Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 424: Bob Thurman

Episode Date: February 20, 2021

Bob Thurman, genius scholar, author, member of Tibet House, and one of the coolest people Duncan has ever met re-joins the DTFH! You can learn more about Bob, his books, and his podcast, on his site: BobThurman.com. David Nichtern (Duncan's meditation teacher) is now offering FREE info sessions for 100-hour meditation teacher training! Sponsored by Dharma Moon and Tibet House. Visit DharmaMoon.com for dates and more information. Learn everything you need to deepen your own practice and study, and learn to skillfully teach mindfulness meditation to others! Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Squarespace - Use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site. Feals - Visit feals.com/duncan and get 50% off and FREE shipping on your first order. Amazon Pharmacy - Get your prescriptions delivered with FREE 2-Day Delivery! You can learn more at Amazon.com/DuncanRX.

Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. You can get Dirty Angel anywhere you get your music. Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. New album and tour date coming this summer. Friends, I want to invite you to hang out with my meditation teacher, David Nickturn, who is about to do a hundred hour mindfulness meditation teacher training. And if that's something that interests you, you can join him

for a free online get together. All the links are going to be at dugoutrustle.com. And that's happening Wednesday, February 24th from seven to eight thirty and Wednesday, March 17th from six thirty to eight o'clock. It's sponsored by Dharma Moon and the organization that today's guest is connected to, Tibet House. All right, let's do this podcast. Maximum complexity, squirting from the one.

Sometimes I wish I never got on the big bang bus. The big bang bus. I don't like dying, but I'm scared of having a body. That's why I keep doing this. You have a better solution. Where are you? That's Trulania Mump's new track, Big Bang Bus. That's off her album, Dissolving Album, which is available on

Klexigore Records. And you can find it on all your various streaming feeds, rivulets, drizzlets, dribbles and low hanging icicle secretions. It's out there for you. My name is D Trussell. At least that's what I'm currently calling myself in this particular part of the multiverse and I welcome you. This is my podcast, the Dugoutrustle Family Hour.

The intent of this podcast is to plant the seeds of as many future Buddhas as possible. You don't have to call it Buddha if you come from a different way of thinking. Call it whatever you want, awaken ones, astral blasters. You can call them messiahs, if that's what you're into. I don't really care the name for it. But the point of this podcast is if possible, and I'm fully prepared to fail in this regard, though I hope I don't, to be some tiny drop,

a grain of sand on whatever cosmic scale is out there that measures out when we get blasts of fresh bodhisattvas to the time space continuum. Because no matter which way you want to cut the sacred egg that fell from the vast nothingness, the bottom line is if we're in some energetic system within which energy cannot be created or destroyed, the very least we can do is we tattle along from childhood to middle age to late middle age to late, late middle age to extremely late middle age to later middle age. And then eventually to full desiccation from the forces of time

and the eventual collapse into a gooey pile of rotting mucousy gunk that used to be the very same pile of meat that our loved ones kissed us on. Then we might as well try to prepare the future as best we can so that should what pretty much every single being that I have some respect for proves to be true that not only does our energy stay in this universe, multiverse, omniverse, whatever you want to call it, but also that that energy reconfigures itself as some sensory apparatus based on our former karma. Then to put it in simpler terms, when I come blasting out of the next vagina

that I merge into this universe from, I would like it to be a happy vagina, not just happy because causes and conditions have configured in a way that are creating a temporary, fleeting, illusory form of happiness, but happy because this is an enlightened vagina that I'm emerging from, or at least a vagina existing in a time period in which enlightened beings have appeared. And so that's the intent of the DTFH. We've got a wonderful guest for you today. Bob Thurman is a genius.

He's a scholar. He's written many books. He's one of the people who participates in an incredible organization out there, which is called Tibet House, which you should look up. This is an organization that is dedicated to preserving the culture of Tibet, Tibetan Buddhism and all the wonderful, beautiful forms of art and philosophy that are currently encapsulated in what's known as a diaspora, which is the scattering of the Tibetans from Tibet,

which happened after the Chinese invasion. He's friends with the Dalai Lama. I could have just said that. But also he is, as far as I'm concerned, one of the coolest people I've ever made contact with in this particular life. And we had an amazing conversation. I can't wait to share it with you. We're going to jump right into it, but first, some quick business.

A tremendous thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH. Every once in a while, I like to offer my listeners domain names that have yet to be taken, and I am stunned that enlightened vagina.com is available somehow. It doesn't make any sense to me. In fact, I feel like maybe it's some kind of mistake. Surely this has been taken by now. I feel like aside from the cultural implications of this domain name still being accessible if you wanted to buy it, just the artistic implications.

What an incredible sounding name for a website. The entire website could be based on the fact that here we are in 2021. Long past the domain name boom, where almost any domain name even remotely associated with sex has been taken, that two of the, dare I say, greatest things on earth combined.com is still floating out there available for anyone who wants it. Not only that, we've got enlightened vagina.space and enlightened vagina.work. That doesn't sound as good. EnlightenedVegina.Vegas is available.

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Give them a shot. Head over to squarespace.com. forward slash Duncan. Try them out for free. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code Duncan and you'll receive 10% off your first order of a website or a domain. Thank you, Squarespace. And we're back.

And now we're returned to a previous segment of the DTFH that, uh, I guess I forgot to do or I just stopped doing it, but we're going to return to it. It's mail bag, mail bag. It's a bag mail. If Jonah was the letter, then the bag would be the whale. I'll never rep again. I promise that I'll never rep again. I promise that I'll never rep again.

Dear Duncan, I'm a professional waitlifter who follows your only fans page. I can't help but notice your beautifully sculpted glutes and abs. I wanted to know what your exercise routine was because even though I work out constantly, I just can't achieve that chiseled Bruce Lee style look. Can you help? Sincerely, Gloria Linu. Dear Gloria, thank you so much for your question, uh, to answer it. I thought I would, uh, just let, let you in on my exercise routine, which I'm doing

right now, I'm doing a plank. Um, I like to read the love song of J. Alfred proof rock while I'm doing abdominal exercises by T. S. Elliot. He would do the same thing. He actually wrote the poem to help him with his ab workouts. But the passage that I read the most is I grow old, I grow old.

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaid singing each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me. I've seen them riding seward on the waves coming the white hair of the waves blown back when the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea by sea girls, wreathed with seaweed, red and brown till human voices wake us and we drown. Fuck. That was, of course, the very end of a three hour plank. By that time, I've read the poem at least 60 times in a row. It's the mailbag lavender hour gmail.com. Mailbag is the mailbag lavender hour gmail.com. And now a word from our sponsors.

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Patreon schedule, which means that you can join us live every Monday at nine a.m. for our journey into boredom, which is a meditation group that's been going on for some time now. And every Friday we have our family gathering. Also, what's going to resume in the next few months is our weekly book club. Join us, join your family. You know, maybe paradise is real. You can find it at the DTFH discord server.

Also, you're going to have piles of additional content. It's all waiting for you at patreon.com forward slash DT. F H. OK, without further ado, everybody, please welcome back to the DTFH author. He's written one of my favorite books on Buddhism in a revolution. Activist, he's somebody who helps keep Tibet House going. You should go to Tibethouse.us to check out all the amazing things they do. They have really incredible live concerts, among other things. He's also got his own podcast, which I was just a guest on.

You can find that at BobThurman.com. So everybody, please welcome back to the DTFH, the great Robert Thurman. Hey, it's great to see you. It's great to see you. How are you down in North Carolina? Where are you? I'm in Asheville right now in Asheville up in the mountains. Yes, sir, up in the mountains.

Where are you up there? That's really nice up there. It's beautiful. Where are you located right now? I'm in Woodstock, you know, actually literally Bearsville, which is outside Woodstock. And I haven't left here except for one day in over a year. Wow. And it's really great because I'm retired.

So I'm really happy being home a lot. Yeah, you're doing a lot of work dealing with the Tibetan and everything. And also keeping Menla and Tibet House alive, you know, Tibet House. We have a healing center, country place here that Tibet House does. I know. And which I'm the custodian, the unpaid custodian, but I love it. It's his holiness, his place. His holiness slept there.

You know, we have a bed that his holiness slept in. That's like George Washington. That's how do you work it out in your mind that your karma is such that you get to know his holiness? Well, we've been doing many lives. And I think I, you know, some lives I wasn't being as helpful as I should have. So I had some problems this life, too. But I'm trying to be very helpful.

And I think I have been. And we've known each other since 1964. Yeah, yeah. You're your your friends with his holiness, the Dalai Lama. He's an amazing guy, too. He's a great guy. But he's also totally normal. In other words, he doesn't act like you don't have to like bow down

and blow a horn and all this crap. But you kind of want to. Yeah, you sometimes do. But he hates that. Actually, there's one funny story I can tell you, please. You're interested in that. Well, although I should be getting you funny stories. By the way, I will tell you one.

