Nancy Neithercut Transcript - Buddha at the Gas Pump

Summary

Nancy Neithercut describes a lifelong longing that led through depression, spiritual seeking, altered-state glimpses, and an intensely painful period of inner unraveling. She explores awakening as the collapse of separation and fixed beliefs, revealing ordinary life as effortless, fluid, and unknowable.

Questions This Interview Explores

What can cause a profound spiritual awakening?
Why can awakening involve fear, despair, and a dark night of the soul?
What happens to beliefs and identity during awakening?
Is awakening the result of personal effort, grace, or both?
What does nonduality feel like in everyday experience?

Key takeaways

The pain of separation can appear early as a deep sense that something essential is missing.
Awakening may involve the painful loss of beliefs, identity, and familiar sources of security.
Joy and sorrow can lose their apparent opposition as emotional experience becomes more unified.
The shift can reveal that life has always been happening without a separate doer.
Fixed beliefs create a sense of solidity, while unknowing opens into awe and wonder.
No technique can force the final breakthrough; seeking and surrender both play uncertain roles.

Transcript

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews or conversations with spiritually awakening people. I’ve done nearly 500 of them now, and if this is new to you and you’d like to check out previous ones, please go to batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P, and look under the Past Interviews menu. That’s where the previous ones are, and you’ll see them organized and categorized in a variety of ways.

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My guest today is Nancy Neithercut. Nancy sent me a bio, but it’s kind of a description of what she actually went through, and I want her to describe that in her own words rather than me just reading it.

And speaking of her own words, Nancy is a poet. I don’t know a lot about poetry, but she sounds like a very good one to me. She has a way with words, and I would say that what we talk about when we talk about enlightenment or higher consciousness and all that is really impossible to adequately put into words, so you have to beat around the bush. But Nancy does a good job of expressing the inexpressible through her words and through her poetry. So I’ll leave you all to be the judge of that as we have this conversation.

This, by the way, is Nancy’s book, This Is It, Coyote. You’ve written several books, haven’t you, Nancy?

Nancy: Yeah, I’ve got four.

Rick: Is that one I just showed you the most recent, or something?

Nancy: No, there’s another one that’s more recent, but it’s pure poetry, and the one I sent you has some nondual stuff in it, so I thought it would be more interesting to you.

Rick: Yeah, it was interesting, and I also listened—you have a lot of videos online—and I listened to a lot of those. So, let’s get into how you ended up where you are today. A lot of people I interview had some interesting stuff going on even when they were children, and in many cases they kind of lost it and then eventually, sometimes painfully, regained it. Do you fit that mold, or was your childhood and adolescence pretty conventional?

Nancy: Outwardly, I suppose it was really conventional. I didn’t really notice what I called the pain of being alive until I was around eight, so I think it hit some people earlier. I spent many, many years in a severe depression, not knowing what it was, but I probably looked like an ordinary kid, although I remember relatives saying, “What happened to that laughing, happy child you used to be?” And I’d snap back at them, like, “I don’t know.”

Rick: And the pain of being alive—was it anything different from what we all go through, or did you somehow have a more acute sense that there was more to life than you or anyone around you was living, and that awareness made the ordinary things that we experience in life seem inadequate?

Nancy: I guess it’s that feeling that there’s something missing, which I think a lot of people have. It seemed very acute. I didn’t seem to notice anyone else who had that, especially at a young age. I remember talking to my parents about it, and they laughed at me, kind of like, “Well, little kids don’t get depressed.”

So I wouldn’t have had any words for it, except now I would say it was just the pain of imaginary separation, and that longing to see through that. But I wouldn’t even have come close to that as a kid.

So I wouldn’t have had any words for it, except now I would say it was just the pain of imaginary separation, and that longing to see through that. But I wouldn’t even have come close to that as a kid.

Rick: But you kind of answered my question, though, because I’d say that everybody has that longing or that pain of separation, but most people don’t have a clue that they do have that pain. They might be frustrated or unfulfilled for various reasons, but it almost sounds like in your case there was an inkling of the reason for it, even though you couldn’t have articulated it.

Nancy: Yes, I’m sure. As I told you before, in my teens, when I listened to all the love songs, I believed all of those. I thought, “Maybe that’s what’s missing,” because it is, in a way, love. Love is a good word for unicity, for no separation.

It could have been that. I didn’t really have a glimpse of that dark cloud going away until my early 20s, so it was a lot of years. I read voraciously, anything I could get my hands on. I never really came across any Eastern philosophy, but I read Western philosophy and psychology books and lots of science fiction.

