Michael Beckwith & Rickie Byers Beckwith at the Parliament of the World's Religions

So, I grew up in Los Angeles. I went away to Atlanta for a couple years to Morehouse College and then I came back to LA and uh was attending USC psychobiology major. Psychobiology, right? I was going to go to med school. Okay. And uh my life took a different turn. Uh-huh. I started having some um very interesting experiences that at the time could be pathological, you know. Was it was this around when the 70s? Yeah, early '7s. Yeah. And this was like spontaneous. Yeah. Series of dreams, visions. I would leave my body all the time. Um I'd find myself watching television. The next thing I know, I'd be on the ceiling looking at myself watch television. Wow. Or I think about Was there any catalyst to this or this was all just spontaneous? Spontaneous. I mean, I was smoking weed and things like that, but but I stopped, you know, it was like I went up to, you know, I thought it was getting pretty bizarre. And uh Have you been reading spiritual books? No, no, no. I was at that time in my life, I had left the church when I was 16 years old. I was more agnostic, you know. I believe there was something some grand um energy, some some something, but not God, the way people thought about God. So I wasn't in that kind of conversation. And um so when these things started happening to me, I had no reference as to what was going on. And so um I can remember and that that went on for over a year. And I can remember just being silent about it because I didn't want people to think I was crazy. And it culminated, not didn't culminate, but there was a point where um I had a dream that I had almost every night of my life. And in this dream, these three men were chasing me, but they were way in the distance. And so I'd always wake up before they would capture me. But every night, they'd get closer and closer, you know. So anyway, in this particular dream, Yeah. Uh, one night I looked back and I saw this line of people that stretched beyond my sight go trying to get into this small tent. And I, but I knew everybody in line. I knew every single person and I turned and I saw the three people and I said, "They can't harm me. All these people will take care of me." And so I turned around and I said started screaming, "Help!" And they turned their back on me and two of the men held me down and another one plunged a knife into my heart. Wow. Wow. The pain was excruciating and I just I screamed out and I died. And then when I woke up, everything was radically changed. It was just love beauty pulsating when you woke up. Yeah. When I I woke up and it was love beauty. Everything was love beauty. This wasn't in the dream anymore. No, I'm awake now. And and I'm awake now. And um everything is love beauty. And the person that went to bed that night was not the same person that woke up. That priorities were different. Everything everything shifted. I lost all of my friends. Um and so that began the search as to what was happening to me. Mhm. That began my conscious foray into uh spiritual studies in which I studied you know uh Easter school. No, you dropped out. Yeah. I just kind of well I had a number of things going on in my life. I had some other crisis going on. So everything kind of I but I never got back to school. Other that kind of school I went back I I studied more um spirituality. I became a spiritual practitioner uh um and did one-on-one counseling for seven years. There was a period of time after that where I had a series of experiences. So I wasn't really any earthly good. Sorry. I wasn't really any earthly good. Oh. Cuz I was just exploring this other dimension of consciousness. Oh, I see. Yeah. So you know I had jobs. I worked for um uh you know different places, prison preveners. I worked for city councilmen. I was able to you know maintain uh uh a level of groundedness in this world. Um but ultimately the spirit was calling me. The thing the ironic thing is I never wanted to be a minister. that was anathema to me, you know, uh because my concept of of minister was a bit jaded. But um so ultimately so I I did the the practitioner thing for about seven years and had did seminars did mainly mainly dealt with healing through prayer with people and I ended up being the director of the prayer ministry for the United Church of Religious Science. And so I did all of the training there. Then I taught in the school of ministry there and I taught prayer and I taught meditation and and that type of thing. And then in the early ' 80s 1986 I was pulled to start my own uh community which is now agape. Right. So it'll be 18 years old this November. I'm giving you the short version. Right. Okay. Of of Were there other things that you experimented with along the way? Um just different forms of meditation. Which different ones? uh you know I did Rajnice you know chaotic meditation I did um um what I do now is um vipasa so I did a lot of vipasa retreats um but meditation has probably been my primary technology um and so I've had I I would go into the light you know I can remember when my um my first wife I was with who thought I was nuts at this time because um you still think you're kind of nuts, right? Well, I can remember see I I remember because she didn't, you know, she didn't marry the guy that I evolved into, you see. So, it's like I'm not. So, it went from it wasn't it wasn't a gradual boom, you know, like, you know, where did this guy come from, you know? And uh I remember asking her later, I mean, we're friends now. And I said, "Now, when I was going through all of that, um, what did you think?" You know, and she said, "Well, I knew you so well. I knew you weren't lying. I thought you were crazy. That was that what she said." cuz I remember one time coming in from a meditation retreat and uh for some reason I went to go meditate again, but this time I just laid down on the bed and um I started going into meditation and I this is just a story about my former wife actually or this this but anyway I lay down on the bed and um my hands got extremely hot the burning and a tremendous loud noise in the ears and palpitating ing of the heart and then a deep silence beyond you know that that silence that's real loud and then I was lifted and the light and for it seemed like hours just kind of discoursing with you know asking questions getting answers you know about the nature of the universe and