An Interview with Francis Bennett 

Francis Bennett was a Roman Catholic, Trappist monk for a number of years. He lived in two monasteries of the Trappist Order in the US and was also a member of an urban, contemplative monastic community originally founded in Paris, France in 1975. He has lived in France at several monasteries, and in Canada at a small monastic community in Montreal Quebec. He received a five and a half year monastic/spiritual formation with the Trappists before he made his vows as a monk at Gethsemani Abbey in 1983. He has worked in ministry in the area of spiritual Care in the hospice movement, as a hospital chaplain and in spiritual care of the sick and dying in parish settings.

In 2010, while in the middle of a Church Service in his monastery in Montreal, Francis suddenly experienced what he has come to call, “a radical perceptual shift in consciousness”, in which he discovered the ever present presence of spacious, pure awareness. He came to see that this awareness is actually the unchanging essence of who he really is and always has been; the Supreme Self. He also came to see simultaneously, that this vast, infinite sense of presence at the center of his being (and at the center of the being of everyone else on the planet) is actually not at all separate from the presence of God, which he had been looking for during his many years as a monk and spiritual seeker.

Francis will be interviewed for conscious.tv by Iain McNay in London on Wednesday 6th May

An Interview with Linda Clair 

Linda was born in Sydney in 1958. She had virtually no interest in meditation or spiritual matters until the age of 37, when she was introduced to Peter Jones, who became her first teacher. This meeting was an intense experience for her. There was a depth to the communication she had never experienced before, and it triggered a search for freedom, which was soon the major focus of her life. At this time she had two teenage children and was running a small business, but she managed to make time for intensive meditation. In 1997 she had a profound awakening during a ten-day retreat in northern New South Wales. She later described the experience as ‘deeper than bliss’.

There was a marked change in her after the awakening, which was really a very strong glimpse of enlightenment. She knew now what was possible, and she also knew that she would not be satisfied until that state became permanent. She maintained the humble attitude of a student and continued to practise. She meditated with Peter whenever she could, and also regularly spent time with the teacher Barry Long. During this time she met the Japanese Zen Master, Hogen Yamahata, who also impressed her with his deeply enlightened presence and humility. Early in 2003 Peter told Linda that she would reach the depth of enlightenment with or without a teacher. She still had a strong desire for extended periods of meditation practice, and at that time Peter was not able to offer this, so she started attending retreats led by Hogen Yamahata. For the next two years she practised with Hogen-san and attended his Zen retreats as often as possible.

In 2004 she travelled to Japan and spent six weeks at a Zen monastery with Hogen-san’s Master, Harada Tangen Roshi, known as Roshi Sama. Her time with him was intense. She sensed she was close to the culmination of her journey. She returned to Australia in a deeply detached, peaceful state. Roshi Sama gave her the name Dai’an Jishin, which translates as ‘deep peace, compassionate heart/mind’.

Her search ended during a ten-day retreat with Hogen-san at Springbrook, in the mountains behind the Gold Coast in Queensland.

‘Everything changed. All fear disappeared. I was left with nothing and nothing to lose. The depth of peace and satisfaction overwhelmed me, and it continues to deepen every day. Life is immediate. There is no desire for anything more or different. This is enough.’

Linda will be interviewed for conscious.tv by Renate McNay in London on Wednesday 6th May

An interview with Nicholas Hagger 

Nicholas Hagger is a poet, cultural historian and philosopher and is the author of more than 35 books including his two latest just released: ‘My Double life 1 - This Dark Wood’ and ‘My Double Life 2  - A Rainbow Over the Hills.’ 

In this interview with Iain McNay, Hagger will talk about his life, his spiritual awakenings and how they have changed the way he sees reality.

In Hagger's words:

"I asked Japanese poet Junzabuto Nishwaki in 1965 for a distillation of the wisdom of the East – he wrote on a business card +A+-A=0. The Great Nothing. He explained that the Universe is a unity that reconciles all contradictions, that the One combines day and night, life or death."

"Libya accelerated my drastic purgation and remaking of myself. I was on the universal mystic way without realising it – I didn’t know that my dark night of the senses would help me back onto the right path of detachments, illumination and transformations – I would have to traverse hell before I could reach inner serenity – I now felt more intensely than ever that I had lost my way in a dark wood and was still searching for my right path."

