Rick Archer Interviewed by Richard Miller, Transcript

Rick Archer Interviewed by Richard Miller

Summary:

• Rick Archer is the “Chief Cook and Bottle Washer” at Buddha at the Gas Pump, a platform that interviews spiritually awakening people. Richard Miller, on the other hand, hosts a similar interview show called Never Not Here.
• In 1967, when Rick was 17 years old, he had a realization about “enlightenment” while driving through Westport, CT. This realization led him to explore the concept through drugs initially, but he later learned Transcendental Meditation ™.
• Rick taught TM for 25 years and continues to meditate regularly. He is not affiliated with any specific spiritual organization but respects those that offer genuine benefits to participants.
• The interview covers topics such as meditation, enlightenment, layers of ignorance, and the essence of consciousness.

Full transcript:

Richard: Hello everyone. Richard Miller here and welcome to “Never Not Here.” And we’ve just been kind of in love with talking. People come on, people post on the site. Of course we have our teachers, our guests, but we want to hear from everybody. So you don’t have to be a so-called teacher, or a presenter of non-duality. That’s not really what we’re all about. We’re just about life and we’re about what makes life tick. And we want to know from you and from everyone else, what makes their life tick and what we can discover together just by dialoguing. And today we’re going to have a really good look at what I’m doing actually because we’re with Rick Archer. And he’s actually doing the same thing we do at “Never Not Here.” He’s got something called “Buddha at the Gas Pump.” And that’s actually interviews with people that are talking about life. And he’s in a really cool place that I’ve always wanted to visit: Fairfield, Iowa. And a lot of people that are interested in what is true about life, have gravitated to Fairfield. And I guess we’ll let Rick tell us what the ambience is like there. And anyhow, Rick, welcome to “Never Not Here.”

Rick: Thanks, Richard. I appreciate it. So have you lived all your life in Fairfield? Yes, but the first 20-some-odd years of my life were spent in Fairfield, Connecticut. Oh-ho! I didn’t move to Fairfield, Iowa, until 1987, so I’ve been here ever since then. I have a thing for Fairfields, I guess.

Richard: Right.

Rick: And I am not a teacher, as you say, but I have been a teacher. I taught Transcendental Meditation for 25 years. But I wouldn’t… You know, to a great extent I was parroting things I had been taught to teach. I did not consider myself to be some realized person who was necessarily speaking from experience when I spoke of higher states of consciousness and so on. I was just parroting. But I had been practicing meditation since 1968 regularly, and so there was some basis of experience which has been growing ever since then. But I did actually become uncomfortable after a while with saying–talking about things that were not my own personal experience, that I could only kind of intuit or reach intellectually. And for that and other reasons, I haven’t been teaching in recent years. But I’m good at asking questions, so that’s one of the reasons I started this interview show that I do.

Richard: So in a way, anytime there’s a very large teaching and very many people have the honor to teach it– and I guess there is a whole university in Fairfield, right?

Rick: Yeah, there is. It’s called Maharishi University of Management. And I actually used to teach there too. I taught desktop publishing, using computers to do print media. And it has been in existence since the early ’70s. It was founded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who was the founder of Transcendental Meditation. And there are probably over a thousand students altogether, although some of them are in branch campuses in other places like India and China. And there is a– It’s an educational program that goes from preschool all the way through PhD. There’s a children’s school and a college and so on. And then there’s a whole community that kind of grew around that. All in all, there are probably 3,000 or 4,000 people in this town of 10,000– 10,000 or 11,000– who practice meditation. And a thousand of those are Vedic pundits who were flown over from India. And they’re on a sort of a branch campus up north of town in their own compound. And they spend their days doing Vedic rituals and chanting Rudrabhishek and all sorts of Vedic ceremonies and so on for the purpose of– the understanding is that that creates an influence which is kind of good for the world. That’s one of the tenets of the Transcendental Meditation movement, that Vedic recitation of Vedic yajnas can have a subtle but powerful influence to help create world peace and so on. So there are similar groups in other parts of the world but this is probably one of the biggest ones here outside of India. And then there’s a whole community that has grown up here. As I mentioned, people have bought houses and raised families over the last several decades. And so there’s those people with a tight TM affiliation. Then there are people like myself actually who have kind of grown away from the TM movement or moved away from it who still are on a spiritual path but don’t feel a close affiliation with that organization but nonetheless respect and appreciate the benefits that they derive from it. And then there are people who are moving to town who have no TM background who might be– there’s one couple that’s a friend of mine– who are friends of mine– who were Ekankar students ever since they were teenagers and another that I can think of who’s into the Waking Down thing, which Samuel Bondar founded, and many others. I mean, I’ve seen Hare Krishnas go through town– all kinds of people. So there’s a sort of an eclectic spiritual community that has grown up here somewhat to the chagrin of the hardcore TM people who feel like they’re just trying to siphon off Maharishi’s students. But people– One size does not fit all and there are people who just have to follow their own paths and their own hearts and they appreciate the atmosphere of a small town where there’s such a preponderance of spiritually oriented people. And it’s a very lively cultural scene. For instance, last night we were up at the town square wandering around what they call an art walk, which happens every month, and the theme of this one was Italian night. So they had an artist flown in from Italy who was doing sidewalk chalk painting, and they had Italian musicians and Italian food and all. So a lot of people kind of… And there’s a band playing Beatles songs– which doesn’t have anything to do with Italy– but actually a whole busload of tourists came in from somewhere else in the state– I don’t know where. So Fairfield is sort of a lively, diverse, creative place, and different people appreciate it for different reasons.

Richard: Do these things get sponsored by the city, or do they get sponsored by the merchants or what–

Rick: Yes and yes. It’s a kind of– There have been culture clashes over the years, when this whole gang of meditators came in with strange ideas and strange ways of eating and dressing and building their houses and so on. There are all these Sthapatya Vedic houses all over town that have to face east and they have little pointy things on the roofs and all that stuff. So a lot of local farmers kind of scratch their heads and wonder what this is all about. But over the years many businesses have been founded by meditators, and there’s been a lot of intermixture and even intermarriage, so to speak, between the different cultures and the boundaries or the edges have blurred. The mayor of the town is a long-time meditator, and everybody’s cool with that. And the city council consists of some people who meditate and some people who don’t. It’s not like the Rajneesh thing out in Oregon, where the meditators are poisoning the salad bar in order to win seats on the city council or something. It’s a fairly friendly and cooperative and synergistic arrangement. There are still points of friction. For instance, there’s been this effort to get some construction done on the train crossings so the trains don’t have to blow their whistles when they come through town. And some people saw that as a meditator initiative and therefore opposed it. And recently we had a consultant come in from Burlington, Iowa, who had accomplished the same thing in his town. He was explaining how towns which do this enhances their quality of life, and they appreciate it. People said, “All right, maybe it’s not a meditator initiative.” They’re coming around more to that. So, anyway, I’m rambling a bit but go ahead and ask another question.

Richard: I want to ask about meditating, I guess, and about TM. I don’t want to really … a commentary on TM and stuff, but here’s an ambient where people are studying, reciting Vedic mantras and chants, and then they’re making some practices according to a certain theory which many people probably are willing to testify that is based in truth. Somehow there’s an idea that there’s an arrival– There’s some kind of a possibility to arrive in a greater– with a greater sense of attention, that something that is true in life. And, in a way, I guess– What is that? Am I right in suggesting that this is a desire for freedom?

