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Rick Archer: 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 and 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 marshy, Mahesh Yogi’s personal secretary, and I have all kinds of experiences, which we’ll be talking about during this interview. And recently, Marsh Mark has written a nice book, which I just read, called, I love you and forgive you. And there’s, I’m sure he’ll want to talk a lot about that. So welcome, Mark. And thanks for doing this.
Mark Landau: Thank you very much. My pleasure. Yeah.
Rick Archer: So where would you like to start? I mean, nobody particularly cares about, you know, whether you played football or not in high school, but in terms of the spiritual implications of your life, you know, the things that you consider to be pivotal or influential in your spiritual path. Let’s, let’s start with those.
Mark Landau: Well, if I start with those, I have to go back before high school, okay. I remember when I shut down my spirituality, it was at the age of five. And my family didn’t support spirituality, my father was a proclaimed atheist. My mother did some ritual things, but there was no harder life or light in them that I could say. And when I was five, and in the car, I felt, 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 divinely fulgens, 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 is the look like? And like I said, it wasn’t a smiley face, but it felt like smiling and love and divine support and nurturance. And most like a face smiling out of the sky, me and I said, like a face smiling out of the sky, 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, you know, my, my experiences. And, you know, I became a hedonist. And, you know, 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. Yeah. For a number of different reasons. And at that time, as you may recall, it was it was still fairly new and white upper middle class, suburbia, and basically unheard of on the part of most people. And there were a few other kids who did some stuff. And then there was about 17 kids in my class that started doing marijuana and hashish and stuff like that, but I, 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 Archer: So did I. Were you attributing some kind of spiritual significance or to these to the drug use? Or are we just doing it for kicks?
Mark Landau: Not 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. Yeah. And to be honest, the first time I did heroin I fell piece like you wouldn’t believe. knock 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 it was it was for peace and for even Oblivion that I was doing it. It wasn’t consciously for any kind of spiritual experience.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I think I threw up the first time I did it, I 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 to
Mark Landau: think the first time it was fabulous the first time, but the the second time, I think, and several times after that I started getting sick from that. Yeah. 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 learned something, you know, that maybe it would help, you know, you know, I’m willing to try anything, including drugs and psychiatry. So I began my first path of self discovery, healing. It was three times a week as a as a and it was psychiatrist, it was client centered psychotherapy. And, and I went all through college. And like you said, a similar experience a second I got away from home. Second, I got away from Westport, you know, which is a beautiful, wealthy, affluent, artsy community, but but for me was hell, you know, I wasn’t a happy place. I lost all interest in drugs and just spontaneously stopped taking on drugs as soon as I left. And, yeah,
Rick Archer: go ahead. I was just gonna probe you with a question. But you obviously have more to say. So continue.
Mark Landau: Oh, yeah, you can pose the question. But in the middle of my two semesters, in 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 do a biopsy. But they removed it all I was under, it was cancer with metastases to the lymph nodes in my abdomen, they call it near distance, which is good, because if it was for metastasis, I probably would have killed me. And but even with near metastases, it’s very lethal. But what happened then was I went through two operations in a year of chemotherapy. And towards the end of my year of chemotherapy, my spiritual experiences awakened again. And I was like, you know, 18, or 19, at that point. And I would have what I we later came to call Unity experiences. You know, I’d be lying on the ground and you know, at the University of Wisconsin, looking at everything, and I just felt absolutely one with everything. With the blades of grass, the concrete sidewalk with the buildings for the people with the cosmos with a galaxy. I just felt a core identity. That was one that was absolutely the same for all things.
Rick Archer: I just don’t you think that with chemotherapy would have just been all kind of dulled out and muddled, and, you know, foggy but but you were actually having these experiences.
Mark Landau: During the chemo, it wasn’t so much that way. Yeah. During the chemo, I was terribly sick. Or it’s 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 Archer: And those days, chemo was a lot more brutal than it is now to it
Mark Landau: was and one of the pioneers was there at the University of Wisconsin. And I was one of his guinea pigs. And but it was it was towards the end of the chemo and it was in between because they don’t give it to you non stop. It’s for like three weeks or four weeks or whatever. And then they stopped 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 March. Towards the end, I did it 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. And things continued from there. I graduated. I love things like philosophy and art history and mythology and, and you know foreign literature and things like that. But because I like 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 want to become a psychotherapist. So I made a very wise decision to take a year off after college, but towards the end, that year, I began to think, What the hell am I going to do for you? So I wrote to 10 school saying, Can I apply at this late date? And only one wrote back saying yes, and that was Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, which is a fairly good school. And so I applied and they accepted me and I got scholarships and decided to go. And 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 was when I finished undergraduate school. And the only thing I could think of doing, you know, in the state that I was in, was here, Timothy Leary.
Rick Archer: Tune in, turn on dropout. Tune in Jeff Berwick, turn on tune in drop out, I think it was.
Mark Landau: And so I did, I had taken LSD once but a small dose at night by myself. And it hadn’t, you know, been a great experience. And I thought, well, I need something and maybe that’ll 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, or at least a psychic or mental or emotional breakthrough.
Mark Landau: 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 away for 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. Um, and, and borderline, I would say borderline all kinds of things borderline bipolar, borderline. Artistic, 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. You know, like a lot of people do for me actually was spiritual, and it’s experience. But um, I nearly got arrested. My girlfriend walked me into university 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 they my parents got me back in and then they really hit me harder with Thorazine and that did it. And it had 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, you know, from the from the world making me even more aware, perceptive in some ways sensitive hypersensitive. And, you know, I was I would 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 to the South Pacific in the Far East. And that took a year because I didn’t want to leave, you know, Tahiti or you know, upon New Guinea or Singapore, you know, immediately. And that’s when I came back. And when I was in Australia, I powerful peak experiences, I met a vegetarian in Samoa, and nearly got eaten by sharks in Fiji. And then I, when I was in Australia, I had fabulous experiences in New Zealand, but in Australia had these very powerful peak experiences, very spiritual. In one day I shaved my head became celibate and vegetarian for a day. all on the same 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. That point, I went checked out the Hari Krishna is they didn’t, you know, 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 ray 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 but that had a very strong effect on me. And I did some things in Japan, none of them really stuck or met 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. And my mother was actually who showed me an article in The New York Times about Transcendental Meditation, and the New York to MTA. And I decided, I go into New York and see what they were about. And the very next day, I saw a poster up in Westport, about the intro. And the intro was Michael and Charlotte cane, I think
Mark Landau: about it. And everything they said, kind of made sense to me. And I liked what I felt and saw and heard. And then should that’s okay. Then, when everyone needs their word, from time to time, I went to the prep, which you gave with Ingrid Zarathustra. And I didn’t remember this when I was writing my book. But I had this in other writing that I had, you know, that I had, I didn’t remember Ingrid, out well. But um, 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 Marashi to 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 help some masters start meditating and, you know, did all kinds of stuff like that it was my whole life.
