Duncan Trussell Family Hour - Ian Lawton is A Dharma Bum!

Episode Date: April 21, 2015

Ian Lawton (The Dharma Bum) Comes on the DTFH to tell the story of the first Irish Buddhist Anarchist missionary.       This episode was sponsored by Harry's.com  go to harry's.com and use offer code duncan to get $5 off of your first order!

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com. Go to Harrys dot com now and use offer code Duncan to get $5 off some sweet German engineered razor blades that are going to make your face look like the president's bottom. Good day to you my perfectly harmonized tapestry of breathing cells. It is I, Duncan Trussell, and you are listening to the Dunkin' Trussell Family Hour podcast. What a special day it is today. Not only is it 420, but it is also my birthday. And I'm not ashamed to announce it though I do consider the concept of birthdays to ultimately

be a ridiculous kind of bookmark that we place on the circuit of time that we're currently being sucked through and mostly things that either invoke a sense of grief or terror. Some combination of all of those are a shame. Some people are ashamed of whatever particular bookmark they've happened to reach in this particular incarnation for whatever reason. I certainly get age shame sometimes like my god I'm so very old. It's a stupid cult you know it's just the feeling of shame that comes from being addicted to your age has got to be the punishment for worshiping a false god which is the concept

of time or the importance of years. You're going to figure it out. Either you've already figured it out if you're over a certain age or you're going to figure it out if you're under a certain age or maybe you've already figured it out just because you're super smart. But one thing you're going to realize is that time is an illusion and that though you might gain some skill when it comes to manipulating the material universe around you that exceeds the skill of other people just because of the number of repetitions that you have practiced

while playing whatever particular game it is that you happen to be playing underneath it all there seems to exist an unchanging spark of youth that always is going to feel young and not just young but is always going to feel outside of time. This is the thing in the Bhagavad Gita that Krishna talks about it cannot be burnt by fire weathered by the wind. It was never born, will never die, it never came into being nor will it cease to be. They call it the atman, the soul, there's a lot of different names for it but the older you get the more you begin to hopefully identify with that aspect of yourself and the less

you begin to identify with the wrinkly meat that is currently acting as the habitat within which that infinite wind can frolic. So anyway I'm pretty excited today because I just recorded this really cool podcast with someone, it's the first time that he's ever been on the podcast, his name's Ian Lawton and he's working on a movie right now called the Dharma Bum whose main character Dharma Loko was basically the first white guy to become a Buddhist monk. So it's a really cool story, he's going to talk about it, I don't want to give away too much of it but it really is a fascinating story and we had a cool conversation that

wasn't just about this movie but got into some interesting and inspiring places. I hope that you will forgive me for going against what I just said in the beginning of this podcast by saying that I considered paying attention to your birthday, a form of idolatry and allow me to be the most absolute hypocrite on planet earth by getting really nostalgic and sentimental for a moment with you guys and saying to all of you how much you mean to me and how incredibly grateful I am to all of you that you listened to this podcast and have allowed me to make a job out of having conversations with so many wise, fascinating, interesting and beautiful people.

I really do think this is the best birthday I've ever had in my life and that's a lot of that is because of the connection that I have with all of you guys and the fact that I get to do this regularly and that it actually sustains me here in this dimension. That is mind blowing and so I hope you all really understand just how grateful I am to you and how much I love you even if I haven't met you and how much happiness you bring to me and in this incarnation. Thank you so much. So sappy when you're worshiping time.

Oh my god the prayers to time inevitably sound just like that nostalgic and sappy and sentimental but you know what sometimes that's okay you don't always have to be cool you don't always have to be strong you know I don't always have to have that steely prison expression as you wince away the deep feels that come from existing in a dimension where everyone around you is going to die from time to time you gotta let your heart squirt out some of that sweet sappy stuff or what are you doing you're not running your engine on all cylinders man you can't always be in locked up raw sometimes you gotta be in freed freed out and cooked or whatever the opposite of locked up or God I'm sorry I said that but I'm not

going to delete it because I'm getting ready for my tour and I don't have a lot of time to spend doing any kind of opening rant and really doesn't matter because I just had such a wonderful chat with Ian and I'm excited for you guys to hear it okay well we're going to dive right into it but first you know what's happening some very quick business this episode of the Duncan Tressel family our podcast is brought to you by Harry's dot com Harry's they're purveyors of some of the finest most high-tech razor blades that exist in this node of the multiverse now listen you might ask how does some bearded hippie know anything about razor blades I'll tell you friend how do I know about razor blades I know about

razor blades because for whatever reason my genetics enjoy creating plumes of greasy oily black pubic hair from every quadrant of my body including this area right above my beard which I shaved down because if I don't the hair will grow right up to my eyes planet of the ape style I have to get razor blades when I get razor blades when you're in a pinch for razor blades it sucks you've got to drive down to the local meat market retail store and wait behind a thick plexiglass locked case that is placed there theoretically because shoplifting razor blades is very popular these days so they feel like they've got to guard these things like it's the arc of the fucking covenant so you stand there waiting

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like handmade shaving cream in India is really cool and scary it was scary I'll admit it there's something scary about some guy in Darm Sala with a fucking straight razor smacking at your face and slicing the hair off because who knows who this guy is I don't know what could happen anything could happen it's scary no matter what when you're around any man with a straight razor it's kind of fucking spooky if you're at a barber shop and you're getting the old school hipster straight razor shave you don't know shaving you you don't know the guy who's shaving you in downtown Eagle Rock you don't know what's in that guy's basement you don't know what's that where that fucking razor has been friend that straight razor when you're down at the old school hipster barber shop and

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tickets left praise a la we've sold out all the other ones Arlington and Philadelphia so on the 22nd of April I'm going to be in Arlington at the Arlington Draft House with Abby Martin and I'm going to be at the Trocadero Theater in Philadelphia on the 24th with Johnny Pemberton I really hope you guys will make it out if you're in either of these spots and are thinking about coming get tickets now the shows do sell out and it sucks when people can't get in I hope to see you there and we have added Michael Daener to the as a guest on the show in Philadelphia he is a meditation teacher who was a drug dealer in Afghanistan during the 60s I had a long chat with him was introduced to him through Ragu Marcus he's super cool so the combination of Johnny Michael and

I is going to be pretty badass I really hope you guys will come to the show were you aware of the fact that are you aware of the fact the questions are you aware that's the first question if you are aware are you aware that in a great many indigenous traditions there's the concept of poisonous darts they can get thrown through the multiverse and embed themselves into your astral body causing you endless suffering sorrow and discontent it's true they call it the evil eye and in Europe there are so many various bits of jewelry that you could wear to shield yourself from the dark glare of the playaheda who shoots his or her poisonous dart into your soul every time they look at you with a sense of contempt or jealousy or anger or whatever it is whatever

bit of poo they happen to be slinging at your soul this is why I have created with the help of the local local God who cares if an artist is local they're just wonderful no matter what and this artist is wonderful Ron Regi the amazing artist created for me a sigil which has within it so many varying symbols that are designed to shield you from the shower of crap that can come spraying into your soul from all the sleeping sad and angry people that sail through this life like living cacti shooting their dark thorns into the hearts of all those that they pass these shirts not only will they shield you from the poisonous darts of the contemptuous playaheda but they will also draw to you so many incredible extra dimensional beings that if you are clairvoyant

