Tim Freke with Lisa Cairns Interview

Summary:

• Tim Freke:
  • Philosopher and author, known for pioneering a new way to experience spiritual awakening that embraces everyday humanity.
  • Developed the “Mystery Experience” and “Lucid Living” philosophies, which focus on experiencing a deep awake state and oneness.
  • Author of over thirty books, including “The Jesus Mysteries” and “Soul Story”.
  • Founder of The Alliance for Lucid Living, an organization dedicated to collective awakening.
• Lisa Cairns:
  • Speaker on non-duality and oneness, emphasizing the aliveness that exists beyond dualistic concepts.
  • Engages in conversations worldwide about the nature of reality and the self.
• Boris Jansch:
  • Filmmaker of “Who’s Driving the Dream Bus?”, a documentary exploring big existential questions and the concept of non-duality.
  • The film features interviews with various spiritual teachers and explores the journey of self-discovery.

Full transcript:

Rick: Welcome to a special edition of Buddha at the Gas Pump. I was contacted by Boris Jänsch a little while ago, who has made a movie called “Who’s Driving the Dream Bus?” Interesting movie, and Boris is going to tell us in a minute what that movie is about. He’s having a conference pretty soon, based on the theme of this movie, over in London, and he suggested we have a little conversation to sort of broaden awareness that this conference is coming up, and he invited Tim Freke and Lisa Cairns, both of whom I’ve interviewed in the past, and so I thought, “Great, that’ll be fun.” So you can look up my previous interviews with Tim and Lisa, but Tim is a philosopher, or lover of wisdom, as the word means, who is pioneering a simple new way to experience a profound spiritual awakening, which fully embraces our everyday humanity. I won’t go on, because we only have an hour. Lisa talks worldwide with people about non-duality, or oneness, the aliveness that always is, no matter what is imagined in it. Subject, object, good, bad, right, wrong, beauty, ugly, me, you. Boris will introduce himself and tell us a little bit about Dream Bus. Go ahead, Boris.

Boris:  Hi, thanks, Rick. “Who’s Driving the Dream Bus” was a project that I started about 15 years ago, and I used to run a production company, and since my early 20s, I had this deep yearning to find answers to the big questions in life, and so I tried everything from lucid dreaming to astral projection to Reiki to hypnosis to meditation. I kind of dipped my toes in everywhere, and I read a lot of spiritual books, philosophy, and I was always left thinking, “Okay, what next?” So this deep yearning turned into what I would say is a deep depression, and that really was the inspiration for making a film and contacting various people and exploring these big questions all around the notion of who am I, what’s this waking, dreaming thing that we all find ourselves in, because it’s a bit bonkers. And then I started contacting people, and the people who I spoke to were people that I had either come across while reading certain books or on YouTube, and it developed over time. Eventually, I was drawn to the notion of non-duality, and it seemed like, as Rupert Spire puts it, it seemed like it’s the final furlong in terms of the search for answers to this life, having explored everything else from religion to philosophy, spiritual teachings. Non-duality, the notion of non-duality seemed to be the final – where the search ended. For me, to cut a long story short, the film is basically a personal journey going through all of the big questions with a few fantastic speakers like Timothy Freke, Tony Parsons, Jeff Foster, and a few others. And so, “Who’s Driving the Dream Bus?” the event is basically further exploring ideas within that film. And yes, so that’s that in a nutshell.

Rick: So, Lisa wasn’t in the –

Lisa: You still got your mustache on.

Boris:  Yes, that’s right.

Lisa: You recorded that with your mustache on.

Boris:  That’s correct, yes.

Rick: He decided to leave it on.

Boris:  If it’s disturbing anyone, I’ll happily remove it.

Lisa: No, it’s fine.

Tim: I can’t get mine off, I’m afraid.

Rick: So, Lisa, you weren’t in the film, but are you going to be speaking at the conference?

Lisa: Yeah, yeah.

Rick: Oh OK, so that’s why we invited you. And it’s interesting because Boris suggested to me that there was some difference of perspective between you and Tim and that that might make for a little bit of controversy, which might make the interview interesting. So, sorry to put you on the spot there, Boris. But perhaps we could just have each of you, Lisa and Tim, lay out your notion of what the film talked about and what, had you been in the film, and in Tim’s case you were, what you presented as your perspective. Maybe starting with Lisa.

Lisa: Okay. Wow, what I thought the film was about.

Rick: Well, do you want me to give you a seed thought?

Lisa: Go for it.

Rick: Okay. Well, I mean, the very title of the film implies that the world is a dream or an illusion, you know, and that there may not be anyone driving this dream bus of a world. And a lot of the speakers in the film emphasize that there really is no person. Tony Parsons is the most notorious for emphasizing that. And therefore, since there’s no person, there’s nothing to do, no one to do it. It’s all kind of going on automatically. Other people introduce more of a kind of a driver in the bus and say, yeah, you know, that’s true on some level, but I also feel like I am a person in addition to maybe being a non-person, that I’m making choices and I’m feeling things as a human being, and there’s free will as far as I can perceive. So those seem to be contradictory perspectives. So where would you fall on that spectrum, Lisa?

Lisa: There doesn’t seem to be anybody driving the dream bus from here.

Rick: Okay.

Lisa: There seems to be. So, but that doesn’t say about what the film’s about, but from this perspective, there just seems to be life happening, just life happening. And in that, there’s an appearance of choice or there’s an appearance of ideas, but that still doesn’t imply somebody’s driving it, a choiceless choice. But the film, I felt like the film was Boris’ exploration of the subject. It was a really sweet exploration of who he was and his relationship with the world. That’s what I felt the film was about.

Rick: Okay. But so your experience though is that there are choices, there are preferences and so on, but there doesn’t seem to be a chooser or a preferrer. In other words, there is no one who is having these choices. There are just choices showing up in the dream.

Lisa: I wouldn’t call it in the dream, but choices appear. A choice appears to choose to drink tea, my tea. Or to grab the cup, but it doesn’t appear for someone. Just sometimes, action just happens, sometimes a thought appears to choose something and sometimes it’s a combination of both, but it still doesn’t imply somebody’s there. And when there’s no choice, there’s no choice. There’s no thought coming up and going to choose the tea. There’s just what else is happening.

Rick: Yeah, okay. So in other words, you can’t identify or locate a drinker of the tea or a chooser of the thought or an owner of the dog or whatever. There’s just these things that you –

Lisa: There’s just life happening.

Rick: Life happening.

Lisa: What’s happening. Always just what’s happening. It’s so simple. It’s just what’s happening and it doesn’t belong to somebody. The somebody only ever is in interpretation.

Rick: So how would that contrast if it does with your experience, Tim?

