Richard Miller Interview

Summary

Richard Miller discusses awakening as a process of deconstructing false identity while integrating emotions, personality, and ordinary human life. He also explains how iRest, a modern adaptation of Yoga Nidra, applies contemplative practice to trauma, healing, and practical well-being.

Questions This Interview Explores

• What happens to the ego and emotions after awakening?
• How can spiritual awakening be integrated with ordinary human life and relationships?
• Can awakening bring up unresolved unconscious material?
• What stages or phases can awakening unfold through?

Key takeaways

• Awakening reveals an innate joy beneath changing human emotions.
• The ego is a functional process, not an entity that must be destroyed.
• Awakening can release unconscious material that still needs to be integrated.
• Freedom means allowing difficult emotions without shame, blame, or self-criticism.
• Awakening can deepen engagement with relationships, creativity, and daily life.
• Nonseparation supports compassion while still allowing differences and healthy boundaries.
• iRest adapts Yoga Nidra for secular applications in trauma, healing, and well-being.

Transcript

✨ Awakening and happiness

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. There are about 350 of them now, and if you’d like to check out previous ones, go to www.batgap.com and look under the Past Interviews menu, where you’ll see them organized in several different ways.

This podcast and YouTube show is made freely available to anyone who wishes to watch it. But it is made possible by the support of those who feel like supporting it. So if you’re one of such people, there’s a donate button on www.batgap.com on the right-hand side.

My guest today is Richard Miller. It was Jean Klein who introduced him to the direct realization of the non-dual teachings, as exemplified in the paths of Advaita, Kashmir Yoga, Taoism, and Dzogchen. Richard now shares this realization and its integration into daily life through meditative self-inquiry, the presence of being, and what lies beyond all sense of self and separation.

Richard teaches internationally and serves as a consultant researching the non-dual meditation protocol he’s developed, Integrative Restoration—iRest Meditation, a secular adaptation of the ancient practice of yogic meditation, Yoga Nidra, studying its efficacy on health, healing, well-being, and awakening.

What I hope to accomplish with Richard today is to explore one thing that’s a little bit unique about him and what he’s doing: He has taken a practice from an ancient tradition and adapted it in such a way that it can be applied in a modern context, and he’s doing that very successfully with PTSD sufferers, people being taken out of sexual slavery in India, and a number of other contexts like that.

I find that very laudable. It’s sort of along the lines of my old profession as a TM teacher, where we really felt that there were practical benefits to meditation. It wasn’t just a philosophical or spiritual thing with no relevance to the so-called real world.

But it also does have deep philosophical and spiritual implications and value as a tool for awakening. So hopefully people listening to this, whether they are dealing with very real human problems that might be ameliorated somewhat by meditation or whether their primary concern is just awakening, realization, or enlightenment, will find this interview relevant.

Maybe to get us started, I wanted to read a quote by Adyashanti that came my way recently. He said:

Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretense. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagine to be true.

As much as I respect and admire Adyashanti, I kind of feel like it does have something to do with becoming better and being happier, and I think Richard might agree. So how would you react to that quote, Richard?

Richard: I think of it as both a constructive path and, rather than destructive, I would call it a deconstructing path. It takes away all that we have believed ourselves to be and reveals what we truly are.

What I see personally is that it erupts tremendous joy, tremendous happiness, but not the kind of happiness or joy that we were used to before, which was predicated on something. It’s really just a joy that’s innate in our cellular DNA, as far as I’m concerned.

It’s fascinating that, rather than the human experience, which brings grief at times through loss, sadness, and irritation—all the human emotions are still there—what I’ve discovered is this underlying equanimity and joy that doesn’t go away. It’s rock-solid and forms the foundation underpinning.

So I like the idea of deconstructing. It deconstructs who we thought we were, reveals who we truly are, and actually provides an incredible constructive ground for our humanness then.

Rick: Maybe the kind of thing Adyashanti was alluding to was the sort of thing presented by The Secret, where you’re going to be able to get more stuff if you apply these deeper laws of the mind, or the human potential movement where you become a better person. There’s emphasis on the word “person,” but not so much transcendence of your personhood and getting right down to your essential nature.

Richard: There’s the other aspect, which is that I think there’s a myth in awakening that somehow we’re going to destroy the ego. I see this in some of the Eastern writings: “Destroy the ego. You’re going to get rid of it; it’ll never come back.” It’s a falsity to me.

The ego structure is built in and hard-wired into our DNA—the sense of “I-ness.” We just appreciate that it’s a process. It’s no longer who we take ourselves to be, and now we can see it operational in the exertion of our personality. But now it’s not in control.

We realize we’re radically and fundamentally not in control. There is no actual “I” here or ego here; it’s just a process like anything else, a function.

Rick: The way the sense of smell is a function or the use of your limbs is a function—it’s just sort of a faculty, you’re saying.

Richard: Exactly, and then it’s not in control. We realize there’s a fundamental intelligence here that’s in control. I feel like when I wake up in the morning, I open my eyes and I basically say, “Okay, tell me what to do.”

Rick: There’s a Sanskrit saying—I don’t remember the Sanskrit—but the English equivalent is, “Brahman is the charioteer.” Meaning that the intelligence is governing the universe, actually governing our life, and if we allow it to do so, can probably do a better job than we, as a limited individual, can do.

Richard: Awakening puts us interconnected into that cosmology, that universal aspect. So we find our place in the universe and, to me, when we find our place in the universe, that brings forward tremendous contentment and, dare I say, happiness.

What I’m aware of is that the stress of daily life and the insults that can happen to us in daily life somehow often disconnect us from our self and our place in the universe. In awakening, we come back to that sense of being in harmony, both here at the human level and then with the entire universe and cosmos.

Rick: That’ll segue into what you’re doing with iRest or Yoga Nidra and PTSD sufferers who have been pummeled by the stress of daily life—and extraordinary stress—and have bottled it up, and it’s handicapping them. So we’re definitely going to talk about that.

❤️ Meeting Jean Klein

Was Jean Klein your first foray into spirituality, or did you mess around with a bunch of stuff and then discover him?

Richard: I had the unique privilege, in 1970 when I started on this path, of meeting an extraordinary woman who had just come here from the Far East. When I was studying psychology, she became my mentor.

