Paul Morgan-Somers Transcript

Paul Morgan-Somers Interview

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening people. I’ve done over 430 of them by now and if this is new to you and you’d like to check out previous ones, go to the past interviews menu on vatgap.com V-A-T-G-A-P and you’ll see all the previous ones there. If this is not new to you then you’re probably tired of hearing me say that but I say it every week for the sake of new people. This whole project is made possible by the support of appreciative listeners and viewers and if you appreciate it and feel like supporting it there’s a PayPal button on every page of the site and we really appreciate those who have been supporting it. My guest today is Paul Morgan Somers. He’s over in the UK. He doesn’t have an extensive bio that he’s sent me but from what I gathered from what he sent, he likes drinking tea, playing football which we call soccer and talking about the ocean. Does that pretty well sum it up Paul?

Paul: Yeah, although I have moved on to coffee recently.

Rick: Oh, you’re getting Americanized, I see. Yeah, it happens.

Rick: And the reason that soccer, one of the reasons aside from the fact that he really does love playing soccer, that soccer is significant here or football I should say is that he was playing it once when he was what about 15 Paul?

Paul: Yes. You’re quite young and all of a sudden he popped into an experience of what he likes to call the ocean and I’m sure everyone will get the metaphor, you know, a sense of unboundedness. So, let’s start there Paul. Was this completely unprecedented in your life? Did you have any sort of prior interest in or knowledge of any such thing or were you just an ordinary kid and this came out of the blue?

Paul: Yeah, just an ordinary kid that loved playing football or soccer. So, I was just training outside the back of my parents house because I’d been given an opportunity to go and play football professionally. So, I was just training most days and one day after training out the back, I just had an impulse to go and sit down and I sat on some steps behind mum and dad’s house and then, well, I suppose everything changed. There was a sense of a… Though I didn’t have any of these words then, it was just what happened, it was just a full-on experience with no thought process, but it was something that was new to my body. I’d never experienced anything like that before, but it was now I can use the words like a rapture, like a sense of [Music] and it felt, you know, physically [Music] a very energetic shock to my body.

Rick: Was it frightening at all or was it enjoyable?

Paul: It was like being hit by, again, I use that word ocean after, but it was like being hit by a wave and it was in complete control of what happened, there was no time to be frightened, it was just a full-on rush as it were. Just like that.

Rick: Yeah, like a sneeze, a cosmic sneeze.

Paul: Yeah, it was a cosmic sneeze. It’s just like that and then I had, from that point, every time I sat, something else happened. It just started a whole period of experiences really.

Rick: That’s interesting. The reason I asked whether it was frightening was that one time when I was a kid, probably I was younger than 10, I had a high fever and I had this experience of huge vastness, you know, and sometimes it would seem to be both vast and infinitesimally small at the same time and also infinitely heavy and infinitely light and I just kind of sat there with my fever experiencing this thing. It was awesome but it was a little scary too because it was so big, you know.

Paul: Yeah, there were many other experiences which had more of an element of fear to them or an element of, you know, basically my brain swearing to itself thinking, “Can my body cope with this?” It was uncertain about it.

Rick: So you’re saying that from the age of 15 when this first happened it became an ongoing thing, different phases, different experiences.

Paul: Yes, different experiences for about, I don’t know, 16-18 months, just different experiences, like on a daily basis really.

Rick: Did it make it difficult to function and go to school and things like that?

Paul: Well, I wasn’t that interested in school. All I wanted to be was a football player and for chasing a little round football around the field it wasn’t that complicated. So, there was such a passion in me. I just loved playing football and over that time that love of chasing after a football never went and it’s still with me now.

Rick: Sure, even though your need doesn’t cooperate.

Paul: Yeah, the right need, but slowly, well the sense of identity was changing, who I thought I was and what I wanted to be, to be a professional football player and to make lots of money and be famous and have girls chasing me. All that seemed to lose its meaning really.

Rick: I have this image of you chasing a ball and girls chasing you, kind of going down the field.

Paul: Yeah, I’d probably be at that time at 15 more interested in the football. Yeah, there were just loads of experiences which changed the whole concept of who I was.

Rick: We have plenty of time, so tell us a few that you know you feel were significant. I mean maybe in retrospect now you don’t think they were significant, they were just sort of phenomena that happened, but people might find it interesting to hear a little bit of what you went through.

Paul: I think it is, I was always reticent to speak about them because people got quite hooked into them and there’s a feeling that it was just something that was just specific to my physiology, my character.

Rick: Yeah.

Paul: Because the characters I’ve met over the years who I say have got wacked, it’s a quite a different story to them all really. So I have a sense that if there’s a thousand characters that have got wacked, it’ll be a different story for each of them.

Rick: It’s true, but there are some commonalities, you know.

Paul: Yes.

Rick: Sometimes people if this kind of thing happens to them out of the blue and they have no context for it or anything to compare it with anyone to talk to, they think there’s something wrong with them, they go running to doctors, you know, they think they’re crazy or whatever, and so it can be reassuring. In fact, just this morning I got a message on Facebook from somebody that had been having all kinds of spiritual things going on and hadn’t known what to do or what it was, and then she discovered this interview show and breathed a sigh of relief to see that there are so many other people were having things like this and that it was happening all over the world. So it can help people to know, you know, what others are going through.

Paul: For me it has happened quite a long time ago. Yes, it’s true. To be honest, I forget a lot of it until somebody mentions something and then my brain remembers it. But I can remember times of thinking that should I speak to my mum and dad, but again I didn’t have words for it, I didn’t know how to frame it, how to put it into words, and I also had that, although there was often a fear of what was going on, there was such a sense of wonderment underlying it, that was stronger than the fear. So the fear never took over strong enough to make me go and speak to mum and dad, you know, and try to explain or put into words what I was having immense difficulty to find words for.

Rick: Did you have any friends that you could speak to or just pretty much kept it to yourself?

Paul: It was just myself and there was no internet back then, no Google, whatever. So I think that sense of wonderment just carried my characters through all those experiences, because a lot of them felt very energetic within the body and later on I learned, I read books about this term called Kundalini and everything, which all then seemed to make sense. The sense of – they’re all energetic experiences visually and auditory and some of the most beautiful were that there was often just beautiful sense everywhere going about through life, and that was one of the most beautiful funnily enough. The scents were extraordinary.

Rick: Scents you mean smells you mean?

Paul: Yes, literally smells.

Rick: Okay. Yeah, and the scents of… What kind of smells? I mean smells like would your normal sense of smell be more acute, like you’d walk by some roses and they were ever so much more aromatic or was it more like you were picking up on things that maybe only dogs would ordinarily smell?

Paul: Yes, I didn’t recognize. There were scents and they would flood my body, so although they were like nasal, it seemed to flood the whole body.

Rick: Interesting.

Paul: And all these things, whether they were visual or whatever, all seem to have an energetic element to them all. Perhaps the brain process did some of them, you know, visually, some more auditory, trying to make sense of an energetic movement in the body or slowly the sense of there being an edge to this body was diminishing as well, and the sense of identity felt more extended through time and space, so it was having seeing things before they happened and things like that and being able to move and not located to the body for a while.

Rick: What’s that? You mean some kind of out-of-body thing?

Paul: Well, yeah, but it wasn’t a sense of a something moving out of another something called a body. There was no… it began to become a sense of like a movement but nothing moving, so there was no journey in it. Most things I’m going to say sound very contradictory, I do apologize.

Rick: No, I totally understand what you’re saying. I think most people listening will understand also. I mean this stuff is paradoxical by nature, you know.

Paul: Yeah, the very nature of it conceptually is enough to paradox.

Rick: Yeah.

Paul: And yet simultaneously it is so simple. Yeah. That I can’t find words for it, which can be frustrating sometimes, but that’s the way it is. Yeah. I sometimes just feel like a drunken character, that when he gets poked I just sing drunken songs and chat drunken words and they’re all paradoxical and contradictory, but there’s such a wonderment for this character, loving them, but I can’t help it.

Rick: Yeah. Well, if the rest of us are comparably intoxicated, then I think we’ll all be on the same wavelength and understand what you’re saying. Incidentally this thing about the subtle sense, S-C-E-N-T-S and you know and knowing things at a distance and all that stuff, the spiritual literature is full of that kind of thing. It’s often brushed off in contemporary non-dual circles as being irrelevant or illusory or a distraction or things like that, but you know I think personally I think that refined capabilities and capacities are part and parcel of an overall spiritual unfoldment or development and they shouldn’t be over-emphasized, but at the same time they shouldn’t be dismissed. It’s just they should be understood for what they are and just taken in stride and we move along, you know, but that kind of thing is bound to happen to people and so it needs to be put in the proper context I think.

Paul: Yeah, for sure, it’s just what happens. Yeah, it happens.

Rick: It’s normal.

Paul: It’s part of life. R;Yeah, it’s unusual, but theoretically there could be a society in which that kind of thing was commonplace and nobody would think twice about it.

Paul: But again, there’s such a gorgeous juice in those things, but also simultaneously that same juice is in having a cup of tea. Yeah. It’s not that they have to be significant or not. I drink a cup of tea, it’s so free, it doesn’t need to have a significance and so those experiences can be stunningly beautiful, but also they don’t need to have a significance. It’s just freedom expressing itself that way really.

Rick: Yeah.

Paul: So there’s no need to reject them or accept them. They are just what they are.

