Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: The fabric of illusion is like multilayered, built on each illusion is built on another illusion, another illusion, another illusion. As soon as you start questioning it, you start breaking down the top illusion and then one underneath that and the one underneath that, until it all just completely unravels.
[00:01:04] Speaker B: Welcome to Supernormalize, the podcast where we challenge the conventional break boundaries and normalize the seemingly supernatural. Join me CJ as we explore less uncharted realms of existence and unravel the mysteries of life experience. My treasured listeners, if you have a life story or healing modality or unique knowledge that you'd love to share, reach out to me at Supernormalized. That's supernormalized with a z at proton me. Let's together embrace acceptance of the supernatural and unusual as what it really is completely normal. Today on Supernormalize, we interview Martin Gifford, the author of Happiness is the Starting Place, whom had a remarkable encounter with Amrita Nadi, an experience discussed by spiritual figures such as Ramana Maharishi Adida and Sat Mindo. In his blog post from 13 years ago, Martin recounted a transformative night when he laid back meditating and as he did, he entered a deep state and his energy shifted, concentrating in his head as a spark of light. From there, he travelled to the right side of his chest, where he encountered a golden Buddha like being who communicated telepathically. This being revealed a scene of interconnected meditating beings and Martin's focus was soon disrupted by an unexpected arrival of a naked woman. Despite this distraction, Martin cherished the profound sense of belonging and contemplated the words of this Buddha. Light being and how it played out in his life is discussed in the show today.
Welcome to Supernormalized, Martin. Now, Martin, you've actually written a book called Happiness is the Starting Place, but that actually started from a remarkable encounter with Amrita Nadi, which was an experience which is discussed by spiritual figures such as Ramana Maharachi Adi, Dar and Sat Mindo. Now, look, this was a big experience for you a little while back in your life.
How did all that happen and what happened for you that actually inspired you so much to actually write that book? Happiness is a starting place is the starting place.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: Well, I've been on a lifelong quest for understanding why the world's so crazy kind of thing.
911 had just happened as well.
And I just saw George Bush saying, yeah, we're going to go to war, we're going to demolish Iraq. And I'm like, what the hell is going on here? It's just crazy overreaction and everything.
And I had a heap of jobs, but I'd ended up in debt and no money. But I still quit the job and went to Byron Bay because I just didn't want to focus on something small like a job when I could be doing something know.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: You found your own mission, were you?
[00:03:52] Speaker A: Oh, definitely, yeah. Kind of saved the world, I must admit. It kind of a bit extreme, but just wanted to understand what was going on. Yeah, right, because we're not given an instruction manual for this world or anything.
[00:04:07] Speaker B: No, but did the 911 event actually really strike something up in you and just made you was that part of your decision making? Like, I've got to change my life because that happened?
[00:04:18] Speaker A: Yeah, it was part of it, but I also just hated ordinary work and that but yeah, I thought 911 was a non event. I just thought, well, people are killing themselves, killing all the time.
Why are we making such a big fuss? Just because it happened in America or something? I suppose it was spectacular.
Yeah, I just wanted to get real. And I think a lot of things happened around 2002. I mean, I've heard 2001, 2002, a lot of spiritual things happened. I mean, I've had a lot of people tell stories about something intense happening in 2002, for example.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: Right.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: I just think there was a kind of a shift time, something like and it was also start of a new millennium according to the Western calendar. So I just think something special was happening.
[00:05:16] Speaker B: Right.
My perspective on that one was like way back then, I was actually managing a store in Newtown, in Sydney, and when 911 happened, I opened the store and I was like, what's going on? The streets are empty. This is really weird because I don't watch TV because for a long time I've thought TV is for idiots. So I just came away from it.
I have watched TV in the past, but it got to a point where I found it was so offensive and so demeaning to engage with it that I just couldn't do it anymore. So on that day that that happened, I didn't know what's going on. And then somebody I grabbed somebody that was walking past really rapidly, and they said, America's been bombed. I said what? So I phoned one of my friends and I went down to their place at the end of Newtown and they were getting ready for work. And I said, what's going on? They said, oh, yeah, America's got been attacked. And on TV they were just showing the same footage over and over and over, which was the planes hitting the towers as an inset on the live footage of the buildings, buildings burning, I should say. And I was looking and going, wait a minute. This just doesn't look right to me.
For me, it was like I didn't feel like that was real at all. I felt like, this is just fake. What's going on here? Why are people even engaging with this? This is so strange that even Australians are so hooked into this story. And it's a traumatizing event. It creates PTSD and causes people to go into panic mode. So I think at that moment in time, it did change a lot of people's lives. Although from my perspective, I was like it's just the government being a bunch of dickheads again or the corporatocracy trying to control people's minds in some way. And I didn't agree with it and it didn't affect me the same way it seemed to affect a lot of other people. I just stepped back and went, I don't know about this, this doesn't make me feel good because I can see that there is machinations within machinations going on here.
