189. Thomas Hübl Interview Transcript

Thomas Hübl Interview

Rick Archer:                     Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer and my guest this week is Thomas Hübl. Welcome, Thomas.

Thomas Hübl:                  Hello, Rick. Good to meet you.

Rick Archer:                     I saw you at SAND in 2011. Saw you give a talk, Science and Non-Duality Conference. Let me read a short bio. Thomas was born in Vienna in 1971. As a 26-year-old medical student, who was also very interested in bodywork and related therapies, he felt a strong inner calling. He took the radical step of following this inner wish, abandoning his studies, (you were a medical student), and spending the next four years in retreat in the Czech Republic. During this time, he did almost nothing except meditating and exploring the spaces of inner consciousness.

Looking back on this time, Thomas speaks of a fundamental opening that took place. After returning to Vienna, he started offering one-on-one sessions. His ability to touch people very deeply and encourage them to take a look at beyond what they usually see soon led to invitations to lead larger workshops. His popularity then grew further and he became known internationally.

Since 2004, Thomas has been active worldwide, organizing talks, workshops, training, tonings, and larger events, such as the popular Celebrate Life Festival or his healing events, which have brought together thousands of Germans with many Israelis to acknowledge, face, and heal the cultural shadow left by the Holocaust. When he is not travelling, he lives in Berlin and Tel Aviv together with his partner, the Israeli artist, Yehudit Sasportas. I hope I pronounced that correctly.

Thomas Hübl:                  Correct.

Rick Archer:                     My first question is about your four years in seclusion or silence. Did you have a formal teacher before that, who instructed you to do such a thing or were you completely on your own and just felt the call to do that and went into that seclusion?

Thomas Hübl:                  I mean, basically, I didn’t have a formal teacher. I looked at different teachings in the time before I went to Czech Republic. I think one influence that was pretty strong was Ken Wilber. I read Ken’s books and it is like an archive of knowledge, basically. So through Ken’s books, I got to know many other things. I think some names that deeply inspired me were definitely Ramana Maharshi, Sri Aurobindo, Ken himself.

Thomas Hübl:                  Then I had a very strong inner guidance at this time, so it was like as if I had my teacher inside and there was a very clear instruction that I somehow got how to go step-by-step and explore inner spaces. So that was a very powerful time for me. I think whenever somebody ask me, “Hey, what are you doing?” because it was very disturbing for my family, I said, “I don’t know, but I feel that I am in a training in a different studying time.” I didn’t know where it’s going and it was also risky because I really love studying medicine, but somehow, this was stronger.

Rick Archer:                     That’s interesting. I think sometimes when you hear about people following inner guidance, it’s just moodiness and just whims that they follow and it doesn’t necessarily leave them anywhere, but I get the sense in your case that it was very legitimate, obviously, and really compelling. You weren’t just fooling around. There was a definite burning direction that you took.

Thomas Hübl:                  Right, right. I think the guidance that I had then is also what the teachings that come through now is it’s a similar place. So it was truly a deep, deep direction that goes in this guidance that was a direction. Now, when I look back, I can see how once that built the other and built the other and built the other. So that was definitely something deeper and merging in myself.

Rick Archer:                     What do you make of that guidance? Do you feel like there’s an actual sort of that were somehow guided by higher beings? Some people talk of guides that direct the course of our lives. Do you feel that it’s just that we’re tapping into a deeper, more intuitive level of our own innate intelligence or our own intelligence, obviously, is not just individual, it’s cosmic intelligence. We’re just tuning into that. Did you give some thoughts to what it was that was actually guiding you?

Thomas Hübl:                  I think it’s for different people in different levels of their development, different things. So it’s not always the same. Some people speak of inner guidance. This is what I would call when the develop through their soul level and then there are other beings that we identify the guidance with. If you go higher in depth, then the guidance more and more comes from what I would call the source or the divine intelligence itself. It’s more and more direct until you breakthrough in a non-dual realization, where actually, you’re walking and the guidance becomes not two. Then it’s not something else or something other or another being or something like this. It’s a deep coherence with the cosmic order, I would say, that we call guidance.

Rick Archer:                     That’s beautifully put. During that four years, did you have someone helping you out, bringing you food and stuff or where you still going out to the store and doing basic things like that, but just spending most of your time meditating?

Thomas Hübl:                  Yes. I was with my first wife at this time and we were in a countryside, house of her family that we spend a lot of time. Of course, I did also other things. I went also out to nature and I went for shopping. Of course, I did these things. I wasn’t sitting four years, seven days a week and 12 hours of meditation, but there were many days of many hours of meditation, definitely. It was not always easy also because I had a bit of inner struggle also with my studies and with my path because I love healing and I love medicine and I love science. So I needed to go through a process myself, but finally, led to what it led to.

Rick Archer:                     So at times, you were wondering, “What am I doing? I left medical school. I’m sitting here with my eyes closed. Was this such a smart thing to do?”

Thomas Hübl:                  Right. There were doubts also, but there was something stronger that was pushing from much deeper in my being.

Rick Archer:                     Interesting. There’s so many myths and fables about people overcoming doubts in order to pursue the thing which they feel they have to pursue. I mean, in every culture, your story is like that. What was the fundamental opening? Can you describe the fundamental opening that finally took place?

Thomas Hübl:                  The closest I can say about it is that it’s something fundamentally changed like in my perception of reality or how I was viewing reality, something fundamentally changed that after that it was not anymore the same like Thomas and the world and all this kind of setup, this construction in myself suddenly fell apart.

Thomas Hübl:                  Suddenly, the screen is much clearer. It’s very hard to describe in words, but it was a very profound change in my whole way of being or my whole way of being in the world like me and the world. Something fundamentally changed. I think afterwards, I was still for one year after that experience, sitting many hours and just in a flight in Vienna. Some people came to me for guidance or sessions, but eventually, I was still sitting a lot in silence afterwards.

Rick Archer:                     You used the word “suddenly” several times, so was it really a sudden thing? One day you woke up and all of a sudden something changed?

Thomas Hübl:                  Yes. It happened at a certain point in a meditation and there were some other experiences before that in this four years, of course, but that was the most fundamental change that I experienced.

Rick Archer:                     You know the story of Ramana Maharshi, where he had this fundamental shift and then he spent many years just sitting in silence in caves. Is that what you were doing in Vienna? Was there a need to deepen or stabilize or integrate or something that caused you to continue to sit in meditation?

Thomas Hübl:                  Right. Yeah. There was this deep wish. It’s like as if you’re breathing and you love fresh air. It’s like sitting when you love the silence and there’s not really something missing. Then you just sit because it’s simply delightful and delicious and deep. There wasn’t much that attracted me out of this state of sitting or being in silence and being on my own.

Thomas Hübl:                  What I felt then already was that there is something that will come and that when the time is right, I always knew there will be a different phase that I will need to go out with this at a certain point in time and that life will somehow pick me. So this was, for sure, part of it.

Rick Archer:                     Again, the intuition. So it was like a preparatory phase that you were-

Thomas Hübl:                  Right, right, right.

Rick Archer:                     You mentioned that was your previous wife. Was your wife a little bit unhappy with all this sitting in silence? I mean, it seems like it might not have-

Thomas Hübl:                  Yes. It was also a pressure on the relationship because, of course, you wanted to explore the world and she wanted to have other experiences as well. For me, this was a deep pull and especially afterwards when I started because my life then suddenly changed. From one day to another, I started traveling and I was on the road all the time. So from being together many hours, many days, all the time, suddenly, our life changed. I think from a certain point in time, we also knew that that’s not going to continue.

Rick Archer:                     I get the sense that there, too, when you began traveling and all it was the intuitive pull that was rather compelling and there just really was no choice. You just had to follow that impulse.

Thomas Hübl:                  Yeah. It was also that another spiritual teacher came to town. His name was Polo. When he saw me in his workshop, he actually also opened the gates because what he said about me and my energy was simply that suddenly, people started to invite me for workshops. Then I tried to follow. From this day on, I just followed this movement and it just continued and it grew. Now, I think 10 years later or even more, many, many things have happened since then.

Rick Archer:                     It’s an interesting thing. It’s a familiar pattern, actually. My teacher was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi for very many years. He had spent 13 years with his teacher and then after his teacher died, he spent a couple of years in silence up in the Himalayas. Then he just felt this impulse, “I got to go to South India.” He didn’t know why. Everybody thought he was crazy for wanting to leave there, but he followed the impulse, went to do it. People started inviting him. Next thing you knew, he was getting plane tickets to go to the west. One thing just led to the next.

Thomas Hübl:                  Right. I deeply believe that, also, that’s how it works. If things are right, if they’re somehow effortless, it’s not that you need to invest so much or somehow then they just open and I think that’s what it was.

