The One You Feed - Ralph White

Episode Date: August 24, 2016

This week we talk to Ralph White  Ralph White is co-founder of the New York Open Center, America’s leading urban institution of holistic learning where his current role is Creative Director. The Open Center receives almost 60,000 visits annually from participants in its year round programs and has presented the major writers and speakers in the fields of wellness, social/ecological change, inner development, world spiritual traditions, art and creativity  for over twenty seven years. He is an international speaker on spirituality, consciousness, the history of the Western Tradition. He is also editor of the award winning Lapis magazine, and taught the first fully accredited course in holistic thinking and learning at New York University. His new memoir is called: The Jeweled Highway: On The Quest For a Life of Meaning  In This Interview, Ralph White and I Discuss...The One You Feed parable His latest book, The Jeweled Highway The role of music in his life His involvement in building spiritual retreat centers How you retain your centeredness in an urban environment If there are parts of the world that are more conducive to places of spiritual retreat than others The powerful role of retreat centers of bringing together people of like mind The importance of contact with nature The importance of a spiritual practice The importance of cultivating community For more show notes visit our website     A grandfather is talking with his grandson and he says there are two wolves inside of us which are always at war with each other.  One of them is a good wolf which represents things like kindness, bravery and love. The other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed, hatred and fear. The grandson stops and thinks about it for a second then he looks up at his grandfather and says, “Grandfather, which one wins?” The grandfather quietly replies, the one you feed The Tale of Two Wolves is often attributed to the Cherokee indians but there seems to be no real proof of this. It has also been attributed to evangelical preacher Billy Graham and Irish Playwright George Bernard Shaw. It appears no one knows for sure but this does not diminish the power of the parable. This parable goes by many names including: The Tale of Two Wolves The Parable of the Two Wolves Two Wolves Which Wolf Do You Feed Which Wolf are You Feeding Which Wolf Will You Feed It also often features different animals, mainly two dogs.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

who pulls it off moment by moment every day. I'm sure there are some Zen masters who do, but for most of us, you know, we're just trying to make it through the day. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.

But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor,

what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Ralph White, a co-founder of the New York Open Center, America's leading urban institution of holistic learning and where his current role is creative director. He currently hosts a program on the WBAI-FM radio in New York City, where he has interviewed many of the major figures in the holistic world and numerous scholars in the fields of multicultural

mysticism and ecology. Ralph is recognized and honored as a guiding force of the annual Gathering of Holistic Centers, which draws leaders from many of the major holistic institutions throughout the world to discuss trends, developments, challenges, and successes in the worldwide consciousness movement. His latest book is The Jeweled Highway, On the Quest for a Life of Meaning. Here's the interview. Hi, Ralph. Welcome to the show. Well, thank you, Eric. I'm glad to be here. I am excited to get you on and talk about your latest book called The Jeweled Highway,

and it's really a recollection of your spiritual journey kind of up to date. It's really a recollection of your spiritual journey kind of up to date. So we'll jump into that in more detail in a minute, but let's start where we normally start, which is with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson, and he says, In life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops, and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather, and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.

So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well, first of all, it tells a certain truth that we do have a shadow as well as a light side within ourselves. I think that's important for us all to recognize. And secondly, what should I say? You know, I was thinking about this parable know I was thinking about this parable I was thinking of a great song by Don Henley about anger and jealousy if you keep carrying on that anger

it'll eat you up inside I think we've got to get down to the heart of the matter my will gets weak and my thoughts seem to scatter but I think it's about forgiveness even if you don't love me anymore to go to the end of that stanza in the song. But there's a lot of truth in that. I think that even when we've been through very difficult and disturbing and maybe unjustified experiences,

it is a question of how we give greater attention to the better angels of our nature. How we do seek to focus on love compassion forgiveness while not pretending that we are devoid of shadows that were as carl jung taught us many decades ago we all have a shadow and that dark side is going to be there and it's going to come out even more if we try to repress it we need to acknowledge that but i think yes we have to give our primary focus to the things of beauty that exist within our psyche. So whether that is love of nature, love of others, but in general, compassion, wisdom, everything that the great spiritual traditions have taught us. You spent your early years in Wales on the coast, beautiful, natural scenery. And you grew up there until your teenage years

