Latest / The Drop the Needle Podcast / 64: DTN Podcast | Jim Alstott Ep. 64 | Why Some Spiritual Seekers Get Lost with George Boyd
Transcript
- Welcome to the Drop the Needle Podcast, your backstage pass to the mystical realm. I'm your host, Jim Alstatt. And here, gifted souls step up to the mic, sharing their spiritual journey. We're hitting the high notes and the low notes of their awakening, creating a symphony of enlightenment. This isn't just another interview show. This is where divine insights are channeled and universal truths are revealed. So crank up your stereo and sit back, because who knows? This just might help you compose the next transformative chapter of your soul's purpose. Are you ready? Let's go. Welcome back. This is the Drop the Needle Podcast. I'm Jim Alstott, and my guest today has been doing something nobody else in the spiritual world has attempted. Mapping the entire inner landscape of human consciousness. Every path, every level, every domain, and building a system to help people navigate it without losing their minds. Spiritual cartographer, master meditation teacher, and founder of the Mudrasram Institute of spiritual studies, Mr. George Boyd. Welcome, George. Pleasure to be here. Well, thank you, thank you, thank you. Hey, why don't you do everyone a favor and tell them a little bit about yourself? Well, I have a interesting background. I grew up in a family of alcoholics. I had very little structure in my life. I was caught up by the Pied Piper of the hippie movement and went up to Haight Ashbury in the Summer of Love. I used to tell my students when I was there in the Summer of Love, 1967. Kate Ashberry. So when I say peace and love, baby, it's authentic. Right on. And then I went through a seeking period, checking out different groups, like many of your listeners probably are doing. You're looking for an authentic path. And then I met my first teacher. I believe in 70, 71, and he was an Italian spiritual master. And he makes these incredible pictures of the great masters of love and wisdom, the great sons of God, as they call them, Sons and daughters of God studied with him for about six months. And I went on to study with a with an Eastern teacher whose name is Satguru Bhagyogaswar. He now goes by the name of Krinpal Singh Rawat. A few years later, I went on to study with the Saint Mat tradition through Saint Darshan Singh. And then I rounded out my spiritual education by taking all the Kriya yogas through the self realization fellowship. And in 1983, I had an enlightenment empowerment experience when I was called to found a new lineage. And since that time, we've developed courses. We've gone on and mapped the entire continuum. There's just Been a down floor. There's been a downpour of incredible inspiration and knowledge which has resulted in 19 print books and now 14 ebooks and just hundreds and hundreds of articles on our blog. Many courses, many webinars. Right? Yeah, that's one thing I can say, that there is a lot of content on your website. You have a lot to offer, that's for sure. Yes. Well, again, a lot of this material comes from people who ask us questions. So they ask me a question and they say, well, what the heck is this, George? And so then I explore it and I give them an answer. And so a lot of our material has come from this question and answers. Because I want to know too. Sure, sure. And speaking of questions, I'd like to dive in and get going on these questions, if you're okay with that. Absolutely. All right. So the 1975-1983 window, you were being trained then by your original guide, right? Is that Adisat Guru? Is that. Yeah, Adi Sat Guru Tea. Okay. Okay. And then you weren't formally empowered to teach until 1983? That's correct. I was in the process of. I was in the process of being prepared. Okay, so. And that's where I wanted to go with that, because with that four year gap between receiving and releasing, what happened in those four years? And I'm wondering what it feels like to be told you're being prepared for something before you fully even understand what that something is. Well, I want to let you know that they didn't say, oh, by the way, you're being prepared like a lamb. I just simply went with the flow. And they say, here's today's lesson. And let's look at this and let's look at that. And I want to show you this, and you need to work on this. Any of your listeners who are interested in learning about what that period was, there's an article on my website, mudrashram.com forward/my spiritual journey. And I describe in great detail what I had to go through before I could become ready to become a lineage holder. There were a lot of. I want to say there were a lot of interludes because when I was in this higher state, when I had had this enlightenment experience, you know, this was even previous becoming a lineage holder, I had to be prepared. I had to develop, redevelop my personality because I'd been all this time up in the higher planes and it's very hard to function. So you got to learn to be a human being because you have to have a instrument in the world to be able to communicate to other people. And so that period. Just one second. George. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I think this is important because you're talking about some things that there's probably a number of people that don't even understand what you're making reference to. When you were in this higher plane and you couldn't even communicate on a human level. What, what are you talking about there? What, what was, what was the higher plane? Okay, well, let's want to give an overview of the continuum. So when we meditate, we go through different levels of the mind. So most people are familiar with the conscious mind. This is your present time experience. Any of you who do mindfulness, for example, are tapping into your conscious mind. Then there's your subconscious mind, which is all the stuff that works in the background, your memory and all the automatic processes. Then your meta conscious mind. This is our, this is the faculty of our mind that allows us to function in the adult role, to carry it our lives, to create what we want in our human lives. Then there's a superconscious mind. And this is all of the levels of what we call the continuum consciousness. So there are several different major divisions within this. We call the subtle realm, the planetary, the transplantary, the cosmic, the super cosmic and the transcendental. So in my spiritual journey with my second teacher, he led me to open one of the, the highest of the eight paths that are in this transcendental band of the continuum. And we traveled along that path to the very culmination, to the very end. And that's when the enlightenment experience took place. And then after that, because it wasn't enough to just simply be in this higher state of consciousness and keeping my attention in these higher worlds. Because to function in the world, you got to bring your attention back and you have to be able to function in the personality. So that was part of my training because it was very easy to be in the state of, as they say in the East Samadhi. But you also have to be able to bring that back to human beings. And you have to develop your personality to do it. So you got to be embodied. So to help me become embodied, I danced for several years. I had to rehabilitate my ability to think. And so I went back and got my bachelor's degree and I completed some things that were incompletion. So my study with Saint Mother, with my third teacher, and Kriya Yoga, these were incompletions. They're things that I had developed in previous lifetimes. And I never completed them. So I had to complete them before I was clear to do this one thing. Gotcha, Gotcha. Okay, well, and thank you for kind of backtracking a little bit there, because I know in doing my research, I came across the Integral Meditation, the four poles that you had referenced. And that's where I was wondering where we're going with that and how that connection was not being able to really communicate. And. And I got to tell you, I find it fascinating the fact that some. You would have to go back and retrain yourself to think, because I would. Is. So when you're saying when you get to, oh, like some samadhi state that it's all. What I mean, what is that in terms of being able to not think and just. Are you just talking about just being, existing, not having to? Because that's a very foreign thought. Yeah. Okay. At least it is to me for somebody who overthinks a lot. Okay. So when you're in samadhi, okay, there is thought coming, but it is the thought of illumination. It's a higher aspect of the mind. And normally our thinking process has to do with using the faculties of reason, memory, and intellect. So I was in tune with this higher octave, which we call the buddhi, or the illumined mind. But I also had to rehabilitate the ability to use reason, you know, be able to remember concepts and to use all the processes of the intellect, both in terms of problem solving and in terms of creating models and being able to language things so that people can understand it. Gotcha. You know, just trying to wrap my mind around that. I'm just. It's still. It's just like, wow. So I keep. I keep thinking it's like coming back to that state, you know, that humanness or humanistic state of analysis, comparison, all these. And I'm not saying that was you, but I just. It's got to be so. Opposite in the other way of being, other way of thinking that it just. I want to say foreign, but it seems like it's almost unrelatable. Well, the issue is that in Integral Meditation, we don't want you to simply be a spiritual being and hang out in bliss and inspired discourse and talk about God. We want you to be able to function as a human being. We want you to be fully human and fully spiritual. That is unique, right? Because let me ask you, so was this something that you then discovered, refined, or was this something that you were taught, the Integral Meditation? Well, when I initially was empowered, the outline of our first intermediate course, which we called the Mudra Ashram master course in meditation. I got that from my supervising initiate, the teacher that was teaching me. And then we since developed additional courses is, for example, the advanced course in meditation. And then during. During the 2000s, the aughts developed a beginning course called the introduction to meditation program for people who haven't meditated before. So I often say that, you know, for some people, they have no problem jumping up onto the fire escape and climbing up to the roof. Right. Other people need the ladder to come all the way down. So that's meditation program. So we have levels. Yeah, I love that. So you're meeting people where they are. And. And that's beautiful. That is absolutely beautiful. And again, thank you for. For taking the time to explain everything, because even though I would say that the vast majority of our audience would happen to be the people that have the experience in meditation or have had some sort of awakening or journey, enlightenment, there are some that are just starting. And as you know, there are times where this takes a sharp left turn and you just go, okay, I'm not done yet. Well, you're never done, but you know what I mean? That's like, okay, I've got to go back and