Joseph: Okay. I was born on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation. I'm census number 379, listed as Earl Rael, Sr. I have a son, Joseph, Jr. I was enrolled June 2nd, 1935. I was enrolled in my mother's tribe.I have an older bother who's enrolled with the Southern Ute Tribe, and two younger brothers who are enrolled in my father's tribe. Apparently in those days Mom and Dad decided the first two would be in her tribe and the second two would be in his tribe. So they ended up getting enrolled at the Picuris (Picker -ees) Pueblo in New Mexico. After Mother passed away I went to live with my father's people there in Picuris Pueblo, and I grew up there in a foster home until I was eighteen. Then I got married on the Souther Ute Reservation to a woman from the Southern Ute Tribe. We have five children: three boys and two girls. They're in their late thirties and forties, and I'm a great-grandfather!...

R: ... congratulations! You talked in the videos and the books about the Picuris Pueblo. Some scenes were of ruins, though. Were those scenes filmed at Picuirs?

J: That was done here in Bernalillo. We filmed that to show the significance of what the wall is in metaphor. As far as the chamber and the other parts, yes, it was filmed at Picuris.

R: So the pueblo is still alive and thriving?

J: Yeah!

R: I was concerned about that. I am real curious about your grandfather. Was his a big influence on your life?

J: Yes, it was. He was kind of my hero. He had these capacities, that I never quite was able to figure out what he was doing or what he was up to! He was kind of like a magician, you know. He was great, 'cause he could do stuff with energy ... or maybe I was just more suggestible to what he was doing! But, these are just my personal experiences with him, so I tell it like I saw it. Because I wanted to explain how perceptual reality is pretty much in the eyes of the beholder, you know. What we see is what we get, or what we perceive is what we cultivate, and what we cultivate is what we harvest.

R: I think a lot of it is based on what our beliefs are beforehand.

J: That's right! And then what we believe is what we get.

R: Is he still alive?

J: He died in the late 40s.

R: So you had him through your formative years ...

J: I was about 12 or 13 when he died. Mother passed away about that time also. Then I went to live in a foster home. They weren't blood-related to us. His name was Where Eagles Perch. And she was Apache from Jicarilla, that married a Picuris man. They were already in their later years and I was their only son. Prior to that time, I spent a lot of time in the mountains. And, they had a ranch up in the mountains, so I spent a lot of time alone. Since I was the only child, I spent a lot of time, when I wasn't out working in the fields, by myself, because the ranch was up in the mountains away from the village. I used to do that in the summers. In the wintertime we would come back down into the village. We would be at Picuris Pueblo.

R: How did your formal education evolve?

J: I went to the day school at Picuris Pueblo. In the evenings we would do religious instructions with the elders. Early on, we were taught that much of the religion had gone underground, so we weren't allowed to explain it. Even today, they caution not to reveal some of the ceremonies, so I don't.
Then, I went to the Santa Fe Indian School in the late forties. I went to the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades there where I first started learning how to draw under the instruction of Jose Ray Toledo, who died a couple of years ago. I got to meet people like Tahoma, one of the famous artists from Oklahoma, and Gerald Nailer, a Navajo artist. These were people who influenced me in the beginning with my art and the way I was to formulate the way I was going to think.

R: But you did get a masters in political science ...

J: In 1954 I went to the College of St. Joseph in Albuquerque. I went a semester and dropped out. I got marries, then in 1968 I started back part time, then went full time. I got a B.A. in political science in 1974. In 1975 I went to the University of Wisconsin and in the Spring of 1976, I got my masters in political science.

R: That's quite a jump, though, from your artwork into political science.

J: Yeah! I was really in search of the sacredness of life. I wanted to find out how Western man had evolved the idea of God. I knew that God was founded in the principals of different languages as they were spoken or as different beliefs came into the languages. I went in search of hoping to find how the Western mind was; formulating the perception of Divine presence. I didn't find it there.

R: Where did that lead you? Especially since you have such an incredible understanding of language and the sounds and roots of language.

J: Well, I went back to the teaching of my fathers people and the Tiwa (Tee-wah) language. I began to look at that more seriously after I got out of college. I helped one of the governors here in New Mexico get elected to office, because I wanted to use my political science training, you know! You know how you do when you get out of college and you want to get things done! But, that didn't go anywhere, so I gave that up. I started looking at how the sound of Tiwa, even though I had investigated it as a kid, but now as an adult I began to see how sound was related to vibration. And vibration was related to language and language was related to how ideas were put together and perceptually acknowledged, you see.

R: So, much of it was your own study, but I get a sense there was a lot of your own intuitive understanding, as well.

J: That's right. It was my intuitive study mostly. So, anything you see in the tapes and the books, are my interpretation of what I thought, I thought I thought was what I thought, I thought, was happening in language. And out of that, I began to get an understanding of resonances and vibration from the mystical aspects, more then from the intellectual side.

