March 6, 2025 • 61 mins
Ep 186 One World in a New World with Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove
👉 "What if everything we think we know about reality, consciousness, and human evolution is just scratching the surface?"
How do we each become the best version of ourselves and navigate this wild, shifting reality with curiosity instead of fear? 🚀
✨ Unlock the Mysteries of Consciousness & the Paranormal ✨
Join me, Zen Benefiel, in this fascinating discussion with Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove, a trailblazer in parapsychology, consciousness studies, and metaphysics. With decades of research and interviews exploring the nature of reality, psychic phenomena, and human potential, Jeff shares insights that challenge conventional thinking and expand our understanding of the mind and beyond.
🔹 The awakening of curiosity—how questioning reality leads to profound discoveries
🔹 Pioneering parapsychology—exploring extrasensory perception (ESP), psychokinesis, and the mind’s hidden powers
🔹 Mysticism, altered states, and consciousness research—bridging the gap between science and spirituality
🔹 The role of intuition vs. intellect—why modern society undervalues the deeper senses of human awareness
🔹 How psychic abilities and metaphysical experiences shape human evolution
🔹 The quest for truth—navigating skepticism, scientific inquiry, and personal experience in the search for deeper knowledge
If you’ve ever wondered about the nature of reality, the power of human consciousness, or the intersection of science and spirituality, this conversation will expand your perspective and invite you to explore new possibilities.
🎥 Watch now and step into a journey of deeper awareness!
đź”” Subscribe for more enlightening conversations on consciousness, transformation, and the mysteries of existence.
Previous Conversations with Jeff and Zen:
A New World Order: https://youtu.be/VU0ZY7p2jhQ
The Sociology of Ufology: https://youtu.be/1VyyZNcFgSs
On Hearing Voices: https://youtu.be/gWdtxnzac7M
Connect with Jeffrey: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreymishlove/
Foundation: https://newthinkingallowed.org
Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@NewThinkingAllowed
Join this channel to get access to perks:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuZl_29zHxehqeL89KSCWFA/join
#Consciousness #Parapsychology #JeffMishlove #Mysticism #SpiritualAwakening #PsychicAbilities #QuantumReality #HumanPotential #MindPower #Intuition #Metaphysics #SelfAwareness #ConsciousLeadership #ParanormalResearch #ExtrasensoryPerception #SpiritualGrowth #Mindfulness #HigherConsciousness #PhilosophyOfMind #ZenBenefiel
_______
Connect with Zen: https://linkedin.com/zenbenefiel
Zen's books: https://amazon.com/author/zendor
Zen's Coaching: https://BeTheDream.com
Zen's CV et al: https://zenbenefiel.com
The Octopus Movement (non-linear thinkers): https://theoctopusmovement.org
Live and Let Live Global Peace Movement: https://liveandletlive.org
Activation Products: https://bit.ly/btdactivation
Assisting in harmony among people and planet: https://planetarycitizens.net
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Namaste and in LA Ketch, and welcome to this episode of One
World in a New World. I'm your host, Zen Benefiel.
And this week I have a very special guest in Doctor Jeffrey
Mishlov. He has won an award for
approving life after death. He's had New Thinking Aloud on
PBS for about 20 years, which iswhere I was first introduced to
(00:22):
him. He has New Thinking Aloud on
YouTube now, of which I was a guest on several years ago, and
he's written The Roots of Consciousness, which is like an
encyclopedia of how consciousness is developed.
The PK Man is another book and then he also has a book about
New Thinking Aloud. So you're going to have a
(00:44):
wonderful time in this journey and I watch it a stick around
will be right. Explore the thoughtless sphere.
Embark on a life changing journey of self discovery.
Embrace harmony with self, with others, with Earth, one world in
a new world. Zen Benefield skillfully ignites
(01:04):
conversations, guiding guests toreveal personal journeys and
perspectives. Listeners are inspired to seek
knowledge and find wisdom in their own lives.
Join this transformative journeyas we navigate the depth of
human experience. Jeff, it is so wonderful to have
(01:24):
you here today. I've been looking forward to
this. Thank you for coming.
You're very welcome. It's a pleasure to be with you.
And with you, as always. So, you know, as our advancement
in consciousness and the abilitythat we have to cognate, to be
aware, to observe, there's an obvious difference between the
(01:49):
inner and outer lives that we experience.
And we're often bereft of talking about those inner lives
with others because generally we're seen as being weird and
saying, you know, crazy, that kind of stuff and and kept at a
distance. Well, that's changing,
especially in this recent shift and how we're we were given the
(02:10):
opportunity to be obsessive on self hygiene and sequestrated to
give us the opportunity to self examine.
And I believe that there's a lotthat's come out of that as far
as the capacity to advance humanity in a much more positive
way. So I know that you have had this
rich history. You've got a PhD in
(02:32):
parapsychology, I believe was the first out of Berkeley back
in 1971, I think it was. So in this exploration and
consciousness, what got you started?
How was that childhood development stage that you had?
That must have had some really interesting, curious questions.
(02:53):
Well, I actually, I had a very normal childhood.
I grew up in the Midwest. I in Fond du Lac, WI.
My father ran a furniture store.I imagined I might run a
furniture store myself or something along those lines.
And I can't really think of verymany extraordinary things that
(03:20):
happened. And I think in my case, probably
the awakening occurred once I got into college, which was in
the 1960s and it was the VietnamWar period and psychedelic drugs
were just becoming available. And that is really what pushed
(03:42):
me to question everything aroundme and, and not just me, but
many, many people of my generation.
So was it a psychedelic experience that kind of pushed
you over the edge to when you experienced that expansive
region that's made available? Through it, well, there were
(04:04):
psychedelic experiences for sure, and they were very
powerful, but you have to take the whole thing is a package
when you. It's hard to imagine, I suppose,
for people alive today who didn't live through the Vietnam
War, what that was like. America had just come off of,
(04:24):
you know, 20 years earlier, 25 years earlier, we had won the
Second World War, the largest war in human history.
And it was like we were the perfect nation.
We were wealthy, we were successful.
We had defeated our enemies. And then all of a sudden, a
(04:44):
generation, my generation comingof age in the 1960s was faced
with, Oh my gosh, it looks as ifour great nation is behaving in
an immoral fashion, you know, murdering over a million brown
skinned Vietnamese people who simply, you know, didn't want to
(05:09):
be a French colony or, or a colony of Western powers.
Let alone give up their oil. So all of a sudden, all of a
sudden it became imperative to question things that we were
raised never to question, but toalways Revere.
(05:33):
So what got you involved in in that inner quest, though,
because it's, you know, you spent your life exploring it and
others and their experiences with what was the key factor
that got you turned inward? Well, I began to take an
interest in, in the topic of mysticism as an undergraduate.
(05:58):
And I truly, I was approaching it, you know, I was being
exposed to mystical, or let me put it this way, altered states
of consciousness through the useof cannabis and, and
psychedelics. And I thought to myself, well,
isn't this interesting? I was a psychology major.
(06:22):
You've got all these people who claim to have mystical
experiences, like they can see ghosts or they're entering into
union with the divine or something like that.
I said this is obviously a, an aberration.
It must be a form of mental illness of some kind.
So what I'm going to do is writemy senior honors thesis on the
(06:46):
psychology of religious mysticism, and I'll be, I'll
just explain, you know what, what's going on with these nutty
people who have these experiences.
And it's like you got a wake up call during that process of
investigation because it appearsthat you know, you can enter
(07:06):
heaven by storm or by a catalystor however you want to call
that. But yet there's pearls from
there that you bring back into this reality that are seem to
be. Universal understandings.
Well, in my case, the Pearl was running into the work of Abraham
(07:31):
Maslow, who was a psychologist, and he had written a book just
published while I was in undergraduate studies.
It was called Toward a Psychology of Beings, and Maslow
was a psychologist. He came up in the 1940s, really.
(07:51):
And he and we're all familiar with Maslow's hierarchy.
That's right. He decided he was going to
investigate the most successful,popular, accomplished people in
our culture, see what he could learn.
And he began interviewing peoplealong the lines of Albert
(08:11):
Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt. And he discovered that almost
everyone he interviewed reportedhaving what he called a peak
experience. And he noted that the peak
experiences, as far as he could tell, didn't really differ in
any way from the classical descriptions of mystical
(08:34):
experiences. But being a psychologist, he
gave it a different name, Peek. And he said dude's experiences
were central to the motivation and character of these
individuals and and they were what they credited to to their
success. So said, even though
(08:57):
traditionally psychologists havefelt that the mystical
experience is in Freudian terms of regression to an infantile
state, he said actually the mostsuccessful people in our culture
build their careers on the basisof these experiences.
And at that point, I realized I had to rethink everything.
(09:20):
Sure. And and it's, you know, it's
funny how the thing that came tomind was one of Jesus saying be
ye as little children, right? So this gives us that
opportunity to be curious, sometimes radically so, and dive
into these things that obviously, you know, we have
(09:41):
different experiences, we call them different things, we use
different terminology. But when we begin to have
discussions about and we're all saying the same thing, just
slightly differently, it seems. Would would you?
Do you find that to be true as well?
Well, that's a good question. The there, there is a whole
(10:04):
intellectual movement called postmodernism which would
disagree with you. They would say we don't know
what people mean when they use their words, so we can't say
that they mean the same thing ornot.
Well that seems like kind of a outsiders observation without
conversation to find out. You know, a lot of times we view
(10:27):
things from the outside but never step into them to actually
find out whether it's true or not.
Do you find that possibly to be the case in this?
