Stephen D’Amico Interview

Summary

Stephen D'Amico describes early experiences of recognizing true nature, merging with inner light, and remaining aware through dreams and sleep. The discussion explores spiritual development, the witness state, meditation, the role of childhood identification, and encounters with subtle beings.

Questions This Interview Explores

• Do people lose their spiritual connection during childhood, and can it be regained?
• What is the witness state, and how can someone begin to experience it?
• Is witnessing a practice or a spontaneous quality of awakened awareness?
• Can awareness continue through dreaming and deep sleep?
• How should spiritual seekers understand encounters with subtle beings?

Key takeaways

• Human beings may begin life connected to awareness before identifying strongly with the body and ego.
• Meditation can help awareness settle into beingness, allowing the witness to emerge naturally.
• The witness is not a divided mental observer but a broader awareness beyond body and mind.
• Witnessing is an important stage of development, not necessarily the final state.
• Spiritual experiences may include both luminous states and encounters with subtle beings.

Transcript

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening people. I’ve done over 400 of them by now, and if this is new to you, please go to the Past Interviews menu on batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P, where you’ll see all the previous ones. This show is made possible by the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. So, if you appreciate it and feel like supporting it, there’s a donate button on every page of the site, and we really appreciate and rely upon the support that we have been receiving in whatever amount, large or small.

My guest today is Stephen D’Amico. Stephen is a spiritual teacher, mystical poet, and author. At the age of 22, he went through a profound spiritual transformation that culminated in a permanent realization of his true nature. Since then, his life has been devoted to understanding the spiritual path from an evolutionary perspective and helping others reconnect with their true nature to help bring about a global awakening in human consciousness. The main way he does this is through the direct transmission of the enlightened state of being, which connects others with their own true nature.

In the past, Stephen has worked in the field of conflict resolution and restorative justice as a mediator, facilitator, trainer, and project leader for youth social action groups. He’s also taught at both the elementary and high school levels, focusing on the special needs of students with learning disabilities.

Currently, he and his wife, Aniko, run Millwood Melt, a lively grilled cheese restaurant in their beloved community of Leesdale in Toronto. And in honor of that, I had a cheese sandwich for lunch, but it wasn’t grilled. I needed Stephen for that, and he wasn’t here. Customers and students playfully refer to Stephen as the grilled cheese guru.

When not feeding bodies, Stephen lives and breathes to feed souls. He currently hosts transformational gatherings and satsangs, and offers individuals enlightened guidance and support via phone, Skype, or in person. He’s the author of two books, The Incredible State of Absolute Nothingness: A Personal Account of Spiritual Enlightenment and Heaven on Earth: A Guide to Enlightenment and Human Unity.

I managed to read both of them cover to cover in the past week, and I enjoyed them a lot. One of the things Stephen did when he was in college was take creative writing courses, and he’s a good writer and conveys his experiences very clearly, as I’m sure you will see in this interview. So, Stephen, thanks, welcome.

Stephen: Well, thank you, Rick. It’s really a pleasure to be here.

Rick: Your book The Incredible State of Absolute Nothingness is a nice biographical account of your life, and it might be good to start on that note. You say in your book that it’s kind of unique that you knew your true nature as a young person, as a child, but actually it’s maybe somewhat rare, but not altogether uncommon among the people I interview. There are quite a few people I’ve interviewed who relate a similar thing, and then, like you, they tend to lose it in their teenage years.

One fellow, who was also from Toronto, said he only had a 15-minute period in his whole life where he lost his awareness of his true nature. He said he didn’t want to live, but he managed to recover it after 15 minutes. In any case, I guess you were saying that you knew who and what you were from your earliest recollection.

Stephen: Yeah, there was a connection for sure, but let me just quickly qualify that, because my view is that it happens for all human beings. We all lose it. It’s just to what degree and how long does it last.

Rick: You think we all have it at some point during our lives, or do most people come in totally blotto, having lost it from birth?

Losing Connection to True Nature

Stephen: No, I don’t think so. I think we all come in sort of still connected to Source as awareness, but we’re learning to identify with the body as we do that. And the more identified we become with the body, then often what happens is, as we’re developing human egos, we lose all connection to true nature.

Rick: Do you see that as a necessary evolutionary progression, that you have to lose it in order to regain it, in a way, so as to actually be able to live it as a human being?

Stephen: Probably, for now, as a human being at this stage in our evolution. I don’t know about the future, but it seems to be the way it goes now.

Rick: They say that people who come in totally self-realized and never lose it aren’t actually people; they are avatars who are here for a specific purpose, but the common lot tends to lose it. You also mentioned that later on in your life, you remembered having chosen your parents.

Stephen: Well, I think it happens for all human beings, for all human souls as they incarnate.

Rick: Some people might say, “I would never have chosen my parents if I had been given a choice.” Or, “Why would some poor soul who is born in Sudan choose to be born in those circumstances?” What would you say to them?

Stephen: Those are heavy questions. Usually there is a karmic reason for every decision as you prepare for incarnation. I cannot say what that would be for any particular individual, but it seems to me that that is the way it works.

✨ The Divine Spark and luminous awareness

Rick: As a child, a subtle vision arose in your mind’s eye every night before falling asleep. That sounded significant. What was that vision?

Stephen: The vision itself was what I call vehicles of transformation. These are all the little subtle forms that can arise as part of our inner journey. All kinds of things can happen.

That particular form was what many traditions refer to as the Divine Spark. As a child, and as a baby really, I was able to perceive that through my mind’s eye before I fell asleep every night. And what it would do was expand my beingness into both what I now call the luminous nirvana or the light of God, and also the formless presence that is God before manifestation.

Rick: How would you describe it? You say “Divine Spark.” Was it just like a little glowing ball of light?

Stephen: Yeah, it would start as a tiny spark off in the distance, but then, as I focused on it, it would grow and expand until my entire field of awareness was gone. In fact, I just lost all sense of identity and merged with the light.

Rick: And that would be your nightly experience as a young child?

Stephen: Every night.

Rick: Would you retain that as you were sleeping, or would you black out when you actually went to sleep?

Stephen: I would not retain it. It would be a process of expanding and becoming one with this luminous dimension. There was another part of the experience that is what I refer to as a contraction phase.

The light would then return as a form in my mind’s eye, until it became just a tiny point, and I myself would actually have to merge with that point and dissolve all sense of self. That would lead to the formless dimension.

Rick: So, every night you dissolved all sense of self, merged with the formless dimension, and then went to sleep?

Stephen: Yeah, pretty much. Sometimes it was this process of going through the inner light, expanding into that and then dissolving into the formless and then into the light again, over and over. It was always wonderful, so sometimes I’d let it go for hours.

Rick: Is that something that you could have described to friends at that time, or was it something you remembered later on in life?

