Buddha at the Gas Pump

Empaths, Empathic Overwhelm, Source Intuition, and the Sacred Work of Healing
Dave Markowitz explores empaths, empathic overwhelm, and the sacred work of healing ourselves and our world. He shares how trauma, sensitivity, intuition, and our connection with Source can shape the way we experience ourselves and other people.

A Source intuitive, bestselling author, healing facilitator, and longtime student of human transformation, Dave draws on decades of experience working with highly sensitive people. He describes his own discovery that he was an empath, how he learned to distinguish his own feelings from what he was absorbing from others, and why he believes many of us are naturally empathic.

The conversation explores the deeper roots of empathic overwhelm, including four original wounds and the movement from an early experience of oneness into separation and individuation. Dave explains why simply protecting or shielding ourselves from other people’s energy may address symptoms without addressing the deeper source of the problem.

Rick and Dave also discuss trauma, fear, anger and grief; relationships and community; forgiveness; meditation and nonduality; connecting with Source; intuitive guidance; and the importance of allowing difficult experiences to become part of our growth rather than trying to escape them.

Dave offers a practical perspective on becoming more resilient without becoming closed off—and on how our own healing can ripple outward, affecting the people and communities around us.

Spiritual Liberation, Memory Reconsolidation, and the End of the Separate Self
Monica Khosla explores spiritual awakening, nonduality, and liberation through the surprising lens of neuroscience and memory reconsolidation. A somatic psychotherapist, she describes a sudden shift during a yoga class in 2009 in which the sense of being a separate self simply fell away.
Monica is the author of The First and Last Belief: A Theory of Liberation in the Age of Neuroscience. In this conversation with Rick Archer, she considers whether the apparent end of separation may be understood as the release of a fundamental embodied assumption—an update in the brain’s model of reality rather than the attainment of a special spiritual status.

They discuss her early spiritual experiences, her long search through psychology, yoga, meditation, acupuncture, astrology, and nondual teachings, and the quiet, unremarkable character of the shift she calls liberation. Monica distinguishes enduring liberation from transitory spiritual states, challenges common assumptions about enlightenment, and emphasizes that liberation does not make someone perfect, omniscient, or free of ordinary human habits and difficulties.

The conversation also explores memory reconsolidation, trauma therapy, predictive processing, consciousness, the nature of perception, the relationship between ancient contemplative traditions and modern neuroscience, free will and responsibility, personal identity, and how spiritual understanding may—or may not—translate into ordinary life.

Book: The First and Last Belief: A theory of Liberation in the age of neuroscience

Website: nondualitynow.com

Discussion of this interview in the BatGap Community Facebook Group

Hello everyone, who knew and loved Bart,

This is Renata Gregori, his wife. My beloved husband left this earth plane on July 27, 2026, due to pneumonia and infection - complications from conditions he was dealing with since the end of last year.

He was the best man I’ve ever known. He was my teacher, my confidant, my best friend, the love of my life and my touchstone for all that is good and righteous. I could always count on him to put things in perspective for me and check me, when I was off base.

We had a celebration of life at our house in Mexico yesterday and it was so beautiful. Music, laughter, tears and beautiful people. Bart has been laid out at our house for two days. As per his wishes, he will be cremated today.

Please continue to contemplate his teachings, read his books and watch his videos. I send my Love to all who knew and loved him and all whose lives he touched.

Bart Marshall described his spiritual path as “self-guided eclectic.” It began with a death experience in Vietnam in 1968 and ended in 2004 on an airplane at 30,000 feet over the Atlantic as he returned from a workshop with Douglas Harding. In those intervening years he “turned over every rock” in his quest for a final answer, but counts three teachers as the most influential: Richard Rose, Nisargadatta Maharaj, and Douglas Harding.

He founded Self Inquiry Group (SIG) in Raleigh, North Carolina and for many years held weekly meetings before stepping back in 2013. Sometimes called “the reluctant guru” by those who know him, Bart nevertheless traveled widely to speak when asked, and teaches retreats and intensives with Deborah Westmoreland (Conscious TV interview) events that proved to be highly transformative for participants.

