Sundance Burke Interview

Summary

Sundance Burke traces an awakening catalyzed by encounters with powerful teachers and the collapse of his former identity and life structures. The conversation contrasts dramatic mystical experiences with the quieter work of recognizing awareness itself through sustained inner inquiry.

Questions This Interview Explores

• How can I discover who I really am beyond the body, mind, and personal identity?
• What does it mean to turn within and become aware of awareness?
• Is spiritual awakening dependent on unusual experiences or supernatural powers?
• What role do effort, observation, and practice play in self-realization?

Key takeaways

• Awakening begins when attention turns from the ego and world toward awareness within.
• The simple fact of “I am” provides a direct starting point for self-inquiry.
• Observing thoughts, emotions, and conditioning reveals what is false.
• Extraordinary powers may show human potential, but they are not the goal of awakening.
• Realization can require sustained effort even when the truth itself is simple.

Transcript

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer, and my guest this week is Sundance Burke. Welcome, Sundance.

Sundance: Hi, Rick. Nice to be here. Thank you.

Rick: Sundance is the husband of Katie Davis, whom I interviewed last week. The two of them live out in Redmond, Washington, and they’re quite a dynamic duo. They’ve both written very nice books. Sundance’s is called Free Spirit: A Guide to Enlightened Being, and you guys do satsangs and travel around and talk to people one-on-one, I guess over Skype and all sorts of things. And you’ve been doing this for quite a while. I think you said you had your awakening in 1982 or something like that?

Sundance: I had the beginning. I had the opening to a new way of being, going inside instead of going without.

Rick: As you know from having watched some of these interviews, particularly the one with your wife last week, people do like to hear a mix of the personal spiritual odyssey and also the knowledge that they espouse. Usually that knowledge is based in their experience. Hopefully it is. If it’s not, then they shouldn’t be saying it, I think. So, in your case, why don’t you just start telling your story, and then it will get us rolling?

Sundance: My story?

Rick: You know what I mean. You tell it in the book a bit, and I’ve heard you tell it in talks. You were a lawyer, you were living in Hawaii, this and that. You ended up running into, I think, Osho’s limousine driver or something? But you can fill in the details.

Sundance: Yeah. You have to give me a second because this is the one thing about awakening: one thing that goes away is your story.

Rick: Yeah, I know.

Sundance: I don’t often tell it, but I will tell it as much as I can.

Rick: And I’ll prime the pump as much as I can, jog your memory and stuff.

Identifying with the Ego and the Body

Sundance: Basically, many years ago I was trapped in the ego state of consciousness. I was a normal “human being,” and so I thought I was a person, and I thought I was this body. I identified with my mind, the thoughts that ran through it, the thoughts that came up in consciousness.

Where the story really starts, in a true way, is that as I grew up, I was the third Don, Donald Russell Burke III, and I idolized my father, who was a surgeon, a very bright man, and a very magnetic man. I was his oldest son.

In a normal growing up, I realized that as much as I loved him, he was not a happy person. And yet he had everything in life that life would seem to offer. I’ve said this before, but he had it. He did. He was a handsome man, he had money, he had a beautiful family, he had a great career, and he was very skilled. But within his own existence, he was quite miserable.

Rick: How do you know he was miserable?

Sundance: Well, he was often abusive and mean-spirited, and it usually would happen around alcohol.

Rick: Sounds familiar.

Sundance: Almost always around drinking. Otherwise, he was a very sweet, dear, kind-hearted, serving human being. But this became—you know how we study our parents, right? This became a natural situation that my own awareness, my own consciousness, bumped up against. It was an incongruity, it was a paradox, and ultimately it was a problem in terms of establishing a relationship.

Rick: So, as a young boy, were you actually cognizant of the paradox, or the disparity, between his outer life and his inner unhappiness? Were you scratching your head and saying, “How could he be so unhappy if he’s got his act so together?” Or was it more subliminal, and you articulated it to yourself later on in life?

Sundance: You know, I was really aware of it. I can only pick, let’s say, when I was 16. I was aware of it before that, but I used to try to teach him to hug. I’d put my arm around him while I was sitting on the couch and gently say, “Now, Dad, just relax,” you know? I mean, that obvious.

And then, when I was older—because this came to a head—we’d go out together, and that would turn into a nightmare by the end of the evening, after a few cocktails. I was a lawyer and he was a doctor, and we were in the local posh bars, trying to have a relationship.

As I said, that created an issue for me because, as it turns out, I wanted what most people want. I wanted love and happiness and joy, and the end of all this anguish, pain, and dissatisfaction.

So something happened, and this is the way life is. My whole attitude toward life has changed. I now see that everything happens, as opposed to I do it, or someone does it.

The California Encounter That Changed His Life

It happened that, in the midst of this dissatisfaction, on a lark, on a spontaneous moment, I took a trip down to California, presumably for business. That day changed my entire life because I met a being, a human consciousness, with whom I had an experience.

I’m really not going to go into the experience too much. Let’s just say that it completely shattered my idea of reality. The experience was so profound, and it was so inside me. I was, at one moment, electrified on the floor in San Francisco and having a vision of how my parents had run their egoic relationship through me. I was not only seeing them, I was also seeing myself. So I was completely in another space, as this consciousness.

Rick: Did you run into this guy just by accident? A so-called accident?

Sundance: I went down to see my client, and it just turned out that this particular being was staying with them temporarily, at his house.

Rick: Why do you call him a being?

Sundance: Well, I think “being” is our true name for ourselves, as opposed to “person,” let’s say.

Rick: So you use that word because this guy was established in being, and it seems superficial to refer to him as “this guy” or “this person” you ran into.

Sundance: You know, I really don’t know where. This was a long time ago. A lot of things have happened since then, and a lot of growth has happened since then. But I can tell you that he was nothing like I was at that time—nothing—other than the fact that all of us had the same true essence. His essence was showing brightly, but again, it’s hard to explain.

Rick: That’s okay. So did you recognize something unusual about this being the moment you saw him, or was it more like you went home to your friend’s house and got into a conversation, and then something began to shift?

Sundance: I was caught up in something. I was caught up in a whirlwind. It was like I was thrown into another dimension, and I didn’t even see it coming.

Rick: Just his presence, or just his aptitude like that?

Sundance: It wasn’t just him. It was the whole environment, the whole experience. It was the fact that I had picked up on a lark and flown to California for no reason. I had a beard at the time, and I was shaving it off.

Rick: I remember that, yeah. You tell the story, and you didn’t finish shaving because you were late for your plane.

Sundance: I got half of it off. Then I heard from my client, when he picked me up at the airport, that he had this massive thing in his place. I was excited for some reason, and I was also scared for some reason.

Have you ever been in one of those situations where the hair on your skin starts to stand up and you don’t know why? It’s an unknown, a brand-new, fresh experience. So that’s really what was happening: having this unexpected event.

Rick: Is he somebody who became well-known, or somebody no one would have ever heard of listening to this?

Sundance: A few people probably know him because he was quite infamous in his own way.

Rick: Do you mind telling his name?

Sundance: He doesn’t go by this name anymore, and he doesn’t teach, and hasn’t for many, many years. I haven’t had contact with him for many, many years. His name was Satoshi at the time.

This is really kind of off the point in terms of what my present teaching is, but—

Rick: Yeah, we’ll catch up with you.

Sundance: Yeah, just to lead up to it. He had a lot of siddhis, and he was very close to Rajneesh, later Osho. Both of them were similar in that they had a lot of powers.

I experienced many of these powers within the first few months. I was 32, and he was about the same age, so we were fairly young, relatively speaking. It just blew me away: telepathy, reading your mind from a distance, going out of body for days and coming back, almost instantaneous healing. He could touch you, and then you would have energy running out of your fingertips for hours.

He used to do it to his cat every time he came in the house. He’d give him a little “mush, mush, mush,” and the cat would go, “Meow!”

And I didn’t know all of this at once. Students just entered, but he could play any musical instrument. He could go into a park, pick up any instrument, and start playing with a group.

Rick: Without ever having learned that instrument, or did he have a musical background?