Rick: Yeah. Well, I’ll speak from my own experience. I learned TM when I was 18 in 1968, so that makes me 60 now. I was a messed up kid. I was taking full advantage of everything the late ’60s had to offer– drugs, sex, rock and roll. I had dropped out of high school. I’d gotten arrested a couple of times for marijuana possession. I was really sort of aimless and floundering. But nonetheless, I had a spiritual bent. I was reading Zen books and other spiritual things, and when I was taking drugs I was sort of telling myself that it was enabling me to explore higher states of consciousness or whatever. After I’d been doing that for about a year and was really getting more and more screwed up, one night I was sitting in my bedroom on acid. My friends had gone home and my mind was spinning, and I was reading a Zen book. It was “Zen Flesh, Zen Bones,” the book happened to be. And it struck me like a lightning bolt that these guys that I was reading about were really serious, very dedicated spiritual aspirants, and I was just fooling around by comparison. And I realized that if I continued fooling around in this way, I was going to end up living a very unhappy life. So I thought, “Well, that’s it. I’m going to stop taking drugs and I’m going to learn Transcendental Meditation,” which is the only thing that was well known in those days as a spiritual practice, “and I’ll just see what happens.” So there’s a long story about how I actually got in to learn. It was in New York City and I was living out in Connecticut– and all these adventures and so on– getting in there and getting started. But I ended up starting and, right off the bat, from day one, from the very first sitting of it, I felt tremendous relief and tremendous release from a heavy weight of confusion and stress that had burdened me. And being an obsessive guy, I just determined to practice it regularly, no matter what. And so I just started the practice twice daily, never skipped, at least half an hour twice a day. These days it’s an hour twice a day, but it’s fluctuated over the years. And my life began to improve. Within a couple of weeks I had gotten a job and gotten back into school. My father was startled and said, “Whatever you’re doing, I want to do it.” So he ended up learning after a while, and then my sisters learned, and so on. I just stuck with it. It just really improved my life in many practical ways, while at the same time providing a rich inner experience– very fulfilling, gratifying, rejuvenating. And the longer I practiced it regularly, the more clear and stable that experience became. Then, after a couple of years–

Richard: So in one way this stability is practical but in another way it seems like it maybe is a platform to be– What would you say? I don’t want to say necessarily serious, but let’s just say sincere.

Rick: Yeah.

Richard: Sincerely looking at what’s true–

Rick: Yeah.

Richard: –instead of just fooling around. Serious seems like a disease sometimes, but anyhow, sincerity might be a good way to say it.

Rick: Yeah. I’d say that when I was just taking drugs and stuff, I wasn’t very sincere. I was using a spiritual alibi for just indulgence in teenage craziness. But at a certain point I realized, “This isn’t going to do it. And your life is going to go nowhere if you continue like this.” I said to myself, “If you really do have genuine spiritual aspirations, you ought to do some kind of genuine practice. Do something real that’s actually going to help you.” So I gave that a try, and it was the first thing I’d really tried. In fact, after a few months I went into a– I kind of adopted the attitude after a few months, “Well, this is wonderful but it’s not really for the heavy-duty guys who want enlightenment or bust.”

Richard: So the heavy-duty guys was more like the monastery, or what–

Rick: Yeah, yeah.

Richard: That you read about in “Zen Bones, Zen Flesh.”

Rick: Exactly. So even though I was meditating regularly, I wrote away to a Zen monastery and said, “Can I join this?” And they said, “Well, you have to study with a local Roshi for six months and get his recommendation.” So I went into New York. That was another big adventure. We had our car towed and had to sleep in a parking lot all night and stuff. I went into New York and met with– sat in a little session with a local Roshi. I was kind of thinking in terms of moving in that direction. And then I went to a TM residence course– like a week-long retreat kind of thing. That kind of solidified it for me in terms of realizing that this could be a serious practice if I took it that way. And that it was a legitimate path to enlightenment or higher states of consciousness. So I began to pursue it with even greater diligence, going to more courses and eventually becoming a teacher. And as a teacher– You know we were– It became a full-time thing for 25 years. And during that time we would– Initially, we would teach for four and a half months here in the States, and then we’d fly over to Europe and spend six weeks on a long meditation retreat course, meditating pretty much the entire day during the height of the course, and then back home again for four and a half months, then back to Europe for another six weeks of intensive meditation. And then after a while–

Richard: Is there just a center, a Maharishi Center, in Europe that’s kind of like overseas, long–

Rick: The main center was in Seelisberg, Switzerland. And boy, we visited some beautiful places on these courses because we’d rent these hotels in the off-seasons: up in the mountains in the summer when the skiers weren’t there and then down on the lake in the winter when the summer people weren’t there. So we got to see a lot of beautiful places, especially Switzerland, but also the French Alps and other places. ‘Cause eventually we started getting these longer courses for six months at a time. Some people would put those back to back and be doing long meditation routines for a year at a time or six months or whatever. So I did a bunch of those– two or three of those.

Richard: So did you have to keep a job or something so that you could finance all that?

Rick: In those days I didn’t. In those days I was just teaching. And you earned credits from teaching if you taught enough people that you could cash in, so to speak, to go on courses. And also my mother helped me. She had a little bit of money. I really took advantage of her because she didn’t have that much. She would pay for some of these courses sometimes. My sister also became a teacher and she was going on them. But, you know I–

Richard: So what’s the effect of six months of solid meditation or one year of solid meditation? I mean, what happened–

Rick: It was very profound. It was very profound. You would come out feeling like a different person altogether. It was like you’d go in as an old rickety VW Beetle and come out as a Mercedes Benz. You just– On the other hand, you needed–

Richard: That means what you’re talking about is stability, right? Something about– Because didn’t we say before something about a stability of– even when you were talking about a teenage years.

Rick: Yeah. And for some people such long meditation can be deleterious. If there’s an imbalance in the personality or something, you can flip out when you do that much meditation. So there was a screening process in enabling– in allowing people to go on those courses to begin with. Despite that, there were some flip-outs on some of those long courses. There was a big long course in Mallorca, Spain, which was a teacher training course, where there wasn’t much of a screening process and all kinds of people came. There were some serious psychiatric cases resulted from that kind of long meditation. But if you didn’t suffer that fate and you survived, it was a profound routine. And then it would take integrating. You couldn’t just do that perpetually. You’d have to get out into activity and live a relatively normal life and engage in practical day-to-day stuff in order to integrate.

Richard: Speak really about integrating. What does that mean?

Rick: Well you could–

Richard: What’s the process? What happens?

Rick: You could come home from a course like that–

Richard: Is there some relapse or something like that?

Rick: Yes and no. If you were in the middle of a course like that, meditating eight hours a day or something, and you just walked into town to go to a store or something it would be too much. You’d be so steeped in the inner experience that you couldn’t handle even a simple walking down the street with cars going by but– And so generally you stayed in seclusion on a long course and then gradually came down– less and less and less meditation as the end of the course approached– until you’re back down to your normal amount for a few weeks. And then you’d go out into the world, hop on a jet and go home again. And when you first got home, again, it would take a while to totally get used to being in the world, doing normal stuff, but it would happen.