Stephen: I’m sure I could have tried to explain it. I don’t think it was beyond my ability to explain it, but I didn’t think anyone would believe me.

Rick: You were well aware of it and enjoyed it and welcomed it every night.

Stephen: I’ve spoken to seekers since then, and it’s not an uncommon experience. It does happen for people.

Rick: That suggests that the connection with your true nature was very lively, strong, and clear, and that it wasn’t overshadowed to a very great degree. Would that be a fair description?

Stephen: Yeah, sure. It happened quite naturally.

Rick: When you woke up in the morning, was there a flood of pure awareness before you got into your day?

Stephen: My mornings were unique in the sense that I would also have a state of awareness throughout sleep, particularly during dreams. So, people describe having the witness throughout waking.

Rick: Lucid dreaming, yeah.

Stephen: I would have that as well. Often when I woke up or as I was waking up, I’d be aware that I was returning to my little body, to being a person in the world. But I would still retain an awareness of true nature as I was waking up.

Often, during that time, I would have a quick review or a scan of my dreams from that night and just seem to naturally understand what they meant, how they related to me as part of my own inner work as a kid.

Rick: There is a continuity of pure awareness underlying or continuing throughout waking, dreaming, and sleeping, and nothing overshadows it. You know that term “turiya”—the fourth? Waking, dreaming, and sleeping are the first three, and turiya—pure awareness—is the fourth. It is said that, once attained clearly and stably, that fourth state is perpetual as the other three rotate around. I guess you are saying that was pretty much your experience?

Stephen: Yeah.

Rick: Then you lost it during your teenage years, and then did it return? Is that your experience now?

Stephen: Yeah, pretty much, not to the same degree. There was a period where I focused on establishing that the fourth state is true, three is true, and so I worked very diligently at it to ensure that in fact it was possible. For months I had 24-hour witnessing awareness.

But now it comes and goes during sleep and dreaming, for sure, but it doesn’t concern me all that much.

Rick: There was a period where you slept 16 hours a day as an experiment?

Stephen: I was sleeping, as an experiment, for something like 16 hours a day to see if it was possible to maintain uninterrupted immersion in the formless state. Finally, I heard a voice, which I referred to as the Divine, which implied, “Enough already.”

Rick: There was a sage in the Vedic literature named Durga Thomas, and his whole thing was that he liked to sleep. He would sleep for around six months at a time, but at the same time, he was this great saint.

Stephen: I used to like to sleep a whole lot. I have memories of my dad trying to wake me up. He would try to wake me up, and I just wouldn’t wake up. So he would grab my mattress and shake it like a sheet, and I would just be like a piece of uncooked spaghetti, rolling around. I knew he was doing this, but it didn’t break my sleep.

Rick: Some yogis do that with samadhi; you do it with sleep.

What else is significant to recount about your childhood years, in terms of spiritual experiences, thoughts, and aspirations, before you got to the point where you started to lose it and knew you were going to lose it?

Stephen: I had discovered little ways of reconnecting whenever I felt as if I was becoming too identified with my sense of personhood or individuality, or just being a person or body in the world and not feeling connected to the transpersonal or witnessing state. I discovered techniques that I would use as a way to reestablish that connection while going about my everyday life.

Rick: Like what?

Stephen: Probably the most significant one was staring at myself in a mirror. As I would do this, my awareness would naturally expand, and I’d be aware more of the witness simply by gazing at my form in the mirror. That would always lead to a total immersion in beingness itself, and I would realize that beingness—not only my beingness, but beingness itself—is the source and the substance of everything in existence.

Then that would be a little too overwhelming at times. I just couldn’t believe that this was the truth, so I pulled back and abided in the witness.

Rick: How old were you at this stage?

Stephen: Four or five. It was there before I had conceptual knowledge. As I was developing a conceptual understanding of my own experience, I would start to understand it in a self-reflexive, verbal kind of way—the way that we comment on our experience.

Rick: You mentioned tracing back the witness and quantum gazing. Were those things you developed later?

Stephen: The quantum gazing thing was more in my teenage years, but tracing back the witness, which was sort of just allowing myself to shift into that observing state, I would just ask myself, “What is the source of this?” I was doing that from quite a young age. That is a form of self-inquiry.

Abiding in the Witness

The main method or technique that I teach people is simply to allow yourself to get in touch with the witness. Then, as you are abiding in that, probe deeper into what is the source of this witnessing. That leads to beingness, the fullness of beingness, true nature, and many different things.

The main method or technique that I teach people is simply to allow yourself to get in touch with the witness. Then, as you are abiding in that, probe deeper into what is the source of this witnessing. That leads to beingness, the fullness of beingness, true nature, and many different things.

Rick: A question came in from Jan Essman from Copenhagen. He said that if he was experiencing the witnessing associated with self-realization, he would experience dreamless sleep as bliss. Is or was that your experience?

Stephen: Bliss, not as much. It was more peace and equanimity, but there was definite bliss during the light.

Rick: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was emphatic that witnessing is not something one does or should try to do. An attempt at witnessing will divide the mind, and witnessing is actually more a quality of awakened consciousness, where there is a natural contrast between the silence of pure awareness and the dynamism of activity. You don’t have to do it any more than you do “being clean” after taking a shower. He cautioned against trying to do anything because it would divide the mind, make you less effective in activity, and create an inner strain. But you do advocate some sort of practice to culture or develop the witness. How would you reconcile that discrepancy?

Stephen: What he is describing can happen. You can set up a mental position where you think, “I’m observing my mind, so this is the witness.” But really, you’re just dividing the mind between a partial amount of your awareness, which is now looking or attempting to see what’s arising.

Rick: When you say “witnessing,” you don’t mean some little part of you over here is witnessing the rest of you over there. You mean a contrast between the unboundedness, which is your true nature, and anything in the relative world, right?

Stephen: Yes, but in terms of understanding the dynamics of this from a psychological perspective, you have awareness, I have awareness, we all have awareness. Although there are things we can do to think that we’re getting in touch with our own awareness, we can get in touch with our own awareness. You can do it now; I can do it now.

The process or technique of connecting with the witness is to actually abide in awareness. At first, you are just aware and feel, “Okay, so yeah, great, I’m aware. That’s not a big deal.” But if you let that pass—the dissatisfaction with the insignificance of the fact that you have awareness—and actually continue to keep your attention on your own awareness, it naturally expands into the witness.

At first, you are just aware. But if you continue to keep your attention on your own awareness, it naturally expands into the witness.

Rick: Here’s a passage from your book: “Subjectively, it felt as if my identity was dividing into two parts, an impersonal side on the one hand and my personal sense of self on the other.”

Stephen: That is the experience when you connect with the witness. You zoom back, or zoom up, or zoom out, and you then realize that you have a body, but you’re not a body. You have your mind, but you’re not just your mind. There is something about us that is bigger than our own personal selves in the world.

