March 10, 2021 • 43 mins
Did Ryan Chambers vanish in India in 2005 due to the influence of the mysterious phenomena, India Syndrome? Or were other forces at play...
India Syndrome is examined by a psychiatric expert in New Delhi, India who assesses whether the cryptic phenomena is a myth or legitimate risk
Ryan Chambers Show Notes:
Dr. Harshit Salian ~ Psychiatrist in New Delhi, India
Dr. Willoughby Britton ~ Assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University
Link to First Do No Harm: Foundational Competencies for Working Skillfully with Meditation-Related Challenges.
David Hammerbeck ~ Academic and Author
Ryan Chambers, Missing in India Facebook Page ~ Access to Jock Chambers information is listed here. Please contact him with any information you might have on Ryan’s disappearance.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans. It's August twenty fourth, two thousand and five.
It's sweltering hot in India. Mosquitoes swarm even by the
banks of the River Ganges and the holy city of Raishikesh.
The sun rises over the river, casting a shadow on
ed nikitin Ashram. The gates of the Ashram open slowly.
(00:33):
Out walks a boy, brown hair, pins of gaze. He's
not wearing a shirt or shoes and looks out of
place next to the elaborate Indian architecture. Barefoot, he wanders
down the road away from the Ashram. He's headed somewhere
where we'll never know. This will be the last sighting
(00:54):
of Ryan Chambers, but it won't be the last time
you'll hear his name. Ryan Chambers is the first poster
child of India syndrome, a controversial psychosis that presumably affects
Westerners confronted by the culture shock, spiritual influence, and destabilizing
dangers of India. But was it enlightenment Ryan was seeking
(01:17):
that ultimately set him astray. A child's death is agony
for any parent, but to have a child disappear without
a trace as a whole different kind of torture. Diane Chambers,
the mother of the missing twenty one year old Australian
Ryan Chambers, shares a term for this kind of loss,
(01:39):
ambiguous loss. It's a loss but you don't know whether
it's a permanent loss or a part time loss, or
whether you've lost them forever or you haven't, or you know,
like it's just or what is the loss? There's no
evidence of the loss. There is no evidence. Ryan's body
has never been found, and his having disappeared in India
(02:01):
adds an additional layer of stress to the situation, which
was armed when Diane reported Ryan missing to the Federal
police and she was taking all the details and she said,
oh a lot. Where did he go missing? And I
said in India? She said, oh India, of all places,
not India. And I feel like, so I don't need
(02:22):
to hear that. I know it's hard enough as it is.
I don't need you confirming it for me. India is
difficult to navigate. It's dense, crowded, there's a language and
culture barrier, and it just operates under a different set
of rules than the West. As Aaron, Ryan's brother points out,
(02:42):
it's a culture shock. Even if you're prepared for it.
The thing I was say from the moment I stepped
off the plane, it's just the sensory oakload. There is noise,
there is rubbish, There are beggars, There are cows in
the middle of the street eating like standing on mounds
of rubbish, eating plastic bags. Cars everywhere, people coming up
(03:03):
to you that you don't know if friendly, who want
to rub you. As we discussed in the last episode,
this culture shock or sensory overload, as Aaron puts, it
had an effect on Ryan, an effect that could have
pushed him over the edge. Ryan's is one of the
many stories we'll share of people who were presumably seeking
(03:24):
a spiritual edge in India and then disappeared. But first
let's further investigate the syndrome associated with these tragedies India syndrome.
Is it a myth or a legitimate risk. We spoke
to a vetted psychiatrist and Delhi to find out. To
be honest, I have not come across the doom at all.
(03:48):
Probably was used by the French psychiatrist register or This
is doctor Harshett. He's worked as a psychiatrist for the
past ten years and hospitals in Bangalore, Racia, Cash where
Ryan went missing, and Delhi. And like he said, he's
not come across the tremendous syndrome at all. He attributes
(04:08):
the term to reach us a rome. Different psychiatrist we
talked about last episode who coined the term. It's eight
thirty pm in Delhi. Doctor Harschet is taking a break
from his busy shift to speak with me. His voice
bounces off the white tiles of a sterile horse program.
It is a miss number to be said that it's
India syndrome. I would rather say it is a syndrome
(04:32):
of illnesses which are seen in migrants or tourists. Migration
as such is known to cause a lot of stress
on people. If you look, if you look into data,
be it in America or in the Europe, you would
see that migrant population have higher number of mental illnesses
(04:54):
compared to their home state population. Let's say someone from
Africa comes to us, he may have a higher chance
of mental illness compared to his own population in Africa.
It is nothing to do with his genetics. It is
due to the stress of the migration. So the other
(05:16):
thing is the cultural shock they receive when they come
to that place. So doctor Harschett does believe it's possible
for foreigners to develop a psychosis due to travel and
culture shock. But labeling at India syndrome isn't accurate, So
why has this term gone on? The term is quite catchy,
(05:37):
so people would obviously would love to hold on to it.
It is something like Stockholm syndrome. Stockholm syndrome as such
is about someone who is having post traumatic stress disorder,
but then if you look at it, it's completely taken
off by that name. Stockholm syndrome was a term first
(05:57):
used by the media in nineteen seventy three when four
hostages who were taken during a bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden,
defended their captors, and though the syndrome is rare, according
to the FBI, about five percent of hostage victims show
evidence of Stockholm syndrome. It's still featured in police hostage
negotiation courses, but as one chief negotiator said, I would
(06:21):
be hard pressed to say that Stockholm syndrome exists. Sometimes
in the field of psychology, people are looking for cause
and effect when it isn't there. But Stockholm syndrome is
still a widely used term in the media just like
India syndrome. See, any article to be published needs to
have some eye candy, needs to have some eye candy.
(06:45):
So you have something which is sense nationalizing that it's
India as such has been known as the land of
mystics and mysteries in the West. So when you put
something like India syndrome, obviously you are catching eyeballs. He's right.
As an American, articles and books that featured the phenomenon
(07:06):
affiliated with people who go missing in India definitely caught
my attention. But I've also gotten to know the families
of those missing people. And in Ryan Chamber's case, it's
just inaccurate to assume a syndrome had anything to do
with his disappearance. He woke up in a train station
in India, had no idea who he was, where he
was when he was That's Aaron Chambers, Ryan's brother, And no,
(07:29):
unfortunately he's not talking about finding Ryan. He's explaining and
experienced journalist David McClean had in two thousand and two
in India that he shared on an episode of This
American Life. According to McClean, he woke up on a
trained platform in India with no idea of who he was,
no passport, no money, no identity. He was taken to
(07:52):
a mental hospital by police for he started to hallucinate
so severely he had to be tied down. After hearing
about mcclean's experience, Ryan's bizarre behavior before his disappearance a
lot more sense tod Aaron. His mind would be basically
wiped and somehow got in contact with people he knew
(08:14):
and then his family and they got him home and
it was his story about him like that journey in
him rebuilding his life, and he basically puts it down
to the anti malarial drug he was on, which was larium.
