We are many, many selves. We're not just a finite being. The selves don't necessarily speak in words. But they are you.

In meditation, we are going back into the light. All our pain will be taken away, our frustration.

When you see someone draining you, your being naturally cuts it off. Yet many times you can be manipulated not to see.

You exist someplace else, and when you can contact yourself in that other place, when you can open up a kind of inter-dimensional phone line between yourself and our various selves, when you have become aware of that, that's when magic begins.

Now, stopping thought is only the beginning. As Brahmananda, who was a disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, once remarked: The inner life begins with samadhi. This is an awesome thought, I realize, for the average person who meditates, that it could begin with samadhi.

I entered a spiritual community when I was 20, which I was in for 11 year, with very strict meditative practices, with an Eastern teacher. It was very much like a religious order.

What I term Zen, old Zen, the original face of Zen, new Zen, pure Zen, or Tantric Zen is - Zen in its essence.