Afleveringen

  • At the conclusion of the last episode, in late November of 1965, I was having a happy life as a normal sixteen-year-old eleventh grader. Things were going well and everything seemed right on track.

    However, even though I had hardly noticed, a few things happened, which in retrospect could be seen to have been subtle warnings of a coming change. First, my father had told me that he would never be a grandfather and given the fact that my brother’s wife was seven months pregnant, that meant that he had less than two months to live.

    Then I had unexpectedly ran into an old comic book that had two mysterious stories concerning Abraham Lincoln and death, which I found to be hauntingly disturbing. Again, I paid no real attention to any of these at the time. But two more events were about to happen that would take things to another level.

    The first one happened on a Saturday morning as my father and I were sitting in services in a modern synagogue near our home in Elkins Park. He was thinking about changing our affiliation, as we still belonged to our original temple, but it was a twenty-five-minute drive each way. This place was close enough that we could walk, which was a dream come true for him.

    Toward the very end of every Jewish service, a prayer is recited called the Mourner’s Kaddish. It is one of the keystones of the religion, and every congregation does it, all over the world. Interestingly, even though it’s done to honor the dead, it never once mentions death or dying. It’s a prayer of praise, and the idea is that you always praise God, no matter what happens. As much as your heart may be broken, the teachings say that there’s always a pathway that leads to salvation.

    As we sat there, the rabbi invited the mourners to rise to say Kaddish, and one of the kids from my school stood up, which surprised me. “I know that kid,” I whispered to my father. “I didn’t know anybody in his family died.”

    Suddenly, to my surprise, my father got extremely serious. “This Kaddish prayer is much more important than you know,” he said, speaking in a tone of voice I had never heard before. It was incredibly solemn and I could barely tell it was him.

    “I want you to promise me that after I die, you will come to services and say Kaddish for me, every morning, and every night. And that you will do it for the full eleven months.”

    It was a strange moment for me. I had never heard him that somber before and besides, it didn’t make sense - he was only fifty-two. There was no question that I would say Kaddish for him after he died but that was twenty or thirty years down the road. “Of course, I will, Dad,” I said matter-of-factly. “You know I will.”

    Then the weird got weirder. “We’re in synagogue,” he said, still in that extremely somber tone. “We’re in front of the Torah and I want you to make a solemn vow to me now. And understand, this is a vow that you are making before God himself.”

    Now, we were extremely close and nothing like this had ever happened between us. He had never asked me to promise him anything before in my entire life. It seemed like a bizarre request, coming from him at this point in his life, but if this is what he wanted, why not? “OK,” I said, concealing the fact that I was slightly taken aback.

    “Good,” he said. “Now, repeat after me.” He paused, and then, like a judge administering an oath of office, he slowly recited the vow, one sentence at a time. And I repeated it after him, word for word.

    “I promise before God, that after you die, I will come to services and say Kaddish for you every morning and night for the full eleven months, so help me God.” When I said the last phrase, he exhaled deeply and slumped forward in his seat, with his eyes closed.

    He didn’t move a muscle and for a second, I thought he might have passed out. It could have been for just an instant or it may have been much longer. I don’t remember now. What I do remember is that there was a deep sense of completeness in that moment. But it wasn’t a positive feeling. It felt more like the completeness of the grave.

    The next thing I knew, they started singing the last song of the service, which is a happy, cheerful hymn. Whenever I heard that song it always lifted me up, basically because I knew that services were over. My father opened his eyes and looked relieved. He seemed like his normal self again and started singing along with the song. Whatever that strange spell was, it was over.

    When we got outside, it was a beautiful day and we were both happy as we walked home in the bright sunlight. I always loved that time right after services. I had fulfilled my obligation to God and to my father, and I could finally get on with the carefree part of my weekend.

    ***

    Then, a short time later, on Monday night, November 29th, I had a deeply disturbing nightmare. Someone was trying to kill me. I was desperately running for my life on a deserted part of the beach in Atlantic City, in front of the Boardwalk. It was daytime, but the atmosphere was dark and foreboding, like a major storm was brewing.

    As I ran frantically, the would-be killer kept firing a gun at me. But the assailant, the gun, and the bullets were all invisible. Still, I could hear the loud crack of the gunfire and feel the sharp zing of the bullets as they whizzed past my head and exploded into the sand in front of me. The assassin was hell-bent on my destruction, relentless and getting closer all the time.

    In sheer terror, I ran under the Boardwalk to hide. But once I did, the whole scene immediately changed. Suddenly I was standing in a dark cave and everything was completely silent. Before, when I was running for my life, I heard the panting of my breath, the thumping of my feet on the sand, and the hiss of the bullets as they flew past my head. Now everything was dead silent and absolutely still.

    I was standing in front of an old, brown wooden cross, with hundreds of lit candles all around. A monk in a dark-brown, hooded robe stood in front of it. The hood concealed the monk’s face entirely.

    “Behold! The cross of the Crucifixion!” I seemed to somehow hear it inside my mind, but I knew it was coming from the monk. Then oddly, a few complete ideas appeared in my consciousness at the same time. Unlike linear thinking where one thought follows another, they all became clear to me at once.

    I knew this was the actual cross from the actual crucifixion and that things were serious. I understood that the cross was a symbol for death, commonly used to mark a grave. And the final message was – “You have come upon it.” I looked at the monk, then back at the cross. Everything seemed frozen in time, like a still picture. The candles had stopped flickering, nothing moved and the stillness seemed to have a presence all its own.

    Suddenly, I felt a sharp slap in the middle of my chest, right on my sternum. I gasped in an enormous amount of air and the next thing I knew, I was lying in my bed, in my pajamas.

    I was in my room, it was morning, and I realized it had all been a dream, a terrible nightmare. My right hand was resting on my chest. I must have stopped breathing in my sleep and then subconsciously slapped myself awake.

    I was shaken and didn’t move for a few minutes. I finally got up, got dressed, and had my breakfast. But as I started driving to school, I was still disturbed. I hardly ever had nightmares and certainly never anything like this before.

    By the time I pulled into the school parking lot though, I was much more relaxed and decided to let the whole thing go. After all, it was just a bad dream. Maybe it was something I ate. The rest of the day was uneventful, and everything seemed fine.

    And it would have stayed fine, except that night, Tuesday, I had the same exact nightmare again, right down to the tiniest detail, through to the very end. Now I was rattled. This was more than just a nightmare, it was a recurring nightmare, which made it doubly serious.

    Then, to my extreme shock and dismay, the next night, Wednesday, I had the exact same dream. Again, I was being chased along the beach by an invisible killer, firing invisible bullets at me. I ducked under the Boardwalk, and it turned into a cave. There was the cross and the monk. Again, I got the same set of inner understandings, ending with the message - “You have come upon it.” And again, I slapped myself awake.

    I didn’t know what to do. Three straight nights of this recurring nightmare was unnerving. And on top of that, the fact that it had a big cross in it was deeply disturbing. The truth is, I didn’t like crosses. They always made me feel uncomfortable. And it wasn’t due to any differences in religious beliefs either. It was much deeper than that
a visceral feeling, like getting punched in the stomach.

    I felt it the very first time I ever saw a crucifixion statue, which was when I was about six. We lived in the Northeast section of the city, across the street from a church and I was having a catch with a friend. The ball flew over and landed near the front door of the building. When I went to get it, I noticed that the church door was open. The place had always been mysterious to me, so I thought I’d go in and take a peek.

    The very first thing I saw in there was a huge cross with a lifelike porcelain statue of a nearly naked man nailed to it. The guy was dead. And there was a crown of sharp thorns stuck into his head, with blood streaming down his face.

    Thorns! I couldn’t believe it. My mother grew rose bushes and always warned me to be careful of them. Still, I got stuck in the finger once. It bled a lot and it really hurt. Seeing a bunch of thorns stuck in this poor guy’s head was revolting. The rest of his body was a real horror show too, with whip marks all over it and nails hammered into his hands and feet.

    It was easily the most gruesome sight I had ever seen in my life. It made me sick to my stomach and I ran out of the church at full speed, crossed the street and collapsed onto our lawn. My head was spinning, and I was out of breath. But the firm ground and familiar smell of the grass made me feel better. After a few minutes, I calmed down.

    Then, out of nowhere, an unexpected rush of rage came over me. Filled with anger and fury, I thought, “Look what those goddamn bastards did to him!” I was only six, but it wasn’t the thought of a child. I felt like I wanted to kill somebody.

    Crosses always bothered me after that. Later, in college, I studied the symbol’s deeper meanings, along with the concepts of sacrifice, grace, forgiveness, the soul’s triumph over death, and its eventual reunion with the immortal father. And while they’re all ennobling ideas, the cross still reminds me of humanity at its worst, and of things gone horribly wrong. And I still get the same visceral feeling.

    The jarring symbol had now played a central role in three recurring nightmares, and I decided if it happened again, I would talk things over with my mother. Maybe it was time for me to go see a doctor or something.

    Well, as far as the ongoing narrative is concerned, this is an ideal place for this episode to stop. All I have to say at this point is – fasten your seat belts! As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open and let’s get together in the next one.

  • We ended the last episode in April of 1965 when George Harrison and John Lennon of the Beatles were unexpectedly given a dose of LSD by their dentist at a dinner party that he was hosting for them. This was done without their knowledge or permission, and although it could have had some significantly negative consequences, fortunately for everyone concerned, it all worked out well.

    At this point in the podcast series, it’s important to understand that this narrative is about the evolution of consciousness, especially as it happened on a mass level beginning in the mid-sixties. And that will serve as a lead in to some of the remarkable experiences I had at the time, which led to my lifelong involvement with personal growth, which is just a simpler term used for the evolution of consciousness.

    As we’ve seen, two substances, marijuana and LSD, played significant roles at the time, but they were just catalysts for the massive changes that were beginning to take place. Critically, this isn’t about those substances, how they work or the positive or negative aspects of them. This is about the liberation and elevation of human consciousness itself, which can easily happen with or without the use of external stimulants.

    Indeed, myriads of people have experienced enlightening inner growth without ever using any of these kinds of substances, and by the same token, plenty of people have taken large amounts of them and have gained very little, if any lasting enlightenment. So, it all depends upon the individual involved, as well as on the circumstances that help set the stage.

    That being said, let’s take a brief look at what happened to John and George that night at their dentist’s home and then, what happened to Ringo and Paul a little later.

    It seems that George had a profoundly illuminating experience that night. As he said, “I felt this amazing sensation come over me. It was like an intense version of the best feeling I ever had in my life. It was wonderful. I felt in love with everything and everyone. Everything was perfect and beautiful, and I wanted to tell everyone how much I loved them — even strangers.

    “I had such an overwhelming feeling of well-being, that there was a God, and I could see him in every blade of grass. It was like gaining hundreds of years of experience within twelve hours. It changed me, and there was no way back to what I was before.”

    Indeed, there was no way back for him and the same held true for John as well, who said about that first night, “God, it was just terrifying, but it was fantastic.” He began taking it on a somewhat regular basis and later he said, “LSD was the self-knowledge which pointed the way. I was suddenly struck by great visions when I first took acid. But you've got to be looking for it before you can possibly find it. Perhaps I was looking without realizing it.” I’ve always felt that given the cultural framework of the time, that was quite a profound observation of his.

    About moving forward, George said, “John and I had decided that Paul and Ringo had to have acid because we couldn’t relate to them anymore. Not just on the one level — we couldn’t relate to them on any level, because acid had changed us so much. It was such a mammoth experience that it was unexplainable. It was something that had to be experienced, because you could spend the rest of your life trying to explain what it made you feel and think. It was all too important to John and me.”

    Ringo joined John and George for their second LSD trip on August 25, 1965 and his experience seemed positive as well. “I’d take anything,” he later said. “It was a fabulous day. The night wasn’t so great, because it felt like it was never going to wear off. Twelve hours later and it was, ‘Give us a break now, Lord.'”

    Paul was a bit more hesitant, and despite repeated pleas from his bandmates, he held out for over a year. But when he finally gave it a try, he said, “I always found it amazing. Sometimes it was a very, very deeply emotional experience, making you want to cry, sometimes seeing God or sensing all the majesty and emotional depth of everything.

    “It opened my eyes to the fact that there is a God 
 It is obvious that God isn’t in a pill, but it explained the mystery of life,” he said. “It was truly a religious experience.”

    So, in the larger context, by the end of 1965, the stage had been set for what was about to come. The Beatles had been opened to a higher understanding of consciousness and their music and everything else about them had begun to evolve. Significantly, they would have a major effect on both the music and the messaging that was about to transform the entire culture.

    But remember, there was also another major factor that had been put in place during the same month that the Beatles first got high with Dylan. And that was the fact that the US Congress had basically given Lyndon Johnson the right to activate the American military in Vietnam in any way he saw fit. And by the end of 1965, he had begun to significantly exercise that right, right or wrong.

    Unfortunately, the statistics tell the tale. By the end of the year there were 184,300 US troops deployed in South Vietnam and 1,928 US soldiers died there that year. That is more than a 700% gain over the previous year’s totals. It was still getting relatively little attention, but tragically, things were just getting warmed up over there.

    Now, the end of 1965 also brings us to a time of a major, critical change in my own life as well. As you may have noticed, I have said very little about my life so far and there’s a good reason for it. I had been living a standard, normal American life, and nothing out of the ordinary had happened to me yet.

    If you know of my personal history, you might find it a little strange for me to say that nothing out of the ordinary had happened to me yet. After all, I had grown up in a somewhat unusual environment. My father was a prominent Philadelphia attorney who started the 76ers and had moved Wilt Chamberlain into our home. Wilt was my roommate when I was in tenth grade, so of course, those were some incredible times.

    But as unusual as they may have been, these are not the kind of “out of the ordinary” events I’m talking about. As you will soon see, I’m referring to something completely different.

    Anyway, as November of 1965 was drawing to a close, I was making my way through eleventh grade and enjoying it thoroughly. I had a great family with lots of terrific friends. My future seemed well-planned and rather rosy as well. I would finish high school followed by college and law school. At some later point my brother and I would inherit our father’s law firm as well as ownership of the 76ers. So, everything seemed pretty much set up for me.

    Speaking of the team, the season was coming into full swing, things were going well for us and the NBA championship seemed clearly in sight. So, there I was, a normal, happy sixteen-year-old, eagerly looking forward to what was coming next.

    But the truth is, as we all must learn sooner or later, you can never really know what’s coming around the next corner. The actual reality of the future always remains unknown. The past, of course is a different story. And with the clarity of hindsight, it’s fairly obvious that some troubling signs were starting to appear in my path.

    The first one was barely noticeable at the time. My brother’s wife was about seven months pregnant and my father and I had driven over to visit them one afternoon. When we got home and pulled into the driveway, I asked him, “So how does it feel now that you’re going to be a grandfather?”

    “What do you mean?” he asked me.

    “Does it make you feel old or anything?”

    He didn’t respond right away and just stared out at the rose garden near the back door of our house. “I’m never going to be the grandfather to this child,” he said. There was a distant sound in his voice, like he was talking from afar. “No. I won’t be the grandfather,” he continued matter-of-factly. “I’ll be the father’s father, but I’ll never be the grandfather.”

    He used to say quirky things like this all the time. It sounded like he was splitting hairs and I didn’t pay any attention to it.

    ***

    A second subtle omen came in the form of a comic book. I was in student council and started thinking about running for school president. My high school was quite large, with about two thousand students. If I wanted to run, there would be a lot to do, and it was time to give it some serious thought. One night at dinner, I mentioned it to my parents and they both encouraged me.

    The next day, when I got home from school, an old comic book of mine was on the end table next to my bed. I hadn’t seen it in years, but I immediately recognized it. It had stories about each president of the United States. My mother kept a few boxes of my childhood things in the basement and had pulled it out, probably to inspire me.

    As I looked at the cover, I clearly remembered that there was a strange story about Abraham Lincoln in the middle. I quickly flipped it opened and sure enough, there it was, “Lincoln, the Mystic.”

    It had two parts. The first was called, “I Am Not Dead – I Still Live.” It showed a letter from a psychic that was found in Lincoln’s desk after he died. Supposedly, it was a channeled, life-after-death message from a close friend of Lincoln’s who had been killed in battle. Written backwards, it had to be read in a mirror. It said - “I am not dead. I still live
I experienced a happy reality - a glorious change by the process called death
 Man lives on Earth, to live elsewhere, and that elsewhere is ever present. Heaven and Hell are conditions, not localities.”

    You might be surprised to learn that Lincoln had kept a letter from a psychic in his desk at the White House, but it’s in the archives of the Library of Congress.

    I went on to the second part, called “The Most Famous Pre-Cognitive Dream in American History.” It showed Lincoln asleep in the White House. A mournful sound wakes him up. He gets out of bed and starts walking toward it. As he gets closer, he realizes that it is the sound of people sobbing in misery. He enters the East Room and sees a coffin on a flag-draped stand, guarded by soldiers.

    “Who is dead in the White House?” he asks one of them. “The President,” comes the reply. “He was killed by an assassin.”

    The crying gets much louder and Lincoln looks into the coffin and to his shock, he sees himself lying there. He stares at his dead body for a moment, then he suddenly wakes up and realizes it had all been a bad dream.

    Looking back on these small events it seems like I was being given some information about what was to come. The first part came from my father. If what he said about never becoming a grandfather came true, whether he knew it or not, he was telling me that he had less than two months to live.

    The second and third came from the comic book about Lincoln and they were both about death. One said that in truth, death is not an ending, it’s actually a glorious change into a happy reality. And the other said that it’s possible to have a pre-cognitive dream of death that can quickly come true.

    Again, I barely noticed these three factors at the time and certainly didn’t see any connection between them and my life at all. That being said, this is a good place to end this episode. As you might guess, the unfolding story is about to go a few levels deeper, so as always, keep your eyes, mind, and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

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  • In the last episode, we looked at two critically important events that happened in August of 1964 that would eventually have truly profound effects on Western culture, as well as on world history in general. On August 7, the US Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and 21 days later, on August 28, Bob Dylan got together with the Beatles in their New York City hotel suite for a casual evening of fun.

    Again, neither event seemed overly important at the time, but in the long run, they were truly critical. By a nearly unanimous vote, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution effectively gave President Lydon Johnson “carte blanche” to direct the American military operation in Southeast Asia however he saw fit.

    A few weeks later, at the party New York, Bob Dylan got John, Paul, George, and Ringo high on marijuana for the first time in their lives, blowing the doors of perception wide open for them. And significantly, in their altered state, he told them that he admired their songs, but the problem was that they weren’t about anything. This casual comment proved to be deeply moving to them in terms of their creativity.

    The last episode was titled, “Tale of Two Seeds,” and that’s exactly what it was because two very different seeds had been planted. And within a rather short period of time, both of those seeds would sprout and start growing like wildfire, and ultimately, one would be the undoing of the other.

    But let’s veer off a little here for a quick reminder of what this sequence of episodes is all about. As I’ve mentioned a few times earlier, the underlying theme of all of this is the evolution of consciousness that began to take place in a very serious way back then and has continued, through to this day, although often quite subtly.

    As the series has unfolded, we’ve gotten some terrific feedback from our subscribers, but there has been one question that has come up a few times and I’d like to address it briefly. The question is, “What do you mean by the term “evolution of consciousness?”

    It’s really quite simple. Essentially, we each live in two worlds - our external world and our internal world. Our external world consists of everything that is happening around us on the outside, which generally involves our friends, our family, our career, our home, our car, our pets, and so on. And on the other hand, our internal world relates to everything that is going on within us – our thoughts, our feelings, our knowledge and understandings, our memoires, etc.

    The term, “consciousness” simply refers to this inner world of ours, which holds the mass composite of all the intelligence that is within each one of us on an individual basis. When our consciousness grows toward the positive, it turns us into better human beings, and the term “evolution of consciousness” is used to simply identify this wonderfully powerful kind of positive inner growth.

    Now, human society is largely a reflection of the overall state of consciousness of the human beings in it, so the more highly evolved our individual consciousness becomes, the better the chances we have of living in a kinder and more humane society. In other words, better people will always create a better world.

    In this regard, history has shown that the artists of any age usually play very significant roles in stimulating the inner growth of the people of their time. Along these lines, although I haven’t been able to find out who said it, I once came across a great quote about the role of the artist in society. It divided people into two categories.

    The first one is made up of society’s solid, reliable, hard-working people, the ones who go to work every day and do all the things we need to keep our lives going. It said that these are the people who make the world go around. But it said that the job of an artist isn’t to make the world go around. The job of the artists is to make the world go forward. As a wanna-be artist, painting the colors of words onto the canvass of ideas, I found the idea to be quite inspiring.

    So, with all that being said, let’s go back to the Beatles in August of 1964. Apparently, when Dylan got them stoned that night, it began a bit of a love affair between the lads and the weed. As happened to so many of us upon our first exposure to the mind-altering powers of THC, they began perceiving things in a very different way. After that, getting high on marijuana became a normal part of their abnormal lives, and their music, along with everything else about them began to undergo a slow, but dramatic metamorphosis.

    Small and subtle as it was, I clearly remember the first time I became conscious of a definite change in their music in December of 1964. I was in tenth grade, finishing my first semester of high school and a new Beatles album had just come out called Beatles 65. It was always a major event whenever a new one of their albums came out and this was no different.

