Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening people. I’ve done about 560 something of them now. If this is new to you and you haven’t seen any of these and you’d like to check out previous ones, please go to www.batgap.com and look under the past interviews menu. Also if you feel like subscribing to the YouTube channel, you’ll get a notification every time a new interview is posted. And I think once you hit the “Subscribe” button, there’s a little bell that pops up, and if you hit the bell, then they really notify you of everything. I think they even notify you when I start one of the live streams. You get a little email, or some message pops up, so you can watch the live streams that Way, if you want to. This program is made possible through the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. So, if you appreciate it and would like to help support it, there’s a PayPal button on every page of the site. And if you don’t like PayPal, which some people don’t, there’s a page explaining other ways to do it. My guest today is Terry Stevens. Welcome Terry.
Terrence: Hello Rick.
Rick: Good to see you. I’ve actually been seeing you for a few minutes, but good to see you formally now. Terry is an Australian-born teacher and guide of non-duality. Like us all, Terry had his own personal backstory, a “me,” which included sexual abuse as a child, living in a dysfunctional and broken family, followed by drug addiction, divorce, depression, and anxiety, with suicidal thoughts. Cheerful introduction there, Terry.
Terrence: [Laughing] It’s just the story.
Rick: Yeah. He’s also been a student and chief instructor in the art of Kung Fu for most of his life. So, was all that broken home and drug addiction stuff going on alongside of Kung Fu or did somehow the Kung… I should think the Kung Fu would have helped to clear all that up.
Terrence: I left home at 13. So there was no longer any dysfunction going on because I left home.
Rick: I see. But then the drug addiction and the depression and all that, Kung Fu didn’t clear that up a bit?
Terrence: No, it came later.
Rick: Oh, okay. Just curious.
Terrence: Yeah.
Rick: Yeah. All right. So you’ve been a professional singer, songwriter, musician… Do you still do that or just something you did at some point?
Terrence: No. Something I did at some point, yeah.
Rick: Okay And has also run several successful companies as a director. Director means like a CEO or something, is that what that means?
Terrence: Directors usually are associated with being an owner of a company.
Rick: An owner, okay. I complimented Terry before we started on his artistic sensitivity. I was saying, if I were single and living alone, I would never have all this cool artwork on the wall and everything’s so neat and tidy, and I I don’t even think I’d make the bed. [both laugh] I always tell my wife, “Why make it? We’re just going to sleep in it again tonight.” [laughter] Anyway, a little bit of frivolity here. So, during Terry’s journey, he consulted various psychologists and therapists and pursued a variety of spiritual paths and self help groups. Nothing seemed to relieve the deep-seated experience of separation and isolation. Then one day in 1986, he chanced – that’s quite a while back – he chanced to meet Sailor Bob Adamson who had settled in Melbourne, following his 12 months with Nisargadatta Maharaj in Bombay. I’m surprised that Nisargadatta let him stay that long. I heard he usually kicked people out after a week or two or something, but he managed to stay a whole year, huh?
Terrence: On and off, yeah.
Rick: Yeah, maybe way back then, it wasn’t so mobbed and he let people stay around longer.
Terrence: Don’t know. Yeah.
Rick: Yeah. So, anyway, here Terry gained an intellectual understanding of non-duality. However, it was many years later that his sense of self, “me,” finally collapsed. What resulted was no more searching, no wanting, and no desires, and a state of being carefree. It was in this state of collapse that his true nature was revealed, awakening from the dreamed fictitious, personal character. Since then Terry has been pointing the way, profoundly direct yet delivered with compassion, warmth and fun.” Okay.
Terrence: Let’s hope so.
Rick: Pardon?
Terrence: [laughing] Let’s hope so. Let’s hope it’s fun.
Rick: Let’s hope so, yeah. Well, so far so good. And I’ve listened to quite a few hours of your recordings and you always seem pretty compassionate, warm and fun. So –
Terrence: Good.
Rick: I think you’re walking your talk. So there’s various ways we could start and, as I told you before, we’ve started recording, I’ve brushed up on my Nisargadatta and jotted down about four pages worth of notes, little quotes from him, commentaries and stuff. And to what extent do you – here’s a question that pops to mind – to what extent do you feel that what you teach is a replica, or a mirror, of what Sailor Bob has been teaching, and in the same vein, to what extent do you feel that Sailor Bob’s teaching is a replica, or a mirror, of the way Nisargadatta taught? Or have you each put your own spin on it?
Terrence: It comes out of, I mean, if you look at all three, it gets expressed out of all three differently. What it’s pointing to is the same. Primarily, Nisargadatta took the line of Neti-Neti. So it was… See, I don’t profess to be a teacher. Bob wouldn’t profess to be a teacher either. So, well, this is… it’s actually, it’s an un-learning. I don’t teach anything, you know? There’s no knowledge, I have no knowledge to give anybody. It’s literally an unlearning. So the process is coming to see and experience the absence of the personal self.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: So that’s got to be challenged, you know? And most paths are about the personal self, trying to acquire, trying to get, trying to improve, constantly trying to reach out.
Rick: Um hmm.
Terrence: Whilst that’s happening, the personal self is, you know, quite strong and still believed to be there. So, this is really, it’s about a deconstruction as opposed to a getting.
Rick: Yeah. Now, you were a musician, and I imagine that you would say that as a musician, your musical abilities could be improved through practice and stuff. How do you distinguish that from trying to improve a personal self?
Terrence: It’s just an idea. All of it is literally just an idea. Whilst there’s the belief that we’re operating from a personal self, then yes, we believe that if I do A, B, and C, I, “me”, is going to improve. where the reality is everything is literally just happening spontaneously, happening, whether it be practice or not. It’s only when “mind” steps in and claims ownership of the doing that problems arise. And the reality is, [chuckles] when you really look, there is no doer.
Rick: I’m going to be a little bit playing devil’s advocate with you, but I think we’ll come to a common understanding. So, to my understanding, the most eminent Advaita sages always taught that, you know, they said what you just said. But on a pragmatic or relative level of phenomena, the personal consciousness and its behaviors and the conditioned “free will” were regarded as experientially or empirically real. And there’s a concept in Vaita Vedanta which treats this, or which deals with this, it’s called “Vyavaharika Satyam.” And what it means is, it means “transactional reality.” And the example often used is that of pots in a room, clay pots. You go in to the room and you could say there are no pots here, there’s only clay, And you would be right, but only in a sort of absolute sense. In a relative sense, there are still pots in the room, even though they’re only clay, and they function as pots and can be used for practical purposes. So, in an absolute sense, you can say there’s no personal self, but in a relative sense, there is a sort of a – well, we’ll get into this more – but I would conjecture, I would posit that there is a personal consciousness that still functions as a faculty, just as the senses function as a faculty, or the voice or other such things. Do you agree or disagree with that?
Terrence: Personal consciousness?
Rick: Well, I’ll have to elaborate on what we mean by that.
Terrence: Yeah, totally disagree. Look, what happens, Rick, is there’s a doing. There are thoughts that still happen. There are decisions that seem to arise and then there’s a doing from those decisions that may arise in the mind. All of that still happens as it always did, but the trick is seeing that it’s not me that’s making the decisions or doing the thinking or applying any action. Actions will still happen. Thoughts will still arise. Decisions will still seem to be made, but there’s no personal self there doing any of that.
Rick: Well, again I’m going to keep playing devil’s advocate here, but to my understanding, I have some quotes here, Nisargadatta like Ramana Maharshi, like Nagarjuna, like the Buddha and many other sages clearly taught that one cannot deny, ignore, or neglect this personal consciousness realm of pragmatic, experiencing behavior. There’s another term in Vedanta called “Lesha-Vidya,” which means “faint remains of ignorance.” And Nisargadatta said, “My world is just like yours. I see, I hear, I feel, I think, I speak, and I act in a world I perceive, just like you. But with you, it is all. With me, it is almost nothing.” And the word “Lesha-Vidya” actually means “faint remains of ignorance.” So there’s just this faint remains, but that’s what makes life possible to live. Without that remains, we wouldn’t be able to function whatsoever. What do you say to that?
Terrence: Okay, so…[laughs] What do I say to that? Okay. Even post – let’s look at that. Even post
Rick: Post?
Terrence: Awakening.
Rick: Post awakening, okay.
Terrence: Post Awakening. There are still thoughts. There is still a seeming location. Yeah? I can’t, all of a sudden, pop into your body and look out of your eyes and see me.
Rick: If you stub your toe, you feel the pain, I don’t.
Terrence: Correct, correct. It’s like, it’s discerning the difference between consciousness and awareness, really. In the realm of consciousness, in the terms of this seeming personal identity, that is being intimated, that is still there, even after post-awakening, that all – how do I put that – Duality, if you like – is a product of consciousness.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: So it’s like being conscious of… yeah…? It’s even being conscious of experiencing a beautiful sunset or a beautiful sky, yeah? Now, awareness is just a complete absence of absence. It’s just absolutely still and absolutely quiet, if you like. No mind occurs, no thoughts occur, so the idea of even being conscious-of doesn’t arise.
Rick: So, you could say it’s a, yeah – I noticed that distinction as I was brushing up on my Nisargadatta. He does distinguish between consciousness and awareness. Awareness is a much more absolute, unmanifest level, you could say. Perhaps, I think you may – I don’t know if you use the term “para-brahman” or maybe not – but it does sound to be a much more impersonal, fundamental, primordial kind of level of being, whereas consciousness has more of a flavor of –
Terrence: Yeah.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: Without consciousness, there’s no experience.
Rick: Right, right.
Terrence: Zero, zero experience.
Rick: Yeah. Here’s another quote that might be helpful. Well, Ferranti often used the phrases “clarity and charity” or “charity and kindness,” and he spoke about love a lot. So, he was, you know, definitely not into some kind of nihilistic, aloof, apathetic, depersonalized kind of scene, which is what sometimes people who get into neo-Advaita get caught in. But here’s a nice quote. He said, “The person, the ‘I am this body, this mind, this chain of memories, this bundle of desires and fears,’ that disappears. But what you may call ‘identity,’ that remains. It enables me to become a person when required. Love creates its own necessities, even of becoming a person.”
Terrence: State of consciousness.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: That is the state of consciousness. What underlies all of it – and it’s extraordinarily difficult for “mind,” and I’m talking about dualistic mind, to get a handle on it – but what underlies everything is love.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: It absolutely is love, you know? You could call it, one of the essential properties, if I can go as, if I can be as bold as to say that, of the absolute is the love to be. That’s the primary love. That’s the first initial pulse, if you like. Don’t ask me why [chuckles]. It just is, you know? So that’s the first initial pulse and we can experience that, Rick. If I was to ask you, or anybody for that matter, what’s your primary love? What would you say? What is your primary love?