Tim: Well, my own feeling is that that is a very beautiful statement of half the picture. And I had the delight of being with Lisa on a panel at the Science and Non-duality Conference and thoroughly enjoyed her playfulness in that perspective, which I delighted and love. What is interesting me is something else or slightly different, but I really relate to what Lisa was saying because it was something which fascinated me also for a very long time. And that’s not to say that it’s lesser in any way. I just feel like there may be more to say. I’m very suspicious when human beings end up saying it’s the final furlong or we’ve arrived. And I think, oh, this is a very big, mysterious business we’re in. And I suspect we’re always at the beginning, not the end. So as someone who feels very much at the beginning, I’d like to say a couple of things, really. One is I think this image of the dream. And it’s a metaphor. You know, in science they use metaphors like they used to compare the world to a machine in which all the cogs turned. There was no free will. It was just a machine. And then we’ve got other metaphors like it’s a hologram or it’s a computer. And those are objects. In spirituality, the metaphors tend to be subjective metaphors because spirituality is a subjective investigation. So the natural metaphor is dream. And I use that a lot. And what’s great about the dream metaphor is it captures actually for real something, a very deep part of actually what I experience, which is the awake state seems to me like a lucid dream. And what strikes me about a lucid dream is that you don’t wake up from this. You don’t go, oh, it was all an illusion. What you actually find is you’re in it and it’s in you at the same time, like a dream. So when you’re dreaming, you still experience being a person in a dream, making choices, having an experience, seeing from one perspective, meeting other dream people. And the dramas are important. They matter. And they’re transformative. And you can learn and you can go on a journey. There’s a story. And at the same time, when you’re lucid, when you’re lost in the dream, that’s all you see. But when you’re lucid dreaming, you see that also the opposite is equally true, that you are not in the dream at all, that you are the dreamer who’s dreaming the whole thing. And from that perspective, you are the whole dream. You’re everything and everyone in the dream. And you see this beautiful paradox that you’re both separate and individual from looking at the dream and you’re the whole thing at once. And that captures for me much more what I experience, which is, oh, these two sit together and I can’t prejudice one over the other. They’re both part of the nature of reality. And here it’s very simple, like Lisa says. It’s all mystery. It’s all one. It’s all happening. And here it’s the opposite. It’s very personal. It’s very complex. It’s very tender. It’s very vulnerable. It’s very human. And they both sit together. Oh, my God. And what’s exciting me about this conference, this Who’s Driving the Dream Bus conference, is because, you know, and I may be wrong about this. I’m ready to be shown completely wrong. But from what I can see, the non-dual community is moving and changing. And I’m so pleased because when I first really came across this 15 years ago, whenever it was 20 years ago, non-duality wasn’t much spoken about. I was very influenced by people like Ramesh Balsekar, had a very extreme non-dual view, because it was hugely exciting and took me to a very interesting place. I’d never really seen it so clearly as when Ramesh showed it to me. But the journey didn’t stop. I thought it had stopped, but it didn’t. It carried on. It was more interesting. And it moved back in to this both/and, so that the personal, rather than being the illusion and the thing to get rid of, suddenly became, yeah, it’s all one. Now this is really interesting. Oh yeah, it’s all a dream. Now what is the dream? Is this just some mistake? Is the fact of our individuality, You know, some illusion we’ve fallen into, and if only it would go away, we’d all be better off? Or is actually, it really precious, really important, but to really see what it is, we need to also have this perspective of seeing that it’s all one. And in that way, if I just maybe say one more thing, if I put on my scholarly hat, because I wrote a number of scholarly books when I was younger, and one of the most popular was on Gnosticism and the ancient mysteries. And what fascinated me about Gnosticism and the ancient mysteries is they had this initiatory process, which they saw as a natural process, I think, that human beings went through when they awakened. And the first step was moving from identification with the body to identification with a separate soul. And that’s what you can see in the New Age movement, the personal development movement, all the things I suspect most of us have come across and been through in some way. And then there was this big jump, which they called the pneumatic or spiritual initiation, which is when you come right out of the personal and you go, “Oh my God.” And that’s the non-dual. You just come out and it’s, “Oh my God,” and you see that it’s all just happening, it’s a revelation. You think it was all about developing a person and suddenly you’re not one. And it’s, “Whoa!” But it doesn’t stop there. The initiatory process moves on to what they call the mystical marriage or the sacred marriage, which is the bringing together of all opposites, in which they are both two and one at the same time. And what I’m interested in is I think the non-dual community is moving in that direction. That’s what I really noticed in these events I’ve been seeing, is that more and more people are coming through to the point where they’re realizing that the personal, our lives, is not something to be dismissed, not something to just ignore, but actually is really, really important. And there’s a greater authenticity coming in, which I love. And the most important thing, when there’s both/and, there is love. There really is, because the love is in the human. It comes through from the one into the many. So I’m really hoping that there’s going to be an interesting debate about the no one’s there versus yeah, and also somebody there, this both/and perspective.

Lisa: And who are you on the panel with, Tim?

Tim: I think I’m with Tony, which I’m really looking forward to.

Rick: Oh God, I’ve got to see that.

Tim: Which will be great, I really hope so.

Lisa: With Tony, and who else?

Tim: Who else am I with, Boris?

Lisa: Boris is like, “Ah.”

Boris:  Richard Lang, I believe, yes. The Headless Way.

Tim: Ah, right, okay. Great, great. It’ll be fun. See, I really, I think it’s great, panels, because I think it’s lovely. I mean, in one way, you never get to hear really where someone’s coming from, because you’re moving between people. But it’s so lovely when you can hear human beings who are explorers, who have actually bothered to really question this, and have found something which they think is worth sharing, and which people are interested in hearing about. And then we can compare notes. Well, that’s where I’m coming from. It’s much more of an explorer of the mystery. And there’s a kind of a human – or humility, I guess, which I love, when we can just reach into the mystery completely as equals before this enormous mystery, and go, “Hmm, looks like this. What do you think?” And I love that.

Rick: Hey, Tim, I’m curious. In those Gnostic traditions that you mentioned, do they discuss the tendency for people to feel that whatever stage they have arrived at is final, and to not anticipate that there might be something more?

Tim: I haven’t come across that, because, I mean, the literature from the Gnostic period and the ancient period is very – you know, we don’t have a huge amount. But I certainly see that, and I see it myself. I mean, let me say that. When I was much, much, much younger, when I was a teenager, and found my guru who was the perfect master, I’d arrived already. I’d already found the answer. And then that was not the answer, and I moved on to other answers. Until now, it feels like, no, there’s always – there’s never arriving without traveling, just as there’s never traveling without arriving. The two always go together. There’s always more. And thank God. Thank God there’s always more.

Rick: So, Lisa, what did all that sound like from your perspective, that Tim just said?

Lisa: Well, in all honesty, it was just sounds appearing. It was very nice, and I enjoyed listening to Tim. But what else is it but that?

Rick: True, but sounds more.

Tim: I hope it’s a little more than that, Lisa, because when you speak, I can hear meaning in the sounds you’re making. If it was just sounds, it would just be la-la-la-la. But I can hear meaning, which is amazing.

Lisa: I mean, obviously, they make sense if there’s a certain type of listening. Like a focused-in listening. If there’s a broad listening, then it tends not to make so much sense. But if there’s a focused-in listening, then the words seemingly fit together and make sense. But it doesn’t mean to be a dismissal of what you’re saying, but it’s just sounds appearing. It’s not it. It’s not the way it is. It can never be the way it is. The way it is, is the way it is. It is what it is now.

Rick: It’s true. It’s sounds appearing, and your dog has lots of little cells living. But somehow you give interpretation to that as a dog whom you love, and whom you play with, and whom you feed.

Lisa: If that happens, it might not happen.

Rick: Generally, it tends to if we want to be functional in the world, does it not?

Lisa: No, because it’s not seen like that from here. It doesn’t seem like I have to put any effort into it. There’s a Lisa here that has to put effort into being functional. Life just happens. It’s so simple. It just happens. There’s feeding the dog, or there’s patting the dog, or there’s telling the dog no, or picking the dog up, or sitting the dog on the lap. Or now, it doesn’t feel like I’m having to put effort. There’s a me in here having to put effort into speaking. Speaking just comes out.

Tim: Do you not like effort, Lisa?

Lisa: Um, I don’t know.

Rick: Come on, you’re making this effortful. But no one said anything about effort. I mean, fine. Couldn’t everything Tim said have been interpreted as something that’s…

Lisa: It could be interpreted in many ways. Some beings would interpret it as genius. Some beings would interpret it as crap. Some beings would interpret it as not making any sense. It could be interpreted lots of different ways. It’s no definite way. It’s just what it is.

Rick: Tim, you want to respond to that? I could, but I’m trying not to draw all the attention.

Tim: We’ve been here before.

Lisa: Lisa is a bit of drama.

Tim: Lisa is the most articulate in my view when she laughs engagingly and blows us all away. Because at that point, no really, I’m not being funny now. I really mean it. Because at that point, you express, I think, what you see perfectly. Because it’s something which isn’t to do with words.

