Tony Samara Interview

Summary

The conversation explores childhood sensitivity, unusual perception, illness, and how painful experiences can deepen compassion. It also examines meditation as a joyful practice, the limits of spiritual labels, and the value of approaching inner development with openness and creativity.

Questions This Interview Explores

• How can sensitivity to other people and the environment affect spiritual development?
• Can suffering and illness become part of a compassionate spiritual path?
• How can meditation become a joyful rather than forced or painful practice?
• What are the limitations of relying on religious concepts such as reincarnation?
• How can meditation balance mental discipline with creativity and openness?

Key takeaways

• Sensitivity can reveal hidden disharmony but also make a person more vulnerable.
• Painful experiences can deepen compassion and broaden how we understand others.
• Meditation is most transformative when approached with joy, gratitude, and positivity.
• Spiritual labels can oversimplify experiences that are far more complex.
• Meditation needs discipline, but creativity should not be suppressed.
• A technique may need to change when spiritual practice becomes unnecessarily difficult.

Transcript

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening people. I’ve done over 400 of them by now. If this is new to you, please go to batgap.com, and you’ll see all the previous ones archived and organized in various different ways, and you can check them out. This program is made possible by the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. I say this every week. So, if you appreciate it and feel like supporting it, there’s a PayPal button on every page of the site.

My guest today is Tony Samara, whom I have found to be a very interesting person, having listened to about six hours of his interviews in the previous week. I had a couple of two-hour drives and some grass to cut, so I got plenty of chance to listen.

Tony is rather prolific. He’s written a number of books, Shaman’s Wisdom, Discover Your Inner Buddha, Ancient Wisdom for Reality Creators, and a number of others, and has been inspiring thousands of readers to discover inner peace and greater fulfillment in their lives through the power and simplicity of practical spirituality.

At the core of his teachings lies the evolution of human consciousness and the joyous illumination of each individual’s inner quest. So, that’s a short bio. We’ll get into a much longer bio as we talk, because, as I said, Tony has lived a very interesting life, and he’s got a lot to say.

Usually these interviews consist of the biographical stuff about what the person has gone through, and that in itself usually contains a lot of knowledge, as it just comes out when you hear what a person has been through. Then there’s also the stuff that’s more explicitly the teaching, if there is a teaching—what the person has to convey. I think Tony has plenty to say on both of those themes, but I think we’ll start with the biographical stuff.

As I recall, Tony, from listening to your other talks and interviews, your interest in spirituality, although you might not have called it that at the time, started at a fairly early age, right?

Tony: That’s right. I didn’t call it spirituality, because when you’re a little child, you don’t know what spirituality means. We’re just living life in the moment.

For me, looking back, I’m able to create an idea of what spirituality means for children—as a child who had access to various dimensions of reality that most children don’t really understand or comprehend so easily or so well. I was able to see into people. I don’t mean just seeing a person through the words that they’re communicating or the body language that they’re conveying, but seeing more deeply into a person.

It’s a sort of perception which, perhaps in New Age spirituality, is called being sensitive or an Indigo child. I don’t know what terms they use today, but I would say it’s just being able to perceive things in a very different way.

Rick: Like, for instance, can you give us an example?

Tony: Well, I grew up in Egypt, and I was very creative in the way that I understood the world. So, perhaps this was a little bit of a mixture of creativity with insight.

I was able to see a lot into the ancient people who lived in Egypt—the pharaohs. I used to speak to my brothers and people around me about their lifestyle, information that wasn’t in history books, and, in some instances, about their very specific ways of doing things.

But from a child’s perspective, for me, it’s just as if you’re watching something that’s happening right in front of you, and you’re describing it from a very basic observation that wasn’t very in-depth. So, I would explain things about their clothes, the foods that they ate, and rituals that they participated in—things that weren’t part of my education.

My parents thought this was very interesting, and they called me a very creative, imaginative type of child.

Rick: So, you weren’t getting that from books or anything? You were just coming out with this stuff? You were sitting there describing things?

Tony: Yes, as children do. You know, when they sit and do something exciting, I might sing a song or begin to describe things. Sometimes there is a lot of interesting wisdom or very interesting information that you can perceive if you are present to what the child is doing and what’s behind the words being conveyed.

Rick: Also picking up stuff from living people that ordinarily wouldn’t be noticeable?

Tony: I was very, very sensitive. So, I would explain things about physical or emotional problems that people had in a way that a child—I was five or six at the time—describes things. Looking back now, I understand that it was a sensitivity that isn’t normal.

I think sensitivity is universal, but somehow I was initiated into being more sensitive on some level than most of the young children around me, for some reason. I don’t know why. But looking back, I see that sensitivity as having played a very major part in the development of my spiritual practice.

Rick: I’m guessing that this sensitivity worked both ways. It not only made you more perceptive, but it made you more vulnerable.

Tony: Exactly, and also more physically sick. As a child, I suffered from a lot of ill health. I was sensitive to any disharmony, anything in the environment.

I grew up, as you know, in areas of conflict, because my parents were diplomats. That was their job: to work in places of conflict because they were working on the peace process. So, I was sensitive to very interesting aspects of the world, but as a child I was perhaps too vulnerable to situations that didn’t make sense to me.

Harmony is innate in all living beings—human beings and animals.

Rick: A lot of people I know feel like that. Spiritual people sometimes describe ourselves as being like washing machines, where we’re picking up on stuff in the environment and processing it through our own nervous systems and resolving it that way, in order to help the world or help specific individuals or situations. Do you get a sense of that?

Tony: Yes, I totally agree. I think it’s not just human beings, but also animals, especially dogs and cats. Harmony is innate in all living beings—human beings and animals. It’s an innate quality that somehow we lose, perhaps through socialization, yet it’s still very much the core of our being, and we’re always trying to harmonize things.

As a child, when you’re less—influenced by socialization, not necessarily less conditioned—then it’s very easy to be vulnerable to situations in that way, where you’re harmonizing, for the good of humanity, whatever is out of sync or not working very well around you.

There were many, many difficult situations that I faced as a child. I think all children today are faced with many choices that aren’t very easy. Perhaps, being in a Third World country, I was exposed to situations that were a little bit different from what most children in the Western world experience.

Sensitivity, suffering, and compassion

Rick: This thing you’re saying about sensitivity and being like a washing machine is interesting. I have a friend who is highly awakened, who is always sort of scratching their head and thinking, “Why is it that so many spiritual teachers seem to go through so much difficulty in terms of their health and the various stuff they go through?”

I mean, people in general do, but it almost seems to be a syndrome sometimes where these people are like sponges. They’re soaking up a lot of stuff and then kind of resolving it. That’s my answer. But would you concur?

Tony: Yes, I totally agree. I think that it’s an initiation into compassion, because when you actually experience life from very harsh or difficult perspectives, then you become more compassionate and more open-minded, and you become more aware of what that means in a practical sense.

Pain as a Spiritual Initiation

I haven’t actually spoken to any very deeply spiritual person who hasn’t experienced some sort of painful initiation. For me, it’s not a negative thing, despite many people thinking that going through pain is negative. That’s a perception that we’ve been socialized to think.

I haven’t actually spoken to any very deeply spiritual person who hasn’t experienced some sort of painful initiation. For me, it’s not a negative thing, despite many people thinking that going through pain is negative. That’s a perception that we’ve been socialized to think.

For me, life is perfect, and whatever you’re going through is a learning process. If you see it in a positive way, as I do now, I think it’s very beneficial for you to be more compassionate and more sensitive to people’s actual experiences, because you are able to understand their experiences.

In my case, this experience of sickness and sensitivity allowed me to see the world from a different perspective. Growing up as a teenager and then as an adult helped me to see things in a different way.

Rick: Yes, and there seemed to be degrees of it. I mean, some people get off pretty easily, and others really go through hell for a long time, you know?

