Dr. Neil's Spiritual Awakening to Non-Duality
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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
Beneath the 1st Chakra and Beyond the Seventh Chakra
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Dr. Neil explores the worlds beneath the root chakra: animal, plant, mineral, molecular, atomic and subatomic. Then he explores above the 6th chakra to the 7th and beyond, in which evolution moves from human to divine, from local non-duality to vast, cosmic non-duality.
Greetings, welcome back to the podcast. Today we're going to talk about the lesser-known chakras, those below the first chakra and above or beyond the seventh chakra. Okay, Dr. Neil, take it away.
SPEAKER_01So human evolution begins at the first chakra, the one that's at the base of the spine, and continues all the way up to the sixth chakra that's between the brow, the eyebrows. However, majority of human beings are only evolved to the second chakra. So we're not going to talk much about human evolution because that's part of a separate podcast which you can listen to. So let's start going downwards from the first chakra further down into the chakras below the first one. And once we finish that, we'll go for the ones above the sixth chakra. The first chakra below the Muladhara, the one at the base of the spine, is related to animal evolution. Animals being uh the entire animal kingdom. And some beings, let's call them beings, cats, dogs, horses, dolphins, are very close to the first chakra, the Mudara, and can actually evolve into human form if uh they're sort of paired together with human beings, or whether they're personally evolved. So let's go down one more chakra. Uh now we're talking about the plant kingdom, and the truth about it is this is a very wide range of elements, and this too, very large trees, can actually evolve and have human human form as well. I found that I can talk to the trees, and they actually talk back to me so they can tell me what's going on, and they connect with each other in root form as well as psychic form. So there's a great deal that is happening on this level and evolving. Next one down is the mineral kingdom, and uh the highly evolved ones are the huge mountains, which also can evolve into human form. And yeah, and I found that I can talk with them as well, and they could answer me as well. So there's a lot of consciousness there for the larger elements, the smaller ones, small minerals, not so much. Uh, below that are the molecular kingdom, so the molecules, uh, and then the atoms, and then the uh subatomic particles. Uh, and these uh have a different form of evolution. They don't, they can't jump into the human evolutionary cycle.
SPEAKER_00And so do you have contact with these subatomic, atomic, molecular levels?
SPEAKER_01I can see them because I live in non-duality, and that means that I could be extremely small in my visual, auditory, uh, feeling, perception. Uh, or I can be very large. Um, so do I have contact? Yes, I have contact, but there's very little consciousness there, so there's not much to communicate with. But there's a capacity to see or understand them.
SPEAKER_00So we we commonly know about the atomic and the subatomic and the molecular levels from high school science.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00What does this have to do with the chakras?
SPEAKER_01Well, the chakras are really the energetic connections between bodies, between levels. So um as we go down, as we go up the chakras from the bottom upwards, they connect with uh the chakras, the chakras are vehicles that connect the bodies. So a human being, you have a physical body, uh, and that physical body is connected to the emotional body, to the astral body, and that happens through chakras. And those are the common ones that we know from diagrams. Uh, so seven major chakras, 49 minor chakras, and lots of nodis or energetic nerves.
SPEAKER_00So I'm visualizing this kind of vertical picture of the chakras, like I'm standing there, and these chakras are beneath my root chakra. Right. But I think there's more than that, right? Because as I'm in the physical body, I live in the physical plane of reality. Yes. I drop my body, I'm to an etheric body, then I'm in the etheric plane. You go back to the etheric plane, and then I go to the astral plane. And I'm functioning in the astral body as we explored in one of the podcasts into the astral plane. So, how are these lower chakras connected to planes of reality?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, these planes of reality are created before human beings arrive on the evolutionary cycle. So they are created in order to have a foundation for evolution of the entire system, including animals and minerals and plants and humans and even divine levels. So the ground on each one of these planes is there before we come, before we arrive.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that makes sense. There's subatomic and atomic reality before humans.
SPEAKER_01Correct.
SPEAKER_00That makes sense. Okay, so how is that connected to an individual's chakras? Do you know?
SPEAKER_01Yes. Um individuality for human beings only really begins uh at the third chakra. Um, the one that's at the solar plexus, that body, the mental body. So there's an individuation that comes out of the second chakra, out of the second body, the astral body, the tribal body, to a sense of individuality. So we're really not talking about individuality until the human beings evolve. And if we're looking at percentages, 20% of human beings are stuck in the first chakra, which is the narcissistic, sociopathic. Um, the best way to describe it would be the Trump chakra. Yeah, the Trump chakra. That would be a good way to describe it. Uh cave, the caveman, which is eat or be eaten, kill or be killed. So, you know, and then we sort of go up to the tribal level where human beings are connecting together to farm and have agricultural connections and have ownership of land and a sense of um connection with each other that's about whether the tribe survives or the tribe doesn't survive. So the individual is not important at this stage, except uh in terms of what it can create tribally. The real individuality begins at the next level, where one leaves the tribe. And many people have experienced this. Not an easy thing to do to leave one's tribe.
