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This podcast series is a presentation of challenging and irreverent conversations on wisdom, courage and common sense; for the most part taking place between renown spiritual teacher Hari Nam Singh Khalsa and respected author and translator Gurpyare Singh. These light-hearted, spontaneous and unpredictable conversations about everyday life inevitably provide a platform to explore the depths of human nature and human destiny. In particular, it is the intention of this series to introduce our listeners to the value of the Khalsa Spiritual Path and its Code of Conduct, the Rehit Maryada, as created by Guru Gobind Singh, the legendary 10th Master of Sikh Dharma.
you
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Yes.
Yes, I think it's Candomblé.
I think that's what it is.
I think it's Candomblé.
it's it's a four, it's like voodoo, but they speak African languages.
Yeah, it's African language in Brazil, but it's, and they have African gods.
It's a whole nother thing.
It's based on the animal's soul.
That's right.
It's based on we're looking on Google.
It's based on Ken Dobly, right?
Yeah.
So I was in I was in Bahia.
This is my this is my experience with Ken Dobly because my my only experience was with it
was either Black Orpheus the movie or reading in my Lonely Planet guidebook.
Right.
Yeah.
But I'm in Bahia and things you know it's kind of things that it's kind of shit that
happens in my life.
I'm in Bahia.
And uh I'm doing some tourist stuff.
And this woman comes up to me and she's going, how would you like to go to a Candomblé?
ceremony.
So I knew from my guidebook, this is gonna be like wild.
Yeah.
I'm thinking, well, where is it gonna be?
Because, you know, also from my guidebook, I knew in Bahia that there are neighborhoods
and favelas that you wouldn't want to go by yourself.
That, you know, that I read the news reports.
But she goes, oh you'll be okay.
We'll get somebody to take care of you.
rest is shared, problem.
I had a hotel room, I'm going to leave my wallet back there anyhow, just in case.
And yeah, they took me into the favela and there were no even police officers there.
Nobody would actually go in there from the outside.
it was like actually visiting another world.
I've never, I've been to lot of crazy places, but I had never been, maybe it's like what
you were talking about in Nairobi, but this was like a crazy isolated place where
Tourists would never go when the sun came down as I said, there were no even police
officers Police officers wouldn't go there and when we got out of the car they actually
had a have Surround me with people just to make sure that I was gonna be okay.
So I was thinking well, you know I'm gonna experience this and get home or not I had this
this way I wanted to see what it was.
It was very interesting because when I went into the
When I went into the room where they were having the ceremony, they had this like altar in
the middle and then the people were like going around in circles.
And since I had some familiarity reading about it and seeing in the movies, I was kind of
expecting what was going to happen.
And sure enough, you know, they were saying things in African and there was these African
animal spirits.
And the next thing you know, the people are starting to go into convulsions.
and the like possessed and I'm sitting on the outside and this was interesting.
The couple things that were really interesting is that as I'm sitting there it was very
hot there so the ceremony was in room but people who were not in the room were looking in
at the room from the outside but most of the interest actually I think was directed at me.
eh
Because they've seen this ceremony before, but most of them probably have never seen
anybody look like me.
So it like somebody from outer space actually just got landed in their ceremony.
So it was like they were looking at me as part of the show and everybody, know, all the
windows were filled with people like leaning in, just trying to get a look at me.
And I'm dressed, I was dressed like I am now.
I was dressed very well, white, very dressed nicely, turban, the whole thing.
So everybody's like looking at me and saying, who is this guy?
And then I'm trying to figure out what the ceremony was.
It was really strange because people like smoking, I mean, the people who are leading it
were like smoking these big cigarettes.
No, there wasn't marijuana.
That was tobacco.
Okay.
I know the difference.
Or I remember the...
I lived through the six...
So they these big tobacco things and they're puffing away and they're puffing away on
these big tobacco things, screaming out these African things for these animal spirits.
The people is going into like convulsions and there's an altar in the middle.
Now, this gets back to organized religion is that I've been around enough organized
religion to know one thing.
If there is an altar in the middle of this room that they're going around, sooner
or later they're going to put food on this altar.
Because it's always like the sacred food.
Always.
It doesn't matter what religion is.
So I'm just kind of waiting.
I don't know the ceremony, but sooner or later there's going to be a plate of something on
that altar.
And I'm getting nervous because I'm a vegetarian and I don't know what the hell is going
to be on this plate.
know sooner or later there's going to be something on that.
There's going to be food there and I don't know.
And I'm sitting there and they don't speak English and I don't want to be killed out of...
lack of respect.
So I don't know what's coming forward.
So sure enough, now it's at the point where it's getting very steamy and everybody's in
convulsions and there's all kinds of uh these primal shouts and sure enough out of the
back door comes this big plate of steamy something.
I don't have any idea what it was, but it was like, I have no idea what was, but it was
like very slimy and green and yellow and it's steamy.
and they put it on the altar and I'm thinking, my God, you know, they're to be bringing
this around because this what they do in all the religious things.
They'll bring it around to the congregation.
That's what people do.
So I'm kind of already thinking I'm looking for maybe there's a dog or something, you
know, there's some way that I'm already, I'm already losing interest in the, I'm losing
interest in the ceremony.
My intention is what's going to happen with this food.
And so they bring this steamy something.
Sure enough, I'm right.
Because, you know, we go to Gidwara, it's like the Prashad, right?
So in the Sikh ceremony, they have like, you know, at the end of service, they have this
uh tasty little like saag halva, you know.
So this what they were doing.
But I don't have any idea what was in this thing.
And they're bringing it around and there were no dogs to feed.
mean, basically I'm.
Everybody's watching, everybody's watching me.
And, you know, it's the kind of thing.
This is like sacred food.
Yeah, yeah, you can't
I just said to myself, you know, I'm just going to, I'm just going to eat it.
Yeah.
I mean, it's like, I'm going to eat it and deal with it.
I don't know what it is.
I don't know if it's meat or fish or vegetable.
I've never smelled anything like this.
I've never seen anything like it was like, I have no idea what this is.
So they give it to me and, um, and I eat it.
I can't tell you guys.
have no, I've never anything like it.
doesn't didn't taste like anything.
I actually still didn't know whether it was meat or fish or
vegetables.
It was just slimy.
It was slimy.
And I said to myself, you know, I'm not going to, I'm not going to get dramatic about
here.
You know, eventually get back to the hotel and if I have to go to the hospital, deal with
it.
You know, I'm sure they'll have something.
They'll pump my stomach or, know, I'll, you know, I'll have a, I'll have a violent
reaction, but I'll survive it.
Maybe I'll take a took of that, that piper.
the pipe.
you know, but no, I went to no, I stayed for the ceremony, went back and I didn't sleep
that night because I thought for sure I'd be making a trip to the hospital.
But that never happened.
And that was my little
There's an interesting story.
There's an interesting story.
In terms of the convulsions, what was that like?
And do feel that it was the collective energy in the room helped other people convulse?
Did it help you also?
He didn't convulse, okay.
What about later?
That would have been the food.
had no...
You know, it's funny because I had um no inclination to be convulsing.
I wasn't part of that.
But I found myself uh kind of getting in the spirit of it.
And I felt like, you know, I try to show it respect.
I try to vibe with it.
But I didn't come close to convulsing.
uh
Yeah, very very interesting and I think I don't people were faking it.
I people were definitely commulsing.
Yeah
yeah.
Well, I, and that's probably the entire point of getting together too, is that convulsion.
Because I think that that's where you start to let go of some of your inhibitions and you
start to resonate at the frequency that, uh, that you, you show up to resonate that like
that you, come there specifically to get there and then you try to figure out how to get
there always, of course, sort of.
the convulsions.
This brings up a subject we're always talking about.
But to me, did not um consider that necessarily congruent with my views of spirituality,
though.
Whatever they were doing, I think, or just in a limited way, I thought that definitely
these people were communicating and experiencing kind of like a farther reaching reality
than just like
a to 5 job.
They were kind of out of that paradigm eh and they were experiencing something but um from
my definition of what spirituality is that was actually fairly, and I'm not criticizing it
because I don't know whether they were practicing it at its depth but just to me just
having that experience and having convulsions is not the purpose of life.
Yeah.
I mean, when I was younger, I think that would have been very intriguing, but I, I, that
didn't hold much interest for me at all.
And I saw, again, it always comes back to the same thing.
I was looking at the people involved, especially the people who are leading this.
Right.
And they did not actually come off as being any more evolved than anyone else I would meet
on the street, except the only big difference is they had convulsions and they were good
at this, but
Perhaps that was the sign of a spiritual evolution in that community is your ability to
convulse.
Can you, you can't convulse?
I'm sorry.
One day, one day we'll get there.
I think that was definitely the message there.
That was definitely the message that your ability to convulse was somehow tied into your
level of uh consciousness.
you
And so I didn't really see that as that important to me.
But I mean, it's valuable in that the people sort of have transcended just ordinary
reality, especially living in a place that's so harsh on a physical level.