and psychic you may see them flying out of the wood paneling of your school or home or rising up from the floor of whatever your job happens to be and landing on your shoulder and whispering sweet mantras into your ear like you are perfect you deserve love you are love eat more chocolate enjoy orgasms more they'll say a lot of different things and if you don't like what they're saying you can always tell them to go away but these shirts are truly magnets for good energy and shields against the dark and if they're if you don't believe in all that nonsense then they just have a really badass design on them uh that contains within it a lot of powerful symbols that Ron Regi put together after we had a conversation so I hope that you will go to

dunkintrustle.com and visit the store and pick up some of these t-shirts for you and your loved ones so that you can identify yourself as a listener of the DTFH and shield yourself from witches and when I say witches I don't mean the stereotypical version of witches but the Hollywood bad witches there's good witches too let me rephrase I know I want to be politically correct when it comes to witches because some of my dearest friends are actual witches dark witches will no longer be able to penetrate your soul and the light witches will be drawn to you and the light will be drawn to you and there will be a rainbow in your heart most of the time can't guarantee it though that's a real fizzled advertisement isn't it oh well I don't have time

to edit I gotta keep for forging ahead and let me not forget one final ad forgive me you all sweeties uh please go through our amazon portal located at dunkintrustle.com if you're planning on buying something uh from amazon amazon is one of the top if not the top dispensary of material items that exist in the current multiverse that we've incarnated into and if you want one of those items from a new pair of shoes to a hat to some kind of strange chemical whatever it is you're longing for it's at amazon.com that's guaranteed might I advise picking up a drone those are super cool why don't you have a drone you realize that you could actually buy a flying machine that you can precisely control using your phone just by going through the amazon portal computers books

whatever it is you need music please just go through the amazon portal located at dunkintrustle.com they will give us a small percentage of anything that you purchase and it costs you nothing it's a great way to support the podcast and so many of you have been doing that and I'm very grateful to you thank you so much I know I say it again and again and again but it really is uh one of the top ways to support this show so please bookmark the amazon portal go through the amazon portal and tell your friends about the amazon portal my god an amazon portal and go through the real amazon portal sometime head down to Peru and slurp back some ayahuasca I've made the decision I'm definitely going to do it I'll talk about that more in a later podcast in the meantime go through

our amazon portal digitally won't you now everyone please if you will settle down wherever you happen to be realize that you are being supported by the earth understand that every single facet of the universe is there to teach you to let go open up an experience ever accelerating exponentially increasing levels of orgasmic bliss and if you can't do that just take a deep breath because that always feels good chris ryan just tweeted something about how if you breathe through your stomach you get more air and it does feel good isn't amazing we don't even know how to breathe you breathe in you put your puff your stomach out and let that sweet air suck down into your lungs and fill your body do it now expand your astral body and understand that you are part of a

net of connections that doesn't just expand across this planet that we are in but actually expands through the entire universe and everything you do is just a micro undulation of the breathing of time and everything else also it's fun really I don't even know what I'm saying at this point I'm basically trying to welcome to the podcast a new friend of mine straight from Ireland he's working on a movie about you already heard me say this in the beginning I'm not going to repeat it he's working on an awesome movie you can go to Duncan trustle.com there are links in the comment section of this podcast where you can find out more about how to help help him get this movie made and just find out more about him in general it's all going to be there but now everyone please

open your third eyes get those pineal glands sprinkle in that sweet organic DMT juice into your brain so that you can extend your psychic tendrils and embrace Ian Lotton please welcome Ian Lotton to the Duncan trustle family hour podcast Hare Krishna welcome Ian Lotton welcome to the Duncan trustle family hour podcast how are you I'm good man an absolute pleasure to be talking to you sir where are you right now I'm in a small town in the midlands of Ireland and the county of mead man and I don't know if you know this place do you have you ever heard of mead no I never have I've never been Ireland oh you've never been okay well you should

come I'll show you around I'd love to I'd love to and isn't it crazy to think that you are in Ireland and I am in the United States and we are communicating via Skype instantaneously that is nuts if you think about that it is it blows it but modern technology is is certainly blows me away in and in what we're capable of doing I mean even me putting together this sort of campaign that I'm running now and that this kind of technology has allowed me to talk to the likes of yourself and and talk to people all over the world it's it's incredible and this this is your crowdfunding campaign for for the movie you're trying to make the the Dharma bum the Dharma bum that's right now this is um you I was connected to you I know you know this but for everyone listening I was

connected to Ian via Ragu because he's working on a movie about a kind of I guess you'd say an unknown saint an unknown Buddhist saint is that fair to say well sainthood isn't really applicable to Buddhism though is there but aren't we allowed to make whoever we want to say it I mean isn't it you know well to me he's he's an absolute hero and there we go the fact that the fact that he's he's he's influenced my life greatly a hundred years after his death that and I want to tell the world his story his I guess says a lot for his his legacy really now what's his name well he was he had a few names he was born he was born Lawrence Carroll in the year 1856 in a small town in the south of Dublin called Booters Town and um yeah well I just well I just

go ahead and start telling you about him well yeah I mean why don't you describe what it was like in Ireland in 1856 1856 Ireland was it wouldn't have been for an Irish native it wouldn't have been the most pleasant place to live it was in in the midst of the British colonial rule the first their first colony so and being born in 1856 it would have been a country that was sort of under the thumb of both the British and the Catholic Church so um yeah so you're a very kind of a repressed people um a very stifled kind of existence you were just living living to work really and um yeah so that the the church really had a stranglehold on people and and the British had a stranglehold on on the government and how the country was run what kind of stranglehold

did they have what what do you mean the church had a stranglehold what were they they weren't burning witches or anything were they um um let's see um to go back into the Irish history they were very domineering um well to put it to put it to you this way that a lot of things are coming to light nowadays all these years later from the the activities that the the Catholic Church in Ireland got up to from child abuse I mean they're recently um over in in the west there was corpses of I think something like 500 babies were found in a septic tank in the grounds of an old church you know so that they would cover up lots and lots of stuff there was I don't know if you know of the Magdaline laundries where um like women who were who became pregnant

out of wedlock were treated like absolutes gone by the church and like their babies were ripped out of them taken away and sometimes ended up in a septic tank you know wow you know it was just woeful woeful the treatment of and it's it's only in the last few years with the Ryan report and things like that where the the abuse that the the Catholic Church had on the people of this country back then and everyone kept it very quiet and kept it secret I mean the secret was kept really safe so they so people were keeping quiet that the Catholic Church had invaded Ireland and had started a kind of organized campaign of child sat that involved child sacrifice well that's probably going a bit too extreme it was just uh you know if a woman was um

pregnant out of wedlock she was she was you know it was a sin and sin was was a real like the worst thing you could commit like getting pregnant like the most natural thing to happen to to a woman who who who lays with a man is is considered to be the most disgusting thing to occur um all right I could you know we could go on but wait but wait I just want to the uh the septic tank filled with babies yeah the idea is the Catholic Church killed those babies well they were yeah well they were removed removed from from the women who were who were pregnant so these were like late-term abortions they were keeping them secret you know they were like this was this was all kept kind of behind closed doors um because you know and and

they were called illegitimate children as well and um because this is a thing you know it's just interesting to me that and I know the term child sacrifice is sounds like I'm being majorly sensationalist here but I have noticed that people who tend to sacrifice children never call it child sacrifice they always have different names for it but it basically is the same thing from sending soldiers to parts of the world to get exploded to getting like young people to like give themselves brain damage through playing football or all the various ways that power structures tend to uh destroy youth for their own energies never are they called child sacrifice there's always different it's always they always have hilarious names for the child sacrifice

