Welcome to part one of dialogue 15 in our Wisdom Series with spiritual master and teacher A. H. Almaas, aka Hameed Ali. In this dialogue we dive into the logos and creative dynamism and how everything emerges from nothing. 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.

Welcome to Deep Transformation, Self, Society Spirit, a podcast in which we really try to bring some depth to our contemporary dialogues and in which we have the privilege of dialoguing with some of the great contemplatives, thinkers and activists of our time when trying to bring a really deep reflective perspective to the great issues of our time and to issues of all time and of the deep exploration of our fundamental being. And one of the ways we're doing that is to have the privilege of having an extensive dialogue with A. H. Almaas, that's the pen name, real name Hameed Ali, who's the founder of the Diamond Approach and the Ridhwan School. And we are systematically working our way through Hamid's magnum opus, or actually there are a lot, several magnum opuses and Hamid is a very prolific writer and teacher. But we're working our way through the Inner Journey Home, which is one of his larger and more systematic texts up to chapter 20, logos and creative Dynamism and Hamid. This is quite a chapter. This has given me, John and me quite a workout. We have texted back and forth, what's this mean? How are you doing with this? It's been one of the most, I hesitate to say it's been one of the most profound because every chapter is profound in its own way, but certainly been one of the most, has a unique depth and dimension to it. And the fundamental topic is creative dynamism. The idea that being the fundamental nature, true nature, the fundamental dimension of reality is inherently dynamic. And for me it's been a really valuable antidote to my own kind of, I guess, exposure to traditions like Advaita Vedanta, where there's the assumption of Brahman or God as this static being. And you by contrast, really point to the fact that yes, fundamental nature is transcendent to time and space and motion, et cetera, but it also has inherent with it both a creativity and a dynamism, ongoing perpetual creation of the universe and of us. There's a lot here, but maybe I'll just let you respond to that.

I mean, yeah, I wonder, you know, if you talk to somebody who's knowledgeable and dvdanta, how will they explain from there perspective changes that Happen and experience it must have some way to explain it, because there's no way to explain it without the dynamism. And it is called different names, different teachings. You know, like in Dzogchen, they talk about energy. Mahmouda talks about manifestation. There's the one taste and then there's a manifestation they can manifest. So this is talk about what? Manifestation. Manifestation and attempt to explain changes. Same thing with energy. If you go to Kashmiri Shaivism, they talk about Shiva and Shakti. Shiva is the still and Shakti is the dynamic, creative. So they have it right there from the beginning, the beginning of the system. Another teaching, of course, Western tradition. Sufis talk about creativity and Sufi talk about new creation. That's what they call it, new creation. That everything is a new creation. No creation is old. So this topic ranges through all these perspectives and adds more. And in fact, I mean, the interesting thing about this dimension we experience, which is the dimension of our nature, true nature, one way true nature manifests itself. We talked about presence and awareness, but also presence, awareness don't explain how things change. They just say how you experience them. How does a comet move across the sky? How do you explain that? How do you explain the changes day and night? I explain the changes of thoughts and feeling and emotion. They're all changing. And always sort of. There is the usual conventional, what's called conventional view, which is changes happen in time. Things are there and time passes on them. And through natural laws, they move and change. Not that the conventional science experience is a big part of that, but that is the material view of explaining this. I think that kind of explanation changes is useful. I don't think of it as wrong. I'm just saying it's one explanation, one way of seeing how change happened. If you see it from the perspective of objects in time. However, we're talking about realizing our nature, which is beyond the material, beyond the objects in time. So how do we see changes happening? If we ask that question, we begin to access or be open to the fact that our nature is dynamic in the sense it has energies, has dynamism, has movement, has flow. And that appeals as some kind of a creativity that becomes like display. And you know, in the chapter I talk about different ways of viewing that kind of creativity. Each way is a kind of experience, different PMI experience one way or the other. He experiences as outer flow, as a new creation, as display, as manifestation, as transformation, all of that. But the idea is that when we talk about the non dual, which everything is one, all what we tweet is all manifestation, all reality is part of one unified fabric. Just one unified fabric. What does it mean about cars moving one place to another? There's no car, actually, one unified fabric. Some part of it appears as a car or a bird. So how do you explain the bird flying?

Well, Hamid, the word that you use over and over again as part of the title of the chapter, as well as creative dynamism, is the Logos. And I love that. And that connects you with the Heracles and the early Greek philosophers and later the Neoplatonists and the Bible. As you mentioned in the book, the first verse of the Gospel of John, in the first chapter and the second verse is in the beginning was the Word. And the. The Word was with God. And the Word was God and nothing was made that was not made by him, basically. And in the original Greek it says in the beginning was a Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. And that is a very, very powerful statement. And I don't think that disagrees at all with what I've been understanding from working, reading this book and this, what you talk about.

