Unpacked In Santa Cruz
Mike Howard talking ....
Unpacked In Santa Cruz
Episode 30: Michael Yankaus: Echoes of Surf Culture and Spirituality
What if the secret to a more fulfilling life lies in the waves of the ocean and the silence of the mind? Join us as we take a nostalgic journey back to 1988 with my longtime friend Mick Yankus, a key figure in the surf industry and a pioneer at O'Neill's OFX office. We reminisce about our evening surf sessions and how Mick's creative genius helped shape the iconic surf logos and wetsuits that defined an era. Relive the excitement of late 1980s surf culture, from the revolutionary use of Apple computers in ad campaigns to the influence of legends like Kelly Slater and Brad Gerlach.
Discover the transformative power of Transcendental Meditation (TM) and how it helped Mick and me navigate the challenges of life. Mick shares his unique blend of yoga, meditation, and physical fitness, which served as an inspiring model for integrating spiritual values into everyday life. We explore how TM allows us to transcend mental activity and experience pure consciousness, bringing about a state of peaceful bliss. Our conversation touches on the intersections between ancient religious traditions and modern scientific understandings of consciousness, highlighting our shared pursuit of happiness and creativity.
From surfing the waves of Santa Cruz to finding inner peace through TM, this episode offers a heartfelt reunion filled with personal stories, spiritual insights, and creative reflections. We recount memorable experiences, including Mick’s journey to becoming a TM teacher and his impactful work with the Silicon Valley TM Center and Stanford Hospital. Whether you're a surfer, a meditator, or someone seeking inspiration, tune in to celebrate friendship, spirituality, and the timeless essence of surfing with us.
Welcome to the Unpacked and Naked Podcast. I'm your host, Michael Howard. I have the lovely privilege of sitting across the table right now with Michael Yankus, a longtime friend of mine 1988, is that right? Yep, Yep, and now neighbor 1988, is that?
Speaker 2:right, yep, yep. And now neighbor, very fortunately, yes, living a block from the ocean, under the upstairs home of the Howard family, which is the greatest house in Santa Cruz.
Speaker 1:I'm super stoked, yeah, yeah. So you know, mick is a longtime friend of mine. Yes, we all call him Mick M-I-K, M-I-K. Yes.
Speaker 2:To separate myself from Mick Fanning or any of those guys. I'm just little Mick M-I-K, that's enough.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know Mick lives large in my life for a number of reasons and I kind of want to start with like the industry side of things and for those of you who don't know that I surf was involved in the surf industry. Mick and I connected right before I started becoming a sales rep and you worked at an office for O'Neill's called OFX. One of the first offices of its kind, if not the first, where there was a really focused center of we wanted to make surf more hardcore and you were living under it was Dave.
Speaker 2:Dave Parmland, creative director, and I was art director the surfing division.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and more than you would know, necessarily, depending on how much you know about the business. I really do have the privilege of sitting in front of someone who, whatever you think, is hardcore about logo work. As pertains to surf, this guy's hands are mostly all over it. That what we would think of when we think of a really hardcore surf logo. This is the guy who really demonstrated best what that might look like and it really has been a privilege to have you as a friend. It was so fun back then to be walking into the office. You know I was working for Excel wetsuits back then. You guys still still let me in the office. I think it was cause I was given Tinkus suits so that you guys could copy what we were doing, cause we were doing different rubber.
Speaker 2:But, uh, just a really unique moment in the industry well, you know it's a known deal, yeah he bought them from me, but it was awesome yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So, so just a really special person in my life and and you know, as it has been with the podcast I've been sharing with you people that have had a very deep impact in my life, and and you and I met when I was 18 yeah, I, I had, uh, I think I had, just I had almost quit doing hair and we just started surfing together I don't know if you had started doing hair oh, I was doing hair when I was 16, okay, yeah but the big impact was my.
Speaker 2:You were one of the standout young surfers on the east side of Santa Cruz and elsewhere, but that was a really great crew and you had this amazing strong backhand attack as a goofy foot and was always happy to be in your space.
Speaker 1:Just go and find out yeah, find out afterwards whether it was the wrong idea. That seemed to be the thing at the time. But really more importantly and this is the point I wanted to get to, and we will talk about surf first is that, mick, to me, really represents this safety net that I had around me at that time. I'm not sure if this was a conscious thing that you did, but Mike was always careful to make sure that I was going surfing with him in the evening.
Speaker 1:And I don't know if that was out of your own need or out of what you were seeing amongst my crew and just kind of the ways that things were going, and recognizing in my heart that I wasn't really part of that thing. But there was a safety that I had growing up into adulthood that I got to have with you and still be myself. I really I cannot look back with enough fondness, with enough appreciation, you know, for that little three-year stint where it was basically you and I almost every day in the evenings and then over the weekends of going and grabbing surfs up north. You know I would go out in the morning, work, then come to your spot, my nose draining trying to get you to hustle up away from your desk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was never a dawn patroller and very pale skin, so I burned over and over again as a young person teenager and therefore I had to surf in the late afternoons or early evenings.
Speaker 1:I always remember you having having different kinds of sunblock and always making sure I put it on no michael, here you go, you gotta put this, yeah, yeah, and you know the.
Speaker 2:The work I did for o'neill was, firstly, they're a great company and Jack was legendary and he's legendary for his creativity, but also he was an amazingly forward-thinking, open-minded and very generous great person, you know, and his sons and daughter, pat o'neill and um bridget, just reflected that. I mean the way they handled things and so forth. But I was super appreciative of the company because I went through generations of different suits and starting with the vest, and I was also acutely aware that the surf media and surf industry was all based in Southern California and my entire aim when I had this opportunity to work for them was I wanted O'Neill to be better than Gotcha and Quick and all these other companies, and the way to do it was visual because the product was already there. They have really amazing designs in their current group, including John Hunter and so forth. I mean, their wetsuits are ranked number one at this point even, but we wanted to give them a look. That was what the surfers were interested in, not what older owners or anything.
Speaker 2:Right, right owners or anything right, right, we went straight to you know who's wearing it and they were from about 12 years old to 25 years old. Is the market, yeah, and the older guys are not looking for older concepts, they're looking young, you know. They want to look at what's happening. So we just they want to look at what's happening, so we just zeroed in on that and I absorbed what was going on in the music industry and art culture, photography, and there were great photographers in the surf industry Aaron Chang, jeff Hornbaker. I won't go further, please. Anyone who's there's?
Speaker 1:no, there's guys up here. Yeah, there's a bunch of guys tr well, tr.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's still going, he's amazing um, but there's a really legend, one living in santa cru Bob Barber, bob Barber.
Speaker 1:Steve Ampere still was kind of poking around.
Speaker 2:Clough, chris Clough, yeah yeah, these guys were awesome, and so I just would spend hours looking through photos and then looking at what was hip. And then Pat O'Neill had a great CEO working for him and he brought in Dave Parmelee, who was an incredibly forward athlete. He was a black belt in karate and super friendly, but the guy could handle himself. The guy could handle himself, you know, and we had all surfers in our design studio to some degree or they had to be linked to some other water sport.
Speaker 2:There was no techies, there was no intellect it was all just focused on what the brand was about and we just did our best to um compete with what I saw is a really good design down south, and I wanted it to be a little edgier. Yeah, and that's what I went after well, I think you know.
Speaker 1:Looking back, for me, uh, you know, what ofx did was now pretty much the benchmark. You know, you guys were the first to release what was it?
Speaker 2:ozone, that album the chili peppers, you know like it was a surf video yeah um filmer the legendary tony roberts um. The graphic design was myself and tim ward, who has done all of the stickers on everybody's car in northern california, all the stuff anywhere that says a town and trees or whatever local insect that's tim ward.
