Transcription
Rob: Maybe -- let's put it like this -- even if you just go, "Everything is empty," even beyond the Unfabricated, "Everything is empty, and therefore everything is equally sacred." Let's say you get there. That's very, very -- that's not to be sniffed at. [laughter] Or whatever the words are. But still, it's like, maybe there's something -- let's say in the soul, or in the psyche, or in some people's soul and psyche -- that wants more.
And what is that more? It's a more creative participation in a kind of endlessness, endless creation and discovery of different kinds of sacredness, and different faces of sacredness, different theophanies. What happens to the eros, with the wanting more, and with the creation that comes out of that, and the -- what's the word? -- the involvement of the imagination and the soul's creative faculty that way? What happens to that if just everything's equally sacred, there's nothing more to do? That has nothing to engage. It has nothing to pour into. It has nothing to open up.
Lila: There's no movement.
Rob: There's no movement, and there's no further creativity on that level. So the kind of sacredness that opens up from the imaginal to me is different. It's not a kind of universal; they're particulars. And there's endless creativity and endless opening and endless discovery. It was maybe that thing -- which I didn't have the concepts for, I didn't have the words for. It's almost like that had to come -- there was a sense that something wasn't ...
Lila: You had the sense.
Rob: Yeah. Well, it also emerged slowly. And I think a turning point for me was reading James Hillman. Someone gave me that -- do you know this book? We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy -- And the World's Getting Worse. It's a really good book of a dialogue between him and ... his name escapes me right now [Michael Ventura]. Super, super brilliant book, very fiery and super passionately intelligent.
Lila: Like the title ...
Rob: And very critical, critical of modern culture and modern psychotherapy and all that. So I read that, thought it was absolutely brilliant. And it also pained me that there was, at that time, not much social engagement in the Dharma. It was all about letting go and being peaceful. It's like [claps hands], the climate is going to pot, and it's like ... what? You know? So it seemed to address some of that. But it didn't really have anything imaginal in it, or if it was there, I didn't pick it up. I just picked up more this very intelligent political sort of critique.
But I started reading other books of his, and at some point, something just ... [snaps fingers]. I just found him such a beautiful writer, and I was just ready at that time. Maybe it was, for me, all the emptiness thing -- which I don't think everyone needs to do all that for the imaginal, but for me, I was at a point where it could be incorporated into a world view and open it up further because of the emptiness thing. He wrote so beautifully, and it just made sense. And it made sense of a lot of things in my soul, which kind of didn't fit so well in the typical Dharma archetypes that were operating, like being peaceful, letting go, not being complicated, being simple, being not so artistic.
Lila: Not so creative.
Rob: Yeah. All this stuff that was, for me, really important. And yeah, there is someone who spews fire from the mouth. I have that! So it's like, that has no place in a certain Dharma, you know?
Lila: In a certain Dharma, or in a certain interpretation of the Dharma.
Rob: Yeah. It has no place in ... It seemed to me, in my process, it seemed to me at that time that in the Dharma world that I was exposed to, the wider Dharma world, especially Insight Meditation, that the range of archetypes that were operating, without even realizing that they were archetypes, were actually pretty limited. There was very little of this fire. There was very little place for ...
Lila: Dragons! [laughs]
Rob: Dragons, anger, creativity, the struggle of the artist, all this stuff. What Hillman opened up for me was just this kind of archetypal perspective on what was going on. And of course feeling like, "Oh, yeah, all these parts of me don't really fit either." Of course I was at the centre of a certain Dharma, resident teacher at Gaia House and all that, right in the middle of this, and feeling a real -- all this stuff was emerging. I was really experimenting a lot. And Hillman doesn't talk a lot about how to practise. I had to develop, again, experiment on my own with developing practices.
Lila: Did you contact him?
