Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer and my guest this time is Mark Landau. Mark is an old friend of mine. I first met him in spring of 1971 when I was teaching a course in Transcendental Meditation in Westport, Connecticut. And Mark came in to learn. And he immediately impressed me by the fact that before he had even learned, he was asking me how to become a teacher. And he ended up doing that in fairly short order and went on to become Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s personal secretary. And I have all kinds of experiences which we’ll be talking about during this interview. And recently Mark has written a nice book which I just read called “I Love You and Forgive You” and I’m sure he’ll want to talk a lot about that. So welcome, Mark and thanks for doing this.
Mark: Thank you very much. My pleasure.
Rick: Yeah. So where would you like to start? I mean nobody particularly cares about whether you played football or not in high school. But in terms of the spiritual implications of your life, the things that you consider to be pivotal or influential in your spiritual path, let’s start with those.
Mark: Well, if I start with those, I have to go back to before high school.
Rick: Okay.
Mark: I remember when I shut down my spirituality. It was at the age of five. And my family didn’t support it, spirituality. My father was a proclaimed atheist. My mother did some ritual things, but there was no heart or life or light in them that I could see. And when I was five and in the car, I felt that I saw God- imminent, divine, in the sky. This was not any cloud or smiley face or anything like that. This was divine effulgence beaming out of the sky at me. And I piped up and I said, “I see God in the sky.” And my father said, “Oh, what does he look like?” And like I said, it wasn’t a smiley face, but it felt like smiling and love and divine support and nurturance, almost like a face smiling out of the sky at me. And I said, “Like a face smiling out of the sky at me,” or something like that. And disdain on everyone’s part in the car besides me, I was the fifth one, the last, the youngest, was so powerful that I decided I was old enough to do something about it. And the only thing I could do was shut down my spirituality. So I did that, and my experiences. And I became a hedonist. But one high school thing. I wasn’t into football, but I would probably say that drugs in high school were a huge part of my evolution for a number of different reasons. And at that time, as you may recall, it was still fairly new in white, upper middle class suburbia, and basically unheard of on the part of most people. And there were a few older kids who did some stuff, and then there were about 17 kids in my class that started doing marijuana and hashish and stuff like that. But I did everything I could get my hands on, because I was in pain and I wanted peace, and I wanted oblivion, and I wanted some kind of breakthrough, or something. And I even did heroin in high school.
Rick: Yes, so did I. Were you attributing some kind of spiritual significance to the drug use or were you just doing it for kicks?
Mark: Not at all. At the time, you know, it wasn’t that much of a conscious thing in terms of altering my consciousness. But I knew that I didn’t like how I felt. And I wanted to do something about that, anything I could do.
Rick: Yeah.
Mark: And, to be honest, the first time I did heroin, I felt peace like you wouldn’t believe. It knocked me off my feet, literally. I had to sit down on the edge of the bathtub in the bathroom where I was being shot up. And, you know, it was for peace and for even oblivion that I was doing it. It wasn’t consciously for any kind of spiritual experience at that time.
Rick: Yeah, yeah. I think I threw up the first time I did it. I only did it about three times, and that was after having done all the other drugs for a year or so, and I was kind of near the end of my drug experience. In fact, I think I did heroin during my 15 days of abstention from drugs before learning TM.
Mark: I think the first time, it was fabulous the first time. But the second time, I think, and several times after that, I started getting sick from it. But, like you, I had been doing other things before, long before, and to the point where I got stoned out of my gourd and went to school and got caught. And, you know, my parents were so shocked by it that my father asked me if I wanted to see a psychiatrist. And I said, yeah. I figured, you know, at that point, I figured I could learn something, you know, that maybe it would help. You know, I’m willing to try anything, including drugs and psychiatry. So, I began my first path of self-discovery healing. And it was three times a week, and it was a psychiatrist. It was client-centered psychotherapy, and I went all through college. And, like you said, a similar experience, the second I got away from home, the second I got away from Westport, which is a beautiful, wealthy, affluent, artsy community, but for me, it was hell. It wasn’t a happy place. I lost all interest in drugs and just spontaneously stopped taking all drugs as soon as I left home. And…
Rick: Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead, I was just going to probe you with a question, but you obviously have more to say, so continue.
Mark: Oh, yeah, you can probe me with a question. But, in the middle of my two semesters of my freshman year, at the end of my first semester freshman year, my girlfriend found a lump in my testicle. And they told me they’d do a biopsy but they removed it while I was under. It was cancer with metastases to the lymph nodes in my abdomen. They call it near-metastases, which is good, because if it was far-metastases, it probably would’ve killed me. But, even with near-metastases, it’s very lethal. But, what happened then was I went through two operations and a year of chemotherapy. Towards the end of my year of chemotherapy, my spiritual experiences awakened again. I was like, you know, 18 or 19 at that point. I would have what we later came to call unity experiences. I’d be lying on the ground at the University of Wisconsin, looking at everything, and I just felt absolutely one with everything. With the blades of grass, the concrete sidewalk, the buildings, the people, the cosmos, the galaxy. I just felt a core identity that was one, that was absolutely the same for all things.
Rick: Interesting. You’d think that with chemotherapy, you would’ve just been all dulled out and muddled and foggy, but you were actually having these experiences.
Mark: During the chemo, it wasn’t so much that way. During the chemo, I was terribly sick. Of course, I lost all my hair. I had sores in my mouth. I couldn’t eat solid food. I had to drink from a blender.
Rick: In those days, chemo was a lot more brutal than it is now, too.
Mark: It was. And one of the pioneers was there at the University of Wisconsin and I was one of his guinea pigs. It was towards the end of the chemo, and it was in between, because they don’t give it to you nonstop. They give it to you for three or four weeks, and then they stop for a few weeks, and then they give it to you, and then they stop. So, it was in between, mostly, the sessions. Because during the sessions I was just too ill to be spiritual much. Towards the end, I did. I didn’t start seeking a spiritual path, but I started taking better care of myself. I started working out. I started eating better. And for the first time in my life, I started seriously studying. Things continued from there. I graduated. I loved things like philosophy, and art history and mythology and foreign literature, and things like that. But because I liked my psychiatrist in college, and I thought I wanted to help people, and I thought it was helping me at the time, and it was, in a way it was, I decided I wanted to become a psychotherapist. So, I made a very wise decision to take a year off after college. But towards the end of that year, I began to think, “What the hell am I going to do for a year?” So, I wrote to ten schools saying, “Can I apply at this late date?” Only one wrote back saying “yes,” and that was Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, which is a fairly good school. So, I applied, and they accepted me and I got scholarships and decided to go. As soon as I got there, I felt totally trapped. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like what I was studying. I wasn’t with a therapist anymore. That stopped when I finished undergraduate school. And the only thing I could think of doing in the state that I was in, was “heed Timothy Leary.”
Rick: “Tune in, turn on, drop out.” “Tune in, turn on, tune in, drop out,” I think it was.
Mark: So, I did. I had taken LSD once, but a small dose at night by myself. It had been a great experience and I thought, “Well, I need something, and maybe that will do something for me.” And I think at that point, there was the idea that it would somehow create a kind of a, if not a spiritual breakthrough, at least, a psychic or mental or emotional breakthrough. So I did that. I went to Florida. I went to a rock concert and I took a massive dose of LSD. And the guy who handed it to me handed me a wafer, you know, a little thin sheet of paper. And I started to pop it, and he said, “You might want to tear that in half.” And I said, “Not me!” And it put me over the edge. I’m very sensitive. I’ve always been hypersensitive about many things, and borderline, I would say, borderline all kinds of things. Borderline bipolar, borderline autistic, I would say, certainly depressed, borderline depressed, if not downright depressed. And LSD was enough to completely knock me off my feet. I lost all rationality. I didn’t know what simple words meant, I didn’t know what normal behavior was. I didn’t get violent, like a lot of people do. For me, it was actually spiritual in its experience. But I nearly got arrested. My girlfriend walked me into University of Vanderbilt Hospital. I somehow got back to Nashville from Florida. I don’t remember how, but I remember almost everything that happened. I think my sister put me on the plane. And they hit me with Thorazine and I started to come down, and I got out, but I wasn’t completely down. And I went back up, and my parents got me back in, and then they really hit me harder with Thorazine and that did it. And it had a very profound effect on me, as one might think, including, I would say, slightly, and they write about this in the literature, slightly stripping away filters that we have that protect us from the world. Making me even more aware, perceptive in some ways, sensitive, hypersensitive. And I went through depression, and I came out of that. And I felt better. And I took a year and went around the world, which was fabulous. I didn’t get around the world, I got through the South Pacific and the Far East. And that took a year because I didn’t want to leave Tahiti, or New Guinea, or Singapore, immediately. And that’s when I came back. And when I was in Australia, I had powerful peak experiences. I met a vegetarian in Samoa and nearly got eaten by sharks in Fiji. And then, when I was in Australia, I had fabulous experiences in New Zealand. But in Australia, I had these very powerful peak experiences, very spiritual. And one day, I shaved my head, became celibate and vegetarian.
Rick: For a day.
