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Rick Archer: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer, Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually Awakening people. I’ve done hundreds of them now. And if this is new to you, and you’d like to watch other ones, please go to BatGap COMM And go under the past interviews menu where you’ll see all the other ones archived. This show is made possible by the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. If you appreciate it and feel like supporting it in any amount, there are PayPal buttons on every page of the site. And if you don’t like PayPal, there’s a donations page which explains other ways of doing it. My guest today is Michael spade spade. Michael is an interesting guy, his background is somewhat similar to mine. He was in the TM movement for many years. And he has lived in many respects, I would say a much saner life than mine in that he had his first profound mystical experience when he was 11. And when I was still like, totally confused little guy that hadn’t even gotten the Boy Scouts yet. And he bypassed many of the destructive aspects of the 60s that I indulged in. And it paid off for him. He had a profound awakening, and it said all kinds of beautiful mystical experiences all of his life. So I don’t know why I launched on that little comparative narrative there. But welcome, Michael. whatever pops into my head, you know. Okay, so Michael lives in Ogden, Utah, which is right near Salt Lake. And there’s an interesting reason why he lives there. We’ll see whether we get into that or not. But he’s lived a fascinating life for the last many, many decades. And I think we will start Michael with the experience you had in the library when you were 11. Because that really kind of watched your your spiritual quest.
Michael Speight: Okay, um, we, my school, took the trip to the library. And we had the opportunity to go exploring a bit. Most of the kids went off to the children’s section, and I didn’t die. I took off the other side of the library. And I ended up in the Philosophy and Religion section. And I was just walking slowly down that aisle, and I was drawn to a book. And I literally just looked over and I my hand went out almost on automatic pilot. And I pulled this book off the shelf and
Rick Archer: people whose who’ve done things like that the books actually fall off the shelf, so you have to reach some book falls off, they look at its Ramana Maharshi or something.
Michael Speight: Oh my god. Wow. Well, I wasn’t quite like, wasn’t quite like that. But yeah, and I opened up by looking through it. And there was a black and white photograph of the Portola palace, and my whole was tiff
Rick Archer: images.
Michael Speight: That’s the that’s in Tibet. in Lhasa, Tibet, the living quarters for the Dalai Lama. Yesterday got
Rick Archer: extra, yeah, vanished or whatever. Yeah.
Michael Speight: And he so I, it just I looked at it. I just recognize that it was it was huge. Just was huge emotional welling up and it just looked like home. Yeah, it just felt like my house. Totally familiar to me.
Rick Archer: Did you have any past life experiences? Vivid ones about that? Or was it just more of this? Yesterday when you’re 11?
Michael Speight: Yeah. Later, my wife and I had a shared experience of Oh, my gosh, I was. I went and we had it at the same moment. We were sitting there talking, we both might like, Did you just get that? And I was riding on my horse. I was all decked out. I was going into this town and somewhere in the Himalayas, to collect my bride, which was my current wife. And she saw me coming and took off and beat feet. And we didn’t get married, but she could describe the horse and I could describe the horse and what I was wearing, we both saw the same thing. And I think that’s why we got married this life to
Rick Archer: deal with had like a karmic debt to pay They’re serious.
Michael Speight: But it was a lot of fun. And so that book changed my life. It was one of Alexandria, David Neal’s works. And, you know, she’s that woman who spent what I was 18 Years in Tibet. And I read the book. And it talked about mystical things to me as a child. People levitating and melting snow around them and little walking super fast. And Amalia is guided by stars and things like that. And so I was smitten with that. I just was like, Wow, man, I want to know how to do that. And from reading the book, she was talking about meditation. And somehow, I cognized, a meditation, which later turned out to be a traditional Tibetan, meditation, visualization, meditation. And I practice that pretty much almost every day. Until I was about 15 years old, when I had my first very profound experience of pure consciousness, you know what, in the TM movement, they would call the transcendent, very profound. And after that, it was just as this is, this is what I want for my life. That’s, that’s the goal. That’s what I want to have. Of course, I had to make a living and do all those things that everybody else says to but I didn’t lose sight of that
Rick Archer: price. Got a little bit distracted, I just want to say to those listening, I usually mentioned this at some point, those listening to the live recording, if you want to post a question, during this interview, go to the upgoing, upcoming interviews page on bat gap calm. And you’ll see a forum at the bottom that page through which you can post questions. And that is true of all the interviews I do on Skype. Okay, so when you had that experience of the transcendent, and can you describe it a little bit more? I mean, how did you know? Or maybe you didn’t know at the time that it was an experience of the transcendent, you later put words to it?
Michael Speight: Yeah, I didn’t know I at that time i i put those words to it. After I had met my Rishi and learned in what we learned. I it was just it was that I would say what I related to it at the time was the peace that passeth all understanding. That was because we grew up going to church and all that sort of stuff. And that was it for me. I I worked very hard after that tried to recreate that experience. And I think what got in the way was my father passed away when I was 14. Rather untimely. And you know, I think maybe as a, as a young boy or a young man, you’re struggling with puberty. Sure. And so it was a little bit difficult. Although I kept practicing, and then I tried other things. I tried Zen, for a number of years, didn’t get anywhere with that. It’s kind of impressive
Rick Archer: that you at that young age throughout your entire adolescence. You practice meditation regularly. And what hour two hours a day. I mean, how much
Michael Speight: I would do is I probably did an hour plus each time. And the other thing is that I should say, as my father was into gymnastics, and my brother and I both are gymnasts, you know, from knee high. We even had some equipment in our backyard. And through that, I started a hatha yoga practice. And so I started doing hot yoga. Before I you know, peripheral age 11. And, and so, I was doing that regularly. So that may have had something to do with it. And I had somewhere along the line. I don’t remember exactly where but when I was young, I’d learned about pranayama Yeah. And so I’ve been doing some breathing exercises is really cool. So just felt thought right. I will say I did not share any of that with my mother. After my dad passed away, and because it just didn’t feel I was concerned. Sure. You know, I didn’t want my mother to worry about anything she had enough to worry about with my dad. Pittcon. Yeah.
Rick Archer: But it’s impressive because you know, most kids that age are just bouncing off the walls. There’s no way you can get him to sit still. And here you are meditating at least an hour a day. And definitely, to me, it’s sort of my way of thinking in indicate some kind of carryover from past lives. The only thing I ever had like that was I figured out how to put my legs in Lotus Last year, oh, cool, you know, just when I was sitting around in the neighborhood playing around, oh, you could put this leg up here and then that like, go up there. And I actually won a prize at a birthday party for doing. Okay. That’s great. I didn’t get any inkling of the Enlightenment thing until I was about 17. But that’s
Michael Speight: that’s great. Wow. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s it seems some. I don’t know. It all just felt very normal. Yeah. For me, I just It just felt natural.
Rick Archer: But the fact that you meditated so diligently, even when it wasn’t really easy, and you weren’t really getting any great results from it, that’s like, amazing to me.
Michael Speight: Oh, I don’t know. I those books, though. By the time I graduated, put time I finished 10th grade. I read every single book in that libraries philosophy religion section. Wow. That’s impressive. So I yeah, I was like running out of things. And so I think that through all of that, you can see the bookshelf behind me. Yeah, that’s, that’s what’s left of my several 1000 book collection. I’ve got it down to that now. Yeah. I kept studying, you know, reading, studying and trying to learn that that was always very inspiring. And then I had a talk about 17 years old. Oh, one of my best friend from Boy Scouts father owned a bunch of horses, and he would take people on hunting fishing camps in the summer. And he’d get us boys to work, you know, which, which was, Oh, wow. You know, we’d go up in the Sierras. And so we used to go up from this base of Lone Pine in the Sierras. And there was a cabin there. And we always would stop to water the horses before going over the 8000 foot pass. And we’d always knock on the door of the cabin. Mostly nobody was there. But this one time, a man answered the door. And there was something about him. I didn’t know what it was. But there was something about him. It was different. And many years later, I found out that that was Franklin miracle, Wolf. Oh, I’ll be done.
Rick Archer: Oh, cool.
Michael Speight: Yeah. I was 17. So there you go.
Rick Archer: Tell people who he is just briefly just in case.
Michael Speight: Franklin borough, Wolf was this extraordinarily brilliant man, PhD, mathematician, philosopher, got into Shankara. Big time back in the 20s. And 30s, had a complete realization wrote a number of very fine books. And it had a small following. And he found la he was living in Los Angeles, and he found it was too difficult. And so he moved. They moved to that cabin up there, his wife,
Rick Archer: me. That’s cool. And then also, since you’re talking about Boy Scouts in the mountains, there was an interesting story you told about how you’re camping and you just had tents. And there was this really violent storm coming up the valley. So that one just for kicks?
Michael Speight: Oh, wow. Yeah, we’d been out. The Scout trip that I was with hiked about 6070 miles of the John Muir Trail every summer. And so we’d done that it was this the last day, or last night before we hiked out and we’re in this canyon, so to speak a big broad Canyon, with mountains on both sides, and at the end, where we’d come off the past down into there was a lake there. And there this storm cranked up that was just mind boggling. Lightning, thunder, dark clouds, you know, it was really something and it was coming down the valley right toward us. And everybody was getting a little worried. So people the scout started put it we have two tents, you know, worthless things. But that’s like a pup tent or something. It’s a it’s a plastic tube and you run a line through it between two trays and you sort of make a pup 10 out of it with a couple of clothespins. You’re gonna get wet but not not as bad. So people were putting those up, and I didn’t i i went over by myself and I just knelt down and I prayed I literally prayed in a very like a Christian fashion and of my childhood, which is a Catholic. High Episcopal Catholicism and I just pray they’re nice. You know, I just asked could could we be spared the storm? It’s got to really wipe us out. You know, it could kill people. You’ll get lightning going everywhere. There’s not much around there is you’re just right. Right there just slightly above treeline. And the storm just came on down and it it got right up to the edge of our cap or you could you could stick your arm out and get water on it, it would get wet. And pull it back and it be dry. And this when came out of the north. Blew that storm. Right around our camp literally, like just coke. Very precise,
Rick Archer: like 20 feet. 15 feet away.
Michael Speight: Yeah, yeah. And then around it. And then it came back to where it had been, except on the other side of us and went on down the valley. And we were all dry. The other kids were like, What are you doing? What? Why didn’t Why don’t you put up your two kids? You know, I said no, we’re not going to get wet. I just knew it was powerful. I’ve always felt much closer to God. You know, up in the mountains Sure.