And that is I was in 1980. I had been there for a year with my family, you know, all of the four kids. One was only two. And I was leaving. I've been there since 79 and I had to leave to go back to work. I had a sabbatical, you know, and then I brought the family to have an exit interview like an audience that you say goodbye and thank you, I've been working together. So I wanted to be very formal to give a good example to my kids about

to be respectful to the Lama, right? So I'm going and the kids are coming with me and dinner. And the solace is standing there, reading out. And then I I try to do a bow, you know, a formal bow. And I'm going down with the bow, right? So instead of letting me do the bow, he he steps forward. He grabs my hand to shake it like just like an ordinary thing. But because I'm already going down, I fall over on the floor, flop on the floor.

And everybody's laughing and the kids are just having a fall. All the tension was broken. You know, the ice and they're laughing away. And then, of course, it's saying, I told you not to be so formal. It's all it doesn't want it, but she's giving me instructions. Wow. And and I'm kind of get up off the floor and then we're all laughing. And then I'm introducing the kids.

They're having fun. But then while we're introducing the kids, the two year old, he thought that was the big thing to do. So we suddenly hear the stomping noise and he is doing the Australian crawl across the floor of the room, because he thought that's what I was doing. Well, that is amazing. That is so good. So this is cracking up totally about all these antics of these kids in here.

And that's typical of him, you know, cutting through formality, you know, and just being being cool, you know, it's great to hear these stories because I think most people who feel any kind of draw towards that philosophy don't know, can't even imagine what it would be like to be around or being like that. And it's nice. And I think that anytime I saw him speak in Anaheim and that was the sort of joyful realization is how funny it is and how bubbly he is and how there isn't like a heavy heaviness to it at all.

No, no, he doesn't do it. Some Lamas do do that. They act like very like they're like practically some kind of an alien statue or something, but he doesn't. He can be like that in a ritual, be very, you know, grandiose and very, you know, elegant in his movements and so forth and kind of like, hmm. But when he's hanging out, he's just hanging out, you know, he's very resilient. You know, what that is, is that the message of that is about the teaching

when you go through yourself and you discover the void, you know, freedom, like openness, not nothing, but openness, you know, and you don't find a rigid thing that's your sort of fixed identity, you know, it's up to maintain it, you know. Yeah. Then you become resilient as far as being appropriate in different situations and you fit with the people, whatever benefits them. You know, you're very oriented towards make cheering them up, you know, making them happy and so on, very specific.

And it's very neat. It's very neat because people think, oh, when you realize selflessness or emptiness, that mean you just sort of everything, it doesn't exist and you just sort of do anything. But it's not a role like that. It's you become very focused on the minute details of things to make it nice, you know. Today's episode of the DTFH has been supported by the apothecaries at Amazon Pharmacy, which is amazing. You don't have to go to the pharmacist anymore.

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That's amazon.com slash Duncan Rx. Again, it's amazon.com slash Duncan Rx. Thank you, Amazon Pharmacy. What's the Tibetan word for emptiness? Dong ba nyid. What is it? Dong ba nyid. It is it?

Dong ba nyid. Dong dong. It's actually a kind of a tea where no air comes out. It's what's called an unaspirated tea. Dong ba nyid. Yeah, Dong ba nyid. That's perfect. Yeah, Dong ba nyid.

And does this translate directly to emptiness or is there another? Or avoidness. I prefer avoidness in some contexts because in some tantric thing, there's something called a high meditation. And there's something called the four Dong ba nyid, the four empties. And whenever I translate for empties, I think of beer cans. And it's just terrible. So I like to say the four voids.

Yeah, yeah. I got to tell you, I'm listening right now to an audio book, which is a translation of the Way of the Bodhisattva by Shanti Deva by His Holiness. His Holiness translated it. And I kind of feel like in the last chapter, the rug just gets pulled out from under you and it seems almost unfair. And the sense that the beginning chapters seem to be a lot about how lucky

you are to be human. And then in the very last chapter, it does this systematic dismemberment of your identity. And then it's just like, have a great night. Have a good night. That that's the end. And it's OK. See you later.

That's the thing. You see freedom. But what that is, is that the introduction to freedom? Because as long as you still said that, oh, this is the wall. That's a real wall over there. Oh, yeah, this is the floor. This is the real body. You know, my old Mongolian teacher was very great.

He used to say, people think they're real and that they're not wrong. They are real. The problem is they think they're really real. So in order to switch from really real, you know, being stuck to being just free but real, you know, free real. Yeah, then you have to at one time see all of it, you know, dissolve, you know, and let go downstream, you know, and let go and go with the flow. You know, then that and then you are picked up by the flow.

And then you're open to the surf, the reality, you know, because reality goes in waves, you know, and that's really, that's really fun. But it is, it does seem unfair almost because also everything gets the table just comes apart. Yes, you know, it's a thought experiment. Yes, and that kind of thought experiment when conducted by strong concentration really leads you into an experience of pure space. And then the kid, then the trick is, and this is very tricky at that point.

That feels like a huge release. But the danger there is that then someone will think, oh, that's the freedom. And it'll never be back there with all those things. And then they get stuck there. And they think that, you know, that's Nirvana somewhere else. And there is, in fact, the Buddha, that's so natural to make that mistake that Buddha practically let people think that some of them, but then introduce them when they first had after they had that experience.

Well, actually that because that's another relational state. It's an altered state, but it's a relational state because you went there from here and then here comes back at some point. Right. And and therefore the key is you have to merge being here as being free and empty space and yet very much here. And that that's that's the deeper thing. That's where love comes in, compassion. It's wisdom becomes love and compassion there, you see, because then

when you're here, you feel so great because you're in empty space, but you're here in the illusion and playing with it, having fun. And then you meet somebody and they're really not having fun. They're upset because they lost an election or they lost their shoes or they lost their toothbrush. And then and then you, oh, let me help you with that. Can you address, I have so many questions for you. Well, that's great. I have enough for you, though.

I want let me just say, you know, I want to ask you a lot about because you were so close to actually, although I knew him also from 1959, but you were so close in the last years to Ram Dass. And now he's gone and I want to really ask you a lot about that and your feeling and then the other people. So, I mean, we'll come around to it, but we can trade. But I really want to know. Let's trade questions. I just have I have two specific questions.

OK, OK, and one of them is can you. Talk about the as we study, I am studying specifically Tibetan Buddhism and I've been on a tear reading book after book or that's for great and but I I'm want to I find myself in my meditation practice having sometimes wonderful experiences. The wonderful experience happens. But because I've been reading this, these books, I think, forget about that. You're not supposed to, you know, don't don't don't even bother with that.

But I've noticed a kind of almost a kind of neurotic attitude appearing towards anything that starts emerging that seems remotely akin to some of the things that I've been reading in these books. I either will think, well, this is placebo. You're projecting what you've read onto this experience because you so want to have illumination or you're experiencing some something. But because you're focusing on it, now you're going to get addicted to this something. And then what ends up happening is is a kind of neurotic echo chamber

related to this phenomena. I wonder if you could talk about this in the sense that that's so good. That's such a great thought. You see, people too much teach. That as long as you meditate, that's just all you have to do is meditate. You don't have to learn anything, in other words, that's a little bit the attitude of the of the Westerner, who thinks that we're so great and smart and civilized and we're the future.

Blah, blah, blah, a lot of stunts and when actually, we're still highly militarized, sitting on top of the genocide of the Native Americans, the slain men of the blacks, new Jim Crow, old Jim Crow. In other words, we're not quite so far out as we think. Right. So actually, maybe we have something to learn from people who, in the past, the Brits conquered them, you know, they, you know what I mean? They were peaceful.

So therefore they were nicer. They weren't weaker, actually, they were just less violent. And so we have to learn. So it's so learning is very key and learning does not disturb your meditation. In fact, it helps you aim it in a proper way. In a proper way. And actually, you can make an argument that this thing about projecting into things and so on.

Well, we're projecting everything all the time. You know, one of the insights of emptiness is, you know, when you're in a dream, when you have a dream, even if you're not lucidly dreaming, you're sort of narrowly dreaming, which you remember only when you wake up, right, because you're kind of just, but in a dream, you have a mood change and you can change the whole environment. You know, you were in the Eiffel Tower and you were about to go up and have a escargot or something or a beautiful, a beautiful waffle up there

for breakfast up in the Eiffel Tower restaurant in your dream. And then you feel a little fear or something. Then suddenly we're falling off the Eiffel Tower. So now you're suddenly in the air outside it in a dream. Actually, we are creating our environment in normal waking time too, because every day we see, we project a concept on it. We recognize it. As we say, we recognize it.

That would say we see it again. Yes. Fitting it with some presupposition we have. That's the painting on my wall. That's the wall. This is the floor. I'm Bob, et cetera. And so when we go in, even when we're meditating and if someone has told us

that the thing to do is don't think anything, just ignore all your thoughts. Just drop them, drop out and don't think, which actually is useful to a point. But if they're saying that gives you the final goal there, that's a mistake. But the point is it's useful because then you get more to choose what you want to think, you're not just driven by thought. But if you're doing that and then you come to a moment of silence where no thoughts are popping up in your mind, that gives you a little bit of a buzz. And the danger there that has happened to many a meditator is, oh, that was a

enlightenment. And at first they have a big buzz and then they get so bored after a while. And then when they're not doing that and someone steps on their toe, they get really pissed off because they didn't actually really unravel their identity habit, you know, me, I, me, may, mine, I, me. The great thing to be able to say, no, I, me, me, mine, I, me, mine, that all day long thing, you know? Yes.