[00:07:16] Speaker A: For sure.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
It was one of those strange events in life for sure, for a lot of people.
So it did trigger you to actually make a big change in your life. And at that time you're working as a clerk at Sydney Royal Hospital for Women.
That event popped your mind in some way and you just wanted to change things. You were a debt collector at the time, so you obviously weren't enjoying that.
[00:07:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I was just in misery because I'd had like 30 jobs in my life trying to find something.
I was stuck there and it was just the most it just had zero contribution to anything.
This is like the opposite of what I intended to do. So I was like thinking to myself, how did I manage to create the opposite of what I was seeking?
Seeking, like happiness and saving the world and good career and all this sort of stuff. And it was the exact opposite. So I thought, Well, I have to change it. Right?
[00:08:21] Speaker B: What was your spirituality around that? I mean, that time of life, were you meditating? Were you reading books? What were you doing?
[00:08:32] Speaker A: I don't think I was reading. I'd been reading a little bit of books, some spiritual books and not much meditation. I've never been really much of a meditator. I've done some meditation, but I always thought, well, what am I trying to achieve here?
[00:08:49] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you were a guitar player, so, I mean, did you get out there and shred with a band or were you more like a solo sort of bloke, just sitting at home having a pluck?
[00:09:00] Speaker A: More like a songwriter.
[00:09:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:04] Speaker A: Write songs.
[00:09:05] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:09:08] Speaker A: And I was writing screenplays and also writing philosophy book.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:09:14] Speaker A: And autobiography. Just trying different things, experimenting. And I had eight boxes of diaries that I'd collected over the years.
When I decided to go to Byron Bay and I had no money and I had a big debt, I thought, how am I going to carry all this? So I ended up chucking it all away except for one box. And I was going to go to Byron Bay and type up my notes and see if I could make a book out of.
[00:09:45] Speaker B: And then did you have a bit of drive to go in Byron Bay? Why did you want to go to Byron Bay? What was the drive?
[00:09:52] Speaker A: I was that's the happiest I've ever been was when I was in Byron Bay.
[00:09:55] Speaker B: Oh, so you'd been there.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: Thought because for those who don't know it's like the spiritual capital of Australia, pretty much that area.
I wouldn't have said that I'm a spiritual guy in particular, but I just like it's such a beautiful place, such a gorgeous yeah, and in the past some sort of positive things happened there, so I thought I'll give it a shot. And I didn't want to be in Sydney.
Yeah, the only option really.
[00:10:30] Speaker B: Okay. So you're launched on your way to Byron Bay by a gift from Marla, who you used to work with at the time and you didn't know about it till you were on the bus. What was that about?
[00:10:41] Speaker A: Yeah, I hated that job, but she loved that job.
She had money, so I couldn't understand why she was doing it. But she was doing it because she liked the work and liked to give her earnings to charity.
[00:11:01] Speaker B: That's pretty noble.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: The bus and opened the card she'd given me, there was $300 in there. I was like, oh, well, that's good.
[00:11:09] Speaker B: Well, $300 went a lot further in those days too.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. But she might have thought I was a charity case, I don't know. Anyway, so I went away with that bit of know, which turned out very fortuitous in the end.
[00:11:25] Speaker B: So what were your initial experiences when you returned to Byron Bay that time? What were they like and where did you stay?
[00:11:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I was staying in a backpacker dorm belong beach house. Well, first I was staying in garages, people's garages and couch surfing and up in the backpack of dorm, sharing a room with like five other people.
And I was going to the internet cafe and typing up my notes onto floppy disks up to 7 hours a day. And then after like two weeks I was just getting nowhere. I saw there's no way I'm going to make a book and get some money in. Any I thought actually I realized it was going to take like two years or something.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: Yeah, right. So was this the pre genesis to your book of the Happiness is the starting place? Is that where it came from?
[00:12:28] Speaker A: Yeah, at the time it was titled Befriending Life and then it had a heap of different titles and changes of themes, but the basic idea was there and yeah, so I was typing these notes and I realized it wasn't going to work.
And then I totally gave up. I thought, oh, screw this, I'm not going to find a career.
I've searched for a career all my life and I've never found it, so I'm not going to find it this week.
I just slumped there, gave up totally. And then a fat guy walked into the room, walked through the door and I was looking at him and then suddenly I just saw a hell scene in his belly. This red, fiery hell scene with whips.
Well, I think that was probably some sort of hallucination or something. But it was like I really saw it right in him.
And I thought, I'm losing my mind here, because I was also meditating and chanting om and sort of asking myself these questions about how I created such a mess of my life.
So I was digging deeper at the time as well.
I kept typing every day after that, but I just had zero enthusiasm, just something to do.