Speaker 2:tim ward is another genius and tr and tw were a little powerhouse of creativity here. Um and dave parmalee and one of his friends who was a music producer and parmalee was doing music. Um had inroads with IRS records. Oh yeah, and that's redundant because it's IR yeah, international Recording Studios or something like that, but they put together the soundtrack for this video, which featured Red Hot Chili Peppers. Jane's Addiction's addiction general public too.
Speaker 1:I think was on that one yeah, concrete blonde iced tea um, it was pretty amazing yeah, it just so represented how diverse surfing was, but how hardcore it was it just again it felt so fun to be a part of being able to walk in that office and just see surfing come to life the way that I understood it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, nationally that soundtrack was number one in college. Soundtrack from a video which is great because surfing is a small niche. You know it's tiny.
Speaker 1:Especially at the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, at the time, and it goes up and down and it becomes a fad, and then it starts to dwindle and then it becomes another fad. And we go through those in the surf industry. But what was also emerging then was our office had a color copier. They were really expensive, you know, and O'Neill just popped for it. And then they set us all up with Apple computers and big screens.
Speaker 1:Which is just so. You all know that is not normal. I mean, I remember the computer showing up and just you being super excited.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is 8089, 89, I think when that hit and all of a sudden we could do the typography. We didn't have to spec it and have somebody else do it, and you know, and go back and forth. And so we had all that control and we were learning how to tweak things. And we did a ad campaign uh called wave, and that featured Martin Potter and all these amazing surfers Matt Hoy right. Hoy came in the next level.
Speaker 2:In the next cycle yeah, yeah, potts and Kelly was with O'Neill at that time and we did a thing. I can't remember the name of the campaign, but we stretched their faces so they were a little bit bigger and right here, you know right and we could do that because now we had control and I remember hand spinning a graphic piece till I got it into a spiral the way I wanted, and that's on the cover of of wave of um ozone and then tim ward did all these little icon drawings.
Speaker 2:And then we had this another amazing uh designer, sandy jen, and she did a redesign of the logo with kind of dreadlock spiked. What was that? Generation hair?
Speaker 1:Well, I think dreads were just coming on the scene.
Speaker 2:New wave, yeah, new wave. It was kind of a dreading new wave kind of look.
Speaker 1:It was where it was going to go. It wasn't where it was at yet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And you know the O'Neill family just said, yeah, that's cool, it's fun, you know. And that's what we were all about having fun. And we had great surfers. We had Tommy Carroll became a world champion, martin Potter became a world champion, luke Egan number two in the world. Brad Gerlach number two in the world, matt Hoy just a total freakout legend. Richard Collins, local. Richard Schmidt Rufo was with us.
Speaker 1:And Gally back then too.
Speaker 2:Gally Adam Rapogel, rufo was with us and galley. Back then, galley adam rapogal, we had all these amazing uh mark munster must oh eddie no, mark munster. Yeah, yeah, yeah munster, yeah, eddie.
Speaker 1:Eddie munster is what we called him. Yeah, what was his? Mark taylor?
Speaker 2:mark taylor, yeah he's awesome, local surfer, awesome, and you know. And then we had marcel soros, we had mark machado marcella departed by then. Machado was there well, he was, he was part of it when, when I started yeah, yeah, yeah, he spent a lot of time at. I love marcel yeah, yeah yeah, yeah. So we had all these amazing talented local surfers and so we had an international team with these names I just mentioned. But I lobbied to do major two-spread ads with a local crew as well Mark Price or.
Speaker 1:Mark Taylor Munster.
Speaker 2:No, what was the Price? Oh, steve Price, steve Price, yeah, steve.
Speaker 1:Price, so yeah, another.
Speaker 2:Another.
Speaker 1:oh my gosh yeah like, talk about a guy who you thought would be a like. He was doing errors before anybody was like and sticking them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then kevin reed yeah you know um. So I was like, if we want to be hardcore, we also have to show our local crew, because the southern cal guys are getting yeah, all the media, all the media so I just went.
Speaker 2:We're doing this yeah and parms was always awesomely open-minded, if not him coming up with the eye back and forth, we would just, uh, have really great ad campaigns and we would change them about every three to six months, so we kept it fresh. Yeah, and that was parmale's genius, and he would come up with the most amazing slogans and I would just have the fun of articulating them.
Speaker 1:You know, so my favorite memory of the way I remember it is that you know post kind of this neon sense you know, from victory wetsuits and alita and all that kind of stuff. Man, it was fun to look like darth vader out in the water and that's really what o'neill brought. You know that animal that. You know that those wetsuits, just at the time were so fresh, all black.
Speaker 2:We did that one ad with Brad Gerlach in the animal wetsuit, which had a very advanced technology for flexibility and durability. It just barely preceded super stretch neoprene, so it didn't make a big dent in it, but it set the direction towards more flexible neoprene, which is sick because you used to spend, you know, a few weeks or a month in Hawaii with no wetsuit and then you'd come back and you'd feel like you're in a straight jacket when you put on heavy neoprene, which we needed up here. And the animal was the answer to that and it was all black. And so we did a photo shoot. I think it was Hornbaker, jeff Hornbaker, we did it at Scott Creek Beach and all of them, all of the writers, so that was Gerlach, richard Schmidt, luke Egan, I think Hoyo's in that one, also Richie Collins, and they're all in black wetsuits. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And they're all in black wetsuits.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yep. And Surfer Magazine later called us and said that ad had the biggest impact in the surf magazine of any in their entire history.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So we were like yeah, yeah, when people are looking forward to ads, which I think we kind of did back then peeking through the magazines yeah, thank you you were looking for the coolest ad. Yeah, that's. You know that's who I want to identify with and you know advertising so cliche.
Speaker 2:Now, you know, but you know back then like that's a thing, like you know all the industry dorks down and down and, yeah, there was garmentos that had gotten in super creative guys were working for um billabong run by um bob hurley, who later started his own brand and now he's with john john um. But those were the guys who's like, okay, we got to be more interesting than Billabong and Quicksilver had great, great. I mean they have the best logo ever done in my mind.
Speaker 1:Well, it's the most embedded for all of us, that mountain and surf, it just is. It's a brilliant logo.
Speaker 2:It just is. It's a brilliant logo. But Gotcha also had amazing creative ideas with Mike Thompson and Mark Price. Mark Price is a visionary guy also who went from there to being part owner of Tavaroa Island Surf Company and part of the island. He owned part of the lease and then he started Firewire Surfboards, which was one of the more forward-thinking technologies for surf materials and surfboards. And you know, you get to meet these guys at trade show booths and and that was the other thing was o'neill just like let us run with that and and that was when cindy uh, now boozen heart, you know who was uh ended up?
Speaker 1:uh, she was. You know she had. Was uh ended up? Uh, she was. You know she. She had the relationship with the surf shop owner here who ended up uh being a part of sessions and then, you know, being the CEO of sessions. You know that they were inventing foam signs back then, like, like that was her business, and so I remember you know her coming in and bringing in the foam. You know that had been shaped into whatever stuff.
Speaker 1:And that ended up carrying over into surf shops. I mean again what you guys accomplished just by doing what you did at trade shows, that transferred into what happened in the stores, which was my world as a sales rep. Everybody's trying to stay at the same click and you guys were just ahead of the game, you know. But again, the talent, again most of which, when we think about surf and think about signs, logos, how surf is supposed to look, you know more, more than you might remember, like it directly came out of ofx and that crew you know, and again, all these guys have all scattered and they're with many of or with other companies.
Speaker 1:Companies have started themselves but like just that hardcore no surfing's really hardcore, other than billabong, which you know I think at the time quick was going pretty mass market. You know, at the same time you guys were scaling, you know, to get past 20 to 50 million a year. You know you're in that. You're in that that buggy process of like how do we jump this?