Rick: That is, by its nature, at least at one stage of our experience, not involved in activity, right?

Stephen: It’s our beingness.

Rick: It’s our beingness, yeah.

Stephen: We are human beings, so the human part is the doing part, and the being is the part that is inactive. It’s the bird on the tree in that Upanishad: one bird flits about, and the other one sits idly.

Rick: In the Gita, there are verses about how, in acting and sitting and walking and standing and drinking and whatever, one maintains that “I do not act at all.” That is not an attitude being advocated; it is a natural, spontaneous experience.

Stephen: Natural and spontaneous, but also not obtainable through actual techniques.

Rick: If you’re going through your day trying to manipulate your experience and get into this witness state, I’m not sure how advisable that would be, but it may be a condition that, after a certain amount of spiritual development, you find yourself in naturally.

Stephen: That’s why I tell all my students, listeners, and anyone who wants to hear me talk about this stuff that this is the importance of meditating at the beginning of the day. If you meditate properly and you can drop into beingness, you are naturally going to witness. You may not maintain it throughout your day, but it’s going to emerge.

Rick: Over time, it will stabilize and become clearer.

Stephen: Over time, it does. This is the case for most people who are on the path, I think.

Rick: Would you also agree that, as interesting as this whole witnessing thing is, it actually is a stage; it’s not the ultimate state of development?

Stephen: What is the ultimate state?

Rick: Good point. We will get on to that.

Stephen: It’s an important part of spiritual development. In a way, it’s when the soul finally comes online.

Subtle beings and the intermediate zone

Rick: You mentioned that, in addition to what happened when you went to sleep, there was a stage at which subtle beings would visit you. One felt like a representation of the devil. As a child, you saw it as the Count from Sesame Street. In addition to that guy tempting you and trying to entice you to follow him in order to gain certain abilities, there were gargoyles, almost like bats hanging upside down, that you felt had a protective function.

Whenever the Sesame Street guy showed up, they would also show up and watch over you. Maybe you should elaborate on that situation.

Stephen: How do I convince people that I’m sane?

Rick: Just don’t start trying to pick bugs out of the air, and we’ll be convinced.

Stephen: In our contemporary culture, when we hear stuff like this, we have a hard time understanding it from anything other than a psychological perspective. From a psychological perspective, it can only be understood as manifestations of the mind—the imagination. “Oh, you were dreaming. Don’t worry about it.”

But my own understanding of the spiritual path and of that actual experience is occult. There are occult phenomena, and I encountered an occult phenomenon as a child.

Rick: Yeah.

Stephen: There are not just negative forces. There are positive forces, positive and negative beings as well—subtle beings. Some of them tempt us, and some of them help us.

Subtle Realms and Spiritual Discernment

Rick: There is a whole realm, or many realms, in creation that are heavily populated with all sorts of subtle forms of life. It is common for us to encounter those on the spiritual path. The spiritual literature is full of such encounters, so we might as well gain some understanding of it and not just pretend it doesn’t exist because it doesn’t fit our philosophical viewpoint.

Stephen: There is a connection between madness and mystical awareness and development. That whole zone is part of that. Schizophrenic individuals aren’t necessarily just having aberrant thoughts. There could be beings and forces that are interrupting and interfering with their cognitive functions.

Rick: They may perceive them and see them, and everybody else just thinks they are crazy and gives them Thorazine. They could actually be opened up to astral realms and so on, and yet not have the capacity to deal with it, not have the inner strength or whatever it takes.

Stephen: A large part of those beings are from what Aurobindo referred to as the intermediate zone. There are sort of half-realized, half-corrupted beings all throughout the universe. You can encounter them. Oftentimes, they want you to follow them; there is a desire to have you follow and listen to them, but they are not immersed in the truth completely.

What he said is that you can still learn from them, but it’s a realm of half-lights and half-truths, and it’s all mixed.

Rick: Patanjali talks about this in the Yoga Sutras. At a certain stage, you may be tempted by celestial beings, and they try to allure you with promises. You should just say, “Thanks, but no thanks,” and move on.

Stephen: The most important part of spiritual development, at least in my understanding, is to awaken to the absolute truth. That is why, in many traditions, they say, “Never mind all of that visionary stuff. Move past that, because it is all a distraction at this point. Until you get established in your own true nature, don’t worry about any of that stuff.” But afterwards, you begin to distinguish between benevolent beings and malevolent ones. On the path, the benevolent ones can certainly be helpful.

Rick: Maharishi used the example of a territory that had all kinds of interesting things in it—diamond mines and gold mines—and then there was a fort at the center commanding it. It might be tempting to go after this diamond mine or that gold mine, but what you really should do is capture the fort because then the territory will belong to you. Then you can safely explore it at your leisure, without getting into a dicey situation because you’re venturing into something that you have no command over.

Stephen: That’s right—orders from headquarters.

Rick: There is not only the astral level, which is still relatively gross, but there is a celestial level, which is more refined, much closer to the absolute level. In what way would you say that these subtler impulses of intelligence could be helpful to human spiritual development?

Stephen: They’re always helping us, or trying, anyway. I think that is part of their divine purpose. But if we open up to this possibility at a certain stage in our spiritual development, or just from curiosity, and invite that influence in, miracles upon miracles.

Rick: New Age people are always talking about ascended masters, guardian angels, and spirit guides. You still have to have a little caution. When you say “invite something in,” that has scary connotations. You want to keep a balance and not dismiss all of this stuff out of hand as hogwash. On the other hand, don’t be undiscriminating and open, thinking, “Anything goes.”

Stephen: That is spiritual maturity, and a lot of New Age people don’t necessarily have it. They hook into this stuff and get trapped in the intermediate zone.

Choosing to lose connection

Rick: As you got older, you realized that you were going to have to disconnect from this formless dimension that had been predominant during your younger years, and become a wild and crazy teenager for a while. You said there was something intentional you did to precipitate this: you began breathing from your upper chest rather than the belly.

Stephen: One of those little techniques that I discovered as a young kid was to focus on breathing. I naturally breathed fully, which is what we learn in yoga—to have a full breath.

By breathing into my belly, I would first dissolve into my own sense of beingness as an individual, but then from there, from the belly center, into beingness itself. I knew that I had to give up my connection, so I dropped all my practices. It was that one in particular that I focused on deliberately not doing, by only breathing into the upper part of my chest as a way to forget about the absolute truth.

But I stopped all the other practices—tracing back the witness and looking in the mirror. Those were the two main ones, aside from deep breathing.

Rick: You actually became agnostic for a period of years. Most people who felt they had some degree of awakening during childhood really didn’t want to lose it. But you realized, “I’m going to have to go through this phase,” and willingly walked into the fire.

