Ep. 183 (Part 1 of 2) | In the tenth dialogue of the A. H. Almaas Wisdom Series, Hameed Ali addresses what co-host Roger Walsh calls perhaps Inner Journey Home’s most profound chapter of all, the chapter on True Nature, as well as subjects he writes about in his autobiographical fragment, Luminous Night’s Journey. In the second turning of the Diamond Approach teaching, we transition from exploring individual true nature to boundless true nature—the absolute, ground of all manifestation. Following the mystery of truth, you come to absolute truth, Hameed tells us, and you find a mystery that not only liberates but makes everything happen. Hameed describes the absolute as the radiant blackness before the light, its luminosity awareness, and relates how, in the absolute, the feeling of intimacy is palpable. Here, the soul recognizes “I am home.”

Hameed explains how being and nonbeing are integrated, and about how time and space emerge out of true nature. Every moment is a new creation, he says, not formed by the past or present, but new, instant to instant, from nonbeing to being. Hameed says the essence of freedom lies in the absolute, and that in these troubled and times, the important thing is to recognize “I am free” and ultimately indestructible, and to be ourselves, grounded by the truth of our inner nature. Towards the end of the conversation, co-host John Dupuy asks Hameed, “What motivates you? Why aren’t you simply hanging out being true nature?” Hameed laughs and responds, “I am.” Recorded April 10, 2025.

“In the absolute, everything dissolves; the absolute is the universal solvent.”

• Introducing the 10th dialogue in the A. H. Almaas Wisdom Series, focusing on The Inner Journey Home‘s chapter, True Nature (00:55)
• What is the phenomenological experience of presence? (02:07)
• The soul can feel like presence—but more often it is structured by our history and appears as our ego self (05:14)
• Presence is the true nature of everything: perfect, complete, totally blissful (06:24)
• Love of truth naturally appears in the heart along the inner journey (09:04)
• The concern with talking about true nature is if you describe it, people look for something that isn’t it (11:57)
• Hameed wrote Luminous Night’s Journey to elucidate the experience of the soul, the absolute, and how soul and absolute are integrated (13:48)
• In the second turning of the teaching, we transition from individual true nature to boundless true nature: the absolute, the ground of all manifestation (18:11)
• The visible and invisible, manifest and unmanifest (19:58)
• Everything happens not from present to future, but from nonbeing to being (21:04)
• Everything dissolves in the absolute: it is the universal solvent (21:41)
• The absolute is the luminous, radiant blackness before the light (24:57)
• In the absolute, the soul recognizes “I am home” (26:47)
• Looking into the absolute, there is nothing; looking away from it, you see the manifest (28:48)
• The concept and experience of cessation (30:44)
• Hameed’s distinction between consciousness and awareness (32:40)
• Awareness = luminosity + emptiness (34:25)
• Emptiness is not empty space, it’s being and nonbeing unified (36:39)

Ep. 182 (Part 2 of 2) | Robert Lawrence Kuhn, producer of the popular PBS series Closer to Truth, which explores consciousness, the mystery of existence, and related topics with an open-minded approach, recently authored a remarkable article: “A Landscape of Consciousness,” in which he surveyed over 200 theories about what consciousness is. Robert tells how he inhabited each theory for a few days while writing it up, and discovered that unlike with other fields of knowledge, a study of consciousness produces more theories the more we know, rather than narrowing the field down. He emphasizes we need to be expansive with our universe of understanding of what consciousness is, and realize that how we engage with the Big Questions of life depends upon our particular theory of consciousness.

Robert tells how the Big Questions, notably what is consciousness and why is there something rather than nothing, have called him all his life, leading him to create the Closer to Truth series, to explore these questions with the leading minds of our time. What Robert didn’t know to begin with, but marvels about now, is how the passion for delving into the most fundamental, existential questions we face as humans unifies people around the world, from every demographic, providing a unique and wonderful point of integration. This is a fascinating, warm, engaging conversation that draws us ever farther into an exploration of the mysteries of life, where we glimpse what lies at the core of humanity. Recorded April 17th, 2025.

“It’s not that we have too many theories of consciousness, it’s that we have one too few.”

