“5 Days With the Dalai Lama: Brian Muldoon” Ep#27

What happens when a high-stakes litigator spends five days with the Dalai Lama? Brian Muldoon, author of The Heart of Conflict and a groundbreaking expert in conflict resolution, joins Chris Jones to discuss his journey from the Catholic priesthood to the 1993 Parliament of the World’s Religions. In this episode of Spiritual Hot Sauce, we dive into the psychology of belief, the power of compassion in leadership, and why Brian left the Church to seek a more universal truth. From the Ganges River to a fictionalized Jesus in India, we explore how imagination and questioning dogma can lead to a more profound faith.

brian@theluminousonebook.com

Brianmuldoonlaw@gmail.com

https://a.co/d/hlkg535

https://www.mind-university.com/about1

This episode of “Spiritual Hot Sauce” by Chris Jones is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.  

Transcript

Chris Jones 0:00

Brian Muldoon, author of The Luminous One, never expected his friendship with Monk Wayne Teesdale would lead him to the Dalai Lama, or that it would challenge his faith. Today, Brian shares the story of how he left the Catholic Church and what he discovered on the other side. Welcome. I'm Chris Jones. This is where believers and skeptics alike are invited to embark on a journey of faith, philosophy, and life from a different perspective. Whether we are joined by an insightful guest or we just jump into the deep end, this exploration promises to challenge us all. Are we getting it right? This is Spiritual Hot Sauce. Brian, welcome to the sauce. Thanks. Thanks so much, Chris. So you are a litigator whose work was groundbreaking in mediation, founder and president of Resolve Dispute Management Incorporated, the first private commercial mediation firm in the Midwest, Chicago, and one of the first in the United States. Your book, The Heart of Conflict, published by Putnam, is still taught in law schools today because of its meta-strategies. In 1999, at the Parliament of the World's Religions held in India that year, you not only attended that convenience, but you helped facilitate it. You are co-director and facilitator of the synthesis dialogues, which included that year's keynote speaker, the Dalai Lama. That's quite an intro. And here we are on Spiritual Hot Sauce talking about the Luminous One book. So I'm really excited to get in this. What am I leaving out? Or what did I over did I misspeak anything or did I get it right?

SPEAKER_03 1:52

Well, you you got it you got it right, except the the uh Parliament of the World's Religions actually was in 1993.

Chris Jones 1:59

Aaron Ross Powell, I'm sorry I got the wrong date.

SPEAKER_03 2:01

Yeah. Yeah. But because it was the hundred-year anniversary of the first Parliament of the World's Religions, which happened during the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

Aaron Powell Wow.

SPEAKER_03 2:14

When Eastern philosophy was for the first time introduced to the West, particularly through a Hindu stage sage named Swami V Vivekananda. Brilliant, brilliant guy.

Chris Jones 2:28

Aaron Ross Powell It's a famous speech.

SPEAKER_03 2:30

Yeah. Yeah. It was it was a standing room ovation of ten minutes. Yeah.

Chris Jones 2:37

Aaron Ross Powell How did you end up at the Parliament of the World's Religion and co-facilitating part of it?

SPEAKER_03 2:45

Trevor Burrus Well, I I had met a monk, Catholic monk named Wayne Teesdale, who was a truly unique individual, very much and in Mavis self, yeah. Yeah. An amazing guy. And he was at a monastery in Chicago, and I was helping to give a retreat for the monks, and met Wayne, and he changed my life. Just a brilliant, brilliant guy, kind of the Thomas Merton of our time, has written a couple of books, A Monk in the World and The Mystic Heart, and unfortunately has passed away. But I met Wayne and we struck up a friendship, and he said there's this big event coming, and let you and I do a program together about living spirituality in the real world, not cloistered away. So I got involved with him and he introduced me to the folks who were running the parliament. And I I guess by volunteer or got just got my number pulled, they asked me to head the facilitation team because there were 6,000 people there.

Chris Jones 3:57

Aaron Ross Powell I don't think your number just gets pulled for that.

SPEAKER_03 4:02

Well I I was incredibly fortunate to be given the opportunity to work with so many incredible spiritual lights. How old were you at that time? That is a good question. Probably in my mid-40s, I'd say.

Chris Jones 4:25

Aaron Ross Powell Now you come from a Catholic background, correct?

SPEAKER_03 4:28

Aaron Ross Powell Right. Born and raised Roman Catholic.

Chris Jones 4:31

Aaron Ross Powell Okay.

SPEAKER_03 4:34

Okay. No, so I was raised in a in a very, very Catholic family. There were eight of us siblings, so that was another indication of the Irish Catholic approach. We were all very involved in all the Catholic celebrations from midnight mass to Easter. My brothers and I all served as altar boys. So we were really immersed in Catholicism from the get-go.