where you moved to Northern England into a town that felt really claustrophobic and limited and dirty. And one of the things that lifted you out of that at the time, one of the things that helped you get a sense that there was a bigger world out there was music oh yeah yeah absolutely well this was the 60s you know and uh the early mid 60s in the north of england in a town called huddersfield um about 80 miles down the road from liverpool so of course the saving grace of moving for a place of exquisite beauty like the Irish Sea coast of Wales to one of those grimy northern industrial towns, which is where the Industrial Revolution began, or one of the places where it began, that was covered in soot, grime, the world's oldest and some of the most disturbed working class. The great consolation was the music. Because, of course, when i was 14 13 14 years old the beatles came barreling out of liverpool and then you had the mersey beat you had all that

great rock and roll that was the saving grace when people ask me what got me through my teenage years i always say it was rock and roll and beer there wasn't a lot else up there in that in that rather it seemed to me godforsorsaken part of the world. But the music was sensational, yeah. The vitality, the exuberance, just the dynamism of it all, yeah. It was the silver lining to spending one's teenagers in the north of England in the early mid-60s. Yeah, and I think that music, any kind of music, rock music, whatever, and we've explored this on the show before,

is really a form of spirituality in its own right, and that I think a lot of what I get out of a spiritual life, I also can get out of music. I was trying to convince somebody earlier that watching live Killers videos on YouTube was my meditation for the day, which I don't think I quite sold anybody on. But there's a similar comfort and consolation there, and it seems how often you quote music in your book and different things that it's still a deep

part of your life. Yeah, you know, I mean, I didn't really plan to include all those lyrics in the book. I just found that as I was recalling different parts of my life, all the music of the time came barreling forth. And those lyrics are just embedded in our psyches. Unlike trying to memorize poetry, all those lyrics from pop and rock and blues songs, that's my personal orientation. They're just in there. And their music has been there at some of the most significant transitional points in my life and especially should we say in the late 60s early 70s when there was a massive explosion of psychedelic music and and many of the great musicians of course starting with the Beatles began to sing about spiritual experience and mystical experience which was phenomenal I mean

what what other art form has gone from singing I love love you, and yes, it's true, and you know I do, and that kind of thing, to actually singing about profound mystical experience. So I think that was a massive transition. But I agree with you. I think even music that is not overtly spiritual, it's in the actual sound itself. I was just reading that in shakespeare his in his plays he always uses music or not always but he often uses music as the symbol of harmony and it was certainly enormously nourishing and vitalizing to my soul growing up not to mention fun vital sexy and wild all of the above so So, yeah, I think music is profound. At the very least, it's therapeutic, and it's uplifting, and it's vitalizing.

Certainly rock and rollers. Exactly. Now, your career has largely been focused on building spiritual retreat centers, for lack of a better word. You originally were very involved in Omega when that started up, and then the last period of your career was in building the Open Center in New York City. And you were really trying to understand what it takes, you know, how could you bring these spiritual ideas right into the heart of the big city? And I'm really curious, what have you learned from that, that people can take away for how they keep a spiritual focus in their life day to day,

whether it be suburban or urban areas where they're living, but how do we take this out of the occasional retreat center and back into our lives more consistently? Because I think that's what a lot of people listening to the show are looking for input on. Yeah, that's a good question, because I'm actually speaking at the first Queen's Book Festival this coming Sunday, and they're asking more or less the same question, you know, which has never been asked before of me, which is how do you, you know, retain your centeredness or your calm or do you remain in your heart while you're in a place as demanding and as frenzied as New York City? And, well, what have I learned from doing the Open Center? the open center i mean the first thing i should say is that when we started the new york open center which is new york's and has been new york's leading center of holistic learning for the last 32 33 years you know the conventional wisdom was that that kind of stuff would never work in new

york that uh maybe california you know maybe hawaii possibly colorado but that the new york was the real world so it's certainly shown me me that notions that there are parts of the planet that are too difficult, too crime-ridden, too caught up in the mayhem of life, that those places are unreceptive to a deeper spirituality and a more holistic worldview. That's certainly not true. New York is filled with people who are creative, interesting, deep, and are connected to profound spiritual questions and are interested in spiritual practices.

