Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Well, thank you for joining me, Dharaguna Muktananda.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: Oh, welcome. Great to be with you again.
[00:00:07] Speaker A: So, yeah, I mean, we already had a conversation. I already kind of know what you do. But for anybody that's new joining us, would you be able to give us a little bit about who you are and what your background is?
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Yes. I am a yoga monk, a yogi who has adopted the sannyasi. We call it renunciate or sanyasi. In India, the Sanskrit word is sanyasi style of life, which means that we don't get married, we remain single and we work for the basically two sides to our lives, self realization and service to the universe.
So we work on ourselves internally through meditation and the lifestyle of yoga.
And the other side of that is the social. So there's the personal and the social, the internal and the external. So socially we do as much, we help people as much as we can in whatever form it's needed.
So I was brought up in New Zealand.
Then I adopted this.
Well, I first Learned meditation in 1991 when I was about 26.
And then I adopted the sannyasi lifestyle soon after that and I've been doing it ever since.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: And your path is called Anandamarga? Anandamarga?
[00:01:42] Speaker B: Anandamarga, which means path of bliss. It was founded by my guru, Sri Sri Anandamurti, who is a great guru that was born in India and he started the organization in India, but it's since then spread all over the world.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: And how long have you been involved?
[00:02:05] Speaker B: Since 91.
So it's going on 35 years now.
[00:02:14] Speaker A: I wasn't even born yet.
That's so impressive. Honestly.
What was it about Ananda Marga that appealed to you? Why did you want to follow that lineage?
[00:02:26] Speaker B: Because in terms of the philosophy and the ideology, it's a complete, it's a comprehensive lifestyle.
It covers everything.
It's, you know, it recognizes that first of all, we have to be healthy.
We have to take care of our physical existence in order to survive, of course.
So that's the first thing.
And then we have to be mentally strong.
We have to base our lives on strong ethical principles which keep our conscience clear.
If you always feel that at least you tried to do the right thing, your conscience is going to be clear.
You can do a lot with that, even under the most adverse circumstances.
And then so there's the physical, which is the kind of the base. Then there's the mental, then there's the spiritual.
And you know, there's not a lot of true spirituality in the world these days. Spiritual meaning that you're trying to connect with the source, the ultimate source of yourself and the universe.
So through practices of ultimately meditation, but other practices also like yoga, asanas, kirtan, vegetarian eating, social service, very, very, very important.
So through all the different practices of the yogic lifestyle, ethical living, first of all, keeping yourself healthy, and then ethical, a life based on ethics, based on morality. Always trying to at least try. We're not perfect, we're humans, so we're going to make mistakes, we're going to err, but at least try to do the right thing.
Then try to eat as, as much as you can. Not only for your own health and well being, physical and mental, but also for the health and well being of the animals and the planet.
Then helping others as much as you can.
So you know, serving the society, serving all the beings of the world when, whenever they come within your orbit of what you can do.
And then asanas means yoga postures to keep the mind balanced, kirtan, spiritual singing, singing a mantra, very important.
And then ultimately meditation. So those are the.
And there's different, you know, different lessons and forms of meditation that you can incorporate into your life.
But that's basically a summary of the yogic lifestyle. So that's what I do personally as well as teach it to others.
Being an Acharya. Acharya means spiritual teacher.
So actually my full name is Acharya Acharya Gunamuktananda Vadut, but we just say dara because it's more generic. It means brother. It means elder brother.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a little easier to say.
[00:06:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:37] Speaker A: Well that's awesome. Thank you for sharing that.
And you said the third goal, right, Is to connect to our source, connect to the universe altogether, the greater consciousness.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: That's the ultimate goal.
That's the primary goal. That's the first priority.
And that's what's missing in society.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: Yeah, that's for sure.
[00:07:00] Speaker B: Yeah. Because of course there were a lot of things wrong with organized religion.
And because of the dogmas of religion, we departed, especially in the west, we departed from religion pretty much. I mean, of course there's still people that are into religion, but there was a big departure from religion about, must have been about 150 years ago in the West. 150, 200 years ago, whatever it was.