Ryan was taking the same anti malarial drug larium. Well
he was in India, So that's I guess what really
(08:34):
sort of hit me as like, wow, maybe that's the
reason for this, because you know that they can always
be speculation. Was Ryan seeker? Did he do drugs there?
You know? It was he prone to some mental illness
that we didn't know about. I don't know, maybe and
maybe maybe larium and its potential psychotic side effects, like
maybe that has something to do it. And it just
(08:55):
that seems to me like the most likely scenario if
I look at it and I think that's where I
probably sit on what actually happened. I'd say it's down
to that than anti malarial drug. That's where I've settled.
Larium is the brand name from map Laquine, which was
the antimalarial drug of choice for soldiers in the British
Army deployed in certain areas like India, Southeast Asia, Sub
(09:18):
Saharan Africa where they may be at risk of contracting
from mosquitoes, but the Military Police concluded that it should
be a drug of last resort after an investigation into
reports of severe side effects which include visual and auditory hallucinations,
acute anxiety, depression, unusual behavior and suicide. I met an
(09:40):
Australian guy when I was there the first time who
was with Ryan the night before he left and said
he was running around the Ashram grounds trying to fly.
And then you look at his journal in the last
couple of pages, this big scrawl across the last two
pages in colored markers, just saying something along the lines
if I'm missing, I'm not dead. I need to free minds,
(10:01):
but first I need to free my own. And it
look like an alternate person an Olidia written it or
someone else altogether, and apparently he couldn't sleep. Probably he
went into someone else's room in the ashram, not John's,
but another person's and asked if he could stay there
the night because he was just afraid of something. The
guy said, no, go back to your own room. Diane
share is more information about Ryan's encounter with this guy,
(10:23):
one of the last people to see him before he vanished.
He said that he had an appointment to see a
yogi that was staying at the ashram, and apparently he's
the guy that when he went, he must have gone
back and met with him, and he asked him if
he could stay in his room that night, and the
(10:45):
guy said yes, and then he said no. See, this
is what's telling me that Ryan was mentally unstable at
the time he was looking. He was calling out for help.
He was looking for help. He was looking for somewhere
to something to anchor him, and it didn't happen. From
these stories, it's possible that Ryan was displaying the severe
(11:08):
side effects of larium, acute anxiety, visual hallucinations, unusual behavior, unfortunately,
maybe even suicide. And a two fifteen article in The Independent,
it was reported that the British Ministry of Defense had
been accused of knowingly risking the mental health of its
(11:28):
own soldiers after new figures showed that nearly one thousand
British servicemen and women have required psychiatric treatment after taking larium,
and in the States, larium was most famously investigated after
four soldiers from Fort Bragg who took the antimalarial drug
while serving in Afghanistan killed their wives in two thousand
(11:50):
and two, even though in two thousand and nine, to
United States military stopped prescribing larium to the majority of
its soldiers. In two thousand and twelve, staff Sergeant Robert
Bales pleaded guilty to killing sixteen Afghan and civilians while
he was on the drug. When we talk about larium,
we're talking about big pharma, which wields a lot of power,
(12:14):
So these detrimental side effects aren't exposed until they've affected
so many people the danger of the drug can no
longer be concealed. In two thousand and one, a double
blind study done in the Netherlands was published showing that
sixty seven percent of people who took larium experienced one
or more adverse effects and six percent had side effects,
(12:36):
so severe they required medical attention. So now there are
stories out there about the potential dangers of larium and books, articles,
and programs like sixty Minutes that are featuring them. The
brand Larium is no longer sold in the United States,
but that's just a brand name. Mefloquine, the actual antimalarial drug,
(13:01):
is still available and commonly prescribed in the US. Since
twenty thirteen, the US Food and Drug Administration added a
warning to the prescription label regarding the potential for permanent
neuropsychiatric side effects that might continue even after you stop
using the drug. This is medical speak for permanent brain damage.
(13:24):
And other clinical write ups about methyliquine aka larium, it's
noted that the drug should be used with caution and
patience with a previous history of depression or mental illness.
I've had a belief right from the beginning, not that
I realized it necessarily before he left, but when you backtrack,
(13:45):
lots of things I think he tainted on the board
of a mental illness. These clinical warnings cautioning patients with
mental illness or depression came out eight years after Ryan disappeared,
so no one, including Ryan's family, could have prepared for
what happened to him in India. Aaron believes the side
effects of larium led to a brother psychotic break and disappearance,
(14:08):
but Jack and Diane aren't completely sold on Larry I'm
being the cause of Ryan's disappearance. After three investigations, one documentary,
and years searching for their son, the Chambers don't want
to close the door on any speculations. But maybe just one.
There ever a moment where you thought he had sort
(14:28):
of just left his leg bye for me. No, no,
but that's only that's only instinctively, you know, I did
for short times. Yeah, yeah, yeah, nah. But he might
might have been a situation where he will leave it
(14:49):
wouldn't contact us, but he's so close to his brothers
that wouldn't be the case. And now fifteen years well, no,
why in the world do I think that? So, the
Chambers don't believe Ryan is out there after fifteen years
trying to free minds on some spiritual quest. Though after
he was reported missing, there were multiple sightings of Ryan
around India which were investigated by the family and unfortunately
(15:13):
led nowhere. Ryan is still officially missing. His body has
never been found, but Kundenegi, who was part of Rishikesh's
local police force investigating Ryan's disappearance. Has been quoted saying
that the Ganges, the Holy river running through Rishikesh, was
especially high when Ryan went missing, so if Ryan had drowned,
(15:35):
the high water and intense current of the river might
have had something to do with there being no evidence
of his body full disclosure. The Chambers didn't get much
help from the authorities in India during their multiple investigations.