Rob: No, I thought about it, but I never did. Then I found out -- I was actually teaching a day-long, and I mentioned him, and someone said, "Who's that?" I started saying, and then someone else said, "Oh, he's dead. He died." So I was like, "Oh." By that point, he was such a soul-figure for me. He died before I could, but I'm hugely grateful to him. He sort of sparked something. But I had to explore it for myself, and it's quite different now from his thing.
But anyway, there was a lot that seemed to me, at that point in my process, that was archetypally constrained in the Dharma world, but without even that framework to understand it -- like, "It's good to be peaceful. It's good to be simple. It's good to just let go," like you're supposed to live somehow without desire. The more, going into all this, just -- it didn't really make sense, you know? A lot of things.
Lila: It's not in all the Dharma communities.
Rob: No, no, no.
Lila: Coming from Israel, it's actually different. We have a different mix.
Rob: I completely believe you, yeah.
Lila: But where you were ...
Rob: Yeah, maybe where I was. Let me make it more -- I take responsibility: I have a mind that picks up on differences and things that don't fit, and discerns between this and this. So I don't have a mind that goes, "Isn't it all wonderful? Isn't it all just one? We're all saying the same thing." And that's great. It's like, I have a mind that really gets into differences and discernments and discriminations. And that brings a certain agitation. But it's a certain way intelligence and wisdom operate. So that's my mind. I saw differences, and I saw discernments that I wanted to make. And the more I put something in there, it's like priming -- something gets really ... Sorry, go ahead.
Lila: Yeah, no, it also sounds like you saw into the jail of that and you wanted to break free.
Rob: That was how I felt it at the time. Now I'm on camera. [laughter] I don't want to say that was an objective statement of what the Dharma world is. But that's how I felt at the time. And I was living at Gaia House, in this room where we [Rob and Lila] had the interviews -- I had one little room. I'm in the middle of this place. I'm on a completely different page of exploration and mindset, and things are opening up.
Lila: I remember we met for an interview a few years ago and you shared that as well.
Rob: Did I? Okay. And it was hard. It was really hard. I was also writing the emptiness book. It was a very solitary time, you know? So I really felt in the middle of this kind of ideational jail and sort of behavioural jail. And something was really pushing, breaking down the walls. And it was hard. It was tremendously exciting as well. It's like, all these discoveries, and something suddenly just -- I can't think of other examples, but maybe getting into the Dharma in the first place. Reading Hillman, it's just like, "Boom!" [exploding motion] One book, actually, Re-Visioning Psychology. I read it on a retreat, I think three times, and I would read every section twice, and at the end I'd start [again]. It changed my whole thinking.
And then I really started, like I said, exploring and developing ways of practice, and eventually developing different ways of thinking about it. But yeah, it was hard in that position. I would go and teach day-longs, and people were, "You're a heretic. You need to be burnt at the stake." But not joking! Like, really intense and unpleasant. People would say, "You're a dangerous man. This is bonkers, and you're a dangerous man." It was really unpleasant. And then I got ill anyway.
Lila: What were you teaching at these day-longs?
Rob: I was starting to teach imaginal stuff. [9:39] Some people loved it. It was like the parting of the Red Sea -- these people, "Thank goodness you're saying this! It makes sense!" It was great, there was all this passion. And other people like, "This is terrible." It was hard. It was really hard.
Lila: You took the fire.
Rob: I had to be very fireful and very strong. And sometimes, going to Dharma talks, I had to really kind of [holds hand up in a centring motion], "Whew. Okay. I know these people are not -- some people are really not going to like this, and it's going to be uncomfortable." And I can feel it when I'm sitting there, you know? The way people are looking or the vibe in the hall. And it really affects me. But it was like, I really had to kind of align with the sense of the angels that wanted that to happen. So it was tricky.
Now, since I've been ill, partly because I don't have energy and the capacity, now people need to -- "If you're coming to this retreat, this is what you want to be doing." I don't want to be dealing with anyone -- partly because it's not going to be helpful for them, or the other people. I personally don't have the energy any more to do that. It took so much energy to hold -- like, speak something in that kind of ...