Speaker 2:yeah, with with licensees in brazil, holland, europe and as a whole in japan. Pan, we helped our team OFX. O'neill FX FX stood for FX. Yeah, international Sales increased in three years like 210%. Yeah yeah, they were into 120 mil, I think around, then yeah, yeah. Which is solid and you know it was just an amazing little team. It included Dave Parmley, myself. Sam Miranda, great artist, he's done a lot of local design work. Matt makuda oh yeah matt sign maker yes legendary, amazingly good surfer back then.
Speaker 1:Oh my god, still amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, and matt is like one of the nicest people on planet earth. The guy is just sick yeah and his brother was a legend too yeah um, and then there was kurt parker, who, uh, just casually became the, the head of nike branding asia, okay right like a little thing, right like, oh my gosh, you know yeah I mean, I had a dual career, so I had other interests which I began to pursue as time went on.
Speaker 2:But, um, yeah, those years were amazing. And when, when the ozone came out, that was when mtv interview. Oh, classic right, because he and um, oh, he's talking not as well, and I have other connections with meditation with those two as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so you know I love these love fests, talking about surfing thing, or one more. Let me go.
Speaker 2:one more thing, um, when that came out, also jane's addiction, really liked the design and irs records. The head of it contacted us and said you know, we had to get permission from all of the bands to to do the art packaging that we created for that CD.
Speaker 2:So there was the VHS the big package for the film, and then there was cassette design and then there was the CD, so that all had to be approved by all of the bands. And he said this is the only time in the history of our company that no one asked for a single change. Wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that, to me, was the biggest validation of my career in design was like okay, the servers like it, all the cool folks like it, the musicians like it. I'm pretty satisfied yeah.
Speaker 1:That was pretty cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and and look, I mean this is a very brief, you know a brief dialogue about all the things. Or there are lots, of, lots of stories in there and and I don't want to dismiss those things it's something we can podcast about more later. Um, but you know more later. But when I say to my audience, growing up in this town I grew up at a very special time, this is what I'm referring to is that I'm just a kid showing up at the office, I'm cutting my chops in the business, I'm working for a competitive wetsuit company, but the integration of the culture at the time was just, it was more malleable back then. You know, we weren't quite othering other companies. The competition lived, lived, lived at the surf shop and who was who was buying what?
Speaker 1:it didn't live within the industry the same way no, we all got along really well yeah, and fed off of each other and that dynamic was just so special to be a part of and that creative process you know, watching it play out and being a part of how dynamic O'Neill was just on the observation side. I know you, I was pulled into meetings is not the right way, but able to have a voice you know, at the big table, where you know you're sitting there quietly.
Speaker 1:You know, at the big table, where you know you're sitting there quietly, you know and and and tinker. Somebody is like howie, you're sitting over there quiet, you know, what do you think of this stuff? And and you know doing the emperors.
Speaker 2:Yes, no, like that one hate, that you know whatever, but but that openness you know to the creative process yeah, when we had surfers come in to show them a new ad campaign concept or a logo, whatever it was, and they would, you know, they were team riders. And they would say, yeah, that's, that's nice, you know. And then I would stop, or parmally would stop and say, don't tell us it's nice, tell us what you think. We're not here to be praised. We want to hear whether you really like it or not, because you are our market, and we want to know how you're responding. You know, don't, don't just try to be nice to us, because we're our company is giving you wetsuits and clothes and so forth, just be honest, you know, and that's what we got.
Speaker 2:And then they began to respect us even more because they knew that we were part of them.
Speaker 1:You know we're here to represent you, to help you enjoy your surfing life and everything about it.
Speaker 2:It's a culture which, in its you know, know imo, it's the coolest culture in the planet being a surfer is like oh my gosh, there's nothing like the happiness you get from surfing. Uh, what nature gives you as a surfer yeah, I, I mean my.
Speaker 1:My fondest memories of us just being are like those two summers where we're surfing the beaches every evening it's knee high and if you can get one turn off on your 6'10 pintail because nothing else would like enter into the surf, you know to the beach you're just busting fins out, just trying trying to get a turnoff in the middle of the brain drain. That is summer, because nothing's happening, but just those evenings together, the walks, you know wherever we were up north.
Speaker 1:It was just such a precious time to me and you know, again, on the interpersonal side, that I had a friend like you that that was there seeing what was around me and again, I don't know if it was intuitive or not, but you just guarding me from the thing that you know that sat in the underbelly and and you know you haven't heard my other 20 something podcasts talking about you know I had parents that picked me up when I was young, when I was driving I had Mick and Mick was always very careful to make sure he knew what was happening in the evening but for sure we were surfing first. And it wasn't parental, it was more kind of uncle-ish, but it just was a presence that was familial, was more.
Speaker 2:I'd been to the extremes of youth culture. So I was in art school in San Francisco in 1966.
Speaker 1:Back when you were two.
Speaker 2:By what most people think, but I'm actually a little on the older side. But the reason I am not asked about my age so much is I had changed my lifestyle when I was 19 to an exceptionally healthy one by comparison, because I was living in Haight-Ashbury when I was going to art school in SF and my roommate was dating Janice Joplin, and another girl who lived in a house that I shared with other art students was Jim Morrison's ex-girlfriend and we used to go to events with the Doors and Jackson Brown and all these amazingly creative people. But I also got heavily derailed by experimentation era and very fortunately so, I dropped out of SF Academy of Art, even though my art was in the student shows and everything. I just would fail to show up for a class because of tangents. Yeah, and I won't go into that, but yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm the unpacked part, yeah.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I happened to see a poster up at the art school that a very famous meditation teacher from India was going to give a lecture at the Berkeley Community Theater. And after I dropped out, my mom re-enrolled me didn't criticize me which is amazing because I wasted my family money but they just re-enrolled me in California College of the Arts, which is in Oakland. It's right on the edge of Berkeley. It's connected to UC Berkeley by College Avenue. You go from one end it's UC Berkeley, At the other end of the street it's California College of the Arts. It's a cool little art school and I got enrolled there by my mom and I was like consciously focused on getting my head straight. My art was doing great, but I really needed to simplify and get healthy.
Speaker 2:And I saw this poster that Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was giving a lecture at the Berkeley Community Theater and a month and a half earlier a young woman in London had been taught this technique transcendental meditation by Maharishi in London and she told her husband about it Her name was Patti Boyd about it. Her name was Patti Boyd and Patti told her husband about it George, and George told George was in a band and he told his friends, his band members Paul, John and Ringo yeah, little band, Little band about this meditation teacher who she was very impressed with. So they all went and met with Maharishi in London and I read a little article about the Beatles learned the technique and then they had these really interesting things to say about it. It was enhancing their creativity is what really caught my heart, because this is 1967 and the beatles by then had gone from she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, to rubber soul, which completely changed the music industry because it was a structured concept album, Like every song was looped to another, really in vibe. And then Revolver utterly changed music again. And then Sgt Pepper, and now they're saying that meditation is making them more creative and healthier.
Speaker 2:So I just made a point okay, I'm going to get to that lecture and I'm lucky. I was focused because the facility seated about 4,000 people but over 7,000 showed up and I got in and you know I was like packed with young people who want to know about marshy and the beatles. And then there were older hip beatniks and multi-generational, you know, and the lecture got delayed because, uh, the plane from la, where marshy was coming from, got delayed by an hour. So everybody's just sitting there joking and loud young crowd, and then this kind of professor-like man walks out on the stage with no announcements, just walks out on the stage and there's a couch there surrounded by some plants, flowers, to make it kind of nature vibe. And then Maharishi walked out onto the stage and the entire auditorium just went silent.
Speaker 2:Interesting, it didn't gradually tone down and then it just went bang yeah, gradually toned down and then it just went bang yeah, because this person had a presence that I don't think any of us had ever experienced. Right, you know, he radiated a kind of blissful spiritual consciousness and it made you want to listen carefully, but in a really friendly way. You felt like I'm a friend with this person immediately and to learn it. So afterwards, to learn the technique, you had to avoid using recreational drugs for 15 days, so that you're in a learning state.