• The challenge of putting these theories into a digestible form (00:54)
• Understanding our personal theories of consciousness as extensions of our worldview (03:14)
• Our own theories often evolve from materialism to panpsychism to idealism (07:11)
• How the title Closer to Truth for the PBS/YouTube series came about (11:59)
• It’s easier to entertain materialist or atheist theories in environments constructed by humans—exposed to the natural universe, you encounter awe, wonder, connection (14:04)
• The concept of awe and transcendence in art and how it reflects our nature of mind (16:16)
• What has exploring these theories of consciousness done to Robert? (17:59)
• The closer we look, the more we end up in bottomless mystery (23:36)
• How exploring the Big Questions unifies people—cutting across religion, race, culture (25:28)
• Acknowledging the limits of knowledge—epistemic humility—appreciating the mystery, and universality (29:54)
• The deeper your understanding goes, the richer your appreciation and awe (31:16)

• Robert Lawrence Kuhn, creator, producer, and host of the PBS series, Closer To Truth
• Robert Lawrence Kuhn, “A Landscape of Consciousness,”article in Progress in Biophysics & Molecular Biology, August 2024
• Paul Davies, quantum physicist, director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, “The universe is about something.”

Ep. 181 (Part 1 of 2) | Robert Lawrence Kuhn, producer of the popular PBS series Closer to Truth, which explores consciousness, the mystery of existence, and related topics with an open-minded approach, recently authored a remarkable article: “A Landscape of Consciousness,” in which he surveyed over 200 theories about what consciousness is. Robert tells how he inhabited each theory for a few days while writing it up, and discovered that unlike with other fields of knowledge, a study of consciousness produces more theories the more we know, rather than narrowing the field down. He emphasizes we need to be expansive with our universe of understanding of what consciousness is, and realize that how we engage with the Big Questions of life depends upon our particular theory of consciousness.

Robert tells how the Big Questions, notably what is consciousness and why is there something rather than nothing, have called him all his life, leading him to create the Closer to Truth series, to explore these questions with the leading minds of our time. What Robert didn’t know to begin with, but marvels about now, is how the passion for delving into the most fundamental, existential questions we face as humans unifies people around the world, from every demographic, providing a unique and wonderful point of integration. This is a fascinating, warm, engaging conversation that draws us ever farther into an exploration of the mysteries of life, where we glimpse what lies at the core of humanity. Recorded April 17th, 2025.

“Consciousness is perhaps the single most unifying question that humanity can explore.”

• Introducing Robert Lawrence Kuhn, author, public intellectual, producer of the PBS series Closer to Truth, which explores fundamental questions of existence (01:02)
• How did it feel to be writing “A Landscape of Consciousness,” a 175k-word article that surveys over 200 theories about what consciousness is (02:50)
• Now Robert is building a website with notated theories of consciousness that allows for theories to grow and change (11:33)
• Consciousness theories, unlike other fields of knowledge, grow the more we know (14:59)
• All the “big questions” are dependent on your theory of consciousness (18:57)
• Why is there something rather than nothing? What is consciousness? Two fundamental questions that have been with Robert all along (23:17)
• Nine levels of nothing and the deep nature of phenomenal consciousness (25:36)
• Why Robert didn’t include his own theory in his survey, and then did—in 71 words (26:58)
• What does the explosion of consciousness theories say about consciousness? (30:27)
• The self-referential paradox of understanding consciousness (35:04)
• How to structure and organize the amalgam of theories (37:08)
• Roughly half the theories went into materialism categories (39:02)
• Challenge theorists conclude we can never understand consciousness (41:03)
• Robert’s theory categories: materialism, non reductive physicalism, quantum, integrated information, panpsychism, monism, dualism, idealism, illusory, anomalies and altered states (42:18)
• What kind of knowledge do psychedelics and altered states offer? (49:20)

• Robert Lawrence Kuhn, creator, producer, and host of the PBS series, Closer To Truth
• Robert Lawrence Kuhn,...

Ep. 180 (Part 2 of 2) | In this podcast, John Prendergast, spiritual teacher, depth psychotherapist (retired), and prolific author, eloquently lays out the territory we encounter on the spiritual path as we move towards opening to our deepest ground. John defines deepest ground as “ungraspable and unfathomable, something we can know intimately as a quality of awareness, unbounded and open.” “When we touch into this,” he continues, “we move from a place of love, peace and groundedness.” In working with students and clients over four decades, John says the presence or absence of ground has been the most important theme.

John has a gift for communicating exactly what is most useful for a spiritual practitioner to hear: taking an integral and nondual approach different from traditional psychotherapy, he invites us to evoke presence—welcome the experience, welcome the fear of annihilation—let go of ordinary knowledge and allow a translucent, transformative space to emerge around ordinary mind. Blending archetypal wisdom and guidance with spacious emptiness, John explains that opening to unbounded awareness supports the process of individuation and actualization; he also weaves in an intriguing version of the hero’s journey, where the hero emerges from the underground, not as a figure of accomplishment and victory, but as a simple, humble being, void of ego. The rich wisdom and gentle guidance offered here is invaluable, worthy of listening to many a time. Recorded November 7, 2024.