And so Chatti Deva is so good with. So even when you are not thinking, you're projecting a state of not thinking into being quiet. Do you follow me? Yes. So, so therefore the reason, the reason what's called the most high thing that you're reading in this Chatti Deva and in Dalai Lama's things always, the most high thing is called the royal reason of relativity.

Hmm. And what that is, what that means is that all things are empty of any non-relative component, that includes me and any object that I look at. So what that means is we, even when I see something as if it had a non-relative component, it was really real exactly that way. And I'm really, really exactly this way, that the mere fact I can see it as if it is not empty proves that it's empty because I'm seeing it. Right.

I'm even making a mistake about it. And therefore I'm relating to it and to the source of my mistake, which is my projection, my ignorance. Okay. And it's not just that I'm projecting the other thing. I'm predicting it other as a really real thing. Right. So I'm stuck on it and I'm stuck with myself.

So, so for example, when I have an emotion, obsession, you know, lust, let's say greed or anger, hatred, when I'm stuck there, it seems to come from a really real place. So it seems to be really real. So I lose it. I forget what would be effective. I forget what is appropriate. I don't get the bigger picture.

I'm driven by my rage or my obsession, obsession to do something really usually self-destructive. Yes. Temporarily it might be destructive of something else, but in the long run, self-destructive, like somebody who smashes a valuable plate or something. Okay. And then they were, oh, shit, that cost me $200. You know, like, why did I do that?

Do you know what I mean? Yes. And that's because that, that anger is perceived as coming from a really, really real fixed self that has a right to be angry. And the anger seems overwhelming that I have to follow whatever it wants me to do. And it pretends to me that it makes me stronger. And actually it turns me into an asshole. Yes.

In fact. Yes. And I've, and I can say that from a lot of experience. I've been an asshole a lot of times. I'm a professional asshole. Well, so, so what I'm, coming back to the question, what that means is, that you have to don't think it's neurotic. You have to do the learning.

The first type of wisdom is called the wisdom born of learning. That's why one reads Naga, Junna and Shantideva and Dhalalama and et cetera. And then the second one is the wisdom born of critically doubting and thinking over and knowing on it and struggling with it and, and developing a deeper appropriate, you know, learning what fits with oneself. And, and then the third one is where then you could just focus on that because you're aimed, you know, your, your, your sight, sighting mechanism, your telescopic sight is the focus coming from what you learned.

And therefore you're aiming at freedom, knowing that the freedom is right here in the relativity because all of the interrelated things are illusory. Right. They're not just totally non-existent, but they're illusory. So, so you're free and relating to them. You can relate to them in a light way. You know, like, as you said, Ram Dass used to say so brilliantly, you know, you sort of know the one is there, you're in it.

He was identifying it often because his body was so painful at the end with sort of a disembodied condition. But he'd also had ecstatic, a lot of ecstatic experience in his life. That man had been super high. I mean, super high in the past. He had. And so, and so he knew it was there. Yes. And so he would say, well, this is just a movie.

That was his say, like, say illusory. But that didn't mean he didn't care about the movie. I remember one time when I gave a talk there, I was pretty jacked up. I was because I was enjoying the talk because I talk myself into a state where it seems to miss myself temporarily, that I know what I'm talking about. Which I don't actually, really. But it seems to me. So then I get in good mood because I talk myself into it.

But but and then other people like it because I'm getting good mood. So I went up to see him in this chair there. And there were a lot of people looking to see him because he was there still, you know, in as much pain as he was. Yes. And so I was looking at him because we have this old relationship and I just cherish every moment I managed to meet him toward the end there and and and and hang out with him.

And then but when he said it was so cute, he looks up at me, smiling, you know, and then he says, look at them. Look at them. In other words, he wanted he wanted he wanted me to look at the other people. Wow. And who are happily there rather than just him. You know, in other words, OK, we got it. We're OK. We like to refine.

But look at them and and he was just completely there for them. You know, he was there for me, too. But he was his clue to me was look at them. Yeah, you know, they're so they're young and they're like they have so much life in them and and they're going to find so many things and they're already here. You know, I mean, it was it was just so neat. You know, that's beautiful. That's and that kind of condensed sort of fractal teaching that he was doing

towards the end there because he didn't he didn't have the ability to speak as he used to. So he everything was condensed. I unravel so many interactions that I had with him because everything he said was folded up in that. I mean, just that look at them. You can I mean, you could do a book just based on what that has. I know, I know he was he was amazing. I loved him really.

I know him when he was Richard, Dr. Albert, driving around in a green Mercedes convertible. How did you know that sound? What? How did you meet him? I was an undergraduate at Harvard when he was a professor there. Wow. And before they really took off, you know, after they all got fired or they broke with Harvard and went to Milburg, then I knew them there, too.

But I knew them from when they were actually when they were taking really small doses. I was serving other people and I was there with some young guys and girls and we were taking bigger ones. And they were blamed later on, turning on, but they didn't give us anything. They were doing experiments with, you know, carefully monitored. They're being very proper. Where were you getting your acid from? All the mescaline and stuff, you know, we, you know, it was around, you know,

in the late fifties, early sixties. And just some friends, you know, you know, I didn't I don't know where they got it. Well, they were getting it from the Sandos laboratories, I believe they just Harvard people, the doctors from Sandos, and there was some floating around. It wasn't illegal at that time. It's not illegal. You know, in some early trips, I would go and I walk around Harvard Square and I would, I would hug a cop.

Well, and what reaction would you get from the cop in those days? Or were they just like this or the cleaning lady in the Hayes Bigford? Yeah. At four in the morning, she would look like the Virgin Mary or like, or even better, but they were used to eccentric students. So they were kind of all right about it. You know, as long as you weren't sort of menacing it anyway, right? Fine.

And there were no hippies and there were no wild states so much in that area. You know, so they were all right. So they, you, you have a psychedelic conference coming up with a lot of great speakers. Um, what are your thoughts regarding the current, what people are calling the second or the third psychedelic wave, the end of the prohibition, all the studies that are happening, you know, the other day, just on a whim, I bought a thousand dollars worth of LSD stocks on the stock market.

And it was the funniest moment. Cause I'm thinking, I am now living in a world where in the old days, when I was buying stock in LSD, I mean, I was buying LSD. You mean from Sanders? You bought Sanders? No, there's various corporations that are being publicly treated right now that have FDA approved, you know, studies where they're synthesizing LSD. So you can literally invest on the stock market into the manufacture of LSD.

What, as someone who was there before the, uh, crackdown during the crackdown and now after the crackdown, what are your thoughts regarding what we can expect culturally as psychedelics continue to, um, have the sort of taboo removed from them and the great book by Michael Paula that I know, you know, you know, uh, how to change your mind, you know, that's great writer or just to do diet and health and all things. Then he, he got into it and then he experimented with himself very timidly, but we're wonderfully, I thought it was a wonderful book.

Well, you know, he shows that when it started, it was a great thing. And the psychiatrists were doing fantastic work. There was some nasty stuff by the CIA going on in Canada and here in there. Crazy stuff because they were hoping they could make super soldiers with it and everything was me, Bob, may I wait? May I stop you there? I use, I'm sure you're aware of this. Ted Kaczynski was the unabomber.

I believe was at Harvard around the time that you were there. Yes, he was my same class, but I didn't know him. And they were doing the OSS was paying. And I can't remember the head of the facility there, but was paying. They were doing art. They were doing the very research you're talking about on Ted Kaczynski at Harvard. Why are you there? Oh, yes.

I didn't know that. I didn't know there were anyone around there. I thought it all happened in Canada, but okay, then that's, that's another piece of the puzzle. I had no idea of that. But the point is that the point is that the psychedelics in general, just to say, are a wonderful tool that are used in many cultures with thousands and thousands of years, and they are part of a kind of initiation thing of finding your place

in the universe for someone who is not going to be a monk or they're not going to be an ascetic Christian monk in the desert, whatever. They're going to be a normal person, have a family and do things, but they're going to have a virtual way of pulling themselves together within the terms of Christianity or Judaism or whatever it may be or an indigenous religion. And so plant conversation with plants and plants, you know, essences and mushrooms, which is a whole other genus of biological entity. I saw Stamets the other day online.

That guy is so proud. Anyway, you know, he is a mushroom. I think he wants to become. And like Tamsa McKenna was a little bit like that. Yes. And so it was a wonderful discovery of this sort of machine oriented culture of ours, very militarized and racist and dominator oriented and alienated from nature and polluting and destroying it and exploiting it and so on. And it was a great discovery that the nature talked to us to it.

And in channeling in through academics and psychiatrists, naturally, the military people are doing their nasty thing and they discovered it was useless to them because actually it had the opposite effect. It made people nonviolent. It made them more in love with nature. It made them more open and some badly directed. It might have made them crazy. But the point is it deconstructed their rigid cultural with a supremacy people.