And I started inquiring more deeply, trying to understand cause and effect within my mind. How does this thought cause that result? Kind of thing. And I just kept tracing it and tracing it and trying to understand and yeah, then I started to have this melting experience where it seemed like something deep inside was melting and I didn't know what it was. I thought, this is weird, what's melting here?
But in retrospect, I'd say it's like the ego or the habitual structures of energy in the body.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[00:14:38] Speaker A: I'd stopped pumping energy into the old habits and things. So that was melting. That's what was melting and was intensely relaxing, like, beyond any sort of massage or anything you've ever had, sort of thing. And then the next night yeah, it's when I had the big breakthrough.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: Big breakthrough. Okay, so can you describe your heartbeat breakthrough and the experiences that actually happened around that at the time?
Did this happen at nighttime? Was it daytime?
What was going on for you? Were you under stress or you just totally relaxed? I mean, what was happening for you at that time?
[00:15:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I was a bit shy socially, so I didn't hang around the dorm very much, the backpacked place very much. Instead, I was going for epically long walks.
And I just noticed that my mind would get in control, taken over by fear of running out of money and not having a career and not knowing what to do with myself. So I was doing things like focusing on the ground as I walked and just trying to break the control of fear over me.
[00:15:53] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: So go for huge long walks and yeah, I was walking till like 11:11 p.m. At night. That's after the typing of the notes. And I was chanting. I think I was chanting om at the time. I chanted on the bus on the way up, but I don't know if I was chanting at the time. And I was moving my arms around just to break off thoughts and to relax and things.
Yeah. And that's what I was doing.
So I'll tell you the experience, I guess.
[00:16:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:26] Speaker A: So the melting began again. Well, I woke up at like 02:00 a.m.
Because my feet were so sore and it was hot weather, it was summer, so my feet were sore. The bed was hot and the bed was old and had a big dip in it. So I was very uncomfortable and I just couldn't sleep, so I just decided to lay on my back and meditate and I didn't want to make noise as well for the other dorm other people in the dorm, in the dorm room.
So I started meditating again and then the melting happened again. But then it seemed to activate this process inside my body where all the energy withdrew from the torso and the limbs and everything went up to the center of my head and I saw it as a spark of light in the center of my head. So I was spark and I also simultaneously saw it. I'm not sure how that works, but then I guess it's like an astral body around the spark kind of thing and you're seeing it from the astral body position.
But anyway, so as that spark of light, I traveled down my neck to the right side of the heart and there was this golden deity like the statues you see in the Asian shops and things like that, buddhist stuff and Hindu stuff.
And yeah, he just started communicating to me I am the indie as the heart of all beings. And it was kind of like psychic communication. Wasn't like I didn't hear him speaking in English or something. It was like intuitive.
He said, So I am the as the heart of all beings. All beings are connected. And then he moved his arms to the right and this whole spiritual space, like spiritual realm opened up and there were all these beings, people human like people, human like beings, meditating, all separate, all separate from each other.
And there was this cord connecting all their hearts.
Throughout all this, I wasn't thinking or doing anything. I was just like looking, just plainly looking without anything going on in my head.
And then he turned around to me and he said and you like kind of a Zen question. And you, what's your story? Kind of thing. Who are you? Kind of thing. And then my attention went back to myself because I was looking who am I? Sort of thing, or what about me? And then I started separating from him and then I tried to get back to him and the harder I tried to get back to him, the faster I separated. And then I came back to my head and I opened my eyes and I saw this light coming from the right side of the heart and it was kind of coming out, spreading out forward from my right side of the heart there.
And it seemed to be projecting the world in some kind of 4D way.
You couldn't explain it or articulate it at all, just forget it.
And I just sort of laid there, sort of memorizing his words because I'm very interested in understanding how the world works. So if somebody's giving me info direct from the horse's mouth kind of thing, I want to remember it.
[00:20:12] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. Did you write it down at the time?
[00:20:15] Speaker A: No, I wrote it down next morning because I didn't want to wake up the dormant residence.
[00:20:24] Speaker B: You've had the ultimate experience possible as a human, but you don't want to wake anyone up.
I can understand.
I had an experience sort of like that one time when I was in a dream and I was walking in a riverbed with this man, and he was a native man in Australia. And I think actually now wait a minute, pull that back. I think it was actually a Native American man and walking in a riverbed with him. And he said to me, Look, I got to tell you something. It's really important and this word will actually make everything in all people's lives easy. And he said, don't word. And I was like, wow, this is going to be good. So he told me the word and I woke up going, oh, man, that's so good. That's really good. I'm really glad I got that. I'll remember that in the morning and I went back to sleep and I forgot it. So after that I was like, oh, I should have wrote that down.
These things happen. So since then, as soon as I get information and I write it down.
[00:21:37] Speaker A: I'm like, Right, yeah, I had a similar one as well.
