Contemplation Intensives -- Perspectives of a Modern Day Mystic

by Gregory Allen Butler

I had not heard about contemplation intensives until last month. Since then I had the opportunity to interview a professional man who was transformed by them. He is not your average man. He blends a brilliant mind with a gentle heart to forge a mystical approach to life, seeking the truth. He is trained in martial arts, and follows the path of the Indian spiritual master, Meher Baba. He is also the co-owner of a leading software animation company. He prefers that I refer to him simply as Richard.

Although I have known Richard for several years, it was not until recently, however, that I heard him tell the story on the telephone about his experience in what he called "Contemplation Intensives," where you focus on a particular question for a long time in a very deep way. To do this you sit with one partner for a while and take turns being asked or asking them a question such as "Who am I?" Then you switch to a new partner and the process starts all over again. In these "Contemplation Intensives" the question is asked of each participant several hundred times over the course of three 16 hour days. I was so enthralled by his story, I asked him if I could sit down with him and record his fascinating story for you. He agreed. Here it is:

How did you get started in Contemplation Intensives?
I was studying a particular school of martial arts called Cheng Hsin at Peter Ralston's dojo. And how I found out about him is that one of my friends picked up a book about him and I could tell that he was very serious about the truth. And that's why we went to that studio-we were looking for that level of integrity which he brought to what he was doing.The source of this quality, at least in part came from the contemplation intensives. He had a major experience himself while doing the technique.

So he was a student of the contemplation intensives?
Yes.

So he told his martial arts students about it?
No, he became a teacher of it.

And what year was it that you took your first intensive?
It could have been 1989 or 1990.

What did you know about the intensive before you took the intensive?
Well, I had heard that it came to the founder, Charles Berner, because he was interested in Zen. There had been a huge improvement in Zen when instead of the monks meditating facing the wall, they were turned around to face each other as they meditated. This was kind of like an extension of that where instead of having a koan that you work on without any direct interaction with another being; you take it to a new level of using the attention of the other person along with your own towards your practice, your goal, your work.

And when did you hear about this question, "Who am I?"
When I got to my first intensive. That was the question that was given. None of the people there were at the level required to go to the next question. There might have been one or two people-but almost everybody was working on the question, "Who am I?" That is the first question in that type of work.

So how many times do you think you were asked that question?
(Laughter) I guess we could do a quick estimate. The intensive was three days. I think the structure was that for 15 minutes you are asked the question. Then for 15 minutes you ask the question. Then you take maybe a one or five-minute break and then you do it all over again. And so, I would say that probably that you are asked the question at least once a minute, so that's like maybe 15 times. It's about half the time of the total workshop and they were long days -maybe 6 am until 10 pm.

Wow, that's intense. 16 hours.
Yeah, 16 hours. So we were asked this question about 30 times per hour and if you knock an hour or two off for breaks and you get a figure somewhere between 400 and 450 times a day.

So you are asked over 400 times a day, "Who are you?"
Yes, but it turns out that if you ask the question, it's the same thing. It doesn't even matter who is asking the question. It becomes an activity so that it doesn't matter who is asking the question. It is the same thing. And by the time you go to sleep at the end of the first day, the question is asking itself in your mind. All night long.

So over the course of the first day, does you answer evolve?
Oh yeah, very much so.

A typical first hour answer would be?
You sort of peel away layer by layer the more typical relationship a person would have with that question, which would be something like "I'm these thoughts; I'm this body. I'm the person sitting in front of you.

"I'm an American?"
I'm an American; I'm Richard. I'm man. All the typical identifications a person can have.

That lasts for how long?
That doesn't last for very long. You go through that in about two hours. You've exhausted the typical identifications.

Is it like an iceberg, with only a fraction of the whole above the surface?
Yes, but when you go under the surface, you're going to a place where you don't know what to say and you don't know what it is, and you're faced with that kind of horrible nothingness or desperation, the fact that you don't know who you are or what you are. And that you've been operating out of some convenient identifications. But the main question, the question that should be the foundation of your being, has been unaddressed, and there you are sitting with it. It gets rough, painful. I don't think it gets scary very often. But it's kind of personally devastating.

