Part two of our dialogue with Hamid Ali is a really deep dive into the fundamental nature of reality. And yet, as he points out, once we touch this reality, life becomes clear and simple in a remarkable way.

Welcome to deep transformation. Self, society, spirit, life enhancing, paradigm rattling conversations with cutting edge thinkers, contemplatives and activists. With Dr. Roger Walsh and John Dupuy join us in the evolutionary fast lane as we take a deep dive into transformational practice. Peak experience, profound understanding, powerful contribution. In luminous Night's Journey, you talk about, in the earlier parts of the book, you talk about the soul, our essence, which includes personal essence, pearl of great price, as being an extension of being.

Yeah.

And the difference between absolute and being I'm not really quite sure of. And when I would be reading being, I would substitute the word God a lot for being. And that seemed to make sense to me. So how would you, how would you distinguish being? Or then later on in the book you talk. It's all co. Co emergent, all these things, you know, they're not separate things, they're all part of the same picture.

Yeah. So being is what I call presence. Being mean the, the beingness, the existence, the ontology of whatever is manifest, whatever we're experiencing. Like if you feel the beingness of your body, the beingness of your soul, that's being. But absolute takes us to beyond being, to non being, to what they call emptiness, which is lack of healing. Non being mean none being. It's the funny thing, because non being in some sense is a negation of being. However, in the Buddhist tradition, they're wet, they're married, they're inseparable, you see, so there are two sides of the same thing. So everything is both being and non being. So there is a fullness on one side and like if you feel it from a certain vantage point, there's a fullness. If you feel it from another vantage point, it's completely nothing. It's a mysterious that way. And the mind cannot conceive of it, you know, you have to have it. Direct experience. Direct experience is very obvious, very clear, distinct. No.

Yeah. To quote you amid, you say experientially, it is simplicity itself, clarity, lightness and freedom. Conceptually, it's paradoxical.

Yeah, it did. Yeah. All the paradox, all the paradoxes come from, you know.

Yeah. And I mean you, you're talking about the, the inseparability of being and non being. But you, you point to something even deeper, that at a certain profound depth of experience, one is required to let go of any belief in or experience of being and one's own being.

Yeah, to get to experience non being, meaning the dissolving of being of any kind, whether it's one's being or universal being, all of them. So it is letting go of the individual soul and letting go of Sati Chanda. Both.

The Vedantas wouldn't be happy to.

Hear that that doesn't be eliminated.

Hamid, in this text, you talk about having this experience, but then it was difficult, challenging to go from the absolute back into being Hamid and having a life and having a wife and having a house and food and trees and bugs and birds and all this stuff. And it seems like a major theme of this is that it can. There can be a reproach mind. It can be brought together and you can have a life at the same time, not being meshed in it.

And that's the idea of freedom, that to have a life that you're not enmeshed in it. You know, a big principle. And this path is what I call being in the world and not being of it.

Yes.

If you are the absolute, any dimension, being, you're not of this world, because this world is physical and material and emotional, all of that. You're not your nature, not any of that. You're not of this world, but you're in it. So in the sense you're living life, a personal life, I mean, all the gurus who talk about there is no universe, they're still talking to people, you know, Remember NASA, Gaddada Maharaj? Yeah, I like him because he has many paradoxes. He'll be talking to a person and he's telling them that there's no individual and it's all in. There's only consciousness. But then he gets angry at them for not get. For not getting what he says. So obviously he's talking to somebody and he's contradicting himself in the moment. He's saying by being angry at them while you be angry at somebody if you believe they're only in your mind.

Yeah, my mind could do that, by the way.

Yeah.

Ah, let's see. So many directions to go. John, I have a line, but is there some more you want to say?

Yeah, I have a bunch of stuff too, but I want to. I don't want to go galloping off into God knows what. So I'm kind of pulling back. I had a couple of ending questions for you, but let me bring up this. This one thing you talked about, the ego. And now when you experience things, you experience things kinesthetically, you Feel it in your body. You see it as diamond multifaceted. And obviously you get it intellectually too. And after you studied and taught physics at Berkeley, you studied Reichan therapy. You think that was partly responsible for your Are helping you to be able to have such embodied.

