Steve Winn Transcript

Steve Winn Interview

Summary:

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer and my guest tonight is Steven Winn and this is a show, in case you haven’t watched any previous ones, in which we discuss spiritual awakenings, for lack of a better term, not in a metaphysical or theoretical sense, but in an actual sense with people who have actually had them. I keep engaging in conversations with friends and with my wife over the terminology because people find it, first of all, they find it rather uncomfortable to use the term enlightenment and so do I, because that term implies some sort of much more exalted state than I think most of my guests would admit to having attained; some sort of final perfect highest state, if there is such a thing. Some people even object to the term awakenings and they feel that maybe the term a shift of some kind would be more appropriate. They feel perhaps that the term awakening implies some sort of elitism that this person is awake and that person isn’t awake and so on. But if you’re going to use the word shift, then what are you shifting to? You’ve got an awakened state. You’ve got to use some kind of a noun there after that verb. So awakenings works for me. The understanding on which we’re doing this show and which has been brought out by each of my guests so far is that there seem to be many degrees or stages of awakening. The criteria that I’ve been using to invite guests on the show, the criterion, is that the awakening that they have undergone seems to put them in a permanently different state of consciousness than they had lived in before that awakening. In other words, most people define themselves, if you ask them, as being a body and a personality in that body, which has certain characteristics, certain jobs, certain associations with family and friends, and certain lifespan and so on. But the theme that has come out in the interviews we’ve done so far is that there is something deeper than that, which is less confined to individual boundaries and less confined in the sense of time. In other words, there’s something deeper which is unbounded, which is everlasting, and which is, in the deepest sense, what we are. And when you begin to experience that, as my guests have been discussing, then you don’t cease to experience yourself as an individual and live your life as an individual, but you also find that there’s this other dimension, which has very profound… and experiencing or living that dimension has very profound implications for the quality of your life. So, with that long-winded introduction, I would like to reintroduce my guest, Steven Winn, who is an old friend of mine and an old friend of Fairfield, has been living here for decades. And maybe we could start, Steven, by just having you tell us a little bit about yourself, your life, what you do, things like that.

Steve: Well, I’m a married man with two kids. I’ve got… in fact, we just celebrated our 27th anniversary. And I’ve got a mailing business, a very successful business. And I’m a minister. I’ve been a minister for about 18 years, at an esoteric Christian church called The Fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

Rick: Your mailing business, as I understand it, is called Seminar Crowds.

Steve: Seminar Crowds, yeah.

Rick: And it’s a thing where you send out large quantities of postcards and all to people in order to attract them to come to seminars, as the name implies. And you do that for various people who are giving these seminars who want crowds.

Steve: Yeah. We don’t actually do the seminars. We just do the mailings.

Rick: You just do the mailings. You promote the seminars.

Steve: We mail out two to three million pieces a month, typically.

Rick: Wow. Post office must love you.

Steve: They do. And we’re challenged for them, because it’s a lot for a small post office.

Rick: Yeah. One thing I’ve always admired about you, Steven, is that you have this sort of… To my perception, you’ve always had this kind of even-tempered, cheerful countenance, despite pretty rollercoaster-like ups and downs in your business life. I mean, at one point, you were co-founder or co-executive of a company here that employed 500 people. And that ran into some trouble through no fault of yours, I’m sure, and pretty much folded. And next thing I knew, you were selling pizzas. And you were doing that with the same cheeriness and enthusiasm with which you were running the big business. And now you’re on to…

Steve: That’s because it was good pizza.

Rick: Yeah, it was very good pizza. And now you’re on to, again, a fairly sizable business. And you seem to… You might tell me I’m wrong, but you seem to have maintained a fairly even keel through all these ups and downs.

Steve: Yeah. It got, to sort of segue into my… experience that’s why you invited me here, it got much more even about 10 years ago. Specifically, December 18th…

Rick: There you go.

Steve: 2000, and right about 4.30 in the afternoon. So I’ll first give a little bit of the background of what happened.

Rick: And I’m glad you’re saying this, because I always ask my guests, “If you could put it on a calendar at a time of day, could you do that?” And some of them say yes, although they may have forgotten the date. And others say, “No, it just sort of crept up on me.” So let’s hear yours, then.

Steve: Mine was very specific, and the phrase that Maharishi used once, called a “gradual click,” was just like that. Kind of it slid in and boom. And there it was. But let me give a background.

Rick: Yeah, yeah, please.

Steve: Okay, so I’m a big fan of the great epic, the Ramayana. And there’s a story in the Ramayana where the demons have invaded heaven, and done the unthinkable. They’ve captured Indra, and brought him down, and captive.

Rick: And he was the lord of heaven.

Steve: He was the king of heaven, and it’s just so totally… You know, creation was in shambles because of this. So the gods that had escaped go to Lord Brahma and say, “Dharma has been falling apart. We need your help. We can’t solve this problem. What can you do for us?” So Brahma says, “Don’t worry. I’ll solve the problem.” And he, poof, appears before Meghnath, who was the son of the ten-headed demon king, Ravana. And so the son, Meghnath, is actually the one who is later called Indrajit, the conqueror of Indra, is the one who has conquered Indra and has him captive. And what ensues there is this charming negotiation. Because the demons worship the gods also, and they honor Lord Shiva. So… and Brahma. Lord Brahma appears, and Indrajit bows down to him and says, “What can I do for you?” And basically they negotiate what kind of a boon, what kind of a gift they’re going to give to Indrajit if he lets Indra go free. And so they negotiated, you know, if he does this puja every day, he can never be defeated in battle. So… and once they’ve concluded these very friendly negotiations, Indrajit says, “Let me go free Indra.” And Lord Brahma says, “Don’t worry, I’ve already freed him.” And Indrajit says, “How could you have done that?” And Lord Brahma says, “I simply put the thought into his mind that he was free, and he becomes free.” Okay? Now, I’m taking this class. This is a sort of an advanced abundance course called, “What Do You Want to Do When You Grow Up?” It’s a telephone course. And the instructor, a guy named Larry Crane, is telling me, telling us on the phone, he says, “If you ever feel like you’re not free,” that’s his term, sort of layman, because to avoid the baggage that you were mentioning, “If you ever feel like you’re not free, just ask yourself, ‘Could I let go of the thought that I’m not free?'” I thought, “Ah, that’s very interesting.” So anyway, I’m literally driving up in Iowa City. This is an easy day to remember because it’s my anniversary year. Okay? So that was our 17th anniversary, whatever it was. The sun was almost going down, that’s why I can put such a specific time to it. But I’m driving along and I’m sort of moaning about how I’m not enlightened. Okay? Oh, it’s, you know, two, 25 years of meditating, I’m not enlightened yet, what is this? And I catch myself and go, “Wait, could I just let go of the thought that I’m not free, that I am enlightened?” And suddenly, it’s like this cone of silence. Remember “Get Smart” in the ’60s? You know, they used to have this cone of silence come down whenever they wanted to avoid the bugs listening to the conversation. It’s really a funny spoof on it. But it was just like this cone of silence came over me and suddenly just, a shockingly different experience.

Rick: You’re driving the car.

Steve: I’m driving the car. Okay? I’ve become oblivious to driving the car. And I have no idea how long this experience takes. Okay? Because I’m on Interstate 80 and I’m just driving. So, boom, this great silence comes in and the silence has never left me ever since. But I’ll describe, there’s a bunch of parts of this experience that are very interesting. So the first thing is I’m in this deep, deep silence and no thoughts whatsoever. No, nothing’s going on. And way above me, way far away, like this voice of God. It’s really my own voice, but out come three questions and three answers. And just kind of like, “Wow, it sounded like “Charlton Heston, but it’s my own voice.” But it’s so far away and it’s like, I’m so out of touch, so unconnected. The first one was, and again, it’s not me trying to think of these things. It’s just, the thoughts are just happening. The first question was, does this mean that all my karma is gone? Because I’d had a Jodeci, a Vedic astrologer, tell me about a year earlier, “Oh, you’re moving into a period where you’re gonna lose all your karma.” And the answer that comes back, sort of floating back this way, so to speak, is, “Yes, now it belongs to Steven.” Very interesting, you know, suddenly, and I’ve realized I am not Steven anymore. I am this silence, and there is no question about it. So the second question, I go, “Hmm.” Second question comes by, again, this floating Charlton Heston-type voice, it’s my voice. It says, “Does this mean,” ’cause I’m a Christian minister, so salvation’s–

Rick: You had already been one.