Mark: All on the same day, and continued in that vein for the rest of my trip and more. And I started seeking a spiritual path consciously, at that point. I went and checked out the Hare Krishnas. They didn’t appeal to me at that time, for whatever reasons. I just kept my eyes and ears open and looked. When I was in Kuala Lumpur, I went to a Hindu temple. And there was a beautiful young man doing yoga in the sunlit open courtyard within the temple. And this rang of my heart, this really pulled to me. I didn’t talk to him. I didn’t talk to them. I didn’t think about becoming a Hindu. But that had a very strong effect on me. And I did some things in Japan. None of them really stuck or meant very much. But then I decided, my ticket read “Tokyo-Delhi,” ironically enough. But I decided to fly to New York instead and came back to Connecticut. And my parents saw the difference in me, of course. And my mother was actually the one who showed me an article in the New York Times about Transcendental Meditation. And the New York TMZ. And I decided I’d go into New York and see what they were about. But the very next day I saw a poster up in Westport about the intro. And the intro was Michael and Charlotte Kane, I think. And everything they said kind of made sense to me. And I liked what I felt and saw and heard. And then I went to… That’s okay. Everyone needs their word from time to time. I went to the prep which you gave with Ingrid Zetterstrom. And I didn’t remember this when I was writing my book, but I had this in other writing that I had. I didn’t remember Ingrid that well. But I started, and I had immediately, in the first meditation, I had a beautiful, blissful experience. I went very deep right away and decided I was going for it. And I went for it. I was full-time pretty much for five years. I went to three teacher training courses in a row. And during the third one, I joined what they called the 108, which was a group around Maharishi to help him and work with him. And I soon became, like you said, his secretary, his personal assistant. And I conducted teacher training courses and became a minister in the world government and helped some ambassadors start meditating and did all kinds of stuff like that. It was my whole life.
Rick: You mentioned the teacher training courses. In your book, you talk about how the long meditations we used to do on those courses, and you said that one time you meditated for three days straight. I mean, did you mean like totally three days straight. Did you get up to have a bite to eat and go to the bathroom and stuff?
Mark: They put food outside our door. I didn’t eat very much for three days, but I did eat a little. I had to get up to go to the bathroom for a little bit of time. I think I might have gotten a few hours sleep at the most. But the rest of the time I was sitting and meditating.
Rick: Yeah, so you mentioned a lot of interesting experiences in your book that you had with Maharishi. And I thought it might be interesting to discuss some of those, just because a lot of people who are listening to this may have a TM background and others not. But he was quite a character, and there were some… It’s kind of one of these people you meet in life whom, from the outset, you feel like, “This is no ordinary person.” And it’s not just because of the way he looked or the way he dressed or anything. There was something about his personality and the influence that he radiated, and in many cases the things he was able to do which struck any observant person as remarkable. So, are there some highlights along those lines that you feel like talking about?
Mark: Sure, sure. Well, the first time I saw him, I saw what I had been looking for. And it wasn’t just his charm or charisma. I could see that and feel that. But I actually saw golden circles of light radiating from his person- concentric circles, strong, clear, filling the room with golden light.
Rick: Was it customary for you to see things like that?
Mark: No. Prior to seeing him, I hadn’t seen that in anyone or anything. Sometimes when I looked at trees or something, I would see a little bit of white or energy or something around them. But I didn’t pay it much mind. But when I saw him, and I didn’t see that around him all the time. I only saw that around him when, in my terminology, he was cranking out the Darshan. But I saw it almost the first time I saw him. I think it was the first time I saw him, in Amherst, at the one-month course in 1971. And like I wrote in the book, not only those more translucent waves of concentric circles of golden light. But there were times when he would produce a halo right behind his head which looked to me like a shimmering, gold, flat plate, almost like the disk of the sun. And I didn’t see that around him very often. But I did see it, you know, maybe in the five years I was with him, something like ten or fifteen times or something like that. I can’t remember if I saw that in Amherst or not.
Rick: Do you think it was something that he produced on those specific occasions or more that your perception tuned into it on those occasions?
Mark: No, it’s my experience that the amount of Darshan or energy that he produced was quite variable. And there were times when he hardly produced any and there were times when he produced a lot.
Rick: And he had control over it?
Mark: No.
Rick: Or the circumstances would bring it out?
Mark: I would say the circumstances would bring it out. It had a lot to do with how well rested he was, how he felt, the circumstances, who was with him, what he was talking about, you know, all of those things combined would produce it.
Rick: Well, haven’t you kind of experienced that yourself, like I have, in teaching situations? You get up in front of a couple hundred people and you’re teaching, and this energy just kind of comes through you, and you feel like you’re engulfing the room with it. And then other times you’re just Joe Schmo, you know, not much going on.
Mark: Absolutely, absolutely. I’ve had people come up to me and tell me that they saw auras around me for the first time in their life. I had one person tell me that they saw a halo behind my head and it had totally to do with the circumstance and what I was talking about. I had no control over it.
Rick: Yeah, somehow you put yourself in the situation as an instrument and then, whatever the mechanics are, that energy kind of ramps up in you or through you so that, as an instrument, you are more effective. It just somehow works that way.
Mark: Exactly. So, if you’re there in front of people who are receptive and you’re talking about spiritual things, you know, the energy starts to amp up.
Rick: It does.
Mark: People can sometimes definitely feel it and oftentimes see it. So, that happened to me much more when I was doing much more teaching.
Rick: Yeah.
Mark: It hasn’t been happening to me that much lately, but I know it’s there.
Rick: So, do you think, this is a general point, I mean, all these gurus with their Shakti and their Darshan and so on. Do you think that, it’s kind of a weird question, but obviously not anybody could get up and just start doing that. There has to be some qualification. But people who see them and their followers often make a big fuss about them and just kind of elevate them to the skies and have them up literally on a pedestal. But it almost seems like it’s just a kind of dynamic that gets created between the guru and the students, that if that guru were just working in a 7-Eleven or something, it just wouldn’t happen. But maybe it’s a moot point because somebody like that isn’t going to go work in a 7-Eleven. They just have a destiny to fulfill.
Mark: They might have to. You know, I’ve done a park bench for three years or whatever it was. But I think it depends on a lot of things, you know, the soul and their ancient history and how much work they’ve done in this life, and all of those things combined. But I think anyone has the potential. Everyone has the potential. They started doing spiritual things and getting into it, and they were placed in front of a group, to a larger or smaller degree, I think it could happen with almost everyone out there, everyone out there really, basically. But some people have done more, some people have a longer history and a more spiritual history, and I’m talking about past life history. Some people align themselves with lineages and they borrow the power of the lineage. And the power of the lineage goes through them, which can amp it up very significantly.
Rick: That’s an interesting point. In fact, that’s what Maharishi told us we were doing when we instructed people. He said, “You’re kind of connecting yourself with this tradition of teachers that goes back a couple of thousand years, and that’s how the teaching you’re imparting has potency.”
Mark: Yes, and I believe that. I mean, if you align yourself with the lineage line of teachers who have been doing this kind of stuff for thousands and thousands of years, then you can piggyback a little bit on them or a lot on them, depending on the person.
Rick: And presumably, if we want to get really ooga-booga here, we might actually be in some sense overseeing things here on this plane, overseeing the representatives of their lineage who step up to teach, such that when they do so, there’s the full force of the lineage behind them.
Mark: I believe that’s true also, and there are other beings. There are archangels, and there are species devas, and there are… Science has pretty much proven that there are other dimensions. There are higher dimensions, or more dimensions than the three we live in. And there are all kinds of beings out there that could come and lend us support. But I think one of the major mechanics of it is that the energy and adoration of the followers of the person, they are all focusing their love and devotion onto this person. And directly in my experience, Maharishi would use their energy to create a kind of feedback loop, and amp up the Darshan. And he did this with me at science symposiums. I mean, in Chicago or wherever it was, when Larry Domesh got up to speak- he was a physicist- and Maharishi’s darling physicist at that point. Maharishi looked for me in the audience. I was sitting in the front row and he found me and he started using me as a vehicle to adore Larry, and to create a kind of aura around Larry, so that Larry would be more charismatic. And I was happy to lend myself for that purpose, or whatever other purpose Maharishi wanted me for. I was into serving at that time, and totally into the whole thing, because I thought we were saving the world. And so there are mechanisms that can be invoked, or utilized directly that can amp this up as well.
Rick: Yeah, I wonder if that’s what’s going on with Amma, the hugging saint. I mean, she just sits there for hour after hour hugging people. And everyone feels like she’s just pouring out all this energy. And she says it’s because she’s connected to this kind of universal generator, absolute field of unbounded energy. And so she’s not going to be depleted. But I wonder if there’s some kind of feedback loop, as you’re saying, where the adoration that people shower on her somehow charges her batteries and enables her to have it come back to the people.
Mark: I believe that’s true also. And I believe that I’ve seen that in action. I went to see her when she was here and there were people who were close to her, standing on the sidelines, adoring her with all their heart. And I could actually see energy pouring from them into her. And it creates a symbiosis. It’s not just a feeding of Amma-ism or a memory. It’s a gestalt, it’s a holistic kind of thing that feeds and generates love and devotion in everyone there. So it’s a positive thing in a way. But the sad thing about it for me is that it’s led a lot of people to believe that those Shaktipat experiences were giving them some kind of lasting healing and enlightenment. And I believe it was feeding them. I think everything that we do helps to a certain degree. But with all that I’ve experienced with Maharishi and the other teachers that I’ve sat with, I was left back with my fucked up inner state. And I made progress but as powerful as the Darshan, the Shakti, and the golden light, and the glory, and all of it was, it didn’t end up doing what I felt I had the need of.
Rick: So you didn’t think there was any cumulative influence, like for all the meditations you did, for instance? Obviously, the effect of a single meditation wears off but isn’t there some kind of cumulative effect, just as practicing the piano, you do it every day and gradually over time you get to be a pretty good piano player?
Mark: Oh yes, absolutely there was a cumulative effect. I mean I made progress, I had huge breakthroughs and epiphanies. I had profound spiritual experiences. I had insights. You know, all of these things were cumulative and helped. But at the end of the day, I would say that I would have periods of grace, periods where I felt like I was enlightened, and sometimes they would be weeks or months on end. But then, if I were to sum total everything, I would say before this more recent thing happened to me, it was more like 85% spin, fear, angst, anxiety, unhappiness, desperation and 15% grace and beauty and enlightenment and the good stuff.
