Karen Johnson Interview

Questions this interview answers

• How can spiritual sensitivities like seeing auras relate to genuine spiritual development?
• What is the core essence of spiritual realization according to the Diamond Approach?
• How do different individuals express spiritual realization in unique ways?
• What role does mutuality and collaboration play in spiritual teaching and discovery?

Key takeaways

• Spiritual sensitivities, such as seeing auras, do not necessarily indicate spiritual realization.
• The Diamond Approach values both realization and the skillful expression of that realization.
• Spiritual development is unique for each person and can manifest in various capacities.
• Mutuality and collaboration can unlock deeper spiritual understanding than individual effort alone.
• Personal relationships and boundaries can support the integrity and evolution of spiritual work.

Transcript

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer and my guest today is Karen Johnson. Welcome Karen.

Karen: Nice to be here.

Rick: Karen is a co-founder of the Diamond Approach as it is taught in the Ridhwan School. She is a colleague and friend of Hameed Ali, whose pen name is A.H. Almaas. I interviewed Hameed a couple of months ago, so many of you may have seen that interview, and if not, you may want to watch that one after you watch this one. Her life is dedicated to the discovery of inner freedom and sharing the treasures with humankind. Karen and I emailed a bit. I listened to my interview with Hameed just the last few days, and we were very metaphysical most of the time in that discussion. We were sort of really digging deep and discussing deep metaphysical points, and I don’t know if we really fully did justice to the Diamond Approach and covered it, so perhaps you and I will do that together today. And here’s something you wrote to me in an email this week.

You said, “I’m much more interested in how the Diamond Approach is evolving than the beginning of it. The beginnings will be interesting for some, but it has been talked about a lot already in other interviews. Our contributions of detailed knowledge of experience and realization and development of the essential individual are very important contributions. What is most interesting and vibrant for me personally, and what differentiates our work even more from other traditions, are the most recent developments of the past 15 years, which we have only recently begun to teach, speak and write about.” So it sounds like a good idea to me that today we talk about that, the most recent developments of the past 15 years, what’s most interesting and vibrant for you personally. I think that will make it the most interesting and useful interview for people.

But at the same time, people want to know who is this person you’re talking to. So let’s spend a little bit of time just going through your personal spiritual background and whatever you consider relevant, just to acquaint listeners and viewers with who you are. And then we’ll get into the Diamond Approach. So go for it.

Karen: Okay, who am I? You know. It’s a really good question.

Rick: Okay, you can take it on all levels.

Karen: Yeah, well, when you ask it, I think of myself on all those levels. When I think of what I am now, that’s a very different orientation than talking about how I came to be what I am now. So I guess we could take it from a historical viewpoint, which is what I’m guessing you’re probably interested in.

Rick: Keeping in mind that you have covered that in other interviews, you know, with Ian and Renata and so on. So people can always listen to those. We don’t want to eat up all our time on something that they can go and listen to somewhere else. The more we can cover fresh ground, the better, but let’s get acquainted a little bit.

Karen: What would you like to know specifically? Okay, well, I don’t know, just for kicks. You know, a typical question is, when did you first kind of get bitten by the spiritual bug? When did you first sort of realize that life was more than mundane appearances and get inspired to start seeking?

Getting bitten by the spiritual bug. (Laughter) Ouch. I kind of see my spiritual evolution as a natural flow. I don’t know that there was any one event. There were many. But one of the very first things that happened to me was reading a newspaper in the living room when I was about eight years old. I was reading about a girl that died in a car accident. For some reason, I was completely struck by what she had said. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I was sitting there for about 20 minutes, mesmerized in the thought of… She hadn’t been wearing her seat belt. She got thrown from the car, and she was on the ground and said, “Don’t worry, Mommy, I know where I’m going.” And finally, I looked up at my mother. We sat around and read a lot. I looked up at my mother, and I said, “Mom, where was she going? Why did she say that?” And my mother said, “I don’t know.

What do you think?” And we started to chat about it. My mother was kind of an unusual individual. She had her own interests in spiritual things. But that’s the first time I remember thinking about death and dying and what is spirit and where do we go and all of that kind of thing. So I think that that’s my first memory of some other place, some other world. There’s something more than this. And that’s not unusual for children around seven or eight to start having the concept of death and wondering about it. But for me, that stimulated a process that continued, not just about death, but about spirit and life and what is that.

Rick: You had a really neat mother, it sounds like. So did I, by the way. She was going to Esalen and doing all these things, kind of a real spiritual person. And when you asked her some questions, she wouldn’t just give you a pat answer, she would kind of bounce it back to you or tell you she didn’t know if she didn’t know, which must have elicited some even greater inquisitiveness in you. So congratulations on having such a great mother.

Karen: Yeah, mothers are very important people in our lives and they can bring out the best in us and they can also help suppress the best in us. She was unusual that way. And she was also aware of her limitations. So she frequently found people to help me when she couldn’t.

Rick: I remember you also saying in some interview that when you were a child, you saw lights around people, you saw auras, and you asked your mother about that. Is that noteworthy? I think it is actually noteworthy because it shows that you were sort of spiritually precocious in a way. Not all kids see that stuff.

