Thomas Beck & Janet Colli Interview
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. There have been about 370 of them now. If this is new to you, go to the past interviews’ menu on batgap.com and you’ll see all the previous ones archived and categorized in various ways. Today’s guests are Thomas Beck and Janet Colli. I’ll just read their bios for the sake of those who may not have read them online. Thomas Beck, PhD, has helped people for 25 years to integrate transformational experience, a radical restructuring of the psyche on a higher level of functioning. As a result of his own neurophysiological restructuring, his meditation practice and interactions with an otherworldly being, whom he calls Cosmic Mother, Thomas is now helping people heal from a wide range of physical illnesses. He believes we all have the ability to heal and to spiritually awaken through the unconditional love of the Almighty Spirit. Janet Elizabeth Colli, PhD, is a psychotherapist in the Pacific Northwest, specializing in integrating trauma with spiritual awakening. With expertise in both clinical and transpersonal psychology, she bridges psychology with the extraordinary and the mystical. She presents at the professional conferences of the American Center for the Integration of Spiritually Transformative Experiences. Catalyzed by a spiritually transformative experience herself, an STE, during cancer treatment, she now provides psycho-spiritual support for a full range of processes, including for those who have been psychiatrically hospitalized during STEs. She facilitates Spiritual Emergence Seattle, a consultation service integrating psycho-spiritual, physiological and community support. Janet lives on Whidbey Island and swims with wild dolphins in Hawaii. There are three things I think that we’re going to be talking about in this interview, all of which I find interesting and hopefully the audience will too. One is, the thing I alluded to, trauma as an impetus to spiritual unfolding. Another is subtle beings, which I’ve covered, and we’ve covered in quite a few other interviews and alluded to. And a third is ETs, or extraterrestrials and the role they may play in an individual or collective spiritual awakening. And that’s something we haven’t really covered on this show, but something that I’ve been interested in since about 1980. and have been meaning to cover. And obviously, on both of those points, the subtle beings, and the ETs, I’d say people fall into several categories. There are people who don’t believe in them whatsoever. There are people who feel, especially with subtle beings, that they’re just sort of an imaginary thing. And ETs also, that they’re an imaginary thing that people have dreamed up. There are people who feel that, okay, they’re real, but they have no relevance to true spiritual aspirants. We should ignore them and not get hung up in that kind of woo-woo stuff. And there are those who feel that they are relevant, they’re real and relevant. So, whatever category you may happen to fall into, we’re not going to spend a lot of time … well, we’ll take any questions people send in during the live feed, but we’re not going to spend a lot of time with trying to dispel the most obvious and common skeptical questions, because we could spend the whole interview doing that. So, there will be a certain presumption of the legitimacy of these things, and we’ll kind of explore from there, which is kind of what this show does anyway, in a sense. I leapfrog a lot of stuff that others would dwell on at great length, and we’ll just take those things for granted and we move on. So, thank you, Thomas, and Janet, it’s great to be with you. I really enjoyed reading pretty a lot of all three of your books that you sent in.
Janet: Oh, wonderful.
Thomas: Thanks for having us. Appreciate it.
Rick: So, among these three categories, which thing would you like to talk about first?
Thomas: Good question.
Rick: Is there a logical sequence that we can unfold?
Janet: Yeah, I think there is. I’m just loathe to begin, that’s all. But trauma is the most grounded thing, and so I think before we take off into the nether realms, we might as well begin with something very embodied. Trauma. And that’s pretty much the way we both came in. And so, in that respect, I think it’s really important. It happened, you know, and it’s happening, it happens a lot in this collective, in this culture. And it happens to be one of the primary ways that people’s egoic consciousness gets split open, gets dissociated, gets fractured. And therefore, it’s got to be a primary way that we can evolve and transcend, enter into these higher states of consciousness.
Rick: Yeah, I’m sure you’ll give us examples, but I do have friends who have gone through fairly traumatic experiences, like the death of a sibling or a serious health crisis or something. And it sort of kick-started them into, shifted them into a different and higher state of consciousness.
Janet: Yeah, and that’s exactly what we work with. And I think it can’t be overstated. Oh, I’ve got a wonderful quote from Jeffrey Kripal, professor of religious studies at Rice University.
Rick: I’ve interviewed him on this show.
Janet: Oh, wonderful, “Extreme illness, car wreck, and sexual abuse are particularly effective inducers of the mystical.” So, that about says it all. And so, I generally begin with that. Sometimes I tell my own story and how that catapulted me into the work we do today.
Rick: Why don’t you do that? So, your own story was cancer.
Janet: Yes, and I must say, putting it all together has taken all of my life, Even though it seems like the first part, it seems like another life. I was diagnosed at 30 with cancer, but it came right out of my childhood. My father was bipolar, and my mother was fairly fractured, I’ll say. And so, I had myself a traumatic hospitalization for food poisoning at around three. And that catapulted me into Western medicine. My father was an MD, in fact, as well. And so, you’ve got a healthy dose of trying to work with an extreme state, bipolar. And he was trying to manage that himself. So, growing up with that was both wonderful and awful. When I was hospitalized, I then developed, how can I say? it was very difficult for me to absorb food. And so, I ended up, my growth was stunted, and I was not very healthy for the first part of my life. And Western medicine had basically failed me. So, when my father, during an episode later, I was in my late 20s, was having an episode and was fairly manic. And we decided that he would, for the first time in his life, be hospitalized psychiatrically. This is a psychiatrist, and doctors don’t, in this culture, they make very poor patients, right? So, he was hospitalized, and that ended up in a tragedy. He died in the hospital. So, I, having been helpful in making that decision, then took that on and felt very guilty about it, which led directly to my own cancer. So, here I am at 30 with cancer, which was treatable with Western medicine, but there was no way I could trust it. If you consider that my ego had been formed very early on out of fear of the medical in that hospitalization early on. And here I was expected to do what? Do chemotherapy and radiation. I’ll tuck in there in that story, I also had an eating disorder as a result, because I couldn’t absorb food, and it just did not feel good to eat. In the process of healing that, now I have a diagnosis of cancer, and I’m supposed to do chemotherapy and radiation, which I absolutely could not do. I said, “That’s going to kill me,” and I refused to do it. So, I spent three years trying to initiate a mystical experience and a spontaneous remission. And that, of course, can’t work if you’re not in a place of surrender. Right? And so, I had a big no, and it wouldn’t, and so after three years I was dying. So, when I was dying, I had a dream, and the dream was of dolphins, and the dream pretty much saved my life. The dream initiated my ability, my trust, my faith to move forward and do the thing that I absolutely could not do. The thing I was most afraid to do was chemotherapy and radiation. So, I was forced, pretty much, by creation, to confront who I thought I was and how my conceptual reality had been put together up to that point. Does that make sense?
Rick: Yeah.
Janet: So, I did the chemotherapy and radiation. I spiritualized Western medicine. So, I had to bring East and West together in my body, transmute what I had firmly believed was poison, right? And I entered into a whole other level of life. So, for me it was a mystical, spiritually transformative experience, as they say now, that lasted for a number of months, integrated, and then I was basically remade, reformulated. So, I knew that trauma was a doorway, a transformational doorway, and I wanted to help other people.
Thomas: I would just add, too, that Janet’s illness was a very curable form of cancer, and she went for a long period of time not undergoing the traditional therapy for it, which was scary in its way, because all you have to do is do the chemo, which is, relatively speaking, not the worst of that type of medication treatment. So, I’m in the background watching all this and thinking, “Holy smokes, let’s move forward with this.”
Thomas: But he was powerless, of course, and had I been forced to do it in a negative way, it never would have worked. When I said yes to it, it was a transformation. So, yeah.
Rick: Yeah, I had friends who died messing around with natural cures and stuff like that when chemo probably would have saved them.
Janet: That’s tough.
Rick: So, sometimes you really have to just do it, and maybe in some advanced civilization there will be some Star Trek-like thing where they just zap you with a little light beam and you’re all healed, but we ain’t there yet. So, I’m just saying this. Sometimes the topic of suicide comes up, and I kind of make statements about … because we have a large audience, and people actually have said that this show has brought them back from that brink, and maybe it’ll bring them back from the cancer brink, too, just this little comment here.
Janet: Well, every case is individual, but for me, and this was really hard to explain for a long time, chemo and radiation happened to be my transformational door. So, for somebody else it can be something entirely different, but that dream of dolphins actually was the impetus to enable me to trust, and so I have that connection very deeply inside of me with them. Yeah.
Rick: An obvious question would be, you guys are both scientists, have there been any studies showing that large traumatized populations, the survivors of those situations, have large percentages of spiritual awakenings, like the Holocaust or Rwanda, genocide, or different things like that, or what’s going on now in Syria? Are we going to see a few years from now, if that situation settles down, that there’s this blossoming of spiritual awakening in that traumatized population?
Janet: Now, I can say, you know, two things. First of all, it’s with assistance or with some kind of support, generally, that these things can blossom or turn that corner into transformation, and that’s why we support, we want to support people. Trauma in and of itself is not enlightening, no, but with support, I think we all have built into our DNA the transformational process or potential, as Stanislav Grof says, “Every human being has the potential for mystical experience.” So, we have that potential, whether or not that becomes manifest, then, that’s what we’re here, that’s what we try, and every helper tries to do, tries to help with that process. As far as research, I can say that Ken Raine’s research, he’s the paradigmatic near-death researcher, and he did some really interesting research. I don’t know about anything more current, and there should be, but years ago, he did a study called the Omega Project, and one of the things, and he looked at people that had either a near-death experience or some kind of UFO encounter, and that could be a close encounter or just a UFO sighting. And what he found was that there was a statistically relevant increase in the trauma that they had experienced in early childhood. So, he did an inventory that included the early childhood experiences, and then he had, of course, control groups, and when he compared them, there was a higher incidence of trauma. So, what we can say is that it can definitely set you up for experiences that can be seen as subtle realm or spiritual. It can definitely set you up through the capacity to dissociate.
