The Arc of Life - Life, Death & Beyond - Huston Smith and Ken Dychtwald. Full interview from the DVD

[Music] [Music] I'm Ken Dyke Wald I'm a psychologist a gerontologist and author of a number of books and I've spent the last 35 plus years trying to understand how the aging process alters our lives our families our communities and really the world during this period of time I've given talks to several million people throughout the world I've met many world leaders and have had the good fortune of interviewing lots and lots of interesting people pertaining to this subject so it was an interesting moment for me when I got a phone call from the producers of this program asking me if I'd be open to interviewing the legendary Houston Smith about his personal views of Aging and his personal views about beyond his aging process about death I would tell you that my first reaction was that I didn't feel up for the task Houston Smith is an extraordinary being his books have been read throughout the world his knowledge of religion both from the outside and the inside is unrivaled and I thought boy how am I going to possibly handle an interview with this extraordinary man but nevertheless I took on the assignment and I sat down for months and thought to myself what would one ask a 90 plus year-old deep thinker what are the most important questions that I'd like to get answers for how would he personally either respond to some of these issues about what happens when you die are you hopeful or frightened my curiosity was piqued as to how he would embrace or dodge these kinds of themes so what you're about to see is a deep interview with one of history's most extraordinary beings who himself is in his tenth decade of life and has given deep thought to so many of the big questions that most of us haven't even gotten around to asking yet I would share candidly that I was a little concerned as to whether it would be disrespectful to sort of guide him with my questions so I wondered before we began the interview should I sit down with my list should I let him begin should I leave it wide open and as you'll see he took total charge right from the beginning and he had some general theories about aging throughout the world that he wanted to lay down before we got into his own personal views and experiences and I is someone who has listened to people talk about and philosophize about aging for three and a half decades now found myself absolutely dazzled by his frame of reference and his point of view on this subject as you'll see this may be a little going against the tide of videos because videos you you turn on your video in the evening and it's jump jump jump jump jump you have to keep shifting to get their attention well I think we are more serious than that we will seek to hold the viewers attention by our content of what we say now here is my yeah now there my statements gonna take maybe five minutes okay and then we can do what seems best everywhere that human beings have lived whenever they have lived always they've been faced with three inescapable problems 1 how to earn their livelihood from the soil second how to get along their fellow human being and third how to get along with themselves now it so happens that the great enduring civilizations are also three in number East Asia China for short South Asia India for short and the West now my thesis is that in their great historical developments these three civilizations have poured more of their attention into one of these problems but differently in the West we have paid attention to nature China has paid port its intellectual energy into human relations sociology for short and India has concentrated more on the psychological so we have the scientific the sociological and the psychological those emphases have caused them to deal with age in distinctive ways we in the West the West has concentrated more on nature and has produced science but it has managed aging miserably far worse than the other two because with their emphasis on the physical and nature that puts the emphasis on the body and the body ages and deteriorate and therefore they have emphasized wrong approach to this they we try to cover it up in the West with lovely metaphors of the sunset years and the autumn color we don't believe a bit of it what we in the West believe is when you're 40 you're over the hill and when you're over the hill you pick up speed that's the West on Aging now the sociologists the world sociologists China much much different what they did was to build up a culture which compensated for the necessary physical decline and the compensation was that the older you grew the more you will be honored now I speak from authority as well as having authorities behind me I grew up in China and with every passing age you can expect other people to jump up and refill the tea pot and you don't have to and what is even more important Kendra likes my wife like this is the ture listened to with more respect so instead of downhill all the way in the West they built in a social system to balance the decline of the body and that was their way of dealing with the aged India the world psychologist took as its distinctive point psychologically they divide in life into four stages youth maturity where you pour your energies into profession and family and social obligations and then retirement is a third stage in the classic literature it's called you become a forest dweller that means you poured a lot of energy into family into society but it's time to retire you're entitled to retire and forest dweller the ancient in their days and not much forests in India shrubbery or zai but you go off alone and there you in that stage your prime responsibility is to think through the meaning of life so that there will be some understanding of this human venture before it's all over that's retirement and just sandwich in how different that is from us for for us retirement means sort of R&R now not so for them you've got the responsibility to understand what life is all about and then the final stage is if technical on word is renunciation you renounce even this privacy this solitude to think these you come back into the world to put into practice what