Awakening Now

BATGAP And Other Adventures With Rick Archer

• Ilona Ciunaite / Rick Archer • Episode 68

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Rick Archer is the host of the popular interview series "Buddha at the Gas Pump" (BatGap), where he engages in conversations with spiritual teachers, authors, and practitioners from various traditions. Through his interviews, Rick explores the diverse experiences and teachings related to spiritual awakening and consciousness. His interest in spirituality extends back to his own early experiences and practices, which have informed his empathetic and insightful approach to interviewing. Rick's dedication to sharing these dialogues aims to support and inspire others on their spiritual journeys.

In today's episode, the interviewer is interviewed. Rick shares his story, experiences with guests, some unusual awakening events. We discussed the transformative journey of spiritual awakening, addressing the beauty and challenges involved. 

Key themes include the importance of discernment in distinguishing genuine spiritual experiences from illusions and identifying trustworthy teachers amidst potential ego traps and ethical pitfalls. 

The discussion highlights the value of meditation and personal practice for deepening one’s inner growth while cautioning against superficial or misguided spiritual paths. Ethical integrity and humility are emphasized as vital for those guiding others, and AI is explored as a new tool for supporting seekers with compassion-based chatbots. Ultimately, perseverance, discernment, and alignment with authentic teachings are advised for those on the spiritual path.

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Music by Valdi Sabev, Visit his channel for more calm and relaxed music 
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Websites
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hello hello Rick hello good to see you Ilona great to see you again yeah and this time you ar on my channel. I intevied you about 10 years ago or something yeah that was 12 years ago 12 yeah long time ago and I'm so honored to have you on my show oh well thank you it's an honor to be here and the show is called Awakening now okay now's a good time perfect time so we talk about all all things Awakening MH and I think Rick Archer doesn't need an introduction everyone else I think it's a cultural thing now okay is there another show on the planet that runs so long and has interviewed so many Awakening people there isn't so much respect and gratitude for that thanks it's it's it's really been a wonderful experience and I've met so many wonderful people and um it's just really enriched my life made all the I have all these great friends all over the world that I've actually never met in person but you know they're my best friends yes and you get to hear so many different perspectives so so many different experiences and different views which is probably a point that we'll be talking about quite a bit this idea of views but I find that very personally very enriching I think there might have been a point in my life when it might have been confusing to hear so many different perspectives but now it's just enriching right so just before we get into all that I ask everyone this question uh what is your definition of Awakening or well that's a good question first of all I like the fact that you're you're kind of well I guess Awakening is a noun but um I consider it a process and really an a NeverEnding process it's not like you get awake and that's it there's no more um and you know some people disagree with that but um I feel like we're all works in progress and that no one who who has ever walked the planet uh has necessarily reached the highest possibility of realization in fact St Teresa of Ávila said that it appears that God himself is on the journey um so you know I consider Awakening to be uh an opening of awareness to one's full potential but that not only means the absolute Dimension or you know the pure Consciousness or whatever term you want to use in that sense but it also includes um a growing appreciation of all the dimensions of life and there life is multi-dimensional and it would also I mean if we're going to use the enlightenment the word Enlightenment which is even more


problematic I would say it also includes a refinement and a maturation of the personality because you know some people claim to be awakened and yet then they turn out to be sexual predators or they're ripping people off financially or something like that and if that's Awakening you can have it you know I don't want that kind of Awakening um for myself or anybody else I I think that um if we're going to use the


term ... to retain its significance and its value it should be reserved for people who have you know cultured a very holistic development now of course you know I mean it's like the word education  you could say you've gained some education when you're in the third grade and um that's true but you wouldn't say you're educated which kind of implies that there's no more learning to do right and if a person a person says I'm awakened there's this kind of absolute quality to the statement which I think does a disservice to the reality of of human evolution yeah I hear you it's a process there may be a starting point or a first shift or a glimpse or a realization and many many Awakenings happening now I've had a even recently I've had some friendly conversations with Rupert Spira about this off camera we just you have been talking and um he used to be kind of heavy on the 