Rick Archer: You mentioned the teacher training courses. In your book, you talk about how you, you know, 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? Or did you get up to have a bite to eat and go to the bathroom and stuff or what?
Mark Landau: They they put food outside our door. I didn’t eat very much for three days. But I did a little I had to get up to go to the bathroom for a little 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 Archer: Yeah. So there’s, you mentioned a lot of interesting experiences in your book that you had with marshy and I thought it might be interesting to discuss some of those just because, you know, a lot of people who are listening to this may have a TM background and others not. But um, he was quite a character and you know, and there were some it’s kind of one of these people you meet in life, whom you you know, from the outset, you feel like, this is no ordinary person, you know, this this person is and it’s not just because of the looked at the way he dressed or anything, there was something about his personality, and the sort of the influence that he radiated. And in many cases, the things he was able to do, which, you know, struck any observant person as remarkable. So there’s some highlights the along those lines you feel like talking about?
Mark Landau: Sure, sure. Well, the first time I saw him, I mean, I saw what I had been looking for. And it wasn’t just, you know, 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 Archer: Was it customary for you to see things like that?
Mark Landau: No. Okay. Prior to seeing him, I hadn’t seen that in anyone or anything. You know, sometimes when I looked at trees or something, I would see a little bit of wider energy or something around them, but but I, you know, 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 our, in my terminology, you know, 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 Amhurst. At the one month course, in 1971. And so, right, and, and like I wrote in the book, not only those, you know, 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, you know, almost like the disk of the Sun. And I didn’t see that around him very often. But I did see, you know, maybe in the five years, I was with him something like, you know, 10 or 15 times or something like, I can’t remember if I saw that in Amhurst or not.
Rick Archer: Do you think it was something that he produced on those specific occasions or more than your perception tuned into it on those occasions?
Mark Landau: No, it’s my experience that the amount of Darsh owner energy that he produced was quite variable. And there were times when he hardly produced any and there was times when he produced a lot, and he had
Rick Archer: control over it. No, or the circumstances would bring it out.
Mark Landau: circumstance, 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, those things combined? Would would produce it?
Rick Archer: I mean, haven’t, haven’t you kind of experienced that yourself in like, I have in you teaching situations, you get up in front of a couple 100 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 other times, you’re just Joe Schmo, you know not much going on?
Mark Landau: Absolutely. I, I’ve had people come up to me and tell me that, you know, they saw auras around me for the first time in their life, I had one person tell me that they saw a halo in my head. And it had totally to do with the circumstance and what I was talking about, I had no control over
Rick Archer: it. Yeah, somehow you put yourself in the situation as an instrument. And then then, you know, whatever the mechanics are, that energy kind of ramps up in your through you. So that as an instrument, you are more effective, it just somehow works that way. Exactly. Yeah.
Mark Landau: So if you’re there in front of, you know, people who are receptive and you’re talking about spiritual things, you know, the energy starts to amp up. It does. People can sometimes definitely feel it and oftentimes see it. So that happened to me much more when I was doing much more teaching. Yeah. It hasn’t been happening to me that much lately, but you know, I know it’s there.
Rick Archer: So do you think this is a general point? I mean, all these gurus with their, you know, their Shakti and their Darshan, and so on. These think that it’s kind of a weird question, but obviously, not anybody could get up and just start doing that. There’s has to be some qualification. But, you know, people who see them and their followers often make a big fuss about them and just kind of, you know, elevate them to the skies, and, you know, have them up literally on a pedestal. But, um, 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 in, you know, 711, or something just wouldn’t happen. But maybe it’s a moot point, because, you know, somebody like, that isn’t gonna go work in a 711, they just have a destiny to fulfill,
Mark Landau: they might do, you know, kind of park bench for, you know, three years, or whatever it was. But, um, I, you know, 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, you know, all of those things combined. But I think anyone has the potential, everyone has the potential, a started, you know, doing spiritual things and getting into it, and you know, and they were placed in front of a group to a larger, smaller degree, I think it could happen with almost everyone out there, everyone out there really basically. But, you know, some people have done more, some people have a longer history and a more spiritual history, and I’m talking about, you know, past life history. Some people align themselves lineages, and they borrow the power of the lineage and the power of lineage goes through them, which can amp it up very significantly.
Rick Archer: That’s an interesting point. In fact, that’s what marshy told us we were doing when we instructed people, he said, You’re, you’re kind of conducting yourself with this tradition of teachers that goes back a couple of 1000 years. And, and that’s how the teaching you’re imparting has potency.
Mark Landau: Yeah. And I believe that, I mean, if you align yourself, you know, with the lineage line of teachers who have been doing this kind of stuff for 1000s, and 1000s, of years, then then you can piggyback a little bit on them, you’re not on them to, you know, dependent.
Rick Archer: And, presumably, you know, if we want to get really a Boga here, you know, who might actually be in some sense overseeing or, or things, you know, 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 kind of force of the lineage behind them.
