The Signposter and Troy of Is interview

Summary

The discussion examines spiritual teaching, guru authority, and the risks of mistaking a powerful insight for complete realization. It also considers how teachings can be useful while teachers remain flawed, and why seekers need to examine ideas for themselves.

Questions This Interview Explores

• How can I tell whether a spiritual teacher or teaching is trustworthy?
• Can someone have a genuine spiritual awakening while still having unresolved psychological issues?
• Why might a teaching be true in theory but not bring lasting change?
• How can I examine spiritual teachings without accepting them as unquestionable truth?

Key takeaways

• Treat a teacher’s words as prompts for your own inquiry, not as answers to adopt.
• Spiritual understanding is more than a concept; it must be seen and tested from the root.
• A genuine insight does not necessarily mean that psychological patterns have been resolved.
• Assess a teaching separately from its teacher, while taking harmful conduct seriously.
• Simple spiritual slogans cannot substitute for understanding conditioning and emotional patterns.

Transcript

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer, and my guests this week are named the Signposter and Troy of Is. These are not their birth names, obviously, but they are the names they choose to be referred to by in this interview. It’s not unusual, of course, for people to assume spiritual names of some sort—Adyashanti, Gangaji. Many teachers do this. I was curious and thought maybe I would start with the question: What is the significance of these names? What do they each mean?

Troy: Well, I guess I’ll start. Troy of Is—you know, medieval times? “I am so-and-so of Sir Lancelot.”

Rick: Right, yeah.

Troy: Well, “of Is” just means, like, of—

Rick: Isness?

Troy: Reality, or—

Rick: Being, or something.

Troy: Yeah.

Rick: Yeah, okay.

Troy: I got the name Troy from the Signposter.

Rick: Okay, good. And how about the Signposter? What does that mean exactly?

Rick, it’s pretty obvious. The name itself is to point back at the inquirer, to break the tendency or habitual way inquirers and seekers have of looking outside for answers rather than being silent and quieting down and testing their answers out inside.

Signposter: Rick, it’s pretty obvious. The name itself is to point back at the inquirer, to break the tendency or habitual way inquirers and seekers have of looking outside for answers rather than being silent and quieting down and testing their answers out inside.

Rick: So your function is to be a stimulus or an impetus for people to do that—to look within for the answers rather than relying on external sources or authorities. Is that correct?

Signposter: Yeah. Even if I find myself answering a question, that is not to be taken as an answer. It’s used as a stimulus for working inside.

📚 Spiritual teachers and the search within

Rick: Okay, good. So I first became aware of you guys—actually, it was first you, Troy—when you posted something on YouTube where you were lambasting gurus in general. I thought, “Boy, this guy has an attitude,” but you were presenting it in an intelligent way. And then I kind of forgot about you.

Later on, you got in touch with me, I believe, and we started talking about doing this interview. Since then, I’ve listened to several things I was able to locate, including your interview with Trip Overholt, which you did just recently, after I had interviewed him. So I have a better sense of what you’re all about, and I’ve read the table of contents of the Signposter’s book—it’s like a 500-page book. I’d like to go through some of the points in that book with you and the Signposter.

But maybe we could just clear the air a little bit about this gurus thing. My feeling was that you painted them with too broad a brush. In other words, there was a lot of generalization about gurus all being money-grubbers, and there being no genuine ones living today, and so on and so forth. I kind of beg to differ with those observations, but I respect your right to have that opinion, if that is your opinion. But let’s talk about gurus a little bit, and why maybe both or either of you feel that they’re ripping people off, if that’s what you feel.

Signposter: Well, your question is why they’re doing it.

A Spectrum of Spiritual Teachers

Rick: Well, first of all, maybe: are they all doing it? Do you really feel like all gurus today, or spiritual teachers, are disingenuous? They’re all just in it for the money? Or do you feel there’s maybe a spectrum, and some are really rip-off artists, some are really quite genuine, and a lot of them are somewhere in between?

Signposter: Probably that’s the way it is. This organism is only going on intuitions in hearing them and seeing them, which I trust quite strongly. I can pick things up very, very well, but obviously there probably are genuine human beings who are doing the guru game, signposting. So, sure.

But you can’t say that we had a great sample, because there are probably thousands of gurus today. It’s not like the old days, when they seemed to be very rare. Although we have to remember Lao Tzu disappeared. There are all kinds of gurus, perhaps, who disappeared. They don’t bother with the game of signposting, because often they think it’s futile.

Rick: Also, Lao Tzu and Jesus and Buddha and all of them lived in a day when we were far from having anything like the internet. There could have been spiritual teachers sprinkled all over the world that we have no way of remembering. But if you look at all the ancient cultures of the world, there are, in fact, records of teachers of various kinds—spiritual teachers in all ancient cultures, from Egypt to the Mayans, what have you. So it does seem to be something that’s characteristic of any age. There are going to be people assuming the role of spiritual teachers. Would you not agree with that?

Signposter: Yeah, but I think, Rick, we’re in rather unique times. People are very desperate today. They’re really frightened. And so they’re looking for, as people do, great authority figures who will calm them down, give them a sense of security, and a deep sense that they’re going to survive. So they’re looking for that.

And that’s a good game to play, because, man, if you can get people hooked in that direction, you’ve got them. You’ve got a great industry. So, if you’ll notice, that’s my slam.

Rick: Yeah, and it harkens back to what you were saying in the beginning, in defining your name: a lot of people do tend to look to external sources rather than within themselves. But the good teachers, I would say—or maybe we could agree on a definition of a good teacher—would be one who is telling the person, “Hey, don’t just listen to me. Find within yourself the experience of what I’m talking about, because the words aren’t going to do it for you. I’m referring to an experience which I have had and which I want you to have.” Most teachers that I know of whom I consider legitimate are saying something like that.

Signposter: Yeah, and I would also tag on to the word “experience” radical standing, you know—understanding which comes from the root. Understanding, I explain it this way: to stand under and see from the root up holistically. So that’s what I encourage.

Rick: I think I got your point, but your audio broke up a little bit, so it’s kind of intermittent at the moment. But we got most of it. So you were just saying that—well, say it again, just so we make sure we have it.

Signposter: Well, what I encourage the inquirer to do is to stand under what’s being said and see, examine from the root up holistically.

Rick: And “stand under”—interestingly enough, the word “radical” is related to the word “root.” But stand under … so I guess what you’re saying is you really want them to experience what’s being said.

Signposter: Yeah, totally, holistically, rather than understand just cognitively.

Rick: Correct. And really, I’d say that most any spiritual teacher worth his salt is advocating just that. They’re going to say, “Don’t just read books and listen to talks. You have to experience what’s being discussed here, or it’s not going to do you any good.” It’s like reading a cookbook: you could starve to death doing that. You need the actual experience of what it’s referring to.

Signposter: Yeah, the point is, though, here’s the problem. When you say, “I want you to understand,” or “stand under and see from the root up,” when I say that, I don’t expect them to be able to do that. It’s not a matter of choice. It’s a matter of whether that gets manifested or not. And it may manifest over time. If a person is very serious and very sincere, it will manifest over time. Or they may get it right off the bat. But it’s not some button that they press in their head to understand.

Rick: No, absolutely not. And in most cases it does take time. It’s not like an audience of 300 people can sit and listen to some teacher and they all get it. They might get an inkling of it, they might get a feeling for it, but the full ripening of the experience being discussed is likely to take quite some time before it really happens.

Signposter: Yeah, that seems to be the way it works.

👁️ Questions about being enlightened

Rick: Yeah. And there does seem to be a bit of a tendency these days, at least in some circles, for teachers to just say, “Call off the search, realize you’re that,” and then people walk away from that lecture saying, “Okay, I’ve called off the search, I am that, I must be done, I must be enlightened, it’s all over with.” That definitely kind of rubs me the wrong way. I think they’re just kidding themselves.

Signposter: Yeah, Rick, that’s an interesting point you bring up. A certain portion of the people do say that. Especially the Advaita people talk that way.

Rick: Yep.

Signposter: Now, the funny thing about it is, what they’re saying is actually true, but it doesn’t work.

Right. Yeah, no, very good point. I mean, it’s a funny thing. There’s this sort of paradox that often comes in where a person can say something which is perfectly true on its own level, but is it really being lived? And does it really apply to all levels?

Rick: Right. Yeah, no, very good point. I mean, it’s a funny thing. There’s this sort of paradox that often comes in where a person can say something which is perfectly true on its own level, but is it really being lived? And does it really apply to all levels?

For instance, some will say, “Well, there really is no doer; there’s nobody who’s actually doing anything.” And then they’ll conclude from that that you shouldn’t do spiritual practices, or you shouldn’t do this or you shouldn’t do that, because it would only imply the existence of a doer. But to me, that’s a confusion of levels.

Signposter: Exactly. My difficulty is my memory is not great. I already forgot. I didn’t say this in response to you, but I like what you said there.

Rick: It’ll come back.

Signposter: Yeah.

Rick: But anyway, feel free to interrupt me if you remember what you were going to say, and I’ll just hopefully jog your memory.

Personally, you guys can do whatever you want, but I would recommend that you just have a more nuanced approach to this thing of teachers, because there are a lot of teachers out there who may charge money. If you go to a retreat with Adyashanti or something, it’s not going to be free. They’re going to rent a retreat facility, and he has a staff of 20 people or whatever that need to be supported, and so on.

