Yogaville, Virginia - Recorded on Sunday, May 24, 2015

Krishna Das Music Presents – Yoga of Devotion Memorial Day Weekend Retreat Yogaville, Buckingham, Virginia Sunday, May 24th, 2015

PART 1 – DESIRE

[KD] You know, I remember sitting on the roof of the Temple back in the old days and I was talking to this young Bengali kirtan wallah, this drummer, he was a fantastic drummer. And he was asking me about my life, you know. And he wanted to know if I had a house. I said, “Yeah.” I was thinking about the mortgage, but he was going like, “Wow, a house!” He said, “Do you have a car?” I said, “Yeah, two.” Car payments. He goes, “Wow!” He says, “Are you married?” I said, “Yeah, divorce coming up.” He goes, “Wow! Kids?” “Yeah, oh boy, they have to go through this.” “Wow!” He wanted everything I had. So I said to him, “My friend you’re out of your mind. All you have to do is wake up in the morning, sing Hare Krishna and go to sleep, that’s it. What’s your problem?” He looked at me like I was crazy. Now, I wake up in the morning, sing hare Krishna, and go to sleep. Unbelievable. But the thing was he was hungry, and those desires that he had would probably never get fulfilled this life. Coming where he was coming from, very poor, uneducated. The opportunities just aren’t there for him. So it’s interesting. Just because here we have every opportunity, everything. We’re not happy either, though. Interesting. And there’s no guarantee that doing spiritual

practice can make you a good person, is going to satisfy the hunger that we bring into this life, satisfy our desires. We might go through our whole lives hungry without ever taking care of ourselves, without ever feeding ourselves what we need because we might think it’s not spiritual or it might hide our neurosis behind that kind of thinking that desires aren’t good for us. That they lead us into delusion, and pain, and suffering. It’s funny because Hanuman is considered... There’s a verse in Sanskrit which I’ve forgotten, but it says, “Not only does Hanuman give Mukti, liberation, but he also satisfies all the desires of the heart at the same time.” So these desires are not considered to be a problem. Maharaj-ji used to say, “You can’t speak to a hungry man about God. Feed him first.” If you’re hungry, food is on your mind, no matter what you think you want to eat. So it’s good to do practice, but it’s also good to pay attention to what we want out of life, to what we want to be, what role we want to play in our own little dramas this life. It can’t be ignored. If you ignore that stuff just slaps you around from behind, like Kevin. So do not ignore the Kevin in your life. Anybody have questions or anything?

[Participant] This is not a deep question. How do you make chai in the bathroom?

[KD] How do you make what?

[Participant] How do you make chai on a yoga math in the bathroom?

[KD] Carefully. You get a little heater, a little electric heater, a little hot pot, you grate the ginger, put the cardamom. I have a big suitcase just for chai. Why do I travel with ten

Yogaville, Virginia - Recorded on Sunday, May 24, 2015

suitcases? That’s why. It’s good. It becomes a ritual. With great awareness, that would be the right answer. Grating the ginger. Grate, grate, grate.

[Participant] So, I have a question. It’s about dealing... Dealing is probably not the right word, but being with other people’s suffering. Someone who is very close and you want to do something or influence something. It seems to be beyond reach, you know, and for me it kind of ticks me off sometimes. But I see that level and I don’t see an apparent window or door that’s open to that person. I’m not sure what to do myself, but I wonder how it is that people get stuck so long in that.

[KD] Those are two different questions. One of them does not have an answer, which is why. Deal with it the best you can. Try to help whenever you can help in whatever way you can help. You try not to project your own imagination on their suffering. It’s not easy to do that. It’s not easy to prevent yourself from doing it. We tend to very quickly throw more fuel on the fire for ourselves. In other words, we can project somebody’s pain to b even greater than it is. Because we can’t know what they’re experiencing. One time Mrs. Tewari was... She had very bad diabetes her whole life because Maharaj-ji had saved Mr. Tewari’s life when he was much younger and told him that from that point on, he should become a frutarian and eat no grains. So, from that point on in life he did that, and being a good Indian wife, she also decided to follow that diet. As a result she couldn’t take the kind of medicine she needed to keep her blood sugar under control, so by the time she got older she suffered horrendously from neuropathy and pain, it was just unbelievable. We used to call her hands of stone, she couldn’t feel anything, she couldn’t... her feet, her hands and other parts of the body had lost feeling. So one time I was sitting in the room with her and she was lying on the bed, just writhing in agony. I said, “Ma, are you okay?” And she just

Yogaville, Virginia - Recorded on Sunday, May 24, 2015

looked at me and she said, “Inside all right. Machine broken.” Really. So, really. I mean, that’s what she was experiencing. She was perfectly fine inside, with the pain, with the suffering, with everything that went with it. She saw the machine is broken and it wasn’t... it didn’t affect her that much. It’s really extraordinary. I mean, these were amazing beings, amazing people who had been immersed in Maharaj-ji their whole lives. But I was sitting there kind of adding on to the thing in my mind, thinking, “Oh, this is so horrible, how could this be, why is this, and this and that, so terrible, why shpuld she suffer like this, she’s such a good person, it’s so terrible.” And, really, she wasn’t suffering the way I would’ve been suffering in the same circumstances. It’s good to see that in oneself. And then whatever you can do, you can do. We don’t know why this is things happen to us or to other people. You know, the laws of cause and effect are very... They’re laws, that’s things work a certain way. I told you that story yesterday about Sudama and Sunanda. I don’t know why they all... They all came together to die within a year. It’s extraordinary, you never... When thy got married, and their first throws of romantic love... They weren’t planning on that. That’s not the way they saw their lives as the way they were going to go. But that’s the way they went. And you can say, “How could that happen, they were with Maharaj-ji.” Well, it happened. You know, Dada was such a great devotee of Maharaj-ji’s and these people had such living faith, such deep... Their lives were completely inside of Him and they lived in it, it affected their lives, you could see the way they lived. One time an Englishman had come... An English guy came to India before we got there and he spent some time with Maharaj-ji and then Maharaj-ji sent him to Dada’s house in Alahabad. Apparently there was some trouble because these people wanted to eat meat, this Englishman and his girlfriend, they were missing meat, so they asked Dada to make meat. But he’s a very strict Bengali Brahman and they couldn’t do that. And then the other thing is that they were up in their room all the time with the door closed all day long, and they never came down and socialized with the family, so other people who knew Dada and were coming to the house started to say that they were spies for Pakistan, this was during the

Yogaville, Virginia - Recorded on Sunday, May 24, 2015

war, and telling dada to throw them out and get rid of them, they were spies. And Dada was just saying, “Shut up.” [Laughs.] So finally Dada arranged for them to go to some other house where they could... meat was prepared, so they could get their diet taken care of. And finally they moved one day after much, you know, all kinds of craziness. So, the minute then move out of the house, a car pulls up, Maharaj-ji arrives. And he comes in, and he sits down, and he says, “So, what’s happening?” And Dada says, “Nothing.” “No, tell me, what happened?” He says, “Well, they were here and...” “And then what?” “And they wanted to...” “And then what?” Dada says, “Why are you asking me? You know everything.” “Oh, just asking.” And then he says, “And then when people said they were spies, what did you say? What did you do? What did you say?” And Dada was quiet. “Tell me. What did you say, what did you think, what did you do when people were saying that they were spies? Tell me, tell me.” And Dada wouldn’t say. So, “Tell me, tell me.” “How could they be spies if you sent them here?” And Maharaj-ji says, “Me? I sent them here? How did I send them here? I’m not responsible for this.” Dada said, “Anyone who comes to this house was sent by you.” Dada got very emotional, Maharaj-ji pats him on the head and he says, “It’s okay, Dada, not everyone is a fool like you.”