I think so. I think revelations that made me appreciate the body being open, free of tension, free of patterning, you know, historical patterning and open. And. And that really is my way of teaching is always experiencing presence through. In the body. You know, similar to the martial arts, where the body is important. So feeling the body is opening the body. Because really, especially if we want to learn about the soul, the soul is what's in the body. It's so enmeshed in the body, so separate from the body. It's what animates it. How can you recognize the soul of the body is not open? So I think learning of writing, therapy and biology and doing years of breath work and freeing the body and relaxing and opening it. And I think the one reason why I got to understand what the soul is experienced because it is really an inside of the body.

And by freeing the body, as you said, Hamid, what are exactly you talking about? Releasing muscle tensions? What are you pointing to here?

Well, if you read Reich, Wilhelm Reich, I mean, he takes Freud work about defenses and contraction and all of that, and he said all those appear in the body. There is no defense or resistance that doesn't have a counterpart in the body. And the body appears as contraction. Patterns of contraction, pattern of tension and opaqueness. So freeing the body is freeing it from those contraction, from those opaqueness, from the. From this tension. Because those tensions are not just physical tension because of accident, whatever. They really correspond to mental attitude and mental beliefs and stuff. Like they all go together. So right. In therapy by doing the work, the breathing work, whatever. What. It's not that the body just relaxes. Body relaxes by releasing emotional content.

Yeah. And there's a principle called the psychophysical principle, that every psychological state has a somatic expression of some kind. It seems like one can harshly, I don't think completely release these psychological conflicts, defenses, et cetera, by somatic work. And it sounds like that's what you're pointing to. That really facilitates the psychological.

Yeah, it's very helpful that way, actually, for many people, if you don't, you know, work in their body and to help liberate it. Difficult for them to experience presence or pure consciousness, because the tension makes it difficult to. You need to be relaxed, you need to be at ease. And the body need to be open.

That's a valuable addition, Hamid, because there's not a lot of emphasis on that in at least some traditions. Of course, Hatha yoga would be the example of excellence of that, but it's not often emphasized. I haven't heard it stated so clearly sometime.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's why many of the Indian tradition, they always practice yoga. You know, it's an important part of the thing to practice yoga too. So the body become more supple of tension. But you see, it is possible to experience, you know, transcendent state while the body is tense, still tension. The body is not liberated, But. But that becomes a dissociated state, the transcendent state that doesn't include the body. So you can experience it, can. It can be in a state of consciousness, free, whatever. But that doesn't inhabit the body, doesn't come through the body.

Okay, so still limited by the somatic complexes, tensions, character armors.

Yeah, they don't just go away because we are in a, you know, transcendent state. Just like ego's content doesn't go away by experiencing, you know, liberation. Know, awakening. Experience. State of awakening doesn't mean the ego is completely gone.

But then you have to do the work of. Of clarification and purifying. Right, we talked about that before. So that you can actually become the vehicle or instrument of being of the absolute. So there's a lot of work.

Well, not just the spath. I work with my work, which is that the working through one psychology and psychological history is one side of the inner work, the other side the discovery of our true nature and various possibilities. So they go hand in hand. The two go together. You know, I don't just talk about awakening to true nature. I do that at an important central part of the teaching. However, liberation from the conditioning of the past, from the patterning previous experience is. Is really important. Otherwise we cannot have to be in the world and not. We can't be in the world in a. In a free way. We can be not of it, but we can't be in the world in a full human way.

Is, Is the. At one point you talk about the ego, memories and culture, anything that makes up the personal as being kind of a liquid, leaden, heavy thing. And it kind of changes into a pearl, you know, a luminescent pearl, which is a personal essence, I suppose. And my question is the ego, not the enemy, but a necessary stage in order to experience and. And to wake up. Can we skip ego and go directly to absolute?