And, of course, multiple different forms of therapy, etc. So I think that's worth bearing in mind, first of all, that we're not alone in this, even if we feel that there's a tiny minority, even I can say that with whatever it is, something like 300,000 people have come to the Open Center over the last three decades. There's a whole community of people out there and people, I think the more people can meet with people of like mind, I've always felt that's one of the significant roles of these holistic learning centers like Omega, like the Open Center, like Findhorn up there in north of Scotland, where I was for three

years in the 70s. They all serve the purpose, or one of the purposes they serve is to bring together people of like mind where you can meet immediately and have that sense that these are people on my wavelength. These are people who speak my language, even if you're the only person in your family or in your workplace who has these more spiritual and holistic interests and values. So I would say that, you know, and I mean, what else? You know, for me, I'm a nature lover. That's why it was difficult for me to move to the industrial north of England when I was young. And it's difficult for me to live in New York. So for me, I have to have that contact with nature.

So I'm fortunate to live in somewhere with a balcony, with the sky, with a little park outside the balcony. So to me, I have to have a spiritual practice. I notice in my meditative practice each morning, my attempt to attune to nature. I think we all need to cultivate community. That's one of the first lessons of positive psychology is that happiness is not so much an individual thing, it grows out of the network of friends, family, colleagues that we have. So I think having a

supportive community around you is just as important as having a practice that can give you some kind of perspective on your day-to-day life. So those are the thoughts that occur to me. Excellent. Yeah, I think that idea of community keeps coming up. I think that most, at least what I had, the spirituality that I had imbued over a bunch of years, really focused on that inward journey. But that community was such a key part of it. It's so funny that I didn't recognize it, because I would say probably the first 10 years of me being more, for lack, you know, the word spiritual, we could debate what that really means, but more focused on an interior life came right in the midst of a great community, which was a 12-step community. And I didn't even recognize, it was so baked into

it. I don't think I recognized how important it was until later when I sort of stepped back from it and went, oh yeah. So that was there the whole time. Well, I think, you know, a lot of people, when we step onto this path of individuation, as Jung called it, or finding out who we are, connecting to our deeper spiritual selves, it has to be an individual journey. You know, it's in a sense we're separating ourselves from the conditioning we might have received from family or from school or from society around us in general so for me certainly it was when i was uh in my adventures in my younger days hitchhiking to machu picchu and

this kind of thing um it was a very individualized isolated path that it needed to be. I think I needed to find my own self. But then once you come to some sense of who you might be, and as I say in my book, the insight that came to me when I was living in Colombia, in Bogota, was I'm here on this earth to the greatest service I can give the world and the greatest way I can actually find fulfillment myself is to just being myself and acting out of authenticity. I think, but I think once you've come to an awareness like that, then why, yeah, why not build community? I mean, I think all the cultures that show the highest levels of happiness and wellbeing, uh, have, uh, have a strong measure of community in them. So, yes, I feel myself extremely grateful to have a very strong worldwide community of friends. So I think, you know, whether it's just the regular person going down the bar to his pals who he might sink a few beers with, or whether it's something more family-oriented,

or whether it's a more directly spiritual community like a Zen community. I think there are all ways of sharing warmth, of nourishing each other and of experiencing joy in this world. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth.

Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you two? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir.

Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason

bobblehead. It's called Really No Really and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You built the early days of the Omega Center. You programmed what they did, what their programs were. You started the Open Center. There's a lot of ambition in that. And one of the things I'm always interested about with people I have on the show is how they balance ambition and striving and sort of the idea that comes through

some spiritual practice about improving ourselves. So how do you balance that aspect of ourselves with also being able to be present to the moment, to be grateful for what we have. There seems to be a paradox there that's sitting kind of right in the middle of that life is, you know, there's this desire to move forward and yet part of the path is also just being happy where you are. Yeah, well, that's true, isn't it? We do live with that kind of paradox that we want to just be in the present with our open hearts and to have that mystical sense that the universe is unfolding as it should.