Sundance: I don’t know. He had a musical background, but how he learned it, I don’t know, because he literally could play anything.

He was emotionally very solid. He didn’t suffer. His consciousness was completely devoid of emotional yo-yo playing. He could put anyone in a trance just by looking at them.

And that was my start. That isn’t anywhere near where I’m at right now, but if you really want to know how I got going, that’s where it kicked off.

Rick: That’s interesting. You say he was notorious. Did he end up getting himself in trouble with all this power? Did it sort of go to his head?

Sundance: Yeah, he got in trouble. But I won’t speak for that, because to him it may have been no trouble at all.

Rick: Maybe, but the scriptures warn against getting carried away with this stuff, because it can go to your head.

Sundance: Yeah, yeah. So it’s important, I suppose, for people to know that siddhis are really not the answer. However, they do tell you something about the human being’s potential.

One of the interesting things that did happen—and this is tying back into where I started this story—was that about three months after I met him, and was in relationship with him as much as possible during that time, having experiences and learning and watching and observing and participating, he told me—and we had formed a close relationship pretty quickly—he told me, and this is crazy, that someone in my family was going to die soon. He just said it straight like that.

I started looking around in my mind at my different family members to see, well, is anybody sick? Is there anything? I was trying to go through some of the people in my family, thinking about who this might be. I also thought maybe it would be me. My lifeline is really short.

It ended up being my father, at 58.

Rick: That’s pretty young.

Sundance: Yeah, and it was a notorious death. I can’t go there. I can’t go there. It was really shocking, and it was out of the blue. You can imagine how that got my attention.

The end of this beginning story is just the fact that when I ran into this path—the path of awakening, the path of finding out who I really am, as opposed to who I thought I was—I realized that I had been waiting for this path my whole life.

In other words, I had never fallen absolutely in love with any activity or any passion. I went from one thing to the next. It might have something to do with my dharma, being an Aries—you know, starting and stopping a lot of things. But nonetheless, I never could settle anywhere.

Turning All Attention Toward Awakening

Then, when this path came, I knew it instantly. It shocked a lot of my family and friends because I completely turned all my attention, all my passion, and all my energy toward this investigation, this inquiry, this awakening. And it started there.

Rick: Did you quit your law practice, or did you manage to juggle that as well?

Sundance: Everything fell apart. Everything. Every structure I had built my ego on fell apart. Now, it held together for a while, about five years. I was able to keep it going. And then it was gone. And everything else was gone. Family was gone. My money was gone. My job was gone. I ended up without a car, and I was living in downtown Seattle, doing stand-up comedy at open-mic sessions. And I wouldn’t prepare. I would just walk in. Some of those performances were okay, and others were completely humiliating.

Rick: Were any of them really great?

Sundance: A few, yeah. But that, again, that wasn’t my… This is a part of this awakening thing: at first, you think the real awakening is experience-based. So you are seeking some sort of experience. And you are hoping to find just the perfect experience, and you are hoping that it will be lasting. And, you know, I found it. And so there were many, many, many attempts.

Rick: Yeah. Were you still with this Satoshi guy, or were you visiting different teachers and trying different things and stuff?

Sundance: For about three years, I was encountering and meeting with him. I even brought him up to my home in Seattle from California, and we did some workshops. He was a mentor. He would even do workshops and put me at his side so that I could not participate, but watch. I’d have to say that he was really the only teacher that I had in that kind of formal relationship.

He also introduced me to Shunyata in California, who got his name from Ramana Maharshi in India. When I met Shunyata, he was 91, and he was given—not “labeled,” that’s not the right word—the grace and blessing of Ramana through a personal encounter in front of Ramana, where the telepathic words, “We are always aware of Shunyata,” came to this being.

He was one of the first people that Satoshi introduced me to when I went to California. It was actually in Marin. He just said, “You want to meet a friend of mine?” He didn’t tell me anything about him. He just took me to his room. He was being hosted by a local family. And I walked in, and there was this 91-year-old mystic. Quite honestly, they say that a mystic means the wholeness of the cosmos. So it was actually kind of difficult to tell whether he was a man or a woman.

Just being in his presence and seeing him actually blew some more of my programming. See, this is the whole thing: all my conditioning was being destroyed and busted. Just being in the room with Shunyata and Satoshi while they talked—I would say nothing, because I was actually stunned. I actually couldn’t stay in the room for more than about 10 or 15 minutes in the beginning. It was just too intense, and nothing was directed at me. It was just energetic.

So that destroyed my concept of old age. He floated around the room. He wore red, high-top Converse tennis shoes, Indian garb, and a turban, and seemed to be from another dimension. There were miracles happening all the time, crazy things, right in front of my eyes. And I just…

Rick: Overt ones, or more, again, on the mental level of telepathy?

Sundance: Overt, overt. I saw him trip on the carpet, like he was going to fall. To me, he looked like a falling man. And then this leg comes out and stabilizes him, almost like some sort of yogic thing or something.

A lot of it was just funny. One time, we were in the room with him, and his room was really dusty. He had papers and books everywhere. He was very cerebral, very intelligent, very conscious. Somebody asked him about the accumulation of dust in his room. His response was, “I don’t bother it; it doesn’t bother me.” You can learn a lot from that, you know?

Rick: Sure.

Sundance: So it was just one thing after another. I felt very blessed, and I also felt scared and excited. I was really being put through a course. These are the old days; a lot of this stuff doesn’t even happen anymore. It was very energetic.

Rick: You’d be surprised. People get in touch with me all the time, saying that they just woke up one morning and all of a sudden their Kundalini was rising, and they didn’t know what was going on. They thought they were going crazy and just really started to cook, looking for answers.

And there are all kinds of people. I mean, you say it yourself in your book and elsewhere, that there seems to be this global awakening taking place, and popcorn is popping all over the place. In a way, what you were experiencing was maybe—I mean, certainly people have, for thousands and thousands of years, been in the presence of people whose very presence was enlightening and transformative. But it’s a bit, I suppose, of a relatively new thing in the West, and maybe in that regard you were something of a pioneer. These days, it actually is happening practically on every street corner, it seems.

Sundance: Yeah, which is nice.

Rick: Yeah, great.

Sundance: Beautiful, yeah. In fact, it’s really happening in a big way now.

Going within

Rick: Were you doing any kind of spiritual practices or disciplines during this time, or basically just living your life and things were popping?

Sundance: I was given a lot of spiritual texts to read. Again, here we are, we’re still at the beginning, but I knew nothing about it in any real way. No formal practices. I never really had a teacher who recommended a complex mental practice. Almost everything that I was exposed to was communicating, “Be aware.”

The only two words I ever got from Shunyata in terms of a teaching—I went to him one time in a terrible emotional state, where my ego was just under huge attack. I was resisting, and I was in a lot of pain. I went up to him, imploring him for help. He just looked at me very calmly and casually and said two words:

Go within.

He didn’t say it with any great compassion that I perceived, either. It was just like, this is direct advice: “Go within.” And I took that to heart. What does that mean, “Go within”? That became my contemplation.

I would say that that is the main teaching. Our attention normally is directed, as a person, to the world and to the self: the object me, the object world, the object you. And this was, “Now turn around, turn around and investigate within yourself.”

We know how to do that, actually, very naturally. We’re habituated to avoid it in the old consciousness, but there is a consciousness now that is arising very strongly, and we’re getting to know the consciousness itself—something that we actually never even took for granted.

So we’re looking at: What is your beloved, the one that will not betray you? What does not change about you? What is always true? And so…

Rick: When you say “we,” I think you’re inferring “we” as a culture, because obviously there have been individuals throughout history who have been adepts in this domain. But there seems to be something new about the proliferation of it, the commonality of it, the fact that people everywhere are getting familiar with the kind of thing you’ve just been saying. It’s not so unusual anymore, right?

That’s what you mean when you say “we,” because in a sense there’s nothing new under the sun, but in terms of it being more widespread…

Sundance: I think I’m talking to those who are making the transition, or are about to. I’m talking to us who are awakening.