Stephen: I’m trying not to be so extreme as I mature as a human being. I think that was just the way it unfolded for me, and it was something I knew I had to do.

It was demarcated by a very time-bound event. I knew it was going to happen, that it had to happen, and I said, “Okay, well, let’s do this completely.” Maybe my dad had some influence here. He would say, “Don’t do anything half-assed. If you’re going to do it, do it all in.”

Rick: How many years did you go through that phase?

Stephen: Four or five, until I was about 16 or 17.

Rick: What began to egg you to wake up again?

Stephen: It happened after having my heart broken.

Rick: A romantic breakup?

Stephen: Yeah, I was with a girl, and it was a really good learning experience. I didn’t waste time exploring human sexuality either, so when that ended, my delusions ended very quickly.

I had been broken down by this tumultuous romantic and sexual relationship, and that prompted me to realize, “Okay, now you have to get it back.”

Rick: What do you mean, you “didn’t waste time” exploring human sexuality?

Stephen: No, I did everything. It was like all you could possibly experience in a relationship—all the insanity of it. I experienced all of that.

Rick: You just compacted it into a short period of time.

Stephen: Yeah.

Rick: At the tail end of that you thought, “There’s got to be more,” and remembered the spiritual thing you had forgotten.

Stephen: That reignited my journey as a seeker. It made it the central focus of my life from that point on.

🛤️ Seeking, service, and the dark night

Rick: What sort of things did you do as a seeker to get the train rolling again?

Stephen: I was asking myself all of those spiritual questions that we ask as teenagers: What’s the purpose of life? Why am I here? Why are we here? What’s the meaning? Is there meaning?

It was really a search to find the answers to those questions, not realizing that the answers were states of being that I had lost touch with and had forgotten how to get back in touch with.

Rick: Did you start doing practices again?

Stephen: I had no idea about spiritual practices, not really.

Rick: So, you were just seeking intellectually and emotionally.

Stephen: Yeah. It was before the internet, so it was like what you could find at your local library.

Rick: You mentioned that you realized the importance of selfless service and started doing a lot of that.

Stephen: As I got going with the inquiry into the answers to these questions, I began to have experiences again. One was discovering that engaging in selfless service gets rid of your own personal desire for satisfaction from life, getting that out of the way and realizing that if you just give yourself to others, you actually gain your true self. That is what I did all the time.

Rick: What forms of service did you do?

Stephen: Just everyday stuff. I put myself through high school and university, so I worked as a waiter at Swiss Chalet, a rotisserie chicken place. At work, predominantly, I would help my fellow employees. I’d clear their tables without being asked. If the drivers in the back or anyone needed my car, I’d just throw them the keys: “Take it. Don’t give me back anything. I don’t want anything in return.” I just wanted to do things for other people.

So, I did whatever; it didn’t matter. Pour them a drink, get their coffee, light their cigarette, whatever. Whatever somebody needed, I would try to provide it.

Rick: You felt that was effective in helping to attenuate your ego and sense of self-importance?

Stephen: It was good practice. Still to this day, I do it.

Rick: This is considered important in all forms of spirituality, Eastern and Western. They call it seva in Sanskrit. It is a time-honored method of diminishing self-centeredness and putting one more in service of the Divine.

Stephen: It awakens the soul, puts someone in touch with the soul, and from the soul you get more accurate intel, better orders from headquarters.

If you just give yourself to others, you actually gain your true self.

Rick: From the time you were 15 or 16, you got on the seeker train again, and then had your big awakening at 22. Was there a lot of intensity during that period? You mentioned that the last few months before your awakening were one long, dark night of the soul.

Stephen: There was an intensity. I was also going through all kinds of transformations, inner changes, as we do just being human beings. As part of those, I was getting back in touch with certain realizations, but it wasn’t connected to an understanding of the absolute truth. I was moving in and out of the witness, but I had no idea what the witness was. That is why I felt sort of dissociated.

You have to remember, I was a materialist, an agnostic, and as far as the world was concerned, I was dissociating. I wondered, “That can’t be good. What’s happening? Am I becoming schizoid?”

Rick: What was the nature of this dark night of the soul?

Stephen: Part of going through these changes of state and not understanding them was confusion. Along with the confusion came depression, because of not knowing, not understanding, and not feeling grounded. I was also in university, and it was quite challenging.

As a result of the witness emerging and me not understanding it, and being dissatisfied with my own life and lack of knowing, I began to suffer from existential ennui, or the sense that “nothing matters.” It can be a universal experience: not understanding, being dissatisfied with conventional life, knowing there has to be more, but not understanding what that more is.

Rick: A large percentage of the population is on Prozac and Zoloft or whatever these drugs are called, which try to provide solace because people feel so miserable.

Stephen: Either way: “What? What is this? How come I’m not happy?” This is perennial, but this is just how it’s showing up in the modern world, and people are medicating.

Rick: Here’s a passage you wrote about the moment of your enlightenment: “Every remnant of my personal identity was gone, obliterated. It was like amnesia, but even that fails to fully convey the sense of emptiness. It felt as if I had never existed. There was nothing. No more life, no more memories, no more me. Nothing. All that remained was my disembodied awareness and this endless realm of nothingness, a vacuum devoid of any features, forms, or qualities. No formless bliss, no absolute truth, nothing.”

Every remnant of my personal identity was gone, obliterated. It felt as if I had never existed. There was nothing. No more life, no more memories, no more me.

Stephen: That was part of the transformations I was experiencing on the night of my awakening. There were definitely things that happened before that, as well as after that.

Rick: Tell us about some of those things.

Stephen: I’d spent the evening out with a friend. We went to a bar, and something happened that got me really turned off to wanting to be out anymore. I was suffering from existential anxiety and ennui, so I just wanted to go home.

It was a cold night in the middle of January. I’d just gotten back from Florida with my girlfriend. My mom had bought me a ticket because she knew I was sad and wanted to help me get happy again.

I came home, and there was an intensified longing for a final resolution to my search. I wanted to understand the answer to the questions I had about life, meaning, and purpose. What am I here for? Why are we here?

I sat on the couch and sank back into the witness. From there, I got the impulse to go to a room I had in the basement of my parents’ house. I went into the pitch-black basement and lay on my bed.

I felt something big was about to happen, but I didn’t have any conceptual understanding for it. Something was going on.

As I sank more fully into the witness, I felt a presence come into my room. It enveloped the entire space. That presence had the quality of the voidness you just described, and it said, “If you want to find the answer to your quest, you have to let go and become what you’re feeling emanating all around you.”

I was terrified. Then I had a subtle vision arise in my mind’s eye of a vortex opening up. From that unfathomable presence in the darkened space of my bedroom, I felt it urging me, “Go into that.”

