Duncan Trussell Family Hour - Raghu Markus LOVES EVERYONE

Episode Date: December 15, 2015

Recorded at the Open Your Heart in Paradise retreat in Maui!  Raghu Markus (love serve remember, mindpodnetwork.com) joins the DTFH to talk about Neem Karoli Baba and universal love.   This episode... is brought to you by CASPER.COM  go to casper.com/familyhour and use offer code family hour to get $5o off of your first mattress.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. I'm dirty little angel. You can get Dirty Angel anywhere you get your music. Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. New album and tour date coming this summer. This fabulous episode is brought to you by the Sweet Mattress Lords over at Casper.com. Go to Casper.com, Ford slash Family Hour.
Starting point is 00:00:24 And use offer code Family Hour to get $50 off of your brand new mattress that you will use to conceive the Messiah. It's alright. Hello friends. It is I, Duncan Trussell. And you are listening to the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast. And you're about to get sprayed with a spirituality
Starting point is 00:00:43 ramp because I've returned from the Open Your Heart and Paradise retreat, which is the meditation Kirtan retreat that Ram Dass puts on once a year in Hawaii. And it's one of the coolest, most amazing things ever. And it's a mind blower, man. It's a mind blower. I'm somebody who has taken LSD probably over 200 times, but definitely over 100 times.
Starting point is 00:01:12 And I've experimented with a variety of psychedelics and substances, but nothing, no psychedelic, no substance that I've ever taken compares to the high that you get from going to these retreats. It's fascinating. It's really incredible. It's wild. I don't know why it happens.
Starting point is 00:01:36 I don't think I can really under it. I don't think anyone could answer why it happens. You can come up with a lot of cool reasons for it. But for the sake of abbreviation, I'm just going to call it magic. Whatever you want to call it. Some people are using the word mirror neurons over there, which is pretty cool.
Starting point is 00:01:57 Maybe it's just the same effect that makes women start menstruating at the same time. The tendency for organic life to harmonize with other organic life that gives you the high. Because at these retreats, there's not just people like me, but there's some really advanced beings, not just Ram Dass, but people like Lamasuryadas or Krishnadas or lots of Dosses at these retreats.
Starting point is 00:02:23 Lots of people who for decades have had a very disciplined spiritual practice and have fully surrendered themselves to the incredible concept that there is something in the universe bigger than human beings. And that thing is the source of all love. And that through a spiritual practice, you can actually connect with that thing. And you can begin to cultivate feelings of love,
Starting point is 00:02:53 compassion, and bliss that eventually will override the glaciation that may have happened to your heart from living in the world of man, which is a pretty violent, chaotic, and disappointing world. It's a crazy thing, man. These ideas are crazy. If you're someone who's all glaciated, if you're a walking human callus,
Starting point is 00:03:22 if you're somebody who's been frozen up, if you're somebody who hates themselves, if you're somebody who can't forgive themselves, if you're somebody who is constantly at war with yourself, if you're somebody who finds yourself yelling at your dogs, because they barked or screaming in traffic or yelling at the operator on the phone, screaming at the Verizon person.
Starting point is 00:03:50 If you will, if you notice that your life seems to be a constant, unending stream of varying forms of anxiety punctuated by intermittent bouts of rage, then the idea that here in your adult life you could actually do a series of practices that would allow you to cultivate love inside of you, that there's actually a way for you to connect with something much, much bigger than you,
Starting point is 00:04:30 and via that connection begin to produce inside of you a feeling of love, unlike any other feeling of love that you may have ever had. Most people's feelings of love has been a kind of contact with impermanence. So love is the feeling that comes before heartbreak, which is why so many people, when they find themselves falling in love,
Starting point is 00:04:57 start acting really weird. They're not acting weird because they're falling in love. They're not acting weird because it's something that love is doing that's making them act weird. When I say act weird, I don't mean the normal, beautiful, sentimental things that happen, like bringing people flowers or every song
Starting point is 00:05:18 that comes on the radio thinking of them. I don't mean that. That's great. I'm saying jealousy, all the things that go along with love, that kind of creeping feeling of dread that may rise up inside of you when you find yourself falling in love because you think to yourself, well, you're going to break my heart one day, I bet.
Starting point is 00:05:39 Well, that's not love's fault. That's just because when you start falling in love with a person or a job or whatever the thing is, then what you're doing is you're allowing yourself to believe that your love is dependent on some other being, some situation, some perfect congruence of phenomena and that if phenomena hasn't gathered together
Starting point is 00:06:07 in some specific way, then there will be no more love. So that's the feeling of terror that happens when people start falling in love. So here's the crazy idea. The crazy idea, and this is known as bhakti, the crazy idea is that you can actually begin to experience that love outside of phenomena, that you can begin to cultivate that love,
Starting point is 00:06:33 that you can begin to build that love up inside of you and it won't go away. And it won't go away because someone didn't return your text. It won't go away because somebody has decided that you've got bad breath and you're broke. It won't go away because something got sick and died. It'll just be there always for the rest of your life. Now that's a wild concept.
Starting point is 00:07:01 That's a wild, wild concept. When people are trying to teach about this stuff, they generally try to point out what they're talking about when they talk about this feeling, this state of mind or state of consciousness. And so people have a lot of different techniques that they use to sort of bring you into this place that they're talking about.
Starting point is 00:07:27 For me, this place, the first time I experienced it, was when I was very young walking with my mom to the beach and I smelled a flower. And my God, it was just the most incredible smell and it was a summer day. I looked down and see my feet and the flip-flops and everything was perfect. The universe was perfect.
Starting point is 00:07:58 Everything was perfectly harmonized. The beach was ahead of me. My grandmother's house was behind me. I was walking in love through love and the love was never going to end. That happened to me. I remember it. I bet if you think back,
Starting point is 00:08:17 you've had a very similar thing happen to you. It might be with a dog or a cat or a parent or a girlfriend or a boyfriend or just a perfect day in the woods. It's happened to you for sure. You felt the thing, the thing. You know what I mean. You've got to know what I'm talking about.
Starting point is 00:08:39 Most of you must know what I'm talking about. Maybe you felt it on a psychedelic. You touched it for a second. You felt it, this incredible potential because you think to yourself, my God, this is something that human beings can experience. And then, of course, it fucking goes away. It goes away.
Starting point is 00:09:00 There's no question about it, but it goes away. All you got to do is pop in some Elliott Smith. Turn on the radio. One out of five songs is about some poor, heartbroken bastard moaning about it. I think every song, what's her name? Every song that Adele writes is about calling up some guy who been telling him how much she misses him.