She had grown up in a Buddhist community in the Far East. Her mother had taught her yoga as a child. She had studied existential psychology with an associate of R. D. Laing, and she had studied with Erich Fromm.

So she came to me, and we began to look at the integration of Eastern and Western psychology, Buddhism, and yoga. Then I met an extraordinary man, Stephen Chang, who introduced me to Taoist studies. I studied with him for many years and then with many teachers in yoga and Advaita, both in India and here in the United States.

So when I came to Jean Klein, it was like coming home with all these gifts that I had received, and he helped me integrate them all into one understanding.

Rick: Did you move to France and learn French and actually study with him in that way, or was it more on-again, off-again?

Richard: I met him here, where I live in Marin County in the Bay Area, and then he subsequently got a home in Santa Barbara for six months a year. So I went to all of his retreats, trainings, and workshops here in the States.

Back then, I was raising two kids. I wasn’t into traveling to France. I wanted to be there in the morning and in the evening when my kids woke up and went to sleep, to be a consistent father. So I really did everything I could to be with Jean when he would be here in the States.

Rick: Did you happen to meet Suzanne Siegel when you were with Jean Klein?

Richard: I did, and actually became a close friend. I loved Suzanne deeply. I had some very deep awakening experiences with her. When I would sit with her, all sense of self would radically fall away. She was a delightful, unique human being.

Rick: Suzanne Siegel was the woman who wrote a book called Collision with the Infinite. She had been a TM teacher and had been on a lot of courses and things. One day, she was getting on a bus and all of a sudden there was this radical shift and falling away of the sense of self, which utterly terrified her because she didn’t know what it was.

This went on for about ten years, during which she was desperately seeking a sense of self and not finding one. Finally, she had a meeting with Jean Klein, and he said, “Stop looking for it. Stop turning back.” He gave her the realization that this was something good that had happened.

Richard: As my sense of self began to be seen through as just a process and not an actual entity, it gave rise in me, for a period of time, to terror and fear. I thought at one point I was losing my mind, and it was kind of like being on a razor’s edge until one day I realized that the sense of being had been there from before, during, and was still here.

That became my real source of who I would take myself to be, rather than this entity that we call the ego or the self. As that structure begins to give way, we don’t have the kind of learning or teaching that shows us we’re something more than that, and so it can be terrifying at first.

I recommend Suzanne’s book all the time, but it’s been out of print, and now it’s coming back into print. Stephen Bodian is theoretically going to write a new foreword. I’ve been asked to write some words for it, so we look forward to that book being back in print because I find it a very helpful read for many people.

✨ Awakening and unfinished conditioning

Rick: She ended up dying of a brain tumor, unfortunately. Some people say, “Well, that’s what all that unity experience and fear was about, something to do with this brain tumor,” but I very much doubt that. Here’s a question: If there was fear and terror, she was not done yet. Fear and terror go away with the dissolution of the individual ego. Would you agree with that?

Richard: What I see with Suzanne is that there was material in her unconscious that had yet to be processed. What I see with myself and with the people I work with—call it awakening, call it enlightenment, call it whatever we want—is the liberation and deconstruction of our sense of separation. We begin to feel our connectedness everywhere, but it also liberates the content of consciousness that’s been stored in there.

That can erupt very radically or over a number of years. My sense is that, as she settled, the content that was stored in her unconscious was starting to press toward becoming conscious and starting to come up.

If we’ve spent decades repressing material into our unconscious and all of a sudden the lid is taken off that material, wouldn’t we expect that, over a period of time, it would be liberated?

I look at the life of the Buddha, and when I see what he struggled with even after his awakening—different pieces of his content of consciousness coming out for years and years and years—he was able to face it and understand what it was. It didn’t bother him, but it was still there being illuminated.

Let’s look at what he often said to Ananda, his attendant. He would say, “Last night Mara came and visited me. But I saw who it was, and he went on his way.” Mara represents those kinds of desires, those kinds of unconscious processes.

The next piece was more fascinating: “Last night Mara came and visited me, and we sat down and had a long conversation and many cups of tea.” To me, that meant there was a piece of content being liberated that he needed to sit with for a long time.

There is this myth that somehow we wake up and we’re never going to have another disquieting thought. We’re never going to get irritated again. There’s going to be no sadness or grief.

Krishna Menon, who was one of Jean’s teachers, had a wife who died. He would go in to be with his wife, crying and sobbing, and then he’d come into the satsang room fully present and joyful. His students became confused, and he finally said, “Look, I give to my wife what she deserves, and I give to you what you deserve. I don’t have a conflict here.”

Rick: That’s very interesting. Amma is like the weather. One person comes up, and there may be tears running down her face. The next second she might be laughing uproariously, and the next moment she might be reprimanding one of her swamis. There’s a sort of complete flexibility, spontaneity, and adaptability to the needs of the moment.

Richard: Shame, blame, guilt, self-absorbed or self-negative thoughts, self-criticism—all that goes away. It doesn’t mean certain thoughts don’t arise, but there’s a different relationship to them now.

We’re not trying to get rid of anything. We’re not trying to fix or change ourselves. We’re just allowing that aspect to arise, and there’s nothing wrong with it.

To me, if ultimately we take the stance that everything comes out of one mysterious essence—the entire cosmos—then wouldn’t everything be part of that cosmos? Every thought and every emotion has its place. It’s simply there to be met, greeted, and be with. Then it has its own movement. No problem.

✨ Four phases of awakening

Rick: I have a sense that, as a culture, maybe over the next 50, 100, or 200 years, we’re going to develop an understanding of what enlightenment and awakening are, with all their nuances and stages. There’s a lot of confusion. People say, “I had this awakening. I’m done,” or, “So-and-so is awakened, and yet he’s an alcoholic or abusing women.” It would be useful to understand the range of possibilities.

Richard: I think of it right now in four phases. I call the first phase “waking in,” where we’re befriending our emotions, our thoughts, and our body. We see all of these aspects as messengers that are part of our humanity.

As we become an integrated human being, we may still take ourselves to be separate, but there’s that first integrative, constructive phase of waking into our being a human being while still separate.

The second phase I see is “waking up and waking out” of this feeling of being separate, and having this total realization of our non-separation and our harmony with the entire universe, where our sense of self dissolves and we see it as just a process.

