Dear, dear listener, hi, this is John Dupuy. I want to ask a favor of you. If you like the podcast Deep Transformation and you're getting a lot out of it, could you please help us by going to wherever you get your podcast, it's a Spotify or Apple or wherever it is, and write, write a review that would really help us to get this out. We really believe in what we're doing and we're really praying and hoping this is helping people and being part of the solution. So if you could do that, it would be greatly appreciated by Roger, myself and our team. God bless. Thank you. Welcome back to part two of our conversation with John Prendergast, spiritual teacher and depth psychologist, where we continue our deep dive into our deepest ground of being. 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.

John, I'd love to move into another topic here. And that is one of your chapters in your book, your Deepest Ground, where you take as exemplars of two kinds of approaches to the psyche and our depths. And you take the exemplars of Carl Jung and Ramana Maharshi, two giants of what should we call them? Explorations of the most profound aspects of the psyche. So maybe you could say. And you juxtapose them in a very beautiful and skillful way. So, so maybe you could say what these two giants represent for you or symbolize.

Well, this is interesting because just to preface my remarks, when I was approaching this book and I write about this in the chapter, I was just starting to write the book about the deepest grounds and something so dear to my heart, and I began to write the first chapter and the inner voice said, stop. And it's like, oh, all right, I'll stop. And why is that? You know, what do I need? What's happening? And it's like the guidance was the kind of inner knowing you need to understand the archetypal dimension better. You have a good feel for the personal that you go like you have a good feel for the groundless ground. But this archetypal, you need to understand better if you're going to speak about the multidimensional ground, because there are these dimensions and to be authentic, you need to know this better, not just cognitively, but experientially. And you need to go back to Jung. So that was the inner guidance here. So I went back and I read his Memory Streams Reflections, which had made such an impact on me when I was a graduate student. Very inspiring, felt very authentic. And then I read his Red Book, which was pretty hard to decipher, pretty dense and obscure, but interesting. And I realized I need to research this more. And so I read other authors about the Red Book and was able to actually to decode his language and get a feel for his journey, his remarkable opening, pioneering opening, after he broke from Freud and opened to this deeper dimension. So there was this whole reacquaintance with Jung himself, his process and his discoveries that at the same time felt like it was very important to be in touch with within myself this archetypal dimension, to have not just an understanding of it and occasional experiences, but a visceral sense or feel. And the visceral sense of it, and this is true for Jung, is he just let himself drop. This is like a critical point in this experience that I write about. He just made the decision to just let go and allow a natural descent to happen. And he found himself like just falling deep underground. And then this whole kind of world appearing that he began to dialogue with, very tumultuous, overwhelming. And he doubted his own sanity, as you know.

And that lasted for several years, didn't it? That was really an extended period.

It went on for many years. And even now some people said this was his psychotic period, but that's not accurate. It was certainly challenging and he questioned his own sanity. But it was a very profound and tumultuous process that went on from kind of 1915 until the late 1920s, I would say, so quite an intense period. And he, you know, he wrote, took notes, which became the Black Book and into the Black Book, the Red Book. Anyway, so that was my journey with Jung, was just to kind of acquaint myself better with this whole felt sense of this archetypal world. And what's interesting is my own kind of spiritual roots come more from Advaita, Vedanta and Kashmir Shaivism. And so I encountered the teachings of Ramana Maharshi very early on in my own exploration. Although his self inquiry process was quite a mystery to me. When I first read about who Am I? You know, I tried to answer with my mind and got nowhere. But he's been one of my teachers, I would say. And I did visit his ashram in India. And speaking of kind of sacred places, the cave in which he sat and the old Darshan hall where he would sit with people for years, charged Presence, really holy, sacred space. So anyway, what was interesting to me is that Jung had a chance to meet Ramana and be with him when he went to India in 19. When was it? 1936, 37. And he chose not to because he thought he knew who Ramana was. He's like all the other gurus and he's just interested in pure, stainless Brahman consciousness. And Jung felt that this was imbalanced, that this would be destructive actually of the body and of the ego in a negative way. And so he really was on a different path. And as I write, he had his own dharma. He believed that what Western society needed, which had become hyper rational, was to balance out that hyper rationalism and include this missing part of the polarity in the psyche and to have a. Through the Holy Spirit, to have a kind of Christification of humanity. So they had very different approaches. And it was just interesting to see that juxtaposition and also to see in both traditions there's a tendency to devalue the other. So in the tradition of Advaita, there'll be a tendency not to deal with the soulful levels and archetypal levels that Jung pioneered so beautifully and so deeply and to dismiss, that is unimportant or even an egoic expression. And from the Jungian side, it's like to give oneself to the transcendent, to the groundless ground would be in some way subverting or diminishing the individuation process where there was a balancing of egoic and archetypal levels and continual kind of expansion vertically and horizontally of those two. My experience working with people is they're both important.