Rick Archer: Yeah, me too. I love mountains whether hiking or skiing or whatever you do, and I’m always loved them. Which is why I live in Iowa. Right. Grew up in Connecticut. irony there. Yeah. So this interesting other stories like that your life but they happen later on. So let’s come back to those. And perhaps moving chronologically, which is sometimes an orderly way to go. Tell us a bit about how you ended up getting into Tm.
Michael Speight: I had a friend of my our parents shared the hospital room and he was born the day before I was. And so we just grew up together like family and he had gone off to Humboldt State College wasn’t a university Banco State College and Northern California in Yreka. Yeah, actually north of Eureka. Arcata Arcada that’s it. Yeah. And he called me I was I had gotten a job packing Newell’s for the US Forest Service for the back country, you know, which was $2.75 an hour sitting on your horse right around God’s country with fabulous spirit. He said, Why to come up and help me pay the rent, which, which is his modus operandi, he was always kind of like that. And then he said, Oh, there’s this guy named Rishi up here. And I didn’t, I didn’t ring a bell with me. I didn’t know who that was. But I resigned my job. And it was coming toward the end of my 90 day appointment anyway, so I just left and went up to humble. And turned out Laurie, she was there. Doing that 1970 teacher training course. And I met all these, what I thought were really cool people hanging out there. I really liked the way they felt at we can remember a bunch of us get together and singing Hey, Jude 16 says that, but I went up to the place where Maurice she would come to give us lectures and waited for him to arrive. I did that I think three times wasn’t too pressed. But I kept going back that was something that just, like pulled me there. And then I think it was about the fourth time or so there was a very well dressed man standing there, you know, blue blazer and all that sort of stuff. And I got into a converse in depth conversation with him. And I’m one of those people talk to anybody. You know, I love talking to people. So perhaps really amazing conversation, Maurice, you arrived. And then the doors opened and the whole crowd of people was out there to sort of, I got sucked along with and pulled right. And I was given a seat on the front row, about two seats down from the gentleman who turned out to be the keynote speaker, a professor from Stanford, amazing, amazing lecture, and just listening to Marashi speak and being that close to him and how he felt to me. I thought this is this is the main This is my teacher this is the guy’s gonna open this up for me. And so I went to ask what to ask if I could learn from him. And as he had a room that he would go to on campus and not worry was actually staying but for, you know, between things and I went up and waited in line, I took a little flower with me, you know, stood there like this. And he came out and he was walking toward me. I just had this thought that I shouldn’t take his time. I thought that I Should my thought I just remember it was I should dedicate my life to freeing his time, so that he could bring his teaching to the world. And then I and in that moment, I took a classic Zen Zen type bodhisattva vow to not give up until all sentient beings reached enlightenment. And I sat there and I thought about I went like, Oh, God, what did I get? Interesting. But that seemed to really pay off because getting ahead, but later on, after I’d become a teacher, I was invited to join Laurie staff. And her well a core a course staff, and then that worked out to joining my receipts in the international staff and that worked out. Being Marcy’s personal assistants, so yeah, that’s nice. Pretty cool.
Rick Archer: What years were you on international staff?
Michael Speight: Oh, 73. And then we came back and found EMI, you went through all of that. And then I went back. I was back and forth. Quite a bit.
Rick Archer: Well, we let’s not take too much time on that. But I was just, there must have been some overlap. I was over there from like, fall of 73 through spring of 76.
Michael Speight: Oh, yeah. Probably we cross paths. That’s not not that there’s any lack of people around Mars. Yeah, I was sailors Berg and hertenstein. fakies and all those places. Usual Suspects.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Okay. So when you finally learned, I guess it wasn’t from Archie, it was from somebody else. Was your initial experience? You know what you’d hoped it would be?
Michael Speight: Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah. First meditation. And I was like, wow, God. Yes. That was one of those moments. Yeah, very powerful. And then I promptly forgot my mantra. Get that recovered. And then the other thing that happened was, I just instantly was doing an hour worth of meditation each time. You just think into it? Yeah. Close my eyes. And when I thought time was up. I don’t want to be an hour later.
Rick Archer: Yeah. You’re not supposed to be 20 minutes, but you’d like to track right?
Michael Speight: Yeah, I did. I did. Yeah. Cool. Yeah.
Rick Archer: Well, I don’t want this to be. I mean, you know, DTM had a profound effect on me. I tend not to be a proselytizer for it anymore, or in these interviews, certainly. But, but but at the same time, you know, sometimes it was brushed off as trivial or just a stress reduction technique or something good for beginners and all and I think that does it a disservice. Because, you know, it’s been very profound for many people. I think many people have awoken as a result of its practice.
Michael Speight: Absolutely. I think TM is one of the fast path methods, which is fast path, simply meaning you have a shot at it one lifetime. And it certainly was very, very profound. I owe lerici. A debt that is unrepeatable from, from one point of view. Just the greatest teacher I’ve ever know. And I learned the most around him, then even anybody else. Amazing. Extraordinary, man.
Rick Archer: Yeah. So you mentioned that within six months of beginning you, your grade point average went from a 1.28 to a 4.0. Nice, and any, we’ll keep moving along here, but any particularly noteworthy, you know, experiences during that whole phase when you were like Marcy’s personal attendant or anything.
Michael Speight: Well, yeah, there was well, on my teacher training course. There was a lot of celestial perception, or refined perception of things. I don’t see through walls, watching people’s souls cognizing their thoughts? healing people? There was a lot going on. Yeah. And it was it was pretty, pretty darn amazing.
Rick Archer: You’re probably meditating 1012 hours a day or something,
Michael Speight: a team for the first 12 days of the course. And then Mari, she asked, What Well, Marcia was in silence. And then he came out on it on the 12th of January. And we had a meeting with him, I think, the next day or so maybe that evening. I don’t I remember exactly. And he said it. Okay, how long you’ve been meditating for and we’d all been doing 12 plus hours. Yeah. He got around to me. He was like, Oh, well, be good. You know? Cool. Cool. Cool. Yeah. Yeah.
Rick Archer: So you mentioned in some notes I read that you had instructed like 17,000 people to meditate. How in the world did you do that? Many people?
Michael Speight: Yeah, well, I have to put in there that that’s actually a instruction in meditation, advanced techniques. And I’ve led a couple of TM cities courses. Oh, I can count all those people. Okay. Yeah. So that’s it got to put it all in there. And Martin Mary, she made me a temp City’s administrator, best techniques teacher, which really upset some people in the movement who weren’t on the call, so to speak. And boy that had some interesting ramifications. Another one of the reasons why I don’t have much to do with the Tim movement anymore. I don’t have anything to do with the 10 minute mark.
Rick Archer: There’s always politics and and organizations, you know?
Michael Speight: there are
Rick Archer: Yeah. Okay, so at some point, he say you had you awakened you had you became self realized or something. You know, people post these videos on YouTube, there’s this guy just the other day that someone brought to my attention that said, you know, he was going on about how he had gotten enlightened. And he was, I didn’t watch the whole thing just sort of spot checked a few bits of it. But he went on for a couple of hours looking at his hand looking at the wall and talking about how he had become enlightened. And I It reminds me when I hear see things like that, that the whole concept of awakening and enlightenment, and so on is a little fuzzy in the popular understanding it there’s no clear cut agreed upon definition of what we mean by these terms. So what do you mean by them? And what when you say that you became realized or awake? Oh, what happened? How would you know that? Yeah. How would you know? And what do you mean by that’s compared to what all the other people who say it mean by it, and because I don’t know, if you got them all in the same room and had them compare notes, there might be some overlap and agreement and some disagreement.
Michael Speight: I am, I might well be, um, I was speaking on the phone to a man that I know to be enlightened. I’m not going to mention his name. Because they don’t have permission to do that. And he was asking me some questions, some hard hitting questions, and all of a sudden, it sweat. Whoa, whoa. And it was dramatic. I felt my whole crown chakra burst open. I felt like the top my head was on fire. It felt Shakti going up. On the top of my head. I’ve never had anything that dramatic before. And he just kind of laughed. He said, Well, there you are. And I said, I said, Okay, I was going to necessarily take his word for it, because I’ve had other profound experiences, nothing like that. But it never went away. It’s still there. And I checked it with one of two of my receipes Vedic couples, and went over everything with them. I talked to Jerry, you know, I made Jerry Jerry Jones. Yeah, yeah. And we talked quite a bit. And I talked to another enlightened person that I know. And I went over all my experiences of what was going on. The other thing that I would say is because Marie, she trained us so well, and gave us such clear definitions of these things. That it was self evident to me My experience was exactly as he described. I didn’t really have any doubts about it from the beginning. But I did want to verify it with other people.
Rick Archer: He didn’t exactly use the term wild Boom. Oh, but he didn’t talk too much about flames coming out of your head.
Michael Speight: But and that’s unusual. Let me say I have I have friends. Couple in Fairfield and California, who just sort of woke up and got one of was Oh awakened about four years and she thought she was but finally she talked to somebody else. And they went, Oh, yeah, you’re there. And she went, Oh, yeah. Okay, that makes sense. No, it was just natural and smooth. You know, big fun. Boom, that’s probably more rare.
Rick Archer: Yet some people distinguish between like people who have these sudden dramatic awakening and losers who kind of ooze into it. And they couldn’t quite mark on a calendar when the shift happened. But in retrospect, they realize, whoa, you know, I mean, it’s all different now. And, yeah,
Michael Speight: well, what the thing that I would add to that is, about a week before this happened, something inside me quit. It just gave up. And I didn’t stop meditating or anything. But I just something in me just surrender is the word. And I think that’s what changed something in me surrendered. And with that surrender, then in that moment, if it went through,
Rick Archer: I think that’s key. Because yeah, a lot of people say you don’t do it or make it happen. You know, it’s not that the you get where you do.
Michael Speight: That’s correct. I agree with that, completely. Mara, she always told us, You can’t force transcendence, that’s my experience of it. We set up the conditions of it, no matter what teaching you’re following, no matter what meditation you’re following. You’re relaxing, you’re letting go whatever it is. Rather, it’s Advaita, intellectual something in their shifts and changes until that surrender takes place that the word usually used is grace.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Yeah, sometimes they’ve used the analogy of like, let’s say you have a pan of water, and it’s a little choppy, and you want the waves to settle down the water to become perfectly still, you just have to let that happen. You don’t do it by pushing on the waves to try to get them to stop because you just create more waves if you do that.
Michael Speight: Yeah, Good analogy.