Speaker 1:Yes, so the brain is not getting other consciousness in different forms.
Speaker 2:Yes. So that is how I got fully back on track, but even better because I met other people who were then into healthier food, you know, and I had a circle of friends in Berkeley. It was a big circle with musicians and artists and faculty members at the college had learned also. We had this really cool camaraderie and that just carried me forward so that my lifestyle like the last beer, the last alcohol I had was high school. After I graduated from high school, I think I maybe drank once after that and then it drifted into the hippiedom and I went SF and then that was over in less than a year.
Speaker 2:And now I'm like this fellow, this Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. This is a truly enlightened person. Rishi mahesh yogi, this is a truly enlightened person, which means he's very naturally, consciously aware. And, if I can go from point a to point z, right I am going there.
Speaker 2:You know I will do things to improve myself. So the next summer I studied, studied with Maharishi at Lake Tahu. He had an international course for people who might be interested in becoming a meditation instructor. So I was young. I learned TM at age 19. And then that following summer I did that. So I was 19 and a half and at the end of the course, in the context of the course and even preparatory to it, I was trained in yoga. So I started doing yoga. I was eating a vegetarian diet, which came naturally because nobody told me to do that. But I gravitated that way Because as a kid I never really liked meat, I just didn't like it. So I was always hoping my parents would have pizza or shrimp or something light, you know Mm-hmm. But I just gravitated that way. And so from age 19 I I've been on a meditation, yoga and, uh, vegetarian, lacto-vegetarian generally.
Speaker 2:I was a sushi-tarian for a while with a girlfriend who loves sushi, a, a little pescatarian, yeah, a little of this and that, but this has helped me improve my surfing as I got older, rather than it diminishing, and I do not feel like I'm aging mentally or emotionally. I feel like I'm constantly growing that way. And I'm 76 and I'm no, you're not. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I know.
Speaker 2:You're 19.
Speaker 1:There we go.
Speaker 2:I'm 19 still but I'm probably the only 76 year old riding a 511 inch yes, 18 and a quarter by two and a quarter inch performance surfboard and people still like the way I surf. And then when they find out how old I actually am, which is relative to your lifestyle I knew that I was not going to be super wealthy. I knew that I would therefore have to retire older and I wanted to be able to surf a lot when I retired that is the entire Mick ethos.
Speaker 1:Yes In a nutshell.
Speaker 2:That is all you need to know about me. I've been very true to my interests. I mean, when I was in high school, one of the projects I was given in my senior year in a public school in Belmont. I grew up on the peninsula. I learned to surf in Half Moon Bay in 1962. No wetsuits, just trunks, and we went out in November in november, 48 degree water, 48 to 52 was.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we just trumped it, you know and we didn't care.
Speaker 2:We came in and stood by a fire and we were stoked, yeah ice baths and saunas, yeah, and then the great o'neill family created the vest, and that changed the game entirely. You could at least be slightly warm.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And then the short Johns came out, you know, and then the board started getting shorter, which was awesome as well. But yeah, those years, I think I kind of lost track no, that's okay.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm going to back the bus up a little bit more because yeah, do that.
Speaker 2:I don't remember what I was saying it'll hit you later.
Speaker 1:you know it's funny because you and I have we've had an ebb and flow to our relationship over the course of you know now, gosh, you know 36, 37 years that we've known each other and I think that there's some real things that correlate. Although you went down a different spiritual path than mine, there's a lot that's very similar, with me getting into ministry at a very young age, yeah, having gotten married early. Also. You know we waited to have kids, but but you have um fortunately you didn't wait too long.
Speaker 2:No, no, no right. Mike howard's kids are like the most unbelievable triad of young guys that I've ever seen.
Speaker 1:This little specimen group.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, what a crew.
Speaker 1:But my point in there is that I think that there's spots where our hearts are intertwined and I got to watch you do some things and I think the best way I can kind of sum it up is you've lived like a priest more than once in your life, you know where. It's not that you were abstinence-based, it was just that you would abstain from particular portions of lifestyle choices.
Speaker 2:That's where we were getting.
Speaker 1:That is really different.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I kind of want to frame this up a little bit. You know, because you know I got married, you moved to Hawaii shortly thereafter. You know cause you know I got married, you moved to Hawaii shortly thereafter, you know, did your thing there. Then you kind of disappeared off the map for a little bit.
Speaker 2:Uh, you know, I was in Laguna for a while working with Billabong and gotcha and Tavaro Island.
Speaker 1:But in between those times you were also participating in in in TM practices, correct. You were also participating in TM practices, correct, and you were really the first person that I saw in all of these kind of spiritual encounters that I had, whether it was in ministry, christian ministry or outside of it, where I would see you move in and out of a priest-like lifestyle to integrating what was in that lifestyle into everyday life. And it created a map for me, believe it or not, of like oh, this is really possible to not live pure. I think that's the wrong way to put it.
Speaker 2:No, true to your inner values. It wasn't about doctrine. It was about I want to be a person that behaves this way, which I feel is more healthy emotionally, intellectually and creatively, athletically, whatever you know everything.
Speaker 1:Well, you were certainly the first person I knew that was doing yoga, meditating and surfing and lifting weights and like what is now the norm. Right, like most athletes, do what you were doing from the beginning. You know, as long as I've known you, and, and one of my favorite moments, uh, in my life with you was running into you at four mile and, and Brennan and I just happened to go up and surf there and you happened to be there. We hadn't seen each other in a decade or so yeah you know, you were over the hill working again.
Speaker 1:Uh, you know, I knew that you had started silicon valley yeah yeah, the other, the silicon valley tm yeah you know where you're working with stanford hospital and and and doing these things.
Speaker 1:But but how I want to frame this up is all I I just remember brennan, like like we, you know I was explaining who he was and he's he's doing some math in his head. He's looking at me going like wait a minute, you're 50. And that means that guy is not 50. What the fuck is that that he's doing? And I want to do that. And that was really the Genesis in a way in our household of you know we all reconnected. You got to know us as adults, with our adults, out of the house mostly, and you know we came and you taught us TM. You know, here about three years ago and just you know what lives in a very special moment in my heart, you know, introducing this spiritual practice. You know I do want to talk about TM because you know one of the struggle points.
Speaker 2:TM is abbreviation for Transcendental Meditation.
Speaker 1:Transcendental Meditation and really, you know this is again one of these words you know how do you transcend, you know what it is that we believe is physical existence. You know which is just this acknowledgement of the spiritual? Of course, I had lived on a very spiritual path. We have these words in Christianity.
Speaker 2:Always.
Speaker 1:Right, right, but these words in Christianity really kind of boxed us into a particular vernacular and certainly the last decade that I was in Christian ministry you know preaching this idea of transcending was sitting so blatantly in Jesus's message and we had no words for it and you know, clearly, after I had quit, you know, whatever it is, my own personal safeguards, it allowed me to explore into these other Eastern philosophies, eastern religions, to kind of get a better grasp on ego, you know, as taught by the Buddha, you know, to really begin embracing the wisdoms that live in this documentation of their understanding of who God is, you know, and coming to an understanding that even the Hindusus are generally a monotheist tradition. You know that they have more words for, for all of these dynamics that are going on doesn't mean that they don't believe in a god yeah you know, as as the center or one beautifully spoken perspective.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you know, I, I realized, you know in my own heart how, how much Christianity and for all of you Christians I'm not meaning to offend you, but how much it had boxed itself in, you know, to these ideas about who God was, who Jesus is. You know, thinking that somehow they were in a Hebraic tradition. But it wasn't even necessarily that either, because the Hebrews are pretty open also once you really delve into the Jewish faith.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And you know, really realizing that much of what separated us was not what we believed but how we said things, was really eye-opening to me, and so you know, and how you behaved.