direct path and he still kind of is um but and I was more heavy on the Progressive idea but we kind of came to an agreement that it's both you can have direct realization you know even on day one but there's there's going to be continual progress and so there's no there's no conflict between those two yeah I'm of the same position that it's all included this and that and the other and some people say you know you should give up seeking and so on and so forth I think seeking just that's like saying give up Hunger you know if you're hungry um if you eat some food you won't be hungry anymore so you will have given up Hunger but not through any kind of Act of will hunger will have just dropped off and the same with seeking I think there's a natural stage at which one is feeling unfulfilled and there's a craving or desire or a yearning for deeper knowledge and experience but at a certain point that knowledge and experience grows to the point where um the Sanskrit word is santosha which means contentment um Wells up to a significant degree and you no longer feel like you're seeking but you're still on this great adventure of exploration and learning and Discovery yeah so the way I would say is that seeking energy doesn't stop but it loses the desperation good point yeah good way of putting it yeah so what happened in your life can you maybe say something shortly or longly yeah well that what you what you just said and uh you know for me my path has always been meditation and and also um all kinds of inquiry and study and thinking about the stuff um but I've always meditated not always but since I was 18 I've meditated twice a day for at least an hour each time and um I I maybe I have obsessive compulsive disorder because I've never skipped it I've always done it twice a day since 1968 and um and it started to benefit me from day one um I had been a very troubled kid I grown up in a troubled family with an alcoholic father who suffered from PTSD from World War II and um and you know my mother tried to commit suicide three times and I ended up dropping out of high school and getting into drugs and getting arrested a couple of times for drugs and so so I was really going nowhere fast and but when I when I got into when I started taking drugs um it was in to some extent with a spiritual aspiration you I was reading Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert's translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead and I'd sit around with my friends having philosophical conversations and uh yeah but after about a year of that I was a mess and I had actually started to dabble in hard drugs a little bit oops I just almost sorry I almost dropped the phone and um and one night I was sitting in my in my bedroom in my in the basement of my father's house and I couldn't sleep because I was high on something and I picked up a Zen book and started reading it and as I read I thought wow you know these guys were really serious and I'm just fooling around and if I keep fooling around like this I'm gonna live a very short unhappy life so I thought that's it I'm going to learn I'm going to stop taking drugs and I'm going to learn to meditate and at the time Transcendental Meditation was the most commonly thing common thing available um so after a couple weeks and some adventures and getting it all organized I I learned to meditate and from the very first sitting I just had a really deep Blissful relaxing experience and I felt much better afterwards so you know I just kept doing it and you know within a couple of months I had gotten back into school and I gotten a job and I was you know playing in a band I used to be a drummer and um you know I had a girlfriend and all none of those things had been happening when I was on drugs because I was just too discombobulated to to have any of that stuff and uh after a couple about two and a half years I became a teacher of it and I taught I taught thousands not thousands I thought about a thousand people um and I spent several years in Switzerland with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and I taught a lot of you know weekend courses and longer courses and and also participated in Long courses sometimes we'd go for six months and just do a lot of meditation for a six-month period up in the Swiss Alps or the French Alps or someplace and uh you know that went on for a number of years sometimes I was giving lectures to some to 500 people sometimes I was cleaning toilets in some TM facility it went you know went back and forth it cultured flexibility I suppose and you know I got married in 1987 and we we finally stepped away from working for the TM movement in 1994 and stepped away from the TM movement entirely in about n 1999 or 2000 no maybe it was 2001 just because I I was that I'd say on the one hand I was getting very independent in my thinking and on the other hand the TM movement was getting very weird and so it just wasn't a good fit anymore um and oh I was outgrown yeah I think that was it and you know I'm very grateful for all the benefits I derived um it just um I was kind of a square peg in a round hole at that point it just didn't fit anymore so that's a very quick summary you might have some questions about all that very interesting I mean you started meditating so early and that's amazing that from the very first time you felt the benefit cause so many people you know they try a little bit and next yeah what else gonna do that particular practice is is effortless to do and so you know I mean when I was teaching I was teaching truck drivers and all kinds of people who you wouldn't think of as the meditation type but you know most people took to it quite effortlessly It's actually an ancient practice um in India it's called Bhavateeet Dhyan which basically means Transcendental Meditation in Sanskrit um but a certain order of swamis in the north of India have been practicing it for hundreds of years and I have a friend who actually went to India many times you might like to interview this guy and he um he interviewed a lot of those swamis about 250 of them and he he had about half of them instruct him in meditation and they all taught him basically the same thing oh wow so you know so whereas the TM movement marishi kind of gave the impression that this was a a discovery that Maharishi had made it was actually probably something he had learned in his in his asham as a student and he he was just good at getting out there and marketing it to the world but anyway it's it's easy it's effortless and it it takes advantage of some of what we could call the natural tendency of the mind to seek a field of Greater happiness um you know and it's could you tell the the the core of it or it's just like kind of couple minutes oh sure yeah one used as a mantra which is um you know a a sound that has it it may have a meaning to somebody who you know speaks Sanskrit and understands that whole tradition but for the average person it has no meaning and it um but as a as a sound it has a certain vibratory influence and when you repeat it me effortlessly and as just a faint idea in the mind eyes closed um the Mind settles down it's it's like a vehicle that enables the mind to settle down and as the Mind begins to settle down and probably most people have experienced this 