Rick: So even in your heyday when you were Maharishi’s personal secretary and you were having all these great experiences, you were 85% fear and angst and all that?
Mark: No, no, no. There were longer periods besides the weeks and the months. There were periods like years, and in that experience, in the glow of… you know, being on Maharishi in a way was like being in heaven. And there was a writer, who was a playwright, I forget his name.
Rick: William Gibson.
Mark: William Gibson wrote a book called “The Season in Heaven.”
Rick: He also wrote “The Miracle Worker.”
Mark: Yeah, okay. So, it was like celestial air, and I had a mission, I had a purpose. It was saving the world through TM. And so I was pretty high almost the entire time, except for the, you know, when the deep disillusionment started coming in. And it started getting really crazy when the CIA came and all of that kind of stuff.
Rick: And the CIA came because it was after Jonestown. Was it, or something? Or it just became such a popular thing, the CIA decided to check it out.
Mark: Well, it was my understanding that there were nine United States senators meditating. And that hundreds of thousands, this we know, hundreds of thousands of young people in America were starting to learn how to meditate. According to Maharishi, someone in India was going to run for Prime Minister. And Maharishi said, “No, you’re not strong enough, you shouldn’t do that.” So he didn’t run for Prime Minister. And this little man from India had this huge amount of power. Generals who could blow up the whole world were coming from the Strategic Air Command and giving him flowers.
Rick: Right, General Davis.
Mark: So I think at one point finally, Jonestown may have had something to do with it. But at some point, I think the powers that be decided that they had to look into what the hell this man was doing.
Rick: And you were there at that time?
Mark: I was there at that time.
Rick: How did you know the CIA was there?
Mark: Because one of them sat next to me, and it was as obvious as day as the nose on his face that, that’s what this man was. He knew who he was, and his background, he said, “I’m from the military.” But he appeared out of nowhere. No one knew who he was. He was right there in the meeting room with Maharishi and a small group of us. He was sitting right next to me.
Rick: I wonder how he got in.
Mark: Maharishi didn’t have guards then so much like he has now. CIA operatives have their own skills as well, I assume, and he got his way in. He didn’t tell me he was CIA, I can’t prove it.
Rick: Well, Maharishi certainly talked about it all the time. And some people thought he was paranoid. And sometimes he would accuse people who were good friends of mine that you knew weren’t in the CIA, of being in the CIA, just to sort of mess with them.
Mark: I think he was getting paranoid.
Rick: He was.
Mark: He went into a depression. He felt like he was being attacked by the biggest power on earth, which, in a way, he was. He would take everyone out on boats and sit out on the water. And he would call all kinds of people CIA operatives, and we know that they weren’t. So I think he actually did go into a kind of a tailspin.
Rick: He also thought that when accidents happened to him, that there were some kind of demonic forces responsible. Like he had a helicopter crash one time, and he got a car accident one time, an electric shock from a faulty tape recorder. And all these things he felt were some kind of dark forces trying to oppose him. And he would go into seclusion for a while after these events.
Mark: Yes, and that’s when the whole seclusion thing started happening, and eventually it got to the point where he wouldn’t see anyone in person. He’d only see them through television cameras. He’d have to be in a completely different room.
Rick: So before we get into the disillusionment phase, is there anything more really flashy? I don’t want to just entertain people with flashiness, but I want to… It’s like I think you and I both agree that Maharishi was a remarkable man. And we’re very grateful for the blessings that he bestowed on our lives. But he was a paradoxical man and some would say hypocritical. There were aspects of his personal life that just didn’t jibe with his public image. And even today I’m scratching my head thinking, “He was so awesome in certain respects, and yet he did this, this, and this.” I suppose Ken Wilber’s principle of lines of development helps to explain it where you can be extremely advanced along certain lines, and yet relatively undeveloped along others. It’s one explanation anyway. But before we get into perhaps some of that, is there anything else by way of really amazing experiences you had during that period?
Mark: There were, and often times subtle perception, my own subtle perception. There were times when I felt I actually shared his perceptions and was seeing things as he was seeing them, and seeing what he was seeing. He definitely had higher dimensional help. When we used to make teachers in big halls, these huge halls, what I would call angel stations would gather in the corridors between the puja tables, the ceremony tables. And I had to walk through one of them once and there were about seven angelic beings all there, you know, huddled together, not huddled, but standing together. I had to walk right through them and they flew off in every direction. Maharishi didn’t like people walking in the corridors at those times. He told everyone not to, but I had to get to him to tell him something that I knew he wanted to know, he would want to know. So there were things like that. When we got to Murin,&&& the three mountain devas came to check him out. And I saw them and he saw them, and he stopped talking, And he looked up at them and they communed for a while, because they thought he was someone they were waiting for. There was so much light in him that they thought he was this being of light that they had been waiting thousands of years for. And they determined that he wasn’t, and they kind of acknowledged each other, and the three of them left. And Maharishi started back in where he was talking. So there were things like that. He could put people in a trance. He could send his awareness off into the distance, far away, and put people into a trance. In my experience, I was driving him through Germany, and we were late for a ferry in Germany, and in Germany the ferry is very punctual. And we were really late. We were like 10 or 15 minutes late. And he would put his awareness out and tell me when I could speed through red lights when no one was around, and I could just speed through red lights, and when I had to stop. And so he was doing that for a while. And I was told that he did that in the helicopter too. If it was foggy or cloudy, he would signal to the helicopter with his hand when to go up and when to go down, when to go right, etc. But he stopped doing that and he went into a quiet space. And let me drive the rest of the way there, when we were about 15 minutes late getting there. And when we got there, the gangplank, the ramp for the ferry was still out. And we drove down and the captain was standing right there at the ramp. And there were two crewmates looking at him, kind of, “What the hell is going on with this guy? He’s just standing there in a trance.” And as soon as we got on the ferry, he came out of the trance and he looked around and he told the guys to take the ramp in and he went to the pilot’s quarters and he took off. And I innocently told people this on Fairfield Life and got lambasted because Charlie Lutz had an almost identical experience with him.
Rick: Incidentally, Fairfield Life is a chat group that I happened to set up about a dozen years ago. That’s still running strong. And it’s a Yahoo group, and Charlie Lutz was one of Maharishi’s original followers back in the early ’60s. Anyway, continue, I just wanted to fill that in.
Mark: So two people had that experience with him. And I had the experience of him getting inside of me and putting me out, and him getting inside of me and helping me sleep on a plane when I was so totally wired from no sleep for 24 hours or more that I couldn’t sleep. He’d get inside of me and unhook all the hooks and I’d sleep like a baby for the rest of the trip. So this is when we were traveling on the state legislature tour through the United States, and things like that. I was alone with him at that time, and later I had help. There were two of us as his secretary, which was much better than just me. And there were other things that are in my book that you could read about if you wanted to. My favorite story involves snakes, but I wasn’t there. I heard it directly from two people, two different people that I respect and trust. But according to them, I won’t say the long of it, I’ll say the short of it. A woman came to the first teacher training course not having heard that it had been postponed. And Maharishi and Tat Wale Baba were in the only building there that was lit, and it was nighttime.
Rick: This is in Rishikesh, India, and Tat Wale Baba was a saint who lived in that vicinity.
Mark: Right, they were having a snake confab because the person who bought the land, unbeknownst to him I guess, the land that they bought for Maharishi’s ashram was snake infested. And there were hundreds of snakes on the floor in this little hall. And there was a king cobra waving in front of Maharishi and Tat Wale Baba and Maharishi sitting there. And in walks this woman from Germany and Maharishi says, “Just sit down, they won’t hurt you.” And she finds a place where there are no snakes, where she can sit on the floor. And this goes on for a while, and then all of a sudden at one point, the king cobra goes down on the floor, slithers out, all the other snakes follow him, and they’re gone. And supposedly thereafter, there were very few snakes ever bothering people or seen on the property. And it’s just that the place was snake infested. And Tat Wale Baba and Maharishi and the snakes got together and maybe the species day for the snakes, who knows, and got the snakes to agree to leave.
Rick: Yeah, I heard that story. Cool. So, all righty. Well, feel free to tell more of these types of stories if you like, but then you eventually left. And you mentioned the word “disillusionment,” and so tell us a little bit about that phase, if you wish.
Mark: Yeah, he, as you know, told everyone to be celibate, including TM teachers who were married.
Rick: Yeah, and hang on one second, before you say this. I’ve been thinking about the fact that we might talk about this. And I just want to say, these are aired in Fairfield, and a lot of people watch them around the world, many people who are into TM, And I just want to caution you that at this point, Mark and I are probably going to discuss something which you may find shocking. And I want to invite you to disconnect if you don’t want to hear it because I don’t think it’s anybody’s desire to shatter anybody’s faith abruptly. And if I had heard this sort of thing, I did hear this sort of thing throughout my years in the TM movement. But I didn’t believe it until about 10 years ago. And I haven’t even told this sort of thing to my own sister who is still in the movement. I just feel like it’s not my place to foist disillusioning information on anyone. And there’s plenty of good that the TM movement has done and is still doing. I mean, the David Lynch Foundation is doing marvelous things with PTSD sufferers and inner-city school children, and all kinds of people who are suffering, relieving tremendous suffering. So I have the utmost respect for all that, and what we are probably about to mention is just a… it’s one of those conundrums, and it’s not uncommon among Indian gurus who came to the West. So be what it is. I don’t claim to fully understand the paradox, but go ahead, Mark.