Mark Landau: I believe that’s true also, and there are other beings, you know, their archangels, and their species, devas and their, you know, their their sciences, pretty much proven that there are other dimensions, their higher dimensions or more dimensions in the three we live in. And there are all kinds of beings out there that could come and lend our support. But I think one of the major mechanics of it is that the energy and adoration of the followers of the person, they’re all focusing their love and devotion on to this person. And directly in my experience, you know, Mari, she would use their energy to create a kind of a feedback loop. And amp up the door, Shannon, and he did this with me, it’s science symposiums. I mean, you know, in Chicago, or wherever it was, when Larry del mesh got up to speak, he was a physicist, and Marsh’s darling physicist at that point. Mark March she 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 Marashi wanted before I was into into serving at that time and totally into the whole thing because I thought we were saving the world and you know, so So there are mechanisms that can be invoked or utilize directly that that can have this up as
Rick Archer: 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, you know, universal generator. Absolute field have 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 comes in that enables her to some have it come back to the people.
Mark Landau: I believe that’s true. Also an eye. I believe that I’ve seen that in action. I went to see her when she was here and they were, you know, people who were close to her standing on the sidelines. adoring her, you know, with all their heart and good, I could actually see energy pouring from them into her. And it creates a symbiosis. It’s not just a feeding or vampirism, right. It’s like a dog. It’s a holistic kind of thing that, that feeds and generates, you know, love and devotion. And everyone there. So it’s a positive thing. A, but the sad thing about it for me is that it’s led a lot of people to believe that the dog those 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 I mean, with all that I experienced with my Reishi and the other teachers that I’ve sat with, you know, I was I was left back with my with my fucked up interstate. And I, I made progress. But oh, is powerful as the darshan, Shakti in the golden light and the glory and all of it was it didn’t end up doing what I felt I had the need.
Rick Archer: So you didn’t think there was any cumulative influence? Like for all the meditations, you did, for instance, obviously, the effective again, of a single meditation wears off, but isn’t there some kind of cumulative effect just as practicing the piano? You know, you have you do it every day. And gradually over time, you’d be good to be a pretty good piano player. Oh, yes,
Mark Landau: absolutely. It 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, at the end of the day, I would say that, you know, I would have periods of grace periods where I felt like I was enlightened. And sometimes they’d be like, in a weeks or months on end. But then, you know, if I were to sum total everything, you know, 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 you know, yeah, and the good stuff. So even
Rick Archer: in your heyday, when you were Marsh’s personal secretary and you’re having all these great experiences, and all you were 85%, fear and angst and all that,
Mark Landau: no, no, there were there were longer periods. Besides the weeks in the month, there were there were periods like yours. And in that experience in the glow of, you know, being on marshy in a way was, you know, like being in habit. And there was a writer who’s a playwright, I forget his name, William Gibson. William Gibson wrote a book called the season in heaven.
Rick Archer: Right. He also wrote the miracle worker. Yeah.
Mark Landau: Okay. So there 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 deed disillusionment started coming in, and it started getting really crazy when the CIA came and all of that kind of stuff.
Rick Archer: At the CIA came because it was after Jonestown was it or something, or it just became such such a popular thing? And ca decided to check it out?
Mark Landau: Well, it was my understanding that there were nine United States metadata, Senators meditating. And there are hundreds of 1000s this we know hundreds of 1000s of young people in America were, were starting to learn how to meditate. According to Marashi, someone in India was going to run for Prime Minister in March, she said, No, you’re not strong enough. You shouldn’t do that. So he didn’t run for Prime Minister. I mean, this little man from India had 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 Archer: Right. General Davis.
Mark Landau: 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 Archer: and you were there at that time.
Mark Landau: I was there at that time. Did
Rick Archer: you know The CIA was there
Mark Landau: because one of them sat next to me and it was as obvious his day as the nose on his face, that that’s what this man was, you know, 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 Marashi and a small group of us, he was sitting right next to me when he got in, and marshy didn’t have guards then. So much like he has now. You know, CIA operatives have their own skills as well, I assume. And, you know, he just he got his way. And I just, you know, he didn’t tell me he was CIA. I can’t prove it. Right. But
Rick Archer: Omar, she certainly talked about it all the time. And, you know, some people thought he was paranoid and, and sometimes he would accuse people whom who are good friends of mine that you knew weren’t in the CIA of being in the CIA, you know, just to sort of mess with them.
Mark Landau: The mess of them, I think he was getting paranoid. He was 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, which and we know that they weren’t. So I think he he actually did go into a kind of a tailspin.
Rick Archer: He also thought that when things have accidents happened to him that there was 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 them. And he would go into seclusion for a while after these events.
Mark Landau: Yes, and that’s when the whole solution things started happening. And eventually got to the point where he wouldn’t see anyone in person, he’d only see them through television. Can it have to be in a completely different room?
Rick Archer: So before we get into the disillusionment phases, anything more like really flashy? Not, I don’t want to just entertain people with flashiness, but I want to, you know, it’s like, I think you and I both agree that, you know, marshy was a remarkable man. And we’re very grateful for the blessings that He bestowed on our lives. But he was a 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. Or, and, you know, even today, I’m scratching my head thinking, you know, he was so awesome in certain respects. And yeah, he did this, this and this. And it’s, you know, I suppose Ken Wilbers principle of lines of development helps to explain it, where you can be extremely advanced along certain lines, and yet, relatively undeveloped along others. That’s one explanation anyway. But before we get into perhaps some of that, is there anything else by way of, you know, really kind of amazing experiences you had during that period. There were.
Mark Landau: And oftentimes, 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 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 but standing together. I had to walk right through them, and they flew off in every direction. marshy didn’t like people walking, you know, 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, you know, there were things like that. When we got to Mira and the three mountain Davis 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 commune 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’d been waiting 1000s of years for and they determined that he wasn’t and they kind of acknowledged each other and the three of them laughed and marshy started back in when he where he was talking. So there were things like that he could he could put people in a trance. He could send his awareness off into the distance far away and put people into a trance. And in my experience, I was driving into Germany. And we were late for a ferry in Germany and in Germany, the ferries are very punctual. And we were really late. We were like 10 or 15 minutes late. And he would 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 to he if it was foggy or cloudy, he tell he’d signaled to the helicopter with his hand when to go up and when to go down and went together, 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’re 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 at the captain was standing right there at the ramp. There were two crewmates looking at him, you know, kind of, you know, 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 end and he went to the pilots quarters and he took off. And you know, I innocently told people this on Fairfield life and got lambasted, you know, because Charlie lutes had an almost identical experience
Rick Archer: with him. Incidentally, Fairfield life is a chat group that I happen to set up about a dozen years ago that’s still running strong. And the yahoo group and Charlie lutes was one of Marsh’s original kind of followers back in the early 60s. Anyway, continue, I just want to fill that in.
