Andrew Cohen & Tim Freke In Dialogue, London November 4th

so we're gonna try and keep the this they would I'm just gonna introduce myself and speak about my history and as Tim Wilkins so I'm gonna try and do be very quick but I'm when I'm afraid I was going on too long so I'm gonna try and keep it to about seven or eight minutes and what I wanted to speak about and Tim will also speak about is my personal history and my my own understanding my my spiritual development up until where we are tonight so I was brought up in a secular Jewish family in New York and I had no religious or spiritual education or background whatsoever and then like a lot of teenagers when I was 16 years old one evening I had a very unexpected profound metaphysical breakthrough when I was sitting up like when I'd having a conversation with my mother when I was living in Rome and I became aware of the fact that the whole universe was one living conscious being the nature of this being was the kind of impersonal absolute love that was unimaginable and during in the midst of that experience was physically crushing and totally overwhelming and I was in a state of awe and Wonder and I was tears were falling from my eyes but I wasn't crying I really didn't know what was happening and after after this happened I did some research and I found out that the experience was comparable he's usually called what an experience of cosmic consciousness so that was my that was my original spiritual initiation then when I was 22 years old I decided to devote my life to read the rediscovery of that experience and I did all the things that true seekers do I got up early in the morning I learned how to meditate I had many teachers I had an Indian guru I had many Western teachers and when I was and I had a lot of experiences I was very curious I've always been a very rational thinker and very philosophically oriented and I took all of my teachers very seriously but I never took anything at face value I always wanted to know why I wanted to make sense out of everything and that was a big theme in my approach to all this for some reason I don't know why and then when I was 27 or 28 I went to India and I decided when I got there that I wasn't gonna go back to America anymore because at that time of my life I've made up my mind that I wanted to become and light more than anything else and I was when I was living in Manhattan when people people and say what do you do so what I told I wasn't doing anything very interesting when I tell people what I wanted to do was to become enlightened people didn't how to respond and when I went to India and I'd answer that same question in the same way people would go oh that's very admirable that's very laudable it's very profound what you're trying to do so I felt very comfortable there seeking seeking for this profound shift and transformation and then I met my wife-to-be who was Indian when I was there and then after after about two and a half years I met my guru to be and his name was hwl Punja who was a disciple of the great Ramana Maharshi and when I met him he was quite unknown but I mentor he was living in a room and is living in a small room in his son's house and I spent three weeks in the president's extraordinary man and he changed my life forever and I asked him all the most important questions that I hadn't burned they were burning metaphysical and philosophical questions that I had he answered them very graciously he was very kind he was very loving it was the most idyllic fantasy story of meeting a guru it was it literally was like a dream come true and when I was within the days that I was with him I would think this is the most extraordinary person I've ever met in my life and then at other times I think he's some crazy old man doesn't know what he's talking about so I was waxing in and out of being sure this was really the real thing and and a lot of doubt and then when I left him after three weeks he told me pay attention something very big is gonna happen to you so that made me doubt him even more because I couldn't imagine how anybody could know that such a thing was true and lo and behold when I met him when I left him and I went it when I was sitting in the train station and they in Lucknow which is where he was living at the time I was I was completely overwhelmed by a metaphysical presence the likes of which I'd never known before and I underwent that kind of an alchemical metaphysical process of being absorbed into a dimension of reality that was utterly unexpected and completely mind-blowing and I knew all my all my wildest dreams were coming true plus and plus a thousand plus a million and and the experience was of being consumed I felt like my whole body was burning up in the experience was of being consumed by an unseen presence that had no beginning and no end and that was the source of unimaginable intelligence and power and love and in the midst of this in the midst of this overwhelming experience people had become my friends were asking asking me questions about what had happened when I'd met this extraordinary man and I started sharing my experience with them and they to my surprise became absorbed in the state of consciousness that I had just been overcome by and within days they were treating me like their teacher and I this all happened really within a matter of weeks so that was the beginning and then I went back to him and I fell at his feet and I said I didn't burst into tears and he said you're the one I've been waiting for this was a I mean I didn't realize till later that he said that the other people see but but then at least it was quite extraordinary so so I went off and then I was invited to Europe and I started teaching and then a lot of people came to me and very quickly a large group of people gathered and I had not had any I had never had a plan or a preconceived idea of how I was gonna teach her what I was going to do I just it was really a process of surrender door was happening very spontaneously and at a certain point the people who are gathering around me we're leaving they seem to want to stay together and be together in the state of consciousness did they experience when I was teaching so after about a year I realized that I was gonna be teaching something very different than what he was teaching was more of a very radical form of invite to Vedanta I realized there was a collective Nate there was something collective about the state of consciousness that I was the people were experiment experiencing through being with me that they would share with each other and when they would share being together in the context of the state of consciousness they were experiencing they experienced an extraordinary potential for human interior evolution so after about a year I realize I had to surrender to the collective nature of what was happening and I realized I had to begin to take responsibility for this community that was forming so that was what twenty seven twenty eight twenty seven twenty eight years ago and we eventually moved to California then we moved back to these coasts we I because of my because I was a very rational person I won I was out I always had a lot of questions and I was trying to make sense out of my experience and I didn't believe everything that I've been told so in order to make sense out of this movement of this metaphysics real as it revelation this metaphysical revelation non-duality moving from the east to the west noted to help make sense of it with my own with my students we started a magazine called what is enlightenment and in the our my inquiry and our inquiry is trying to make sense out of this phenomena of this metaphysical realization of non-duality moving from east to west we tried to make sense out of it in a very transparent way with the magazine and the magazine caught on very quickly because it was quite it was it was very good it was sophisticated the inquiry was deep and we were slaughtering a lot of sacred cows and a lot of people recognized that in this so my own understanding of enlightenment went through significant changes and I just want to touch on them briefly because we will go into it later as we speak tonight but my my teacher is the revelation he gave me was that the ultimate the ultimate truth is that his consciousness - formless beginningless and endless ground all of the experience when we awakened directly to the truth of our own self nature as consciousness itself in that recognition in that realization we recognize that the appearance of the world which begins with the appearance of thoughts and the presence of our own physical form are all part of an illusion of a temporary illusion of that which appears and ultimately disappears and the only thing that's ultimately real is that which never changes which is which is this metaphysical timeless formless ground a being which we can directly access to because who could becoming aware of our own our own experience of consciousness in this in every moment so it was the introducing people to this experience which was happening in very dramatic ways in those days was the beginning my gurus position was that the world is an illusion time is an illusion and the that we should realize that and when we do we will because because we let because we will have let go of the apparent reality of the world and our own minds and our own personalities we will have a very liberated therefore relationship with our minds the drama the relentless drama human experience and the appearance of the world it was more or less abhi in the world but not other kind of teaching and in my own experience with my own students who are having these revelations a very profound revelations in this country often I found that that grand narrative unsatisfying because to me what became more important was it was not the fact of the realization of the experience of the realization or these insights or the kinds of ecstasy people were experiencing but what kind of world would we create together if we if we could create it from a perspective of such a liberated state of consciousness and the inspiration the liberated inspiration that we experienced in these states of consciousness so the creative potential inherent in this in the state of enlightened awareness became more interesting to me than just the experience the state of enlightened awarenesses itself or as an end in itself and so I so for this and other reasons I my teacher and I will get eventually started going in different directions and I started exploring the creative potential inherent in the revelation of enlightenment and enlightened awareness rather than the state of that state of consciousness is being an end in itself and I started to pursue it and I through the through the pursuing this direction I in my own way I came upon what's what these days is called a process perspective learning to see all of manifestation of the entire creative process from a perspective of being in a of an impersonal phenomena that is all ultimately spirit it's all ultimately God including our own minds or on emotions our own bodies and the world itself is all part and parcel of one impersonal process and so then I began to see the more we can dis identify with you relentlessly personal and ferociously narcissistic sense of this is my experience and it's very very important and begin to see even our own personal experience through this impersonal process perspective we could we could find a way to let go more and more of of the of the apparent significance of being ourselves and begin to relate to life you know more from from front perspective that that's free from free from all inherently creative so this was this is the this is kind of a middle step that's when my teachings went from from from where I used to call a personal enlightenment Vantage orientation to what I used to call an impersonal he's not a very attractive word I understand what if we went from a personal relationship to this idea of spiritual liberation to an impersonal process respected oriented one and the next thing that happened and this was very interesting we were sharing as I was I was always teaching and traveling but it's the headed there was a worldwide community and we were sharing these trying to put them into practice and seeing all the different ways in which is just liberated process orientation process perspective how this related to the reality of being a human being so what does this have to do with the reality being human being and all the inherent challenges of being human and the challenges of being human are infinite so that's that's a whole lot much larger conversation but I always wanted to relate the experience of liberation and the ecstasy of liberation the reality of being human and I know that tim has been very interested in this particular issue also so so but I knew in this shift from from a personal subjective experience of enlightened awareness to a shared inner subjective experience of enlightened awareness and the potential and that was that was really what was lighting me up and what I was very interested in and the next thing that happened was I became friends with the the great American philosopher Ken Wilber I became very interested in the whole scientific notion of cosmic evolution biological evolution and with integral philosophy especially cultural evolution and I became as I became friends with Kanna became friends with Don back and learned about spiral dynamics and I recognized in learning about integral philosophy that I had actually been pursuing the pursuing enlightenment in evolutionary context without knowing it but when I discovered evolution as a meta context it it it's affirmed what I had been intuitively the direction I've been intuitively pursuing and then and then this went on to a deeper appreciation of the creative and developmental and evolutionary aspect of the creative process as a whole and recognizing that in this evolutionary orientation that to live a truly conscious life now meant to live to live in the consciousness of to live in the consciousness of the awareness of this ultimately creative context that gave rise to the experience we're having now gave rise to the person we are now I gave rise to the miraculous gifted complex cognition and self reflective awareness and they're learning to consciously take responsibility for all of that and the spirit of wanting to be a truly liberated human being put us in a unique position to be able to consciously create the future in ways that would have great significance potentially for human evolution and so that's it's a very it's a simplified way of looking at this so this really started to become the essence of what I was sharing was the whole potential for human freedom and human liberation in the context of of evolution and to awaken people to a significance and why I felt it was so important and still feel it's so important is because to me the the most challenging existential question for most sophisticated postmodern human beings is the absence of a clear sense of purpose in terms of who enters of Y I'm a Qui URI I'm actually here in this world what's the purpose of the experience I'm having and why it's so important for us is because historically speaking were among the luckiest people that have ever been born in terms of our wealth and our education and our personal freedom but there's so many people have historic on his unprecedented gifts of modernity and postmodernity are unprecedented in the midst of it so many people feel existentially lost and confused because they don't yeah so to me the the awakening to to this meta to this meta purpose metaphor postman