Jeff, I called you, Jeff, Yes, absolutely, mm hm golf is that they anything in golf that doesn't change? Anything that changes the best in playing? Does this man a one time winner on the PGA Tour? The point Alan is he didn't go Hollywood. You need a fourth before we get to the episode, we should tip our caps to echo our corporate sponsors here and of course Lydia co the New World Number one is a long time Echo ambassador. Michael, do do you know my affection for Lydia and I share it? Just a charming person and an outstanding golfer. You've done her far better than I. What can you tell us about her? Well? I still have her hat from the Olympics in Rio is his gorgeous New Zealand hat, and asked for I could keep it. She said yes. But one time I was talking to her, I said, where does your power come from? She says, it's from the ground. You know. It's like a really old school. And she has beautiful footwork. And I always watch her swing the club and she's like she's dancing. And as I'm as I'm observing this, I always noticed her her Echo Biome shoes like they just seem to give her superpowers. Have you have observed anything along those lines. Well, you know what the great teachers say. There's only one thing that connects you to the ground in this game, and that's your They don't say your echo shoes, but in this case, it is her echo shoes. So that's pretty cool. The secret to Lydia COO's success along with many other talents. But she's wearing the right footwears all right. Back to ned A fourth, Hello and welcome back to NITA four, a podcast for Michael Bamberger, Jeff Ogilvie and myself invite a surprise guest on two of the people. Don't know who's on the line. I happen to do so. Um A little hint to you boys. He's a He's known as a golf writer, but he's only written one golf book, plus it's sequel. Um. He is a astronaut of the inner cell. To use a felicitous phrase from one of his one of his that he typed. Um. He found in a place called the Lyn Institute on the cliffs of Big Sir, which was really the first gathering spot for searchers and wanderers and seekers who wanted to explore the mind body connection. It's still thriving and after launching the helping to launch anyway, the the counterculture of the nineteen sixties and all these years later, Estlin is still a draw from all over the world. So um, any guesses who are our guest might be Oh, here's another important detail. We come from the same hometown, Salinas, California, and it's not John Steinbeg. So there's not too many type as we've come out of there. Michael was he was he delivered by John Steinbeck's physician father or grandfather. You're you're getting warmer. His father delivered John Steinbeg. Let me rephrase his father or grandfather? Was his father delivered John Seinbeck? I think possibly the grandfather, but you would know better than I. Well, well we can clear that up. Okay, I think we know. Did John Updyke say of this writer to be named he took the lid off the game or something to that effect. Yes, I think it's now obvious that our guest is one Michael Murphy, author of Golf in the Kingdom. Mr Murphy, there you are. I remember you very well. And Michael Boberger, Oh my god, it's a dangerous group here. Um, what a what a pleasure the pledges Ahman, So this is the fiftieth anniversary of Golf in the Kingdom in this slender little volume that that you typed up your first ever golf book, and um, it's in dirt all all this time. Can you believe that it's being Michael? Well, you know it's a miracle, you know, right having written it when I was five years old, you know it's it's lasted so long. Anyway, it goes on and on and sending very strange messages. My way is Golf in the Kingdom is beloved in Australia as it is here in the United States. I think so. I mean it's a universal book, right, I mean you have to have played a lot of golf, I think, to really fall in love with it, because I think golf is such a confusing game and it challenges everything in your brain, and everything you try to do makes it worse. And this sort of helps to get you there, you know, it helps to sort of show you why you're wrong, but you can't really grasp it, Like you can see it, but you can't grasp it. In the book. Every time you read it. It's sort of takes you where you want to go, but you can't get there. It's a magic book. I think you have to have played a lot of golf though, and I think it really helps to have played in Scotland. Jeff, I called you, Jeff, Yes, absolutely, well, it's you know, it's had quite a readership outside the golf world, and that's what's been a a big surprise for for me through the years that um, people accuse me of a lot of getting them to play golf, you know, and you know, I said, are you are you happy about that? Some of them say, oh, very happy and others say not so happy. But it's uh, it kind of it's struck a nerve, you know, with these kinds of and well when it was published, um outside the box experiences and that's I think it's that's been the it's lifeline UM into this last thing leadership. So uh, it's it was. It's a tremendous surprise to me. I mean, the range of experiences people have wanted to share with me, and certainly on golf courses, you know, people who have had these um feel of sympathy with the experiences in it. Michael you you're write in the book of the the Peak Experience, Hogan at the height of his powers. We've talked about Tiger in two thousand. Uh, Jeff Ogilby a wing for another Peak Experience. Was the writing of that book A peak Experience? Did you write it in a sort of fever dream. I've never had a chance to ask you that before. Well, it was, you know, it's not only the first book I wrote, but the first book I tried to write. And uh it uh, it just it came and it was actually uh a great folks at Viking Press. You know, it was back two, so it was not really edited. Um, so it came out and it's um. You know, I've written another seven books, but none of them came like this one. Um. You know, so um um relatively easily. But I've had the idea to write it ten years earlier, and then instead I started as an institute and you know, survive that, and then I sat down to write this thing. So I