Duncan Trussell Family Hour - Radhanath Swami

Episode Date: September 16, 2015

Duncan is joined by Radhanath Swami (The Journey Home: autobiography of an American Swami) and they talk about Bhakti Yoga, and what the Hare Krishna mantra means. This episode brought to you by CASPER.COM  go to CASPER.COM/FAMILYHOUR to receive $50 off your mattress purchase!

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This episode of the DTFH is brought to you by Casper.com. Go to Casper.com forward slash family hour to receive $50 off your order for a delightful, wonderful, soft, perfect, brand new mattress. Also I did a rather long-winded rant in this one, and if you want to skip over that and skip over the commercials, jump over to around the 33 minute mark and you'll get right into the interview. Alright, here we go. Hello friends.

It is I, Duncan Trussell, and you are listening to the Duncan Trussell Family Hour Podcast and oh, what a magical episode we have today. And to kick this episode off, I'm going to play a clip from an interview with Carl Sagan that was done six months before he died. What is faith? It is belief in the absence of evidence. Now, I don't propose to tell anybody what to believe, but for me, believing when there's no compelling evidence is a mistake.

The idea is to withhold belief until there is compelling evidence. And if the universe does not comply with our predispositions, okay, then we have the wrenching obligation to accommodate to the way the universe really is. And that's coming from a man who's got about six months left to live. He has not succumbed to the attractive and comforting idea offered to the world through so many varying religions that when material life ceases, when organic life ceases, when the last breath leaves the body, the human does not stop existing, but rather, depending on which particular philosophy you're subscribing to, goes on to some higher plane of consciousness

or has some kind of contact with the creator. And that's a very attractive thing to start believing in when you're trying to get to the creator. And that's a very attractive thing to start believing in when you're at the gateway of death. But Carl Sagan was not letting himself get sucked into that paradigm, but rather was holding firm. And for Carl Sagan, this wrenching obligation that he was talking about was obviously the

wrenching obligation to accept the fact that upon the dissolution of his body, he would cease to exist for infinity and would never have contact with those that he loved again. This is the great terror. This is the great ghost story of the atheist. This is the horror of the world. The idea that all the world religions, any faith that has within it the concept of life after death, is not something based on any kind of evidence at all, but is rather just the flowery proclamation of a person terrified of his own extinction.

So terrified that he has been driven into a state of delirium that has allowed him to experience the delusion of contact with a creator or contact with some kind of higher state of consciousness, that it's like matter and antimatter. And once the human mind comes into contact with the inescapable truth that upon that last exhalation, we transform into absolute nothingness for infinity, the human mind goes nuts. It loses its shit. And for millennia, the human mind has been weaving together these stories to try to mitigate

that terrible, aching, awful, inescapable horror that we're all in a canoe heading in the direction of a waterfall that leads into the mouth of oblivion. Oh, it's scary. It's scary to think. And so we end up in a sort of mindset, the mindset of the scientific materialist, which is kind of a very, it's like a truth martyr. It's a person who is offered on the altar of truth the comfort items, like a child surrendering its pacifier to its mother, the security blankets that so many other people all over the world

are clinging to, like infants, all the cathedrals, all the temples, all the mosques, all the churches are just glorified security blankets built by the terror stricken leaders of the world religions, which have not grown out of the human mind to offer comfort or solace or to connect humanity with some kind of higher truth or higher consciousness, but rather to stupefy, to intoxicate and to dull down that aspect of the human entity that screams in the face of the void. And so that is certainly one way to look at religion and that is certainly one way to look at all philosophies based on ideas that cannot be proven scientifically.

There's even more cynical ways of looking at it. You could even say that religion itself was not something created by people in a fear delirium who had lost their minds over their inability to deal with their own extinction, but it was actually created by con artists who were aware of the fact that huge swaths of the human population were going insane with fear, and they knew that if they fabricated some kind of beautiful fairy tale and allowed themselves to take on the guise of middlemen between humans existing in this dimension and the infinite transcendent entities that exist in some other dimension, then they could make a lot of money and live very comfortable lives

while so many other people were toiling and scraping their way from the womb to the tomb. And so this is where we get that wonderful quote, religion is what happened. I think this is Mark Twain. I'm not positive. Forgive me if I misquote someone. It's a great quote though. Religion is what happened when the first con man met the first fool. And from there you can gaze down upon the delusional masses and their silly rituals

and burning their incense and their truth tombs rather than hanging out on internet forums and writing cynical, jaded, shitty comments underneath YouTube videos of cats falling asleep. So if faith is a kind of scientific sin, which is believing in things for which there is no evidence, then when it comes to understanding religion, we have to start looking into what do we have evidence for in religion. And one thing we arguably have evidence for is that religion has the potential to transform the subjective outlook of a person practicing whatever religion they happen to be practicing.

This is summed up nicely in this passage from varieties of a religious experience, the book written by William James. There is a state of mind known to religious men, but to no others in which the will to assert ourselves and hold our own has been displaced by a willingness to close our mouths and be as nothing in the floods and water spouts of God. In this state of mind, what we most dreaded has become the habitation of our safety and the hour of our moral death has turned into our spiritual birthday. The time for tension in our soul is over and that of happy relaxation, of calm, deep breathing,

of an eternal present with no discordant future to be anxious about has arrived. What William James is describing there is the peak experience that is accessible via the methodologies presented in all the world religions. And what he's articulating is the self-reported subjective state of multitudes of people who have come into contact with religion. We must withhold belief until we have firm evidence. That's what Carl Sagan says. We must withhold belief.

So if you're somebody who subscribes to the hypothesis that there is no external disembodied intelligence in the universe, that there is no higher consciousness, external to human form, that in the entire expansive ever expanding, impossible to comprehend vastness of the universe, there is no greater intelligence and certainly no greater intelligence that created the set of chain reactions that made life form on this planet that we're currently existing in. And you have to affirm that hypothesis by gathering all the data available to you, not just the data that you found that has been gathered by people scanning the external universe.

You have to scan your own internal universe as well. And that's where you run into a lot of problems because that particular data set that exists inside the subjective cosmos of every single individual is a data set that is not accessible to the tools currently available to scientists living today. We've got the Hubble telescope, we've got satellite circling planets, but we have no way to fly meters, gauges, or any kind of device into the subjective universe that makes up a great deal of who we are. We are the universe.

Human beings are the universe. You have to agree with that. And if we are the universe, then one swath of the universe, one sedimentary layer of the universe is that universe that exists within the human mind. The universe of dreams, imagination, inspiration, the universe of epiphanies, the universe accessible when you inhale dimethyltryptamine smoke or slurp back ayahuasca or take a large enough dose of mushrooms, that place that is populated by seemingly disembodied entities that seem very different from us.

That place has been reported, has been talked about, and has been mapped by psychonauts, mystics, theologians, and prophets for a very, very, very long time. But we don't have the gauges to get in there yet. You're not going to be able to find what an epiphany looks like using an MRI. And you're not going to be able to find what enlightenment looks like using a CAT scan. We can do MRIs and CAT scans of people claiming to be enlightened, but that's not really going to give us the metric that we're looking for. And that's where shit gets cool, because you are the only person who can go into your internal

cosmos who has access to this very rare strata of the biosphere. If you consider just how rare life appears to be based on our current scans of planets in our galaxy, and based on our scans of the planets that we have access to, and we don't have very good access to the planets in the Goldilocks region of stars, but we do know that there do seem to be planets out there. But the bottom line is we haven't gotten any kind of contact, as far as we're aware, unless there's some vast government conspiracy that happened a very long time ago, from any kind of aliens.

