Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Welcome to my Bob Thurman podcast.
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Have a great day.
This is episode 344.
Okay. Hello, Isa. What a pleasure to see you.
And everyone, I want to introduce my good friend and colleague and eminent and respected colleague Issa Guccardi.
And today I'm going to be talking with her about her wonderful book called Depth Hypnosis, A Path to Healing Power and Transformation.
And Isa is a psycho analyst of.
Of many decades work.
And she is also a official shamanic practitioner who, you know, clears negative spirits away from hospitals and everything in the Bay Area where she lives. And she's also the head of a wonderful organization called the Sacred Stream, which is a 501c3 non profit that functions in the Bay Area very helpfully and wonderfully.
And she also has taught here and there. We have taught together on the west coast and here on the east coast at the Menlo center and Tibet House, of Tibet House, and also in non duality conferences in the west and also at Sacred Stream.
So it is a real pleasure, after some period of time of me being a little bit inactive on podcasting to have this conversation with Issa. What happened to my picture? Oh, my goodness.
There's two.
Two different ones going on here.
How can that be?
[00:03:02] Speaker B: Look at the other one, Bob. I think I see you in that one. If you.
[00:03:05] Speaker A: I see you see me. I see you're looking on this one and. And I see.
And we're both frozen on this one over here.
Just to. Never mind. I can see you on the screen. I have a number of screens and.
[00:03:20] Speaker B: Yeah, wherever you were just looking. Right.
Almost in between the two. I see you perfectly.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: Okay, good, good.
All right, never mind then. I won't worry about that. I have to. I'm looking this way now. Okay, so there we are. He says, so welcome.
[00:03:40] Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you so much, Bob.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: What's that?
[00:03:43] Speaker B: Thank you so much.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: Oh, it's my pleasure. It's absolutely my honor and pleasure.
And I'm really, you know, one thing that, since we last talked in sort of professional terms, one thing that some of your work reminds me of in rereading this book again for this.
For this session is recently I discovered this family therapy thing about listening when parts speak. You know, that sort of thing.
[00:04:12] Speaker B: Right, right, right.
[00:04:13] Speaker A: Wonderful thing too, that I had not heard of when we last used to work together. And Nina likes that, too. And I think that's very resonant with what you do in a very interesting way. And I think your depth hypnosis approach to it probably would accelerate people who work with Alyssa if they would learn that. In other words, I think yours is a matrix within which that.
That very useful thing would fit beautifully. And I think in the future, I would love to have a conference at Menlo with you and some family therapy people and some probably psychedelic therapy people.
I think we should think about that in the future, anyway.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: We should definitely look at that, for sure.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: Would you like to make an opening statement? And, of course, I want everyone to see. This is the book.
This here is the book.
It's a depth hypnosis, and it has a moon. That's a moon.
It's a star.
[00:05:11] Speaker B: You know, that's near Mount Kailash. Bob, that picture.
Yeah, yeah. One of my students took the picture when she was there on pilgrimage.
[00:05:22] Speaker A: Oh, good.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: And I think that's actually a star. That's an actual star that she.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it must be Venus. Yeah.
The evening at the evening Venus.
And that's beautiful. Yeah.
[00:05:36] Speaker B: And that. And that night sky is just amazing, isn't it?
[00:05:40] Speaker A: Yes, of course. Absolutely.
[00:05:42] Speaker B: I'm sure you've seen it, right?
[00:05:44] Speaker A: Very little electrical pollution there at Mount Kailash.
Amazing place. It totally blew my mind, I must say, when I went there in the 90s and the North a lot, I went there often.
Okay, so how would you like to start?
[00:06:01] Speaker B: Well, we can start talking about how depth hypnosis came about, if that would be of interest to you.
[00:06:10] Speaker A: Well, actually, I was reminded of this, and you could share, I think, with people your preface, where you talk about the extreme pluralism of your youth and upbringing.
I know I had sort of forgotten all the many dimensions in here, and I looked at it again. It's. It's quite amazing. So please carry on with that.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: Well, actually, Bob, what was the thing.
What was the thing that. That struck you the most about my. My early years?
[00:06:41] Speaker A: Well, I like very much your. Your.
It's funny, I. I had not remembered about your dad's profession, but I. I was just from reading it, I realized it must be something like that for the move, all the many movings around. But one of the things that I've. You know, a.
The Hawaiian thing and then the Huichaw thing, those two things, I think were most extraordinary.
And then, of course, the Sufi thing, you know, from. And. And seeing the two Sides. And you made me almost feel like weeping with what you mentioned about Beirut.
Because I had a dear friend who used to teach at aub, you know, American University Beirut, where he taught many of the Saudi princess. Most of the princes and princesses of the Saudis used to be, were educated there, but then they couldn't use the kind of more liberal and more open minded and relaxed way of being, individual, energetic way of being when they would get back to their own authoritarian thing, even as the princes of it.
And it was. He used to talk about Beirut as the Andalusia of the Middle east and how it was the model of how the Middle east doesn't need to be this horrible situation that it all is in.
And, and, and the one ethnocentric state in the Middle east, of course being Israel, which doesn't like it to show that everybody can get along, you know, without, without this terrible com, you know, conflict and wrecked Lebanon. Actually, you know, over here he used to weep about it, you know, so it reminded me of that.
Yeah, but if you share your. With your own memories about it, I think people would love that.
[00:08:21] Speaker B: Well, Lebanon, you know, I love that, that he's likening it to Andalusia because I've always thought that I would. Wanted to, I wanted to have a lifetime in Spain, you know, in the, in the early, you know, like 1500s, 1600s, 17, you know, like just the crossroads of all the different religions and all the different ways of thinking, you know. And that is exactly what Beirut was.
And the most fun thing about being in Lebanon. Well, there are so many fun things about being in Lebanon, especially after having spent so much time in Saudi Arabia, which as you mentioned is a more constricted reality was, was the fact that every conversation took place in at least three languages, you know, so it was very inspiring for me. I spoke Arabic when I arrived there and I learned French very quickly because the Lebanese are so open hearted and welcoming, you know, so fantastic, amazing.
And yeah, in terms of Hawaii, you know, I mean, one of the things that was so clear to me was the peace and the beauty and the harmony of Hawaii, you know, expressed in all the different natural forms, you know. You know, the nature is so powerful there and you know, it was such a contrast for me in terms of human experience where humans are really kind of complicated and having a hard time and not that harmonious. That was my experience as a young person. So I think that those early years were very formative for me in terms of really in my book Coming to Peace, I talk about this question that I carried with me from a very, very young age. I remember I was probably not more than four, standing on the beach, you know, you know, with the. At the end of the day, you know, when all the crabs come out, you know, we get to sit together and watch the sun go down. And I remember thinking, how, how can we bring. How can we bring this happiness to people? You know, and.