My brother was a spiritual seeker, I suppose, so I read all of his books about chakras, Seth Speaks, and all that stuff that was going on in the ’70s. I read it all. I even—I know you’re a TM guy—for my 14th birthday, I got initiated into TM, and so I did that. I never stuck with it.

But I was probably just a seeker, voraciously seeking, although I never would have called it awakening or enlightenment. I had no idea what I was looking for, but I knew there was something. I was that seeking, and it was very, very painful.

Rick: Do you have any idea what caused those glimpses you had in your 20s?

Nancy: When I was 21 or 22, I can’t remember, but I took some acid.

Rick: That’ll do it.

Psychedelic Glimpses of Awe and Beauty

Nancy: I was out, I was plucking in nature, and it was like—I remember the awe, I remember the beauty, I remember this perfection. I never was slammed back into the deep, dark pit again until the final process, but the glimpses were there, not just when I was taking the drugs. That just lasted on and off for a couple of years, but they became—it’s hard to look back, because when I look back, it’s like it was always obvious, but I just wasn’t noticing it.

Rick: Yeah. Everybody says that when awakening happens: “I’ve always known this, it’s always been obvious,” and yet it wasn’t, somehow.

Nancy: No, you just don’t notice it, and then it’s always obvious. It’s never not obvious; it’s just spectacular.

Rick: So when you say that the acid gave you some glimpses, or some kind of recollection of something, almost the way you expressed it, it sounded like some primordial memory of something that you knew deep down, but had glossed over or forgotten. Is that the way you’re putting it?

Nancy: At the time, it felt like I had forgotten it. Yeah. It was like, “This is the big wow. This is this awe and beauty that I remembered as a kid.” So it wasn’t just remembering it; it was there again.

Rick: It’s interesting that that snapped you out of the depression. They’re actually using psilocybin and things like that at Johns Hopkins and NYU and places to help people who are chronically depressed, and very often one dose, under proper supervision, will change things more or less permanently, apparently.

Nancy: I’ve read that.

Meditation, Collapse, and the Dark Night of the Soul

Rick: So then, though, things started to really grind for you. They started to get intense, and it sounded like you went through a real cooking process, a dark night of the soul kind of thing, where you were just really working through a lot of stuff and crying and suffering, and your heart was on fire and all that kind of stuff. Why don’t you take us into that?

Nancy: Well, it was when I turned 50. I just skipped 25 years.

In between times, I was just living a normal—well, not a normal life, but a life of traveling and odd jobs. I ended up in a beautiful place to live, and at times I was meditating, at times reading, reading, reading books, and then other times not. So it was not consistent.

At the end, there was about a year and a half where I was meditating a lot, and I got really high. I was watching the breath, and I was very, very high. But I knew that it felt like it was contrived in a way.

That last winter before this 50th birthday, I had read in an Alan Watts book that he said something like, “A hiccup is the same as a bolt of lightning.”

Rick: What do you mean by that?

Nancy: Well, I thought it meant that it’s all the process of nature, or that what I saw as the inside is the same as the outside. And so that’s what I really wanted to grok more than anything else. I knew that that was some kind of secret that was waiting to be seen through.

So I used to meditate and say, “The wind blows, my blood flows,” and I was really trying to see this. And then finally, a few months later, I just snapped and thought, “Nothing I have ever done in my entire life has brought me one bit closer to this elusive goal, and I don’t know what it is.”

When Joy and Sorrow Become One Emotion

For about a month, I was just stunned. I was just stunned. And that’s when the crashing and falling began, after that month. I had about four days at the end of the month of seeing everything as perfect. And then the slamming and the deep, deep despair, alternating with intense, overwhelming joy, and back again and back again.

Through this period, I noticed that beliefs were just going away. Someone would say something—for example, someone would mention astrology—and I’d think, “I don’t believe that anymore.” And then you would go, “I never really did.” So some beliefs I noticed particularly, and some only later, and sometimes huge swaths probably.

Then, about six months after that began, I really couldn’t tell the difference between joy and sorrow. It was fabulous. It was just this beautiful, unnamed emotion, no matter what was happening.

It was a lot of hell and a lot of heaven.

Rick: There’s something you wrote here that I thought would be worth reading:

I write often about the ripping and shredding and the total evisceration that occurred before this profound shift in perspective. Before the shift, it was a life of fear. And continuing on, after that, there were six months of extreme sadness and intense despair alternating with unspeakable joy, peppered with sudden bouts of impending doom. I noticed beliefs about who I was and what the world was like catch fire and burn and become transparent and fall away. I felt lighter and lighter and noticed that memories and thoughts of the future, and even what was seemingly going on, were losing their grip. Quite suddenly, after six months, I noticed that joy and sorrow had merged and I truly could not tell the difference.