    All the songs were remarkably great, as they always were, but there was one that seemed just a bit different. John Lennon was singing. His voice had become incredibly familiar to me and always made me happy. The song was about a lost love, but instead of just being sad, it seemed to have a new sense of pathos in it. And in the slow introduction, I couldn’t believe the words that I heard him sing. “I’m a loser. I’m a loser. And I’m not what I appear to be.”

    I was pretty surprised. To me, he seemed to be the coolest superstar in the whole world, which to my young mind made him one of my major heroes. And now, I am hearing this greatly influential voice tell me that in actuality, he’s really a loser and he’s not what he appears to be.

    And there were some pretty deep ideas in the rest of the lyrics as well. “Although I laugh and I act like a clown, beneath this mask, I am wearing a frown. My tears are falling like rain from the sky. Is it for her or myself that I cry? What have I done to deserve such a fate? I realize I have left it too late. And so it’s true, pride comes before a fall. I’m telling you so that you won’t lose all. I’m a loser. I’m a loser. And I’m not what I appear to be.”

    It's not like it was that all that big of a deal for me, but still, something seemed noticeably different. Clearly it was a break-up song, but also clearly, it was not a song that didn’t mean anything.

    I didn’t notice it at the time, but in a larger sense, some initial seeds of concepts of change were being planted in my subconscious mind. “Maybe I’m a loser too, and maybe I’m not what I appear to be. And you know what? Maybe this whole world isn’t what it appears to be. And what about life itself? Maybe life isn’t what it appears to be, either. These are really important questions and you don’t really know a thing about this kind of stuff, do you?”

    These hadn’t exactly formed into thoughts yet, just somewhat ethereal feelings and of course, I had no answers. Far from it. I didn’t even have any questions. Again, it was just a subtle feeling, like on a very deep level, a curtain of some kind was about to be lifted. Again, these were the earliest of times for me. It would be several years before I would find myself being forced to explore the treacherous terrain of self-deception.

    As far as the society was concerned, at this point, it's important to remember that during the mid-sixties, as well as for at least the ten years that followed, the Beatles were by far, the most influential force in popular music. Of course, there were many other tremendous musicians during that time as well, far too many to mention here. But the Beatles always led the way, coaxing the culture down the yellow brick road for at least a decade.

    All in all, a truly remarkable output of rock music became the primary source of influence to the seventy million American baby boomers. With their radios and record players constantly blasting the beat, it became the soundtrack of their lives as they made their way through the incredibly influential years that led them into becoming the people they eventually became.

    By the way, on a completely different track, let’s take a look at a few statistics regarding Southeast Asia as the year of 1964 came to a close. At the close of 1963, the US had 16.300 “advisors” active in South Vietnam and 122 of them had been killed that year. By the end of 1964, the number had increased by over 40% to 23,300 and 216 of them had been killed. Not that anyone was paying any attention to it. These weren’t particularly alarming numbers and Vietnam could have been on the moon as far at the general public was concerned. A vast majority of the American population had never even heard of it.

    But the Beatles music had definitely begun to change. It started out with a random song here and there, but the same way that random rocks trickling down the side of a mountain can suddenly catalyze a massive avalanche, in many significant ways, the Beatles were about to change the world.

    In this regard, one evening in April of 1965 marked the beginning of their next phase, as their newly elevated path was unexpectedly launched into hyperspace.

    John Lennon and George Harrison, along with their wives, went to dinner at the home of their dentist. The dentist served them a meal, followed by coffee and dessert, and it seemed like he made sure that John and George drank all their coffee. Then, a short while later, he told them that he had spiked their coffee with LSD.

    Of course, dosing someone with LSD without their consent is a terrible thing to do. History has taught, as Timothy Leary’s research at Harvard had proclaimed much earlier, that the drug can wreak severely negative impacts when done in the wrong way at the wrong time.

    Fortunately for the couples at dinner that night, even though it turned out to be a bit of a crazy ride, they still remained safe. But both George and John had some deeply profound experiences. But that’s enough for right now. As you can imagine, we’re coming into some interesting territory in the coming episodes, so as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

  • As we ended the last episode, a party was beginning in a swank hotel suite in New York City. It was August 28, 1964, and Bob Dylan had driven down from his home in Woodstock to spend an evening with John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, who had become known to the world as the Beatles.

    Before we get into what happened on that magical evening, let’s step back a little and remember that we are looking at certain key events that took place back then that were hardly noticed at the time, but would have incredibly powerful effects on the massive changes that were about to come that would shake our society to its very core.

    Two of those major events happened in August of 1964 and the meeting between Dylan and the Beatles was actually the second one. Let’s start this episode by taking a quick look at what happened a few weeks earlier, on August 4.

    On that date, by a vote of 98 – 2 in the Senate, and by a 100% unanimous vote of the House of Representatives, the Congress of the United States passed something called the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

    The odds are high that you either never heard of it or barely remember it, but in essence, this is what opened the door to the ever-deepening US involvement in Vietnam. In a lot of ways, this event marked the very beginning of the coming catastrophe.

    At the time, in the battle between North and South Vietnam, the US was backing the south against the communist regime of the north. But South Vietnam’s forces had been largely ineffective and the Johnson administration concluded that it needed to prop them up to prevent a communist takeover of the entire region. This idea was called the “domino theory” and was often used to justify deeper US involvement in the area.

    The South Vietnamese began a series of naval raids on the North Vietnamese coast and to lend support, the U.S. Navy stationed two destroyers, the Maddox and the Turner Joy, in the Gulf of Tonkin. On August 2, they reported that they had been attacked by some North Vietnamese patrol boats and had returned fire. Later it came out that the US had fired the first shots.

    Then on August 4, with the area under severely inclement weather, relying on radar readings, the ships thought they were under larger attack. The two ships fired at the area delineated by the radar readings and reported up the chain of command that they were engaged in a battle. But soon, the captain of the Maddox realized that not only had there had been no attack, there were actually no ships in the area at all. He sent the corrected information up the chain of command.

    Then, as Johnson’s Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara said in the documentary, “The Fog of War,” things got a little foggy. No one knows exactly how or why it happened, but President Johnson, speaking with the full authority of his office, notified congress that the attack had happened.

    He then addressed the country on national TV and explained the alleged facts of the alleged situation. And calling for action, he firmly stated that the US could not tolerate this kind of aggression on the open seas. Congress passed the Tonkin resolution which stated that “the United States is, therefore, prepared, as the President determines, to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force.” Note that the key words, “as the President determines.

    Now there are two key points to take away from this congressional resolution. The first one is that the report’s inciting incident was, essentially, a “false flag,” which means it never happened. Of course, it was only after certain secret documents about it had been de-classified in 2005 that the true information became known. All things considered; forty years of misinformation sounds about right.

    But the second, and by far most important issue with the proclamation is that it gave the president the right to use US military force at his discretion, without having to go before Congress for authorization. They basically gave him Carte Blanche to direct the actions of the military in Southeast Asia as he saw fit. And as events would subsequently prove, he really took them up on it.

    It’s not necessary to go more deeply into all this here. The important thing is, and no one it knew back then, tragically, the trap-door been set and soon, we would fall into the horrifying abyss of death and destruction that was lying in wait for us in Vietnam.

    Now, on a much lighter note, let’s jump ahead three weeks to August 28 and the party in the swank premier suite at the Delmonico Hotel, when Bob Dylan joined John, Paul, George and Ringo for an informal get together.

    Dylan was always a big influence on the white-hot band from England. He had hit the big time about a year before the Beatles had emerged and they really looked up to him. Now, although they had both become major forces in popular music, in reality they operated in distinctly different musical frameworks. All of the Beatles’ songs were about standard romantic themes, while Dylan’s carried much deeper messages.

    He had begun as a protest singer and quickly came to be considered the voice of the new generation. But he had recently gone through quite a change and was working on a new album called, “Another Side of Bob Dylan.” And indeed, it clearly was a very different side of the rapidly evolving artist.

    In his new music he was dealing with themes that were far more personal than societal. Still, on the deepest level, his new songs were every bit as revolutionary as his protest songs had been, and as deeply insightful as well, but in a very different way.

    One of his new songs was called “All I Really Want to Do.” Instead of being tied down to the normal roles of a standard romantic relationship, he expressed the liberated desire for freedom and individualism for both partners. He sang, “I ain’t looking to compete with you, beat or cheat or mistreat you. Simplify you, classify you, deny, defy or crucify you. All I really want to do is baby be friends with you.” No one had ever heard anything quite like it before and it quickly became a big hit.

    But there was also a rumor about this new direction he was taking. According to one record producer who claimed he had been there, Dylan had tried LSD for the first time earlier that year.

    As I already mentioned about Dylan, he always has been and still is, prone to keeping the details of his private life extremely private. So, nobody knows if or when he ever did LSD, how many times, or anything like that. But he wrote a song back then that found its way onto his new album and some observers consider to be the first popular song ever written about an LSD trip.

    The song was called, “The Chimes of Freedom Flashing” and this deeply poetic statement quickly became an iconic standard in the annals of popular culture. Dylan seemed to have entered into a different dimension, where he was getting a sense that a major change in consciousness was approaching, that would bring freedom and liberation to those who were suffering from the slings and arrows of humanity’s unending inhumanity. It was and still is quite a powerful idea.

    In the song, he and a companion were having a dramatic, multi-sensory experience as they witnessed what he called, “the chimes of freedom flashing.” He said the chimes were “Flashing for the warriors, whose strength is not to fight, flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight. And for each and every underdog soldier in the night.” He went on, saying they were “Tolling for the searching ones on their speechless, seeking trail, for the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale, and for each unharmful gentle soul misplaced inside a jail.” And in the last verse, he proclaimed that the chimes were “Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed, for the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones and worse, and for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe. And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.” Obviously, this guy was light years ahead of his time.

    Anyway, back to the party with the Beatles. It started out in a friendly, light hearted manner and stayed that way for a while until unexpectedly it went up a notch as Dylan told the group that he had brought along some rather high-grade marijuana.

    He said he had assumed that the Beatles were already getting high because he thought the lyric to one of their famous songs was - “It’s such a feeling that my love, I get high, I get high, I get high.” They all had a good laugh because the actual lyric in the song was “I can’t hide. I can’t hide. I can’t hide.” Not “I get high.”

    The hilarity continued, one thing led to another and before they knew it, the fab four, along with their manager Brian Epstein, got stoned for the first time in their lives. And it seems like they got really stoned, because, as it can happen, rather than just having an elevated inner feeling, it seems they took a little journey through the doors of perception and started having some rather profound realizations.

    You might have heard the term, “the doors of perception before,” as writer Aldous Huxley used it as the title for his 1954 book. It comes from the quote by William Blake, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is – infinite.” And that’s kind of what happened to them that night.

    Paul McCartney felt like he was having an inspiring brush with enlightenment. He said something to the effect that this was the first time in his life that he felt he could really think. He had one of their assistants grab a pen and paper to keep writing down all deeper understandings he kept having.

    Apparently, as the revelry of the evening continued, at one point Dylan made a comment to them that went in pretty deep. At the time, 100% of the songs the Beatles were writing and singing were about the ups and downs of standard, romantic boy-girl love, and that was their entire repertoire. That was it.

    Dylan told them that he really enjoyed their music and he did. He often said that they had a great sound, that their melodies were terrific and their harmonies were perfect. But he said that even though he liked them, he had a problem with their songs and his problem was that they weren’t about anything.

    Supposedly John Lennon got blown out and later said that Dylan’s comment had produced some major realizations within him, prompting him to start writing about deeper themes that were “outside of just the meat-market.”

    In retrospect, many cultural historians believe that this meeting between Dylan and the Beatles marked the very beginnings of a major change that would soon completely transform popular music, which in turn, would change the entire world. We’ll go into it all this little more in depth in the coming episodes so let’s call it quits for now. As always, keep your eyes mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

  • We ended the last episode with the Commencement Address that President Kennedy gave at American University, which marked a major thaw in the cold war, leading to a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union. That was on June 10, 1963. Now let’s move on to June 11th.

    Governor George Wallace, in defiance of federal desegregation orders, attempted to block the enrollment of two African American students at the University of Alabama. Symbolizing his resistance to federal integration efforts, he stood in the doorway and proclaimed, “Segregation Now. Segregation Forever.” It’s hard to know if he thought his action was going to intimidate the President, but it did no such thing. JFK quickly federalized the Alabama National Guard, who immediately removed Wallace from the premises.

    That night, the President delivered a televised address to the country announcing that he had ordered the National Guard to ensure the enrollment of the two African American students. Then, emphasizing the importance of upholding the rule of law and the Constitution, he clearly reaffirmed his administration’s full support of the Civil Rights movement.

    It turns out that the month of June was to become a truly historic month for him because as it continued, on June 26th, he made his legendary trip to West Berlin. In his world-famous speech to 120,000 wildly admiring West Berliners, he said, “There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that Communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin.” Then, with the wit of biting sarcasm he continued, “Freedom has many difficulties and Democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us.”

    At that point, he concluded the speech with words that went down in history, “All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner.” Of course, it meant, “I am a Berliner.”

    At the end of the trip, he left Berlin for a four-day visit to his ancestral homeland in Ireland, a journey that can only be called a love fest. Not only was he the first US president to ever visit the emerald isle, his trip was celebrated as the return of a truly beloved native son, and wherever he went, he was mobbed by adoring Irish crowds. He then moved on to two days spent in London consulting with Prime Minister MacMillan before returning to Washington.

    Following his return from the exhilarating trip abroad, it was time to begin preparing for the coming presidential election. Although it had been a promising first term, he still had a tricky path to navigate in 1964, as his political enemies were powerful and the road ahead of him had some serious obstacles.

    During these early, pre-elections days of October and November, there were rumored to have been two other events that may have happened which would have critically changed world history if they had come true. The first one is that Kennedy, concluding that the government of South Vietnam had become too unstable to justify further US support, had supposedly set in motion plans to terminate all US involvement in Vietnam by the end of December, 1965, He had made up his mind and we were pulling out.

    The second possible event is the report that Kennedy had decided to drop Lyndon Johnson from the ticket for the election of 1964 and had told him so.

    Now, there is no substantial proof to verify either of these claims and there never will be. Still, if you let your imagination run wild a little, you can see how the history of the coming era would have been radically different.

    Whatever his plans might have been, they would have had to remain top secret given the turbulent politics of the upcoming presidential election. In that regard, he began to embark on some politically-motivated trips. On November 2nd he left for Chicago, followed by a trip to Tampa, Florida on the 18th. Then, on November 21, he and the first lady departed for Texas.

    They went to San Antonio, then Houston, and then to Fort Worth, where they stayed overnight. The next morning, they took the short flight to Dallas and arrived at 11:38 AM. They got into the presidential limousine and left Love Field at 11:55, arriving in downtown Dallas following the short ride. The streets were lined with throngs of awestruck people, enthusiastically cheering them on, as the most recognized and charismatic couple in the entire world slowly passed by. As they basked in the warmth of the adoring crowd, the motorcade continued on, into the brilliant sunlight of what was shaping up to be an absolutely perfect day. Then, at 12:30 pm, the unthinkable happened.

    ***

    It’s neither necessary nor possible to begin to describe the effect that it had on America, and in particular, the youth of America, as the plague of that horrible news spread like wildfire throughout the population. And it went on for the full thirty days of mourning that followed. For me, when the assassination happened, I had just begun ninth grade, my last year in junior high school and I was in the sadly unfortunate position of being just old enough and just young enough.

    I was old enough to understand the true gravity of the tragedy, but still young enough to have my childhood sensibilities shaken to the core. And let’s not even talk about that four-day stretch of dark days. There was the assassination itself, followed by a day of absolute shock, then the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald on national TV, followed by the incredibly sad and deeply somber funeral, as the forty-six year-old, fallen hero of the republic was laid to rest. It was all so sad, but also, it was all so weird.

    For the first time ever, the whole country stopped to watch television as the entire nation stood still for the six-hour funeral. Something like this had happened before, on April 14, 1945 when President Franklin Roosevelt was buried, but that was only on radio. This was completely different. It was much more graphic, as one incredibly grief-stricken image after the next was broadcast to the entire western world.

    And when it comes to tragic images, the spontaneous salute that John-John gave to his father’s flag-draped coffin as it passed him by was seared into our collective memory. Nobody saw that heart-wrenching moment coming.

    It was almost as if we were being taught as a culture, a dramatic seminar on the ever-present possibility of sudden death
how everything can come to a screeching halt, no matter who you are. And subconsciously the message was clear - if instant death can happen to someone like that, who was at the absolute pinnacle of power, it can happen to any one of us. We can be gone in a flash. And then nothing is the same.

    In total, all three major networks suspended normal programming for four days and played seventy consecutive hours of the live coverage of the proceedings. From a mass media perspective, the only other time anything like this has ever happened was the coverage of the 911 attacks in 2001.

    Again, the purpose of this series of podcasts is to focus on the mass evolution of consciousness that happened during this formative era, as well as to examine my own story as I went through it all. At this point, to put it simply, we all had the wind completely taken out of our sails. Our daily lives continued, but again, it was all so sad and it was all so weird, like we were painfully groping our way through the shadows of a slowly unfolding nightmare that never seemed to end. And then, suddenly, something completely different happened.

    ***

    Exactly eighty days after the assassination, on the night of February 9, 1964, variety TV show host Ed Sullivan walked onto the stage of his Sunday night program and with five words, spoke a phrase that absolutely changed everything - “Ladies and Gentleman – The Beatles.”

    Seventy-Seven million people were watching and for the youth of the country, it was like a magic spell had been cast, designed to dissipate the suffering and the pain that had enveloped us. In an instant, one phase of our life ended and another began. The mourning period was over and suddenly, it was time to sing and dance again. And boy, did we!

    Once more, it is neither necessary nor possible to begin to describe what happened. Suffice it to say that everything changed for us almost overnight, as this thing called Beatlemania set it. We had four new heroes, these guys named John, Paul, George and Ringo and they were so cool, yet so incredibly upbeat at the same time. Their music was truly amazing but there was also something else about them, something intangible. They seemed to be happily above the toils of life, like they had just arrived from another planet that ran on nothing but pure fun.

    And on top of it all, their haircuts were like nothing we’d ever seen before. It seemed a little strange at first, but within a few months, all the guys were copying them. I know I went from the standard buzz-cut to the new mop top as soon as my hair would grow out. If it sounds like we were completely awestruck, we were, but don’t forget what we’d just been through, not to mention our age – I was just a month shy of turning fifteen.

    Amazingly, it ended up that the Beatles were just the first wave of what became known as the British Invasion as the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, the Who, the Hollies, the Zombies, the Kinks, Herman’s Hermits and God knows how many others came cascading into the country. It seemed like every day, wave after wave of new songs washed up onto the shores of our AM radios, which we had blasting all the time. And that’s not to mention all of the new remarkable American music that helped launched us into hyper-space, as well.

    Of course, we were still going to school and studying, as normal life continued, But, a massive new party had obviously begun, with the Beatles leading the way.

    Things went on like that for about six months. Then the Beatles hit an unexpected, little turn in the road, when on the night of August 28, 1964, they finally got to spend an evening with one of their primary musical heroes, the enigmatic Bob Dylan.

    Now this was another one of those events that was only a very quick couple of hours, and it was largely unnoticed at the time. On one level, it was just your standard meeting of two major musical superstar acts. At the time, the Beatles were enjoying a level of fame that had never been seen before. And along with also being extremely famous, Dylan was the most influential musician of his time.

    It started out with a lot of goofing around, a lot of partying, you know the standard kind of things that can happen in a glitzy high-end hotel room in New York City when the absolute pinnacle of rock and roll gets together to relax and have a good time.

    But it ended up being quite a bit more than that. Even though it was extremely subtle, again, those subterranean Teutonic plates were set in motion and a major earthquake was looming, just over the horizon. Well, this is a perfect place for us to stop, so as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

  • We closed the last episode by looking at the emergence of Bob Dylan onto the Beat Scene in Greenwich Village in 1962, and we mentioned his song, Blowin’ in the Wind, where he asked some deeply troubling questions about what was going wrong in the world and said that the answer to them all is blowing in the wind.

    Now Dylan has never confirmed nor denied that he was referring to marijuana in that song. But if he was, it was a pretty obscure reference because

    less than 4 per cent of the US population had tried it at the time, and a vast majority of people had never even heard of it.

    It’s known that a lot of the “Beatniks” were into it, including my sister who was attending a big university in a major US city, so it was probably starting to get around, although her private escapades were always kept top secret.

    There was another drug, LSD, that was flying well under society’s radar screen as well, but there were two major differences between the two substances. While marijuana got you high, meaning it put you into of an elevated state of mind, LSD was a powerful psychedelic, capable of significantly altering your entire sense of reality. And, although the far less potent drug, marijuana, had been against the law since 1937, remarkably, LSD was still legal.

    We’ll get into the effects of these substances on American culture more deeply as the story unfolds. For now, let’s go back to the period immediately following the Cuban Missile Crisis and take another look at President Kennedy.

    It seems clear that serving as the Commander in Chief of the United States armed forces during those harrowing thirteen days had a profound effect on him and most historians believe he started to seriously explore ways to reduce the tensions between America and the Soviet Union.