Bart was the author of The Perennial Way: New English Versions of Yoga Sutras, Dhammapada, Heart Sutra, Ashtavakra Gita, Faith Mind Sutra, and Tao Te Ching, and Christ Sutras (Fall 2014), which contains the complete sayings of Jesus from all sources arranged as topical sermons.

Interview recorded 11/8/2014

Houman Z. Emami, a native of Iran (ancient Persia), has a bright academic career in Philosophy and Religion, Holism and Consciousness, with earlier careers in Computer Science, Telecommunications, and a number of educational-institute startups. He has completed undergraduate studies in the above fields, within and without standard academic training, and he continues in his graduate and Ph.D. thesis, “On Intuition, the Heart Faculty, and Theophanies”.
Before reaching his eleventh year, Houman had lived through the Iranian revolution of 1979, the Iran and Iraq war of 1981, and the inner-city bombings and atrocities of war. “And that was just the beginning,” he tells us. Miraculous events began as a direct result of these earlier years of awakening and grew in proportion to his yearning. In this way, the dark side of war, and the lesser-known light side of war were made manifest from age five onwards. After several relocations and maturing in both eastern and western cultures before his thirtieth year, Houman had taken part in a relatively successful lifestyle, returned to academia and various spiritual practices thrice, finally taking early retirement in his late twenties, leaving all behind and spending a decade as an independent world-traveler, contemporary monk and spiritual pilgrim. These later awakenings in solitude and on the pilgrim’s walk integrated those of his early childhood.
At last, returning to worldly life in his late thirties, he continues to impact the world he left behind. Loved ones and relations lovingly refer to him as “scribe,” “pilgrim,” and “scholar.” A “scribe” is one who decodes and deciphers the teachings of the ancient scrolls, which are symbolic representations of transcendent realms made immanent within a simple framework of understanding. A “pilgrim” is one who leaves the mind behind (is a passerby), leads from the heart, “connects the dots,” is a bridge-builder, and a peacemaker. And a “scholar,” from scolere, is one who lives at ease as a student of life, truth, and wisdom. In this respect, he has written:
Let the truth of love be & become the love of truth, and the love of truth be & become the truth of love. That means, the soul genuinely desires love and truth, embraced by and swaying this way and that throughout life, in order to teach us that we must love unconditionally but when finding ourselves in the snares of selfish love, we must pursue truth; and we must pursue truth unconditionally but when we find truth become empty tradition and superstition, we must pursue love.
In practice, Houman’s spiritual invocation consciously began in his early teens, as a result of a near-death experience (NDE)—taking him back to his early childhood visions, and to his native ancestral teachings of the East, Near East, and the Orient. After his near-death experience and remembering his life’s calling more fully from age five, Houman recalled all that proceeded from that age in the divine plan, walking them out and remembering them step by step.
Years later, these remembrances and awakenings culminated into visionary experiences and embodiments—involving “theophanies,” meaning divine interventions or encounters. Twelve years of practice and integration turned him into an independent spiritual pilgrim in 2003, and he has been traveling the world since. His journey has been one of the most overwhelming stories one might hear.

All there is, IS Love for Love IS…

Andrew Cohen (1955–2025) was a spiritual teacher and the founder of EnlightenNext, an organization associated with his teaching of “Evolutionary Enlightenment.” He was a student of H. W. L. Poonja and wrote several books, including My Master Is My Self and Evolutionary Enlightenment.
I interviewed Andrew in July 2012. Soon afterward, serious accounts emerged from former students describing a harmful and coercive culture within EnlightenNext. In light of those accounts, I removed this interview from the BatGap site.
I have decided to restore it following Andrew’s death, not as an endorsement or a minimization of the harm experienced by former members, but because he appeared to make sincere efforts in later years to confront his behavior and change. These included therapy, ayahuasca work, a willingness to take ordinary jobs when necessary, and participation in the candid documentary How I Created a Cult, which includes difficult testimony from former members and is far from flattering to him.
This interview is being made available as a historical record. As always, viewers are encouraged to exercise discernment and form their own conclusions.
Books by Andrew Cohen:
My Master Is My Self
Enlightenment Is a Secret
An Unconditional Relationship to Life
Freedom Has No History 
Embracing Heaven & Earth
Living Enlightenment
Evolutionary Enlightenment: A New Path for Spiritual Awakening 
Interview conducted 7/14/2012