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- Candid conversations with experts, thought leaders, and everyday people - Insights on sexual health, wellness, and self-care - Discussions on consent, communication, and boundary-setting - Personal stories of pleasure, passion, and transformation
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Transcending Ego and Embracing Spiritual Connection Through Mindfulness and Consciousness - Alain Caroll
•Avik Chakraborty•Episode 40
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Discover the wisdom and insights of Alain Caroll, an esteemed educational psychologist, as we unravel the mysteries of transcendental psychology and the intricate dance between human consciousness and reality. Alain captivates us with his journey from an early fascination inspired by "Autobiography of a Yogi" to a transformative encounter with a psychic in San Francisco that illuminated his life’s purpose. Our conversation brings forth the universal capability of accessing higher dimensions of awareness and the profound impact of mindfulness. Alain guides us through his experiences of transcending the ego’s constraints, highlighting the significance of creating space and stilling the mind to connect with the transcendent dimension of being.
Immerse yourself in the transformative power of consciousness as Alain explores the delicate balance between the ego as an obstacle and a tool for growth. He shares how meditation and stillness can dissolve the ego's grip on our thoughts, allowing divine energy to flow and manifest as love, compassion, and kindness. Together, we examine the ego's false promises compared to the spirit's path of forgiveness and gratitude, emphasizing internal healing through spiritual understanding. Alain’s insights challenge us to let go of ego-driven judgments and embrace a more vibrant life through spiritual connection and understanding.
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Hey there, everyone. Welcome back to another electrifying episode of Pleasure Principles. I'm your host, avik, and here to guide you through transformative conversations that unravel the mysteries of mind, the soul and the pathways to a more vibrant and deconnected life. Soul and the pathways to a more vibrant and deconnected life. So today's topic is one that all have you questioning everything you thought of or thought, knew that about reality itself. So we are diving deep into transcendental psychology, a field that explores the profound relationship between human consciousness and the nature of reality, and joining us for this mind-expanding journey is none other than Alain Caroll. So welcome to the show, alain.
Speaker 2:
Thank you very much, avik. I'm happy to be here, and blessings to your audience.
Speaker 1:
Lovely, lovely. So, al Alan, like before we start, I'll quickly have to introduce you to all of our listeners. Dear listeners, alan is an educational psychologist with over 30 years of experience, a global traveler and a pioneer in teaching mindfulness techniques that unlock our truest potential. So he's worked with some of the biggest names in the corporate world, like empowering thousands to master public speaking, reduce psychological suffering and reconnect with the transcendent dimension of being. So Allen believes that the key to freedom and joy lies in the space between our thoughts and the pauses between our words. So intriguing, right. So grab your favorite beverage, get comfy and prepare to have your mind blown. So welcome to the show again. Thank you, lovely. So, anil, you have spent decades exploring the intricate relationship between human consciousness and the nature of reality. So what sparked your fascination with this field?
Speaker 2:
Early days.
Speaker 2:
You know, when I was a teenager, way back in the early days in the 70s, I was drawn to books like the Autobiography of a Yogi Paramahansa, yogananda's Self-Realization, fellowship, the story of his transformation of life in India, and just reading that book just makes your mind go whoa.
Speaker 2:
There's a lot of stuff happening around here that I don't experience the stuff that he's talking about, but it sounds like it's pretty good stuff. Don't experience the stuff that he's talking about, but it sounds like it's pretty good stuff. So I took that path of self-inquiry, of mindfulness, got my degrees in psychology because that was the field, that sort of explored human behavior when you look at all the fields you could explore and I went through the educational psychology route, was an educational psychologist and I found myself attracted to the transpersonal conversation which deals with this thing called an ego and this other thing called a being or a spirit or presence or something that you want to get from the ego. You want to figure out a way of getting rid of that one or something with that one and you want to get to that other space that those gurus keep talking about. So here we are, 50 years later. We're still in the the conversation, because it's a spiritual soul conversation that brings me a lot of pleasure wow, that's really lovely.