when you feel some quietness or some silence it's usually associated with kind of a a greater inner peace or happiness and so as the Mind settles down it encounters greater charm or happiness and that and so it just sort of follows that natural tendency effortlessly and next thing you know you you may have arrived at a state of no Mantra no thoughts just pure awareness but then you know you're not used you're not used to that so that some thoughts Bubble Up and you come out again and then you realize you're out you pick up the Mantra again take another dive um but it's um it's like that there's no concentration or control involved as there are in some kinds of meditation and it's also not a contemplative practice where you're sitting thinking about various topics sounds sounds simple enough yeah now just sit down and let's meditate right and no I would I would add here that the TM movement kind of espouses it as a simple solution to all problems and if you just do that everything else is going to fall into place I would say that you know it's more than there's more to it than that um there are other things that you should probably attend to in life I I mean I know people who've been meditating for decades who I would consider to be to have very poor critical thinking skills or to be unethical or um you know unkind or they they have troubles in their relationships or health problems I mean so it one still needs to take care of all aspects of life but um but like exercise or good diet or good sleep or anything else it's something that if you add it to your routine can be very helpful you know useful yeah I agree I hear you yeah yes like there's no no rule there's no one magic pill that would fix life in any way no yeah and uh Hey so let's talk about all these various points of view and various traditions and I mean you you interviewed so many people other but but there must be something that everyone agrees on or not or not I guess um well I think probably among all the people I've interviewed everyone agrees that there's more to life than meets the eye and that um you know there's something more profound that can be discovered or experienced and obviously people go about discovering it in different ways that you know that they discover or that they that attract them and um you know I'm kind of reminded of Shri Ramakrishna here who was very fond of the blind men in the elephant analogy and um even in even in Vedanta there are like half a dozen different schools of Vedanta that completely disagree with each other on what the Ultimate Reality is and Ramakrishna said you know he said that's no problem it's like the Blind Men of the elephant um you know this guy the leg feels like a tree trunk and the tail feels like a snake and the Tusk feels like a spear or whatever and they they all describe the elephant based on their experience and they're they're each correct but but they don't have the whole picture and he he he said it's very rare for somebody to have the whole picture um and it and I certainly don't claim to have it but but what I do do at least intellectually is I try to take a God's eye view of things which is to say you know if you really had completely comprehensive understanding uh of the full nature of reality you would probably respect and appreciate all the people who have particular perspectives which aren't necessarily comprehensive but which are valid in their own right in their own from their own angle um you know what I mean yeah like we all see the same differently express it differently um maybe we're not even looking at the same part yeah yeah our view is very limited yeah or you can imagine like a tree and a bird sees it one way and a human sees it another way and a cow sees it another way and all now there's something there even though it's being perceived and insect sees it a different way it's being perceived so differently by these different species but there is something there and um I think well maybe one thing to throw in here is I think that the human beings have the perhaps unique gift of being able to get down to the real nitty-gritty as the saying goes which is to to get to a point where the um the the all of one's perceptions can be in terms of the essential nature of everything which is to say the self or pure pure Consciousness or Brahman if you want to use that term so um I don't think other species have that capability perhaps as far as I know uh but and that would be a good definition of Awakening actually which you asked earlier is a stage at which you know one perceives the essential nature of everything uh um and it's uh it's like and this is an analogy from Vedanta 