Lisa: Yeah.

Tim: And therefore, when you come to words, I hear you struggle. Because what you’re saying is “ha ha la la” and I get that.

Lisa: It doesn’t feel like a struggle.

Tim: No, no, there’s no struggle. I can see it. Which is why when I say, when you smile like you are doing now, it’s the most articulate. Because at that point, there’s no words. It’s just flying out of your eyes and I get it. I really, really do. And I really get also that right now on your journey, this is where you want to be. Or the life wants you to be if you don’t like that. Or the nobody wants you to be. Or whatever it is. Or the one has put you. Or whatever works for you. And that doesn’t mean that you won’t spend the rest of your life articulating this for people. Beautifully. I mean, it’s not that you must move on or you will move on. It doesn’t matter. I love the fact that consciousness is exploring itself. The life, better to say, is exploring itself from so many different directions. And like you, I don’t think there’s any way of saying it that’s right. Because it’s not going to happen.

Lisa: But maybe we should get into this subject. The title of the film is “Dream Bus”. But I don’t see a you or me. That’s only an interpretation. Which isn’t wrong, interpretation. But who is this you or me?

Tim: Well, I think the you or me arises here, Lisa. And I think it’s fairly obvious. And I think when we start saying things which misses out the obviousness of our experience, we’ve kind of become like fundamentalist religion does. Kind of says things which are kind of a bit like, “Hang on a second. I really think that.” So, for instance, I am separate from you as a conscious being. And that’s obvious because I can think a thought now. And I can know what it is and you don’t know what it is. Now, we’re having that experience. And you’re the same and Rick’s the same and Boris is the same. So, the thing we need to understand is where we start from. That’s where we start. And then we can come to this deep place where we can realize that the being on which that’s arising is not separate. And it’s not. But the experience of being a conscious being is separate. And that’s very obvious. And I think if we deny that, we’ve kind of moved into a realm of fantasy.

Lisa: But are we in fantasy already saying we are somebody?

Tim: Well, let’s go back to my example. What am I thinking? I’m a conscious being. I’m having a consciously separate experience. And you have no access to it. So, on that level, there’s clearly a you or I as conscious beings. I don’t think that can be disputed. Can it?

Lisa: Well, I’m sure it could be. But…

Tim: Well, can we? How can we? Because we’re clearly having different conscious experiences.

Lisa: But that’s an idea.

Tim: We’re different bodies. We’re different bodies.

Lisa: But you don’t even see your body now. There’s not even a human that sees his body.

Tim: There is something here on one level. There’s also nothing here on another level.

Lisa: But that’s an imagination. That’s all an interpretation.

Tim: I think you’re getting confused because everything obviously that we say is going to be language. There’s no two ways about that. And everything we think is going to be language, we can’t do anything about that. So, if we just go back to, “Oh, it’s just a language with everything that’s said,” it will always be right. If everything that’s said to you, you just go, “It’s language,” it will always be right because there is only language.

Lisa: But what I was trying to point out is that it’s interpretation that you are a body.

Tim: Yes. I’m not identifying necessarily by saying, “I am this body.” But I am certainly saying there is a body in this room on one level. And there is – or let’s stick with conscious being because that’s the one that I think is most intriguing with you. There is a conscious being here looking through, a conscious being through this amazing internet over there. And we can connect, I think, as separate, very obviously, and also as not separate. And there’s both. And I think that the problem generally is that people don’t see the not separate. They don’t see where we’re one being, which is a huge loss. But to replace it by not seeing that we’re also separate is also a huge loss. Because what makes you so interesting is you’re not the same. You think different thoughts. You have different things arising. You’re as conscious of being in that room.

Lisa: It doesn’t make so much sense here because there’s just what’s happening and what’s happening –

Tim: Okay, let me just pick you up. You just said, “It doesn’t make much sense here.” The fact that it’s here and not there, which is where this is, but over here it’s this, that here is a reference point. And that reference point is what is separate. You are like a different wave in the one sea. You are like a different point of consciousness in the great unconscious field of being. But we are different points in the one unconscious field, aren’t we? You said you have a different perspective.

Lisa: I completely don’t –

Tim: How do you have a different perspective then?

Lisa: The different perspective is, is that it’s all seen as what is.

Tim: But it’s your perspective. It’s not mine. There’s two. There’s a conversation. It may be a duet for one, but it’s still a duet.

Lisa: I just don’t see an I and a you. There is just aliveness happening, beingness, lots of different forms appearing.

Tim: Now, the one clip – Sorry, Lisa.

Lisa: I don’t see a Lisa.

Tim: The problem I have with what you’re saying –

Lisa: There’s no sense or I say an I. It’s just there is no Lisa. There’s just what’s happening.

Rick: Let me throw something into the pot. It’s a good thing you guys are in separate countries.

Lisa: No, we’re in the same country.

Rick: I thought you were in Spain.

Tim: Before you throw something new in, Rick, can I just pick up on one little word?

Rick: Okay.

Tim: Which I’d love to do. You see, I think there’s a word which I’m probably not very fond of. Most words I don’t mind, but this word I’m not particularly fond of. It’s the word “just.” Because when the word “it’s just” is used, it’s nearly always a sign of reductionism. “It’s just this.” No. It’s like when scientists go, “Look, you may be falling in love, but it’s just chemicals in your body” – which Einstein ridiculed – or “It’s just the cause and effect of gravity.” And it is that. Obviously, it’s that. How interesting. But it’s not just that. It’s a whole spectrum of things. And the same happens with non-duality. You hear this, “It’s just.” Well, it is that, but it’s not just that. It’s actually a whole spectrum. The great miracle of being is it expresses itself in a whole spectrum of which that oneness is the grand, but the expression is into uniqueness and individuality. And I personally, personally feel that that is the most important thing about this life process, is its expression into individuality.

Rick: Do you want to respond to that, Lisa?

Lisa: Well, it’s just very simple here. And I don’t see it as here as in Lisa’s body. That’s most probably what it sounds like. Because it’s just life happening, and it doesn’t happen to someone or for someone. It’s just life happening. It’s completely impersonal.

Rick: And I think you’re speaking sincerely from your experience, as is Tim.

Lisa: I’m not sure of whose experience we’re talking from, though.

Rick: Right, but there’s a functioning mechanism there, which we see as Lisa, which is perceiving or understanding life to be a certain way, to be just what’s happening, and has the capability of expressing that to us.

Lisa: I don’t know all those things, actually.

Rick: You don’t know all those things?

Lisa: I just don’t know that there’s a mechanism that’s perceiving and receiving or anything that you said. All that’s known is what is, and in that, thoughts and words and everything are coming out. But none of it’s known. None of it’s truth.

Tim: No, none of it. You’re right. It’s none of it’s truth. And the odd thing about being Tim Freke in these conversations, which I have many, is I get to represent celebrating separateness as opposed to waking up to oneness, whereas really I’m about both. And I hear what you’re saying, and I think it’s so important to have the perspective that you have. I really, really do. It’s just that in the articulation of it – because what you’re trying to say cannot be said – if in the articulation of it, it can’t help but kind of turn around on itself. So when you say nothing else is known as truth, that’s absolutely right, but certainly a lot more is known. Every sentence that you speak is arising from a whole history of speaking, not just of you, but of the whole culture. I know it’s not the experience, but if you look more carefully, that must be the truth in that sense, that in saying those sounds and responding in that way to me…

Lisa: That makes very logical sense.

Tim: Well, it’s not about logic. It’s just about looking and just looking and listening, because the words are not just sounds. They carry meaning. And that’s why they’re so interesting. So we need to account for some sounds have meaning. What’s that? Where does that arise from?

Lisa: But that makes very logical sense, that it arises from the past, but that’s not the actual experience that anything arises from the past.

Tim: No.

Lisa: The past arises in this.

