Summary
The discussion explores kundalini awakening, spiritual emergencies, and the challenge of integrating profound experiences into ordinary life. It also examines the tension between disciplined spiritual practice and the direct recognition that awareness is already present.
Questions This Interview Explores
- What is a spiritual emergency, and how can it be distinguished from psychosis?
- How can intense spiritual practices or awakenings destabilize a person?
- What role do spiritual practices, teachers, and seeking play if awareness is already present?
- How can spiritual guidance be adapted to a person's readiness and circumstances?
Key takeaways
- Powerful awakening experiences can disrupt identity, relationships, and everyday functioning.
- Grounding, preparation, community, and practical support help people integrate intense spiritual openings.
- Mystical experiences should not automatically be treated as psychiatric illness.
- Awareness is already present, but recognizing it may still require guidance and practice.
- Skillful teaching meets people where they are instead of imposing one path on everyone.
Transcript
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 345 of them so far over the past six years. If you’d like to check out the archives, go to batgap.com and look under the Past Interviews menu.
This whole show is made possible by the support of appreciative viewers and listeners. If you’d like to support us, there’s a PayPal button on the right-hand side of every page on the site. Any amount of support, large or small, is appreciated. It all sort of adds up and enables us to dedicate a lot of time to this.
My guest today is Tom Thompson. Tom is a teacher of conscious living. In 1982, he began teaching conscious living, which we’ll define in a moment, at the Woodbury Yoga Center in Connecticut. Whereabouts in Connecticut, Tom?
Tom: Woodbury.
Rick: Where’s Woodbury?
Tom: Well, it’s off of 84. If you’re going between Danbury and Waterbury, it’s up north, near Southbury, like that.
Rick: Yeah. I used to teach Transcendental Meditation up there in the early 1970s. That’s why I was curious.
Tom: Where were you, Washington?
Rick: I grew up in Fairfield, but I taught all around Fairfield County and also in Danbury and Waterbury and that area. I taught a lot of kids at the Taft School in Watertown.
Okay, and then in 1990, the Awakened Heart Center moved to North Carolina. Conscious living is an all-inclusive way of life. It includes the possibility of radical awakening, along with the integration of body, emotions, mind, and spirit; living skillfully and effectively in the world; and being in loving, empowering relationships.
In 1964, at the age of 15, Tom became a student of human psychology and a practitioner of the yogic pathways and enlightenment traditions. That’s kind of cool. It’s a pretty early start, Tom. He’s had the great fortune of training in depth with a number of exceptional teachers in both the enlightenment traditions and Western psychology.
While pursuing spiritual realization, Tom had many jobs in many different fields. All were important in terms of his personal growth and evolution, but the most important was working 13 years as a mental health worker in psychiatry. Did you work at the Psychiatric Institute in Newtown, Connecticut, by any chance?
Tom: No, it was a small general hospital in Derby, actually—Griffin Hospital. It was Yale-affiliated. We had an excellent psych unit.
Rick: I asked because I actually taught TM at that hospital. But he has extensive training and experience in several different therapeutic modalities, including hypnotherapy, transactional analysis, human potential, energy psychology, and HeartMath.
After many years of intense practice and experiences in several different spiritual traditions, a sudden awakening occurred that led to the spontaneous collapse and falling away of all identification with spiritual and psychological belief systems, traditions, gurus, concepts, and the experience of a separate, unique individual self.
Now there is “this,” as it is and as it appears to happen.
Now there is “this,” as it is and as it appears to happen. The teachings of conscious living are direct, obvious, and all-inclusive. There is nothing to be believed or accepted, as they are self-evident. They point to the incredible gift and mystery of life living us here and now as we are.
Tom lives with his best friend, partner, and wife, Bonnie. I hope the three of them get along, Tom. He also has a daughter, Kelly, son-in-law, Chad, and grandson, Caden. So, welcome.
Tom: She has triple personalities. Thank you, Rick, for having me on the show.
Rick: Oh, you’re welcome. I appreciate you coming on. I don’t always read people’s bio like that, the one they send in, but I just felt like doing it this time. It’s kind of a nice summary of your whole thing, but obviously we could do with some elaboration.
Discovering yoga and the inner science
Maybe we could start at the age of 15, if you think that’s appropriate. That’s a pretty young age to get serious about human psychology and yogic pathways and enlightenment traditions and all that. What was the impetus for that? What lit that fire within you?
Tom: I was actually very interested in discovering what life was. As a kid, I had a laboratory and all sorts of plants. I had good friendships with many scientists who were some of the kindest, nicest, most helpful people I’ve ever met. I was doing research on plant cancer. I had a little paper route.
Rick: Plant cancer?
Tom: Yeah. Agrobacterium tumefaciens. It’s caused by bacteria. You can grow sunflower plants and then inject this in there. In a way, what cancer is, is life gone wild. Instead of cooperating, it’s taking all the nutrients, everything, for itself. But it is a big form of life, so it was easy to study and all of that.
I was very interested in growing plants and bacteria. Down the street was a Dr. Hurst, who was a virologist who really got me interested in viruses, because are they alive or are they dead? Why can they take dead cells and make them alive again? All of these things are just incredible.
So, I was looking for the key. I was looking for the key. One summer when I was 15, we were going on a college tour looking for a college for my brother. We came down South to visit my aunt and uncle, who lived in Lumberton, North Carolina.
When I was staying there, I went into their library, and they had a book on yoga. I’d heard of it, but I had no idea what it really was. So, I read it. The way it was presented was that yoga was like an inner science. It talked about the kundalini, and I thought, “Here’s the key. This is it.”
I went out to the swimming pool and started doing the postures, the breathing, focusing on the third eye, “Om, om, om, om,” the whole thing. I was really excited.
When I returned home, we lived in Westchester County, which isn’t that far from where you were. Whenever I could, I’d go into New York City and get more books and read. There was Serpent Power, and there was—I can’t remember exactly when it came out—Gopi Krishna’s book on kundalini. So, I felt that was the key.
Rick: Were you having kundalini experiences, or did you just want to learn that aspect of it?
Tom: At that point, if I was, I wasn’t aware of it. So, I can’t say I was. But later on, definitely.
Rick: Yeah, maybe we can talk about that. Well, I’m really impressed that you were such a serious student at that age. I’m somewhat envious, actually.
Tom: I really didn’t know what I was doing. I mean, people go, “Are you a child prodigy?” The answer is no. I really didn’t understand 90 percent of what I was reading and studying, but I was just fascinated by it.
Rick: Yeah, that’s interesting. So, take us from there. At 15, you’re reading all these books. How long did it take you to find some teacher you wanted to study with?
Tom: I was working most of the time after school and stuff, but a friend named Frank Cellini told me he saw this big book on yoga in a natural food store in White Plains. He told me all about it. I gave him the money—it was like 20 bucks or something, which was a fortune—to get it for me, and he went and got it for me.
It was Swami Vishnu Devananda’s The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga, and it just blew me away, because that’s where it got into a lot more depth. Fortunately, a few years later, when I was in college, I was able to go to Val Morin, Quebec, and take the teacher-training course with Swami Vishnu.
That’s with Sivananda. Sivananda had written a book on kundalini, and Vishnu presented all the yogic pathways, not just Hatha Yoga, but all of them, and the complete human being. That really fascinated me. We’re not just focusing on one aspect, but on the evolution of the whole integral being.
Rick: Yeah. So, you became a yoga teacher. Did you actually begin teaching it?
Tom: I taught it whenever I could, but after college I had a little problem with the draft board.
Rick: Oh, yeah.
Tom: I became a conscientious objector and went to California to do the alternate service. At one point out there, we ended up in a commune in the mountains, and I taught it. We had energy weekends, where we taught things like Hatha Yoga, martial arts, qigong, all of that.
Then we had outlaw weekends, where we tried to liberate people’s consciousness from the man.
Rick: What was that first word? Outlaw weekends?
Tom: Outlaw.
Rick: Outlaw weekends. Okay. Did you manage to bypass the drug phase?
Tom: Oh, no. After I found out about yoga at 15, Timothy Leary came along. We heard about LSD and instant enlightenment, so it was like, why not? No, I didn’t bypass it.
I was just writing somebody shortly before we connected, and we were talking about the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Rick:Space Odyssey, right?
Tom: Yeah, yeah. I saw that with some friends, very, very high on LSD. It was great.
Rick: Maybe you had a better understanding of the ending than I did, then.
Tom: I totally understood it that night. It was great.
🕊️ Muktananda and powerful spiritual experiences
Rick: Okay. Maybe I’m jumping ahead here, but I gathered from reading some of the stuff on your website that you ended up with—Swami moved to Nandur for a while.
Tom: Yeah.
Rick: Am I jumping ahead, or is that the next significant thing here?
Tom: Well, I studied with a lot of teachers before him, but I was definitely looking for somebody. At that point, I bought Gopi Krishna’s idea that kundalini is the underlying cause of all good things—science, arts, philosophy—and that it’s the evolutionary power in man.
Rick: Which channels itself in all those different ways.