Yogaville, Virginia - Recorded on Sunday, May 24, 2015

Dada was too great. There was a very great saint, contemporary of Maharaj-ji named Devraha Baba who really was two-hundred-and-fifty years old. He had lived in the same county, it’s like somebody lived next door for two-hundred-fifty years, and he knew your grandparents, your great-grandparents, your great-great-great-grandparents; that was the story with this guy, everybody knew him. So one time he came to Alahabad and one of the people who used to come to see Maharaj-ji was also a devotee of Devraha Baba and he had been trying to get Dada to come and meet Devraha Baba for many years. So finally Dada could no longer avoid it. So he went... This is the way Dada felt. So he went and he went for a few minutes from the back of the room, he pranamed like this and then he left. The minute he comes home, Maharaj-ji arrives. “So, where have you been? What have you been doing? Then what happened? You went to see Devraha Baba? Did you take my name? He knows me well, he would have blessed you. Did you take my name? Did you take my name?” “No,” he said. “What did you do?” “I just pranamed from the back of the room and left.” “Why? Why did you do that? Why didn’t you pranam to him? Why didn’t you touch his feet?” And Dada was quiet. “Why didn’t you touch his feet? Why didn’t you touch his feet?” Dada wouldn’t say. “Tell me! Tell me!” So, finally Dada says, “I only have one head to give, it has already been given.” Maharaj-ji says, pats him, “Okay, okay, okay.” One time Dada and Maharaj-ji were standing together in a room, Dada always stood in Maharaj-ji’s presence, he never sat down. And in the distance you could hear the

Yogaville, Virginia - Recorded on Sunday, May 24, 2015

artillery shells going off; the Army used this mountain nearby as an artillery range. So these things were going off and Dada laughed. Maharaj-ji says, “Why are you laughing?” And Dada says, “Oh, I’m thinking you’re just like the army.” Ana Maharaj-ji says, “What? How am I like the army?” He said, “Always firing blanks.” “Ha! I’m just like the army, I’m just like the army.” [Laughs.] Because, firing blanks, he could never be angry at you, it’s not possible. But he displayed anger when it was necessary. One time there was a guy who would come to the temple and he wound up staying for many months and he gradually took charge of the kitchen, and in the kitchen they prepared the prasad that was given away during the day, the puris and potatoes. So Dada... So Maharaj-ji starts saying to Dada, “Dada, check the puris.” So Dada went into the room where they kept... nearby where Maharaj-ji is and he opens the bag and, puris, they’re fine, good. Next day, “Dada, check the puris.” They were fine. This went off for a few days, finally Dada comes back one day and says, “Maharaj-ji, they’ve turned black.” And what that means is that the puris were cooked in pure ghee, this guy was cutting the ghee with oil, mustard oil, and selling the ghee to the villagers. And of course Maharaj-ji knew everything, that’s why for days before he actually... And when a certain percentage of the ghee is cut with oil, the puris will turn black instead of golden, golden brown. So Maharaj-ji of course knew this was happening, but he waited until, you know. And then he calls to this guy and he just screams at him, “Get out, you miserable thief, get out, get your stuff and get out!” He’s like an enraged, you never saw anything like it. And the guy is all, and he runs and gets his stuff and... Ram Dass was sitting that day, for the first time he went and he sat in the room that he’d lived in the first time he was staying in the temple in his previous visit, which was just above, and no one knew he was there. And after this, after Maharaj-ji screamed to this guy and the guy left, Maharaj-ji turns to Dada and said, “Did Ram Dass see me get mad? Tell him I’ll explain everything to him later.” Of course, no one knew

Yogaville, Virginia - Recorded on Sunday, May 24, 2015

Ram Dass was up there, except Ram Dass and Maharaj-ji. Of course he never explained anything to Ram Dass at all. In fact, He said to him, “Ram Dass, give up anger. [Laughs.] Give up anger.” Ram Dass said, “I can’t.” What happened was, Ram Dass hated the Westerners. He hated them. Because of him we went to India to be with Maharaj-ji. And Maharaj-ji had instructed him not to talk about Him, but all he did was talk about Him. So a group of Westerners finally wound up over there and it just screwed up Ram Dass’s time with Him, he wanted Maharaj-ji alone, and that could never be, because we were there, so he hated us. And Maharaj-ji was just completely driving him out of his mind. So he said to Ram Dass, “You’re a saint, you shouldn’t touch money.” So Ram Dass had to give his money to one of the other Westerners and when he wanted like buy ticket for the bus to go to Kainchi, he had to ask this guy for money to buy the ticket or have the guy buy ticket for him. So finally it was just building and building and he walked to Kainchi, which is like a four... Oh, he got up late one day and all the Westerners were gone, so he had no money to buy a ticket on the bus. So he had to walk to Kainchi, which is like four hours over the mountains. And the whole way he was steaming and just... For four hours, and he gets [there], walks down to the Temple and we’re eating on the other side of the courtyard where Maharaj-ji is having us fed. And he walks in and one of the guys, it turned out to be one of the guys that Ram Dass hated the most, got up and brought him a plate of food. Ram Dass took the food and threw it in his face, right in front Maharaj-ji. “Ram Dass, come here.” He says, “Is something wrong?” “Yes, I hate these people. I’m angry, I’m angry at adharma, the non-dharmicness of us, our non-spiritual stuff.” And Ram Dass says, “I’m angry at adharma in them and me.” Maharaj-ji goes, “I don’t see any impurity.” He said, “Ram Dass, give up anger and tell the truth.” And Ram Dass says, “The truth is I hate these people.” Maharaj-ji said, “Ram Dass, give up anger and tell the truth.”

Yogaville, Virginia - Recorded on Sunday, May 24, 2015

So, it was very powerful for him. Because he had to... You know, he had to let go of his self-righteousness and his anger as best as he could. And so he came up to each one of us and he put some sweet in our mouths and stuff like that. There was still a bit of an edge. But he was doing the best he could. One time Ram Dass came up to Maharaj-ji and he said, “Maharaj-ji, I want you to raise my kundalini.” So, basically he’s asking Maharaj-ji to do it, finish him off, do it, enlighten him, liberate him. Maharaj-ji looks and he says, “You know, I don’t know anything about that stuff. You go see Muktananda, he knows all that stuff, he’ll do it. Yeah, he’ll do it, yeah, you go see him.” Ram Dass gets angrier. “No, Maharaj-ji, I want you to raise my kundalini.” “Hm... Sai Baba! Go see Sai Baba, he’ll do it, he can... Oh, he’ll do that, you go see him.” “No, Maharaj-ji, I want you to raise my kundalini.” So Maharaj-ji kind of... He had been sitting on a tucket, he gets up, he stands up, he throws his blanket up over his shoulder and he looks down at Ram Dass and he says, “I only know two things. Ra and Ma, the two syllables in the name of Ram.” We’ll get there. “I only know two things.” Maharaj-ji’s reality is God. That’s what he sees, that’s what he sees inside of Himself, that’s what He sees outside, that’s what He is. He’s become that. There’s no one in there doing anything anymore. There’s no self. There’s no small “s” self. There’s no self-centered desires. There’s no need for anything. He’s become the whole universe. Things happen through him because he’s totally turned towards the divine. And that’s what he means when he says, “I only know Ram,” those two syllables. That’s His reality, Ram, God, all the time, twenty-four/seven. But we projected our versions of Him onto Him. And being who he is, he would enter into our versions of Him and love us and relate to us the way we wanted and needed to be related to. Just like krishna made love to the gopies. Each one in the way they secretly wanted to