Yeah, You know, I often think about some of these cultures and their cultural practices
that are spiritual in nature and have evolved through sets of practices and people and
institutions that have organically formed.
what that set of practices that have been, let's say, codified into some form of religion,
you know, there's an essence there.
It's either started out or had some aspiration to guide its people towards enlightenment.
ah What is to become of those sets of practices and rituals as it evolves towards a higher
plane, towards...
a new set of rituals and practices and how do people let go of the old and then take on
the new and what is that process that perhaps it comes about with like an inspirational
leader from within or does it come from outside?
What are your thoughts about that?
How do we bring a new culture to old practices and rituals?
You got a new interviewer here.
What do you think?
Shit!
I didn't even know we were recording.
Where am I?
My name is Zaravar Dhaliwal.
Zaravar Singh Dhaliwal.
I guess he's buddies with Harinam and a fellow Sikh and follower of some sort of light
that will hopefully get us to consciousness.
But yeah, guess Harinam, we've known each other for a couple of years now.
Just through these mean streets of New York.
Cool.
Yeah, I'm excited to have you here.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you.
This is great.
All right.
So incremental change.
How does it occur?
I mean, I think this is interesting that we're having this conversation today.
I don't know if you guys were watching the conclave coverage earlier today.
So funny.
It's been why would anybody watch soap operas?
I mean when you got like
it up.
And I haven't had bombons with me.
I think that's an interesting point though, because I mean, so much of our frustration
with religion is how unadaptable it is.
And it's like, why are we doing, why are we doing these things?
They don't make sense.
And some of it does make sense.
some of it is supposed, maybe not supposed to be codified, but it just is.
It's just how things are.
mean, I think you look at any group of people and there's like a certain barrier to entry
and that's knowing the code, that's knowing the language and maybe that's.
why it's there so that you can spend, you have to spend some time with it in order to get
to know it.
But, you know, it's everybody I think is also frustrated by that at the same time.
They want things that are relevant to their current situation, things that are realistic.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, we talk a lot about religion, me and him.
He's had, and Zorav has had a influence on my thinking, because he's very uh intelligent
and visionary.
So he says stuff, I listen, I think about it.
And so there's things he said over the last couple of years that I've known him that have,
if nothing else, motivated me to think about things that I'm involved with.
That's helpful.
But yeah, like watching the Conclave because I'm always, it's all helpful because I can,
there's always something there that will give me pause to reflect on what I'm doing and
whether I'm a zombie.
Mm.
Yeah.
I mean, that was the funny thing about watching it was like, if you, you know, if you
didn't think of it as this, as, um, Christianity and you thought of it as something else,
like something more sinister, maybe, or, know, just depending on your perspective, it's
very strange.
Like it's all these guys wearing the same outfit and the number of buttons is symbolic and
it's number 33 and it's like,
These things are scary to people.
I learned that.
That's when Jesus died.
So it's an honor of oh that or an honor of Jesus' life, depending on how
who dreamed this stuff up.
Jesus didn't say when I die I want everybody with 33 buttons.
Somebody cooked that up.
Even the whole thing with the celibacy, mean, don't think he ever said anything about it.
Well, that's, mean, and here you go.
Like these are reformations upon something else.
mean, all things that had to be decided over time and that have been implemented.
Yeah.
Well, I think the interesting thing about the conclave, mean, here is none of us are
Catholics here.
We're all talking about Catholicism.
Are you Catholic?
No, I get yeah, I to Catholic high school right so and I won the theology award myself
Old testament, new testament, I've got it all covered.
One of the things that I think is difficult in the institutionalized religion is that it's
kind of been my observation and not always but very often the people running it the people
in the top positions are not by any stretch of the imagination the most evolved people or
the most even the most inspired people they're often the people who are been determined to
be the best team players
that they're a team player, that this is the system and you're totally sold into the team.
This is our team and you are totally sold into the rules of the team.
so we can trust you.
So these are the rules.
You have agreed to those rules at a very high level of commitment.
So we can entrust this to you because you're not going to undermine our game here.
Hmm.
you see, I mean, I think anybody would say that about their boss too.
Or their president, yeah.
And at the end of the day, a religion is like a government or a company, it's an
institution with a leadership structure and uh set of practices and procedures and goals.
That makes sense.
people who get into the leadership also often get in there very similarly how people get
to the top in corporations and the government as well.
of the things that I was really interested in, I think it in New York Times, really
interesting thing they were talking about this conclave was that they were saying that,
you know, there were many, I mean, there's, guess, hundreds of people who technically
could be appointed the Pope.
Any carnal but it's it's kind of like funny is that unlike in politics Nobody actually
wants to admit That they want to be the Pope, but there's certainly people who do want to
be that that would be absolutely Insane to suggest that that you know So in other words,
it's a lie to begin with because everybody is kind of just saying okay It's God's will and
will accept it.
Well
know, there may be people like that, but there's definitely people who want to be the
Pope.
Yeah, that's what I wonder about is like, what's it like behind the scenes?
Like what house of cards style plotting is going on?
I mean there's a lot of alliances and stuff like that, but I don't think anybody's
actually admitting, hey, elect me the pope.
I mean that wouldn't be humble enough.
Like to be the Pope you gotta be humble.
That's right.
Or like any religious leader for that matter.
It's the virtue of that role is, this individual is realized, they're humble, they're
conscientious, they're giving.
boy, would be sure refreshing to hear somebody just say, I'd like to be the Pope.
To be honest, would be refreshing just straight up.
Yeah, no, like, let's forget all this.
I actually would like to be the Pope.
Even if you don't want to make me the Pope, I'd like to be the Pope.
At least that's an honest man there.
What if you had to like campaign and then run to be a pope and then like you had like a
social media strategy and
But I think they do campaign.
think they campaign in their own way.
Yeah, yeah.
Sure, they probably do.
mean, it's just like any other organization.
So bizarre.
Yeah, yeah.
So bizarre.
Yeah, we always get back to it, but it's a very interesting organization.
Yeah.
Do you, I don't know if this is a, I guess this whole thing is controversial, but do you
think that there may be a younger, slightly more outspoken and vocal pope that's put in
place?
I was wondering if now we're moving to...
a day and age where the level of discussion, you know, it's traditionally been around
these, the presidents and heads of states at the highest levels.
And then you have the UN and the G20 and G7, et cetera, et cetera.
Do we foresee a time and place now where it's going to be the Pope and then the heads of
the Islamic Church and the head of the Sikh Church and the head of X, Y, and Z all coming
together and saying, okay, well, look, this is what we think.
And, you know, this is our stance.
Because if we think about it, how do we amalgamate, let's say, people?
Okay, well there's countries and then there's communities and then there's religion.
And this is one of the highest levels of organization we have and actually one of the
deepest.
What happens when you're born?
You're baptized.
You're brought into your faith from a very early age.
It's actually like they've penetrated the ah human development right at its core.
And I think it's because it's one of the oldest institutions, if not the oldest type of
institution.
And so they say, okay, well, how do we, how do we get them early?
And, uh, you know, not in a negative way, certainly.
don't know.
This is just like the way it is sort of way.
Yeah, I mean, it's for some people who have never tried to unwind their identity.
It's just, I mean, it's just there with so many other things.
I mean, I've, you know, I think people inherit their parents' political persuasion too,
the same way.
I actually think there's evidence that there's kind of a revolution taking place, but it's
going to happen from underneath, not from up top.
Because the people up top, think, are very bought into this.
um They're in control of something.
I don't think they get addicted to being in control.
So their control of something really is dictated.
in the continuity of this illusion that somehow what we're doing is better as special.
uh So there's something that I can identify and I can be the head of it.
And, and I think that it's almost like a gang and you know, I'm the head of the gang, but
if like all the gangs in New York decided that,
You know, we're really at the end of the day, we're not individual gang members.
We're all a member of the same gang.
We're all brothers.
Then all the people who are heading all the gangs would lose all their prestige.
Because they're getting their prestige and division, not in unity.
So I'm not actually looking for much leadership in this from the leadership.
I just think that people are getting smarter.
and I think what happened, I, it's in a way, I mean, I, I'm not happy with what happened
to the victims, but one of the good things that came out of this whole sex abuse scandal
in the Catholic church is that it kind of busted this illusion that somehow the priests
were more involved than the people in the pews.
It busted, in fact, you know, probably a lot less.
So, and then even after it's over, they're still trying to convince the people that
somehow they have some special
higher role but then their behavior is so off the charts that you people are just not that
stupid and they're going wait a minute wait a minute if they're so evolved if they're kind
of the gatekeepers to the divine no no that kid that doesn't make any sense look what
they're doing no the whole thing and and so I think it's good that people just question
these things
Yeah, yeah.
I often wonder if uh religion, especially, well, the smart ones that think about the
trends of where their followership is going, if they're concerned.
Because I feel that, let's say if we take the United States or North America, let's just
say US and Canada for that matter, as the countries develop, if people move into cities, I
think they have less and less time for religion.
