You have all grown up with some kind of prejudice in your world. But is that real to you?

Years ago when I was in New York, I knew a lady who was a judge. She was black. She said to me, “You have no idea what it’s like to be followed around in a department store because of your race.”

It’s not race that creates discrimination. It’s money.

But actually, I do. It’s not race that creates discrimination. It’s money. I used to have long hair. I looked like a hippy. I used to wear bellbottoms and flip-flops. I would be followed around in stores because I wasn’t dressed well enough. Then I discovered I was being followed and I decided I wanted to change it. Somebody gave me a belt that was worth two thousand dollars. So whenever I wore that belt, nobody followed me around the store. I realized that the only real prejudice in life is money. It’s so bizarre to me that we try to make those things real.

With Access, I don’t have a point of view about religion. Who you choose to worship, who you choose to study, who you choose to believe in is your choice. We all are connected to the oneness, the God source that is all things.

We all grew up in different cultures. But didn’t you notice that what was not working for you was the insanity that people were choosing? With Access, you begin to realize what’s really relevant to you, not what’s relevant from other people’s points of view.

Travel is such a great education. Cultures are created as separations in order to maintain the divisiveness of money.

In the seventies I went on a trip to Europe. I wanted to find out how the people were. I went to Marrakesh. I picked up a couple of hitchhikers – a French woman and her boyfriend. She invited me to a dinner party at a very wealthy man’s house. I was the only English speaker there and it felt really strange to be the odd man out. I wondered how I could be more in the group. The custom in Morocco is that everyone eats with their right hand, not with their left, and certainly not with silverware. I wondered how I was ever going to get any food into my mouth. I watched the host roll the cous cous in a particular way with his right hand and pop it in his mouth. I duplicated that. All of a sudden, I was no longer separate. It’s amazing that you can create a change in somebody if you just duplicate the way they see things.

If we can get the world to a place of allowance with one another, there can be no war. You can’t have war and allowance in the same universe. You can only have judgment and war in the same universe.

What’s it going to take for the world to create from a different place? I don’t see the value of war. Guns are a big business. The gift of war is that we shove massive amounts of money into certain countries. It becomes a major part of how our countries create economic stability from their point of view. History shows that when you have an economic downturn, you get into a war in order to stimulate the economy. What a crazy way to do it. There are other ways.

Having judgment disappear from our universe allows us to create anything. That’s the gift of no judgment. You create for yourself but you also create for others around you. When you don’t choose judgment as a reality, others can’t hold their judgment in existence. Judgment requires alignment and agreement. It requires the other person to have some place to keep that in existence. When you don’t have any, they can’t have it either.

From my point of view, the world should be a place where culture is the joy of the difference between us, and the joy of the possibility that exists between us because we see each other. Access goes beyond the limitations of culture and gives you the space to be you. The culture of consciousness questions everything. It’s so amazing when you run into someone who also has that culture – even if they are not involved with Access.

If you had no point of view about what anybody was, whether you are Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or Mexican – that strange place of having no point of view gives the other person the chance to care about you. Isn’t that wonderful? I went to a lot of churches, cults, and religions before I started Access. One of the things I noticed that was really consistent with all of them is that they were all trying to find a way to control you to believe what they believed.

My sense is that religion is not about setting us free. It’s about controlling us. Pretty much every church, cult, and religion is about – “How do we control the people? How do we get them to give us their money?” I hate to say it, but I get the feeling that the majority of churches are more about the money than they are about the kindness or caring.

I went to Spain in the seventies and I was startled because there was so much poverty at the time. That was when Franco was still in power. These churches would have gates in front of their buildings, with gold and jewel-encrusted statues of saints that they were supposed to worship. But there were people starving in the streets. That just didn’t make sense to me.

Wouldn’t the purpose of religion be to take care of the people? But that’s the way I’ve always been. I’ve always had that strange point of view from the beginning. On that same trip, I went to Morocco. I went to the bazaar in Marrakesh. I watched the snake charmers enthrall the children with what they were able to do. This is something that people should experience. This place where they deal with death as though it is just part of life.

The more there is consciousness in the world, the more we all choose to be conscious. Violent crime cannot continue to exist in the face of consciousness. The contribution you are to a different possibility creates a different reality. It creates your life as easier and everybody else’s as better too. If you really want to change the world, you’ve got to choose to change you.

To hear more… Consciousness Beyond Culture: A Conversation about Race, Religion and Culture, on Youtube