    When the crisis began, Kennedy had authorized his brother Robert, the Attorney General and a key member of his cabinet, to set up a back channel of communications with the Soviet Ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin. JFK felt that it was imperative to have a reliable form of direct communication with Khrushchev.

    According to released Russian documents, the Soviet premier’s son-in-law Alexei Adzhubei, met privately with the President to confirm that the Attorney General would be speaking on his authority. When he asked JFK if Bobby was his “number two” in Washington, JFK replied that he wasn’t just “No. 2, but 3, 4, 5 and 6.” The message was relayed to Khrushchev and the back channel was secured.

    Once the crisis had been resolved, the two leaders set up a permanent, direct channel that became known as the “Hot Line.” Before it was officially completed in June of 1963, it could take as long as twelve hours for the two sides to communicate. Twelve hours is an obvious eternity in a world filled with massive atomic weaponry. Now, at least communications were on a much sounder footing.

    In various public statements and speeches that followed, President Kennedy began expressing a stronger commitment to peace and the importance of finding diplomatic solutions to international conflicts. He emphasized the need for dialogue and negotiation to prevent the escalation of tensions. And he began to prioritize Civil Rights in Americas well.

    Like most members of my generation, I had always felt a kind of personal connection to him. I don’t want to sound too shallow here, but along with all of his other accomplishments, he just seemed like the coolest guy in the world, and we all looked up to him. A commentator once put it this way. Nixon reminded us of who we were, and Kennedy of who we wish we were. It was for obvious reasons. He was young and handsome, came from a very wealthy and powerful family, had a beautiful wife who seemed like royalty, along with two adorable kids.

    And on top of all this, his life played extremely well in the mass media, which was still in its earliest stages. The truth is that besides being president, he was also the most charismatic media superstar in the world. He would routinely hang out with the hottest entertainers in show business and everybody was totally enamored by him. At the top of the heap was Frank Sinatra and his pals, who were known as the “Rat Pack” and as the presidential campaign began in 1960, Sinatra changed its name to the “Jack Pack.”

    Supposedly Jack and Frank were very tight and obviously Frank ran with a huge circle of A-List celebrities. All the glitzy pieces of the political/entertainment puzzle formed a glamorous mosaic when Marilyn Monroe sang happy birthday to JFK at his 45th birthday gala celebration in Madison Square Garden. Popular culture as basking in the high life, with John F. Kennedy at the very top. So, again, I had always been pretty taken with him.

    Looking back on it from a cultural perspective, an interesting side note is that Timothy Leary, the former Harvard professor who became a major counter-culture guru, claimed that JFK had been experimenting with LSD during this time as well.

    According to Leary, at one point in mid-1962, a very impressive woman in her early forties came to visit him in his office at Harvard. She said she was an artist living in Georgetown and wanted to learn how to conduct LSD sessions. Apparently, a few of her female friends had a plan to turn some of the most powerful men in Washington on to LSD.

    After a few meetings, she confided in Leary that she was having a serious affair with a very high-ranking member of the administration and he was interested in experimenting with the drug. Leary gave her detailed instructions on how to properly conduct sessions and things moved on from there. She began reporting her progress regularly to Leary and apparently things were going quite well. Along with the fact that this high-level member of the administration’s mind was expanding, their love affair was reaching extremely satisfying new heights.

    Now, it turns out that Leary’s friend was no ordinary woman. Her name was Mary Pinchot Meyer. She came from a wealthy family, had known JFK since they were teen-agers, and they had been neighbors together in Georgetown. She was also extremely well-connected in Washington. Her sister was married to Ben Bradlee, a major reporter for Newsweek and a close friend of JFK’s. who later became the Executive Editor of the Washington Post. So, you can imagine how well-connected she really was.

    I’ll tell you in a future episode how Leary came to the conclusion that JFK was the high-ranking member of the administration in question. Obviously, Leary’s theory has never been proven and it never will be, as all the players, including Leary, are long since dead. The whole thing could have easily come from a false memory of his or even a hallucination.

    But it never mattered to me whether it was true or not because my focus has always been on the growth of human consciousness, regardless of the catalyst. And there is no question that LSD played a significant role in the massive changes that were about to overcome society during the next few years.

    Also, and again I don’t want to sound too shallow here, but the idea that JFK might have been experimenting with mind expansion only made him seem cooler to me. LSD was completely legal at the time, many members of the intelligentsia had tried it, and I found the idea to be intriguing.

    Regardless of the reason, Kennedy was making major strides in the direction of establishing a framework for the reduction of tension and the establishment of peace, not just with the Soviet Union, but around the world as well.

    On June 10,1963, he took it a step further by delivering one of the most important speeches of his presidency as he gave the Commencement Address at American University.

    He set the tone at the beginning by saying, “I have, therefore, chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived--yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace.” Then he continued, “I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children--not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women--not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.”

    He then shifted to the relationship between America and Russia saying, “both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race.” And then he made a major policy announcement calling for a test ban treaty and stating that the US would suspend nuclear atmospheric testing if Russian would agree.

    And then he went on, “So, let us not be blind to our differences--but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved
For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.”

    The speech, which represented a break from contentious rhetoric, was revolutionary for several reasons. First, it marked a real thaw in the cold war. Although he acknowledged the ideological differences between the two superpowers, he still stressed their common humanity, which transcended those differences. Moving away from the adversarial language that had characterized the cold war for so long, he sought to create an atmosphere more conducive to negotiations and détente.

    And critically, from the standpoint of policy, it represented a true breakthrough, as he announced his intention to pursue a comprehensive test ban treaty with Russia. Importantly, the speech received positive response both at home and abroad, which helped set the stage for the major diplomatic initiatives that followed, including the signing of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in August of 1963.

    Today, it's hard to grasp how revolutionary his ideas as well as his actions were. From our modern perspective, his views were incredibly advanced for the times.

    And when he talked about the commonality between the Americans and the Russians, saying that “we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal,” even though he was six years early, from his words, he almost sounded like a hippy who had just come back from Woodstock. Who knows - maybe Timothy Leary was right. Maybe he had been experimenting with consciousness expansion. But it really didn’t matter. What mattered was how he was steering the ship of state.

    So, let’s end this episode by leaving things here for now. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

  • The last episode ended with the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962. As you may recall, one day at the height of the crisis, October 27th is considered by some experts to be the closest the world has ever come to a full-out nuclear war. And it is thought that the wise decision of one 34-year-old Russian naval officer was all that stood in the way of provoking what could have been the cause of the greatest single loss of life in human history.

    The American public had been deeply shaken by the event. Early in the crisis, on the night of October 22, 1962, JFK appeared on national TV and outlined the situation to the country. He said that Cuba had in essence, been turned into a Russian strategic nuclear base, complete with long-range and unmistakably offensive weapons, clearly capable of mass destruction.

    Saying that this now constituted an explicit threat to all the Americas and acting in the defense of the entire Western Hemisphere, he announced a strict naval embargo. Then he gave a clear and stark warning to Russia. “It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”

    Clearly, the gauntlet had been thrown and the ultimatum was unmistakable. If you fire a missile from Cuba at any county on this side of the globe, we will launch an immediate and full retaliatory response upon you.

    In closing, he said to the American public, “My fellow citizens: let no one doubt that this is a difficult and dangerous effort on which we have set out. No one can foresee precisely what course it will take or what costs or casualties will be incurred.”

    Nothing like this had ever happened before and a lot of people felt that a real catastrophe was at hand. Fortunately, the crisis resolved itself with no major incidents and things returned to some facsimile of normal. Still, most people remained extremely concerned about the future, because it had become painfully obvious that this ongoing cold war could get really hot, really fast.

    Again, the evolution of consciousness is the focus of this story, along with an understanding of how certain societal and cultural events served to catalyze its emergence, so we’re going to shift our perspective a bit at this point.

    We’re going to stay in the same time-frame, but we’re going to look at a different series of events, set against a very different backdrop.

    In 1945, when the country had emerged victorious from the six years of hell that it had gone through in World War Two, it exhaled a deep sigh of relief that turned into a general state of conformity.

    It seemed that we wanted and needed a calming sense of normality to set in after suffering the harrowing insanity of the unending torment of injury, misery and death that had overcome the world for what seemed like eternity.

    It might have been a little boring, or even intimidating, but we wanted everything to be safely, sanely the same, at least for a while. And that’s what happened. America turned basic vanilla, 70 million babies were born and for a while, we just let it be.

    But that kind of thing only lasts for so long, and then the younger generation starts to stretch its legs and flex its muscles a little. In the mid ‘50s a kind of subculture began developing around the country. In general, it featured a rejection of conventional norms including the materialistic and conformist aspects of the society.

    It became known as the Beat Generation and interestingly, the term had been coined by writer Jack Kerouac, who claimed that it didn’t mean that you were deflated or beat. It meant you had the beat. It was something you could feel, like a jazz beat, and according to him, it didn’t matter what you called it. What mattered is that you had it.

    Along with Kerouac, other key writers included Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Neal Cassidy. The Beats became known for their exploration of alternative lifestyles, experimentation with drugs, and a deep interest in Eastern philosophy and spirituality. Although it began as a relatively small nuance of society, the seeds they planted throughout the fifties and early sixties would populate and grow into a massive forest. And like flower power on steroids, it would permanently alter the landscape of the entire culture.

    Along with the poets, writers and folk musicians, other revolutions began to take hold in the entertainment world. In movies, a new actor named Marlon Brando was being noticed for his avant-garde style of acting, which created a radically different kind of hero.

    With his ability to convey a feeling of inner turmoil and vulnerability beneath a tough exterior, he brought a new sense of realism to the screen. Soon after playing a conflicted blue-collar brute in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” in 1953 he played a black-leather jacketed, delinquent motorcycle gang leader in “The Wild One.”

    Early in the film, a possible girlfriend asked him, “What are you rebelling against Johnny?” With a casual shrug he replied, “What do you got?” His defiant attitude symbolized rebellion and constructed a new kind of “bad boy” archetype in film. James Dean took it a step further in “East of Eden” and “Rebel Without a Cause” and inevitably, movies began to change in a major way.

    A similar, but louder revolution was building in popular music as well. A new rhythm called “Rock and Roll” had begun to emerge. In the early-fifties, artists like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and Fats Domino fueled the flames of the vibrant new sound, and year by year, its popularity continued to grow. Then on September 9, 1956, the burning candle of rock exploded into a full-scale conflagration when Elvis Presly gyrated his way onto the stage of the Ed Sullivan Theatre. The genie was out of the bottle, sixty million kids went nuts, and that was only the beginning.

    Meanwhile, a vibrant Beat scene had begun to develop in New York City’s Greenwich Village and a bunch of coffee houses had sprung up featuring folk music singers and poets. Thousands of onlookers were drawn to the streets on a weekly basis, just to check out the scene.

    In January of 1961, as the Beat scene was in full swing, a 19-year-old kid from Minnesota hitch-hiked to Manhattan to see what he could see. He was a skilled singer-songwriter who played the guitar and harmonica, and a few years earlier, he had changed his name to Bob Dlyan. He began hanging out at the folk café’s and playing songs whenever he got the chance.

    But it soon became apparent that this was no ordinary kid. He seemed to possess an extreme talent, both in writing and performing. Within an amazingly short period of time, he became one of the most important folk/protest voices in the city. Of course, that was just the beginning of a truly legendary career. Fifty-five years later, he was granted the Nobel Prize in literature and the New York Times estimated that he had written over six hundred songs.

    But even back at the beginning, he seemed to be light-years ahead of everyone else. And there seemed to be something prophetic about his work. Surprisingly, he had secured a record deal rather early in his career, and in April of 1962, he went into the studio to record his second album. At one point in early September, he recorded his iconic song, “A Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall.”

    In the song, in response to the question, “Where have you been my blue-eyed son?” he answered with line after now famous line. Listen to his poetic description of the visions he saw, which stood for the darkness that was engulfing the world.

    “I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans. I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard. I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it. I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken. I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children. I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world.” Then as if warning of the fallout from a nuclear blast, he sang the chorus. “And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.”

    The song was an immediate phenomenon with the beat generation and about a month later, it seemed to have been prophetic as President Kennedy went on TV to inform the American public about the Cuban Missile Crisis, and for thirteen days, the world held its breath.

    A few months after that, things seemed to come back from the brink a little, but Dylan was just getting warmed up. He recorded a series of protest songs that instantly became classics and still are today. His first one sounded like it came right out of Eisenhower’s warning. It was called “Masters of War” and was incredibly powerful.

    The first verse says. “Come you masters of war. You that build the big guns. You that build the death planes. You that build all the bombs. You that hide behind walls. You that hide behind desks. I just want you to know. I can see through your masks.”

    A little later he continued – “You’ve thrown the worst fear that can ever be hurled. The fear to bring children into the world. Let me ask you one question – is your money that good. Will it buy you forgiveness, do you think that it could?”

    Then the last verse really puts the nail in the coffin. “And I hope that you die. And your death will come soon. I'll follow your casket by the pale afternoon. And I'll watch while you're lowered. Down to your deathbed. And I'll stand over your grave. 'Til I'm sure that you're dead.”

    Maybe he was thinking that the masters of war were so tricky, they would probably fake their own death if would benefit them. Remember, in his warning, Eisenhower said to take nothing for granted. Regardless, representing the forces of life, he wanted the warmongers off the planet for good.

    Before we close, a few points about the passage of time. First, it still always amazes me that Dylan was only 21 years old when he wrote that song. And besides his youth, these were still the earliest of days. JFK was still president.

    We live now, knowing the history of what was to come, but back then, nobody knew it. Consider what was about to happen over the next seven years – JFK, Martin Luther King, Bobby, Woodstock, Kent State. And the emergence of a new generation whose look and outlook would have been unimaginable back then.

    But that generation was on the forefront of a conscious revolution that would ultimately bring the war machine to a grinding halt. Obviously, it was just a halt, not a stop. But at least it was a beginning.

    Anyway, at that point in 1963, Dylan’s career launched quickly. On April 12, he played Town Hall. On July 27, he played the Newport Folk Festival and on October 26, he played Carnegie Hall. And earlier, on May 27, Columbia Records released his second album which had Masters of War on it.

    But it had another song that blew the roof off the entire folk world. It was called “Blowin’ in the Wind” and it quickly became an anthem for American Youth. Dylan goes through a probing set of questions about the world as it was. “How many roads must a man walk down, before you call him a man? How many times must the cannon balls fly before they’re forever banned? How many deaths will ‘it take til he knows that too many people have died?”

    Then, in the chorus he said, “The answer my friend, is blowin’ in the wind. The answer is blowin’ in the wind.”

    Now, I was in eighth grade when that song became popular and I remember hearing it and wondering, what the hell is he talking about, the answer is blowin’ in the wind? What is it that is blowing in the wind that could possibly be the answer to all these problems?

    Well, we’re going to dig into that in the next episode. So, as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened. And let’s get together in the next one.

  • In the previous episode that took place in March of 1965, I mentioned that although we didn’t know it, the western world was entering into the early stages of a turbulent upheaval that would eventually revolutionize human consciousness on a global level. As one of the seventy million American baby boomers who were busy growing up at the time, I was heading right into it, as well.

    In the chapter of “Wilt, Ike & Me” that was included in the episode, I had made mention of three critical factors that would become significant influences in shaping the upcoming changes – John F. Kennedy, Bob Dylan, and marijuana. Like the subterranean movements of massive Teutonic plates, the foundational reverberations from these powerful forces were about to unleash a major earthquake.

    As with the rest of us who lived through that era, I was radically changed by it, and I’m going to present some of the deeper impressions that it made on me. But before I do, there are a few things I would like to point out.

    First, during that time I was exposed to a combination of events and influences that changed the trajectory of my entire life, and ultimately, personal growth became my primary focus. So, I tend to view things from that particular perspective. Of course, there are many other ways of looking at what happened back then and mine is only one of them.

    I will also include some profound events that happened to me which opened my eyes to a larger vision of what human intelligence can become, which inspired me to reach for higher ground. I continue to be a work in progress, but so is everyone else who is still alive. Regardless of your hopes and dreams, if you want to move forward, you always have to start from where you are. And as any great card player will tell you – the trick to the game is in learning how to play the hand you’re dealt.

    Regarding the societal history of what happened, some of what I am about to discuss can be proven and some of it cannot. But presenting historical fact is not the purpose here. And besides, history isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. According to George Santayana, the renowned American philosopher and educator, “History is a pack of lies about events that never happened
told by people who weren’t there.”

    As with the content of all these podcasts, the information that follows will simply be presented for your consideration. My suggestion is that you just take it and see what it does for you.

    This episode is going to focus on JFK. We’ll get to Dylan and marijuana a little later. For now, we want to look at one essential aspect of JFK’s presidency, particularly his emergence as a champion of world peace.

    Let’s start weaving this tapestry of time on January 17, 1961, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his Farewell Speech to the country. Before he became president, Eisenhower was the quintessential military man. He had graduated West Point in 1915 and remained on active duty in the army for thirty-three consecutive years. A five-star general in WWII, he served as the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe, directing the allies to victory in that grueling six-year tragedy that claimed the lives of 15 million soldiers and 38 million civilians.

    So, it’s three days before he’s about to leave office, and the soldier/president is bidding farewell to the people of the republic that he had served for his entire life. And what does say to them?

    Well, at one point, he issued them a stern, now-famous warning. “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex,” he said. “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.”

    If you wonder that he meant by all this, it can be summed up in one simple, but simply dreadful fact – warfare had become extremely profitable. Both the constant threat of war, as well as its execution, creates an enormous, constant, and ongoing cashflow, regularly generating massive profits.

    This makes it inherently dangerous, because of an inherently dangerous aspect of our current mentality – when it comes to being right or being rich, a lot of us will choose to take the money, regardless of the consequences. Our world is rife with examples of the unenlightened rationales that we use to justify our misguided actions, which are incredibly short-sighted to say the least.

    In his speech, Eisenhower was the first one to coin the term, the “Military Industrial Complex,” which delineated the network of dependencies and relationships that exist between the government, the military, and powerful defense contractors. With his decades of military experience, he warned that we must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. He said that it was the unwarranted influences by the complex that posed the potential risk, due to the disastrous rise of misplaced power that could come from it. In other words, policy could become driven by profit.

    When it comes to gaining influence, nothing beats just plain buying it, which is a practice that human beings began perfecting almost as soon as soon as they created money.

    In modern times, money spent on lobbying congress is a reliable barometer for tracking influence sought. In 2022, the defense industry spent over $125 million in lobbying and its affiliates contributed another $17.5 million to the reelection of certain members of congress. A total of $858 billion was spent on US defense that year.

    Now this is a number we readily accept today. It continues year in and year out. But in 1961, it was unthinkable. It reminds me of what Deep Throat said to Woodward and Bernstein in “All the President’s Men” about solving the mystery of Watergate, when he told them, “Just follow the money.”

    Three days after giving his farewell speech, Eisenhower, the oldest man ever elected president at age 70, passed the gavel to the youngest man ever elected – John F. Kennedy, at age 43. And in many deeply profound ways, the old was giving way to the new.

    We’re going to jump ahead a little bit here. We’re going to move forward 646 days, from inauguration day, Jan. 21, 1961, to October 27, 1962, which is considered by some to be the most significant day in human history which most people have never heard of.

    Of course, John F. Kennedy is one of the most famous figures in all American history and he has been the topic of over 40,000 books, so I’m quite sure you’ve heard of him. But I’m also just as sure that you’ve probably never heard of someone named Vasily Arkhipov. But these were two of the key players on that fateful day.

    As you may have guessed, it was at the very height of the incredibly dangerous Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy had recently learned that Russia had installed a significant number of nuclear missiles in Cuba that were easily capable of inflicting severe damage on over half of the United States. The President had put in place a naval embargo, blocking all cargo into Cuba.

    Ominous threats between the two countries had been escalating and hostilities were rapidly building. Then, earlier on that October day, Russia had shot down a US spy plane, killing the pilot.

    In America, Kennedy’s military staff was calling for an immediate counter attack. Meanwhile, the Russian commanders were demanding that Khrushchev take significant military action as well. Castro even wired Khrushchev calling for him to launch a nuclear missile targeted at Florida. In the extremely volatile situation, things had clearly gone from bad to worse.

    Meanwhile, four Russian submarines were secretly lurking in the waters near the blockade and unbeknownst to US intelligence, they were armed with nuclear torpedoes.

    At one point, the battery died aboard one of the Russian submarines, the B-59, and it lost all communication with the outside world, including with its command center. One of the major US destroyers in the area, the Charles B. Cecil, suddenly detected the sub and began dropping mini depth charges into the water to force it to come to the surface and identify itself.

    On top of all this, the sub had lost its air conditioning and was running low on oxygen. The crew had become extremely anxious and it was getting worse. Believing that the war between the US and Russia had already begun, the captain started to prepare to launch one of their nuclear torpedoes. He would make a pre-emptive strike and blow the US destroyer out of the water.

    Fortunately, though, the Russian rules of engagement dictated that the decision to fire a nuclear weapon had to be unanimous among all three commanders of the ship. At 34 years old Vasily Arkhipov, the guy you never heard of, was second in command and he resolutely refused to endorse the action of launching the torpedo. Instead, he went against the captain, insisting that in a non-combative stance, the sub should rise to the surface and identify itself.

