you
Are you sick?
New York boy, where were you born?
What borough?
Brooklyn.
Born in Brooklyn.
That's pretty awesome.
You're a lawyer, a financial advisor, a cab driver and a photographer and a mountain climber.
Mountain climber.
you've done.
Yeah.
You've done everything.
And you.
have seen the face of God or you're an enlightened dude.
You teach people how to be.
What do you do?
How would you describe what you do for a living?
You know, I was talking about this the other day and what I do for a living now.
I think this would be my ideal job too, is people pay me for being me.
I'm sure I have a job title anymore.
mean, I think that these days I used to say, people say, well, what do you do?
What do you do?
You know, and I used to say, you know, first thing I'd say is, know, I'm a lawyer.
I mean, because that's what I spend my time making my living.
But I do, as you see, I do a lot of different things.
So it's hard to say that I do just this.
So to make life simpler for people, I usually describe myself as being a spiritual teacher and a spiritual advisor.
But it's hard for me to, you know, and that then people kind of have some kind of framework.
But actually, I think
more and more I am just getting up in the morning and living my life and uh being of whatever help I can be.
along the way, you know, find ways to uh support myself.
uh I think at the end of the day, I get paid to inspire people.
So what kind of law do you practice?
I have well when I got into are we kind of going this could we use this part we could do anything
think yeah, we could do whatever we want.
I part of this is I need I want to Let me maybe Formally say Fanny Cohen here.
I'm talking to my friend Hari Nam Singh Khalsa, right?
That's right.
Okay and Plainly you are a Sikh you are a turban.
You've got a very like relaxed
look on your face often and a nice beard.
ah
the stress of living here, right?
Yeah.
uh
Beard, yeah, like beards seem awesome.
If I was a guy, would totally have a beard.
You know, I was noticing, you know, sometimes because I have a beard and many people I know have a beard, I kind of just, that's kind of my reality.
But every now and then I walk down the street and realize that very few people have beards.
No way, where are you walking?
Beards are like the biggest thing.
ah
I think maybe for like hipsters, but I mean the general run-of-the-mill people that you meet, you know at work or you know the subway you don't see that many and a lot of people
wearing beards are mentally ill too.
So, you know, I kind of discount that I mean the people who just don't bathe.
Yeah, it's a good point.
mean, if you're ever going through anything, like you just got broken up with, or you just lost your job, or you're really sick, I mean, the first thing to go is like facial hair
for guys.
Like that's like the quick tell-all for a problem.
But you know, I went to the movie Lincoln the other day and I noticed that actually most of the people had beards, most of the adults had beards.
That's right.
Yeah, well, mean, facial hair in general was just more plentiful in other times of human history.
I mean, to me, the most striking is actually if you look at like a TV show or a movie from the 70s, people just had more hair, like all over.
All over.
Well, the whole Sikh thing with the hair, it's kind of like the whole Moses thing.
What's the seek thing with the hair?
I don't know.
The Sikh thing with the hair again, kind of like the Moses thing.
It's kind of like, well, first of all, this is how God created you.
So there's no mistakes made.
So there's a reason you have hair.
It's not just some uh oddity from nature that there's a reason for everything.
Okay.
So there's a reason that you have hair and in the animal kingdom, maybe with the exception of lions and stuff, mean, humans can actually grow their hair to great lengths.
And so, you know, on this path, we're actually taught that it's a sense of strength, that you actually, that we're very complex beings.
The equipment of being a human being is a very complex piece of equipment and everything has some kind of inherent reason, including hair.
So for us, we believe that the hair is actually uh a receptor of energy.
Yeah, that it's like an antenna and that that's the reason it's there and that also that uh where it's placed is actually uh involved with your emotional life.
So for instance, for a man, one of the reasons that a man has a beard is to actually cover his chin because that gives him emotional coverage.
So it's almost like being emotionally naked.
And, and, and so this is what a man looks like.
So my teacher is very
charismatic and controversial guy.
And he would just say like he just found it very odd coming from where he came from to this culture to see why it is that men want to look like boys.
Because boys don't have facial hair.
So why would a grown mature man want to look like a child?
Huh.
So that was his take, which I think there's something to that.
Yeah, well, what do you think?
I'd have to agree with that.
I mean, to me, I've been wearing a beard so long that I don't know any other way.
But now that I wear a beard and I look at men and they go to such great lengths to have this very slick looking face with no stubble.
And I'm thinking, well, that's what a six year old child looks like.
Why would you want to look like a six year old child?
Wow, I mean, to me the thing with male facial hair is all about uh conformity and kind of like this corporate conformity, like in the 50s, like clean cut guy.
And that was really important.
I mean, the way like my dad who was around then talks about it is like, it was, there was no choice.
Like if you didn't have a clean shaven face, there was a
big part of people that just wouldn't take you seriously.
Yeah, and yet the people uh who think that way actually give so little thought to how it actually got to be that way.
You know, it's kind of odd.
They think themselves being intelligent, but they don't like sit back and think, well, how did that actually come to be?
Why is even that the conformity and why would that be a good thing?
You know, there's just like a disconnect.
And of course, I think one of the more humorous sides of that
is you have people who are, you know, and I, again, I'll say this, I have nothing against Christianity or the Bible.
I actually have a lot of respect for it.
But to me, it's like, it's so odd that there are people like who have like short hair and they're clean cut and they have pictures of their savior who's got long hair and a beard.
But if you actually presented yourself as the savior yourself, you wouldn't get a job in that place.
you know, they kick you out of the church.
would say, I mean, so if Jesus himself walked into the church, he'd be kicked on the kids can because he'd be considered to be like dirty scruffy, whatever they think that is.
But that's the person who they put the most on the pedestal is a person who did not cut his hair and who had a beard.
I don't care.
So somebody's going to have to explain that one to me.
Yeah, I mean, you know that that's pretty much the story of St.
Francis is he was you know that story?
No, he's a he was just a guy.
I mean it was in Assisi.