Mark: Um, as his personal assistant, I lived in the room next to his. I brought him his food and his clothing. I organized the people who came to see him when he wanted to see someone. He told me to go and get them. So oftentimes in the evening he would want to see women, and I’d go and get them. And sometimes I would walk in on him and see that between him and the women there was more than simple camaraderie.
Rick: They weren’t just reading poetry to him?
Mark: I didn’t see what some of the skin boys saw, you know.
Rick: Skin boy is just a euphemism for personal secretary, the position you filled, and it was called that because they carried his deer skin around and put it on the couch before he came in to sit down. So anyway, continue. I just…defining terms that you throw out that people won’t understand.
Mark: Thank you. It became…well, towards the very beginning, it became obvious to me that he would drool over attractive young women. I mean, I could see that in my first teacher training course. And, you know, I drool over beautiful young women sometimes myself, or have done in the past. So, you know, we’re all human beings. We all have bodies that have certain responses, etc., etc., etc.
Rick: But you weren’t claiming to be a life celibate, nor advocating it for others.
Mark: And that, there’s the rub, if you will. And so, the more I saw, the more I began to question and not feel so great about what was happening. And it wasn’t only sex. And I would like to say this. I think he was celibate until Judith Bourque, and I’m going to explain who Judith Bourque is. Or maybe one woman before her, but we think it’s Judith. But I think he was celibate for a lot of his early life, and at one point just decided, “I want to experience that.”
Rick: Yeah. Well, actually, stories did go back to the early 60s. But you know, Shankara did the same thing, the great founder of non-duality, who was a celibate monk, except he didn’t do it in his own body. He left his body and assumed the body of a king, entered the body of a king who just happened to be dying, and boom, the king springs back to life. And Shankara had the time of his life for about a month with the king’s queens. And then at a certain point, the queens got hip to what was going on and sent scouts to go and burn Shankara’s body. So he wouldn’t be able to return to it, because they liked him the way he was in the king’s body. And Shankara’s disciples kind of woke him out of that trance just in the nick of time and he came back into his body. The king dropped dead and Shankara went on being a monk, if we believe that story. But nonetheless, Shankara felt that he needed to have that experience to round out his repertoire, in order to be able to really best anyone at a debate on any topic.
Mark: Right, and you know, Judith wrote a book about her affair with Maharishi.
Rick: Judith Bourque and the book is entitled “Robes of Silk, Feet of Clay.”
Mark: And it’s a very touching, innocent, lovely book. I mean, I was surprised, because it leads one to believe, and I think it’s truthful, her experience, that she might have been the first. We know that he came onto Mia Farrow and all of that kind of stuff. But I know he didn’t succeed with her. And I think he might not have succeeded with other women. But there might have been other women, I don’t know. But it came across as almost a coming of age of a 50-year-old celibate guru. But at the time, there were other things that were worse for me than that, and that’s that he would use people and discard them. Often times when they ran out of money, I paid to be his secretary. I paid to be in the 108. I spent nearly $100,000 of my own money to work for the movement for almost 5 years. And he had disdain for his followers. And it seemed to all be coming down more and more to power and money and sex.
Rick: Like the same thing that motivates most of the human race.
Mark: All of those things began to not sit well with me. And on the one hand, I wanted to get closer to him than ever, because I felt that I could. And on the other hand, I wanted to leave and I told someone that. I told certain people that. That I was almost out of there, or out of there. And then finally he came to a head and he kicked me out, and it was devastating. But I also set it up that he would kick me out in a way.
Rick: And some people would say, “Well, this is normal guru behavior. The guru boosts you up and then he knocks you down. And it busts your ego,” and so on and so forth. There have been so many cases where people have rationalized all kinds of things in the name of crazy guru wisdom. And that whatever the guru does is divinely inspired, and he can’t do wrong, and it’s cosmic intelligence working out people’s shortcomings, and so on and so forth. But I’m afraid that that line of thinking has been responsible for a great deal of abuse in many movements, far more severe than anything that ever happened in the TM movement.
Mark: Yes, I agree with that. If you believe that the guru is absolutely divine, infallible, perfect, and can do no wrong, then it’s all for your good. And in a way, even without that, one can say it’s all for your good. There’s a part of that that has validity. But if there’s abuse and greed and criminality and shadow, definitely dark, deep, powerful shadow going on, and one denies it, then one has left the valley of truth, if you will, and is in denial.
Rick: Yeah, I mean ultimately if we want to look at it that way, we could say everything that happens is all for everybody’s good. If we regard God as ultimately benign and concerned with the evolution of the universe, then all the horrible things that have ever happened have somehow, from that perspective, been in the interest of evolution. It’s just God playing within himself, assuming all these roles, you know? But, I don’t know. When you take it down to the human level, personally my own values are such that I don’t want to use that as an alibi for abuse and misbehavior on anyone’s part.
Mark: And then we’re on the same page there. I think it’s important that we use our discernment to really see what is and that we can do that. We are multi-dimensional beings. We live, I believe, always on all the dimensions simultaneously. But we also live here in the 3D. And, you know, in the 3D there’s that which damages and corrupts and hurts and causes bondage. And there’s that which heals and helps and liberates and comes from real love. And I think it’s important that we use our discernment to determine when it’s one and when it’s the other, if it can be, if it is the other. I think in a lot of gurus’ cases, especially the ones who came from a protected environment in India and came to the West, and there was the onslaught of all the flesh that is pervasive and all the wealth and all the corruption, etc., etc., etc., that a lot of them succumbed.
Rick: Yeah. I interviewed Amrit Desai a few months ago and he was one of those who famously succumbed. And it was a big scandal and most of his followers left him. But he ended up turning around and dealing with it in a very mature way which is, everybody got counseling. And he completely opened himself up to discussion about what had happened. And to this day he does that. I brought it up during the interview and he said, “Yeah, I was a younger man, I had a lot of sexual energy, didn’t know what to do with it, I just kind of lost it, got carried away.” But I admired him for his candor about that situation, instead of just trying to hide it. I mean, I suppose he did try to hide it as long as he could. But when it blew open, he dealt with it in what I regard as a mature way.
Mark: I respect that too. I feel that in that regard, one could say that he had more maturity than Maharishi did about that particular thing.
Rick: Yeah. Although, you know, in Maharishi’s case, and perhaps we can be sympathetic about it at this point, his movement was much bigger. He was much more famous, and his aura, or his persona, was much more clearly, at least from my experience, was very clearly defined as this pristine celibate monk. And I don’t think there’s any way he could have turned it around and said, “Okay, well here’s what’s really been going on, and I’m very sorry, and now we’re all going to talk about this.” I mean, it just wasn’t the way he operated. I often felt that there was a need-to-know basis, the way things worked around him. And I often felt that this might be related to that, that he only had people close to him whom he could absolutely trust with any secrets. And there was a hierarchy of secrecy that filtered down throughout his whole organization. And sometimes for good reason because some nice worthwhile project would get underway. And if it got out too soon that it was going to happen, opponents to it would come and try to stop it. I’m rambling a bit, but maybe your thoughts on that?
Mark: I think it’s a different page, because I agree with you how things were. He had this persona, this world, personality, but I think he could have done it differently. I think he could have just come out, because in the early days he would say things like, “I renounce renunciation.” And he could have taken that a step further and said, “You know, I believe in the power of celibacy. I’ve experienced it for 40 or 50 years or whatever. I advise you to try it, and I advise you to do it, but I feel like I’ve done it enough, and I want to experience worldly pleasure.”
Rick: Yeah, he could have done that, but that wasn’t him.
Mark: But I’m saying he didn’t have that maturity.
Rick: I heard that he once said to Jerry Jarvis, who was one of the top leaders of his movement, that as a younger man he had been convinced that a monastic lifestyle was essential, if not highly conducive to gaining enlightenment. But he later realized that he would have gotten enlightened however he had lived his life, and had it to do over again he might have been a married man.
Mark: I haven’t heard that, but I have heard that he told someone that he wasn’t enlightened.
Rick: Ah, interesting. Can we talk about that for a second? Or is there not much more to say about it?
Mark: There isn’t much more to say, and it really is almost a breach of confidence.
Rick: Okay.
Mark: You know, just to throw that out there, but I would want to leave that with the person that he actually said it to, to come forth and go more into it.
Rick: Sure. All right, so where should we go from here? We spend more than enough time on Maharishi. I love him dearly.
Mark: I would never trade what I did for anything. I fell in love with him right away, and I loved him pretty much the whole time, even when I was getting disillusioned, I didn’t want to lose him. He was a phenomenon. As I write in my website, in my book, what a mixed bag he was, because he was totally mixed bag. Very deep shadow and very profound light. But I certainly think we have spent more than enough time on him in this interview.
Rick: Yeah, well, you know, I have never really done that in any of my interviews, and you are the guy to do it with. So that’s why we spent the time.
Mark: Okay, I am glad we did it.
Rick: Yeah, but this is more about your whole path. Okay, so I think we have concluded the Maharishi chapter of this interview. So, where would you like to take it from here? What happened when you left?