you have figured out that is the big picture I may be reading it wrong but it seems like you favor the psychological model with with appreciation for the sociological model and the physical model seems to you to be seems to me in your comments to be superficial exactly many of these constructs emerged over time when people didn't live very long one century ago the average life expectancy as you know worldwide was only about 47 and so a lot of the notion of what was life was the idea that life might be 40 or 50 or maybe 60 years yeah how old are you today well into my 91st year and so today we have people living into their 80s and 90s and beyond 100 years yeah is the notion then that the same models that you just described would fit with a longer aging process or would they be stretched out to line up with the longer life or is there yet another stage of life that there's now time for the former not the latter or if there is a fifth stage you tell me I'll be the interviewer and ask you what that fifth stage is in the 1970s I had the good fortune of studying for a while with Eric Erickson who you may have known or been friends with yes and he was considered the great father of adult psychology and he had a book childhood in society in which he laid out the eight stages of life and right five of them were childhood and towards the end of his life in his 90s he and his wife Joan came out with another idea that there was yet another stage of life that they called transcendence now would that be the same as your Hindi the Hindu last stage of life that's a very good question and I did not yes I think it would correlate with the retirement when I didn't use the word meditation but thinking through and I didn't use the word transcendent but I think that they this was all impressive so do you think of yourself as an old man yeah I'm told that and it's sort of creeps up on one so incrementally that you don't realize that you've crossed the line and you're old but now let me face the question do I feel old yes there is evidence I've been very fortunate in my health but I was smitten nine years ago with osteoporosis and that means I'm my spine cannot support my back and to walk to study myself and my friends well no I have to hold on to their arm and so it takes I'm used to you know I played colleagues tennis and my body with but okay and there's another way I sleep a lot more and I'm a good sleeper so I notice that I am oh by those two primary oh and another is that deafness has approached me and I'm very grateful to technology for keeping me in the communications circle I see you have a cochlear implant yes what was it like to have a piece of technology joined with your own biology well you know you don't take the long view while you're in that and that that operation took the better part of two hours and they put me under and they used morphine and it it turned out that I was allergic to morphine so when I came out rather than attending to the improvement in the hearing I I was just nauseated and the dry heaves for about three days so it was not a pleasant experience but it's worth it it's worth it do you ever wish you could be young again you know I have a little characteristic whimsy and I've been interviewed maybe 500 times and once in a long while someone comes up with a question I've never thought of and my knee-jerk response is turn you for asking me a question I've never thought so I never thought boy I wish I were a young no I know categorically nomal that was right then but I it took a lot of energy and I am glad to say that was fine then but I've done that there's no whiff to repeat it thank you with your own aging process do you think of it as an a scent or is it decent well with the body it's very clear it's a decent for with with the mind and the spirit it's easy to say the ideal it's an ascent it should be an increase in understanding and this is recently become the more important part point for me increase in understanding and acceptance I love and st. Paul's statement in one of his letters I have learned whatsoever condition I find myself in there and to be content I think that's wonderful and I am practicing that and I have to admit without bragging we don't think about that evaluation thing I think that I am on balance more content at this stage in my life fewer ups and downs and so on more even keel are there any good metaphors in nature for the aging process then aging resembles something that you can describe in nature I have to think for a moment anything well you know nature is constantly recycling yeah so attention to spring summer autumn winter is a wonderful metaphor for life and the seasons that we go through you have remarkable fluency in the in the wisdom traditions and the religions of the world well that I will admit to a lifelong interest are there some religions more than others that have a richer understanding of the of the aging experience no judge not that ye be not judged I happened to have been born and raised a Christian and it took with me so that's what I am but far be it from me to pass judgment on what it would be like if I had been born a Buddhist or of a non test I I have some intimation of that because I have friends in all of the eight to seven and outside of myself and so I picked their minds for their understanding if someone were seeking to better understand their own aging process to which religious tradition would you point them Christianity but I do that where I've already covered myself it's not up to me to I've retired a long time ago from giving advice I have enough problems with this six foot so frame dealing with that to take on the problems of other people conversation is wonderful because like here we learn from one another but advice be very careful claiming the because it would require putting yourself in their shoes and that's a noble idea to do as much as you can but you can't get very far what is it there's a Native Americans statement don't judge another person till you have walked a mile in his modest a moccasin okay not only have you studied these traditions but you've had a life of introspection and as it turns out you've lived longer than many of your teachers many of the individuals