Italy and he was like, uh actually this is again kind of similar I think to the story of the Buddha.
He was kind of an upper class guy who was very sheltered from life and then had or the real world and suffering and death and disease and evil.
And he got out one day and saw it and was changed by it and wanted to get rid of all his worldly possessions, give everything to charity, have nothing and just live in the world
and be a saint, be a good guy.
And people thought he was crazy.
And he was really trying to embody those Jesus-like principles.
Yeah, there's a history in almost all the religions of the people that the people put up on a pedestal for their virtues.
The very people who follow them, these same things, that if their own children did this, they'd throw them out of the house.
I mean, some of this makes, you know, it's too funny.
That's, I mean, do think people are aware of it though?
Or is it only, I mean, that we have, that you have a certain perspective on it?
I mean,
I think it's kind of a whole conversation itself, but I think in general you could put it under the title of how religion's got hijacked.
How true religion has been hijacked by people actually who are not particularly evolved.
But they've hijacked religion for their own purposes, but they don't really live its ideals.
So what is the purpose of religion?
Well, to me, as long as I, it's almost like we were gonna talk about today how I got into all of this.
It's funny, because I was coming over the subway here and I was thinking about what we were gonna talk about today.
About how one gets started and all this and how I got started and all this.
And I was thinking, well, how would you even start this conversation?
But really, you have to start the conversation.
you're talking to a person like
Okay, how does a person start on the spiritual path or on the path of spiritual development or religious commitment or any of these things?
This is the lawyer in me talking now.
To me, it's ridiculous to even start down that road before you're even clear what you're talking about.
You brought up the question before really getting into how does one start on a spiritual path or on the course of spiritual development.
There has to be some common understanding of what I would even mean by spirituality and spiritual development or religion.
So you asked it to me, um it's really insane that I've been living so much of my life like this and you cannot believe how rarely somebody would actually even ask me that simple
question.
I could be teaching a workshop, I could be invited to give a public presentation on these themes in front of hundreds of people.
And people actually are going about their business of what they think it is to be spiritual or to grow spiritually.
But data are not even clear what that even means.
Yeah, well, I mean, one thing that I'm always coming up against, and especially with this venture and, working on other shows where we're trying to document spirituality, is that
the word is so corrupted and in some ways it's so bankrupt and so meaningless.
I hold people, you know, whenever somebody uses that word around me, I put their heels to the fire.
Yeah.
How do you say like, you know, the magic and glory of life and all of its infinite
You know, I very rarely use the word spiritual.
Like you know, it's very interesting when I teach or I counsel people, I actually very rarely use words like spirituality because I know that there's a lot of assumptions going
on and people may think I'm meaning something and I don't mean that.
So to me, like this is very good example, to me, spirituality, spiritual, uh
Development religion any any and to me they're actually mutually exclusive.
They're not understood the same way in society But religion as such was just an institutionalized form of just packaging spirituality in the end.
It's the same thing.
I mean, it's It's a parent Yeah, now things have happened to it that's another discussion but but all this is kind of the same family of pursuit and and so to me
There's only two real reasons for religion or spirituality.
For somebody being in a religion or a person pursuing, quote unquote, spirituality.
And that is that there is a conscious intention to actually experience and connect with the essence of what actually you are, not what you're about.
The is about, the world itself involves what you're about.
Meaning, what you're about is, you know, the family you're born from, your career, the house you live in, who your friends are, what your political affiliation is, zillions of
these things.
And these things describe how, you know, the way in which you live your life.
But underneath all of that, there's something that's a very...
uh
pure, infinite, uh never was born, never dies.
It's your actual essence.
So anybody who is to me seeking uh spirituality is trying to connect with their true essence.
they're, when in most paths, your infinite essence, we would say.
And then the other part, which I think is actually very integrated with this, is that there's a conscious effort, uh very
committed choice in your life to be everything that you can be in this life.
it's personal development.
It's a very conscious choice of personal development that you're going to develop uh the virtues that you were born with as a human being to be everything that you could possibly
be in this lifetime.
And spirituality and religion is kind of like a recipe.
It's a it's a map to be that way and this is often left by people who figured it out You know, it's it's very streets at the end of days very strategic There are people have been
born on the planet who kind of figured the game out and they got there now There's kind of like describing to people.
Okay, I figured my way through this labyrinth and this is them because you're gonna have a hell of a time figuring this out on your own and I actually figured out
I figured out this puzzle so, and other people have too, but they all get you to the same place.
So I got through this labyrinth this way.
if you care to make it to the other side of the bridge, this is how I made it here and this is what you need to do.
And that's why there's so much in common with all these paths because more or less it's the same recipe.
They're a little bit different, but more or less it's the same recipe to get there because it's not that complicated.
Hmm.
I mean, do you think that in thinking of this as a game, do you think that religions and spiritualities quote unquote, don't kill me for using that word, uh I'll get you to
happiness or like a certain state or enjoyment of life?
Or are they just sort of teaching you that it is a game and that there are
kind of moves that you can do, but it doesn't get you to any place.
It just teaches you how to like operate.
I think the second, I think it teaches you how to operate and you have to do it yourself.
See, I think that's one of the ways, I mean, again, it's a longer conversation about how religion has become corrupted.
I think it's become corrupted because it's become a business.
It's become a business because what they're really kind of trying to sell you is, my sense, often a false sense of goods.
They're basically saying is like, you do this, you ...
You believe in this, you take this set of goods and you know what?
And uh we can guarantee you like a ticket to paradise.
But you're not in paradise yet.
And they can't actually even show you that.
They just say, just believe us.
Just believe us.
You do what we want you to do and we'll give you a ticket to paradise.
But you you're not actually going to know that until after your physical body dies.
And it's amazing how many people buy into this because it doesn't make any sense.
But people are very vulnerable.
And if you really study the teachings of all the great teachers through history, whether Jesus, Buddha, or whoever you would name, that they actually don't teach that.