Yogaville, Virginia - Recorded on Sunday, May 24, 2015

be loved. Every single one of different way. Maharaj-ji loved us and related to us individually, not as a group; each one of us had our own Maharaj-ji. Even though we were all sitting there at the same time, we were all seeing and relating to a different Baba because he’s completely... There’s no one in there to do it, it just happened naturally. And naturally is the key word because He lived in what they call the “natural state,” which is called Sahaja Samadhi, where there’s no effort, all there is just you living in your natural state of being, which is God, which is Buddha nature, whatever you want to call it. So everything was possible. All the miracles that happened, He didn’t do them. They happen because of [the fact] that he was fully turned towards that. It’s very difficult to wrap our minds around it, because our minds cannot be wrapped around it. Whenever anybody asked Maharaj-ji for to do something like the save them from some disease or get a job for their children or find a wife for their son or this or that, he would just say, “Pray to Hanuman-ji, He’ll do it.” And people always said, “I’ve come to see Neem Karoli Baba.” “There’s no Baba here,” he would say, “There’s no Baba here.” And He would send them to pray to Hanuman. Because he was fully identified with that, and Hanuman’s fully identified with Ram, and Ram is the whole universe. Ram asked Hanuman, “How do you see me?” And he said, “When I’m identified with the body, I serve you. When I’m identified with the mind, or the soul, the soul, you’re the whole and I am a part. When I know the truth, we are one, there’s only one of us. And all these levels exist at the same time, that’s the thing that’s inconceivable to us. How can all two or three levels exist at the same time? When Hanuman jumps over the ocean, he was making an effort; that body took a leap and jumped over the ocean. There was a will motivating and moving that body. So that’s the level where he identifies with the body, he can use the body to serve. But at the same time he knows that Ram is the doer, Ram accomplishes everything. It’s God that’s the doer. So he’s not deluded at any moment about things. The levels that exist they call ultimate reality and relative reality, everyday reality. They’re not separate things, they don’t exist one after the other, they exist like a sandwich, vegetarian baloney.

Yogaville, Virginia - Recorded on Sunday, May 24, 2015

It’s like that. They don’t negate each other in relative reality, everyday reality, we have to stop at the stop signs, we have things to do, we have to eat, we have to run around, we have lives. In ultimate reality, when we’re aware of God and we’re fully in God, nothing happening and there’s no one to do anything. There are no separate beings, that’s ultimate reality. But in this reality, relative reality, we seem to be separate. And there are rules to follow, there’s the way to do things. It’s possible for the great saints... For the great saints relative reality is included in ultimate reality. But for us they are separate. If that wasn’t the case, then none of... our all of our efforts would never accomplish anything in terms of finding God or finding love or happiness. But the fact is [that] everything is already in there so to speak that we need, we just need to uncover. Ultimate reality lives within us, it’s who we are already. It has to be, or it could never be. That gets complicated. So if you want to know more, just become a Buddhist.

PART 2 – AWARENESS

[KD] Yeah, question.

[Participant] Thank you for your beautiful music this weekend, Krishna Das, it’s been wonderful. Can you help us understand we have some of these great teachers and saints, they live a normal life span, 67 to 80 years, and then you have these guys in the jungle like you say living 200 or 250 years.

[KD] I can explain, whether you believe is another story. This particular Baba was on his third body, okay. For instance, remember the Baba I just told you aboutabove are just told

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about, Devraha Baba? He, when he died was on his fourth body. Well, that might not be true. Well, it’s complicated, what can I say. Very complicated. But let me... I’ll tell you one version of the story, okay. So this Babatne 160 or 180 year-old Baba was a young Baba and he’d met Devraha Baba who was old and blind and he used to walk with his and on the young Baba’s shoulder and they traveled together. And then 40, 50, 60 years later, they did was called Prakaya Pravesh, which is the changing of the bodies where they take their atma out of their body and they put it in another body. Complicated, very complicated. And then the young Baba got older and he walked with his hand on the other... And they did this Suzanne I want on them and they stated that three or four times. And in fact when we were at the Kumba Mehla in 1985, the Baba I was with, the 180- year-old Baba went to visit Devraha Baba, the 250-year-old Baba. And Devraha Baba said to him, “Oh, Sri Krishna came to see me and he asked me to come and do lila with Him in Brindavan, so I’m going.” And he left the body shortly after that. The idea behind it is that there’s certain practices that they’re doing that takes time to come to fruition and you need more than the 70 or 80 years that the body and this time is used to getting. Although through herbal therapies, you know, I know, I’ve heard about a Baba who is 120, ion fact I met one who was 109 the last time I was in India. But I’ve heard of Babas who are 120 in one body, you know, they just live such pure lives and many of them mostly in the mountains for long periods. So, there’s that. There is Prakaya Pravesh and then there is Kaya Kalpa, which is through herbs and magic, mantra magic, they can rejuvenate the body. And this Baba, the 180-year-old Baba, has done that with this body that he has. When I met him he looked like he was 75, but the Baba who brought me there, who was this young guy about 40 at the time, I think, had met him before and he didn’t recognize him, because the first time he met him he was really old, he looked like at 90 and had no teeth, and now he was like 70 and he had teeth and his hair wasn’t white, it was just grayish black. The guy didn’t recognize him, and it was the same guy. So he was able to rejuvenate himself quite a bit. There’s a really cool book about this

Yogaville, Virginia - Recorded on Sunday, May 24, 2015

called Maharaj, and it’s about a 160-year-old saint, it’s called Maharaj. I don’t think it’s in print any more. And this guy learned to do this Kaya Kalpa technique and he rejuvenated his body many times and then it was time to go, so he just did it and he just left. It’s another way of seeing things, you know. Not exactly what’s on TV today. And, wow, now we can watch the whole series in one sitting. A little different way of going through life. For instance, this Baba that I knew, he did that for two of his devotees who were very kind of... who were very worldly-oriented people, but he somehow had a karmic connection with them and he did... He put them both through the six-month whatever it is. It takes a six-month period where you have to lie down quietly and your mind should be calm, and these guys’ minds couldn’t be calm, so at the end of the period... I think they lasted about three months, they were healthier and you could definitely see that they looked younger, but they hadn’t really rejuvenated. This old Baba grew teeth again. He grew another set of teeth and everything. But he could put his mind and leave it ion one place, but these people couldn’t. So it has to do with what your real aspirations are as well. Which is why it’s essentially called a hidden technique. It’s hidden because we couldn’t see it if was right in front of us. Which it is.

[Participant] This is something that has been bothering...

[KD] You know, I want to run for president, would you run my campaign?

[Participant] [Laughs.] Only if you keep me from being attached to the results.

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[KD] How could I do that? I’m attached to the results.

[Participant] [Laughs.] And this has nothing to do with that. It’s actually something that’s been on my mind for as long as I can remember, which is we always talk about... The teaching is God is within us, of course, and God is everywhere, God is everything, but there’s one little piece...

[KD] Are you going to let her talk about you like that?

[Participant] [Laughs.] There’s one little piece that I can’t quite get, which is this...

[KD] One?

[Participant] Well, it’s one of many, but this is the one that happens to be surfacing today.

[KD] I can’t get any of it, so what are you talking about?

[Participant] There’s a little piece of scripture, of the little scripture that I know, I think it’s in there somewhere where Shiva is talking to Parvati and he says to her, “Oh Parvati know that

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the nature of Barhma is beyond perception, beyond understanding without name and form, and without attributes that are perceptible by the senses.” To me, that says that’s nothingness and I’m trying to figure out...

[KD] No, no, it’s beyond name and form and concepts. What you just said was a concept.

[Participant] Yes, but, but, it’s empty.

[KD] But, but nothing.

[Participant] It’s like nothing is nothing, right?

[KD] No, it’s a concept. That’s beyond concepts.

[Participant] But the how can it be within us? I mean...

[KD] Yeah, it's beyond thinking about it. Give it up, girl.