Tim: That’s right, but in trying to understand the nature of reality, I think we have to actually, again, you know, when you’re stuck in time, it’s such a revelation to come into the now. When you’re stuck in the now, and you think that’s all there is, because it isn’t all there is. It really is. There’s a past and there’s a future and we live in it. Right now, we’re living in both, all of it. Eventually, I think you come back and you go, “Oh, look, hang on. I’ve ended up in an absurdity,” which is very interesting, but it’s an absurdity because it’s one side of a very paradoxical reality, a very paradoxical predicament. And you’re able to re-own your humanity and come back to where you started and know the place for the first time, as T.S. Eliot says, or in the Zen koan. You know, it starts with you trying to master the bull in the ten bulls story, and then you give up on that, and then you discover eventually the eighth of the ten bulls, which is the empty circle. There is nothing. And then there’s nine and ten. And it doesn’t end with the empty circle. The ten bulls story goes on in the Zen tradition. It ends with the Zen master walking through the marketplace where he started with a bottle of wine in one hand and a staff in the other, just laughing and playing, because he’s no longer up the mountain. He’s come back down to the marketplace. And all of this is allegories human beings have created throughout time to account for the same kind of process in which eventually, again, to quote the Zen tradition, they put it beautifully, you start with mountains and mountains, rivers and rivers, then suddenly mountains aren’t mountains and rivers aren’t rivers, and then again mountains and mountains and rivers are rivers. And there’s a time when it feels like, look, we can come back to our humanity just as it is and embody it as it is with this deep knowing of the oneness of being. And that’s love. That’s where the love flows, because we’re right in touch with our humanness in all of its complexity.

Rick: Can you quote that Nisargadatta quote where he said something like that? Do you remember that?

Tim: Nisargadatta said, yeah, one of his quotes that I love is, “Wisdom is” – I can’t remember verbatim, but Lisa might – it’s something about – I’m thinking of Suzuki Roshi who says, “Wisdom is the emptiness of things and love is the manyness of things.” But Nisargadatta says almost the same thing about –

Lisa: My life…

Rick: flows between those two, yeah.

Lisa: Hangs, flows.

Tim: And that’s it. Flows between those two poles. Beautifully put. There’s the manyness which is where we’re all separate. Here’s the oneness where we’re all one. Just like a dream. And we’re in both. We’re already in both. We just have to pay enough attention to see we’re both in the now, always, and yet also the now is arising in this process of time, which is what makes it so interesting. Even to make a noise like this requires time, because until I reach the end of the sentence, it makes no sense. This is where the story is. And you can look at a story. You can look at a movie. And this is what reductionism does. Reductionism looks at the movie and it goes, look, it’s – well, there’s two reductionisms. There’s scientific reductionism, which looks at it and goes, it’s just the DVD. It’s nothing. It’s just information on a disc. That’s all it is. It’s just that. And then there’s spiritual non-dual reductionism, which just goes, it’s just colored flickering lights. It’s just colored flickering lights. And then in between you can go, it’s both of those, and it’s a story. And that story is the human experience, and it’s precious.

Rick: Lisa said something about 15 minutes ago, and maybe you can remember what it was when I start saying it. But you said something about, well, yeah, if we focus down, then it means this. But the implication being that it’s sort of a concession with duality or something to focus down. My understanding and experience is that the full – if we want to use the word enlightenment, which is – I hesitate to use because it’s so loaded with connotations – but is the capacity or the ability to appreciate the unboundedness and focus within precise boundaries simultaneously, and to imbue or to acknowledge all the meaning and significance and importance of those boundaries, and yet to see them essentially as the boundless. And that’s paradoxical. I mean, an enlightened person, so to speak, should be able to pilot a 747 in a snowstorm and remain in that silent, uninvolved, unboundedness and appreciate all the diversity that he’s experiencing as essentially being that, and yet at the same time really pay attention to what he’s doing and land the plane safely. There’s no contradiction or conflict between the meaning and significance of all the things in the world that we value and that we interact with and the unboundedness, the deeper reality. Is there?

Lisa: Well, I don’t think I’m an enlightened person, so I think I’m out.

Rick: Well, I cautioned you about my hesitancy to use that term. And, of course, you’re not a person.

Lisa: It’s just very simple here. It’s just what’s happening. It’s a bit of a bore for people because people like drama and like lots of words, tend to, not all the time, and like looking at it from different levels. But it’s just what’s happening. And I’m not an enlightened person. That would be another story that happens to someone in a story, which is an impossibility because where are stories now? Stories are just imagination. So there’s an imagination of you being someone that’s enlightened.

Tim: That “just” word again, you see.

Lisa: There would be a complete pantomime.

Tim: It’s just imagination. What about “It’s imagination, wow!”

Lisa: Well, it’s nothing wrong with imagination. But it’s imagination and it’s not who you are. It’s just another thing that’s appearing in this, the same as the light or the sounds or the smells or the hands.

Tim: But don’t you ever get – I mean, I feel funny here because I’m so delighted you’re in this state, Lisa, and I have no desire whatsoever –

Lisa: I’m not in a state.

Tim: Well, all right, sorry, whatever way you choose to describe it. But you’re Lisa or Lisa doesn’t exist or whatever it is that captures it in words for you. But I’m just delighted you’re you, and I’m delighted that you are able to bring this into our world in the way you do. And I’m aware that we’re playing out this conversation, which can make it sound like I’m trying to convince you of something, which I’m not. But I’m intrigued that you are not intrigued by the colors as well as the light.

Lisa: Well, I think that you mean by the colors as in like thinking or –

Tim: No, I mean everything, everything which is multifarious, everything which is diverse, everything which is unique, everything which is individuating into a new form, all the processes which happen over the course of time.

Rick: You may be more intrigued than you realize. For instance, I know Lisa is an animal lover, and she now has a dog, and I’m sure she loves the dog and plays with the dog, and there’s not a sort of a flat emotionless dismissal of the reality.

Tim: I certainly don’t get that from Lisa at all. I get loads of animation.

Lisa: There’s a fascination with this, and in this stories arise, and there’s no sense that I am more – that I am somebody. There is more of those stories than anything else. It’s all appearing in what is. But before, prior, there used to be a sense that I was somebody inside this body, and I was my past, and I am my future, and I am someone going along in time. Then that seemingly collapsed, although that’s another story, and then there was just “what is” left. And what is is much more fascinating than that me dynamic that was happening prior. But that doesn’t mean to dismiss emotions. Like full-on emotions happen.

Rick: So would you say in your experience that the emotions and the perceptions and the actions and everything else is all contained within that “what is”?

Lisa: Everything is contained within “what is”. It’s all there ever is.

Rick: Yeah. So the “what is” is not sort of a flat colorless homogenous sap. It’s sort of full of –

Lisa: It’s full of life.

Rick: It’s full of life.

Lisa: We’re not trying to avoid it anymore.

Rick: Yeah, it’s full of dynamism and richness and diversity, but all contained within the wholeness or the oneness.

Tim: So would you be correct then to say, Lisa, that over there, that what’s arising is that the life is full of individuation and variety and individual things, but not you. It’s something which has no individual nature.

Lisa: Life is full of appearances. There’s no one appearance that’s more somebody or another.

Tim: But they’re different, different appearances. There’s a difference between your hair and your nose or your table or your chair and the different colors. You can tell the history of different colors.

Lisa: There’s seemingly different appearances, but they’re not separate in any way.

Tim: They’re different, but they’re not separate. So you mean they’re separate and not separate.

Lisa: No, they’re just seemingly different appearances. So there’s seemingly a computer and a table and a hand that touches the computer, but there’s no longer the sense that the hand is that somebody stops at the edge of the hand and the computer begins there.

Tim: So it seems to me that actually what you’re describing is not dissimilar in a way, that you’re describing it being separate and not separate, that you’re able to tell the difference between your hand and the computer, and also there’s no boundary between them.