Yes.

And as we sit and go deeply into our experience, there's a very natural movement of attention between different dimensions. And sometimes, you know, and certainly when we, if we're on vision quests or do plant medicine, these, you know, the archetypal dimensions tend to get evoked more directly. And they can be profoundly healing and revelatory and important and life changing, deeply transformative. Similarly, there can be movements where the ground falls open, you know, and the walls fall off and the roof falls off. And we feel ourselves as boundless awareness, not separate from anything and intrinsic to everything, which is profoundly liberating and life giving. And attention will move, and sometimes it'll go to levels of personal conditioning, these core limiting beliefs or contractions and traumatic experience. So attention, given the chance, attention will go to where it needs in the healing and awakening process. And I think it's important to understand that that's A unique process for everyone. It's a very spontaneous process and it's very important to honor that in people that we're working with and within our own self, to not cut ourselves off from any dimension of our experience.

And I want to just emphasize an implication of what you're saying there, John. And that is what for me was one of the most important recognitions of psychotherapy was that we can actually trust our own psyches, that there's a wisdom and guidance and there that's much greater than this little ego. And I had spent my entire life like it seems like most of this people, distrusting my own mind and thinking. I had to be on guard against my own impulses and this and that and the other, etc. And it was such a relief to find that actually one can trust the mind and therefore trust oneself.

Exactly. Beautiful point. There is given a chance, the psyche will unfold itself and reveal either essential qualities of being or being itself. And it's a natural unfolding process. But it needs support and it needs understanding for that to happen. And that's why sometimes that flowering will happen of its own, spontaneously at times. And sometimes it's really helpful to have an attuned guide or some kind of supportive environment to facilitate that opening. But yes, there is an intrinsic movement and natural intelligence within each of us.

And stepping back, just, I love your talking about Ramana Maharshi and Carl Jung and how they were both kind of arrive at the same places, but Jung came from a new, you know, psychotherapy, a student of Freud, and took that and took the individuation, the individuality, which eventually led to the place that I think Ramana Maharshi was starting out at, basically. And it's really interesting, it's kind of a Western and Eastern way of looking at it. But they seem at the deepest levels come to the same transcendent place, if I'm not mistaken.

Well, I see it a little differently, okay. Because I think they actually do take, they speak to different dimensions of experience, of depth experience. So to use a metaphor of the ocean, let's say Jung was exploring the deepest currents within the ocean, the very fine levels of manifestation, the archetypes that would emerge that were not personal, they were transpersonal and they were cross cultural. On the other hand, Ramana was interested in the ocean floor, like the ground of being, if you will, the formless awareness. So Jung interested in very subtle form and Ramana interested in the formless. And each specialized in these areas, but did not necessarily fully address the other. And So I see them as complementary and as close, but actually distinctive.

Have you been able to weave those together a little in your journey? And if you'd like to speak on that a bit.