Chris Jones 5:04

Aaron Ross Powell Okay. You meet him and he says, hey, come co-facilitate this. Take me through that experience, because this interests me greatly.

SPEAKER_03 5:14

Yeah. Well, it was a chan it was, first of all, incredibly educational. There were, like I said, 6,000 people who attended. They belonged to every possible version of religion or spirituality, from Rastafarians to Louis Farrakhan, the Dalai Lama, to Cardinal Bernadine of the Catholic Church. So they they got everybody together, but our job as facilitators was to make sure that everybody had had a voice and an opportunity to be heard and to learn from one another. So as the week of the Parliament progressed, we brought people into small groups where they could share what their experience was. And it was just to be around that level of spiritual wisdom was life-changing, not only for me, but for the people who were there. Just an amazing experience. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.

Chris Jones 6:14

What kind of ideas and concepts would you define that was life-changing?

SPEAKER_03 6:20

Well, I happened to be sitting at the table of the Vatican's representative and who was an archbishop, and he looked over at me as our we would meet every day at lunch, and he looked over at me and he said he said, Well, I think you guys are invite in inventing a new religion here. And I said, How what do you what do you mean by that? He goes, you act like you're just facilitating things, but you actually choose what people get to say and when they get to say. And and you're actually profound, isn't it? Yeah. And so I could tell something new was emerging, and it was what Brother Wayne called inter-spirituality, which is you don't just walk a single path, you walk all of them at the same time, to the extent you can. The great philosophy professor, Houston Smith, himself buried in himself in a variety of religions, Islam, Christianity, he was, I believe, a Lutheran himself, Hinduism, and he was true to each of those paths, but they created something by their interaction that was truly unique, which was How does that work?

Chris Jones 7:43

Explain that to me so I understand so that he's all all the things at once. So how does that work?

SPEAKER_03 7:49

Aaron Ross Powell Well, what what it means is you you keep an open mind and you inquire deeply into other people's religious experience. You don't assume that yours is the best or the only avenue of truth. You open up to the input of others. So for example, uh in some cases, I recall Brother Wayne saying to the Dalai Lama, he said, you know, Your Holiness, Buddhism is great as far as it goes, but it stops a little short. And the Dalai Lama said, what do you mean by that? And he said you're missing an important ingredient, and that is God. And of course, Buddhism is famously a non-deistic religion. And the Dalai Lama, instead of saying, Wayne, you're crazy. I'm a I'm a Buddhist monk. I'm not gonna adopt your Western God idea. But instead of saying that, he just said, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna think about that. So he didn't slam the door shut. He was open as as open as he could he could find a way to be. And and something came out of the sauce that that they were making with different ingredients. So for example, I I I once heard a a group of Christian theologians discussing the the common ground between Buddhism and Christianity. And the the Christian theologians did not hesitate to critique some of the fundamental principles of Buddhism. For example, they said the problem with Buddhism is it it doesn't really require that much compassion or care for others. It's it tends to be it's pretty cerebral and is not engaged in helping out those who need help. And and the the Buddhist theologians basically said, you know, that's a good point. We we need to build in a greater appreciation for the impact on others of this path to enlightenment. So there's a lot of give and take that can happen, but one of the things that does occur and and is the thing perhaps that people resist in inter-religious or interspiritual dialogue, which is it changes who you are. I remember talking to a a Catholic priest at at the uh Parliament, and he insisted that his baseline experience of the world was as a Catholic priest. And he he couldn't really talk about his experience as a man, as a human being, as somebody who's still looking for the way. He was at the result of his own personal theology, and that's how he viewed the world. And anything that didn't comply with that, he considered to be either pointless or heretical.

Chris Jones 11:04

So to your point, though, that's a whole lot of religion right there. So why is it that you feel like that we put up such walls when it comes to other religions where we just automatically feel all of it's heretical unless it's in our little box?

SPEAKER_03 11:19

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. Well, uh I I guess the the polite way that that people tend to talk about it is human beings are imperfect and we impose our kind of human values on things that are are beyond human. But I I just think it's a matter of well it feels so good to be right about things. It can be kind of an addictive experience. And if you're a part of a community that insists that whatever it says is the absolute truth and that others do not have that same truth uh available to them, you're gonna get a lot of oxytocin or other kinds of uh chemicals swirling about in the brain because you j it just feels good to be that right, I I think. And it's you it's hard for people to say, well, I think this might be true, but I'm not sure of it. We we have a as it turns out, it is not easy to tolerate ambiguity and the idea that maybe we're right and maybe somebody else is right at the same time. Paradox and ambiguity are are difficult mountains for us with our kind of ego stories, difficult mountains to climb.