Yeah, I mean, like when people read the Bible, when they say the Word was with God, the Word, the beginning was the Word, the Word is with God, the Word was God. What does the Word mean? It's not a word in the usual sense of the Word.

Well, it's often interpreted as the King James version of the Bible, every jot, title and semicolon. And that's the word of God. Yeah, that's the word they're talking about. But when you change it to Logos, it has a much more profound and clarifying meaning.

Yeah. So this chapter go to really delve into the question, where does expression word come from? You see, and I think you read the chapter. So you saw it. It is not an easy thing to understand because when you say first was the Word and the Word was with God, the Word was God, or each one of them is saying something important about deep, very deep counter experience and realization is not understood just by looking at the Word and taking them at face value. Because otherwise, you know, face value. What do you mean? What word? One word. That word was with God. God is a word. And so the conventional meaning of words is not what is meant here. I don't think that's what's meant in the Bible, because how people read it can't be. I mean, it doesn't make sense. Of course the word Satan is used to refer to Jesus, you know, Christ. Anyway, so that's. Yeah. So if we get into the details of this teaching, this experience, we can understand, have an understanding of the place of the world, place of language, place of expression, speaking. I call also the logos, the speaker and connected in the human speaking where language come from.

And I mean the dynamism and creativity you're speaking to in this chapter is a radically. Well, I was going to say pervasive. But pervasive doesn't even do it justice. It's not just there is creation. And not that it's a one time event as in some of the theistic traditions. But you emphasize that there is a dynamic creativity, ongoing and total. It's a very radical perspective. The whole universe, all manifest realms are created anew in each. Well, it's before time, but let's say each instant. And that even the appearance that nothing persists, which is another radical implication. And that what we take to be movement is not something in time actually moving across space, but a continual recreation of a facet of being. As for example a car or a bird.

This is pretty mind blowing in something mind blowing. The experience itself is beautiful and profound. And I want to iterate. This is experience. We're talking about experience. This chapter is an expression of an actual experience, a string of experience, a stream of experiences of realization. But when people talk about being non dual, do they really understand this? If you don't understand this, your non duality is incomplete because nondual mean nothing separate from anything else. Well, if nothing separate from anything else, then how do birds fly? How do cows move? They're not separate. What happens? So that's basically here we talk about being and through nature. We're saying that it has a dynamism and dynamic meaning is not just still, it can't be still, it's one side of it, the other side of it is alive, it's dynamic, it is false. And the way its aliveness happens is it is constantly being creative of everything at the same time. So the creativity is not like God created the world in seven days and sat down to rest. And then the world goes on. Or even scientific the big bang. And then we have the universe of 14 billion years old. And all of them no come to the logos, to this understanding, this kind of experience. There is no time passes anything, nothing old. There is nothing that is created, stays there, being created. And time passes around. Because this dynamism is constant, never stops. It is constantly creating what we experience, what we perceive, creating it anew each instant.

And you say that everything is recreated every instant, but everything is also annihilated every instant. So we have a new creation every instant. That is a remarkable insight. And changes a lot.

Yeah, that's one way that many teachings emphasize is the creation and destruction. And I think the Hindu system has the gods, you know, a God of creation, the God of Brahma and Vishnu, you know, and destruction. So because. Yeah, I mean, you cannot have something that doesn't. Doesn't persist of time without it being annihilated, you know, annihilated. That's one way of experiencing. In fact, some people can experience it that way. You can experience creation and you can experience as dissolving, it's disappearing. It's like the moment is created, the next moment dissolves, or a new creation to happen and the same thing is recreated, but sometimes recreated slightly differently. And the continuity of recreation, instant by instant with slight differentiation, will basically create the changes that happen. And experience, which is my writing, I use film, a movie screen, how the film is always changing, the picture is always changing and you see things changing, people moving and talking. But in reality the whole screen is changing instant to instant. So that's a good metaphor to understand how from the non dual perspective, how the world appears, which is that the whole world, the whole universe, all of reality, all of the forms of reality are constantly created and has to be created and new. The old version has to go, you see. So I usually use different expression. One of them is creation and destruction. Creation, annihilation. Another one, I call it replacement. Each version is replaced by the next version, you know, so it is sometimes you feel like what my body and my. My house and the world, the sea is being replaced every instant by a new virgin. And the new version has similarities to the older version. Otherwise there will be no understanding of movement or change. Just like it happens in a movie. You see a horse walking from one end to another. It's really a screen just changes from instant to instant and appear to us as a horse move one end to another. It's very similar kind of thing.

And Amit, I want to emphasize something you said in passing because it seems to me a really important point. And you said that. Well, let me step back and say you're presenting a very profound metaphysics, an understanding of the nature of reality and manifestation, creativity, change. And it could come across as an abstract metaphysics, almost speculative. But you made the point that this comes out of your direct experience. And the further implication which you've implied in other times is everything that you're presenting in your work is born out of your own direct experience. And realization. You're informed and enriched perhaps by all sorts of knowledge you have of different traditions. But this is a report on your own experience, effectively.