Starting point is 00:09:24 Adele, at least two of Adele's songs are from the other point of view are stalker songs where Adele's either in somebody's backyard saying that she's going to find somebody or reminds them of her. She's calling somebody to let him know. She's still in love with him. It's a common experience.
Starting point is 00:09:46 Once you have associated some human being with a feeling of love, then, my God, all you want to do is be around that human being. And it's not, I'm not saying the human being isn't great, but the human being is not the source of this love. It isn't. And that's what you start learning at these Ram Dass retreats. You start learning at these retreats,
Starting point is 00:10:08 you know, the basics of bhakti yoga and the basics of mindfulness and the two merge together really well. And there's an interesting story about this, these two things and why this group of people at these retreats that you run into, this satsang, the spiritual group, the spiritual community are interested in these two things,
Starting point is 00:10:34 is there's a history behind it. And that history is written about in this brand new book called Love Everyone by Parvati Marcus. She is a devotee of Neem Kurali Baba, and Neem Kurali Baba was Ram Dass' guru. And so it's a really fascinating story. If you're not aware of it,
Starting point is 00:11:03 I'll try to summarize it as best I can, but basically Ram Dass, his name used to be Richard Alpert, was hanging out with Timothy Leary at Harvard and they were taking LSD and other psychedelics and they were coming into contact with something that modern psychology really couldn't help them understand. The way Alpert put it was,
Starting point is 00:11:35 he didn't have the maps for the states of consciousness that was being presented to them via LSD or psilocybin or mushrooms. And so Alpert at the time goes to India with a bunch of LSD manufactured by Owsley. Owsley, if you've ever heard the word term orange sunshine, this was Owsley's acid. He was this perfectionist LSD chemist who at the time
Starting point is 00:12:04 was apparently whipping up LSD that was so incredible that when you took it, Jesus would call you on your cell phone and there weren't even cell phones back then. It was amazing. And so he whipped up a special batch of this stuff for Alpert who wanted to take it to India to give it to yogis, meditators, monks, spiritual people to see if they understood the state of consciousness and if they had maps
Starting point is 00:12:36 for this state of consciousness. So as the story goes, Alpert runs into this super hippie named Bhagavan Das and they sort of spend some time just wandering through India together. And Bhagavan Das is like, he's teaching Ram Das, you could say. You know, the story goes that Alpert, not Ram Das, at the time his name was Alpert, but that Alpert would, he was just always keeping him in the present.
Starting point is 00:13:12 Alpert was sick, but he was always like bringing him back to the present moment, the present moment, the present moment. Sounds very psychedelic. But as the story goes, Alpert was taking a leak in an outhouse looking out at the stars in India and he was thinking about his mother. He died six months before.
Starting point is 00:13:36 And I guess he was thinking about how now she was a soul. And it was, you know, it was more of, it was an, for him, he hadn't thought of her in that way before. So it was a sort of remarkable moment. And then the next day, this hippie's with, is having problems with his visa. So the hippie wants to go see his guru. And Alpert is not really interested in meeting anybody's guru.
Starting point is 00:14:10 He's actually become sick of India. He finds the, he thinks India is a little too garish and a little too, it just, you know, you have to understand, he's one of the great intellectuals of the time. Harvard professor, Harvard apostate kicked out of Harvard for LSD. You can't get cooler than that. You're a professor kicked out of Harvard for,
Starting point is 00:14:33 for LSD crimes. It's amazing. He's a genius. So he's probably a little over India. And he was, I think he was going to head to Japan. So he's a little annoyed that this hippie that he's with wants to go see his guru, but he's going to go with him anyway. And so they get there and Bhagavan Das goes running to his guru.
Starting point is 00:15:00 This is Neem Karoli Baba falls down in front of him sobbing. And Alper, very skeptical, very dubious, thinks to himself, there's no way I'm going to bow down to this guy. It's ridiculous. And so he goes to Maharaji, as they call him, Neem Karoli Baba. Neem Karoli Baba says to him, the first thing he says to him, is, I think he asked him for his Range Rover. He's like, can I have your car?
Starting point is 00:15:42 And everyone laughs because they know that he's just playing into Alpert's paranoia because this is a guy who doesn't have any cars. He doesn't drive. He doesn't drive around. He's like a guy who sits in a blanket most of the time surrounded by people, emanating some of the most incredible, potent, amazing, transcendent, indescribable energy that any most people have ever
Starting point is 00:16:10 experienced, according to reports. And then he says to Alpert, last night you were looking out at the stars thinking about your mother and Alpert's thinking, Alpert's thinking, all right. Well, I mean, that's a pretty easy one to guess. And then he says to him, she got big in her stomach, her spleen. And he says in English, because all this is being translated, he says spleen.
Starting point is 00:16:46 And so now Alpert is like, what the fuck is happening? Because there's no way that this guy knows about how my mother died. There's no way. What is this? He thinks, is this a CIA agent? Now, of course, a lot of other stuff is going on when you come into contact with these beings in that moment that is outside of language. And so Alpert reports feeling an incredible pain in his chest,
Starting point is 00:17:10 like something breaking open. Then he starts sobbing and he realizes that he's come home. He has the feeling of coming home. And that is the beginning of Ram Dass. And that is the beginning of the great seminal hippie Bible. Be here now. And it's the beginning of this incredible group of people that I get to hang out with anytime I go to these retreats.
Starting point is 00:17:33 Because Alpert goes through a pretty intense period of teaching from the devotees of Maharaja and from being around Maharaja. And you can read about all that stuff in a variety of books. Be here now. It's there for you. But it's also in this great new book. Love Everyone. And it's just an incredible thing, man.
Starting point is 00:17:57 It's an incredible thing. So this group of people start coming to India because Ram Dass is talking about how there's this guru out there, like a real, the real deal, a real saint. And so when they're out there in India, they're not just sitting at the feet of Maharaja because you can't always get around him. He disappears sometimes. I mean, not literally, like into thin air, but he would make himself
Starting point is 00:18:20 scarce a lot. So everyone's always looking for him. And when they couldn't find him, they would go to do mindfulness meditation, vipassana meditation. And so it's an incredible group of people who all became friends out there. This is Jack Cornfield. This is Sharon Salzburg.
Starting point is 00:18:38 This is Krishnadas. This is Raghu Marcus. And of course, Ram Dass. They're all were hanging out together in India as friends. And as friends who are all experiencing this incredible awakening that was a result of being around this amazing, mysterious, super advanced being called Neem Karoli Baba, who has had a profound impact on our culture.