Well, sure. I lean towards the idea that
that there is a reality out there, that we all receive it in
(10:48):
in our unique ways and that whenwe talk about it, we're talking
about the same thing even if we use different language.
But you can never be 100% sure. William James wrote a book
called It's about Pluralism, Pluralistic Universe, in which
(11:13):
he he suggests it could be the case that each person is a
universe unto themselves and that everybody's reality is
simply different from everybody else's.
True, we're all unique as snowflakes and, and then said,
well, I heard the other day, there's only like 35 different
types of snowflakes, but we're even much more than that, right.
(11:37):
And and in that diversity, it would seem that there would be a
natural unity in that by design,considering that there is an
intelligence behind our design and there appears to be the more
we peer into that quantum physics now is recognized.
(11:58):
Oh, everything's vibration. It's not physical matter at all.
So how do these vibrations harmonize and is there a
consistent frequency throughout that we all such as to love and
be loved, being a core desire, There's a frequency there,
there's a vibration. Is this something that maybe
(12:20):
would bring those exterior observations and descriptions
into a more cohesive and coherent package?
Well, we'd like to think so. I mean, that's the optimistic
point of view that it at the endof the day, love will win out
(12:41):
and human beings are basically positive, loving, creative
individuals. But The thing is Zen, you're
you're getting into metaphysics and one of the issues with with
metaphysics, it's been a big problem from that was pointed
(13:04):
out by the Vienna Circle. And the logical positive is that
how do you decide a a metaphysical question like is,
is there one reality, one metaphysical principle that
unifies everything like consciousness or God or matter?
Or do we live in a dualistic world where there are two
(13:27):
principles like good and evil, mind and matter?
How do you even begin to settle these things it.
Would seem I'm exploring this. Obviously it would seem that
choice is a difference. We can take it to the binary,
you know, the zero and one, and yet we're dealing with a unified
(13:49):
whole. Like Einstein had said, there's
a unified field that we haven't really developed the awareness
or consciousness or technology that's able to measure or define
it. So how?
Do we know it's there at all? It well, it would seem to me
that we can't think our way through this universe that's
(14:11):
built on vibration, that we haveto learn how to sense it.
And therein we get into what we,what has been called the
metaphysics because of the senses, the clairols if you
will, and then some. And yet there's this
inextricable single point of reference within each of us from
(14:32):
which we experience reality. So if those single points are
able to find agreement or at least some commonality,
inexperience, would that not lead to something a little more
holistic in perspective? Well, if that's what you want,
(14:54):
if you're if, if your aim is to create a a world which is
holistic, then for sure that's what you want to do is
communicate. The thing is, we live in a time
of polarization. Absolutely.
Where there's a segment of the population that doesn't
(15:15):
particularly want a holistic integration, there's a segment
of the population that basicallysays it's either us or them.
These people are not my partners, they are my
adversaries. So if I want to win, they have
to lose. And so that's what I'm going
for. It's a 0 sum game and I want to
(15:37):
be a winner rather than the people who are saying no we all
are going to rise together. A rising tide lifts all boats.
Yes. And it's, it's one thing to say
that, it's another to facilitateand observe it happening
naturally. There's been a huge boon lately
in the whole notion of servant leadership amongst the
(16:00):
organizational development side of businesses and corporations
and and large entities that realize it's not necessarily
about profit over people and planet.
We have to flip it and make it people and planet over profit
because it's the people that actually get the work done and
(16:20):
they have to feel like they belong that and that they're
part of the community. And this especially with the
Gen. Z ers, they're like, you know,
we don't want any part of this separative kind of environment.
Do you find that happening as well?
Well, you know, from my perspective Zen, I would say
that that attitude is 1. I heard voiced quite a bit in
(16:45):
the 90s, in the 80s and cultural.
Creatives back then, right? Sure.
These days it's almost more likethere's what you see on the rise
is this right wing backlash against that kind of thinking.
It's the people who who have sort of the opposing point of
(17:06):
view right now that's even beyond the ascendant.
Do you see a, an opportunity forthat shifting based on what
you've discovered through your own work, the programs, the
people that you've spoken with and, and their deep dives into
(17:27):
how to navigate in this world more effectively and frankly
more harmoniously? Because none of us really like
the chaos. We don't want to fight that,
that, you know, why would we want to kill somebody
arbitrarily, right or, or at all?
The sense of that just doesn't feel congruent with good sense.
(17:50):
Well. You might think so, but on the
other hand, some people seem to like chaos now.
I just completed an interview about Robert Anton Wilson, a
very popular writer I met. Him years ago.
Lovely man, a very funny He was a friend of mine when I lived in
(18:13):
Berkeley. I think there's renewed interest
in his writing and he was a proponent of what he called
Discordianism and which is a youcould even call it a religion,
but the Discordian religion is is 1.
And that says the universe, if you want to look at it
(18:34):
metaphysically from their perspective, is a constant
struggle between the forces of chaos and the forces of order.
And Robert Anton Wilson leaned toward the forces of chaos, He
said they're the ones that are going to prevail.
Chaos always wins in in the end,So you you might as well go with
(18:55):
it. And from a human perspective, I
can see that now Wilbert Smith had a different view based on
his conversations with people from elsewhere that were
recorded in his memoirs, from being the director of project
management, which was Canada's Blue Book basically in the 50s.
He had said that from their perspective, they had warned
(19:18):
humans that if you point out an anomaly in the universe or
something that doesn't fit, thenyou don't understand it yet.
So our perhaps our nature because of where we've come from
and our original, you know, fight, flight, protect, say, you
(19:41):
know, feeling safe and, and the whole, you know, night and day,
dark and light. We have these notions that there
is a consistency throughout thisreality that we're experiencing
that is bipolar, that is it really, or are we just choosing
(20:02):
to see it that way because of our inability to see things as
part of a? Oneness.
Well, you could say it's an inability or you could say
there's no need to decide if we,if we don't have the knowledge
(20:24):
or the means of making a decision, maybe it's better
simply to say very humbly, we don't know.
There is, and that's that third choice, right?
There's yes, I know. No, I don't know.
And like, well, maybe let's findout, right, how do we explore
that? How do you see, how do you self
and and what have you 'cause youseem to want to explore this, to
(20:47):
find the commonality, to find what's there that actually
unifies and doesn't separate in many.
Ways I'm I'm doing the opposite.I'm looking for the anomalies.
I'm looking for the things that that are so bizarre and so
strange that that they push people's buttons.
(21:07):
So you have a big segment of thepopulation who says this is the
work of the devil. And you have another big segment
of the population who's saying this is simply the rising tide
of superstition. It can't be real.
And I I find that those anomalies are among the most
significant things. If you want to understand
(21:30):
reality, you have to pay attention to them.
Well, it. It provides that multiple.
Challenge in your beliefs, yeah.And it does give a much broader
sense of points of view of perspective from which to
consider things because the moreperspective you have, the
(21:51):
greater understanding can be garnered.
It would appear right now in that though it has there been
any coherence, consistency, congruence, golden thread
throughout that may tie it in a nice bow?
(22:11):
Or does it seem to be still all discordant?
Well, there's been very important milestones along the
way. JB Rhine, for example, in
parapsychology at Duke University, established certain
language, established language which has been in use now for
(22:34):
since the 1930s. Extrasensory perception.
Psychokinesis, the idea that thehuman being, unaided by any sort
of outside spiritual assistance,has innate abilities of
consciousness that extend far beyond the limits of the
(22:56):
physical body. Now this takes me back to the
Vedas, which I know you're familiar with and I believe
paraphrase. They kind of offer that.
And for those of you who aren't familiar with the Vedas, they're
Sanskrit poems. There's four of them that were
(23:17):
written 15,000 plus years ago. And the gist of them seem to
offer that we are all divine threads Incarnate, connected to
Source, capable of God consciousness.
Now reflecting on that and fast forwarding to this boon and
(23:37):
awareness and consciousness and seemingly the congruence and old
spiritual teachings and now quantum discoveries, how does
that play out? Or how would you think that
might play out? Well, there's been in the last
(23:58):
several decades a a movement, some people call it quantum
mysticism, with people trying todo exactly that.
Say now that we have the discoveries of quantum physics,
we understand how the world works, and we can apply quantum
physics to explain the mysteriesof consciousness and
(24:20):
parapsychology. I think it's a valiant effort.
I think it's worth doing. Ultimately, I don't think it
will be successful, but we need to do it anyway.
Well, yeah, we never know. And and you know, one step, even
though it may not be successful,it guides us to a next step that
(24:44):
may not be successful and yet still raises the bar and leads
us towards something new but or the ability to explore the
unknown with a little less fear.You know, not long ago I did an
interview with a fellow named James Cook.
There's a new book out about thenature of reality published by
(25:07):
Prometheus Press. It's the publishing company that
does all the skeptics, the Scientific Committee for the
Investigation of the Claims of the Paranormal.
They're not even real skeptics. My friend Stanley Krippner says,
let's call them what they reallyare.
They're scoffers. They just wanna scoff at all of
this so. Well, that's the natural thing
(25:30):
to do without a direct experience of it, right?
Sure, most people will it it it's you've never experienced
something and someone else says,you know, I have it for
breakfast every morning and you must think to yourself, well,
that person is pulling my leg and.
And I've got to stay away from them.
(25:52):
I can't, I can't believe it because I've never had the
experience myself, but the the point that James Cook was making
is, is very simple, he said. You can never know what reality
is. Reality is beyond language.
So any attempt to explain ultimate reality using language
(26:16):
is bound to fail. I would totally agree with that
because by the use of language, we begin to categorize,
categorize label title, which immediately limits the
possibility of what else might be in that experience or
whatever it is we're trying to describe.
