Dr. Neil's Spiritual Awakening to Non-Duality
NEW EPISODES THE 1st OF EVERY MONTH
You may have heard about spiritual awakening. Do you know someone who is living it? Join us as Dr. Neil Schuitevoerder describes the lived experience of an advanced stage of human consciousness and shares insight for seekers of all traditions. Dr. Neil will speak from the direct experience of Being, Brahman, Sunyata, or Pure Consciousness as he transmits Non-dual Reality to you -- non-dual space/time, non-dual thinking, non-dual love, the non-dual body, and his yogic abilities to travel the cosmos, move through the bardos and, at the same time, live as a psychologist, husband, father, and grandfather. His experience dispels many myths about awakening. He will be interviewed by his partner, Dr. Connie Zweig, author of Meeting the Shadow, Romancing the Shadow, Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path, and the award-winning book The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul.
Dr. Neil's Spiritual Awakening to Non-Duality
Who am I? Part 3: Living as Spirit: I am Everything
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Dr. Neil explores the expansion of his identity from an ego to the soul to the divine. His early, visual, local subject/object non-duality opened out into a vast non-dual reality that includes everything in the galaxy, beyond physical sight and beyond space/time. His current state: I am everything everywhere.
Greetings. We're back with another podcast with Dr. Neil. And today we're going to explore who am I part three? From living as a soul to living as spirit. I am everything. So, Dr. Neil, let's review a little bit for people who didn't hear podcast one or two of this series. Um, Living as an Ego and Living as Soul first.
SPEAKER_01Okay, umciousness is the first thing that we're going to explore, which is awareness of your body and moving it and allowing yourself to become conscious of the body as an entity which you have control of. This is my body. That sort of is what cavemen are like. It's an instinctive process, and uh that has to do with getting food and shelter and sex.
SPEAKER_00Survival needs.
SPEAKER_01Survival needs. The next level is the emotional uh and uh human development uh follows that to people who start to love and care and share and have conflict and anger and hurt and joy as human beings. Uh and it's it's uh typical of tribal cultures, in other words, cultures where they're agrarian, they're their group consciousness rather than egoic. Correct. So the group consciousness in the sense that I survive because my group survives, and I die for my group, and the next level is the intellectual or the mind, which has many identities. Roles as a father, a husband, a believer in certain views, political affiliations. Uh, it's an identity that says, I am that, I am that um separate intellectual consciousness.
SPEAKER_00I am what I think, I am what I believe.
SPEAKER_01Correct, correct. Thanks for filling that in. And next we get the intuitive level. Intuitive level means things come to you because they just do. We don't know where they come from, but we know that we identify with them, and we know that they are part of us. When we integrate all those four together, we get what in the East is called an ego. We're not talking about Freud or Jung, you know, we're talking about an identity that is integrated, that says, I am those things that I've already mentioned.
SPEAKER_00And what is it like for you living as an ego? You're what is the human experience of that, the subjective experience?
SPEAKER_01I get up in the morning, I brush my teeth, I do my work, I love my wife, I call my grandkids, I enjoy my story, I'm going to die. I was born and uh and uh conceived and I became aware and uh of being a human being who's got a limited cycle. It's this lifetime.
SPEAKER_00Okay, and for me, there's an inherent experience of separation.
SPEAKER_01Yes, well, you're as separate as you can be when you're an ego. Okay, so uh, and many traditions try to go beyond ego, so they consider ego to be a boundary, that that identity uh keeps you stuck uh out of spiritual realms.
SPEAKER_00So let's move to living as a soul.
SPEAKER_01All right, so we're still talking about the human journey, uh, and although few people actually get to become aware of living as a soul. The soul is Bala's went through all the lifetimes, and I in a previous uh interview I spoke about a lifetime that I call previous lifetime. The soul leaves the body after death, finds its home amongst the group that it belongs to, and spends some time there and then reincarnates as an individual. It also um has a sense of connected identity with the purpose of its group soul. So, for example, mine is love and wisdom and service, so that my group soul functions in terms of that and creates life in terms of that. The soul is also conscious throughout the egoic life, um, and is constantly guiding, building, creating, sustaining, and dissolving the aspects of the personal life. So it's there at conception and it's there at birth, and it's there at teenage years, and it's there as an adult, and it's there in the spiritual realms as well. So one gets to experience uh spiritual identities.
SPEAKER_00So, what's the lived experience of living as a soul?
SPEAKER_01I I remember my past lifetimes. I have no beginning or no end, I'm eternal, not empty, and that's a higher level, but eternal.