whose work you admired and studied and speak of lived far less long than you lived why are you pointing out earlier that times are extending the lifespan yet what have you made of these additional years beyond what your teachers could make of their 60 or 70 years of life two things the first it's common knowledge that I was a close friend of Aldous Huxley and once when I was driving him home from a lecture why he said Houston you know it's rather embarrassing to have spent one's whole life pondering the human condition and come up with nothing more profound than try to be a little kinder well in a way he just claimed he's very modest person profundity but in another way that's that's exactly right so I have it has that with each passing year it becomes more evident that this is the basic human project to be a little kinder in one's dealings with other people the other thing has come a more recently and as more of a surprise I have become increasingly aware of how helpful and kind other people are you know they it's obvious as all over me that I'm infirm and I in need of health and but what comes as a surprise is strangers welcome and say could I help you across this street and other things like that and it is so what should I say ever done no I'm I I don't often feel myself at a loss for a word but I don't have the word it comes as a surprise as how courteous and kind strangers are when they see somebody in need and you would not have been as aware of this had you not aged to this point in your life absolutely because now is the time that my body just has to have help to stay in the swim from the inside of you how would you characterize the state of your mind well I think I touched on that when I said I am content now I think there's another thing that comes into this matter of aging that we have not mentioned before and this is one's attitude towards death we're going to get there we can go there now if you like yeah that if one is not afraid of death then aging which slopes and evitable towards that moment holds no great fear explain that explain that yeah well okay I'm gonna put it in my Christian idiom but I'm I've had a lot of practice at this and I can translate it into other tradition when asked for the Christian view is that if you have lived your life reasonably well you will go to heaven this is the vernacular what you said and I think I think that it's basically right whatever words you want the light on the television screen never goes off what we have no idea of is what the images on that television screen will be after we and and this is a useful phrase from the India Indian after we drop the body we don't know but the lights never gonna go off do you find yourself as you age altering your view about how much fear you have or no fear or you came to this many years ago and it's it's remained this absence of fear well now you will not let me weasel out but I'm um put it slightly differently if one how does one feel about one's life when one's nears the end of it and this is also another recent realization namely that it you're happy about your life then you're content to just let it drop away like a leaf falling from a tree you're willing to let it drop away or does your happiness cause you to want to have more of it no that's a that's a sensible question but it's got a sensible answer no enough is enough I mean you don't need three desserts [Laughter] but if you feel happy about your life as I basically do I made all kinds of mistakes and so on but that comes with the territory of it but I have looking back I am happy with the choices that I'm a vocation wife and whoa where I would teach and so on so I'm I'm again content and happy and when I say no regrets that means on balance i I don't think if I had to do it again I would do it any better but if you could give the young Houston Smith some advice for how to have lived that life differently is there anything now I don't know be a little kinder maybe that weaseling out let me see that's a another interesting question that calls for a little thicket Oh for self-reflection yes I wished that I had truly listened more to my wife sure I heard the words but I didn't know often enough pick up where the words were coming from and so however I would word that that's what I would whisper into the ear of the youthful Houston Smith watch out for that when that comes along there is an anecdote which has received a good bit of attention when I was in college and in the summers dormitories closed and I would be in a rooming house and there was somebody who I had to get up at 6:00 because my job included opening the cafeteria at the University of Chicago and somebody had to get up a half hour earlier and so I didn't have an alarm clock I said just shake me when you leave and I know it's time for me to come and at the end of the summer he said you know Houston there's something very quiet I find quite interesting every time I would shake you your first word would be good g-o-o-d and who knows but in a way I feel that that has been that goon has been foundation of my attitude towards life has it grown stronger as you've aged or has it diminished this sense of good I think it remains steady now of course in in bad times we lost a daughter from sarcoma cancer and we lost a granddaughter who was murdered and on those times why one doesn't vocalize good so it's on Talent first of all thank you also for sharing with such with such candor your view of this do you feel there's any parts of the aging process then have been a big disappointment that you thought something better what happened but as you've aged and grown older that didn't know I I am content and also i we all know how the problems that aids brings to so many of our acquaintances and I just feel extreme Nate's I could say lucky fortunate but I think for me the best word is blessed by the fact that I have moved into this final stage with no [Music] well I'll put a positively in good physical health that as long as my back is supportive by being in a comfortable chair like now or lying down I am in complete comfort how many persons my age are even younger than that are that blessed if I had in my pocket a pill I know that story that's been told