We should own everything and dominate everybody. And so it was not useful. It was a contrary to useful. Now, the other answer to the question is interesting, which is there was a guy called Harry and slinger in the thirties and forties and fifties would be more forties and fifties. He was a Hoover friend. And I just saw this premiere of a movie about Billy Holiday,

his great singer, you know, and how she was persecuted and they were really angry with her because she sang a song called Strange Fruit. Yeah. About lynching. Yes. And she was really popular with great singer and nightclubs, but did she now and then would throw in a little black power subversive thing and they hated her and they wanted to arrest her. And then he said in one scene to the Hoover and the other guys,

all the white guys, and they are like, we know, OSS type room in this early sixties, late fifties. And he said or early fifties even. And he said, well, we can't arrest them for singing a song. But we can get them for using heroin. Right. Then with the drug laws, you know, right. And do this, you know, and he was notorious.

He was the one who put acid on the schedule. One list with a dangerous and anesthetic drugs and things like that. I thought it was Nixon. What? I thought it was Nixon. Nixon came late to it, but he was involved. Yes. But he was. And also Nixon's guy, the plumber, was the guy who busted Milbroke, actually. But that's how he was working for, you know,

that whatever his name was, I forgot. I know what you're talking about. Yeah. So point is that they were they were all trying to be in using drugs to promote their racism, in fact, and block Native Americans from Mescalito, and from their ceremonies and block it and then make sure that the black communities had a lot of heroin. Wow. You know, as they were stopping, they weren't doing wasn't with the white community, but they would purposely

send it in. The British had done that with the Chinese in the 19th century. That's what the opium war was about. Opium war was not because of the legality of opium. It was because the Chinese were making it illegal and refusing to import British opium, and the British couldn't pay for tea with cash because they were so popular tea in Europe that they were draining the silver resources of Europe. And so they were forcing the Chinese to take opium and raking. Therefore, the population in those opium dents, which we think was some Chinese

thing, but actually the British shoved it down their throat. Wow. Hey, it would be the equivalent of some Colombians coming in and invading Washington, coming up from Miami and forcing the cars and all to get stoned on cocaine. I mean, it was a scene. So my point is that the the domineering elite has always used drugs to control majority populations that outnumber them or are more energetic than them.

And that was just another instance of that, taking it away from the shrinks, taking it away from the anti-alcoholics, because it's very helpful to overcome alcohol addiction. Right. You know, the ibogaine, not only acid, but, you know, many a plus, like the African ibogaine is very good for heroin, for example, supposedly. I mean, I don't know, I never did either heroin or ibogaine, but I should have, but I never did.

But I will in the future if I live longer. I'll experiment with all of them because they're all very useful. Yeah. But in a setting, also, if you're misdirected in the set, when you get a vulnerable, open, you're projecting apparatus is temporarily suspended. Yes. And then you're directly merging with your field of experience. Then you see all kind of new things about it that you didn't notice because the minute you look at it, you wrap a concept on it.

And oh, that's what I know. I ahead of time, I was going to see that's all I see. Right. And so when that temporarily is suspended, which most of those psychedelics, entheogenics, as Houston Smith called them, what that's what they do, they temporarily freeze your immediate stuffing everything into your own preconceptions. Yes. And then you see if you see the heaven in a dew drop, like a poet, like Emily Dickinson, you see the lamps of the streets of heaven

in a drop of dew. Yes. And they blow your mind. And the people who used it well didn't just do that. Like, like, so Tim sort of never did anything else much after the initial thing. Whereas Richard became Ram Dass and he really explored the mind and he helped a lot of people and he really did well because he didn't only do that. Right. You know what I mean? Just like suspend things.

It's like someone who only meditates without learning anything. They're just suspending their bad feeling, but they don't get rid of it. It comes back when they stop doing it. Yes. So then they get addicted to going and running away and doing that. Whereas the real thing is to learn how it works and learn to project things that are helpful out of love and compassion instead of projecting boring things out of domination and alienation.

Right. I mean, that's the key. That's the key. So it's like, you know, you bring the language back into it, language is fantastic. It's a wonderful thing, but it never can express reality. You know, Buddha gave them the Copenhagen Declaration 2600 years ago. He did. Indians had atomic physics, they had high energy things, kundalini,

little kind of thing. And he said, guys, none of the theories, including anything I say, is going to capture reality. It's inexpressible, you know? You can experience it. So then you'll kind of know it at the deepest way. But then I'm so sorry, you can't explain it to anybody else. You can only explain to them methods they can use to themselves discover.

Because when human beings have the ability to do that, we have amazing, amazing brains. We have super computers right there in the skull and all up and down the spine. That's one of the many things I love about Buddhism is that it isn't really telling you just believe this. No, it's saying this is a this is a process that you have to take up. To me, that is one of the many mind blowing things about it. But speaking of the Copenhagen Declaration,

and this actually leads right into the second question I have for you, which is. Listening to a variety of these Tibetan scriptures, I've heard the idea of praying to future Buddhas. And I wanted to ask you about that. I guess there's two parts to the question, which is, what is the Buddhist interpretation of time? Right. Is it a thing that is already in existence? In other words, are these future Buddhas somehow already existing?

Or is it a thing that's kind of like a quantum soup that is, you know, we're evolving towards or is it just when they say pray to people? OK, both of those. And this in the sense that the Buddha part of being a Buddha, as you go into a moment in which all of the past is still there. You know, in other words, the past is currently there. No problem. It's also there.

None of that you can even change the past, actually. Wait, wait. You can magically you can actually change it. OK, you can you can repair every damage that happened in the past. In fact, you can figure it out in a way. And because it's just it's it has an illusory quality. It is like a movie. You can re-edit the movie.

You know, and then as far as the future goes, it's not like there's a set future in us, which would mean that is that would be like a mechanistic way of looking. And it would mean that there's no freedom or choices are meaningless. It's just going to unravel. Yes, it was a guy who was a contemporary of Shakyamuni Buddha twenty six hundred years ago who taught that. And he had a famous thing he would do when he would give a lecture.

He was a well-known teacher. He was a rival of the Buddha's actually, but he couldn't really do it. But he tried. But he had a thing where we'd have a ball of twine and it would be all wound, you know, ruffled up and he would give his talk about, don't worry, we'll get liberated. It'll just happen by itself. And then he would throw the ball holding one end and the ball would unravel.

And when it finally was no more a ball, it would fall to the floor. He was a fatalist, in other words, right? And Buddha rejected that, you know, but the thing about it, you know, the Kala chakra, yes, that the Dalai Lama loves to do so much. And he had special permission, actually, from some some deities to to teach it many times, which usually in the history in Tibet, they did once or twice a year, I mean, once in a lifetime, they would do Kala chakra. The grand, what they call the grand initiation.

And he's done it 34 times or 35 times publicly. And he's done it many more times than maybe 50, 60 times in just in the monastery. And what that means is a time machine. So it has a chakra wheel, it's like we say about it, how good, nice wheels. You know, you get a new Tesla and somebody will say, hey, great wheels. Yeah. So it can mean a machine chakra, you know. And but this time machine is not like HG Wells, where you go around in time,

which you imagine to be a sort of fixed medium, a real real thing the way it is. Time is also illusory. Like an illusion, it's also magical, like spaces. And so so what happens is that when you become a Buddha, you know, when Duncan Buddha comes there, although you might have a different name. Yeah. And you know, there's a big thing when you meet a Buddha, he'll tell us. You know, you'll be Buddha such and such in such such a universe and your name will

be so and so. And it's considered it's considered a big thing to have that from Buddha, because it's like a not a not secret either. And because then you get a kind of confidence about it. Yes. But the thing is that and therefore when a when a Buddha, Buddha has a bodhisattva vow, right? He's not going to take Nirvana until everybody's in Nirvana. Right. He's not going to leave anybody behind.

Hey, what about us? Yeah. But in his way, he did it actually, because in his reality, which is more real reality, he saw all our possible futures of all beings. It's like unbelievable. Yes. It's like super computer to the super, super. Yes. So all multiple possible futures he saw.

Yes. And he saw we could have really boring and the suffering futures be born as a as a dog and a cat and a crocodile. And in fact, even hell and heaven, gods and pleasures and heaven. But then falling from that, going round and round and round, you know, stupidly instead of becoming really happy. Yes, like a being that makes everybody else happy and is fully happy in the midst of everything and empties the hells and etc. I mean, really fixes it up, fixes up the infrastructure.

Yes. And supposedly that's the theory, right? So so a Buddha goes into all those futures of all beings. And he knows all of their past that the ones that he sees around him. And he and in a way, so everybody's around him from all time. Because the moment that he's in has every moment in it. But he knows that it's not fixed the future. So there then his his vow is enacted. So it's like he hasn't broken his vow

because he sees every being as they're going to get there. He's going to make sure of it. And he's been in a position where he can actually be effective in doing so. And and he will be at the cornerstone, at the crossroads, at the juncture, in the moment between their deaths and rebirths in their future lives, where he will be able to guide them and give them a little leg up over here and like such a point of road sign that way. Because, unfortunately, he can't just blast them right into his own state

because the point is that that takes the infinite energy he has access to and will do. But we are where we don't want infinite energy. If we feel blasted by energy, we'll be frightened. We'll think it's going to kill us. Yes, we'll get more tight to resist it to keep it because we think we have a boundary and that we're not it. It's a universe is different from us. It's alien to us.