Which means that up until this point, we are the only life that we have discovered in space. And that's terrestrial life on planet Earth. So you are in a very interesting and beautiful situation here as a human being, because you are the only entity, as far as you know, in the entire universe that has access to your subjective cosmos. Nobody else can see your dreams, nobody else can think your thoughts, nobody else can feel what you feel, nobody else has access to that data set. They only have access to your articulation of that data set.

That makes any sense at all. What I'm saying here is you're the only being that can fly your spaceship of consciousness into the great, luminous, vivid, subconscious cosmos that exists inside of your mind. So before you discard and write off our religion, based on your analysis of all the various data sets that have been obtained from scientists using all kinds of fascinating high-tech instruments to scan the external universe, you have to do a scan of your own internal universe, and you have to do that scan before and after you've practiced any given religion for some certain amount of time.

You need to find out what happens to your internal, subjective cosmos after practicing some religion. See what happens. I would like to see and I would be deeply moved and I would have great respect for people like Richard Dawkins if they would spend some period of time engaged actively and fully in religious life. What would Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris have to say about Islam after practicing for a few months and not practicing in a cynical way but actually going through the routine?

I'm sure they wouldn't be able to do it without being cynical. What would happen if they suspended their disbelief for a period of a few months and engaged in some kind of theistic religion for any given period of time and then accurately reported any changes that happened to their internal mindset or mood state after this practice? Would there be any change at all? What I mean is it's not fair to study the outside of religion and claim that because the symbols used in religion are completely ridiculous and unverifiable using any kind

of measurement tool available to the scientist without scanning the internal universe, their own internal universe after practicing prayer, mantra, congregational chanting or whatever the particular religion is that they decided to investigate. It would be a curious study. That's all. So the same applies to you and this is something that Alistair Crowley advised and something that I really love which is dive into this stuff, check it out, go deep into it. Go into it not with the fanatical bleary eyes of somebody trying to escape the itchy horror

of their own inevitable extinction but with the wide open lucid eyes of a scientist studying a strata of the universe that is only accessible to the individual which is that strata which is your own subjective understanding of life, the lens through which you and you alone gaze out into the world. See what happens and how that apprehension of the universe changes when you add to your internal cosmology the symbols that are offered to us from all the world's religions. How to use all the world's religions start with one. For me the religion that had the greatest impact in my life is what's called Vaishnaiva

Bhakti Yoga, Hari Krishnas, came into contact with the Hari Krishnas many, many, many, many moons ago when I was in Laguna Beach, started chanting Hari Krishnas, started following some of their prescribed methodologies which I don't think I could follow today. These include not eating meat, no intoxicants, no sex, that was easy for me back then, and no gambling, no problem. But the eating meat and the drugs thing, I mean it wasn't necessarily the easiest thing but I definitely did it and suddenly I was refraining from all of this stuff and combining that with daily chanting of this mantra, Hari Krishna, Hari Krishna, Krishna, Krishna,

Hari Hari, Haridama, Haridama, Rama, Rama, Hari Hari, I was doing that every day and it changed me and I think it changed me permanently to some degree. I still say Hari Krishna, I still chant Hari Krishna, I recognize the dangers of organized religion and I am always going to be skeptical of any kind of organized religion that places that creates a system where there is a guru or spiritual master or somebody who has full authority over their flock but I would be a bad scientist if I didn't report back to you to say that the consistent chanting of the Hari Krishna Mahamantra mixed in with a more disciplined daily life created some pretty profound changes in my subjective consciousness

and created some of the most psychedelic experiences that I have ever had in my life. That definitely happened, it definitely happened to me and I marvel over it and think about it to this very day, some of the stuff that happened when I was really diligently engaged in that spiritual practice. So you know I say Hari Krishna a bunch on this podcast, that's why and I was thinking how odd it is that I've never really had a Hari Krishna devotee on this podcast and not long after that thought I got a text from Zach Leary who said that his friend Radhanath Swami, a Hari Krishna monk and teacher was going to be in town and that he would do

my podcast so that's how this podcast came about and I hope that you will listen to it with an open mind, temporarily suspend any stigma that you may, any preconceived notions about who the Hari Krishna's are or what it is to be a Hari Krishna and just listen to the interview I did with Radhanath Swami and forgive me if I seem a little nervous or if I miss some questions. I was trying to cover the broad strokes of the philosophy while dealing with something that I love to encounter which is that a lot of, quite often when you get to hang out with somebody who's been practicing a spiritual tradition for a very long time, they output

some pretty intense energy that is psychedelic in its own right and I don't know whether that's just something I'm projecting or whether that's something that is actually coming from within them but it's always been true for me. It's happened a bunch and that happened during this episode too. So there you go. We're going to dive right into this but first some quick business. Today's episode of the DTFH is brought to you by the mattress lords over at Casper.com. I don't need to tell you how important those sweet padded rectangles are in your life.

A mattress is something that you make love on top of. It's something you curl up in the fetal position in when you've eaten too much marijuana and wait for the demons to go away and obviously it's something that you sleep on. You watch TV on it if you're somebody who has a TV in your bedroom. You don't need to know that a mattress is super important but one thing that you've probably experienced if you currently own a mattress is this strange problematic aspect of buying a mattress at any kind of mattress dispensary. Mattress salesmen are confusingly angry.

These beings are selling these wonderful sweet rectangles of solace and yet they seem filled with such inexplicable rage and I think the rage is directly related to having to work inside a warehouse filled with mattresses and yet not being allowed to nap on top of them and also dealing with people coming in all day long who definitely are not going to buy a mattress from you. It creates a kind of weird rage. I was almost punched by a mattress salesman once. He was physically angry.

You could see his fists clenching. I don't remember what I did. I'm sure it was related to, I probably sassed him or something. I don't know what it is that happened but I do know that any experience that I've ever had trying to buy a mattress has not been fun. The last mattress that I bought, I'm sorry I've told this story a few times before. I will quickly summarize. A, I was too high.

I went to a mattress store completely baked on Edible Marijuana. B, I'd recently experienced, my mom had died and I'd gotten cancer so I was also crazy. I was high and crazy and somehow I thought that the answer to the great sucking void that had appeared in my chest was to buy a super expensive mattress. What ended up happening is I got hoodwinked. The mattress salesman brought me over to the most expensive corner of the store. He showed me this mattress on top of a frame that would lift up and vibrate and I lay on the mattress.

It was very comfortable and he pressed the vibrate button. The thing started vibrating. I was super high. It felt like my atoms were about to fly apart in a million different directions and what sealed the deal, this hypnotic maniacal minotaur and a maze of mattresses told me that his wife had actually gotten addicted to this kind of mattress and that had been a problem. He looked at me with the most solemn, serious look and he said, I'll sell you this but you got to promise me that you're not going to get addicted and that was it.

That's all I had to hear. I could get addicted to this mattress. This is like heroin. It's like a narcotic. Done. I ended up paying way too much for this ridiculous mattress and what ultimately is the same kind of bed that you find in old folks home. It was shipped to my house a couple of weeks later.