I see a third phase, which I call “waking down.” Now we’re coming back into our personality, body, senses, and mind. Whereas before we felt ourselves to be separate, now we feel no separation.

Our senses, our ego structure, our personality, and our mind are all designed to create a sense of separation. But now there’s a new organ that was vestigial before. It’s awake, and it sees no separation.

Even as I look at you, I see borders, boundaries, and facial structures, and yet I feel an underlying tone that I call being, mystery, or whatever, that knows no separation.

I see the fourth phase as “waking out.” Now we’re waking out into all of our relationships—our work with our children, our spouse, our job, and being in the world—with that deep quality of non-separation.

With separation, you and I can have differences of personality. We can disagree and have conflict. But with that awakening of no separation, there’s the impossibility for us to do violence, because I don’t see you as other than myself. I love that notion: We can celebrate difference, and yet within that there is no fundamental difference.

I really do feel these four phases, where we’re integrating. Somebody asked me, “So what’s the result of enlightenment?” I would say we become a wonderfully exquisite human being in the way we’re designed.

Rick: Ken Wilber had a three-part model: waking up, cleaning up, and growing up. We can think of examples of people who have one leg of that stool but not necessarily the other two. I think that really is the maturing of us as human beings.

Richard: There’s no judgment then. Everybody is doing the best they know how based on their conditioning, genetic coding, the way they grew up, and this mystery of how we come to be each so different.

So there can be no guilt or blame. But I do see places for boundaries and borders, depending on a person’s behavior. There’s no shame, no blame; just everybody doing the best they know how.

Rick: Which doesn’t make you wishy-washy. It doesn’t mean you’re not going to have issues that really light your fire.

Richard: One of the myths I see is the question, “If I wake up, won’t I drop out of the world?” My response is, “You’re a unique expression. Maybe you may, but probably not. You’re actually going to have more energy and more boundless ability to be creative because you’re no longer placing things in the way of your creativity. You’re unblocked. You’re willing to be seen, heard, and who you really are authentically.”

Growth, dharma, and the mystery

Rick: When we awaken pure consciousness, it isn’t passive. It has its job to do. It begins to purify and seep into every nook and cranny of our life. Is there ever an end to that, or is it really a lifelong thing as long as we’re in a body?

Richard: If we look at the human being as a structure, as a process, it is in evolution. The ego structure a hundred thousand years ago didn’t exist because the neocortex hadn’t fundamentally come online. Just the human functioning as a process is in evolution.

We’re in evolution as you and I are sitting here. We’re changing our cells, our DNA, and our genetic structure. So the underlying mystery of consciousness, awareness, presence, whatever, doesn’t seem to evolve or change. But this organ, as a receptor, receiver, and broadcaster, feels like it’s in constant evolution and change.

As long as we’re alive, we’re going through fundamentally new experiences, integrating depths of understanding that might not have been there because receptors are coming online. Our first understanding of non-separation may be very different from growing into it, although something is fundamentally unchanged day to day. It’s always brand new, but it’s always the same. It’s a fundamental paradox.

Rick: Some people feel that they have a clear understanding, if not experience, of the unchanging dimension. With that in mind, they say, “You’re already enlightened; there are no degrees of enlightenment, and there’s really nothing you can do to facilitate enlightenment because you’re already enlightened.”

Richard: Aren’t we each a different flower? We’re all of one species, but we’re different flowers. Each of us has our own garden to tend.

As we wake up, we follow the marching orders of that underlying intelligence, and we each have a garden to tend. Some gardens are very tiny, some are very large, but each is unique. I love the line from the Bhagavad Gita: “To do your own dharma, your own work, imperfectly, is better than to do someone else’s perfectly.”

I realized I don’t need to worry fundamentally about the entire universe and every person on the planet. I just need to take care of my assignment, what I’ve been asked to do, and do it as beautifully and perfectly as I can.

Some people, like Ramana Maharshi, sat still for 15 years and then stayed in one place, one ashram. But look at the incredible effect he had in the world. Other people, like me, are out there working with the military, survivors of sexual trauma or trafficking, and the homeless. I’m constantly traveling. It’s a lot of what one might call effort, but day to day it feels like play. I’m just waking up in the morning and following my marching orders.

Rick: That’s the way you’re wired. You’d probably be pretty useless if you just sat around in one spot in a loincloth all day.

Richard: I couldn’t do it. I’d go on vacation for three days, and after three days there’s so much creativity that starts to fire off.

I think we each have an inner gyroscope or compass. When we start to go away, that compass starts pulling us back. When we’re identified with the ego structure, it says, “Something’s wrong with me,” versus “Something’s wrong.” When we’re no longer identified with it, we can realize, “I’m starting to do somebody else’s job, not my job,” and come back to what feels right moment to moment.

Rick: There’s an evolutionary trajectory in a person’s life which may become more and more clear, or from which they may stray. The idea is to attune yourself to that. When you do, nature’s principle of least effort comes into play. You feel like you’re not even working, even though you might be dynamically active, because you’re going with the flow of the river rather than paddling against it.

Richard: As we awaken, the body, which is based in conditioning, slowly purifies. As that conditioning clears away, we’re able to see our dharma more clearly day to day.

But the human body and mind are an expectation-anticipating, creating machine. Even as we clear away conditioning, new thoughts and expectations are being laid in, just as a function of the human being, which later on are going to be encountered and cleared away.

So I see conditioning as an endless process. We step out of it. It doesn’t mean that it goes away; it continues. We’re just out of the process.

At first, we think we’re in a cage that we’re trying to break out of. Ultimately, we see that the cage has always been within us and we’ve never been in it. It’s in us, and that is where we find our freedom.

I’ve come to realize that I’m not in my body; the body’s in me. I can feel it, and I’m not separate from it, but it is a functioning in my awareness. Ultimately, there’s something even beyond the awareness, because the awareness is in that greater mystery.

So I see that conditioning is something we’ll always have. But we become more comfortable navigating it and feeling this unchanging, fresh intelligence that knows what it needs to do moment to moment. And I just say, “Okay, I turn myself over to you.”

🩺 Yoga Nidra and healing trauma

Rick: Let’s talk about the people you work with through Yoga Nidra, and define Yoga Nidra. You work with people who have really been through it, severe situations, and get some great results. So let’s talk about what Yoga Nidra is and how it can have the effect it does.

