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Guy Spiro: Gary, I have been interested in speaking with you ever since The Dancing Wu Li Masters came out. How did you come to write that book, and what do you think of how we have come to understand quantum physics since then?

Gary Zukav: I was born in Texas and brought up in the Midwest, mostly in Kansas, and got a scholarship to Harvard. After I got out of Harvard, once quitting and then returning to graduate, I volunteered to go into the U.S. Army and became a Special Forces officer. After leaving the Green Berets, I spent quite a few years doing what I discovered I did a lot of and that was be angry, feel that I was a victim and a sexual addict. This continued for quite awhile until one day when I was living in San Francisco and I was invited to a meeting of a group of physicists. I was amazed at what I heard. These people talked about whether or not consciousness creates reality and I did not expect physicists to be speaking about these kinds of things.

I returned to the meetings and I was fortunate enough to be invited again and again. I became more and more interested and excited and then surprised to discover that I wasn’t able to articulate what interested me and excited me so much. So I decided to start to read, and the more I read, the more it came to me. I began to see that I wanted to write a book about what I was learning. A book about quantum physics for people who would come after me. A gift for those who had no scientific background or interest in science, but who wanted to know about this thing called quantum physics. That became The Dancing Wu Li Masters and won the American Book Award for Science. It was wonderfully praised in the New York Times the day before it was released, and it did a lot to change my life in many ways. The biggest way was this: before I began to write that book my life was filled with anger and judgment and bitterness and sexual addiction. While I was writing the book, I was so excited that I was content to be where I was, doing what I was doing. I was completely fulfilled, I was engaged, and I believe I was engaging, I was living in the present moment. That book was a gift to me as well as to the people who later read it.

GS: You know I’ve always been a little bit curious, what were you angry about?

GZ: Everything. I was always boiling. I was always enraged about something, I was always critical of other people and jealous. I always felt that I was an unappreciated person. I felt that I was a victim and that the world was unjust and I was angry about that, too.

GS: What exactly was it that changed that?

GZ: The beginning of it was the experience that I had while writing The Dancing Wu-Li Masters. That was an experience different from any in my life. That book was my first gift to life. Before that, everything I did was for me. I was always looking out for me, always seeing what I could gain, but that book was not for me. It was a gift for others and it was a joy to write. That’s why it is a joy to read, and twenty-five years after it was published, it is still selling around the world. Its got the energy of a gift, its got the energy of the present moment, its got the energy of excitement and participation in life, and that’s what we’re all looking for.

GS: So writing the book facilitated the change.

GZ: Yes. That was what brought about the beginning of the change. The change did not happen and then was over. It is still happening. It is happening now. I’m always doing the best that I can to move into more freedom and more awareness. That’s what I later wrote The Seat of the Soul about.

GS: Have you had an opportunity to see the movie, What the Bleep?

GZ: Yes.

GS: How do you react to it?

GZ: I think it’s an excellent movie. It stimulates people to recognize a relationship between consciousness and physical phenomena, the relationship between consciousness and your physiology. I recommend it for that reason, but you can go much deeper. There is a reason for emotions. Emotions are presented in that movie, as I understand it, in terms of peptides and neurotransmitters, and physiological processes that are affected by your thoughts—and all of this is true and it’s exciting to realize, but there is a much deeper level and a much more powerful level at which you can look at your emotions.

GS: Talk about that.

GZ: Your emotions are the force field of your soul. You cannot reach your soul through your mind, through reading, through reciting scripture, you cannot reach it until you begin to feel. When you feel, you feel not only that which is joyful, but that which is painful as well. That which is painful is bringing your attention to parts of your personality that you need to heal, frightened parts of your personality that are standing between you and your fullest potential. But these frightened parts of your personality are not your adversaries, or your obstacles, they are your avenues to spiritual growth.

GS: I’ve always felt that the emotional level was kind of the forgotten stepchild of the consciousness movement. And yet as you say, the emotions are vastly important, they’re certainly the step between the mind and the physical.

GZ: Without awareness of your emotions you can not develop spiritually. You can understand more but you won’t really change. There are many people who tell me, of the millions who have read The Seat of the Soul, that “The Seat of the Soul changed my life,” and I believe them, because it validated in them what they already knew about things, such as the huge, unprecedented transformation in human consciousness that is underway. It validated that transformation in their own consciousness as they’ve become aware of more than the five senses can provide them. As they become aware of themselves as more than bodies and more than minds. It also validates their intrinsic understanding that their lives are meaningful, and that is something that you can hold onto when things fall apart and you feel the pain of a broken relationship or the death of a child or the collapse of a business.