Rick Archer:                     Yeah. You just feel the impulse, cooperate with the impulse. I suppose there’s some people who fight against the impulse. I don’t know what happens to them. Maybe it’s just a struggle or maybe nature gives up and says, “All right. This guy is not going to cooperate. Let him keep doing what he wants to do,” but it’s good that you followed it.

Thomas Hübl:                  Right.

Rick Archer:                     So nowadays, do you still find that you’re inclined to spend time in silence because it’s so sweet the way it was during that first year after the shift or do you find that it’s unnecessary now because whether you’re sitting in silence or eyes open in activity, it’s all the same thing?

Thomas Hübl:                  Yeah. I think now my meditation shifted a lot because I’m teaching a lot, I’m giving a lot of groups, also quite big groups and I work a lot with individuals. So every time, because my work is very much based on, “Okay. There are some more general things that we can teach that apply to most of us,” and then my work is also very specific, so that I get very specific feedback to people’s individual path, intelligence, state of consciousness, so in this attunement with people. So really go deeply into their source code, in a way, is a very deep meditation for me.

Thomas Hübl:                  When I give groups, I’m in a deep meditative state all the time. So I think that’s just shifted and because I do it nearly every day, all the time, so it’s something that continues. It continues and it’s much more in movement than it was then in this time. So this was more the silent part and now, it’s the meditation in action, in a way. Yeah.

Rick Archer:                     When you’re dealing with groups or individuals and you’re saying various things to them, is it in a way based upon what they’re saying to you or is it more about nonverbal perception or intuition of what needs to be said and it just … In other words, you could hardly have much conversation at all with an individual and yet, you know what to say to them or what to do to facilitate.

Thomas Hübl:                  Right. I think it’s all of it. Often, people come to me with questions around their life, around their spiritual practice, around whatever, their evolution. The more open somebody is to really hear something, because not always when somebody asks a question, there’s an openness to receive a feedback. If somebody’s energy and heart is really open and there is a readiness, then a lot of information comes to me and then I think then I really … It’s like as if the gates are open, the water is just pouring in. As long as the gates are open, the water is flowing. Once the gates close, the water stops. I believe that the universe is very efficient and it’s this high intelligence doesn’t waste energy.

Thomas Hübl:                  So something is not ready to be said. It doesn’t even come to me. So sometimes people ask me questions and I have nothing to say. Sometimes someone asks a question and there are loads of information that is coming.

Rick Archer:                     Good. Well, hopefully, during this interview it will be the second thing. It’s a actually a principle in physics. It’s the principle of least action. You can throw a ball and there a million different courses that the ball can take, but it’s actually going to take the one that’s most efficient because that’s the way nature functions.

Thomas Hübl:                  Right. I deeply believe that that’s how it works. Yeah.

Rick Archer:                     After having asked you about your own personal journey and unfolding, which I’ve already done, I was going to ask you to just give us the overview of your teaching, if you have to summarize it in five minutes and then we can go into more specifics. So we started to go into your teaching a little bit. Why don’t you give us an overview what it is you teach or say or do with people?

Thomas Hübl:                  I think my work is based on different pillars, I would say. One part is that I believe that also on the spiritual path, we definitely need to look at our individual development and we need to look at our shadows. We need to look at, “Okay. Which parts of our intelligence, our inaction and immovement and which parts of our intelligence are blocked?” So this is one pillar. We look at how much of your intelligence is currently active because the suffering comes from everything that’s held back and not active. So we look, “Okay. What can come on line more for you or anybody to have the richest and fullest experience of this lifetime available?” So that’s one part.

Thomas Hübl:                  The other part is that we developed a tool over the last 10 years. It’s called transparent communication because I say if we deepen our awareness and our spiritual practice, more and more information is available to us. So every human being radiates, basically, the whole information to his or her life, every moment into space. If I am present enough like not consumed by myself so much and if I am tuned in enough, we can literally join each other’s river of intelligence and have a much deeper understanding of each other’s perspectives.

Thomas Hübl:                  So this leaps by the time to a deeper unification of separate perspectives as a cultural tool, so as something that a group, even a big group can practice and it will actually align people into higher presence and higher alignment with the energy that’s currently happening. So that’s also one part. We develop loads of exercises how to open this part in ourselves because I believe that’s an ability that we have available. That’s one ability of spiritual intelligence and emotional intelligence. If we open that so we have a much deeper understanding of each other, less conflicts, more potential-oriented culture, so that we support each other’s potential. By that, a culture will make a jump. So that’s one aspect as well.

Thomas Hübl:                  The other aspect is that I, in the last year, start talking much more about mystical principles because I believe that there are some universal principles that life and existence is based upon. If we know these principles, we can align with them and this means much less suffering in life and more flow and a deeper understanding.

Thomas Hübl:                  If we work against those principles, we are actually more stuck, more in resistance and we’ll have more suffering in our experience. So there’s definitely a part. The one part is like the transcendence part, the stillness, the meditative breakthrough into unformed consciousness. That’s certainly one part. One part is what we call service, “How does my development serve a greater context and a great environment of my just own spiritual journey?” So that it doesn’t stay my meditation and my practice, but that the radius of my influence through this will grow.

Thomas Hübl:                  So we say, “Okay. How can we create …?” For example, our three-year training programs, everybody does a project that serves something in the world. We are looking that the spiritual practice has also an aspect of service for the greater good. So that’s the main pillars, I would say, of the work.

Rick Archer:                     Great. Now if we may, let’s retrace those and go into some more details and specifics and concrete examples. You can reiterate them better than I can. The first one had to do with individual focus. Please explain it again and let’s get into more specifics.

Thomas Hübl:                  The shadow integration like I’m saying every one of us is born with a specific intelligence, a composition of intelligence. Part of this intelligence can develop itself in a given context and part of this intelligence is dormant for many people. Some people, let’s say, have easier circumstances, so they are fuller, they are more incarnated, more grounded, they got much more support for who they are. So the intelligence could develop itself easily.

Thomas Hübl:                  Other people have more difficulties, more traumatizing environments and so on. So they might not fully be able to express the gift that they got. So we developed this tool of transparent communication, which means that we are doing a lot of communication or diad or triad work and we go, we learn to read other much more precisely, so that we perceive, let’s say, the sources of the symptoms that we have in our life because most of the time in the groups when somebody asks a question, the question is a symptom.

Thomas Hübl:                  So my job or the job of people who are learning this work is to find out what’s the source in this being’s experience that causes this symptom to arise. For example, that I have constantly troubled with my intimate relationships, that I’ve constantly troubled with money, that I don’t know what to do in my life. These are symptoms in the surface. If we look in the mystical teachings, especially also the Jewish Kabbalah teachings, we find that there are different levels of information and the deeper our level of consciousness is grounded in the source, the more information is available for us.

Thomas Hübl:                  So our speech, our accent and our life, basically, is much more coherent with this cosmic flow. Therefore, when we open our mouth, we say that hits the point. So the higher is our consciousness development, the more my speech and my accent need to be aligned with this deeper flow of life. Therefore, I’m less and less talking about life, but I’m actually talking more and more from the present moment, from the intelligence of the present moment and not from a reflection of this present moment.

Thomas Hübl:                  Life becomes more direct and that’s a very powerful tool. Therefore, also I think a lot of therapists, coaches, people who work with people come to our groups because they find this very helpful for their own practice, this addition that we teach to the normal psychological knowledge that anyway already very popular. So that’s a very powerful mechanism how to integrate shadow aspects and get them more on line.

Thomas Hübl:                  Actually, someone from our three-year training program developed now. He’s the head of university in Berlin and they developed a campaign that transforms hundreds of schools in Germany from knowledge-based education to potential-based education. So how can we as teachers and human beings and as a culture really support each other in our potential development? So some parts are also based upon this principles. I think that’s something that we need to evolve into as a culture on a we level in our spiritual development.

Rick Archer:                     In other words, in those schools, they wouldn’t just be concerned with filling the container of knowledge. They’d be concerned with expanding the container of knowledge.

Thomas Hübl:                  Right, you could say. Yeah.

Rick Archer:                     What you were just saying, it seems to me that there’s a cart and horse kind of question or maybe a description-prescription question, which is that some people would say, “Well, just develop consciousness and then all else should be handed unto thee, that all these various shadow things will resolve and hang-ups will clear out and so on.” Others would say, “Well, work on the shadow stuff and then your consciousness will develop.” So which comes first? Which is the chicken and which is the egg here?

Thomas Hübl:                  None comes first. None comes first.

Rick Archer:                     Simultaneous?

