Panel Discussion on Refined Perception

Questions this interview answers

• What is refined or subtle perception and how does it relate to spiritual awakening?
• Is the ability to perceive subtle or celestial realms an inevitable part of spiritual development or a special aptitude?
• How do experiences of subtle perception impact one’s sense of self and relationship with the world?
• Should subtle perception be intentionally cultivated, or does it develop naturally as consciousness evolves?

Key takeaways

• Refined perception involves experiencing subtle realities beyond ordinary sensory awareness.
• Such perceptions can arise spontaneously or through spiritual practices and may evolve over time.
• Experiences of subtle realms often lead to a sense of interconnectedness and deeper compassion.
• Subtle perception is not separate from physical reality but reveals its underlying consciousness.
• The development of refined perception can support spiritual growth but is not required for awakening.
• Cultural norms and personal readiness influence how openly people share these experiences.

Transcript

Introduction to Refined Perception

Rick: 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, 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. L. 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.

Introducing the Panelists

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]

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: 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: 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, Kristin?

Kristin: Yeah, can you remind me of the question?

Rick: 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: 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, the walls, the trees, the rocks, the wind, 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, 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.

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: Okay, who would like to go next?

Harri: 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: No, you first, ladies first.

Ruffina: 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: Purusha is just a monastic program in the TM movement.

Ruffina: 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.

The silence was so palpable. It’s like nothing you normally would experience, even while transcending.

Rick: So that was it.

Ruffina: 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: Your phone is ringing. [Laughter]

She’s got it turned off.

Ruffina: 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.

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.

… (Transcript continues with further panelist experiences, audience questions, and deeper explorations of refined perception, celestial realms, and the unfolding of consciousness. For brevity, the remainder of the transcript follows the same structure, with topical subheads and occasional callout quotes highlighting especially strong lines.)

Francis: …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.

It’s more a matter of seeing the absolute reality in all these forms, of seeing the presence of God in everything that exists.

… (Panelists discuss the interweaving of subtle perception, the role of love, and the multidimensionality of reality.)

Kristin: …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: And it’s not just beings, it’s everything.

Kristin: Yes, yes.

Harri: That’s what I liked when you said, “Everything that shares the flow.”

Kristin: Right, everything.

Harri: Everything is conscious.

Kristin: 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.

✨ Evolution of Consciousness and Overlapping States

Audience member: …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: 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: Cosmic consciousness, God consciousness, unity consciousness.

Harri: 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?

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.

⛰️ Challenges, Purification, and the Shadow Side

Rick: …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? …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: …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. …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.

Kristin: …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.

🕊️ Channeling, Deities, and Spiritual Communication

Rick: …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. …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: …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: …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. …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.

Concluding Reflections and Advice

Stan: …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.

Harri: …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. …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.

Kristin: …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. …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: 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. …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. …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: Francis, speak now or forever hold your peace. You good?

Francis: I’m in peace.

Rick: 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.