Yes, we would we would experience a huge burst of bliss as a sort of deathly thing like nuclear fission or something. You know, we hate it. Right. So he only we can only find it from the inside out because we're already in touch with it at the deepest subatomic level of our being, of our soul, you could say, of our subtle cells, even. And so his whole thing is to tease us, create environments and situations, etc.

It was that will cause us to feel safe to open and to understand and use our intelligence and to see, OK, it's all relative. You can't really get me that bad. Oh, I'm really like that. And I can identify with it and so on, which we do anyway, right? We identify with our kids, identify with our loved ones, yes, parents, sometimes after we get to give up blaming them. We can identify with them and your grandparents.

You know, and and so we have that ability to amplify our identification. And what a Buddha is, is the same conceivable thing of someone who has amplified their identification infinitely, incorporating all space and time. Wow. And joining all the other Buddhists who are all there all the time, they never leave because they are everywhere and in time, too, in time, too. So so my point is that way they fulfill their bodhisattva vow that they stay with us and they will be screwed up this life.

Well, next life they'll be at that point and they'll know they're like Groundhog Day, everything is Groundhog Day for them in relation to us. You know what I'm saying? And so I mean, that's the concept. And actually the key to the concept is every single being, whoever was a Buddha, which is infinite numbers of them, because we got a lot of interest is beginningless. It's not like it's some big bang.

That's just a local cycle. Right. You know, and it's beginningless. So there's endless numbers of them and they all think they're you and me. What do you mean they all think they're you and me? They do. Well, have you ever been like almost totally empathetic in a love situation or is it something or the birth of a child? Yes, you practically are the other being and you suddenly see yourself from them.

Yes. Well, you just we can just switch like that. Normally we don't hear you over there. OK. But the point is this is a being who has managed to do that totally. Wow. And that's why they're compassionate. That's why they don't they can't bear our suffering because they feel it. But you know, just like sometimes you've been in an ecstatic state. I know you have.

Yes. And you stub your toe running from one delight to another. And you kind of didn't notice it. Yes. And then later, like, you know, when you call calm down or whatever next day, oh, oh, you know, yeah, you know. But you don't even notice it at the time. So this is such an extreme bliss of being everything and everywhere. Other freedom, bliss, void, indivisible or bliss, empty, indivisible. That they that they can feel all our agonizing pain, even if we're in hell.

And then they can know by feeling it where it is we need to open up to like lessen the scrunch of it, you know what I'm saying? Because if they came and it's like you run up and hug a paranoid person, they're going to have to freak out. Yeah, you can't you can't you can't. So so so this is a beautiful thing. I only kind of got into it only recently after 40, 50 years. You know, the Buddha nature is the one.

You know, in a way. And by the way, you you're studying Tibetan, which is best place to study. But they will tell you it's all Indian. You know, the Holy Land, you know, the Holy Land for them, you know, the is is. They call it the Holy Land is India where Buddha lived, you know, really come. Yeah, he didn't come to Tibet. He lived in India.

And well, his many of his followers eventually did a thousand years later. And then and then I think the great adepts of India realize the foreigners are coming. You know, the military militarized foreigners, first the Persians, Arabs, then the Europeans, they'll be coming because we have such a party here, we're having a name Karoli Baba party. Right. We're doing raga and said we're dancing.

Right. We have we have top. It's the top of the world, you know, mango. It's really fun. Yes, India's amazing place. And so and then the guys dragging their wives in the sack behind them or their camel. They're not having fun because the fun is something in the sack behind the camp. Well, they can't they can't enjoy the camel that much.

And they're going to come and they were the trampolos and they knew it. So they put the jewels up in Tibet, you know, to bring. Of course, they left a lot of jewels in India, but they but you know, they burnt hundreds of universities and monasteries and libraries that Muslims when they came around a thousand years ago. And so that's where they kept it. Tibet became like a hard drive to store all the way. That's it. Yes, exactly.

Wow, that is so they don't act like a we invented everything here in Tibet. They don't know they also didn't just passively just reproduce everything. Repeat it. They develop more subtle things. Oh, fantastic. It's it's this is so mind blowing. It sounds, you know, when I when I've been listening to these scriptures, you know, they're saying things like for some people, Avalokita, Shavara is just a cool breeze on their face.

You know, for some people, they get to me and I love it. It's just so trippy. But I just to just to confirm because I really am trying. I really am so inspired by some of these ideas. It sounds like the Buddhist cosmology seems to match like multiverse theory or the idea that there is multiple timelines, multiple universes. And within these universes, there are multiple sort of manifestations of an identical mind, but taking on all these different forms.

Wow, that's a body of emanation. It's called nirvana. When you're a Buddha, you could have many bodies. You could have 10,000 Duncan's. You could be doing the Dunkel, Choson podcast in the worst uptight place in Pakistan. OK, well, fortunately, not there yet. But but and I won't keep I won't keep I'm sorry to torch you with these questions. No, no, no, that's not torture.

If there is an enlightened version of you and an enlightened version of me. Yes, there is then. Are we entangled with that being? In other words, I could understand why to have a Buddha tell you here's what your name is going to be and here's where you're going to be. From that point forward, could you connect with that version of you? Of course. And is that version of you trying to connect? Imagine, you know, when we imagine something really great.

That means we can actually experience it and it can be actual, although any relative thing has an illusory quality. Right. In the Vimalakirti Sutra, did you read my Vimalakirti Sutra translation ever? No, that'll be my next one. That's the next one. You'll love that. It's online for free. You can download it. I'll tell you where.

But I'm saying Vimalakirti at the end of the sutra, he meets the Shakyamuni Buddha because he was he lives in town nearby Shakyamuni, but he's from another universe and Shakyamuni verse, although he's a layman, not a monk, but he's respected for his wisdom by Shakyamuni, like the lady, the wise guy and the and the monk-like guy. So I think he goes to visit Shakyamuni and and he takes the whole group in his house with him. He has a thousand people, a thousand. He has like a doctor who like house that you can have thousands of people in it. Yeah, although it looks like a house outside in this big city.

Right. So he picks up the whole assembly in his hand and he moves them over to the grove outside of town where Buddha's staying, comes to see the Buddha because they all want to see a Buddha at the end of a long teaching in Vimalakirti's house. So then Buddha says to him, oh, hey, Vimalakirti, I'm so glad to see you. You've been unwelving here, you're elderly, and it's so nice that you're here with all your friends and so forth. A lot of his own monks were there and so on, Buddha's own monks were there.

And so he said, so you wanted to see the Buddha, right? You came over to see the Buddha, right? So now that you're here, how do you see the Buddha? And so Vimalakirti is looking at him and he says, well, I don't see the Buddha when I see a body in front of me. I don't see the Buddha when and he goes at that level where what's called the Dharmakaya of the Buddha, the reality body, which best translated as reality, not just teaching body, but reality body.

It was an ultimate meaning of Dharma as reality itself. And so he says, oh, he's on that level. So that means he knows that Buddha feels he's Vimalakirti. Buddha feels he's everybody in the audience. Buddha is everywhere in the galaxy. So in many of these sutras, when Buddha starts to teach, you often create a performance art piece for the students in which he'll create a vision that they temporarily see of the Buddha teaching a bunch of students in five thousand

different planets simultaneously. And that's your multiple university. No, he sticks his tongue when he teaches the transcendent wisdom sutra. Not in every version, but because they're different like the version. But in the twenty five thousand one on up, he sticks out his tongue first. And the light comes out of the middle of this. He has a big tongue, by the way, like a yogi. He can put it up on forehead and the tip and he and the light comes out of his tongue

and they suddenly see that he's teaching this in countless worlds. Like you were looking in two mirrors facing each other just endlessly. Yes. And so what the reason he does that is that, you know, when we do something good or when we learn something, we think, oh, the one who's struggling with this and he's showing that all over the universe is not empty of human beings. He's not a bunch of stones out there and that dinosaurs and with this endless numbers of humanoid environments.

Already they're saying that from thousands of you and the people who are more hip, they can travel with mind traveling like dream, projection, sort of thing, consciously and they come when Buddha teaches here, they come out of the world and they go to other worlds and they're able to do that. They say they don't need a metal spaceship here. They don't need Steven Spielberg's closing counter machine. They don't need that. They just go with their mind.

OK, so this is this implies the thing that and I don't mean to get into the world. I love this. But the implication would be that it shouldn't awaken being appear on this planet. We might expect an uptick in sightings of UFOs, an uptick in paranormal events. We already have. We already have. Yeah, right. You know, I think we have already, sure.

But we are we are the ones we see like UFO and we're assuming it's like a metal thing, like our own clunky 737 or something. Yeah, but what are shaped like a saucer or something that whatever. But, you know, and they may have there may be people who have that. There may be peace, although the one thing I really got pissed off in the closing counter of the third can, which is a great flick. I mean, Steve Spielberg is very cool. OK, but what I thought was pathetic one, you know, I loved it in that moment

where he finally looks up and then you see Times Square hanging upside down above you by this powerful anti gravity thing is that in the in the fantasy, you know, in the movie, right? And you see the New York City Times Square is hanging right over your head. All luminous and glowing, wonderful. OK, and then it then they did it and then the gangplank comes down. And then people come out. But then the guys come out and the guys like Casper, the freaking ghost.