Well, that's a big question. Yeah. You know, as I suggested in the book, there's a kind of a natural unfolding of those. And even though. Let's take the example, because I have found at different times of my life, my attention has gone more to one level or to another. But even the impulse to write this book, for instance, feels like it's coming from some other level. Like, I don't have a personal agenda here. I don't have a need personally to write this in order to achieve or demonstrate anything. It's like, it feels like life is saying, share what you've learned. It will be of benefit to others. And once you've shared it, let it go. So that has a kind of archetypal feel to it. In other words, I have certain sensitivities, certain insights, certain understandings that I have found to be of help to others. And it feels like it would be actually selfish to simply keep those to myself. And so the movement is a natural sharing of that. All of that within a context of all is, well, no matter what. And they're both operating. It's like if this book were never to happen, that would be okay. And there's a natural movement to do so. So if I have the capacity, if I have the time and, you know, then to allow that gift to be shared. So that gives an example.

Yeah, it seems that that gets into Jung and the archetypes and in that spacious emptiness of just unitive experience. There's times when we put on the coat of the archetype.

Yes.

Like it's stand up as a Gandalf or a wizard or a healer or a holy man or a warrior or a hero. There's times to take on that, but it's held lightly.

That's it. It's held lightly. We don't take that as who we are. Fundamentally, it's a role function that life is asking of us. To be a parent, for instance, to be a mother, to be a caretaker, to be an artist, to be a lover. It's called forth from circumstances. It's being open to that. Not insisting on it, but not refusing it and being willing to put on the cloak and then be willing to let it go when it's no longer needed. There's a lightness of being in that. To not take oneself.

You know, it connects us to our ancestors. You know, these coats that we put on at certain times is something that's been built over human history. And so there's a connectedness to that layer of it.

This is one of the interesting. We could talk about this quite a bit. It's a fascinating subject. Jung referred to the collective unconscious as a land of the dead, clearly and directly linking it to our ancestral lineages, to those voices, those countless generations of beings that preceded us, whose yearnings had not been actualized, who questions had not been answered, whose essence had not been recognized. And we are on that wave and moving of life, waking up to itself through humanity.

And in some sense, the ancestors are looking at us, waiting for us to get it done.

You know, this is what people report, and it's been fascinating in this in depth work at times. People discover an ancestral lineage of suffering almost always. And as they resolve a particular issue within themselves, it feels like that whole lineage lights up for them in some way. It's very interesting.

And how do you understand that, John?

That is. I can understand it in two ways. I can understand it as we carry kind of psychic traces from our ancestors that are passed on culturally and through specific families of origin. So in a kind of linear way, it's our baggage, and the baggage becomes illumined. So that would be a more conventional way. Another way, which is much more kind of mind blowing is it's all happening at the same time, that our concept of linearity is just that concept. And so past, present, future are all coexisting simultaneously. And a change in any of those affects all of them.

Yeah, okay.

I understood that at moments, at brief moments. I've seen that.

But honestly, I can't say that that's my lived experience. That's a concept. But it is interesting that people have these experiences where it feels like the ancestors are grateful for the unfolding, that someone is discovering a letting go of some deep confusion.

Yeah. You point to the way that Jung and Ramana Maharshi. Well, a couple of questions here first followed different paths, they had different callings, and they responded to what life asked of each of them. And you pointed to. Point to the fact that Jung focused on mental contents, even though very profound ones, whereas Ramana Maharshi went to the dropped into and became the awareness in which content arises.

Yes.

Would you say that those are characteristic of Indian culture and contemporary Western culture, respectively?

I think so. I mean, with exceptions, of course. But yeah. India in particular has a transcendent accent to its spirituality and Western culture. I mean, you know, you can see if we look at Meister Eckhart, for instance, there's a transcendent aspect, but he was very interested in living that. The Geburz, the birth of spirit in ordinary life as well. He's an outlier. I think, you know, there are a few outliers in Western society, but mainly we've been interested in the content. And really prior to Jung, there wasn't a clear articulation, even this subtle archetypal level. There were certainly expressions of it, but not conceptual framework with which to understand it. But yeah, I think, you know, we in the west are more concerned with form and India in its more transcendent traditions with the formless.