SPEAKER_00No, it's not. We call it separation and individuation in psychology. Correct. Whether it's leaving the family of origin, the religion, the spiritual community, the political tribe, whatever it is.
SPEAKER_01So that's the beginning of the sort of human separation from this uh map uh of evolution. But all of this exists, the map exists before human beings came here a million years back, before there were cavemen or cave persons.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so we've explored the fourth and fifth and sixth chakras in other podcasts.
SPEAKER_01Yes, we do.
SPEAKER_00So let's go to the crown now.
SPEAKER_01The seventh chakra is the beginning of the divine levels. So human beings are now, if they need if they evolve to this level of beginning the divine journey, the journey of non-duality, where there's one, there's oneness, there's this um transcendence of individuality into unity. Yeah, that exists, but one moves from duality in the sixth chakra to non-duality in the seventh chakras. And the simplest form of that is if I look at a tree, I see in the tree the essence of the tree is the same as my essence. We're not separate, we're not we're not two, we are one. So you know, of course, I can see the tree as a separate entity as well, but and this is not about the tree, this could be about anything. The whole point of it is that the objects of ordinary perception also show uh in terms of non-duality, that the essence of the those objects are the same as my essence.
SPEAKER_00Which we could call emptiness or consciousness or non-duality is the best form. Okay. So the seventh chakra is kind of popularly known as a thousand-petaled lotus.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00Can you talk about that?
SPEAKER_01Well, it's the beginning of a very complex system of non-duality. Uh so uh my experience is that my awareness moved from the objects of visual perception, ordinary visual perception, uh, together with the sense of non-duality, to uh subtle realms, like I could be aware of things that were not in my immediate perception. Like I live near a harbor. So if I look out of the window, there's a harbor, and I'm one with the whole harbor, but most of the harbor I can't actually visually see with my ordinary eyes. Uh I live in Los Angeles and I am one with Los Angeles, not separate. Uh I'm one with the state of California, that loved and hated state. Uh, I'm one with the country, United States, and the planet Earth. And as I expand that awareness of non-duality, I'm one with the solar system and the galaxy and so on.
SPEAKER_00And so these objects are outside of your visual perception, but that doesn't matter anymore.
SPEAKER_01No, it doesn't matter because the widening of the ability to perceive moves from physical to astral, moves to more and more subtle realms of visual perception. Well, some people are psychic and they can see uh subtle energy systems in the bodies. Um they can see um dead beings like I can. You know, they can talk to them and listen to them.
SPEAKER_00So that could be on the astral plane or the mental plane.
SPEAKER_01It could be, yes, it could be on any plane. So the there's an expansion that begins with the seventh chakra with the thousand petal lotus and expands to more and more petals until one gets to a point where there's a sense of oneness with the entire manifest cosmos. I say cosmos, I don't mean just the physical universe, I mean the subtle universes too.
SPEAKER_00And does that include the subatomic and atomic?
SPEAKER_01It does. In fact, the only way to experience the subatomic and atomic and molecular, besides electron microscopes, the only way to do it is to actually be non-dual, because then one can actually become extremely small.
SPEAKER_00What do you mean, become small? Your consciousness?
SPEAKER_01Well, your consciousness can actually be extremely small, be outside of space, so that it can manifest its awareness at any place in space and time.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so you've often said, I am everything. So if your consciousness is identified with everything, then it all opens up to become available to your awareness. Is that what you're saying?
SPEAKER_01Non-duality begins with the individual objects of perception as not being separate from the self and expands all the way to all objects that's in essence the same as the self. So, you know, we can talk about it visually, but there's there's no objects that are not the same as the essence of self.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so the local non-duality of subject and object in, I guess, the sixth chakra expands to a vast cosmic non-duality in the seventh chakra.
SPEAKER_01Correct.
SPEAKER_00Okay, and the petals sounds like they're openings. This is maybe why some people have cities or yogic powers and other people don't, or some people have the experiences you're describing, and other people don't.