SPEAKER_00Um is there less sense of separation?
SPEAKER_01Yes, because one can join with your group, so and uh one can connect with beings on different levels and planes. Many think of it as opening up the sixth chakra, the ajna, the sixth chakra. So one can uh connect with um the dead, uh, one can connect with um beings from other planes, so it's possible as a soul to travel to different realms.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so let's move beyond the soul.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so we've ended the human development when we go beyond soul and we enter into the divine development. In other words, this this is the nature of the divinity and divine consciousness. Up until now, we've spoken about the human human development, even though it's can be quite expanded and beyond most people, uh, it's still human. So we're moving into the divine development now.
SPEAKER_00And so, what was your experience of that, of the beginning of that? So I would suggest that for you, the beginning was a local non-duality. You looked at the tree and you saw the self or consciousness in the tree that was the same as consciousness in you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's true. Um I looked at the sky and saw myself in the sky. I looked at the birds and saw myself in the birds. I looked at people in my work and saw myself there.
SPEAKER_00So that was a disillusion.
SPEAKER_01Your essence.
SPEAKER_00Your essence. And so that was sort of the end of the subject-object duality, but it was the beginning for you.
SPEAKER_01Well, there was a beginning of a subject-object non-duality, so um, where the objects of perception, hearing, sight, emotion, feeling became part of the subject. They were no different in essence. That doesn't mean that I if I looked at a person, I didn't see any external person, but I looked, I saw beyond, and beyond myself was there. Uh, myself was also in the body on all its levels physical, emotional, mental, intuitive, ego was there, and was also in the object of perception.
SPEAKER_00So the earlier stages were transcended, but they were also included in your experience.
SPEAKER_01Correct. There's there's there's not a dissolving of any stage on my path. My path was one of growth and inclusion, and and it still is. You know, there still is about growing, becoming, evolving, and including what was there before. So there's awareness of the body and moving it, for example. On a conscious level, I moved the hand. I I moved the hand. Emotionally, I had the desire to move the hand. Mentally, I had the concept of a hand as mine and moving it. Intuitively, I had a sense that this is happening, and from an ego point of view, I am moving this hand, but from uh and from a soul point of view, I am still moving this hand, but once one goes beyond soul, this hand is moving itself, so I'm not doing it, the divine is doing it.
SPEAKER_00What is that like?
SPEAKER_01Puzzling at first, because you kind of realize that your mouth is speaking and words are coming out, and yet it's not your mouth, and you move your body, and yet one identifies with what the body is doing. One is not that body doing that, it's happening. So all consciousness is just it's happening.
SPEAKER_00So there's no longer identification with the doer at this stage, yes.
SPEAKER_01Um the ego, up until the ego stage, one is identified with the doer, and then at very advanced stages, which we'll get to, there's a re-identification with the doer. But at this stage, there's no identification with the doer.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so that local non-duality um emerged, and then what emerged after that?
SPEAKER_01Well, there was a growing sense of non-duality beyond the local, so it became not something that I was seeing with my physical eyes, but something I was seeing with my psychic ability. So looking deeper into the world, looking deeper into beings, looking deep into different levels of consciousness, uh, until I got to a stage where I was looking at the cosmos, the universe, uh, starting with a galaxy, um, and also noting at the same time that I was that, I was the galaxy, dreaming up the neo consciousness, the neo the local identity, the local identity. So uh so and then once I reached that sort of galactic level, I started to become aware that there was um there was something similar to the Big Bang, which was uh a state which was beyond time, space, beyond space-time, um, outside of space-time that was creating that awareness. I was empty at that level, and there was something outside of space-time that was creating the awareness of the cosmos, the universe.
SPEAKER_00Umside of space-time, meaning something beyond the relative reality.
SPEAKER_01A place where there was no space and there was no time, and that's that allowed me to identify with what at the time I called the traveler, which means my awareness is not in space-time, but I can manifest my awareness anywhere in space-time. So I could be in the galaxy, I could be in the astral, mental, buddhic, atmic planes, the cosmic planes. I could connect with um spiritual beings. So um I could see the subtle realms that were going on in the tree outside my window with the blinds closed. So there was awareness of objects outside of the relative perspective, and outside of physical sight.
SPEAKER_00So the local non-duality required the physical sight, right? And then it no longer required that.
SPEAKER_01No, there was uh psychic sight and then knowing, knowing, knowing, so just knowing it's there.
SPEAKER_00Okay, and so now there's a more vast or cosmic non-duality, right? That doesn't require the object to be in front of you, right? And the object can be, or it isn't an object anymore, right because it isn't a subject-object of dynamics.