Money and the Practical Needs of Spiritual Communities

But I don’t think that’s necessarily an evil. There are different organizational structures. Even when Ramana Maharshi was living in his little ashram in South India—and I mention him because almost everybody agrees that he was the real deal—he may not have charged money, but money must have been donated to build buildings and buy food, and so on and so forth. So, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.” It’s just a sort of necessity.

Now, in the same breath, I could say that there are people who have completely abused that area and gotten totally carried away with money and charged exorbitant prices for stuff which should almost really be given away. So there’s legitimacy to some of the criticisms I’ve heard you speak about.

Signposter: Yeah. Well, I think charging … And I like the idea of the organization, because most gurus develop an organization, whether they do it by themselves or not. The organization gradually forms around them, and it often takes over. But the guru always has the freedom to intervene, to create an intervention when he becomes aware of biased charging.

For example, Krishnamurti used to have huge, big gatherings, but it was merely a token of mission. It was very small all the time.

Rick: Yeah.

Signposter: But then there’s … We can go to another lad, Adi Da. He was an expert capitalist. You know, he really knew how to charge.

Troy: Oh, yeah.

Signposter: How to control that. So you’ve got those two extremes.

Rick: Yeah, and perhaps gradations somewhere in between the two. When I interviewed Trip Overholt a few weeks ago, we talked about Adi Da a bit, and I happened to have had a conversation with a guy who was with him for 17 years. The stuff he was into was just horrendous, some of the things he did. And people would all write it off as crazy wisdom and so on.

But ironically, I’ve interviewed two people, and I consider both of them friends. One of them lives here in my town. They were with Adi Da for a long time, and they came out okay. They’re beautiful people. They really seem to have a high level of realization and a great deal of integrity. They both walked away from that whole thing, but somehow or other… There’s that saying, “Even a broken clock tells the correct time twice a day.” Somehow or other, they came out of that experience with a lot of spiritual maturity. So go figure.

Signposter: Well, I don’t know what your thinking is, but in studying Adi Da, I would say this: His teaching was fantastic. It was ultimate teaching. However, when he got to the Adidam stuff, it got nuts.

Rick: He started changing his name every other year to something fancier.

Signposter: No, I don’t mean that. I mean, Adidam was when you had to worship him. You know, enlightenment could only happen through seeing him, hearing him, feeling him, tasting him, smelling him—the whole bit. You had to turn your whole attention to him. First of all, that teaching method he was talking about, the form of devotion, complete devotion, was impossible to do. It’s not neurologically… The brain doesn’t allow you to do that kind of work. So it was asking you to do something that was impossible, but you got hooked by trying.

Rick: This brings up a couple of interesting points. And Troy, you just feel free to chime in anytime you want. Don’t let me override you if you feel like talking about something.

Troy: I was just going to add to that: When I first met the Signposter, I was exposed to Adi Da in the normal kind of way people are, where they say, “Oh, Adi Da was bad—the behaviors he did,” all that sort of thing. And if you’re an outsider and that’s all you hear about Adi Da, unless you’re really open to inquiry, to finding out, most people will just stop there. And they totally miss out on a beautiful opportunity to study the parts of his teaching that are very valuable.

For example, I found Adi Da to be one of the most valuable signposters of all signposters. Not the devotional stuff, but the other parts.

Rick: His writings and stuff, yeah.

Troy: I had to learn to be open to that. The Signposter invited me to do that. Originally, I was a bit closed. I thought, “Oh, he’s weird,” or whatever.

Signposter: And you could—the funny thing, Rick, is that you can—and this is what Adi Da did. He was clever as hell, and he managed to reinterpret the so-called cultural, social, bad things he was doing. He reinterpreted it as God doing it.

Rick: Right.

Signposter: And if you can do that and convince people to believe that, then you’re all right. It only looks bad as long as you’re stuck in the cultural, social viewpoint.

Rick: Yeah. Well, this brings up a couple of really interesting points. I think one of the points is that it’s quite common for people to have an awakening that strikes them as being so profound and so complete that they feel like, “This is it. I’m enlightened. My path is finished.” And yet, there’s still major stuff in terms of ego, however you want to define it, that hasn’t been worked out, but to which they’re completely oblivious.

And so they embark on the role of teacher or guru, and at a certain point, this stuff that hasn’t really been dealt with begins to surface, and the whole thing begins to go off the rails. And I think it’s happened in many, many circumstances. Some teachers have had the honesty to come forward and say, “Hey, wait a minute. I was mistaken. I wasn’t enlightened after all. I’m going to renounce my teachership role and get back to work on myself.” Others just carry on and go sailing off into la-la land with people following them.

Signposter: Beautiful. That’s a very important observation you’ve made, because there are a lot of these teachers—we could even mention them, but I won’t—there are a lot of modern-day teachers who are really well-recognized and know nothing about their inner psychology. That’s where they blunder. They do a lot of blundering there.

What I call them is slogan providers. They provide a lot of so-called spiritual slogans, but they have very little understanding about the ego problems, emotional problems, identification problems, goal-orientation problems, and most of all, they don’t grasp how the person has been conditioned or programmed from childhood on. They think you can get rid of that with slogans. You can’t.

What I call them is slogan providers. They provide a lot of so-called spiritual slogans, but they have very little understanding about the ego problems, emotional problems, identification problems, goal-orientation problems, and most of all, they don’t grasp how the person has been conditioned or programmed from childhood on. They think you can get rid of that with slogans. You can’t.

Rick: Now, how do you know this? Just by observing and intuitively sort of picking up on it?

Signposter: Yes, yes.

Rick: Okay, well, let’s take a well-known example. Let’s name him by name: Eckhart Tolle. I don’t know if you were alluding to him.

Signposter: I’m not thinking of him, no.

Rick: Okay, good. Now, he’s an example of somebody who charges money. He’s probably a wealthy man; he’s sold millions of books, but he seems to be offering a valuable teaching. How many people are actually awakening or becoming enlightened, and so on, as a result of that, I don’t know, but it certainly kind of opened a lot of people’s eyes to a great extent. And so far, he hasn’t gotten weird on us. He’s still offering useful stuff, much of it free. So you weren’t alluding to him.

But there’s an example of somebody who actually woke quite spontaneously. He hadn’t really shown an interest in this kind of thing. And if you’ve ever heard his story, one day he just kind of woke up. He was getting suicidal, and in desperation he sort of asked, “Well, I cannot live with myself anymore.” And then he thought, “Wait a minute, are there two of me? Who is this self with whom I can’t live?” The next morning, he woke up with this profound awakening, which he eventually matured into. I don’t know why I’m going on about him, but I’m just trying to make the point that, again, we have to be careful not to paint with too broad a brush, because there are a lot of good, genuine teachers out there who are making a contribution.

Signposter: Do you like him?

Rick: I do. I like listening to him. I’ve read most of his books. I’d like to interview him one of these days.

Signposter: I’m trying to think of the name of his books. I don’t mean The Power of Now, but there was another one that came out.

Rick:A New Earth.

Signposter: Something like that, yes. Certain things he said about the way the parents should react to the child were completely psychologically nuts. Pardon?

Troy: The pain body.

Signposter: The pain body.

Rick: The pain body.

Signposter: Yeah. It was really weird stuff. People really—they’ll buy into anything. Anything that a guru who’s been recognized says, they’ll buy into it, and they’ll begin to look for the pain body. It’s like the Freudian situation: looking for the id, looking for the ego, looking for the superego. They’re concrete things in the body. It gets all distorted. I have to say that, personally speaking, all my intuitive antennae are going up and saying, “This guy is not it.”

Rick: Well, I guess it depends what we mean by “it.” And also, when I read somebody like Eckhart Tolle, I’m not looking for absolute truth. In fact, I don’t look for that in anybody. It’s like everything is a point, or everything is a theory, if we want to speak in scientific terms. Maybe there’s a pain body, maybe there’s not. It’s an interesting idea to play with. It’s a model, perhaps, for the way we’re structured. I don’t think, “Oh boy, that’s the way it is—pain body. I’m a believer.” It’s like, “Okay, interesting perspective. Now let me hear another one.”

And when you say, “That’s a lot of bunk, and it’s a crazy idea,” I think, “Okay, maybe it’s a crazy idea.” That’s the Signposter’s take on it, but I’m not going to believe that with any absolute certainty either. To me, it’s another perspective, another theory on a theory.

Signposter: Yeah. It’s not so much the pain body idea itself, although I don’t buy it, but it’s how he applied it—how he was suggesting it should be applied to children. I can’t quote you what that is right now, but if you…

Rick: Yeah, I don’t remember it myself.

Signposter: Psychologically, it was completely wacky.

Rick: Okay. Well, let me ask you this: Is there a teacher out there, besides yourself, I suppose—a living teacher whom you feel has really got their act together, who is really teaching in a way that you would endorse or approve of?

Signposter: Hmm. I can’t think of any.

Rick: Okay. How about deceased teachers?

Signposter: Lots of them. Nisargadatta, Ramana, U. G. Krishnamurti, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Adi Da.

Rick: Adi Da, really?

Signposter: Oh, definitely.

Rick: Despite everything we’ve said about him, you think he had the whole package?

Signposter: Yes, he did.

Rick: So even though he was screwing his disciples, addicted to a variety of drugs, watching porn, and doing all the things he did, that’s cool with you?

Signposter: It’s not that it’s cool with me if people are being hurt.

Rick: People were being hurt.

Signposter: Okay. So I say that’s too bad that they were being hurt. I wish someone had dragged them away.

Rick: Yeah.