Steve: Yes, I’d been one for 18 years now. So the whole issue of salvation, what does it mean? We’re a very esoteric Christian church, so we try and find out what’s it really mean. And the question floats along, does this mean that I’ve been saved? And the answer floats back. It says, “There’s nothing to be saved.” [laughing] You know, and then, who would save an old coat? So now, not only am I separate, but it’s nothing about that, you know, basically. Now I would say, there’s no salvation of the ego, there’s only the awakening of the being. So the third question, again, just comes floating, is, “Does this mean that I’m as enlightened as Maharishi and Ammachi?” And the answer comes back, it says, “Yes, but you don’t have their power.” And, you know, I’m still intelligent enough to think, so I go, “Huh, could I let go of the thought that I don’t have their power? And I go to an experience that did not continue, but it’s extraordinary anyway. I go massively deeper. I can’t even imagine going massively deeper, but what I did is like this syrupy, sweet presence, it’s just, and suddenly I’m in there, and all of creation starts pouring out of me. And the first thing that comes up is all the gods, all the goddesses, Archangel Michael, Lakshmi, all these various gods are just emanating from me. And Maharishi, Ammachi, Vivekananda, you know, I see all these masters there also. And way, way further away is creation. So it’s sort of like, you know, they are creating, and it’s, you know, this is almost Rishi, Devata, and Chandas, okay? And I realize from this level, all these masters that have all this power that I don’t consciously have, from this level of being, I am that power. And they are just expressions of me. And what it’s done for me is anchored in me that there’s only one of us here. And that’s true for everybody. There’s just one of us here, we’re all creating, and we may not be conscious of it, but that was my creation. And that didn’t stay, okay? But the silence stayed, and my experience there was that for two or three weeks, it was such this crystal clear, I use the phrase loud silence, okay? It was just so loud. And after about two or three weeks, it becomes normal. And the doubt comes in.

Rick: The death?

Steve: The doubt.

Rick: Doubt.

Steve: Doubt. And it’s, oh, is this witnessing? I mean, very clear at night, very crystal clear.

Rick: During sleep.

Steve: Yeah, during sleep. Just emphatically clear. And they go, oh, is this, you know, and I’m sort of wondering, is this, you know, ’cause you hear about people having an experience of witnessing 24/7, and then it goes. I go, oh, what is this? But my nature seems to be that I get very clear experiences. And what started to happen is every time I’d have a doubt, I’d almost revert back to this perfectly clear experience of this witnessing. So one example of this would be that my wife and I were in the habit of going to bed at the same time, and it’s just easier to fall asleep when we both go to bed, when we both, once we both get in bed. It’s just a cultured pattern. So at one night, I’m lying in bed, waiting for my wife to finish, you know, taking her makeup off, this sort of a thing. And, you know, sort of thinking, ugh, staying wide awake, thinking, mm, you know, every so often, thought flows to my mind, when’s she gonna come to bed? But pretty much wide, wide awake. And eventually, she comes in there, gets in bed, and I go, I say to her out loud, oh, thank goodness you’re here, now I can fall asleep. And she says to me, what are you talking about? You’ve been snoring for the past hour. [laughing] And I go, oh, you know, I, you know. And, you know, one of the things that I’ll say here, I’ll sort of pull in some of the research from Fred Travis on campus, the professor that does all the brainwave studies.

Rick: Let me just interject. When he refers to campus, he’s referring to Maharishi University of Management, which is a university here in Fairfield, Iowa, where everybody, all the students and faculty and everybody practices transcendental meditation regularly. And Dr. Fred Travis has been doing brainwave research for decades, trying to correlate brain functioning, as it can be measured, with higher states of consciousness. So, go ahead.

Steve: So, I go to one of his lectures, very, very interesting, and he really does have it well mapped out. What are the physiological brainwave correlates of witnessing? And he’s telling the story about this woman who had–

Rick: Let me just interject one more thing, witnessing. I just want to define terms, ’cause all kinds of people watch these things. Why don’t you describe witnessing, define it?

Steve: So, witnessing is the experience of pure consciousness. It’s while waking, sleeping, and dreaming is going on. It’s almost as though, in fact, it is as though we have two, a dual functioning of the nervous system, and one nervous system is experiencing pure consciousness all the time, and the other is experiencing waking, sleeping, and dreaming the whole time. So, they go together, and I’ll talk in a minute about the effect of that.

Rick: And I think maybe the reason the word witnessing is chosen for this experience is that there’s a sense that, in the midst of all this activity, there’s pure silence, and I am that silence. And there can also be a sense that that silence imbues or infuses or permeates the surroundings, so that there’s almost this flavor of nothing’s happening, even though things are obviously happening, at the same time, nothing’s happening, because it’s all silence. And so, it can sometimes take on the characteristic of feeling oneself to be far removed or detached from creation, as you experienced in the car when you first had that. Other times, it’s more integrated, I would say, and you don’t feel any sort of gulf or dichotomy or anything, but still, if you tend to look, there are these paradoxical elements that coexist quite nicely together, of silence and dynamism or activity. So, proceed.

Steve: And it’s distinctly different from simply keeping your mouth shut and intellectually watching what’s going around.

Rick: Yeah, it’s not an exercise in–

Steve: It’s not an exercise of the mind.

Rick: Right.

Steve: Okay, it’s pure consciousness, that silent state, living there all the time.

Rick: Right.

Steve: So anyway, back to his description of it. He measured this gal, she’d gone back to Belgium, and so he mailed her the results, saying, “This looks like you’re witnessing, you’re at the brainwave pattern of this.” And she calls him up and she says, “I don’t think I’m witnessing.” And he starts talking to her, asking these questions, looking at her life, how much quietness there is in her life, how much supportive nature she has, do things just happen for her? And she goes, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.” And so basically, it describes this wonderful, perfect life. And he says, “Well, that’s what it is.” And so it wasn’t that, and that was my experience, is that after two or three weeks, it was normal. Okay, and I could easily see, in fact, I ended up, you know, sometimes I go to meditate in the golden domes on campus here, where about 1,000 people are meditating, and I’d look, shortly after this experience, this was happening, I’d look and I’d look out at all these people and I’d say, “They are swimming in a sea of consciousness, just like I am, and the only difference between us, perhaps, is that I notice it.”

Rick: Right.

Steve: And they don’t notice it. But no difference other than that.

Rick: Yeah, that’s actually one of the reasons I wanted to do this show, is that it’s been my experience that, you know, in a town where a couple thousand people have been meditating for decades, there are a lot of people who are really living what you’re talking about, but, you know, just as in your case, perhaps, when you, just before you had that thought in the car as you were driving, you know, where would I be without this thought? There is some, just some slight angle of attention or doubt or, you know, holding on to some concept of what it’s supposed to be, as opposed to what I’m actually already living. You know, kind of looking through the glasses that are sitting on top of your head kind of thing. And so, you know, I’m finding that this show is, hopefully will be very helpful in enabling people to see that common characters that we see around town every day, Buddhas at the gas pump, are experiencing something that many more of us are actually experiencing, you know?

Steve: So let me give you a analogy I love to use. So, we’ve all seen these illustrations. You look at them one way and they’re faces, with two silhouettes looking at each other. Look at it another way, it’s a lamp stand, okay? Or whatever.

Rick: A vase or whatever.

Steve: A vase, right. And this is what it’s like. This is, you know, you look at it one way, it’s this way. You look at it one way, it’s this way. You look at life one way and there’s a silence. You look at life another way, there’s all this activity. And it’s just a shift of perception. And like I say, everyone’s got it. And it’s, on one sense it’s amazing, and on another sense it is absolutely nothing. So, what I did notice, and I told you that, is that the first thing I noticed was, I still had feelings, okay? Well, you know, I mean, my opinion is most people want enlightenment or whatever you want to call it, to escape from their feelings, okay? And I would notice that, oh well, these feelings still come up. They didn’t hook me like they used to, okay? But they’re still there, sort of going on, and almost marveling that, wow, how could that still be there? But they don’t last very long. So, and it was just like, I was expecting, oh, total bliss, total peace, and nothing but that. But instead it’s, the backdrop is bliss. And out here there’s still activity going on, up and down, and up and down, and up and down. And it doesn’t matter, you know?

Rick: You’re expecting that if you hit your thumb with a hammer, you’re gonna say, well that feels nice. (laughing)

Rick: Probably gonna say, grrr.

Steve: Yeah, and so, you know, this is why I look at the people here that have been meditating for 30, 40 years, and I go, the only difference is, I notice something that they don’t notice. And other than that.