Richard: Yoga, if I take the term, relates to feeling our embodied, somatic, felt sense of interconnectedness with ourselves and the entire cosmos. Yoga represents that one where we’re awake and feel our connectedness with self and the world. In a word, union.

Nidra, while it means sleep, actually means a changing state of consciousness. So Yoga Nidra means to feel that interconnected sense no matter what state of consciousness might be present. The mind may be happy, sad, irritated, upset, or experiencing trauma, and yet there’s some underlying essence here that still feels whole and healthy.

The process is an integration of ancient teachings from Yoga, Sankhya, Patanjali, Advaita, and Kashmir Non-Dualism. It helps us awaken through our body, senses, emotions, and thoughts, and into joy, well-being, and ultimately non-dual understanding.

As we befriend ourselves, we’re no longer thinking there’s something wrong here that needs to be changed or fixed. As we welcome our humanity, there’s a natural evolution, very gradual, of awakening into non-separation.

My own feeling is that we all are born in non-separation. The ego comes online around 18 months. Its process develops and solidifies this sense of separation with which we identify. Ultimately, we’re learning how to feel the functioning of the body-mind senses that create separation with this underlying essence of no separation.

The beauty I found as I worked with it, both in my own life and with my clients, and then with people experiencing PTSD, depression, schizophrenia, or other illnesses, was that the process helped them realize this unchanging aspect to themselves. From that ground, they were much more able to navigate trauma or difficulty.

To me, it’s summed up in what one veteran from Miami said who was in one of our studies:

In every intervention that I had ever been given for my post-traumatic stress, they always started with what was wrong with me, what needed to be fixed and changed. With you and Yoga Nidra, you’re showing me right from the beginning what’s right about me and what about me has always been whole, doesn’t need to be fixed or changed. Now that I know what’s whole, I’m willing to face my worst nightmare. But when I only thought there was something wrong with me, I didn’t want to face it at all.

So the teachings of Yoga Nidra offer simple ways, right at the beginning, to introduce a person to something about themselves that’s unchanging, has never been hurt, can’t be harmed, and is always complete and perfect. Now we can ground into that and face the emotions or trauma that need to be dealt with.

People in homeless shelters and at VA centers say, “I feel like I just came home.” I think that’s what meditation, and these teachings in Yoga Nidra specifically, do. They help us come home to the home we’ve never left. We just got identified with other movements and thought we left home, but here’s the home we never left, and here’s where the equanimity and peace are.

Rick: In Christianity, one of the core teachings, as I understand it, is that at your core you’re a sinner, something broken. What you’re saying here is that at your core, in your essence, you’re whole, pure, and perfect, and you need to discover that.

Richard: Take the word sin, and if you go back to its etymology, it means to miss the mark. At our heart as human beings, we’ve become sinners; we’ve missed the mark. We’ve gone away from our authentic beingness.

So the teachings of Christianity are designed to bring us back to that home we never left. Now we’re hitting the target in the center, dead on. We’re not missing the mark; we’re no longer sinners.

👨‍👩‍👧 Coming home to being

Rick: What are the mechanics of it?

Richard: If we take a moment when we’re between two doings—we’ve finished mowing the lawn and we’re not yet ready to go on to the next thing—there’s a moment where we’re just being. Or between two thoughts or two breaths, there’s a moment where we’re just being.

We all know this. It’s innate to us, just a sense of being where we’re no longer caught up in some thought or doing, and we fall back into being.

There are five simple inquiries that I like to take people through to help them come home. When you’re just being, if you take your stance as being, where do you feel being is located?

People often say, “I shift from being up in my head to being more down in my heart when I’m just being. Then there’s a quality where the boundaries melt away, and I feel like I’m everywhere and nowhere specific.”

So I have people feel that sense of being spacious and open. There’s a quality of presence here that’s embodied, but it also feels like an unlocalized field.

Then I’ll ask, “What’s happening to your thoughts?” People say, “My thinking is slowing down or stopping. I’m just in an easeful kind of timelessness.” Thought and time go together; past and present are part of thinking. So when we’re just being, we enter into our timelessness.

My third question is, as being, do you need anything? Everyone says, “No, as being I feel complete and perfect just as I am.” It doesn’t deny that the body has a need or want. We still need air, food, shelter, and clothing, but as being, we’re complete.

Then I ask, “Is this unfamiliar?” People say, “No, I feel this all the time. I’ve known this.” I ask, “Then how much time of your day do you spend nourishing being?” They say, “We don’t spend any time.” So I say, “Let’s spend a little time just nourishing this feeling of being.”

The final question is, “Is there anything special that you need to do to be?” People realize, “No, I could be reading a book, having a conversation, working on my computer, walking, or eating. I can be along with any doing.” So it’s free of doing.

Now what do I introduce you to? You’re spacious and unlocalized, outside of time, outside of need, want, or desire, perfect just as you are, complete and whole.

Then I say, “Your trauma—has this beingness been hurt or harmed by your trauma?” They realize, “No, it’s always been here. I’ve just gotten distracted by the trauma.”

I was working with a fellow who had deep depression. In the first session, I introduced him to this quality of being. He came back the second session and said, “I’ve been through numerous psychiatrists and medications. I had lost all sense of hope that I’d ever be able to dissolve my depression. When I left your office, this sense of being and wholeness lasted for a number of hours, and it slowly went away. But it gave me hope, for the first time in years, that I can find my way through this depression. I realize there’s something about me that’s free of the depression. I just have to remember it.”

That’s the way we began. Every time he came to my office, we began by starting in that quality of being, nourishing it, and then slowly examining what was undermining his depression. Over time, he was able to release the underlying structures, and he’s a happy camper now—no depression, full of being, and back in life.

Rick: Presumably, when you’re working with somebody, you don’t ask these questions as quickly as you just did.

Richard: No, I go very slowly because I want it to be a somatic, embodied, heartfelt experience. I want people to have that sense of coming home to themselves right away.

It’s interesting: We’re not doing the practices—meditating, doing yoga, whatever—to get that; we’re doing them out of that. Right from the beginning, I’m trying to show people this changeless aspect of equanimity that they don’t have to get. It’s already here, but we forget it. We’re so conditioned, we lose it very quickly.