Tom: Yeah, yeah. It’s just the blossoming of human potential. I was looking for a teacher. I was doing the practices that I learned at Swami Vishnu’s and stuff, very sincerely, but I was really looking for somebody who knew about it.
When I found out about Muktananda, I went to see him. 1976 is when I first met him.
Rick: Up in South Fallsburg?
Tom: Yeah.
Rick: Yeah.
Tom: I have no use personally—I’m not in any way judging it; I’m just saying my personal thing is that I’m not interested in the cultural affectations. So, it was a complete circus around Baba. But whatever he was, was extraordinary.
Being in his presence, you would go into these incredible states. It wasn’t just the states; you’d actually see things. You’d actually know things. So, I spent as much time with him as possible, and I went through stuff I wouldn’t have gone through if it wasn’t for him. I don’t regret any of it.
Rick: I was there that summer too, but I was in the TM facility right next door, and sometimes—
Tom: Yeah, we brought you guys up there.
Rick: Right, you ended up buying it. Sometimes Baba would walk down the street, taking a walk, and I never met him personally.
Tom: I know you’ve seen him there.
Rick: Yeah, yeah.
Tom: I’m aware you guys were down there.
Rick: So, obviously you eventually left that, but you had all sorts of profound experiences. Hopefully, no regrets.
⛰️ Spiritual emergency and kundalini crisis
Tom: One of the things that happened was when Baba went back to India, I was having very powerful, disorienting experiences. I had a wife, a baby, and a job, and it was getting harder to function. It was very disorienting.
I was writing Lee Saneli, and he was writing back and forth. He was a doctor, an ophthalmologist, and a psychiatrist who founded the Kundalini Clinic. In San Francisco, he was very kind because he would actually write me back. Very narcissistically, I didn’t realize he probably had thousands of people writing him, but he did write back.
At one point, he sent a flyer about Sri Dhyanyogi Madhusudandas, who was also a Kundalini yogi. He said, “Since I couldn’t get to Baba, maybe this guru could help me.” So, I invited Guruji to—well, it actually turned out to be my mother’s home. She went off somewhere, and he came. He was an extraordinary being. I was also working with him and his successor, Sri Amar Libha.
Rick: I think I’ve heard of her. I hadn’t heard of him. So, maybe at this juncture, it would be good to talk a little bit about disorienting experiences that can happen during sadhana, during spiritual practice, or as a result of it, because a lot of people go through them. I don’t know if they always readily find the kind of help they might need. Could you elaborate a little bit on that whole phenomenon?
Tom: Over time, with Stan Grof, who I think you interviewed, and Christina, and other people, they started the Spiritual Emergency Network. There were a lot of people undergoing these problems. People like Stan and Lee, and a lot of other professionals, really tried to set up an organization to help these people.
I think what happens is that if you’re functioning in society, you have a job, and you have relationships, you need a fairly firm persona to function. You’ve got to play the game if you’re going to function. When Kundalini gets very strong, it’s blowing the whole lot away, and it’s very disorienting. In psychiatry, we’d say you’re depersonalizing. You really lose your orientation, and it’s hard to function and process what was going on.
Fortunately, I was working in psychiatry, so I had a good cover, I noticed. But I think we don’t realize, when we’re really opening up spiritually, that we’re going to lose our reference points. That’s part of the process.
When we’re really opening up spiritually, we’re going to lose our reference points. That’s part of the process.
Rick: And yet, there are people who have made the full transition, or whatever that may be, who function perfectly well and actually can take on all kinds of complex responsibilities and manage things. So, there’s this sort of transitional period, or this kind of no-man’s-land, you have to traverse to get from here to there.
Tom: It’s like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly.
Rick: Yeah, you go through the mush stage.
Tom: A complete mess. Imaginal cells and all that.
Rick: So, I guess one interesting question is: to what extent can that transition be made manageable, or to what extent can it be handled such that one’s whole life doesn’t fall apart? That would be a real turnoff to many people considering the spiritual path or motivated by it. They don’t want their life to fall apart, and yet they want what the spiritual path promises.
Tom: Well, I think the direct approach can bypass a lot of that. But in terms of what we’re talking about right now, I think the traditional yogic pathways involve preparing a very strong vehicle: devotion, the ability to function, karma yoga, the knowledge and wisdom of what you’re doing, and meditation. In old times, you developed a vehicle—all dimensions of a vehicle—so you could really withstand the full impact of something like Shaktipata Kundalini awakening.
You’re also in a supportive community, like an ashram or like TM. You guys had a supportive community that, if you flipped out a little bit, took care of you in a way.
Rick: Yeah.
Tom: I don’t think society here—in India, it’s much more accepted—but in the United States, keeping up appearances is very important.
Rick: Yeah. I was just listening to an Adyashanti recording the other day, and he was saying how, in Zen monasteries, you might get into such a state that they would have you stop doing spiritual practices altogether and go work in the garden, hoeing and weeding, and doing some kind of physical labor to ground and stabilize yourself.
Tom: Absolutely. And, of course, in the ashrams, there are many Babas and others who do plenty of physical labor and things like that.
Rick: Yeah, all the kitchen work and all that kind of thing.
Tom: Oh, yeah.
Rick: Yeah. Well, it’s an interesting thing, and we could devote the whole talk just to that. There have been books written about it and all, but I think it’s something that needs to be understood better, so that people understand what they’re getting into. It also needs to be, hopefully, understood better by psychiatric professionals, so that people aren’t treated inappropriately if they do run into some sort of spiritual emergency, as they’re called.
Tom: One of the things I did when I was in psychiatry was write a paper about the Kundalini crisis. The DSM-IV—I don’t know where they are now—but it did have a section trying to help psychiatrists know the difference between a mystical experience and a psychotic experience. There are very clear indicators, and people like Bonnie Greenwell and others have written some very good, useful books.
Rick: Yeah.
Tom: But I think—
Rick: Joan Harrigan is another good one.
Tom: Yeah, yes. All of them are doing a great job, and I think it is important in psychiatric training that doctors understand that just because a person doesn’t want to work at IBM doesn’t mean they’re psychotic.
Rick: Yeah.
Tom: There is a huge difference between somebody undergoing a mystical experience and somebody having a psychotic break.
Rick: Yeah. Although, did you find that, let’s say in Baba’s ashram, sometimes the intensity would be such that people would get kind of psychotic? I mean, it would destabilize people if they didn’t have the innate stability already established to handle the kind of energy they were being exposed to.
Tom: Yeah. Same thing with psychedelics. I think a lot of people have a predisposition for brain problems, nervous system problems, or psychiatric problems when doing strong practices. For instance, we had a number of TM teachers on our psych unit.
Rick: As patients, you mean?
Tom: Yeah.
Rick: Yeah.
Tom: I think what happened was that, when you got to know them, there was already something that was going to come up.
Rick: Yeah.
Tom: It got triggered by the intense practices. Same thing with psychedelics. Some of us are much luckier—I mean, really just lucky—that we didn’t get triggered. But I do think intense Kundalini, psychedelics, and intense Zen practices can trigger that if somebody is unbalanced.
I remember when EST, with Werner Erhard, finally figured out that you needed your psychiatrist’s or therapist’s permission to take EST, because it really could push people over the edge.
Rick: Yeah. Maharishi used to say that his teacher’s motto was “Safety first.”
Tom: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rick: It is kind of a slow-and-steady-wins-the-race thing, in a way. On the one hand, there’s this sort of attitude that zeal and ardency and so on are really going to get you enlightened quickly. But I think that has to be tempered with sensibility, practicality, carefulness, balance, integration, and all that stuff.
Tom: Zen, they talk—
Rick: Yeah, go ahead.
Tom: No, you go.
Zen, they talk about cultivating the apple tree. If you do a good job with that, the apple will fall by itself.
Rick: Yeah, yeah. So, this might be—how do you juxtapose that with the folks who say, “Well, you’re already enlightened and you don’t have to do anything”?
Tom: Well, that’s pretty much where I’m at now.
Rick: Is it?
Tom: Yeah.
🛤️ Direct recognition and the end of seeking
Rick: If you say that, okay, well, that’s interesting that I should ask, because here’s a guy who’s been in both camps.
Tom: Yeah. I think we’re creating—I have nothing against anything anybody does, and I totally support whatever anybody’s led to do. But it’s here now. It’s already here. Yes, most people have to go through a process, but the truth is, there’s nothing that has to happen first. It’s our true nature. It’s what’s already happening. It’s already here.
The presence of awareness, free of any form, is here, and it’s living us.
The presence of awareness, free of any form, is here, and it’s living us. In a way, running off and seeking—which we’re compelled to do by the Kundalini—I think what makes us seekers is the spiritual power. But we are conscious now. The intelligence is living us now. It’s present now. If we’re really willing to stop and look at what’s actually happening now, we see it. Or we don’t, and then that’s where the next level and the next level come in. But it is here.
Rick: Yeah. By definition, in terms of what it actually is we’re talking about, we’re talking about reality. As the Gita says, “The unreal has no being; the real never ceases to be.” People, time and time again, say that when they awaken, they realize, “Oh, this has always been my true nature. How could I not have seen it?”
Tom: That’s right.
Rick: Yeah.