So let's go back there and imagine that you started at 6 am and it's now 6 pm and I ask you "Who are you?" What would your answer be?
There is a period where you go through anger and you say "I don't know. Shut up. Don't ask me anymore." And things like that. (Laughter) Or you shout, "I DON'T KNOW…I DON'T KNOW." But usually the answers would be in one chunk. You don't elaborate. You say, "I don't know" and that would be it. But after awhile, being annoyed doesn't hold any water either. It doesn't solve the issue. It's like an avoidance, and it becomes clear. There you are and you don't know who the hell you are. There you are, there you are, there you are. What are you? What are you? What are you? And pretty soon you get into this, "I'm going to find out!" You get this sort of desire in you -"I'm going to crack it open. I'm going to get it." And you get this intensity and this focus. And you see it like with different partners. And they see it. They start catching this thing. It becomes very serious. It becomes contagious. And so you try your damndest. You put all your self into it. And it's an impossible task. It's a koan.

There was a hint given at one point that it's like a building that has no doors. Your body, your self, your being. When you're pretending to be outside, you have no entry. You have to be what it is. You can't be describing it outside of it. I was given that clue at some point. You know, you start trying to search in a different place than before. That was given after a lot of torment. Some of these workshops went on for 14 days.

So they would give you clues along the way?
Not very many. Every once in a while there would be a Zen story read, or sometimes there were some words from the Buddha.

Ramana Maharshi?
I don't think so. Not in my sessions. I think that's up to the teacher's discretion. But there wasn't a lot of that stuff. Just a few brief vignettes. Little short things. There was something about a Zen story about something falling, and falling, and falling. It helped one get that focus and that being with the process. Anyway, too bad you got me after I contracted Alzheimer's. (Laughter) It was a long time ago.

So after three days, what was your concept of who you were?
Well, several times I had done this and I came up completely empty handed. And sometimes I came up with an experience. One of the times I came up with an experience, it was like I was having an experience of existence being like a flat tiling of some sort. It was extremely abstract. It was way abstract. And when I got that, I felt a bitterness because I had had other experiences before I did this work… that I sorely missed. And this experience was such a fleeting glimpse compared to those that it just brought up my sort of, the painfulness of my longing. It just aggravated that painfulness. Another of the things I got - my body felt as if it was made of something lighter and it seemed to emanate light. And there was kind of a wholeness and a directness. Just a simplistic, incredible, raw truth about just being. And I felt that and I was that.

Were you able to convey that in your answer?
I was, but not only that, but when I got back to practicing martial arts, I had a Private Eye that I would basically spar with. It was very close to western boxing, the kind of sparring that we did. And he was a mountain of a man. He weighed a lot and he was tall. He had quite a reach. And of course he was a private detective and he did this kind of stuff every day. And I actually mopped the floor with him. I just mopped the floor with him. And that was just after the weekend that we had done this work. The next week he mopped the floor with me, as usual. But there was something that I had received that created a competency that was way beyond normal.

And when we did this work with Peter (Peter Ralston was the facilitator of the Contemplation Intensives as well as Richard's martial arts teacher), Peter felt that there was a connection between the martial arts and this work, between competence in all things and this kind of work. When one got out of one's way completely, one became aligned with the force of one's being. It made a big difference in life.

So the experience of mopping the floor with this Private Eye, that was sort of like being in the zone?
Yeah. I mean it is almost physically impossible to think that this could happen, as I weighed so little, that I could have that much effect on just his sheer mass and experience and strength.

What was your size?
I was six feet tall and I weighed 130 pounds. And he was six foot eight inches and weighed about 275 pounds. He was big.

A power forward on an NBA basketball team.
Yeah. (Laughter) Big guy. Another experience I had, I think it was after an intensive, but it could have been after some other work we did there. I had the experience of being at two locations at one time. And I was driving. Which means that my car, obviously, (laughter) was also having the same experience. I was in two places at one time with my car. I drove over two separate bridges going home. That was my experience.