and metaphysical purpose in the context of evolutionary potential can we can we can literally realize you know why the universe came came to life and why why you and I are actually here right now and the enormous potential and the life that God's given us and and well that to me is the ants is the biggest the most important answer to be found and once we find that answer not only intellectually but metaphysically then we're off to the races and then from there from there on it's up to us to to live the most meaningful and purposeful and creative and life we can to contribute in the most heroic week where we can to create the future with everyone else and in terms of my personal story I went through quite a crisis about four and a half years ago when some of my students were challenging challenge day my position as being their their guru because even though I was we were even though I was teaching a lot of these very leading edge principles in terms of how to think about all this I was very much holding on to a very mythic notion of being Sadhguru when inherent in that in that inherent inherent in that thinking is the eastern idea of coming coming to the end of being fully enlightened coming to the end of the path being you're on the other side now and you're and you're you're never going to yeah you reach the state of perfection and even though I didn't completely believe that I was still holding on to that idea about myself and when this was challenged I didn't take it very well and just led to me taking a period of time off for for reflection and reconsideration of some some some ideas about myself and about enlightenment itself that I've been entertaining and holding on to that I hadn't even anyways I hadn't even been aware of it so when I stepped down the worldwide community to my shock and horror folded very quickly and I'm still reeling and reeling from that from the fact that happened because that wasn't I didn't expect that to happen it wasn't part of the idea I thought I needed to take time out from my own reflection because they'd literally been teaching non-stop for 27 years but that's not what happened so I've in the last I took really three years off which was a quite a personal ordeal and the ultimate existential the biggest challenge that had my own life and then I started and I'm still recovering from the shock of its the shock of everything would have what happened and I started teaching again about ten months ago and coming back to life and moving forward and wanting to learn from everything that's happening and continue to contribute in the biggest way I can I don't know how long that was hopefully wasn't enough so I'm gonna be good and not banks around like I normally do but now I will try and sit on the seat because it seems polite tonight but I will have to take my shoes off hello so I'm Tim if you don't know and I also started off with a spontaneous awakening I was 12 I lived in the West Country of England and one day while sitting on this hill happened my sense of it is that I was always profoundly struck with how mysterious life is I still am every day just this profound sense of how enormous and breathtaking the mystery of existence is and how I felt very confused at all the grown-up seem to be pretending that I knew what was going on when clearly they didn't and why no one ever mentioned it well you know you went to school and no one ever went yeah the universe what the hell you know well the news or no one ever said it and and I think that was the thing which probably spurred what I now think of as the moment I tasted what I call being deep awake which is a name I've ended up with because it feels like well it's like being awake but deeper and there's no I don't for me it's not an absolute state I found no limit to it it just seems so I feel like a beginner it just goes on and on and on as far as I can see but what was there right from the start and I remember vividly there's three characteristics which I'd say it has is still there whenever I get the chance to dive really deeply in which is a profound sense of oneness or communion is probably a good word one in many nests at the same time so that the there's a deep connectivity between everything there's a sense you aliveness though so forth think it's gonna be like the multipath and sketch oh and this and that sense of that everything being um and probably for me what when I was young and still the most important this profound this wonderful love whole universe is just pulsating with with love which really hit me very strongly as a little boy and which still does actually and and then this sense which I now think of as a gnosis of deep knowing which sounds so naive like a lot of these things they sound really childlike I think that there's a that there's a fundamental goodness to existence that despite everything despite all of the suffering of which there is so much that underneath that there is something fundamentally good about this and that's where it started from me and and like Andrew was kind of shot off and I did every mad thing that I could do to play with consciousness and meditated and had studied this and heard teachers and gurus and took everything so I could lay my hands on and did everything I could find to explore consciousness and what I found was it kept happening and I could go deeper and deeper and deeper into it but like everyone I was very influenced by what was around me and a lot of what was around me was the influx of Indian spirituality in quite an uncritical way so I just took all of that on to some degree even though actually didn't suit me wasn't comfortable with it so that as I got older I began to question that and began to think hang on I've rejected Western religion because it didn't seem up to the job but I've kind of taken on a lot of Eastern religion without giving it the same critical thought as if it's absolute if it's just the way it is and over the last period of my life last few decades that felt like no what's happening is that I'm evolving because the whole universe is evolving and part of that evolution is to frame these experiences in a new way so as a writer which is probably the best way of capturing the last part of my life I started writing books written a lot of books thirty-five books the first whole section of that was really studying all the different spiritual traditions of the world and very much from a perennial philosophy perspective like there's something to say in this and the thing which seems like the same is there are human beings like me who one day went pull and when oh yeah it's all one it's really about love and then said it in their own vocabulary literally that they could say in that way and so it came out in it with a certain flavor and tradition and they had a philosophy of their time and then the the particular item on early Gnostic Christianity which had became a best-seller so that was a big to-do at the time and kind of changed my profile but this last phase for me has been like really what I'm interested in is understanding my own experience of life in the hope that probably other people are having a similar experience and that what I can do is if I can if I can as a philosopher if I can understand it and share it then that will help other people to understand their experience and so this last period has been like well how can we understand this awakening now in the 21st century and a feeling that a lot of the stuff that happened in the past was great then but needs we need to be able to revise it and for me that's been two phases in that really the first was that I see a huge amount of deep spirituality as inherently life denying rejecting because of when it arose and I kind of get that I think it's a natural thing when I said when I first woke up for me it was yes of oh my god well and so there's a natural feeling you know why can't I just be always yeah why am i why do I have to go and so when someone came along and said well the problem is its uten you're the problem you know there is a something in you which wants to stop you and it's your ego or it sure it's your personality it's just your separate existence at all you just believed it's Tim and I was very open to that well your mind when my guru that was my gurus thing as your mind so it's like I was this thing is in me my attachment my mom really was a hole in my humanity that I was emotionally attached to things that I wanted to do things with my life I had aspirations that I kept thinking all the time I wasn't just completely empty in silent everything that may be a human being was the problem so if I could just stare a white wall mom enough then I would be blue the whole time and and it would I turn into this imaginary figure that I thought these other people were because I haven't met them yet I met them now and I know they're not like that but from a distance that's what it looked like and so I wanted a spirituality which was genuine to my experience and my experiences has not been that it's and it's been much more interesting than that what I've discovered what which has really intrigued me is that I seem to be two things at once which is that there's this profound depth to my being which is formless and one with everything from which and arises this enormous love which holds everything unconditionally just as it is and I'm Tim on a journey he was a guy from the West country has a certain accent has certain qualities hopefully you'll enjoy him for an evening but if you were with him all the time like I am he would drive you nuts because and he's uh he's on a journey and like being on a journey means that he is necessarily unconscious of things that he doesn't know he's unconscious of that's why he's unconscious of them and the part of that will be I hope to be more conscious tomorrow than I was today in part so it's a Jenner knee of I want to say humility but probably humiliation is probably closer it's a constant discovery of how wrong like being because that's the only way I evolve and so there's Tim who's constantly evolving and I see no sign of that possibly ending and then this thing which doesn't move and change and they both coexist so I've developed what I call a para logical philosophy of spirituality para logical because it's both and a paradox rather than one or the other and what I see from so much spirituality is it's based on one or the other and generally it's like the spirituality is get rid of this and then you can have this where my experience is oh no they both exist together and the more I can just be with Tim and let him be okay the more this just opens up of itself there's nothing in the way there's nothing trying to stop me there's nothing wrong there's just an evolving Tim and this together and that the love comes with them both so along my time over the last few decades has been speaking out against more extreme forms of spirituality especially with the advent of massive popularity of non-duality over the last period which has been like no no this is the reality this is the illusion and it's felt like this is not an illusion this is really important and it's through this through this process of evolving form that we are conscious at all actually if anything and then we can be conscious of the formless so that with that the one becomes conscious of itself through being many that's how it so that this journey were on rather than being an illusion which needs to dissipate is actually the foundation through which this deeper awakening is coming into existence and that led me into really appreciating this evolutionary current this evening sorry this amazing idea I mean just amazing idea that we now have from science although it's an ancient idea you its inherent in spirituality is inherent in the whole in hinduism its inherent in the idea of transmigration of souls in pythagoreanism it's the idea of new starters of plant and then you become an animal and then you know that you end up and ate all of that so it's it's a very old notion but now we have this we have this idea that the unity the whole universe is evolving everything is evolving and most generations have lived in the universe which is just is what it is but ours is all moving it's it's all evolving there's a lovely line from a scientist and philosopher I admire greatly Bryan Swim who I just had the pleasure of meeting for the first time in the Santa non-duality conference in America I just spoke at where he says something like yes what we've discovered is if you take hydrogen which is where it all started one of the first things if you take hydrogen and leave it long enough he learns to sing opera and I love that because you just get the scale of the vision that we're talking about so the last period of my life has been wanting to basically my journeys been further and further in the first half was like oh my god it's all one and the whole of the second house has been further and further into how only want to engage with humanity I want to speak up for for this I want to see the ego as the hero of the journey not the villain I want to encourage people to feel empowered as individuals not undr not disempower them and the more empowered and the more they become themselves the more will wake up because the thing you notice straight away is that people who get attracted to people are here in this e room tonight are more individual not less they've actually become they've individuated away from the herd they've become more themselves the individuality hasn't diminished its increased and the more we can do that and when we think for ourselves we don't just think believe what other people say we we question and doubt that the more conscious we become so I wanted to speak up for that and then the last period has been in my latest book soul story I've created a whole philosophy called emergent spirituality which has been my contribution towards how can we bring together science and spirituality into one story and the one story of evolution which I hope will get a chance to go into a bit tonight so that we can see that they are part of an one human endeavor so we can bring these two strands into in together and so that we can say to spirituality that this human journey we're on which is not just a human journey as the whole cosmic journey really matters because that's my deepest intuition it's it's a you know and not just in the grand sense which is amazing but in the particular sense that your individual journey matters but you are in the tiniest little things your relationships with your family and your struggles and your those things really really really matter and that this awakening is not from that but into that to enable us to engage so the last thing I want to do is just say a few words about why I'm here tonight first of all thanks to everyone who laid it on and for Andrea for inviting me to be part of this and I've come because I'm really intrigued because I came across Andrews evolutionary spirituality long before I was writing about it it's always been there for me but I was not didn't feel ready or able to write about it and also Kenz which was amazing blew me away and the magazine which I thought was extraordinarily good compared to everything else which is on the market and deep and questioning just the mere title was a question it's great um and there was that and then I was aware of what you was doing in the in in his own teaching and I didn't like it it seemed to be the very opposite to me of any of where it needed to go evolutionary wise that it felt like the for me the whole guru model the absolute model was the was was part of the past that we needed to move into a completely