Thomas Hübl:                  If we understand that the deep mystical mastery is the mastery of stillness and the mastery of movement, together, it’s not two. I think people who have a strong tendency to stillness sometimes miss out on the fact that the intelligence of life, the face of the divine that is developing, moving and expressing itself is equally important as the stillness and that non-duality, for me, means that we match the stillness and movement equally as not two. This means that both is actually true. Both is equally important and there is the … If I’m deeply grounded in the unformed isness of the eternal timeless isness or a Catholic is based consciousness or whatever. There are many names for that. At the same time, I’m like a laser in very precise moment-to-moment speech, action and way of living, so that I’m evolution and I’m ever-present.

Thomas Hübl:                  I think this either or is a sign that there is not a full non-dual realization because otherwise, there wouldn’t be an either or. For me, that’s not an either or. They have equally non-dual.

Rick Archer:                     In terms of your own development, there was a sequence. You went through phase, firstly, where you were very inner-directed and silent and not doing much and then on that foundation, you came out into activity and began doing a lot. So I’m wondering if in your own teaching and working with people you prescribed that sequence where, firstly, there’s a focus on inner-directedness and then on that foundation, they go forth and get more involved and other things.

Thomas Hübl:                  No, no. We train this simultaneously.

Rick Archer:                     Alternately or equally, completely simultaneously? It’s not like, “Close your eyes. Go deep then come out. Act it.” It’s more completely simultaneous.

Thomas Hübl:                  Yeah. For example, in our three-year training program, in the first year, people do a lot of shadow integration. This releases a lot of energy. The energy becomes new creativity. It boosts our worldly life in a way because many things start to clear up parts of our life that are hanging for many years, difficulties in relationship, difficulties with finding ones vocation or whatever. So the areas of our life that constantly pull energy out, where it seems like a stuck CD that has a recurrent pattern, so we learn how to more, with the higher competency, to really clear up these parts of our life because I think that’s a competency.

Thomas Hübl:                  So that’s not just something that happens, but it’s something that once we know the deeper mechanics of energy, all these things are like a science. Awakening is like a science, an inner science. Once I understand the principles, I see, “Oh, that’s why this is healing. That’s why.” This is what I think is something that needs to come. It’s what I call spiritual competency. That that’s not just a random happening. It’s a random happening if I don’t see the source that originates or that causes the movement.

Thomas Hübl:                  In the moment, I see the course of the movement, whatever the movement is, a personal movement, a collective movement or a very transcendental movement. It’s part of a hierarchy and in a hierarchy and a natural hierarchy of creation. There is a lot of knowledge around how to precisely relate to different levels and not to create a mess between those levels.

Thomas Hübl:                  What I see in the spiritual field quite often is that people use, for example, an argument from a very high level of transcendence and pull it down into the personal experience and cover their individual shadows with it. This is not healthy. This also keeps our spiritual development stuck.

Thomas Hübl:                  So the more we can put things into an order, I think not only it creates a competency, but it also makes the spiritual mystical knowledge. Actually, we can really introduce it again into the marketplace, also to very scientific grounded people and say, “Listen, this is not just an airy cloud that we call spirituality. No, no, but it’s something very grounded and if I know how to use it, it can actually be very beneficial for every area in life.”

Rick Archer:                     I really like that. I can see your old medical student mind coming through in this kind of thing. You’re a scientist at heart. You’re approaching this in a scientific, systematic way, which I think it can be because I think, ultimately, all this spirituality stuff is experiential, which is what science is all about. You’re developing and evolving all sorts of practices, which are ways of testing hypothesis and arriving at experiential conclusions. I think that’s great.

Rick Archer:                     Regarding the levels, I’m always getting flak from people because I’m always talking about levels and very much in the context of what you just said, which is that people misapply levels very often. They interpose them. They take something, which is valid on one level and then they try to apply it on another level and it doesn’t makes sense. For instance, saying, “The world is an illusion.” Okay, fine. On some level, the world is an illusion, but on the level of stepping in front of a bus, the world is not an illusion and you have to obey those laws of nature on the level at which they operate.

Thomas Hübl:                  Right. I think, actually, I mean, it’s very important what you said right now because I think, actually, this saying is very dangerous. To say that, “The world is an illusion,” is very dangerous because it can lead to the fact that if you, I mean, if this is the separate experience of the world is an illusion, but not, “The world is an illusion,” I think that’s a very difficult saying.

Thomas Hübl:                  I think in some levels of development, if somebody is really truly before a very strong realization like a master or a teacher, might use this as an intervention in order to flip the coin in a way. I think to tell this to the majority of people as this is how it is, I think that’s very difficult because I think if the world’s an illusion, all the participation in the world, in the expression of the divine aspect is actually in vain because it’s any way an illusion.

Thomas Hübl:                  So all the aspects of my humanities that my deepest humanity becomes my highest possibility. This means deep vulnerability, compassion, love, clarity. So on these values, you only express if you really care about the world. I think that’s a pathology that I see arising in some of the satsang non-dual fields that there is an overemphasis on stillness and the lack of competency in the movement.

Thomas Hübl:                  Then people that are not in the state that Ramana Maharshi was in are using Ramana Maharshi’s teachings, but are not in the transmission. Therefore, it’s not true. That, I think, a very important part to look at because I think it can keep people very passive and not really relate to the evolutionary aspect of life. Then we say, “Oh, there’s no evolution because evolution is an illusion.” I think that’s simply dangerous to say.

Rick Archer:                     Beautiful. I feel like clapping right now. You’ve stated very eloquently something, which is a recurrent theme in these interviews because I feel very strongly about what you’re saying. In Sanskrit, there’s a term mithyA, which means dependent reality and they use the example of a pot. Really, the pot’s only clay, fine. There’s no pot. On the level of the pot, which is dependent on clay, you have a pot. You can put water in it or beans or whatever and you can’t deny that the pot exists and can function as a pot.

Rick Archer:                     So even though, again, in the same breadth, you can say, “Well, it’s really only clay.” Yeah, fine, but it’s still a pot. So this paradoxical both end situation is the way life is structured.

Thomas Hübl:                  Right. I think in the moment because the world is being born moment-to-moment out of consciousness, so when something arises from nothing, something needs to fulfill itself in order to return into nothing. That’s the sense I call. That’s what’s also written in the Tao Te Ching. The Tao, it’s earth to the world and to the thousand forms and then there’s written, “Express yourself completely, then keep quiet.” So if energy, we are already born, so we are already movement. We are not anymore asking the question if we want to be born because we are already here and we’re exploring the movement and the stillness.

Thomas Hübl:                  Now, we need to live our life completely in order to return into nothing, to release the energy and leave without a trace. That’s how the saints are called in the Kabbalah tradition, the ones that leave without a trace, which means the one that fulfill the energy completely and return into silence.

Thomas Hübl:                  If this is my moment-to-moment life and if this is the fulfillment of my incarnation, so then I can express myself completely and return into nothing as nothing. This sounds to me much more appealing than to say, “The world is an illusion.” The world’s stillness is divine.

Rick Archer:                     There’s a T. S. Eliot, Paul, Burnt Norton, where he talks about, “We will never …” I can paraphrase, “There will not be an end to all our seeking until we come back to the place from which we started and then discover it for the first time.” There’s another Sanskrit phrase, which I don’t know the Sanskrit, but the English is contact with Brahman is infinite joy, but you can’t have that contact with Brahman until there has become a contactor, someone, a living, breathing entity, who can retrace the steps back to the source and then as a living, breathing entity, live the source in the world. That stirs up a joy, a bliss, which couldn’t exist with just a flood on manifest had it never manifested.

Thomas Hübl:                  Right. The fact is there is a manifest world already. Therefore, it’s not a question. There is not just silence. I think there’s a misunderstanding of non-duality that the emptiness is the truest realization. I think that’s not fully complete. That’s not a complete realization. The full awareness of the process of creation, how we are here now having this conversation and how out of nothing the universe is being born that holds this planet in which we are sitting and through the infinite we are part of an evolutionary movement and we are really enjoying it because this is the ecstasy of the divine that creates this. So I think that flow and movement and the masculine and the feminine realization, they are equally important. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have this conversation here.

Rick Archer:                     It will just be flat nothingness. You know that Sanskrit phrase, “Purnamadah purnamidam,” “This is full, that is full.” So it’s not just the one on manifest absolute fullness. The relative manifest is also full and the two fullnesses together make a whole that’s more than the sum of its parts.

