John P. Milton (JPM): With the encouragement of my grandfather and parents, I began doing wilderness solos and vision quests at the age of seven in 1945. I told them I wanted to go out alone into the mountains "to be in the real Church."

For the next five years, I did at least several vision quests a year in northern New Hampshire, Maine, or in the swamps and Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey. When I was 15, I did my first month-long wilderness solo in the Olympic Mountains of Washington State.

JPM: A deep inner love of Nature and Spirit, and a desire to deepen that natural union. Later, I discovered the writings of John Muir, Henry David Thoreau and John Burroughs; these writings became a deep confirmation of my path. Starting at 15, I began conceiving and carrying out numerous expeditions in wild, remote areas little or never explored by Western culture. The insights given to me by Great Nature and Spirit during these expeditions have been profound teachings for me.

As a result of this deep immersion in wilderness and wild nature from an early age, Nature has always been my primary Teacher: dissolving into the vast openness of sky; learning the way wind speaks as the voice of Spirit, seeing how gracefully clouds swirl through their changes - never clinging; absorbing the yielding power of water; experiencing the profound cutting-through energy of lightning bolts... all these, and mountain, animal, bird, stone, river, forest - all have been great mentors.

JPM: As I mentioned, my main teachers have always been wild Nature and Great Spirit. But I have also been extremely fortunate in having had many wonderful human teachers.

Since the late 1950's, I've been honored to work with fine teachers in Taoism and T'ai Chi, Buddhism, Dzogchen, Vedanta and both Hindu and Buddhist Tantra. I've also learned a lot from living with traditional peoples and Shamans in remote parts of Mother Earth.

JPM: In 1958 I had my first teacher of meditative Qi Gong for spiritual cultivation; that opened an ever-deepening form of Taoist practice that I've continued with ever since.

Then, in the late 1960's I was first exposed to T'ai Chi Ch'uan and immediately fell in love with that system of spiritual and energetic cultivation.

From 1973 through 1980 I studied Cheng's Yang family style T'ai Chi - predominantly with Robert Smith and Ben Pang Jeng Lo - but also with Maggie Newman, Tam Gibbs and others.

I also studied Qi Gong and Taoist yoga with Sifu Fong Ha, Mantak Chia and other Taoist teachers.

I have taught these systems since 1979.

JPM: My formal training in Far Eastern meditation began in 1958 at the University of Michigan, practicing Zen meditation with Ed Maupin as my teacher. I was fortunate enough to meet Ed shortly after his return from extensive Zen training in Japan. Zazen, combined with my regular vision quests, became the core of my spiritual practice. For many years, I practiced classical soto style zazen meditation between four and eight hours a day. Zazen continues until today as a core practice for me. Then, later on in the 1960's, I also became a serious student of the teachings of Taoism, Tibetan Buddhism and both Hindu and Buddhist Tantra. In the 1970's, I was also deeply influenced by the blessings of shaktipat and Siddha Yoga with Swami Muktananda.

As a result of all this spiritual cultivation, my first major experience of the arising of Kundalini Shakti and the opening of central channel came in the mid 1970's. This was such a powerful experience for me that for six months all I could do was rest in profound waves of bliss and unmitigated presence. My usual reasoning mind and subject/object distinctions had dissolved, leaving open, spacious Being - filled with the bliss of powerful energy radiating through that spaciousness. Slowly, over three or four more months, normal rational consciousness began to naturally arise once more out of that pure State - but underneath ordinary discriminating mind, the bliss and spaciousness of pure Being still remains.

Also starting in the late 1960's and through the 1970's until now, I have been fortunate and very blessed to have many fine teachers from several Tibetan lineages, particularly Sogyal Rinpoche, His Holiness (H.H.) Dilgo Khentze Rinpoche, H.H. the Karmapa, H.H. the Dalai Lama, Lama Tharchin, Lopon Tenzin Namdak, Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche and many other wonderful Lamas. In particular, the blessings of opening and deepening Dzogchen contemplation have been at the heart of my personal cultivation. 

From the late 1960's on until now, I have been very active in helping protect Himalayan forests and in setting up wildlife reserves and national parks in Nepal and Bhutan. I often hired large numbers of Tibetan refugees to help me in survey and parks work in the Himalaya Mountains along the Tibetan frontier. All this has given me some extraordinary opportunities to study and practice with Himalayan masters on their home ground and often in a very traditional way, with few or no other westerners around.