Rick: Yeah, the kind of people who would be inclined to listen to this thing in the first place.

Sundance: There have always been awake beings in existence, for sure. But we’re living out this drama, this story, that we’re living right now in the most amazing time. It’s just incredible, beautiful.

Rick: Okay, so five years in, you were doing comedy in nightclubs, and your life was falling apart, but you say that’s still the beginning. We really haven’t gotten to the more significant thing you wanted to say.

Sundance: Well, I mean, that is the story part, and there are many, many, many more stories.

Rick: Sure, many stories and experiences.

Self-Realization and the Fall of the False Self

Sundance: Yeah, but the point is that once we turn within, once we turn to discover who we are, hopefully that is something that can be completed—that you can actually, I guess they call it “self-realized” now, allow the ego to fall away, the false self, and stabilize, and find out in a very congruent and centered way, “Who are you? Who am I?” to the point where you don’t need to ask that question anymore.

But, I mean, the long and short of it is that I worked very, very, very hard for 17 years, which is just a relative term. Some people are less, some more, and some never. It doesn’t make any difference. But for those who say there’s no effort required or nothing to do, I would say, “No.” I did hundreds of different things and spent endless hours.

But I did get focused, and I didn’t go down many distracted ways of learning, at least from my point of view—and that’s all it is, my point of view. I like the simple teachings. I was in love with Nisargadatta’s work, his expressions. I got that book very early and wore it out. I still have it, and it just falls apart in my hand.

I just loved him because he had a lot to say, and it was all incredibly intelligent. In essence, it’s all very simple. His main teaching—and I agree, I help people in this way too—is just be aware of your base. The only thing you know for sure is “I am.” It’s a true fact: “I am.” You can say that. It cannot be disputed.

I just loved him because he had a lot to say, and it was all incredibly intelligent. In essence, it’s all very simple. His main teaching—and I agree, I help people in this way too—is just be aware of your base. The only thing you know for sure is “I am.” It’s a true fact: “I am.” You can say that. It cannot be disputed.

And you get to know that. You contemplate it. You feel it. You go beneath those two words, and you stay with that as your meditation. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing. You can be at work, eating, or right here talking.

I now see that this is the one thing that the human—and this is a story too, our human story—this is the one thing that we never gave cognizance to. In other words, we’re very interested in the body, the physical form, and very interested in our mind and emotions and in our senses. But the power that allows all of that to exist was never even spoken of. You know, you go to school.

Rick: Yeah, they don’t tell you this stuff.

Sundance: No, they say, “Pay attention,” but they tell you what to pay attention to. They don’t actually tell you to pay attention to attention, or to see what that power is.

So, in effect, we have all these people operating in this, again, story world or dream world, who have no idea who they really are. And then they’re making assessments about everything they see around them, saying, “I know this, I know that, I know this, I know that,” and they’re skipping the Self. “I don’t know myself, but I know everything else.”

Rick: And most of them don’t know that they don’t know who they are. Most people haven’t even asked the question yet, or it hasn’t even dawned on them that they might be something more than they take themselves to be.

This “I am” thing you just said, if you say that to most people, they’re going to say, “Well, I am Rick, and I like to eat such and such, and I play the guitar, and I work at this job, and I blah, blah, blah,” which, of course, has nothing to do with what you’re pointing at.

Sundance: No, it doesn’t. I mean, those are things that you learn, and you can’t tell anybody this. They have to look for themselves, really investigate for themselves, and find it directly: “My goodness, that image of myself that I see, or that I think, or that I feel, is not really who I am.”

So with our intellect, we can actually see the things that are false, but that’s as far as the intellect can really take you. We can see the false, we can start letting things drop away. We can start to see the programming and the conditioning. And then we start to learn through observation, through looking. That’s how everybody learns. That’s how we’ve learned anything, really: through paying attention.

✨ Presence and self-inquiry

Rick: So were you doing this during those 17 years—reading books and continuing to look? It probably became second nature to you.

Sundance: Absolutely, absolutely. It was constant. As an example, there’s a really good reason not to have a formal practice, because formal practices are limiting. Usually you have to have the right environment, the right amount of time, and set it up in a certain way. Usually, it has big structures.

But if you have just the practice of turning within, and the practice of being aware that “I am”—in other words, I’m standing in a line in the grocery store, and in the old days, I’m aware; I’m aware right now that I am—you’d be surprised. Just check it out for yourself: most people are not even aware that they exist.

This is what is establishing presence. We call it presence in the Western world. Presence means, “I am aware that I am.” And you don’t really need to do anything. You don’t need to go anywhere beyond that. You don’t need to add anything to that, and you don’t need to take anything away. Just actually experiencing what that’s like reveals to you, on its own, the value of it, the truth of it, what it is.

Rick: In defense of formal practices, which I’ve been doing for 44 years, I would say that the things aren’t mutually exclusive. You can do a practice, but you can also be doing what you just said, and they can actually be complementary.

Sundance: That’s true. I mean, I was not making a rule.

Rick: And some people actually do well to have a discipline of some sort. Anything can be taken out of proportion or become obsessive, or whatever. I know in my own case, my life was such a shambles when I first learned to meditate at the age of 18. I had dropped out of high school and been arrested a couple of times, and things were crazy. It was tremendously nourishing and healing, and it profoundly turned my life around on a dime.

So my tendency is never to say, “Well, you don’t need this, you don’t need that.” It’s just, “If it works for you, more power to you.” And maybe you could also say, “Consider this, because this is also good.” Keep your eyes open, and keep all your options open.

Sundance: Yeah, see, that’s the problem with a personal story: it’s too limiting. That’s why we’re here together, so between us we can broaden the picture and go beyond the person. Because you’re right, this is really all about each being going within their own self, and then they determine.

Rick: Yeah, I think as long as personal stories are told in a way that doesn’t make people conclude that their story has to be like your story in order for some particular thing to happen, they can be interesting. You read Autobiography of a Yogi; you don’t need to be like Yogananda. It’s an interesting story.

I do get feedback from people who say, “I love to see the variety of ways in which, and the circumstances in which, people woke up.” Not that the circumstances themselves were responsible for it, but it kind of gives people hope sometimes. Even they—ordinary Joe Schmo, doing this and that and the other thing—don’t have to be a special person for this sort of thing to happen.

Sundance: Yeah, it’s true, but as long as it doesn’t distract you from your own experience. I have actually seen where it does distract.

Rick: I have too, and I’ve seen people try to emulate others—to eat what they eat, dress like they dress, and talk like they talk. Your point is very well taken if that’s what a person ends up doing. There’s going to be a run on these blue sweatshirts after this interview.

Sundance: I doubt that.

Rick: Okay, so where were we? I shouldn’t ask you that. You talked about the 17 years and how there was this sort of intense, earnest focus—reading and looking at yourself, self-reflection, self-referral. And the number 17 seems to be significant because it implies that at the end of 17 years there was some kind of breakthrough.

Sundance: There actually was a breakthrough. During that period, I never was a teacher. I never shared. I always had—though I would have unbelievably profound experiences—and toward the latter part of that time, I thought I was free. I thought I was liberated. We’re talking about the last two or three years. I was completely different from the beginning, and I thought I was liberated.

Then, in one retreat I went to with Eli and Gangaji—I’ll give them a kudo here—all of a sudden, I was with Katie, and we were in Hawaii. All of a sudden, I had this enormous longing come up, and I hadn’t experienced that for years. Actually, I felt my life was quite clear, and that’s only my feeling about it. Then, all of a sudden, out of the blue, this enormous longing came up, and I was on fire with it—intense.

Rick: Did it have a target, a focus, or was it just an abstract longing?

Sundance: It was like I felt bound. At that point, I just—hopefully, you don’t deny what your experience is. Whatever I was thinking, I had no power over what I was actually feeling in that moment.

Again, like I said, I had never been a teacher, never shared. So there was something in me, right? There was some doubt, or—and this is hindsight helping a little bit with the conversation—but I was burning, on fire, to express truth, liberation, or whatever.