Richard: Anyhow, if it takes– What you’re saying is it takes a little time and some re-entry and stuff like that. And these of course are not just pure thoughts but they’re all body, mind, spirit–

Rick: Yeah, the whole physiology was being transformed.

Richard: The whole physiology. So there’s a certain amount of feelings that go with it. And maybe some– Is it like angst or is it like, “Okay.” You’re giving up a great peace?

Rick: There was this process which was referred to as unstraightened. Do you remember the Beatles song “Dear Prudence”?

Richard: A little bit.

Rick: Well, that was written about Prudence Farrow, who was Mia Farrow’s sister. And she was on a course like the type I’ve been describing in Rishikesh, India, with the Beatles and Maharishi and everything. And she was in her room day after day after day doing these long meditations. And she had taken a lot of drugs earlier, before then, and she was really getting kind of nutty– very nutty, and kind of unstable. But I’m sure if you would talk to Prudence– which I’m still kind of remotely in touch with her– she’s doing fine now. But what happened was when– at least the way this process worked– was that when you did long meditations like that, really deep-seated, deeply lodged stresses in the nervous system– which you might not even have been aware of and which were influencing your behavior, constraining you to a much more restricted kind of perspective or worldview– started to release. Started to un– And as they released, you’d begin to experience all this stuff that had been buried: emotional stuff, perceptual stuff. I had a friend on one of my courses that had also taken a lot of drugs, and she was basically seeing hallucinations as these deep stresses started to unfold. She’d see birds flying around that weren’t really there, and they’d be landing in her room and landing on her head, and so on and so forth. So it was kind of a crazy scene. But–

Richard: So anyhow, that was what was happening in all those courses, right? Because even in a simple satsang or in a simple weekend retreat there’s enough silence or there’s enough– what shall we call it– you know, inter-resonance or something between the people that are in that retreat– that your daily run, your mind run, let’s say, is disturbed enough– not even disturbed, I would say, just relaxed enough, let’s just say that something bubbles up, you know, and it comes out as something that– You know if it bubbles up, it means that you’ve been pushing it down, right? Or otherwise it would have been up already.

Rick: Exactly.

Richard: So if you’ve been pushing it up, down, in a way, it’s something that you are not proud of.

Rick: Yeah, and there are other ways of doing this. I mean, there are different kinds of therapies and so on, where people enable stuff that’s been buried to kind of come to light. Shadow work, for instance, or even the Waking Down group has ways of doing this. And having it come to light, it kind of enables– it can be dissipated if you deal with it properly.

Richard: In other words, it’s managed in another way. It’s not just let come up and fly. It’s somehow looked at and anticipated, you know, prepared for in some way. And so then in some ways it’s lessened or eased or…

Rick: Yeah, or dissolved or whatever word you want to use. And in the case of this procedure that I’ve been talking about, it was more of a physiological thing that would take place. I mean, you’d settle into… the mind and body are interrelated. So when your mind became so settled as it did with all that long practice, your body would become very, very settled. And then these deep stresses would begin to unwind or begin to unfold. And then– because again the mind and body are interrelated– when the deep physical stresses began to unwind, there would be a corresponding mental experience or emotional experience related in quality to the type of stress that was dissolving. And there was constant reminder from Maharishi or whoever was teaching the Course that this was what was happening.

Richard: So then that would be a deep spiritual experience? Because if things are unwinding, there’s an opening, and in an opening, something new floods in, right?

Rick: Usually while it was unwinding, that wasn’t such a neat experience because it was very often unpleasant stuff that was getting dissolved. But once it had been dissolved, then you felt a much greater freedom and clarity, once you’d gotten that garbage out. And like I say, your whole functioning– You went from the old rickety VW Beetle to the Mercedes. You found– You came out into activity again after such a course and found that you could think more clearly, speak more clearly, act more effectively and so on. So that was the purpose of it. It was–

Richard: But yet there’s some integration needed. So what did that mean? Did it stick?

Rick: To a certain extent.

Richard: …saw it clearly. Right?

Rick: There was an analogy that Maharishi always used to use which was that if you wanted the way they used to dye fabrics in India, they would dip the cloth in a colored dye– let’s say a red dye or something– and then they’d take it out and bleach it in the sun. Lay it out and let it bleach. And it would lose most of its color. But then they would dip it again, and then put it out to bleach again in the sun. And repeating that process over and over, the color eventually became colorfast and wouldn’t bleach even if you left it in the sun. So he used that analogy to illustrate this point that alternating meditation with activity enabled you to stabilize and integrate what was experienced deep in meditation so that it eventually would not be lost even in the most hectic, dynamic activity.

Richard: Did that work?

Rick: Yes.

Richard: Because, you know, when I heard that story before, it was from a guy that had been meditating even 40 years and never missed a day. And I got it from him that he really believed that meditation was one thing and that it doesn’t really come out to your day-to-day life.

Rick: It did for me.

Richard: He said the dye thing, but he said the faded part, but he never did say that it eventually doesn’t fade. You’ve got to keep going back. You’ve gotta keep going back. And so–

Rick: That was my experience. And I think that even if I were to stop meditating now, I wouldn’t lose what I’ve gained. Maybe I wouldn’t progress as quickly anymore. I know some people who meditated for years, had an awakening, decided they didn’t need to meditate anymore, and they still seem to be progressing very quickly. They’ve got a different sort of engine on their train now. But it definitely worked for me. And I can in the most–

Richard: Let’s go in and say what is progressing.

Rick: Well, by my definition, progressing means– It’s like we’re all reflectors. We– There was a line from the Incredible String Band– if you remember them from the ’60s– it was “Light that is one, though the lamps be many.” And if the kinds of people you’ve been interviewing, the things you’ve been thinking about– You’re probably familiar with the notion that underlying all the diversity of life, all the different personalities, is an essential fundamental field of consciousness or awareness. And we all reflect that differently, or express it differently. We can think of ourselves as being reflectors. Lamps. It’s like electricity. We have electricity. And you can power all sorts of appliances with it, all sorts of different light bulbs. Some light bulbs might just be little 25-watt ones, others might be a big powerful searchlight that a lighthouse would use. They may be different colors and so on. But it’s all the same electricity. And it’s just according to the structure of the light bulb, or the way it’s made that it’s able to express whatever it does. So using that analogy, our nervous system is that which enables us to express or reflect consciousness. And we’re all conscious, to whatever degree. And we can refine our nervous system, we can change the way it functions. And that’s what spiritual practice is all about: meditation, other kind of– fasting, whatever spiritual practice people do.

Richard: Let me ask you this, because you said we’re all consciousness to a certain degree–

Rick: Conscious.

Richard: –or to a degree. I don’t know exactly what you said. But I mean… What does that mean exactly?

Rick: What it means is that–

Richard: I mean is there more consciousness and less consciousness? I mean, everyone’s conscious, right?

Rick: Right.

Richard: They might not be conscious of what you’re conscious of. They might be conscious of their thoughts, or they might be conscious of self-limitation, or illusions of self-limitation. But the conscious part is maybe the same. I don’t know.