Mark: I went through a lot of different… For me, the career and the money were never a big draw for me. What I really wanted more than anything else was enhanced spirituality and healing, becoming whole, that’s always what I wanted. I love the arts, I have a lot of respect for people who support themselves through their art. I have written over a hundred songs. I love music and I thought I wanted to be a rock star once. But I wasn’t as motivated anywhere near by that or anything else as I was by the spiritual stuff. So, I went through a whole series of different things. I went through CoDA, 12-step stuff, I just started doing everything that I was drawn to, that I thought might help me. And if it helped me, I started facilitating it with other people. So, I did rebirthing, shamanic journeys, soul retrieval, hands on and hands off energy and body work. I went through a Buddhist phase. I took refuge with a wild man from Denmark named Olly Nidal, Tibetan Buddhist. He was the first white man to be with a Karmapa. I went through a Hawaiian Kahuna phase, an esoteric Jewish phase, an esoteric Christian phase, and I started working with people. First with hands on and hands off energy and body work, and then with rebirthing, and then with shamanic journey and soul retrieval, and then I got into something called DNA activation, which I totally loved. I just kind of went on doing everything that I could to heal and awaken, and help other people heal and awaken, and help the world heal and awaken. That’s all I’ve ever really cared about. I spent a glorious year in South Africa, bringing DNA activation to people there. I studied with different teachers, any teacher that I was drawn to. I would go and study with them because I still felt that I needed help. I learned a tremendous amount from Leslie Temple Thurston. And I had wonderful experiences with Gangaji, and Neelam, and Pamela Wilson, and people like that. I’ll just leave it at that for the moment. That was always my draw, my pull. However, I got with a woman who smoked marijuana and I got her to stop, because I didn’t want to do that, or be around that. And she agreed. So we lived together for a while, and then we went off to Hawaii on vacation and we’re staying with friends of hers. And they all smoked marijuana. At that point, I was feeling kind of stuck, and I made the same mistake I did with LSD. I didn’t think marijuana could put me over the edge. I knew that LSD could but I thought I’d be okay with marijuana. I smoked hefty stuff, Kauai Electric, every other day for eight days and I didn’t hold back. I took it in and I held it in. And I got higher and higher, and I lost my balance again. As I said, I think I’ve always been a bit borderline bipolar, and autistic, and all these other things. I had a very difficult childhood. My father was very violent, not physically but emotionally, energetically, and psychically. My mother cut me off at the age of one, completely. I could never go to her. I could talk to her but there was this huge wall between us. I went through a series of four more psychotic episodes between the end of ’91 and ’94. Most of them were in some way drug-related. One of them wasn’t. The last one was the only one where I was allowed to go through the whole thing without it being curtailed by involuntary meds. In each of those four, I was arrested. I was institutionalized. I was given drugs, and the episode was curtailed in midstream. Except for the last one. The psychiatrist at the Austin County Jail was on vacation and he couldn’t administer any drugs. He wasn’t there and they didn’t have anyone to substitute for him. So, I got to come down while I was still in jail. And by the time they sent me to the mental institution, I was totally grounded and rational. I just made the decision: “No more of these. I’m not going to have any more of these.” I was flirting with them because they were so powerful, and so intense, and so high. They were messianic for me. They were spiritual.
Rick: You know, this might serve as a warning to people listening. Because these days people are fascinated with ayahuasca, for instance. I know someone in this town here who I consider to be really, you know, pretty highly evolved, quite awakened, who ended up taking ayahuasca and flipped out, and has had all sorts of episodes like you’ve been describing. So I think people should be very cautious before engaging in any of this stuff at any stage, but especially if they’ve been on a spiritual path for a long time, and they think that somehow dabbling with some drugs is going to help them at this point.
Mark: I totally agree. I think they did play a role, especially in the 60s, for a lot of us that actually ended up being beneficial.
Rick: But it took a toll, even then. And there were casualties back then who still haven’t recovered, who died or who are still institutionalized. I mean, it’s brutal, you know? It’s really not a safe and universal path for spiritual development by any means.
Mark: Totally, and I totally agree with that. I would not recommend it. But I know there will be people drawn to it and they’ll do it. And that’s everyone’s prerogative, I believe. But it certainly knocked me off my feet.
Rick: Yeah. I have a book here which I haven’t read yet which was sent to me by a David Gersten MD, entitled “Are You Getting Enlightened or Losing Your Mind? A Psychiatrist’s Guide for Mastering Paranormal and Spiritual Experience.” And flipping through it, it looks like he’s encountered a lot of people who are spiritually inclined but there does seem to be, in many cases, a fine line between spiritual unfoldment and insanity. And in fact, I think, as you and I have both observed, a lot of times intense spiritual unfoldment can trigger insanity. So there’s kind of a something, a glue, or a shell that holds us together. And in a way, we want to get rid of that because we want to be open and unbounded. But if it’s not done in the right way, artfully, carefully, it has served its function, and if it’s no longer there, we can be totally nuts.
Mark: Yes, I agree. And the fine line, or even the connection between spirituality and insanity is written about in the literature. It’s recognized, it’s written about. And there are similar experiences that can occur in both realms. But I totally agree with you, I don’t recommend drugs as a spiritual path.
Rick: Yeah, and even non-drug paths, one should proceed with a fair degree of caution. You remember, Maharishi’s teacher used to use the motto, “Safety first.” You can put yourself over the edge, like we experienced back in Majorca with those long, long meditation courses. There were a lot of nutcases, a lot of people who totally flipped out doing that much meditation.
Mark: Yeah, and I put a little bit of that in my book. One of my first roles in helping Maharishi was to monitor and help one of the men who had cracked.
Rick: Yeah, I did a little bit of that too. There were people who had to be locked up in a room and just watch 24/7 because they were so nutty from doing too much meditation or whatever.
Mark: I didn’t have to do that with him, but I had to accompany him everywhere. So definitely, we’re working with deep powers, deep energy, deep psychic shadows. But I believe that there were shadows in Maharishi and shadows around the TM technique itself. And I think there are techniques which have no shadow or less shadow.
Rick: Interesting. We’ll have to hear about those. But when you said that just now, I was reminded of something that you said in your book that I wanted to ask you about, which is that, I think you said at one point, that you feel now that the emphasis on self-realization or self-actualization is misguided. Remember that? And what did you mean by that?
Mark: I remember it very well. To say it more precisely, I believe that trying to go straight for self-realization, that’s misguided. Enlightenment and enlightened being have become such parody words now that I don’t like to use them even at all. But I think we all know, kind of generally, we have a consensus of what we mean by enlightenment or self-realization. And it’s my experience over the last nearly 50 years now, 49 years, that in people going straight for self-realization, straight for enlightenment, that it’s created this huge industry. It’s created this huge quagmire. It’s created a tremendous amount of dependency on spiritual teachers and groups and dogmas and paths. And it’s created a lot of disappointment, disillusionment, psychosis in some cases, and misunderstanding. And that the best thing that we can go for now, which is along very similar lines but is different for me, is going for healing and becoming whole. I believe we can really do that now, and it’s going to be easy. We can really heal almost all of the shadow things inside of us, like we never could before, like I couldn’t with all the teachers I had and all the modalities I used and all the work I did with other people. I had huge progress, huge cumulative effect, like you said, but I didn’t become healed or whole. I was still a mess, I still had all this shadow, and I was still totally ego-run, and totally mind-run, run by the mind, and not totally, I mean I tend to use hyperbole, but like I said, 85% of the time. And what we really can do now, what millions of people can do now, is heal all that stuff, or a lot of that stuff, or enough of that stuff. So they flip that ratio on its head. Instead of 85% of the time in worry and angst and not so good, not so happy, not so wonderful, not filled with love, not feeling free, they’re 85 or 95 or 98%, or however much it is, feeling love-based instead of fear-based, freedom instead of constricted or contracted or bound. You know, love, joy, happiness, all the things that we talk about, that we associate with enlightenment. But then in going for self-realization, going for enlightenment, there’s a term “spiritual bypass.” And I think it’s a valuable, valuable term, because I think spiritual bypass, like dependency, in the spiritual world, the New Age world if you will, is pandemic. And people bypass the shadow, they bypass the harder work, they bypass healing and becoming whole to go straight for self-realization. And I think that if we just shift that focus, and we just let go of the demand that we become enlightened or self-realized and just decide or utilize my technique or whatever, as a way to heal and become whole, that’s doable. That’s infinitely more doable. And you don’t need a group, you don’t need a teacher, you don’t need a dogma, you don’t need a path, you don’t need an ethnic tradition, you don’t need a lineage, you don’t need the patina of spirituality, you don’t need any of those things. And you actually can heal the shadow within and release it, and become more and more and more whole. And there is a kind of self-realization or enlightenment that comes along with that. But it’s not what we were told we’d get. You know, it’s not what many of us have an idea about. But it’s similar to that in many ways, but when it’s not the goal, it becomes easier. And when it is the goal and we’re trying to go straight for it, it becomes almost impossible, I would say.
Rick: Okay, so we’re going to talk about your technique in a few minutes. So, just to summarize what you just said, you’re saying that, as opposed to the way it was taught in the TM movement, where you were told to just go for the “water the root and enjoy the fruit”, just go for the transcendent and everything else is going to just work itself out, you don’t have to put any attention on it. In fact, people were debarred from courses for going and getting some marriage counseling or something. They were considered to be off the program, engaging in any kind of therapy. It was considered unnecessary and distraction and so on. You’re saying that really there needs to be a lot of relative healing. And that all that stuff isn’t going to just take care of itself if you are steeped in the transcendent. You need to water some of the leaves and branches and so on. Now, would you acknowledge or say that the two can be done simultaneously, that there can be a transcendence going on and at the same time you’re working on relative stuff? Or are you saying that even that is unbalanced priorities and that you should go straight for the healing? Because, I mean, there is this attitude that you can heal eternally and you’re never going to heal everything. It’s almost like there needs to be a little bit of spiritual bypassing because you’re never going to attain perfection in the relative, you have to dive into the absolute. So, go ahead and respond to that.