Thomas Hübl:                  Right. Then we can be deeply grounded in the silence of this moment and the presence of this moment and the unformed timelessness and eternal beingness and at the same time, there is this incredible intelligence unfolding. Both is equally true. I think that’s very appealing because then what we do in life really matters. It’s not that it doesn’t matter. Every word that we say has an effect. Every action that we do has an effect and that when we act out of alignment with our deepest authenticity, it has an effect.

Thomas Hübl:                  I really care about you, I care about the world, I care about the global crisis because it’s important and at the same time, I know that the deepest stillness of that whichever or that which always is just here is also true. I think, for me, this is a much more appealing version of non-duality.

Rick Archer:                     Yeah. There are a number of teachers who were primarily concerned with the inner world, who are getting more and more involved in improving the outer. For instance, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee just edited a book called Spiritual Ecology. I’m just about finished reading it, which all these great speakers are writing essays about, who are very familiar with non-dual awareness, but who were writing about the soul of the world and how that has to awaken in order for the ecological crisis to be resolved. They were concerned about that issue.

Rick Archer:                     Last year at the SAND conference, David Loy and Llewellyn got up and gave a talk about spirituality and global warming. Then David had this interaction with Francis Lucille in which he was saying, “Well, what about global warming? What about the climate issue?” Francis was saying, “It doesn’t interest me. It doesn’t concern me. The world is like a speck of dust.” That went on for quite a while and got rather testy until they finally shifted the subject.

Rick Archer:                     It does seem that a lot of people who have been primarily concerned with non-duality inner development just unmet focus on the unmanifest have turned it around and began to engage, which is great because many of the people who’ve been engaging on these relative issues, such as climate change or political change and so on, haven’t had the unmanifest connection and they tend to get burned out and frustrated or angry or violent, all that stuff. So it wasn’t complete.

Thomas Hübl:                  Right. You’re saying it beautifully that activism is something else because activism comes from a limited perspective, but the true action out of alignment of caring and deeper flow of intelligence is actually what in the Jewish tradition is called the … In the Jewish tradition, people talk about the Tikkun and it means a spiritual opening that can take place, like a correction of our flow. So when our karmas actually freeze our intelligence into a certain quality, we can open it and release it and that it can unfold into its highest potential.

Thomas Hübl:                  This quality is also something that we can apply on collective issues. Every time something is out of alignment, there’s a correction for it. So I think a deeper caring about the global context is definitely important. If it comes from this deeper inner connection, then it’s not just activism. Then it’s realigning with some cosmic flows and orders and that’s very powerful.

Rick Archer:                     Yeah, and if it doesn’t have that deeper connection, then it’s just palliative, one is just messing with symptoms without getting to the underlying cause.

Thomas Hübl:                  Right. There is a beautiful sentence that is hard enough for some people that says in the Tao Te Ching, it says that, “The world is sacred. It doesn’t need to be improved.” That’s a beautiful sentence, but it also means that the world has evolution as well inside. There is development part of the world, but my limited perspective cannot be the one that judges if the world needs to be improved because often, we want to improve the world that it’s more comfortable for us. That’s definitely a whole other department.

Thomas Hübl:                  What I’m saying is from a deep inner connection, there is a deep caring for the manifest world as well, which is equal to the, let’s say, greater feminine enlightened principle that the mother will never leave her children, which means that the force of creation will always care for creation as well and not just for emptiness. So then we have both aspects, the true emptiness and their fullness of life equally important. Then we have a kind of a caring and action in the world and for the world that comes from this deeper place of knowing.

Rick Archer:                     Look what’s been done to the world in the name of improving it. I mean, “Paved paradise, put up a parking lot,” as Joni Mitchell sang and obviously, so many ramifications of that. I mean, the people who are drilling for oil in the Arctic now that the Arctic is melting probably think they’re improving the world, “Yeah, we need the energy. It makes our lives better. It improves our world,” but it’s obviously not true.

Rick Archer:                     There was something interesting you said in one of the talks I was listening to, where it reminded me of … I guess I could summarize it to say conditioning reinforces boundaries or we might say routine work kills the genius in men. In other words, when we experience, we naturally have to focus in very specific ways, but that focus habituates us to narrowness. So what would be the antidote to that so as to maintain comprehensive awareness while focusing as we must do?

Thomas Hübl:                  Both, again, to practice the deep, deep beyond, which is freedom and to also practice that I believe everything that is in life, everything that is an energy, an object, a thought, a mind, a culture, a society, is pure movement. The lower we go in the ladder, the more concrete and structure the universe becomes. The higher we go in the ladder, the more energetic, the more potential reality becomes. We have many different potential realities available and one is forming itself right now.

Thomas Hübl:                  So that if I know that my inherent nature in creation is actually movement, then I will look that I can bring as many parts of my life into the highest movement that’s possible. One practical example, for example, that I believe that the nature of our learning and our mind and our brain is that we create habits from everything. That’s very good because you don’t need to learn to walk to the computer every day to make these interviews. So you know how to walk. That’s a good habit to have.

Thomas Hübl:                  The other thing is when we are in a long-term relationship and an intimate relationship, we create a habit of our partner in our own awareness and what we see and we relate to our partner is not our partner, but the image of the partner in myself. That’s actually a problem because it means that it freezes my experience of my partner and I don’t push the refresh button every time, so I see the old website every day. That’s a problem.

Thomas Hübl:                  What we do now is a practice is to say, “Listen, the more awake you are, the less you know people,” which means every time I see you, so today I see you for the first time, so I get a fresh impression of you. When I see you after a hundred times, I say, “Oh, it’s Rick,” but that’s actually that I’m asleep. In the moment I say, “Oh, it’s you,” I’m asleep because I’m not tuning in and being with you exactly how you arise right now in this moment.

Thomas Hübl:                  So to overcome this conditioning or this conditioned reality that happens in my own perspective is a very drastic and very fundamental spiritual practice. So every time to see life again fresh and even if my mind knows you, I’m still looking again, “Who are you right now? Who are you right now? Who are you right now?” This is a very deep spiritual practice because what I say in the teachings often is that there are two different spiritual path. One is the monastic part, so I go out of life, I retreat and I have a very intense, deep spiritual practice and a monastic life or in a cave in the Himalayan Mountains.

Thomas Hübl:                  The other one is that I practice in culture, but if I practice in culture, I need to learn to live according to the laws of culture. Otherwise, I will constantly have troubles in my life. We see many spiritual practitioners that are actually very ungrounded, that have difficulties with earning money, difficulties with getting their life done, with their relationships, even with their children. So there are some things that are definitely not in place sometimes and it looks like that it’s a more spiritual life, but sometimes, it’s just a more ungrounded life.

Thomas Hübl:                  As you said, sometimes people follow their intuition. They say, “Oh, I’m in the moment,” but they are not able to keep a commitment. That’s not what being in the moment necessarily means. So if we practice in culture, we actually need to practice in all four directions. We need to ground ourselves. We need to transcend ourselves and we need to have a horizontal impact in culture and an awareness of a higher or a wider radius of life. That’s a very demanding practice.

Thomas Hübl:                  So if we mix the monastic life with the culture as a spiritual practice, we might get in deep serious trouble because it might be that our suffering will be actually increased. That’s, I think, where we need to be careful when we import spiritual practices from the east, where we have more monastic or more retreat versions of spirituality. Here in culture, we need to live fully because everything that’s not moving fully is actually creating suffering.

Thomas Hübl:                  So every time I release the movement and I participate more, I participate more in the creative aspect of the universe. This sparks my genius ability to be more on line. Then innovation is actually not or creativity is something that is an ability. It’s not a coincidence. It’s not that I have creative moments. It’s actually that creativity and innovation is something that I can learn and practice. Once my channel is open, I’m moment-to-moment innovative. I’m literally becoming an innovative moment and that’s what a genius is.

Rick Archer:                     You mentioned being able to balance freedom with focus and this has been an elaboration on that theme. I think most people are deficient in the freedom aspect. People through decades have focus or are living through the five senses, have become very bounded and individuated and many people don’t even realize there is a dimension of freedom to be found, but those who do realize that still might not find it so readily.

Rick Archer:                     So we want to talk a little bit about how you can create the proper balance between freedom and focus, if we want to use those two words. Also, with regard to conditioning, I mean, obviously, you don’t wake up in the morning and say, “Who’s this woman in my bed?” There’s a knowledge and a detailed knowledge of the person.

Rick Archer:                     Yet, you’re saying that there’s a certain aspect of conditioning, which is undesirable and which limits the relationship or limits the experience and that the same could be applied to a violin player, a commercial airline pilot, whatever. Those skills demand a great deal of knowledge and experience and training and conditioning. Yet, at the same time, we don’t want to lose our freedom in the narrow boundaries that the conditioning tends to reinforce. So go ahead and respond to that if you would.

