AUTHORS & PHILANTROPISTS, FAITH & SPIRITUALITY, SEASON 2, TV SHOW - INTERVIEWS

Novels that Expand Your Mind (with Chris Katsaropoulous)

July 7, 2015

4 min read

Critically acclaimed author Chris Katsaropoulos has written more than dozen books including Antiphony and Entrevoir. He worked as an editor at several major publishing houses and has published numerous trade books, textbooks and novels. 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.

Season 2 – EP 20

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Click here for full transcript.

Novels that Expand Your Mind

Recently, a friend of mine sent me a book she thought I’d enjoy – Entrevoir by Chris Katsaropoulous.

After reading the first few pages of his book, I called Chris to ask him if he would be on my show Waking Up in America. “Your book reminds me of The Little Prince,” I said immediately. They are two very different books but for me they are both triggers – giving the reader a permission to open up their mind.

“I want to know where his spiritual fiction comes from,” I told my friend before my trip to meet Chris.

Like many amazing spiritual people I’ve met on my travels, there’s nothing on the outside that showcases his expansive creativity. He lives in a suburb of Indianapolis, and the only difference I noticed when we pulled in front of his house was that his front lawn was spotted with bright yellow dandelions – welcomed to grow free, instead of being proclaimed intruders and expelled from the uniform look of the weed-free subdivision.

His wife is also a writer, so their home is filled with quotes and books and comfortable reading chairs. There is an upright piano in the sitting room where Chris and I talked; he is self-taught and music is a hobby that he also often incorporates into his novels. When he played Rachmaninoff’s piano concerto for me, I admired his freedom in doing so, because as a classically trained pianist, I always limited myself to pieces that my teachers deemed appropriate and ‘safe’ for me.

We talked about expanding our minds, and the importance of art in our lives, and his views on the freedom it opens us to:

“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 [consuming.] So anything that gets us outside of those structures… can help to open awareness. And art, whether it’s music or poetry or a novel [can do that].”

LIFE BEFORE – WAKING UP MOMENT

Chris has always been a writer, mostly of novels and poetry.

He was writing a thriller novel when his research led him to Glastonbury, England and the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.

“[Glastonbury] is a sacred place, and on the top of that hill… I had a big awakening experience there… It’s a very sacred place… Something just came through me and I started having out of body experiences and past life experiences and all sorts of multi dimensional experiences, that have gone into making my novels and my poetry since then.”

I asked Chris if he was ever afraid of how people would react to these experiences he is writing about. “No,” he says,”Because it feels totally natural.”

“Everyone is spiritual. Everyone is a spiritual being.

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.”

We are becoming detached from our spirituality. We don’t understand it… and a lot of people fear it… maybe because it feels safer to stay within what’s familiar.

“When we remember the wholeness of everything, and the connection with the spirit and its source, then we go back to the highest state, and 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 truly a powerful spiritual being opens you up to all sorts of possibilities…”

When we open up our mind and let go of fear, we can begin to explore the worlds beyond our own, the thoughts beyond those we are taught to think, the feelings we don’t even recognize because we haven’t allowed ourselves to feel. When we expand our consciousness we begin to experience our lives not from the side-lines, but as active participants.