Starting point is 00:19:06 He really has. You would be surprised how many people were his devotees. It's incredible. Very interesting stuff related to this guy. He reminds me of a kind of like positive Alistair Karoli, because you never hear about Karoli had some pretty, a pretty huge impact on society, but you won't hear about it that much. And in the same way, Neem Karoli Baba hadn't had an effect only like
Starting point is 00:19:35 whereas with Karoli, it's a lot of like a lot of his teachings are misunderstood. And if you misunderstand them, they can get you into trouble. Neem Karoli Baba's teachings are less complex and all seem to center around a few things that he told Ram Dass to do when he got back to the West, which is love everyone and tell the truth. Holy shit. That's pretty much it right there.
Starting point is 00:20:06 Love everyone and tell the truth. It's so perplexing indeed, but simple. Maybe the simplicity is part of what makes it so perplexing. That idea of, well, how do I do that if I don't feel love for everybody? Then the truth is that I don't feel that. So it's something that you can play around with in your mind. You can attempt to unpackage. You can unbox it.
Starting point is 00:20:34 You can look at it in a million different ways. But it's really a cool thing to be around a group of people who have been exposed to that teaching for 40 years or so and have been trying to enact it in their lives because it works. That's the whole point of this rant. It works. I can't be skeptical about it anymore. I can't be cynical about it anymore.
Starting point is 00:21:01 When you're at these retreats, something rises up inside of you, whether you like it or not. Something happens. Well, maybe there's ways to avoid it, but I don't know. Something happens. Something comes bubbling up inside of you. And suddenly you realize that that feeling that you had when you were young or when you were in love or that feeling that you had, whatever it was,
Starting point is 00:21:27 the Garden of Eden that you lived in before you got kicked out by the world. You realize that you can go back to that place right now for the rest of your life. And that, friends, is a mindblower. It's real. You can feel it. I felt it. It went away. But I felt it.
Starting point is 00:21:48 Felt it for about a week. A blossoming, growing, incredible happiness. A kind of dissolution of an awful amnesia that I had fallen prey to. And a lot of people have fallen prey to this amnesia. We call this amnesia being an adult. It's the active forgetting of your true identity. It's the active avoidance of what you really are. It's the active denial of what you know and what all of us know,
Starting point is 00:22:30 which is the most important thing in this world is love. It's the glue that holds everything together. And it's much more than that. It's indescribable, beautiful, and it's something that can be cultivated. That's the most important thing. It's not something that you have to hope for. It's not something that you have to hope that you run into the right person at the fucking bar, or that you swipe the right way on Tinder,
Starting point is 00:22:56 or that the right series of events happen, and then suddenly you're allowed to feel love. It's something that you can cultivate, that you can grow inside of you. It's something that you can actually harvest on a daily basis, and that cultivation is what is known as a spiritual practice. You become a love farmer, and the idea is that over time, the more you allow yourself to believe this incredible fantasy,
Starting point is 00:23:28 which is that love is not dependent on any person, place, or thing, but it's something that is at your core what you really are, then you will find that the glaciation that has happened that has encased your heart in a thick ball of ice begins to melt away. And it'll freeze back up again pretty fast. Don't get me wrong. But those moments, just one moment. You know what? I'll take just one more moment like that moment I had when I was a kid.
Starting point is 00:24:08 Just one more. Anything to break up. The long, long periods of anxiety. The bouts of anger, the depression. Just a few moments where you realize, oh fuck, spring is coming. That's how spring comes, you know? It doesn't happen all at once.
Starting point is 00:24:32 There's frost and snow, and then it starts melting, and maybe it comes back, but then all of a sudden there's a flower, and there's birds, and you realize that winter doesn't last forever. That's what Neem Karoli Baba and Ramdas and Sharon Salzburg and Krishnadas and Jack Hornfield and the great teachers teach us.
Starting point is 00:25:04 That thing you think is permanent? That frozen feeling that you think is going to go on forever? No way. Spring is already there, underneath the ice. All you've got to do is start cultivating love. And it goes away. But the fact that you've experienced it just one more time, the fact that you experience it outside of dependence on any other person,
Starting point is 00:25:33 the fact that you realize exactly where you are right now is just the place that you need to be. If you can feel that just once, then you could feel it again, and that's what happens at these retreats. So, holy shit, I love them, and I'm going to keep yapping about this stuff more and more and more, and probably I'm going to do longer intros, or maybe I won't even have guests,
Starting point is 00:25:56 and I'll just ramble and yap about this stuff, because it's something that I want to have as a steadier practice, and I think part of that is reporting in on what's going on. I don't talk about this stuff as much as I want to, and I do that because I don't want to seem like some kind of rambling hippie... I do it because I want to seem cool. I don't do it because I want to seem cool, and it doesn't sound very cool to talk about love, I guess.
Starting point is 00:26:27 It makes you sound... I don't even know who it doesn't sound cool to, like, who am I trying to impress, and who cares? This is where my head is right now, friends. These retreats are supremely powerful, and the interview that you're about to hear is with Ragu Marcus mid-retreat, so forgive me if I sound even more blasted in the interview than I feel right now, but I highly recommend picking up a copy of this amazing book, Love Everyone.
Starting point is 00:27:00 It's really good. I haven't read a more concise breakdown of not just of who Neem Karoli Baba was, but who this group of people was, this satsang that formed around him. Check it out, and thank you guys for listening. I love you guys, and we're going to dive right into this interview, but first, some quick business. No, no, no! Ah, some rather depressing news.
Starting point is 00:27:29 I don't know if you guys read about this or not, but another dude out in Portland died yesterday, because while he was sleeping, he rolled over, and his face got stuck in a pile of sticky, dried semen and body secretions that accrued on his mattress that he'd had for many, many years, and he suffocated. And this has been happening all over the place, which is why it's really important for you to replace your mattress
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Starting point is 00:29:12 I make love on a Casper mattress. I pet my dogs on a Casper mattress. I write beautiful sonnets. I write letters to the president, and I actually dance on my Casper mattress when the moon is full. I don't do that, but I definitely sleep on the damn thing. Watch a bunch of iTunes on it, and I'm really glad to have a new mattress, and here's why.
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Starting point is 00:31:26 It'll take you straight to Amazon, and when you're doing all your Christmas shopping, when you're following the rules of Lord Jesus Christ, who clearly stated in the Gospel of John, that if you want to express love, and you want to express that you are a true representative of the source of all love in the universe, the number one way to do it is once a year to buy plastic shit
Starting point is 00:31:44 for your friends that makes them feel guilty because they didn't spend as much money on you. The best way to do that is to go to amazon.com through the DTFH portal. They will give us a small percentage of anything that you buy, and it doesn't cost you anything. So it's a great way for you to support the podcast, and a great way for you to avoid that awful holiday traffic.