A good point, Roger.

Yeah, it is. I mean that's, I mean, we talk about spiritual teachings. That's about experience, immediate, direct experience. And it is one way of experiencing through nature, facet or property, or a dimension of true nature that makes sense to our world. The fact that we have one feeling following another, one thought of how did that happen? You know, if it is not happening in time, how is it happening?

And as you pointed out, materialists and conventional, for example, scientists come up with very sophisticated accounts of causality and change, etc. Although we need to acknowledge that change remains one of the great mysteries of philosophy, but is possible to come up with explanations which only view and interpret the material side. But what you're offering is something significantly deeper. You have, you know, you have, you did your doctorate in physics at UC Berkeley, you have all that, but you're introducing a much deeper dimension of direct experience of the absolute and a direct experience of its manifestation, creativity, change, and the principles by which it does so, which you call the logos. So you're enriching the material worldview and understanding with this more profound, multi layered recognition of being.

Yeah. And in creation, not just the physical world, but also the mental, the emotional, the spiritual world, all dimensions of experience are all being created and recreated, created anew, as the Sufis will call it. New creation, the doctrine of new creation, which means everything is newly created. We don't need to think of a creator because the Logos here is the creator of some senses. Is the creative dimension of our spiritual nature creative? Not in the sense that people think, oh, I'm creative, I could be an artist, I could paint, I could have ideas. I mean, that also comes from it. But I'm talking about creativity.

A little larger perspective.

I remember was invited to a talk by, you know, a friend, teacher who teaches you, who teaches through art, painting and thing. And. And they're doing all their. Not all, you're all creative, but creativity is much more profound, deeper that not only your brush and your mind is creating you yourself and your creativity is created instant by instant. The whole thing is being created and not by you.

Yeah, a little different between creating a painting, creating a universe. Yeah.

So creativity here means you don't need to be a creative person to experience creativity. Does creativity mean generation of reality?

That's nice. Here's a line from the chapter which I liked. It says, this is the effect of the Dimension of love as it fills the field of logos, giving us the impression that the universe is unfolding as the action of love, of the love of being. The Logos is felt then as the heart of God and we are all its inhabitants.

Yeah, that's one way of experiencing things. I mean, this remind me that some of that Veda Vedanta tradition talk about consciousness as love too. And everything is the creation of that love. That's actually Advaita Vedanta. She doesn't talk about creativity. We can approach this question creativity in many ways, as you mentioned, for instance, that's one way, one thing. I mean, there's the general creativity and then many other topics, subtopics like question of free will, the question of action, the question of choice. All of these things are addressed here from a non dual perspective. Which actually the chapter doesn't discuss because, you know, it would have been longer. If there is no individual that have their own creativity. What does it mean that somebody make a choice or does something, does anybody do anything? That is one thing that arises here. I remember teaching about this. You know, some people come through the door and I tell the person, you think you came through the door? Actually, nobody came through the door. You just emerged in the room. Then as you walk, you're emerging instant by instant. So nobody walks.

And there are profound implications here for perennial issues like free will, which you. You touch on here.

Yeah, I think in one dimension we perceive it ourselves as having free will. At another dimension, at a deeper dimension, there's like. There's only one movement. And that's the universe moving all together at the same time. And what we perceive as our individual selves is just a part of the universal logos creating. And that connects everything everywhere. Talk about entanglement. I mean, everything is absolutely the same thing. And it's all one movement, one word. I think you called it the chapter.

One time, one movement. Each instant, the whole, all and everything appears. The next instance, it reappears with slight modification and keeps reappearing with slight modification. And if you look at the different modification, you see things that we call movement and change and transformation. But they're not seen here as movement of change and transformation.

So when we realize that, Hamid, what does that do to the individual soul? When we realize that non duality and what we thought of as something is actually something far different and more profound.

Well, the individual soul, you need the individual soul to be able to access this kind of realization, this kind of realm. Individual soul, the experiencing lens needed for true nature to have perception. But the experienced soul here is not appearing as an individual soul. Usually it is more implicit, it's implied, it is absorbed. And because in this experience I don't experience myself as an individual, I experience myself as the totality or as the source of the totality. I mean the way all non dual teaching talk about I am the universe, they say, but I'm the universe that is constantly changing.

Since we brought in the idea of non separation and that there's no individual doer, rather just the totality or being or true nature manifesting everything. And that that undoes the conventional assumptions about a separate self and individual choice and free will. But you make a very important point, Hamid, in the book, that yes, this is the way things are seen from a much deeper perspective can arise as a realization in contemplation, et cetera. But it's not enough just to mouth the words. If we have not had and had that experience for ourselves, if it's not a reality for us, we really need to live in an authentic way which honors the fact that we experience ourselves as separate, with an independent will. And we need to live authentically. We need to make choices or have the appearance of making choices which are ethical, appropriate, skillful, compassionate, et cetera. So you acknowledge the importance of both perspectives?