SPEAKER_02 12:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:49

So that's that's who we are as human beings. We uh the feeling of be what we don't often recognize is that the neurological path of being right about something is very different from the neurological path of actually finding the truth. Aaron Ross Powell Two different things. Two very different things. So you can feel completely right about something that's patently false, and your brain won't care. It it just wants the dopamine.

Chris Jones 13:20

Aaron Powell Yeah. That's the one thing that bothers me a lot of about a lot of debates, that it has less to do with finding the truth and more to do with acrobatical verbiage of winning rather than finding truth. And it's very tribal because you root for your team and everything is viewed as a win no matter what. And it's like I don't know why we even do this. You know, if we're going to do it, let's try to do it in a way where we're uncovering something that's bigger than all of us.

SPEAKER_03 13:48

Yeah, but that the truth, I'm glad you brought that up. That is something you would think all these religions were in pursuit of.

SPEAKER_02 13:58

Right.

SPEAKER_03 13:59

But it's it's uh it's a marketing term in in many cases. Because uh particularly with the the legacy religions, the ones that have been around for a while, they're they're how they promote themselves is as truth seekers, but they exempt their own teaching from that inquiry. Aaron Powell Yeah.

Chris Jones 14:22

I agree. There's some protection of your brand sometimes in large organized religion. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:29

Well, I I think as it turns out the the more illogical, unproven principles or things that that not only have no evidence to support them, but are are clearly false, those when we share those very marginal beliefs with other people, it binds us to them. And that's what what you're saying in terms of tribalism.

SPEAKER_02 14:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:00

And it's so important to feel you're part of a community that if the price of admission is adopting kind of crazy belief, oh uh well, I could I could get get along with that. I like the community.

Chris Jones 15:14

Yeah. Yeah. So it's when you were at uh sorry I didn't interrupt you, but you were facilitating this at the Parliament of the World's Religions, and you were facilitating the synthesis of dialogues. So how long did this last? How long does this take place? The the synthesis?

SPEAKER_03 15:35

Yes. Dialogues. So we were in India for about a week. So we had essentially five days with the Dalai Lama.

Chris Jones 15:44

Who had you get to speak directly to the Dalai Lama?

SPEAKER_03 15:48

Aaron Ross Powell, yeah. He was just with us for five days. And he was he was a very good friend of this monk who I mentioned before, Brother Wayne Teesdale. And that's why he agreed to do it, because he regarded Wayne as being sort of the embodiment of Christian virtue.

Chris Jones 16:06

Aaron Ross Powell So it had to be one of those moments, no matter how religious you are, if you you see people like the Dalai Lama in person, you were interact with them just as a person for a week and other equal heavies from different faiths and different spiritual philosophies. But if you come together and you see everybody connecting and you see everybody, like you say, putting their guard down, there's not a lot of tribalism. There's just more engagement, not for debate, but for better understanding of our own faith in that situation. I'm just very curious, how did that impact you at the time while you were doing that? Was that like surreal? Did you feel like you were seeing a different world, a different planet?

SPEAKER_03 16:54

Yeah. Well there's no way to be with somebody as remarkable as the Dalai Lama with without your thinking, this is an extraordinary experience that I'm having. And actually the dynamic of the process, we basically we had 40 kind of very high-level intellectuals from a variety of different fields and disciplines, and they were the engaged discussants. And then there were another hundred people who observed the exchanges. And what happened is the same thing that happens in any small group formation or community formation, which is it starts off with a bang, and you can't believe how great it is, and everybody's really friendly and open. And then our egos work in, and pretty soon we find ourselves elbowing one another to have something to say and wanting to impress the Dalai Lama with our incredible wisdom. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Chris Jones 18:02

Sure, I can understand that.

SPEAKER_03 18:04

And that's exactly what happened with our group, which was, I mean, people were literally trying to push others away so that they could have their time at the microphone.

Chris Jones 18:16

So what was the Dalai Lama's posturing? Was he saying anything that was extremely profound, or was he just there immersed in the moment with anyone else?