Yeah, that's true ego. I mean everybody, everybody grows up with an ego. So it's natural to have an ego. So you wonder if it's natural, why there it can't be mistake if it's natural for everybody. So it says. So that's why I see it as a step, as one stage, a development of the soul which prepares the life for more of an essential kind of individuation. I call the pearl. The leaden thing is more. The lead is one way of experiencing inner defensiveness. But it is a state of inertia. The inertia for the ego. How the ego doesn't change when the people say I work in it, but it doesn't change. That's because there's inertia. You have to get to the inertia part. When you feel inertia, it feels like lead doesn't move, doesn't flow.

There's so much in this chapter on true nature. I mean this, this was, this was a mind, a mind blower in the best sense. We haven't talked about a couple of things that you emphasize. One is the whole relationship to space and time of true nature. And so that seems important. And then how one points to true nature.

So that chapter about true nature I'm introducing through nature in some ways main feature, but in general an introduction to what comes. The chapters come after it where I go through different dimensions of that true nature. And more detail. Like I go there's a chapter on the absolute, for instance, detail in the fifth dimension. But he true nature is more general and brings out many features of what we call true nature. What I call true nature. Buddha is called Buddha nature. You know, the Indian will call it the, you know, the ultimate self and the Suvs will call the divine essence.

And one of the things you emphasize is that true nature as the absolute ground of all phenomena in the universe is beyond space and time, that it creates space, time. And so it introduces these extraordinary paradoxes of experiencing it as infinite and eternal. And yet it's not, it's not quite.

Yeah, infinite, eternal. That's how we can experience it from outside it. And when we see that vastness of it. And like an experience of the absolute or any of those dimensions is vast and it has no end to it. So that sums infinite. It feels infinite in terms seeing it feel like you can't see the end of it and feels infinite. So we say it's infinite since it is the non. The absolute part of it is the non. Being source of all being. Being appears in space and time, you know, so it manifests space and time. Because true nature, you cannot say it is space or time. It's not the time that passes, because no time passes in true nature itself.

If time and space emerge from true nature. Yes. It's not held in time.

Yes. But you see, saying that space and time emerge from true nature is really a very profound thing. Because even though on the spiritual level it says space and time are not fundamental, it says the physical level. And they are fundamental, you know, because they emerge from true nature. True nature creates space and time. Because there are many theories now, and quantum theory, whatever, they're trying to sort of make space and time not real out, created, but create from what? Not physically. They think of it as a quantum phenomena. Creates time and space. But that is, you know, from the perspective of spirituality, that not true. The space, the way we experience it, is created by true nature. So is time. And the time that passes, even when we experience timelessness, if we live in timelessness all the time. Right. Some can live in timelessness, meaning no time. The body ages anyway. And that is with the meaning of the passage of time. So the passage of time never ceases, even though we can live in timelessness. That's a paradox, you see.

Yes.

Because true nature is timeless. However, it also manifests time and space for life to happen, because life as people know it, it's in time and space and everything. I mean the whole universe, I mean the world of science and materiality is in space and time.

And you your point that if one doesn't have a spiritual perspective, then space, time can seem absolute, as they did for Newton.

It also could be very bleak.

Yeah. Newton thought they were absolute, that God created space and time. And I think in some sense he was correct. If we take true nature to be God. However, at the present time, they're trying to make space and time a byproduct of other physical phenomena.

Well, well. And in practical terms, I mean, I want to quote something. You say that true nature is beyond time and space. It can't be measured by either, because they're right. But what one can experience is, I quote, ineffable freedom.

Yes. Well, to be true nature, the realization of oath to be, to recognize we are. That true nature is pure freedom. Because true nature is free essence of freedom. There's nothing that constrain it.

And sometime in our conversations, probably in a later dialogue, we must have a conversation about the varieties of freedom. Because there's an evolution in your work, different kinds of freedom, which is very profound. But maybe we can extend this conversation about true nature being beyond space and time to the recognition that you emphasize that true nature is beyond all characterization, that we can point to it in various ways, it is radically unqualifiable. And I guess I hadn't thought of the connection here, but this way you're pointing to what Nagarjuna, the central philosopher of Mahayana Buddhism pointed to, that you can't say anything is, is or isn't, or Both is and etc.

