Gary Zukav’s view of enlightenment owes its debt to no single philosophy or idea.

While Zukav’s books draw upon elements of the world’s religions – including karma, reincarnation, and the soul – and include aspects of the quantum physics he wrote about in his classic The Dancing Wu Li Masters, Zukav has fashioned a spiritual way of thought all his own.

Having spent no less than 133 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, Zukav’s The Seat of the Soul is one of the landmark self-help works of our time. Zukav himself, a placid-voiced man with a hint of the accent of the American West, has become a near-household name since he began making regular appearances on the Oprah Winfrey Show five years ago. Today, Zukav probably reaches more people than any other nondenominational spiritual figure in the nation.

As a person, Zukav is no easier to categorize than his work. A native Kansan, he graduated from Harvard, served as a Green Beret officer in Vietnam, and returned home in the 1970s to write his first book, The Dancing Wu Li Masters. A longtime staple on spiritual bookshelves and beyond, the book has become one of the most widely read works to explain advanced physics to a layperson.

Zukav currently divides himself between writing (he claims not to read much), personal appearances (both on Oprah and in public talks), and work with his non-profit Seat of the Soul Foundation, which he founded with the woman he calls his “spiritual partner,” Linda Francis.

Science of Mind spoke with Zukav shortly before the publication of his new book, The Mind of the Soul: Responsible Choice.

Science of Mind: There seems to be a good deal of correspondence between the ideas of Science of Mind and your own way of thought. What has been your experience with Science of Mind or New Thought?

Zukav: I don’t have a lot it; I haven’t read much in the last twenty or twenty-five years. But I do know that there must be a great deal of correspondence because the very first public talk that I gave was to the annual convention of the United Church of Religious Science in Orange County. And I never before had spoken to anybody about the content of The Seat of the Soul – and afterwards everyone stood up and they clapped and they clapped and they clapped. So I knew that this group of ministers was either very impressed by the book [laughter], or that I was saying something that they already knew and was articulating it in a way that would be helpful to them.

Science of Mind: What was your spiritual life like as a child?

Zukav: I didn’t have one as a child. I didn’t have one until I was in, oh I would guess, my forties. Until I wrote The Dancing Wu Li Masters, in fact, I never thought about giving anything to anyone else; I thought only about myself. I was an adventurer, I was in the Army, I was a paratrooper, I rode motorcycles – but it never occurred to me that I was doing these things because I frightened and it never occurred to me to look at my own fears. Of course, I knew I was frightened to go on a patrol in Vietnam or Laos; I knew that I was frightened when I jumped out of an airplane; but I didn’t realize that I was frightened of not living up to the expectations of other people, or my own expectations, and I didn’t realize that I was frightened of being ridiculed, and that I was terribly frightened of being rejected. And so I was arrogant, angry, macho, and in that state became a Green Beret officer.

Science of Mind: What was your experience like in Vietnam?

Zukav: When I was in the Army, I was violent and I was angry. I was resentful. I felt inferior and so I acted superior – and I was surrounded by people like that. But I chose it; it was what I wanted at the time. I wasn’t drafted, I enlisted in the infantry and then I volunteered for jump school, then I volunteered for the Special Forces, and I was proud of my uniform, and my beret, and my boots. I liked the camaraderie; it made me feel admirable to have a top-secret mission and to be using top-secret equipment and weapons. And that’s what I chose, because that’s what my consciousness was. As multi-sensory humans, we are able to see a dynamic that might be called the universal law of attraction – and that is that like-energy attracts. Which means if you are a loving and compassionate person, you will be drawn to loving and compassionate people, they will populate your world, and you will live in a loving and compassionate world. If you are violent and angry, you will draw violent and angry people to you, and they will draw you to them, and you will live in a violent and angry world. And it will seem natural to you.

I was looking at some slides from Vietnam a few years ago, and they were rather ordinary; they were simply of the one of the supporting artillery batteries that an infantry company in the neighborhood brought with them; and I was watching young humans about my age at the time focused on projecting packages of high-explosives through the air and into locations where they hoped other people just like themselves were located, intent on killing. That was part of my world. I look at it now and I can say, that was a hellish experience; but it wasn’t at the time. Your consciousness creates continually, that is why it is so important to become aware of it. To become aware of your personality, all of the parts of it, and heal those parts that are frightened. I lived in a world of terror. And that world was filled with brutality – and I liked it. Now, my world is filled with loving people who are striving to challenge the parts of themselves that require healing; and I know from my experience in both domains that it takes much more courage to get to know all of the parts of yourself, to feel what you are feeling, and to change, than it does to be a Green Beret.

Science of Mind: Where did the change start for you? What provided the impetus for the change?