Rick: Yeah, Leonard Cohen had some line about the cracks being how the light gets in, remember that line?
Janet: Yes, yes, yes!
Janet: I’ve got that on my website, it’s perfect. Yeah, forget your perfect offering, right? Except the cracks, the cracks are how the light … I can’t rhyme it like he did, but that’s how the light gets in.
Rick: I know people who I would consider highly enlightened who had really nice childhoods, real smooth, and Adyashanti for instance, great parents, everything went nicely. Although he did have some major breakdowns in his 20s, not mental breakdowns, but physical breakdowns, where he was stuck in bed for 6 months, and he was a competitive bicycle racer. And he just wanted to get out and do that, but when he tried to do that, he would just relapse and be back in bed for months. And eventually he got the message, and it was like something was trying to shift him into a different mode of life, and something was trying to realign his physiology for a different role than being a professional bicycle racer.
Janet: Yeah, perfect, case in point. Yes, we get remade, we get undone, we become undone. Our egoic nature gets fractured by any number of things, and the more we realize that and can … well, the training I did was like, “Oh, you have a problem? Congratulations! Congratulations!” because that could just be the biggest doorway to enlightenment.
Rick: Yeah, Thomas, did you want to add anything?
Thomas: Well, you know, my own experience as a child, I experienced sexual trauma, and as a teenager, I think directly related to that, I went through a period of about 3 years where I experienced extreme obsessive compulsive disorder. And in those days, not much was known about it, and there were no medications for it, and there really was no understanding of what actually happens in the brain, which now is something that researchers understand. But more recently in my life, I have used the remnants, let’s call it, of the OCD as the doorway into some really quite extraordinary experiences. So, the trauma to transformation route has been my path, and I’m still on that path. And maybe at some point here we can talk about the whole subject of healing that evolves oftentimes with these transformative experiences, because that’s something that’s happening quite rapidly now with me and has for about the last 2 years.
Janet: I would like to say about OCD in particular, if you ever, oh, you’ve had Stanislaw Groff on your program as well? Yes. And when I hear him speak, of course, the thing that fascinates him, seems to fascinate him the most, is OCD. And his experiences with people with that during LSD psychotherapy. So that’s why it’s been such a profound doorway for Tom, is when you go into these states, and then if you’re, just the, say the, well, the states of obsession or revulsion, right? If you can, if you focus on that, and then because you have a higher order, or Tom at this point, he’s a long-term meditator, his brain functioning has expanded, right? Beyond that, and so going from that place in the brain where that experience functions, and they know that because the brain scans now, and then having that expansion take place again and again, has been profoundly transformative. And this is something that you would not have believed possible. So, I’ve been meaning to write Stan Groff and say, “Hey, this is where some of your work has actually led, in a very grounded way.” So, we’re living it.
Rick: Yeah, I sometimes joke that OCD is my friend because it’s made me meditate regularly for 48 years.
Janet: Okay, you know, it can work, it can work in some positive ways too.
Rick: I remember walking to school when I was a kid and not stepping on the cracks because it was going to break my mother’s back.
Janet: You see, this has a way of really … the brain’s way of … and then the decompensation or the compensation from that can be enormous. I say, just say Tesla. Tesla had OCD, as you might know.
Rick: I just watched a documentary about him the other night on PBS or whatever.
Janet: Profound.
Rick: It was like everything had to be in multiples of three. If he stayed in a hotel room, it had to be divisible by three and he would walk around a building three times before going into it and stuff like that.
Janet: Yeah, so …
Thomas: He would use like 12 napkins, like embroidered napkins, piles of them, that sort of thing. He was pretty deep into his OCD.
Janet: So when you work with the brain, when you work with these states, it can be the … we call it a portal. It can be a portal to expansion. That contraction and expansion, which is at the heart of the universe, actually happens within our brain when you pass through that transformational door, whether it’s cancer, OCD, or sexual trauma.
Rick: I would like to think that, we have possibly the option, if we believe that we have free will, of getting the message without having to be whacked over the head. In other words, we don’t necessarily have to go through extreme trauma in order to have a spiritual awakening.
Janet: Well, not necessarily.
Rick: Yeah, if we’ve had the inspiration, go for it and consider yourself fortunate that you don’t have to.
Janet: Yeah, but how else are you going to crack that … and I mean this lightly, because it’s not in our business to go around cracking the ego structure. But that is essentially what needs to be done. That is the crack that lets the light in. And so that egoic structure, whether it’s through long-term meditation, the help of a guru, right, or other worldly beings, something has to be … there has to be some intrusion. So, yeah.
Rick: I remember a friend, you know John Gray, the Mars-Venus guy?
Janet: Oh yeah, yes.
Rick: He’s an old friend of mine and he used to be Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s personal secretary. And I remember when he was ready to stop doing that and Maharishi was trying to choose a new one, John recommended a friend of his. And Maharishi said, “Oh,” he said, “I’d have to crack through that hard shell,” He wanted somebody whose shell was already cracked or thin or something. He didn’t want to have to do the work on this guy. So, we can thin our own shell, I would say.
Janet: Yeah, yeah. Yes, this crab is actually the sign for cancer, right? That my shell … one of my first teachers, Richard Moss, said, “I was a tough nut to crack,” and I was! I had to come very close to death. Yeah.
Rick: I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that the more we can take the initiative ourselves to thin our shell, the less God or nature or whatever is going to have to clobber us. Perhaps, hopefully.
Thomas: Years ago, 20, 25 years ago, I was really a beginner. I had “beginner’s mind,” as they call it, about meditation, and then through some people that we met, we hung out with some what we considered very enlightened people at the time. And I began meditating, and I really, really liked it. So I would get up at 3 a.m. and meditate for three hours, day after day after day, and I could feel my nervous system shifting from week to week. And it actually became too much at one point that I had to back off. But in the long term, this led to, like in the last 10 years that I write about in my book, a number of very expansive, incredible experiences that just happened spontaneously. And I began to think after a while, “Gee, is there some way that I can actually facilitate these things happening?” And that led me to find a woman here on the island, north of Seattle, who’s a Jungian psychotherapist. I didn’t know it at the time, but we have a much deeper connection than I ever imagined. But at one point, I said, “I need to bite the bullet and look at the trauma that I experienced as a kid much more deeply, and I’m ready to do that now.” And I did, and as a result, for a period of about 18 months, every single time that we met, I would have a very expansive, incredibly intense experience that lasted for 60 to 90 minutes. And eventually, the energetics of those sessions focused more and more on my arms and hands as opposed to a whole body experience. And then probably in the last year and a half or so, I became aware that I can actually help people to reduce their symptoms from some pretty serious illnesses. And so that sort of brings us up to the moment. I meditate six to ten hours a week right now, and that seems to be, for me, because I’ve done so much meditation, it seems like, “It’s easy. It’s nothing.” I get that. And trust me, I have clients who have never meditated in their lives, and they’re in their 40s and 50s, and they start out with five minutes a day, and I’m going, “Fantastic. Go for it. Do it, do it, do it.” And it changes them. Those who choose to do the meditation, it changes them really quickly.
Rick: Okay, so we’re talking about trauma as an impetus to awakening, and Janet gave her example about cancer. You gave an example about OCD. Any examples among your clients that you want to bring up?
Thomas: The one that comes up right away is a man in his early 50s who, as a child, experienced some of the most severe sexual trauma that I’ve ever been aware of in my career. And as a result, as you might well guess, it’s very, very difficult for him to look at what happened to him because he goes right back into that state, and he dissociates, extremely dissociated. And so, he made a decision that he wanted to confront his trauma head on. He said, “Okay, I’m with you.” And he began to talk about some things that had happened to him, and only in a very general sense. And I could sit there and watch him. This is actually within the last month. And I could watch him dissociate, and he actually became nauseous, could barely hear my voice, and he’s sitting four feet across from me. And he sort of doubled over, and I go through the normal routine. I sort of pat him on the back of his hands and pat his legs to bring him back. And it began to help a little bit, and I got his awareness after about 10 minutes. And at some point, he sat, and he was quiet. And I could watch this shift happen. Internally, I don’t know exactly what was going on, but he made a fundamental shift from being extremely distressed by even touching the surface of his trauma to going clear to the other end of the continuum in a matter of about 10 to 15 minutes. I call it the Buddha smile. It came over his face, and he sat back relaxed, and he went into an actual state of complete bliss. And I said, “How are you doing?” Let’s call him Ralph, okay, make up a name. “How are you doing, Ralph?” And he just smiled and looked at me. I said, “Just hang with that for the next half hour,” which he did. And then he said, “Okay, it’s time to go. I’m good.” So, I made sure he was grounded, you know, and could drive and all that. But he told me the following week that he had experienced that for the rest of the entire day. And it was the most expansive, one of the most beautiful experiences of his entire life. So that’s the trajectory that he’s on right now. It’s very similar to the kinds of things that I have experienced myself.
Rick: Would you concur that trauma, and all mental states for that matter, will have a physiological correlate that every thought we think, every emotion we feel, everything has some kind of neuro-physiological counterpart? ;t And if there’s been a lot of trauma and it has residual effects on it, if it’s stored, it must be stored physiologically as well as mentally. And that really overcoming it necessitates and involves a physiological transformation as much as a mental one. I think you alluded to that earlier, but maybe we can go into that a little bit.