Rick: Right, well that’s kind of an acceptance. I mean, I guess maybe I use the word significance and I didn’t mean to imply that they’re more significant than having a cup of tea, but they’re not irrelevant either. They’re just part of human experience when some sort of opening like this happens and so we don’t make too much of a fuss about them nor do we reject them. They’re just like, “Oh, this is nice.” It’s like there’s a term in Louisiana called a “lanyap” and if you buy something in the store they throw a little something extra in the package as a little gift and that’s called a Lagniappe. So this is like a Lagniappe.

Paul: Yeah, yeah. I’ve never heard that. It has that sort of feel.

Rick: Yeah.

Paul: That’s surprise, that wonderment about them. In one way it’s just very childlike and very simple.

Rick: Well, we’re going to fill in a lot more in your timeline, but did that stuff stop or does that still go on and you just take it in stride?

Paul: Some of them have carried on. Most of the major like strong energetic things all stopped when, for want of a better word, that ocean, over that time this character became aware that there was this energy, I called energy at the time, which was everything. It was the football I was chasing, it was my mum walking into the room, the people I was competing against, it was the goalpost, it was everything. But there was still a sense of a Paul experiencing that ocean, that luminosity. Then, although this sounds like a time thing, it’s not a time thing, that luminosity was just self-evidently self-luminous and there wasn’t a separate something experiencing the ocean, there was just ocean and that luminosity, so like that never went, but those dramatic experiences in the body all calmed down mostly speaking. But still things happen on a daily basis which are visual and energetic, but they’re just matter of fact, you know, there’s nothing, sometimes people ask me about them, but I forget, honestly I don’t think about them until I get prodded.

Rick: In my understanding what happens is that, I mean this is lived through a body, I mean you mentioned that it’s the luminosity sort of living itself, but it’s living itself by virtue of there being a nervous system that can be a conduit or an instrument for that living, you know, and that nervous system has a lot of adjustment to undergo when a big energetic opening like this happens and it can take years for the adjustment to pretty much complete itself and you can go through all kinds of stuff that seems intense as it’s doing so, but then when that adjustment has largely been made, the intensity and the contrast and the drama seem to really diminish, right, and it just becomes more normal and matter of fact and so on, but you’re still living it through a nervous system and that nervous system is still subject to change and adjustment and whatnot, so and it’s still a sensing instrument, so you’re still going to be having experiences.

Paul: Yeah, yeah, and it’s a constantly changing experience.

Rick: Exactly, yeah. So there’s… Constantly changing experience of something which doesn’t change.

Paul: Yeah, it’s constantly juicy. Right. So, and it’s freedom, so it can appear in whichever blinking way it wants and that could be dramatic or it could be quite calm, it could be quite constructive or quite destructive in certain ways.

Rick: How would it be destructive? In the sense, when I’ve met characters over the years, it’s been a little bit for their nervous system, like a bit like a bomb going off and that it’s caused a lot of, for at least a period of time, especially living the sort of lives, running a business in a family.

Rick: Yeah.

Paul: It’s been problematic for the characters to assimilate and adjust.

Rick: Yeah.

Paul: For some characters it seems to be a lot smoother, but for a reasonable amount of characters it’s problematic and can be quite messy. So in that sense it’s from the status quo of how life was.

Rick: Yeah, I run into that a lot. I mean I hear from people who have had to stop working or who, I mean in fact there’s one guy who you know he was a carpenter, he is, maybe still is, I don’t know, but he might be listening to this interview and he liked nothing better than sitting on the couch watching football, American football, having a beer, you know, and I wasn’t interested in spirituality and then this big huge awakening happened and it really kind of knocked him, threw him for a loop. I mean he hadn’t ever been able to function the same after that.

Paul: Yeah, and not just for the character but for his family, for his, you know, nearest and dearest, for his business colleagues or whatever, it can be problematic. In that sense it can be, sometimes I feel like unless the itch is really strong in the character when they come and chat with me, I tend to steer them away from it a little bit.

Rick: If they have a choice, you know, sometimes it just takes over and they couldn’t steer it away if they wanted to.

Paul: Yeah, for sure, but it’s

Rick: like you

Paul: it’s a dance that happens when they come. Yeah, sometimes you push your way and see whether they still want to come forward. And I think I remember speaking to an old monk years and years ago and he said well that’s why they used to suggest that people go into a monastery. It is easier to handle the side effects in a monastery than for a householder.

Rick: It is, it can be, at least if you’re cut out for that, but you know in this day and age there seems to be a kind of a wave of awakenings taking place in the world primarily among householders, people who don’t want to live in monasteries and there’s been a lot of talk over the recent years about embodiment and integration and you know people want this experience and sometimes they have no choice but to have this experience, but they also want to live human lives and so there’s been a lot of discussion in spiritual circles about you know how do we integrate this, how do we hold down a job and you know support a family and all this and in the midst of this whole thing which can actually be quite powerful.

Paul: For my character they’re not different things, you know, people use these words form and the formless, again they’re not two things. You know it’s about juice, it’s about living, it’s about drinking a cup of tea, it’s about hugging, it’s about chasing a football, it’s about everything, there’s nothing excluded.

Rick: So for you there was no difficulty in acclimating to this or was there? I mean you actually went into a monastery for five years.

Paul: Yeah, there was, I think for my body there was a difficulty to begin with, this physiologically.

Rick: Adjustment.

Paul: An adjustment and then I was very lucky I found this monastery.

Rick: Tell the story of that, so you were like a kid and you’re up there in wherever you lived and you know you didn’t know what the heck this was and then somebody told you there was this big bookstore in London and you thought I’ll go down there and see if there’s anything in that bookstore about this.

Paul: And I’m still so fond, there’s a bookstore called Foyles and I was told it’s the biggest bookstore in the world and I think it was at one time.

Rick: Yeah, now it’s Amazon.

Paul: Yeah, now Amazon, yeah, taking over the world. So I jumped on a train and went to London because I lived in a very quiet rural place back then, so there was no bookshops locally or anything. So I jumped and by that time my character had fallen in love with this ocean for want of better words. So I just went and just walked into Foyles bookshops and asked do you have any books on the ocean? I was mad.

Rick: They said yeah, Jacques Cousteau has written some.

Paul: Yeah, so I can’t remember but I was there for a while looking through books and then somebody said to me there was a bookshop quite local to it called Watkins Bookshop and Watkins has been there since 1895 or something and it’s full of esoteric books and world religions books. And I went there and I picked up some books called the Upanishads and in there I read, I was reading and there were some words in there that seemed to echo this ocean and there was a sticker in the back of the book supplied by the Vedanta Center and the address just outside London. So I went home and shortly went back up to visit this place and I was taken to see the head abbot and he just said something very natural has happened to you but it would be a good idea if you want to come and live here for a while and I thought great. So I left the football and I put a little note on my kitchen table to mum and dad and I’ve just gone off to this place, don’t worry everything’s fine. Obviously they freaked out a little bit.

Rick: What were you like point?

Paul: Yeah, late 16 or something. Because all they knew was this football boy and suddenly he was going to… because they weren’t religious or you know they were business people, so God only knows what they thought. But I jumped on the train and I went to this monastery and was there for about five years in total but it was gorgeous for me because living in such a rural area I hadn’t met people from other cultures or whatever. The only foreign people I’d met were English people because I come from Wales.

Rick: Oh, so the people from the Welsh consider the English to be foreigners, do they?

Paul: Oh yeah, for sure.

Rick: Okay.

Paul: English occupy our country.

Rick: Yeah, that in Scotland.

Paul: Yeah, when we play them in sport it’s serious, it becomes religious for the Welch.

Rick: Okay.

Paul: We have to beat the English. But anyway, the gentleman in charge was a medical doctor before he became a monk. So when the Dalai Lama fled Tibet as a youngster, he was sent by the Indian government to go and receive him or find him and receive him because he was a monk and a medical doctor. So he took two boxes to go and check him out and make sure everything’s okay and all the politics involved. So he moved in those sort of circles. So he used to organize, I don’t know if it still happens, what they called inter-religious dialogue between world religious delegations.

Rick: There’s a lot of that still happening. I don’t know about the Vedanta Society but there’s a Parliament of World Religions that attracts over 10,000 people when they hold it.

Paul: So in this monastery, all these delegations used to be Buddhist and Islamic and all sorts used to come, and Christian. So I was able to meet people from all around the world with all different truths as it were and hear them discussing and arguing and some of the characters were just beautiful, some of them were just crazy, like life, you know, these are no different. You get the mad ones, the neurotic ones, the sweet ones, no difference. And so but I was able to meet people, it’s like traveling the world it felt, but I didn’t leave the monastery. So I was fortunate enough to speak to like the Dalai Lama and bishops and archbishops.

Rick: Maybe you can set up an interview with me with the Dalai Lama. Hey, so you are a bit of a child prodigy or something, would that be the word? You know, I mean here you were only 17, 16 years old with this level of experience that a lot of old monks would die for and were you very vocal about what you were experiencing and living and did they make a fuss about you or was there some envy or did you kind of keep it quiet and just kind of do your thing and wash the dishes?

Paul: Yeah, when I arrived the old monk said something very natural has happened to you, it would be good for you to come here but don’t talk about it. Okay, good. And I didn’t. He was kind enough to let me come so I followed his rules. Yeah, so sometimes if I got really prodded it would pop out. There is an instance, I often tell this story, but there was an inter-religious meeting on mysticism. So the Vatican sent a delegation and one of them in the delegation was a hermit and it’d been the first time he’d come out of his hermitage in about 30 years but he was ordered by his seniors to come to this meeting between different religious traditions to talk about mysticism and he was Italian. His English was okay but not brilliant but I was looking after him because there was about six of us lads in the monastery and we looked after these various delegations and I chatted to him about the ocean. But he didn’t say much and I thought it was his poor Italian but on the last evening before he left he said, “Paul,” I was bringing him some tea in his room because he had a history of Christ appearing to him and he just said to me, one day he said, “Christ appeared to me when I was praying and he walked into my body and we both disappeared. So I know what you’re talking about but please don’t tell anybody.” And he said it in such a sweet way, just a childlike way. He was just happy to go back to his hermitage and be there basically. He didn’t mind any trouble from his superiors or whatever but it was such a familiar gorgeous moment when he said it.