Speaker 2:It's not just what you believe or talk about. It's how you actually integrate that into behavioral activation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you know, let's. I mean, I don't want to cut you off time-wise, but this is things that.
Speaker 2:No, this is awesome, I'm enjoying the honor of being noticed.
Speaker 1:In the presence of the spirits of the beach right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have a view of the ocean to our direct east.
Speaker 1:Yes, brian Upton and I have the best podcast studios when we're at home, no caves. We do go to our caves to podcast everywhere else, but uh, but you know he's actually just right over there at new brighton, are you? What were you looking at?
Speaker 2:is that okay? Is what okay?
Speaker 1:recording still going we're telling you recording. No. No, I'm not cutting you off yet.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, I just was double checking. Oh yeah, no, no.
Speaker 1:We're totally. It's that red dot right there, so we're all good. But you know, the point I was trying to get to in this, you know, is kind of the 30,000 foot view. You know, when you started Silicon Valley TM Center, you know your work with Stanford, what you know, what happened in the science arena was that you know the doctors were discovering that TM in fact brought great health to the people who practiced it. Self-awareness a lot of to me, a lot of jibber-jabber about, you know, being woke or whatever. You know aware of how things are, and that's great. But the practice of TM itself, which was very interesting to me because I've certainly meditated a lot in times past, which is very focused, but there's a real difference in TM and you know, and I would love for you to kind of explain that in five minutes or so- yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2:We can take it directly from the word focus. With regards to meditating, the principles of activity are very different from the principles of meditation and I will narrow it down to a short explanation of that and I think people will find this interesting and maybe educative. Maybe educative Principles of activity and every parent knows these principles and imbibes them in their children are effort, focus and control, because any activity that you do, it takes effort to start it, focus to direct it and control to manage it over time. So you know, when I was a little kid, my room was a mess. My mom would say your room's not going to clean itself, you're going to have to put some effort into this. So she would get me onto that You've got to. You know, make things happen and it happens through effort. And if I was allegedly studying and my dad saw me with music going on at the same time, he'd say maybe turn off the music and focus. So everybody knows that.
Speaker 2:But the purpose of meditation is different, because in the physical world, material world, if we want something to become something, we have to put in that effort to make it happen. It will not happen on its own. So effort, focus, control. Those are the mechanisms of activity, but the purpose of meditation is actually, in the deepest sense, the direct opposite. The purpose of meditation is very simple it's to take a little time out of activity where you'll sit down, eyes closed. You sit down because that reduces physical activity. Close your eyes, that reduces sensory activity. Because visual sense is by far the most complex and most active. You know, looking around the room right now, all the different colors, the textures, the details.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're making decisions right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and your brain physiology is supporting different parts of activity in your brain linked to other areas that deal with reasoning, distance analysis. So it's a very complex but it's an intimate relationship. When you're active physically, your brain physiology is very active and your consciousness is dominated by the activity. Purpose of meditation is to experience consciousness itself, which is the basis of thought, perception and action. But most people don't necessarily. They know that. Everybody knows that you have to be conscious to do something. So consciousness is fundamental. You're conscious of your thoughts, you're conscious of your intellect, you're conscious of your emotions, you're conscious of your perceptions, emotions, you're conscious of your perceptions. But consciousness itself has that flexibility and that stability and that potential because at that level of your mind, which transcends the mental activity of thinking, consciousness itself has three qualities and those qualities were identified in the ancient Vedic tradition of India, which is the source of yoga tradition and a lot of other traditions Ayurveda, natural approach to health and so forth.
Speaker 2:But consciousness was defined with three Sanskrit terms and you don't have to know these terms, but I just like to use them because it's a way of explaining. The terms were sat, s-a-t, chit. The terms were sat, s-a-t, chit, c-h-i-t and ananda, a-n-a-n-d-a. Now I'll translate and you'll notice they're not religious terms, they're not really spiritual, they relate to natural cognitive experience. Sat means that at the deepest level of your inner mind, your consciousness, it transcends activity of thinking, which is sound and it is silent. Also, it is non-active. Because it's non-active, it's non-changing, it's non-variable. Thoughts change, emotions change, perceptions change, but consciousness is always consciousness. Why? Because it has this timeless, silent, non-active quality. But it's not the silence of sleep. So chit means intelligence, awareness or consciousness. So consciousness is silent, intelligent awareness. If you look around our room here, you are quietly, intelligently aware of whatever you see or hear. And that's because of the silent intelligence of your own consciousness, which is infinite in its intellectual creative potential, meaning what's the limit to what you might think about?
Speaker 1:Yeah, there is none. There is none.
Speaker 2:And as a graphic artist, this is the blessing of creativity within. Within is I can think about anything. Yeah Right, and I'm only empowered to that effect, because that is the deepest nature of my own consciousness. And this is true for every human being. And, on top of that, anything that you are conscious of, you have a memory of it. If you want the memory to be vivid, you give more conscious attention to it. Mm-hmm, consciousness has unlimited creative potential and unlimited memory potential, unlimited intellectual potential, but your physiology can only handle so much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, the brain caps.
Speaker 2:Right, so every day we're accumulating all of this memory and cognitive and physiological fatigue, all of this memory and cognitive and physiological fatigue, and we have to reset. And the way that we do that automatically, through the natural sequences of life, is we are active for 16 hours and then we sleep for eight. Okay, and that's 24 hours.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's seven hours, yeah, or in my case, six and a half if I'm lucky.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's important to get seven to eight hours of sleep because and this will link back to what we're talking about, but I'll just insert this you need to get seven to eight hours of sleep because it takes five to six hours to get to the deepest level.
Speaker 2:Right and if you allow yourself to keep sleeping, then you get the full rejuvenative effect, which occurs through dream cycles emerging from the deep rest that you're gaining, and the dreams are your memories clearing out through the physiology, reverting back to a less fatigued state. So your brain physiology is like reversing the input of information that created the fatigue, and so you have dreams related to your previous experience. They may mix together into crazy dreamlike sequence. You don't need to understand your dreams. If you have them. The effect is there. You're rejuvenated. It's like emptying the cache on your web browser history. The browser can handle infinite information, but the memory can only take so much and you have to cleanse it and that's the truth for our psychophysiology.
Speaker 2:Now, when you sleep, it takes five to six hours for metabolism to lower approximately 8% deeper rest than when you started to sleep. During meditation, transcendental meditation a Harvard Medical School study noted that when the mind settles into this non-active, silent, pure intelligence Sat Chit, silent, pure intelligence, ananda bliss. It's peacefully blissful, not fireworks, you're just calmly at peace because it's silent and non-active. So when your mind in deep meditation enters what is called samadhi in yogic terminology, adi in yogic terminology mind is completely settled, you're awake, but your heart rate goes down and your breath rate goes down and your brain physiology automatically becomes more orderly and integrated. And this Harvard study noted that in a 20-minute TM session, compared to eight hours of sleep resting, metabolism was lowering 16% compared to 8% in less than 10 minutes.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay.
Speaker 2:And this is why people love transcendental meditation. It's not an ideology. The intellect which is typically actively engaged can be transcended into pure intelligence, which is non-active. And this is what we can infer Christ was advocating when he said the kingdom of heaven is within. The kingdom of heaven is within the deepest state of inner peace. Heavenly inner peace is he's referring to his consciousness, which in spiritual terms, would be his soul. I and my father, the essence of everything, are one. What does that mean? It means that my consciousness is at one with the essence of everything, and modern physics has taken this to the forefront of understanding nature by having identified that everything that exists in nature is an expression of intelligence Plant intelligence, human intelligence in your physiology and your mind, and so forth. But then science said well, okay, what is the leaf made of? What is human skin tissue made of? What is a tree made of? What is the earth or the ocean made of? And they start to find more simplified levels of intelligence. The intelligence of the physiology is incredibly complex, we take it for granted.
Speaker 2:But there's the nervous system the digestive system, the cardiovascular system, the muscular system, and then it all maintains a cohesiveness as you grow into a person and then ages and like who governs all of that?