I allowed myself this terrible belief that once the mattress came everything would be okay and all the grief and sorrow and awfulness that I experienced in 2013 would dissipate as I lay down on that sweet, vibrating rectangle of joy and the mattress came and installed the mattress. Well, I didn't. The guys who brought it installed the mattress and some friends came over and I remember showing them the mattress with this kind of crazy look in my eye like, look, I got this awesome mattress.

Oh yeah, this is the one. This is why life is good, vibrating mattress. I still remember the pity. I still remember the pity in their eyes as they realized that I had completely gone off the deep end and was using the mattress as a surrogate for God. Basically, what happened is within six months that goddamn mattress started sinking in. It was like laying on a lumpy old bag of dirt. What had formerly been so comfortable, there was just like terror, there was like awful

indentations in it. It was just a bad mattress, man. It broke down. It just broke down quick and I wasn't very comfortable. I get all these back spasms and muscle spasms and I realized that I'd been hoodwinked by a mattress master. Anyway, I was contacted by Casper. They wanted to sponsor the podcast.

I told them to send the mattress and I tried it out before I could promote it. The mattress is what I lay onto this very day. What other promotion do you need? I sleep on a Casper mattress. I love it. It has yet to indent. It has yet to collapse. It is a very comfortable, firm, bouncy mattress and it was a million times less expensive

than the evil rectangle of doom sold to me by that bastard at the mattress warehouse that I purchased a mattress from. Casper mattresses cost 500 for a twin size mattress, 600 for a twin extra large, 750 for a full sized, and 850 for a queen sized, and 950 for a king sized mattress. I don't know why you're going to buy a twin sized mattress. That's kind of spooky. Are you a serial killer? Are you trying to get mattresses into your cult compound?

Don't get a twin sized mattress. Get a queen. Really, get a king. That's my big regret. I wish I'd asked them to send me a god damn king sized mattress because I've got two dogs and a girlfriend now and I feel like I'm laying in a very small raft in an ocean of sleep filled with a lot of warm, sweet, wriggling, wonderful things. Kings the way to go.

You make the choice. All I'm saying is I would not lead you astray. I sleep on a Casper mattress. It's way more comfortable than the super expensive mattress that I bought and the cool thing about Casper is they'll give you a free delivery and returns with a 100 day period. There's no way you can lose. Let them send you the mattress. If you hate the damn thing, send it back and go to a mattress maze and buy some super

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Here's a big announcement. Hello, Australia. On Sunday, the 8th of November at 8 p.m., I'm going to be at the Factory Theater in Sydney doing a live podcast recording. We added this show. We're doing very well when it comes to ticket sales so the folks promoting this tour thought it'd be a great idea to do a live podcast. If you want to come see a live Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast and you live anywhere

near Sydney, I hope that you will go to the link that's going to be up at DuncanTrussell.com and buy tickets to the DTFH live podcast recording with Johnny Pemberton. Go get tickets now. A big thank you to all of you who have been donating to the podcast. Thank you to all of you who have been using our Amazon portal. This is a fantastic way for you to support this podcast while buying all those wonderful bits of plastic that are so important for your happiness here in this material universe. If you go to any of the episodes at DuncanTrussell.com and click on our Amazon portal when you're

buying something through Amazon, then we will get a very small percentage of whatever it is that you buy and it doesn't cost you anything. Right now I am immersed in this incredible book that makes me feel really dumb not because the book is too academic but because the book is so simple yet powerful. It's called The Varieties of Religious Experience, A Study in Human Nature by William James. Highly recommended if you want to buy a cool book on Amazon and I'm really into flop books right now rather than audible or Kindle books. It's really nice to hold a book in your hand.

I forgot about that. Very simple joy. So if you want a cool book and you want to support this podcast, why not go through the portal located at DuncanTrussell.com in the comments section of any of these episodes. Bored by the long introduction and the incredibly long mattress commercial, please remember that you can always skip forward, that you don't have to listen to these introductions. I will not be offended and I understand if sometimes for you they may seem tedious. Other people seem to really enjoy them my friends.

So just skip through and if you just like the interviews, if you just like the conversations, that's hugely flattering to me and I certainly want you to feel bored with this podcast. So just jump ahead. Also I think many people are not aware of the fact that there is a thriving online community located at DuncanTrussell.com with some really interesting characters there who you can interact with and talk about these podcasts or anything else that you feel like talking about for that matter. I invite you to go to DuncanTrussell.com, join the forum, check out my upcoming dates,

buy a t-shirt, get a poster, but more than anything, thank you for listening to this show. Let's get this thing going. Today's guest is Radhanath Swamy. He is a monk in the Krishna Bhakti lineage. It's also known as a Vaishnaiva Sannyasana. He's written a book called The Journey Home, a memoir of his search for spiritual truth and he has organized an incredible charity in Mumbai which serves more than 260,000 plates

of vegetarian food to the children in the slums of Mumbai on a daily basis. He also has an incredible eco village out there in India which is a self-sustaining village. I'll have all the links to this so you can check it all out and links for you to get into contact with Radhanath Swamy if you feel like it. His website is www.radhanathswi.com. Go check it out, but for now, everyone, please welcome to the DuncanTrussell Family Hour podcast, Radhanath Swamy. Radhanath Swamy, welcome to the DuncanTrussell Family Hour podcast.

I'm so grateful that you're here today. It is my honor and great pleasure to be with you, Duncan, thank you. You are the first devotee that I've had on this podcast and I was talking to you before a little bit about how this religion has had a massive impact on my life, but I don't think I've explained it very well on this podcast and so I'm really excited to chat with you a little bit about it so that maybe you could give an explanation to the audience who listens about what bhakti yoga is and what it means to be a devotee. So that's my first lazy question, which is what is bhakti yoga?

In Sanskrit, the name or the word bhakti means love, spiritual love. The principle is that the most fundamental need of all living beings is to love and to be loved. In the Brahma Sutra, a great scripture, it is said, ananda mayo bhashat, which means one thing that we all have in common, whether we're CEOs of corporations or little aunts on a kitchen counter, everyone is looking for pleasure. We're all seeking pleasure and we're all seeking ways to relieve that which interferes with our pleasure, which is pain.

Things, accumulation of wealth or power, prestige or physical sensual experiences, can give some degree of pleasure to the body, mind and senses, but they cannot touch the heart and real fulfillment is a thing of the heart. The only thing that can actually touch the heart with joy is to be loved and to love. And the origin of that experience is the soul's love for God or the supreme soul. The living force within the body who's seeing through the eyes and hearing through the ears and smelling through the nose and thinking through the brain. That living force in Bhagavad Gita is called the atma or the soul.

And this is a universal principle. In the Bible, Jesus says, what profit if a person who gains the whole world but loses his own soul? So we are this soul, we are this living force that's animating and giving consciousness to our bodies. And people are so much distracted by trying to find happiness through satisfying the body that they've forgotten the needs of the soul. Just like if you're driving in a car, the car needs gasoline and oil, but the driver

needs something else. What is it that actually gives satisfaction, meaning, and fulfillment to the soul? And all the great religions and spiritual paths throughout history are speaking in various languages, sometimes in various ways, to address this question. Who am I? What is real happiness? What is death? What is beyond death?

So the origin of that need for pleasure is the natural love the soul has for the Supreme Soul. In our tradition we call Krishna. Krishna means the all-beautiful, all-loving, all-attractive one. There are many names of God. And bhakti yoga is the process, the path, the culture that actually reconnects us to that love that is inherent within us. Love for God and compassion for all living beings is our intrinsic, essential nature.