Lila: Wow. You had a role there.
Rob: It felt ... let's say, that was the image I had, yeah. Let's put it that way. That was the imaginal.
Lila: And you took the risk.
Rob: I took the risk, yeah, and paid the cost, I think. I paid some of the cost. But it was really something about Hillman, and then really experimenting. Something just kind of ignited with the whole thing. And then, at some point during this, after I'd finished my book -- which was a completely crazy process writing the book, and I really needed the angels' help with that, boy! Part of the reason it was difficult -- and I've said this in talks, as well, somewhere -- I had gone beyond that material, and I was really on fire with the imaginal. It takes so long to write a book like that, and really write it trying to be clear and precise.
Lila: And your heart was different, in a different place.
Rob: It was in a different place with what I wanted to explore and share. And I wanted to write much more poetically. Anyway, it was hard. So I really took the process imaginally and had the help from the angels. What I wanted to say was, after I finished the book, then I could kind of give myself to the imaginal. And at that point, Catherine and I started meeting. We had a friendship kind of up and down over the years, and we were not so close, but we started meeting, just to kind of clear up some stuff between us that was a bit obscuring the field. I think I was a bit 'out there' when I was writing the book. It was a very solitary, pressured, intense time.
Lila: 'Out there'?
Rob: Out there, kind of a bit nuts. [laughter]
Lila: Again!
Rob: Did I say that? I see a pattern, I think. [laughter] But actually -- I said this to Catherine; I remember going to her and saying, "I did an experiment writing the book. It was almost as if it was inhuman. I was living not as a human being. I was living on another level." And it was amazing, and it really took a cost. It really had a cost. And I got ill not long after that. So I don't know, you know. But I remember saying to Catherine, "I did an experiment, and it got a little extreme in terms of almost not taking care of the human needs, and kind of going into this other thing." But it was a conscious decision.
Lila: You know, this book, I hear the cost. I read and re-read and re-read -- this book is an encyclopedia.
Rob: Yeah. [laughs]
Lila: And just a small praise -- there are so many remarks: it's such an important thing. Thank you so much for doing this.
Rob: Thank you.
Lila: I know you had no choice ...
Rob: Well, actually, I did. I really did.
Lila: It doesn't sound like it!
Rob: People were asking me for a long time, and I didn't want to because I knew how much work it would be. And someone said to me, "Here are some transcriptions of your talks. You could just do this." And I read them, and I was like, "How do people even understand anything I'm saying? It doesn't make any sense."
Lila: As I said, you didn't have any choice!
Rob: Then I said, "Okay, I'm going to do it." I started, and it was hard, you know? And I remember saying to Kirsten, "I think I'm going to stop." And she said -- you know Kirsten -- [pointing finger] "You don't even think about it!" [laughter] "What are you doing? You don't stop!" So I was like, "Okay." [laughter] At a certain point, then there was more this sense of, "The angels want it." And I really thought, you know, "I don't think anyone's going to read this."
Lila: Come on!
Rob: I really thought that. And it was more like, somehow the angels were rejoicing that I was doing it. And they were loving me. But it was a crazy time. It was kind of on this angelic level. Kirsten and I were then no longer together shortly after starting, and I was really -- I had a lot of, hours of interviews, intense interviews, and then writing all afternoon, just day after day like this.
Lila: And forgetting about the body?
Rob: Not forgetting, but just not really -- not just the body, but also like a social life and taking care. But like I said, it was a conscious experiment, and I think it was a little extreme. Anyway, that's the story of the book. And the angels came after a little bit. At first there wasn't really a sense of the soul of the book.
Lila: What do you mean, "The angels came"?
Rob: I mean, it was hard, and I really did honestly think -- Kirsten makes fun of me, but I honestly thought, "This is not a book that many people are going to read. It probably won't get published." Well, that's what happened -- the publishers turned it down. I had to self-publish it. So I really thought this. And it was difficult writing. I had moved on. It was very solitary, after long hours doing -- you know, after you do, I don't know, four hours of interviews straight, it's tiring. And then to pick up and start writing for hours -- it's hard, day after day, knowing the publisher would turn it down, thinking "Very few people will want to read this."