Tom: Unfortunately, because of the seeking, we know why people don’t see it.
Rick: Because of the seeking?
Tom: Well, we understand. I think that’s one of the reasons it’s good that people go down the wrong pathways a lot if they’re going to awaken, because you understand what people’s minds are doing and what they’re doing. You can listen to them as they describe their experience, and then maybe you can ask them a question or something that’s helpful for them to stop and look back.
Rick: Yeah, they may be looking in the wrong direction. But with all of your experience, this whole idea of “you’re already enlightened, there’s nothing to do,” and all that stuff, how realistic or practical do you think it would be to just walk into a psychiatric hospital, a prison, a group of PTSD sufferers, or just any situation where people are really struggling, and say that to people, and have them actually—
Tom: Well, I think that would be very unskillful.
Rick: Yeah.
Tom: What I feel is that it’s all a play of consciousness, and everybody’s doing exactly what they need to be doing, even Donald Trump. They’re all out there doing their role in the play. As Ramakrishna said when they asked him about evil, “It’s there to thicken the plot.” Everybody is a perfect expression of the Absolute, exactly the way they are. There are no shoulds—no “you should meditate,” no “you should” do anything.
But if satsang is being offered and people come, that’s not the teacher going out there and laying their trip on them. That’s people being brought. Whatever is bringing them, it’s their time; they’re ready. If they’re not, they go somewhere else. So, it is true that you can’t just go out on the street and say, “Hey, God dwells within you as you.”
Rick: Right, Muktananda’s favorite phrase.
Tom: Yeah. It’s extremely profound. If somebody really just sits with that, it should pop them.
Rick: Ideally. But Ramana Maharshi was asked about this, and he said the percentage of people who are actually going to pop—I don’t think he used that word—just on hearing “You are That” is pretty minuscule. The vast majority of people are going to have to go through various things before they have the readiness for that to really hit home, if they hear it.
Tom: So, there are many upayas, many levels. They all have their value, but it seems to me the best thing is to start by telling them the truth. And if a person doesn’t see it—which I didn’t, good Lord—if they don’t see it, then you ask them what’s going on, and then you just keep pointing and pointing. And sometimes, they’ve got to do a lot of stuff.
Rick: Yeah, I heard that’s kind of how Ramana went about it. He would start by telling them the truth, and if they didn’t get it, then he’d say, “Okay, well, how about if you meditate?” And if that didn’t work for them, then, “Okay, well, how about if you do some seva?” He’d sort of tailor the prescription to the person he was talking to in order to give them something that was going to be effective for them.
Tom: Right, and devotional paths, all sorts of paths.
Rick: Yeah, because the only reason this is a bit of a sticking point for me is that there are all these characters who show up online who are fond of saying that you’re already enlightened, you don’t need to do anything. And, pardon me if I’m judgmental, but I generally get the sense that they’re not actually living the experience that they’re describing. It’s easy to parrot those words and still be a dick.
Tom: Well, I think if there’s—okay, that’s a very good point. If there’s an awakening, it’s like the ocean-and-wave thing, but I’ll just do it. There’s my hand. This is me, this is you, this is all those people. And before awakening, it’s like—
Rick: We’re all separate.
Tom: There’s me. But then, with awakening, you realize this groundless being that is all of us. And so, when that’s really realized, that’s where the heart opens, that’s where you see people for what they are, and then you work together, not against each other.
So, I do think—I don’t think people, when they wake up, become better people because they’re trying to, but I think through the deep seeing, they recognize everybody as that ocean being expressed. And so loving-kindness and acceptance and all these things happen spontaneously, not because of training or because you’re trying to, but it’s just the world is seen differently.
Rick: Yeah, that’s a good point too. A couple of weeks ago I did an interview, and there was a very well-written comment on YouTube under that video by an old friend of mine, actually. He was arguing the point that behavior really has nothing to do with realization, that behavior is just sort of an automatic thing that’s carried on by the gunas of nature or whatever, and is determined by your conditioning and your background, and so on.
You might be a rather incorrigible person and yet be awakened or not, but there’s really no connection. It’s not like awakening is going to move you in the direction of saintliness or something. And I tend to argue the opposite, but what would you say?
Tom: I’d say that we have all those genetic and environmental conditions. I have a guinea pig, and I’ll talk about him.
Rick: A real guinea pig, like a pet?
Tom: No, like one of my teachers, Wayne Lickerman.
Rick: Oh, Wayne, yeah.
Tom: And he argues, like your friend argues, but Wayne’s been transformed completely, and I think everybody who knows him, or at least knew him—
Rick: Yeah, he was an alcoholic and so on.
Tom: —and a narcissist and a slick business guy, lying and doing all sorts of things. And I really feel that most people who spend time with Wayne say he’s a very loving, caring, honest, supportive person. And I think if somebody knew him personally—so, Wayne would say, because he has, that enlightenment doesn’t transform the being, but so much crap falls away because there’s nothing supporting it anymore.
Rick: Yeah, so in other words, he’s wrong. It does transform.
Tom: Yeah. Not because you’re sitting around thinking you’re going to be a holy person, but because all those things—all the fears and greed and… what’s that all about? It’s fear. It’s fear-based. It’s held in place by not knowing what you are.
Rick: Right, and by all sorts of narrow—
Tom: And saying, “If I don’t get by, somebody else is going to take it,” and all that. When what’s holding that together collapses, it falls away. And I really think, whether Wayne agrees with me or not, I think he’s a much kinder, more loving person.
Rick: Yeah, and I think there’s something to the fact that throughout all the world’s spiritual traditions, saintly behavior is associated with what we might call enlightenment or higher consciousness. There are some examples. I believe Saint Augustine had been a real creep, and Saint Francis was also not such a good guy. And then he kind of went through this huge transformation. And it’s kind of a cart-and-horse issue.
Tom: Right, but certain things just fall away.
Rick: Yeah.
Tom: And what’s going to keep that going? So, you still have your personality type. Wayne’s still loud and outrageous and stuff, but he’s doing it out of compassion and honesty.
Rick: Yeah. Somebody else emailed me just this morning, actually, with reference to one of my recent interviews: “How can a person be so realized and yet not have a very likable personality?” And my response was, “There are degrees of realization.” And if we want to define realization exclusively in terms of falling into sort of the absolute view, or recognizing one’s ultimate non-personhood or something, then fine.
But I think, just in terms of what you’re saying here, there are all sorts of relative possibilities for further refinement of the heart, perception, and behavior, and all that stuff will tend to come along, I think, if the self has been realized. Hopefully, we can explore that a little bit more. Is it inevitable, or does one need to somehow engage in compassionate action?
Tom: Traditional Zen—I’m talking about Chinese and Tang Dynasty and stuff—you weren’t allowed to open your mouth for 10 years.
Rick: After you realized.
Tom: Because it takes time to integrate. And in Zen they say, “Open mouth, already a mistake.” [Laughter] And so, being in the absolute is a half-baked state. It’s the ghost cave. You bring that back; it’s more tantric, where this is God too, this is the absolute too, this is its expression. And you bring—you’re coming from the heart, you’re much more skillful. It’s not a “you” doing it; it is recognizing itself everywhere and in everything.
Rick: Yeah, and even in terms of what we were talking about 10 minutes ago, with kundalini and all, there’s a physiological component to this, and the physiology doesn’t transform overnight. It seems to me the physiology is very correlated with behavior and all, and in the Vedic tradition they talk of vasanas and impressions, and basically conditioning of the nervous system, and that doesn’t just get wiped clean overnight, I don’t think.
Tom: It does fall away.
Rick: It falls away, but you’re not going to wake up one morning as a radically, totally different person, generally. It seems to me that in most cases there’s going to be some kind of gradual falling away, even after realization, and maybe it’ll accelerate.
I know that—what’s her name, Peace Pilgrim? She wrote this beautiful little book, and she talked about how after realization there’s this sort of almost like a hockey-stick curve, an acceleration of evolution where nature has taken over and the individual has gotten out of the way, and so then transformation can really begin to kick into high gear.
Tom: Absolutely, and that’s disorienting too, especially if you awaken in a very traditional setting, and none of that has value or is important anymore.
Rick: Yeah. I know there are a lot of cases of people who—so many things have to change in their life and do change radically after awakening. Go ahead, what were you going to say?
Tom: In this area, I know some people this has actually happened to, but in this area there’s a lot of horseback riding. They do all sorts of horse dressage and all of that. So, what happens is somebody is getting an identity—and again, nothing wrong with this, I’m just talking about certain people I know. They initially were getting an identity from that, so they were trying very hard, and they were doing well and winning ribbons and everything, and there was a huge investment of identity in that.
When awakening happened, or an awakening happened, they no longer needed that identity.
Rick: This is someone specific that you’re thinking of?
Tom: Yeah, a few people.
Rick: Who were into horseback riding, yeah.
Tom: Yeah, and so suddenly, their relationship with horses changes. They’re no longer competing. They now just ride their horse because they like horses. People are going, “What’s wrong with you? You used to be so good,” and they’re like, “It’s not there anymore,” because that identity is meaningless. And that’s the sort of thing that confuses people around you.