and then I had a thought were your eyes closed the whole time my eyes were closed yeah I think they as far as I remember they were closed Yeah, I had the thought, "Oh, wow. I've been gone so long. They're going to be worried about me." So, as soon as I had that thought, I became body conscious again. Then I ran out into the living room and people there and I said, "You got to understand what's going on. The nature of the universe. It's a living organism." And you know, there's no time in space. You know, everything is love. It's everywhere. I was just going on and on and on. And everybody was just staring at me. And what I didn't realize only about a minute had passed. a you know it was like no you know I didn't realize that till a little bit later it was like so for for in their mind I had walked in put my bags down went into the back room and they came running out with this fantastic story and so that's why she thought Yeah. Yeah. How did you guys meet? Oh god. Friend of mine gave me a tape of her singing. and said he was he didn't want me to meet her. He just wanted me to hear the song they had written together. Just tell the truth. Well, he said I'm telling the truth. He said, you know, said I want you to hear this song. And I I played the song and I said, the song is okay, but who's singing? And he said, a girl by the name of Ricky Buyers, but she's not going to be interested in coming to your church to sing or anything. And I heard something in her voice. I said, no, no, no. I I I feel her destiny. I there's something in her voice. She's I knew her and uh I knew her destiny. I knew that that that voice carried such healing that I had to meet her. And um interestingly enough, when we talked on the phone, she was as he described, cynical, you know, I'm not interested in that stuff, you know. But ultimately, she came to sing at the church. He's paid me. What? You paid me to come sing at the church. Yeah. You were cynical. Well, I had a lot to be cynical about, you know, and so it was I was um I played for two religious science churches before Agape and I would listen to the ministers and I would kind of see the way one in particular was living after the sermon, you know, and what he was talking about during the sermon. I mean, I I came into, ironically enough, I came into religious science in 1975 in New York City. Uh, and Raymond Charles Barker was the minister there at Alisty Hall. Uhhuh. And my uncle took me to the first service. He says, "If you're in New York, you're an artist and you want to get in show business and you want to do all of this, you have all these dreams, you need to be rooted in something." And so, and he and that was his um his system of belief was religious science. science of mind, new thought, not just religious science. He was just open to he was just open to creative thought and uh and he took me there. And so um so I had I had a a foundation and I had a a thirst. I wasn't quite clear, you know, the teaching wasn't enough for what I needed. And when I heard Michael speak, when I finally made my way to Agape, uh and you were already living in LA. I was already living in LA. I left New York and uh I actually thought I'd married Michael. A psychic had told me that I was going to marry this man from the west and we were going to write music together and we were going to uh just change many hearts around the world. Wow. That he had that he had a beard and a mustache. Yeah. Yeah. But he had a beard and a mustache. So when I met a man from the West Coast when I was in New York and he and he had a beard and a mustache and he was talking about, "Wow, we could write music together." I'm thinking like this is the guy. It wasn't wasn't just one psychic. It was like people were coming out of the street going like your destiny's on the west coast. You know, you're going to be really famous in music. And I was going like, oh, good. When this man comes who had moved to town and and he was um he had a mustache and a beard and he wanted to get married and that people didn't want to get married in New York. Not and none of my musician friends and those were my colleagues. And uh this person was a musician and he did want a family. He had to be the guy. You're a musician. He wasn't the guy. No, we write we write music. Oh, sorry. So, we do write music together. Um uh but um so he wasn't the guy, but he was the guy to get me to the West Coast. And he was the man that was the father of my two children who are magnificent beings. And so it's there's something to be said about the way that I got to Los Angeles. And it is it is it was the place that I needed to come to. And uh when I heard him say uh hello when he got up when I was at the service and I did I was like really not so nice on the phone. You know that's another story another interview. But when I saw him and I mean it wasn't love at first sight. It wasn't any of that. I'm just looking at him and the first thing that came to me was spoiled. So, um, she's a part of that. That was so funny. But when he got up and he said hello, I knew he had something, you know. So, now with Jerry Maguire, the movie, when she says he he had me at hello, you know, it's like when he said hello, I said he knows. I just could hear it in his voice. I could hear that he knew something and I had been searching for it. And and most recently to that point was in the African study group. So we would be studying uh the principles of uh Egyptology and but most of the time we were studying how the truth was stolen you know but we weren't studying the truth just how it was stolen. So, so when he started to talk, I just started to cry, you know, because it was everything that I believed. It was everything I believed. And I was like, "Oh." And the more I came to Agape, the more I wanted to be there and not get paid. And one day I had to go when I wasn't getting paid. And that that was the end of my marriage. Really? You're not getting paid? Said, "No, I just got to go. I got I have to I have to be there for that sermon. I have to be there. So long long before we were songwriting partners or husband and wife like he was my teacher. He was my he was a teacher that I had sought because it when he speaks I know you know I know that if I had heard that when I was 25 my destiny would have been totally different you know it would have had a larger context. Sure. Sure. Then name it and claim it. Right. you know. Yeah.