Nancy: Yeah, that’s what it was like. It was a lot of hell and a lot of heaven.

Rick: Yeah.

Nancy: And then, when I realized that joy and sorrow were the same, I knew that this was going to be good. I knew it was going to be good.

And I have to say, too, that during that whole time, I never tried to fight it. It never even occurred to me that I could try to stop this avalanche, basically, of affliction that was washing through me.

Rick: Yeah, you just lay still and let the surgeon operate.

Nancy: Yeah, it was like that. And then, the next six months were just a lot of anxiety. I would lie awake at night, gripped by unseen terror. I really didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t have a map of this or really know what was happening. But it was a lot more anxiety and fear for several months.

Lots of things happened along the way. I remember at one point thinking that I was on a path and was going somewhere. And I realized that that belief would have to go, too. It was almost like saying goodbye. I remember really crying then. Earlier, a lot of the beliefs about myself that were going away were beliefs that I really liked. And that’s really hard, too. The ones that you don’t like, no problem. But when you realize that everything’s got to go, it just hits you like a punch in the gut. It’s so severe.

The shift while cleaning a stove

Rick: I want to get into a discussion about beliefs with you, and practices, and all kinds of points. But before we do that, let’s talk about something you just said, which was that you felt you didn’t know what was going on when this stuff was happening. Now, in retrospect, having come to the other side of it, what do you feel was going on?

Nancy: Basically, belief in belief was going away.

Rick: And that accounted for all the fear and heartburn and anxiety and roller-coaster emotions and all that other stuff? That was just all because of…

Nancy: Looking for handholds, looking for safety and not being able to find it, ever. It’s terrifying. When your whole world flies apart, it is terrifying. Quite at the very end, I just felt this because everyone says that no one gets this. You don’t get it. It doesn’t happen to you.

Rick: Right. There’s not a person who gets it.

Nancy: Right. And I remember trying to talk myself out of it. Why do I want this so much? I don’t know what it is, but why do I want this so much? And it felt like a heartache. It just felt worse than when my mom died, really. Just this horrible, horrible heartache. And I think now I was kind of mourning my own death in some ways.

Rick: I was just going to say that. It’s because you were dying.

Nancy: Yes.

Rick: That’s even closer to home than your mom dying.

Nancy: Yeah. And so it was just a couple of weeks later when the shift happened.

Rick: What you talk about, of course, is not unprecedented. There have been various writers throughout history who have described similar things. Perhaps that’s what St. John of the Cross was talking about with the dark night of the soul, and many others have addressed going through a purgatory of some sort before breaking through. As I understand it, there’s just a lot of dross that needs to be cleared out before we can be a fit vehicle for awakening. You described it in terms of beliefs, and I’m sure that’s part of it. There could also be physiological things that need to be shifted and adjusted and purified or purged, or whatever, before the physiology can be a clear channel for that awakening. Do you agree with that?

Nancy: I wouldn’t recognize any really physiological thing except for my heart hurting. And then, of course, when the shift happens, it is psychological and physiological. When it actually happens, you’re just like, “Do you want me to tell you about that part?”

Rick: Yes, please do.

Awakening Through the Stove-Knob Experience

This is the most amazing part. My husband and I cleaned houses for a living, and I was cleaning this woman’s stove. I had the knob off the stove, and I was just cleaning it when, all of a sudden, without any warning at all, it was like my hand became the stove knob, became the rag, became the space, became the wall, and there were no things. There was no separation. There was nothing. It was just this sublime liquidity, and yet everything continued. My hand kept moving.

Nancy: This is the most amazing part. My husband and I cleaned houses for a living, and I was cleaning this woman’s stove. I had the knob off the stove, and I was just cleaning it when, all of a sudden, without any warning at all, it was like my hand became the stove knob, became the rag, became the space, became the wall, and there were no things. There was no separation. There was nothing. It was just this sublime liquidity, and yet everything continued. My hand kept moving.

There were no things. There was no separation. There was nothing.

It’s so shocking because there’s a huge physiological release, too. I thought maybe I should be—my body should crumple to the floor because there’s no one holding it up anymore. Or maybe I’d be peeing my pants because there’s no one doing anything anymore. It was obvious that life had always done itself. It was just so obvious, and it’s never gone away.

Rick: That’s great. So you should have started a spiritual movement involving stove cleaning. You could have made a killing.

Nancy: I’d rather get the money from cleaning houses. People do think that what the person was doing might be magical, but it’s really noncircumstantial. There was a fever pitch of seeking, yes, but that personal Armageddon—you can’t make that happen. It just happens on its own. The burning.