Richard: Yoga Nidra describes five sheaths of identification: our body, energy body, emotions, thoughts, and a sense of joy. It talks about how we become identified with these. Yoga Nidra is a process where we’re taking off these sheaths, taking off our clothes of identification.

Rick: Are you referring to the koshas?

Richard: The koshas. As we take them off, we discover this unchanging aspect, and then we put our clothes back on. We walk back into life with our body, emotions, and thoughts, but we realize ourselves as this unchanging aspect.

At first, we’re so identified with these sheaths—body, senses, mind, and emotions—that we think that’s who we are: an ego. When we take them all off, we discover, “Wow, this is who I really am!” Then we put our clothes back on so we can go back into the world.

Rick: A lot of yogic practitioners would consider it a big deal to penetrate the five koshas and get beyond even the bliss sheath. Are you saying that happens commonly among your students?

Richard: The insight into being can be had very quickly. There’s the awakening stage. I think awakening can have a glimpse very quickly.

Rick: I do too—day one.

Richard: Day one. But establishing that takes time, sometimes decades, to grow into and clarify all the conditioning with which we’ve been conditioned to identify.

One of my favorite stories is of Anandamayi Ma, who very early in her life had a sense of tremendous bliss, awakening, and nonduality. In her later years, her students said, “Ma, we’re concerned because you seem to have lost your bliss.” Her remark was, “Isn’t it great? I’m no longer distracted.”

Even bliss and joy can become an obstruction to that deeper state of nonduality. The sense of being itself sometimes becomes the new goal, or is substituted for awareness. I see being as a quality that’s fairly substantive and is in our awareness. Awareness has no qualities; its quality is that it has no qualities.

Beyond that, there’s something else. We have to keep going. A glimpse gives way to an establishment, which can give way to beingness, which gives way to awareness, which gives way to what I call that which lies beyond all sense of self and all sense of self-awareness.

Richard: In 1970, with my first class in Yoga Nidra and meditation, I walked out feeling myself totally in harmony with the universe. It was a deep coming home, and it slowly faded. It gave rise to an incredible vow: “What just happened, and how do I understand this?”

Then, in 1997, I had this profound coming home. The image I have is that somebody got into the light switch and soldered all the wires together, so now it doesn’t turn on or off; it’s just on. That sense of equanimity hasn’t gone anywhere for years now.

But there were decades of glimpsing and going away, glimpsing and going away. In the couple of years before Jean passed, I said, “I’ve had this incredible understanding, and yet there’s something in me that still feels like it wants to be affirmed by you.” I loved what Jean said: “Who wants to be affirmed?”

That final obstruction dropped away when I was sitting with Adyashanti. I realized those final doubts are something we have to keep working with, bringing in, musing over, and wondering about. Then, one day, they just drop away, and there’s no more doubt.

Rick: Unless there is.

Richard: Unless some little hidden morsel pops out. Those deeper layers of conditioning can work themselves back up and give little sprouts of doubt, absolutely.

Rick: There’s a verse in the Gita: “No effort is lost and no obstacle exists. Even a little of this dharma relieves great fear.” People shouldn’t think they have to spend years before getting relief. Even on day one, there can be huge relief. There’s no obstacle; no effort is lost.

🛤️ Research and practical results

Richard: This is why the military asked me to do a study with wounded warriors with PTSD returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Within eighteen sessions, many of them had improved dramatically. The baseline of military PTSD is a score of 40, and the highest is 80. At the beginning, every service member was around 79 or 80. At the end, they were all below the baseline of 40, except for one who was hovering right at 40.

We saw very quickly that we could get tremendous relief from symptoms people had experienced for years. We’ve worked with Vietnam, Korean War, and World War II veterans. They often say, “It’s the first night of sleep I’ve had since Vietnam,” after one session.

We know we can get tremendous relief. That instills hope that there is a way through. Then it may take many sessions and many years to clear away all the debris. But it is possible.

Rick: Spiritual practice or spiritual evolution should be thought of as a lifetime endeavor—something that’s never a waste of time, like exercise or eating a good diet. It has a cumulative effect and should be taught in schools in some form.

Richard: We see in neuroscience that meditation grows and thickens the cortex related to executive functioning. We grow the hippocampus, which allows us to see greater perspective, and shrink aspects of the limbic system, including the amygdala, so we’re no longer held hostage by our emotions.

We see radical changes over time with consistent practice. The secret is to stop meditating and see how it comes back to you. Students can get into a habit rather than experiencing the freshness of waking up and feeling that meditation is calling us.

Rick: If it’s effective, you’re naturally going to be inclined to do it. You’re going to look forward to it. It’ll be joyful and nourishing, like a good night’s sleep or a good meal.

Richard: The immediacy can come very quickly and give that sense of, “Wow, something’s possible here that I thought was not possible.” I hope a little doubt remains for the remainder of our lives because it keeps us honest and wondering, “Is there something else here that I’m not seeing?”

Rick: The normal person is asleep to their true nature through waking, dreaming, and deep sleep, while the yogi is awake to and knows his or her true nature across all states, even sleep.

Richard: What I find, especially when I’m on retreat, is that there are nights when I’m awake all night long, watching my body sleep. Then there are times when even that subtle self-awareness disappears. There’s nobody watching, nobody aware; there’s just immersion in what we might call pure consciousness.

Self-awareness comes and goes. Yoga Nidra and meditation over a long period awaken something in us that, in a way, never sleeps. The body goes to sleep in us and wakes up in us. Once we break identification with the body, the body can go to sleep while that which doesn’t go to sleep is still there, awake.

The mistake many people make in meditation is that when self-awareness momentarily dissolves and comes back, they say, “I just fell asleep.” What may have happened was that the sense of self-awareness disappeared.

Jean oriented me to this by saying, “When you’re in deep meditation and that self-awareness begins to re-arise, notice the perfume that it may be bringing back with it from where you just were, where ‘I’ is not.”

When we come back from deep absorption, whether in deep sleep or deep meditation, we bring something back with us. It’s why people crave deep sleep so much. They go back home, but they don’t understand where they really went. Meditation reveals that unchanging quality that we go back to constantly, all day long.