Rick: I think the first thing I’d say is I don’t quite understand the question and I’m not sure what you’re asking actually.
Terrence: Okay, what do you love most?
Rick: Chocolate ice cream?
Terrence: [laughing] We will throw something up.
Rick: Yeah, well I’m just joking around. But –
Terrence: Yeah. Most people, if they have kids –
Rick: They say they love my kids, yeah.
Terrence: My children, that’s my primary love. That’s what I love most, you know. That’s what they believe,
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: is that they love their kids most. Now, I sometimes use this, I’ve got to change it, but anyway. If I challenge that and I say, “Okay, go and stand up against that wall, with your back against the wall, and the person gets up and they stand there with their back against the wall, and I walk over to them and I put my hands around their throat and I start squeezing, and I squeeze and I squeeze and I squeeze and I squeeze, until they can’t breathe, then they start to panic, and then, what would occur, is a fight to survive, a fight To Be, literally TO BE. The thought of their kids disappears man, like that’s not the primary love. The primary love is literally to Be, and all human beings experience that.
Rick: I think I would have kneed you in the groin before it got to the point where I couldn’t breathe. [laughter]
Terrence: Exactly.
Rick: Well you know the old Zen story, right, of the master takes the disciple to the river and pushes his head underwater and he’s about to drown and finally lets him breathe and he said, “You know, you’ve got to want God as much as you wanted to breathe there.” Right? You’ve heard that, everybody’s heard that story.
Terrence: [smiling] Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s the primary, that’s the first primary pulse and with that, what gets born, if you like, is consciousness and what arises, what seemingly arises in consciousness is duality. But the reality is, the reason I said “seemingly arises,” is duality is absolutely nothing but a product of mind. Absolutely nothing but a product of mind. It’s mind, because mind operates dualistically. And in the absence of mind altogether, when the mind goes completely quiet and still and there is absolutely no thoughts, zero thoughts, what happens to duality then?
Rick: Just sort of resolves into oneness.
Terrence: Yeah.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: So duality is nothing but a product of mind.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: And then the mind creates a pseudo person, yeah? And if you really, really look at that, I often say, you know, if I use the word “teach,” it’s the wrong word. But…
Rick: We know what you mean.
Terrence: Yeah. See I’m trying –
Rick: You’re just demonstrating no mind right now, right?
Terrence: Yeah, actually. [laughs] Beautiful. Beautiful.
Rick: There are two thoughts that came to mind when you said that about the mind sort of gives rise to duality. I don’t mean to throw around so many Sanskrit phrases, but there’s another one which is “pragya paradh.”
Terrence: I won’t know them by the way.
Rick: Well, I’ll explain them. Pragya paradh means, what it means is “the mistake of the intellect.” And it’s just what you’re referring to. The saying is that there’s some kind of fundamental core mistake that the intellect makes which gives rise to the whole perception of duality and multiplicity from the essential oneness and that enlightenment is a matter of reversing that mistake or correcting that mistake. But there’s another thought which comes to mind which is that, I often think that if duality is a product of mind, it’s got to be a product of cosmic mind or some kind of universal mind, because otherwise, we wouldn’t have intersubjective agreement, you know? I’d see a stop sign and you’d see an ostrich and somebody else would see nothing. There’s a, sort of, an intersubjective agreement about what is around us in the world and f one person gets down to the level of transcendence and unity and there’s no world anymore, that doesn’t happen for everybody else. And in fact, the world has been developing for billions of years before there were any minds around to perceive it. So, what do you think about that? Or both those points?
Terrence: [Laughter] I love your questions. I’ve always loved your questions, by the way.
Rick: Thanks.
Terrence: I think that, I think the real question there is “What is it that is responsible for thought?” Yeah? Is it me? Okay that can be clearly looked at, and you would say, “No,” because if I was responsible for thought, I don’t know about you, Rick, but I’d just turn it off and go fishing for a week, Rick.
Rick: But then you’d have to think, “Okay, I gotta get this worm and put it on the hook, and I think I’ll cast it over there. That looks like a good spot.”
Terrence: Would you? Would you, though? That’s an assumption.
Rick: Okay, well, what would happen, actually?
Terrence: Everything would just happen. Everything would just happen, even if there was, like… Very, very, very little thought, Rick, is needed to function.
Rick: I agree with that.
Terrence: Very little thought.
Rick: Maybe not none, but very little.
Terrence: Yep, yep. Everything literally, when you truly see, is just occurring, is just happening. Me, I’ll step in a split second later and claim ownership of all the doing and so on, but it is literally just happening. It is all just happening. Getting back to duality and the idea of a “Me” being created. What is that “Me?” What is it? We’re told to go looking for it. What is it? Where is it? Where does it reside? Does it have a center? Does it have a flavor? Does it have boundaries? We’re literally asked to go looking for it. A really, really easy way to see what that seeming Me actually is, if I had the capacity now, Rick, to reach into the screen and touch you on your shoulder – I don’t, but if I did, and the moment that I did that, I created absolute, total, personal amnesia in you. Your name’s gone. Your history’s gone. All of your history is completely gone. Yeah? Who would you be then? Where does the Me go in the absence of that history? What’s left? Literally, like, you don’t disappear. In the absence of the story, you don’t disappear.
Rick: Well, even now, without you touching me on the shoulder, I don’t define myself in terms of my history. You know, one time I was sitting in front of a, I was sitting in this room that is sometimes used as a dance studio and it was a… lunch was being served there and I was sitting at a table chatting with somebody and I happened to look in the mirrors that line the wall, you know how they put mirrors up in dance studios. And I saw myself sitting talking to this guy and it’s like struck me. I thought, “Wow, you know, that’s how people see me? This little guy that,” you know, because that’s definitely not my perception, if you will, of what I am.
Terrence: So, what would you define yourself as?
Rick: When I’m asked that question, it’s like there’s this, and I want to get into this with you, there’s this sort of paradoxical, in fact, Ms. Sargadatta said something about how the ability to incorporate paradox and ambiguity is a good sign if it’s developed in a person, but I would say that I’m nowhere, I’m everywhere, and I’m right here. somehow those three paradoxically opposite things are completely harmonized in my experience. Does that make sense?
Terrence: It totally does. Beautifully put, actually. So, given that you know that, what is the personal Me?
Rick: I think you could say, you know, that it’s like the old wave on the ocean analogy. it’s nothing but water, but it still has an appearance as a wave and it functions as a wave. If somebody calls my name, I respond. If I stub my toe, it’s felt here as we were saying earlier. But there’s also very much the freedom, you could say, of the experience that I’m not isolated to this six-foot frame, you know? And that if it dies, it’s not going to be the end of what I am because how could that die?
Terrence: So you said that it appears as a wave.
Rick: Yeah, you could say that.
Terrence: I understand what you mean by that. Where does it actually appear?
Rick: In relative creation, you could say. There’s a, go ahead, you might want to respond to that before I carry on.
Terrence: Yeah, the personal sense of Me. Where does that appear?
Rick: ; Maybe you’re asking in my own experience, where does it appear?
Terrence: Well, perhaps yours. I mean, this can apply to anybody that’s listening. Where, where… [laughs] Look, you know, we often paint these metaphors, you know, it’s “What I am is a wave” and “I’m no thing and I’m nothing,” and “I’m everything and I’m everywhere,” and “I have no location,” and so on and so forth. Yep, okay, good enough. And what’s the personal Me? What is that? And where?
Rick: Well, let’s let, let’s let, let’s let Nisargadatta answer it. Hediscusses our situation as involving three levels of identity. Personal ego consciousness, egoless universal consciousness or knowingness involved in the worlds of experience, and then transcendent worldless no-knowing absolute awareness or unmanifest reality. And so, I tend to have this multi-dimensional view of it.
Terrence: Beautiful.
Rick: And none of the dimensions negate or obviate the others.
Terrence: Hmm. So, what you just described then was awareness, consciousness, and the supposed person.
Rick: Yeah, I think so.
Terrence: The three.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: Yeah. So, we need to identify what is this personal self? What is that? What is that. What I experienced, Rick, was I had – what I thought at the time – was a profound intellectual understanding of non-duality. But the truth was, if I was to be really honest with myself, the truth was, “Me still feels like I’m here. Personal Me still feels like I’m here,” yeah? Even with this profound – what I thought was profound -intellectual understanding of non-duality, yeah? It’s that, that Me-still-feels-like-I’m-here that needs to be looked at. What is that? What’s actually occurring? Because there’s something occurring there. What is it that’s actually occurring that gives this sense of Me, the personal, individual, separate, isolated person that still feels like it’s here? There’s something that’s actually occurring there.
Rick: Yeah, well, it might be what I was saying before about… I mean, well it depends on how predominant it is, don’t you think? I mean, for some people that’s the whole show, this sense of me and there’s no other dimensionality to their experience. Others open up to something deeper. Now, are you saying that you can function without any semblance of any personal self whatsoever?
Terrence: [chuckles] There is no personal self. So yes. There is no personal self. And I know you hate hearing that. [laughs] And I know a lot of people – because it sounds like a bypass – but let me explain.
Rick: Yeah, yeah, please.
Terrence: Okay. So, why is it that with all this knowledge and all this understanding, I still feel like I’m here? I remember experiencing that, and not seeing how profound that statement was, “I still feel like I’m here.” I don’t know where else I expected to find myself by the way, right, other than here? But what dawned on me at the time was, the reason that Me feels like it’s absolutely here was really, really, really simple. It was just a thought or mind that claims ownership of this presence, this consciousness. He claims ownership of it, which gives rise to the mind believing that the Me is [loses earpiece, continues] the Me, is this consciousness, awareness. Now, that being the case, right, if that’s what’s happening, then you’d have to ask yourself, What can a thought experience? What can a thought actually experience? Can it experience water, heat, fire? What can it experience? If you really look, you will discover a thought doesn’t and can’t actually experience anything. It’s just a narrator. It just tells a story about stuff. It describes, it literally just describes things all the time. So this notion of Me, which is nothing but thoughts, it’s just nothing but a pattern of thoughts that arises in the mind. Another way of saying it is, what Me is, is mind that we have no control over, that that’s just chatting away, that that’s the seeker, that’s seeking, that that’s asking questions, all of it arises in the mind. All of it. So if you understand that a thought doesn’t and can’t actually experience anything, what’s it basing its story on? What’s it basing its narrative about the world and about personal self and so on and so forth? What’s it basing that on?
Rick: Well, a thought is an experience itself. So I don’t know how an experience could experience an experience. It’s sort of, it’s the object of experience, it’s not the experiencer.