R: I was really intrigued when you said the Tiwa language is metaphoric. In the books, you would give a comparative translation (to English). For instance: "Bring me the dog." In the Tiwa, it would be: "To go get and bring to me watchfulness." Is that how it would be spoken literally in Tiwa, or is that your translation directly into a metaphoric expression for the reader's benefit?

J: That's literal Tiwa! You see, a dog is not really a dog. Dogs are considered for use in medicine as caretaker, at one level. Every single form has multiple vibrations. For instance, off the top of my head, dog would be "the action of doing," "of being." It's also "the sense of child-like innocence," and dog is also "greatness." Put all those together and you have caretaker. You have, "creating an action out of child-like innocence that leads toward greatness." Those three vibrations to my interpretation have the vibration of being taken care of by greatness.

R: That's so foreign to English. I can see how that would give you a totally different outlook, or understanding, of what was being spoken.

J: I had a hard time in grade school, high school, and college because I was used to translating literally in Tiwa, my first language, and it wasn't working. Doing papers in college was a real problem. I took extra writing classes on how to produce grade-A papers. Once I figured it out, I got on the Dean's List.
I had to get on the Dean's List, otherwise I couldn't get into graduate school. The Department Chairman at the University of Wisconsin said to me "You can't get in here with these kinds of grades!" I think I was a junior at UNM then. I came back and took writing courses, then I produced straight "A" papers...

R: ...while learning a whole new concept of language...

J: I had to learn a whole new way of thinking! Later on, I realized that was actually a gift. I saw that there was a number of different ways that one could receive reality, and yet you thought that you were seeing the same thing the next person was. In fact, you were not, because you were on two different tracks viewing the same things and saying the same words, but meaning something totally different.

R: The idea, then, of language as metaphor applies, regardless of what language it is.

J: Exactly! It doesn't just apply to Tiwa, it applies to English, it applies to all the other languages. Language is multiple meaningness. Every language has its own "other meaning," not just what the word means that you're trying to use at that particular moment in time.

R: I suspect English is a bit more difficult to figure out metaphorically.

J: Yes, it is! I think different languages have a particular goal, or objective, behind them and so what they want to do is make a particular direction clear. So, the language shows it by the words that are used. Each language, I think, in the beginning, tries to make a particular kind of discovery of perceptual reality from its own basis. If you really look at the different languages that are spoken, it's really an opportunity for us to look at life in different ways, and it's totally amazing.

R: Then we see how the language is shaped by political, economic, or religious interests to serve that "power."

J: Yes!

R: I'd like to expand a bit more on your artwork before we move ahead to other areas. I am presuming that was your first career.

J: Yeah, that's right. That was the first one.

R: Was your art for the sake of the art itself, or were you already exploring these other concepts through it?

J: What I found when I started doing the artwork-as soon as I got the pencil and paper, or as soon as I started to paint-I wanted to bring out the energy of the particular piece. Not only the picture itself, but the energy corning from that picture as if it was speaking to me from an energy level, as well as a pictorial level. I tried to combine those two so my heart would show these faces corning out of the form that I'm trying to depict as a way of expressing that energy that is seeking to find its relationship to God, or to greatness.

R: I've always liked the idea of work as worship. So, I was really intrigued when you said that early on you resisted working! What happened to change your mind and bring you into the awareness of work as worship?

J: I saw the relationship in Tiwa. T'ala means to work. Ah means to do. I found that doing something towards the materialization of some goal, or task, required some ingenuity, or what I call inspiration. I finally put the three together, that life could be breath, matter, and movement. If you could put yourself in the paradigm where you could become inspired towards, say, digging a ditch or digging a post hole-which is really drudgery if you look at it the other way-but, become inspired that there was a physical energy that would enter through me and would assist me digging the hole so that digging holes, or sweeping the floor, or mopping the flooring mundane kinds of work -became a happy experience. I began to understand that this energy was spiritual and that that spiritual energy was, in fact, the very energy when, during those times when I would set down to draw, was the same energy that would inspire me to create a masterpiece, or something that would really make sense.

R: I like the word inspiration, too. When you're inspired, it's not work, it's fun!

J: Yeah! It's fun, and it's worship! See, because I explain that worship occurs in that moment, or instantaneeity when the creative energy descends into your being and fuses you with teachability, and those two resonances, or vibrations, create in you a radiance to look for those forms, ideas, or whatever, and bring them into full bloom in that instant so that I can formulate in my thinking awareness in ways that I can attach them to some greatness that I can then state in a work of art, or drawing, or even just feeling.

R: Next thing you know, a whole day has passed and you're completely disassociated with "real-world" time.

J: Exactly right! You got it right on the nail!

R: Another thing you said in Being and Vibration: "We have forgotten how to listen to what our efforts have been saying." What are ways we can get back in touch with that?