Thomas: You know, when a child is traumatized, no matter what the trauma is, the nature of it, we have to shut down emotionally oftentimes to survive what’s going on around us, what’s being done to us. So certain brain structures are altered during that process. And as a form of compensation, our brains are incredibly neuroplastic, which means that one part of the brain can take over the functions of another part of the brain to compensate. So, I think those parts, and this has been shown to happen with people who begin to do mindfulness meditation and within a space of about eight weeks, FMRI studies show that there are actual physical structural changes in their brain and functional changes in their brain. One part of the brain shuts down, another part of the brain opens up as a form of compensation. This is what I believe allows a lot of people who’ve been severely traumatized to become much more intuitive and makes it easier for them in a way to open up to these other states of consciousness and to the beings that inhabit these other realms.
Janet: So now if we move to the next level with that, I’ll just say there’s a way, the way I look at this in myself and in other individuals, if you come in to a setting, a childhood setting where there’s going to be abuse and trauma, I also have to look at this in terms of the soul. And, when we met, say, Joy Gilbert, who I hope we’ll mention later, and learned that her father had been very violent and abusive and saw the way that it had affected her, I knew we were on the right track, right? That my upbringing had not been some vast accident and tragedy, but that, and this is borne out with research as well, is that this, such settings, teach a person how to either A, leave their bodies, leave their bodies entirely as in an out-of-body experience, or you become vast dissociators. But what happens with that, it doesn’t necessarily cause just pathology at all, it’s teaching you, training you how to focus your awareness into other realms and realities that are going to affect us spiritually. So that dissociative quality that Joy certainly, was engaged in, right? You learn how to dissociate. And so, she ended up doing something very functional with it. She went to the East, was with the Maharishi, and she learned how to meditate. And it was the early spiritual training of her life, you see? So, when you look at it, when you give a long-term view of that, it’s like it’s hard, you don’t want to bring that in too early when somebody’s coming in with, say, trauma, sexual trauma or anything like that. And say, “Well, this is part of your karma or part of your soul’s journey.” But I, having been through that myself, I can’t ignore the bigger picture as well as what it does to us in terms of our psychology and our physiology.
Rick: Yeah, I’m sure there’s a bigger picture. Some say we sign up for what we end up getting, we choose our parents. I read an article a couple weeks ago about a guy who hit his head on the bottom of a swimming pool and got a severe concussion, and shortly thereafter began to play beautiful classical music, composing it on the fly. And he could sit there for hours composing this stuff, and he’s played with orchestras and everything now. Thomas’s comment about other parts of the brain opening up to compensate for those that are being shut down reminded me of that. And then there was that lady whose name is eluding me at the moment who wrote “Stroke of Genius,” I think it was called, and what’s her name? Three-part name. And that article also mentioned a little kid that got hit in the head with a baseball, and thereafter he was able to solve complicated mathematical equations just in his head. But one would like to think that you don’t have to actually damage the brain in order to open up its full potential, that you can somehow bypass that ideally and open it up without being traumatized or limited in any sense.
Thomas: Right, and this is what I wrote about in my book, the being that I encountered when I was four years old that I call Angie in my book, but actually her name is Cosmic Mother. And what I understand now is that there are beings that are very corporeal, they’re very real, like we’re real, I call them people, and that they have the capacity to download enormous amounts of knowledge, energetics into the human body that can take months or days or years to integrate. And so, it isn’t necessarily a traumatic experience that can lead to different kinds of awakening processes in a human.
Janet: But it’s going to be an intrusion of some nature, that’s the common denominator. An intrusion, it seems like an intrusion to our egoic self, right? Of some nature, that’s what I would say.
Rick: It might depend on how intact and defensive the ego is. If one fully trusts in what’s going on, one might not feel it as an intrusion, but as a gift. I’ve spoken to people who do speak of downloads, they feel like a whole package of knowledge is downloaded and they don’t feel like they’re being invaded or violated, they feel like they’re being blessed.
Janet: That’s the trick, that’s the key, is our perception of it. The perception initially may be one where, you just look at what’s happening in the collective now, right? And how can you see that for the gift that it is, right? And, that’s, congratulations, you have a problem, or congratulations, this is, energy of life. That’s kind of the attitude one ideally would want.
Rick: Yeah, there’s a quote I wrote down from you about, you said, “The current paradigm on our planet is one of polarization and isolation. A deep fear-based mass unconsciousness that sees control and will not stop until everything it touches is destroyed.” I felt this very strongly most of my life, in the sense that there is something out of balance in the world at large, has guided many others and myself to the realm of spirit. You kind of wonder whether the darkness that may seem insurmountable and hopeless is actually a trauma that is eliciting or triggering, catalyzing. Catalyzing a worldwide awakening.
Janet: Part of the plan, that’s it, is part of the plan. That’s an incredible way to see it. I just presented at ASIST and I wanted to talk about someone’s bipolar episode and what could be viewed by Western medicine as psychosis, but what he got was this expansion and contraction that is at the heart of the universe, it’s like breathing. So we can see this, this polarity, so the polarity gets bigger, it’s very union, but out of that the third transcendent state of consciousness or the third transcendent position will come. So, if we’re in this contraction now, it’s just part of the plan.
Rick: Yeah, there’s a verse in the Bhagavad Gita where Lord Krishna says, “When dharma is in decay and adharma flourishes, I take birth age after age.” So it’s kind of like, the Crosby, Stills and Nash, we know the darkest hour is always before the dawn, although they didn’t coin that phrase. But if we think of a pendulum swing, it kind of has to swing all the way in one direction before it can start swinging in the other.
Janet: Yeah,
Thomas: So, one of the things that comes up for me is … it’s related to all this, and it’s the idea of how that change occurs, how it occurs physically in a person and the sort of why it happens. And the underlying why of it brings us into what they call chaos theory in mathematics. And I’m not a mathematician, but I know it from reading about it, is that when you feed a certain kind of energy into any natural system, which can be the global weather pattern, it can be our individual consciousness or collective consciousness, you keep feeding energy in over and over and over and over. And at some point what they call the underlying attractor, the underlying form of the system, will go through an abrupt shift, right? And this is manifest in people … if you read the book, Cosmic Consciousness was the first book that I ever read about …
Rick: By Buck.
Thomas: by Buck, right?
Janet: Yes.
Thomas: What was it, 1899 or 1900 or something it was written. And people meditate and they meditate and they meditate for years and years and years, and then one day all of a sudden for no apparent reason, whoosh, something happens and this huge energy comes through this body. It can, it doesn’t always, but it can happen this way. And you see the world suddenly in a very different way. And I have a really intense interest right now in understanding exactly what that mechanism is. I mean biologically, what happens with the client that I mentioned a little while ago, or my own experience, how does that actually happen? What’s the moment that goes … what is it physiologically and emotionally, all these components? If we understood this really well, it is something that could be applied to a lot of people collectively, you know, a very different sort of planet.
Rick: Yeah. There’s a phrase or term in physics called “phase transition” and it’s actually a very common phenomenon. When you boil water, nothing much seems to be happening even at 211 degrees Fahrenheit, but at 212, boom, it starts to boil. And there are many, many other examples in physics like that. So it could be that we’re a lot closer to a significant shift in the world than it would seem.
Janet: Yeah, the word “species shift” comes to mind and that was exactly what the beings told Marcy Clevans. She’s Haley in my book, Sacred Encounters, so that’s the first part of the book. And they basically told her we’re undergoing a species shift. Yeah.
Rick: And Thomas alluded to individual shifts too. Those also can seem like nothing much is happening, it might be years off and all of a sudden, pop, there’s a shift. And I’m sure there’s a physiological component of that if we looked at what’s going on with the chakras and all that stuff.
Janet: Right, so what’s happening individually, if individuals are experiencing this, then … this is their wording, it will move like a wave through the species so that the individuals that are experiencing this transformational shift, such as ourselves, such as you, that we then … everybody else participates in that, by virtue of our connection.
Rick: I think most people have heard the 100th monkey story, I think that may have been discredited, I don’t know, but similar principle.
Janet: Yes, right and so, I think we’re edging towards the beings, talking about the beings.
Rick: Yeah, let’s talk about that because we’ve alluded to it a number of times. So, what are we talking about when we talk about subtle beings and their relevance to the whole individual and collective awakening?
Thomas: Well, subtle beings, they’re subtle and not so subtle beings. (Janet laughs)
Janet: that’s a good way to put it.
Rick: A few of them are running are running for president these days.
Janet: (laughs)
Rick: Well, that’s a….yeah
Thomas: (laughs)
Rick: one of them in particular
Thomas: ( laughs) Well in my case for example, when I knew all of my life that something profound had happened to me when I was four years old And I couldn’t quite pin it. And
Thomas: I didn’t know what
Thomas: it was. It was some sort of a let’s call it an intervention from outside of normal state of affairs, and I had Dreams about it. Then over the years…
Janet: Hypnotherapy, one or two sessions,
Thomas: A couple of hypnotherapy sessions, which brought some imagery up.
Thomas: And then eventually I worked with a woman, a friend of ours, who … she’s sort of a natural remote perceiver, if you will, and she was able to tap into the timeframe during which this happened and the emotional experience that That my sister had had at the time. She mimicked that, and when I saw her mimic it, it sent me actually into an altered state. J; It was sheer terror.
Thomas: my sister, not myself,
Janet: right.
Thomas: At that moment, I began to recover some of the actual memories of what had happened. In psychological terms, the memory had composed of the content of what had happened, in the emotional state you are in at the time, so you tie them together. So, I was able to access the feeling stand spontaneously the memories began to come forth.