    An intense argument ensued for quite a while, but Arkhipov stood his ground and in accordance with the Russian rules, he blocked the launch. Finally, they decided to bring the B-59 to the surface. The two ships signaled each other of peaceful intentions. The Cecil stood down and the situation ended without further incident. Over the next few days, with a round of intense back-channel diplomacy between Kennedy and Khruschev the entire crisis was finally resolved.

    It may not sound like much now that sixty years of history have gone by, but many scholars consider that moment on October 27 to be the closest humanity has ever come to a full-scale nuclear war, with all the tragedy that could have ensued.

    If Arkhipov had complied with the captain’s order and that Russian sub had sunk the American destroyer with a nuclear torpedo, all hell might have broken loose and we don’t know what might have happened. We do know that Russia and America had major nuclear arsenals pointed at each other that were ready to launch at a moment’s notice. And those weapons were about a thousand times more powerful than the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, which killed about 100,000 people. If things had gotten out of hand, which could have easily happened, it is quite possible that fifty million people could have been killed within an hour or so. More casualties that took place during the six years of World War Two, would have been caused in less than a day.

    Kennedy had been deeply moved by the entire episode. He headed the US position hands on, making all the key decisions from beginning to end and he knew how close we had come to a major, human-caused catastrophe.

    He may or may not have known that just one 34-year-old man, standing on his own, outside the chain of command, made a decision that saved millions of lives. But Kennedy was a renowned student of history and had earlier passed around a book to his staff called “The Guns of August,” which told the story of how World War I took place due to a series of reckless mistakes coupled with poor diplomacy, and he fully understood what could have happened. He knew what was in his hands and he knew what he had to do.

    We’ll stop here for now, but sometime after this harrowing incident JFK began to transform into an active proponent for peace. As the tale continues in the next episode, we’ll get into some fascinating theories about JFK’s metamorphosis. And then we have Dylan, marijuana, LSD and the Beatles on the horizon. So, essentially, the story is just beginning


    As always, keep your eyes, mind, and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

  • As you may recall, I am currently preparing to release a comprehensive personal growth program called, “The Higher Mind Training.” Its purpose is to help people harmonize their intelligence, which will allow them to transform the prison of self-sabotage into the freedom of self-empowerment.

    We will have programs designed to address specific needs, like smoking cessation, freedom from drug and alcohol abuse, and weight loss. We will also offer a general personal growth training, as well.

    As I have also mentioned in some previous podcast episodes, as part of the preparation effort, I am reviewing a large portion of the research material I have collected over the years, including some of the journals that I have kept, and I am going to present some of it to you for your consideration.

    Although the material may seem to cover a wide range of topics, it all revolves around one central theme, which is the fact that as human beings, we have a remarkable potential within our intelligence which remains largely untapped and if we choose to, we can connect with it. Even small improvements in this kind of self-knowledge can significantly transform our lives for the better.

    At this point, I’m going to look back at certain dramatic events that led me to explore some of the deeper sides of life, ultimately leading me to become deeply committed to the process of personal growth. Like each one of us, my personal life has been set against the background of the society and culture I’ve lived in, and as it will become apparent, the times, they were a changin’.

    To set the stage, I’d like to start out with a short chapter from my memoir, Wilt, Ike & Me. It takes place in March of 1965 and I am beginning here primarily due to the nature of the times. Back then, hardly any of us knew it, but we were on the verge of a massive cultural change that would eventually revolutionize the entire western world. And even though it may not be obvious, in many, the revolution goes on today..

    In those days, Wilt Chamberlain had been staying with us in our home for a number of weeks and it was quite an adventure. But this isn’t so much about Wilt, as it is about my sister, Sybil, a college student who had become a bit of what they called at the time, a “beatnik.” So, let’s take a look at a day in the life


    * * *

    A lot of the times in the late afternoon, Wilt and I would end up hanging out in my sister’s room at the end of the hall, listening to music. Sybil had a nice record player and was never there. She was a sophomore now at Temple University and was out all the time.

    Her room was in its own part of the upstairs. Wilt was in my room, and I was in the guest room right next to it. That was on one side of the house, along with the bathroom. Then there was a long hallway that went past a small sundeck on the roof, and Sybil’s room was at the far end of the hall. It was a universe unto itself, and the door to that universe was always closed.

    One thing I learned early in life is that you never, under any circumstances, entered her room without knocking first, and then you had to wait for her permission to come in. This was a cardinal rule and we all obeyed it implicitly. Only our homemaker, Geneva had free rein to come and go as she pleased.

    Sybil was what was called a beatnik in those days. My mother just called her a vilde chaya, which is a Yiddish term that doesn’t translate perfectly into English, but basically means a “wild Indian.” And that shoe really fit.

    She was a lot like the weather in our part of the world—lots of warm, sunny days but some dark, stormy ones as well. And as her little brother, while I enjoyed basking in the sunshine when it was out, I always knew to get the hell out of the way whenever one of those storms blew through.

    She was by no means a bad kid, adored her parents and was fiercely loyal to her family. But she had an untamable wild streak running through her. And no matter what was going on, she was always her own boss.

    The first time I really saw it was during the 1960 presidential campaign. My father was for Nixon. He was tight with the Pennsylvania Republican party and had met both Eisenhower and Nixon. He had even unsuccessfully run for Congress in 1956.

    On top of that, he was no fan of the Kennedys. In his view, Joseph Kennedy had been weak on Hitler and he didn’t trust him when it came to Jewish welfare. And in my father’s world, the apple never falls too far from the tree.

    Sybil, on the other hand, fell madly in love with JFK. He was the first candidate who was a real media superstar, and my fifteen-year-old sister was crazy about him. She pasted about five hundred pictures of him on her wall in a massive collage. I think my father got nauseous every time he saw it and avoided ever going into her room. Even after the election, her JFK shrine endured for quite a while.

    Now that she was in college, her taste in wall décor had veered off into some new directions. One of her girlfriends was a talented portrait painter, who later became a famous courtroom artist. She painted three large full-color paintings for Sybil, who displayed them prominently in her room.

    Two were portraits of Sybil. In one, she was wearing an enormous black-feathered hat. It looked like her head was covered by a dark, foreboding raven. In the other, she was seated on a big, comfortable gold easy chair, with an opened book lying face-down on her lap. From the sour look on her face, she was either the most bored or the most depressed person in the world.

    But she hung the masterpiece of her collection in the center of the back wall, and it really grabbed your attention when you walked in the room. In the rear of the large painting was a blindfolded naked woman hanging from a meat hook by her tied hands. A priest stood in the foreground, dressed in a black suit and a black shirt with a white priest’s collar. He was holding a Bible in his hands with a gold crucifix on top of it. And he was staring daggers at you.

    Sybil added her own piece of art to the mix. She made a collage and put it right next to the painting. She covered a large piece of poster paper with cutout photos of every form of human suffering imaginable. It was unbelievably awful. And in the middle, she put a true-to-life depiction of Jesus on the cross.

    She was obviously making a statement of some kind, but it probably would have gone over better in a dorm than in her room at home. My father couldn’t stand it.

    I was sitting with him in the kitchen having ice cream one Thursday night, while my mother was still in New York doing her charity work. Something seemed to be bothering him. The whole time we ate, he had a weird look in his eye, like his mind was on a slow simmer. Suddenly it exploded into full boil.

    “God damn it!” he said and smacked his hand down on the kitchen table. He stood up, went over to a drawer, rummaged through it and pulled out a medium-size carving knife. “God damn it!” he repeated and angrily stomped out of the kitchen toward the steps that led upstairs.

    “What the hell is this?” I thought and went running after him. Knife in hand, he went up the steps, then down the hall to Sybil’s closed door. He burst it open without knocking and flicked on the lights. I had no idea what he was up to, but I was glad she wasn’t home.

    He walked right over to her human suffering collage, and using the sharp point of the knife, started scraping off the Crucifixion scene. He attacked it like a maniac and kept going until he had gotten rid of every last bit of it. When he was finished, he stood there and stared at the poster for a moment. Then he turned around and looked at me. I had absolutely nothing to say, and neither did he.

    Now, of course, symbols mean different things to different people, and whatever that image meant to him, he clearly didn’t want it in his daughter’s bedroom. But now it was gone, and everything seemed fine. We walked back to the kitchen together, sat down at the table, and finished our ice cream as though nothing had happened.

    My mother was absolutely horrified when she got home later, and he told her what he’d done. Somewhat of an artist herself, she felt he had no right to invade Sybil’s room and inflict his will on her creative expression. She thought it was appalling.

    When Sybil got home the next day and my mother sheepishly began to give her the details, my sister made a point of being outraged. But her biggest effort was to hide her deep relief.

    When my mother said, “Sybil, Daddy went into your room last night,” her heart sank, and she got really scared. But when she heard what actually happened, she was so happy she almost burst out laughing, but kept a straight face.

    She told me years later that she always kept an ounce of grass in the drawer of the night table next to her bed. She couldn’t have cared less about the collage, but if he had found the marijuana, it could have been a disaster. She would have really had to reach into her bag of tricks to wiggle her way out of that one. We both knew she could have done it—she was that good. But it would have been quite a challenge, even for her.

    Now, this was still the early days, when marijuana had just started blowing in the wind, and not too many people were smoking it at the time.

    When she first started, I could clearly smell a pungent, unfamiliar odor in the air. It definitely was not the same as the normal cigarette smoke that pervaded every other part of our house. When I asked her about it, she told me she had begun burning incense. It was a new thing she had found, a study aid that would clear her mind and help her concentrate. It made sense to me.

    One day, during Wilt’s stay, she was home in her room with the door closed. Wilt and I were in my room, and I had to drive him somewhere. As we walked out into the hall, it reeked of that smell of hers. He immediately picked up on it and stopped on the landing before we went downstairs.

    “What’s that?” he asked me, taking a couple sniffs of the air.

    “Oh, Sybil’s into burning incense now. She does it all the time. It helps her study.”

    “Really?” Wilt, sounding impressed. He looked at me like I was five years old. “So, you think that’s incense, huh?”

    I didn’t say anything. What else could it be?

    “OK,” he said with a chuckle. “Incense it is.”

    But before he moved, he took one more sniff and nodded in appreciation. “It smells like some pretty good stuff to me,” he added, and we left.

    * * *

    Before we close this episode, I want to add one other element to the mix. Behind her closed door, my sister always had music playing and at one point, for some strange reason, she seemed to have gotten into this hillbilly singer who had a high pitched, twangy voice and played a guitar and harmonica.

    It was such a weird sound that I figured it must have been some kind of comedy album. I mean, why else would anyone pay good money to listen to someone who sounded like that? It turned out that the hillbilly singer was some kid my brother’s age named Bob Dylan.

    Astonishingly, within another few years, he would become a major hero of mine and I would know all his songs by heart. But that was still a few lifetimes away. Again, these were the very early stages of a major, unprecedented change of consciousness that was about to disrupt the entire world, but we’ll pick it up again in the next episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened and let’s get together in the next one.

  • I’m going to ask you to try to stretch your mind and imagination a bit for this episode. A true story is going to be presented to you. It took place in India, sometime around 1910 and you may find the cultural differences to be a little unusual for you. But on a subtextual level, a lot of important information is going to be presented as well, and you may find that it takes you to some interesting places within your own intelligence. I know it did for me.

    As I mentioned a few episodes earlier, as my interest in Personal Growth began to grow strongly towards the end of 1971, I became aware of certain writers and speakers that grew into significant sources of information for me, and many have remained so.

    One of these was the renowned Indian Yogi, Parmahansa Yogananda, and my earliest introduction to him was in the memoir he had written which was called, “Autobiography of a Yogi.”

    At the time, I was being exposed to an idea about God and religion that was new and somewhat revolutionary for me. Rather than being far away from us, the Divine Essence was actually very close. In fact, closer than our own breath. And you didn’t have to die to get to be with it. You could somehow could turn your attention within and experience it now, while you are alive. Yogananda’s writings were very much in line with this perspective.

    Historically, he came to America in 1920 and became a powerful force in the west until his death in 1952. His towering legacy still lives on, but this story is from a much earlier time in his life, when he was a teenager, still living in India. And according to him, it marked a truly major turning point.

    For thousands of years, that country has had a tradition of gurus, who are teachers and master practitioners. They usually have a set of disciples that they teach. At the time of this story, Yogananda had recently become a disciple of a master named Sri Yukteswar and had begun living in his ashram, practicing, and studying to become a yogi.

    But as a teenager and young college student, he was getting restless and wanted to travel to the Himalaya mountains. He thought he would go there to sit in silence to achieve continuous divine communion. Although he felt his intense yearning was sincere at the time, he later called it “one of the unpredictable delusions which occasionally assail the devotee.”

    His teacher discouraged the idea, saying that "Wisdom is better sought from a man of realization than from an inert mountain." But Yogananda decided to go anyway.

    As he was preparing for his journey, he heard stories about someone known as the “sleepless saint” who was supposedly always awake in an ecstatic state of consciousness. The story was that he had spent decades alone in a cave, practicing meditation and had achieved some kind of enlightenment. Yogananda decided to travel to the village in the mountains where this man supposedly lived and try to contact him.

    After a few days on the road, as he got nearer to the village, he came upon a shrine that many people in the area considered to be a holy place, like Lourdes. When he walked into the temple, he was surprised to see that it contained nothing but a large stone ball. Most pilgrims bowed before it, but Yogananda, believing he should bow only to God, just walked out without offering any reverence at all to the huge stone ball.

    He finally got to the village and started asking where he might be able to find this holy man, whose name was Ram Gopal Babu. And here is where his nightmare of confusion began.

    He began to be told a series of conflicting bits of information. He was told that no such person lived in the village. He was sent to another village several miles away. When he got there, he was told he had made the wrong turn. In another village he was told he had just missed the man.

    Finally, night fell and he found a place to eat and sleep. The next day, his fruitless journey got even worse, filled with hour after hour of following wrong information, in the blistering hot sun. Toward the end of the day, feeling completely hopeless as he was standing at a crossroad wondering which way to go, the extreme heat made him feel like he was ready to pass out. Then, he noticed someone walking towards him at a casual and very leisurely pace.

    In his autobiography, here is what Yogananda happened next -

    “The stranger halted beside me. Short and slight, he was physically unimpressive save for an extraordinary pair of piercing dark eyes. "I was planning to leave the village, but your purpose was good, so I awaited you." He shook his finger in my astounded face. "Aren't you clever to think that, unannounced, you could pounce on me?”

    In the presence of this master, I stood speechless. His next remark was abruptly put. "Tell me; where do you think God is?"

    “Why, He is within me and everywhere." I doubtless looked as bewildered as I felt.

    "All-pervading, eh?" The saint chuckled. "Then why, young sir, did you fail to bow before the Infinite in the stone symbol at the temple yesterday? Your pride caused you the punishment of being misdirected
and today, too, you have had a fairly uncomfortable time of it!"

    I agreed wholeheartedly, wonder-struck that an omniscient eye hid within the unremarkable body before me. Healing strength emanated from the yogi; I was instantly refreshed in the scorching field.

    "The devotee inclines to think his path to God is the only way," he said. "Yoga, through which divinity is found within, is doubtless the highest road
But discovering the Lord within, we soon perceive Him without. Holy shrines 
are rightly venerated as nuclear centers of spiritual power."

    The saint's censorious attitude vanished; his eyes became compassionately soft. He patted my shoulder.

    "Young yogi, I see you are running away from your master. He has everything you need; you must return to him. Mountains cannot be your guru." Ram Gopal was repeating the same thought which Sri Yukteswar had expressed at our last meeting.

    "Masters are under no cosmic compulsion to limit their residence." My companion glanced at me quizzically. "The Himalayas in India and Tibet have no monopoly on saints. What one does not trouble to find within will not be discovered by transporting the body hither and yon. As soon as the devotee is willing to go even to the ends of the earth for spiritual enlightenment, his guru appears near-by."

    I silently agreed.

    “Are you able to have a little room where you can close the door and be alone?"

    "Yes." I reflected that this saint descended from the general to the particular with disconcerting speed.

    "That is your cave." The yogi bestowed on me a gaze of illumination which I have never forgotten. "That is your sacred mountain. That is where you will find the kingdom of God."

    His simple words instantaneously banished my lifelong obsession for the Himalayas.

    "Young sir, your divine thirst is laudable. I feel great love for you." Ram Gopal took my hand and led me to a quaint hamlet. The adobe houses were covered with coconut leaves and adorned with rustic entrances.

    The saint seated me on the umbrageous bamboo platform of his small cottage. After giving me sweetened lime juice and a piece of rock candy, he entered his patio and assumed the lotus posture. In about four hours I opened my meditative eyes and saw that the moonlit figure of the yogi was still motionless. As I was sternly reminding my stomach that man does not live by bread alone, Ram Gopal approached me.

    "I see you are famished; food will be ready soon."

    A fire was kindled under a clay oven on the patio; rice and dhal were quickly served on large banana leaves. My host courteously refused my aid in all cooking chores. "The guest is God," a Hindu proverb, has commanded devout observance from time immemorial.

    Ram Gopal arranged some torn blankets on the floor for my bed, and seated himself on a straw mat. Overwhelmed by his spiritual magnetism, I ventured a request.

    "Sir, why don't you grant me a samadhi ?" (Note: In Hindu yoga, samadhi is regarded as the final elevated state of consciousness, at which union with the divine is reached.)

    "Dear one, I would be glad to convey the divine contact, but it is not my place to do so." The saint looked at me with half-closed eyes. "Your master will bestow that experience shortly. Your body is not tuned just yet. As a small lamp cannot withstand excessive electrical voltage, so your nerves are unready for the cosmic current. If I gave you the infinite ecstasy right now, you would burn as if every cell were on fire.

    "You are asking illumination from me," the yogi continued musingly, "while I am wondering-inconsiderable as I am, and with the little meditation I have done-if I have succeeded in pleasing God, and what worth I may find in His eyes at the final reckoning."

    "Sir, have you not been singleheartedly seeking God for a long time?"

    "I have not done much. For twenty years I occupied a secret grotto, meditating eighteen hours a day. Then I moved to a more inaccessible cave and remained there for twenty-five years, entering the yoga union for twenty hours daily. I did not need sleep, for I was ever with God. My body was more rested in the complete calmness of super consciousness than it could be by the partial peace of the ordinary subconscious state.

    "In super consciousness, the internal organs remain in a state of suspended animation, electrified by the cosmic energy. By such means I have found it unnecessary to sleep for years. The time will come when you too will dispense with sleep."

    "My goodness, you have meditated for so long and yet are unsure of the Lord's favor!" I gazed at him in astonishment. "Then what about us poor mortals?"

    "Well, don't you see, my dear boy, that God is Eternity Itself? To assume that one can fully know Him by forty-five years of meditation is rather a preposterous expectation. However, even a little meditation saves one from the dire fear of death and after-death states. Do not fix your spiritual ideal on a small mountain, but hitch it to the star of unqualified divine attainment. If you work hard, you will get there."

    Enthralled by the prospect, I asked him for further enlightening words. He related a wondrous story of his first meeting with a renowned Hindu avatar.

    Around midnight Ram Gopal fell into silence, and I lay down on my blankets. Closing my eyes, I saw flashes of lightning; the vast space within me was a chamber of molten light. I opened my eyes and observed the same dazzling radiance. The room became a part of that infinite vault which I beheld with interior vision.

    "Why don't you go to sleep?"

    "Sir, how can I sleep in the presence of lightning, blazing whether my eyes are shut or open?"

    "You are blessed to have this experience; the spiritual radiations are not easily seen." The saint added a few words of affection.

    At dawn Ram Gopal gave me rock candies and said I must depart. I felt such reluctance to bid him farewell that tears coursed down my cheeks.

    "I will not let you go empty-handed." The yogi spoke tenderly. "I will do something for you."

    He smiled and looked at me steadfastly. I stood rooted to the ground, peace rushing like a mighty flood through the gates of my eyes. I was instantaneously healed of a pain in my back, which had troubled me intermittently for years.

    Renewed, bathed in a sea of luminous joy, I wept no more. After touching the saint's feet, I sauntered into the jungle, making my way through its tropical tangle until I reached the village with the holy temple.

    There I made a second pilgrimage to the famous shrine, and prostrated myself fully before the altar. The round stone enlarged before my inner vision until it became the cosmical spheres, ring within ring, zone after zone, all dowered with divinity.”

    And so ends this part of Yogananda’s remarkable story, which was clearly worlds away from our own. As I mentioned earlier, I came upon this in the very early stages of my interest in personal growth and a few parts of it really hit me. And these parts still impress me, but on a deeper level as I continue to age.

    Here are a few of them for your consideration. First was the general state of consciousness of Ram Gopal. He knew all about Yogananda before they ever met. He knew that he was travelling to try to find him and he knew about Yogananda’s refusal to bow before the stone in the shrine.

    Also, he had meditated alone in a cave for decades and seemed to be in a permanently exalted state. Yet, even in that state, he mentioned that when we are talking about the Divine Force, or God, we are talking about the infinite, and practicing meditation for several decades in one lifetime isn’t necessarily as big a deal as it may seem to us. And finally, he healed Yogananda of back pain that he had suffered from for most of his life.