Rick Archer: Yeah. So you know, so Okay, so you’re a guy who had a rather market and abrupt shift. And so, you know, like, what was life? Like, let’s say, the week after that shift that was different than the week before that shift? I mean, what changed? And you say, it continues to this day. So what’s different about you now than it was then prior to the shift? Well, terms of your subjective experience,
Michael Speight: the week after I went to bed wiped out by other I was wiped out. I was totally hosed. I, I hit the sack, I didn’t get out of bed except to eat, my wife would check on me. You know, you Okay? Yep. They’re totally awake, vivid, amazing, strong, ordinary shift in perception that I couldn’t really put my finger on. I don’t, I can point at it with words, but I can’t describe it. But it just everything was amazing. And, and the top of my head felt like, open and alive, just on fire. So that went on for actually, about a month. And after that, there was this sort of roller coaster ride, where some days, I felt just totally amazing. And other days, I felt like rock bottom again. And that kind of fluctuated like that. And that’s my understanding is that that’s not all that uncommon.
Rick Archer: No, it’s not. So there’s usually is an integration phase that’s going on, you know, there’s been this big blowout in the nervous system has to catch up or adapt to it.
Michael Speight: Yeah, I think so. But I, I’m going to leap ahead a little bit and say that, that you never exhausted what you mean. But you’ve gone into, into pure consciousness that is on a first name basis with infinity. So there you are, you know, and infinite is infinite, and you can’t exhaust it. So you’re always going to grow, you’re always going to have the opportunity to expand, you’re always going to have opportunity for more knowledge. In one sense, although your awareness is huge. Just in talking to you right now. I’ve been cognizing you, your physiology and self is getting structured in me. That happens a lot with with people, they come and see me and we just sit and talk. And then I’ll look at them and I’ll say oh my goodness, what happened to your ribs, you know, and they say like, Oh, I I cracked three of them, you know, you start to see on a more refined level. The other piece of it is, you know you and I come from the TM tradition where Mari she used English words to describe traditional states of consciousness. And so he also said it’s really only one big giant study of consciousness. We we use these descriptors to talk to you about this maturation, this maturing this growth as you proceed through it. And my experience of that was just two and a half months later I was in what we call your Allman Brothers. Yeah, yeah. And I that’s another one. I went back and I, I remember it, Maurice, you told us okay, go read the Brahma sutra Brahma sutras. So I have them, I pull them off the shelf. And I was like, Oh, this makes sense. I’ve been reading these for 40 years, and they
Michael Speight: you know, and Isha Upanishad. But the greatest part of that is, it’s, it’s a feeling of coming home. It’s a feeling of complete naturalness, of freedom of total freedom, a freedom of equality with all things. A joy, a blissful state. Not like, what we might, you know, like, winning the lottery would be joyful, but not this. It’s not the same thing. It’s more subtle, more powerful than that. So it was, it was pretty quick turnaround. Yeah. And that I’m, I’m still getting used to it. I’m honest. You know, it’s still every day is like, Oh, wow.
Rick Archer: Yeah, it’s like, no other day in Disneyland. So when did this happen? This shift? So wait,
Michael Speight: I’m not that long ago? Four years or something? Oh, no, actually, the full shift took place last summer. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, I’m a newbie. Okay.
Rick Archer: Interesting. You know, I want to question you on some of the stuff you’re just saying about infinity and all, you know, in mathematics, you can have infinity. And then you can have bigger infinities, like, you could take infinity and add 10 to it, and that’s bigger. Or you could take infinity and square it, or qubit are, you know, take it to the 10th power. And so they play with this kind of concept and, but in terms of consciousness and our experience of consciousness, your experience, do you feel and find that there’s a sort of a dimension that isn’t going to change or get bigger, are vaster or anything else, it’s already infinite, what more could be added to it? And yet, it’s the embodiment of that the living of that expression of that the channeling of that through a human life has no end of growth. Does that fit your experience? Or would you say it differently?
Michael Speight: I think that’s a very good way of saying, what I would say is this. Before enlightenment, we tend to think of infinitely a lot of mathematicians do that, as something linear. You know, it started over here, and it goes off infinitely in that direction. And, and the kind of infinity of pure consciousness isn’t like that. Or a Bindu used to say, Satyam, return per hot, the truth, the right, the vast so it’s that vastness, which your awareness begins to encompass. And I think some people who have been there longer have a maybe a greater sense of that than I might at this point in time. To me, there’s a sense of it being limitless. And that’s free, pretty amazing. While at the same time, there’s a sense of continued growth and understanding. You got to remember in the, in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna, when he sits down with our Juna to have their discussion. He starts with the subject of knowledge. And then he talks about experience, right. So Satya, then yoga. Yeah, and I think that you can still learn things. Sure. I know, I met a woman who was the person first person that Marie she connected up with when he went to Hawaii back in 59. And before he even came to San Francisco, and she told me that she’s all the poor little man, he didn’t know anything about Christianity. And I had to tell him, and I just remember saying that was okay. A little bit, you know, but yeah, he probably didn’t know much about Christianity. So he learned, he learned he still weren’t
Rick Archer: sure. I mean, well, you know how to fly helicopters until you said, a helicopter license but you don’t know how to fly 740 sevens and you don’t know how to do brain surgery and you don’t know You know, play the drums maybe. So I mean, obviously, we’re all kinds of relative things we can learn. And no, no one would expect an enlightened person to be able to do all those things, or know all those things that those are like specialized channels of knowledge and ability. Right? Well, yeah. But what we’re kind of alluding to here is, you know, what is it that is kind of intrinsic to awakening? That would be a common denominator for all people.
Michael Speight: Well, I hope. Yeah, I guess that’s, that’s good. I’m glad you asked that, because I’ve, I’ve listened to a few or other marvelous, you know, interviews. And I think that this is a common question that comes up with people. Because you’re asking two things, you’re saying, what’s your experience? And you say, what’s the common denominator that everybody might experience? And I’m gonna guess that my experience might, at least this might be slightly different than somebody else’s. But how the commonality of that vastness, that awareness and and that unity, because the Unity pieces. For me, if I look at an object, and I focus my attention on it, I can’t, I cannot differentiate between myself and the object that I’m looking at.
Rick Archer: And yet, you know, where to stick the fork when you eat dinner? Yeah, and yet
Michael Speight: you do? Yeah. Which is probably at least a video thing. And we got to still survive and be able to eat and all of that.
Rick Archer: Yeah, they should be demeaning. Faint remains of ignorance. Right. And yet, is it ignorance? Yeah. Okay. So, um, yes, yes. Appreciation of any sort of duality, ignorance? Or is it that the sort of divine that we’re appreciating that the richness and variety of God and of God’s creation? I think you might want to brush it off as being illusion? Or do we want to see it as as the as the divine in form,
Michael Speight: I want to do both, I want to I want to see the divine in form, I want to appreciate that, because that’s part of the reason for the creation, we’re told, you know, the Vedic literature talks about that all great saints have talked about the joy of God’s creation and experiencing that, living that and living that in its absolute fullness. But you got to remember my HR issues talk about living 200%. Yeah, so we’re living 100% of the absolute value, or that vastness, that pure consciousness, but we’re also living in 100% of the relative value. So I don’t see those as incompatible. And I’m, frankly, I get frustrated with these teachers who say, Oh, no, none of that. That’s all nonsense. It’s all illusion. You know, it’s all my it doesn’t exist, because this does exist.
Rick Archer: Yeah, there’s a term in Sanskrit mithya. And which means dependent reality. And they use the example of a pot, you know, which looks like a pot, it acts like a pot, you can put things in it. And yet, it’s really only clay. So is there really a pot or is there only clay? Well, both? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Maybe the clay thing is more fundamental than the pot thing. But still doesn’t mean there is no pot,
Michael Speight: right? Well, I think people who, perhaps, I’m guessing, but perhaps the reason why some people like to emphasize the complete non duality, because it can shake the unenlightened mind the unrealized mine a little bit out of its stupor, and maybe make it freeze up a little bit where that it has to expand and look at things a little bit differently.
Rick Archer: Maybe, but I think it also tends to confuse a lot of people because they they’re trying to hold down jobs and raise families and, you know, take life a little bit seriously. And they’re being fed this thing over and over again, that you don’t exist, and there is no universe and it’s all an illusion, and nothing matters and you have no freewill. And, you know, it’s all preordained, and yada, yada. And I don’t know if those teachings are really applicable or appropriate or useful for everybody.
Michael Speight: Yeah. Well, I agree with you. I don’t think there is full everybody. I think that you have to define your terms. And I spent a lot of years in the computer industry. And, you know, one of the first things you do is you define your terms before you get into a discussion to make sure you’re all on the same plate. And I think that there’s no mic backgrounds in religious studies, and there’s a huge disparity between cultural context understanding. So if you’re, if you grew up in Japan, and you grew up around Zen Buddhism, and you’re familiar with those terms, and that’s, you take that to America, like Alan Watts is a good example of a guy who completely blew it. In my opinion. You know, he tried, I think, but he just didn’t really get Zen And so he didn’t translate it into our culture in the way that perhaps would have been as useful as it might have been. So we see a lot of that misunderstanding taking place. I think that I did that. I think we all did that with our issues, teachings, and other people’s teachings, you know, we read it, where you see it at the level where we were. And then, you know, later we go, oh, that’s what I didn’t see that before.
Rick Archer: Yeah, that brings up an interesting question. A few minutes ago, you talked about how you had this awakening. And then within a couple of months, you sort of got the Brahman as you use the word Brahman. And I was thinking about, like, if there’s a religious tradition, or a culture, in which you’re told over and over again, from your formative years, that the whole concept of God is irrelevant. And, you know, ultimately, everything is emptiness, and, and things like that. I wonder if that’s the kind of experience you grow into. And you know, whether they’re outliers or Mavericks, in such cultures who begin to experience God and wonder, well, they never told me about this, you know, or, you know, whereas if you’re in another culture, which, which emphasizes the development of God consciousness and higher states, then self-realization, whether you naturally grow into those. But you think about that?
Michael Speight: Well, I, I’ve heard it said that you’re born and to your religion and your culture, because that’s what you need to experience to, to experience. So I would have to agree with both both those statements. We are products of our conditioning. And we’re also victims of our concepts. You know, cognitive dissidence, should be studied at school by everyone, you know, everybody should have that right on the tip of their tongue, the understanding that we tend to reshape things that fit our idea of the way things should be, which is based on our conditioning and our concept. That’s
Rick Archer: actually some notes here actually, from your book, you talked about cognitive dissonance theory. And he said, One, humans are sensitive to inconsistencies between actions and beliefs, to recognition of this inconsistency will cause dissonance, and will motivate an individual to resolve the dissonance, three, dissonance will be resolved in one of three basic waves, changing beliefs, changing actions, or changing perception of action.