but let's say one goes into a Pottery Shop and sees all these different pots there are different colors different shapes and different sizes and so on and one would be seeing difference mainly but someone who really understands Pottery would go in there and say oh it's all clay you know I can see that there the essential nature of all these things is Clay uh but it's Clay appearing in different form and sizes and and colors and so on oh I love that yeah and so you know it's it's correct to say that there's uh one could go into the shop and say there's nothing here but clay and they would be right but it wouldn't be the full picture because there are pots and um there's a word in Sanskrit called Mithya M i t h y a which deals with this particular issue uh and it's I think it's translated as um well there's another term vyāvahārika which is transactional reality Mitya is kind of like the the apparent reality and um and one has to respect it you don't step in front of buses because you know they're all pure Consciousness you have to respect the relative reality but there it's possible to arrive at a point where you also apprehend the ultimate nature of things right so we can see both exactly yes exactly and that's the same thing otherwise it's unbalanced yeah and some and it's I mean it's good we're talking about this because some people do privilege one over the other or even are unaware of of the that there is another like probably most people in the world would have no idea that um there's a sort of deeper essential nature to everything in which everything is is one because everything is ultimately the same thing and then there are other people who get on a spiritual path and they they catch on to the it's perhaps intellectual and not even experiential but they emphasize the so absolute nature of things to the point where they dismiss um or undervalue the relative nature of things and um you know perhaps and there's a lady named Jessica Nathanson who's interesting I've interviewed her and she has this um website called The Glorious both and and her her whole trip is basically dealing with people who had gotten so into Neoadaita that they had lost interest in their families and their jobs they had become depressed that the world was meaningless it's all an illusion and yada yada and um you know and some had even become suicidal so I I think it you know it can be possibly relevant to somebody who's a recluse and wants to sit in the cave all the time to you know get so into the absolute perspective that the relative is virtually non-existent and certainly uninteresting but for the average person most of us um there has to be an integration or a balance between both fields of Life yeah that's very important otherwise you know you can get lost in like ideas yeah even though the experience of like Blissful States but it all comes and goes and then here you are back to the toilet or brushing teeth or cooking meals right or picking up the dog poop just something I do every day we have dogs um yeah which is you know like Easter it's an Easter egg hunt um yeah so what you said ideas that was interesting you mentioned that word because I think a lot of people get focused on these kinds of teachings Neoadvaita and so on but they don't necessarily have enough of the experiential component and perhaps perhaps I don't for whatever reason maybe they don't have some practice which can give them the taste of it or whatever but they end up there's a Tibetan saying which is don't mistake understanding for realization and then it goes on to say don't mistake realization for Liberation but I think some people fall into that trap where they read so many books and listen to so many many talks and they they end up kind of brainwashing themselves with an understanding which is maybe a valid understanding but it is not um supported by their direct experience and they they kind of assume that they've had the realization that these books talk about but there's something missing and it it's not a it's not a healthy um state to be in right good to know that it's temporary it will pass oh as all things do I think George Harrison had an album All Things Must Pass yes so when I see people are trapped in ideas I'm not worried because it will pass you know they going going into the trap to experience that to learn something from it to pick up wisdom and then carry on that's true I mean I've I've gone through so many phases in my life but um you know maybe sometimes there's ways of um accelerating um one's transition so you don't have to get stuck in something for 20 years right oh maybe you do who knows maybe you do yeah I mean I think we're on a long timeline and yes each lifetime it's just the snap of the fingers yeah I think I want to mention that well 12 years ago when I just got into this MH there was such a limited amount of information for me for example I was never in any movement I didn't know what a guru was or Retreat or even a spiritual teacher so for me it was very limited information yeah and now there if you think that was limited 12 years ago you should have seen it in 1968 yeah it was much more limited exactly and we didn't obviously we didn't even have the internet so you know now there's a flood of information yeah so with the all this explosion of information all the explosion of hearing and seeing different people talking about this in their own ways mhm it's so confusing because somebody is sitting listening to these interviews and saying oh I didn't have that experience I didn't have that experience oh I want to have that experience and it's just it's it's just so such a trap as well to be comparing yeah I think it's I I mean there might be a phase in someone's process where it would be good not to you know listen to a million different things and get yourself confused and then there might be a phase where it is good to do that and to compare and contrast and and look look at how different people discuss things and as far as practices are concerned um you know you don't want to do a different practice every week you want to find something that works for you and stick with it for a while and you know after a while if it doesn't seem to be working then maybe it's it' be good to try something else um um yeah personally you know even way back I mean back in the 70s when I was definitely solid in the TM movement I I had enjoyed reading Carlos Castaneda and you know um various books there's a great book by Elizabeth Haich called Initiation which I remember made a big impact and you know I I dabbled around reading different things um but um and these days of course I it's a different thing every week but um I don't find it confusing I somehow managed to fit it all into the puzzle well you had a lot of practice listening to all these over 700 interviews oh my God yeah so yeah yeah a lot of different influences yeah and I think it's natural I mean you know variety is the spice of life um to use another metaphor God is God is not a one- trick Pony um and when you think about speaking of God I mean if you think about astronomy and how many I mean they tell us that every Star pretty much has planets around it they've discovered that now and if even 1% of those planets had intelligent life on them we're talking about trillions of of civilizations throughout the Universe you know with intelligent life and undoubtedly they all have their spiritual traditions and their religions and their teachers and all that stuff and probably 99% of them say that ours is the only one if they only right right one and so on but you know it's just like um we're we're all kind of in this together and throughout the Universe everybody's evolving everything's evolving and it's natural to have it's natural for there to be different spiritual traditions and paths according to the different cultural you know climatic conditions and all all the so many variables that in make people what they are it wouldn't be natural for in our world for everybody to be a Mormon or everybody to be a Catholic or everybody to practice TM or or anything else there's you you gravitate toward you know who is it the Rolling Stone said you don't always get what you want but you get what you need ah yeah so the invitation would be to enjoy your experience and whatever that is is the right one yeah and be inquisitive I mean it's great to it's great to be sort of I mean what it's to me it's the most interesting thing in life and I've always found this stuff fascinating ever since I first discovered that it existed but um yeah go ahead and read books and and watch videos and just uh you know if you find it enjoyable and if you find that it seems to help you um it's a health it's a healthy thing I think to broaden your knowledge about this stuff um but again don't be a 

dilatant means superficial dabbler where you just you know take a try a little of this a little of that and you never settle down and do a serious


practice and I want to ask you what inspired you to start Buddha at the gas pump well it's an interesting story um we had a little satsang going in my town uh didn't have a particular teacher but you know 20 or 30 of us would sit around in a room once a week and have a discussion and um a number of the people in the room had already had been meditating for decades and had undergone some significant Spiritual Awakening um a few of whom you might like to interview I can think of all kinds of people you might like to interview um and um but I found I would ask questions you know and the the the rule of the group was you're supposed to just talk about your own experience but someone would talk about your their experience and I would start saying well what about this you know I start probing them with little questions and the guy whose house we were having it in he he would get upset he said stop asking questions you're supposed to just talk about your own experience and stop interviewing people and so one day I was out in the garage working on a Boflex machine which is like an exercise machine and I was listening to some talk by Adyashanti and I thought hey you know I should start an interview show where I can actually do what is coming naturally to me which is to interview people and at first I just thought it would be like like a radio show on my little local radio station here and they didn't really want to do it so friends just encouraged me to um you know get it in video and and put it out on the internet and so I started doing that and it it took off you know and there were all kinds of technical challenges and various software problems I've gone through over the years one thing the whole technology has evolved so much um but that's how started who was your first guest it was a a couple named George and Mary Foster who live here in town in fact my first dozen guests or so were people who just lived here in town because I didn't have the ability to do it over the internet at that stage and um so I just interviewed some local people and then eventually I figured out how to use Skype and use and get Skype Rec Skype conversations to be recorded and uh then I started branching out Wow what a what a journey yeah meanwhile I had a full-time job and I was doing this in the evenings and weekends and so on and I wanted to make it freely available I didn't want to charge anything and um I wanted to grow it to the point where you know the the naturally small percentage of people who would donate to such a thing would donate to the point where I could do it full-time and over the years that that it it gradually got to that point and it was wasn't until about 2018 that I was able to totally drop any other kind of job and just do this and we set it up as a nonprofit organization so that you know people could make a donation and get a tax write off and stuff oh wonderful yeah thank you for sharing that and did you did Adyashanti came on very soon after you started yeah a Adyashanti was guest number 85 I believe so it probably would have been in the second year um he actually came to town here and gave a talk and somebody else I I was somewhat involved in setting up his talk but um you know and then I had lunch with him and a few other people and I kind of his uh the person who had been helping him at the time was always kind of not Cooperative in terms of getting in having him do an interview and but then I'm sitting right next to him at lunch and so I just I said hey can I interview you and said sure what was he going to say so you know then I ended up doing it and then we we had several other ones after that like um in his house up in um California I forget the name of the town how fun listening to him you got the idea yeah yeah I think I probably told him that