Rick: And many of them do notice it. I mean, can you tell, just walking around town, who notices it or who doesn’t? Or would you have to talk to them and sort of get into a conversation? I mean.

Steve: By looking at them, I certainly couldn’t.

Rick: No.

Steve: I mean. (laughing)

Steve: You know, and the people I’ve spoken to, was like this woman from Belgium.

Rick: Right.

Steve: You know, she didn’t think she was, but the description there, and in particular, you know, the witnessing of sleep, like I was very fortunate, those first two or three weeks was so crystal clear. But after a while, you don’t care if you’re witnessing or not. It’s just–

Rick: It’s like you just as soon sleep.

Steve: Yeah, well, yeah, and it just doesn’t matter if you’re, and again, it’s just noticing that the silence is there.

Rick: Right.

Steve: But what I’ll say is, it’s always crystal clear, if I ever think about it, that the silence was there.

Rick: Right.

Steve: It’s like, I’m crystal clear, I breathe, but I may not be aware of my breathing.

Rick: Right. And it doesn’t add anything to your breathing ability to be aware of it.

Steve: No.

Rick: Nor would it add anything to the silence to constantly keep attending to it to see if it’s there.

Steve: Yeah, check on it. Oh, are you there? Good dog.

Rick: Still there.

Steve: Good dog. Sit, heel.

Rick: Go away, kid, I’m here.

Steve: Yeah. (laughing)

Rick: Doesn’t it seem to you that the mind has a kind of a habit? Minds do tend to just think in habitual ways. And I’ve engaged in weekly satsangs or spiritual discussion groups with people, and you can almost see it click in where they think, wait a minute now, and the mind just goes into doubt mode and just starts cranking up all these reasons and trying to kind of grasp it on a mental level. But it’s not something that the mind contains. It’s something that maybe contains the mind and everything else. And they’re trying to kind of put the cart before the horse or something.

Steve: Yeah, the mind’s very tricky. The whole mind ego. Very, very slippery and very much, in my opinion, their job is to maintain themselves as separate from awareness, separate from beingness.

Rick: The job of the mind and ego.

Steve: The job of the mind. It’s sort of like we’ve said, we want the mind and ego to run our lives, so we put them in charge of it, and they don’t want to give it up.

Rick: Right.

Steve: You know? [laughing] And once you get really clear that the mind and ego are just doing an okay job, and really we’ve done them a disservice to give them that responsibility.

Rick: Yeah.

Steve: Okay? ‘Cause how much more profound is living life on the level of the heart, on the level of the intellect? Where it just flows.

Rick: On the level of being.

Steve: The level of being. Yeah. Oh, I met me in the middle of the level of awareness.

Rick: Right.

Steve: And not on the level of the intellect.

Rick: No.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. Now, I’ll talk about, if it’s useful.

Rick: Talk about anything, yeah.

Steve: Okay, so, you know, the traditional Vedic path is you’ve got seven states of consciousness, waking, sleeping, dreaming, and this experience of pure, pure silence, alone by itself, then this silence, this experience of witnessing, the silence with activity. And the traditional sixth path is what I call, as a preacher, the Nathaniel state.

Rick: Why do you call it that?

Steve: Jesus promises Nathaniel, one of his 12 disciples, that he’ll basically show him the glories of heaven, all the heavens. Nathaniel was so impressed that Jesus could see who he was and what his nature was from when they’re standing 100 yards away in a fig tree. And Jesus says, “You’re impressed with that? “I’ll show you this.”

Rick: That’s interesting. I was on a boat ride with Maharishi one time, and about 50 yards away, there were some people standing on the shore, and Maharishi was, there were two guys actually standing together on the shore, and Maharishi said, “The guy on the left has much more spiritual silence.” He could sort of see that from–

Steve: Nice.

Rick: From the boat, yeah.

Steve: So anyway, this sixth stage is sometimes called glorified cosmic consciousness, or God consciousness, where you’re more or less perceiving the celestial finest value of life along with the gross value of life, okay?

Rick: Right.

Steve: So I had this experience, and I won’t call it a state of consciousness ’cause it only lasted about four days, but it’ll give people a vision of what’s, maybe what’s going on there. And I’ll tell the whole story ’cause it’s the charming story. Here I am, this Christian minister, and way out here in terms of esoteric, metaphysical understanding of the Bible, and get a lot of grief from traditional Christians.

Rick: Do you interact with them much?

Steve: I used to more than I do now, ’cause I used to, you know, I love hanging out with people that just love Jesus.

Rick: Right.

Steve: And that’s very dear to my heart.

Rick: We’ll talk more about that, but go into this story.

Steve: So anyway, I get this flyer in the mail talking about a course on, a one-week course on Christianity in business. I thought, oh, that’s sort of nice. And it’s a good, you know, it’s an evangelical church in Kansas City, but they’re very focused, very dedicated, and they all do a lot of prayer and fasting. Okay, so I thought, ah, and this sort of quiet part of me goes, you’re going to that. Okay? And I catch myself and go, mm. So I’m sort of like hearing it from the universe, God, that I’m going to that. And then I start complaining about it, sort of arguing with God.

Rick: Yeah.

Steve: Okay, saying, ah, you know.

Rick: Let this cup pass from me.

Steve: Yeah, God, if I go down there, they’re just gonna judge me. I said, why do I have to drive four or five hours to Kansas City to get judged when I can go across the street, and a Jew believer will judge me?

Rick: Right.

Steve: And the local evangelicals will judge me. And I keep complaining, and I still keep getting this message, I’m going. And finally I say, God, I just want to go somewhere where I can be loved. And then the voice comes through very, very clearly. It says, you’re not going down there to be loved. You’re going down there to learn to love them. And you know, what can you say? Okay, I’m going.

Rick: Right.

Steve: So I go down there, and the first thing is, this whole church is like 5,000 people.

Rick: Wow.

Steve: Okay, big, big church. Now we’re off sort of on the side, this is starting on a Monday morning.

Rick: Right.

Steve: And we’re off sort of on the side of about 30 or 40 Christian business people. And with the whole church, all the staff, like 600 or 700 people, all fast three days a month. And it happened to be those first three days, so I’m fasting along with them.

Rick: Three days in a row.

Steve: Three days in a row. You know, and I’m doing the Moses fast. You know, no food, no water. Very, very, very strong fast. And I’d been reading The Way of the Pilgrim. With this wonderful book about this pilgrim over in Russia.

Rick: Russia, right, I read that years ago.

Steve: Okay, you know, and he’s doing the Hesychastic Prayer, I forget the pronunciation of it. It’s Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. That prayer, just you know, repeating, repeating over and over and over again. And he ends the book with this glorious description of this celestial experience he has. Wherever he looks, he’s seeing the presence of God. So anyway, I’m doing that down there all these three days, and I just absolutely go into God consciousness. Everywhere I look, there is this shimmering, beautiful glow. And I look at the wall, and it’s a wall, and it’s this shimmering presence of God. And I look over the floor, and it’s that. I look at this person, and my heart is unbelievably expanded. And that goes on for three days, and then the fourth day goes on, and I’m thinking, oh, I hope I don’t lose this as the fast is over, and I start drinking juice, going just fine, until Thursday night, the fourth night, where they’re starting a big conference for the whole church, and we’re invited to the evening ceremonies, evening opening ceremonies. And so the main theologian, they have this school of theology there where they train ministers. He starts giving this talk, and this is shortly after Katrina. And he says, you know those nurses that stayed behind Katrina when the power was out in the preemie ward, and saved the lives of all those premature babies by their great sacrifice? He says, you know, they’re all going to hell if they haven’t accepted Jesus Christ. [laughing] You know, this outrage rises up in me, okay? And I start thinking of all the scriptures where it’s not that true, that’s not true, that’s not true, that’s not true. And then he says, and I have a lot of good Mormon friends. And he says, you know, that good Mormon neighbor of yours who’s a scoutmaster, and he works for Habitat for Humanity, he’s going to hell. And I go, ooh! And I’m just furious, and I’m just seething, and I’m just shouting internally. And after about 10 or 15 minutes, I realize this incredible, glorious, celestial perception is gone. Gone! And I go, oh no, Lord. I feel like this treasured baby was gone. And I go, oh, what am I gonna do? That night I go home to my hotel room, and I say, God, you have to show me what this is about. Because I sure want to know. So I wake up the next morning, and normally because of the witnessing, and I was witnessing all during this time, of the witnessing I wake up very sweetly, very silently. This morning I wake up with this shout in my head that says, what about him? What about him?