Michael Speight: Correct? Yeah. And I just want to make sure I didn’t write that I plagiarize that one. Because I couldn’t, I couldn’t say that any better. So what, why not use? But yeah, that’s it. Exactly. So this is why why, why we have a lot of problems we have in the world, you know, wife, some people like somebody is politics and somebody else doesn’t, you know, or somebody is religion, they get very vehement about their version of it. You know, not they’re not being gentle enough, being kind, they’re not opening up, and, and living life in a more fundamental truth level.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I guess one way I would frame it is, rather than beliefs and actions that, you know, understanding and experience maybe that’s another way of saying the same thing. But, you know, you, the religious fundamentalists, for instance, they they’re holding tightly to a certain belief, or beliefs, do they really experience that? Or are they just holding tightly to something that they can’t, that they haven’t experientially verified? And if they were to experience they verify it? Would they lighten up and realize that no other expressions in other cultures are actually saying the same thing? Just because they sound different because it’s other cultures?
Michael Speight: I’m on the Salt Lake City Interfaith Council. And it’s quite fascinating to be in a room of people who all are talking to each other, you know, Muslims, Jews, Christians, all versions are talking to each other. And they’re saying, Oh, look, we have this in common. Yeah. You know, they’re really, it’s a beautiful group of people. They’re about finding that commonality as opposed to finding the differences. But people do very much vehemently hold on to their versions of things. If it’s my opinion, that if, if Jesus were to show up today, he would not remotely recognize what passes for Christianity almost anywhere in the world.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I’ve often thought that too. And that and that if you put Jesus Krishna, Buddha, Mohammed, you know, whoever roomed together, they’d have a grand old time and that they would just, you know, be basically on the same page. Yeah, they’re learning from each other say, Oh, you see it this way very interesting.
Michael Speight: Yeah. Yeah. Be like, like the old Ricci’s. You know, they’d sit around the campfire, I suppose and not talk about making s’mores but talk about cognitions of the days, you know, which would have been more interesting. Yeah, I think that’s true. Okay. And you also have to remember too, that Christianity and unfortunately the Quran also have been reinterpreted and mis translated, transcribed, etc. Yeah. Muhammad was illiterate, you didn’t even know how to write. And he spoke cero, Aramaic, not Arabic. So when when you are translating, I’m not picking on most likely
Rick Archer: No you’re using it as a case in point
Michael Speight: Just a case in point, but the, when you translate it from the cero Aramaic into the Arabic things could get messed up? Sure. I have friends who wrote a very fine book about that I helped with some of the editing and and nobody wants to read that book who isn’t an academic believe me, but But you could say the same thing about early Christianity. I’m a huge fan of Bart Ehrman. Dr. Ehrman is a brilliant in my opinion, early Christian Christology person.
Rick Archer: And incidentally, you have a PhD in religious studies I should mention. Another thing we could mention here is that, you know, people like Jesus and so on spoke from a certain level of consciousness, and their listeners could only listen from their level of consciousness. And something is lost right there. I mean, right in the very room or building or crowd that is that is gathered. So what you know, if it’s lost right there, what’s to say, of being lost over hundreds and 1000s of years?
Michael Speight: Yeah, I think that’s exactly Maurice used to say it was just, you know, that was on the hard rocks of ignorance. Yeah, it’s time times the guilty party.
Rick Archer: I want to look back to what you’re you again, you we almost do back to this. Now we’re going to do it. He talked about he had this realization within a few months, you were in Brahman consciousness. Now, you know, there are certain earmarks of higher states of consciousness, including the initial one cosmic consciousness or self realization, and then stages after that, one of the earmarks of cosmic consciousness or the permanence of pure consciousness in the midst of waking, dreaming, sleeping, is that you’re not supposed to lose pure awareness during sleep anymore? Did that happened to you?
Michael Speight: I went back and forth a little bit in the beginning. Yeah. But it’s, I don’t, my body sleeps, I’m old, you know, decrepit falling apart, you know, as Monty Python set, you know, my knees are knackered, you know, all of that. But it’s just
Rick Archer: What about now.
Michael Speight: It’s just there.
Rick Archer: If your pure awareness is there, yeah. Yeah. And now people might wonder, okay, how do you know it’s there? Because are you thinking oh, here it is. Because if you’re thinking here it is, then you’re thinking thoughts and thoughts are characteristic of waking state, you know, right. So how do you remember it when you wake up in the morning? Or do you actually know it’s there throughout the night and is that knowing some kind of activity taking place, which means you’re not sleeping as deeply as, as you might,
Michael Speight: you can still sleep. You can sleep this deep is whatever is your April. But awareness is awareness is just pure awareness. It’s nothing but awareness. But I will say this, you can have thoughts in pure awareness.
Rick Archer: Yeah. But are those thoughts? Part of waking state coming in? Or can you have thoughts and yet, I mean, because you know, pure awareness. Okay, that’s there. But then, then in addition to that, either you’re awake, you’re asleep, or you’re dreaming, right? Or what else could you be? Just aware? Yeah, but your body is one of those three states? Yeah. Well, your body
Michael Speight: your body. Yeah, it there’s the perception that that’s what’s going on. I’m not completely convinced that that’s exactly the way it is anymore. You know, I’ve had okay, I’ve had heart surgery, right? I had my gallbladder, I lost my gallbladder. My knees been worked on my shoulders been rebuilt.
Rick Archer: You’re becoming bionic.
Michael Speight: When I was in India, I went to I Advaitic I Advaitic clinic, and the guy screwed up and he poured boiling hot oil down my sinuses. Oh, yeah, that was not good. Yeah, and, and so I have I’ve had sinus surgery. Okay. All right. So you can have my point is, you can have all this stuff and still get enlightened. still experience pure consciousness 24 by seven. And so if you’re in deep sleep, you could be watching yourself sleep. If you’re dreaming, you could watch yourself dream. You can. You could design your dreams if you want. I’m done that you get to play places Draper. Yeah. Yeah. You know, lucid dreaming, do that kind of stuff. In waking state. You can sit your, your, your, your impure codons, but you’re having normal thoughts you’re thinking. But thoughts aren’t who you are, you know, thoughts are just thoughts. They’re thought forms. They come and go. And I think one of the things that I learned along the way was to not pay attention to my own thoughts.
Rick Archer: Okay, pretty well covers it, I think. So anyway, just a summary point, then we’re talking about pure consciousness being maintained 24/7, including during sleep that’s said to be, and I have a whole I have a file on my computer with dozens of quotes from different people, Nisargadatta and various others about that very thing. And that’s not always mentioned, do you think of that as an kind of an acid test of awakening? That is going to be the case for anybody who is validly awakened? Or is it a special case situation?
Michael Speight: Well, I’m not able to answer that the definitive because I haven’t talked to everybody on the planet, who’s gotten enlightened. I do know one man who absolutely insist that witnessing during sleep is not a criteria for enlightenment. Yeah. And I believe he’s enlightened, I believe he’s enlightened.
Rick Archer: I’ve had this discussion with friends. And there was one guy, for instance, who said, Yeah, well, that went on for quite a while, but I got tired of it. And I just assumed really be asleep when I’m asleep. And so you know, somehow he was able to shut it down. And yet he considers himself to still be No, yeah. No.
Michael Speight: Yeah. So I think that everybody, again, it’s an infinite universe and infinite possibility of experiences. You know, you, you can cry with joy, and you can cry with sorrow. But the mechanisms the same, yeah. So if we’re witnessing our sleep, great. If we’re not witnessing our sleep, when you wake up, what’s there. If you’re, if you’re witnessing when you wake up, and you’re witnessing all the time you’re awake, or you’re witnessing while you’re dreaming, but maybe you aren’t doing it while you’re sleeping. I don’t know that it makes a difference. Yeah. I
Rick Archer: think Romney used to say, you know, well, you wake up and you you say I slept well, well, how do you know you slept? Well, if there was no awareness?
Michael Speight: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. There has to be something there. Yeah. I don’t know. Maybe you remember one time Maurice was being asked something. And he he said, I don’t remember. And the guy was asking, got all upset, said what do you How come you can’t remember. And Mercy very commonly looked at it and said, in order to remember you must first be able to forget. Yeah. So it’s the same thing. What’s memory memory is stuff lodged someplace in our brain, at least in part, but it’s also more holistic than that.
Rick Archer: Yeah. I mean, that’s sort of I wouldn’t have gotten upset with him saying that or anybody saying that, because that implies that the enlightened person is supposed to be like Rain Man or something, you know, who can go through the whole phonebook and then recount it to you? It’s that’s a special case ability, which shouldn’t be confused with enlightenment.
Michael Speight: I agree. And so should so maybe the analogy falls apart there, but is witnessing 24 by seven. A special category, or is it a hallmark?
Rick Archer: Yeah, well, maybe we’ll leave that question open ended. It’s something that comes up every now and then. But I guess the the, you know, what I’m kind of getting at with questions like that is, are there universal criteria for higher states of consciousness? Could they eventually be mapped out in a systematic way? And correlated with certain brainwave patterns and things and, you know, could we really understand higher states? Or is there sort of a whole lot of variation and subjective difference and so on that, so we’ll never be able to standardize it, you know,
Michael Speight: I hope we’ll never be able to standardize it. I might take away some of the joy and the surprise Yeah. I think that my I can only speak my own experience, my own experiences that I am aware of time. And I don’t it doesn’t get overshadowed anymore. I can still get upset. I can still You’ll feel some, you know, a friend of mine was driving. And I was in the car with him. And we had a little bit of a close call. And I remember going, Yeah, but but it didn’t stick. It didn’t stick like it used to it just sort of went away in a couple of days, you know, it was just gone. Yeah. And so I would say part of the hallmarks would be that impressions, that relationship to the impressions of the mind and the physiology shifts and changes.
Rick Archer: Yeah, line on water line on air as opposed to line in stone.
Michael Speight: Right, exactly.
Rick Archer: Okay, so we’ve alluded to celestial perception and or we might say, a perception or appreciation of subtle phenomenon, which are ordinarily not perceived with the grosser aspects of the senses, if that’s a good way of defining it. And and you’ve had a lot of this stuff throughout your life. And it might be interesting to talk about some of them just for fun. Like, for instance, how you met your wife. Yeah, and this is the wife you’re now married to? Are you talking about this? Okay. Now, you mentioned she’s Korean?
Michael Speight: Yeah. Yeah, she is. Yeah. I I, that story starts about six months before we met, I was sitting in meditation, and I heard a voice in my head, and it just called my name. And I went, Whoa, you know, what’s that? And I thought
Rick Archer: it was a woman’s voice?