Terrence: There’s no one experiencing the thought. What we’re trying to do, okay, all I’m trying to do at the moment is point out how the mind operates, where the Me comes from, how it seems to come into existence, and then why this seeking continues. With all this knowledge, with all this understanding, there’s still a seeking that’s happening. The reason the seeking is happening is because mind literally cannot experience this.
Rick: Who’s seeking is happening for whom?
Terrence: Mind.
Rick: Everybody’s mind? You mean all eight billion of us are seeking is happening? Is that what you’re saying?
Terrence: If seeking is occurring, yes. In others, there is no seeking that is occurring.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: And some there is seeking that is occurring. Now the point there is, what is it that’s responsible for those thoughts? What is it that is responsible for those seeking thoughts? What’s responsible for that?
Rick: I would say that it’s the natural tendency of the mind to seek a field of greater happiness. And that’s what’s also responsible for the very evolution of the universe, actually.
Terrence: But it doesn’t know happiness, Rick.
Rick: But it’s seeking, you know.
Terrence: Without, without power,
Rick: Yeah, and usually in most people’s cases, it’s seeking externally, this car, this person, this money, whatever.
Terrence: The mind is seeking a concept of what it believes happiness to be.
Rick: Right. And in most cases, it gets disappointed because the things it goes after are transitory and not that fulfilling anyway, so it keeps seeking.
Terrence: Yeah. So, let’s – if we take it back. If indeed there is only the Absolute, if indeed there is only One, then surely that One or that Absolute is responsible for everything, including every single solitary thought that arises in a person.
Rick: So the Absolute is doing stuff. It’s creating thoughts, it’s…
Terrence: It’s the pulse. It’s the pulse.
Rick: It has an active, functional role, you’re saying.
Terrence: Yeah, of course. Seemingly. [Laughter]
Rick: Seemingly, yeah.
Terrence: Seemingly. Yeah, it’s… look, Rick, at the end of the day, it’s all a dream. At the end of the day, yeah, everything that arises in a person’s mind, the seeming-person is not responsible for that, and what also arises in the mind is the seeming- person.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: So, we think that it’s me that’s going to find enlightenment. It’s me that’s going to wake up from the dream. Indeed, what happens is you wake up to the dream, not from it. There’s a huge, huge difference between both those points. So the question then must arise, who or what is it then that awakens? What is it that awakens? If there’s no personal self there, if there is no Me there, what is it that awakens? And from what?
Rick: Well, you know, I mean people have been pondering this question for thousands of years and the traditional answer, if we refer to the Bhagavad Gita for instance, is that the self realizes the self by the self, by itself. It’s not some person who realizes it, which is an absurdity if you consider what the person “it” supposedly is and what the self is. It’s kind of like, I don’t know, pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps or something.[laughter] You know, the self wakes up to itself. And one way of looking at it is the person finally gets out of the way to the extent that the self is no longer occluded by sensory inputs and so on. Kind of like, you could say, if the sun is overshadowed by clouds and then, the sun never, was never actually overshadowed. It’s shining brightly, whether there’s clouds or not, but from the dualistic perspective, it seems to be overshadowed by the clouds. When the clouds finally dissipate, I don’t know, the analogies have their limitations, but “Oh, I’ve always been, this has always been the case. I just thought there was this overshadowing, but that in itself was an illusion.”
Terrence: Yeah, yeah. Another way of perhaps looking at this is there’s one primal doer.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: And I’m not talking about a god when I say that, that’s sitting back pulling the strings and deciding what’s going to happen before it happens and structuring things and so on.
Rick: Right, that would be dualistic.
Terrence: Yeah.
Rick: A puppeteer that’s removed from it all, you know?
Terrence: Yeah. Correct. The intelligence is so magnificent that what is actually happening is just bursting into existence right now.
Rick: Yeah, yeah.
Terrence: Like, the intelligence, oh my God! Like…. what’s…. like… which brings us to time. Is there such a thing as time? Is there such a thing as time?
Rick: We could say it’s a concept that we use to measure eternity.
Terrence: It’s totally a concept, because in our absolute direct experience, where’s time? In our direct experience.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: And also, you know, I sometimes say, archaeologists will find dinosaur bones and they go, “Oh, these are 260 million year old dinosaur bones. Wow, check this out!” No. Those dinosaur bones are bursting into existence right now. They’re brand new and fresh right now.
Rick: Yeah, okay, I’m going to call you on this one. They are, and I agree. And I marvel at this all the time. I go walking in the woods every day, as I told you, and I just appreciate the spontaneous bursting forth of creativity that’s in every leaf and every bug and every pebble. And, you know… But in a relative sense – and we can refer to the relative sense, as long as we do so in a conditional way, not an absolute way –
Terrence: Well, it implies time. It implies time.
Rick: It implies time.
Terrence: Straight away, it will imply time, but there isn’t any time.
Rick: Well, look at it from Einstein’s perspective. Okay, we look at the Andromeda Galaxy, it has taken, what is it, 2 million years for the light to arrive to us from the Andromeda galaxy.
Terrence: Interesting concept.
Rick: From a human perspective. Now, look at it from the perspective of a photon, which is what the light is that’s coming from the Andromeda galaxy. It’s traveling at the speed of light. And at the speed of light, time has completely collapsed. The photon is here instantaneously, if you could ride on the photon, so to speak. And it seems to me that space also collapses, if time collapses. So -and he figured that all out mathematically and unfolded it beautifully.
Terrence: Yeah, and is any of it actually true? In the relative sense, we go, “Yeah, yeah, that makes sense and that’s true and we can measure it,” and so on and so forth. But when you step out of that, then what? And all I’m saying is, when you step out of mind, then what is experienced?
Rick: Nothing, I would say. If there’s no mind functioning whatsoever, how could there be experience?
Terrence: Hmm. Maybe there is.
Rick: Is there? What? Like what? Give me an example.
Terrence: There’s still experiencing happening all the time.
Rick: Through what?
Terrence: Just…
Rick: Well, right now you and I are having experience, we’re talking to each other. We’re using our eyes and ears primarily, where eyes and ears are being used to register sight and sound, right? And are you seeing? It’s just eyes and ears all by themselves doing this?
Terrence: Don’t need mind. Sorry, you don’t, you don’t, you don’t, the experience is not-
Rick: I think we better define mind.
Terrence: Okay, okay. When I say mind, I’m not talking about Universal Mind. I’m talking about personal mind.
Rick: Individual mind.
Terrence: Individual mind, yeah? It’s not needed.
Rick: And what if it were there? I mean, are you saying nobody uses mind or just an enlightened person doesn’t?
Terrence: Nobody uses mind. There’s nobody there to use it.
Rick: So there’s no such thing as mind then, you’re saying?
Terrence: Correct.
Rick: Okay, then what is mind? How are you defining it?
Terrence: It’s purely an appearance.
Rick: And why is the mind an appearance but the visual input is not an appearance? Or is that an appearance too?
Terrence: That’s also an appearance.
Rick: So everything is an appearance?
Terrence: Of course it is, yeah.
Rick: Okay, so nothing exists, everything is an appearance.
Terrence: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, not “nothing exists.”
Rick: Okay.
Terrence: No, absolutely not “nothing exists.” No thing exists, this nothing that people refer to, is everything.
Rick: Yeah, okay.
Terrence: There’s no such thing as nothing. It’s just so ridiculous.
Rick: So your shirt, you have a red shirt on, does it exist?
Terrence: Yeah.
Rick: Okay.
Terrence: But only as far as mind is concerned. In the absence of mind, is there a red shirt?
Rick: Okay, so then we must both have a mind because we both see a red shirt.
Terrence: Yeah, that’s the consciousness part. That’s the consciousness part.
Rick: You just said there was no mind.
Terrence: That’s the, there appears to be. That’s consciousness. The appearance of. In the awareness, there is no appearance of. Until consciousness arrives, which is, if you like, the self-conscious part of the Absolute. It’s the Absolute that’s experiencing everything, not a person. The person is a dreamed-up character that arises in the mind of the seeming person or the seeming individual. That needs to be seen. That literally needs to be seen.
Rick: And you’re saying that, okay, so you’re boiling everything down to its essence and saying that all of everything, the whole universe, red shirts and all, are just an appearance that is nothing other than the absolute interacting with itself or something and giving rise to appearances which ultimately have no reality. Am I putting words in your mouth or are those?
Terrence: No, you’re not. There is only one reality. So, to say that there’s no reality is still incorrect, but we’re trying to now –
Rick: No, I didn’t say no reality, no relative reality, that all relative realities are just appearances –
Terrence: Correct.
Rick: – which have no ultimate substance or no ultimate reality.
Terrence: Yeah, I stand corrected. That’s right.
Rick: Ah, okay.
Terrence: That’s right. It all arises in mind. And when I say that, I’m talking about the seeming-person. It all arises in the seeming-person’s mind. Now, that’s a contradiction in terms because there’s no person there that has a mind, all right, like that’s the point that I was giving you earlier, Rick, you know, when total amnesia is experienced, where does the personal person go?
Rick: How about when death is experienced, where does the personal person go?
Terrence: What’s that, death?
Rick: Well, you know, let’s say your body dies. What happens?
Terrence: Personal-person dissolves. Personal-person is nothing but a product of mind. So, it’s not –
Rick: So, you would not agree with the notion of reincarnation, I suppose?
Terrence: Of course not. Yeah.
Rick: I totally do. Want to argue about that?
Terrence: Anytime you like.
Rick: This is a good time.[laughter] >> Yeah, yeah. Incarnation, absolutely. Reincarnation, no. >> Yeah. Here’s the deal.
Terrence: Yeah.
Rick: I agree with, I kind of agree with everything you’re saying, but we’re just taking, we put different spins on it.
Terrence: What do you mean?
Rick: I am still an adherent to this multi-dimensional thing. Even if the relative dimensions are just transactional reality and not ultimately real, like the pots are really only clay. But in a relative sense, they have a relative existence. And that’s where the word “Leishavidya” comes in in Vedanta or “Vyavaharka Satyam” comes in in Vedanta and that’s why, perhaps Nisargadatta said, “What you call identity remains. It enables me to become a person when required.” So, and here’s another example. You could say on one level that nothing ever existed. I just recently took a course from Swami Sarvapriyananda of the Vedanta Society on the Mandukya Upanishad, Gaudapada’s commentary on it, and he argues very convincingly, Gaudapada does, that creation never happened. The whole sense of there being any creation whatsoever is a mistake of the intellect, nothing ever happened. But then finally, at the end of the whole thing, he said, “but you actually have to make a concession with relativity in order to live,” and we do make a concession with relativity whenever we do anything. You can’t… If you just absolved into the Absolute with nothing but that, there would be no living. So – and that’s true on one level. There is no universe, nothing ever happened. On a more manifest level, you could say it’s all God, it’s all divine, everything is perfect, all is well and wisely put. No one is doing anything, it’s all the divine play. On a more manifest level, you could say there are starving children in Africa, there’s a pandemic going on, there’s relative problems. You can’t just dismiss them as illusory and ignore them, something should be done about them. So, there’s this kind of three-level, there actually are Sanskrit names for these levels, this is traditional knowledge. There’s this three-level thing and so I’m just suggesting that enlightenment or awakening is more of a multi-dimensional arrangement in which you acknowledge the relative unreality of these more manifest levels, and so you can truthfully say that “nothing ever happened,” but you’ve somehow learned to play the play. As Rupert Spier always says, “The guy who plays King Lear in the play, he knows he’s not King Lear, but he’s playing that part for the sake of the play.”