I think the place's job is to rule out the
fact of it being a homicide. Yeah, really didn't have
(15:55):
any evolvement, and we looked in search. Basically from their
thorough search that expanned years with one of them instigation
captured and the two eleven documentary Missing in the Land
of Gods, which you can access on the Ryan Chambers
Missing in India Facebook page, Jock and Diane have been
(16:16):
able to piece together information on what might have happened
to Ryan's body at the time Ryan went missing, if
he had of drowned in the Ganges River because they
opened the barrages, they opened the barrages to prevent the flooding,
So if he had drowned, his body just would have
washed right down the river. In two thousand and five,
(16:37):
a team checked out all of the river barridges, offshoots,
and flood overflow areas. In total, the Ganges River was
searched on three occasions, but as Diane points out, the
baradges were open when Ryan disappeared, so instead of being
caught in the barrage gates like most bodies are, Ryan's
body would have flowed right down the river, potentially washing
(17:00):
up on a bank somewhere or being dragged out. I've
heard that lots of bodies of pulled from the Ganges,
and conversations Dad's had with people said that they generally
don't take photos of people that aren't Indian, So this
is an issue. If Ryan's body was found and because
he's not Indian, there was no picture taken as evidence,
(17:22):
then nobody would ever know. We'll hear from someone in
a later episode who experienced this firsthand, but for now,
it's important to think about this. If the authorities only
take pictures of drowned Indians, what happens to the bodies
or any evidence of non Indians or drowned foreigners, And
why aren't there pictures also taken? I imagine if you've
(17:44):
got lots of foreigners coming over and going missing, meeting
an untimely end. That's kind of home tourism. In other words,
a dead foreigner isn't good for tourism, but a missing
foreigner Yeah, And I guess you think about it, there's
a bit of a mystique about someone going missing, right,
like what have they gone seeking? And what are they?
(18:06):
You know, have they reached this enlightenment? Have they have
they become? You know, are they now one of these
kind of mystical people in India? Like yeah, that's very
very different too. They died, Yeah, I guess that probably
adds to the mystique of the place in a way.
A missing person builds mystique, and mysteries can be seductive,
(18:30):
but they can also lead to inaccurate theories, like India syndrome.
But India syndrome is just that a theory, but that
theory has been tagged onto a real psychosis that could
affect foreigners and non foreigners alike in India. Those seekers
might be more susceptible to it. India syndrome is not
(18:55):
technically a thing, because it's not an officially recognized disease,
but the psychosis that it's inaccurately labeled. Is a thing.
As doctors explained to me, Foreigners who experience extreme culture shock,
illicit drug use, or have mental illness in their history
and quit their meds to go to India looking for
alternative medicine or a lifestyle change could potentially experience a
(19:19):
psychotic break. But what's most alarming is psychotic breaks occur
in some of the most popular places in circumstances that I,
as a seeker of sought out and it felt safe
to me. Here's talk to her share again. A lot
of these people come to learn yoga. A lot of
these people come to learn meditation. People do have misconception
(19:42):
about yoga in the sense yoga includes exercises as well
as meditation. Now, a lot of people who do intense
meditation that I'm talking about the mental aspect of it.
I'm not talking about the physical aspect of it. I'm
not talking about the exercises. Let's say something like chakra.
(20:02):
These are all exercises. There is intense medica also done
a part of yogic meditation. Now, when people go into
intense meditation beat Indian meditation or European meditation, it has
been seen that they are more prone to develop psychosis or,
like you said, bipolar effective disorder. In fact, I have
(20:24):
seen few cases Indians themselves who have want to for
some spiritual discourses where they have had some ten day
intense meditation and they have come to me with depression.
Doctor Herschet's words echo what we heard from Scott Kearney
who told us about the adverse effects meditation had on
a student MLA. So basically, meditation doesn't only help focus, stress,
(20:49):
pain really for give you an overall zen, but as
doctor will Be Britain, Assistant professor of psychiatry and human
behavior at Brown University notes in a Yoga Journal article,
meditation can also unearth unpleasant emotions, painful memories, or physical
mental disturbances that can be unsettling at best and debilitating
(21:11):
at worst. She shares a story about working as a
resident in two thousand and six at an impatient psychiatric
hospital in Arizona and witnessing two people who were hospitalized
after a ten day meditation retreat. She looked for scientific
research to explain this and came up short, so she
started to informally ask meditation teachers about the issues they'd encountered.
(21:35):
And realized negative reactions to meditation were common, and it
was evident that a lot of people knew about these
potentially dangerous effects and weren't talking about it, which Britain
attributes to the multibillion dollar mindfulness industry exposing the dark
side of meditation. It's about for business. Doctor Harshitt, however,
(21:57):
is an open book about what happens to the brain
during meditation and what could potentially lead to a dangerous
experience when you are in a trance or when you're
doing intense meditation. One thing is there is a lot
of cognitively, you are realizing a lot of things about
your life, okay, and other things that a lot of
(22:19):
neurotransmitter change is happening, just like you would know that
a lot of yogis can stay for longer periods. You
can say in a suspended animation where they don't eat food,
they breathe lesser, their heart rates slows down. These are
(22:40):
all because of the neurotransmitters of our body, which they
are able to control. They are trained from years or decades.
You can say, but someone let's say me, if I
go down there and I do that, and I'm not
trained enough and I go into an intense meditation goals
for ten days fifteen days and probably it may affect
(23:03):
So not being primed for intense meditation could lead to
an adverse effect. In twenty seventeen, doctor Britton did a
study where she looked at nearly one hundred interviews with
meditation teachers, experts, and practitioners of Western Buddhist practices who
described their meditation related experiences as challenging, distressing, or functionally impairing.
(23:26):
Eighty eight percent of the meditators in the study are
reported that these meditation experiences had an impact on their
lives beyond their meditation sessions. Seventy three percent indicated moderate
to severe impairment, which means they're meditating prompted a reaction
or result that kept them from living their normal daily lives.
Seventeen percent reported feeling suicidal, and another seventeen percent required
(23:51):
inpatient hospitalization for psychosis due to meditation. The research showed
that these distressing experiences were not limited to people who
had a history of mental illness, though trauma survivors can
be a purely susceptible to the adverse effects of meditation
because it forces them to lean into their emotions as
(24:12):
opposed to avoiding or compartmentalizing them. This leaning end can
retrigger their trauma. I have to say this as a meditator.
I don't think meditation is bad. I'm just highlighting rarely
discussed issues that bring awareness to a practice that's presumed
to have only positive effects. Meditation is good, but you
(24:33):
should know which type of meditation is good for you.
There are multiple types of meditations. Transcendental meditation is quite
used a lot, even in therapist So my point is
not all meditation is bad. You should know what you
need to choose. So unless you have a learned teacher,
(24:55):
it's foolish to go for it, is what my beliefies.
Is there anything that any meditation you can tell us
now that we might want to stare care of. I
am not an expert on meditation and yoga. I'm a
medical doctor, so I would be the wrong person to
suggest anything. There are some upcoming stories will be covering
or the dangers of meditation will be suspect. So this
(25:17):
conversation isn't over, but my conversation with doctor her share is.