It's simply been forgotten, and bhakti is reviving that. When you talk about the Supreme, the Supreme Soul, and then the soul that is inside of people, that's always been a kind of confusing differentiation. How is there a Supreme Soul? And then myriads of whatever we happen to be, the individual soul. How are these things separated? How does separation exist between that Supreme consciousness and all of these little motes of consciousness that have taken up temporary incarnations here?

There is an upanishad of Vedic literature that explains so beautifully, nityo nityanam cetanas cetananam ekobahunam yobhadadati kamam, that there's one Supreme Soul that is the cause of all causes, the source of everything. And there are limitless souls who have that Supreme Soul as their origin and who are forever dependent upon that Supreme Soul. An analogy is given, there's the Sun Planet. And emanating from the Sun Planet, there are limitless Sun Rays. And each Sun Ray is qualitatively identical to the Sun Planet.

Each Sun Ray gives off heat and light, just like the Sun. But the Sun is the origin of the Sun Ray. And the Sun is the whole and the Sun Ray is only a part. So quantitatively there's a difference, but qualitatively there one. So in Bhakti, becoming one with God is the principle of we are eternally loving servants of God, or of the Absolute, or who we call Krishna or Ram. And we become one in our love. When people love each other so much, they lose their sense of separateness in the ecstasy

of that love. And this is, in the Bhakti tradition, this is the relationship we have with the Supreme object of all love. To feel God's infinite love for us and to reciprocate with our love is, in the Bhakti tradition, the highest spiritual experience. This relationship in Bhakti Yoga is, it's very, it's been worked out. There are symbols, the symbols of Radha, the symbols of Krishna, the deities, and there are very specific ways that these deities are worshiped.

When I've gone to the, when I've gone to the temples and watched, what do you call it, the deities ceremony? What are these called? These are called where you bathe the deities and burn, and like light candles in front of them and move them around. What is the name of those, what's the name of that ceremony? It's called, the principle of that type of worship is called puja. Puja, that's it.

And specific ceremony is arti. Arti, that's it. So when I'm watching that, it's, you're seeing something that is very precise. It's something that is, seems to be as precise as you can get. I don't know how much improvisation is going on in this form of worship. Where does that come from? Who originated that series of movements that make up arti or the worship of the deities? The concept of puja or the worship of the deities is, it's a meditation.

When we chant God's names or meditate on Sri Ram, Sri Krishna within our hearts, we're connecting to that love that's within us. This chanting of God's names is a very special way or mantra meditation of awakening that inner love that's within our heart. But we do have a body and we do have senses and there is a world all around us made out of material elements. So what do we do while we're here? The idea is we could use all the elements of this world as an expression of that love.

And through expressing our love in this way, we're meditating on what's within our heart, and through our eyes, and through our nose, and through our ears, and we're making that connection. There's, according to the Bhagavad Gita, there's eight material elements, primary elements, earth, water, fire, air, space, other gross elements, and then the mind, the intelligence, and the ego. So our tea is a beautiful meditation of offering creation back to the Creator with love and gratitude.

When we offer incense or flower, the quality of earth is fragrance. So we're offering fragrance when we offer water, we offer a fan, which is air, we sing or blow a kankshal, which is sound, which is the quality of space. We offer a little lamp, a little fire lamp, which is the quality of sight. So we're taking, and going through the steps or the procedures, we're applying our intelligence by hearing it, we're applying our mind, and by offering, with love, we're offering our egos. So our tea is actually just a very, very beautiful, holistic meditation where we're using our

bodies, all of our senses, our mind, intelligence, our egos, and the elements of the whole creation, and we're offering with gratitude and love back to Krishna. But this is not a one-sided interaction, is it? It's not a one-sided interaction. When you do this, there is a reciprocity that is coming from the deities. Is that accurate to say? What you're saying is beautiful. That's the essence of it, because love is reciprocal.

And the love between the soul, between us and the Supreme Soul, is something very personal and very, it's the deepest of all experiences. And the Gita Krishna tells Ye Gita Mam Propadyante that according to our sincerity, our beloved reciprocates with us. So just like Duncan, electricity is an energy that we can't see. But when that electricity goes into a light bulb, we can actually perceive the light. Now the light bulb is not the electricity itself, but it becomes permeated with the electricity and it becomes light.

So a deity may be a material element, but God is everywhere and everything and everything is coming from God and everything is God's energy. So when we approach the deity according to special devotional, traditional ways, then God appears there to accept our love and reciprocate his love. But can you, in a very tangible way, and ultimately that is meant to connect us to the Lord within our heart. And when that connection is made within the Lord within our heart, then we can actually see how every living being, whatever the race, whatever the sex, whatever the social background,

whatever the species, every living being is a child of my beloved, is a part of my beloved. And naturally we will feel love and compassion for all of creation. And we'll see the environment, the earth, and the planets all around us. This is all the energy, the creation of my beloved, it's his property, her property. And in this way we will honor and respect all living beings, we'll honor and respect all things and use them in harmony with our own souls, love and compassion for God and His creation. When you started chanting, when was the first moment that you realized that this, that you

were in very deep water? And I can remember when that happened to me, because what you're describing, I don't know if people understand that those deities somehow, and I don't know what it is, I like to maintain skepticism. So I think in terms of a projection maybe of some deeper archetypical part that exists inside of me, but I also have to admit experiences I've had in relation to those things have been the most psychedelic, overwhelming, intense moments of my life. And I don't know that people understand that.

Can you talk about maybe some of the experiences you've had in relation to those deities? To the chanting or to the deities? To the deities, because I've watched devotees gazing at the deities. I remember going to India to the ISKCON temple in Vrindavan and watching the devotees looking at the deities. And the way that they're looking at them, this is the way that you look at someone you're in love with. They were looking at them with that identical look of someone who's hanging out with their

soulmate or something. And there is not, it's not a one-sided interaction that's happening. You can see that they're receiving something from them as well. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about any moments that you've had with the deities where you've gotten transmissions or downloads or can you describe it? The first time I encountered this puja or deity worship, I was in the Himalayas. I wrote a memoir called The Journey Home Autobiography of American Swami where I describe how I was looking for meaning and truth on a spiritual level and I hitchhiked from London and ended

up in the Himalayas. It took about six months to get there. But while I was there, I was at a little temple in the forest and I saw people looking at the deities with such affection and they were offering articles. And because of my background, I'm originally from Northern Illinois, I was thinking, is this idol worship? This is really strange. I felt uncomfortable with it, but I saw that these people were really sincere so I couldn't

discard it. I just didn't understand it. And later on, as I was traveling and wandering, I came to Brindavan. And there were some beautiful people, some of the most saintly, compassionate, God intoxicated people I've ever met in my life and it was so deep and it was so real, their kindness, their goodness, and they were in such a transcendent, ecstatic state of love. And they would chant kirtans in front of these deities and they would be looking at these deities as you were saying with more affection than a lover can look at a lover in this world.

And at that time, I realized that this is not idol worship, this is something very deep. These people are extraordinarily self-realized, enlightened people. And I remembered from the Bible, it says, you can judge a tree by its fruit. And if the fruit of these people's lives is such compassion for all life, being totally tent just with the ecstasies of the love of their heart and just giving to others, then this must be something very, very beautiful. And that experience of being with such people gave me the understanding that they're seeing the beloved of our hearts in that deity.