Rick: Yeah, that’s sweet. Speaking of Christ, I mean Christ said don’t hide your light under a bushel but then again we don’t like spiritual braggarts, you know, who are always spouting off about what they’re experiencing. There’s some kind of balance to be found there.

Paul: Yeah, and still you know the West doesn’t have a particular good rep for encouraging people to speak freely about religious topics, especially going back to history.

Rick: Yeah, I mean all the mystics got killed or persecuted or given a hard time by administrative types who weren’t having those experiences.

Paul: So it’s not a good incentive to speak.

Rick: Yeah, good point.

Paul: And still it happens now really. I was invited to go over to Egypt to chat and then some people that I know who have been there just phoned me and said well possibly it’s better not to go and it hadn’t occurred to me. Because you can still upset people quite easily.

Rick: Yeah, you know that was one of my motivations for starting this show was I live in a town where a lot of people have been meditating for decades and people were having you know awakenings and I would hear from them. They’d say well I had this really profound shift and I started telling my friends about it and they all gave me a hard time. They said, oh you’re just Joe Schmo, you couldn’t possibly be having something like this. So I thought well you know I want to start interviewing these people so that their peers can see that it’s happening to people just like them and then maybe they won’t give them a hard time and also maybe they will you know have more confidence that it could happen to them too. And so that was one of the reasons this thing got going.

Paul: Yeah and it feels like a very natural luminosity. It’s not special.

Rick: Right. It’s something everyone should enjoy.

Paul: It’s very natural. Yes. Yeah. It’s the juice of time and space.

Rick: Right.

Paul: It’s the juice of it all.

Rick: I mean if we went back to the 1800s you know think about how people would react if we pulled out a cell phone or you know took off in a helicopter or any of those types of things. They’d be completely freaked out but now we all just take it for granted and I think the same thing can happen with what you’re talking about you know over time and maybe we’re getting moving in that direction.

Paul: It feels you know for my character it feels a bit like that, like the old central structures of authority whether they’re political or financial or religious or so-called spiritual, they’re all being shaken really quite strongly at the moment and there seems to be like a decentralization of those central authorities and possibly the sort of thing we’re chatting about is hugely, has a decentralization of effect because it removes the middle person with authority in a sense or it makes them a lot less significant or less critical.

Rick: I think you’re right. I mean there was a time and maybe it’s still true that in the Catholic Church you know priests were officially considered the intermediaries between the ordinary people and God and I mean there was a big fuss when Gutenberg came out with the Bible because it was getting to the point where others could read it also and you didn’t need you know priests to intervene and you know so that was a big shake-up, but I think we’ve obviously come quite away since then but I think it’s even getting more decentralized as you were just saying, more democratized, and you know people are gaining the confidence to recognize that they, I mean the title of the show, Buddha at the Gas Pump, people in ordinary circumstances having the sort of experiences that were once considered super special and rare, you know.

Paul: Yeah, it’s not, it’s natural and you know again over I don’t know 40 years of chatting to characters, you know all the characters I’ve met have got wacked. Some of them have been, you know it makes it you know a great little story but for a lot of them it was simply just almost like waking up in the morning but no sense of there being a separate something waking up. It was such a non-event in a sense. I think you have to be careful when you link it to being something special that can be problematic.

Rick: Yeah and on the other hand just to play devil’s advocate, I sometimes hear people saying, they dumb it down too much sometimes, they say things like “yeah you know you could be a drunkard and you can be you know an abusive SOB and you can be creepy and all this stuff and yet you’re awakened.” I don’t know, I don’t like to take it that far. I think that if awakening is really genuine and you’ve developed the sort of awareness and sensitivity to which you have been alluding, your behavior is not going to really be out of line like that, at least in my idealistic sense of it. So I just don’t like the attitude that anything goes and you can be an enlightened axe murderer or something. It’s just there’s got to be some kind of clearer definition of it I think.

Paul: Well I’ve never met any character who’s an axe murderer and enlightened, so I don’t know. Actually one of the avatars in Vishnu was an axe murderer, so there you go. He went around chopping off all the Kshatriya’s heads.

Paul: Makes a sweet story, Hollywood.

Rick: Okay, now feel free to just always chime in if there’s a pause and I’m not asking a question if something has been on your mind, just pop in there. I just want to pick up on your use of the word character. You frequently refer to characters that get whacked or my character and all, and when you say that I get the implication that you’re saying that you know what you essentially are is not what is not this Paul fellow that we see on screen, that that’s just a character like a character in a play or puppet or something and that it does an injustice to the reality of that ocean to squeeze it down into the drop of an individual. So you try to remind people of that by using the word character, am I right?

Paul: But no, not really.

Rick: Okay, why do you say that all the time?

Paul: Well it doesn’t, I don’t know why I say most things, but because the character is it.

Rick: What do you mean?

Paul: It’s not like the character is less important. Okay, well whwn you go to the dentist with a toothache, you don’t say to the dentist, “Hey my character has a toothache,” you know because the dentist will probably say “Okay we’ll bring him in, we’ll take a look.” I mean you would just say “I have a toothache.”

Paul: I just say there’s lots of pain.

Rick: You could say it that way.

Paul: Yeah, I don’t know.

Rick: Well the reason I’m bugging you about that is some people play word games you know with regard to pronouns, you know they don’t want to just say you know “Please pass me the salt” or some simple thing like that. They start trying to phrase their words in such a way as to constantly remind people that they are not the body, they are not the personality and so on. It sometimes sounds a little unnatural.

Paul: No, I’m very much my character.

Rick: You’re also Paul I guess.

Paul: Yeah, well different words for the same thing. Same thing. And so I’ll perhaps say character or me or time and space. They’re all words for the same thing.

Rick: Yeah, and even if you say my character it’s like are there two of you, there’s a character and then there’s the me who owns it.

Paul: I mean yeah, the whole structure of words is problematic.

Rick: Yeah.

Paul: In a sense we are having a drunken conversation.

Rick: Right, cheers.

Paul: Because in a sense all these words come out of time and space and they’re full of the the alcohol of time and space.

Rick: Yeah.

Paul: But what they’re singing about or they’re in love with hasn’t got a measurement, but all these words are measurements. But it’s not that the measurement is right or wrong because the measurement is it as well and isn’t it simultaneously so to speak. So we’re inherently like using a spade to try to dig a hole in the ocean and it’s it’s not a very suitable instrument. If you’re using words to build a house it would be more useful but in this context of this drunken conversation the spade of words we’re using isn’t a brilliant instrument.

Rick: But it’s better than just staring knowingly into each other’s eyes for two hours, that would get a bit boring. So it’s good to try to do something with words.

Paul: It depends whether you were blonde and more beautiful.

Rick: Sorry, next lifetime maybe.

Paul: No, but it can be, you know, it’s in the silence as well as the words. It’s not one better than the other.

Rick: Sure.

Paul: It’s just, it’s everything.

Rick: I’m sure we all experience that very often we’ll have a conversation with somebody and the words just form a small percentage of the actual communication that’s taking place, you know. You use the words in order to sort of keep it going but there’s so many other strata of communication that are happening.

Paul: And it’s, yeah, very much, because you can listen to words and you can play with words for hours and hours and hours. But also people can hear the same words again and suddenly something different is heard so to speak.

Rick: Very true. And something else goes on there that’s more like a it’s almost like a sense of something here in itself and that can have a different physiological response in the body than just an intellectual process which could be fun and it can help and create clarity with certain ideas and whatever. But when this wetness slaps you, it tends to go below the neck. So and the whole body gets gets hugged or slapped whichever way but whether you want to be romantic or something else happens.

Rick: Or slapstick.

Paul: Yeah.

Rick: Yeah. That’s nice. And very often people talk that way, you know, they talk about levels of awakening on head, heart and gut and so on, the way Adyashanti talks. And you know that it’s not just an, obviously not just an intellectual thing or a mind thing, it’s, on all levels and very visceral.

Paul: Yeah, because in that sense it’s got nothing to do with being clever or not clever.

Rick: No.

Paul: It’s more in a sense more immediate than that. It’s more immediate than any movement of measuring, any movement of time and space, so any movement of a concept. In one sense anything that can be measured or conceptualized into a sort of knowing, into a box as it were, tends to be problematic with regard to this freedom.

Rick: Yeah. You know that old Buddhist saying of the finger pointing at the moon, you know, and then people are getting all hung up on the finger instead of looking at the moon. So I mean all these words and all this talk and so on, it’s that finger.

Paul: Yeah, literally. I remember listening to all these delegations talking and arguing and sometimes quite heated and it is the utter simplicity of this luminosity and yet quite naturally the brain will try to create a knowing of it in a sense, to create a map of it and then for me anyway it felt like all these delegations were arguing over their maps.

Rick: Yeah.

Paul: But none of the maps were it in a sense anyway and it was almost like arguing in completely the wrong place. They weren’t even in the same room as this luminosity as it were.

Rick: Well, you know.

Paul: People want days and weeks this arguments and months and years and thousands of years.

Rick: Millennia, I mean hundreds of millions of people have been killed over disputes over maps which actually refer to the same territory but you know the adherents of the maps are attached to their version and you know they can’t see the … Yeah.