Starting point is 00:32:06 Oh my God. I would rather shove my face deep into the oily anus of Lucifer and take a big snort of his demonic turds than find myself in holiday traffic gazing out the window at four-lorn people sucked into the materialistic, hypnotic reptilian vortex blasted out of the goddamn hypno rectangles that convinced all of us the only way to show love is to buy shit for people.
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Starting point is 00:33:45 All right. There we go. Those are the ads. Today's guest is a dear friend of mine and actually one of my spiritual teachers. And he's been teaching me for a great many years. I know that sounds so heavy and creepy and weird, but it's true. Raghu Marcus is one of my teachers.
Starting point is 00:34:06 And if not for him, I would never get to go to these Ram Dass retreats. And if not for him, I don't know. I think a lot of cool stuff that's happened into my life maybe wouldn't have happened. And that's the effect being around people like Raghu will have on your life is it just gets better in awesome ways. So he's a really amazing human being.
Starting point is 00:34:27 You can actually read about him in the new book. Love everyone. Or if you want to meet him, come to any of the retreats. He's always there. Regardless, he's a super cool guy. He has actually started his own podcast network. And you can, it's an amazing place with podcasts from Sharon Salzburg, Krishnadas.
Starting point is 00:34:50 He's the host at Raghu Marcus, who has his own podcast with David Silver called Mind Rolling. You can go to that. It's called MindPod Network. So if you go to mindpodnetwork.com, you can find Mind Rolling and a lot of other great spiritually based podcasts. Highly recommend it. Now everybody, please welcome to the Duncan Trestle Family Hour
Starting point is 00:35:15 podcast, Raghu Marcus. Welcome back to the Duncan Trestle Family Hour podcast being recorded from the eighth Open Your Heart in Paradise retreat here in Hawaii, Hawaii. Jesus. Wowie Maui. Thank you. I'm glad to be here.
Starting point is 00:35:56 Be with you again. It's amazing how many of these I've been to now. I was just thinking, right? It's crazy. I come to these now every single time. And I don't have to force you anymore. Well, no, it's now become my favorite part of the year. It's really interesting.
Starting point is 00:36:15 You know, when I, I gotta tell you, man, I've been skeptical about this stuff for a long time. Even all the podcasts that we've done together, there's always a part of me that's like, man, I don't know. I want it to be real. I want there to be an effect that comes from some kind of bhakti practice. I want there to be spiritual progress.
Starting point is 00:36:40 I want there to be an evolution of the soul. But a piece of me has always been like, I think it might be a pipe dream. I think it might just be something that we wish were real, but it isn't up until this retreat. And now I'm starting to see, wow, man, this is having like a serious impact on me in a real way that it's not the speed of progress I think I would have liked, but it's real.
Starting point is 00:37:17 It's a real undeniable shift that I can feel that's happened in me. And I just want to thank you for that. Me? Yeah, you're the one who did all this for me. You really are. And on top of it, I was going to tell you, I don't believe one word of what you're saying.
Starting point is 00:37:32 In the very beginning, you may have had a few cynical thoughts going on. Sure. But since quite some time, this, I would say to you, I don't believe one word of what you're saying. And because I'm looking in your eyes and I know you don't believe it. There's always a bit of stout in me.
Starting point is 00:37:52 There always is. There's stout in everyone. You don't have the market on it. But no, I mean, it's a, there's, and I think Ram Dass talks about this, the many different levels that you can tune into. Yeah. And, you know, this path that's being taught here, this particular path, which is a form of bhakti yoga, which seems to be centered
Starting point is 00:38:19 around neem kurali baba, Maharaji. It's a form of guru yoga. It's pretty far out stuff. But not without the wisdom factor, right? That's why all these Buddhists are here every retreat. Well, right. That, well, yes, you guys, which is very interesting. And we'll get to that in a second.
Starting point is 00:38:38 But let's talk a little bit about how far out this thing is that, that you guys are putting out there because it's far out, man. It's far out. The idea. Here's the concept. Where was this human, neem kurali baba, Maharaji, who was beyond an advanced being? What's the name for it?
Starting point is 00:39:00 You said there's a name for it. Sidha. Yes. This is a person who had paranormal abilities, telepathic, endless accounts of miracles happening around this person, endless accounts from fairly mundane things, just like a basic demonstrations of some form of clairvoyance to some pretty far out stuff.
Starting point is 00:39:24 Translocation. I've heard of bringing birds back to life. People claiming he was in different places at once. People claiming to have seen him in the UK on a bus when he was definitely in India, just endless and endless and endless stories about this human being. And then on top of that, regardless of whether or not you buy into that stuff, there's just no question that this human who lived pre-internet,
Starting point is 00:39:55 pre-cell phone, had a massive impact on the culture of the United States via Be Here Now, the book that Ram that was transcribed from Ram Das' lectures, in which Ram Das says was in some way, I don't know if he'd use the word channeled, but in some way was a direct result of the influence of Neem Karoli Baba. That's pretty far out, Raghu. And so I think that when people hear that stuff, they are rightfully skeptical.
Starting point is 00:40:27 There's got to be a hefty amount of skepticism that pops into your head when you hear about a guy in a blanket in the Kanchi Valley, is that how you say it? Kanchi. Kanchi Valley in India who could do magical things and now has what I would consider to be a kind of budding religion growing around him. Religion, oh my God. It is.
Starting point is 00:40:52 No religion? No religion? Well, I mean, I think you're... It's a translation of a religion. Well, I would... It's crazy. The people that are involved here, the thing they hated the most was religion that went to India.
Starting point is 00:41:04 See, here's the thing, as weird as this sounds, I don't apply negative limitations to religion. I don't know why people do. I mean, I do know why people do. But I mean, what you're seeing here is a classic, you know, Maslow, right? Have you ever heard of Maslow? So Maslow wrote a great book, Religious Values and Peak Experiences. You know that book?
Starting point is 00:41:28 No. I think that's what it's called. And in the book, he talks about how what happens from time to time when somebody wakes up. Somebody has a peak experience or their life becomes something incredible. Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad. And then around that person, inevitably, there are the disciples, because somebody wakes up in the most extreme way,
Starting point is 00:41:53 and then if you're around a person who's woken up, you're going to change. If you hang out with people who are in shape, like if that's the only people you hang out with, you're going to get in shape. You're going to probably get in shape. If you hang out with people who are skeptical and cynical and shitty and angry, you're going to get skeptical, cynical, shitty, angry. Yes, mirror neurons. Mirror neurons, no way around it.
