I explored alternate states of consciousness at one period of my life through psychedelics, as was the fashion with all my friends.

You have thousands of selves inside you. Meditation is a process of peeling back the layers of the self. We start with peeling back the personality from this lifetime.

Transmission does not have to take place physically. The student doesn't have to be sitting across from you. But it's easier if they are because the vibration of the teacher is strongest in the physical proximity of the teacher.

The experience of the next life is too far away to really be concerned with. It will be an outgrowth of this incarnation and what happens between birth and death.

We call it the transmission of the lamp in Zen. That's when we take enlightened states of mind and literally, you can transfer them, just like you can hand somebody flowers.

Without humility, all spiritual progress stops.

The good news is that you don't have to stop thoughts completely to meditate. It takes a long time to stop thought impeccably. What you need is to detach yourself from thought.