Janet: Not merely, how can I say this? The memories are re-experienced so it isn’t just a mental process. But Tom was in this state himself. He was re-experiencing them.
Thomas: It was a very physiological, very, very intense. They are not just thoughts.
Janet: Yes and that’s like these memories are so deeply associated, and then you also have the age involved, very early childhood. So, they are discreetly held as state dependent memories. So, you literally have to be in that state of consciousness in order to recover them fully. So, he went into the re-experiencing of his contact with this other worldly being and what we had merely surmised, for all of our lives, then became manifest.
Rick: So Thomas, what was that experience, exactly with the subtle being? Why was it so impactful?
Thomas: The setting is central Ohio, a small house that we lived in, me and my family, and the memories that came through, were this compelling sense of overwhelming love. Like unconditional love that was pulling on me, like really hard. And I had the memory of actually being moved through the air, over a period of moments, up toward this, I consider her a light being, that’s one way to describe her, a female being who was making a very powerful, there were 3 houses contact with my subconscious mind, and my conscious mind. Eventually, I ended up in her presence. One of the earlier memories that came back was looking at our house- there were 3 houses-1-2-3 and ours was the center house, and I remember Brilliant, brilliant white light in the sky. And eventually we moved toward that white light and eventually I was in the presence of this being.
Janet: The trees- is that where you tried to grab the trees as you went by?
Thomas: AT first I was trying to ground myself and we have this huge mulberry tree in the back yard, and I was trying to grab that to ground myself, and at some point, all of a sudden I felt this enormous wave go through my body and this feeling ahhh, I can let go, I don’t have to struggle, I can just go with this energy. And I found myself shortly after in the presence of this dominative little being, very definitely a female being, probably 4 feet tall or smaller, and pretty much in a state of confusion, because I’m a four year old and I’m trying to form my ego and I’m trying to figure how the world works and all of a sudden, everything I know up to that moment goes out the window. Like quickly! What I do remember- and this actually came through much later, I first remember lying on a table, and sort of propping myself up on one arm, and looking into the eyes of this being. And at that point everything went sort of black. But what I really understand now is it was sort of like a mind merge with this being, and she was downloading a massive amount of knowledge and energetics into me physically,
Janet: energy, yeah
Thomas: I was just overwhelmed. And I came to understand later that it was not her first choice to do that, at that moment, because I was too young. But she felt imperative to do so because of where the species is right now and because this whole thing was set up long before I was born. I found out only a few years ago, that my mother as a child had had an experience, and she didn’t know how to recognize it. But that’s unfolded too. And there are actually what you call MIB experiences that have happened in our family over the years.
Janet: . men in black
Thomas: men in black, the real men in black. SO this being, I journeyed toward her, I was blessed to be able to experience unconditional love on a level that I couldn’t have imagined. . That has been the primary nature of my experience with this being, is that she exudes unconditional love. Some people talk about negative experiences with beings, and I haven’t had that kind of experience. Mine’s been very, very positive. And then she went away for many, many years until about 6 or 6 years ago, when I started consciously, in my meditations asking her to return into my life. Ans one day I felt this very overwhelming presence that lasted for a whole day and then into my meditation at night and I asked “Cosmic Mother, what’s happening here?” and what I got was: “I’m not here for you right now, but somebody else is” and there is a male figure now, I don’t know what his actual name is, but I call him Henry. “I’m not here for you right now, but somebody else is” and there is a male figure now, I don’t know what his actual name is, but I call him Henry.
Janet: We call him Henry
Thomas: And Henry is a being. I feel his presence all the time. And then in the last couple of years, Cosmic mother has come back into my life, and I have been aware of her presence. Many times, especially when I’ve been in these intensive states, she helps initiate these intensive states. And in a therapeutic setting actually. So I am aware that she is around and that I am in a very intensive phase of my awakening right now and that includes the healing process I described earlier.
Rick: Wasn’t Henry the name of Jimmy Stewarts rabbit in that movie…
Janet: no that Harvey
Rick: Harvey! I knew it started with an H.
Thomas: That topic comes up sometimes.
Janet: Henry is actually very personable, although he says “I am not a soothsayer if we ask too many questions, but he’s been known to give us information, very grounded information such as “should we check our baggage at the airport?” Sometime I’ll ask him a question about a client or for guidance. He’s also informed me that my mother, who I’ve mentioned is very fractured, and is going through her own healing process and Henry was able to inform me and I picked up that she’s back. She is doing very well now. She has gone through her own healing process. So, I just want to say that Henry has been very helpful and as the emissary or go between Tom and Cosmic Mother. The universe is efficient.
Rick: I just want to ask you some questions that will help fill in the blanks for some people who might think this is getting a little whacky. First of all, Thomas , was your first experience with Comic Mother, where you were 4 years old, and you were grasping for the tree, table. That kind of sounds like alien abduction where your physical body went up. Was it your physical body or was that an OBE do you think?
Thomas: It was my physical body.
Janet: yeah.
Thomas: I tend to shy away from certain terminology anymore but it was definitely an encounter experience with an otherworldly being.
Rick: Who had a craft of some kind that had a table in it that you could lie on.
Janet: Yeah,
Thomas: I’d like to just mention one thing relative to this and that is, people think about, well you’re talking about subtle beings and so forth and not so subtle beings and I made it a point to mention some place in this discussion that a couple of years ago, NASA released a report that they estimate that there are some 20 billion Earth type planets in our Milky Way galaxy alone based on Kepler telescope studies. And that within the known universe that there are some quintillion or so possibly Earth type planets.
Rick: Sure, so now 2 trillion galaxies instead of a couple hundred billion in the known universe, that just came out a couple weeks ago.
Thomas: Oh, okay, yeah.
Rick: So you multiply 2 trillion by what, a couple hundred, what did you say, 20 billion or something?
Thomas: Yeah, some gigantic
Rick: You get a big number.
Thomas: 10 to the 15th or 10 to the 18th, some huge, huge number. It’s like, gosh folks, we’re not alone in the universe.
Janet: We are not alone
Thomas: And so the idea that, oh, there are actual physical beings visiting our planet.
Janet: Or, okay, let me make the point here, physical or non-physical, we are in right now what we think of as a physical material reality, but is that the only dimensional reality? Of course not. And so, I don’t get really hung up with … I look at it as phase transitions, whether or not they manifest materially in our material reality or not, and they may not. Some things happen out of body and some things happen very materially, but you have to become, how can I say, fluent. You just become more fluent. These are just like … think of it as the water turning into ice, that we happen to have the ability to pass through material objects at times, facilitated by these beings. They themselves are not bound by our temporal and linear …
Thomas: Well, they have technologies.
Janet: We call them spiritual technologies.
Thomas: Right, spiritual and scientific technologies that are far, far advanced beyond what humans are.
Rick: Sure. I think a good principle to bring in, and you … well, here’s a quote from your book, Thomas, “The End of Homo Sapiens and the Birth of a New Species,” you say, “A vast consciousness organizes the universe, subsuming everything. It is the glue that holds the universe together, everywhere and nowhere.” And I think science helps us realize this, because if you look at anything closely, you see that vast intelligence at work. Look at a single atom, look at a grain of sand and the trillions of atoms that are in that. Look at a cubic centimeter of empty space, somewhere way out between two galaxies, even it contains gamma rays and photons and so on, passing through that are perfectly orchestrated by an intelligence, a level or degree of intelligence we can barely comprehend. So the whole thing to me is one big mass of intelligence, which we could call God if we want. And go ahead and riff off of that.
Thomas: Well, one of the things that came through in several of my sessions over the last couple of years, I imagine being in a very extreme expanded, but yet very super connected state of consciousness, the other end of the continuum from the dissociated state of consciousness. And what came to me was, I guess you could call them principles, which to me make perfect sense that space is not just big, like really, really big, like they say in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, it’s infinite, it’s actually infinite. The other point is time is infinite. There was no beginning and there is no end, and that sort of like flies in the face of Big Bang Theory, which is a whole discussion I don’t want to go into necessarily. The third is that consciousness also is infinite. So you have these three concepts and it’s, I think, virtually impossible to really understand these concepts in our normal waking state of consciousness. To be in an expansive state, you get it as a direct experience of that reality. So, I feel that I have had that experience a number of times, and when I’m in my normal beta state talking to you, it’s like, “Yeah, these are really fascinating ideas,” but that’s different than actually being in that state where you get it directly.
Janet: Or being in the presence of one of these beings, to say that. That for us has been an extreme or altered state, right? And so, we’re trying to normalize it more by talking about it, and apparently, it’s time to talk about it in our culture or we wouldn’t be sitting here. But these are experiences that people have had and that we have had much skepticism and ridicule and it’s very important to provide a place, as you’re doing, so that we can talk about this in as grounded a way as we can.
Rick: Yeah. A few years ago, I organized a panel discussion with some friends who all have subtle perception, including Harry Alto, Kristen Kirk, Francis Bennett, you can find it on BatGap. And I don’t want to name names, but among these people this kind of perception is routine. And one of them, for instance, said that he constantly, routinely, as you and I experience birds and trees, experiences all the subtle realms of creation and all the beings who reside therein. And you mentioned something about being in the presence of one of these beings, well we always are, they’re always there. j Right, good point. Yes, we just are not conscious of it fully, or some of us are some of the time, right? And it’s getting more acclimated to that and being able to listen to others without automatically having to withdraw. And I think it’s really important at this juncture in our evolution, the evolution of our species, to be able to grok it.