[Participant] Could you explain that?

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[KD] No. How can I explain it? It’s beyond explaining.

[Participant] Look, this all started because I was given a spiritual name Nirguna, which means beyond qualities and from that moment on I realized I don’t get this at all. So, that’s all. [Laughs.] And you’re not helping.

[KD] That’s a concept. It's called suspending disbelief, that’s what it's called. You don’t see what’s seeing out of your eyes, but you don’t doubt it, you see. So? But you don’t think about it, “Duh, what’s seeing outside of my eyes? What’s seeing through my eyes? I don’t believe in that, that’s just emptiness, there must be...” But yet, you use it all the time.

[Participant] Yeah, but that’s a physical thing. Right?

[KD] No

[Participant] It's not?

[KD] It’s not physical, what is physical?

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[Participant] You seeing is a physical thing.

[KD] You think so?

[Participant] And you mind is a physical thing in many ways.

[KD] Seeing is not a physical thing. What is seeing? What is seeing? There is the eye and there is the monitor. Is it physical that... Is it physical? I don’t know, let’s think about it. The eye is involved, certainly, because there’s nerves, we know that there’s little receptors in the eye that send a thing to the brain, and then the brain does something. But, what does it do? What is seeing? What is aware? There’s awareness, then there’s seeing, which you could say there’s conceptual seeing. You gather the information and the brain says, “Oh, that’s a monitor.” But what is it that actually sees? If it was just the nerves in the eye, then a dead person would see, if it was a physical thing.

[Participant] Well, they say it's electrical, right? There are little electrical things that happen...

[KD] People have electricity?

[Participant] Yeah.

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[KD] Plug him in! [Laughs.] Still he wouldn’t see. It's the see... It's awareness, consciousness. But you never question that. What is consciousness? You just say, “This is stuff, this is this, this is this, this is that.” How you see all that, by the power... The power through which you see all that, you never look at that. You never questioned that at all. That is beyond concepts. It is what it is. You can’t talk about it, it has no qualities other than clarity, so to speak. But even that, talking about the Brahman, which is beyond consciousness.

[Participant] So is there an experience of that awareness or is it just a non-experiential thing?

[KD] Who would have the experience, should there be one? To whom with that experience occur?

[Participant] One would think the individual who is having experiences.

[KD] Not if it’s beyond concept or beyond the mind or beyond the senses, right. So, who would have the experience? We’ll shorten the torture here. Only that itself would experience itself. Only awareness is aware of itself. You, the ego, will never be aware of that. But when you lose your ego, all there is is awareness.

[Participant] And so when you die and you merge with the absolute, then...

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[KD] Who says you do that?

[Participant] I do know, that’s something I thought I was taught somewhere.

[KD] You read that somewhere? Catholic school, that’s where you read it.

[Participant] No, no, no, that’s something different.

[KD] No guarantee you’re going to merge with the absolute this life, I hate to tell you.

[Participant] Oh, I see what you’re saying, okay.

[KD] You’ll take another body, sooner or later. First of all, as soon as you drop this you are in a dream, just like at night, but you have no body to come back to. So it gets a little crazy, so to speak. That’s called the Bardo, which I don’t know anything about, so don’t ask me. But let’s go back to your question. You have to... It’s a good question because it’s an answer you can’t ever have the answer, because only that can know itself. We, you and me, can never know that; we’re limited, we’re a product of experience and sense experience and thoughts and all that stuff. None of that can go there, so to speak. Only when that is dissolved, will that part of you, your true nature, know itself. You can’t sit

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here and think about it, because it can’t be thought of. But is it empty? Why would you say it’s empty? Just because you can’t put a thought on it? Like with a post-it or a tack? Means it’s empty? You're empty, we're empty. There’s no reality to us at all. We’re just thoughts that come and go. Where they come from, where they go, there’s no reality to them at all. But yet we think we’re pretty real. We think we’re pretty real and so we act that way. But that is beyond all this. And yet it’s right here, all the time. And we’re separated from it by the veil of our thinking and our attachments to sensory information. So when we can keep repeating Ram, Ram, Ram, we are releasing or training ourselves to release all those thoughts that we identify with all the time. And we’re training ourselves using this Name to release ourselves from these thoughts. And as those thoughts no longer hold us, we begin to experience within us something that is beyond thought. That which sees through my eyes, through your eyes. When I went to these Babas and said, “I want to find my Guru,” they said “Your Guru is looking out of your eyes.” What were they talking about? They were talking about just what you’re asking about. Is it empty or is it full, who knows? It’s neither, it’s nothing you can talk about. It’s beyond concepts. Concepts are conditioned responses to stubbing your toe, you know, and you have to make up a story: I have a toe, it hit a wall, that’s pain. That’s the story. Concepts are conditions from being in a body, from being attached to the senses and the mind. That’s as far as they go. They don’t touch. They can’t go back in there into awareness because they are out there, they’re objects of awareness. Thinking, feeling, talking, imagining. Those are all objects of this awareness which is looking out of the eye and being aware in the mind. Who’s thinking? Who’s aware of the thoughts? What is awareness? Well, that’s a good question. What it is is beyond anything you can say about it. Except that it is. But that’s what’s running the show. That’s what’s in there, that’s light, you people call it a light because it’s a convenient term, because it illuminates everything. But it’s not a physical light, it’s the light of awareness.

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[Participant] So I won’t ever get it? In other words, I mean, I will never really understand it as long as I am in the body, right?

[KD] You can experience it, it just won’t be intuitive, it won’t be mental. It will be through feeling, through the intuitive experience, an inner experience. Because it’s inside of you. It’s seeing through your eyes, hearing through your ears, touching through your skin, tasting through your taste buds and whatever else there is, growing through your hair, curling. So, that’s what’s happening. But to say it’s empty, to say the void is empty... They call it the void because... You know, it was Suzuki, DT Suzuki, who first translated the word Shunyata, which means... He translated it as emptiness. But all the lamas and all the masters say it could as easily been translated as fullness. Just so you know. But because he was one of the first ones to make that popular, it picked up speed from him, so all the Beat poets, because they were negative and they hated themselves, they jumped on to that. And everything’s empty, nothing matters. But that’s not true. It’s absolutely not true. Everything does matter. And it’s empty and full at the same time.

[Participant] And maybe it doesn’t matter, really. Ultimately.

[KD] It doesn’t matter what we say about it, no. Which is really a relief if you think about it. We can’t fuck it up. It is what it is, it always is, it always will be, regardless of what we do or say or imagine or think about it. All we have to do is drop all that stuff and then we’re in it. We recognize that we’re in it all the time. That’s the impetus for doing spiritual work, is letting go. Why are you letting go? Because it feels better to be... not be

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stuck in the obsessive flow of thought all the time. Why? Because who you are is not stuck in the thought, but it’s kind of glued to it at the at the moment because of our habits of thought, how we see ourselves, how we live, how we’ve been taught and how we’ve been programmed in life. And all the saints say the same thing, they just say it differently according to their own geographical cultural location. Everybody’s talking about the same thing, there’s only one thing going on here. And that one thing, it can’t be described. But you could say it’s like this and it’s like that, but to experience it you have to forget what you think it’s like. Which you would as time goes on, as you train yourself and as life trains us and our karmas ripen.

[Participant] So the ultimate lesson is just keep doing the practices.

[KD] Right.

[Participant] Ah. I thought I’d have you say that. Thank you.