relearn this. Because it's not. There's something that's triggering some sort of response that I haven't worked through yet. And, yeah, this is. And I know I'm. I'm probably thinking or saying this because I'm thinking of myself, but I think that I'm not alone in this. Again, thank you. Appreciate it. Let me just weigh in on what you said there. So we talk about that. There are four types of karma. So karma is the stuff that's in the darkened area of your mind, what we call the unconscious mind. So there's some karma that is behind this higher self inside you, which we call the soul, which dwells in the superconscious mind. There's karma. That is your potential. That's behind your. The forms that the soul occupies in the superconscious mind. There's karma behind the spirit that connects you with its source. And then there's karma, which is embedded in your life. And so many people, even though they meditate, they find I have these recurrent patterns that are coming up. I don't know what this is. And these are aspects of what we call your problem or destiny, karma. And what happens is that as you learn to work with these, you accelerate the process of working them through, and then eventually they disappear. So a person Has a addiction to cigarettes. And for whatever reason, you know, they, it's just out of their control. They can't do it. They unlock the key and all of a sudden the desire for smoking cigarettes disappears. It's gone. That's what happens when you resolve these things and over the course of living your life and as you are able to work with these things, and we teach ways to work with these things, you can accelerate the process of working them out and finishing them so they don't keep coming back. That is, that's a huge thing to be able to work on and to be able to tackle really when, when you think about it. Because that's quite a gift to learn how to do that, in my opinion. I really think that it is because there's so many people and my, my circle and other people's circle that, and I hear regularly or I can even overhear conversations where somebody said, well, that just triggers me. That's, that's a triggering mechanism for me. Whenever that happens with that, I get triggered and I'm like, huh, that's interesting. So I really like that. You know, again, a little curiosity type of question as it relates to the coursework. So do you offer something through the coursework that you keep going up to the point where you can be an instructor in this type of meditation? Yes. So people will typically take the intermediate class that they've never meditated before. They will take the introduction to meditation program, take one of our formats for a intermediate course. So we have the in person course. Or right now they get to study with me. I have, I'm training some teachers right now. And sometimes and at some point they will get brave enough to actually teach. Yeah. And then there's an online version of. For people who can't come to a regular schedule, it's called the accelerated meditation program. Then they go on and take the advanced course in meditation where we actually take them up and we show you all those higher levels of the condition continuum up to the seventh transcendental path, that pole star of our spiritual lives. That's called the Infinite consciousness. Or in the east they call it Satchit Ananda. And then they, they do their transformational work. So I want to just back up here a little bit and give a little context for this. So the first stage of meditation is what we call achieving mindfulness. This is when you collect your attention and you're here in the present time. The second stage is you begin to contemplate what we call the focal points along what we call the thread of consciousness. And this trains you how to focus your mind, to contemplate, to get. Understand the content that's there, to get a sense about what this really is, becoming one with it. And this is some of the material we cover in the introduction to meditation program. In the intermediate course, we teach you the next step, which is awakening the three, what we call the three immortal principles. So this is what we call the attention principle. So this is your intentional consciousness. And people use this all the time. So when you say, I'm making up my mind, I'm going to do this, or when you really get a sense, I'm going to commune with this person spiritually. You're giving. You're giving suggestion to other people, to your mind. You're thinking very, very deeply about a spiritual concept. You're listening to intuition. You're using your intuition to send the light, what we call an attunement, or you're using it to activate a transformational mantra. We use this all the time in the background. But when you learn to actually awaken it, you experience exactly what it is. And then you learn how to travel as the attentional principle through the superconscious mind. The next immortal principle that we awaken is what's called the spirit. And this is this loving, pure, holy part of ourselves that, you know, most people, if you overcome a lot of the, you know, the reactionary stuff, the right. The negative stuff, all the, all the, you know, all the negative egoic stuff, you come into this place where you just spontaneously feel love, and this is your spirit. And then there's what we call your higher self or the soul, which is, you might say, that's like your self in the superconscious mind. Okay. And so when we train people, we look to see which ensouling entity, which part of you is your cutting edge of growth. So we want to start you where you are. We don't want to skip you ahead going up into the cosmic, or we