I was also fortunate to study Vipassana meditation with S.N. Goenka and his wife in Nepal. Another major teacher for me has been the great tantrika, and devotee of the Divine Feminine, Vasudev of India and Nepal. Over a number of years I was blessed with being able to study with him in mountain caves, at Nepal's great temple to Shiva as the God of All Nature, Pashupatinath, and in the cremation grounds of Nepal and Varanasi (Benares). His teachings, transmissions and direct initiation into the Sacred View have been an incredible blessing to my life and my ability to serve my students.

JPM: One reason was, simply, to be able to respond to many requests from students and others to teach and to offer an accelerated series of Sacred Passages and Awareness Trainings. Another reason was to serve the need for cultural transformation at the deepest level.

In earlier years, my professional background focused on first helping to birth the environmental movement. Then I specialized on ecological studies, uncovering suppressed ecological and economic development issues, helping create national and international environmental policies, Alaskan wilderness protection, saving Earth's rapidly-dwindling tropical forests and on preserving the planet's rapidly vanishing wilderness. After immersing myself in creating these and other major environmental initiatives for many years, I became convinced that political, legal and economic approaches did not go deep enough. These outer initiatives could not alone bring about the penetrating changes in human culture that we need for people to live in true harmony and balance with the Earth. The next great opening of ecological view would have to be an internal one.

Reflecting on the profound internal changes that I, as well as others I had taken into the wilderness, had experienced from nature solos - I knew that this process could help provide human culture with the deep inner communion with both the Earth and Universal Source that would be necessary for living in true harmony and creative integrity with One's Essence and with Nature.

JPM: Reflecting on the profound internal changes that I as well as others have received in the wilderness, starting in the late 1950's and continuing through the 1970's, I took friends on vision quests and wilderness solos once or twice a year. Most of my training to prepare them focused on ways to meditate and cultivate energy in Nature. I also developed a series of practices to refine and purify perception - to allow each sense to transform from an experience of subject/object separation into a direct perceptual realization of Union with that which is being perceived.

In the 1980's, first the Nature Quest, and then the Sacred Passage and Way of Nature Programs became a way to make this experience more widely available. In many ways, I see the Passages as a form of Deep Ecology training and opening: a profound union of inner and outer Nature. Many who have done Sacred Passage have gone on to be of immense help in the healing and protection of the Earth.

Since the 1960's I've been working on creating an inner development process that defines the essential universal spiritual principles and provides carefully selected and refined practices that cultivate these principals. This process combines guided Awareness Training with alone time in wild Nature. I call this "Opening the Sacred View"...This View is now grounded in The Twelve Principles, The Sacred Passage program, the NatureQuest process, and the basic and Advanced Awareness Trainings now offered through the Way of Nature’s spiritual fellowship.

JPM: From a deeply personal view, I received a great gift in 1984, when I was struck by a Thunderbolt. What next unfolded was a classical death experience - somewhat similar to what others have reported, those who have died and been brought back - often through medical intervention.

One instant I was preparing for bed around eleven o'clock, slipping under the covers - the next instant the Universe-shattering roar of a massive thunderbolt cut through my awareness, and my physical being - completely and perfectly shattering all conceptions of reality and my world. In a moment, I found myself hurtling headfirst up through a giant, dark-walled tunnel of immense proportions. Earth and bedroom were totally left behind. At the end of the vast tunnel I dissolved into the Boundless. Many have attempted to describe the Unborn: Pristine Awareness, The Clear Light, The Essence of God and Goddess, The Formless Presence that births all forms - but for me it was an Initiation impossible to describe in words. I simply call it Source.

I was brought back through the dark tunnel, feet first. As my awareness re-integrated in my human body, I discovered my body was no longer under the covers, but on top of the bed in a lotus meditation posture. I have no idea how it got there. Even as I sped back into form down the tunnel, my eyes never left the Clear Light. Coming back into my body, my eyes remain fixed on that Light that I had been perfectly unified with. However, now I found myself looking through the window, gazing deeply into the light of rising Venus, the Morning Star. About six hours of our normal time had passed. It was dawn.

The Gift of that transmission has been the Origin of most of my teachings on formless Source itself.