I personally think that people are moving away from religion.
think it's going to be, um know, people will try to find other means to become connected
to spirituality.
people now are, know, meditation is taking off in places like New York and obviously yoga
has really, ah we've talked about this right now, mean, yoga has really taken off over
last five, 10 years and, you know, there are all sort of progressive steps towards, okay,
breathing.
okay, understanding, okay, how I can activate deeper components of my mind, my
subconscious, my conscious, and start to align them and tune them to a frequency.
And so people are realizing, oh, wait a minute, I can actually just do this on my own.
Oh, wait, it actually feels good not to eat a hamburger.
I feel better about myself or I have more energy.
And I think people are starting to find that without the church.
See, it's funny that he's here because we often have this conversation.
It's funny.
I have learned from him that I've been influenced and hopefully I've said some things that
maybe he's got to think about.
Now, I actually, it's funny we're having this conversation.
Now we're talking a lot about the institutionalized religion, but I myself am a minister.
Right!
And, and, I am now this is the, this is the paradox.
See, I'm talking about all this stuff, but I myself am a minister and I am an unabashed
believer in religion.
Okay.
So it sounds paradoxical, but I actually think the problem is not religion.
The problem is that religion has been hijacked.
Right.
It's the organization.
mean, I think that the three of us can safely say that we are believers in something and
we, there, you know, mean, the basic tenets of religion to do good to other people, do
good to yourself and kind of realize that there's more to it than what you
I think it's beyond that.
think it's beyond that.
Like take the Sikh faith.
So, you know, we've talked about, there's many personages in the history of the Sikhs,
but, you know, we always talk about, uh I have a particular affinity for the 10th master
in the Sikh lineage, is Guru Gobind Singh.
And Guru Gobind Singh really kind of laid, I mean, of anybody, actually laid out the
institution.
of what this is.
He kind of laid out what it is to be a Sikh.
He laid out what it looks like, what you do, how you look, how you dress, how you eat.
mean, so it's actually a fairly clear recipe.
It's not just about higher ideals.
It's actually, he kind of actually put it into a
to practice.
It's a particular practice, a particular form.
It's actually pretty clear.
Okay.
I don't think it's one of these philosophical things.
He actually created a whole code of conduct around it.
Okay.
So that to me is the religion.
All right.
And I actually believe this is very powerful and I do not believe that we're, we're at
least right now in humanity.
that a person can replicate that experience just by their own personal spiritual practice.
I don't believe that.
I think that this is very, very powerful.
need to come to a community and connect with other people and you also have to have a no.
No, they actually have a uh clear roadmap of this is the technology.
This is what it looks like.
This is what I do.
This what I get up in the morning.
This is how I dress.
This is how I eat.
This is what the sacred scripture is.
This is the name of God.
I mean, it's all kind of laid out.
So you don't need to go to quote unquote church.
I mean, once you have the technology or the practice, can you do it on your own?
I think, well, again, I'm talking about the Sikh faith, is that they have gurdwaras or
temples.
And I think that the idea when they were first created was this was going to be a very
sacred, I'm sorry, that's God calling it.
Unless it said something incorrect here.
Send him to Voice Films, problem.
You can always reach him.
Yeah, I think that these formulas are very powerful.
They're like code.
I like code.
so somebody's experienced something, not just the seek life.
mean, I have respect for all the paths.
Somebody's got a code.
And if you kind of hooked into that code.
then you're on that highway.
And I think that's really what the religion is.
Now, I think the problem is, that it's gotten, I think we're actually coming out of fairly
dark age of consciousness.
And so I think what happened is that I think these religions were very inspired and
exalted, but they have been kind of exploited and manipulated and taken over.
And what they are now is actually not at all what they were envisioned to be by the people
who created them.
In fact, and I think we've talked about this in other talks, to me, there's only two
legitimate reasons for religion, okay?
Other than, you know, day to day life, but in far as as a person, the two reasons for
religion...
is to give you a code that you can be the best you can be as a functioning human being in
this society.
And the second reason for religion is that in this lifetime that you can experience the
infinity.
That's it.
Those, no matter what path it is, that is the reason for religion.
And I think that if you go back in the history, that is the reason for every religious
path.
If it goes back to its inception, but very quickly that often the founder dies and without
within before the body's even cold, it's already starting to get screwed with.
so people start using it for their own.
I mean, I mean, even, you know, we had in the early sixties in the south of the United
States, you know, people who were like uh Southern Baptists and they, was, and you know,
they had like segregated churches.
And you know, people are getting this like half cooked idea that supposedly God prefers
like white skin people to dark skin people that, um you know, it's all this kind of crazy
thinking and they actually use, they use the religion to justify their, their lower
behavior.
It's not anything exalted.
It's actually they're using religion to, to, to just justify anything they're doing.
Yeah, I guess so.
I think maybe we need to clarify terms because when you're talking about a technology and
a code of conduct, maybe we'll call that organized religion because there's something
organized around it.
But I guess what I see as uh a major failure of religion is the bureaucratic organization.
mean, it's sort of like religion has been franchised out and that uh there's a hierarchy
that sends out
initiatives.
it's just like a corporation.
And anybody who's worked for a corporation knows how bureaucracy fucks things up.
it's, mean, it does some things.
It distributes money really well, but it doesn't necessarily distribute messages very
well.
And it also leaves middle managers to their own devices.
You know, a lot of money disappears, a lot of shit goes, goes wrong.
In absence of religion, don't see where in our current societal systems where we're taught
a set of values or ah sort of this path to enlightenment.
so religion, organized religion, appears to have a function in my mind or a purpose that
is not really met through other institutions that we currently have.
Not to say that it couldn't be.
but in our current institutional framework it's not.
tend to think, you know, the set of, uh whether it's the Sikh faith or any other organized
or even disorganized religion, or organized, depends on how you want to look at it, um at
some point, you you sort of take this set of practices and you like throw someone in the
direction of God.
um
And at some point though, gotta like land and then walk the rest of the way there yourself
because like religion can point you to the light and then even like pushed you along, you
know, let's say doing bhajmani and dhipat, you know, every morning you wake up, you're
doing a repetitive prayer, same with Islam, you do five prayers a day.
And now, you know, it's been shown to our subconscious and conscious mind prayers.
very important.
It essentially is a form of brainwashing ourselves.
And if you know the message, you're imprinting that message day in and day out.
And if the message is be good, give, work hard, then that then becomes imprinted on your
subconscious, then your conscious, and then your day-to-day actions, and then your life.
It's sort of that whole, aah that sequence.
And so that's important.
then at some point you ...
if you're just saying okay you know like I'm I'm of this religion I'm about this faith
that I know in my personal view you haven't reached it yet because you're still looking
very narrowly to say okay wait this is this is what I am and who I am when you're this
then you're not something else and I think that what supersedes religion is then the
species itself like understanding okay we're we're of a of a a mankind we're of a certain
type of organism that
perhaps has an ability to attain consciousness.
I don't know if that exists in other animals or not.
And I guess what is consciousness too?
It's so poetic.
uh You read like Rumi Mandalev and you read some of these other...
ah Even in Garbani, the poetry behind what the infinite is, it's so beautiful.
It's almost unattainably beautiful.
It's like, wow, how do I ever live that?
But I wonder if it's like if we just work backwards and like it's just eternal bliss.
It's kind of like walking around with a smile on your face always.
And I think like, wow, that guy's pretty conscious probably because he's like, oh, he's
happy.
And he's not hopped up on something to get there.
You know what I mean?
You're just like naturally happy.
uh then you're just like, something we talked a little bit about today is like, okay,
you're happy now you want to make everyone else happy.
Okay, that becomes like the next objective.
And in your happiness, you learn how to channel a tremendous amount of energy.
And you become a repository with like your practices, your breathing habits, your dietary
habits, which, in religion is codified.
It's like, you don't do this.
But like when you're living that lifestyle, it's like, it's not that you don't do this.
It's that you prefer to do something else.
It's like, I feel like sometimes the old carrot and stick like religion will give you this
stick.
when it's actually all about the carrot, you just like, I want that.
I want to be energized always.
I want to be happy always.
I want everyone around me to be happy and energized always.
And then you just become like this deep, deep channel for energy.
And then, and then I think you start to seek out people who require the energy the most.
And you say, wait a minute, there, may be actually like a, like a pecking order here.
There may be some sort of hierarchy that I can find or prescribed to.
you say, okay, well this
then becomes my life's work.
Let me dedicate myself to this issue or something that's important that I feel like I can
move the needle on.
uh But I mean, I say all of these things with defining what I think it means to be
conscious.
But that could be any religion.
You could have come from Judaism and Christianity or whatever it is.
ah But I think what you can't do
is come from those and only prescribed to that because I'm not sure if you, you know, I
don't know, I don't know if you like attain the higher levels if that's like, if that's
the lens, it's like, okay, I'm like, I've only come from here, I only help these types of
people, I don't know.
I think that's what you're saying is that there when you achieve that higher place that
feeling of infinity or universal oneness there is no lens and that's the point I mean it's
seeing everything as yourself it's seeing everything as one.
Yeah.
Well, you know, all the people who have said this in history are the, you know, it's funny
because there's a lot of people in the history of the world who owned like many hotels and
cruise lines.
People who were the presidents of countries of hundreds of millions of people.