Mark Landau: 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 Why are from no sleep for 24 hours or more that I couldn’t sleep side of me and unhook all the hooks and I 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 things like I was alone with him at that time. And later, I had helped there were two of us as a secretary, which was much better than just me. Um, so and there were other things you know, that are in my book that you know, could read about if you want to do it, you know? My favorite story involves snakes but I wasn’t there. You know, I heard it directly from two people two different people that I respect and trust. But according to them, I will say the long a bit say the short of it. A woman you know, came to the first teacher training course not having heard that it had been postponed and marshy and taught while the Bob were in the only building there that was led and it was nighttime.
Rick Archer: This is in Rishikesh, India. She thought well, Ababa was a saint who lived in that vicinity.
Mark Landau: Right they were having a snake contact because the the person who bought the land unbeknownst to him, I guess the the land that they bought for marshes ah Shan was snake infested. And there were hundreds of snakes on the floor in this in this little Hall. And there was the king cobra waving in front of Marashi and Tala Baba and Marcia sitting there. And in walks this woman from Germany and Marsha says to sit down they want her to when 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 are seen on the property. And it’s just that, you know, the place was snake infested and Tala bobbin and marsh in snakes got together and maybe the species day before the snakes Oh noes and, and got the snakes to a great believe.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I heard that story. Cool. So already well, if feel free to tell more of these types of stories if you like but then, you know, you eventually left and you mentioned we’re disillusionment and so tell us a little bit about that phase if you wish.
Mark Landau: Yeah, he as you know told everyone to be celibate, including TM teachers who were married. Yeah,
Rick Archer: hang on one second before you say this. just been thinking about the fact that we might talk about this. And I just want to say, these 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 kind of 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, you know, 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 this disillusioning information on anyone. And there’s, there’s plenty of good the TM movement is has done and is still doing I mean, the David Lynch Foundation is doing marvelous things with PTSD sufferers, any Skinner city schoolchildren and, and all kinds of, you know, people who are suffering, relieving tremendous suffering. So I have the utmost respect for all that. And this, what we’re probably about dimension is just a it’s a kind of, 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 Landau: That’s his, his personal assistant, I lived in the room next to his I brought him his food and his clothing, you know, 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 see in the evening, he would want to see women and I go and get them. And sometimes I would walk in on him. And see that. between him and the women, that was, there was more, you know, simple camaraderie.
Rick Archer: They weren’t just reading poetry to
Mark Landau: me, I didn’t see what some of the skin boys saw, you know,
Rick Archer: skin boy is just a euphemism for personal secretary, the position you filled, and it was called that because they carried his deerskin 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 Landau: Thank you. Um, 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 draw over beautiful young women, sometimes myself, or have done in the past. So, you know, there’s, we’re all human beings, we all have bodies that have certain responses, etc, etc, etc.
Rick Archer: But you weren’t claiming to be alive, celibate, nor advocating it for others.
Mark Landau: And that there’s the rub, if you will. And so the more I saw, 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 Burke, and I’m going to explain who Judah berg is. Or maybe one woman before. We think it’s true. 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 Archer: Yeah. Well, I actually stories did go back to the early 60s. But but you know, I mean, Shanker did the same thing, the great founder of nonduality, 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 was just happened to be dying. And boom, the king springs back to life and Shanker had the time of his life for about a month with the Kings Queens. And then at a certain point, the Queen’s got hip to what was going on and went to sent sent scouts to go and burn, Shanker his body so he wouldn’t be able to return to it because they liked him the way he was in the Kings body, and Shanker His disciples kind of woke him out of that trance just in the nick of time, and he came back in his body, the king dropped dead and Shankara went on being a monk. But if we believe that story, but nonetheless, Shakur 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 Landau: Right. And, you know, Judith wrote a book about her her affair with marshy
Rick Archer: Judith Bork and the book is entitled robes of silk feet of clay.
Mark Landau: 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 on to me, a Pharaoh and all of that kind of stuff. But I don’t think he I know he didn’t succeed with her. I think he might not have succeeded with other women. But there might have been other women, I don’t know. But 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, he would use people and discard them. Oftentimes, when they ran out of money, we I paid to be his secretary, I paid to be in the one away, and I spent nearly $100,000 of my own money to work for the movement for five, almost five years. And he had Spain for his followers. And it seemed to all be coming down more and more, to power and money. And sex, like the same thing that motivates you know, most of the human race, all all of those things began to not sit well with me. And on the one hand, I wanted to get closer to him ever, because I felt that I could. And on the other hand, I wanted to leave and I told someone that I told, you know, certain people that that I was, I was almost out of there or out of there. And then finally came to a head and he kicked me out. And it was devastating. And, but, you know, I also set it up, you know, that he would kick me out in a way.
Rick Archer: 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. And, you know, there have been so many cases where people have rationalized all kinds of things, in the name of, you know, crazy guru wisdom, and you know, that whatever the guru does, is divinely inspired, and you can’t do wrong, and it’s it’s cosmic intelligence, working out people’s, you know, 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, and many movements far more severe than anything that ever happened in the TM movement.
Mark Landau: 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, you know, even without that one can say it’s all for your good, you know, there’s a part of that, that, that that has validity. But if, if there’s abuse, and greed and criminality, and you know, Shadow, definitely arc, deep, powerful shadow going on, and one denies it, then then one has has left the Valley of truth, if you will, and, and is in denial. Yeah, I
Rick Archer: mean, ultimately, if we want to look at it that way, we could say everything that happens, it’s all for everybody’s good, you know, if we, if we regard God as, as ultimately benign, and can concern with the evolution of the universe, then, you know, 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. I don’t, personally, my own values are such that I don’t want to use that as a alibi for abuse and misbehavior on anyone’s part.