Sort of like the electron going through two slits in quantum physics.
Right. I also had other experiences from time to time. I also had the experience of being able to see behind me as well as in front of me. But all these things were fleeting. Of course the most common experience, which is extraordinary, is that when you do martial arts, there is a place you get into in whatever you're doing that is much more powerful than normal, like if you flip somebody, instead of them going a short distance and then hitting the ground, they really fly. Or if you push them, instead of them going back a little bit, they really go backwards. And I had that many years before and I guess that was what really sold me on martial arts. And that is something any martial art will touch on. There is no getting around it. It's not a matter of better leverage or something. Something totally other is happening than one's normal experience. Everybody I know who practices has had that. It's not a rare experience. It's very much a part of what happens.

So do you still do martial arts?
No, I can't do it because I have fibromyalgia and I just don't have those capabilities anymore.

Was this experience in the contemplation intensives your first experience with mysticism?
I think my first experience was when I was a small child. I went into the backyard. I was looking at insects and trying to identify them and I noticed that there was such detail on every aspect of the smallest creatures and that detail must go on into infinity in a small direction and that it must go into infinity in a large direction. And that such care was taken in the construction of this world. The love and the care…to put it into perspective, if you go to a movie set, you will see buildings that are just facades, buildings with nothing behind them. But this world was so infinitely crafted, and exquisitely crafted, that when I was five, I was just totally blown away by the infinity. So that is the first one I remembered. (Laughter)

Did that experience have you seeking from that point on in your life?
Yeah, I think that I became a seeker that looked for such things in nature, in being in nature. Somehow I felt much more of an alignment with the mystical, mostly in the wonder and discovery of nature, and the serenity of nature.

So let's move on. After you completed your contemplation intensives, what prompted you to go off to India?
I went to India because of Meher Baba, but I didn't know about him until I had gone back to Seattle. I had gotten in touch with the sister of one of my college buddies because I was moving back there to finish my college work…I had maybe a year's worth to do.

So you grew up in Seattle?
No, I just went to college there. But I took a 13-year break to work in Silicon Valley. And then I decided to go back and finish up. And so I met with my buddy's sister and right away she told me that I thought I was pursuing God with my mind, but that I was really a heart-bhakti-devotional type. And there was no use messing around with the footman because Meher Baba was the emperor. Why not go directly to the emperor? I thought she was crazy. It was unsolicited advice. And she set me up with a place to live. She had a friend with a house nearby. It was a group house where several different people shared rent and there were Baba pictures all over the walls, and I thought that was very strange. But it was in a nice location so I moved in. So I sat with that very skeptically for about half a year. Then Theresa, the sister of my college buddy, and her friend Catherine, who was living in the house I was staying in, went to India. And when they went to India I felt something in my heart that was undeniable and it wouldn't go away the whole time they were in India. I felt connected to India. And not too long before that my father had called up and said, "Don't go to India."

I said, "I'm not going to India. I'm not interested in that Hindu stuff. I'm into like Zen, or something. I have no interest in all that. But then, after I had this experience, I had to call him up and say, "Dad, I'm going to India."

He had heard a lot about false gurus and people being brainwashed by cults, and all that, He was worried. Anyway, that's how I first got to India. And it was a very powerful experience for me. Normally, I would have gotten all the shots one would need for going to a place like India, but by the time I went to India I was so mad for Baba and for God, that I just said, "This is a pilgrimage. If you want to kill me on this pilgrimage, go ahead. I'm just giving my whole self into your care. I turn my health over to you.

So how many intensives had you completed before you moved up to Seattle?
I think I probably did five intensives, including two 14-day intensives.

So you went to India because of what you felt in your heart when your friends went there?
Yes, I felt connected to them the whole time they were there. Very strongly.

How long after their trip was it before you went?
About a year. And it's a really big experience to go to India. I met the woman I married on that trip. After being there about a week, I felt that Baba was beside me and he would sort of just inside my mind tell me what to do so that I wouldn't have to follow my thoughts anymore. I felt his arm around me. I felt him walking with me telling me what to do moment to moment. It was exquisite. It was a very ecstatic and heart rending experience being so close to him, and feeling so inadequate and undeserving because I have a very doubting mind and yet he would enfold me in his arms and take me under his wing. That was extremely powerful. That experience of being that close to him lasted five weeks and when I came home it stopped and I was broken hearted that I didn't know what to do.