SPEAKER_01Right. So the petals are very complex. There's as you they say, there's a thousand petals. I don't know, there are a thousand, but there's capacity to open up huge amounts of subtle visual, auditory, and all five senses. So there's a huge capacity to do that. Okay, but but there's something more, yeah. Once one kind of gets to the place where one is everything, then there's an awareness that comes or has come for me that I'm also nothing. And in a sense, nothing being not in time space or space-time. So uh I am outside of space-time, and that allows me to be anywhere in space-time, which is an interesting paradox in a way, but that's the nature of real perception, is that one can open it up at any point in space-time, merely be but not being in any point in space-time. That's a kind of emptiness.
SPEAKER_00Let me see if I understand that. So your consciousness is untethered from Neil, Neil's body, mind, sensations, sights, smells, touch. And it becomes one with first a near object and then a far object. So subject, object dissolves, near, far dissolves. These dualities begin to disappear, right? That's why we call it non-duality. And at in part of this process, at some stage, you experience that you were empty, your body-mind was empty, and then that everything was empty. The subject was empty, the object was empty. And what can move around in this emptiness beyond space-time is your attention. Well, I don't know what else to call it, that your attention or your consciousness.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it can manifest at any point in space-time. Okay, and that means on the physical world, and that means on the celestial world, and that means on the subtle planes, uh, etheric, the astral, mental, causal, causal. So attention is capable of being anywhere because one is not separate. One is one is connected fully with every every plane of existence.
SPEAKER_00Okay, and let's just briefly keep going into the upper chakras now that are less familiar.
SPEAKER_01Right. So the emptiness allows us to actually experience any point in space-time. Then there's a 180 turnaround to another level, which is um the absolute, which includes everything that one can experience or not experience. It's there, it's um it cannot be known, but you know it's there. It's a very mysterious thing that one is aware that there is such a thing as the absolute, and yet one is incapable as a human being of knowing and describing and experiencing that spirit.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, he who says he knows the way doesn't know the way.
SPEAKER_01Yes, it's ineffable, yes, ineffable, and yet it's like in religious terms, God is uh unknowable beyond knowledge, kind of like before there was creation, before there was manifestation, and and also before there was this manifestation of this cosmos, there were there is what we would call um the unmanifest. The thought, the idea of the divinity, of having the entire cosmic story be present, be thought, but not manifest, not spoken, as some religions talk about, the vocalization of the universe is what creates it, or the word, the word, or the light, or the light, yeah. So before that, there is an experience of this reality and potential, and one can experience that by separating a very small part of the potential. I call it the noah, and that allows one to actually see into this potential without actually disturbing it.
SPEAKER_00The field of potential, potential, yeah. So is this the eighth chakra?
SPEAKER_01It's very hard to determine which chakras are occur in once one sort of gets to the eighth chakra because different spiritual traditions have different orders to the manifestation of these divine um bodies or chakras. So it's sort of better just to talk about them to say that there's six above the seventh chakras, rather than to try to define which one comes first and which one comes second, because the order is more confusing than worthwhile engaging.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so the point is that we don't really know much about six chakras above the crown, because there haven't been too many people who've reported back. So you what you're describing maybe the eighth chakra, maybe the ninth.
SPEAKER_01Yes, well, it's there, it's one of them, and uh maybe the tenth. It's very hard to say what the order is. Um but there's more. There are non-dual states of cognition. I guess that's the best word, cognition. Um states like uh awareness, no subject, no object, no me, no you, no process, just awareness. Uh like love. Now we're not talking about the lower forms of love, like human love or uh love for animals or plants or no subject object. No subject object. No, there's love, love as a precursor for all existence. So people ask me what what comes first, consciousness or love? Love comes before consciousness, and there are many different forms: ecstasy, joy, well-being. There are many different non-dual states of awareness that um that exist beyond time space.
SPEAKER_00So those would be affiliated with the upper chakras.
SPEAKER_01Those would be expressions of the upper chakras.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Do you want to um come back to the present moment as we wind down here?
SPEAKER_01There's one more that I'd like to share, which is that non-duality at some point, the fact that there's no I or you or process cannot exist unless duality exists as well, which is kind of difficult to cognize, but that's what I'm experiencing nowadays, which is that this linear growth through duality to non-duality is actually not linear, it's all there and present at any moment in time space, and it's also there outside of time space, always already present, always already present, yeah. And now I can answer your question. Coming back to the moment, what I experience, I'd call it total existence. There's nothing that's outside of this existence, this total existence.
SPEAKER_00Meaning it's all in you and you're all in it, meaning that there's there's nothing that is not fully present and always has been and is is uh fully existent and always has been, always will be, and is now. Great. Thank you. Thanks, Augner. Thank you.