Terrence: The part is being played, it’s not a person playing the part.
Rick: You could say that.
Terrence: There’s no person playing the part. The part is being played. When somebody says, “Terry, Terrance,” I still turn.
Rick: Yeah, sure.
Terrence: I still walk out my front door and say, “Oh there’s my car over there. Yeah, that’s across the road.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: Oh yep, it’s still there.
Rick: If you drive at 100 miles an hour, the cop pulls you over, you don’t say, “Oh, sorry, I wasn’t doing this. There’s nobody driving this car.” You’ll get hauled off to something worse than jail. [laughter]
Terrence: Wouldn’t it be great if we could say that in court and get away with it? [laughter] Yeah, so…
Rick: I’m talking more than I usually talk, but I have a feeling that we’re, you know…
Terrence: No, I like it. I like it actually. It’s good. We’re actually engaged. It’s good.
Rick: My wife is out of the room, otherwise she’d be handing me notes saying, “You’re talking too much.”
Terrence: Would she? [laughter] Yeah, look. That stemmed from reincarnation.
Rick: Okay, I got something for you.
Terrence: It stemmed from reincarnation and um…
Rick: Let’s come back to that, the reincarnation thing.
Terrence: All right.
Rick: I want to throw in one other thing at you, which is, I quote the Gita a lot because I like the Gita. I’ve read it a lot of times. There’s a whole section of verses of the Gita where it says just what you’ve been saying. It says, “You do not act at all.” It’s the gunas of nature doing the action or God’s doing the action or something rather, but it’s, you do not sit, you do not stand, you do not walk, you do not talk, and that this is the perspective of a realized person that “I am. I do not act at all.” But then in other verses in the same book, maybe even the same chapter, Christian’s saying to Arjuna, “Get off your butt,” you know, “you have something you need to do here.” And, “You have control over action alone, never over its fruits.” And so, I think this just kind of speaks to, again, different – go ahead.
Terrence: Yeah. We think Arjuna is speaking to a a person. If there is no person, what’s being spoken to? Let me give you an example, Rick. Let’s just say, you and I are in the same room and you’re asleep.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: You’re laying on the couch.
Rick: You’re not going to strangle me, are you?
Terrence: No. [laughing]
Rick: That was earlier.
Terrence: No, I promise. [laughing]
Rick: I’m not scared.
Terrence: You’re asleep on the couch –
Rick: Right.
Terrence: – and I’m awake. I happen to just be sitting there in the room reading a book or whatever, but I’m awake. And you’re clearly asleep and I start to see you thrashing around.
Rick: Having a dream or something.
Terrence: Having not a good Dream –
Rick: Right.
Terrence: – because you’re thrashing around, you’re screaming out and it sounds like there’s terror in your voice and so on. Now I could do one or two things. I could just go, “Ah, doesn’t matter. It’s just a dream. He’ll eventually wake up from it, won’t matter, yeah? Because as soon as he wakes up from it, he’ll realize it was a dream and it’s gone, yeah?” Or I could go over and gently start whispering in your ear, “Rick, Rick, Rick, Rick, wake up, bud. You’re having a dream. Rick, wake up.” Yeah? Who am I speaking to? Am I speaking to the dream-character in the dream?
Rick: Actually, I think you’re speaking to something more fundamental than the dream character.
Terrence: Absolutely.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: Which is –
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: – which is what this teaching is about. We’re not, you know… Bob’s got a beautiful way of putting it, yeah? He says, “I’m not speaking to any mind, I’m not speaking to any body. I’m speaking to that I am that I Am.” Yeah? So we’re getting, you know, I engage with people. Yeah?
Rick: So he’s speaking to it, and therefore, and he is that, so therefore it’s speaking to itself.
Terrence: Correct.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: And hearing itself.
Rick: Right.
Terrence: And speaking to itself.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: Yeah? So, if you go back to that dream analogy that I just used, let’s also just assume that in the dream, the dream character in the dream, now let’s keep in mind your body’s just lying on the sofa, asleep, right? But in the dream…
Rick: I’m being chased by a lion or something.
Terrence: No, no. Rick’s off doing this satsang and that satsang and doing this course and that teacher and reading this book and accumulating all this knowledge about spirituality, about awakening, about reincarnation, whatever it is, yeah? Accumulating all this stuff in the dream. Then you wake up. So the dreamed character is the seeker, is the supposed-seeker. On awakening, on awakening, all of that stuff that that dreamed character was doing to get a result vanishes. Absolutely seen for what it was, a dream, dream-character, oh-my-God. And nothing in that dream ever actually happened. Nothing, none of it, ever actually happened. Okay, so the so-called waking dream, the exact same thing is happening. So when I’m communicating, I’m not talking to the seeming-person. Why would I waste my time? It’s a dream. Why would I waste my time? So when I’m whispering in your ear when you’re asleep, I’m not trying to wake up the dream character in the dream. I’m trying to wake up who you are, who you actually are, yeah? In your direct experience. Because upon awakening, the dream is seen for what it is.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: A dream. And all the angst and pain and suffering and anxiety and all that stuff that seekers go through dissolves when you wake up on the sofa, I’m talking about. When you wake up. Oh, pfft.
Rick: And Nisargadatta was really good at that. He said, here’s a quote, he said, “My guru told me that I am Parabrahman and nothing else. I have accepted that with great conviction, and therefore whatever other things appear seem to me palpably false. If the Guru’s words are accepted with total conviction, our entire destiny, our entire life will be transformed.”
Terrence: Yeah. Everything, everything changes. And yet, nothing does. [Laughter] Like the dream character is seen for what it is or was. It’s literal, it was literally a dreamed character, literally. And there’s no dreamer here dreaming the dreamed character. The so-called dreamer here is the dream character. Yeah?
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: Which brings me back to what I was saying to you earlier. Okay, so what’s responsible for the dream? ‘Cause it seems to be a dream happening. There seems to be thoughts happening. There seems to be a thought that arises here as a personal self, “I am,” and I’m still seeking, and I’m still searching, and I’m still inquiring. Even that statement is not coming from a person. [laughing] Why would that be any different, that statement for any of the other thoughts that arise in mind? It just happens.
Rick: Yeah. But traditionally, teachers have made statements like that and then in the next breath, they have reminded students that they have responsibility for their actions, their karmic consequences for doing things or not doing things that the absolute reality does not negate or obviate relative considerations.
Terrence: Concessions seem to happen.
Rick: ; Yeah.
Terrence: Concessions seem to happen.
Rick: And they have to, for the sake of practical living.
Terrence: Yeah.
Rick: And you’re probably aware that some neo-Advaita folks have actually used this absolute view as a cop out for doing all kinds of reprehensible things and saying, “Well, it’s all a dream,” and “Oh, there is no doer,” and you know, that kind of stuff. So that kind of teaching can be misused.
Terrence: I totally agree. “There’s no me so I can do anything.”
Rick: Yeah. I can sleep with all these women or rip off this money or whatever.
Terrence: And who would be doing that?
Rick: Right, no doer.
Terrence: No, it would still be the Me.
Rick: Yeah, you’re right, it would be, but sometimes this has been used as an alibi for…
Terrence: Yeah, when, look, when people, yeah, when people just have an intellectual understanding of it, yeah. Absolutely. A direct, a direct understanding, you can’t hurt others. You are others. You’d have to be a masochist, and I don’t believe that the Absolute is a masochist.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: Yeah. You can’t. It’s love. You can’t, you can’t harm others. You can’t.
Rick: That’s a very good point.
Terrence: It’s not possible. Yeah, like you asked before, “Who am I?” Or how do you – I forget how you put it, but I was reminded of Jesus saying, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” And the only way to really do that is to, ultimately, is to realize that the neighbor is yourself.
Terrence: Yeah.
Rick: And then there’s going to be this as much love for them as you would have for your supposed self.
Terrence: Then there is just love.
Rick: Yeah, you wouldn’t hurt them any more than you would stab your own hand or something.
Terrence: Then there is just love. Yeah. But there’s a big difference, Rick, between that kind of love and the love that we think we experience as a personal person.
Rick: Right. No, agreed.
Terrence: The personal love that the personal person believes it’s experiencing is always conditional. It’s always conditional. The absolute love is absolutely non-conditional. Now, how does a mind get its head around that? A personal mind I’m talking about. It’s like trying to get its head around infinity. It’s like trying to get its head around “there’s no such thing as time.”
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: Because it operates dualistically, it can’t. Because mind operates dualistically, it literally can’t. It’s got to be a beginning and an end in terms of infinity. The mind will say it can’t.
Rick: There does? Are you saying there has to be, infinity has to have a beginning and end?
Terrence: In terms of mind, yeah. It can’t fathom no beginning and no end.
Rick: I see, I see. Yeah.
Terrence: Because it operates dualistically. Same with love. Love is conditional. I’ll love you if.
Rick: Right. If you’re nice to me.
Terrence: Yeah, of course. But if you don’t, blah, blah, blah.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: You know, it’s like, yeah. So this love that I’m talking about is not split. It’s not dualistic. Therefore, it’s unconditional.
Rick: Yeah, there was this woman named Eddie Hillison who was in a concentration camp in Poland, I believe, and she, later, at some point, somehow her writings got out. I don’t know if she died in the camp or not, but she was definitely in some very, awakened state and she could not not love her persecutors. It was just not within her capacity. It was very inspiring for some of the other inmates in the concentration camp.
Terrence: Yep.
Rick: But that, you know, it’s rare but it’s possible.
Terrence: Totally. You know, I’d hate to imagine, I could only imagine, how many so-called “human beings” there are walking around on the planet that are awake and no one knows about it.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: They don’t even know about it.
Rick: Could be.
Terrence: Could be, like we don’t know, you know.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: I’ve heard stories like that myself Rick, but in terms of what I constantly try and do is bring people back to their absolute direct experience right here, right now.
Rick: Yeah that’s a good thing to do.