👁️ Belief, unknowing, and the dream of separation

Rick: There seem to be different camps on this point, some leaning toward personal effort, some leaning toward grace, and some having a both-and perspective: grace and some personal effort are involved. For me, it’s hard to say whether, because a person had dogged determination and applied various practices, they achieved awakening, or whether, because awakening was on the horizon, they simply functioned and felt that way. It’s hard to establish causality here.

Nancy: Is the future predicting the past?

Rick: Yeah, that kind of thing. It’s hard to say which is the cart and which is the horse.

Nancy: I think I was just wired that way because I know and have met so many people who probably have suffered way more than I have and who have been more avid seekers than I have. And so I don’t know why some brains have this shift and some don’t. If I could give it away, I would, but I sure wouldn’t wish what I went through on anyone else because it is so exceedingly painful, or it was for me.

Rick: Yeah. But I think that almost everyone does go through something like that in the transition.

Nancy: I think so.

Rick: And maybe you just don’t go through it until you’re ready to go through it. So it’s not something one can wish for or wish on others, but when the time has come for that, then you’re going to go through that sort of intensity.

Nancy: Yeah, the wormhole will just eat you up.

Rick: Let’s talk about belief a little bit. You mentioned a lot of beliefs were falling away, and you mentioned astrology. I’ve heard you say you don’t believe in reincarnation or God or things like that. My attitude toward belief is that every belief can be looked at scientifically. It’s a hypothesis. There’s no point in making a big fuss about whether it’s true or not. It’s something that may or may not be true, and only some kind of empirical experience can verify or refute it. But people get themselves all riled up about things that they haven’t experienced and perhaps, in many cases, can’t prove.

Nancy: Well, because people are their beliefs.

Rick: Yeah, maybe that’s it.

Nancy: And so we challenge someone’s beliefs, and their whole self-identity is challenged. So I’m not going to say I don’t have any beliefs now. I’m just saying that nothing is—

Rick: It’s not your identity.

Nancy: Nothing is believed. What would you be without beliefs and preferences?

Rick: Yeah, I can get that. In my own case, I believe things. But if they turn out not to be true, then okay, fine. I’d rather know the truth than hang on to some belief.

Nancy: Truth is also a belief, that there is anything true. It’s just another idea. It’s just another category, a way of describing what’s going on. Is it true? Is it not true? Because all we really can know is what’s going on right now.

Yes, but the color and all measurement are coming from your brain. So I would say the physical world exists, but it doesn’t have any characteristics or qualities—time, dimension, or causality. There’s no measurement. It’s all basically an unknowable unknown. And so the brain, using shared, learned words and concepts, seems to make it into things, separate things: the universe, you, me, love, beauty.

Some ideas of things correspond to the physical world: a table, my cup, et cetera. And other things are just purely imaginary: selves, purple unicorns on the moon.

Rick: Oh, those are real.

Nancy: Right. So I would say that what I would call a belief is a thought that feels solid somehow. It’s got weight to it. It feels real. So if you have a recurring thought about God, perhaps, or astrology, or purple unicorns on the moon—and I’m not talking about proving or disproving—and I would never ask anyone to give up a belief because people can’t, because they are beliefs, it’s more like beliefs—I’m talking about real internal core beliefs of any solidity at all, of anything that’s any reference point whatsoever, of all thingness—that just gets blasted away. All ideas of solidity, of something that you know. So it’s really more like this incredible, delicious unknowing that’s what’s going on. And that’s where the awe and the beauty are, just in not knowing and realizing there’s really no one to know. It’s just this seamless wonderment.

The Dream of Separation and Mental Fabrication

And also, there is the dream of separation. Because wonderment is part of the dream of separation. Enlightenment is the dream of separation as well. There’s no escaping this dream. This is the only place that we live and love.

Rick: Nisargadatta or somebody said that enlightenment is a state of perpetual free fall. The bad news is that it’s a perpetual free fall, but don’t worry about it. There’s no ground, so you’re never going to go splat.

Yeah, it is. It’s like falling until the falling’s falling, until there’s no one to land, until there’s no reference points whatsoever. There’s absolutely nothing left. It’s just astonishing that the entire known world is mentally fabricated. It’s just astonishing. And knowing that there are no things makes everything so fantastic. It’s just like this marvelous world that we live in. And being human is so wonderful. I just love it all.

Nancy: Yeah, it is. It’s like falling until the falling’s falling, until there’s no one to land, until there’s no reference points whatsoever. There’s absolutely nothing left. It’s just astonishing that the entire known world is mentally fabricated. It’s just astonishing. And knowing that there are no things makes everything so fantastic. It’s just like this marvelous world that we live in. And being human is so wonderful. I just love it all.