Speaker 1:Right yeah.
Speaker 2:This is what Christ is saying. My father did that.
Speaker 1:I didn't do it.
Speaker 2:Who is the father? It is this universal intelligence behind nature and you go from the skin tissue level and it's made of cells. There are much fewer cells than there are of physical structures in the natural world. There's billions and trillions, but there's only so many cells.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:So they're simpler and they're more subtle. Cells are made of molecules. When you get to the molecular level, it's even simpler, it's more subtle. There's less activity. Even though there is complex activity at those levels, we don't even notice it. It is so subtle, right? You don't notice any skin tissue, cellular or molecular activity.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:It's on a completely different scale.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it just is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's simplifying. And then you get to the atomic level and it's simplified to a one reality Everything in this room, even though it's highly complex on the physical level, every inch is different from every other inch At the atomic level. Everything in this room at the same time is nothing but atoms.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's all the same thing.
Speaker 2:And there is a quality in nature that, through its own intelligent creative potential, guided atoms to group together to form different molecules. And you know, this intelligence behind nature doesn't really go through a lot of experimentation. It is so intelligent universally. It just creates precisely with nuances relative to the fact that there has to be aging and there's so many weather influences and bacterial.
Speaker 1:It's so complex.
Speaker 2:We take it completely for granted. But what physics is saying is don't Don't take this for granted, because as we go deeper, it's getting more interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's interesting that you say this because the physicists that I listen to I'm not a science guy, it's not my background, but I do like to listen to smart people, my science is how much rocker in the tail?
Speaker 2:Yes, that's right. What are the rocker in the tail doing on this film On the surfboard?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Sorry folks, no no, no, I'm not wanting to stop you because you know we, I do want to have further conversations with you and other podcasts get into more details, yeah, about tm, but but you know I continue to frame this up, you know so, so that that it stays simple. You know, one of the repeated themes that that has been throughout the podcast is that you know, when we get to these ancient traditions you know, christianity being mine clearly attached to judaism, and and and. However, the hebrews were exposed to god, and and that whole thing and where it lives historically beautiful you know it lives in this framework of of understanding the way that we do in 2000.
Speaker 1:You know 24, you know it's. There's a lot of sociology attached to it, there's a mythology, whether people believe it or not, that it's a myth. Some of these components that in my own movement, evangelicalism it's not that old, it's only 120 years old. We've gotten a little bit ahead of ourselves in some ways, imagining that God is something. You know, that what human beings have to do is turn God into a thing, as though it is the same thing as us, and ignoring the fact that, when asked the first time you know there was an encounter with God. You know Abram's like who are you? God's response is I am, that, I am, you know and I love you know. Augustine put it this way you know God is and he is not. But the moment you try to turn him into a thing, you've missed the point. Like it's impossible because God is everything. And yet if you claim him to be one thing, no, you're wrong.
Speaker 2:He is that the figurative values help a very abstract reality become more tangible. Yeah, right that is the purpose, but I want to just conclude that one little description.
Speaker 1:Yeah, go for it yeah.
Speaker 2:So the atoms are made of particles, particle level is very, very tiny and ultimately these particles are made from non-physical vibrations of energy called fields. And there's, according to physics, as far as I understand and I'm just voicing back what I have learned from great minds like John Hagelin, dr John Hagelin and Dr Tony Nader, who wrote an amazing book that's out called Consciousness is All there Is, and I'll give you that logic in just two more minutes but these fields are now understood to emerge from. They are the first creative value that emerges from a singular, completely abstract, non-physical field of pure intelligence, and this is called the unified field of pure intelligence. Own natural creative potential created the vibrations that form the particles, that form the atoms, the molecules of everything that exists in the entire galactic universe, and did it universally, because it's infinite. There are no boundaries to that field. There's no borders.
Speaker 2:Now physicists are taking this a step further by saying if the unified field is the essence of everything, the creative source of everything, then that means it's not only the essence of your environment or your physicality, but it has to be the essence of your mind as well, which we call consciousness, and what this means is that the unified field is a field of creative and we could say reactive intelligence, because anything that it creates exhibits creative structuring form but is also reactive, which means it's lively at the intelligent structural level. Now you could say, yeah, the table is not intelligent, it's not thinking, and you're absolutely right, but it is intelligent in its structure. It is made of molecules and et cetera, or cells because it's wood and then molecules and then atoms and then yeah, I mean it doesn't just exist.
Speaker 1:because we think it exists, we are resting on it.
Speaker 2:Correct. So it is. It's physically there and it's reactive. What? What does that mean? It's simple If the temperature in the room goes down in the atmosphere, the temperature of the table goes down too. So it is responding to a molecular change in temperature. And that means it's a lively intelligence. And that liveliness, which we appreciate as our own consciousness, is the same feel that creates the liveliness of anything else. And so this title of a book, consciousness is All there Is. It's another way of saying intelligence is all there is. Everything is an expression of intelligence. But Dr Nader takes it a beautiful step further by saying that wakeful quality of consciousness is there in everything that exists evolutionary intelligence. That means that over time the chair will become older and the molecules will break down, so it's changing. Everything that is created will change.
Speaker 2:Now the value of meditating in this perspective is beautifully harmonious with the intent of all traditional, time-honored religions, in that it allows the individual to learn how to simplify the activity of the mind without effort. Because if you use effort when you meditate, you're making your mind more active. If you try to focus, hold your attention, that's effortful and you won't enter a state of no activity by increasing activity. So the transcendental meditation technique is very uniquely articulated as a knowledge of how the active mind can spontaneously settle into the essence of its consciousness through its own tendency. The natural tendency of the mind is very simple it favors happiness. If you're thinking what should I have for dinner, you think what would be the worst thing I could eat for dinner tonight.
Speaker 1:Or are you?
Speaker 2:thinking what would make me happy. Why are we that way? Because our consciousness is ananda it's bliss yeah our basic inner state is pleasantly blissful okay, can we sit right here just?
Speaker 1:for a minute not not to interrupt you no, that's cool it's my perspective, given in the household that I was raised in, you know, in a blue collar house. You know, with UCSC showing up, what did happen in the sixties to this little town called Santa Cruz. You know, there's a lot of language and and I again, this is what I was referring to as kind of this self-help spiritual mumbo jumbo that floats around about being conscious that, you know, a lot of the early adopters appeared to be very, very like selfish is maybe too strong a word, but very self-motivated, but not that different than anybody is going out to crusade to make 20 million dollars. You know, it's like I feel good and so should you, and it's like almost imposing this well, I'm in bliss, like. Well, of course you're in bliss, you know you, you made a bunch of money, you're screwing however you want, you're drinking all day and I'm glad you're super conscious that you can meditate and focus that, all your bad behavior away.
Speaker 1:You know that. That. You know when you these kinds of things got thrown into the 60s and the hippie movement in a way, especially from the Christian angle, all of what we're calling modern day evangelicalism are all former hippies that got saved, that came in, radicalized the church and now it's become totally conservative. You know which is. You know it's so strange to be at the tail end of a movement. But you know we now have these languages and this is part of the barrier that I'm trying to work through for myself personally on how to communicate these things with other believers from you know my arch of belief, because we have these words like blissful, as though happiness is this thing that we attain by striving towards it, as opposed to the reality, which is what I think you're articulating to me. The way I've understood it is that there's this consciousness that is I believe I would describe it as my subconscious we would say that's fair, but we would say fundamental.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it gets back to the original sin prospect in Christianity that somehow we are born flawed. I'm not here to have that debate, really, but really you know, after having raised my children, looking back at things, I would do very differently now. You know, on the kind of pressures that I put on them, this kind of this cultural thing to normalize, to get them directed, you know, as you were saying, to be active all the time. You know all three of my sons are doing TM or meditating in some form of this. Of course you know the one that's calling you the most about it, but really you know, like with the middle one he was very much introduced, you know, when he was in the program down in Coronado. You know that that is an active part of what they do is really learning how to operate in a meditative state just to separate themselves from the pain.