it's a great story I'd looked but I have another pill that would allow you to live fifty more years would you want it no no absolutely no because well it's hiked an arc and the arc has been completed and this is not like one of those bridges where you have our arc no it's it's been a good light and I'm glad that I didn't miss it but there's no I used to go back to the earlier metaphor to have three desserts earlier you mentioned the Christian tradition of you live a good life you have heaven afterward and you mentioned that you could translate that into several other religions what would a Buddhist view be about what comes next reincarnation and depending on they see death as simply analogous to changing your clothes you change the close of your body but the essence of you takes on a new body and how it is reborn depends on how you have lived your life yeah because they have an enormous suite this is only one chapter in a very thick book and the virtues merit one pain in this life will be cumulative through your future life in the Muslim I think I cannot think of any difference between the Muslim and the question about the afterlife you have invested a great deal of your life in a desire to live it consciously you're in your tenth decade of life has it been worth it oh of course why well you know you you have to excuse me but I I feel a certain rapport with you then I can sort of make a joke out of your your questions and let me ask you in turn do you like to be happy and sure everybody does and then I ask you why so for you it's it's it's just it's as simple as that that it's not a question of you don't question whether or not this pursuit of a conscious life was a was the right path or not and with Socrates who said the unexamined life is not worth living you believe I agree my last question before we'll take a short break there's a great deal of attention spent perhaps in the West with trying to put off aging to look young act young be faithless what's your point of view about all that that it's denial and it's tending to appearances without getting down to the real question coming to terms with it and making the most of it in the making the most of it of one's life of one's aging is how is that done by hook or by crook I mean may how do you make the most of your life by making the right choices and trying from experience to cultivate wisdom how far along that line do you feel you've come in your cultivation of wisdom are you quite delighted or satisfied that you have lived the life in which wisdom has grown for you I would not use either of those term surprised is my word because turn you again I mean I say I'm surprised and you say why are you surprised it's like why am I happy same question I you're but you lived a life in pursuit of wisdom and you've surrounded yourself with wise people wise teachers why now you have you haven't hasn't been behind you it's been in you're in front of you as well yeah and you feel and looking at you examining your own ninety plus years of life that this wisdom has taken root and grown in you yeah yes I will say that's a fair statement I think I have gleaned he almost ruthlessly from wise people who have sought out his Holiness the Dalai Lama Aldous Huxley and so on and I have been rapacious in trying to assimilate as much wisdom as I can from them the quality of your thinking seems extraordinary to me I've studied ageing and older adults now for 35 years and it's not unusual to sit down with a 90 year old and the quality of their mind is diminished yours does not seem to be well use it or lose it alright let's take a little break thank you role-models twenty-year-olds wonder about what they'll be like when they're 40 year olds and they look around and see lots of romans yeah there aren't a lot of 90 or 95 year old role models around are there well you're past your 90th birthday now so who do you look to as a role model for how to live this period of your life I have storehouse of memories people that I looked up to and they're they're still with me now even though physically nah do want me to be specific well actually yes are there several individuals you can think of that give you examples for how to be in 90 or 95 year old no I do not know any my age that can be role models for me recently Paul Samuelson who was my colleague at MIT and who transform economic he died at 94 and the way he what he did with his life is a model but he's no longer living and I do not if this is your question do not know of any living individuals my age that are role model for me is that yes because I'm about to be 60 and I meet people like you and it gives me an image of what I could be when I'm 90 but I wonder as you've answered what it would be like to be and I dear old 491 or 95 year old and look around no no living example but the knowledge of how people have lived is reinforcement to me in my age is there some figure from religion or mythology that serves for you as an example of how you can be at this stage in your life Lao Tzu the name is the old fellow actually historically and the lifespan was not very long then are there characters in mythology or beings in the religious traditions who represent for you an example they may not be alive today of what a wonderful model of Aging well of course his holiness is my mentor and my model and he's only six years younger than I am but the continued vitality and wisdom of that man is astonishing and a constant inspiration is is that yes so let me ask you a silly question then they may all be silly from your point of view but this one is more silly if if I were to ask you to provide simple advice about how to age well and you'd give five suggestions to younger people based on your life experience how to age properly or how to age well what would you tell people take care of your help keep your mind alert and occupied I recently reread the brothers karamazov desk and right and the complicated front but it it is an amazing boy I'm now in the midst of worn piece but I'm not sure I'm gonna make it through that because then the book is too tedious or because you may not live long enough I won't I know at this point it seems clear I won't because I'm not making much headway in that