Living in an ordinary world without believing in separation

Rick: For instance, a dog or a bird doesn’t conceptualize the way we do, but they’re going to see the same fire hydrant, or the same stop sign, or the same tree. Maybe they see it differently, obviously, but there’s something there which seems to be a more universal phenomenon than any one individual perspective.

Nancy: Yes, well, the physical world exists. When I die, my dream will be done, but the shared dream of separation continues. So there is a physical world. I don’t think a dog without language says to himself, “Oh, that’s a fire hydrant. I’m going to go over there,” because the dog doesn’t have this imaginary separation. The dog doesn’t even know that it’s a dog. It doesn’t even know it is. Whereas we, through this amazing imaginary separation, are aware of aliveness. There is awareness of being aware. That is the jewel of evolution, that there is this. And it is exceedingly painful when it’s believed in. So that’s where seeking comes in. And when it’s not believed in, then it’s spectacular beyond measure.

Rick: There’s a phrase in Vedanta that you might enjoy. It’s “leisha vidya,” faint remains of ignorance. Without some appreciation of diversity, living wouldn’t be possible. You wouldn’t be able to eat, move, or walk through a door. But you don’t need much of it. Faint remains are adequate.

Nancy: Yeah. Well, even my cat doesn’t eat her own foot when she’s eating dinner.

Rick: Exactly.

Nancy: So, yes, I would say the dream of separation continues much as it did before. I’m still here. I’m just as real as you. And tomorrow. So the dream continues. It’s just now infused with this overwhelming awe and feeling of beauty, no matter what it looks or feels like. It’s just so amazing. And loving this incredible humanness that we all share is spectacular, too.

Rick: How do your various faculties, such as the senses, mind, intellect, and emotions, function now as compared with before the shift?

Nancy: I would say my eyes probably see the same as your eyes, and my hearing, taste, and other senses are probably the same. When they call the third eye opening, that’s like—there’s always the knowing that there is no separation, and yet complete awe at imaginary separation. So there’s never belief in the dream, and yet there’s full participation. The thought stream has changed quite a lot, I’d have to say.

Rick: How so?

Nancy: I used to have just constant self-correction, self-judgment, constant thoughts about how to fix the world or fix things, because everything felt wrong. So the brain is always thinking of ways to try to fix things. And so when you know that there is no perfection or imperfection, but it really feels perfect, and also when you know without a doubt that no one is the instigator of their thought or feeling or belief or action, then there’s just—there’s no blame. It’s just—it is a lot different in those ways.

Rick: Do things ever happen to you which even momentarily make the dream seem more real, such as injuring yourself in some way and experiencing intense pain?

Nancy: No, the big wow is always on. Just last summer, our last cat died, and I was sobbing uncontrollably, but it felt so beautiful to feel so deeply. It was just wonderful. And I have broken my arm twice since the shift, and I have felt pain, but it doesn’t feel like there’s someone who’s feeling it who wants it to go away. Of course, you take an aspirin if you have a headache, and you will get a cast on your wrist if your arm is broken, but it’s like people have secondary pain, for example. There’s always that anxiety. People who have chronic pain have a secondary pain—chronic anxiety that there’s going to be pain—and it makes it even worse.

So if you take that away, it would be like that. There’s never any trying to—any feeling like this is wrong. There’s never the thought, “Oh, this is wrong.” I’ve never thought that anyone is wrong. I just look at people, and they look so beautiful. I would love to tell everyone that they’re beautiful, and I love them, but you just can’t go around doing that these days.

Rick: Some people distinguish between pain and suffering. They say any sentient being experiences pain, and it’s a good thing they do, because they could put your hand on the stove and not know it if you didn’t experience pain. But then there’s this overlay that happens that causes suffering.

Nancy: I wouldn’t ever tell someone that I’m free of suffering, because there’s no one to be free of it. But I feel the same emotions as everyone else, and in some ways it’s more raw and deeper, because there’s no thought that this is wrong. It all feels beautiful. Everything that before I thought was horrible is just—everything seems really beautiful.

Rick: And yet you have a much larger context in which to experience it.

Nancy: The known world would be the mud, but the mud would be beautiful, as well as the ocean.

Rick: You have a different context or a different orientation, which gives you a much broader canvas on which to paint experiences. The individual experiences don’t become the totality of your being, because they don’t overshadow you.

Nancy: There’s always still this swirling conceptual thought-dream going on, but it’s subsumed. It’s supersaturated with the feeling of okayness and the feeling of awe that supersaturates this dream of separation. And it’s still the dream of separation. There’s no escape from this dream of separation. You don’t wake up out of it. You just wake up to it.

