Panel Discussion on Refined Perception
Rick Archer : Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer and as you can see I have a number of guests tonight. This will be a panel discussion on refined or as it’s sometimes called celestial perception. And the reason I wanted to do this is that, first of all, if you read the spiritual literature of various traditions or look at the art, the iconography, you see plenty of references or depictions, references to or depictions of stuff that people don’t ordinarily perceive with their gross sensory capabilities. You see halos, auras, angels, all this stuff. Those traditions are rife with that kind of thing. And so the question is, what’s going on? What is all that? If it’s so common in the spiritual literature, is it important? Is it something that people can expect to begin experiencing as they evolve spiritually? And indeed, I often get emails from people. I got one just this week from a woman in Australia who, I actually have some notes on it here, she walked into her three-year-old daughter’s bedroom and had an unexpected kundalini awakening three years ago. She wasn’t really into this stuff at all. The experience started with a deep gravitational pull to meditate. She wasn’t a meditator. And then she saw a red line go straight up through her spine and out the center of her eyebrows. And then she opened her eyes and Sri Anandamayi Ma was sitting opposite me and took me through a series of initiations. And this kind of thing isn’t uncommon. And she goes on to talk about she’s always in the company of two beings who are pretty much always visible and all kinds of things. She even wrote a bunch of questions that I might ask some of our guests later. Now, the non-dual community, of which many of whose members I’ve interviewed on this show, hasn’t really paid much attention to this. In fact, most of them would probably consider this topic a distraction. The New Age community has been paying a lot of attention to it for some decades, and everybody’s channeling Saint Germain and whatnot. But there’s often a lot of woo-woo associated with that. And I think perhaps the non-dual community has been wise to eschew that whole orientation and just try to cut to the quick, cut to the core of reality. Of course, one of the greatest founders of the contemporary non-dual scene was Ramana Maharshi. And when Papaji first went to see him, H. W. R. Poonja, Papaji, he told him that he was a Christian devotee and that he often played with Krishna. Krishna would appear to him and he would play with him. And Ramana Maharshi said, “Is he here now?” And Papaji said, “No.” And Ramana Maharshi said, “Well, that which comes and goes isn’t real. And you have to find that which doesn’t come and go.” So, speaking of Krishna, in the Gita, Krishna says, “The unreal has no being. The real never ceases to be. The final truth about them both has been known by the seers of ultimate reality.” So, if that which is ultimately real never ceases to be, should we be interested in things which come and go? Are they valid points of attention for a spiritual aspirant? So, those are some of the questions I want to just raise to set this up. And some other questions we’ll probably discuss in this talk are what this subtle or refined perception actually is, whether it’s relevant to spiritual awakening, as I just suggested, whether it is an inevitable development on the path or a special aptitude like musical or athletic ability, the nature of our relationships with the beings which reside on subtler levels of creation. Do we have a relationship? Do we support each other in some way? And whether subtle perception should be intentionally cultivated or whether it will develop on its own, if and when it is meant to. And if it can be developed, what are the prerequisites to and stages of its development? Another point I just want to throw in before introducing the guests is that I have a feeling, just from everything I’ve been exposed to, that we’re not talking about one simple thing which can be put into a cubbyhole, that there is a vast range of, you could say, subtler layers of creation and all sorts of different experiences are possible, depending upon what range one is open to. One other point I want to make. Many people in this room and many people watching this will have been students of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. He made the point very clearly in a number of beautiful lectures that self-realization is not the end of the line. In a sense, it’s a foundation or a prerequisite to much more profound levels of development or experience. And he went on to talk about refined perception at great length and associated that with culturing of the heart, expansion of love. So I think we’ll be talking about that too tonight. So let me introduce our guests. I’m going to introduce them very briefly, and if they want to introduce themselves at greater length, they can do so when they each speak. So I’ll do Stuart starting with my left. Oh, one more thing I want to say, and that is that everybody on this panel has been reluctant to participate. [Laughter] Not as reluctant as you. To come out and talk about this stuff, because I think partly it’s rather intimate. It’s a very gentle, intimate, private kind of experience. It’s not something you go shouting from the rooftops. And also, I think it has to do perhaps a little bit with cultural norms. If we all lived in a society in which everybody perceived this sort of thing routinely, it would be no big deal. You know, what do you have for lunch? It would be like that. [Laughter] Oh, I saw a celestial being today. Big deal. Let’s go shopping. But it’s not. It’s unusual. And even to speak of a spiritual awakening, what to say of any sort of soul perceptions, many people get flack from their friends who can’t relate to Joe Schmo being enlightened. They know the guy. It doesn’t seem like he’s enlightened. So there’s a little blowback, I think, that a lot of people experience when they come out with this stuff. And very often when they experience that, they stop talking about it. So it was sort of a little bit like herding cats to get everybody to come on this panel. All right, now I’m ready to introduce them. So to my left, Rufina Farouk Akhlazaria. She and her late husband Farouk have been teaching meditation in the St. Louis area for a long time to people who would otherwise go to jail or who are on probation. There are some judges down there who sentenced them to learn meditation instead. That’s right. So that’s great. And as I say, each person will be able to introduce themselves at greater length. And Rufina is the only person on this panel whom I haven’t yet interviewed. I’ll be interviewing her in August. To his left, Francis Dale Bennett. Francis is, for the better part of 30 years, was a Trappist and Benedictine monk in various monasteries in the U.S., Canada, and France. He and I are good friends, and if I interview him many more times, I’m going to have to change the name of the show to Francis at the next panel. [Laughter] Okay. To his left, Harry Alto. Harry is a professional artist and businessman here in Fairfield, Iowa. And after I interviewed him a couple of months ago, he started getting flooded with emails and speaking requests and so on and so forth. And people were emailing me saying, “Cancel everybody else. Just interview Harry every week.” [Laughter] So he was a very popular guest on the show. To his left, Kristen Kirk. Kristen is a healer and spiritual teacher who lives in the Northampton, Massachusetts area. Her interview on that gap was also very popular. And I’ll let her introduce herself at greater length when she speaks. And to her left, Stan Kenz. And Stan, I’ll just read part of a little bio he gave me here. “Since his immortal nature was revealed to him in 1994, Stan reports being established in lively self-referral awareness.” He is a PhD candidate at Marshall University of Management here in Fairfield, Iowa, doing research on a topic that relates to what we’re going to be talking about tonight. And he was, I believe, the — oh, here’s some. “Since his early childhood, Stan’s experiences and interactions with celestial and light beings continues to expand in both regularity and meaning.” And Stan was, I believe, the third person I interviewed on that gap. >> I think so. >> Yeah. So thank you all for doing this. >> Thank you, Harry. >> So I don’t know exactly how this is going to unfold. I think we’ll have discussion among ourselves here for a while, and then maybe after an hour or so, we’ll open it up to audience questions and discussion, and we’ll just kind of let it roll. So do any of you — I didn’t mean to put anybody on the spot, but do any of you have an inclination to go ahead and speak first? And I’d like each of you, if you would, to just describe, you know, your own experience in relationship to this topic and your kind of understanding of the topic relevant to your own experience. And, you know, we’ll keep each one a little brief because if we each go on for 15 minutes, that will be the whole night. So let’s just kind of go from one person to the next, and who would like to go first?
Stan Kendz: Well, I can start, Rick, if that’s okay with you and the panel. My experience has started when I was a very young person, probably — I was thinking back today, maybe about eight or nine years old. I used to go to summer camp, and it was a Christian summer camp, and we were out in the woods with an open chapel. And I can remember being very bored with the service, but I used to watch sort of like shadow or angelic beings fly back and forth from one side of the adornments of the altar, and I entertained myself with that for quite some time. And then as life progressed and I grew older, I had episodes, and they didn’t last for my whole life, and I don’t always have them now, but I had celestial hearing for quite a few incidences, saw other types of beings, and I went through an evolution. As my own nervous system and my own consciousness expanded, those beings took different forms. Sometimes at one stage of my life, the plant kingdom sort of spoke to me very, very lively. Later than that, I had interactions with beings that my senses interpreted as animals. I had a spiritual experience with a possum, and the animal came out of the woods and rested its head on my foot, and it actually terrified me because I was sitting there hoping to interact with nature on a very deep level, but when it actually happens, there are some parts of your mind and thinking and ego, and it’s just not something that we’re used to doing in our culture, so you have reactions that you don’t anticipate for yourself. And then I developed the ability to see auras at a very early time in my 20s, continued around many, many years doing auric workshops and teaching people how to regain auric sight in color and the meaningfulness. I continued on then to work in other areas of development in dream time, lucid dreaming. And then as time goes on, I would have experiences, and one of the most vivid was there was a being that emerged from a tree while I was on a vision quest, and I was just sitting there quietly in the woods with no clothes on, merging with nature, and I saw this what looked to me like puffball mushrooms start to grow out of the side of a tree. I had a biology degree at the time, so I was kind of intrigued that this thing could grow so fast. And over a two-hour period, it grew about that big, and then a stem came out, and then it started to rotate, and when it turned towards me, it had a face on it. And that was when I really wished I could pass out intentionally. And it sort of progressed from there. And what I understand is that the nervous system and all the different levels of psychology have to integrate, or at least that’s the way I interpret it. And so sometimes a being will take a form that doesn’t just shock you to pieces, because who knows what it could really be. It could be a light being or something that we can’t even cognize, but over the years, as I’ve expanded my possibilities and gotten more used to it, they seem to be more directly interacting now, maybe just as a light being directly. And so that’s my story of how the evolution transpired in my life.
