The Science Of Embodied Practice

Introduction to Stephen Altair 0:00

My guest today is somebody I'm really looking forward to chatting with. His name is Stephen Altair, and you can see more about his work at the website. Raising our vibration net again. Raising our vibration. Dot net, not dot commodores. Dot net. Raising our vibration. Dot net. He is an author. His a mystic. He is a meditation teacher. And he launched Australia's first health lifestyle interactive TV channel with open TV and has a lot of other things in the exercise, meditation and media space. He's also been interested in science for a long time, so he has looked at the effect of subtle energy on anxiety and stress.

It's also used instruments like EEG rvhs to measure what happens to our bodies when our awareness changes. And that's what we're realizing. That's a lot that he's been giving transformational workshops and healing meditation, lucid dreaming, and practical mystical approaches to life for over 30 years. It is such a joy and delight to welcome you here today. Stephen. Thank you so much goes in such an absolute delight to. I'm a great fan of your work and I'm incredibly blessed to be here. So thank you and thank you to everybody who's listening.

This is really a dialog between us and you. So yeah, I'm really grateful for this collective consciousness that we bring here. Very exciting. And also feel this happening as you listen and share with Stephen and I too, your body, your mind, your energy level, what's happening to your vibration when you're just sitting with people with a certain vibrational level? It's hard not to get caught up in the energy and that shift with him. So I suspect you'll find if you score yourself now and in an. Hour, it will be it will be out of this world.

It'll be a very it'll be a very boundless experience. But. Okay, so I know you you actually were immersed in spirituality at a very early age. And I think that's that's real privilege. when, when we do have that, when we, when we sense a genuine spirituality with people around us. Who was it in your life when you were a child who most gave you that felt sense of what this was like? Yeah, that beautiful question. So I was brought up by, God, mother or Carmelite, Mother Superior by the name of Mother Kathleen Adamson.

And she taught me about Carmelite centering prayer from when I was very, very well when I was a baby. And that practice, especially the practice of the great unknowing, in other words, that we don't know who God is. And where we rest still let go of our identity, let go of our concepts, let go of any of these constructs that we think around it. That was very influential for me as a baby, and she taught me how to visualize angels around me from that very early age.

Early Spiritual Formation and Childhood Experiences 3:08

So I've been able to see angels since I was a very young child, and I presume that everybody could see them. But I realized that we all see here feel sense these guardians or protection in, in, in very different ways. So that was a really very direct connection to those very early life, forming experiences. And as a result. So my dad was a scientist. He ran a hospital, he managed a hospital unit, and my mum was the matron of, another hospital, so that but but my mum was very into the science, into the mystics.

And so she was a very spiritual, scientist, if I could call it that. And dad was a real science scientist, so I was brought up on the hospital wards I often used to describe my journeys as a, as a youngster is, oh, what were you doing these holidays? I was in hospital. I was, I was helping the doctors on the wards. So it was really. It was really funny kind of, way that I saw my holidays. And at the age of two, Dawson, I had a recurring dream every single night for an entire year that I was a Tibetan monk.

And that I died in this dream. And I died the same way. Over and over again, I woke screaming. I had tremendous amount of anxiety around that dream, and because I couldn't make sense as young, I tried to keep verbalizing this. My parents thought I was epileptic, and that was actually my first introduction to neuroscience, because I was taken in and out of many hospitals and many test labs testing everything eyesight, vision, brain and so on. But they found nothing untoward, nothing that was, obviously at that point, I was having a past life experience, as I found out later when I studied with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, that I'd served him as a Tibetan monks and and died in 1959.

So I actually had a direct confirmation in many ways from from His Holiness. In fact, the Dalai Lama told me directly myself, I was very fortunate as a, young man. I was part of a group that sponsored him on his first trip to New Zealand, and he told me, I asked him what what he thought I should do in those very sort of early, early, very green days of, of experience. And he said, very simply, study in body, become and teach. And I just thought it was I've kept those those words right close to my heart ever since, you know, a young 20 year old.

So that that dream, that very early dream and that experience with the early neuroscience of being in and out of hospitals and test labs was actually, it propelled me on this deeply curious journey into, well, what do we experience? How do we experience these states and and what are the different traditions? I was brought up in that very Carmelite mystical tradition. So the traditions of Saint Francis of Assisi and said, Teresa of Avila said, trace of me. So in Saint John of the cross I was really in I, I kept going to my local parish priest when I was just to attend a little kid and saying, why aren't we studying the mystical experiences of this site?

