Transcript of SAND Panel Discussion — John Hagelin, Igor Kufayev, and Mark McCooey

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SAND Panel Discussion — John Hagelin, Igor Kufayev, and Mark McCooey

Rick Archer: Greetings. Thank you for coming. My name is Rick Archer. And I have an interview show called Buddha, the gas pump. And there are a number of points which come up in the interviews, which I feel need to be clarified. For more for the general spiritual community, not that I’m necessarily in a position to clarify them. But we’re all on this path together. And I think there are certain understandings that need to be worked out in greater depth and detail. So I asked Maurizio if I might give a presentation here about those points. And he said, Great. And then I thought, well, you know, it’d be more interesting if it were a panel. So I began to think of friends, whom I would like to invite. And here we have our panel, I’d like to introduce them, maybe starting with John at the far end. And then we’ll get right into it. Time is very short. And we are not actually going to take questions during our 45 minutes, but we’re coming right up to the lunch break. So at the end, we’ll sit here as long as you like and discuss and answer questions. However, John has a flight to catch at 210. And he’s going to just fly out of here. So please don’t waylay him with any questions or anything. He has to just go as crazy as even here and I really appreciate his taking the time. I first met John over 40 years ago, as he said yesterday, he was immobilized in a body cast. This is in his prep school infirmary, which where I ran into him. And there’s an interesting story behind that behind that, which I won’t tell at the moment. But when he was released from the body cast, he had so much momentum built up that he just flew into a wonderful career and became a world class  quantum physicist. You’ve probably heard his bio if you’ve been to any of his presentations, but he is an ex educator, a public policy expert, and leading proponent of peace. He received degrees from Dartmouth Harvard, and conducted pioneering research at CERN, the European Center for particle physics, and slack the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. His contributions in the fields of electroweak unification, grand unification, supersymmetry and cosmology include some of the most cited references in the physical sciences. He’s also responsible for the development of a highly successful Grand Unified Field Theory, based on the superstring by Dr. Hagelin is unique among scientists, in being the first to apply this most advanced knowledge for the practical benefit of humankind. He has pioneered the use of unified field based technologies proven to reduce crime, violence, terrorism, and war and to promote peace throughout society, technologies derived from the ancient Vedic Science of consciousness to John’s left, it’s funny when I invited John Maurizio said, Well, John has done quite a few talks, you also need to get some fresh blood in there. So these two gentlemen are as fresh as blood gets. To John’s left is Mark McCooey. And he’s never really spoken before in the kind of context that he’s about to speak. But he has been teaching meditation for over 40 years and by keeping in contact with even the earliest of his students over the course of that time, has become very familiar with their detailed descriptions of higher states of consciousness. Mark speaks about the experiences of higher states from the perspective of yoga or union with non dual being, being a ground floor baseline for great beauty and development to follow. He quotes as follows our earliest experiences of non dual reality carry great freedom and liberation, that infinite being now knows itself without restrictions to be unbounded, yet still does not know still does not understand intimately, the mystery of the world and environment that it surrounds in the non dual state being is now liberated from thinking it is an individual and now needs to uncover its deeper role in the many forms and contents of the environment. This even deeper mystery needs to be solved, but it is now non dual being that is the detective, not the individual person. And Mark speaks from experience and having written that, and then to my right igaku Five was born in 1966. in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. In his childhood, he had many experiences associated With awakening of latent energy, classically trained in art from an early age, he was recognized as something of a prodigy, a one time student at the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts, Igor had his first solo X, X. X ambition at the age of 25, and by his early 30s, enjoyed an international art career in London. Alongside of his passion for art, he was always drawn to Eastern philosophies with yoga and meditation as part of his daily activities. At the age of 36, Igor had undergone a radical transformation of consciousness, which subsequently blossomed into spontaneous unfoldment of grace. He abandoned his art career, and for the next five years continued long hours of meditation, integrating expanded state of conscious awareness throughout all of his interactions. Igor points out that awakening takes place on a cellular level, and it is the physiology with its nervous system that acts as a support for individual consciousness to mature into full Enlightenment. It can be said that his methods are rooted in Tantra. Having studied such diverse traditions as Vedanta, tantra, Sufi and Zen, he remains elusive to categorization categorization, saying that, abiding in a state of spontaneous absorption transcends the boundaries of any given truth, based on intellectual grasp of ultimate reality. Kashmir, Shaivism became the focal point of his interest. Its transcendental physicalism appealed to his down to earth creative sensibility, you need to that tradition of the doctrine of sponder had been verified by direct experience in perceiving the world as a throb of pure consciousness in the heart of his own. He’s referring to his own experience here, he addresses the question of freewill and non dual awareness and responsibility that comes with the realization that the manifested world is not an illusion, but pulsating with infinite possibilities, reality itself. So that was a fairly long introduction to everyone. But I wanted to give you their background. And we’ve Igor is going to speak first. And then after he does, I want to just bring up a few of these points that I mentioned, kind of bugged me that are, you know, out there and perhaps need a little bit deeper discussion. And then all of us, John, and Mark, in particular, will will address those points. So ego.