Thomas Hübl:                  Yeah. I mean, I definitely agree with everything that you said is it’s not that we don’t know who is this person and at the same time, in the moment I know who is this person, there’s a high tendency to fall asleep in the memory of this person. So what I said before in the transparent communication, we train that we actually attune ourselves again and again and again to the moment that is happening. So when I talk with you, I need to be attuned with you and at the same time, I’m open space. I’m present.

Rick Archer:                     How is that you’re able to be open space? Was that through those four years in silence that that got established primarily?

Thomas Hübl:                  Right. I think it came through also my meditation practice before, but it got gradually deeper and I think after this four years, there was a deep shift in consciousness. So that’s a home. At the same time, the precision in everything that’s arising in this home is continuously also growing and developing. So it’s both.

Rick Archer:                     How about the people you work with because you’re not advising them to go off and take four years of silence? I don’t even know if you’re advising them to sit in an hour of silence every day or whatever. How do you enable them to culture the kind of freedom that you enjoy?

Thomas Hübl:                  Yes. We do some deep meditations retreats, though, which means that everybody who comes to me and says, “I seriously want to study,” so everybody needs to a quiet, an intense meditation practice and spiritual practice, which includes the body awareness and inner awareness, a shadow integration, a meditative awareness, different kinds of meditations, actually, to open different parts of our being.

Thomas Hübl:                  For example, in our three-year training program, we go for 18 days to the Himalayas.

Rick Archer:                     Oh, nice.

Thomas Hübl:                  We have intense meditation retreat, which is a 24-hour meditation. We call it The Cave. It’s a very deep process that has a strong transmission and many hours of meditation. Also, people sit in through the nights. It’s a very specific composition of parts of my work. We have this regular for deeper students, those students that are long-term students. They have a very intense spiritual practice.

Thomas Hübl:                  It gradually grows. I think if one day I see someone in my group and I think it’s time, then I would send them also offer one year to a meditation retreat. So definitely, I see this as a very important part.

Rick Archer:                     Okay. Good. That puts another piece in the puzzle for me. Now, I don’t know if we’ve covered it, but earlier when I asked you to summarize your teaching, you gave three separate things. There was the individual thing, then there was the more group dynamics thing. Have we really discussed that adequately yet?

Thomas Hübl:                  Yes. What I say that there are certain principles and I believe many people who come to groups are also people who have a high degree of spiritual intelligence available to themselves, intuitive intelligence and also emotional intelligence. These are aspects that in our current education system are not so promoted, let’s say, are not so developed, actually. So I believe that there are some abilities of our spiritual intelligence. If we just support them a bit, they start flowering.

Thomas Hübl:                  This can become a collective for cultural ability. So we are working also on a we aspect of awakening. So how does through we awaken to higher levels of itself and what does that mean? The increasing radius of awareness, also, creates a more awake culture. I’m also very interested in what’s the impact. We have research circles on consciousness and business. We have research circles on consciousness education. I told you what was one aspect and health.

Thomas Hübl:                  So we are also looking how the consciousness development really affects different important systems of our society, so that it also makes a difference in the world and the we aspect comes in. Then the other aspect that we said before is mystical principle. For example, one mystical principle is, I believe, that when out of nothing, something’s arising. This energy needs to express itself completely in order to return into peace or nothing.

Thomas Hübl:                  Many aspects of our lives are actually based upon. This is true for every thought. This is true for every emotion. This is true for every incarnation, for every lifetime. This is true for bigger cosmic circles. This is also true, for example, for the nature of a shadow and the nature of a recurrent pattern in my experience.

Thomas Hübl:                  So we are looking how to deepen our awareness, so that we see the principles of creation more clearly in everyday life, in every interaction, in systems like a company or in different nature cycles. Then we suddenly understand on a deeper, more fundamental level what actually other forces that compose my current existence and even my current perception of reality. That’s something very powerful.

Thomas Hübl:                  Then suddenly, we see, for example, that even parts of the tradition like in Christianity or in Judaism or Islam that many modern people, so to speak, expel from their life held or are holding very precious principles that are not anymore so much filled with energy, but if we see the mystical aspect of it, then they’re very beautiful principles and they have been around for thousands of years.

Thomas Hübl:                  So we are not just reinventing the wheel, but we just bring in the mystical aspect of some things that became empty rituals and suddenly see, “Wow! There’s a lot of wisdom all around us all the time.”

Rick Archer:                     That’s great. I mean, obviously, if intelligence or consciousness is the foundation of everything and not only the foundation, if it permeates everything, if it’s really the ocean in which we all swim, then nothing is dumb and routine and mechanical merely. Everything is imbued with intelligence. So I guess what I hear you saying is that you’re seeking to understand and awaken that intelligence in all of its various expressions, remove the cloud of dullness that shrouds intelligence in business or in education or in relationships or whatever field, which have gotten numbed by routine, repetitiveness, constant attention on growth levels of life to the exclusion of the subtle.

Thomas Hübl:                  Right. The exclusion of the subtle and even the ignorance through the unformed and that when we awaken this again and we see, “Wow! There’s so much beauty in words like confession. What is a sin? What is a marriage? What was the foundation of this oldest terms?” By centuries, things got lost on the way. I believe deeply that in the mystical, in the traditions, it doesn’t matter if it’s Buddhism, if it’s Judaism and so on that the ones that really knew or know what they are talking about are just a few. These are the true mystics.

Thomas Hübl:                  I think if you get contact to this true mystics in whatever tradition, there is such a beauty that’s unfolding and I think, therefore, even hundred years ago, hundreds of years ago when there was no mass transportation, people were traveling half around the planet to suddenly meet someone like that because the answers that came out of this deep groundedness and consciousness is they were very different than all the other answers that you can get from limited perspectives.

Thomas Hübl:                  So I believe that this quality needs to be … In the western world, we are missing a bit the mystical competency. I think that’s something beautiful to go for and to reintroduce this as a very valid part besides science and besides other things that this needs to have its place in our society because it has an important role.

Rick Archer:                     As a critical role, it seems to me that everything is so messed up because it’s lacking, because that mystical dimension is lacking.

Thomas Hübl:                  Right.

Rick Archer:                     I mean, sometimes people think that an enlightened society would be we would return back to a simple life where we’re all farming and wearing one clothes or something, but really, we could still have sophisticated technologies and everything else, but just infused with we could call it the mystical or spiritual dimension, which brings everything into proper alignment, so it’s no longer inflicting so much harm on us. In fact, everything could be totally benign and technological sophisticated.

Thomas Hübl:                  Right. If you look into evolution and we see that life forms tend to grow into higher complexities, I think it would be stupid to think that an enlightened society would just return to farming. Maybe some people would because this is their vocation, but other people would be totally thrilled with complexity and with the genius expression of human excellence.

Thomas Hübl:                  Therefore, even therefore, I think it’s so crucial that we create a different form of contemporary mystical understanding that is able to relay to genetic engineering, that is able or relay to nanotechnology and to all the amazing parts out there and we are creating moment-by-moment right now and also to see that it’s very important to see different levels of development and not judge them just by their pathology, to always see what is their amazing contribution that capitalism, that modernity, that the industrial age gave to humanity and what are the shadow aspects and to learn to look at this more differentiated and then see, “Okay. We correct the pathologies and the shadows, but we definitely want to continue with the amazing contributions.”

Thomas Hübl:                  Then we somehow also finish with this myth that enlightenment and intellectual knowledge are not going hand-in-hand. So either you don’t think and then you enlighten, but you think, you are not enlightened. I think this is a very strange notion.

Rick Archer:                     That is reminiscent of Ken Wilber’s pre/trans fallacy that enlightened people are going to be like little babies in a sense. They’re not thinking. You mentioned genetic engineering. That brings out an interesting point related to what you’re saying, which is taking that as an example and there are many other examples, at the present time, that’s a pretty scary thing, actually, because the people who are doing genetic engineering really don’t have a very comprehensive understanding of what they’re doing. They’re messing around with the level of nature’s functioning, which they only very partially understand and making changes at that level, which could be devastating in their consequences.

Rick Archer:                     I don’t know whether genetic engineering, ultimately, has any right to exist, but if it does, it will have to be in a way that we’re completely cooperating with the intelligence of nature rather than applying limited human intelligence to something that only the intelligence of nature really comprehends. You know what I mean?

Thomas Hübl:                  Right. I think you’re totally on. I think it’s also funny to think that genetic engineering has no right to exist because it has a right to exist because it can bring a lot of positive things.

Rick Archer:                     Potentially.