Starting point is 00:42:17 So in that same way, it only makes sense that if somebody wakes up, if somebody really does the thing, and it does happen inarguably, no matter how skeptical or dubious you are, it can't help but avoid the fact that human culture has been shifted radically and dramatically by human beings who appear every once in a while and convey some transcendent truth to a group of people, and that is the seed of a religion. So when I look at this, and you may shake your head,
Starting point is 00:42:50 Ragu's shaking his head, he doesn't want to admit. Well, it's a bad connotation for me, religion. It's just maybe a generational thing. Call it whatever you want to call it. It's just a path. It's a path. But still, according to Maslow, what ends up happening, what the structure that I'm part of now,
Starting point is 00:43:09 and that you are definitely part of, and that Ram Dass is part of, is you are the first circle surrounding a being who appeared on planet Earth and put out such radical, profound, incredible energy that it inexorably shifted the consciousness of the majority of people who came into contact with that being to the point where not one year later, not two years later, but up to what, 30 years later? 30 years later, 40 years later, people are every single day talking about him to the point, and also, I watch Krishnadas,
Starting point is 00:43:53 and almost every time people talk about Neem Karoli Baba, he starts crying. He cries. It's how many years later has it been? How many years later? Almost 45, sorry. Almost 45 years later, and he was so impacted by this being that mentioning him stories about him caused Krishnadas. But he's not thinking back on a story to evoke this emotion.
Starting point is 00:44:22 Maharaji is present, Neem Karoli Baba is present for him in his chanting, and whenever he is clear, right? And in the moment of sharing, like he was just before, when the same thing happened, which you didn't even know about, which he just got very emotional thinking about Maharaji. So, but you know what, can I, let me give you, so I hear what you're saying, and it's very, very pointed and what's happening, what has happened with Maharaji,
Starting point is 00:44:54 what he represents, unconditional love and compassion and service and remembrance, right? Yes. It's the path. It's definitely a path, but it's like that being, that was a body that we interacted with at that time, but who that thing really is, is beyond any kind of little human being, it's part of the big thing that we all have in us, all of us. And I tell you, so recently I went to India,
Starting point is 00:45:28 and of course I've told Duncan what I'm going to mention here, that I met an extraordinary being while I was there, and he was full of love and joy, and he was a pretty free being. I mean, I don't, you know, nothing, I can't compare anybody to anybody. Right. I just know Maharaji. But in that sphere, around this particular being, was that same thing that we can't give it a name,
Starting point is 00:45:58 because every name we give it doesn't say it. A combination of wisdom, I mean Ram Dass says it, wisdom, love, bliss, compassion, those qualities. It's wrapped up that makes this kind of essencey thing that we are made up of. And we, our minds don't allow us to access it very much. Why? Human. We are human.
Starting point is 00:46:24 See, I think that's a very fascinating thing, and I do know what you mean that there is a... So, just to close, because what I was trying to say is that thing was there, had nothing to do with, I mean, actually this Baba thinks the most of Nim Karoli Baba, thinks one of the great Siddhas that ever lived, kind of a thing. So he's highly respectful. But whatever, it's too completely, we just found this, you know, through a funny set of circumstances, found this Baba a few years ago, right?
Starting point is 00:46:58 And these two things that we have going, they're like simultaneously the same thing. Right. And we went to see Ananda Mahima back in the day, who was also gone beyond saint. Yeah. And it would be that same pool of essence that we can't find a name for. Well, that's a thing.
Starting point is 00:47:22 I'm just saying, so it's all the same. That thing is available, it's obviously around the highest vibrating beings like this. It's readily available. But it's available to everybody. And that's even down here at the old barn here, the pavilion, right? The barn. When Krishna really gets going or there's a beautiful meditation, something, the whole place kind of comes together,
Starting point is 00:47:45 and you feel this one vibration that feels pretty great. It's the same thing. So it's all the same thing. It's only that thing that's going on, not the personality of the guru. Right. Absolutely. And that, but see, this is very interesting. So essentially what we're talking about here is water fountains.
Starting point is 00:48:05 You know, you can have, no matter what color the water fountain is, no matter what the water fountain, where it's located, if it is the thing that has water that comes out of it, that's a water fountain. And these gurus, as they're called, they're people who... Siddhas. You can't even say gurus. Siddhas. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:48:29 These are people who seem to have had their ego evaporated. No more self, no more individual self that is in duality, that does not exist. They're empty of self. So we, these, now, you gotta understand, you don't, it's, see, I think you understand it a little bit, but it's very difficult for you to grasp how completely nuts that sounds to a lot of people. I'm gonna name, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell you what people have trouble with. It's, here's what people have trouble with.
Starting point is 00:49:04 And not me. I'm not saying this like secretly, it's me. I'm saying, when I've spoke, the trouble I've run into when I start talking about this, because when I talk about it now, I'm at the point where I'm like, I've, I totally get it. I've seen it. I've been around it. I know I've never met Maharaji, obviously, because he died. He died before I was born.
Starting point is 00:49:27 But I've met him through you and I've met him through the gestalt of the group of people if they've gathered together and I've met him in other weird ways too. And so I don't, I'm not skeptical anymore. I really mean that. But I think a lot of people, man, I'm just gonna say what they would say. Here's what they're gonna say. This is complete delusion. You were sucked in by a very advanced con artist who, who has so much to gain, so much to gain
Starting point is 00:50:07 by putting on a show of being this thing or that thing, allowing himself to be a reflection of what is just inside of you and ultimately to put this kind of stuff out there into the world is to lead people in the direction of being hoodwinked by scoundrels who have learned magic tricks and are using these magic tricks to hypnotize and control the folks out there who are desperate to experience the transcendent. Do you work for any anti-cult association? No! That sounded like a rant from an anti-cult man.
Starting point is 00:50:51 This is the argument against gurus. This is it. This is a very paranoid argument on one level. Yes, it is very paranoid, but it's real and it's something that I think is an obstacle. I don't mean to say that in a way to discount what you're saying, which is basically it's hard to believe stuff like this that is beyond the mind. Yes. It was hard for us to believe that.
Starting point is 00:51:22 I went to India because, honestly, there's only one reason. It wasn't about any of that because I met somebody who when I looked in his eyes, I knew the truth was there. Period. I was always somebody who was like, I want to know. I want to know what the fuck is going on in me and in this whole world. So I went after it. I went to India and found, I said, where is what you are talking about? I need to get there.
Starting point is 00:51:50 And I did. There wasn't even, there wasn't a shred of doubt in the first moments that I met him. A shred because I remembered everything, like been together forever. So it's like flipping back incarnation kind of thing without not the astral part of that, just the total deep, deep feeling of knowing part of that. And home. So at the level of having that personal experience, that is mine. That's what Krishna said today. This is all about personal experience.