And in that book, you know, I explore conflict resolution. You know, how, you know, the different methods of conflict resolution that are drawn from Hooponopono of Hawaii and Ubuntu of Southern Africa and the Iroquois League of the Algonquin and Haudenosi people of the Eastern seaboard of the United States and Canada.
But, and with depth hypnosis, we're, you know, very much very focused on resolving obstacles to one's happiness. And, you know, we start with trying to understand what is creating someone's upset. And, you know, I first started working in hypno as a hypnotherapist as I was getting my doctorate in transpersonal psychology.
And you know, as I headed into my clinical practice, I had many years of Buddhist practice and study and many years of shamanic practice and study that I was bringing into the clinical setting without, and not actually realizing at the beginning that I was going to be bringing these very powerful engines of transformation that you find in shamanic practice. You know, the processes of, you know, bringing, you know, soul parts back to the self, the processes of retrieving power that's been lost.
And, you know, I absolutely fell into a structure of the way that Buddhism approaches all phenomenon. You know, everything is workable.
You're working with compassion, non judgment. You're working to try to understand what is obscuring this person's Buddha nature from themselves that lies in the symptoms that they're bringing in. And so I, you know, the, the processes of depth hypnosis, which are largely in the altered state of awareness, moved into the clinical setting through these lenses of Buddhist practice. Understanding the nature of reincarnation and working with regression therapy to help a person move across their lifetimes, their own, their personal history in this lifetime, to go to the originating experience of generally trauma that is driving a person's symptoms that they're coming for help with. And so that that whole arc of understanding the, the Buddhist continuum of, of experience, I found to be very, very helpful in helping people expand the way that they were thinking about their situation. And so pretty soon I got depth hypnosis, you know, happening.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: And you were so lucky to have such a varied childhood.
You know, it reminds me a little bit of Nina, my Nina, who was born in Mexico and then brought up till the age of six in China and then had to go to Germany and then Sweden and then came to New York at 18. It wasn't quite as numerous as yours, hops, you know, and there were some other dimensions and so it was also very different, but it was very, very similar.
And I think of you and it's amazing, you know, I think of you and she as sort of higher beings from another dimension coming to a planet in a time of tremendous stress, which is what we, you know, the world wars. And it's still going on, actually, still long term. World war. Colonialism, in a way, was a world war. And then the breakup of colonialism, which is what we're still not finished with now, is still this other. It's really. It's this 1, 2 and 3, you can call it, but it's all one war, you know.
[00:14:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:44] Speaker A: Trying to break back to owning a paradise planet that we live on, you know. And so you, you guys definitely came from there, it seems to me. I'm very, very honored to, to. I'm very lucky to have bumped into you all, really. I like it. I like the way the Dalai Lama's picture is right exactly over the top of your head.
Very good.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: You know, it was the monks of the garden, Shardse Dokong Constant, who stayed with us for the better part of a year. You know, this was, this room was their dormitory. And we had eight monks living with us for the better part of a year. And they're the ones that put that picture of the Dalai Lama there.
[00:15:27] Speaker A: It's beautifully. It's really nice. And then you have Dhonka over there and have a look at this one over there. And I can't quite see what that. I forget I've been in that room, but I forget what that Tonka is the one on that side.
[00:15:39] Speaker B: It's Jambala. Jambala.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: Oh, God. That's very natural and good. Prosperity, the deity of prosperity.
[00:15:48] Speaker B: Yeah. And the medicine Buddha is the one right directly behind me that the Dalai Lama is.
[00:15:55] Speaker A: I see. I can't see it from this.
Perfect, perfect. Wonderful.
[00:16:00] Speaker B: Yeah. And they hung those, they hung those tonkas as well. They. The, the.
Yeah. So. So I keep. As I, I think I've told you before, I keep the, the altar just the way they left it. I do the water bowls, the water offerings every, every day. And you know, just like they showed me to do. So I feel I stay Connected with them, you know.
[00:16:22] Speaker A: Very good.
[00:16:23] Speaker B: And with the depth.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: I have one question for you about this depth hypnosis, which is you basically, you just mentioned, and you are a hypnotherapist.
So why do you call it depth hypnosis instead of depth hypnotherapy?
[00:16:40] Speaker B: Well, well, the reason that I call it depth hypnosis is because.
Well, I'll answer that at several levels. It's called depth hypnosis because of the depth to which you can go within your being through the processes of depth hypnosis.
And hypnotherapy is generally a more limited set of processes, wonderful processes that we do incorporate in depth hypnosis, but they generally have to do with suggestion hypnosis.
When someone wants to quit smoking, you provide suggestions that are usually scripted and we don't. We will work with. With that kind of thing. We do a lot of work with addiction with depth hypnosis, but we work in a different way where we help the person understand what the underlying issues might be that are driving the addiction and then work with them to help them develop the suggestions that they might need.
[00:17:44] Speaker A: So we feel that to use diplo therapy under value is the value of the tool of hypnosis, which is central to crediting to the depth of the person. That's the reason.
[00:17:56] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. Yes.
[00:17:58] Speaker A: On the other hand, Mike, my view about it is that it actually is one tool, but you're also your shamanism, your knowledge of Buddhism, Sufism, et cetera. And that you do use the other tools. And whereas when somebody who doesn't know anything about you or it, when they see it, they think, oh, that's just hypnotism.
[00:18:19] Speaker B: Right.
[00:18:20] Speaker A: So I have a suggestion for you, which I did a little research in the last two days and re looking at this and there is a Greek word called no exis.
[00:18:32] Speaker B: I know, I know, I know. And I've often wanted to call it hip hip and then gnosis. G N O S I S. I've. I've often wanted to change it.
[00:18:43] Speaker A: That would have been better.
But no, extensive has a different meaning, which I think you might really like.
No extis with an xis. Oh.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: Huh.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: No excess, you know, which a little bit sounds like it connects with noetic, you know.
[00:19:00] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:19:01] Speaker A: Sciences and. But it, but what it is, it's a Greek word for spring and for opening.
[00:19:09] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: In other words, the.
The sleep trance.
You know, hypnos comes from Greek to sleep, actually. So it's like yoga nidra. You know, it's like the yogic Thing of sleep being the third state before the fourth state where you really get to the depth of the person, you know, waking you have deep sleep, dreaming. And then the fourth state, you know, there are these four states. So the hypnosis just refers to the deep sleep one.
And whereas no ices means to open to the springtime and open of a different level of living energy and of growth and power, what you refer to when you teach, you talk about retaining and recovering a certain spiritual power.
And I think I understand that better. And so therefore I did that little bit of research about what would be a Greek word for opening because you know, the CIS ending in Greek of hypnosis, it's just a gerund, it doesn't have any meaning, you know, hypnosis. So it's still. The word is not live up to what you do.
But if you want. If hypnotherapy is closer to what you do. I think actually. But you're emphasizing the hypno part of it and the depth part of it, which is very clear that the depth shows the depth of being.