different thing where we were empowering individuals and the Guru model was built on this rejection of the separate self or the rejection of the ego there was something that needed to be dismantled and that's why you needed the authority figure because no one could do that for themselves whereas my own feeling as being we don't need to dismantle anything actually we just need to make it healthy and to encourage it actually because most people hate themselves and that's the problem it's the opposite problem and we can bring that love to this that can be healthy and then from a healthy ego this deeper thing will just open up over itself so I really struggle with that and when to hear Andrew speak once spoke on the same conference actually once as well with Tom Bell also a few times I would see you at our Center yes yeah I came to the center and I really love the philosophy really didn't like that aspect of it at all and also with Ken and also had a kind of feeling for those of you that know spiral dynamics I had a kind of feeling that my attitude was been dismissed as kind of the Mean Green meme the kind of that it would be you know oh it's just the leveling out of everything in which it wasn't it didn't feel like that to me at all it felt like this this retrogressive thing has been applied to something really progressive so when I heard that there'd been a massive explosion in your community and that the whole the the Guru thing had had had been there not that you know that all the things that happened and the things of people saying and my first reaction was oh there we go as another one because there's so many I mean it's just endless and a feeling of that's what we need to leave behind so when he got a chance to meet Andrew could meet you it was like oh how interesting part not least because it felt like wow what a human journey you've been on I mean this extraordinary journey yeah man I've been on yeah I mean just to make to be that to be like dinner and then to be willow and like whoa Wow what would that be like I mean I don't wanna find out but well what would that be like and to have all those people like you're the best you're the worst and like what would that be like and I find it hard with one or two let alone you know and so I was really intrigued because I find myself like really resonant and wanting to explore this area where we you know you be way ahead of the game I think and I really and I'm really wanting to contribute myself around emergen or eeveelution airy spirituality and then this other stuff where in the past we would have definitely disagreed around the role of a teacher and the nature of ego and those traditional issues and part of what I thought would be great to do and explore is how Andrew how you see that now and how that fits with the evolutionary idea now and whether it's possible to have a different version than that to go forward into the future and great Tim so I think it'd be great to go into those questions together there are very important questions for all of us and very relevant and there were open questions because nobody really has the answers but I thought just before we go into the particulars just to follow on from what I was saying from what you were saying maybe to start with from the biggest perspective and so we both we both agree very passionately that transcending the world what Rupert Sheldrake would call approaching enlightenment as vertical liftoff escaping from samsara escaping from the material world transcend and the goal of enlightenment being to transcend and escape from the human experience is the very opposite direction we need to go in because we've discovered that waking up is more about being here than it ever was than ever more and more and more in the more we wake up the more we realize that we're desperately needed to be here but to be here not in a state of ignorance and blindness and unconsciousness but instead of being radically and profoundly awake so we can so we can participate replace the deep insight and liberated consciousness so so so I as far as I understand the biggest biggest metaphysical perspective that would encourage us to go in that direction which starts with the revelation of non-duality as you as you were describing this other desert there's the man is the many is only the one but then but then realizing that as the Buddha is the Buddha boldly proclaimed in the Heart Sutra the form and emptiness are one and not two so the Buddha realized that because because you read the original Buddha wanted to escape the world of form in the world of manifestation and like in many of the religious traditions myth the mythic religious traditions in the east and the West wanted to escape from the the embodied existence and then what they felt was the tyranny of the human experience and to awaken to a nirvanic state of freedom which which great great Yogi's and saints good experience as a result of cultivating the capacity to enter deep state deep and higher states of consciousness for para meditation so this this so this revelation of the world of the world of form it's not separate from emptiness itself and that they're one and not two makes us see that that that that that there is no difference and if there is no difference is really nowhere else to go than where we already are but then the third component to that revelation which is happened very recently in history 150 years ago which is the discovery of evolution so not only is the ultimate realization of a non duality that for non duality is that form and emptiness or one and not two but we now we have to add to this and the world deform is evolving is going somewhere so that so that's it's an important understanding to see that form and emptiness or one and not two into the world the form is evolving going somewhere and then for me what's been very profound and very important very source of great inspiration is to use theological language just for fun that if we want if we would if we would call God the metaphysical principle that catalyze the universe into existence that the universe that there seems to be very much we look into the reality of our experience and we look at what's happened in the creative process its level of matter and biology and human consciousness and culture that seems to be a driving force that's compelling the universe to exists and it's compelling human consciousness to exist and it's compelling that's compelling this creative process to carry forward that if we could say that that God or the Creator principle in the universe come compelled this this manifest dis manifest create a process to emerge from absolute nothingness and it and and when we look into when we look into the experience of that drive in our own human experience we feel there's a great sense of purpose and purposefulness and a deliberate aspiration to want to exist and so when we when we when we realize that God is both freedom from all of manifestation and simultaneously the essence of the impulse that gave rise to all of manifestation is giving rise to all the manifestation right now including our own impulse towards consciousness our own spiritual impulse and the aspirational come our conscious we it became apparent to me and I really believe this is true that that at a certain point this metaphysical principle in ways that I think would be inconceivable for the human minds actually grasp or understand chose to take that leap from formlessness to form so the world of form is God or they are they are the ultimate metaphysical principle in in a state of deliberate becoming it's not because you when I were discussing over coffee cup read into predestined but there's there's a there's a deliberate drive it's the drive of arrows creative principle in the universe so so look seeing all that from a non dual perspective then then we begin to see that the human experience that Tim's having the human experience that Andrews having informed by this recognition that I'm not merely my you know as the Easterners say I'm not merely this body in this mind but his body in this mind when we awaken to these meta physical realities these truths are vehicles through which this process can awaken to itself can recognize itself and realize itself and then then I'll Tomica consciously take responsibility for engaging with the life life process in in and with that knowledge then that that knowledge enters into the world some in a very profound and powerful way through us great we disagree by that good because then that's good so that's something we can explore because yes in principle and I see it slightly differently yeah because that's coming in on God's straightaway that's pretty funny and well if they're provocative yeah I love it I love it's more important idea for me all the time actually I see God or spirit if you like whatever word you want to give to that in a sense as the as the origin I don't see that it's deliberate I don't see that because I think that say it's slipping something in between the words that the word guard yeah or just a consciousness that's deliberately doing something I wanna see it as a that where things the only thing I think I can say about where the universe has come from mm-hmm it's something Brian swim seven years ago which is it's come from the potentiality for the universe right so I see that the ground as being as potentiality and it being in the very nature of potentiality yeah to realize itself that's what potentiality does and that what you can see happening is the realization of ever more emergent potentials so you've got spirit or God as pure potentiality possible the possible realizing itself as ever more emergent potentials through this unfolding of form yes hi yeah and it's right here right now I see that there's this emptiness and then there's this unfolding of time something timeless and and this unfolding of time through which the caste is constantly accumulating there's more and more passed all the time than there you know there's more passed now than when we came here before it's theirs it's building up information and is it's doing that it's coming in to me you know evermore evolved in emergent forms and my own sense then is you've got God as being or just pure being and God is becoming yes I chose thing but also it feels like it's going somewhere right and where it's going it feels is another emergent level all together because so that there's a there's a level of that that just as things keep combining or in what can we call deeper Holland's you know that idea that things combine to bring more emergent realities into existence and so for instance just as all the cells in my body have got it together to be this one body that actually we're bringing God into existence through this and that through the communion of souls when we come into this state of conscious oneness that what's arising is that what I experience is this big love this enormous love so this enormous that God is not where it's come from it's where it's going in that sense wouldn't you say wouldn't you agree that that there is a there's an energy and an intelligence that's driving these potentials to continue to catalyze greater and greater potentials and greater greater complexity that's what I meant there's a that's yes yeah and then and then creating the sort of the creativity itself is a drive or a force or a compulsive yeah it's a compulsion yes process yeah it keeps on and and I think we can see in every moment ever every moments a fresh one it it's all it's never happened before it's it's constantly new always new always no and then the question it feels to me then becomes just to relate it back to the point that you were making which I thought was really important which is purpose is that then what I want to say is that it's not that the universe has a purpose it's more that purpose is inherent in its very nature you know because it is the realization of potential that's what it is yeah so that when it reaches us what we're the purpose which is inherent is the realization of ever deeper more emergent potentialities so here are you and I existing on this level where we're matter and then were body and then we're this other thing where we're having a meaningful conversation which is mind or soul or psyche yeah on that level what is the most emergent potentiality that we can realize and but the difference for us as compared to molecules when they were turning into water for the first time is that we're doing it consciously we can actually reflect and say I can actively engage with this emergent process and bring the most emergent part of myself to to life so do you so I it's Mike my personal conviction that this that that the fact that we ended up with this extraordinary potential is not an accident that this that this potential was somehow inherent and where it was all going it was going to end up here some one way or the other maybe maybe not maybe not particularly this way that we've been and errantly that the energy and intelligence of created the universe was going to give rise all Tinley to sentient life-forms they were going to have a greater greater capacity for more complex consciousness the more complex that consciousness became as it was going to begin to become aware of who it really was and then endeavor to take responsibility for the highest reasons for the whole process I mean that's kind of the biggest way to understand it yeah I might but the problem I have with putting and I don't think of doing this but but from I have with putting anything which is a conscious God at the beginning of time of any form whatsoever is I don't like him I don't like him because he's mean because he's excited but I would I will it is me I would respectively disagree that the idea that there's a there's a conscious principle of work who doesn't necessarily need to associate in any way with the mythic notion of the of the the angry Jewish guard in the sky true but it's even just that enough to go look there's an intentionality to this there's a there's a logic behind it because there's also a craziness to it absolutely you know it's like if you wanted to get to you and I having this conversation and all of us awakening in it then you know really 120 million years of dinosaurs ripping the hell out why would you do that five five extinction periods but you know it's like this this amazing consciousness is indecisive it doesn't know what it's doing and it's created a world where babies right now are dying from AIDS and it's like well I don't like you you're mad and dangerous whereas if it's if it's what it's arising from is this potentiality it is realizing itself and becoming that so that that deep conscious compassionate oneness is not he's not where it's come from which is but but where it's actually arising now where it's going because the deepest things arise last you know it didn't start with soul it started with hydrogen I guess the the point the point pride the point at night there when I told the dilemma is that there is a movement tour I agree with you there's a lot of chaos and conflict in but there's an incomprehensible kid catastrophe and confusion but the fact that there's a record there is a dynamic movement towards coherence in the process that in the midst of all the chaos and confusion of Maria a meandering and falling back it's ultimately what's driving it that's that that the not knowing that that's the case for me is a great source of faith and in conviction my sense is slightly different again I guess and which is that is the bug my you know I first is I have no idea but my we're doing our best but would you know my intuition would be that that