They actually teach that you can experience your infinite uh existence while you're still alive.
You don't have to wait till the next life.
And you actually have, there's two ways of doing that.
And it's kind of a paradoxical combination of
You have to, not another person can't do it for you.
You have to do it for yourself.
So this isn't talked about a lot because, you know, it's very hard to sell that, you know, so, so it's very hard to sell that you can be enlightened, but it's up to you.
So I'm leaving it back to you.
So they're thinking, okay, so why would I pay you for that?
You know, and the, other piece,
is that there's something that if you're a spiritually oriented person, we'd call grace.
Grace is kind of like the paradoxical other side to that is that no matter how hard you try, that is not actually enough.
That things happen because there is something much bigger at play that is outside the paradigm of your mind.
That there's something going on that's bigger
than your limited view of the universe.
And so you're a child of this.
And so it's kind of like working there even if you don't see it.
So it's kind of like this paradoxical combination of self-intent and conscious choice and application and also allowing in for grace, allowing in for things to just let shit
happen.
So it's a very odd combination, but I've learned this in my own life that there are equal partners in this.
It's almost like the same point and it doesn't make any sense because there's no logic to it, but to me it's this equal mixture of just being very focused on what your goal is and
walking towards it and on the other hand, know, letting shit happen.
Hmm.
I mean, are you are you opposed to all organized?
What is your?
Well, again, this is another paradoxical side of my life because obviously I can't be opposed to organized religion because I'm a minister.
Right.
know, so I, and not only am I a minister, but I would say that I'm as religious a person as I know.
I'm a very, I am a, I am an unapologetic religious person and
A lot of times my students get very upset at that because they've had very bad experiences with religion as I have.
so the last thing they want to hear from somebody like myself who they look up to is that I love religion.
ah
Organized religion has its dangers and but you could say this about anything in life in a marriage or anything else I mean there's you you have to be able to kind of see the whole
picture.
So to me uh Religion is very very valuable.
It's very hard.
I in my opinion is very hard to actually experience enlightenment without religion because religion gives you content and it's very hard to apply your
Even if you have a glorious experience, it's very hard to give it any context in your day to day life without having the structure of religion to give it structure and context.
On the other hand, as I mentioned, think that religion can be very dangerous because it's often run by people who are not enlightened.
It's like putting a gun in the hands of a crazy person.
Religion is a very powerful thing and you put it in the hand.
It's basically about again.
It's really as I mentioned before to me religion is about the game of enlightenment It's there's only two reasons for the existence of religion It's to help a person gain
enlightenment to gain union with the soul in this lifetime to have that level of uh infinity and the other one is which is you know kind of related to the day-to-day life is
to you
actually expressing this in your day-to-day life, in everything you do, so that everything is congruent.
So you better yourself, so your daily life is congruent with your infinite experience.
And there's very few, you know, if you go to the church or synagogue, there's very few people even living close to this and even of course more troubling and closer, on closer
observation.
Normally the people in charge are running these institutions are less involved than the people sitting in the pews.
And they like status, they like their position, they like everything that goes with it.
They like the salary, they like the clothes that go with it.
And often to get into the higher ranks of the organization of any of these religious organizations does not necessarily require a high level of consciousness.
It has to often to do with uh you showing that you're team player and that you're willing to play by the rules of the institution.
so often to get to the higher ranks does require you to be intelligent and generous and hardworking in many of these things.
But I often find that the most enlightened people in any particular religion often are not the people up at the top.
It's at the people who
look like they're at the bottom.
Yeah, I mean I think you know it this is a tricky area to get into because we can both agree that Organizing people together, you know, sometimes it works and sometimes it
doesn't and it comes down to the individual institution I mean, we've all seen churches and synagogues and whatever that are very positive places for people and they're positive
communities that are doing things for its members and doing things for the community at large
But we've also seen the other end of the spectrum, is just bureaucracy and politicking at its worst.
you know, I mean, I'd like to get into that.
think some of it is maybe structural in the way that these organized organizations have to be organized and also maybe the origins.
mean, a lot of them are family owned and that's why.
Even philosophically, it's a wildly interesting topic because it really involves so many things.
It's so many different layers.
ah But again, I think the real interesting thing to me is that although all these things are so fascinating, you get into history and culture and...
sexism and racism.
mean, just every possible angle is involved.
Capitalism, everything is involved in these religious organizations, but
They can't hide one thing is that the, the, the, at the base, it's still the same thing.
The purpose of these things, the founders of all these, all these paths really had a very simple agenda.
And that was to, to show mankind that there is a way that during this lifetime, you can experience the infinity of your existence and that your life, it, once you have that, can
arrange your life in a way that will help other people experience this as well.
That's it.
It's actually no more complicated.
Experience the infinity of life.
of experience the infinity of your existence.
All right, so what is that?
Well, you know, I'm a little handcuffed because now, and this again I think gets down to the heart of what spirituality really is about, is that when I'm asked questions like
that, all I can say is I'll do the best that can do because these things by definition have no words.
So it's like whenever people say, you know, can you explain love to us?
Well, they really, you know what mean, all you have is the word love, but you really are kind of,
hamstrung here is like there are no words to express that experience.
So when people have experienced, depending on the culture, it's called nirvana, enlightenment, Christ consciousness, whatever, whatever, there's different, but those are
just like words.
They're just words to basically label and experience that there are no words for.
So the best
that I can do is, that
to start at a platform that um you are something.
Okay, you are something.
And that thing um is beyond time and space.
And it is actually in its evolution towards liberation.
It's taking a time and space and form here.
It's actually part of this journey.
And the journey is just going back where you came from.
and actually realize the greatest thing about this particular life of everything that this life offers, people, again, spiritually or interperson, truly spiritually or interperson
understands that the vast majority of mankind is actually just shitting their life away on bullshit.
now it's not that everything they're doing lacks cause and reason and all that, but there is a lack of
uh direction and that what is the ultimate purpose of me being here?