Rick: So what do you mean when you say there are no things? There’s a physical world, you say, but it has no qualities or characteristics.

Nancy: There’s the symphony of perception—all perception, the sensorial display—and there’s a simultaneous, inseparable awareness of it. That’s what’s going on.

And thought, which is made of shared, learned words, seems to create things out of this. When you’re a little kid, you learn “tree,” for example, and you learn, “This is a tree.” And then that’s seen as a tree, and it feels like there’s a “you” separate from it. The more things you learn about, the more things that are there solidify the idea that there’s a “you” separate from them.

So by conceptualizing the world into little things, like throwing a lasso around something, just creating thingness, then it appears that there’s a “you” inside of this world of things. But that’s all just made up by the brain, by the thought stream.

Rick: Okay. So let’s get back to the dog, then. The dog doesn’t conceptualize, but it sees a ball, and you can throw the ball. It sees that the ball is separate from the grass, and it runs after it and tries to catch it.

Nancy: See, that story that you just told created a dog, a ball, grass, and running. That’s how the dream writes itself.

Rick: So you’re saying that objects really don’t exist—dogs, grass, balls, et cetera.

Nancy: Shared dream of separation.

Rick: And so, in your case, where there’s no dream of separation…

Nancy: It’s still here. I’m still here.

Rick: But separation is no longer predominant as it once was.

Nancy: Yes. So, you could call it unicity, or people will use words like oneness or wholeness, and every word that you use to describe it sounds like it’s a thing. But there are no things.

So you can’t say “edgelessness,” or all the words, like I say in my poetry, to try to convey this seamless magnificence that I think everyone really knows, but you can’t conceptualize it.

I think a lot of people, especially seekers, know there’s this seamlessness actually going on, with no handholds, no reference points whatsoever. And yet, then there’s the belief in the dream of separation and thought, which is up here.

I think it creates a lot of dissonance, and for some people, it’s probably very, very painful, like it was for me. So there’s belief in the dream, the thought world, the thought dream. And then there’s also this knowing that, well, maybe that’s not it, or maybe there’s something else.

That’s what the feeling of something else is, or the longing to return to love or to wholeness. I think it’s an intuitiveness, and trying to grasp that or trying to understand it will just seem to push it away because it can’t be understood.

Rick: That’s my problem. I’m trying to understand it.

Nancy: Well, you have these great talks because of it.

Rick: If I understood it, maybe I would not be able to do these talks. So, long live my ignorance.

Nancy: It’s really not understandable. And that’s the thing: the mind will search for all the—if there’s a moment or a brief interlude of not believing in solidity, it’s terrifying.

I’ve talked with people, and they just have a bit of it, and it’s very terrifying for people because there’s—where do I go now? Where’s the safe place? But there is no safe place. There is no safe place. And then, of course, there’s seeing through the self as part of one of those things.

✨ God, intelligence, and life doing itself

Rick: I’ve heard you say that you don’t believe in God, and I want to dwell on that in a real, nuanced way. You do really appreciate creation; it’s beautiful. You use the word “awe” over and over again. So there’s this deep, sublime appreciation that characterizes your everyday experience, right? Is there an artist responsible for this beautiful work of art? Do you ever wonder how it is that electrons whiz around a nucleus, or that cells, which are vastly complex little mechanisms, self-replicate?

Nancy: That’s beautiful. You kind of sound like my parents trying to convince me that there was a God when I was a kid.

Rick: But this is not the kind of God that Sam Harris likes to castigate. I’m talking about something much more pervasive.

Nancy: I would say that it doesn’t feel like there are two. I would say life does itself. And to say that everything’s imbued with intelligence—intelligence is a description from your brain, which is calling it intelligent. But I would say it all happens all by itself. There’s no maker of it, or there’s nothing that’s touching everything with intelligence except your intelligence. You are the painter of beauty. You are the painter of intelligence. Your brain is the creator of imaginary separation and the sparkling dew on the spider web in the morning. The story coming through your brain is creating all these things and a “you” to feel like your jaw is dropping because it’s so spectacular.

Rick: But what created my brain?

Nancy: Your brain is just part of life doing itself.

Rick: Right.

Nancy: The belief in separation makes it feel like there is a creator or somebody doing something, or a vast intelligence or something that does it all. But to me, it’s obvious that it’s all of a piece. It just all does itself. Spontaneously, naturally arising, the world appears, and then it seems to appear that there are separate things in it.