The same thing happened with somebody who used to play golf. And I finally told her, because she’d meditate instead of play golf with her friends, I said, “Just go play golf with them. I’ll take you later.” They’re too confused. They think you’re depressed. They have all these stories about why she didn’t want to play golf anymore.
Rick: Yeah, and to play devil’s advocate, I would say that it’s certainly possible for a person to be awakened and yet be a professional golfer or basketball player, or somebody who’s in a relatively competitive field, a stockbroker or something like that.
Tom: Sure.
Rick: But perhaps it depends on—well, if we reference the Bhagavad Gita, there was a war about to be fought, and that’s kind of a competitive thing, and Arjuna had lost all motivation to fight it. Krishna said, “Well, all right, then get established in the Self and then fight it, and then you’ll be doing it sort of out of… nature will be running the show, and it won’t be your individuality determining the motivation.”
Tom: So, Arjuna was programmed as a warrior. So, that was his natural expression.
Rick: His dharma.
Tom: Yeah, and so even after awakening he still did his thing.
Rick: He did, yeah. But the Bhagavad Gita is a very profound and deep teaching, because it really, really gets into all of this we’re talking about in incredible depth.
✨ A sudden awakening
Yeah. Let’s come back to your story, and as we’re going along here, at any point if there’s anything that comes to mind that you want to talk about that I’m not asking you, just bring it up and we’ll talk about it. Just feel free to do that; it’s like a conversation.
So, we talked about a lot of your training and the years of intense practice and things that you did, but then you had—here we go—“a sudden awakening occurred that led to the spontaneous collapse and falling away of all identification with spiritual and psychological…” I read that in the beginning. So, what was this sudden awakening? Describe it a little bit. People will find that interesting.
Tom: I’ve been to India—this was the 1980s—I’ve been to India a few times, a couple of times, and again, I was deeply involved with the yoga center and all sorts of stuff, but it just stopped being true for me. I have nothing but love in my heart for my gurus and my fellow disciples and everything, but it was no longer authentic for me. It was not “it.”
And so, when I came back from India—I can’t remember, it was the late ’80s, I think—I suddenly started a course called The Supreme Doctrine of Direct Recognition. What would have happened in my terms, Rick, is what I call “cathexis” stuff.
Rick: Oh, yeah.
Tom: Cathexis is where we take our psychic energy and project it onto people, things, or ideas. So, somebody meets a person and they’re just a nice Indian person, and somebody else is bowing at their feet because they’re a guru. That person is cathecting.
For me, it just stopped. I saw us making up most of this stuff, where our imaginations are creating almost the entire spiritual path. And I just stopped. That was very disorienting because all you can think about is the stuff you were taught. In other words, when all of that stops, there’s nothing to do, in a way, to think about. I don’t know if I’m making sense.
Rick: I think you kind of are.
Tom: You’re just present. You’re just here, like we are now. Nothing’s happening. I’m talking to you. This is it. And that’s what was happening. I couldn’t get any excitement up about it anymore. So, I felt myself just, with everything, not invested in it.
And then, what I was teaching—I was in a community that was guru-oriented—was sort of going against the guru. Not on purpose, but it just was. The students would be with her, and it was great. She is the most wonderful person I’ve ever met.
Rick: Is that Anandi Ma?
Tom: Shri Anandi Ma. Yeah. Anandi Ma, Dilip Doshi, and Guruji, whom I spent a lot of time with, are like, “If you want gurus, that’s a good place to go.” I’ve never seen them… She’s gotten a little angry with me, but rightfully so. But they’re pure. They walk the talk. They’re it.
But I started saying what you and I were talking about: direct recognition. It’s here. If God is infinite and eternal and blah, blah, blah, then you, as you are, are “it.” So, this was causing confusion. I eventually left.
Rick: Again, just to rehash that point briefly, what you just said is true. Theoretically, you should be able to say it to a dog, and the dog should get enlightened. Now, you might argue, “Well, the dog doesn’t speak English, so he doesn’t understand what you’re saying.”
Tom: And the dog isn’t creating a problem, either. It’s not going around thinking, “I should be a better dog.”
Rick: Yeah. If it’s not in tune with the person’s experience, there’s a danger that they’re just going to mistake an intellectual understanding for realization. That’s the only thing. You’re going to say that, and they’re going to say, “Yeah, I get that. I have an intuitive feel for that. This is it. I’m done.” And there are actually teachers out there who encourage people to proclaim that they’re done.
Tom: Right. So, the “I’m done” part is the danger. But Wayne Lickerman and Francis Lucille both came here to our center. We used to have a center downtown for 20 years, and we don’t have that anymore. Both Wayne and Francis came, and one of the conversations I had with Francis was—he said, and I hope I’m repeating this right—that if you have a clear intellectual understanding, it’s like looking at one of those pictures where you see the surface, and somebody says, “Yeah, but there’s something deeper.”
Rick: One of those computer-generated things where you look at it for a while.
Tom: Yeah, and you see something three-dimensional behind it. If you didn’t have a teacher giving you intellectual information, saying, “If you spend some time looking more deeply, you’re going to see a whole other dimension,” you might not know to look.
Francis convinced me that having a good, clear intellectual understanding is actually helpful, because you start looking at things differently. And it’s in that looking at things differently that you might suddenly see. So, if you stay just in the intellectual understanding, saying, “Now I’ve got this intellectually. I’m done,” yes, that’s a danger, and that’s why it’s good to have a teacher. But the intellectual understanding, used as a tool, will help you tremendously.
Rick: I totally agree. And as I sometimes say in interviews—not that it really matters that I totally agree, because I’m not some kind of arbiter of truth here—but in terms of my own experience and understanding, intellectual understanding is like, if we have two legs, that’s one of them, and the other one is experience. You can’t walk on either leg by itself. You have to have both going along.
And, just to stretch the metaphor, they can enhance each other. Understanding can clarify experience, and experience can clarify understanding. There’s no harm in pursuing both simultaneously.
Tom: Right. So, to follow up on that, when I left the center, something happened to me. In the traditions I was in, there was really no way to think about it or organize it conceptually. Not that that’s necessary, but generally, if somebody says, “What happened to you?” it’s a good idea to say something.
So, around the early ’90s, I ran into Gangaji, and it was like, “Somebody’s speaking my language.” She was able to say what I had experienced but couldn’t put into words. I tell people, “It’s like being in a foreign country and suddenly hearing your own language.” So, she was very important in the shift.
Rick: That’s great. So, did this sudden radical awakening occur with or after Gangaji?
Tom: No, before her.
Rick: Oh, before her. Okay.
Tom: When I was still at the Yoga Center. I didn’t know. All the words I gave to her came later.
Rick: Yeah. So, you kind of didn’t quite know. Something was happening here, but you didn’t know what it was. Do you, Mr. Thompson?
Tom: There was nothing happening and nobody thinking about it. So, it’s sort of like… But some part of me knew it was time to leave for all sorts of reasons. It was not my milieu anymore.
Rick: That’s an interesting question in and of itself, and it relates to my own experience in leaving the TM movement and to a lot of other people I know. Very often, after leaving a thing, you experience a big shift. In many ways, experientially and intellectually, you’re able to step back, and there’s a newfound freedom. You can reevaluate all your ingrained assumptions and just get out of the box that you had unwittingly gotten ingrained in.
Tom: That’s very well put.
Rick: Which is not to say everybody should just leave whatever they’re doing. I’m not implying that.
Tom: No, I think we’re guided. I think people are guided to stay in the TM program or stay with Anandi Ma. That’s their home. That’s where they belong. But I think other people have to pay attention if something is saying, “Keep going.” You’ve got to keep going. You were very committed for, what, 30 years?
Rick: Yeah. An incubator analogy for this: The eggs are in the incubator and they’re getting ready to hatch, and they shouldn’t leave the incubator because they’re not hatched. But if they hatch, they just don’t belong in the incubator anymore. They’re going to interfere with the other eggs. It’s going to thwart their own development at that point. As chicks, they need to get out and get into a different…
Tom: And there’s nothing wrong with those other eggs staying in the incubator until they hatch. There are no shoulds.
Rick: Right. And there’s nothing… We don’t mean to sound—I wouldn’t want to speak to someone and be—what’s the word I’m looking for? Judgmental… condescending, you’re right. Like, “Oh, you’re still in the incubator. I’m hatched.”
Tom: No. I think we all have to listen to our hearts. That’s why I want to be very clear about Anandi Ma, Dilip Doshi, and Guruji. The whole thing around them, I totally trust it. I totally love it. It’s just not right for me.
But people come to me and say, “I want to get Shaktipat. I want this.” And I send them to them.
Rick: Yeah. It’s not your thing.
Tom: Yeah. But if they want Shaktipat, I know those people. I know… I saw Guruji tell her—I was there when Guruji basically said, “This is my successor.” He lived to be 116. He was a real yogi.
Rick: 116?
Tom: Yeah. He was born in the 1880s.
Rick: Oh, that’s impressive.
Tom: When I first met him, he couldn’t speak English. He had just come to the United States. A year later, he was speaking English perfectly. He was an extraordinary person.
Rick: Amazing.