Rick: Yeah, it is. What I’m suggesting is that consciousness itself, like electricity in my analogy, is the same– one and the same– for all people. Your consciousness essentially is one and the same thing as my consciousness. We are the same consciousness. And that’s what this whole non-dual thing is all about. We are the same person, essentially, you and I. But your nervous system and my nervous system are two different reflectors of that consciousness, and each one reflects it somewhat uniquely. And we can say that of all the seven billion people in the world, all the millions and trillions of animals in the world– from insects to elephants, whatever they may be– all the same consciousness at the very core of their existence. But according to the type of nervous system that consciousness is reflected or expressed in a unique way. And to my understanding what spiritual practice is ultimately all about is becoming a better reflector. And I know that some spiritual teachers don’t like this whole notion of better, and of levels, and of progress, and of all that stuff. So, be that as it may–

Richard: But anyhow, all those things are thoughts, right? I mean, they’re thought-based.

Rick: Well, we’re thinking about them right now, and we’re talking about them, but what we’re really talking about is an experience. We’re not just talking about a concept. So, I mean, you’re a spiritual guy.

Richard: Yeah, but I mean, sometimes some people are actually saying that an experience is a concept. Without the concept, the experience wouldn’t happen. And then they’re not giving concept much more weight than a thought.

Rick: Well, I think concepts enable you to interpret experience. I mean if you had never tasted a mango before and somebody gave you a mango, a piece of mango, and you ate it, you’d think, “Well, this is delicious. I wonder what it’s called.” And then they might say, “Oh, it’s a mango.” And then that adds a concept to an experience you just had. And then they might say, “Well, they’re grown in India.” And you might say– And then that adds another concept to an experience you just had. But whether or not you– And then you might learn how to grow mango trees and so on– But whether or not you start adding all those concepts, the actual eating of the mango is–

Richard: Let me give you a contrary example, then–

Rick: Okay.

Richard: –because I get that one. Let’s say you go to the African savanna, the sub-Sahara or something like that.

Rick: Sure.

Richard: And you have the experience of heat, of course. And you have the experience of sweating and uncomfortable, sticky clothes. And maybe you have the experience of bugs and they’re flying around and maybe you get some bites and stuff like that. And then somehow you’re with an African man, or like a primitive man, that just lives out there and has been living in a primitive way, let’s say. And he takes you and starts showing you in the bushes and stuff like that there’s these tracks and then there’s this scuffle and then you can see the bent little twigs on the plants. And then he weaves a whole story of what animals passed, what they did, how long they’d been there, who took what, who ate what. And he’s got the whole history of the place for the last week– when it rained– and just by looking at a few broken twigs and stuff. But yet, because we don’t have any of those concepts, we don’t have that experience. It’s not there whatsoever for us.

Rick: Well, that’s a good point. I mean, you and the African man are both experiencing the same twigs. You’re both looking at the same footprints and so, but he sees a whole lot in that that you don’t see.

Richard: I see zero in it.

Rick: Yeah, you just see twigs and you see footprints. Essentially you’re saying this but he’s interpreting it much more richly with much more detail and knowledge and understanding than you are. But you are essentially having the same experience. I think it’s actually a good point, and you can draw a parallel between that–

Richard: In other words, I’m saying I’m not having that experience. I’m having the one with bugs and sweat, you know? And he’s having the one that this is a rich place and that I’m going to have a meal here, and that I can feed my whole family on if I just follow these tracks.

Rick: Yeah.

Richard: He’s got a whole– He’s–

Rick: He’s noticing stuff that you’re not noticing.

Richard: He’s noticing his life, how his life works, and I’m just noticing suffering.

Rick: Right. And you could potentially notice what he’s noticing. He could say, “Look at this twig,” and you say, “Yeah, I see the twig.” But now to him that twig means a lot. He interprets a whole lot out of it. For you, “It’s a twig and the bugs are biting me. Let’s get out of here.” So everybody is conscious if they’re alive.

Richard: Yeah, but I mean, look at it this way: Here’s 6 billion people having 6 billion experiences, and there’s 100 of us in one room, and so 100 experiences are happening.

Rick: Right.

Richard: So that I’m not having any of the other 99. I’m only having the one that I’m– somehow my concepts can embrace. And I’m saying that I don’t– I think there’s so much in the world that passes through. I mean, even just look at the fact that we only have a small window of frequencies–

Rick: Yeah.

Richard: –of sounds and of lights that we can perceive.

Rick: We wouldn’t be able to function if the window were a whole lot bigger.

Richard: Yeah. So then therefore there’s tons of things that we’re unconscious of and then we only have a certain amount of conceptual baggage that comes from what we identify with– which means that we think it’s important– and which might mean that stuff that you were talking about that bubbles up in the long courses there–

Rick: Yeah.

Richard: –somehow those things keep bubbling up until somehow we’re willing to let them be at rest. And so then I’m saying that a concept and an experience could be the same thing. Just lately I was talking to a guy and he was posing the question, “How do you get intellectual understanding to be experiential–” What did he call it? “–experiential awareness?” And, “Is there a way to speed that up?” And I was kind of wondering if intellectual understanding isn’t an experiential awareness, because there’s the experience of intellectual understanding, and that’s an experience too. And it’s just not the one you were expecting or the one you’re wishing for. And so then to say that it’s not an experience, and to say that something else is an experience just because it’s what you wish for, or because it’s broader or wider or feels more open or feels like more peaceful– I’m not so sure that that is a distinction that’s true.

Rick: I think that in my understanding and experience I think the two are correlated but somewhat loosely sometimes. In India they have what some people call babbling saints, who are realized people who nonetheless don’t really have much of an intellectual understanding about their realization. And so they may speak about it, but they don’t make a whole lot of sense. Maybe there are some people like that in the West too. And conversely there are people everywhere who maybe have studied a lot of philosophy and spiritual matters and so on– and read a lot of books– who could tell you a lot of things about it. I was this way when I was 18, I was reading these books and I could sit there and rap for half an hour about some spiritual topic but the experience that I was talking about was– I didn’t really own it. It wasn’t really clear. On the other hand, I think that when there is a genuine growth of experience taking place, then intellectual understanding is extremely valuable in order to corroborate and supplement it. It’s like real enlightenment– if we want to use that term– involves both experience and understanding. And I am drawing somewhat of a distinction between them because if we’re thinking thoughts, speaking words– it all represents concepts or ideas that– An idea is not the thing. An idea of dinner is not going to nourish you. And like that, an idea or concept about consciousness or the essential nature of the self is not necessarily going to be the experience of consciousness or the essential nature of the self.

Richard: Let’s go back a second to the babbling saints.

Rick: Okay.

Richard: Okay. So these guys have some kind of great peace– It seems like so. My understanding. But their presence might be felt.

Rick: Yeah.

Richard: And that’s how people acknowledge that this guy is somehow aware.

Rick: Right.

Richard: But he has no way to–

Rick: And he may be aware whether or not people acknowledge it because someone’s realization isn’t really dependent upon anybody else’s acknowledgement.

Richard: But otherwise he wouldn’t come up on the radar.

Rick: Right. Right.

Richard: Those other guys are not even babbling, they’re just back there somewhere.

Rick: They’re just driving rickshaws or whatever.

Richard: But the ones that are out there– and we’re going to call them babbling saints, because we’re calling them saints– somehow we can feel a presence about them and something happens, changes, shifts in us, maybe just by being with them.

Rick: Yes.