(26:38):
And the, it's more of a sense ofawe in those that is relative
to, I believe a, a, a frequency then or a vibration or a sense
of being that can be felt by many simultaneously in, in Group
(26:59):
experiences or an individual in a singular experience.
Now how, and I'm sure you've talked to many who share that
perspective. How would that fit into this
possibility of discovering something more that's valuable
for the human race to begin to come together and work is one
(27:22):
that that because we only have one planet, right?
And we're we're one race. Even though we have this massive
diversity, we're still human beings.
Well for all I know we share theplanet with non human
intelligences that may may be even much more superior to the
(27:45):
human race than than we are to clams.
I I that's a nice couch, Jeff, II know you know, because the,
the folks that you know and the folks that I know that that's
it's not a may it, there's this interaction that's taking place
and it's ongoing. I.
And I would go further. I would say that from my point
(28:07):
of view, the whole universe is alive.
Yes, it's conscious. There's an intelligence, I would
say. Is there a design in that?
Design, yeah. So as as we the open.
Question. Now so and I say that because,
you know, we've got a genetic design, right?
(28:28):
We have certain things, we don'tunderstand the fullness of the
genetic codes yet, but we do know there's certain things that
and behaviors that are triggeredby genes.
There's cultural memes, means, creos, all those kinds of things
that Sheldrake introduced years ago.
And then there's this frequency based soul vibration, if you
will, that's also present the electromagnetic field that's
(28:53):
generated from that. How does that So you've got the,
the biophysical, if you will, and the what could be said as
metaphysical, that yet it is intrinsic to the physical
because it gives us that consciousness.
(29:13):
How does if there were a naturaldesign for this, what might it
lead to kind of like these conversations of inner and outer
realities? Is there 1 experience that could
be had that we're just avoiding because we like to dominate and
control? Well, if you look at, that's a.
(29:35):
Loaded question, I know Jungian.Psychology, I'm I'm a big fan of
Carl Jung and he talked about four basic human functions,
thinking, feeling, sensing and intuiting.
And I think it's pretty clear inour culture that they're not
(29:58):
evenly distributed, that our culture is very heavily weighted
toward thinking and sensation. You go around and, you know,
there's all sorts of ways that we promote sensation.
Fast cars, beautiful women, you know TikTok.
(30:22):
Videos. All all of that would be people
are into you. You know, how can we what
amazing experiences can we have next?
Skydiving or you name it, It's almost.
Like an insatiable curiosity forsensation.
Yeah, For. Sensation and of course the
(30:45):
world of the intellect is very dominant and we devalue and
you've been hinting at this throughout our discussion.
We devalue thinking and we, excuse me, intuition and
feeling. We do talking throughout our
discussion. You can't solve certain problems
(31:05):
intellectually, but you can feel.
You can have a sense of the vibration of the love of the
feeling. You have a sense of your
connectivity to the whole universe and and for sure,
people do have that. It would be a mistake to think
that therefore you should subscribe to any particular
(31:25):
ideology or metaphysical interpretation of your
experience, but that that experience of being connected is
a is a very important human experience.
I think it's related to the Buddhist notion of compassion.
And as a parapsychologist, I think that it's our lack of
(31:53):
compassion that blocks our psychic functioning.
And by that I mean, if you open up to your God-given gift of
clairvoyance, telepathy, you're going to open yourself up to the
(32:16):
pain of the world, to the peoplein Los Angeles who have lost
their homes, to the people in Gaza who who have lost their
city, to all of the misery in the world.
And most of us simply don't wantto do that.
It's instinctively. I mean, I want to.
(32:38):
Keep our blinders on and just live in our walled community.
And as a result, what we end up doing, we end up numbing
ourselves. We, we go through life as if all
the pain and suffering in this world, and there's plenty of it
didn't exist as long as we can create a a little sanctuary for
(33:01):
ourselves. And you can do that.
But the price of having such a nice, comfortable middle class
American life is you're going toshut down your own natural
psychic gifts. If you want to open up the
powers of the mind, the cities, the very first thing is you've
(33:24):
got to be able to allow yourselfto feel compassion for the
suffering of the world. And that means compassion means
feeling with. Feeling even for yourself, too.
I mean, there's all kinds of traumas that we're in denial of
that we shove down into our body, wonder why we become
diseased and then have these aberrant behaviors in life
(33:48):
because we've never dealt with those traumas.
And we're still fighting the fear and and we're seeing that
fear reflected in others. And it's really just our
projections that we're getting back instead so I can.
Hardly fault anybody for not wanting to be overwhelmed by,
you know, the experience of painand trauma are.
(34:09):
Not to be because it did just itbrings that deep sense of
compassion, if you will, of and even not understanding why this
has to happen, right. And you know, you're, you
mentioned thinking being one of the, the young in traits.
(34:31):
And it would, the neuroscientisttoday they're saying, well, we,
I'm not sure how they actually measure this, but they say,
well, we've got 70 thousand thoughts a day that we have.
And from what you're describing,in my experience, it seems like
at least 2/3, maybe even 3/4 of those are self deprecating.
(34:53):
And that by becoming, you know, having these experiences, you
begin to become aware of how you're thinking and then have
the opportunity to change that over time.
It doesn't happen overnight, as you know, we all know.
No, I think you can change a negative thought very quickly.
(35:15):
As a matter of fact, I'm. Glad you say that.
Yeah, I don't. Think it has to take a long time
if you observe a self deprecating thought pass through
your head. Like boy am I stupid that a
thought like that. I developed a habit long ago
(35:38):
because I was a seminar leader for a company called Omega
Seminars that dealt with precisely this problem.
You can say to yourself, cancel that thought.
You don't have to own any self deprecating thought, nor do you
even have to own a thought whereyou devalue any other human
(36:00):
being. Right.
The judgement, criticism that that unnecessary, Yeah.
You can let go of all of all of those thoughts.
It's not as if you cannot criticize.
You can criticize other people without devaluing them.
As a human being, you criticize their behavior.
You could say you can do this better.
(36:21):
It doesn't mean you're a worse person because you made a
mistake or didn't do it the verybest way.
And that's. A great distinction because it's
the behavior that we have issueswith, not the person.
We have no idea what their life has been like in order to get to
the place that they're at and behave like they do.
It's then again, you know, kind of prompts that desire to this,
(36:43):
Covey says. To seek first to understand
before being understood that query of getting to know, you
know, unpacking that using nonviolent communication to draw
out what's been within and hopefully help to dissolve that
constraint in their outer activity as a result.
(37:07):
How do you see this evolving andand do you see some shifts
coming out of COVID as a result of that time for that obsession
on self hygiene and sequestration?
Well, I am an optimist basicallyand I'm a person who I do hold
(37:30):
that belief that you talked about.
I don't think I can prove it, but I hold it, which is the
unity of consciousness and the unity of of the world.
And as a result of having that belief, I also think that the
entire universe is positive. I feel a sense of oneness with
(37:55):
the entire universe and that theentire universe is good.
Even the fact of death is good. Even the fact of illness is is
good. Even the fact of war and
persecution. Ultimately, they're all here for
our benefit. And we should have gratitude for
it first, rather than condemnation, right?
(38:16):
Well, that. May be sometimes hard to get to
when you're in the middle of thepinchers.
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
And yet in that experience of oneness, you know, is it
positive or negative or it's just neutral and, and it's
managed by how we direct our attention, intention and
interactions. Lots of times growth occurs
(38:42):
because we're forced to kicking and screaming.
We don't want to do it, we wouldrather resist it.
But there's no resisting. Change is inevitable, and it's a
lot of. Pain in that now is the pain in
the growth or actually in the resistance to it, because the
growth is a freedom of expression of sensation of this
(39:05):
new dynamic of life that we hadn't experienced and it's and
the resistance is to it seems tobe what causes the pain.
Yeah, I I would agree. It seems as if we always have a
choice. I think of of growing joyfully
without pain, but we don't always take that choice.
(39:29):
Sometimes we're afraid to. And when that happens, we end up
growing anyway. Only it's not as joyful as it
might have been. It's more painful.
There. We don't have any choice.
We're going to have to grow one way or another.
You can only resist it for so long.
Very. True.
(39:51):
Now turn the corner a little bit.
As a parapsychologist and and with your interviews of others,
does there seem to be a consistent constraint that one
has to observe and then overcomein order to garner a fuller
(40:11):
understanding and and is there aconsistent process?
In that I realized that it may be described differently, but
again, there seems to be or seems like there could be a
consistent process in that well.I think some of your audience
members may be interested in knowing that in partnership with
(40:34):
the California Institute for Human Science we, which is a
Graduate School based in California, Northern California
near San Diego, we're setting upparapsychology programs.
You can get a master's degree ora doctoral degree now with a
(40:55):
specialization or a concentration in parapsychology,
but the first thing you have to know about that is, unlike
getting your degree in chemistryor biology or physics, you can't
expect a nice high paying job waiting for you.
Parapsychology is not considereda stick field like like that,
(41:19):
even though parapsychologists are very up to date on
scientific methodology and theory and are often pushing the
limits and and coming up with new advances and statistics and
methodology and theoretical physics and elsewhere.
But in spite of that, if you aregoing to go into parapsychology,
(41:46):
the first thing you need to be alert to is the fact that a very
sizable portion of the public are going to think you're nuts.
And in fair, when I, when I cameup, the standard advice was to
anybody like me foolish enough to want to go into
parapsychology, the advice consistently was don't do it.
(42:13):
Get yourself a degree in a conventional field and even then
that's not enough. Get tenure.
And then once you have tenure, then you can't be fired.