How about looking like an adult or something? You know, like the terminator or a beautiful woman or like a big human, like something very beautiful human. Yeah, yeah. What makes you think that somebody with advanced technology is going to look like it's so silly and so supremacist? You know, we're the humans. You know, we got our own, you know, we got the terminator. And then the little thing comes out of the hand.

Like, yeah, it can feel a little thing like you can make a UFO. It can probably make a peloton. Give it a break. If it is, it can be like, yeah, that's hilarious. So that was that was catering to all sort of American humanoid supremacy things. Yes. Oh, yeah, they got a powerful machine. But what a win, you know, wow, humanoid supremacy. Well, you know, as I've been listening, I like these audiobooks.

I've been listening. I really have thought if this stuff I'm listening to is not for lack of a better word, an alien transmission. I don't know what is it's because the perspective of a lot of these teachings is seemingly outside of the time space continuum. And that that that in its own right produces such a unique quality. The consciousness that's emanating it is not does not strike me. It is terrestrial.

I mean, clearly it grew out of the earth, but also it does feel like it's coming from somewhere very far away simultaneously, which is one of the things I like about it. Well, wasn't that what was great about Ramdas? I like to go that way. You know, Ramdas was always with the one, you know, and he was always, you know, there was a great notebook term that was developed at Millbrook called up leveling and which Ramdas would use that term. And then he would sometimes say, you know, in a stressful situation,

you sort of see the bigger picture and you cool down and then you act more kindly and more beneficially in a difficult situation, etc. And that's the up leveling idea, you know, instead of staying in a certain network where you're trapped in a certain thing. Yes. So you got you were very close with him, right? And you often when I went to when he when he wasn't there, what happened? How did you handle that?

That's what I want to know if you would tell me what. I mean, it's it's perfect that you're looking into the Dalai Lama and the books and things. And we we I kind of met name Karoli Babal through the heart of Krishna Das because I didn't meet him. I saw him, but I never met him because I was sort of in another world, you know, writing all my books and everything and the Buddhist thing. And I didn't go to the Hindu temple with my stupidity. Unfortunately, I didn't realize you have a Buddha in the Hindu temple, but you did.

And so I lament that I missed him. And I missed a lot of really great lamas that I know about now. And I never got to meet because I had to work, you know, I didn't. I didn't have the money to just be around, hang out all of them. Yes. How to support a family and do it, give teachings in school. So so what is going on with with Ramdas's folks and yourself now that he's not there? And you have KD and you have, you know, we don't go to didn't go to Maui this time.

Of course, we couldn't go in and I don't know if they'll renew the thing in Maui or maybe they'll do it in California, Ohio, I don't know what's going on. Yeah, what is going on, but more important than politically or socially. What's going on in your mind? I mean, you know, I feel like it's so funny you say you missed these lamas. I feel like I missed Ramdas. I I because of Ramdas, I have a practice. I have David Nick turn.

I have a meditation teacher because of my association with that satsang. I now I'm practicing and reading now. But I wasn't doing it when I was in going to those things. So I feel guilt a little bit or a sense of underutilizing or not plugging in as much as I potentially could have during the times I spent with them. And I know that idea to him. He would probably say, that's just your ego. That's your and I know you can think of how he would react to when you're

feeling this and that. Well, I have conversations with him, you know, not, you know, like that, you know, or like, you know, the the the other day even I was and I don't, you know, again, I I like Robert Anton Wilson's advice with most of these things, which is maintain agnosticism, so you don't embarrass yourself with a lot of these things. Don't get to hear what Chogyam Trumbler Rinpoche said, which is just disown it. It's there, but don't you don't necessarily have to like crystallize it and turn it right.

But, you know, when I went right after my mom, dad, I I Ragu took me to his house. That's the first time I got to really be with him. And he did, you know, we sat together and I was crying and he was, you know, looking at me in the eye and I and but I do after it was whatever this and exchange between us was when it was over, all I knew was that I didn't really quite understand what had happened there. And then but the other day I was just I can't remember if I was falling asleep

or meditating or but all of a sudden I had that vivid memory of being back there. Except this time he was saying, here I put this inside of you so that when you're ready, you could see this. And he was like, he was like, I don't know, I fell asleep. It was Ramdas, you know, it's like I think that the way my mind is, you know, dealing with the loss is by on one level, trying to really respect what he taught regarding, you know, kind of like when he was pointing and saying, look at them, you know, that is the message that I was getting from him in his

last days, which is that we know what's so funny is before I ever met him. And again, these are all miracle stories or whatever. Before I ever met him, I had this dream about him. I was standing at the edge of a long pier. It was the Richard Alpert you met like young Ramdas, I think he was smoking a cigarette, which he was standing at this very handsome, very handsome and he was handsome and he was charismatic and he

was standing at the edge of this pier looking out at the ocean and he turned and looked at me and then looked out at the ocean and said, I don't know. I think I'm going to go there soon. And that was this dream. Yes. And then the next day, I remember reading online, he had fallen or he was in the hospital and I thought, what the heck? I don't even and then my mom had a dream about him before I ever went to these retreats where he said to her, where's Duncan?

He's late. Really? Really? Yes. I think about those as just, you know, whatever. But but to me, the what, you know, that my encounter with him, especially the very last Mala ceremony he did at the retreat, knowing that the stage he was in, but then seeing

really how completely there he was and how he was fully giving himself to the people there and that there was just such a beauty. I don't know a better word for it than a true sophistication, like a kind of possibility and so yeah, my my my wife is broke. Everyone's got a broken heart about it. I have I have a broken heart about it. But to put it into perspective, you were talking. We were talking earlier about throwing and breaking things.

So just in the love, everyone and tell the truth spirit that just the night before he died, I've been in a fight with my wife and I went down in the garage and I was so mad and there was a picture of him sitting in the garage and I took it and I threw it on the ground. I was so mad and the next day he died. So this so to me that is the as since then I've been I have a meditation practice and I've been really working with that part of me and watching it kind of not go. I don't know if it'll go away in this life, but certainly chapter six.

You know, Shantideva's chapter six. You should listen to it again and again. Yeah, I know exactly what they antidote for anger is patience. Shantideva chapter six, it's the patient and I do listen to that. I also listen to it with some grim sense of like, oh, no, because of course. Shantideva is saying, you know, of all the things to worry about, it's anger, a lifetime of practice destroyed in a moment of anger. All of it like just gone gone.

But, you know, so I guess to answer your question, I. Only now feel like I'm getting to to to know him and and while I was there, I feel like I was a little frivolous in in in my relate in because I just didn't understand what it was. I couldn't. I knew it was beautiful and I was there. I don't know what you did, though. And then that's why I'm saying you can change the past, you know, you realize that he knew that you knew he also knew that you were thinking you

didn't know, yeah, and he saw through it, maybe superficial thing, and you'll be able to see it, re experience it in a completely different way. I promise you. I believe you. I mean, this is really well. But to me, that is the the the gift he left us. And your story confirms what my feeling has been, which is the gift he left us was each other that that that was the that was his parting gift.

And in that, in in, I think the the connection between all of us and people who didn't come to the retreats, people who are just whose lives were transformed by his teachings, he's that's where he's at. That's he's there. I know to me. My I joke with my wife sometimes that it's like now that he is no longer embodied. It's a lot cheaper to hang out with him, you know, I know in a lot and a lot quicker, a lot faster, no flight to online.

It's all online. Yeah, it's exactly. Raghu and them are all making it happen. It's really great. And yes, they are. Rama Rameshwari, the book is great. Have you been reading the book? Do you see the book?

The being or being Ramdas? I haven't gotten into it. I'm telling you. Being Ramdas is really, really nice. Yeah. My wife has been reading it. They tell some of the stories at Milbrook and all kinds of things. And I enjoy the parts too.

It's really great. It really is a real live Hindu boo, Hindu boo, Saint. Yes, Hindu boo. Yes, he was he was it. I do I do think of him as a saint. I think as time progresses, you know, it will start dawning on us more and more.

Just I think so, just what he was. I think so. And and and I yeah, I yeah, I'll never stop thinking. I don't think I'll ever stop thinking about it. I don't think I'll do my Raju, too. Even though I never hung out with him, although I used to pick up some of his students when they would be sick and take them to the hospital. But I somehow never sat down with him.

I was like, oh, I love it up. Yeah. But now I'm appreciating him to seeing feeling his presence in K.D. They're like Nina. Yes, even though she never met him. But she met the Ma, you know, the Ma who is associated with him. And I can feel the presence of it's like a family we all have. It's really nice.

It is really nice. But I think there's a feeling of worry right now. Some people have a feeling of worry that once the pandemic ends that what was happening, what was happening in Hawaii won't repeat. That we've lost that ability to sort of commune together. And I hope that's not the case. But I do think it's a bit of a question mark right now. How to sort of you know, there is.

Well, we'll all work on it. We'll see what we can do. I think we have to we have to know the whole planet needs to, you know, that's one thing we've learned from the COVID, actually, which is that we can be together and move through the the global brain, you know, yes. Of course, the bad guys are also rushing around in the global brain drink weird propaganda and things, but it is a global brain that we do have, you know. And look here, we're chatting in North Carolina down there in the Tar Heel

State, and I'm up here in the woods and in New York. And and and we're we can we can build together. I feel your presence very much right here. I feel yours too. I mean, don't you don't you think that the implication of this ability to communicate because there's a precedent here. There has been a Buddha and maybe there's one on, you know, one on the planet now. But of course, they're on it.