Richard: But they can’t articulate it. Okay? So now the other one you were saying is like, okay somebody can have a lot of spiritual knowledge because he read books and stuff like that. And then somehow his experience isn’t the same. But yet he’s having an experience, see? And I’m saying– And what you’re suggesting is that somehow his experience should match up with spiritual lore. That the Vedas and the Upanishads and the traditions and the history have enough truth to them that that’s the way it’s going to look for us too. But I’m suggesting that maybe this guy could just articulate his experience whatever it is right now. His experience. Because this is what is real for– This is what’s happening. Because I mean like the spiritual lore right now is what’s not happening. It’s only what’s in your thoughts and what’s in your head. And what’s happening is very mundane maybe. You’re letting the dog in, letting the dog out. And uh– But how can that be any less spiritual? How can that be any less imbibed with life?

Rick: Yeah, it– Well let me take that from a couple of angles. In interviewing people who’ve had spiritual awakenings– and just knowing them from being in this community and my various travels over the years– many people have said to me that when they did awake, even though they had read a lot of spiritual books and so on over the years, it was completely different than anything they had anticipated. In other words, the concepts that they had formed as they were on the path and aspiring to enlightenment and so on didn’t do justice to the actual experience that dawned when an awakening took place. And I think one way of understanding that or explaining that is that there are different levels of consciousness and knowledge is different in different levels, in different states of consciousness. The knowledge in the waking state is different than the knowledge in the dream state, which is different than the knowledge in let’s say cosmic consciousness and so on. And even though people in various levels of consciousness may perceive the very same phenomenon or situation, they’re going to perceive it differently according to their state. Like for instance, you mentioned letting the dog out. I just let the dog out and in a couple of times. And my experience of that was different than it would have been when I was 18 years old and hadn’t embarked on a spiritual path. Very same objective circumstances but a different orientation toward them. Or another example I might use is last time I traveled I was late for a connecting flight and I was running through O’Hare airport at Christmas time– out of breath, racing to catch a connecting flight. It was way over in the other terminal or something. So there’s all this chaos at the airport and my lungs are burning, I’m running along, boots on my feet. and at the very same time, I felt like silence was my predominant experience. There was a profound peaceful silence that I– that was really me and that also even permeated the chaotic environment. Now that was a different experience than I might have had 30, 40 years ago under such circumstances. And was a direct outcome, I think, of having done whatever spiritual practice I’ve done all these years.

Richard: Well we can say it’s a direct outcome but we really can’t know it, can we? Because I mean in a way maybe it’s just a gift of sophistication– of anything. I guess we have the tendency to say what we did caused who we are today, but we can’t know that for sure.

Rick: Maybe not. I don’t know anything for sure.

Richard: It’s just correlated. In other words, it correlates.

Rick: Right.

Richard: Like you said before– I think you were mentioning what’s correlated.

Rick: What I do know is that when I sit down to meditate and sit there for an hour and then get up afterwards, I feel different than I did when I sat down. And I feel different than I would have had I watched TV for that hour instead of sitting and meditating. I feel like the windows of perception have been wiped a little bit cleaner and there’s a greater infusion of awareness or whatever. And–

Richard: But anyhow that’s an experience and that’s an experience that does match up or meld with the spiritual lore. I’m just going to call it lore, but spiritual tradition, I’ll say, if that sounds better to you.

Rick: Yeah.

Richard: And it matches up with spiritual tradition. In a way, we’re saying that, at least I’m saying, or I’m posing, that your whole town has got a tremendous spiritual tradition attached to it with thousands of people, both the Indian people that are doing the chanting and then 3,000 people that– or 1,000 or so in the university, and then maybe 1,000 that have been in TM and have not been teaching it anymore. There’s a huge tradition there, so then there’s a huge knowledge base, let’s say, that is based on that tradition. And then also there’s a huge effort, let’s say, and maybe a noticing too. But effort and noticing, in other words, effort is effort and noticing is more effortless. But that’s just noticing that life can more and more correspond to the teachings that we grew up with and that we’ve imbibed in these last decades.

Rick: I think I understand your point. I think it’s a good point. If we grew up in a Native American culture, for instance, or in a Buddhist monastery, or a South American shaman community or something like that, we would have perhaps different experiences and different– a different whole philosophical structure that we related to. And it might in many respects be quite different from what I’m expressing having with my particular orientation and background. I just want to add that– and I’ll get back to that, elaborate on that point in a second– but I just want to add that you refer to all the spiritual lore and the ancient traditions. I don’t think those were cooked up out of nothing. It wasn’t a bunch of guys sitting around entertaining themselves, just dreaming up, kind of randomly philosophizing about things. I think all the genuine spiritual traditions, whether Christian or Buddhist or whatever, arose from experience, a profound experience that the founder or the writers of those traditions were having. For instance, many of the things Christ said. I mean, Christ wasn’t just an ordinary guy walking around doing stuff. He– You know if you could step inside of his eyes, so to speak, step inside, see the world through his perspective, you would probably find it to be radically different than the way you see the world or the way people ordinarily see the world. He wasn’t just special in terms of his personality. He was living in a profoundly different state of awareness than the average person and it was by virtue of that that he had such an impact.

Richard: I totally agree to that. I’m not questioning at all the origins of spiritual tradition. But I am saying that now we’re holding them as a body of thought, and a body of thought is not really all that connected to our life. In a way, when I was saying that we experience what our concepts are, in a way it’s connected to our life because somehow that body of thought we’re also experiencing, because that is what we hold and what we see. But I’m just saying that– trying to– I think there could be a temptation to try to fit our life into that too, you know? And the fact is that we’re not having the same immense experiences that the originators of these traditions are having because they weren’t holding a body of thought. They were just looking at life raw. And maybe some come from a lineage. Maybe some were holding a body of thought. I don’t know that but I’m just saying that that’s the alternative. I’m–

Rick: Yeah. I think I understand your point.

Richard: It’s not useful. I don’t think it will take you to the goal. It can be useful in a certain part of your life. Even you said that at a certain point there’s some people, you included, that are not teaching TM anymore, but you’re practicing.

Rick: Yeah, and there might be a point at which it’s no longer relevant for me to even practice. If you take a boat across a river and you get to the other side, you might as well get out of the boat. It’s not getting you any place.

Richard: Yeah, I think that there’s another river up there somewhere. I might need this. It doesn’t leak yet.

Rick: Yeah, there might be. But I guess the point you’re getting at, and I think I agree with it, is that our experience can be conditioned by our understanding and our conceptions and our philosophical orientation. We can overlay…

Richard: Well, it just must be. It just must be, because otherwise how can there be six billion?

Rick: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve had discussions about this sort of thing with friends, where they claim or posit that there are different qualities of enlightenment according to what you conceive of it or understand it to be. I kind of like the idea that enlightenment, as you said a minute ago, is just the raw truth without any conceptual overlay. But again, we grew up with–

Richard: Even that’s a concept, definitely, because maybe there’s no such thing as no conceptual overlay. That’s just kind of like taking the thing the whole way.

Rick: Yeah, if you’re alive, you have to–

Richard: I would quote the Vedas too, and say that there’s only one truth, there’s many layers of ignorance. So that there is not many layers of enlightenment or many layers of truth. There’s only one truth.

Rick: I agree with you.

