American Tantric & His Worldwide Adventures - Dr. Robert Svoboda’s Spiritual Journey | TRS 357

other than aoris you've explored rest of India from people talk about India like it's one homogeneous country but it's many many different countries and you're making room for Prana or Life Force to enter your body it's important to think but thinking itself as a habit is a really bad happen we met someone who was from the tribe he made the three of us stand and then he started chanting and three crows came and sat right next to us that's when you realize that there was a python there and maybe he kicked it or something and the next day just as he looked up she vomited a half eaten rat if you make the mistake of interfering with the animal who taught you all this like who introduced you to Native American culture in this way we've done a lot of Tantra based conversations on TRS but Tantra is what our culture calls practices that could be considered as a part of the occult when you talk about global occult or as I like to call it Global Tantra there are parallels with what we have here in Indian culture so this conversation I had with one of our All Stars Dr swaboda is an exploration of the same thought you're going to enjoy this conversation a lot if you enjoy our conversations with rajash Shi nandi this is about daes from other countries daes from other cultures as well as of course Indian culture and Indian dieties very deep episode so sit back relax get ready to absorb and get ready to have many of your beliefs challenged because I personally believe that your mind and your soul only grow when you're forced to disagree with yourself and when you're forced to think Beyond The Realm that you already know this is Dr Roberts fora on [Music] TRS it's great to see you as well sir um I remember right after a long conversation from the last time which we had to divide into two parts we had this little conversation about how your life is not just limited to everything that you learned in India so that's what I wanted to make this conversation about when I saw your name on my schedule my first thought was hm what are we going to speak about and I was actually meditating on my way back home here like in the flight when I was coming back to Bombay I was meditating and I just got this intuition that I should talk about your time studying or learning from Native Americans and South America and how possibly and Africa and Africa okay I didn't know this but the rest of India I mean I mean the rest of the world wow the rest of India that's and the rest of India too other than aoris you've explored the rest of India from many parts of the rest of India because of course you know people talk about India like it's it's one homogeneous country but it's many many different countries and uh you know viand used to say that the Assam the the uh uh Kam kamaka Davi he he used to say she's she's something different even from the betas she's coming down she's coming from so so long ago that yes on the surface you know they've made her into a mahavidya it's a but really she's she's something from Far a different and very very very very you know ttin of thousands of years old and so even in India there are things that you know that that that have are are older than what we think of as being old okay um the reason I was bringing up the other cultures was because this whole year for me has not just been about Hinduism or jism or any of the indic religions it's also been about interreligious studies and the one thing I've learned about religions all over the world is that religions always originated from a preceding religion and there's lots of religions in the history of the world which have probably just died out and I'm using the word religion for the lack of a better word uh I don't know what the ancient word for religion would have been maybe culture maybe Dharma I don't know but the more I learn about Native America or ancient African culture ancient South American culture or I had a trip to Australia last year and and I figured that even the Aboriginal culture is very similar to the ancient ancient Indian school of thought and I don't want to call it the ancient Indian school of thought it's probably more like even what we follow in India is part of that homogeneous culture that was once followed possibly by hunter gatherers and now you've studied all over India you've studied all over the world do you disagree with me do you agree with me I totally agree with you and that's been my experience also you know the you you bring up Australia I I have been fortunate uh I haven't been there for a few years because of the pandemic but um I've spent probably a couple of months a year there for 20 years in mostly in one particular area and I've got to know some things about the land not so much the indigenous people but about the land and the people in the land were always very closely connected and of course they represent the the oldest the oldest more or less intact civilization of humans about 70,000 years ago there was a genetic bottleneck for humans there were as few as a thousand potentially a thousand people possibly more like 10,000 but everybody in the world more than 8 billion people they've come from those 1,000 to 10,000 ,000 people and after 70,000 years ago about 60,000 is years ago people started those people started to leave Africa and they I'm they walked all the way along and the uh sea levels were different then and they got to Australia and they have been maintain and Australia was cut off then when the sea level sea went back up and they've been maintaining a culture that has very definitely connection to that 60,000 years ago there in fact in tamalu there's still people who have genetic connection very closely connected to those Aboriginal so there's there's some around the world you know if we want to really see what people have been doing in the past that's a very good place to go it's it's not uh as uh accessible as as some other cultures are but definitely it's it's it's it's very interesting and if you're polite you can at least even if you're not from there you can at least make some connection and and interact with it in a positive way okay uh do you have any experiences from Australia I have a ton uh but I'd love to hear some of yours maybe I'll give us a little bit of a context on the Aboriginal people to those of uh the audience members that haven't heard of them um so I'll give a bit of context on the Aboriginal people basically when you go to Australia now if you go to the big cities it's Multicultural uh it's a lot of white folks and then it's like people from other countries who've migrated there uh they all acknowledge the fact that Australia was originally inhabited by the Aboriginal people when you actually get into studying Aboriginal history you go to these Aboriginal centers uh they will kind of let you in a little bit on their culture not completely not not not much for some reason they're very guarded about it partly because of all the white people who came there and and Afflicted them for so many years uh I believe that around 1500 is when European imperialism started all over the globe uh you know I in that time Barat India was uh basically the richest part of the world so I don't think European imperialism could just go into India and dominate but Australia wasn't really a rich part of the world they were still kind of very linked with the land they were living off the land uh it said that when the European imperialists actually arrived in Australia they even did think things like uh they classified the aboriginals as flora and FAA and told their own people that it's okay to hunt these other people and that and that law was still on the books even in the like the 1940s or the 1950s it was only repealed then and if you if you talk to the Aboriginal people today like The Descendants a lot of them are of mixed Heritage they have a lot of white blood as well they have this weird sense of um generational trauma mixed with a little guilt uh so it's it's very difficult conversations with them you you sense it especially when they're talking about their own culture it's very intricate uh lots of different tools lots of different uh ways of life uh you know they were all family oriented people had nuclear families Etc but if you draw the map of Australia each tiny part of Australia is divided according to one of their tribes and there was a bunch of these tribes each tribe has something called a I forgot the word but it's kind of like a mascot it's an animal that represents that tribe some people you call it a totem totem yeah uh so uh you'd see that I mean this is something I spoke to a bunch of them about I said that so say if your totem is the Tasmanian Tiger does it mean that you guys also inherit traits of the Tasmanian tiger and a bunch of them said yes that's exactly what it is so if your totem is the Orca you know like a a sea animal you'll see that people from that tribe are a little more relaxed a little more kind of Seaside oriented of course that's an outcome of geography as well but they're very connected to their totems I've actually had some occult experiences on that same trip which I choose not to talk about right uh but very intricate culture and every time you talk to them as an Indian and you share some of your Indian outlooks like when I spoke to them about Bima or Davi they all got emotional they were like this and this is very similar they did feel a bit of Brotherhood with myself and my Indian guys with me so there's some kind of deep connection between India and Aboriginal Australia for sure but I'd love to hear your thoughts so well I think the the the most important thing is that they don't and I think this is true generally of uh indigenous people in the Americas also they don't regard themselves they don't think of humans as being separate or better than all the other animals and plants they regard themselves as being very much a part of the environment in which they live and that's why the land is so important to them and that's why specific areas and you know they've had tens of thousands of years so they've had plenty of time to know which areas men is is meant for the men to relate to and which areas to relate to the women to relate to and in that area where that tribe is the their the people in the tribe it's their responsibility to look after those parts of the land to make sure that the land and the humans and the animals and the plants all work together and and and maintain a healthy ecology and of course we human beings think that nowadays the modern human being we think that everything