Terrence: Okay, so in that, I attempt to get people to experience, if you like, their own sense of consciousness. I sometimes throw in the word “awareness” too. I probably shouldn’t, you know, but let’s just say their own sense of consciousness or their own sense of being. People have difficulty with that. A lot of people have difficulty with that. But those that don’t, that are able to realize that they are the “aware-ing,” I often refer to it as the “inging,” you know? (pause) If I can get a person, (seeming person) there, and ask them this really direct question, providing there’s a direct experience of consciousness. Usually when I… The first thing that usually happens, when a person arrives there, “mind” stops. There’s no thought. It’s like a pause that occurs, yeah? Then I ask them the question, in that experience, “Is it divided?” “Is it split?” “Is it divided?” And in one’s direct experience of that, Rick, you discover it is not divided, it is not two, it is not split, it is not dualistic.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: So at best, I try and point to, or get somebody to, arrive there and experience that, and have them realize it’s not split, it’s not divided, it’s not dualistic in their direct experience. Now, it can be difficult, because most people – when I try and take them there – will take the stance “Yes, I’m aware of,” “Yes, I’m conscious of” and I say “No, no, no, no, it’s closer than that. It’s much, much closer.” I’m not talking about being aware of, not talking about being conscious of, I’m talking about Being, Consciousness and Awareness Itself and the direct experience of that. And in the direct experience of that, everything goes quiet. There’s an absence of Me. There’s an absence, which really is just an absence of thought, literally. So mind goes quiet, yeah? And then question that. “Is it divided?” I’ll go, “No.” “Is it split?” I’ll go, “No.” I’ll go, “Great. What’s the name of this teaching?” I’ll go, “Uh, non-duality.” There it is, you’ve arrived. [laughter] And then the mind will kick in again, right? But at least it’s giving them a path, it’s a way home.
Rick: A glimpse.
Terrence: It’s a way home, yeah?
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: And it’s, it becomes, then, a direct experience and all the lights go on.
Rick: Yeah, and as you know, it can take a while for it to become an abiding direct experience as it did with you, as it did with Nisargadatta, for that matter. You know, it took him about three years or so.
Terrence: Well, it was different for me, Rick. I had an intellectual understanding of this for years, decades in fact, yep?
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: And I got to the point of hating the intellectual understanding. I got to the point of even telling myself, “This non-duality stuff, what a crock of shit.”
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: I did, yeah. And I kind of wiped out everything with that.
Rick: Is this when you were already with Bob or before Bob?
Terrence: This was in between Bob. So I met Bob around the age of 25, 26 years of age. Then, around about ‘89, ‘90, something like that. I went my own way. Just went off into life and was living life. Wasn’t teaching, wasn’t doing anything. But, had awakening occurred in that period of time that I spent with Bob? No. I thought it had. I thought it had, yeah? And then off I went into the world and over a couple of decades, I just suffered. What happened was the sense of me, the idea of me, came back slowly. Ever so, I was so slow I didn’t notice it really happening, you know, and then I just started experiencing a lot of internal suffering. I still had enough sense to know this is all just mind stuff. None of it’s real.
Rick: Yeah, but that idea didn’t save you from the suffering.
Terrence: It did not save me –
Rick: No.
Terrence: – from the suffering at all.
Rick: Right.
Terrence: In fact, it made it worse.
Rick: Which is a good thing to emphasize because, you and I are banding about a bunch of ideas here, “Maybe it’s this way” and “Maybe it’s that way,” but all of this is words and talk and ultimately it has to be rooted in very deep, direct experience.
Terrence: Yeah.
Rick: Living reality.
Terrence: Yeah. so I reached a point, everything around me seemed to start collapsing. Got divorced. Family disowned me. I had a son that disowned me. And it’s because I reached such a state of bleakness, I guess you’d call it, just dark. I was just so sucked in to self, you know? I was absolutely not available for anybody. I would try and act like I was, but the truth is I wasn’t, you know? And why was I acting like I was? Well, part of me would say “Because it’s the right thing to do,” and another part of me would say “It’s because I want them to love me,” you know? So, you know, in the end, everything just completely, completely collapsed and I found myself purely absolutely alone. And I mean that literally. Alone. I didn’t feel like there was anybody I could go to. I’d seen therapists and psychologists and stuff, and I’d have a few sessions with them and I’d just go, “Oh my God, they’re in a story themselves, like what?” And then, eventually, I was sitting at home and in absolute desperation, and this is somebody – this came out of the mouth of somebody that had no belief whatsoever in an interventionist God, no, no belief, right? But out of pure desperation, what came out of my mouth (and I remember saying it vocally), I remember sitting there just so desperate, just so… Anyway, what came out of my mouth was either “Take me” or “Save me, but for God’s sake, don’t leave me sitting here like this.” “Either wake me up or kill me. Please don’t leave me sitting here like this.” And I sat there, my eyes were closed and sat there for a moment, and I kind of, you know…
Rick: Any thunderbolts coming?
Terrence: laughing] Nothing happened. Not a thing happened, right? So what happened? I was left sitting here like this. But that was like my… Of all the things that I would have thrown out there to try and save me, I wouldn’t have thought that would have been the last thing. Because I had, you know, “Interventionist God is absurd.” And I still know that that’s not true, but that’s what came out. And in that – that was amazing. I shared it with Bob later, he kind of corrected me on it, which was great – In that, all of a sudden, (and it happened suddenly) all of a sudden, everything went quiet. Yeah? What do I mean by “Everything went quiet?”
Terrence: Mind went quiet. What arose was, “You know what? I just don’t care anymore. It’s okay. As everything is, it’s okay. I don’t care anymore because it’s clear I can’t do anything. No matter how hard I try, no matter what I do,” you know? I sometimes refer to that as a complete and absolute surrender that occurred. And it just happened. It literally just happened. I threw out this thing, this seeming prayer, and everything went quiet. And the seeking, the fighting, the wanting was over. It was literally over. Then I experienced just absolute silence and absolute no thoughts. Zero was going on. And for whatever reason, it stayed that way for just shy of three months. Just nothing going on. I pulled up a chair, put it on my front veranda. I just remember sitting on the chair, my front veranda, and all I did was just look at the sky. No anchor points, just a sky, you know what I mean? And every now and then clouds would go by, but there was no attachment-to. It was just vastness. It was kind of –
Rick: Kind of reminds me of Eckhart Tolle’s Awakening. Have you ever read his book?
Terrence: No, I haven’t, no.
Rick: Yeah, he was at his wits end and he just said, I don’t know, he might have been suicidal, but he said, “I can’t live with myself anymore.” And he said, “Wait a minute, are there two of me? Who is this self with whom I can’t live?” [Terry nods his head] And then he went to bed and he woke up in the morning and the world was different. It was just totally different. And for a couple of years, he basically sat on a park bench and looked at the squirrels, you know? [Terry nods his head, smiling] And then eventually he got things going again. But yeah, there’s definitely a phenomenon or a syndrome or whatever of reaching the end of your rope and getting to the point where you realize deeply, viscerally that you are not able to do it and there’s a kind of surrender that happens there and that can facilitate a really deep shift.
Terrence: Yeah. And you know, one of the points of suffering, prior to that, was the understanding “I can’t get this, I can’t do this,” yeah? If it’s going to happen, it’s just going to happen, yeah? So then what I did, with that understanding, I took the stance, “Okay, I’m just going to wait. Oh my God, there’s still a me there waiting,” right? But oh my God, I waited for years, Rick. Years and years, and I just felt like I was a dry leaf being kind of blown around in the wind and that was kind of representing my life. Never knowing where I was gonna end up or what was going to happen you know. But then getting back to post, everything went quiet. It was like there was… And even talking about this, I talk about it in hindsight because in that (I’m going to call it three-month period) in that three-month period, there’s nothing happening. So around about that three-month period, what I noticed was “mind” started to stir again. It literally just started to stir. And I remember I kind of looked over to the right and I saw this tree that had obviously been there for like 30 years because of the size of it. And I remember the gaze just, mind started to spin. I remember looking over to this tree, which I passed and walked under, I don’t know, a few thousand times, and I remember looking over at this tree and seeing it for the first time. I mean that literally, seeing it for the first time. Prior to that I always saw the tree through the mind.
Rick: Right, now you’re seeing it.
Terrence: No, it was literally just, there was just seeing, yeah? Of the tree-ing, if you like, yeah? And I remember looking over to the left, I remember looking, there’s a hedge. I looked at that and just the detail and the exquisiteness of everything
Terrence: and even my concrete driveway, I looked at that and that blew me away.
Rick: Yeah, yeah.
Terrence: Then I looked out onto the road there’s a black bitumen road there and I went, “Ahh!” Everything just kind of, [laughter] everything just opened up and I don’t know how. It’s like all of the senses all opened up at the same time and everything was being experienced at the same time. If you try and do that with a “me,” what it will do is it will shift from one sense to the other and then the rate on the sense, seeing or hearing or tasting or touching, you know? That’s the, that’s that experience of being, of being blown open, if you like. All of the senses become active all at the one time and are all being experienced at the one time, at the same time. And then, gradually the mind started to stir, and it started to stir, you know? I was able to start planning things, but that was just happening. I didn’t ask the mind to start stirring, it just started to stir.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: And with that, with certain thoughts…
Rick: And that wasn’t the problem, right? It didn’t suck you back into your previous state or anything.
Terrence: It was not a problem because there was the absence of the personal-me thoughts.
Rick: Right.
Terrence: That disappeared.
Rick: So you just acknowledge that you do have a mind, but it’s just, it doesn’t define you or confine you the way it used to.
Terrence: Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, all right. [both laughing] I’ll let you have that one.
Rick: Yeah. [both laughing]
Rick: It’s a function. It’s a tool. It’s like breathing, or it’s just one of our faculties.
Terrence: It’s the sixth sense.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: It’s seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling, thinking. And the sixth sense is the creative sense. It creates. Look how amazing it creates.
Rick: Sure. You know, the whole Vedic tradition has this all broken down. There’s intellect, “buddhi,” there’s “manas,” mind, there are the “indriyas,” which are the senses, and there’s this whole hierarchy of functions within the individual structure.
Terrence: Hm mmmm. [nodding] And then, of course, the Atman or the universal consciousness underlying them all. And they all just, they can function together in a harmonious whole. Realization of the Atman doesn’t obliterate the other functions by any means.
Terrence: Yeah.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: Then I, then what occurred was amazing. [laughs] Keep in mind that, prior to this, prior to that three-month stint or prior to me throwing out that nonsensical prayer, prior to that, my mind was taken up with 99%, probably 100% “me-thoughts.”