Karen: Yeah, and I get ambivalent about talking about it because it’s kind of one of those occult things and people get very interested in psychic phenomena, which I think is part of what happens when you become more sensitive. But I also feel that being engaged in being able to see subtle energies or that kind of thing doesn’t necessarily make somebody spiritually realized. So I tend to back off of talking about it, but I’m fine to do so. She treated that in a way that she didn’t know what to do with me. My teachers didn’t know what to do with me at school. I was pretty outcast. I found it to be quite painful to be able to see those things. But one thing that struck me as I was thinking about, wondering whether you’re going to ask me this question, that one thing I took from it that I didn’t lose is I could always tell if somebody was telling me the truth. And that I found very useful.

The rest of it, seeing their hatred or their anger or even their love that was sometimes very overpowering. I could see many things, but knowing whether they told me the truth or not was something that was very, very good. That I liked. Then I learned whether I should trust them or not trust them and how much. That was useful.

“I could always tell if somebody was telling me the truth. And that I found very useful.”

Rick: Well, you know, this topic does interest me a little bit. Not that I’m obsessed with the occult or anything, and I wouldn’t even consider this occult, but just because when you consider what the full range of human potential is, and then you think that maybe some people are outliers who are just experiencing things that everyone potentially could experience, but they’re just more developed in some respect than the average. And then you can imagine a society in which that became the norm and this kind of stuff was taken for granted. Then it’s not so strange. Actually, the interview that will be going up before this one goes up was a panel discussion about refined perception and what the implications of it might be with about five people who all have refined perception.

And some were very squeamish about even talking about it, and one guy decided, “That’s the last time I’m going to talk about it. I don’t feel like being so outspoken about such an intimate thing.” And others feel very comfortable talking about it. But in any case, I don’t think it should be relegated to some corner as just being a new age woo-woo. It may be something that everyone on the spiritual path encounters at some point and perhaps needs to understand the significance of.

Karen: Well, I think that I’m comfortable talking about it. I think people get distracted by it, and I think there’s also ways in which people see it as spiritual development, and I don’t think it’s true. I think it can be, and it also can be used to assist people in their spiritual development. But I think there are many people who have all kinds of sensitivities and extrasensory perception that is not an expression of spiritual development or is a kind of development but ends up being used in a way that is for themselves. So it can be distorted just like any other sense can be. So those are my considerations when I talk about those kinds of things because when children have them like I did, they don’t see it as a development necessarily. It’s like too much information sometimes.

It’s more than I needed to know about things, but also it was useful in other ways, and especially as I got involved with people who knew and could help me to understand it. But actually what happened was my mother took me to somebody who worked with sensitives, they called them at the time. It was in the 60s, so there’s people that dealt with things like that, and they actually helped me to learn to unsee a bit and to titrate it. Eventually I kind of lost sight of it for a while until I was in high school where my parents got involved in self-hypnosis and then the whole realm of astral traveling and all of these kinds of things kind of showed up and I started seeing auras again. And my mother reminded me that I did as a child and I got scared and she said, “Well, let’s do it different this time. Let’s see what it means.” So we investigated it instead.

Rick: Yeah. I think again, things are scary when they’re unusual, and if we lived in a society in which that sort of perception was the norm, it was like big deal. You wouldn’t talk about it much because it’s something that everyone would share in their experience, but it’s a little unusual when it’s unusual.

Karen: It’s true. It’s dramatic that way. I think actually it brings in the question of energy and energy information and exchange that I think people are doing all of the time. I don’t think that is something related to development. The fact that I could see it was some kind of capacity. I don’t know why it was there, but people are having exchanges constantly. I mean, people are transmitting themselves on a loudspeaker all the time. So I think people are picking those things up. If you walk into a room and something has happened there that was … somebody just had a fight and left, you can sort of feel that something funny had gone on. Or if you walk in and people stop talking and try to make nice, you get that something’s funny. It’s not just their body language. It’s a whole atmosphere that’s been created. So I think that people are aware. They’re just not knowing what they’re aware of.

Rick: And someone like yourself, perhaps, for most people it’s probably just intuitive or just a feeling or something. But for some people it’s quite clear. Someone’s lying, you see sparks flying around their heads. So it’s just … and you say maybe it’s not spirituality. And I would agree in the sense that there’s not a tight correlation, but I think there’s a loose correlation. I think if you took a hundred highly spiritually enlightened people, however we define that, you’d find that this kind of thing was fairly common among them. And if you took a hundred people in San Quentin, not to say that some of those might not be highly spiritual, but you’d find it to be less common. There’s just a sort of a crudeness or a dulling down that happens. And spirituality, by contrast, is the opposite of that. It’s a sort of a refinement and a purification of all that crudeness.

All of our faculties, wouldn’t you agree with me?

Karen: Yes, in one sense that yes, our senses become more refined. Our ability to sense becomes deeper. We feel more, but not everybody will see auras necessarily. Not everybody is going to see the same dimensions in the same way. So, I think even though our senses become more refined, auras might not be something everybody sees, for instance.