else is is somehow meant for us to exploit and that's totally different from the way that they believe and from the way that most um uh uh uh uh most traditional people of traditional cultures believe I can say that um uh as I as I said I I haven't spent a lot of time with Aboriginal people uh in Australia but the place that I've been going to for the past uh 25 years is a place where the original people there um their totem animals were the uh iguana or the goana they call it in Australia and the python and so uh it has been very interesting for me to interact with those animals because where my friend lives uh pythons periodically enter the house and wander around and the iguanas will wander around and so on because they they understand that she accepts her her herself as being part of that environment she's not trying to keep them out and and and maintain a different a distance between them she's willing to enter into a relationship with them and then it works very well for her okay I'm not going to reveal the entire story here because I've been told not to but I'll reveal a part of it um we did this Aboriginal Tour on the last day of our trip uh we met someone who was from the tribe whose totem was a crow now crows are actually very very rare in Australia like in my entire Australian trip I see any crows very like we didn't see any crows across three or four cities that we visited now we go into this guy's land uh their temples are actually small pockets of land either like you know an a Grove or like the edge of a cliff uh those are the temples so he took us that he said that in my culture in My Tribe if I have welcomed you into my land now you're a part of my tribe that's what my tribe believes so he did an initiation ceremony like he said that now you're a part of my tribe you're like a brother to me he said that do you allow me to invite you into my tribe so we said yes he said okay stand he made the three of us stand three Indian guys he's feeling a connect with us and then he started chanting started clicking and chanting and those chants were just like bhajans okay and all of us are in that bit of a trance with him that what's he doing what's this Bhajan and three crows came and sat right next to us and all three of us are looking at each other like what is happening here and that's when you realize that these ancient people knew a lot more about Mother Nature than modern people do and a lot more happened on that same trip in that same story which I choose not to reveal but uh there's some strange connection between animals and humans that modern day humans have forgotten about and if you make the mistake um of interfering with the animal and not treating it with respect um the at at at this house of my friend she was gone for a few months and she allowed a couple of an Australian couple to live there and they you know they're not ignorant people but he one day I don't know there was a python there and maybe he kicked it or something and the next day in the evening he was at the side of the house and he could Fel feel something dripping onto him and he looked up and right above him about you know a half a meter above him there was a python and you know they can unhinge their jaws and she had opened her mouth and just as he looked up she vomited a half eaten rat on top of him with a bunch of of of maggots and all kinds of other things and now at least he knows to be more respectful see but I mean it's you when you're in a place like that or you know viol andand would have called it a place that's jagrat that's alive you have to be careful and you you you want to it's like going anywhere where there's powerful powerful things powerful people you have to be polite a bunch of the Australian aboriginals that I met asked me about the importance of animals in Hindu culture so I said that the only thing I can think of is the vah like the um each like basically each God has his or her own favorite animal and maybe those animals are sort of linked to the traits of that God okay cut to couple of months ago I was in udur uh there's a hotel called the ud vas the land that the ud vas is made on uh they had found a Kaka statue on that land uh that land is also supposed to be the home to a lot of peacocks and the staff at the ud Villa says that very often early in the morning when the Sun hits the statue a lot of the peacocks in udas will actually go and stand right next to the statue and karika statue also has a peacock as its own V yes this so this is the parall that I thought was very similar to Aboriginal culture where there's such a deep relationship with animals there's something in the world of animal Consciousness that we're yet to understand that's what I strongly believe that people like the aboriginals have not forgotten yet yes the thing is that we're modern humans and we've forgotten so many things yeah they say that about b upasana as well that if you begin worshiping k or any of the beffs dogs are very drawn to you and dogs won't uh get aggressive with you I don't know how true that is but I have noticed this some well sometimes they won't get aggressive with you sometimes I remember going just about a year ago going to uh the inauguration of a cabit of Temple in Tamal Nadu and the next day I mean I was in I was I was wasn't at the temple I was probably an hour away but I was you know and there was um I was walking along and um uh a watchdog broke its chain and came over and just grazed my leg but enough to draw blood so sometimes the de might want some blood and the dog will so you know I didn't end up it didn't even it it didn't break uh it didn't cut my uh pajama it broke the skin though so I wasn't worried about getting rabes but I did offer the blood and so it depends on the relationship that you have with the deity so the dogs definitely are not going to uh start coming to attack you if you are seriously connected to kala because kala will discourage that from happening we spoke so much about India on the last episode uh I want to know the point at which you kind of left India and did you go back to America to kind of study further did you travel through the world to study further like what was your journey post India I graduated from the t a MAV in 1980 and uh my mother had come to visit vimalananda in India and she spent five weeks here in India and we went all around we went hither and thither and um after after meeting her then Ananda said to me you know my desire had been for you to stay in India and continue to just just live a very spiritual life but after meeting your mother I can see that your ronano Bund your your karmic connection with your family as such that it that you need to find a way to be successful and to make your parents feel like you're well established in life and that you're doing something good for people and so he said even though I don't like the idea you're going to have to go back first to the US and then you'll be going all around the world and and and and trying to assist people to understand a little bit about ayurva and Joes and and Russa Vidya and all these all these vidas all these forms of knowledge that we have here in India and introduce to people all of these things that they have no clue about that really we've been studying for the past many thousands of years so after I graduated and did my internship then um I first uh I I went for about a year to the US and started talking about ayurva I came back to India um and violand and I went on around the world trip and um then he his health was declining so I stayed here uh four more years here in Mumbai and then I started spending much more time in the US and and I started in the US but I gradually went to many different I think I've I think I've taught in I don't know 24 different countries or something and in some countries like in Italy I I went there for like a week every year for 15 years talking to beauticians in you know fourstar Conference Centers and I spent uh went to the UK two or three times a year for several years and I had you know a group there and in Canada which is where I met Mr who's my Jes mentor and and slowly I started getting connected even to other unusual places like South America and like not so much I mean I've been to Africa in fact I went to Africa even before kind of the reason I got to India was because of going to Africa first where were you in Africa um I crossed Overland from the west coast to the east coast this was back in 1973 I started when I was 19 which country did you ENT um uh morania okay that's in the southern part of it's in it's in really in the western part it's north of senagal oh okay okay okay so landed in morania um and you took back then in fact apparently you still do it you take the iron or train right uh from the coast Inland and then you take uh uh trucks or taxis the iono train goes through the Sahara Desert it goes through part of it's you know it's an over night trip so it's not that far but yeah it's this is actually part of the Sahara Desert so I went to Sagal I went to Molly I came down to Ivory Coast and I got really sick in Ivory Coast and I didn't know what to do but thank fortunately God has always been uh kind to me so I happened to walk into a bookstore where there were um two young Frenchmen who were running it and they said you look terrible I said I feel terrible so they said they took me to their flat with them and they said we're not going to be here this weekend we're going to a witch doctor convention but we have a nice young Witch Doctor we would like to him to look at your case so this this very nice young Ian this uh a African man came he was a bank clerk ordinarily and he just looked at me for a minute and he said something into a glass of water now when I got to India Vim andand used to use this method all the time speaks a mon into water and give the water to somebody and they get the result but I had no clue about this so I thought ah he's talking into the water he made me drink the water within a few minutes I got very sleepy I lay down I slept for I don't know how many hours and when I woke up I was 90% better just from doing that no it didn't solve the problem but it really it it made me rethink what medicine really was and what other things were and I continued Crossing I got to Nigeria and I got sick again and I was in a a taxi that was I was sharing with a Nigerian kid and he said you don't look good and he said I don't feel good so he took me home with him and uh his mother was a nurse and I had spent a week in ibadan great City ibadan head of the euroba culture and interestingly enough back at that time there was a woman from uh uh