I went up to the front row, and I was going to get the microphone. I was going to speak, and I was going to get Gangaji’s attention. She had spoken to my heart a few years earlier. I didn’t go to many of her events. I never—well, anyway, that’s a sidelight.

I’m very intense, and the funny thing is, I don’t think Gangaji even knows this story, because I’d spoken with her later, and this is just something that happened within me. I started to try to say some things to her. I was saying stuff, going through my mind, and it was like, “I want to die.” Words were trying to come out, and they were kind of heavy words. I just—I don’t know, something happened. I just stopped. The whole thing just collapsed.

I sat there for a second, just kind of stunned, and I put the microphone down in my lap. The only funny thing that Gangaji did do is, after that happened, she sat there, kind of stunned herself, and she said, “Oh, thank God! There is stopping!”

Oh, thank God! There is stopping!

No Longer Looking to the Mind for Identity

There was nothing magical about that event other than what I just told you. But it turns out that I actually realized—and it took me many, many months to realize—that something had shifted from that moment forward. I had stopped making trips to the mind to find myself, to identify myself.

Rick: Interesting. So for many years, this self-reflection, self-inquiry thing was almost like a practice you had been doing, had gotten into the habit of doing. Perhaps even unconsciously, it had become so second nature. Then, at that moment, that habit just sort of evaporated, and henceforth you didn’t do it. But you didn’t even realize it until later on, that you had stopped doing it. Sometimes when I ask a question, I just restate what the person says in order to make sure I clearly understand what they did say. But that’s it, right? That’s what happened.

Sundance: Yes, that’s pretty much it. The way I discovered it had stopped was that a singer, a spiritual singer and a friend of ours, came up to our house and was going to do an event.

Rick: Was that Kirtana, I think it was?

Sundance: Yeah, it was Kirtana. She asked me if I had longing, and I said, “No.” It was only at that moment when I answered that question—and she was surprised, like, “You’re kidding,” because that’s really a part of her songs too. I’m not saying anything about her, because I really can’t, but I’m telling the story.

I didn’t have longing anymore. I just realized it then, and it had been that way ever since Hawaii. So there was a shift there.

Rick: Yeah, it’s interesting how sometimes a shift will take place and it won’t even be recognized at that moment, or it’s only recognized much later on in retrospect. You kind of think, “Whoa, that was really a turning point,” and I didn’t even realize it at the time.

Sundance: Yeah, and along with that—and I think this is good for everyone to check out on their own—I realized that on some level I was seeking an experience. I think along with the end of longing was also the end of doubt, the end of questions, and the end of seeking, because the real realization was, “Oh my gosh, it’s not an experience.”

Rick: Would it be possible to give us a little bit clearer understanding of what you mean by longing—what longing was and what it wasn’t, once it had stopped?

Sundance: That’s your heart wanting to totally break open. That’s like this awakening allowing your joy to come out, your love to come out, your smiles to come out, your connection with nature, your innocence, your purity. Whether we know it or not, we all long for that.

When we can get really, really honest with that longing, we allow it. Most people are holding it down, and there are a lot of belief systems that cause us to hold it down. We think it’s scary, that it’s not good for love, that it hurts. There are many, many messages, much conditioning, holding down this desire to awaken authentically to who you really are.

Rick: So wouldn’t you say that most spiritual seekers are consciously longing? That’s what defines a spiritual seeker: this conscious realization that there’s something more than what they’re living, and they’re longing to find it.

Sundance: Yeah, I think so. I think longing is very—what’s the right word?

Rick: Natural.

Sundance: Yeah, yeah. Thank you.

Rick: Some people say, “Well, stop seeking,” and all that. But that’s putting the cart before the horse. If the finding hasn’t happened to a sufficient degree, then the seeking is natural, and you’re just going to be driven.

If somebody had said to you, “Stop seeking,” a week after you first met that Santoshi guy, when you were just a newbie at all this, it would have been completely inappropriate, right?

Sundance: Totally, yeah. From my point of view, yeah.

Rick: I mean, you had to—I don’t know if we can say “had”—but you obviously went through 17 years of processing, and I don’t know if that could have been shortcutted.

Sundance: Well, I don’t see anything wrong with seeking, and I don’t see anything wrong with not seeking. Whatever the moment, whatever is truthful in the moment. And here’s another point. There are a few good points. Earnestness, really wanting to be free, wanting to be enlightened, wanting to be self-realized, wanting to know who you are. Really being earnest about that is good. That helps. And then being honest as much as possible with yourself. That also plays a big role, being able to see yourself, to witness honestly what’s going on. So that you’re not—because we often—and I, believe me, 17 years is a long time. I mean, I went down many dead ends and didn’t tell myself the truth all the time. But it does pay to be as honest as you can possibly be.

Rick: A lot of times, I think this stop-seeking thing is often attributed to Papaji. I interviewed Neelam a few weeks ago, who studied with Papaji quite a bit, and she said that the context in which that was said was really in his presence there in Lucknow, with all these people, and he was kind of saying, “Hey, just relax. It’s right here before your eyes. It’s here in abundance. Just chill and settle into it.”

And I think that not-seeking is often totally appropriate in satsang. I really do think that that is almost the best thing you can say in satsang: “Rest.”

Sundance: And I think that not-seeking is often totally appropriate in satsang. I really do think that that is almost the best thing you can say in satsang: “Rest.”

Rick: Yeah. I was up on stage making a fool of myself one time in the presence of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and I don’t know, I was a very intense guy. And he came out with this beautiful thing. He said, “Every day is life.” He said, “Don’t pass up the present for some glorious future.” You know, just sort of—and he went on a little bit, but that was the essence of it. And I think it took me down a few notches, and I kind of realized that, sure, the future may be more glorious in a sense than what one is living right now, because life has an evolutionary tendency to it, but if you pass over the present for, “Oh, I’m going to be miserable until I am such and such,” then you’re putting yourself out of balance and out of tune with the flow.

Sundance: Well, the present, presence, is absolutely essential. And it’s the most radiant and richest experience of being, to be present. And our life, when it’s present, is going to change a lot, because many teachers have talked about the seeking aspect: moving away from this moment, moving to the future, it’s the next moment, it’s not this one. No, it’s right here. And it’s also the easiest and most sane way to live, because then you’re not dealing with an imagination, either coming from the past or projecting into the future. You’re not dealing with imagination. You’re dealing with the very simple experience of right now. And you realize that that’s just so easy to be with, and it’s not complex. You don’t even need to get into a really complex mental state or do all these mental gymnastics. It’s all right here, and it’s beautiful.

Rick: When you were talking about your experience at the Gangaji and Eli retreat, prior to getting up on the mic, you said this longing came up, and you felt, I think you used the word “trapped” or “constrained” or “bound” or something. Was it sort of a sudden dawning of awareness that you weren’t as free as you thought you had been? Because you mentioned you thought you were liberated, but then this longing came up, and you realized you hadn’t been liberated. Was there a sense of being bottled up or dammed up? Because then you mentioned when that relaxed or burst like a dam, there was this outpouring of greater freedom of expression, of love and happiness and all that.

Sundance: I’m not sure I would describe it the way you were just putting it, because it wasn’t a contemplated situation. It was a super-present one. The presence was incredibly present. The longing was incredibly present. So it was like, “I’m in a fire. I’m in it.” I didn’t even know what it was about. It’s beyond contemplation. I didn’t know what it was.

Rick: It just came up spontaneously.

Sundance: I just knew that I had to deal with it. I had to face it, and I had to come to terms with it. But I didn’t know what it was, and I didn’t know what those terms were, and what happened I did not expect. It’s a mystery, I guess.

Rick: It kind of sounds like, though, you did face it and come to terms with it right on the spot. In other words, it bubbled up because it was time to face it, and then there with Gangaji it sort of worked itself out.

Sundance: Yeah. I think that’s the value of satsang, of being in satsang, that it’s the perfect place for that kind of encounter with yourself.

Rick: Yeah.

Sundance: And a lot of people have, so-called people, have taken that opportunity to heart.

Rick: Sure. Did you say you were with Katie at that point?