And for the most part, nobody remembers what their name is.
It's like they never were here.
And then there are people like Buddha and Guru Nanak and Christ, they represent something
that actually lasts for thousands of years because it's not even their personage.
It's like what they represented.
So that's really what people are valuing is transcendence.
They don't even know that.
these, these are the, these are the people who have legacy and somehow
You know, somehow it gets lost.
You know, it's interesting.
was in China.
I know these Buddhist temples.
They've got this like giant Buddha, like 50 feet tall.
You know, like giant Buddha.
And then they, right in front of the Buddha, they've got these like, these, uh these, like
mattresses, you know, like these foam mattresses.
And then people get on their knees and prostate and they, do like, you know, prostrate.
They prostrate, now they don't prostate.
I prostate, they prostrate.
They bow like 18 times, like to 33, you know, whatever.
They have this whole thing down, right?
And they always look like, bring gifts.
And then I kind of ask, well, you know, what are you doing?
And then, well, know, this, this, and then I'll have all this, you know, if I do this,
then Buddha will bring me prosperity and Buddha will bring me this.
And then I'm thinking, oh my God, this thing's gone like way, way out.
Because I actually have read the Buddhist teachings.
I'm not a Buddhist by self-description, but I have read the Buddhist teachings and this
has nothing to do with the Buddhist teachings.
Buddhist teachings have to do with how a person lives their life, conducts himself where
their mind is at to attain uh timeless infinity.
It has nothing to do.
There's nothing.
I've read all the Buddhist teachings.
There's nothing in the Buddhist teachings that have anything to indicate that, you know,
you should make a big, statue of me out of wood and bow down to this 17 times and pay your
mortgage, you know, and make sure that, you know, you marry the pretty girl around the
block.
What in the world?
This is what I'm saying.
There's like religion and there's religion, you So to me, the Buddha created clearly
an identifiable way of life.
this is the way that on this planet, if you follow this recipe, you will get transcendence
and you'll be everything you can be.
Somehow this got hijacked into like a very weird variation of this that, you know, again,
if you just read the Buddhist teachings and you see what actually happens in the temple is
very little to do with it.
How did that happen?
And I think that's true in almost all the faiths.
so, you know, me and Zorava talk about this and I am, I may be very stubborn, but my
inclination at this point is instead of attack, well, I do, I attack the hypocrisy of
modern institutionalized religion, but I feel it's important to fight for the real
religion.
because I don't see an alternative.
I go around the world and I teach yoga and meditation.
A lot of these people who I teach, or in my class, I want to get into this like I'm above
and below, but I go teach these things and people show up.
I get to observe things.
Like Zoravar has mentioned, it's true.
uh Especially among young people, there is a uh negativity towards religion.
And so there is, but, people love to talk in terms of quote unquote spirituality and that
religion as if they're two separate.
I see, I don't actually don't see them as being separate things, but people separate them
out as if they're two separate things.
think religion is bad.
Spirituality is good.
And then, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to meditate.
I'm to meditate.
I'm going to do yoga and that's going to qualify me as a spiritual person.
But a lot of people get mad at me because I'm just speaking honestly about
My observation, I don't actually think that people doing yoga, just yoga and meditation
are particularly evolved.
They don't.
That's my, that's my, I mean, people hate me for saying it, but to me, they're lacking
something.
And actually what they're lacking is religion.
And when I say lacking religion, I'm not coming from the point of doing some stupid
rituals or, or, or stupid hierarchy that no, no, it's kind of like they
They don't have focus in what they're doing.
There's not like, like, like Sir, I was saying, it's like have like a certain thing.
get up in the morning.
I recite this.
mean, the whole, it's like their life is not actually very, very like, like laser focused
in getting, getting through like this.
It's too disperse.
Like, okay, I'm to do yoga meditation.
Okay.
So, so you have a nice experience.
So what?
mean, so is that it?
You know what?
So we started the conversation talking about
people doing the voodoo.
And I would say what is different between people going to yoga class and meditating and
people doing voodoo?
I would say there's no difference.
Except, you know, and sometimes you see people in yoga do convulsions too.
mean, that does happen.
But, but I mean, it's the same kind of thing though.
It's kind of like people are just kind of wanting some kind of experience.
But um like, where's it going?
I find the people who just do
Yoga and meditation often are egomaniacs.
They can't recognize that there's a higher ideal at work.
In fact, it's very interesting.
There's one very dirty word, the dirtiest word that you can actually say in a yoga class.
Like if I'm teaching yoga and meditation, what do you is the dirtiest word?
The gym.
No, what do you think?
I'm teaching.
I'm teaching somewhere.
I'm teaching a class.
What is the dirtiest word I can say up there?
relax.
How about God?
Okay?
God's the dirtiest word I can say sometimes.
I'll do it just to just to earth people Because they hate it.
Yeah, so I do it.
I just do it to yank that chain
How do you invoke God in a yoga class?
I just talk God.
I'm a God guy.
I'm in a really awkward position, so I'm a god guy.
don't know about you.
Yeah, that's pretty much it.
That's pretty much it.
a god.
And I use God a lot in my classes and I just see I sit up there and watch the people.
That's actually a funny Rorschach test because it's like, what are you talking about?
Yeah, I'll do, I'll be up there and I'm teaching class and I'll just freely use the word
God as my teacher did.
And uh it's very helpful to me because all I have to do is talk about God during the class
and uh I can actually see where people are at just by how they're reacting.
I can see if that makes them angry.
I could see if that that's exactly what they want to hear.
I could see that it kind of
kind of irks their ego.
can see that there is sense of love and trust.
mean, it's very interesting that word, that word I can see, I can see whether they've had
issues with this from their childhood about organized religion.
People really kind of show themselves.
That's a very powerful word to use.
means different things to different people.
But the most important thing is, that if I'm going to be teaching spirituality, okay.
I'm actually going to use that word.
It's interesting, uh...
what affects that word God and organized religion have on people's psyche.
there's many people who have gone to religious schools in their high schools and
elementary schools.
in organized religion sometimes there's the use of oh fear, negativity to help drive
behavior.
So, okay, well do this, otherwise you're going to go here.
uh
And I feel sometimes that people um are trying to move away from that aspect of the
religion.
When you have a large number of people you're trying to control, you have to sometimes use
fear as a tactic of control or as a tool of control.
And I think that a lot of people have a lot of scar tissue around the fear that has been
created.
oh
intelligent person.
You know, they have this car tissue, whether they recognize it or not, where it comes from
or not, whether they sort of realize that they're having a visceral reaction when the word
God, which also means something else that is tied to the religion.
This is why I think it's so helpful to bring that word out.
if to me, what people really need to do is they have to confront their own issues.
So these are issues that have to be dealt with one way or the other.
So I would agree that I had that same experience when I was younger, that the people who
use that word.
The things that are represented to me were mostly negative.
Okay.
Like most people.
So, but when I got later in life, I realized is that it's not about even the word itself.
It's about where people are coming from.
So in other words, the word itself, God aside, what's most important to me is that I have
a connection with something that's bigger than myself.
All right.
And I.
am not willing to disown that because of other people's treating that disrespectfully or
with lower consciousness.
It's just how I'm dealing with it.
again, I decided that it's better to, I'd rather be leading like a revolution fighting for
ownership of that because I feel that what these, and it's not just God, mean, because
You're saying God because we're from the West.
you know, that's kind like a German, you know, it's like a German word actually, you know,
and as Yogi Bhajan would say, you know, is like generating, organizing and destroying.
That's what God is.
God is actually that generates, organizes and destroys all at the same time.
Okay.
religion or people?
Everything okay God God is that force that generates like it gives birth Organizes and and
and destroys all the same time, okay But but I'm sure that other people in other cultures
have the same issues with people using ROM or anything I mean from their childhood I mean,
but it's it's actually that the the forces that we talked about have kind of co-opted this
and what to do about that because
To me, think that the revolution ahead is going to be people wanting to gain control back
up because this is priceless.
You can't disown it.
I mean, you can't disown your connection to what created you.
And so right now there are certain forces in society that own the words.
That's actually what they've done.
They kind of like own control of the words.
You know, it's like, I get that we all, we're all into politics.
So, you know, I'll give you an example.
I was very curious.
What the Republicans did started doing about 15.
It was very, very, very well thought out plan that they decided that they're going to
control the term family values.
It's not like they had any, it's ridiculous.
I mean, it's all kind of, everybody's in a family, but they actually somehow got control
of that word.
that if you weren't a Republican that you'd actually, it's a very good example.
If you were a Democrat you'd consider family values to be a dirty word because it was
synonymous with something very unpleasant.
But that doesn't mean that you don't have family values if you're Democratic home.
You you love your family.
Family is very important to you.
But now there's a group of people that have basically co-opted that term which is a very
nice term but now they have ownership of it and they can manipulate it.
um And I think that's exactly what a lot of the institutions have done with words like
God.
It's not the word itself.
It's like they're the ones that have kind of taken ownership of something that's actually
a very beautiful thing and you just kind of use it for their own ends.