I had a dream that listed every mistake I'd made in my life.
Like every key mistake. I was like, wow, there's no way I'm going to forget that. That was really like the impact was huge.
Cafe opened up, the laptop, just nothing there. Yeah, look, do you have an idea of what the word might have been?
[00:22:10] Speaker B: No idea. I can remember everything about it except for the word. So I have since discovered ways to make sure that I can capture things. And what I did for a while was actually use a microphone and I'd put a portable mic right next to the bed and I would just turn it on and just say it, just say it exactly as I remember it right that moment. But I did actually discover since then that when you start to speak, what happens, that actually does dissolve some of the connection to the ideas. And when people do remote viewing, instead of actually using words, they'll use pictures, and they'll just draw as many pictures as they can because the actual mind that connects to that sort of knowing is more image based. So if you actually draw little pictures, just little key elements, everything you can imagine, then more stuff unfolds and comes out of it. So that's a pro tip that I've learned since then. Can't say I've put it into practice much because I haven't had anything for a little while now that popped up and said, you got to write this down, but I'm prepared for it just in case.
[00:23:11] Speaker A: Nice one. Yeah, because that realm is not sort of linear and that's right. Logical sentences very well.
[00:23:21] Speaker B: No, well, it's multidimensional. So like you said, it's very hard to put into words, because words don't encompass these things, that's why.
[00:23:30] Speaker A: Well, I mean, you could say that words don't encompass anything.
[00:23:34] Speaker B: Yeah, true.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: Because every little thing has multiple facets and you can view it from multiple angles.
[00:23:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:46] Speaker A: Like an ant walking over the laptop is going to see the laptop very differently to me, typing on it, using it as a tool.
[00:23:54] Speaker B: Very true. Very true. So you've had this experience early in the morning, didn't wake anyone up. You went back to sleep, you woke up the next day. And what happened then?
[00:24:05] Speaker A: You don't want to hear the little funny thing that happened after.
[00:24:07] Speaker B: I know what happened after that's. Right. Yeah. The lady. Yeah, talk about that. Yes.
[00:24:13] Speaker A: I'm laying there on the bed at 02:00 A.m., trying to just memorizing this golden deity's words and watching this light coming from the right side of my heart and trying to comprehend what was happening.
And I heard footsteps outside, and the door opened and one of the backpacker dorm residents walked in, and she promptly stripped naked and started playing the exhibitionists, kind of dancing around and enjoying thinking we're all asleep. Right.
I thought that was incredible coincidence. It was like Shakti and Shiva or something.
Just amazing coincidence because that's never happened to me in my life. And wow.
Felt like an energetic or maybe.
[00:25:13] Speaker B: A.
[00:25:14] Speaker A: Connected, inevitable sort of thing. And a funny thing. You mentioned a dream before, but a lot of people have said, look, that was an interesting dream you had. Wasn't a dream.
[00:25:22] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I know.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: They can only see it in terms of it must have been a dream. It can't have been real.
Hence the point of your podcast. Super normalized. It doesn't have to be real.
[00:25:37] Speaker B: Well, I mean, who says that reality is not a dream anyway?
Or a projection from the projection that's it too? I sometimes have been toying with the idea that the human experience that we are is more of like it's a lens effect through what we are. We aren't actually what we seemed ourselves to be. We're an antenna, and we pick up information and transmit it and send it around and swap it and communicate it to others and yeah, for all intents and purposes, it could be that the whole thing is a dream continuously, and this is just part of the solid part of it. So, yeah, enjoy it.
[00:26:19] Speaker A: Well, to me, it seemed to me at the time that this whole world is a projection from the right side of our hearts and that everybody's projection adds up to this hologram called the world.
Don't ask me how it works, but it really seemed like that.
Note that other people have totally different cosmologies and different spiritual experiences which have a different explanation, but it seemed very matter of fact to me, like it was like being shown by the Smithsonian Institution, this is this and this is that, and this is how they all work. So this is your it was very matter of fact. It wasn't like choirs of angels or anything like that.
[00:27:06] Speaker B: It was just this is how it is.
[00:27:10] Speaker A: And it wasn't like in sort of elevated sort of loving consciousness or anything, or oneness or anything. It was just matter of fact. It was uncanny.
[00:27:19] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[00:27:21] Speaker A: The next day I went to the Beach Hotel for breakfast.
[00:27:26] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: And all these songs were playing that were really relevant, like, you're standing on the ledge and we want to make a connection, things like that. I was like, wow, that's strange. Songs I'd never heard before.
And I was just writing in their notebook what had happened and writing down his words and trying to analyze it.
And the projection of light from the right side of the heart is still happening for the whole of the day. And then by around 05:00 p.m., I think it's faded away.