But we've thrown the baby out with the bathwater.
There were a lot of dogmas in religion which were not good, that were holding humanity back, holding back the liberation of intellect. That's why there was the Renaissance.
But then we've also discarded the core aspect of religion which was covered over by all the dogmas and all the rituals and everything which aren't necessarily useful.
And that is the true spirituality.
Because there's a reason why there are religions in the world.
It's not just to try to organize and subjugate people.
That's a kind of a sideline that they got into the religions.
But ultimately religion started because in the human mind there's a human longing.
Who am I?
Where did I come from? What am I doing here?
Is there a meaning to life? Is there a purpose?
Can I make my life a mission? Rather than just so basically what's happened in the last hundred years or so, 100, 150 years, whatever it was, is we've been brainwashed.
We've been taught to believe that we may as well, there's only one life, we may as well enjoy it as much as we can live and let live. And the only purpose of it is just to make as much of a mark as you can while you're alive. And then when you're dead, you, you're dead and gone. And that's it.
So that's instilled, that's fostered a very nihilistic perspective of life which is being eroding away at the psyche of human beings that haven't adopted a higher calling or a higher mission or a high meaning in their lives.
If you just believe that all there is to life is just to enjoy yourself and to look after yourself and your family as much as you can before you die, and then that's it, then it's a soul destroying perspective.
And the reason why it's a soul destroying perspective is because it doesn't encompass the soul.
It doesn't encompass the concept of a higher being.
Your soul being part of a higher soul, being part of a higher consciousness, it takes away the concept of God.
So you don't want to take away the concept of God. Of course, you know, if you associate with the concept of God with dogmatic religion, then that's not a good thing.
But the concept of God is not necessarily to be associated with dogmatic religion.
And what I found in Anandamaga and what I've found in my life ever since is that the concept of God is a spiritual concept and spirituality is not the same as religion.
Of course the core of religion should be spirituality. And it still is for many people and.
For people of all different types of religions. There are still very spiritual people in all the religions. Every Religion, but it can be independent of religion as well. True spirituality is best practiced, in my opinion, in its essence.
And the essential practice for that is meditation.
Because meditation means looking within yourself and trying to find your essence within yourself. Trying to find.
Trying to realize yourself as the greater self.
[00:12:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
Now would you say that's the big difference between spirituality and religion is religion and dogma is looking out there for the answers and spirituality is looking in here?
[00:12:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
Depending on the religion, of course, the Semitic religions are quite extroversial. They're not very introversial, outward looking and based on belief rather than experience.
The Eastern religions are more introversial and experiential, based on experience.
Also based on a lot of belief in dogma as well.
But in general, the more you look within, the more introversial you are, the more you're going to find the truth, because you can only, of course, this world is also truth. This universe is also the truth.
It's the expression of pure truth.
But you're not going to find the pure truth.
Well, ultimately you can find the pure truth within everything and everyone else. But the best place to start looking or the ultimate place to look is in yourself, within yourself.
Because each one of us is a manifestation of that pure truth, the ultimate truth.
Each one of us, each one of, we all have awareness. We all have consciousness. So each one, the consciousness of each and every one of us is, according to yogic philosophy and according to my experience through meditation for the last 35 years, an expression or a manifestation of the infinite consciousness of the universe.
The infinite consciousness is the supreme truth, the ultimate truth.
And the consciousness of each and every one of us is an expression of that, a manifestation of that. It's like, you know, if you, on a moonlit night, you can see the moon reflected in many different.
If there's a lot of. If it's been raining or something, there's a lot of puddles around or rivers or lakes or whatever, you know, bodies of water. You can see the moon reflected in different receptacles through different media.
But there's only one moon, which is the cause of all those reflections.
Another analogy is that there are many waves on the ocean.
Each wave has its individual existence, but ultimately its existence is the ocean.
Each wave is one with the ocean.
Now we are all one with the infinite consciousness.