I had a friend recently tell me when I was struggling, going through kind of a dark period, he told me, this has really stuck with me, that the content is the path. So I was like, huh, okay. And I guess that's form is form is emptiness and emptiness is form sort of thing. But we're talking about, I guess, different yogas kind of leading us to the same, same, eventually the same place. I don't know. That's just a concept. But what would you say about that?

Well, I think again, Jung was concerned with individuation, individualized expression of essential of these archetypal qualities. So I think they lead to complementary but differentiated places. And I think both are important actually. And I think the tendency is to devalue one or the other. And I see them, this has been my discovery that the openness that discovering really the depths of true nature, this unbounded, open, undefined awareness, I find actually supports the actualization and individuation process because we're less, as we engage in it more deeply, we're less concerned about our image and story because we realize it's not who we are fundamentally. So the less we are concerned with how am I doing, how do I look, my legacy, what am I going to achieve? And we're more and more in the process of just life living itself. Those gifts come forward in a very much more spontaneous and unpretentious way. And so my experience is like opening to unbounded awareness supports the individuation process when properly understood. But people get stuck on the spiritual path and they often get stuck in the transcendent. And they get stuck up here. They get stuck in like this awareness, which feels expansive, which feels free. But this whole kind of embodiment, the descent really include the body, is the discovery that emptiness is form and form is emptiness. The non separation of form and formless, that it's all consciousness, not just as a nice thought, but as a lived reality. That's the imminent approach. And I think that blends these dimensions.

That we're talking about, John, in your use of Ramana, Maharshi and Carl Jung as exemplars of people who follow their calling to distinctly different realizations and discoveries about the psyche and about human nature, but in ways which you're pointing out can be used very. In very complementary ways. And then you brought it back to the reader and you ask a beautiful question. Given that these two are exemplars of following their calling, what is life asking of you? I thought that was such a beautiful question.

That's good.

Yeah, it's a living question. It's a question that is. And it's not a question for ordinary mind, not a question for thought, ordinary conceptual thought. It's a question that takes us into our depths, into openness, into an innocent availability and a deep listening and trusting. Coming back to your point, Roger, that there is something profoundly trustworthy in the core of our being that both supports us and nourishes us and provides meaningful direction as well. Yeah, a living question.

Yeah, it's a beautiful reflection. And towards the end of your book, your deepest ground, you come to the deepest ground, the groundless ground. And you've been alluding to this at several points in our discussion, but is there anything else you'd like to say about this groundless ground as you describe it?

Well, you know, here's the difficulty. Putting any words to that which is prior to words, putting any images to that which is prior to imagery. I will say this. Usually when there is the first encounter with. It is an encounter with darkness, with silence, with stillness, with a sense of emptiness and the sense of no thing or no thingness. And let's say we have gone through our fear of being nothing and no one, our fear of annihilation. And there is an openness to this. It has that quality, profound stillness and silence and darkness. Not referring to anyone or anything. Even the sense I am is too much as we surrender to relax into trust, this no thingness. Very often there's a sense of pure potentiality, too. It's like no form, no one, no thing. And yet a sense of inherent fullness as potentiality. In other words, the darkness is brimming with light. It's pregnant with creativity and growing trust and sensitivity of this. There is a natural movement of that luminosity in potential into form. And we can feel it as an upwelling current of life. Not that it happens in such a linear or hierarchical way because it can happen at any point. We can have glimpses of this before and openings and closings. But the more we are at ease and grounded in this openness and that's the paradoxical, you know, here's language that's so paradoxical in the darkness, in the stillness, in the silence, in the no thingness. The more there is just a natural relaxation, recognition of this as true as source, the more we are open to an essential life moving through us. And it feels like the word source has its root in French. Source, spring. It has a spring like quality, an upwelling creative energy that begins to move through us. And if we're sensitive, we can feel that. And we can feel it as a kind of inner light, inner luminosity, inner aliveness that begins to move through us. And its natural movement is up and out, an outpouring, an upwelling and an outpouring. So some people feel this, some people don't. And it's not necessary to feel can be. I have found a wide range of sensitivity to this process. And as I suggested earlier, what initially feels like a downward opening into like just infinite darkness and stillness below becomes more global. It's like 360, it's non directional. Right. And it also has the qualities of the other portals. Quality of love, quality of just brilliant clarity, diamond like clarity as well.