Rick: The reason we enjoy sleep so much is that there is an immersion into the Self once again, without anything occluding it. When there’s no recognition of “I’m asleep” and yet pure awareness is awake to itself, that’s pure awareness without ripples.

Richard: When we go into sleep, there are different states: hypnagogia, stage one, delta, theta, and REM. In Yoga Nidra, if we put someone on an EEG, we’ll see that they’re in the delta state. But there’s something else—that’s not a state—that’s able to comment that they’re awake.

Self-awareness, to me, is a state. It comes and goes. There’s something else here that’s not a state. I call it the mystery. The moment we start to describe it, we try to objectify it. There’s something here that we can sense is always here, and how self-awareness appears in it is another mystery.

Rick: I usually think of being as equivalent to the Self, with a capital S, which is always referred to as indestructible and unchanging. Physiology can reflect it, like a mirror can reflect sunlight, but breaking the mirror doesn’t break the sun.

Richard: The main thing is that there’s something here that’s indestructible. We need to let go of conceptual thought about it and sink into absorption—not in it, but as it. It permeates our daily life and interactions.

It brings with it deep equanimity, peace, well-being, and joy. Then other capacities start to erupt on their own: kindness, compassion, and a tremendous quality of love for love itself. We see everything as being made out of that same substance.

We’re falling in love, in a way, over and over again with everybody and everything we meet.

Rick: Some people argue that enlightenment has nothing to do with behavior. You can be a total SOB and be enlightened.

Richard: I think both are true. There’s something here that’s unchanging, like the space in the room. Awareness is just in and as itself.

But as we grow into that realization through awakening and enlightenment, it has a purifying effect on the body and mind. They become a better vehicle. There is a construction that arises that is healthier and more resilient.

That doesn’t necessarily happen for some people. They wake up and are in a clarified, transcendent state, while their body and mind still have conditioning. They’re creating havoc, having sex with their students, or are alcoholic. Waking up doesn’t necessarily lead to clarification of the body and mind.

But it’s wonderful when it does, because we become kinder and more compassionate. Alcoholism, abuse, and those things fade away because we realize they create havoc and distraction. They’re no longer interesting.

Rick: Maybe it’s possible to be stuck in a state where a significant awakening has occurred, but for some reason you’re not motivated to go further.

Richard: I’ve worked with people in mental hospitals who had tremendous clarity of awakening, and yet schizophrenia was still there. I’ve worked with people who’ve had tremendous insight into nonduality, and yet they had narcissistic personality disorder.

There can be awakening, but genetic coding, structure, or the way the DNA is designed may hold something in place. The alcoholic may remain an alcoholic. Trungpa remained a drinker and ultimately died because of his drinking. Teachers with narcissistic personality disorders remained abusive to their students. The realization didn’t fundamentally change that hardwiring.

Sometimes that hardwiring can change. Our genes are constantly turning off and turning on. The structure of our DNA is changing even as we’re sitting here. So the possibility is there. Why it doesn’t manifest in certain people, I take as the mystery. Ultimately, I know that I don’t know.

Rick: There are examples of real scoundrels being transformed. Valmiki, who wrote the Ramayana, was a highway robber and murderer and became a sage. St. Paul was a persecutor of Christians and became a completely different person. Maybe there’s hope that no matter what, as the Gita says, “Even if you’re the greatest of all sinners, you shall pass over all evil by the raft of knowledge alone.”

Richard: This is why it’s abusive of our culture that we lock people up in situations that feed the very thing we want to change. We need to look at the human being as always having the potential for growth and rewriting their script.

I’m working with people who have been very abusive and have had tremendous, evil effects in their worlds. Yet they have the possibility and compensatory structures to change, grow, evolve, and become very different people, like Valmiki.

When we worked with prisoners doing gardening, iRest, meditation, and tai chi, the recidivism rate among them was tiny. Yet many people were against treating prisoners too well. It doesn’t make sense to ignore results showing that people can return and lead healthy lives.

Rick: A quote from Hafiz: “I have come to this world to see the sword drop from men’s hands even at the height of their arc of rage because we have finally realized there is just one flesh we can wound.”

Richard: Beautiful.

Equanimity, boundaries, and spontaneous action

Rick: Can one accept association with anyone or anything regardless of personal distaste and still maintain equanimity and love those people and situations?

Richard: We don’t maintain equanimity. Equanimity maintains itself, I would say. Love maintains itself. That underlying, unchanging essence maintains itself.

We see that the other is doing the best they know how because we know we’re always doing the best we know how. But that doesn’t mean we don’t put up borders or boundaries. When somebody is causing harm or potentially could cause harm, healthy boundaries need to be set and established. It may mean bringing someone into a locked facility because they would otherwise harm others or themselves.

What wakes up sees everyone as self, doesn’t see other, loves everything as it is, and yet respects separation and duality. In every situation, we know exactly what to do, and sometimes what we need to do is set a boundary. It’s fluid.

The Dalai Lama was asked what he would do if someone were about to murder another person and he had a loaded weapon available. He said, “Put me in the situation and we’ll see.” That ability to realize, “I don’t know what my next response is going to be, but I trust there’s an intelligence here that knows exactly what to do.”

Rick: What we’re talking about is not the acquisition of superficial attributes, such as an intellectual understanding of moral nuances or self-restraint. We’re talking about the establishment of something rock-solid: deep equanimity and an inner gyroscope that enables spontaneous right action.

Richard: I first show this underlying essence of unchanging equanimity, peace, and spaciousness, and then notice how, when we’re feeling them, we access them in our body so we anchor into them.

Then we can invite in sadness, anger, irritation, discomfort, or pain, and invite in the sense of equanimity and being. When equanimity and irritation co-arise, equanimity creates a foundation in which irritation can liberate itself. It doesn’t capture and hold us hostage.

We had a veteran who was always engaging in road rage. One day he said, “An 18-wheeler truck cut me off, and I was fantasizing about following him into the parking lot and beating him to a pulp, while my hands were turning in the opposite direction.”

He said he knew the process was working because he didn’t have to think about it. The underlying equanimity was there. It wasn’t supporting his thoughts about beating the man; it was moving into a different quality.

Rick: Eventually he won’t even have the mental thoughts.

Richard: Conditioning and mental thoughts may still come up. We may have a momentary flight of fancy, but there’s nothing to give it hold. It can’t establish itself the way it could before.