Thomas Hübl:                  Potentially, but if it’s driven by money, if it’s driven by ego-limited motivations, then it’s a problem because then we actually apply things sometimes too early. We don’t have a full, deep understanding and alignment, as you said, with the natural intelligence of life. If the enlightenment aspect and I think that’s a crucial answer for our time is actually that the deep scientific revelations and the mystical revelations need to work together, that there is no other way, that the deep inner knowledge and the deep outer knowledge.

Thomas Hübl:                  They need to find a fusion and they need to find a much deeper dialog and then to see how much they can benefit from each other and that if you bring in the deep alignment of the mystical realization into science, that’s actually the inner connection to the scientific revelations. So it’s much more connection to the growing evolutionary intelligence. Then we will use this technologies wisely. If you use them wisely, they can be a huge benefit.

Thomas Hübl:                  If it just look what modern medicine contributed to how much suffering was eliminated through this, it’s incredible. Therefore, sometimes when people come to my groups and, usually, also many people come that come out of alternative medicine cycles and I’m very appreciative of all kinds of healing technologies that work and I’m working a lot with healing myself, but to exclude one or the other is simply stupid because all the flower is important and we need to know when to use what.

Thomas Hübl:                  I think that’s what you said. If genetic engineering will be used wisely, it can be a huge benefit for life. If it’s used egoistically like just for benefit and profit and money of companies, then it’s actually, it can be a huge trouble that we create to ourselves.

Rick Archer:                     Yeah. I mean, taking medicine is a case on point. Look at antibiotics, how wonderful those have been. Yet now, I live in Iowa and they give antibiotics to all the pics and the cows, so they can produce more milk without getting infections and so the pigs can live in these crowded little containers without getting … All that is getting into the water supply and into the meat. It’s getting to the point where not very many antibiotics work anymore and then all these superbugs are developing. It all comes down to greed, really, and short-sightedness.

Thomas Hübl:                  Right. That’s the pathology and we need to correct the pathology without dismissing the original invention and seeing all the millions of people that benefited from these antibiotics. So if we keep this at every level of development, we’ll create a shadow because once something is being born and once something creates a structure, every structure will have a shadow. We need to learn to relate to the shadows and to correct them. I think then we created a natural hierarchy of development that is beneficial and that is in alignment with the intelligence that run through us. That’s a very exciting tool to have.

Rick Archer:                     Yeah. So just to reiterate and perhaps to summarize and we can both summarize and reiterate, it seems that we’re not going to dismantle society. All the structures and the technologies and the means of communication, everything else has been built up. It’s not going to all be dismantled and we’re going to get back to some kind of pristine, primordial world. So the only solution is to infuse or supplement all these structures that have been built with divine intelligence, with cosmic intelligence or whatever and we human beings are the instruments through which that can happen.

Rick Archer:                     We need to awaken that in ourselves and then through us, enough of us have been doing that, things will naturally fall into place. All these technologies at this point so askew and so harmful in many ways will perhaps become totally benign. They’ll serve their ideal intended purpose, yet without the unwanted side effects.

Thomas Hübl:                  Right. To see that life is trial and error. I think Sir Ken Robinson puts it very beautifully on his … He’s a speaker, a very popular speaker on education. He puts it very beautifully. He says, “Look, most of the people when they come out from our educational system, they are totally afraid to get things wrong. Therefore, we cannot be anymore truly genuine and creative.”

Thomas Hübl:                  So that we see, “Yes, life is also learning,” and I think if we are living our life in that high integrity, that when we see, we actually make a mistake, that we correct it, so then we can totally experiment and also really be pioneers in the excellence of human intelligence because I don’t believe into this myth that we will all come back and be farmers and have no technology. I think it’s also stupid because there are so many other things that will build upon the technology that we develop until now. We just need a deeper inner development and a deeper inner connection and that more and more people will actually have a breakthrough into this deeper awakening and from that, be fueled in whatever their excellence is and that we, again, there to really allow and support human intelligence and excellence in all the 360 degrees of flavors.

Thomas Hübl:                  So that we are not just saying intelligence and we mean intellectual cognitive intelligence. There’s so many other parts of human intelligences that are necessary to create a sustainable culture. If it’s deeply grounded in the unformed, in more and more people and really there to live up to our highest potential, I think then we have this life that many people are looking for.

Rick Archer:                     Yeah. I think it was Thoreau who said, “Go ahead and build your castles in the air. That’s where they belong. Just put foundations under them.”

Thomas Hübl:                  Right.

Rick Archer:                     Now, you’re doing some real interesting work and I mentioned that in the introduction in trying to heal the shadow of the holocaust and working with Germans and Israelis. You, yourself, are Austrian. You’re married to an Israeli. Let’s talk about that a little bit if we may. Do you feel like the holocaust still casts a pretty dark shadow? Let’s talk about collective consciousness and the evolution of collective consciousness and so on.

Thomas Hübl:                  Right. Yes, I mean, my work started out of Germany and then mainly in Germany in the first years. What I have seen is that in many groups, I have seen actually the same pattern happening. So that when we come to a certain intensity and depth, then there was an eruption. Really, literally, 30, 40 people out of 100 started crying and seeing horrible images in one moment. It was a fire through group.

Thomas Hübl:                  So that once we allow a deeper sensitivity, vulnerability, openness and space, so the valves are open. The pressure in the collective consciousness is looking for ways how to discharge itself. This we see in pathological forms and sometimes in people that are becoming psychotic, but also, we see it in groups when spiritual practitioners their inner world more. Suddenly, this energy can come to the surface, which is actually a very healthy process. It’s an inner hygiene process.

Thomas Hübl:                  So I thought, “Wow! I saw this again and again and again,” especially in the training programs. Then I said, “Listen, I think we need to develop tools how to take care of collective shadows,” and the holocaust shadow is one, but there are many more on this planet through atrocities that have happened all over.

Rick Archer:                     … and are still happening.

Thomas Hübl:                  Yeah, and they’re still happening. So if we understand an individual shadow and how one trauma can create a deep impact in a person’s life later on, so then we understand that the collective trauma can create a deep impact. Now, we have two possibilities, either generations after generations who actually live through the symptoms of these traumas until they are so diluted that they disappear or we do some very precise consciousness work.

Thomas Hübl:                  The collective shadow needs collective caring, which means big groups of people like thousands of people come together and taking care of this collective unconscious energy that’s just looking for a consciousness awareness in order to appear, to integrate itself and then to become free energy or creativity.

Thomas Hübl:                  So we develop some tools how to do that with large groups and I did some big events and we are still also doing this big Celebrate Life Festival in the summer. So we are looking how to use part of our spiritual practice also to take care of our collective life base. I’m living currently also in Israel, so I see the other side of it in Israel. Now, we are creating workshops and projects, how to work with this energy because it’s a very strong impact or scar in the collective consciousness.

Thomas Hübl:                  I also believe that now, there’s a lot of writing about the European Union and about the financial crisis in the European Union. I think, yes, that’s true and if we want to unify Europe, we also will need to take care of the collective unconscious layers that have been between the countries in Europe. So many things have happened here in history that are crazy. If we put it together, this collective unconscious material will show up as financial crisis, political crisis, social crisis. So it will find symptoms how it expresses itself, but actually deeper in our collective psyche, we have something to take care of.

Thomas Hübl:                  I think because on a collective level, we need to express a global consciousness. Without the global consciousness, we are not able to deal with the collective, let’s say, problems or collective stuff that we are dealing with like global warming, for example, and there are others. I think we need to, like in the mystical knowledge, we’re always talking about free energy, which is free possibility or intelligence and structure.

Thomas Hübl:                  The tension, the creative tension between the structure that has gravity and the free energy that constantly pulls evolution to new heights is called evolutionary tension. If this tension is healthy, a human being develops and stays grounded and inspired. If we are too much in the energy, there’s a lot of inspiration, but not so much happening in one’s life. If the structure is too strong, we have very much in life, but we are stuck in it because we are not developing, really.

Thomas Hübl:                  So we need a healthy balance. When we open in the expression of life, our energy to higher levels of consciousness like our energy to higher levels of consciousness like our Aurobindo describes. So we need also to create the proper vessel for it. Otherwise, we cannot handle the intensity. What I see humanity going through is we need to create a global vessel that much more intelligence can flow on a global level and deal with the topics that we need to deal with.

Thomas Hübl:                  On the way there, we need to give up or we need to transcend, not give up, but transcend national identities, national interests in order to create a global caring. On the way there, we would need to deal with our collective shadows.

Rick Archer:                     Interesting. A couple of questions. One is, do you feel that a relatively small group of people, maybe thousands, but still a fraction of the total population, can serve as a washing machine to heal a collective shadow for the benefit of the entire population?