Okay among many things and so the ultimate purpose for me Being in this particular lifetime is to be liberated so uh So I don't have to kind of continue going through this
nonsense, I just need to I need to kind of merge into what I really am
and not continue this illusion anymore.
So what this lifetime offers is the possibility for you to actually experience the infinity of your existence.
And you ask me, what is that?
And so what it is is, that what you really are is even beyond being a human being.
So what you are is you are like,
pure consciousness, pure energy, and you never were born and you never will die.
you, the creator and the creator, this is when people talk about God, from our point of view, you are God in the sense that you can't separate the creator from the created.
I mean, it's the same thing.
mean, is it that you create your own reality?
oh
Not real not in the way that I believe you're saying it it's that Something did create you Okay, there is a so we definitely say okay.
There is a creator But you can't separate the creator from what the created the creator and the create what the creator It's all the same thing so you're you're part of that and
and so to me the human suffering and the different religions teach it in different ways, but
All human suffering is directly or indirectly caused by one's feeling alienated, one's feeling separated.
And this is very painful and then it manifests itself in very real life.
Things, my boyfriend left me, I lost my job, how am going to pay for the rent?
Nobody loves me, whatever.
need to go to the bar for a drink.
I mean, you go down the list, but the cause of all suffering and anxiety
goes back to the same cause and that is that I don't feel full.
To some extent I don't feel full.
I feel empty.
I feel disconnected.
But actually people are disconnected from their own selves.
They don't feel themselves.
If they felt absolutely connected to the source and they felt deathless in every moment,
there would be nothing to feel sad about.
so there is a thought that spiritual pursuit is about uh finding out how to find happiness.
But one thing in my life I've learned, I find I'm saying this a lot, is that I've actually lost my interest in happiness.
That I used to, I think I originally got into this to pursue happiness and
That was a big interest of mine and I'm finding as I'm getting older that uh happiness is less and less attractive to me.
Why?
Because it's just one note?
Yeah, that's act.
That's true.
You've got it.
You're very smart.
That it's just one note.
That's what it is.
And it's a note everybody wants to hear.
But uh at the end of the day, it's just a feeling.
And being happy doesn't mean your enlightenment.
Just is a mood.
mean, happiness is a mood.
It often is a reflection of mental and emotional health.
Okay, but that is good.
No, that is good.
But that in and of itself.
So in other words,
If I'm happy, that's generally a sign that something's right, that there is uh some mental and emotional health, which is good, but in and of itself, that doesn't mean that I have
peace.
Peace and happiness are not the same thing.
I've also found that people mix up these feelings and use them interchangeably, but peace and happiness are definitely not the same thing.
In fact, you could be sad.
and have peace and you can be happy and have no peace.
They're not exactly the same.
Happiness and sadness are moods.
Having peace is not a mood.
Mmm, it and peace maybe goes back to this connection that you're talking about.
Whereas happiness is sort of like a trick that your mind can
Happiness is very passing.
Yeah, you can't you're not gonna be happy all the time Nor should you be having like, you know If you find out that you know, your spouse just got hit by a car and you felt happy
you there would be inappropriate Okay, and I've seen people do that and they thought that they were spiritually spiritually evolved.
I thought they were idiots uh You know, that's not so much.
What's you know this I mean
But you can have peace through all these different moods and the peace is that you're comfortable with yourself and you're connected.
So that's a little bit different way of looking at this.
yeah.
All right.
all right.
So you're born in Brooklyn.
You are.
Sorry, I'm known to get off on a tangent.
no, that was beautiful.
um I mean, when did you have a revelation that took you into this into seeing the universal oneness or how did you even
know what, I'll tell you something, I'll tell you some surprising, you know what?
You know when I had my revelation?
I had my revelation when I was one year old in my crib.
Yeah, yeah, and that's still with me.
It was a very interesting experience.
Of course, this is a problem that many of us suffer from is that often very early in age, you will actually have an aha moment, but it is absolutely not supported on any level.
And so you'll squash it.
and you won't let it flow.
oh You won't let it flourish because the message you're kind of given uh subtly or directly is that you're crazy.
But yet something happened when you were young that kind of gave many people this insight into something very big.
And then people are discouraged from running with that because it's not
You know can't put in the bank you can you know so you know and and the people who don't have that experience are very threatened by people who do So so from a very young age if
you have this uh you're discouraged so in my case I remember this is very interesting experience that scares the hell out of my mom when I share this with her because I give
her all the details and and the details are correct and and and and go how could you have known that
So I'm one year old, I'm in a crib and there's a party in my grandfather's house.
And you know, I was from a Jewish background and he was a very religious man.
And you he wanted to fill in the whole, you know, he, he, he, he, but it's interesting is that, the rest of the family was, I would call like a culturally Jewish.
They, you know, they did, went to synagogue on Saturday.
They,
went to the high holidays, there's this, you know, the whole thing they had to filter fish on Sundays, you know, whatever they self-identified with.
But the truth of the matter is, is that in this entire extended family, there was only one pious man, truly pious man, and that was my grandmother, my grandfather, on my mother's
side.
And I remember being in my crib, and this was probably the first memory I ever had of
a spiritual life is that I remember being very young and being in a very crowded room with many older people.
And I even can picture this even as I'm talking to you.
And in that room amongst all these people was one person who was like, he was like from another planet.
He was not like anyone else in the room.
And my attention got drawn to him.
And it was like a tunnel.
It was like a tunnel vision where it's like all these people were just like wallpaper and everything kind of just went a tunnel onto this very simple person.
And I looked at him and he looked at me with his eyes and all of a sudden the whole universe opened up.
And of course I had no context or reference point for this at this age.
Of course not.
And I couldn't even have an
intellectual context, all that I know is that something happened to me that actually kept with me till being an adult.
Makes no sense.
And so I think during my uh childhood and my upbringing, I had a little affinity for the synagogue, but it was also dissonant to me because there was something, the only thing
that was interesting to me in the synagogue is I went to Hebrew school.