But like a wave with its individual existence, we identify more superficially with our individual existence.
And identification with individual existence brings individual pleasure and pain, happiness and sadness. The dualities of life based on one's individual Experience based on one's superficial experience.
But if you want to transcend, if you want to go beyond the dualities, the ups and downs of life, then you have to identify not only with your individual existence, you have to identify with your individual existence, of course, to be alive, but you also have to practice identifying with your deepest existence as well. And that's what meditation is, that's what spirituality is.
It means that at the point of your death, rather than worrying about, there's a funny story that there's.
An old guy, and he was on his deathbed, he was a shopkeeper. He'd been a shopkeeper all his life. And his sons were in the business as well.
So he had three sons. And the first son, he said, is so and so here. The first son, yes, I'm here, Father.
And then he said, is the so and so here the second one, yes, I'm here, father. Then is so and so here the third one, yes, I'm here, father. He goes, then who's looking after the shop?
He's on his deathbed, you know.
So you don't want to be like that when you die.
You don't want to identify with what you've been doing your whole life, just on an individual level. You want to identify with your ultimate existence, your deepest existence.
And then you will go.
When you leave this body, you will go closer to that existence.
You'll either get a birth in another body where you can continue your spiritual journey, hopefully more conducive in body and environment.
If your ideation is deep, or we say in Yoga, if you've already attained the goal, if you've become self realized, if you've realized yourself as the greater self, you will merge back into the greater self again.
And this is the mission of humanity. Ultimately, we're told by society and the media, our teachers, parents, teachers, the media, society, that the goal of life is to have a good family, be healthy, have a good family, have a good job, have a good career, do something good for the world, whatever. Make a lot people have different goals.
Money now is a big one.
People equate success with money and material possessions and things like that. But when you die, you can't take any of that with you.
The only thing you can take with you is yourself.
And the deeper your connection to self is, the better you're going to be.
And ultimately, if your connection to self is the ultimate self as the greatest self, then you will become that. You will identify with it and merge back into it.
[00:20:02] Speaker A: Very well spoken.
[00:20:04] Speaker B: And the feeling of that is anandam or bliss.
You know, from a limited thing, you can only get a limited amount of satisfaction or contentment or happiness.
But from infinite consciousness, you get infinite happiness, or what we call bliss, Anandam in Sanskrit.
So that's why ananda marga is the path of bliss.
It's all those practices that we can do in our lives that can lead us, that can bring us closer and lead us towards that ultimate state of infinite happiness or bliss, identifying with the infinite consciousness, the supreme consciousness.
So in yoga, God is not something external.
God is your inner self, your inner being that you're trying to connect with more and more and more until you identify fully with that state of godhood.
[00:21:18] Speaker A: So reincarnation is based upon what we identify with. If there's still some sort of identification with the character, with the material world, with some kind of something here that isn't God, you will come back and try to fulfill those desires.
[00:21:36] Speaker B: Exactly. Exactly. According to the yogic philosophy, you are born in a body and environment which is most conducive to your onward journey to your current, which is most in line with your current state of mind.
Now, many people are reborn either in the same place or the same family or very similar environment to where they've lived in this life, because they haven't made much progress spiritually. I mean, the mind may have evolved a bit depending on how much work the person did on themselves.
Up till now, people have not done a lot of inner work. Of course, it's changing now.
People are doing more inner work, working on themselves more.
So the evolution of mind within one lifetime is increasing.
But in the past, you know, people have not evolved that much in one lifetime, and they may have even devolved.
If you give in to the base instincts of eating, sleeping, fear and sex, you can devolve from the human form into.
Dogs are a big one.
Humans and dogs are very close. There's a reason for that.
[00:23:31] Speaker A: That'S interesting.
[00:23:33] Speaker B: There's a reason. And depending on the state of mind, there's other life forms that you can devolve into.
[00:23:41] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:23:43] Speaker B: But the important thing to keep in mind is that everyone will ultimately reach the goal sometime or another.