I wasn’t sure what would happen, but I knew I wasn’t getting the answers any other way, so I let myself dissolve into the vortex. As soon as I did, my entire sense of self was obliterated. It was shattered in a kind of psychological, shamanic dismemberment. My entire sense of self dissolved into that void.

As I was in that void, I thought, “Oh, this is a mistake. This can’t be the absolute truth. There’s nothing here! Am I going to have to stay here? If so, I’m done. I’ve made some kind of cosmic spiritual error, and I’m just going to have to sit in this limbo-like place of void and nothingness.”

But now I understand that that is a part of the transformation we can go through during meditation. It was out of that voidness that I was brought into a state of unity with the formless plenum, the fullness of that emptiness.

Rick: There is an interesting collection of terms in spiritual literature about whether it’s fullness or emptiness. The Buddhists talk about emptiness, and certain Vedic texts talk about fullness: Purnamadah, Purnamidam. Maharishi used to talk of fullness of emptiness and fullness of fullness. Could it be empty since there’s no “thing” there, and yet full because it is the field of all possibilities and the source of manifestation?

Stephen: That’s all part of it. It’s flavors, and it’s also stages. There are facets and stages of it.

Rick: Did you just go to sleep and wake up in the morning, or was there more?

The experience finished, and I realized that I’d been brought into a state of reconnection with Source and with my own true nature. I was immersed in the bliss of the formless and had all kinds of realizations about the significance of the formless. It is a necessary part of manifestation.

Stephen: The experience finished, and I realized that I’d been brought into a state of reconnection with Source and with my own true nature. I was immersed in the bliss of the formless and had all kinds of realizations about the significance of the formless. It is a necessary part of manifestation.

There was a voice from that presence that said, “Okay, do you want to stay here, or do you want to go back to your life?” I thought, “Well, I’ll go back to my life.”

I felt confident that I had rediscovered the absolute truth I had been searching for, and I understood it by becoming it. So, I decided to come back.

When I came back, the process of deciding to return to my body allowed my mind, my sense of self as an individual, to go through a transformation that completely changed my psychological makeup and my understanding of who I was, both as an individual and as more than an individual.

Rick: In the book, it sounds like a near-death experience. You say, “I remember being in this same dimension prior to incarnating, which is when I recalled undergoing the afterlife phenomenon known as the life review.” It sounds like you went through some kind of life review even there in the basement, as you were deciding to come back.

Stephen: It was a full-on psychospiritual conversion with elements of a near-death experience. Visionary experiences were part of it, and mystical formless dissolution was part of it. The entire experience lasted about 10 minutes, but there were many features and components.

The near-death experience that I subsequently read about, I realized, “That was part of my awakening. I actually went through a near-death experience.” I also understood that human beings go through the exact same process at the end of life: a return to the void, which can be very disorienting if you don’t understand it.

But that is only preparation to go through the life review. We have to completely lose our life, the life that we lived. We have to completely let it go or drop it in order to extract the wisdom that we’re supposed to gain.

Rick: Did that happen to you? It is as if you transcended so utterly that you had dropped your life almost like dying. But your body wasn’t dying, and because it was so complete, it put you through a life review?

Stephen: I went through a total life review. I had 360-degree vision and was looking through all of these screens at the same time, getting replays of my entire life. Sometimes people talk about their entire life flashing before their mind’s eye. I had that, but on multiple screens all around me, all at once. I didn’t resist; I accepted the truth of it all, and it wasn’t always pretty.

Rick: Did you feel as if you learned a lot from it?

Stephen: All of that, but it’s astounding. It’s incomprehensible, in a way, to think about how much I understood. We go through life and have experiences and learn from them, but it was like that.

Rick: Did it change the way you operated thereafter?

Stephen: My entire life was changed at that point.

Rick: You became vegan, lost a lot of weight, stopped smoking, and completely rebooted your system. Your friends thought maybe you had anorexia, but you radically changed.

Stephen: It got rebooted, and I just did what I had to do to make sure that the install stayed.

Rick: It’s almost as if you felt the vehicle needed some housecleaning before it was fit to hold this new awareness.

Stephen: Yes, it did, and I did.

Rick: You said that “the location of my new self was no longer in my body; instead, it hovered mysteriously above my head.” Did you feel as if you were hovering up there, viewing your life from a few feet above your head?

Stephen: Yeah, sort of like being in the zone, as athletes sometimes get into the zone and have that perspective, which allows them to control the game.

Rick: And that was going on all the time?

Stephen: Yeah, for about three years.

Rick: That’s what you mean by being in a transcendental state of awareness and eventually needing to come down from that and embody?

Stephen: We all do. Awakening isn’t just a transpersonal experience. You hear about people who have these experiences and transcend. Teachers refer to “the body” and “the mind,” talking about themselves in the third person because they are fully immersed in the transcendent perspective. But as part of spiritual maturation, it has to become embodied.

Rick: You weren’t a space cadet. You were going to school, working as a mediator, and planting thousands of trees. People may have picked up on aloofness, but you were still personable.

Stephen: I don’t think people understood that the seed of my consciousness wasn’t in my body. How would they? I was still very personable. But my experience was similar to Jackie O’Keefe’s. It was just the character responding to people.

My body had to continue functioning in the world and take care of things. Because I was engaged in all of these activities, all of that was optimized in a way.

Rick: Optimized, meaning performed efficiently?

Stephen: Very efficiently.

Rick: It almost sounds like the perspective of a puppeteer above your body, with the body functioning, but you’re not really the doer or chooser.

Stephen: We can get into that, but yes, I was above, and that’s where the real chooser and real doer are.

Embodiment and collective karma

Rick: After about three years, you felt prompted or decided that it was time to integrate.

Stephen: That’s right.

Rick: You wrote that “during my waking state, I was plagued by ancient fears and primitive reactions to life, and countless nights were spent fighting sadistic and tormented beings in recurring nightmarish dreams.” Was that during the reintegration phase?

Stephen: That was part of a deeper process that I engaged in. Most people, as they reintegrate with the body from a transcendental perspective, simply have to come back into the body and learn how to become sensitive, feeling, normally functioning human beings. That was the main purpose, but I also did deeper spiritual work as part of descending.

When I descended, I didn’t come back actually into my body; I went past it, down into a deeper level. This is an occult thing—very occult.

Rick: Is that related to what you say in the book: “At more advanced stages of spiritual evolution, the overall karmic inheritance of humanity is confronted and transcended”?

Stephen: It can be.

Rick: Is that why you were having all this nightmarish stuff? You were taking on collective karma?

Stephen: It sounds crazy, but yeah.

Rick: It doesn’t sound crazy at all. I’ve been hearing for decades that once we have cleaned up our own stuff, we take on humanity’s stuff and become a washing machine for that.

Stephen: To live as a self-realized or somewhat realized human being in the world, you become a sensing, heart-centered, pure individual, and you feel other people; you kind of take it on.