Zukav: There is no single point because your life is a continuum. But writing The Dancing Wu Li Masters was my first gift to life. I became fascinated with quantum physics, as I began to understand it, and I decided to leave a gift for others who would come later and be interested in quantum physics. And, as I did, I began to realize that while I was writing this book I was excited and fulfilled and engaged, and my life was meaningful and electric. And when I wasn’t feeling those things, I was frightened, angry, bitter, jealous, resentful – and a victim again. …And I set the intention to live my life the way this book was being written: spontaneously, intelligently, and joyfully. And writing that book was a leap across a chasm, and I didn’t know that I leaped and I didn’t know even know the chasm was there. But when I was on the other side, I realized that the chasm was there – and it’s the chasm between thinking and doing. It’s the chasm between inspiration and acting on your inspiration. And having acted, having done something, having contributed to the world, I found myself in another place. It was the difference between taking and giving. And my anger, my addictions didn’t disappear for years – but I had that experience in my life as a benchmark. And my life continued to change.

So, I won’t say that is the pivotal turning point before which the terrain became quite different; but writing The Dancing Wu Li Masters was a meaningful experience for me and one that put me in new territory, into a new consciousness – the consciousness of giving.

Science of Mind:  In The Seat of the Soul you write of  “Luciferic energy” as the force of temptation – but temptation that gives us the possibility for change or choice. What is the primary Luciferic energy you see in America as a nation today?

Zukav: Lucifer means Light-bringer; and temptation is the dynamic that brings to your consciousness negativities in you that would create painful consequences if they were not brought into consciousness and healed. Temptation is a dress rehearsal for a negative karmic event. As you are tempted to do something, at that moment you can choose to heal that negativity within yourself or move on into opening night. In other words, you can heal that negativity before your energy spills into the worlds of others, and creates negative consequences for you. Temptation is a gracious dynamic, it’s a beneficent dynamic, it is a remarkable dynamic through which you can see that which most needs to be healed in you before you act on it. You can change your own consciousness without needing to act out the experience. I think of temptation as occurring to individuals. Although you could extrapolate it to a collective, that is difficult to do because in a collective not all individuals have the same temptation. Temptation is a dynamic that allows you to alter your own consciousness so that you can create more constructively and, hopefully, more wisely.

Science of Mind: I want to ask you about something you had said on an Oprah appearance. On one appearance you said, “There is no such thing as a tragedy in this life. There is no such thing as unfairness. There is a compassionate universe unfolding at each moment and if you look at life otherwise, you look at yourself as a victim.” Some critics have said that this outlook denies those who have suffered, including whole populations such as the American Indian or the Iraqi Kurds, of the right to name the source of their suffering and the right to be heard from as victims of evil. How do you respond to this?

Zukav: Everyone has the right to be angry, a right to be vengeful, and a right to feel a victim. Everyone also has the right to be loving, the right to acknowledge that the universe is compassionate and wise, and the right to live their lives in that way. You must choose the position you will take. Viktor Frankl, a Jew in a Nazi death camp came to the realization one icy cold winter morning when being marched out on a work detail and being struck by the butt of a rifle, that the one thing the Nazis could not take from him was his ability to love. And he could have descended into righteous rage at what the Nazis did and were doing to the Jews, and what they were doing to him. Instead he made a proclamation to himself that he would love, and that could not and would not be taken from him. I am not in any way denying the suffering of so many people – on the contrary, the human experience is characterized by brutality and suffering, by poverty and starvation and malnutrition. The only way to eliminate these experiences is to eliminate the cause of these experiences – and that is consciousness. To change consciousness pulls each of these experiences up by the root.

Everyone has suffered. My dream is a world of harmony and cooperation and sharing and reverence for life – but authentic power is power, it is not authentic victimhood; it is power, it is understanding that your experiences, no matter what they are – whether you are Iraqi or Kurdish or black or Native American or Jewish or Hindu or Muslim – your experiences are uniquely suited to your spiritual growth. And they offer you opportunities to grow spiritually. Emotional awareness is one of the skills necessary to create authentic power, and as you become emotionally aware you become aware of how much pain there is in the world and how that pain exists in you. It takes courage to become emotionally aware, to feel the suffering, to feel the agony of a child dying, of a family torn apart; and to say to yourself, feeling all of this, “I will no longer be a part of the brutality that has characterized human experience since its origin. I will not act in anger even though I am trembling with rage. I will not seek revenge even though I want to kill; I will challenge this part of me. I will leave this life a person who contributes to life rather than a person who takes from life. And I will use every one of my experiences to help me do that.” If you can say that, you are strongly on the spiritual path.

Science of Mind: Do you believe there can be a just use of force in the world, such as taking protective action, either individually or collectively?