Mark Landau: And then we’re on the same page there. I think also, I think it’s important that we use our discernment to, to really see what is and that we can do that we 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, you know, comes from real love. And I think it’s important that we use our discernment to To determine when it’s one and when it’s the other if it can be, you know, if it is the other. Yeah, I think in in a lot of, you know, 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 and etc, etc, etc, that, that a lot of them succumbed.
Rick Archer: 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, 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, and to this day, he, he does that he, you know, I brought it up during the interview. And he said, Yeah, you know, 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, you know, got got carried away. But I admired him for his candor about that situation, stead of just trying to hide it. I mean, I suppose he did try to hide it as long as he could, when it blew open. He, he dealt with it in a much, you know, what I regard as a mature way?
Mark Landau: I respect to i feel that, you know, in that regard, one could say that he had more maturity than marshy did about that particular thing.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Although, you know, I mean, in marshes case, and perhaps we can be sympathetic about at this point, his movement was much bigger, he was much more famous, and his, his aura or his, you know, his persona was much more. Clearly, I, at least, from my experience, was 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 sort of talk about this. I mean, it just wasn’t the way he operated, there was this sort of, 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, you know, he only had people close to him whom he could absolutely trust with any secrets. And there was a sort of a hierarchy of secrecy that filtered down throughout his whole organization. And sometimes for good reason, because, you know, 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. And, you know, I’m rambling a bit, but maybe your thoughts on that.
Mark Landau: I think it’d be different page because I agree with you how things were, he had this persona, this world personality, but but I think he could have done it differently. You know, I think he could have just come out because he, you know, in the early days, he would say things like, you know, I renounce or menstruation. And he could have taken it a step further and said, You know, I, I believe in the power of celibacy. I’ve experienced it for 40 or 50 years, or whatever, I advise you to try, and I advise you to do it. But I feel like I’ve done it enough. And I want to experience worldly pleasure.
Rick Archer: Yeah. He could have done that. But that wasn’t him. What I’m saying he didn’t have that maturity, right. Oh, I heard that he once said to Jerry Jarvis, who was one of the top leaders of his movement that, yeah, as a younger man, he had been convinced that monastic lifestyle was essential, essential, if not highly conducive to gaining enlightenment, but he later realized that he would have gotten lightened. However, he had lived his life and had he had it to do over again, he might have been a married man.
Mark Landau: I haven’t heard that. But I have heard that he told someone that he wasn’t enlightened.
Rick Archer: Ah, interesting. Can we talk about that for a second? Not much more to say about it.
Mark Landau: There isn’t much more to say and it’s, it’s it really is almost a breach of confidence. Okay. Um, you know, I just to throw that out there, but I would want to leave that with the person that he actually said it to. Okay. No, to come forth and go more into it. Sure.
Rick Archer: All right. So where should we go from here?
Mark Landau: We spend more than enough time on Mars. Yeah, I love him dearly. I would never trade what I did before. 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, in my website in my book, you know what a mixed bag he was because he was totally mixed bag, you know, very deep shadow and very profound light. But I certainly think we spent more than enough time on him in this interview.
Rick Archer: Yeah, well, you know, I’ve never really done that in any of my interviews, and you’re the guy to do it with. So that’s why we spent the time. Okay, I’m glad we did. Yeah, but this is more about your whole path. Okay, so I think we’ve, we’ve concluded the Mihashi chapter of this interview. And so where would you like to take it from here? What happened when you left?
Mark Landau: I went through a lot of different jobs. For me, you know, 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’ve written over 100 songs, I love music. And I thought I wanted to be a rock star once but I wasn’t as motivated anywhere nearby that or anything else as I was by the spiritual stuff. So I went through a whole series of different things. I went through COTA 12, step stuff i 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 journey salt, triple 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 all the night all Tibetan Buddhist. He was the first white man to be with a Karmapa I, I went through a Hawaiian Kahuna phase and esoteric Jewish phase and esoteric Christian phase. And, and I started working with people first with hands on hands off energy, body energy and body work, then with rebirthing and then with Shamanic journey and soul retrieval. And then I got into something called DNA activation, which I totally loved. And, and I just kind of, you know, 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, that’s all I’ve ever really cared about. And I spent a glorious year in South Africa, bringing DNA activation to people there, you know, 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. And I learned a tremendous amount from Leslie temple Thursday, I had wonderful experiences with Ganga, J and D. Lemon. And Pamela Wilson and people like that. Okay, I’ll just leave it at that for the moment. And, you know, so I, that was, that was always my draw my pole. 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. And so we lived together for a while and then we went off to Hawaii. On vacation. We’re staying with friends of hers, and they all smoke marijuana. And so and 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 but I smoked hefty stuff khoy 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. And and as I said, you know, 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. And my mother cut me off at the age of one I’m completely could never go to her. You know, I could, I could talk to her. But, but, but there was this huge wall between us. And so I went through a series of four more psychotic episodes between. Now at the end of 91, and 94. And most of them were in some way drug related, one of them wasn’t. And 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 and then the, the episode was curtailed in midstream, except 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
Mark Landau: any one 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. And 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 Archer: You know, this might serve as a warning to people listening. Because these days people are fascinated with Ayahuasca, for instance, and 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 kind of episodes like you’ve been describing. So, you know, 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 is going to help them at this at this point.
Mark Landau: I totally agree. I think they did play a role, especially in the 60s, for a lot of us that that actually ended up being beneficial.
Rick Archer: But, but it took a toll even then. And there were casualties back then who still haven’t recovered, you know, who died or who were still institutionalize. I mean, it’s, it’s brutal, you know, it’s really not a safe and universal path or spiritual development by any means.
Mark Landau: Totally. And I totally agree with that. I would not recommend it. But, you know, I know there will be people drawn to it, and they’ll do it. And now it’s everyone’s prerogative, I believe. But it certainly knocked me off my feet.