Then. You can do parapsychology
because otherwise you're taking a big career risk.
Oh. Yeah.
And and you know, in our earlierconversation said shared that,
(42:36):
you know, and I had my awakeningat 18.
That one psychiatrist said, you know, you've had an awakening,
keep your mouth shut, nobody's going to understand you.
And then the following year I had an incident and ended up the
hospital talking with another and the total opposite that the
diagnosis, right, the DSM 4 version and the drugging and all
(42:59):
that stuff that came with that. I hope that that's not still
happening today, almost 50 yearslater.
I, I don't think it is. And and yet it edifies the point
you just made about the disparity in how others perceive
one who does have these kinds ofexperiences.
(43:22):
It's a very serious problem. For example, my friend Diane
Hennessy Powell is a psychiatrist who began
researching. They're called autistic savants,
brilliant young children, but who are suffering from autism.
(43:43):
And she determined through a series of tests that they have
remarkable psychic skills. I know.
Is it that wrote a book? About it called the ESP enigma
and this is a point I'm getting to Zen the psychiatric
profession in the state of Oregon where she was said this
(44:03):
lady is obviously crazy and and they took away her psychiatric
license because she wrote a bookabout her research.
That's how serious the opposition is.
They are poor materialist atheist typically and and the
very idea of the existence of paranormal abilities is very
(44:27):
very threatening to them. Well, it's the categories and
the separation rather than the awareness and assimilation of
this new information. And I wonder myself, you know,
understanding that throughout history we've had, I don't want
to say genetic engineering, but we've had natural selection and
(44:51):
adaptation and our genes and we have and others animals have
changed to adapt to their environment.
And I often wonder if this scientifically moving through
new areas of space and the subtle shifts in the vibratory
levels of them, if there's a trickle down or through the
(45:13):
development of humans affected by that.
And instead of seeing this new proclivity towards autism and
and savant autistics as well nonlinear thinkers and and such, is
(45:35):
this more of a natural occurrence that we're attempting
to see from an old paradigm, notunderstanding what what shift is
taking place? You, you got me speechless.
I'm not sure I fully understood the question, actually.
(45:55):
OK. Let let me reframe it.
I, I kind of that was a long 1. So do you feel perhaps that
these shifts in how children areevolving and what we're noticing
in them, instead of labeling it as a disorder, that it's
(46:17):
actually an evolutionary processtaking place to engage these
deeper senses? Possibly.
Yeah, it could. It could be both for all we
know. I wouldn't wanna dismiss the
pain and suffering families thatare dealing with autism.
(46:37):
It is it is very difficult emotionally for parents of
autistic children and it does seem to be on the rise.
And it does raise the the question about, you know what,
what is it about our culture that seems to be triggering
nature? Or nurture are, are the
(46:59):
chemicals we're putting into ourbodies causing it, or is it part
of a natural evolutionary process that engages this
internal side? And, and as you know, you know,
when we, when, when paradigms shift, we go from one side of
the pendulum over to the other. And then we got to find some
place in the middle to find balance and harmony in that.
Well, it's. Vaccines, don't you know?
(47:25):
So how do we, how do you proposeor or what do you feel might be
an Ave. to position our perspective from?
Well, I think you've said it quite well that that we need to
be inquiring. We need to be trying to learn
(47:49):
more from others rather than simply dismissing them because
of our preconceived opinions. There.
There's a word for that. It's called prejudice,
prejudging a situation. It would be very good if people
stop prejudging and made an effort to learn more about the
(48:10):
people who they think are their adversaries.
But you know, it brings up this sense that I had.
And so when you interviewed me years ago, it was a 28 year
dream come true for me. I'd wanted to emulate you when I
started One World in 1990 and hoping someday to be worthy of
(48:31):
an interview with you, never dreaming it would be possible.
And yet it happened. And by doing so, you weren't,
you took the opposite approach. You were, you seemed to
understand, you had great inquiry.
You were framing, you were actively listening and reframing
what I was saying in the ways that you understood it to be and
(48:54):
edifying what I was saying, sometimes questioning for
clarity. But you had this additional
understanding and embracing of the possibility from which you
were able to speak from and inquire more from that
perspective. How does that's a beautiful
(49:17):
place to be? How do we develop that in
ourselves in order to move forward in a better fashion as
we expand our environment? Because the digital world, the
virtual space, is limitless. Now we can talk to people all
over the world in an instant where we never used to be able
to do that when we were growing up.
(49:40):
Well, you. Have to want to know about other
people. If you don't want to then
nothing will motivate you. But if I look in my own case,
back when I was a young person, about 18, I was working at a
resort for the summer in Wisconsin as a bellman, you
(50:04):
know, carrying people's suitcases up to their rooms when
they check things of that sort. And it was a fun job for the
summer for an 18 year old. Sure.
It was a very swinging place. You know, they had the Road
America race cars and parties and so on.
(50:27):
And I noticed that there was oneof the other Bellman was
extremely popular. We didn't know When you're 18 or
so, when you're in your teens, popularity is a big issue and.
You bet and. And so I saw this guy is really
popular. What is his secret?
And so I began studying and watching, just noticing.
(50:50):
And what I noticed is he took aninterest in other people.
He began asking them questions about themselves, and everybody
enjoyed answering those questions.
And so they're attracted to him.So I learned if you want to be
popular with people, show that you're interested in them.
(51:14):
That kind of makes sense, right?I wanted I wanted to be more
popular. So I learned how to listen as as
a result of that. And it's paid many, many
dividends. Oh.
Absolutely great listeners go far and especially if they can
reflect well now. And this brings up a good point
(51:37):
that curiosity, that willingnessto observe, to incorporate, to
aspire. How do you or what might you
suggest for those who may hear this and think we're you know,
it's all bullshit, but still want to find out or or to test
(51:59):
things or to inquire further? What what kinds of things do you
find are best for that initial inquiry into this other world
that they may have an inkling towards or maybe even experience
of that don't know how to inviteit into this their framework I.
(52:23):
Think everybody is unique, Everybody is going to find their
own route and and the way I couch it is that the universe
wants each and every one of us to become the best version of
ourselves. That's going to be different for
each person. It means being the best father,
(52:46):
the best parent, the best child,the best sibling, the the best
friend to your friends. It means pursuing the career
that best expresses something inside of you.
You could call it your purpose. Your intellity is a Greek word
(53:07):
that allows you to express yourself most fully.
And if you set as your goal, you're going to become the best
person that you can be, the bestZen Benefiel that you can be.
The universe is going to help you because the universe wants
that for you. And doors will open.
(53:28):
Now, they may be difficult doors.
It doesn't mean life is going tobe easy because the universe
doesn't necessarily want you to have an easy life.
If you wanted an easy life, maybe a different planet would
have been would have been good. This is a planet where people,
often, not always there are people who have easy lives here,
(53:52):
but often people come to this planet in order to take on
something difficult, something hard to do and to.
Achieve. And to achieve so you can move
on. So what would you suggest for
those that are? Is there a basic question that
(54:19):
one might engage to begin with? Where you could say how can I be
the best version of myself? What does it mean even to be the
best version of of yourself? Well.
I'm laughing at that because it's that's the phrase that Mark
(54:40):
Victor uses. He's the founder of Live and Let
Live Global Peace Movement, of which I'm operations director
of. And and you know, we have two
principles with that, a moral and illegal.
The moral is be the best person,be an excellent human.
And the legal side of it is to calibrate the law to remove
aggression, which is the challenge that we have, but that
(55:05):
that be the best human that thatis such great advice.
And how do we do that? That's, you know, as diverse as
there are as many people. Well, there's a vast resource
available to everybody. We have so many tools,
meditation, dreaming, journaling.
(55:27):
If you if you psychotherapy there.
The resources that are availableto somebody who wants to become
the best version of themselves is enormous.
And if they're curious of the paras psychological side of
life, you have a treasure trove in the podcast and and
(55:48):
television shows you've done over the years.
We've just. Uploaded our two thousandth
video on the Thinking Aloud channel.
And as I mentioned earlier, we're working with the
California Institute for Human Science to begin to offer
Master's degrees and doctoral degrees with specializations in
(56:10):
parapsychology. That's such a great opportunity
and well placed in today for people who are seeking to
understand, integrate, explore, study, right, that the best way
to study yourself. Yeah, is study yourself.
(56:31):
Well, I think so. It would seem to be.
I mean that that kind of makes sense, doesn't it?
Now how do we make that sense? Common.
Well, you know, as I say, everyone is different.
I happen to have an entrepreneurial bent.
My father was a small businessman.
I always sort of imagined I would never work for anyone
(56:52):
else. I would always work for myself.
I think it's a a good attitude for people who want to go into
parapsychology because there arejobs, but they're not many jobs,
but they're enormous opportunities for people who
want to create their own career psychology.
But it requires a type of personwho's willing to do that.
(57:15):
It's not for everybody. Some people are more cut out to
work for a large corporation. Sure.
And, and they don't have to go through the immense amount of
considerations. You know, as an entrepreneur,
you've got to understand your target market, your marketing
plan, your, you know, the four PS, your price, product
(57:35):
promotion and placement, and allof those kinds that are
necessary that if you're workingfor somebody else, those things
never come up so well. I know that's one of your areas
of expertise, as a matter of fact.
I've been really fortunate to have a broad spectrum of
(57:55):
education, understanding and experience across many
industries, as well as a rich metaphysical life.
And what it's come to is that ultimate functionality, because
that's really where the rubber meets the road.
If you're not functional in society, then you need to step
(58:16):
back, begin asking some questions.
OK, what's happening here? Why is why am I not?
And, and seek the answers like rookie, right?
