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This podcast opens with a description of the human stages of development or Growing Up, from caveman to enlightened sage. The hosts make the point that we can have an advanced state of consciousness at any stage, such as a heart opening in a tribal stage or a non-dual glimpse in a rational stage. We will then interpret that state experience through the lens of our stage – “Jesus loves me” or “We’re all connected in quantum reality.” For this reason, it’s essential to focus on our emotional, cognitive, and moral development, along with shadow awareness – Growing Up – because it’s invisibly shaping and interpreting our reality all along the way. But it is typically devalued in religious/mystical traditions as less important than spiritual development -- Waking Up. Dr. Neil describes his own experiences of Waking Up in earlier stages of development.

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Dr. Neil describes the Witness as pure consciousness, the background that always is in all states of awareness. In the conventional waking state, we are not aware of it because we are identified with our subjectivity or with an object. When the Witness emerges, we separate and become identified with the Self or pure consciousness – I Am That – and feel free inside from identification with body, mind, feelings. This sense of freedom from subject/object, attraction/aversion is a cue that we are in the Witness. When we move into non-duality, the Witness seems to disappear at first. But it’s always already there – and reappears as we move our attention between duality and non-duality in the world.

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“The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.”—the third Chinese patriarch of Zen.

Today Neil describes the role of preferences, likes and dislikes, love and hate after awakening. He addresses the question: How do we include the people or behaviors that we find unacceptable in the One? If we feel a great attraction or aversion to a politician, celebrity, or friend, do we need to do shadow-work post-awakening? He explains that these pairs of opposites, and their shadow material, are different in different stages of consciousness – and therefore require a different attention.

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Dr. Neil describes the higher emotions that arose before and after his awakening:

well-being in the physical and subtle bodies, nectar in the mouth, blissful equanimity, dynamic waves of ecstasy, and rapture or non-dual samadhi. He points out that these states are now available to him at will, with and without dualistic functioning in the world, as he works and speaks with people. The last state alone does not allow him to operate in duality.

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What is the location of an awakened consciousness that is beyond space/time? How do we situate ourselves in space when the dualities of local/nonlocal or near/far are dissolved? The mystical traditions teach that longing for union with the divine beloved or Source is inherent in the human soul. What happens when that distance disappears, union is attained –and, even more, we identify with that Source? Our cosmic location becomes “I am That which is Everything, Everywhere.” Or, as Dr Neil put it, “I’m free from being anywhere.”

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Dr. Neil describes an overview of his journey from psychic intuition to the Knower, to the Traveler beyond space/time, to the dissolution of subject/object and becoming One with the objects of perception near and far. At that point, he realizes that there is nowhere to go, Everything in his body. Then he experiences astral projection but not as the traveler; he becomes One with the astral body and plane. Then this expands to the mental, buddhic, and celestial planes. Then it expands to the galaxy, and he is That. His latest realization includes a golden orb whose beings are creating and dissolving the manifest world.

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Podcast listeners have posted some interesting questions to us: What is the difference between your Knower and the arrogance of a know-it-all? Is there an end point to the evolution of consciousness? Should we try to develop psychic abilities or siddhis (yogic powers), or will they inevitably unfold? How does advanced spiritual experience affect future lifetimes? What is your identity while living in nonduality? What happens to fun or pleasure for enlightened folks?

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"Form is emptiness; emptiness is form." This adage from the Heart Sutra describes non-dual reality in Buddhist terms: all form is basically empty, that is, neither permanent nor substantial. And emptiness, as the source and nature of form, is reality. Dr. Neil describes the stages of his direct experience of emptiness, from empty action, to empty speech, to empty mind, to empty self, to empty object, to empty cosmos. As he awakened to the formless self that underlies the forms of ego, he awoke to the emptiness of all forms—and the nonduality of self and world.