"This was my first glimpse of the celebrated golden flower, the centre and the source of my being. White light flowing upwards, a spring opened up inside me, visions wobbled inside me, I saw a fountain of light... finally I said to myself , 'I surrender’ and I was drunk with flowing light."

Iain McNay's complete interview with Nicholas Hagger is now available on Conscious TV through this link

An interview with Jah Wobble 

Jah Wobble was the original bass player in the band, Public Image Limited (PIL), which was formed by former Sex-pistols singer John Lydon (Rotten).  Jah was 17 when he joined the band having never been in a band before. He came from a tough and at times violent East London background. When he was young, he developed a taste for short wave radio oscillations, they put him into a state of trance and he could sleep better. In Jah's words, the wave radio oscillations 'felt like listening to infinity.’  

From an early age, he had a strong spiritual bent having discovered the Upanishads and was captivated by ancient teachings. As a result, music, especially the bass guitar and his spiritual life became indelibly intertwined.

‘When you truly accept the bass as an emanation of God, as the ground of existence, you make a friend of impermanence, a state of flux, therefore the fear of losing what you have diminishes…you truly ride the rhythm – you will reside in the residence of ‘OM’, you can ride the sonic boom to heaven.

My bass playing relies first and foremost on intuition – it is necessary to remain innocent – intuition is directed from the solar plexus – the knowing sun in the guts.’

After years on the road with bands, he became an alcoholic ‘Whenever I drank, all the fear disappeared and the tension left my body’ but he couldn’t go on like that and became completely burnt out.  His Marriage broke up and he was left with a crushing sense of failure.

After joining AA and finding a real depth in his spiritual path life, he remembers:

‘I found I was grateful for every drink and drug I had taken because it was because of them I now had a beautiful and stable life which in turn led to a great productivity. I felt really alive and sensitized, I had simply grasped what it is to be human. 

Everything in life was sort of emptying out and becoming simpler. I was now at the stage of developing a meditative mind. There came a point where there was no difference between making music and spirituality – the world might have been getting crazier but I was getting better.’

Iain McNay's complete interview with Jah Wobble is now available through the link here. 

An interview with Jenny Boyd 

Jenny Boyd is the author of ‘It’s Not only Rock ‘n’ Roll’, a book where she presents interviews with 75 musicians about how their creativity functions. Jenny works as a psychologist and addictions consultant in London. In her book, she wanted to understand how the minds and souls of the artists could create such great music.

Her own spiritual awakening first started when she was 18...

‘A tingling sensation rippled through my body, everything appearing crystal clear. I felt like a channel for the deeper parts of myself, as if I was watching myself from above. There was also a feeling of unity. My search for enlightenment had begun, I was now on a path from which I would often swerve but never leave.’

In 1967 she travelled with the Beatles to India to spend time with Maharishi Maheshi Yogi (her sister Pattie was going out with – and later married - George Harrison at the time). Here she learnt to meditate. She became a successful model in London, and later married Mick Fleetwood, the drummer in Fleetwood Mac.

‘After many years of being involved with everything that went along with rock ‘n’ roll, I decided to go to college and study psychology.’

In this interview, Jenny will talk about her own journey as well as the fascinating process she discovered about musicians creativity.

‘Peak experience can happen when the artist is totally in the here and now.  A time of complete concentration that overtakes the mundane  - the experience of eternity right here and now  - by completely concentrating on the music, they are able to open themselves up – the result can be songs that come from nowhere.’

Iain McNay's complete interview with Jenny Boyd is now available here. 

An interview with Kristiina Helin

Kristiina Helin is from Finland. She is an Opera and Music Stage Director and a Mother. A few month ago Kristiina wrote us an email where she said: "Thank you for running Conscious.TV. I have seen all your programs and my solitude ended when I saw there are others with the same realization.  Until then I felt there was only me and Krishnamurti..."

Kristiina had many "Out of Body" experiences as a child which were frightening but these experiences also gave her a taste of her true Self. After entering Acting School in London where they were trying to reach the unknown by questioning radically their perception and reality, she coincidently found out about Japanese Butoh dance and traveled to Japan to study its philosophy. The most important exercise was Bisoku movement that is an extremely slow movement, dancing for example to the smell of a flower and different images. Through the slow movements, she entered witnessing, awareness becoming whatever was in front of her. After a long period of silence, Kristiina attended a gathering with Rupert Spira where she had a profound shift in her perception...looking into the mirror she was neither in her body nor in the mirror, she had disappeared. In her own words: "Relaxing the body is crucial...Life is fully moving through me as me"

To watch Renate McNay's complete interview with Kristiina, please click here. 

