Also see http://batgap.com/rahasya-fritjof-kraft/  

Rahasya is a mystic, physician, spiritual teacher and author who has been working with people for more than 33 years. Meeting his master in 1980 revolutionized his life and led to a deep understanding of his being.  Rahasya's teaching is simple, profound and deeply transformative.  

http://www.livingunity.com/ 

 Interview recorded 6/23/10.

Also see http://batgap.com/ted-strauss-hillary-davis/  

As a child, I had many experiences of the limitless side of my Being, but perhaps nothing extraordinary. I think most people have such experiences quite naturally. As I grew older, I felt increasingly overwhelmed by my own wounds and by all the separation and denial I felt inside and out. By the time I left grammar school, I was confused and repressed. But I was telling myself and the world I was fine and everything was OK.  

By the time I'd reached my teens, I was in crisis and I found myself reaching out for something beyond the ordinary world. I began my spiritual search (as did many of my peers) reading books by J. Krishnamurti, Yogananda, Carlos Casteneda, Ram Dass, and Richard Bach. Soon thereafter, I began using hallucinogens as a tool in my self-inquiry process. I glimpsed my future realization in this life, but I also saw that I couldn't reach it through drugs. At 17, I took initiation into TM and began to practice regularly. After meeting Maharishi, I found myself preparing to become a TM teacher. I took years of training, (over a year in deep meditations and fasting in the Switzerland), spent lots of time with Maharishi, and finally was endowed by him with the knowledge I needed to initiate others. I taught TM to hundreds of seekers, thinking that this simple technique would eventually bring them (and myself) freedom. It was around this time that it became perfectly clear to me that, until I and many others around me had awakened into some fundamental self-recognition and integrity of Being, nothing else was going to make the world any better.  

Interview recorded 6/16/10.

Also see http://batgap.com/rick-archer-richard-miller/  

I'm the Chief Cook and Bottle Washer at Buddha at the Gas Pump. Richard Miller hosts a similar interview show called Never Not Here. Somehow we connected and he asked to interview me, not necessarily as an awakened being or teacher, but as a fellow spiritual aspirant. In the summer of 1967, when I was 17 years old, I was driving through Westport, CT with three friends in the car. One of them in the back seat was reading from a commentary on the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert. A quiet but memorable realization dawned in me that there was such a thing as "enlightenment" and that realizing it was life's ultimate goal. I rather recklessly explored that possibility through drugs for a year, then saw the futility of that approach and learned Transcendental Meditation. I taught TM for 25 years and still meditate regularly, but am not affiliated with any particular spiritual organization. I respect any of them which seem to offer genuine benefits to their participants.  

Interview recorded 6/5/2010.

Also see http://batgap.com/james-braha/  

After thirty years of seeking liberation, James Braha had nearly given up on finding fulfillment. His mind began to change, however, when he encountered the Hindu/Vedic philosophy of non-duality. Upon reading "Sailor" Bob Adamson's book What's Wrong with Right Now Unless You Think About It, James immediately invited Bob to come from Australia to share his knowledge with Americans.  For five glorious weeks in the summer of 2004, Bob and his wife stayed with the Braha family at their home in Florida. Spiritual talk with arguably the greatest non-duality teacher alive continued from morning till night, as James' dearest friends and spiritualists from around the country joined the investigations into the truth of reality versus the illusion of appearance.  

Interview recorded 5/19/2010.

Also see http://batgap.com/fali-engineer/  

Am a Zoroastrian by birth but a theosophist by inclination; was educated in South India as a civil engineer and worked in Pakistan from 1950.  I learned TM in 1974 from an American teacher who introduced it for the first time in the country. Realizing its great value, I traveled to Switzerland in early 1975 and graduated as a teacher of TM under the guidance of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who had popularized its practice in the West.  As the only teacher in Pakistan initially, I organized the TM Movement there and was its National Leader for 12 years until my wife and I left in 1987 to settle in the US. Several thousand were taught during this period.  In 1981, at Maharishi's invitation, I visited India and graduated as a TM-Sidhi teacher at his ashram in Rishikesh.  Have been a member of the Theosophical Society for 44 years and am at present the president of the Houston Lodge, which is 98 years old. The motto of the Society is "There is no religion higher than Truth", to which all seekers would subscribe.  

Interview recorded 4/28/2010.

Also see http://batgap.com/igal-moria/  

Igal Moria was infected with the spiritual bug in his teens has no plans of recovering. He joined Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at 19 (in 1973) and was involved with the TM movement for 25 years, working with Maharishi on developing courses and course materials on Maharishi Vedic Science and world religions. He came across the teaching of spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen, and instantly resonated with the depth and seriousness of Cohen's work. He was a member of Andrew Cohen's core body of students.  

Interview recorded 4/21/2010

Also see http://batgap.com/mary-foster/ 

Interview recorded 4/7/2010.

Also see http://batgap.com/john-speer/ 

Interview recorded 3/31/2010.

Also see http://batgap.com/andy-schulman/ 

 I remember having the thought at age 26, "what am I going to do, I will never make it through the second year of graduate school"? Having just completed my first year in training as a psychiatric social worker it was obvious that I felt more like a patient, who needed intense help, than the person charged with helping others. At that moment, I became a seeker.  The subsequent initiation into Transcendental Meditation forever set the direction of my life in ways I could not have imagined and it was a blessing that I did not. The road was bumpy quite a bit of the time yet there were always people there to help. Nature was always there giving both challenges and help necessary to see my way through them. Then one day not knowing how it happened or why, silence was now present all the time. Everything had changed yet nothing was different.  The change was both ordinary and profound. It was not the end of the journey but a new beginning and way of experiencing it. Life is now spent in the deepening of that silence and removal of the remaining junk. One can indeed know "One's Self" and yet have much more work to do.  

Interview recorded 3/17/2010.

Also see http://batgap.com/sandra-glickman/  

A lifelong seeker of spiritual awakening, Sandra has deeply applied and correlated many teachings, methods, disciplines, healings, experiments, adventures, and views of every kind to forge a comprehensive understanding of human identity. She attended the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, an interdisciplinary program, experientially based, and purposed toward personal transformation. Her investigations led her to become a devotee of Adi Da Samraj between 1986 and 1996. She then began studying with Saniel Bonder, founder of Waking Down in Mutuality, with whose guidance she awakened in 1996, to a non-dual conscious embodiment of both her divine and human nature. She is currently a Senior Teacher of Waking Down, participating also in the ongoing creation of dharma, organizational structure, courses, and workshops. Sandra has been in private practice as a transpersonal psychotherapist since 1987. She has been a resident of Fairfield, Iowa since 2004. 

 Interview recorded 2/24/2010.