And before you signed off, here one final thought on
India syndrome. Another thing what I would say is not
only about mental illness, but if you look at it
with terms to the West, the religious values and the
cultural values in the West is crumbling, which is true
(25:41):
by the number of people who are winning off religion.
If you look at the West, so somewhere people are
searching for a truer meaning to their life. When they
don't find it back home, they tend to go somewhere else.
It's just like the famous proverb the grass is greener
(26:04):
on the other side. Doctor Arschet's sentiment resonates with me.
Our religious values in the West are crumbling, and I'm
one of the people weaning off my Episcopalian upbringing and
Catholic fascination to find my own comprehension of a higher source,
the universe, God, whatever you want to call it, most
(26:24):
would understand it broadly as spirituality. It's fluid, not constrained
by doctrine or organized through a system of power. Spirituality
can be what you want it to be. Is your
own unique journey. But as we've heard, there's no promise
you won't be led astray. According to the Chambers, Ryan
(26:50):
didn't identify as a seeker, but India still draws seekers
in droves in search of spiritual connection, quests, and awakenings.
There's one seeker, Justin Alexander Schettler, who would more aptly
call himself an adventurer and nomad, whose spiritual curiosity and
trust in someone who could lead him to enlightenment ultimately
(27:14):
led him astray. Before we dig into that story, it's
important to know why Westerners like Justin are drawn to
India's mystique. Here is academic David Hammerback. Personally, I think
that there is no such thing as India's syndrome. I
do think, however, that there are India because of this
sort of cultural alert that it has, which is I
think really become doubled or troubled or quadrupled since the
(27:37):
nineteen sixties, and the sort of association of India and
Hinduism and all sorts of aspects of South Asia and
Central Asia with counterculture. I think that that led to
even more interest by certain groups of people, mostly younger
people who've been disaffected by society and it seems to
(27:58):
offer a different way of living. According to Hammerback, Westerners
have been romanticizing India's mystic alert for more than a millennia.
This obsession dates back to ancient Rome and Greece. I
think that there's so many of these really tantalizing aspects
of India. And it was fabled going back to the
Greeks as being this sort of extraordinary place where other
(28:21):
things happen, where are different kinds of beings. Even Herodotus,
the Greek historian, wrote about there was like anthesize of
dogs and humans. There were many many, you know, three
or four times the size of normal people, all sorts
of strange things. So I think even going back to
like Alexander the Great One as far as India, he
went there partially to conquer, but also because he was
(28:43):
drawn by these stories of the foreign otherness of India,
and part of that is the mysticism. There's definitely obviously
a mystical tradition in India. Hammerberg Snapali's wife is Hindu,
so he's felt tied the religion for the past fifteen
years and believes Hinduism plays into the Western fascination with India.
I think they're drawn to the mysticism of of Hinduism
(29:07):
because in many ways it forms such a clean break
from the culture of West and in many many aspects
from the way you practice, to the way you live,
to the food you eat, to the iconography you're surrounded
with it, to the community you're in. But a fascination
can come with suspicion. We heard earlier from Karni about
(29:29):
the detrimental, if not dangerous, effects India can have on Westerners,
which Hammerback calls the destabilizing dangers of India. There has
been a series of text novels and other things Britain
which show that India can have a detrimental effect. But
it's autocomis means like it grows out of the soil itself.
(29:51):
There's a number of romantisist Gothic texts in the early
nineteenth century in which just happens where you know, Westerners
are having to do battle with these strange beings that
come around almost always at night. And there's all these
other tropes such as the Thugs, which is part of
India as well. The Thugs were an organized gang of
professional assassins sometimes described as the world's first mafia, who
(30:15):
operated from the thirteenth to nineteenth centuries in India. Members
of the fanatical religious group, who were infamous for their
ritualistic assassinations, carried out in the name of the fierce
Hindu goddess Collie. Were known as thugs. This is where
the word thug comes from in America. Though the thugs
were a real threat, Hammerback doesn't believe that India the
(30:39):
country is a threat and chalks sees destabilizing dangers up
to virtual Orientalism, which is a blend of received truths, stereotypes,
but most of all, the media's repackaging of India's mystics,
spiritual and exotic into a salacious story that will catch
and hold someone's attention. But he doesn't necessarily think the
(31:00):
media is trying to exploit India. I think it comes
from a lack of comprehension under standing of the religions
of India. This includes a flam and how they cohabitate,
and how you know what their specific practices are and
their beliefs. I think it's easy to create our own
narrative around the unknown, in this case India. It's also
(31:21):
common to view the unknown or someone or something different
or other than us as dangerous, which might be why
these culture bound syndromes, including India syndrome, were established. I
want to get in Keytis thoughts someone born and raised
in India on her country's deep rooted spirituality. India was
ruled by people of different religions, people who came from
(31:43):
different parts of the world, which is why it saw
such a huge mix of religions and therefore it is
seen as a religious country. So I think there is
so much diversity that it's hard to kind of escape
some form of religion or some form of spirituality or
mysticism if anyone comes to flor India. I assumed India
(32:07):
was primarily Hindu, but it's actually a melting part for religions,
which according to India's religion census, includes Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism,
and various offshoots of these religions depending on the location
of the followers. So India is spiritually prosperous, which in
Kita believes is a draw for westerners, I mean the West.
(32:29):
It has a lot in terms of material resources, right,
So if you're coming from the West to India, people
would think, well, why would you leave that country which
has so much to give you in terms of wealth
and come to a place here which is struggling when
it comes to resources. So it must be something that
(32:51):
is im material and therefore it would probably be something spiritual.
But apparently the raw for Westerners is not only spiritual.
My grandfather the years ago, he said, Oh, I read
somewhere that lot of Westerners are looking for Indian wife
because you know, Indians have such good family values and
(33:12):
all their marriages are ending up in divorces. And that's
why they are now coming to India looking for Indian
women to marry. Why that's awesome, but yeah, he said
it with a lot of pride. Westerners are drawn to
the spiritual depths and strong values India offers. But like
us in the West or an increasing number of people
(33:32):
identify as spiritual rather than religious. India's new generation is
also rejecting their country's archaic religions and read a finding
spirituality for themselves. I was asking a Hindu preach something
and I said, there was a notice on the temple
in a village in western India, and I said it
says women are not allowed. Why is that so? And
(33:56):
he says, oh, you know, this is Hanuman and he
always stayed a bachelor, so he's not he doesn't like
interacting with women. Hanuman is a Hindu god, usually represent
it as a monkey, And I said, but God is
open to all. He didn't answer my question. He said,
where there is faith, there are no questions in my generation. Again,
(34:16):
when I talk about there is this kind of dissociation
and atachment with mainstream religion. There's also an attraction towards mysticism,
and a lot towards mystic poets who do not see
God as this being to be feared, or do not
(34:38):
believe in this extremely hierarchical relationship between God and human
I mean, God would be more like a conscience. God
would be more like a friend. And that is the
kind of thing younger people relate to more rather than
this kind of scary authority imposed. I mean people, young
(34:59):
people want to do something because they understand it to
be right, not because they are told they would be
punished in hell. They would not be talking about rights
and rituals and practices. They would be talking about humanity,
because that is less about conducting certain rituals and more
(35:20):
about meditating, more about the journey of the self, more
about understanding the higher powers rather than fearing the higher powers.