SPEAKER_01No, it still has a subject-object. For example, my mother passed away nearly a year ago, and I'm conscious of her now, where she's on the Buddhic plane, the heart plane. Um, and she's aware that I'm thinking about her, and we can have a conversation in the mind. Um, and while I'm looking at her as an object from a subject point of view, I'm also that, I'm also her. The essence, the essence of me is also her, and it's also here in all these forms.
SPEAKER_00So the duality is included in the non-dual experience. Correct. That's how you can operate in the world, that's how you see patients all day long, yes, as a psychologist.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, this is one of the big fallacies that happens because in the east uh and and in the west, uh, mystics tend to uh isolate, become monks, living in caves, living in communities that allow them not to be functional. Uh, but if you follow my path, the one that I follow, I'm fully functional on a physical level, emotional level, mental level.
SPEAKER_00The path of the householder.
SPEAKER_01The path of the householder. Gotta be awake and to live life as it is, plus the additional.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So you've always said to me, the purpose of life is not to be awakened, it's to be human.
SPEAKER_01Yes, I came here to be a human being, to be as fully a human being as possible. But what I'm discovering is that that includes not just the animal nature, but the human nature as I've expanded it, and the spiritual nature, the you know, the divine divine levels, of which there are many more than we've actually covered so far.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So is there anything else you want to say about living beyond soul, living as spirit? You recently you've been saying, I am everything, everywhere.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there's nowhere where I'm not, except in the personal story of my life. In other words, there's something in the way the journey manifests that it won't allow me to know the future of the personal story of my life, because I have to live it, and that's part of the story, the reason why I came here. I came here to be a human being, not to be somebody who was not aware um of that. Uh, but there's many more levels. There's uh non-duality and subject, in other words, myself is empty. I can't find a me there. And there's the objects that I perceive with my physical eyes, psychic eyes, spiritual eyes, there's nobody there. It's empty. The whole cosmos is empty of manifestation, and it its first manifestation in terms of consciousness is is a sense of potential. It's before anything was created. Before anything existed, I am there too. I am in that place before anything existed. I am the source from which existence arises.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's beautiful. I'm the source from which everything arises.
SPEAKER_01Right. So what I've been realizing in the last couple of months is that there are states where there's no subject, no object. In other words, they're non-dual that are far more complex uh than just looking at a tree and seeing oneself in the tree. There are states like love. Love is a state um that in a spiritual sense, non-personal love, we're talking about has no beginning or end. It's not personal, it's not my love or somebody else's love, it's just love, and I experience that with all these different levels that I've spoken about, as well as um, I experience that state.
SPEAKER_00Can we say it's a quality of consciousness or true nature?
SPEAKER_01It's a quality of the divine, the divine loves, God loves everything. Ecstasy is another one. God is ecstatic, happiness is another one. There is no limit to it, there's no boundary to it.
SPEAKER_00So these are boundless states that don't require the subject and object in the way we think about love or personalize it or happiness, we personalize it. And what you're saying is there's something inherent in the nature of everything that that carries those states, right? And so if you are experiencing pain, let's say you get a headache or you have back pain, which I do. So what happens for you with the pain state?
SPEAKER_01Okay, so right now my back is uh hurting a little, uh, probably the way I'm sitting in this chair, but there's not just uh pain, there's bliss too, and there's joy at the same time. When I first woke up to um a spiritual state, a being state, not not a doing state, a being state. I had a migraine, and I focused my attention on the migraine, and gradually over a period of now, the migraine disappeared into total ecstasy.
SPEAKER_00So is there something that you're doing to find the bliss and the ecstasy while you're in pain? And does this mean that there's no suffering?
SPEAKER_01There is suffering, but there is something bigger than suffering. So right now there's uh nectar in my in my mouth, uh, joy in the heart, and pain in the back. There's a connection with the suffering of the of human beings on the planet, and there is the joy of being alive at the same time. So these are states that are transient and passing. I don't experience pain as permanent.
SPEAKER_00And so, can you say anything to anyone who has a lot of physical suffering that might be helpful?
SPEAKER_01This too will pass. The nature of life is ecstasy, bliss, joy, uh, happiness, love. That's the nature of the divine. Go for that.
SPEAKER_00Sachidananda.
SPEAKER_01The divine is everywhere, okay. It's in you. Look for it, embrace it, fight for it. This is not a passive journey, this is an active journey. One embraces the reality of life. There's more, but we'll do that next time.
SPEAKER_00Okay, thank you everyone for listening.
SPEAKER_01Appreciate it.