in this case what was it they were saying that was called illegitimate children they had a different name illegitimate children yeah they were just if they're not born within wedlock yeah they're considered illegitimate yeah that's right which means they cannot be buried and in consecrated ground and all that kind of stuff oh got you so they're just disposed of as if they were trash oh I got you yeah yeah I got you and then you know God only knows what other stuff was going on you know and I don't mean to do any Catholic bashing I actually saw a statistic of how in the various denominations of Christianity and world religions there is a disturbing amount of pedophilia that goes on but we that's a huge huge component to this as well yeah we can't even imagine

you know back then when there was no internet no way to get this information out and when the church had such great power that even if you dared to mention that a priest had been fucking a kid that was it for you man you'd probably end up in jail or worse so we can't even imagine the other terrible things that's precisely the the stranglehold that we were talking about earlier is that is that they had on the populace you know well there we go man I think that's a pretty good setting of the scene imagine imagine if where you live right now whoever you are that's listening imagine if where you live right now had a Christian version of the Taliban that was being supported by a super power and had taken over your country and driven you into a life of shame and misery and sadness

is that that that's it yeah I kind of want to preface this as well that even though the this story has a lot of a sort of anti-christian anti-catholic kind of sentiments I don't kind of personally I don't I don't have a problem with people who who find solace in in the teachings of Christ and things like that you know if that's if that's your thing and that works for you then more parity it's just when you use it to sort of to demean and abuse other people like when it comes to equal rights like the right to for gay marriage etc when you use it to for for bigotry and hide behind your you know that the book that you they hold sacred for you know that is what I have a problem with yeah yeah I just thought you know Christ was it was a righteous dude he was he was a

cool guy you know if you if you strip away all the kind of supernatural elements I think he had a lot of he had a lot of beautiful things to say even with the supernatural even with the supernatural elements he was a cool guy I don't know if you've heard that song Jesus could have turned what does it say Jesus could have turned Jesus turned water into wine he could have turned uh something I'm gonna misquote he could have turned uh grass into marijuana if you wanted to he was a great guy and I love the miracles and I love all of it and I think these the people who are listening to podcast know how I feel about that but I'm and I'm also equal I'm also fascinated by the way that this amazing drama of Satan and God gets played out you know and it sort of lends credence to the

notion of some supernatural demonic force when you see that uh wearing the that this this energy in the universe it is the energy of dissipation corruption debilitation this energy likes to wear the mask of its opposite and parade around as its opposite doing the most atrocious and vile things throughout the world in the name of its enemy it really is an incredible uh formation that happens in the symbol structures that we call organized religion uh and it happens in such a perfect and incredible way that to me it's it's awe inspiring and it's so spooky that here you have this religion of love peace empathy uh healing uh and and it gets reflected into the universe through people who are dead asleep and transformed into its opposite and that is just amazing and people

get sucked into that tornado generations of people get sucked into an uh the cyclone which is the reversal of the very thing they think that they are worshiping it's like it's like generations of people who think that the the the the the the shit at the salad bar is ice cream and they've been they've taught each other to just take big scoops of shit and smile while they're eating it oh isn't this shit good oh you better say it's good or you're gonna go to hell don't you love it mmm it's delicious that's what it is when right there at that very salad bar on the other side if you go to the root of what most of these religions are it's just the sweetest most delightful delicious sustaining thing ever but you never get to that side of the salad bar because it's

being guarded by men and women dressed like penguins yeah i i mean i personally had my had had my fill of those uh during my childhood i was i was raised um raised roman catholic so i had um i was taught by nuns and again by christian brothers and uh yeah i i i never ended up any in in any kind of uh sexual kind of abuse which a lot of people did but i was certainly physically and mentally abused by by these people yeah it was it was tough now we're talking about like late 70s early 80s so it's an in sort of recent history so yeah so uh so yeah so imagine even now i mean i'm sure there's people you know ever i know so many people who've been you know psychologically abused via catholicism uh that it's it's still i'm nearly 44 years of

age and i still suffer from catholic guilt yeah they get you man just beaten into me as a child they get you it's a piece you know they get you're right there too and by they get you right when your neurons are forming you know they get you right when you're you know i i can't remember the name of this wonderful chemical that i really want to find but apparently there's this new drug that you can take that puts your brain into the state that kids are at when they're learning because you're you know you're more wide open then and you're the way that you're it's a yeah fascinating drug and you know people say that when you're on it you have to be very very careful to have your phone turned off and to be in a place where you're not going to get disturbed because whatever is happening

is going to imprint uh on into your brain with more intensity than otherwise so i think that's the state that kids constantly live in their brains are wide open and they're getting so deeply imprinted neurologically by whatever they happen to be around that when they're around this you know generational form of uh of conditioning that has as one of its primary methods the use of fear and shame and guilt that you end up with some circuits in in your motherboard that uh just are are only going to produce in you for your entire life varying shades of what you're talking about until you figure out a way to uh dissolve those circuits and rewire them uh so and so many people i've met so this is to me it's just it's fun to talk about this stuff in in relation to your

story so that people fully understand um what what our hero was born into because no doubt he must also have been laboring under this strange combination of resentment and respect and shame and fear that uh catholicism seems to uh stamp onto so many people's souls well here here's the thing he actually he was born right next door to the local catholic church so he was right in there on the front lines and i think that kind of prompted him to uh because he became an alcoholic very quickly right i think early early teens he really hit the bottle so obviously there's some kind of abuse or some kind of whatever in in his background um before he's before he left the country and he left the country very early they think about 17 or 18 years of age he made his way

because buddhist town is very near dunleary and dunleary is a port town so that got him over to liverpool in uh in england and he was working on the docks over there and um and because back in dublin he was um he was the son of the local greengrocer so that kind of experience uh got him a boat sorry he got him a job on the ship's pantry in the on the liverpool docks which in turn took him to new york and new york around that time um was like gangs in new york you know this scorsese movie yes so it was that kind of uh that we're talking about that that kind of time um and so he was traveling in a time with no passport so he was changing his name left right and center um and he kind of bummed his way across the usa then once he got to new york

um sort of living hand to mouth being a real bum um hobo jumping trains you know being uh being a beatnik way before beatniks were invented right um and again his his shipping skills got him onto the the fruit ships of um the sacramento rivers so he was working his way up and down there till he got to san francisco and in san francisco then he started working the ships again which brought him uh to japan the shipping route to japan the commerce route there wow and the the story goes that uh on sort of the third trip returning from japan to san francisco he was him and his mate were kicked off the boat for drunken disorderly conduct and just you know he woke up hung over on the beach watching his ships sail away back to back to new york leaving him there

alone god you're so fucked like can you imagine how fucked you are like you are so fucked because this isn't there's no air you're not going to catch a plane back like you are screwed man you like you are deeply deeply fucked if you find yourself in the hundreds of years ago on a beach in japan with no an alcoholic just just shipwrecked on in another country he definitely didn't speak japanese right there's no way no not at all this was like his only a third time in japan oh wow i say he was only probably there for an like an afternoon maybe stayed overnight before heading back so on this time he just uh the the crew had enough of him and kicked him off the boat and left him there wow um apparently how much of an asshole do you have to be to get kicked off a boat in japan

like you must like it's really i mean you gotta be like really doing some awful stuff for a people on a boat to be like look man we're we're gonna have to shipwreck you in a completely different country because you're that much of an asshole i know it's crazy to think that yeah i just to think where he ends up as well later on in his life i would look but the weird thing is is that he ended up um he made his way to berma somehow going all the way down through southeast asia um fueling his alcohol you know living hand to mouth continuing his his his booming about and working along the coastline of southeast asia till he got to berma where he was working as a tally clerk apparently um i'm not exactly a hundred percent sure what a tally