Starting point is 00:52:28 If you do not, you're having, you in particular are obviously some personal experiences happened. So it's changed your insights to some degree related to this. And so there's many people that are skeptical and many of us were skeptical as well. And if your karma would be that something will happen to take that away or not, or there's a relationship with the universe of being positive and having intention to want to become a better human being and have a more balanced life, whatever you want to call it, to be on a path. So some people, that's maybe not going to happen. They're going to stay in their mind and whether it's true or not, it's meaningless to them. And so there's also a thing that people, as you said, there's there's many fountains and people gravitate towards a fountain.
Starting point is 00:53:27 And that is one big thing, that intention. The next is what is called grace from the universe that you recognize the guiding force that's part of the one that would part of that essence that we can't name. And you realize that you have been connected back with the portal, shall we say, as Ram Dass called it, the guru is a portal. And you get connected back with the portal to take you into understanding reality. See, that is wild, man. See, that is wild, you know, because there is the world, you know, the world, the consensus reality, consensus reality, scientific materialism. It's a world where stuff's, you know, made out of atoms, and it's a kind of hilarious random. Some people even say a catastrophic accident where the universe is somehow harmonized atoms together in a way that they become aware of themselves. And in the fleeting few moments that they exist before being completely ripped apart by time, they get attached to things and then watch everything get taken away.
Starting point is 00:54:42 And then they get sucked into the void. And that's it, man. That's it. And any rationalization that you have, oh, there's a reincarnation or, oh, no, you don't understand. You're a transcendent being taking a course called human incarnation, where you're getting a chance to learn how to love and to give more and to let go. All that stuff, it's just desperate attempts to soothe the raging fires of awareness that you are in the most catastrophic predicament that anything could get into, which is to temporarily exist. What you're talking about and what I've been experiencing points in the direction of a completely different paradigm from that level of hopelessness. It points in the direction of something that is the exact opposite of that. And I think that it's just wild to consider all the implications of what you are teaching and what everyone here is teaching. It's wild because you're talking about interdimensional contact from some transcendent intelligence that from time to time... That's what it is.
Starting point is 00:55:55 That's not something I've ever thought of in my entire life. That's what it is. I mean, interdimensional might not be the right word for it, but you're talking about some form of disembodied consciousness that from time to time, if a person is able to annihilate or negate or reduce their ego to some certain degree, it goes through them in the same way that... No, wait, can we clarify that? Sure. Reducing ego by a certain degree? There is no such thing. Okay. There is removing... and this takes gazillions of lifetimes for anything like that to happen, but these beings that come in, and there's very few, but there are numbers of them, they obviously come in completely without any empty of self. Empty of that thing that we all relate with, that I mean mine when we get up in the morning until we go to bed at night and then all through the dream cycle.
Starting point is 00:56:56 So they don't have that. Right. That is not going on. So there's no reduction in ego. Just clarification. I love it. I love the clarification. This is today... So when you... I get to go to these retreats, you guys. As you can... you know whenever I'm at the retreats because the podcast gets really weird like this, but I went to... they have a meditation at 6 a.m. So you wake up at 6 and you go meditate with Ramesh and he reads a little bit. And so he read from Ramana Maharishi.
Starting point is 00:57:33 Ramana Maharishi. Right. And so this is a guy who when he was 17, goes and lays down on the floor of his father's study and pretends to be dead, lets himself die. Well, no, he said, I could live one more second without knowing who I was. So I was going to lay down there and I'm just going to lay there till I died. And I'm just going to keep asking, who am I? And that's a whole practice in itself now. But it wiped him, right? That whatever he did, like whatever he did, like he's been described as a corpse that the universe spoke through. It's the exact same story. Yeah, he would be of that same ilk as Anima Karoli Baba and he absolutely went into the non-dual zone and taught from that place. So he was exceptional. Yeah. So when he was 16, that happened. Bang, he went into a cave on a hill in Arunachala. And next thing, that's where this very powerful center has been for many years. Another fountain. Yes, exactly. And these, so here's the thing.
Starting point is 00:58:44 The paradigm that you guys are teaching is the effect that it has is really, really profound in the sense that I know whoever you are out there that's listening. I guarantee, I promise you, I know that you felt it. You felt it. Because any time you felt that thing where you're like, my God, I'm so happy. I feel like I'm at home. I feel like this is who I really am. And then all the worries, all the crazy shit in the world, it seems to be like water off a duck's back. Like the entire world seems, and I don't mean to reduce it in a nihilistic way, but the entire world seems to be something that you could jump over like a puddle for a second. And you've definitely felt it. I've felt it. And the thing that you think you're feeling is generally related to home. You feel like it's a feeling of being at home. You know, it's that feeling of being at home. What's really trippy is that feeling of being at home is not the feeling of being at home. It's the feeling of tuning in to what I suppose you actually are. Yeah. And that's the point right there. So that while you're at home, just keep the analogy going. You're completely comfortable. You're completely at ease, right? You're just hanging. Everything is cool. You're not thinking about yesterday, tomorrow. You're very present, and that's part of just being. Somebody knocks on your door, and you let them in. You didn't know they were coming, and they were like hungry, and you fed them, and you felt so good about feeding them, just sharing.
Starting point is 01:00:43 Yeah. That's in essence what it's all about. So you have that moment, right? And then you trust, and you start to trust that moment more than the negative stuff. And then things change. That's nuts. So see this, I don't mean to keep saying it's nuts, and I'm sorry for using a word like that, but it's for someone like me, who has been a real whole lot of time, swirling around in neurotic vortexes of fear, self doubt, self hate, self loathing, a pretty dismal outlook on the world from time to time, to like, and also someone like, you know, I do have a family who I love, but for someone who like those feelings of like being at home for me growing up, were few and far between because there were divorces, there was a lot of traveling, there's all the shit that comes from a dysfunctional family. So that feeling of really being at home or like, here you are, this is the place where you're safe, you're fine, everyone here loves you, don't worry, you're completely taken care of. Fuck that. I didn't, I had that, you know, I had that from time to time, but not all the time. There was always a sense of like, I'm going to get sent to a fucking drug rehab or kicked out of the house or, you know, like a general feeling of like just being a kind of miscreant, bad kid. Who was always on the verge of being, you know, of disaster, right? That was generally my experience of home. Me too. Okay, right. And I think a lot of people, that's their experience of home. So, from time to time, I would have a feeling like Christmas hanging out with the, with my grandparents, Christmas tree, that's feeling would creep in. Like, this is great. This is how things are supposed to feel, right? And I always associated that with Christmas. But what's interesting about this thing going on here is that you end up getting that exact same feeling.