And so I can take the stance, you know what, I'm going to disassociate from that and I'm
just going to have some kind of loose spiritual personal practice of my own that I'm going
to say, screw that.
Okay, okay, screw that I'm not gonna let them I'm not gonna let them steal this is I mean
whose idea was this that there's some guy up there with like a cane and a White beard who
concocted that up.
That's like crazy thinking.
There's no I mean, that's not God.
Why would he crazy?
Did they actually and the people are like buying into this what are you out of your mind?
mean, how much of scripture though do you think was deliberately written as a parable or
as a myth?
Like it's hyperbolic that they had to personify God in order to tell a story.
I believe in those stories.
believe in, you know, it's interesting.
I believe in the parables and stories.
think they're very like, like for instance, like my favorite story in the Bible, again,
I'm not a Christian, but I read all this stuff.
To me, like the best story in the whole Bible is the story of Lot.
I think that's story.
Good, good story.
turning the salt thing.
That's great.
I mean, that's a great parable about life.
You know, basically you can't look back.
I mean, it's,
there was something, God, that's such a sad story too.
I remember being really affected by that.
Yeah, pillar of salt.
there's it's like sentimentally selfish about it too, like for her reasons for wanting to
look back.
And then she gets.
But I think that's a great parable about spiritual development is that it's I think it is
the toughest thing for a person to deal with and it's also like a paradox is that you know
have to accept yourself for who you are which includes everything you are and have been
it's just a matter of self-acceptance but if you're going for the liberation game you have
to die to yesterday.
That's what that story is about.
have to actually, you have to die yesterday because that has nothing to do with where
you're going.
It can give you some understanding where you're at, but basically the spiritual path is
going forward and you have to walk away from that.
So I think that's a great parable.
But how much I love parables and stories, I think it is a big mistake to make stories and
parables about that force that creates the universe.
because you really don't have a story for that.
See, that's what it is.
It's something that there is no story about.
There's a story about everything else, but there's no story about that.
And I think that that in the attempt to like make that guy into like the big hand with the
pointy finger and the gray beard and the cane, this is a big mistake because that's like
making God into like a human being.
And I think that I understand where that's coming from.
But you're limiting this.
It's beyond your comprehension.
So once, to me this is ego.
If you're starting to actually describe what God looks like and then you put it in a form
that's validating that you are the highest thing there is, that's the human ego.
think that none of the great teachers taught this and I would challenge even Christians
who've done this.
I don't have any problem with Christianity taught by Christ.
I've read the Bible many times.
There's nothing that I've ever written, there's nothing that I have ever read.
Nothing that I've ever read in the Bible that would indicate that God's like this guy with
a cane and a gray beard and has a pointy finger looking...
Where did that come from?
And so now people kind of get...
ah
involved with this and yeah that's great but there is nothing even in your holy book to
say that where is that coming?
I think you hit it on the head when you said the word interpretation.
and so much of this is how we internalize such abstract concepts of spirituality and so we
use parables or sohqis as we call them or like the character Osho used to use, Nullah
Masruddin, Nasruddin I think and we use these to contextualize a lesson and then pass it
forward so it's sort of early form of codification and a lot of the imagery around God
being perhaps a
with long hair or on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Now this is how people identified with their image of God back then when those images were
created and now they just happen to have
been very pervasive in our society and lived until this point where we sort of think God
and sometimes some people think of that image where it was a tool that was used at a point
in time for people to digest such abstract concepts.
I think our ability to digest these concepts has broadened over time where we don't need
to use such narrow messaging.
I think our messaging has become more abstract to, you know, to sort of
to continue to teach lessons i think but at the same time i'd be so specific and narrow to
speak to one particular audience
Well, one of things I really was touched with when I was exposed to the teachings of the
Sikh Gurus is that there was never any attempt, and I still have not seen any attempt to
try to characterize.
In fact, it's to the contrary.
It's clear that the teachings of the Guru is that you actually can't do that, that it's
beyond your...
It's beyond your human capacity to do that.
All you can do is experience it.
You can't describe it.
You can't articulate it.
But in this lifetime, you can experience it.
And this is just how you do it.
You do it this way.
And this is the recipe.
And if you do this and you're sincere about it, you'll experience it.
But I'm not even going to waste my time trying to describe to you what that experience is
because there's never been a word.
actually that can give you the experience.
There's only mantras or words that can lead you.
It's like a doorway to that experience, but it's not like a description of what it looks
like because it doesn't look like anything.
Yeah, one of the benefits I think the Sikh faith has is that it's relatively new as far as
religions go and so it's the message from the root, let's call Nanak, Guru Nanak Dev Ji
being the root of the message, has let's say...
not moved as far away from the authentic message as perhaps an older religion.
Because the longer the further back the mystic came about, then the religion itself has
been adapted through human touch that much more.
And so I think, you know, sort of thinking about when it was the 1400s when, you know,
that sort of there about, let's call it 550 years ago now when Gujranath Devji was around.
you know that that is much less than the ticket two thousand years or let's say aslam was
seven seven hundreds
Although people are still trying very hard to put their own spin.
I know but that's the thing that happens when it's because it's the religion moves from
from the message the mystic has into an institution into power structures and then into
control and so okay why you know how how many people can you control okay what's what sort
of the the imagery the messaging what can I conjure up to to command that control
So, know one of the things that's really like for instance striking in in the sea culture
I say now I'm saying the culture Is that the teachings the original teachings were very
revolutionary even?
Socially so this was hundreds of years ago.
So two of the two of the big things That the the tenants basic tenants of this particular
faith
is one is, and it's right there.
Nobody could contest that it's like right not there is that the gurus taught the equality
of men and women.
Okay.
The equality of sexism.
And this was hundreds of years ago.
Hundreds of 500 years ago.
Okay.
You can imagine that was like absolutely revolutionary.
It's still revolutionary, but it was 500 years ago.
It was, this was in a society where women were treated like cattle actually.
And now this saint is coming and said, well, your cattle is equal to you.
Okay.
That's, that's a big one.
Okay.
No, that's, that's, that's actually true.
That's how women were treated as cattle.
They were, they were just possessions.
Okay.
And, and, and, and, you know, valued possessions, but it was like a form of slavery.
And so now this same comes along and says, actually,
that not only did Guru Nanak teach the equality of men and women, but he actually, in my
own mind, actually kind of inferred the superiority of women.
That women were bringing certain qualities to the table that actually men were in need of.
That it would be very difficult for men
that it was a creation to actually suppress people in the name of religion.
This is very revolutionary thinking.
And yet, if you actually talk to people who call, many people who call themselves
religious Sikhs, you go into Sikh temples, to me the women are not treated equally.
You go even to the holiest Sikh places in India and the women can't even sing there.
They can't even, I mean they're not treated equally.
even as they're reading from the scripture, I mean it's crazy stuff.
Even as they're reading from the scripture that clearly states the equality of men and
women and clearly states the abhorrence of the chaos system, the people living in this
community still at least subtly practice the chaos system and do not treat women equally.
It's crazy stuff.
It really, it's crazy stuff.
So, and again, so it gets back to what I saying before is that I actually do believe in
the message and I'm willing to fight for it.
And if I have a problem with religion, it's the fact that people have hijacked something
that's very high ideals and they're manipulating it to justify their not so enlightened
way of living.
in the end,
It's worth fighting for because to me it's man's greatest hope.
Because it really holds the code and it holds the technology.
And just to simply just say, you know, it's just not, it's obsolete.
I actually don't agree.
On our way over here we were talking about uh the process by which to attain enlightenment
but to start moving in that direction.
We were talking about how so much of that journey is about habit change.
It's course a change in frame of thinking but also a change in day-to-day living.
Day-to-day living is largely a compilation of your habits.
One's ability to change
his or her habit I think also dictates one's ability to move in the direction of
enlightenment.
so fixed on who you are as an individual, okay, well, is, you know, every day I do this,
this, and this.
And you're not willing to change that or open to different perspectives.
think you'll have a very challenging time in moving towards enlightenment because I think
so much of that is shedding of your personality or as they call it, your ego.
uh slowly you chip away at it, chip, chip, chip, and you lose another habit, another
belief, another habit.
then soon you're sort of walking around with
with a much lighter weight ah than before.
I think that's what has drawn me to Harinam so much is that his work is not just about
going around and prophesying and saying, this is what the scriptures say.
I think he takes the essence of the scriptures and helps individuals.
during that change process, during that change journey through the therapy.
And I think that therapy is so clutch because firstly it's an honest voice.
It's a voice that you can't hear or see when you're looking in the mirror or hearing
yourself because you've got a certain lens or blinders on.
And so someone is saying, okay, let's use the tool of therapy.
but oriented towards enlightenment.
okay, let's just fix this.
you have a bad marriage.
Okay, let's fix your marriage.
No, no, no, no, The marriage is a symptom and there's an underlying issue behind it.
Now let's look at the underlying issue.
And the only way to get to the true essence of the underlying issue, I think, is if your
orientation is enlightenment.
And so if you use that to work backwards.