clerk does but it's something to do with taking tickets or whatever weird but he was he came across a flyer uh that explained buddhism attract that explained buddhism um obviously berma was uh was a huge buddhist country at the time yeah not at the time but obviously is um so he he made his way to a local monastery after reading a little flyer um about buddhism and um the local buddhist took him in and he dried out they had such a profound effect on him that he quit the bottle and he dried out wow and after he decided to become an apprentice monk and after five years as an apprentice he uh in in i think it was june of 1900s he was the first ever white man to be ordained to buddhist monk now that's that's documented that's for sure like in the

in the world this is the first Caucasian to become a buddhist first guy that's nuts that's incredible that we even know that that's an amazing thing that we even know who that is but that is wild i mean that is an epic moment in the history of of that's an epic moment in history to think that yeah i mean it's like the the missing link really to the western buddhism wow crazy and it's all thanks it's all thanks to these fantastic professors there's these three professors who have managed to piece this guy's life together like i said earlier he was living in a time without passports so he was constantly changing his name and had aliases so for them to be able to piece together his life from these fragments of information and figuring out that they were talking

about the right person it's just astonishing that is amazing to think that the first white buddhist became a buddhist because he was too much of an asshole to stay on a boat that's one way of putting it i guess crazy i mean he certainly had a a whirlwind of a life leading up to that point but to be honest with you that like him becoming a monk is just the beginning of this story is really what what he did as a monk then that makes him a legend in my eyes pardon me i've got some gas i've just eaten my food dinner pardon me i'm belching no problem man you don't have to say yourself this is a podcast you could burp for the next 15 minutes and nobody's gonna care that much but um um getting back to this guy he was um

like like i said him becoming a monk is really just the beginning of the story because um at the at the time when he became a monk in 1900 Burma was in the process of being colonized by the british and him coming from a british colony he really took onbridge with this he he fell in love with buddhism so much that he really profoundly affected his life so much so much so that he i mean he quit the bottle the transformation from from a drunken bomb to a dharma bomb is is you know extraordinary and um for him to see uh the british come in and try to destroy this thing that he discovered that's so sacred to him he really took offence and onbridge to this and how the british were doing this how they sort of softened the blow of

their of their colonization was to send in missionaries first and foremost right to convert the buddhas to christianity in order for them to sort of ease make the make the job of taking over their country easier right um so that's that's essentially who who damaloka sorry his name became damaloka after he was uh after he was ordained his ordained name was udamaloka what does that mean does that mean anything um i i've in certain things i've read people have said it's the irish pongi but i think that might have may have been just a nickname that he had because he because of him uh he went on preaching tours all up and down southeast asia so he and because he was a white man with a shaved head and in saffron robes he became he was an odyssey he was a became

a real celebrity yes it's a great hook it's a great hook like you're definitely gonna sell tickets if you're the first white mug anyone's ever seen that's definitely it later on he's he'd steal so much thunder as well like lord quersan that that famous british emperor like showing up at one point um showing up in this town where he's supposed to visit and nobody was there to greet him because damaloka was up the road and had stolen the entire audience you know amazing but um so so what he did was uh like about a month or so after his ordination he placed an ad in the the local burmese newspaper which essentially stated uh he he he said he proclaimed himself to be the bishop of rangoon and forbade any christian tracts or bibles to be handed out in in berma and and said you're not allowed

to do this by order of you damaloka the bishop of rangoon i mean he wasn't the bishop of rangoon he just made that up just to give himself some sort of gravitas wow but he you know he that was sort of the beginning of him sort of making his announcement publicly that you're not allowed to do this and you know if you fuck with me you're going down i mean this is one man standing up to the mind of the british empire yeah and the way he had to do it was by combating christianity and i think a lot of people hear that and they think what the fuck this is the this is the all embracing this is buddhism it's not supposed to be differentiating uh one one religion from the other but if if you understand that it's not so much the christianity that he was combating it was the

people who were wanting to use it as manacles to uh psychologically enslave people that were about to be invaded and that's what he was fighting against not the the religion itself it seems like exactly yeah and obviously he'd he'd witnessed the stranglehold um back in his old country you know and and i think he saw a solidarity with these people who he had you know he who he left and led it into his heart and said you know this i don't want i'm not going to let this happen i've seen what happens when they come where they fucked up my country i'm not going to let them fuck up yours kind of thing yeah and uh which is the most admirable thing you you know i can i can think of and a dangerous very dangerous thing to do and very dangerous yeah absolutely i mean he he

his first arrest i mean he started because he was he was an anarchist really um a total activist and um his first arrest was when he approached an off-duty police officer uh British police officer obviously on the on the swedagon pagoda and the swedagon pagoda is a sacred ground in in rangoon and um no shoes are allowed essentially um when you walk in this in this area you remove your shoes that's just a given yes um unless you're unless you're a police officer on duty yes and um um he was he was there um and approached an off-duty police officer uh who was wearing shoes and uh he confronted them and demanded that he remove his shoes that you're disrespecting everyone here and remove your shoes and the the police officer is refusing and damaloka came out

with the line um you've trampled all over their country now you're going to tram now you want to trample all over their religion and they threw through in jail for that he was arrested and dragged off to jail because obviously people started to gather and you know they were very afraid of sedition and that was one of the charges that he he ended up getting he was charged with sedition later on i mean it was from from 1900 to roughly 1911 he was um he was that was sort of his reign of terror if you like right so it's just just oh just a little over a decade where he was um i mean he ended up being uh under police surveillance no matter where he went when he went on his preaching tours all through Sri Lanka and places like that um i mean he was he was so ahead of his time he was

in china he opened up one of the first multicultural schools for english i mean he um he did so much stuff he a lot of stuff sort of fell fell apart he was very good at um sort of setting up things like the buddhist track society which was a publication where you'd hand out free tracks tracks are like um you know newsletters that kind of thing because here's the thing men people don't understand sorry to cut you off like for us modern modern humans whatever that means the the notion of buddhism or the idea of buddhism is not it's like yeah we see buddhist monks at the airport there's buddhist textbooks or buddhist books everywhere there's so much buddhism is just immersed itself in all the cultures of the world but at this time i don't think people were so aware

of it they didn't know what it was at all so people hadn't been introduced to these ideas which if if you've ever studied buddhism uh you quickly realize how different a religion this is compared to most other religions because it seems to be more of a a process than a religion it's more of a series of exercises philosophy really isn't it philosophy and it's a and and it's a uh it's a kind of um you know they say that uh we take you take up the dharma you and the dharma you take up these ideas in other words it's not like i just believe this is real and i don't understand it it's like you not rules to follow it's just a path to to live really yeah and you have to digest it and the the more that you digest it the more your former self begins to transform not because you

have taken a leap of faith so much is because you've begun to assimilate these very very powerful truths into your life that quite often run counter to the way most of society thinks you know so much of society is based on the individual so much of society is based on power trips and the ego and and and so much of society is based on differentiation when buddhism uh it seems at least the my encounters with it it produces a kind of dissolution uh of the boundaries between me and everything else and it does in a very systematic almost surgical way so it's kind of cool that people nobody really knew about this and um that's that's that's what's so amazing about this story to me is that here you have like uh this is like um this guy was infected