“We are on the wave of life waking up to itself through humanity.”

• Gaining an experiential understanding of the archetypal teachings of Carl Jung to better understand multidimensional ground (01:19)
• Jungian archetypes are subtle ground; Ramana Maharshi’s focus is no ground (05:09)
• Trusting the wisdom of our own psyches (09:07)
• Blending archetypal wisdom and guidance with spacious emptiness (12:07)
• The collective unconscious: linking consciousness to our ancestors (14:29)
• Multidimensional healing: healing ancestral lineages (15:20)
• Eastern transcendence and Western focus on living life: opening to unbounded awareness supports the process of individuation and actualization (16:51)
• The living question: What is life asking of you? (21:20)
• The first encounter is with darkness, stillness, emptiness; then comes a sense of pure potentiality and an upwelling current of life (22:41)
• What does engaged nonduality look like? Existential crisis and climate change (27:18)
• Frequency holders and/or frequency actors (31:56)
• Invitation to nondual communities: what is the natural response to this genuine existential threat? (33:02)
• The hesitancy people feel about bringing out the light of awareness (34:37)
• Opening the heart to collective suffering (35:30)
• Our love of truth will bring us to our deepest ground: let that be our guide (37:18)

• Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
• Carl Jung, The Red Book: A Reader’s Edition

Ep. 179 (Part 1 of 2) | In this podcast, John Prendergast, spiritual teacher, depth psychotherapist (retired), and prolific author, eloquently lays out the territory we encounter on the spiritual path as we move towards opening to our deepest ground. John defines deepest ground as “ungraspable and unfathomable, something we can know intimately as a quality of awareness, unbounded and open.” “When we touch into this,” he continues, “we move from a place of love, peace and groundedness.” In working with students and clients over four decades, John says the presence or absence of ground has been the most important theme.

John has a gift for communicating exactly what is most useful for a spiritual practitioner to hear: taking an integral and nondual approach different from traditional psychotherapy, he invites us to evoke presence—welcome the experience, welcome the fear of annihilation—let go of ordinary knowledge and allow a translucent, transformative space to emerge around ordinary mind. Blending archetypal wisdom and guidance with spacious emptiness, John explains that opening to unbounded awareness supports the process of individuation and actualization; he also weaves in an intriguing version of the hero’s journey, where the hero emerges from the underground, not as a figure of accomplishment and victory, but as a simple, humble being, void of ego. The rich wisdom and gentle guidance offered here is invaluable, worthy of listening to many a time. Recorded November 7, 2024.

“Transcendence is a beautiful first step… but there’s a very important process of embodying awareness more and more deeply, in the physical body, in the subtle body.”

• Introducing John Prendergast, Ph.D., retired psychotherapist, spiritual teacher, and author, whose most recent book is Your Deepest Ground (00:57)
• What is our deepest ground? (01:55)
• What is the difference between presence and ground? (04:29)
• The fear of losing control, of annihilation, that comes up in the process of healing and awakening (06:47)
• Using the myth of the underground descent, but emerging not as a hero, but simple and humble—devoid of egoic will (09:29)
• A translucency of the body/mind emerges: a core illumination (13:18)
• Meditation, self-inquiry, and time with authentic teachers are what have brought John to luminosity (15:09)
• The connection to one’s teacher: for John, this was Jean Klein and Adyashanti (16:25)
• Back to returning to the world—not as a hero, but where there’s no sense of accomplishment and hierarchy disappears (17:55)
• The tyranny of the enlightenment drive (20:42)
• Willfulness gradually transforms into willingness (24:07)
• Individual guidance can come as the small, still voice but also in kinesthetic form (25:25)
• Are there specific practices that facilitate opening to our deepest ground? (27:24)
• Evoking presence: John leads an invitation to welcome the experience, welcome the fear of annihilation (29:14)
• The difference between John’s work and traditional psychotherapy (31:31)
• Beyond welcoming, John teaches a self-inquiry practice that asks, “Do I really want to know what is true?” (36:15)
• Working not just on personal limiting beliefs but existential limiting beliefs—e.g., “I am a separate self” (39:19)
• Recognizing the limitation of rational thought, a transformative space emerges around ordinary mind...