Signposter: But that doesn’t suggest that Adi Da’s teaching was false. His teaching—in a way, you’ve got to distinguish between the teaching as a signpost and the teacher. Almost all teachers have flaws. I would say they all have flaws. But their teaching can be right smack on. And that distinction has to be really made.

Rick: Well, if you want to go and learn mathematics from somebody, you would expect him not just to be good at reading from a textbook. You would actually expect him to be able to do the mathematics himself, to be an embodiment of the knowledge he professes to teach.

So with regard to spiritual knowledge, how effective is somebody’s teaching if their life doesn’t reflect that teaching? If their life isn’t complete, you know, if it’s off base with what they’re actually saying, shouldn’t you be able to walk your talk if it’s a genuine teaching?

Signposter: Yeah, but what would walking your talk be like? What would you expect from Adi Da? What would you expect him to be like?

I would expect that awakening and realization or enlightenment is more than just realizing the absolute nature of the Self or some such thing. That’s a first step.

Rick: I would expect that awakening and realization or enlightenment is more than just realizing the absolute nature of the Self or some such thing. That’s a first step.

Signposter: You’re talking about what you would expect Adi Da to look like.

Rick: Yeah, and I guess my answer to that, or my response to that, would be: What is the utility of a spiritual teaching? What is it for? Is it just to have nice philosophical ideas, or does it actually have some practical value in the nitty-gritty of life?

Signposter: Well, within the teaching, you must be willing and able to deconstruct what the person already is, what the inquirer is inquiring about, and what the inquirer believes and assumes and concludes. That has to be destroyed utterly through deconstruction processes.

Rick: Which inquirer are you talking about? Someone like myself asking about Adi Da, or what?

Signposter: Well, I wasn’t thinking of you, but I’m talking about a seeker and an inquirer to a guru.

Rick: Okay, so let’s say somebody comes to Adi Da, as a case in point, and?

Signposter: And Adi Da was an expert at deconstructing. He could pull it apart. He wasn’t too gentle about it. That’s what I’m talking about. He taught the verbal, the conceptual teaching, but at the same time he blew up the verbal and conceptual teaching that the person was embodied with. In other words, the obstructions that the person came to Adi Da with—the belief systems, the assumptions, the presuppositions, the conclusions, all that sort of thing, the premises. You see, everybody comes to another person. We come automatically and unconsciously with all that stuff, and that’s what’s in the road. In other words, we get a notion of what reality and truth is, and we come to a teacher with that. That has to be destroyed.

Rick: Yeah, I think that’s a valuable point, and we can talk more about that. But if an innocent young girl comes to a teacher expecting spiritual instruction and ends up more or less getting raped, then maybe he’s blowing some conceptions that she was hanging on to, but I don’t consider that a very skillful means of doing so, or a very compassionate way of doing so.

Signposter: No, Adi Da, we have to admit, didn’t seem to have the compassion that was required of great teachers. But the question is, how many of them do?

Rick: Some of them do. Again, you can’t dismiss them all in one fell swoop.

Signposter: No, I said, how many of them do? It might be a very small number.

Rick: It might even be a minority. Okay, so let’s try to distill a kind of a main point from what we’ve been talking about for the last 10 or 15 minutes. Maybe some kind of… see if we can agree upon what constitutes a legitimate teacher, a teacher whom one could respect, whom you could respect, whom I could respect, whom we would encourage our granddaughter or daughter to go to for instruction, if they were still alive, without fear of damage. What sort of criteria would you insist upon if you were going to send someone who is very dear to you to a spiritual teacher?

Signposter: I would pick out a top-notch, well-known Zen master. Other than that, I’m not sure.

Rick: Okay. And there have been, of course, instances where top-notch, well-known Zen masters have been found sleeping with their students and so on, but you would hopefully find one who had his act together ethically, or would that not matter so much? Would it be more a matter of just the ability to practice and teach Zen?

Signposter: Because of my awareness of the psychological damage that could be done, I would send my relative, or what do you call it, godchild, to one that had his ethics and morality under control.

Rick: Good. And I would agree with you, which is why I have a hard time accepting that Adi Da would be one of the teachers you felt were really legitimate. He definitely had something to offer; he packed a punch, but boy, there were really some screws loose. But we don’t want to spend the whole interview talking about Adi Da.

Signposter: Just one last thing. Who’s the bald-headed guy, I think?

Troy: Wilber.

Signposter: Wilber, Ken Wilber. He said about Adi Da at one stage that he wouldn’t send just a person that wasn’t really, really, really deeply serious for enlightenment to Adi Da, but if they were really after enlightenment, he’d send them to Adi Da.

Rick: Yeah.

Signposter: That’s an interesting quotation.

Rick: Yeah, it is. I still wouldn’t send my daughter, if I had one, to see Adi Da, but what the heck, it’s just one more ingredient in the stew, you know? That’s what Ken Wilber says.

Signposter: Yes, it is. That’s right. And also, we can’t just dismiss it either. There’s something I just want to emphasize: it’s not Adi Da that’s doing it. We’ve got to remember that.

Rick: Oh, yeah. Well, that was his alibi. “Hey, it ain’t me doing it. I’m a witness. It’s God doing it. It’s whatever.”

Signposter: It’s God manifesting through me.

Rick: Right.

Signposter: So, you see, what I’m trying to point out is God does not have any morality, right or wrong, good or bad, up or down, etc. It’s us, it’s we freaky little humans that keep pouring that in through religion. Now, I’m not—don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that throwing out all morality and doing what the hell you want. I’m not talking that way. I’m just trying to point out, though, that one has to realize that actually it’s the Tao that’s manifesting. What we might call good or bad, the Tao is doing it.

Rick: Sure. And that’s true of everything. It was the Tao as Hitler. It was the Tao as that guy who shot up the movie theater in Colorado a couple of weeks ago.

Signposter: As easy as it seems, as wacky as it seems, it certainly should make us think, “Is our notion about what God is or the Tao is kind of weird?” You know, we keep humanizing God all the time.

Rick: Yeah. Hey, it’s a big universe. Probably there are planets which get hit by asteroids and billions of people die in an instant. And it probably happens every other day in this big, vast universe. And so, you know, God is a genocidal maniac, if we want to look at it that way. But obviously, when you step out to that perspective, you really can’t put a moralistic value judgment on it.

Signposter: Yeah. But you can go one step further and say, “At the root, there is no such thing as Rick.”

Rick: Right. So when the planet blows up, essentially, nobody dies.

Signposter: Nothing has happened.

Rick: Right, exactly. Yeah. This is a favorite theme of mine, actually. But the way I like to play with it is, there are different levels which are simultaneously true. On one level, nothing has happened. On another level, things are happening and they are all perfect. On another level, things aren’t perfect and they really need fixing. And all three of those things are simultaneously true, and perhaps the “nothing has happened” level is more true than the other two, but you can’t kind of dismiss any one of them. It’s like the whole spectrum is what we call “life.”

Signposter: Yeah, as long as we’re hooked on pleasure and want to avoid pain, then that’s true.

Rick: Yep. Okay. So let’s see. Where were we? So, let’s talk a little bit about… I want to talk about your book a bit, and what Dialogical Inquiry is, and there are some interesting little points that I picked up in the table of contents. But would you be amenable to talking about your own life a little bit? I mean, on what basis, on what authority, based upon your own experience and understanding, have you written this book, and are you saying the things you’re saying today? How did you get from being a zitty little teenager like the rest of us to a man espousing wisdom, writing books, and calling yourself the Signposter? What was your spiritual path?

Signposter: My spiritual path, and I recommend it highly, is to suffer, to suffer with all your heart and soul, so much so that you begin to inquire deeply, almost simultaneously. And that happened when I was very, very young, and it continued to happen over the years. In other words, to put it very bluntly, I will admit it to you, Rick, my dear father figure. You know, you’re like a priest, eh?

Rick: I am.

Signposter: I’m playing the game of priest here.

Rick: Okay, I see. Yes.

Signposter: I will admit that I was really screwed up. It started very young, with crazy parents.

Rick: Ditto. Alcoholic father, mother in a mental hospital, me into drugs. I went that whole route.

Signposter: Okay. Well, we’re brothers in truth here.

Rick: Yeah, and I agree. Suffering like that can be a real impetus to seeking, you know, to try to find your way out of suffering. If everything were just all smooth and easy, there might not be much impetus.

Signposter: Yeah. One little point I’ll share. At about four or five, my parents did some horrible things to me, emotionally, psychologically. They abandoned me, right in front of my face. “Go on, I don’t love you anymore.”

Rick: Literally.

Signposter: Yeah, literally. Anyway, the point was, I looked to my parents because I thought, as most children, if not all, that they know the answer. They’ve got the answers. These people really know.

Rick: Sure.

Signposter: And then, when I was about five years old, I began to say, “They don’t seem to know as much as I think they know, as they seem to be contradicting themselves. They’re saying one thing and so on, and they’re also suffering.” So, I had a great realization that adults really don’t know. They pretend they do. That was one of the great realizations. And that started me seeking for maybe somebody that does know.

Rick: I went through a similar thing myself, and I would actually move from one to the next. I’d think, “Okay, this person really knows,” and then after a while I’d think, “No, he doesn’t.” And then I’d go on to another one, you know?

Signposter: That’s good thinking. You get stuck in a rut.

Rick: And so, how did it go, progressing from five up through into your teenage years and so on? Did you eventually find a teacher whom you respected?

Signposter: Only in my reading and video observing. I guess I’d have to say that I really didn’t have a personal relationship with any teacher.

Rick: But you read a bunch of teachers, and you read a bunch of things. Did you end up engaging in some sort of spiritual practice?