Richard: And that there’s many perceptions of truth or many interpretations of truth, and some of them are, let’s call it, slimmer. And then some of them maybe don’t hardly even exist. Like we’re saying, is it possible that there’s just no concept? And it doesn’t have to be possible, you know. Just because mathematics will say there’s an infinity and a zero, there’s probably neither. They’re both figments of our imagination. Where would there ever be zero? Because the finer and finer and finer you look, there’s some little ray that’s going through there or something.

Rick: Well, I think that was kind of what I was trying to get at, your statement that there’s only one truth but just many layers of ignorance. When I was talking about there being this sort of essential reality of consciousness, and then many different ways in which it’s reflected, according to all the different beings that reflect it, or that live it, namely all beings. In my analogy of one field of electricity, many different light bulbs. And yet I think that what very often happens, and maybe this is a slightly different point to take the conversation in, is that people with various personalities, having grown up in various cultures, can all arrive at that one truth experientially, and appreciate it with crystal clarity. And yet they still have a personality, they still have a cultural background, they may have different political opinions, or religious orientations, and so on. And what very often happens is people look at them and define enlightenment in terms of their particular individual characteristics.

Richard: The personality part.

Rick: Yeah, the personality part.

Richard: Because that’s what we see, because that’s what is dominant in ourselves. If personality is dominant in ourselves, then we see someone else’s personality–

Rick: Yeah, and the guy might–

Richard: –so much believed in, in ourselves, then we probably see the inner truth in everybody too, because like a guru doesn’t see all the personalities, he sees the divine in everybody, right?

Rick: He does, and I think he also sees different people have different personalities. He doesn’t lose the ability to discriminate.

Richard: Oh, right, but he doesn’t believe it. He doesn’t believe that’s who they are.

Rick: Yes, essentially that’s not who they are, and it’s only secondarily, in a sense, who they are. But no one, no matter how enlightened they may be, is devoid of preferences. If you take the most enlightened person in the world and give him two plates, one has dog poop on it and the other has a delicious meal, I guarantee you 100% of them are going to take the delicious meal. They have preferences. As one of the people I interviewed recently said, you go to the most enlightened guy in the world and say, “Well, I can set off this dirty bomb in New York City, or I can dump it in the ocean,” he’s going to say, “Dump it in the ocean.” He makes choices, he has attitudes, preferences.

Richard: Well one thing that an enlightened person might have is appropriateness, because he might take the dog poop and bury it in the garden and it’ll make something grow. He knows where it goes, and he’ll take the plate of food, and if there’s two different plates of food that are more or less the same, he might have a preference, but if he gets the other one, he’s not going to in any way be hurt by that.

Rick: And what I’m saying is that– and we’ll leave the dog poop out of it– but what I’m suggesting is that people very often mistake the personal preferences of a supposedly enlightened person as being characteristic of enlightenment itself. So if some enlightened guru or something has a particular political attitude, the person will say, “Well, that’s kind of the cosmic perspective, that must be the truth, because this enlightened person looks at it that way, therefore I should try to look at it that way.” But I’m suggesting that’s a fallacy and that you’re entitled to have the completely opposite political perspective while yet respecting and appreciating the enlightened– I keep using the word “enlightenment.” I hate it actually, because it has such connotations– but while yet appreciating and respecting the realized state of that person. Different strokes for different folks.

Richard: So many times these days, they make distinctions. Now, I’m not even so sure– This is maybe conceptual also because what can be held as an idea– In other words, what’s here right now really doesn’t need any idea. Like when you’re in deep meditation, there’s something– Something exists, right? Like “I” exists, or “I” not meaning my ego necessarily but there’s a perceiver somehow– or something, a witnesser. All those words have limitations and so on but something exists, with or without thoughts.

Rick: Right.

Richard: But other things, conceptual matter, doesn’t exist without a thought.

Rick: True.

Richard: And so then it’s only limited to the conceptual apparatus. And the conceptual apparatus oft times we find is not really tied to what’s real, It’s tied to what was yesterday or where our conditioning came from.

Rick: Yeah.

Richard: And so then it’s not all that trustworthy.

Rick: You know there’s a beautiful quote from Jesus which I’ve been thinking about a lot lately in which he said, “The foxes have their holes, and the birds have their nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” And what that quote means to me is that for Jesus, who referred to himself as the Son of Man, there was no refuge in any conceptual cubbyhole. He contained all the concepts, he wasn’t contained by them. And I think a lot of people experience something akin to this as they grow along the spiritual path which is that they can no longer fit with– securely and adamantly– into a particular perspective. They can see the perspective and yet they can say, “On the other hand, there’s this.” In fact, there’s this book in the Indian literature called the Jaimini Sutras, which I read many times in the TM movement. And I don’t really– I didn’t really understand much of it but he kept using this phrase, “On the other hand,” and that’s the one thing that stuck with me. Or if you didn’t read that, maybe you watched “Fiddler on the Roof.” Any story, any particular perspective, doesn’t embrace the whole picture, doesn’t encompass the whole reality. And we as human beings tend to lock ourselves into particular perspectives, particular stories, whether politically or spiritually or emotionally and relationship-wise or whatever. But–

Richard: So that’s only a half-truth? In other words–

Rick: Not even a half. Not even a half. It’s just a sliver.

Richard: Oh, yeah?

Rick: Just one little point on the–

Richard: In the sense that every health has its disease to go with it. In other words, every concept has its negative built in it.

Rick: Exactly.

Richard: There’s no such thing as black and white. There’s only more– less white is what we call black, and less black is what we call white.

Rick: Yeah.

Richard: And without the two of them there, somehow it’s one coin. It doesn’t even have two sides, maybe. And that’s just what concepts are, that’s not what things are. There’s no object that has those two properties that we have to try to put it together. It’s only a concept that’s wrapped around a perception, and it says, “This is an object,” and that concept has two components to it; a plus and a minus. Well, a plus and a minus only means what I like and what I dislike. So it has– But it just is a — It has duality in it.

Rick: A very dear friend of mine, a young man, 25 years old, committed suicide about a week and a half ago. And just last Monday I attended and actually spoke at his memorial service at his parents’ house. There were about 400 or 500 people there. And it really shook this community up because this guy was well-loved and respected by a lot of people. He was a very bright young man. I was actually going to interview him on my show, because I considered him to have– to be an awakened person, or to have undergone at least a significant stage of awakening. And a lot of people at this ceremony–

Richard: Was that the guy that had a pretty strong illness?

Rick: No, he committed suicide. There was nothing wrong with him.

Richard: I thought maybe he just was ending from the illness. He didn’t want to live through it anymore.

Rick: He was perfectly healthy.

Richard: Okay. And his parents kind of shocked everybody by putting this very positive spin on it. Not that– Certainly not that they weren’t grief-stricken by the death of their son but they felt like he had been so different all of his life, such a cosmic kid, so to speak, and that there could possibly be some sort of cosmic rationalization for what he did. like he was just unable to live in this world and wanted to reunite with God or something. And a lot of parents in the community got really upset at this because they felt like it was going to give their children a justification for doing a similar thing. They felt it was being condoned. And the point I tried to make at the service was that– this point I was just making, that they’re– Certainly we’re entitled to our perspectives and it’s natural and human to assume a perspective on any given event but you just have to give yourself and others the latitude to have their perspective, even though it may be completely different than yours. It’s legitimate for them given their orientation, given their makeup. Those of us who get too locked into our perspectives end up starting wars or flying airplanes into buildings. We just are not seeing the bigger picture. And perhaps my friend who killed himself was definitely too locked into his perspective. And it causes us to act out of accordance with the whole of life– with the total goodness of life– when we’re just too fixated or constrained by a particular viewpoint. Again, we have our view–

Richard: Somehow that calls for– For me that kinda calls for dialoguing– and for open dialoguing. And open dialoguing to me means no expectations or no condemnation–

Rick: Yep.

