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#2944 - Tuesday, October 2, 2007 - Editor: Jerry Katz
Nondual Highlights Here's an excerpt from a radio interview I did, beautifully transcribed by Cassie Zievers, who has typed out about 20 pages of transcript. Thanks, Cassie!
Rollye James: It’s fascinating, because the first thing that I think of when you say that is, boy does it ever have some co-conspirators because if you want to control a population, whether it’s through a religion or it’s through politics, whenever you have a conscious desire to control, keeping this knowledge of nonduality from a populace is going to be your first order of business. Instilling fear, instilling separativeness, and instilling that concept that they are isolated and need control or help seems to be probably part of why mankind has, at least through the masses, not been dealing with this issue at all. We’ll leave it right there.
Jerry Katz is with us and we’ll pick it up right there. That’s a fascinating thought, when you think about it, because those that seek to control us, the last thing they want us to know is our nondual nature. So, you can check out One: Essential Writings on Nonduality and you can check out http://www.nonduality.net for more information. And we’ll tackle that and we’ll also be taking your calls as well on nonduality with Jerry Katz and Rollye James on Coast to Coast AM.
It has been fascinating. I’ve been looking at fast blasts and also the emails I’ve gotten at Coast and also at Rollye.net and it’s totally polarized. Amazingly so, it’s split down the middle. People, well, such a Tim who’s saying “You may be saving my life right now.” And other people who are saying “I’m so bored I’m turning off the radio,” and it’s interesting to see it’s an even split. Some people are really resonating to this and some people are saying, “Boy, this is some of the worst stuff I’ve ever heard.” You know, in some ways, that doesn’t fully surprise me.
Rollye James: I could go on all
night, I can see, but already I have people asking things that I
wouldn’t have thought to ask. We’re going to kick
it off with Joel in
Joel: First of all, I’m 56 years old and I have to say that what I’m hearing is, to me, not what it is. Not only is it, I believe, not what it is, I think it’s an intellectual construct. I was given, and I don’t like saying this, this is the first time I’ve ever said this openly but, I think it’s essential at the time. I was given a revelation on this 33 years ago and it came as I was sitting still in meditation, and no drugs, perfectly normal, and I saw the once and everything. I saw non-existence, I saw existence, and I saw the interrelationship, but more than that, I was given a specific series of discussions to put people into that flow, so to speak, so they can find that within themselves. It works pretty much one hundred percent of the time. One of the problems with this whole conversation is that when you have internal knowledge, and we’ll call that esoteric knowledge, the knowledge that you do find within and you have exoteric knowledge, like you find in a book or with a teacher. So while all teachers are telling you to do the things to look within yourself, to find the answers, what actually occurs is a dependence, an emotional, psychological dependence on the teacher, so everyone walks out of their group practices feeling good, but they’re actually being defeated because they are as they think they are evolving externally attached to certain things. Realizing this through this internal change that I went through, I was given this construct to help people realize, and I’m stuttering. There are a lot of things I really want to say and I’ll keep it simple. Basically it really is simple. One, you could look at the sky and you could look at the ocean and you could feel really good about everything, but that ain’t going to do it, I mean not the way that real oneness is, the nonexistence that you talk about, you yourself, Mr. Katz, do not know this. You are intellectually contriving or believing something because if you really have this nature, then you have been, you’ve crossed both sides and been able see why nothing really is and that nothing really is something and why consciousness here with the individuality of our identity as humans does not exist on the other side with the same sense of our individuality, so in a sense we do not exist but yet we do exist just with a different kind of a quantum connection to everything that we all are one, but we all are nothing.
Rollye James: Joel, I understand the semantics of that, but what you just said to me doesn’t differ from what Jerry’s been saying to me.
Joel: I’m trying to find the methodology to define it, because I’m trying to speak where Mr. Katz can understand that we’re all on the same page.
Rollye James: All right, real quickly, just give me the methodology. Take it.
Joel: It’s learning to sit still and learning to listen. For example, let’s say you have a bad habit. If you could sit still and you could face yourself, once a day, for 10 to 20 minutes a day, and you could be honest enough and not lie to yourself, by recognizing that a certain behavioral pattern is incorrect, just the recognition of it, may begin, and it won’t in the short term, but it begins to set the wheels in motion for the change. It begins to construct a future path, or a path, let’s say, which will help one to release those things. Now how that occurs, that’s a whole ‘nother issue.
Rollye James: Alright, I appreciate the call, thanks Joel. Jerry, this is what I think you’re saying, am I missing something?
Jerry Katz: Well, I think Joel’s coming from the point of view that he understands all that from his pure inner knowledge. He’s coming from himself. He’s saying that I’m speaking from an intellectual construct, that I don’t know it, but I’m just coming from books or something. It's important to see both of those things. Some people are coming from book knowledge, from intellectual knowledge. Other people are coming from utter experience. Most are coming from both. When people meet others in the world of nonduality, you’ve got to decide if you’re going to align with someone. If you’re going to have a teacher you’ve got to be sure that that person is going to help you, is coming from the right place. He mentioned existence and non-existence together, and it’s true, when I say we don’t exist, that might not be the full picture, that’s part of it. We exist and not exist at the same time. The reality goes beyond that. It is an intellectual expression to say that we are form and we are formless and that they’re both the same. Joel is coming from a good place, he sounds like a good guy. There are all kinds of people out there who are doing teachings and expressing nonduality in different ways and it’s interesting to hear people. I listen to people all the time through email, it’s nice to hear people on the phone talking.
Rollye James: You betcha!
Jerry Katz: We experience nonduality to a degree. Eckhart Tolle is a great teacher of nonduality and his book The Power of Now is very popular and it’s a very good book and I recommend it. Anyone who wants to get into nonduality, read The Power of Now, watch The Matrix and go online, see what’s out there. So yeah, The Power of Now ... the mind conspires to keep us in the past and the future. Remember, conspiracy doesn’t stop, so don’t stop with the now, keep going, keep probing further. Even the now, itself, has its own limitations, right? I mean, the now implies the past and the future, and real nondual understanding is even finer than the now.
Rollye James: Alright, I
appreciate that,
Jerry Katz: It does. It just gives a clearer picture of everything. You get less caught up in that kind of stuff.
Rollye James: We’ve got
Jerry Katz and we’ve got your calls, by the way, and get in
on that. We’ve got Tony in Dallas and Steve in