Tony: Yes, I mean, any pain is difficult when you’re in it. It seems like it’s very, very difficult, but it does seem like some people attract a lot of pain because…

Rick: They have more karma to work off or something? I don’t know.

Tony: Who knows exactly? I wouldn’t say my childhood was terrible, but I had moments of deep disharmony, meaning physical and emotional disharmony.

There were situations that really disturbed me—for example, the pain and suffering of people around me, just being so poor and not being able to fulfill their basic needs. Back then, that was a powerful impression that allowed me to always be more open to seeing things from different perspectives, not just looking from one perspective.

I grew up in a very wealthy environment. I was open to seeing that not everyone is the same. Some people grow up in a beautiful little castle, and they’re sort of separated, as if by a border, from the actual reality of what’s happening around them. I assume I was able to see both worlds.

Rick: I think it would perhaps be jumping ahead too much to explain why you’re healthy now, but maybe we can discuss that in the course of the conversation. What do you think?

Tony: Sounds good, because it’s important. Yes.

Rick: Okay, so if that sensitivity, and being in Egypt and all that, were the first significant milestone that comes to mind, what would the next be?

Tony: The next would be what my mother once shared with me. She said, “I don’t know where you got this idea from, because it wasn’t so common then, but you explained to us about vegetarianism.”

That wasn’t an aspect of anything that we ever spoke about. My parents didn’t know anything about vegetarianism, and I grew up in a place where that wasn’t normal. I wasn’t in California or the UK; I was in a place where people didn’t really understand vegetarianism.

I described, at the age of eight, how much suffering animals go through to be present as part of our dinner. I described that to my parents, everyone present, and my brothers. After an hour of speaking, they just put the food away. They just had to change. They couldn’t eat, and they didn’t know where the information came from.

Rick: Did you convert them to vegetarianism, or just—no? Okay.

Tony: I’m not trying to convert anyone to vegetarianism. I am just saying that, for her, it was incredible that I came up with this interesting information out of nowhere.

I continued to do this, not just about food, but about many aspects of life. They’re not religious, and they didn’t believe in reincarnation. What I mean is that this was an incredible, interesting situation that was happening. We didn’t really understand where the information was coming from.

Rick: Where did he come from? I was just going to mention my question: If you ever have any clear past-life memories, that could account for your precociousness in the spiritual world.

Tony: I’m very hesitant to use the word reincarnation, because I think it’s been used in a way that doesn’t really convey its true meaning. Everyone is speaking about karma and reincarnation, and what have you, today, and I don’t know if it’s truly understood.

So I don’t really see reincarnation in the same way as, say, Hinduism, where whatever you do allows you to come back to a rebirth that is very specific to what you’ve done. I think it’s much more complex than this. And I don’t believe that religions, whether it be Hinduism, Christianity, or Buddhism, have a clear understanding of what happens after death. We can all talk about things, but in the end, it’s only our experience that allows us to understand the truth of what’s happening.

Rick: Do you have this sense, though, that we’re on an evolutionary trajectory that’s much longer than an individual lifetime, however the mechanics of that may work? Because it’s a long-term project.

Tony: Exactly. It’s not as simple as what’s happening today or what happened yesterday. And I see this very often in people. Beyond personality traits, there are certain aspects that perhaps are genetically transmitted into the personal communication of that person, saying whatever, but there is a depth behind everything that we don’t understand.

Neuroscience is beginning to understand a little bit more today about the complexity of what it means to be human, but we are just at the beginning, I believe, of understanding something so complex that, in words, you can’t really convey what happens. Reincarnation is a word; what does it mean? What does it really explain? It doesn’t explain very much to me.

Rick: Yes, beautiful point. I often ponder that notion. Through various examples—for instance, a single cell is more complex than the city of Tokyo. And we have about 100 trillion of them in our bodies, plus even many more times that number of non-human cells, the microbiome. So it’s this amazing instrument that we occupy, and we just kind of blithely go along through life, yada yada, but there’s this miracle taking place.

Tony: Every moment. And that’s just the cells. Who knows what else is happening beyond the physical?

Rick: Exactly—all the subtle levels and everything.

Tony: Exactly. We’re too complex to simplify experiences into a word such as reincarnation or spiritual. I’m always hesitant to use these words, because very often they create dogmatism. They create a belief system that says, “Okay, we understand our experience because it means that we know this word that we’re communicating about and agree upon, and that’s what the experience is.” But actually, it’s so much more complex. Like you just said, so much more is going on.

The simplicity at the core

Rick: Okay, we’ll get back to your personal story. Yet there is something which we might call the simplest form of awareness. There’s a verse from the Bhagavad Gita which says:

For endlessly branched—and I don’t know, it’s really somehow complicated—are the intellects of the irresolute. But the resolute intellect is one-pointed.

All sorts of fragmentation and complexity can actually be boiled down in one’s experience to a simple form of awareness, which is kind of at the core of things.

All sorts of fragmentation and complexity can actually be boiled down in one’s experience to a simple form of awareness, which is kind of at the core of things.

Tony: Exactly. And that’s the core of my teaching.

Rick: Yeah, good. Okay.

Tony: Not my teaching—everyone’s teaching, perennial wisdom.

Rick: Okay, so would it be jumping ahead to begin to talk about your Zen phase, or the significant milestones in between there?

Tony: I mean, as a child, I was just unusual, and I didn’t like being unusual. As you know, when you’re a teenager, you don’t want to be different. So that was a big thing for me, and it helped me to embark upon the practical spiritual path of learning meditation.

This started at the age of 14, when I started learning a type of meditation that’s very similar to TM—actually, it was TM, but a little bit removed from the TM of the Hindus.

Rick: Yes, exactly.

Tony: It was psychologists who were working to promote this mantra-type of meditation, which was based on TM teachings.

Rick: I was a TM teacher for 25 years, by the way, just for the record.

Tony: All right. And that was a great experience, as I do think that TM is also an amazing teaching. For me, that was the first real initiation into learning practical meditation—how to sit and meditate.

I did this for many years, quite regularly: every weekend and also every day for an hour. Despite studying at high school, it was something I found fantastic. It was just like a revelation to be able to sit in meditation.

Rick: When I learned to meditate, my friends were all into drugs at the time, and I realized that I’ve got to just be alone now. I can’t be with these people, because I have to chart my own course. So I just hung out with the dog, and after a few months, I collected new friends.

Did you find yourself to be a bit of a loner, since you were a meditator? Did you find kindred souls that you could relate to?

Tony: Exactly like you say, most of my friends were at the age when they were drinking too much, partying, and doing all sorts of interesting things. But for me, my interest was more in meditation, so you tend to isolate yourself from the social setting around you and find a new sort of relationship with other people.

I began to connect to people who were interested in meditation and consciousness. This, for me, was an amazing experience, because I never had that connection in my life. Of course, I had my family and my friends, but none of them understood what I was going through. So I felt weird, really. But I also felt okay—that this was normal.

There were people around me who enjoyed meditation, who were talking about consciousness, and for me, it was the greatest fun ever. I was enjoying myself. It wasn’t like I was meditating because I was suffering. I was meditating because it was a joyous experience.

There were people around me who enjoyed meditation, who were talking about consciousness, and for me, it was the greatest fun ever. I was enjoying myself. It wasn’t like I was meditating because I was suffering. I was meditating because it was a joyous experience.

It wasn’t like I was meditating because I was suffering. I was meditating because it was a joyous experience.

Rick: Yeah, I mean, that’s a good point to make. I would concur that it’s an inherently blissful, enjoyable experience. It’s not some arduous discipline. If it’s done right, it’s delightful.

Tony: Exactly. And so this is why every weekend, every free weekend, I would spend in retreats, learning more meditation. The more I meditated, the more impressed I was with where and what you could connect to.