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: It was all about me. [both laughing] And then, if you can imagine that completely stopping the space, in mind if you like, the space. Then there were a ton of thoughts that came in, almost like it was being downloaded. And what came up, the underlying theme of it was, “Oh my God, this is so simple. This is so incredibly simple.” How we miss it is staggering. It’s staggering how we miss this. And so what kept coming up for me was, “There’s got to be a better way of communicating this.” “There’s got to be a better way of communicating this.” And then with that came all these pointers and you know, just kind of all… So that was the only thinking that was going on and it was literally like it was being downloaded.
Rick: That is so cool. I really love that story.
Terrence: And then I
Rick: And then – oh, yeah, keep going, Sorry.
Terrence: I haven’t seen Bob for 20 years. And the thought came to mind, “Oh, I’ll go and hop in on one of Bob’s groups. I haven’t seen him for 20 years.” You know what I mean?
Rick: Is he in Melbourne or where is he?
Terrence: Yeah, he’s only about 10 k’s from where I live, six-odd miles from where I live. So that came to mind, you know? And then, interestingly enough, the next thing that came to mind was… I think in what blurb you read out, Rick, at the beginning, it highlighted one of the facts that I was sexually abused when I was a kid. And up until I’m sitting on my front veranda, up until then, the inner dialogue that was going on was I was a victim of that. And there was a perpetrator. But I’d had, you can imagine Rick, I’d had lots of counselling around it and trying to resolve it, put it all in perspective, you know? Stop blaming myself, all that stuff, which was nice. But the truth of the matter is, it didn’t seem to matter how much counselling I had. When sometimes a thought would arise in my mind, if I saw this guy walking down the street, yeah? And I went, “It doesn’t matter what amount of counseling you get, I’m not over it.”
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: It’s not resolved. I would want to beat him up. I was only like Then the most remarkable thing happened. He came to mind, and for the first time in my life, what I experienced was, “Oh my God, I wonder what he’s been living with all this time. I wonder, if at any point, he’s had this fear of me one day turning up on his front door and knocking on his door and standing there with a shotgun or whatever and blowing him away, whatever, right? So for the first time I experienced absence of me. I was okay. All of a sudden, I’m okay. But he came to mind, and probably because he was a part of my profound inner dialogue for a long time, since I was 12 years old, that in a way shaped my “me.” So that was quite a profound thing. Next thing you know… I was observing all this happening, right? Next thing you know, I tracked him down. I worked out where he lived and then I found myself getting in the car and starting the car and driving off there, and I pull up out the front and –
Rick: Get out the shotgun and
Terrence: [laughing] No.
Rick: I’m just kidding. [laughs]
Terrence: I know, I know. Walk up to the front door, knock on the door. Lo and behold, the door opens and there he is. Now, remember, that was a long, long, long time ago. So he had no idea who I was. I was a 12-year-old the last time he saw me, so now I’m an adult. And I very, very, very gently, I found that I was just very, very gently introducing myself but trying to gently ease into his memory, just named a few things that you were once a manager of, blah, and you also did blah. Then all of a sudden, and I won’t go into the dialogue that I had, but all of a sudden, it dawned on him who I was.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: And I saw absolute terror arise in this person. You know, he was, I would say, pushing 80 years of age –
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: – by the time I’m standing there, as an adult. And I just saw him shudder and I just saw all the fear, you know? And then the next thing that occurred was, “Ah, there it is.” That’s what he’s been experiencing all this time.
Rick: Yeah. Yeah.
Terrence: Like, “There it is,” you know? So I just very gently and very lovingly assured him I’m totally okay. I’m absolutely, because I was.
Rick: Yeah, you were in good shape.
Terrence: Self-split, right? And I was just very, very loving and very kind and I wanted him to be okay.
Rick: Yeah, you wanted to like him and let him, yeah.
Terrence: I just wanted him to be okay, and to do that, he needed to see I was okay.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: There’s no grudges and said look you won’t see me again and I hope you have a wonderful life, said all human beings make mistakes, it’s okay.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: It’s okay, you know, I’m telling you I’m okay. And he didn’t say anything, he was just like a deer caught in the headlights you know?
Rick: You may not have been the only person he did this to.
Terrence: I was, according to the police, I was the only person he did this to.
Rick: Oh, okay.
Terrence: Well, nobody else had come forward anyway.
Rick: I see.
Terrence: So.
Rick: When did you come forward? When you were 12 or?
Terrence: No, no, no, not until I was in my mid-30s did I come forward.
Rick: I see, yeah.
Terrence: And the police did a check and there was no one else that had come forward.
Rick: Right.
Terrence: Who knows? I don’t know. It wasn’t about that anymore.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: Then I said what I said and I was warm and kind and then I turned to walk away, so I had my back to him. And then this really beautiful, soft voice (and I barely heard it but I heard it) he said “I’m sorry.” I just turned and looked back and I lit up you know?
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: Like “It’s okay, let it go, I’m okay, look, I mean look, okay?” And then, with that, I turned and and walked off and got in my car. And that was kind of like the only thing that seemed to be needed to be handled from my past story, if you like. Everything else was, I didn’t have to do anything or say anything, even with family. Family members, I just needed to show up. I just needed to turn up and they just saw this massive transformation. That was good enough for them. [laughs]
Rick: Yeah, that’s really sweet. That’s a great story.
Terrence: Yeah, then I got to Bob. I hadn’t seen him for 20 years and I went through and told him what happened. He said – I said to him “I just reached a point where I don’t care anymore,” and he said, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, let’s rephrase that.” He said, “You reached a point of becoming carefree.” And I went, “Yup. That’s a much better way of putting it.” [laughs]
Rick: Yeah. Which is what happened. Because you were not doing the not-caring, it was just care had been lifted from you.
Terrence: Yeah.
Rick: Yeah. It wasn’t something you did really.
Terrence: No, it just happened. Yeah, like when I – saying “I don’t care” kind of implies the person that’s made a decision, “I’m not going to care anymore.”
Rick: Right.
Terrence: And that’s not what it was.
Rick: Right.
Terrence: But I didn’t know how to verbalize it until Bob corrected me on it. I went, “Yes, that’s it!”
Rick: That’s great.
Terrence: Free, just free. I don’t know why I went into all that story, but anyway I went into that.
Rick: Well, it’s a great story. I’m glad you did. It got me to shut up for a while [laughs] and I think it was really inspiring actually. Yeah, I mean people like these awakening stories. Not that it’s going to be the same for anybody else, although there are certain similarities that come up again and again. And one of those similarities is, again, reaching the end of the road, reaching the point at which, like bottoming out is a word, you know? Reaching the point of, “Help me God, I can’t take another breath without some kind of breakthrough.”
Terrence: It seems to be that that is very common.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: Even with people that I work with. The people that I really sit up and pay attention to are the ones that are saying, “I’m fucked.”
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: Excuse my French, but just ones that are saying they’re at their wits end.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: They’re the ones that, for whatever reason, energy comes up. I get energized and I seem to go right there with them. People that I’m dealing with that are, you know, “Yeah. I’ve been into non-duality for a long time.” Their life seems to be kind of okay, there’s less of a tendency for – I still communicate – but that urgency if you like, that, “Oh,” to really, really go there with them is not so strong. And I trust that. It’s just what it is, you know?
Rick: Yeah. Yeah.
Terrence: Yeah.
Rick: Let see, a couple of people have sent in questions. Let me ask these.
Terrence: Yeah.
Rick: One is from Tanya Williams, whom I think you’ve spoken with because I’m listening to your recordings and there was a woman with a very strong New Zealand accent.
Terrence: Yep. Yep.
Rick: So, here’s, let me put my glasses on so I can read this better. “How do you know, once and for all, that you are not an illusory me? Doubts that there is no me,” in other words, she doubts about that, “are appearing, although I cannot find a me.” So, she can’t find it, but she doubts that there isn’t one. “There is an expectation that something will happen and then I will know the me has definitely dropped. Are doubts about there being a me resolved by abiding as I/Awareness?”
Terrence: Everything is resolved right there. Everything. [Chuckles] You know, I sometimes use the expression, Rick, “If God comes knocking, you better be home.”
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: Yep. Or another way of putting that, “If awakening is going to occur, you better be present. You better be here in whatever form, in a form that’s destroyed, but just be here.” So, that that the mind wants questions to, that that the mind wants to know, or that that the me has questions to, or that that the me wants to know, gets answered and resolved right here. It just comes in, like I was saying before, when I said all that stuff that’s kind of downloaded, everything gets resolved. The knowing of the truth gets resolved and understood as a result of sitting here in the seeming nothing-going-on. Mind hates that. [laughs] It hates that. But in the seeming nothing-happening in your absolute own direct experience of just abiding here, that here-ness if you like, (oh God this is a concept, anyway) that here-ness, if you like, opens up like a flower. It opens, it opens, it opens, it opens, it opens, it opens. And everything gets resolved.
Rick: You know, one question that comes up to me, with regard to Tanya’s question is that, like I said earlier, Nisargadatta says, in his own experience, “What you may call identity remains. It enables me to become a person, when required. Love creates its own necessities, even in becoming a person.” And maybe Tanya, and people like Tanya, are kind of expecting to be devoid of any sense of personhood or identity whatsoever, and since they still feel a sense of identity, as Nisargadatta said he did, they think that “I’m not getting it. There’s something wrong here because I still have this sense of identity.” And again, to my understanding, it’s a matter of proportion. There’s always going to be some remnant of sense of identity in order to be able to function. But, unlike most people in the world for whom that sense of identity is the all and all of their existence and they’re not aware of anything else, for you it’s like the tip of the iceberg and there’s a lot more iceberg that you are appreciating and aware of that is much more. So it’s just like we were saying earlier, kind of a faculty now instead of the entirety of what you think yourself to be.
Terrence: Yeah. Yeah, so the seeming identity that seemingly remains is just a thought pattern.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: It’s not a person. It’s not an entity. It’s not a person.
Rick: Right, it’s a faint remains. You know, in Vedanta they use the example of let’s say you’re holding a big ball of butter in your hand and it’s this greasy big ball of butter and then you throw it off. So you’re basically rid of the butter, but there’s sort of a greasy surface remaining on your palm.
Terrence: Yeah, but you know, with absolute knowing that it’s not a person.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: It’s not a thing. It’s not an entity. Has no location as such. It just arises, like it always did, by the way. It always did. That’s what always happened.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: But a much, much, much, much bigger story.
Rick: Sure, it used to be the big predominant elephant in the room.
Terrence: Yeah.
Rick: Now it’s just a little mouse.
Terrence: Yeah, yeah. And often I find myself just sitting in my backyard, that’s one of my favorite places to be and I just, I just kind of, I can pull up a chair and just sit there with nothing occurring, and before I know it four or five hours have gone by.
Rick: Wow.
Terrence: Then the mind might start to stir.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: It might, you know.