Igor Kufayev: The word of this, as you see it, apparently attributed to the great sage or Schuster, what does that mean? It means that reality is perceptual. It is as we perceive it. And in order for that to happen, there has to be three components. There has to be the seer, the scene and the scene. So, the relationship between the three that wants to give us all this gamut of what we call experience, without the three, there’s no experience at all. When we say the seer seeing in the scene, we obviously mean by that all the range of other sensory perceptions that take place, we don’t just see we’re here have a sense of smell, with taste, if that’s what this being our experience of the time when we eat. So, because of the complexity of the experience, it is sometimes perhaps, eludes us that what we perceive at any given moment is colored very much by who is in the driving seat. Speaking of this income in the context of the spiritual inquiry on a spiritual quest, when our awareness is dominated by the sin subject in this sorry object in this case, that is what technically known as ignorance that is what technically known as basically a Vidya in Indian tradition. So, when one perceives a tree and a flower, Sky, okay the surface of the water, any object, that object completely overtakes, overwhelms overwhelms and that is the predominant experience, when that happens, when that happens, all the other two are on the foreground. Yes, so that, that that is the case when the object dominates our perception. We often call awakening the radical shift in perception. It is a diametrically opposite reality that takes place that when suddenly, the seer recognizes himself and no longer lost in the scene. Of course, one should immediately add to that, that this could take all the wrench and all the spectrum of the experience. It’s not black and white. But there is something, it is a distinctive, distinctive, state distinctive experience just as distinctive as waking state, it differs from the dreaming or the result of deep sleep. Furthermore, if we can have like a little bit touch upon the summit of the spiritual awareness of what is in many traditions called Enlightenment, emancipation with heavy self realization is that the collapse or the merging of the seer and the scene, that is the observer, and the observed, is no longer distinguishable. What’s left is just the act of seeing the act of perceiving. It’s a nameless experience, it’s perhaps a bit premature to talk about it at the very opening of this discussion. So, what I wanted to bring the attention, your attention as the audience is that when we speak of this process of self realization, when we speak of the process of awakening, Enlightenment, it entails it entails the often gradual transformation in the relationship of this three. So I feel this could be like an intro intro asset, lecture.

Rick Archer: Good, thank you. Now, I’d like to just bring up a couple of these points that I feel come up a lot in interviews, and are out there in the contemporary spiritual community, and then the other speakers who will address them. One is that I often encounter what I consider to be confusion of levels, a person might have a clear experience, for instance of a unmanifest silent field, or maybe they don’t even have the experience, but they have a clear understanding, there is such a field. And on that level, there is no person and nothing to do, nothing happens and so on. But they extrapolate from that they miss apply that, in my opinion to the more manifest levels, such that they might say, well, since there is really no person and nothing to do, don’t bother doing any spiritual practices, because that only implies the existence of a person and you’re only going to reinforce it reinforce that notion to which I respond, well then don’t bother eating because it only reinforces the notion of an eater. Or, for instance, it’s popular, and we all probably have felt and understood at times that everything is absolutely perfect, just as it is. But then does that absolve us from you know, trying to solve hunger problems in Africa or, you know, all the terrible things that happen in the world? Do we just accept everything is perfect? No. Because on that level, everything is not perfect hands that needs to be addressed in some way. So all these levels are simultaneously true and paradoxically, opposed to one another in a sense, but in the larger context. And in an in in a broader awareness or in one’s experience. They all fit together and are lived simultaneously in perfect harmony. There’s a second point which I’d like us to address, which I think was articulated nicely by a wonderful gentleman that I interviewed a couple of months ago named Francis Bennett, you may have remembered, remember him if you’ve watched the interview, he’s a Trappist monk. And he was in the monastery for decades and then had this profound awakening and decided it was time for him to leave the monastery. And he was living life in relative obscurity. But after the interview, he said, I’m probably still getting and this was weeks after the interview 40 to 50 emails a day from people asking me questions, while guests have maybe had a momentary glimpse into the absolute reality, or at least a relatively clear conceptual grasp of it. And then it fades and disappears. It seems that many then cherish a memory of this experience and formed conceptual philosophical beliefs around the memory. They then try to convince anyone who will listen that they’re fully enlightened, which I am often relatively sure they are not. I try to be gentle and kind to people and quietly suggest that they may have some more work to do. But many won’t listen to me at all and become very defensive and try to prove to me that they are more awake than I, which maybe they are, I really don’t know or care whether they are or not, frankly. So there does seem to be this syndrome out there of perhaps mistaking intellectual understanding for realization. And there’s an old Tibetan proverb So I often quote, which is Don’t mistake intellectual understanding for realization, don’t mistake realization for liberation. And we could add to that don’t mistake liberation, for Enlightenment. So with that, I’d like to open it up to either mark or John, whoever would like to speak first. And we’ll take it from there.