Rick: Yeah, and that’s obviously the case when you talk to a bunch of people. That’s obviously the case.

Karen: Not everybody’s going to have a capacity to know the past, present, and future. Not everyone’s going to have that. So, it depends on the person’s development, proclivities, I guess, or how being wants to express itself through them and how it wants to see itself.

🕊️ Defining Spiritual Development

Rick: So, if things like that are sort of symptomatic and different people are going to have different symptoms, then what is the more essential fundamental value that you would regard? If you had to boil spirituality or spiritual development down to its core essence, what would that be?

Karen: That’s a very big question. Well, you’re asking several different questions in that. Spirituality and how that spirituality is expressed in the form of capacities, that can be many. Spirituality in terms of boiling it down to its essence, I would say that can be anything. I mean, that can be … well, the question would be what’s most fundamental.

Rick: Yeah, some would say self-realization, for instance.

Karen: Pardon?

Rick: Some might say, “Okay, self-realization, that’s the core.” I see. Yeah, that kind of thing. How does the Ridhwan School define it?

Karen: Self-realization?

Rick: No, I mean, what is your yardstick for spiritual development in the Ridhwan School? People obviously go through years of training and they progress through levels or stages of expertise and some of them eventually become teachers. I mean, how do you evaluate or measure, if you do, a person’s progress?

Karen: Well, there’s two things. One is the realization side, what people are able to experience, the subtlety of the level of realization. And then there’s the expression. How is that realization expressed? And in the Ridhwan School, to be a teacher, it needs to be expressed in a particular way in terms of skill. However, that doesn’t mean that all teachers are realized in the same way. Some people have actually a great deal of skill and capacity, knowledge, precision. They’re very skillful in the way that they can guide people. Their realization may not be as deep as somebody else’s who has less skill. So they might be more honed, more developed, and more precise in their actual ability to guide somebody when their experience may not be as expansive as someone else’s. So, it depends on how you look at it. Sometimes I have students whose realization is quite deep.

What I mean by deep is subtle. They’re able to really traverse a lot of different kinds of experiences. Those experiences come out and get expressed in their lives, but they’ve chosen not to become teachers, which I have a great deal of respect for that too. Being a teacher is only one way of expressing that realization, and there are many other ways.

Rick: Yeah, I mean, to use the Sanskrit term, we all have different dharmas, and everybody’s dharma is not that of a teacher.

Karen: Yes.

❤️ Meeting Hameed Ali and the Origins of the Diamond Approach

Rick: Yeah, so, okay, we’ll keep unfolding this, but let’s bring it back to you a little bit more. So, you know, you last left us in your teenage years where your parents were starting to get into hypnosis and stuff, and you began to experience astral traveling and auras dawned again. Then what?

Karen: Then what? Then I went away to art school. I did not want to go. I wanted to stay home. I was one of those kids who wanted to stay home and not go. I was still very shy, uncomfortable making new friends. I had started coming out more in high school. I learned yoga. I was teaching yoga to my PE class in high school, but I was very comfortable at home, and I wanted to stay home. So, I went away to school. I stayed in contact with my parents, and then I met a friend, Sandra Maitre, who introduced me to Hameed, and that’s how I met him. But I didn’t have much to do with him for a couple of years, and then we met again. As I look at my life and the way our lives kind of came together, it’s been very interesting to kind of look over the way things flowed to have us meet. Then we drove to Colorado at some point together where he was going to do the returning process.

Sandra and he were going to go do that together, and she called me and said, “Do you want to come?” I said, “Sure.” I had just broken up with my boyfriend. I had nothing better to do, and I just felt, “Yes, I want to go.” We were both very shy, actually, he and I, but we started talking, and we haven’t stopped since is what I tell people. That began a journey toward…I didn’t know I was seeking at that point. I was interested in spirituality. I did yoga. I did meditation. I did various things. I went and saw teachers with my friend, Richie Gordon. He went around, and we visited all the teachers, and Stanford University had them coming through in droves. By the time I got to meet Hameed, he didn’t consider himself a teacher yet. We were just friends. We went to Boulder, and that’s where the groups began, and that’s where things took off.

Rick: You mentioned that experience in several interviews, which I think bears repeating, you were sitting with me, and he did some whirling thing with his hand or something, and that opened up in you some kind of awakening, which never left you after that.

Karen: Uh-huh. Well, we had had experiences of essence. We discovered this nectary fluid and lights and all kinds of subtle experiences were starting to happen already bit by bit, but that’s when I actually recognized the power and the real substantial nature of presence, and that’s when presence was awakening in me. Literally, I felt my body waking up. I felt my body waking up, but later I understood that to be my consciousness, that my consciousness in my body was waking up like lights, like a brilliant fullness was just flowing through me and waking up every cell as it went along, and that’s when I got the significance, and I felt I bowed to it and felt that at that time he was my friend, and we were best friends by then. But I also had a very important recognition that by him doing that and awakening something in me and showing me that, he was my teacher too.