Lisa: I’m a bore. I’m a negative teacher.

Tim: Really?

Lisa: I’m not even a teacher, but a negative speaker. A negative is not that I am all appearances. It’s that one that thinks it’s separate falls away, and then all that’s left is appearances. The appearances are all the same essence of oneness, aliveness.

Tim: But what you’re describing again seems not dissimilar, just in a different language. It’s because what you’re saying is that you can tell the difference between your computer and your hand or the computer and the table, and yet they’re all of one essence. So there’s no separateness. Well, there is a separateness, which you can recognize, because you’ve switched the computer on, and there’s not a separateness.

Lisa: Recognition would only ever be in thought. When the thoughts disappear, there’s just what is. So there might be a thought that arises and says, “Oh, Lisa’s hand got burnt on the computer or bitten by the dog or something.” But that’s in thought. Then when that dissolves, then there’s just what is again.

Tim: Of course, yes. When there’s silence, there is what is, yes, for sure.

Rick: But obviously thought serves a function. You need to walk down the street, and you need to recognize that…

Lisa: No, thoughts aren’t the creator of this. Thoughts are just something that appears in this. Thoughts do not create functioning.

Rick: Oh, I didn’t say they did.

Lisa: Oh, okay. I thought you said you need thoughts in order to function.

Rick: It serves a purpose. It’s a faculty. When you’re walking down the street, you might need to recognize that this is a bus, and it’s moving very fast, and it’s large, and it’s heavy, and I’d better not stand in front of it. That’s not all a mentation process. It happens kind of spontaneously. But through learning, you learn as a child that you don’t run in front of buses.

Lisa: The body-mind mechanism becomes conditioned. It doesn’t need to be thought about. There’s many a time, I’m sure, when Rick’s crossed the road, and there’s been no thinking about how to do it.

Rick: Absolutely, most of the time.

Lisa: Mind-mechanic, yeah.

Rick: But there was some…

Lisa: It’s amazing how quickly we can type. We’re not like, “Are you over?” or whatever it is.

Rick: Yeah. Well, actually, that’s probably it. I shouldn’t have taken us down that road.

Tim: No, Rick, I think you should have done, because I think you’re right. And I think, again, it’s kind of like we’re oversimplifying things because they’re all so complex as well as simple, and ironic for me because I’m a great man of the simple. Everything I do is about the simple. But also, you know, with thoughts, you say about the learning process, what we do when we learn is that we start by being conscious of it and thinking about it, and then once we’ve learned it, we can do it automatically. So when you’ve got kids, you’re constantly trying to get them to be conscious, use their thoughts, to be able to think about things. When you make a discovery, if you’re using physics, you’re going to need maths. We need these languages. But there comes a point where it just functions. But that’s a journey to that place.

Rick: Yeah, and I mean any good violinist or skier or tennis player or – we have a dog interruption here, but I think –

Lisa: Sorry.

Rick: That’s okay. So I think, based on what Tim was just saying, you know, there’s so many things in life that might have taken some thought when we were first learning them but have become automatic because they’re so deeply ingrained, like an athletic ability or a musical ability or something like that. It just all becomes second nature to us after a while.

Tim: So we need both of these. It always seems it’s both. It’s not either/or, it’s both/and. We need unconscious competence, that ability to just let it flow, is the most attractive place to be. But sometimes to arrive there, often to arrive there, we go through conscious learning, and that’s where we use all the faculties which nature has given us, which are wonderful. And that’s what you see in growing up, and that’s what you see as you carry on growing up, actually, right to the end. You’re constantly doing it. But I come back again to the fact that we’re speaking, and we just take that for granted as if it’s just happening. But it’s not just happening. We’ve arrived at this ability to speak, and we’ve learned that ability to speak, and now it’s just happening.

Rick: I interviewed Gary Weber last week, and you were on a conference with him at the – you were on a panel with him at the conference, Tim.

Tim: Yes.

Rick: And one of Gary’s big things is that he doesn’t think.

Tim: Yes.

Rick: Although he did acknowledge in the interview that, yeah, he does think, just not so much anymore. And I think one thing that happens is, you know, if we contrast the blah, blah type of thinking, that the noise in the head, the ten radio stations at the same time that is most people’s experience, with the silent, virtually thoughtless mind that we might shift to after undergoing some sort of awakening, it seems that we’re not thinking at all and that everything is just happening on its own. But there’s still thought. It’s just much more subtle. Gary mentioned an impulse of energy or something. Again, that’s a thought.

Tim: Are we talking about conscious thought or unconscious – I mean, you know, there’s certain people studying the brain who think we’re having just a gigantic number of thoughts all the time, of which a small number become conscious. It’s a very complicated issue. But obviously in his experience, that’s what Gary’s saying. For me, it’s like thought – it is, to use Lisa’s lovely phrase, imagination. And we’re imagining speaking. Here I’m speaking out loud, and then I learn to speak to myself in my head. Now, speaking is just speaking. It can be really good. I can talk rubbish, and I can talk rubbish to you, or we can have a really interesting conversation, which I feel we’re having now. And the same inside your head when you’re thinking. You can talk rubbish to yourself, which is blah, blah, blah, and it can be worries and nonsense and blah, and that’s where the mind gets a bad press. Or you can think some of the beautiful thoughts which have led people to create wonderful poetry and works of art and music and science and work out things and reflect, and that’s a huge and beautiful thing, and it’s taken a great deal of human effort from our ancestors to arrive at, and I honour them for it. So it becomes like, hey, thought’s great, if we think good things. All of these things have a place, but they also have another side because everything has that paradoxical nature.

Rick: I think we were really on to something a minute ago when Lisa was talking about – or maybe I was putting words in her mouth, but she was acknowledging the fact that there’s all this richness and diversity and interesting stuff, but it’s all contained within wholeness or oneness, if we want to call it that, and that’s the essence of all this diversity. Diversity really is nothing other than that. And I think that completely concurs with the traditional Vedantic perspective, and I think it also concurs with the modern scientific perspective. A physicist will tell you that all this apparent diversity is not what it appears to be. It really is Maya in a sense. It’s that which is not. And if you boil it down to its essence, you find that anything that appears to be individuated or diverse is actually all the same stuff. And correct me if I’m wrong, Lisa, but I think you’re kind of giving expression to that in your own experience.

Lisa: Yeah.

Rick: That was easy. [Laughter]

Rick: I mean, again, I’m a wordy guy. I’m using a lot of words.

Lisa: It’s not just one movement. And I think what you guys were saying earlier – I’ve forgotten actually what you were saying. It was at some point a thought that came to the same – in fact, I’ve forgotten what it was now.

Rick: Well, we were talking about the diversity within unity or the sort of the dynamism within oneness, within silence. That’s another word we could throw in here is silence. There’s this deep, palpable, pervading silence, and yet it’s dynamic, kind of like currents within an ocean or something.

Lisa: Yeah, this is all just one big movement happening and not happening at the same time.

Rick: Happening within itself.

Lisa: Happening or not happening or – yeah. You could say within itself, but there’s no outside of itself either.

Rick: True. So anything that is happening is –

Tim: I feel like a guy who’s on this incredible boat speeding along with waves crashing and people going, “Hold on,” and, “Let’s do that,” and, “Look at that. It’s amazing” and porpoises are diving out and someone’s by my side going, “It’s just water. It’s just water,” and it’s like, “Yeah, but come on.” [Laughter]

Rick: I’m reminded of the Gita for some reason at this point where there’s this huge battle about to occur and tens of thousands of people are going to be killed, and Krishna just has this smile on his face and basically says, “I’ve already killed him. It’s a done deal.” There’s this sort of incredible, intense, diverse display of creation, and yet it’s all happening within this sort of playfulness of the creator. It’s all – I think I could – anyway, enough said on that point. Somebody chime in.

Tim: Lisa, have you got something? I’d love to hear you.