don't take you up in the super cosmic. And we don't want to take you up into the trans and the altitude. Yes, yeah. But we start you where you are and we move you step by step. So the next stage is learning to work on yourself. So we talk about methods to work with the issues in your mind, issues to, you know, that prawl up karma. We talk about to work with you to learn to empower yourself, to tap into your higher nature, your higher potentials. Everyone has innate genius, everyone has innate gifts. And so as you able to open this up, you're able to bring these forward. And then the last piece is transformation. So in our intermediate courses, we give you a way to pull down this. We call this supreme Spirit, the supreme light that actually acts like a magnifying glass. Have you ever taken a magnifying glass and focused it so it actually burns? Well, what it does is it burns the karma behind the soul. And then the soul begins to. To move. And that's the last state. So people move from wherever they are. They start in the subtle, they move through that planetary transplant cosmic. They finish the super cosmic. They begin to open one of the transcendental paths. And then they come up onto the bridge path, which is the seventh stage of spirituality. And they open a form which we call the form of the disciple. And at that level they have the option to say, well, I don't want to teach, I just want to go on to liberation or want to teach at that level. We train them, they become empowered. They can teach our intermediate class, they go on the next stage, which is beyond what we call the light of liberation from birth and death. This is. This is the stage when you become fully liberated. You don't have to be reborn in any world. And then you reach the stage we call the Mahatma. And that level, they're trained and they are able to teach the advanced course in meditation. Okay. Okay. So I'm going to do probably myself and you a favor. I'll stop asking more and more questions. But that just happens to me. I'm naturally curious about those things and I want to know. I'm going to approach our time together as if somebody from the street has an opportunity to speak with you for the first time and ask those questions. Right. So I think it's important to come at it that way. But I do have a number of questions that I want to ask you. So I think it's important to get to some of those too. Because I know that again, in the research that I was doing, there was a talk about Kundalini Syndrome. Right. And I. You've been working with Kundalini syndrome since 2006, and that people's who awakening opened something they really couldn't close or ground. Is. Is that my understanding? Is that correct? That's correct. Okay, so then what does that look like when someone walks through your door like that? And what do you think is the. The missing component that a lot of other teachers aren't applying to help them? Really? Okay, well, let's talk about what the Kundalini is. Okay. So there are really three ways we can drive meditation. I can drive meditation by focusing my attention. I can drive meditation by, you know, thinking about an idea, reflecting deeply upon an idea. Like you're studying scriptures or you're studying, you know, a profound spiritual book and you're meditating on that. The third way is we can use energy. So there is a dormant energy within the mind that allows us to use our whole mind. Now, normally, you would not want to awaken this beyond your cutting edge of spirituality because you, at that level, you are under control. So let's say your soul dwells in the planetary realm. I would not want to awaken that energy beyond your soul because when you bring it beyond that level, it's out of your control. Space is out of the tube at that point. Right, right, right. So in many traditions, they don't simply stop it there, but they'll bring it up into the cosmic realm. So they awaken people to a center we call cosmic consciousness. Or they might bring it all the way up into a super cosmic path, in which case that energy is out of a person's control. And unless the teacher, who is either training them in a technique to awaken at that level, or is sending a energy, what we call shaktipat, an energy of. An energy of attunement that allows them to actually bring this energy up unless they bring it back down. People are caught up in this altered state of consciousness. Now, it's extremely blissful. It's ecstatic. But you can't function at that level. And then sometimes the kundalini gets fixed up there and you start having these strange pains. And, you know, you have problems thinking. You can't focus, you can't concentrate, you can't discharge the duties of your job. You. You have problems relating to your family. Wow. And so sometimes if a person hasn't created what we call an imbalance. So if you think about an abacus, okay, I have my prop, so think about it. That normally you want to have everything aligned. Every level of being needs to be aligned. But sometimes people do some type of a transformation and they move one level out, they move it further, and they move it further. And at a certain point, there's a shift that takes place energetically. And so the kundalini becomes fixed there. They re identify with that center, and suddenly they no longer are in touch with their regular personality. And they become a. I want to say they become a spiritual center of bliss and communication, but they're not in touch with their human personality anymore. And sometimes it acts. If you stay in these states for long periods of time, it actually causes your ability to function, the personality, it causes it to deteriorate. So. Well, I guess