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
Awakening and Health from the Soul’s Point of View
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Who is healthy? Who is ill? As the individual human soul leaves the divine source and incarnates in a body/mind, it carries the influence of several kinds of karma: individual karma from lifetimes, group karma, and the collective karma of humanity (as we witnessed in the pandemic). It’s also influenced by genes, environment, and lifestyle choices. Dr. Neil explores the interconnections of health, longevity, and consciousness.
Greetings. Welcome back to the podcast. Today we're going to talk about health and consciousness. What is the relevance of health to awakening? What is the experience of health in different levels of consciousness? And some misunderstandings about this connection as well. Okay, take it away, Dr. Neil.
SPEAKER_01Well, I think the place to start is who is Ramana Maharshi's question. Who am I? I am emptiness. I am everything. I am one with the subject and object and process of experience. And that's the deepest level of who we are. Although there are different ways of experiencing that. The divine has those qualities, emptiness and consciousness of it all. And we're an aspect of the divine. And by the human soul, I mean the collective human soul. That we're all part of one consciousness, one human consciousness, and we're in evolved into incarnation on this planet, Earth, as our second planet. Um, and we've been here for a while, and we're we may we may not be here for too much longer if we keep doing the bad things for our health. Um and uh and from the human soul has soul groups in it, which have different purposes, and those are uh eternal and immortal, and out of those soul groups, individual souls are created, which um which facilitate the evolution of the divine in its experience of creation and perceiving itself. So the soul, the soul, individual soul or the group soul uh are very important. And I think that's the primary issue we're gonna look at in terms of health elements.
SPEAKER_00And so we're kind of starting backwards instead of evolution of the individual to oneness or pure consciousness, we're starting with the source and looking at involution into group soul, into individual soul, and then the soul incarnates into a body-mind.
SPEAKER_01Right. I remember coming into this body, and what I did was uh take on different sheaths of consciousness, um, one after another, as and um and finally uh being conceived uh and identifying with the um physical body. This happened, uh the physical energy body. This happened around about uh six months of gestation, and that was sort of the beginning of this human journey, which I think is a very key aspect. The human journey is a key aspect of the soul's evolution.
SPEAKER_00And what does the soul recall about health or this kind of um quality of life as it incarnates from other lives?
SPEAKER_01Well, um we have karma, and karma is a difficult thing to talk about because most people assume it's an individual thing. That we uh if we do something bad, something bad's gonna happen to us, and if we do something that's uh good or positive, it's then good things are gonna happen to us. That's very individual and separate, and uh it doesn't really take a look at the fact that this human consciousness, so human consciousness means that who knows what will happen to humanity on this planet, uh, and we're all part of it, and we all would be affected by some catastrophe or some disaster or some stupidity on the fact that human beings might just wipe each other off the planet uh and have to then sort of separate ourselves and find another planet. So some things are collective, some things are individual souls.
SPEAKER_00Um we could look at the pandemic as an example of collective health karma.
SPEAKER_01To some degree, yes. Um, pandemic or pandemics in general, uh, or an asteroid hitting the earth, or something karmic that affects everybody or most people.
SPEAKER_00An epidemic.
SPEAKER_01An epidemic. So and and that's very hard to look at in terms of individual karma because it's not individual, you know, it's part of our decision to be here, and we do decide as souls, as individual souls, who our mother and father and siblings are going to be, and how long we're going to be here for. Some people talk about it in terms of breaths, some people talk about it in terms of uh knowing the moments of death or the period of death, but it's not unknown for the soul before it incarnates. These are things that are known, just not remembered, yes, they're purposely forgotten, so we can take the human journey, and the human journey is very well outlined in psychology in terms of the general human journey, not the upper spiritual levels that has not been clearly defined, but um but the general human journey of evolution, taking care of the body, taking care of the emotions, the relational issues, the financial issues, the the um so the soul incarnates into an individual body-mind, carrying karma from past lives, carrying karma from the group soul and from humanity as a whole.
SPEAKER_00And so then let's say someone gets a childhood illness or they have a chronic illness as an adult. So, how is this related then to the evolutionary journey of moving toward higher levels of consciousness?