Rick: Maharishi said that once we get rid of our own stress, we start taking on cosmic stress.

Stephen: That’s right—cosmic and personal.

Free will from absolute and relative perspectives

Rick: You wrote that God only allows evil to exist as a necessary consequence of giving beings like us free will. Some people I’ve interviewed don’t feel we have any free will. They say everything is automatic, and quote scientific studies in which the impulse to move your arm happens before you move it. It’s a perennial debate.

Stephen: I think that is connected with right-brain and left-brain integration and how the brain functions as a receiver for consciousness. Many non-dualists say there is no free will. My understanding is that that view comes from the absolute perspective.

From the absolute perspective, there is no free will, because all of this is happening as a simultaneous manifestation of the Divine in form, unfolding exactly as it is meant to. But if you change your perspective and zoom in closer to what actually happens here in the world, and look at the experience of being a human being, we make choices all the time.

Rick: It sure seems like it.

Stephen: You can choose not to take out the garbage today and leave it until next week, but then you’re going to get maggots. Or you take out the garbage and take care of it. We make choices all the time, and those choices lead to outcomes. But from the absolute perspective, everything is happening instantaneously. So how can there be a choice? Choice is programmed into the structure of the universe.

Rick: From the really absolute perspective, nothing ever happened; there is no universe, therefore there is no choice or free will. But as soon as you acknowledge that there is a universe, all these relative considerations come in which you have to take seriously.

Stephen: Different laws operate at different levels of reality. From the absolute, everything is happening according to Divine will. But as you come out of that and move into the relative, there is actually free will as part of this great unfolding.

Rick: It’s a matter of scale and perspective. At one scale you have a liver; at another, it’s molecules, then atoms and quarks. You could say the same with a sense of self and free will.

Stephen: Even at the level of a quark, let’s say, there is some agency. There is a quark that wants to connect with an antiparticle. There is agency there, and it wants to do its job.

Rick: It has tendencies, proclivities, roles, and functions. Some would argue that a quark can only do what a quark can do and has no choice.

Stephen: They are all making choices that lead to all kinds of outcomes. Some realize their full potential and some don’t. Some return into the formless; they self-annihilate.

Rick: Philosophers have debated this for millennia, and we’re not going to resolve it here, but that gives a good perspective.

Stephen: We all have circumstances in life that limit our options, but we still have choice. The more we understand that we have choice, and the more we are willing to make good choices, the more freedom increases and we get better opportunities.

Rick: It is like growing up. As a child, you have no autonomy and are under your parents’ control. As an adolescent, you start making choices and gaining autonomy, sometimes recklessly. Eventually, hopefully, you become a mature adult making wise decisions.

In the span of evolution, animals are completely in tune with natural law and can only behave as monkeys or zebras. Human beings have freedom of choice and can get themselves into trouble. Enlightened sages are again completely in the lap of the Divine, doing its bidding, but have come full circle.

Stephen: It’s a great analogy. That covers everything.

Rick: Can a person be happy, spiritually aligned, and maybe even enlightened without meditating, reading wisdom books, or having a metaphysical experience? If so, what is the role of effort on a spiritual path?

It can happen. People have awakenings and realize it is effortless, because there is a certain effortlessness to it. You realize that you are already the thing you seek, and you don’t have to go anywhere to get it. You just have to stop trying so hard and realize that it is already the case.

Stephen: It can happen. People have awakenings and realize it is effortless, because there is a certain effortlessness to it. You realize that you are already the thing you seek, and you don’t have to go anywhere to get it. You just have to stop trying so hard and realize that it is already the case.

Rick: Many teachers have said that the desire for God or enlightenment is instrumental in realizing. Patanjali says the more intense your desire, the more rapidly you realize.

Stephen: This is the most important desire to have, and that desire drives the soul to evolve more and more.

The realization of the nondual perspective—not needing to find it because you already are that—is just one realization. It is not the full process of spiritual maturation. You can have that realization and let too many things go because you realize nothing ultimately matters, so your life falls apart, or you can lose it and become a seeker again without knowing why.

At that point, you have to have desire or practices. There is discipline involved in developing, cultivating, and maintaining any ability, including spiritual abilities.

Rick: Enlightenment may be an accident, but practice makes you accident-prone.

Stephen: Exactly.

🕊️ Food, compassion, and spiritual sensitivity

Rick: You followed a vegan diet for a time, yet your restaurant serves tuna, ham, and bacon. Does compassion for animals slaughtered for food production figure in the awakened perspective, or is it somehow a moot point? The Buddha was reputed to have died from eating rancid pork.

Stephen: It’s a serious question. I’m not vegan anymore, but I was vegan for many years. I don’t eat a lot of meat. The meat I do eat, I try to make sure has been raised humanely and is organic.

As you become more spiritually sensitive, you realize that when you’re eating pork, you’re eating a fairly sentient animal as opposed to a carrot. I understand, and I am grateful for, the food that I eat. The material universe and our experience here on Earth are food for us to unfold in the experiment of consciousness becoming the physical. That is how I understand it now.

Rick: Do you serve organic or humanely raised meat in your restaurant, if possible?

Stephen: At times, not all the time. Our bread is organic; it’s made by a church, which I love. But if I were to be completely organic, with what little amount of money I make doing this, I wouldn’t even be able to make that. It’s not financially possible.

Rick: Native Americans are said to have had a reverential attitude when they killed an animal, thanking it for its life and for helping to sustain theirs.

Stephen: How could you not? As you become sensitive to the importance of sentience, you feel that. Both my wife and I have that reverence. When we prepare food, we prepare it with love. It’s done with reverence for the food; we’re not just throwing things together.

Shaktipat and transmission

Rick: You have said that the main way you help foster awakening is through direct transmission of the enlightened state of being. A couple of people were asking about Shaktipat: what it is, whether one’s attitude is important, and what it is for people who may not know.

Stephen: What you get from Shaktipat, or energy transmission, is really a process of resonance. As the transmitter, I immerse myself in beingness as much as possible, so that it becomes amplified, and then I lock into you, often through the eyes, to bring you into that same state of being.

People may be unprepared for that. People cry; some people break down. It doesn’t happen that often, and I try to be sensitive and almost psychic in figuring out where the person is and what they can handle. If you come and get a transmission, you’re going to get something.

Rick: What are you experiencing while you’re doing this? How did you begin doing it, and what do other people report experiencing?

Stephen: I discovered it gradually. Sometimes I noticed that if I sat and manifested or tried to amplify my connection to Source, people around me would feel it and say authentic things, just blurting them out. I knew something was happening. That was the first inkling that something could be transmitted and received, and that a response could come from that reception.

My process of discovering that I could do it happened more profoundly shortly after I started teaching. I was meditating with people in the room, and something felt as if it was taking over and allowing a flood of energies to come through me and pour into other people. I didn’t understand what I was doing; it would just happen.