everything everything every moment is everything is the past meeting the possible it's a foreign meeting the formless timeless meeting time and that the past that the nature of the past is it it it accumulates so that there's more and it's not have gone anywhere this is the the everything that has ever been is implicit in this moment so that and that's true of every moment that every moment is both a new moment a new possibility and it includes everything that's ever happened surround this idea that time passes it's rather that the time is getting richer and deeper and accumulating so that what's creating each moment is that creativity that you're talking about which is a possible meeting everything that's ever happened and my my own the way that I can make sense of the fact that the University knows so the anthropic principle that it's so perfectly set up for life and all those things is that my my guess would be that this is not the first universe that there's a genealogy of universes like people like Penrose have said that the universe is give birth to other universes just like human given beings give birth to other human beings so that each University setting off with all of that but that potential with all of that past already creating where it's going to go so it's not like there's a conscious being of those yes but or anything remotely like that or even just a principle but rather there is constantly the past unfolding within the possible but I guess the issues that I'm feeling it that in the midst of all this chaos chaotic unpredictable dramatic and profound creativity that there's a driving forest it's striving through all of and you're saying you you seem to be saying that what's driving all of it is the accumulated momentum that word was and because of that because they cumulation more more information there is a natural unavoidable tendency towards greater complexity towards evolution and towards the emergent of ever deeper potentials you know you couldn't have a water until there was already hydrogen and all right once you've got those two then you can have water and so that there so that it's there's a natural tendency towards the realization of deeper and deeper potentials no we are now here we are right on the cutting edge of exactly the same thing so if we if we replace the word guard with the word loud with that is that better for me love is the key okay I don't see love at the beginning I see it's where we're going you don't see love at the beginning no heads crazy you know dinosaurs and all the stuff that's you know all of us the extinctions and the things that you look at you go when I when I experienced that it was as a kid when I experienced it now when I think it's right here right now when that that the beloved that big love which holds it that is not allowing causing or the immense suffering in the world it is actually the thing which is arising wanting to hold and transform it so the the the imperative that I feel is towards that is this new thing that's coming into me but don't you think that there there is them that their inherent in the creative process at our levels is creation and destruction happen simultaneously yep and so the the creative process from the very beginning was vibrate it was violent but it was through this through the switches to the the creative I forgot the word I used to use through the creative friction they gave rise to the creative process that that that friction and that collision of meteors and atoms and molecules is what that the friction itself was a form of love because the creative process always happens to create a friction in in the material universe biologically making love is to happen to create a friction the development of new ideas and thought happens when like-minded creative thinking individuals come together and rub together and it creates friction the friction creates that which is new so it seems the part and parcel of the creative process from up until now has always has always partially involved violence creation and destruction and also especially when we went by a lot when you emerge in a biological life as it enters into it and you know enormous catastrophes you know in in in in nature her hurricanes and famines and so that title taught away so well what what what I believe as I as I believe is that that this that this was an inevitable and unavoidable creative process that needed that that needed to happen in order to give rise to more and more attention more and more sentient life-forms that had greater and greater capacities for complex consciousness now the the one of the most profoundly significant emerging potentials and greater and the greater complexity of consciousness is awakening of a moral context for existence and most of the world's great wisdom traditions brought a moral context of that a moral context for the human experience so we were so often for example these great traditions made it possible for us to step from being tribal savages and to agreeing oh thou shalt not kill thou shalt not sleep with the ones neighbor you know we went from and so so the the originally this religious and spiritual drive awakened us to this I was a moral awakening when we learned we learned how to live according to laws they made it that allowed us to evolve to higher and higher levels and so I so it seems that now when we awaken from this these lower levels of consciousness the higher and higher levels of consciousness when we go from anthro centric to like a postmodern world centric of consciousness we realized the universal nature of being human and we're as the universal nature of being human when you get to we get to we start to see the human race that were part of the human race and all of planet Earth and we in the universal nature of it liberate us from liberate us from a way of thinking that's less inclusive so these larger and larger perspectives enable us awaken us to a moral embrace that includes more and more of the universe and when we go from a world center postmodern world centric state of consciousness to a cosmos centric perspective where we waked all of evolution that's when we experience this great this great moral sense of care and compassion for the whole process and so I think what's important to remember at least from my point of view is that is that it's taken the universe this universe anyway because it could be multiple of lis but it's taken this particular universe 13.7 or fourteen billion years to produce its conscious sentient life forms and had that have the complex enough consciousness to be able to cognize their their their self sense as being the whole process and and and then the sense of care and concern that this awakens so from i from my perspective from a human from a local human centric perspective when we looked at all the the the chaos and the violence and the pain and suffering that it's taken for us to get to this point we feel well the God must be cruel and inhuman and cruel and unfeeling but from and from from from another point of view when when this creator principal took this leap from formlessness to form which gave rise to ultimately this all the things we've been speaking about in my 14 13.7 billion years might not be that long in order to in order even for this moral of moral potential to awaken to itself in and through these these evolved sanctioned life forms and so there so that doesn't say that doesn't mean that all the suffering in the chaos is justified or okay it's still the more the more the more we awaken to our own humanity the more it becomes unbearable but but even to be able to experience the fact that any suffering is unbearable is a very high state of consciousness and it's taking the universe we could say 14 billion years to for us to be able to even experience that level of sensitivity and expensive care and concern so that's so so I see that the process has made it possible for us to care that much and if we're just getting started and I think from a God's eye point of view from a the biggest metaphysical principle point of view which is getting going I certainly agree with that so what you described was the evolution of love and I can go with that so it starts at something but it's ended up with this this massive compassion this this this this yes and it feels like that when I say let's bring the most emergent thing into our lives I mean that I mean how can we bring that mass of love into this world how can we do that in the tiniest little things and the biggest things in whatever thing we're doing all the time that is the most emergent thing we can do that's the latest thing in the cosmos is this huge connection on this deep soul level and how can we bring that in so that feels like a good segue into the other thing having just talked about this whole evolutionary vision which is although we've disagreed a little bit fundamentally we're on exactly the same exactly the same page on of just the nuances different that's all and of course it's going to be because it's a whole new thing that's wanting to come in how do we then as you know I'm not a scientist you're not a scientist we are coming to this as people who've been exploring awakening how is that going to be in the context of this now how how do we help each other bring this the most emergent qualities in arts to to life to the evolutionary process how do we do that and and how do you feel now as opposed to how you did feel four years ago around the model that can do that your time of being a guru and your attitude towards the ego and actually stars like because I well first of all I'm I'm I'm very much exploring these questions so I haven't come to any definitive conclusions so I haven't figured it all out by any stretch of imagination but which which particular one of those particular written well that's the weakness will start the guru question okay don't they go together I'm sorry don't they go together those two things isn't the whole thing which which creates the the absolute gurus and the justification from it is that you need somebody who can stand outside that can show you while parsing you the narcissistic lemme let me explain to my understanding in the world and then a word form from my own experience in my understanding then let's try and deconstruct it so my understanding but the significant the the the the most positive understanding what that means it would be someone who has such a deep experience of awakening to enlightened awareness that they have been permanently transformed in such a sense that it that that they that they have no longer have a choice but to live for consciousness itself and any other reason or purpose for living no longer is sufficient for them and it becomes choiceless and and and such individuals have a capacity to share this non dual realization is truth not only at the level of cognition and philosophy but at the level of direct experience that can they actually can transmit it because they're their very being has been so infused by this by this theirs knowing in this being so so a real guru has it has the capacity not only to share the ultimate secret of existence ultimate secret of the universe with other human beings directly at a level of experience so to be in their presence one actually begins to experience the truth of Nandu of the truth of the infinite the truth of non-duality in a way that's not just a spoken word it's like you even people actually have an experience of transformation in their presence and also if they are deeply realized their own natural quote/unquote natural state well she would be so compelling that that they would that they would through their own natural state of being compel a level or a degree of liberated awareness and liberated consciousness liberated human being nough said there was a there was a level of attainment there was a level of mastery there was a level of gnosis that was permanent and that was dramatic and that was that would had the power to compel compel others so want to look for there would be your understanding now well that's a problem I just want to start with the positive side of it I don't mean just from your experience my sense is just like every you know every time I've every time like you know it's just it's ubiquitous now I want to critique it now okay I could take it but I wanted to just because to me it's it's a complicated question so because for me what's important and especially this potent postmodern flatland cultural context or in as we all know you can be a guru as it relates to finances you can be a guru as relates to Sports and nutrition but if you're a gurus relates to spiritual matters you must be a fake and a charlatan and a fraud and a hypocrite and a ripoff artist so so the problem isn't even with the girl guru the problem is with that there that there is a the the very notion of spiritual attainment is in question and so I feel personally that we need to protect and honor the truth of the fact that it's possible not only to awaken but it's possible to awaken to deeper and deeper levels of consciousness and not everybody who has these awakenings is that the same place the same level of attainment and that a deeper level of spiritual enlightenment actually has meaning and significance for all of us and that needs to be honored and respected I believe and if and we've been especially in of course in the East they do that because they understand these higher states of consciousness exist in the West we have no knowledge of recognition of these higher States so we don't understand what it even means but so that's the positive side of and I feel still feel strongly about that the problem is and I we were discussing this a little bit when we went out for coffee is that there has been a presumption and I and this was also presumption that I shared before I ran into my own problems did I really believe it anyway I don't know but anyway there's a presumption that the the attainment of gnosis and the attainment of a deep state of enlightened awareness automatically would presume that the human vehicle for that state of consciousness some has somehow reached a state of perfection or purity and in a lot in the mythic traditions this this imposition or this projection is belief is portrayed in the idea that Jesus was born of a virgin or the Buddha was omniscient allowed these mythical stories compelled to us some mythical or ancient notion of human perfection so this the story over the last 45 years when a lot of powerfully realized you know gurus and masters have come to us from the west of the East including Western teachers is that there was a presumption and the perfection of their realization the perfection of their humanity and then there was this confusing there were these confusing episodes where no doubt they could transmit these states of consciousness in very powerful ways and awakened a lot of people but in terms of their own the evolution of their own humanity they still had unexamined psychological emotional issues and shadows and usually led to great catastrophes so I think the the main the main problem for me was with the word guru and what it implies is the mythic belief in the perfected human yes and I and I know that what got me into trouble specifically is when it went after 27 years of being of having kind of in a situation where had absolute power not that I wield it in that way but I was my my authority was not quite never questioned when after 27 years I got used to never being questioned when my senior students had grown up I became independent autonomous adults it started to go as well I love Andrew very much but he's made mistakes and he's imperfect and we