Etc.

Maybe you could speak to that.

Well, even when we talk about the absolute, we are really elaborating. And an experience and true nature can be even more mysterious than that, than what we call absolute in the sense at some point it becomes we, we have to go to another third, the fourth turning of the teaching, because absolutism of the end of the second turning, where you cannot say anything about true nature because whatever you say could be true, could be not true. You cannot determine it. And the determination that happened when you say this is true doesn't mean it's wrong, but it means there, there is a way of explaining true nature where that is, you cannot say that about it.

And Ken Wilbur had a nice three part pointer to the way one can point to true nature. Saying one can use analogy. It's not this, but it's kind of like this or this via positiva or the negative. It's saying it's not this, it's not that netty. Nettie of the. Of the right or injunctive way. It's a, you know, to do this, practice yourself and experience it to yourself directly. It seems like that's a nice. He puts together those three.

That's the only way to really know. Through experience. Yeah, I mean all spiritual teaching do that. And they're trying to get you to have the experience of true nature, which means experience of your freedom, basically your liberation and fulfillment and happiness and all of that.

And it seems to me that in this inner work, not only is the only way one can really know these profound experiences, and particularly true nature, is through direct experience, but the depth of one's experience sets the limits on one's intellectual understanding also.

Yeah, that's a good way of saying it. Yes. Because whatever we experience, the mind will conceptualize at some points. You know, each teaching does that they have a view for realization, like instruction. The view. The view. But what is the view is just a conceptual perspective about what the experience is, you see. But if we don't know it, our mind can't conceive of it. Many, many of the dimensions through nature are inconceivable because many of them are either paradoxical or unexpected or unimagined, unimaginable in terms of the subtlety and the difference and beauty, accuracy. All these things are actually cannot be conceived by the mind. So if we don't experience them, the mind doesn't know. But when we experience those people who have a good mind, they have quite a good time because they can. Their knowledge has. Explodes sort of.

Yeah, you reach the limit and like you can't go beyond it.

Yeah. In terms of knowing it through the mind. But if you experience it, that opens the mind further, you see.

Yeah.

If you experience through nature, it silences the mind through during the experience. But then the mind comes back, it has new content, new data that hasn't had before. It can think with and it can do it in a way that obstruct this experience if it holds on to the thought. Or it could do it in a way that opens up experience further.

Yeah, and, and a lot of the book that, that I kind of got off the path, what we were doing before. I'll go back to the text if you'd like me to. But it, you, you talk about, you know, the integration you had, all these revelations, I mean, these experiences absolute of being a presence of reality, of the soul and essence and all of this stuff. And then at one point you felt like, how can I go back, you know, how can I go back into the world and be, as you said, be part of it, but not of it. And I wanted to ask you, this is personal. There's a lot of really what I would say bad things going on in our country right now, like our constitutional democracy is being destroyed. And I wonder, you know, how do we act on that? And I've got the intuition that I should resist, but I don't know what that resistance should look like. I don't want to be part of the problem, you know, I want to be part of the solution. So if you have any insights on.

That, I would be deep these days. How to tell what's the position to take. Right.

Yeah. I don't, I don't know if I'm just angry and shout and scream. Is that just going to harden the other side? I'm not sure. It's. It's a co on for me. Resist. But what is resistance? How do you do that?

