Season 2 – Episode 20. Released on July 07, 2015.
Novels that Expand Your Mind (with Chris Katsaropoulous)
INTRO
Today, I am in Indianapolis with critically acclaimed author Chris Katsaropoulos. Through his lyrical prose and poetry, Chris offers spiritual experiences and personal glimpses into the mystical life of a human soul, as an inspiration to the readers to expand their minds.
BUMPER
I am Tajci.
At 19 I was a superstar and I was lost inside. I left it all behind, switched continents and started all over. Years later I found myself lost again. This time in the American dream.
This is a story about awakening. About living the life you were created for. About going inward and discovering the joyous and purposeful person you and I are both meant to be.
This is “Waking Up In America.”
TAJCI
Thank you so much Chris for welcoming us into your home.
CHRIS
You’re welcome…
TAJCI
and being on Waking Up in America!
CHRIS
Thank you!
TAJCI
Tell our viewers what do you do? And what do you write. And I’ll tell you why, because the world likes to put us in boxes. And even when we don’t fit into a particular box, we always have to check one in order to fit.
CHRIS
Yea, who are you? What I do is write fiction and poetry that has a spiritual, metaphysical aspect to it and all of my books have some sort of, I guess you might say, higher meaning to them, to the books. So, there is always an element of story and character and things happen in the books but there is also layers of meaning that come through. And what I like to do in my books is to have the reader bring to the book what their experiences are. And take away the meanings from the book that they gather from the books. So, leaving it open for interpretation, open for someone to decide what this means to them and that’s how I like to write my books.
TAJCI
Right! So, when I go to the library, your books would be classified under..
CHRIS
They are literary fiction. Adult literary fiction and they have sometimes… they have subcategory of spiritual, or metaphysical. Because they always have that theme.
TAJCI
Yes. Because when you say a ‘novelist’ there is a whole bunch of novelists out there that I wouldn’t compare yours to.
CHRIS
Well, thank you. I mean, yea it’s… I try to make the language beautiful in the book, so they are just, I mean even if you don’t have a spiritual bent or interest, you’d enjoy reading it from just the story and the language itself.
TAJCI
So you’ve always been a writer?
CHRIS
Yes. I’ve always have written, since very young. There is a story when I was a very small kid, I was three or four, I was writing things out. I didn’t know what I was writing, but just the act of writing on the piece of paper with a pencil or a pen was just… I liked it and, so
I’ve always been interested in writing. I’ve always written poetry and stories and now, recently novels.
TAJCI
When was the first time that you can remember that you wrote a poem? How old were you?
CHRIS
Poem… Well, probably I would say 12, 13 years old. Young teenager.
TAJCI
Yes, interesting! I have three boys and my two oldest ones love poetry.
CHRIS
Really?
TAJCI
Yes. And I’ve noticed how kids are, how they are as boys, able to express themselves on a lot deeper levels through poetry. I have to say, I think… they’ve always had really good teachers, who were really, who were even when they were homeschooling they were mentored by English language teachers.
CHRIS
So they were exposed to all of that.
TAJCI
Yes. And I think, and I’ll bring this up now already, the music has something to do with that.
CHRIS
Yes.
TAJCI
And I ask that because you play piano.
CHRIS
Yes! I do. A bit.
TAJCI
You say a bit…
CHRIS
I enjoy it quite a bit, so it’s one of my relaxation hobbies. I play every day and just play a little bit and… yea… but music is a big influence.
It’s in all of my books, and it relates to the poetry as you know because, the poetry is lyrical, it has a flow, it has a rhythm to it, it has meter, it has all those musical elements and that’s where, I think what you are talking about is, you can reach places of emotion and feeling with poetry in the same way that you can with music, that you can’t necessarily go to with a non-fiction book, or even straight prose in a novel.
And in Entrevoir, my new book and in all of my books, there are sections where there are more straight prose, dialogue and description. But when I talk about higher states of consciousness or different states of spiritual awareness, the language changes and it becomes really more like poetry, even within the novel. So I think that’s something that, you know is maybe fairly somewhat unique in my books.
TAJCI
And one of the first connections that I made with your books, when I read, was the connection with the “Little Prince”. And I’m not sure, it’s not the way it’s written, obviously, little bit the poetry… But I think a lot of it is symbolism, but I think more of it is, like you said, bringing the reader in and letting me go through it and interpret it the way my soul interprets it.
CHRIS
Yea.
TAJCI
Hmmm more than my mind.
CHRIS
Yes. Absolutely and… So…
that’s what the books are about, is actually getting into the head and the soul of the characters and then experiencing what they are going through because that, in that way it’s exposing readers to these other states of being, these other awarenesses. It’s expanding consciences.