Rick: The minister?

Steve: Yes. And I realize that just as I lost the connection to this divine when I was judging him, as long as he’s living judgment, okay, he can’t possibly be experiencing it either. And so suddenly my heart just went wide, wide open. Filled full of compassion, not just for him, but for all Christians who don’t quite understand it yet. And so that’s how I learned to love them, just like God told me I was gonna be doing.

Rick: That whole attitude of everybody’s going to hell unless they believe what we believe strikes me as being a sort of a way of just puffing yourself up, trying to make yourself, like we’ve got the secret handshake in our club, and nobody else can come in. It’s like we’re better than everybody. It’s kind of like an ego boost kind of a thing. Strikes me as being, I don’t know. And it’s not only Christians, of course.

Steve: It’s every metaphysical group.

Rick: Yeah, there’s a faction like that, even a majority sometimes in every religion.

Steve: And every spiritual–

Rick: And all kinds of other groups, yes, spiritual. Our guru is the best guru, and our practice here is the best. Our diet is the best diet, or whatever.

Steve: And my experience is as long as we’re holding judgments like that, we’re separating ourselves from God.

Rick: Yeah, well that’s a great story. Judge not lest you be judged.

Steve: That’s what Jesus says.

Rick: Yeah.

Steve: Yeah, yeah.

Rick: And it’s interesting because, I mean, it bears repeating that the key to your story is that, well, Amma uses an analogy with regard to anger. She said it’s like a blade that doesn’t have a handle, and it’s a blade on both sides, and you stab somebody, you also cut yourself. And I think the same can be said of judgment. You’re judging them, and you’re probably closing yourself down more than you’re doing anything to them.

Steve: Yeah. You know, the other thing I’d add in the seven states, to sort of go back to this other analogy of the seven states of consciousness, is Jesus talks about the seven states, the seventh. And in his prayer, he prays at the very end that we can be one with the Father, just as he is one with the Father. And not just one with the Father, with everyone. So my experience is, if you know how to look for it, and that’s why I’m so happy you’re doing this show, if you know how to look for it, all these states of consciousness, all this refined consciousness, is 100% inside of Christianity. And it’s just time for it to, again, it’s just a shift of perception.

Rick: Yeah.

Steve: You see it, and once you start witnessing, once you start having these glimpses of the celestial, you read every passage differently. So that’s my desire, to see that come forth more in Christianity.

Rick: Yeah, I’m sure it will. Through you, through people like you, through just the general upsurge that’s taking place in the world, I think. There’s kind of a global awakening, and we’re all doing our little parts. What do you make of the, the teaching in many different Eastern religions, and primarily Hinduism, and perhaps also to some extent in Western, that the ego actually has to be crushed or destroyed?

Steve: Well, I’d, I’ll quote–

Rick: They use that terminology, you know?

Steve: Yeah, I’ll quote Maharishi here. So Maharishi Mahesh Yogi says, there’s two ways to deal with the ego. One is to expand it until it becomes universal, and the other is to destroy it, until it becomes so small that it just disappears altogether. So one way or the other, the ego is this mechanism that we have that keeps us separate from the world, separate from creation. So one way or the other, you know, to experience unboundedness, the ego has to be dealt with. Maharishi chose expansion. In all honesty, Christianity and Buddhism, when they’re very similar religions, they go for the destruction of the ego. So when Jesus, for example, overcomes the three temptations, you know, then he says, get thee behind me, Satan. Okay? I hear that as the enemy, Satan, is really our own ego. And because, you know, Jesus is overcoming these desires of the ego, to be glorious, to be powerful, to be eternal.

Rick: Right.

Steve: Okay? He’s saying, get behind me, basically be gone, destroy yourself, and it allows Jesus to go and do his universal role. So, you know, I’d say both are true, and depending on the nature of the teacher and the nature of the student, they’re gonna be on a different path.

Rick: It’s my sense, and hopefully we’re not talking just sort of speculatively or metaphysically here, because I think we can relate this to experience, which is what I wanna keep doing on this show, you know, so it doesn’t just become kind of a philosophical chit-chat. But it’s my sense that, you know, the ego, as I understand it, is a necessary tool. I mean, you can’t really live life without one. If you had no sense of personal identity, you wouldn’t be able to walk through the door, you know? They’re, you know, distinguishing this body from the door. And, in fact, I was reading a book last night in which various teachers were saying that you really, if your ego is weak and undeveloped and perhaps confused, you’ve gotta build it up first before you have anything worth surrendering, worth offering as a surrender.

Steve: But let’s put this concept of enlightenment back on the table here. And, for one, I’ll tell you, and this comes out of the teachings of Meher Baba, and also the Sufi tradition, is that there’s different types of enlightenment, okay? And one of them really is, and in the Sufis they call it the Majzoob, is the person becomes so enlightened that the ego does disappear, and they literally become a functionless corpse, alive.

Rick: They just lie there.

Steve: They’re just lying there like that, and they’re gone.

Rick: They have that in Hinduism, too.

Steve: The masts, the crazy–

Rick: The guys will just lie on the ground with their mouth open, and if anybody drops food in, they swallow it.

Steve: Right, and so, you know, that’s where, and that’s where, you know, that kind of enlightenment is absolutely possible, and now, but back on the other side of this is you look at any of the famous masters, Maharishi, Ammachi, Ramana Maharishi–

Rick: Yogananda, whoever.

Steve: Yogananda, all these. You know, if you say, you know, Ammachi, she turns her head and she looks at you.

Rick: Yeah.

Steve: Okay? They have an ego. They have some level of identification, and they call it, you know, the leshavidya, the last remains of the ignorance, and it allows them to function.

Rick: Yeah, and they also have cultural background, and they speak a certain language, and they like this kind of food as opposed to that kind of food, and maybe this person as opposed to that person, even though there’s a sense of universal love, but you see, you know, such people still having very distinct, colorful personalities with all kinds of preferences.

Steve: So, let me tell you about another, a Western master, not so well-known, named Lester Levenson, and the reason I brought him up, and the reason I say I was so surprised that I still had emotions when I started witnessing is, you know, he went through this process of releasing. He was sent home to die. He had a heart failure back in ’52. Sent home to die by his doctors, ’cause they said, “We can’t help you.” No stents in those days, that sort of thing. And, you know, he examined his life, and he said, “Aha, I’ve been healthiest in my life when I’ve been loving. I’ve been the sickest in my life when I’ve been wanting.” So, he just started systematically going through his life, his past, and letting go of all his negative feelings, and literally let them go so much that he had no feelings for about 15 years. All these amazing miracles, you know. If he wanted to drive his old car, he’d go out and take a pencil and hit the battery, and it would start. Okay, just all sorts of things like that. And the reason I brought this out about the feelings is that after about, you know, 10, 12 years, he was having trouble, ’cause people wanted him to teach, okay, ’cause he had such extraordinary peace around him, and he was having trouble relating to them. So, he said, “I need to get back into these feelings.” So, he started watching daytime television for three years.

Rick: Soap operas and stuff.

Steve: Yes, yes, and after about three years, he noticed a tear coming down his eye, and he goes, “Ah, now I can go out and really teach effectively.”

Rick: Interesting.

Steve: Yes, and so, you know, the degree of, given all that time, if you would’ve said Lester to him, he would’ve turned his head and said yes, so he still had a little bit there, but the degree of how much of the ego remains is, let’s call it negotiable, okay?

Rick: So, did you ever read the book “Collision with the Infinite” by Suzanne Segal?

Steve: I did.

Rick: Interesting book.

Steve: I did.

Rick: This woman had been a long-time meditator, meditation teacher, transcendental meditation, and then at some point, she’d kind of drifted away, and she’d stopped meditating, and she got married to a French doctor, and she got pregnant, and she was living in Paris, and one day she came from swimming at the pool, and she was just getting on the bus, and all of a sudden, boom, she just lost all sense of personal identity, and she just had this sort of unbounded, impersonal awareness, and she couldn’t find a sense of personal identity, and she panicked, and she kind of started looking back, where is it, where am I, you know, what’s going on? And the more she looked, the more she panicked, and this basically went on for 10 years of this looking back, trying to find a sense of personal identity. Meanwhile, she was raising a daughter, getting a PhD, you know, doing all this normal stuff, but without a sense of personal identity. She couldn’t locate it, and finally, and she went to all these psychologists, she thought she was crazy.

Steve: With us, she was disassociated.