So I think that is, as we think about, there's one's journey towards enlightenment, and
then there's those who are trending towards enlightenment and their desire to seek global
consciousness.
And I think in sort of this broader movement towards a more conscious Earth, the globe.
society, humanity, I think we'll need a lot more Harinams out there really helping those
who have attained some level of realization will help those who are on the journey perhaps
in stages that they've already passed through.
And I think this sort of, this almost like mentorship model ah really needs to become more
pervasive as more and more individuals.
uh
attain higher levels of enlightenment or realization.
know, one word you use, it's funny because I learned a lot from this guy because he's very
precise in his uh use of words.
I really like this word about habit because it's not very sexy, but it's very uh
pragmatic.
And so I have very pragmatic view of spirituality.
To me, it's about strategy.
I don't see people as being inherently good or bad.
I think everybody wants the same thing in life.
Everybody wants to be happy.
Nobody wants to be sad.
People want to feel full.
They don't want to feel empty.
We're driven by the same things.
But some people have really good strategy and many people's strategy sucks.
and it doesn't work.
mean, so like, don't be so attached to it.
Just, mean, nobody's good.
Nobody's bad.
It's just the strategy sucks.
It doesn't work.
So we're talking about flexibility.
Like if your strategy sucks, get a better strategy.
Okay.
It's no, don't be so attached that your strategy has to be right.
You do it.
Be flexible.
And so I think really
I think in a way, I hadn't thought about it before, but I think this is in a way that
there's a subtle addition of somebody being, see, I see religion and spirituality being
the same thing.
It's just a different, it's just a different angle.
They kind of work together.
You really can't totally separate.
To me, people generally talk about spirituality, has to do with
uh an experience in a way of being.
And religion in a way is a way, it's like a formula to actually integrate this in your day
to day life.
And you can't separate the two out because if you have some very high experience, you
still need a way to integrate this into your day to day life so you can be an effective
human being and not a space cadet.
And so to me, really what we're talking about here,
in somebody being a religiously oriented person and to being an evolved person is that it
really does get down to habits.
if you take on a certain uh religious tradition, a spiritual tradition, you're buying
into, okay, I'm willing to revolve my life around these particular habits as opposed to
these other, because you're going to have habits one way the other.
They're to be like healthy habits or unhealthy habits.
so I think that it, we were talking here coming also over here about this word
consciousness, but to consciousness to me actually this has to do with like paying
attention at a very, at a very high level.
And you just, there's like an awareness.
So it just has to be an awareness that, you know, I, I am, I'm kind of committing to these
habits to be
kind of what my life is revolving around with the understanding that these habits are
going to lead me in a direction whereas these other habits, know, you know, my habit is,
you know, every Friday night getting off from work and going get, get schlockered at the
local bar and then getting laid by somebody, I don't know, waking up in somebody's bed and
vomiting in the street the next morning.
If that's my actual weekend, that's a habit.
And, uh, that's probably not going to be a very good habit to lead me to enlightenment.
But if getting up in the morning and praying and you know eating a certain way and you
know, that's more likely to lead me so I think that these habits are just conscious
strategy about getting a certain outcome so if your if your goal in life is to experience
your essence and to evolve and constantly change and be everything you can be it
It's kind of hard to kind of broker this on a moment to my moment basis.
It's just the nature of the human being is we're too easily distracted and we're too
easily off course.
So we kind of get something to kind of get our ass back in line.
that's something a good thing about religion.
People see it's restricting, but I think actually it's helpful is that you have to first
come to grips with the human nature and we have a nature to drift.
The mind drifts.
It's not that people are good or bad.
It's just the natures, we easily drift and we need something to anchor ourselves towards
something that's good.
Yeah, it's really easy to forget.
after if you've, I mean, every time I hear you talk about experiencing infinity, I mean,
just hearing you say that takes me back to moments when I've felt that way.
But it's so easy to forget that, you know?
And I mean, and so every time you hear it, it's a revelation and you're like, only I could
just keep that in the forefront of my mind that, you know, that I am the grass.
Well, I share, you know, the thing is, I...
My tendency is to share my vulnerabilities with people and what I've gone through because
I'm like everybody else and sometimes people attribute a way of being to me as if I'm more
better or more advanced.
That's actually totally untrue.
I'm just like everybody else.
And I have the same tendency to drift and be distracted as anybody.
In fact, because of my nature, probably even more so.
because we were talking, come over the train, the two of us are very interested in
everything.
And you are too.
I mean, I can see from your book collection.
you know, so there's a tendency to get distracted and drift because there's so many things
that can gain your attention.
And you can easily find yourself, how the hell did I get, I mean, your head's like, how
did I get here?
And so to me, it's just very helpful to at least have something that kind of pulls you
back.
Yeah.
On a daily basis.
It's, it's, and then you can, you know, like what you were saying, that happens to me too.
I get into the daily thing, how am going to pay the rent this month and what's going to
happen?
And it's raining out and I can, there's so much in life to grab your attention here that I
can at times forget like who I am and what it's about.
And if I didn't have any of this to pull me back, I actually don't know why, what happened
to me.
I see what happens to people.
mostly have a lot of compassion because it's understandable.
It's understandable that, you know, the five horsemen of your senses, as they say, they
can like be like wild horses and your senses and your ego and your emotions, they can take
you like very, very quickly within a moment, just like way off.
And if you don't have, I mean, it's, it's, to me, it's not enough to just have some like
very generalized thing.
um I'm a spiritual person and I do some yoga there, you know, because I talk to people
every day who've got like serious, serious problems who do a lot of yoga meditation, but
they don't have any anchor.
Yeah, I mean, to me, my image of anybody new age is like somebody holding a yoga mat,
wearing like precious gems and shouting at traffic.
Like you see that all...
You see that so much.
mean, it's embarrassing.
is embarrassing.
But it's also that balance.
mean, I think that...
It's funny too, I think that maybe the farther you get along the path to enlightenment,
the more you find yourself like screaming at your computer, you know?
And then you're just like, my God, why am I like this?
Like, why has this opened up this chasm of frustration in me?
Like the more, the more that you're, when you, when you find those moments of peace and
you're just like, yeah.
And then when you snap back into.
your human routine, it's that much more frustrating.
You know you actually brought up something that I'm personally dealing with right now and
I see this a lot and it's very unexpected outcome because of course you think that if
you're I think there's a very big thing you're on to because You know, there's this
there's this there's kind of like this inference that people are buying into that if
I do yoga, meditation, this, that I'm going to be in La La Land and happy and nothing is
going to affect me and everything is going to be beautiful.
But actually now I'm finding, you can have those moments, actually I'm finding now that my
moments of uh frustration and even pain are more acute.
because I believe when you were talking I can really relate to what you're saying because
I actually feel that the more you actually do meditate and align yourself with
consciousness that when you're not living in alignment with that it's really painful.
Whereas the obvious, you like I'll see people who doing all kinds of wacky things
And it doesn't seem to affect them at all, but they're kind of like in these days.
And as you become a more conscious person, you're like kind of coming out of that days and
you're very sensitive.
And now you're doing shit that you shouldn't be doing.
And you did that same shit 10 years ago and you thought you were having fun.
And now you're doing the same thing 10 years later and it's not fun.
It's like painful.
And it's because it's painful because you know that it's not
in alignment with the fineness of who you are.
And you didn't, when you lack that self-respect and that self experience, you're just like
an automatic pilot.
You actually are numb.
You don't actually feel that you're kicking yourself in the stomach.
And now you're more sensitive and you're more aware and you're coming out of this cloud.
And all of a sudden you're doing something and you're going,
I'm doing it and it's addictive.
You get into this compulsive behavior that you've always done the same thing and back then
it was just kind of ah gave you some comfort and now it's not giving you comfort, it's
actually giving you pain but you don't know how to get out of it.
I'm really even seeing this in my own life now that ah we were talking and it's really
interesting because a lot of people come to me
as a teacher lead them out of where they're at.
But I myself, I'm going through transition in life, but I choose to go through transition
in life.
And I was saying to my wife the other day, she's going, well, you how are doing today?
And I said to her, part of me is dying.
I actually feel like part of me is dying.
It's very painful.
And her response to that was, that's great.
Because that's what we want to be doing.
But it hurts like hell.
hurts like hell because the things...
I almost want to cry saying this because it's on such a cellular level with me.
But it's incredibly painful when the things in life that I used to love are now some of
the things that bring me pain.
And it's so hard to say goodbye to old friends.
But sometimes you got to make room for new friends.
And so there's a lot of my life that used to give me joy.
And it's not like it doesn't give me any joy anymore, but it's it's kind of lost its
thing.
And I'm needing to make new friends and I'm needing to make new friends with myself.
And what's happened is over the years, I've just become sensitive to myself.
And when I do anything in life now that is not congruent with me being my own best friend,
there's something in me that is just an incredible pain.
So a lot of times people again, in this la la spiritual life, they think that spiritual
growth is just
really just this really beautiful pleasant and not actually sometimes it's unbelievably
painful and there's no need to really run away from that pain either because you know it's
just you just die I mean dying a lot of times painful and sometimes in this life you need
to die many times I know myself I've you know people say well you see you know because I'm
turning 61 this week you know you're turning 28 we're getting there
And I'm 61 and people go, well, you know, you know, you've been around a while.