“I felt my body waking up, but later I understood that to be my consciousness… like a brilliant fullness was just flowing through me and waking up every cell as it went along.”

Rick: So what was that thing he did? Did he do that with other people?

Karen: That thing he did?

Rick: That swirling thing with his hand, did he know what he was doing? Or was it some kind of spontaneous gesture and it just sort of triggered something in you and he never did it again?

Karen: He never did it again.

Rick: Just some little thing that happened to happen.

Karen: He just had this swirling in his hand, as if he was kind of extracting nectar from the air or something. I don’t know what he was doing, but I was just mesmerized by it. Yeah, it was an interesting experience, and clearly at that time it was the beginnings of things happening in the 70s. I was living in Denver, but that thing that happened then, I don’t know what dawned on him to do that.

Rick: Some gesture.

Karen: He never did it again, he never did it before, but he just poured this into me. It was really very interesting. I had had spiritual experiences before. It wasn’t like the spiritual presence was new exactly, but something happened differently. The way that my experience unraveled from there and unfolded, it unraveled me and unfolded itself into me is kind of how I see it. It really became specifically the diamond approach, how things began to emerge at that point. So, that was unique, it was a unique experience for him and for me.

Co-Founding and the Evolution of the Diamond Approach

Rick: So, are you two co-founders? Did you pretty much play an equal share in formulating the diamond approach, or was he the predominant one and you kind of like filled in the pieces, or what?

Karen: Well, that’s an interesting and complex story. He was involved along with another friend and myself. He was the spearhead of it. The realizations tended to come through him at first, although as this presence was unfolding in me, I would have experiences in particular ways he wouldn’t. Other friends would have experiences in ways he wouldn’t, but he synthesized all of this in some way. It wasn’t just an intellectual synthesis. It was a way in which he would have insight into how all of the things fit together. So, yes, we were in a conversation that was very mutual. It was organic. It was a discovery. He would be involved in an inquiry. I would engage with him. I would have all kinds of other kinds of questions. He would engage with me. I would have experiences. But in terms of the synthesis of the teaching, he was the one who was bringing those things together.

That became more and more, we became more and more involved. I became more and more engaged. Then I moved out to California and there was much more involvement. But we weren’t, I don’t consider us having actually been equal until the 90s. That’s when I felt our engagement and involvement together actually reached a kind of mutual place. Then certain experiences began to happen and this is where I felt things got very exciting. Being was coming through in such a way that I could see, if I look back on not my own personal history, but the history of the way the work evolved, I could see the way being was maneuvering itself with the people that were involved at the beginning, including the students that were the original students and how that whole thing came together to really explode a path into existence through us.

In the 90s, things started happening where I could see how the mutuality and the equalization needed to happen to create a kind of vortex to open up secrets that couldn’t be known by just one. It needed a certain kind of synergy, a certain kind of exchange that liberated a certain kind of understanding that brought about a whole perspective that is now what’s being taught in the school. That didn’t happen until … I mean the first inklings of that began around 1985. The actual opening to it started in the 90s and then that culminated in around year 2000.

Rick: A number of interesting things here. One is a very personal and perhaps inappropriate question, which is that you and Hameed have been working together for like 30, 40 years. Has it ever been a personal relationship or has it always just been, “He’s been married all this time and you guys are just spiritual co-creators or something?” I wonder how that’s how you’ve met. I mean I hear even these days talking about Tantra and Eros and all this stuff. I’m wondering how have you managed to balance that close working relationship with personal lives outside of your relationship?

Karen: Well, that’s a very good question because it’s been a difficult balance at times. But that’s why when we talk about the Tantra, we talk about friendships that use Eros for liberation. It’s a kind of energy that erotic energy does not have to be sexual energy, but it can be. We have had attractions from time to time, but we also recognize we’re about the work. This is not about us in terms of individuals. We’re individuals that are expressing something far larger, much more important than just what is our personal pleasure or direction.

We’re both married and we’ve been always involved with other people. When we first met, we were both involved with other people. It just seemed that being arranged itself in such a way to keep us just far enough and having our own personal life to create a kind of energy. I don’t know if it would have happened otherwise. We have wondered, not often, but occasionally, what if we had met and we weren’t involved with other people all the time? What would have happened? We actually think that it’s possible that the work wouldn’t have evolved as it has. People get engaged with their lives and their instincts get engaged in a way that you get involved in creating your shelter, having company, and your sexual pleasure. All of these things and something else occurs there, rather than having the truth and realization as central to your relationship.

Although it could be, I’m not saying it’s not possible, but we don’t know what it would have been otherwise.

Rick: That’s kind of a moot point.

Karen: It has been a difficult balance in terms of our relationships, just because the work is central to our lives. It is what matters, it is what we would give up everything for.

“The work is central to our lives. It is what matters, it is what we would give up everything for.”