could argue that I was kind of you know, just stating. I mean, it was incubating it and it all just came out the way it did, and it struck a nerve and it's had this unusual publishing history, you know where Oh boy, anyway, that's a story into itself. So I would say it was in a state um of self discovery and um um, you know, since Jeff, you've joined this circle here, I will take the liberty to you know, be very frank about some of these um experiences that the book is attracted to me and triggered from the writing of synchronicities and coincidences and memories and this could happen. Uh, you know when you're writing, you guys know it. Uh um that certain um acts just channel stuff. It's just amazing. And so a lot of it was remembering my remembering you know. It was kind of a uh uh things that I knew, uh playing when I was in you know, I didn't start playing until I was fourteen, so those experiences in high school and stuff came back and um. So, yes, I was in a state when I wrote it. I would say, I was, Jeff, that sounds a little bit like being in the zone as a golfer, you know, like, can you relate to some of the things he's saying You're thinking, but you're not thinking. It just sort of comes back to you. Well, yeah, I mean, it's absolutely I always read it as an instruction book. I mean, it's such a beautiful story, but I always read it as an instruction book, UM, because it doesn't take if you take a deep dive into golf, it doesn't take you very long that you're the problem. Um. The the golf is that the only thing in golf that doesn't change, the only thing that changes the person playing. UM. And it didn't take me very long to realize that I was my problem, not the game. And I always felt that this, Yeah, Golfing and Kingdom was an instruction book, is a little bit. One of my favorite books, which is an odd book, I guess for a young person to read, was gold um Zen in the out of Motorcycle Maintenance. Um, with this voice in his head that's going on this whole time. Just there's such annoying character that he just keeps bringing in you just fight through all these pages. And I just hated it. And that was like playing golf. I'm just annoying myself while I'm playing golf, Like can't I just get out of the way and just swing, Like I know I can swing it in there, but why can't I stop talking to myself and just swing. Um, so, I yeah, I loved the story. It's a beautiful it's I think it's sort of the best sort of exposure of the mystical side of golf, which has never really talked about very often, but it clearly exists, Like you say, with the synchronicities of stuff. I mean you have examples. I mean Tiger showed us a lot of times. I mean, how did he hold those parts on the last hole so many times? You know, like it's not because his strokers any better or he reads the green any better. I mean, he's obviously good at that. But how does that parton Tory Pines go in? How does Jack's partner eight six? I'm seventeen that the Master's going it never break broke that way ever? Again, I mean, these things exist, um, and it's clear and obvious. I think once you open your eyes to it, and I think Golf in the Kingdom shows you that. I think it's I think anyone who really wants to take a deep dive into often understand why it's such an enduring guy and everybody loves it so much has to read this book a lot. I think you have to read it a lot, because I think every time you rate it is more that yef. I appreciate all those remarks. I am very much. It's um, yeah, it's uh. The game has a peculiar genius for opening the world up. Of course, you get out on some of those golf courses and the world has already been opened up by all the love that's gone into say, you know, I was as a kid, I was very lucky to get to play pebble all the time, Pebble Beach and for five dollars back then. And boy, you go out there is never the same that golf course it and so it's the world. So you go through these big gardens and then this something happens to people, and people want to tell me about their experiences. And it's been a hell of a journey for fifty years listening to just as if I'm you know, father Murphy taking confession out on there on the golf course, that they hear that, you know, if they know about golf in the Kingdom, they want to tell me about their experiences, both negative and positive. Um. And that has been a rare privilege to to hear these stories for fifty years. So it's it's an amazing game. I still suspect, I'm all right, I believe, at least in my confident moments, that I'm still learning things about the game and what is it about it? Because you know, athletes have these peak experiences that they never talked about. And I learned that right away in response, you know, to them, to you know, pro athletes who have been reading the book and let me in adventures with them about this and that, and but golf evokes I think a wider range of um rich, deep, often far out experience and any other game, I mean certainly some high adventures, you know, um uh bring this out. But anyway, it's amazing. Golf is still under reported. Yeah, that's that's what That's what I said. And you know, Jeff's in Australia and you're north of San Francisco, and um, you guys have this deep connection separated by oceans. But you could you can talk lyrically about it. And uh, I'm wondering, you know, Jefvis, did people come up to you in the way that Michael is describing where they want to They want you to explain the game to them, and they want to share their stories with you. I mean, did you have that in common? You're both kind of these oracle figures. Oracle is a strong word. It's certainly people in airports, and it's golf courses and you're in the pub sometimes and it's you know, I've been working on my driver and I don't know. They keep telling me I'm not an inside path. But the ball doesn't do this, and the ball doesn't do that, and how do I do this? And how do you guys spin the ball from fifty yards from the green? And um, most of it you can't explain. You just have to do, you know. UM. I think the biggest obstacle, which is what the book sort of hints at and points out, UM, is you just have to be totally and fully