Paul: You can see that the map is simultaneously the person’s identity and people will fight strongly over their sense of identity. Yeah. Because if their map gets threatened as it were, their identity gets threatened and then they can become quite feisty.

Rick: It’s an interesting point. I mean the point you’re making is that is that fundamentalism is symptomatic of an insecurity in one’s identity. That and to me that insecurity lies in not having the actual experience to which one’s belief refers. So you can listen to the words of Jesus for instance and you’re not experiencing what Jesus experienced or what he was alluding to and so you feel an insecurity and you get real fanatical about his words and your interpretation of his words versus somebody else’s interpretation who perhaps also isn’t having that experience and the two of you can be at loggerheads you know over something which you should both be you know hugging each other about if you had the experience.

Paul: Yeah, for sure. Like if you had, you know, I live by the beach and so often you’d see kids playing on the beach and complete strangers, you know, kids and they just look at each other across the sandcastle and often just walk up to each other and hug each other.

Rick: Oh nice.

Paul: You know, for all, you know, from all cultures and and whatever there’s, that’s to me that’s in a sense the naturalness of aliveness, that’s the juiciness of it.

Rick: Yeah.

Paul: But on top of that as we get older and our brains become a lot more sophisticated in building maps and building identities and when a a map becomes, we believe in our maps and if enough people believe in their map it becomes a reality as it were and then they’ll fight over their map to the death.

Rick: It’s a really sweet point you’re making, you know, because with all the trouble in the world, all the political and economic and national divides and conflicts and strife and you know currently and going back throughout history, you know, we’re really all just one being one ocean and it’s sort of absurd that apparent fragments of the ocean are at war with one another. How can the ocean be at war with itself? So obviously it’s a situation of extreme delusion that all this strife exists and if people were able to settle into what they really are there’d be complete unity and harmony.

Paul: But the possibility is that the very movement of time and space of me is a bit of a contradiction in the sense that there can be a movement but not a mover. So in a sense the identity is dealing with, that’s why it’s what you said earlier, it’s always uncertain of itself because in a way it’s all based on a lie, it’s based on an energetic lie that it’s separate from life, that it’s separate from the other person or whatever. So in some way the energetic movement of me tends to be inherently quite destructive to itself and to others as part and process of that movement. It’s like the very movement has to be creative and destructive simultaneously to create the movement and it seems to arise out of the the polarity of this appearance of two things, of two poles. It’s both attracted and repulsed by both poles. So it’s attracted and repulsed by the unknown and it’s attracted and repulsed by the known. But again paradoxically it needs, without that appearance of two, there can be no appearance of a movement. It’s the appearance of two that creates that energetic, almost like a constantly energetic imbalance which creates the appearance of movement of time and space. But without the two you can’t have time and space and vice versa. You can’t have movement, you can’t have time. But to have that the price you pay is for that. It’s a bit like walking. To walk there has to be a constant imbalance to create that movement and we’re always moving in a constant imbalance and hopefully not too imbalanced, we’re not too drunk in which it can be problematic. But the other problematic, if it becomes too balanced the movement stops. If things become too known it becomes, well in a sense it kills and if it becomes too unknown there’s a sense it kills. The whole movement of me is a contradictory paradox and it can only be like that. So in a very neutral way I often say the very movement of me is born out of violence and it’s part and parcel of movement of time and space. So it can never be divorced from it because it’s part and parcel of its of its energetic nature. And also again on the beach you see the kids building sandcastles and they spend all day building sometimes stunning sandcastles even with the apparent adult who is then a kid building sandcastles for their children as well. But towards the end of the day when you see the faces of those children smashing their sandcastles there’s actually so much joy in their faces as they’re smashing their sandcastles. Again we have in our characters this beautiful wonderment of creating but also paradoxically in destroying as well. So it’s part and parcel of this movement called time and space or called me but it’s simultaneously creative and destructive.

Rick: Yeah, kind of reminds me of the Tibetan sand paintings that they do, you know they do these beautiful things and then they just wipe them away.

Paul: Yeah.

Rick: And it also reminds me of the sort of the whole Vedic tradition. I’m sure this is true of other traditions where you know you have you know the Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, the creator, the maintainer and the destroyer and all three are considered necessary for there to be a creation. You know there’s a balance and reciprocity between them that makes the whole thing happen and even from the physics perspective I mean there’s something called spontaneous sequential symmetry breaking where there’s a sort of a fundamental symmetry at the most primordial level of the universe and that it’s broken by degrees sequentially and as it’s broken then more and more force and matter fields and diversity and elements and the whole thing arise and in their arising obviously there’s going to be sort of conflicts and clashes and you know interactions and the whole thing gets very very kind of mixed up but if it didn’t go through that process you wouldn’t have a creation.

Paul: Or destruction.

Rick: Or destruction yeah and so it’s like the course of of the of creative intelligence we could call it is from here to here you know from eye to eye. It’s like you know that T.S. Eliot line that we you know the end of all our seeking will be to arrive back at the place from which we started and to know it for the first time.

Paul: Very much yeah and you often hear that from people, they’ll often say. An old monk contacted me, a Benedictine monk a little while, a few months ago and it’s quite funny because he was he was swearing quite a lot on the phone which often happens with spiritual characters. Because he was saying “Paul, what I was looking for was there the first day I walked into the monastery like 40 years ago and I went into there and sat to pray. What I was looking for was was there when I walked in on the first day.” So it’s very much again I often say it’s an apparent movement but with no mover.

Rick: Yeah.

Paul: So it is literally a journeyless journey.

Rick: Yeah, pathless path and if it wasn’t there on the first day then it must not have been something abiding or permanent, you know, it would be a transitory thing and that’s not what he was looking for. He was looking you know there’s that verse in the Gita, “the unreal has no being, the real never ceases to be.”

Paul: It’s everything.

Rick: Yeah.

Paul: It never wasn’t the case and that’s I often feel, I often hear people say this word unconditional and literally this ocean is because it already is the case. Yeah. It doesn’t have to be a condition for it because it already is. Everything.

Rick: Yeah, now that is not to say that it’s sufficient to just say something like that or accept someone saying something like that and say to yourself, “okay I’m done,” it’s all you know, it’s all already the case and what I’m looking for is already here because it may not be your experience and if it’s not your experience then you’ve got to go through whatever you got to go through until it becomes your experience and you can’t just necessarily do it at the snap of a finger, you know, in my experience.

Paul: Again, there doesn’t seem to be any rules to this but you’d have to do some sort of scientific research and analyze all these different characters and but only from the characters I’ve met over the years because in a way this ocean doesn’t have anything because it’s not in a relationship with anything so it doesn’t sing, it doesn’t say do this or not do it.

Rick: It’s a relationship with itself.

Paul: Yeah, so if the character loves to meditate, that’s gorgeous, meditate, but if I had a friend, a good friend in the monastery and for his character sitting to meditate was utter violence, he used to hate it, he used to suffer and suffer and suffer.

Rick: Kind of depends on how you’re going about it, but anyway go on.

Paul: Yeah, but he’d work all day helping people and feeding people and whatever.

Rick: Oh, that’s great.

Paul: And I remember one day somebody gave to the monastery a clock to put in the meditation room and it was a lovely clock but it went as clocks do, it went tick-tock, tick-tock and that was the final straw for my friend. Because at that time my character would just sit there for hours and days or whatever and I came sitting and I came to. My friend and his hands were around my neck and he was shaking me like this and he’s saying, “Paul, Paul is not fair, how can you sit there?” And for him it was murder. So, for that character to tell him to go and sit, it didn’t seem to be the pertinent thing to do. So, it’s not like one size fits all, it’s very individual to the person.

Rick: I totally agree and that’s why there are different paths, you know. I mean traditionally there’s you know the bhakti path, devotion, there’s the service path, seva and there’s the knowledge path, jnana and there’s the you know action path, karma and so on. And different people are acclimated or constituted to be more suitable to one approach or another.

Paul: And it doesn’t matter because they’re all just flavors of the same thing anyway.

Rick: Yeah, so you have to do what’s right for you.

Paul: Well, it’s just like common sense.

Rick: Yeah.

Paul: Again, this is not about, it doesn’t seem to be about being clever, it’s more about natural and common sense.

Rick: Yeah, but one point I heard you make in some of your talks that I might take exception to and perhaps you didn’t mean it this way is that you know you’re saying it makes no difference whether you sit and meditate or hang out in the pub. And you know and I would say it does make a difference. That I mean to take it to a greater extreme, you could say it makes no difference whether you you know meditate regularly or do a bunch of methamphetamine every day. Yeah, well the one is actually going to help your brain develop, new neuroplasticity, the other is going to destroy your brain and that’s going to make a difference in how you experience life. So, you have to be a little careful when you make statements like that, that what we do actually does matter, wouldn’t you say?

Paul: In a natural practical way for sure, big time.

Rick: Yeah.

Paul: I can’t remember the context and what you referred to.

Rick: Something like that that you said in the talk and yeah.

Paul: But again, the flavor of this ocean is it’s more like a … it’s not like a “but” ocean. But. Like, but you said this or but he said that or but the book said that. It has more of a flavor of and, and, and that. So, in other words it contains everything. And that.

Rick: Sure. It contains the holocaust and it contains you know, some beautiful things and it’s like everything is contained within this this great wholeness, this ocean. Right? Is that what you’re saying?