Signposter: Yeah, I went to Philip Kapleau’s monastery in Rochester, New York, I think it was.

Rick: I actually applied to that in 1968, and they told me I had to study with a local Roshi for a while before going there. I ended up going off on a different path, but I know—it’s funny. Small world.

Signposter: It is. I went there for a while and did a lot of meditating. And then, I don’t know, this sounds blasphemous, but I came to the conclusion that meditation really isn’t going to get you anywhere. It’s not a way to get. Meditation is something you might do to celebrate or to just exist. Meditation is a nice way to exist. It’s sort of like the… what was his name, that guy that threw it out as quietism?

Troy: Hui-neng.

Signposter: Hui-neng. I like the attitude of Hui-neng towards meditation.

Rick: Which was?

Signposter: Which was that he thought meditation was just a form of quietism. And he said, “Quietism doesn’t do anything.” And threw it out. And that’s how the Zen koan came into existence. But he did bring it in. He was a very free Zen master. He was one of the most powerful, dynamic human beings I think that ever walked the planet. He was a revolutionary.

Rick: I would suggest with regard to meditation that there are many different forms of it, just like there are many different things that we refer to as liquids, but they’re not all going to have the same effect if you drink them. And some form of meditation might be very stress-producing rather than stress-releasing. But to each his own. A lot of people swear by it and have gotten tremendous benefit from it and feel like it’s led to their liberation or realization. Others feel like, “Well, it was a waste of time.”

Signposter: Do you know John de Ruiter?

Rick: I’ve heard of him. He’s up in Canada, Edmonton or someplace.

Signposter: Yeah, Edmonton.

Rick: I have a next-door neighbor who used to drive up there practically every weekend to see him.

Signposter: Amazing. Anyway, John doesn’t mention meditation at all, just as an example.

Rick: Yeah. Well, you know, it’s a big world. And for some people, meditation is their focus; for other people, selfless service; and for other people, I don’t know, all sorts of different spiritual practices and approaches. So people tend to gravitate toward the thing which does it for them.

Signposter: Yeah. And the important point is what you bring to meditation.

Rick: Yeah, I agree. If you have a lackadaisical attitude, then maybe it’s not going to do much for you.

Signposter: Or if you bring to meditation an attitude of efforting, that’s loose.

Rick: I agree. Not that my agreement in any way validates the point, but that’s my understanding as well. Anyway, you did a lot of meditation. You eventually decided it was just sort of a form of quietude that wasn’t going to get you anywhere, and so then what?

Signposter: Well, I just dropped it.

Rick: And?

Signposter: But periodically I will meditate, but not as a rule or as a system.

Rick: Right. And so, you know, you’re still talking about something that happened 60 years ago, or 55 years ago, as a relatively young man. So what has been happening all your life? I mean, now you’re a signposter, you’re someone who is teaching other people, and so on. Spell it out for us a little bit more. Was there an awakening at some point, or has it been just a very gradual, incremental growth of wisdom as you’ve aged, or what?

Signposter: That’s an interesting question, because two things happened. I had very, very powerful—at least four or five, I would say five—mystical experiences. You know, some very supreme, unusual mystical experiences. But what’s really interesting about that is that those weren’t the important point. What was important was the gradual, underlying, unconscious awakening that was going on. And that took place over my whole life.

Rick: Yeah, that’s a good point. In fact, I was going to ask you whether it would be worth talking about these mystical experiences, but the second thing you said, I think, is very significant, because obviously mystical experiences can come and go, right?

Signposter: Yes.

Rick: Something which can come can also go.

Exactly. But what’s interesting, Rick, is that mystical experience at least does one major thing. It allows you, the inquirer, the seeker, to realize that there’s a capacity in our being that’s way beyond the ordinary.

Mystical Experience and the Capacity Beyond the Ordinary

Signposter: Exactly. But what’s interesting, Rick, is that mystical experience at least does one major thing. It allows you, the inquirer, the seeker, to realize that there’s a capacity in our being that’s way beyond the ordinary.

Rick: Yeah.

Signposter: It’s so unusual that it awakens you to the fact that you have infinite potential.

Rick: Yeah.

Signposter: Because ordinarily you would never have any experience like that.

Rick: No, I totally agree. I mean, in my case, the first time I had a mystical experience was on LSD back in the ’60s, and I thought, “Holy crap!” I’d always assumed the world was just the way I thought, the way I perceived it to be. But it all depends on how you perceive it, and that can change radically. So I thought, “Whoa, that’s the purpose of life: to radically change the way you see the world, to the point where you’re really seeing it as it is.” Of course, LSD didn’t do it for me, but it was a kick in the pants to begin with.

Signposter: It’s quite a shock to find out that your version of reality is just a version of reality.

Rick: Yeah, yeah. And it seems like most people in the world have taken their version of reality for granted and just assumed that the world they see is the world that is.

Signposter: And that’s conditioning. That’s cultural, social conditioning.

Rick: Yeah. I did hear you talk quite a bit about that in your interview with Trip, and perhaps you discuss it a lot in your book. So we’ll get to that in just a second. You just said that the mystical experiences were significant in that they showed you there was something more than what you were routinely experiencing, and that the really significant thing is what has grown gradually and subtly over time and doesn’t come and go, right?

Signposter: Yes. Now, I have to explain something. In order for that to happen, you have to have an attitude of continuous observation: observing everything going on around you, especially people, and checking it out, testing it out. That’s how you learn that people are really locked into what I call a cultural, social prison—a prison of a cultural, social nature. I kept observing and testing that out through the years.

Rick: And who or what is the warden of that prison?

Signposter: Their own mind.

Rick: Their own mind.

Signposter: Yes.

Rick: So you can’t blame their parents or society or something. We’re saying it’s our own mind that does this.

Signposter: Well, it’s parents and society that create their mind.

Rick: Right, and who created the minds of the parents and society?

Signposter: It goes back and back and back.

Rick: Yeah, so it’s just a never-ending conditioned… Pardon?

Signposter: Turtles all the way down.

Rick: Yeah, turtles all the way down, right. I love that. So you’re saying there’s just an age-old wheel of conditioning that keeps rolling, and if we want to get off the wheel, then we need to begin to do what exactly?

Signposter: Observe and test.

Rick: Okay, and specifically, how do you do that? Let’s say Troy is a student of yours and he goes through his day. What do you do all day, Troy—observe and test?

Troy: Well, one example was when I was an undergraduate. You have all kinds of professors, right?

Rick: Mm-hm.

Troy: Through reading the book, certain sections of it allowed me not to get caught up in seeing the professor as, basically, the authority who knows it all or has all the answers.

Rick: Which book are you talking about? The Signposter’s book?

Troy: Yeah.

Rick: Oh, okay.

Troy: And through my dialogues with them, I would observe carefully different professors or different people. One of the things I learned was that people are incredibly narcissistic. That’s just one example.

Rick: Okay. So let’s say you come to that conclusion, that people in general are incredibly narcissistic. What do you do with it? How does it help you become less narcissistic or more liberated, or whatever it is we’re supposed to become?

Troy: I don’t think there is a method. I think you keep going; you just keep observing.

Rick: Okay.

Troy: You don’t bring the first insight with you. You don’t hold on to that. You discover it again and again, deeper and deeper, through observing. And there’s no way I could say, “Okay, it’s going to go this way,” or, “This happens.” It’s a process. It’s unknown. You don’t know where it’s going to go. That’s what inquiry is.

Rick: Okay. So, speaking to either of you, is there a sense in what you are doing of a kind of progression, where there is going to be a deeper or clearer realization, or some such thing, as you continue to inquire and observe?

Troy: I would say so, yeah.

Rick: Okay. And would you identify any significant milestones or ultimate destination in this process, or is it something we do until the day we die?

Troy: I don’t know. I am inquiring into that.

Rick: How about you, Signposter?

Signposter: Enlightenment is a process. It’s not a state.

Rick: Okay.

Signposter: And therefore, it can go on eternally. Just like God is eternal and God is an eternal mystery, enlightenment can go on eternally.

Rick: And so when you say that, can you define enlightenment a little bit better? Let’s see if we’re on the same page with that.

Signposter: Well, I don’t tend to define anything, because that only limits it.

Rick: Okay. But if we’re going to use a word, then that word is referring to something, and we want to make sure we have a common understanding of what that word represents. Otherwise, we’re not communicating.

Signposter: I understand that, and it’s a difficult difficulty. The only thing I can perhaps do is answer questions.

Rick: Okay. So then my question is: Let’s say there are some traditionally enlightened people we might think of—the Buddha, Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta, or these people. You say it’s not a state, but a process that continues. So these guys, you would say, were not in some state, per se. They were adepts at a process. Would that be correct?

Signposter: Yeah, at a certain stage of the process.

Rick: An advanced stage, which is why we respect them as teachers.

Signposter: Advanced relative to the rest of the world’s population.

Rick: But theoretically not any kind of final destination—something that could continue on and on, for all we know.

Signposter: Yeah. The danger is, even with these people we revere a great deal—Jesus and Buddha and Ramana and whoever else—the danger is that we project ultimate enlightenment onto them when it could be a heavy dose of ego inflation.

Rick: Could be. Although, I guess that begs the question: Is there any example of ultimate enlightenment throughout history? Or are you saying we should just always take everything with a grain of salt and not just assume? There could be an alternate explanation for what made these guys special.

Signposter: I would say not to join the crowd. Did you ever meet Ramana?

Rick: Oh no. When did he die, 1956 or something like that? I would have been about six years old then.