Rick: It’s a very interesting point. I mean, you’ve managed to transmute or sublimate or something this energy that is created by your interaction and it’s provided fuel for your teaching. I’m just reiterating what you just said. Whereas, had you not done that, there wouldn’t have been that fuel. The teaching might not have had the potency and the vibrancy that it has ended up having. So it’s kind of interesting. And related to that, you’ve said several times, and Hameed also often said when I was talking to him, that being organized it in such a way. And that fascinates me, because it sort of, in a way, almost anthropomorphizes being. It implies that “Being” is not just sort of flat absolute, but it’s a lively intelligence which actually, in some way, orchestrates the course of events to help facilitate certain outcomes or certain unfoldments. So feel free to comment on both those points.

I find them both very interesting.

Karen: Yeah, I think it is easy for some to anthropomorphize being, which is why there is the concept of God as somebody sitting up in the sky. Because how can you, if you don’t have the experience of a dynamic force, an invisible kind of force behind everything at all times and all places that’s happening, you can’t think of it any other way. If you think of yourself as an entity separate from other entities, God can’t be but an entity. It’s very difficult to think of a force that’s not an entity if you see yourself as one.

Rick: Yeah, probably I shouldn’t have used the word anthropomorphize, because that does imply entity. But what I’m thinking of more is in terms of all-pervading intelligence, which we are within that, that is within us, it’s just inseparable. But that it actually does have a kind of an evolutionary direction and that it sort of in its vast and infinite intelligence tends to move things along in a certain way and bring about certain outcomes and developments that are not just dumb luck.

Karen: Right, that has its own intelligence in a way that’s optimizing.

Rick: Yeah.

Karen: It optimizes its possibilities of expression.

Rick: Sure. So, for instance, the diamond approach is an effective thing. It’s influencing the lives of a lot of people. It wasn’t a coincidence that you happened to run into Hameed and that you happened to go to Denver and that you happened to be married to other people in relationships with other people. It’s intricate, I mean it’s unfathomable if you really try to parse it out too much, but all these things were conducive to things developing as they did. And it’s not just your individual intelligence which orchestrated it, which figured it all out. There was some larger intelligence that you were following the impulses of or that you were in tune with that enabled things to develop as they have.

Karen: Well, I followed them even though I wasn’t in tune with them.

Rick: Yeah.

Karen: I ended up at art school. I met Sandra. I met Hameed. I didn’t feel like I was in touch with anything and going, “Oh, I’m feeling guided here.” Although, if I look back on it, I made a lot of decisions based on a gut feeling of, “This feels like the right thing to do.”

Rick: Yeah.

Karen: Or, “This doesn’t feel like the right thing to do.” Yeah, who’s making that decision? It can feel like my decision, but is it? When I look back at it, no, I don’t feel that it’s that way. There’s only “Being” deciding.

Rick: Yeah. And I guess the point I’m dwelling on is that it’s interesting that “Being” does decide, you know. Not necessarily as a human intellect would decide, but there’s something more meaningful to the way events unfold in the world than just randomness and so on. There’s a kind of a guiding intelligence.

Karen: Right, there’s a pattern.

Rick: Yeah.

Karen: That you can see in hindsight often that you don’t see as it’s happening.

Rick: Right, right.

Karen: That events are created that stimulate a certain process and it appears from within the entity’s point of view that they’re making a decision.

Rick: Yes.

Karen: If you look at it from within a separated individual, you can’t see it any other way than I am making a decision.

Rick: Right, it seems like that.

Karen: But from a bigger view, you see how all of these energies are moving in a certain direction and something slips into place and you find yourself making a decision.

Rick: Yeah.

Karen: Or you find yourself moving in a certain direction. And at some point when I make a decision now or when I, you know, if I articulate it that way, I don’t actually feel that I am making a decision. I actually, what starts happening for me is a discernment of the way things are going.

“What starts happening for me is a discernment of the way things are going… It’s just a recognition it’s the optimal way to go.”

Rick: Beautiful, yeah.

Karen: And that that’s just the way that it’s going. It doesn’t mean that I don’t apply myself. It doesn’t mean I’m not practicing. It doesn’t mean, but the more aware I am, the more I recognize this is the optimal way to go. And it’s just a recognition it’s the optimal way to go. It doesn’t feel like I’m, okay, I’m deciding to do that now.

Rick: Right.

Karen: It’s like following the optimal way things are moving, that it’s already moving. I can’t even say that it’s already moving there, but there’s a way that the engagement is simply that, yes, that’s the natural next step, the most natural.

Rick: Yeah, it’s very interesting. You know that common phrase, “Go with the flow,” and that might sound a little passive, but there’s this sort of subtle balance, isn’t there, between going with the flow and sort of being on your toes in terms of subtle discrimination and just being alert to the way the flow is going in order to go with it and not sort of blindly go against it.

Karen: Yes, and that that’ll have immediate repercussions, the more sensitive one is.

Rick: Yeah.

Karen: And it’ll feel more and more dull when you’re going in the wrong direction and more and more bright when you’re moving in a direction that feels … that you’re recognizing as correct direction or right action.