Rick: Yeah, and finally, she went to a spiritual teacher named Jean Klein, a French teacher, and he just said, “Stop looking back,” you know, and somehow, that snapped her out of it, and she kind of relaxed, and shifted, and realized that, ah, this is a spiritual state that I’ve attained, and kind of, once she relaxed into it, and stopped fighting it, then it really started to blossom, and you know. Cool story.

Steve: It’s a great book, yeah.

Rick: Yeah. Let’s bring this back to you a little bit. You became, well, first of all, I think you started meditation before you became a minister, right?

Steve: Yeah, I started meditating in 1973, and 1992, what happened was that I’d been on a tour following Ammachi around.

Rick: ’72?

Steve: ’92.

Rick: ’92, ’92.

Steve: ’92, I’d been on a tour following Ammachi around the country. I came back to the Unity Church that we’d started two years earlier, two, three years earlier, and the Unity minister stands up, and she says, the Holy Spirit says, “I’m supposed to leave,” and she points to me and says, “And you’re the next minister.” [laughing]

Rick: You knew her pretty well. She knew you pretty well.

Steve: She knew me, and I knew her, and I go, “Oh.” And what, you know, I’d offered to teach a prosperity class, okay, ’cause I’ve had a lot of prosperity, some ups and downs, and, you know, I was, actually, the joke of that is, is I was broke at the time, and I wanted to teach a prosperity class just to put my attention on prosperity, ’cause it always brings prosperity. That’s my experience. And she said, “Just teach what you’re gonna teach “in the prosperity class as your Sunday morning service.” And so, that just sort of kept going, and kept going, and kept going, and, you know, for about 12 years, it was a Unity church, but because I wasn’t ordained in Unity, eventually, that caused a little schism with the main organization. I totally understand that, and so we recruited this independent, and like I say, very esoteric Christian church.

Rick: And were you kind of an avid Christian before you learned Transcendental Meditation?

Steve: You know, I–

Rick: How old were you when you learned TM?

Steve: I was 20 when I learned TM. What had happened to me is that, when I was 11, I was an army brat, meaning I was living on, my dad was an army officer.

Rick: Traveling around?

Steve: Traveling in different army bases, and I’d go to Sunday school, and at one Sunday school class, this was down in San Antonio, Texas, the PFC, the private leading the class, who was a very strong Christian, said, “Well, I’m shipping out next week.” It was my last class, and had us all sit in a circle in our chairs, and said, “Now, put your heads down, and I want, “when you’re ready, I want you to raise your hand “if you’re going to accept Christ as your Savior.” So we were sitting there, it seemed like forever we were sitting there, and I finally thought, I said, “Boy, if I don’t raise my hand, “we’ll be here forever.” And so, I raised my hand, and then I peeked at everybody else, no one else had raised their hand. And it was so funny, because I realized, I said, even though I sort of did this under strange circumstances, something had happened. You know, it was almost like a recognition of a connection between me and Jesus. And, you know, after that point, you know, it was like something was there, but I go to high school, the Jesus Freak movement starts, the street Christian movement starts, I can’t stand ’em. So I’m going, I don’t want to be a Christian like this, this is not me, and so I let it go, but what happens is, I learned to meditate, you know, in October, and by–

Rick: October of ’73.

Steve: October of ’73. Okay, and by the end of December of ’73, I’ve read the Bible all the way through, cover to cover, which I hadn’t done ever, okay? So somehow, the meditation opened up something inside of Christianity. And then, here is the joke of all this, is that I’m taking this speed reading class offered by the campus, and the instructor–

Rick: What campus?

Steve: UC Santa Barbara, sorry.

Rick: I see, okay.

Steve: And this instructor says, “Oh,” she says, “You know, you can become a minister for $2. “You send off your $2, “you become a Universal Life Church minister.” And I basically said, “Well, I want to do that.” And so I sent my $2 in as a joke, and I’m thinking, oh, there’s gonna be some great tax scheme or something like this, all of which is false, no big tax scheme. But it’s one of the things, you just be careful what you ask for, because suddenly, I get this certificate, and people start saying to me, “Would you perform a wedding ceremony?” And that starts up in ’70, or ’82, I guess, and I’m pretty soon, I’m a real minister.

Rick: Ha, one thing led to the next.

Steve: One thing leads to the next, yeah.

Rick: I read the Bible, too, cover to cover, but actually, I listened to it while walking the cat when I was living on campus, where you’re not supposed to have cats, and so I would take it out and walk it every evening for half an hour, keep an eye on it, and listen to the Bible.

Steve: Beautiful.

Rick: And then I did the whole thing with the Book of Mormon, too, ’cause some Mormons gave me that on tape to listen to, which tended to fit Mark Twain’s description as being chloroform in print, but there were some interesting bits. [both laughing]

Steve: I was reading the Book of Mormon, I think there’s a chapter called Nehemiah, or something like that, and I was complaining to the guy who gave it to me, and said, “This is so boring.” And he goes, “Oh, Nehemiah, you know what they say? “You know that there’s a story about some guy “in World War II or something like that “who has a Book of Mormon in his pocket, “he’s a soldier, and–”

Rick: Catches a bullet.

Steve: Catches the bullet, and it hits the second Nehemiah, and stops in the seat, and the guy says, “Nothing gets through Nehemiah.” [both laughing]

Rick: That’s pretty good. Well, you know, I had been camping in Utah, and I had breakfast with some Mormons, and they offered me a Book of Mormon, and I said, “I’ll never read it.” They said, “But I listen to books on tape.” And they said, “Okay, we’ll send you the thing on tape.” So they sent it to me here in Fairfield, and I felt honor-bound to listen to it since they had sent it to me, and then I donated it to the local library when I was done. >

Steve: Well, you know, we’re laughing, but the truth is, when you look at the Mormon church, if you could handle authority, ’cause it’s a very authoritative religion, but when I go to Salt Lake City, and I walk around Salt Lake City, and I’m not like Maharishi, you can really see who’s spiritually awakened and who’s not, but I see so many well-integrated, I see wholeness in so many people. It’s a very, in my opinion, it’s a really good religion.

Rick: Yeah, I taught TM in Utah for quite a while, and I really enjoyed it out there, and I really liked the people, and it was a good feeling.

Steve: And it is growing, by the way, which is a point of interest, ’cause I’ve done a lot of historical reading about Christianity. The early Christian church grew about 4% a year, if you look at it today. The Mormon church, since 1826, or whenever it started, has been growing about 4% a year. So it’s a rapidly growing, doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s a big church, and it’s–

Rick: Compound interest.

Steve: Compound interest. It’s a moving church.

Rick: You know, it’d be interesting to hear, I mean, religions in general, many of them, as we said earlier, have a faction, sometimes a majority, who are very judgmental, and very kind of exclusionary, and so on. Everybody else is going to hell, we’re the only, I mean, there are probably little places in the country where only the members of a certain church are going to heaven, and everybody else is going to hell. So it would be interesting to hear, from your perspective, basing it as much as possible on your experience, as opposed to just your beliefs, how you can manage to be so tolerant, not only of all kinds of Christian sects, but of Hinduism, Buddhism, every other religion in the world. ‘Cause Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. “No man goeth unto the Father but by me.” So maybe you could comment on that, but try to do it in terms of your experience.

Steve: Okay, so one thing to understand, for me at least, is that when I read the Bible, I read it differently than everybody else does, because of my experiences. I read it in this–

Rick: Not necessarily different than everybody else, but different than–

Steve: No, but than the traditional, classic. And so, when it says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” or “I am the open door that no man can shut,” to me, when he says, “I am,” he says this very clear. He says, “God is love, and God is spirit.” To me, what he’s saying is, love is the open door that no man can shut.

Rick: And he said, “I and my Father are one.” So if they’re one, then he’s love, and he’s spirit.

Steve: He is love. And the other thing is, Jesus is very, very, very clear. He’s asked, “What are the two main commandments?” And he says, “Love God, and love your neighbor.” It’s very close.

Rick: As yourself.

Steve: As yourself. Love your neighbor as yourself, and that’s very close to loving God. So, you do those two things, you are honoring the teachings, the essential teachings of Jesus. And so, and they’re both love. So, anybody who preaches love, who teaches love, I welcome and I honor. But let me give you a different take on the narrowness of all these different religions. And I’m very quick to point out, I see the same bigotry in every spiritual group.

Rick: Yeah, New Age spiritual groups, Eastern spiritual groups.