Tom: Yeah. But he was an old… He used to say, “When’s the monsoon season coming?” I said, “There’s no monsoon season in Connecticut.”
(Laughter)
Rick: It’s more like Mark Twain said about Connecticut: “If you don’t like the weather here, wait an hour.”
Tom: Right, right.
Rick: Okay. So, then, here you are at the Conscious Living Center in North Carolina. What is the Conscious Living Center? What do you teach there? Who can go there? What do they do if they go there?
Tom: Well, we had a center downtown for 20 years, and we taught yoga. We taught a whole bunch of classes. We had two meditation programs a week.
I want to speak about one of the classes for a minute. It was called Healing Words. It was actually Bonnie’s idea. What happened was I was working privately with a lot of cancer patients, and I couldn’t see them enough. In other words, they needed ongoing support, but I was too booked up. I couldn’t get them in.
So Bonnie said, “Well, why don’t you just start a group?” We started a group, and we would talk about illness and then end the group with group hypnosis. People love hypnosis. It’s really de-hypnosis.
What happened was different topics would come up, like, “Why is a positive attitude increasing your chances of getting better?” All sorts of things would happen. Then people would start inviting their friends into the Healing Words group, which was one of the more successful things we did.
It would just become any subject, usually psychological or energy psychology. We did a lot of experiments in there that were really neat. Then, at the end, we’d all finish with everybody lying down and doing positive-affirmation hypnosis.
But we had the center. We had yoga, meditation, and all sorts of classes. Wayne Lickerman came, Francis Lucille came. We had a good group of regulars. And then I’d meet with people privately.
But we sold that center about five years ago because we were going to move to the mountains. My brother got sick, though, and so here we are.
Now we work out of our home. I have a little office here where I see people. I’m in the meditation room right now, where we have a weekly meditation satsang. So, we’ve condensed.
But in our program now, we’re focusing mostly on recognizing your true nature.
Rick: Do people have to come to North Carolina to do this? Is there any kind of remote thing that you offer?
Tom: We have two people from South Carolina who come on FaceTime on my iPad. I am not a techie. I mean, it’s an act of God that you and I are talking here now—and all your support.
But yeah, people come here. People do come from out of state and other places.
Rick: So, they can just get a local hotel or something and stay and work there?
Tom: Yeah. It’s every Monday, from 7:00 to 8:30. But we focus mainly on really looking deeply, and anybody can ask questions. That’s where we go. It’s not like I’m right and have the answers. It’s more like, “Let’s look at this.”
🩺 Reality tunnels and healing
Rick: Sure. So, what kind of results do you seem to be getting? For instance, when you met with the cancer patients, was there any statistically significant reduction in cancer or change in the patient outcomes?
Tom: Yeah, I haven’t done a study. But most of the patients are getting traditional medical help, and that’s why I recommend that people with cancer not fool around. You really need to put the brakes on. Hypnosis and energy psychology support those treatments.
So, I have a lot of friends who had cancer, even recurrences of cancer 20 years ago, and they’re around doing fine. I don’t think it’s me. I think what we did helped. It’s a reality tunnel. One reality tunnel says, “Here’s your prognosis with cancer.” But if you shift that reality tunnel, you have a much better prognosis.
Rick: Yeah, I read your article about reality tunnels. By “reality tunnel,” you just mean a sort of perspective, right? Every being on the planet is in a slightly different reality tunnel.
Tom: Many reality tunnels. For instance, if you—well, astrology. I’m not an astrologer, and I’m not interested in astrology. But if you talk to an astrologer, that’s a reality tunnel. They’re interpreting what’s happening through their reality tunnel, and for them, it’s true.
Rick: Yeah. I think I heard you use the blind man and the elephant analogy in one of your recordings. Almost everyone’s familiar with that. A bunch of blind people feel the elephant, and for one, it’s like a snake; for one, it’s like a wall; for one, it’s like a tree trunk, and so on, depending on which part they feel. So, we all have our little slice of the pie in terms of—
Tom: Yeah, we’re all right, and we’re all wrong.
Rick: Here’s a question that just came in from Julian in Nottingham, England.
Tom: Oh, I know Julian. Yeah, I think I know who this is.
Rick: Cool. “Recently, something has been reflecting on how my most real, radical, meaningful, and true change in immediate perception and understanding is when the heart is awake. Would you agree that the awake, conscious heart is the true key”—he capitalized T and K—“as is perhaps implied by the name of your center?”
Tom: Awakened consciousness—I’m going to answer not directly, but awakened consciousness is all-accepting and all-inclusive. It has no judgment. It has no idea that anything should be other than the way it is. And that’s love.
So, when the heart awakens, what awakens is the ability to love and accept people just the way they are. It’s like a wave. One wave sees another wave, and it knows it’s as much ocean as it is. It’s the same ocean. So, the heart does awaken, and that’s a loving connection with all beings, even the ones the mind may not like.
Rick: Do you think heart awakening is possibly independent of self-realization, that you can have one without the other?
Tom: Not the way I talk about it.
Rick: They’re synonymous, more or less?
Tom: Yeah. I think when you recognize your true nature, which is simple, you recognize, “This is Sailor Bob, but the ‘I am, I am’ is the same ‘I am’ you are.” And that’s known. That’s recognized.
So, instead of looking at somebody with their conditioning, you’re seeing the light coming out of their eyes, that same intelligence, that same consciousness. And that really shifts things.
Rick: It shifts things, but I wonder if that recognition could precede the full awakening of the heart. One could sort of recognize one’s essential nature and see all beings and the self, and the self and all beings, and all that, and yet not have the heart blossom to the full extent it’s capable of doing.
Tom: I think that’s a little bit like what we’re talking about. I don’t think it’s the heart. I think it’s the mind. But I think all conditioning, fears, and interpretations temporarily block that full awareness. They can fall away, and they can fall away without a person even knowing that something’s shifted. I don’t know—am I answering your question?
Rick: Yeah, you are. I’m just kind of fine-tuning the understanding here of whether awakening is sort of an on-off, black-and-white sort of thing, or whether it’s, in a way, the first step, and then there is sequential unfoldment or refinement, or clearing away, as you say, of accumulated stuff, which is greatly facilitated by awakening to one’s true nature.
Tom: We are sort of mixing apples with oranges. When awakening happens, that’s something that can’t be reversed. And then all sorts of stuff on the relative happens afterward.
For instance, when you realize—and this could get into a big discussion—but when you realize that you’re being lived, you’re not the author of your life, that you’re being lived—I’m talking about the embodied being being lived—that life is happening through you, that you didn’t create yourself, even your ego, even your sense of self, that was all created, that was all happening, and that’s fully realized.
You don’t go around thinking about it, just like you’re breathing air right now. You’re not thinking about breathing; you’re not thinking about air. But if I point it out to you, you know it’s happening. And the same thing, really: realization is something that stops happening, but you don’t miss it. You don’t go around thinking about it.
The idea of a separate self with its own autonomy is gone.
The idea of a separate self with its own autonomy is gone. That doesn’t mean there’s not the instrument, the programming, or the cognitive center. It’s all still here, but none of this was my doing. As Wayne Liquorman would have pointed out, I would have done a much better job, Rick.
Rick: As he said, none of this is my doing, so is there even a “my” who could have done it? There is no “me,” no “my.”
Tom: There’s a cognitive center which can be self-reflective through memory. And again, what’s really fascinating is that there are neurobiologists and neuroscientists—
Rick: Who actually get this. It’s just fascinating, like Andrew Newberg and Dan Siegel. The brain—the way they know this is because of their scans—the brain, like, you can be very focused, paying attention, and there’s no “you” doing it. There’s just attention happening.
Then somebody can say, “Do you like the soccer game you’re watching?” and the brain starts a memory loop, which gives a sense of an embodied self. But it’s an illusion created by the brain.
And the brain only does it—well, it does it differently for everybody—but it’s not happening. Most of us are in an awakened state much of the time because there’s no “me” there. Self-referencing only happens at certain times. And it’s the brain doing it. It’s an illusion created by the brain, and they’ve pretty much nailed this down.
Antonio Damasio is a neuroscientist in Southern California who came up with the term “autobiographical self,” at least I think he did. He pretty much describes how the brain creates the idea that there’s somebody in here. It’s very much like Siri on an iPhone. You know, Siri and I have a conversation. She knows a lot of things I don’t know, but there isn’t anybody in there.
Rick: Like that Joaquin Phoenix movie.
Tom: Which one?
Rick: Oh, there was a movie where he fell in love with his iPhone or something.
Well, that’s interesting. I chew on this one a lot with friends. And there seem to be two camps. There’s the camp that you just described, and then there’s the camp represented by people like Francis Bennett, for instance, who say, “Yeah, you’re an individual. You’re just not only an individual. You are a wave, but you’re not only a wave. You’re primarily the ocean, but there is still a wave.”
Tom: Yeah, but the ocean’s doing the wave.
Rick: The ocean’s doing the wave, but there’s still a wave that the ocean is doing.
Tom: Yeah, I agree with that.