unknown 18:23

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 18:24

He was he was completely engaged. We brother Wayne and I had met with him a couple of months before the event and kind of outlined what we thought would happen and what the issues were, and he he prepared his own participation based on that. Wow. Wow. And so he he spoke very freely because what his intention, his intention was to bring the principles of compassion into all spheres of human behavior. You know, so just because you're in business doesn't mean you can forget about taking care of people who need help. That's right. That kind of thing. And and all of all of us, I would say, who were present experienced really profound collapse brought on by our own kind of egos, and then built it slowly back up. And as people began to recognize that some of our behavior was was, as you said, very tribal and very egocentric. And so it it it was a pretty amazing drop and then rebuilding. And on our last day together, he did this incredible teaching called the Chala Kalachakra Initiation, where basically he said and now I'm going to talk to you about the stages of it of it uh attaining compassion, because they go through basically eight levels, starting with please God put Don't let me be such a jerk next time I talk to this guy. So very basic stuff, going all the way to let me be grateful that this person who I once trusted has betrayed and attacked me. May I welcome them as a special friend, because that's how you build compassion and love for others by learning to love the ones who are really hard to love. And half and when he finished that teaching, he gave what's called darshan in Hinduism, which is basically kind of a sharing of very high-level energy, in this case, with the entire room of people. And without knowing what had happened, people were in tears because they felt this incredible power.

Chris Jones 20:51

Yeah. Firsthand. So what was it like? Tell me about that.

SPEAKER_03 20:56

Oh, I just remember feeling a combination of complete joy with feeling a little bit self-conscious that I just kind of broke open. It's it's like what in Christianity we would call grace.

SPEAKER_02 21:14

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 21:15

Just this wave of grace. And and there were some people in the in the group who were had been fighting with each other the entire time. And I turned around and they were in tears and hugging each other. And this is without his saying anything or doing anything. How long did that experience last? It's still going on. Really? Just uh a matter of remembering it. Wow. Because at the end of it, he brought us along in in what's called the Bodhisattva vow. So and he said he says, if if you're Christian, this vow you might think of the words of Saint Francis. If you're Jewish, I I'm not sure what you would think of, but think of something that you consider to be especially uh holy and important to you. And then then he he gave us the bodhisattva vow and asked us to repeat it three times. And the vow basically is this: as long as space remains, as long as time remains, may I too remain for the benefit of the world. In other words, the commitment that each of us made was no matter what happens, if I'm reincarnated a thousand times for a thousand lifetimes, this is my commitment. So it's it's a a big commitment.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:48

And to to receive that directly from him was just an incredible experience and a great honor. Obviously, because you're still still resonating in you.

unknown 22:59

Yeah.

Chris Jones 23:00

Yeah. So do you still use that uh that vow? Do you still think of it? Do you still draw on it?

SPEAKER_03 23:08

When I remember.

Chris Jones 23:09

Yeah, when you remember.

SPEAKER_03 23:12

You know, it remembering things that are so life-changing. I mean, I can't forget it, but I but I sometimes can't remember it either.

Chris Jones 23:22

I understand. Yeah. So I think you were talking about there was ego, and ego does come up. If this is what you do and this is your and you're put in a room with other people that are different ideas, there is that human side of us, our ego. It wants to push in and, like you said, win. You know, it's not about finding truth, it's about winning and saying something that's remembered. Did you feel like you had an upper hand because you're a litigator? I mean, this is your career. This is what you do. Did that help you? I'm just and that's just a personal thing for me. I just want to know: did you feel like you had an upper hand on everybody else where you could control your emotions more?

SPEAKER_03 24:04

I I would say I controlled my emotions less because even though I was involved with uh several other people in facilitating that, it was extremely emotional. And and it was hard not to appreciate what was going on. So it was it was quite emotional. And it changed your life, right?

Chris Jones 24:27

What's that? It changed your life.

SPEAKER_03 24:29

It it changed my life and and everybody else who was there. Uh you know, I you can't imagine a life where you you get a gift even greater than that. So it it was it was life-changing and and also humbling because uh as a facilitator, I I did have access. I mean, I could turn to the Dalai Lama and ask him what he thought about something. Aaron Powell That's incredible. You know, I could so and and that that actually created tension between the facilitation staff and and uh the participants, because they just wanted to say what they wanted to say, and we were trying to facilitate it into an experience where they would maximize the experience. In other words, for us to track how their consciousness was changed by these interactions with this holiness.

Chris Jones 25:29

So that makes sense to me because an organized religion we create a pecking order typically. So when you get together with other organized religions, you're trying to figure out the pecking order and where you fit in and gain more status. But at the end, there was someone that said, no, no pecking order here. And then that was Okay. So tell me what changed in your life personally after that?

SPEAKER_03 25:56

Well, one thing was I I felt a need to actually build in compassion to my own life in a way I hadn't before. So I'd been mediating cases for many, many years, and that always felt like a good thing to be doing, helping people come to terms with one another. Always felt like a good thing, but uh I could see that I needed to be doing more. And so when I came back, I I, with some friends, formed a group called Friends of Compassion, and we developed several projects that would help us kind of live this bodhisattva vow. So we raised money and built a s a school for Tibetan kids in in India and far North India. We built Women's Center and stocked it with computers and internet access and that kind of thing. Aaron Ross Powell That's wonderful. Well, we th we thought it was. Turns out we we triggered an entire cast war between the haves and the have-nots, which we didn't appreciate because we we were possessed of what one monk called idiot compassion. That it's not really compassion to give a guy ten bucks so he can go get drunk again. Yeah. That's not really helping him.