But without actually going into the experience of it, you will still remain angry or jealous or overeat or over shop, or be addicted to sex, or alcohol, or any of the many, many things that we all do to escape the pain of the frightened parts of our personalities. Yet it’s those parts precisely that you were born to heal, and you can’t do that until you experience them. That’s why emotional awareness is a fundamental component of spiritual development. Without emotional awareness, in terms of your body, you can’t really touch the energy of your soul. There’s a great deal more to spiritual development than emotional awareness, but without emotional awareness you don’t escape the realm of your intellect. You stay within the domain of your thoughts and you think evermore that you know evermore ... and you do think and know evermore, but that doesn’t really change you.

GS: Many people involved in the consciousness movement draw their source material from the East, where they tend to see the mind and the emotions as being the same thing. That and the concept of gaining in consciousness tend to send people up and away from the body and away from the emotions, further into the mind, hopefully to get beyond the mind. But that’s kind of putting the cart before the horse.

GZ: Yes. I’m suggesting something different. I’m suggesting that the spiritual path does not make you otherworldly, it makes you very much this worldly. You don’t escape this world, you go into this world, but with awareness, and not with attachment to all that you are struggling with, to the need to validate yourself through what you can accomplish or what people feel for you. You become worldly; you go into your life, you don’t escape it. You become more present, more human, more free of your fears, as you experience them and challenge them. More and more capable of giving the gifts that you were born to give. This is how you create authentic power. Authentic power is the alignment of your personality with your soul, authentic power is naturally thirsting for the intentions of your soul, which are harmony and cooperation, and sharing and reverence for life. All of the frightened parts of your personality do not care about the intentions of your soul. They have their own agendas.

GS: When I was in my early twenties, this was my last lifetime. I really bought into the “get off the wheel” model. I was trying to cultivate indifference.

GZ: Oh, that’s a good point you bring up. Indifference creates indifference. I am not saying that you will not get off the wheel, I’m assuming that you are referring to the Buddhist concept of the wheel of life, of dharma, and of being able to move beyond it.

GS: Yes.

GZ: There will come a time when it will not be necessary for the soul to experience learning in the realm of duality, we will step away from it, and into other domains of learning and development as we move toward ever increasing awareness and freedom. But I do struggle to be a practical person. I struggle to be a person who is no longer controlled by my fears, by my critical thoughts, by my judgments of other people, by my need to succeed or my need to have a certain partner, or my need to have wealth or my need to have fame, or my need to have a mountain bike, or my need to be liked or my need to ... all of these things controlled me for so long.

GS: You understand that you are none of those things.

GZ: It’s one thing to understand, it’s another to actually move beyond their power over you. That’s where I am interested in talking to people and that is the critical point.

GS: It’s not so difficult to understand intellectually, but quite another to actually live it.

GZ: That is so correct, and that’s why creating authentic power is not a process that you take at a workshop and then it’s done, it is the process of your life becoming an aware meditation.

GS: Jesus said pray without ceasing.

GZ: Yes but pray for what?

GS: Well, understanding prayer as being in communion with the true self or God or however you want to term it.

GZ: That’s right; that’s what we all long for, that’s what we all want. But what happens when you become angry, what happens when someone pushes your buttons?

GS: It goes out the window.

{Laughter}

GZ: Out the window, for the moment, but what comes in the window? The experiences of a frightened part of your personality. And that’s what you were born to deal with, that’s your life, that’s your curriculum in the earth school. Everyone has a unique one, just like every snowflake is unique. Some people, when they become angry, need to dominate, need to shout louder, need to beat someone else into submission emotionally, intellectually, physically. Other people, when they become angry, withdraw emotionally. So for some people, challenging their anger means being able to experience anger without speaking, without expressing it, this is just the very first step, and yet for other people, challenging their anger means being able to begin to give it some articulation. There is no formula, but there are tools; there are tools that everyone can use, that Buddhists can use and Hindus can use, and Christians and Jews and atheists, that Native Americans and Zoroastrians and Baha'i can use, and these tools are necessary if you are going to move into your fullest potential, which means to give the gifts that you were born to give, to fulfill the sacred contract that you have with the universe.

GS: Talk more about these tools.

GZ: One of them is emotional awareness. Another tool is intention, knowing what your intention is. When you make a choice, what you’re actually choosing is an intention and intention is a quality of consciousness that you bring to an action. It’s your motivation, it’s your reason for doing it. You can smile at someone and have many different intentions for doing that. The smile is irrelevant, the intention is important. Did you smile because there’s something you want, did you smile because you were frightened and you wanted to disarm someone, did you smile because your heart filled with joy, did you smile because you saw something beautiful in the other person? Those are all different energies behind a smile. The same thing with physical actions, suppose you donate some money to a charity, did you do it because it’s close to the end of the year and you want a tax benefit, did you do it because you want to look at yourself as a philanthropist, and a good person, did you do it because you want other people to look at you that way, did you do it because you feel guilty, did you do it because you want to support what that organization is doing and this is a way that you can do it?