Austria who had come down and become the Hy Priestess of the uh of the of the cult of a goddess called osun and without knowing it at the time this young man Mr olos and Peters took me to osogbo which is where the main place of osun and had Daran of osun and I I did not have any clue what was going on but cut to about um 10 years ago and I'm in s Paulo and the the deities of the Yoba have come to the Western Hemisphere uh in uh in in religions like CIA and uh candomblé and there's a condom house in s Paulo and we happen to go there the day that osun is being worshiped and we have Daran of osun right in uh s Pao those d were brought during the slave trade they were brought during the slave trade so the slaves brought their deities with them and you know deities deities are like in a way they're like you and me they want to travel so I live in Houston Texas and in the southern part of Houston in a place called perland there is a minakshi temple it's the only minakshi Temple that's outside India and you go to it it looks like a South Indian temple even though it's in Paran Texas and the and and the people are the it's it everything is really PKA it's a very well done it's just like the minoi temple but it's in Texas I got to bring you back to Africa yes so so I get introduced to osun and I don't know that but I'm introduced to osun and then I go through the Congo and a few years ago I do 23 and me and I find out that uh though I had no clue of it I'm 0.5% congales what is 23 in me it's a you you uh test your saliva and find out uh where your genes have come from so most of my genes have come from you know half of it from my father definitely from Central Europe the other half from my mother some of it most of it from northern Europe but a little bit of Jewish blood and this little bit of congales blood how do you think that got in the one of my great great-grandfathers owned slaves and after the Civil War he he didn't want to live uh he was was living in Texas he didn't want to continue living there cuz he wanted to continue owning slaves so he moved down to Brazil where they continued to allow people to own slaves until 1881 and his daughter who had been born in Texas went down there with him and then went back up to uh Texas with him thereafter and uh after he left Brazil because after the you know after the slave trade ended then it managing his cacao plant was not so easy anymore and unfortunately he thought that he had a diamond mine and he thought he knew how to trade diamonds but uh that's a very specific kind of thing so he ended up unfortunately getting involved in a plot to counterfeit Brazilian currency and the US had just made it illegal it was always illegal to counterfeit US currency but just made it illegal to counterfeit foreign currency and they wanted a test case and so they got his brother and they got the brother to rat out on him there was a big case it was in the New York Times he went to jail and now his poor his poor daughter is there you know she's come back from Brazil and her father is in jail what kind of what position does she have in society so she ends up meeting a guy named Lum Atkins and Mr Lum Atkins we don't know where he came from so he easily could have had some of this Jewish and congales blood in him that's where I think it came from how do you trace back that far um one of my cousin sisters is very interested in tracing genealogy and nowadays you have all kinds of you have all kinds of all kinds of people are trying to find out where especially in the US because lots of people they've disconnected from where their ancestors came from and and they don't they don't have any clue and they're trying to find out what's going on with their ancestors okay coming back to that Africa phase back in Africa so now I go through Congo and I don't know anything about this but I feel right at home in Congo and I'm and I'm in I'm also welcomed in Congo so this is nice I continue going and I get to Kenya I got to pause you a little bit because we've reached the East Coast now yes what was Africa like in the ' 70s I'm assuming 73 so have you seen this movie called The Last King of Scotland yes that was one of the first movies I saw which kind of Drew out a picture of 7s afca and I kind of got scared after seeing that movie well and I did not go to Uganda because of edmn but otherwise I had no trouble whatsoever a couple of times I just slept by the side of the road I mean giraffes were walking across the road there were there were chimpanzees there were I I never ran into any big cats except in a you know in a national park um when I turned 20 I was inooro National Park and I was waiting to get into a a hut and two hyenas showed up and I really you know what what did I know I was a white kid from a from you know the US I didn't know whether hyenas attacked people or not I didn't know whether hyenas could climb trees but I thought I'm going to climb the tree and and you know at the very least I'll drop down on top of them or something but the guys with the key showed up and the hyenas left and so on so I never found out whether they were going to climb the tree or not I don't think they can was was it safe for a white person just totally utterly yeah throughout Africa as long as you were polite to be and and the people back then were very they had these countries had just been you know like Kenya became liberated from the Brits in 65 or something like that so they were just getting you know it was before before various problems started to kick in so everybody was feeling like you know there there was this sense of openness and freedom and Africans are very hospitable so people always took care of me and uh it was great to just sort of meet them and find out what they were doing and how they lived their lives and and the degree to you know how they uh how they interacted with their deities for example what's the energy of the land like or can you not generalize no you can generalize and um and I think it the the best way to say it is in the way that um one of the first people I met here in Mumbai when I came here was uh a lady who was married to a Punjabi but she was a Naidu from South Africa born in South Africa and so she knows about you know she was a native of Africa and she said Africa is all about the Earth element so it's it's you you when you go there you if if you're paying attention you really feel that you were connected to the Earth element and as long as you act from that perspective and then then you'll be fine there but it's very much it's a very it's it's a very the Earth element generally is very stable so it has it it it back before all of the Arabs and the Europeans and so on came and started manipulating things it was naturally it had problems like every place especially diseases but it's it's a it's a place where there is the potential for great stability and the potential for things to get stuck both so it's a very it's very strongly connected to we would think of as the mulaa the root so if you're if you have a good relationship with your root chakra then that's that's good because you will have an innate stability and if not you will have innate instability did you feel any connection with India while you were in Africa based on what you learned about India after your Africa I I wasn't I didn't have any idea about India I didn't I had no I I knew I was going to Nepal I had read a an old translation of the badita while I was in high school but I really didn't have any feel for India one way or another so I got to Kenya yeah and I had been accepted to participate in a um uh an expedition into the uh what back at that time was in the back of Beyond in Kenya to this tribe that had this would have been this was the second time only that they were that that anyone from the outside was coming to meet them nowadays of course everybody has met everybody but back then there the the tribe was very much uh separate the poot tribe and um there had just been a total eclipse of the Sun a week earlier and so they wanted someone from our group to to join the tribe kind of like you joined in with this guy in Australia um and so I volunteered and so there was this whole thing and it involved um uh it involved there was dancing and uh originally I would have been expected to go out with the spear and kill a lion fortun fortunately for me things were different and all I had to do was uh kill a goat with a spear wow and that was a hard thing to do because I had no I never tried to kill a the spears are like six feet long and you had to hold the leg of the goat and stab it u in so you wanted to get into the heart so the thing would not uh would would not uh suffer and so I couldn't figure out how to do it finally the guy with with me guiding my you know guided my spear also and then we uh drank some of the blood and then there was a lecture by the old men and uh the uh at least back then people you know what they you call here which is fermented um juice from the top of the coconut they call Palm wine there so the old men drank a lot of palm wine they talked about the ancestors and traditions and so on and um I have to say that I you know when I got back to event I flew to to the UK I crossed over land to Nepal I came down I got to Bombay I was actually going to take the boat back to Mombasa and spend time with the tribe but then I got diverted into India but after after having this experience of of initiation I can definitely say that I it opened something for me that that has provided a a connection that I can still I can still feel that connection to the land of of Africa thanks to that initiation let's talk about this this sounds a lot like an African version of Tantra yes and you know if you actually go deep into the Indian forests and you actually meet the tribals they have their own versions of Tantra yeah which makes me think that maybe tribes all over the world have followed some version of Tantra or what we refer to as Tantra yes because you know what what does tenter actually mean what it means that you you want to learn about how things actually work in the world you know modern people they we're relying on all of these things and and we're moving through the world but we're moving through the world because we have all of these things we have food that is delivered to us we have a place to stay we have the AC thank goodness and um all of this is very convenient but suppose you know just go back I mean to the aboriginals in Australia for example they were doing this even 500 years ago but just go back to to when PE Let's go back to everybody 20,000 year 30,000 50,000 years ago you were always