It's just a matter of how much of a straight road you're going to take to that goal.
For example, if you devolve into another life form, into the animal world, you're just delaying the inevitable.
So the more work you do on yourself, the more you can get into that blissful state, a more and more blissful state of mind, sooner and ultimately Attain the goal of self realization, of godhood, God realization, sooner rather than later.
Because later means you're just throwing yourself back into the ups and downs of human life, into Samsara, into Samsara, or either human life or animal or plant life. Again, it depends on the mind.
But generally we say we don't want to go back.
We've already come from there.
You know, there is a story that my guru once, he pointed to, you know, there was a congregation, he was talking to a lot of people. He pointed to one man, he said, stand up.
And he said, 500 million years ago you were, I think he said, something like a unicellular cell or something.
And then he went through from 500 million years, then he went 100 million years, then he went 50 million years through these different life forms, you know, unicellular cell. Then you were a. I can't remember. Just off the top of my mind, I can't remember exactly what they were. But then like amphibian, reptile, bird, mammal. Then he said, a thousand years ago.
Then he said, yeah, then he said, a thousand years ago you were simple farmer plowing his field.
And now you are here in front of me.
But the thing that I take away from it is that it started 500 million years ago.
So that's an incredible thing when you think that each of us as human beings, we've been evolving through different life forms.
The mind has evolved through different life forms for millions and millions of years.
And it's an incredible thing that we've now we're human beings and we can self reflect, we can reflect on our own existence and the meaning of our lives.
And so we've attained a lot.
But in general, people don't know this. They don't have this perspective and so they don't appreciate the value of human life.
Human life is so valuable, so precious, and it's okay. It's for enjoying yourself and having a good time with other people, as well as higher pursuits like contributing to society as much as we can and helping others as much as we can. But ultimately the purpose of it is to realize oneself. And you can only realize yourself through the human form because it's only in the human form that we can self reflect and contemplate and do meditation.
So being a human being on this planet is very significant and very precious and we should all use our lives wisely.
[00:28:16] Speaker A: Amen to that.
Do you feel that this particular life in this time period, this incarnation is rather urgent or rather special, as opposed to the farmer, a Thousand years ago.
[00:28:32] Speaker B: Yeah, it's more significant.
It's definitely more significant now because the human mind, our collective consciousness, is a lot more elevated now than it was a thousand years ago.
The human mind is a lot more evolved than it was a thousand years ago. In general, if you look at people in general on this planet, and animals also, you look at dogs as well, and cats and dogs and other highly evolved animals.
In general, the degree of evolution of life, human life and animal life and plant life on this planet has evolved.
And we're now at a time where there's a consciousness shift on this planet for human beings from the material to the spiritual.
[00:29:38] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what it seems like to me. We are in a transition.
[00:29:42] Speaker B: We're in a transition. We're in the middle of a shift in consciousness. Yeah, for sure.
For sure.
[00:29:51] Speaker A: And just taken to, right, the literal account of us having this technology, us having all the knowledge of the past, all of the dharma of the past at our fingertips that we can access just like this.
To me, that's a miracle.
[00:30:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
I mean, all the technological development, as well as the complexity of. The development of. The complexity of life.
The complexity of life and our society, interactions between people, not only on an individual or direct level, but also with social media now, with AI, with so many different levels, dimensions of life in our current society, is all a reflection of the evolution of mind.
And you see the speed of evolution is also increasing as time goes on.
I mean, you look at what we've been through in the last five years, even compared to what we. I mean, okay, the human mind and society was evolving, say, 100 years ago, but in five years, they didn't go through a fraction of what we've been through in the last five years in terms of evolution of mind, in terms of mental clash. Mental.
The kinds of things we've had to deal with on a psychological level in our society in the last five years, it's been incredible. Really.
[00:31:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:38] Speaker B: And AI now is just another way that that's going to accelerate.
Mm.
[00:31:45] Speaker A: Yeah. We didn't really have AI at the extent that we do five years ago.