J: Working is another way of listening because listening requires movement: mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual movement-energy. When we are working physically , like doing a task, some movement is required. Listening and physically working have one thing in common: there's movement. In order to be creative, you have to be inspired in order to materialize that movement into something that is sacred or that is very appreciated or enjoyed ...

R: Useful...

J: Useful! Yes. In a reductionistic society, or world view, we think in terms of how to get it done as soon as possible, or try to get something for as little as you can: not have to pay a lot. This other tries to teach that every single moment is an opportunity for achieving the highest potential or the highest excellence, and that if you live that way, after a while your life becomes a stream of pure joy because you begin to see that life is a number of other forms that are waiting to be acknowledged. So, you keep yourself always in a state, or near-state, of inspiration.

R: I call that being in the flow ...

J: You"re really in the flow, and life gets really good!

R: You also said "Effort in the toil of our daily work is the food the planet Earth eats for its survival." I have a difficult time with that, for one reason: how do you reconcile that idea with what we have collectively done to the environment?

J: I'm trying to explain that effort is when we apply ourself mentally, emotional, and spiritually from a place of inspiration; inspiration doesn't let you invent things that are contradictory to the environment. Therefore, when you are inspired mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, that automatically places you. I follow the teaching that technically, we don't exist. Each moment we have an opportunity to exist, and if we have that opportunity to exist, then we should operate from becoming inspired so that we are mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually in fine atunement. And, if we're in fine atunement, we're going to create things that are productive to life, not take away from it.

R: Maybe that's where we've gotten out of balance, or off our path, when we see the results of what we've created is destructive to the Earth Mother.

J: Yes! What I'm saying is that when we're in fine atunement, life places us in balance again. The key is to be in a state of reconciliation all of the time. Where you are constantly reconciling your position in terms of where you are in life, so you keep yourself in balance with the right kind of work. Not create things just for the sake of creating them.

R: Or for selfish reasons.

J: Yeah. I talk in my books about how we can, through sound, get in touch with the AH, EEH, EE, 0, UH. (For instance), the AH sound at any time during the day, will make us purists. We can slide from purism, and being a purist, to the other sound, EEH, which means placement.
What I do is check myself by sounding those sounds within myself to find out if I'm out of balance in anyone of those areas. I just repeat them to myself and I know if I'm out in left field in some area in my life at that particular moment in time, you see.

R: So, do you get a reaction from your body?

J : Yeah. A reaction from my body will tell me. You see, your body knows everything. At least mine does, anyway. It tells me when I'm going off on a tangent. And I tend to do that. I don't know if you know anything about Geminis, but they tend to fly off more often then they ought to (both laughing)

R: You then draw a conclusion that we die to become memory to give life to those who will become astute listeners. How do you define "listener?" Is it more then just listening with our ears?

J: Yes. It's listening with the whole body. What I say is the skin on our body is the extension of the ear drum. So that when you hear a sound, your ear picks up the sound vibration of it, but your body pick up the other sound. It then formulates it into an impulse that determines how you're going to see that form that you just heard. If you're coming from a metaphoric mind, from the Tiwa, for instance, then that's how you're going top perceive, you see?

R: Yes. It has been determined through studies that no more than 30% of our verbal communication is accomplished through the spoken word.

J: The physical body of the human being, in metaphor, is all of the ancient traditions put together to carry life through a human form. So, we're talking here also of genetic memory.

R: Is that how the moment-to-moment reconstruction of our physical presence evolves, then? We continually incorporate that new information on all levels.

J: That's right! It's also bringing in everything we've known in the past.

R: Continuing with this, then, in your videos, you talk of how the Native Americans were "of the circle" and how the Europeans were "of the grid." Then you said, in so many words, that they were to come together for a purpose. First, what is the significance of each form, metaphorically. Then, could you comment on what you see the purpose is, or the end result of such a merging?

J: I saw in a vision a spark of light, which was in the center. Then it began to go out. As it went out, it had lines ... that's like Western man. When it got to the periphery, the light went to the north, south, east, west and it started to spread and expand. This took place in an instant of time. When it got as far as it could go, I saw it create a circle. The Indians were the circle, OK? In metaphor. I'm talking metaphor, now. In the next instant, the light began to disappear and come back to the center.
When the light started as a pinpoint of light, it had both qualities: the circle and the grid. And then, as it went out, it showed us the grid, and when it finally extended itself out, it became the circle. Now, the circle and the grid are coming back together, then they end up as a point of light, then disappear. I'm saying that we're at that moment in history where the circle and the grid have come together metaphorically. Therefore, we're going to see it occurring physically.

R: Can you give some ideas of how, or what?

J: We're in a different world now socially, economically, and politically. It's going to bring it together in the new generations that are coming. The kids, you know. They're going to bring it all together.