Rick: Yeah. So, there’s still a Tom and a Rick. But some people are more radical about it. They say, “No, actually, there’s no sense whatsoever of any personal self.” And then I say something like, “All right, well, if you stub your toe, some guy in China doesn’t cry out in pain.” There’s some kind of localized reaction to it.
Tom: Same thing with Siri.
Rick: Yeah. What about—
Tom: Hey, Siri.
Rick: Did she say anything?
Tom: What is zero divided by zero?
Siri: Imagine that you have zero cookies and you eat them evenly among zero friends. How many cookies does each person get? See? It doesn’t make sense. And Cookie Monster is sad that there are no cookies. And you are sad that you have no friends.
[Laughter]
Tom: So, yes, if I talked to her here and she responded, there’s a cause and effect. If this one has different information than somebody else’s, it has its own personality. You said “personal self.” That’s fine. Separate self, no.
Rick: What’s the difference?
Tom: You didn’t create your personal self.
Rick: That may be irrelevant, but is there one? You say you didn’t create one, but—
Tom: At times during the day, there is one.
Rick: There is one?
Tom: At times, because of the feedback loop.
Rick: Yeah. Like if your wife comes into the room—if Bonnie comes into the room and says, “Hey, Tom, the house is on fire,” then, whoa, you turn your head. You don’t just sit there. There’s some kind of reaction.
Tom: So does the dog.
Rick: Maybe. Yeah, okay. If the dog—yeah, she might say, “Good dog, come get a bone.”
Tom: But all of that is the instrument responding.
Rick: Yeah.
Tom: And the instrument has a cognitive center, and it has memories to go with that cognitive center. We now know most of those memories are not accurate because the brain is constantly changing and embellishing them. But we didn’t create that.
🎵 Reincarnation and creative intelligence
Rick: Do you believe in reincarnation?
Tom: I don’t believe in anything.
Rick: Well, do you believe that the sun is—well, they determined it is. So, there’s a lot of research to indicate that maybe reincarnation is a thing. What do you think of that?
Tom: When I was in Connecticut, I did some work with Ken Ring, who’s written books—or his students and others have written books—about near-death experiences. I think there’s—I would say that’s a reality tunnel.
Rick: Okay. So, in other words, it’s a relative reality of some kind.
Tom: It’s a relative reality, and I suspect people who deeply believe in reincarnation probably do.
So, a question for you,
Rick: the whole Sanatana Dharma and Buddhist teachings are to get off the cycle of birth and death. Why would anybody want to reincarnate?
I think that the Buddhist teachings would respond that it’s not a question of whether or not they want to, but they will as long as they have—
Tom: Unless they wake up.
Rick: Unless they wake up, or unless they—well, maybe they’ll decide to become one of those bodhisattvas and keep coming back for the benefit of all beings or something.
But the reason—I mean, it’s a sneaky, tricky question, but the reason I asked is that some people just say, “Well, it couldn’t—” Tony Parsons and others say there couldn’t be reincarnation because that implies that there is some entity that could reincarnate, and there is no entity. There’s nobody here.
But I would say that there’s a subtle body, there’s the jiva. We’re not just this gross flesh and blood, and that subtle thing retains impressions and has an evolutionary trajectory and goes through various experiences as it moves along the evolutionary scale, spiritually speaking.
Tom: What is evolution?
Rick: Greater and greater capacity to reflect, incorporate, or express the Divine.
Tom: So, if it’s all Divine, what’s the problem?
Rick: No, it’s not a problem. I didn’t say it was a problem.
Tom: How can you express more of the Divine?
Rick: Well, it means more energy, more intelligence, more creativity. You were talking about Kundalini in the beginning as sort of the deep impetus to creativity and creative acts, and so on, or the expression of that. Mozart expresses more musical creativity than I do, or than obviously most people do. There’s been a development there.
Tom: You’re assuming it came from other lives.
Rick: Well, actually, that occurred to me just as I was saying that. It may. That might account for how a genius like that is found composing things at five years old. In fact, you and I may have had lives in which we were spiritual aspirants, and that might account for why we both—you especially—kind of got interested in this in our teens. There’s sort of—what does the Gita say? “No effort is lost, and no obstacle exists.”
It’s almost like putting money in a bank account. Well, go ahead. I’m talking too much. You responded to what I’ve said so far.
Tom: You and I were very blessed because we came into a zeitgeist where meditation and all of this was available.
Rick: Yeah, we weren’t born in Tanzania or something.
Tom: Right. So, the chance of you running into TM and me running into all of this and having that possibility—it was happening not just with you and me, but with millions of people. And so, to say “you or I”—it wasn’t you and me; it was millions of people. Very similar stories, very similar stories.
But let me give you my take on reincarnation. Unfortunately, I’m asked to do a lot of memorial services, but this phone has its own intelligence. It has its own programming.
Rick: Does it have consciousness?
Tom: Well, not by my definition, but Siri may have a different opinion about that. In the programming here of Siri, this particular phone, I would call that consciousness. The conscious intelligence that you saw earlier—she responded to me. There’s something that responds.
But awareness is out here. That pure awareness is nonlocal. There’s no time, no space. This is created in time and space and has specific programming. It’s a specific instrument. From my point of view, we’re all instruments, created by Kundalini. Kundalini is the personal creative intelligence. Maharishi used that word. That’s a great term.
What created us is that creative intelligence. And that creative intelligence created us all with different capacities and lifts us and creates that sense of me in here and all of that.
The possibility, with the subtle bodies and stuff, if somebody’s oriented that way—like you said, if you want to be reborn an avatar or something—to be able to keep that energy package, with all its samskaras and vasanas, if there’s the desire to do that, that is possible. Anything is possible.
But when you are free of false identification, there’s nothing to hold that together. And so, when the body drops, consciousness that’s in the body returns to that ocean of awareness.
Rick: You may be right.
Tom: I’m absolutely right. Don’t doubt it.
Rick: Oh, that’s scary.
Tom: That’s just the way I see it.
Rick: Yeah, and certainly there are spiritual traditions that say that. Once reincarnation has occurred, that’s it; you’re off the wheel, no more reincarnation.
Tom: What’s the reincarnate?
Rick: Pardon? Yeah, what’s the reincarnate? You’ve sort of gone beyond that necessity or possibility.
Tom: There’s no false identity.
Rick: Right. Although it’s sometimes puzzling to talk to all these people who are communing with Jesus, or Ramana Maharshi shows up in their bedroom and talks to them, or all that stuff. I don’t know how to explain all that.
Tom: Well, I worked in psychiatry for 13 years, and I’m a hypnotherapist, and I’ve channeled Hanuman. There are all sorts of explanations in the brain for all that.
Rick: It could be just a brain thing, or it could be that they’re sort of like Muktananda, for instance, who had a really ardent desire to live in Siddhaloka after he had dropped his body. And the guy I interviewed two weeks ago, Nirgunajan, said that he himself had had several glimpses of Siddhaloka, and there are these incredible spiritual beings dwelling there.
Tom: That’s as real as this.
Rick: My wife just wrote down—Irene just wrote down—“It’s all possibilities.”
Tom: Right. Some possibilities are better than others.
Rick: Let’s get back to the creative intelligence thing for a second.
Tom: Sure. That’s a great term.
Rick: Yeah. The second law of thermodynamics tells us that the universe should just sort of fizzle out and entropy should just take over, and everything should just go back to nothingness or dust or something. But there seems to be this counterforce, which results in frogs and trees and people and all these incredibly intricate, well-organized structures that reflect consciousness much more fully than a pile of rust.
Some would say—Maharishi, in fact, used to say—that there’s sort of an evolutionary agenda, as it were, for creation; that the Divine wants to play with itself in manifest form and experience itself as a living reality.
Hence, there is this sort of evolutionary progression that takes place over eons, where stars are formed, stars explode, heavy elements are created, and beings eventually evolve. Those beings become more and more evolved and more and more capable of being fuller expressions of that creative intelligence out of which they arise.
So, I don’t know. Take it from there. What do you think of that whole cosmology?
Tom: Well, I come out of a tantric tradition, so I pretty much agree with that. What I would say to all of that is that it can also be a possibility of incredible suffering if you don’t know your true nature.
So, what I think is most important is discovering what you really are. Because what we’re doing in this creation is seeking meaning and purpose from the creation. We’re seeking identity: “I’m better. I got a bigger house. I got more money. I’m Donald Trump,” whatever it is. We’re seeking in it.
And that’s ultimately frustrating because it’s disappearing right in front of us. It’s creating, but it’s also disappearing. Everybody’s got to buy a new iPhone, all that stuff.
If you know your true nature, first, go back: “What am I?” And that’s really not that difficult. Once you know that, again, a lot of things fall away, but then you can enjoy life as it is. You can let that creative power flow through you.
Let’s talk about Hatha Yoga. Hatha Yoga can be done as a chore, or it can be done as an act of ecstasy. So, two people can be doing the exact same thing, but why they’re doing it, or what’s causing them to do it, is totally different. One, in a way, is causing suffering. The other one is an expression of liberation.
So, the thing about the creative power is that we get hypnotized and think we’re going to find meaning and fulfillment out there, instead of recognizing our true nature. Once we know our true nature, it’s pure play. It’s theater. Go for it, whatever you want to do. Look what you’re doing. This is great, what you’re doing.