need to talk to him about it and so my big failure I wasn't ready to meet their demand they're they're they're called to be called to to question you know and that was really that was the that was my the time I failed my students in that moment I had to spend last three four years coming to terms with that huge error which had to do with ego pride superiority and being very blindly identified with the mythic nature of my role and my position as being guru for so long so I've been spent a lot of time deconstructing that part of my own identity over the last four years and I feel like I very much come back to earth I've joined the human race I realized that I'm a flawed human being just like everybody else I have my strong points in my weak points I've certain gifts that other people don't have but I'm fundamentally living on the same human plane with that with everyone else and before I realized I didn't really think that was true I saw myself as living living it living I mean having a and I still have one foot I still believe I have one foot in at the most people have don't don't know about which is true but I but that no longer means that I'm a perfect specimen or I'm not if they're not a flawed human being so so I think so what how I feel about it just a bit of very simply finally is that however we're going to do it I feel we need to preserve the significant meaning and significance of spiritual attainment that it means something and that it's rare and it's important for all of our sake and we need to the mythologies the fact that having a graded they're having a very profound attainment necessarily means any there were anything close to being a perfect perfect human being yes oh cool lots of interesting things I want to say and ask you as well really yeah I'm just thinking I fit my own gut feeling is that I always it always feels if I've had an amazing experience with people and we go into the deep wait stay and people enter the state for the first time especially in all of the happens the last thing I want to talk about is attainment it's not a word I really come after a because like you know because it just feels like what I want them to see is something that's just simply what they are and what they can experience for themselves and my biggest hope is that they will leave feeling empowered and see how special they are and and one of the great failures of the old model was the elevated how special this person was distended inherently pretentious enterin absolutely it was really bad teaching because they were they were being disempowered not empowered you know you ran and and around the very opposite of what needed to happen was happening and that we didn't need to it's like and because of the examples you said about other areas where we talk about gurus you know but I think of you know when I invite my plumber to come I invite my plumber to come because he's so much but I'm rubbish at plumbing I mean I just terrible all that practical stuff from useless but if he wanted some finis on ideas I probably be better than him I'm thinking maybe I wouldn't but probably and I could give him some of those cuz I've spent my time really focusing on that so I'm good at this I can share any and then there's something so natural about all of that so my sense is that this this way of doing things has been but but let's say the plumber was not only your local farmer but he actually been recognized to be one of the best plumbers in England of course now that's wood no no because the fact is that he was really an innovative extraordinary plumber who to proved the whole plumbing system this is where the analogy is gonna completely break down because now the plumber has to be there going but my real mission is to turn you into a plumber and then you can be the best one my only point I wish I'd never broke the plumb no no no but but the thing is that all I'm saying is that are the only thing I'm concerned about is that we we want to learn to make a hole the capacity to make distinct distinctions we did well honoring everybody's gifts and potential we do because that's that's all I'm yes I do agree that is obviously that's important because that's what we have to give each other so I'm the question what I'm left with is a kind of question of the the thing we started off and you made it plain when we first met that you were you know part of what your process was to go to all of these places that have come up for you and so it felt for two reasons one because I'm curious deeply and two because in deciding to do this a whole load of people have contacted me and told me not to applaud you for doing this and and and they and there's been good reasons you know they've you know they've seemed like really I've been in communication with some of them they've seemed very genuine people and they're going look you know I was really hurt by this really really badly and I just want to make sure no one else gets hurt by by this ever again and I hear that and it's like okay well I don't know I have no experience of it I I know you've seen it in other places or the same dynamic and I'm just I'm not interested in that human element of you know that there are there are people who've been really it's not just like a theoretical and people being really hurt by that power relationship and and how you sit with that now and how that how that feels to you well I I mean the big from the biggest perspective I don't I've done a lot of introspection I've done psychotherapy I've worked with ayahuasca I really looked very deeply into myself for the past warriors that and not I've taken this as seriously as probably any teacher ever has like I think I could say that a lot of confidence and I when I stepped step back I let my I let everything fall apart because I really felt I had to really face everything in the most complete way I could so after four years of great introspection and and and you know I made the ultimate sacrifice to do it I didn't I didn't know I didn't fight hold on to power I really let it go in order to in order to find out what the truth was so after looking very deeply into myself I haven't I haven't found ill-will or basically bad motives or any kind of will to harm anybody but what I do know is it that there was um I was very young when I started teaching I was 31 years old and a 31 year old oh he has so much life experience my teacher taught was it told me to never doubt myself so Wow yeah and he told me with great force at the very very very beginning so I there was a level of dominance that made me very powerful wow that's really bad advice well I agree but many responsible advice well we can look at means many ways to look at it but nevertheless this this that advice plus I was a very I still am but I was a very inspired young man and I saw potentials that because but I gathered a lot of students very quickly and I started to notice what was happening around me is what happened is our most core is that a lot of a lot of my students thought I was the greatest the best the most incredible teacher in the world and because they were my students that meant they were great and I was looking around I was saying that's not true you're very self-satisfied and you through the identify student identification with me being your student being your teacher that's just making you feel more self-satisfied and my vision for what I wanted to do with this group of people who were so attracted by the teaching was I felt we all we wanted to co-create something that had never happened we wanted to co-create some extraordinary vision of heaven the vision of the possible it was a utopian evolutionary aspiration in order to do that everybody had to be willing to give their whole hearts and their souls to doesn't we had to be willing to play for real and to do real spiritual practice and to be very transparently honest with each other for the sake of what we were trying to do together so my fundamental error was that I and this has happened in evolutionary experiments in the past it's been it's been the shadow of the evolutionary impulse is that I began to see people but I was right transparent about it I shared this view this doesn't justify what happened but I said I see all of you as means to an end and the end was this this be these potential breakthroughs in the evolution of consciousness at a collective level and so as her and I saw most people weren't the spiritual heroes they thought they were and they were very ambivalent but I wanted to take responsibility for where all this was really leading and I knew we all had to take hundreds pence 100% responsibility at an individual level for this to really work and people said they wanted to do and so I started pushing I started pushing and creating looking at creating a lot of pressure and all I all I saw most the time is where is where we is if this works where we could get to it these breaks through that great breakthroughs happened so the good news is real breakthroughs did happen which I genuinely believe led to unleashing potentials and inner subjective enlightenment or subjective awareness that literally didn't exist before this is my belief Mike my strong conviction and I was woefully unaware of the cost of that because some people who didn't have the energy to pay the price who were warrant even mentally fit for that kind of intensity of spiritual engagement practice suffered enormous Lee and I spent I spent a year traveling around the world reaching out to people and apologizing for that so I know so have you actually because that was always intrigued by that as well because these people are contacting me and they're they obviously don't haven't felt like you know I was Jensen you know how would I feel and I think I'd be I feel mortified I feel like I want to go and see everyone and sit down them individually and go well I'm sorry I had what happened I did travel in the world I went to live but you have you've actually done that goner and yes I rely went to you I mean I could make a list I really did I went these country I took out the email list and as many as many people as I could I write them emails I has to meet them see them personally and I did I did the best that I could that I do a perfect job no but I did the best that I could the thing is this is confusing yes and I and I feel some of the things that happen to feel ashamed of and I feel terrible about but I also know that the impulse that was driving me was fundamentally positive and I will never deny that even though I know I made many mistakes and I I was there was a there was a degree to which I didn't I I'm saying that I just I saw where we were going in there and I and I literally told people we're gonna get there with you without you and everybody said I want to be part of this so so that captures completely for me what felt so disastrous definitely was that wasn't there was disastrous loss in humanity so how so so there's a whole load of people out there right now probably watching this film I suspect as well no no no but they will be watching it if it goes out who are gonna be thinking who have told me they don't want this to happen to anyone else and you are now talking about teaching and you're talking about students but I can tell you what's the difference now in how you have what personally you know I made a choice very early on that I would have no students I would have friends and we would explore it and I would show myself completely as it occurred and that together that would mean and then hopefully they would see something of value that I could share with sure and I and and that's why I call myself a philosopher not a spiritual teacher because that feels a safe term doesn't say that you are a spiritual teacher de-ice teach about spirituality but it doesn't carry that you know you know you're not a philosopher like only are you a spiritual team really on the love junkie now by my aunt the issue is very complicated I've from my brother it's okay very cool I promise week I promise we can talk later I promise to talk to you so the issue the issue is that I don't I've I have never I have no intention of pushing ever anybody ever again that whole impulse of creating a context they're built that builds up a certain kind of pressure and expectation is gone in me out of the even even the the the that impulse has died out so I haven't I don't and at the same time the evolutionary the the the love for and be compelled by evolutionary potential still very much awake so I don't know how I'm gonna be able to do it but I'm a very aware that that that that drive and that doubtless this is completely God's the car it's a karmic consequence of everything that's happened now the other thing is that many of my former students don't feel that the fact that my my passion for the possible and my spiritual conviction and my spiritual inspiration is still very much alive they see as that they see as a for as could only be an expression of ego and not as the very thing that attracted them to me in the first place so I do feel very honestly to you unless I was to become a gardener and to renounce my life's calling a lot of people wouldn't be satisfied and I will never be able to satisfy them but I would only ask people that have doubts about it it's just to give me some time and to see what happens but I'm quite sure that it was also just for historical record a lot of a lot a lot of what were describing here events that happened 20 years ago and unfortunately because that's what all the attention has come to that I I'm in a very challenging personal predicament right now where all of my life's work and this has been reduced to some fundamental mistakes that made a very long time ago and it's just not it's not it's not how I operate anymore it's not how I think but I'm still very compelled by evolutionary potential and a shared collective evolutionary potential but how to actualize it in a new way is what I'm utterly consumed by maybe that would be a good place for us to have a break and then come back together the only thought I want to add to that because it just feels very pertinent right now is how just collectively we're here talking about it in a spiritual dimension but actually collectively it feels like right this very minute the whole of Western culture is having a look at power relationships between men and women that's workplace how the power abuse we're absolutely really focusing in on pair abuse and this is just one example of something which is actually coming up everywhere so should we have a shoe ever break so you can have a glass of water and then get to get back together you know we'll make use of the time as we can and we can converse so as you probably gathered it was all you know we've just we decided earlier we just start us off and and see where it went and and hopefully we covered a little bit of the idea of the Volusia nari aspect and a little bit of the stuff that I wanted to talk about and the times gone really fast as I knew it would as it has done every time we've chopped we've talked and let's just go where you want to take it folks and maybe we can we'll try and give answers and responses so it really interests me but I'm interested in hearing you guys take on it personal responsibility where does it begin where does it end and we've got this whole thing with all these sex scandals which a lot of them historical and now we talk about a situation with Andrew and his students big victims well you kind of didn't quite a legit but you hinted there was some thought they were victims and my question is well because I was with a guru for some years then I was with a spiritual teacher who