All that's far beyond our human experience. But as I was to find out and I. And so I journeyed all all over the world, you know, and studied with different, different masters in different monasteries and different traditions, to really ask that question of what what is this inner knowing that you have and all these different traditions and how does it show up for you? And of course, at those, those stages, I wasn't measuring it. But later, thanks to a neuroscience groups and science labs in Japan, I was able to measure those effects and what what did actually happen in my brain.

So it was a really wonderful meeting, an intersection of this spirituality and science. So it was that in a sense that very that two year old experience with that dreaming and you've mentioned Journal. So all of those everybody who's listening, you know, those journals that Dawson has mentioned, they are absolutely priceless. So I kept journals like those the from that very young age because I had so many dreams. I was an avid, lucid dream of from a very young child. And I, I documented more than 30,000 dreams over a period of around about 10 to 15 years.

And it was very, very it was a very rich and deep journaling experience in it. That whole experience with dreaming and lucid dreaming was in fact, the the propulsion into this deep curiosity about meditation and blissful bliss states and studying with the masters. Wow. And so with that kind of initial formative experience with mysticism, then you naturally went into it, and obviously you had an affinity for it as well, because there are some people who just it just doesn't, like, resonate with. It's interesting, you know, some people and they're, they're, they're surrounded by people who are maybe their husbands and their wives or their children are and and they're not. It's very interesting.

I mentioned raising our vibration. And, there's some people who just aren't vibrating at that level. And, I, I've also learned to see those that are in my life and, and, and, and really interact with them. And we, we reinforce each other that way. And if there are people who aren't, I, I just don't have any kind of, I don't I don't regret it. But I also recognize that those just aren't, aren't my people, at least for now. So, having that that rich initial experience and then going, seeking out those teachers really reinforced all of that for you and gave you this sort of movement into it.

So let me let me ask you this, and this is perhaps an unusual question, but what were the difficulties and challenges you faced with that kind of orientation? the so one is obviously that you feel quite alone because you start testing out experience and you say, so do you see angels?

Loneliness, Teachers, and the Search for Meaning 9:13

Do you see lights when you when you sit down to pray, do you feel like you're drawn into ecstasy? Does it does your brain light up? Do you see visions all the time? I saw, you know, I, I lie down to go to sleep. And I have 300 visions, you know, pulsing through my consciousness. And I'd, you know, it was like being actually right in the middle of the movie. So finding people to relate to. I remember, again, you know, in my early teens, going next door to my neighbor in tears and saying, I need to find magicians, I need to find masters.

And she she said, I've been waiting for you to come across. And she handed me two books, The Kybalion, which is a beautiful alchemical text, an autobiography of Yogi by Paramount. Yogananda and I went back and as if somebody had just given me gold and really sat down and studied and decided, oh, I'm going to learn both alchemy and yoga. They seem to be quite similar. I'll. And so she became my, you know, confidant, mentor and friend, guided me into lots of groups and and also into lots of exchanges with other mystics that I could relate to.

So I think that sense of loneliness, you know, if you're listening to me and you, you can identify with it, that you feel like, oh, I don't quite relate to members of my family because they don't share that common thread of that mystical understanding, or they don't share that same curiosity. So if you're listening to it, look, please reach out. I'm I talk to so many people every day who that's the first thing they say. They say, you're not going to think I'm crazy if you tell me this. You know, the the line, the first line of the, the, the quest Jewel of Illumination by Shankara.

The first few sentences are this is a, 2000 year old Hindu scripture. Robin Hartley, great mystic, said that this was like the the way, to to to become illumined. And, Shankar's says, Shankar says if you're in a body and you're reasonably healthy and you are doing this work, you're a fool. I. Said that, you know, so, I mean, we we, we have the privilege of of consciousness and awareness and bodies and and he says, you just got to go do it. It's like, so blunt and direct about doing it. And then he realized that most of the world is doing it.