[00:31:49] Speaker B: No, it was. I mean, it was being developed and it was there to a certain extent, but it was.
It's pretty much just come out in the last two or three years. Right.
[00:32:01] Speaker A: Yep. That's a huge accelerator.
[00:32:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:06] Speaker A: But you're saying all in all, it's a reflection of our evolution toward God or our return to God.
[00:32:16] Speaker B: Yes.
It's an expression of the evolution of mind.
Because the more the mind evolves the more the intellect evolves and all the things we can do with the intellect, but then you've got to go beyond the intellect.
So basically, up till now, we've had a tremendous evolution of intellect on this planet.
But over intellect, above intellect, you've got intuition.
So now we're moving from intellect to intuition.
That's the shift in consciousness that we were talking about just before. That's going to be a shift from intellect to intuition.
Intuition means more a direct connection with the cosmic mind, the mind of God, the cosmic consciousness.
So rather than using one's intellect to live to solve problems, each one of us will increasingly more so use our intuition, have a more direct connection to the source of all knowledge, past, present and future.
So all this intellectual evolution and development is leading into an intuitional evolution and development.
You can see that in science.
Now with science, science has become very, very evolved technologically, but it's hit a wall in terms of the big questions.
Consciousness, existence, How to go beyond our current understanding of life and the universe into a higher understanding of life and the universe.
And that's going to be a more intuitional science, including medicine, intuition science, including meditation. Yeah.
And of course, that'll also involve more technological development. We still have to figure out how to travel.
Interstellar travel, for example.
It will come, it'll be part of it.
But it will also include the big questions like consciousness and biopsychology. How to increase one's.
How to fine tune one's body and mind for a better way of living. Things like that.
How to convert different forms into other forms by the use of, you know, by different higher powers and things like that. It's, you know, possible.
[00:35:29] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Intuition is just a higher intelligence, right?
[00:35:34] Speaker B: It's a higher intelligence. It's higher than intellect. Intellect is not intelligence.
You know, they say, you know, like the guy that started AI, what's his name?
He's been giving some interviews that say.
[00:35:51] Speaker A: Sam Altman.
[00:35:52] Speaker B: No.
[00:35:53] Speaker A: Elon Musk?
[00:35:54] Speaker B: No, no, no. Those guys are just the entrepreneurs that have taken it up.
The guy that first.
He got a Nobel Prize for it recently. I can't remember his name.
Anyway, he's been.
[00:36:07] Speaker A: I'll look it up after.
[00:36:08] Speaker B: He's an English guy. He's been saying that AI could become conscious and take us over, but it's impossible because that's based on the presumption that artificial intelligence means consciousness. It doesn't mean consciousness at all. It's just a programming of like, you program your mind.
But it's not.
AI doesn't have awareness, doesn't have consciousness. So there's no worry about AI taking over the world.
So he's a scientist, he's not a philosopher.
Scientists shouldn't comment on philosophy.
[00:37:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:01] Speaker B: So there's no problem there.
AI is just another way that the human intellect has manifested.
Has manifested technology, basically. Just a very highly developed form of technology.
But it's not conscious.
Consciousness means awareness, awareness of self.
You know, even animals. You know, they say that animals don't. They used to say animals don't have souls, but you can. You can tell just by looking at the eyes of any animal, really. Okay. The more developed the animal, the more you can see it in their eyes.
You can see awareness.
[00:37:48] Speaker A: Especially dogs.
[00:37:49] Speaker B: Especially dogs, Yep. Dogs.
[00:37:52] Speaker A: You know why? Because they look at you right back in the eyes.
[00:37:54] Speaker B: That's right. They're. They have.
I was saying before, we're very close in terms of evolution to dogs.
The mind is very close.
So you can see that. But even in the less developed animals, you can see it. You can see it in all animals, that glint of awareness in their eyes.
And so that means that all beings, all living beings are on a path of evolution towards a higher and higher awareness, a higher evolution, a higher state of being, and ultimately the highest state of being.
[00:38:41] Speaker A: But what you're saying is AI isn't connected to that evolution.