🏘️ Diamond Approach Curriculum and Group Dynamics

Rick: So let’s focus in on what we said when I read your … in the introduction you were saying, “What’s most interesting and vibrant for me personally and what differentiates our work even more from other traditions are the most recent developments of the past 15 years, which we have only recently begun to teach, speak, and write about.” So let’s spend a good hour talking about what you’re implying there.

Karen: Okay. Well, like I was saying before about the things that started to open up for Hamid and I in the ’90s were a departure from the journey, what we call the journey of ascent and descent of the diamond approach, which is when we learned about the aspects of our nature that are applicable in daily life where people can actually feel the kindness of “Being”, the strength, the love, the intelligence, the joy. All of these things are things people can actually relate to and those are the first things that tend to open up on the journey. And then we get involved in dealing with who we are in terms of who we are in the world as a person and our realization. And that goes through various dimensions we call the non-dual dimensions or the boundless dimensions is what we call them in the school to the absolute.

And then there’s a whole process of what we call the journey of descent, which is the integration of all of the dimensions and aspects into the absolute and seeing everything from there through that.

Rick: So, let me just interrupt for a second. So, the people who are studying in the school actually experientially go through the phases you just described. You’re not just taking them through it philosophically, but their experience clearly or to whatever degree of clarity actually progresses through those phases.

Karen: Yes, that’s the curriculum in school.

Rick: And how does that happen? What do they do or practice or whatever to bring that about?

Karen: We have practices, we have teachings. When someone joins a group, they get involved in a group that takes people through the various levels and dimensions. And we do exercises, teachings, meditations, and so on.

Rick: So, are there little subgroups within the Ridhwan School where if you’re at this stage, you participate in this group because they’re focusing on that and then maybe you graduate from that and you get into this little subgroup?

Karen: It’s usually you start a group and you go through the curriculum with that group. And then sometimes groups are merged when they get smaller, if they’re dealing with the same things, or if somebody comes in at a time when the group is still open, they pick things up from another group if they need them. But generally, you join one group and you go through the whole curriculum with that group, which establishes its own group field, too. Which is kind of a nice and an interesting thing because you move through things with people and get to know them in ways that you might not if you were just going to a class, for instance. It’s a whole kind of sub-sangha, that there’s the whole school and then there’s the groups within the school that are moving through the curriculum in different ways.

Recent Developments: The Freedom Vehicle and Radical Non-Conceptuality

Rick: So let’s zoom back into our introductory point, what you’ve been doing the past 15 years, what’s most vibrant for you personally. I want to make sure we’re doing justice to it. We may be getting off on tangents and not really getting to the meat of it or bringing in all the facets you’d like to talk about.

Karen: Well, I think the meat of it really is what we’re teaching in the school, and it’s a very, very big, meaty subject. But I think, yes, we have touched on it in the sense that freedom is really honoring the dynamism of “Being”, and that it is on a continual trajectory to expand itself into new horizons, new arenas, new development, and that what that implies for the individual consciousness is really a kind of freedom that is really unimaginable in the sense that, I mean, getting into any of the boundless dimensions is unimaginable. So, the kind of freedom that’s possible is a departure from all of that, even. But it’s exciting because it gives me a good feeling about the possibilities for humanity, even if the planet doesn’t exist anymore, which at some point it won’t, even if we do good things here and try to really help the health of our planet and optimize this arena.

Universes explode and grow and die every moment, but what else is there? And what kind of freedom is possible? So in the school, we’re teaching from the perspective of freedom and venturing into what some of those possibilities are. And we can’t exhaust it, but we can bring in a perspective of freedom that really honors the dynamism of our nature, the dynamism of this amazing, inscrutable “Beingness” that we are.

“Freedom is really honoring the dynamism of ‘Being’, and that it is on a continual trajectory to expand itself into new horizons, new arenas, new development.”

Rick: And about this grey night of the soul, was that contagious or was it just you and Hameed? Did your students start experiencing the same thing?

Karen: Not for some time. It only was when Hameed and I began to see what it meant that people began to experience it. And most people came to it as boredom, feeling disquieted, feeling done with the work. Some people actually left when I knew that what they were heading toward was that. Some people don’t want to feel nothing. They want to feel spiritual. It really makes you have to confront your ideas about spirituality because from this place everything is spiritual and not spiritual. Everything is ordinary.

Rick: I mean, is what you are referring to really just a matter of integration and maturity? Because at a certain point the “wow” factor has to pretty much disappear. If you really integrate this stuff it has to be as normal as breathing. You don’t keep making a big fuss about it all the time. There is a sort of ordinariness to something which if you were to pop into it abruptly and suddenly would seem quite extraordinary, but it’s really quite ordinary if it’s well enough integrated. Is that a fair assessment of what you are talking about?

Karen: It could be. I think partly. However, we’ve never really heard anybody talk about it this way. I’m talking about it somewhat simplistically, but because it opened up to an entire way of looking at things, even looking at our own path that was very difficult to comprehend. It took many, many, many years of insight and development to really comprehend the meaning. The normality is part of it. I think you’re right. Anybody who I have met who I bow to as realized or feel that kind of respect for, they act pretty normal. Normal in one way, but also you can tell that there’s great openness, kindness, love, acceptance. The qualities come through in ways that are discernible, but they’re acting like a normal human being. They’re not putting themselves up on a pedestal. They’re not acting in any way that demands something from you to them.