[00:28:01] Speaker B: So these experiences that you've had, sometimes when people have spiritual experiences like that, that they don't have a full explanation for, occasionally you might find that reality then will start popping up explanations that actually help you to ground it and understand it even more. Did that actually happen for you as well? Because that can happen.
[00:28:24] Speaker A: No, I'm not sure. What do you mean?
[00:28:27] Speaker B: You might suddenly be offered a book that actually explained what happened.
[00:28:35] Speaker A: There's three gurus I mentioned. I mean, at the time I was reading Adidar and Ramana Maharshi, and both of them talk about the Amrita nadi on the right side of the heart in being the seat of the self.
[00:28:46] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: So that's the closest explanation I have. But I've never seen jesus also said, I am in you and you are in me, which is the same thing that the golden deity.
It seems to be an extremely rare experience because I only know four other people have had it.
But also my experience was more detailed than this. They just say it's the seeds of the souls on the right side of the heart, but they don't have any images or spiritual realms or deities or anything like that.
The intuition was the only thing that I got, that the world is some kind of 4D hologram projection from the right side of the heart. That was just an intuitive sense, but I'm not confident about that. I wouldn't say I'm confident, but there was no explanation from the world. There was other spiritual phenomena at the time, but no explanations.
[00:29:44] Speaker B: Often these experiences too will trigger people to be spurred upon a path to explore and understand that experience even more. And did that happen to you after that? Did you actually go pursuing that experience even more? Did you want to find out more about it? And how did you go with.
[00:30:07] Speaker A: I read I started reading every quote Raman Maharshi said about nadi, and I read everything, but there's not much out there. There's not much about this thing, so I just analyzed it myself, trying to understand how did it happen? And I understand how it happened for sure, but I don't understand I want to go back. I haven't gone back there again. The activation process has happened a few times, but then desire will pop up and sort of stop it continuing and getting pulsing, twitching on the right side of the heart ever since, but it never happened again. But, yeah, I would like to go back there and get some more explanation of what's going on.
[00:30:57] Speaker B: Yeah, it's really curious because it's known as the channel of bliss and immortality and the seat of the source of consciousness of the self, and it's explained as being located in the heart on the right. So like in your chest, you actually felt it on the right hand side, which is exactly the location of it.
That's really curious in itself. So it's generated between the true heart and not just the heart chakra, but the living heart of the very self and its perfect place above. So very curious that you actually connected deep into that and how it affected you because yeah.
[00:31:32] Speaker A: Wow.
A joke to myself at the time.
[00:31:36] Speaker B: Gee.
[00:31:37] Speaker A: Been searching everywhere for the answer and it's only twelve inches away from my head.
[00:31:43] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[00:31:45] Speaker A: They say, call it a channel or even a nerve on the right side of heart.
[00:31:51] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:31:54] Speaker A: And people have said to me, and I've talked to other people about it, like meditation stuff, and say, oh, I've got a sense of it, or something. It's like, no, you haven't. It's really concrete. It's not like some vague spiritual woo woo thing. It's like spiritual physics, I would call.
[00:32:11] Speaker B: It in it right, yeah.
[00:32:12] Speaker A: The strange thing is other people have other experiences, like have near death experiences or something, and they say they go out of the top of the head, the head chakra, or even some say out of the belly, the horror. But I read one near death experience where the person flew out of their thigh, their right thigh.
[00:32:32] Speaker B: I don't know that's really? OD. Yeah. Okay.
[00:32:34] Speaker A: Entrances and exits. Most people with near death experiences just find themselves outside of the body. Oh, I'm out of the body.
[00:32:41] Speaker B: Yeah. And they're often looking at the body going, okay, I must be dead. Yeah.
[00:32:50] Speaker A: I'm not going to form a fixed opinion of how these things work. Or maybe there's the same thing happening in different ways to different people.
Spirituality is a multidimensional thing, not a simple linear thing. It's multidimensional and can take all these forms.
[00:33:10] Speaker B: Okay, so after your experience of this and the naked dancing lady, you decided to make some other changes and you moved from Byron Bay up to Brisbane. How did your financial situation improve after that?
[00:33:27] Speaker A: Or did it it just got worse.
I went to Centrelink to go on the Doll and they said, no, you got. To wait a few weeks. So then my money ran out and ended up on the street, living on the street. It was only like three or four days, but first time, for had a guitar for sale in a shop in Sydney. And I phoned him up and asked the owner to buy it to get the money in.
So I was just sleeping in the parks and things like that, waiting for money to come through.
[00:34:08] Speaker B: Right, and you had a bit of a tussle with some possums.
[00:34:15] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I was laying on a sleeping a park bench, and I was worried about being attacked and that, so I tried to sort of half asleep kind of thing because I'd heard about Darrow being killed in one of these parks. And so I was a bit afraid.