Paul: Yeah. There’s nothing to exclude as it were. But for sure there’s practical ramifications. Like so many, again we were speaking earlier about the side effects sometimes when people are going through a change in which the map of their identity is being shaken as it were and they can often then find it difficult to engage in what they were engaged in before and part of that process is earning money and things like that. But they have very practical consequences for not just the person but their family and everything like that. So, the so-called spiritual thing doesn’t negate earning money and being practical and putting food on the table. Again, it’s very earthy and muddy and down to earth in many ways in getting on with what needs to be done but there’s no suggestion that the sense of one thing can be more conducive or more of an obstacle as it were for that character in the sense of because there’s nothing that can get closer to everything, there’s just everything.

Rick: Yeah, well I’m gonna…

Paul: But that doesn’t negate what you’re just gonna say.

Rick: Right, which is I was gonna give you a little bit of a hard time on that point. Yeah, and what you’re going to say also is it.

Paul: Yeah, yeah, I mean in the big picture. It appears to be a “but” but possibly it’s an “and.” Yeah,

Rick: I mean in five billion years from now this planet is gonna melt because the sun’s gonna expand and you know long before that everybody, well everyone that’s alive now will have died but obviously it’s not going to be too rosy on on earth and well I don’t know maybe that’s not the best example but well yeah I could use it. So you know from the perspective of the totality you know of the ocean of the universe or whatever that’s all in a day’s work. I mean it’s natural this kind of thing happens every you know probably every day some asteroid crashes into an inhabited planet and kills everything. But on the other hand taking it down to the individual level it’s important. There was a a Buddhist sage who lived maybe a thousand years ago named Padmasambhava and there’s a quote from him he said “Although my awareness is as vast as the sky my attention to karma is as fine as a grain of barley flour.” And what he meant by that I think is that the ocean, one’s oceanhood the unboundedness of it all doesn’t negate or render insignificant all the various individual values and responsibilities and consequences of our behavior and the choices we make and so on. Both are true you know and they don’t they may be paradoxical but they don’t conflict with one another.

Paul: For sure, definitely and it’s and because people often– because I’ve got two boys you know people often ask me what about your boys and being responsible for them and things like that and but that thing called responsibility is the ocean and it’s so it’s responsibility full-on in that sense. So like for my younger son he that sense that there was a separate something it’s like collapsed in him when he was about 12 or whatever. So it is quite funny because he does a lot, he’s a free runner, he does lots of parkour.

Rick: I know what that means like you’re jumping on these obstacles and it’s kind of dangerous and you’re flipping over things.

Paul: Yeah, so I turned around in the garden he was training and he was in tears and I thought he’s fallen off something and I thought oh here we go to the A&E again and he just walked up to me and he said there is nobody here is there dad and I said no and just physiologically often tears is quite common or swearing or laughter. There seems to be a physiological response when this sort of slap comes, this wetness and but yeah there’s no father or son as such but that there doesn’t need to be a separate father and son paradoxically for there to be beautiful responsibility and all the practical consequences of dealing because then the whole authority structure for him fell away so there was no authority figure called mum or dad or indeed school. So he wrote a resignation letter, a 22 page document when he was saying school is an inefficient use of my time I’m resigning and he resigned.

Rick: Can you leave school at that age? In the US I don’t think you could.

Paul: Yeah, in this country you have a legal responsibility to educate your child but not to send them to school.

Rick: Oh yeah homeschooling kind of thing.

Paul: Yeah, so I took him into the head mistress and he handed his notice in and she read it and just said “Oh okay” and that was it.

Rick: Yeah, it’s interesting that both you and your son had an awakening in a way I don’t know as a result of sport but kind of while playing it or just after.

Paul: Yeah, I hadn’t thought about that.

Rick: Yeah, kind of runs in the genes or something.

Paul: So perhaps sport is the key.

Rick: It is, everyone should go out and

Paul: look after your knees.

Rick: Yeah, exactly and wear a helmet maybe if you’re doing parkour.

Paul: Yeah, or American football.

Rick: Yeah.

Paul: Yeah,

Rick: I heard you tell your story about your son– it was fascinating and now he’s doing some kind of, he’s talking about there being a new industrial revolution and and he’s doing some kind of business which would take advantage of the change that he sees coming in society or something like that.

Paul: Yeah, well after that experience his character changed dramatically and for me I often say he started moving in the realm of ideas in the sense that he was creating maps, creating identities and also destroying them like creating sand castles on the beach very quickly and he was like or has been like burning through maps.

Rick: So different personality phases you mean?

Paul: Yeah, you can see it’s almost like life has speeded up and for his character and so he’s creating realities and destroying them very quickly.

Rick:

Paul: Interesting. Yeah, it’s fascinating watching and so yeah he started his own business up, he started trading, he’s doing really well.

Rick: Trading like stocks or something?

Paul: Well he discovered something called the blockchain which is like a decentralized way of exchanging anything of value, was no middle person. So it’s a little bit like we’ve been having this conversation about the orthodox religious traditions. So he feels that this emerging technology of robotics and AI and blockchain will create the equivalent of a new industrial revolution in which power will be decentralized from central authorities more into a decentralized landscape and he’s very passionate to use the system being practical as he said as it is but using it to change itself.

Rick: Yeah.

Paul: So he’s very inspired by I suppose people like Elon Musk and things.

Rick: Oh yeah. I think he’s right. How old is he now?

Paul: He’s just 15 now.

Rick: Wow, that’s so cool that he’s doing all that stuff at such a young age. I mean what we’re doing is an example of what he was saying. I used to say freedom of the press belongs to those who own one and now everyone owns one in the sense you know you can sort of broadcast and put things out there and you know it’s so decentralized.

Paul: So well yeah it’s like exactly what you’re doing.

Rick: Yeah exactly.

Paul: You’re decentralizing information and apparent authority from how it was structured into a very different sort of landscape and communication and in that the actual conversation is changing and the possibilities are changing.

Rick: Yeah it’s exciting, it’s an exciting time to be alive. Let’s stay alive as long as we can. Knees notwithstanding.

Paul: Yeah, but yeah he sees you know lots of things imminently happening. He says the future is here now but it’s not spread out dad. Yeah, that’s brilliant.

Rick: Wow, I was such an ningcompoop when I was 15. It’s really inspiring to hear someone that age being so wise.

Paul: It is weird he was invited by the Bank of England which is our central bank to a dinner meeting to give them input about the future disruption of these technologies.

Rick: Amazing.

Paul: He took a photo and he sat there with his baseball hat on with people like you know posh people as he said.

Rick: Right, all kinds of He came back, he said “Dad that was my first experience of power.” because he said the way we were treated by everybody he said he’d never experienced that before. So he said I’ve realized how power can be so intoxicating for people and you know we’ve talked about obviously spiritual and religious things and the whole construct that society has made and that possibly they’re not as authoritative as we presume them to be, not as all- knowing as we presume them to be.

Rick: It’s all the emperor’s new clothes.

Paul: Yeah, yeah. But he can see, you know, it’s his first experience of why people fall in love with power and why they hold on to it. And we see that, well I’m sure you’ve seen it in the spiritual circle as in the economic circle or the political circle. Again, it’s human nature. It’s those kids on the beach.

Rick: Yeah, there’s that saying power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I don’t know who said that, but it definitely can be intoxicating and go to one’s head.

Paul: It is, you know, within the context of our conversation, you know, over 40 years of chatting to people. Now, you hear so many stories from people that have in one way or another have been abused by people in religious or spiritual authority.

Rick: Yeah.

Paul: And in a sense, I made a new year’s resolution to become more grumpy. So, I’m going to be, I wanted to become more grumpy with that sort of stuff.

Rick: ; As long as you don’t become abusive in the process.

Paul: Yeah, I’m less patient of all that sort of it when people use power to abuse other people.

Rick: Yeah, you know, that’s another meme that is kind of emerging in the collective consciousness. I gave a talk at the Science and Nonduality Conference in October about the ethics of enlightenment and a bunch of people came up afterwards, teachers and non-teachers and just said, “We’ve all been talking about this and thinking about this, the time has come to not tolerate this kind of stuff anymore.” And look what’s happening now, I don’t know about in the UK, but over here all these movie stars and politicians and all are getting busted for sexual abuse and using their power to take advantage of people. In the collective consciousness there’s a impatience with that, a lack of tolerance of it anymore.

Paul: Yes, so I think in people’s characters, that one then needs to be like a, at least like a, in a sense a street awareness when you’re around people with power, to be careful. And that equally goes to so-called spiritual teachers and gurus and whatever. It’s like, I often say, regard them as second-hand car salesmen until they prove otherwise. It’s possibly a good start-off point, because power is such, it’s so appealing to characters.

Rick: It is and it’s tricky not only for the students of such people but for the people themselves. I mean they get hit harder than any of them. You know there’s that saying, “Pride goeth before a fall.” There’s so many instances of people just getting, letting it go to their heads and you know the whole thing gets out of control and then they end up crashing and burning. So there’s a kind of a maturity I think that’s necessary in order to assume the role of a spiritual teacher and often people try to assume it prematurely.

Paul: Again in the old monastic traditions they used to say, “Stay quiet for 20 years.”

Rick: Yeah. And possibly there’s a common sense in that really.

Rick: Now the times are such that we need people to you know get out there and talk and teach. I mean there seems to be this again the democratization idea where it’s not just sort of one guru with thousands of followers but hundreds and hundreds of people with small gatherings that are helpful to those people, but the same dynamic is there where there has to be a readiness and a maturity in order to assume that role otherwise you’re not going to be helping anyone including yourself.

Paul: My son was telling me he’s reading a book called “Stealing Fire” I think it’s called and it goes into about transcendence or moving to a different state and they were analyzing navy seals. It’s written by scientists I think and when they’re looking for a navy seal they’re looking for a character that when in extreme circumstances doesn’t become like a superhero like you see in the movies, like a a super individual, he actually can become one with the group.