Zukav: It is all a matter of intention. Intention is what creates consequences and not the action. And intention is a quality of consciousness that you bring to an action. So, if you use physical force against someone to punish that person or to make yourself feel superior or righteous, then you will create consequences that are painful for you. If you use a physical force in order to protect someone, you would create very different consequences For example, suppose that you see that someone is distraught and might hurt themselves, and you physically restrain that person. Your intention is one of loving concern. But if your intention is to be the hero and to show yourself as superior to people who aren’t heroes, then that same action creates different consequences.

Science of Mind: In Science of Mind as a way of thought, we speak often of the ability of the mind to produce manifestations in the material world. Yet I find that we rarely talk about ethics with respect to this; that is to say, considering the ramifications of that which we wish to manifest. I wonder if you could speak to this?

Zukav:  If you strive to be ethical because you care for others, that is a noble endeavor – but you can do even more: You can become one who exemplifies the most noble and caring aspects of a human being. When you are aware of your intentions you create consequences that are beneficial. It is possible to behave in an ethical way, to speak in an ethical way, and to present yourself as an ethical person – and yet your intentions are to create external power for yourself. And your actions and words will create painful consequences for you. Ethics is a useful tool for five-sensory humans who evolved through exploring the physical world with the five senses and understanding it, correlating what they discovering with the intellect – all with the evolutionary goal of survival. But multi-sensory humans seek more than survival. To evolve, they need to growth spiritually. And their primary decision-making faculty is not the intellect. It is intuition.

Intuition is the voice of the non-physical world. Intuition is your access to a more compassionate and wise perspective that you alone can gain or can obtain. Intuition is the ability to communicate in a way that is meaningful to you with your nonphysical guides and Teachers. As you become highly intuitive and emotionally aware you have these two internal systems – your intuitional structure and your emotional system – to inform you of parts of your personality that are frightened. And your emotional system informs you of them by creating painful physical sensations in your body. This mechanism of the human energy system is detailed in The Heart of the Soul [Zukav’s 2001 book]. You have your intuitional structure – which will be the subject of a later book – and that is your access to non-physical guidance. As you follow your intuition and you use the intentions of the soul as your checks and balances, you create authentic power. Your intuition – your non-physical guides and Teachers – cannot tell you what to do, nor control what you do. No one, not even your nonphysical Teachers, can choose how you will use your energy. But they will help you to see options that you haven’t seen before; they will help you to see the probable consequences of each of your options; they will guide you to the depth and scope of your creative power and the extent to which you are responsible for it; and then you will make your own decisions, always.

As you make a decision, ask yourself “Will this create harmony? Is this sharing? Will this create cooperation? Is this reverent of Life?” And if the answer is no, then you are not in touch with a non-physical Teacher, you are in touch with a frightened part of your personality.

Science of Mind:  Tell us about your new book, The Mind of the Soul: Responsible Choice. What induced you to write it at this time, and how does it differ from your previous works?

Zukav:  It is a book about how to use your will in order to align your personality with your soul. It is different from our other books in several ways. The Seat of the Soul contains these principles. But over the years, and after interactions with thousands of people, I’ve come to see that there is so much to the tools that are presented in The Seat of the Soul, that it’s helpful to have an elaboration.

So, The Heart of the Soul elaborates the tool of emotional awareness. And The Mind of the Soul elaborates and illustrates and demonstrates another tool, which is responsible choice. Now, all of the tools are interwoven, so it’s not sequential as though you do one thing, then another. As you become emotionally aware, you become aware of parts of your personality that are frightened and then you make responsible choices that enable you to heal them. And yet as you make a responsible choice of intention, you create consequences. So, responsible choice is the mechanism through which you create authentic power – that is how you align your personality with your soul.

And The Mind of the Soul explains responsible choice as a tool in practical, accessible ways and allows you to experiment with it. This book is different from all of my other books, except The Heart of the Soul, in that it contains not only the text, which I love to write, but practices and exercises. The book is filled with them and they are a central part of the book. It also contains illustrations and diagrams and emphasized thoughts. Before The Heart of the Soul, I had never thought of a book in these terms. So, both The Heart of the Soul and this book, The Mind of Soul, are quite revolutionary from this point of view; but our publisher was willing to experiment with us and I am very happy with the result. This book is not designed merely to be read, but to be used. It engages the heart, in engages intuition; it makes responsible choice come alive so that it’s not merely a concept.

The Seat of the Soul Foundation

In addition to writing and speaking, Gary Zukav maintains a non-profit organization, the Seat of the Soul Foundation (www.seatofthesoul.org). “It offers people support and programs that people can use after they read the books to take the next step,” Zukav says. Among other activities, the foundation supports a Soul Circle program, which Zukav describes as “local independent groups that meet to study and to practice authentic power.” The foundation can also be reached at 888-440-7685, or outside the U.S. at 541-482-8199.  Gary Zukav can be reached at www.zukav.com.