They're talking about the football scores and they're talking about the latest, you know, what what the city council is going to do with, with, with with a pavement. I mean. toe to toe total. But I absolutely, you know, it is, I think some of the basic questions that I asked were exactly around that. Dawson is like, what is the evidential? What would a spiritual master say? And we just need to get answers to that. I had to go and visit the Masters in the mountains, so I did that in the Himalayas, but equally the masters in the labs.

I wanted to find out both both angles on it. And I think that what you're speaking to points to, you know, awareness itself, like where your attention is, there you are. And I think you've mentioned that story before about Swami Dean. And and I studied with Swami Mukund on this groups in ashrams and Guru Meyer over a long period of time. And the he speaks about that red dot, you know, the red dot on the sheet, the white sheet and that if you're focused on the red dot, if you obsess on just one particular thing, that that's where all your direction is turned to.

That's where all your awareness is directed. And if you want to really touch the infinite and you want to go beyond and you want to go beyond concept, then that's where you need to direct your attention. So I think there's some really that that basic richness in that example you've given is so true that if we focus on the pavement or if we focus on, oh, just angst about everything that's going on in the world, then that's where our attention is directed, and that's where we find our winner sits.

And that's not going to touch the boundless, blissful states that everybody had knows of, but probably is not quite so inclined to turn to because they think, oh, it's beyond my reach. And one of the things I think you and I have done over so many years, and you for many more years than me, have turned people towards knowing that they can do this and that. There are very simple ways of accessing this, and you don't have to go and sit for ten years in a restaurant on the top of the mountain to actually access these blissful states, that you can do this really directly with God and with.

Yeah, directly. And then the challenge to that is to integrate them because, the first scholar to do a large scale study, this was, was was a Catholic priest, Paul. And really, he was also a novelist and a researcher is a really, really interesting guy. And in the 1970s, he did, study, people in mystical experiences. And he found out that the vast majority of people are having what the called anomalous experiences. They're not anomalous at all. They're actually by far one of the most common experiences there are.

So that was one finding of, and really study was that virtually everyone is having them. And another striking finding of the study was that they're not telling anybody about them. So why isn't telling husbands? Husbands are telling wives? Children aren't having parents. Nobody's telling their their parish priest. and so what what what we find here is that people are having these experiences and there's no place to put them. I think when I first had a mystical experience at the age of about 13, I was I was just laying in my bedroom and despair one day just I was very suicidal and miserable and just incredibly depressed.

And just one day I was laying there in my bedroom and I just suddenly had this experience of looking out at the cosmos, and it was this huge field of light, and they're all used to like this, this intimate feel. Will these little lights there. And I just understood intuitively that the fabric of the cosmos was love. And that experience was was with me. But could I talk to anybody about that? And I mean any of my friends at school or my parents or anybody in the church? I mean, they would have pretty much.

In fact, there's there's a documentary about people of spontaneous experiences, spontaneous awakenings, and the majority of them actually wound up getting diagnosed and medicated. A lot of them wound up being locked in padded cells or on three medications, and there's just so little ability to, to, share this one society and then integrate it. So that's, that's the other big challenge. You obviously been able to integrate this and bring it in. And we want to share it with people. The potential with them.

But again, the integration part is often really a challenge. I, I totally agree. And you've mentioned and Andrew the priest and one of my favorite researchers, Andrew Newberg. And he also, you know, through his studies, he identified a number of characteristics of the, you know, the mystical experience, the he he spoke about, the sense of intensity, spoke about the sense of clarity, spoke about unity, surrender and transformational effects. And I've often gone back to those five characteristics as being very important to help us integrate.

So if you if you're listening to us and you can identify with any of that, if you've had just like yourself, you know, very, very intense experience or you've had a sense of really deep clarity around something, you know, this this is actually pointing straight to that mystical thing. And I think when you can break it down for people into, hey, you're not crazy. This is actually something that is a really deep and transformational

Mystical Experience and the Challenge of Integration 16:58

opportunity to access mystical states, and you're starting to awaken to them. And that was where, professor, you know, Gina, you at the consciousness group that that was what he was speaking to us about, the opportunities for us when we have those awakening moments, that we aren't crazy, that there's a place to go. There's people like you, Dawson, that people can reach out to and feel like, oh, I'm not crazy. There's a way of stabilizing this because obviously, stabilizing and integrating, just as you've mentioned, is a really huge part of this.