Lisa: I missed what you last said. I’m sorry.

Rick: Just that the universe is incredibly dynamic. On the subatomic level, it’s dynamic. If we release the energy contained in a single atom, it’s this huge explosion. On the galactic level, it’s dynamic. There are black holes and quasars and things crashing into each other, and the whole thing is this vast, marvelous display of – we could call it creative intelligence, and yet it is just an appearance. The physicists will tell you that you can boil all that down to the unmanifest, to sort of just a virtual nothingness or virtual reality, but you can’t say that’s only it, and you can’t kind of rest on the understanding of that. A physicist can’t say, “Well, there’s really no gravity because at the quantum level, gravity hasn’t arisen” and then go jumping off a building and expect to get away with it. Tim?

Tim: Yeah, I think what you say is really important. Look, the thing about which we see in science which is amazing is that we’ve been able to find this deep simplicity, and that’s very similar to non-duality. And then the mystery then becomes how is this individuated complexity – which has given us consciousness – arisen from that nothing, from that incredible simplicity? And yet in arising, each time something new emerges, it’s more than the parts. This is a really interesting thing, and it’s led to us, who can now think about and reflect on these things. Now my feeling is that keeping that process going is really important. So for me, what I’m interested in is an exploration of awakening, which is trans-rational, not pre-rational, to use Ken Wilber’s excellent phrase. See, I think if we go for the pre-rational, which is going, “Oh, rationality, no, don’t want that,” we’re very similar to the trans-rational, which is what I think the great mystics are talking about. It sounds the same, but it’s not. It’s before rationality. The trans-rational, and this is your guy in the 707, who’s awake and able to fly, which by the way proved that I wasn’t enlightened, because I couldn’t possibly do that. But what it does is it goes, “Look, the trans-rational has transcended rationality and found this deep state of being, but contains the rational, or the trans-human, if you like, which contains the human. It hasn’t gone back before it, which is where we start as kids. It’s discovered that place we start as kids, where we’re just like in the moment smiling, going, “It’s just happening, it’s just happening,” but we’ve got this as well, because we’ve gone through that on the evolutionary journey, so we’re able to transcend and include what it’s gone for. So it’s non-dual, and it’s dual. It’s not done by having to lose anything. You just gain more.

Rick: Any response to that, Lisa?

Lisa: No. I’m not so heady, and this stuff doesn’t keep this interest. Not that you guys aren’t fascinating in your own right, but…

Tim: Let’s talk about love. Let’s talk about love for five minutes.

Lisa: I kind of begin to phase out, so I don’t mean to be rude.

Rick: No, that’s okay. I was thinking that as Tim was talking. I was thinking, “To Lisa, all of this must sound so complicated and heady, as you say, and unnecessarily intellectual and all that.” But that’s just the way…

Lisa: But it may interest some people, and I don’t criticize. There’s not a judgment of that. For some people, that’s really interesting, and that’s not a criticism. It’s just for this body-mind mechanism, there’s more of an enjoyment in other things.

Rick: Yeah, and that’s completely legitimate. I mean, that’s the way Tim is wired, and I’m wired that way.

Lisa: Yeah, it’s not meant to be a criticism or a judgment.

Rick: Not as well, but we’re all kind of different expressions of that same totality, each with our own unique tendencies, and yours happened to be not so complicated, really. You’re a simple person in a complimentary sense.

Lisa: It didn’t used to be that way. Lisa used to be incredibly complicated.

Rick: Oh, yeah?

Lisa: Feeling a lot more concerned, but more concerned about, rather than mental stuff as in understanding things, it was more this energy of wanting love or wanting to get things from people or wanting approval. And that got very complicated, or that game became very complicated in Lisa’s story of trying to get love from people or get things from people. But not so much on the intellectual level, more on –

Rick: Emotional things.

Lisa: Yeah.

Rick: Yeah, yeah. And now you’re just more fulfilled and not so –

Lisa: Just that mechanism of feeling like it needs to constantly get things from people doesn’t –

Rick: Right. Doesn’t operate anymore. Tim, what were you about to say?

Lisa: I say, I don’t, I just say, I play. I didn’t say anymore, because who knows what, we don’t know the future, we just know now.

Rick: Yeah, you might be going for a PhD in neuroscience in a few years for all we know.

Lisa: Yeah. We never know.

Rick: There was an interesting interchange at the S.A.N.D. conference in California last fall in which David Loy and Llewellyn von Lee gave a beautiful talk about spiritual ecology. And then later on, Francis Lucille got up and started to give his talk, and David Loy got up to the mic and started pressing Francis Lucille about the ecological issues that confront the world. And Francis was like, “It doesn’t interest me, and it’s not my concern, it’s not what I talk about or think about.” And David Loy says, “Well, it should be your concern. I mean, it should be all our concern. Can’t we bring spirituality to these more critical global issues?” And Francis was like, “Eh, the earth is like a speck of dust in the big picture of things.” And there was this interesting tussle that went back and forth for a while. And I’m just reading Llewellyn’s book now on spiritual ecology. And I guess the reason I’m bringing this up is just to introduce this issue of does this simple, pure, non-dual realization have any larger utility, aside from making our life more simple and perhaps enjoyable and meaningful, does it have some larger significance for the world?

Lisa: No.

Rick: Okay. I thought you were going to say that. And Tim?

Tim: Oh, I really hope so, Rick. Because to me, the thing which is – I mean, this is not missing in Lisa at all. I can see it loud and clear in Lisa and in many other people who have developed the way of thinking about things that Lisa has. But the – and the – love. I wanted to talk about love because love is the key. At the end of the day, where I do agree with Lisa completely is that eventually it can just be yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s all interesting. It’s fun. I enjoy it. But the place where I want to rest always is with love. And for me, love arises in my humanity when I’m in touch with this deep oneness, when I can connect as one and many with the world and with each other. And so there’s a lovely line – I mentioned the Gnostics earlier – in the Gospel of Thomas, which I love. It’s a line which really struck me one day when I read it, where it says – they’re talking about the gnosis, which is the waking up to the state that we’ve been talking about, the non-dual, the knowing, the one thing you know and you don’t know anything else. And you can’t say what it is. It’s just what it is. The thing that Lisa is talking about very well. It says those who are free because of gnosis become slaves because of love. And that’s my experience, is that as I wake up to this oneness, as I see that there is a place where there is no Tim and no anyone, and it’s all happening and it’s one, it’s arising, that recognition is arising through consciousness which is individuated in this human being called Tim. And that when those both arise together, there is separateness and not separateness, and there’s this huge love. And that love is what makes me want to come back to the story. And that’s where I become a slave to love, to bring love into life. And to bring love to the environment, the planet, all life forms, to life itself, to each other, to heal the suffering which is out there, to cope with, you know, like right now my mum is next door and she’s not well, she has cancer, and I love her and I want to bring that to her. And I want to increase the love in the world because that oneness arises this big, big love. And that’s what makes me so passionate about not resting with the ‘it’s just’, but coming back in with ‘it’s also’, so that we can bring that love really dynamically into life. And that is to take a risk, it’s to take a risk that we’ll become human again and we’ve just escaped it and we may not want to come back to being human again. But actually it’s safe. Once you know that you’re safe here, you can take the risk of being human again.