wondering where the food was going to come from you were always wondering whether something was going to attack you or not you were always wondering whether you were going to be safe where you were going to be you were always wondering whether some disease would come through and what you would do about it so people had to they they simply couldn't behave like we behave nowadays which is to ignore everything and and assume that all of the plants and animals are are there for us to enjoy in whatever way we want to enjoy them people understood back then that animals and plants they have their own societies they have their own ways of interacting with one another they have their own attitudes towards one another they don't trust humans because humans are not trustworthy but if you if you are very patient and you are are very open and you're very respectful they may let you see a little bit of what they're up to plants and animals plants and animals both okay and you're saying this based on what you learned in Africa or like well and then what I've continued to learn in other places also it's like you you you you can the environment is there for you to interact with you have to know how to interact with it and you have to you have you you if you value your life you have to always remember that it's not human uh whenever I start to think of myself as being you know having achieved something all I have to do is look down here to my arm um and uh one of the many deities that I'm fond of is the Hawaiian volcano goddess Pelle and I was very fortunate for 12 years to spend like 6 to8 weeks of the year in Hawaii and at least a dozen times I I never counted I was able to go out onto the lava flow and make offerings into red lava red flowing lava so and those offering and of course the lava came and covered them those offerings are going to remain there for I don't know however long the island is there a million years probably so my papayas and coconuts and so on as an offering and things would happen in certain ways and I could tell that P was appreciating it but when I started to think that I was something special and I forgot that she was a volcano one day I was not paying attention and uh fell down and um Lava is is very very sharp really very sharp this is fresh lava we're talking about lava that maybe was only laid down a day or two ago the you know if the you see red lava it's flowing that of course is that's like 1100° Centigrade that will vaporize your you stay away from that you offer something you do it carefully from over there you have if right next to it you have to be very careful not to stand too long in one place uh or your shoes will start to melt because it's still hot but after about 24 hours the top you know one foot of it or so has gotten cool enough that you can walk on this is Hawaiian volcano we're talking about very liquid lava not the explosive volcanoes those are very different things where are those uh like in um all along the uh west coast of the Americas So like um Mount St Helens that blew up those are very dangerous volcanoes this is dangerous I mean obviously I I ended up with offering quite a bit of blood to the goddess right then um and I eventually had to go to um the hospital because you don't want to leave the fragments of lava in your skin because they will act as foreign bodies so and I and I tried to take them out myself but I didn't have the guts without anesthesia to drag you know because the skin was all open in several places but I see that there's a little tiny piece of lava that was missed and it's come to the surface a couple of years ago really and so I can see yeah it's the dark spot right there and so I can look at it and I can say yeah remember remember to always be respectful especially when you're dealing with a with a natural force you've had some life man I've I've had it's been great in some ways and it's been terrible and otherwise hold on we we we're going to talk about this I want to know a little bit more about lava I want to know a little bit more about this Dy Pelle you say Pelle um first of all what's the energy of lava like other than just hot I'm asking you more ethereal question it's uh big it's it's because uh this particular volcano um uh the the big island of a they're basically five volcanoes this is the one there two that are still active this is the most active one it's one of the most active ones on Earth and so it has been slowly building up its own crater and it's not that big yet but but there is this and so what there is is there's a magma Hotpot underneath it so there's a giant and I don't know how big giant is but I mean it's miles and miles and miles across of molten rock that is underneath and that rock continues coming to the surface so you can you you can kind of you can kind of it's I mean there's a lot of rock between you and that and the Hotpot but you can kind of feel the hot spot and there's a direct connection because that is coming up from the center of the earth that you see the lava there and it is not it is coming up from Far Far beneath there so there's you you you can definitely feel like connection there but it's also just the fact that you are out in the middle of this place where lava is flowing and it's it's black all around black lava everywhere and sometimes there will be uh methane explosions happening underneath you so sometimes you boom and and that there is there is the there's sometimes the the sound of of the lava is a particular kind of sound so it's it's just you it's big is the best way I can describe it it's like you're it's it's it's it's bigger than you can encapsulate in your way of seeing things Okay it definitely has its own Consciousness yes and up until recently um it was P the guy is p who it is said originally came from um Tahiti originally came from Tahiti and and established herself in this crater the crater of Hal mau mau uh at the kilowa volcano and until recently you could access the crater some American guy 150 years ago built a place called volcano house and you could sit there and there wasn't always visible lava in the crater but the crater was always there and there would always be some steam coming out of it and then you could go to you could go around to a place where there would where you could make offerings and a lot of people would make offerings of Jin but that probably came from some some you know European somewhere or some American but what she really likes is ohalo berries and the O Halo plant ohly oo berries are little red berries about this size the oo plant is one of the first plants along with the OA that start to grow after the lava is laid down initially there no plants are going to be there because the lava is very hot but then there's a lot of rain so the rain comes down the rain gets in there and seeds and land up there and the oo grows and you can always you could always find Oho near Hal ma Mau and you would go and find five oo berries you would offer one to her you would eat one offer one to her eat one offer one to her and then you know it's kind of like then you um if if if she was you would wait to you know I would do this before I went because I would be saying to her please let me go out and uh make off make some offerings and come back in one piece and you know you would then maybe the geese would fly by at the moment that you're asking or maybe something else would happen but there you you want some kind of response from nature doesn't have to be a big fancy response like the Skies open and Angels come down there should just be some response so the the environment is saying yes yes you you you have come and you've requested this yes you may do so and then I would go ahead and do that so um I I I know that other people relate to P in a different way but that's the way I relate to her so you know it's I I like to I like to relate to to things the way I'm able to relate to them um kind of an Indian question but are all these a version of Madura or Kalima or something like that like are they all kind of do they all originate from the same divine feminine according to the durti um there uh every there there is only one goddess vimalananda like to call her adya the original everyone else no matter where is a manifestation of that original and I mean while it would be nice to think that you know India owns her nobody owns her she is she is totally and completely independent she is SW Tantra and she can do whatever she wants to because people here have paid lots of attention to her and have worshiped her in many different forms in many different ways she has been gracious enough to manifest repeatedly in different ways uh but she manifests everywhere that that is who she is I mean she is in charge of manifestation she's the the the she is the mother so she is naturally everything that is produced on this in this Loca in this in muu Loca it is coming from this original goddess different names different places different Gad meaning different attributes but only one goddess what do the Hawaiians pray to P for four is a good question I'm not sure but I mean they they respect her as being you you know there would have been a time where kind of like over here you here here in India uh at least traditionally you would have a Kola de your family would worship a particular D so in Hawaii also your family would be associated with a particular dayah and that might be according to where you lived or what your job was or something you know if your job was fishing then you would certainly want to have a a a good uh relationship with the god of the sea if if you if you were living near the volcano you'd want to have a good relationship with the god of the volcano and of course for some people it became more a matter of you know a fear-based thing that we must plate and this of course happens in every culture we must plate the god or goddess so that that we do do not get smitten and struck down with a thunderbolt or whatever you know uh the first time a lot of us hear about demig gods or these kind of pagan practices while we're growing up where we read about posidon and the Greeks praying to posidon Etc you kind of laugh at it a little bit as a child maybe as a child you're fascinated and then your parents and your relatives and your elders make you laugh at it saying that oh this is so old world but there's probably some kind of Consciousness that the ocean has that the Greeks of that time called posidon that the Indians called varuna there's some kind of Consciousness that the sun also has that we call Surya and other cultures called Rah etc etc what do you think changes when you pray to the gods of these