But I think that I would like you to reflect about in another edition and everything. You get your own name. Hypnoexis.
[00:20:44] Speaker B: I love this idea, Bob, thank you so much. I always learn so much from you.
[00:20:48] Speaker A: Well, no, I don't know if it's correct, but I just felt that it's short selling what you do to just call it hypnosis.
As I said, the regular person will just say, oh yeah, I don't want to get hypnotized. I mean someone will think that, you know, and that's all it is. But that's far from what all it is, just a tool of it, you know. And the opening to the altered states also is really, really key. And I'm sure when that's more legal, you will be expert in dealing with that and there will be a lot of need for that. That's coming up. You know, when we get past this current dark night of the soul where everything is hopeless, you know, supposedly.
I mean, that's what they want us to think, but it's not the case, I think. Well, what do you think? What do you think about the society now and the planet actually? What do you think?
What is your shamanic and depth thing tell you about what's happening?
[00:21:47] Speaker B: Well, I think that the time is really calling us to reconnect with the earth.
Shamanism is a process of understanding the unseen powers of the earth.
And I think that a lot of people's distress is a function of the disconnection with the earth and disconnection within the self.
And so I feel like we have, you know, a real opportunity to practice. You know, like, I think that we need to. That's why I do all the trainings that I do, trying to train people to do depth hypnosis with. With other people, because it is profoundly transformative and it helps people, you know, from a Buddhist idea, it helps people dismantle their karmic patterns through. Through the processes of soul retrieval and power retrieval and energetic interference removal. You're changing karmic patterns and, and the obscurations of those patterns lifts as the person is able to more and more fully connect with their Buddha nature. You know, the. The very first process that we do in an altered state in depth hypnosis is to connect with what we call the part of the self that has only your highest good as its sole intent.
So we're kind of translating the idea of Buddha nature so that people aren't thinking, oh, I have to be Buddhist to do this, or I have to be shamanic to do this. You know, we're really in depth hypnosis. I like to call it a good front end. You know, it's a way of meeting people in the modern time, but what they really did.
[00:23:32] Speaker A: Why did you reject hypnosis?
[00:23:36] Speaker B: Oh, you know, it was something that I came to after we had trademarked depth hypnosis, and we kind of needed to stay with it. And the reason that I went with depth hypnosis at the time, you know, this was, you know, 20, almost 30 years ago now, was because, you know, at the time, remember, Bob, 30 years ago, people weren't really buying spirituality as part of any kind of therapeutic process.
And, and, and people were suspicious of mind, body, kinds of therapeutic interventions and hypnosis. The word hypnosis was within the dominant parlance, within the dominant paradigm. It was the main thing that people could think about that would take them beyond their usual conscious mind ways of knowing. So I was looking for a word that would help them. Like that wouldn't be so foreign to them, but that would take them beyond. Right.
[00:24:42] Speaker A: You know, there was probably no much such thing as hypnotherapy at that time.
[00:24:47] Speaker B: I would say very little. Very little. Yeah.
[00:24:50] Speaker A: I think what you are doing is actually way beyond. I mean, it includes things like getting someone to quit smoking, which after all, is a huge thing and very difficult for people to do. So. It's not like that's a minor thing.
That's amazing. Huge thing. I mean, I've seen that up close. And, you know, people are killing themselves, taking decades off their life, you know, when they can't get over that terrible addiction. And with you, even with the vaping and everything, you know what I mean? It's just terrible what people are doing to themselves, you know, which is what the modernity is, as you say. It's actually people are attacking themselves when you say connect to the earth, you know, from Buddhist point of view, Buddhist medicine point of view, you know, the bones in your face are the earth.
So, you know, so a person like Donald Trump is like. He is alienated from his own face bones.
Do you know what I mean? Anything solid in his body is Mother Earth.
[00:25:47] Speaker B: Right, right, right. Yes. We're disconnected from the earth. We are disconnected.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: It's like you're scared of yourself, you hate yourself. You're disconnected from yourself. No wonder you're flapping around desperately clawing at people and grabbing something that you shouldn't be grabbing because you're so desperate, you know, and terrible, terrible thing, you know, I don't know if you read. Did you read Mary Trump's book?
[00:26:14] Speaker B: I listened to part of it and I listened to her speaking about it. I didn't read the whole thing, no.
[00:26:19] Speaker A: Well, I did. I never read the whole thing nowadays ever.
But I did read quite a bit of it, you know, hoping to find a key to what can help that poor fellow before he destroys himself and all of us. And with him. And I became more and more sympathetic to him, actually. It's so traumatized. The guy is really.
They're really an unhappy person, actually. Like, probably it reminds me of that, you know, the story of Murdu, his name, or Deva in Tibetan. He was a beggar in a kingdom, some kingdom, I don't know which one. And he found it, like the Koh I Noor diamond, you know, he found it somewhere in the garbage, you know, some fantastic treasure, you know. And then people were surprised because the beggar had found this greatest treasure.
And then he was telling people he didn't want it. He liked being a beggar. He was the head of the chief of the beggar community.
He would go to the temple and get, you know, food and lunch or whatever, and he liked that. He didn't want this thing. He didn't know what to do. He didn't want it. So he. So he said, well, what I'm going to do is I'm going to give it to the poorest person in the city, in the country, you know, and Then they said, well, who is that? Well, he says, I'll have to figure that out.
And then they have the thing. And then the king made a special thing, big ceremony where he would announce it. He said, once he said, I figured it out and I'm ready to announce. Then the king said, oh, great, we should have the whole community come and we'll all see what you decide.
And so then they all gathered the whole community. And then he took the jewel and he marched up to the throne and gave it to the king.
[00:28:00] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:28:01] Speaker A: And the king said, why are you giving it to me? You said, we're going to give it to the poorest person in the country. I said, well, that's you, you know. You know that your budget doesn't cover all the other poor people and all the problems and the dikes and the ditches and the sewage system and whatever it is. So you're completely stressed out and you feel very poor. So you need this more than anybody else to keep up your job of taking care of the country, you know. So this poor guy has gotten, who's so desperate himself, has gotten to where this huge burden of responsibility is. Weight is on him of all the people. So all he can think of is to attack them all.
Somehow he therefore ends up hating them all because he can't bear their weight, you know, so we're now seeing this attack on the people. You know, he wants the generals to join him, but they are not doing so, thank goodness.
[00:28:54] Speaker B: Yeah, right, right.
Well, I think that. I think that people, you know, have many different ways of responding to that inner sense of disconnection. And, and, you know, from a depth hypnosis point of view, the symptoms that they come for help with, you know, depth hypnosis can help a really wide variety of.
Of forms of imbalance.
It can work with imbalance, like on a. On a physical level, like with autoimmune problems. It can work with issues on an emotional level, such as depression.
It can work with issues such as like, you know, obsessive compulsive type ideation on a mental level.