Rick Archer: Who would like to go next? Well, let’s go from–I don’t want to just go from right to left. Do you want to go next, Kristian?
Kristin Kirk: Yeah, can you remind me of the question?
Rick Archer: Well, just to talk about your own experience with this topic of subtle perception or refined perception, when and how did it dawn, and what was the nature of the experience? And is, and how is it continuing to develop? You know, five minutes.
Kristin Kirk: I guess it’s easiest for me just to speak about what’s kind of present now. There’s been just sort of a falling away of what was my normal, what used to be the normal kind of reality, and I’m experiencing everything as conscious. So, yeah, whether it’s the chair I’m sitting in, you know, the walls, the trees, the rocks, the wind, you know, I mean, like everything I just experience as consciousness, and that there’s–I was sharing on Friday that at some point I realized that the Disney movies were more real, depicted reality more clearly than most of us understand, you know, where they have the teapots dancing and talking to each other, and that that’s more actually how I’m experiencing consciousness. And then in terms of all the different dimensions that are also part of my experience of reality, that there’s communication just throughout, there’s nothing as being withheld. It’s only my experiences, it’s our perspective that limits that access. And so for me, before I had the reality kind of shift in 2003, I had what people would call more like psychic perception, and then as things shifted, what I want to say, what’s different is there’s not a separateness, so that before there was a self having psychic experience, looking and exploring, and after the shift there wasn’t interest in reaching out and exploring, there was just a resting, and then reality continued to open itself. And then I would just say briefly that just what comes to mind, the value that for me is that communication with all these different beings is profoundly supportive, and has supported my spiritual evolution, continues to, and deepens my love, my compassion, my understanding, my presence, my ability to share. And in the sharing it’s not like it’s happening at something that I’m doing, there’s a whole configuration of beings that all come in to support whatever is happening, whether it’s a talk or a healing, so there’s no separation. So that one value, and then another is just the awareness of what an exquisite place we’re living. I think people miss that, so often people are reaching for some spiritual transcendence, and getting to get away from physicality, and there’s no difference, like this is, in my language, this is like divine existence that’s happening. And so it’s not at all, I mean it can be a distraction if one uses it that way, but in my experience, in the embodiment of this realization, life just gets richer and deeper and more exquisite, and separation just continues to fall away and fall away and fall away, and deepens relationships, respect, caring, caring for the planet, caring for each other.
Rick Archer: Okay, who would like to go next?
Harri Aalto: Everything she said. No, my experience has also started at a young age, but I won’t go into that. But I will say that subtle areas of experience are just as permanent as gross or non-changing areas. The whole field of consciousness is a continuum. The subtle areas of creation are there all the time. What’s missing is the ability to see them, or be them. Seeing is believing, right? So in the transcending process, I could turn the whole thing upside down and say that the most beautiful, most sublime area of consciousness is this relative that we live in, this so-called changing area. Now, this physical reality is connected to the divine levels of consciousness, and divine levels of consciousness are connected to the fundamental level of human consciousness, that abstraction, that light, the knowledge that exists at the fundamental level of human consciousness. That area of consciousness percolates into the divine level. The divine level percolates into the so-called gross level, but I don’t like calling it a gross level because, like you both were saying, the divine level is just as immortal as any other level. The gross relative level is fundamentally where all the benefits are going to be enjoyed. The divine levels of consciousness have a function, in the same way that your fundamental level of consciousness has a function. Let’s say the laws of nature, all these aspects of nature – fire, air, water, space and so forth – all these elements of nature are administrated by the personifications, let’s call them, or the gods of nature. These gods, these devas, they are constantly active in relation to us. They’re doing their thing. If you have bliss, if you have knowledge, it’s coming from somewhere. It does not have a source. It has a source, and the source is the subtle level of your own consciousness, and everybody’s consciousness has this. The only thing that might be missing is the ability to see, hear, taste and touch these levels. Now, the subtle levels of consciousness are constantly open to me. They’ve always been open. They’ve been open for 30 years. And I don’t always go there, but it’s always there, I can feel it right now. And it’s not so much that there are beings there, it’s more like you’re there, consciousness is there, your wholeness is there, your love is there, your feelings are there, your knowledge is there. All of it is kind of like an exquisite continuum, it’s like a huge … it’s a cosmic hierarchy of sublimity, or whatever it is. It’s wonderful, and I’m not the guy to talk about love and all that. I’m kind of … I’m a little bit … usually I’m very shy about these things. But human consciousness can tap into anything it wants to, anything you want to. And it’s so natural, so just there, so immediate, so now. The subtle levels of consciousness aren’t out there somewhere in the heavens. They occupy the same space, the same physiology, the same consciousness. You know, our bodies sit here, but our bodies are also cosmic in nature. It’s not just our minds that are cosmic in nature. The whole show is cosmic. And it depends on where your attention is, your abilities are, but it’s so natural, it’s just seeing is believing. That’s enough for now. [Laughter]
Francis Bennett: No, you first, ladies first.
Ruffina Anklesaria: Okay, about twenty years ago, a friend whom I met for the first time, he’s a meditator, a Maharishi Transcendental Meditation meditator, told me that he had an experience with someone on Purusha, another meditator.
Rick Archer: Purusha is just a monastic program in the TM movement.
Ruffina Anklesaria: Okay, thank you for that clarification. He said that they were meditating together once, and when they opened their eyes they were in a different place and in a different time, and everything around them looked different. And since then, it had completely changed his life, and that experience that he had, he was able to transfer it to others also. So I got immediately very interested. Being a teacher of Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation myself since 1978, I was very intrigued. So this was about, like I said, about twenty years ago, and I immediately asked him, “I’m going to be the next one. I want to get that experience. I want to know what it is.” So, the same evening, because he was leaving the next day, the same evening we sat together, and I had the most transformative experience of my life, which I’m telling you all about for the first time. I have been very shy about this, but I have gone through a lot in my life, in the last two years especially. So many things have changed in my life. I’ve become a widow. I got very sick. Many big changes in my life. And I thought that this is the time of my life that I want to give back what God has given me so much of. And this experience was the transformation that began a whole new world that I’m going to spend a few more minutes, perhaps, than my colleagues, to explain to you what this life has been like and how it can benefit you in some more detail. So, I sat with my friend, like on that sofa, and I’m here, probably a little closer, and he looked into my eyes, and he just told me to just look into his eyes, which I did. And I started to feel the ethers around me change. I could actually see like the walls started to shake, and everything around me became very ethereal. They took on a different property than what we could see around us usually. So I was just easy with the experience, and I continued. I’m used to transcending. With my eyes open, I kept looking. Suddenly, in addition to this, a huge globe of light came out of his third eye, and then more of it came out, and it filled the room. The whole room now was turning into brilliant, golden, celestial light. I was into this. So I was enjoying it, and I thought this was it. There were no words being exchanged. So everything was filled with golden light that was emanating from his third eye. Then my third eye also was pulsating greatly, and light started to come out of my third eye also, and I could see all of this happening. And more than that, the room was transformed into the most beautiful celestial place you had ever seen. If you watched a movie like by Cecil B. DeMille or any of these guys from long ago, it’s as if you opened a jewel box, and everything in the room that you had seen previously to be gross became made of golden light of different densities. Suddenly, everything became so heavenly. I felt I was in a different place already, but that was just the beginning. So first of all, this huge jewel box opened up, and this jewel box was everything around me already, except I could see it, it pure golden light in different densities of it. Then as I looked at my friend, he started to change. He didn’t look like the person that I started out with either. His face started to change like the mask fell away, and immediately I saw who he was previously in his last incarnation, and I knew who he was to me, and I felt it and saw it, and I knew that he was seeing me also in my past, just as he was seeing and I was seeing. I saw where we were. We were in China. Then I saw we were in India. Then we were in Europe. And then the masks of all his past fell away. I saw hundreds of lifetimes that we had lived together in 3D clarity. He was not–no, I could still speak. I don’t know how, but I was able to speak. He could still speak too, and we were softly having some minor conversation, but it was really mind-blowing. I saw all the lives that we had lived, and they were numerous. I was now going like flicking by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. I was seeing the whole stretch of all the lives we had lived together, and I was feeling at the same time in my heart all that he had been to me during that time. And at the same time, there was such silence. The silence was so palpable. It’s like nothing you normally would experience, even while transcending.
Rick Archer: So that was it.