natural things around us do you think that if you pray to suryya Dev your relationship with the sun changes or similarly posid I hope so I hope I hope that if you pray to Su dev then your relationship to the sun externally and to the sun internally which of course on the one hand is your right nostril that's the suadi on the one hand is your heart that also is the suda because it's the if you don't have that the the rest of your organism the of the solar system is gone but but in addition to that there is the there are the other aspects of sua so it's you you if if you really aligning yourself with sua then then ideally what you were doing is you were aligning yourself with with all of these aspects maybe one aspect more than another okay and I mean if we for example we look back into uh the um ramayana for a moment Rama was from the solar Dynasty that means theoretically his one of his forbit one of his ancestors was actually the son but when it came time that he needed to prepare himself to encounter raana wasta introduced to him the ad which is a stotra a a prayer about the about ad about suria about the Sun so even even an avatara like Rama needed to have needed to embody in order to do what he needed to do he needed to embody the sun he could embody the sun because he was in that in that lineage so there was the the potential was already there it was the son was his ultimately his Kola de his family deity but he needed something to activate that in himself so that he could then proceed ahead to do what he needed to do so this is be this is happening All Around the World in different ways what's the thing the difference with India is that people have been doing this for much there two two main differences they've been doing it much longer they've been doing it in so many different ways like in Hawaii you know there there are a lot of interesting stories about the gods it's and the goddesses Etc but but it's one set of gods and goddesses basically over here there's all kind there's the viic gods and there's the Panic gods and there's local Gods you know they they gods and places that just for one little area because in the past people were not people you would usually worship your grma D every little every grma every village or town had a d connected to it and that's Who You'd Worship in addition to your Kula deat your family deity and your ish deat the deity that you personally had the biggest Affinity with so things are you know the difference here in India is things are much more developed that's one difference and the second difference is since the past two or three thousand years a lot of the a lot of the the grma devatas these are you know we could we could call them demigods yakas and yakshin and so on what is a DAV after all let's say that you know Han we talk about Hanuman as the God as the the the son of the god of wind so it's the the the the the wind has a reality we acknowledge that it has a reality like the sea and if you are like the Richies and the moies if you sit and meditate long enough you will start to perceive that the very fact of it having a reality causes it to have some consciousness of its own because the entire world is made out of Consciousness this is the the the big difference the Sania philosophy and modern physics say the same thing there was a singularity it exploded and now we have the universe the samada the difference is the modern physics says it was it was all energy and it was um it was and it turned into matter and Consciousness somehow came out of that we don't know how and the Sania philosophy here in India says that's insane to think that way it was Consciousness that started off first with no limitations whatsoever n it is not this we can't describe it in any way it's pure Consciousness but for some reason it wanted to experience itself and then as the Consciousness became more and more obstructed in the way that the sank explains it it's become more and more condensed and it's come down to where we are now to our little low level our very low level as it says in the shat bhagavata this is the lowest you know as a you can't get any more dense than the Earth element It also says that you know once you're here the good news is you only have up to go you only have up to go if you were I mean you can certainly you can certainly make a bigger problem for yourself here in the Earth element and get into the kit into the mud and be there for quite a while but if you establish yourself Health with a healthy relationship to the Earth element automatically you'll start moving in the direction of the sky okay um there was one core reason I wanted to have this conversation with you this is actually uh the reason I chose to talk about non- India things on today's episode the reason is my curiosity about Native American culture as well as South American culture so I think we've covered Africa Australia uh Asia now uh and we're moving on to like the daes rituals of North and South America um I've actually not had too many people on the show who know much about North American culture especially uh I'd like for you to start this conversation Wherever You Wish uh possibly I think it would be helpful if you give some context on Native American culture because even words like cherok or places like Oklahoma I don't think Indian audiences have much context so you can start off with the 101 sir okay until uh well aside from the Vikings who came very briefly to New Finland which is the nor North most northeastern part of North America about a thousand years ago um the people started transiting from Asia into the Americas maybe 20,000 years ago so they had plenty of time where they were not being influenced by other people and they went from all that that Northern Area all the way down to the southern part of South America Columbus shows up 1492 and after that the the Europeans start to interfere with things and so there as in Africa as in Australia various cultures had developed some of them had had created cities like the Incas and puru uh like there there is a culture in um new mexic Mexico which is a state in the United States that had its own kind of uh uh Urban sort of situation that nobody knew about that was outside of that area even people in even natives in other parts of North America might not have known about it because people didn't move around that much and then the Europeans came in and then things started to change the number one reason things started to change is the Europeans brought diseases with them diseases that no one in North or South America had been exposed to So within the first 20 years or 30 years of any culture coming in contact with Europeans approximately 90% of the people died from small poox from measles from things that might not have killed people in Europe and Asia but the nobody would had been exposed to them in the Americas so right there a big part of the culture gets totally just imagine if you know tomorrow 90% of the people in in your location suddenly weren't there how would you keep Society together it'd be almost impossible so it was very difficult it's been difficult for the past 500 years unless you've been totally separated from the rest of the world to keep you what was going on back then intact some people have been able to do it to some degree um so let's take let's start with North America uh where which is where I come from from there are 50 states in the US um uh one of which is Hawaii which has its own Polynesian culture and one of which is Alaska which still has a lot of Native Americans but the Native Americans in Alaska are very different from the Native Americans in Florida or the native because they were they they developed their culture in the context of the land they were on they were they had a a a living relationship with the land so they were everybody developed their own different culture of course the Europeans didn't care about that they just wanted to extract things from the land so they came in and Disturbed all these cultures um and one of the ways they Disturbed them is they found out that there were a bunch of people who happened to be on some land that they wanted and then they either killed them or they drove them away so for example one of the tribes of North American natives that was very prominent in the East part of the country were called the Cherokee and um the Cherokee were doing very well where they were uh until the government under Andrew Jackson decided that it wanted their land and so it forced them to walk several hundred miles to what is now called Oklahoma which is a state that's north of Texas and so I went to high school and college in Oklahoma and that was at that time called the Indian Territory so all the the natives that they didn't want somewhere else because they wanted to have farmland or they wanted to prospect for minerals or whatever they would send them to Oklahoma and so you you ended up with people you know another large percentage of them died because you're walking in the in the fall and the winter and it's cold and you don't have enough food and there's disease and so on lots of people are dying so this disturbs your culture also so they get to Oklahoma they try to keep their culture are intact it's very difficult because they have all and and the and the and the the the Europe the Europeans who've now turned into Americans they are not they don't think that the the natives have any value they think that the natives should all become nice brown skinned Americans and then everything will be great but the natives still feel a relationship to the land they still feel a relationship to the animals and the plants they still feel that there is something that the Europeans have forgotten I've heard I I don't know this is true but that when the aboriginals in Australia saw white people arriving they thought they were ghosts and not just because they had white skin because they looked inside them and they didn't see anything they saw that there was there was no in India we'd call it dma there was no there was no connection to anything real there was only hunger that and and the natives some of the natives in um in in in North America uh there there's a uh I forget which tribe but there's a concept of of what's called a wendigo and the wendigo is something that just has an appetite it just continues to eat some of the South Americans call the European settlers and their descendants termite people because they don't produce anything they just eat so so there's there's been you know the the natives could understand okay our maybe this tribe over here they're our neighbors we're enemies with them but we're