And it can work. It's very, very helpful for spiritual emergencies or, you know, or the sense of disloc that people have in terms of their spiritual connection.
So it is.
And the reason that you can address such a wide variety of issues is because from the depth hypnosis point of view, it's understood that the symptoms are simply showing you the way in which you have twisted away from your Buddha nature. And the symptoms are actually the path back. So we go in and we follow the symptoms. So for instance, if someone is coming for help with, say, a panic issue that they're dealing with.
So of course you spend time understanding, you know, the person's emotional experience over the course of their lifetimes, beginning with their birth or the life, this lifetime beginning with their birth. And then you, you know, do an exploration of the issue itself. You know, when did it start? How does it affect you?
But then what we do is we of course do that first altered state process of connecting with that part of the self that has only your highest good is its sole intent, which acts as a, an anchor or a safe harbor to return to as we begin to look at the actual panic or the fear. And we will help the. So we start with the fear and help the person move into an altered state of awareness, connect with that part of the self that has only their highest good as its sole intent as a, as an anchor. And then we follow the panic into the body, located in the body, and then to the physical sensations that the body is experiencing. In order to understand, you know, the color, the temperature, the energetic pattern, you're down to the pattern level.
And then you follow that pattern of experience that, that is expressed in a color or temperature, and you follow it through the person's experience. And you do account, you know, saying, you know, one, knowing that you can get closer to the understanding the nature of this panic than you can, or the, the temperature, the color of the panic than you might ordinarily be able to do. Two, knowing you may be going to a situation, time or place in your young adulthood or childhood or infancy, or even in a past life experience or a prenatal experience.
[00:32:24] Speaker A: And three, you often get past life.
[00:32:27] Speaker B: People going into a lot of past life, and then you take them and you, you, they, they land in a place where the originating trauma started. And then you can work with, with either, you know, of course, you're always working in depth hypnosis, you're always working with energy medicine, you're always working with light. You're always working, you know, to, to, to bring in, you know, support on that energetic level. But then, you know, you can, you know, you can go ahead and do, you know, find the soul parts that fractured at the time of the trauma and help the person become their own practitioner. In many ways. It's, it's, it is a shamanic process of soul retrieval, but the person becomes their own shamanic practitioner. They find that soul part, they bring that back themselves, and, and so they're very empowered and participating and in the process, and you do that again and again until you get a shift in the symptoms of the panic. And with depth hypnosis, you almost always get some kind of a shift within the first five sessions.
It moves quickly. It moves.
[00:33:41] Speaker A: Let me ask you then, how do you induct the session? In other words, do you actually hypnotize people with a thing there or a light flash or something? I mean, do you use something like that to create light hypnotic state? How do, what do you actually do or did varies with different people or what I'm going to ask you to hypnotize or to do whatever you do. So I'm just asking ahead of time, right?
[00:34:08] Speaker B: I'd love to do that with you, Bob.
No, you, you, you actually just start with suggestions for relaxation and you actually start with Shamatha. You have them, you know, you have them focus on their breath.
[00:34:22] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:34:22] Speaker B: And they, they, you know, so just allowing yourself to focus on your breath.
Allowing yourself to notice where your breath goes as you breathe in and as you breathe out. And you do that for a little while with them, guiding them in that way.
[00:34:37] Speaker A: Have them lie down like psychotherapists, like a couch or something.
[00:34:42] Speaker B: A little bit, A little bit. It's.
And you're working with your voice, you know, to, in a very definite way to sort of bringing, you know, the energy, you know, inward, your breath inward, following into that place where everything that you've ever known or felt or sensed is recorded.
And then just allowing yourself to know that we're here today to, you know, do whatever we're doing. And then you just take them from there. And they, you know, you're working energetically to like bring in a lot of calm energy and you're working with your voice to help them focus inward. And, and, and because they are making that connection with the, that part of themselves that has only their highest good is its sole intent. They have an inner sense of safety that is not dependent on the clinician, on the practitioner is they, they have their own, they, they have their own internal support which allows them to go more deeply than they would normally be able to do. So they're not getting re traumatized. Even though we're often visiting sources of trauma that are behind addiction or eating disorders or something like that.
[00:35:54] Speaker A: That sounds really cool. I'm thinking I definitely want to have a session with you when you come.
[00:35:58] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:36:01] Speaker A: What is the date?
[00:36:03] Speaker B: I'm coming in June, the second weekend and third weekend in June.
I'm teaching a class on. I think it's the 11th, 12th and 13th. It's the Friday, Saturday and Sunday. And then you and I are teaching a class the following weekend, the Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
So I'm really looking forward to that.
[00:36:26] Speaker A: Okay, good. That's very good. I am too. You know, I was thinking that.
Do you know the work of Lisa Miller?
[00:36:34] Speaker B: A little bit, yes.
[00:36:36] Speaker A: Did you read her work, the. The Awakened Brain?
[00:36:40] Speaker B: I've heard about it. I've only heard about her work.
[00:36:44] Speaker A: You would really like it because she.
And you know that she wrote the Oxford book that the psychiatrists often have and then sort of like the. It's the spiritual component complement of the DSM is her Oxford book. How expensive? Like $150. Some huge price. But anyway, it's. And it's edited by her and engineered by her, has a lot of people's writings in it. It's one of those kind of books and it's kind of a reference work. And her. What she reveals, what she teaches in the Awakened Brain is how she came up with something that the neuroscientists, or at least some of them accept, which is at the part of the right parietal lobe that gets very atrophied in serious depression. I mean, super clinical depressoids, you know, who didn't kill themselves yet, but are really close to it. There's an area of the brain that becomes very atrophied and that anybody who has some religious or spiritual sense of belonging to something bigger, which I notice you have in the book here, as one of the things, you know, belonging to something greater than themselves, that area is energized.
So it's kind of immunizes against the severity of depression as a sort of neuroscientific kind of proof, backing up her role from Columbia, not from ordinary Columbia, from Columbia Teachers College, actually, which is a more free place. Actually, Columbia is worse. The psych department of Columbia is hopeless. It's all drugs, you know, and neuroscience, you know, there's no, there's no psychology involved with it at all. Nothing clinical, you know what I mean? Except products that the. That they get grants to help people make, you know what I mean?
Actually, I'll tell you that story another time. But the chairwoman of that department came to a meeting and was talking about how much she hated her department, you know, wow. She was chairwoman. Wow. And then people were like freaked. He was in a mood, you know, and whatever had happened, I don't even know. It was a chairperson's meeting and she just came in like that and then people said, well, what's wrong? What's wrong? She said, well, we don't do psychology. We all work for Novartis.
Wow.
[00:39:02] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:39:03] Speaker A: And all we do is work for Novartis. That's what she said.
[00:39:06] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:39:06] Speaker A: And so. So anyway, Lisa.