invested in what you're doing, so much to the point where you don't care about what happens next, you know, um it. And that's the challenge. It's how do you get into a golf shot so fully invested into a golf shot? I'm not really here where it goes, because if you care where it goes, that's where all the problems come from. Um. And if you think of someone like Dustin Johnson, who naturally is that way, he is so invested in what he's doing, but it just doesn't seem to care where it goes. And that's why he's so free and plays so nice. You know. Um. That's really what my feeling of the zone or the flow state or all this stuff that we talk about, is that it's being so invested in what you're doing that you forget about sort of what you're doing, you know, And that's impossible. It's a really difficult state to try to get into. It's almost you have to try to not get into it, but trying not to get into it's wrong as well, you know. Um, So it's such it's this sort of thing that you can see but you just can't grab. And people want to know how we do it, and I don't know how we do it. Um. I just do it because I've been doing it for a long time and it just I don't know. It just sort of happens one day and I think, Michael, you said you didn't start to your fourteen, and I think that's younger than most, and I think you're sort of blessed to start that young. But I mean, I was hit ping pong balls around my house when I was three or four, and I think the earlier you can get to it, you're very you're at a very zend state. When you're three or four, you know, you're just taking it all in. You don't really care about results. You're just having just total immersion and joy and fun about hitting a ping pong ball down the hallway in your house. And I think you've sort of in you condition yourself to that's you get way in front of the curve. I think when you start so young, um, and when you look at Tiger was on TV when he was in nappies right or diapers sorry, um, like he was doing it from day one, and I think you sort of there's an imprint on your whatever you want to call it, if it's physical or psychological or spiritual or something, there's an imprint. The earlier you start that you can be so fully immersed in what you're doing that, um, it's not about the result. The joy is in the doing it, not in where the ball goes. And I think that's the biggest challenge because the more people want to play well, the more they care about where the ball goes. But the more you care about where the ball goes, the hotter it is to hit it where you want to go. So I think that's why it's such an enduring game and the book is still so relevant fifty years later, because that really is the challenge of the game is too to be so involved in what you're doing that you forget about forget about where the ball is going to go. And that's a really hard thing to do. Uh. If I could just offer Michael too quick observations and then and then a question. One is this at this very much relates to golf in the Kingdom, your astounding youthfulness and uh, at your age is an inspiration to me, and I'm sure Alan and Jeff as well. And the other thing, the other quick observation is the astounding quality of the writing, where like you feel like you're in front of the fireplace. You can smell the heather, you can smell the whiskey, you can smell Michael's desperation. Um, and how if you just consider just the first half of the book, it is absolutely a classic example of quality writing in the sense that the character starts in one place, goes through a series of adventures, finishes someplace else. So I read it as a probably just a little out of college or early twenties, and it has been, as Cheff and Allen have said, something you read again and again as I read The Great ASPI and some other seminal works in my life, because every time you get more out of it. Anyway, that was just two quick observations I wander to share, and Jeff part of me if I'm not getting this correct. But I'm gonna say something Michael that I believe I heard Jeff say this, And I'm wondering, with all your study of peak experience and knowing Murphy in the book, but particularly knowing Shiva's irons as you do, what what your sense of this would be. I believe Jeff once said, you know, he played an outstanding golf and he won an he won of US Open, and then he tried to get better and and Jeff correct me if I have this wrong. Some years later, sometime later, he discovered a better goal is just get better, but don't try to get better, because he in the trying to get better, confusion emerges. You get better, like we're you know, I think we would all say by doing Jeff correct me if I've got any part of that wrong, which I may very well have. And Michael, I wonder if that question even made any sense. Do you have an insight into that conflict between trying to get better at something and just getting better at something. I've got an answer I would love to hear, Jeff, But you know, either the first huge influence on me when I flipped, you know, when I was at stand for as a student. You guys know the story, and it was a blow to the family. And you know, I went from you know, semi respectable to completely disreputable and to become they thought was a yogi or they called me a yogi. Where I grew up, Selina's a tough town. Yogi is about It's the worst thing you possibly could have been in ninety or fifty so um anyway, um the influence triarra Bindo, the great Indian philosopher and thinker, and uh so he um. One of his many maxims was don't try to have the same experience twice. Okay, practice faithfully whenever you're the art the pleasures of practice, but um, never try to have the same experience twice. And this is a dictum in the ratist mystical traditions, because you say, well, if you're a Buddhist practice you're trying to give up attachments there or whatever the ethical system is you're using or whatever. The method and practice is important. But it's what Jeff's hitting right in in the core of the problem, that are we're wired in such a way we're built for the new, for novelty. So you could make the argument that once you try to imitate yourself as a writer, I