Mark McCooey: Just a few comments, several points there. One of the things that’s a mistake on any path is cherishing past experiences that tell us that we’re greater than we are. I like the analogy of the wave in the ocean where the wave finally has an opportunity to dive into the ocean and discover that it’s boundary lis. And when it comes back to knowing itself as a wave, it is now cognizant of that potential, but not living it yet. And this is the start of the seeking that drives us forward in our spiritual lives. Because the possibility has been tasted. However, it’s a mistake for the wave to them want to replicate that particular dive with that particular phenomena. And I find with my meditation students, if, for example, they were sitting in a certain room with certain incense, and the blinds were pulled and, and they had a certain music going on the next room, and they had a great experience. Typically, what they’ll try to do is put the same instance and sticks there. And in other words, they’ll try to replicate both the environment in the inner environment. And that’s mistake, because this physiology is changing the actual experience of the of that first dive has already transformed, and a different experience awaits. So we never try to replicate and we just let go those old those old experiences. Language is really tricky, because the things that we say that makes sense in activity, are the things that we say from a state of realization won’t necessarily apply to other states. So So knowledge is different in different states of consciousness. So for example, in India, a renunciant that wants to go to the cave, and just believe and reminds himself daily that this is all Maya, it’s not important, I shouldn’t get caught up in it. It’s fine for the renunciant. Because his lifestyle, his choice of meditation, practice, everything is appropriate to those mental instructions and reminders that he gives himself. However, the same is not true for householders, we’re karma Yogi’s, our job is our job or our pathway, largely is the pathway of uniting with pure being, and then drenched in the bliss, the happiness, the peace that comes with that experience, come back out and interact with the world. And this, this becomes the way in which that deep experience gets pulled out and made fast in everyday life. Because the action after meditation, we regret we regret because the experience fades and we say off. You know, I’ve just had that beautiful meditation. And now, you know, my wife’s yelling at me to come to dinner. And I gotta go coach, my kids in their soccer game, or whatever it is. And I lose that deep contact with that, that union that I had that Samadhi that I had, when I meditated, the thing that we don’t realize is that action, that interaction with the world is actually making that dive deep and fast and integrated to the nervous system. So so we never regret our action, and we don’t retire from life, we join life vigorously. In fact, with with the alternating of these two modalities, we’re able to enjoy your life to a far greater degree. And the other thing I was gonna say is as we progress, it’s really a gradation. It’s if you follow the color spectrum, blue, or green to blue. You’ll notice as you travel it that you start with lots of green, which might be ignorance. And as the blue starts blending in, you start notice a bit more blue with the green. And one day you wake up, and it’s all it’s all. It’s all blue. And in other words, there’s a slow and gradual, winking in and winking out of this state of expanded awareness that now blends and joins us that infinite silent awareness is no longer lost in action. In fact, even more specifically, it’s not lost in sleep. It’s not lost in dreaming. And we have to be careful because sometimes we want to walk around saying, Oh, I, I am not the doer. I am. I am. I’m separate from my actions we, we can sometimes try and imagine that state of being this infinite space, and yet not being the doer. And yet, this state can’t be faked. It’s not something that we can imagine. And so in sleep, there’s no change. That’s to manipulate at all. If that wakefulness is asleep, then we know it’s one of the tests, that this reality is already becoming part of our life. So I’ll stop there.

Igor Kufayev: I just want to further a little comment on what Mark just said, is it because the waking dreaming deep sleep states of consciousness, they’re not the relative states of consciousness. They each of them represent a certain degree, a certain energy that governs the universe. In its whole entirety, in, in every experience in every thought process, in everything in every act. In nature, this three forces are present. And I like those of you who are familiar with, let’s say, categories of Indian thoughts, I’m sure you have heard of the rajas, sattwa and tamas, the Gunas of nature. And they’re just quickly give that sattwa is light equilibrium is that which pulls them together in perfect balance. rajas is motion, energy, passion, desire is that what sets creation motion, and tamo guna or tamas is the inertia. It’s where each stage in evolution each states in creation is being checked, in order for it to have a platform to grow to the next stage like in sacred geometry. So the permutation, the mutability between these three states, the sattwa, rajas, and tamas rules entirely rules the day and night and in between it rules are states of psychological states of consciousness, it affects our thoughts. And likewise, waking, dreaming deep sleep states of consciousness are manifestations of these energies through the fact that deep sleep represents tamas, the inertia, the dreaming state represents the rajas, you know, the mind senses are switched off, we dream. It’s this activity of the mind mind left to itself to wander. And the waking state of consciousness is the manifestation of sattwa, where liquid equilibrium this is where our, all our faculties are at its maximum, the coherence between mind and body through the sensory perceptions just want you to make that distinction. So the transcendence of the states is paramount, we cannot talk about full and white awakening and full Enlightenment, unless all three are transcended, and the witness witness abides in itself. Without any disturbance, the consciousness the awareness is no longer no longer overshadowed by any changes that take place on a surface level of existence.