I didn’t tell anybody what I thought was happening. I would ask people, “What was your experience? How did you feel?” It developed as I sat with people and discovered that it was occurring. Eventually, I learned exactly how to make myself available in the right way, so it is a much more conscious process today.

Rick: Do you feel a higher being is transmitting through you, or is it being itself, pure awareness, universal consciousness, with you as a conduit?

Stephen: Now I feel that I’m a conduit. I lift myself up in the way that I know how to. But it was Jesus who showed me how to do it.

Rick: How did you know it was Jesus? Did you actually see Jesus?

Stephen: There was a historical component. As I went through the process of feeling visited by a luminous entity, I knew that the particular entity was Jesus, the historical Jesus.

But at this stage in my understanding, that personal self is not even part of the makeup anymore. That entity, that enlightened entity, exists as a function of the Divine.

Rick: How is it that higher beings such as Ramana and Jesus show up if there is complete dissolution of personal self?

Stephen: I’m not sure. It could be that way, or it could be that these are highly evolved beings who knowingly continue their work on behalf of the Divine.

Rick: You lean more toward that understanding?

Stephen: I lean more toward it, even though both are true. Again, it’s a matter of scale or perspective.

Rick: In Heaven on Earth, you wrote that every great religious tradition testifies that there is one experience towering above all others as the ultimate spiritual goal, traditionally called enlightenment. You referred to your awakening at 22 as enlightenment, yet there was continued growth, adjustment, integration, and purification afterward. The term has a static, superlative quality that implies you’re done. What do you think about that?

Stephen: Enlightenment is really just when the soul comes online.

Rick: If that’s how we define the word.

Stephen: The experience of merging with the Absolute often does lead to a complete cessation of activity. Take Ramana. How long did he sit and do nothing?

Rick: Years.

Stephen: It could happen. But then he got help and became a teacher and server of people. As he became more identified with the particular body he inhabited, he also became more compassionate and loving. As he matured from a younger awakened soul to an older one, he became more loving and caring in his outward behavior. That shows me that maturation continues.

Rick: Evolution continues. Even when we awaken, there is still development that can occur.

Stephen: I think evolution continues. It’s unending in a way; we’re still evolving. Even as human beings, we can awaken, and after awakening there is still development.

The X as a vehicle of transformation

Rick: You have an X sign on the wall behind you, which is also the cover of your book. You had a whole experience of an X, and I’ve never heard anyone else describe that. Could you explain it?

Stephen: The X was another vehicle of transformation. We were talking about the Divine Spark. This appeared during the period before my major awakening at 22, when all kinds of subtle experiences were occurring that I didn’t understand.

One was the emergence of this luminous X while I was in a writing class at university.

Rick: Just in your mind’s eye?

Stephen: It was instigated by a poem I was reading, a poem I thought was written by a Canadian poet named Christopher Doudny. I asked him since then, and he responded, “I don’t know, maybe.”

As I read the poem, my consciousness entered an altered state. It zoomed up and out and above my head. From that place, this form emerged.

I came back down into my body and finished the class, but the X continued to emerge as I went about daily life. Whether I was in school, at home studying, or working at Swiss Chalet, it would appear.

I began to realize that it wanted something from me. It was trying to show me something, so I became curious. At the same time, I was uncertain because it’s an X, a striking symbol with different associations. But I learned to trust it, and as I did, it led to the transformation of my ordinary state of consciousness into the nondual state.

It would emerge in my mind’s eye, and I would focus on it. Pulses of light would move from all four corners down to the center, as if it wanted to pull me into the center.

If I allowed myself to be fully drawn into where the courses of light suggested I go with my attention, I would merge with the form. At that point, I would experience the luminous nirvana I had experienced when I was younger, but only for a flash.

Right after that, the yantra, the light, would dissolve, but I would realize, “Oh, I’m in the nondual state.” It became an inner tool or vehicle of transformation that precipitated the transformation of my consciousness into the nondual state.

But it didn’t hold. It wouldn’t stick; it would fade away. Now I’ve put it out in the world because it is what is considered a yantra. You can use it as a device.

Rick: A yantra is like a mantra, but whereas a mantra is auditory, a yantra is visual—a tool for transcendence.

Stephen: Mantras are considered emanations of the Divine—direct emanations. So are yantras. This came from the Divine.

✨ Different kinds of awakening

Rick: How would you distinguish between awakening and enlightenment?

Stephen: In the way I use those terms, awakening is usually some sort of momentary or temporary glimpse, and it may not be a glimpse of the full truth. We can have all kinds of spiritual awakenings. We can awaken to the nowness of reality and realize, “Everything is now.”

Enlightenment is the complete dissolution of the ordinary sense of self and a return to the primordial, eternal, infinite dimension of beingness. That gives rise to your own awareness but transcends it and, in fact, is the source and substance for everything in existence.

The more we go through that experience, the better, because sometimes one time is not enough. For most people, spiritual awakening leading to a permanent shift in consciousness happens gradually. People who have made significant progress on the spiritual journey in previous lifetimes, such as spiritual teachers, may go through more dramatic awakenings.

For the average human being, it is more gradual. The more you experience it, the more it leads to a permanent change in your overall sense of self, such that you realize you are no longer just an ego, personality, body, mind, emotions, or thoughts.

Those are intrinsic parts of you as a human being, but who and what you are is more than that.

Rick: Some people wonder how certain people have amazing experiences as children and wake up apparently easily, without much practice. You attribute that to development in previous lifetimes.

Stephen: Of course, it has to be.

Rick: The Gita says that if you don’t make it in this lifetime, you pick up in the next one where you left off. It may be like a spiritual child prodigy, or even a musical one such as Mozart at five or six.

📚 Teachers, discernment, and living masters

Have you met other enlightened sages or had a living master or mentor who could question you and hold you accountable?

I think it was Adi Da who said that “dead gurus don’t kick ass.” The implication is that a close association with a living teacher can help work out kinks in your personality and keep you from getting off on tangents.

Stephen: No.

Rick: At least not in this lifetime?

Stephen: Not because I didn’t want one, and not because I didn’t look for one, but I never found one that worked for me.

Rick: In your Heaven on Earth book, you quoted Hildegard of Bingen: “Everything that is in the heavens, on the earth, and under the earth is penetrated with connectedness, penetrated with relatedness.” It reminds me of Indra’s net, where every point in creation is infinitely correlated with every other point.

Stephen: Her words are based on a direct experience, which is something we can experience as one of those facets of awakening.

There are so many different realizations and states of being we can enter into, and different practices are conducive to experiences of nondual interconnectivity. Other practices are conducive to states of realization of the absolute, inherent emptiness of everything, or its formless potential.