Michael Speight: Yeah, yeah, it was, it had that. It was very distinctive voice, I would have recognized it in a minute. And I thought, Oh, God, am I going schizophrenic or something, you know, then, like a month, literally, about a month later, Bob might get the voice again. And I was like, oh, Chase, and, and it happened about every month. And I was starting to wonder if I should worry or not. And then I went to a retreat, meditation retreat, Jim held at the cob mountain facility they used to have. And I honestly, at that point, I was sort of like, not dating anybody. I didn’t want to get involved with any women at all. Because I had had more than my share of difficult times, decided that I wasn’t any good at it. So I was sort of standoffish, but I was sitting at this table. And the woman who later became my wife comes over and sits down and we just chatting lunch, you know, and I’m not going there. You know, she’s beautiful, she’s intelligent, you know, gosh, what wasn’t to like, but I was like, ah, you know, I’m going to go there. And so this kind of went on for the time of the course. And I’m resisting, but the presentations there. And then the last day of the course, I go to the office to turn in my key. Alright, so I’m standing at the window and setting my key down, because nobody was in the office. And I hear the voice and it’s going, Michael, and I felt like it is, you know, again, it’s like Nora. And the voice goes, Michael, really emphatically. I’m like, What’s going on here? And then it’s louder. And I turn around. And it’s certainly my now wife, it’s her. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, you know, I better pay attention to this. So we decided to, to have a date. And which I was resisting. But we did. And got married, but whatever. I don’t remember how long you’d have to ask my wife. Men are terrible at that.
Rick Archer: Yeah. As long as you remember your anniversary, it’d be okay.
Michael Speight: I do. I do. And it’s okay, well, it’s pretty amazing.
Rick Archer: Yeah. So we wouldn’t call that celestial perception, but it’s something unusual and interesting. And yeah, exactly. Yeah, there’s a guy, Paul Morgan Summers, who had a similar experience like that. He just had this name came to him. I interviewed him a month or two ago, and he had never heard of this person or the else. And then he was in a store or something. And he overheard some women talk. And they mentioned this name. It was an unusual name. And he went up to them and said, you know, this person exists this name. And they said, Yeah, she lives so and so or whatever. So you looked her up in the phonebook or something and called her and he called her up. He said, You know, I think I’m supposed to marry you. I shouldn’t she she thought he was a total nutcase because she never heard of the guy. But he ended up marrying her. Yeah, so long story. You can watch the interview with him.
Michael Speight: I’ll have to do that.
Rick Archer: But um, okay, so then you had another experience with her where she you were living in San Francisco or something and she and some lady So female friends went over to Berkeley or Oakland to have a ladies night out and tell that story. Oh, yeah,
Michael Speight: we weren’t married yet. Oh, we were dating. And she had her girlfriend, they went over to Yoshis, the jazz bar. And for ladies night out, and I was, I guess I was at my house at Berkeley. And she all sudden, I just could see everything that was going on. And there was a guy who was hitting on the two of them. And I thought that was irritating to me. So I picked up my cell phone, I called her. And I said, I said, Hi, she goes, Oh, how are you? And I said, um, would you please tell the black guy in the green jacket with the gold earring of the bald head to go away? And she goes, what, where are you? Where are you? Where are you? I’m like, I’m at home. And she had, she actually had to kind of live with that for all for it took her a while to get used to me. You know, it was it was kind of startling for her in the beginning.
Rick Archer: Interesting. And then you had the thing where, like, you know, you started tuning into people’s bodies and diagnosing things like there was a woman with a hairline fracture below her elbow or something? Yeah.
Michael Speight: Well, I was before I was married to my wife. I had a girlfriend, and she had this woman who was a friend who was a nurse. And my girlfriend was telling her stories, you know, because I always could tell what was going on with my girlfriend. And so she we had dinner together and the girlfriend of my friend accosted me, kind of vehemently. She said, Okay, she says you can see things and data data, you know, one of those, and, okay, what’s wrong with my arm? You know? And so I kind of upset me, honestly, I was like, Well, what, you know, I’m not doing a dog and pony show here. This isn’t showed tell, you know, she well, you don’t know anything. You know, one of those that I saw, I don’t know. I looked at her arm and I could see and I said, Oh, you have a hairline fracture. And I said, it’s like right here, you know? And she goes, No, I was basically childhood. And she says, you know, it was x rayed and they didn’t find anything. And that was the last time I ever heard from her. I found out a little while later, I asked my friend whatever happened to her? She said, Well, her arm didn’t heal, and they did an MRI. And it was exactly what you described. And it freaked her out that somebody could be no, that tuned in to you or be that transparent to him. And she couldn’t take it.
Rick Archer: Yeah, freaked her out kind of violated her paradigm. Probably.
Michael Speight: Totally. And I and I felt bad about that. But then she put me in the position of it. So
Rick Archer: yeah, well, it’s interesting. So so there’s more of these things. While we’re on this theme. Let’s just tell a few more because it kind of interesting. For instance, you’ve had a number of couple situations you mentioned where you noticed that there was a breast lump. And someone, and I’m sure you weren’t staring them sure the woman because I, you know, my eyes are up here, right. But you
Michael Speight: guys, I honestly say I wasn’t staring. Because nothing was exposed. They were well, well dressed women. Yeah. And, yes, I’m a guy, but I wasn’t staring. And, in fact, one of the women was a friend of the person that I was talking to, and she was kind of tangential to it. And I just went Oh, and I I don’t know why I just turned I looked at her. I said, Look, you don’t know me at all. But I want to tell you this, because it may help you save your life. I told her what happened. She said, Oh my God, thank you. And I found out from her friend that she did go check it out. And that was a lot better breast and it probably saved her. So there’s one that’s not there that I’ll tell you that’s a little bit more interesting. I haven’t written it down. But recently, I went in to have my cardiac cardiology exam last June. And so I go in and I’m in the little room, you know, and that very nice young woman comes in, very sharp professional comes in and she starts typing my information into the hospital computer. And I answer questions that I look at her and I’ve gotten very careful. I don’t open the mouth and say things unless I know who my audience is. For some reason, I just blurt it out. I said, What happened to your kidneys? She goes, Oh my God, how did you know? And I’m like, Oh, God, what have I done, you know? And, and she says, you know, that happened when I was two years old. And I don’t even remember which one. And I looked at her and I said, what’s the last one? She goes, Oh, yeah, you know, so I’m like, why did that Get up and why did I do that? I felt bad. You know, and I apologize to her. Well, A while later another, the cardiologist, physician’s assistant came in and she had a headscarf on, and she was dealing with carrot, you know, came she was under chemo and had cancer. I think it was like maybe ovarian cancer. And so I’m looking at her and chemotherapy make her so cloudy that you can’t perceive her right away. But after we sat there we talked for it’s been 20 minutes, I started to see. And I could see that the cancer was not completely gone yet. And I thought, I’m not gonna open my mouth. You know, I couldn’t say, hey, but another meeting we had later another date. She came in and I looked at her and I said, Look, this is gonna sound really strange to you. I think it could just come some weirdo. But I said, this is what I’m saying. And I told her what I saw. And she she was, you know, crestfallen. It really shocked her. And I said, Look, I don’t expect you to believe me. But the young lady in your office in when I described her told her name. I said, she and I had something went around about her kidneys. So you she never met me before. And so what I took out of that was the reason for the whole kidney thing was so that when I had the
Rick Archer: It’ll give you an excuse to say, yeah, some reinforcement.
Michael Speight: Yeah, there’s some proof there.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Interesting.
Michael Speight: Yeah. So I haven’t talked to her since I don’t know how she has her nails. But my sense was that she would live it cuz I told her, I said, I think you’re gonna live because you’re going to go back and finish this up.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Interesting. Well, another thing that this story reveals, is that, you know, when a person is in no higher state of consciousness, they say and do stuff that they may not know why they’re saying and doing it. It just kind of stuff happens. Stuff comes out of their mouths, they find themselves doing certain things. And yet there turns out there’s a wisdom to it that they couldn’t have. Yeah, intellectually worked out, you know,
Michael Speight: that’s my experience of it. So I’m, I’m trying to be very much more open now. But I have had a number of times when people have been healed. And I can’t claim any doership and that
Rick Archer: mentioned side by healing some ribs, and then a clavicle and then an ACL injury.
Michael Speight: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that is a lovely, lovely woman, one of my students, and She hurt herself. And we were talking and she was obviously in pain. And I don’t know why I just like, Oh, would you like to fix that? Because well, yeah, you know, and so we’ll come over here, and I don’t really have to touch anybody. But in her case, they felt if I put my hand on her shoulder, that contact would signify to her that there’s something going on. So I just, and there are other people in the room watching this. I wouldn’t ever touched a young woman. Sure. Without somebody, you know, and particularly my wife, you know, and so I just put my hand on her shoulder and, but I don’t know, less than a minute. And then I looked, I said, You’re gonna be fine. And she had instant relief and felt better and healed up and then she she felt so good. She went ski. Yeah. She took a tumble. And they took her off the mountain ski patrols or off the mountain took her to a local hospital. They did an x ray, and she had this massive tearing her ACL. And so
Rick Archer: ligament in the knee. People don’t Yeah,
Michael Speight: yeah, I yeah, I’m not even actually sure where it is, but except they could see some
Rick Archer: anterior cruciate ligament or something. It’s called.
Michael Speight: I wouldn’t not about the full person. And so she calls me up. On Wednesday, I think it was Wednesday, Thursday, she says, I’m going in for surgery on Friday, you know, I’ve got this this, you know, I can have somebody dragged me up there. Can you fix it? And i just i. So what you what really happens is you take a son culpa. Yeah. Okay. So the if the thought at the subtlest relative level, and then you fall back into the transcendent, well, in my case, it was already in the transcend it but so then it’s it becomes a very powerful thought that comes to fruition. Yeah. And maybe quick, quicker than a regular thought might. So I just I said to her, I said, No, no, no, you don’t need to come up as such, you’re going to be fine. You know, and I didn’t really think about that. I just came out of my mouth and I didn’t even think about what I meant by you’re going to be fine, you know? Well, she goes in Friday morning and the orthopedic EDIC surgeon looks directions go. It’s Oh, this is so bad. I’ve got to have an MRI. So she sends her out for the MRI. She gets the MRI and it comes back. And the MRI shows nothing wrong. Everything is totally healed. Perfect. So how does that happen? It happens. Yeah, it just happens.