Chris Jones 27:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:24

Yeah. Yeah. Great point. And so anyway, with this group, Friends of Compassion, we we tried to bring it down to the everyday we sponsored a refugee family from Ecuador and made sure that that we walked with them through the the whole immigration process and helped support them until they got their feet on the ground. So so that that so it I was looking for practical ways at that point. And so being involved with synthesis kind of pushed me to actually do that.

Chris Jones 28:00

Aaron Ross Powell Active. You were actively wanting to love. Like Jesus loved, actively. So what changed in your faith as far as your religion of Roman Catholic?

SPEAKER_03 28:46

Well, since the age of five, I I had always thought I was going to become a priest. I had a cousin who was a Jesuit priest and in a big Irish Catholic family, the idea is you always send one of them off to the priesthood, to the seminary, and my mom certainly encouraged it. But by the age of 13, when I was actually applying to go into a seminary, I had begun to develop not just doubt, but a conviction that much of what is taken as unalterable truth in the Catholic Church is not that at all.

Chris Jones 29:29

Aaron Ross Powell It's a very rigid posture.

SPEAKER_03 29:32

Very rigid and based on, to me, very dubious reading of scriptures, many of which are themselves inconsistent and and basically contradict what we know and and believe as thinking human beings. And it just seemed wrong. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Chris Jones 29:55

Give me some examples of what you mean. What scriptures are are you referring to?

SPEAKER_03 30:01

Well, start with the easy ones, like the virgin birth. That's that's not how the world works. And if there's a God, I don't think he's going around doing song and dance show, working miracles to impress or terrorize people who are struggling with their own personal direction. So things like virgin birth, the the notion that God had this strange idea that he would manifest a mortal son and then sacrifice him through the agency of Romans in order to appease himself in some way. And, you know, but as Christians, you know, we've all looked at that those kinds of arrangements quizzically, like, does that make sense? So this went on for me for many, many, many years. And and uh the the desire to reconcile reason and theology. And that's a path that I'm still on, and and the the book I wrote, the luminous one, yeah, is is really about that.

Chris Jones 31:19

Yeah. I want to get to the book. I want to talk about that. So after that, your did you quit being a Roman Catholic?

SPEAKER_03 31:29

Aaron Ross Powell Well, in in the Catholic Church, you you never get to be a former Catholic. You're always in. You can't get out. Because I I wrote a letter to the Archbishop of Chicago and I said, I'm I'm resigning from the Catholic Church. I I no longer share the beliefs that are Trevor Burrus, Jr. Shortly after your trip? Actually, I think that was beforehand. Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. I was still I was deeply uncomfortable in the Trevor Burrus.

Chris Jones 32:02

So you went from wanting to be a priest feeling like you were going to be a priest, but then started having these doubts and then eventually ended up leaving the Catholic Church, where you tried to, but you didn't get to. And then they sent you to India. Does that sound about right?

SPEAKER_03 32:18

Aaron Powell Yeah. Yeah. And and and the thing that that I I really appreciated about the Parliament, Parliament of the World's Religions, was how it opened up so many paths. You could just taste the spiritual nectar that was being provided. Well, for example, Brother Wayne, although he was a Catholic monk, was ordained in India as basically as a sadhu, as Indian monk, on the belief that if there is truth to the scriptures and if there's truth to the Upanishads, the Hindu scriptures, then they're referring to the same kind of divine being. And so Wayne, although he lived in a Catholic monastery, he he often wore the robes of a Hindu priest. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Chris Jones 33:20

I think in the Bhagavad Gita, there's a part where Arjuna and Sri Krishna are having this conversation. And for those who don't know, Arjuna is a warring prince and Sri Krishna is an incarnation of God. But Arjuna wants to know what God's like. Well, who are you? How many gods are there? And he's basically, look up in the sky. How many stars do you see? It's just there's so many. But every time Arjuna keeps pushing in, it's less and less until finally Shri Krishna says there's only one God. And then he asks, Well, how come we see God differently? And he says, Well, because people are different. And it's you see God how you need to see God, because it's more important, basically, that you get what you need to get. And do you think or believe that's how we thought? And that's why he did that?