I was laying there, and I fell asleep. I did fall asleep. And then I woke up with this cold sensation on the top of my scalp. I thought, oh, maybe somebody's stirring things up, bullying me or something. So I jumped up, and there were these possums. It was like, maybe eight possums. And one of them was a mother, had a baby on her back, and they were licking my scalp.
I couldn't understand why the hell were they licking my scalp. But then I figured out it happened again. I went back to sleep again. I tried to show them away, but they wouldn't go. And they weren't frightened of me at all. They were just like, hey, man, we're cool.
I said, well, you keep guard for me, you know, and I'll go back to sleep.
I don't know how long later. A few minutes later, I felt them licking again, licking my scalp again. So I jumped up. I said, Why are you licking my scalp, guys? And then I figured out that it was just fruitscent, shampoo.
All these weird things were happening at the time. I'd go to a food court or something, and I'd see these little Davers underneath plants planted in the food court.
And I walked around. I was in Brisbane at that point, and Queen Street Mall. I was walking along, and then I just saw this inside of some sort of Tibetan or Asian sort of hut or small, small house. And then that's weird, because then the owner of that house seemed to be seeing through my eyes, queen Street Mall. And he said, oh, so that's a shopping mall, all right.
He wasn't very interested.
Again, it was like that psychic kind of communication. I didn't hear his voice. It was just I was hearing his thoughts, and that was bizarre.
[00:36:58] Speaker B: Well, I'm really curious about the divas. And you must have been, like, in a really open sort of state because of your heart connection. And you're seeing these divas under the plants. What did they look like?
[00:37:13] Speaker A: If you do a little search in the neck, you probably see that they were, like, colorful pretty you could see through them a bit, but they were pretty colorful things about, I don't know, five inches high.
[00:37:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:35] Speaker A: They'd be just sitting under plant under trees and plants and things like that, just sitting there. I don't know. I've heard that they can be the spirit of the trees or plants, or they can be the guardians of them or something like that. I don't know. Right.
[00:37:52] Speaker B: Yeah. I just did a quick search then while we're talking, and yeah, I can see what you mean. And it does make me think also of the fairy folk, the Fay, the good neighbors as well. It seems like they're related in some way, which is really curious and very interesting at the same time.
I had an experience in Thailand where I had visions of the plant divas myself, and I was walking around one night, and then suddenly I was looking at the trees, and instead of them being trees, it was people making love. I'm like, what the hell is this? I feel, OD, looking at that. But it's a tree. But it's also that. And I'm thinking, what is this? And obviously, later on, I figured out that it was the plant spirits and that's them creating the tree.
[00:38:36] Speaker A: Right. Oh, yeah. Okay.
[00:38:37] Speaker B: Yeah, it was wild. I was like, Whoa, the nature is really sensuous.
I was like, wow. Interesting. Very curious.
[00:38:48] Speaker A: Oh, there's definitely more going on to these things than we realize.
[00:38:53] Speaker B: Yeah. It makes me wonder about the human experience. It seems like if we get really caught into the material side of things, we don't actually have any connection or any sight of these things. But with you and your experience and you've opened up by your heart experience, it did actually open some doors to you to be able to see more things as well. Has that actually continued in your life, or has anything else played out from that.
[00:39:18] Speaker A: That experience?
There's been just different phenomena happening, like seeing, like, a paisley patterns in a gray asphalt road or melting into the surroundings.
That's pretty hard to explain. Kind of oneness. I guess people would interpret that as you're just melting into the surroundings.
[00:39:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:48] Speaker A: Nothing else in particular.
[00:39:50] Speaker B: Okay.
So you've had no other spiritual openings since that time.
[00:40:02] Speaker A: Out of nothing bizarre like that? Just ordinary sort of like oneness states or witness states, headless states and bodyless states, where you feel like there's no body and there's no head.
I'm looking to get something a bit more profound, but I want to understand what the universe is, what's going on here.
[00:40:29] Speaker B: Right.
[00:40:30] Speaker A: Had experiences before that?
Once a week, I'll wake up in the morning and have that hypnotic state, you know, that hypnopompic state?
[00:40:40] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:40:41] Speaker A: Where there's no identity. You're just pure consciousness.
You don't know who you are, your name, your sex, your location, anything. You just know that you exist. And then when you open your eyes, the memory of who you are, who you supposedly are. World comes back.
[00:41:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
So all these experiences inspired you in such a way that you end up writing a book called Happiness is the Starting Place. Can you talk about that book? What it's about and who's the target audience and what's your objective with it?
[00:41:25] Speaker A: It's about happiness and utopia.
The idea is like, individual happiness can lead to global utopia, and the only thing in the way is bodily instincts and societal illusions. So we just got to satisfy our bodily needs and end the societal illusion that there's something wrong with us. Society says you're lacking and flawed, and you need to chase material or spiritual gain.