    All this made me look at the state of my awareness at that time. I was a standard, twenty-two year old American know it all, who thought he knew it all, but was starting to find out a thing or two about some of the illusions of this life. And I started wondering what the greater potential of our consciousness is? It suddenly seemed like there was more to life than learning how to master the skills of how much, how many, where and when. All centered around the stone cathedral of “I, Me, Mine.”

    We don’t have the time to go into more detail about how this story affected me. I just wanted to present it to you for your own personal consideration, and I hope you found it interesting and helpful, as well as somewhat enlightening. Enough has been expressed for this episode As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

  • As with many people, in my line of work, one thing often leads to another, and often in some very unexpected ways. As you may recall, I have mentioned in a few earlier episodes that over the years, I have been involved in the writing of several stories for the purpose of possibly developing them into novels or films, and at one point in my life, I became very involved in studying story structure.

    This was around the time of the release of the first Star Wars movie and during my research I became intrigued when I learned that George Lucas, the writer, producer, and director of the film, had been significantly influenced by someone named Joseph Campbell and that the basic story structure of Star Wars was largely developed from of what Cambell had termed, “The Myth of the Hero.”

    This was from his book, “The Hero With a Thousand Faces,” that was published in 1949 and as I started studying it, I was amazed to find that what happens to Luke Skywalker in Star Wars follows the exact outline of Campell’s story structure to the tee.

    As I continued my research, it turned out that Campell’s understanding of the hero was just one part of his work, which also included a general grasp of the power of myth in the human psyche. And, additionally, a large influence on him had been psychologist Carl Jung.

    Of course, like most people who have gone through the standard western educational system, I had heard of Jung. but to be honest with you, the only thing I think I knew about him was that there were some differences in the way his last name could be pronounced. I called him Carl Young, but some of the finer students of linguistics pronounced his last name Yooong. I doubt he would care. I don’t want to sound too shallow, but that’s really about all I knew about the guy.

    Now suddenly I had an interest in him. It began with his influence on Campbell and the way his views pertained to crafting stories. But the deeper I got, the more fascinating his overall viewpoint became to me.

    By way of a very brief overview, Jung was a Swiss psychologist born in 1875 who became one of the major figures in modern psychology. But he was a little different from Freud and many of the other authorities of his time. He was slightly more esoteric. He founded analytical psychology, which emphasizes the exploration of the unconscious and deeper elements of the psyche.

    He also introduced the concept of archetypes, which are universal, innate symbols and themes which remarkably appear in myths, dreams, and fantasies across all human cultures, throughout all eras of civilization. He considered them to be part of the collective unconscious, representing fundamental human experiences and emotions that we all have in common, like a shared reservoir of memories and ideas that all human beings inherit.

    And to take it one step further, he also delved into a process that he called individuation, which perceives life as a journey of self-discovery. It is a transformative process, and Campbell used it as a foundation of his myth of the hero. The protagonist, which also represents each one of us, undergoes trials and hardships, comes face-to-face with the unknown, and ultimately triumphs, returning to the world with newfound wisdom, giving boons to his fellowman. This is a basic storyline that has deeply affected human beings since the beginning of recorded history.

    I could see that thanks to George Lucas’s consultations with Joseph Campbell, Luke Skywalker’s journey in the ultra-modern Sci-Fi epic Star Wars, exactly mirrored the psychological and spiritual transformation that Jung had associated with individuation.

    I was starting to get pretty blown out and although my initial interest in Jung’s observations began with just my interest in the elements of good story construction, his understandings began to take on greater relevancy to me as they pertained to my interest in some of the deeper meanings in life and how they relate to personal growth.

    Which leads me to the basic theme of this episode. Because, as interesting as this may have hopefully been so far, what I really want to do is pass along four of my favorite quotes from Jung that I have found to be particularly transformative, and I have found that their meanings to me have deepened considerably over the decades.

    The first one is, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”

    In this regard, Jung observed that individuals tend to project their own unconscious qualities onto others. In other words, the aspects that we find irritating, offensive, or challenging in other people may be reflections of our own unresolved issues or unacknowledged traits.

    For me, this one required a little upgrade in the old humility department because about the easiest thing in the world to do is to dislike something about somebody else. Take it from me, if you’re tuned into that sort of thing, you see it all day long. So and so is narcissistically self-centered. This one has an obnoxious mean streak. Or, that one is a power-hungry egomaniac. And on and on, ad nauseum.

    And it gets a little unsettling if you take Jung’s point of view, that maybe the reason I see all these terrible traits in others is because I carry them all in me. Maybe if I didn’t have them, I wouldn’t even notice them. Like hearing strangers speaking in a foreign language that I didn’t understand, I wouldn’t pay it any attention at all.

    And if I recognize these irritating traits within myself, maybe I can find out what is causing them, and more importantly, maybe even transform them into something better, which would be great for both for me and for those around me. I find that anytime you think like that, you don’t feel like such a big shot.

    The second great quote from Jung is, “Your vision can clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside awakes.”

    This was in line with another realization I was dealing with as I started to become aware of some of the sayings of Buddha. Once, someone asked him what he was. Was he some kind of divine being, like a god, or an angel or a master of something like that? And he replied, “I am awake. To be awake is everything.”

    Now a library worth of books has been written about this idea of being awake in life, rather than being asleep. But Jung’s quote was pretty confronting to me. How much did I look into my own heart? To tell the truth, I didn’t even know what that meant, and no matter what I think I may have learned in the last half century, I probably still don’t.

    And when it comes to looking outside versus looking inside, I wouldn’t say that all my attention was completely focused on the outside. Probably no more than 98% of it. And again, I’ve been practicing personal growth for over fifty years, and I think there’s a decent possibility that I may have picked up a percent or even two over the that time. Which, according to Jung, means that I’m still basically dreaming my life away.

    So, it seems like we all have in front of us the idea of making life a journey of self-discovery, gaining clarity through self-reflection, transcending illusions, and awakening through internal inquiry. For me, although it may sound like a tall order, what else should I be doing with this fleeting existence?

    The third quote that I want to mention is a short, pithy quip that I still really enjoy. “One ought not go to cadavers to study life.”

    Of course, you can look at this idea in a lot of ways, but here is an idea to consider. Perhaps observe the difference between what is alive and what is not. We have life within us. We are alive. But many of the antiquated concepts from unenlightened cultures that went before us are dead and the people that came up with them are long since dead. Flowers and insects are alive. And one thing about life – it always functions only in present time. The past is a memory and the future is only an idea. Life is always now and all of creation is throbbing with life.

    Maybe what he is saying is that by bonding ourselves to life, rather than to death we will produce a major change in both our outlook as well as our behavior. I’m reminded of a passage in the book, “Little Big Man,” by Thomas Berger, which was the source of the movie of the same name.

    Old Lodge Skins, the wise Cheyenne chief was reflecting on the difference between the Native Americans and the White Man. He said something like, to the Cheyenne, everything is alive. Not only the people, the animals and all the plants, but the dirt, the mountains, the sky and the sea, the earth and all of creation is alive. To the Cheyenne, everything is alive. But to the White Man, everything is dead. He even sees his brothers and sisters as just the walking dead. There’s a lot to unpack in that comment.

    Finally, the last quote by Jung that really got to me was, ““The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown. We don’t so much solve our problems as we outgrow them. We add capacities and experiences that eventually make us bigger than the problems.”

    This was the first time I had ever heard things put quite in this way. I know for me, I seem to spend the majority of my life solving problems. One thing, after the next, after the next. And I never thought about the idea of outgrowing them, that I could become bigger than the problems.

    The idea of outgrowing something reminded me of the first time I ever learned about outgrowing anything. I must have been about five years old and I had a pair of red cowboy boots that I absolutely adored. I wore them every day through the winter and when spring came, my mother put them on in the back of my closet.

    I completely forgot about them until late fall, about six months later. She was getting me dressed to go to a birthday party and I saw my old boots. I was overwhelmed with excitement at the idea of wearing them again. When I told my mother I wanted to get them out she said, “Oh no. They won’t fit you anymore.”

    What she said didn’t make any sense to me. These were my favorite shoes. After begging her about a hundred times, she finally put them on me with a big shoe horn. They felt pretty tight, but I decided to wear them anyway.

    When I walked out the front door, to my shock, I couldn’t even make it to the car. They were so tight that I couldn’t stand them and had to get them off as soon as possible. And the idea of ever wanting to wear again went right out the window. Permanently.

    Jung would say that it is the same with the greatest and most important problems in our lives. The only solution to them is to outgrow them. Maybe as our consciousness expands and grows, from our enlarged perspective, we see them with a different set of eyes. And we approach them with a different set of tools. And maybe from there, not only are the big problems taken care of, the little ones fall in line as well. Who know? It seems like we each have to find out for ourselves.

    Anyway, I hope that the quotes from Dr. Jung have stimulated some ideas in your awareness. As with a lot of insights from the world of personal growth, if you give them a little time and attention, they have the potential to bear some wonderfully tasty and truly nutritious fruit. But let’s leave it at that for this episode.

    As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

  • I am continuing with the process of releasing some of the large amount of notes that I’ve filed away over the years that pertain to personal growth. As I mentioned, I am not building any podcasts specifically around any of these ideas. I am just putting them out to you without any particular format so you can take them in one at a time and see if they do anything for you.

    One thing I didn’t mention is that some of these are not just ideas, they are actually notes that I’ve taken with the idea to possibly construct a short story around. It’s something that I learned from the gifted American Literature professor that I was fortunate to have in my senior year of college, prize winning author Kermit Moyer.

    Kert told me that for the most part, he wrote like a jazz musician who was improvising a piece. He said he never knew where the writing would take him. He would just get started and soon the work would begin to take shape, almost on its own. He authored many of his writings in that way. The idea caught my fancy, and although I do a lot more planning than that, the technique is something that I do love to play around with.

    So, we’re going to begin today’s podcast with a quick story about something that happened to me about fifteen or twenty years ago. I have a working title for this working story, but to be honest, I’m not sure that the story is going to go much farther than here. The title is, “You Know It When You See It.”

    As I mentioned in a few episodes in the past, I’ve been playing golf for many, many years and I am really, really bad at it. Trust me. I’m not being modest or humble about it. The truth is that I was horrible when I first started playing around with it and I am every bit as horrible now as I was twenty-five years ago. I do enjoy playing. I’ve learned a lot about it and a lot from it. But I’m just plain bad at it.

    Comedian Larry David says he’s in the same boat and he once put it this way. “You really have to have a knack for this game and the truth is, I’m knackless.”

    Don’t worry. This story isn’t really about golf at all. It’s more about the recognition of mastery. So, here’s what happened.

    We live in a condominium on Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park and there is a golf driving range about two miles away that is called “Longknockers.” I used to go over there about twice a week to hit some balls. Because my schedule is usually pretty flexible, I would go over on weekdays in the early afternoon, when the place was basically empty.

    Like most driving ranges, it is a huge, open field and being in the park, there is a large line of trees on one side. I would generally go all the way over near this line of trees so I could be in the shade as I was hitting.

    One afternoon, I went over there as usual and as I was walking over to my secluded spot near the trees, I was surprised to see that someone was sitting in a chair, right behind the area where I usually played from. There was never anybody there and I always had it to myself, so I was mildly perturbed. Anyway as I walked closer, I could see that this guy wasn’t just sitting in the chair, he was actually sprawled across it. As I got a little closer, I could see that he seemed to be unconscious. I didn’t want to disturb him, but I did want to hit my bucket of balls from my spot, so I set up about ten yards in front of him.

    From that vantage point, I could see a few empty bottles on the grass around his chair. I’m not sure exactly what had been in them, but they looked like booze bottles and the general smell of the place gave a clear confirmation.

    I started to hit a few balls in the direction of this huge tree that was off in the distance. I had been told it was about 210 yards away. I would always hit towards the tree and even with my driver, I would consider myself lucky to be able to reach it. If you know anything about golf, you know that if you consider yourself lucky to be able to hit your driver 210 yards, you’re not what they call a “big hitter.”

    So, I kept hitting and the guy was still passed out on the chair behind me. Finally, after I hit a shot I heard him say, “You’re not replicatin’ your practice swing.” I turned around and looked at him. He was sitting up a little and was a little more conscious than he had been before.

    “What the hell are you takin’ a practice swing for if you’re not going to at least try to replicate it. Complete waste of time.”

    I knew he was right, but I also knew that it wouldn’t be a stretch to categorize my interest in golf with that phrase. Complete waste of time wouldn’t be an inaccurate summation of all the hours I had spent in my life hitting golf balls. Mark Twain once said that golf was a good walk spoiled, which never bothered me much because I usually took a cart.

    “You want a lesson?” he asked me. My first thought was, “My God, why would I want a lesson from this guy. He looked like he’d be lucky if he could stand up.

    “I teach all the best players around here. I teach at Merion, Pine Valley, Commonwealth National.” That last name caught my attention becasue my closest friend belonged to Commonwealth.

    “Oh yeah?” I asked. “How much?”

    “Forty bucks,” he answered.

    “I only got twenty,” I said.

    “Good enough,” he responded.

    He got up and kind of staggered over to me. He looked in my bag. “Oh, you got a new Bubble Burner,” he said. Taylor Made, a major golf company had just come out with a new driver called the Bubble Burner. It was a big sensation and my wife had surprised me with one for my birthday a little earlier. It was an incredibly sweet gesture on her part because the truth is, at my level play, buying me a fake putter for miniature golf would have been a far more appropriate use of money.

    “I haven’t seen one of these in person yet,” the alleged teacher said. “You mind if I hit a few? He asked.

    “No, not at all. Go ahead,” I responded.

    Now I’m not nearly a good enough writer to describe what happened next. He pulled the club out of my bag and the second he had the club in his hands, my perception of him immediately changed. I could tell just by the way he casually held the club in his hands that this guy really knew his stuff.

    He teed up a ball, and with a very slow and easy, and obviously perfect swing, with no recognizable source of power whatsoever, he hit a ball over the tree in the distance. And I mean well over the tree, like over 250 yards in the air.

    For a hacker like me, whenever you see someone hit a ball like that, you are basically stunned, which I was. He hit about five balls in a row. Each one went way over the tree and he deliberately bent a couple of shots to the right, which in golf is called a “fade.” And then a few over to the left, called a “draw.”

    I was in a transformed state just watching him. I’m not sure I was even breathing. He handed me back the club and said, “I don’t really like what they’ve done with this. I couldn’t really control it.”

    I could barely move. He started giving me a lesson and honestly, I don’t really remember what he taught me. I do remember that the way he had me swing the club was very different from the way I had been doing it.

    We had a nice time together and as we were about to say goodbye to each other, he looked at me sideways and said, “Let me ask you something.” He was still pretty inebriated. “If I hadn’t shown you what I showed you today, what would you have been practicing?”

    “I don’t know,” I responded, “I guess my same..”

    “Your same old freaking bullshot,” he growled back at me, like a drill sergeant. Of course those weren’t his exact words, but you get the point.

    Later that day, I called my friend who belonged to Commonwealth and he knew exactly who this guy was because he was well known to the top players as the best player in the entire Philadelphia area. He could have made the pro tour but he had a serious problem with alcohol and was never able to kick it. A couple of years later, they found him dead in a flop house.

    So why did I tell you this story? Well, simply because it taught me two very critical lessons that ultimately had to do with personal growth. The first one is, you know that you are in the presence of the master of a craft as soon as you see them perform. This can be about anything, sports, cards, chess, knitting, you name it. You can be around a lot of people who are good, but when you’re with a true master, you know it when you see it.

    With this guy, whose first name was Billy, he was dead drunk when I first met him and he could have said a million things to me. When he took the club in his hands, I could tell he had skill, but I still had my doubts. But as soon as he started hitting the ball, constantly putting it well over the tree in the distance that I could barely reach, all my doubt immediately vanished and I was in that state in that famous Bruno Mars song when he sang, “Don’t believe me, just watch.”

    The last thing that he said to me was deeply meaningful as well. If I hadn’t run into a teacher who could point out my errors and show me the way to a better swing, even though I would be doing something that I would call practicing, all I would really be doing is my same old freaking bullshot.

    And by the way, with golf as with most skills, nothing beats having a real live teacher giving you instruction. God knows I have a million books and tapes on golf and they really haven’t done me much good. One good teacher is worth its weight in gold.

    Now, it’s easy to know when you’re exposed to transformative information about golf because your score eventually starts to improve. With personal growth, if you have access to good information and especially if you have a good teacher, your inner world starts to improve. As our consciousness begins to evolve and expand, there is a natural sense of harmonic well being that starts to come over you, and all the better angels of your nature start to show up.

    Well, I haven’t really examined this little anecdote in several years and it’s always a lot of fun and a little enlightening whenever I do. It was just a quirky little lesson about life that came to me unexpectedly on a golf driving range, delivered by a lovable rapscallion of a character who could have easily come straight out of the Twilight Zone. It’s the kind of thing that often happens when you’re lucky enough to be able to tune into it.

    So that will be it for this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let’s get together in the next one.

  • As you may recall, I had mentioned in the last two episodes that we are making a slight change in format for the “Stop Making Yourself Miserable” podcasts. Instead of building each episode around one particular theme, I am going to start presenting notes that I’ve made over the last fifty years that were particularly inspiring to me as I continued to go through all the ever-unfolding phases of inner growth.

    For me, these living ideas are like beautiful flowers and bountiful fruit trees that align the side of the path I travel along. And again, they are not being presented as specific teachings of any kind, just simply ideas for you to consider. My suggestion is that you just take them in, maybe contemplate their meaning a little and see if they take you anywhere interesting within yourself. You may come across some pleasant surprises that might be surprisingly long lasting. You never know because the evolution of your inner consciousness truly is a gift that keeps on giving.

    And one last point, which again comes completely from my own experiences with each one of these – although they may seem to be incredibly simple, they are often far deeper than they appear to be at first glance. For me, when I would encounter one of these, a natural process of inner contemplation would take place, seemingly on its own, and layer upon layer of meaning would make itself known.

    This following message is a perfect example of the simplicity of the profound and the profundity of the simple. As I mentioned at the end of the last episode, several decades ago I had been reading the transcript of a press conference that had been held for Prem Rawat, who was just thirteen years old at the time.

    Someone asked him, “Do you believe in God?” And he immediately responded, "I believe in the God who put a smile on every baby's face." Now that phrase really stopped me dead in my tracks and made me give it some real thought.

    For one thing, I had never heard that particular idea before and the first thing I asked myself was, “Is there really a smile on every baby’s face?” Well, obviously, they’re not smiling all the time. I mean a lot of the time, they’re crying. But then I realized the deeper idea behind the question, which made me rephrase it to, “Is there the potential for a smile within every baby? And if there is, where does it come from? Might it be instinctual?’

    Now back then, I had been around enough babies to know that they can break into a beautiful smile at any time, so on an intuitive level it quickly became clear that yes, there is a potential smile within every baby. So I had no issue with the idea that there is a smile on every baby’s face.

    Then I started thinking about the nature of that smile and a few things quickly occurred to me. The first one is that a baby’s smile is incredibly transformative on the human beings around it. It’s actually remarkable.

    You can take the most hard-boiled person in the world, who could easily win the Mr. or Mrs. Universe title for the most miserable people on earth, and put them alone in a room with a baby. And if no one is there and enough time has gone by for the adult to settle down a little, when that baby suddenly beams one of those beatific smiles at them, the adult’s heart of ice will melt in an instant and they’ll smile and start cooing at the baby in a matter of seconds.

    This inherent tenderness of a human’s connection with a baby is a critical element of the highest and best aspects of our nature. And it doesn’t even have to be a human baby either. The sweetness of this reaction has been clinically observed in people when they get around babies of other species as well. We all know what happens to people when they get to be around a baby puppy or a kitten. And it doesn’t stop there. It’s the same with baby deer, baby rabbits, baby horses, all the way through to baby turtles. It just does something truly wonderful to us.

    So, if an incredibly powerful smile lights up every baby’s face, the next big question is, “What are they smiling about?”

    When viewed from a certain perspective, this is a truly great question. Studies have shown that babies do smile all the time and it’s also been shown that children under the age of five experience significant laughter about three hundred times a day. That’s a really lot of smiling and laughing. And the obvious and deeply profound question is, “What are they smiling and laughing about? What is it that is making them so happy? Why are they all in such great moods?”

    We know that they’re not laughing at any jokes, because they’re this happy long before they gain any language skills. They’re also too young to be happy about the various external things that generally make adults happy – like money, success, prestige, power, position, etc.

    Of course, there are probably hundreds of well-reasoned out reasons why they are so happy, but personally, I’m fond of this one particular idea which is rooted in Ancient Wisdom and validated by modern neuroscience. And that is that they are so happy all the time because they are still closely connected to the very essence of our consciousness.

    They haven’t absorbed enough of the unconscious confusion of the external world to be over-influenced by it. And although they may have been exposed to the agitating aspects we all run into like anger and fear, they haven’t yet cemented the associated negative channels in their brain. The inherent happiness and contentment of our inner essence, existing in its state of joyful, creative genius is still who they are. And that’s why there is so much smiling and laughter in their lives.