Sundance: Oh, yeah. Okay, so you guys had already gotten together. We’ve been together since 1988, and Katie was also an enormous part of my awakening. It’s just our heart connection. I’m sure we met by grace; there’s no other explanation. The rapport and natural intimacy—and I was in awakening and she had awakened, and these two awakenings came together. That’s a story I won’t tell you.

Rick: You don’t have to. But one thing about it is, I kind of got the impression from her book that when she met you, you were already awakened or something. “I met this wonderful awakened guy.” But you’re saying that she was instrumental in your awakening, so I guess maybe what you’re saying is that it was in process, and then she was another big engine on the train, which—

Sundance: No, there was no distinction between us. So it’s impossible to put us on a scale of relativity. When that comes together, there is no scale, and the terms “awakened” or “self-realized,” that doesn’t make any sense at all to the relationship. You’re basically in service to the heart, in something like that, and everything is bowing to the heart. And so I would say that was more the path of devotion that was in our world. And it was a very, very, very natural devotion. There was no agenda; it was just so obvious.

Rick: Some teachers say that only after self-realization does it become possible for the path of devotion to really be profound, because it has a foundation, you see, of knowing who you are, as opposed to being completely oblivious to who you are. And so then there can be a real flowering of the heart. Would you agree, based on your experience?

Sundance: I don’t know.

Rick: Okay.

Sundance: I mean, devotion isn’t something I can describe with any truth. That’s really all I can say about it.

Rick: Words are just too crude and superficial to do it justice.

Sundance: I don’t know if I really want to make any statement about it, honestly. It’s kind of sacred.

Rick: Okay. Well, that’s good, I understand. It sort of trivializes it in a way, to try to bring it out verbally and discuss it. I think I understand.

Sundance: It’s so not an object.

🛤️ Two paths to freedom

Rick: Right. Okay, now I read about a third of your book. I didn’t get a chance to read the whole thing; there’s always a lot going on around here, but I really enjoyed what I read. You have the whole structure and flow of the book, I’m sure, much clearer in your mind than it is in mine. Are there some kind of highlights, as you think about the book, that would be interesting to discuss and perhaps interest people in reading it, to find out more?

Sundance: Why don’t you tell me what you picked up from it, because honestly, I don’t read the book very often.

Rick: Well, you wrote it.

Sundance: I know, I know.

Rick: Well, it’s one of these books that it’s kind of nice to read in small doses, I found, because there’s a lot packed into each sentence and paragraph. I don’t know how many chapters I got through, but each time as I was reading, I was kind of wishing you were there to say, “Hey, let’s talk about this.” A lot of different points were interesting. But let me bounce it back to you. If you had to summarize the book in a short paragraph, what would you say it’s about?

Sundance: It’s about the two main paths to freedom that are on the wisdom path: the path of jnana, which is basically self-inquiry. So the chapter on self-inquiry, I think, is very important. It’s very powerful. The other is presence, learning that you are presence, and using that presence to deal with all the dilemmas of getting over your programming and conditioning, which are based in time, the illusion of time, the psychological time of the false self. So only by presence, only by the witnessing consciousness, can you really be free.

Rick: So you’re saying that self-inquiry and presence are actually two distinct paths, and one might take one or the other and perhaps arrive at the same goal. Is that what you’re saying?

Sundance: Well, they are distinct. Doing self-inquiry does have a structure, and I use it often, and it’s in the book, and it’s laid out in many places by Ramana. What better question is there to ask yourself than, “Who am I?” If you had any question to ask yourself, I think that would be the best one. And there is a structure to it. You want to find out what the source of that “I” is, where that “I” is arising from, what that “I” is. And it can be a very practical technique that you can take anywhere. It’s not hard. You can use it on the simplest things, like whenever, let’s say, you get irritated or something from service at a restaurant, and you just might ask yourself, “Who? Who is irritated? I am. Who is I?” It’s so incredibly powerful that it can completely disengage you from the egoic path and the misery and suffering related to that, in such a simple way, as can presence.

Rick: So let’s say you’re in that restaurant. Let’s say two people are in the restaurant, and they’re both getting irritated. And one guy uses the self-inquiry technique: “Who am I? Who is getting irritated?” So presumably that defuses the irritation, because it breaks the fixation on outer-directedness—“I’m mad at the waitress,” and so on and so forth—and the inner-directedness, and kind of a location of the source of the irritation, and deeper than that. And the other guy, let’s say, uses presence or witnessing. I think you equate the two. Elaborate on how that would work for him in that situation, as opposed to self-inquiry. Just to distinguish the two things that you’ve laid out.

Presence as Consciousness and the Field of Now

Sundance: Well, presence is really understanding that you’re consciousness. So instead of being a name, or a form, or an object, you’re actually the moment of space. You’re the entire field. You’re a field of now, a field of presence. You’re an emptiness. So, if you’re truly present, if you are truly present, nothing going on in that field will bother you. And if you’re not truly present, if something is bothering you in that field, then if you just turn to presence, turn to consciousness, pure consciousness, then you will realize the truth. You will be liberated. You’ll be free. Otherwise, you’ll be bound by the resistance you’re having to that moment being as it is. And so you are identifying with the content. You’re identifying with the play of forms and experiences in front of you, in your field.

And it’s always that identification, from whatever technique you’re using, with the limited self, which is literally a false self, because it will betray you constantly, because it never lasts. It’s totally impermanent. So anytime we are identifying who we are with the changeful, with the impermanence, we will suffer the duality involved in concepts.

Rick: It sounds like the outcome is the same. In fact, I’m still not totally clear on the distinction between self-inquiry and presence, because it seems like self-inquiry, as you’ve described it, sort of gets you to that state of presence.

Well, if they both lead to the same place, then you could actually say there is no difference. I mean, here again, the mind plays tricks on us. It wants to distinguish things, but really everything is indistinguishable.

Rick: All roads lead to Rome.

Sundance: But if we do talk, and by our talking we can make that distinction, it can be heard by others. So you see, we have this old habit, this mental habit. It’s very ancient, and it’s very established. And so anytime we can catch ourselves, because there’s a tempting force trying to pull you back into…

Rick: Identification.

Sundance: Yeah, yeah, trying to pull you back into the idea that a concept is real. A concept is real. A concept is real. Here’s a real concept. No, they’re not. You know, even “I am,” you can boil that down to a very basic concept. But actually, what it’s really showing you is that you’re beyond the concept. You’re beyond the concept.

You’re beyond the concept.

This is where the mind is really freed, because when the mind is no longer identified, then it’s free to serve the truth. And that’s a great release.

This is where the mind is really freed, because when the mind is no longer identified, then it’s free to serve the truth. And that’s a great release.

Rick: Yeah, well, it seems to me that’s the crux of it, because you still need concepts in order to function. You couldn’t do anything if we didn’t have concepts. We’d just be lying on the floor in a daze or something.

You need concepts to go shopping, you need concepts to drive your car, you need concepts to have a conversation, and so on. But the extent to which you are identified, or locked in…

Sundance: Yeah, it’s the enmeshment that is the problem.

Rick: Yeah, yeah, that’s the problem.

Sundance: Why don’t we just look at concepts as a tool? You know, they’re in our toolbox. I bring out a tool, I use it, and I put it back in the toolbox when I’m done with it. That’s, I think, really where concepts lie.

They’re with material form, they’re with names and places, they’re with diversity, but they have nothing to do with who you are.

Rick: Right.

Sundance: And absolutely nothing to do with who you are.

Rick: And in that vein, could you even say that the ego is a tool, which you use as you use your intellect, your senses, your mind, your physical apparatus, but it has nothing to do with who you are?

It’s usually in the driver’s seat, but if things are properly realized, then it just has a more subservient role and isn’t seen to be really running the show. It’s a tool.

Sundance: Yeah, I actually wouldn’t agree with just the way you phrased that, because I don’t see the ego having any reality. The ego is false, so it’s just false.

Rick: Well, is everything false, then—all the other things I just itemized? Or is just the ego false, while the mind, the intellect, and all those things have some sort of functionality?

Sundance: Now we’re getting into semantics, because now we have to figure out what “false” means.