TAJCI
In this show, I am… I started this series to explore that awakening. That, of which, it seems like you are writing about. This shift. And I am interested in how, why it happens in people’s lives, how it happens, but more why it happens, and then, you know, how it changes their lives. What happens afterwards. And then of course, I’m interested in a possibility of, can we trigger that change, rather than wait for someone’s life time to go by, or before, a lot of times in our lives, the triggers are tragedies. And I am interested to see can we… and as an artist I would like to hope and believe, and I do that music and artists are triggers in the world to awaken people.
CHRIS
Absolutely! Anything that’s expanding your awareness, your consciousness is I think the doorway, the opening that you are talking about, that, you know…
I think there is a lot of programming in our day to day lives. We have certain schedules, certain work obligations, certain programming that comes to us from television, or whatever media that we are doing. So anything that gets us outside of those structures, I think, can help to open awareness and art, whether it’s music or poetry or a novel [can do that].
And that’s why, I’ve kind of chosen, I was lead to write these novels as I’ve had these kind of experiences and it’s a way of just sharing them. And I think that exposure to those kinds of experiences helps open our awareness.
Everyone is spiritual. Everyone is a spiritual being.
It’s just how open are you to those experiences, how aware are you of those expanded states of consciousness. That’s the key, I think. It’s just opening up and allowing it, allowing yourself to have those experiences.
TAJCI
So for someone that, someone that says, you know, I’m just really not spiritual, or someone that doesn’t even know how would they recognize the spirituality, okay? What… and then you say ‘expand your awareness’… what does that mean? What does that look like? What does that, and probably, that would be the question before we can say what does that feel like, because we are all very detached from knowing how we feel.
CHRIS
Yea. Well, and I think that’s a product of our… Our modern world is very results oriented, very time oriented, very structured and those things are very left brain kinds of things. And so we shut off the right brain, the holistic, the creative in a lot of senses to function in the world that we have. So if..
TAJCI
And we even take it away from the schools…
CHRIS
Yes, schools are… that’s part of the process is to educate someone, to train them to think a certain way and so what it does is, it shuts down the things that happen in dreams. The things, the intuitions that we have, the feelings that we have, those are the access points to the spiritual awareness you know. If someone has a dream when they foresee something or they, experience something way out of the norm, you know, they experience flying in a dream well, if they speak about it with someone else they may be told, “Well, that was just a dream, that’s not real.” In my view the thing that happen in dreams just as real, if not more real, than us sitting here, it’s just a different state of reality, and when you start to look at things that way, then you start to open up to all sorts of experiences that can happen, in the dream state, or in meditative states, when you start to practice some form of meditation…
TAJCI
Yes, and so now I’m going to connect that with one of your books Antiphony, where you actually, you know, take a lot of this scientific… Bring some science into it, and for me, I grew up in Atheism, and science was everything. I drank and ate and just absorbed science and philosophy and music. Ok, so those three together, work great together… What I didn’t have at all was the spiritual connection; but these three together indicated the existence of something else…
CHRIS
Something beyond, yes…
TAJCI
That activated this desire in my soul in my soul, and then when I was able, the time came on my path, I went and searched… We could do three episodes with Chris, so I will just encourage the viewers to read your book… All of your books, anyway, but in particular the Antiphony, you combine all of this…
CHRIS
Yeah, I mean, the Antiphony is about string theory, physics, and consciences… It’s about this string physicist, who has these visions, that he’s not sure what they are about. Is he seeing a higher reality? Is he seeing the ultimate nature of the universe, or is he going crazy? Many people would say he’s going crazy, so he has all of these doubts in his mind, and he’s bringing consciences into the actual physics, which is…
And he says in a conference, what if God is the missing element to our equations?
Well that’s really a no-no, you know that forbidden ground, so he becomes a heretic, so to speak, it’s flipped on his head, you know, religion has heretics, but science also has heretics, because if you don’t fit inside the framework of the theory, and the accepted research areas, well then you’re outside, and you lose your job, and you lose your status, and what it does is, because he’s outside of that box by the end of the book, it opened him up to all these other awarenesses that he wouldn’t have had otherwise… if he stayed on the straight and narrow, you know, accepted path…
He sees things in a totally different light, he experiences past lives, future lives other dimensions other planets, there’s more.
What essentially happens is he understands that there’s more than just a day-to-day world going to work and, you know, going to the shopping mall, or whatever we do; all those things are important, but there’s more.
That’s just the awareness though, that we’re talking about…
TAJCI
People want to know “Why? Why would I care… I’m happy not knowing… Ignorance is Bliss.”…
CHRIS
It is safe to be inside of a certain structure because it’s comfortable, and it’s what’s known… When you open up to these other things you’ll open up your awareness, and your consciences, all sorts of things can happen… It’s just the beauty of it in my view, it’s amazing…
TAJCI
For example you can experience pain, and that’s a scary thought for a lot of people, and could it be that it’s a choice, or free will? To awaken or not? To live in the presence, receive the graces or not?…
CHRIS
Absolutely, because I think this is what, I mean, we’re getting metaphysical here, but this is what the fall in the Bible is just the forgetting your true nature, your true connection with the highest source, and spirit… that’s what the fall is… that’s the original, what we call sin, but that’s what… it’s duality…
TAJCI
Disconnect…
CHRIS
Disconnection, separateness, duality, all of those things.