SPEAKER_03 34:07

Well, it it was something like that. I I heard Wayne one time at a conference say that the understanding of God that that Buddhism actually picks up where Christianity leaves off. Because in Christianity, in the Judeo-Christian model, there there is a personal God who attends to our needs, gives us a sense of purpose, judges us one way or the other. But Buddhism takes the notion of God beyond that and sees God as being so intimately connected to everything there is that you can't carve out a separate place in your mind or in the world occupied by God. So it's a a different notion of God. And part of the problem I think that we have is when people talk about God, they they usually are referring to this Judeo-Christian God, Yahweh, kind of a tribal God, you know, who who gets very angry if people don't follow what he says, who's does things that seem just profoundly wrong, who doesn't address the place of evil. And but there but if you take for a moment the the idea of God in that tradition, that is a being who is infinite and eternal. And then we have to ask ourselves, how good am I at understanding things that are infinite and eternal? And I think the answer is we're terrible at it. And the reason is we have very limited three-dimensional brains that cannot conceive of anything without attaching a concept to it. And God, as understood in the Judeo Christian tradition, God is beyond any form of definition or concept. So when on the radio a preacher is saying, God wants you to be happy or rich or whatever, he's talking on a turn. I am pretty sure he doesn't have any clue what God wants or thinks. Because by definition, that is beyond our capacity to understand.

Chris Jones 36:37

So do you identify more as a Buddhist or Hindu?

SPEAKER_03 36:47

I'm just at my better moments, I'm just looking for what's true.

Chris Jones 36:54

Still looking for truth.

SPEAKER_03 36:56

Yeah. And I think that's an unending and life, lifelong pursuit because the truth is constantly shifting.

Chris Jones 37:05

Okay. So that brings me to your book, The Luminous One. Yeah. And so I'm hearing in the scripture says from the age of 13 to 30, we don't really have anything of his life. It's missing. And there's a lot of people out there that believe that Jesus actually went to India. And I know you don't personally believe that, but you use that as a vehicle to express, I think, something else, which I'm going to get to in a minute. But my question is, it's this idea of Jesus going to India. And I can't help but think with you and you sharing your story with me, that it's almost metaphorical for you and how you went to India with Jesus and this idea and how things are changed and shifted there in finding your truth. Is there some of that in that story, you think? I think so. So tell me about the story. Let's jump into it. Sure.

SPEAKER_03 38:04

So it begins with with a caveat that this book is is not true. The story in it is fiction. It is an exercise of the imagination. It it does not pretend to be advocating for the truth of it because there'd be no way to know. So and that's because I believe that any of us on the spiritual path not only do but have to use our own imaginations in in trying to get to the truth. It's not something we just passively take in. We have to work mentally at it. But anyway, so in this story, it begins with his birth in a stable to a uh 13, 14-year-old girl who's been impregnated by a Russian uh a Roman soldier, an archer by the name of Pantera. And there actually was such a guy who was a Jewish archer in the Roman army and is buried whose grave was discovered in the 19th century in Germany. And there's there's a whole belief that that this is actually how Mary without husband became pregnant. And I mean that that accords with biology. It doesn't necessarily it takes the fun out of Christmas, I think. But anyway, so he grows up in a household and and his mother gets married to a wealthy man named Yusuf or Joseph gets married to him, and that he becomes uh Jesus' stepfather. And he runs caravans between Palestine and India, going through the Middle East and Afghanistan, through the Khyber Pass in Afghanistan down to the Ganges River. And his stepfather is brutal and a drunk, and eventually Yeshua can't take it anymore, and he runs away while in Afghanistan. He ends up being kind of adopted by a Hindu family which is on its way down to the Ganges River for a big event called the Kumbh Mela, which occurs every 12 years in each of four cities. Anyway, so. He goes down and he sees literally millions of monks and people going on retreat by the river, because it's as you as you know, the Ganges River is considered to be the most sacred spot in India. It's where the divine and the human meet that the waters of the Ganges are basically flowing over the beard of Shiva. Anyway, he he goes down and sees these incredible events and all these people jumping in the river, and it's uh the the feeling is very celebratory, but he notices that there are starving people, the Dalit, the untouchables. And and the pilgrims are are not allowed to give any food or anything to the untouchables, or they'll be punished by the Hindu priests. But because he's not Hindu, he starts giving people leftover food that he finds in the various camps, and eventually that that grows into, you know, feeding thousands. And in the book, I try to, in several ways, align some of the experiences that this boy Yeshua has to stories that we find in the Bible, like the loaves and fishes and all that. Things like that actually do occur in the natural world where nobody ever expects it, but there's a wonderful prosperity. But it's the result of people with good hearts. Anyway, he ends up, Yeshua becoming very involved in helping the poor and and those who are suffering, and this shapes him as a person. And then he his his spiritual teacher, an elderly uh sadhu or monk, tells him about a great interreligious event that's going to occur in Kashmir, and he sends Yeshua to it. And that was kind of a parallel to the Parliament of the World's Religions, but this was an actual event called the Fourth Buddhist Council. And so he's able to, and it was convened with people from all different religions, the Greeks, the Taoists from China, Hindus of every kind. And at this Fourth Buddhist Council, they wrote down ultimately what the Buddhist scriptures were, but they included principles from other religions in it. And he he then gets pulled into China with a group of Indian royalty and has a number of experiences that would be quite natural. He gets to watch a debate between Confucians in China. And Confucius, I think he lived either well after or well before Jesus. So there's no attempt to make these things chronologically correct. But just to give the idea of what it's like to have these experiences. Anyway, after some intense inner probing, Yeshua realizes that he really misses home. He misses his mother and his siblings, not his stepfather, but the rest of them. And so like the prodigal son, he comes home and he's welcomed by all except his his brother. One of his brothers, they they both kind of develop an interest in Mary Magdalene. And rivalry between the siblings, between the brothers, turns out to be tragic and catastrophic for both of them. So that's a different twist on the whole Judas betrayal thing.