And you have a beautiful sentence there. You say the truth of who we are is an inexpressible openness. Yeah, I just love that. Love that statement. Yeah. So there's another aspect of your work that isn't so such a central part of your book. Your deepest ground. It's implied, but it's something which you seem to have stepped into more. And that is a bringing of these profound perspectives. Your work is sometimes described as non dual. You're sometimes described as non dual teacher. Of late, you have been bringing this perspective to bear on the great issues of our time and speaking to the ways in which these profound recognitions and understandings of who we are and who we can recognize ourselves to be can inform and inspire social activism and working with the great issues that we face. Love to hear you speak to that.

This is an emergent aspect and it's been implicit, I think. And I've always been kind of engaged politically and interested what's going on relative level, although my primary focus has been on inner healing and awakening. So this is. It feels like a response to the times in a way. It's like there is, given how precious this Understanding is how deep, how profound, how life transformative. The question is then, how does this wish to move in the world now, in response, what would an engaged non duality or non dual orientation or approach begin to look like? And one of the reasons I think that this has been. There are a number of reasons, I imagine, why this hasn't been articulated so far. One is that non dual teachings have been historically more transcendent, more concerned with individual liberation. And this is true in Advaita, but also in other non dual teachings within Buddhist traditions and other contemplative traditions. But the essential recognition of non separateness or oneness, that self and other, the distinction between there are differences, there are distinctions, but not a fundamental difference is really where this comes from. Because we're so. So much of conflict is around us and them, around our egocentric perspective. And as collective, we have identities as groups and we have identities as individuals, but they're always separative, there's always an us and them. And therefore we're fighting from one perspective to another. And it feels to me that even though it's a relatively small community of deep contemplatives who are in the process of recognizing this deeper truth, it is an essential one to bring into ordinary life and particularly to the pressing issues. And the issue that's been most pressing for me has been climate change and climate disruption. Because we are facing an existential crisis that we have never faced as humanity before. And it's one that we've caused ourselves. And it is deeply our economics, our system of governance. Governance is deeply rooted in this egocentric perspective. And therefore to come from a different perspective, to introduce this clarity and understanding in a way that feels authentic to us, to whatever roles we're given, if we have a role in leadership in government or business, if we're in a teaching role, if we're writing or we have podcasts, if we have conversations with friends and family, if we're organizing groups that have kindred spirits, contemplatives, to take action from this awareness. I think this is a very important contribution to make. I don't think it's the only one. I don't think it's sufficient in itself. I think we need our scientists, we need our all hands on deck, really, all resources, our best resources, our best minds, our best hearts to engage and to do so collectively, because individually it's not enough. There's this idea. This came up in the non dual roundtable of frequency holders. It's an idea apparently introduced by Eckhart Tolle that it's enough just to radiate consciousness. And I would say perhaps that's true for a few individuals like Ramana Maharshi. But I think for most of us, we can be frequency holders, but also frequency actors. We can act from this deeper, more inclusive, less separative awareness and not only radiating that into the field of consciousness, the shared field, which has its value, but also acting from that. Now the interesting challenge is it's going to look different for different people. There are always going to be conservatives, there's always going to be progressives. And so it's not taking a particular point of view. It's actually the willingness to step back and entertain many perspectives in many views and hold one's own view lightly and still act in a way from compassion and from a deep understanding. So this is, it's more an invitation to contemplative communities of the non dual orientation to ask the question, what is a natural response to this threat? Existential, genuine existential threat. Because as beings that are interdependent with all of life in the biosphere, if this experiment fails, there's not going to be any wisdom tradition around, not on this planet. So that's a brief overview of what, how this has been moving. And so I've been doing some teaching in person and online and building a community around engaged non duality. And hopefully this process will continue with others as well, inviting other non dual teachers to engage in that.