Rick: If a person has studied Yoga Nidra for a while and learned how to do it properly, what would they be doing on their own each day?

Richard: We’re nourishing that sense of well-being all day long. We call it an inner resource. Wear a watch and put it on a timer. Every 30 minutes it goes off, and you remember that quality of well-being.

We weave it into any emotion we may feel. If we get irritated, sad, depressed, or tired, we weave into that state the sense of equanimity or well-being.

If we’re in a conversation and become upset or triggered, we weave in well-being and go into the body to find the opposite of the irritation or upset. If we’re angry, perhaps the opposite is peace. If we’re afraid, perhaps it’s courage.

Find that opposite in the body as sensation, come back to the fear, and feel them both at the same time, having taken off the labels. When we contemplate opposites at the same time, we step out of the default mode and into a world of infinite possibility. We have a new insight, and the fear tends to dissolve and give way to a deeper action.

We’ve worked with people in chronic pain, helping them see that they can go beyond the pain in the moment by contemplating opposites. I worked with a woman with fourth-stage cancer of the liver and lung who believed, “I’m unlovable.” I had her contemplate “I’m unlovable” and “I’m lovable” in her body as sensation.

She came to a new conclusion: “Oh, my God. I’m love itself. When I’m love itself, I can tolerate being unloved, and I can tolerate being loved, and I can tolerate loving someone, and I can tolerate not loving someone.”

She ultimately died of cancer, but she died with what Kabir calls the face of satisfied desire, rather than the torment she had been in when I first met her.

Yoga Nidra teaches us to work with the body, senses, emotions, feelings, thoughts, beliefs, images, and memories. We learn to take perspective: dive into an emotion and feel it, back away and look at it, dive back in, and then do both—feel connected to it and aware of it.

It grows our ability to take perspective and not be held hostage or enmeshed in what’s arising. By breaking free, we can have insights into actions we need to take.

Yoga Nidra is action-oriented and somatically oriented. I’m not so interested in the intellectual. Can you come from your heart? Can you meet yourself without trying to fix or change yourself?

Then look at what actions you need to take in your life. Whatever emotion is arising, whatever the circumstance, you’re not so much in it as it’s arising in you, in your equanimity, and you have the ability to respond.

Jean Klein used to say that when someone asked, “What do I do with my fear?” he would say, “Feel it, now step away from it, now come back.” We’re learning to feel what we’re feeling, step away, get perspective, come back, and see the right action we need to take.

The word dharma means our duty or work in the world. Its root, rta, means to be in total harmony with the totality of the universe in each moment of action. Yoga Nidra helps people connect with that right action and feel connected to themselves and the universe.

🕊️ Tradition and adaptation

Rick: How much of what you teach as Yoga Nidra is traditional ancient material, and how much have you devised through experience?

Richard: My hope is that it’s all based on the ancient teachings. I feel like I’m revitalizing it into the 22nd century by taking words like spirituality and religion out of it and looking at these as ancient processes that are basic human-being qualities.

In the tradition, we start with what’s called the sankalpa. “San” means something born from within us, and “kalpa” means that it unfolds over time. It’s an affirmation of how we should live our life.

Rick: Like an intention.

Richard: Like an intention. When I worked with the military, I said, “Find an intention or affirmation within yourselves.” They said, “What do you mean?” I said, “Find your mission,” and they said, “We can do mission. That’s easy.”

What’s the mission you feel life has sent you on? We start with that sankalpa, but I realized it needed to be split into three: feeling the basic life force that has given birth to each of us, the mission life has sent us on, and the small intentions each day.

For traumatized people lacking a basic inner sense of security, ground, foundation, and safety, I have them contemplate beingness right from the start. It develops an inner resource of peace, equanimity, foundation, ground, safety, and security.

I also added working with opposites. The tradition talks about welcoming an emotion as sensation, but through my studies with Patanjali, Buddhism, and Yoga, I saw the value of working with opposites and wove that into the practice.

The five-kosha model is body, breathing or energy, emotions, thoughts, and joy. But I realized the fundamental sense of “I” is an integral genetic coding and appropriating mechanism. It lays claim to whatever is arising.

So I added a sixth kosha, Asmita Maya. Asmita means I-ness. We take one more look at how subtle and tenacious this sense is and see it as just a process.

The I-thought is so tenacious that it sneaks in and says, “Isn’t this cool? I’m enlightened!” Even self-awareness can have a subtle taint of I-ness. That, too, needs to be set free. Ultimately, we are something more than any of these structures.

The ocean and the wave

Rick: There’s still some association with our individuality. If you stub your toe in San Rafael, I don’t suddenly get a pain in my toe here in Iowa. It would be your pain, not mine.

Richard: There is this unique experience we’re having, and even beingness has a paradoxical sense. There is a localized sense of our own presence. But presence is the same presence that’s over there in you, while we have our own unique experience of it.

I began to realize that’s just the way unbounded presence can localize itself as well as feel itself everywhere.

Rick: So we realize that we’re the ocean, but we also still are a wave.

Richard: We are a wave, and yet as we feel our wave, we still feel ourselves as the ocean.

Rick: There are all these different waves in the ocean. We’re not that wave over there; we’re this particular wave, but we’re all the ocean.

Richard: In meditation, we feel the specialness of a bounded, close-in presence and then our unboundedness. We feel both, and they begin to merge one into the other. The paradox resolves itself not mentally, but as embodied experience.

Rick: It might be more useful, rather than speaking of awakening as one monochromatic thing, to speak of awakenings, with many flavors, nuances, stages, and degrees.

Richard: In a first awakening, we may awaken into the transcendent and become immersed in the universal or impersonal. As it integrates, we fall back down into the heart, where there’s a whole awakening of the heart that has both a universal aspect and a very personal humanness.

My wife once said, “It feels like there’s nobody here.” I said, “Isn’t it great?” But she said, “No, I want to be your special somebody.” Later she said, “It feels like you’re back.” I said, “Actually, it feels like something has more deeply integrated. You’re still anybody, but you’re my special nobody.”

It began a deeper movement into humanness. This is really about becoming a good human being. We’re fully participating in all things human: our emotions and relationships.