not going to kill them all off we're not going to destroy them we're just going to we're going to create a boundary and they will have their reality and we'll have their real our reality and this is how we're going to live it was a totally new and different thing for them to have a a a group of people who kept o coming in destroying everything chopping down forests killing all the animals and killing everybody who was living or driving away everybody who was in there so somehow some of the natives in North America have been able to preserve some of their traditions and I've been very fortunate to have been become associated with a group of people who is maintaining uh what what is um what is called a a a suance and this Sundance is where uh a number of people who uh who who followed this it's it's um this particular group is um associated with the Lota uh which used to be called the Sue um and uh but but uh that was a French name that was imposed on them so the Lota have um they appreciate the sun they've lived in a far north area and uh that's an area was very dark in the winter and so you you are really looking for the sun to come back here in India we don't worry about that there's always the sun sweet or we're not worried about the sun disappearing but there you're always the in the winter maybe you've only got five or six hours of Sun if you're in Alaska four hours of Sun and then it's dark and darkness is hard for human beings to deal with so there there has always been an appreciation that that there had to be an alignment with the Sun so that even when it was dark there could be some of that solar energy coming in and maintaining that light on the inside so people would not get dark and constricted and start to start to become corrupted in some way by that darkness and so the Sundance is a very it's it's a very serious very serious Penance I mean if you want to First you want to really evaluate that you that you want to do the Sundance and then you then you then you have to you have to pray about it and you might go on a A Vision Quest and that would require you to go sit on a in one place away from everything for 4 days with no food and no water waiting for a vision to be delivered to you and once you get the vision if if it everything is an alignment then you can consider actually doing the dance and the dance also involves for four days you eating nothing and drinking nothing and being out there and aligning yourself with the Sun so this is very serious Penance and I think what's important to to emphasize here is that people the people who do this they're not doing it for themselves I mean we think nowadays you know I'm going to do some Penance I'm going to do this and I'm going to get some benefit they're not doing it for themselves they're doing it for their people and that's what the songs say that I am uh I uh have been per uh fortunate to be able to participate um in this particular Sundance for on three occasions and I uh work with the the fire because the sweat lodges and various other things you a fire has to be burning all the time so I like to work with the fire at night because that's um the fire has to be kept alive who taught you all this like who introduced you to Native American culture in this way um well it started off by I was introduced to sweat lodges and that was when I probably I did the first sweat lodge uh 30 years ago maybe longer in New Mexico and New Mexico is a place um there are a lot of as its name suggests a lot of um uh Mexican influence and Spanish influence but there are a number of native uh tribes there also and have been there for uh thousands of yours I have to talk a little bit about sweat lodges because I don't think too many people who watch the show know about it I got introduced to it through a gentleman who owns a resort like an Eco Resort in a place called jibby in Himachal Pradesh he made myself and six of my team members do it with him it's basically a tiny tent that they build you you keep like really heated rocks right in the center of the tent you chant mantras uh you conduct pranayam inside the tent and then you throw water cold water onto those hot rocks so it becomes kind of like a micro steam room now it sounds simple but there's some kind of Trance that you go into and something extremely Primal comes out of you I remember being through a really low phase of my life when I went through that sweat lodge experience uh right after you get out of the tent they pour really cold water on you and this is done in very cold weather this was done in January in the Himalayas so I'm assuming it's similar weather in North America as well like it's cold outside you go into like a really hot sweat lodge you get lots of thoughts you get to confront your own thoughts and when you go out they pour cold cold water on you you feel really hungry and then you eat to end the ritual at least that's what we did in Himachal Pradesh but you feel extremely strong after doing that sweat lodge experience am I saying anything wrong is there anything else you'd like to add no except that they're different different they as with many practice I is their different ways of doing sweat lodges in different place in in Mexico they do it slightly different they call it at tamiscal down there so uh but but it's basically the same thing you're requesting it's it's it's everyone is together it should be totally dark you bring in the Rocks you add the water and you are you it's as if you're at the center of the universe and the Rocks represent the the ancestors and you've the grandfathers and the grandmothers and you've requested them to be present and you're asking them for guidance and you're asking them to to to uh you're asking that they assist you to live in the right way so this is all about this this is all very much about aligning yourself with reality and you know this there are different ways to do this it's it's like the the thing that is probably the most important thing for anyone in the world is to be be aware of what you're thinking thinking is a bad habit it's important to think but thinking itself as a habit is a really bad habit so this is one way to address those thinking that that thought another way is um doing a Vasa Retreat which I've been fortunate to do at at igat Pui which is very near here and you just have to sit and be with your mind and allow your thoughts to come out and and and and so you become aware of something that is not limited by all these thoughts that are going on in your head all uh all the time and the as as as we go further and further into the modern world and we are being manipulated more and more by the various things that want to manipulate us they will keep trying to make us think in a particular way and we have to be as far as possible each one of us able to think independently so you can't run away from the world World maybe you could at one point you can't do that anymore there's nowhere to run so you have to make sure that you are keeping your own awareness focused and that and the Sundance is one way to do that so I don't go and try to dance but I I and I work with the fire anyway I I I worship the fire myself so I have an opportunity to relate to the fire and if if you're going to have a sweat lodge somebody has to be tending the fire and they are they are encouraging those rocks to assist everybody in the sweat lodge to to purify themselves and physical purification is one thing but it's mental and emotional purification let it all be sweated out let everything come out and then you are more open and you're more aware and you're there's the potential then for something good to be become to to come down and be present inside you yep you making room for Prana or Life Force to enter your body absolutely and you have Prana inside you but but what happens is you're corrupting The Prana you're you're you're you're you're holding yourself in particular waysa according to the way you're thinking so you're you're you're freeing yourself temporarily of a large number of those thoughts and that allows The Prana to move into all parts of you open up dark areas that you may not have looked at before and bring light into places where light needs to go and then you can see things differently about yourself and therefore about the rest of the world and that's a benefit fair to say that every experience that we' spoken about on this episode and the last two episodes are somewhat related to opening up the channels of your own body mind and soul to allow more Prana to flow into them absolutely that's what spiritual growth is I mean ultimately Pana we're alive because of piranha life is all because of Prana so ultimately really speaking Prana Is For Living beings like you and me Prana is God okay before we move forward with this Native American uh experience I want to ask you one if you could explain the word Prana because it's present in every single ancient culture uh and two is spiritual growth the same as an increase of Prana so when we talk about Kaa yoga and autobiography of a yogi where they say you grow spiritually you grow very quickly from from a spiritual perspective you're basically opening up your body to receive more life force right is that the right kind of thinking you definitely want to open up your body to receive more of the life force but just because you receive more of the life force does not necessarily mean you will become more spiritual okay now let's talk about what life force is and then you can expand this stu okay and of course with with words it's kind of difficult to experience what the life force is but think about the life force as this you we have um a sperm and an ovom they come together they form one cell called a zygote from that one cell you and I are made up of I don't know 10 trillion human cells plus another 10 trillion bacteria and vir and and briia and AR Ikea and so on so there there's trillions and trillions of cells and then of course each one of us is interacting with other human beings and with plants and animals and so on so a a tremendous complexity is being generated out of this one cell so prawn is what is driving that projection of awareness into this physical world and so we're alive because there is this PR there is this life force The Prana that is circulating inside us keeping the body and the mind and the spirit together electricity well electricity is part of it but it's much more subtle than electricity um I mean one way to think about it and and don't take this analogy too far is you have a magnet you have piece of paper and you have some iron filings on the top you move the magnet the iron filings will