But there are many, there are many, there are many. But they are in a form that people can deal with now. If a Buddha came looking like Buddha, it would be like E.T., you know, very much. The creative people are really great. Hollywood, movies, sci-fi, especially. I really like that. Even the comic books, I love them. They're so cool.

Black Panther. Oh, the best. It's the best. And it is being spoken through them. But, you know, that what really gives me goose bumps is this possibility that we're all beginning to, you know, it's like watching monkeys encounter fire for the first time, you know, like, like watching like the wild things that we're doing on the internet.

I mean, we just have seen like the QAnon, you know, people's fuses getting blown by whatever that is, that's going in the wrong direction. Exactly. Taking a hit. But just like I'm sure when whatever the proto-hominates were that encountered fire, you better believe there were two generations of probably burn victims who just didn't know how it worked and they were burning themselves and setting trees on fire, burning things. That's QAnon.

QAnon is like burn victims from this new technology. But what's exciting to me about it is what happens when one of these buddhas on the planet or when one is still sort of manifesting what happens when instead of the deer park, instead of the very slow sort of distillation and the movement into Tibet and the people coming from Tibet to gather the data and bring you what happens when it just goes bam through the whole planet? What happens then to me? Do you think that that's a real possibility?

Do you really believe that? Definitely. I'm certain. I have certainty as much as one can be certain about anything in the illusory world. I'm like a relaxed certainty, but I'm sure, yes. In fact, I'm upset. I'm always my old original Mongolian Rup Lama. He used to disagree with a lot of things. We used to whatever, you know, he was very critical, very wonderful, but very kind also.

But he did agree with me in one argument that I had with him about Shambhala, you know, the Kalachakra thing about where it's scheduled to be happened around 24, 25 or 24, 15, something in that area. The whole planet goes ballistic into goodness, in other words. And instead of all this sort of half baked and violence and weird tightness and whatever and lack of joy. And I was always telling I was already with one Tibetan astrologer, astronomer, also old Mongolian guy from Puyattia, from Siberia.

But I had been in Tibet for decades and, you know, a old guy, very wise. And he was insisting that's the correct time. And I was saying, listen, man, this planet is not going to last 400 more years under this mismanagement of these crazy tyrants, you know, they're who just sucking money and they don't even have fun at it. They don't know how to have fun. Right. And I said, it'll never happen. And we can't we can't wait for 425 years, I said.

And he was disagreeing with me. And his argument was that's what's written in the scripture. I said, well, if you were going to change thing in there, a lot of blue means around would you give them the exact timing? Would you put it up? Can you use it? Yeah. And the other argument was that the planets can't tolerate like nuclear wars and things. And everyone is amazed.

We didn't have another nuclear outbreak since Hiroshima, but that doesn't mean we won't. You know, they're really crazy people who can eat. Everyone will have these things. You know, they have pocket nukes. They're making them all over the place. That's the problem. That's a real danger. And and so I was that's what I work at.

And then my my old Geshe Wangel, I met his name for a purpose. He suddenly intervened and he said to the old modeling guy, the Bariat one, although all about him, he said, I think he has a point about me. But I didn't know I'm challenging a scripture, actually. And he said he said, yeah, he has a part. I said, because I was saying, you know, you have no idea the machinery of destruction.

Yes, that is mobilized on the planet now. That's right. And so we need this sort of magical, miraculous intervention. Yes. And you know, in a way, it's happening from the grassroots, you know. And we might know there's a thing in the road, a sutra that I like, where one guy, like you and me, very enthusiastic about the Dharma. This school and that girl, you know, Ramdas, the Dalai Lama, the old Geshe, this person, that person and David Nick turn doing his thing there.

Then I got him going on that with my wife, got him booked, you know, going with the Met House and doing it, spending his day. And he's a good guy. And he was the guy who was there playing his cello. What does he play? The cello, right? What does he play? He plays a lot of instruments. Well, he put guitar with Ramdas, so he was playing the bass with Ramdas. That's right. And anyway,

so there we are and and suddenly some hardwood guy is doing something about a dating thing because he was shy and awkward with girls and then somehow he turned that into Facebook with like two million members right in a planet where people, you know, somebody might say, oh, in Buddha's time, they were all linked up because they were all clairvoyant because they were like amazing. There was only so in a few hundred thousand people on the whole planet and blah, blah, blah, but we couldn't go like that.

But actually from Buddha's point of view, he doesn't want to be the grand old days. He wants this to every generation to be better. Right. That's what compassion is about. You know, there's and so suddenly, as you say, what you put in is beautiful and you just, boom, imagine if the equivalent of Buddha. Well, actually, the other limit we'll teach online right now and 14 million people will listen all over China, actually, they get round, they use VPN, they get round the world, two of them do, you know, the Hipper one and 14

million people in his in his Twitter. And that's still only a few million. How about this? Wait till we get to get to 100 million. And he has to stay lucid. His English is getting, you know, he's 85 now. Yes. But there'll be other ones who will be able to do that. And they'll be younger and blogger can do it now. And KD can do it now.

You are doing it now. And you know, they're reaching out through you. And you say, you and they are indivisible when you're really in love and speaking the truth and the name and the biology is doing too. They're all working at it and it's working at the ground grassroots. And I used to have a way where I would say during the past nightmarish four years and actually during the nightmarish eight years where we had the earlier ruling election, you know, in Florida, you know,

the Supreme Court, you know, we had this warmongering instead of the environment president, yes, we were supposed to have that close, that close. Oh, he won, actually, if they counted it, if they had counted it properly, they would have an voter suppression when we know that. But never mind. So during those different times, I was thinking, well, you know, something it's natural. It's actually a good sign that the good people are getting better. And the planet is getting more in their hands.

It's a good sign that the bad people are still running it into the ground because the bad people are so miserable and they think if they dominate everybody else, they'll be really happy. And that only actually makes them more miserable. Right. And in a few lifetimes of that, they might quit and quit. But the good people are more relaxed. So you can't you're going to block my vote. Well, never mind. I'm happy.

Anyway, even you're a bad person. I'm happy. Okay, I guess I'll say I'll be happy in jail. I'll be happy here. I'll be happy there. I mean, that does I'm not making that an excuse. I'm just saying the good people are more alive. They have more personal energy. They have more inner flow, whatever is happening to them. And the bad people are so narrow, but then they are much more focused

on domineering and cheating and doing something. So they keep bubbling at the top. They see come up to the top and then we have to watch them all the time, which is like a big lesson of how not to behave. Yes. Yes. Yeah, I agree. They're like reverse gurus or something. And they're paying such a terrible price to teach us in that way.

It's like, you know, like I love Buddhism taught me to really like Jesus more than I did originally. Now that I know he's one of the great rabbis, right? Actually, and you know, which it took a while to figure that out. And I really like him. But and but as a religious studies scholar back when I was still in academia, I went with a friend to see Mel Gibson's movie. I don't know if you ever saw it.

The Passion of the Christ. Yeah, I went to see it and I knew I'd hate it. So my friend did too. So we made a pact that if we feel like leaving, we're going to make each other stay. So we will watch it all the way through. And I saw it in LA in a big theater. Yes. And one of the things that did shock me was all these fundamentalist families,

you know, like born again, you know, like sort of right wing, you know, that kind. There were lots of them there and they've already been to 10 of them. They'd seen it 10 times. But the thing that really freaked me out and gave me a little bit of encouragement, in spite of how awful it was, was they had little kids with them. And they were whacking them to stay in their seats, you know, and the kids were seeing this total SNM night. Yes, that's what it was.

And so anti-Semitic and so much of a nightmare. Yes, I blame the rabbi, blame the rabbi. Even the Mrs. Mrs. Pilate was coming out with clean towels. What's the bullshit? Pilate was so vicious. He was removed by a subsequent emperor because he was killing everybody. It was horrible.

He was really horrible. So it was him, the Romans are to blame, not the not the not the rabbis. You know, he was a little a little bit of rambunctious to Jesus as a rabbi. But, you know, he was a great rabbi and he was teaching there. He was teaching the compassion of God, you know. Yes. Anyway, anyway, it would encourage me is those kids subliminally have been forced to sit there and they're going to get as far away from this ridiculous belief trap

as they can when they grow up. And they'll try to have a little bit fun at life. That's right. And they're not going to see this as an M crap, you know. And in Gibson, it's so freaked out himself personally. Even when Jesus is resurrected and all healed and he's flying in the sky, he still looks pissed off. He's annoyed.

You know, and I really love him. And you know, this is a great scene. I'm coming back to Buddhism. Let me just come back for one second. What you're doing. You realize that Dalai Lama doesn't. He's not teaching what he's teaching and doing what he's doing. I was trying to give a by a desire for you to be a Buddhist or me.

He doesn't want us. He wants us to be stay in our own culture with our grandma's religion. He has a big thing about it. Wow. Buddhism is so useful is that we can use it without going into a new kind of denominational freak out where we've got to be that it's because we think it's a religion. Those are these are this is high inward inner science and inner technology.