Yeah, I think the way I really take it is that important thing is that I am myself, that I am free and recognize that I am not only free, but inured from the influence of all these things, all these things happening around me. I mean, it's much worse, much more chaos, much more suffering and fear and anger than it used to be 20 years ago. Yes, right. However, there was always anger, fear, whatever. There's nothing new, it's just more intense. Right. And just like 20 years ago, we still needed to be ourself, to be free from all the anger and fear and all these things. Now the need is even stronger. We need to be grounded in what we are, so that the fear, I mean, I feel the sadness and the fear of the world. I am aware of it, but what I am is not touched by it. You know, I'm aware of it, feel it, sympathize with it, but I am not touched by it because I am something that is indestructible, you know, that its purity cannot be marred. And from that, depending on the situation, what expression comes wouldn't be a natural obvious thing. That happens and depends on the situation. It depends on what is your place in life, you know, what kind of job you have, what kind of position, what kind of reputation. All of these can determine what action will arise from you. But it has to be informed by the truth of our inner nature. Otherwise you're lost. Many people these days are actually completely lost. They don't know what is true, up and down and you know, they're reacting one way or another. It's sad, you know, but you know, if we grounded in our true nature, at least we are aware of all these things, but we're not embroiled in them.

And amid you mentioned that this, your inner work allows you to. To be aware, but not to be thrown about by the events of the world. And that's often misunderstood as not caring. But I think you're pointing out that and a number of traditions do that. That kind of profound equanimity allows a deeper caring to emerge and more skillful responses.

Yeah, I mean, because part. True nature manifests also as compassion, as love, as sensitivity, as generosity, as tolerance. All of these things, these are manifestations. So our interaction with the world will embody all these things, all these true values. People talk about values these days and I hear politics say, well, I changed from one thing, I changed my values. I said, what? How do you change your values? Values are values. You don't change your values, you change your beliefs or positions, but about things, about issues. But if you change your values mean you don't have values. That's simple as that so. But the values of true nature are fundamental and eternal.

Yes.

You know.

Yeah.

So our job is to manifest those, work on ourselves and manifest those. Those essential values.

Yeah. How do you manifest those eternal values and not just now, all the time? Even things get easy and obvious and clear. We still need to manifest those.

Amen. Yeah. Good. Did you have something?

Well, there was an association I had which was that I find it very helpful, Hamid, that you emphasize the many essential qualities that true nature can take. All these many cases described as classic virtues, that they're all expressions of true nature. And I find that very helpful compared to so many traditions which say true nature is this. It's consciousness or it's being or it's some. It's one thing. And there's not. Doesn't seem, at least as in my reading, that there's the emphasis on the. The manifold virtues that are all expressions of true nature.

Yeah. I mean, the quality is some teaching. Talk about, like the Platona and Plato, Platonic idea and Neoplatonic traditions also had that. So our Western tradition had that in its roots, that there are many qualities of our true nature or being. Some of the Eastern traditions have that to some degree. This teaching seemed to, for some reason, had that as an important part of the teaching. The qualities. But the qualities you see are significant partly because one principle, the source of this teaching, is to be in the world and not of it. How can you be in the world without those qualities? You do need courage, you need steadfastness, you need clarity, you need intelligence, you need compassion, sensitivity, all of that to live in this world. And that's when the qualities really become very useful thing. And both guidance and capacity to live in the world in a genuine and also as effective a way as possible.

And a path to liberation without these essential values would be. Would be pretty grim. I mean, it would be not empty in a good way, but it would be valueless. I guess that doesn't help us to live in a better way.

Yeah, I mean, many teachings don't, especially the Easter one. They don't talk about living life because they're mostly monks and, you know, living in monasteries. That's how Buddhism started. Buddha was a monk, and he was. Wanted his people to be monks with him, not live in the world. And they didn't cook their food or work. They begged for food. But that's not living in the world. That is just, you know, being in the world just to go into true nature, you see. And while this teaching says, yes, we want true nature, that's part of it. We're not part of the world. But how we are in the world, that true nature expresses itself in the everyday life. And that takes us to the. You know, Zen takes that into the last one of the pictures being the marketplace, you know, hands open.

Yeah.

In the marketplace. But you, like. You appear like an ordinary human being with other human being, you know.

Yes. There's a beautiful commentary on that last picture. Maybe we just should just say that the 10 oxfording pictures are a pictorial representation of the spiritual path as described and practiced in Zen. In the last picture that you're talking about, amid is this. This bumpkin kind of wandering into the marketplace with a good. And the commentary says even the wisest cannot find them, which I think is a great description. It's like, so apparently ordinary.