You know, it's that perspective of unity. On the other hand, when we come into more of the binary and dualistic world of good and evil, we can see that change needs to take place in our culture. see that change needs to take place in our culture. And so, yeah, when I came to New York 33 years ago, it was with a very specific intention, which was to create and build from scratch this place, the Open Center. I mean, it seemed like a somewhat quixotic idea, but it was also clear that, you know, arguably the world's most influential city really needed a major focal point for this new, more holistic and ecological worldview. So it wasn't for me so much of a personal ambition,

it was more a sense, look, this is a job to be done. So, I mean, I poured myself into it heart and soul. And, you know, I guess it was a pretty nonstop exercise for those first five years in service or in commitment or in some kind of dedication. But at the same time, New York is a fun city. I mean, I was young. I was in my early mid-30s. I wanted to have fun. I've always been a strong advocate and enjoyer of fun. So, I mean, if you're going to be in a retreat somewhere that's another story you know if you're

going to choose to live in a contemplative life in a retreat setting i certainly honor that but in my particular destiny to come to new york and create the open center involved imbibing of the joys of living in the city and uh so whether that's culture, the arts, music, romance, whatever it might have been, I sought to drink that to the full. I mean, I didn't know when I began that I would be in New York as long as I have been. At that point in my life, I'd never lived anywhere since childhood for longer than three or four years. So I wanted to drink it to the dregs and taste it to the full and get that big-time New York experience. So it's the balance, isn't it?

I don't know if there's any easy answers. We seek to be contemplative and serene and calm and centered and loving in our day-to-day lives. At the same time, we want to jump into life and grab the bull by the horns. And when you inevitably do that, you know, you get out there a bit, you take a few risks, you step into some worlds that you're not familiar with, it's going to get a little rambunctious. It may be difficult, but I don't regret pouring myself into life because it's too precious to allow it to pass by without

seeking to have the most passionate experience of each passing moment that you possibly can. This is a question you asked yourself in your youth. How could any honest and perceptive person accept the existence of some kind of higher presence when the whole 20th century had been a massive accumulation of evidence that life was meaningless, filled with gratuitous horror, and random death. And I'm curious how you did over time, you know, how you reconcile that today, what your view is, how you tied all these things together for yourself. Well, you know, I think I grew up with some notion of God that came from the Church of England. And, you know, it was some notion of some guy with a long

white beard sitting on a throne saying after death, you've been good or bad, you're going to sit on a cloud and play a harp for eternity, which always struck me as a horrible thought, or you're going to, you know, have a more hellish post-life existence. And as a result, if you have that kind of conception of divinity, you're going to ask yourself, how could, I remember writing an essay on this in the philosophy course when I was at university, how can the existence of evil in this world be reconciled with the existence of an omnipotent and benevolent God? And it really can't be in a lot of ways that if you're going to take that old style view of the divine, I mean, yes, I grew up, my grandfather was in the trenches of the Somme, was mustard gas there, although he survived. My father was in the trenches of the Somme, was mustard gassed there, although he survived.

My father was in the thick of the Second World War, all the way from Normandy to the Nazi surrender. And I just grew up with a strong awareness of the horrors of the wars, of the Holocaust, with Stalin's crimes, etc. And I asked myself, how could that possibly be some deeper, more spiritual reality? And as a, as a teenager, there just wasn't much evidence for that. So I was the kind of angry teenage existentialist, I would say. So I really, I didn't grow up with a lot of faith. Should we say that there is a deeper order to the universe, I really have to set off on that journey, that quest, that quest for meaning. Could we actually be living in a meaningful world? And that took me through many things. It took me through those countercultural explorations in the early 70s in California and in South America. I think those years for me were crucial between 21 or 22 and 26,

say between graduate school and Findholm. That's when I really explored and journeyed into other worlds, had many different explorations of consciousness in nature, in spiritual practices, in other ways. And I actually had the experience. Well, first of all, there's a sense of humility, you know, when you spent all those nights under those vast starlit skies, whether it's in the Andes at 12,000 feet, or whether it's in the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, you have that sense of the tininess of the human experience that here we are, we think we have figured out the nature of the world, that scientific materialism, should we say, is the most astute handle on reality. And then you gaze at those night skies for weeks or

months on end, and you think, we're just a speck in this vast universe where some of those tiniest little lights, perceptible lights, are not just stars or suns or even galaxies. They're galaxies of galaxies. You know, this is an infinitely huge universe. I had certain spiritual experiences that showed me that, as Dante would have said, that love is the very motor energy of the cosmos. would have said that love is the very motor energy of the cosmos. So I, through my own personal spiritual search, my travels, my journeys inwardly and outwardly, I personally had to come to a living spiritual experience, an experience of gnosis, should we say, of spiritual knowledge. I'm not somebody oriented towards faith and dogma and that kind of thing that really didn't speak to me at all i'm i'm somebody who needed a personal experience of it and that's what i experienced in those journeys and adventures in my in the first half of my 20s um so that i came to that point where