And she has a story in there that you would like. You know, where she. She met. She. She began to use a little spirituality in some place in Philadelphia where she was a junior psychiatrist, you know, getting started, doing internal residency like thing, and found it incredibly helpful with certain very difficult patients, you know, to mobilize their own spiritual background. Some little fragments that they had in the middle of their gloom and doom, you know. So it's very perfect for you, actually. You know, you'll meet her. She's really very, very fundable. Never met her for 31 years. I taught at Columbia. She was across the street, and then afterwards met her, and she's terrific. You know, you'd really like her.
[00:39:53] Speaker B: She went on, well, I think it's so important to bring the. The understanding of spirit into the clinical setting. And, you know, this was something that was very much resisted, and it's still in some places resistant.
And, you know, even, you know, I used to work with Michael Harner. I used to work as a medium with him. And, you know, he.
He. He cautioned, he said, you know, you can't, you know, you can't bring shamanism into the clinical setting. You know, it's. You know, he was. He was afraid of doing it. Like, he. He was worried that there would be some kind of clash of cultures, you know, and, and even he, you know, and. And I had a lot. There was a lot of resistance, you know, with me bringing in this very. I mean, it's not like we're proselytizing. We're not saying it's this form of spirituality that's going to help you, but.
[00:40:46] Speaker A: You know, you know, whatever form, you know.
[00:40:49] Speaker B: Right. It's the same. The same prejudice that Maslow, of course, faced and that. And that Stan Groff faced, you know, like the, you know, insisting. I mean, I always appreciated Stan so much because he so insisted on the transcendent participating. And he, you know, he had the credentials as a MD and a PhD that, you know, people would listen to him. And I feel like we have, you know, we owe him a great deal because there was really just so much prejudice against bringing spirit into this, into the therapeutic setting. And now today it's more common and, you know, death hypnosis is right here on the. On that. It's been on that edge for 30 years. And now we're here, you know, ready to like, you know, you know, meet anyone and everyone on their own terms, you know, in terms of their own definitions of spiritual, you know.
[00:41:41] Speaker A: I agree completely, actually. I thought for years that I invented the word psychonaut. And then I discovered Stan had created that word maybe earlier than I had come in that word before I did.
I independently also came up with it. So I really like him too. Yeah. I think he's really important and really great. He's still alive too, right? I think it's Michael.
[00:42:03] Speaker B: Yes. Yes.
[00:42:04] Speaker A: Arner is gone though, right? Is he.
[00:42:08] Speaker B: She's fine. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, I think that, you know, letting, you know, bringing spirit back into the clinical setting is fundamental to helping people reconnect with the deeper parts of themselves, you know, because spirit is the deepest part. Right.
[00:42:28] Speaker A: And it's still. But it still, I think remains that the sort of repressive forms of religious institutionalism are still harmful. I think we can say.
[00:42:37] Speaker B: Oh, yes, yes, absolutely.
[00:42:39] Speaker A: That in the Christian nationalist drive to change the United States into a Onward Christian soldiers country, you know.
[00:42:47] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:42:48] Speaker A: Susan. Of Church and State, you know, specifically Baptist church and State.
[00:42:53] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:42:55] Speaker A: I mean, really dangerous, actually. And Pakistan and Israel, they showing the same thing. And in a way you could say the communists are still. They have one church state, you know, and so a one church state period is no good. You know, one ideology, one repressive ideology is still no good. I think the psychiatrists are correct on that one.
[00:43:14] Speaker B: I totally agree. Yeah.
[00:43:16] Speaker A: You know, depth of gnosis opens up, whichever it is. I, by the way, recently you might be enjoyed it since I didn't quite have this and when we met before, but in my subsequent learning, and I'm still very ignorant, but I subsequently learned one thing, which is I kind of forgave God, who used to really annoy me with his business about his one only son. And, you know, the Christian thing, you know, and putting him up on that cross, which I later discovered was the Romans did that, not God, you know, for that. And, you know, the early Christians never used the crucifix as their symbol until 325, until the council of Nicaea, where the Romans put that as the main symbol, you know, as a way to show their power actually subliminally, do you know what I mean?
Their ability to repress even God, you know. So anyway, but anyway, so I forgave God and I decided that God is telling people that he's not omnipotent what the real problem is, is the projection of omnipotence into anybody or anything.
Do you know? And God is telling everybody in all the religions that he's not omnipotent if it's a he. And the Mother Goddess also is not omnipotent. She's telling in any version that puts her at the top, which is less. Less, unfortunately, is not equal projects. There's very still, there are forms of it.
And the way they're telling us that is forcing is telling us that we have to be ethical.
That is a message that I'm not omnipotent. That you have this role and agency in determining your own situation.
Which means that I'm not omnipotent. If I was really omnipotent, I would never bother with ethics or anything. I wouldn't bother with it, you know, because they just do what I make you do. So therefore you have no responsibility for it and therefore no blame, no consequences.
But when I tell you have to be ethical or bad things will happen, then I'm saying you have your own agency and we're working together, you know, So I forget. I decided God is okay, he's doing his best.
And I found out, you know the Flower ornament sutra, the 10th stage bodhisattva in that sutra, one of the many sub sutras in that sutra likes to be God in different planets and cultures. You know, in other words, it has the sort of. The more. More powerful position in a particular cultural field of living beings to be able to help beings more, you know, while they're waiting to be Buddha, you know, on the 10th stage, because they can't force their way into being enthroned as a Buddha. They have to. The other Buddhas have to kind of, you know, give them the license or whatever, crown them or something. There's a whole thing like that. Really fun, really interesting. But I didn't have that attitude before and now I'm more. So that makes me more open to the Abrahamics and some forms of Hinduism and so on, which are the main ones that do that, you know.
[00:46:27] Speaker B: Well, Bob, I remember that story that you always tell about Buddha and his. And his enlightenment process, stumbling upon the heaven where Indra was presiding and.
And thinking that he had arrived in the God realms and wasn't actually him.
[00:46:49] Speaker A: It was someone called Kevada.
[00:46:51] Speaker B: Oh, Kevada. Oh, sorry.
You tell the story.
[00:46:55] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Well, that's a sutra. It's called the Kavada Sutra. And he goes there and he meets God, the Monotheistic God that the Indians were believing in in Buddha's time.
Brahma, his name. Brahma. They still. He's the creator, right? Brahma the creator, still, you know, Shiva the destroyer, supposedly Vishnu the preserver. And so he meets Brahma and he says, oh, great, I got. I came up here with my yogic power and my astral body, and there you are, and now I've found you, and who created everything, and now I want to know what was there before you created it, and how did you do it and how does it all work?
So then God, you know, Rama says to him, excuse me, but you know who I am. Yes, I know that God recites his credential, his, you know, his cv, you know. And then the guy says, I know that. That's why I came to ask you the question. And then God says, yeah, but the thing is, I'm busy. Do you have an appointment?