Ep. 178 (Part 2 of 2) | In the ninth dialogue of the A. H. Almaas Wisdom Series, Hameed gives a fascinating account of how four distinctly different wisdom teachings came to him in succession, directly from true nature, embodied in the form of diamonds. “In the beginning, I didn’t know…what the hell were these? Is it my imagination?” Hameed laughs. But then his colleagues and students experienced the diamondness too. Like angels of revelation, each diamond vehicle brings a different type of wisdom: the first diamond vehicle, Guidance, brings clarity and initiated the practice of inquiry; the second embodies the wisdom that pleasure is what we are, bringing an understanding of pleasure from a spiritual perspective; the third diamond vehicle holds the wisdom of how to conduct our lives from a place of truth, and the fourth the wisdom of true knowledge—knowing by being—the knowing that is needed for awakening.

Not only do we hear marvelous stories of how the diamond-shaped wisdom messengers appeared to Hameed, but he also imparts a wonderfully comprehensive yet succinct rendering of the teachings they brought, and the conversation flows from embodying wisdom to embodying pleasure, the inward turn, and why bliss must be combined with emptiness for enlightenment to occur. Also, how to live a life of truth with the inner compass provided by the third diamond teaching, the pitfalls of the ego’s tendency to accommodate others, how being is inseparable from knowing, and lots more. A very full, warm, rich conversation, filled also with humor, sparkle, and delight. Recorded January 30, 2025.

“The Diamond Dome brings in the wisdom of true knowledge—spiritual knowledge, knowing by being—the knowing that is needed for awakening.”

• Emptiness has a bliss to it (00:49)
• The death tantra and sexual tantra paths to enlightenment (01:06)
• Emptiness/fullness, being/non-being, unity/particularity: two sides of reality (03:18)
• We lose track of the particularity when we focus on unity only (05:22)
• There are many different levels of particularity: ego, body, soul… Each diamond vehicle is a particularity (09:39)
• The Citadel, the third diamond vehicle, is the essential conscience, the wisdom of how to conduct your life from the perspective of true nature (10:05)
• Accommodating is part of the behavior of the ego, but in accommodating, most of the time you are selling yourself, compromising (13:20)
• Living a life of truth brings in the unity and the particularity (15:37)
• You transition when you become willing to sacrifice comforts, relationships, the supports of the ego, to align only with truth (17:56)
• On this path, the vehicle first appears then manifests each of its aspects—different shaped diamonds within a diamond (21:31)
• For Hameed, first Diamond Guidance appeared, then Markabah, then the Citadel, then the Diamond Dome (24:24)
• The Diamond Dome brings in the wisdom of true knowledge—spiritual knowledge, knowing by being—the knowing that is needed for awakening (25:41)
• This vehicle brings the knowledge of each aspect; basic concepts are clearly delineated (29:27)
• True nature informs the individual mind with basic concepts (34:38)
• Each vehicle highlights certain parts of the ego as obstacles to realization; the dome highlights self-identity, the “I-ness” of the ego (36:26)
• To embody the Diamond Dome the ego needs to experience cessation (37:43)

Ep. 177 (Part 1 of 2) | In the ninth dialogue of the A. H. Almaas Wisdom Series, Hameed gives a fascinating account of how four distinctly different wisdom teachings came to him in succession, directly from true nature, embodied in the form of diamonds. “In the beginning, I didn’t know…what the hell were these? Is it my imagination?” Hameed laughs. But then his colleagues and students experienced the diamondness too. Like angels of revelation, each diamond vehicle brings a different type of wisdom: the first diamond vehicle, Guidance, brings clarity and initiated the practice of inquiry; the second embodies the wisdom that pleasure is what we are, bringing an understanding of pleasure from a spiritual perspective; the third diamond vehicle holds the wisdom of how to conduct our lives from a place of truth, and the fourth the wisdom of true knowledge—knowing by being—the knowing that is needed for awakening.

Not only do we hear marvelous stories of how the diamond-shaped wisdom messengers appeared to Hameed, but he also imparts a wonderfully comprehensive yet succinct rendering of the teachings they brought, and the conversation flows from embodying wisdom to embodying pleasure, the inward turn, and why bliss must be combined with emptiness for enlightenment to occur. Also, how to live a life of truth with the inner compass provided by the third diamond teaching, the pitfalls of the ego’s tendency to accommodate others, how being is inseparable from knowing, and lots more. A very full, warm, rich conversation, filled also with humor, sparkle, and delight. Recorded January 30, 2025.