basically with this information and then he started transferring it uh all over the world and the his ability to transfer it was um maybe a little more potent than other people because back in the day I think people listened to it was just so unique he saw them but you got a buddhist honky here man so he's like this is a powerful thing like it's people are gonna listen even though what he's saying is probably no different than the message that's been transmitted from the universe for thousands of years just because of his special identity uh during in relation to this time period he was an excellent excellent amplifier of this information yeah which is pretty cool and that you know the thing that here's another thing that I'd love

to talk with you about is um just how like I think as individuals it's really hard for us to imagine like oh little old me I I'm just a drunk you know like whatever your particular miasma that you found yourself stuck in whoever you are listening right now and everyone's got their own little tar pit they're stuck in you look at the tar around your feet whether it's the shitty relationship the depression the addiction the um the disease the whatever it is you know the thing that you think you're stuck in and then while being stuck in this stuff you no doubt experience from time to time these moments of feeling like you've got a really important thing to do in this world that doesn't involve making money like you get that you know what I'm saying that sense of like

shit man I want to I feel like I can help people and around me and it's a weird feeling if you're a drunk it's a weird feeling if you're an addict it's a weird feeling if you just finish throwing a vase across the room because you were in a fight with your husband or your wife it's a weird feeling when you you know you perceive yourself as being covered in the tar of this of maya uh when when and suddenly coming into you is this sense of like there is a greater path for me than this but look at me I'm a fucking asshole I'm not you know I think I am not gondi and so that's another beautiful thing about this story is here you have someone who was so wretched so fucking wretched a drunk so wretched but he came into contact with this information and uh not only transformed

his own life but began but became an an actual threat is it safe to say he was a threat to one of the largest empires on the planet I think it was considering they erased him from history deliberately would suggest that they were felt threatened by his words and his actions erased from history by the fucking empire think about that that is so wild like because not by the way nothing better can happen to you than for some power structure to erase you from history that is like way better than sending flowers to your funeral that's like you are so potent and so dangerous to the paradigm we were trying to transmit into the world that we are going to try to wash you off of the chalkboard of time if we can that's pretty badass

absolutely and that's precisely the reason why I want to make this movie that I want his legacy to be known by as many people as possible yeah well I don't want sorry go ahead no I just I was I was my my you know I was um no I was just gonna say that um my apologies Duncan I've lost my train oh no problem man I do it all the time I constantly smoke marijuana so that's like just par for the course usually when that happens to me I just go and you know and then and then try to think of something remotely but really here's the thing man you I really are you familiar if you ever uh when I was in college I read this book The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky have you ever read that book no I've read other Dostoevsky I

haven't read Brothers Karamazov it's great man and there's a one of my favorite um essays in there is about uh Saul of Tarsus who was uh you know I guess you could say he was one of the first Christian missionaries so he interestingly enough in a lot of ways there's a parallel between our hero here and uh the first Christian missionary uh Paul his name was Saul uh and he was someone who like back in the day it was very popular and fun to throw rocks at early Christians because why I don't know I guess they were obnoxious back then or people were just like shut the fuck up about Jesus and they would like throw rocks at them and so one of one of uh one of these persecutors of the Christians was um this uh person named Saul and the story goes he's

walking down the road to Damascus has a vision of Jesus Christ who says to him Saul Saul why do you persecute me and in this moment of contact with the Christ consciousness he has a personal transformation his he goes blind becomes Paul he's sent into Damascus runs into some Christians and he's the person who founded the early Christian church which is really interesting and a lot of people say what we see in the post gospels in the epistles is actually not Christianity it's called Paulian theology which is a translation of Christianity but it's really an interesting story and the parallel is here you have a scumbag who likes to throw rocks at very sweet people meets this incredible potent consciousness and transforms to become one of the great missionaries

of the particular religion that he was associated with it's a it's an archetype I guess but Dostoevsky in this essay he uh he ponders what happened in that moment of transformation uh did Jesus or whatever spirit he encountered that came down from the sky touch him in such a way that it created a kind of atomic shift or a metaphysical shift inside of him that he couldn't have done anything about there was no way to resist it there was no way to stop it you just get touched on the heart by our sweet Lord Jesus and bang you're a better person if so then this is a very dire uh appraisal of Christianity and we're in a lot of trouble because it means Jesus is just some kind of alien that can shoot a spiritual healing beam at the dark part of your heart and whether you like it or not you're

going to turn into a good person thus all free will has been completely eradicated the other the and since Dostoevsky was an existentialist a Christian existentialist he said no what happened was Saul had this experience maybe he didn't have enough water to drink or maybe uh you know he just something happened neurologically or maybe he ate the wrong wheat that had some fungus on it Dostoevsky doesn't say that but who knows what happens Saul trips out has this vision and because he's finally had a vision he uses it as the excuse to become his optimum self and uh I love that I love that idea because it's like yeah sure Buddhism great the picking up the the dharma great Christianity great uh uh Islam great the visions great all of them great great great great great

but really all they do is give you a perfect excuse to become a better person that's it and that becoming a better person you're the one who does it you're the one who does it you're the one who pulls yourself out of the tar and whatever symbol structure you want to use to do it uh you get to pick it's right there for you you know what I'm saying it's that goddamn imminent transformation that is floating in front of all human beings at any given moment that blows my mind that at any second in this dimension if you want to you can achieve what unfortunately is an overused and misunderstood word enlightenment attainment you can realize that we are inside the most divine incredible beautiful sweet smelling temple of of time any whenever you want and it really

doesn't matter which way you do it it's just that you can do it and stories like this which is it sounds to me that this is a redemption story or so inspiring because man it's real I just think people just need to keep going back to the fact that this was a drunk who got thrown off a boat you know this is a drunk who got thrown off a boat like the bottom of the rung that's pretty much the bottom of the rung there man you are a homeless man homeless alcoholic on a beach in japan who transforms into one of the great modern buddhist teachers of our time threatens one of the great world powers and gets erased from history until thank god someone like you comes along and is like we're gonna we're gonna get this information out there and this is where it gets even more

spectacular to me is that the way that you're getting this information out there is using a brand new technology which is broadcasting this story at this very moment around the entire planet how wild is that man it's like this little seed that you've discovered now you've managed to use a technology that has only existed in the last maybe decade or so 15 years uh you to amp to to reproduce it and amplify it and send it into the brains of so many people all around the planet that's an incredible thing to think about to me that's really fucking cool wow thank you thank you thanks for getting this stuff out here man i just i think it's so cool to hear these stories especially ones that no one's heard of no one i never in my life have ever contemplated who was

the first who was the first year a white white person who got in touch with buddhism it's something no one even thinks about no one even considers that so it's really cool man and so i was i was completely floored when i when i first first read the information and um i was just thinking like why don't why isn't this common knowledge why why isn't he in our in our history books why isn't he in our textbooks why then why didn't i learn about this guy at school you know you got the likes of you know oscar wilder michael collins or other sort of big names in irish history but udam aloka has just has never existed in in in this sort of consciousness you know and um he's sort of he's known bits and pieces in academia people who go out of their way to study history of religion

etc and and they're the only people who are who are aware of them at this point and that's i think he's too important a person his story and his legacy and and his is you know his lust for life really is he's up there with you know lennie bruce or marthin luther king people who who just stood up for what they believed in despite any of the odds and just went for it with tenacity and righteous indignation and just ah righteous indignation power just with you know powerful with the correct you know what i'm trying to say yes i do know what you're trying to say i i i become very inarticulate when i get when i get personally uh sort of emotional about about this man you know well it's fascinating in a way that you are like him you are you you feel the same