Rick: Yeah. Here’s a point from your book Sacred Encounters, you say that “the subtle is fundamental to and gives rise to the gross. Gross material reality is said by mystics and visionaries alike to arise out of this subtle realm.” I think that’s important to understand in this context, and physics helps corroborate it in terms of, maybe it’s not a one-to-one correlation, but in terms of the fact that the deeper you go in terms of physical reality, the less material things become, to the point where materiality can’t be found whatsoever. So if one has that in mind, that we can think of it as an ocean where the gross level is like the surface, and then there’s deeper levels, and there’s all these fish down there that you don’t see if you just look at the surface.
Janet: That’s great.
Rick: It’s perhaps a good metaphor. And another thing, the reason we don’t see it ordinarily, is that the gross perception overshadows the subtle. The senses become habituated to a relatively crude level of functioning and lose the ability, or never even gain the ability, to pick up on these more refined, subtle values. But eventually, in the course of spiritual evolution, they do. And that’s one of the things I think, why I like to talk about this topic sometimes, is that it’s definitely part of the journey, and people might as well get used to the idea that this whole vertical dimension of subtle realms is part of the overall topography of the universe.
Janet: Yeah, that’s very well put.
Thomas: Yes, and that’s why meditation has been such an important part of my life, because I learned early on that basically the more you meditate, if you’re doing it right, the more open you become. And I got to the point where my sensory input was pretty overwhelming, because I had been doing such a great deal of meditation, so I had to back off for a while. But my nervous system has adjusted to that now. So anyway.
Rick: You have to integrate, right?
Janet: Yeah.
Thomas: So, what can I say?
Janet: His weekly sessions with the Jungian, I believe the Jungian therapist, that was the container through which this being could enter and enhance is a good way to put it, enhance his nervous system by being in the presence of that higher energetic. And so every week it would be like literally Darshan or …
Thomas: That’s a good way to describe it.
Janet: Yeah.
Rick: So Thomas, your book is entitled “The End of Homo Sapiens and the Birth of a New Species.” Do you feel that that is literally true and that a new species will evolve relatively – I don’t know how long it will take – that it will be as different from us as we are from monkeys, for instance?
Thomas: I think so. I think we may or may not end up having the same form that we do right now, but it is a phase transition that I believe is already well underway. And it’s like popcorn, you know. One person becomes awakened and another and then reaches some critical mass and then boom, a lot of people – I don’t know about everybody – but a lot of people, it doesn’t take everybody. It’s one of these situations where I liken it to like if you have a chemical compound and you put what’s called a dopant in it, which is another like one atom of another material in it. Sometimes you put in like one atom in 10,000 and it completely changes the characteristics of the solution that you created. So maybe it only takes one person in every 10,000 or every million to become fully awakened in order to affect the collective.
Rick: Yeah, here’s a couple of examples. I mean, 1% of the cells in the heart are called pacemaker cells and they regulate the beating of the entire heart. The square root of 1% of the photons in a beam of light, if they become coherent with one another, creates a phase transition in which the entire thing becomes a laser. And there are other examples in magnetism and other examples from science, but Maharaja used to be really big on that point. You’re probably aware of that.
Janet: Yes,
Rick: Getting the square root of 1% of the world’s population to meditate and so on, in groups.
Janet: Yeah, and our function right now happens to be to elucidate the role that these other otherworldly beings, we call them, are playing in this. So we are not alone. We are certainly connected with them energetically, genetically, and there is a vast, I would call intervention happening. And for those people that are having similar experiences, and I have to believe that there are going to be some in your audience, we are here to normalize it and to validate it, authenticate it, just as Joy Gilbert did for us, say, 15, almost 20 years ago.
Rick: 20 years ago, yeah.
Janet: 20 years ago, yeah.
Rick: And we’ll talk more about her.
Janet: Okay.
Rick: So if we were to draw a Venn diagram, which is like, people have probably seen those, it’s like overlapping circles, and in one circle you have a certain thing, the A circle, another you have the B circle, and where they overlap it’s like A and B together. Could we say that there’s the whole alien thing, extraterrestrials, there’s the whole subtle being thing, and then there’s some kind of overlap? In other words, there may be subtle beings who live among us routinely and normally and inhabit the subtler realms in our everyday world, and then there are extraterrestrials who come from who knows where, and yet there’s an overlap in terms of these extraterrestrials seem to have mastered travel not only over distance but over dimensions and can function at subtler realms as well as travel vast distances.
Thomas: Yeah, we’re, human beings are in the playpen right now, you know, in terms of like these technologies, but you have to consider, given that another species would have the ability to travel vast distances, even interstellar, let alone intergalactic distances, well they have to have the technology to first communicate across those distances in a relatively short period of time, because if you travel, say, even at the speed of light, which is enormous, when you shine a flashlight at one end of our galaxy it takes 50,000 years for the beam to hit the other side, right?
Rick: From our perspective.
Thomas: Yeah, we can’t sit around waiting.
Rick: From the perspective of the photon, the trip is instantaneous.
Thomas: Exactly.
Janet: Right.
Thomas: Right. But then also, you want to travel from here to, say, the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, it’s four and something light years away, right? Well we can get in our thruster rocket and we’ll be there in 50,000 years or something, well that won’t cut it. So there has to be some level of technology that goes far beyond what we’re utilizing right now. And these are the material technologies, but there’s also, what Janet alluded to a little while ago, the technologies of the spirit, which we, I think as human beings, are in the process of really learning for the first time, perhaps. It’s like, what comes out of a great deal of meditation? The very things that you talk about a lot on your program. These are remarkable technologies that cumulatively will become or are becoming the phase shift that we’re talking about.
Janet: – And we happen to think it’s encoded in our DNA. I have absolutely no proof of that, but that again is one thing that the beings have said, and they said that directly to Joy Gilbert, they said, “Your DNA is coded to awaken at this time.” And awaken she did. When she told us 20 years ago we’d be undergoing something similar, who would have thunk, right? But now what I see is that Tom is going through in slow motion, and that too is very important because I, as the more analytical one of the two, I can document, I can write, I can describe the experience so to make it more, to normalize it for others, see? And so, he’s going through in slow motion what Joy went through, oh, how many years ago at this point, you know, when a being touched her on the forehead and she went into unity. So here Tom is, as his nervous system is entrained week after week after week and …
Thomas: Well, my resident state of consciousness is going through regular periodic upgrades and I don’t know what the end point is, frankly.
Rick: I don’t think there is one, personally.
Thomas: Maybe there isn’t, maybe there isn’t. But it’s very interesting to be going through the process and it’s quite exciting, you know? It’s phenomenal to have these physical sensations in my body and also the expansion of my awareness of what’s around me in a very different way than our normal state of mind. Many of these things have happened, like when I’m driving on the freeway for no apparent reason or when we take a ferry back and forth between the mainland and the island a couple times a week and I’ve had it happen when I’m on the ferry. It’s like, “Why now?” I don’t know why now.
Rick: Not doing anything else, might as well. There are 7 billion people or so on the planet and I don’t know, I wonder how many of these people have been actually influenced by extraterrestrials directly. That sounds like this is bringing up an exciting point so I don’t think I have to finish the question, you just go for it.
Janet: How exciting is this? Well, I just spoke at the American Center for the Integration of Spiritually Transformative Experiences, ASIST, and Marcy Clevens, who’s in my book, The Sacred Encounters, she’s the first case, right? She was in my doctoral dissertation. She is now integrating and integrated enough that she is now publicly speaking about her experiences as she spoke. Now I’ve been talking about this for 15 years, but the timing is everything. So when Marcy spoke at this conference, it was such a tremendous success. At the end of it, it was like, “Yay, aliens!” Everybody was like … and as we sat around the table, a very large table, and these are people, luminaries in the field of transfer personal psychology, right? And some people started to share things that they had not known how to either think about, how to integrate. And so, we had a profound sharing. At one point, I hate to out … I’m not going to say it by name, but at one point a woman had to absent herself, go to the bathroom, and throw up. Okay? It was so physiologically impactful to her, so triggering to her, to finally have some
Rick: Corroboration.
Janet: Corroboration, light, light about what her experience had been. So, we were having people start to share, maybe for the first time ever, some elements of this experience, and we are right there. So now I’m getting chills, okay? We’re right there. The timing is now. And so, if we have certain … if we impact certain individuals right now with this, the work will fall on whatever, I just say, fertile ground it needs to.
Rick: So let’s play a little mind game here. From our perspective, and you’ve focused a lot more on this than I have, we have these accounts, snippets of information, stuff remembered during hypnosis, and all kinds of stuff in it. If you read all the literature, there are all these bits and pieces coming together from various people all over the world. But if you could do a mind shift and put yourself in the perspective of these alien beings, whoever they are, and you completely understood their agenda and their role in the evolution of our planet and our species, and saving the world or whatever, how would you describe or elaborate their perspective and their role? What would you have to say about what they’re doing?
Thomas: Well, the word that I use is a midwifing process, that they are overseeing the transition that the human species is in process of going through right now. And they are making adjustments as we go along. The way to make adjustments is to impact individual people, as opposed to landing on the White House lawn.
Rick: Although that, at some point, may be the thing to do.
Thomas: ; Well, it may be. I don’t really know. But there’s a couple of important points I want to bring up right here. One is, I think what we experience when we talk about these matters, and we get the resistance or the scoffing and these sorts of things, I think people are experiencing much of what they would experience if they were suddenly to awaken. It’s like existential fear crops up. And that becomes the resistance, “Oh, it’s easy to ridicule this stuff because it isn’t scientific.” Well, yeah it is. And we use labels, we use words. And words are important. Words can show us what possibilities there are. But there are certain words that I don’t use anymore because I don’t like the baggies.
Janet: We don’t say … we have to use them in order to say what we don’t use, but we don’t say alien abduction.
Rick: No.