Signposter: I’m only asking the question to point out that you have no firsthand knowledge of him at all.

Rick: No, in fact, I haven’t even read his books in any detail yet. Everybody talks about him, so I talk about him. I’d like to read his books, but he’s out of the…

Signposter: Sample of what I’m talking about.

Rick: Yeah.

Signposter: We join the crowd, and that’s a mistake.

Rick: Right.

Signposter: Your American statement, “I’m from Missouri,” says, “I will test him out when I see him.”

Rick: Yeah, it’s the Show-Me State, Missouri.

Signposter: Right. And until that happens, keep an open mind.

Rick: Yeah, I think that’s a great attitude. And you can… I’m sorry, go ahead.

Signposter: Ramana may not have been the enlightened guy that’s been projected onto him. A guy who sits on a bed a great deal of the time and wobbles around with a limp leg, sitting in what looks like a pampered diaper—that doesn’t tell me he’s enlightened. And he reads comic books. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s enlightened.

Rick: Did he read comic books?

Signposter: Yeah.

Rick: Oh, okay.

Signposter: That’s fine. I think that’s great.

Rick: Yeah, and it doesn’t tell you he’s not enlightened either.

Signposter: You see what I’m getting at, though? They make such a big deal out of a guy who lies in bed all day.

Rick: Not a bad gig. Yeah, I mean, obviously, I guess what you’re saying is we should be suspicious of any external criteria for enlightenment. And enlightenment could be there in someone whom we would least expect.

Signposter: Exactly.

Rick: Right. Doesn’t have to speak with an Indian accent or wear a loincloth or anything.

Signposter: Exactly.

Rick: Of course.

Signposter: I’m really very wary of mob rules in spiritual matters. It can be very ridiculous. Like Nisargadatta, he smoked himself to death. What the hell is wrong with him?

Rick: Yeah. And yet, when you read his books, just like you read Adi Da’s books, the guy was brilliant, you know.

Signposter: Yeah, now there you got it. Krishnamurti, you see, the strange thing about Krishnamurti is that because he talks so simply and writes books that are so easy to read, people think he’s not saying anything. But if you really study what he’s saying, he says things just as profound as Adi Da. But you’ve got to go deep to really examine what he’s saying.

Rick: Are you talking about U. G. or J.?

Signposter: Yeah, Jiddu.

Rick: J., okay.

Signposter: Now, U. G. was really something else.

Rick: He was a trip, yeah.

Signposter: He was, you know, on the face of it, you’d say he’s nuts. But at the same time, there’s one theme you have to remember with U. G. He was telling you, “All knowledge, all thought is off. It’s not it.” And that’s what he did all his life, in a crazy manner. He was almost like an actor who’s completely destroying everything. But that was his main theme: all knowledge and all thought is nuts.

Rick: Well, you know, actually, I listened to a talk that Troy gave, I think, on YouTube, and I thought you did a pretty good job of it in terms of explaining how we really don’t know anything because we’re capable of knowing only a tiny fraction of what’s actually going on. You know, our eyes can only see so much of the electromagnetic spectrum, our ears can only hear so much, and so on and so forth, right? That was you, wasn’t it? So it seems to be what the Signposter is saying here, but when I listened to that, I thought, “Yeah, but enlightenment or realization is not about something you see through the senses,” because obviously the senses have their limitations. We’re just a tiny little speck in a vast universe. It’s about awakening to that which is beyond the senses, which is in its nature universal.

Troy: A term we’ll use is “the only,” and that just signifies, basically, that the senses are the only as well, or you could call it God. Like enlightenment, we’re not necessarily saying we know what enlightenment is. I don’t really know what that is, because that would mean I could know what life is or God. We’re saying there’s just the only, and the only is the great mystery, and everything that is there, including senses, is the great mystery or the only as well. Some people call it transcendent and immanent, meaning it goes beyond the senses, like you mentioned, but it’s immanent, it’s in the … it’s non-dual, it’s the only. But we’re not saying we know what that is. I’m not saying I know that.

Rick: You just have an intellectual facility with it, or familiarity with the idea.

Troy: When you talk about a process, it can basically be summarized as deconstructing, like U. G., knowledge, which is the cultural-social enterprise—deconstruction, deconstruction—and then there’s also “knowing” more and more that you don’t know what anything is, and that’s the ultimate. It all goes there eventually. Adi Da called it “divine ignorance.” Krishna already had his word for it: Zen Master. That’s what they’re pointing to. U. G., Nisargadatta—that’s where it all goes. Like, that’s the … all roads point there.

Signposter: It’s kind of an interesting point. The question comes up, “Can you be happy in nothing?” And yes, you can. When you get to the point that you don’t know what anything is, then there’s a great possibility you could be happy in that. You don’t have to be despairing and commit suicide.

Rick: Yeah. Well, here’s another guru for you that’s quite effective in helping people to do that: Byron Katie. She has this system which is quite effective in prying loose people’s certainty about what they think. You know, they’re sure of something, and she says, “Do you really know that for sure? Do you absolutely know that to be true?” And then look at it from the opposite perspective, and she’s really good with this system of helping people to get to a state of not knowing.

Signposter: Yeah, she does have a very good system. Very nice. She’s a very good deconstructor.

Rick: Yeah. Let’s talk about your book a little bit. I read through the whole table of contents, and … what is the title of the book, by the way?

Signposter: “The Delusion of Being Human.”

Rick: Okay, that’s a good one. You want to elaborate on that a bit before we dig into it?

Signposter: Well, I’m going to let … Troy’s not doing much talking, so I’m going to invite him to take over.

Rick: Okay.

Troy: I think it just means that, basically, the ultimate goal of the book is to point out your true nature, like to remove the obstructions and encumbrances that lay in the road of that. And one of the major ones is your neurological system, culture, society, gives you the feeling like … your basic sense of consciousness is a limitation, a point of view, being human, and that has to be transcended. I think that’s just … that’s the main thing of that title.

Rick: Good. I like that. Because we are obviously … to my understanding, that’s what the whole enlightenment game is all about, is the realization that you really are something which is far beyond just the human biological mechanism. So …

Signposter: Rick?

Rick: Yes.

Signposter: Should I just intervene for one moment?

Rick: Uh-huh.

What I’m finding that would be worthwhile making some comment about is that this new thing called evolutionary enlightenment, and integral psychology, integral philosophy and spirituality, et cetera, is fundamentally inviting people to join one another in love while being in the dream. That’s all I wanted to say about it.

Signposter: What I’m finding that would be worthwhile making some comment about is that this new thing called evolutionary enlightenment, and integral psychology, integral philosophy and spirituality, et cetera, is fundamentally inviting people to join one another in love while being in the dream. That’s all I wanted to say about it.

Rick: Okay.

Signposter: It’s merely trying to make a dream better.

Rick: Well, I just interviewed Andrew Cohen a couple of weeks ago, and I can’t speak on his behalf. He’s the founder or the proponent of this evolutionary enlightenment, and I think what he would say is … he would probably agree with you in a sense, like, “Sure, if we wish, we could say that the whole world is a dream.” I mean, Shankara said, “The world is an illusion. Brahman alone is real. The world is Brahman.” And so, yeah, but what’s wrong with making the dream better?

Signposter: It’s a nightmare, baby.

Rick: Pardon?

Signposter: It’s better than a nightmare.

Rick: It certainly is. And where is there to go after the Absolute is realized? Well, we’re still living, breathing entities, and I think the where to go at that point is to start infusing that into the relative more, become more aligned or attuned with that level of cosmic intelligence, because it’s going to mean that the individual expression of your life is much more enjoyable, both for yourself and for those whom it influences.

Signposter: Yes. All I’m saying is it would be nice if they told people that you’re just joining us in a dream.

Rick: Some of them do. There’s this guy that I interviewed a couple of years ago named Timothy Conway, and he’s written this really nice article where he talks about just what we were saying: sure, this world is a dream world and we’re just dream characters, but just because it is doesn’t mean that we don’t want to behave more intelligently and responsibly. I mean, Troy’s going off to college to get a PhD. Why do that if it’s only a dream? Well, because he’ll be more effective in the world, he’ll live a better life in this dream world, right?

Signposter: Yeah.

Rick: Yeah. So I guess the point I’m making is that realizing what you just said doesn’t mean we just blow the whole thing off and sit around on the street corner. We can still engage creatively and responsibly and constructively in this dream world.

Signposter: Yeah. I’m just saying it would be really responsible, wonderfully responsible, if people who joined that organization were told that they’re joining that dream.

Rick: I think it’s important to point out, because otherwise I suppose you could begin to take the dream too seriously.

Signposter: That’s exactly what happens.

Rick: Yeah. There’s something you refer to in your book quite often, “Mr.” You say the conversation with Mr. begins, and later on you say the conversation with Mr. continues. Who is this Mr. you’re referring to?

Signposter: Mr. is a person called Hermit that I met when I was suffering most.

Rick: Ah.

Signposter: When I was on a farm by myself, I got chopped by two women at the same time. My wife and my mistress chopped me, and I went into what they called howling. I was on a farm, desperate, and I happened to meet this old man, who wasn’t as old as he looked, actually. He had a cabin in the forest, and he would meet 10 to 14 people. I was eventually invited to that. That helped to wake me up.

Rick: This was up in Canada someplace?

Signposter: Yeah.

Rick: Okay. You said you didn’t have a teacher, but it sounds like maybe this guy was a teacher of sorts for you.

Signposter: Yes. Truthfully speaking, he was a teacher, but he wasn’t well known, and he disappeared.