John Hagelin: I like very much what has been said by our speakers, and would like to reinforce some of the comments that were made. There are many, many, many, certainly here, who have had a at least momentary realization of the nature of the self, as free, as unbounded, as removed from the day to day ephemeral changing experiences of waking, dreaming, sleeping. And that experience itself can be to a degree liberating to a degree liberating, because all of a sudden, you’re saying, I had no idea that my being my existence, transcends any temporal experience. And there’s nothing really to do much with this body, this environment, this vocation, these responsibilities, these ups and these downs. So that can bring a degree of of peace and assuredness and a little bit of a sense of inner stability, inner invincibility, because there’s at least some recollection, some memory, that though these things come and go, at some level, I am beyond it all and inherently pure bliss. And there are people who are satisfied with that experience is a very satisfying experience and may even think that Well, I’m among the Cognizant tea. I’m among the I know the reality. But at that point, the knowledge of the reality is an intellectual reflection. It’s a memory and that, you know, memories, beliefs aren’t much of a thing. beliefs, thoughts really aren’t much of a thing. What is the thing? What is important is one’s living experience, independent of our rationalization or intellectualization about it? It’s just the experience of life. Are we still experientially that universal, unbounded, immortal, timeless reality that is beyond the mind, beyond the intellect beyond the ego And until that is established, and it was beautifully explained by Mark, that there’s not much of a trick to it, except repetition, of alternation of universal consciousness with the focused activity of the day. But there are people I think, who feel that while I get it, so I don’t need to put in the time to meditate and to transcend. And that I think, really, is a mistaking of the path to the goal. And so at that point, when really should keep going, because that universal consciousness, the more it’s infused, to be a permanent feature of the actual brain functioning of living life, the more life is elevated, and the more we are free, the more we’re living Enlightenment, and not thinking about it. And these days, what’s interesting is that the brain science has come a long way. It’s still extremely primitive, quite frankly, in terms of really getting to the basis of what’s going on, and why how the brain is able to sustain this experience of universal awareness. That’s a big deal for this little piece of meat. But somehow or other, the brain is so exquisitely constructed, and weak, this is a whole nother subject for a lecture, but so exquisitely constructed, that is designed to resonate in that universal wholeness of life that differentiates us, for example, from a lizard that doesn’t have a brain that is designed to resonate, and that you can look at the structure of the brain of the human and see the difference. And how this is set up to mirror to mimic universal being how the structure of the brain mirrors the unified field, as now understood by physics, for example. But in any case, the point is to keep going. And you can actually look at the brain and see whether somebody is really living unbounded awareness during waking, dreaming, sleeping, or not. And that’s helpful, that’s helpful, because it takes the whole thing from the level of while I’m experiencing this, and you’re not, it makes it a little more objective. But for our own acid test, we don’t carry around an EEG machine, which you can buy for about 100 bucks these days. For, you have to learn how to use it, that’s a different thing. But for our own edification, what was just mentioned by the last two speakers, is that it’s possible perhaps during waking activity, we could kind of imagine or convince ourselves that we are beyond all of this, I’m not overshadowed by this. It can be simply a mood. But when you’re in the depth of the deepest point of sleep, there’s not a whole lot of self trickery going on in state of consciousness, if during the depths of sleep, in anesthesia, for that matter, if the light of universal consciousness is undimmed, if the sense of universal self witnessing the mind and body sleeping, established in bliss and immortality, a cosmic witness to the drama of dreams, cosmic witness to the inertia of sleep, which is a wonderful state of consciousness, if you’re awake to experience it, by the way, it’s really underrated, or a cosmic witness to the mind and body engaged in waking action. That’s a good acid test. And that’s really a sign that you can not stop, I should say, because at that point, you have liberation, you are free from the binding influence of action, free from the intense dramas of the ups and downs of life in the absence of the stability of the self. But really life evolution doesn’t stop there. And I noticed that Rick differentiated mere liberation, as I tried to yesterday, from full Enlightenment, in which the separation of self and non self eventually dissolves in one grand unity, in which all of this is experienced as nothing but that universal self.