book so keep your mind alert friendships very important I have picked up for lunch about three days a week to go out and we have a enjoyable time well it's just being with friends and changing catching up on thoughts so take care of your body keep your mind active and stimulated friendship do not overlook the beauty of this world we really lived in of course here in California it's a little easier I have Ryan old neighbor used to say it well if you lived in California would be easy to believe in the Garden of Eden and so on but the fifth one would be listen in order to understand the lives of others and you are associated with because they to have their story some people say that their perception of time alters as they grow older that time things move quicker that a year goes by more speedily than when they were young have you any perception of the passage of time as being different than it was when you were a younger man not for me personally but I certainly notice in the world everybody seems to be in a rush and even people who write me letters and I have a lot of incoming mail they're impatient they they want their answer day before yesterday and I don't jump line I just I do answer my mail but I keep it at my pace if you knew your life was coming to an end this life or this body that you might drop soon what would you regret the most well maybe it speaks louder than words that no no I'm taking a double take on that and I do have an answer and I think I touched on it earlier that I wish that I had listened to my wife I heard the words but I did not pick up the feeling behind that word the those words so that is a regret and if I thought I wish I had done differently is there anything about people today that makes you angry none in my immediate associates if I were to move out of that again this is only hypothetical for me but I know that there are people who are out to get an advantage over other people but I don't come and contact with people like that okay so you have a great Bank of knowledge about what religion will let that pass but go ahead you have a far bigger Bank of knowledge than most people have about particularly about what the what the different religious traditions think what happens at the end of this physical life but I'd like to know what you believe is going to happen to Houston Smith at the end of this life well his television screen is now going to go dead and but part of what makes it interesting is that at this stage I have no idea what the images will be but and that's interesting is there some part of you that's curious to see that next chapter I am content with the pace of life if I were to learn that I would die tomorrow I would hope that there would be time for my family to gather around me but otherwise that the acceptance would be there does that yes it does do you ever have dreams or fantasies about your afterlife no I I don't spend fantasies it will be there and it is bound to be fascinating and I don't think I mentioned this but being a philosopher and spending the bulk of my career as well as on the side interested and reading in the great minds why now here is a real evidence of aged is coming right out that I I forget how I began a sentence and when that happened there's no chance of a smooth landing on that so this isn't the first time that I've had to ask you what was your question I don't remember so let me let me tell you where I think I was going when you personally envisioned the transition out of this body does it do you perceive it as something that's abrupt one second near this and the next second year in some other form or do you see it as something that is fluid no it will be abrupt and it will come as a surprise but I have pondered this a little bit and let me make my point by by way of a cartoon you know cartoons are tended to be funny and are funny but there are also very wise at time and I remember a cartoon man on a cliff looking at over beautiful sunset and the captain ran man enjoying himself enjoying the sunset in other words the intention was on his enjoyment rather on the sunsets now that carries over and I creates a little wandering on my part about when I drop the body I am at peace and persuaded that it will be glorious as heaven is supposed to be but what I don't know is whether that glory will totally absorb my attention or whether there will still be some remnant of tan tension on Houston Smith enjoying the glory of heaven I hope it's not that but who knows do you have an expectation that there will be a reincarnated you that will appear somewhere sometime there is reincarnation is sure but where or when [Music] the classic Indian doctrine of reincarnation is you are reborn in a new body on this earth well possibly but I'm not invested in that it may be in an unknown land if land even is well it's a metaphor so if you were to find yourself to the extent you were taking note of yourself in some far off galaxies or it with some other metaphysical realm that would be okay sure sure now there is one question about whether I want to not totally be my atention not totally on the sunset but on myself and that is that I I find myself wondering whether I will know my loved ones still in the body when I'm not in the body and I find myself Fantas saying to myself yes I I I love them and I am invested in their lives in their future and I would like to continue to be aware of them but if that I can take it or leave it I'm gonna ask you a question that might offend you or offend your perspective and I apologize if I do so hit if you find an opening so there are some people who believe that aging and the transition towards death is something that they should submit to accept allow to happen however God or nature passes it has it happened and there are other people I think a growing number of people who feel that they'd like to take charge of their end of life they'd like to when the suffering is high or when the pain is great bring an end to their life well I am against suicide however I also recognize that I am NOT in their shoes but one of the reasons I'm against it is physical pain now we can deal with with tranquilizers and that sort of thing so it's the inner mental spiritual pain and