An Interview by Holger Peterson from Spirit TV

Q: What is the core of your philosophy?

John: We have identities, we all grow up with concepts of who we are.These concepts become very dense. It’s through these concepts that we relate to ourselves and we relate to each other. There’s a lot of form to these concepts. We relate to ourselves as being persons having identities. Everything is a development of who you are, who I am, relating to each other through these identities. These identities that we have, what we do in this life, what we relate to in this life are necessary to be able to communicate with each other. They enable us to realize ourselves within a very dense form as a person within different interests and occupations.

So it’s a necessary kind of development that we all come into, and at the same time, that kind of development invariably covers up the deepest levels within. We grow up relating to ‘who you are, who I am’ and thereby lose touch with what we are – and what we are at the core is something really different from what a person and what a self are, and yet this core awareness and core consciousness that we are, is intricately involved in every part of our development and every part of our awareness. To be able to access what we really are, at the core and at the very root, there needs to be what I’ve spoken of as being a core-splitting honesty, an honesty that is so fundamental that it reaches all the way in, all the way to the root and breaks open at the very essence of what we are, breaks open our awareness, so we begin to know what it is we actually come from. To have that kind of core-splitting truth requires core-splitting honesty, asking the question: “what am I really?” In asking such core-splitting questions, what comes apart is the identity within feeling, our thinking, and the concepts that we grow up with. We then begin to realize that what we are is something of a consciousness, an awareness that, at a very profound level within,  is one with everything.

Q: Why are so many people drawn to you?

John: The struggle for people is that we grow up in our western cultures relating to linear concepts and a greater use of the mind in how we communicate with each other. What we are at a deeper level has to do with realization and not so much to do with linear thinking. So as long as we’re moving about in our conversation through the use of concepts, then we become identified with these concepts instead being able to open up to what profound realization is in its essence, which involves a letting go of our way of moving, mentally and emotionally, to be able to move on a deeper level. That has to do with being able to relate to something we know the truth of within but don’t have an understanding of. It can be understood more easily when you can think of yourself as a person, and in relating to others as a person, you know while relating as a person there’s something deeper within than how you’re relating. As soon as you are being honest within, to realizing that there is something deeper, you realize that there’s something of a self within, that is more, and deeper and finer than how you see yourself as a person with others. In the privacy of your own heart, you begin to realize your self.

In the privacy of your own heart, when you’re realizing your self, you begin to very easily realize that there’s something even deeper within than what you are as a self. So you begin to realize something of, not just a self, but something of a heart level, that something moves your heart, touches your heart. You can move into a deeper heart level instead of being in your self, and then you realize that you know something even deeper than what your own heart is. So each level that you respond to moving, going deeper and deeper, you always know from there that, again, there’s something deeper, and instead of trying to understand it, the way in is to just relate directly. The truth is within everything. It’s within techniques. It’s within the various religions.

Q: Why don’t you offer techniques to experience deeper levels of being?

John: The difficulty, as soon as you lay hold of a technique, is that as soon as something begins to touch within that you know is deeper, then you relate that directly to the tradition of whatever religion it is that you’re relating to, or you begin to relate directly to the technique that you’re using, such as meditation. When you meditate, your awareness opens up and you begin to know something within that’s deeper than what you’re accustomed to being as a person and as a self. As soon as that opening takes place, the tendency is to believe that meditation works, and you become a meditator. So then instead of being a person, now you are a meditator. So the very technique that helps also confines and locks in awareness to being something again that has a form that doesn’t actually reach the core. The technique itself is not the same as your own core. Instead of working with techniques, what I give people is what relates most directly to what our core really is. If a technique isn’t given, then the relationship takes place with what awakening is directly instead of with the technique that facilitates awakening.

Q: Why do so many people search for inner, deeper levels?

John: It’s really quite simple and that’s when, for example, you’re asking how to reach these deeper levels, you’re bringing up the question because you are knowing that there are deeper levels. If you didn’t know that there were deeper levels, you wouldn’t be asking such a question and you would have no interest. So you’re already knowing the truth of something within. You’re knowing that there is something fundamentally much deeper than all of this life and how people relate as selves and as persons. So you’re already knowing the truth of something within that is much more. That truth doesn’t need to be first understood for you to be able to access what you’re knowing the truth of. What gives you the access of what you’re knowing the truth of is that you are already knowing what you’re talking about, you’re just not necessarily understanding what they’re knowing. The distraction is in trying to understand instead of relating directly, which is knowing that there is something deeper within. It’s in the direct relating that you end up coming from that which you’re already knowing the truth of.