Endless Discovery and the Value of Perspectives

Rick: That’s beautiful. It’s a subtle point so it sometimes takes a lot of words to say it. And I think Hameed and I, when we did our interview, we kind of batted this around quite a bit too. I guess if I could summarize it in a few words it would be that ultimate reality may be just it is what it is, but our capacity as carbon units, our capacity as beings who can experience that reality, there’s no end to its refinement and to the exploration that we can pursue or that we can go through. I’m not doing it any better than you did, but there’s just no end.

I guess another key point you’re trying to make here is that if we have this concept that there’s this end point and we’re going to reach it and then we’re just going to rest on our laurels and be done, it’s not a very helpful concept and it doesn’t really bear any correlation with the reality of the situation, which is that there is never going to be such a thing.

Karen: Well, I think for some people there is such a thing.

Rick: Yeah, do you think really that they’re really at such a point or do you think that they’ve just kind of mistaken a transit lounge for the final destination?

Karen: Transit lounge, well I think there are many way stations and I think some people prefer to get off at those stations and have a cup of coffee and sometimes they like it and so they move in. I don’t know what the right thing is for everyone, but I do think for me, being on a path of discovery, I don’t feel necessarily … it just hasn’t been my way to sit, have coffee, move in and watch the …

Rick: CNN.

Karen: Yeah, whatever. It just hasn’t been what’s occurred for me. And I actually have to say that having an end point is a helpful concept for some people. In fact, in our work, the first years are bringing out the aspects, working through the issues and being able to have a certain realization. We don’t say that’s the end one, but we say it’s an important one and it’s an important one for them to be able to develop. For some people, studying Buddhism and getting into the emptiness and having that be really, really integrated, that’s an important end point. Then when that’s really part of who they are, who knows? Anything’s possible. People have different kinds of realizations. I mean, Dogen showed up with some new ways of looking at things. That’s one I’m currently interested in, so I bring him up.

But in any path, there’s an end point that’s postulated, but once people get there, all kinds of different things happen. People splinter off and have different sorts of ways of looking at that very same teaching. The dynamism is showing itself no matter what the tradition is. From my point of view, I can see it in all kinds of traditions, even when they say, “This is it for us. This is it,” and somebody else says it a little differently, and somebody else is expressing it a little differently. For me, I just see it as a big ocean of discovery that I don’t know that I’d want to be at an end, even though I saw that there was that bias for a long time.

“For me, I just see it as a big ocean of discovery that I don’t know that I’d want to be at an end.”

The Individual and the Infinite

Rick: And one thing Hameed and I were talking about was that not only is “Being” beyond life and death, but there seems to be some essence that evolves over time that is beyond life and death and that is distinctive or unique to each of us. Of course, many traditions hold that opinion. So is that the kind of thing you’re talking about in the school?

Karen: Yeah, that’s what I mean when I say to “Be”, actually be that which is beyond life and death. That means our individual consciousness is able to recognize itself as that and that’s true in any of the non-dual conditions. When you recognize that’s what you are, there is no life and death. You know that you can’t die. As the individual consciousness expresses that in a pure way, that begins to develop the individual consciousness in such a way that it too is not relegated to the realm of life and death and is free from life and death.

Rick: Yeah, there’s sort of a debate about that. Some people say, “Well, it’s like the raindrop falls into the ocean and is indistinguishable from the ocean, that’s it, all there is is ocean.” And others say, “No, even after enlightenment there is some essence which lives on and which could function on some level.” Many people have spoken of Ramana Maharshi coming to them, even sometimes before they ever knew who he was or that he had ever existed. Pamela Wilson, I mean, he shows up in her bedroom and she throws a pillow at him. So it’s an interesting thing to consider.

Karen: Really? Why did she throw a pillow at him?

Rick: Because she was like this teenage girl and she thought, “I want truth to come to this door. I want to know what the truth is.” And so she kind of gets in bed and she maybe falls asleep or I don’t even know if she was asleep yet and all of a sudden this Indian man is sitting on her bed and she was a little bit freaked out. And later on she discovered that, “Oh, that was Ramana Maharshi,” because she saw a picture of him. And I’ve interviewed at least half a dozen people who’ve had experiences like that, where Ramana Maharshi comes to them. More often than not it’s before they’d ever heard of him.

And so either the intelligence of “Being”, which we were talking about earlier, is orchestrating that kind of a vision for people and it has nothing to do with the person who was Ramana Maharshi or Ramana Maharshi is hanging out on some level kind of pulling the strings and intervening in people’s lives.