[00:38:46] Speaker B: No, it's an expression of that evolution. It's an expression of the evolution of mind. It's just like.
Yeah, it's just like.
50 years ago, we could start making computers because our intellect was developed enough and we had developed the science of technology to that state where we could start making computers. But we couldn't do that 500 years ago.
We could do it 50 years ago, but we couldn't do it 500 years ago.
We couldn't do it 500 years ago because the mind wasn't evolved enough, the intellect wasn't evolved enough, and we hadn't developed the science of technology enough.
So it's just an expression of mind.
[00:39:39] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what one would say is the danger. It's an expression of the mind that has got us into this mess.
You know what I'm getting at?
[00:39:52] Speaker B: Well, the expression of mind is always going to get us into a mess.
There's always a positive and a negative to every form of progress.
And AI, for example, is perhaps the greatest example of that.
AI is going to be. It's going to have huge positives as well as huge potential positives as well as huge potential negatives.
But it's Just like any other form of technology, every form of technology, every technological development or advancement has had positives and negatives.
[00:40:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
It's very true.
[00:40:44] Speaker B: The greatest potential is within the mind of each one of us.
[00:40:48] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:40:50] Speaker B: And ultimately that's the ultimate positive potential.
[00:40:55] Speaker A: Yeah. AI or no AI.
[00:40:58] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:40:58] Speaker A: Potential.
[00:40:59] Speaker B: That's right. Ultimately, it depends on how you use your mind.
You know, depending on what you do with your. How you use your mind, you can either be in heaven or hell.
[00:41:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:41:12] Speaker B: It only depends on your state, your perspective of mind. That's all.
[00:41:18] Speaker A: The choice is yours.
[00:41:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:41:23] Speaker A: Yeah. That's what I really am attracted to in Eastern philosophies is that there is this accountability, there is this sovereignty, the seeds of sovereignty that is sowed within the.
Within the lineages.
It says, it's really up to you. You can do this for eternity. We've been doing this for hundreds of thousands of years. It's like, how long do you want to be on the hamster wheel?
It's up to you.
[00:41:47] Speaker B: Right, exactly. It's up to you.
We all have individual freedom, free will.
[00:41:55] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's part of the love of God. Right. Is that we can do this. We can dilly dally as long as we want.
[00:41:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
Or we can go straight to the source.
[00:42:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:06] Speaker B: You know, Buddha. Buddha was brought up as a prince with all the pleasures of a princely life.
So his father, who was the king at that time, supplied everything that he thought would keep him happy.
Delicious food, girls, entertainment, everything.
But then he thought to himself, what is all this for?
So then he embarked on a journey of self discovery and ultimately sat under a tree and said to himself, I'm not going to move until I realize the truth.
And then he became self realized.
Now that's an extreme example.
Hardly any of us can do that. To sit under a tree and go, especially these days with all the distractions of life and all the complexities of life.
But it's possible. Anything is possible. Depends on your will and your determination, your intention, your will and your determination.
[00:43:28] Speaker A: Now, part of the Buddhist story is that after enlightenment, after the Bodhi tree, he came back into the kingdom to teach. Right?
[00:43:36] Speaker B: Right.
[00:43:37] Speaker A: Do you feel that's also part of our path is to serve?
[00:43:40] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure, for sure. Because the two pillars of the true way of living as a human being on this earth are self realization and service to all.
So service to all self realization means to find the truth within yourself, to find yourself as the ultimate self, to realize yourself as the ultimate self. And service to all means to help others to do that as much as you can as well.
Now, it may be that someone requires physical service like food or medical treatment, or they may need saving from a precarious situation or a bad place that they are in their lives.
But higher than that is everyone needs to find the right path.
So he went back and he tried to, you know, there's a lot of good things in Buddhism.
He tried to teach people the right way to live and that became Buddhism.