Rick: I would say that the creator is not a puppeteer detached from his puppets. That life you say is doing itself is what I’m alluding to as the creator. There is nothing but that. So there’s just this totality of whatever we want to call it, which has, as one of its qualities, intelligence and organizing power.

Nancy: Well, then your brain would be part of it, and that’s how it can recognize it.

Rick: And talk about it. Yeah, exactly.

Nancy: Right. But I would still say that the intelligence is coming from you. I wouldn’t say that a rock has intelligence, personally.

Rick: I would. Look closely.

Nancy: I would say that it’s your brain creating the idea of rockness and hardness and softness and love and beauty. Intelligence is this creating and painting the dream of separation. And you are one of these imaginary separate things.

Rick: If we look at what’s going on in a rock at the molecular or atomic level, we see this marvel of orderliness and systematic laws of nature. It’s not just randomness or chaos.

Nancy: As I said, that’s because of our description of it. We are part of it, and only through us do we recognize it. I studied biochemistry, and I loved learning how the enzymes worked, and proteins, and digestion. I studied it because I was trying to feel good.

Rick: One way of trying to feel good.

Nancy: There’s got to be a way I can do something to this skull and feel good. So, yes, of course it is marvelous. I don’t think I ever really thought that there was a creator of it. I have never had that belief. And then when everything dropped away and I realized that life was doing itself, then I could say, yes, it is all of a piece of itself. So life does itself. And it takes us to see the beauty and the intricacy and perfection and wonder.

Rick: How could there be anything other than the totality? What could be outside of it? What could be separate from it?

Nancy: Right.

Rick: Nothing. It’s all-pervading: all, big and small, fast and near and far, gross and subtle. And it’s the self-interaction of that which gives rise, ultimately, to brains and beings who can enjoy that as a living experience.

Nancy: Yes, I would say that the universe kisses itself through our lips.

Rick: Very good.

Nancy: I know that in the past, other people who’ve had this shift would say that it’s all God or all self or something. That doesn’t have to be my term of reference.

Rick: It’s just a choice of terminology.

Nancy: Right. But I never used the word, because of the ideas that people have of God as being a separate creator or something. It’s just not in my vocabulary.

Rick: There are points in Patanjali I wanted to read and see what you think about them from the Yoga Sutras. He says:

Some who have attained higher states or know unmanifest nature are drawn into birth in this world by their remaining latent impressions of ignorance and more naturally come to these states of Samadhi.

Next verse:

Others follow a systematic path by which the higher Samadhi is attained. Those who pursue their practices with intensity of feeling, vigor, and firm conviction achieve concentration and the fruits thereof more quickly compared to those of medium or lesser intensity.

Rick: For me, those verses evoke a cart-and-horse argument. It’s hard to say whether practice causes awakening, or whether awakening was on the horizon and led someone to practice.

Rick: A fellow I interviewed spent 18 years on death row. Under those circumstances, he kept himself sane by doing intense spiritual practice while he was in a little concrete box. It ruined his health, but he said, “If I had to do it over again, I would,” because it placed him in a circumstance where he had to apply himself with that sort of intensity, and it bore fruit.

Nancy: Yeah.

Rick: You mentioned that practices might reinforce the notion of a practicer. Ramana used to be fond of the phrase, “It takes a thorn to remove a thorn.” Spiritual practice makes you accident-prone. There are practices which can catalyze purification and facilitate the conditions in which realization may occur.

Nancy: I still think that saying there is a path or a method, a practice, will perpetuate the illusion that it happens to you, first of all, and that there is a path when it’s really the falling away of the path, the ground, the goal. It’s the falling away of everything. And I don’t ever tell people to not do anything or to do anything. I’ll just say there is no “you” to do or not do anything.

So I understand that because I talk with seekers a lot, and all I do is speak in nonsense words to trick their brains up instead, because that’s all I can do. What happens naturally is that all these words come out that might catapult you out of all these assumptions.

Rick: And how is that working for you? What is your experience in terms of all the people that you talk with?

Nancy: A lot of people have glimpses when I’m talking with them, or if they’re listening to a video or reading something that I wrote. And I also have to say that when the glimpse goes away, they blame me for that, too.

Rick: Well, as long as they credit you for the glimpse, then they can blame you for the loss of it.

Nancy: Because I think it’s a very rare thing. I searched Facebook a lot, in different groups and things. I found a lot of people who had seen through the illusion of self, but usually hardly anyone who had recognized this unicity, this no-thingness.

I’m a pretty private person. I just write the books, I write the blog, and I post on Facebook. But I’m not a teacher because it can’t be taught. I’m just more of an artist, I suppose.

Rick: If, ten or twenty years before your awakening, someone had said to you the kinds of things you’re now saying, what effect do you think it might have had on you?