Rick Archer: And Jeff, let me just cue right into what you want to say, I think. I get emails from people who say, I’m totally awake, or I’m done, or whatever. And I always say, I don’t maybe not, you know, maybe there’s more yet to explore. And it’s also very much involved to say, Stop seeking, give up the search. And in a sense, that happens at a certain stage in which you know, you I think Mark can address this beautifully. The individual yearning, striving, desperate, unfulfilled, I gotta get it thing goes away. But the adventure really just begins then the exploration really begins in earnest. And we might spend our remaining time exploring the territory that we might traverse from the stage at which the pure awareness is maintained. 24/7 As John just discussed, Add to whatever is that unity that he alluded to

Mark McCooey: just a few comments. In that first experience of undifferentiated pure Being along with activity, there can sometimes almost be a depression, if you will. And what I mean by that is, one is felt to be so separate that the normal things in life that motivate that entice us that that draw us into heavy socializing or ambition at work or whatever, those driving forces disappear. Because the nature of the self now knows itself to be the ocean, the ocean doesn’t really care about the wave, to be perfectly honest, the ocean is self sufficient. However, the ocean doesn’t, or sorry, this, this expanded state of awareness doesn’t yet understand what this phenomenal world is around it, because it feels separate. And it doesn’t really know what the construct is, how does this all come into being, I now know myself to be free. I know myself not to be trapped by these forms. But I don’t really know what these forms are. And then starts the most beautiful March of understanding led by the heart. And this is the true place for bhakti yoga. This is where the heart starts to open up and appreciate the absolute divine beauty that exists and everything around us. And that divine beauty, we can see clearly because the stress of everyday life is no longer obscuring impacting, and dampening, the ability to see what’s really in the environment. And it’s an experience of deep appreciation. And that appreciation. Love is really just deep appreciation. When you love your wife or your kids, it’s because you see so many more things about them that you appreciate, that other people don’t see. And what happens is this appreciation for the detail, the fine structure of all of nature operating becomes a sense of devotion. And worship is a strong word. But it’s the sense of reverence for everything that we see around us that grows into a desire or a merging with that beauty. And suddenly, a day arrives when all of that wakes up. In other words, being that’s woken up to itself, as infinite now wakes up to itself as the environment. And so there is a journey past CCE it’s not a lot. Cosmetic, sorry, cosmic consciousness liberation Lightman. The witnessing the witness, we got we got so many terms here. Yeah, there is a journey past people object to that thought. And the reason they object is they don’t want to think that there’s another job to do for this. This this this organism, the interesting thing is the job for the individuals over the individuals completely free of its job. The new job belongs to nature. So it’s the infinite awareness itself that has to reconcile itself to the environment. That’s the new job. And nature takes it on while we sit there and witness it. And we we’re not doing it anymore. And people ask what is the motivation for action past this waking up state. And the Schuester says a beautiful thing. He says, Neither do we stop doing what we’ve always done. Okay, so the momentum that you have in your life, the obligations you’ve taken on, you know, you don’t leave your wife and your kids, you don’t quit your job, although partment some people do. But neither do we cease doing what we’ve always done. Nor do we turn away that which comes to us. In other words, the ocean is now moving the wave, the wave is no longer responsible for where it goes and what it does. And so it’s important just to understand that awakening is just a step towards true Self Realization, where we realize the Self in the entire environment. So just just a really important thing to know.

Igor Kufayev: Yeah, like the awakening, it’s awakening what self is awakens to itself, self realizes itself. But the level of degree of that realization is often vast. And one cannot just say that this is like it’s not a black and white event. It’s all the spectrum of colors that are present there. And as Mark just pointed out, right at the beginning of his remark is that the witnessing state of consciousness, what Mark called Cosmic Consciousness is often characterized by the increased polarity by the increased duality. In fact, we feel very often, because we experienced that inner peace, inner bliss. We be we for the first time in the possession of who We are of our self. However the world out there starting from the sensory perceptions, and ideations ideas and thought process is still being perceived outside. And this separation is a necessity step, it’s this contrast is a very necessary step, because the self, once it’s no itself is then then as Mark again said, is moved to a much more finer process, this is when the real work starts. This is when to say that, okay, I’ve arrived, this is it, the job is done, I can set up my own Satsang. And, you know, very often, very often, the speakers the teachers make this mistake, they speak from that level of awareness from that level of realization, forgetting that this is not the non dual realization, it is duality that utmost, but it is a very tricky state, because you are in the possession of the self. However, the world out there is not factually perceive as yourself, only when you can say sincerely that there is nothing out there in the full range of your perception is not separate from you, that is maybe perhaps, one can say that something is happening, but then very often, there is no name for it. This is why the truly enlightened people, the truly self realized people will always avoid this kind of you know, speculation of you know, are you are you what you talk about? Are you representing and why you? Are you really embodying what what this whole talk, because it does not even the thought does not even enter there. For the stills thought still belongs to the dual nature dual structure of the brain. Just wanted to make that