Starting point is 01:02:46 Around a group of people, many of which that you've never met in your life. And yet, suddenly, this feeling gets invoked at these things. And to me, I can't think of anything cooler than that. That brings up the purpose of this visit with you, which is love everyone. The book. Right. I'm terrible, terrible. The publisher asked me, get on with Duncan and talk about the book. Yeah, the book. So there's a book that Raghu sent to me, which I just finished reading. It's super cool. And it's basically a series of stories about people encountering Neem Karoli Baba. It's very, very well written. It's super concise. And it's just a fascinating check it out. You definitely should check it out. As far as I'm concerned, there's a few books I really always go back to. And one of them is Gris for the Mill. Love it. The other one is Be Here Now. And this is going to be one of those books, too, because it's such a... What comes through is this. Man, you guys, I know I sound like a raving cultist lunatic right now, but I wouldn't lead you astray. And I'm telling you, this is... The reason that I always grill Raghu, or I don't always, but the reason I'm grilling him right now, in the beginning, is because just to demonstrate how these teachers here are impossible to offend, it's really impossible to like... No, there's no blasphemy. That's what's cool about it, is that it's... There's not a sense of like... There's not a sense of like, I can say something wrong. When I'm around you, I don't get the feeling that I can like... And maybe that's what you consider religion to be. Maybe that's what you think religion is, is the ability to say something wrong that goes against some dogma that will lead to you being ostracized or kicked out or whatever.
Starting point is 01:04:55 One thing I really love about these retreats, and the particular path that seems to have been transmitted through Neem Karoli Baba, is that there doesn't seem to be any place in it where you can piss somebody off by saying the wrong thing. No one's getting upset. Ram Das' legacy, right? Being honest, just being honest with all the foibles and so on. So, you know, that's a big part of what it is. But you're talking about the book, and you're talking about being here at this retreat, and the kind of thing with, you know, there's close to 400 people here. And the connectivity and the envelope that everyone enters into, and it becomes very much one thing, and it's very much that home thing that we were just talking about. And it's very much what this book represents, which is really about sharing. It's what Ram Das talks about when Maharaj told me not to tell anybody about him. That's all I could do when I came back to America. And that's the heart of what this whole thing is. And by the way, never mind the highfalutin stuff and the miracles and all of that, I never think about any of that.
Starting point is 01:06:10 What I think about is what these practices that I've been given, and allowing me to continue to open up to be with that space, whatever. You want to call it a Maharajee. You want to call it a combination of bliss, wisdom, love, compassion, feeling, whatever. God feeling is what this Baba used to tell us a few weeks ago. You get the God feeling. You meditate for three hours straight. Something good will happen. I haven't done it yet, by the way. Meditated for three hours? He says you meditate for ten minutes. You meditate for twenty minutes, an hour or two hours. He said three hours. You've never meditated for three hours straight? No, not without moving. Three hours straight. No, not without moving.
Starting point is 01:07:01 I did once at a Sashin Zen sitting. The whole three hours, not a movement. I don't remember. You might have done it because you are an advanced being. No, I almost turned in. No, hell no. You know what I did during those three hours? I started freaking out. I thought I was the wall. And then I realized that I had to leave to go get a beer. No. I have no God feeling. I bailed, man.
Starting point is 01:07:35 No God feeling. I turned into a wall, told the teacher, I got to go. She's like, just trust me. Just stay. Just stay a little longer. You'll see. Just stay. I'm like, I'm out of here. Yeah, but I know. But so this book, the book is really cool because a lot of things come through it. And yeah, regardless of like whether you buy into the miraculous stuff or not, I say, look at all, I say, look at all of this stuff with ultimate skepticism. Test it. It's your job to do that because if you don't do that, well, you'll save yourself a lot of time. But if you do, if you're like me, it's good to test. But if you're really attached to that skepticism that might prevent some opening to whatever may or may not happen. Yeah, there is a certain degree of skepticism. And then there's just trying desperately as much as you can to push this stuff away from you because the implications are really intense. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:08:34 And so that's another quality, another interesting aspect of the book is that when people came into contact with Neem Karolibaba again and again and again, there's stories of like eating. Like they're so blasted by the energy from this being. Or how about this one? This guy goes down. He's in Kenchi's in the ashram and he wants to help out. So he goes down to the kitchen to shine. I mean, get the rust off pots or the black suit off pots and whatever and cut vegetables and he was doing all that. And then he went back and he went along a path back to the main part of the ashram. And he says, sure enough, who's coming at me from the other side? Maharaj. He said, I couldn't believe it. I used to think he was this huge monkey like guy.
Starting point is 01:09:29 Yeah. He wore a blanket, but he was this little man. And so he's thinking about, oh my God, it's just unbelievable. And then he catches him squarely in the eye. In the eye, right? Yeah. And they don't pass. He comes up to him and he screams, Maharaj screams, blue murder at this guy whose name was Shavaya. Chow!
Starting point is 01:09:56 I mean, get the fuck out! And he said, I, waves and waves of bliss went through my body. Anybody else who would have been there would have thought, holy shit, this kid's getting a complete dressing down. And he had the opposite thing happen. He got, he got like high. He got completely out there. And he said, and he says in this story, so there's no accounting for any kind of rational thing about how anything works at all. And what you see may not be what it is. Well, right. Yeah, that's the, that is, that's the problem, you know, because what, here's the thing, it's very convenient to live in consensus reality.
Starting point is 01:10:48 Consensus reality is a very convenient place to be. You watch the view, you watch forensic files, you drink too much, you go to bed, you wake up, you go to work, things kind of suck. They don't suck too bad. You, you, you have some kids, things just don't suck that bad. They kind of suck, but they don't suck that bad. And that's consensus reality, right? Did you invent consensus reality? I did come up with that turn on someone else. I think it's Robert Anton Wilson. Yeah, it's the majority, it's the reality that the, that it's in the middle. We're all, we're all buying into.
Starting point is 01:11:23 I mean, we're all doing the same consensus reality of one level. I think in order to Caprio got raped by a bear in the new movie, the, the people are shooting. He did. Yeah, they've got to do something to control guns. And what's going on with the Kardashians? Lamarro, I hope he sees, he's, we might be brain damaged. That's consensus reality. Those are the, those are the, those are the. We're all buying into that, right? Well, no, see, it's convenient, but the thing is when you come into contact with this stuff.