Nancy: Oh, I would have been an avid seeker. I wouldn’t have taken time off, probably. I wouldn’t have—and maybe it would have prevented it. I don’t know. But I know that if I had read that, I would be longing for this, for sure.

Rick: But haven’t you just been saying that it’s not so good to be a seeker because it reinforces the notion of a person who seeks?

Nancy: Right, so I’m probably doing more harm than good. But these songs have been coming out ever since it happened, so just about every day I write something. It’s never felt like I’ve ever really written a word. I just watch “Amaze” as my fingers go over the keyboard, or my thumb goes on my phone. It’s so amazing that all this seems to be happening all by itself.

🎵 Poetry and the return of humanness

Rick: Irene wants me to talk to you more about your journey and about poetry. Would you like to talk about that, more about your journey and more about poetry?

Nancy: As I said, I wrote sad love songs.

Rick: Sad love songs.

Nancy: And then I didn’t really write again. I did a lot of painting, and I was a bead artist, so I was always doing something in the arts. After the shift, probably it’s just so stunning that the poetry started to flow. And I’d stop, I don’t know. But it’s just about every day I write.

Rick: So you didn’t used to write poetry?

Nancy: No. I never was a lover of poetry, never read a lot of poetry. I read Walt Whitman when I was a teenager, but I never have read poetry, really. I just keep writing. I get ideas and then I just watch my fingers go. It’s amazing.

Rick: How do you feel when you’re writing it?

Nancy: I don’t know. I’m not that introspective. I don’t look at how I feel.

Rick: It just pours out of you. You’re not thinking—do you do a lot of rewriting and tinkering with it, or does it just come out the way it does?

Nancy: I don’t do much rewriting at all. I’m putting together another book, and I’m looking through all the stuff I’ve written since October 1st. I’m just putting it all on there, and it all looks good to me. I’m not very discerning. I just put it all in the book and see what happens, see if people like it or not. I like to read it.

Rick: How do you feel about the idea that awakening means finding something unchanging outside of thought and emotion?

Nancy: I would say it’s the opposite. I am this flow of thought and emotion. There’s nothing outside of it. This is it. This is it.

This is the only world that we live in and love.

And it’s wonderful to not try to escape this, because I had a lifetime of trying to escape it, and I know what people are going through. I was there.

Rick: You’ve probably heard the terms “spiritual bypassing” and “dissociation.”

Nancy: I think there still is, especially for people who have the realization of no-self. They’ll just go, “Well, there’s nobody here,” and I’m like, “Well, you can’t exist as a non-self. You have to exist as a self. If I call your name, ‘Hey, Rick,’ of course you turn around.”

Rick: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi had an outline of stages of development. He called one “cosmic consciousness,” meaning that the no-self state had been realized—the sort of realization that one is not the actor, one is not the doer, and activity seems to go on by itself without any agent. Then he talked about “unity consciousness,” in which everything is one living wholeness, including all the emotions and experiences.

Nancy: I have to say that I felt, during the year up to the shift, like I was this separate thing called awareness.

Rick: He said, “A heart can’t stand separation, and it wants to bridge the gulf.” So this reunification process takes place until everything again is brought back into a wholeness in which the heart is fully blossomed.

Nancy: That’s beautiful. It feels like I’m just dancing on the edge of a feather between love and nothing at all.

So I think it’s the return of full-on humanness in all aspects. And for me, sharing our humanness is what life is about. That’s the most magnificent of all: to share our humanness, the joys and sorrows.

Closing reflections

Rick: This has been a great conversation, Nancy. I really enjoyed talking to you.

Nancy: I loved talking to you, too.

Rick: I hope I didn’t seem argumentative, but I just like having lively discourse.

Nancy: No, not at all. You seemed like a very gentle, beautiful person. And I really enjoyed our conversation.

Rick: Traditional Buddhism and Hinduism have a long history of debate and vigorous discourse about everything that matters. This helps students to go beyond fundamentalism and see a situation from multiple points of view.

Nancy: I love talking to people about this because it brings up all kinds of shiny new things. Talking with you will elicit all kinds of more things for me to write about.

Rick: I’ve been talking with Nancy Neithercut, and I will link to your blog and your books on Amazon from the page that we’ll create on BatGap.

Nancy: My Facebook page is public, so anyone’s welcome to get on there if they like. But I protect my private life, I have to say.

Rick: Thanks to those who’ve been listening or watching. Thanks again to Nancy, and we will see you for the next one.

Nancy: All right. Thank you.

Rick: You’re welcome, Nancy. Bye-bye.

Nancy: Bye-bye. [Music]