Rick: They say we’re in the sixth great extinction. Archaeologists have identified five previous ones and this is the first one that’s man-made. And, you know, every day entire species go extinct. And there’s all kinds of tremendous suffering, both of animals and people all over the world because of the kind of environment, because of the influence humans have had on the world. And one of the things, you know, Llewellyn’s book is exploring is that this is all symptomatic of a very dualistic, materialistic, mechanistic mentality that has dominated the world for a long time now and given us all kinds of powerful technologies without any kind of deeper moral or spiritual foundation. And that the solution to all this is not just more technology in terms of like better solar panels and wind turbines and all that, but a spiritual awakening. And so, because then it will really, you know, that will go deep enough to actually cure the malaise that has given rise to all this mess that we’ve created in the world. So I say in that sense that non-duality or spirituality does have practical significance that would be of value for anybody who’s alive or for anybody who loves life or loves animals or loves people or anything else. So, you know, this whole notion that the world – And I heard it in the Dream Bus movie, one of the speakers, I think it might have been Tony Parsons, is just saying, “It doesn’t really matter what happens to the world because it’s all an illusion.” Yeah, on some level that’s true, but do we really feel that? I mean, if your child gets hit by a bus, does that matter? Sure, you care about that. If you’re watching an animal being tortured, sorry to be graphic, yeah, I mean, if you have a heart, you care about that. So you don’t brush it off as illusion. And yet this stuff is happening on a global scale. And I think that, you know, this sort of non-dual community is a very small and relatively unknown thing, but I think it’s a powerful force for transformation in the world, which really will mean something to all of us, illusory though we may ultimately be.

Lisa: I don’t see… The way I see it is I don’t see love as ours. When the love is yours, it’s then all conditioned love. It’s then all trying to get something from someone or trying to give that love to someone. Love is what is. Love is the essence of everything. And so it’s not that helping the dog or rescuing a dog from Thailand – I just rescued a dog from Thailand, Tim. I think I told Rick. Doesn’t happen. It’s not that those things don’t happen, but it’s not my love. It wasn’t that I decided to do that. It’s that life put in that play. It wrote in that momentum. But because life is in opposites, there’s always going to be decay and destruction. It’s part of what happens in this. And so there’s always going to be – there’s never going to be a peaceful world in that sense, because the way in which life is set up is from one form to change to another form, continuously. One form – I mean, it’s happening and it’s not happening, so you could say there’s a side where it’s not really changing or moving. But in one way, there is movement happening. And in that movement, it’s always one form is changing to another form. And as soon as one form becomes its most beautiful, it then begins to decay and be destroyed and become into another form. So there’s never going to be peace in the flow of life. There’s never going to be this peaceful idea that people long for. That peace is an illusion that’s all about mental concepts of how we’d like it to look like. It is what it is. And the love is the end of the resistance to what it is. And that doesn’t mean that helping, that bringing the dog back to England doesn’t happen. But it’s not mine. I’m not compassionate. I’m not claiming any of that. That, to me, is the arrogance, is the mistake. It’s just something that happens. And it also works the other way around if you’re the murderer or the pedophile. If that’s the character that’s played out, the murderer or the pedophile, then that also doesn’t belong to them, doesn’t belong to someone. It’s just what’s happening. So I see love as completely impersonal. When love is personalized, then it’s what can I get from that person? How can I give them my love or how can I get love from another? When it’s not personal, then love is everything. And everything, yes, is constantly changing into different forms. So there’s always destruction happening as well as growth. But it’s not personal. When it’s personalized, then the suffering begins.

Tim: Can I just say I thought that was a fantastic bit of philosophy there? Really beautifully put. I really did. It was lovely. And I agree with you completely. I think that’s right. Only half the story, of course, but it’s absolutely right. I also love my child and it’s my child. And I really love her. And I love all children. Because there is a love which is for everything and everyone. And that’s the big love. That’s the state of being. And you’re right. It’s when you see the world is just love vibrating. And then it individuates. And it’s not a bad thing. It’s not a horrible love, my love for my child. It’s a beautiful love. It’s a beautiful love as well. It’s that particular color of love.

Lisa: Everything is that love. But I just, this, I think it, well it’s not I think, but there can be and who knows, I don’t know what Tim and Rick are talking about ultimately. It’s the sounds coming out. I can’t say you’re talking like me or we’re coming from the same perspective. That’s not known. But it doesn’t have to belong to someone. And yet functioning or appearances can carry on happening. But it doesn’t mean that it’s wrong if it does appear that it belongs to someone. Or right, that’s just another appearance happening. But I don’t think that can ever be back to the earth subject. It’s impossible for there ever to be peace on earth.

Tim: Well, you know, you’re probably right.

Lisa: It’s always going to change into different forms.

Tim: Yeah, but you’re certainly right about that.

Lisa: And some people are going to want the forms to stay the same. So maybe in Tim there will be a wanting for the child to stay in that form. But it’s always going to change eventually.

Tim: Yes, you’re right. And yet also, you know, because there has been an evolutionary change as well. Now all forms do turn into each other. You know, I’m witnessing that happen with my mum right now. I’ve got my daughter growing into a form and blossoming like a flower and my mum is wilting.

Lisa: And how can we possibly say what’s a better form?

Tim: Oh, I don’t know that we need to.

Lisa: But then that’s the whole momentum behind saving the planet. Is that this is the best form. That this is what it should look like. We don’t know. We just know what is. That doesn’t mean that the body-mind mechanisms each don’t do certain things like rescuing a dog or some other ones might do murdering. But better or worse is indistinguishable. We can’t name that. We just know what happens. Just innocently what is happening and appearing.

Tim: Yeah, I know. It’s a very, I think you end up in a very, I mean, well I can’t say that because you’re not there. So I’d be wrong to say it in this conversation. It worries me that perspective.

Lisa: It can only worry you if there’s a sense that you are separate from oneness.

Tim: But there is. There is a sense of being oneness and individual. And there’s being a part of the fact that I am life, conscious of itself. And my engagement with it as the one, conscious as someone, is what this is. I am the one conscious of someone engaging creatively. I am the very creative force. And part of that creativity is to come up through this individuality as this consciously separate individual to think, because that’s what human beings do, to feel, to connect, to care, to enter into the great drama of life which is unfolding as the one arising as someone to bring that knowledge into the drama and to move it on. And that is beautiful.

Lisa: But doesn’t it really feel like the action is Tim’s?

Tim: It depends where you stand. If you stand back far enough, there’s no Tim. So there’s no one to do anything. If you come right into it, there most certainly is. And that’s where we can play as separate. And I can’t prejudice one over the other because they’re both true. That’s like going, “You think there’s a wave? Surely. How could you say that? It’s just ocean.” Well, it’s a both. It’s clearly both. And that’s what’s so beautiful to engage. And why I say it worries me is when I come into the individuated story as Tim and I hear this, you know, I see this amazing woman saying these amazing things, articulating this one side of it so well, it feels to me that the conclusions, the quietest conclusion that it arrives at, if it hasn’t got both, is actually, can, you know, it doesn’t matter that it is, but it can undercut the very thing which life is, the one is doing, which is arising as separate individuals to be conscious, to be creative, to engage. And that, to me, is the symphony of life. And we get to sing a short verse and how wonderful that is.

Rick: There are cycles in life. And obviously we’re not in the middle of World War II right now. The Pol Pot regime is not doing its thing. Stalin is not in the middle of killing 20 million people. There are cycles and sometimes things are better and sometimes things are worse. But theoretically, I mean, if you go to the Hindu perspective, there could be an age and has been an age where things are really rosy and it’s a lovely world to live in. And so as you say, Lisa, I mean, one thing changes to the next. But we may be in the upswing right now towards a more wholesome world, which is just more enjoyable for people to live in. I’ll tell you a story.

Lisa: It’s always going to rot.

Rick: Eventually. I mean, eventually this planet isn’t going to be here. Eventually our sun is going to expand and engulf it. So there are cycles. And to everything there is a season. But you probably heard of Amma, the hugging saint. And I saw her a couple times this summer, so I’m reminded of this story. But in addition to having hugged 32 million people over the last so many years and doing that many, many hours a day and having that be a really moving experience for those individuals, in her spare time she’s built all these hospitals and schools and orphanages and working on farmer suicides and building houses for tsunami victims and on and on and on, a big long list. And yet she knows a thing or two about non-duality. I mean, I’m quite sure she’s established in seeing the world as one and in seeing everything as one and so on. In fact, one time one of her swamis said to her, “Well, what more can we do for the world?” And she said, “What world?” So she’s got that. But at the same time you see somebody like that who is just drenched in the knowingness of the non-dual reality of life, exerting every iota of energy and strength to improve the world. Now that seems very paradoxical, but it also seems to be the way it has gone throughout history for highly realized beings to overflow, “My cup runneth over,” to naturally rise in waves of compassion and to devote their lives to bettering the world.