SPEAKER_01Well, karma is somewhat separate from the evolutionary journey. In other words, the uh the karmic aspects happen to people at whatever level or whatever uh part of the journey. And it's at different levels of consciousness, how you deal with that karmic issue is becomes the key factor, not whether it's going to happen or not happen. So, for example, um, I may be um ill, and that illness can motivate me towards more spiritual practice and more growth, or can actually depress me and create anxiety and juice me to something that's more limited, just like death might be a doorway to more consciousness, and death might be a doorway to less consciousness, depending on how we tackle these things.
SPEAKER_00So, this karma is unfolding through our genetics, through our environmental pollutants and family issues, through our um community and collective issues. And so our health is in a way um one of the kind of pieces that interconnects all these different levels of life, and it's very hard to sort it out.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there are a lot of illusions um about health that are based on this sort of notion of transcending the ego, going beyond it, and I think a sense of enlightenment. So we know many great gurus and spiritual beings have died from diseases, young or young-ish. So somehow there's a myth in our system that indicates that people should have long lives free from disease if they follow a spiritual practice, which is not necessarily true because the soul sort of might actually really only want a very short life, maybe not even being born, maybe be being two years old before one passes on. It's a need for experience on different levels, and so the soul decides what it's going to take on.
SPEAKER_00So that was certainly a myth that I grew up with in my 20s in the meditation world, which said that if we meditate long enough, we'll have perfect health. There were books written about perfect health, right? And the flip side of it was if we take care of our health, we'll have better meditation experience. And it seems to me now, with everything we understand from the body-mind and from karma and the brain and everything, that that's very simplistic and probably not true.
SPEAKER_01There was some truth in the fact that if you uh eat well, exercise, breathe clean air, sleep well, sleep well, have good relationships, have a positive mental attitude. These are all very positive things that can create a form which supports the soul awareness in the body, and soul's expression of life through the body, through the ego. Um, so it uh and and the group soul can express its consciousness through that. So there is some truth in it, but there's a lot of illusions in it because uh, like I said, having a disease, a chronic disease or a serious disease or dying young might be purposeful, might be inherently um a positive soul experience. The soul is not that interested in this brief lifetime. Soul is immortal and internal, and so you know, I remember having previous lives, a number of them, and I remember, in fact, being with Connie in one life for this. Uh, and so what does this life mean in terms of length of time? 60, 80 uh years, what does it mean? It's just a small amount in a vast evolutionary cycle, and so it doesn't mean a lot. I'll give you an example. Um, my father uh died at 49, and that was I was 18 years old, and that was a tragedy in our life or our family, uh impacted us seriously on a growth level, and yet seemed like it was disastrous, and yet when I connect with him, I watched him leave his body and incarnate pretty quickly into another body, and now already 51 years later, the other day was his would have been his 100th birthday, 50 something years later, he's he's incarnated, he's evolving, he's married, he's in another country with another culture, so he's growing in terms of that culture. He has children and he has grandchildren. And so dying young facilitated that unfoldment for him, and I feel connected to him on the subtle plans on the soul level, because that exists whether he's whether one is in a body or not in a body.
SPEAKER_00So we don't want to minimize the tragedy of loss and the emotional impact and the financial impact it had on your family. So we don't want to minimize that and we don't want to romanticize that, but what we're offering is a bigger picture, a larger perspective. Yeah, when we look at it from the point of view of soul, your father's soul's evolution.
SPEAKER_01Right. So the ideal life cycle involves developmental processes that begin at conception and go through a whole cycle of evolution uh that's well covered in psychology. And spiritual practice helps unfold further than that. Um, and ideally, um, we would like to fulfill a have a long life because more time means more opportunity to for evolution, for growth, for spiritual growth, um, and a good quality of life. So, you know, what one eats and drinks and smokes and doesn't smoke are all valuable and important. I however that's just one part of the story. There's a much bigger picture that's going on that has little to do with that. Um, I have a 96-year-old client who eats terribly. She snacks. She doesn't have breakfast, lunch, or dinner, she snacks. And she eats a lot of cheese and a lot of meats and a lot of fast foods. And she's very alert and intellectually astute and physically capable of doing a lot of things too. So, you know, these these exceptions sort of teach us that while it's good to eat well, and it's good to sleep well, and it's good to function positively, there's exceptions to this. Some people have better genes, and some people have better environmental charm.
SPEAKER_00However, she's not waking up.