can say this, if you already try to imitate yourself, you're going to become a hack writer. I mean, you gotta let new stuff in and you have to, as it were, risk becoming disreputable again, you know, because God knows what this thing is gonna uh happen. Uh. This this letting go experience, but it's letting go within what you've been practicing. Um so this is this is one of the tenderest, most delicate problems. I mean, and Jeff nailed it right there. And you know, um uh, you know Hogan was actually good on this point, you know, and I do think it was. It was a subliminal influence on me. You know, I wasn't thinking of him when I wrote the book, but having watched him practice so much over there Double Beach growing up, and people gather on to watch him, and there was an enchantment. And you'd see six or eight of the pros, the touring pros, they're watching him practice. So um so when they asked him about some of these shots, you know, he had a tremendous repertoire of shots he could make. And some of those Texas players, my god, they hit They played this low game, all these low shots, and then they could aeroplane it and it would rise and okay, here you have a rising one. That's a draw or or a fade and whatever. So he pulled his shots off, and you know, he was sometimes asked, um, how how is it that under a pressure you can hit so many of these extraordinary shots and and he said, well, I'm a looking guy. And they said lucky. You practice more than anybody else. And he said, well, the more you practice, the luckier you get. But he was he was getting at this thing that I think Jeff's getting at same thing. Um uh, the new see. And of course, if you want to get metaphysical, you know, you know that the whole section singing the praises of golf, that's a It was a parody of a Plato symposium. Yeah, I think we've talked about this, and I think so if you walk through Plato symposium, all the characters are kind of a you know, I was having fun with that idea. And and as you know, the great philosopher Whitehead said, Western philosophy is nothing but a series of footnotes to Plato. So it's kind of embedded this ancient it's embedded in there. I mean, we could be fun talking about that. So a lot of these and one of the great truths is that we're born to eternal novelty. And that's a hard truth for a lot of religious teachers. And we know, I don't know where you guys want to go with this esoteric meeting we're having here. Well, we'll follow you anywhere. We'll follow you anywhere. Well know, you said something, you said something an interesting minute ago that I want to explore. You know, this idea being disreputable because you know, you came from a family of doctor, you were expected to be a doctor. You went to Stanford, uh, you know, on a premed track, and then then you took a philosophy class that blew your mind and sent you down this this whole other path. But um, you know, I read like like when I just reread Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth, and I'm like, which is one of my favorite books, Like, I can't believe this guy type this out and his whole family could read it. You know, it's like so raunchy and the amount of courage it takes to put something out there to the whole world. And of course he's not it's it's an act of fiction. He's not the narrator, but people naturally wonder about the writer behind the words and the bravery of that and many other books, you know, Tropica Cancer, Tropica Cancer. Henry Miller reading that book is like, oh my god, I can't leave. You just wrote that it's wild. Um, and of course you don't, you're not working blue like that, But um, how hard was it for you to to put this book out into the world and or even just to go down this path knowing, uh, the way selling us the way I do it is this dusty farming town. It's it's not a hotbed of open mindedness. And so for um, what was the struggle like for you to take on this new world, this new identity and leave behind what was expected of you. Yeah, that was not a struggle. I mean they were thrilled that I wrote a book. My brother was the designated writer in the family and he had this nationwide bestseller, you know, The Sergeant, and so I came along and so it's actually me becoming reputable. Oh my god, I published a book. And of course had you know, escalately been going for ten years at that point. But um, but there are different kinds of being reputable, reputable with whom you can be so anchored in being reputable in a small circle of your um pals or your family or your associate, you know, your colleagues, and it's hard when you're really good at something to break set. You know. This is stupendous problem in the arts, really, and uh, you know, we do. You know, I do have friends in the movie business, and you know a lot of folks in Hollywood come up to us and this is a standing um issue and it's uh like going and on about this. So reputable doesn't mean just about sex. It's about whatever, you know, whatever you're supposed to do that's engraved in you. And it's the reliabilities we need, we need, we need reliabilities, But how do you live a life that's balanced and reputable and still full of the new? And boy, when you get as old as I am, you know, and your watch your friends going down one you know, it's like in an ancient forest, one tree after another falling down around you and my wife and I you know, I'm ninety two now, so you can imagine. I mean, they they've been falling faster. And how stuck people get as they get older, you know, how stuck and the limitation of options. So, um, I think what Jeff says about shot making itself is a microcosm of our larger station in life, what you think, and it's and I think the ultimate thing is that um the game of all games. The reason the cosmos is here is the unfoldment of this greater life that awaits us. You know, if we're going to get really serious there, you know, a greater life is pressing to be born in us, really and um, you know it's one of the attractions of sport, I must say. I you know, I've always been a a nut about sports and loving it. But it's an enactment of the new. I mean, what a new great um athlete appears, or a great new