thought he was the key root and I got a lot from both of them but I also learned not to give my power away and I learnt it I think my ones who would disagree with me but I think I learned it very deeply and it's like I had to go through that experience to learn something so important and it's and it's it's impacted me it's empowered me it's kind of in your language timid it's helped me found if I the deeper level of who I really am and so I kind of a lot of people have knocked Andrew to me I interviewed Andrew many years ago and I you know I like the fact that Tim you've engaged I like the fat Andrews comeback and with humility it talks about where he is and what happened it cetera in a way there's nothing wrong is there if we look at now and where we go fools you've both talked about there's nothing wrong and I say I wonder how you feel about the role of the the victim and the perpetrator respond to that just my feeling is in course you're right I also had a guru when I was younger and gave my power away and took it back and hurrah and learnt a lot and was grateful for the experience you know I'm glad I went in even gladder I came out and so that was good and obviously I can see that people do give it and want to because it's great that somebody else knows in a world where it's scary and confusing there's someone else you can put your faith in so there's no doubt about that and it's but there's something good in every experience there's no experience so bad that there's not some kernel of goodness that you can find in it most of the things that people pick up in their lives are from often the worst experiences then doesn't mean we still want to perpetuate those kind of relationships as power relationships in which abuse can happen and the thing which was really touching me from the emails and the context that I'd had from people when I said I'd do this was that that what people were concerned about I think is a genuine thing too which was like well I've been heard I don't want anyone else to get hurt so it feels like we're looking at something real in all these different aspects in which people give their power away and other people take it it's hard to give you a pair way if someone says I would I won't take it and constantly goes no no no come back to you which to me is the model we need to go into and everything this for specifically in teachings of awakening we need to develop a new model in which the teacher is constantly giving it back giving it back giving it back so the projection never happens and so that so that the the important thing in setting that a new thing up is to not get stuck in the past but to learn from the past so that these old things have gone but oh they're only there's only only if we found the positive in them only if we turn something around was it was it worth it for each and you know whether it's the teacher who's learned something or the individuals who gave their peril learn something that's what we need to make sure happens then take it into a new thing and if we can do that then my hope is that we stop looking at the we stop just going in through blame and recrimination I mean my grace hope is that every single person can find the deepest thing they've got to offer and offer it in a in a healthy way that benefits everyone was it in love my hook might the reason I was intrigued to me and who enjoyed our meetings and wanted to do this was the I want for me and for him that whoever's the deepest and best in us can be come to life I mean that would be wonderful and and that it can benefit people that and I want it for you and for all of us so that feels like the essential thing we want to focus on thank you so I actually have a lot to say about this particular question about giving up power but first I just want to say for the record and if this sounds like Pride forgive me but I want to say that there are a lot of people who are my students that ended up being hurt very badly for that I really feel terrible about and I I I wish there was something I could do to change the past that there isn't so I know that I'm never gonna teach with such intensity ever again in force but at the same time I have to say very truthfully in honesty that we we had a thriving spiritual community in which my students were ex-drug extraordinarily committed and made great sacrifices for the sake of our shared endeavor and we had a very rigorous schedule of spiritual practice and engagement that that helped a lot of people to develop in the most extraordinary profound ways and I say I say this with genuine pride and a lot of humility that many teachers told me that they'd never seen students like mine who my students had so much spiritual self-confidence that an independent intelligence so I just want to fill out the picture for just for the sake of the truth now the issue of giving up power is something I've thought a lot about and I in my particular story it's interesting because I was very influenced by the Eastern money the traditional Eastern model and the way that Tim was referring to and I understand the shooter out in the extremely short time I spent with my own teacher I see he would get people to get to a point where they would give up completely and we surrender in every possible way and followed his feet and he wanted them to he wanted them to give up the whole everything every aspect of their mind every aspect of their personal identity so they could experience the fullness of their own potential of their own and the potential of their unenlightened awareness but the the utter released so that fullness of experience of liberation can only be tasted and known when even if it's just for a microsecond you literally give it all up without hesitation without asking for anything in return you just surrender unconditionally totally absolutely and only an individual is willing to go that far and and we're willing to not know that much will they will that mysterious wisdom knowledge liberation gracefulness and love overwhelmed them and that's just the way it is and and most people aren't willing to do that for a very understandable reasons but unless we are that kind of experience is just not going to happen now when I met my teacher I had been with many many teachers I was fed up with the girl myself to be completely honest with you I was fed up with everybody's imperfections when I told my teacher you know I said I have no expectations and he said that's really good so he expressed the kind of bald independence that really touched me you know it was very inspiring to me but I told him when I was sitting with him when I was I was sitting with a pivotal moment came when I was sitting with him very quietly and I heard myself out of the words to him that were unpremeditated and unthought I want to die but I don't know how so that was my what I call my authentic self it wasn't my conscious ego it was declaring to him that I want to go although I want or whatever it's going to take and he didn't say anything he just teased wise welled up with tears but I knew that would ever take that was going to take I wanted to go all the way and so when this miraculous experience happened to me as a result of his grace I I was sitting in a hotel room and I was sleeping in a hotel room in a deli and I got up in the middle of this experience and I heard myself out of the words I surrender my life to you do with me what you will and I wasn't surrendering to the man I was surrendering to the presence that was overwhelming me and it didn't come from my ego so these words were not premeditated I said surrender my life and then I saw this world this water going around in a whirlpool going down the drain and I realized that was that was my what felt at the time like my will my independent my independent ego my my independent egoic existence but I was bearing witness to this just happening and then I went to him and I fell at his feet and I heard the rest of it happened so I was quite convinced that nothing less than other an unconditional surrender to the absolute either itself or to the form of the absolute in the traditional guru model was nothing was gonna be nothing less was going to be enough than that and then and I started working with people I was trying to get them to let go that much and when they did you know the gates have having to open up an enormous spiritual force so in rushing through and overwhelmed all of us and I was because I was working in a collective situation which is much more complex than working in an individual situation if one person surrenders that much they suddenly have access to left's of knowledge and wisdom that you're not going to know unless you let go as much as they did and so I was trying to get as many people's like this is why I got into trouble I tried to get more and more people to let go that much so that this tremendous spiritual power could enter into the world through all of us and we could engage at that level but I realized you know that it's not that simple and that people recoil and the ego comes back and wants to fight for its fight for its own its own way and so I was doing a lot of this battle for a long time and for a significant period of time enough of my students had surrendered had surrendered that deeply that it made an enormous significance around 'red presence to a picture to be shared because everybody had they're really going to control in a way that was quite extraordinary and a lot of the trouble that I a lot of mistakes that I made and all of the reasons that later on I did end up causing unforgivable suffering to some people was to try and keep that ego recoil out of the picture because believe me when that ego recoil is kept out of the picture a sublime potential and a sublime inner subjective potential emerges that is utterly sacred and unimaginable when it really does so I was my attention was always on that not on the actual draw human dramas human drama that really did 2cb self-purification is actually a partner so after a while after teaching for many many years I felt I didn't want to get that involved with people anymore because I knew it was wrestling with people in this way was not something I wanted to do anymore I knew it was painful for me it was good and inevitably lead to pain and suffering for them if they really didn't want to take it all the way most people had no idea what they're really getting involved with and what the price was gonna what the cost was gonna be so I backed off from teaching that way and I say I said I more taught in a way which people wouldn't have personal relationships me but I shared my philosophy with them in my practice and my students were teaching so I wanted to keep my distance from everybody and it worked and then we developed levels and levels of students and people get very involved but they wouldn't be there egos would never be challenged in that way and I didn't want there he goes to be challenged in that way because I knew how dangerous it really was to challenge anybody in that way and in the last year's that we we just weren't doing that anymore I mean that was just that is something that happened quite a while in the past and I wasn't that kind of confrontation just simply wasn't really part of what we were doing most of the time so an interesting thing happened to me which made me understand the right problems that Tim was bringing up and related to giving up power because when I agreed to step down and take time off to take the sabbatical I gave up my power as being the spiritual master in the center of this international community and I can tell you within seconds of me doing that the whole thing fell apart and this was something that I struggled with a lot since then because I knew I know I had to do that in order to transcend this the the mythic identity that I had so fully taken on and at the same time the minute I did that everything fell to bits and so when I was working with some of my students they wanted me to give up my power to them in the same way that they'd given it up to me and I and and it was in that battle with them that I started to realize the problem with the distraught with working that way and it was I realized that it wasn't gonna work and I and I suddenly realize I through going for being on the other end of it myself suddenly I'm 27 years I realized what the problem is and was and I've also had a thought a lot about the in terms of cultural evolution that the structure of the South has become more and more complex so in the East you know two thousand years ago two thousand years ago three thousand years ago the surrender of this personal identity wasn't such a big deal in the same way that it is now because the postmodern itself needs to need to individuate in order to become fully self actualized and in order to full in order to fully realize its potential that has to happen and we ruined my own senior students were expressing that need is needed individual daddy I was the daddy figure as the father figure the guru figure I was so lost and my own mythic identity that I didn't see and recognize their own healthy natural developmental need that they that they needed to get away from underneath my umbrella and fully fully spread their own wings and fly fully independently from me and because I was lost in this old identity and very attached to it I didn't recognize that their need was was was healthy and I needed to let them go and encourage them to go and become who you need to be and I love you I and I'm ashamed of this my betrayal of them was I felt that it was a betrayal of everything that we committed ourselves to I didn't see what was happening in front of my face because sophisticate is my teaching once I failed them dramatically in that so and you know and so it's been it's been very pain holds the situation is very painful for a lot of us but now as I read as a teacher and wanting to do something big and meaningful again I realized that one of the first Noble Truths of a new approach has to be nobody is ever allowed to give up their power nobody's ever allowed to give up their autonomy nobody's ever allowed to surrender to the master because that's going to lead to all kinds of problems that is it always as inevitably well especially in a postmodern context now the question is and the interesting questions and I don't know the answer to this that to go deeply into into awakening is it necessary for all of us to at least for us a period of time either even the universe or split second or a few minutes to give up our power absolutely or can we experience that depth and fullness of fear without having to give up our power at all I don't know the answer I know the answer what's the answer yeah we can I'm absolutely sure we can because I see it so much okay is that I'm just astonished at how deep people can go really really fast it not and what what intrigues me was that that permeating what you were saying every now and again was this image of the ego coming back or ego and this word I mean means lots of things to different people but this is this is inherent idea there's something about the self which is a there's something about the self which is which is out to stop you being enlightened which wants to hang and my feeling is it's just not true it's only true if you set it up like that and if you set it up like this then the separate self which you've spent a lifetime developing which 13.8 billion years of arriving at and you've spent whatever it is 20 30 40 years developing and then you go you've got to die and sooner or later it just goes no because it does it's important it doesn't it needs to flourish if you go you need to be loved you