Steven, we talked about spirituality, the spiritual experience, integrating it, whether you're raised that way or you come to it and then need to find a way to bring into our everyday life. one of the things that really is so different about today's era than, say, the era of my my grandparents or going back to say the 1900s is is the role science is playing in this. Because now with, with Descartes and and the and the, the scientific revolution, I think therefore I am. And then, of course, the great split when Charles Darwin published, The Origin of Species and then the Church of England was vociferous, still opposed to him.

There's been this split of science and, and and spirituality, certainly science and religion and what's been remarkable in the last five decades is now that we're turning instruments like EEGs and heart rate variability monitors and MRI's into studying spirituality. We're discovering it's having massive effects on our brain, our body and our function. So I'm just thrilled at this time when the two are really coming together, I predict will come together much more closely in in the next decade. So.

So how did you get intrigued by that and what have you done in that space? No, thank thank you Dawson. Thank you. The so one of I think, spirituality and science are growing together just like me. So one of the things that really interested me, my dad was a physicist, so was my, sister. So we naturally had physics in the house. And I was really curious about the fact that progress in theoretical physics, especially during the last decade, has been leading to this more progressively unified understanding of the laws of nature and consciousness.

So there is you know, unified field theories, identifying a single universal unified field at the basis of all form and phenomena in the universe. I think that's been a really interesting evolution of science, sort of solid recently, because at the same time, the other area of science that I'm particularly interested in is this cutting edge research in the field of neuroscience. But, you know, partly my curiosity from the way that my brain unfolded as a as a young child, really deeply interested in what had they put on my head in those hospitals when I was just three, you know, two and three years old?

And the the field of neuroscience is also revealing the the existence of this unified field of consciousness. You know, we have these distinct states of waking, dreaming, deep sleep. And there's there's that fourth major state of human consciousness. And in they're in a meditative state, for example, through samadhi, which is really a deep abyssal state. There is a the observer and the observed in the process of observation, you know, the even those even paralleled by the double slit experiment in physics are actually united in an indivisible wholeness and pure consciousness, which can't be measured and it can't be named so that these parallel discoveries of the unified field of physics and the unified field of consciousness really have raised my excitement level of of the fact that there is this is even if you can pick certain holes in each part of it, there is a unifying.

There is actually people are asking fundamental questions, questions regarding the relationships of the two and how they might come together. So the both the theoretical and the experimental evidence has been really compelling in these fields that there is a potential non-dual or indivisible state, that human awareness can directly experience, which is at the foundation of the universe. So it's that bringing together that is has me tremendously excited that I wake up every morning thinking about how we can help the humanity evolve as a whole into connecting to this unified field that's at the foundation of the universe.

And there have been a lot of different, you know, experiments done. I think it was John Hagelin that did a national demonstration project where they took 4000 advanced meditators and over the period of the time that they they research that there was a market reduced reduction in violent crime in Washington, DC. And I always found that those mechanisms that bring about that. So this proposed link between human neurophysiology and the unified field of physics speaks great to my heart. And and speaks straight to, you know, my relationship with both medicine and science and spirituality through my dead mum.

So that has has particularly given given rise to all those questions that we ask about. So what is the evidence show? What does the science show us about meditation itself and when I've applied those findings and looked at the way that meditation practice, for example, has transformed my life and the lives of other people around me, it's been truly transforming, truly exciting. And that's really my basic motivation, is to share that joy with people. So I recognize, you know, that we can rewire our brains through meditation and that through Western society, just like you were mentioning.

You know, with the news, we tend to get into these habits, which are very conceptual, where we get hardwired in our brains, our habits of views and perspectives and ways of looking at the world. And so it's a groove you've created a groove.

Science, Consciousness, and Meditation Research 23:08

And when you realize that you can change it and rewire it, then this is such an for people. What I can change by fact that neuroplasticity is really such a fundamental, it should be taught, is what the famous words and elementary school, you know, you can. love it. Yeah. So I'm very present, you know, to the wonders of this, that wherever your attention is, then you're either going to be focused on a very dull and finite view of the world, or you're going to be prepared, like the great cloud of unknowing in the Carmelite tradition, which I think is why it kind of enchanted me so much.