When we remember the wholeness of everything, and the connection with the spirit and it’s source, then we go back to the highest state, and our true, this is everyone’s true state as a spiritual being, but it’s scary to go back and realize, because people like their own limitations, to know that you’re a truly, a powerful spiritual being opens you up all sorts of possibilities…
TAJCI
And limitations also limit you from experiencing the pain, and, like you said, going back to me means you have to go back through a lot of these walls, wounds, and that’s what we talk about, and many of our guests will say that that once they had the awakening, the shift in their lives not only can they receive this grace and love and light, and experience this joy, but they have to face the dark corners, and a lot of this is a part of the gift, a part of being open, I always say if you block the fear and the pain you’re blocking everything else!…
CHRIS
Yeah, if you shut off one thing, you’re shutting off everything…
TAJCI
So what about Chris… you’re also an editor…
CHRIS
Yes…
TAJCI
And you write textbooks…
CHRIS
Yes, I’ve written textbooks, trade books, and also some publications…
TAJCI
Which tells me it’s dry material…
CHRIS
Yes, it’s a little dryer than my books, yes…
TAJCI
So when did you have a shift?…
CHRIS
I would say about ten years ago was the biggest opening up… Actually I went to Glastonbury tour in England and Aya Sophia in Istanbul. I was actually researching a book that I was writing, it was a thriller novel at that time, but it had, even then it had those elements to it, but it was more of a standard like thriller genre book.
But when I went to Glastonbury tour I started to, after… I had a big awakening experience there, I don’t know if, it’s a very sacred place.
TAJCI
Yea.
CHRIS
It’s associated with King Arthur, Knights of the Round Table, all sorts of things. Christ, Joseph of Arimathea supposedly went there, the Holy Grail, but anyway, it’s a pilgrimage spot, it’s a sacred place, and on that top of that hill, something just came through me and I started having out of body experiences and past life experiences and all sorts of multi dimensional experiences, I’ll say that have gone into making my novels and my poetry since then.
TAJCI
Were you ever afraid, if you start publicly talking…
CHRIS
No. Because it feels totally natural. I mean there are people… Some people will say, ‘oh that doesn’t make sense, that’s crazy.’ Or I’ve told people about having out of body experiences and they’ll say, ‘are you okay? Do you, I mean, maybe you should see a doctor.’ Because it’s not in their experience. So it’s new and it’s different. So they are relating it to, you are having a physical problem, if you’re not inside your body. That’s… ‘something must be wrong! Maybe you’re sick’. Being up out there by the ceiling when you’re sitting here is not normal. So…
If I wake up in the middle of the night, I know that it’s time to write, if it’s 3 am and I am awake, than that means whatever’s coming up through the subconscious, is coming through and it’s time to write it. I plan things during the day, because I’m planning the themes of the book, or how it’s gonna flow, how it’s gonna end, but the actual writing happens in the middle of the night. It’s kind of a dream state, to be… and it’s very quiet and peaceful then too.
TAJCI
That’s part of the creative process, it’s… and I always like to encourage my viewers like you do with your books to engage them… any time you have this creative urge, no matter what time it is, really and no matter what it is, just go and do it… If it’s to bake something or to plant something that will grow, anything that you can… doodle, anything, we think of creativity only as artists, but thoughts…
CHRIS
It’s an expression.
TAJCI
Yes. And like you said, we really, as a culture need to engage more, not just complain.
CHRIS
Well I think… so there’s a friend of ours who is a musician and sometimes
we’ve talked about this idea that you’re either a creator or a consumer. And in our society, most people are consumers, so, which is fine, you know… I listen to music, watch television, go to movies, but if that’s all you’re doing, you’re just being fed, you’re not feeding anything back out. As a creator you’re bringing something to the world.
TAJCI
Yea. It’s, I think, create and react have the same letters
CHRIS
Yes
TAJCI
just different order
CHRIS
Just flipped.
TAJCI
You’re gonna play a piece for us?
CHRIS
Yes.
TAJCI
Thank you so much, thank you! I… it’s just a blessing that my friend Kendall introduced me to you and your writing and again… get your reading glasses on, nice comfortable chair, a mug of tea and get to reading. Thank you so much Chris!
CHRIS
Thank you!
(piano music)
TAJCI
I just love to be able to bring you these amazing guests and their stories to help you to live the life you are created for. And we have more for you at WakingUpInAmerica.net and you can always find us on social media, Facebook, Twitter and really engage with us, tell us how are you are doing on your path. Thank you so much and see you next week!
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