Lila: So what was the fire?
Rob: There wasn't a fire. This was the difficult thing.
Lila: This without a fire?! [laughs]
Rob: Wait! After a little while, then I was working on imaginal practice, and so I brought -- it's almost like bringing, the sense of the book started to have, it's like the soul of the book, the image of the book. And with that -- I call them angels, but it's like, imaginal figures would come in relation to the book, and almost like loving me, and kissing my heart, and giving me -- it's moving -- thanking me for writing it. It was like all this existed at a non-human level, so to speak. Humanly, I was on my own. I really knew that the publishers would turn it down, which is what happened.
Lila: Do you know how many people are thankful ...?
Rob: I know now. And that's great, and it's lovely. Still, it will never be a bestseller or whatever. I just want to tell you about the process.
Lila: I just want to pause here and say, do you know how loved you are?
Rob: [laughs] Yeah! I do! I really do, and getting it all has been -- I was going to say "mind-blowing," but heart-blowing, like the amount of love. It's really -- I don't even have the word for it. It was not shocking but -- I don't have the word; maybe I'm getting tired. It's humbling and touching. This doesn't really do it justice. There was so much love, there is so much love, and it's almost an imaginal thing in itself. It becomes imaginal, my illness and my receiving so much love. The whole thing has these other dimensions of soul and grace to it. So I do know, and I didn't before. But suddenly I got this really terrible illness, and there was such an outpouring of love, and boy, it was just, it is just -- 'amazing' is an overused word, but it was amazing.
Lila: Still is.
Rob: Yeah, yeah.
Lila: It's true, because there are so many layers to it. One of them, a huge one, is the book, and the teaching that came through you, and the fact that you said "yes," and you allowed it. You allowed the dragon to be there. In a way, it's like really some kind of mystical knight that is willing ...
Rob: With a 'k'?
Lila: Yeah.
Rob: Yeah. [laughs]
Lila: Willing to face difficulties and hardships and monsters for the others as well. This book, who can write such a thing, and also with everything that you're sharing now? I'm really, really glad that these angels came finally.
Rob: [laughs] I'm glad too. Yeah. Thank you. I'm glad too.
Lila: It's an eye-opener -- you know how many students told me that they're working with the book, and they have their own thing, and I'm teaching from the book so much, and others ...
Rob: That's beautiful. Thank you. It's lovely. And I think I know that, yeah. And then for some people, it's not so much the emptiness stuff -- it's other stuff, teachings in the past, even before the emptiness thing, or the imaginal thing.
[20:27, video transitions forward] And by that point, I was deep into the imaginal. I'd just had all this crazy -- it was finished, the book.
Lila: Again on your own, no one to ...
Rob: The imaginal stuff? Yeah. I was really exploring it. And again, I was in the middle of Gaia House, all this really -- you know how sort of out there some of the stuff is. So all this stuff's going on ...
Lila: Painful experience.
Rob: And not only the experience, but also the ideas, and pushing against the walls of kind of what I saw at the time as the range of what the Dharma was. Anyway. I started meeting with Catherine, but for me, I couldn't come to a good place with her unless I started including some of this imaginal thing in our conversations.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, we battered around a bit, and suddenly -- you'd have to hear her version; this is my version -- suddenly she entered that with me. And then we started working together imaginally and developing things and certain ways of working together with the imaginal. That was a big part of, that was a real sort of womb or crucible. There was a lot of fertility that came out of that as well.
At first, yeah, I was very much on my own, and really feeling like I was kind of in this [gestures with arms and body a tight and constricted space] with something that was huge, and kind of battling people and getting called names and all kinds of stuff. And then making the connection with her, and starting to work with her, and it was just very different then. But that wasn't that long before I got ill. It was -- when did we start? Maybe eight or nine months before I got ill, we started working. But we got really close through the work, and like I said, it was very fertile.