Rick: Yeah. Well, I totally agree with everything you just said, and I don’t know if it actually contradicts everything I just said. They’re just kind of complementary aspects of the same picture.
Tom: Yeah. I totally agree that life is an incredible gift and possibility.
And that’s why I’m really excited by the neuroscience, because these guys are really trippy when you read them. I mean, I think it’s Dan Siegel. He’s a medical doctor, a neuroscientist. He says, “The mind creates the brain,” not the brain creates the mind. The mind creates the brain. That’s a pretty trippy thing for a scientist. But he’s a meditator. He’s got it.
Rick: Yeah. And I would have to carefully define “mind” if I were going to agree with him, because—
Tom: Consciousness problem.
Rick: Yeah, I don’t think the individual mind creates the brain.
Tom: Now you’re getting on my page.
Rick: Yeah, we could get into a whole thing about that. There’s some kind of much more vast intelligence, which includes all kinds of laws of nature—biological and physical, and so on and so forth—that creates everything.
Tom: Well, we know now how we can evolve the brain.
Rick: You mean neuroplasticity?
Tom: Yeah, and creating new neural pathways, neuroplasticity, getting it more in harmony with our body and the energy fields around our body.
Rick: Yeah, here’s a—where is it? Deepak Chopra and Rudy Tanzi just wrote this book, Super Genes, recently, which is kind of—well, it’s not just about the brain, but there are all sorts of people. Who’s that guy, Rick Hanson, whom I interviewed, who’s into brain sculpting? They talk that way, that you can—but we’re getting off on a tangent here.
I think the reason I brought this all up, and the reason I got into this little debate with you, is just that I’m much more—maybe it’s because my understanding isn’t as deep or as clear as it could be—but I’m really kind of into all possibilities.
As Irene wrote down on the notebook here, I really have a hard time saying with any certainty that this definitely happens or this definitely doesn’t happen, whether reincarnation, UFOs, or anything else. Do we really know? Absolutely?
And it could seem—I mean, certain experiences we can have, like the falling away of the sense of self, can seem so convincing. But how do we know we’re not going to have some other kind of clarity or experience ten years from now that’s going to make us say, “Wait a minute, there’s more than I realized”?
Tom: Right. So, that happens, but who’s creating that? So, let’s say I wake up and I say, “I’m totally awake,” and then three years from now I have a greater experience. Well, if it was me creating that, I would have stayed where I was, but there’s something else working. It’s not my will; it’s something else living it.
Rick: Yeah, yeah. It is my will, too, but it’s, again, the ocean living the way. So, I agree with you and Irene that the possibilities are infinite. That’s why I use that term “reality tunnels.” Reality tunnels are infinite. We can imagine and manifest almost anything.
Yeah, and I think stuff—UFOs, for instance—we may be one of their video games. You and me. They’re going to look at them; they think they’re real.
Rick: Yeah, we may be next year’s lunch. There was a Twilight Zone episode about that. They came with this book that was called To Serve Man, and everybody thought, “Oh, great, these great humanitarian beings are coming from outer space.”
And then, at the very end of the episode, some guys who had been working on translating it came rushing in as people were boarding the spaceship and said, “Stop, stop, it’s a cookbook!” That was great. That was a good show. See, they play with the possibilities and all that all the time.
There’s that sort of “don’t-know mind” thing that they say in Zen.
Tom: I totally agree with that.
Rick: There are all kinds of things I think I know that I repeat and that I say, but when you really step back, nothing is certain, at least in my experience. There’s like—who knows?
Tom: There are two things I ask people to ask themselves, and we look at: “What am I?” Francis Lucille, again, said, “The fastest way to enlightenment is knowing what you’re not.” Now, the funny thing about that is ultimately you are all of that. But you have to see it and move back after you stop everything, stop identifying with anything—whatever’s left.
But also, the other question is, “What’s life using me for?” Find that. The awe and mystery of life is that we really don’t know. And Zen: the beginner’s mind.
Rick: Yeah, I love that. But those are two great questions to kind of dwell in, without expecting adamant certainty, but with just sort of a reverential respect for—
Tom: Right. You stand on the question and look out.
Rick: Yeah. I love them both, but particularly that one of, “What’s life using me for?” There’s a sort of a devotional quality to that. It’s like, “Thy will be done. How can I serve?” That kind of a feeling.
Tom: Right. And when you tune into that, like you have and other people have, life’s wonderful. It’s thrilling. Because you know from the heart that you’re doing what you’re meant to do.
Rick: Yeah.
Tom: What you’re designed to do, however you want to say it.
Rick: Yeah, it really is. And there’s a time for everything. I went through a number of years where I was okay with it, just doing computer work and stuff like that, earning a living. But there’s always this sense—having taught meditation for 25 years, there’s always this sense of, “You know, it would be nice to be doing something a little bit more profound, something that seems more meaningful in a spiritual sense.”
But it was very valuable to go through all those years of doing that and build a sort of financial foundation and so on. So, I don’t think a person should feel that if they’re just working some job, supporting a family, they’re kind of missing the boat and not being able to devote themselves overtly, full-time, to spiritual pursuits. The guy I interviewed last week—
Tom: That is spiritual.
Rick: It is, yeah. The guy I interviewed last week, this fellow—what’s his name? Atreya Thomas.
Tom: Yeah, he and I just became Facebook friends.
Rick: Oh, good. He does this amazing thing where he and his wife take care of crack babies, and he runs a preschool in Los Angeles, and yet in the midst of all that, he’s undergone this profound spiritual awakening. So, yeah, you don’t have to be sitting in an ashram or anything.
Tom: Right. He’s sitting in real suffering and doing something about it. But that really pushes us, I think, more than a lot of things, to look more deeply and question what it’s all about. But then you can spontaneously respond, like he’s doing.
Rick: Yeah, it’s neat.
Tom: But look, again, your show—if I understand, you were going to do a local TV show.
Rick: A local radio show with a ten-mile radius. So that was the thought.
Tom: Yeah, what happened to you?
Rick: And it’s funny because when that was my intention, I wasn’t getting any support for it. The radio station didn’t want to do it, even though the guys at the radio station were meditators and everything. And people wanted to do it. But it’s sort of like the bigger the concept became, the more supported it became.
Tom: Right. So, there was like a guidance system.
Rick: There was.
Tom: And the blocks: don’t go down this way; here’s a block.
Rick: Yeah, which is a fascinating thing in itself. We were talking about creative intelligence a little while ago. Do you have the sense that you’re being guided, that there’s more—there’s sort of a larger intelligence than is necessarily fully in your conscious cognition—that is nudging you this way and that?
Tom: When I teach, or whatever you want to call it, it’s like channeling.
Rick: Yeah.
Tom: And often some people will write me and say, “What did you mean when you said that?” I have no recollection of saying anything. And sometimes I listen. I’ve listened to recordings, and I go, “Wow, that guy’s pretty good.”
But really, my terminology—well, it’s the kundalini, it’s what I would call it. It’s just the word; it’s just the term. But I feel it moving, and I think the people who come here know when that’s happening more than when it’s not, because it’s just flooded.
Rick: Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s almost like if you put yourself in the position of being an instrument of the Divine, if I can use that terminology, then it’s sort of like the powers that be, or whatever, say, “Hey, boys, we’ve got a live one here. Let’s give him some juice.”
Tom: Exactly. What a way to live our whole lives.
Rick: Yeah, it’s inspiring.
Tom: I agree totally with that.
Rick: And however one wants to do it. Not everybody should do what you’re doing or what I’m doing or anything else. It’s like we each have our unique expression. And it may be raising crack babies.
Tom: Right. You’re guided. We’re guided if we listen to the energy, to the feelings. It’s very clear which way to move. And it’s not always clear. So, that’s one of the things when I said, “What’s life using you for?”
There are traditional pathways cut out where you can get a job and you get your benefits, and you get your retirement and your medical care. And so, the temptation is to go, let’s say, a secure path for some people. But they get this other urge to do something else, but there’s no map for that. There’s no—you can’t—when I started teaching meditation, I became a single parent. My daughter was around four, and I worked at the hospital, and I decided I was going to teach meditation.
So, I went part-time at the hospital, lost all my benefits, lost all my retirement. The first meditation class I taught, I think I had five students, and the first night I talked about kundalini. Three dropped out after the first night. And every night I’d go to sleep, and at three in the morning I’d wake up in a panic attack, and my mind would say, “Go back. Get your job back. Get everything back. Go back to the hospital.”
And then in the morning I’d meditate, and that power would take over, and I realized, “Oh my God, I’m not going to do it.” But there was no path. There was no—this is how you do it. There was nothing.
Rick: It’s interesting. It’s funny, you wish sometimes that there would be clearly marked road signs, like, “This is it. You’re on the right path.” But it’s much more subtle and intuitive than that.
Tom: Right. And this is going to work out. Just tell me it’s going to work out. It’s nothing like that. But all you can do is be with that inner feeling and go for it.