It was like opening a book. If it’s a good book, reading it becomes more interesting, and you can’t put the book down. I realized that TM was interesting, but I wanted to work with a person. From what I was reading and from talking to people around me, I wanted to work with a person who understood meditation from an awakened perspective.

So I began searching for teachings that conveyed what it means to be awakened, but in a way that’s not dogmatic or too religious. For me, as soon as religion becomes too dogmatic, it’s like the red lights just start blinking. I don’t like what happened to the religious way. So for me, it’s difficult.

Rick: There’s a story of God and the devil walking down the road. God sees something, picks it up, and puts it in his pocket. The devil says, “Hey, what did you find?” And God says, “Oh, it’s the truth.” The devil says, “Oh, give it to me. I’ll organize it for you.”

Tony: Very good point. For me, Zen Buddhism seemed, from what I looked at—I looked at Tibetan Buddhism, and I looked at Hinduism—the simplest way to meditate. I wanted something that was focused just on meditation. So especially Zazen, which is the meditation practice, seemed like the right thing.

I started learning Zen meditation as a teenager, and from there, I got so impressed with the whole practice that I decided to dedicate a few years of my life to sitting in meditation in a monastery with a Zen master.

🕊️ Life in a Zen monastery

Rick: Out in California, right?

Tony: That’s right. That was the first and only time I spent a few years in California. Beautiful place.

Rick: I found that phase of your story interesting, because you were doing something like 10 hours of meditation a day, plus working in the garden and doing other things like that, and you couldn’t get enough of it. You were only sleeping a few hours a night, I think, as I recall, but you liked it so much that you would actually do extra meditation sitting outside the Zen master’s door sometimes at night.

Tony: Exactly, exactly.

Rick: Yeah. And the reason I found that interesting is that I’ve talked to other people who did Zen meditation, like Adyashanti, Shinzen Young, and others, and it was a real grind for them because the struggle was difficult. They were in pain. They had to sit there even though they were in pain. It sounds to me like you really enjoyed it.

Tony: Well, I mean, it is painful to sit in the beginning, but most of the pain is emotional or mental. If your mind is blissful, then the pain can be transformed, just because you are in a blissful state, into something that’s not so present in the physical body.

For me, I was present to the joy of sitting in meditation and the gratitude to be in a place where that was possible. And not only was I sitting in meditation, but so many people were practicing meditation in the same way, creating this energy bubble, this place of meditation, where you just felt so in touch with the spiritual dynamics of the world. I can’t understand how anyone could not feel blissful in such a situation.

Rick: Well, you must have talked to some of your fellow monks there. For instance, with Adya and Shinzen, they both said that it wasn’t just the physical pain; it was that the mind was wandering, and there was a sort of inner struggle going on. But for you, it seems like you just naturally sank into a blissful state.

I find part of the reason that’s interesting is that the mechanics of TM, which you’ve been practicing, are effortless, and you don’t concentrate and so on. But then Zen involves concentration, as I understand it, and you managed to make that shift and yet still found it blissful.

Tony: Yes, I actually used the TM technique with Zen, so it wasn’t that I was just sitting and focused on the breath, counting, “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.” That was only at the beginning, to get the mind to be so focused and so clear that you could go a little bit beyond the mental, repetitive state of counting numbers.

I think numbers are very important, but I think creativity is much more. It’s a very powerful aspect of meditation that’s often forgotten when you get too caught up in techniques.

So I spoke to the Zen master about this. He said, of course, creativity is what meditation is about, but first you have to discipline the mind so that you don’t daydream and you don’t just use your creativity to fulfill your desires through your mundane imagination and stuff.

Maybe it’s just because of the sensitivity that I was initiated into as a child. It was easy. It wasn’t difficult, and that’s good. I think it should be easy for everyone.

As soon as meditation gets difficult, I believe that something has to change—that the way you’re approaching things has to change. Because part of my teachings, or everyone’s teachings, is that positivity—not in that sort of pretend way, but being positive internally and being positive about your practice—is one of the most important wisdom tools that you can apply in transformation.

Why the mind wanders

Rick: Maybe we can dip into the consideration of the mechanics of meditation here for a moment. Why would you say the mind wanders when you’re meditating? The whole point is to bring the mind into a fully focused, deep state. You don’t want to just be chit-chatting all over the place and wandering. So the question is, why is it wandering to begin with?

Tony: Well, the chit-chat is actually an important aspect for you, too, for anyone to realize. I don’t think that’s a negative. The mind wandering off and focusing on this and focusing on that is actually a very useful way to understand why the mind is working in that way in the first place. For me, if you want an intellectual description, it all has to do with the ego, this idea that we are separate from this moment.

This moment is recreated in the mind as something different from what it is. So there is this internal dialogue that’s constantly trying to reaffirm itself: “Okay, this moment means this.” And then the chit-chat happens because the ego is really separate from this moment.

But that’s just intellectual. For me, that doesn’t make sense when you’re actually sitting in meditation and the mind is chit-chatting. How you actually deal with it is more important. For me, the way to deal or interact with that inner communication is to come back to a level of heart connection that allows you to bypass the ego, meaning to come back to a real, deep feeling.

What that deep feeling means in the moment is very different from just saying, “Okay, I have to discipline my mind. I have to stop it from wandering.” I did that a few times because my mind is very, very clever. It manages to think about all sorts of things.

Rick: Yes, for whatever reason, as does everyone’s, pretty much.

Tony: Right, exactly. So I pushed myself to think about one thing, but you can’t do that with the mind. You have to come back to a heartfelt space of connection. For me, that is what is important to do. And so, if there is chit-chat, it’s just because we’re separate from the world; we’re separate from what’s going on.

Rick: Yeah. And when you come back to that heartfelt space of connection, what is your experience? Or what is one’s experience, just directly, not intellectually? What is the quality of that experience?

Tony: Well, I can speak from my perspective, but I think that shouldn’t be taken as what happens for everyone, because everyone is different. Everyone is unique. But for me, it’s deep stillness and joy, and also being able to laugh at things in a way where you don’t take your mind, and you don’t take what it thinks about, so seriously. You don’t look at it from that serious perspective.

Previously, before I sat in meditation, I would look at death, and I would look at suffering, from a very grim perspective. I would say, “Gosh, the world is a terrible place. How could we be in this sort of place? Why is that mess here in the first place?” It’s a very negative perspective.

And I understand the negativity in that perspective. Because, of course, if you’re separate from seeing things in a different way, then you see them from the only way possible, which is the mental one. But if you connect to this moment, which speaks a different language than just the mind, then you’re connecting to many, many aspects that are difficult to portray in language.

You’re connecting to yourself from a deeper perspective, and this is why there is stillness.

Rick: Yeah. That’s kind of what I was getting at. In my understanding, the mind wanders because it’s looking for happiness. If it’s not really finding it, if it’s just finding a little shred here and a little shred there, then its wandering is kind of constant and frenetic, and perhaps almost desperate.

It’s like a dog. Let’s say a dog is really hungry, and it’s sniffing all around the yard, looking for scraps of food or whatever. But if you put a bowl of food at the door, then the dog will just come in and focus there and be kind of settled with that bowl of food.

So, like what you’re saying about settling into the heart, that would be the bowl of food, and it’s so intrinsically gratifying that the frenetic wandering of the mind ceases. That sort of multidivergent, scattered quality of the mind converges into one-pointedness. That’s kind of what I was getting at.

Tony: Actually, the thing is, Western people have satisfied their basic needs, yes? But no one is satisfied. They’re still unsatisfied.

There are many people in Third World countries who are unhappy because their physical needs haven’t been met, but it’s the same circle. People are trying to satisfy those needs, thinking that those needs will bring them back to a space of stillness. But actually, it’s the mind that’s creating all the confusion.