i really saw that yes we there is there's a a spark of divinity within each of us, just as there is divinity within the cosmos, and that is our challenge as spiritual beings, to connect the divine spark within our hearts with the divine element within the cosmos, the microcosm and the macrocosm. So, you know, once I came to that, that's what gave me an insight that, okay, I've arrived at that inner conviction. I was probably 25, 26 before that really clarified itself for me in a firm way. to places like Fyndhorn because Fyndhorn, the echo village alternative community up in the north of Scotland, saw itself as a center of demonstration. It was intent upon demonstrating to the world that it is possible to live in harmony, broadly speaking, with each other and with nature.

This is not just some fantasy or some spiritual dream that there really can be an alternative to this hyper competitive capitalist materialist world that we grow up in and then the more you you know the more you develop a community of people who share those values and have come to it independently, not through receiving some set of dogma, the more it becomes strengthening. And, you know, I think of Fintan itself started in 1962, three broke people on a windswept trailer park in an obscure part of northern Scotland, and how the founders had the intuitive insight that it would become an internationally recognized center

of light as they called it and that in turn would become part of a network of light and or a network of conscious centers all over the world and that has certainly come to pass i mean i was amazed to see that both cnn and msnbc did pieces on finn long last week because it has probably the lowest carbon footprint of anywhere on the earth. But it was amazing to see the mainstream media, 50-odd years after Fintan was founded, actually responding with incredible respect and appreciation. So I think it's a question of taking that inner journey, engaging in those mystical, spiritual practices, being in places of beauty, nature, solitude, mystical inspiration, reading the kind of books that they came to me. And as I describe in the book, it was funny the way books would just come to me in my early 20s after my experiences in the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona. experiences in the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona. And so I think there's reading, there's the study, there's the practice, and then there's the community of people with these shared insights. And I think, you know, I think that's the way you do it, or at least you try to do it

and face it. Look, you know, who pulls it off moment by moment every day? I'm sure there are some Zen masters who do. But for most of us, you know, we're just trying to make it moment every day. I'm sure there are some Zen masters who do, but for most of us, you know, we're just trying to make it through the day. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal?

The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too?

Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening?

Really? No, really. Yeah, really. No, really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really?

No, Really? And you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your book was interesting. It opened a couple doors for me that I've not had a chance to explore. But you name a man as you think, you know, potentially the greatest, you know, spiritual teacher that there's been that, by and large, nobody really talks about, teacher that there's been that, by and large, nobody really talks about, certainly not in that context, and that's Rudolf Steiner. He's mostly known for the Waldorf style of education, which my son participated in as a preschooler, but you talk about him as way beyond that. So,

can you share with me some sort of practical or tangible or thing that we could understand, thing that you learned from Rudolf Steiner that might act as a teaser for us to explore more? Good question. Well, I would say about Steiner that he's one of the great spiritual figures of the West of the 20th century, certainly one of the most outstanding spiritual philosophers. And if you remember that line from the Bible, by their fruit shall ye know them, you look at the incredible fruits that he left behind in terms of, as you were saying, in terms of Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, seeding the Camphill villages, and so on.

I think really, without question, the greatest holistic legacy of the 20th century so then you know but all of that just came out of the last five or six years of his life i mean the other between 1901 and 1919 it was all about the deeper esoteric spiritual philosophy the nature of reality that he personally felt that his most important mission was to return to the world a correct and scrupulous understanding of karma and reincarnation. And yet, as you're saying, most people don't read Steiner for that today. It's more the practical legacies like Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture. But if I were to think, you know, what could I say that would give people a hint? Well, you know, he wrote, it's hard to pick out one thing because his works, he gave over 6,000 lectures in his life compiled into about 350 different volumes. It's a treasure trove of esoteric wisdom.