I was brought up that culturally religious Jewish guy.
know, my father insists that I go to synagogue, but God was never actually spoken in our house.
It was very odd.
You know, go to synagogue every Saturday, you never heard the word God.
And nobody was really kind of connected on that to any level.
But the one interest, the thing that grabbed my attention in the synagogue was the Torah, the holy book.
Nothing else actually kind of was that interesting to me.
And I really noticed being there that um nobody else seemed to be that interested in that.
And that seemed to be the only reason to be there.
so I got...
There was a part of me that was attracted to it, but I just didn't feel that place was for me.
And there was nothing that I heard there.
There was no person who I met there that actually um was feeding me.
what I needed, but I didn't even know what I needed.
But I knew that whatever I needed wasn't on that plate for me, at least right then.
um So, okay, when you say that you saw this man with the tunnel vision in your crib and the universe opened up, what are you talking about?
Well again, it's kind of unfair because I'm not sure that there words for that experience, I would say this.
Yeah, even especially since we're on a radio show here.
So at the age of one, okay, or younger, I experienced something that
visually was like pure light and it felt like somebody took my rib cage and just just totally opened it up so even not being sophisticated on any level at that age on any level
it would be like, you know, if you're one year old and you you're in a car accident or something, I mean, it's shocking, but shocking in a good way.
It was something that was so, so shocking that it stayed with me.
But it wasn't shocking in a a a traumatic way.
was shocking in a in a way that it was difficult to live my life.
Because even
Even at a young age, if you have an experience like that, what is equal to that?
Nothing.
Whoa, so you were like trying to get a fix when you were like one and a half?
ah I think so.
Yeah, I do I do but I mean again you're you're talking about something that's very you know, it's very unsophisticated You know, I mean you're not so fit you you have an
experience and There's a sense of knowing you know, it's like, know, it's like a cat, know, the even cat nips They get high the cat's not like super intelligent.
It's not gonna go to you know Harvard Business School But it knows that if I have this thing, you know that felt very good.
So something happened to me that made me feel
more than very good and I think I spent a good part of my life unconsciously trying to replicate that.
Okay.
I mean, I think that a lot of people can probably relate to having experiences like that when they were children.
And that's something I'm interested in.
I think, well, I think we'll get around to that.
If not now, then in the future.
But after this experience, I mean, you're chasing it.
When's the next time you have an out of body experience?
Well, I think what happened to me, which again, I think this happens to a lot of people, especially in retrospect, is that as I'm developing as a person, now I'm a teenager and
I'm going to college and
What I really want deep down and I had a taste of it.
So it's kind of in my DNA is really what I want is I want to feel whole and I don't feel whole.
So I start doing all the things that people do in an attempt to be whole.
And that is I'm looking for recognition.
I'm looking to get drunk.
I'm looking to get laid.
I'm looking
to do all the things that I think are going to uh give me this sense of completion, this sense of happiness.
uh Of course, my strategy is awful and I have no idea what I'm doing.
And in fact, not only am I not getting more whole, I'm getting fooled.
I'm getting fooled because I have glimpses of it.
you know, so I get laid, so I get like a little glimpse of it or...
you know, I get high, I start using drugs and I get a glimpse of it.
But actually that makes my life more frustrating because I can't sustain that.
so this is again, later in life has brought me much compassion because I tend less to see people as being good and bad people as I see them actually all wanting the same thing and
having good or bad strategies on how to get it because we're people and we all want something.
And, and so it's understandable why somebody would
engage in behavior that's self-destructive because they're actually engaging it sometimes with the thought that it's actually going to bring them closer to this little experience
or get a glimpse of it, but they can't sustain it and it eventually destroys them.
So I think like a lot of people, when I was a young man, started getting involved in what I say is in the end, a lot of self-destructive behavior.
But I think my motivation in all those cases was that I involved myself because I thought that this would give me a taste of the infinity.
So what were you doing?
Were you just I mean normal kids stuff sleeping around smoking pot drinking?
Yeah, and No, but it was making you unhappy
I don't think it's that simple.
think that there were moments that it made me very happy and that's where you get fooled.
If it was totally unhappy, nobody would actually engage in any of behavior.
They engage in the behavior because it gives you fleeting moments of feeling full.
And so you're grabbing at what you can grab at.
so I didn't say it made That did not make me unhappy.
What I think
I realized somewhere along the line was that the strategy is not working out, that it can't sustain itself and that eventually it will destroy me.
Got it.
And I saw that at a very young age actually.
Mmm, like how old?
Well, I think the first glimpse I got at this actually, because it's not like a one...
I mean, there's a number of events that happen in your life.
I think a very big event that happened in my life was when I was...
uh Actually, it's funny how these things are connected.
I was going to the University of Maryland.
I was 19 years old.
Back then, this was before the whole computer thing.
We used to have to register for courses, you know, in person with a pencil, you know, and to show up and wait With a pencil!
Yeah, wait in line and actually sign up.
And so, you we had these prerequisites and all this, but as often was the case, you know, I was a ball player, I was a rugby player.
played the game and then we went out drinking and I got hung over and I didn't get over.
I actually, I was so hung over that I missed my time to register.
So I landed up walking, but actually it was a fun kind of fortuitous moment in my life because because I was hung over and I missed the courses I would have signed up for, I
I had to take the only course that was left, which I had no interest in.
was called a philosophy of Eastern religion.
And I only took it because I needed a philosophy course and I took whatever was left because I needed to graduate or to move ahead.
And I ended up taking this course and I almost dropped out of it, but fortunately I stuck with it.
And what this course did, the age of 19 is it
all these this new thinking in front of me that I had never ever been exposed to and that was you know the teachings of the Buddha and the Bhagavad-gita and the Upanishads and etc
etc all this like Eastern thought and it was the first time in my life that I ever like read stuff and couldn't sleep at night I kept me up all night because I go my god you know
this is actually how I see things I actually see the world like this
And this is the first time this was actually ever validated to me.