So you can say—and I don’t say this to push aside that suffering—that when you don’t have enough food, it is important. I understand how important suffering is and how important it is to satisfy one’s hunger. But we can change the confusion around that picture by also remembering that the mind is what is creating the confusion. It’s not only the hunger.

So this gets into a place that’s perhaps not very politically correct. Even in India, because I worked in India for many months, when poor people don’t have enough, you can still come back to a place of happiness, even when those basic needs haven’t been fulfilled. So it’s not just about happiness.

There are many—I call them—egoic confusions that we chase in our mind as the bowl of food that the dog is looking for. And for some people, it gets even more complex than happiness. Then we start identifying happiness as very specific. We look at happiness, meaning that we think happiness is something, and that happiness then becomes very limited to that something.

In the Western world, it could be money. For some people, we don’t even know that we’re chasing money, because we’re looking for the happiness that’s behind the material world, where money becomes what we’re chasing. Or it could be sexual satisfaction, mental satisfaction, or physical satisfaction.

Rick: Yeah, but it kind of all boils down to happiness. We may not realize that that’s what we’re looking for, but that’s what we’re looking for.

Tony: Of course. If you’re not happy, you’re going to be confused about why you’re not connected to your heart.

Rick: Yes, and of course, all the scriptures say the kingdom of heaven is within. Satyananda says there’s this reservoir of inner happiness. And there’s something I just heard the other day from the Upanishads or something about how the Creator created the senses to be outward-directed by nature.

So we naturally start looking outside for that happiness that we inherently desire. But then someone like yourself, who learns to meditate, takes a 180-degree turn: “Ah, there’s where the happiness is. That’s the source of it.”

Tony: Exactly. But that’s actually a very simple step. It’s just the rewiring of the brain to connect to the internal communication that most of us, because of social belief systems, tend to ignore.

In the UK, you just don’t speak about yourself. You speak about everything else—the weather, politics, and whatever else. But you don’t speak about yourself, because looking internally is just seen as something that you don’t do. It’s just not normal.

So you have to rewire the brain to go beyond that social belief system, where you’re not just sitting in meditation and people then think, “Okay, you’re sitting and wasting time because you haven’t got anything better to do.” It’s an actual positive activity that changes things.

As we know from Google and from other big organizations, meditation actually helps people to be more real and more productive and to have more empathy. It’s not just that you are more awakened; you’re also more harmonious.

Rick: Yes. When I first learned to meditate, I used to go to a tree house in the backyard of the house where I was staying, because it was noisy in the house. The people wrote this song, “Hey, Jude, up in your tree, get out of you and into me.” I got that they thought I was just being self-indulgent or something.

Tony: But that’s basically what people think about meditation. It’s not understood, but now we’re beginning to understand it through the science and all the MRI imaging and that sort of new technology.

We understand that things are changing internally. We’re rewiring the brain, so it’s not a waste of time. It’s actually something that I believe will help humanity to transform consciousness from looking out all the time to realizing that we have precious gifts within ourselves that need to be explored, communicated, and investigated in a different way than history has allowed us to do.

Rick: You mentioned rewiring the brain, and I’ve heard you say that it might take 120 days to really reprogram the brain, to get rid of a particular habit or something. And, of course, the term neuroplasticity is very much in vogue these days.

But I would say that it’s not like the rewiring starts from day one and is cumulative. It seems incremental and cumulative. You can be going on for 50 years, and still, the rewiring takes place, and there’s always more that can be refined.

Tony: Exactly. That’s why it’s important to meditate every day, right? Not just to meditate once and then think, “Okay, I’ve done it,” and wait for another week or two weeks.

Consistency is what helps the brain to actually, as you say, create a space where there is an accumulative effect of the practice that makes sense to the brain. And sometimes it takes 50 years; sometimes it takes longer to change things. But at least you’re changing. In itself, there’s the joy of life: that you have the possibility to learn from the changes that are happening.

Rick: Jerry Seinfeld, you know, has been meditating for decades. He was right. He kind of quit the Seinfeld show because he was really tired. But he said that he later realized that if he were to meditate—he didn’t use to meditate in the morning because he figured, “Well, I’ve just slept, why bother?”—he would just meditate in the afternoon to recuperate.

He later realized that if he did it twice a day, he would have had much more energy during the whole day. He probably wouldn’t have quit the Seinfeld show. And then recently, he was talking to Tom Hanks, who was going to take a sabbatical for a year because he was burned out. Jerry said, “Well, learn to meditate, and you won’t need to do that.” And sure enough, that’s what happened.

Tony: Wow. Yeah, that’s exactly right. That’s one of the core aspects of universal teachings: meditate in the morning, meditate in the evening. Even if you have no time, just two minutes is better than nothing.

I think this should be something that children are taught at school, so that it’s normal.

Rick: And it is in some schools. Yeah. Wow, that’s amazing. There are schools in inner cities where programs of various different kinds of meditation are being offered, and in prisons and places like that. It’s really helping.

Tony: Perfect. Yes, yeah.

Yes. I believe this to be one of the major transformational tools, and this is why I’m so happy when the Dalai Lama goes around and inspires everyone with his smile and his compassion. Meditation is something that’s not exotic or dogmatic. You don’t have to be religious, and you don’t have to have certain strange belief systems that are different from your own. It’s just a practice, like anything else.

Rick: And a lot of that stigma has been eliminated since the ’60s and ’70s. It used to seem really weird and exotic. Now it’s kind of mainstream. I mean, yoga is taught on every street corner, practically in every YMCA. Meditation is kind of coming along with that, so it’s getting more into the culture.

Tony: I think in America you’re more advanced than in some Eastern European countries and in some other places. People still see meditation as a cult or as an Eastern religious practice, rather than as a neutral practice that has nothing to do with religion. It has to do with emotional well-being.

So there’s still some education that needs to happen in this part of the world, anyway. But I know in America, especially California and the Western states, you’re pretty advanced.

Rick: And there’s that popular phrase, “Spiritual, but not religious.” A lot of people categorize themselves that way. So maybe when you’re in Eastern countries, you can popularize that notion.

Leaving the monastery and entering the world

I’ll do my best. So anyway, let’s get back to you. You were in the Zen monastery, meditating your brains out and thoroughly enjoying it. You even took a vow of celibacy at a certain point there.

Tony: You have to be celibate in a monastery.

Rick: Of course. But I didn’t know, when you took that vow, were you thinking, “Okay, this is for life”? Or were you thinking, “Okay, well, as long as I’m in this monastery”?

Tony: Well, I didn’t know. I really went with an open mind. I thought I could be there for a week or for the rest of my life. I didn’t know. I would just see how things went.

Rick: And as it was, you were there, what, a year and a half or something?

Tony: Yeah, almost two years.

Rick: And what finally prompted you to leave?

Tony: Well, that’s complex. I’m very individualistic, so I felt that, as an individual, it’s important to share what I know with the world outside of a group setting. I still believe this to be important: Every human being is unique. We’re all born with gifts, and we don’t need to go to an ashram, a temple, or a monastery. I think those places have their place, but in the modern world, I truly believe that we have to be part of the world on some level and interact with the world on some level.

So I felt that was important, and it was my driving force to go back to the world and see if what I had actually experienced in this beautiful place—where I could have stayed, and it would have been easy and very blissful for me—could be transferred into a world where everyone is faced with stress, anxiety, pollution, noise, and people who aren’t so nice or so open. There are people who are negative in their perspective, in their communication, and in what they do to you.

I wanted to see if I could survive with this in the world. It was much more difficult than I thought, actually. It was almost like going out naked into the world. It was quite an experience. I felt that everyone was just screaming at me. The noise and the amount of aggression and disharmony that were obvious in the world were a lot to cope with during the first few weeks.

But I managed. We’re adaptable. We human beings are really adaptable. You get over that sensitivity and toughen up.