    Okay, so much for the smile on every baby’s face. Now what about the first part of the statement that the young teacher made in the press conference when he said, “I believe in the God who put the smile on every baby’s face?”

    In so many words, the statement says that God is the source of the smiles on the faces of babies. Or you could say that God is the source of the inner joy that makes the baby smile. And that says something about God that is radically different from most of what I had been exposed to up until then, and it was pretty shocking to me, but in a good way.

    As I said earlier, I had come upon this quote when I was still pretty young myself. To be exact, I was about twenty-two. And I had never thought of the idea of the Supreme Being in these terms.

    As I’ve mentioned previously in these podcasts, during my upbringing, I was given a pretty heavy dose of what is called the Judeo-Christian tradition, and the idea of the deity that it introduced me to was a male-God who carried around a big quiver full of lightning bolts and didn’t seem to be a particularly nice guy.

    I mean, half the time, he’s smiting someone for some reason, so you come away with a fairly hefty burden of fear. And that’s not to mention the guilt that you get from the origin story. You have original sin, where our great-times-a-million grandmother and grandfather got kicked out of paradise.

    And then when you flip to the new version of the tale, you continue down guilty lane, by hearing that God had to have his only begotten son killed so his blood could wash away our sins.

    The first time I came across the idea, it actually made me sick. But that may have been from just the idea of blood because I’ve always had one of those medical phobias. Anyway, there was this huge sign in Atlantic City that said, “Christ Died for Our Sins.” It was over a church near the boardwalk and I must have seen it at least five hundred times in my life and the more I saw it, the more uncomfortable I got.

    It kind of made me think, so this is actually all my fault. I’m the one who committed the sins that forced God to kill his only begotten son, so his blood could be used to cleanse the world of the sins I brought. Jeez, this blood bath story took the guilt thing to a whole different level.

    I certainly don’t want to give offense to anyone about any of this, but a whole pattern of thinking went off within me. What the hell did I ever do that was so Goddam bad that God had to kill his son so his blood could wash my sins away? And why would blood wash anything away? It didn’t make any sense to me and to be honest, it made this God guy seem a little sick. Why would I want to have anything to do with him?

    When you consider all the stuff they tell you that you have to do to try to worm your way back into the Big Guy’s good graces, it didn’t seem worth it. All this praying, fasting, begging and repenting to butter up this thunderbolt bearing human-blood-sacrifice-craving character? What’s the point?

    Again, this is probably all my own mishegoss, which is a Yiddish term for craziness or lunacy, and I apologize if I offended anyone, but all this stuff put up some pretty steep walls between myself and the Ultimate Power of the Universe.

    So, that’s where I was. Now, let’s go back to the idea of the God who put a smile on every baby’s face. And by the way, you can probably see why the idea was so foreign to me. Beautiful, intriguing, even perhaps enlightening. But definitely foreign.

    By contemplating the image of a smiling baby and tying it to the essence of the Deity, a different perspective began to take shape in my consciousness. The purity and innocence of it, along with the idea that immense joy is bestowed by God to every human at birth, was something I had never considered before.

    And that was just the beginning of many new ideas for me. The concept that there is inherent good within every human being and that all the negativity was just learned behavior began to emerge. And it brought along the idea of universality with it. The image of an innocent, smiling baby experiencing the joy of the Divine within brought me a sense of hope that perhaps all the separation brought on by the world’s religious, cultural, and geographical boundaries might be able to be transcended.

    Again, this was still rather early in my interest in personal growth and I was just starting to get introduced to certain ideas that were actually thousands of years old. The idea that there is pure, unadulterated happiness within us that is not tied to anything external. That there is a compassionate and loving universal power which is the source of all the magnificent goodness and beauty in the world. And that this power serves as a guiding light in life and because it is always within, it can be accessed at any time. And all you have to do is open up to it.

    With the birth of all these seeds of understanding, it was like some noble, high minded and extremely powerful group of friendly strangers had suddenly come to visit me in my jail cell where I was imprisoned in the dungeon of my mind. I had been locked up there for ages and now they were telling me about this wonderful realm that existed just outside my prison walls.

    Then they told me that there was no lock on the door to my cell and actually it had never been locked. I was free to leave there anytime I wanted. And it was all up to me.

    So, these are a lot of the realizations that started coming to me from that 13-word sentence that was spoken by that 13 year old teacher. Not bad. I started thinking that maybe the kid had something after all.

    Okay, enough for one episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened and let’s get together in the next one.

  • As I mentioned in the previous episode, I am about to begin a series of episodes that will have more of a free-flow format than the ones that have gone before. This is because I have a large amount of information that I have collected over the years which I consider to be extremely valuable when it comes to personal growth, and rather than try to build a context for each one that would be the theme of an entire episode, I am just going to put them out one at a time, without trying to format them into a general context.

    There are a couple of reasons for this. The first one is that I have found that every one of these ideas has been extremely helpful to me at some point in time, just the way they are. And they may be very helpful to you, as well. Also, if I don’t put them out now, rather than serving to possibly help someone in their path of personal growth, they’ll probably end up just being food for worms somewhere. And although the worms might appreciate the nutritional value of the paper, the ideas themselves will do the crawlers no good at all. That kind of stuff only works for human beings.

    So, before I begin, I’d like return to my own personal story and move it forward a little bit from where we left off in the last episode. I had mentioned that my interest in inner growth began when I heard the news that the Beatles were continuing their magical mystery tour by travelling to India to study meditation. Before I knew it, I decided to look into meditation and went to the Philadelphia Transcendental Meditation center and received a mantra to meditate with.

    The practice didn’t really do much for me and my interest in inner evolution left me about as quickly as it came. But at this point, I want to underscore something important about what was happening within my overall intelligence. You may or may not be aware of the fact that I had a few extraordinarily metaphysical experiences surrounding the sudden death of my father. These experiences are detailed fairly extensively in my memoir, “Wilt, Ike and Me” and they were the subject of a few podcast episodes about a year and a half ago.

    To make a very long story very short this is the gist of what happened. With absolutely no background in this kind of thing at all, one night when I was in 11th grade, I had a clear and vivid dream that my father had died. I dreamt the events as they happened to me. It was quite a long dream, with several sequences, it was crystal clear and I could remember every bit of it.

    And then incredibly, it all happened the next night exactly as I had dreamt it, down to the finest details of who said what to me and when. Then, about six months later, I had another deeply vivid dream in which my father appeared to me and told me that he never really died. He said that there is no death and that it’s just a public relations stunt that God came up with to get people to think about him.

    At the end of the dream, he noticed that I was wearing his ring He told me to give it back to him. I did and the whole room exploded into brilliant white light. Then back in real life, a few hours later, following my gym class, when I opened my locker and went into my wallet where I kept my two rings, his ring had disappeared. My other ring, my watch, my wallet with a ten-dollar bill in it were all still there. But inexplicably his ring was gone. It had vanished without a trace.

    Now, even though the details about these events were truly extraordinary in and of themselves, the thing that was important to my growth was the fact that they had happened at all. Underlying the shock and grief that came along with the sudden death of my father was a deep understanding that started to come over me, that was that there’s more to this life than meets the eye. There’s more to it than we’ve been told.

    I mean, how is it possible that in a dream, I clearly foresaw events that hadn’t happened yet? What does that say about time and space and the so-called reality of life as we know it?

    Of course, this was a lot for a standard American 16-year-old schoolboy to begin to grasp, but it lit a deep desire within me to find out what the hell is going on around here. What am I doing here? What is the purpose for my life? Why was I born? What did I come here to do? You know, all those basic kinds of existential questions that we are generally warned to dismiss from our minds at all costs. There’s no answer to them and they will just lead you down a never-ending rabbit hole of confusion.

    Well that may be true, but the fact was, I had no choice about asking these kinds of questions and I still don’t. I still have to ask them. By the way, I’ve learned a lot since then and although there is still effort to be made, there is an enormous amount of difference between the effort of searching to find a gold mine and the effort of mining the gold once you’ve found it.

    Anyway, in the fall of 1971, suddenly some powerful events began to take place almost simultaneously. The first thing was that I heard about a unique Indian teacher who supposedly had a very evolved way of teaching. He was all the rave at the time, but I was really put off by the fact that the guy was only 13 years old. He was basically just a kid.

    I’ll never forget it. I was in my first semester of law school walking down the quad at Temple University with my old friend and fellow student, Ted Simon. Ted was already very serious about the law. He studied hard and quickly became a major criminal lawyer, as well as the President of the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys. I won’t go into details about it here, but let’s just say I went down a road less traveled.

    Anyway, I had a hot dog in my hand and was about to bite into it and suddenly saw a poster taped to a pole which said something like, “13 year old spiritual teacher has come to relieve you of your suffering.” I stopped dead in my tracks and just stared at it. “Whoever is promoting this guy is going to go bankrupt fast. Who the hell is going to believe that a 13-year-old kid is a spiritual teacher? What the hell can somebody that young know?” I asked Ted. I was so flabbergasted by the complete absurdity of the idea that it took me a few minutes to finally bite into the dog.

    Well, things went the surprising way they often do and within a few months, to my extreme surprise, I started taking this young teacher a bit more seriously. He was teaching a form of meditation that was supposedly quite powerful and in certain circles that I had become familiar with, he was gaining a serious reputation for having significant wisdom.

    That’s a really quick overview, but how it actually happened is quite a story in and of its own right and I will probably tell it in a podcast episode one of these days.

    Anyway, this teacher’s name was Prem Rawat and besides hearing a lot about him, I also got exposed to a few other sources of information that began to exert a strong influence on me in those days. And this kind of happened all at once.

    The first one was that a lot of people I knew had begun reading a book called, “Autobiography of a Yogi,” by someone named Parmahansa Yogananda. At some point, I got that book and couldn’t put it down. I’ll go more deeply into who he was and what his influence was on me at a later time, but his writings became a major source of inspiration to me. And they still are.

    At the same time, a lot of people were recommending reading a book called, “There is a River, the Edgar Cayce Story.” I had never heard of Edgar Cayce before and the story of America’s most documented psychic was another element that played a major role in my inner awakenings back then. The idea that someone could tap into a higher realm of consciousness and gain access to a wealth of knowledge that was otherwise unavailable was basically a mind blower.

    Another book that hit me pretty hard at the time was called “The Essene Gospel of Peace,” which was one of a four-part series that presented a deeply esoteric view point about God and religion.

    Along the same lines, it was recommended to me that I begin reading a book called “The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ,” which was supposedly channeled by someone named Levi. This book was truly incredible and I plan to present a few chapters of it down the road sometime.

    I began reading all of these books within a few months of each other and it was quite a powerful experience because essentially they all said the same thing. Prem Rawat hadn’t written any books back then, but he was giving a lot of talks which also said the same exact thing. And the basic message which was common to them all was that – yes there is such a thing as God and it is omniscient, which means it knows everything, is omnipotent, which means that it is all powerful, and it is omnipresent, which means that it is present everywhere, throughout every molecule of creation and beyond.

    And the most important thing is that it is within every single individual and we are all born with the inherent ability to connect with it, expand and grow, and eventually merge into it. And the successful performance of this merger of consciousness, which could also be termed, the ultimate surrender, was the purpose of our life, the very reason we were born here in the first place. And if we were able to accomplish this evolution of consciousness, we will be complete and able to have the highest experience of life possible or find heaven on earth while we are still alive, if you want to put it that way. This is the brass ring on this otherwise crazy looking merry-go-round we found ourselves on.

    And the most amazing bottom line element to me was that God is not some ultra powerful guy who lives ten zillion light years away and can only be approached after you die. No, all these sources taught that you can find the god presence within yourself and ultimately merge with it. The general term for it was “the indwelling god presence” and I had never been exposed to this kind of a concept before in my life.

    Like I said, all of this hit me at the same time within just a few months. I started practicing the meditation taught by the young teacher and I’m still doing it to this day.

    So, this has been quite a lot of information for one episode and I’m going to close it by relating to you one of the first notes I took from back then that was deeply meaningful to me.

    I was reading the transcript of a press conference that was held for Prem Rawat. Again, he was thirteen years old at the time. And by the way, as bizarre as the idea of such a young teacher seemed to me back then, in the east, great teachers who were child prodigies and began teaching at a young age does happen from time to time. The greatly venerated Yogi, Sri Ramakrishna was recognized as a master soul by the age of seven. The current Dali Lama was recognized as a master soul by the age of five and assumed full leadership duties at the age of fifteen. And there is currently a very young teacher who will apparently take his place at the appropriate time.

    I didn’t know any of this back then and the reality is that it didn’t really matter. I liked what the young teacher had to say and his approach seemed not only revolutionary but it was deeply meaningful.

    Anyway, at this press conference someone asked him, “Do you believe in God?” And he simply replied, “I believe in the God who put a smile on every baby’s face.” That eleven-word sentence was one of the most beautifully profound statements I had ever heard, and I’m going to get into it more deeply in the the next episode, along with several other things. But in the meantime, you may want to give that statement a little thought and see what it does to you. “I believe in the God who put a smile on every baby’s face.”

    So, for now, keep your eyes, mind, and heart open and let’s get together in the next one.

  • Over the course of these podcasts, I have mentioned several times that I first became interested in personal growth around the time that the Beatles went to India to study meditation in February of 1968. My interest wasn’t particularly deep. The only thing deep about me at the time was how deeply I was being influenced by the world around me, and I basically mirrored every move the Beatles made. They said that meditation was great, so I thought I’d check it out.

    My search didn’t go very far. Just far enough to understand that I didn’t understand anything about anything to do with it. And I had no real interest in it either. But that changed as the next few years went by in a flash.

    One thing I haven’t mentioned about those days is that at one point I began taking random, but detailed notes on anything that I came across that helped to expand my inner awareness, even in the smallest of ways. I never stopped this notetaking process and I never threw any of it out, either. That began half a century ago so, as you can imagine, I have an enormous amount of material stored away in my office.

    As I was recently considering what to do with all of it, an interesting idea occurred to me that involved our podcast series. But before I tell you the idea, first let me tell you a fascinating story that I once heard that served as a significant inspiration for me to begin making notes in the first place. It’s the story about how the ending of the movie, Casablanca came to be, and once you hear it, I’m sure you’ll understand how all these strings tie together.

    So, it started back in my college days. As I mentioned in an earlier episode, in my junior year, I had spent a full semester working as an intern on Capitol Hill, with my major in Government and Public Administration. But by the end of the semester, my experiences on the hill led me to conclude that the world of politics was not one that I wanted to set up shop in. Maybe it was just what was going on in the country during the late sixties, as extreme societal turbulence violently eradicated any semblance of normality. But from my perspective the hill seemed like one big snake pit, constantly churning through never-ending rounds of ego-based struggles for money and power.

    After considering a few different options, I finally decided to change my major to American Literature. For some unknown reason, the idea of possibly becoming a writer seemed to hold a much bigger draw for me, not that I had any talent or experience in the field. Now that I have been working at it for several decades, I can hypothesize with some degree of certainty that at least I’ve gained a modicum of experience.

    Anyway, around that time, I came upon an interview with Julius Epstein who, along with his identical twin brother Phillip, had written the movie, Casablanca. I, like millions of other motion picture enthusiasts, had always been a major fan of that film, ever since I first saw it in a film club in high school. And being a would-be writer, anything a successful author had to say about the craft of writing was naturally interesting to me.

    But in this interview, Julie Epstein began describing an element of the making of the movie that I had never heard before and it really got my attention. According to him, as screenwriters, he and his brother had never been able to come up with an ending to the story and they still didn’t have one even when shooting began.

    If you’ve never seen it, on a basic level, it’s a bittersweet story about a love triangle and throughout the piece, you never know which of the two men the woman will end up with. But its classic ending reveals the fact that it also has profoundly noble themes as well, one of which is the critical importance of performing individual duty.

    Rick Blaine, played by Humphrey Bogart, ultimately sacrifices his love for Ilsa Lund, portrayed by Ingrid Bergman, for the greater good. Ilsa's husband, Victor Laszlo, is a renowned Czech resistance leader, and he needs her support to continue his vital work in his uphill battle against the Nazis. Rick finally recognizes the significance of Victor's mission and the importance of Ilsa's role in it.

    In the final scenes of the movie, even though he is clear that Ilsa would rather stay with him, Rick puts his personal feelings aside and helps her escape with Victor, understanding that their mission is far more important than any of their own personal feelings. As he puts it, “Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”

    This incredibly climactic ending is truly a piece of cinematic history and I was a deep admirer of it, but I never knew until listening to Epstein that the ending wasn’t written or even decided upon until the shooting was well under way.

    And then, in the interview, he went on to tell the story of how he and his brother came up with the ending. To me, it was a remarkable tale and it stuck to me to this day because it speaks volumes about the role that instinct plays in our intelligence.

    He said that as writers he and his brother would routinely write down any notes that struck them about anything at all., It didn’t matter if the idea had no context or relationship to anything they were working on. In fact, the ones that seemed to come to them completely out of the blue, often ended up being the most usefully creative ones in the long run. And that was especially true when it came to writing dialogue. He said this form of note taking was a well-known method of the craft and they had been doing it for their entire careers.

    Then he shifted back to talking about the difficulties they had run into in coming up with the ending of Casablanca. They just couldn’t decide if Ilsa should go with Victor to America or stay with Rick in Casablanca. And as shooting continued, this lack of an ending had become a real problem for everyone involved in the film, especially the actors and the director.

    As the pressure continued to mount, they started rummaging through their huge file of random ideas and at one point, they found a line of dialogue that stopped them dead in their tracks. The line was, “Round up the usual suspects.” They had no real recollection of when or how it was written. They just knew it was a great line, and given the gripping drama of the story line, they instinctively knew that if it was used in the right way, at the right time, it could really take the movie to a whole different level.

    By the way, no one involved with picture at that time thought that it was going to be any good at all. They all thought it seemed destined to be a flop.

    They started to try to figure out where to use this terrific line. The first question was - who could say it? It quickly became clear that the only character who could deliver it was the police captain, Captain Renault, played by Claude Rains.

    But what would lead him to speak that line? Well, it might be great if he spoke it after somebody killed somebody. Then they thought, “Who would the audience most like to see killed?” Again, it became obvious fairly quickly that the audience would love to see the villain killed. The villain was Major Strasser, a high-ranking Nazi officer.

    Now the big question came up - who should kill him? They considered all the key players and Humphrey Bogart’s character was far and away the favorite. Ultimately, he was the central hero of the plot and it’s always most satisfying when the hero defeats the villain.

    So, when should he kill him? Suddenly the resolution of the ending began to emerge. The most dramatic time would be if the Major tried to stop Victor and Ilsa from escaping and Rick eliminates him, opening the way for them to escape. And with all these plot elements in place, it only made sense for Rick to remain in Casablanca and become pals with Captain Renault, who had used that great line to save his life.

    The film was released in early 1943 and despite the premonition of doom and gloom that pervaded the cast and crew during the filming, it quickly gained significant approval. But over the years that followed, the ending became one of the most renowned and respected in Hollywood history and catapulted the film into movie immortality. And eighty years later, it is still one of the most beloved movies of all time.

    And hearing that the ending wasn’t the result of a planned-out strategy but was reverse-engineered from a random line of dialogue really impressed me. I don’t remember whether it was a conscious or an unconscious decision about it, but I found myself making notes about anything and everything related to personal growth that impressed me, and as I said, I never threw any of it away.

    Now, let’s go back to the idea that occurred to me regarding all this personal growth material I have in my files. So far, in preparing these podcasts, I generally pick out one central them for an episode and weave the entire episode around that theme. At this point, we’ve produced over eighty episodes and they have all followed this format.

    But as I was looking over all of this material I have collected it hit me that while a lot of it is extremely valuable, it may not be a large enough topic to build a complete episode around. And then I thought that it might be a great idea to develop a different format. Rather than building a whole episode around one particular theme, maybe I should just present the ideas without thinking about developing a context at all. Maybe I should just present them to you and you can just take them in and see where they may lead you.

    So, I am going to incorporate this creative free-flow format into the next few episodes and see what happens. Again, these will not be teachings of any kind, just some intriguing ideas you might like to consider. They will still be coming from Ancient Wisdom through to modern neuroscience, along with personal experiences and observations that have been particularly helpful to me.

    If you just relax and let them come into your consciousness, it’s quite possible that they may bring you some interesting and maybe even enlightening realizations. You might even play with the concepts in a reverse engineering, “Casablanca” ending kind of a way, where you let one idea lead to another. Maybe you’ll experience your own “Round up the usual suspects” effect. With inner growth, you never know where you may uncover your next masterpiece of wisdom.

    So, we’ll begin the new format in the next episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open and lets get together in the next one.

  • In the last few episodes, we’ve talked about the fact that many of us suffer from a case of mistaken identity in which have come to believe that we are actually the contents of our neural template, which is largely responsible for forming our ordinary mind. We looked at some of the limitations of it, especially that it is, by nature, always dissatisfied, that it has the element of fear deeply rooted in its awareness and that it cannot dwell in present time. We also discussed the existence of its voice, called our inner critic which feeds us over 30,000 negative messages every day. And we touched on the phenomenon of self-sabotage, in which we often become our own worst enemy.

    In this episode, we’re going to look a little deeper into the make-up of our overall intelligence by considering some of the differences between our ordinary mind and our higher mind.