story are there any questions that you ask every guest on the show that's a good question um Hm trying to think um remember the three stooges do you ever watch The Three Stooges no okay you won't get this joke then so I won't bother telling you well actually the the punch the the three stes are these com comedy characters and one of them was supposed to be kind of dumb and uh he was the funniest guy and one time they had some problem they're standing there trying to figure out what to do and he's kind of scrunching up his face this way and that and finally he says I'm trying to think but nothing


happens um questions I ask every time well there's certain themes I'd say that I am fond of myself and that I often bring up in interviews some of which we've already talked about here um you know the ongoing nature of evolution um the um one thing that that fascinates me is the omnipresent nature of intelligence I feel like God is just staring Us in the face if you think of anything a leaf that you're looking at or a pebble um and you you consider what you're actually looking at and you know the cells the molecules what's actually going on there it's this Marvel of intelligence and order an expression of orderly laws of nature and when you consider that there is no cubic centimeter in the entire universe where you wouldn't find an orderly expression of laws of nature you think wow I mean that's what God is it's it's this  

omnipresent intelligence within which everything is contained and by which or within which everything is orchestrated so sometimes I steer guests into that kind of discussion which interests me and actually I've actually interviewed a number of people who are kind of specifically interested in that kind of thing um and I like I mean of course uh you know the kinds of questions I would ask or topics I would discuss would depend a lot on the the guest and the nature of their particular thing um like I interviewed a lady few weeks ago who's who has an autistic daughter and she um and she's also a psychiatrist and she believes that autistic children are are kind of these um representatives of some higher Consciousness that's dawning in the world and they're they're these people they they're really special it's not like they're just damaged or something but they actually have a special gift and and a special role to play and um you know so we talked about that um or I would and there's a categorical index on batgap.com where we have all the interviews organized by different categories so you know there's all the different religious Traditions Hinduism Buddhism you know um Islam Etc Sufism and then the're you know scientists and they channelers and they near-death experiences and um these are Fun Kundalini Awakenings and you know all all the different things have you ever had a near death experience um no no I didn't I had a really fascinating experience one time it wasn't near death but it it was like during sleep and um I in the it was like a dream but it was so powerful and so profound that it seemed like it wasn't just a dream it was something more and in the dream I was ushered into a room and I was made to lie down on my stomach and hold on to some handles at about shoulder height and this being with a spear or Trident or something um started stabbing my spine up and down and like you know just stabbing it and it was excruciating but at the same time something very profound was happening and I just held on for dear life and I eventually came up out of it and as I came up out of it into the waking State this more greater and greater greater Bliss and freedom and just um relief began to dawn in my awareness and I just felt like and when I fully woke up it was like I felt like I had just been released from having been bound by Steel cords or something for God knows how long and they had been broken and I I for several days I walked along around practically with my jaw hanging open just kind of holy shoot know what happened it was just like this profound uh Awakening and then like uh later on I heard that there's some Tibetan practice where you're supposed to imagine Lord Shiva stabbing your spine with a trident and piercing your chakras and I thought maybe somebody somebody else had that same experience and they reverse engineered it into a practice so anyway I don't know why I got off on that tangent but um I guess you asked me about profound experiences or something the near near death you asked about near death yeah no I'm I'm pretty healthy and fortun I haven't had a near-death experience knock on