And where do Westerners go for these spiritual practices when
they hit India. I don't see as many foreigners in
(35:41):
temples if I just look at Delhi, but I would
see many more of them in yoga studios. So you
can say that they are maybe practices associated with both.
But then yoga would be a practice where the self
is the center. Right, you do this and you meditate
and then think about God. But if I go to
(36:03):
a temple, I would say, okay, bio a land of flowers,
buy this packet of incenstics, by this holy threat, to
tie around a tree and then make this plate, offer
this to the idol, go around it five times, and
then take some of that holy water, drink it up,
and then you know your wish is supposedly hurt and
(36:23):
so on. So these are more external practice of the
violence is more of again what we were talking earlier,
of self reflection in a journey seeking inwards. So on.
We don't have time to break down India's handful of
religions and tie them Alti mysticism. Scholars have spent lifetimes
(36:43):
examining religions in the East and they're still figuring it out.
But what I took away from this conversation within Kita
is that there is a palpable sense of spirituality and
mysticism in India built on the foundation of a handful
of religions. But India's new generation is adapting their own
version of spirituality, which is a version Westerners can relate to,
(37:05):
as it's something they get a whitewashed version of in
their yoga studios and the States. But the mysticism of
India is still a draw and very real. But not
every story of a spiritual awakening ends in self discovery.
Justin Alexander Schuttler's ended in a different kind of discovery,
one that involved a police investigation. I'm thirty two and
(37:28):
last week I retired. Maybe retirement isn't the right word.
If there's a word that means I'm free to live
the life of my dreams, I'm that. That's a voice
over actor reading an excerpt from Justin's blog eight years ago.
As you can tell he's extreme. He cashed out his
roth Ira and spent the money on a Sony A
(37:49):
seven two camera to capture his escapades. And escapades is
a belittling word for the adventures Justin sought out. He
was a survivalist who in his youth studied the Apache Scouts,
who moved undetected through the desert and lived off the land.
He made his own native tools based on drawings he
did at New York's Museum of Natural History, and in
(38:10):
the summer of twenty fourteen, he put his survival skills
to the test trekking across the Himalaya and bet with
little more than sandals and a knife. He called himself
an NYC ninja and proves it with a photo on
Instagram of his silhouette against a misty New York City
backdrop six hundred feet in the air. He's standing on
(38:32):
some sort of railing, presumably on a building he's not
supposed to be climbing. There's another shot taken from a
cherry red crane looking down on New York city scape.
It makes me dizzy just looking at that photo. The
shot is seven hundred feet in the air. One false
move and he's done. Justin identified as a nomad and
(38:54):
shared his extreme experiences with his eleven thousand Instagram followers
and in a blog, Adventures of Justin, where he documented
his eighteen thousand mile trips the American West on his
Royal Enfield motorcycle and an experience he had living with
the indigenous tribe the Montoway and Indonesia, where he helped
(39:14):
make poison tipped arrows and wore a loincloth made from
tree bark. His photos, videos, and visceral journal entries are
intoxicating and they capture the feeling of the moment. And
when Justin turns the cameron himself, he's honestly as breathtaking
as a scenery he captures. He's an Adonis. Justin lives
(39:36):
and looks like a romanticized version of a legendary explorer
and as Mantra speaks to this, be kind and do
epic shit. But did he also romanticize the dangers of
living on the edge. In an online interview, an interviewer
asked Justin, who was an influencer before you could make
a living doing it? Why he goes by Justin Alexander
(39:58):
Supertramp on Facebook. His answer Chris McCanless. Chris McCanless, also
known by his nickname Alexander Supertramp, was an American hiker
who in nineteen ninety two sought solitude in the Alaskan
bush with minimal supplies and aspirations to live off the land.
He used an abandoned bus he found in the back
(40:19):
country as a makeshift shelter. The same bus were his
dead body, weighing only sixty seven pounds, was found six
months later. Chris died of starvation and the online interview
Justin finishes his thought on Chris McCanless, saying vagabonding and
living in the back country is a way to make
(40:41):
social life feel fresh. I'm not trying to cut myself
off from society like he was. I do have a
lot of respect for the guy that said I think
it's too bad we don't look at the many examples
of people who went into the wild and lived to
tell a great story. Justin documented so many stories in
(41:02):
his lifetime, but unfortunately he hasn't been able to tell
his last story. On August nineteenth, twenty sixteen, he wrote
his last blog entry from India's Pivardi Valley. In the blog,
he writes about a pilgrimage he is going to take
into the Himalayas to meditate. The last line reads, I
(41:24):
should return mid September, so if I'm not back by then,
don't look for me. Justin's story sounds like an Eastern
version of Into the Wild. The nineteen ninety six John
Krakauer book about Chris McCanless. Though McCanless vanished in the wilderness,
his body was found and that abandoned bus on Alaska's
(41:45):
Stampede trail, but Justin's body has never been found. Do
Justin meet the same fate as Chris? Or does Justin's
last sentiment, if I'm not back by then don't look
for me? Have anything to do with his disappearance. We'll
find out on the next episode of A stre If
(42:08):
you have any information or tips on Ryan chambers disappearance,
please reach out to Job Chambers at Jock joc K
dot Chambers C. H A. M. B. E. R. S
at gmail dot com. Also, if you're interested, check out
First Do No Harm, which is an online course that
(42:30):
breaks down the adverse effects of meditation. It's led by
doctor Willoughby Britton, who I mentioned in the episode, and
it involves a series of methods for managing these meditation
risks and negative outcomes. Astray is a production of School
of Humans and iHeartRadio. Today's episode of Astray, Ryan Chambers
was produced, written, and narrated by May Caroline Fodder and
(42:53):
Kita Nanda is my co producer and Gavi Watts is
our supervising producer. Astray was scored by Jason Shannon, with
sound design and mixed by Tunewelders. Executive producers are Brandon
bar Elsie Crowley and Brian Lavin. Special thanks to our
voiceover band, Gunter School of Humans
School of Humans. It's August twenty fourth, two thousand and five.