And so I found myself thinking about this all the time.
And I think that gave me the first motivation.
had that, that this was actually of all the things I did in my life, that this was going to be the most important thing in my life.
And the most important thing in my life was to actually find out why I was here.
And so that was at 19, I decided that that was the most
important job ahead of my life is to actually find out why I was put here.
And that's a lot.
And at the time, you know, I'm very politically involved.
I was in the anti-war movement.
I was around very philosophical people.
I also was a jock.
I was a ballplayer.
And so I had all these little things.
And now I had this other thing where I was into this and I was kind of on the side.
that actually got me, oddly enough, kind of got me interested in psychedelic drugs.
Now again, not a great strategy necessarily, but that intrigued me.
It's kind of a shortcut because I'm reading about these other worldly experiences that people have had through history and I want to have these too.
But obviously I don't have the self-discipline where I'm going to sit down in there and meditate for 10 years.
So think maybe I'm going to get this in a pill or in a joint or in a hit of acid.
Eastern philosophy actually got me interested in maybe I should be playing around with uh acid and mescaline.
So I started experimenting with psychedelics.
What'd take?
Whatever was in that day, mean mushrooms and mescaline and LSD and you know, I mean very, very strong stuff.
I wasn't that although I was a party guy, wasn't that interested in alcohol and things like that because that to me was just kind of a downer.
was more interested in mind expansion.
Mm-hmm.
And to me alcohol had nothing to do with mind expansion.
That was LSD.
And then I started hanging around people like that.
And so I kind of saw that as my early on interest in what I thought uh spirituality was.
And of course later on in life I realized that was ridiculous.
early on I did.
I thought this would open my eyes spiritually.
Again, I learned later that that's not true, but that was where my interest is.
This led me into uh other things.
I think the next interesting thing that happened to me is I actually fell in love with a very unpsychedelic kind of girl.
uh I was going to get married and she um dumped me.
And that, I never had experienced like heartbreak like that before.
And I thought I was spiritually developed.
Actually, I wasn't spiritually developed at all.
I mean, it's like I was really kind of deluding myself, but I wasn't developed at all.
And I was unprepared for that kind of disappointment.
And at first I even got more self-destructive.
That caused me to drink and do more drugs and to sleep around even more to kind of cover that pain.
And again, I think later in life that really helped me to be very compassionate about what motivates people's behavior and through that myself.
then, ah but after kind of like the pain wore off in that I kind of remembered, you know, a couple of years ago I was really studying Eastern religion, these teachings, and I think
that that's of more interest to me.
And I started kind of getting
And then I was in law school already at this time.
So now I'm in my early 20s and I'm in law school and I kind of was away from this Eastern philosophy and now I'm in the second, third year in law school.
And I'm like, what the hell am I doing here?
I mean, I'm like in law school, what the hell am I doing?
I mean, I'm among people who all they care about was just get a job on Wall Street and whatever life that I was.
uh
asked to participate that was not my life, that was somebody else's life.
I never wanted to be there.
I mean, what am I doing?
I'm somebody else's life.
This is not important to me.
And I found my mind kind of wandering because I said, you know what?
I'm being really put a life at hell here.
I'm living somebody else's idea of what a good life is.
This is not very important to me.
So even though I got through law school, I found I spending a lot of my spare time um
starting to do yoga.
So I was doing yoga and meditation back, you know, like in the early seventies, mid seventies.
Now it's very popular.
Back then, nobody was doing this and, and, all these famous teachers were coming from the East.
So I'd start going to the lectures at town hall.
I'd start reading books.
This was very, very interesting to me watching on TV and following along.
And, and, uh, so, you know, everybody's thinking I'm a little crazy.
I'm like, you know, I'm
23, 24 and I'm reading about these things.
So then I think I had shared this once before with you.
was walking down, I don't know if I shared the story, but was walking down 57th Street in New York one day and it was one of these things where your head is turning one direction
instead of the other and you don't realize because your neck is like swiveled 30 degrees to the left, you have one kind of life.
If your neck was in the other direction, you'd have another type of life.
So my neck was turned 30 degrees to the left as I was walking past a bookstore and this book caught my eye.
And that kind of set me in a whole other direction of my life.
There was a book, was called Kundalini, The Evolutionary Energy in Mankind.
I that's interesting.
And I walk into the store.
I'm going, okay, I started flipping through the book.
It was written by a man named Gopi Krishna and he was just talking about his personal experiences with
having this Kundalini energy uh opened up in his being.
And I started reading the book, I'm like, my God, it sounds like the guy's on an LSD trip, but he's not taking LSD.
The guy's actually sober, and this is describing very much what it felt like to be on LSD.
I'm going, what the hell is that?
So I kind of picked my interest.
Yeah, picked my interest.
I never had read anything like this.
So the next day I look in the Yellow Pages and I look up,
Kundalini just for the hell of it and sure enough there's a place in Brooklyn that's teaching Kundalini yoga.
Of course I have no idea what this is and I thought it had to do with him which of course it didn't but I land up going there and just inquiring because I never saw that word
before and they had an ashram there back then they had ashrams.
It was like a cooperative community, families and children all living in the same place and they
I knocked on the door and somebody opens the door and the guy's got like, all wearing all white and a turban and a beard.
And I'm like, whoa, what the hell is this?
You know?
my God, the guy, come on in.
We're having a class.
We're having a class in Kundalini Yoga.
Alright, so I go in.
I do this class and I was very uncomfortable and very nervous.
I'm like, who are these people and what am I doing here?
Is this a cult?
I mean, how the hell did I get here?
But I, and all at the same time, I had already been doing meditations and yoga and all this for a couple of years now.
And I come in, I do this class.
I have no idea what I walked into, but by the end of the class, I'm like high as a kite.
I'm like super, super high.
mean, just like tripping.
Yeah.
I was like tripping, but without acid.
I'm like super, super high.
I'm like, what the hell is this?