Rick: Well, people seem to pick on the ego, and yet everyone seems to even…

Sundance: You’ll have to tell me first what the ego is. I don’t know what you mean by “ego.”

Rick: I would mean by it “some I-sense,” and some sense of… where somebody comes in the room and says, “Hey, Sundance,” and you turn your head, because there’s some sense of localization.

And yet, as we started out talking an hour ago, for most people on the planet, that’s the entirety of their existence: “That’s me, that’s what I am.” But for someone who has realized the deeper dimension to life, it’s peripheral, it’s floating on the surface, but it doesn’t completely get eradicated.

At least that’s my experience, but my experience may be immature. Maybe at some point my experience will be quite the opposite. I don’t know.

Sundance: Well, rather than have a discussion about the term “ego,” I’d rather frame it in the sense of “suffering.” You know, however we couch these things, or whatever their terms are, if you’re suffering—this is really our own investigation—then whatever is going on in that process is false.

And when I use the term “ego,” I’m really referring to misidentification, and that misidentification causes suffering. So, absent that, I really don’t care about the word “ego” very much.

I mean, to me, it doesn’t have anything to do with this body, whatever you want to call this body, or the world itself, or the fact that we… You know, you can move about the world, you can do everything with the physical body, everything with your emotions, everything with thinking, without thinking. You know, there doesn’t really have to be an image-self there.

You know, like, I look in the mirror in the morning, and then I carry that image around with me all day long. That, to me, is the ego. You know, I’m constantly thinking about myself in the past, I’m thinking about myself in the future, what I’m going to do next, how I’m going to handle the next event.

So the ego is that which takes you out of presence. It’s that which confuses you, or veils your realization of who you are.

Rick: Okay, well, I can understand. If you define “ego” that way, then I can understand why you would say that it’s just unreal.

Sundance: Yeah.

Rick: I tend to use it more in the sense that there’s… even a person who is not in the least bit identified, or trapped, or bound, or overshadowed, there’s still a kind of a kernel of “I-sense.”

It’s not exclusively their sense of “I.” I mean, there’s a much broader, vaster reality to what they know themselves to be, but there’s still sort of a functioning, utilitarian component to the personality structure that is never utterly eradicated.

And it seems that if it were, then it would be difficult to function.

Sundance: You wouldn’t have any world at all.

Rick: Yeah, yeah, right.

Sundance: In my own experience, as long as there is consciousness, there is an “I-sense.”

Rick: There you go, yeah.

Sundance: I mean, it’s that simple. I mean, I have actually seen consciousness arise, come out of nothing. And before the world started, before my body started, before anything started, I saw there was an identity there, but it’s nothing.

But there’s a definite sense of being, but there’s nothing. And then, light, and then body. This can be like waking up in the morning. It can happen, waking up in the morning.

So consciousness brings in the “I am.” Actually, and I can’t speak about this, but I believe that really we are something beyond consciousness, because I’ve seen consciousness arise and I’ve seen it set. So, who has seen that?

But there’s no sense of “I am” in that. There’s no sense of self. So consciousness and self, pure self, pure consciousness, same thing. And that’s “I,” but really, is the “I” the body, or is the “I”…?

At some point, the “I” becomes consciousness, pure consciousness. That’s who you know yourself to be, in the manifest world. In that which is manifesting, “I am” consciousness.

So, it’s very beautiful, actually, to live as that truth, because that big self is quite miraculous, and a lot of fun. And you’re clearly not the doer. “I am” consciousness is not the doer.

See, the doer is the body, the person. “I’m going to do this, I’m going to get this handled.” No, no, no. Give it to consciousness. Let go of the struggle, of that personal struggle, the personal fears. Everything personal, because that’s not truly who you are. It’s not truly who I am. And it’s a graceful life.

Rick: Yeah, that’s good, that’s very well put. It’s a matter of proportion and perspective. Are you the ocean or are you the iceberg? Well, they’re both water. The iceberg just happens to be a little bit more precipitated, and it floats around in a specific place, but the ocean is everywhere.

And maybe all the icebergs are all essentially the same as the ocean, but they each have their own individual expression, but ultimately they’re all ocean.

Sundance: We are. Everything in this world is consciousness. I am consciousness, you are consciousness. Everything is consciousness. And I took that very pragmatically.

And it’s amazing to me that sometimes it doesn’t seem to be able to be seen, but this is very pragmatic. When you wake up in the morning, because we’re already having this discussion, you’ll probably understand what I’m pointing at. Who are you? I mean, does just your body wake up? Does just your thoughts wake up? No! Everything wakes up.

It’s all there. It’s all there. I mean, everything around you is there. And it’s like, why don’t we allow ourselves to be our totality? We’re told some story, some other story, but that’s not actually our experience.

Our experience is that the totality of manifest life is present as us. But of course we have been told a false story, and it’s just to contemplate and investigate. What is the truth? Look within, be honest, take a good look. And we discover truths when we look, and we see for ourselves.

Witnessing and the harmonizing force

Rick: I don’t know if it’s just a matter of what we’ve been told. It’s not like one generation deludes the next, and so on and so on, generation after generation.

It’s more like the mechanics of human experience are such that outer-directed attention results in a focusing down to the point value and a loss of the universal value. And it becomes habitual, it becomes conditioned, and we get locked into it to the point that we can’t just turn around and appreciate the universal value.

And like yourself, there was a process over many years of reversing that conditioning that had become ingrained. Would you agree with that? That’s more of a statement than a question, but it almost sounds like when we say, “We’ve been told,” it’s like there was a sort of diabolical plot to delude us in our infancy, and we perpetuate that through the generations.

Sundance: Yeah, well, it’s just a story. I mean, I could say that the ego is a diabolical plot, but ultimately—and this is honest work—I just don’t like splitting hairs to try to find truth.

And it’s hard for me to do that and come up with anything that makes any sense to me. In a lot of ways, the most powerful teaching that Katie and I do—and we don’t do it, but it happens—is just sitting in silence as consciousness.

And so really, because that’s where everything is really going. It’s going to silence, it’s going to stillness, it’s going to the mountain, the field.

And so a lot of times, things can be said in so many artful ways, but they always seem to be moving in the opposite direction from where I really see the truth. I see the truth moving to stillness and silence and pure awareness, and not really having so much to say about what it’s like or what it is, or how this thing differs from that thing.

It makes for interesting talk, but it doesn’t really speak truly, in my opinion.

Rick: You’re rebelling against your years as a lawyer. Well, just to play devil’s advocate to that, I think there’s truth in what you say. I mean, people can get really caught up in intellectual gymnastics about all this stuff without any kind of correlation in genuine experience. On the other hand, there have been some great teachers throughout history who engaged in vigorous debates, like Shankara, for instance. He would go around India debating all these people, fully established in the experience that he was discussing with them.

But that was just his tendency, his proclivity, his capability, and it was in keeping with the culture. So I’m not a scholar, I’m not an intellectual person, and I don’t have too many advanced degrees or anything like that. But I’m just sort of making the point that I don’t think intellectual discrimination and discussion is necessarily incompatible with presence and being and realization. It’s sometimes painted with that brush, and it’s largely a matter of individual tendencies, and for some people it’s completely inappropriate.

But it’s one of those things, like you said earlier, about formal practices: different strokes for different folks, to each his own. For some people it may work and be appropriate; for others it’s like nonsense, they’re not interested in it. And I kind of respect all the different tendencies that people have. I mean, you go to this Science and Non-Duality Conference in San Rafael and you hear some brilliant minds really discussing this kind of stuff in great detail. And others, they’re very simple; they get up there and maybe start having tears running down their cheeks or something.

Francis Lucille, when he got up to speak, just sat there for 20 minutes. And at the end he said, “Not so much what we say, it’s how much we love that matters.” And he got up out of his chair and left.

Not so much what we say, it’s how much we love that matters.

Sundance: Beautiful. Thank you.

Rick: But if everyone who came to the conference did that, I think nobody would show up again next year. So, you know, different strokes for different folks, sliding the family stone. Yeah, we fit beautifully together, all of us.