Then there isn’t a process in awakening to and entering the deep within. We have all been in that which we’re looking for. You can see it in little children, really little children. We see little children and we’re absolutely delighted with the kind innocence, the kind of purity, the kind of cleanness in a baby, in a small child. They’re already coming from what they are as a core, but without concepts, without the surrounding beliefs. They’re already naturally being what it is that we are all looking for in our complex lives. Its the direct relating within, instead of trying to get there. As soon as you’re trying to get there, then what you’re being is the trying, instead of actually coming from it. It’s not difficult to come from the deepest levels within, but you can’t use anything that’s learned to be able to do so. That’s why a baby is naturally already coming from it. A small child, you can see in their eyes and their face that they have something that everyone is looking for. It’s not with difficulty, it’s with profound ease, but profound ease cannot involve the use of ability that we’ve come into in growing up.

Q: Why do so many people fail to reach their deeper levels?

John: People naturally use what has worked in some way before. So, the thinking mind, the emotions, everybody knows how to use their thinking, their intellect, their emotions, their feeling, so it’s natural to use what we’re already able to do to be able to access deeper realms and levels within. The difficulty is that these subsequent forms to what we really are – our thinking bodies, our emotional bodies – they come after what we really are. They are not what creates what we truly are, so these bodies need to be let go of. In letting go of what we’re used to using in our lives, we naturally fall into that which we first are. Awakening easily takes place then, and as that awakening does take place, then immediately the tendency is for people to lay hold of their mental bodies and their emotional bodies to try and help what is already flowering, opening and being realized.

What is accomplished with our first real ability to realize is to just meet directly with people, instead of relating through our usual filters. While we are thinking, while we are feeling, while we have our emotions and our concepts, in the midst of all of that, being able to have immediate and direct contact that isn’t dependent on thinking and feeling and concepts. So the result is being able to, in a sense, plug in directly, with people, with nature, having that most profound oneness access that isn’t dependent on thinking and that isn’t dependent on feeling, and then that does open up within all of the thinking and all of the feeling.

Q: It feels like a religious approach? Is it?

John: No, and yet its easy to see the truth within Christianity as it is easy to see the truth within religion. Every religion, every philosophy, any book that you pick up, any movie you watch, there’s deeper truth, profound truth, easily seen and realized within whatever medium is laid hold of. The truth really is in everything, but as soon as it’s believed, then the mind begins to settle on one particular way, and then we limit ourselves to being stuck within a certain way of thinking, and a certain way of believing.

Q: What is the value of being in your presence?

John: What principally takes place, when I’m spending time with people, is not really so much the teaching, it’s not the words and it’s not the concepts. It really is just that I am moving as awareness from within the deepest level that I’ve awakened to, and I’m relating directly with people, so it’s the transmission that is the real value of spending time with me. When I’m coming from the deeper levels within, that activates the deeper levels within the people who I’m spending time with. It’s that activation that is the greatest value, not the concepts and not the teaching. As soon as it’s reduced to the concepts and the teaching, then it becomes a part of the thinking mind again, which separates from the deeper levels being awakened to. I have been opening up more and more to just being with people.

Really, it’s about giving people more access to me. It gives people a different way of experiencing what they’re already seeing or realizing within meetings. So then they can see how naturally awareness moves and opens in how a person functions, and in how I move as a self, and how I move as a person, for people to experience and see for themselves that there is something more to reality than what they’ve grown up thinking. The specialness of it is being in proximity to what people are experiencing within themselves when they’re with me, deeper levels opening within. Just simply by being in a meeting, profound reality opens up, and people have the sensation of their own body, of regions and levels within, that they’re not understanding. The experience of that is something that they’re knowing the truth of. People are realizing the value of just being close to that which inspires the opening in them. People value that experience more than the information that they receive. It’s not the greater concepts that people are really interested in, it’s the direct connection to the levels within that are opening, so when these levels begin to open, by virtue of just being in a meeting, people gravitate towards being in these meetings, because while being there the opening occurs. So, the transmission is of greater value to people than the concepts that are spoken about.