I'm going, you know, it's funny.
It goes fast.
But on the other hand, I actually feel like I've been around for like a thousand years
because in this lifetime, I think I've already died at least at least seven or eight
times.
And all by my own choice, which makes it more painful.
But it's almost like nobody had to do it to me.
I mean, I come to the point if you want to keep growing.
and you want to kind of go in direction you're going, you keep having to say goodbye and
you keep having to say goodbye almost to the life that you have.
And a of that's so, it's, it's not exactly what people think it is.
And, and, and again, I, you know, kind of tying it back to this thought about what
religion is, is that in a higher level, I think it's like, you're just kind of loyal to
these habits.
and these habits are actually going to crank you.
mean, it's, it's, it's, they're going to, I had a great spiritual teacher and the best way
to describe having a guy like that as my spiritual teacher, if you imagine that every way
you walk, there's a mirror in front of you.
Wow.
Okay.
Okay, and and that is um and that's the kind of teacher I hope to be to others but that is
a very um Difficult way to live but you have to be willing to look at yourself And people
don't want to do that
What they say is you become more conscious, you start to live outside of yourself and you
view yourself in interactions rather than actually being in the interaction.
It's almost like you're watching the film of yourself living your life.
so that sounds pretty spot on.
idea of seeing yourself in the mirror in every action, it allows you to be conscious at
every moment.
And again, I think it's difficult as you go along in this and if you are living your life
and you're choosing to have a mirror in front of you, which is a difficult choice in
itself, you know, ah it's not always going to be pleasant what you're seeing.
And that's sometimes very painful to kind of realize what you have to deal with and when
you have to overcome and, and, you know,
I learned this from my teacher and it's really an important part of my growth as a person
is that he really impressed upon me the fact that very few people accept themselves on any
level.
He don't accept how great you are and you don't accept your weaknesses.
You don't accept either.
You're trying to hide your weaknesses so nobody will know.
But everybody knows anyhow, so don't waste your breath.
Everybody knows what you're weak at, so don't knock yourself out.
oh You think you're hiding it, everybody already knows.
oh And equally, you can't admit to yourself how wonderful you are.
You can't admit to yourself how beautiful and what qualities you have because you're
guilty.
You feel guilty in admitting...
how great you are, how wonderful you are and how unique you are.
So you don't have any level of self-acceptance.
You don't love your weaknesses and you don't love your strengths.
So you're trying to always present yourself falsely in who you are not.
And this is a very, very difficult way to live.
So it's better to just embrace yourself as you are and you don't have to make any
apologies to anybody or who you are and love yourself.
Why do you think people come to the, or do you think people come to the table with this
guilt?
And if they do, what is it?
Cause I think anybody who's either in the Jewish or the Christian faith has been accused
of having guilt.
it's funny.
mean, I think I, definitely have it, but I wouldn't, there's no possible way I could trace
it to my Judaism or my involvement in a Catholic school.
Nobody put that upon me.
you know,
think guilt is a very positive thing.
But you know what?
It's all these things you could see.
You know, like we talked about like religion and we talked about guilt.
again, some of these things in themselves are positive, but then they get like, like they
get like in a very weird, weird, you know, what do you call it?
just kind of.
Yeah, it's like, so to me, I think what's helpful about guilt.
Okay, constructive guilt is that...
Naturally, if you're a human being and you're conscious and you're doing something that is
not in alignment with your best interest and who you're meant to be, it is helpful to feel
pain about that because that can motivate you out of that.
That is what I would call conscious guilt in that it's not like you're a bad person.
It's like you're
Simply it means that you're doing something you shouldn't be doing.
And that is true.
A lot of times we do things we simply shouldn't be doing.
Not because it means you're bad person.
It means your strategy sucks again.
I mean, you're, you're, you're doing something that is not congruent to the beautiful you,
you know, it's, it's so, so if you're feeling pain about it means you're actually paying
attention.
You're conscious.
I think that's okay, actually.
Like if I go out um and I've done this sometimes like I'm having a bad day, I got a short
temper, going down the street somebody looks at me the wrong way and maybe I'll go fuck
you.
You call out people on the street?
No, I have done their things.
I have, maybe too much coffee sometimes.
You know what, actually, I'll tell you something I once did.
This is very embarrassing, but this is an example of, I think, a good example of guilt in
real life.
Should I say this happened about 15 years ago?
Not that it couldn't happen tomorrow, but it's very embarrassing.
This is a real human.
a real human weakness here.
uh So I come back to my car.
My car is parked and it's like a minute over the meter.
And there's a meter made who's writing me out a ticket.
And I'm telling it's just like a minute and she's just not.
Not even looking up.
Yeah.
and
I just, I was having a bad day and she was like a hundred pounds overweight.
And I just said to you fat something, whatever pig, I don't know what I, whatever.
I said something really horrible, horrible to her.
And she, she was hurt by what I said.
But not near as much as I was hurt because it took me weeks to get over that.
It took me...
I felt horrible that I would say something this to a sister.
because I was having a bad day and that I would be so mean-spirited to a sister to say
something like that and I I couldn't even sleep that night and I've never done that since
and I think that's an example of what I would see constructive guilt is that I did
something that I was ashamed of and sometimes we do things that are worthy of being
ashamed of
because it means we're paying attention that we're not being our best.
And I was like, way, way under my best.
But that happened to me and it also wake me up that I'm capable of doing that.
I have to be more respectful.
I have to be more respectful to myself.
And I was actually, never saw her again, but I found myself a couple of weeks later just
spending hours going around the downtown Portland where I was living, trying to find her.
Just so I can apologize to her.
I spent hours because I just, I couldn't live with myself saying that.
That's not who I want to be.
that would be an example.
But this other kind of guilt was like, you know, I have to like apologize for being alive.
I have to apologize for having urges.
I have to apologize for having vulnerabilities.
No, that's ridiculous.
the kind of guilt that holds you back and I think that's something that is in the way of
people letting go, letting themselves...
mean, because enlightenment can be a very enjoyable feeling and there is something about
letting yourself go, turning that tape off in your mind.
When you do something that makes you have those guilty thoughts, acknowledging them
but realizing that you don't have to listen to them.
Well, I think also that from my experience with people, people have a much easier time
forgiving others than their own selves.
People have a very hard time letting go of that.
And that really gets in the way because then you're in the past and you have to accept
that, you make a mistake and it doesn't mean you're a bad person.
I mean, it just is kind of self-acceptance.
You know, I made a mistake.
And I gotta let that go.
Because if I don't let that go, I'm just not gonna grow.
find some people who, I would almost say it's about myself, for years, was just used, the
negative to say, okay, you're not working hard enough, you're not doing this, you're not
doing that.
But then you start to take on a negative self-image, and then that becomes also your tool
or the means by which you communicate with others, is you look at them through a critical
lens.
And wherever you take that on, however that comes about, it's, I think it's a...
could be a destructive habit to have one to yourself and then two to your relationships
and others.
eh it just becomes, again, coming back to this word habit, right?
It's the habit by which you're looking at yourself.
If you're looking at yourself through positive lens or through perhaps a negative lens
where you're constantly not reaching a bar or you're not satisfying yourself.
But that's, it's flawed methodology because you'll never live up.
to what you could be or what someone else's vision of what you could be is or how good
someone else is doing.
Like that's, that's like a big catch-22.
You're going around this little mouse wheel all day long, trying to live up to something,
but you'll never do that.
So it's almost like, okay, well let's take an entirely different paradigm shift and look
at it from, wait a minute, what am I doing?
Or how do I use a different means to motivate myself and others?
And I feel like that is,
Really like, know still living life going on day by day, you know, hopefully making
progress but at the same time all of sudden a great weight has been lifted because all of
a sudden it's not what am I not doing?
It's what am I doing?
And then how do I continue to make what I am doing even better?
And so I think and then all of sudden the relationships and the interactions with others
have have changed because of that now all of a sudden it's okay Well, how do I help you
not how do I slap you and say okay, you're doing a bad job
and push you down and say, well maybe I'll just look for the next person to work with.
No, let's build you.
Let's create something together.
And I think that that's much more meaningful.
it comes back to, I guess I'm realizing to have it in this situation.
Well, one of the things that was kind of a paradox for me was that I was able to more
easily forgive myself about things when I found it easier to apologize to other people for
wrongs I did to them.
didn't wait.
You know, it's kind of an odd, you know, it's like if you, if you can, if, if you can,
apologize if you can be graceful with another person, it means that you're not holding on
to it.
And I had this thing that happened to me years ago and it was actually, again, it was one
of these like epiphanies.
I had a friend of mine who hadn't talked to me in many, many years.
He was really angry with me.
And actually, I don't think there was a reason for it, but this person was very, very
angry with me for years.
hadn't talked to me in years.
And by happenstance, I actually bumped into this person unexpectedly.
And I won't go into the details because I'm trying to be confidential, but I bumped into
them in interesting time and space.