Chris Jones 44:29

Aaron Ross Powell So what were you wanting to accomplish with this book? What are you wanting to share with people in this book?

SPEAKER_03 44:37

Well, first of all, that imagination is necessary or extremely useful in following the spiritual path, not taking things at face value, but looking for stories that we can tell ourselves that help us walk the path of the spiritual pilgrim. And this is just an example of one guy's effort to do that in a way that makes sense of his Christian background.

Chris Jones 45:10

For you, it's more getting the result rather than what it takes, what's going on in your mind to get you there. So what happens in your heart if you need to hear the story one way or if you need to hear it this way, it's whatever it needs to be that helps you on your journey and your path. Is that or am I misunderstanding what you're saying?

SPEAKER_03 45:29

Aaron Ross Powell Well, it's it's something very much like that. Stories have the power to change lives. And and a good story about somebody like Yeshua maybe will inspire someone to to look within themselves and see have I done this? Have I asked myself what is true? Have I asked myself what am I called to do in in this life? What gives my life meaning? So it expands by storytelling. We're teaching ourselves. You know, I I feel in many ways I learned from this story as it kind of came out.

Chris Jones 46:13

Aaron Ross Powell I would imagine you going back and working with what you've been wrestling with since your journey and your trip, because this is kind of what it sounds like to me, and sharing with others.

SPEAKER_03 46:27

Yeah. And I believe in the power of story. Stephen Pinker from Harvard, the he's an evolutionary psychologist, believes that the principal reason that we as a species have actually reduced our level of violence, which is hard to believe these days, but that since the 16th century, our level of violence has hugely dropped. It used to be you you're likely to get stabbed any time you go in town, and now we feel pretty safe about it. And and he attributes that to the Gutenberg printing press, that as people read more and more fiction, they could see that things could be different. And they didn't have to behave like animals.

Chris Jones 47:24

After that, then when they finally came up with a phonetic language, then we it was what, the hymns of Kish. It was in the temple of singing praises to God, trying to figure out spiritually who we were. And then it was transference of wisdom down generally. But the third thing we did was we started telling stories. The hero's journey, actually. It was the the oldest story we have is the hero's journey. It's about 4,600 years old, and we're still telling it.

SPEAKER_03 47:52

But you're you're talking about uh the Gilgamesh epic.

Chris Jones 47:56

Yeah, the epic of Gilgamesh and what the tale of the Egyptian sailor and all of that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:02

Right. Yeah. And so my goal with the book was to tell a story that people would find interesting enough that it could they begin to ask questions like, hey, maybe I need to go take a harder look at my religion and look at some things that are different and maybe find something I didn't expect.

Chris Jones 48:22

Aaron Ross Powell Well, where do you land on Jesus now? After all of this, do you think he was real, or do you think he's a culmination of some of our best ideas?

SPEAKER_03 48:31

Or well, without having evidence that's determinative of e either way, I would say, yeah, definitely there was such a guy. I I think that the stories that we have about him are pretty much unreliable. It's anybody who at that time was causing any trouble at all, the Romans had no trouble crucifying, and the Jews were especially troublesome for them. And so the Romans were crucifying Jews at the rate of like 15,000 at a time. I mean, it was so it wouldn't be surprising that he got caught up in that. I I don't really I I can't see how this the whole story of his sacrificing himself for the salvation of mankind, I don't that doesn't make sense to me. And and I I think one of the other filters for me has been one of the other projects that I undertook after synthesis was working to develop an online training program in improved cognition, how to think better about things. And that program, which is called Mind University, which I developed with my friends Dr. Rebecca Armstrong and Andrew Shepard, that that convinced me that whatever it is we say, we endorse, or believe about Jesus or about God, it really cannot be legitimately held if it contradr contradicts the evidence or logic. So I've had to filter all of my beliefs about this through that filter. What would somebody say about this if they were writing an academic paper that was properly vetted? Would it be true or not? And I think I I guess I've come to the conclusion that the one thing that I'm sure is sacred in this world is the truth. And we live at a time when truth itself is under incredible attack from the White House on down. People have found the truth to be inconvenient. And I think what we need at this time, I mean, I think vast majorities of people are disgusted by the lack of truth and overt dishonesty. But we need to make it into a movement because that's what as human beings defines us. So you know, when we talk about looking to the face of God, I think that face looks a lot like what's true. And we need to honor that.