Ruffina Anklesaria: So that was my shaking-up experience, my transformative experience, my first time tasting the celestial gold. After that, I wanted to keep this experience, and I noticed that golden light was flowing out of me readily, and doing different things, speaking on the phone or whatever, doing anything, the golden light would become apparent. And if I sat with it, and I looked into the eyes of someone else, I noticed the transformation could take place again. I could see the world made of celestial golden light, the sight of which created such bliss. I could feel my heart bursting. I could feel bliss pouring out of my heart. The silence that you would expect in the transcendent became lively in the relative. I could feel so much silence, even while the world was transforming at the same time. So I continued to do this like an advanced technique. I was used to meditating already regularly twice a day. I just tried every day to enliven this celestial level with someone else. And it grew, the experience grew with me over the years. I began to see, you all here cannot believe how beautiful the world is, just as it is right now, if only you could see it. And it breaks the boundaries in your heart when you can see how beautiful everything is. It’s all interwoven, the ability to perceive, to feel the bliss, to feel the silence and to enliven all of it together. It’s like the whole wave of the ocean rising up at the same time. So this was happening, and I realized I could see people’s past lives also. So I decided to experiment. I asked one or two of my relatives to sit with me for me to look at them. I had the most marvelous show of my life. I saw who these people have been to me in all the previous incarnations. I saw, for example, my sister-in-law, who is willing to speak to you also. I saw that she and I were burned at the stake together in medieval times for witchcraft. That’s one of the things. I saw in one of her lives that she was my mother, and she was– we didn’t have a good relationship, and it made her cry when she saw it with me again. Remember, we were not exchanging any words. This is all communicated simultaneously. So these are just some of the experiences. I did this with a couple of people and was able to peel back, through sight only, the information that is stored with us at all times. I don’t have to do anything. Even as I was speaking to Francis outside just now for the first time, I could already see the mask of his face peeling back. [laughter] So after doing this a couple of times, I decided, “Wow, this is really something. Let me try this now on something that might be really useful besides me getting all excited about it.” And I had a friend who had just lost his wife, and he was grieving greatly. A young man–I was young also–and I asked him to sit with me and let me go into gold, which is what I call it. I go into the gold because I go into the golden light and everything becomes that. And he got great relief from his grief when I was finished with him after a couple of minutes. I said, “Wow, this is beyond my control now. I better check with my master.” I communicated to Maharishi what was happening to me, and I got the message back from him that I was very beautiful. Maharishi said, “Sign of increasing purity. Use the experience to bless the world. Forget about the past lives.” [laughter] So by that time, after you’ve seen many past lives, and you realize you’ve been all things to all people, you have lost, it loses its charm. So I was kind of relieved with that kind of information because after you’ve tried every candy in the store, it doesn’t make any difference. We’ve been beggar, king, queen, everything. One thing I’d like to say, though, is that when you change sex from one life to the next, the first life you change your sex from the previous one, you probably will end up being gay or lesbian. It gives you great compassion when you know this, that if you’ve been a woman or a man for a long time, and it’s your first incarnation, also when you’re making the change, it happens spontaneously. Have compassion on the gay, homosexual community. It’s natural. It’s a change of the energies. Okay, because I know I’ve taken a lot of time, I must get you to the present. So since that time, I kept it quiet, and I would just sit and go into golden light, permeating everything and just enjoying the growth and the bliss that took place. In the beginning, I froze like a statue. As I have read in Anandamayi Ma’s books also, I would just look into your eyes. Let’s say I was looking there. I would just sit and look, and my body would freeze completely, and the golden light would pour out of me and enliven the whole room. Now, if there’s somebody else in the house, as I had, they always knew when I was in my golden experience because it would change the environment. They could feel the difference. So that continued as the years went by. I just knew I had this ability, and I kept it to myself basically until I realized, let’s try this again after so many years. I did it with a brother who has retained the ability, so whoever I do it with gets the same ability. That’s the thing.
Rick Archer: Your phone is ringing [Laughter]
Rick Archer: She’s got it turned off.
Ruffina Anklesaria: When the Shakti from me goes into your eye, it enlivens the same experience in you, and you can retain it and have the ability. My daughter here has the ability. Five years ago, she had always expressed an interest in what I was doing, and I told her at some point she would get it, but my husband was a bit afraid about these past lives and all these things. We didn’t want to expose it. But one particular day, I felt it very strong right then and there. She was sitting in front of me, and I said, “Annie, look at me.” And Annie looked at me, and I just zapped her. And what was very beautiful for me is that she described to me what I was experiencing. I felt like crying because this was an innocent child with no experience or theoretical information about anything. She told me, “Mummy, I’m seeing the light waves coming out of your forehead, moving like this, coming out of you.” That’s precisely what I was seeing. And from then, she got the ability also. Now, this has had tremendous effects, as you would imagine. But right now, in the present time, I have found that doing any activity, the celestial light comes. I could be watching TV. I could be very sick. I have to tell you, what’s happening to my body is not what’s happening to my celestial perception. I was in the emergency room. Couldn’t even speak because I was in so much pain, and I was filling the room with golden light at the same time. It’s very visible. I can see the light pouring out of me, and if you have perception at that level, you can see it too. But recently, what really kicked me out of my seat to call Rick is that I was lecturing as a TM instructor. I was speaking to someone, and while I was speaking to them, I looked into their eyes, and the whole room turned into gold, and she saw the whole thing. And she was kind of like totally flabbergasted because the whole room filled with light and changed in front of her eyes. So I thought to myself, “Maybe I should do something about this.” Because it seems like once given the right start, people’s third eyes can easily and naturally be opened and gives them celestial perception. In my viewpoint, oh, I should tell you, in the beginning, I used to see celestial golden beings as well. I would be going to check someone’s meditation, and two golden people would come and sit next to them. I see a little golden boy walking around the house. Golden beings were also in the room. I do not have that perception at this time. Other things have taken its place. I seem to be able to light up a room literally, and I seem to be able to transfer the capability fairly easily as well. So that is my experience in a nutshell. I’m sorry if that was a bit big. But I have to tell you that this has broken the boundaries of my heart in a big way. That bliss flowing through me, that light that emerges from me, has really made me a much more loving being. I think the people around me should be the ones to speak about this. It is not right that I should speak about this. But I think the boundaries of my heart just fell away as bliss flowed through me all these years. And I think higher states of consciousness is nothing like I expected. I thought it would be a sterile place of non-activity. It is not that. If I am there, it is a place of great joyfulness, happiness, love, full of God. I love God. I am a total devotee of the Lord. I have also divine manifestations, which I cannot speak about in this lecture. The lecture doesn’t leave room for that. And I will leave something for August interview as well. But I have to say, my world is so much richer. It is not the passive, cold place that I expected an enlightened world to be. It is so much more beautiful. I care so much more for people. I feel sometimes that the whole world is living in my heart. And I can feel everyone inside of my heart. I feel sometimes like the gardener in front of me is so dear to me. As dear as the guy who is putting on my roof. As dear as my sister, as my child. I feel them in my own heart so much. I could do anything for them. It is nothing like I had anticipated. And I am very glad it isn’t. So that’s my talk. Thank you.
Rick Archer: Brother Francis.
Francis Bennett: Oh my.
Rick Archer: Tough act to follow, huh?
Francis Bennett: Yeah. All of them are. Normally when I give a talk or something, I kind of have a little sense of what I am going to say. Not always. And this is one of those “not always” times. So I will just open my mouth and see what comes out. I would have to say that the essence of what I realized in 2010 when I had a kind of major shift, in my own words, the way I would describe it if I had to put it in a nutshell, was that I suddenly saw so clearly that God is in everything and everything is in God. That the reality of God that I had been seeking my whole life as a monk had always, always been present. It had never not been present. And everywhere I looked I saw God’s presence in all these various different forms. And I always loved God my whole life, but that set in my heart a fire burning of love for God that was very intense. And this week I thought of an example that would relate to this. And that was an example that I think a lot of people could relate to. If you were in love with someone, if you had, if you’re a man, whatever you like, men or women, it doesn’t matter, if you were in love with someone, when you’re looking into the face of your beloved, you would notice every little detail. You might look into the eyes of a woman you love and you might notice the little flecks in her eyes. You might notice her eyelashes, you might notice the freckles across her nose. You might notice the way she wrinkles her nose when she gets angry. You might notice all kinds of little details. And the reason your perception of that person is so refined and so precise is because you love them with all your heart. And my sense is that when love for God sets your heart on fire, your perception just automatically, love refines it. Love itself refines it. And as Harry said, I think beautifully, the idea that this phenomenal world we live in is not just an illusion that can just be dismissed as nothing and be, you know, just let it go to hell in a handbasket, you could say, because it’s not real anyway. All that’s real is the absolute reality. It’s more a matter of seeing the absolute reality in all these forms, of seeing the presence of God in everything that exists. So, I thought when Rufina was talking, I thought of this image of the Wizard of Oz, you know, that scene where Dorothy’s house lands in Oz, and when she first opens the door, and everybody kind of goes, “Ahh!” You know, she opens the door, and from this kind of drab, black and white world, she opens the door and there’s this magical world of color and vibrancy and life and love. And I think when a person awakens to this presence of God, that I would call awakening to the presence of God, it’s like that. The world takes on a whole different look. Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is in your midst,” or, “The kingdom of heaven is within you.” It can be translated either way. And I think what Harry said is really accurate, that there are all these various dimensions of reality, the phenomenal relative reality. And they’re not in some faraway heaven somewhere, they’re all around us, they’re within us. That there are so many layers of dimensions of reality, of phenomenal reality, that are manifestations of God, that are in a certain sense an incarnation of God. And the eyes of love, when they’re awakened, the eyes of the heart see that. And that not only includes this physical world that we live in, that most of us are conscious of on some level, and the divinity of that world, but it includes other worlds that we’re normally not aware of. And I think that’s sort of, for me, that’s the essence of this. It’s looking at phenomenal reality with the eyes of love, with the eyes of God, you could say. God looking at God, in all these forms. And there are many forms that most human beings are not aware of. And at some point after that awakening, I started becoming aware of various other dimensions. And they’re very real, they exist. There’s a movie out now called “Heaven is for Real”. And I think that the message of that movie, it’s a beautiful movie by the way, get a chance to see it. It’s about an innocent little boy who gets a look at these celestial realms. And they’re not in some far off place, they’re right here with us, all around us, and within us. And I guess that’s what I have as an opener. And maybe that’s all I have.
