AUTHENTICITY AND SPIRITUALITY IN TELEVISION

I’ve been exploring in my mind what role, for example, television would play, and video would play. And because I’ve had experiences of doing television where people have written in afterwards and said who is that person? It was like he was inside my being. I felt very familiar with him, and I don’t know who he is. I did this with the BBC in London with Bernard Levin, and I did it at Burbank with NBC with, whatever that is. And I experienced the same thing. 

At the time I asked whether I could look directly into the camera and talk directly to this person, and I took the little red light that is on the camera, and I said I’m going to look into this camera, and this is your third eye. I’m looking to you and you and I are right here. Now we’re going through, I’ll tell you what I’m seeing—I’m seeing the camera at this point. That’s on one level, but I’ll look beyond that, and I’ll just be here with you. And you and I, let’s now go beyond here I am, I’ve got this body, this is a 31-model body. I’m a man. But beyond that I’m another being, and if you look at me, imagine you have a little thing that converts right here, a little television channel selector. You look at me first and you see a body. You see a bald 50-year-old Caucasian male. Okay, now flip it once more and you see my personality. You see a charming, warm, affable, humorous being right? Now you flip it once more. I’m an Aries. OK, now you got me pegged, I’m an Aries. Now you flip it once more and look into my eyes and you see I’m a fellow soul. You in there? I’m here. Here we are, just one to one. And we’re both in bodies, we’re both in personalities, we’re both in astral identities. 

Let’s go one more. Now it’s like there’s only one of us which is looking at ourselves, looking at ourselves, and all this stuff is just stuff. You here? There’s only one of us. What do we do now? Let’s make believe were the many. Now we flip it once more and the whole thing disappears. And these are planes of reality. The whole thing just. And to me, I mean, the media is an incredible vehicle for the transmission of spirit. But it can’t be hustled because people can see through because they’re sitting in their living room and they don’t have to be nervous and they can see a phony a mile away and you can’t talk about the spirit, you got to be the spirit. And that’s why the media uncovers fraudulence. And a good news network has got to demand people that are working on themselves. Because people are just being great about teaching stuff—forget it. And we haven’t been ready to transmit the spirit because there aren’t enough people that are taking their spiritual journey seriously enough. They get a little bit of juice and they’re out playing, and you got to keep throwing it back in and working. I mean, I’ve gotten very, very good at one level. You can see I’m really, I’m a good showman, I’m good at transmitting Dharma. I’m kind of a master at a certain level. But it’s not good enough. And I’m going back to the drawing board now. Because what I owe my fellow human beings is more. Because I’ve had a guru, I’ve met somebody who in all the years I knew him, I couldn’t find where he was and I couldn’t find where he wasn’t. And I know what’s possible in a human being, and I’m greedy. I won’t stop, settle because I owe it. I owe and I see the possibility. And I realized that all you transmitted your being, not what you think you’re transmitting. I watch people say you gotta love everybody and I can feel the anger in their hearts. But be love, and everybody feels loved. That’s what a good news network can transmit, but it’s gotta be it’s very vulnerable because it is transmitting being, not knowing, but being.

I think that the media—every one of us, every one of us feeds people. In the way, with whatever light we have with our being. And I think it behooves the people of the media to work on themselves because just as you are an environment for me to manifest—it’s interesting, like when I when I am doing a lecture and television comes in, if I’m doing a big lecture and it’s like professional union television, very often the person that’s running the camera sees me as a side of beef. I mean, I am an object that they are collecting. And I need feedback. I need a feedback loop. That’s why I always have the lights up in the auditorium, because I need—I’m sharing. It’s a thing that we’re sharing that oneness, that with space, and that’s what releases me. I can get pounded. I’m an insecure, neurotic, Jewish boy. I mean, I’m still that guy too. 

And so I would look around and they would be all these beautiful beings, and I’d look at the cameraman, and the cameraman had this busy with technology, seeing me as this object. And I would feel myself lock in. And I think that if a media group is going to manifest and create an environment in which that spirit can manifest, they have to work on themselves to become those beings that reflect back, that allow that thing to release. And very rarely do you get that. Very rarely. When you walk into a television studio you are almost completely surrounded with “sit here. Hold it. We’re not ready for the take yet. Just a minute, you know, and OK now.” And the whole technology gets completely in the way of the spirit. 

And the spirit has got to take first priority. And it’s extremely disciplined for me to manage, to manifest the spirit in the face of what I’m usually faced with in the media. Like lights. For example, the technology that demands bright lights so that you can’t see who you’re talking to. And I can’t have that feedback of eye to eye, of soul-to-soul contact. And that’s just discipline for me to learn how to do that, how to say, OK, I don’t have that, let me surrender, let me work with that one. I ought to be able to manifest assuming like looking into a camera and not getting caught in cameraness. You know, everything—we’re like on camera now, I gotta, you know, that kind of thing. 

And there was a training for me. But it can’t, the media can help a lot by creating that space, because—.  I was going to do a show once, a television show, in which I just wanted to take regular people—. I wanted to take a truck driver, and a somebody that was in a house taking care of children all day, and all these different social roles and showing how the spirit is manifesting in everybody’s life, but they’re busy not noticing it. Because when I look, everybody is having transcendent experiences all the time. They’re just not coping to them. They’re treating them as irrelevant. I went out of my mind. I was confused for a minute. I don’t know what I was thinking. You know, all that stuff. And when you bring it in, you can get almost everybody—. 

I mean, there’s these Gallup polls and all show most people have mystical experiences, but it hasn’t been sort of in vogue to talk about them. And so just showing —. And showing how each life has its beauty and is a vehicle. See, the game is people think, well, if he’s a holy man, OK, somehow, he’s doing more than if it’s a mother bringing up a child. And that’s nonsense. I mean the unique function is that you watch a dharmic mother raising a child and you see beauty. That’s just breathtaking. And you see a Dharmic construction worker, and you see a dharmic financier, and you see a Dharma politician, and you’re blown away.