Rick: Yeah, has the group in mind.

Paul: Then there’s no leader, there’s no leader in a group, in a navy seal group, whoever’s in the best position becomes the natural leader at that moment in time. So like in a conversation, you know, is there a teacher, is there a student? The teacher and the student, if you want to use those words, appear all over the place in a word, in a mannerism from every character in a conversation. It’s not located, it’s not located inside that certain character or physiology. It’s in that sense that if you could say there was a teacher or it’s non-local in a sense.

Rick: Yeah, people become more like catalysts in a way, you know, they can serve to facilitate something in the group but it’s not like they’re, and I know people who are really uncomfortable even just sitting on some kind of stage or anything, they just would rather get down on the floor and have everybody in a circle and just to sort of make it more clear that there’s a commonality and not a hierarchical arrangement.

Paul: Because as you said earlier, so much of communication isn’t in the words and you know, as we said, words are problematic anyway, because they’re not a particularly great instrument for singing about this. But also when you build a structure like you raise somebody onto a platform as it were, that already is communicating something in our conditioning. So, but there’s, like you said, you know, we can’t but use words, sometimes those situations, but you just have to be careful with them, not to get, not to believe in them.

Rick: Right, or in yourself too much in terms of any individual importance.

Paul: Well, yeah, to believe in any measurement, a measurement is real but it’s a measurement of something which has no measurement. So, simultaneously it’s unreal as it were.

Rick: Yeah, there’s a quote from Amma whom you see over my shoulder here. She always says, “It’s always good to have the attitude of a beginner.” I think what she means by that is just that, you know, humility, you know, just recognition that one doesn’t know everything or have some kind of super-duper status or anything that if you just have that attitude and almost like the attitude of a servant, which, you know, some of the great saints that we admire throughout history have had just the humility and sense of servitude, that it’s a safeguard for yourself and also makes you more helpful perhaps to others.

Paul: But in many ways Rick, it’s more simple than that. It’s so close as it were, that in a sense it’s brand new. In that brand newness there’s no knowing, because there’s no even knowing that it’s brand new, but it’s immaculate in a sense and perhaps that’s the story of the immaculate conception. It’s literally, literally time and space is immaculate. And in that timeless seamlessness, there is no need of knowing and yet it can appear as knowing, it can appear as a measurement.

Rick: It’s interesting you should say all that in response to what I just said. I’m trying to get the segue how we got to that, but it’s interesting what you’re saying. Maybe just the brand new part.

Paul: Literally. In other words ever fresh moment to moment, are you kind of saying that there’s a…

Paul: It’s not even more imminent than that.

Rick: It’s closer than one’s jugular vein as they say.

Paul: It’s like you push the brain towards it as it were and suddenly the brain and the words go… They just stop because there’s no measurement for it because it’s not… In that sense it’s not a time and space thing.

Rick: It precedes time and space.

Paul: In a sense, but it is time and space. Yes, the form is the formless. They only in language appear to be two things and that’s the language is a two-edged sword. It can create as much separation as clarity as it were. And it’ll do both unavoidably because that’s the nature of the tool.

Rick: Yeah, I don’t even know. Well maybe language is to blame but we still use it and you know but I think it kind of depends on our orientation to it that if we keep it in its proper place and recognize its limitations then it can be a useful tool. If we think that it’s capable of encapsulating the whole reality and that the words themselves are so important then the whole thing gets top-heavy and you know and misinterpretation and confusion emerge.

Paul: Yeah, we just fight over words, we fight over measurements.

Rick: Like we were saying earlier. Yeah, we’ll loop back to some stuff in your personal life which I think is kind of fascinating. Well firstly let me ask what was your motivation for leaving the monastery after five years?

Paul: The same playfulness that took me there.

Rick: Yeah, just something moved you to leave.

Paul: Yeah, just moved and I lived like a hermit for a while on my parents farm.

Rick: And then so you must have been about early 20s by that time. So if you went in when you were 17 or so.

Paul: Yeah, 22 or whatever.

Rick: And how old were you when you got married?

Paul: I can’t remember.

Rick: Roughly.

Paul: Later 20s.

Rick: Okay, and you had this interesting story about that where your wife whom you’d never met the woman and this name popped into your head and you thought I’m going to marry this person. You didn’t even know if such a person existed or if she did where she was or anything else but boom I’m going to marry this person. What do you make of that? I mean how did that happen?

Paul: I don’t know, it’s just what happened. It sounds a bit weird.

Rick: One of those mystical kind of things.

Paul: Yeah, just sitting quietly and I heard the name and I just knew I’d marry her.

Rick: And so then you overheard some women in a store or something talking about this person?

Paul: In the local village I heard the name then again. So I inquired, I said “Who is this person?” I also asked how old are they?

Rick: She’s 70.

Paul: And I got hold of her telephone number and I just phoned her up out of the blue and said “My name’s Paul, would you like to go out for dinner?” She said no.

Rick: Unless your name is McCartney, I don’t think so.

Paul: Yeah, so I remember putting the phone down and I’m thinking well we’re getting married why did you say no? And then months later she phoned me.

Rick: Right, she was snowed in someplace right? And she phoned you asked if you had a four-wheel drive vehicle.

Paul: Yeah, my mum and dad had an old little Suzuki four by four. So I managed to get down, it was a long farm lane. It was full of snow, it was very beautiful and the gates had iced up and it was a bit like a film really.

Rick: You were like Prince Charming coming to save her.

Paul: Yeah, I rescued her and took her for dinner.

Rick: Killed a dragon or two on the way.

Paul: Yeah.

Rick: So you took her for dinner and then so one thing led to the next.

Paul: Yeah, we just kept in communication and then yeah eventually married and had two boys.

Rick: And you didn’t stay, how long were you married? I keep asking you all these number

Rick: Interesting, what did she make of your whole orientation to life? I mean did she kind of get this ocean business?

Paul: Because my character will just speak about it when it gets prodded. Was she interested in that whole thing? So in a sense she had a sense that when she said when she met me it felt like coming home. That’s the only way that she verbalized it really. So it’s funny, I was speaking to my son yesterday and often people ask me what do you say to your children about this? And I often don’t understand questions, it takes my brain a little while to like create that sort of map because the question doesn’t make much sense. Because everything’s the ocean, so there’s nothing that needs to be spoken about as such, because the kids as it were just grew up in the ocean. And so it’s just always what is. So they didn’t have to be like some sort of proper conversation about, because there isn’t a something which is the ocean, there isn’t a something over there or behind there which is the ocean, it’s not a something in that sense. So to make it into something it just becomes another measurement which isn’t it.

Rick: And so this all, what you’re saying now arose from my asking about whether your wife was interested in this stuff and so I guess what you’re saying is it was it’s so natural to you that you don’t make a deal out of it. If she’s interested, she’s interested, if she’s not, she’s not, but it’s like it wasn’t relevant really as a topic of discussion or something.

Paul: But making a living was the ocean.

Rick: Yeah, something you needed to do. Building a business, yeah, making profits and and…

Rick: And you have some kind of art studio or something don’t you?

Paul: Yeah, and deciding which school for your children to go to and what books to read and what stories to tell them and things like that.

Rick: Those are all currents within the ocean.

Paul: Well, although this sounds a bit paradoxical, they’re not even currents, it’s the whole ocean is in it.

Rick: No, I get that. Yeah, so because the current sounds isolated but what you’re saying is that the whole ocean is in every drop. Is it?

Paul: Yeah, it’s in changing the baby’s nappy, it’s in the hug, it’s in cooking breakfast, it’s in reading the book, it’s in trying to make a business deal, to make money, to pay the mortgage.

Rick: Right.

Paul: It’s all of that, that’s all the juice.

Rick: Yeah, what was it William Blake said, “Infinity in a wildflower, eternity in an hour.” It’s sort of the totality is in the part.

Paul: Literally. That thing we call the part which we think we know, we know the measurement but we don’t know what’s being measured. But the paradoxical thing is that that measurement is measuring something which has no measurement, which is immeasurable. So that thing we call a cup of tea for instance is everything.

Rick: Yeah. See now words aren’t so bad, I mean it’s beautiful what you’re saying. [Laughter] You know it’s poetic but it’s like you know there’s people who have a way with words, Rumi and various others or even the Upanishads which you referred to earlier where the words somehow magically give one an intuitive sense of the reality to which they point and so they really do have their function.

Paul: It’s a bit like that, it’s a bit like a love affair.

Rick: Yeah.

Paul: In the sense when you’re speaking about your lover something comes through the words, that isn’t simply the words.

Rick: Yes, yes, a feeling is conveyed or you talked about smells earlier, there’s an aroma that is stimulated by the words.

Paul: Yeah, so this conversation is literally everything.

Rick: So it’s probably too personal to ask but maybe you could answer in a general way in terms of the types of things you’ve been saying. But you said after 20-25 years that relationship ended and I guess you would just say that that’s the way the ocean flowed or something.

Paul: Yeah, two different characters at that point wanted different things.

Rick: Yeah.

Paul: Because I would say living with the character that might not have the same map as yours or have different priorities for instance, you know just has practical implications and for me in a sense the two boys and what was going on there became the priority for my character.

Rick: Well and it wasn’t for your wife, I mean usually mothers are very, you know.

Paul: Yeah, the boys love their mom and the mom loves the boys but there was a difference in the dance that was happening.

Rick: Yeah, okay, I think that’s clear. I won’t press you for anything more in that area. And so now you run this art gallery and in Wales I guess.

Paul: Well, I’m more of a silent partner there now.

Rick: Okay.

Paul: I don’t have time really.