But as soon as you understand that, first off, that's false, that happiness is actually your nature, happiness and goodwill, that helps to stop it. But seeing that all your goals are unreliable will lead to letting goals go. And then you just relax and realize that you're woven into the fabric of the universe kind of thing.
You are the current of life or part of the current of life.
That's it. That's the reality. And whatever you try to grab is just going to become like a stagnant pond eventually. It always does, whether that's a material goal or a spiritual goal.
[00:42:50] Speaker B: Okay, are you saying with that thencietal illusion?
[00:42:56] Speaker A: Because when we're born, we're brainwashed day and night. There's something wrong with you got to achieve this goal. Don't be bad and try to be good and try to gain happiness and success through money or spirituality.
I don't think humankind has come fully to terms with our predicament. Like, when you think about it, we're just vulnerable little baby born as vulnerable little babies, and then we're just inundated with this toxic societal program, and we have to step out of it. It's like the Matrix or something. You got to step out of it.
[00:43:37] Speaker B: Right?
[00:43:38] Speaker A: And as soon as you do, you realize there's no problem. There's nothing we can't solve. All the problems are caused by thinking we've got to achieve. So we've got to fight and dominate and compete and all that stuff.
It's all self created, but it's an inherited illusion from the past.
Our ancestors created the idea there's something wrong with us, and we've got to be good, and they follow these rules, and it's just nobody's sort of stopped and turned around and go, hang on. What is all these things, including morality and whatnot? All of it. We're not dependent on any of it.
[00:44:16] Speaker B: Yeah, right. Okay, so who is your target for this book?
[00:44:23] Speaker A: Who's what?
[00:44:24] Speaker B: Who is your target? Target market.
[00:44:26] Speaker A: Who do you that's a problem. I'm not sure anyone materialists would say it's a bit too spiritual, and spiritualists will say, oh, no, I've got to seek my spiritual thing.
I wonder if anybody's ready to just relax and be themselves. I don't know.
[00:44:49] Speaker B: I think that's the key message of pretty much every spiritual guru out there in the universe. Yeah.
[00:44:55] Speaker A: No, but they say relax and be yourself in order to get enlightened.
[00:45:02] Speaker B: I get what you're saying. I get what you're saying. Okay. Because you're already enlightened. Technically, you're already enlightened.
[00:45:07] Speaker A: Well, no, you've only got to get rid of illusion. You don't have to get anywhere. You've only got to get rid of that you're dependent on some kind of state or gain or anything.
[00:45:20] Speaker B: Yeah, right. Okay, so remove all of the self idols we put up in front of ourselves and basically you're already there.
[00:45:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Because the energy that we are, the spark energy, the spiritual energy that we are, gets divided into the goal and the seeker, and the seeker chases the goal, and it's all a story in our heads.
[00:45:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
Okay. Now, do you have any messages that you'd like to share with the world that comes from your wisdom of all your experiences and your writing?
[00:46:01] Speaker A: Just that we're not dependent. We just need to satisfy survival needs and understand that there's no reliability, so there's nothing to seek. And then you realize you never needed to seek reliability, ever.
[00:46:18] Speaker B: Simple.
[00:46:18] Speaker A: That really excellent. Didn't you want to talk some about some more weird spiritual experiences?
[00:46:24] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. What have you got?
[00:46:28] Speaker A: Well, all these experiences, I think happened before the spark experience or the heart experience.
[00:46:36] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:46:36] Speaker A: But when I meditated when I was young, I meditated and I felt a dead hand land on my shoulder when I was home alone. Seemed to land through the window, and I just jumped out of my chair and switched on all the lights and looked around and made sure there was no real person there. But it was an uncanny it was terrifying FUD on my shoulder from this just hand coming out of nowhere. It felt like a zombie hand or something.
[00:47:11] Speaker B: So it felt cold.
[00:47:16] Speaker A: Well, I had clothes on, so I don't know, it just felt like it fell.
[00:47:23] Speaker B: Oh, weird.
[00:47:25] Speaker A: Another one was during sex. I had an out of body experience where I saw my body as being black and having, like, wood shavings on it.
[00:47:36] Speaker B: Weird.
Must have been good sex.
[00:47:40] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
She just blew my mind.
[00:47:46] Speaker B: Absolutely.
Wow.
[00:47:53] Speaker A: And she just had the she just had to string on a finger, you know, she just she just completely had control of me.
[00:48:04] Speaker B: Okay, I can relate to that.
[00:48:16] Speaker A: Another one, I felt like during a breath work session, my right arm started spasming, and with my eyes closed, I could feel her wave her hand over my right arm and relax it.
[00:48:33] Speaker B: Right.
[00:48:35] Speaker A: So I intuited that she did it, and she was able to do it by just waving her arm over the hand, over the top. She didn't touch it or anything.
[00:48:44] Speaker B: Right.