wood me neither I never had any I think they're interesting though yeah they're really interesting I like to listen to them because you know people come in and with their different Visions yeah they they they talk about interesting things that are not visible in everyday reality no we have any idea about it if you if you don't experience it right whatever that is a dream or imagination hallucination you know we can call it whatever you want but that's their experience they went through one interesting thing about it is that you know the kind of the mainstream scientific attitude is that we are just our bodies and when the bodies die that's the end and um and you know the idea that Consciousness transcends the body or is some kind of universal field and the body is more like a a radio you know transmitter receiver than it is than it is a generator of Consciousness or creator of Consciousness that is alien to the modern scientific Paradigm but um some people have near-death experiences and they experience things like while they're under anesthesia during operation or something that there's no explanation for like there's one example where somebody experienced that there was a red sneaker you know a sneaker is like a kind of shoe on the on the roof of the hospital and later on somebody went up there and found the sneaker or that there was some uh something on top of some cabinet in the in the operating room that couldn't be seen by anybody in the room but somebody went up and checked in there there was that thing up there or there was one lady I interviewed who experienced a she had had a car accident she was in surgery and she experienced that her uncle I think it was was buying a particular kind of candy bar from the machine in the waiting room and later on when she came out of anesthesia and talked to her uncle she said you bought a Snickers bar I saw you buy a Snickers bar and the guy didn't even like eat candy ordinarily but he had bought this thing sure enough he had he had bought that she saw it while she was under anesthesia so um what that kind of proves is that Consciousness can can function independent of the body so it's not just uh something that is generated by the brain and that you're um and that is limited to the senses that are in your body it can it can actually one can perceive things at a distance so that that in itself um upsets the Paradigm that I think really needs to be upset in order for society to evolve in its understanding of what life is right yes we can look just from at the tail of the elephant and say oh this is how it is exactly and you know it's funny because that's another theme that interests me personally is just the whole science spirituality interface because you know science science is obviously a very powerful influential thing in our in our world and it's done a lot of good and a lot of bad but it's really transformed our world and um but spiritual but science without spirituality I think is is dangerous it's like children playing with guns or something it we need spiritual maturity in order to counterbalance the um powerful influence that scientific technologies have including AI we can talk about AI if you want because I'm really into it um and um that that that sort of interface interests me a lot and part of my mission in life even when I first became a a meditation teacher at the age of 21 was the feeling that um you know the world needs a spiritual awakening in order to save Society from possible Extinction or at least from great troubles and and and tribulations and that the more we can raise Collective Consciousness the better life will be for everyone um and I so I really think that spirituality is an essential component of that and um that's been one of my motivating drives all the another thing that well you you want to comment on any of that before I say anything else well I think the science says mostly I know but the mystery of life is I don't know I'm open I don't know you say the the mystery is that the word you use yes mystery yeah yeah yeah because one if I know I'm closed to the mystery if I don't know I'm open to this miracle very good point yeah when I know I know what I can see hear taste smell and you know everything else is Concepts and visions and things like that but there is so much more to this yeah the invisible that cannot be described how about that yeah there's an organization in England called the um Galileo commission and they named it that because um back when he invented the telescope Galileo invited the church authorities to look through his telescope and to see that there that Jupiter had moons and for some reason the idea of Jupiter having moons was um against church doctrine don't ask me why and so they refused to look through his telescope because they said Well it can't be true because it's against church doctrine um so I think you know the reason these guys in England called their thing the Galileo commission is that a lot of scientists are behaving that way even now you know somebody like Dean Raiden comes up with some really interesting research showing that psychic abilities real or you know some other thing kinds of things he studies and they won't even look at his research you know they say it can't be true I'm not going to take the time to look at it so I think if they if they act that way they're not being scientists they're being religious Fanatics they've there's a term scientism which me which means like fundamentalist science where you're you're not open-minded yeah so we need to kind of find the balance between what I know and what I don't know and just live here yeah and be open to the mystery right and Science and spirituality can actually be allies I gave a talk on this at the science and Nonduality conference in I don't know 2015 but they can be allies on the on in the Quest for know they they're not enemies right it's like the elephant's trunk and elephant's tail they on the sameelephant the elephant needs them both right um there's two other things I've got going on but feel free to ask me questions but um two other major things that I work on one is um something called the association for Spiritual integrity and I think you might be a member of iten yes I am and um that started because I was at the science and non Duality conference and I gave a talk called the ethics of Enlightenment and Jack O'Keefe um was in the audience and also a guy named Craig Holiday and they had given similar talks and we we hadn't really um you know collaborated or or coordinated we didn't know we were all giving a similar talk and so we we had lunch afterwards and you know we we found we were all really interested in the idea that in contemporary spirituality spiritual teachers spiritual movements there have been a lot of ethical breaches and misconduct and that you know we should try to do something to help correct the situation so we decided to form an organization which became the association for Spiritual Integrity we have over 700 members now and over 50 member organizations and we've given talks at Harvard Divinity School conferences and the Parliament of world religions and uh we have all these webinars and different things and so that's that's something that you know one of my activities you want to say anything about that before yes and it's very important activity because as you say somebody that says I woke up or I'm awakened now and a lot of people can start worshiping or following and you know I'm awake doesn't mean that I'm honest or I am moral or I am kind right and then he wants he wants to have sex with all the women in his group and then he just says oh I'm not doing that God is doing it I'm not the doer you know yeah or some crazy nonsense like that yeah what comes to mind is John of God you remember that one in Brazil the crazy story I interviewed a lady who probably made 50 trips down to to John of God and she took people down there in groups and all we we had quite a discussion about that um yeah that's one that's one of the biggest ones kind of yeah and there and even some popular gurus I mean my own teacher Maharishi Mahesh Yogi had some real ethical problems in terms of his sexual Affairs and stuff although he claimed to be a life celibate and then there's all kinds of stuff with Osho and you know all kind yeah I you don't have to get we don't have to get into all the different names but I mean people are aware of these things it's good it's good you bring that out because who to trust yeah and people get disillusioned I mean I've I've actually heard of people committing suicide because they got so disillusioned by some spiritual teacher and that's that's a real crime I mean that's a real shame um and you know I think again I think spirituality is such a precious thing and it's a responsibility if you're going to be a teacher to not give it a bad name and to not disillusion people and to not violate their trust because you put a lot of trust in a spiritual teacher and you know it's a it's like being putting your trust in in a school teacher if you're a little child and if the school teacher starts molesting the child or doing something like that it's it's such a traumatic experience and perhaps it's even more so with spirituality because it's such an a deep essential need in in in human