Steve: Yes, and the way I see it is, that it’s the duty of the spiritual leader of any group, any church, to make it easy for the followers to stay on the path. And so, there’s a certain amount of catering to the ego to do that. Okay, so, the teachers that are the most effective are the ones that convince their students that they’ve got the best path, and they stay on it for 20 years, rather than going here to here to here to here.

Rick: Yeah, I mean, the teacher’s not gonna say, “Well, this is like a third rate path, “you’d really be much better off there, “but come on, stay with me anyway.”

Steve: Right, and because the danger is not that they’ll go to another path, the danger is they’ll do nothing. And the ego takes over and continues to live as the ego.

Rick: Or they’ll be dilettantes, they’ll sort of, you know, try to dig 100 wells a foot deep instead of one well 100 feet deep.

Steve: Where they really get the water.

Rick: Right.

Steve: Where you get the spiritual nourishment. So, I don’t see that as a bad thing. I mean, it’s easy to look at it and say, oh, how judgmental, how narrow-minded, and all this sort of thing. But I’m seeing that as, this is how you keep people moving forward, digging that one well very deeply.

Rick: But then you said, you know, you had that experience with that minister in Kansas City, where he was being very judgmental, and it shut him down.

Steve: Yes.

Rick: And it shut you down to be judgmental of him.

Steve: Yeah.

Rick: So, you know, aren’t leaders who instill that sort of attitude in their followers, shutting them all down?

Steve: So, what I’ve noticed is, and this is just an observation, when you look at an organization, a spiritual or a religious organization, that the people at the bottom of the hierarchy there are not judgmental about the others, okay? The person at the very top is also very open. And it’s the ones sort of in the, you know, let’s call it the 85 to 90%, to 95% level of authority in an organization, who have the most to lose, whose egos are invested in that, they’re the ones that really build and hold on to how much better we are than everybody else. So, top and bottom don’t care, that little band does care, and they’re perpetrating it, and you know, these wannabes down here that want that. And every organization, every organization that I’ve, you know, this is a student of history and spiritual organizations, you see this pattern that’s perfectly exemplified by Jesus and Paul, okay? Here is Jesus, this incredible spiritual master, absolutely first rate, okay? Whether he’s a one and only or not, I’m not gonna say, all right? But absolutely–

Rick: If he is, there’s a lot of planets in the universe that are in deep trouble.

Steve: Right, so this absolutely, you know, completely spiritual love being, okay? And then along comes Paul, who creates an organization after him, okay?

Rick: Were they contemporaries, or did Paul come a couple hundred years later?

Steve: Paul never met Jesus.

Rick: Ah, I see.

Steve: Okay, Paul was persecuting Jews, and you know, has that experience on the road to Damascus.

Rick: Oh, that’s him, yeah.

Steve: That’s Paul, okay? So, Paul creates this incredible organization, this church that, you know, we have today. Saint Francis of Assisi, again, this incredible spiritual being, and his sidekick, I forget the fellow’s name, is a politician inside the church, okay? And, you know, some of the things he does, he’s just like, gasp. But what he does is, he creates, you know, the Franciscans, who are this incredible, powerful force throughout history of feeding the poor, helping the sick, helping the lame, all that sort of thing. So it’s almost as though you start out with a spiritual impetus, this spiritual power, and then someone comes along and says, now let’s–

Rick: Institutionalize it.

Steve: Institutionalize it and put it into the world where it’s going to last, so this just doesn’t disappear. And at first, I used to get mad at Paul, and I used to get mad at this guy, this Saint Francis’ sidekick, but now I look and say, no, look what they’ve done.

Rick: Yeah.

Steve: They’ve brought something out, and the critical part of the unfolding of knowledge.

Rick: Hmm, interesting.

Steve: Yeah, and that’s that same, you know,

Rick: Yeah.

Steve: And someone in there is going to rise up in every spiritual organization that’s going to last, and create this ongoing nature of it. That’s my opinion.

Rick: Yeah, it’s interesting that, so let me recap a little bit. So you started meditating in ’73, Transcendental Meditation. You went along doing that, and then 17 years ago, from now, which must have been about, about ’92.

Steve: ’92.

Rick: You became a minister.

Steve: Yes.

Rick: And then you went along doing that, and then about 10 years ago, ’99 or so.

Steve: 2000, December of 2000.

Rick: It’s December of 2000, December 14th at 4.30 p.m.

Steve: December 18th.

Rick: 18th at 4.30 p.m.

Steve: Who’s keeping track?

Rick: Yeah, right, what is it? You had this profound spiritual awakening.

Steve: Yes.

Rick: And it’s kind of hard to say, even for you perhaps, you know, what is causal and what is coincidental. You know, it’s like, it could just be that the engine that’s been driving you all these years to pursue these spiritual things ultimately culminated in this awakening 10 years ago, and perhaps the spiritual things you’ve been doing were conducive to that awakening, but…

Steve: So on that vein, you know, I mean, do you think I haven’t asked, when I’m moaning the fact that I’m not in unity of Brahman consciousness, could I just let go of this thought? Okay.

Rick: It worked for me then.

Steve: It worked for me then. Yeah, you know, I have glimpses of it, but very clearly it’s a state of consciousness that I’m intellectually clear on, but isn’t my reality.

Rick: Right, but I do find it interesting, and I again wonder whether it’s causal or coincidental, that you would have this thought, can I let go of this thought that I’m not free, and then suddenly this freedom would dawn. ‘Cause I mean, probably half the people who are listening to this are gonna try that, you know.

Rick: I hope you try it.

Steve: Yeah, and you know, something may or may not happen, and they’re gonna say, well, geez, why’d it work for him and it’s not working for me? It could be that, you know, you were about to pop, and that thought just sort of came in as coincidentally, you know, as a result of what you were about to experience.

Steve: I couldn’t argue a bit with what you’re saying. That’s why I say it doesn’t work when I ask about a unity consciousness, ’cause I let go of the thought I’m not there. So, you know, I’m sure there’s a timing, you know, a time and place for everything, it’s an unfolding, and you know, I remember Maharishi’s analogy, you know, he says, oh, people don’t know why they get enlightened. You know, imagine a man who has just one last stress left, and he’s reaching up in the supermarket to pull down a can of soup, and the stress leaves, and boom, he’s awakened, and he starts the can of soup.

Rick: Can of soup movement. [laughing]

Steve: But all I can say is that spiritual practices along the way, no matter what, are providing peace of mind, peace of heart, and they’re well worth doing just because, you know, like the Suzanne Segal story, okay? You know, very hard, very uncomfortable for her for a long time, and my sense is, you do the spiritual work because when it happens, you’re then ready for it, rather than having a rough landing, so to speak.

Rick: Yeah, not only that, but if, as I read that book, Collision with the Infinite by Suzanne Segal, if she had kind of put two and two together, if she had sort of recognized in all the lectures and things she had studied around meditation, that those were actually referring to what she was now experiencing. If she’d been able to connect that, she would’ve just been able to relax into it right away. But the memory was faint, vague, and the experience was so different than what she had anticipated, perhaps, when she had been studying it some years back, that she didn’t connect, you know? And therefore, and in fact, Maharishi says, I just looked this up the other day in the Gita, his commentary in the Gita, that this experience of freedom or awakening can actually be a cause of confusion and fear if it’s not associated or supplemented by a proper understanding.

Steve: Now, the other thing Maharishi says that’s really interesting–

Rick: Hold that thought, we’re gonna take a little break. Welcome back to Buddha at the Gas Pump. We took a little break to change discs. My name is Rick Archer, and my guest tonight, or today, whenever you’re watching this, is Steven Winn. We’ve been having a very lively discussion, which, however you’re watching this, you’ll probably be able to scroll back and see what we’ve been talking about. But just before the break, we were talking about the, whether–

Steve: We were talking about the enlightenment experience.

Rick: Right.

Steve: And how Suzanne Segal couldn’t quite integrate what had happened.

Rick: Yeah. The importance of knowledge to make sure that experience is smooth and comfortable. And also, what’s the cart and what’s the horse? I mean, does enlightenment sort of, or does the imminent emergence of awakening cause you to have some such thought as maybe I can just drop the thought that I’m not free, or was that thought actually instrumental in causing the awakening?