[00:48:45] Speaker A: There's a lot of amazing healers out there. A lot of people love to find out how they know their stuff. I suppose they specialize enough.
[00:48:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Where did you do that breathwork session at?
[00:49:00] Speaker A: That was in India. Osho Ashram. Bhagwan Sri. Rajneesh Ashram. That guy.
Another one. I heard a voice in my ear. I was trading on the stock market and I heard a voice in my ear say, the ASX 200 stock market is going to go to $7,000 in two weeks.
And 15 days later it went to 7000, so it ran 300 points, which is pretty big move.
[00:49:33] Speaker B: Did you profit from it?
[00:49:36] Speaker A: No, because when I heard, I looked at the market and it was actually falling, so I thought, this is not true. So it actually fell 100 points and then ran up 300 points. So I would have made a huge profit if I hadn't listened.
And it gave the message to me. The voice gave the message to me in such a calm way, it just said again, very matter of fact, the market is going to go to 7000 in two weeks.
[00:50:04] Speaker B: Well, I personally wouldn't mind some stock market tip wizards that are on the other side that come and whisper in my ear, too. That'd be cool.
[00:50:13] Speaker A: I don't know. I did it at that time. Why the voice happened at that time?
Yeah, I'd like some more tips like that.
Always joked, like people who claim to be one with God or something like that. I said, well, give us some stock.
They never have.
[00:50:32] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:50:34] Speaker A: And another time, I was doing a voice dialogue session, and it felt like the spirit of Jimi Hendrix entered my body.
The archetype of Jimi Hendrix, that kind of wild shamanistic know. It was such a switch. It was like I was that person, that energy, that person.
[00:50:58] Speaker B: Wow, cool.
[00:51:00] Speaker A: Yeah, that's about it, I think.
[00:51:03] Speaker B: And what did they do for you at the time?
[00:51:07] Speaker A: What surprised me, it left me straight away. It just came in quickly and left quickly.
That's always interesting. Phenomena.
And they're also all very different and random. A lot of it I don't understand.
Just shows that there's so much more going on than we normally realize. Like your sort of podcast theme.
[00:51:36] Speaker B: Yeah, well, definitely. Our experience of life, as we've discussed before the show too, is a lot more unusual than people often want to let on. And people often will say things and not be honest about their own experiences until they feel safe to, and then they'll say, yeah, well, actually, something like that happened to me, too.
You know what I mean?
[00:52:00] Speaker A: I think that's changing now. I think a lot more people are more willing to talk about near death experiences, and it's even like Zen ideas and oneness ideas have even entered the mainstream through video games and movies like The Matrix and things like that.
[00:52:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:52:19] Speaker A: So I think that's changing.
[00:52:21] Speaker B: It's definitely changing. I think people are embracing more spiritual connection and these spiritual ideas that's been brought in through both science and regular spiritual channels as well. So it is the time, I think, for it for people waking up and becoming more connected. So that's a good thing. And yeah, it sounds like you've had quite the life of experience yourself, which is great.
[00:52:46] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think it's accelerating as well. I think we're going to be surprised how quick things can happen.
[00:52:55] Speaker B: Where do you think it's going?
[00:52:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I just think illusion is gradually breaking down. Like as things accelerate, people get to experience more and more things and realize that they're all dead ends.
And as that speeds up with all the modern, amazing gadgetry and experiences we can have these days, as that accelerates, people are going to start questioning.
I mean, people started questioning during COVID lockdowns and things like that as well. And people will start questioning things. And once you start questioning things, because the fabric of illusion is like multilayered built on each illusion is built on another illusion, another illusion, another illusion. As soon as you start questioning it, you start breaking down the top illusion and then one underneath that and the one underneath that until it all just completely unravels and that accelerates as well. You might be stuck at the top illusion for a while, then the next one's a bit faster, the next one's a bit faster, and then before you know it, you've fallen off the know into the Abbas of the unknown, which is reality.
[00:54:09] Speaker B: Well, that sounds like a really good way to wind up the podcast. And yeah, that's a good ending. Nice and clear. And thank you so much for your talk, Martin. That was really good to hear your experience and hear your understanding of what happened to you and how it played out in your life. I really appreciate your time.
[00:54:30] Speaker A: Thanks, EJ. Great to be here. Thanks for inviting.
[00:54:33] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, you're welcome. And thanks for reaching out. So, yeah, I'll say bye for now.
[00:54:38] Speaker A: Ciao.
[00:54:42] Speaker B: Martin's had some curious and interesting experiences delving into his own spirituality there and spontaneous ones at that. And I'm glad that he's actually shared those with us and be interesting to have a look at his book too. Happiness is the Starting Place and how that has played out in his own life. So if you've enjoyed today's show, please give us a five star rating on your favorite podcast app and please share to a friend. I'd really appreciate that. Thank you so much for listening and until next week, bye for now.
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