Janet: We stopped using that.
Rick: It just has too much of a creepy connotation.
Janet: Right, right.
Thomas: I say “close encounters.” And the being, I scarcely even use the word “being” with regard to Cosmic Mother. It’s like, she’s a person. It humanizes her. She isn’t human, like she isn’t our species, but she has the human phenotype. She has two arms and two legs and a head and eyes and all that. And I think that’s a generic phenotype throughout the cosmos. It’s probably a very efficient way to get around.
Janet: At the same time, I can say, she’s a gray. She would be a gray that people might relate to. I am working with someone now who has experienced mantis-type beings, which is a wonderful thing. I am so profoundly elated to have him in my practice.
Thomas: A lot of people don’t realize that planet Earth was dominated for millions, many millions of years by gigantic insects, billions of years ago. I don’t know how intelligent they were, but there you are.
Janet: So we both have to use some labels and then we change the labels, we transform the labels, and we like to think we’re beyond the labels, but we have to talk. We have to say something. I say gray or there are other kinds of beings. So, one interesting thing is, so here we are at the table at ASSIST sharing, and so immediately someone comes up, “Well, what about those evil grays? Do we have to protect ourselves from them?” This is just so right. You talk about non-dualism and here we go right into the cosmos with that good versus evil perspective. And we’re right there as well, Marcy and I, to say, “Well, that’s not how we look at it. That’s not how we see this. It’s not about good versus evil.” It may be on some levels, but we don’t see these beings as that.
Rick: What about cattle mutilations? What’s that about?
Janet: Yeah, well …
Thomas: Well, you know, I don’t know a whole lot about it, but the little bit that I’ve read suggests to me that some agent, agency, I don’t know who, whether it’s the Air Force or somebody outside of some otherworldly beings, it appears that they’re just testing, they’re doing tissue testing to see how contaminated we are.
Janet: The beings. Yeah, the beings. And so, yeah, we don’t focus on that.
Thomas: Well, people make a big deal of it, but my goodness, how many cattle do we slaughter every year?
Janet: Please!
Rick: It makes you think that maybe some of them are a little twisted and others more benign, but I don’t know.
Janet: Well, see, yes, that’s the point, is we don’t really know that, and I don’t go out and teach that. We teach from personal experience and from the experience of those that we know best, and that’s not our experience. Yeah.
Rick: And what you choose to put your attention on grows stronger in your life.
Janet: That’s right.
Rick: Even with subtle beings, I mean, there’s darker ones and you don’t want to go there, you want to keep your attention on
Janet: And at the same time, I’m … I am working on a book of spiritual emergency stories, and there are no doubt about it, people that have been in hell realms, what the Tibetans would call hell realms, I’m not going to say that doesn’t exist. It absolutely does, or some forms of attachments or beings that you don’t want in your physical body, in your physical space, and there are ways to work with that. So, the most profound way I know, someone, I’ll be including his story, when he found himself in a hellish realm, which has a particular odor to it as well. You have to understand these things are tangible. And what he found was prayer, was actually praying, was actually reaching out to the light, was the solution, was the remedy. And so, that whole, his transformative leap was that.
Rick: Sure.
Janet: Yeah, uh-huh.
Rick: Yeah, there are things you can do.
Janet: Things you can do.
Rick: I had an experience one time where I was attacked by something creepy and I started doing this Sanskrit prayer thing and it dispelled it. Some of the listeners might be … they’re totally comfortable with the notion that there have been these great spiritual masters like Ramana Maharshi and various other spiritual masters, and yet they might find it a stretch to think of extraterrestrial beings as being spiritual shepherds or guides and trying to uplift mankind. And yet there are some stories in your book, or at least you’re quoting Joy Gilbert’s book, of some of these spiritual masters actually being in cahoots with …
Janet: Cahoots.
Rick: … with these extraterrestrials. That’s kind of interesting, that they would be the sort of earthly human fleshly agents and then they have their sort of extraterrestrial counterparts and they’re working with each other.
Janet: Very well said. I couldn’t say it better myself, as that seems to be the picture and that’s a part of my own research and that’s how we came to meet Joy Gilbert. I do hope that you’ll be able to interview her and in case you aren’t, her book, “It’s Time to Remember” is a jewel.
Rick: I read it like around the time it came out and I totally loved it and then forgot about it.
Janet: Yes,
Rick: So, it’s cool to find it in your … referring to it in your thing.
Janet: Yeah, and I try to go through it. Her book is the jewel and then my book is like kind of pointing out what each facet, each facet in detail, psychologically and linking it up. Her life is the embodiment of bringing out the connection with these beings going from the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to Tibetan Buddhist Sogyal Rinpoche, who she was a student of and, at the behest of the head of the Nyingma lineage. And so, having that spiritual pedigree was very important to us and the experiences, her experiences in connecting her spiritual work with those traditions and these beings, that was critical, that that come out. And so now, we are in her tradition, in her lineage as well, coming out with our own experiences at this point because it’s time. It’s just time. And yeah, so, we’re not out here trying to convince anybody who doesn’t want to be convinced, but just sharing our own experience, hopefully in a grounded enough way, beginning with cancer, beginning with trauma. Now I’m working with people that have some degree of psychosis and seeing that’s a spiritually transformative experience that our culture is denying and then sharing our enlightenment process. So, if people, need to hear this, then they will. And for those that don’t, that’s okay. But you’ve got to trust that too.
Rick: Sure. I think Thomas wants to say something.
Thomas: Oh, just that in the last couple of years, I’ve made a connection with His Eminence Garshen Rinpoche and I really didn’t know anything about him, but I was led to him through, a number that kept resurfacing over and over through my life. And, I think it’s important to ground this in science, what Janet and I have been experiencing, to ground it in, historical traditions. I don’t consider myself to be a Buddhist or Hindu or anything, but I look at the various spiritual practices and I think, what works for me. So, I feel a great connection to Garshen Rinpoche, for example. And yet here was this other very strange thing that happened to me when I was four years old. I don’t have any memory of asking for it to happen. It just happened. And now it makes sense to me in a much broader perspective. This is a universe that’s teeming with intelligent life. And they are around us right now and they love us very, very deeply. And I get that there are people who feel they’ve had negative experiences with that and I have compassion for them. I’m just telling you that hasn’t been my experience.
Janet: And what I found is, and it was absolutely critical that this happen, the first case in my book, Sacred Encounters, is a woman that had post-traumatic stress from it. And so not to disavow the traumatic aspects of it. In fact, that was where we started. That’s what we started working with. And she was, this is Haley. This is Marcy Clevens, who is now teaching. And so you can work through that, whatever shock that caused your nervous system and your consciousness, that that can be worked through. That’s why we trained in trauma therapy. And so not to disavow that, but to shelter that, to usher it into the next stage of expansion is really, the name of the game. I also want to bring out, well, when along the time that we met Joy, which is about 20 years ago, I was very invested in trying to find out what the other spiritual traditions knew about these beings. And I made a point of, almost harassing Sri Ma’s Bengali saint, who now is in Napa, California, asking her Swami to comment on this. I would go to Darshan with them and ask them, what do you know about these so-called aliens? What do you know about them? What do you know about Vamanas, the UFOs and the Vedic literature? And the answer I got from her Swami was very clear, “No one is alien to Sri Ma. No one is alien to Sri Ma.” I think that’s about the time when we probably dropped that terminology, you see, because …
Rick: Yeah, I mean we refer to Mexicans as aliens, but if we think of ourselves as one global family, then no one is an alien. So, you just have to expand it out beyond the earth and then no one is an alien.
Janet: Right, right.
Thomas: I think one of the primary things that I would like to stress is that there’s a continuum with trauma, of dissociation at one end and super-connectedness at the other end.
Janet: Yeah.
Thomas: And there is some medium point in there that can be used as a doorway to transition from one to the other and that this can be done on a collective level as well as an individual level.
Janet: On a collective level.
Thomas: Right? It’s like what happened to me when I was four years old was my brain got rebooted before it was ready to be rebooted and now it’s being upgraded and rebooted again.
Janet: And integrated. This is the integration process. So, beyond the actual experiences and then the reliving, the recovery of them and making the connections, what it all meant, and then having to live in this higher energetic, that’s the integration process. And that’s what Marcy Clevens spoke to at the ASIST conference, and it was electrifying. So apparently the timing is now, we are ready to hear this.
Rick: You mentioned science a few minutes ago, Thomas, and for some reason I’m really fascinated with the potentially mutually enriching relationship between science and spirituality in terms of science being able to bring a more systematic approach to spirituality so it’s not all just faith and conjecture and one person’s subjective experience against another. And also, in terms of spirituality being able to bring a whole new set of tools to science which it can’t, to enable it to explore the vast majority of creation which it is totally unaware of and doesn’t even believe in because it doesn’t have the tools to explore. And the ultimate tool would be the human nervous system itself, which is far more sophisticated and subtle in its functioning than any tool that we’ve been able to build to extend our senses, any material tool.
Thomas: Right. These beings, these people, they come from different, I don’t want to call it lineages, but they come from different genetic lines than humans do, at least as far as we know. And their perception of the world around them is probably vastly different than how we perceive the world. And so, I think it’s incumbent upon us, we who have been in contact with these beings, or they’ve been in contact with us, these people, that at some point in our lives we teach about it, we bring it out in a grounded way that we do connect it with science. I have … oh, bloop bloop, we’re going bloop bloop,
Rick: Are you okay?
Thomas: yeah…You have the technologies that help beings travel vast distances and communicate but you also have the technologies of the mind, It’s like, how can a being communicate with a human and not speak verbally to you? Is there some, what I call, a primal language that you don’t have to learn like 50 different earth languages in order to communicate with people? Is there some primal language that we all can understand? I think there is. Would that be useful?