Starting point is 01:11:54 And one reason I love doing this podcast is because I get a chance to, if not for this podcast, I don't know if we would have met, but I get to meet people who are living outside of consensus reality. And I get to see the, the, the end result of, of that for some people, for some people, it's not great. For some people living outside of consensus reality doesn't mean you're living in a paradigm when you're hanging out with people who seem to have their number one focus being figuring out ways to be more open and compassionate and loving. For some people living outside of consensus reality means sitting in a cabin in the anorondacks, making mail bombs to send to scientists. Cause you want to, or you know what I mean? That is, so it's not, it's not always a good thing, but the, the, the, the, when you hear the call, as they say,
Starting point is 01:12:44 and someone starts indicating to you that there might be another reality tunnel. This is a Robert Anton Wilson saying, but there might be another reality tunnel, vastly different from the one that you're living in. Populated by symbols that don't consist of people like Lamar Odom or the Kardashians or Justin Bieber or Leonardo DiCaprio, but populated by symbols that are way older than even the United States. The symbols that are thousands and thousands and thousands of years old. It's going to spring a lot of resistance in people because this may be the kiddie pool, but it's safe. And you guys are saying, listen, there's a deep end. There's a deep end.
Starting point is 01:13:36 The water is much, much, much deeper than you think. And you guys lure people over there. Lure. Yes. Jesus, it sounds like. You lure, you're a lure. You do lure. You do lure. It's a, it's a.
Starting point is 01:13:50 I don't lure. It sounds sinister. I'm not luring. I'm not a lure. You're a luring. It's. Okay, I'll buy that. When I say, when I say it, it seems, it seems sinister.
Starting point is 01:14:03 I don't mean it. Although Ram Dass is talking today about, yeah, no, I'm just like, and he talks about Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. Let nobody know. So who the hell are you talking about? They're from the forties. But yeah, the puppeteer and the puppet. And that's. Yeah, that one's been fallen flat because everyone totally nobody knows shit about that.
Starting point is 01:14:23 It's just. Yeah. Because Ram Dass is trying to describe his relationship with Neiman Crowley Baba. And he's trying to. Say that if you've ever heard Ram Dass's lectures, experiments and truth, you name it, then it's mind blowing how. The flow that he had, how articulate he was, how he was improvising everything and it was all perfectly coming together in the most incredible way. And so Ram Dass is saying now that this was not him, but he had become a conduit for Neiman Crowley Baba. So he's using the idea of a ventriloquist.
Starting point is 01:15:00 And so are you. So are you. I mean, absolutely. I mean, this, your interest in the beginning was Ram Dass and, you know, talking about that wisdom and all that. It was nothing of Maharajah, particularly in the very beginning, right? When you came into contact with this year. And then once you started talking about it, you became that same thing unknowingly because you didn't know really was what is this Maharajah? What is this energy and all that stuff?
Starting point is 01:15:29 You weren't even that interested, but it happened. And that's what happens. And that's what everybody is transmitting who they are. Unfortunately, some of us are vibrating at a lower rate. So that causes the consensus, blah, blah, right? Yeah, sure. We all want to vibrate with that low. We want to eat junk food.
Starting point is 01:15:48 Yes. All that kind of stuff. So, you know, it's sugar and everything. I'm doing it. I just had a beautiful cup of coffee before I came over here and put that sugar in there. Demon sugar. Anyhow, you know what it is. So in closing, I must say to you, you said the key thing.
Starting point is 01:16:07 You said the purpose of any of this that's that we're talking about is to get. Deeper into the truth of who you are. Yeah. Happy in terms of being able to accept suffering and accept the pleasant things in more of the same breath. That's these are things I'm talking about myself. That's what that's the only reason I'm doing. I'm the idea.
Starting point is 01:16:36 I understand going back to the source and ultimately I just want to sit in that space that Maharaj is. I mean, unfortunately, one is has to apply that with everything they're doing every day and it's not going into a cave. But it's like the song. What's so funny about peace, love and understanding, right? You know that song? Yeah, sure.
Starting point is 01:17:01 Elvis, Elvis Costello's terrific. You should play this on the podcast. I can't. Why? I'd have to get his permission. Okay. I'll call him. Elvis Costello.
Starting point is 01:17:12 I didn't hear Elvis Costello, but the truth is it's simple is what I'm trying to say. Just the simple things trying to be a better person like that someone comes in, you feed them, you're more at home. That's the object is to get there. They downplay it. They downplay it. They downplay it. I'm telling you guys, this is close encounters of the third kind level intensity and they
Starting point is 01:17:37 downplay it for some reason, which maybe it's because it's maybe that's part of the lure because if like people like me go bugling out this George Norrie coast to coast craziness and everyone's going to roll their eyes and be like, I'm not going to that thing. But I'm telling you, man, whatever the thing is coming through, I've only seen it a few times before. I've seen it in Vrindavan. I've seen it. It may be, you know, sounds embarrassing to say, but I've seen it like it.
Starting point is 01:18:07 I've seen it like it at a really, really great rave once. I saw some kind of thing there that it's really, I don't know, man, through the group of people, something was being transmitted more than what you think exists in the world if you're someone who lives in the cave of consensus reality. And so that's pretty wild, man. And that's the key. It's when they ask the Buddha what's the most important thing of the three vows, which is I take refuge in the Buddha.
Starting point is 01:18:40 I take refuge in the Dharma. I take refuge in the Sangha, satsang, community. And he said absolutely community satsang. Right. That's the most important vow. And I've been personally told this too by other saints and so on that sharing that space with people of like mind is then that it's just what in the Bible, two or more gathered in my name.
Starting point is 01:19:08 There I am. That's it. It's as simple as that. That's what's happening in that sense. And, you know, because we're powerfully turned tuning into that thing, that thing there, which we don't have a name for, right? Wisdom, joy, love, compassion. So then everybody's tuning forks start tuning to that vibration inside.
Starting point is 01:19:32 And then we share that. So it's all about that. Love everyone is just the sharing thing. And that's what we've been talking about here. Sharing that. And because that's who we are as humans. And we saw that. That's the miracle.
Starting point is 01:19:43 None of this other bullshit. We saw that in Maharaja. And that's so the human, the potential is there in all because then as the story I told the other day, he looked around after he felt this vibration from Maharaja. And he just looked and saw how much love he had for people he never met before. So that's what it's about then. That's what it's about here. And get love everyone.
Starting point is 01:20:06 Go to Amazon. Go to Duncan's portal on his site. Sure. I'll have a link to it on the comment section of this podcast. Raghu, thank you so much for being on the show. Always. For making all this happen. You're such a, you're such a humble guy.
Starting point is 01:20:22 He's like running this entire retreat. Like you're making so much happen. You act like it's not a big deal. I'm very grateful to you. There's so many people in it. So it's really graced. We've had good fortune. So great to be here.
Starting point is 01:20:34 Thank you, Raghu. Thanks. Bye. Thanks for listening, everybody. And a big thanks to Casper.com for supporting this podcast. Go to Casper.com forward slash family hour and use offer code family hour to get $50 off your brand new mattress. Happy holidays, friends. There's going to be another podcast coming out this week.
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