Buddha at the Gas Pump

The Rev. Matthew Wright is an Episcopal priest, writer, and retreat leader working to renew the Christian Wisdom tradition within a wider interspiritual framework.  He writes a monthly column, Belonging, for Contemplative Journal and serves as priest-in-charge at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in Woodstock, NY.  Matthew lives with his wife, Yanick, alongside the brothers of Holy Cross Monastery in...

Mary Reed is an “accidental” mystic who, following eleven years of profound, involuntary visions and insights into divine realms, surrendered her executive life in Washington, DC to explore her spiritual gifts in a remote Buddhist nunnery in India. She grew up without any interest in religion but with an innate knowing that humans had more ability to access greater wisdom than most seemed to reali...

Abdy was born in Iran in 1964 to the Electriciteh family. At an early age he realized that his realm of reality was beyond what he could share with others. As a child, his awareness of extraordinary abilities, such as putting light and sparkles on people, could only be rationalized as a dream. When, thirty years later, he realized those sparkles were being received by the people, healing them phys...

Della had the good fortune of a life that many would have wanted to live. She grew up in a loving environment. She went to college. She started a family. She became a doctor and worked in emergency. She wasn’t looking for anything. She didn’t have any spiritual beliefs. She was happy. Then, in 2005, during a hypnosis session, she had what could be described as a near-death experience. Her heart wa...

Joey Lott is not a spiritual teacher. He’s not offering enlightenment, awakening, liberation, or any such carrot to keep you searching for something else. Instead, he’s just a fellow person who had the fortune to discover that the willingness to stop seeking for answers, for solutions to all kinds of imagined spiritual problems, reveals the peace of just being whatever is happening - which is all...

Once called by Norman Cousins, “An accomplished court jester to humanity,” David Ellzey is a transformative speaker, entertainer, author, and mentor – who has inspired a quarter of a million people worldwide to explore the oneness of humanity and of life. As mentor, coach, and teacher, David guides clients with unflinching self-inquiry, techniques like The Sedona Method for emotional well being, m...

Salvadore Poe was a successful musician from New York, making records, touring, having videos on MTV, and doing film scores when in 1997 he had a life-changing experience that propelled him on a single-pointed inquiry in search of enlightenment. During the next seven years, he immersed himself in intensive retreats in USA, Europe, and India, met many teachers, including U.G. Krishnamurti, Douglas...

Brief history of Norio: I always loved wheels ever since I was a small child. The first set of wheels was a bicycle, which by age nine, I was riding 40 miles at a time. Age 19, I drove a taxi in Boston for five years. I began driving a truck, as well as greyhound buses, at age 25. I began what I refer to as "true inquiry" while driving my truck in 2003, thereby being able to see the silence, from...

Andrew Harvey is an author, speaker and founder/director of the Institute of Sacred Activism, an international organization focused on inviting concerned people to take up the challenge of our contemporary global crises by becoming inspired, effective and practical agents of institutional and systemic change, in order to create peace and sustainability. Andrew Harvey has taught at Oxford Universit...

Michael Roads passed away April 28, 2024. His wife writes, "To our Dear Heart Family... Carolyn here. It is with an open and heavy heart that I share with you Michael transitioned at 3:06 AM, 28 April, Brisbane time. He had a very difficult last couple days...difficult enough to tip him over the edge into complete surrender, to the final letting go. His last hours were very peaceful. He was sleepi...

John Astin is the author of three collections of poetic and prose reflections on the non-dual nature of reality, Too Intimate for Words, (2005) This Is Always Enough(2007), and Searching for Rain in a Monsoon (2012). He is presently at work on a new book, It’s Not What You Think It Is: Reflections on the Inconceivable Nature of Reality. Along with his writing and teaching, John is also a singer, s...

Stan Grof, M.D., Ph. D. is a psychiatrist with more than fifty years’ experience researching the healing and transformative potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness. His groundbreaking theories influenced the integration of Western science with his brilliant mapping of the transpersonal dimension. He is one of the founders and chief theoreticians of Transpersonal Psychology and received a...