    Now, even though we have made tremendous advances in neurology, the brain sciences, psychiatry, and psychology, we still know very little about the actual potential of our intelligence. Current thinking is that is far greater than we currently imagine. So, let’s dig into it.

    Obviously, even though, in reality we each have only one intelligence, the easiest way to examine it is by separating it into two distinct parts – our ordinary mind and our higher mind.

    In that regard, I am going to present some information from a tremendous resource, “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying,” which gives a terrific overview of the key teachings of Tibetan Buddhism. This classic compilation of wisdom was first published in 1982, with a thirtieth anniversary edition released in 2012.

    As an aside, I find that even though it may be thousands of years old, Ancient Wisdom often captures the obstacles facing us in modern times with uncanny clarity, as though it were written today.

    I remember once reading a description of our ordinary life as lived through the filter of our ordinary mind which said something like this, “When we are children, all we think about is - my toys, my toys, my toys. Then we get older and it becomes – my mate, my mate, my mate. Finally, when we become adults, it turns into – my worries, my worries, my worries. And it just stays there.” Sound familiar? I guess on a certain level, some things never change.

    Anyway, let’s use some of the text from the “Tibetan Book of Living and Dying” to help shed some light on the ordinary mind and then on the higher mind.

    The Ordinary Mind

    Let’s remember that after years of neural firing and the establishment of billions of neural pathways, our brain sets up our neural template, which is an incredibly interconnected matrix of all the information stored in our brain. By around age five, we become increasingly identified with this template, which is also called our Ordinary Mind and we basically start filtering our life entire through it.

    It’s important to understand that we can’t function in the world without it. Afterall, among many other critical tasks, we use it to navigate our way through life. The problem is that even though it is an incredibly multi-faceted tool, it is also severely limited. For the most part, we are given no training in using it at all and we can easily become over-identified with it. If it gets out of control, it can be the cause of endless trouble for us. So, let’s take a look at what we are dealing with here.

    The Tibetan book says that while the ordinary mind does possess discriminating awareness, its focus is largely external, always making us look outside of ourselves. It also possesses a basic sense of duality – good and bad, light and dark, which makes it constantly grasping or rejecting. And it is discursive, which means it is always digressing from one subject to another, often focusing on a projected and falsely perceived external reference point.

    After this, the text really gets down to brass tacks. Even though this is thousands of years old, see if it sounds familiar to you:

    “So, the Ordinary Mind is the part of the mind that thinks, plots, desires, manipulates, that flares up in anger, that creates and indulges in waves of negative emotions and thoughts, that has to go on and on and on, asserting, validating, and confirming its existence by fragmenting, conceptualizing, and solidifying experience.

    “The Ordinary Mind is the ceaselessly shifting and shiftless prey of external influences, habitual tendencies, and conditioning. The Ordinary Mind can seem like a candle flame in an open doorway, vulnerable to all the winds of circumstances.

    “Seen from one angle, the ordinary mind is flickering, unstable, grasping, and endlessly minding others business, its energy consumed by projecting outwards. The ordinary mind can be thought of as a Mexican jumping bean, or as a monkey hopping restlessly from branch to branch on a tree.

    “Yet seen in another way, the ordinary mind has a false, dull stability, a smug and self-protected inertia, a stone-like calm of ingrained habits. The Ordinary Mind is as cunning as a crooked politician, skeptical, distrustful, expert at trickery and guile, ingenious in the games of deception. It is within the experience of this chaotic, confused, undisciplined, and repetitive, ordinary mind that, again and again and again, we undergo change and death.”

    So, while we do have this vast neural network that makes up our Ordinary Mind, and we can’t live without, it is critically important to understand its limitations. Again, this mind is not our true identity and it is certainly not the sum total of our intelligence. Far from it.

    Here are some things to remember about it, so you can avoid its pitfalls, which in many ways are the source of most human problems, both individual and societal:

    1. It is dualistic, constantly fluctuating, and reactive in nature.

    2. It generally vacillates between attachment and rejection, which leads to endless desires and negative emotions and thoughts.

    3. It is unstable and reactive in nature. It projects constantly flickering reactions to an endless parade of external circumstances.

    4. It fragments and conceptualizes experiences and its assumptions and conclusions can be significantly flawed.

    5. It is continuously vulnerable to external influences and circumstances which change constantly.

    6. By the nature of its insecure and skeptical foundation, it is cunning, and skilled in deception and trickery.

    7. Despite its apparent instability, it also possesses inherent inertia and is resistant to change due to ingrained habits and patterns.

    So, this is quite a list. Again, it’s just a summary of some of the characteristics of the limiting aspects of our ordinary mind. They are common to us all and personally, as intense as they may be, take it from me, my own ordinary mind makes them look pretty tame.

    Anyway, we can all benefit by gaining a simple awareness of them and understanding and eventually transcending these limitations is a central goal to many of the spiritual and contemplative practices contained in Ancient Wisdom. According to it, a higher state of awareness can be achieved, bringing a state of consciousness that exists beyond the dualistic and reactive tendencies of the Ordinary Mind, resulting in a state of peace, equanimity, and ultimate freedom from suffering.

    This is a great introduction to looking into the other part of our intelligence, which is said to be the primary foundation of our identity: Our Higher Mind.

    The Higher Mind

    We all start out life with the awareness of only our Higher Mind and if you’ve ever spent time with a baby or toddler, you know how magical and creatively intelligent this level of consciousness is. Its learning capacity alone is truly astonishing.

    Here is what the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying says about it:

    “Then there is the very nature of mind, its innermost essence, which is absolutely and always untouched by change or death. At present, it is hidden, within our own mind, enveloped and obscured by the mental scurry of our thoughts and emotions.

    “Just as clouds can be shifted by a strong gust of wind to reveal the shining sun and wide-open sky, so, under certain special circumstances, some inspiration may uncover for us glimpses of this nature of mind. These glimpses have many depths and degrees, but each of them will bring some light of understanding, meaning and freedom.

    “This is because the nature of mind is the very root itself of understanding. In Tibetan, we call it ‘Rigpa,’ our primordial, pure, pristine awareness that is at once intelligent, cognizant, radiant, and always awake. It could be said to be the knowledge of knowledge itself.

    “Do not make the mistake of imagining that the nature of mind is exclusive to our mind only. It is, in fact, the nature of everything. It can never be said too often that to realize the nature of mind is to realize the nature of all things.

    “Saints and Mystics throughout history have adorned their realizations with different names and given them different faces and interpretations, but what they are all fundamentally experiencing is the essential nature of the mind. Christians and Jews call it God, Hindus call it the self, Shiva, Brahman, and Vishnu. Sufi Mystics name it the hidden essence, and Buddhists call it the Buddha nature.

    “At the heart of all religions is the certainty that there is a fundamental truth, and that this life is a sacred opportunity to evolve and realize it.”

    I don’t know about you, but whenever I come across a great description of this higher state of being, I always feel like something is knocking on some kind of door within me. I know it sounds vague, but I also feel a deep desire to open that door up.

    What the Tibetans call the nature of mind, or Rigpa, is another term for the higher mind. Now most of us feel that it is easier to relate to and understand the ordinary mind than it is the Higher Mind, probably because we’ve had much more experience experiencing it. Understanding the Higher Mind can seem much more challenging and I’m very fond of what inner growth teacher Prem Rawat has to say about it. According to him, the Ordinary Mind is finite in nature and therefore, our finite mind can easily understand it. But the Higher Mind is infinite in nature and therefore, we can never truly understand it. According to him, we can just feel it and trust it. And that is far more than sufficient.

    Even though we may not be able to comprehend it, here is a very brief summary of some of its remarkable aspects:

    1. At its essence, it is immutable, meaning it is not subject to change. Ancient Wisdom says it is not only untouched by change, it is also untouched by transient thoughts and emotions, and incredibly, even by death.

    2. It is universal in nature. Not limited by anything, including the individual mind and ego, it is the root of understanding, transcending all other personal boundaries.

    3. It is inherently connected to the infinite essence that is at the root of all creation, and is the home of our insight, intuition, inspiration and aspiration.

    4. It is the source of all the “better angels of our nature,” including among countless other aspects, love, compassion, integrity, courage, altruism, etc.

    5. It represents a constantly expanding horizon for us. Infinite in nature, no matter how much of its positive essence we are able to grasp and experience, there is always more.

    6. It exists in the state of the “ever new.” Not subject to the limitations of time and space, it is the essence of the “now” and can never age. Therefore, the ever-enlarging experience of it is always new for us.

    7. Whether or not we are currently aware of it, we are infinitely attracted to it. At the essence of our intelligence, we have an intense desire to merge into it.

    So, we’ve seen that there are two basic aspects of our intelligence – our ordinary mind and our higher mind, and we’ve taken a quick look at some of the characteristics of each.

    Personally, I’ve always been attracted to the idea of the Higher Mind. But like the rest of life’s endeavors, growing from the idea stage into reality is the challenge and probably the opportunity as well. When it comes to the Ordinary Mind, like blindly stepping into a mud puddle, it’s basically effortless. But to grow into the Higher Mind, it seems to take some intention, like you have to want it, like a truly thirsty person needs water.

    Yet, voices from Ancient Wisdom through to modern neuroscience assure us that it is, in fact, available to us. Some say that our thirst for it is inborn and fulfilling it is the actual purpose for incarnating here in the first place. Who knows? I guess we each have to figure that one out for ourselves.

    Well, once again, this has been a lot of information for one episode. So, keep your eyes, mind, and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

  • As mentioned in the previous episode, we are continuing to provide some of the basic information that is imparted by the Higher Mind Training, which is a new personal growth program being prepared for release by the Better Angels Publishing Company. Its purpose is to help the normal, everyday person emerge from the prison of self-sabotage into the freedom of self-empowerment. The program probably won’t be released until the middle of next year, but we want to give our podcast subscribers the information now, so you can begin using it right away, if you like.

    To begin this episode, let’s start out by taking a little detour in time and space back to August 13, 1865 to a sanitarium in Vienna, Austria, which is the date upon which one of its inmates named Ignatz Semmelweis died. He had suffered from a nervous breakdown and had been confined to the sanitarium a few months earlier. Outspoken, unruly, and constantly arguing that he was being held against his will, he suffered regular beatings from the guards. The cause of his death had been a gangrenous wound on his right hand, which was a probable result of one of these beatings.

    Surprisingly, Semmelweis was a physician and scientist who had fallen into serious disrepute among the medical establishment of the capital city. He had been doing research on the mortality rates among women during childbirth and at one point, he had come up with a radical new idea that became extremely unpopular, primarily because there was absolutely no scientific basis for it. Even so, it seemed to make intuitive sense to him, so he began to institute it at Vienna General Hospital’s First Obstetrical Clinic.

    He documented the results of his unfounded and unaccepted new procedure and found that over several months, the maternal mortality rate in the obstetrical clinic dropped from 18% to 2%. Even though he still had no scientific theory upon which to base any medical hypothesis whatsoever, he still published a book about his findings in 1861, called “Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever.”

    Given the story so far, the next obvious question would be – what was this radical new idea that Dr. Semmelweis had come up with that had seemingly cut the maternity mortality rate by nearly ninety percent? Now remember, he had no scientific explanation for how or why his procedure worked and every medical professional who had heard about it was adamantly opposed to it.

    Get ready. You will probably find this quite shocking.

    He proposed that all the health care workers in the hospital, the doctors, nurses, and midwives, should wash their hands before they performed any procedure on any patient. In fact, he felt they should wash their hands before they even touched anyone at all and he came up with a chlorinated lime solution to do the job.

    He had absolutely no scientific reasoning to support his supposition and his outrageous idea was met with ridicule and universally condemned by the entire medical establishment. They were certain of their opinion because, in their highly educated minds, the concept made absolutely no sense. Why would washing your hands have anything to do whatsoever with protecting the health of mothers and babies during childbirth?

    And on top of that, the doctors felt personally offended. Why should they have to wash their hands? Afterall, doctors were considered to be refined gentlemen and gentlemen never have to wash their hands. That was for laborers and other members of the lower classes.

    Following his clashes with the medical establishment, Semmelweis got involved with some other societal and political battles as well, and was ridiculed, ostracized, and finally ruined. He suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to an asylum where he eventually died from the beatings he received from the guards.

    All of this came from the audacity he had to suggest that medical professionals should wash their hands before treating patients. And don’t forget, they weren’t treating just anybody. This was the upper crust of Austrian society. Many of the mothers and babies who died in the contaminated obstetrical hospitals were members of the aristocracy and royalty of Europe, who were being treated by the finest doctors of the day.

    Many years after his death, because of his efforts to protect the maternity environment, he became widely known as the “Savior of Mothers.” Of course, he wasn’t the first savior to be crucified by his detractors and certainly not the last.

    To put the story into historical perspective, Dr. Semmelweis had made his radical handwashing suggestion about twenty years before the general emergence of germ theory into the scientific world, which followed the work of Pasteur and Lister.

    Back in 1860, they knew nothing about germs whatsoever. They had never even heard the term. They still believed that disease was caused by liquid “humors” in the body, a two-thousand-year-old concept that was concocted by ancient Greek and Roman doctors. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the standard accepted medical procedure of the day for treating disease was still simple bloodletting. And they felt that the state of their medical understanding was incredibly advanced.

    As primitive as they may appear today, this has been the case with most cultures. Every society thinks they are incredibly advanced, and this conceit goes way back. When chariots were invented in about 1600 BC, they were all the rage. The Hittites took them to an unheard-of level of comfort and maneuverability, and eventually refined them for warfare. The most advanced military battle of its time was fought in 1274 BC with over five thousand chariots helping to boost the carnage. I’m sure the warriors were all proud of the level of modernity they had achieved.

    Going back to the “Savior of Mothers” 1860 example, let’s back up a little to 1830’s, 40’s and 50’s, and consider the tremendously advanced water system that was set up to bring water into the White House. It was complete with steam driven pumps and cast-iron piping and the fact that water was delivered in this way to the White House was a marvel of the times.

    Of course, no one knew anything about germ theory and although the piping system was ingenious, the water that it carried was severely contaminated, coming from wells that abutted wastewater dumps that were loaded with pathogens. It is now believed that Presidents Henry Harrison, James Polk and Zachary Taylor all died as a result of exposure to the water brought in by that otherwise innovative system.

    And that’s not to mention the tragic death of Abraham Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, who died from typhoid fever which was directly related to the putrid White House water.

    So, due to their significant technological advances, they were able to distribute water in a more convenient way, but with their ignorance of germ theory, they just made it more convenient for people to get sick and die.

    Of course, we’ve come a long way and hand sanitization has become almost universal, especially since the pandemic. But back then, they just didn’t know what they didn’t know. And guess what? Neither do we. No one ever does.

    I often find myself wondering what the people living a hundred and fifty years from now will think of us. Like all previous cultures, we believe we are incredibly advanced. But what critical factors don’t we know now, that will be common knowledge throughout the world in 2175?

    With my lifelong focus on the evolution of human consciousness, my assumption as well as my hope is that it will have something to do with the way we use our minds. Because to put it simply, the way we use our minds is the basic root of all the major troubles that we face today.

    Look at it this way. We live in an extremely troubled world, nearly drowning in a sea of immense problems, and from what I’ve read, if you ask artificial intelligence to come up with a plan that would quickly and efficiently save the planet, it would simply respond, “Get rid of the human beings.” Of course, it’s a shocking response, and some AI experts find it deeply disturbing, but you can see the troubling logic behind it.

    And if we are the primary cause of the problems that are plaguing our world, what’s wrong with us? Again, the answer is dramatically simple. It’s our mind. That’s right. the most advanced biological evolution since the beginning of life on earth, and indeed the very factor that enabled us to emerge from the brutal tests of survival of the fittest, this miraculous organ is the very cause of all our issues.

    And it isn’t really the mind itself that is the problem. It’s the way we use it. Let’s refine that statement a little. It’s the unconscious way that we’ve been unconsciously trained to unconsciously use it that’s creating the problem. We have a mind with nearly unfathomable intelligence, but we haven’t learned how to use it in a human-centric way. We develop incredible technology, but we don’t use it in a way that serves humanity or the rest of the planet.

    And this lack of evolved consciousness is nothing new. Just look at our track record. It’s pretty dismal. And that’s not just in caring for the planet, it’s also deeply troubling in taking care of ourselves.

    Here is a particularly disgusting example. About 160,000 people die each week from starvation on earth. That means that close to 8,500,000 people literally starve to death each year. They die because they simply don’t get enough food to eat.

    Now, get this – in the United States alone, 119 billion pounds of food is wasted each year. That means that 130 billion meals, $408 billion in food or about 40% of the total food supply is simply thrown out. Discarded. Four hundred and eight billion dollars of food is wasted each year, while 8,500,000 people die of starvation.

    We have the money and we have the technology. We just have a serious problem with the way we misuse our intelligence. And personally, I believe that if and when people 150 years from now look back on us, it will be the generally primitive level of our human consciousness that will be so shocking to them.

    Because when it comes to the overall state of our consciousness, basically, we’re still living a glorified law of the jungle. You know the drill – I, me, mine. Dog eat dog, Winner takes all, and the countless variations of the same primitive, fear-based theme, which leads to the sad conclusion that in the entire world, we have no greater enemy than ourselves. No other creature or factor poses a greater threat to our survival than we do. If the human species is ever destroyed, there is a high probability that it will be a case of unconscious suicide.

    So, there can be no doubt that the growth of our inner consciousness is critical to our survival as a species, and I’d like to offer two of my favorite quotes on the subject. Albert Einstein said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” And Dr. Carl Jung said, “The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved, but only outgrown.”

    So again, we must grow. And when it comes to inner growth, I’d like to suggest a “what if.” What if it’s not all that hard? What if like the germs in the nineteenth century, there is something incredibly basic that we just don’t know yet? And what if the key to our advancement is as simple as just washing your hands?

    Well, this seems like a good place to stop. We’ll go a couple of steps deeper in the coming episode, so keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.

  • In the last episode we spent some time looking into our innate human genius as well as some of the remarkable attributes we have within our vast intelligence. We also touched on the fact that many of us are troubled by self-sabotage and other forms of negativity that limit our ability to truly enjoy our lives.

    And we ended the episode with two questions - if we began life in a genius state of consciousness and it is still within us right now: What happened to us? And more importantly, what can happen for us?”

    We’re going to look at these critical questions in this episode today. But let’s start out with an extremely condensed overview of the answer: What happened to us is that we began suffering from a subtle case of mistaken identity, which is hampering us from fulfilling our ability to achieve highest human potential. And what can happen for us is that we can re-connect once again with the larger part of our intelligence and enjoy all the inborn gifts that are built into it. This will create a more fulfilling life for ourselves, having a positive effect on everyone in our sphere of influence.

    Okay, that’s only two sentences, but there’s a lot to unpack in them.

    Our case of mistaken identity brings on the condition of self-sabotage, which seems to affect almost everybody. I’m always impressed by how many people tell me how much they are bothered by it, and some of them are incredibly successful. Many are suffering from the dreaded imposter syndrome, which is one form of it where they believe that despite their accomplishments in life, on the deepest level, they are really a fraud. There are dozens of psychological syndromes like these that prey on our minds and can plague our lives in hundreds of ways.

    It kind of reminds me of a west wind at the Jersey shore, near Philadelphia. On those beaches, if there is a west wind, which is also called a land breeze, it blows tons of mosquitoes and green head flies onto the beach and you really can’t go on it. Everything else can be perfect – great sunshine creating a beautiful, warm day, bright clear ocean giving off that fresh saltwater smell. But if you go onto that beach, a swarm of insects will make a meal out of you so fast that you won’t be able to last longer than five minutes. Believe me, I am speaking from painfully direct experience on this.

    It can be just like that in life. It makes no difference how great things may be going in your outer world, if your mind is making a meal out of you on the inside, you’ve got real problems.

    So, as we approach the information, I’d like to suggest that you try to maintain what is called the “beginner’s mind,” which simply means you continue to suspend your assumptions and previous understandings as you consider the ideas presented. Also, even though you may have heard some of these ideas before, there is a decent chance that you have never heard them in this exact context before.

    As I mentioned in the last episode, I am always reminding myself of Thomas Edison’s view of our so-called understandings in his quote: “We don’t know one millionth of one percent about anything.” That’s a truly helpful perspective because if you can stay opened and give the understandings a fair chance, a lot of pleasant inner surprises may surface within you.

    Now, as has been mentioned a few times, as a species, we humans are on the very low end of the food chain and would never have made it through the grueling selection process of survival of the fittest were it not for our incredible brain. Indeed, not only is it the single greatest biological evolution in the history of life on earth, it is the only factor that has allowed us to prevail over the almost insurmountable odds that were stacked against us.

    Incredibly, we have about 86 billion neurons that fire together constantly and after enough repetition of firing between specific neurons, a neural pathway is established. Once the pathway is established and used continually, it becomes fortified and the neural firing mechanism becomes greatly enhanced. And when this has happened to a sufficient degree, we feel that we have learned something.

    This is the way you learned your name. This is the way you learned the language that you speak and in fact this is the way you’ve learned everything that you’ve learned throughout your entire life. Learning is basically just the repeated firing of neurons which create the advanced formations of your neural pathways.