And in their company, I began to see that too. And for years, I was a pujari, I was just serving deities. But serving deities is just an external conception. I was trying to really dedicate my heart in every way and my actions in offering loving service to God, to Sri Radha Krishna, who is the form and names of God that my tradition worships. Uradha is God's lover. Is that how you would say, Radharani is the lover of God, the God's girlfriend, wife?

In Sanskrit, that there's one God. And this is the one God of all religions, nam-namakari-pahudha-nijasara-vasakti. And that one God has many names and has appeared in this world in many forms, but the same one person, the same one ultimate source of everything and everyone, the father and mother of everyone. But that one God is eternally in both male and female aspect, the Shaktiman and the Shakti. So Krishna is the male aspect of God, according to the names of our tradition. And Radha is the feminine aspect of that divinity.

And they are one and the same. And to use the same analogy for a different explanation, Krishna is like the sun and Radha is like the sunshine. You can't separate the two. You can't have sun without sunshine and you can't have sunshine without sun. The feminine aspect of divinity, Sita or Lakshmi or Radha, is the aspect of God that is compassion, forgiveness, makes the Supreme accessible to each and every one of us in a very intimate and personal way.

The Supreme Mother and the Supreme Father are forever existing and attracting our own love and inviting us to enter into that state of consciousness. And one of the things I love about this particular religion is the stories about the interactions between Radha and Krishna. And this is a very big part of the religion, isn't it, studying the different ways that Radha and Krishna play together. There's a place called, I'm sure I'm going to mispronounce it, Golok Vrindavan, is that how you say it?

Which is like the eternal, it's heaven basically. And in this place, these beings hang out eternally and they play together, essentially. They have these interactions. And is that called the alila? Is that what it's called? The lila? Is that the right term for it? It's the right term.

So these pastimes are broken down in the most beautiful ways. And there's all these stories that I like that are very, very trippy, like maybe you could tell one. Do you know, like the story of Krishna eating mud? Can you tell that story? I would love to. In the Gita, Krishna tells Hidha, Hidha, Dharamasya, Glanir, Bhavati Bharata, that he descends into this world in many ways, as we explained, to ultimately attract our love back to him

and to teach us how to live in yoga or in harmony with the true nature of our soul, with the true nature of our relationship with God and with all other living beings and with the environment around us. So Krishna is that one supreme God who steps aside from his role as the supreme absolute controller to exchange intimate love with his lovers. And to do that, he will take the child, he will give us the experience of being sometimes his parent or his lover or his friend. The example is this, a judge in a courtroom is called your honor.

When the judge goes home, he has his friends and they joke together and he has his children who say, give me this and give me that and he has his parents who chastise him for not taking care of his health and he has his wife who reminds him to take the garbage out. So which is more intimate, being the judge in the courtroom or having these intimate loving personal relationships. So Krishna is that aspect of God where God puts his godness aside for the purpose of, he's still God facilitating loving relationships. So in Brindavan, Krishna appears and he's a little child and his mother is Yashoda and

father is Nanda. And one day Krishna's friends, Krishna was just three years old at the time, they said to his mother, he ate dirt, Krishna ate dirt. His friends snitched him out. Yeah, they did. And his mother, she's not thinking he's God, she's thinking he's my child. Now please understand, I hope I'm not getting too philosophical but that's my inclination. She has already realized the absolute power and an all mightiness of God as the creator

of everything, the source of all that exists, the absolute truth. She's realized that fully but in the intimacy of her love that's all in the background because his sweetness, his beauty and his love is completely capturing her soul's affection. So she's thinking he's my child, what would a mother think if her son was eating dirt? She was really worried, so she said to Krishna, why are you eating dirt? Krishna said, I didn't eat dirt. She said, but your friends are saying that you ate dirt and they're always on your side. Why are they saying if you didn't eat dirt and their friends are there saying, no, he

ate dirt? Krishna said, I didn't eat dirt. She said, how will you keep your health? I'm giving you so many nice foods, why are you eating dirt? Krishna said, I didn't eat dirt. If you don't believe me, look in my mouth. So he opened his little mouth. Now he's the size of a three-year-old little boy.

He opened his little tiny mouth and she looked inside. She saw all the planets in the universe. She saw the sun and the moon and Saturn and Venus and Neptune and she saw the stars and she saw all the mountains of the earth planet and all the oceans and she saw all living beings and she looked closer and she saw herself looking in her little sun, Krishna's mouth. She saw all these things and the beautiful thing about it is, because we say God is great, but this is an inconceivable understanding how great God actually is. The actual universe was within his mouth.

And it's not like Apple and Sony and all these corporations, they're making things the smaller, the microchip, the more data you can get in little tiny pieces. He wasn't compressing anything. He wasn't concentrating anything. It was actually the full sun, the full moon, the full planet, the full Himalayas were all and his mouth didn't grow. It was just a few inches in diameter. Now how is that possible?

A chintishakti. God is great. There's nothing impossible for the Absolute Truth. So when she was seeing this, she was kind of bewildered. Is my son some great yogi or is my son Narayan, the Absolute Truth God? Not possible because when there's lightning, he cries and he runs to me and I have to embrace him to pacify him and when he's hungry, I have to feed him otherwise he'll cry. He's my son.

So she was in this dilemma. She's seeing the universe in his mouth and she's loving him as her baby and she can't love him as a baby if she's thinking he's the almighty God. Right. So then Krishna closes his mouth and smiled and she completely forgot everything she just saw in her motherly affection for him and just embrace him and fed him. Wow, see that is what I love about this religion because the stories are so psychedelic. They're so juicy and they're so, that story you can think about and analyze and consider

and talk about and break down for your entire life if you wanted to. Just that one little story, you could break down the implications of it. What does it mean? What is some, what is it pointing to? And that's what I think is so incredibly engrossing about Vaisnaiva Bhakti Yoga. Do you, what do you, you believe that that actually happened, right? You believe that that there was a time where that interaction literally happened. Yes.

And so many people will hear that story and they will think, well, this is mythology. That did not happen. There was no, there was never a divine baby that appeared on this planet. There was never an interaction between a divine baby and a divine mother. These are symbols that are meant to point in the direction of some philosophy, but they're not real. It's not, it couldn't have happened based on the laws of physics, based on the empirical understanding of the universe.

This could not have happened. How do you answer that? How do you answer the skeptic, the Richard Dawkins, the Sam Harrises, the people who hear these stories and say, no, this is not real. It's just myth. May I share a personal experience I had? Please. I discuss this in the book, Journey Home.

I was living in the Himalayas. This is a 1971 and I was very close with one yogi, very dear friend, very sweet person, and he wanted me to come to an event with him. Now events in the Himalayas, I never heard of it, but he went to a little temple and people came and he started performing what most people would consider miracles. He chanted mantras and from his hands he created a stone shiva lingam, like a statue of Shiva. And then he started chanting mantras and ashes, limitless practically.

Gallons of ashes were pouring out of the palm of his hand. He wasn't even wearing a shirt. And everybody who came to him, they were saying, they were approaching him as God. And he said, I'm not God. I just know how to do this. He said, through the yoga practice, I've learned this property city where I've learned to manipulate matter on a molecular perspective through my mind. He said, I can create ashes.

God can create universes. God's inconceivable prowess. He said, true spirituality is to understand that I'm the eternal soul, to free ourself from the ego of wanting to be the controller, the enjoyer, and the proprietor, but understanding that I'm the caretaker of sacred property, of the supreme object of love, or Ram, he called. After I met him, I went into the forest and I was just thinking about what he just did and what he said.