SPEAKER_01No, this person is not waking up.
SPEAKER_00No, this is a conventional person. She's not doing spiritual work, right? So that's a distinction.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So, and a lot of the centenarians we read about around the world when they're asked about their health and lifestyle practices, they're not unusual.
SPEAKER_01No, they drink and they sex, they're intimate.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but what we're trying to bring is the consciousness into the story and the impact of the um what you're calling the soul's journey from health issues and kind of enlarge the story so that when there's a health crisis, we might ask ourselves different questions, right? What is the meaning of this to my life at this moment? How does this change my priorities? Does it mean I want to have more fun or I want to do more spiritual practice?
SPEAKER_01Right. That's an inherent question. Any kind of stress or disease or disease or chronic illness. They're all opportunities uh to unfold greater, greater depths of awareness.
SPEAKER_00And does it mean I want extreme measures in treatment to live longer if it reduces my quality of life? Many of us have faced that question in our families. And if you are looking at that in the context of consciousness, the development of consciousness, it shifts that question. If you know you're going to be reborn, how does that change the picture for you of making these choices, these end-of-life choices? If you know that you're a soul, not a body, what does that mean for your advanced directive?
SPEAKER_01That means that you have less fear of death because one continues after the body dies, that you have ongoing consciousness that looks at incarnation in future lifetimes, just like my father did. So the um the whole sort of framework of health is not short term, it's long term. And one looks at the fact that one might sacrifice in the short term for the long-term view. And the soul knows all of this. The soul is not unaware of what it's incarnate, what the genes are that it's incarnating into, and what the environment is and what the community uh aspect is. So the soul is aware, and the group soul is constantly functioning to actually improve, being a vehicle for the divine consciousness to incarnate.
SPEAKER_00So we hope this leaves you with some questions to contemplate about your lifestyle choices and your um health care choices. For example, I have a friend who's 80, she never goes to the doctor, she doesn't do anything preventive. It's like the opposite of me. I'm constantly checking every single parameter of my health. So, why is that? And what is that like for you? And how does it relate to your desire for awakening? And from the point of view of the soul, it really has a different answer than if you're identified as an ego in a body. So we hope this is helpful to you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'd like to talk a little bit about some myths. Myth that if if you wake up, you're going to have a long life. That's not true. Uh, myth that disastrous uh events take you down. They don't necessarily take you down, they might open you up to more awareness of what life is about. That this individual life is what's important, it's not this the divine life is really what's important, and it functions through the group soul, individual soul, and through the ego and through the body, and through the individual journey through the life cycle. So health uh and longevity are statistically increased by wealth and uh education and uh and having a clean environment.
SPEAKER_00So big class differences, yeah, big class differences.
SPEAKER_01I think something like 13 years difference between those who have means and those who don't have means in terms of longevity. And what's important along longevity, it gives this individual life more chance to unfold. So more deeper consciousness. So um and so when one reaches 70, as I'm about to do, this is the time to do more spiritual practice. This is the time to actually grow in health, in taking better care of your health. This is the time to actually expand awareness because the body's needs for sex, uh, relationship, uh, money, power, and the ego's needs for identity are lessened as part of the process. So taking care of one's health is important because it facilitates greater growth and and potentially one can become more involved. And all these different levels need to be taken care of. So one of the things that grows with consciousness is one becomes aware of a group consciousness, um, and one needs to function in terms of it. We're at a very interesting political junction in the United States right now, and there's a lot going on, and consciousness is important right now, uh, and one needs to hold on to the soul's perspective, which is love, joy, nurturing, giving, growing, knowing, believing, faith, and in be in beauty, the the beauty of the world. Um, so this is an important time to hold on to it because you know we are we are going through darker times. This is um gonna contribute towards health.
SPEAKER_00Okay, shall we land there?
unknownFine.
SPEAKER_00Do you want to describe what you're experiencing in this moment?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm ill and I'm healthy, and I'm here and I'm everywhere. Uh and my body is present in this room and is everywhere in the cosmos. And what I eat is something that's evolving and improving. Uh and I think uh it's important for all of us to cherish the uh journey of becoming healthy spiritually as well as physically and mentally. So spiritual health is practicing a spiritual practice and radiating beauty and love.
SPEAKER_00Okay, thank you for listening.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, bye bye.