An interview with Giles Hutchins 

On January 30th, Iain McNay will interview Giles Hutchins. Giles has written two books: The Illusion of Separation and The Nature of Business.

Here are few excerpts from Giles' books:

On Separateness

"Our patterns of thinking and learning are all based on a world of ‘things’ which we are encouraged to think of as separate building. The dominant world view allows us to count and measure objects without their having any relational value for us. It provides for neat definitions and a sense of control over life yet projects a logic that sets humans apart from each other and from Nature itself.

Yet the deeper we look into nature, the more we realise that nothing in life is separate; everything is a dynamic interplay. Life is essentially co-creative, fluid and connective. Separateness is an illusion we have created which has fast become a dangerous delusion infecting how we think and relate in business, politics and beyond.  It is becoming increasingly apparent that the critical problem facing our planet cannot be resolved with the same thinking that created the problems in the first place.’

On Meditation

"In Devon, my daily meditations and yoga were supplemented with sitting against trees I got to know intimately. I learnt a Druidic tree meditation and healing practice which I practiced daily with the trees. I also started writing short articles while sitting next to trees, blogs for a personal website. Then the Guardian newspaper offered to pay for me to write blogs for them and soon after that a publisher approached me about writing a book on business inspired by nature."

On Leaving the Corporate Life 

"Leaving corporate life was all contrary to my conditioning of security, career, status, financial income, etc. and while my earnings have been pathetic in comparison since, it is with no regrets. I gave myself the vital space and time to deepen my inner psychic connection to Nature and also to recover from years of shell-shocking global travel, stress, burning the candle at both ends, etc. I underwent something of a metamorphosis from 2012 to 2014, gradually healing while letting go of old mentalities, going through a ‘dark night of the soul’, embracing the unconscious depths of my imaginal realm and making friends once again with the stillness within."

Iain McNay's complete interview with Giles Hutchins is now available on Conscious TV through the link here. 

An interview with Prajna Ginty 

The Edge of Grace

Prajna is a mother, spiritual teacher and author of the book, Edge of Grace - A Seeker's Path to the Heart of Liberation. She was on top of the 'enlightenment mountain' and spent 7 years in Samadhi when she was thrown by spirit into a cauldron of transmuting fire. A long walk into the dark night began where she felt she could not live this life anymore. One night she went close to the cliff and began jumping when something picked her up saying, 'This is your purpose and the life to live, you're staying, go home.' 

In Prajna's words

'I want everyone to know that regardless of their circumstances, they can directly experience wholeness, return to the deepest peace and live in freedom'

Renate McNay's complete interview with Prajna is now available on Conscious TV via this link. 

  

An interview with Eimear Moran 

A Feather on the Breath of God 

Eimear Moran is the author of the book The Garden Path Home to Eden - A new Way of seeing Love, Self and the Garden.

Eimear could always see the Divine in Nature and when her life seemed to fall apart she could only allow this total "Free Fall" in the safe place of her garden where she would sit with all her pain and loneliness. One day she sat in her garden looking at a Hawthorn Tree, it was a grey, cold day and miserable. The tree looked poor and barren and she thought 'I must look as barren to this tree as he is to me.' In that moment she woke up and realized her true nature. An amazing feeling of love came over her, it was a reality of heavenly perfection and she knew she had met God. 

Eimear can be contacted at eimearmoran@eircom.net

Renate McNay's complete interview with Eimear can now be viewed through this link

An interview with Adrain Rides and John Flaherty 

Addiction and Awakening 

John is author of the book, 'Addiction Unplugged - How To Be Free' and has worked in the field of addiction for 25 years. He was previously a Catholic Priest but left when he was 35, having felt he had handed his life over to the Church. At this point he felt physically, mentally and emotionally drained and he knew it was time to move on. 

Adrian started drinking heavily at an early age to avoid feelings of intense anxiety and reached the point where his marriage had broken down and he was in a deep depression. He discovered meditation and his life started to change. Shortly afterwards he had an experience:

'I realised that now is all that there is and that the past and future were simply torments of my mind. I realised that I was alive, that my aliveness was not separate from the aliveness in everything, I realised that I was life itself and that I had found myself.' 