And I was sitting under a banyan tree, a huge banyan tree. And there was a tiny little banyan tree seed, and I picked up that seed and I was thinking, there's an entire banyan tree in this seed. It not only is there a banyan tree in this seed, but there's a banyan tree that can create millions or thousands of more seeds that could create more banyan trees and more seeds. Can any human being, however great a scientist they are, create a seed of life? And I was thinking, my mother and father, when they came together, they didn't have any engineering plan for the development of my body.

Just a seed went from my father to my mother and then little eyes started growing and little hands started growing and now here I am sitting under a banyan tree and the Himalayas reflecting on the purpose of life. And we create cities and we create technologies and we create spaceships going to outer space. But where is that consciousness, that life coming from? Actually, Duncan, we're seeing miracles at every moment. But because we see them all the time, we take them for granted. Every time we see a tree, it's a miracle that came out of a tiny little seed, which is beyond human ability to do. Every time we may be in a traffic jam and be honking our horns because so many people are around, but every one of those people is a total miracle. There was just a little

seed in the oaf of a mother that became a human being and now they're making other human beings and making cars. The whole world is nothing but miracles. How is the earth always in its orbit and the sun? And we can explain how it's happening, but where it's coming from. A chintya shakti means the first real understanding of God is inconceivable potencies. And inconceivable means it's beyond our intelligence. If God can put a banyan tree in a little tiny seed, God could put the universe in his own mouth he wants to. God could come as a little baby to attract our love. For me, it's, I understand how other people are seeing things and under processing, you know, but for me, there's miracles everywhere around. And if the source of all those miracles wants to do something wonderful,

it's totally believable and extraordinarily wonderful. It feels like it takes a lot of courage to live in the universe that you're living in. I think that a lot of us don't want to see the universe in our baby's mouth because the result of seeing that is a complete recalibration of the way that we live our lives. And I think for a lot of people, that is not a very attractive notion. I mean, I can remember when I was at the temple in Laguna Beach on Jhamastami, the appearance day of Lord Krishna, I didn't really know anything about, I just, you know, encountered the Bhagavad Gita and it just encountered the devotees and was having my mind blown. And I can remember staring at these deities and I don't know what happened.

I don't know what it was, but for a split second, they weren't deities anymore and it didn't feel like symbols and it didn't look like statues. It felt like this was an output point for some kind of super advanced intelligence that I couldn't possibly understand. It felt like an ant in a swimming pool, just sort of thrashing around in an enormous thing that I couldn't understand. I think about, I probably think about that once a week. Still, I think about what was that? What was that? But it was scary because I don't want to shave my head and I don't want to shave my head and become a monk. The universe is nature shaving my head for me because my hair is falling out, but I think that there's something terrifying about coming into contact with the kind of energy

that you're describing right now and I think it takes a lot of courage that a lot of us don't have. Do we all have to become monks? I'm looking at you, you're wearing your own monk, you're wearing robes, you have a potent energy that's very palatable, but what about those of us who don't want to get drawn? We don't want to see the universe in the mouth of our children. We don't want to go that deep. What do we do? Unless you're taking some really strong psychedelic aid, you're not going to see the universe in this child's mouth because this is Krishna who appeared on earth, this is not our own children. Right, but still to see these miracles that you're talking about and to live in the world that you live in, to surrender completely to this energy, it's not, it's scary. It's a scary

idea and I think that this is why when people hear about the Hare Krishna's, the word cult comes up a lot. People say, oh that's a religious cult, those people are fanatics and if you get too involved in it, you'll give away all your stuff and you'll end up at an airport somewhere. That's the stigma attached to the religion. I can, I have this podcast where I get to talk about whatever I want and I guess I'm a known weirdo now, but they're still talking about the Hare Krishna's or saying, I almost, I mean I was right there teetering on the edge of going for it and that's a stigmatized, there's a stigma attached to it as compared to other religions. The potency is so powerful in that religion that if you start hanging out there too much, if you start hanging out with the devotees

too much, well then you start wanting to hang out with the devotees more and if you start going to the temple a little bit, you start wanting to go to the temple more and if you start chanting Hare Krishna, you start wanting to chant Hare Krishna more. It's got a very powerful magnetic pull that is terrifying to me. Is there a moderate version of Bhakti Yoga? Is there a version of Bhakti Yoga that doesn't involve a full surrender to this kind of, to this lifestyle? May I tell you another story? Please. I was in an auditorium in Mumbai and there was about 400 students and professors. It was at a college for chartered and certified

accountants. Okay. And I give a talk. After my talk, I asked for questions and answers and when you're in a university in India, you have to really be prepared if you ask for questions and answers. Right. So one young man raised his hand and I called on him and everyone in the room went, ooh. So I understood this person has special charisma and popularity. He started screaming at me. He said, I reject everything you say. You are simply here to cheat us. What if everyone in the world became a swami like you? Who would run the government? Who would grow the food? Who would educate our children? Who would do the banking and the trading? Therefore, I consider that you're

cheating us. He got a standing ovation. And after somehow or other, the crowd quieted down. I said a little prayer and I answered his question. I said, what would happen to the world if everyone became an accountant like you? Ooh, good one. That's a burn. Who would run the governments? Who would grow our food? Who would educate our children? Right. Who would do our banking and trading? In fact, if everybody became an accountant like you, there would be a 100% unemployment because no one would need an accountant. Right. I said, just like a body, there's different organs and limbs within the body. There's the kidneys and the lungs and the heart and the brain and the pancreas. They're not competing with each other. Each part of the body

has its unique color, shape and function. The kidneys cannot do what the lungs do. And the heart cannot do what the brain does. A healthy body is where every part of the body is not arrogant. I'm doing better than you. Right. Every part of the body is appreciating and synchronizing with every other part of the body because they all know that they're dependent on each other. Right. So human society is like a body unless we could recognize that there's a special contribution that all of us can make for the world, for each other, for God. And we learn how to live in harmony and appreciation for each other. At our temple in Mumbai, where I live, we have an ashram with some monks, but we have a congregation of over 10,000 people. Wow. And these

people are in politics and they run schools. We have our own hospital, Bhaktivedanta Hospital. It's a 200-bed hospital. And there's doctors and there's nurses and administrators and cooks and everything else. They're all devotees of Krishna, mothers, fathers. And among those people, besides the monks, nobody wears, when they go to work, they dress according to, you know, what the society is wearing in that sense. And they have regular kind of hair. But it's not that they're less spiritual than the monks. They're performing their duties in society. So I told this person in this college, I said there's a need for politicians and farmers and bankers and there's a need for accountants like you and there's also some need for swamis like me.

Let's stop fighting with each other and let's work together like the organs and limbs of the body and make a healthy human society. How'd it go over? How'd your response go over? Well, with all humility, I got a louder and longer standing ovation than he did. He deserved it. That's cool. Does that answer your question? Perfectly. Thank you. In other words, spiritual life is not a matter of changing our hairstyle or changing our clothes. It's a matter of harmonizing our lives with each other through our devotion and our love for God and learning how to respect and honor each other through the process. I think that brings us to a question that maybe I should have asked at the beginning.