Rick: Well, that’s okay.

Signposter: It was a very strange phenomenon, an unusual phenomenon.

Rick: Interesting. What kind of impact did he have on your life?

Signposter: Powerful.

Rick: In what respect?

Signposter: Well, actually, it changed my life.

Rick: How so?

Signposter: I saw through the delusion of my suffering.

Rick: Originally, before you met him, your suffering was very real, and, “Oh, I’m going through all this terrible stuff.” Then after you had spent some time with him, it’s like you realized it wasn’t as real as you thought.

Signposter: What I realized was that all the conditioning and programming of the culture, I had interjected that into my neurological brain-mind system, and then I projected it out, and that was the suffering. I was continuing to project, to put it bluntly, the bullshit that I inherited from the cultural-social enterprise. That was my suffering. When I really got that, that suffering disappeared. I was able to free myself from the addiction to my mistress.

Rick: You’re speaking literally of a mistress here. You had a wife and a mistress, and you were addicted to the mistress, and the two of them somehow maybe colluded and just said, “To heck with this. You’re out of here, buddy.”

Troy: Did you mention the soulmate?

Signposter: Troy just told me I might mention the soulmate. After that suffering, I met my soulmate. That’s another story, but all I can say is that’s when dialogical inquiry really took place for both of us. It was the first time I didn’t put on an act and try to con a woman. My soulmate, I never tried to con her. It was the first time I told the truth about myself.

Rick: Interesting. So it was good, then, that you went through this suffering. It was a necessary kind of purgatory for you to get to the other side of it and meet the person you were supposed to meet.

Signposter: It’s almost impossible to wake up without suffering. I don’t want to say absolutely, because there’s obviously exceptions.

Rick: Yeah, I’m just thinking about that. It might depend. I think it obviously varies from one individual to the next, and I don’t know if I want to give any glib suggestions as to why some suffer so much more than others. But perhaps if we look at it from the broadest possible perspective, and if we think of God as being ultimately on our side, to have our best interests in mind, then he’s not just being a sadistic tormentor by putting us through suffering. There’s actually some sort of lesson to be learned through it.

Signposter: I don’t buy that at all.

Rick: Okay, what would you say?

Signposter: God doesn’t have any interest in mind.

Rick: He doesn’t have any kind of purpose or evolutionary goal, so to speak, for the universe?

Signposter: No.

Rick: Okay.

Signposter: God just continues to manifest. We put the valuation on it.

Rick: But, speaking back about evolutionary enlightenment, doesn’t there seem to be this sort of evolutionary impetus or direction? Things keep kind of growing and evolving and progressing and so on.

Signposter: It seems to be that the human species is improving in some areas, but at the same time it’s improving in some areas, it’s getting more dreadful and more—actually, more—what’s the word in the Bible?

Rick: Destructive?

Signposter: More destructive, more apocalyptic.

Rick: Yeah, I agree. The more we progress, on the other hand, the more capable we become of destroying the environment and destroying the planet.

Signposter: Exactly. And God may be playing a game here, for all we know, because he enjoys it. Just playing a little bit with the metaphor here. He may want us to think we’re really progressing, and then he’s going to pull the plug on the whole thing.

Rick: Could be. But don’t just talk about us or our planet, even. Look at the big picture. We started out with the Big Bang, I suppose, and we probably had nothing but subatomic particles. They eventually congealed into hydrogen, and we eventually formed stars. Within the fusion reaction in stars, we began to get heavier elements, and that gave rise to planets, and life formed somehow. It’s like there’s been this whole kind of evolution or progression from an amorphous nothingness to a very rich, complex ecosystem and world. And ours, of course, is only one of billions.

So there does seem to be this kind of evolutionary progression that has taken place, and that’s what I refer to when I speak of God having a purpose or an evolutionary direction. Of course, the word “God” is tricky because there are so many connotations with it, but I would just mean the intelligence that underlies and governs the universe and permeates it.

Signposter: Yeah, I hear what you’re saying, and it could be that, but then again, we don’t know.

Rick: No, it’s interesting speculation, I suppose. It just seems that way to my understanding. So anyway, you met this hermit …

Signposter: It’s a good story to calm human beings down.

Rick: Or to help them gain a little bit of a handle on the way things actually are, maybe. I mean, you say certain things with a fair amount of certainty or a fair amount of conviction, like you’re expressing your understanding of things. And I suppose to any of those things I could say, “It’s a good story, it’s a nice theory,” and maybe you’d agree with me, but we still formulate them, you know? We still play with these theories.

Signposter: Yeah, but I like reminding myself that I really don’t know.

Rick: Yeah, absolutely. Hear, hear. I totally agree with you. A friend was just telling me today in an email, she was saying, “You really have to drop all your concepts, all your baggage, just drop it all.” And I say, “Well, you know, I’m not as attached to it as you might think. There are certain things that make a lot of sense to me, but I hold them all somewhat lightly.” You know, they are theories, and if we think of ourselves as scientists, so to speak, if someone comes along with a better theory or something that shoots holes in our cherished theories, then great! We want truth; we don’t want to just cling to unrealistic notions, so let’s shoot them all to pieces if something can do that.

Signposter: Yeah, we really don’t know when the story is going to end. We keep creating the story.

Rick: Yeah, or if it will.

Signposter: That’s right.

Rick: So anyway, you went through this suffering bit, and you met the hermit, and then on the other side of that you met your soulmate, and you were honest for the first time in your life with her.

Signposter: With a woman. I wasn’t trying to con them into being under my control.

Rick: Which you had always done in the past, I suppose.

Signposter: Yes, I always thought I had to lie, shoot to shit.

Rick: Yeah, that has a kind of a short-range effect. So you stayed with this woman all of her life?

Signposter: Which one is that?

Rick: The soulmate.

Signposter: I’ve been with my soulmate 21 years.

Rick: Great. And I suppose this has been an aid in your dialogical inquiry, your ability to question and probe and examine assumptions.

Signposter: Exactly. And another thing that’s no small matter: she nursed me when I was pretty well through life, when I was dying almost. When I came back from the hospital, she nursed me back to life.

Rick: Great. So your book is a long one, and we can’t really go through every little chapter here, but just walk us through what you consider to be the most important, salient points, if you would. Because I presume that this book is kind of like your life’s work, it’s your legacy, what you understand and feel to be useful for people you’ve put here. So give us a glimpse of it, and when it goes on the market, maybe some of the people who listen to this will want to buy it.

Signposter: I just want to say something about the soulmate situation.

Rick: Okay.

Signposter: People think you find your soulmate. It’s not something you find; it’s something you create. And you create it together when you already have moved from thinking that the cultural social enterprise has any answers for spirituality and transcendence. So the soulmate is one who helps you, first of all, serve God; second, know God; third, become God. And that’s through dialogical inquiry and investigation and so on and so forth.

But you start out more or less serving God, because you don’t know what God is. And you begin to know God in a sense of knowing God to be the only, and then eventually you realize, well, that includes me. So that’s what I mean by soulmate. That’s why it’s called soulmate.

Rick: Yeah, that’s good. And I presume you speak from experience here. You’ve gone through this progression?

Signposter: Yes, exactly.

Rick: Okay. And so, to jump to the third one. Well, let’s go to the second one, knowing God. When you had kind of arrived at the knowing God stage, what did you know?

Signposter: That only God is. And it’s a great mystery, and will always be a great mystery.

Rick: And that knowledge was not just intellectual, I presume; it was somewhat experiential, intuitive, visceral kind of?

Signposter: Totally existential.

Rick: Yeah. You were living it, not just thinking it.

Signposter: Yeah. And everything that arose, referring to that to deconstruct what was arising.

Rick: Uh-huh. And then the third one, that you are God. Of course, some people would freak out if they heard anybody say that, but you’re not referring to your individual ego being God. You’re referring to, you know, you are that totality, right?

Signposter: Yeah. First of all, ego’s behavior is not something that exists. It’s just behavior.

Rick: Uh-huh.

Signposter: Ego takes place when there’s an assumption you’re a separate self.

Rick: Yeah.

Signposter: So, when you realize that’s all crap, it’s not possible to be a separate self. You know, when you realize that’s totally impossible, then you say, “I am the only.”

Rick: Uh-huh. And again, I always ask this, but it’s easy … I mean, when I was 18 years old, I could hear ideas like this and say, “Yeah, yeah, I understand, I got it.” But I think what you’re saying is it’s something much more than just having a sort of an intellectual kind of affinity with the ideas you’re saying here. You’re talking about, as you say, something really existential, something deeply experiential, something at the gut level that one is living.

Signposter: Yeah. It’s a realization that’s … it’s almost infinite, you could call it, an infinite realization.

Rick: Yeah. And would you say it’s something that’s kind of … it’s there 24/7? It’s not something that comes and goes whenever you happen to remember to think about it? It’s just kind of an ongoing foundation?

Signposter: Well, I’m going to put it in terms of conditioning. Conditioned stimulus-response. When a cultural social stimulus arises, then that ordinarily will trigger off or elicit a cultural social response. But what has happened is the cultural social response that’s elicited from the stimulus, the cultural social stimulus, now elicits “I am the only.”

Rick: I don’t understand. Can you make it more … can you give me an example? Are you saying this is something that happens to an average sort of ignorant person, or are you saying this is somehow a more enlightened way of functioning, or what?