Rick: I think there are levels of the mind which precede meaning.
Janet: Right, right.
Rick: And if you are able to function on those levels of the mind, they precede verb, I mean language. But they don’t precede, I always say, they don’t precede meaning. So, meanings can be conveyed without the use of different languages which are more …
Janet: Right, that’s it. That’s it, that’s more it, yes.
Thomas: Right, and I think a great deal of knowing or knowledge can be conveyed in a very short period of time. I think we grossly underestimate the capability of our human brains to take in and download and linearize or integrate information. I think we have vastly more capability than we actually realize.
Janet: And utilize, yeah.
Rick: And speaking of shifting of the culture and so on, I mean, 400 or 500 years ago it was commonly assumed that the earth was the center of the universe, the center of the solar system and so on, and very few people think that today, although you can still find websites where people do think that.
Janet: Right.
Rick: And science is really the tool that has helped us to realize that. So, I would like to think that through a much more mature science, which incorporated all the kinds of things we’re talking about here, exploration and knowledge of subtle realms, we could eventually make knowledge of that, familiarity with that, and even common everyday experience of that, as common as is now the understanding that the sun is the center of the solar system, or many of the other things that we agree upon as a culture, which we once thought to be different.
Janet: Or energy, the energy of…
Thomas: Well, you’re talking about the sun being the center of the solar system, and the sun actually is the source of all forms of energy that we use on this planet, for example. And I have looked into some of the technologies based upon my work with individuals. It’s like you do a what-if game, okay, what if these crafts, say, for example, are real? And if so, then how do they do the things that people report? Because they’re far outside the envelope of any technology that we have currently. Although that being said, I think we are moving very rapidly toward these hyper, call them hyper technologies, some of which we know about publicly, and a lot I don’t think we know about publicly. But I’ve looked into this, and I think there are ways to access, say, solar energy that are very different than anything that’s being done right now. And that’s an area of interest for me.
Janet: And Tom has an energy project, I’ll just say that. And that’s designed to bring some of these technologies to manifest them, right? So that energy on this planet can be safely…
Thomas: Can be accessed safely, limitlessly. And we don’t have to burn anything to do it.
Rick: Well there are guys like Greg Braden and others who are talking about zero-point energy and technologies like that. And there are some who say that many of our current technologies, such as the transistor or fiber optics, might actually have been reverse-engineered from crashed alien spacecraft. I don’t know if Steven Greer suggests that.
Janet: See, we don’t know about things like that. We try to be very, very grounded in our approach. And when I say Tom has an energy project, I mean an energy project. It’s not theory, it’s actual practical device. So, we are trying to normalize and manifest what has impacted us and others and bring it home, bring it home.
Rick: There’s a whole thing about, which maybe I’ll talk more with Joy Gilbert about this if I end up interviewing her, about implants in the body and genetic manipulation, taking fetuses from the body and doing this and that. And it seems like there’s some kind of a genetic engineering going on, on an interspecies level perhaps. And this is …
Thomas: Humans are sure trying to do it, we’re trying to genetically engineer everything.
Rick: Perhaps, with a cruder, more simplistic understanding of genetics.
Janet: Right, I would say that we are some … we have had enough intervention at this point in our genetics that, you know, again, there’s nothing I can prove. But oh, I know a wonderful, a few little stories, the things that really got my attention when I, 20 years ago, when I was continuing Ken Ring’s research into the effects of this on people who had had near-death or UFO encounters. And I included a group in my study, people that had had both, people that had had both near-death and some kind of UFO or close encounter. And one, I’ll never forget this, one person during his near-death experience, going through the tunnel of light and at each side flanking him were these two beings, what we would call “grays,” right? They were taking him through the tunnel. And then, he had a sense of his own body and he realized he was a gray, okay? He was himself that kind of being.
Rick: In human form, for this lifetime, you’re saying?
Janet: For this human lifetime, but on the other side he again reverted to his more resident state of consciousness and being as a gray, okay? And so, that really started me to think, well, as Joy said, they’re basically manufacturing bodies so that enlightened beings can have a human experience. And I think that done with intent to … and there are lineages, we know that in ufology, there are lineages of families that have this experience. And given that, you have to think, who are we? Where do we come from? Some of us come from different places. Some of us come from the stars And so, we listened to this and then I was able to write the foreword for a book of Australian, an Australian couple. And the woman’s experience was basically that she was, as the title of her book was something like human by day, gray by night, or alien by night, And so, she would have experiences where she would find herself at someone’s bedside and they’d be screaming. This is one childhood experience. And the next day they would relate in school the other person that they had had a dream where a monster showed up and she was saying, “It’s me, it’s me, don’t you recognize me?” And so, she would have … and then she would remember details about the bedroom of the person and realize that she had been in some other form visiting, out of body at night, other people. And then when her memories and her experiences became conscious, and she realized that her identity was that of what we would call an alien being, that her true identity, her more true identity was that. So I started paying attention to these stories, to these experiences. Who are we? I have to ask genetically. Genetically there’s no question in my mind that we have been impacted and even engineered by these beings.
Rick: Yeah, it’s kind of an interesting thought that there are genetically engineering bodies that could be adequate or appropriate vehicles for some more highly evolved souls to occupy.
Janet: Exactly Yeah, it’s hard to disavow that if you read Joy’s book or even mine, which is partly about her.
Rick: You have some interesting bits in your book about the ancient Vedic society of India, and here are some little bits about … had regular diplomatic links with a hierarchy of extraterrestrial and higher dimensional beings. The Puranas, which is a Vedic scripture, refer to 400,000 human-like races living on various planets among which interbreeding regularly occurs, the human species allegedly descending from the Devas. The word “Devas” is usually translated as “gods,” but that could easily mean more highly evolved beings from elsewhere. In Sanskrit the Devas are referred to as “Vaimanikon,” meaning “travelers in Vimanas.” Vimanas were aerial cars that the Vedas describe in quite some detail, and there are even pictures of them depicted in various carvings in India. It’s like there was an ancient culture, which apparently was in regular communion with these other cultures as we are with Italy and Germany.
Janet: Yes, and I think that we are headed in that direction. We are headed in that direction now.
Rick: I think we are too, which is why I wanted to do this show. I just feel like …
Janet: Thank you.
Rick: Even though people might think I’m a weirdo and, there’s a certain segment of my audience that will just … we’ll get some thumbs down, but I don’t care. I’ve never really restrained myself for fear of being labeled a weirdo.
Janet: well thank you. This is very heartening to us. I think the timing is just … is now. The timing is now for it and there will be those that will thank you, I can tell you that. And anybody that thinks it’s weird, I don’t know what their spiritual … oh, I know, Ken Wilber, I have to say Ken Wilber wrote a scathing letter, I think, to the “Utney Reader” in which he ridiculed this phenomenon and I just have to say, you don’t have to go there. You really do not have to. I wish he had actually sat down with some experiencers such as us before he wrote that.
Rick: Well, history is rife with examples of people who have taken a fixed position on this, that or the other idea, saying, “This is the way it is, it can’t be anything other than this,” and then of course they’ve been proven wrong over time. There were people who said that train travel would be lethal because you can’t move And there were people in the 1800s that were saying, “Okay, we’ve pretty much reached the end of technological advancement, nothing significant is going to be developed after this.” And,so it’s just a mindset and I really think we have to remain open-minded.
Janet: Yeah, so we just … yeah.
Thomas: Well, you know, it’s really so clear to me now. We live in a self-organizing, self-sustaining universe and the fundamental glue that holds it all together, is unconditional love and that’s where I’m coming from right now. And if I had to say I have a goal in my life, it’s to be able to help people heal emotionally, physically, and for myself to experience that unconditional love as much as I possibly can and help other people experience it as well. So that’s sort of my bottom line for where I’m at at this point in my life.
Rick: Yeah. What the world needs now is love, sweet love. T; Yeah,
Janet: Yeah What did the beings tell Betty Andreas? “And those who do not have love have nothing.” Love, they basically said, “Love is the answer.” So, they came up with that.
Rick: Sounds like the Sermon on the Mount.
Janet: Or the Beatles, right?
Rick: Yeah, right.
Janet: Yeah.
Rick: Just to throw in another point, I mean we’re almost in … this is almost like a good wrap-up moment right now, but there’s something I think even takes it a little bit further and that’s something you quoted from Joy’s book where she maintains that any genuinely enlightened human being is aware of the multitude of layers of creation, including those from whence so-called aliens emerge. I think that pushes the envelope on what enlightenment or awakening really means because some people say that that sort of awareness or perception has nothing to do with enlightenment and that it, as I said in the beginning, that it could be a distraction or a hang-up, and perhaps it could, if one places undue emphasis on it without kind of getting down to the essence of things and establishing oneself there. But I really think that a full-blown spiritual development is going to include a lot more than mere self-realization, if you can say that.
Janet: Right, yes. I asked Nityananda, do you know his work, Nityananda?
Rick: Well, there was a Nityananda who was Muktananda’s guru, but obviously you didn’t ask him.
Janet: No, no. Well, anyway, I did spend time …
Rick: There’s a guy in India that there’s some scandal around named Nityananda.
Janet: Yes, So, I tried to communicate with people about this issue, people that were in guru or enlightened positions and try to, elicit some kind of response. And the most, like I said with Shri ma, that she said, “No one is alien to me.” And I’ve been, at one point I was invested in trying to figure out where the traditions stand with this phenomenon. But at this point we’re absolutely fine with our own experience and we’re teaching out of that. Yeah.