way you feel driven in the same way to get this story out there you're you are you're you're transmitting you can you have actually it seems like absorbed a lot of his energy and are feels like yeah yeah it feels like that i mean i i there's this so saying and i don't know if it's a song lyric or whatever it is uh whoever coined this phrase but it's uh religion is for is for people who are afraid to go to hell whereas spirituality is for people who've already been there ah yes yeah right and i don't know who coined that but i i i live by that right now oh i love that and i can see the damaloka he went through his his hell and then came out the other side as you know reborn i mean that's that's your rebirth right there isn't that yeah i look at you know what i

look at it transformational arc from from from from a nobody to to somebody so important and then to be and then back to a nobody for a little after nothing you know that the candle was blown out until 2009 you know hundred hundred years later you know that thing you're saying about spirituality versus religion uh you know what it reminds me of is the right when um and you know ron dos of course talks about he's so good at articulating the idea of all these various channels that we can tune into at any given moment and uh but it does remind me like i still i'm old enough now as you are to remember when there was only 13 channels on the tv you're three main ones and you are i can remember like two you'd be lucky if you there was one like i remember in north caroline we had this

little tv and if you got the antenna just right you could tune in to put uh to to god a station that had doctor who but it would come through really fuzzy and foggy and it was like still like oh my god we got it we got it for a second it was amazing uh and and then and then cable happened and then suddenly you get these crystal clear channels and it was just like oh my god look at all these other things we could watch and to me that's kind of what uh spirituality is it's that it's suddenly it's those crazy moments in the midst of whatever your particular hell happens to be uh whatever it is and it doesn't have to be something as dramatic as alcoholism it can just be the general sense of anxiety and emptiness that fills the hearts of anyone who's taken the

smallest amount of time to consider the fact that they are going to die uh it can just be that that kind of aching thing of like knowing like you know i love all these people around me but they're all going to die and so am i i actually just saw the uh i actually just saw the somebody on reddit asked like since like 10 000 bc how many people have died and you know obviously it's in the it's in the billions it's everybody it's everybody uh so you know that that um that at first can create a real aching sadness and then and in the midst of that spirituality is this tuning mechanism that suddenly says yeah okay right exactly oh you're right terrible terrible terrible death death death you're gonna die everyone's gonna die no one will everyone will be erased from the chalk

board of time regardless of what they do because the entire planet is gonna eventually be incinerated by a supernova or a comet or a meteor or some unknown source there is no way to escape the singularity we're all plunging into you're exactly right and it's incredibly terrifying and also you're right your relationships suck your marriage is shit your financially bankrupt you're spiraling down into alcoholism you're addicted to heroin you're deeply chronically supremely depressed yes you're right you're right you've got cancer yes you're right you've got a hepatitis whatever herpes yes you do it's true you do and it's scary and terrible but here let me show you this other channel click and you turn to that channel it's like oh my god this entire

universe is the incense rising off of the altar of the divine everything is so beautiful and even my own expiration even my own dissolution even my own fear even the pain itself is incredible isn't it amazing it's amazing sorry about that uh but that's what it teaches you that's the channel that you get that's the thing that you can tune into man and that to me is just one of the most incredible beautiful gifts uh that people like Dharma Loka give us sorry Duncan I missed some of that there because you went I went on hold for a second I don't know if you don't worry it was just it was a it was a ridiculous rant but it was good it was good I just missed about 15 or 20 seconds there and I didn't know what you were saying I was saying that

we can tune into any frequency that you know there's a lot of other frequencies that we could tune into and that um uh this um uh the teachers they allow us to um tune into frequencies other than the miasmic oily ones that a lot of us are stuck in yes I guess that's it I don't know and um can I ask you a question sure what is God to you because I'm an atheist and I don't believe in God um and I'm just I'm I like to know more about um what your opinion of what God is and what he's got to you because I know it's a personal thing really isn't it well I mean you know yeah I like I actually got some sometimes I'll like I think I negatively talk about atheists and I never mean to you I uh but but uh well I'm I'm an atheist because like technically I am to be

honest I don't identify with anything to be I I see myself as a human on planet earth and we're all one and I practice Buddhism I'm certainly uh I'm certainly a student of the teachings of the Buddha for sure but uh and but I don't believe in God and I don't believe in a deity well yeah I mean I'm just because I I I know when I respect you and I just like to know what what is God to you well you know I there's a um so you you so the idea from the God that I know or understand or pray to or think about or feel connected to um there's a lot of different names for for that that that what that is and and some of them you know if you take any of them literally obviously you're going to be like this is a complete horseshit because uh we're talking about

I mean you know you just have to look at where we at what's going on here right what what is going on here and and what's going on here is that based on every on everything that we understand uh using the most advanced technology that we currently have it appears that there was some outburst of energy billions and billions and billions of years ago that ended up cooling down and in the cooling down process expanded infinitely and also formed all these uh accumulations of matter that we call planets and stars and comets and somehow the spinning of these things and the input from random chaotic chance whether it was meteor impacts or we don't know what really the the combination of the spinning centrifugal force and being close enough to a burning ball of light

uh and having sort of a hot core the combination of all these things created this life-bearing somal curam is that how you say it somal curam that that that that you know organic life it came from and then organic life uh but complexified and eventually it became us and uh we feel love and the so for me the leap of faith when it comes to god or or why i believe in god and how i believe in god is i can't understand i don't i cannot accept the idea that life is only formed on this planet it's impossible for me to accept that idea and based on the data coming in from um uh the kepler satellite that the telescope that's studying potentially habitable earth-like planets in the goldilocks region of stars not too hot not too cold there it appears to

be that there are zillions of them out there just in the tiny little quadrant of the universe that we can uh see and so if we are truly in an ever-expanding infinite universe which i don't see how it couldn't be infinite because what's the wall made of you know what's the wherever it stops what's the boundary there man it's that's something too then it's an infinite boundary but whatever it is we must exist in the infinite universe and if the infinite universe has as one of its qualities the production of sentient beings that are capable of unconditional love for each other in their highest moments on this planet which is a and we're brand new on this thing man we just popped out of the womb of the earth and we've already gotten to the point where many of us at this very moment are

taking bullets for our brothers and sisters uh just because we love them uh people are dying for their children people are dying for their friends people are swimming and saving people in the ocean even though they know they might drown we know in this universe that that level of love is possible and is happening and if we exist in an infinite universe then i think there must be an infinite spectrum of that kind of phenomena and i think the sum total of all phenomena in in that place where love reaches its maximum infinite ever accelerating exponentially increasing place is the point that i would call god and that's what i pray to gotcha gotcha do you do do you read carl sagan i've seen cosmos i i don't read a lot of carl

say i know he's incredible i mean i know i know to me that to me the man was enlightened i to me he he was a buddha i mean if you listen to um the audio book extract of pale blue dot about how you know when he sent um voyager one up on its mission and as it passed i think it was as it was leaving the rings of saturn he he decided to point to point the the the vessel back towards earth and take a photograph of it yes which was just that pale blue dot image and what that you know the profound poetry that came out of him after seeing that image i mean it just it astounds me that you know in in every hotel room drawer is a copy of the holy bible yet pale blue dot is out of print yeah right well you know man yeah i know i mean he said something as well is that we we are the