[KD] And by doing practice we mean, you know, just keep breathing. That life is a practice. How we live our life is our practice. In order to get the strength to live a good life, there’s some things that we could do to help ourselves overcome certain blocks obstacles in our stuff, if we choose to do that. See, Maharaj-ji never talked about this stuff. Never. In fact, one time he saw Balaram, me and my guru brother, we were sitting in front of Him one day and Balaram had this book called the Ashtavakra Gita, which is

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the absolute non-dual, nothing ever happens, nobody is... you know, it’s like that. “What does it say in that book?” Balaram said... Maharaj-ji used to always say, sub ek, all one, so Balaram went, “It’s all one.” Maharaj-ji goes, “They know!” [Laughs.] He said to the Indian people, “These boys know everything.” And then he says, “What did they say about gyani, realized?” And Balsram says, “Those who say don’t know, and those who know don’t say.” Maharaj-ji said, “No, they say!” What? Have another puri and shut up. He didn’t talk about this stuff. He didn’t use to talk about philosophy. Because he knew what we were ready for what we weren’t ready for. For instance, once a woman... An old Ma came to Kainchi in the morning and said, “Baba, show me God.” And Maharaj-ji says, “Not now, Ma. Go, go in the back, do your stuff, go away.” So, later in the day the woman’s getting ready to leave the temple and go home, and Maharaj-ji calls her over and says, “Ma, sit down, I’m going to show you God.” “Not now, Baba, I have to go home! And make food! I have something to take care of!” She ran away. Another time, Tewari... Mr. Tewari, he was a great yogi, I mean, really a great yogi, just imagine what that might be, that’s what he is. So one day Maharaj-ji says to him, “Hey, come here. Do you want to see God?” The way a yogi knows a yogi, he knew Maharaj-ji could, like this, right. So he starts shaking, he says, “Yes.” Maharaj-ji says, “Go to the lake in Nainital, tie 50 pounds of rocks around your feet and jump in. You’ll see God.” The thing is that it that’s really true. If we really wanted, whatever you want to call it, it would be done, but we don’t. That’s it. See you, weekend’s over. That’s the truth. What we have in our lives and how we live our lives and the level of awareness we have the level of compassion, that’s just what we want. If we wanted more, we’d have it.

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If you can talk like this more or less. But we are bound by our karmas, we are bound by our attachments and our desires. And it’s perfectly fine. That’s our situation. Within that we can awaken, no question about it. But we should recognize that it’s just the way it is because it is that way, you know. It’s not a mistake. We’re not... It’s not like we should be enlightened, we just took the wrong turn. No. This is it. That’s the good news and the bad news. But you can’t fake this, you can’t fool yourself, you can’t fool anybody. I mean, you can fool people, you can’t fool yourself. So it’s good to deal with the stuff that’s there rather than pretend that the stuff is not there, that’s what I’m trying to say. And then you can let it go. If you don’t see it, you can’t let it go. If you don’t see selfishness and greed and shame and fear and guilt and... all those things, you can’t see how they cause suffering in our lives. And we can then find a way to release that suffering. You can’t just sit down and go Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram until you die and think that’s going to do you much good. Because it’s the intention with which you do your practices that really matters. And the intention is something that we need to work on because we’re all so selfish, we’re all so self-centered and that’s fine on one level. We got this body, we got to take care of it. If you want to feed it you have to put the food in your mouth, not over your shoulder. So there’s a certain amount of care that has to be taken. And that goes for all your desires. You have to honor who you are and find a way to live with yourself in a good way. We have so many nasty programs running about self-love and caring for ourselves that it’s very difficult to even get to a place where we can take care of ourselves in a good way and make decisions in our lives that are in our own best interest. You know, at one point it seemed perfectly reasonable to me that becoming addicted to free base was fantastic. That seemed like the perfect thing to do. Talk about delusion, right? But at the time it seemed perfectly reasonable. That’s the way it is. We get deluded by our stuff because we’re not paying attention, we don’t know how you look at it, we don’t know how to see it. We don’t know how to look over our shoulder and see the shadows. But the shadows are not... We don’t see them by

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looking over our shoulder, we see them by seeing where they fall when the light is behind us the shadows are right there. The shadows are our lives. Do we see love everywhere, all the time? That’s one of the qualities of an enlightened being. I doubted. So we can see our shadows. We see how we judge ourselves and judge other people, we like some people more than others. Perfectly reasonable. But in the long run that’s not going to work. It’s amazing how every day is different, hm?

PART 3 – SELFLESSNESS

[Participant] In following what you’re saying about selfishness and because we have an ego, I guess we’re always selfish in certain ways and maybe in good ways through volunteering and something that is very self-centered for our own gain, personal gain. How do you practice selflessness?

[KD] Self...?

[Participant] Selflessness so that you’re not..

[KD] Selflessness.

[Participant] Yes, selflessness.

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[KD] You can’t, you don’t practice that. You arrive at that over time when your selfishness is not there. What it’s like is the real self, which is not... which is the same in everybody. You can’t practice selflessness. Everything humans do has a motive. Nishkama karma means “desireless action.” Only God can do that. Once again, I want to tell what Maharaj-ji said to Tewari, “Okay, you’re a Brahman; you’re supposed to know everything. Tell me, what did Krishna teach in the Gita?” So the common thing everybody says is selfless service, right. That the spat answer a person will give. So of course Tewari knew it was a set-up, so he said, “Selfless service.” “Ha! You miserable Brahmans, deluding the people. Only God does selfless service.” Only God has no desire, has no self-centered desire for pleasure or to avoid pain. But what does that mean? Is God just up there in the sky doing everything selflessly while we sit here and burn? No, God is within us. And when we act from the deepest place within us, there’s a possibility that is close to selfless. The desire is very subtle and it’s good. But serving people and doing seva, not... I remember... this is where the t-shirts came from, “I survived a Krishna Das workshop.” Because a friend of mine said, “I do selfless service at my work.” I said, “Stop!” And I just ripped her to shreds, because she’s a friend of mine. You don’t do selfless service at work. First of all, you’re getting paid. Where is the selflessness? Are you letting them pay your neighbor? Or the prisoners if you’re a guard in the jail? No. You get the money, so it’s not selfless. So we went on a whole thing about this, I was especially cranky that day. Unfortunately. But every act that you do to help another person lightens your load as well, even if it’s, “Oh, I want to help.” Help, good. Maharaj-ji said, “How do you raise kundalini? You feed people.” That’s a very serious statement, he doesn’t say that lightly. “How do you find God? You serve people.” So, you know, let’s just say that we have misguided, confused ideas of where we’re going and who we are, who we really are. And so that’s why we want to meet the Saints and

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read about the Saints and see how they lived and what they did. It clears our vision a little bit about who we are and what our place in this whole thing is, you know. I used to... When I was younger I thought, “I’m going to India, I’m going to stay there the rest of my life, I’m going to live in a cave and I’m going to be a great yogi. Pfft, right. But Maharaj- ji in his kindness and compassion and sweetness, he let me play that role for a while. And he laughed and enjoyed and he sent me home to do my work. But he gave me the strength I needed to do this work here. Because if I went to a cave, especially at that point in my life, all I’d be thinking about was women. I’d probably start sculpting women in the cave wall. So he knew that, he understood all that, and that’s not the way go. So he sent me back to deal with reality, you know, the way things... My reality. And work through the whole situation and learn to live in a good way, the best I can. I had had this big nervous breakdown in the Temple and it involved a girlfriend of mine who had killed herself after I went to India. We’d already been separated for many years, but I was very affected by it and He was teasing me about getting married again and all this crazy stuff. Finally I just had a complete hallucinatory breakdown. And He got me through it, He saved me. After it was over, a few days later, He says to me, “You’re Bajrangbali.” Bajrangbali is a name of Hanuman, thunderbolt body, just like unbelievable power and strength. “You’re Bajrangbali. What’s your name?” “Krishna Das.” “Nay! Bajrangbali. What’s your name?” “Krishna Das.” “Nay! Bajrangbali. What’s your name?” “Krishna Das.” And I said, “Okay,” because He’s teasing me about getting married all the time. And I knew the minute I got married I’d be sent back to America like everybody else, that’s what happened. “Oh, you’re friends? That’s good.” The next day, “Oh, you’re