I speaking for myself I can imagine no situation when I would take my own life but I come back to the fact that I'm not in other people's shoes and so I am not wagging my finger at them if they make the opposite decision as you have grown older do you feel that your doors of perception using the Huxley phrase have grown wider yeah do you feel that the the screen between your perception of life of God has been more opened with aging or more closed open does that you're pausing and you're quizzical expression makes me wonder well that was surprising no I need to explain that well then please explain this now I will tell you that my reaction is more delight actually so much of the literature on aging is about loneliness loss fear nostalgia trauma the idea that for you it may be for many but perhaps you as a as a pioneer with aging while you might be osteoporotic and you might not hear well and you can't play tennis anymore but your capacity to perceive if it grows wider more open larger then that's a fantastic thing yes no I think it has not in any literal physical sense of when but in terms horizons mental horizon yes is there anything you'd still liked anything big you'd still like to do or cause to happen with your teachings in this life well I that I in it the focus if I said if I took it as anything I wish I had done differently than of course yes plenty but that wasn't the question although that's a good question if you want to go with that that would be great oh yes there are oh I'll give you just just a couple of very mundane garden-variety thing nothing momentous but my mother outlived my father and I I felt I was always good that when my trips and I my life has been studded with speaking engagements at Kali the if it was anywhere in the direction of my parents why I would make a detour on the way home and spend time and visit my mother and I can still visualize her as soon as I'm seated why she would lean forward and say well Houston when do you have to leave and I said well late tomorrow afternoon and you could and she would sit back in resignation and I would look on the positive side well we have all this afternoon and we have this evening and I we can go out to dinner and then we'll have all tomorrow morning before I have to go well to me it seemed generous but you could just tell from her experience her disappointment and one could also understand it because she she wanted to just hang out with me for about three days she would like it more and there was also always a little gossip going around about that in that retirement home and all that but never mind the content the words were just sort of cementing being the love of being together if you were to think of one song that best tells the story of your life what song would that be see how can I keep from singing do you know that well you can edit it out of the moment it's a wonderful song my life flows on in endless song above verse lamentations I hear that sure but for up to that spells a new creation midst all the sorrows and the strife I hear that music ringing it sounds an echo in my soul how can I keep from singing well you asked for oh you've got it alright I've got another question I only got a only a few more if there were one prayer a prayer prayer that best reflected your deepest wishes what prayer would that be God please increase my love for my fellow companions and my understanding life with its profound mystery and that prayer comes from me if there were one story a joke or a fable a story that best captures how people should meet life's challenges what story comes to your mind well this is topical and time but I happened to be rereading uncle Tam tongs camp cabin and I think that uncle town that story is so inspiring because well a man a slave all the adversities but the way he could triumph over that exude and actually experience almost [Music] christ-like attitude towards life in the world what would you wish in terms of how people might think of you and your work in your teachings that they remember the Houston Smith in the 1960s the Houston Smith in the 1980s the Houston Smith is an old man all right if this is too glib you won't let me off the hook but he did the best he could do you feel you're still doing the best you can yes and so the last question is the question that what would you like to ask of yourself I would like to ask myself why I would hope my last words would be and there's a little story behind this little in the sense of short but momentous st. John Chrysostom a Christian Saint in the fourth century he crossed Russian crossed the czarina for neglecting the poor and she in her absolute power ordered him to be dragged to death behind a chariot he was deeply loved by the people and so in that scene on both sides the throngs of people mourning for his death and it is said that one of them picked up his last words thanks thanks for everything praise praise for it all I would wish that those could be my last words thank you for allowing me to interview today no I hadn't you were you were incredibly easy to interview for me but the interviewer has to be listening to what the interviewee is saying and thinking attention I love doing this interview I would have to say that I'm not easily won over but I love being in the presence of this being I had the sense that I was with someone who was so large and so radiant and so clear thinking and so much more enlightened than me that even though this was my subject we were talking about I felt myself the student and I liked his playfulness I like his humor I liked his willingness to engage I liked when he said you know hit me with your best shot he was grand and for me the chance in my life to be in the presence of in a way an avatar a pioneer someone who is who is modeling a new way of experiencing the aging process doesn't happen that often and I felt that that happened for me in this interaction with the legendary Houston Smith [Music]

Channel: Vedanta Video

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Keywords: Vedanta, religion, god, karma, meditation, ramakrishna, vivekananda, brahman, hindu

Id: jARtPew66zc

Length: 82min 21sec (4941 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 09 2020