universes what i don't want to misquote the man there but he says we are the universe's way of knowing itself that's right that's right and that's happening right now and every single person listening and and and it's and i don't think it's just limited to uh and not that it matters that it's ever even if it were just here to me it's still divine it's still uh so so sumptuous and sweet and something to uh some something so comforting uh but and i think there's lots of ways to get to get to that point and if you want to be if you want to use matter or you want to focus solely on matter then that is the you know that is the flesh of of um this divinity and the more and what's in the in written in the very uh inorganic matter of the planet that we are

currently existing on is the story of billions and billions of years and if you zoom in even deeper to that then you see written within the very inorganic matter the stones of this earth if you zoom in deeper to the atomic or subatomic levels then you start witnessing uh the miracle which is that we are in a a a very slow moving cloud of atomic phenomena that uh is capable of producing sense organs and life and that you know the scripture is everywhere so and it's just right there for everyone to tune into but on it but i think for a lot of people it's overwhelming like a lot for a lot of people it's like you want to be the kid at the uh slumber party when the parents have driven away for a second and you get to uh have that feeling of of you know uh not being

watched over it's kind of overwhelming you know you don't want to you want to we need the rebellious phase we need that feeling of like i'm a separate differentiated individual in the face of this thing and that's a blast and i think but i think that that ultimately is a it can feel so so so empty and cold uh in relation to this other way of connecting which is where suddenly you kind of do that thing they call surrender and uh allow yourself just for a second to be embraced by everything and to blend in with it and to become you know part of those sort of warp and weave of this uh exhalation uh that is happening this miraculous exhalation we are inside one of the most in the first outbreath of god that's us you know and you don't have to call it god if you're

a catholic man i wouldn't call it god i'd come up with my own name for it because that word unfortunately you know that word is uh very simple word is tainted it makes me for someone like me who grew up with under the thumb of christian brothers and stuff like that the the g word really does does doesn't do the right thing no way brother it's like i could give me a baby give me any baby and i if you give me three this sounds so fucked up but if you give me three years with a baby give me three babies give me three babies for three years and i can make all three of them hate any word that you give me whatever it is you want me to i can get them to hate the word butter i can get them to hate the word night i can get them to hate the word pillow i could do

like just take the word pillow if you give me uh kids and and just any kind of like just basic skinnery like a skinner box and every time the word pillow is uttered there's a nice electric shock that runs through their body when they become older and somebody's like hey do you have uh you you need an extra can i have a pillow they're gonna like ah fuck no god i don't use pillows they suck man i i'm never gonna lay on a fucking pillow i use my hands pillows are awful and it's the same thing it's like that's the unfortunate you know repercussion hopefully unintentional repercussion of this bastardized version of a beautiful philosophy uh is it this tool which is all the word god is it's just a tool man it's a tool it's a plug or it's the

connection point between you and the sentient divine aspect of the universe but you know once you've been shocked don't use the word anymore come up with a new one call it whatever you want man you get to invent that name i don't have a word for it but i do feel the connection uh when i can i connect with the universe when i meditate and that's where it really it really you can feel that i mean you mentioned Kepler there earlier and um i had um it was it was recommended once in one sort of thing i was reading online to sort of keep a meditation journal and um i did i only did it once and i made one entry and um and if i can try and remember what i said but it was um if you think meditation to me is like when i think it was the Hubble um they ran the the

belt of Orion there was an area of space where scientists believed there was absolutely nothing so i think for 14 days they trained the Hubble maybe it was Kepler but i think it was the Hubble for 14 days they trained and focused and spent all their attention on this area where they expected there to be nothing when the photograph developed they saw billions of more galaxies yeah that to me is just that blows my fucking mind man yeah and that that's what i get like i i reach the edge of the observable universe internally when i meditate and when i you know and i feel that connection because it's it's parallel within and without you know from and and it's like you know like that's sort of um an egg timer where the sand is dropping that point right in the center

between the top compartment and the bottom compartment that is the center of your head if you like when you're meditating and that connects you between the both universe within and without and you realize you are everything yes that's it i love it that's god to me that's that's it man that's that feeling that oh that that is that is you know god is an easy word man it's it's a written it's a dumb word really anything god god god it really does seem like something a dumb person like if it done it really is like the sound you would make when you're experiencing that exhilarating sense of novelty like the first thing that's going to come out of your mouth is like good good good you know it's like that it's it almost is just like

that um it's like the utterance of someone whose mind is getting blown you know it's like good good it's that thing you know ah ah you know that god it's got that ah sound in it you know that sound you're like oh wow it's that you know and and um it's not the first word we say when we orgasm as well yeah yeah exactly and before the word god came into popular use you know or before before the whatever language whatever it is in your language or in all the languages of the earth there is still that exhilarating sense of it's like a combination of excitement and relief that happens when you realize that the the the your every single thing that you think about how every single thing works is only one tiny tiny infinitesimal little piece of the way things really are and for

a brief second in this incarnation we get the chance to glimpse that greater thing and it's oh what a relief fuck man i thought i knew everything i really really did and oh wow it's totally different than what i thought like it's so very very different and not different in a bad way but different in a billion trillion times better than what you expected it's like that uh that imminent surprise party that's waiting every single person in every moment you know when you come home from a shitty day at work and you open the door and all your friends are there and you're you know there's just this love comes blasting out at you and everyone's like surprise it's that thing you know at any moment there's that chance to have the entire universe give

you a surprise party where it's like surprise check it out this place is awesome you thought it was shit but it isn't it's awesome it's so filled with love and truth and that that's god you know and i don't care about the word i just use it as a form of laziness really it's fun to pray too man actually it's it's like it's really a blast to like you know it's like okay we um like seti you know uh we were scanning the observable universe for signs of extraterrestrial life uh and in one controversial move that some people want to do is they want to start blasting i think lasers or some like thing into the universe that like is saying to people hey we're out here we're out here we're out here and some people are saying you know let's keep quiet about this place that we're at

right now because we don't know who we're contacting uh so let's let's let's let's keep this under wraps but so a person an individual existing on this planet is in one of the most unique predicaments that i can think of in the known universe which is that here we are this sentient bit of thinking meat that has this deep deep inner cosmos subjective inner universe filled with all our memories thoughts and feelings and we're surrounded by an external universe that seems to go on forever so in the same way that it might be absolutely ridiculous and pointless to imagine that we can shoot lasers or information beams out into the sky in some random direction and someone might come back to us and say hey what's up oh cool we've been waiting for you guys to call

it's still definitely worth the effort if you ask me and in the same way if you are a sentient bit of the universe experiencing itself then wouldn't you want to run experiments that involved metaphysically trying to communicate with any form of disembodied super intelligent sentience that might exist outside of your own self and that's what prayer is and why not give it a shot because you know maybe no one does write back but a lot of people have reported that from time to time you somebody somebody writes back right away you know and the way that they write back is not in the form of like hearing the voice of god but the way they write back is a sudden explosive uh as a sudden explosive occurrence of unpredictable yet beautiful synchronicities around you

that are called miracles you know that's the way it writes back and and i think it's worth the experiment you know i think it's definitely worth the experiment to do and it's and even if nothing happens even if you pray you just wake up in the morning go thank you god you can't say that say thank you carl or whatever name you want to come up with thank you you know come up with the name for it thank you carl sagan and and uh thank you that which inspired carl sagan thank you that thing at the quantum level of carl sagan that created the series of electrical events in carl sagan's brain to produce all of the works of carl sagan thank you that point from which all inspiration emerges into the known universe thank you that thing that allows human beings to express love