Rick Archer: throw one thing quickly into the Mexican Enlai take me a sentence to say, and that is that I often hear descriptions being offered as prescriptions. People sit and describe their experience give us that song and kind of picking apart the nature of their experience. And the audience can only take it as a prescription, but it really can’t be. So please,

John Hagelin: it’s a very useful point. Because there are a lot of enlightened people who’ve achieved their state of Enlightenment through any possible means, even through no me just basically by merit of birth, gifted with a very intact nervous system, and they’re experiencing unbounded awareness. They’re living in the eternal Now and they look at somebody who’s filled with stress and anxiety in places to go. And they just say, I know what your problem is. Just be unbounded. Just be universe, cosmic. And it’s difficult thing to do. Because intellectually, you can’t even grasp of that unboundedness it can only be known on the level of its own direct experience, I have to run I just wanted to make a comment. This is a wonderful panel, by the way, because it’s very clear that the people who are speaking, are living that experience of which they are speaking. It’s not always the case. But in any case, I will say this. It’s a little bit about technique. In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, which is the classic text of yoga, there are techniques to transcend or transcending, meditations, for example, which just take the mind like a rock to sink deeply into the transcendental source of thought, go quickly beyond thought with no stops along the way, and experience pure unbounded awareness, the eternal nature of the immortal self. And that’s really the technique to both experience it and to alternation without an activity as was said, to stabilize that experience in life, you know, in living, higher states of consciousness where there’s a difference between self which is infinitely expanded, and non self which remains is crude and coarse and bound, as it appears, right now starts to melt. And that melting happens, it’s it happens over time, it happens on its own. It’s a natural process of refinement of perception of the world around us, and growth of love to enrich the appreciation of the world around us, until it literally becomes inseparable from the self. Perceived for its reality is nothing but a wave of the universal self, a ripple on the surface of the unified field. But even there in Yoga Sutras of Patanjali there are techniques to enhance and accelerate that growth. Because you know, life is short, and as much time as we can spend at the goal as opposed to On the path, really, it’s It may sound heretical, but the better off we are, because the more fully we enjoy, the sooner the better. So techniques for accelerating the growth of higher states of consciousness of realization, beyond mere liberation, mere Nirvana, mere immortality, unboundedness and bliss on the level of the self has to do with experiencing more of that in the environment. So a technique might, for example, an advanced technique of meditation might involve a technique that has the senses more awake, more open, more alert, as the mind fathoms, the deeper and deeper levels of reality, that deeper and deeper levels of thought on the path to the transcendental source of thought, at that point, it may be a little bit slower getting to the goal, but the goal is more or less established by now. Now, it’s a question of awakening to the gap between the gross and the absolute inner being, and at the senses start to perceive, and you become fluid and familiar with the deeper deeper levels of reality is if at the quantum mechanical, unified field, quantum field theoretic and unified level, you awaken to more divine levels, lovable levels of reality. And again, it’s just going in and out a little more slowly, you can start to see that, oh, this is nothing but that I see the unified field emerging in a wave of vibration that is an electron, which is not separate from the wave, it is the way this is all myself. If you’re an ice skater, and you fall down, it all happens rather fast, you find yourself on your back, you don’t exactly know, in detail how you got there. If you fall a lot, as a hockey stick skater, I fell a lot, you actually get very used to the process of falling and actually can protect yourself on the way it’s going through the process of slipping into the transcendent and emerging from it, that you know, the mechanics of emergence, mechanics of creation, from the origin of creation, to the point where you see this seamlessly, no longer a gap, but a seamless connection between the self and non self. So I guess what I’m saying is, technique is important. Practice is important. And it would be incorrect for somebody in a state of enlightened to say, Oh, just be enlightened. Just be. That’s fine in that state of consciousness. But awaken consciousness, we have a duty to expand, to grow to expand and happiness, expand in knowledge, expand and wisdom and experience, ultimately, the totality of our infinite self. I have to run at this point. But I’m really happy to have been able to share this. Wonderful, thank you.

Rick Archer: Thank you, John. Drive safely. And I hope you catch a flight. And the let’s not Hang Hang John up with questions, right? Because you really want to get to that plane Jones. But it’s officially this is just about over. It’s about 1230. But now’s the lunch break. And we’re happy to sit here for as long as people like to discuss and take questions. John’s mic, somebody, whoever wants to hand the mic around to those who’d like to ask a question, the one on John’s chair could be used for that. And so and you know, if you’re feel free to leave if you’d like but if you’re in the back, and you’d like to move up towards the front or whatever, feel free to do so. So are there any questions? To start with? The woman over here? There we go.