And I, uh, I've stayed with a friend's place apartment in the neighborhood and I go over, I said, Hey, you know, this is amazing.
And I got a little manual and I said, Hey, you know, I taught my friend.
said, I did this class that I'm going to give you this class.
And these people, get up like four o'clock in the morning, every morning.
They get up four o'clock and they do this yoga meditation.
I'm gonna do that.
I'm gonna get up tomorrow four o'clock in the morning.
And which I did, and I did that every day for probably the next 15 years.
And so I was on my way and I didn't really realize that.
But of all the things that I practiced, and again this gets back to what we were talking about before, is that
I really, my goal at this point in my life was very different than most of my friends.
My goal in my life was again to experience the heavens and to actually understand the purpose of life.
Most of my friends were just wanting to find a job.
I actually wanted to know what the purpose of life was and I felt actually everything I do in school was a bummer because
It really at that point in my life I didn't see where the whole thing fit in and I just wanted to know why Why would I even be on this planet and and all of a sudden I took this
class and now I'm doing this every day and I'm getting Incredible experience of myself that I I never had really experienced before and I'm doing you know what I I think I'm
actually I I got I'm on the I'm on the I go ahead and say like the dog you're on the trail I'm on the trail here.
I got I got a scent
I got a scent, actually on the trail here and I got to keep going.
But I was really scared because I shit, this is going to really complicate my life here because I got a very normal life.
I'm going to law school, I got a girlfriend, I got a family.
And now I'm hanging out with these people with turbans and beards and dripping.
And that's how I felt.
I I was high all of the time.
All the time.
And then I saw I was like between two different worlds here for a while.
And then I started desperately trying to find another way to do this because I'm thinking, you know, if I actually continue on this path, it's going to make my life very, very
complicated.
You're like a closeted, enlightened guy.
Well, I would hardly call myself enlightened, but but I was I think a closeted aspirant.
I was somebody who aspired.
I was somebody who aspired to live the spiritual life, but that was not going to be socially acceptable or desirable in any of the circles that I was in, except for this
secret world.
So I was living in like a secret world.
I'd go to law school by
And at night I'd be hanging out with these people with turbans and beards meditating, you know, so I had this like double life and and and I still hadn't given up my life of going
out and partying and have girlfriends So I almost had three lives.
So this was yeah.
Well, I was I was able to put all this together Of course, you can't do that forever.
But for a while I did and I think for the next couple years I tried to negotiate Doing that
And then also I was frantically trying to find the same experience in something closer to the tradition I was born into because I knew that, I mean this would make my life very,
very complicated and I was trying to do this on my own terms.
But I never was able to quite do it on my own terms.
It just didn't work out and it was almost like I was meant to be there.
A year later I actually met the man
who
was to be my spiritual teacher.
I was practicing this.
This is what he had brought from India, but I actually didn't meet him for a year and I was kind of scared about doing that.
But about a year later I met him for the first time.
Telling somebody this the other day, actually on a blind date of all things.
Yeah, I actually brought a bunch.
He was teaching a course, actually brought a blind date to the, my God, I think back on that.
It's too funny.
I mean, she was in shock.
mean, it's not where you bring a blind date.
But he was there and that he walked into the room and my life was about to change.
And it changed very, very fast.
And I didn't, his man named Yogi Budgen and uh I immediately I didn't like him and anything did not like him at all.
and uh
And I didn't understand most of what he was talking about and the little I understood I totally disagreed with.
And so I'm feeling very put off by him but I found the most disturbing thing was even as I'm saying to myself, I really don't like this guy, I don't agree with anything he's
saying, I'm also saying to myself, whatever this guy's eating for breakfast, that's what I need to be eating for breakfast because
And I scared myself because here's somebody who my initial reaction, him is very, I'm very intimidated.
I'm very put off by him.
And at the same time I'm saying to myself, that is the first man I ever met in my life.
He's walking the talk.
That's the real thing.
And what I want in my life is I want to be like him.
Even as I'm saying to myself, I gotta get away from this guy.
I'm saying to myself,
That's who I want to be.
I want to be like him.
And I think that from that moment, that's really what I've devoted my life to be.
My life is to be not him, but to be that type of person.
So that was like a defining moment in my life when I met him in person for the first time.
I think that was the first time, even though I was going to school, I went to law school, I did all these things.
I think this was, was 25 when I met him.
and I guess maybe just turning 26.
And that was the first time in my life that I said to myself, that's what I want for my life.
What was it about him?
Boy, also tough to put in words.
I think what I liked about him was that he had all the qualities that I admired.
That he seemed like somebody who was very comfortable in his skin.
He seemed like somebody who was wise beyond words.
And he seemed to have...
on inner strength and self-confidence that I had actually never seen in my life and have yet to see.
Being in his presence, found to be very empowering.
ah That's somebody who is fearless.
That's somebody who is not afraid to speak the truth.
That's somebody who would give their life to just do what's right.
So he kind of encompassed all the things that deep down that I held dear, but was getting no support for.
And I'm going, you know what?
I said something to myself back then.
It was like crazy.
I mean, he was such an impressive guy, such an impressive guy.
But I said to myself, you know, I got two arms and two legs.
If he did it, I can do that.
And I said, it's not going to be easy, but if he did it, I can do that.
And so
That's what I'm going do with my life.
I'm going to live my life like he lives his life.
And so I didn't know it, but that kind of really started me down this whole road.
then, you know, it still was a while before I can really wrap my head around where I was going.
But within a couple of years, I actually took on his, he was a Sikh himself.
It was his religion.
He came to the United States really to teach yoga and meditation.
help people better their lives wherever they were at.
I got taken in enough that I decided that I was actually gonna do with my life.
I just wanted to be like him, so I just took on what he was doing even though I didn't know what the hell I was doing.
Just, yeah, just said, he's walking, I'm just gonna walk right behind him.
Hmm.
I mean, do you think that that happens to people where they just sort of get compelled to do something?