team or somebody does a great thing that's never been done. The world lights up to some degree. It really does, don't you think. I mean, I mean, you guys are out there reporting on this all the time. It's um uh you know, the suspense, the trauma, that the newness. But Jeff, you you know, and I mean you've done it many times in your life. What do you you want? What well US Open, Ryder Cup with three World championships or what do you call those big ones? Yeah, they used to be called w tcs. Um. Yeah, I mean I think you hit on a couple of things that I've had along the way and felt, um, the new thing is fascinating. Jack told us he Actually I wasn't sitting there at the time, but Jack used to love walking around the locker room a memorial sort of holding court like waiting for golfers to ask him questions. Um. And he was fantastic to talk to. But there was one day I wasn't there, but he told a story and the boys and some of the someone told me. I can't remember who told me, but they asked him sort of what swing thoughts and what did you think about when you play golf, and did you ever have any favorite swing thoughts or sort of ways you went about it? And he says, you know, when I was playing my best I tried to I got to the range every morning and tried to have a new thought from yesterday, no matter how well I played yesterday, I tried to think something new today. Um. Because he thought they'd get stale very quick. And he tried to do something new every single day because he realized that exactly what you're saying, Michael, that it's all about new, um and fresh and a new experience, and it's got to keep you engaged. And if you sort of get stuck in the tram tracks, you keep going the same direction, you've got to get out of the tram tracks and sort of get something news. I thought that was fascinating that Um he always tried. I mean, it doesn't matter, it's it's almost the discipline it takes to have a great swing thought on Thursday and shoot sixty five and hit the ball perfectly and come out on Friday and do something differently. That's almost impossible to do. And it's the greatest golfer of all time, well, one of the two greatest golfers of all time actively tried to do that. He tapped into something that most of us haven't. I think is pretty interesting. Um And I think, like you say, it's the new thing it golf is a bit like music, right, It's there's no destination for music, it's just music for music's sake. And I think we all played golf with a destination in mind. And I don't think that's what it's about. I think we want to play golf for golf's sake. Um And I think, well, that's the enduring part of this book, is it. It's trying to point you to that direction, Like it's there's no destination here, Like, just get immersed and get fascinated with the game, and the more you get fast and added with the game, the more you're going to get out of it. Um. So yeah, I think it's this metaphysical philosophy stuff. I think golf is a very good If it doesn't send you that way, you're not really paying attention. I think this golf is a is a window to this world that or a doorway that if you start playing golf and you get in, you get involved, it's going to take you the direction that Michael's talking about. I just think it has to unless you're not paying attention as you read too many Golf Digest instruction articles and um um not picking on any publications, but you just you get down this rabbit hole of cutting golf into little pieces, and the nature of cutting is you can always cut it to a smaller piece. Um. I think golf has got this disease, or maybe humans have got a disease, probably of taking something beautiful and cutting it in half and wondering how it works. And then you cut it in half, you realize you can cut it a half again, and then you cut in half again. You can cut it a half again, and that never ends with golf, with anything, and golf were very susceptible to do this. And I think the secret, not the secret, the secrets that a right word. That's been a really ruined word. But um, the idea is that you're trying to put all the pieces back together, You're not trying to cut it up. You know most people are going the other way with it. Um. I think it's fascinating. And back to Hogan just a little quickly under start the Hogan thing. Um we ask everybody asks Hogan or great golfers, Well, how do you do that? And then afterwards they start thinking about it and chop it up after they've done it. But they didn't learn how to do it by chopping it up and doing that. They just loved Hogan just loved practice. He wasn't practicing to get better. He woke up in the morning and couldn't think of anything better than just to try to hit great golf shots. He was just immersed and fascinated with hitting great golf shots. And that the byproduct of that was the one golf tournaments. I don't think he tried to win golf tournaments. He woke up in the morning and all he wanted to do was hit great golf shots. And I think, um, when if you try to copy that, it doesn't work. You know, you've got to light the fire in yourself to be fascinated yourself, and you've got all you want to do in the morning is to get up and at great golf shots or right great? Right? Well, I mean I assume writing the I feel like if you just love writing and just start writing and keep writing, something good is going to come out of it. The more you just get into writing, well, that's the good result. If you set out with a destination in mind, you're probably gonna not right right as well, because you're gonna you're putting yourself in tram tracks and you're you're giving yourself a destination. Um. And the great things in life don't have a destination. They just they exist for themselves. You just you play golf because it's fun to play. You don't play golf to get anywhere. Um. And human nature as we're always trying to get somewhere with something. But how do you know where you're trying to get. You don't know where you're trying to get, you know, so how do you get somewhere? You can't decide where to go with your golf because alway they think is you don't know where it's going to go. So just have fun doing it, okay. T Jeff's