that would make sense because like anything, if it's not used or utilized, it atrophies, right? Yes. So that. That does make sense. Okay, so Kundalini syndrome, then, is when we're talking about essentially getting stuck in one of those elevated states where you're not prepared or equipped to integrate that state in your daily life. Is that. Yes, that's okay. Okay, cool. So I got it. I understood that. All right, so you've been writing poetry since 1963, and you were listed in who's who in Poetry, and you published volumes of mystical verse spanning five decades. And most people who know your work know the meditation teacher, right? They don't know the poet. What does the poetry do? The. That the teaching can't. Well, poetry, I want to say, is a mystical language. It's a way of teaching through symbolic language, through metaphors, images that you can't capture in the linear. Want to say, the more intellectualized languaging that comes with teaching. And so when I was becoming a poet, expressing my poetic gift, if a person would have a birthday, I would write a poem for them. If they were leaving the company I was working from, I would write them a poem. If they lost someone, I would write them a poem. Or if I went out and I saw a little, you know, a little tableau in nature, and I say, oh, can write a poem about it? And so just everything became a trigger to bring out a poem. And so literally probably hundreds and hundreds of poems were generated. I don't do write a lot of poetry now, you know, for certain occasions I do. But that almost sounds like music, right? Because where music comes in, where words stop, but in poetry, there's symbolism that are. That's utilized for those words. So it's not your standard language necessarily. Even though it is. You're not making these abstract or nonsensical words. But does that make sense what I'm saying? That's what came to mind. It's where that. That can be explained through normal dialogue or conversation ceases, and then it's the next step. Yeah, it's. It's a higher order. It's a higher order of communication. Okay, so, okay, it's. It's a. It's like a language which comes from the spiritual heart. It's like a language that comes from the soul versus, you know, our structured way of communicating, which typically uses the intellect. So we have Certain rules of grammar, etc. Correct. Okay, good, Good, George, I'm getting you. I like this. I like this quite a bit. Of course, I did enjoy our pre show conversation too. So that would be a lie if I said this was all somewhat new. That's why you're on the show, because I found it very interesting. So this is something that some people may or may not know about you and that's. You have a personal history with cultic groups from your own early spiritual training. And you've written an entire book about cults, religions and terrorism. Yeah. And most people have been hurt by a spiritual community either go silent or go angry. You went and built an entire recovery program. What drove that decision? Well, I see there are three levels in something. You have an experience and, you know, you can't really understand it. Then you try to understand it and you try to work out whatever was, however you were heard or wherever you were, diminished. And then the third part is, then you say, okay, I have worked this through. How can I help other people work this through? And so the coaching program came about as a result of deeply thinking about, well, what are the things that I went through, you know, what are the layers I had to release before I was free from the programming of the cultic group? And, you know, what were the factors that kept me aligned with that cultic group? And then I created a coaching program for that. That's wonderful. Yeah. And I think that this is just my opinion. I think that people that actually have gone through those situations, those experiences, seem to be the best equipped to handle or help coach and get somebody through those challenges that they're experiencing. Again, that's my opinion. I'm sure there's always going to be an exception to that rule, but it just makes sense. Right. Because it'd be the equivalent of somebody coaching a basketball to a professional basketball team that's never played basketball in their entire life. Yeah, but I can coach you, but you don't know what I've experienced and what I'm going through. And you really did understand and do understand. So there's empathy that goes along with that as well as the tools that could be utilized to help get through and heal. Yeah, I like that. I'm sorry, I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but that's what's coming to mind that's coming into my head with that. Yeah. 73 paths. You describe 73 distinct spiritual paths that are active in human consciousness right now. And for most people, the spiritual world is already overwhelming Just trying to pick one. How do you hold that much territory in your mind all at once? And what does it feel like to see all of it simultaneously? Okay, well, let's talk about where those 73 paths are. So when you're making your journey through the subtle, you're on your particular pathway back to source, the planetary, and you go back to source at that level. And then the transplantary, you wake in an essence that we call the monad, and you go back to source, you go into the cosmic, you wake in a higher essence we call the astral soul, you go back to source, and then in the super cosmic, each of us dwell in one of these 73 paths. So you have 30 people in a room, you may have people that are on 30 different paths. Their super cosmic soul, as we call it, dwells on one of these paths. And so when you are