An Interview with Gary Zukav

I had been very nervous about meeting Mr. Zukav before the interview, but as soon as I shook his hand and began to talk with him, all my nervousness melted away. Born in Pittsburg, Kansas, Mr. Zukav graduated from Pittsburg High School in 1960. Following graduation he attended Harvard University. In 1979 he wrote Dancing Wu Li Masters, which won the American Book Award for Science. In 1989 he wrote The Seat of the Soul, a book about evolution and happiness in life. The Seat of the Soul became a national bestseller, remaining on the New York Time's Bestseller list for over one hundred and thirty-nine weeks.  His books have sold over four and a half million copies and been translated into sixteen different languages.

GZ: So. I'll start by asking you a question. What is a famous person?

BP: Well, I'd have to say it's someone who is well known, maybe? Or has changed the world?

GZ: If Osama Bin Laden where someone that you knew, would you want to interview him as a famous person?

BP: Probably not. I would say that would be infamous. Is that close?

GZ: Yes, that's very close. What I'm sensing is that for your project you want to speak to someone who is the most well known positive influence that you know. That's important because fame is not. But being a positive influence in the world is. There are many people who are famous and are not positive influences in the world, and there are many people who are positive influences in the world--much more than I--who are not famous. So it is valuable to realize [pauses] it is valuable to realize what is important and what is not. Now, what does it mean to be a positive influence?

BP: Well, I would say it means to try and teach other people and show them what's good--right and wrong--things like that.

GZ: That's close. Intention is what makes a positive influence or a negative influence. Intention. For example, you may want to teach somebody how to hurt other people [pauses] or you may want to teach somebody how to help other people. In both cases you are teaching someone, but there is a big difference between someone who teaches people how to help and teaches people how to hurt, and that difference is intention. So if your intention is to be constructive instead of destructive, or to share instead of to hoard, or to contribute instead of to exploit, then your intention is a positive one. And my feeling is that you want visitors to your website to have the benefit of the people who have positive intentions [coughs].

BP: That's pretty much it, I think. You said it a lot better than I could have.

GZ: How do you get a positive intention?

BP: By trying to accomplish something good?

GZ: Yes, you choose it.

BP: Yeah.

GZ: You have to say 'this is what I intend; this is what I will do if the universe is willing for me to do it.' So an intention is not a wish, and it is not a hope, it is the conscious use of your will. You know what will is?

BP: Yes.

GZ: So your parents tell you 'you will do this' and you say to yourself 'I don't want to do this, but I will do it only because they tell me I will do it.' Or you say 'I will not do that.' Both of those are uses of your will. That will is very important because that's what allows you to make a choice. The choice that you make is the choice of intention. Do you see?

BP: I see.

GZ: Now, it is one thing to decide to have a positive intention, say, to help people. But have you ever decided to do one thing and then found yourself doing another?

BP: [nods] Uh-huh.

GZ: Tell me about when that happened to you [coughs].

BP: Oh, I can't think of a specific time, exactly, but I'm sure it's happened before.

GZ: Can you give me an example?

BP: I'm trying. Well, like when I said I was going to study for a test, but then I ended up doing something else instead.

GZ: Perfect example. Perfect. You set the intention to study for the test, but then you suddenly woke up to the fact that you weren't studying for the test you were doing something else. That happened because although you set the intention to do one thing there was a part of you--that you didn't know about--that had a different intention. And that intention was to watch a ball game, or to go running, or to do something else besides study. If you don't know about those parts of yourself, they choose your intentions for you.

BP: And you can't control them.

GZ: Exactly. Exactly! And those are your compulsions. And your fixations. And your obsessions. In other words the parts of your self that are 'out of control'. Somebody says something, and suddenly you're angry.

BP: You don't know why.

GZ: You don't know why. Even if you set the intention to be a peaceful person, you're suddenly enraged. So choosing your intention is not so simple, because to choose it and really be able to choose it consciously you have to start to become familiar with yourself, with all the different parts of yourself. And when you decide to do that, you decide to become the master of your own life. Some people think that being the master of their own lives--

BP: [shuffles with the tape recorder]

GZ: Is it alright?

BP: Yeah, sometimes it stops though and I have to check it, sorry [laughs].

GZ: Some people think that they are the master of their lives if they are the ones that decide when they get up in the morning, when they go to sleep at night, where they go during the day, what they do for a living, what clothes they wear. And they say to themselves 'I am a master of my life if I can do all those things' because some people can't, like a prisoner. A prisoner is in jail. A prisoner must wear the clothes that the jail says, the prisoner must get up when the regulations say to get up and go to sleep when the regulations say to go to sleep, and cannot travel where he chooses when he chooses. 'But I,' some people say, 'am a master of my life because I can do all of those things.' But these people are not masters of their lives as long as they cannot control their anger, or their jealousy.

BP: As long as they don't know themselves, right?

GZ: Exactly! Exactly. As long as they feel that they are less important than other people, or if they feel that they are more important than other people. Or if they feel that they are attractive, or not attractive. They're controlled by these things, and they're just as much in prison as the person in a penitentiary. Do you know what the word penitentiary means?

BP: Nope.

GZ: To be penitent. It means to think about things. So originally people were put in prison to think about things.

BP: What they did.

GZ: That's right. So you might say that while you are out of control in your life you are in a penitentiary [laughs softly], where you have time to think about what you've done, like hurt the people that you love, like...become angry when you have set the intention not to become angry. When you decide to start to know your self, so that you can be out of this prison, that's when you begin the process of being a master of your life [coughs]. And it's never too early, and it's never too late to start [smiles].

BP: I see what you're saying.

GZ: It's better to start early [laughs], but it's never too late to start, because it's always good to get out of prison.

BP: Yeah.

GZ: It's better to get out of prison earlier than later, but the important thing is getting out of prison, and that's what happens when you get to know yourself, so that you can choose your intentions, and hold, even while you are feeling all of the things that you are feeling inside yourself. Is this making sense to you?

BP: Uh-huh [nods]. I understand.

GZ: When you do that, you start to become a positive influence in the world, and then if the universe wants you to be a famous person the universe will make you a famous person. It's not you that does it; it's the universe. And if the universe doesn't want you to be a famous person, you won't be a famous person, because the universe will always provide for you what is best for you. The important thing is not whether you are famous or not, but what your intention is [pauses], and if your intention is to be a positive influence in the world, and you really want that enough, you will start to do the work that is necessary to learn about yourself. And if you do that long enough, you will begin to feel the results.

BP: I've read your book, your first--well, not first, but The Seat of the Soul--and I also have Soul Stories and Dancing Wu Li Masters, and I haven't started those yet, but I'm going to. I read it, but pretty much I just want to hear about your life story and how you got to where you are because I understand that you were in Vietnam?

GZ: This is my life's story.

BP: It is?

GZ: Yes, what I've just told you are the most important things that I can share for your website--[pauses. Something is beeping.]

BP: Is it you or me?

GZ: [chuckles]. It's for me [long pause]. You know that I was in the army, when I was about your age. A little older--not much. And at that time, I was a very different person than I am now, and the way that I changed was exactly the way that I have described to you.

BP: Getting out of prison.

GZ: Getting out of prison.

BP: And learning about your self.

GZ: And learning about myself. Some people can learn about themselves and decide to stay in the army, but when I learned about myself, my life began to change. This is what you can share with your visitors to the web site. These are more important things than...history. History is temporary, but when you make changes in yourself for the better, that's permanent.