wint it's a really odd game, as almost all games are, because there is no product in the end. There's a trophy, maybe your name's on it, maybe it's not, but there's no product in the end except for some kind of vague internal feeling, which, of course, Michael, you captured you know so extremely well, and in your book. Yeah, it's even more than the feeling itself. It's trying. It's the quest to find that feeling, right like, because the feeling can be fleeting, but to me, like when I when I'm playing my best, uh, I'm just like there's a sensation of trying to get it. It's just like total effortlessness when I swing the club and uh, and then you have, you know, five minute walk you get to try it again, and there's those five minutes like the hardest. You're just like, Okay, don't get too excited, don't think about well, okay, if I if I birdied this hole and I finished with two pars, I can you shoot my best score ever? Like, you know, it's like the walk to me is one of the hardest parts of golf, with to not not getting your own way and not get not start chasing a different feeling. Like it's uh, I think I think Sis might have had something to say about this. You know, let the nothingness into your shots, right, Like that's that's one of the most oft repeated lines from Golf in the Kingdom. But the nothingness is the key. It's uh, that's that's like kind of where that's what I'm always chasing the different words in different languages around what you know, nothing is about. I mean, there's you know, Buddhism is based in that no notion. There are a lot of beautiful Sanskrit words for this, but you know words, you know, you could get approximations to experience with words and words themselves then can produce great experiences. But um uh. Finally, that word um you can get you close, but by itself, it can't get you there. I mean you have to experience it. Ah, that's what he meant. You know, he might have called it something else. You know some Sanskrit word shunyums that's the word sunyumnata, and it's trying, you know, your emptiness, um, nothingness, the fertile void. You know, different translators will translate that word. But people have been testifying to this and to this, these further dimensions of human experience, you know, for thousands of years um, and as it comes into the culture. It's just amazing to me that writing this book, I UM the golf is a doorway for lots of people into this the first time they've ever had a deep Buddhist I mean, people will sit in um retreats for years and not have some of the experiences they have on golf courses. It's it's a great irony, um. But there it is, this, these possibilities waiting for us, and golf has a peculiar genius for bringing people towards it. It's it's just a fact. You know. It's like, uh, you know, fifty years I've been you know this. Uh, the gift of writing the book has given me just to watch this window oh keep opening from that game. It's uh uh, it's it's a fact. Um. There it sits and we argue about it from so many different angles, you know, and you know, are the Southeast nice people are not nice people? You know are whatever. There's always something brand new to argue about or on the game, the politics that um, oh god, everything, the ecology of it, and uh, and yet people come back to this um incredible uh something that UM delivers. These experiences are people experience, you know, having started this and it's been going for sixty years now, and people come from all over the world in search of these uh, larger possibilities in human life. And it's uh, you know, and some of my um somewhat disreputable moments, I've proclaimed that golf's delivering more experience, more stories than Buddhist practice in America, And of course it's upset some of my friends. But uh, then they start thinking about it, you know. Um, but that anyway, Michael, you've told me that, Um, there was a lot of that. You made such a study of Hogan, and you sat near Mrs Hogan. I think at Olympic and the influence Hogan had on you, and that there was a lot of Hogan and Siva's. I never got a chance, of course, to be around Hogan, but I think of Sheba's your character, Sheva's irons is having so much warmth and humanity in connection with other people that I don't necessarily so associate with Hogan. I don't know if that's correct or not, but I'm wondering what else came to you that let you fill in Sheba's in such a rich way. You're my psychoanalyst. Yes, a matter of speaking, I mean, oh boy, Um, well, I mean there's that, Michael, which of which I'm conscious, and that which is of which I'm unconscious. Uh. You know, anybody who writes um a book that is in the is imaginative and and you know, I say, people say, well, is it fiction or or nonfiction? I say, well, it's semi it's it's semi fiction because the experiences my kind of discipline was, and I do differentiate it from I call it mystical realism because people want explanations as as distinguished from magical realism. You know, in the great Latin novelists with gold fish from the sky and redwood trees that put their arms around you and all. There's nothing like that, exactly in golf in the Kingdom. These are experiences that people have. And you know, I wrote a sequel, it's the sequel, you know, the Kingdom of suba Science. All those experiences actually happen to people and so um uh so too, um so, all of that came into play writing the book. So um so, I channeled the character, you know, but it did. He did. He materialized in front of me and pretty soon this could happen. You asked me about the state I was in. Pretty soon, um I was hearing the stuff I wrote down, you know, I was hearing it. And people think, well, yeah, you know this is on the edge of schizophrenia. Uh well, accept writers are flirting with the same sorts of things as certain psychotics. Uh do you know the you know, the m m PI in the Minnesota Multiphasing Inventory. I don't want to get too fancy here, but it's it's been given to more people than any other single test, millions. And there's something called the schizophrenia scale. And when you know, when it's given to a lot of writers, they scored very high on the schizophrenia