And he basically brushes him off.
And then he's leaving. And then God popped out and intercepts him as he's sort of descending in the planes of the heavenly, heavenly hierarchies.
And then first he said, I'm leaving, I'm leaving, don't worry, you don't have to chase me. He says, no, I'm not chasing you. I'm answering your question now. He says, and then he says, I couldn't answer you in the throne room where the other godlings were, all the devapudras, because if I'd said there that I didn't create it and I don't control everything and I'm not omnipotent, you know, I knew that sutra, yes, long before, but I didn't kind of extend it to the other gods, you know. And then, and so then he said. And so then he says, so I want. I couldn't tell you that in front of the other gods because they, they depend on me.
I was the first being who came in this new evolution of this new planetary system that we're in, and the heavens associated with this new planetary system. And.
And when the other ones arrived, they looked at me and said, daddy, you know, and papa, you know. And so then I said, I'm not your papa at first. And they got so threatened that I then said, well, okay, papa, everything is fine, it's under control.
So I couldn't tell you that I did not create, that I'm not all powerful and I was in front of them.
And so then he says, and so then the guy is very happy. Then he tells ikebada, go see Buddha on Earth, and he will answer your question in whatever way is best for you. I'm not saying he's omnipotent either, but I'm saying he will answer your question properly. I think he understands the process maybe better than me.
And so you go ask him, and then ask him to do me a favor. And what's that? He says, well, tell people that I'm not omnipotent because I don't like it when they say that, when they think that. Because then when bad things happen, I do like it when good things happen to them because they praise me, thank God, they say, but when bad things happen to me, they hate me because they think I did it.
And they have to know I don't do the bad things, that the bad things are a causal process that they do from their own agency. You know, I. I try to help them avert it as much as I can, but I can't. I'm not omnipotent. So ask Buddha to please reassure them about that so they won't hate me when they have holocaust and things, you know, when their children die or whatever it is, you know.
So that's this actual story and Buddha. And then, then Brahma came to see Buddha, actually. And Buddha kind of the story more with Buddha wasn't really Indra. Indra was always happy about Buddha. He didn't have a problem. But, but, and, but Buddha. Indra has a huge invitation and a big celebration for Buddha after Buddhahood in the flower ornament. That's another beautiful thing. In the flower ornament. But Brahma comes down and he demands that Buddha teaches because Buddha claims he's not going to teach anything at first because nobody will understand it, you know.
So he sort of says, I'm just going to just hang out and be cool, you know, in the, in my garden here. And, you know, I'm going to stay in my forest, you know, and then. And nobody will get what I tell them, you know. And then Brahma comes down and brings the Dharma wheel, you know, and says, you. You must do it. You must teach.
And then he shows Buddha a vision of rainstorm. And then the different plants are getting the rain and each using it in their own way. Same rain, you know, but it's. Each plant uses just this drop or that much or whatever, you know, they. So the plants themselves adapt what they receive, you know, so don't worry, you know, they'll all get something out of it.
So there's. That's what. That's the Brahma, Buddha. And Direct Buddha interaction with so on.
So.
[00:51:42] Speaker B: Right.
[00:51:43] Speaker A: He's a 10 stage bodhisattva. In other words, the Buddhists understand him as a 10th stage, almost a Buddha like more or less a Buddha in his understanding, but therefore very open minded, you know, and appreciating the complete Buddha, you know.
You know, who is completely, you know, an inconceivability, you know. Right.
It's like you and me, you know, if we were both completely empathic of each other 100%.
So we were both sides of this conversation, that would be what? This weird state of Buddha including infinite numbers of other beings, I mean it's beyond imagine.
[00:52:23] Speaker B: It's something to aspire to. Right.
[00:52:27] Speaker A: We reach the boundary of what we can imagine.
[00:52:29] Speaker B: Right, right, right.
[00:52:31] Speaker A: And yet they urge us to open to the possibility.
[00:52:35] Speaker B: Right.
Well, you know, I thank you so much for that story, Bob.
I forgot some of this.
[00:52:42] Speaker A: I didn't mean to intrigue talking so much to you, but it's just so nice to see you sitting there. It really is a pleasure to see you. Really.
[00:52:51] Speaker B: It's wonderful to see you and to be with you too, Bob. I always enjoy so much our times together and the places that we go together when we're teaching or just talking or just hanging out.
[00:53:04] Speaker A: I noticed that what's his name, the non duality people are sort of stirring to life a little bit now with some movies and they somehow don't feel up to like a big organization like that yet again, you know. But maybe we should all do one together in some time.
[00:53:22] Speaker B: That would be great to do a conference again. We had a lot of fun going to those conferences were so much fun.
[00:53:29] Speaker A: Together they were fun and maybe we should help them rekindle them.
[00:53:33] Speaker B: I mean we could, we could do.
[00:53:35] Speaker A: Remember we also did our one Tibet House. Did a great one right in the member and the.
Were you there for that? I think you were right.
[00:53:45] Speaker B: I've been to some of them. I'm not sure which one you're talking about.
[00:53:48] Speaker A: 1997.
[00:53:50] Speaker B: Oh no, it wasn't to that one.
[00:53:52] Speaker A: Willie Brown helped out because we brought Dalai Lama and we Roberto Menchu and we brought Jose Ramos Horta, 3 Nobel Prize people and we can, we, we can do that again. But not dalai Lama. I think 90 he's not going to come. Although he swore at the time, even if it was a wheelchair, he would come if we did any peace conferences like that. So we, you know, we should rather do that. Gandhi wants to do that. And Bay Area.
I feel very deprived not having been to Bay Area. Since before COVID practically. As far as teaching goes, you know, or promoting a book or anything, I haven't done a thing there.
[00:54:27] Speaker B: Yeah, you need to come out. You know, the Sacred Stream center is just, you know, a wonderful place and we can, we can hold all kinds of, we can hold all kinds of events there together. It would be really, I think it really, you know, bring, bring some help.
[00:54:40] Speaker A: To the world like your friend John Campbell and I are doing. We're starting this whole Vajra yoga thing.
[00:54:47] Speaker B: Uh huh.
[00:54:48] Speaker A: Whole new thing we have going Baja Yoga that I want to introduce you with when you come. I will explain it more and I'll let you know more about it. But yeah, we'd like to do some big Vajra yoga event, like a weekend or a retreat or something.
Well, it's kind of, it's, it's kind of making yoga, you know, spirituality open source spirituality rather than either just Hindu or just Buddhist or just what? Or just whatever, just athletics, you know, but it's all of that, you know, so it's a kind of. The Vajra means bringing it into this different worldview of the blissfulness of reality. Actually that's already there. You know, the fact that this is nirvana now and that's the Vajra side of it, you know, and bringing practice into that, you know, so creating that sense of security that you say and you say that in the Vajra hypnosis, it doesn't come from the therapist, the sense of security, but of course it does come from your presence actually. That is.