whatever that is just say thank you to it in the morning or at night and who knows worst case you just have said thank you to a phantom you know an imaginary friend what's the big deal it's still cool i i i get that when i'm at night i'm walking my dog and i stand and look at the stars that you know that's if that's if you want to call that praying and and looking up and knowing there's so much that we don't know that completely outweighs what we do know and we know so much yes the dark matter you know and it's but and that space has weight i mean that that was revealing there recently but was it Lawrence Krause he said even nothing weighs something that's awesome that's fucking amazing that's fucking amazing man and and and you

know it's to me this is why i love bhakti yoga because bhakti yoga acknowledges that uh one of the great pleasures in life is saying thank you one of the great pleasures in life is when someone gives you something a million times more than you deserve and you go oh thank you thank you thank you and they go oh it's nothing really i love you like that's such a fun interaction to have and it's such a sweet interaction to have and i think that some people rob themselves of this experience by negating the potentiality of a godhead and when you um when you uh uh just allow it for a second nothing to lose nothing to lose and then and you start doing these kind of metaphysical experiments which were recommended by not just by the uh you know

fundamentalists but are also recommended by some of the most respected occultists that have ever existed like Crowley Crowley said you know create try to contact every god but once you've contacted each god move on to the next one you're done you know so contact Hanuman as soon as you get the call i'll hang up yeah and then call the next one when you get the message hang up the phone but Crowley said here's a phone book of gods it's uh here's Krishna Hanuman Ganesh here's satan here's Jesus here's a phone book of gods it's called all the scriptures of the world here's what you do make a phone call to every single one of them and then and once you make contact with them get the information you need hang up the phone and then call the next god and keep doing it

all the way down the line because they're all just different pieces of this one you know magnificent incredible happening because you know here we have the exterior universe with all its weight and beauty and power and all the things that scientists show us that Phyllis was such ah but man there is no denying the fact that we have a subjective universe that is teeming with all these potent mystical symbols and uh why do we why do some people take all these mystical symbols that exist in our minds all those connections that happen the moment we tune into all the uh myth and all the symbols and myth there is a real beautiful thing that happens when you're a kid and you watch Star Wars for the first time man that is a mystical event and and and when

you when you see these archetypes playing out and you feel connected and you say I am a fucking Jedi I think I'm a Jedi you know that's real that's real it's just but because it's existing in inner space instead of outer space it gets reduced and negated by the materialist and I don't see why it's like the sparks and stars that exist in my mind are just as valid as the sparks and stars that exist outside of my mind and if some of those sparks and stars are taking on the formation of mythological deified creatures or beings I don't see why I'm not allowed to connect to those things in the same way I'm allowed to connect to all the data coming from the external universe brilliant thanks sorry I just it's like uh it's like I'm got my own little personal podcast here

I'm just listening like I'm that means I'm talking too much I listen to your show all the time man when I'm out walking my dog and stuff and I just you know I get lost in your words and forget like I have to talk back to you no never ask is never ask a stoner what he thinks God is it's just the worst I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I mean I could just nothing to apologize for man I love listening to you I love listening to you man I it really is like I am I really do love it's I like the different ways that people come to connect with the awe and and and I think all the ways are are are valid and beautiful and and inspiring to me it's it's any of them work it's just like what you know it doesn't matter what gate you you go into Disneyland through it's like

you're in you know you're in Disneyland go through go through anyone that you want and uh you know we got a little off track but I'm glad we did uh because I love talking about this stuff it's a uh I I do want to get get back into this movie that you're working on I think people hear your passion and I want to how how far along are you and you're fundraising for this thing um but it hasn't been I've I've managed to uh talk to a lot of people all around the world and and you are actually the the last last person on my initial wish list so that's a that's an achievement unlocked right there cool thank you for really from the bottom of my heart thank you for having me on your show this is amazing let's do it again man but I want to yeah let's talk about

how people can help out getting uh this story out into the world because it's clearly a story that people need to hear about this should be something that everyone just knows great um well I'm crowd funding right now at the minute on a new platform called dana.io dana as in the buddhist buddhist term for forgiving without receiving um it's the world's first buddhist crowdfunding platform so if you're familiar with kickstarter and indiegogo it's it's along those lines um and if you go to dana.io forward slash the dharma bum um you'll see our campaign page I've I've got a pledge video there it's it's very much like kickstarter um so you got your pledge video and some details there and details of who who have got involved in the film and you can buy t-shirts you

can you can actually be in the movie um because I'm this movie is going to be realized through animation um traditional hand drawn 2d animation so there's a certain pledge to your there that we can we can stick it stick you in the movie as an animated character cool um yeah um I find a certain kind of uh poetry in the fact that we're bringing this lost legend back to life in a art form that is considered to be dying so uh yeah that is really cool man and that is what you're doing you know it's like you you one thing that's so exciting uh to me is like from time to time you hear about people saying you know we're gonna bring the mammoth back it's been frozen in the ice but we think we have the technology now to bring these creatures back to the earth uh and and and what

you're doing is very similar you're taking a story that has been frozen in the ice and you're thawing it out and bringing it back to life and that's a really cool thing man so I hope you guys listen and we'll uh consider checking out that link I'll have it at dunkintrussell.com uh help get this uh help get this movie made and uh thank you so much Ian for uh taking the time to chat with me and for allowing me all of these uh rants that I just went on you really uh you really clearly activated something inside of me I really appreciate it dude I I enjoyed and loved every second of it beautiful okay great well thanks man and we will talk again soon thank you very much Duncan and I believe it's your birthday happy birthday to you brother thank you so much uh thank you have

a great day and thank you it's an honor that you uh you would take the time out on your birthday to to talk to this can't think like myself nah bullshit I can't think of a better birthday gift ever I'm now officially having the greatest birthday I've ever had my life thank you Ian I really appreciate it man and I'll talk to you soon okay thanks for listening everybody that was Ian Lawton uh I'm gonna have links to uh his that the his movie at dunkintrussell.com in the comment section of this website thanks to harrys.com for supporting this episode of the DTFH you can go to harrys.com use offer code Duncan to get five dollars off some sweet damn razor blades and if you like this podcast give us a nice rating on iTunes won't you

and don't forget to use our amazon portal please as a birthday gift to me the next time you go swimming through the internet and plan on picking up something from amazon why not take a dip into the dunkintrussell family our amazon portal you can do it as easily as go into dunkintrussell.com clicking on the comment section of any of these podcasts and clicking on the amazon portal link bookmark that thing won't you it's a great way to support this podcast and it costs you not a penny I hope you guys have a wonderful 420 and a wonderful rest of your week a wonderful rest of your incarnation and make every single cycle of time that the indestructible aspect of yourself that you truly are travels through be filled with bliss multiple orgasms and lots of sweet sweet

deep french kissing and good animals and pets and dogs and you can even french kiss your dog nothing wrong with that I love you I'll talk to you next time now please I hope you will enjoy this track from the new or one of the new holy sun's albums this is actually one of my favorite albums of all time it's called last decade two and you can buy the entire album by going to holysons.bandcamp.com this track is called young man and I want to dedicate it to all you sweeties out there have been giving me birthday wishes today I love you all and I'll see you next time when I take a walk out to be in the sun with the dogs and I took them out to the fields of wheat and stuff like that or whatever the hell that shit is by the factory

and I wrote this song and I don't know if it's sad or what but it goes and when the storm is clear I'll be standing right here I'll survive the sadness of this world so like the sunrise I am a young man I live a long time

I hope my heart's not set on much I gotta move slow so let my eyes close trust in this world with my life so so

so yeah i did it originally you gotta put that on my tape