It's sweltering hot in India. Mosquitoes swarm even by the
banks of the River Ganges and the holy city of Raishikesh.
The sun rises over the river, casting a shadow on
ed nikitin Ashram. The gates of the Ashram open slowly.
(00:33):
Out walks a boy, brown hair, pins of gaze. He's
not wearing a shirt or shoes and looks out of
place next to the elaborate Indian architecture. Barefoot, he wanders
down the road away from the Ashram. He's headed somewhere
where we'll never know. This will be the last sighting
(00:54):
of Ryan Chambers, but it won't be the last time
you'll hear his name. Ryan Chambers is the first poster
child of India syndrome, a controversial psychosis that presumably affects
Westerners confronted by the culture shock, spiritual influence, and destabilizing
dangers of India. But was it enlightenment Ryan was seeking
(01:17):
that ultimately set him astray. A child's death is agony
for any parent, but to have a child disappear without
a trace as a whole different kind of torture. Diane Chambers,
the mother of the missing twenty one year old Australian
Ryan Chambers, shares a term for this kind of loss,
(01:39):
ambiguous loss. It's a loss but you don't know whether
it's a permanent loss or a part time loss, or
whether you've lost them forever or you haven't, or you know,
like it's just or what is the loss? There's no
evidence of the loss. There is no evidence. Ryan's body
has never been found, and his having disappeared in India
(02:01):
adds an additional layer of stress to the situation, which
was armed when Diane reported Ryan missing to the Federal
police and she was taking all the details and she said,
oh a lot. Where did he go missing? And I
said in India? She said, oh India, of all places,
not India. And I feel like, so I don't need
(02:22):
to hear that. I know it's hard enough as it is.
I don't need you confirming it for me. India is
difficult to navigate. It's dense, crowded, there's a language and
culture barrier, and it just operates under a different set
of rules than the West. As Aaron, Ryan's brother points out,
(02:42):
it's a culture shock. Even if you're prepared for it.
The thing I was say from the moment I stepped
off the plane, it's just the sensory oakload. There is noise,
there is rubbish, There are beggars, There are cows in
the middle of the street eating like standing on mounds
of rubbish, eating plastic bags. Cars everywhere, people coming up
(03:03):
to you that you don't know if friendly, who want
to rub you. As we discussed in the last episode,
this culture shock or sensory overload, as Aaron puts, it
had an effect on Ryan, an effect that could have
pushed him over the edge. Ryan's is one of the
many stories we'll share of people who were presumably seeking
(03:24):
a spiritual edge in India and then disappeared. But first
let's further investigate the syndrome associated with these tragedies India syndrome.
Is it a myth or a legitimate risk. We spoke
to a vetted psychiatrist and Delhi to find out. To
be honest, I have not come across the doom at all.
(03:48):
Probably was used by the French psychiatrist register or This
is doctor Harshett. He's worked as a psychiatrist for the
past ten years and hospitals in Bangalore, Racia, Cash where
Ryan went missing, and Delhi. And like he said, he's
not come across the tremendous syndrome at all. He attributes
(04:08):
the term to reach us a rome. Different psychiatrist we
talked about last episode who coined the term. It's eight
thirty pm in Delhi. Doctor Harschet is taking a break
from his busy shift to speak with me. His voice
bounces off the white tiles of a sterile horse program.
It is a miss number to be said that it's
India syndrome. I would rather say it is a syndrome
(04:32):
of illnesses which are seen in migrants or tourists. Migration
as such is known to cause a lot of stress
on people. If you look, if you look into data,
be it in America or in the Europe, you would
see that migrant population have higher number of mental illnesses
(04:54):
compared to their home state population. Let's say someone from
Africa comes to us, he may have a higher chance
of mental illness compared to his own population in Africa.
It is nothing to do with his genetics. It is
due to the stress of the migration. So the other
(05:16):
thing is the cultural shock they receive when they come
to that place. So doctor Harschett does believe it's possible
for foreigners to develop a psychosis due to travel and
culture shock. But labeling at India syndrome isn't accurate, So
why has this term gone on? The term is quite catchy,
(05:37):
so people would obviously would love to hold on to it.
It is something like Stockholm syndrome. Stockholm syndrome as such
is about someone who is having post traumatic stress disorder,
but then if you look at it, it's completely taken
off by that name. Stockholm syndrome was a term first
(05:57):
used by the media in nineteen seventy three when four
hostages who were taken during a bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden,
defended their captors, and though the syndrome is rare, according
to the FBI, about five percent of hostage victims show
evidence of Stockholm syndrome. It's still featured in police hostage
negotiation courses, but as one chief negotiator said, I would
(06:21):
be hard pressed to say that Stockholm syndrome exists. Sometimes
in the field of psychology, people are looking for cause
and effect when it isn't there. But Stockholm syndrome is
still a widely used term in the media just like
India syndrome. See, any article to be published needs to
have some eye candy, needs to have some eye candy.
(06:45):
So you have something which is sense nationalizing that it's
India as such has been known as the land of
mystics and mysteries in the West. So when you put
something like India syndrome, obviously you are catching eyeballs. He's right.
As an American, articles and books that featured the phenomenon
(07:06):
affiliated with people who go missing in India definitely caught
my attention. But I've also gotten to know the families
of those missing people. And in Ryan Chamber's case, it's
just inaccurate to assume a syndrome had anything to do
with his disappearance. He woke up in a train station
in India, had no idea who he was, where he
was when he was That's Aaron Chambers, Ryan's brother, And no,
(07:29):
unfortunately he's not talking about finding Ryan. He's explaining and
experienced journalist David McClean had in two thousand and two
in India that he shared on an episode of This
American Life. According to McClean, he woke up on a
trained platform in India with no idea of who he was,
no passport, no money, no identity. He was taken to
(07:52):
a mental hospital by police for he started to hallucinate
so severely he had to be tied down. After hearing
about mcclean's experience, Ryan's bizarre behavior before his disappearance a
lot more sense tod Aaron. His mind would be basically
wiped and somehow got in contact with people he knew
(08:14):
and then his family and they got him home and
it was his story about him like that journey in
him rebuilding his life, and he basically puts it down
to the anti malarial drug he was on, which was larium.