Many flowers in the garden, and it wouldn’t be a very pretty garden if all the flowers were exactly the same.

Sundance: Yeah.

Rick: One point I wanted to come back to a little bit was your discussion of witnessing, because you kind of established that as a significant part of the book, and I had gotten that far in the book. Are you suggesting that witnessing is a—here we go again with intellectual nitpicking—are you suggesting that witnessing is something one actually does or practices consciously and intentionally, or is it more like a symptom of a certain state of being where naturally one finds oneself the witness of all that goes on?

Sundance: Well, the way I was taught it, and I actually feel the way it was realized as well, is that it didn’t start with witnessing; it started with self-observation.

Rick: Okay.

Sundance: And I actually learned about that teaching—the source I got it from was Gurdjieff.

Rick: Oh, yeah.

Sundance: And then, instead of calling it witnessing, he called it self-remembering. So, from self-observation to self-remembering. Very early on I took up contemplating that teaching. So in the beginning it might start as self-observation. You basically think you’re a person and you’re just starting to observe yourself. And that’s good, and it bears fruit, and spontaneously it might deepen at some moment where, instead of a person observing yourself, you slip into consciousness and presence. You just slip into it. And see, there are so many words for the same thing.

Rick: Sure, yeah.

Sundance: The point of the word “witness” really is the non-involvement with experience. So you’re not taking sides; you don’t particularly have a point of view, or what they would call a neutral point of view. Sometimes I call it the harmonizing force, and it’s a little controversial nowadays to use the pyramid, but in duality in the mind, you know, you’ve got the base and the polarized forces—active and passive—moving back and forth, yin and yang. And then at the top of the pyramid you have this eagle, this overview.

So the witness is not taking sides with either side of the support structure. It is just viewing impartially what’s going on. So rather than being trapped in the forces of duality, which are opposing and contradicting each other, and also working together, but basically creating the dualities of life—pleasure and pain, desire and fear, stuff like that—the witnessing allows you to be free of them. It’s called the harmonizing force, the peace force.

You can imagine that if you’re trying to create peace and you have two warring entities, this mediator, if he’s willing to hear both sides and to consider both sides as legitimate, and because he has no resistance or bias to either one, is actually taking in the true story, the true picture. So if each of those parties is feeling met, then there might be an equanimity and a balance that results from that consciousness that’s involved in the situation.

And if you recall some period of humanity’s experience—the Dark Ages—where these lower forces were in constant duality and conflict with each other, and the spiritual energy of the witness had not entered into the scene, then the possibilities for harmony and balance and peace in a real way might not have been realized.

And so I think what’s happening in the world now is that this spiritual force, this harmonizing force, this third force beyond the forces of duality, has entered the scene. And to the extent that we access it, it’s bringing that to our own experience, not only on the inside but also reflected on the outside.

Rick: Is it possible to be in tune with this harmonizing force, or to be in this witness consciousness, and yet at the same time take a stand? Because, for instance, in your book, your commentaries about the way our country behaved after 9/11, as contrasted with how we might ideally have behaved, to me kind of implied a progressive liberal perspective, which I share. And yet, is it possible to have a conviction like that and, at the same time, on a deeper level, perhaps be impartial, universal in one’s perspective?

I believe so. I mean, I believe we’re at that point right now, where as many of us as possible, as many parts of consciousness as possible, can get together and be present, and not be coming from the polarized forces of desire and fear warring with each other. I think that we could have an influence, and that we can make appropriate decisions.

Sundance: I believe so. I mean, I believe we’re at that point right now, where as many of us as possible, as many parts of consciousness as possible, can get together and be present, and not be coming from the polarized forces of desire and fear warring with each other. I think that we could have an influence, and that we can make appropriate decisions.

I won’t say what any specific decision would be, but certainly not reacting to a negative situation with more negativity. Some of these things are just common sense; they’re not high spiritual principles. Obviously, the public is being completely manipulated to a very ignorant point of view, and is under the sway of very dangerous beliefs. And hopefully, if that goes too far, obviously it gets very, very bad, which is what’s happening now.

And then, out of that suffering, we finally have had enough, and we are looking for a new way. And many times in the past, that new way was not really a new way; it was just a change. In other words, I’ll throw you in with throwing some more despots, and the whole thing turns into a mess about 20 years later. But now, it’s really, really, really serious, because there’s a lot of—and again, this is kind of a metaphorical story of what happens on the inside with all of us waking up. The two go together.

✨ Awakening in the world

Rick: It’s all one. And, yeah, I believe that people will be looking to presence for the next decisions that are made in this world. I hope that is the case. It is present, and that’s what your show is about. And there are many, many others in the world right now. It’s very active, as we sit here.

Yeah, I think you’re right, and you made an interesting point there, which is that there’s a lot of change now on the outside. People are waking up, people are not passively accepting stuff that is really unacceptable by any decent standards. And the correlation to that is this epidemic of spiritual awakening that seems to be taking place. I think the two are very much intertwined, and we’re all playing different roles, some of us more political and activist, and some of us more quiet, perhaps. Again, different flowers in the garden; we all have our individual roles to play. But it’s heartening; it gives one hope.

Sundance: Yes, it definitely is happening. We’re bringing light. Light is being brought into the situation, so really what’s happening is that the false is being exposed collectively. There are enormous falsehoods. There is an enormous disillusionment going on collectively, worldwide. And that collective disillusionment is changing the whole paradigm of what their beliefs were.

You know, they thought the world was operating a certain way, and when you actually do find out what the real depth of it is, what the real story is, it’s just totally, completely nothing like what we’ve assumed. And this is even true for me. In the last couple of years, as the collective story has been revealed to this consciousness, it’s like, “Are you kidding me?” I mean, I knew things were wrong. I knew that the world was definitely insane, but actually what the real story is is just so mind-blowingly different from what we’ve been told.

When people wake up to it, it’s going to shake us all collectively, but it’s also going to shake our insides, because even your inner story will no longer make sense. Once the outer story is completely destroyed, it will shake you all through your foundations, inside and out.

And so I think at that point, I hope it’s a turning to the heart, a turning to love, and that it’s seen from the witness point of view that we are one being, one consciousness. And I have often said that there will be one job in the future. You know, I didn’t think it would happen in my lifetime, but it just might, it just might. And that would be service, service to others—only one job.

And you may, it doesn’t matter, you’ll be doing all kinds of different things, but the attitude—

Rick: The spirit.

Sundance: And the understanding, or as Shinyana used to say, “The inner standing will be totally here in the heart.”

Rick: Yeah, like you might be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a teacher, or a bus driver, or whatever, but it’s where you’re doing it from.

Sundance: Everything will change, though. There will be plenty of money, there will be plenty of abundance, there will be no poverty; none of that stuff will exist. It’s only existed because of the lack of spiritual energy, the lack of witnessing force. It’s only come about in inattention, no presence.

See, things are sneaking up on us and using us, and we gave our power away. But you know, you can reclaim your power by being who you really are, being the witness, being present, because really, what can happen to you when you’re present? Who can sneak up on you and make you do something silly, or say something silly, or hurt someone? Or go off to war—“Here, you’re present, go off to war, go fight this war.” I mean, hopefully we have enough of a charge and a presence here that this may be a beautiful beginning.

Rick: I’m glad you got onto this topic. You get really animated when you begin talking on this theme, and I appreciate it; it’s good. I was on a boat ride one time with Maharishi, and people were talking about what he called the “phase transition.” This was in 1975, this huge change that he saw coming, and many people were even then talking about it.

And people said, “Well, how can we survive it? It sounds like it could be really cataclysmic.” And he said, “Well, hang on to yourself, hold on to yourself, that’s all you need to do.”

Rick: And I think that’s so true now. Those are very important words: Be your truth. Be super. Let that bring you into, as Eckhart used to say, intense presence when the going gets very dicey. And then, you know how it is when disaster happens, how people come together naturally?

Yeah, like earthquakes or tornadoes or whatever.

Sundance: Unbelievable, unbelievable how much our hearts open up, how much our eyesight opens up.