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good friends, that’s very good.” Next day, “You’re married, go back to America to see your parents.” That was not happening, I was staying in India. So he started on me. So he says, “You’re Bajrangbali.” So Hanuman traditionally is considered to be the eternal celibate, right. He’s millions of years old and he’s never getting it on. Amazing. And He’s giving me the name of Bajrangbali, which is the most powerful, fierce name of Hanuman, right, and at the same time He’s teasing me about getting married. So he said, “What’s your name? Bajrang...” I said, “Krishna Das.” “Nay!” And I said, “Okay. You want me to be Bajrangbali, remember he’s the eternal celibate.” And He just cracked up and laughed, I never heard anybody, “Hahaha.” He laughed so hard. He said, “Okay, you’re Janaka. King Janaka. You’ll have Yoga and Bhoga.” King Janaka was Sita’s father in the Ramayan; he was a Raja Rishi, he was king but he was also a rishi, an enlightened being. And he yoga and bhoga, it means “Yoga,” union with God, and “Bhoga,” which is worldly enjoyment, and he had them both, and he was beyond attachment to the world. So I just laughed and left. He kept trying to call me Bajrangbali, but I didn’t... “Nay! Krishna Das.” The story about Janaka, I’ll just tell you, you know. Narada, who was supposed to be the greatest devotee of Vishnu, and he goes around singing and chanting. He comes to Vishnu and he said, “Tell me, who is your greatest devotee?” And Vishnu says, “On, you know that king Janaka over there.” “What?” “Yeah, go see, go take a look.” So Narada flies over and he looks down and it’s nighttime and the king is in his harem, right. And he has beautiful women all around, and he’s lying down like this and he’s just like... They’re all crashed and sleeping after a night of the partying. So Narada

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goes back to Vishnu and says, “Are you out of your mind? Look at that guy! You’re telling he’s greater than me? Come on!” “Go look again.” So he flies back again, he looks down, he looks. This time he sees that all the women are naked, they’re lying down, the king is lying down, he’s got... One arm he’s got around woman and he’s holding her breast and the other arm while he’s asleep has fallen in the fire and he’s not burning. And it’s a symbol of being beyond pleasure and pain. So if you’re beyond pleasure and pain, you can... It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t affect your heart no matter what you do, no matter what you’re going through. So we can exclude ourselves from that list. So being a great devotee, that’s what it means. It doesn’t mean blessing out and dancing, that’s not the final state. The final state is being beyond pleasure and pain, not attached to it. You can certainly enjoy and not enjoy, but you’re not destroyed by it, like Mrs. Tewari when I said, “Are you Okay?” She said, “Inside okay, machine broken.” We can’t say that. I stub my toe, the next week is ruined. I won’t talk to anybody, I don’t pick up the phone. This is our reality, so you could see we have a little work to do.

PART 4 – AMBITION

[Participant] These are two questions. I’m just curious. Baba let you stay there a long time...

[KD] What?

[Participant] Baba, neem Karoli Baba let you stay there a long time...

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[KD] Yeah.

[Participant] You said He kicked a lo of people out. And just in your stories it seems there are a lot of love ties between you and Him. Just as an intuitive thing, do you know why he let you stay so long?

[KD] He what?

[Participant] Why He let you stay so long.

[KD] I needed it, yeah, I needed it.

[Participant] He kicked all the other people out! They probably needed it too, right?

[KD] No, if they’d needed, they would have stayed. He would have kept them there. What had to be done, was done. Next! He didn’t... He wasn’t... He took care of business, that’s what he did. That’s what He was doing, taking care of the people He had to care of, and what had to be done for them was done. And for me, I needed to stay there, I guess for that length of time, so he kept me there. And he did, as I told you, he did keep me there. And the others, why they didn’t ask Him if they should go? He didn’t want them to. It

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was time to go. Period. That’s it. Next! There’s no more thought about that than necessary, that’s just what happened because that’s what happen.

[Participant] The second question is yesterday you were speaking a lot about devotion and chanting of the Names, repetition of the Names as practice and someone had written you about lingering and longing, the longing for God. I remember in Garrison you spoke a little bit about this but you also mentioned something else, and correct me if I’m wrong, which was we also are answering a call, we’re not just longing, we’re also answering, I was very intrigued.

[KD] Yeah, that’s the poem from Rumi, “Love Dogs.”

[Participant] Could you just talk a little bit about, it’s just really quite inspirational.

[KD] I don’t remember the whole poem, so...

[Participant] The essence?

[KD] Take that mic away from her, please.

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[Participant] Nice, nice.

[KD] It’s a poem by Rumi, who’s... if you haven’t read Rumi’s poetry, you haven’t lived. It’s just like that, okay. You have to read. If you’re interested in this stuff at all, it’s most extraordinary poetry you’ll ever see about devotion and love and the path, it’s really amazing. So the poem goes something like this, “One night a man was crying ‘Allah, Allah’ and his voice was sweet with the calling. But a cynic walked by and said, ‘Why are you calling out? Have you ever got an answer?’ And it kind of shocked the guy and he went, ‘No, I never got an answer.’ So he stopped praying and he fell into a confused sleep and in his sleep, in a dream, the guide of souls came to him and said, ‘Why have you stopped calling, why have you stopped praying?’ And the guy said, ‘You know, I never got an answer.’ And the guide of souls says to him, ‘The calling out is the answer.’ He says, ‘The longing to fill your cup...’ Do you want to give it to me? Okay, I’ll read the whole thing. “One night a man was crying, ‘Allah, Allah.’ His lips grew sweet with the praising until a cynic said, ‘So, I’ve heard you calling out, but have you ever gotten any response?’ The man had no answer for that and he quit praying and fell into a confused sleep. He dreamed he saw the guide of souls in a thick green foliage. ‘Why did you stop praising?’ ‘Because I’ve never heard anything back.’ ‘The longing you express is the return message. The grief you cry out for draws you towards union. Your sadness, your pure sadness that won’t help is the secret cup. Listen to the moan of the dog for its master, that whining is the connection. There are love dogs no one knows the names of. Give your life to be one of them.’ ” Oh that we could give our lives to be like that, to be in that love. That’s what we have to do. And like I was saying before, to the extent that we have or have not, that’s the way it is. So we move on from here. But if we don’t deal with our stuff, it will deal with us. So, at the same time that you do practice and try to

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open, don’t lose sight of all the little miserable shitty things you do to yourself and to others all day long. It will be very helpful. Because then you can work on forgiveness.

[Participant] Hi KD.

[KD] Hey.

[Participant] So I want your opinion on...

[KD] I have lots of opinions.

[Participant] ...on ambition. I see so many beautiful souls have released external ambition in order to connected with the slowness, the mindfulness of life. And I’m curious if there is a possibility of there being both or if ambition is more of an egoistic desire. Its should be... Not should, but takes us away from maybe what could be the love and the power of life.

[KD] There’s only life, there’s not two lives, you only have one of them at a time. So you have to see what works for you, what you want to be. What you want to do. I don’t think ambition is a bad thing, I think it’s very useful and s about I think it’s very useful in the becoming the person you want to become the world. It doesn’t pull you away from yourself because you’re always here. Sitting quietly under a tree doesn’t mean you won’t

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be thinking. So... And if you don’t live life fully, you’ll always be thinking about what you didn’t do and why you didn’t do it and what you should be doing and... The idea is to get very... get present. And you can do that being busy and active, in some ways more easily than when you sit cross-legged somewhere. So, like I said when I was with that Baba in the jungle and he showed me how I was crippling myself by not using my will, by not really living, it was a life-changing experience for me. I can actually say that that was the first step towards being... recognizing that I needed to sing with people. It took a few years after that until I started, but just seeing that part of myself that wasn’t living fully, that wasn’t going after things, that was afraid, you know. So it’s a good thing, there’s nothing wrong with it.