Ryan was taking the same anti malarial drug larium. Well
he was in India, So that's I guess what really
(08:34):
sort of hit me as like, wow, maybe that's the
reason for this, because you know that they can always
be speculation. Was Ryan seeker? Did he do drugs there?
You know? It was he prone to some mental illness
that we didn't know about. I don't know, maybe and
maybe maybe larium and its potential psychotic side effects, like
maybe that has something to do it. And it just
(08:55):
that seems to me like the most likely scenario if
I look at it and I think that's where I
probably sit on what actually happened. I'd say it's down
to that than anti malarial drug. That's where I've settled.
Larium is the brand name from map Laquine, which was
the antimalarial drug of choice for soldiers in the British
Army deployed in certain areas like India, Southeast Asia, Sub
(09:18):
Saharan Africa where they may be at risk of contracting
from mosquitoes, but the Military Police concluded that it should
be a drug of last resort after an investigation into
reports of severe side effects which include visual and auditory hallucinations,
acute anxiety, depression, unusual behavior and suicide. I met an
(09:40):
Australian guy when I was there the first time who
was with Ryan the night before he left and said
he was running around the Ashram grounds trying to fly.
And then you look at his journal in the last
couple of pages, this big scrawl across the last two
pages in colored markers, just saying something along the lines
if I'm missing, I'm not dead. I need to free minds,
(10:01):
but first I need to free my own. And it
look like an alternate person an Olidia written it or
someone else altogether, and apparently he couldn't sleep. Probably he
went into someone else's room in the ashram, not John's,
but another person's and asked if he could stay there
the night because he was just afraid of something. The
guy said, no, go back to your own room. Diane
share is more information about Ryan's encounter with this guy,
(10:23):
one of the last people to see him before he vanished.
He said that he had an appointment to see a
yogi that was staying at the ashram, and apparently he's
the guy that when he went, he must have gone
back and met with him, and he asked him if
he could stay in his room that night, and the
(10:45):
guy said yes, and then he said no. See, this
is what's telling me that Ryan was mentally unstable at
the time he was looking. He was calling out for help.
He was looking for help. He was looking for somewhere
to something to anchor him, and it didn't happen. From
these stories, it's possible that Ryan was displaying the severe
(11:08):
side effects of larium, acute anxiety, visual hallucinations, unusual behavior, unfortunately,
maybe even suicide. And a two fifteen article in The Independent,
it was reported that the British Ministry of Defense had
been accused of knowingly risking the mental health of its
(11:28):
own soldiers after new figures showed that nearly one thousand
British servicemen and women have required psychiatric treatment after taking larium,
and in the States, larium was most famously investigated after
four soldiers from Fort Bragg who took the antimalarial drug
while serving in Afghanistan killed their wives in two thousand
(11:50):
and two, even though in two thousand and nine, to
United States military stopped prescribing larium to the majority of
its soldiers. In two thousand and twelve, staff Sergeant Robert
Bales pleaded guilty to killing sixteen Afghan and civilians while
he was on the drug. When we talk about larium,
we're talking about big pharma, which wields a lot of power,
(12:14):
So these detrimental side effects aren't exposed until they've affected
so many people the danger of the drug can no
longer be concealed. In two thousand and one, a double
blind study done in the Netherlands was published showing that
sixty seven percent of people who took larium experienced one
or more adverse effects and six percent had side effects,
(12:36):
so severe they required medical attention. So now there are
stories out there about the potential dangers of larium and books, articles,
and programs like sixty Minutes that are featuring them. The
brand Larium is no longer sold in the United States,
but that's just a brand name. Mefloquine, the actual antimalarial drug,
(13:01):
is still available and commonly prescribed in the US. Since
twenty thirteen, the US Food and Drug Administration added a
warning to the prescription label regarding the potential for permanent
neuropsychiatric side effects that might continue even after you stop
using the drug. This is medical speak for permanent brain damage.
(13:24):
And other clinical write ups about methyliquine aka larium, it's
noted that the drug should be used with caution and
patience with a previous history of depression or mental illness.
I've had a belief right from the beginning, not that
I realized it necessarily before he left, but when you backtrack,
(13:45):
lots of things I think he tainted on the board
of a mental illness. These clinical warnings cautioning patients with
mental illness or depression came out eight years after Ryan disappeared,
so no one, including Ryan's family, could have prepared for
what happened to him in India. Aaron believes the side
effects of larium led to a brother psychotic break and disappearance,
(14:08):
but Jack and Diane aren't completely sold on Larry I'm
being the cause of Ryan's disappearance. After three investigations, one documentary,
and years searching for their son, the Chambers don't want
to close the door on any speculations. But maybe just one.
There ever a moment where you thought he had sort
(14:28):
of just left his leg bye for me. No, no,
but that's only that's only instinctively, you know, I did
for short times. Yeah, yeah, yeah, nah. But he might
might have been a situation where he will leave it
(14:49):
wouldn't contact us, but he's so close to his brothers
that wouldn't be the case. And now fifteen years well, no,
why in the world do I think that? So, the
Chambers don't believe Ryan is out there after fifteen years
trying to free minds on some spiritual quest. Though after
he was reported missing, there were multiple sightings of Ryan
around India which were investigated by the family and unfortunately
(15:13):
led nowhere. Ryan is still officially missing. His body has
never been found, but Kundenegi, who was part of Rishikesh's
local police force investigating Ryan's disappearance. Has been quoted saying
that the Ganges, the Holy river running through Rishikesh, was
especially high when Ryan went missing, so if Ryan had drowned,
(15:35):
the high water and intense current of the river might
have had something to do with there being no evidence
of his body full disclosure. The Chambers didn't get much
help from the authorities in India during their multiple investigations.
I think the place's job is to rule out the
fact of it being a homicide. Yeah, really didn't have
(15:55):
any evolvement, and we looked in search. Basically from their
thorough search that expanned years with one of them instigation
captured and the two eleven documentary Missing in the Land
of Gods, which you can access on the Ryan Chambers
Missing in India Facebook page, Jock and Diane have been
(16:16):
able to piece together information on what might have happened
to Ryan's body at the time Ryan went missing, if
he had of drowned in the Ganges River because they
opened the barrages, they opened the barrages to prevent the flooding,
So if he had drowned, his body just would have
washed right down the river. In two thousand and five,
(16:37):
a team checked out all of the river barridges, offshoots,
and flood overflow areas. In total, the Ganges River was
searched on three occasions, but as Diane points out, the
baradges were open when Ryan disappeared, so instead of being
caught in the barrage gates like most bodies are, Ryan's
body would have flowed right down the river, potentially washing
(17:00):
up on a bank somewhere or being dragged out. I've
heard that lots of bodies of pulled from the Ganges,
and conversations Dad's had with people said that they generally
don't take photos of people that aren't Indian, So this
is an issue. If Ryan's body was found and because
he's not Indian, there was no picture taken as evidence,
(17:22):
then nobody would ever know. We'll hear from someone in
a later episode who experienced this firsthand, but for now,
it's important to think about this. If the authorities only
take pictures of drowned Indians, what happens to the bodies
or any evidence of non Indians or drowned foreigners, And
why aren't there pictures also taken? I imagine if you've
(17:44):
got lots of foreigners coming over and going missing, meeting
an untimely end. That's kind of home tourism. In other words,
a dead foreigner isn't good for tourism, but a missing
foreigner Yeah, And I guess you think about it, there's
a bit of a mystique about someone going missing, right,
like what have they gone seeking? And what are they?