Rick: I’m hungry. I need to pee, whatever, you know, something.
Terrence: Cup of coffee would be good. [laughs] And then I just start to stir again, you know? Bob used to talk about that, you know? He used to say, again, you know, but he used to say that sometimes, when he would, when that was occurring for him, sometimes he would say that he kind of felt like he had to kick the thoughts back into being, like he had to –
Rick: To have some motivation or impetus or something.
Terrence: Yeah, yeah, it was almost like he had to make it happen, you know? And I’m sure if you’re questioning him on that, he would say, “No, no, it just happens.” Yeah, I like, you know… I know Rick when you and I finish here today.
Rick: You’ll go sit in the backyard for four hours.
Terrence: [Chuckles] I’ll go make myself a coffee because I’ll finish that one, and I’ll just go and sit in the… I generally have a look at the plants, when I go out in my backyard, even though I may have looked at them an hour and a half earlier. I just… I can’t help but look at them, and every time I do, they’re brand new.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: It’s like fresh.
Rick: Yeah, freshness. That’s a nice thing too. I was thinking before, when you were talking about how this – you began to see the tree and the road and the bushes and all as if for the first time. There’s that verse in the Bible about seeing through a glass darkly and then it speaks of eventually, the glass becoming clear and oh, you see things for the first time.
Terrence: Yeah.
Rick: And then there’s this traditional understanding, actually, that until the Self is realized, the capitalist Self, the absolute value is realized, there can’t really be any significant appreciation of the world around us, because the appreciator is not awake. And so, the appreciation can’t be profound. But then and it’s a natural sequence, in a way, once an awakening occurs on that deep level, at a certain point, for a refinement of the senses to begin to occur. And there’s actually said to be a very great range to which that refinement can happen, can take place. You may find, in your own experience, that it’s not over and that, ten years from now or whatever, it will be even more sublime than it is now.
Terrence: Yeah, you know, what I do know is it just opens and opens and then stuff gets downloaded.
Rick: In fact I wanted to give you a quote from the Sargadatta, I’m showing it on the screen right now, you can’t see it but other people will. He said, “Forget ‘I am that.’ I realize so much more since then. It’s so much deeper.”
Terrence: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Like I mean, he even went through the process of, I think, for three years just staying with the I AM.
Rick: Yeah, and look at Ramana. Ramana had this big awakening when he was 16 or whatever, and then he went and spent the next decade or more in a cave, just percolating or marinating or something before he came out, before his mind probably kicked in after all that, like yours did. He maybe he got a download and came down off the mountain and started actually speaking and teaching.
Terrence: Yeah. Even the “I Am,” that’s the first split. That’s the first dualistic split. I Am becomes a – you know like – it’s a mild split but it’s a split. Yeah, if you just stay with the I Am, not much of a problem. What’s wrong with I Am? It only becomes a problem when we say “I am Terry, Terrence,” or “I am Rick,” or I am whoever and then the backstory gets connected to that. You know if there’s nothing added to the I am, the I am is just a pointer. The I am is a pointer to this that, this consciousness, this awareness, this… the experiencing of that, yeah. So, even the “I am” has to be abandoned at some point.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: Like, Rick, when I –
Rick: Yeah, you could say maybe, you could say that “is-ness” is more fundamental than “am-ness.”
Terrence: Yeah, yeah.
Rick: That’d be one way of putting it.
Terrence: Yeah, yeah, I like that. Yeah, I like that. You know, it’s… I remember, which is what I think caused, “There’s got to be a better way of explaining this.” And what I think caused that was when – let’s just for argument’s sake, this is just an expression – when all the lights came on, the first thing I realized,[laughs] the first thing I realized was everything that I’ve ever heard, everything that I’ve ever read, anything that anybody has ever said about this, none of it’s true. Not one single solitary thing that I’ve heard or read is actually true.
Rick: Is that the case or is it that your understanding didn’t actually grok what they were saying? Because are you really going to say that Shankara and Ramana and Sargadatta and all the rest didn’t say anything true or just that you didn’t appreciate it really?
Terrence: Everything that they said, everything that gets said is a pointer. It’s not the actual.
Rick: I see, of course, like the finger pointing at the moon thing.
Terrence: So none of it’s actually true.
Rick: Sure, it’s just words.
Terrence: Yeah, right.
Rick: You can write a 600-page book on mangoes but it’s not like tasting a mango.
Terrence: Totally, totally yeah. And that’s kind of like, I went, “Oh my God!” And then it was like, “How does this get missed? How does this get???” And then I just got flooded. “There’s got to be a better…” And now, I can be in the middle of a conversation with you and I’ll hear stuff coming out of my mouth and I’m like, “Oh, Terry.”
Rick: Where did that come from?
Terrence: That’s not it. [laughs] That’s not it, you know what I mean? [laughs] But I’ve had to kind of surrender to that also, which I’m sure all the other teachers do as well. You know, you just surrender. You understand that the only tool you have is dualistic language and you go about communicating and pointing, however it is you’re going to communicate and point. And that’s just [shrugs]
Rick: Yeah, and I think something deeper is communicated than just the words. You know, the words are kind of a, not a crutch, I’m trying to think of the right word, they’re just a tool, but they’re not the entire communication that’s taking place. You know, like when you sit with Bob or whatever, there’s an energetic something or other going on that’s more than just the words he’s speaking.
Terrence: Yeah, for sure.
Rick: Same with, I mean, take an extreme example, somebody like Ramana, who just radiated this profound atmosphere of oneness. People would just sit in his presence. Sometimes he would speak, sometimes he wouldn’t, but just the mere proximity had this incredibly profound effect on people.
Terrence: Yeah, yeah. When I walk down the street, all the flowers that are in the garden as I walk past them, they all open up. [laughs]
Rick: [laughs] Yeah, actually it’s Venus fly traps and they all slam shut.
Terrence: Yeah. [nodding and clapping his hands]
Rick: Hey, a question came in and I want to ask you. This is from Cheryl in Florida. It’s a very brief question, but perhaps – and you’ve already answered it somewhat – but maybe you can give it a crack. She said, “When I find the path to home and I get there, then what?”
Terrence: Sit there and do nothing. Be willing or earnest enough to be able to trust in sitting there and doing nothing and trusting that. Just sit there. Sit there. You know, like that’s at best Rick or Cheryl, was it Cheryl?
Rick: Cheryl from Florida.
Terrence: Yeah, that’s at best where I’m trying to get people.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: There, and then now, now just sit there. Because I can’t tell you anything about this. I can’t. Now it’s time for it to just download itself, if you like. But you need to sit there and be willing to sit there.
Rick: Yeah, but I think there’s something more figurative about what you’re saying than literal perhaps because Cheryl doesn’t need to just sit on her porch and neglect the kids, or whatever, for three months. She could be very busily engaged in her life, but there’s a deep sitting-there that happens in the midst of that apparent busyness, wouldn’t you say?
Terrence: Yeah, yes, I would say that. But I would also say the closer, the clor, I’ll say it, but I just heard myself go, “I’m going to say something, but that’s not it,” but anyway [laughs]. The closer you get to just “this,” the more important it is to have less distractions around you.
Rick: Yeah you don’t need to go to discos and you know roller coaster rides and all that excitation.
Terrence: Don’t hang with someone that would ordinarily trigger you.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: Just for a moment. It’s not forever. It’s just for a moment, yeah? So you’re just trying to create a space, if you like, where mind is not triggered, if possible. And I know that can be extraordinarily difficult, when people have got busy lives and so on and so forth, but there’s still plenty of time during the day. But there’s still, you know…
Rick: Give yourself some downtime you’re saying.
Terrence: Yeah, you’re right. It can still be the experiencing of “this,” if you like, whilst you’re looking after the kids. Just observe what is actually happening. Just -Bob used to say, “Get in the box seat.”
Rick: The box seat?
Terrence: The best seat in the house –
Rick: Yeah, witnessing –
Terrence: – is the box seat.”
Rick: – is the typical word.
Terrence: Yep. And just watch everything that is occurring. Watch the body moving, watch thoughts come up, watch sounds coming out of your mouth, what sounds coming out of other people’s mouths, you know.
Rick: And that is not – you might agree with this – that’s not so much something you do, it’s the condition that you live. It’s not like, “Okay, I’m watching, I’m watching, I’m watching.” It’s not like this vigilant activity that you have to do all day long. It becomes a natural way of functioning.
Terrence: Yeah, it’s, yeah, well, it’s consciousness itself. If you want to throw in awareness, but it’s consciousness itself. It’s just being conscious, not conscious-of,
Rick: Right.
Terrence: just being conscious. And part of that process is being aware of, yet just watching the body and yet there’s the awareing-of.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: But what it’s trying to highlight is the consciousness itself.
Rick: I think one way of looking at it is that the nature of consciousness, or awareness, is that it is a field of silence. And if we’re engaged in activity, yet grounded in that field of silence, there’s a natural juxtaposition or a natural dichotomy between this silence, in which nothing is happening, and then the dynamism in which you’re doing this and that. And so, it’s kind of like the silent depths of the ocean and the turbulence of of the waves are appreciated simultaneously, whereas before, it might have just been waves, waves, waves with no appreciation or recourse to the depth.
Terrence: Yeah, look, I’d say the silence is awareness and in consciousness, there is… that’s where the appreciation happens. It’s in consciousness, yeah? Appreciation for a sky or a flower or whatever and sound is heard there. Seeing, hearing, tasting, touching is experienced there in consciousness.
Rick: Yeah, yeah. That’s really nice. In other words, you’re sort of functioning from that level, if we want to call it deep, (I don’t know if that’s a good word) but you don’t have to…it’s almost like… You know that word “namaste” that they say in India?
Terrence: Um hmmm.
Rick: Something like, you know, I forget how it’s literally translated, but something like the deepest aspect of me appreciates the deepest aspect of you and that’s how we’re relating.
Terrence: Yeah, beautiful.
Rick: I think that’s kind of what you’re saying here, about flowers and other things.
Terrence: Yeah. Yeah.
Rick: We’re kind of relating to them rather than on the surface levels of our existences, at the deepest level, which actually is “one.” You know, we’re one with the flower and everything else at [Terry nodding agreement] that level and so you really appreciate it.
Terrence: Yep. There’s absolute knowing of that.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: In consciousness, there’s the absolute knowing of what’s actually happening, but there’s also the knowing of the game, of the show, of the seeming-Terry and the seeming-Rick and the seeming-distance. But you know… and it’s beautiful. It’s quite profound.
Rick: It’s multi-dimensional, as I’ve been saying. There’s the seeming level and there’s the knowing level.
Terrence: Yeah, and the knowing level is directly experienced.
Rick: Yes. Got it.