Thank you very much. This clearly one of the great issues and questions of our time is how do we bring whatever, whatever capacities we have, and in this particular case, how do we bring any understanding, psychological, spiritual, we have gained to both act, act from, as you're saying, act from a hopefully a little wiser, a little more gentler and appreciative stance. And how do we use, allow ourselves to be used as optimal instruments of service?

Exactly. And that's a willingness to kind of come out. It's a coming out process. It's one thing very interesting to have worked with people for so long and to see the hesitancy that people feel to bring out the light of awareness because it's so sacred, it's so precious, it's carefully guarded. And very often early on we decide that it's not welcome or safe to bring that into the world. And so the awakening, the opening very often and opening of the heart and opening of the ground very often involves going through this fear and inhibition to really come out in the full luminosity of our core being. And this is like bringing it out further, you know, bringing it out into the sphere of political action. And how can we move not from fear, but from love, not from limited understanding, but from a deeper wisdom, a transrational wisdom. So I don't see it as a mass movement because most people aren't that interested or motivated to go to these kind of depths of exploration. And why some people do and some people don't is a complete mystery. But for those of us who do, those of us who are deep contemplatives, who also care deeply about the planet and about our fellow human beings and fellow beings of all kinds, it means opening a heart to collective suffering. That's another reason why these traditions have kind of kept a distance. It's like if we're opening to suffering, not getting lost in it, not fixating on it, feeling the grief, feeling the loss, feeling the despair, feeling what's behind that too, and to sense there is a greater love and a greater presence here available as a resource for all of us. Like one of the things that happens with activists is they get burned out very, very quickly and just given the scope of resistance and the difficulty of issues that they're working on. So one specific way that those of us who are deep contemplatives can help is to help resource others who are out and very active. But we can be activists ourselves. And it's about finding what form that's true for us and finding others, because it has to be. We have to affiliate. You know, I think we have to strengthen numbers as well. So it's where it's coming from. And you know, we were just talking at the beginning of the program about the recent election two days ago and how to respond and feeling many people feeling disheartened and, and shocked and despairing. And these are very understandable responses. What's important is that we really get quiet, dig deep, find that depth of heart and depth of ground and respond from there. To not be discouraged by lies, deception, by the appeals to basic instincts of fear and anger, rather than getting lost in that, to actually go deeper and come from a deeper and truer place. And I think maybe just here and there, or maybe councils of wise beings coming together and assisting various organizations could be one form that that might take.

There's a deep cult like spell that many people in our country are caught up in. Where you, if you. And I've experienced this personally, if you even suggest that humans have any responsibility about what's going on in the world and the weather and nature and all that, they get Very angry.

You know, we don't like to have our worldview challenged. Right. And there's an art to doing that, and there's an art to being with someone who has a very different perspective and from ours and being able to actually see through that and feel through that to what is not separate and what is shared and to stay in touch with that, like heart to heart. That's very precious and important.

Yeah. And a practice of itself.

It is. Very much so.

Yeah. Beautiful. John, we've covered a lot here, and you've covered a lot in this beautiful book, your Deepest Ground. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Well, I'm grateful. I'm grateful to be here. I'm just grateful in general, as you know. I'm grateful to be alive and have this experience in this mystery of life. So there's that. Grateful to be able to have this conversation with you and grateful for the work that both of you do in your podcasts. And as far as the theme of the deep ground, I think I come back to the theme of our love of truth. And truth not as an ideology, not as a dogma, not as a particular perspective, but the truth of being, the truth of awareness that we all share our love for that will bring us to the depths of our heart and the depths of our ground. Our love for that comes from those. Comes from that. So, like, we're following the love or devotion to what is most precious and what is most important, and to let that be our guide, I think that's what's important. And to be willing to feel anything, experience anything, see anything, know anything in this process of giving ourselves to an unfolding, unfathomable truth of who we really are.

Beautiful. Thank you, John. And thank you for this exquisite book, Your Deepest Ground.

Yeah. And you're beautiful. Sharing right now. Very moving. Thank you very much.

Yeah. Genuinely enjoyed being with both of you.

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Sam.