And again, going back to the independence thing, I'm all the time -- you know, stuff happens, and trying different things, and then thinking about, "How does this fit together? What's the implication here? What's the insight? What concepts are needed?" And so stuff got developed, but very much not on my own. But anyway, then I got ill. But it continues. It continued after I got ill. I had to really take a break after the operation, but it picked up.
Lila: It fits in a way that this is one of the fuels and fires that gets you rolling.
Rob: The illness thing?
Lila: No, the imaginal, through the illness.
Rob: Oh, yeah, absolutely, in the sense that -- I gave a talk about this at some point recently, or sometime in the last year -- again, going back to what we said before, it's like, how do I relate to possibly dying soon, and the illness? And I'm so limited now in what I can do and where I can go and things. One part of it is -- going back to what I said before -- is a sense of looking back and not regretting. I feel like I can say I've always, even if I've made mistakes (like being in the therapy with that crazy [person] too long), I thought, I really felt that "I'm doing the right ..." until I thought that I wasn't, and then "This is no longer serving what I really love."
Lila: You don't see it as a mistake right away.
Rob: Yeah, no. I don't either in hindsight. But anyway, that's one thing. Another thing is all the emptiness and the Unfabricated and all that. That's huge, you know. But another thing is this taking all these imaginal teachings, or what I call now 'sensing with soul,' and actually sensing this situation, my possible death, this body, the operation, the cancer, all this love that's coming, my limitations, and sensing that imaginally, if you like, sensing it with soul. So that's a huge part of my practice since I've got ill. And oftentimes there's so much physical weakness or difficulty, it's often a place where I start. It's like, just be with that, and then start to open up in humility with that, and it opens up in soul. It's not that then suddenly I'm -- well, maybe I am cured; I don't know -- but suddenly I'm cured or now it's like I don't feel ill or whatever. But something opens up in terms of the dimensions and the other kinds of healing and beauty and sacredness.
Lila: Can you share one?
Rob: I've said some in talks. Let's see. I can share so many, I'd have to think.
Lila: Maybe a recent one.
Rob: I'd have to give it to you when I'm a little less tired I think.
Lila: Because before you weren't tired, so you weren't thinking. [laughter] Just fire!
Rob: A recent one ...
Lila: Just any. It's fine.
Rob: Okay. Oh, okay. Just the other day -- I don't know if this is the greatest example; it's just what comes up. I've given examples on talks. I'm sitting, just feeling quite rough and not right, everything, physically, and also my mind not really, with that, also feeling -- I don't know if it's this hormonal thing I have now or whatever, but something just kind of jangly and not aligned. Not terrible, like, agonizing pain, but just really not right. I sit, and suddenly this big, black bird lands on my chest. And it starts kind of pecking at my heart centre. It's kind of taking things out from inside, like near the heart. And then it's putting things in -- like when birds make a nest, they put things in. [laughs] And it's kind of scraping things. I actually don't know what it means. I have no idea. But I start to feel much better. Maybe that's not the best example of looking at the illness, but in terms of starting with that.
Lila: It's interesting. The image came out of itself, so to speak ...
Rob: Yeah. But I have to start with the not feeling well, and ...
Lila: With what you call the 'energy body.'
Rob: With the energy body not feeling well, but also with the sense of -- and I talked about it recently in talks -- it's like, humility is an element of the imaginal.
Lila: Beautiful. In what sense?
Rob: Well, in many senses, but in the sense here -- it's quite easy to feel humble in relation to my body. [laughs] It's quite easy to feel, at this point, humble in relation -- I don't know what will happen with my body. I don't know if I'll live or die. I'm not in control. I take all my medicine. I do everything, mostly, that they tell me to do. I put up with all the side effects and everything. But basically, I can't decide if I live or die. I don't have that choice. There's a humility there in that: I'm not in control. And there's a humility in relation to some kind of unknown divinity. I'm not asking -- I mean, I could say I hope that I live, but I'm not in control of that, you know? So in relation to the dukkha that's in the body and the situation, then the humility. And that kind of opens up a space where -- it's one of the ingredients that things can then easily be imaginal. The whole situation can be imaginal.