Adrian also works in the field of addiction and teaches mindfulness in London. 

You can read more about Adrian's work through his website at www.lovelifelivenow.com and to read more on John and his work, you can visit www.beawarebealive.com

 Iain McNay's complete interview with Adrian Rides and John Flaherty can be viewed via this link 

  

Higher Being Bodies 

an interview with Ocke de Boer 

Ocke is the author of the book Higher being Bodies, which is based on a non-dualistic approach to the Fourth Way.  

Ever since hearing the song, ‘Why Are We Sleeping’ by Kevin Ayers when he was a teenager, Ocke realized that reality was different to what he had learnt and wanted to wake up. He became a sailor when he was 16, worked in a youth prison when he was 20 and then started to read Ouspensky and Gurdjieff. “This was like coming home,” he says.

In this interview, he talks about applying sacred ideas and explains ‘coating', the dual-nature of human beings.  We have a physical body composed of material from the Earth and a Kesdjan body which is composed of matter from the solar system.

“I am the absence of my presence and I am the absence of the presence of my presence.”

Iain McNay's complete interview with Ocke is now available on Conscious TV through this link. 

Being Knowing Being

an interview with Deborah Westmoreland 

Deborah Westmoreland is a poet, a spiritual teacher and the author of Being Knowing Being, which is an upcoming book of spiritual essays.  

After several tragedies, her big question was "How can I end suffering?"  She was sick and tired of Deborah.  Her mind was too busy to sit in meditation so she started doing running meditations...to find the moment, never got ahead of her breath, nor behind.  She disconnected from all her belief structures and attachments until she awakened one day, and realized that she had always been in Heaven.  

In Deborah's words "You have to become disinterested in the character, not interested in the story. Suffering is optional, it’s self-imposed.”  

Deborah has never had a spiritual teacher, nor followed any teaching.

Renate McNay's complete interview with Deborah is now available on Conscious TV through this link. 

Only This Emptiness

an interview with Bart Marshall 

In the Vietnam War, a mortar landed nearby that blew Bart into a clear and brilliant blackness that “Felt like home. I would have gladly stayed in that blackness but instead I was brought back into a world I could no longer view in the same way.” 

When he returned in 1968, he experimented with LSD, read everything he could find that might offer clues to what had happened to him, studied meditation and attended workshops.  After 20 years, he hit a wall as a seeker and then met the teacher Richard Rose with whom he studied for 5 years. It was after a weekend with Douglas Harding that a breakthrough finally happened. 

“Being the source of everything that is nothing - everything and nothing, only this emptiness.”

Iain McNay's complete interview with Bart is now available on Conscious TV through this link. 

The Matrix of Silence

an Interview with Thomas Mueller

Thomas Mueller is the author of The Natural Health Matrix: Eastern Wisdom for Western Minds. He is an Ayurvedic practitioner, meditation and yoga teacher and the founder of AYUWAVE.  

In this interview, he tells us about his journey for health and peace and his path to waking up. He spent 10 years in the Ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at the Vedic University in Holland and taught Ayurvedic therapies, meditation and yoga to hundreds of students around the globe. One of the significant lessons for him was TRUST and listening to the song of silence which became the Matrix, leading him to an incredible source of energy and peace. 

You can watch Renate McNay's complete interview with Thomas on Conscious TV by clicking on this link 

An Interview with Dennis Moorby 

In his mid-40s Dennis was at the top of his professional career when he went with a friend to India who was visiting his guru Swami Shyam.  Dennis looked into the guru’s eyes and saw that he was a really happy man. In that moment something  happened, a hidden door opened in him letting out all the happiness he had stashed away for years. He spent the next 2 weeks in India in absolute bliss. 

What opened up seemed like a series of calamities. His wife of seventeen years decided to leave him, his  nine year-old daughter went through a difficult phase and was put in boarding school and the cut and thrust of climbing the corporate ladder lost its lustre. 

From Swami Shyam, Dennis migrated to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh  and did Dynamic Meditation every morning for three months on the trot. Everything that had been self-evident in his life up until that time was called into question and usually found wanting. The result was a more malleable outlook that made the process of letting go that much easier.

The second phase of  his journey began when he  fell in love. And so started a new intense relationship which provided fuel for the gradual breaking down of the ego and the opening of the heart.