Rick: Do you feel we are like the blind man feeling the elephant, getting different perspectives on a larger reality? If we become sighted, will we all see the whole elephant and the same thing?

Stephen: Maybe not in the way you’re suggesting, but I’m not sure. What is more important is to legitimize the different experiences. They are real; they can happen.

Because one teacher has an experience of love, another peace, and another bliss, it is in the nature of that individual to emphasize the facet of awakening they experienced. You say, “It’s all love!” Another says it’s all peace, or that nothing exists and this is all a dream. These are different perspectives that come from states of being and the realizations that go with those states. But all of them are the elephant, because it’s all the Divine.

Rick: If Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed, and Lao Tzu walked into a bar, would they agree about reality?

Stephen: A meeting of all those great sages, after they got over the differences in semantics, would probably find agreement in what I call the absolute truth: all of this is happening as an expression of some transcendent mystery, which nobody really knows where it came from, and yet it created all of this.

They might differ on particular details—one had a vision of a donkey, another went up into heaven, and another saw no visions. But I think they would agree in their understanding of the actual mystery of existence.

Rick: They wouldn’t be killing each other over their differences, as their followers tend to do.

Stephen: No, I don’t think so.

✨ Global awakening and the evolutionary impulse

Rick: An important theme to both of us is the notion that there is a global awakening taking place. On one hand, we hear about worst-case scenarios for climate change and wonder if the human race will exist in another couple of generations. On the other hand, people all over the world are having spiritual awakenings, often beneath the radar. I find that inspiring and conducive to optimism. What is your sense of it?

Stephen: The evolutionary impulse and what’s happening now are forcing humanity to awaken, in a way.

Rick: How so?

Stephen: It’s crunch time. We continue with our current level of development, participating in systems that we helped co-create, because of a lack of understanding of alternatives or because this is the way we experience and accept the world.

But more and more people are realizing that the way we are doing it is killing the planet. We are potentially creating a situation so irreparable that we may not be here.

I doubt that very much. I think some of us will squeak through the worst-case scenario, but it is like Easter Island. Are we going to continue to do this? Why haven’t we stopped? According to the ecologists, we should be hitting full stop and reversing.

Rick: Easter Island’s civilization wiped itself out by cutting down the trees and eliminating the basis of its sustenance. We are doing that on a global scale. But there is hope. It may not be accidental that a spiritual epidemic is taking place to counterbalance the devastation we are causing.

Stephen: We are like this as human beings. We put off what we know we have to do until it becomes situation-critical. We do it in our individual lives, and it seems we do it collectively.

Rick: Winston Churchill said of Americans, “They always can be counted on to do the right thing after having tried every other possibility.”

Stephen: I’m optimistic because of our technological development. When push comes to shove, some whiz kid is going to invent something that reduces the carbon footprint. It is also a matter of political will.

Rick: The capability is already there. Solar panels, localized power, and batteries could make us largely independent of fossil fuel. It’s a matter of will and political and economic competency.

How do you distinguish a truly realized being from a fake guru?

Stephen: You need a good bullshit detector.

Rick: How do you get one of those?

Stephen: Life experience. You get burned a few times. There are all kinds of teachers in any human endeavor: people who are really good, people who are average, and complete frauds. The same is true with spiritual teachers.

Rick: I would say: look for sincerity, a what-you-see-is-what-you-get feeling; someone who isn’t putting on airs, claiming to be super-special, or holding themselves above people, and who is walking their talk. Often there is a natural, down-to-earth quality. They are not afraid to say they run a grilled cheese shop or are struggling to make ends meet, and yet their wisdom, sincerity, and intelligence come through.

Stephen: It takes a while to get to know anyone. The more time you spend with them, the more you get a feel for who they really are—not who they want you to perceive them as.

Rick: Don’t drop your critical faculties. There is no harm in asking questions, scrutinizing, and expecting rational answers. If someone is offended by that or threatened by a challenge to their façade, be wary.

Stephen: See what happens when you give them a poke.

Rick: Are they kind, or abusive? Are they doing weird things with money? Is there sexual inappropriateness with students? Anything like that is a red flag. Do they rationalize it by saying, “My ways are inscrutable and you shouldn’t question them”?

Stephen: It’s crazy wisdom.

Rick: I’m very leery of this so-called crazy wisdom thing.

Stephen: That’s right.

Rick: If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.

Stephen’s work and closing thoughts

Tell us what you have to offer. You’re in the Toronto area, and you also do webinars online that people can tune into around the world.

Stephen: I’ve just started using Facebook Live. Here in Toronto I offer satsang, and I’ll probably start broadcasting that on Facebook Live. I recently launched the project Walking in the Woods on Facebook Live, offering presence and guidance in real time.

I’ll be doing that probably once a week. It’s something I’ve been dreaming about doing for years. I’m also available for one-on-one Skypes, and there is information about that on my website.

Rick: Your website is stephendamico.com?

Stephen: Yep.

Rick: That’s s-t-e-p-h-e-n-d-a-m-i-c-o dot com.

Stephen: Yeah.

Rick: Thanks, Stephen. This has been a lot of fun.

Stephen: Likewise. I really appreciate the opportunity, Rick. It’s great to finally meet you. It’s really like a dream come true for me.

As a spiritual teacher, after my awakening, I didn’t say anything to anybody for ten years because I knew I wasn’t ready or equipped to guide anyone anywhere.

Rick: Apparently, in the Zen tradition, they say that after your awakening, you shouldn’t do anything for ten years.

Stephen: I’ve heard you say this recently, and it was confirming. I got the timeline right, according to Zen. Ever since I discovered your work, I thought, “One day it would be great to be on your show,” and here we are.

Rick: I got the sense that the timing was right. You had reached a point at which you felt ready for a wider audience, and then Irene got in touch with you.

Stephen: That’s right.

Rick: What you are doing provides a platform for spiritual teachers who are trying to share subtle and esoteric truths.

Stephen: We are all serving each other. This is a great blessing for me, and it helps the teachers and the people who watch and listen. It’s a mutually supportive endeavor.

Rick: People know the general wrap-up. You’ve been watching an interview with Stephen D’Amico on Buddha at the Gas Pump. You can go to www.batgap.com to check out the previous interviews and sign up for email notifications. You can subscribe to the YouTube channel, which helps a lot, and there is also an audio podcast for listening while commuting or walking in the woods.

As I said in the beginning, we appreciate any financial support you care to offer, large or small. Thanks for listening or watching, and we will see you again next week.

Next week I’ll be interviewing Sri M for the second time, the very sweet, saintly man from India who has a very interesting story. He has written a sequel to his first book, with the subtitle The Journey Continues.

So again, thanks, and we will see you next week. Thanks, Stephen.

Stephen: Thanks, Rick.

Rick: All right, good luck.

Stephen: Thanks.