Rick: So, okay, that was California. Will we be skipping ahead to get to India now, or was there something significant in between?

Tony: No, that was basically it. From California, I went back to the UK and just lived life there, working a little bit and doing things, adapting to the situation, and then going to India. I went just because it’s a fascinating place. I was very fascinated with the history, especially the Jain tradition—the very peaceful tradition—and the Hindu tradition. There’s also the Christian tradition that is present there, which is a type of Christianity that is very important in India.

Rick: Did you meet Father Bede Griffiths by any chance?

Tony: No, I didn’t, actually. But I met many very interesting people, many sadhus, and many, I would say, awakened people. It was an amazing experience for me, which helped me to really clarify the teaching that I began to search for after leaving India, with a group of friends and a few people around me.

Rick: Did you spend time with Osho? I know—is there some book about you and Osho or something?

Tony: No, but I’ve met many people who had spent time with Osho or were alive when Osho was alive and were part of the movement. It was in India where you meet all sorts of people. I wasn’t traveling as a tourist. I was moving from one place to another, visiting great places, so I would meet interesting people who were on that sort of journey—a pilgrimage, so to say.

Rick: Meanwhile, were you doing some sort of spiritual practice as you traveled around? Maybe you were sampling other spiritual practices, trying this and trying that, and learning from other teachers?

Tony: No, I was just interested in being present to the energy that was around me. I wasn’t actually learning anything more than what I had learned in my previous practice in the Zen monastery or through the TM-type meditation.

When you learn something, I think, in the end, there is no need to look into everything. Once you’re established in a practice, the practice teaches you. But what is important is to be around people or in an atmosphere that is awakened.

This is what I was actually looking for in India: to sit in a temple that was just beautiful and to be able to practice there without having to say, “Okay, I want to learn a little bit more about Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, or the Osho practice.” There’s nothing wrong with learning all these things, but for me, I was too busy in my own practice to spend time learning more things. That was already full-time work.

Nonverbal Transmission Across Traditions

It was just meeting people, sitting near sadhus, and having them say nothing while I simply sat there. Perhaps there is some sort of transmission that happens when you are in that space. It’s nonverbal and goes beyond learning a technique or learning a specific tradition. So this is perhaps why the teaching today is very eclectic. It brings in many traditions.

Rick: By “teaching,” you mean your teaching?

Tony: Yeah. It’s not, “This is what you have to do.” I adapt to the situation according to the people I’m working with. If they’re medical practitioners, Hindus, or Christians, I try to speak the same language so that I’m not speaking a foreign language and there is a connection somewhere. So it’s eclectic.

Rick: That’s good. I think if that’s approached in the right spirit, it’s very wise. It speaks of a universality in your perspective: All streams lead to the ocean, and whichever stream you happen to be flowing in will take you to the ocean. Here’s some support, some context in which you can flow with less obstruction.

Tony: Exactly. But I do truly emphasize that everything is universal. People who think that one practice is better or different from another are engaging in a kind of spiritual egotism. People say, “I’m a Buddhist, and that’s the best you can be,” or, “I’m a Hindu,” or, “I’m a Christian, and this is the only way.”

I think we’re beyond that. Perhaps that was the history of humanity in the past, but today there is a universal sort of truth that needs to be explored from different angles. We can share that interesting understanding in different ways—through poetry, creativity, and music—and it just enhances our understanding of that ocean. It doesn’t create a difference. It just allows us to see that people see things differently. Some people look at the trees, other people look at the plants, or the roses, or whatever.

Rick: When people try to tell me that such-and-such is the only way, I like to start talking astronomy with them. I say, “Well, physicists and cosmologists now think there may be an infinite number of universes. There are thought to be two trillion galaxies in our universe, and there are probably 100 billion stars in each galaxy. The Kepler telescope now indicates that there are planets around most stars, many of them apparently habitable. Undoubtedly, on those habitable planets there have been many religions. All right, so probably most of those religions are saying, ‘Ours is the only way.’ How crazy is that?”

Tony: Exactly. There is a multidimensionality even to those galaxies and stars, so we don’t even know what is going on. This gets a bit esoteric, but we don’t even know if what is going on in this linear dimension is an expression of reality. We’re just comfortable with this linear dimension.

Speaking about religious truths from this dimension will always result in conflict. But what if we go for a little bit of a deeper perspective? When we dream, are we dreaming the same dream? That’s a different level of reality. Perhaps we’re all dreaming from the very same perspective, but we can’t communicate that because it’s so beyond language.

We only remember aspects of the dream when we come out of sleep and return to the mental, conceptual level of thinking. Then we can say, “Oh, I dreamed yesterday that I was floating in water,” but all of a sudden we’re out of that level of communication.

That’s important, and that’s just one level. Beyond that, there are many levels. This is why my teaching is not so much about using words. I’m very careful. This is perhaps why I didn’t use so many words with you. I try to make it as simple as possible because in the end, it’s all about transmission.

For me, rather than intellectually trying to make sense of what it means to meditate, it’s all about practice. But we have to start somewhere, especially when you have an active mind that is asking all these questions: “Why am I sitting here when I could be going to the beach?” Or, “Why am I sitting here when this is so boring?”

People say meditation can be so boring. Then we have to explore the multidimensionality of experience beyond just, “Sit here because you will feel better,” or, “Sit here because you will find happiness.” There is another space that we just haven’t begun to understand, and this is why it’s so important.

✨ Awakening and the big shift

Rick: I guess one way of describing it is as if you want to just use metaphors, there’s the horizontal view that you might get looking at the ocean, but then there’s a vertical dimension that you don’t necessarily see if you’re just looking at the surface. And if you think you understand the Pacific Ocean, let’s say, just by looking at the surface, you’ve just begun. I mean, there’s all this depth and all these life forms, ones that live at various levels and so on. And you have to sort of take a three-dimensional perspective to really understand the ocean. And the same with creation, the same with our experience. Spirituality is like diving in that respect, I think.

Tony: Like surfing. I know for those who surf, every wave is different. And you can only experience it as a total experience in that moment. And it makes total sense when you’re there. And then it’s never that you’ve experienced that wave before, or that you understand the ocean, because it’s different every time.

Rick: Yeah. So, in your interview with Conscious TV, one of them, I heard you mention that at one point there was a kind of big “aha” realization moment for you. What was that? Again, we’re—yeah, what you just said, words are so inadequate. I have seen people producing YouTube videos in which they just stare at the camera, and I think, “I can’t interview this person. I’ve got to talk. I’ve got to have a dialogue.”

Tony: Well, I think everyone has these “aha” moments. And I would say, if you want to explain those in words, they’re little aha moments. When there is an aha moment that is a million times or a trillion times more profound, it’s the same, but your mind just restructures in such a radical way that it’s not the same.

In the end, when you come back to your mind, it’s not the same, right? You don’t fall back into the old social habits or the old belief systems. It’s like something transforms, and then the neurons just melt and you rewire them in a different way. Is that making sense?

Rick: I’m going to press you a little bit more on it. Given that we understand the limitations of words, and how words can’t really do justice to this experience any more than describing what a strawberry tastes like is going to be the same as actually tasting one, what more can you describe about what happened?

Tony: Well, I can’t describe exactly in words what happened, but I can describe some of the transformations that happened later.

So, I was in meditation, and I would come out of meditation feeling more relaxed, more connected, more still, more energized, more alive. That was my experience. But very often, I would fall back into a system that would require more meditation, right? I’m not saying I resolved all the problems in the world, but somehow, the problems didn’t seem so important.

From that moment, I expanded into a different dimension. It was almost like I was looking at the world from outside in, rather than from inside out. I don’t know if that makes sense to you.

Rick: Yes, it kind of does. So, you shifted into some universal awareness, which was, yes, kind of like how some people think, “Okay, I am inside this body looking out,” and then at a certain point a shift can happen in which you realize, “Oh, this body is really inside me.”