You know, life has the answers for you.
You just have to ask the right questions and be patient and
life will offer the answers. Well, and and it's simply true.
(58:37):
Some people are not functional and and they were year and I
suppose it's to everybody's benefit that some people are not
functional so that we can deal with that.
Sure gives the opportunity for greater service, doesn't it
Mayor? Baba who was a regarded by his
(58:57):
followers as an avatar, it was aPersian Mystic and he found
these people, he called them themad musts.
They were people typically an insane asylums and he said they
are intoxicated with God and he would go and he just sit and
(59:17):
meditate with them and help themto move through that feeling of
being overwhelmed by the divine so that they could begin to
function a little better. And, and there is a, a challenge
in that because you, that space,that sensation, that awareness
(59:41):
is so blissful. Why would you want to leave it,
right? And yet you've got to come back
to a reality that is less than blissful most of the time.
And and yet, there are moments within it that can be had to
make it all worthwhile. That's awesome, Jeff.
(01:00:04):
I, I, I know I've, we've kind ofextended our time.
I really appreciate the conversation that we've had
today and the expertise that you've been able to share, and
hopefully the insight and understanding of wisdom that our
audience will take in and be able to utilize in their own
lives. Thank you Zen, it's been a
(01:00:25):
pleasure to connect with you again.
Very good. And thank you and namaste, Inla
catch. Thanks for sticking with us for
this episode of One World in a New World.
I'm your host, Zen Benefiel, andI'll see you next time.
Namaste and in LA Ketch, and welcome to this episode of One
World in a New World. I'm your host, Zen Benefiel.
And this week I have a very special guest in Doctor Jeffrey
Mishlov. He has won an award for
approving life after death. He's had New Thinking Aloud on
PBS for about 20 years, which iswhere I was first introduced to
(00:22):
him. He has New Thinking Aloud on
YouTube now, of which I was a guest on several years ago, and
he's written The Roots of Consciousness, which is like an
encyclopedia of how consciousness is developed.
The PK Man is another book and then he also has a book about
New Thinking Aloud. So you're going to have a
(00:44):
wonderful time in this journey and I watch it a stick around
will be right. Explore the thoughtless sphere.
Embark on a life changing journey of self discovery.
Embrace harmony with self, with others, with Earth, one world in
a new world. Zen Benefield skillfully ignites
(01:04):
conversations, guiding guests toreveal personal journeys and
perspectives. Listeners are inspired to seek
knowledge and find wisdom in their own lives.
Join this transformative journeyas we navigate the depth of
human experience. Jeff, it is so wonderful to have
(01:24):
you here today. I've been looking forward to
this. Thank you for coming.
You're very welcome. It's a pleasure to be with you.
And with you, as always. So, you know, as our advancement
in consciousness and the abilitythat we have to cognate, to be
aware, to observe, there's an obvious difference between the
(01:49):
inner and outer lives that we experience.
And we're often bereft of talking about those inner lives
with others because generally we're seen as being weird and
saying, you know, crazy, that kind of stuff and and kept at a
distance. Well, that's changing,
especially in this recent shift and how we're we were given the
(02:10):
opportunity to be obsessive on self hygiene and sequestrated to
give us the opportunity to self examine.
And I believe that there's a lotthat's come out of that as far
as the capacity to advance humanity in a much more positive
way. So I know that you have had this
rich history. You've got a PhD in
(02:32):
parapsychology, I believe was the first out of Berkeley back
in 1971, I think it was. So in this exploration and
consciousness, what got you started?
How was that childhood development stage that you had?
That must have had some really interesting, curious questions.
(02:53):
Well, I actually, I had a very normal childhood.
I grew up in the Midwest. I in Fond du Lac, WI.
My father ran a furniture store.I imagined I might run a
furniture store myself or something along those lines.
And I can't really think of verymany extraordinary things that
(03:20):
happened. And I think in my case, probably
the awakening occurred once I got into college, which was in
the 1960s and it was the VietnamWar period and psychedelic drugs
were just becoming available. And that is really what pushed
(03:42):
me to question everything aroundme and, and not just me, but
many, many people of my generation.
So was it a psychedelic experience that kind of pushed
you over the edge to when you experienced that expansive
region that's made available? Through it, well, there were
(04:04):
psychedelic experiences for sure, and they were very
powerful, but you have to take the whole thing is a package
when you. It's hard to imagine, I suppose,
for people alive today who didn't live through the Vietnam
War, what that was like. America had just come off of,
(04:24):
you know, 20 years earlier, 25 years earlier, we had won the
Second World War, the largest war in human history.
And it was like we were the perfect nation.
We were wealthy, we were successful.
We had defeated our enemies. And then all of a sudden, a
(04:44):
generation, my generation comingof age in the 1960s was faced
with, Oh my gosh, it looks as ifour great nation is behaving in
an immoral fashion, you know, murdering over a million brown
skinned Vietnamese people who simply, you know, didn't want to
(05:09):
be a French colony or, or a colony of Western powers.
Let alone give up their oil. So all of a sudden, all of a
sudden it became imperative to question things that we were
raised never to question, but toalways Revere.
(05:33):
So what got you involved in in that inner quest, though,
because it's, you know, you spent your life exploring it and
others and their experiences with what was the key factor
that got you turned inward? Well, I began to take an
interest in, in the topic of mysticism as an undergraduate.
(05:58):
And I truly, I was approaching it, you know, I was being
exposed to mystical, or let me put it this way, altered states
of consciousness through the useof cannabis and, and
psychedelics. And I thought to myself, well,
isn't this interesting? I was a psychology major.
(06:22):
You've got all these people who claim to have mystical
experiences, like they can see ghosts or they're entering into
union with the divine or something like that.
I said this is obviously a, an aberration.
It must be a form of mental illness of some kind.
So what I'm going to do is writemy senior honors thesis on the
(06:46):
psychology of religious mysticism, and I'll be, I'll
just explain, you know what, what's going on with these nutty
people who have these experiences.
And it's like you got a wake up call during that process of
investigation because it appearsthat you know, you can enter
(07:06):
heaven by storm or by a catalystor however you want to call
that. But yet there's pearls from
there that you bring back into this reality that are seem to
be. Universal understandings.
Well, in my case, the Pearl was running into the work of Abraham
(07:31):
Maslow, who was a psychologist, and he had written a book just
published while I was in undergraduate studies.
It was called Toward a Psychology of Beings, and Maslow
was a psychologist. He came up in the 1940s, really.
(07:51):
And he and we're all familiar with Maslow's hierarchy.
That's right. He decided he was going to
investigate the most successful,popular, accomplished people in
our culture, see what he could learn.
And he began interviewing peoplealong the lines of Albert
(08:11):
Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt. And he discovered that almost
everyone he interviewed reportedhaving what he called a peak
experience. And he noted that the peak
experiences, as far as he could tell, didn't really differ in
any way from the classical descriptions of mystical
(08:34):
experiences. But being a psychologist, he
gave it a different name, Peek. And he said dude's experiences
were central to the motivation and character of these
individuals and and they were what they credited to to their
success. So said, even though
(08:57):
traditionally psychologists havefelt that the mystical
experience is in Freudian terms of regression to an infantile
state, he said actually the mostsuccessful people in our culture
build their careers on the basisof these experiences.
And at that point, I realized I had to rethink everything.
(09:20):
Sure. And and it's, you know, it's
funny how the thing that came tomind was one of Jesus saying be
ye as little children, right? So this gives us that
opportunity to be curious, sometimes radically so, and dive
into these things that obviously, you know, we have
(09:41):
different experiences, we call them different things, we use
different terminology. But when we begin to have
discussions about and we're all saying the same thing, just
slightly differently, it seems. Would would you?
Do you find that to be true as well?
Well, that's a good question. The there, there is a whole
(10:04):
intellectual movement called postmodernism which would
disagree with you. They would say we don't know
what people mean when they use their words, so we can't say
that they mean the same thing ornot.
Well that seems like kind of a outsiders observation without
conversation to find out. You know, a lot of times we view
(10:27):
things from the outside but never step into them to actually
find out whether it's true or not.
Do you find that possibly to be the case in this?
Well, sure. I lean towards the idea that
that there is a reality out there, that we all receive it in
(10:48):
in our unique ways and that whenwe talk about it, we're talking
about the same thing even if we use different language.
But you can never be 100% sure. William James wrote a book
called It's about Pluralism, Pluralistic Universe, in which
(11:13):
he he suggests it could be the case that each person is a
universe unto themselves and that everybody's reality is
simply different from everybody else's.
True, we're all unique as snowflakes and, and then said,
well, I heard the other day, there's only like 35 different
types of snowflakes, but we're even much more than that, right.
(11:37):
And and in that diversity, it would seem that there would be a
natural unity in that by design,considering that there is an
intelligence behind our design and there appears to be the more
we peer into that quantum physics now is recognized.
(11:58):
Oh, everything's vibration. It's not physical matter at all.
So how do these vibrations harmonize and is there a
consistent frequency throughout that we all such as to love and
be loved, being a core desire, There's a frequency there,
there's a vibration. Is this something that maybe
(12:20):
would bring those exterior observations and descriptions
into a more cohesive and coherent package?
Well, we'd like to think so. I mean, that's the optimistic
point of view that it at the endof the day, love will win out
(12:41):
and human beings are basically positive, loving, creative
individuals. But The thing is Zen, you're
you're getting into metaphysics and one of the issues with with
metaphysics, it's been a big problem from that was pointed
(13:04):
out by the Vienna Circle. And the logical positive is that
how do you decide a a metaphysical question like is,
is there one reality, one metaphysical principle that
unifies everything like consciousness or God or matter?