Gail is a clinical psychologist and author in Santa Barbara, CA, who joyfully speaks from her own experience about the possibility of moving from common everyday problems to living in the deepest acceptance and peace. Problems are seen as opportunities; the illusion of the separate self as a doorway to enduring happiness. Stories are honored, while fierce and loving investigation invites their dis...

Adam Bucko is an activist, spiritual director to many of New York City’s homeless youth, and co-author of a new award-winning book called “Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation (Sacred Activism)". He grew up in Poland during the totalitarian regime and spent his early years exploring the anarchist youth movement as a force for social and political change. At the age of 17, Ada...

Originally from the Netherlands, Prajnaparamita has been in search of her true nature all her life. Initially investigating and studying psychology, religion and philosophy, she eventually met a truly awakened soul and surrendered her heart, her mind and her life. Over several decades Prajnaparamita received a rich vista of non-dual teachings: Advaita Vedanta, Mahayana Buddhism, Zen and Ch’an. Onc...

Science and Spirituality: Potential Allies in Discovering Truth My talk was accompanied by a multimedia presentation, which has been edited into this video. There were technical issues: the official camera wasn't there, so a friend recorded this on her camcorder and the sound quality isn't ideal. I ran out of time and had to cut some things that I added to this video, etc. But hopefully, you'll en...

Dorothy Hunt serves as Spiritual Director of Moon Mountain Sangha, teaching at the request of Adyashanti.  She is the founder of the San Francisco Center for Meditation and Psychotherapy and has practiced psychotherapy since 1967. She is the author of Leaves from Moon Mountain, Only This!, and Ending the Search: From Spiritual Ambition to the Heart of Awareness. A contributing author to The Sacred...

Jane Anderson-Ross is a wife, mother, and grandmother currently living in Rochester, NY. Raised in a New Jersey suburb of Philadelphia, Jane always had the gifts of love and compassion, and even as a young child, felt that her life path was to help others heal. But in 1988, during the throes of her own trials and difficulties, Jane had a transformation that was prompted by a singular prayer. She s...

A. Hameed Ali was born in Kuwait in 1944. At the age of eighteen, he moved to the USA to study at the University of California in Berkeley. Hameed was working on his Ph. D. in physics when he reached a turning point in his life and destiny that led him more and more into inquiring into the psychological and spiritual aspects of human nature. Hameed’s interest in the truth of human nature and the t...

Richard Moss is an internationally respected leader in the field of inner transformation, subtle body-mind dynamics, and living a path of conscious relationships. In 1977 Richard was a practicing medical doctor when he experienced a spontaneous spiritual illumination that awakened him to the multi-dimensional nature of human consciousness. This realization profoundly transformed his understanding...

Robert A.F. Thurman is the Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religion at Columbia University, President of the Tibet House U.S., a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Tibetan civilization, and President of the American Institute of Buddhist Studies, a non-profit affiliated with the Center for Buddhist Studies at Colum...

I grew up in a hard-working family, none religious. At the age of 18, I learned that the Father I'd known all my life was not, in fact, my biological Father. This new-found fact destabilized the identity I had become accustomed to. The idea of who I was came under question. I was left asking, who am I. What then followed was ten years of drinking. At 27 I found myself in recovery from alcoholism....

Bruce Joel Rubin is an Oscar-winning screenwriter for the film Ghost.   His films include Jacob's Ladder, My Life (which he also directed), Brainstorm, Deep Impact, Stuart Little 2, The Last Mimzy, and The Time Traveler's Wife, among others.   His spiritual journey began with a massive overdose of LSD in the 1960s.   Shortly afterward he began hitchhiking around the world in search of a teacher an...

While out in California for the Science and Nonduality Conference, I had some downtime before the conference started, so I decided to tape a long panel discussion with a rather large group of friends, most of them previous guests on Batgap. Sofia University in Palo Alto (where transpersonal psychology was founded by Abraham Maslow and others), generously provided a room and video equipment. I'm es...

While out in California for the Science and Nonduality Conference, I had some downtime before the conference started, so I decided to tape a long panel discussion with a rather large group of friends, most of them previous guests on Batgap. Sofia University in Palo Alto (where transpersonal psychology was founded by Abraham Maslow and others), generously provided a room and video equipment. I'm es...