move it's not a physical thing because the paper is in between but it is a force so Prana is more subtle Than Physical reality and less subtle than the mind it's in between the body and the mind but is keeping them together because without that living individuals would not occur so so Prana everything in the world has an agenda okay is it fair to say that modern society takes you away from allowing the maximum amount of Prana to flow through your body mind and soul I think it is very fair to say that because it you get you get there's good quality Prana and there's not so good quality Prana we're all alive because there's Prana if you do not get enough Prana you will you will die we're getting Prana basically to ways we're getting Prana by breathing immediately we get Prana and we get Prana by eating and it's said in ayurva that The Prana is absorbed from the large intestine and of course the breath is absorb through the lungs so breath oxygen is sort of like the vehicle for Prana oxygen and Prana are two different oxygen is very dense Prana is less dense but they're Associated together and the lungs and the Lar and test center Associated together and they are in Chinese medicine as well because they're both involved with taking piranha from the environment into the organism but you take it in then you have to do something with it so this is again where ayurva is the basic principles of ayurva if only people knew them this would be a very useful thing when you take the Prana in it is providing you life force and that life force will either promote more life force and that will happen if you were circulating the energy well or it will turn into what we an ayurva call Vata and Vata means nervous energy so you'll have energy but you won't be able to store it you won't be able you won't know what to do with it so you will you will get jittery and you will talk a lot and you will look at your social media and you will wander around looking for things to involve yourself in because you have all this energy and you feel like you have to do something but you don't know what you should do and so the we're we're we're getting energy we're we're getting Prana all the time otherwise we wouldn't be alive we're breathing it but if you're in a big city um you're breathing in PR air that has a bunch of pollution in it but it's not just the physical pollution you're breathing in The Prana of every body around you and these are people who are not necessarily spiritual and what they're thinking about is how can I make more money how can I seduce so so and so over there how can I become a big uh daada or how can I become a you know uh an important politician or how can I become famous or people are focusing on that and their thoughts are going out into the environment so you're breathing in that stuff too and this is why it is so desirable if you at all can get out of the city at least occasionally go to some place where there is pure air pure water and just allow yourself to turn off the phone and just allow yourself to connect to reality that's the reality what we're in in the city is not reality I mean it is real but it's not it's not sustainable reality so and then we have the question of food so originally you were getting food directly from the ground and everything was and there was nice praw and there was no particular pollution now the food is polluted but it's not just the physical pollution it's the pollution of the people who are growing it but they're doing it for money and the people who are cooking it but they're doing it for money and the people who are are thinking whatever it is vimalananda always preferred to cook his own food and he was a great cook and he said one of the reasons I prefer to cook my own food is because other people when they cook their thoughts are going into the food and unless their thoughts are are are uplifting thoughts it's going to affect my awareness also so here we are and you know you're you're you're in a and I understand this you're in a hurry you're going to get the w p from somewhere you you know and you have time just enough to get it some chai but the person who's cooking the chai very likely is doing it for money and not because he or she wants you to you know have a a a great life and and have and and and be more calm and and they just want your does you know 10 or 20 rupees and the person who is cooking the food they're probably also you know cooking it and they're thinking you know the boss is like this and I have these problems and what am I going to do next and and all of that is going into the food too which is why it's great when your parents cook for you yes that's the underlying logic as well that is the underlying logic as as well so we definitely want someone who has your interests at heart um to be cooking for you and and I mean I personally I don't do a lot of cooking but I prefer personally just prefer to eat I eat very simply I eat some fruit I eat some vegetables I I have some milk or some Cur uh yogurt or something but I like to just do that on my own because I in the food then there's no complication from outside I'm a strong believer in the fact that Prana can be achieved from the Sun as well if you know how to tap into that kind of energy I've been reading a lot of work on this even with Kaa yoga which is spoken about in autobiography of a yogi they say that eventually slightly controversial statement they say that your body eventually reaches a point where you can harness the Sun for an increased amount of Prana through your soul absolutely and I mean the person that I have known and I say person advisedly who who was able to use this was Jal sadu Rish Rashi our Guru marage V malan nandez uh in the book Junior G marage and um you know as I mentioned before he he did eat tobacco but uh he was also getting pra through the Sun and he used to occasionally let me massage his legs and I was very uh uh privileged to do that and I was very appreciative and one day I guess I applied a little too much oil and he said stop and I I I thought oh my god what have I done now and of course he was always paying attention to people's thoughts and he said no you didn't do anything wrong but the thing is if you apply too much oil it makes it more difficult for me to get the sunlight down into my bones and that's where you want your pro even the the doist the Chinese say this the pra needs to be stored in your bones so he was he was an individual and you know he was a man who had been in samade for hundreds of years but that's a different thing he was an individual who knew how to bring the sunlight into his body store it in his bones and and then he didn't need to eat food other than you know a little bit of tobacco in order to just get some extra juice okay coming back to the Sundance now sir I'll let you continue with that story because the sun seems to be an extremely important spiritual aspect of a lot of cultures all over the world so let's talk about this one and then we'll break away talk a little bit more about the sun well and and you know the the the the reason for the Sundance part of it is to be able to experience your own limitations and to be able to go through those limitations even if you're not actually out there dancing if you're there you're assisting the dancers you're doing things you're you're there with them and you're maybe you're chanting or maybe you're just maybe you're just there sitting with them and projecting um calm and projecting prawn in their Direction and if you're working with the fire then you're you're making sure there are plenty of hot coals onto which you put Cedar so there will be purifying smoke they use at least this particular uh uh dance uses Cedar put on hot coals I mean it's like ATI it's like you know any any other kind of fragrance that has number one a fragrance uh the the fragrance is related directly to the Earth element so a good fragrance will make you feel more stable hence the utility of of using agati or whatever but it should be good quality agati and not something made out of petrochemicals because that is going to have a not as St izing effect okay so this is basically a ritual where you fast you keep your stomach empty you allow The Prana to go inwards and upwards towards your mind and you enter a state of meditation while you stare at the Sun not Staring at the Sun but being out in the sun okay so and and and and the thing is that of course you it's you want your mind after uh you know the not eating and and and and and dancing and chanting you're it's going to be much more difficult for you to think so the idea is yes The Prana should be you should be purifying on the inside and opening yourself to the reality of the sun and the sun you know you know here in let's talk about here in India for example the sun represents the soul the Atma and so I I don't I don't know that they would describe Des cribe it in the same way but it's basically the same thing it's the sun gives life the sun uh provides Heat and the sun provides um uh it it encourages the production of plants and animals which we use as food so without the Sun that would be the end of the whole experience there would be no life without the Sun so we're appreciating the sun we're aligning ourselves with the sun and this is people are sacrificing their food they're sacrificing ing their water they're sacrificing their rest so they're out there dancing and focusing to to to send their prayer to the son again not for themselves but for their entire Community people people you know and this is true of other other traditional groups that I found there I mean to some degree you're doing it for yourself but the main reason is you want your because you are a limited person you're going to be here for 70 years 80 years 90 years maybe then you'll be dead but where did you come from and who's going to come after you so what's important is not you so much I mean you need to be you need to take care of yourself but you're taking care of yourself to provide that continuity from your ancestors into your descendants so that's what people they're they're aligning themselves with the sun partly for their own Spiritual Development and partly to to know that they to do something difficult and they're doing it but they're not focusing on that they're focusing on having this benefit the entire community that is supporting this this ritual I think we were talking about this outside when you said that sometimes during this ritual you'll have a vision or the ritual will allow you to have a vision what does that mean do you actually see something happening well I you know I have a very limited