scale. Um, because it's um, but it's also has to be accompanied by some of the stability scales. But it's opening that the doors of the mind and this stuff comes. Uh. So that was you know, it was the first book I tried to write let alone, right, Um, so the you know, it's kind of quasi channeling. And you could say that in great art and in great sports performance, and I think it's again I would argue with Jeff, this will getting that this thing if you can open the not only the doors of perception, but open up all the hidden windows of your mind body complex. I mean, would you think about what goes into hitting a let's say a shot. Let's I'm thinking I was right next to Hogan when he hit a shot at that opening loss to fleck. And it was in grass pretty I mean it was in the rough, and but it was one of these low shots of these some of these Texas players you know, tell me Bold and Jimmy to marry. They did these little shots. It would rise, but this one, honest to God, to the left of the pin, rising and fading out of high grass. All right. How many muscle fibers in his body and how many nerves and his brain and cerebellum and everywhere else were involved in that? Nobody could cut pozzib We count them and he couldn't. I would argualy channel that shot. He channeled it. Now. I think he probably had an image of that's what he wanted to do. He wanted to play a low rising and fade into that um. And uh. It was interesting because before he hit the shot, I was standing near him and he yelled at someone, how Sam. He kind of measured himself against Sam. Sneed a lot, and and the guy yelled back, oh, he's under so many under or whatever, and he shook his head. He took that into consideration. He may have been computing how much he was going to go for, you know, a lower or higher score. I don't know, but anyway, there was the settled sense centered down computing that and then pulling the shot off. Well, you have to believe me, and that is like me writing a paragraph, uh and not anticipating it. I didn't see it coming. You see what I mean? You guys, well you know you're writing right as writers. I mean, you don't know this sentence exactly is coming and don't you but it appears. And that is this marriage that we all have with our unconscious, our subliminal mind. People say, well, what do you how do you see the unconscious? Well, I say, well, think one image in Star Wars the movie are two D two. You know, the little the robot goes wrong. Okay, we each have our R two D two. It's our unconscious. It's always working. So you have to know how to listen are too D two But so one. For for a writer, it comes as a sentence or an image or even a paragraph. When you get one of these long runs, it's um, I actually do think um. I owe some of it to my Irish ancestry, because you know, the father's side of the family. All this, I mean, there was a lot of competition for who is going to blow the longest riff at dinner. I mean there was, I mean, it was it was you know. Uh. You know, these cultural steriotypes often have some truth in them, but you rejoice, you know, ulysses or something. I mean some of those are paragraphs that he channeled. Okay, and the same with certain rounds of golf. I'll tell you. The only person who ever played a great game in his life that I played against once was Kenney Ventury and he was fifteen. I was sixteen. And um he uh became famous in our part of the world up here, you know, um in northern California when he was UM. I would say, from the time he was about seventeen to twenty that he would uh maybe get five or six holes where the ball was stiff to the pin, I mean within feet, you know. And it was um. And then he went out on the tour there and he did well. But he I remember that as a kid having known him, and UM, I can't say I played again stim. I mean we were matched with each other. It was a pathetic mismatch. But anyway, um uh. So the point I want to make is this are too deep to that we that is in us uh is the subliminal mind, our secret magic. Uh. It can be there for a few seconds, or a few minutes, or a few hours or over a period of time. It's uh, you know this comes up a lot, don int es um people coming from the you know, from all over the world to talk about this stuff. It's um. Uh, it's hugely and once again, golf is an incredible venue for people to experience this stuff. It's amazing. I mean, well, Jeff, obviously in your life, I mean you've done it. I mean, to win those big tournaments, Jesus. And the competition you guys are against. You know, in Hogan's day, do ten or fifteen guys out there who could really play? But now you guys watched about a couple of d well, I mean everybody out there now everyone hits the ball much further than any anybody thought of hitting it when I was younger, when Hogan was playing. I mean, you hear it further. Um. But all that competition, and it's a a cohort of magic has emerged. And say, although you know, it's interesting that certain players, I mean a lot of people turn on you know, we don't need to repeat this to just watch Tiger you know and and so and um, you could argue that in the old days, I mean when Hogan was playing, and some of those guys were such characters, you know, so people was kind of like watching the Harlem Globe Trotters. You go to the Crosby clam Bay can see some of these guys play. It was colorful characters. Some I don't know how you feel about this job, but there's a lot of um, more conformity on the tour. I do have a question for you, Michael. I mean that you're not playing a ton of golf anymore, presumably, Um, do you still do you dream about golf? Do you can you still summon in your body the sensation of hitting golf shots? Like how much does the game live within you still? You know, great athletes do leave legacies in the minds of people who were near them when they were playing or even on television. I mean, we all know there are certain shots that are are get me take that shot. When Hogan hit that shot, that's in me, I can feel it. It was so thrilling. It's like, um, you know, remembering the most delicious experiences in your life. You know, it's it's not to be too crass, but you can remember some erotic