Richard: –and massive amounts of tolerance.

Rick: Yes. And then when people can air these things and say, “Life is this way for me, and somehow I’m grossly unsatisfied with it,” and then somehow that can come open. Otherwise, if that is something that just can’t be shared with anybody– I mean, that’s a tragedy.

Rick: Yeah.

Richard: And it’s really an honor for you to be so close to it.

Rick: And ironically, this kid was very good at actually helping people broaden their perspectives. I discovered after he died that he had been meeting with a couple of friends of mine– personally, on a one-to-one basis– for the last year, and had really transformed their lives. I’m talking about a guy who’s my age, that he’d been meeting with weekly, who looked transformed. He said, “He enabled me to lift such a burden from my own shoulders in terms of my pent-up emotions and my neurotic tendencies. He saw through that and enabled me to see through it and to free myself from it.” But yet he couldn’t free himself. He didn’t have anyone whom he had access to who could help him break out of that. Or perhaps he was just suffering from some biochemical disturbance, manic depression or something.

Richard: Yeah, but in your community, is there– There must be a lot of people that could be turned to, right?

Rick: Yeah, there are. You know, there are.

Richard: Your community is so rich.

Rick: It’s an amazing place, really. Full of all kinds of– I mean, there are people walking around this town, running businesses, raising families, who routinely see angels and gods and have all this celestial vision and are in very highly enlightened states. They might be working in a factory, but they’re kind of living in a state like that. Uh, you know– Yeah. Anyway.

Richard: You were saying something pretty interesting, to me at least. That somehow you find– A couple of ways we phrase it, that there’s really– Somehow, sometimes you find that there’s really no slot for you to fit in. In other words, as far as how your awakening is looking, is one thing we were saying. And then we were– I don’t know, somehow we were talking about the many lamps and the reflection of the truth, and that the individuality is part of the grand– seems to be a part of the grand scheme.

Rick: Yeah.

Richard: Like the individual expression, let’s say, of even the one truth. And so then I think we can easily acknowledge that when we were talking about the traditions and the teachings that are very strong and centered around certain– well, Maharishis’ teachings, and there’s one of them, and there might be other ones too in the community, that the teachings are not infinite in how many slots they have. And so then they’re very useful at a certain point when people are just coming onto this and just realizing that– and not talking about necessarily a slot where I fit in but the generic direction and so on. There’s some classifications, or broad classifications. I’m a druggy, or I’m a recovering addict, or I’m a meditator. Things like that are very useful, but then at a certain point, I’m wondering– because really good teaching, in order to give freedom, really has to become obsolete.

Rick: Very good point. It’s like I said before: When the boat reaches the other side of the river, it’s time to get out of the boat. And there–

Richard: So just to finish that thought: Really good teaching, in another way, needs to have a hole at the top where people can get out.

Rick: Yeah.

Richard: And maybe, usually holes at the top– The sangha, the congregation, the devotees, they don’t like that hole and they don’t like to see a lot of people escaping. I mean, even you said it because you said that some of the Maharishi people, or the TM people, in a way, resent other teachings that come in and so-called dilute, take away their prized specimens.

Rick: And they actually have a tendency to boot you out if you get involved in those. I got booted out because I started going to see– getting involved with Amma, the hugging saint.

Richard: Yeah, yeah, right. Amma comes every year, right?

Rick: Yeah, she has been, yeah. She’s not coming this year, but she’s coming other places around the country. But I didn’t mind it too much. I would have minded it 20 years earlier if I’d gotten booted out, but I think I was ready. I kind of think of it as an incubator and many spiritual movements can be thought of in this way: that it’s an incubator. And at a certain point, the chick begins to peck its way out of its shell, and it’s no longer relevant for it to stay in the incubator. It needs to fly. And if it tries to stay in the incubator, it actually probably creates trouble for the other eggs, and retards its own freedom and progress. So–

Richard: So my question is, like in your town, in the TM movement, well, I don’t necessarily need you to make comments just on any kind of one movement or anything like that but in your town, let’s say, is there a lot of pent-up energy that just says, “Freedom is– I’m doing a service, I’m teaching TM, I’m serving a lot, and people are benefiting by what I’m doing, but somehow ” I don’t know, “and I’m doing my meditation two hours a day, and I get a great peace from it, but is this it?”

Rick: I think some people feel that way. Each person has their own story, but I think there’s a certain sub-category of people who– I’ve talked about this sometimes on my show, that you can categorize people into different attitudes. But there are some people who feel like, “Well, I’ve been doing this for 30 or 40 years, and probably at this rate I’m never going to reach the goal,” whatever that may be. “So I’m just going to keep doing it, because I don’t know anything better to do.” And then there are other people who actually awaken. Very often I find it’s people who leave the incubator, as I said, and then undergo some sort of awakening. Maybe they leave the incubator because they’re on the verge of undergoing awakening. I don’t know. And then sometimes the people in the first category I mentioned resent those people and say, “Well, you couldn’t really be awakened. You’re just on an ego trip.”

Richard: “It’s a false awakening.” They all say that.

Rick: “You’re off the program.”

Richard: That’s probably every master, that anybody that says they’re awakening. Even with Ramana or something like that. I was in India two years ago, not this winter, but the one before. And there are some very, very beautiful saints, or just real peaceful, skinny little guys, really wise people, but they say, “Oh, I’m not a teacher, no way. Oh no, I wouldn’t be filmed. No, no, no.” Because it would come back on them and hit them on the head, because everybody would say, “You are teaching, why? Just send in Ramana, he’s right here. You can see him more now than ever.”

Rick: Right.

Richard: They would say, “There’s only one teacher, Ramana.”

Rick: “Light that is one, though the lamps be many.” But my attitude toward it is that there are many degrees of awakening and maybe some people who say they’re awakened, it’s just a baby step, it’s just an initial degree. There may be dozens more stages they’re going to progress through before– And I don’t even know if there is any sort of final stage. I think that the greatest saints who ever walked the planet would probably acknowledge that there’s still some sort of growth for them to undergo which may be far beyond the conception of somebody who’s just starting out.

Richard: Well, I don’t know. One thing is to say there’s growth but another thing is, like we were saying, what we’re saying that– I’m getting a little confused because I just did another interview. we were just– Okay, let’s just talk about the illusion. The illusion is in movement. This movement is part of– Even saints participate in this illusion, in this movement. I mean, there’s always a movement and that could be what you could say is the stages or the progression or something like that. It’s just flowing with this movement, and maybe receiving the movement as it plays through your instrument, and accepting it too. Receiving and accepting might be a little different because you receive what you like and you accept what you don’t like. But that’s just your likes and dislikes or your preferences, and maybe it’s strong or maybe not. We were just saying enlightened people have preferences just like everyone else. Okay, that’s just the movement is staying with that, but it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s lots of stages or lots of things. In other words, because otherwise if we say there’s a lot of stages of enlightenment then we’re always trying to get somewhere. And how can we be here if we’re trying to get somewhere else? If we’re acknowledging that there’s another stage to get to and I should go deeper? I mean, that’s just a thought, and the effect of that thought is it takes me away from this moment. And if it takes me away from this moment, then it’s just like ah–

Rick: Well, I see your point.