Rick Archer: Yeah, no, that’s kind of stuff. I mean, there’s a guy on TV, Harry, what’s name that TV show you’re watching with that hailer guy from Australia? The healer, I think it was called. But a amazing, I mean, this, it took a lot out of him. In his case, he had to sort of really rest up after these incidents. But he, you know, there were shows, we were football players who had really screwed up their knees and who could barely walk or all of a sudden be able to run and he’s really remarkable. So this stuff, it’s it’s a little tangential, I’d say to the whole awakening enlightenment thing. But um, you know, but it’s, I think it’s somewhat related, because it indicates that there is more to life than the ordinary, gross mechanics, and you know, the things we happen to believe because they happen to fit our experience so far. It’s got an open mind about this stuff. Yeah, I
Michael Speight: agree. And one thing that I want to say because I don’t want to get 1000 phone calls, I cannot automatically heal people. Right. All right. I sometimes that happens, sometimes it doesn’t happen. And you know, you take the thought, and you get the feedback saying, Nope, this is karmic or whatever, guys got to go through this. That’s the way it is. And other times, it just happens. And I I’m not, I don’t put myself out as a healer. It’s not my not my thing. person calling card. It’s just it just happens around me.
Rick Archer: Yeah, no, it’s interesting. Though, speaking of sankalpa. And speaking of healing, they had an interesting experience with ARMA. And I mentioned sankalpa, because she has done that for a lot, that kind of thing for a lot of people. I mean, it’s easy to, it’s easy to say, Oh, well, it could happen anyway. But there’s so many instances where she’s done. It’s in Cabo for somebody, and nothing works out. I mean, in our case, even finding our house, you know, we went to her, and we said, you know, we really want to have a house, we can’t afford the party, Aveda, you know, which was all the rage around here. And, you know, what should we do and, and she, she said, I’m old, do some copper, and don’t worry about the advantages buy, get the right house and, and so then I was at work, and somebody mentioned, you know, some add house for sale someplace, I call that rain and gave her an address. And she went to look for it and got lost, and came down this driveway and found the house we now live in, which is perfect for us. And it’s grant actually with a little modification, you know, somewhat in keeping with the party of aid. So anyway, that that kind of thing could be brushed off. But there have been a lot of other little divine interventions like that. Yeah, and yeah, a big one. Tell us yours.
Michael Speight: Oh, um, well, I I was sitting in meditation. When my wife and I lived in Stanford and Redwood Shores that San Francisco Bay area, a little bit south of San Francisco there. And I was sitting in meditation, it was like, almost voice in my head said, Come to my office room now. And I was like,
Rick Archer: you know, what had you seen on my before, and you saw, okay,
Michael Speight: yeah, we’ve been going on for years. And I just, you know, and so I was like, oh, so I went back to the mantra. And then it was like, no now. So I got up. I went downstairs said my wife. Look, I got this cosmic Telegram, I think was the words I used. It said, I think I’m supposed to go to a massage room and my wife goes,
Rick Archer: we’ll go. And she didn’t mean San Ramon, California. She meant India, right. She
Michael Speight: meant India. Yes. So I booked a flight on the highway. I got I had a three day delay because it snowed in London. And they didn’t have any snow plows. So I got a delay but I got there. Had the taxi ride from hell from the airport to her OSH ROM. I caught that was my pocket. The floorboards and vehicle were sort of there. You know how it is?
Rick Archer: Yeah. India is rough.
Michael Speight: It’s rough but beautiful and rough at the same time. So i i I’m at Ross ROM. I’m up got 16 floors and the And the building I’m in. And I’m in deep meditation again, and all sudden, I get another voice. I don’t know this voice I don’t know it’s a man’s voice or it’s what I would say it’s a male voice. And it says, Go downstairs and I went back to the Montra you know, ignoring my thoughts meditation as we’ve been trained, and then I, the voice said, you know, go downstairs, so I thought, no, gotta go downstairs, I got up, went, took the elevator down and walked out the front of the slap there. And I say I literally said, Okay, now what? My feet, my feet just started moving. It was like my legs were propelled on their own. And so I just relaxed and solid they took me in, they took me almost OSH ROM has a huge facility, that’s the Kali temple, the lot of seating in it and some business offices and that kind of stuff. And, and to the right hand side of that the sort of a little alleyway and some small low buildings, and one of those low buildings is where she was born. And that particular building is now a shrine and a small temple. So I was walking down to there I get there. Literally just as they’re starting a Maha mitten, Jaya Houma, which is a lord shiva Houma, a home of for healing and enlightenment. And there was one there was maybe a dozen people there 10 or 12 people and there was like one place to sit right next to the to the fire and with a wall that I could leave my back on, which is really important for me. And so I I sat down there and this young man this young man, I’ve never seen anybody before her since like and normally when you see the pundits and stuff they’re usually in the orange robes or something like that when they do these, almost not all of them in other could be in the white Dodi’s he was in a white dhoti and he had short little past shoulder like dark hair, most illuminating eyes you could imagine. And then there were two older two or three older gentlemen across from me, who were assisting him and they were wearing for some reason I’ve never I’ve never seen a man wearing Dodi like that. They’re Dodi’s were almost like they were made out of saris, you know, they’re kind of amber colored and beautiful. And this is I’ve been to a lot of these Vedic ceremonies, and I’ve never before or since into one that was as precise as this. This Pandit the sky, he everything he did was like, like a robot, you know, but with life. And so he was 100% focused and consumed in what he was doing. And the job of the gentleman was to hand him what he needed as it was needed. I know the Mahabharata Jaya. So I was chanting along with him. And then when it was over, everybody just got up left and I got up and left. The interesting thing is, I thought about him, you know, and I I realized I had not seen him around the temple the whole time. I was there, either before or after. And, and then I got to think about that, you know, he’s so familiar to me. He looks very familiar to me. And then I went, Oh, God. And I pulled out my Autobiography of a Yogi book, I looked up the drawing of Baba Ji in that book, and I cannot say that it was Baba Ji that I saw. There’s no way I could ever say that. But all I can tell you is spitting image of that drawing. And I didn’t die.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I mean, you haven’t really explained the situation with your heart. No, but your your sort of your life was a bit in Japan.
Michael Speight: Yeah, I was. Tread I was dancing on thin ice, right. I was still dancing, but it was still nice. Yeah, I had a I had a atrial fib, where my heart is to 285 beats a minute, sometimes for for a month at a time. And it was just wearing the out and you know, I had a cardiologist who is an idiot. misdiagnosed and mistreated me which costs me My gall bladder, and most people get their gallbladders out, they don’t have any problems, I have problems. And so forth and so on. And I, I saw myself before all this happen, I saw myself dying. And I could see it clearly I knew exactly when it was going to happen, not the exact date. But I know be June 9, do it be about three years away from that moment time that I saw it, I saw everything. So I literally I got my affairs in order. I did my will. I talked to my wife. I had a beautiful Jyoti’s ring. I gave that to my son. But she lost. Which is okay, it was fine. It actually worked out. It was one of those things that worked out for the better. But yeah, it was. I just didn’t see myself being being around anymore. And then after this, I lived.
Rick Archer: Well, did you? Have you had a fib anymore? And have you had any medical checkups that have indicated that something has actually been changed or healed? I
Michael Speight: did have the surgery for a fib, I had radio frequency ablation. And that was real fun. Nothing like having your catheter removed. But so you know, yeah, it was dicey. But I’ve never had an atrial fib symptom sets knock on wood. And I have a EKG, small little personalized EKG machine that I could check my heart with. It actually works with your cell phone, it’s pretty amazing. And called cardio, highly recommend it. And so I could track and I have had no symptoms at all of atrial fib and all these years since then.
Rick Archer: And so you’re pretty confident as far as you can be that it was a result of this intervention by ama going to rush ROM and having this whole Yaga with, possibly with Balaji.
Michael Speight: Yeah, I would say her and also a Sri crinum. A, which is another story, a tale that one if you want. I
Rick Archer: should example of a son culpa here.
Michael Speight: Yeah, she couldn’t be he who’s extraordinary. Who has been that gap? Oh, yeah, that’s right. That’s right. Yes. She was in Portland, Oregon. And so I flew out, stay with some friends to see her. And when it was my turn to go up, you know, she gives you a little three by five card. You could write things on there. And I wrote, I said, I see myself dying. And this is what it is. And fine. I’d like to I’d like to see Shiva before I die if possible. And I gave it to her. And she just took it and she held it. She looked at it. And she just nodded her head. Yep. And that was it. It’s like, okay, cool. I went to the back of the church, I went up in the choir loft. And I was I thought, Oh, I’ll sit down and meditate. And I sat down to meditate. But I had so much Shakti, so much energy that I couldn’t, it was like the monitors just like a little ping out nod or space or something, you know, I mean, just vibrating. And while I’m sitting there, I have my eyes closed, all sudden, I see all my, but she’s no Srikrishna by he was also called Dama writer, people. So she’s standing in front of me. And I say, well, that’s interesting, you know, and I open my eyes. And she’s standing in front of me, except that I can see her still sitting on the stage. Right? You know? And I thought, well, wow. And so I closed my eyes open has the same thing. And then she she morphed, I think is the right word into Saraswathi. And it was Saraswathi standing in front of me the white sorry, the whole thing. I mean, it’s like, Oh, my God, you know, and I, I was shaking, and it’s these things are very humbling. I think I want to make that very clear. They’re really, I find them to be, you know, it’s just cut you down to a very human being, in a beautiful sense. But
Rick Archer: I’m glad you’re saying that because I’ve listened to a lot of people talk about flashy experiences, who seem to have very vivid imaginations and like to attract attention, you know, by now. marvelous things are experiencing, but I don’t get that feeling with you.
Michael Speight: Yeah, I don’t. Yeah, I want to make an appointment. But anyway, so while I was sitting there looking at her all of a sudden she showed me her defined form, and it was exactly alike. Like Saraswathi to get Yeah, like the Gita describes Krishna showing our Juna, the entire universe is like there. And I totally get why our Junior was going like, hey, take it back. Take it back now. Yeah, it was so overwhelming that I think that if it had been a flash of a malt minimal over a second longer, I would have fried died. And and then you know Bowman and everything went back to normal. And I sat there and I went, well who gives a damn if I die? Right? What difference does it make? So I thought that was pretty cool. I want to make a, if I may, Marie, she years ago told me I should share my experiences because he said they were good experiences. And people could benefit from hearing. And I didn’t, I didn’t for a very long time. Because I don’t want to stand out and be that person, you know, and have. And I also didn’t want to have people got it. You know? Yeah, I’m not I’m not wired like that. But one of his, well, his minister of of yoga was a very dear friend of mine extraordinary man. He kept encouraging me to talk my experience. So finally I started sharing them. And I’ve, I’ve said, my whole spiritual life that My number one job is to keep my ego out of it. You know, I have met people who want to go Oh, Michael, you’re so special. I always know. You know, I I think Maurice was already sample here. These people credit to his teacher and his tradition. And I honestly feel the same way. I I can’t take credit for anything. I’m very cognizant that, you know, that statement that only God is the doer is rather accurate. No, I just wanted to say that so people think, you know, grandstanding or somebody special because I don’t feel I’m somebody special. Yeah.