doing your work at the level the super cosmic, you're simply seeing what's on your inner horizon. So if you are, let's say that you're on a Sufi path, you're going to see the form of the divine that they see in the Sufi path. If you're on a Shiva path, you're going to see some form of Shiva, right? Or if you're on a Vishnu path, you're going to see some form of Vishnu, you know, Krishna or Rama. If you're on a Sikh path, you're going to see the, you know, the representation of the five worlds. So when people are on this particular path, they don't see the other paths. Gotcha. They don't see the other familiar way. The way you see the other paths is when you're up in the transcendental sphere, up on the bridge path. From that standpoint, you can see the entire super cosmic sphere laid out before you, and you can see all those 73 different paths. And just so you know that the supreme being who manifest these paths is not done yet. So he's got a few more to go before he winds up this, this great age. So they're 96 all together. So we're most of the way there. We got 73, 96. Outstanding, outstanding. I've got two more questions for you before we get to the musical questions, if that's okay. Absolutely. Okay. So you describe something you call the pseudo personality, which a state that can develop in people doing certain spiritual practices where they seem always happy, always loving, always ready to teach. But it's actually a disassociated state anchored in a higher identity rather than the genuine transformation. So how does a listener tell the difference between someone who has genuinely arrived somewhere and someone who's playing or performing the arrival? Well, you're talking now about. We call spiritual imbalance. This is when, remember our abacus. And you're moving some spiritual lessons off the. What we call the axis of being. And so at the first level, it's kind of like a honeymoon stage. You know, I'm feeling good, blissful state. Stay here all day. And then you go a little further and you start spacing out. You know, you say, oh, you start spacing out. And then further along the path, typically you start having. You start processing really deep stuff. You might have a Kundalini syndrome. And when you get through that stormy area, you awaken as that spiritual essence and your entire personality shifts. So you're no longer identified as a human being anymore. You become identified with this spiritual essence. So if we're working with cosmic consciousness, you become identified with cosmic consciousness. So you're no longer functioning as a human being. You're simply expressing this higher nature. So I was just going to ask you, using that example, and I'm sorry to interrupt. I'll forget it otherwise. So when you're talking about that cosmic consciousness, right, you're. But you're not talking about being like a disassociated personality or being like that. You're a cosmic being then, are you? Okay, so when we talk about cosmic consciousness, we're talking about a center that we call in our tradition, a nucleus of identity. So a teacher trains you to focus on cosmic consciousness as you unfold it. Eventually it becomes the core of your identity and you dissociate from the ego, which is the part of you that is embedded in human life, yourself, which is the part of you that governs your life. And even from your soul, which is the part of you that is bringing forward its gifts in human life. And you become identified with cosmic consciousness. Now, if you continue that track, eventually when you finish that, then you become. You can become a teacher at that level, what we call the yogi preceptor, for example, okay, but this pseudo personality is that you recognize that this person isn't presenting to me as their genuine human life. I don't sense their self. I don't even sense the soul. I sense something else. It's very blissful and it's very happy, but it seems somehow it's artificial. And so that's when you know that someone has gone to those levels. I mean, these are very blissful ecstatic states. And, you know, so I'M not going to denigrate them. I mean, some people want to do that. We just don't recommend it in Integral Meditation. But again, you know that. And when you see a person who's in a cultic group, you see people that are identified with this higher center, they're just a little too happy, and they seem to be a purveyor of some spiritual message. And, you know, they don't. They're not really living their own lives anymore. They're doing something else. So. Well, I could see where it would be difficult for someone. But, you know, differentiating between the two, especially early on, I'm wondering when you get to that level, let's. That you're. You're essentially talking, and I'll use this term even though you didn't. A cosmic being. So you're no longer who you are on any. On any level. There's no representation of you any longer. You're this other being. So is. Is that. But that's different than channeling, though, isn't it? Or is it the same? Okay, so let's think about what channeling is. I want to clarify that first. Now, channeling is typically a gift that people develop when they move through the third band of the planetary realm. We call it the psychic realm. I wrote a book about it called the psychic Realm. So anybody who's interested, you can look that book up, all right? And at that level, one of the. You have a gift. You awaken this throat center. And there are two different ways that you can do channeling. You can tune into your own soul where you're able to give inspired discourse, or what they call ni satsang, or you can basically give the microphone to some other entity and they speak through