[00:55:50] Speaker B: It'S there helping, you're there supporting.
[00:55:54] Speaker A: Crucial that the good therapist like you, it's very crucial that you, that you share with the other your view that they also are fine in themselves.
[00:56:05] Speaker B: Right. That's really important. And so many.
[00:56:08] Speaker A: That's a hologram that comes from your presence.
And we don't have to emphasize the key to them being open to it is not emphasizing that.
[00:56:17] Speaker B: Right, that's right. And then discovering the place within them that connects into it. You know, that's, that's the really important thing. And you know, in terms of, you know, talking about spirituality and you know, and the different ways in which people can get trapped in different orthodoxies. I mean one of the, one of the big things that I've done over the course of my clinical experience over the last 30 years plus is to really help people rediscover their own spiritual truth. And often it's helping people step out of the misunderstandings that you were having around Christianity, helping them identify and go to the places within them that got caught in the traps of the orthodoxy and helping them find a way out, you know, to reclaim themselves and reclaim their own truth and their own spirit free of the. Of the binds of the orthodoxy. Or, you know, for some people, they find themselves within the framework of the orthodoxy and they do feel whole, but they're. And they don't feel trapped. It depends on where a person is in their evolution.
[00:57:34] Speaker A: But if you take someone like our president, you know, there is that infantile omnipotence feeling of the infantile, the rage of the infant, you know, who wants the nursing now? They want this. You know, that means the omnipotency of their anger and demand, you know, on the universe, on the world. And then they can't find anything like that in themselves that is absolute. So then they project it into a deity.
And then in the name of the deity, they act like insane, you know, and they kill people and do things, you know, but, you know, like the Sam Harris book Against Faith, you remember that book he wrote?
[00:58:11] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:58:12] Speaker A: On the religions. Meanwhile, communists kill more people. I mean, anybody can, you know, anybody who becomes a fanatic can kill more people. And then you look a person like our president, and they didn't. He doesn't believe in any deity, of course, but. And so he somehow tried to. He thinks he is omnipotent now, and he's constantly freaking out when nobody, when anybody challenges that he can't take it, flips out.
[00:58:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's a really complicated set of patterns that he's got going on. But the thing is, people do have complicated sets of patterns that are creating their problems. And it really is just a matter of sitting down and trying to unwind and help people discern, you know, what's causing them to do what they do and helping them, you know, with that idea that they are creating, that Buddhist idea that they, you know, you don't like, shove it down their face at the beginning because it can seem like, oh, gosh, now you're blaming me for my situation. But, you know, giving them that sense of freedom, that personal responsibility, you know, if you, if you are responsible for creating the issues and the situations where you are right now, then you have freedom. And because you can change it. And, you know, really, like, that becomes like a really important place for people to step into a new way of relating to their situation and their being and becoming more independent and less.
Less dependent on other people's judgments or other people's views so that they can chart their own course and so that they can find their way back to their own wholeness on their own terms. And, and to do that, you have to move through the, your own complications of your own karmic patterns and unwind them. Because in that unwinding there's so much wisdom that emerges.
And you know, by the time that you get through all of the processes of depth hypnosis as, as a, as a client, you know, people really have big changes internally. And one of the things that happens as people are working with the depth hypnosis process in the clinical setting is they often want to find out more about it. And that's when they start coming to the classes. All the trainings that we have, we have many classes where we train people to become depth hypnosis practitioners.
And then depth hypnosis becomes its own very ecumenical spiritual path where a person can actually step into understanding suffering at another level. I think, you know, as a client, people are just trying to understand their own suffering. As a student of depth hypnosis, you're trying to understand the, the nature of suffering. And then as a practitioner, you're, you're actually getting practice understanding how to dismantle the, the, the structures that are creating suffering. And so the. Becoming a depth hypnosis practitioner, in some ways you become a particular type of spiritual assistant and helping and learning how to understand the nature of suffering, you know, being taught every single day, you know, all of the different ways in which people can arrive at the things that make them suffer. And you're taught every single day about how to help them step out of that suffering by working, you know, with this part of themselves that has only their highest good, is their soul intent. And working with your own guidance as a practitioner, you really are entering into this world of, of, you know, it is a path of spiritual evolution in and of itself. Even though you just start out wanting to stop smoking, you know, you have.
[01:02:10] Speaker A: A formal teacher training program that you. Yes, that's a one or two year thing or something or.
[01:02:16] Speaker B: Yes, that's right. Yes. And we have administers that. And you can become a minister in the foundation of the Sacred stream as well and become a spiritual counselor.
[01:02:27] Speaker A: Can that lead to a counselor license in California?
[01:02:32] Speaker B: It's a spiritual counseling certificate. So you're not working in a license, you're not working under a licensing structure. You're working within a spiritual church like structure.
[01:02:45] Speaker A: So, so the teacher. So the depth hypnosis doesn't have a. But it must have a California counseling license behind it. Like for example, your Own profession.
Don't you have it.
[01:02:58] Speaker B: Has it. It has its own training process. Yes.
[01:03:01] Speaker A: Yeah. And then. And with the state license, I mean, I hope. I believe so. Right.
[01:03:08] Speaker B: You're working as a spiritual counselor. So it's. There's psychology. Psychological aspect to it. But you're working as a spiritual counselor.
[01:03:17] Speaker A: Not a psychotherapeutic license. It is not. I see.
Okay. Well, that's. That should be changed. They should.
When you're. When you're not promoting a particular spirituality that should be licensable by this. By any state in the future, you know.
[01:03:35] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I think the main thing is that people have the ability to be able to work psychologically. They have that way to be able to work spiritually. They have a way to work emotionally, they have a way to work, you know, within.
You know, really exploring the. The further reaches of the self, you know, with, you know, with.
We. And we have really quite a few psychologists, we have quite a few doctors, we have quite a few nurses, we have quite a few birthing professionals who all come and take the training because they feel that it really supports their work at a very deep level.
[01:04:19] Speaker A: I do think you should have a lot of ministers and Catholic priests and rabbis, and they should also come.
[01:04:26] Speaker B: I think we do have quite a few. We do especially we have the universalist.
Universal universalist churches and the unity churches. We have quite a few ministers who.
[01:04:42] Speaker A: I have a universal ministry little thing.
[01:04:45] Speaker B: You'Re right, you know. Yeah. Universal life church. Yep.
Yeah.
[01:04:51] Speaker A: So I have that. I have that license as a universally universalist thing. Yeah, that's very good. You know, all these scandals and these horrible stuff going on with all these priests, you know, who are, you know, it's, you know, it's terrible. And actually some Zen masters would probably use.
Use it. And, you know, because any spiritual minister of any type of spirituality runs into these kind of things in the psyche of the people they're counseling. So your. Your type of training should be open for them, actually.