Tony: Yes, even to the extent where you’re looking and you realize that the body isn’t even really part of your experience. The body is just as temporary. Now, of course, it’s not exactly the same, but this is just to make sense of it. It’s as if you would see something moving—you see it there, and it’s permanent. Then it moves out of your vision, you don’t see it, and it’s gone.

So, that same relationship to the body, and that same relationship to the old personality—I would like to call it the personality I was born with. Looking out from the inside, nothing really changed, because people still recognized me. I was still Tony. It wasn’t like I changed my name and all of a sudden started speaking a different language. Certain characteristics that people identified as me were still present: my movements, the way I looked at people, the structure was still there, but something…

Rick: You didn’t start speaking Swahili all of a sudden or something. You’re still you; you have your individual structure, which…

Tony: Yes, actually, I became more comfortable in the individual structure because I wasn’t identifying with it. I was looking from outside in, and I would slip into that and, at times, slip out because of the experience, which, as you say, is a universal experience. It allows you to connect to another aspect of what I believe to be everyone’s personality: this universality of consciousness that we are constantly dipping into.

For me, this is why we have the aha moments, but we don’t remember them, because they’re so quick that it’s not dramatic enough to shift your awareness into this recognition. But when there is a very powerful, dramatic event and this shift is remembered for much longer—I don’t know if it’s remembered forever. For me, forever, so far, so far—but for some people, I’ve read that there is a gradual awakening.

This was the debate in Zen Buddhism. There was the Rinzai School of Zen Buddhism, which is, you know, one awakening and you’re there; you are free of the ego. And then there is the—I’m simplifying—the other school that speaks about gradual awakening, where you just move deeper and deeper into the space of awakening. It makes more sense; you feel more comfortable. So, I believe they’re both right.

I believe that some people have an experience of awakening after which it’s impossible to fall back into the old ways of doing things. And there are other people who have those moments of awakening that aren’t really moments; they may be two or three minutes that are remembered for a long time, but there needs to be more work to awaken, to awaken the mind to radical shifts.

✨ Gradual awakening and psychedelic shortcuts

Rick: We were talking about the brain and the nervous system a little earlier, and neuroplasticity. There’s a physiological correlation to enlightenment, or to higher states of consciousness, or whatever. The physiology doesn’t utterly transform itself in an instant. It takes time for the neurons to rewire and all that stuff.

So, I think practically speaking, like you said, there can be both. There can be many years of gradual, incremental transformation, both subjectively and physiologically, and then, at a certain point, when you’re ready, there can be a rather profound and dramatic shift, which can be permanent. There’s no conflict between the two notions, I think.

Tony: And who knows what happened before? For example, with Rumi, who met his spiritual master and was awakened in that moment. But he was obviously awakened, writing poetry and being very wise, prior to that moment. So, I believe there were many moments of gradual insight that allowed your brain, your physiology, your nervous system, and your mind to be capable of such a radical shift.

Because actually, it can be quite dangerous, I believe, if you’re not prepared for a radical shift. And this is why—I’m not against drugs—I’m always cautioning people. Many people say, “But why would you sit and meditate every day when you can just take some drugs that will change your consciousness immediately, and it’s quicker?”

No, it’s not. In the end, you still have to prepare for the shift. So, in that way, it’s not quicker, and you can get very confused when you come back to this reality and you have to work with what you’ve already seen. Knowing, in this way, using drugs, what you have to do, it’s very confusing to have to do all those things.

In the end, it’s better, in my perspective, to take things slowly and gradually enhance your awareness so that you’re capable of deeper awareness. Don’t push your awareness into a state that is so unable to process the information that sometimes a regression happens.

In the end, it’s better, in my perspective, to take things slowly and gradually enhance your awareness so that you’re capable of deeper awareness. Don’t push your awareness into a state that is so unable to process the information that sometimes a regression happens.

In the end, it’s better, in my perspective, to take things slowly and gradually enhance your awareness so that you’re capable of deeper awareness.

This is why meditation is so very important. And this is what gradual awakening means. I believe every moment we sit in meditation, we’re awakening our consciousness. This is why it’s so profoundly important, like you’re saying, because it gives you energy, brings back vitality, and promotes health.

Rick: Yes, there are a few popular phrases that are appropriate here: slow and steady wins the race; safety first. With drugs, the drugs can give you a glimpse, and you may never forget that glimpse. You might realize, “Wow, there is something really profound that I don’t ordinarily experience,” and you could come back to that, maybe. But they don’t really have the capability of producing the neurophysiological transformation in a thorough and stable way that’s going to enable you to live that as a natural state twenty-four-seven.

Tony: Exactly. And some people using drugs may be offended by what I’m saying, but I believe that sometimes it’s important to see things in a different way. When you travel and see a country that’s totally different from where you live, and how people do things differently from the way that you do things, it opens your mind.

But beyond that, the opening has to happen in a natural, very accumulative way, and this is why meditation is the central core of what I teach to people.

Rick: Yes, in my position, talking to all these people and having all these people listen, I often get reports of people who have gotten into serious trouble. I mean, I get good reports from people doing ayahuasca and stuff, and I know you’ve done that, and maybe we’ll get on to that. But I also get the car-wreck stories of people really getting into trouble, or having Kundalini awakenings for which they weren’t prepared, not necessarily exactly through drugs but through other means, and then being incapacitated and all.

So, there’s real value, I think, in cultivating the nervous system, doing something in a stable, steady, safe manner that’s going to be effective in the long term.

Tony: Exactly. Because in the end, that’s what matters. It’s not just a quick fix. Western people are into the marathon, not a sprint, as you say. It’s not about instant satisfaction, because in the end, it’s about your life, what happens with your life, and the legacy that you leave behind.

Just one moment of, say, LSD or ayahuasca can rewire the brain in such a way that there is more difficulty. You’re actually having to do more work rather than less work.

Rick: Yes, it can do some damage that has to be undone.

Tony: For sure. I’m sure you know, it’s not new to me. I was in the Amazon rainforest, working with Native people, and I was initiated in the ritual of ayahuasca.

I would never recommend it anymore to people unless there are very specific ailments that they have, such as cancer or something similar. Perhaps, because of such physical ailments, they don’t have the time. Then they need to work through things physically that transform their body. But for mental stability and for mental clarity and focus, it’s not the way for me.

Rick: Like you said, there are specific things. I mean, Johns Hopkins is doing studies now with psilocybin and its efficacy, and how it is helping people with various addictions and things like that. So, sure, we never know—never say never. There’s a value in these things.

But if you’re a serious spiritual practitioner who is interested in enlightenment, it may be tempting to go for shortcuts. In our culture, the fast-food culture, people are always interested in those. But for sure, it is good to be really sober about this stuff and careful.

Tony: Why try to get somewhere when it’s so enjoyable to sit in meditation, when it’s so fun to explore consciousness and learn about yourself, the world, and reality from a different perspective?

People who seek instant satisfaction are usually depressed, and depression needs to be worked with prior to trying to change your life. You need to understand the psychology of your personality and being before you start using whatever to change that.

Meditation can be very difficult if you’re depressed, because very often it makes you more depressed. People have told me this. They sit in meditation and say, “It’s not like you say. It’s not a joyous experience. I’m not feeling blissful. I’m not feeling happy. I just remember how depressed I am, and I sit there feeling worse.” But even that’s part of the transformation.

Rick: Being part of that washing-machine dissolution effect we’re talking about in the beginning, where the stuff is actually being resolved and you feel it more acutely.

Tony: Well, it’s being resolved. Exactly—the healing crisis, right?

Rick: A few minutes ago, you mentioned Rumi, and we were talking about awakening being either gradual or instantaneous, and the various degrees of awakening. That reminded me of a Sufi saying that I think is apropos: There is an end to the path to God, but there’s no end to the path in God.