need to be healthy and you and you need to realize that there is another pole to your identity which is this formless oneness that you are the formulas oneness arising as this individual you're not just this individual you're both but you neither you just this and this is in the way this is actually it's through arising as this conscious individual you all will come to a recognition of this and when you're both there will be this in the love because that little being bodied love that when you do that actually there's nothing to nothing in the way there's nothing to attack there's nothing to get rid of is simply about helping people make the journey of maturation which they start as a child you know I'm a parent and when I see that as a kids I want them to develop a healthy separate individual ego identity through which they can come into their themselves and then wake up to this deeper thing through it if they're trapped in it then they become egotistical then they think it's all about then which it's not it's about everything but but that in itself is a good thing that they have this identity any and it only becomes a hindrance when it's painted is that it could otherwise it's just healthy or unhelpful you made me half both in possibility I'd love to okay because because I agree with you that you know I you know the psychotherapist the Buddhist therapist Jack English said you have to be for somebody before you could be nobody yeah so that means that the the that and and this is something that I wish I understood at a deeper level a long time ago that that generally only is a self structure that's fundamentally happen which is enormous ly healthy will have this distraint and the positive self belief that will better will be able to let go but I but if someone is still in the grips of self-hatred yes fear and neurosis yes and they're put under too much pressure to let go that's gonna create enormous problems so I'm exactly I fully agree exactly but so I'm I fully understand that but but also I I do feel that there that the there having a healthy ego and a positive sense of the inherent goodness of oneself and accepting us are you know are the good in the bad and the perfect our imperfections and forgiving ourselves and being fundamentally in a healthy state it's not necessarily enough to take the step no it's madness or you still take knowing there's another element to it which is that which is what I found Anna you may not agree at all but I felt that there is a there isn't always has been a profound or a profound dimension of part of awakening that's pretty soon becomes countercultural because when our when our identified mental identity are culturally inherited values and our belief systems are suddenly challenged by the revolution of this infinite context and we realize that all all of these perspectives are are created they don't they don't exist as absolute realities or Givens they're co-created through shared belief systems when we see through all that there's suddenly the recognition oh I can and this is what's the right excitement I can actually choose to be it consciously create the self I want to be from this profoundly liberated perspective and and and there is a part of the Souths it and those moms can say no and can and can and will resist this since there's a so yes so so what I wanted just to add to it is that I fully agree with you and I've made all the worst mistakes in terms of not respecting and egos need to fully become healthy before it can it's ready to fully make that leap and the damage that can be done of it isn't I also realized that having I felt that I was repeating what I just said it's having a purely held egos not enough and that and in the enormity of the revelation of seeing that the world is a construct it's a created construct and a relationship and our relationship to it at all a concert it doesn't there's no there's no giver there's no absolute Givens it takes an enormous an enormous strength of spiritual conviction and abide and the freedom of emptiness to be able to bear the overwhelming implications of all that and and and that I have found in the work that I have done imperfectly is is is where a lot of people can become very unstable and so I don't know the answers of the question I know that that's where the love seems so important to me yeah because if it's um you know if you if it's just I mean there's such a liberation in the mystery when you just wow it's just so big isn't it and the formless oneness but it's not there's also there's something there's a quality to it of a event of embracing that comes with it so that it which reaches write down and that is what I think can can hold the the fact that Tim is so on a journey and imperfect and is is falling over all the time is because this is something which holds me up yeah to make the journey and my faith is in that that that I can I can I can live in you've made the shift and that's what I just man I trust that that can happen to anyone and what I witness again and again again is it just does and that if I can if my role then is to try and model as best as I can being all that I am which means meeting you as Tim who's a vulnerable human being for all that assurance sharp is being imperfect and and and at the same time look through and go oh and look there's looking back ah Neustadter Hendrix yeah and to get that yeah and and and then to meet you as Tim in Andrew and then through that this Wow at the same time and it feels like if we can model that for each other then we can encourage we can be I can see in me and I can see in you then if we become it becomes easier for everyone to see in themselves yeah well there's two people here and one here and one here someone actually this gentleman somebody else had their hand up earlier was that is that that was gone okay so we got gentlemen here and then that does just think when you're saying about modeling it for each other if you look at over the years you have been around this quite a few years and seeing different stories and and personally and sometimes it's happened where nature is just absolutely kick the crap out of something so do you model that though nature's absolutely kick the crap out of someone in a way saying yeah you know but do you model that bit as well isn't that what we're talking about here I'm I release of the model it's like you looked in which to take it's just about being from an attempt to be what this authentic as possible which means look I know that anything could happen to him at any moment you know he's feeling pretty good at the moment everything's going all right but you know I could be turned inside out within seconds I mean that was attractive that's what attracted me to look towards Andrews story was there was someone he was doing down inside and and that I need to be real with that it's like when I hear people say since I've ever woken up you know I have no fear and my feeling is wow you're not paying attention because this is scary here is scary here is safe totally safe and here is really scary and and and the two are there together and I can I can have a I can be conscious of both I was just think of the experience I had monastery was very much waited on the the nature kicking what they were modeling that it was very tough is there and you know I walked away from there yeah but there's still things that sometimes I can't seem to with a teacher occasionally nature steps in and go oh now that's yeah well that hurt yeah yeah I get it so that that's the the balance thing I always wonder and I have no idea I do you mean yeah whether the RCM like my feeling is look they knew your life is gonna kick people it does that and and what the role we can play for each other is to love each other no I think in that amazing love that the teachers do the nice bit nature will do the other babies needed maybe yeah I mean that's gonna happen that your house too much doesn't it just happens all the time then what we need to do is to hold each other's hand and and even even the whole teacher thing has to be really handled very gently because fundamentally we're just all in it together fundamental my work all this incredible journey my teaching addictions I teach so meditation plus a little bit more for the NHS and it's it's such a gentle process yeah so so careful yeah but it's so really beautifully vulnerably it's just so human yeah because those people come very naked so it's and if don't you see I'm sure you must see that when when we become vulnerable and naked then these depth are there it's the opposite and the love is there and and the depths are not just emptiness it's bits of death sort of full of love that's the difference and that's the thing well that's the most emergent thing that we need to bring in it feels to me thank you I was just going to follow on from what you were saying because what I want to talk about his surrender real the depth of surrender which for me has come just through what life you know what's happened in my life and I find that what you were talking about actually moved me quite deeply because I've recognized that just from having to make a choice sometimes to completely allow what I can't change and for that it sometimes takes a complete breakdown of what me I would want and and in those times I've sometimes come into a place of peace and stillness that would be eluding me otherwise and I have a particular challenge in my life that isn't just a one-off thing it's something that keeps cropping up that I need to deal with and and it goes to the very deep part of me because it involves one of my children and I'm sure there are many other people who can identify with that that the people we love the most often are the ones that are our greatest teachers because of our investment in them in a way and it's a very human thing and it's not something that I feel well it's not something it's not a great guru thing it's not a great teaching thing in the normal sense of the way you guys have been talking it's just life is my teacher and and there's only one prayer and I'm not really religious in the sense of having any particular religion but there's one prayer that always goes through my heart which is basically in those moments when I'm most shattered I always say to myself God it's a it's a known prayer I think God be in my eyes and in my seeing God be in my my mouth and in my speaking God be in my heart and in my understanding because that then transforms sometimes even the worst of things it really does if it's said right from the heart and I think what you've gone through what I can relate to is your humility in admitting where you've gone wrong that for me makes whatever you have to say about your life that's what I can relate to more than the great experience I think if you've had a great experience for awakening you've been very fortunate I don't feel that that makes you special I think what makes us all special as human beings is how we deal with the crap you're right but I think which is what you described is very profound and it's the ultimate challenge for all of us because as I always used to say it's easy to be enlightened when everything's going well but when it's not then we find out where we're really at and that I think it's timid service being portrayed many times in many different ways and I and with this Tara enormous challenge I've been in the midst of so I've been confronted with every day and still AM every day when I wake up and so to what degree can we surrender to the truth of what you know this is you've all heard this oh do I have to read it can you surrender the truth of what actually is happening and where you really at without resisting it because of pride vicious pride will not allow us will refuse to accept incoming information that contradicts an image we have of ourselves and maybe a more idealized image we have of ourselves and or of life itself or of God or a spirit of how things should be and the reality is you know the realities unless we're really in or less aware that we're really to surrender to the truth as according to how deeply we're able to understand a degree of our insight but really let go into the truth of it without resisting it which there's nothing new about this idea well ultimately determined how free we're actually gonna really be and really be able to be in a potential for freedom so not so so shining is shining it's easy to shine when it's when it's easy but did I want to get back to a little bit of this issue about ego because I just want to speak very transparently about what I've been what because I can tell you that what what I was facing it was so humiliating and so I was so ashamed experiencing so much shame and grief and guilt that a part of me and I still feel that it's still there wanted to crawl under a rock and disappear and in there and to never be seen again and and I still and I still on on days when I feel less strong and less inspired that is that that desire to want to crawl away he's still there and there's another part of me it's the same part of me that said yes to my girl and then brought me to him wants to light up bring bring as much light I can into this world as much as I can before I die and there is a there's there's an unquenchable passion to do that that's not personal it's not coming from my personal self and and I and these are these are and and and a lot of my own healing as a result of this challenge his big has been the very human work of self forgiveness and accepting the fact that I made mistakes and the people who hurt as a result of it accepting the fact that I wasn't as clear minded her clear-eyed as I thought I would there was parts of myself that I was unconscious of even though I was a very person with tremendous insight and coming to terms with the consequences of that and what's made it possible has been a lot of self forgiveness and ultimately forgiving myself which we giving others which is a very human part of awakening it's very much what you've been speaking about so it's very something that's a very intimate part of my daily experience but I have to be very honest that the part of me that wants to crawl away it's a very different part of me that wants to stand up and bear witness and if even in the face of everything that's happened and I personally feel that I have an obligation to do that and that obligation compels me to say no to the part of myself that wants to crawl away and yeah I guess the thing I feel because I have the same not in a very different situation right now but you know there's a part mean it doesn't feel up to what I do another part may be exactly you know I should end there's another part me just wants to you know hide away and my feeling is that yes of course there's that there's things in us which pull us back and then it becomes what tone of voice do I use what how is that no gonna be said am I gonna look at that part and go no or am I gonna go I really care why I feel like that because who wouldn't it's a big thing but as well and and and I'll make some space some crawl away space for you I need to you know there's regular times where I need to just crawl away and just go it's just me in the units and then and then from that this other thing which is pulling me forward can come and take mad risks can do this with you you can do things I never thought I'd be able to do and and take because of this the deep safety that comes from waking up yeah but the thing is because because I know that I made a commitment a long time ago and I know that I'll I know that I'm never gonna back down from it that that's what that's the only thing I feel like if I can use the word keeps