Speaker 1:You know my oldest being the shrink, so he's aware of all this stuff. But moving away from this idea that somehow evil is what all that exists in the human, this is, I mean this is where you lose christians. Just so you know it's because you know it goes against our original sin thing. But I I also think that original sin is a misunderstanding. You know, I think sin is misunderstanding. I don't think it's evil, you know I I think.
Speaker 2:If we're getting back to that, depends on the degree of that myth.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah yeah, it just depends on how far you're misunderstanding things and how you're actuating those you know. But my point in bringing that up is mostly, you know, to bridge for my audience. Like, hey, you know, we haven't quite developed a language that entirely syncopates, you know, but I do believe that it's in conversations like this where we're not contradicting each other but we're, you know, collected with the same heart, acknowledging that, you know, god is all of this stuff, but there is this thing. That is God. You know, for Christianity we get to call it by name, through Jesus. I view that as a privilege.
Speaker 2:It's beautiful.
Speaker 1:You know, I don't know. Yeah, it's, but there's even a disconnect in me, you know, kind of putting that out there, and there's a discomfort, not because of who Jesus was, but because of how I'm trying to allocate him to the person you know. Here you go, here's Jesus, and it's summed up with yes, he was a good guy, he healed a bunch of people, died and rose again, and that really isn't the message you know. And if you, too, believe that he died and rose again, you get the shiny prize of heaven, when really the message that Jesus brought was far more about the eternal, and it wasn't heaven that he was talking about. He was talking about a way things flow. And do you want that? Now in this life? I've got the rest of it secure. However, that manifests is like nothing you can understand.
Speaker 2:I think that we don't look at there being a conflict between the essence of life and life in its active value, because we, they coexist, from the level of these field vibrations to physical reality. That's the act of changing world, and for change to occur, there's creative value, and then there's the dynamism activity value, and then there's the dynamism activity, and then there has to be a function that creates dissolution of the current state, so another state can emerge. So that's destruction. And I think what religion is just wanting to advise us of is you have choices. You can do activities that go too far in the active value, that they enter destruction.
Speaker 2:You have to have a balanced life you have to have a balanced life and for a higher path, you have to be making decisions that support the creative power of nature, and the creative power of nature is godlike.
Speaker 1:Yeah and this is you know.
Speaker 2:And this is what we would like to have happen. But we don't have to use those terms. We can just say you know, you need an overall psychophysiological balance and you can enhance that by experiencing the basis of both your physiology and your mind, which is your own consciousness.
Speaker 1:Through consciousness. Yes, and this is kind of to my simple point, which is really way too simple in what you're articulating, but I'm roaming around quite a bit as it pertains to free will, and there's a doctor up at Stanford that that, and then Sam Harris, who's, who's a pretty well known humanist, who are very, very kind man. You know, does TM, uh, listening to Sam? You know listening to this other doctor here at Stanford talking about free will and and, and they, neither of them, believe that free will actually exists. But there is this reality of what we're conscious of and whether we're willing to be more conscious of how we impact the things around us. And that's certainly the path that I've been trying to take, rather than living. You know the path that I've been trying to take rather than living. You know, within religious structures or dogmas that do more to define things than I want them to. You know it's like, of course, look, I believe in God, you know, as a single entity. You know, for me and the triune, you know, with Jesus and the Holy Spirit, that fits well within my religious paradigms. To best explain, you know what it is we're talking about. You know what you're explaining to our audience. Re-explaining to me.
Speaker 1:These are things that we've talked about at length before. You know, and I'm still sitting here learning like, yeah, yeah, like you know, this thing we call energy is not this foofy. Oh, energy in the world is just so amazing, bro, like, can you pass that bong over here? You know that whole mentality of like, yeah, of course there's that energy cycle of yeah, we can, we can feel, you know, in tune to nature in in that way, whether it's psychoactive, you know substances are being involved in that too.
Speaker 1:But the point of what I'm trying to bring up is that you know, as I've expressed to our listeners sorry about the fire truck there, but you know someone's going to get rescued For me. You know, I've been explaining to my audience that I'm really stuck in Genesis 1, 1 through 5 right now and the realities of this moment, where, in the myth that the Jews had about God, that there was just darkness in God's book and there was light and God spoke and there was light. But once the light came, it exposed the chaos, and the God that we serve organized the chaos that the light brought, that he brought, and you know that's what we're calling creation. But I don't think creating things is the same way you know it's not.
Speaker 2:In a way, it is because vibration, like so, consciousness is completely silent and then, as it emerges into an active creative force in nature, it's a vibration of energy, and vibration is sound.
Speaker 1:Yeah, listen, I agree with you.
Speaker 2:So there appear to be these fundamental sound vibrations that resulted in the creation of particles, atoms.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, and there's a language to them too, which is amazing. It's so amazing. Yes, yes, and there's a language to them too, which is amazing that it is probably language that is the common denominator to all evolutionary processes, which is there's language in the rocks, what some being that has a language.
Speaker 1:We're just now getting a glimpse at what has been made in some strange form and because of our concept of time and othering and world religion. My point in sharing that is, it gets back to the God is this thing, and one of the exercises that I put myself through in partaking in TM and manifesting it the way that I do, is that it does allow me to live in that consciousness that is pure in a way, because it lives in that vibration which, again, it's all this language. That's new to me, but it's a sound, but it's a language, and when you're there it's like, yeah, it's that, but I mean you have more words for it, but but it's like it's just other, it's not an it. You know, I cannot describe it because it's not a thing.
Speaker 2:Words cannot describe something that is infinite. Yeah, as soon as you start to describe it, you're in the world of limitation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and boxing got it.
Speaker 2:And what is beautiful about life is that every human being of every culture, of every age, at the level of their consciousness, they have infinite creative potential, they have infinite inner peace and they have invincible stability, because at that level there is no activity, there is no change. So these big wave surfers and one of them, lucas chumbo, brazilian, is this like radically creative on gigantic waves, and he found this silence, practicing transcendental meditation, gave him more of that stability. Tom Brady seven Super Bowl he's a.
Speaker 2:TM enthusiast Jovacek in tennis, another TM-er at the top. What I noticed as a surfer is, apart from the flexibility that I've maintained from doing yoga and then strength fitness, the effect of TM on the brain is that it creates a more permanent integrated brain physiology, which means enhanced mind-body coordination, because the movement of your arms is governed by one part of the brain and another part which impels reactive. So the hypothalamus and things of this nature and then the rear part of the brain is visual and when they're more integrated then the information moves more quickly. And I drop things. You know I'll knock something off. I will invariably catch it before it hits the ground because I have this crazy fast reflex and I've noticed my mind body coordination is not diminished and I can, um, still get up quick enough and stay balanced and airdrop as you've seen me do.
Speaker 1:You're doing better than I am.
Speaker 2:And this is why it's part of my lifestyle and as an instructor, I, out of gratitude for what I learned from Maharishi when his organization or he directly asked of me to help on a project. I have given up my adherence to living by the ocean to pay back with gratitude, helping him achieve what he wants to be achieved, and I'm fortunate enough to have a ability. Part of it is communication skills, which it's linked to graphic design. A graphic designer has to know how to communicate. Yeah, I I mean?
Speaker 1:I mean, art is the real language, isn't it? You know it's, it's such a strange it's a visual language. I mean this this is something that we really have in common, that, even though I don't have the same skill set, no, but your house, everything about you, has an artistic vibe. Yeah, it's just, you just got this thing and you know again, I married up that way.
Speaker 2:So also, she's incredibly creative.