Speaker 1:
yeah, and and also like um, any moment you want to share, like in your journey when you realized the transformative power of mindfulness and the transcendence First clear wake up call was back in the 70s.
Speaker 2:
Again, I went to a psychic in San Francisco named Marshall Lever and the channel that spoke with him was called Old Chinese and I was in my early 20s. I go up to the apartment in San Francisco and he comes to the door and he looks like an Irish fisherman with a white turtleneck and a jacket and has a studio in the back. And I go back to the studio. I sit in this chair. He's sitting about seven or eight feet in front of me. He closes his eyes, he has a microphone, he's going to record. When he closed his eyes, a wave of energy just pushed me, pushed me back into the chair.
Speaker 2:
In my 20, 22 years of life on the planet, I've never had a wave of energy that I couldn't see, feel, push me back into the chair. And that was a blessing. Because my first question I wanted to know and what is my purpose in being on the planet? And right away, if you can get a sense about what your purpose is on being on the planet, then making choices about what to do in this situation, you just take a look at well, what's your purpose? Is this on purpose or off purpose and I ended up, you know, meditation, yoga, ram Dass Be here Now. Book Sadhguru, eckhart Tolle, deepak Chopra all these people are sort of talking about this transcendent dimension of consciousness, and we'll call that a state of mindfulness.
Speaker 1:
Wow, that's really lovely to hear, and from there I mentioned that. Such an inspiring turning point, alan. Inspiring turning point, alan. It makes me wonder that do you think everyone is capable of accessing this dimension of awareness, or does it require a special mindset only?
Speaker 2:
Another way of asking the question does the light bulb know about electricity? And most people the light bulb knows about a light bulb, but doesn't know about electricity. So does the human body know about the energy within the human body? No, they're too busy looking at the movie of their thoughts inside their head being projected out onto the outside screen of their outer reality. But when you begin to still the mind and begin to manage your thoughts like you would say, the Raja Yoga would be the stilling of the mind, the managing of the thoughts you have the realization which I'm sure you've had, evick that you're not the thought that is there. You are not your thoughts, you're not your body, you're not your mind. You are not your thoughts, you're not your body, you're not your mind. You are the observer of the thoughts. You are the observer of the movie that you're watching, of your life.
Speaker 2:
And when you're an observer, you have developed the ability to observe, and the one key ingredient that you need in order to observe is the ability to create space.
Speaker 2:
Space is the fifth element earth, air, fire, water and space, the akash, empty space of nothingness. And if you can realize that you are not spacious, your thoughts are very constipated and there's no free flow to the thoughts, because the purpose of the ego is to hold the thoughts together, which is called your identity. So you don't want to let go of my thoughts, I don't want to relax my thoughts, I want to keep my thoughts, I want to keep my personal opinion, I want to keep my awareness about what's going on out there, and so that creates constipation which blocks the flow of that divine energy. But as you begin to meditate, you begin to relax, you begin to shift into a more relaxed state of consciousness, which would be in the autonomic nervous system, would be the parasympathetic nervous system, where you're dealing with relaxation, digestion, relaxed and rest and you spend time in there. That's where you want to go in order to achieve that breakthrough in consciousness.
Speaker 1:
Lovely. Yeah, that's really great. And also on this, you talk about the power of the pause as a mindfulness tool.
Speaker 2:
So if you can explain, like, how this works and why it's so effective, around the world 40 years, over 60 countries, trained thousands of speakers, many, many in India. And when you look at a speaker, next time you look at a speaker, see if the speaker has any spaces in the speaker between the sounds that they speak and right away you can tell the amateurs because they don't have any spaces. There's no pauses between the sounds that they speak. But when you watch the professional, when you watch a person who is performing their thoughts, the words per minute begin to slow down and you begin to be able to catch a wave, like in sailing when you are going to go downwind, you catch the wave and it just accelerates the boat. When you catch the wind, when you catch the wind of stillness, it transforms your life because in that space of stillness, in that space of stillness, in that space of the pause between the sounds that I speak, a wave of relaxation flows through your body and a source of pleasure in public speaking is that are you relaxed when you're speaking and when you can create a pause? There's no forward thrusting of the yang sound energy. There's the input of the female, feminine, yin energy and that is a moment of presence, a moment of stillness that you get to anchor and ground yourself. And when you can anchor and ground yourself and pause between the sounds that you speak, you control the timing of your speaking.