Signposter: Okay, here’s a way of putting it. Jordan just said somebody might ask you, “How’s the weather today?” Well, the social response, the conditioned social non-thinking response, is, “It’s not a bad day.” Well, as soon as that arises, “This is not a bad day,” that’s a social response. Immediately what kicks in, because it’s been conditioned together, is, “Ah! God has spoken to God!”

Rick: Ah, so you’re saying that when the realization dawns that “I am God,” then ordinary, simple, everyday interactions like, “How’s the weather?” and “The weather’s fine,” are seen as just being God interacting with Himself. Is that what you’re saying?

Signposter: Yeah.

Rick: Okay, yeah. So every little thing, you know, you’re buying carrots in the grocery store, whatever, the carrots are God, the checkout clerk is God, it’s all God.

Signposter: It’s God playing that.

Rick: Right. It’s God carroting, and God checkout clerking, and God paying, moneying, and …

Signposter: Bullshitting.

Rick: What was the last one?

Signposter: God bullshitting.

Rick: Bullshitting, whatever. Yeah. So that gets us back to that perspective that we were talking about half an hour ago, if we want to see it. If God really is omnipresent, as they say, then where is He not? I mean, He permeated Auschwitz as thoroughly as He permeates the Grand Canyon or Yosemite National Park or something.

Signposter: Exactly.

Rick: Yeah. And I guess you’re saying, does this realization—and again, I’m assuming that there’s some experiential nature to it for you, not just a good philosophical grasp on it—does this realization have any practical significance? For instance, right now you have two different forms of cancer you mentioned, and you may not be long for this world. How has this realization enabled you to deal with that circumstance?

Signposter: I had these two forms.

Rick: Oh, they went away?

Signposter: They got cured through operation.

Rick: Oh, very good.

Signposter: Yeah.

Rick: Great.

Signposter: I’m still suffering the effects of the operation, but the operation was hellish.

Rick: Yeah, I can imagine. But let’s say, I mean, there’s a real nitty-gritty situation that all of us will face in one form or another one day. How has the, let’s say, spiritual maturity that you’ve gained over the course of a lifetime enabled you to deal with that sort of thing, as compared with maybe the guy in the next room in the hospital who hadn’t had that sort of development?

Signposter: Well, first of all, there were several times that I was close to death—heart things and bleeding to death, and so on and so forth. They were rushing me around from one emergency situation to the next, et cetera. I sure didn’t like the idea that I was going to die.

Interestingly enough, I went into a clinical depression, where I lost all interest in anything, everything. My dear soulmate nursed me out of that. She would get me to get up and walk ten feet to start out—just walk ten feet, just get up. And I did it. Strangely enough, I did it not for me, but for her.

All I can say is that it helped me through those rough times. I was challenged very, very profoundly and deeply with the possibility that there is no afterlife, and that all that’s been said about that by religion and so on and so forth is all just metaphor. It’s all just talk for an insecure organism. So I was trying to face the nothingness that was on its way. That was a tremendous challenge, really a tremendous challenge.

I began to experiment. I wanted to see if I could find, in the midst of that, some form of security. So I tried to go back to an old religion. I tried to create and stimulate an old belief system. That was an interesting experiment. I discovered several things: you cannot create a belief system just because, if you’re aware of what you’re doing. You cannot create a belief system for security’s sake.

I also discovered another wonderful thing. I don’t know if I get much agreement on this one, but you cannot surrender. It’s impossible to surrender deliberately, consciously. It’s something that takes place magically. I use the word “magically” because you can’t do it. The self can’t do it. The phony self can’t do it. It’s something that just takes place. So I dropped that experiment, and here I am.

Rick: Yeah. It was Woody Allen, by the way, who said, “I don’t mind dying; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” You make some good points. This point about not being able to conjure up a religion again kind of reminds me of the point that once the snake has been seen to be only a rope, you don’t see it as a snake again. You can’t go back to seeing it as a snake.

Signposter: Yeah, it was quite an experiment.

Rick: Yeah. And this thing about not being able to surrender willfully, I think that’s very profound. There are a lot of teachers who just say, “Oh, just give up the search. Just realize who you are,” yada yada. I always want to hear them say that. I think it’s not so volitional for people. They can’t just snap their fingers and have this happen.

Signposter: You can’t let go, Rick.

Rick: Yeah, not willfully.

Signposter: That’s right. It’s something that happens.

Rick: Maybe you can willfully just relax the struggle a little bit, but in terms of complete liberation, completely letting go, I think you’re right.

Signposter: Yeah. It’s a manifestation of the Tao.

Rick: What I would say, though—maybe see if you agree with this—is that you can’t just jump off the precipice, but you can move yourself toward the precipice to the point where you’re there at the edge, and then the wind can blow you off or something. You know what I mean by the metaphor? If a person is deeply conditioned, they’re not just going to snap out of all those layers of conditioning, but the conditioning can be worked out bit by bit, to the point where perhaps the last shred of it will go.

Signposter: Yeah, Rick. I don’t like to use the word “experience,” but my understanding, or my apprehension, of this thing called conditioning is that there is no guru ever who got free of all conditioning. None of them got free. What happens is that when they notice or observe the conditioning arising, they can let it go then, but they never get free of it.

Rick: Yeah, and I guess it kind of depends on what we mean by conditioning, because some forms of conditioning are essential to life. I mean, we’re conditioned to get hungry, we’re conditioned to breathe, and things like that.

Signposter: That’s not conditioning. That’s your biological condition.

Rick: Oh, yeah, okay. That must be autonomic nervous system stuff. So by conditioning you mean any kind of…

Signposter: Cultural.

Rick: Sure. You’re probably right. I mean, even if you think of the most enlightened examples we can think of, they were a product of their culture, a product of their time, and had certain assumptions and understandings ingrained in them during their upbringing. I’ve seen it in a number of cases of people whom I have great respect for, so I agree with you.

Signposter: There are impulses that continue—compulsions, upsets. The only thing is, they’re not caught in it for a long period of time.

Rick: And they may not be caught in it at all. I mean, they speak of the binding influence of action, and some teachers, I think, would say to what you’re saying, “Yeah, you’re still going to see the remnants of conditioned behavior on the observable level of a person’s life, but if you actually could step inside their subjective experience, you would find that they’re free. They’re not actually bound by these types of behavior that you’re seeing on the surface.”

Signposter: Yeah, it depends on the degree and the kinds of conditioning. For example, if you wanted to study that, I think in his latest book, Balsekar wrote that no guru is free of conditioning. That’s an example of one person who made that statement. Now, it’s very hard for gurus to admit that they’re still conditioned when they’ve got another game going.

Rick: Yeah, I think they’re human beings. I mean, Eckhart Tolle likes his morning cup of coffee. He’s actually had people come up to him in coffee shops and say, “Hey, I thought you were enlightened. Why are you buying coffee?” He says, “I like coffee.” (Laughter)

Signposter: Speak the truth more often.

Rick: Yeah. If his dog died—he has a dog, and he likes to walk in the woods—I’m sure he’d be upset if his dog died. We’re human beings, no matter…

Signposter: Well, we’re not human.

Rick: Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. We are and we aren’t. I mean, the conditioned aspect of us is; the unconditioned aspect of us is not, right?

Signposter: Well, it’s only a label.

Rick: Yeah, yeah. And that’s what I’m getting at: sure, as humans, there’s always going to be conditioning. It just goes with the territory. But if enlightenment means anything, I think it means actually a state of liberation from the binding influence of conditioning, from the binding influence of action. You can be fully engaged in action, but no longer doing so in a conditioned way, no longer having conditioning shroud your true nature.

Yeah, a person can be caught in the process of getting a desired outcome, right? Here’s the point: what happens often is, as you awaken, you are no longer attached to the outcome.

Signposter: Yeah, a person can be caught in the process of getting a desired outcome, right? Here’s the point: what happens often is, as you awaken, you are no longer attached to the outcome.

Rick: Perfect, yep. That reminds me of a verse in the Gita. It says, “You have control over action alone, never over its fruits. Engage yourself in all actions without being attached to the fruits of your action.”

Signposter: Right.

Rick: Yeah.

Signposter: It’s a universal probability: you may or may not get the fruits.

Rick: True.

Signposter: It’s got nothing… Have you read Korzybski’s book, Science and Sanity?

Rick: No.

Signposter: Well, he brought out a fantastic statement, and it’s something that you can meditate on continuously all day long and test out all day long. It’s called, “The map is not the territory.”

Rick: That’s good. I like that phrase. It’s a very important phrase, I think. I don’t know how he meant it, but when we talk about enlightenment and all this stuff, we’re just kind of sketching out this real crude map, which may be quite dissimilar from the actual territory that it refers to.

Signposter: Exactly. And what I have found is that most past and present gurus often don’t know or realize, especially in the moment, that the map is not the territory.

Rick: Wilber?

Troy: Wilber is an example of that.

Rick: I don’t know. I can’t speak for Wilber.

Troy: The integral map, or Cohen, for example, with evolutionary enlightenment, is based on certain premises, like the Big Bang and so on, but these are maps of physics that are continuously being reshuffled.

Rick: Yeah.

Troy: Wilber does not point out enough, or at all, that the map is not the territory. You’ve got to pay $200 a DVD to go through stage one of the map, stage two of the map. There are all kinds of levels, lines, quadrants, types. Maybe in one of his books he mentions that the map’s not the territory, but that’s just an example. He’s huge throughout the world.