Rick Archer: Rather than me ask questions, I’d like to have the panelists continue to interact, if some of the rest of you have responses to what anybody else has said. Kristin?
Kristin Kirk: I do actually. I haven’t ever spoken with Harry, and after watching part of the interview, I totally wanted to have a conversation.
Harri Aalto: Well here we are.
Kristin Kirk: I think, so this is more just, yeah, this is just what I wanted to share. I haven’t heard a whole lot of people speak about the Devic reality, the way that I experience it. And what you were sharing came the closest to what my experience is, is that in that of everything being conscious, like that the Devic world is this other part, so we have our human, our manifestation of consciousness is only happening because it’s completely interwoven with this Devic reality, which is also conscious, but it’s a different…
Harri Aalto: And it’s not just beings, it’s everything.
Kristin Kirk: Yes, yes.
Harri Aalto: That’s what I liked when you said, “Everything that shares the flow.”
Kristin Kirk: Right, everything.
Harri Aalto: Everything is conscious.
Kristin Kirk: Right. So when I go into a room to have a talk, I mean, I’m in harmony and communication with the walls and the rugs and everything of coming into alignment to create today, you know, whatever it is that’s happening. So I don’t know, I just wanted to say it was thrilling for me, you know, to hear someone speaking in that way that people don’t usually talk about.
Harri Aalto: There’s a state of consciousness called “unity consciousness,” and your speech or your talk reminds me of that, everything in terms of the Self, everything in terms of knowing this shining inner life is outside as well. There’s no outside, there’s no inside, right? There’s no outside, no inside. So it’s one continuum. And I loved it when you talked about the golden light, right? And I think of that as Soma, of course, and everybody knows, or mostly knows what Soma is. Soma is also related to Soma Ved, which is one of the principle Vedas in the Vedas, and it’s the movement of consciousness. And I experienced that movement of consciousness in a similar way you described, more like a rain shower that’s constantly moving as golden light into my heart, out of my heart, into my head, out of my head, everywhere, the whole body from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head, has this golden quality to it, in the movement of this pure white primordial consciousness. It takes this golden hue when it becomes more conscious and more form-like, and this golden light, this movement of consciousness, shimmers into or solidifies into the devas of creation. And of course, you might say the Indian Devas, other people say Christian Devas or gods, but they all have the same, they’re all united in their efforts to bestow and communicate and be there for us all of the time. Right? That’s what you experienced? That’s what you said.
Kristin Kirk: That’s totally my experience.
Harri Aalto: At least we’re all in agreement, right?
Stan Kendz: Rick, I’d like to share, lots of people hear these stories and they wonder, like, how come this panel of people out of so many people are having these experiences? And so my research for the past six or seven years was to try to understand a deeper level of, you know, how does a human being evolve to that level or change to that level? And so I think I’m the first person to actually do some validation that you can, by putting our own awareness, each individual, into the boundless field of the transcendent several times a day, at least twice for some time, that the field itself cultivates you. You don’t really have to work at it at all. And what we saw when I did my research was, we have a community here where people have been doing that for 40 years, and so many of them reported not only just these celestial visions and hearings and so forth, but the spontaneous and instantaneous fulfillment of their desire. You have a thought of something, and somebody may run into your house and give it to you. I mean, it can be just that spontaneous. And so what happens is that the human being is this, is an expression of, a unique expression, each of us, and what are there, close to 7 billion on Earth now, we’re all a unique expression of this boundless intelligence that takes every form that we’ve ever seen or could imagine, and we can reconnect with it at such a deep level that we have the experience of the wholeness of it. All the memory of it, all the beauty of it, all the gold of it, all the visions of it, and we’re one with it in such an intimate way that anything it wants or we want as a representative in physical form of it is just instantly given to ourselves. And it’s an exquisite thing. And it’s actually, you know, my research validated that, yes, this does happen when we do these kind of practices.
Rick Archer: Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and all else shall be added unto thee.
Stan Kendz: And everybody, every place can have that experience. Life becomes effortless, and no mistakes ever. You make a decision, it supports the evolution of every single thing that’s part of the wholeness. No more mistakes with nuclear energy or anything like that. It’s just effortless correct management. It’s really quite beautiful.
Rick Archer: Audience? Is anybody in the audience who would like to ask anything? If you’d like to sit in this chair, be on camera if you don’t mind, come up and sit in this chair. And also we don’t want big long gaps while we’re passing the mic around, so maybe people should be coming up here. And if you don’t want to be on camera, just kind of wave the camera guy away, and he won’t put it on you. But think about it. If you have any questions you’d like to ask. Yeah, you go ahead for a while there thinking about their questions.
Ruffina Anklesaria: While you’re coming up.
Rick Archer:Oh, you’ve got that.
Ruffina Anklesaria: I’d just like to say that one of the experiences that blew me away in the beginning was I went to a Gandharva Veda concert music. And I was able to see the shapes of light generated by each instrument. It was kind of–it was really a neat experience, you know, that I could see the shapes of light coming off of each instrument. Then another thing, I was working at the embassy of Japan in Trinidad, and I remember I went into my boss’s office once, and when I looked at him, he looked like he was a mannequin to me. And I thought to myself–I thought– and then I realized what was happening. My consciousness was shifting between Rufina, the small individual, and the unbounded standpoint, which was the bigger me. And this is what was happening. When I shifted into my big Self, everybody, including me, looked like mannequins. We looked unreal against the backdrop of my real, big, unbounded nature. And this happens also when I look at someone and the transference is taking place. I start off looking at you. I’m Rufina, and you are, I’m looking at you. And then my boundaries start to fall away, and I feel myself become that unbounded, expanded Self, which is not contained in the form of Rufina anymore. And that experience, I would shift in and out of it during the day, during the night, while I’m sleeping. I would be sleeping sometimes, and I would think to myself, “Who’s in the room with me? My husband is not here. Who is this? I’m hearing this person. I check. It’s always me. I’m snoring, you know, or I’m breathing deeply, or something is happening in the room, but that big Self has taken over, and I’m not relating to the small Rufina boundary until I shift back into it. So the awareness, I could see there is value in bringing out that whole unbounded Self into the boundary, and it gives me the qualities of that level, of that unbounded feel, even while being in the relative. So all the beautiful qualities you expect of that absolute field become very lively in my little body. So that’s why sometimes I feel as if I’m going into a spiritual ecstasy. Actually, I do. I feel so much bliss, so much love for God, for everyone, for everything that is flowing through me. I feel as if I have to pour it on everyone. I have to give this love back out. And that’s why I have taken this step today, because I have to give all this light, all this love, back out as much as possible before I lay this body down. And that has been my motivation.
Rick Archer: One of the questions this woman from Australia asked, whom I referred to earlier in the beginning, Stan reminded me of this, because you were talking about how heavenly the world could be, and we won’t make mistakes, and all that stuff. But obviously that’s a far cry from the way the world is now. And Harri was talking about how everything that’s on the surface of life is percolating up from subtler levels. So how about all the yucky stuff? Is it just that there’s not enough of the good stuff percolating up, or is there some kind of battle between the gods and the demons going on on some subtle level? And here’s one of her things. She said, “When the kundalini awoke, it was shown as a red line entering and going up the spine, and as it entered the heart, a being emerged, quite a freaky-looking thing that wasn’t too happy about being removed. It was clear that it had acted as some kind of block, and as it came out after some time, dissolved through the field.” Interesting that these blocks can have energetic form. And then she said, “If I sit in meditation with others,” she very rarely does because she lives in a small town in Australia, “I sometimes see beings being released. One time, one really made itself known. It came right up close and wouldn’t leave the person it was attached to. If we have these experiences, is there any guidance as to what to do?” So we’ve all heard the idea of spirit possession and Jesus casting out the devils out of people and then them getting up and being healed and cured of insanity and so on. So what about this whole thing of subtle energetic forms, actual malevolent intelligences of some kind, rooting themselves in our makeup in some way, and the whole process of purification is a matter of purging ourselves of those forms. Does anybody have any comments on that?
Stan Kendz: I do, Rick, if I can talk again. What I’ve come to realize is that eventually the awareness gets to a certain level where it realizes absolutely without question that everything is the Self and wholeness. And when that happens, the individual turns its own awareness or her own awareness back into the Self and cleanses the entire way that they think or manage or deal with anything in their experience. And that cleansing process actually ripples through their whole environment. Their environment actually gets joy-filled, effortless to manage, and it’s a self-referral loop. You know, the Mayans had the snake swallowing its own tail, and it’s like the intellect grabs on to, “Oh, this is all just me,” and then suddenly it becomes wholeness, and that wholeness starts to cleanse itself. It doesn’t need to have any other techniques. When we see things as something else is happening, that’s still a little bit of residual smoke in the thinking of the wholeness. But when the wholeness starts to realize, “That’s the only thing here is me, and what I allow to come through me is what’s going to be my experience,” then it self-cleanses and it becomes joyful.
Rick Archer: Anybody else have comments on that?