“For enlightenment to happen, emptiness has to be combined with bliss.”

• Introducing the 9th dialogue in the A. H. Almaas Wisdom Series: How did the Diamond Approach teaching come to Hameed? (00:53)
• First came a pure, transparent presence like liquid diamond: clarity itself (04:46)
• The diamond also came with a sense of precision, of sharp discrimination, of objectivity (08:07)
• Hameed’s vision of the diamond vehicles: like a fleet of ships in black space (11:05)
• The first diamond vehicle, guidance, brought about the practice of inquiry (12:06)
• Hameed’s near-death experience: looking down upon his body it was a body of diamonds; two diamonds called him back: love and joy (13:23)
• Recounting this experience to friends later, the diamond vehicle filled the room—the sacred manifest (17:08)
• Manifest in this one body was the guidance for the teaching, like an angel of revelation but shaped like a spaceship made of diamonds (19:46)
• Each diamond vehicle brings a different kind of wisdom (20:58)
• Diamond wisdom can be used as guidance in the scientific field (22:36)
• It’s not just a teaching, but a presence that embodies the teaching; embodying the presence is learning the teaching (25:11)
• The second diamond vehicle is the vehicle of pleasure, understanding pleasure from the spiritual perspective: the teaching of the inward turn (27:04)
• Pleasure turns out to be a whole realm, where all aspects appear in their pleasurable form (34:38)
• Inner guidance is where the truth is from instant to instant, telling you to look here, not there (35:58)
• Hameed differentiates pleasure from bliss, because pleasure is something ordinary human beings know (37:39)
• Embodying the wisdom that pleasure is what we are (40:08)
• All the vehicles are expressions of the essence of consciousness,...

Ep. 176 (Part 3 of 3) | Longtime spiritual practitioner, gifted teacher, Tibetan Buddhist lama, and developmental psychology specialist Kimberley Lafferty integrates contemporary psychology and wisdom tradition in this lively, luminous conversation about the process of awakening, the evolution of ethics, and the extraordinary capacities that come online as we mature into later stages of development. What do developmental perspectives have to add to our understanding of human nature and to spiritual practice? Our meaning-making shifts radically as we develop, Kimberley says, and because of that our reality itself shifts. This is why communicating with people with very different points of view can fail so miserably—one person’s reality is simply not the same as the next person’s reality. We need to discern, what is their meaning-making reality in this moment? What is ours?

Throughout, Kimberley grounds the discussion in practical, real-life scenarios; she also shares intriguing research on later stage development that has found that as we mature, our senses evolve: our hearing evolves to deep attunement; our seeing evolves to witnessing, our capacity of touch evolves to embody presence. It’s exciting and inspiring to see the road ahead, to acquire new insights and tools to improve communication across cultural (and age) divides, to have the concept of bodhicitta unpacked so deftly and common misperceptions about emptiness corrected—and to witness Kimberley’s wise and zesty approach to life: “What connects us all is our luminous, aware consciousness,” she says, “and if we can lean into the messiness, I think we can find our way through.” Recorded October 3, 2024.

“How can I reconstruct myself to be truth, goodness, and beauty?”

• What are some of the capacities that come online as people mature? (01:26)
• At late stage development, people awaken to individual construction; this is meta-awareness or 5th person perspective (03:40)
• It’s like waking up in a lucid dream and realizing you’re dreaming (06:00)
• How can I reconstruct myself to be truth, goodness, and beauty? (07:24)
• Development is a balloon, not a ladder (10:15)
• How developmental theory illuminates broader perspective taking: the capacity of skillful means (13:12)
• Siddhis (transpersonal powers) start to come on: precognitive capacities, the capacity of empathy (16:24)
• What challenges come about as we develop? (17:40)
• What connects us is our luminous, aware consciousness—if we can lean into the messiness, we can find our way through (22:43)
• What are humans becoming? The possibility of becoming trans-human (25:28)
• In later stages, our senses evolve: our hearing evolves to deep attunement; our seeing evolves to witnessing, to see through time and space, our capacity of touch evolves to embody presence (28:49)
• Seeing polarities rather than opposites: polarities are the building blocks of how we construct reality (31:50)
• Bodhicitta taps us into our ultimate nature (35:12)
• Correcting misperceptions of the bodhisattva vow (40:34)
• The tradition of debate in the Tibetan-Buddhist tradition (42:30)
• You are not alone; there is spiritual support available (45:36)

• Kimberley Lafferty’s website: The Confluence Experience (Education,...