Rick: Yeah. I’m reminded of the Bible, where Jesus shows up and he says to these fishermen, “All right, just drop your nets. Come with me. Follow me.” And they do it. And they must have had all kinds of commitments.
Tom: Yeah, yeah.
Rick: It was a big leap of faith.
Tom: Right.
Rick: Which is not to say—I mean, there were stories of hippies thinking that the whole society was about to crash and then running up their credit cards because it doesn’t matter; the economy is going to crash. You have to be sensible. It takes discrimination to discern between your whims and actual genuine intuition.
Tom: Right, and that’s why the yogic pathways together—the discriminating wisdom of jnana yoga goes with the heartfelt devotion of bhakti. It really—I tend to westernize in my mind—but it’s really a credible system of checks and balances. Oops, I just banged the table.
Rick: I didn’t even hear it. Yeah, and coming back to the Conscious Living Center here, which you say is radical awakening along with integration of body, emotions, mind, and spirit; living skillfully and effectively in this world; and being in loving and empowering relationships—I mean, that pretty well covers it.
Tom: Right, all-inclusive.
Rick: Yeah, and there are people who would say there is no universe, there is no self, there is no nothing, and just wipe all that away. Who cares about relationships? But personally, my preference is for the more all-inclusive approach that you seem to be offering, because most of us, we’re not just sitting in a cave. I mean, there’s all kinds of things.
Tom: Right, and I see, again, everybody’s doing exactly what they should. So, when I meet with people privately, I have no agenda. They present their agenda, and I try to look out of their eyes and see what their life’s looking like for them, and then from that, we hopefully move forward. And I have all sorts of tools that might be able to help them.
Rick: Yeah.
Tom: But I don’t have any thought that they should be different than they are. A lot of my clients are not the least interested in what we do here on Mondays, and they probably don’t even know we have a Monday thing. So, when I meet with them, it’s what’s happening with them.
And I’m not going to be sitting there going, “Well, all this would be resolved if you just woke up and knew your true nature,” because they would go, “What?” So, everybody is like—whatever that particular wave is doing, it’s still the ocean doing it. And if they’ve come in here because they’re sad their dog died, that’s the entire universe doing that.
Rick: Yeah, and you’re not going to say there is no dog, and the dog never dies, and you’re not going to give glib little—
Tom: Yeah, well, the dog’s going to reincarnate and be your mother—or it may or may not; I don’t know. But I am going to listen to them and really tune into them.
Rick: Yeah, that’s sweet. There’s a saying in India that when the mango tree is ripe, the branches bend down so that people can just pick the fruit on their level, so to speak. So, as teachers of any sort, it’s valuable, I think, to meet people where they’re at.
Tom: Right, and that’s not a condescending thing. I’ve heard people say that, because again, where they’re at is God being there. That’s God in that form, in the ocean, or whatever you want to call it. So, whatever their difficulty or problem, whether they’re an enlightened guru sitting there or somebody who’s sad because their dog died, it’s still that same Divine being, or whatever.
Everyone as an expression of the Divine
Rick: Yep, light that is one, though the lamps be many. So, what haven’t we covered, Tom, that half an hour after we hang up you’re going to think, “Geez, I wish we’d talked about that”?
Tom: I really feel it’s important. I’m not saying this is where people stop, but I think it’s really important that everybody—one of the things I tell everybody who comes here is they’re an avatar. Everybody is an avatar. Avatar is the Divine, the infinite Divine, born in the form of a human. Everybody is that.
Rick: God dwells within you as you. God dwells within you as you, as Muktananda used to say.
Tom: Yes, exactly, that’s really it. And whatever the person perceives as their faults, their weaknesses, “I’m not good enough,” they need to see that God dwells within them as them, that that is God moving through them, whatever form it is. Start there.
God dwells within you as you.
It’s a possibility; you don’t have to believe it. It’s not a belief unless you’ve had the experience. It’s a place, again, to stand and look out of the possibility that the same Divine intelligence is coming through you as Jesus, Buddha, gurus, whatever it is.
And if that’s so, again, there’s a question of why don’t you know? How are you stopping yourself from knowing that? And it’s because they’re fixated on something else. And so, the process of investigation is releasing those fixations and turning attention back on this incredible thing that’s happening.
And then most of those problems—not all of them, of course, because life’s full of problems—but it shifts, it shifts. And I think people, then they may have to do sadhana, whatever it is. But do it from the point of view of the truth. That’s it.
Rick: Yeah. I think one thing, and this relates to your point about turning inward versus outward, is a lot of people look at people like Jesus, Buddha, Ramana Maharshi, and so on, and they say, “Wow, those guys are so awesome, and I’m just this chump, so I couldn’t possibly be like them.”
But from the perspective of Ramana, for instance, or Buddha, looking at that person, he would say, “Yeah, you and I are the same person. We’re just the same light shining out through different eyes, so to speak.” I think it helps.
I sometimes use the analogy of electricity. You could have a whole lot of different light bulbs of different wattages, and they may shine more or less brightly, but they’re all kind of plugged into the same electrical source, the same electrical field, and that’s identical for all the bulbs. So, it’s just a matter of the physical structure of the bulb that’s going to determine how brightly it shines.
Tom: Right. And that electricity is that creative intelligence.
Rick: Right.
Tom: And it’s like you said, it’s lighting everybody up. The word “enlightenment” only has meaning to the unenlightened, because when you’re enlightened, what you do is look out and see that all the waves are the same, including you. We’re all ocean-waving, whatever, and so it’s a meaningless term.
But it’s a pointer. It’s a pointer. And so, it’s useful as a pointer, but once that shift of perception happens, there are just all these waves, and it’s an infinite ocean.
Working with Tom and closing remarks
Rick: So, let me ask you this. Now that you’re a high-tech dude and you’ve become an expert in Skype and all that stuff, since we’re kind of wrapping up the interview pretty soon, we usually talk toward the end about what somebody can do if they happen to live in Canada and want to talk to you. Do you do online consultations, or would you be interested in doing them? Or would you really just prefer to keep a local clientele?
Tom: Well, pretty much I do local, but I have worked with people all over the world on Skype and FaceTime. Somebody in India is the one who turned me on to Skype initially. He wrote me and said, “Can we Skype?” And I’m like, “I don’t know. Is that legal?”
So, it was a guy in India who introduced me to it. That’s how I got started with it. I do that some, but a lot of the work, I feel, works better when I’m actually with the person.
Rick: Yeah. But there is value to the online thing, too. A lot of people I interview do online consultations. There’s this one woman that I’m going to be interviewing in July, I think, who wasn’t even doing consultations. She was just watching Mooji videos, a whole bunch of them. And one day she had this radical awakening just watching YouTube videos.
So, there’s something to this online thing, even though it may not be as nice as being right there with the person.
Tom: Well, like I said, I have done it—FaceTime and some Skyping with people around the world. I’m always happy to do that.
Rick: Good. And plus, if people want, they could come and visit you in North Carolina.
Tom: Right.
Rick: All right. Thanks. So, this has been a fun talk.
Tom: Thank you, Rick.
Rick: Yeah, we’ve covered a bunch of things. I appreciate that you’ve been tuning into BatGap yourself over time, I guess, and watched a number of them.
Tom: Yeah, and I just want to say that a couple of times we’ve had intensives that made more money than we thought. Bonnie sent you all a couple of checks, and I hope other people are doing that, because I know how easy it is for it to be a one-way street—just turn on BatGap and watch it.
But we have tried to support you, and I hope other people do that, because I think what you’re offering is extremely valuable.
Rick: Well, thank you very much.
Tom: I met Jerry, I met your staff, and you guys do an incredible job. It is just so easy to access, and you and Irene do have to eat and stuff.
Rick: Yeah, we’re kind of gross in that way. Not breatharians. All right, thanks. Well, let me make a few little wrap-up points. This has been a lot of fun. Your website is?
Tom: TheAwakenedHeartCenter.com.
Rick: TheAwakenedHeartCenter.com, and I’ll have a page for you on BatGap and link to that. And have you written any books? No, you haven’t.
Tom: We have a blog on our website. There’s a blog with a bunch of articles; most of those things were written in response to people’s questions.
Rick: Yeah, I read some of those. They were good. So, you can get in touch with Tom through his website. This interview, as you probably know, is one in an ongoing series, so stay tuned for others.
If you’d like to be notified when new ones go up, there’s a mailing list tab on BatGap.com, and you’ll get an email once a week when we put up a new interview. It also exists as an audio podcast for those who don’t feel like sitting in front of their computer for two hours watching something. You can listen while you’re commuting or whatever, and there’s a tab for that, too, where you can sign up.
Someone brought to our attention this week that it only lists the most recent 300, and the first 34 or 35 aren’t listed. That’s because iTunes has a limitation of only listing 300 or 500 podcast episodes. But there are other services. There’s something called Stitcher that might list them all.
You can also download any individual audio file by going to that particular page on the website and then hitting the little download button on the audio file. So, just a little technical thing. Thanks for listening and watching, and thank you again, Tom.
Tom: Thank you, Rick. Thank you, Irene.
Rick: It was a lot of fun. And we’ll see you all next week, whoever is listening. Thanks.
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
YouTube