Speaker 1:Yeah, creative, yeah, so you know our spaces and are just peaceful and that is more, probably more testimony to kim than it is me, but but our tastes are very simpatico, that that I recognize what's right, that flows through her and you know it. It's been beautiful for us as a couple because you know, we, you know, even as phonetic as we both are and we're both very 80d and on the spectrum ourselves you know there's a piece that that happens like where we're present, you know, and especially how we've associated our presence as it pertains to space yeah you know it.
Speaker 1:It's just part of what's being here. You lived in that room right there for a little bit. There's something about that room that is just peaceful in its simplicity. It's tiny, but it's like everybody sleeps good.
Speaker 2:Everybody sleeps good in that room. It's a total haven. No doubt about it.
Speaker 1:Well, Michael, I do want to wrap this up. You know we've been going for for a little over a couple hours here, and and uh, but but there's certainly I'm I'm hoping that you'll come back and I'd love to talk more about this.
Speaker 2:I am incredibly uh grateful that you have uh invited me to share things that have been so helpful for me personally and the opportunities that nature gave you know. One thing I wanted to complete was in public school, we had a little graphic design task and we had to design a brochure. This is when I was 17, 8, probably 17, just before I turned 18 in my senior year and I designed a o'neill surfing brochure okay, well, yeah and I I hand drew their little logo and images.
Speaker 2:And after I graduated and like I was in a public school and they gave me my own classroom and said just do art, yeah, and show it to us periodically so we can grade you. That's like unheard of in a public school, right? Because I had this gift from nature for creativity, but my father was a semi-pro athlete when I was born, so I had a really strong athlete physiology as well, and he was in football.
Speaker 2:And so I had a really strong athlete physiology as well, and he was in football. I was crazy good in football until I hit high school.
Speaker 1:And I was only 5'2". The size metrics didn't work in your favor. Yeah, it was over.
Speaker 2:I couldn't play varsity football. And then I found surfing my freshman year. And then I found surfing, you know, my freshman year, and I, you know, I graduated high school and summer I was just surfing and I had a day job, you know, because I had to earn my money and so forth. And I was just cruising and I had kind of longish hair and mid-October my mom walks into my room and says if you'll get on a bus and go to San Francisco tomorrow morning, I've arranged for you to be interviewed by the head of the San Francisco Academy of Art. I think his name was Stevens. He was a legendary figure in San Francisco and he said he will review my portfolio and if he feels I'm qualified, he will let me start school then, like a month and a half, late my mom was this amazing lady man, she just, she just saw you.
Speaker 1:That's so beautiful to have.
Speaker 2:So I go and I've got this portfolio and he's looking at all the paintings and stuff like that and he opens this brochure and he like zeroes in on you know, and he goes. You know you have a lot of fine art talent but you have, uh, creative design skills. You could be making a hundred thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 1:And the way this is 1960. Like what? That was a millionaire, 65, right? No, this is 66,. That's a millionaire back then. No, this is 66.
Speaker 2:But that's a lot of money.
Speaker 1:And I was like.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm like my eyes crossed. I'm like well, wow, so I started school and then I left school to go to India to become a TM teacher. School to go to India to become a TM teacher.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And at that time you had to have a college degree to be eligible to become a TM instructor. Marci wanted academically cultured people, so I was interviewed by him and he asked about my, my family. And then he asked me about my educational level and I said, uh, I'm just, I just finished my first year and he said, okay, you can come in two years. He was giving me a little slack right, and I was sitting here with this very enlightened person. I'm in awe of the presence that I'm in and I.
Speaker 2:I was like I don't want to be away from you that long and he kind of smiled and then I said I'm in art school, Maharishi, I'm not in law school or medical school.
Speaker 1:I've been doing art my whole life.
Speaker 2:They're not teaching me anything.
Speaker 1:I'm just doing the art.
Speaker 2:And he smiled and he said study philosophy, study photography, and if you're good you can come in two years. And I was invited in a year and a half.
Speaker 1:That's so great.
Speaker 2:And that just you know I have taught TM is a four instruction session, class hour and a half each session on four consecutive days. So it's very personal and over all these years I've taught TM for 54 years. I've taught TM for 54 years Throughout the United States, in India, in Europe. I worked with Maharishi for four years as a graphic artist in Switzerland because I showed him a redesign of a TM poster and it was very different and very hip and he just zeroed in on it and said, oh, this is very good, this is very professional. And then he invited me to work with a group of really highly trained and professionally gifted designers and so I was cultured in design with these really amazing people who also were into meditation yeah in this beautiful little village in switzerland, I mean I was living in a postcard.
Speaker 2:It was so yeah, yeah and you know, here I am. I. I have had the great fortune to live everything that I dreamed about. I loved surfing. I got to design for one of the-.
Speaker 1:Probably the most important company ever. Yeah, o'neill, and be a part of making it itself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was very fortunate that they trusted me and gave me that opportunity. Yeah, there were great people there Mark Tinkus, who's now with their clothing.
Speaker 1:Did Mark come back? Yeah, he's-. Oh, okay, interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's so sick.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm texting him.
Speaker 2:I didn't know he was back in town. I thought he was up here. Quite a bit more than tinkus is an awesomely creative and, uh, comprehensive thinker yes, oh yeah, tink, and I well look, I, I, I gotta go.
Speaker 1:Yes, we're there, but no One quick mention. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Also the design team, Jim DeLeon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I do not want to forget Jim DeLeon.
Speaker 2:This guy was an amazing musician artist and he also contributed a lot of cool energy to our space.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it really is. You've done a really good job of kind of, yeah, painting a picture, and I'm very interested in getting into the details of the strokes.
Speaker 2:Give our listeners a break, but I do know that you're ramping up again here in Santa Cruz to teach TM.
Speaker 1:You're welcome to give any information to my audience.
Speaker 2:We have a very nice TM center on Capitola Road on Capitola Road and we offer the course in Transcendental Meditation and I am currently getting certified as a Consciousness Advisor, which means that I have now a background in the knowledge of Maharishi Ayurveda, personal health care, Maharishi Yoga and we have other programs all centered on. Tm enhances consciousness. It improves your physiology through deep rest, so each time you meditate you get deeper rest than sleep and this will help you stay young and unstressed. It lowers stress.
Speaker 1:So name of the place, phone number I don't have my.
Speaker 2:I'm new to the. You can contact me Well yeah, go ahead. Or can you add it later?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can add it later. We can put it on the ad server and we'll try to put it on a link to the podcast. But you'll come back and it'll be great. Anyways, Michael, I just so appreciate you. I love you a bunch. Thanks for coming.
Speaker 2:I could get it off my phone. Go ahead and get it off your phone. Okay, hang on, hang on hang on.
Speaker 1:Okay, I have to go to. Yes, this is where we are just two old guys right Sitting with our phones.
Speaker 2:Just one little second. I do not want to miss this. Ask me another question while they're waiting.
Speaker 1:What hair care do you use? I use.
Speaker 2:Gillette razor.
Speaker 1:Yes, the ongoing jokes. I have great hair.
Speaker 2:Yes, you do, I have gray hair, not great hair.
Speaker 1:We're finally kind of simpatico this way. Right, I've got the gray. You've still got the red Flick through your hair. Hang on the santa cruz transcendental meditation center is at 42, 45 capitola road, second floor suite 203 and the phone that's across the street from dharma. Oh yeah, and the contact phone number.
Speaker 2:The contact phone number is 831-818-4962. And do they have a website? There is Go to tmorg Santa Cruz.
Speaker 1:Excellent, all right Well, michael, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:And that phone number is iPhone, so you can text it. Yeah, you can leave a message whatever, so you can text it. Yeah, you leave a message, great well, thanks a bunch.
Speaker 1:I love you a bunch thank you bro so grateful for you and uh let's go, sir all y'all who are listening. I'm gonna go roll with the boys right now. I'm gonna go get beat up and choked, oh yeah you know, you are gnarly yeah, all right brother love you love you too man.