Rick Archer: That’s good. Glad you said that. About dying. Do you have any idea what’s going to happen to you when you die?
Michael Speight: Yes, actually, now I do. What is it? Oh. So
Rick Archer: you’re going to be put in charge of all galaxy.
Michael Speight: Years ago, I I talked to a Joe Tish and who’s world famous Vedic Astrology? Jyotish. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for saying who’s world famous bestseller, book writer, all that sort of stuff. And, and he’s I said, you know, tell me about my life. And he said that I didn’t I came into human existence from the naugus.
Rick Archer: Which are the snake beings? Yeah. Very Ancient
Michael Speight: Dragons, you know, a big use. And there’s mainly three different types. But
Rick Archer: and just just to interject here, I my first interview with Shri M. Rekha, he recounts a very interesting experience he had with a Naga. Anyway, as a footnote. So continue. I’ve had
Michael Speight: a I’ve had a lot of very wonderful experiences with naugus. And so I thought that was interesting, because I came from there straight into being a human being without going through a lot of other rigmarole. So that I checked that with two other Jyoti says, you know, asking for a second opinion from your doctor, same thing, and I checked it with a woman that I know of who extraordinary, intuitive. And he said, Yes. So
Rick Archer: the only check it with these folks, did you say, hey, was I a Naga? And then they said, Yes. Or did you? Did they actually come out with the Naga thing from there?
Michael Speight: I actually, I’m a little more circumspect. Yeah, I’m like, you know, what’s, what went on? You know, and I just get, you know, an innocent confirmation, right? And so these particular naugus that I’m talking about are beings of light, very wise, ancient beings of light. And I’ve been invited, supposedly, to, when I leave here to go back there and share my experience in my life and my knowledge and learnings with them, and that, that culture and all of that,
Rick Archer: are they just, this is maybe a dumb question, but do they reside on some subtler realm? Do they reside on a different planet or what how’s it works?
Michael Speight: subtler realm. It’s a place that’s what
Rick Archer: but it doesn’t have to necessarily have a god Graphic location visa V the earth?
Michael Speight: Not Not that I’m aware of.
Rick Archer: Okay, just
Michael Speight: you know,
Rick Archer: yeah. I just want to understand how that works. Okay, well, that’s interesting. You have something to look forward to. Well, exactly buddies.
Michael Speight: But I was also told, I also have the option of I could come back. But they’ve told me there’s no date I could
Rick Archer: you didn’t take a vote he saw about remember, yeah,
Michael Speight: we’re gonna we’re gonna give you a gold watch and you can retire. You know, I’ve been told that if I want it, and I also have the opportunity to merge with the absolute. And I, if I’ve made up my mind, I’m not aware of having made up my mind.
Rick Archer: So that brings up an interesting question. You know, you have these options, right. And a couple of the options involve continuing as some kind of embodied being. And there are people who argue that there is ultimately no person, and therefore any notion of continuation of a person after the body dies is nonsense. There couldn’t be reincarnation, there couldn’t be this, because there’s nothing or no one to reincarnate. And how do you sit with that argument?
Michael Speight: Well, and yet the universe recreates itself continually in mitered ways that are filled with wonder. I’m figuring if the universe wants that to happen. It’ll figure out a way to make it happen. I don’t feel like that’s something that we have to take an absolute point of view on and say it’s this way or that way. Because there’s so much in the Vedic literature and other you know, Tibetan Buddhist literature, other cultures. Where that, yes, you know, you can come back and come into another body. By the way, the one thing that I should have mentioned, which just came to me is, one of the reasons why I was going to die was because I had burned up 100% of the karma that came into this life. And so supposedly, when that happens, you’re, you’re done, and you go, and you get a new container. And, and I have a real sense of that, that all of that stuff that I came in with, it’s just gone. It’s not that things don’t happen to you. And, you know, karma still happens, because you’re in a body and stuff, but it doesn’t bind you anymore. You’re not stuck. So that’s the difference. The concept of reincarnation is based on fundamentally based on something binding you over to take another form,
Rick Archer: like it’s compulsory, as opposed to voluntary, right?
Michael Speight: Yeah. And so, if you can do it compulsory, why can’t you do it voluntary?
Rick Archer: Yeah. But then let me ask you this. You know, what is it? Let’s say, persons enlightened, they’re in Brahman consciousness? Is there still some sort of kernel that identifies them as an individual, if you can use the word individual? As a as a being that could actually take on another body? And, and if so, what is what is that thing? I mean, the apparently, if what I’m saying is true, it’s not something which disappears or dissipates or dissolves when an event takes place. There’s still some Okay,
Michael Speight: yeah, you got it? Yeah, um, let’s use the word soul. Okay. Your soul. Your soul theoretically is immortal.
Rick Archer: And we’re talking about an individual expression, not just the universal soul or something, right?
Michael Speight: Yeah. Your your particular your soul, that soul of yours. And so that soul can what happens to it? Okay, what happens to that piece? If you read the Vedic literature, it talks even about like carrying on for millenniums are UKAS or coming out again after the creation dissolves and comes back
Rick Archer: and not just because you’re in ignorance and you have to be reborn. But even if you’re enlightened, it says this, right? Yeah,
Michael Speight: yeah, it’s it’s there. I’ve read it. Okay. Don’t ask me where? Because I’ve read so much. I can’t. Yeah, I should. I should have kept notes. I did. And so yeah, I’d say it that’s the soul. And then the karma. What is that? That’s a whole wad. What is it’s a lot of cause and effect that somehow is attached itself. Well, the ego thinks that that’s what it is. Thanks. You know, I, I am this wad of stuff. That’s me. And you know, that’s a horrible explanation. But well, but
Rick Archer: yeah, it has all kinds of likes and dislikes and preferences and opinions and attitudes and biases. And yeah. So that
Michael Speight: stuff, you know, comes back and somehow it’s got to fulfill itself. Well, what is it? Why is it fulfilling itself? That’s the question I would was asking myself for years. And Maurice, you made that very clear that it’s, it’s evolving toward full realization. So once you’re fully enlightened, and you can you have possibility of not returning. Yeah. Okay. And so,
Rick Archer: not the certainty but the possibility you’re saying, right, yeah, it’s all join us. This is Luna.
Michael Speight: Hi Luna. Yeah, and, you know, if you read the Vedic literature,
Michael Speight: supposedly it’s set you brought since Luna stepped on it, except right segue. Supposedly, when you die, you go to the moon.
Rick Archer: Oh, yeah. I’ve heard that the Pitris live on the moon. Yeah, I was in a room with Maharishi one time when he said that I thought I said Maharishi Pitris on the moon. And, you know, there’s no air there. And he looked at me like, some kind of idiot.
Michael Speight: Well, I can remember there was a man on one of our courses, who was dying. And Maurice, and he were having sort of a discussion, but I was able to overhear it. And the man said, you know, what’s going to happen tomorrow? She said, I’ll see you at the moon. Yeah. And I thought, Wow, beautiful. He’s gonna go with be there with a guy passes away. And, you know, maybe intercede with him with the Lords of Karma? I don’t know. But what’s going to help him along his way? And Chris, Christina Olson, who, anyway, to meditators know who she is, she told me that Maurice, she did the same thing for her mother when her mother passed. So I think that’s beautiful. But, so if you’re, if you’re okay, let’s, let’s, I’m not, I’m not a sports guy. I don’t know much about sports. But I didn’t understand the concept of a free agent. So maybe the enlightened person is now created. And he could go sign on with, with who he wants to sign on.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Or he can, he can merge back into the absolute. Right. I mean, you mentioned that as an option. And, you know, I mean, all this stuff. Might people at this point might be saying, Yeah, who knows. And this is also speculative. These guys are referring to stuff that is in ancient scriptures, and it may be all mythological. But it’d be one of the presumptions of these ancient scriptures is that there were people and could be now who could actually know this stuff with some certitude through a cognitive process that is available to those who, who have awakened, you know, who have become enlightened?
Michael Speight: Yeah, no, I think that that’s correct. After all, that’s what the Vedic Rishi is, did. They caught they caught cognize the functioning of the universe and, you know, gave gave it forth and eventually it got written down. And we have that, and and of those teachings have evolved, as more knowledge has come on, you know, now you have, you know, what, from Rick vet to some of it at the yards of it, I get, etc, to the apana shots and to the Donta. And so there’s this kind of progression. And even those those deities referred to in the early Vedas group grew and changed over time, as more knowledge came on, if you know, according to what I read anyway, so why not? Why not? I, I can look. I can look at a lot of things now. And I’ve been sort of satisfying my curiosity a bit here and there. But I haven’t really taken a hard look at our software, I guess, to be more accurate at that whole decision point about what what happened, what am I going to do next?
Rick Archer: Yeah, maybe you don’t need to decide until it’s time until you’re faced with the actual choice.
Michael Speight: And the other thing that’s interesting is I don’t see a death for me anymore, right. So I figure I’m just more normal now. Like, like anybody else. I don’t see something. Yeah. And so it could, in one sense, I will never die. And my body will go and then what happens happens so we’ll just see When what happens? Yeah. All right, I’ll write you a letter. Okay. Please
Rick Archer: do. Yeah. And incidentally, I mean, on this whole theme of what’s supposed to happen after we die, and all that, of these, these topics we have been discussing for a few minutes, which are kind of I regard any, any idea that you want to consider, as a hypothesis? I agree. Yeah. And hypotheses are not something to be believed in or disbelieved. They’re something to investigate. Yeah. And there may be some things which, you know, there may be many, there are many things which science can’t investigate, it doesn’t have the tools. But what we’re what we’re implying here is that spirituality, if properly understood, and applied, provides tools to explore things, which were, you know, heretofore considered metaphysical or mystical, or, you know, beyond any possibility of certainty.
Michael Speight: Yeah, you know, the Dalai Lama. He was asked, okay, what happens when you die? And he said, Well, I have certain beliefs I’ve been trained. This is, you know, what we believe is Buddhists. Do I know? I know. Yeah, it was, it was real honest. You know, it was real straightforward. And I feel the same way. I have ideas and thoughts. And some cognitions. That are pretty clear. But you know, like everybody else, I guess I’ll find out.
Rick Archer: Yeah, this is a kind of what not to k, this was asking Yama, you know, what happens? When he dies? Does he exist? Or is he’s just not? And yeah, we said, Oh, please don’t make me tell you that. I’ll give you anything kingdoms, you know, beautiful women, whatever you want. But don’t make me answer that question. But you know, kind of nothing else held him to it.
Michael Speight: Good for him.