It does require, what I would say is when you pick up a book by Steiner and you really have to follow your intuition about what is the best book to begin with, for me, it was The Tension Between East and West, which I read when I was in Hawaii because I thought that would be a good place to read a book with a title like that. But when you get into these things, you realize, what is it? these things, you realize, what is it? It's just, you know, we're living in an infinitely deeper universe than we think we are. But as I say to people when I'm speaking about Steiner, I've been into it for 30 years. I feel I have penetrated into it inches deep, and it is oceans deep. I think we're living in a vast, beautiful, incredibly moving cosmos that we only just glimpse the true dimensions of in moments of spiritual lucidity. And I think it's just worth it whether we consider what Rudolf Steiner would tell us about what happens each night in dreamless sleep and how

that relates to karma. I think the whole picture that Rudolf Steiner gives us of the journey of the soul between death and rebirth is extremely beautiful. I've been doing these conferences on the art of dying for the last 20 years, and I always try to make sure that some of Steiner's research on the journey of the soul between death and rebirth is represented at those events. Because for me, it's the deepest material spoken on death in the 20th century. So if you have those kinds of questions, look, could there be a larger mega picture? I mean, I would say Steiner has the biggest mind that I've come across in the 20th century and also a very beautiful and pure heart. It was never the faintest hint of scandal from the many people who knew him before he died in 1925.

the vast and awe-inspiring nature and spectrum of the human experience and how we have an enormous amount to learn. And the more we can stay here, here's one very practical thing. Rudolf Steiner would say that what we want to cultivate towards life in general or even people that we disagree with is an attitude of reverence and veneration. Because if you develop the critical spirit, it kills. He would say it kills our capacity to see the spiritual within others. So he recommends as a practice that when we're listening to people, even if it's somebody we radically disagree with in this political season, we have no shortage of that, then try to put our prejudices aside, you know, the usual reaction, oh, that's stupid, so-and-so, you know, which is what I tend to do. Put our

attentions in our heart and try to use the heart as an organ of cognition, as a vehicle for knowing, and enter through your heart into the heart of another, and try to just live into their reality for a little while. I know when I first thought I would do this, I thought, I can't do that. I'll just turn into a raving idiot. I'll lose my own judgment in these matters. And of course, nothing of the sort happened. I think that's how we expand the circle of compassion, as Martin Luther King would say, that Obama likes to quote that. And I think that's how we do it on an individual basis, is to try to put that judgmental, angry, accusatory side of ourselves and try to use the organ, the heart, as an organ of knowing, of cognition. So yeah, I think that's what I'd say about Rudolf Steiner. I really encourage our

listeners to don't be put off by the language. You just have to persevere a bit. But the spiritual rewards, just reading Steiner is a meditation. It's not going to be a quick read. I love to read Steiner after 30 odd years. The sentences are just meditations in themselves. They're literally mind expanding. So yeah, he's the great, I once wrote an article about Steiner called Rudolf Steiner, Neglected Spiritual Genius. And I think over the course of the coming centuries, we will gain a deeper and deeper appreciation for him, just as when he died in 25, there were only two Waldorf schools in the world. Now there's over a thousand, and they're spreading like wildfire in China, of all places, literally hundreds of new ones opening each year. Wow, that's very interesting. Well, Ralph, I think that's a great place for us to go ahead

and wrap up. I think that message that you left us there with from Rudolf Steiner is particularly apt in this political season and in this world of ours today. So thanks so much for coming on. I enjoyed the book. And I'll have links on the show notes to where people can buy the book where they can find your website where they can learn more about the Open Center, and a link to some of Rudolf Steiner's stuff also. Yes, could I just mention one other thing? I've done this 21-year series of conferences on the Western esoteric tradition.

It began with one in the alchemical world of Renaissance Bohemia, the period referred to as the Rosicrucian Enlightenment back in 95, but we're going to do one in a month's time or so called an esoteric quest for the mysteries of the north in Iceland. So if anybody of any of our listeners are interested in that, they might want to check out the website esotericquest.org because it lists all the conferences and quests we've done over the last 20 plus years. And I've found those to be great sources of joy and inspiration for me. It's one because with all the emphasis upon yoga and Buddhism and shamanism, which I support, it's wonderful. But it's wonderful to remember, too, that in the Western esoteric tradition, we have, in a sense, the European indigenous spiritual path. And it's filled

with beauty and amazement excellent wonderful yes thanks for mentioning that i'll put a link to that website also okay well it's been a pleasure to talk to you eric i wish you all the best with your show and uh yeah thank you ralph and uh take care and we'll talk again i'm sure all right all the very best. Okay. Bye. You can learn more about Ralph White and this podcast at one you feed.net slash Ralph.