Or do we live in a dualistic world where there are two
(13:27):
principles like good and evil, mind and matter?
How do you even begin to settle these things it.
Would seem I'm exploring this. Obviously it would seem that
choice is a difference. We can take it to the binary,
you know, the zero and one, and yet we're dealing with a unified
(13:49):
whole. Like Einstein had said, there's
a unified field that we haven't really developed the awareness
or consciousness or technology that's able to measure or define
it. So how?
Do we know it's there at all? It well, it would seem to me
that we can't think our way through this universe that's
(14:11):
built on vibration, that we haveto learn how to sense it.
And therein we get into what we,what has been called the
metaphysics because of the senses, the clairols if you
will, and then some. And yet there's this
inextricable single point of reference within each of us from
(14:32):
which we experience reality. So if those single points are
able to find agreement or at least some commonality,
inexperience, would that not lead to something a little more
holistic in perspective? Well, if that's what you want,
(14:54):
if you're if, if your aim is to create a a world which is
holistic, then for sure that's what you want to do is
communicate. The thing is, we live in a time
of polarization. Absolutely.
Where there's a segment of the population that doesn't
(15:15):
particularly want a holistic integration, there's a segment
of the population that basicallysays it's either us or them.
These people are not my partners, they are my
adversaries. So if I want to win, they have
to lose. And so that's what I'm going
for. It's a 0 sum game and I want to
(15:37):
be a winner rather than the people who are saying no we all
are going to rise together. A rising tide lifts all boats.
Yes. And it's, it's one thing to say
that, it's another to facilitateand observe it happening
naturally. There's been a huge boon lately
in the whole notion of servant leadership amongst the
(16:00):
organizational development side of businesses and corporations
and and large entities that realize it's not necessarily
about profit over people and planet.
We have to flip it and make it people and planet over profit
because it's the people that actually get the work done and
(16:20):
they have to feel like they belong that and that they're
part of the community. And this especially with the
Gen. Z ers, they're like, you know,
we don't want any part of this separative kind of environment.
Do you find that happening as well?
Well, you know, from my perspective Zen, I would say
that that attitude is 1. I heard voiced quite a bit in
(16:45):
the 90s, in the 80s and cultural.
Creatives back then, right? Sure.
These days it's almost more likethere's what you see on the rise
is this right wing backlash against that kind of thinking.
It's the people who who have sort of the opposing point of
(17:06):
view right now that's even beyond the ascendant.
Do you see a, an opportunity forthat shifting based on what
you've discovered through your own work, the programs, the
people that you've spoken with and, and their deep dives into
(17:27):
how to navigate in this world more effectively and frankly
more harmoniously? Because none of us really like
the chaos. We don't want to fight that,
that, you know, why would we want to kill somebody
arbitrarily, right or, or at all?
The sense of that just doesn't feel congruent with good sense.
(17:50):
Well. You might think so, but on the
other hand, some people seem to like chaos now.
I just completed an interview about Robert Anton Wilson, a
very popular writer I met. Him years ago.
Lovely man, a very funny He was a friend of mine when I lived in
(18:13):
Berkeley. I think there's renewed interest
in his writing and he was a proponent of what he called
Discordianism and which is a youcould even call it a religion,
but the Discordian religion is is 1.
And that says the universe, if you want to look at it
(18:34):
metaphysically from their perspective, is a constant
struggle between the forces of chaos and the forces of order.
And Robert Anton Wilson leaned toward the forces of chaos, He
said they're the ones that are going to prevail.
Chaos always wins in in the end,So you you might as well go with
(18:55):
it. And from a human perspective, I
can see that now Wilbert Smith had a different view based on
his conversations with people from elsewhere that were
recorded in his memoirs, from being the director of project
management, which was Canada's Blue Book basically in the 50s.
He had said that from their perspective, they had warned
(19:18):
humans that if you point out an anomaly in the universe or
something that doesn't fit, thenyou don't understand it yet.
So our perhaps our nature because of where we've come from
and our original, you know, fight, flight, protect, say, you
(19:41):
know, feeling safe and, and the whole, you know, night and day,
dark and light. We have these notions that there
is a consistency throughout thisreality that we're experiencing
that is bipolar, that is it really, or are we just choosing
(20:02):
to see it that way because of our inability to see things as
part of a? Oneness.
Well, you could say it's an inability or you could say
there's no need to decide if we,if we don't have the knowledge
(20:24):
or the means of making a decision, maybe it's better
simply to say very humbly, we don't know.
There is, and that's that third choice, right?
There's yes, I know. No, I don't know.
And like, well, maybe let's findout, right, how do we explore
that? How do you see, how do you self
and and what have you 'cause youseem to want to explore this, to
(20:47):
find the commonality, to find what's there that actually
unifies and doesn't separate in many.
Ways I'm I'm doing the opposite.I'm looking for the anomalies.
I'm looking for the things that that are so bizarre and so
strange that that they push people's buttons.
(21:07):
So you have a big segment of thepopulation who says this is the
work of the devil. And you have another big segment
of the population who's saying this is simply the rising tide
of superstition. It can't be real.
And I I find that those anomalies are among the most
significant things. If you want to understand
(21:30):
reality, you have to pay attention to them.
Well, it. It provides that multiple.
Challenge in your beliefs, yeah.And it does give a much broader
sense of points of view of perspective from which to
consider things because the moreperspective you have, the
(21:51):
greater understanding can be garnered.
It would appear right now in that though it has there been
any coherence, consistency, congruence, golden thread
throughout that may tie it in a nice bow?
(22:11):
Or does it seem to be still all discordant?
Well, there's been very important milestones along the
way. JB Rhine, for example, in
parapsychology at Duke University, established certain
language, established language which has been in use now for
(22:34):
since the 1930s. Extrasensory perception.
Psychokinesis, the idea that thehuman being, unaided by any sort
of outside spiritual assistance,has innate abilities of
consciousness that extend far beyond the limits of the
(22:56):
physical body. Now this takes me back to the
Vedas, which I know you're familiar with and I believe
paraphrase. They kind of offer that.
And for those of you who aren't familiar with the Vedas, they're
Sanskrit poems. There's four of them that were
(23:17):
written 15,000 plus years ago. And the gist of them seem to
offer that we are all divine threads Incarnate, connected to
Source, capable of God consciousness.
Now reflecting on that and fast forwarding to this boon and
(23:37):
awareness and consciousness and seemingly the congruence and old
spiritual teachings and now quantum discoveries, how does
that play out? Or how would you think that
might play out? Well, there's been in the last
(23:58):
several decades a a movement, some people call it quantum
mysticism, with people trying todo exactly that.
Say now that we have the discoveries of quantum physics,
we understand how the world works, and we can apply quantum
physics to explain the mysteriesof consciousness and
(24:20):
parapsychology. I think it's a valiant effort.
I think it's worth doing. Ultimately, I don't think it
will be successful, but we need to do it anyway.
Well, yeah, we never know. And and you know, one step, even
though it may not be successful,it guides us to a next step that
(24:44):
may not be successful and yet still raises the bar and leads
us towards something new but or the ability to explore the
unknown with a little less fear.You know, not long ago I did an
interview with a fellow named James Cook.
There's a new book out about thenature of reality published by
(25:07):
Prometheus Press. It's the publishing company that
does all the skeptics, the Scientific Committee for the
Investigation of the Claims of the Paranormal.
They're not even real skeptics. My friend Stanley Krippner says,
let's call them what they reallyare.
They're scoffers. They just wanna scoff at all of
this so. Well, that's the natural thing
(25:30):
to do without a direct experience of it, right?
Sure, most people will it it it's you've never experienced
something and someone else says,you know, I have it for
breakfast every morning and you must think to yourself, well,
that person is pulling my leg and.
And I've got to stay away from them.
(25:52):
I can't, I can't believe it because I've never had the
experience myself, but the the point that James Cook was making
is, is very simple, he said. You can never know what reality
is. Reality is beyond language.
So any attempt to explain ultimate reality using language
(26:16):
is bound to fail. I would totally agree with that
because by the use of language, we begin to categorize,
categorize label title, which immediately limits the
possibility of what else might be in that experience or
whatever it is we're trying to describe.
(26:38):
And the, it's more of a sense ofawe in those that is relative
to, I believe a, a, a frequency then or a vibration or a sense
of being that can be felt by many simultaneously in, in Group
(26:59):
experiences or an individual in a singular experience.
Now how, and I'm sure you've talked to many who share that
perspective. How would that fit into this
possibility of discovering something more that's valuable
for the human race to begin to come together and work is one
(27:22):
that that because we only have one planet, right?
And we're we're one race. Even though we have this massive
diversity, we're still human beings.
Well for all I know we share theplanet with non human
intelligences that may may be even much more superior to the
(27:45):
human race than than we are to clams.
I I that's a nice couch, Jeff, II know you know, because the,
the folks that you know and the folks that I know that that's
it's not a may it, there's this interaction that's taking place
and it's ongoing. I.
And I would go further. I would say that from my point
(28:07):
of view, the whole universe is alive.
Yes, it's conscious. There's an intelligence, I would
say. Is there a design in that?
Design, yeah. So as as we the open.
Question. Now so and I say that because,
you know, we've got a genetic design, right?
(28:28):
We have certain things, we don'tunderstand the fullness of the
genetic codes yet, but we do know there's certain things that
and behaviors that are triggeredby genes.
There's cultural memes, means, creos, all those kinds of things
that Sheldrake introduced years ago.