Rick Archer: Yeah. I have a book here, which I haven’t read yet. Which was sent to me by David Gersten, MD entitled, are you getting enlightened or losing your mind? A psychiatrist 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, you know, spiritual unfoldment and sanity. 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, there’s a kind of a something, a glue, or a shell that holds us together. And we, 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. We can, it has served its function and that when that if it’s no longer there we can be, you know, totally nuts.
Mark Landau: 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, it’s written about, and there are similar experiences that can occur in both realms. But I totally agree with you. I don’t, I don’t recommend drugs as a spiritual path.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And even non drug paths, one should proceed with a fair degree of caution. You remember, Marcy’s teacher used to use the motto of safety first. You can you can put yourself over the edge. Like, you know, we experienced back in my Orca, where those long long meditation courses there were a lot of nutcases blog, people who totally flipped out doing that much meditation.
Mark Landau: Yeah. And I, I put a little bit of that in my book. One of my first roles in helping Marashi was to was to monitor and help one of the men who had cracked
Rick Archer: Yeah, well, that meditation, I did a little bit of that to their people who had to be sort of locked up in a room and just and just watch 24/7 Because they were so so nutty from doing too much meditation or whatever?
Mark Landau: I have to do that with him, but I had to accompany him everywhere he makes sure that Yeah. Um, so definitely we’re working with, with deep, you know, powers, deep energy, deep psychic shadows. And but you know I I believe they’re there, I believe that there were shadows and Marashi and shadows around the TM technique itself. And I think there are techniques which have no shadow or less shadow.
Rick Archer: Interesting. We’ll have to hear about those. But you know, 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? What did you mean by that?
Mark Landau: Berg very well, I yet to say it more precisely, I believe that going 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 I’m 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, and misunderstanding. And that, and that the best thing that we can go for now, which is along very similar lines, but it’s different for me, is going for healing and becoming whole. believe we can really do that now. And it’s going to be easy, that we can really heal all the 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, I didn’t, I didn’t become healer Hall, I was still a mess, I still had all this shadow, and I was still totally ego run. 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, 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. There 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 you know we associate with enlightenment, but then going going for self realization going for enlightenment. We, there’s a term spiritual bypass. And I think it’s a valuable valuable term because I think spiritual bypass like 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. You know, healing and becoming Hall to go straight for self realization and I think that if we just shift that focus, and 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 home, that 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 pattern 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’s a kind of self realization or enlightenment that comes along with that. But it’s not. It’s not what we were told, we get. You know, it’s not what many of us have an idea about.
Mark Landau: But it’s similar to that in many ways, but it’s, 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 Archer: Okay, so we’re going to talk about your technique in a few minutes. But um, so just to summarize what you just said, you know, you’re saying that, as opposed to the way it was taught, to the moment where, you know, if you were told to just, you know, go for the water, the route 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, you know, people were debarred from courses for going and getting some marriage counseling or something, because, you know, 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 gonna just take care of itself, if you were steeped in the transcendent, you need to take you needed to walk, you need to water some of the leaves and branches and so on. Now, are you saying that? Would you acknowledge or say that the two can be done simultaneously, there can be sort of a transcendence going on, and at the same time, you’re working on relative stuff? Are you saying that even that is a miss unbalanced priorities, and that you should kind of go straight for the healing. Because I mean, you know, there is this attitude that you can heal eternally, and you’re never going to heal everything. And that you really need to kind of there, 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 sort of dive into the absolute. So go ahead and respond to that.
Mark Landau: And I agree, I agree with that, in the 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 and the desperation, for enlightenment and self realization, and we we focus more in an unfocused way, and an easy way and yes, in an effortless way, on on the healing and becoming Hall, that what can happen. And I feel this happened to me on the night of April 29, April 30, is that so much of the shadow, so much of the, the the, 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’s 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 Marcy talked about, you know, what, you know, more, allowing us to be fully who we are, or much more fully who we are, you know, or if we have to put percentages on it instead of living 15% You know, of our potential of who we fully are, you know, 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 the books and the techniques that have come out, you know, I believe that there will be like popcorn, like marshy talked about popcorn, people popping into enlightenment, but it won’t be popping into enlightenment, it’ll be popping into healing and releasing the stuff that that holds us from fully living who we truly are. And, and becoming Hall.
Rick Archer: Well, isn’t that enlightenment, if you’ve been released from all the stuff that holds you that blocks you from being who you truly are, and you have become whole? Aren’t we talking about enlightenment? Or is there something else you’re talking about?
Mark Landau: In a way, in a way it isn’t. In a way it is definitely in the technique that I’m offering to everyone.
Rick Archer: But 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, whatever it was, and, and how you kind of came upon this thing. And then we’ll, we’ll really unfold it in much greater detail once you’ve explained that.
Mark Landau: Okay, so let me just finish my my life story very quick. Okay.
Rick Archer: Oh, yeah, the car accident that was that was really something
Mark Landau: we deal with a car accident. Okay. 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 1000s 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, you know, 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 were 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. I wish,
Rick Archer: I wish all teachers held themselves to that standard.
Mark Landau: I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t do it. I was living a lie. And I knew that unless I felt that unless I were living something worth living, I wasn’t going to be a healer or 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, and I got regular jobs. And I decided that some people are just too damaged for this lifetime to become enlightened to he’ll become Hall, it’s just some of us are just too damaged. That’s just the way it is. And maybe next lifetime for me always before that, I was sure 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 little bit of a lunatic in some ways, and not very happy. And I’m old enough to get social security. So I go on mad, I’m lucky that I moved from Santa Fe to Los Alamos after the job, I was working as a accounting manager for a high tech consulting firm. And so I can get section eight 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, I, I did that. And so I was taken care of, I wasn’t not on the street, and I decided that I would come out of my isolation because I’d become very isolated. I hardly spend 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 gonna 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, you know, and yes, all the time I spent with Marashi, 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, you know, free newspaper and look inside to see what was what, then I saw little tiny notice about a men circle. And I thought, Oh, that’s great. A men circle, no leader, no money, you know, equal 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 them in there, yada yada. And, and they were all part of a group called the mankind project, I had gone through a three day initiation, the new Warrior Training adventure. And it’s I read a little bit about it, but I really decided to do it. Because I like this man, 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 my trauma, because of all the work I’ve done, and all the facilitation and 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, in my book is that, you know, for deeper initiation into your own masculinity, mature maleness, for living myth that actually, you know, creates archetypes that that affect you. And for some of the best shadow work I’ve ever undergone. I would, I would recommend it for people. So as a result of that, I decided to claim my elder hood. I was almost 66 At the time, and and to start doing healing circles again, on the telephone, I felt really empowered and deepened and strengthened, and in a deeper level of my own masculine maturity.