Right. Like to matching the sophistication of the Facebook and Twitter and the computer and zoom and everything. This is the inner one. How to develop these inner summaries of this of our inner computer, our wet wear computer, our wet, wet, wet, wet disc. And and so therefore it can be used without disrupting the cultural matrix where grandma is happy.

Yes. And you know, I know, you know, at first when I because I was annoyed by the Christian church, so at first I was kind of like, oh, yeah, Buddhism is much better. I want to go and the dynamic kept pushing me not to be like that. And then finally, and then I was a monk and then since then. And then finally one day I had this epiphany where I happened to switch on the tube to some people on TV standing up for Jesus.

I think it was black church, maybe. And you know, they're really getting into it. You know, like, yeah, and then I was thinking they are standing up for compassion for a divine emanation of compassion. Yes, whatever the theology might be. But that's what they're doing. And they get so nice. They just go, Jesus, I said, why on earth would I want them to have to call out

and be born again for somebody whose name they couldn't pronounce? Right. I'm a little kid. No, yeah, I don't I can't say any of the any of the any of the Tibetan teachers names or Shanti, David, that's it. I can say Dilco Kinsey, Rinpoche, I remember that. Chokin, Trump or Rinpoche. But that's it is I'm listening to this and it's talking about the 18th century

Tibetan is the point. The inner science, you know, Buddhism would everywhere among vast populations in India, even India has many nations, your hundred nations. And then China and Japan, Korea, all of them in Central Asia, even Iran, all over the place. And because they didn't interfere like that. Although it would if someone had a nasty view of God, that God was like, wanted to make them supreme and they should go and kill everybody who didn't believe what they think, then they would learn if the Buddhist technology would

get them to adapt to modify the technology and the theology in such a way that they wouldn't make it anti somebody else. Right. Yes, that's what it's viral. It affects the DNA. It gets I don't want infections the wrong word, but it gets into the DNA of things. It shows this this process. And I love that.

You know, I to be honest, I don't want to be an Episcopalian. My grandmother was an Episcopalian. I went to bed in Buddhism. I want to, you know, I want to like think about Avalokiteshivara rather than like try to understand the transition and they are same. They are the compassion of the universe, the great mother, you know. You know, I have this rabbi who sent me a great book where he claims he's proven. I haven't read it.

I don't have time to read it yet. He's proven that the name of Yahweh, Y H W H is actually he who the secret name of Yahweh is he who. And he says that that is the male and female pronouns. So that the Shekhinah was one with God in the ancient, most ancient level of the tradition, he says, in the esoteric level. So that so there is a God, the mother, in other words, he's making. He's written a book like that.

That's he's excited. He heard that I was interested in that and I didn't like the idea that the Shekhinah, at least she comes back on the Sabbath for the Jews. But the Christians only have as a Holy Ghost. Yeah, they don't have a mom. Yeah, you know, because the Romans did that. I'm telling you, the Christianity got a little twisted by the Roman. It sure did.

I mean, I guess you have Gnosticism. You have what is it called? Yeah, they killed a lot of Gnostics. And they buried there. Now we're just digging them up. You know, they buried them and hid them because they were destroying them. Yeah, they wanted to fit with their authority and their domination. And the Caesar, you know, I'll send you something really bizarre

that not to get too off track, but I did just it's funny because you're sort of alluding to the East Indian trading company that were the dominators who were the ones I'm thinking that were, you know, sort of forcing the opium on the British. The East Indian trading company, the East Indian trading company. They were the ones who were slavers. They're the ones who came up with on Wall Street. The contract for shorting the stuff that just happened in the news. They're going to innovate it the way to profit from failure.

They're the ones who are poisoning everyone with opium. East Indian trading company. I will send you their logo has the Gnostic Demiurge on it. The exact drawing of the Gnostic Demiurge, the control creature. Send me that. I'll send it to you. It's so wild. You love Robert Anton Wilson.

I did too. I really like that too. He's the best. Yeah, I don't mean to get off track. You know, that's not in the track. You know, that that guy, Dan Brown, he sort of uses all those things in his novels and everything. And that's OK, popularized in a certain way. It's I like it as a hobby.

You know, it's cool. But I don't want to miss out. Next book, though, Dan Brown is going to have to mummify Tom Hanks. Which would be fine. It would be fine. It would be really great. That's right. So fun, Duncan.

Thank you. Thank you. I have one other thing. I want to come back to one of your other questions. I have one thing for you. Thank you. Party gift. OK.

And that is I have something I call a consolation prize. OK. You remember that? I think I mentioned it once in Maui, but but I'm not in detail, probably. Because they weren't as learned as you. But the whole group. But, you know, this I awarded to myself. It's paid primarily, but then I'm sharing it at my elder age.

This consolation prize has to do with I've been 50 years in this life, doing all this stuff. And I'm still kind of a turkey, you know, in my own way now and then. And I lose it or whatever. Although I'm getting better. My wife always says, yeah, you're improving a little bit here and there. Back slide. I want to step forward, too, back, too forward. Like that.

So but the thing is this, I've gotten far enough, though. That I am certain I'm going to be a Buddha. I have no doubt about it. And I will be I will enjoy Nirvana. And I'll be in that infinite moment, yes, eternal moment, which doesn't ignore the past and the future. It incorporates the multiple futures and the multiple path. I know that I'm going to do that.

And then this is the amazing thing. I figured this out, you know, in the Buddha's story, just before he attains Nirvana under the tree, he has two previous insights. And one of them is he remembers all his infinite previous lives, yes, which means he remembers being every conceivable type of being, yes, including any kind of sci-fi being they might have cooked up on Star Trek. Yes, not just on this planet. He was in because it's beginningless, infinite.

He remembers all of them. Bam, like that. Then he suddenly realizes that he was entangled with every other being, infinite members, all that time, infinite, right? So then he knows all their previous things. And then he can specifically see each one where they've been locally and recently in the last 50 lifetimes or something, right? And then he looks forward and he sees all the possibilities for all of them.

And he knows he'll he's cool now. So he will be he can be many beings for each of them. Yes. So he's just. And then, but what about it? I don't want to go further there. What I'm saying is the reason he was able to remember those previous lives, which we can't, is because we don't remember them because we suffered.

I was suffering enough now. We don't need to remember when I broke my leg in a previous life. I don't need that. But the point is, he realized he'd always been in Nirvana. That life, the life energy itself is Nirvana. It's love. Life is love and bliss. And he'd always been, even if he was breaking his leg,

even if he was a vegetarian dinosaur being by a T-Rex, he was in Nirvana because the life energy of the T-Rex and himself and every cell in his body was bliss. So he could never remember it all because he was watching the movie on the projected on the screen of infinite bliss void indivisible of his own past. Right? Yes. So what that means is now we were there. Actually, we're really feeling happy because we are

joining souls, you know, thanks to Ramdhalas and Guruji and Dalai Lama and Shakyamune and whatever. Yes. So we're happy right now. We're really happy and because of our wives scolding us. And and that's also really helpful. Yes. And it really is. And so we're very happy. But we're a little frustrated.

We're not kind. We're not Buddha. Yes, we think, we think, OK. But when we do get to be Buddha, even if it's a hundred lifetimes, a million lifetime, we will remember this time. We will revise our experience of this time and we'll be Buddha now. Understand? Yes.

That's a collection. That's the consolation that you asked about how to hook up to that future. You follow? So I can only do it with a kind of trust in the universe. I love a loving face. Reasonable, though. Reasonable, not a blind face, not against reason, reasonable by all physics and all subatomic and all Copenhagen Declaration and then Einstein.

The wonderful things, even the materialist, nailist, no soul, people, scientists have discovered about matter, yes, in the quantum computers and so on. Wonderful. So that's a consolation anyway. I want to consolation. That's the prize. That's not a consolation.

That's the door prize, man. That's it. That's you just made a wormhole. That was a word you created a wormhole out of this Congress. No, it is, it is. So now we can go down and we can pick up the shattered glass of the picture frame with a nice new glass and I've been wanting to fix that thing for a while now. Kiss the hand of our Valentine.

Yes, I lost my temper. No, no, no, no. Yes. You're the one. Blah, blah, blah. I want to join Tokyo. So cool. What a joy.

Thank you for this. I will cherish this conversation for the rest of my life. Thank you so much. Me too, Duncan. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Bob. And let's let's encourage it. Let's encourage

Oh, why do I block the name? You know, in Ohio now, our dear friend, Ragu, Ragu, Ragu. Let's encourage Ragu and all those guys to let's let's get let's get, you know, how are you going? Or maybe there's a better hotel or a better island. I don't know, you know, could be, you know, let's let's try to have a really satsang, you know? Yes, OK, great.

Let's do it. I'll call him right now. Thank you so much for this. It's so nice to chat with you. Thank you. Thank you. That was Bob Thurman, everybody. You can go to his website.

That's BobThurman.com. Check him out. Get in to the Thurman Nexus. Much thanks to our wonderful sponsors. Much thanks to our patrons. Remember, you can subscribe to the DTFH at patreon.com forward slash DTFH. I love y'all and I will see you next week. We have some beautiful things cooking for the DTFH and I look forward to sharing

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