And then there's this frequency based soul vibration, if you
will, that's also present the electromagnetic field that's
(28:53):
generated from that. How does that So you've got the,
the biophysical, if you will, and the what could be said as
metaphysical, that yet it is intrinsic to the physical
because it gives us that consciousness.
(29:13):
How does if there were a naturaldesign for this, what might it
lead to kind of like these conversations of inner and outer
realities? Is there 1 experience that could
be had that we're just avoiding because we like to dominate and
control? Well, if you look at, that's a.
(29:35):
Loaded question, I know Jungian.Psychology, I'm I'm a big fan of
Carl Jung and he talked about four basic human functions,
thinking, feeling, sensing and intuiting.
And I think it's pretty clear inour culture that they're not
(29:58):
evenly distributed, that our culture is very heavily weighted
toward thinking and sensation. You go around and, you know,
there's all sorts of ways that we promote sensation.
Fast cars, beautiful women, you know TikTok.
(30:22):
Videos. All all of that would be people
are into you. You know, how can we what
amazing experiences can we have next?
Skydiving or you name it, It's almost.
Like an insatiable curiosity forsensation.
Yeah, For. Sensation and of course the
(30:45):
world of the intellect is very dominant and we devalue and
you've been hinting at this throughout our discussion.
We devalue thinking and we, excuse me, intuition and
feeling. We do talking throughout our
discussion. You can't solve certain problems
(31:05):
intellectually, but you can feel.
You can have a sense of the vibration of the love of the
feeling. You have a sense of your
connectivity to the whole universe and and for sure,
people do have that. It would be a mistake to think
that therefore you should subscribe to any particular
(31:25):
ideology or metaphysical interpretation of your
experience, but that that experience of being connected is
a is a very important human experience.
I think it's related to the Buddhist notion of compassion.
And as a parapsychologist, I think that it's our lack of
(31:53):
compassion that blocks our psychic functioning.
And by that I mean, if you open up to your God-given gift of
clairvoyance, telepathy, you're going to open yourself up to the
(32:16):
pain of the world, to the peoplein Los Angeles who have lost
their homes, to the people in Gaza who who have lost their
city, to all of the misery in the world.
And most of us simply don't wantto do that.
It's instinctively. I mean, I want to.
(32:38):
Keep our blinders on and just live in our walled community.
And as a result, what we end up doing, we end up numbing
ourselves. We, we go through life as if all
the pain and suffering in this world, and there's plenty of it
didn't exist as long as we can create a a little sanctuary for
(33:01):
ourselves. And you can do that.
But the price of having such a nice, comfortable middle class
American life is you're going toshut down your own natural
psychic gifts. If you want to open up the
powers of the mind, the cities, the very first thing is you've
(33:24):
got to be able to allow yourselfto feel compassion for the
suffering of the world. And that means compassion means
feeling with. Feeling even for yourself, too.
I mean, there's all kinds of traumas that we're in denial of
that we shove down into our body, wonder why we become
diseased and then have these aberrant behaviors in life
(33:48):
because we've never dealt with those traumas.
And we're still fighting the fear and and we're seeing that
fear reflected in others. And it's really just our
projections that we're getting back instead so I can.
Hardly fault anybody for not wanting to be overwhelmed by,
you know, the experience of painand trauma are.
(34:09):
Not to be because it did just itbrings that deep sense of
compassion, if you will, of and even not understanding why this
has to happen, right. And you know, you're, you
mentioned thinking being one of the, the young in traits.
(34:31):
And it would, the neuroscientisttoday they're saying, well, we,
I'm not sure how they actually measure this, but they say,
well, we've got 70 thousand thoughts a day that we have.
And from what you're describing,in my experience, it seems like
at least 2/3, maybe even 3/4 of those are self deprecating.
(34:53):
And that by becoming, you know, having these experiences, you
begin to become aware of how you're thinking and then have
the opportunity to change that over time.
It doesn't happen overnight, as you know, we all know.
No, I think you can change a negative thought very quickly.
(35:15):
As a matter of fact, I'm. Glad you say that.
Yeah, I don't. Think it has to take a long time
if you observe a self deprecating thought pass through
your head. Like boy am I stupid that a
thought like that. I developed a habit long ago
(35:38):
because I was a seminar leader for a company called Omega
Seminars that dealt with precisely this problem.
You can say to yourself, cancel that thought.
You don't have to own any self deprecating thought, nor do you
even have to own a thought whereyou devalue any other human
(36:00):
being. Right.
The judgement, criticism that that unnecessary, Yeah.
You can let go of all of all of those thoughts.
It's not as if you cannot criticize.
You can criticize other people without devaluing them.
As a human being, you criticize their behavior.
You could say you can do this better.
(36:21):
It doesn't mean you're a worse person because you made a
mistake or didn't do it the verybest way.
And that's. A great distinction because it's
the behavior that we have issueswith, not the person.
We have no idea what their life has been like in order to get to
the place that they're at and behave like they do.
It's then again, you know, kind of prompts that desire to this,
(36:43):
Covey says. To seek first to understand
before being understood that query of getting to know, you
know, unpacking that using nonviolent communication to draw
out what's been within and hopefully help to dissolve that
constraint in their outer activity as a result.
(37:07):
How do you see this evolving andand do you see some shifts
coming out of COVID as a result of that time for that obsession
on self hygiene and sequestration?
Well, I am an optimist basicallyand I'm a person who I do hold
(37:30):
that belief that you talked about.
I don't think I can prove it, but I hold it, which is the
unity of consciousness and the unity of of the world.
And as a result of having that belief, I also think that the
entire universe is positive. I feel a sense of oneness with
(37:55):
the entire universe and that theentire universe is good.
Even the fact of death is good. Even the fact of illness is is
good. Even the fact of war and
persecution. Ultimately, they're all here for
our benefit. And we should have gratitude for
it first, rather than condemnation, right?
(38:16):
Well, that. May be sometimes hard to get to
when you're in the middle of thepinchers.
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
And yet in that experience of oneness, you know, is it
positive or negative or it's just neutral and, and it's
managed by how we direct our attention, intention and
interactions. Lots of times growth occurs
(38:42):
because we're forced to kicking and screaming.
We don't want to do it, we wouldrather resist it.
But there's no resisting. Change is inevitable, and it's a
lot of. Pain in that now is the pain in
the growth or actually in the resistance to it, because the
growth is a freedom of expression of sensation of this
(39:05):
new dynamic of life that we hadn't experienced and it's and
the resistance is to it seems tobe what causes the pain.
Yeah, I I would agree. It seems as if we always have a
choice. I think of of growing joyfully
without pain, but we don't always take that choice.
(39:29):
Sometimes we're afraid to. And when that happens, we end up
growing anyway. Only it's not as joyful as it
might have been. It's more painful.
There. We don't have any choice.
We're going to have to grow one way or another.
You can only resist it for so long.
Very. True.
(39:51):
Now turn the corner a little bit.
As a parapsychologist and and with your interviews of others,
does there seem to be a consistent constraint that one
has to observe and then overcomein order to garner a fuller
(40:11):
understanding and and is there aconsistent process?
In that I realized that it may be described differently, but
again, there seems to be or seems like there could be a
consistent process in that well.I think some of your audience
members may be interested in knowing that in partnership with
(40:34):
the California Institute for Human Science we, which is a
Graduate School based in California, Northern California
near San Diego, we're setting upparapsychology programs.
You can get a master's degree ora doctoral degree now with a
(40:55):
specialization or a concentration in parapsychology,
but the first thing you have to know about that is, unlike
getting your degree in chemistryor biology or physics, you can't
expect a nice high paying job waiting for you.
Parapsychology is not considereda stick field like like that,
(41:19):
even though parapsychologists are very up to date on
scientific methodology and theory and are often pushing the
limits and and coming up with new advances and statistics and
methodology and theoretical physics and elsewhere.
But in spite of that, if you aregoing to go into parapsychology,
(41:46):
the first thing you need to be alert to is the fact that a very
sizable portion of the public are going to think you're nuts.
And in fair, when I, when I cameup, the standard advice was to
anybody like me foolish enough to want to go into
parapsychology, the advice consistently was don't do it.
(42:13):
Get yourself a degree in a conventional field and even then
that's not enough. Get tenure.
And then once you have tenure, then you can't be fired.
Then. You can do parapsychology
because otherwise you're taking a big career risk.
Oh. Yeah.
And and you know, in our earlierconversation said shared that,
(42:36):
you know, and I had my awakeningat 18.
That one psychiatrist said, you know, you've had an awakening,
keep your mouth shut, nobody's going to understand you.
And then the following year I had an incident and ended up the
hospital talking with another and the total opposite that the
diagnosis, right, the DSM 4 version and the drugging and all
(42:59):
that stuff that came with that. I hope that that's not still
happening today, almost 50 yearslater.
I, I don't think it is. And and yet it edifies the point
you just made about the disparity in how others perceive
one who does have these kinds ofexperiences.
(43:22):
It's a very serious problem. For example, my friend Diane
Hennessy Powell is a psychiatrist who began
researching. They're called autistic savants,
brilliant young children, but who are suffering from autism.
(43:43):
And she determined through a series of tests that they have
remarkable psychic skills. I know.
Is it that wrote a book? About it called the ESP enigma
and this is a point I'm getting to Zen the psychiatric
profession in the state of Oregon where she was said this
(44:03):
lady is obviously crazy and and they took away her psychiatric
license because she wrote a bookabout her research.
That's how serious the opposition is.
They are poor materialist atheist typically and and the
very idea of the existence of paranormal abilities is very
(44:27):
very threatening to them. Well, it's the categories and
the separation rather than the awareness and assimilation of
this new information. And I wonder myself, you know,
understanding that throughout history we've had, I don't want
to say genetic engineering, but we've had natural selection and
(44:51):
adaptation and our genes and we have and others animals have
changed to adapt to their environment.