Mark Landau: And so on my birthday, April 28, 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 drawn below is a teacher, you know, he’s done a lot of flower of life stuff and merkabah stuff, a lot of stuff with a Mayan Calendar and with indigenous people and with the Gyptian. Being beings, and I like him, I was never drawn to study with him. I have friends who did. And I, I’ve known a lot of the stuff that he comes out with, and I have like 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, 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 they’re, you know, 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 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 myrrh 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 me, I love you 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.
Rick Archer: So you weren’t considering who you were loving and forgiving, or anything else, you’re just saying,
Mark Landau: 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 Archer: And it could just as well be pointed to yourself anyways, to anyone else, it’s just you just sort of a universal non directed thing you’re doing,
Mark Landau: 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 light 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, 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, of healing and all this stuff started happening. And for five hours straight, what it felt like was that 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 who 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, and my shadow in, you know, all the parts of me that were damaged and constricted and tight and fearful. And I wasn’t seeing the details that that clearly Oh, this is there was that that age, it wasn’t anything like that. It was just I was feeling very profoundly this, 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 benefit, just sitting there benefiting without having to do much. And I didn’t think it all the time I didn’t you know, jam the words out. You know, it just it just happened. 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 like I say like hyperbole, there are times certainly 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 that was gone. At first I thought it was all I thought it was 100% of it. But I soon began to realize that it wasn’t all but it was 95% of it. Literally. It was it was my shadow. Not only was it bigger than my shadow, as they like to say, you know, in some circles, it’s that my shadow had had had healed and released and I was free of it completely free. And
Rick Archer: as that borne itself out over the last six months or so
Mark Landau: bored 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 Archer: 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 our mechanisms, it’s just that it usually in most cases, has been blown out of proportion has usurped its the authority and gotten, you know, to dominating. But if everything is in its proper proportion, and ego is just one, it’s one of a number of faculties that enables us to function as a human being.
Mark Landau: And that’s in my experience, although I would even add to that, that that it’s not really necessary to function as a human being that there are times when that 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 Archer: Sure, as with a number of our faculties, but it also sort of depends on what we mean by ego. I mean, if what I mean is just some sense of personal identity such that you would at least you know, care for yourself, you wouldn’t walk out in a traffic with without the sense that there’s there’s nobody here and nothing’s happening and you know, you you would have a natural protective mechanism not to do that and a million other examples we could raise, there’s, 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 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 Landau: Yeah, I have a slightly different take on the ego. What’s your take? Mee Mee Mee Mee Mee Mee Mee Mee Mee Mee Mee Mee Well,
Rick Archer: yeah, that’s what I mean by the distorted, overblown aspect of it, you know, it that that faculty, which there’s a natural function can get distorted and blown out of proportion, and then it’s all about me.
Mark Landau: Yeah, but we’re splitting hairs here, okay, we might be on the same page. But for me, the, you know, the self preservation and the individual identity of a three dimensional being, that’s not the ego, that’s, that’s the three dimensional persona, if you will, or, or the, the way we have that we need to, you know, to differentiate ourselves from other beings. But for me, the, you know, the, the ego, the mechanism is, by definition, the me mechanism, the either that wants to be self important to me that wants everything that it wants. And, 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, like, it’s, it’s taking over and even take over for a few minutes here and there. But, but it doesn’t have the grip that used to have, it can’t really rule me for more than, you know, however long you know, 15 minutes or 10 minutes or you know, whatever it is. And that’s that’s slightly different from the the, the self preservation mechanism and the differentiation mechanism that differentiates me from other beings.
Rick Archer: Okay, so it’s a matter of how we define it. And so I see what you mean.
Mark Landau: And, but, but it has born 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 marshy when I was a happy camper. But, you know, that was the rare. 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 has 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 once. And I don’t think my technique is, and I haven’t said what it is yet really, but is going to have that huge profound effect on many people in five hours, I believe that there are people out there that could have that potential with people who have done a lot of work or, you know, have done pretty much everything else that they could possibly do. And they’re there. And that’s all it’s gonna take. But I think for many people in a more gentle longer term way, that the 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, to become whole. And then and that enlightenment or liberation or self realization is a part of that 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 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 a 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. You know, 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 Archer: So do you think it’s possible that you were just on the, on the brink of happy campers them that night, and you know, you were shifting into it, and you sat there and you picked up I love you forgive you. And that was almost coincidental? Or do you think that they love you and forgive you actually really was the the fulcrum or whatever that created the shift you under when
Mark Landau: it was, 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 a lever that dumped 1000 tonnes at sea. And, and that’s how was my experience, that’s how it felt, you know, I had I had a good experience after the new Warrior Training adventure, and then I went into a little dark night of the soul. And, and I wrote a poem from that dark night of the soul. And then I wrote a poem from my state after, you know, after the that night, and I have both in my book in my website. But I 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 Archer: Okay, as you said, you haven’t thoroughly described the technique yet. But when you a minute ago, you’re 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 Landau: 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 Archer: Elephants are waking up. I say the elephants are waking up,
Mark Landau: moving and going through my system. Are the elephants being parts of my shadow? You know, even things from the day that I’m working through, you know how sleep supposed to be working through things in your day. You know, sometimes meditation can be working through things in your day, not just consciously and deliberately. But things come up that need to be processed, that you didn’t get to fully process in that moment. So, you know, when those things are going on, then I could say, Yes, I’m gonna let the place as when i Everything is quiet, and I feel the infinite, then I’m in a deeper place. But even you know, when I close my eyes, just 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 or other.