Very nice. Yeah, I like that. That’s very good.

We had technical problems in the beginning, and we lost some of the time that I had hoped to spend with you. I know you have to go in about half an hour.

Tony: Oh, yes.

Rick: What have we not covered yet that you want to be sure to cover in this interview? We can do another one in the future, but for today, what are some important things that you’d like to bring out that we haven’t had a chance to discuss?

Tony: I would say what you eat—your diet. I believe this to be very important, simply because the Western diet is so unhealthy, and it’s not suited for meditation. It doesn’t support meditation.

I’m not saying vegetarianism is the way, but just making sure that the food you eat supports the physiological and neurological changes in your mind and your brain. I would say it’s important to eat less of certain foods, such as foods that stimulate the mind, especially sugar. I would also say, eat less meat and more plant-based foods.

Of course, seek to avoid overly processed foods, with all the MSG, colorings, and what have you. This is all obvious to people who are already meditating and choosing a healthy lifestyle. But I do believe this to be a very important aspect of transformation, because the physical body is part of the transformation. We’re not just transforming the mind; we need to take into account the physical body.

Rick: Yes. I live in a town where a lot of people meditate—Fairfield, Iowa—and a lot of people became vegetarians years ago. I see them in the grocery store buying doughnuts and stuff. It’s not as though everybody, although I’m sure some are, is on a healthy routine.

I think there’s a lot of people who could use a lot more exercise and a healthier diet. A healthier diet doesn’t just mean vegetarianism; it means some of the things you just mentioned. A lot of times, people end up heavy on starches and sugars and having cravings because they’re not getting enough protein. Then we can run into serious health problems down the line.

Tony: I think people who are not healthy vegetarians can really damage their bodies. There is something called vitamin B12 deficiency, which neurologically makes it more difficult to relax and meditate. If you don’t have B12, you can easily suffer from depression and neurological damage.

If you’re eating doughnuts, or even vegan doughnuts or whatever, that’s not the way. What I’m saying is to reduce certain foods and increase the foods that support the nervous system and the brain to function in a better way.

We know, for example, that the Mediterranean diet is heavy on plant-based foods: lots of vegetables, a variety of vegetables, and a variety of fruit. It doesn’t include all these trans fats, doughnuts, and sugars. It’s based on fresh produce.

I noticed this while in America. Generally, people are into fast food and quick food. In Italy, there is this slow-food movement, where everything is cooked right from the beginning. I know people don’t have time, but if you’re serious about transformation, make time to exercise and make time to eat food that is transformative.

I always make sure that diet is something I convey in the retreats that people come to. It’s a habit, and once you create a healthy habit, it’s easy to put into practice. Yet it’s also easy to reach for things like pizza or burgers or what have you. But it’s just as easy, if you know how, to prepare something that’s slightly healthier.

That doesn’t mean you have to be fanatical. Some people get obsessed with food. I’m not talking about being obsessed with everything that you eat, because that’s another diversion, but just being aware.

I’ve noticed that many people who meditate come to me and say, “Well, I’m not interested in the physical aspect. I’m more interested in transforming the ego mind.” There isn’t that correlation. The Buddha worked with his body, and every mystic works with their body to transform it and prepare for this awakening experience. It’s a slow process, changing your habits, but the body is the temple of the soul.

Rick: Exactly.

Tony: And exercising, like you do, is so easy. Just walking or swimming, or whatever exercise you can do. If you’ve got a dog, you can chase the dog, kick a ball, or do whatever with your dog. It’s fun.

Too many people sit. This is the thing in the Western world. People think, and also in the Zen Buddhist center, sitting was an incredibly difficult thing for me to do because I had to sit for 16 hours when doing intensive meditation. That’s difficult, but there was always a five-minute break where you would walk around.

Rick: There’s a saying these days in medical circles that sitting is the new smoking. In other words, they understand now that physical inactivity is extremely deleterious.

The reason we’re dwelling on this—I mean, people might be wondering, “What is this turning into, some kind of health lecture?”—is that the principle here, which hopefully is clear, is that the body is a vehicle. It’s the vehicle through which, if we want enlightenment and so on, we need to attend to the body. If that body is damaged in some way or malfunctioning, it’s going to be an impediment to our progress.

Tony: As you say, what is meditation? It’s about finding a state of happiness that is sustainable. If the body is not happy, then how can the mind be happy? If the mind is not happy, how can the body be?

Rick: They are correlated, or interrelated, very closely. If you were to sit somebody like the Buddha, Ramana Maharshi, Jesus, or somebody like that down and hook them up to an EEG and various other physiological measurements, you’d find, I think, that those physiological measurements were quite distinctly different from the norm, from the average that you saw.

That person was not only in a very different state subjectively; their whole physiology had been transformed in its functioning.

Tony: Exactly. That is my “work”: to change the physical body so that there isn’t a shock from, as you were saying previously, a kundalini energy movement. The body is sensitive to energy but able to sustain that energy, which is something that, as a child, I wasn’t able to do.

This is why I was so sick as a child. I haven’t been sick—touch wood—since being a teenager, for many years, because your body heals when your mind heals, and your mind heals when your body heals. I think this is important.

The other thing that perhaps is useful is moments of stillness and integration.

We are fed too much information. There is just too much information out there—books, YouTube, videos, and what have you. There is an overload, and we don’t give ourselves enough time to just be still, to do nothing.

To sit with your dog and pet it and just enjoy doing nothing, or to sit in the garden, relaxed—such moments allow for creativity.

If you remember what I was speaking about, creativity is a fundamental part of the meditational technique that I work with. Creativity is missing in people’s lives because we’re too busy.

There is something else I speak about: journaling or creating a vision board, where you simply allow creativity to manifest within stillness, or within the “just doing nothing” space.

✨ Awakening in a changing world

Rick: You were talking a minute ago about preparing the body to be able to sustain the intensity of spiritual energy. In your book that I was reading, you said the energy of the world is becoming more intense.

One more little thing for you: I see the world getting more positive, and I see us entering an era where light is more abundant and more present than it has ever been throughout recent history.

One thing that I keep encountering is people who weren’t even that interested in spiritual reality—maybe not at all. They liked to watch football and have a beer, and all of a sudden they had some kind of spiritual awakening and didn’t know what to do with it. It totally rocked their world.

In your teaching and your activity as a spiritual teacher, have you run into such people who have had a spiritual awakening for which they appeared not to have been prepared? Have you been able to help them adjust to it and normalize?

Tony: Yes, many, many people. I believe that, as you said, the world is more positive, meaning that the situations around us are more difficult. But because we are challenged to make a choice, many of us make the choice to come back to an awareness that is very positive.

That means that we want to change. We don’t want to just be in limbo. We don’t want to just sit on the fence. We want to change.

Many people are doing that without realizing why they’re doing it. It’s just an internal dialogue happening, perhaps on a subconscious level, that allows them to all of a sudden wake up one day and find that something is different.

They know they have to do things in a different way, yet often they don’t know how to do this. Then they begin searching.

Very often, many people find something like meditation, or some sort of technique or healing modality, that changes their whole perspective. This is something that I very much like to work with in the retreats: how to create a space that goes beyond just the negativity of looking at the world as a difficult place, because so many people do that.

So many people watch the news, football, or entertainment on television because, on some level, the mind has been overwhelmed by the negativity of all the information that’s out there, as well as by the internal negativity—the negative belief systems.

Some people get caught in this circle and sort of give up. Many people give up and want to entertain their minds with all sorts of information.

This is why there are people watching the news, connected to Facebook or social media, and addicted to it all the time: because they’re too afraid to face that aspect of themselves that allows for this change.

Tony: But I believe the positivity that is in the world today allows many to make a choice to step out of that limbo situation where they’re just being entertained and make a choice: “Okay, I want to do things differently.” They ask themselves, “How can I do this in a different way?” And then, as you know, if you begin to look for something, it just simply appears.