life um what is your view on people waking up let's say having an experience a shift and then starting a YouTube channel starting to share their experiences getting serious on YouTube right


away it depends on how they do it you know if if they remain humble and you know they admit that they don't know everything and that they are learning and but they have something useful to share like I interviewed a young guy from Denmark a couple weeks ago named um Lucas Bergendahl and he's very sweet guy I really liked him he's 29 years old and you know hasn't been that long since he had a spiritual awakening but he's very humble and he's very honest and very kind of self effacing like you know he'll tell you about all his problems and his shortcomings and everything else but he's really got something you know and um but if somebody you know they have some kind of Awakening and they they kind of Proclaim that they are the Avatar and you know and that everybody should worship them and believe me they're actually people who do this um then you know that's that's problematic yeah and and it it's probably a little risky you know to set yourself up as a spiritual teacher because it can go to your head you know you could end up with all these people like you know glare you know admiring you and praising you and wanting to be near you and so on and so forth if you're not really mature um you can get an inflated ego right I think this is also a question of Ethics you know it is definitely there's um there's an interesting there's a woman I interviewed named Joan Shivarpita Harrigan Shivarpita is like her spiritual name and um she's she's a good friend we stay in touch but she's a real expert on um Kundalini she's written some big thick books about it and she had an Institute in Tennessee where people could go for a couple weeks and anyway um she describes the various ways in which Kundalini can rise and there's something called a deflected Rising where it rises to a certain extent but then it kind of gets off on a side track and one can have it can it can endow a person with great shakti and and Charisma and eloquence and Bliss and you know they can become a very impressive person and they they think they're enlightened other people think they're enlightened but actually they haven't reached it it's off on a Sidetrack and they end up causing trouble and usually having some kind of Crash and Burn you know experience so that might explain some of these situations yeah Crash and Burn beware yeah another thing I want to mention is uh I mentioned AI so there's this wonderful fellow that I interviewed um named Nipun Mehta um he's Indian but he lives in California these days and he has an organization called service space which is operates all over the world millions of people are involved in it and um he started this um thing that he calls The Compassion bot Network which is um it's a a network of AI chatbots that he actually provides for free to um various spiritual organizations and people stuff so he asked me if I would like to have one of these and I I I said yeah because I'm kind of a computer geek and I was interested in Ai and so I set this thing up and um and I'm helping other people set them up as well maybe you would like to have one and um yeah we can do that and um I've uploaded over 100,000 documents to it um not one by one usually in batches but we've uploaded uh 1,700 of the world's sacred texts you know the well-known ones such as the Bible and the Quran and all that but also very more obscure sacred texts and um transcripts of thousands and thousands of spiritual discussions and videos and books and all kind of stuff so um there's a link to it on there's a menu item uh to it on batgap.com and you can you can explore it but people are finding that it's really uh generally better than chat GPT or any of the commercial Bots for Spiritual or philosophical discussions and uh and there's more and more features we keep adding to it for instance um if you ask it a question and then it gives you a nice answer it usually gives you some follow-up questions you might want to ask or some point some recommendations but then at the bottom it has some links to the sources from which it got the information and um we we're getting it developed now so that they will be video Source links so that let's say I let's say I had interview or let's say I had a a transcript of my interview with you on there and if it if it drew upon that interview for its answer then in the video Source link if you click on it it would actually take you to the specific point in the video where it you know got the relevant information for that answer wow that's the next level right it is and this is something that it yeah so and there's all kinds of possibilities on the horizon as this stuff evolves and so that's something that I actually spend a lot of my time on developing this thing wow yes I'm impressed yeah it's it's fun sounds good I mean if you could upload all the Liberation Unleashed Forum all the all the threads I mean everything up there let's let's talk about that we can do that and then and then what'll be cool about it is then you can have a chat bot where a person can like interact with the entire Data Corpus that's the word they use for this kind of thing a Data Corpus of of Liberation Unleashed and it will it will kind of it'll take the entire knowledge of Liberation Unleashed to compose particular answers to any questions that people want to ask it's a little bit other way around I mean the guides are asking questions yeah so yeah that that sounds like a good idea that you can have a AI guide yeah I I'll help you set that up and um I I don't go on the form anymore I just got tired of typing the same question over and over again yeah so now they don't have to ask you for the answers they can just ask the butt because you've already answered them and uh and they can get anything they want out of it right and like there was one guy named Jem Bendell that I interviewed and he um wrote a book called breaking together which he feels like there's going to be a sort of societal collapse due to um climate change and various other factors he analyzes all these different things in his book and he up he has a bot um they call his Jem bot because his name is Jem and it um it basically the knowledge in it just consists of his entire book but it was a big book it took me 18 hours to listen to and so it's a way of interacting with his book you can ask it questions and it'll just give you answers based upon the the collective knowledge that he put in the book ah wow so this an example so there's a whole bunch of these spots they keep growing up and Nipun amazingly he doesn't charge he Nipun estimated it would take over a million dollars to develop one of these Bots individually with all of its capabilities that it has but he's he doesn't charge anything um and of course I everybody Under the Sun can't have one but if if some if it's relevant and and if you know kind of a spiritual or positive thing and if a person has enough information to put in it to to give it a nice solid knowledge base um then they would be eligible oh wow so level up then pardon we go to level up yeah yeah like reaching new possibilities opening up yeah very interesting thank you for sharing that I'll definitely look into it yeah we can uh you can check out the one on batgap just go under on batgap to the batgap bot menu and get a feeling for how it works but then we we can follow up and um you know get it set up for you sweet