Lisa: I don’t see compassion as bettering the world at all.

Rick: So it doesn’t better the world for tsunami victims to have a home or for young girls to be saved from prostitution in the slums of Calcutta or any of those things? That’s not a betterment of their lives or at least of their little corner of the world?

Lisa: It’s nicer than them having to be a prostitute or starving to death on the street.

Rick: So it’s better?

Lisa: It’s not, but all things come in opposites.

Rick: Yeah, and we tend to prefer –

Lisa: Whatever comes and whatever is the most beautiful will also rot and be destroyed as well. And that’s the nature of this world. All forms eat each other. We’re predators. Like dogs are predators. I am a big lover of dogs, and dogs are such vicious killers. They’re the most successful pack animal. They can take down massive buffaloes. That’s the nature of this. All forms change. And the me dynamic, the personal dynamic, is always trying to make it permanent and safe and fix it so it’s not scary. I’m not saying don’t do nice things. I’m saying that there is no one separate from life itself. There is no one that’s doing that good action. There is no one doing a bad action. There’s just action happening, and whatever it’s labeled as isn’t truth. It’s a tiny little label in language, a tiny little label in language that’s saying it’s better. That’s a tiny, tiny little perspective. It’s not known. This is all mystery. It’s not known. I’m not saying that what this body-mind mechanism would or wouldn’t do in certain situations, who knows what it would do. But what I’m talking about is the end of defining someone as a good person, someone as a bad person, one action as a right action, one action as a wrong action, one action as a better action, one action as a worse action. That’s not known.

Rick: Do you believe in hot and cold?

Lisa: Sorry?

Rick: Do you believe in hot and cold?

Lisa: I don’t believe.

Rick: There’s no hot or cold?

Lisa: I just believe.

Rick: Ice is the same as your stove?

Lisa: So there’s just sensation happening, and if the hand is burnt, more than likely the hand will move away from being burnt. But this is all language, and ultimately something isn’t cold, something isn’t hot. That’s just language which has been put onto it. The dog is not labeling it as hot or cold, and yet there’s still experience happening.

Rick: I totally agree. I mean there’s a level on which there is no hot or cold, there is no fast or slow, big or small, old or young. All those dualities are ultimately hot and cold.

Lisa: And the me dynamic is always going to try and run to the peaceful experience and the peaceful world, and it will never, ever get there. It’s like a hamster in a wheel.

Rick: It’s the natural tendency of life. It’s the natural tendency to move toward greater happiness, greater enjoyment, greater fulfillment. One doesn’t choose to put one’s hand on a hot stove because it’s unfulfilling.

Lisa: Well, that’s it, just because that’s what happens.

Rick: Do you have any thoughts on all that, Tim?

Tim: I’m just really intrigued by how we’ve gone around in big circles with this. Yes, it is all mystery. The irony is just about everything which Lisa is saying you could read in many of my books. There is such a strong resonance, but as well, there is the opposite. Because as Lisa herself said, everything comes in opposites. So everything is separate and not separate. Everything is one and many. Everything is distinguishable and indistinguishable, depending on where you stand. Now, you can choose to try and stand just in one place. Whether you can actually do that or just claim you’re doing that, I hold open, because I genuinely don’t know. And meeting Ramesh Balsekar, who I know was a big influence on Lisa too, I believe, was a wonderful experience because it was somebody who could articulate, I mean, a great philosopher, amazing philosopher, could articulate this, that perspective. But ultimately, I remember sitting with Ramesh, and at the time I didn’t pick up on it, but it troubled me and I could feel it. A woman had come with her husband’s ashes, which she had come to put in the Ganges from Europe. And Ramesh’s attitude was, “Well, there’s nobody there and it doesn’t matter.” And then somebody at the back said, “What about love?” And there was only about five of us there. It was a very long time ago. And Ramesh said, “Love is the opposite of hate.” And something went, “Oh, yeah, I get all of that, but I want to go up to that woman and go, ‘Oh, you know, tell me about your husband and how was it?'” And just find that personal connection as well. And that is what has happened to me after that, was that from that huge revelation, which lasted for numbers of years, and a lot of stuff which I wrote at that time, this journey back into the personal, so that I agree with everything that the fundamentalists, as I would call it, or reductionists is the best word, reductionist non-dualists say, but it’s reductionist. And just as I understand what the reductionist scientists say, but it’s reductionist. And what it’s missing out is the bit in between. They both go to that it’s just one, either in the physical object or in the spiritual subject. It’s just one. And it is one. And this is why they sit together so well, actually, because they’re both reductionists. What they lose is the place where we started in the middle, where all the colors are, and where everything is in this individuation process in time. So that that gets lost, and yet that, to me, and it doesn’t have to be to everyone, is really precious, which is why I do care about the planet. I do want to engage with the drama, even though it does hurt. I do want to engage to make it a better world for my children, even though I don’t expect to ever see a perfect world, and may not even see a better one. I do want to make all of those commitments. And I would love it if more of us did.

Rick: Well, I think one thing we can conclude from all this is it’s going to be an interesting conference.

Tim: Yeah, yeah.

Lisa: And Boris has still got his mustache on.

Rick: Boris has his mustache. He’s going to wear it to the conference. So, Boris, can you give us some details about when and where this conference is going to be, and what people can do? Oh, your mustache just slipped off.

Boris:  Yeah, absolutely. Can I just have my turn at the loo break, please? Just 30 seconds, I’ll be back in a minute.

Rick: Well, we’re just about done. We’re done with this interview. So can you just tell us about the conference, and then we’ll wrap it up.

Boris:  All right, great. Well, first of all, thank you ever so much, guys. That was brilliant. Let me just cut to Lisa quickly. That was like, in terms of a conversation, it was like the perfect curve. You know, when you watch a film, you have the entertainment curve, and it was just brilliant. I really enjoyed it. The conference, I would just say it’s the weekend of the 31st of August and the 1st of September, Bank Holiday Weekend. So please come along if you want to become enlightened. Oh, there goes a flying pig. But, you know, lots of people who are going to be coming have a sincere search, a yearning to find the answers. So I really think it’s the right place to come if you are doing that. And we’ve got some fantastic, 10 fantastic speakers. So come along, please.

Rick: Great. And there’s a website, right, where people can find out about this and sign up and so on?

Boris:  There’s a website, yeah, dreambuslive.com. And we’ve got some videos on there with all of the speakers. And all of the information is there, the booking information, so you can book your tickets. And we’ll see you there, hopefully.

Rick: Okay. And so let me make a couple of quick wrap-up points. I will be putting all this on batgap.com, which – and I’ll be linking to the conference and linking to Tim’s and Lisa’s websites and all that, as usual. And a few other things you’ll find there. I know Boris is desperate to go to the bathroom, but bear with me for a second. There’s a lot of other interviews on batgap.com, which you’ll find categorized alphabetically and chronologically. There’s a place to make a donation. There’s a place to sign up for an email newsletter. There’s a discussion group, all kinds of stuff. So feel free to go there. There’s also an audio podcast. So that’s it for now. I have another interview this morning, which will be both more and less serious than this one. So thanks, guys. It’s been a lot of fun.

Lisa: Yeah, thanks, guys.

Rick: Thanks to those who have been listening or watching.

Tim: It’s been really great to take part in this. Thanks, Lisa, for being so playful.

Lisa: Yeah, thanks, Tim.

Rick: All right. See you all. Bye. [Music]