[Participant] Thank you.

[KD] Then you have to start dealing with all your fears and the way that you don’t let yourself do what you want to do. That’s why it’s a good thing. Because you have to clean up all that stuff on the way to being you. It’s the same for everybody.

[Participant] Why is there fear? What is that?

[KD] Why is what?

[Participant] Why is there fear?

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[KD] Why is there fear? I don’t know.

[Participant] What is fear?

[KD] You tell me. Or are you afraid of?

[Participant] The unknown?

[KD] Hm?

[Participant] I think I’m afraid of the unknown.

[KD] Unknown? I think you’re afraid of the known, actually. Unknown, nothing to be afraid of, it’s not here, not there. We’re afraid of the things within us that have caused us pain and suffering. We don’t want to hurt. We don’t want to be hurt. So we don’t extend ourselves into situations where our hearts will get crushed again, you know. Perfectly reasonable. But eventually, you know, they always say you always put a little fence around a sapling until it grows and then destroys the fence. It’s okay to take time and get to know oneself and gather your strength before you jump headlong into things that are potentially painful, like relationships. So the more we know about ourselves, the better

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we’ll be in that situation. But the problem is that the most... The best way to get to know yourself is to get your ass kicked in a relationship. So it’s a catch 22 or catch 108 as the case may be. If you don’t live, you’ll never get hurt; but that’s not who we are. We have desires, we want things, and if we don’t go after them, yes, we’ll never get them and we’ll never get hurt, but we’re also hurting ourselves by not going after them. So, it takes time. It takes time and it takes kind of a certain kind of humility to recognize, “Yeah, it’s possible I’m going to get my ass kicked, but really this is what I want, so I’m going to go and do it.” Just bring the first aid kit with you, that’s all. Make sure you have 911 on your phone or 611 or whatever that is—that’s Verizon by the way. Because your cell phone needs to work in an emergency. Yeah, you know. I tried to avoid relationships my whole life, I was so scared. I mean, I went to India, I was so scared brahmachari for the rest of my life and what can I say that hasn’t been said already. And all that was fear-based. I wanted it so bad, but I was so afraid because I was insecure, I hated myself, I was nervous, I didn’t know how to be me in a situation. And so I just said, “I’ll be a yogi.” That seemed like a reasonable alternative. Right! Yogis don’t... aren’t afraid of nothing! They’ve done that, been there, done that. You know, they overcome all those things. They’ve transcended all those things, they haven’t pushed them away out of fear. A real yogi. Maharaj-ji was married, he had a family. But, for us here in America, in the West, relationships are a very big part of our lives. It takes a while to kind of get good at them. About a thousand births.

PART 5 – RIPENING

[KD] Okay, angry guy. No, you, I pick you. Don’t get angry and tell me what to do.

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[Participant] You’re so kind.

[KD] I’m not kind.

[Participant] Yes, you are.

[KD] Don’t be angry with me.

[Participant] Yesterday we had a really great class about the ten most important words in the yoga sutras and one of them was pranidhana, surrender. And it’s amazing in the yoga sutras, it describes all these practices that one needs to do which are very arduous and require a lot of time and effort and then it says “or you can just surrender.” Which seems like an easy way out.

[KD] Yeah, you think so?

[Participant] Well, that was my question. What does that look like in practice?

[KD] That looks like a happy man when nobody’s coming to his classes.

Yogaville, Virginia - Recorded on Sunday, May 24, 2015

[Participant] Did you really get that?

[KD] That’s what it means. Surrender means accepting things as they are, which we don’t have the power to do. Surrender... Actually, real surrender happens through grace, not through personal effort. One cannot pick oneself up and offer oneself. One can only open and enter into the state of grace. You can’t... It’s not an act of will, because the will itself is based on ego. Which is not a bad thing, you have to... You're feeding, you’re eating, you’re walking, this is all will, you’re doing things, it’s all will. Will is not a bad thing. Taking care of oneself is not a bad thing. But you can’t through will enter into deeper states of whatever it is to call it, Samadhi or reality. Because personal will cannot go there. The mind can conceive of what’s beyond the mind. The mind says, “There’s nothing beyond the mind,” of course, what else would the mind say? It has to say something. Even if it says it’s beyond the mind, it knows it’s a concept and it’s not beyond the mind. It’s just kidding us, kidding itself, kidding ourselves. So surrender means it’s ripening. You are ripe, ripe. But ripening is a process that takes time. Like a fruit that gets ripe on a tree. You can’t rush it. Nor is it an act of will of that fruit, “I'm getting riper and riper. Yeah, every day, I’m ripening myself.” It’s not ripening yourself, it’s natural, it’s a process. So surrender is not an act of will. Not only surrender is not an act of will, so is meditation not. Real meditation is not an act of will either. We can practice concentration, we can practice releasing thoughts and use our will to nurture ourselves in that way. But to actually enter into deeper states of awareness, it happens when you’re ripe. And through these practices we are in a sense placing ourselves fully in the sun so that we are ripened as quickly as we can be ripened, but you can’t speeded it up, you can’t make it happen. So if you ask me what does it look like, it looks like a happy person who’s not getting anybody come to their classes. It would not affect your

Yogaville, Virginia - Recorded on Sunday, May 24, 2015

heart at it, there would be no mind fluctuation in response to that situation, that would be surrender. So, you can see you can’t fake it. Especially if we're honest with ourselves. So then we have to live with that and see what that is, and what is that all about, and what are all the factors that we put all our eggs in this one basket and it just get stepped on. What were those eggs? Self-worth? Feeling of self-worth, feeling of being needed, all that stuff that human beings have. This is all going to be released when surrender happens. But until that moment we have to clean up our rooms, we have to do our work. Like they say, in order to feel something up, they say, if you want to make it full, you have to empty it first. So you have to empty the pot of all the dust and the dirt on that pot and then it’s ready for the pure clean whatever, water, milk, amrit, whatever. But if there’s dirt in it, you’re not going to pour something good in there. The real stuff won’t be put in there. So that’s what... If we want our hearts filled with love, we have to eliminate our selfishness, or where could love go? Our greed and our judgments of people and all our self-judging, and all that stuff that we do. And then love would just flow in, you don’t have to make it flow in and it will flow because we’ve just uncovered the whole source which is being covered up by our stuff.

[Participant] What was your favorite or your most memorable experience with Swami Satchidananda?