Yeah. And that is actually the nature of realization. At some point, you feel ordinary. I mean, after all the vast, amazing, beautiful, mind shattering thing, life become ordinary and simple at some point.

Yeah. And hopefully we will get to the fourth turning. But you. You emphasize there that the most ordinary experiences can be recognized as. As profound as some of the most remarkable experiences we've been talking about today. So. Yeah.

Yeah. The idea is to be free. You know, there's freedom, no limitation on oneself, and inwardly free. You might. Outwardly, you might not be free, but inwardly free.

Yeah, yeah. Beautiful. You're reminding me of that exquisite quote from Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist who was imprisoned in the Nazi system and said, everything can be taken away from. From a person except the last freedom, the freedom to choose their attitude in any situation. Yeah, yeah.

Right.

Yeah. John, you had a question you wanted to.

Yeah, this is like the. The cherry on top of this absolute Sunday we've been digesting here. Thank you so much for. It's been extremely profound. So this question arose for me when studying your works, and I have been immersing myself in it also. Your words are. They're transmitting. It's not just intellectual ideas. There's something that really comes through and helps us understand these almost impossible things that. That you describe. But what is it, Hamid, that motivates you these days at this point in your life? Why are you talking to us? Why do you still, you know, teach? And what. What is the motivation? Why don't you just hang out and be, you know, be true nature?

I am.

Okay?

I'm hanging out, being. Well, I mean, living this life. What does it mean, hanging out? I'm not. I'm not in a monastery, you know, I'm still living in life. Although I'm not an. An ego individual. Like I. The way I experience myself is not something. That's how most people describe their experience, but, you know, still engage. There's engagement with life and the enjoyment. There's enjoyment of our conversation. And also it is something that happens at some point in the path, which is the expression of compassion, love, generosity, giving. Wanting others to benefit is not a motivation. It's a natural expression. It just happens, you know, that is what happens. So I don't need motivation. There's nobody there to be motivated, let's put it that way. Expression, outflow of life.

Beautiful. Well, I mean, being true nature is expressing itself through you in exquisite and delightful and enjoyable and very helpful ways. And thank you so much for giving everyone who's listening this profound transmission and. And your being so deep appreciated.

Yeah, Very, very grateful, Hamid. Thank you.

I'm also grateful to the two of you because you are giving many people the opportunity to have a window into this universe that is potential for all human beings, while most human beings don't know about it.

Yeah.

So giving people a window to look. Oh, yeah. It's possible there is such thing that, you know, hopefully. I mean, it's. It's good for them to know that. But also it's a way for true nature to appear.

Yes, yes, yes. And we feel very extremely grateful to be part of it and to be able to play a small role in getting these profound realizations your. And your being out to. To the world. So thank you so much.

Yeah. And I'm reading this stuff and immersing myself in it, and I go, then I get to talk to him in person next week. You know, it's like.

Yeah. So I'm glad you got into that book, John, because it's a book I really noticed, and not many people read it, and I imagine not many people read it because it's hard to sort of read in some sense, although it's biography is biographical. Should be easier than the other books because it's a direct experience, but it's a kind of experience that many people don't have. So it might not be able to relate to it, but as I said, it is intended as a confusion to spiritual literature about an area of spirituality that is not discussed, which is how the soul connects with the absolute.

And there's so much in that book that perhaps we could even do a conversation around it. I know John would jump at the opportunity.

Yeah. I barely got beyond the introduction today. I mean, I got the first 25 pages, maybe, but we could. Yeah, we could explore that.

You will see in it by the second half what's it like to be the absolute living in this world.

That's right.

It's really, really, really good to see. Yeah. Yeah.

That's the major thrust.

Yeah. Magical in some sense, you know, but it is interesting. Yeah.

There's the understatement of the day.

Well, good being with the two of you. Till next time. I think next time will be in two weeks or something. Not far. Yeah.

Yes. Thanks so much.

Thank you, Hamid.

Have a good day.

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Sam.