You can also discover and explore this non-dual or or what might be known as beyond concept. And when people say, well, hang on, we've just got these five senses. Everybody is. But even that I often speak to people that this in 1978, there was a scientist and philosopher, Guy Mirchi, who identified 48 senses. You know, as an example, there are many of us who think of the, you know, from the X-Men. We've seen the movies and we've heard about Magneto and what's known as an electromagnetic sense, but in fact, it is actually a real sense.

It's known as Magneto. Reception. And, Professor Joseph Kissling of the California Institute of Technology, together with colleagues in the US and Japan in 2019, did research where they actually discovered the human system can tell the North from south and that there are crystals, iron based crystals that in in the special cells in the body that actually are thought to rotate rather like the needle of the compass. So they open and close pores in the cells, thereby affecting signals being sent to the brain.

So I was so curious about this research because I thought, well, hang on a minute. If we've got all these extra senses, what are we not exploring? What what have we defined ourselves as and what happens if we go beyond concept? What? What if we point to the power of interception, which is where the raising of vibration goes into the inner sensing combined with mindfulness, it brings enormous power to the human potential. So that's that's one of the areas of research I've been incredibly interested in.

You know, the fact that when we look outside our window, we look at a house and we think, oh, well, that house is real, isn't it? But in fact, it is. And just simply an interpretation of our brain. Like right now there are galaxies out there that whose light is on the still on the way to our eyes, but hasn't had the opportunity to reach us yet. So we are only perceiving a fraction of what's present. And I often give the example, like the, when you consider we feel stable. And yet, as schoolkids, we know that the Earth is moving about the sun in a very nearly circular orbit, and it covers the root at a speed of around 30km a second or 67,000 miles an hour.

And then the Milky Way itself is moving at an astounding one point 3,000,000mph. So it really shows us that we are just simply perceiving what our senses are telling us. And in fact, we're moving it rapidly through the universe, which I I've, I live with that concept every moment. I feel the movement of the universe. And I think when we're not even aware of it, because like you said, we're mostly focused on the news and worried about what the economy's going to do. Stephen, I love to have you do a practical exercise with us because of course, you're so focused on bringing these states in people's awareness sleep.

So let's go ahead and just take a few moments and just go there with you in the next while. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you truly. So as you're listening to us, just simply rest back and close your eyes because we're going to go to one of the most essential key points of any practice, and that is that every experience that you have can be viewed as your own true, pure, boundless and clear nature. So we're going to do two begin with is to let go and rest in that awareness and allow every experience to unfold within this open space, this open, boundless space.

So go ahead and get comfortable first, find an upright posture that allows you to be relaxed in order. Check in with your body. Make friends with this beautiful body that your consciousness is resting in, and do whatever you need to do to truly let go, just to surrender. If it helps, you can bring to mind an experience that helps you to let go. Sometimes this is like being out in nature, where you might imagine yourself lying out in the grass on a beautiful day. You could. This could be in the company of somebody you love.

Could be with a grandma or a pet, or it could be a feeling or an experience you had as a child, which was really deeply nurturing. Just fell into that. Like sliding into a warm bath. Just simply be with whatever helps you to relax for a few moments and notice how this feels in your body. And now open your heart and consider this love that you have. For a grandmother appeared a loved one or relative or friend. And consider that we're going to meditate on that feeling, not just for ourselves, but for all beings.

So really feel this love and kindness. To this special person or this special pain, or even just for the natural wonders of ours, you know, a deep sense of gratitude. Feel a deep sense of kindness. It's flowing from your heart. And then bring to mind the blessings of this, this love, this simple love and kindness that you're feeling. It could be in the form of a teacher you have. You might be connected to deities or angels, or it could be just as simple as that grandma that you can feel. I want you to feel that love for that being or that person or that that.

And I want you to feel it in front of you. And I want you to feel it to you right? And I want you to feel it. Love and care. Protecting you, supporting you, behind you. And feel it to you. Lift. And insulate the line. So see. Anchored in love and kindness. And it's flowing up through your thighs. And send your belly to your heart. And then feel it opening in. Both of you. And feel it opening into your crown. Toronto not flowing down through your belly. Right down into the root center. And then feel as if all this love that's surrounding you is dissolving into light.