Speaker 5: So if I heard what I just heard correctly, this has been kind of my question running throughout the whole conference of how you embody this space, like the only times I’ve ever been able to get any experience of this has been through transmission of my body through the senses. So so I don’t know if any of you can kind of elucidate a little bit more, but I was relieved to hear that there is indeed practice that that, you know, that lit leads us that helps us lean in a direction that that opens us, hopefully, increasingly, but it’s easy for me to get stuck on the gross stuff around me and and then you know, that I can’t I don’t know how to be in that.

Rick Archer: And that’s true of everyone. It’s a very dense world we live in, you know, jellen.

Igor Kufayev: Actually, it’s actually feels fitting to, in response to your question, to give conclusive remarks to what John said before his departure is that the reason why practice is important is because the repeated, repeated experience Some of the abiding in the self are known as Samadhi is necessery. Before before, what is known as Samadhi becomes our day to day experience. In other words, the tradition speaks of the various different Samadhi is there is somebody with awareness like savvycard, but there’s somebody without awareness nirvikalpa but only somebody’s have beginning and end doesn’t matter, you sat 15 minutes in Samadhi in one sitting or two hours in Samadhi, it has to end in order for the body to function. So, each time the body in that state of absorption, there is some amazing transformation takes place. And many traditions speak of that transformation in terms of the because the metabolic activity becomes new. There’s nothing happening on that level, which opens up a vast, vast space, or space for the actual transformative place to take place. Because metabolic processes always overshadow it’s like our body even when we asleep. And when when we rejuvenate, even when we don’t do nothing, is constantly busy digesting, assimilating, you know, digesting food, we ate digesting thoughts we had. So, when somebody takes place, there is none of that happening. There is no physiological functioning, there is no digestion anymore, so to speak, there is no necessity for anything, there is no necessity for breathing, breath, in fact, becomes suspended. Anyone who has ever experienced Samadhi, one of the most amazing thing about Samadhi is that your breath, incoming and outgoing breath at some point becomes suspense, is no breathing whatsoever. This is the real meaning of pranayama or people who teach yoga, they put emphasis on, you know, dozens of different practices and there have the purpose and the role. But the actual aim of pranayama is the full suspension of breath, not holding it, not holding it at force, as some also mistakenly understand. But the real tradition of pranayama the real essence is that is that when there is no breathing, and then a space between the breath exactly the space between the breath as many scriptures say that’s where the Brahman resides. That’s where the absolute that’s where the pure consciousness is. And you are in that space and you are that space you are that. So that’s why I repeated experience of Samadhi that what oils the nervous system to then embodied in the waking dreaming deep sleep, while we eat while we make love while we listen to music, while we’re doing our morning jog, it is uninterrupted tradition goes that Sahaja Samadhi. I’m sure many of you have heard of that Ramana Maharshi spoke a lot about Sahaja Samadhi. The distinction Sahaja Samadhi cannot be practiced. But path toward Sahaja Samadhi can be practiced because the Haji Samadhi is not practiced. As such, you can sit down and create the conditions whereby you experience Samadhi. The previously mentioned you know that when you experience that state of full absorption, yet it has to terminate in order for the ability to function in Sahaja Samadhi. When we in Sahaja Samadhi, the body can function fully. It’s fully operable. And this is what perhaps you were saying in terms of the that is when the bliss of the self is on the level of the senses, senses not only no longer overshadow, they become willing participants in that dance of love in that dance of life. The sense is no longer the obstacles they park, they take a full engagement, they took a full part in this whole process.

Rick Archer: And I mentioned that one finds that stage that dynamic, challenging situations, whereas they once might have been more trying and more more difficult to maintain any sort of serenity become even more fascinating because the contrast increases between the inner silence and the outer dynamism. So running through an airport can be like an amazing experience. Because here you are in this cave of silence with all this crazy stuff going on. It’s interesting.

Mark McCooey: The only thing I’d add is part of your question is how do I easily slip from this course crude world into this state of Samadhi? Like

Speaker 5: I don’t think it’s easy to do that and you know, I have four kids I got a bit As soon as I have all kinds of stuff going on, I just want to know that I can get there.