Steve: So anyway, the story I was starting to tell was that Maharishi describes this process of enlightenment. He does it a number of different times and different things, but one of the stories he says, I heard this in my science of creative intelligence class back in 1976, where what happens is the disciple becomes enlightened, and goes to the master and says, “I’m experiencing this.” And the master says, “Yes, that’s it. “That’s enlightenment.” And the disciple goes, “No, it’s gotta be more than this. “It’s just not enough.” And the master goes, “No, no, no, that’s it, “that’s it, that’s it.” And so it’s almost as though it’s, ’cause we’re all expecting this light bulb flash, marching band experience, and it’s not quite that. I was lucky to have a very crystal clear experience of it, but like the Belgian woman, Suzanne Segal, had a–

Rick: Hers was sudden, but uncomfortable. And Maharishi actually sees a phrase that it can sneak up like a thief in the night. And I think, and there’s this group in town called Waking Down, which is a spiritual path. My guests in the last two weeks were Waking Down practitioners. But they have this phrase that some people are ‘oozers’. They kind of ooze into enlightenment, or into awakening. And I think if you ooze gradually enough, you don’t even know that it’s happened.

Steve: And that’s like the Belgian woman.

Rick: Yeah.

Steve: Okay, so, you know, all going back to the question of what causes it. Does spiritual practice have anything to do with it? Okay, or is it just destiny that’s gonna happen? And I don’t have a perfect answer. I love Maharishi’s perspective on it, which is to say, knowledge is different in different states of consciousness. So probably from the universal perspective, it happens all on time, no matter what. And from our own individual perspective, it happens just when we are free enough to let go of the ego and experience some unboundedness.

Rick: Yeah, there was some Zen master or something, somebody quoted this in one of my previous interviews where he said something like, you know, enlightenment can happen quite by accident, but spiritual practices make you accident prone.

Steve: That’s very nice.

Rick: The likelihood of, you know, it can happen to anybody. And it does happen to people, just out of the blue. People who haven’t done any sort of spiritual practices, they could be just, you know, walking across the street and all of a sudden, kaboom. But, you know, the likelihood of it happening, I think, increases the more you prepare yourself and culture the nervous system to experience such a thing.

Steve: So there’s a couple things I’d say about that. One is that Meher Baba used to describe people in an insane asylum. And because Meher Baba spent a decade going throughout India, finding what he called, the spiritually intoxicated people called masts. And he would take them and work with them. He says it was his job in creation to give them a push to the next side. That they were people who had gotten stuck in sort of the celestial glory of life at a certain level and were mesmerized there and wouldn’t be, wouldn’t do anything to move any further. So, but he said many people, not many, but he says in almost every insane asylum in India, you go in there and he said there’d be one or two people who were really spiritually awake and had had an experience like this and it’s so overwhelming, sort of like Suzanne Segal, only they literally think they’re crazy.

Rick: Yeah, Maharishi said the same thing about insane asylums. Not that everybody in there is, but some.

Steve: Small, small, small percentage. But the other story I wanted to say is, because I always relate it back to letting go of the ego, whether through expansion or through collapse, is that many people, you know we’re talking about when it happens, when it doesn’t happen, but many people simply aren’t yet willing to awaken. And I say that from my own experience. So the very first kind of meditation I learned, this was in 1972, about a year before I learned TM. I took a class called the Nature of the Soul meditation. The Tibetan Buddhist type of meditation. And the way this worked is you took a seed thought, in this case the first thought was the nature of the soul is immortal. And the instruction was to take that thought one time and then sit quietly for 15 minutes. And if thoughts came by, not to fight them, but just imagine a log floating down a small stream that you could sort of jump in the log and push the side to get to the other side. And when a thought comes along, you just sort of gently let it float away. And so I did this because it was really cool in Santa Barbara to be a meditator. You know, I thought the girls would love me. But what happened was this first meditation was so profound that I came out of it going, I clearly have a soul. And terrified at the same time.

Rick: Why?

Steve: Because the next week I could see there’s gonna be some sutras, some statement, opening statement, that’s gonna be like the nature of God is something that’s gonna affirm the nature of God. And I thought if I know that God exists, like I know I have a soul, I’m gonna have to drop everything in my life.

Rick: Interesting, so at that point you were an agnostic?

Steve: I was an agnostic and I was terrified that if I knew there was a God in the same degree of strength, you know, all the material desires of my life, you know, the girlfriends and the–

Rick: You were about 19 at that point.

Steve: I was 19 or so, all the adventure, ’cause I’d been a river boatman, I was a whitewater river boatman, I had all these rivers I wanted to go rafting down, that sort of thing. And I’m thinking, I don’t wanna give that up. Okay, I had a list of things. And my ego just said, not ready, not happening, I never went back to that class again. You know, and I only started TM because I was on the fencing team in Santa Barbara. And I saw the studies that said, you do this kind of meditation–

Rick: Faster reflexes.

Steve: You get faster reaction time. And I was actually part of a follow-up study. MIU was in Santa Barbara at the time, which I didn’t even know about. But so they did a study and it was really true, after meditating I was much faster, I became a very good fencer.

Rick: MIU, which is the university, Maharishi, it was the original name, Maharishi International University, of what was later called, is now called Maharishi University of Management, and which moved from Santa Barbara here to Fairfield, Iowa in about 1973 or so.

Steve: ’73, ’75.

Rick: ’74, something like that. Yeah, yeah, early ’70s. Anyway, just putting it in context when you throw out an acronym like that. One thing that I find fascinating is that, and this is to some extent true in your case, as you’ve been describing tonight, but I have some other friends like this too, who seem to, whenever they sort of think about something, like some spiritual insight, they have the experience. And I find that a little frustrating, ’cause for me, my experience is not so responsive to what I think. I get real high doing shows like this, talking about this kind of thing. But I have this weekly discussion group that I go to every Wednesday night, I’ll be going there tonight after this, and a lot of awakened people in the group. And one in particular, he just sort of, he hardly even meditates, but he has these profound experiences, and just week after week, there’s a very significant shift in his experience in an evolutionary way. And it seems always that it’s just somehow, he just kind of sees his way into it, or feels his way into it. And maybe it’s just a matter of one’s own makeup, one’s own personality, how one functions, and it’s just different for different people.

Steve: Well, I’ll give you a little bit of background on that, just another perspective on it, because it’s true. I’ve been very blessed in the sense of having experiences, although it’s always a battle dealing with pride on it.

Rick: Pride?

Steve: Pride.

Rick: Think I’m cool on it.

Steve: Yeah, and how stupid is spiritual pride?

Rick: Right.

Steve: Oh, I’m so spiritual. [laughing] It’s a continual battle. But what I, it’s–

Rick: Especially if you start getting up in front of audiences, and people start looking at you like, whoa, this guy’s got–

Steve: Like you’re somebody. Believe me, that’s why it’s been, what, close to, well, it’s been virtually 10 years, nine years, since I’ve really been, I’ve never told the story in any public format whatsoever.

Rick: Oh, so this is your first?

Steve: This is my first time.

Rick: Cool.

Steve: Yeah, some of the stories, I told the story about the, loving, learning how to love the Christians. I told that story, but–

Rick: But the actual awakening, though.

Steve: No, no, I’ve never described that, because the sort of, I don’t wanna be out there like that.

Rick: Well, you know, keep the thought you’re gonna pursue, but I just wanna say that there are a number of people that I haven’t yet convinced to come on this show, because they don’t wanna be idolized, or they don’t wanna come out of the closet, so to speak, and be regarded as something special or unusual. And there are a lot of people like that in this town. I mean, I can think of just half a dozen off the top of my head that I’m hoping that after they see a number of interviews like this, and that’s part of my motivation in doing this show, is to turn it into something much more common, at least in this town, to eliminate the stigma of, and it almost is a stigma, of being awakened, you know? Where you’re either accused of being on some ego trip, or being self-deluded, or whatever. That’s many people’s knee-jerk reaction. So I can understand why you’d be reticent to–

Steve: And you know, the reality is, Maharishi started all this because he said the world needed enlightened people.

Rick: Yeah, and so what’s so horrible about the fact that we’re getting some?

Steve: Yeah, in fact, I was hearing today, someone was telling me, and I’ve never heard this, it was just on the level of rumor, but that in the Vedas somewhere it says, a hundred people in unity consciousness can transform the world. And I believe it. I completely believe it. But anyway, God, I’m fading on that story.

Rick: Yeah, let’s get it back.

Steve: I know why, ’cause I’ve been saying, you know, why it is, ’cause I used to ask, why am I having these experiences like this?

Rick: And fighting pride, you’re also saying.

Steve: Yeah, so when I was in college, I just got so clear that my mission in life was to know everything about everything. Okay, I called it a Renaissance man. You know, and I’d read all this, I just wanted to know everything about everything. So when I was on phase one of teacher training for the TM program, and I never did become a teacher, okay, it’s an interesting story there, but.