I think both perspectives are important because it's difficult to live life without the ordinary conventional perspective. At the same time, the conventional perspective is only one perspective is incomplete if we take it to be all of reality, you know, and that leaves us in some sense disconnected from our roots and as a result empty and meaningless and all that that people experience. But people talk about awakening as recognize your all awareness or your all consciousness. This is going further. Well, okay, I am all consciousness and awareness. What does that mean about how do I live? Most people who are realized nondual, they experience themselves as awareness. But the moment something needs to be done, they become the usual doer, which is one way ego experiences itself. The ego is experienced as a separate self, is also experienced as a separate doer. So this dynamism shows we don't need a doer, the universe does. I mean expression. I use sometime, as I call sometime the source or the dimension of being. I call it who that's secret name, God who hurt.

Right?

And I have a teaching, I call it who does, okay, which is in Christianity will be called the only doer. There's only one doer. One doer is being itself. So that's using the expression doing, you know. But really from this perspective, there's no doing There is a generation of appearance and display of what we perceive being displayed instant by instant. And an outflow, a luminous outflow of all forms and experiences.

And you're converging here amid with a description a number of traditions that the of the non doing. I think of, for example, the Wu Wei of the Chinese tradition. Action without action, doing without doing. Or Dzogchen Spontaneity or Maestro living without. Why just a spontaneous outflow of non intentional action. But you're also giving a deeper understanding of the fundamental ontological basis on which spontaneity can arise.

Yeah, you see, there are many realizations. Non dual is one realization. First of all, we need a cousin in many of the realization there is nondual. But it means very different than what we talk about. As one realization. I can be some realization. I don't see the universe being created, but I don't do anything. There is nobody there to do anything. Things are just happens. That's a different realization than the law is involved, but is implicit. It's not experience here. We're talking about the explicit, explicit full experience, complete experience of a dynamic force of being. And dynamic force is a creative force. A creative force means generating. Generating forms and generating appearances. Creating experience and generating them in a way that is continuous. And by a process of continual creation. Which means nothing is created. And days and time, everything is recreated in some sense. So I mean, this is the very basis of transitoriness. For instance, teaching transitory. This is obvious. Everything is transitory. Hold on to something. Holding on to something means you're somebody holding on to something that you believe persists in time. So all delusion, there's no such thing. There's no you to hold on to something. And there's nothing there to hold on to. Because always of its very nature is always changing anyway.

Well, there does seem to be. I'm trying to understand this, Hamid. There is an individual soul, an individual self that we experience as such. But the fallacy comes when we think we're a disconnected soul or disconnected self. That we're cut off from everything. But we still continue to function as all these individual eyes that are perceiving the universe. And being acted through or playing our role. So how. Anyway, to me that's a great mystery. But I kind of feel my way into that.

Yeah, I mean, we are each individual soul. But each soul is like a wave in this ocean or a ripple in this ocean. That is also part of what's being created, recreated. And what is soul it created recreated as I or the Organ of perception, of seeing, knowing how being is work, works, how being is manifesting. So because the experience of new creation is always an experience of somebody, right? You could say, I mean, everything always recreated instant by instant. It is true, but if you do that, it's abstract, but it is really an individual experience, like it's my experience or your experience or some lama's experience. So that shows that the soul is important. Without the individual, there is no experience of any kind, creation or know of anything. There has to be an individual. So that's why I always wonder why those people talking about individual being an illusion? There is not an illusion. The logos manifest creates out of itself organs of perception and action that are expression of itself, that are real and alive and as real and dynamic as itself. So the soul is very similar to the logos actually, because it has that sense of flow and dynamism, creativity, things changing and moving.

Habeed is it similar as they talk about in quantum physics, that something can be a particle, appear to be an individual entity and a wave that extends into infinity depending on how you perceive it or how you look at it. Is that a good metaphor to help us kind of understand this? Stay tuned for part two of this three part dialogue in which we continue to explore the logos and the creative dynamism of true nature. Thank you very much for being a part of this conversation. We hope that you were moved, as we are moved, being part of it ourselves. We'd also like to say that this is being funded by Roger and myself. It comes out of our pockets. So if you would like to help us to mainly to get this podcast out to more people because the bigger audience have which is steadily growing, but the more people we can reach and the more marketing we can do, the more positive effect we can have on the world. So we've done a couple of ways. But we'd like you to buy us a cup of coffee. Very simple. And I do that with podcasts that I support and I find it's very satisfying. So thank you for your help, thank you for your presence and thank you for all you are and all you do. We love you.

Sam.