Rick: So Tom, I think Janet and I have been dominating this conversation a little bit too much. You’ve had maybe 20% of … is there anything more you’d like to say that’s important to you that you haven’t had a chance to get in?
Thomas: I guess my experience of late, I feel like I’m on an accelerated asymptotic curve right now. Like I got my early experience with Cosmic Mother and that gave me, I jokingly call it a “curl brain boost,” you know, from the 1950s sci-fi Forbidden Planet, which it was. And now I’m at a whole different phase in my process. And the ability to impact people physically, with these hands is really totally unexpected to me.
Rick: Energy healing.
Thomas: Yeah, the healing. But yet to me, it’s like a miracle. And I see that as where I’m going in my own work, at least part of my own work. And it just really convinces me that there is hope for the human species. And we have the ability to do things that are life-affirming, that we just … all we have to do is set our minds to it and not live in a place of fear. And just absolutely, I’ve experienced that sense of absolute, full-on, flame-on, unconditional love and it’s a mind-blower. It’s phenomenal to be in that space. And there are times when I just crave it and I want to share that with people, you know, however I can do that. I very much appreciate being able to discuss these matters with you on a network like this. It’s fantastic, I appreciate the good work you’re doing.
Rick: Thanks. That kind of brings up a little point, which is that in contemporary spiritual circles, very often siddhis of any kind are dismissed as irrelevant, as a distraction, and yet these extraterrestrials we’ve been talking about have all kinds of siddhis, being able to levitate and go through walls and do amazing things with people. There was even one story where someone reached his hand inside Joy Gilbert’s body and pulled something out. And when I was in the Philippines I went and watched the psychic healers who purport to be doing that. And it seemed to me it might have been sleight of hand, but I had friends who were doctors who went there for a couple months every day and just watched as closely as they wanted and ended up being convinced that some of these guys at least are actually doing what it looks like they’re doing, reaching in and pulling something out of people. So, there’s all kinds of possibilities out there. And again, we have to ask the question, what does full human potential look like and full spiritual potential? Is it merely going to be just a realization of the oneness of things or will it actually include a blossoming of all kinds of capabilities which we have latent within us?
Janet: And a phase of both, right? I know it’s very important to Tom’s process that he do this energy work now, that that’s the natural evolution of his energy work with the being, Cosmic Mother. And so, it’s important now. Everything’s on a case-by-case basis. So, I don’t view it as a distraction, but as a necessary step in the process. And as we integrate in our work as healers, and we integrate these other experiences, there’s a time for the work that he’s doing now, the energy healing. And who knows what that will evolve into, but I know it’s important for him now.
Rick: Yeah, I think your point about timing is good because there could be people who don’t have a certain level of maturity and all who would say, “Oh, aren’t I God’s gift to humanity? Look at this ability I have,” and it could end up going to their heads. But with the proper degree of spiritual and emotional and personal maturity, then these things can be appropriate.
Janet: Absolutely. Again, you work with the process, with what’s presenting itself in the best possible way you can, and you try to stay open to guidance so that the evolution that’s natural can occur. And, Tom’s had an active kundalini process for about 25 years, 20 years, and so, all that energy, you know, this is another phase of its manifestation, okay? So, we try to stay open and not have a judgment. That’s a good thing, not have too much of a judgment about this, whether it’s about aliens or healing or, siddhis or what, is that the judgment itself can shut things down more quickly than anything.
Rick: What’s been the nature of your kundalini process, Thomas?
Thomas: I originally began to experience it, it’s got to be 20 years ago. I was doing three-hour meditations every night from about 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. on a regular basis. And my first experience was I got into a state of, I call it the statue mode where I could sit completely motionless except for breathing for like two, three hours at a time. This was phenomenal to me because I’m a very jumpy kind of guy. And then at some point it began to express itself as like really intense shaking, tremors, whole body tremors. And then it would be like a hurricane comes through, the front half of the hurricane was all the tremors and stuff. Then there’d be this absolute calmness that would happen for 15, 30 minutes, Just really beautiful, blissful state. Then the other side of the hurricane would come through and I would experience kriyas, like very distinct patterns. And the kriyas are, of course, spontaneous body postures, you know, and sometimes motions. And my body would do like a Balinese dancer kind of thing. Everyone’s like, “Wow, what is this? It isn’t me, it’s just this energy flowing through me.” And it’s actually become very, very intense in the last two, three months. But I’m so used to it now, it’s like, “Okay, what’s happening tonight?” Right?
Rick: Yeah. That’s a whole other topic that, we could do a whole interview on. And I’m in touch with a couple of people, one in Australia, another in Spain, who are going through completely incapacitating, horrific kundalini experiences, where they are basically bedridden and frozen in various postures for hours at a time, with volcanic energy that they can’t allow, that won’t go all the way up, it’s stuck. And boy, … if world consciousness is rising and this becomes a little bit more epidemic, it’s something that’s really going to have to be dealt with in a more systematic way by more knowledgeable people, because these people can’t find doctors who don’t regard them as totally crazy and want to load them up with Thorazine, you know?
Janet: Right.
Thomas: Hey, even what I’m experiencing, I have asked my GP and several other doctors, just out of a sense of curiosity. Nobody’s ever heard of the word “kundalini,” so I don’t even go there, right? But there’s nothing that medical science, I think, can do anything about this. So, I just let it rip, you know? It’s like, “I’m okay.”
Rick: Yeah. Well, you’re fortunate that it’s processing fairly smoothly. Some people get into much more dire situations.
Thomas: Absolutely, I know. It can be very, very intense, and Janet’s had some clients who had really intense processes.
Janet: Well, spiritual emergency, that’s rife with kundalini processes.
Thomas: Yeah, But mine just seems to keep on going. I’m like, “Okay, that’s great.” Yeah.
Rick: Okay, well we’ve covered quite a bit. And you know …
Janet: Yeah. Wow.
Rick: It’s really fun talking to you guys.
Janet: Thank you. Thank you for such a broad-minded, heart-based communication with us. It’s very, very … I mean, it’s so rare. We have not been able to do this publicly at all in this way, so I really thank you for that. r Well, I’ve been around the block, you know? I’ve been focusing on this stuff for a long time, and especially since I started doing this show, I talk to a different person every week, and if I couldn’t accommodate a wide diversity of perspectives and experiences and give people the benefit of the doubt, I wouldn’t be able to do this. And I’m just naturally inclined to accommodate it, because I really feel like there’s much more to life than meets the eye. And in my father’s house there are many mansions, as Jesus said. There are just so many different mysteries and marvelous things in the universe that we generally don’t know anything about. And I really think it’s very important to keep an open mind, and not to be gullible, but I take people with a grain of salt. I don’t say, “Oh, because so-and-so said it, it must be true,” but I’m really open to the possibility that it is true.
Thomas: It’s so important to keep this work grounded. That’s why I like to keep it grounded in the science. I read a ton of scientific journal articles, and to keep it grounded in my meditation. These are things that people have been doing for thousands of years to help awaken, you know? So, it’s like, “Okay, so we’re introducing another element into this from outside of this planet, but why can’t that be an option?”
Janet: Why not? Why not?
Rick: I think Steven Spielberg and George Lucas have prepared us for that, and Ron Howard.
Janet: Yeah, or we’ve prepared them, right? It goes back and forth. I’d like to just thank the woman, Johanna, who really put this whole show in process when she recommended us. So, thank you, thank you dear.
Rick: Yeah, thank you Johanna. And speaking of that, we have a recommendation system for inviting guests, and we’ve shut it down for a while because there are just so many requests, and Irene was spending a couple hours a day just looking through all these things, but we’ll open it up again before too long and we’ll notify people when it’s open. So, thank you so much for this, and thanks to those who have been listening or watching. As always, I’ll put up a page on BatGap about this interview with links to Thomas and Janet’s website and books and any other relevant information, and you can get in touch with them.
Janet: And I did want to say, Sri M, Sri M that you interviewed is a wonderful corollary to this show. We watched it and we knew we were heading in the right direction, so if anybody wants to see his also in conjunction with our interview, it would be lovely.
Rick: Yeah, he’s a really nice guy. I was just down in Santa Cruz, California conducting a thing with Francis Bennett and Adyashanti, which we’ll be posting soon. Some woman came up to me afterwards and said, “Sri M, I’m going to India to be with Sri M. Thank you so much.” So, it’s lovely connecting people like that. He was a good man. I recommend his autobiography and I’d recommend your books. There are three different ones here, I’ll link to them, but I’ve really enjoyed reading them.
Janet: Oh, thank you.
Rick: If people found this interesting, I think they’ll find the books well worth their time.
Janet: Thank you very much.
Rick: Yeah, so let me make a couple of general wrap-up points that I always make, that you’ve been listening or watching to an interview which is part of an ongoing series. And if you want to check out previous ones, just go to www.batgap.com and you can find them all under the “Past Interviews” menu, categorized in various ways. If you sign up for the audio podcast, you’ll download hundreds of episodes and you can listen to them on your i-thing, or Stitcher or whatever. And there’s a “Donate” button, we rely on that support in order to make this happen, this consumes most of our time here. And some other things, if you just check out the menus, it’s all pretty obvious, just explore the menus for a few minutes and you’ll see what we have to offer at www.batgap.com. So, thanks for listening or watching. I have 3 or 4 interviews in process right now, which have already been done. I’m not sure in which order they’re going to be released, so I won’t announce what the next one is going to be, but there’s a bit of a flurry right now because I was just out in California and did a bunch of stuff live. So, stay tuned for that and we’ll see you for the next one.
Janet: Thanks, Rick.
Rick: Thanks, Thomas and Janet.
Janet & Thomas: Thank you, bye.