Speaker 2:
And when you ask yourself, avik, who do you speak for? Well, I speak for me. Well, who is me? Well, it's my identity Eckhart Tolle would talk about. It's your conceptual identity, how you conceive yourself being. I'm a man, I am American. This is my football team, this is my family. These are my possessions, all the things that you identify yourself to be what you end up doing by putting a pause in there. Family, these are my possessions, all the things that you identify yourself to be, what you do, what you end up doing, you, you, you. By putting a pause in there, it gives you now a space. Fifth element there's a space of nothingness between the sounds and that's a portal to, to the infinite. And it's pretty cool. Everyone can pause, but no one does it until they're trained.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, exactly, very true. And you often mention the ego and its role in psychological suffering. So how can we recognize when our ego is taking control?
Speaker 2:
It's a good question the ego would be. Physically, you will notice, your breathing is not as full, your body is tense. Psychologically, you have a lot of complaints about the reality in which you live. There's things you like in the movie of your life and there's things you don't like in the movie of your life and the things that, if you don't like, you'd like to replace with things that you do like, so you're not falling in love with God's creation. I mean, god created the whole thing. But you're saying, well, some of God's creations I like, but that stuff over there, that relationship, my job or my body or whatever, that I don't like, that one.
Speaker 2:
So you are, the ego, is in competition, and the ego is in competition with your higher self, your spiritual self, your divine mother. Your divine mother is there with you, companion through your entire life. But the ego's voice is so loud that you're letting the ego do the judgments, based on your conditioning, of what's right and wrong. But as you begin to practice stillness, the breathing, the meditation, the formulation of the ego is the clusters of thoughts, concepts, and if you can begin to dissolve the glue that holds the concepts together, you aerate that energy and when you aerate something. You allow a flow to flow through. There's no damning, there's a flow now You've opened up holes and allows that divine wind of the divine mother to flow through. There's no damning is. There's a. There's a flow, now you've opened up holes and allows that divine wind of of the divine mother to flow through you and you can call that love, compassion and kindness. And. But the problem of that is you. The ego has to ask for support, and the ego is asking for support from the divine mother or your higher self, which is saying that the ego's belief system or the ego's operating system are living under the grace of the ego. It doesn't bring you joy and satisfaction. Just look at my body, look at my blood pressure, look at my relationships, look at my pain, look at my suffering that I experienced. Well, that's because you've been playing the game according to the ego, by your nature, of the reality that you live in. We live in a reality created by the divine. You are a piece of the divine and you want to be practicing the.
Speaker 2:
If I was divine I'm not saying I am, but if I was a divine. If I was divine, I'm not saying I am, but if I was a divine being of life. How would I be in this moment, right now? Now would I be? And I now have a choice, because I'm pausing. I have a choice about what I want to say.
Speaker 2:
I look at the effect of what I have to say that ricochets back onto me, so like if I get angry at you, the anger starts over here inside of me first. So right away I'm holding onto the anger that I'm projecting onto you. It feels good to the ego to get angry at you because you're the guy that did it to me, or I'm going to really get back at you, but you yourself are holding the fire of the anger inside yourself. And so the only way out of the only way out of that one avic is to practice the, the spiritual practice of, of compassion and forgiveness and and gratitude for, for the things in the movie, and all of a sudden, no more resistance, it flows. You are able to enjoy that experience of oneness and love within your own life, and that's our goal.
Speaker 1:
That's lovely and that's really fascinating, alan, but it feels like such a universal struggle, right? But here let me play a devil's advocate. Couldn't the ego also be a tool for growth, if managed properly? What do you?