And then imagine all of that light and wisdom merging into you. And then just let go and rest for a moment. And then begin to deeply embody this kindness I want you to imagine above you that that love, that love for that grandma or that angelic being or that deity, or appeared. Right above him and begins to flow down through your crown. And if you take both your hands and gently begin to tap this love and kindness into your crown, so you just gently reaching up with your fingertips and tapping and tapping this love

Guided Loving-Kindness Meditation 31:28

and kindness so that you're gently tapping the love lines and beauty of wonder and openness into your crown. You're so good. It's like a bath. It's like a box of presents or nectar is flowing into you through this opening, through this sense in your crown. And then gently move your fingers down to your third eye, the space between your eyebrows, and just gently tap into that same love and kindness. It's the same one thing, the same love, kindness. That feeling you have for that paired of grandma or you're embodying it.

You can feel it in that third eye area, and then gently move your hands around to the base of your skull. So behind you, and just gently feel into that beautiful opening in the throat center as you tap gently behind you. It's like you're filling the base of your skull with this love and kindness and opening, and then move your hands gently down your body and tap your heart round about the chest area, just gently tapping this loving kindness, asking wisdom. You can feel it and for of your body. And then just relax your hands and just feel how your body feels.

Feel yourself opening. Just drop all the effort for a moment. Drop any judgment about what's happening. Just give yourself permission to simply be this embodied presence of love. You don't even need to meditate. You're just resting naturally as this open, loving awareness unfolds. And fulfillment for these last few minutes. For a new awareness to your breathing and breathe as this love. Breathe as this gentle, embodied kindness and love. It's so simple. Notice the quality of your breathing as you inhale.

Experience the full feeling of your breathing as this loving kindness, the beauty of the gift of your breath that we're breathing in the plants and the trees. Gifts to us. And as we breathe out, we're compassionately giving the gift back with great gratitude. That breathing is intimately connected to these beings. Experience the whole process of the breath, aware of the in-breath from the very moment it begins arises out of stillness. You feel the sensations of the in-breath evolve, and every moment, and then you have such degree of clarity.

You can even see this space. A brief pause between the in-breath and the next outbreath. You fill a gap space between each cycle of in-breath and outward. Your experience of the breath is tranquil and beautiful. It's like the most beautiful garden. Springtime. You wonder if you ever want to feel or look at anything else again. The gap between the in-breath and the algorithm. So like space, so completely transparent that there's no outside or inside and no in between. So just rest, stillness and graspable open, spacious, aware.

Profumo. That's such a beautiful place to rest here. And I can feel each of those shifts as you walked us through the exercise to even that. Just a beautiful slowing down of attention to being here, being now. And it's available to us right here in any moment of our busy lives. So thank you so much for reminding us of how close all those things are. And we can make those shifts just by consciousness. Stephen, as we come near the end of our conversation today, I'd love to get a sense from you, a description of what it's like to be in these states.

Because often when we're in these states, in everyday life, we're just functioning. If you raised your vibration, to a certain level, then again, it's a little hard to connect with with people around you. I know when I go on a retreat, for example, I go to retreats in my, my van to the coast in California, and, I just spend like a few days there. I don't want to see anybody or talk to anybody. I just want to be in that that space, and I. I literally bring canned cold coffee. I don't even want to have to go to the coffee shop and talk to a barista.

So, you know, you just want so, so interfacing with other people is, is it's really, is a real process when you're in those states and they're so different from ordinary every day reality. So. So what are they what do they feel like to you? You've described some of the experiences you had when you are in that space of sleeping and dreaming? what what what what is it you mentioned earlier? The the thank you. I didn't write it down, but something like the infinite, feeling as though you're in the infinite.

What is it? What does that experience feel like to you? So the experience is saturated with bliss and love. It feels like I'm in love with the world constantly, so it actually has been very useful in practical terms. In terms that interface with everybody else is that I see everybody as the Buddha or Christ or Magdalene. I see everybody as Tara in a in a very simple sense. And when I go to the supermarket, it's a very simple way. I greet everybody as being an enlightened being. So that simple practice, the simple practice of seeing everybody as the Buddha and feeling the ground I'm walking on, is like a mandala.

