My name is Rick Archer, and I have the privilege today of hosting

a conversation between Adyashanti and Francis Bennett.

We'll be talking about Adyashanti's book, "Resurrecting Jesus".

I listened to the audio version of this book and I had the feeling, as I was reading it

that it was something I could read or listen to repeatedly, periodically

over the years and that as I progressed

in my own spiritual development I would be able to appreciate

deeper and deeper levels of what Adyashanti was bringing out in the book.

I think it has a lot of vertical dimension to it.

Um...Francis read the book four times (Laughter)

including once when... (Francis interrupts) - It's kind of right up my alley, I would say.

(Laughter) Oh, so, I assume he liked it (laughter).

So, let me introduce Adya and Francis.

Adyashanti is the author of "The Way of Liberation",

"Resurrecting Jesus", "True Meditation", and "The End of Your World".

He is an American-born spiritual teacher, devoted to serving the awakening

of all beings. His teachings are an open invitation to stop, inquire, and recognize

what is true and liberating at the core of all existence.

Asked to teach in 1996 by his Zen teacher of 14 years,

Adyashanti offers teachings that are free of any tradition or ideaology.

Quote, "The truth I point to is not confined within any religious point of view,

belief system or doctrine, but is open to all and found within all." - end quote.

He teaches throughout North America and Europe.

Offering Satsangs and weekend intensives, silent retreats,

and a live Internet radio broadcast.

Francis Bennett was an ordinary,

sociable young man.... - He's still relatively sociable. (Laughter)

Not as young anymore, (laughter)

Who answered the call to a life of spiritual adventure

as a contemplative in the Monastary of the order of Sistertions

of the strict observance, commonly known as "trappists".

Thomas Merton, the pioneer and Christian mystic of the 20th Century,

was Francis's inspiration,

and it was Merton's influence that led Francis

to explore the deepest reality of being,

within the frameworks of Christianity, Buddhism, Advaita,

Vedanta, and Non-duality.

Francis has worked with the sick and dying

in parishes, hospitals, and hospices,

since he moved away from the gnostic life.

In 2010, while in the middle of mass,

there came what Francis describes as,

"a radical perceptual shift in consciousness",

which made it clear that the pure awareness

that is at the heart of all, is no different

from the presence of God, which he had

been seeking outside of himself for so long.

So, as I was listening to this book,

pretty much every point, I felt, could easily be

a springboard for a whole conversation. It's very rich.

There's a lot to unpack,

and I kept thinking, what are we going to talk about

in this interview,

because there's so many different angles we can take,

and you know, it could be so comprehensive?

But I sort of hoped, and I still hope,

that, with a little bit of a send-off,

Francis and Adya will just get into a conversation

and I'll stay pretty much out of it.

Maybe I'll have a couple of questions towards the end.

Which is unlike the way I usually do interviews - but...

we will leave to those who say I talk too much.

[Laughter]

So, where shall we start?

Francis: Well, Glenda from "The Wizard of Oz"

says, "it's best to start from the beginning." Right? [Laughter]

Isn't that the line from "The Wizard of Oz"?

Rick: I think it might be [Laughter].

So, let me ask, just to kick-start it.

What motivated you to write this book?

Adya: Oh, a love of the Jesus story, as I said.

Loved the story, since I was a kid.

Like so many people, [it] totally captured my imagination.

It's really the founding story, or mythic story,

of our whole Western culture.

I think it still dominates our culture, even though,

Christianity as a whole doesn't dominate

the culture like it did 500 years ago,

but still, you just feel it everywhere in the culture.

And so...but personally, it was just...

it was something that totally captured my imagination.

I was taken by the story,

I was taken by, when I was a kid, the "magical" quality,

as children love, magical things.

And it also had, a real - probably

more than anything - it really connected

me to the magic, I would think, of Existence.

Just that feeling of sacredness.

And even for me, every Christmas would roll around,

and about 2 months before Christmas I thought,

I always felt I would enter into this different domain.

Almost like a...into a Harry Potter movie.

But it would just start... you know what I mean?

Like the whole atmosphere,

the energy of the land,

of the space, were just,

would alter. And I could feel it.

And it would bring me in this place that felt

very, very, very sacred.

And it would last about a couple of months before Christmas,

and it would last for at least a month afterwards.

So it was like a 3 month window.

And it still happens to me, to this day.

There is like this 3 month window that is

sort of, extra extraordinary. And to me

that was always tied in with this

amazing story, of this amazing,

amazing being. So, it's that feeling,

I think, more than anything, that has captured me.

Rick: Since your awakening and since

you became very busy as

a spiritual teacher, had you really had

much time to put your attention

on the story of Jesus, and give it

much thought? Or was this like a real

discovery adventure for you,

researching and writing this book?