They don't really know why, but they just keep doing it?
I've really come to feel that that's actually the best reason.
Well, you know, if it...
How do I put this?
If you're to walk into the unknown, it infers that you don't know right now anyhow.
If you knew it, wouldn't be called the unknown.
I think this was also uh part of my walk into becoming, really trusting my intuition.
that I wasn't really raised to trust my intuition.
I was raised to believe in what my head was telling me.
But as I learned along the way is that if you do that, you become very confused.
And many of the answers are really not between your ears anyhow.
I'm not discounting it.
I mean, there are things that are important that are between your ears, but most of the important decisions in life are made in your heart, not in your head.
And so I, and I'm not even talking about emotional, I'm just talking in your, just trust yourself that you're, there's a voice inside of you that most people are disconnected from
and I was because you're just listening so hard to what's going on between your ears.
And I think what happened back then was a very strong thing for me is that everything in my head was telling me no.
And it was screaming at me no.
But there was a of me that was very peaceful part of me that's going, know, this is it.
I was born to do this and uh I'm not going listen to my head.
I'm actually going to listen to my heart.
My heart tells me that uh I was born to do this and I'm not going look back.
Hmm.
So you just kept on.
I just kept on and then it put me through every test.
And as it turned out, I was right because actually this path is nothing like what I thought it would be.
It's totally different.
And when I started out on it, I just was looking at it from the perspective of somebody who was absolutely new.
And so most of my opinions were worthless.
I mean, my factual, my intellectual opinions were virtually worthless.
Because I had no idea what it would be actually, you know, you have to walk it to know it.
I mean, you can't read it in a book and you can't figure it out.
And so I trusted that.
What it really came down to is the other thing is I learned to trust myself.
It's like nobody forced me to do anything.
So I really trusted this guy.
But at the end of the day, wasn't him who I trusted.
I trusted my own judgment.
I trusted that
I trusted that I, if I trusted this person, I trusted that my judgment was not wrong.
And there's been many times along the way over the last 40 years that everything around me was screaming, pulling me in another direction, but there's something inside of me that
just goes, you know, just keep on walking.
And I wouldn't have had what I had in my life unless I kept on walking.
Yeah.
So that's what this path is about too.
Alright.
Well, Hari Nam, this has been a great introduction to who you are.
I think we're gonna go on a long journey here, but it's gonna be beautiful.
it is a very long journey and it was nice that we could talk a little bit about how it started.
it really starts the message really that I share with people is that it's like that Chinese saying, what do they say?
The uh journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step.
so I think whatever it is in life that uh
You have to have a certain trust in yourself that where you're walking is the right direction.
You just got to keep on walking, find out what's along the way.
Yeah, yeah.
What do think it is that compels people forward?
It's, you know, I'm a big believer in this whole kiss thing.
Keep it simple, stupid.
That, it's, it's the same for everybody.
People are people.
And I think what compels people is the same thing is that what people want is not complicated.
What people want at the end of the day is they want to feel full.
They want to feel, you know, that's like the best, one of the best words in the English language is fulfillment.
So really,
That's what people want more than anything.
They want to feel fulfillment.
They want to feel full.
That's why they do anything.
That's why they get married.
That's why they have children.
That's why they have a certain career.
They have a mission in life.
They want to feel fulfilled and they have various strategies they think that are going to get them there.
I think that people keep on going because it's something, there's some kind of
feeling or evidence or whatever is that if I keep walking, this is going to take me towards the day that I'm actually going to feel that fulfillment.
And let's hope they made the right decision because sometimes people make horribly misguided uh decisions about that.
But I think that the thing that keeps people keeping on going is, that there is uh a belief inside or maybe they got a taste of something to make them feel like
If I don't get distracted, if I keep walking, then this life will promise me the fulfillment.
Hmm.
So I have one final question for today.
Are you tripping right now?
Compared to what?
That's actually your answer.
All right.
Yeah, compared to what?
Tripping compared to what?
Because you know, even your question, you know, it's good that people think about these things.
So if you were feeling kind of empty and somebody gave you a pill and you were flying through the sky, you'd say you were high.
But if you were flying, right, but if you were flying through the sky all the time, would you actually be high?
Right.
You know what saying?
So I would say this is that I believe that my experience of my being is such that um I've come to just...
uh
just expect
certain experience that if somebody else would just plunked in their body, if they were to plunk their head into my skull, you know, they'd probably have a nervous breakdown.
Hahaha!
You know I'm saying it would be they couldn't hate I mean But it's just normal because this is just how I am all the time, right?
But that doesn't mean that I don't have up and down days.
It just means that on a vibrational level
you're just intuiting a lot more information.
even intuiting this, it's all about frequency.
It's about frequency.
The average person is operating on a very low frequency and then if you do something in your life that just puts you harmonizing on another frequency, you just get used to just
dealing on that frequency.
That's the frequency that you're playing the game at.
so you don't feel like
maybe the highness that you're talking about because that's just your normal way of being.
Got it.
So to kind of answer your question, I guess, yeah, I probably am very high now, but this is just, but it's compared to a lot.
I mean, I feel pretty much the same as I did this morning, you know, and this morning I feel pretty much the same as it is yesterday.
So that's my normal way of being.
But I think that a person who is, is aligned with their soul,
is just vibrating at a higher frequency and it is a very good way to live.
All right, well, we're gonna find out more about this frequency.
Maybe, yeah.
Maybe we'll be able to hear it, hopefully.
Well sure, as we go forward also, I hope to, instead of only talking stuff philosophically, I really hope that I'll be able to actually even share things that people
will be able to use in their home to actually increase, higher the level of their own freedom.
That's it.
Okay, sounds good.
The music in today's show is by Auntie Depressant.
Follow Hari Nam, your spiritual guide, at HariNam11 on Twitter and on Facebook.
That's H-A-R-I-N-A-M 11.
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Forgot the ways in the distant past, you shaved I tried and it says so
Hmm, stinky.