What does the Hare Krishna mantra mean? How does it go? What does it mean? And why does it do what it does? Because I know that when I chant, which I'm not doing right now, but when I'm chanting regularly, my life changes. My predilections shift. The things I get interested in change. I'm a hippie. I'm a superstitious hippie. So I'm just going to say I have more coincidences. Synchronicity seemed to happen more. Things just seem to get better. Can you talk a little bit about number one? What is it? How does it go? And number two, what is it doing? Why is some series of words different from other series of words? Why can't I chant jam, jam, strawberry, banana, jam, jam, strawberry, banana?

Why won't that have the same impact that the Mahamantra will have on my life? In the ancient Sanskrit language, mantra is composed of two seed words. Mana, which means the mind, and trayate means to liberate or deliver. So mantra means a divine sound vibration, which liberates the mind from illusions and the anxieties caused by those illusions. My beloved Guru Srila Prabhupada, he gave a beautiful analogy that when a raindrop falls from a cloud, it's pure, it's transparent. But when that raindrop falls onto the earth, it becomes muddy and loses its transparency. If you filter the water, it brings about its original natural transparency. So similarly, our consciousness, our consciousness is love of God is within all of us.

We're by nature pure. But due to the ahankar, the ego, we're identifying with so many temporary designations, and that brings about so many complications in our life. And through that greed, envy, anger, selfish, passion, arrogance, and illusion. This is all like the mud that clouds our mind. If you look in the mirror, you're supposed to see yourself. But if the mirror is covered with dust, then all you see is dust, and you think that's me. So this chanting of mantras or meditating on mantras is a way of filtering or purifying our consciousness to bring it back to its original natural state. The state of true peace, true love, and a true understanding of our personal relationship with the ultimate object of all love,

and to be an instrument of that love in whatever we do, which is compassion. That's the purpose of a mantra. In the Vedas, there are various mantras. There are many names of God, and in each and every one of these true names of God that are coming from true traditions, God's presence is accessible to us. The power, the beauty, the sweetness, and the love of God is within those names. It awakens from within us our love. So of the many mantras and the many names, the Kali Santarana Upanishad describes there is a maha mantra. And this maha mantra includes all other mantras. And it's especially for bringing about deep peace, liberating ourselves from the arrogance and selfishness and envy that plague us

so that we can really be instruments of a higher purpose. And that mantra is Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hari Hari. And in my travels in India, I found that so many of the great yoga masters, so many of the great sages of various traditions, they put the highest emphasis on this Hare Krishna maha mantra. It's not just the Hare Krishna movement. It's known throughout India among those who really understand what the Vedas tell, that this mantra is especially empowered in the times that we're living called Kali Yuga, an age where there's a predominance of quarrel and hypocrisy. Hare, the first word, is a name of Sri Radha, the compassionate feminine energy.

The feminine motherly side of God, Radha. Another name is Hare. And Krishna means, not a sectarian name of God, means the one supreme God who's all loving, all beautiful, who's the source of all excellences, who's all attractive. And Rama, Rama literally means the reservoir of all pleasure. We're all looking for pleasure when we repose our propensity for happiness. In God, we experience the highest pleasure. And that highest pleasure is something that's within our own hearts. And when we tap into that, then we don't have to go searching outside by acquiring more money and more fame and more sex and more prestige and more properties for pleasure. We can do all those things, but it becomes a way of expressing. We can have all those things

and do so many things, but we're no longer in need of them for our happiness. We use whatever we have to express the great joy that we've discovered within ourselves, the joy of love, the joy of compassion, the joy of Ananda, our true ecstasy. So this Mahamantra is a way of invoking that loving propensity to awaken within our hearts, where we can actually be vessels of a higher cause, a higher purpose, God's love in whatever we may do. Can you, is there, what are the rules about chanting? Can you, like if someone's listening now and they think, oh okay, I want to try chanting this mantra, see what happens? How would you tell them to do it?

Lord Chaitanya explains there's no hard and fast rules for this chant. Who is Lord Chaitanya? Lord Chaitanya is Krishna, who appeared just 500 years ago, and he was the one who actually promoted Kirtan within the world. He established it in a very, very special way. So this is a historic figure. Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is a historic figure, someone that definitely lived in India. He lived in Navadweep, which is in West Bengal, and I go there every year, and then he traveled all around India, and eventually he lived in Puri,

which is a very, very holy place in India, also on the East Coast. And people think that he's an incarnation of Krishna. 4,500 years before his appearance in many different Vedas, he's predicted his coming. And so he came and said, here, did this mantra exist before Lord Chaitanya appeared? Were people chanting Hare Krishna before he came around? This Hare Krishna mantra has been since time that cannot be traced out. The Vedas, 5,000 years ago, prioritize it as a great method of awakening that divine love within ourselves.

So no rules. No rules in chanting. Somebody listening, you can chant this in your car, you can chant it at a rave, you can chant it whenever you want. There's no way to do it wrong. Well, as far as making a higher connection through our chanting, there's no rules or regulations. At the same time, if we live with moral integrity, then that chanting is going to have a deeper effect on us. So, okay, right. So you can, it's just like any other thing. It depends on how deep you want to go. You could, by chanting in any situation, any time silently or loudly or softly,

we make that connection. But as we start making that connection, we naturally want to live in harmony with higher spiritual principles. Can we, do you think we could try, can we chant a little bit so people can hear what it sounds like? Can we chant some japa so people could, maybe you want to try it out, could chant with us for a few minutes? Do you want, can we do that? I would love to do whatever you say. Great. All right, let's do it. Let's chant for five minutes. Let's try that. And you guys listening, if you're still listening, it means you're probably interested in this,

or you're just, I'm sorry if I freaked you guys out, but this is my favorite religion on earth. And so this is a chance for you to chant along with us and just give it a shot. Because obviously you can go online and Google search japa. It's there for you. But yeah, let's just chant. All right, Krishna, honestly, hanging out with people like you, I'm sorry if I seem stammering and weird, but whenever I get to be around people like you, you've got such an intense vibe that it makes me feel weirdly high, which is, which I love. So, okay, let's do it. I'm going to pause for a second and then let's chant.

Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna,

Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Krishna Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, right? Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna,

Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare,

Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for being on the show. How can people get in touch with you? How can people contact you if they'd like to talk with you more about this subject matter? I have a website, radhanatswami.com.

Perfect. I'll have all the links at dugartrusel.com. Thank you, Zach, for making this happen. It's been such a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. Hare Krishna. It's truly an honor to spend this time with you, Duncan. Thank you. And all of your wonderful listeners. Thank you. Say, God, Amen. Without regard for its meaning, say, God. Prior to interpretation, say, God. Say, God, continually, without interruption.

If interrupted, begin anew and say, God. Say, God, with each breath, each footstep, each eye blink. Say, God, without anxiety or strain. Say, God, like a river of God's sayings. While living in an evil time or region, say, God. In the throes of mounting bliss, say, God. On guard before the mirror, say, God, Amen. May the lovers packed simply be to say, God.

Sealed, unsealed, say, God. Between certainty and doubt, say, God. Confronted by elaborate systems, say, God. Facing beautiful simplicities, say, God. Let the interjection of awe and wonder remain, God. Repeatedly, say, God, yet be thou not obsessed. To say, God is to sing, God. To sing, God is to draw near to God, to the nearness that is, God.

Say, God is the only increment. Say, God, now. Say, God, despite that which would prevent one from saying, God. Say, God, and know it to be so. Say, God, until reality is consumed by God's saying. Say, God, as if pouring water from one vessel into another. Say, God, in secret. Say, God, and conceal it from oneself.