Thomas Hübl:                  Right. Of course, there’s a correlation to the intensity. For example, a few thousand people are not enough in Germany because what happened here was so out of alignment.

Rick Archer:                     It’s so extreme, yeah.

Thomas Hübl:                  So extreme that we would need really stadiums full of people to really, if you really want to create a massive impact. Actually, even a group of thousand people can create a difference, if we do it more often and if we really work ourselves through this energy. I think we can clear up quite a lot with this size of groups. Yeah.

Rick Archer:                     It would also depend on the potency of the group, which should depend on the potency of the individuals in that group. I mean, theoretically, a group of a hundred could do it if it were powerful enough, theoretically.

Thomas Hübl:                  Right, if you have 100 masters that really are doing this.

Rick Archer:                     This thing about … I’m letting dogs in and out here. I mean, obviously, we have our own thing in the US with slavery. It was a big deal that we elected a black president. Of course, there was a backlash to that. There’s a lot of opposition and resistance and all that he’s been getting, which people won’t acknowledge, but I think it’s largely because he’s black. It really pushes people’s buttons.

Rick Archer:                     So I mean, these days now, there’s the Arab Spring. Egypt is in the headlines. There’s a huge thing happening there. I mean, when you look at these situations like, for instance, Egypt, with your knowledge of the deeper mechanics of life and the collective shadow and so on, do you read more meaning into it than the average person would. Do you get the symbolism or the significance of various events that are taking place?

Thomas Hübl:                  I, definitely, think that something very fundamental is happening at the moment on the planet and that the Arab Spring is part of it. There’s simply some structures and consciousness that are not anymore serving the evolutionary development of life. They are breaking open, like the financial crisis in some western countries is part of it. Also, the Arab Spring by itself is actually just a sign that things crack open, but it’s not an easy transition.

Thomas Hübl:                  So the problem is that many people are really suffering and that there are many casualties. Also, when you look to Syria, I mean, it’s incredible what’s happening there. On a more collective level, I think if you see it from a higher perspective like also in time, like the human evolution simply takes is we are looking at this in a span of 70 years. If you look at this on a much longer timeline, I think that’s just some deep movements in the human consciousness to break open structures that are too old and to open them into a fresh, to let the wind in.

Thomas Hübl:                  Leonard Cohen sings a very lovely line that says, “The cracks where the light comes in.” Either there is a voluntary development, which means when we are aligned inside, so we are actually developing before we need a crisis. If we don’t do that, if we’re too fixed in the conditioning, in the structure, we need something that breaks open the structure for life to develop, which in itself a very healthy movement.

Thomas Hübl:                  Art, for example, good art is our cracks in society. We need these cracks for our sanity. This is what keeps us sane. I think what happens in the Arab Spring right now is that there are cracks and new movements want to happen. In itself, it’s a good movement, but many people are suffering from the way, how it’s happening.

Rick Archer:                     Yeah. Back in the early ’80s or late ’70s, I participated in groups, where we went to trouble spots in the world. I spent three months in Iran. We just meditated for hours and hours a day in a hotel with few hundred guys. There were other groups in Central America and other places, where there are trouble spots. In fact, there was a group in Israel. The theory was that we were softening up collective consciousness and helping to filter out a lot of this stuff because change was inevitable. It was going to be the higher consciousness is dawning and the world is going to have to be restructured in order to accommodate it.

Rick Archer:                     The hope was that that restructuring could be less tumultuous, less traumatic than it might otherwise be. Maybe we didn’t do a very good job because, obviously, there was a lot of tumult, but it could have been worse. So I guess one of the things you’re trying to do with your groups and healing these collective shadows is grease the wheels to enable the inevitable transition to be more smooth and less full of suffering and catechism.

Thomas Hübl:                  I think, well, what I said before to that more and more people will find this inner alignment and this what I call Divine FM. Divine FM for me is the non-dual state or awareness. It’s actually in the becoming part as a radio station. The radio station I call Divine FM and everybody has in the heart a receiver. So the more attunement we find in ourselves and the more authenticity, so there is a deeper inner guidance that is coherent with the cosmic intelligence.

Thomas Hübl:                  I think what we need to hope for is that more and more people will listen and live according to this inner guidance. It doesn’t matter in which area of life. By that, there will be a more smooth and voluntary development because I think in many people, many people know that already since longer time there is the evolutionary impulse knocking at the door and saying, “Listen, you need to move, you need to develop.” I don’t know, the relationship is over, the job is over, the way how you live your life is over, the way how you care for your environment is over and something new needs to happen.

Thomas Hübl:                  I think the more we all listen to this natural development that we can have, this is what in the traditions people call when people come from the future. So when you, literally, are connected to this higher possibility that manifests through us and you live accordingly. So then we don’t need crisis or breakdowns in order to restart the system. Yeah, that’s I think what we can hope for.

Rick Archer:                     I heard you say something in one of your interviews, you said, “Great scientists and artists and people like that come from the future.” I didn’t entirely understand what you meant by that.

Thomas Hübl:                  I think that there are two different levels how to look at the future. One is that people dream of a better life because they don’t like their current life. That’s not really the future. That’s the imagination of an escape of now, so that’s really on present. Then there are people that are so present in what they do that they become excellent. This can be artists, this can be whatever, scientists and all professions, actually, sports people, that when you’re so present in what you’re doing, that you actually exceed the limits of this specific human intelligence and you tap into something new. You become a pioneer.

Thomas Hübl:                  This means that you, what I call you reach through the ceiling of your consciousness and you collect fruits from the future and when you come back, you have fruits that people don’t know. These are insights, these are breakthroughs in science, these are breakthroughs in sports, these are breakthroughs in art, in music, in visual art, in whatever, in films. So suddenly, you see, you hear this piece of music and you feel that it comes from a different place, where you see this painting and you plug into a different consciousness.

Thomas Hübl:                  I think that’s not … Then the future is actually your higher consciousness’ potential or development. It’s not tomorrow because tomorrow can be in the same circle of consciousness like today. Then tomorrow is not a future. If you develop into something in a new version of yourself tomorrow, then actually, you’re coming from the future. So you’re grounded in isness and at the same time, you are allowing the future to manifest through you.

Rick Archer:                     I think I understand what you mean. So people who are on the leading edge, who are the real innovators, they’re embodying or we could even say channeling tendencies that need to manifest in order for the further evolution of whatever like Steve Jobs or the Beetles or whoever has really broken through cultural boundaries and apparently changes the world. They’re vehicles, they’re conduits through which emerging possibilities can be realized.

Thomas Hübl:                  Beautiful. Beautifully put, yes. Wonderful. It doesn’t mean that these people are fully realized or this doesn’t mean that these people … You can have a genius musician and when he or she goes on stage, you are just amazed by what comes through this music.

Rick Archer:                     Sometimes they’re amazed as much as you are.

Thomas Hübl:                  Right. Then they go down and emotionally or socially, they’re very fully developed. They cannot get their life on line or maybe they take drugs or whatever, but when they go on stage, it’s amazing. So one line of development can actually be very refined and others not so much. Therefore, I think a holistic human development is so important.

Thomas Hübl:                  You said another thing that is very important. I think one sign of a healthy spiritual development is that you or everyone, we are surprised by what comes out of us, our actions more often. So if you’re not surprised very often in your life by what you’re doing or saying, something is not working. If your spiritual opening is getting bigger, then the new information that comes through you, that your system is becoming more open means that new things can come through you, so you say something and you’re surprised by it. That’s a really good sign because then it means that the systems, the nerve systems in life get more open.

Rick Archer:                     It also pertains to what we were saying half an hour ago, which is that you’re not functioning out of mere conditioning. You’re functioning out of pure intuition or deeper intelligence.

Thomas Hübl:                  Right. Beautiful. That’s, I think, a healthy sign for a healthy development.

Rick Archer:                     With regard to, I mean, there’s a lot of things we can talk about. You’re working with the holocaust shadow. Obviously, there is the Arab-Israeli thing and the Palestinians and all these deals. Do you see collective consciousness as being, various collective consciousness like you have family consciousness, city consciousness, national consciousness, regional consciousness, religious consciousness, do you see all those things as actual conscious entities in and of themselves in the same sense that we might see ourselves as an entity, but really we’re a colony of trillions of cells both human and nonhuman that make us function?

Rick Archer:                     Yet, there’s an intelligence or a consciousness that is created through the collaboration of all those cells. So with regard to collective consciousness, is there a German consciousness, which is the Dave of Germany or collective? It’s like an actual entity that forms the consciousness of that country.