I love what Sylvia Boorstein said when asked what meditation had done for her: “It’s made me a kinder person.” If that’s all it does, holy mackerel. What a beautiful expression.

Rick: That alone could change the world.

Richard: Can we just be good human beings and forget about some transcendent state? That’s here too, but it’s really about embracing our humanness, and that’s love.

Rick: We have an intellect, senses, the heart, and perhaps other faculties. What we’re awakening to is like a fuel or nourishing substance, a fertilizer, with the potential to enrich each of these enormously.

Richard: We’re each a flower, each an expression. As we deepen into it, we stop looking at other flowers and asking, “How should I be like them?” We look to this flower: What’s the fragrance here? What are my marching orders?

We come into harmony with ourselves as a unique human expression. We give up competition, anticipation, and striving to be anything other than what we are. It’s a deeper and deeper falling in love.

Rick: What’s your attrition rate? You teach large groups of people. How many stick with it?

Richard: My map has 38 steps or stages. Around the 25th step, we consolidate as a healthy human being, friendly with our emotions and thoughts. We’ve worked through trauma and still feel separate, but we feel really good.

Most people turn to me and say, “Thank you very much, Doc. I’ll see you in the marketplace.” A few say, “There’s something else here, isn’t there?” And I say, “Yes, come on in the back room. I have another class going on here.”

As a homeless person, veteran, service member, or ordinary person with chronic pain or cancer, people turn to these teachings to feel better. When they start to feel better, that’s an extraordinary moment, and they may need to go out and experience it for a while. Years later, some return and say, “There’s something more happening here.”

So most people go away having taken something astounding in their own way—healing of chronic pain, PTSD, depression, or simply feeling better. Increasingly, more people are coming to retreats who are ripe for deeper awakening.

Rick: If people don’t stick with it, do they tend to backslide?

Richard: Once that glimpse of being has been seen and felt, it’s difficult to backslide, because what they begin to backslide into is more painful than it was before the glimpse. They want to come back and say, “Let’s keep going. I don’t want to do this backslide. It doesn’t feel good anymore.”

The old teachings sometimes said, “Do this and everything will be fine.” I wanted to know, “Does this really work, and how and why?” The processes I’ve discovered through meditation, Jean Klein, and Yoga Nidra give us support.

It’s no longer, “Trust me.” It’s more like, “Here is the research. Here are structures you can engage in. Here is the ground of being I’d like to introduce you to first.” We’re not merely moving toward awakening; we’re understanding it at the very beginning.

Rick: What would someone do in the morning or evening, sitting with eyes closed for 20 minutes or half an hour?

Richard: When people sit, I ask them to affirm, “Why am I doing this? What’s my overall intention, and what’s my intention for this practice?” When thoughts arise and we go off with them, the intention bubbles up and asks, “Is that really what you want to be doing?” Then we let go and come back.

Start with your intention and overall mission. Then weave in that sense of being. I say, “I’m meditating now. I’m not cooking lunch. I’m sitting here, and I want to immerse myself in this being.” I walk through the five aspects: spacious, timeless, perfect, complete, and whole, and abide in that for a while.

Then I open up the meditation: What wants to happen right now? What most wants to be seen or connected with? Some days we bask in being. Some days we watch self-awareness come and go. Some days we work with irritation or boredom.

Rick: I don’t go about it quite as you described, but those kinds of things cycle through. A key principle is that you set a routine and stick with it. You don’t go by your whims.

Richard: So you do have an intention: “I’m going to sit here for this amount of time.” You have an intention to be present.

Rick: How can someone do Yoga Nidra without a teacher?

Richard: Yoga Nidra initially is a guided practice because we’re helping a person understand meditation. But ultimately, it isn’t.

Within Yoga Nidra there’s setting the intention, working with thoughts, and so forth, within a larger 38-step map of going into being and awareness and what lies beyond. Each component can be mixed and matched.

When you’re sitting by yourself and a difficult emotion arises, because you’ve studied that component, you know how to meet the emotion. Maybe it’s a belief, or maybe you’re settling into being. Because you’ve engaged with it in a guided way, you understand how to meet it.

Now you’re free of the teacher. You’re your own teacher, and the native intelligence you trust tells you that whatever arises, you have the skill set to meet it.

Krishnamurti said, “It is the person who doesn’t know what to do who’s in trouble.” Once you understand how thinking and emotions work, you have the skill set for meeting them.

That’s what Yoga Nidra does. It gives us tools with which we learn how to meet thought and emotion, radically accept ourselves, and see the actions we need to take that help us feel connected to ourselves, the people around us, and the universe.

People can find books, tapes, MP3s, and online teachings. When I was learning, I wrote out exercises and practiced them. I would lie on the floor and go through each step slowly. After a while, meeting the body as sensation naturally led to feeling the breath, then emotions, thoughts, joy, and awareness.

So the structures and teachings are initially guides, but ultimately, we’re supposed to go beyond them.

Rick: You’ve trained teachers around the world, and people can also use books, MP3s, CDs, and online teachings.

Richard: I’m creating video-driven teaching, including a five-hour video on “When Self Falls Away: The Deeper Practices of Yoga Nidra Meditation,” as well as videos on early, foundation, and intermediate stages.

Rick: I’ll be linking to your website, iRest.us, where people can find all this material.

Richard: I also have a seven-week online course teaching the four aspects—waking in, waking up, waking down, and waking out—and taking people through the actual meditations so we can experience them for ourselves.

Closing

Rick: Thank you so much. This has been a great conversation. For those listening, I’ve been speaking with Richard Miller. I’ll be linking to his website and to the books he’s published on Amazon and Sounds True.

As most of you know, this is an ongoing series. You can subscribe on YouTube or on www.batgap.com to a weekly email whenever a new interview is posted. There’s also an audio podcast if you’d like to listen to the audio.

Richard: I appreciate the time you allow so we can actually go into some depth. It’s beautiful that it allows us to have some depth of discussion.

Rick: Most people seem to like that. Some people say, “Can’t you just crunch it down to an hour?”

Richard: Can’t you just punch it down to five minutes? Come on!

Rick: A lot of people really like the long format, and according to YouTube statistics, quite a few people listen to the whole thing. So thanks, and thank you to those who’ve been listening or watching. We’ll see you next week.

Richard: Thank you, Rick.