Rick: Oh, yeah, he’s a very influential guy. Well, you know, if we look at those old maps that Columbus drew, or the pilgrims, or early settlers, or the Vikings, or whatever, you see these very crude representations of what North America looks like. These days we have satellite photography that can see a cigarette pack on the ground. It’s all mapped out in very precise detail. So I think any of these guys, any guru, as you call them, is in most cases just sketching out a map to the best of their ability, but the maps are evolving. Even in terms of any individual, his ability to sketch out a map is evolving, but perhaps we as a culture are improving our mapmaking ability as we go along.

Signposter: Just to be a little bit more specific, when I talk about a map, I’m talking about a conceptual-perceptual map. Or put it the other way: the perceptual-conceptual map is not reality.

Rick: Correct, it’s only a pointer. But we have to kind of do that. If we say the color red, which is obviously the color of my shirt, that’s an agreed-upon concept to refer to this particular spectrum of the electromagnetic wavelength. But we all kind of agree on what it means, so we’re trying to agree upon and discuss…

Signposter: Rick, just a point there. He wanted to say something. Try it.

Troy: You know how you said “red,” the red shirt, and the concept? You said your shirt is obviously red. By sensory-perceptual map, like how he mentioned sensory and conceptual, the perception that it’s red—the visual system, et cetera—that in itself is a map or a model. It’s a translation.

Rick: Exactly.

Troy: A large, infinite, or unlimited amount of energy, or the territory, which is totality, gets translated into a map. You could call it the first level of the map, and then the second level is the conceptual-linguistic end. The book, to kind of weave this into the sample, is a major deconstructor in that sense. It goes from level to level. A lot of the maps build off Alfred Korzybski. He’s the guy who said, “The map’s not the territory.” If you’re familiar, Stephen Wolinsky, the disciple of Nisargadatta, was profoundly influenced by Korzybski as well.

It goes in to talk about how there are different levels of the map, meaning the sensory-perceptual—what you see as red—and then the conceptual. That all makes up what you call human. It’s called The Delusion of Being Human. Involved in that as well, woven into those maps, are basically the mapmakers, or what’s called the cultural-social enterprise, and cultural-social conditioning—the specifics of conditioning. Basically, Pavlovian conditioning, avoidance-escape conditioning, all sorts of things from what’s called learning theory in psychology. There’s also all kinds of neuroscience in terms of how the photons come in and there’s an abstraction of energy. But I just wanted to weave that in there.

Rick: Sure. So that’s a good little taste of some of the stuff that’s in the book.

Perception, reality, and the limits of knowing

Signposter: Are you aware, Rick, that what you see as color outside you is not outside you? It’s a sensation inside your neurology.

Rick: Sure. It’s something happening in the brain that is interpreted as color, or as whatever.

Signposter: Are you also aware that there’s nothing outside you?

Rick: Yeah, as long as we define you in the big sense of it. Obviously, there’s stuff outside this body. I mean, Venus, the planet, is outside this body, is it not? But what I essentially am contains both this body and Venus.

Signposter: No, you’re constructing Venus. It’s not outside you at all.

Rick: That’s an interesting idea. Elaborate on that a little bit.

Signposter: Well, it’s just the whole idea that you’re creating—or constructing is a better word, because we seldom ever create anything. What we’re doing is constructing neurologically. We’re constructing all kinds of perceptual and conceptual maps through our various senses and our ideational system. And then we project that outside because that seems to be the way it looks. But it’s not that way. It’s not that way at all.

Rick: But when I mentioned Venus, you knew what I was talking about, and you and I have never talked about Venus before, because everybody in the world has seen Venus, and astronomers have seen it in quite some detail. And if everybody in the world died—which 100 years from now everyone will have—and there were other people here, they’d be seeing Venus. So it’s not like Venus is dependent for its existence on what you or I or anybody else understands. It has a certain objective reality to it, doesn’t it?

Signposter: It’s not objective at all. There is no such thing as objective. There is subjective, but no objective. What happens—and it’s the worst sin we ever commit—is we agree. We’re always being run by agreement. And the agreement comes from the cultural, social enterprise, which tells us that there is Venus out there. So notice that when we see Venus, it looks like it’s outside of us. That’s our own perception. Perception has constructed that, and the word Venus has also been constructed by our language. So there’s nothing outside of us.

Rick: But if I—go ahead.

Signposter: Here’s the question—I mean, not the question, but here’s a statement that goes with that. Where does “us” stop and begin? And if you know you’re the only, you know there isn’t any beginning, there isn’t any end, there isn’t any birth, there isn’t any death.

Rick: Do you want to add to that, Troy?

Troy: I was just going to say, the delusion is being human. We all have—like, your Venus and my Venus are different. I construct a Venus; you construct a Venus.

Rick: We both construct concepts of this thing that we’ve never actually seen close up.

Troy: From a point of view, which is something Adi Da—to bring our good buddy back—drew out through what he often referred to as “point of view.” Later on in his teaching, he brought in the neurological system more, the limits of it, and the sort of thing we’re talking about. He used a metaphor of totality, or the territory, as a room. He would say, to know the room as it is—meaning the only—to really be able to actually know it, you’d have to be able to see it from every single point of view in the room simultaneously, from all time and space. But we can’t do that. We’re limited to the point of view of our neurology.

So if you’re somewhere in the States right now and you look up at the sky and see Venus, you’re seeing the room from your point of view, and I’m seeing it from mine. It’s limited.

Rick: Yeah, we’re like little peepholes, and we’re only getting some kind of approximation of what’s out there. And each peephole gives it a different color, a different flavor.

Troy: One of the statements that really hit me at the core, when I was in a Dialogical Inquiry one time with the Signposter, was when he said, “Anything limited is unreal; only the unlimited is real.” That’s a major theme.

Anything limited is unreal; only the unlimited is real.

Rick: Yeah, I like that. Well, as always, when I do interviews, I feel like I’m scratching the surface, which kind of fits right in with your “map is not the territory” theme. I always feel like we’re trying to have a conversation about something using concepts and words that are way beyond concepts and words. And hopefully this is of some value for people. I feel like it’s of value for me somehow, just dwelling on this stuff and having these conversations. And people who listen and watch these shows seem to feel the same way. Somehow or other, just engaging. I don’t know if what we’re doing here is what you would call Dialogical Inquiry, but it seems to have some kind of effect when you engage in it.

Signposter: Yeah, it’s Dialogical Inquiry, Rick. And thank you for entering into it.

Rick: Yeah, yeah. I sort of feel like we could probably go on all afternoon, but you must be getting a little tired, and I don’t want to bore people who are listening to this. But it’s very interesting. I understand you have a—well, your book will be coming out, but you also have—if a person lives in your vicinity, there’s a little group of 20 or 30 people that meets with you on a weekly basis or something, I heard you say?

Signposter: Yeah, it changes. It was as high as about 40, and it went back down to about 8.

Rick: You know what you might consider doing? I was in a group like that for years, and we had a speakerphone in the room. People would call in from all over the country and participate via this conference phone that we had in the room there. You might want to consider doing something like that, and then people who are listening to this show, or anybody else whom you’re in touch with, could engage with you that way.

Signposter: That’s an interesting idea. I think Troy thought of that.

Rick: Yeah. You can buy one of those used on eBay or whatever, and they’re not too expensive. You get the good ones that are shaped kind of like little arms that come out, and they really pick up the sound well.

Signposter: Okay.

Rick: Yeah. Okay, guys. Well, I thank you for this conversation. Do you have anything, any final statements you want to make before we conclude?

Signposter: I only want to bow down before you.

Rick: Oh, bow down before you. I’m not worthy of bowing down before anyone any more than anybody else is.

Signposter: Yep, you’re forgetting who you are.

Rick: In fact, you’re my senior, so the respect is all due to you. At least in the Indian tradition, you always bow before your elders.

Troy: First Nations as well.

Rick: You mean like the Native Americans? Is that what you mean by First Nations? Yeah, yeah.

There’s some value in that. Okay, so let me make a concluding remark or two. It won’t take long. This is an ongoing series of interviews, and if you go to batgap.com, you’ll find them all archived. They’re also archived on the YouTube channel, and you can subscribe to the YouTube channel to be notified of new ones. Or, at batgap.com, there’s a little tab that you can click on and put your email address in, and whenever a new interview is posted, you’ll be notified of it.

There’s also an audio podcast you can subscribe to, and almost half the people who listen to this show just do it in audio. So you’ll see links to that with every interview on batgap.com. It’s an Apple iPod podcast thing. And also on batgap.com, there’s a discussion group that crops up around every single interview. Each interview has its own little discussion. Last week’s one is up to about 150 comments or so. So if you feel inclined to say anything about this interview, or to engage in a discussion about the things we’ve been talking about, go there and just post something. You can be your own signposter.

Troy: I did want to mention one thing, now that I think of it. Also, to build off what you were saying, if someone wants to ask any questions about something that was said in the interview, or if they want to continue this dialogue, they could add Troy of Is. I have Facebook. It’s just T-R-O-Y.

Rick: Yeah, I’ll link to your Facebook page from batgap.com, so they can just click and go there if they want to talk to you.

Troy: Or Skype. I don’t charge anyone for Skype.

Rick: Okay.

Troy: Troyofis at gmail.com. That’s email.

Rick: Why don’t you send me all this stuff in an email, and I’ll put it right there on the site. So if you want, I’ll put your Skype address and your email and your Facebook address, and people can all get in touch with you in those different ways.

Troy: And the Signposter goes through me because I’m younger and I’m more familiar with technology, so that’s why I gave it to Troy.

Rick: Sure. Okay, so all that will be there on batgap.com. Just go there if you’d like to get in touch with the Signposter or with Troy. Okay? All right. Thank you very much. Live long and prosper. [Music]