Chris Jones 51:22

Aaron Ross Powell So for you, God and whatever that is is just truth.

SPEAKER_03 51:28

Well, I would I would first of all say that God is incomprehensible. I believe that in evolutionary terms, we will eventually learn to think beyond the three-dimensional. I'm reminded of do you remember the uh Twilight Zone TV show with Rod Serling? Can I read you what his introduction was to that? Do you remember? Yeah. He says there is a fifth dimension beyond which that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as an of infinit as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the twilight zone. And to me, that's a that's a pretty good definition of God, or at least of our capacity to imagine one.

Chris Jones 52:36

Aaron Ross Powell, I think if God really wanted us to understand him, he would have made himself more available to be understood. I think it's probably more important to him that we help one another and serve us. And by doing that, we serve him.

SPEAKER_03 52:50

Yeah. And well, you know that that great quotation from Irenaeus in the fourth century? Said the glory of the glory of God is the human person fully alive. And to me and to me, that's what it's all about, becoming fully alive.

Chris Jones 53:11

Aaron Ross Powell So you're a theist, but what that means you don't know, but you're still seeking.

SPEAKER_03 53:16

Yeah. I I yeah.

Chris Jones 53:18

I think it can all be right, but it can all be wrong, and that's okay.

SPEAKER_03 53:22

Aaron Powell Yeah. It it don't know, but I have to the the thing that is holy to me is the thing that I'm in pursuit of. And I think in some way one could call that God. But to even dare to say anything about God means we have to become a lot we have to get to a point where non-conceptual understanding is how we approach the divine. So I like that.

Chris Jones 53:52

You know, a big part of what I try to do on this podcast is create a space where we can separate Jesus from the religion that encompasses him. We talk a lot about the religion that worships the deity of Christ versus becoming a disciple of Christ. And I do that so people can experience Jesus in a different way. And I hope people don't take this as trying to belittle or demean Jesus, because that's not the intent here. The intent is to explore our faith, but obviously in your exploration, you've taken Jesus with you. And forcing yourself to see things differently forces yourself to see yourself differently. Because I think sometimes because of the deity of Christ and how we approach him, we never apply him. We should be using Jesus as a template in how we love and how we interact with the external. I think we use Jesus and ask Jesus to forgive us for our shortcomings. And then we sometimes use Jesus as an excuse for our shortcomings. And I'm not trying to say that perfection is the goal here, but growing in truth is. And if you're going to grow in that truth, you're going to have to challenge yourself. Okay, well, this has been awesome. I've enjoyed this a lot, getting to hear your perspective and your experience with the Dalai Lama and there at the Parliament of the World Religions. That was a that was very interesting, and uh I enjoyed that a lot. Thank you for sharing and sharing a lot of your experiences and your your journey. So if you would tell me what's going on now, you have your book, and how do people get in contact with you?

SPEAKER_03 55:49

Well, the book is available through Amazon or Kindle, and that it's easy to download it from from there or have uh printed copies sent. So that's that's available. And I I can be reached at my email, Brian Muldoonlaw.com, or Brian Muldoonlaw at gmail.com So, and happy to follow up uh uh or answer any questions people might have about the book. And we're getting very close to uh announcing the availability of our Mind University program on uh creating stronger cognitive skills, being able to weed out all the chaff, all the stuff that fills up our inbox every day, and protect our minds from infiltration, basically.

Chris Jones 56:49

Thank you so much for jumping in on this conversation with me. And uh I'm sure people have will enjoy this. And I I thank you very much again, and I appreciate the time you've given.

SPEAKER_03 57:02

Chris, thanks so much. I I really have enjoyed talking with you.

Chris Jones 57:05

Thank you, buddy. Okay, man. Thanks for joining me here on Spiritual Hunt. I'd love to hear from you. So please reach out with questions, comments, and your concerns. And don't forget to like, subscribe, and review us. You can follow us on Facebook for updates and information. And if you enjoy the flavor of the sauce, then please share it with others. I would appreciate that. We'll see you next time.