Rick: Yes, that’s true. Seek and you shall find—it really works!

Tony: It does. Wherever your focus is, that’s where the energy goes. And that’s where manifestation happens. So I believe that we can manifest many interesting things. Even if it’s not directly learning techniques of meditation, it could be just situations or people we meet that make a big difference in our lives and help us to take another step into a world that we perhaps would never have gotten into if we hadn’t met those people.

Rick: Yes, but when you say the energy of the world is becoming more intense, do you mean that the collective consciousness is rising in some fundamental way? My sense of that is, if you take the analogy of a forest, let’s say somehow the ground in the forest became more fertile, becoming a lot more fertile for some reason. All the plants would find themselves growing more quickly, both the weeds, maybe, and the good plants. So this is a sort of acceleration, with all kinds of tendencies—almost paradoxically opposed ones, negative and positive—and the drama is getting more dramatic.

Tony: That’s exactly right. That’s exactly what I mean. You know, the contrast between everything becomes so obvious for people who are aware. If you’re looking at the situation that we know is there, it’s not because things are getting worse, but because we need to make a choice: either to give up or to move with the transformation, to allow that transformation to happen. So the forest is growing, and we have to grow with the forest because we are part of the forest. We can’t just sit and pretend that everything is accelerating and nothing is happening to us as individuals.

If we go with that flow, then that’s the intensity. Things can dramatically transform now more easily. We can change things more easily now than perhaps 1,000 years ago.

For some reason, I believe that everyone who’s incarnated and manifested in this world today is gifted. It’s not about this being a difficult time; it’s actually a beautiful time to learn about consciousness. Perhaps we’ve gone through these periods before during the history of evolution, but I believe this time is even more powerful.

Rick: I think it is. So I think what you’re saying is that it’s a time of great opportunity.

Tony: Exactly.

Rick: I think somebody was telling me recently—it was somebody who speaks Chinese, I think—that the symbol for crisis in the Chinese language also contains the symbol for opportunity.

Tony: Exactly. You know, if you’re not challenged, how do you grow? We’re all being challenged as humanity. All humanity is being challenged now by the situations that we’re facing, whatever they are. For instance, climate change, if you believe in climate change. Some people don’t.

Rick: Some people don’t question a belief. Some people believe in gravity.

Tony: Some people don’t. But all these things are not negative, as some people worry. Some scientists worry because I studied science at university—that was what I studied. Scientists have said, “We’ve reached a point where perhaps we’ll never be able to go back. It’s reached a point where the crisis is so bad that it’s not reversible.”

But I don’t see it like that. I really see things changing dramatically in ways that we don’t recognize even in science today, because reality is much more complex than the linear perspective on which old science—not the new science—has based itself.

Rick: Well, that’s not to say that these changes are not going to be dramatic. I mean, there was a glacier in Antarctica that showed signs of melting and breaking up. If it does, sea levels could rise 10 to 13 feet in a relatively short amount of time, which is going to displace 145 million people. It’s going to make the Syria problem look like a Boy Scout picnic or something.

So the world could be headed for some pretty intense things as these changes take place. But I think, concurrently, there is a spiritual awakening taking place. It’s funny and interesting to ponder the juxtaposition of this inner and outer change.

Tony: Exactly. You know, I was watching something on a video a long time ago, and it was in Syria. It was about a piano player playing the piano in the middle of a war zone.

Rick: Wow.

Tony: It was so incredible. There was the contrast of bombs, destroyed houses, and people in a sort of confused state of war, and then this person was playing classical music on a piano.

So, yes, we are heading toward a situation where there will be extremes. I do hope that the glaciers in Antarctica and all the ice don’t melt, as people are saying will happen, because it’s not just about the sea rising; it’s also about currents changing. In science, this is what they’re afraid of. The currents changing means that the whole world’s ecosystem will just collapse.

Rick: Well, if the Gulf Stream stops, then Great Britain is going to have a climate like northern Canada.

Tony: Yes, exactly. Who knows what else? But even in those moments, it is still possible to connect to consciousness. This is what I was saying in the beginning: even when there is starvation, war, and pain, we still have access to consciousness that allows us intuition and creativity—to be like that piano player and create music.

Music is the language of peace and the language that comes from the depth of one’s heart.

Music is the language of peace and the language that comes from the depth of one’s heart. To create music in this way hopefully inspires people. What inspired me, of course, was seeing someone in such a situation giving his musical talent to the world rather than adding to the confusion that is obvious when you’re in a war zone.

Rick: Yes, and I would not say “even in those moments.” I would say especially in those moments. I think that if we lived in a heavenly world, people might not have the motivation to look within and strive for enlightenment. But when the going gets rough, people begin to feel that this is so unsatisfactory—there must be something deeper.

Tony: Exactly.

Rick: Well, we should wrap it up pretty soon. Is there anything else that’s dear to your heart that we haven’t had a chance to express? Last time I asked you that question, you mentioned diet. Do you want to give people an overview of your teaching activities and how you offer what you offer?

Tony: Actually, I work online a lot.

Rick: Yes, that’s why we have to wrap it up, because you have an online webinar coming up in a few minutes.

Tony: I think this is an easy way for people to connect today. There are many programs that include not just the idea behind the programs. It’s not just more information; it’s also about transmission, so it’s an energetic experience.

Rick: Do you feel that can be done online? Even though people are all over the world, is there definitely an energetic transmission?

Tony: For sure. It’s like meditating. The more people who meditate, it doesn’t matter if they’re sitting in China or sitting in Chile—there is a connection on this other, multidimensional level that is very obvious. This is why it’s so important that many people connect on this level.

It’s not just about the numbers. It’s the fact that we—well, this is for another interview—but we can move from one dimension to another within our perceptions and really connect to what transmission means, just as we connect to the warmth of the sun or the beauty of the ocean. There is so much intuitive connection that happens online.

For those who want to work in a personal setting, I do this in retreats, which are usually in Portugal. (Note: Since March 2020, all Tony’s retreats have been conducted online.)

Rick: You and Mooji.

Tony: For some reason, that’s interesting. I was there before Mooji moved there. There are some other people moving into Portugal. It’s interesting, and I do believe it’s an amazing, beautiful place. It’s not just beautiful; the energy is beautiful. So that’s where the retreats are held. I do some talks in the UK, and all the information is on the website, TonySamara.com.

Rick: And I’ll be linking to that, obviously. Well, we’ll do another one of these one of these days. I’m sure there are plenty of points we could have discussed, and we’ll discuss them next time around.

So, thanks. Let me make a few little wrap-up points. I’ve been speaking with Tony Samara, and you’ve learned a lot about him in the last hour and a half. You can go to his website to learn more. This is an ongoing series of interviews, as most of you know.

If you’d like to be notified of future ones as they are posted, you can sign up for my email newsletter list on https://batgap.com.

Also, explore the menus there and you’ll see what else is offered, one of which is an audio podcast of the show. If you’d like to listen while you commute, you can do that.

One other thing is that I’ve been speaking with a representative at YouTube. There’s this thing where, if you have 100,000 subscribers to your show, you get all sorts of special support and everything from YouTube. I’m currently at 28,000 after seven years, but I’d like to encourage people watching to subscribe. Just hit the Subscribe button on the YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Batgap.

That basically just means you’ll get an email once in a while from YouTube notifying you of new shows on any channel to which you subscribe. But it’ll help BatGap a lot if you do that. It will help me get more support from YouTube and collaboration with them.

So thanks for that, and thanks for listening or watching. And thank you, Tony. I really appreciate your time. I really enjoyed preparing for this and doing it. You’re an interesting guy to talk to.

Tony: Thank you very much.

Rick: So thanks, everybody, and we’ll see you next time.