Mark: And I agree with that in a sense that the healing and the evolution doesn’t stop. But it’s my experience that when we let go of the demand and the desperation for enlightenment and self-realization, and we focus more in an unfocused way, in an easy way, yes, in an effortless way, on the healing and becoming whole, that what can happen, and I feel this happened to me on the night of April 29th, April 30th, is that so much of the shadow, so much of the energetic, the infrastructure that holds us in bondage and distortion and limitation can get healed and released. That it revolutionizes our existence and we become a completely different being, not just someone who has gone through a major breakthrough or an epiphany, but a completely different being in that, that ratio has been stood on its head. And what we almost totally live is love fountaining through our existence, freedom making us feel joyous and happy, more creativity, all the things Maharishi talked about, more allowing us to be fully who we are, or much more fully who we are. Or if we have to put percentages on it, instead of living 15% of our potential of who we fully are, living 90% of who we are. And I believe that’s quite possible, that’s quite doable, and I believe that’s what this time is for now. All that we’ve done over the last five decades, that all of the internet connecting the world, that all of the books and the techniques that have come out, I believe that there will be like popcorn, like Maharishi talked about, popcorn people popping into enlightenment. But it won’t be popping into enlightenment. It will be popping into healing and releasing the stuff that holds us from fully living who we truly are and becoming whole.
Rick: Well, isn’t that enlightenment? If you’ve been released from all the stuff that blocks you from being who you truly are and become whole, aren’t we talking about enlightenment or is there something else here you’re talking about?
Mark: Yes, in a way it isn’t, in a way it is, definitely, in the technique that I’m offering to everyone.
Rick: Actually, let’s back up a second here because you keep alluding to this technique. And you might as well explain what it is. And maybe you could introduce that by explaining what happened to you on April, or whatever it was, and how you came upon this thing. And then we’ll really unfold it in much greater detail once you’ve explained that.
Mark: Okay, so let me just finish my life story very quickly.
Rick: Oh yeah, the car accident, that was really something.
Mark: We don’t have to deal with a car accident. That’s not as important as the fact that by 2002 I had one book published. It was published in South Africa. And I was in South Africa and I had worked with thousands of people worldwide, and I was starting to have a spiritual following. But my inner experience was not what I was working for and hoping for. And the cognitive dissonance, the discrepancy between the amount of anxiety and compulsion and fear that I was experiencing versus what I was talking about and promoting, it was too great. So I started to pull back and then I just stopped teaching. I stopped doing healing work. I felt that unless I was really living something laudable, that I felt was really genuine and authentic and worth modeling to people, that I couldn’t do that work anymore. Even though I was stepping aside and calling in higher dimensional beings and energy, and they were doing these healings on people and having fabulous experiences, I couldn’t be out there as a model. So I stopped, and by 2007 I even stopped my healing telephone circles.
Rick: I wish all teachers held themselves to that standard.
Mark: I couldn’t do it. I was living a lie. And I knew that unless I felt that unless I was living something worth living, I wasn’t going to be a healer or a teacher. So that continued from, you know, it started in 2002 when I came back from South Africa and it culminated in 2007 when I did my last telephone healing circle and I got regular jobs. And I decided that some people are just too damaged for this lifetime to become enlightened, to heal, become whole. Some of us are just too damaged. That’s just the way it is and maybe it’s next lifetime for me. Always before that I was sure it would be this life when I was in the TM movement. And then, you know, I got a series of jobs, and I got fired from my last one. You know, I’m still a bit of a lunatic in some ways and not very happy. And I’m old enough to get Social Security, so I go on that. I’m lucky that I moved from Santa Fe to Los Alamos after the job I was working as an accounting manager for a high-tech consulting firm. And so I can get Section 8 housing which is a kind of a subsidized housing. Not physical units that are subsidized but they pay for a large chunk of your rent and food stamps. And so, you know, instead of trying to get another job, which would have been difficult under the circumstances under which I was fired, I did that. And so I was taken care of. I wasn’t out on the street and I decided that I would come out of my isolation, because I had become very isolated. I hardly spent any time with anybody except for in the work environment. I wasn’t working with anyone, healing or doing anything like that, or talking about it. I wasn’t in a group, etc., etc. So I just decided, “Okay, I can’t get another job right now. Or I don’t want to get another job right now, I’m going to come out of isolation in some other way.” And I think at that moment, when I decided to come out of isolation, after all the work I did, and yes, all the time I spent with Maharishi, I mean for five years I was stuck like glue to him. And when I was his personal secretary, it was almost like I was an appendage of his. But I think some kind of divine orchestration kicked in and just kind of guided me. And the first thing I did was get a local free newspaper and look inside to see what was what. And I saw a little tiny notice about a men’s circle. And I thought, “Oh, that’s great, a men’s circle, no leader, no money, equals sitting in a circle, I like that, I’ve not been able to relate to men very well. I’ll do it.” And so I did and I liked the men there, yada, yada, yada. And they were all part of a group called the Mankind Project. They had gone through a three-day initiation, the New Warrior Training Adventure. And so I read a little bit about it, but I really decided to do it because I liked these men. I wanted to continue in the circle as an equal with them and I couldn’t be an equal until I went through this three-day weekend. So I didn’t expect much from it because of all the work I’ve done and all the facilitation of working with other people, etc., etc. But it was very valuable for me, and I highly recommend it to any man who may be drawn to it. And, you know, they do a lot of wild things. They don’t like people going into details. But what I say in my website and my book is that, for deeper initiation into your own masculinity- mature maleness, for living myth that actually creates archetypes that affect you and for some of the best shadow work I’ve ever undergone, I would recommend it for people. So, as a result of that, I decided to claim my “elderhood.” I was almost 66 at the time. And to start doing healing circles again on the telephone, I felt really empowered and deepened and strengthened in a deeper level of my own masculine maturity. And so, on my birthday, April 28th, this past April, my 66th birthday, I did my first healing circle since 2007. And I loved it, I always loved the work. And there were seven people, one from South Africa, and it was lovely. And the next day, I got an email from an old friend in South Africa with a link to a Drunvalo Melchizedek interview with Jennifer McLean. And Drunvalo is a teacher, you know, He’s done a lot of Flower of Life stuff and Merkaba stuff, a lot of stuff with the Mayan calendar and with indigenous people and with Egyptian beings. And I like him. I was never drawn to study with him. I have friends who did. And I’ve known a lot of the stuff that he comes out with and I’ve liked it. So, even though I know about him and mostly what he says, I decided to listen to this live stream interview. It had just been done a few days before, on the 24th. And for the first hour, I heard mostly what I already knew. But in the last 15 minutes, he said two things that went deep into me. And one was, he said that after the ascension our hearts would know what to do. And then he said, he talked about a guy named James Hart, a psychiatrist or a psychologist who’s doing healing work with Native American elders and chiefs in Canada and getting fabulous results working with forgiveness, and getting them to forgive everything about everything that’s ever been done to everyone there. And that he has some computer that’s supposed to be able to map their shadow and all that kind of stuff I don’t know about. But just those two things: your hard knowing what to do and forgiveness. And I meditate every night, I meditate three times a day. And that night I sat to meditate like always, and I started working with something around letting my heart tell me what to do and forgiveness. And it started to form into a kind of a mantra and I started to work with the words of the mantra. And then I refined it down and I believe this was divinely inspired and I was being guided. I refined it down to I love you and forgive you. I love you and forgive you. I love you and forgive you. I love you and forgive you. And I didn’t use it as a contemplation, trying to create love and forgiveness inside of myself. I use it as a meditation like a mantra, just thinking the words “I love you and forgive you, I love you and forgive you.”
Rick: So you weren’t considering who you were loving and forgiving or anything else, you were just saying it?
Mark: I was just internally, mentally, silently thinking. I wasn’t trying to point it to anybody or manipulate or control or do anything else.
Rick: And it could just as well be pointed to yourself anyway as to anyone else, it was just sort of a universal, non-directed thing you were doing.
Mark: It could go to anywhere it was needed, myself, others, wherever, you know, I wasn’t trying to direct that part of it. I was only using it as a simple mantra. We were told that the TM mantras are meaningless sounds. You know, there’s truth to that and there’s lie to that. But I was using it in a way almost like a meaningless sound but it was I love you and forgive you. And this thing started happening, kicked in automatically without my making much effort. And for five hours straight, I mean, you know, if you do meditation and you go into a deep samadhi or a deep healing, you know it. I mean, you know it and you don’t want to stop. And almost immediately upon my starting this, I went into this deep place of healing and all this stuff started happening. And for five hours straight, what it felt like was that love and forgiveness, without my trying to manufacture it from my small self, was going everywhere in my system it was needed and was healing things. And a lot of it was towards myself. It was all in myself. It was all in my own infrastructure, you know, in my ego, in my personality, in my shadow. And you know, all the parts of me that were damaged and constricted and tied and fearful. I wasn’t seeing the details that clearly, “oh, this is, it was that age.” It wasn’t anything like that. It was just I was feeling very profoundly this energy of love and forgiveness going everywhere in my system, wherever it was needed. It was like my higher power took over and was working with my subconscious. And I was just benefiting, just sitting there benefiting without having to do much. And I didn’t think at all the time, I didn’t, you know, jam the words out, you know, it just happened. And after about five hours I went to sleep and I woke up and I felt absolutely, totally different than I’ve ever felt in my life. And it didn’t feel like I felt after a big, huge breakthrough or epiphany. You know, it felt utterly, utterly, utterly changed on every level of my existence. And I felt space. I’ve always had trouble breathing, you know, not always, I say like hyperbole. There are times when I feel less constricted. But for almost all my life my breathing has been restricted, and contracted, and you know, whatever, spin, fear, anxiety, whatever. All of that, almost all of that was gone. At first I thought it was all of it. I thought it was 100% of it. But I soon began to realize that it wasn’t all of it. But it was 95% of it, literally. It was my shadow. Not only was I bigger than my shadow, as they like to say, you know, in some circles. It’s that my shadow had healed and released and I was free of it, completely free of it.