me safe but I feel without having been valid without being doubtless before I thought about that I might I might be able to succumb to the to this desire to crawl away so I just wanted to say that for the record yeah fantastic there we go the gentleman here I think was first yeah cool um just a girl just thinking about what the what would you say would be the next important step for the process in terms of the evolutionary process because it feels like there's I'm getting a sense of something different coming from each of you like Newton I don't weigh them both it feels like you were talking about wanting to get further down into the human level experience and so is it something like would you say the next step is more of the next leap or the next big step we need to make or however you want to put it would be more of a an individualized distinct expression of the evolutionary process as opposed to one sensing is what Andrew is pointing to is more of a collective impersonal expression of the process I mean and I just wondered if you might want great question is that the end or is it you know no I I don't - collecting my work now the collected part of it is something I take granted as a given as part of what I'm doing but I think that Tim and I fundamentally agree I think I'm I I was always at what's called a transcender and my heart is still more attracted to to the trend to the transcendental potential in consciousness but but now I realized that I personally and also as a teacher in my work it's a very much work to include so much more of the reality of the vulnerability of being human and the truth of being human and the pain of being human and the frailty of being human and the reality of the needs of being human and to honor that in to respect that and to include that more and more explicitly and you include the complexity of all that in a in a vision of evolution era of being an evolutionary enlightened human being and I that and some dimensions of being human where I were very much missing from the way I was seeing things before and I was crashing into the frailty of my own parts of my own broken humanity in kind and and seeing that it's true I've have enabled ital it's taken that's enabled me to see where I was wrong and where in ways in which I was missing ways it was just was missing so I would it would be more it so it would be more of a still giving the transcendental nature of consciousness the greatest priority while including more and more of a much more complex understanding of the challenge of being human and I would say not only both end but all than everything really I'm incredibly greedy because it feels like we've got so much and who wouldn't want it all so I was thinking just the other day what I mean by awakening now were being deep awake really is to wake up to everything so that means to really get into sensation breathing feeling just the very raw I want to wake up to this I also want to wake up to this incredible process of being a soul on a journey of being a story of the adventure of being Tim of all that being part of a collective adventure that and I really want to wake up to this deep still formless presence which is my being connected to all being and I want all of that and therefore the next step it feels to me is to to do all of it so - and each person will be playing will be doing it to me it's not it's like what the thing that could be next for you will depend on maybe what you're missing or where you're where you're drawn to so if you're really stuck in this it'll be this and I meet a lot of people who are like I want to experience this and I love giving people the experience of that because they haven't had it perhaps or they haven't want to get back to it then I meet a whole lot of other people who are kind of floating around in this non-dual place um and that's just not in their bodies or they're not having arrived in their humanity and they're they're using it as a way of avoiding making the human journey and then it's like no you don't worry about that you've got that come back into this and then collectively it feels like well I want to see the world transformed I don't expect to see it transform but I would like to edge it on a bit so that my kids see it a bit better and their kids see it a bit better and for me that means the the dual purpose for me would be keep that the new thing that the latest thing is what is this waking up - Hardeep being and I feel like the people which I've been critical of in the past - who've had a you know who who set up all these old traditions I wrote about that I think we need to go beyond because they went off into monasteries and because they focused hard on something which very few people were experiencing they opened it up for us because they the past creates what's possible now so the fact that those individuals did withdraw from life enabled them to open up to this thing which is transcendent now we can open up to that and bring it into life and that's the key that we can open up to that feel the love and bring the love in and so that means my job it feels is to wake up to the place where there's one of us and then to find out how to express that uniquely through Tim as best as I can and your job is to wake up to the place where there's one of us and to express that through your particular make your soul as an individual and then for us to support each other and encourage each other and and to know that the human journey is going to be tough because of all the reasons she said because life will kick share of you because you said all that crashing up and with and we're living with we're constantly living with the whole evolutionary spectrum hasn't gone anywhere there's still physics doing its thing and there's biology doing its thing and there's soul doing its thing and then there's the stillness and we're in all of it so no wonder it's complicated and and and if we can the waking up just these kind of almost like we'll just turn it up just be more conscious of all of that and and then bring it in so we're more individual and yet we're all more one and the more one would become we the more if we individual we can be the more individual the more it feels like you're emphasizing more individuality both I'm saying that the two can only come together I'm actually what I'm actually saying is the way to wake up to the transcendent is buying by individuation and that individuation if marks out the whole of the evolutionary process for 13.8 billion years and and you know it hydrogen atoms you can't really tell one from the other very much apart from where they're what position they're in but by the time it's arrived at you and me we have really individuated and if you get into our nature as as soul as as psyche we're really particular and your your story and my story so that everything and the more individuated we've become the less collectively we are the more you're you and not just a representative of this culture all of those things the more we have individuated the more conscious we are and to do that requires doubt standing out or Tom and me self-reliance take responsibility self response but all those things the more that happens more conscious you'll be the more conscious you are the more you can be conscious that you are conscious the more you can throw your consciousness back onto your being so the two are not options to one or the other they come together that's the point and that's what 13.8 billion years of evolution shows us they come together so individuate and then and then what I call you Nvidia way to come into higher unity but it asked the question yeah because the the the one thing that I that to me is that I unanswered and that question is that with the with with with awakening to this this these higher states of consciousness because of the freedom we experience when we see how so much of the world that we saw thought the world was showed up and was fixed and given in particularly realize it wasn't suddenly the potential for not only conscious participation but for the Mallee malleability of reality comes apparent to us and the thing is that as these individuals awaken as they number one develop and healthy ways psychologically and emotionally and gain his capacity for individuation autonomy as they experience this is all I did idealized but as they experienced these higher states of consciousness and realize all things are possible it's a apparently that struck the the structure stages of individual and cultural evolution actually exists and so as people as people awaken higher states of consciousness that scan over time how people's awakened to higher structure stages so as we as this happens as more individuals at the leading with the leading edge in the world is the postmodern structure stage so as more people the leading structures edge of post-modernism begin to awake and their potential for transcending post-postmodern and and awakening to and becoming cognizant I'm gonna co-creators of a post-postmodern stage of a shared collective worldview vision and structure begins to emerge now what to me the the the the the power of enlightened awareness to affect change at the level of culture will emerge when more people have these kind of awakenings and then it then Kohi sharing a fundamentally coherent vision of the possible emerges one that challenges the status quo and transcends and includes and embraces at a higher level now that going to a higher level is inherently going to challenge the status quo in the way things were this always work that way and so I just wanted to add that to the argument because I think that just the experience of awakening to being and just the experience of of healthy autonomy and individuation in and of itself because then it says oh well then if that's gonna happen then through that healthy vehicle that doesn't let access to enlightened awareness is higher human stage it happens for human stages and those higher stages reveal new possibilities for for integration for more you for unity and greater complexity and greater complexity and greater greater coherence but then inherently challenges the status quo yeah I agree and so and so so for me the issue is the issue is how does how does how does the ultimate manifestation of unity consciousness which is as you've been saying is love how does love express itself in that in that difficult dynamic between future potentials and it's and its dynamic interplay with between the status the status quo and the way things are going to be I don't I don't give any easy answer to the question there's no but and what I mean you know I'm sure you know this but just just to say it you know when I when I say the word love it can be heard as kind of love and I I do mean that because I really like kind of fluffy pink love but love it the love that I mean it is really deep and strong I mean it's just a massively oh just so deep it can hold every everything in it it can hold all of life it can hear yeah exactly [Music] no not at all exactly right exactly I think you're exactly right exactly right that's the whole point everyone needs to be themselves and then we find even no one that's the whole thing no one's in charge of it it's where we meet it's the thing we create together yeah Android you were saying are you talking about just this pressure and how to rise above the status quo I think that's what you were saying this is what I was trying to say is there's a relationship between awakening to higher states of consciousness and the emergence of higher structure stages in human growth and so that there is that there is a it's it's for example you know Pope went post modernity exploded on the scene in the 1960s there was a there was there was a culture war yeah and so this this it's get screwed and the biggest person for the biggest protection it's purely positive creative friction and the biggest perspective when you get in the relative human perspective it's full of it's full of painful and challenging conflict between the realization of new ideals and new possibilities that that our responses to the the wrongs of the past and embracing potentials of the future and so it's all good but but there has a real creative friction so I just we just have to realize that part and parcel of higher spiritual development is going to be a dimension of creative friction between between the status quo of where we've come from and where potentially we're going I completely agree the thought that I had especially when you restated it now is that I can't help but feeling that that's actually as personal as its culture to your own personality absolutely absolutely that's why the terms been using our revolution in consciousness word that's why it's been people have really gotten this they were genuine then they they often say the same thing I want a revolution in combat that's that's the that's the impulse that's revere that's true that's actions of self actualizing is that is that friction because you see though you because you book you're riding a wave you're riding a wave of evolution upon in you your awakening to it and then you're not you did you lose self concern then you just want to make the thing happen to be able to ground yourself and I think a teacher that you're you stand as you're part of your approach was the way that you felt the need to push aggressively that kind of a pressure is that in the yeah long time ago right right exactly as well that pressure you know I think there seems to be two parts of it because one of it is the idea that's that you're using to apply that pressure almost like a philosophy and the way that and the way that it's realized and so my question is personal experiences I felt like these two worlds and we're applying pressure to myself through the inspiration of a teacher that I'm following at that time or an organization has helped me a lot and other times I found it all depends on the circumstance in that case I was kind of exhausted by the processes of the pressure and especially like it's not the right thing at the right time for the right reasons yeah I think that that level of individuality the the right thing at the right time the right person and that the love what I was going to say about love when I was saying it was a deep thing is that that love can have any face you know there's you know very personal example for me was my dad was an alcoholic he was a lovely man and but he was an alcoholic and to love my dad was not to go and get him a bottle of whiskey but he hated me for that now and I had to be willing to be hated cuz I actually loved him so love isn't just be nice love is being willing to do the right thing but doing that from love and doing that from anger or something else is a different experience so doing it because I really wanted him to be okay was a different experience than you know yeah and and if we can find that connection because then we can do whatever is necessary and that feels like the challenge maybe might be nice to sit for a few minutes could soon silence maybe for 3-4 minutes like to invite you if you would like to to stay with that big stillness but to open your eyes and without say anything just turn to the people that are around you and just connect with your eyes within and maybe squeeze their hands and just see in that meeting the meeting of your humanity and through that to that profound oneness of being that we've just been in with closing our eyes and just have a sense of it thanks for making this happen thank you have we done we'll be cooked thanks for making this happen thank you everyone is filmed it thank you everyone for showing up and playing with us you