    After a while, all your pathways develop an internal brain structure that we call your neural grid, which is the massive, interconnected electronic highway which holds all of your individuated knowledge. And we know from the study of people who have suffered from severe stroke or traumatic brain injury, these pathways can be completely wiped out, with nothing remaining. But, after what can be a grueling process of reprogramming, the grid can be rewired and a lot can be regained. So, it is the content of this neural grid that creates who we seem to be.

    But as critical as our neural grid is on a countless number of levels, including the shaping of our identity in the world, it is only one small part of our massive overall intelligence. Another term for this grid is the ordinary mind, and it is a very powerful tool that we have created to navigate our way through life.

    And now, as touched on in the last episode, here comes the root of the problem for us. Instead of understanding that this is just a tool that we have created, due to a myriad of external factors, we have come to believe that this is who we really are. We have become so overidentified with the makeup of this inner matrix that we have lost sight of our real nature, which is a key element of our much larger intelligence.

    And here’s where the pain of it comes in. Within this small part of our intelligence is an even smaller part which has been called our inner critic. And as small as it may be, it has a critically big mouth. The reason it’s called the inner critic is because it is always criticizing us. It’s merciless and once you start believing that your inner critic is who you really are, and you listen to its constant negative rambling like it’s the gospel truth, you’re in for one nasty day at the beach. Followed by many, many more.

    Our mind moves almost at light speed and the current estimation is that it is giving us about 30,000 negative messages every day and fifty percent of those are repetitive. Which means we are programming the same negative messages into our mind at least 15,000 times each day, or about fifteen times a minute. This is a truly incredible amount of negativity, which can make you feel like you carry the weight of the world on your shoulders.

    Now it’s important to remember that our ordinary mind is a truly extraordinary tool and we could never survive without it. And we can never grasp how much intelligence we each have within us at this very moment. Indeed, it is estimated that it would take the most advanced computer in the world about 45 hours to do what our brain does in just one second.

    But this mind of ours can be a real double-edged sword, which means it cuts both ways. And when our inner critic wields the sword, we usually find ourselves cut and bleeding within seconds.

    To further clarify the situation, let’s briefly examine three basic aspects of our ordinary mind that can have an enormous impact on us.

    The first element to grasp about our Ordinary Mind is that it is responsible for making improvements in every part of our lives, which is a truly tremendous benefit for us. But to utilize this talent, a key part of its nature is that it is always dissatisfied. No matter what’s going on, it will always be looking for something better, something more. Its innate dissatisfaction is what makes it so effective and productive. Without it, we’d still be living in caves and every advancement in our world, from the wheel to the computer and beyond, is a direct result of it.

    But the when the dissatisfaction becomes unbridled and gets out of control, it can become brutal because living in a state of constant dissatisfaction can truly darken your life. Thinking that your dissatisfied mind is who you really are, you become dissatisfied with everything. Nothing is ever good enough, including your spouse, your family, and your profession, among many other things. And ultimately, you become dissatisfied with yourself, which can become deeply destructive, turning your world into a prison of endless frustration.

    A second key characteristic of the Ordinary Mind is that it is deeply connected to our limbic system, which is responsible for our safety and security. In this area, it’s in a state of constant surveillance, always on the lookout for threat, and we couldn’t survive without it, especially during the early days in the cave.

    This survival mechanism is a critical function for us and we can’t do without it. But the other side of the coin is that its default signal is fear, and its general tendency is to catastrophize problems, making a mountain out of every molehill on every issue. Ultimately, fear can become the root of our awareness, completely dominating our minds and bringing devastating results to our health and well-being. Ironically, if unchecked, the very part of our mind that is responsible for protecting our life can end up ruining it.

    The last aspect of our Ordinary Mind to understand is that by nature, it cannot operate in present time. It’s always remembering the past or hypothesizing about the future. Or it may go into weaving random fantasies. But it can never be in the here and now. When we’re in present time, we’re in an entirely different state of consciousness than our thought world.

    This may not seem so bad at first, but if we don’t understand it, it can become deeply problematic. We can often find ourselves wondering why we’re not fully present, why are we day dreaming our way through our lives and not really paying attention. The next thing you know, the inner critic has more ammunition to torture us with. But that’s only if you believe that you are your mind. When you know that you’re not and you understand how it works, you can take advantage of an entirely different approach which yields vastly different results.

    Now here’s one last thing to consider about the make-up of this neural grid of ours. It wasn’t exactly created by us. We actually had very little to do with assembling the deepest structures of it. That was done by an amalgam of all of the influences that we were exposed to throughout our younger years. And we really don’t have access to its actual formation.

    Of course, we know that our parents or primary care givers had an enormous amount to do with it, but we don’t know much about what they were truly like as adults. We just saw them through the eyes of a child. And there were many other architects of it as well that we can barely remember, specifically our teachers from kindergarten through second grade, who also were among its primary programmers.

    And that’s not to mention the world of television, radio and the internet, generating the constant barrage of commercial messaging that we have lived with for our entire lives. In the 1970s we saw between 500 to 1600 ads per day. Now we are exposed to between 4,000 to 10,000 of them each day. So, who really shaped this grid of ours anyway?

    We’re coming to the end of this episode and we have only taken a 40,000-foot overview of the lay of the land. Suffice it to say, that if you have come to believe that your ordinary mind is who you actually are, with its neural contents of all your likes and dislikes, opinions and concepts, memories and future dreams, and you don’t understand that in reality, it’s just an incredibly innovative tool that was largely created by a random hodge-podge of constant impressions, you’re in for a pretty rocky internal ride as you proceed down the highway of life. Whether we understand it or not, our neural grid is not who we are. It’s not even close. Fortunately, our overall intelligence is something far greater.

    Now, this has been a lot of information to absorb. We’ve exposed the pathway that leads to the trap of our inner prison. In the next episode, we’ll start looking into finding the doorway out.

    As always, keep your eyes mind and heart opened and let’s get together in the next one.

  • In the last two episodes, I discussed the Higher Mind Training, which is a unique personal growth program that is being prepared for release by the Better Angels Publishing Company. I also mentioned that for the past six months I have been teaching some of its basic understandings and techniques to the counselors and residents of the James A. Casey House in Wilkes-Barre, PA, which is an innovative halfway house where about fifty men live, recovering from the effects of severe alcohol and substance abuse.

    This effort has been kind of an experiment because although I have been speaking about and teaching the fundamentals of the training for many years, I have never exposed it to a population of this kind and had no idea what to expect. The results have been deeply inspiring.

    It’s been obvious that these guys have never heard anything about their greater inner potential before. Neither well-educated nor well-funded, most of them have been beaten down by the external world for most of their existence. They’ve been told that they are losers, that they’ve basically ruined their lives and that the road ahead of them is a dangerous, thorny, uphill climb, with a high probability that they’ll fail in their efforts to recover.

    Suddenly, they’re being given new information - that they were born geniuses and that they still have the genius potential inside of them. And most importantly, that they’re not their minds, Even though it may be filled with anger, fear and thousands of other forms of negativity, their finite mind with its vicious inner critic is not who they are. It’s just one part of a much larger intelligence that they have. And they don’t have to buy into the miserable story that it’s telling them all day long. They can let it go and move on, because there’s a bright road ahead of them if they choose to choose it.

    We also show them a few simple inner exercises and even though they may get only a brief introduction to inner freedom, it’s clearly a liberating experience for them and it’s been an incredible phenomenon to watch. After one exercise, a resident smiled at me in disbelief and said, “I have never felt anything like this before in my life.”

    During these months, as I began to prepare for the return of the podcast schedule, I decided to make some of the key points of the training available to all our podcast subscribers. There is still quite a lot of work to be done prior to the program’s release and I wanted to make this information available to you now. You may find it to be quite helpful and there’s no reason for you to have to wait.

    Now although a lot of what I am going to present to you may seem basic at first, just take it in. I have found that most people have never had a clear introduction to these inner fundamentals and having a clear understanding of them can be critical to our long-term happiness. Afterall, they pertain to the achievement of our highest human potential, which will enhance every area of our lives.

    So, let’s begin with a somewhat tricky problem that can be a real barrier to the growth of our inner awareness and that is – on a certain level, we’re know-it-alls. We think we already know everything. Now I’m only talking about a relatively small part of our mind, but it has a pretty loud voice.

    And there is a companion trait that comes along with being a know-it-all and that is - we like to be right. Actually, we love to be right, but we make far too much out of it. And it’s not just an annoying trait, it can be downright dangerous. When it gets out of hand, wars can start with terrible catastrophes following.

    Sometimes you have to wonder: why are we so proud about being right, anyway? Being right isn’t such a big accomplishment. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. This particular part of our mind isn’t really such a big deal. It’s bark is much worse than its bite, but if we want to grow, we really do need to grow beyond it.

    It reminds me of a story from the old days, and I mean the thousands of years old days, when a student approached a master and asked to be taught knowledge of the inner self. “Let’s have some tea first,” the master said.

    He then poured the student a cup of tea. When the cup was full, he stopped for a few seconds and said, “Here, let me give you a little more.” The master then poured more tea on top of the filled cup and the tea ran onto the saucer. The master kept pouring more tea onto the cup and it ran onto the table. He kept pouring and it ran over the table onto the ground. He kept pouring for a few more moments, then he looked at the would-be student.

    “You see, all the tea that was poured into your filled cup just ran off and ended up on the ground. It was a complete waste and never did you or anybody else any good. Is that right?” he asked, and the student nodded.

    “You see, you have to empty your cup before you can fill it.” So typical of Ancient Wisdom - an extremely simple statement with an extremely profound meaning.

    By the way, this know-it-all, love-to-be-right trait isn’t bound to only individuals. Every culture throughout history seems to think that it’s completely advanced. Even the most appalling barbaric ones thought they were great. So, both as individuals and as societies we remain proud of our so-called knowledge.

    And this always leads me to one of my favorite quotes, which comes from Thomas Edison, who is still considered to be one of the greatest inventors of all times. He is credited with over a thousand patented inventions including the light bulb, the phonograph, the motion picture, and the telegraph. Pretty impressive! Probably one of the smartest humans ever!

    Well, here’s his view about the state of our knowledge. “We don’t know one millionth of one percent about anything,” he said. Hearing that phrase and knowing that it comes from him always makes me humble. And when it comes to inner growth, humility is one of the most reliable allies we have.

    With that, let’s quickly recall that famous study that was commissioned by NASA in which Dr. George Land found that 98% of us begin life as creative geniuses and remain that way though the age of five. Then it progressively diminishes until by our early twenties, only two percent of us are in the genius category. But according to Dr. Land, this remarkable level of intelligence remains within us and can be recovered relatively quickly.

    Personally, the thought that there are advanced levels of consciousness within our intelligence that we have not yet discovered has always intrigued me and through research I have found that this concept has been expressed in every culture and religion throughout human history. I have mentioned in a previous episode that one of my favorite ideas about this is the inner state called Satchitanand, as expressed in Vedantic philosophy.

    The term can be broken down into three components: Sat, which is truth. Chit, which is consciousness and Anand, which is bliss.

    The ancient teaching is that although we may not be aware of it, there is a profound state within us which is connected to eternal truth, unending happiness, and immortal contentment. Together, they represent the ultimate reality or supreme principle, which exists both within and without. George Harrison expressed the concept in his classic song, “Within You Without You.”

    Personally, I fell in love with the idea when I first heard the song on the Sergeant Pepper album. I was in college at the time, it was the late sixties and

    chaos had become the societal norm. Things were falling apart as quickly as they were coming together, but as George put it, “When you see beyond yourself you may find that peace of mind is waiting there.”

    Now, with the idea that there is a pristine state of peace, consciousness and bliss within our awareness, along with Dr. Land’s conclusion that we are in a genius state of consciousness from birth through age five, I started thinking about our early years, especially before the age of three. It seemed to me that if a toddler is not hungry, tired or in need of being changed, and nothing external is bothering them, they seem to exist in a most amazing state of being. They’re creative, expressive and completely aware. And they’re incredibly happy. Indeed, according to current research the average toddler laughs about 300 times a day.

    Of course, we can blow right by that number but stop and think about it. That’s a lot of laughter. So, what are they laughing about? They don’t have much of an understanding about anything in the so-caller real world, so they’re not laughing at a good joke or because they just found out they unexpectedly came into a ton of money. No. The fact is they’re not laughing at anything at all. They don’t need a reason to be happy. They just exist in a state of consciousness that is inherently joyful. And a countless number of masters and teachers over thousands of years, have told us that this state of consciousness is within us now.

    In that regard, I’m reminded of a poem called “Samadhi” that was written by the great teacher Paramhansa Yogananda. Samadhi is a term that refers to the highest meditative state where the individual achieves union with the Divine. He wrote it after he first experienced it as a yogi and this is the ending - “Spotless is my mental sky. Below, ahead, and high above - Eternity and I, one united ray. I, a tiny bubble of laughter, have become the Sea of Mirth Itself.”

    Can you imagine that? Living in a state of inner consciousness where you have transcended the bonds of earth life and merged with the Divine. And what about that term - the Sea of Mirth itself? The dictionary defines “mirth” as abundant gladness expressed by laughter. I don’t know about you, but with all the ideas about God and heaven that I’ve been taught throughout my whole life, and believe me, that’s a lot of ideas – I never came across the idea of God being abundantly happy and expressing it with laughter. The big guy they taught me about seemed to be pretty pissed most of the time and was always ready to smite somebody. Well, so much for concepts.

    But also, to appreciate the incredible state of being that we have within us, we don’t have to go looking for some arcane, yogic, meditative state. It’s much simpler than that. We can just look within our own heart, which is already filled with what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.” There are hundreds of average, everyday traits that we have within our awareness that are miraculous in their own way. Love, gratitude, kindness, generosity, integrity, and compassion are just a few.

    So, if we start out life in this incredible state of consciousness and it is all within us right now, a most obvious question comes up: What happened to us? And more importantly, what can happen for us? Well, we’ve covered a lot of ground here and as you might guess, this will be the topic of the next episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open and let’s get together in the next one


  • In the last episode, I offered a brief introduction to The Higher Mind Training, which is the next project that will be released by the Better Angels Publishing Company.

    I mentioned the remarkable fact that modern neuroscience is in the process of verifying the basis of the higher understandings that have been expressed by Ancient Wisdom for tens of thousands of years. Now, we don’t have the time to go into the specific scientific details of what happens to our brain and nervous system when our inner awareness evolves into its higher levels. Just suffice it so say that the physiological proof of its positive effects on us is irrefutable.

    I also presented the work of Dr. George Land and the study he produced for NASA that indicated that an astounding 98% of us were born geniuses and remained that way through the age of five. And by the time we reach adulthood, only about 2% of us are still in that genius category. But amazingly, that level of intelligence hasn’t left our consciousness. It’s still there and we can definitely reconnect with it.

    And finally, I began the episode with the statement that the Higher Mind Training presents the average, everyday person with practical understandings and techniques they can use to expand their awareness and take them into our larger sphere of human intelligence. It is specifically designed to be simple to understand and easy to put into practice.

    So, with this in mind, let me give you a brief update about some powerful events that have taken place with the Higher Mind Training during this past spring and summer.

    About six months ago, I was invited to teach some of its basic principles to the counselors who serve in a half-way house in Wilkes-Barre, PA as well as the residents who live there. The results of this initial phase of implementation have been truly encouraging.

    The name of the establishment is the James A. Casey House and it has been in operation for over twenty years. Its population is about fifty men, all of whom are recovering alcoholics and/or drug addicts. And these guys are all veterans of some truly hard times. Many have just been released from incarceration, several have recently been subject to severe overdoses, and many were homeless before the Casey House took them in.

    You could say that a lot of them are living on the very bottom rung of society’s ladder, with very little education and even less wherewithal to survive the school of hard knocks that they find themselves involuntarily enrolled in. For me, although I have been speaking about and teaching the ideas and methods involved with the Higher Mind Training for many years, I had never tried to apply it to a population of this kind and had no idea what to expect.

    As I began to train the counselors, I also held six training sessions directly with the residents so I could gain first-hand knowledge of their reactions. It was far more powerful than I had anticipated. Not only did they understand the material, but many had uplifting, liberating experiences practicing it. The results with the counselors, who continue to learn about the training and practice it have been equally impressive as well. And even though we are still in the early stages of implementation at the Casey House, the results have been truly encouraging.

    One of the key fundamentals of the training is that most of us live in a state of Self-Sabotage and this is clearly at the root of most of the problems of the residents of the Casey House.

    The basic description of the state of Self-Sabotage is quite simple. We keep getting in our own way of making progress in our lives. If it becomes bad enough, we become our own worst enemy. To one degree or another, this happens to almost all of us. No matter who we are or what we may have accomplished in life, we all have certain dissatisfactions that we are trying to transcend, higher goals of some form that we would like to achieve. And we each have only one truly powerful enemy who is fighting us every step of the way. And that is – our own self!

    And the reason for this is also quite simple. Basically, we are at war with ourselves. In his introduction to the NASA study, as Dr. Land put it, our neurons are constantly fighting with each other. And again, this goes on with most of us, no matter who we are, how successful we may be, how much money we have, etc., etc.

    So where does this constant inner battle come from and how can we resolve it? Believe it or not, it all comes down to a case of mistaken identity. Let’s use the lens of the Higher Mind Training to take a quick look at it.

    To get started, let’s go back to the very beginning, which for us means, let’s go back about 300,000 years ago to when our species first began to appear on earth. In that regard, there are a couple of things to consider. First, since the beginning of life on planet earth, an estimated five to fifty billion species have evolved here. And incredibly, approximately 99 percent of them have become extinct. They came, stayed a while, and then for one reason or another, they vanished. Gone for good.

    So, the obvious question then comes up – how did we survive? Why haven’t we become extinct?

    The fact that we didn’t defies all logic. Given our relatively puny bodies with our lowly position on the food chain, natural selection should have wiped us out thousands of years ago. After all, we’re not the biggest. We’re not the strongest. We’re far from the fastest. Compared to sea creatures, we’re pathetic swimmers and we can’t fly at all. And when it comes to reproduction, our babies are born helpless, it takes them years to get to where they can survive on their own and compared to most other species, our overall offspring statistics are terribly weak.

    So, under the laws of survival of the fittest, we should have been long gone by now. And indeed, we would have been just another unknown creature that came and went, except for this one small feature that was bestowed upon us by nature. We were born with this incredibly powerful brain. And although we’re clearly outmatched on every other level, this one small organ, with its endless creativity, has given us an overwhelming advantage against the competition.

    At first glance, it doesn’t appear to be much. About the size of an average cantaloupe, it’s less than 100 cubic inches and weighs only about three pounds. And yet, of all the biological evolutions that have manifested on earth since the appearance of the microbe, with its 100 billion neurons seamlessly wired for endless creativity, it’s in a class all by itself. Indeed, the human brain is the single greatest masterpiece ever created by nature. And we each have one of our own.

    With just its ability to invent tools, starting with primitive flint rock knives, it altered the survival equation, and soon we were at the very top of the food chain. And it did much more than that. With its boundless innovation, we didn’t just survive, we became the dominant creature on earth, radically transforming the entire planet.

    And it truly is a most extraordinary tool. It is estimated that it would take the most advanced computer in the world about 45 hours to do what your brain does in just one second. So, your mind is absolutely incredible, and you could never grasp how much intelligence you have within you at this very moment.

    So given all of this, where does this horribly destructive state of Self-Sabotage come from? Well, the truth is, it’s not all that hard to understand. The first concept to grasp is that we all have something in our intelligence which the Higher Mind Training calls our “Neural Template.”

    Our brain has about 86 billion neurons that fire together constantly, and as the saying goes, neurons that fire together, wire together. They create about a hundred trillion neural pathways, which form a neural grid. This vast neural grid is called our neural template.

    It is an incredibly complex device and it’s filled with everything that makes us who we are in the world, all of our concepts, emotions, thoughts and feelings, likes and dislikes, hope and memories, and on and on. We end up filtering everything that happens to us through this vast neural network, and that filtering shapes our entire life experience. We’ve each been basically living our lives through this neural filter since age five.

    Now it’s important to remember that according to Dr. Land’s study for NASA, 98% of us were born geniuses and remained in that category through the age of five, which is when our creative intelligence began a significant and steady decline. So, what happened?

    For most of us, we become more and more over-identified with our neural template, which is also called our ordinary mind. Due to an almost unending barrage of external stimuli, we lose the understanding that this grid that we have created is just a tool that we use to navigate our way through life, and we start believing that this neural template, this ordinary mind that can be overwhelmingly filled with negativity - this is actually who we are. And this extreme over-identification with this very small part of our overall intelligence becomes this case of mistaken identity. And this mistaken identity is the root cause of most of our mental and psychological pain.

    Now, we don’t have this over-identification with anything else that we own. I don’t care how much you might love your car or your cell phone. You never get confused into thinking that they’re actually a part of you. But by mid-childhood, we’ve become so bonded to this neural template we’ve created, that we’ve lost touch with our actual identity and we no longer know who we really are. And the inner civil war, the war between the states of consciousness rages on.

    So, as I mentioned in the last episode, this is just the tip of the iceberg, but it’s also a great place to bring this episode to an end. There’s a lot more coming, so as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open and let’s get together in the next one.