Mark McCooey: Yes. Yes, the the answer is absolutely, yes. The question you have the slipping into Samadhi requires the use of any one of your senses, whether it’s a sound, whether it’s visual, whether it’s touch, and so forth. And so there are techniques that allow sound. For example, I use a sound based Mantra, Mantra, a Mantra, probably use though, because a lot of Mantra meditations keep the mind focused on the surface level. Whereas properly used a Mantra meditation will allow you to follow the finest sound from its obvious gross level, to a refined level where it’s infinite. And where the Mantra is infinite. So too, is your awareness. And so if you’ve got a busy life, you need to do some homework and come up with that type of powerful yet simple. Meditation my, my wife, and I raised three kids all through, you know, and you know that as soon as you start meditating, they’re knocking on the door, and you know, that, that there’s going to be screaming, as soon as you start and you know, you know all the things about life, or just when you’re about to meditate, the phone rings, and, you know, you have to go pick someone up or whatever. So life, life can’t stop being lived, we just have to find the simplest way to slip into this state, so that it repetitiously starts to grow in our lives,

Igor Kufayev: I just want to add one thing is that it’s very important that that you have this understanding that it is indeed difficult to go into Samadhi. However, you are in Samadhi, even now, there is no other way. Samadhi is the background of our beam are being springs from Samadhi. We do not create Samadhi, we do not reconstr Samadhi is not some kind of a special state that we try to get into Samadhi is becoming who we are. That’s what Samadhi really is. Awareness of that removes all this. Outside, let’s say trials, although we’ll be a lot of arrows, but at least we remove that, you know that what it requires is to be when I understood that on a on a meditative mat many, many years ago, it took tremendous amount of pressure of meditative process, I suddenly like, like, that’s what this is all about. Meditation is spontaneous process, all of us are sitting here, in a soup in the ocean of meditation, we all are already in that state of transcendence. However, however, what covers or abstracts or obscures or eclipses? That is the fluctuations on the surface of what Mark talked earlier in the in the in the talk. It is the wave, the surface of the waves. So we don’t do anything. It happens on its own. If we are, if we are using the right circumstance or right, setting, you know, an appropriate, let’s say methodology, because then it’s natural. I just wanted to play with the gentleman

Rick Archer: in the second row here had a question. I

Speaker 6: was wondering about, you know, we’re always hearing No, to find oneself is to ask the question, Who am I? And so when we look for this self, though, it is it’s not there. So I mean, even at the beginning of the inquiry, or even in the exploration, it’s really difficult to read it because the thing that’s that’s looking for that self is also non existent. And the thing that you’re looking for, is also non existent. So how, how could you actually explore that something that exists? You’re looking for something that supposed to exist? You feel that you experienced it? I mean, so you experience it, but when you look for it, it’s not there? How could that be? How can something that doesn’t exist? exist?

Mark McCooey: So who is the you that experiences it?

Speaker 6: I’m asking you that? No, no.

Mark McCooey: I’ll tell you why. Ask the question. It’s very, there is some state of awareness necessary to have an experience.

Igor Kufayev: Okay, so we know this for automatica. We,

Mark McCooey: we know that you are conscious enough to even ask this question. Absolutely. We know you’re conscious enough to have this interaction. Are we okay so far? Oh, yeah. Okay, so that consciousness doesn’t yet know itself. Oh, Okay, it is abstract. But that consciousness right now is projected from your eyes on me. And we’re speaking, and there is a sensory exchange between us. But it appears within yourself that it’s happening between you and I. Now that consciousness that’s doing the interaction, doesn’t yet know that it’s infinite. It hasn’t yet woken up to its infinite potential, its knowledge of itself. So when you say no one’s there, I’d like to change this slightly and say, something is there. That something is awareness. It’s not nothing. It’s something enough to notice itself, sounding very abstract and I when I get to this place, but this apparatus is capable of having infinity know infinity through this apparatus. Yeah. It’s like a really tough words to deal with. Because right now who I am feels like trapped inside here. How could that ever be infinite? But its nature, the nature of us even having an interaction? Depends on Infinite Being being here right now? I don’t think I’ve answered your question. No,

Rick Archer: I, I think I can put a little something on that. And then after that, the AV guy told me that they have to move equipment, and we’ll have to stop using the equipment, we can still stay for a while and talk without audio stuff, if you want to come up close. But you know, Ramana Maharshi, of course, popularized this thing of self inquiry. But in his milieu, it was a situation where it was, you know, his his silence, his presence was the main technique. And if you had the opportunity to be in his vicinity, the boy had to do was sit there and soak it up. And there would be many cases of spontaneous Self Realization. But, you know, he gave people a technique for those who needed something, and that was self inquiry. But even that wasn’t considered universal. If that didn’t do it for you, he would step it down a notch and say, Okay, well practice maybe meditation or something. And if that didn’t do it for you, he’d step it down a notch and say, Okay, maybe selfless service, go out and do some karma yoga. And I’m just using him as him as an example because he’s so widely respected. But you know, as Sly and the Family Stone said, it’s different strokes for different folks. There’s a whole range of, of practices and techniques and things that you can sort of find your, your place on the spectrum of those and find something that works for you. And one thing will lead to the next. So if you find that this self inquiry thing doesn’t make sense for you, and it’s just you’re not getting anywhere with it. Maybe there’s a different practice that would hit them