Rick: It’s good they can’t kick you out of the dome for doing all the stuff you do. [laughing]

Steve: But what happened is, on teacher training, Maharishi is describing the nervous system of a Rishi. And the exact same phrase that I had used all during college. He says, the nature of a Rishi is someone who wants to know everything about everything. And I go, ah.

Rick: Wow.

Steve: Okay.

Rick: So is that why your nickname is Rishi?

Steve: No, Ammachi gave me that name.

Rick: Oh, Ammachi gave you that, okay, well she’s onto something. S

Steve:Well, and I go, that was the other thing.

Rick: That was just out of the blue, she gave you that name?

Steve: Well, sort of. I guess this is the day I’m coming out of the closet on everything.

Rick: Yeah, right.

Steve: So what happened was, I was on tour with Ammachi, and people were getting names, so I figured, oh, I gotta get a name, I’ll ask her for a name tonight. And that, that day, while I’m meditating in my hotel room, I have this experience where I go to an absolute world. You know, you’ve seen pictures of Krishna and Ram in blue, and dark purple like this. So I go to this world where tables are blue, the walls are blue, the house, you know, all–

Rick: And it seemed like a real world, or just some imaginary vision?

Steve: No, you know, very much a real world. I didn’t meet any beings there.

Rick: Oh, okay, just tables and stuff.

Steve: But very clearly, and I go, ooh, this is what Maharishi means when he talks about, or rumors that he talks about, an absolute world. You know, and I go, ooh, that’s interesting, and I’m sort of stunned by it, and nothing to do with it. I mean, it’s never come back again, and this, like this. But that night, Ammachi gives me the name Rishi. So I go, oh, that’s–

Rick: I haven’t heard her having given anybody else that name.

Steve: She gave one little infant that name. And my wife happened to be standing right there when she gave that name to the person, so she pulled the person aside and said, you know, he’s very likely to have some very clear experiences.

Rick: Interesting.

Steve: Yeah.

Rick: Cool.

Steve: But what does it mean? And Ammachi, by the way, very carefully, ’cause she does not want spiritual pride running around, she said, I’m giving you this name in the sense of someone who does a lot of sadhana, a lot of spiritual work, which I do.

Rick: Right.

Steve: Okay, and so–

Rick: And by the way, Rishi means seer, right?

Steve: Seer, yeah.

Rick: In Sanskrit.

Steve: It means seer. So it just, and that’s why I think I see these things fairly clearly.

Rick: Yeah.

Steve: And believe me, some of these people that I’ve talked to, they have experiences that far outshine mine.

Rick: Some of which people you’ve talked to?

Steve: Like the ones you’ve talked to.

Rick: Around town people, yeah.

Steve: Yeah, this fellow that has this new experience every week.

Rick: Right.

Steve: You’re getting 20, 35 years of experience here, you know?

Rick: And this guy’s like 25 years old.

Steve: He’s 20, yeah, and every week it’s something new. I’m not that.

Rick: Started meditating when he was four or something.

Steve: Yeah, and you know what? I get happier and happier when I hear stories like that. At first I used to feel a little jealousy.

Rick: Right.

Steve: But now it’s kinda like, oh, thank goodness.

Rick: Yeah.

Steve: Thank goodness people are gonna be here that can carry this forward because, you know.

Rick: Yeah, I mean, I don’t feel jealous. I can relate to the jealousy thing, but I kind of see life as a continuum. And you know, I could live to be 100, I could die tomorrow. It’s gonna carry on, you know? And whatever’s best, whatever I need in terms of experience in order to progress along the path that I’m on, it’s gonna happen.

Steve: Yeah, you know, the thing, you know, one of the, we all have patterns in our life that sort of guide and direct us and shape the direction we go. One of mine is this desire to save the world. You know, which is a complete fraud.

Rick: Yeah.

Steve: Okay, the world is perfect just the way it is.

Rick: What was that voice that said to you? It said, who’s there to save or something?

Steve: Yeah, who’s there to save. And by the way, the joke on this is, you know, I realized because in this church, I keep trying to find a way to turn Christianity into a bona fide spiritual path, okay?

Rick: Isn’t it already?

Steve: No.

Rick: Oh.

Steve: So it became the power religion.

Rick: It got too encrusted with institutionalized.

Steve: Institutionalized and it became a moral, you know, how to inculcate moral behavior in people.

Rick: Right.

Steve: Now there’s always a core of it that’s spiritual, but that’s not the main part of it.

Rick: But for the participants who are in that aspect of it, you know, the moralistic aspect of it, isn’t it appropriate for them at the stage that they’re at?

Steve: Yes, and do I think that it could be brought up to where, for them, it’s not just a moral transformation, but a spiritual consciousness? I mean, if they want to be connected to Jesus Christ, which is Christianity, you need to transform your consciousness first.

Rick: Yeah.

Steve: Okay, new wine, new wineskin, okay? So, but, oh, I lost my train of thought here.

Rick: It’ll come back. Transforming Christianity.

Steve: Oh, yeah, so the joke of this is, is that here they are trying to save me, and it finally dawned on me that here I am trying to save them. So there’s no difference here.

Rick: Right.

Steve: You know, no difference, and you know, when I get to, and I can relax, I go, ah, I can let it all go, but it still comes up.

Rick: Yeah. You know, well, they have that, there’s that saying in the ecology movement, think globally, act locally.

Steve: Yes.

Rick: And, you know, I think that’s what we’re all doing. I mean, how significant is this little TV show in the big picture of the world? You know, but, we’re holding up our stick, we’re each doing our part, and your little church on the square, you know, you’re doing your thing, and collectively, this stuff has ripple effects.

Steve: And I’ll tell you, Rick, do not be surprised if this show has huge impact.

Rick: Yeah.

Steve: You know, I can say, ’cause we put our sermons on YouTube, and do no promotion whatsoever.

Rick: Right, and they get around.

Steve: Well, you know, I went and looked once, and how many people are watching? I was expecting five or six, you know, people who can’t get to church because their knees hurt, or something like that.

Rick: Well, listen, Oprah Winfrey’s starting her own TV channel, and she’s gonna need programming. (laughing)

Steve: And let me ask this question, though. How much freedom is there in having to perform internationally, or nationally, every week? You gotta put in a show every week?

Rick: Oh, it’s fun.

Steve: Well, I understand that, and I do it on the sermon, but when I look at quality of life, and freedom, okay, how much freedom there is, I go, “Wow, if I can get to a spot where I don’t feel compelled “to do anything, and it’s just a free expression of love, “that’s when I’m the happiest.” Rather than, “Oh, I have to do this because I have to save “Christianity.”

Rick: I see, without any missionary motive.

Steve: Without any missionary motive.

Rick: Right.

Steve: So I need to let go of the missionary motive, every time it comes up, I need to catch it, let it go.

Rick: Yeah, well, I admit to having a bit of a missionary motive with this show, and I’ve always been a bit of a born-again proselytizer for whatever I was into. Because I have a feeling that, as we were saying earlier, that there are a lot of people who would benefit around here, and around the broader scope, from seeing week after week that so-called ordinary people are having extraordinary experiences. But on the other hand, I’m primarily doing it just because I find it extremely uplifting and enlivening and fun for me. It’s like I sit at my computer all week, earning a living, and this is the highlight of my week, getting out here and doing this. [laughing]

Steve: I think it’s a great service.

Rick: Yeah. Well, thank you very much. We can do this again, I have a whole list of people, but I’m planning to rotate some of them through, because I think as you go home after this show, you’ll think, oh, we could have talked about this, we could have talked about that. So take notes, if thoughts come to you, and we’ll do it again maybe in a few months or something. Who knows what we’ll come out with, it’s an ever-evolving experience. So, thank you very much, Steven, and you’ve been watching Buddha at the Gas Pump. There will be some titles at the end of this show, which will be on the screen long enough for you to write them down, with links to a number of things you can do. There is a internet chat group, a discussion group, where people, some of whom have been guests on this show, and others of whom have been watching it, are talking every day about these sorts of topics. There’ll be a link to that. There’s a YouTube channel where we’re posting all of these shows. There will be my name and email address in case you want to ask me any, or send in any questions that I can ask guests. I have an email list that you can subscribe to, to be notified of future shows, and probably two or three other things that I’m not thinking of at the moment. But, any case, those will be in the titles, and I hope to see you next week. Thank you very much.