Harri Aalto: It’s an interesting subject because despite this joyful, knowledge-filled experience that can be had, and is had by awakened people, the body continues to age, the wars continue in the world. Why is that? Why don’t we? Because there are laws of nature, right? We get the ability to do is focus in the right way, everything in terms of the Self. Now, we still have, you’re not going to get rid of wrinkles, or losing your hair, or any of those kinds of things. What the awakened state accomplishes is that the mind is constantly in this blissful state. When it gets more dramatic, when it gets more obvious, when it gets more prevalent, the awakened state overshadows everything. But overshadowing doesn’t make … it takes the badness out of the bad, but all that continues to happen. You don’t look quite the same you did ten years ago, and neither do I. Why is that? There’s kind of a balance in nature, right? There are certain laws of nature that make things end, there are certain laws of nature that make things evolve, there are certain laws of nature that you might say are bad, but the awakened mind doesn’t recognize the badness in the process of aging, or the process, any process. It all becomes a positive kind of phenomenon, and it’s hard to describe. But, you know, and there are Devas, and there are the other ones, right? They’re there, and they have their game. But an awake mind can look at this area and put the whole show into it, as it were, and just see the bliss, see the knowledge, see the joy. But it’s quiet, it’s not always overt. You can see me scowling, walking down the street, but inside I’m feeling pretty good. So there’s something manifesting the scowl as well. I’m just not paying attention to it. You, might people, I’m not.
Rick Archer: Francis or Kristen? I’m trying to keep it balanced.
Harri Aalto: Yeah, you should say something on this sin stuff.
Rick Archer: Yeah, exorcism. Kristen?
Kristin Kirk: For me this is a huge topic. And to do it justice would need a long amount of time. So my hesitation, and I will speak about it briefly, my hesitation in speaking about it briefly is that it’s really valuable to get the whole scope because people have so many questions about it, and there can be a lot of fear about it, and people having their own experiences internally, not understanding what’s happening, that can be terrifying. So I just want to say that, just to I don’t know where I’m going. Let me just be quiet for a second and see if I’ll toss it back to Francis. So my experience is, yes, there’s a whole game, there’s a whole … I mean, I love how you speak about the forces, right? The universe is an amazing, amazing game that’s at play, and that in the internal realization of wholeness, there’s not the fear, there’s not the being caught up in the game, and that the deeper recognition of love and compassion is then what relates with what may look like a demon, or may look like a past life trauma, or may look like an abusive parent, so that those things are still happening and at play, and that when I’m doing healing sessions with people, or working in large groups, a lot of that more condensed, contracted, those contracted states of consciousness are what come forward. And my sense is we’re just at a time in evolution of the planet where the vibrations are shifting so dramatically that people are waking up all over the place, and these densities are then being brought to the light because the vibrations are raising. So I would just say that in my experience, a lot of the stuff that people are frightened about or have questions about, that there’s a certain level of reality to it so that people aren’t crazy, and that getting support can be really helpful, and is sometimes necessary. It’s been necessary in my path. And at the same time, in the deeper truth and wholeness, everything is good, everything is divine, and everything is in harmony, even if it doesn’t feel like it’s harmony. From a deeper perspective, there’s a harmony and a wisdom and a learning and an evolution that’s unfolding.
Rick Archer: Francis, do you want to say anything, or are you kind of sitting there?
Francis Bennett: not at the moment.
Rick Archer: Okay, you just pipe up if anything comes to mind.
Audience member: So I’ve always had that question, and I think this is my opportunity. I’ve been thinking of the higher states of consciousness, like all of us, as we learn them, starting with transcendental consciousness, cosmic consciousness, divine consciousness, unity consciousness. And this is such a clear progression. And as I become more and more familiar with it, whichever way I am, I’m thinking, well, it sounds like there is an overlap between these different states of consciousness, and it is not like going step by step. So I would like to find out from our panel, whether you experience this blending of different states of consciousness in different ways.
Harri Aalto: So I think both are true. Certainly in my life, not that I’m saying that I’m in these states, but let’s just imagine for a moment that I’ve gone through, for instance, Maharishi states seven states of consciousness – GCC, GC, UC.
Rick Archer: Cosmic consciousness, God consciousness, unity consciousness.
Harri Aalto: Yes, those are the distinct levels that the TM organization talks about all the time. And I’ve experienced all those states of consciousness, but they come very distinctly and very overlappingly, both. Come and go, come and go, come and go, and then another one starts, but it never stops. You don’t get CC, witnessing of sleep, and that’s the end – I am enlightened. Then you get GC, celestial perception, and that’s the end. What you realize with every state of consciousness, as it unfolds, it becomes part of your life. Your past life doesn’t disappear, your future life doesn’t disappear at all, it all amalgamates into the state that you’re in at the moment, and new and more unity consciousness dawns, everything’s in terms of the Self. Hey, wonderful, boom, next day you have another experience, it doesn’t look like unity, it looks like something else, much bigger, much better. And it keeps going, it goes on and on and on. And then Maharishi calls it Brahman consciousness, right? And guess what? Brahman consciousness takes in all the relative, the gross relative, the pains and the stresses and the loves and the demons and the gods, everything starts amalgamating into this consciousness, not in terms of the Self, in terms of wholeness now, something much bigger than the Self. If you can say that, maybe you can. So all those states of consciousness, they totally overlap, everybody can have them, and the biggest realization you have in every state of consciousness is when you’re there, you’ve always had it. Always had it, never wasn’t there. That’s how simple it is, right?
Ruffina Anklesaria: Actually, this is one of the things that struck me when I first started to have these experiences. As a teacher, I had been teaching about growth to cosmic consciousness, rise to God consciousness and then to unity consciousness. So in my mind, I thought it was a linear kind of thing, progression that would take place. I thought that after you’ve been having witnessing at night, then you would start seeing refined perception, and then you would have some unity experience. So you’re kind of waiting for it to happen in that way, but it’s not like that. It’s just as he described it. I find that you seem to have sometimes some CC experience of witnessing, of the unbounded, getting there, and then you’re into celestial perception, and then the world has suddenly become so much a part of you, it feels like it’s unity, and then you’re back in CC again. It’s really an interweaving of the different states of consciousness. I think Maharishi, just like he described in the bubble diagram, he laid it out so that we could understand it intellectually. But when we experience it, it’s really all interwoven. I think it’s a very good point, Francis.
Rick Archer: Let me quickly explain something for the YouTube audience, because a lot of these acronyms and terms might be unfamiliar. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who some of us on this panel have a background with, laid out seven states of consciousness. Waking, dreaming, and sleeping are the first three. Everybody experiences those. The fourth is actually, the Sanskrit name for it is Turya, which means fourth. That would be transcendental consciousness, pure consciousness, pure awareness, without any relative experience. Repeated experiences of that, integrating it over time, would result in having that fourth state become permanent in the midst of the other three – waking, dreaming, and sleeping. So in the waking state it would be experienced as a state of pure silence or witnessing, feeling a detached feeling that you’re not the actor performing the action that’s going on by itself. During sleep there would be inner awareness, even though you’re snoring like a sailor, you’d be awake inside. Maybe that’s something Francis can speak to, because that’s his experience. He snores like a sailor. No, he doesn’t.
Francis Bennett: You stayed with me, you know I don’t snore.
Rick Archer: In fact, he said when you had your foot surgery and you went under anesthesia, you lost that inner awareness and it was quite surprising. Ordinarily it’s there during sleep. Then, I’ll just wrap this up real quick, but I just want to throw this out because we’re bandying about these terms. Living in that state for some time, the senses would refine and instead of perceiving the ordinary gross level of creation through the senses as we always have, appreciation, love would grow. We’d be perceiving much finer levels of the objects we perceive, much closer to the value of the absolute, although not quite there. And that Maharishi called God-consciousness, and that’s what they mean by GC when they say it. And then eventually, the subtlest value would be apprehended or appreciated and the objects, the senses would be perceived in terms of the Self, in terms of the absolute that one had known oneself to be since it was first tasted in the fourth state and stabilized in the fifth state, cosmic consciousness. But as these people have been saying, it’s not quite so sequential as that, not quite so linear, they appear to be all much more mixed up and one thing can precede the other.
Harri Aalto: So the unfoldment of states of consciousness do not eliminate previous states of consciousness, ever. Here we are, we still have bodies, we walk around the street, we don’t walk into trees, we don’t lose our sense of direction, we don’t lose anything; what we do is gain something. Each state of consciousness is a wonderful gain, it’s an addition. Every state of reality, every state of clarity is an addition to what we already have. It’s not often the growth of consciousness is thought in terms of elimination. Go towards this nothing state, it’s wonderful but it’s nothing. Well, okay, I’ve got nothing, I can experience nothing, sort of, and I can talk about it, there’s this ground state, there’s nothing that seems to be there, but all this other stuff is there too, including the gross relative. It’s a big, massive continuum of consciousness, that’s all it is. And I like your way of describing it as golden light, because that’s very integral to the phenomenon or the movement of that consciousness, of that silent consciousness. But all the gurus, or many gurus and many Advaitees, and what do they call them, non-dualists, I’m all for them because if they’ve truly realized it, the state of consciousness is this incredible ground state of awareness from where everything starts, but I’d say that’s the first step, not the last step.