[KD] I really didn’t spend much time with him. I think it was in 1968, I came to see him and he said, “Do you have a question?” And I said, “No.” He said, “Okay, well, when you get one, come back.” So when did I come here? 2011 or 10 or something. It took me forty years to get back. My most memorable experience with Swami Satchidananda actually happened when he was with Swami Chidananda in the winter... spring of 1969, I think, at Ananda Ashram. I went to hear Swami Satchidananda because she was there giving a talk

Yogaville, Virginia - Recorded on Sunday, May 24, 2015

in the afternoon, and there was this kind of very austere fierce looking saddhu sitting next to him and I had never seen anybody else, any other swamis except Swami Satchidananda, so I was wondering about this guy. And so we were all sitting outside on this lawn and Swami Satchidananda gave a talk, and you know, at the end he used to go, “Hari Om!” like this, you know. So, at the end of the talk I was kind of waiting for that, but instead I heard “Sri Ram Jay Ram Jay Jay Ram!” And every... it was just like somebody had plugged me into an electric sock, and I went, “Ahhhhh!” like this. I said, “Who is that?” I never found out who it was, because I didn’t know anybody to talk to anybody, so I just went home. So then, three years later I’m in Kainchi with Maharaj-ji, I’d gone to India, I’d been in India two years already and this car pulls up to the Temple and a bunch of swamis come rolling out of the car and they roll through the temple right into Maharaj-ji’s room. And they close the door and I hear runs Maharaj-ji and close the door and I hear, “Sri Ram Jay Ram.” I’d never forgotten that. “Who is that? Who is that?” And they said, “Oh, this is Swami Chidananda, he knows Maharaj-ji very well, he comes, he sings for him all the time.” And Swami Chidananda had been singing to Maharaj-ji already before he came to America. So, when I heard him sing Shri Ram, he had already sung that for Maharaj-ji before I heard it from him. So that it was like a connection there. And that’s the day that Swami Chidananda talks about the oranges, you know, the miracle of the oranges? They has brought about eight oranges with them and so somebody took the oranges and put them in a bowl on Maharaj-ji’s bed and Maharaj-ji started distributing the oranges, but there were like 25 people in the room and everybody got an orange, but nobody noticed until later. That’s the way je would do things. He just kept on giving out oranges that weren’t there. Everybody got one. Swami Chidananda wrote about that. So that was the most memorable day.

[Participant] Thank you.

Yogaville, Virginia - Recorded on Sunday, May 24, 2015

[KD] Yeah. The other memorable thing that happened with integral yoga was... Nah, I shouldn’t tell you. [Laughs.] Nah {mumbles]. Nah, I’m not going to tell you because it’s going to hurt somebody’s feelings, it's going to hurt somebody’s feelings. You don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings, do you? Neither do I. Next!

[Participant] Will you tell the story about when your Guru gave you the name Krishna Das?

[KD] You know, it’s not much of a story, Maharaj-ji did everything so spontaneously and so funkily, you know. It’s not like, “You are now...” you know, “I name you...” Just one day I got called into the room, he looks at me and he goes, “Arjun. Nay! Krishna. Nay! Krishna Das. I said, “Krishna Das? I'm a Hanuman guy, you know, I’m a Ram guy, what is this Krishna shit?” He just laughed, he said, “No, no, don’t worry, Hanuman-ji served Krishna too.” And he did, actually. I mean, even in the Mahabarata there’s a beautiful story about when the war was over, Arjuna asked Krishna to... The war was over, so Arjuna was just about to get down off his chariot at the last day after the last battle. Now, every day of the war, Krishna as Arjuna’s charioteer would get down first and help Arjuna off the chariot, that was his job as his charioteer. But this day Krishna says to Arjuna, “Today, you get off the chariot first and get as far away as you can. So Arjuna jumps off the chariot and runs a distance away. Then Krishna jumps off the chariot and on the flag on the chariot was... I believe it was a white flag with a red monkey on it. And as Krishna jumped off the chariot, the monkey flew out of the flag into the sky and disappeared and the chariot exploded. And Krishna says to Arjuna, “Didn’t you ever wonder why your chariot was the only chariot

Yogaville, Virginia - Recorded on Sunday, May 24, 2015

that never got destroyed by all the missiles that were sent and it?” He said, “Hanuman was in the flag absorbing all the damage himself.” So, he served Krishna too.

[Participant] Thank you.

[KD] Yeah.

[Participant] In the same tone of giving names, I’m curious on how Arjun, your tabla player got called Arjun.

[KD] Siddhi Ma gave him that name. Siddhi Ma is Maharaj-ji’s disciple, she gave him the name Arjun.

[Participant] Siddhi...?

[KD] Siddhi Ma. Siddhi Ma. That’s it. No big story. What can I say.

[Participant] When Baba passed and you went searching for Him, was there something you were particularly seeking and are you still seeking that?

Yogaville, Virginia - Recorded on Sunday, May 24, 2015

[KD] I was looking for Him, for his body. Because we had heard, you know. He’d been seen in many places at the same time already, so we knew He could make as many bodies as he wanted. But we weren’t really sure that the body that got burnt in Brindavan was the only one that was there or if He had really left the body, left the planet entirely for good. So I was looking for His body, I was sure He was somewhere. I’m still sure He’s somewhere.

[Participant] So the question was, what would you seek for him now?

[KD] I’m not seeking Him now. Let Him find me. I'm tired of looking for Him. I was seeking Him because I was attached to his body and I wanted to be with him, because being with Him physically was the only thing that made me happy, so I couldn’t bear not having that. So it took many years to process all that attachment and recognize that the love was in me and that’s where I needed to find it. So it's been a long process. It’s still going on. So whether there’s really a body or not is up to Him. I didn’t find him in the first place, you know. How did it happen? I was just living my life and he showed up. So either he'll show up again or he won’t. But that’s not the prime thing. To be with him physically is no longer... That’s not what’s happening right now. I'm fine with that. Mostly. I’m okay. I really am, I’m okay [fakes weeping]. [Laughs.] Yeah, I am, actually. I never thought I would be, but I am. And that’s also by His Grace. It's all His Grace that I’d given up masking and covering his continual presence with my own bullshit. That’s what happened. Shall I say that again? It’s by His Grace that I have stopped pretending to myself that He’s not here. He's here. He's more here than I am. So, because He is that living presence within us, that that place that’s beyond thoughts, that’s fully surrendered, and that is where we live. home base within us. That’s who He is. He’s not something

Yogaville, Virginia - Recorded on Sunday, May 24, 2015

outside. He never was, and He never thought He was. But I thought He was. So I’ve stopped thinking that that’s what He is, so I feel better. I don’t feel like I’m without him. Most of the time. Okay, on Fridays between 3:00 and 3:15 AM I don’t feel like I’m without Him. But the rest of the time it sucks. No, it’s not like that. If it was like that, I couldn’t do what I do. This is the reason I do what I do, because this brings me... You could say it brings me into that presence again, over and over, it keeps opening that door again when I... when my stuff closes it. This chanting opens the door, being with you opens the door again, like this. That’s why I do it, it’s very selfish. If you weren’t here, I’d just be home watching TV. So this is good, I thank you for that. I wouldn’t be doing this if you weren’t here. I would just be home moping around. So, it's good. All right. Anybody else? I think we’ve finished. Why don’t we go out and enjoy the beautiful day and... You have a question? No, you’re just scratching. Okay. [Laughs.] Don’t move in this room. Anybody else want to say something, it’s fine. Okay, over there. We won’t mind not going out for the next twenty minutes while I deal with whatever you’re saying.

[Participant] Just a curiosity.

[KD] It's on, you just got to put it close to your mouth.

[Participant] Okay. Do you bliss out listening to yourself?

[KD] Say what? Say that again?

Yogaville, Virginia - Recorded on Sunday, May 24, 2015

[Participant] Do you bliss out listening to yourself? [Laughs.]

[KD] Oh, sure. You've heard me tell that story about when I was driving to the city to dliver a CD to this radio station that wanted to play it? So I was sitting on the seat of the car and I thought, “Hm, why don’t I listen to this? Everybody else listens to this shit in their car, I’ll listen to it.” So I put it in and, “It’s great, ‘Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna...’ it's not bad, really.” Someone cuts me off, I’m, “Son of a... ‘Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna...’ ” So, I was really, “Who is that person who is trying to kill me?” I pulled out and I sped up and I came next to the car and I looked over. It was this little old lady. Like this, she couldn’t see over the steering wheel. She hadn’t cut me off, she didn’t even see me! She wasn’t trying to kill me, she just didn’t see me. But I was ready to kill her, Hare Krishna and all. I would have shot the CD right through the window. So, yeah, I bliss out. All right. See you later.

Yogaville, Virginia - Recorded on Sunday, May 24, 2015