So what did you do?
I moped. And I wrote love letters everyday to the woman I was eventually to marry. Later, she came out to Myrtle Beach and I came to Myrtle Beach in South Carolina, and eventually we got married and went to India together. And this was probably in 1997.

Once I went to India and I met this guy there I liked immediately from Yugoslavia named Vlado. He liked to talk philosophy and I liked to talk philosophy and we were talking in the dining hall at Meherabad and the topic of these contemplation intensives came up. And he told me that he had done many of these. I was absolutely floored. I had no idea that someone in Yugoslavia would have any knowledge at all for such a thing. And so I was skeptical. But after talking for a while I realized that he had done this work. And that whereas I had only done this work for a short while, he had done it for perhaps a decade. Much more in depth than I had. He told me that many people in Yugoslavia had been involved in the contemplation intensives and that almost all of them, a tremendous number of them who had been doing this work, had come to Baba through the work.

I had been harboring some sort of elitist thought about having done something so special, and that no one else knew about it, and all that stuff. And here all my specialness was kind of laid bare in terms of its silliness.

So how do you think all these people in Yugoslavia came to know about Baba through these intensives and the question, "Who am I?"
Oh, I think they went way beyond that question. As you get into the work, you get into several other questions. One of the questions is "What is being?" Actually the second question is, if you conquer "Who am I?" then the next question is "What is another?" But I think there are many more questions beyond that. Anyway, I don't know what their trajectory was, but somehow they felt Baba's presence.

After my talk with Vlado, and I was in this state of having my silly attitudes turned upside down, I walked up the hill to Baba's tomb, and when I got up there, on the steps of a small cabin next to the tomb, was someone from Peter Ralston's dojo that I had done enlightenment intensives with, and I had no idea he knew about Meher Baba at all. And so when I saw him, I got in my heart an understanding that no matter what kind of esoteric practices I could have been involved with or imagined, all of them were just in Baba's hands. They were just his toys, or his playthings for people like me. And so my spiritual arrogance was completely melted in that moment.

Do you think the Contemplation Intensives were laying the groundwork for each of you to come to Baba?
For me, I felt so. You know they say that when the student is ready the teacher will appear. There was something very true and earnest, not only in Peter Ralston, but in other students I worked with that created an atmosphere that helped me to sort of make an inner commitment to move towards the spiritual in my life.

Are the questions from your intensives still performing revolutions in your consciousness?
I guess the simple answer is yes. I know from those experiences that the kind of everyday world and the worldliness is not as solid as it sometimes appears and not as compelling as it sometimes feels. My intellect has had certain evidences of the futility of worldly endeavors.

What is the biggest change in you between now and 1989?
The thing that seems the clearest to me is the wallpaper of my life the kind of matrix out of which my life is glued together seems to be more and more clearly Meher Baba. There is very little of a toehold for a real attempt to go back to a totally secular approach to life. When I get lost, I can't get too lost when my whole wallpaper of my existence is him.

Do you have any intuitions or recollections of past lives, where you might have been following in the footsteps of Jesus, or Buddha, or Mohammed or Krishna?
The only thing that was suspicious was when I was about eight years old and I bumped into this book called Zen and the Art of Archery at the library. And I read it and it really made me want to become a monk in Japan studying Zen. It was an absolute and total commitment. And it didn't really work out. But it was there. Anyway, soon after reading this book, I went to Pier 1 Imports. I bought a bamboo mat. I took it out to the back yard and started meditating (laughter) which I didn't know how to do, but I did it anyway. Whatever I could figure out or guess. It seemed a little bit precocious. I didn't really have much background at all in any of that. I had tried sincerely to be part of a youth group in a Methodist church but they didn't really seem to be very interested in finding out deeply about Jesus at the time. They were interested in fellowship and playing sports together.

I was looking for a way--for a path. So Zen and the Art of Archery - boy that was it! I guess that was when I was really sold on martial arts.

So that's how this odyssey got started. Very interesting. Thank you Richard.