Now, for me, it actually looks like that when you ask how my experiences, my vision. Actually, over the years it's slowly changed to a rainbow tinge, which is why I have this rainbow at my back. The it it actually looks like that there's a different sense of color to to everything. The colors are very vibrant and very, very bright and they stay like that constantly and smells are very strong and hearing is very heightened. Like I feel like I can hear in to multiple sources of sound all at the same time,

What Mystical States Feel Like 38:38

and there's a constant hum or a vibration like, that hums in my being. I spent some time with a swami in, the Himalayas, and his was this simple sound vibration using the vibration of or constantly. And I had direct experiences of cosmic consciousness through that simple vibrating his own constantly 24 hours a day for, you know, weeks on end and and just simply practicing that one thing. And this is one of the things I'd love to share with people, if you have something that really touches your heart, make that you one thing bring.

Have conscious chickens throughout your day where you come back again and again to that very special moment that that lights you up. Because that's my brain feels like that. I think you mentioned and I alluded to it a little, that I've been tested in a variety of labs, both in the US and Japan, and they show very, very high gamma states compared to they compared my brain with three groups of meditators throughout Japan. There's no my gamma range is vast and the gamma range is small. So the a long term meditators have been meditating around 40 years.

So the the obviously it does make that enlightenment network that you often refer to is switched on and it's constantly on and it keeps feeling like that. And so the world looks very bright. When I close my eyes it looks like I'm in a bright field. So when I when I meditate, it's even brighter. Deities appear, angels appear. Buddhism I've been very fortunate that they've been blessed by teachers like the Dalai Lama and Tenzin. When you were shy and lingering back then, Paramahansa Yogananda, to have had that direct input and that direct guidance, and I just simply followed their instructions for over 40 years and keep practicing our as an hours a day.

And the it got down to the very simple things in the and that's, that's really one of my point points here is that make conscious chickens your daily go to find those moments. We just as you teach to us. And there are these bliss states that we can access very rapidly. And sometimes I mentioned a story at the beginning about my little girl. she's eight eight. She just recently had Covid along with the rest of the family. For me, it was just simply I charmed through it and I came out of it and had quite a rapid recovery.

My daughter struggled with breathing, so I taught her, as I teach many people, the same beautiful breath that you often share breathing in for kind of full and breathing out for kind of six, so that the vagus nerve and the parasympathetic nervous system stimulate it. And that was a real for her. She said that when I do this, I come down and I can brave. And she spoke recently at a peace conference. Dawson and I asked her to write a bio and she said, I just want them to describe me as love. And what's.

That like? Love, awareness, meditation and wisdom. I just thought, that's my girl. so it's so it feels like that. And I think, it feels very bright and very lit constantly. I feel like, people come to me from all over the planet because they want to have a plant medicine experience outside of taking plant medicine, and because my brain looks like it's on 24 seven DMT, which is what the neuroscientist described my brain is, they said, oh, you have this very high theta at 7.8Hz. You have a constant Schumann resonance of seven and forth, you know, seven theta, 14 alpha.

And you have this incredibly high gamma that goes way out beyond 200 to it. So whatever you are doing, they said it's like that all the time. And the Japanese led that. So there was a study that was published in in Japan at a science and technical, technology conference, and that got me a lot of interest because people said, oh, you can actually really do these things. You're not just describing things that are in research. You've actually been researched and published. So it's really helpful the science and the spirituality in this section, when they work together like that, is such a beautiful gift.

So I'm so grateful you for describing it because it's, you know, people think, I can't get there. I don't know how to get there. And then you showed us the exercise. You can get there in five minutes. And your your advice to actually is very much similar advice that Paul Brunton gay people 100 years ago, after he sat with Ramana maharshi is just remember that. Bring it to memory over and over and over again. He called it remembering the glimpse of heaven you've had. So you bring it to you, bring the memory just thousands of times, and then after a while, you start to immerse yourself that that reality.

And then after a while that starts, that that reality starts to become the primary reality that you are aware of and everything else starts to fade. So it's it's wonderful to know that you can be there, go there, spend time there, and then make that after a while, your new normal Steve lives so grateful for you for the wonderful inspiration you brought today, the wonderful inspiration you're bringing through your your life and your work. And I know that, as we do this, that many people are awakening and are coming into this realization that we are moving toward living in a world of Buddhas.

we truly are. And you are one of the doors and, one of the, I bow humbly at the feet of the wisdom of the Buddha to us. And so thank. You, bless you, thank you. Till then, be healthy, be happy, and fill your life with love. Thank you.