Rick: Oh really, so you’re just busy talking about the ocean and drinking tea?

Paul: Yeah, lots of tea and the boys. So people came like before our conversation and people will come after our conversation.

Rick: What kind of people? You mean people with whom you sit as a mentor? p;We just drink tea and chat.

Rick: Buddies with your boys, that kind of people?

Paul: No, we just drink tea and chat about the ocean and whatever else.

Rick: So you have a little open house and people come around and sit and chat and that keeps you pretty busy?

Paul: Yes, although I don’t like the house being too open.

Rick: Yeah, I know what you mean. I suppose every now and then you rent a hall.

Paul: Yeah, and there’s so much going on in the boys lives at the moment. Sure. Especially Angelo, my youngest.

Rick: Yeah, it sounds exciting.

Paul: I have my resources and my energies needed there as well.

Rick: Yeah, a kid could support you in your old age, it sounds like the rate he’s going. That’s the plan, huh? And do you do, I mean, people are right now, let’s see, there’s about they’re probably all over the world and after we’ve done this, people may want to get in touch with you. Do you Skype conversations with people and stuff like that from here?

Paul: Yeah, I always didn’t like it, but the last year or so I’ve started because there’s so many people from, I always used to love traveling about having cups of tea and meeting people.

Rick: And coffee.

Paul: Yeah, coffee now, yeah, cappuccinos. But now it’s impossible because people are from different countries and they’re all over. So Skype is becoming much more, for me, the easiest way of doing it.

Rick: Sure, I mean, sometimes people ask me why I don’t travel to see the people. So if I did that it would be like England today and Tennessee last week and you know, California the week before I’d be on the road constantly. Skype is much easier.

Paul: So the last few years I’ve experienced that basically and I can’t do that anymore.

Rick: Yeah. Do you charge a certain amount for your time when you do Skype conversations?

Paul: No, I don’t charge but sometimes people give money, sometimes.

Rick: Yeah, sometimes you may need to or else you’re gonna have to turn people away because it’s gonna get so busy, you know.

Paul: Well, I’ve, for 40 years I’ve just chatted to people.

Rick: That’s nice.

Paul: My boys tell me off sometimes.

Rick: For spending so much time chatting with people?

Paul: Yeah.

Rick: That’s probably why you and your wife aren’t together anymore. Would you get off the phone?

Paul: Thank you, Rick.

Rick: I figured it out. I can relate. Do you ever do any residential things like little retreats and things?

Paul: Yeah, I’ve done them in my home basically because I like them quite, like what you outlined previously about you know, sitting in front of an audience. I’ve always been reticent of that.

Rick: Yeah.

Paul: Again, I just felt like meeting people across the table, having a cup of tea. Yeah, I like to keep it informal. It happens, it does happen more again because I can’t, in one way, practically it’s easy to meet a lot of people in one go nowadays.

Rick: Sure.

Paul: And individually. You know what a lot of people do, Paul, is they use this thing called Zoom. Have you ever used Zoom? And it enables you to have these sort of little webinars with it’s very, it’s better than Skype for that kind of thing for multiple people, it’s participatory, you know.

Paul: Yeah, this last year is the first time people have contacted me and organized Zooms and you see lots of different faces.

Rick: Right.

Paul: I find a bit weird to be honest.

Rick: Yeah, but it’s sort of a handy tool.

Paul: Yeah, but it’s, yeah, so that’s beginning to happen as well.

Rick: Okay, good. And in your experience with all these chats and cups of tea and so on, has there been, have you noticed that there’s a sort of a contagion? I mean, when you’re talking to people does it enliven something in them? Have people that you’ve been interacting with for some time had awakenings? Has it stimulated that in them? I mean, what are people getting out of all these chats and all this tea?

Paul: Lots of people come because they’ve had, for want of a better word, awakenings. And lots of times, you know, that’s been or has been problematic. So, you help them kind of come to terms with it. So, some of the conversation can revolve around that.

Rick: Yeah, that’s good.

Paul: But it’s just a drunken conversation about love really.

Rick: Sure.

Paul: And all the practical things that go around that.

Rick: But that’s a real valuable service. I think there’s definitely a need for sort of post awakening, a little bit of post awakening hand-holding, you know, and helping people to get comfortable with what’s happening to them.

Paul: Well, it’s again, it’s different for different characters, but for some characters it can, as you said, can be very unsettling. And also there can be often quite a bit of fear, because it’s very common that in the experience is almost like a sense that they were going to die or or whatever.

Rick: Yeah, something is going to die.

Paul: Yeah. Something that never was. I remember listening to this old monk and somebody in the garden was telling him about this experience and in the experiences they were going to commit suicide, but this was in a dream. And he was he was digging up the root vegetables and things and he turned around to the man and said, “Did you succeed?” And the man said, “No.” And he looked at him and said, “Oh pity,” and carried on gardening again.

Rick: Succeed in committing suicide? P;Yeah.

Rick: Were they saying that literally or more like a…

Paul: No, in the dream, in the sense he was going to die.

Rick: Right.

Paul: So the old monk in the context of our conversation said, “Oh you should have jumped.”

Rick: Yeah.

Paul: And it would have been the end of something that never was.

Rick: Right. And just to cover our basis here, we’re not implying any kind of literal suicide, we’re talking about the death of the ego or the false sense of self.

Paul: We’re talking about the juice of aliveness.

Rick: Right.

Paul: Yeah. Which can’t be measured, which in that sense was never born, which never began. So the whole concept of death or the end of a something just collapses. The whole of what we’re talking about really, I often say it’s like meditation. Meditation in a way was designed to break time and space. It’s designed to break something which isn’t what it appears to be. It’s designed to break an energetic lie that there are, there is one thing separate from another thing.

Rick: Yeah.

Paul: So what we’re talking about is just a crazy drunken love affair that breaks time and space.

Rick: It’s funny you use the word drunken because I interviewed a Sufi gentleman last week and Rumi and Kabir and those guys often use that drunkenness as a metaphor for this sort of divine intoxication.

Paul: For sure, I have a funny thing which is a bit weird. Some people don’t know me. When I go to sleep–from those experiences as a teenager something always happens –and then there’s just no body basically, there’s no sense of an edge to the body, the body can’t be found and there’s a lot of energetic stuff that goes on and then in the night the body will wake up and it’ll dance.

Rick: Now wait a minute, so let me make sure what you’re talking about here. So are you talking about some subtle thing or you’re saying that if somebody were sitting in the room they would see Paul get out of bed and start dancing around?

Paul: Oh yeah, I’d be up out of bed dancing.

Rick: This actually happens every night?

Paul: No, the experience…

Rick: No wonder your wife left you.

Paul: Energetic experience. It’s not very good on a first date if it happens.

Rick: So like dancing around the bedroom?

Paul: And it’s literally like a drunkenness. It’s like… It just overflows in the body basically

Rick: with energy

Paul: and makes the body dance.

Rick: Interesting and you’ll dance for what 5-10 minutes or something, go take a pee and go back to bed?

Paul: I don’t really know.

Rick: You don’t really know, it’s just something that happens.

Paul: I don’t think it goes on for a long, long time.

Rick: Yeah. What kind of dancing is it? I mean is it wild and crazy or is it more like this subtle Tai Chi kind of thing or what?

Paul: It’s not crazy heavy metal stuff.

Rick: No, okay. More flowing kind of?

Paul: Yeah, it’s… I don’t know, I’ve never thought that, what kind of dancing.

Rick: It’s just making you think about all kinds of things you haven’t thought about.

Paul: Yeah, I don’t really know, really. It’s just…

Rick: You should set up a camera and tape it sometime. Have it ready to go.

Paul: And I don’t know why it happens, it’s just the same. When I go to bed it’s always the same. It was an experience when I was 16 and I’d have this sense to go and sit quietly and then I just learned to follow it basically, whenever I had that sense. And so if I was in the house I’d just go up to my bedroom and sit on my bed. And this one time I went up and sat on my bed and there’s just this, it was a violet, what I called a cloud, came into the room. I went above the body and then I knew I had to lie down. I don’t know how I knew, I just lay down and it just rained down onto the body and it was very energetically strong. And then it was the first time that I had experienced that the edge of the body wasn’t the edge that I thought it was, that the edge was also edgeless and then there was no sense of a separate body as a separate to the wall over there or to the carpet or to the bed. And that happens every night since basically.

Rick: Does it happen with the the violet thing every night or?

Paul: Yeah.

Rick: Oh really?

Paul: Yeah.

Rick: That’s so interesting.

Paul: I don’t know what, I don’t know. Yeah. It’s just what the physiology does.

Rick: I mean I’ve had a couple of experiences in my life that were somewhat like that and I attributed them, maybe it was just my interpretation, but I attributed them to some kind of celestial being or something. I mean one time I was giving a talk in a room and there were only two people in the room and they were on kind of on either side and I was looking to this person talking and then listening to that, looking at that person and talking. And then all of a sudden this ball of light came into the room and it was right in the middle and it gave me the sense of being very conscious, as much as those people if not more so, and I kind of looked at it and acknowledged and and then there was sort of reciprocity and then I went on talking but I sort of felt like there was some kind of interest or intervention or curiosity or something from whatever that was that was checking out what I was doing perhaps giving me more energy or wisdom or whatever in what I was doing and when you told that story just now I got that feeling like maybe, I mean I have friends who routinely see sort of subtle beings like guardian angels or something around people tending to them in ways which my friend doesn’t even understand but they’re there. So I just wonder sometimes if we have something like that in our lives that associates with us and and serves as a some inspirational or influential kind of guide, you know. Irene says, “Geez, spit it out,” but hey it took me a while to say that but I was trying to find the words, you know. I suppose that would be all speculative and hypothetical for you and you don’t really know, is that right?