Rick: And has that borne itself out over the last six months or so?
Mark: It hasn’t borne itself out? I know it’s not 100%, I know there are things that I still go through. I still have an ego, there’s no question about that. But it’s like the ego, it’s like it’s a mechanism. It’s like it’s a mechanism that’s just there, and it can’t grab me and take me over like it used to. There are times when it can rise up and very briefly seem to hold sway over me. But they can’t last very long and it doesn’t have the grip that it used to have. But it’s like a mechanism that’s still there, it’s like kind of built into my system.
Rick: I think personally, you know, I hear all this talk about getting rid of your ego. I think that if you’re going to be alive, you need one. It’s a mechanism, just as your senses and your intellect and your mind and all these faculties we have are mechanisms. It’s just that it usually, in most cases, has been blown out of proportion, has usurped the authority and gotten too dominating. But if everything is in its proper proportion, then the ego is just one of a number of faculties that enables us to function as a human being.
Mark: And that’s been my experience, although I would even add to that that it’s not really necessary to function as a human being. There are times when it’s called for and needed, but for a lot of the time it can just be quiet and sit there as a dormant mechanism that’s not needed in that moment.
Rick: Sure, as with a number of our faculties, but it also sort of depends on what we mean by “ego.” What I mean is just some sense of personal identity, such that you would at least care for yourself. You wouldn’t walk out into traffic without the sense that there’s nobody here and nothing’s happening. You would have the natural protective mechanism not to do that. And a million other examples we could raise. If you whack your thumb with a hammer, the pain is felt locally, it’s not felt on Mars, because there is some individual entity. There’s some biological mechanism of which an ego is part of its functioning. At least that’s my current understanding. I mean, a year from now, I might totally refute that, but anyway.
Mark: Yeah, I have a slightly different take on the ego.
Rick: What’s your take?
Mark: Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me?
Rick: Yeah, that’s what I mean by the distorted, overblown aspect of it. That faculty which serves a natural function can get distorted and blown out of proportion, and then it’s all about me.
Mark: Yeah, but we’re splitting hairs here, I think. We might be on the same page. But for me, the self-preservation and the individual identity of a three-dimensional being, that’s not the ego. That’s the three-dimensional persona, if you will, or the way we have that we need to differentiate ourselves from other beings. But for me, the ego, the mechanism, is by definition the me mechanism, the me that wants to be self-important, the me that wants everything that it wants. And in my experience, that doesn’t die either, or at least for me, that hasn’t completely gone away. And that’s what can come up every once in a while and look as if it’s taking over, and even take over for a few minutes here and there. But it doesn’t have the grip that it used to have. It can’t really rule me for more than, however long, 15 minutes or 10 minutes, or whatever it is. And that’s slightly different from the self-preservation mechanism and the differentiation mechanism that differentiates me from other beings.
Rick: Okay, so it’s a matter of how we define it, and so I see what you mean.
Mark: But it has borne out, you know, what I would say is that my life is love-based. My life is happiness-based, my life is creativity-based, my life is freedom-based. I’m a happy camper. I mean, most of my life, you know, there were years when I was with Maharishi and I was a happy camper. But that was the rarity, that was very rare. For most of my life I wasn’t a happy camper. For a lot of my life, I longed for death. I didn’t want to be here. The 3D wasn’t for me. But that’s completely turned on its head. And ever since that night, and there’s been progress since that night also, I feel like my life is love-based and generosity-based, and embracing instead of wanting to get away from. And it’s completely different than it was. And I don’t think my technique is, and I haven’t said what it is yet really, but it’s going to have that huge profound effect on many people in 5 hours. I believe that there are people out there that could have that potential with, people who have done a lot of work, who have done pretty much everything else, that they could possibly do and are there, and that’s all it’s going to take. But I think for many people in a more gentle, longer-term way, that this technique that came to me that night, that I’ve been using ever since, could really help heal and release their shadow, and help them become whole. And that enlightenment or liberation or self-realization is a part of that. So when I do this technique, there are times when what I call “the samadhi comes,” the silence, and I write about it in the book. For me, it’s not a flashy experience. It’s beautiful and subtle, and it’s when the mind quiets down and everything goes still. And you can begin to perceive a kind of boundlessness, that either you’re unbounded or there’s somehow this infinite space there. And it’s very quiet and it’s very subtle, but there’s not much else going on. And that happens from time to time, you know, in my meditations. And I love it when it happens, and when it happens I’ll either sometimes very gently think, “I love you and forgive you,” every once in a while or I’ll just sit there and enjoy it. So that transcendent thing, I’m not against it, I love it. And I think it’s a very valuable, wonderful thing. But when we try to go for the state where it’s the basis of our existence all the time, and we don’t deal with what needs to be healed and released, then we get ourselves into usually a problematic situation.
Rick: So, do you think it’s possible that you were just on the brink of happy camperdom that night and you were shifting into it. And you sat there and you picked up “I love you and forgive you,” and that was almost coincidental? Or do you think that the “I love you and forgive you” actually really was the fulcrum or whatever that created the shift you underwent?
Mark: It was my experience that it was the fulcrum. And I even almost use that analogy on my website in my book. And I say something like, “It was the lever that dumped a thousand tons at sea.” And that was my experience, that’s how it felt. You know, I had a good experience after the New Warrior Training Adventure, and then I went into a little dark night of the soul. And I wrote a poem from that dark night of the soul, and then I wrote a poem from my state after that night. And I have both in my book and my website. But it was my experience that, that was the lever, and that can be, has the potential to be the lever for perhaps many people.
Rick: Okay, and as you said, you haven’t thoroughly described the technique yet. But a minute ago, you were talking about going into a nice samadhi state, and maybe occasionally in that state you’ll think, “I love you and forgive you.” But when that doesn’t happen, the samadhi state, are you kind of in a deeper state anyway, when you just close your eyes and settle down, and do “I love you and forgive you?” Or is it more like you might feel like you’re just on the surface and doing this thing, but it has its effect nonetheless?
Mark: Well, for me, the meditative state is a deeper state almost by definition. There are times in the meditative state where I’m doing more processing than I’m doing transcending, that I’m feeling things coming up, and that there are things that are somehow being processed, and there’s work going on.
Rick: The elephants are waking up. I say the elephants are waking up.
Mark: The elephants are moving and going through my system, and the elephants being parts of my shadow, presumably. Even things from the day that I’m working through, you know, how sleep is supposed to be working through things in your day. Sometimes meditation can be working through things in your day, not necessarily consciously and deliberately. But things come up that need to be processed, that you didn’t get to fully process in that moment. So, when those things are going on, then I could say, “Yes, I’m in a less deep place,” as when everything is quiet and I feel the infinite, then I’m in a deeper place. But even when I close my eyes, just going in the inward direction brings one into a slightly deeper place than being in the outer, directed mode. So, when I’m not in samadhi or in a place of quiet and stillness, usually what’s happening is that I’m going through some kind of processing.
Rick: So what haven’t you told us yet about this “love you and forgive you” thing that people need to hear?
Mark: The most important thing, and the thing that I would like to convey more than anything else, is that, first of all, I offer this technique to everyone free. And it’s free at my website. And I strongly encourage you to read my website in its entirety, because I think all the information there has its place and can be of value. I can just tell you what the technique is in a moment, but it’s very easy to dismiss. Both the ego, the ego will want to dismiss it. And it’s, “Oh yeah, I know what that is. What can that do for me?” So I would really recommend that you read my website. And I would request and encourage you and love you if you bought my book. Because I believe the book is really the vehicle that can spread, that can bring this to more people. And I believe this lever, this fulcrum, this very simple, easy technique of meditating, really has the potential to free a lot of people from a huge amount of their shadow and constriction and limitation, and become more fully who they are. And it’s a whole different world when the shadow unloads, when the 10,000 tons dump at sea, or however many, or however much, or whatever. You’re more fully who you are, there’s more promise, there’s more creativity, there’s more wonder, there’s more joy, there’s more happiness, there’s more love, and there’s more forgiveness. And that’s the basis of your life, instead of not being so great, being the basis of your life. So I believe the book could do more, I’ll say it, for this world, than almost anything else out there. I can’t help it. I tried everything else that I was drawn to. And this is the only thing that really did it for me. And yes, there was cumulative effect, and yes, I could have been closer, and yes, all of that stuff, definitely. But, you know, try it. See what it does for you, and give it a good, honest shot. And all of that is explained in the website and the book. So, there’s that.
Rick: I just want to say I’m always a little leery of universal prescriptions or absolute panaceas, but it did work for you. And undoubtedly it’s working for a lot of people that have picked it up since you’ve begun promulgating it. So why not? If a person feels inclined to do it, then great.
Mark: I wouldn’t even say a lot. And I’m not saying it’s going to work for everyone, I’m not saying it’s a universal panacea. But what I am saying, and what I do say in my website, and it can be misconstrued, and maybe it’s not even misconstrued, maybe there is ego involved in it, is that, what it does is, it boils the healing process down to its two most essential ingredients. And that what really heals is love and what really heals is forgiveness. And those two things are the two most essential things for healing. And those two things really do heal more powerfully when utilized in a different way than almost anything else out there could. Because those are the things that heal.
Rick: And you feel that actually just saying that phrase on a mental level evokes love and forgiveness from within us to a significant degree?