And I often wonder if this scientifically moving through
new areas of space and the subtle shifts in the vibratory
levels of them, if there's a trickle down or through the
(45:13):
development of humans affected by that.
And instead of seeing this new proclivity towards autism and
and savant autistics as well nonlinear thinkers and and such, is
(45:35):
this more of a natural occurrence that we're attempting
to see from an old paradigm, notunderstanding what what shift is
taking place? You, you got me speechless.
I'm not sure I fully understood the question, actually.
(45:55):
OK. Let let me reframe it.
I, I kind of that was a long 1. So do you feel perhaps that
these shifts in how children areevolving and what we're noticing
in them, instead of labeling it as a disorder, that it's
(46:17):
actually an evolutionary processtaking place to engage these
deeper senses? Possibly.
Yeah, it could. It could be both for all we
know. I wouldn't wanna dismiss the
pain and suffering families thatare dealing with autism.
(46:37):
It is it is very difficult emotionally for parents of
autistic children and it does seem to be on the rise.
And it does raise the the question about, you know what,
what is it about our culture that seems to be triggering
nature? Or nurture are, are the
(46:59):
chemicals we're putting into ourbodies causing it, or is it part
of a natural evolutionary process that engages this
internal side? And, and as you know, you know,
when we, when, when paradigms shift, we go from one side of
the pendulum over to the other. And then we got to find some
place in the middle to find balance and harmony in that.
Well, it's. Vaccines, don't you know?
(47:25):
So how do we, how do you proposeor or what do you feel might be
an Ave. to position our perspective from?
Well, I think you've said it quite well that that we need to
be inquiring. We need to be trying to learn
(47:49):
more from others rather than simply dismissing them because
of our preconceived opinions. There.
There's a word for that. It's called prejudice,
prejudging a situation. It would be very good if people
stop prejudging and made an effort to learn more about the
(48:10):
people who they think are their adversaries.
But you know, it brings up this sense that I had.
And so when you interviewed me years ago, it was a 28 year
dream come true for me. I'd wanted to emulate you when I
started One World in 1990 and hoping someday to be worthy of
(48:31):
an interview with you, never dreaming it would be possible.
And yet it happened. And by doing so, you weren't,
you took the opposite approach. You were, you seemed to
understand, you had great inquiry.
You were framing, you were actively listening and reframing
what I was saying in the ways that you understood it to be and
(48:54):
edifying what I was saying, sometimes questioning for
clarity. But you had this additional
understanding and embracing of the possibility from which you
were able to speak from and inquire more from that
perspective. How does that's a beautiful
(49:17):
place to be? How do we develop that in
ourselves in order to move forward in a better fashion as
we expand our environment? Because the digital world, the
virtual space, is limitless. Now we can talk to people all
over the world in an instant where we never used to be able
to do that when we were growing up.
(49:40):
Well, you. Have to want to know about other
people. If you don't want to then
nothing will motivate you. But if I look in my own case,
back when I was a young person, about 18, I was working at a
resort for the summer in Wisconsin as a bellman, you
(50:04):
know, carrying people's suitcases up to their rooms when
they check things of that sort. And it was a fun job for the
summer for an 18 year old. Sure.
It was a very swinging place. You know, they had the Road
America race cars and parties and so on.
(50:27):
And I noticed that there was oneof the other Bellman was
extremely popular. We didn't know When you're 18 or
so, when you're in your teens, popularity is a big issue and.
You bet and. And so I saw this guy is really
popular. What is his secret?
And so I began studying and watching, just noticing.
(50:50):
And what I noticed is he took aninterest in other people.
He began asking them questions about themselves, and everybody
enjoyed answering those questions.
And so they're attracted to him.So I learned if you want to be
popular with people, show that you're interested in them.
(51:14):
That kind of makes sense, right?I wanted I wanted to be more
popular. So I learned how to listen as as
a result of that. And it's paid many, many
dividends. Oh.
Absolutely great listeners go far and especially if they can
reflect well now. And this brings up a good point
(51:37):
that curiosity, that willingnessto observe, to incorporate, to
aspire. How do you or what might you
suggest for those who may hear this and think we're you know,
it's all bullshit, but still want to find out or or to test
(51:59):
things or to inquire further? What what kinds of things do you
find are best for that initial inquiry into this other world
that they may have an inkling towards or maybe even experience
of that don't know how to inviteit into this their framework I.
(52:23):
Think everybody is unique, Everybody is going to find their
own route and and the way I couch it is that the universe
wants each and every one of us to become the best version of
ourselves. That's going to be different for
each person. It means being the best father,
(52:46):
the best parent, the best child,the best sibling, the the best
friend to your friends. It means pursuing the career
that best expresses something inside of you.
You could call it your purpose. Your intellity is a Greek word
(53:07):
that allows you to express yourself most fully.
And if you set as your goal, you're going to become the best
person that you can be, the bestZen Benefiel that you can be.
The universe is going to help you because the universe wants
that for you. And doors will open.
(53:28):
Now, they may be difficult doors.
It doesn't mean life is going tobe easy because the universe
doesn't necessarily want you to have an easy life.
If you wanted an easy life, maybe a different planet would
have been would have been good. This is a planet where people,
often, not always there are people who have easy lives here,
(53:52):
but often people come to this planet in order to take on
something difficult, something hard to do and to.
Achieve. And to achieve so you can move
on. So what would you suggest for
those that are? Is there a basic question that
(54:19):
one might engage to begin with? Where you could say how can I be
the best version of myself? What does it mean even to be the
best version of of yourself? Well.
I'm laughing at that because it's that's the phrase that Mark
(54:40):
Victor uses. He's the founder of Live and Let
Live Global Peace Movement, of which I'm operations director
of. And and you know, we have two
principles with that, a moral and illegal.
The moral is be the best person,be an excellent human.
And the legal side of it is to calibrate the law to remove
aggression, which is the challenge that we have, but that
(55:05):
that be the best human that thatis such great advice.
And how do we do that? That's, you know, as diverse as
there are as many people. Well, there's a vast resource
available to everybody. We have so many tools,
meditation, dreaming, journaling.
(55:27):
If you if you psychotherapy there.
The resources that are availableto somebody who wants to become
the best version of themselves is enormous.
And if they're curious of the paras psychological side of
life, you have a treasure trove in the podcast and and
(55:48):
television shows you've done over the years.
We've just. Uploaded our two thousandth
video on the Thinking Aloud channel.
And as I mentioned earlier, we're working with the
California Institute for Human Science to begin to offer
Master's degrees and doctoral degrees with specializations in
(56:10):
parapsychology. That's such a great opportunity
and well placed in today for people who are seeking to
understand, integrate, explore, study, right, that the best way
to study yourself. Yeah, is study yourself.
(56:31):
Well, I think so. It would seem to be.
I mean that that kind of makes sense, doesn't it?
Now how do we make that sense? Common.
Well, you know, as I say, everyone is different.
I happen to have an entrepreneurial bent.
My father was a small businessman.
I always sort of imagined I would never work for anyone
(56:52):
else. I would always work for myself.
I think it's a a good attitude for people who want to go into
parapsychology because there arejobs, but they're not many jobs,
but they're enormous opportunities for people who
want to create their own career psychology.
But it requires a type of personwho's willing to do that.
(57:15):
It's not for everybody. Some people are more cut out to
work for a large corporation. Sure.
And, and they don't have to go through the immense amount of
considerations. You know, as an entrepreneur,
you've got to understand your target market, your marketing
plan, your, you know, the four PS, your price, product
(57:35):
promotion and placement, and allof those kinds that are
necessary that if you're workingfor somebody else, those things
never come up so well. I know that's one of your areas
of expertise, as a matter of fact.
I've been really fortunate to have a broad spectrum of
(57:55):
education, understanding and experience across many
industries, as well as a rich metaphysical life.
And what it's come to is that ultimate functionality, because
that's really where the rubber meets the road.
If you're not functional in society, then you need to step
(58:16):
back, begin asking some questions.
OK, what's happening here? Why is why am I not?
And, and seek the answers like rookie, right?
You know, life has the answers for you.
You just have to ask the right questions and be patient and
life will offer the answers. Well, and and it's simply true.
(58:37):
Some people are not functional and and they were year and I
suppose it's to everybody's benefit that some people are not
functional so that we can deal with that.
Sure gives the opportunity for greater service, doesn't it
Mayor? Baba who was a regarded by his
(58:57):
followers as an avatar, it was aPersian Mystic and he found
these people, he called them themad musts.
They were people typically an insane asylums and he said they
are intoxicated with God and he would go and he just sit and
(59:17):
meditate with them and help themto move through that feeling of
being overwhelmed by the divine so that they could begin to
function a little better. And, and there is a, a challenge
in that because you, that space,that sensation, that awareness
(59:41):
is so blissful. Why would you want to leave it,
right? And yet you've got to come back
to a reality that is less than blissful most of the time.
And and yet, there are moments within it that can be had to
make it all worthwhile. That's awesome, Jeff.
(01:00:04):
I, I, I know I've, we've kind ofextended our time.
I really appreciate the conversation that we've had
today and the expertise that you've been able to share, and
hopefully the insight and understanding of wisdom that our
audience will take in and be able to utilize in their own
lives. Thank you Zen, it's been a
(01:00:25):
pleasure to connect with you again.
Very good. And thank you and namaste, Inla
catch. Thanks for sticking with us for
this episode of One World in a New World.
I'm your host, Zen Benefiel, andI'll see you next time.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.