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.  

An Interview with Alan Budge 

Challenges of the Spiritual Path 

Alan is the author of For God’s Sake, which he describes as his true story of his tragi-comic quest for spiritual enlightenment. 

In Alan's words: 

‘Having given up on the entirely godless realm of would-be smart London restaurants, I journeyed widely through India, China, Tibet, and parts of West Yorkshire. I also worked for various would-be deeply spiritual organisations. This unflinching quest for truth led, not entirely unexpectedly, to a far from enlightened descent into alcoholism and misery. But then after sobering up I began to ponder: what is really at the heart of all this spiritual carry-on? Can it be of any use, given the challenges we face?’

On May 8th, Alan was invited for an interview on Conscious TV with Iain McNay. You can view the complete interview on conscious.tv by clicking this link. 

An Interview with Miranda Macpherson 

Be Nothing Do Nothing Get Nothing Become Nothing

Author of the book Boundless Love, Miranda has been teaching since 1995 and is known for her depth of presence, clarity and refined capacity to guide people into direct experience of the sacred. 

On March 8th, when she sat down for an interview with Renate McNay, she told Renate of her "dark night of the soul" begging God to let her die and eventually her profound Non-dual awakening while meditating in Ramana Maharshi’s cave after which her ego engine stopped for a few weeks and her life was completely changed.

In Miranda's words: ‘Our soul is longing to belong to humanity and Enlightenment is the Human Nature'

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