It is miraculous to have been saying, God. To have attained to that orientation, whereupon one must utter the word, God. Say, God, and welcome the inevitable. Say, God, to sustain commutual Claire audience throughout a Christ realm. Say, God. Say, God, as you know, you have been born. Say, God, as a holy Bible read aloud and all scripture springs from a single sound. Say, God, in the name of the in utterable name.

Say, God, amen. Say, God, when you say the names of Christ Jesus to help you say, God. To say, God is to copulate for millions of years. Amen. This you and I of God sound sayings. To say, God is to continue knowing it to be so. Amen. Say, God, and the heart's eye hears the.

Amen. Say, God, and tend the true cross planted in the centermost soil of your heart. Amen. Say, God, and know you have always been saying, God. Parallel to all God seems or seems not. Amen. The body is a God saying instrument. Amen.

The mind is a God saying habitat. Amen. To say, God is to walk with God in silence. Say, God, before and after having been distracted from saying, God. That is, frame the lack of saying with an abundance of saying. Frame it in time. Amen. To say, God is to awake and say, God, amen.

Say, God, when saying there has never been falsehood of any kind, and one's own God saying form rises up from fundamental slime, as it falls from undifferentiated causum, coalescing the most transparent verse into a mountain of singing fire, administered to your larynx by armored hummingbirds of vibrating script, laying open the occult by closing away the revealed into every flame of song combined, quavering just prior to the destruction of this present moment. Amen.

This moment that is the present covering of the true moment of total revelation. Amen. The complete teaching instantaneous. Amen. The spontaneous uprising of eons of devotion. Amen. The nearness that is a living intelligence encountered in the joy itself of continuous spiritual labor preserved along a delicate chain of enlarged and present instances.

Amen. Eternities attenuated through time. Amen. Time bodies forever forming. Amen. That is their present shaping. Amen. Say God and fold this cosmic ebb into a fervently small thing.

Say God and say the swaddling bands of the enshrouding chrysalis. Say God and say the interior vastnesses of the heart region exceed cosmos. Amen. Remember in the shepherd's fold doth freely migrate. Amen. And I, even you and I are perfect components of an expression of divine limitlessness. Amen. Which is to say truly, truly the larynx is a delicate nest of names.

Amen. Say truly, truly our animal manifestations form the elegant scaffold of a roving and mighty temple. Amen. Which is to say truly, truly revelation is immediately bestowed upon those who wish to receive it as it is. That is to become the revealed. Amen. Be free from all that is said and say God. Say God with a heart full of lust throughout the refracted rigors of piety and say, Lord God, hear this, my sacrifice and accept my stumblings across your luminous shadow.

Say God and say she who is he and say the proximity of the kingdom, the atom of holiness, a regimented cloud swarm of holy atoms. Amen. Say the seam of symmetry, absolute unnameableness and the origin of blasphemy. Amen. Say God and say that which passes through itself, interpenetrated, auto pervaded. Amen. Say the constellator girdled by trillions of lives. Say God the annihilation of curiosity, the supremely erotic, the nasher of souls, the murmur in the stone, that which is suffered and enjoyed, that which goads and coaxes, that which welcomes and exiles. Amen. Say God a soothing disturbance, a mirrored countenance, bedecked with realities. Amen. Say the evaporation of knowledge. Say God against the God sayers. To say God is to love God, that is, to entone God through all aspects of one's being. Say God and say that which his spirit abides, patiently developing from itself into itself through limitless varieties of limited incarnations.

Spirit mirroring spirit in vast dimensions of dynamic reflection as spirit seeks its own level. Say God to preside as Christ child amidst the cheering throng world of joyous solitude, alone at the source of friendship. Say God and say revolutionary coagulations and dispersions of as yet unreflected pure light and say, I arrive in my vanishing. I am consumed. Say God and the brutal burden of your suffering apart from God is lifted by the effortless grace of your inborn Christ way. Say God until the word is clearly and deeply impressed in its own irresistible sounding, transcendentally legible. Say God as though clasped in Christ and be baptized in an immediate and ecstatic fluency in the name of God. Say God to fall to the cross and rise lifted with the free intuition of a clown. Say God and say no more techniques.

Say God and say one's immediate experience of oneself as being in reality. This experience itself, however it may be described or interpreted is presently a direct revelation of the divine. This duty is impossible to shirk. It is the foundation of the vehicle and the purpose of one's present incarnation. Say God, sing God and this song serves only to repeat. Love God and God is love dangerously schizophrenic and appropriately yearned for from God through God to God. Free from concerns with qualities of freedom. Free to experience being created and destroyed anew in the Lord.

Sing out the scripture of which you are composed and the holy sayings become your echo. To say God is to transmute one's life in body thought and deed into prayer, which is fundamentally a sacrifice offered in praise, thanks and wonder. An utterance, a song unto the Lord, a song one may now become. This song state establishes harmony of being in conflicts with God's voice intoning the syllabum primordium, the expression of this present moment. Everlasting, mounting birth upon birth in the terrible blossoming of the word. This very name that is the twisting, leaping body of the physics of true reality. The reality of the truth. Say God and say song is the umbilicus, amen.

If thou would be converted say God and assuredly it is underway. The heart region is perpetual wilderness, treacherous, awesome, sublime. And the way across oneself lies directly through its deepest interior. The universe is fastened to your mind, borne aloft while crushing you under in accordance with the law of melody, amen. Say God because the larynx is intoned by the word. Because human song is contiguous with the soul of the species. Because you are that soul and civilization is your crown to cast off that you might sing free. Say God and the material body is a brief clotting of spirit.

Say God in the irresistible embrace of the omniscient which prior to involuntary surrender we struggle to escape. Though it be a greater bliss than the body can withstand. Say God and die completely, continuously, which is to say become born repeatedly and marvel at the alien vistas of this human sector of and creature consciousness. Say God to read the original Bible presently inscribed within your center most heart chamber. It is a single letter precisely etched into the surface of your soul. This is what a soul is for. Amen. Say God and be aware a courtship has begun. Amen. Say God and the word the name fragments into every word every name that it may penetrate all meaning all measurement spanning all spectra of expression from truth to falsehood.

Say God and say the exponential faceting of spirit unquotable. Say God and hear wisdom's footsteps approaching. Beginning as the nearest synesthesia multiplying in varieties of unity. Their rhythm increasingly rapid slurring into harmonic vistas of near motionless eons. Between vibration. Parallel to creation. Oh the cradle of perfect beauty. It is what your reflection sees as you gaze upon it. This present moment.

Is the divine habitation of an ultra cosmic and salvific event. So say God and say this robe of song draping the corpus supreme. The template of the absolute architecture. Verily the resplendent God sound raising and lowering the worlds within and without us. Amen. We say God and our mounting ecstasy is undisturbed by our own wild cries of exalted humility. Say God and you are a spontaneous echo of the voice that utters your immediate manifestation. So sing out the inmost sanctum of the temple. Sing and cease to occult yourself.

And this is apocalypse. Amen. Say God firmly rooted in the fecund corpse of God. Amen. Say God to detect the holy design of total grace. Amen. Say God and trace a calligraphic pathside your very own and the Lord's own for you. Say God the first and final revolution. Say God the healing of the great derangement. Say God the mystic awakening of the purified. Say God the withering of falsehood in the light of the truth.

Say God the rending of the veil. Say God joined in universal chorus. Say God the advent of the way. Say God there is nothing else to say.