Francis Bennett: I really liked what he said. I think that’s really an important point, that the expansion, you could say, of consciousness, it’s not really that consciousness is expanding, obviously, but our awareness of it is expanding constantly, and when it expands to a larger space, it doesn’t eliminate the boundary that it had before, it includes it and expands it, and it just keeps including more and more and more. And my sense, you know, I mean, you were talking about a kind of a particular map of consciousness, which is from the TM teaching of Maharishi, and that’s a perfectly valid map, I’m sure. I don’t happen to know a lot about that map. I mean, I’ve heard little descriptions of various states that I can recognize kind of in my own experience. But, you know, and in the Christian mystical tradition, there’s a map of consciousness that is laid out by St. John of the Cross and the ascent to Mount Carmel and so on, and he talks about three major states of consciousness, purgative, illuminative and unitive. And there’s probably corollaries if you took the map of consciousness that Maharishi sets forth, and you compared it to the map of consciousness that John of the Cross sets forth. I read a book that Rick passed on to me about Kundalini, and I could see precise parallels between the map of consciousness of John of the Cross and the ascent to Mount Carmel, and the map of consciousness that this woman was basing on classical kind of teachings on Kundalini arising. And I could even see in my own life parallels, like I could look over 25 years of my life and see, “Oh yeah, I remember that and that.” And it was so fascinating to me that you have these two maps that sound very different, but they’re really different ways of describing the same journey. And I think a lot of stuff in the kind of non-dual spiritual scene, a lot of people have a kind of awakening, a glimpse, whether it’s sometimes kind of an intellectual awakening to the understanding of non-duality, and they get stuck there. They get focused on that, and they think that the realization of that kind of larger space obliterates what came before. And it’s a common, common, I think, problem in this scene.
Harri Aalto: I don’t think it’s a problem, though. I think it’s the first step. You know what I mean? Because they won’t stay there forever.
Francis Bennett: Yeah, it can be a problem though when they think that the journey’s finished, and that, “Okay, I’ve had a glimpse of the Absolute, I’m done.” I even ran across people recently who were using that term, that “so-and-so is done.” And my response to that was, “They can’t be done, because no one’s ever done.” It’s like you were talking about these different states, these different stages of consciousness, and each one of them is infinite. Like, each one of them has an infinite depth that can never be plumbed in a human lifetime, certainly. It can never be. So I don’t know, I just loved what you said.
Harri Aalto: Well, it’s beautiful. This is kind of a simple analogy, but it’s kind of like if you’re walking in a landscape, you have the foreground, the middle ground, and the horizon, and as you’re approaching the horizon, the horizon keeps moving.
Francis Bennett: Yeah, exactly!
Harri Aalto: That’s what consciousness is like. The horizon gets bigger and bigger, not smaller and smaller.
Francis Bennett: Right.
Harri Aalto: Right.
Rick Archer: I’m glad you’re saying this stuff, because I obviously talk to a lot of people in this field, and I think people can get stuck, and they can get stuck for a decade, decades.
Francis Bennett: Lifetimes, probably.
Rick Archer: Yeah, they’re actually in an awakened state, but they’re stuck for the rest of their life, perhaps, in that state. I don’t want to name names, but they keep saying the same thing over and over. And many people in that boat would listen to this conversation and think, “What are these people talking about? “They’re crazy, they’re over-complicating “what is really such a basic, fundamental thing. “They’re just layering all kinds of stuff on there “about golden light and beings and all these things. “That’s all illusory, it’s all maya. “Just settle down into the Self and be done with all that.” Experientially, I have no authority to speak about this, I don’t think, but intellectually, just from everything I’ve learned and to whatever extent I’ve experienced it, and some of the great beings that I’ve had the privilege of associating with, I just feel like there’s such a vast range of possibilities in it. Maharishi once said, someone asked him about getting stuck in this state that we’re talking about, this sort of flat, absolute, plain vanilla. He said it was like a bullet going through his heart to hear that, because he knew that there was so much more that people could experience, and he just really had this ardent desire to unfold the whole range of possibilities for people.
Harri Aalto: I’m ending up talking a lot more than I thought. You can tell me to shut up if I talk too much. But I’d like to comment on, I took my first interview with Rick two months ago, and I’ve had, I don’t know, 600 responses, and I’ve answered 100 of them. And what really got me is that, you know, sometimes we’re in this TM community, right? Hey, we’re the only ones that have pure consciousness, we’re the only ones that have these states of consciousness. But what I’m hearing and seeing is dozens of people having these same experiences. They’ve never done TM, but they’re having these experiences, they’re having unity consciousness experiences, like you. And many people like that, and some of these experiences, and the way they describe it is phenomenal. And they ask me questions, and I’m saying, “Whoa, where did these guys come from? They should come here to this community!” But all I’m pointing out is that this is a very universal phenomenon, this growth of consciousness, and the clarity of consciousness exists throughout the whole world.
Rick Archer: Yeah, this woman from Australia, her brother, who is a plumber in this little town, now he’s awakening. He doesn’t know any of this stuff. I mean, it hasn’t been of interest to him, but he’s cooking. So it’s exciting. It offers hope for the world that, you know, people are popping all over.
Stan Kendz: In my experience was that every single thought we have can shift our state of consciousness. Every single thought. And those of us who do advanced practices become aware of those thoughts, and we can be very, very subtle in what we allow to go through our awareness or not. So to me that’s one very profound thing. The other thing is, when Harri said, you know, “These things are all here,” they may only be here because we still recognize them to be here. We may have, as some Masters have said, the ability to fly, the ability to rejuvenate, the ability to live as long as we choose to live. And if we keep accepting that they’re always going to be here, maybe they’re always going to be here. But if we allow ourselves to entertain the possibility that we’re divine and anything we can imagine and hold our awareness on is possible, maybe they won’t be here either. That’s where I’m coming from. [laughter]
Rick Archer: Is it on?
Carol Olicker: Okay, I have a question and a comment. And the comment is, “I have never heard anybody else describe that experience that I had too. I was on a bus. I turned around. Every seat was filled by mannequin. It was actually a little scary.” I mean, really, literally, a mannequin. And I knew literally, I knew they were people, but I was seeing mannequins. So thank you for mentioning that because I never heard anybody else say it. I didn’t know what I was having.
Ruffina Anklesaria: It really looked like that to me. You see the movement of the limbs and everything. They look so unreal. It looked to me, this is a mannequin speaking to me. And in truth and in fact, that’s when your big Self takes over, and you are not seeing it only from your small perception. That’s when I began to realize that my awareness was shifting in and out of the small, Rufina seeing and the bigger side of me that was cognizing things in their true perspective. And we put a lot of emphasis on the mannequin that we see and that we feel we are until we realize that there’s a lot more happening as well. It’s really grand. Thank you for saying that.
Carol Olicker: Thank you for saying that. I’ve never heard anybody say it. And I didn’t know what I was having. And then the question is, are you going to be around for a while? [laughter] I mean, this thing that everybody wants to–
Ruffina Anklesaria: Okay, let me give you a little interesting tidbit.
Carol Olicker: Yes.
Ruffina Anklesaria: I’ll mention to Rick. No, I’m not going to be around for a while. But I’d like to just mention, just as a point of interest, is that there are certain times when this energy is very lively in the environment. And all of us who have it permanently can tell you that when it’s full moon, you can go celestial, like, really, really, really quickly. I was saying maybe I should start giving some full moon retreats, you know, because it happens so quickly. It’s so spontaneous. It actually happens quite easily with me now also, but I don’t know what to do with it. It has happened, like I said, I was just talking. I’m just talking to people, and boom, it’s happened, you know. But I don’t know what more to do with it except maybe to have a retreat and see if somebody wants to try. I don’t know, maybe it happens in groups, too. I’ve never spoken about this in public before. Neither has Francis. This is a new thing.
Francis Bennett: This topic, other things.
Ruffina Anklesaria: This particular topic of refined perception. And I know the transference for me is very real and very easily done as well. But at the same time, I don’t know what made it so. Maybe there are other factors that I’m not aware of, but everyone I have done it with, it has happened. And my daughter is here, and she has amazing perception as well. And she sees more. She sees celestial beings and so on. She is 15, and she started when she was 10. And she had previous experiences, too. And I don’t know where this is leading to. That’s all I can say.
Rick Archer: Well, you’re coming back to Fairfield on August 3rd for a Batgap interview. Maybe you should do a retreat that weekend.
Ruffina Anklesaria: Is it full moon?
Rick Archer: I don’t know.
Ruffina Anklesaria: It’s just for your benefit.
Rick Archer: You could do one down in St. Louis, too. People could go there.
Ruffina Anklesaria: Maybe I will have a full moon retreat. You’re open to it. Why not? Because I see there is value in bringing out your big Self, obviously. That’s what it’s all about. And I see through this Shaktipat, which is direct transference, it enlivens in you, and you get the ability to bring out that complete silence while your eyes are open. That’s a big deal. It integrates the growth of the transcendent, the finest relative after that. It becomes very lively in your awareness, and the world just becomes so much richer. It’s so much more beautiful. And unity and all these other states of consciousness, they are not flat and sterile and horrible. I don’t know why I thought so, but they are not. They’re full of love and compassion and richness. It’s just more. It’s just more and more and more.
Harri Aalto: It’s not less and less.
Ruffina Anklesaria: You’re right about that.
Harri Aalto: That’s beautiful.
Ruffina Anklesaria: Maybe if you all inquire, and I get some serious interest in them, I might think of a way to connect with you.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I’ll be putting this interview up and it will link to her website, as it will to everyone else’s websites. So, we’ve been talking about celestial perception, or refined perception. I suppose there are levels of perception which you would call refined, but you are not yet celestial. There must be many gradations of it. But a question I want to come back to is the relevance of this to spiritual awakening. Is what we’re talking about here something that everybody on the spiritual path, sooner or later, is eventually going to experience? You can’t get stuck anywhere forever. Maybe they’re not going to experience in this lifetime, in this body, but is this kind of facility and familiarity with the finer realms of creation, the celestial realms, an inevitable unfoldment in the course of everyone’s evolution, or is it some kind of an option, like a special aptitude, like musical ability, as I said in the beginning? What do you guys have to say to that?