Rick Archer: So What haven’t you told us yet about this love you and for everything that people need to hear
Mark Landau: 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 a value. I can just tell you what the technique is in a moment. But it’s very easy to dismiss both the ego ego one and dismiss it. And, you know, it’s Oh, yeah, I know what that is, you know, it’s, it’s, you know, what can I do for me. Um, 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, and it’s a whole different world. When when the shadow on loads when the 10,000 tonnes dump at sea, or however many or however much or whatever. You’re more fully who you are, you know, you’re there’s more promise, there’s more creativity, there’s more wonder there’s more joy, there’s more happiness, more love, more love, and there’s more forgiveness. And, 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 do more. I’ll say it for this world, and 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 but but you know, try it, see, see what it does for you and give it a good shot. And all of that is explained in the website in the book. So, so there’s that.
Rick Archer: And I just want to say I’m always a little leery of universal prescriptions, you know, or absolute panacea. panaceas. But um, you know, 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. And so why not, if a person feels inclined to do it, then great.
Mark Landau: I wouldn’t even say a lot. And you know, I’m not saying it’s gonna work for everyone. I’m not saying it’s a universal panacea. But, 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, you know, 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 in a different way than almost anything else out there could because those are the things that heal
Rick Archer: 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 Landau: Yes, let me let me say the technique now. The technique is meditating regularly. You know, 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, the attention into the inward direction, as opposed to the outward direction. And in my experience meditation as the most effective way of going 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, 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. You know, all of the things that we think you don’t have to try to get the mind to be quiet, you know, 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 can’t process that you could process at the time. So we think that happen, that happens. But when you can, and when you want to just very simply and easily think I love you and for you. I love it. I love it. 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 that’s what feels right. But when you do start ruminating or you know, having lots of thoughts or whatever, and you can just think I love you and forgive him 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, and higher power, your higher power, your Higher Self, your inner wisdom, your inner guru, whatever you want to call it, the Sadhguru, whatever you want to call it kind of gently, easily takes over without you’re 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, you know, whatever, whatever happens in that moment, you’re not a doer, you know, it’s just happening inside of you. And and that 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 stuff that’s holding you back.
Rick Archer: does it usually take well, before you before a person feels that happening? I mean, because the person might sit there for five minutes and say, as is boring, nothing’s happening. I mean, you have to kind of give it 20 minutes or half an hour or something to really kick in.
Mark Landau: It’s gonna be different for everyone in every situation every time they sit down to meditate. You know what, what I recommend a bare bare minimum, an absolute bare minimum. And, 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 five minutes and meditate.
Rick Archer: Five minutes is nothing anybody can do that, buddy.
Mark Landau: And before you go to sleep after you’ve done anything else, everything else, sit up in bed and meditate for five minutes before you go to sleep. That they are minimum I recommend longer than that. But it’s the bare minimum that I recommend and I believe in five minutes something
Rick Archer: could happen. If somebody has a mantra meditation or something else, they’ve already been practicing Vipassana or whatever would you suggest like doing that for their usual period and then tagging this on the end of it?
Mark Landau: That’s one To buy 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 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 five minutes in the morning in the evening, you know, I’d recommend an afternoon meditation as well. You know, I meditate 45 minutes in the morning, about 20 minutes, give or take in the afternoon, and anywhere from five minutes to half an hour or 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 five minutes, you know, I can start having dream images, very faint dream images are um, 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 you add a little more time, do you know cactus in and do a little bit of 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 Archer: Okay, great. Anything else you’d like to say about this? Or have we covered it?
Mark Landau: 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, 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 did 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 give the technique a little chance to see if we can help along those lines. And even if it’s some other way, you know, whatever it is, that 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 becomes it can become easier now for lots and lots and lots of people. And that we as a human race, we have the potential to to shepherd this planet and take care of it and take care of ourselves and help each other and, you know, thrive. You know, I recommend everyone watch the movie thrive. I really think it’s worth watching. So
Rick Archer: yeah, so I was gonna, 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? Yeah, I mean to people say, Hey, what happened to mark he’s a different guy now.
Mark Landau: I don’t know how visible it is to people. I try to express it sometimes. But what I what I what I tried to describe is that 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 Archer: which probably means you don’t feel the depression that you had been prone to. Right? It’s like it, it kind of wipes that out,
Mark Landau: 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, the whole level of existence has shifted, and the whole basis of existence is shifting. And where I thought you were, you’re gonna go and there are times when when people have seen this and responded to it. But I, you know, there are people have said to me, you seem completely different. And I said, I am completely different. Oh, but I think for the most part, you know, people haven’t noticed that much. But where I thought you were gonna go is have my outer circumstances changed along with the inner circumstances, you know, you know, is, is, you know, I’m still living in the same place, I still have as little money as I did before pretty much does a tiny bit of income that started to trickle in. But, you know, I wrote this book, I had this mission, you know, 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, if my book took off after I dropped dead, you know, in 10 years, or whatever, you know, and I be thrilled, you know, if it were to help people, then I’d love for it to help people. Now, I’d love for it to sell like hotcakes and may be able to, you know, do half the things that I would still like to do, there’s still a lot of things I would love to do. But, but those things don’t matter so much anymore. What matters is the basis of my existence, which is totally transformed.
Rick Archer: Beautiful. Well, that’s a good spot to end it. This has been a fascinating conversation.
Mark Landau: Thank you. We did it totally got to be too.
Rick Archer: Yeah. 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, all of 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 batgap.com Bat gap, 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 and 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 Landau: Yeah, we never get give the address of my website.
Rick Archer: 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 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 Landau: most people are probably figured it out it’s I love you and forgive you. There’s only one eye in it. And and is spelled out I love you and forgive you.org and the name of my book, it’s at my website, it’s I love you and forgive you a true self healing tool in the life around good.
Rick Archer: And again, I’ll be linking to that from your page on 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 site. So thanks and thanks to those who’ve 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 tree. And then the one after that is a very interesting fella named Tom Crockett in case you’ve heard of him. So goodbye.
Mark Landau: I thank you very much