Richard: –counterproductive, right?

Rick: Yeah. Yes and no. I think you can acknowledge that there is progress–

Richard: Hold on just a second. Close that door a second, because that sheds the light a little bit.

Rick: Sure. I think you can acknowledge that there is plenty of progress yet to undergo and yet be content with where you’re at now. It’s like, to take a simple example, a person is in school and there are various grades they go through as they’re in school. And if they say to themselves, “Well, I’m just in the fifth–” Let’s say they’re in the fifth grade, and they say, “Well, this is school and I’m studying what I’m studying, and if I acknowledge that there might be high school and college and graduate school to go through, then I’m not really doing justice to what I’m doing right now.” But that’s not necessarily the case. They can totally focus on the fifth grade, learn everything it has to teach them, be who they are, appreciate what they’re learning, but there are going to be further unfoldments for them if they continue their education. So I understand the whole bit about “be here now” and Eckhart Tolle’s thing of living in the present, and that’s very true. But Eckhart Tolle himself will tell you that, established in the present moment, there is yet plenty of unfoldment and deepening that can take place.

Richard: Well, one thing about the fifth grade is that it’s already a belief in a progression so then you can be at ease with that progression. You know the steps.

Rick: Yeah. But I mean, there’s no fifth grade of enlightenment–

Rick: There is though.

Richard: –unless you say there is.

Rick: I say there is. I say that you and I are not Ramana Maharshi or Ammachi, or someone who has a much more mature, full level of experience. We’re experiencing the same thing. If Amma were to look at you, she would see herself, she would see that same self that is in everyone, as we were discussing earlier. But it doesn’t mean that we’re all equal in terms of our ability to– in terms of the the clarity with which we experience that level of life, and in terms of our ability to express it and impact the lives of others with it.

Richard: I guess I can acknowledge that, but I don’t think that’s a hugely useful place to go.

Rick: It can be. You know the Urban Guru Cafe folks that have that whole–

Richard: I’ve heard of them, yes.

Rick: I’ve listened to all 74 of their interviews and I listen to new ones as they come out. And there is this sentiment there that any sort of discussion of levels or of seeking or of progress or of anybody being more highly developed spiritually than anybody else is a crock and it’s really not a useful way to look at life. And I can see their perspective. You know, I always do this with things: I can see their perspective but I respectfully disagree as well because I don’t think it’s practical in terms of what we actually experience in life. In fact, one of the main people in that discussion, who’s responsible and involved and does a lot of the interviews on that show, said at one point to one of the teachers she was interviewing, “Well, I mean, is this all there is to it? I mean, it seems so ordinary.” And there was evidently a sort of a longing or a lack that she was feeling, that she felt like there must be something more to her experience than what she was experiencing. And again, I agree with you that always chasing the dangling carrot can be a stumbling block. At some point you have to kind of relax back and say, “Okay, what I’ve actually got now is very significant, and it may be actually what I was looking for.” But at the very same time there is always room for growth. It’s like a paradox. It’s a con– It’s a paradox.

Richard: This is my take on that: She would never get an answer, “Is this all there is?”

Rick: The answer she got was, “Yeah, this is it. Relax and enjoy it.”

Richard: Well, I mean, that wasn’t an answer to her.

Rick: Right.

Richard: That was not an answer to her and she will never get an answer because she was asking a question– a mental projection question, projected question– and there’s no answer. There’s no mental answer that is it.

Rick: Yeah.

Richard: So she’s never going to find anything there until that becomes less important to her. That question has to be– is really– has to see through that question and see that that’s the wrong question to ask.

Rick: I’d have to say that if I had a favorite word, it’s the word “paradox.” And the reason I like that word is that any kind of assertion you make about anything you can always find a sort of a paradoxical other perspective that’s equally valid. And that is not to say that there are not somehow qualitative differences between different ways of understanding things.

Richard: But a paradox is also a thought.

Rick: It is.

Richard: It only exists in thought. It doesn’t really exist in nature.

Rick: Very good.

Richard: And so then, if you want, the thoughts do have paradox and we can acknowledge that and then that’s not really what we’re looking or what we’re seeking to– we’re not really seeking to resolve that paradox. We’re seeking to have it become less important so that our focus can actually drop it–

Rick: Yeah.

Richard: –and really just sit with what is, and not to deny it or try to throw the paradox out because that’s like an impossibility but just to see what is before the paradox.

Rick: Now, there actually is a paradox in nature, but maybe not. Like, for instance, we know that light is both a particle and a wave depending upon whether you’re observing it. But it only becomes a paradox when an observer gets involved. I think that–

Richard: Oh, that observer is a mind.

Rick: Yeah, right.

Richard: An observer is a mind. So a mind created particles and a mind created waves. There’s neither.

Rick: Exactly.

Richard: In nature, there’s neither.

Rick: So it really proves your point. Only when the observer starts muddling around do we get the paradox and otherwise nature is fine just as it is. But what I’m trying to say is that all these assertions and statements and theories and attitudes and so on that we adopt about all these different points– It would serve us well to remember that, as you said, they are just thoughts. They are just concepts. And in the realm of concepts there are always going to be other truths. Byron Katie is so good at showing that whatever you believe pretty much the polar opposite is probably also true. She gets people to flip it around.

Richard: But she’s not trying to really say that they’re both true. She’s just trying to say that, “Look, even the opposite has an effect on you. Neither are true.”

Rick: Right.

Richard: “You’re not that.”

Rick: Yeah, which maybe is what Zen koans always tried to do: to get you to give up the dualistic wrestling match with concepts and just relax into something which is much more fundamental and unified, which resolves all such paradoxes.

Richard: Even the word “give up–” you just realize it’s futile. This don’t hook together. These don’t go together.

Rick: Yeah.

Richard: And then the whole thing is in the garbage bin and what’s left is life.

Rick: Exactly.

Richard: I had a lot of fun talking with you, Rick.

Rick: Yeah, it was great, Richard. I’m glad we did this. Right. So we’ll have to go on your website, which is– You’ve got a– It’s BATGAP.com, Yes. B-A-T-G-A-P .com which stands for Buddha at the Gas Pump. And if you go there, then there are links to some other things that you can do. You can find out about a chat group and a YouTube channel and a– I don’t know, something else– a podcast. And also I’ve linked to some other interview shows like this, including yours. So there’s links to that, to the Urban Guru Cafe, and a few others that I’ve found. So it’s a little central station place for checking in on what I’ve been doing and what I’m interested in.

Richard: For checking in on consciousness.

Rick: Right. Right.

Richard: What’s going on in Fairfield.

Rick: Yep, and beyond.

Richard: Ah, right on. Okay.

Rick: All right.

Richard: So just thank you, Rick. It’s been our pleasure, a real pleasure.

Rick: Thank you, Richard. We’ll be in touch.

Richard: Okay.

Rick: Okay.

Richard: So everybody, thanks for coming. This was Rick Archer. We’re here in, well, Fairfield, but all around the world, actually, because the Internet is all around the world. So glad you could make it this time. So thanks so much and goodbye for this episode.