Several years later after going through a period of depression, Dennis went to hear Sogyal Rimpoche talk: 

‘I sat in the front row and listened intently to forty minutes of ancient Tibetan wisdom, delivered in an impeccable Cambridge accent. On looking into his eyes at the formal departure, I had my third major Samadhi. I was on cloud nine for the next three months. But the euphoria began to fade but the awareness was such at that time that I had understood the components that had created the spiritual breakthrough for me. Awareness and focus for just forty minutes.'

He  then set about bringing these aspects together in meditation to reignite the impetus to seriously follow the spiritual path and cast around for a teacher but nothing rang true. 

He picked up a book by Ayya Khema which detailed the path of the Jhanas as a way to explore deep meditative states of consciousness and that resulted in forming the basis of an intense 18-month retreat he did alone in a small apartment in a village in Germany using the road map of the Jhana meditations,  facilitated by long and frequent sittings.

‘Equally important in this period was the time outside of formal meditation, where agitation of the mind was kept to a minimum, life was kept quite simple. Walking out in the park, the trees, for example, were treated with full present awareness, as was the bird song and the cake at the Schloss café. 

After about eighteen months of this exploration which took me through to touching ninth Jhana, it felt time to take a break. The apartment in Germany was sold, we moved from Ticino to an Alpine Chalet and after Christmas 2009 I took a Giorgetti Chair (it is important to be comfortable in meditation) and began a similar meditation routine. After six weeks of intense meditation I had the breakthrough into a place where the expanded state of awareness was always available in waking state.

So we come to where I am now, coping with living life from the point of view of expanded awareness and relearning to operate in everyday life from a different point of view. 

Jac O’Keeffe helped me about a year ago to ‘embody’ the experience, bringing the sense of infinite awareness down into the heart area and grounding through the body. This has allowed my feet to touch the ground a good deal more effectively.' Dennis Moorby

Dennis Moorby sat with Iain McNay for an interview on Conscious TV on the 4^th June. You are welcome to watch the complete interview by clicking the link here

 An Interview with Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell
Godhead - The Brain's Big Bang 

Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell are authors of many books together including new release ‘Godhead.’ 

The book sets out to draw together psychology, science and mysticism into the same river of human experience. In doing so it throws new light on questions that mankind has pondered for centuries. 

The authors take us on an exciting investigative voyage that produces clear reasons for why those who think human life is essentially meaningless are wrong. En route, through the lens of evolution, cultural history, poetry, psychology and a plethora of new scientific insights, they not only throw fresh light on ancient mysteries, the origin of creativity, hypnosis, spirituality, religion and indoctrination but also meet head-on the central questions at the heart of science today. Science and mysticism are essential aspects of human functioning, they say, and both are linked with why we are so uniquely prone to mental illness and understanding this is a part of effective self-development. 

Among some of the key questions they explore (and answer) are: 

Why is it that we are capable of creating societies that foster the highest pinnacles of extraordinary individual and collective creative achievement, yet so often let our cultures degenerate to the nadir of inhumanity and bestiality? 

Where is the 'nothing' that existed before 'something' first appeared? 

Where did the quantum information come from that made our vast universe and all forms of life possible? 

What is consciousness? How could consciousness arise from inanimate matter? 

Can the claims about the nature of reality made by mystics throughout the ages be reconciled with our best scientific insights? 

What is mysticism for? What does 'enlightenment' mean exactly? 

Can our individual consciousness survive death? 

Are 'God' and 'Godhead' useful terms? 

Is there a future for our species? What is 'destiny'? And how should one prepare oneself to meet it?

On June 6th, Ivan Tyrrell sat with Iain McNay for an interview on Conscious TV. The complete interview is available via this link.

An Interview with Mike Kewley 

You Are Not What You Think

Mike was obsessed with becoming Enlightened since childhood – for him that was the point of living. He knew from an early age that the voice in his head wasn’t him. He had some terrifying experiences of no-self which led to panic attacks and depression. Eventually he decided that he needed to drop the desire for enlightenment and somehow fix his life. 

And then, after a time, he was much happier. He then had the experience that ended his search for enlightenment.

In Mike's own words: ‘There's just the impersonal flow of awareness being everything without exception, no way to get it and no way to get out of it. It basks in the ordinary and mundane as well as the fireworks.'

On May 8th, Mike came to Conscious TV studios for an interview with Iain McNay. You can view the complete interview on conscious.tv by clicking this link.