Mark: Yes, let me say the technique now. The technique is meditating regularly. Every spiritual and religious tradition has some way of going within, whether it’s prayer, or contemplation, or meditation, or vision quest. Whatever it is, it’s some way of turning the attention into the inward direction as opposed to the outward direction. And in my experience, meditation is the most effective way of doing that. I’ve done vision quest, I loved it. I used it as a healing modality. I’ve done prayer, I’ve done contemplation. But for me meditation and a regular meditation is the best way. And I think of it almost like hygiene, a daily form of hygiene, spiritual hygiene, physical hygiene, emotional hygiene. So, it’s a regular meditation two or three times a day, I do it three times. And what you do is you just very easily sit there. You don’t have to have your spine straight. You don’t have to think the mantra all the time. All of the things that we think, you don’t have to try to get the mind to be quiet, that make it impossible for people to meditate. You have to drop all of those. Because if you have an idea that you have to control the monkey mind, forget it. You’re never going to be able to do it, ever. It’s a false idea. The monkey mind is processing stuff that happened to you that you can’t process, that you could process at the time. So, look at everything that happens, but when you can and when you want to, just very simply and easily think, “I love you and forgive you. I love you and forgive you. I love you and forgive you.” And let it go when you want to, come back to it when you want to. Sit there for a long period of time just with the processing, if that’s what feels right. If the silence comes up, sit there for a long time with just the silence, if that’s what feels right. But when you do start ruminating, or having lots of thoughts, or whatever, and you can, just think, “I love you and forgive you.” And as easily and effortlessly as possible. But what can happen, and what I believe does happen, is it’s not you, the small doer, the small self, creating love and forgiveness and healing things inside of you. What can happen is that the small self just starts to get quiet, and a higher power, your higher power, your higher self, your inner wisdom, your inner guru, whatever you want to call it, the Satguru, whatever you want to call it, kind of gently, easily takes over without you even realizing it or thinking about it. And it starts delivering those vibrations, those energies of love and forgiveness, everywhere within you where it’s needed, or one particular place within you where it’s needed. Or whatever happens in that moment, you’re not the doer, it’s just happening inside of you. And that this little technique of thinking, “I love you and forgive you,” in your meditation has the potential to be the lever to heal and release the shadow, the stuff that’s holding you back.
Rick: Does it usually take a while before a person feels that happening? Because a person might sit there for 5 minutes and say, “Ah, this is boring, nothing is happening.” Do you have to give it 20 minutes or half an hour or something to really kick in?
Mark: It’s going to be different for everyone in every situation, every time they sit down to meditate. You know, what I recommend is a bare minimum, an absolute bare minimum, and it may be different for different people when they do that. But for me the bare minimum is, after you wake up and maybe go to the bathroom and wash your mouth out or whatever, sit down for 5 minutes and meditate.
Rick: Ah, 5 minutes is nothing, anybody can do that.
Mark: And before you go to sleep, after you’ve done anything else, everything else, sit up in bed and meditate for 5 minutes before you go to sleep. That bare minimum, I recommend longer than that, but it’s the bare minimum that I recommend. And I believe in 5 minutes something could happen.
Rick: If somebody has a mantra meditation or something else they’ve already been practicing, vipassana or whatever, would you suggest doing that for their usual period and then tagging this on the end of it?
Mark: That’s one of my recommendations. I recommend doing it in any way that works for you. My highest recommendation would be to let whatever you’re doing go for a while and just try this exclusively for a month. That’s what I would most deeply recommend, but if that doesn’t work for you, I totally understand that. Either add on more time or do what you’re doing a little bit less time and add this in. Again, I would recommend more than 5 minutes in the morning and the evening. I’d recommend an afternoon meditation as well. I meditate 45 minutes in the morning, about 20 minutes, give or take, in the afternoon, and anywhere from 5 minutes to half an hour more in the evening, depending on when I start to fall asleep. And when I start to fall asleep, even if it’s after only 5 minutes, I can start having dream images, very faint dream images, or I’m getting very sleepy, then I just lie down and fall asleep. So I don’t recommend worrying about minutes at night. So yeah, whatever way works for you. Add on a little more time to tag this in and do a little bit less of what you’re doing, or let go of what you’re doing for a month and try this exclusively if that works for you.
Rick: Okay, great. Anything else you’d like to say about this? Or have we covered it?
Mark: Yeah. It’s hard to convey. I mean, everyone knows joy and everyone knows happiness. But I think almost everyone knows inner turmoil and discomfort. You know, just basic existential, psychological, emotional, spiritual, heart pain, discomfort. You know, a lot of people know what the pain body is or what the shadow. A lot of people don’t use that terminology and haven’t worked with those things very much. But, I mean, your life can really be lived from a wonderful place instead of a, to be honest, not very nice place. And of course, we all go through ups and downs and fluctuations. But it’s only the unhealed stuff, it’s only the distortion, it’s only the shadow that crimps our existence, that makes life not worth living, feel like it can be not worth living. And that truly can be healed now, I believe. And if we just allow for that, try, you know, give the technique a little chance to see if it can help along those lines. And even if it’s some other way, you know, whatever it is, that healing, that wholeness is possible now. More so, I believe, than it ever has been. Because I believe that we are now, you know, at the juncture of 2012. We’re right there. And, you know, the world has become a very connected place. And enough of us have done enough work over a long enough time, so that it can become easier now for lots and lots and lots of people. And as a human race, we have the potential to shepherd this planet and take care of it, and take care of ourselves, and help each other, and thrive. I recommend everyone watch the movie “Thrive.” I really think it’s worth watching.
Rick: Good. So I was going to … one more question occurred to me, which is that, have you found that not only has your inner life been transformed by this and the way you feel, but have you truly become radically different in terms of the degree to which you love and forgive the people in your life and the people you happen to encounter?
Mark: Yeah.
Rick: I mean, do people say, “Hey, whoa, what happened to Mark? He’s a different guy now.”
Mark: I don’t know how visible it is to people. I try to express it sometimes. But what I try to describe is that, you know, almost all the time I feel love flowing through me, love flowing through my heart, love for everything, love for every iota of creation, love for everyone out there, love for myself, love for life.
Rick: Which probably means you don’t feel the depression that you had been prone to.
Mark: Right.
Rick: It’s like it kind of wipes that out.
Mark: It wipes that out. There can be ups and downs. There were moments when I began to feel, “Am I going back to where I was before?” But, you know, it became obvious very quickly that I wasn’t. So there will definitely still be ups and downs, but the whole level of existence has shifted and the whole basis of existence has shifted. And where I thought you were going to go, and there are times when people have seen this and responded to it, but people have said to me, “You seem completely different.” And I said, “I am completely different.” But I think for the most part, people haven’t noticed it that much. But where I thought you were going to go is, “Have my outer circumstances changed along with the inner circumstances?” You know, I am still living in the same place, I still have as little money as I did before, pretty much. There is a tiny bit of income that started to trickle in. But, you know, I wrote this book, I have this mission, I feel wonderful. You know, all of those things are different. And I believe over time the outer may change as well. But it doesn’t matter so much anymore. I mean, if my book took off after I dropped dead, you know, in 10 years or whatever, you know, I would be thrilled. If it were to help people then, I would love for it to help people now. I would love for it to sell like hotcakes and me be able to do half the things that I would still like to do. There are still a lot of things I would love to do. But those things don’t matter so much anymore. What matters is the basis of my existence, which is totally transformed.
Rick: Beautiful. Well that’s a good spot to end it. This has been a fascinating conversation.
Mark: Thank you. Thank you.
Rick: I’m glad we did it. I totally enjoyed it.
Mark: Me too.
Rick: Let me make a couple of concluding remarks that I always make. I’ve been speaking with Mark Landau, which you probably realize if you’ve listened this long. And Mark and I are old friends from way back. And this discussion, this interview, is part of an ongoing series. I do about one a week, although this weekend I’m doing three – you and someone on Saturday and someone on Sunday. But if you would like to be notified each time I do a new one, then please go to www.BATGAP.com, B-A-T-G-A-P, which is an acronym for Buddha at the Gas Pump. And there’s a little tab there which you can click on in order to sign up for an email notification, which you’ll get each time I put up a new interview. You’ll also see the video of this interview there, if you want to send it to friends or whatever. And you’ll also see a link to an audio podcast, if you’d like to subscribe to the podcast and listen to this on your iPod or iPhone. There’s also a discussion group that springs up around each interview and usually remains relevant to that interview. Hopefully it will. So if you feel like discussing some of the things that Mark has been talking about, go ahead and participate in that. There’s also a “Donate” button, which I really appreciate people clicking from time to time in order to support this endeavor. So thanks Mark, and thanks to those who have been listening or watching. Yeah, you want to say one more thing?
Mark: Yeah, we never give the address of my website.
Rick: Oh, I’m sorry, I am going to do that. You go ahead and say it, and I’m also going to link to it from www.BATGAP.com. But in case somebody is listening to this while they’re riding their horse and they want to just jot it down, what is your website?
Mark: Most people have probably figured it out. It’s www.ILOVEYOUANDFORGIVEYOU. There’s only one “I” in it, and “and” is spelled out, www.ILOVEYOUANDFORGIVEYOU.org. And the name of my book is at my website, it’s “I Love You and Forgive You: A True Self-Healing Tool and the Life Around It.”
Rick: Good, and again I’ll be linking to that from your page on www.BATGAP.com. If somebody is driving in the car and they forget what it was, just go there and you’ll be able to click on it and go to Mark’s site. So thanks, and thanks to those who have been listening or watching, and we’ll see you next time. Next time is going to be another old friend of mine, whom I met in 1969, named Rose Rosetree. And then the one after that is a very interesting fellow named Tom Crockett, in case you’ve heard of him. So, goodbye.
Mark: Bye, thank you very much.