Paul: Well in a sense the brain always likes to know so it’ll always, it’ll try to

Rick: cook up stories,

Paul: yeah. But again, you know whether I describe a violet light or I say this body, it’s the same ocean. And that’s the love affair. So it doesn’t, for me I don’t care whether it’s a blinking violet light or a cup of tea

Rick: or the Archangel Gabriel or something.

Paul: Yeah, it’s all… I met earlier today and chatted to the same, for want of a better word, the same being, the same ocean. Yeah. The same, it’s the same lover.

Rick: That’s good. I want to ask you another question about your sleep and that is that when you go to sleep at night, when well pardon my phraseology because the words are limited, but when Paul lies down in bed, body goes to rest, there’s some kind of inner awareness. Does the ocean remain awake to itself when the body begins to snore or are you totally blotto, you’re gone?

Paul: That luminosity is irrespective of waking, dreaming or sleep.

Rick: Good.

Paul: But that luminosity has nothing to do with the way I understand the awareness in the sense of one thing being aware of a different thing. It’s more evident, it’s more… it’s before that sort of apparent movement happens and yet is that movement of time and space simultaneously. Literally the form and the formless are not two things.

Rick: Would it be accurate to say that when your body goes to sleep the senses are shut down because that’s what sleep is and so therefore there’s not going to be you know an active experience of a thing of any sort through any sensory apparatus but that luminosity without experiencing things continues on as it always does.

Paul: Yeah, but in the sense that there’s no sense of anything continuing?

Rick: Because for there to be a sense you’d have to be sort of functioning mentally like you know cognizant of it which would be an activity and you’re saying that everything has really resolved back into its primordial…

Paul: Well, even in a sense prior to that because although this sounds a bit crazy, it’s also itself evident that nothing nothing began.

Rick: It doesn’t sound crazy at all. Yeah,

Paul: but literally Rick, literally nothing has ever began, nothing has ever been born and yet it doesn’t negate that measurement called birth and movement and time and space and Paul and sons and everything. Yeah, it’s freedom, it’s it’s unconditional.

Rick: Yeah, and you’re certainly not the first person to say something like that. Ramana said that sort of thing and many others that and you can say that that nothing ever began, nothing ever happened and then in the same breath you can say yes, but then there’s all this and both are paradoxically simultaneously true.

Paul: And, and, and, it’s infinite.

Rick: Yeah, yeah.

Paul: There’s no edges to it, there’s no measurements and then we just get back. I think the Indians have an analogy about it, is it a salt doll going to test how deep the ocean is?

Rick: Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that one.

Paul: Yeah, that when it walks into the ocean it dissolves.

Rick: Just dissolves, right.

Paul: So the brain is a bit like that, you push it as it were, this is all a bit of a story now, but you push it towards the ocean and it just dissolves and then suddenly begins to happen and then there’s just what can’t be measured, which paradoxically is simultaneously all measurements, the whole of time and space.

Rick: Yeah, I love that and I love the way you’re presenting it in a balanced way because there’s some people who just say the first part of it, you know, they say there’s only this and nothing ever happened and then they don’t kind of complete the thing to say but then there’s also everything happening and so it just seems kind of lopsided and people kind of scratch their heads and say, yeah but what about my job and what about this and that. So it’s kind of like the ocean can contain you know the whole panoply of diversity, apparent diversity without overflowing because it’s infinite.

Paul: Of course, otherwise it wouldn’t be free.

Rick: Yeah. Do you ever feel any restriction or constriction or lack of freedom or or even momentarily or does nothing disrupt that?

Paul: But there’s always luminosity, there’s always this ocean which can appear to be anything, you know whether it’s pain or I need to pay the bills it can appear as anything, anger. Does the pain or anything else ever get so intense that the that the oceanhood is momentarily forgotten?

Paul: Well, because it’s not a memory. Right. I had kidney stone a couple of years ago and that was…

Rick: It hurt like hell.

Paul: That was real pain, that was good pain and I couldn’t stand up, I couldn’t get onto my feet.

Rick: Right.

Paul: But that is it. It’s everything, Rick.

Rick: Those who are listening to the audio version of this and not seeing the video, Paul’s making all sorts of interesting gestures like playing with his lips and putting his hand over his face and stuff like that. But I think you’re conveying it beautifully and you know it’s just delightful you know having this virtual cup of tea with you and going on about this. I mean there’s a beautiful way in which you kind of dance around the whole topic and you know use words to say that which can’t be said. You’re doing a good job of it I’d say.

Paul: But because literally it does feel like a dance.

Rick: Yeah, exactly.

Paul: It’s a gorgeous dance with nothing moving.

Rick: Yeah. Another question has just come to mind and that is that as time has gone on and you’ve been at this for decades now, is there still a sense of growth and unfoldment in some respect? I mean within the infinite freedom of the ocean do you feel like certain capacities have become more and more rich such as love for instance or kind of sensory refinement or anything. I mean do you feel like there’s that you’re still a work in progress in some respect?

Paul: I’ve got more grumpy.

Rick: Oh yeah, okay, so you’re regressing.

Paul: The answer in a sense is yes and no. Because that freedom, that ocean is what it is.

Rick: Yeah, it’s full.

Paul: Yeah, even words like complete don’t even touch it. I guess. Sorry. And in that freedom anything like senses can change, the sensitivities can change, the physiology can change.

Rick: Was there direction to that change? I mean would you define it as developmental in some way?

Paul: Okay, the answer is yes and no. I do apologize.

Rick: No, that’s okay, I understand.

Paul: But in the sense you can create a map in your brain and it can appear to be that there’s something developing and it is, it’s true and untrue simultaneously, that sort of measurement.

Rick: Yeah.

Paul: What we’re talking about is an utter paradox, it’s an utter conceptual paradox.

Rick: Yeah, but when you talk about paradox you can say you know that I mean you can if you’re doing side B of the paradox you can say yes and the B side there is sort of change and the development seems to have a direction or trajectory or you know things are getting better in this or that respect or something whereas side A of the paradox it’s all just perfect and nothing ever changes, nothing ever happened and so on. So I mean you can say that.

Paul: So in that in that sense in freedom there’s nothing excluded.

Rick: Right.

Paul: So in that sense it’s and and and and.

Rick: Yeah. And and what?

Paul: Everything. The dance can appear as in any way it wants to. Right. And it can be a quiet or it could be a more sophisticated dance or more simple dance. But the the juice of the dance is that is also the same in however it expresses itself. So it’s different and not different simultaneously.

Rick: Yeah.

Paul: It’s again it’s this sense of the form and the formless are not two things, that movement and non-movement are not two things. Change and unchange are not two things, they’re just measurements, apparent measurements of something which can’t be measured.

Rick: You’re a walking talking Zen koan. Tea drinking Zen koan.

Paul: Coffee now. I think I’m more sophisticated I’ve been told.

Rick: Yeah. Well great. Well this has been delightful. I don’t know if we’re going to cover any fresh ground or even if we have because it’s all the same ground. By continuing.

Paul: It is and it isn’t.

Rick: Yes you’re right. But it’s lovely spending a couple hours with you just you know carrying on like this. It’s been a delightful experience.

Paul: Okay thank you Rick.

Rick: Yeah.

Paul: Thank you Irene.

Rick: Oh Irene, Paul says thank you. She says “You’re welcome, Paul”. No she didn’t, she just said you’re welcome Paul. So I just want to just make a couple of wrap-up points. Okay so you don’t really have a functioning website at this point I’ve noticed. You gave me a link to one but it doesn’t work so maybe you’ll get that fixed. But you do have a Facebook page and I’ll be linking to that and you haven’t written any books I don’t believe but I guess people can contact you through your Facebook page if they want to have a Skype chat or something like that right?

Paul: Yeah or through the email that you used. Do you want me to put your email on on your website page?

Paul: Yeah. Okay. I tend not to be very good with social media.

Rick: Okay.

Paul: I do tend to check the emails.

Rick: Alrighty so I’ll put your email address on your BatGap page.

Paul: Yes. And people can get in touch that way if they like. I’m not always the quickest in replying.

Rick: Right. Okay. We noticed that but we did get a hold of you.

Paul: I apologize.

Rick: Get ready for a bit of a deluge. You’ll probably have a lot of people contacting you so good luck with that. And then in general just to those who are listening or watching this is an ongoing series and there’s several things you could do if you’d like to stay in touch. One is to subscribe to the YouTube channel that you’re watching if you’re watching this on YouTube and then YouTube will notify you when new interviews are posted. Another is to subscribe to my little email thing so that you’ll get an email from us whenever a new interview is posted. And there’s also the audio podcast if you like to listen to things rather than sit and watch. And if you subscribe to the podcast then every time you open iTunes or whatever you’re using to listen to podcasts you’ll get each new episode as it becomes available. So there’s those and then there’s some other things if you check out the various menus on Batgap.com. So please do that, and we’ll see you next week. Next week I’ll be speaking with a gentleman who is in his 90s who originally got in touch with us saying I’m in my 90s, I’ve had both my feet amputated and I’ve never been happier in my life. And he was the designer of some of the original cars like the Thunderbird and GTO and some of those power cars in in Detroit and he’s also done all sorts of fascinating things in his life but then he ended up having this profound spiritual awakening and he’s sharp as a tack and full of energy. So his name is John Sampson. I’ll be interviewing him next week. So stay tuned and thanks for listening or watching and thank you Paul, it’s been a joy and we’ll be in touch.

Paul: Thank you.

Rick: You’re welcome.