I mean, there weren't people like you back in the forties when I was growing up. Who talk like you do and think like you do. I'm in my 60s now, and I see a lot of changes that took place in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and into the 90s. I think there's a different person being born, that we're some how contributing to, that's bringing this whole thing together. It's going to happen whether we give it any conscious thought, or not. There seems to be like an "overlay." There's a lot around the Earth that is kind of recording all this stuff and kind of directing, at some level, a better, more unified action for future generations. In other words, we're going to evolve to something better than what we've been in the past.

R: The idea of Peter Russell's Global Brain keeps coming to mind.

J: Yeah! Yeah! Something like that!

R: This seems like a natural spot to ask you about the Peace Chambers. Tell us something about that, the vision you had, what work is being done through them.

J: There's about thirty or forty. I don't know how many there are by now. I was sitting at the foot of my bed one day. My children were already grown, more or less. I wanted to contribute something to the planet. I remember that year I was Sun Dancing on the Southern Ute Reservation. I remember I made that request. Later, I thought about it. You know the old saying, "you better be careful what you ask for, you might get it?" (both laughing) So, I went to dance that year and I had this vision. I saw this being. And there was music coming out of it. Then I saw chambers and people singing for world peace. The vision ended, and I thought no more of it. It wasn't uncommon for me to have visions during the dances.
About a month later, I was taken out of body up into the upper plains over here in Bernalillo, where I live. I met a Council of Elders there, in the upper plains. Actually, I was in a sweat lodge here at the house, when I was taken out of body. I probably was gone no more than maybe three or four seconds, but it felt like longer than that...

R: Oh, yeah ... "no-time"

J: Yeah! I met these Elders and they said "Why haven't you built these Peace Chambers?" And I said, "I can't find a place to build it." Which, in fact, I had been looking. I had been to Virginia Beach and California and some other places, kind of looking and talking about the vision I had. But, no takers.
The next instance after they had finished talking to me, they showed me exactly where to put the chamber. It was in my garden plot, here at the house! So, the next day I started building it. What's interesting, is that year, when we finished it, I think we started in October, and on New Year's Eve we dedicated it, the beginning of 1984. I remember that after that talking to my partner saying something was not done yet.
Next thing I knew, I was taken down into the lower world and I saw the Elders again. They put me through initiation and tested me to see if I was a true Peace Maker. I didn't know it was a test, and they never tell you, you either pass it or don't pass it. In this case, they tested to see if I had the qualities of a person who could come from a place of peace. There were a number of incidences where I was challenged into a war situation, and I refused to do so. As a result, at the end of that journey, which maybe took ten or fifteen seconds, but seemed like forever, I passed the test.
Then they showed themselves and said, "Now, you're ready to carry the Peace Chamber idea." I was told pretty much straightforward that my job wasn't to talk up the sound chambers, or Peace Chambers: that was their job. My job was to just bring it into concrete form.
Like in Europe, I sell my chants (tapes) and my drawings and some of my students do dances over there and they collect money that way. That's how they're building them.

R: Are there any limits? In other words, do they require special placement, for instance. Or, if someone wanted to do one, is that all that's necessary?

J: Yeah! If people want to do one, that's all that's necessary. I checked on whether we need to put them in strategic energy places. The answer came that everywhere is holy. Those people who are going to build them had already been designated and that they would come forth.

R: Is this an example of the merging of the Circle with the Grid?

J: Yes! Yes. It has to do with the merging of the Circle with the Grid. When I talk about energy, world peace, I'm not necessarily talking about human people. I'm talking about people, not always human people. I'm talking about vibration and people. So, the different people of the Earth come to a resonating vibration that seeks its own harmony. We're looking here at plants, animals, rivers, oceans, human people. We're also looking at moments as part of the whole thing evolving to a balance of fine resonance, you see.

R: Harmony.

J: Harmony! Yeah! You see, I've heard this harmony in my head at certain times. One time, I was in New York and other times when out in the country. And I've heard this harmony, which is coming right from the material world, but the human ear doesn't get it unless certain other conditions are met. I'm not sure what those are, yet. But, at that point you can hear everything singing ... as some people have said, singing to God.

R: What are your plans for the future?

J: Well, I have a couple of books coming out. I just finished filming a series on what I think life is. I don't really have any real goal other than to just keep writing and doing my art. I really enjoy doing that. I draw because I love it. And I love doing carpentry. People joke around here because every year they find me building something. I'm just having a good time!

R: There you go! (both laughing) That's what it's all about, I think. Is there anything else you'd like to leave with us?

J: Id just like to tell people that the number one thing to do is find something in your life that you can really get excited about. Then just do it. Out of that experience you'll get so much joy, that eventually you'll want to find other things that you'll really enjoy doing in life. Then, when you least expect it, you'll fall in love with life! Once you fall in love with life, then Life's got you, you see!