Kinda' like all kinds of aha's come to you

that you hadn't thought about before?

Adya: Kinda' both, kinda' both.

I mean, I really got into the whole

Christian Mystical, tradition probably in my

mid-twenties, after I'd been doing Zen

for 4 or 5 years. When, you know, in your

twenties, 4 or 5 years seems like forever.

Especially when you're doing Zen [Laughter],

it can be so difficult. But I felt something was missing,

something I couldn't connect with.

And I didn't know what it was,

I didn't know how to find it.

I didn't know where to search for it.

But, I started to see it in these books

of the Christian mystics.

And when I was in my mid-twenties

I just started devouring books.

I mean, probably, 200 books -

all of the Christian mystics, and only in

retrospect, you know, like looking back in the

rearview mirror - we're all so much

wiser than we are [Laughter] -

but looking back, I can see that

what it did was connect me to the

Sacred Heart, to the Spiritual Heart.

Which I couldn't find in Zen.

Now I can see that it was there, but it

wasn't there, as a Westerner, in a way that

it was easy for me to access.

Even the idea of "compassion" to my way

of being, wasn't a way. I could feel compassion,

but it didn't get me into

the Spiritual Heart. It didn't really

open the whole thing up.

And then just reading some of these mystics,

it was almost like entering into that

3 months of magic again.

That I could open those books, write centuries...

St. John of the Cross, Meister Eckhart,

and many, many others,

and all of a sudden it would be... so that's what started.

Rick: We're talking in the car, on the way up, about...

in certain Buddhist traditions - maybe predominantly - there

is very little talk of God, and actually,

a number of prominent Buddhists

proclaim themselves as Atheists.

And we were kind of speculating as to why that is,

and whether Buddhism, at least as those

people practiced it, only took you so far,

and that there's a whole other range of possibilities, which

I think you're eluding to now, which

involve the heart and more refined perception, and

deeper appreciation of

God's creation, of God Himself, or Itself.

Adya: I think to me, the Christian, at least for me - because

I don't like to make general statements, because the

way people interact with their traditions

is very unique to them - but for me, I think

on the whole, the best of the Christian

tradition as, kind of, an enlightened duality.

Rick: What do you mean by that?

Adya: And I mean that in the very best sense.

I mean that as a tradition,

of course the mystics go beyond that,

beyond any kind of duality, or a lot of them go

away beyond any duality, but I think

one of its gifts - and its gifts is a

very needed gift in the world of non-duality

spirituality - is that,

our minds get so stuck on these

hierarchies like: "nonduality is better than duality".

Really? Where, where, is that written?

Francis: And what's that? Duality! [Laughter] Exactly.

And here we are, right? We call this "duality".

But to me, enlightened duality is,

to me, I could summarize it really simply, is when

you see and feel and experience everything -

everything you see, taste, touch, feel is God.

And you know, in the radical non-dual circles

that the world has, is called an illusion.

Like something that's a dream.

And that has a legitimacy too, because contemplatives

for thousands of years, have had these experiences

where the world does seem like a dream,

does seem, comparatively,

to some deeper state of being,

of very little importance, and that's very freeing

and very liberating. But the other side is the

completion of that insight, when you see

it's also absolutely God. Not as a philosophy

or as a theology, but you actually experience it that way.

And that's to me, you can talk about that, I suppose,

and use lots of different language, but to see everything as God...

Or as Ramana Maharshi might see everything as the Self -

whatever language works for you -

to me, that's what I mean when I say, "enlightened duality".

You know...the seeing duality for what IT really is -

it's Divine. This whole thing where we call,

"some parts real, some parts unreal,"

it's a convention of our human minds.

It doesn't actually exist "out here" in life.

There's not things that are "a tree is real or not real."

These are ways that, I think, we confuse ourselves.

Rick: Chime in Francis?

Francis: What I liked about this book is that it really captures, for me,

the essence of who Jesus really is for me now.

I grew up Catholic and a little boy going to mass

and loving Jesus, all the time, and then ended up in

religious life. So, my sense of Jesus was very

devotional, and so on.

But then after a shift happened in around 2010,

well, shifts happened for many years, over many,

many years - little shifts and big shifts -

and then in 2010 it seemed that everything

was spun on its head. And Jesus took on a

whole different meaning for me. And what happened

with me was that I discovered, you could say, the Christ within me,

That who I was in my essence,

in transcendence, was the Christ; that

the Christ was living in and through me.

And a lot of the early Christian formulations about Jesus,

the theological formulations, the creedal statements,

and statements by the fathers of the church -

fathers and mothers of the church - they talk about what