Rick Archer: Now, you said earlier that, you know, you’ve been talking to me for a while, and you kind of tuned in to me, and my body becomes a part of your body or some such thing. I mean, have you picked up on anything?
Michael Speight: You’re very healthy, you’re very clear. And you’re very, I think it’s amazing how many enlightened people you’ve attracted around you. This, you’re clearly, you know, in your dharma. And your consciousness is amazingly clear. It’s, it’s like, if you’re not enlightened, you know, somebody just needs to come along and go.
Rick Archer: I don’t consider myself enlightened, or I don’t make any claims whatsoever. But I haven’t had any big flashy, head exploding kind of things like you’ve had. I hope most people don’t. Yeah, I don’t witness sleep, although I’ve had that occasionally. And, but what I do find is that there’s a rock solid, presence or silence or whatever you want to call it, that there’s nothing shakes.
Michael Speight: Your heart is like, beautiful, thank you. And I don’t, at least right now, I’m not. I’m not picking up on, you know, any illness or particular life threatening problems or anything, and I don’t see
Rick Archer: this sore shoulder. I don’t know what’s causing it. And I think if switching my mouse to my left hand, maybe it’s that don’t worry about I’m just kidding. You don’t have to fix my shoulder. Okay, so we’ve covered quite a bit. And is there anything that kind of like pops into your mind that you feel like we you’d like to talk about while we have the chance?
Michael Speight: Well, people know. Well, I’m not an Amway salesman. So you know, I help
Rick Archer: Herbalife right.
Michael Speight: I just can’t stand pyramid marketing schemes. Yeah, I know, you know, I’m, I’ve got a website up if anybody wants to take a look at that. I think you’ve got a link. Yeah. Um, and, you know, I’m not particularly I guess what I would like to think about myself as as maybe spiritual consultant. And if I can help someone understand their experiences, and, you know, deal with mood making versus the real thing. I would be delighted if they could help people that way. I’m certainly open to visit someplace and give talks that because I’ve done that for years. I’m open to teach meditation to people on a one to one basis because that’s what I do.
Rick Archer: You have to do that in person, right? You don’t do that over Skype or something.
Michael Speight: No, I don’t I know of people who do things over Skype. They’re kind of like Yeah, but no, I would have to be one. Once
Rick Archer: you become a Utah you would have to go somewhere.
Michael Speight: Yeah. But I’m willing to talk to people you know, they can there’s a link on my website, they can write me and I will right back would be delightful. You know delightful to, to do that. You know, I guess I’m still trying to help people have that awakening for the week. Have you
Rick Archer: ever? Do you feel like you’ve ever been instrumental in triggering an awakening? And anybody?
Michael Speight: Yeah, yeah. I’ve got six students of mine, who are all awake now. And some of that, I pointed them to another person who was able to knock them over the line. But also, a couple of them woke up here. And in my meditate, dedicated puja meditation room, they went, Whoa, look at lights coming out of me, I’m shining light everywhere. Cool, was really beautiful. And I personally think we’re going to see more and more awakenings over the next few years. It’s just time. And it’s one way we’re going to rescue the world for the mess it’s in. You know, we have to have a shot at Yeah.
Rick Archer: I mean, you know, a lot of new agey types have been saying that this this thing is going to happen. And a lot of ancient cultures have to there’s yeah, there’s going to be an awakening or a dawning of higher consciousness in the world. So I hope so. You know, we’re all doing our part.
Michael Speight: Yeah. Yeah. I love it. And you know what, I always tell people come to meditate. Wait, you know, I never thought I ever to win the Nobel Prize or anything like that, you know, but I always thought as long as I was meditating, I was doing my part. You know, that story of
Rick Archer: Christians? Oh, yeah. The people holding up their sticks, it sticks.
Michael Speight: And I always felt like, Okay, I’m holding it up my stick. I’m doing what I can do. Yeah. I think if people just do that. There’s a tremendous beauty to that. And it does make the world a better place.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And yeah, I’m glad you said that. And that story about the sticks just briefly is you know, Indra was jealous of Krishna because though people have run divan were so into Krishna. And so he started pouring down rain on the village to sort of get at people. And, you know, the people pleaded to Krishna to save them, Krishna went and picked up a hill or a mountain and held it above the village with his hand to act as an umbrella. And all the people after a while thought, ooh, he can’t hold that up all by himself. So they all grabbed a stick and came and kind of helped to hold up the mountain. And of course, it actually didn’t do anything, but they felt like they were helping. So you know, we’re kind of like, you know, we really God is doing everything, but we can feel that we’re helping, holding up by our whatever we’re doing in the, in the interest of, you know, helping to awaken the world.
Michael Speight: Yeah, no, no, it’s very special. And I think it’s also reminds us of our humanity. And I think that’s really important. I’d say, I’ve, I’ve worked around the world quite a bit. And I think one of the problems with America is that it’s very self centered. You know, we’ve kind of gotten into this sort of me generation, and my selfie and, you know, all that sort of stuff. And I think that we need to be reminded of our humanity, that we are all in this together. And I’m a huge huge fan of and believer in the collective consciousness. When we have people here at my house, sometimes we have 2030 even more people because my house can actually squeeze that many in. The effect is incredible. Everybody gets uplifted. And there’s a little trick I learned to
Rick Archer: read while you’re here in Iowa when we had 8000 meditating together one time in the in the wintertime.
Michael Speight: No, I wasn’t able to make that course. That was rich. Yeah, exactly. It is. And that’s just it. When we have people together, you know, if you’re a Christian, you might remember that two, a two or three are gathered in my name. I grabbed a request. Yeah, you know, and if you’re you know, Maurice, he’s always told us about the power of the collective consciousness particularly through the city program. Doesn’t matter. If you’re an omelet devotee or you know, Rama, Rama to vote doesn’t matter. If you’re doing something and you’re maybe you’re in a satsang or something like that, then you’re helping uplift everyone. Yeah, I think that’s, I think I personally find that extraordinarily beautiful and important.
Rick Archer: Yeah, it is. There’s a there’s a that I read it a few weeks ago at the end of an interview that last Mondal of Rigveda. Right. I mean, last Sukta of the 10th, mandola Rigveda, about assembly is significant in unity. And it talks about the kind of the, the potency of a group of enlightened together.
Michael Speight: It’s very, very, very powerful. And we should do it as much as we can.
Rick Archer: Yeah. So you mentioned you have these gatherings in your house is what is that about? And if anybody lives in the Salt Lake area, can they come to them?
Yes, mostly they’ve been students of mine. meditators, although we are not some of them non meditators. You know, my dearest friend beautiful Dorothy Rowe, came and did a session here. You know, we have
Rick Archer: who’s been on BatGap by the way.
Michael Speight: Yeah, I know. It’s, it’s she’s just so wonderful.
Rick Archer: You’re whacking your microphone here with your hand.
Michael Speight: Oh, sorry. Apologize. But yeah, you know, she was here in the eye of colicky opened up. And, and I saw, you know, when she saw we, you know, I was like, whoa. Big. I know. Shakti coming out of that was extraordinary. So it’s a thought I house is also very special. There are naugus that frequent that there’s elementals around. I have walked out my backyard and lived up scene. Look is open up celestial beings running around. This is it’s kind of a cool place. It’s just a neighborhood. But the grounds have a quality to it, that people come in and they just feel it. They just go oh, gosh, display skills. Wonderful. Yeah. And they have good meditations here. So that happens.
Rick Archer: I mean, how long have you live there?
Michael Speight: Eight years, huh?
Rick Archer: Yeah. I mean, places imbibe the influence of the people who frequent them. You know, you walk into a bar, and even if it’s closed, there’s a feeling in the room. Or you walk into a temple, which has been this, like I remember there’s a beautiful place in New Mexico called sanctuary or they Chimayo and we went there one time, and all these healings have taken place. You know, we’ve got all these crutches on the wall that people have been able to discard and stuff. And you walk in there, and there’s just this feeling of holiness. And I remember, we sat down Irene started crying right away, because there’s just beautiful sweetness in the air. So it’s a thing you know, it’s kind of interesting thing to understand, but different places you get bought imbued with the qualities of the consciousness of those who frequent them.
Michael Speight: Yeah, yeah. Well, we we’ve done a lot of pooches we know we have FANTIC music recitation by John’s going 24 by seven in multiple rooms. And so it’s it’s a nice place. You are most welcome. You and Irene are most welcome to come visit anytime. Just attempt to get over 30 minutes away from one of the world’s class ski resorts.
Rick Archer: That Snowbird Alta.
Michael Speight: No, we’re oh, what I know, I don’t skate anymore. It’s right over the mountain behind my house. I could look over and see the mountain.
Rick Archer: Okay. I think I’ll figure it out when I get there.
Michael Speight: Okay. They held part of the Olympics there.
Rick Archer: Oh, cool. Squaw Valley. No, nothing. Anyway, we’re getting off track. But if we ever traveled, we don’t travel much. But if we ever do my car on I-80 we’ll stop by.
Michael Speight: Oh, that’d be wonderful. We’d love to see you guys going.
Rick Archer: Oh, okay. Well, thanks for taking birth on this godforsaken planet and good luck weather wherever you end up after this one. But it’s been a lot of fun talking to you and getting to know you better.
Michael Speight: Yeah, thank you. I really enjoyed it. Yeah.
Rick Archer: And for those listening or watching, Michael’s indicated, is the same routine as with every interview, I’ll put a link to his website and you can check out what he has to offer, get in touch with him and possibly learn meditation from him or have a consultation or whatever, you got whatever you need, or whatever your workout and and we’ll see you next time. Okay, that’s off the top of my head. I forget who I’m interviewing next. But um, it’ll be somebody and we we keep scheduling about well once a week, so stay tuned. And if you’d like to be notified each time, there’s a new one, then sign up for the little email notification thing. And or subscribe to the YouTube channel. If you’re watching this on YouTube. The more subscribers the better in terms of YouTube’s sort of support, you’re talking to Richard Richard Schoeller. Yeah, sure. Yeah, who was an interesting guy who who actually I don’t know if he’s doesn’t mean he’s an undertaker. Oh, and, and ironically, he also has sees the deceased in there. Oh wow subtle bodies or whatever and it’s all kind of came upon him quite unexpectedly and I haven’t really delved into his story because I completely focus on the person I’m about to interview and then as soon as that’s over, I switch gears and focus on the next one. But, um, anyway, that’s,
Michael Speight: um, I’m looking forward to it. Yeah. Okay,
Rick Archer: good. Well, thanks, Michael. And thanks to all those who’ve been listening or watching and we’ll see you next time. Hopefully. Okay, bye. Bye bye.