Rick: Yeah, even a snowstorm. Here in Iowa, you have a big snowstorm, and everybody’s out helping shovel each other’s driveways, feeling all this neighborliness—people you haven’t talked to since last winter.

Sundance: Yeah, but I’m hopeful that we’re going to get to the… There are two cruxes to the problem. One is inner and the other one is outer. In a sense, they’re both the same, and it is the ego: the ego inside, and then the ego outside.

We need to get to that ego, and we need to say, “Your time is over. This is completely false. I’m done with you. I have realized who I am now, and you no longer have any power over my life. In fact, I recognize you. I am looking at you. I am watching you.” Yeah, it’s like Anonymous, except we forgive, because there’s nothing to forgive once you realize. Everything is fine.

Your time is over. This is completely false. I’m done with you.

Rick: Yeah, that’s great. I remember back in the ’60s or early ’70s, when all the protests and riots and whatnot were taking place on the college campuses. I was in college, and I was already meditating at that point, and I felt like, “Okay, well, I’m making my contribution. I feel like these guys are just getting too carried away without referring back to the foundation, without the… There’s too much ego involved, not enough self-referral.”

Nowadays I look back and I think, “Well, if it weren’t for their efforts, the Vietnam War might have lasted a lot longer than it did.” People need to do stuff on the outer level as well. You can’t just sit around and meditate and expect the world to change.

I think that there’s a kind of balance, and perhaps those who have been primarily inward-oriented could actually benefit from being a little bit more engaged outwardly, and vice versa. Occupy people and all have to remember that there’s a deeper dimension to this that’s really motivating this awakening, and stay true to that in order to stay on track.

Sundance: Yeah, I mean, it’s all one. It’s one big, huge manifestation, and no part in that manifestation is unimportant. It’s all connected. Separation is a notion that has no existence in reality. So whether we know it or not, we are all rowing the ship together.

I honestly think we are living in an amazing time where we are going to see a paradigm shift globally, and very, very different from the past, like the French Revolution or the American Revolution, where basically the same forces remained.

A new force is entering here, and it is this consciousness, it is this witnessing, it is the awareness of a higher truth that is already present, does not need to be established. It’s just waiting to be felt and to be seen and to be lived and to be realized.

And it’s happened, and that’s what… It’s been growing and growing and growing and growing, and we always wondered if it was going to grow fast enough before the manifestation decided to take a turn for the worse. But, yeah, I don’t know if I would say hopeful for me, as much as I would say I’m kind of excited and kind of enthused by it.

Rick: Yeah, me too.

Sundance: And I don’t see any real disaster, not from the point of view of who you really are. There is nothing under threat, but how do we live here? How do we enjoy this time? How do we spend this now together?

I’d like to be with you, and I’d like to be with people like you, and I have compassion for when I see them suffering, even when you’re loving them. And the more the love grows, the more they’re surrounded by it. We can have a really, really sweet life, I hope.

Rick: Yeah, it’s very inspiring to hear you say that. At one point I got goosebumps when you were saying that. It kind of ramped up my inspiration level for this whole thing. So, you know, it’s beautiful.

I’d actually like to recommend a book in addition to your book. There’s a friend of mine named Robert Cox who, about 20 years ago, wrote this book called The Pillar of Celestial Fire and the Lost Science of the Ancient Seers. In it he talked about—and what you were saying reminded me of it—subtle energy and how it’s this subtle force that causes spiritual evolution, enlivens the physiology, and so on.

He actually goes into great detail, but he said that there’s this procession of the equinoxes, which happens on a cycle of 26,000 years, and we’re approaching the point at which a huge influx of subtle energy will come, kind of awash, bombarding the Earth from the center of the galaxy. That’s why we’re experiencing this quickening in consciousness around the world.

Anyway, I don’t want to dwell on that, but the thought of the book came to mind, and I think a lot of listeners might enjoy it.

Sundance: Nice.

Books, presence, and closing thoughts

Rick: Yeah, Robert Cox is the guy’s name. So anyway, we probably should wrap it up. We’ve been going for almost two hours. There are probably a million beautiful little nuggets in your book that we could go off on discussions about and talk for another two hours, but out of mercy for our listeners, we can conclude.

Is there anything that has been in the back of your mind that you feel like we ought to have touched on that we haven’t?

Sundance: Well, just because you were mentioning the book, the only thing I’ll say about Free Spirit and also Katie’s book, Awake Joy, is that they were written in presence—in presence.

More than the ideas that are in them, the real value in those books is that they contain that energy of presence and help everyone resonate with it, because that’s just what the book is. It has that frequency in it.

So beyond the actual directions and statements and words, there is a flow, and I think that’s the real value of the book. And I think that’s the real value of any true spiritual teaching: not what they say, but to be the realization that you’re trying to communicate, so that it’s not trying to communicate; it is an actual offering.

Rick: I got that feeling while reading your books, both of them. They kind of settle you down because of the energy, the level from which they were written.

I actually was on a spiritual retreat a couple of weeks ago with Sharon Landrith, and had Katie’s book with me and got quite a lot of reading time in on the retreat, so that was a nice combination. I kind of came back here and hit the ground running again, so I didn’t have quite as much time to read your book, but it’s very enjoyable, what I’ve read of it so far.

Sundance: Thank you.

Rick: How did you get the name “Sundance”?

Sundance: I don’t know. I mean, it came from a cat. You have cats.

Rick: I have a cat right here. She often sits on my lap while I’m doing these interviews.

What’s her name?

Sundance: Leela.

Rick: Oh, nice, which means “play” in Sanskrit.

Sundance: Yeah, yeah, I know the word.

Rick: And we have a couple of dogs too.

Sundance: Yeah, I just don’t know how I got it, actually. I mean, I had a cat—we had two cats that we picked up at Lake Quinault. They were wild and they were living at a lodge, and they needed a home. Their names were Sundance and Moonbeam.

When we brought them home with us, Sundance, in a day or two, was gone—either eaten by something or just took off.

Rick: So you took his name?

Sundance: Go figure, you know.

Rick: When I was a kid, there were two cats living across the street named Sunbeam and Moonbeam. Very close.

Sundance: Yeah, yeah.

Rick: Anyway, that’s a nice name. So thank you, Sundance. This has been enjoyable, and I really hope I’ll run into you one of these days and give you a big hug. I’m sure we will.

Sundance: Can I give a little schedule? Very small.

Rick: Yes, please, go ahead.

Sundance: We’re going to be somewhere near you.

Rick: And keep in mind that people might be watching this two years from now, or ten years from now, so let’s give a date and time.

Sundance: So let’s go to our website. If you want to see our schedule, my website is www.sundanceberk.org, and our schedule is posted there—Katie’s and my schedule.

In general, in June we’re going to be in North Carolina and…

Rick: Washington, D.C.

Sundance: Washington, D.C., and then back to North Carolina for the wonderful gathering, and we’ve decided to do that.

So thank you for sharing with me and being present with me. I enjoyed it very much.

Rick: Me too. We’ll do it again sometime.

So let me make a couple of concluding remarks. You’ve been watching an interview that is part of an ongoing series called Buddha at the Gas Pump, and all of these interviews can be found archived at www.batgap.com—B-A-T-G-A-P—which is an acronym for “Buddha at the Gas Pump.”

If you’d like to be notified every time a new one is made available, you can subscribe to the email notification there, or you can subscribe on YouTube, and YouTube will tell you when new ones come up, although I’m having a little problem with YouTube at the moment, and I won’t go into that.

There’s also an audio podcast that you can subscribe to with Apple’s iTunes, and there’s a link to that from the website. There’s also a fairly lively discussion group—two discussion groups, actually. There’s one on www.batgap.com that crops up around every interview, and then there’s also a Yahoo group called “Buddha at the Gas Pump,” which is a little bit lesser known, but there are some pretty good discussions there sometimes.

You’ll find a link to that on www.batgap.com also. Thank you very much. Thank you, Sundance.

Sundance: Bye-bye, Rick.

Rick: Bye-bye, and thank you to those who have been listening or watching. We will see you next time.