uh connection to this so I can't I can't uh I can't uh speak authoritatively on what kind of Visions people have I've heard about things like that but the idea is very I mean if you do not eat do not drink water and you s and I have never done that for four days I've done that twice for three days and you become very much clarified because you're you're you now you're not taking things in that of course are being influenced by whatever people have you know added to it and you're sitting and you're meditating and you're proceeding your reciting your mons or whatever it is you're doing and you can definitely start to feel that you are becoming more subtle if that's what you're doing I mean if you were focused instead on I'm going to do this to be a big you know a tough guy that's what you're going to end up with but if you're doing it seriously you're going to find your awareness becoming more subtle and you know the davit the gods and the goddesses they may be able to manifest themselves down here occasionally but they don't live on this plane they live on a much more refined and subtle plane so if we really want to connect with those gods and goddesses we have to be a lot more our awareness has to be a lot more refined and subtle so this is all of this process is for the purpose of making your normal you know what is normal awareness for the normal human being we're our sense organs are connecting us to the world all the time we're creating desire the entire world exists because of Desire so this is what you're saying is for this period of however long it's going to be I'm going to minimize my desires and I'm going to I'm going to sacrifice I could be eating I could be drinking I could be sleep you know comfortable somewhere I'm going to minimize those things so that I can align myself better temporarily with the subtle realities that are that we have that we meaning our community whatever that Community is uh that have a relationship with so I want to act as a you know some people have said that a human being the job of a human being is to create a connection between the Earth and the sky all and the sky means maybe you know not just the sky here but the entire universe you know the the the for the dsts it's the SE the Milky Way I mean the uh uh the Big Dipper The Great Bear uh other people may have some but it's out there that is not limited by the Earth so the human being has the ability to to to to to position awareness in all kinds of different levels of subt let me have a shot at this we spoke about how every single spiritual process from any every single culture allows you to increase the amount of PR shaky or life force that flows through your body every time you level up in that life force game it's like as if one of the filters that was originally put on your body and your mind gets removed and you get connected to a higher reality so the more you meditate the more you take part in these rituals the more you fast the more you clean up your body mind and soul the more you purify yourself the closer you are to a higher reality where you don't only have access to the physical reality around you the mental reality in your mind but also spiritual reality that has always been around you but you've been blocked out for all yes okay yes definitely now the thing is of course that as you move in this direction so you're becoming more subtle but you've not become totally subtle which means your ego is still present and there's always that question of the degree to which you were going to identify yourself with that shuti and you're going to start thinking that you something big you and so this this and VI and used to say you know you make some progress spiritually and you will think oh that's great now everything is going to be easy for me no that's exactly the wrong thing he would say the more progress you make the harder it becomes the more progress you make the greater the potential if you start to identify with something and you start to think things should be a a certain way the greater the potential that you're going to take that shuti and corrupt it yourself in some way so the as as you do more sadna yes you will be your awareness will become more and more uh subtle and it will become more and more connected to the subtler Realms of reality but you have to make sure that you that you continue to to your your ultimate focus continues to be on whatever it is you're focusing on maybe on your Guru maybe on your ish deat maybe on the Supreme reality whatever it is but as soon as you as as soon as you forget that and you start to think that you are doing it instead of it's it's this process that involves you but is is much bigger than you are then you start to he would say dive bomb you start to move in the direction where now instead of you being moving in the direction of Rama you're moving you're moving in the direction of Ren who has 10 heads the 10 sense organs and who thinks he the king of Lanka you're the king of your own re reality and you're taking Sia which is your Kundalini Shakti and you're using her as your ego instead of what she really needs to do which is connect to Rama which means the Atma and and and and you've stolen her and at some point Rama is going to come and kill you but and and naturally it will be good if Rah does kill you but why instead just don't do that and remain as a devotee of Rama or Jesus or Krishna or whoever it is you you want to bow down to what's the Hanuman G in this anecdote the pran the pran the pran and that's why I don't know who we have to thank but that's why I suppose hanumanji himself who is a chiranjiv who is still alive Hanuman is the son of the god of wind Hanuman is the 11th rudra he is the incarnation of the god of death he's the god of death because when Prana goes out of your body you're dead so he's the guide of death but he is he is the embodiment of that energy that brings life to everybody embodiment of Prana the advantage of Hanuman is he is always focused on Rama he doesn't care you know it's he never gets angry he may be out there killing things but he's not angry with them he's doing it just because he knows that Rama wants him so you know nowadays I see images of Hanuman looking angry he's not looking he doesn't bother looking angry he's not the the thing you know things like he doesn't care about that he cares only about Rama Rama says go kill that per that individual he goes and kills that individual Rah says save that person he saves that person so how fortunate are we that we have access to haniman and by accessing Hanuman we can automatically connect to Rama but we're accessing someone who is much more accessible than Rama is because Rama lived a long time ago don't know how long but a long time ago okay sometimes in the middle of episodes I just get an intuition to stop and I've got that intuition right now right before you began this analogy between Rama and Enlightenment uh we were going to talk about South America but I think we need to leave some stuff for our next conversation as well Dr swaboda how was this one as compared to the last two conversations we had no it it was a different thing but it's always it's always nice to to be able to to I I have been very fortunate in so many ways but one way I've been very fortunate is to have survived this long and to have seen how things are developing over this period of time and it's very interesting to see that that very internet that can be so challenging in so many ways also has the potential to reach so many people potentially with things that may be of benefit to them so this was very totally different from our previous conversation but um it it definitely has the feel that hopefully it will be of benefit to somebody somewhere the way I look at it so is that the dates haven't just woken up but they're starting to catch speed in the world again feel for the last 100 years for some reason dieses all over the world had lost some amount of speed and there were very few Roberts foras but now there's going to be a lot more definitely and the reason that they had lost speed is because people were not paying attention to them I mean they might go to the Mund and you know J D J DEA or something but they were not paying attention they were not actually connecting to those deities and the deities have to be fed with our prom that's how they stay so you know viic deities how many viic deities do people still worship almost nobody I mean Vishnu was a a deity rudra has turned into Shiva but otherwise how many Egyptian deities do people worship almost none you know the Poseidon who worships Poseidon nowadays so those deities can't do anything they're not being fed with Prana they're not being fed with attention they they're they they they are sh they don't have any Shak anymore now that we're people are actually going and actually genuinely trying to connect with the deities they're getting some energy and they can do more yeah 100% uh I have nothing to say other than Jay Hanuman so J Hanuman and since it's still the ganapati UT ganapati Papa lovely uh for our American viewers and our International viewers Google that and say it with us Dr Robert SAA thank you I appreciate you I really look forward to speaking to you again and expanding upon your life once again thank you sir thank you thank you that was the episode for today ladies and gentlemen and I've still not covered everything that I'd like to cover with Robert swod please go follow him on his social media handles he's got so much to offer to the world so many experiences so much knowledge the least we can do is show him all our support on social media he's a TRS Allstar if you've not seen his older episodes with us we'll link them down below make sure you go check them out they are most centered around aori culture and Indian Tantra but Dr sooda is going to be back on the show so tell me what you'd like me to ask him about the next time he's around lots of love to you guys thank you for supporting the renir [Music] show [Music] a

Channel: BeerBiceps

Views: 655,923

Keywords: podcast, indian podcast, indian podcasts english, ranveer allahbadia, beerbiceps, the ranveer show, the ranveer show podcast, the ranveer show beerbiceps, trs, aghori, black magic, men of god, dead men, aghori sadhus, dr robert svoboda, robert svoboda, aghora, dr robert svoboda podcast, dr robert svoboda beerbiceps, beerbiceps aghori, aghori tantra, tantra, tantra mantra, aghori culture, karma, marijuana, ayurveda, native american culture, indian culture, totem animals, volcanoes

Id: YXr1UZwapR0

Length: 100min 5sec (6005 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 14 2023