Harri Aalto: It’s all these states of awareness, the celestial levels, that from which the celestial levels arise, and our daily lives are all connected, they’re all eternal. You can’t take the celestial level out of our daily lives any more than you can take the celestial level out of that fundamental oneness of consciousness that exists universally, that is there to be tapped into. So the awakening process will always evolve to a certain degree, depending on which senses are predominant in that person’s physiology. Maybe it’s the sense of sight, so you’ll see that, or maybe you’ll hear it. In my case I have four senses, lively and celestial, all the time.
Rick Archer: And which one’s not lively? Taste?
Harri Aalto: The senses.
Rick Archer: I know, you had four senses, you said lively, so we have five senses, so which one’s not lively?
Harri Aalto: No, and all I’m saying is, these states of consciousness aren’t something you can dismiss. They’re going to come into your awareness sooner or later, as the clarity, awakening is the experience of those states.
Rick Archer: Now, could one be sort of prematurely interested in this stuff? I mean, if it’s not relevant at whatever one’s stage of development is, can it be some kind of mind candy that could actually be a distraction and it’ll become relevant later on, but one should just not even think about it?
Harri Aalto: I don’t think you should go after just the celestial levels. I think you should have an integrated approach and you get techniques from the Masters who know how to give them to you. You go through this process of refinement of the nervous system, you go through this process of refinement of the senses, you do advanced techniques and these things unfold. After they’ve unfolded, some of these states of consciousness, they’ll start revealing themselves to you and they won’t overpower you and you won’t turn into some kind of zombie or something.
Rick Archer: Yeah, “overpower” is an interesting word. I remember the first course I was ever on with Maharishi, he was talking about God-consciousness and he said, “You really need the foundation of the Self.” And he said, “The immensity of God-consciousness, when fully experienced, is so great.” He said, “God couldn’t even telephone from a distance if you didn’t have the Self established, you’d be crushed. You need to establish that.”
Harri Aalto: If I didn’t have a wife when I went through GC, I’d be dead.
Rick Archer: You would have starved to death or what?
Harri Aalto: No, it was overpowering, this is years ago.
Rick Archer: And how did Kathy help?
Harri Aalto: She took care of the issues of relative existence. The sights and the sounds and the tastes and the touches were so overpowering, that’s really all I could do. I wouldn’t know how to write a check. My hand wouldn’t move that way.
Rick Archer: Yeah, this woman said, “There were seven times when I was sure the amount of energy and alchemy occurring would kill me. I’ve been totally brought to my knees only to find love there. It’s been a gut-wrenching trip, but I’m here to tell the tale and I know the fear and pain of real awakening. Some traverses are razor thin and my heart goes out to those trying to navigate through.”
Harri Aalto: But this GC state hasn’t got anything to do with pain, I’ll tell you that.
Rick Archer: No, no, no.
Harri Aalto: That’s more like maybe a CC, beginning separation. Even Maharishi called it terrible.
Rick Archer: Right. So maybe that’s more like it, but not the celestial levels.
Rick Archer: Kristen, proportionally you haven’t been speaking as much. Do you have anything to add at this point?
Harri Aalto: She’s having a good time.
Kristin Kirk: I have sat with that question, because we talked about it before. In my experience, I don’t know. I meet people who are deeply, beautifully awake and aren’t having all these experiences. And I wouldn’t … So it’s hard for me to say if something comes next or if that happens. But … So I don’t know …
Harri Aalto: Go ahead, go ahead.
Kristin Kirk: I’m going to say something now. I mean, I just tend to speak of my own experience, you know. And on a certain level it makes sense that the more present people become and the more surrendered they are, that those containers of the sense of self that are useful in the function of perceiving, that when they start to soften and open, that the perception then is also less limited, becomes greater. So again, expansion isn’t necessarily happening, that the focal point of, that vantage point of perception starts to deepen, and so the perception gets broader and broader. And that for me the senses in the physical are just … not just, but they’re divine function happening for this reality, and those senses are a reflection of a deeper function, a deeper reality that can continue, they open through all these different subtle and subtler levels. So it would make sense to me that there could be an evolution of opening to all these subtle perceptions. So I could see that being true, but I also wouldn’t want to put it forward as steps that someone should be reaching for or you know, I mean, I always point people back to what’s true for you, you know, what’s true there, and that some people it may be useful to do techniques to develop that perception because it’s in deep alignment with that God consciousness right there, where someone else it might be completely not useful and a distraction, and I would say, “No, don’t do that, just go sit on your pillow,” you know? So …
Francis Bennett: My sense too is that this journey that we’re all on unfolds in its own way, and differently for each person. And while I think you could say in a certain sense that very refined levels of consciousness and perception and so on are inevitably going to unfold for everyone, for every form, we also have to realize that there’s this context that’s huge of perhaps countless lifetimes, you know? So to say it’s going to all unfold in this one human incarnation I think is not accurate, because how can anyone say that? All of us are at different points of the journey, and I often use the analogy of if you had a track and a race was being run, and you had somebody starting at the starting line, you had somebody starting 20 yards beyond the starting line, you had somebody starting 20 yards behind the starting line, and then maybe somebody starting two miles down the road from the starting line, that’s the reality, I think that we have, because of karmic, sort of dharmic kind of dynamics. We’re all at such different points of this journey, and there’s no telling, really, the precision of that, how that’s going to play out, how that’s going to unfold. But I think there can be a kind of innate trust within us that this consciousness that we really are, that we can awaken to, that we can come to realize as being who we are on the deepest level, is utterly open and trusting, and just allows whatever comes, and allows the unfolding of this journey to unfold as it does, and it’s going to be different for every form.
Rick Archer: David, come on up here. You don’t have to be on camera.
David Kupferman: Kristin, you were talking about surrender, and you were talking about devotion. So how does surrender and devotion, what role do they play, and how does one develop these things if one isn’t feeling it?
Ruffina Anklesaria: In my case, I alter the technique of Shaktipat, which is the opening of the eye, that it just took place like that. Of course, for me, it was on the basis of lots of meditation and advanced technique and so on also. But it spontaneously developed afterwards, although I have to give credit to the fact that I am a Catholic, and I’ve been very devoted in my tradition to Mother Mary, to the church. I attended a Catholic school, an all-girls convent, and I was very much into the prayerful side of things as well. However, there was a definite shift in my consciousness, and in the capacity of my heart to love God and to love His creation, when my third eye opened and the bliss started to flow. It happened simultaneously. As my third eye opened and I perceived the objects of creation and their celestial value, I could feel the change in my heart taking place. I could feel sweet bliss developing. It’s an interaction that takes place, and that developed in me, outside an activity, more surrender, more love of God, because I was feeling and seeing God in everything, flowing, and experiencing it at the same time. So, surrender, devotion to God, sight of His creation, all of these are unfolding together. And by opening my perception in that way, it certainly burst open the energy in my heart and in the crown of my head. I was telling Rick, it started to feel like I was walking in a fountain on top of my head. I would put my hands many times to see what’s on top of there. And when I was meditating, so many years had passed with me having the experience, and still, I would open my eyes to see who put on that bright light there, you know. I’m meditating, and the bright light is inside all the time. So, these things develop. Surrender develops. You can’t make yourself surrender. You cannot make yourself love God, just as you can’t make yourself love the person next to you. You cannot make yourself become devoted. These things unfold naturally as your being unfolds. They are not things you can make happen. The best you can do is do those meditation practices. I personally recommend Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation. Do those practices that unfold that level of being in your awareness. If something happens with my Shaktipat opening of the zone, that’s fine too. I know it’s happening.
Francis Bennett: Part of my retreat today was about surrender, and it precisely agrees completely with what Rufina just said, which is that surrender is not something you do. It’s at the deepest core of your being, that presence, that consciousness, that pure awareness, is pure openness. It is surrender. And the way to get to surrender is not by doing anything particularly, but it’s by touching into that reality and realizing it. And that reality is itself like surrender, you could say, the essence of surrender. But a lot of people think of surrender as something you work yourself up to, or some emotion you have to create. And I don’t think that’s what it is. I think surrender is realization itself. And when you intend toward that realization, you’re approaching surrender. You’re approaching that consciousness that’s utterly open. And that’s just what we were talking about today at the retreat.
Kristin Kirk: I’d like to say something too. I think where I’m drawn to speak is another aspect of surrender. Part of my process had been being with all the densities that were coming up, and there’s identification there. There’s an investment in the emotional story or thought pattern. There was a very visceral engagement with what was coming up. I think this is what people’s lives are about, where we’re engaged, where there’s an attachment. And that my process was actually the practice of surrendering, that my relationship to surrender was actually a very active, engaged process. And that’s what my whole process was, that something would come up, and I would feel the pain, the depth, the excruciating, the hatred, whatever these intense things that were coming up that were coming to the surface. And that, for me, surrender and devotion were then the same thing, because if everything is God, then this hatred rising up in me is God, this terror rising up in me is God. And if I truly trust, if everything is one, then there’s a willingness to then surrender into the experience that was coming forward, and by complete, full meeting of that experience, recognizing everything as truth, then the contraction, the identification with that experience would release. The substance that was created from the attachment that was held in my being would dissolve. The beings connected with the supporting that whole creation would then also engage in that releasing. And that the surrender and the devotion were then the same, it’s the love, the love of everything. And through that process, as things continue to resolve, then the radiance, the golden truth that is deeper than those contracted thought patterns or emotional holdings would come forward. So, yeah, so those are the same for me. I love your question.