I mean, one I shared, and it's just what I'm remembering now, one I shared in a talk -- it's similar; not feeling well. This was in my old place. And being with that, and being with the knowledge of the cancer and all that. And the birds are singing outside, and it's like their melodies are sort of filaments of energy in space, and they're kind of weaving my energy body. Their melodies are weaving my body, reweaving it. It's so beautiful. There's a sense of, again, humility. It's a grace. I'm not doing it; they're giving it to me, and I'm open, and I'm feeling that in the energy body. And something happens in the energy body. It feels like a grace. It feels beautiful. The heart opens. Something starts feeling much better in the energy body. I might still have the cancer, so I'm not postulating anything about real healing, physical healing -- maybe, maybe not. But in terms of the soul healing, and also then how I relate to nature, and the sense of the dimensionality of the birds and the music and the body and the connection. Does that make sense?
Lila: It makes sense. It makes soul!
Rob: Yeah, beautiful. So something like that would be an example. That's the other one -- it was a while ago. I'm getting tired, so that was the only one I could think of right now. But yeah, many examples. It's so prevalent, having to deal with my body. I had so much energy before, and now just feeling tired a lot. It's different. I have to get used to it, you know?
Lila: Wow. You have so much energy right now ...
Rob: I'm getting tired! [laughter]
Lila: But still, and before it was even probably ...
Rob: Yeah.
Lila: There's no fear of death?
Rob: No. There's a fear around -- I don't know if 'fear' is the right word. I'm not afraid of what will happen, or that nothing will happen and there's just an extinction. I think sometimes what I get into is, or what I have got into, is in relation to what wants to come through. I remember after I was diagnosed and before my operation, I was hanging out with Yanai and Catherine and Kirsten, at Kirsten's place in the garden. Someone asked me something about it or whatever, and I remember saying, "I don't know if I've done enough." Those were the words. "I don't know if enough of what wanted to come has come, and now it might get cut short." And I was crying, you know? Someone might hear that and say, "Oh, self-worth." It had nothing to do with that. I don't have any problem with self-worth. It was really this sense. That's not a fear so much as a grief thing.
Lila: And now?
Rob: Now ... it's interesting. Now it's a little bit different, because I've actually done a lot since then. [laughter] An enormous amount.
Lila: I would say. How many talks have you done? Hundreds, I think.
Rob: Hundreds. Yeah, I don't know -- a lot. So this is also a blessing and a grace, and being ill as well. I say sometimes, giving those talks, I feel really not well; I don't have the energy. I feel I can't think straight. And I sense into the soul lineage of what we're opening up here with these imaginal teachings. And, you know, there are people in the past -- I mean, people like Hillman or whatever, and other people who I'll never know. There's a tradition. And there will be people in the future. I take my place in that lineage, and I feel supported by it, and I'm giving to that lineage. So I would just -- feeling so crappy, and "Now I have to give this talk, and it's very complicated." [laughs] So I would just kind of pray, really -- put myself in alignment and devotion to that, and then just say, "You've got to help me, and then I'll ..."
Lila: Plunge.
Rob: Just plunge and hope for the best. [laughs] I've done a lot, so it's really a blessing. I feel a bit different about this "Have I done enough?" So no, there's no fear, but I don't want to die. I'd rather live a long time. I feel like there's so much more to explore and discover, especially this imaginal stuff that we're doing. I really would like to see it born well. I feel that it is different than Hillman. It's certainly different than Jung. And it's different than Tibetan tantra. It's its own thing now. It's like a baby -- I want to make sure it's okay enough before I feel okay dying. So there's that kind of thing. Now I think I'm getting tired! [laughs]