GS: It might be some of those reasons, simultaneously.

GZ: Go to the deepest one. The deepest one is the one that is creating your experience, which in the East is called Karma. You can experiment with this in your life. For example, have you ever given a gift to someone who, like a child, says, “I don’t like it.” Do you feel any pain, do you feel disappointment, do you feel anger, do you feel used? If so, then you had a second agenda that you weren’t aware of. You thought you wanted to give something to the other person, but actually you wanted something from the other person. You wanted appreciation, or acknowledgment, or indebtedness, and when you didn’t get it, you got a reaction. So if you thought that you were giving to give and you have an unexpected painful reaction, an emotional experience like that, then that’s your signal that you had a second agenda. And that’s what’s important to discover, because you are a powerful creator. In every moment you create with your choices, your choices of intention, and your power as a creator is a constant. You create strongly whether you are aware of the intentions with which you are creating or not. That’s why it’s wise to become aware of the intention with which you are creating.

GS: Well, I can relate to what you are saying. I find that most of what I used to be angry about all the time, I’ve let go. It’s been a real interesting process. I have wondered if it’s just because I’ve gotten older and burned a lot of it out or if I really have let it go.

GZ: You can let it go, but it’s not a matter of saying “I’m going to let it go,” it’s a matter of realizing that you don’t want to behave that way, you don’t want to create with that intention any longer.

GS: Who wants to feel that way?

GZ: Exactly. And the first time you decide that, your anger doesn’t go away; it’s strong and it’s old. That’s a frightened part of your personality that you were born to heal. But as you challenge it that way, again and again and again and again and again, it begins to lose its power over you and you begin to gain power over it. Eventually its power over you disintegrates. I have seen this in my life in many ways. For example, there was a time when, if something didn’t go the way I wanted it to, a little thing like tripping over something I left in the hall, I would get very angry at it. I would want to kick it out of my way. Now it seems I trip over things all the time, but it doesn’t bother me.

GS: I find I laugh about things that used to make me angry. They just tickle me.

GZ: That’s wonderful. Linda Francis and I love sharing tools that people can apply to their lives to develop just the kind of transformation that you’re describing. Another tool is access to your intuition, and another is developing your trust in the universe, allowing yourself to feel it or to experiment with it.

GS: That was longer in coming. I still work with trusting the universe, that’s not an easy one. Of course, none of them are.

GZ: No, no one has an easy time in the earth school. That’s because it’s a learning environment, it’s a multimedia, five-sensory, full color, surround sound, always up to date, real time, cast of billions, learning environment in which your experience is always perfect for you, given the wisdom of the choices you’ve made.

GS: I sometimes describe the world as a theme park. I’m on the Guy ride and you’re on the Gary ride and were are all trying to upgrade our tickets.

GZ: That’s right, we each have our own curriculum in the earth school, our own particular challenges, and our own fulfillment to reach. By the way, authentic power, what I’ve been talking about throughout this interview, is the experience of being alive for a reason and knowing what you’re doing serves that reason. It’s contentment, it’s being fully engaged in the present moment.

GS: Not spending all your time in the past or the future.

GZ: Yes. It is the most meaningful pursuit that you can undertake on this earth, the pursuit of authentic power, and as we become multisensory humans, that’s the huge transformation in consciousness that I mentioned at the beginning of the interview, as we begin to realize that we are more than bodies and minds, more than enzymes and molecules, and that this universe is more than our five senses can detect and present to us.

GS: We’ve talked about a lot of concepts here. What do you want people to hear in this?

GZ: That your life is meaningful. You are on this earth voluntarily, you have an agreement with the universe, you have potential that you are now beginning to thirst for. You have gifts to give, and to give those gifts is part of the process of creating authentic power. As you become authentically powerful, as you align your personality with your soul, as you begin to experience and challenge and change the frightened parts of your personality, you’ll simultaneously become more able to give the gifts. And in giving them comes your meaning and your fulfillment and your purpose and your joy and your bliss and your appreciation for life, even when things are difficult, even when things happen that other people would consider tragic. You have, in the process of creating authentic power, ignited an internal sun and it cannot and will not cease to shine, to radiate warmth and light and clarity. That is the creation of authentic power. There are ways to create it, ways that you can apply, ways that will help you to step into a life of more meaning and more joy and less pain.

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Gary Zukav will present “Inside Track: Accelerated Spiritual Growth,” an exploration of authentic power—the alignment of your personality with your soul, on February 13th, 9am-1pm at the Crown Plaza Chicago O’Hare, 5440 North River Road, Rosemont, Illinois. For more information and to register to attend, visit www.conferenceworks.com or call 866-547-3309, extn. 124.

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