Rick Archer: There’s another phenomenon that we might just, in the remaining time, just ask you guys about. A number of people that I’ve interviewed have, for the most part spontaneously, begun to experience channeling, you know, like Mercedes Kirkl. She was sitting meditating one day and all of a sudden Mary Magdalene started, she was convinced it was Mary Magdalene, started coming through and dictating all this stuff which she wrote down. Andre Morgana had gone through the whole TM thing and very well established in a the United States, and she ended up going to South America and now she actually takes on the whole persona of Hiawatha and Vovo Alamale, who is some kind of South American entity. There are others too. Jeta Mali, I interviewed just last week, she says she, I don’t know if it’s channeling, but she talks to Jesus and Buddha and, you know, these higher beings. So what do we make of this whole channeling thing? Does anyone have any opinion about it? The people I spoke to seem very clear and they don’t seem like they’ve been overtaken by some entity. Does it have, what’s its significance in the whole spiritual phenomenon that we’re seeing in the world today?
Kristin Kirk: I can definitely speak to it, but I was just speaking so if anyone else has a…
Harri Aalto: Go ahead.
Kristin Kirk: It makes sense to me in terms of people opening and the vibrations on the planet shifting that some of the veils that were really in place and in tight, that were tight, are softening and opening so that people are having access to consciousness in all different forms. So, I mean, I experience that channeling is different than awakening in terms of accessing someone else’s consciousness. And I think there’s definitely a value and a place for it, but that, I don’t know, that was just…
Ruffina Anklesaria: I have had predictive dreams before the opening of my third eye. In my family, it runs in the family. But I would say that since this phenomenon has taken place with me, I find that I have been able to have very clear dreams, which I don’t consider dreams, of the different gods. And because I am appreciating gods from all traditions, Hindu, Catholic, Zoroastrian, and so forth, my home is in all of these are there. I have had very deep and real experiences with some of these gods, which of course I would never tell anybody about. I don’t know why I’m saying it now, but… including Christ, and Lord Vishnu, Lord Rama, and various others over the years. And whenever they came to me, Mahalakshmi, whenever they came to me, I would immediately rise out of my consciousness and know, I knew that they had visited and either blessed me or told me something. Actually, it’s really kind of interesting. I just remember one night I dreamt of Sri Sathya Sai Baba. Again, remember, I’m Christian also. My tradition and all my prayers are in such. And he told me in that state that he was sending me a gift. He was giving a gift to me and my husband. Of course, like most mornings, because my husband knew I had predictive dreams, I would tell him what the day held for us. He would normally get some indication what the day would be like, so he would know whatever it was. I told him, I said, “Sathya Sai Baba came to me, and he said he was sending us a gift.” he said, “okay.” It turned out that a friend of ours, who was gravely ill, came to visit. She was moving to Hawaii. She wanted to spend her last days there. And she was dispersing all the things she had with her. She brought me a vial of ash from Sri Sathya Sai Baba. And then she later brought me his pig tail. I was not a specific devotee of Sri Sai Baba, but I love God in all his forms. I think the deities know this. So that was just one connecting point of my dream and reality. Just to verify that these devas do exist on that fine level. And the light that I can see outside also shines inside. And when it shines inside, I get to see the celestial level where Maharishi says the gods reside. He says it clearly. So if other people are experiencing God consciousness and the celestial levels, the gods will appear to them, and they will give information. And I imagine channeling will also be possible. I have not had channeling, but I just thought I would share with you that I do have these experiences of Lord Vishnu and so on. And now that you said it, I’m taking you back into the experience over the years. Remember to ask me for it in August. (Laughter)
Rick Archer: I was kind of thinking that we would make this a marathon. We’d go on for three hours until 10 o’clock or something. But then I learned just today that we have to get out of here ultimately by 9.30. But I’ll have to wrap this up by about 9 in order to pack up all the equipment and have everything totally out. So I guess what I’d like to do is have the people on the panel make some kind of concluding remark. I don’t know if Rufina feels she needs to make one in addition to what she just said. But if everyone could make some sort of concluding remark, that would be great. And then I’m afraid we’ll have to wrap it up, although I’d really like to do this for the next three hours. So you don’t have to go in sequential order. But based on everything we’ve talked about tonight, is there anything, whatever comes to your minds, that you’d like to say in conclusion?
Stan Kendz: Well, I started at the beginning, so I may start at the end. I think that it’s possible for the kind of idea that I would like to leave everybody with is every human being has the possibility of making an entire journey back to wholeness. And when you get there, every single thing you desire is possible for you to experience and live with. And you don’t have to have the negativity in the world any longer. And I think I’d like to, if I live for anything, I’d like to inspire people to take that path and to go in that direction and to materialize Heaven on Earth with me. Thank you.
Rick Archer: And Stan, is there anything that you would have to offer people individually or in groups, if they were to get in touch with you? Would you be giving courses? Would you go out in the lecture if somebody invited you?
Stan Kendz: Out to the lecture service.
Rick Archer: Some kind of one-on-one sort of thing?
Stan Kendz: I think my research is unique. It’s never been done and it’s unprecedented. And I think it validates the fact that human beings have the opportunity in one lifetime to culture themselves until they can command the laws of nature. And I think that that’s something that is very exciting and I can’t wait to share it. Just like Ruffina, I feel it’s my dharma to get out there and share it with everybody.
Rick Archer: Okay, and we’ll talk about how I can set it up so people can get in touch with you if they want to.
Stan Kendz: Thank you very much. It was a pleasure to be with you all tonight.
Kristin Kirk: No words are coming at the moment, so if you’re doing popcorn style.
Harri Aalto: The consciousness is available, pure consciousness is available, I think, for everybody, just like you were saying, right? And the full potential of that consciousness is available. But I think many people, even if they have the experience, maybe tend to minimize it or maybe even depreciate it a little bit. Pure consciousness is very natural, very normal, everybody has it. The celestial levels are universal, just as universal as pure consciousness. And they can be even not so obvious, let’s put it that way. They’re so simple, so natural, you can even see stuff and discount it. My advice is to whatever your experience is, give it its full value. And that’s how the benefits from that experience will come. If you have a transcending experience, don’t say, “That was nothing.” Say, “It was everything.” Go for it. Think about it even. Talk about it. That’s what Maharishi has recommended we do. I started talking about the experiences five, six years ago, or writing about them. Even though I’ve had these experiences my entire life, just the talking about it, accepting them, knowing them, has tremendously increased the knowledge level, which has increased the joy level, which has increased the ability to get the benefits from it. I don’t talk about benefits very much, but they’re all there. It sounds like, “Hey, you should be able to turn that carpet gold,” but you can if it has any value. So I do agree with you, I don’t disagree. So all I’m advising everybody is to pay attention to experience, accept them for what they are, for their fullness, not for their emptiness, and the benefits that arise out of them can be very subtle. But all experiences are powerful and subtle and quiet. That’s it folks.
Rick Archer: You guys don’t have to make concluding remarks. Do you have something now, Kristin?
Kristin Kirk: Yeah, I think this whole seeking thing of looking outside oneself, you can do that forever. And that the exquisiteness of what’s happening is happening all the time right here. And if you go the other direction, you know, into… Oh, sorry, I’m banging the microphone. That’s the heart-pounding sound. You know, going into your own… everything is right there inside, so you don’t have to go anywhere. So I would just invite that curiosity and the invitation to be present with what’s really happening right now for you in this moment. That this is an incredible… there’s an incredible thing happening right here. You know, like just washing your dishes is a profound thing. The water is conscious, the soap is conscious, the dish is conscious, you are conscious, like this whole thing. So I would just invite you to open in more presence to what’s happening now. Yeah, and that you don’t have to go anywhere.
Ruffina Anklesaria: May I say something? I would like to thank you, Rick, for doing such a marvelous job all these years. Just like we are stepping out, at least I’m stepping out for the first time, you’re doing something truly amazing by making it possible for shy people like me to step out. It’s hard to think of me as shy.
Rick Archer: It’s the powder milk biscuits.
Ruffina Anklesaria: It’s also a delight for me to hear other people share some of the experiences that I have had so intimately for such a long time, including my friend who came forward with the mannequin analogy as well. I’m very appreciative. I’d like to say that I don’t know if there is going to be any real value in my continuing to speak like this, but I will make myself available. If it is found to be useful, I will continue to lecture. I have several lectures lined up already, and this is the first time I’m speaking, but I will be speaking in a couple of locations, Salt Lake City and San Jose and Seattle and so forth. But I will continue if it is useful. And I’m happy for the forum, and again, I thank Rick and the organizers for making it possible for us to all come together today and to serve that part of consciousness and to bring out some beautiful gems, golden celestial gems that are really silent. Silence is golden, they say, and I think there is a reason for it. Thank you, Rick.
Rick Archer: Francis, speak now or forever hold your peace. You good?
Francis Bennett: I’m in peace.
Rick Archer: Okay, good. So let me make a few concluding remarks. Most of the people on this panel, we may do the same. I’ve submitted a proposal to do the same thing at the Science and Non-Duality Conference out in San Jose, out in late October, so it will have to fit into an hour somehow. All of these people I have interviewed, with the exception of Rufina, as I said, I’ll be linking to all of their websites on the page that I put up about this interview on batgap.com. You can check out their websites to see what they may have to offer. And I won’t go into all the details that I always say at the end of every interview. You know the drill. Go to batgap.com, poke around, you’ll see all kinds of good stuff. So I guess that’s it. Thanks for listening or watching, and we’ll see you next week. [Music]