Is there anything you want to say that we haven't touched on something um I always that's you ask me what question I ask people in interviews that's one I usually ask towards the end I say is there anything I haven't thought of that you want to talk about um but um nothing comes to mind I mean I could talk to you all day because uh you're interesting and this is this all it's always fun talking about all this stuff okay I'll have another question okay good I have a question that I ask everyone go for it right so somebody who is watching these videos interviews are still a seeker and is looking for that shift or that Awakening what would be your best advice Hm well you know Jesus said he said seek and you shall find knock and the door shall be opened and uh there's a saying in India take I don't know whether the guru says this or God says this but take one step toward me and I'll take a hundred steps toward you um so I think that the very desire for this kind of knowledge and experience is a really good start and the Very fact that one has such a desire is important and it's it's actually probably kind of rare still if you consider all the eight billion people in the world how many people really know about this and and want it so you have the desire and that's great and probably anybody watching this has that desire and then you need to figure out all right well what what can I do with it how can I fulfill it and so you kind of what we were saying earlier you need to sort of shop around a little bit you know check out different possibilities watch different videos listen to different teachers see what resonates with you but always keep your powers of discrimination you know don't I mean I know of examples of people who signed over their entire inheritance of $900,000 to some spiritual teacher because he he told them the money had bad karma attached to it and he could cleanse it for them so don't don't do anything like that um you know feel free to run away if if you start to get a kind of a bad Vibe or anybody asks you to go to bed with them or give them give them all your money or something be careful there's a lot of half-baked spiritual teachers out there right but there are some sincere ones there are some good ones and if you find that you know you resonate with what someone is saying then great um you know maybe that's somebody you should pay more attention to I would also say though that um at least because of my I have a bias you know for actually meditating doing a practice because it worked so well for me and maybe that's not the the right thing for everybody different people people can do different things but you know just from my own experience I found that just aside from reading and listening to stuff just having sitting and closing my eyes and having a deep you know dive into pure awareness twice a day has had tremendous benefits so if you can find a way of doing that and I have a friend actually another guy who you might like to interview named Jerry Freeman who's do been doing all this research on the traditions of effortless transcending he calls it uh that have been going around the world and it turns out most spiritual Traditions have something of that nature and he's been trying to compile it all into a document so that um you know people could read that and pursue something that is in line with their particular tradition or interests and that would actually be effective for them um for instance there's a guy named Lawrence Freeman whom I've interviewed I think he's based in France and um he has a Christian type of meditation that's very similar to what I've been practicing but that uses a Christian Mantra and hundreds of thousands of people have learned it and you know it's a very popular inspiring thing so you know if that's your orientation maybe that would be good um maybe TM would be good maybe I don't know some guy just contacted me this morning um who has some kind of meditation that he's offering that I think would be effective based upon what I I looked at so search around you know as I said as Jesus said seek and you shall find good advice yeah so hopefully all the Seekers that that are listening they are already seeking they just need a little bit of um perseverance or dedication yeah and what I thought found and what you have probably found also is that when you do have this intention and you start sort of pursuing it all kinds of opportunities open up to you that you wouldn't


have this this information or this person or this opportunity um it's it's almost like you know God or nature whatever is responding to your your interest and giving you what what you're you're you're looking for right yeah like knock knocking comes from inside that's right good point yeah I think Rumi or somebody said something like


that well thank you so much Rick it's such a pleasure to communicate and share with you I can't do Namaste because I have to hold the phone I'll do it one handed


Namaste yeah one yeah how does one hand Namaste sound yeah one one hand clapping what's the sound yeah yeah so great talking to you and we'll be in touch we'll get you going on that bot thing and anything else I can do to help and uh if you you know if you want to keep doing these interviews and I have some I I have a whole 700 suggestions for you oh wonderful because I was looking for suggestions and here you you come up yeah and you know I have all these emails of emails all these people and I'd be happy to put you in touch with people oh wonderful thank you so much and thank you everyone for watching and listening and please comment like share do do everything you can thank you I really appreciate is that what gets this channel more visible it reaches more people yep thank you Rick yeah you're welcome thank you and see you soon bye see you soon bye thank you