Speaker 2:
say. There's a saying that I like I'm not sure who said it, it might be Einstein, albert Einstein and I'm going to paraphrase it is that the, the, the intuitive mind, is a sacred gift and the rational mind is the servant, is a faithful servant. So you have to be in the spiritual Place and now that I'm in the spiritual place, I can use my ego to execute my spiritual thoughts. I can use my ego to speak, because who do I speak for? I speak for my identity. So if I speak for my identity, am I speaking for my ego identity, in which I want to be right and I'm judging everything in front of me as right or wrong, or am I speaking from my spiritual identity, in which right and wrong is not an issue because the ego doesn't need to judge anymore?
Speaker 2:
If you let the spiritual part do the judgment and in the spiritual part we'll judge it with kindness, love and compassion, whereas the ego will judge it for, is this a threat to my survival? Are you offending me? Is this a threat to my identity? I'll need to defend and I'll need to attack. So I can. Now my body begins to attack and my voice begins to attack, and my body is now tense, but it feels so good to attack you because you've done such bad things, and so by me attacking you I'm actually hurting myself. So there's no benefit to that, though psychologically for the ego it feels good. So the ego is definitely necessary to execute the wishes of the spirit.
Speaker 1:
Okay, okay. So like if you could leave our listeners with one profound truth about the relationship between consciousness and reality, what that would be.
Speaker 2:
If you want salvation, there's a fuel that you can use for salvation, and the difficulty there is that the ego promises salvation too. They say if you, if you follow what I believe is to be true, you will achieve that paradise, salvation, wonderful place. And the spirit says the same thing if you follow my operating system, you'll, you'll get to, you'll get to salvation. So we've been following the ego's operating system and there's not a lot of salvation that people record there, but there's a lot of salvation when people follow the Spirit. So what's the fuel, the F-U-E-L that you use in order to get to salvation in the Spirit and what's the fuel that you use to get to salvation theoretically in the ego? Well, the fuel that gets you to the suffering of the ego is judgments, complaints and grievances. If you feel constantly judgments this is good, this is bad, this is right, this is wrong. You shouldn't have done that, evick. So you are saying that you are the judge of the movie that you're watching right now. The spirit, the fuel fuel will get you to salvation, is the fuel of forgiveness. Forgiveness and compassion and gratitude. So you begin to fuel the forgiveness of whatever it is in the movie that is unforgivable or something to see that you don't like Practice forgiveness, that you don't like practice forgiveness. And when you practice forgiveness on the thing that appears to be outside of you, it actually is a projection of the pain inside of you that's being projected onto the movie outside. And when I forgive the outside, immediately I forgive the inside, because the outside is merely a reflection of what's going on on the inside. So you've got to take a look.
Speaker 2:
You want to play the game of judging it or not, and if you want to get back to salvation, in the Christian tradition they talk about the Garden of Eden, and in the Garden of Eden they said that there's a couple of trees in there, that you can stay in the Garden of Eden, the paradise, the wonderful place, but you can't eat from that tree.
Speaker 2:
That's the tree of knowledge Knowledge of what? Knowledge of good and evil. Now you can eat from the other tree, the tree of life. That's immortality. You can eat all you want from that tree, but don't eat from the tree of good and evil because it will cause you suffering. So you ask everybody right now in India who's listened to this around the world what do you judge in the big movie outside, which is good and bad and you'll say well, this is good, this is bad, this is right. So you're already eating from the tree of good and evil and all of a sudden you're suffering. So you have to let that one go and let the higher self be the judge. But the ego doesn't want to give up judgment, because that's pretty cool to be able to judge what I want to do.
Speaker 1:
Exactly Lovely. I feel like this has been nothing sort of phenomenal, for this definitely. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and insights with us today. I know our listeners are walking away with new perspectives and, at the same time, the practical tools to unlock the power of consciousness. So, dear listeners, if this episode has resonated with you, share it with someone who needs a little extra inspiration today, and do not forget to follow the podcast and leave us a review. It helps us keep bringing you these incredible conversations. So, until next time, keep seeking, keep questioning and also, most importantly, keep growing. So this is your host, ravik, signing off with love and light. So stay curious and stay conscious. Thank you so much.