highlights. There are certain things you will never forget. And it's not just that you have a mental image. You feel it, particularly if you ever played the game. You know, um, you know what I mean. And it's almost as good as the real thing. The remembering might be better. I was watching Tiger and I actually was experiencing on some of those drives you and I was experiencing lust. I'm sure that's true. So there's a lineage, I mean, I'm sorry, a legacy that great athletes leave out there in the memories of others really well. And and also great writers and great storytellers. I mean, Jeff's up and down on the seven second hole at Wingfoot will live on forever. I mean, just as golf in the Kingdom will, just as to the links Land will. I mean, it's uh, it's kind of neat to bring together people on this, on this this one conversation who have touched a lot of folks in different ways, and uh, you know, it's it's fun for me. I I feel like I'm just having an out of body experience watching you guys talk about these things. But it's it's one of the great things about the nineteenth Hole. You know, you play over in Scotland and my god, you're rubbed raw in the wind and it's okay. But if you go into the clubhouse and you have a single maldis a single and you don't get halfway up to heaven, You're not going to get there when you die. It's uh, you know what I mean. I mean it's because it opens up um uh, well, it just inhibits you to some extent and in that just an ambition, amazing things are rise and um so that in that sense we're so vulnerable and contagious to one another. And when you have a sports arena with millions of people watching, you know, it's it's at times I just think underrated how an athlete can do something. It's a thrilled at last and reverberates forever as long as that anybody who experienced it, there's alive the legacy of our greatness to one another. And um, let's say somebody who's been down and out and has uh not done a lot of good in life and does one incredible, great and good thing and it reverberates where it reverberates, so we can all add to this in incredibly cruel but grace laden world we live in. I mean, you know, um and uh so anyway, it's um. People say to me, Um, I love a challenge like this. M Well, of course, at the end of the day, Mike, it's a silly game. I said, well, what I mean, a little ball into this hole and you walk around like this and everything else. So I know when they're setting me up like that, that I'm gonna win, and because I could come back with all of the good things that happened, you know in this game. I'm serious and it's um. It's a largely enchanted game that uh well, it does what it does, and it's these um and sport generally. Um uh it's oh boy, I'm inhibiting myself right now because you know, my wife and I are very involved in Russian American relations and we're living in this now as hell that's perpetrated by Putin. I don't I don't want to go down that road with you guys, but uh so, I often say it's too bad in Russia. They forgive me for this, but that they don't play golf. You know. It's uh, I get some of these guys out there and out of these warhols that they live in. I mean, it's been a a nation that has suffered enormously and it's so huge, and it's produced this readiness to fight and this monsters. I'm sorry to intervene with, but that, Um, we've got to be thankful for these activities that we do have that are life giving and healthy and God bless golf give rise to this transcendence, these transcendent moments, but we go beyond ourselves, thank God. Michael and Jeff give me final thoughts for our guest on Uti for with Michael Murphy here. Wow, this has just been a pleasure. Um, I've enjoyed listening the whole time. This is fascinating. We could do this all day. I think it's important. I think of more. I mean, you wrote this book fifty years ago. It should have been paid. I mean, everybody loves it. But everybody loves it and then they go off and don't really live it, you know, they get distracted by everything else. And I think it's more relevant now because, as I said, we're cutting it up into so many small pieces and we'd of thing the point, Um, all the holiday golf is just there. If a golf psych and that's how we don't have to fought wols, because we fought the wool with ourself every time we play golf, and we learned about ourselves every time. And I think, uh, it's just been fascinating. I've enjoyed the whole thing. We can do this trial. Well, thank you Allen for arranging this, and uh, Michael, I hope I have many more opportunities to say this to you, but I just want to say you're a hero to me, and I'm incredibly grateful that you are the person you are and that you've written down the words that you have. You probably know I believe I have this right that Gorbachov gave Reagan a driver made out of a nuclear missile, but maybe someone gave it to Clinton. That the point really is they should have just kept it. Uh. Uh. If you ever cared to write a sort of sequel about a mystical conversation between Hogan and Tiger, I think people would eat it up. Uh. But thank you for the example of of your life and and everything that you've given us. Michael. Thank you God, that's generous words, and thank you for all your great stuff about life in this good green world. And anyway, and and Jeff, thanks for those generous remarks. I I very very much appreciate them a lot. Really well, I'm just gonna build on what these other guys said. It's absolute pleasure talking to you as always. Michael, Uh, congratulations fifty the anniversary of golf in the Kingdom. What a run uh years old. I think anyone who listens this podcast will know that you haven't lost anything off your fastball. It's it's heroic the life you continues to lead. So um, this has been this has been a tremendous pleasure and honor. Thank you for for rounding out our foursome here. We're gonna we're gonna sign off on from this podcast, but I know the conversation will continue for quite a long time amongst all of us in different ways. So thanks everybody for listening, and uh, we'll do this again soon. That's the end. Mm hmmm, Oh my god. It's a dangerous group here.