Terrence: Or the direct experience in, of everything and in that there’s the knowing, nothing separate, all is one, you know? And how beautiful is it? And the intelligence, oh my God, the intelligence behind it all!
Rick: Absolutely. Even a single cell, you look at what’s going on in a single cell and it’s mind boggling.
Terrence: It makes the concept of God look ridiculous.
Rick: God as some bearded puppeteer, but God as all-pervading intelligence, which is functioning at all levels of creation and orchestrating all this beauty and complexity –
Terrence: Yep.
Rick: – in which there is absolutely no gap whatsoever anywhere. Go out to intergalactic space and look at a cubic centimeter and there’s that same intelligence functioning in various ways.
Terrence: Yeah. And the important thing to realize there is God is not an entity. [laughs]
Rick: Yeah, exactly.
Terrence: God is Consciousness, Awareness, the Livingness, the Everything. That is God. And the intelligence that is latent – Bob refers to it as an intelligence energy. It’s good enough – the intelligence that is lightened within that “knowing,” when you experience this… that… oh my God.
Rick: Well, entity implies locality, it implies isolation.
Terrence: Yeah.
Rick: It implies that God is some kind of being that is somewhere, at a switchboard pushing buttons,
Terrence: Yeah, and it’s not that.
Rick: but I think we both agree that it’s not that.
Terrence: Yeah.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: Which is, that’s just a concept.
Rick: Yeah. You know, before we run out of time, I want to try to nail you on this reincarnation question. I don’t think we’re going to resolve it, but okay, here we are talking. We have, and please forgive the limitations of human speech and grammar, but we have human bodies, okay? If you cut them, they’ll bleed. We’ve been talking about multidimensionality and gross and subtle levels of creation and so on. We have subtle bodies, you know, and there’s all kinds of experiences people have, near-death experiences where they’re in surgery and all of a sudden they’re seeing the surgeons from the ceiling and they notice there’s a red sneaker on a balcony outside that nobody ever knew was there, it’s right next to the air conditioner and, you know, so there’s somehow something subtle that actually has an ability to experience even when the physical body is shut down. And so, the whole idea of reincarnation, and I’m sure you’re familiar with this, is that something subtle continues on when the physical body dies and eventually takes up a new body. And the purpose of that, the rationale of that, is that there’s an evolutionary journey that we’re all on and obviously most people don’t seem to have, to complete that journey in one life, so you get another crack at it. You know, you finish the first grade and you get to go to the second grade and so on. Education is not completed in one grade. So that’s it in a nutshell. I’m sure you’ve heard the philosophy, so you know, why do you feel like that it couldn’t work that way?
Terrence: Okay, so that, correct me if I’m wrong, Rick, because I know that you’ve got a much better background educationally than I do, but what you’re referring to there is the Wheel of Samsara.
Rick: You could say that.
Terrence: Okay. Good.
Rick: I suppose. I mean, that’s one term that’s been used for it. And I don’t use that term because I don’t feel like it’s something I need to desperately get off or anything, which is usually, yeah, go ahead.
Terrence: Yeah, yeah. So, and you just took the words right out of my mouth, you know. There is the idea, the Wheel of Samsara is birth, death, reincarnation, birth, death, reincarnation, and always trying to improve. This lifetime is going to be better, you know. We don’t even have a reference to the past lifetime, so how it’s going to be better, like what’s the reference point? I’m not sure what the reference point – we don’t remember our past life, if there was one, for a start.
Rick: Some people do. In fact a guy named Stevenson at the University of Virginia interviewed thousands of young children who still had memories of past lives and was able to corroborate the things they said by going to that town or looking up the records of this plane that crashed in World War II or whatever. But then we lose that memory, eventually, if we have it at all.
Terrence: Yeah but, the mistake we make there is the belief that it’s my past life. Why can’t it just be a memory of a past life?
Rick: Somebody else’s or?
Terrence: Everything comes from the absolute.
Rick: Yeah, as if all the experiences in the universe, we come into this life and we sort of take a bucket, but it’s kind of a random bucket, [Terry nodding] it’s not necessarily our bucket. And so we experience having died in World War II or something, but it wasn’t, it didn’t happen to an “us” or “we,” an “I.” It could be that way, some people theorize it that way. I tend to,
Terrence: [Shrugs] Here –
Rick: Go ahead.
Terrence: Yeah, look, that gets resolved here. [Hand gesture pulling down, closing fingers] The truth of that question actually gets resolved from here. [hand gesture again] Not mind. And in reference to the Wheel of Samsara, you know, the idea is to eventually get off the wheel. And the easiest way to get off the wheel is to realize there’s no one on it.
Rick: Yeah, that’s well put.
Terrence: And there’s no wheel.
Rick: [laughs] And that’s what all the traditions actually say. They say once that realization occurs, then reincarnation becomes a moot point. It’s sort of –
Terrence: Yeah.
Rick: – it’s not going to happen anymore.
Terrence: Yeah.
Rick: But that is not to say that it hasn’t been happening prior to that realization. Maybe it has. Maybe it’s a random bucket. Maybe there’s actually, you know, the kleshas, the samsaras, the samskaras that are accumulated this life, maybe we actually take those impressions into a new one and work on them some more.
Terrence: Yeah, that’s what the story is.
Rick: It’s a theory. You know what, I mean, I take all these ideas, all ideas, as hypotheses.
Terrence: Sure.
Rick: And hypotheses could be explored experientially, if we feel it’s worthwhile doing so, but I don’t take them as absolute truths which anybody ought to believe in. [Terry nods] There’s just certain things which kind of make sense logically, but who knows? So hypotheses can be disproven.
Terrence: Yeah.
Rick: That’s the way science works. I mean we say all crows are black, all right, you’ll get an albino crow and that refutes that, that notion, so anything can always be disproven.
Terrence: Yeah, see look either what these teachers are saying is true or it’s not.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: It’s either true or it’s not, and all of them –
Rick: Or it’s partially true. [both chuckle]
Terrence: All of them saying that there’s no personal self there. There’s no personal self, there’s no –
Rick: Yeah, but a lot of those teachers talk in the same breath about reincarnation. Shankara, Ramana, they acknowledge that that’s a thing.
Terrence: Don’t know them, I don’t know, and if that’s what they’re talking about, I would strongly disagree.
Rick: Okay, I’m sorry.
Terrence: And that’s all, yeah.
Rick: I don’t know what Nisargadatta said about it.
Terrence: I don’t know for a fact. I haven’t spoken to any of those people that you referred to. I haven’t read any of the… I think just a lot of times concessions are made. I do, you know? Until the seeming-person reaches a point of being prepared to drop it all, it all just dropping, all of it –
Rick: Well, are you saying that you disagree with them adamantly and with certitude? Are you saying that it doesn’t jive with your view of things?
Terrence: e No, I can’t say that because I’ve never read anything that does.
Rick: And even if you had, if you read the stuff, you might disagree, but can you say –
Terrence: I may.
Rick: But then again, maybe you would say, “Well, maybe they’re right, maybe they’re wrong, don’t know. Doesn’t like jive with my perspective on things, but who knows? Who’s to say that my perspective is completely aligned with all the mysteries of the universe?
Terrence: Yeah, and all I can say to that, Rick, is you just know.
Rick: Eh.
Terrence: That’s all I can say.
Rick: That’s a little dangerous. If by that, if by “you just know” means you can pass judgment on –
Terrence: No, no
Rick: – various relative considerations.
Terrence: No, no. Look, there’s just a knowing. There’s a knowing of the truth.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: There just is. Yeah.
Rick: The essential truth.
Terrence: Yeah.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: That’s annoying.
Rick: No, I’m good with that.
Terrence: Yeah, and then in reference to what others are saying, I can’t give an opinion on that. I would have to read.
Rick: That’s fair enough.
Terrence: On what they’re saying, you know, rather than get it secondhand from you.
Rick: Sure, yeah.
Terrence: I would have to have a … and even then, would I pass judgment? Look, it’s all okay. [smiles] It is what’s being taught, whether it be meditation, whether it be Christ Consciousness, whether it be the Course in Miracles, it’s all okay.
Rick: Yeah.
Terrence: It’s all, there’s nothing wrong.
Rick: That’s my attitude, that’s how I’m able to do this show.
Terrence: Yeah, it’s all okay. Yeah, and a beautiful show it is. Everything, it’s all okay.
Rick: Yeah. Well, that’s a good note to end on.
Terrence: Yeah. It’s all okay.
Rick: Right, we’ve totally resolved it. [both laughs]
Terrence: What’s that book, “I’m Okay, You’re Okay?”
Rick: Yeah, right.
Terrence: God, that was a long time ago, right?
Rick: Yeah, back in the 70s.
Terrence: Yeah.
Rick: Okay, good. Well, this has been lively.
Terrence: Thank you.
Rick: It’s got you off the porch for a little bit.
Terrence: Thank you. Yeah, I’ve really enjoyed the dialogue. I’ve completely forgotten that there’s even people out there watching this.
Rick: Yeah, we’ve –
Terrence: Now, it’s just been [hand gesture “you and me”]
Rick: There are a couple hundred or so watching and still are. But anyway, I hope they’ve enjoyed it. We’ve enjoyed it. And yeah, a lot of fun, Terry.
Terrence: Yeah, I’d like to do this again with you sometime.
Rick: Yeah, we can do that.
Terrence: Yeah.
Rick: Probably you’ll be arguing that there’s reincarnation. I’ll be arguing that there’s not by that time. [both laugh]
Terrence: Now that’d be a good one.
Rick: Yeah. [more laughter] Alright, great.
Terrence: Yeah, thank you.
Rick: And thank you. I just want to thank those who’ve been watching the live one. Those who are not watching the live one, these are always broadcast live, so go to the “Upcoming Interviews” page on batgap.com and you’ll see when upcoming ones are scheduled for and you can tune into those, if you want. There’s also a little thing off to the right on that page of every interview, where you can click on it and you can set a reminder to notify you in your email program or in Google or something. Yeah, so thanks for listening or watching. Next week I’ll be doing a second interview with Paul Mueller-Ortega who is an expert in Kashmir Shaivism. He has a website called “Blue Throat Yoga.” And so that should be an interesting discussion, as most of them seem to be. So thanks a lot and go to batgap.com and check out the menus for you know various things that are there, such as the email list or the audio podcast and so on. Thanks again Terry.
Terrence: Thank you, Rick. Thank you for providing this platform and this space for this message to get out there. I mean I think it’s wonderful what you do. Thank you.
Rick: Oh it’s just a lot of fun. Yeah.
Terrence: Yeah, thank you. All right, thank you.
Rick: Thank you, Terry. Talk to you later.
Terrence: Thanks. Thank you.
Rick: Bye-bye.
Terrence: Bye. Thank you.