Thomas Hübl:                  Right. I mean, you could say whenever something creates boundaries around itself, any structure in consciousness that creates a boundary and an identity, so the identity can be viewed as a certain consciousness, so to speak. Then when you attune yourself, when you embrace this field with your own awareness and you read the energy of it, so you could say, “Okay. This is a specific information that is regarding to this consciousness,” and it might be a family, as you say, a state. It might be a globe or something bigger. That’s just a help to read the specifics.

Thomas Hübl:                  What we are looking for is how to transcend these boundaries and literally create more open, a more open field awareness. So my answer is yes, there is something like this and it’s also being co-created with the part of consciousness that’s looking at it. So when we look at Germany, we co-create this field by looking at it that way as well. So it’s both. It’s a co-creation in a way.

Rick Archer:                     Along the lines of that, I’ve heard it said. In fact, it was my teacher, Maharishi, who used to always say that a national leader, let’s say a president, can’t really do what he wants entirely not because just of political pressures, but because there’s a collective consciousness that’s co-created by all the people, all the millions of people in that country and that has its own karma, its own destiny, which is very powerful. As soon as the leader gets into the office despite all his plans and hopes and dreams, he finds himself governed by that collective consciousness.

Thomas Hübl:                  Also. Yes. Right. Therefore, it’s so important that when people say and they complain about the corruption of governments and why things are not working, but fundamentally, it comes down to the fact that every one of us, in order to create a functional democracy, needs to be a grownup human being and grownup means that we are intellectually, emotionally and physically grownup and at the same time, that we are caring, that we are participating fully in the life that we are living. If every part of the democracy is really taking care of the so-called problems or issues that come along my path.

Thomas Hübl:                  So then I’m not waiting till the government does it, but there are some things that we as human beings, as grownup human beings are responsible for. I think if this breakthrough fully, then democracy, some democracy will work. So what you’re saying is totally true. If there’s always a correlation between the consciousness of the state and the leader and this is one unit, so to speak, therefore, I think that the leadership of the future, politicians of the future are literally ones that live out of this inner connection and can become a voice of the evolutionary power that drives the system.

Thomas Hübl:                  Like a corporate leader would be someone that is attuned to the evolutionary drive of the system and can voice it and can lead accordingly. The politician would do the same with the whole state. Then I think the deeper intelligence in the system and not just asymptomatic intelligence of the system is driving the boat. Then it’s more essential and then it’s actually more serving.

Rick Archer:                     Beautiful. There’s really something just like that last night in that book by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee. It was one of the essays. The person was saying that the tradition of wise elders and they’re very rare these days, but really, we need a world in which our leaders are likewise elders, who are not just telling people what to do, but are reflecting divine consciousness with the intelligence of the universe and just representatives of that and therefore, can really lead from a cosmic perspective.

Thomas Hübl:                  Right. I think like in the tradition, it’s written, the more empty you are, the more light fall through. So when there is less and less conditioned structure, then naturally, the light fall through effortlessly. This means that sometimes when you see more awake beings, so you see from the outside they look like human beings, but from the inside, they’re pure light. Why? Because it’s empty and the personality doesn’t filter that higher light, so there’s an effortless creation that’s running through.

Thomas Hübl:                  Therefore, they are also called the ones that leave without a trace. It means that we don’t leave garbage, but our life impacts the world and there’s no karma that’s being left, no karma that life needs to take care of in a way or clear up.

Rick Archer:                     You said a little while ago, maybe this is one of my final points, that you alluded to a world in which we really have no national boundaries anymore. Is that what you meant to say?

Thomas Hübl:                  That we transcend the national boundaries. Maybe we will need them for some time still, but I think we need to transcend them and create a much bigger caring. So yes, we can be Austrians, Germans, Americans, whatever, but that’s not so important. What is more important is that I’m a global, at least a global citizen and that my actions need to be infused and beneficial for a global system.

Thomas Hübl:                  I think if I can embrace a global system in my consciousness, I’m also creating already a global vessel in myself. I think if more people will be able to do that, so then there’s naturally a global caring, which also means that the intelligence that we have already on the planet is also able to deal with the issues that are there. We just need to allow the flow. I think the internet, so the externalization of the brain, so to speak, the external neurons are helping a lot with this.

Thomas Hübl:                  So we need to also break down some structures that simply limit still the flow of intelligence on a global level. The national interest actually a part of this walls that we built that somehow limit a much global unfolding of intelligence. If a global intelligence would unfold, suddenly, you would see many more inventions come out that actually, again, able to deal with the challenges that we have.

Rick Archer:                     There’s a Sanskrit phrase that goes, “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam,” which means “The world is my family.” You know how in a family you have brothers and sisters and mother and this and that. They’re all autonomous individuals. It’s not like they’re all one being, but they’re family. So there’s this harmony and closeness. I think maybe given the cultural diversity of the world, maybe a long time before we don’t actually have separate nations, but all these nations can be like brothers and sisters to one another, if there’s sufficient foundation of wholeness or oneness in the awareness of the people.

Thomas Hübl:                  Right. I think it’s not about breaking down the borders of the countries now. That is illusionary because this cannot happen so quickly, but what can happen more quickly is that enough people will literally create a caring and an inspirational quality for the whole global context. Then I think we will be able to deal with inner and outer competencies, for example, with effects like global warming, climate crisis, food crisis, whatever. There are many topics. I think we need these inner and outer competencies, not just one or the other. We need both in order to come up with something that’s facing the challenges.

Rick Archer:                     On the same theme, I mean, if one were really in true non-duality, not just the unmanifest non-duality, then the Amazon Rainforest is my lungs. The rivers are my veins and the ocean is my blood and so on. You would know sooner damage those things than you would cut off your own finger. There’s an intimacy with everything that is naturally going to express itself as a much more intelligent way of dealing with the world.

Thomas Hübl:                  That is beautiful. Therefore, I’m so much with you when we talk about “The world is an illusion” because the expression of the world is equally sacred and the stillness of the world. If this is true, so I will be grounded deeply in and as the unformed, ever-present isness and at the same time, I will totally care for the expression of the divine. Then also, everything that I say matters and everything that I do matters. Both is true. It’s not either or. It’s both is true.

Thomas Hübl:                  Then we find people with their wisdom and their groundedness and isness will express itself in true action and participation. I think that’s what we need that the wisdom and that the mystical insight is actually flowing as a natural, authentic impulse into life because when do we care for things if we feel intimate with them. If I feel intimate as the world, so I will care for the world.

Rick Archer:                     Yeah, exactly. I think that’s what Christ meant when he said something like, “Whatsoever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.” He didn’t mean me, Jesus Christ or whoever, his real name was. He meant me, the one that we all are. You harm something in some way, you’re harming yourself.

Thomas Hübl:                  Right. I think that’s what it is.

Rick Archer:                     “Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.” I’m not really as literary as I sound. I have a very spotty education. These things come to mind. I have a limited repertoire. As people who listen to these interview often will constantly remind me, “Why are you saying the same old quotes over and over again?”

Thomas Hübl:                  [inaudible 01:43:55]

Rick Archer:                     Yeah. “I’m just full of you.” All right. Great. Well, this has been a lovely talk. I really enjoyed speaking with you as I knew I would. I hope we can do it again in the future some time or maybe we’ll run into each other in some conference or something.

Thomas Hübl:                  Yeah. Beautiful. I would enjoy this as well. Yes.

Rick Archer:                     Let me make a few wrap up points. I’ve been speaking with Thomas or I guess you say Thomas, right? Officially?

Thomas Hübl:                  Thomas Hübl.

Rick Archer:                     Thomas is good enough, Hübl. You know who he is by now. I don’t have to reiterate his bio, but I will be linking to his website and several different links that they’ve given me on the page that I created for him on batgap.com, where this video will be embedded. There will also be an audio version of it. You can download or you can subscribe to iTunes and get it as a podcast. There on BatGap, you’ll also see both an alphabetical and a chronological list of all the interviews I’ve done and I do a new one each week. So if you’d like to be notified of new ones, there’s a little email signup link that you can just put in your name and email address and you’ll get an email about once a week notifying you of new interviews.

Rick Archer:                     There’s also a donate button, which I appreciate people clicking on if they have the capacity. It enables me to keep doing this things, although I don’t do it full-time. I have a day job, but I take a lot of time doing it and various expenses and so on. So I appreciate the support that people have given and continue to give. There’s a discussion group there that crops up around each interview. We’re currently having a few technical issues with the way that works, but we’ll sort them out. So feel free to plunge in and discuss the points we’ve brought up during this interview.

Rick Archer:                     I think that’s about it. Thank you for listening or watching. Next week, I have Foster and Kimberly Gamble, who created the movie called Thrive, which is very interesting. I think you can see it on YouTube. You might even want to watch it before the interview. So we’ll you see next week.