So a big part of the spiritual lifestyle or the spiritual path is not only to realize your own self as the ultimate spiritual reality, but to help others to do that as well. So lift them up from whatever difficulties they have in their lives and teach them the way forward as much as you can. And we can all do that according to our individual capabilities.
I mean, Buddha, for example, could do that in a big way and start a big movement in religion, But we can all do that in our own small ways.
[00:45:44] Speaker A: Yep.
That's the beauty of it. It's the beauty of our individual paths is we're all our own Buddha.
[00:45:52] Speaker B: Right.
[00:45:52] Speaker A: And it's all in small ways. Doesn't have to be grandiose. The Buddha could be the janitor, the Buddha could be the homeless guy that's asking for money.
[00:46:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
We can all learn something at every moment of our lives through everyone else.
[00:46:08] Speaker A: That's it.
[00:46:10] Speaker B: The important thing though is to as much as possible, follow the recipe. When you're cooking, follow the recipe.
[00:46:18] Speaker A: That's good. Yeah.
[00:46:19] Speaker B: And the recipe is there's a tried and tested spiritual lifestyle that is most conducive to spiritual evolution, to enlightenment.
And as I was saying before, it's the essence of all religions and all spiritual paths are basically the same.
These things that I was talking about before, to live your life in the right way and utilize as many of the techniques of yoga as we can to, to move ahead.
[00:47:13] Speaker A: Well said.
Yeah, we're all walking each other home.
[00:47:19] Speaker B: So yoga, for example, is not just about like, you know, dressing up like me or becoming a so called yogi.
No, yoga is the essence of all.
Yoga actually means the yoke, the.
The.
[00:47:41] Speaker A: Union.
[00:47:42] Speaker B: Union. It means union.
Thanks for.
I was trying to remember that.
Now you're teaching me.
So yoga means union. Yoga means the path of union in all walks of life.
So you don't have to be a Sannyasi like me. For example, in Anandamarga, there's a few of us that do that, that have adopted the path without the individual families. But most of, most of them are, most of us are family people.
You know, most of the people in the world are family people.
So you can practice yoga and whatever as a family person, as well as a yogi or a monk or a nun.
In whatever situation you find yourself in, whatever culture you find yourself in, whatever religion you were born into, whatever, you can practice yoga, which is the essential practice of realizing yourself in every form of life.
[00:48:54] Speaker A: That's the beauty of it.
Yep.
That's what I'm trying to show people here. Because I'm a regular guy, so I'm trying to show people that it's possible for all of us.
[00:49:04] Speaker B: We're all regular guys.
[00:49:07] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[00:49:10] Speaker B: But at the same time, we're all extraordinary guys as well.
So we have to, you know, while being regular, we have to find the extraordinariness within ourselves.
[00:49:23] Speaker A: Yes, well said. We're all extraordinarily regular.
[00:49:28] Speaker B: Even better said.
[00:49:33] Speaker A: That's awesome. Well, hey, I think that's a really good note to wrap this up at Dada. I know you got to get going. I thank you for joining me today.
Do you have anything else you want to say, though, before we wrap it up?
[00:49:44] Speaker B: Well, you know, as I said when we started, great to join you again and have another chat with you.
And I would just encourage anyone that sees this or listens to it to just find as much as you can find meaning in your life, have the intention to find deeper meaning in your life, and your life will.
If you have that intention, your life will become more meaningful.
You will feel more purposeful, and you will feel that you're really living your life as a mission. And that ultimate mission, you will get closer to realizing the goal of that mission the more you do it.
So if you want to know more, you can go to my website and then I can put you on to, you know, answer any. You can contact me, and I can answer whatever questions you have, and I can, you know, refer you to someone that can, you know, teach you more and then.
[00:50:59] Speaker A: Awesome.
[00:50:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
So great to be with you.
[00:51:03] Speaker A: Great to have you. I bow to you.
[00:51:05] Speaker B: In yoga, we say, Namaskar. I greet the divinity within you with all my mind and all my heart.
[00:51:13] Speaker A: Namaskar. Namaskar, everybody.
Peace and love. Thank you, Dada.