[01:05:20] Speaker B: Absolutely. Absolutely. It's something you know, I really, you know, I really like supporting people who are supporting other people. That's, you know, that's a big part of what depth hypnosis does because it can be integrated into any other kind of practice. It can be integrated into a. Into an acupuncture practice, into birthing professional practice. It can, because it has. One of the big things that depth hypnosis has in. It is a series of processes that are very supportive to the practitioner.
One, we've been talking about the effect on the clients but one of the big issues that I have with really wonderful people coming into my practice, they're just burned out. They've been doctoring, they've been nursing, they've been caring for people for a long time and they just can't keep going. And it's because they don't know the techniques of energy management that are really needed and are really fundamental to shamanic practice and depth hypnosis practice. Because you know, whenever you're working shamanically, you're always working with the power of your own helping guides.
And you're not using your life energy to, to do, to do things. You're becoming a channel, like a hollow bone for this transcendent power to work through you.
And just getting that shift in a birthing professional or in a doctor or in a nurse, getting them to understand that they don't have to use their own life energy to make other people better or that they don't have to take on other people's pain in order to make them better. There's so many misunderstandings that people have as professional helpers and there's a lot of training in depth hypnosis about energy management, learning how to attune your own energy system so that you become a clear channel for the, the power of the transcendent to work through you. And that the person in front of you experiences as that you were talking that matrix, that field, they experience that field and they are able to draw from it rather than drawing from your life energy as the practitioner.
And that is more empowering to them. It makes them less dependent on you as the practitioner. And it's much more relaxing for the practitioner.
I've had so many students who come in, in that state of burnout, acupuncturists, any kind of medical professional, and when they learn the mechanics of being able to become power fil and to be merged with that transcendent experience as they are in the clinical setting, they come back to life, they want to return. And we need that because we need all these good people who have been out on the front lines for so long. We need to be able to get them back on the front lines and help them do the healing they need to do in order to be able to work differently and to have, and to look at their misunderstandings about what it means to heal, what it means to, to serve. You know, I think that's a big part of bodhisattva training, right? You have to learn what is the correct relationship to suffering. Right? And, and, and that is a Big part of what the training is in depth hypnosis. It's, it's, it really is in some ways, you know, Bodhisattva in training school, you know, it's, you know, you know.
[01:09:05] Speaker A: Helps people for the medical doctor. The medical doctor could be channeling Hippocrates, they could be channeling Galen or whatever. You know, they do medical school, right, handling Hippocrates. Yeah, do no harm and all this. But then they completely have to be self reliant, you know, it wasn't the materialist thing, you know, that they are inflicted on that, that's imposed on them, that, that absolutist, absolutized nothingness that is imposed upon them. So they really need that, they need to learn that in their own terms, you know, that after all, like, right, the caduceus of the doctor has two serpents coiled around, right. The stank like a Katanga staff. It's a shamanic style. Right. The Tibetan physician has the medicine Buddha to channel, you know.
[01:09:56] Speaker B: Right, exactly, exactly.
[01:09:58] Speaker A: And it's, they need something like that.
[01:10:00] Speaker B: That's exactly. And depth hypnosis provides, you know, ways of helping people learn how to do that without necessarily engaging in Tantric practice or something like that. It has, there's, you know, and, and we really do look at the nature of service. We try to understand, you know, what are, what are our intentions for being of service.
And I, I, for many years, I went to the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine every fall and gave a lecture, a series of lectures on, you know, you know, the path of service. Why are you doing this? What, what are your intentions for doing this, this kind of work? Because so many people come into the healing arts because, because they, they, you know, they, they have, they want to help, but they have misunderstandings about what it might be to help.
[01:10:54] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
[01:10:55] Speaker B: And that is something that you really have to help help people address so that they can stay the long term.
I mean, you know, I've, I've had people who come, you know, really wonderful practitioners who they really thought they had to take on other people's pain in order to heal them, you know, and they are so burdened and so exhausted and you know, we were able to do the work of lifting, of giving back, you know, this pain that doesn't belong to them, you know, giving it to, you know, being able to transmute it and have them be able to step out of this way of thinking, in this way of practicing so that they can return with all of their skills in a new and enlivened. Way. And, you know, this is something that is very close to my heart that I really is something that I feel very honored to be able to do and, you know, do my very best to serve people who are serving other people so that we can stay the long course, so that we can address this crisis that we're in, so we can address this calamity for the long term, so that we can stay the course, so that we can feel that deep transcendent assistance that the earth provides, that our own Buddha nature provides, and that we can bring that to bear and to keep helping, keep staying in the long term.
You know, and so I think, you know, this is a very, you know, Buddhist Bodhisattva enterprise that I'm describing. I know. And. And it is. And I think that it's something that we, that we all are striving for. I think those of us that are striving to be conscious and striving to help, I think. I think these are all issues that we all want to address and need to address and can address and we can transform those things within us that would keep us from being able to stay the long term.
And so, you know, that's.
[01:12:59] Speaker A: I think we really reached a certain time.
Yes, that was, that was a wonderful final statement.
I couldn't agree more with it. And I think those people just to. To sort of wrap it up. I think people should find this book and read it and then also come see Isa on the East Coast. You can see her anytime out of the Sacred Stream in San Francisco and in Berkeley, but you can see her on the east coast at Menla Mountain Spa Retreat in Phoenicia, New York.
And are you giving a talk at Tibet House while you're in the East? No. You're just doing.
[01:13:40] Speaker B: No, no, not this time.
[01:13:43] Speaker A: Menla is also Tibet House, so it's the same thing. And at the Dalai Lama Center, Country Center Focus on Healing. And so there you are, and we look forward to it. And thank you so much, Isha. If I had a white scarf, I would offer it to you.
It's just visualize. Imagine white scarf.
[01:14:09] Speaker B: I would offer one to you.
[01:14:10] Speaker A: Okay, good. We'll both do that.
And this will be. We'll let you know. Molly will let you know whenever we publish this, which will be soon, I think. This was not live streamed, so we will publish it as soon as possible, actually, I think it will be very good. But, you know, I defer to the Internet. People who know what's right, time to do which and what you know, and they will figure that out. Okay.
[01:14:34] Speaker B: Okay, wonderful, Bob.
[01:14:35] Speaker A: Love to Laura and to all of our friends there. And I would like to think of doing a trip out there with the Vajra yoga thing at some point. Maybe co sponsored by Tibet House and Sacred Stream or something like that.
[01:14:50] Speaker B: Let's definitely talk about that, Bob. For sure. Let's definitely talk about that. Love to do that. And we have a new nice new guest quarters where you can stay.
[01:14:59] Speaker A: So nice. Okay, great.
That would be wonderful.
[01:15:04] Speaker B: Okay. Much love to you, to Naina, to everyone at Menlo, to everyone there. Thank you so much, Bob.
[01:15:10] Speaker A: Thank you so much. All the best. Okay, good.
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