you. And typically, when people talk about channeling, they're talking about that second level. Now, when we talk about cosmic consciousness, what's happening is that your attention, which is normally in the waking state of consciousness, has traveled through the bands of the conscious mind, subconscious mind, meta conscious mind. You move through the subtle and the planetary realm, and then you have it focused with this center that's in the cosmic realm. And that's what we're talking about, this cosmic consciousness. And so in Vedanta, for example, they talk about atman, you know, this. This essence inside of you. And they say that. That ultimately, as you begin to dissolve the veils of illusion, eventually you become one with this. This Brahman, this universal being, which is in the Hindu tradition, I guess, represents, you know, their form of God. So in these traditions, they have you focus on this cosmic consciousness nucleus, this atman, and then that's where they begin to function from. They live their lives from that level. Okay. Yeah. Okay, so last question before we get on to the musical questions. And I'm wondering if you could say just one thing to spiritual seeker. Right. If you could say one thing to that person who's genuinely hungry, genuinely looking for, seeking, and therefore genuinely vulnerable. Yes. What would it be? What's the thing that most seekers don't know that you wish that they did before they started? Well, the first thing is that you need to understand what you're getting yourself into. Okay, so you got the guru, the guru says, oh, my child, this is the supreme path, the highest path. Meditate in this way, use this mantra, repeat it 300,000 times, and you will become enlightened. Right. And they say, oh, that sounds great. And they do it. And they don't know where the heck they are. They don't really know what they're doing, but they just know I'm doing this and feels blissful, feels good. But they don't understand, you know, what is the whole work that you're supposed behind it. Right, right. So you need to have an understanding. So that's one of the reasons in our tradition why we start you out with the continuum, so you can understand where all these things lay, where all these different paths are. And, you know, hopefully if you like that particular approach, then you're going to start to work at your cutting edge of spirituality. I like to use the analogy is that if you're in the fourth grade, I mean, you can go on and I suppose you can learn integral calculus, but might be a little hard without a foundation. It's probably more important that you learn addition and subtraction. So we say, let's start at your cutting edge. Let's get to know your self. Let's get to know your soul, let's get to know your spirit, and let's start developing you where you are, at your cutting edge, not jumping ahead. We're going to, we're going to visit them, you're going to get there. But let's not try and do college level work when we're in the fourth grade. Right, right. Set yourself up for some disappointment there. Well, setting yourself up for some blissful and ecstatic experiences that you don't really know what you're getting into. That's. That's more accurate. Yeah. But you know, that being said, having an understanding of the continuum, understanding where these paths lay, you know, will give you some understanding. So there may be some reason why you feel called to develop yourself on a Tibetan Buddhist path. And, you know, that's perfectly fine and good if that's what, you know, we're called to do. Guidance is telling you to do well, then, you know, do it. Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Now we're going to move along to the musical questions. And, you know, as anyone could tell you that's ever listened to the podcast before, this is a section where I get to ask you, the guest, some musical questions. Are you ready for those? I am. Awesome. What was the first song that you can recall that you fell in love with from the radio? That was Surfer girl with the Beach Boys. Nice, nice. You're the first person that brought that up. I've never heard that one. Outstanding. Now, did your family have a song that everyone would belt out on road trips or did you go on road trips or something like that as a family? And if not, it could be later in life with buddies or what have you? Well, again, I have disclosed that I grew up in an alcoholic family. Yep. Dysfunctional. So we had a soundtrack in our family, and it was records that would play over and over again. Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong. And so, you know, that was kind of the soundtrack of my early life because my mother would pass out and the record would play over, over again. Louis Arsenal. Hello. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. So you learned to dislike those songs after a while, I would imagine. No, I, I, I love them. They're great. Do you really? That's awesome. That's awesome. Frank Sinatra. They're great. Just genius, you know, musical geniuses. The way that Louis Armstrong could play the trumpet. Oh, my God. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. So I have a, on a side note, I have a, a very close friend of mine, John Vincent. He's in the Chicagoland area, who is famous and I, it's not an exaggeration to say world famous for his Sinatra. I hate to even say impersonation, but I guess it would be because he sounds very much like Frank Sinatra. Tom Driessen, who was a close friend to Frank Sinatra, had John on some of his shows in Vegas. He said he was that good. So, anyway, side note and a plug for John Vincent. So what was your favorite song that you and your friends would belt out your senior year of high school? Well, in my senior high school, this was around the period when I went up to the Summer of Love. So I was immersed in all the incredible music. Jimi Hendrix I was just gonna say the Woodstock era. Yeah. Opposite Coast. Jefferson Airplane, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Dose, the Doors. So I. You know, I mean, it was just the period in which there's such fire music. Just so many inspired people. So. So a lot of them, you know, I still remember, and sometimes I'll get on YouTube today and I'll just remember some of those songs. And I. You know, as a. As a young man, I used to have a lot of record albums. Bob Dylan, I had Donovan, I had Cat Stevens, and just. Yeah, yeah. So I. You know, so I. I really was very immersed in music, at least during my teenage years. And I think that's a period when a lot of people really connect with their signature music, the music of their era, of their generation. That's their soul at that time, too. I think that that's. They look for inspiration and different things like that from. From the. Those songs. Speaking of that, do you have a song that gets the positive juices flowing? Well, I think that. I think that a lot of. A lot of songs that uplift me, like, for example, beautiful Chance, I think about some of the chants that Dava Premal does, or Sanatam Kaur. Okay. Or Krishna Das, you know, these inspiring chants that really just uplift the mind in these very serene and peaceful places of mind. So these are the things that, you know, if I want to lift my mood, I can turn on something like that. That's wonderful. And as someone that I. I would say she's a. She's a new friend. Her name is Michelle Blood, Originally from Australia. Are you familiar with who Michelle is? Okay. So Michelle incorporates not only the lyrical expression within the music. So almost like we're talking about the chance in her songs in this very specific words and the very specific frequencies that accompany those. Those words that, when they're combined, accelerate. It could be healing. It could be a number of different things. And it's been quite successful for a number of people. And. And that's. I don't know what brought that to mind, but I think it was the chance and what that does and the. The beauty in some of that music. That's almost solfeggio, but it's not because it does that. What we're talking about, that vibrational frequency that will elevate or repair or heal, and it's just a thing of beauty. It really is. I'll skip ahead to my favorite question, and that is sometimes there are songs you hear that ring so true that they stop you in your tracks. The song's lyrics sound as though they were written specifically for you or by you. What's that song for you? I think the song that really touched me as I was growing up was Bob Dylan, Sad Eyed lady of the Lowlands. And he was just talking about stuff, but I don't know, I just felt that right in the depth of my soul. Sad eyed load Sad Eyed lady of the Lowlands by Bob Dylan. You know what? I'm gonna. It's kind of like the last one. I'm gonna ask you one more question because I think with your background, this might be pretty epic. And it's. What's a song that you believe could change the way people think about the world around them positively if they just listen to the lyrics. Trying to think about who did this. Come on, people now Smile on your brother get together Try to love one another Yep. Yeah, and I don't. I'm trying to remember the name of the group that did that. I have it going in my head right now. I'll find it. It'll be on your playlist. So don't you want to worry. I'll definitely have that for you. I will definitely get that. Well, it's just about time to cue the music for today's episode, but don't forget to, like, comment and subscribe to the Drop the Needle podcast to stay up to date on our latest episodes. I'd also like to take a moment to thank everyone again for tuning in today, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Drop the Needle podcast. I would also like to thank our very special guests, George Boyd. If do you have anything that's going on right now that you want people to be aware of, any new classes or programs or anything like that? Anybody who's interested, I ask them to come to my website. They go to Contact Us page. And at the top of that page there's a little box that says Spiritual Discovery Session. I want you to go ahead and just click that box, say what you're interested in, and we'll talk and see if the July class will be right for you. Maybe you're starting. Maybe we want to start you with the introduction meditation program. Maybe you want to go to intermediate. Maybe you want a custom program. Maybe you need coaching of some type. So we need to talk. So mudrasham.comm u d R A S H R A M It's like the two. Like the word mudra and ashram one way, pronounced mudra ashram.com and then you go to the Contact Us and you'll find the Spiritual Discovery session. Just tell what you're interested in. I'll be happy to talk to you and see if what we offer resonates with you. You just go and sign up on the website, and it's all laid out there for you. Accelerated meditation program, same thing. You can do it online. Excellent. And I'll make sure that I put all of that information in the show notes, so don't worry about that. All right, My drop the needle posse. Like Billy Joel says, from the highs to the lows to the end of the show, this is the end of our show. Until next time, this is Jamal Stott wishing you infinite health, happiness, and the perfect playlist for your life. Thank you again for being the best part of us. Catch you next time.