Karen: Well, it’s a beautiful illustration of when you really feel that kind of desire for the truth, honor what comes to you, whatever it looks like, and find out what’s that. I wanted the truth and here this is what’s showing up, whether it’s inwardly or outwardly. But I think back to the question of freedom, when you talk about the drop in the ocean and just dissipating into the ocean, or you’re talking about the individual consciousness, I say, “Why do you need to choose?” We have the experiences of both when we feel we can completely melt or dissolve into the ocean of “Being” and feel that we are everywhere at all times, all places. That’s true and it’s still one’s individual experience. Not everybody’s having that experience. So there’s something that is the experiencer.

If you can know an experience, if you can articulate that experience, somebody’s having it and that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a self. It’s like we’re all conduits. If we look at it from the outside in, every individual is a conduit into that vastness. From the vastness, it has a conduit into the world or into experience. And so there’s a way in which there’s a very symbiotic relationship between the individual consciousness and the ocean of consciousness, if you want to call it that, or whatever you want to call true nature or the ultimate, whatever it is. There’s a devaluation of the individual consciousness very frequently. The more I understand about the way things work, the more I see that yes, there is only “Being” and there is only true nature and it manifested itself a world to grow eyes in. It has beautiful ways of developing itself to see itself, to know itself in new ways.

“Every individual is a conduit into that vastness. From the vastness, it has a conduit into the world or into experience.”

Openness to All Perspectives

Rick: What else can we bring out that would be of value to people and exciting for you?

Karen: Well, I am excited talking about this inclusive perspective. I find it very accepting, open to … It’s also valuing each tradition’s perspective in a way that we can continue to learn. I mean, Hameed’s always been extremely well-read and interested in many, many traditions. I am somewhat … I’ve studied them, but mainly I learn a lot by talking with him about what he knows. All the way through the journey, he’s always been impacted by other traditions. I in turn have been impacted by how he’s been impacted. It’s also gone through him in a way where he’s like a filtering mechanism. It’s very interesting where it comes in and we experience things in a certain way, but then it becomes part of our perspective and it’s got a slightly different wisdom to it. It’s not exactly the same. We’ve learned from other traditions all along the way.

When we entered through the absolute into this other dimension of featurelessness, we were basically pretty lost for a while. We hadn’t heard anybody talk about it. There may have been teachings and some people listening to this may be aware of them, but we were floundering for quite some time because very often we would be looking at our experience and say, “Oh, the Buddhists have a certain point of view about this. Yes, this fits or this doesn’t for us.” Or, “Yes, they have a teaching about emptiness or they have a teaching about pure awareness.” We learned that way, but we were having it come through in a particular way. We had nothing to bang up against and say, so there wasn’t any real conceptual dichotomy to play with about it. In fact, there were no dichotomies at all of any sort.

It was what we call radical non-conceptuality where there wasn’t even the conception or the concept of awareness or even emptiness. It didn’t feel empty, it didn’t feel not empty. So, it was much more radical for us and other people may have come into this.

“The Freedom Vehicle is really the kind of freedom that has a wisdom of all perspectives without being attached to any of them, without having to perch on anyone in particular.”

Well, that’s the beauty of things is that in hearing you talking about listening to different people all the time, we’re always impacted in a way that hopefully we think about things later on and things come up and, “Oh, wow!” And that just is part of the conversation. The conversation continues after the words are through, and that’s what’s beautiful. And I do want to say that you are a perfect chameleon in the sense that your Being is manifesting in a very unique and lovely way that I feel privileged to be speaking with.

Rick: Well, thanks, I’m honored. Really sweet. And I’ll see you in a couple of months actually, or maybe five, out at the S.A.N.D. conference. I’ll be going out there. I saw you and Hameed are on the roster.

Karen: Yes.

Rick: Great.

Karen: Yeah, we’ll be there.

Rick: Yeah. All righty, well, I guess let’s wrap it up then. I mean, there’s always more to talk about. We’ll have other opportunities.

Karen: We will.

Rick: Yeah. Well, let me make a few concluding remarks. I’ve been speaking with Karen Johnson, who again is co-founder of The Diamond Approach, as it is taught in the Ridhwan School. She and Hameed Ali, or A.H. Almaas, teach together. I will be linking to her website from her page on Batgap.com. Each interview has its own page. If you happen to be listening to this on YouTube or somebody sent you the audio of it or something go to Batgap.com and you will find an archive of all the interviews I’ve done so far, about 230 something, and there’s a place to sign up to be notified each time a new one is done. Just get an email once a week.

There is a little discussion group that crops up around each interview. Sometimes it gets pretty lively, sometimes not, but if anything in this interview inspires you to participate in a conversation, go there. You’ll see a link to it on Karen’s page. There’s a link to an audio podcast on each interview’s page, so you can go and subscribe on iTunes and listen to the interviews on whatever podcast reader you use. There’s a donate button, which I appreciate and rely upon people clicking from time to time if they have the means. There are some other things, if you pull down the various menus, there’s a chronological index of interviews, a topical index, and it all is a work in progress, it can always be improved. So thanks for listening or watching. Thanks again Karen.

Karen: Thank you.

Rick: It’s been great, and we’ll see you all next week.

Karen: Okay, goodbye.

Rick: Bye Karen, thanks.

Karen: Bye.

Rick: Bye.