The person had been avoiding me for many, many years actually.
And this person was like jarred kind of seeing me.
and I knew how mad this person was at me.
You know, I just, you know, there's no reason to make a drama about it.
So I just said to the person, um you know, I understand you're mad at me and um I'm sorry
for whatever pain I caused you.
Please forgive me.
But I mean, I'll say that because I'm not holding on to it.
You know, so it's like free.
How much energy?
It didn't cost me a nickel.
You know, it didn't cost me anything.
And I wasn't even being manipulative.
was kind of like, I was like...
You know, the thing is, if I was guilty about it, I actually, in sense that you're talking
about guilt, I probably would have been defending myself.
But instead...
I had no shame.
so it was just easy to say, you know, it's on me.
I'll take it on.
I'll take it.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry I you.
I'll take that on.
And uh the other person came over to me and they like started crying on my shoulder.
And it was such a relief and that's all that they wanted.
So what's the difference?
But I feel that if I was guilt oriented in the way that you're talking about that I would
still be like fighting this war.
mean there's no, the war is over.
So I think that again we would talk coming over here to me at this point in my life it's
all about service.
About what can you bring.
And the thing is, that you got to be, you got to lighten your load.
You can't, you can't give anything if you're all locked up in yourself.
And so to me, it's lot of it is a process of getting like unlocked.
And so one of the, there's many pieces on how you get unentangled within yourself.
But one of the ways that, and it's a long process, all of this, no doubt, but one of the
ways you get unlocked and unencumbered within yourself.
is by forgiving yourself for not being perfect.
As long as you're giving yourself this hard time, you don't have any, like you were
saying, you don't have the available energy to help anybody else if you're all locked up
feeling angry at yourself.
don't have anything to give.
You're just hammering yourself.
But life is short.
You don't have that much time.
People are depending on you.
You don't have time to like just be so self-absorbed.
And it is self-absorbed.
and just knock on on yourself, who cares?
It's over with.
You can't bring back the past.
If you made a mistake, just don't do it again.
You know?
But by reflecting on your disappointments with yourself, you're not helping anybody.
And it's a heavy, you know, you can feel it.
It's a...
It's a heavier existence and we want to feel a little lighter.
you got to, you kind of have to, you know, I find it's funny because I'm a very tough
teacher.
very tough people coming for spiritual guidance as a counselor, as teacher.
And I got a well earned reputation as being a hammer.
Yeah, I'm tough.
I'm very truthful with people, but
I find my, and they're surprised because sometimes people come to talk to me and they're
expecting the hammer.
And I'm going, what's your problem?
Why are you so hard on yourself?
And they're expecting that I'm going to hammer them.
And I'm like, why, what are you doing to yourself?
Why are you so hard on yourself?
Relax.
And a lot of it is because they're like, what are you saying?
They don't realize how much guilt their whole life is just
buried in guilt for any number of reasons that they're not good enough.
And like, come on, like give it a break.
know, give it, let it is come on, give it a break.
Let it go.
Uh, we all made mistakes, you know, that's how we learn.
Just don't do it again.
Yeah, and I think people are taught that that's the right way to be though, that always
hammering yourself keeps you in line and reminds you of what the right thing to do is.
Well, again, I just think this is a lack of like evolution because these things, you could
see how all these things kind of get glommed over religion.
All this it's like Cuba got to like sort all this out.
OK, so to me, you can be hard on yourself to the extent that you have high expectations of
yourself, which is good.
And it's good to be very self-disciplined.
These are good things.
But but.
Judging yourself harshly and unfairly that that you're not going to get anything out of So
people tend to glom all these things together, but they're actually very different I think
it is good to be hard on yourself in the extent that I think that person should be very
demanding on themselves and Ask a lot of themselves because to me if you don't ask a lot
of yourself if you're not demanding a lot of yourself It means you don't respect yourself
you see you
If you respect yourself, you're willing to demand a lot of yourself.
But if you're a very conscious person, it's like another one of these paradoxes, at the
same moment that you're expecting a lot of yourself, you still have to care about yourself
enough to give yourself a break for things that have happened, it's over with, and you'll
learn from it you won't do it again.
And it doesn't reflect on you negatively that...
You know, everybody deserves a break and you got to give yourself a break.
They're not mutually exclusive.
You know, in fact, again, if you can, to me, if you can give yourself a break and you can
forgive yourself and not feel guilty for breathing, you're actually creating more space
for you to be demanding on yourself to be good.
You're not tied up again.
It's a matter of being just all tied up.
I feel like a lot of this conversation around guilt leads right into a discussion around
emotions and the emotions that we feel about ourselves and how I think sometimes we let
our emotions control our decision-making process and I often used to think
I think this is probably from my early education around spirituality and consciousness
that a conscious individual experiences no emotions or it's absolutely muted.
You're not happy or sad.
You don't have these wild swings.
Actually, in fact, think it was an interesting conversation we had once, Harinam, ah that
I think evolved that thinking in that it wasn't necessarily an absence of emotion.
was an ability for one...
one's conscious to interpret one's bodily emotion interpret it and then move beyond it and
uh...
and i think that that's where uh...
this idea of grace comes about in a in a right now would love to hear some of your
reflections on this because i i i finally remember that conversation and it was uh...
it's it's it seems like it's a part of the evolution of of moving away from uh...
being controlled by external
influences and really choosing the character you want to be and not letting that be
changed or manipulated by external influences.
Well, again, I think what you're saying, what it triggers in me, as you were talking, I
was thinking about this uh whole idea of like the Greeks, the Stoics, the Stoicism, and
even the teachings of Guru Gobind Singh and even religion itself, it kind of was all
coming back to this, is that it gets back to code of conduct in that what religion is and
And I, again, to get back to what stoicism is, that people, people don't understand.
It's not like somebody who chooses to have their life run by their ideals and their values
and their code of conduct.
It's not like they don't have feelings.
In fact, they're acutely aware of their feelings, but they've already made the decision,
which takes great courage.
that they're not going to let these feelings affect their behavior.
This actually, to me, when I was younger, I read about the Stoics, like in Greece, and
people talked about Stoics, they're Stoic, they're Stoic.
And it was like this negative connotation is that, yeah, they're very Stoic.
And again, when I'm younger, I didn't question this, that people had this negative...
connotation about people who are like this that somehow they were these feelingless
persons and I never actually Revisited that until many many years later when I was
studying the teachings of Guru Gobind Singh is that he was totally a stoic that That he
was teaching that you your behavior is guided by your ideals in your code of conduct But
he never was saying that people don't have feelings
that they know.
No, to the contrary, I feel that when a person lives by these ideals and that directs
their behavior, then their feelings are actually right in their face.
Because other people I find, you know, just watching on the subway, you know, watching the
people, is that people have a feeling and they tend to just react to that feeling.
So they don't even have time to digest it, you know.
So they're horny, so they're going to look to get laid.
They're a little sad, they're going to look to get drunk.
They're trying to find that they're feeling insecure.
They're going to look for, do I get some money?
They're bored, they need some stimulation.
Let me go to the track and do some gambling.
So they're trying to get some immediate gratification to address these feelings.
And in doing this, they don't even give themselves the opportunity to really digest the
feelings themselves.
Like what actually is that feeling?
Because they're just trying to kind of...
react to it.
But person who is, I would say, stoic is certainly feeling those feelings.
right in their face and they're actually having to make decisions based on what their
ideals are, not reacting to the feelings.
So to me, people who are stoic actually are more in touch with their feelings, not less
so.
They're just not being controlled by them.
And in doing so, get control of themselves and they have even a deeper appreciation of the
feelings.
So it's not presented in this way, but I consider myself to be a stoic person.
Yet most people who know me know that I wear my feelings on my sleeve.
I'm a very emotionally expressive person, but my, my, but in spite of all that, I, my,
decisions and behaviors are not dictated by my emotions.
So again,
Sometimes what that means is going back to what we're saying is that sometimes I have to
deal with my feelings and it's very painful Because I have to live with it.
I'm not trying to I'm not trying to do something like crush it I have to live with it.
So if I'm feeling sadness or conflict or any of this I have to just live with it and
understand it But I can't let it
I can't let it control me because then I'm a slave.
This is what the spiritual teachers are teaching well.
They're really trying to teach you how to be free from slavery.
You can be slave of a government, but you can also be slave to your emotions.
And then you lose control.
And then you don't have the life that you want.
Our music is brought to you today by Auntie Depressant.
Thanks to Zorover Dollywall for joining us today.
He's a fascinating guy and a man of the world.
Find him on Twitter at Zorover.
uh
Hari Nam is coming to where you live.
This Saturday the 16th he will be at Synergy Yoga in Miami and Sunday the 17th he will be
at Mystic Waters Kava Bar in Hollywood Beach, Florida.
For more information and to register, email him at harinam56 at gmail.com.
That's H-A-R-I-N-A-M-5-6 at gmail.com or on his website at yogaheaven.
oh
Follow him on Twitter at Carinon11.
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I'm Fanny Cohen.
Thanks for listening and see you around the old earth.
you
Hmm, stinky.