(18:06):
You know, have they reached this enlightenment? Have they have
they become? You know, are they now one of these
kind of mystical people in India? Like yeah, that's very
very different too. They died, Yeah, I guess that probably
adds to the mystique of the place in a way.
A missing person builds mystique, and mysteries can be seductive,
(18:30):
but they can also lead to inaccurate theories, like India syndrome.
But India syndrome is just that a theory, but that
theory has been tagged onto a real psychosis that could
affect foreigners and non foreigners alike in India. Those seekers
might be more susceptible to it. India syndrome is not
(18:55):
technically a thing, because it's not an officially recognized disease,
but the psychosis that it's inaccurately labeled. Is a thing.
As doctors explained to me, Foreigners who experience extreme culture shock,
illicit drug use, or have mental illness in their history
and quit their meds to go to India looking for
alternative medicine or a lifestyle change could potentially experience a
(19:19):
psychotic break. But what's most alarming is psychotic breaks occur
in some of the most popular places in circumstances that I,
as a seeker of sought out and it felt safe
to me. Here's talk to her share again. A lot
of these people come to learn yoga. A lot of
these people come to learn meditation. People do have misconception
(19:42):
about yoga in the sense yoga includes exercises as well
as meditation. Now, a lot of people who do intense
meditation that I'm talking about the mental aspect of it.
I'm not talking about the physical aspect of it. I'm
not talking about the exercises. Let's say something like chakra.
(20:02):
These are all exercises. There is intense medica also done
a part of yogic meditation. Now, when people go into
intense meditation beat Indian meditation or European meditation, it has
been seen that they are more prone to develop psychosis or,
like you said, bipolar effective disorder. In fact, I have
(20:24):
seen few cases Indians themselves who have want to for
some spiritual discourses where they have had some ten day
intense meditation and they have come to me with depression.
Doctor Herschet's words echo what we heard from Scott Kearney
who told us about the adverse effects meditation had on
a student MLA. So basically, meditation doesn't only help focus, stress,
(20:49):
pain really for give you an overall zen, but as
doctor will Be Britain, Assistant professor of psychiatry and human
behavior at Brown University notes in a Yoga Journal article,
meditation can also unearth unpleasant emotions, painful memories, or physical
mental disturbances that can be unsettling at best and debilitating
(21:11):
at worst. She shares a story about working as a
resident in two thousand and six at an impatient psychiatric
hospital in Arizona and witnessing two people who were hospitalized
after a ten day meditation retreat. She looked for scientific
research to explain this and came up short, so she
started to informally ask meditation teachers about the issues they'd encountered.
(21:35):
And realized negative reactions to meditation were common, and it
was evident that a lot of people knew about these
potentially dangerous effects and weren't talking about it, which Britain
attributes to the multibillion dollar mindfulness industry exposing the dark
side of meditation. It's about for business. Doctor Harshitt, however,
(21:57):
is an open book about what happens to the brain
during meditation and what could potentially lead to a dangerous
experience when you are in a trance or when you're
doing intense meditation. One thing is there is a lot
of cognitively, you are realizing a lot of things about
your life, okay, and other things that a lot of
(22:19):
neurotransmitter change is happening, just like you would know that
a lot of yogis can stay for longer periods. You
can say in a suspended animation where they don't eat food,
they breathe lesser, their heart rates slows down. These are
(22:40):
all because of the neurotransmitters of our body, which they
are able to control. They are trained from years or decades.
You can say, but someone let's say me, if I
go down there and I do that, and I'm not
trained enough and I go into an intense meditation goals
for ten days fifteen days and probably it may affect
(23:03):
So not being primed for intense meditation could lead to
an adverse effect. In twenty seventeen, doctor Britton did a
study where she looked at nearly one hundred interviews with
meditation teachers, experts, and practitioners of Western Buddhist practices who
described their meditation related experiences as challenging, distressing, or functionally impairing.
(23:26):
Eighty eight percent of the meditators in the study are
reported that these meditation experiences had an impact on their
lives beyond their meditation sessions. Seventy three percent indicated moderate
to severe impairment, which means they're meditating prompted a reaction
or result that kept them from living their normal daily lives.
Seventeen percent reported feeling suicidal, and another seventeen percent required
(23:51):
inpatient hospitalization for psychosis due to meditation. The research showed
that these distressing experiences were not limited to people who
had a history of mental illness, though trauma survivors can
be a purely susceptible to the adverse effects of meditation
because it forces them to lean into their emotions as
(24:12):
opposed to avoiding or compartmentalizing them. This leaning end can
retrigger their trauma. I have to say this as a meditator.
I don't think meditation is bad. I'm just highlighting rarely
discussed issues that bring awareness to a practice that's presumed
to have only positive effects. Meditation is good, but you
(24:33):
should know which type of meditation is good for you.
There are multiple types of meditations. Transcendental meditation is quite
used a lot, even in therapist So my point is
not all meditation is bad. You should know what you
need to choose. So unless you have a learned teacher,
(24:55):
it's foolish to go for it, is what my beliefies.
Is there anything that any meditation you can tell us
now that we might want to stare care of. I
am not an expert on meditation and yoga. I'm a
medical doctor, so I would be the wrong person to
suggest anything. There are some upcoming stories will be covering
or the dangers of meditation will be suspect. So this
(25:17):
conversation isn't over, but my conversation with doctor her share is.
And before you signed off, here one final thought on
India syndrome. Another thing what I would say is not
only about mental illness, but if you look at it
with terms to the West, the religious values and the
cultural values in the West is crumbling, which is true
(25:41):
by the number of people who are winning off religion.
If you look at the West, so somewhere people are
searching for a truer meaning to their life. When they
don't find it back home, they tend to go somewhere else.
It's just like the famous proverb the grass is greener
(26:04):
on the other side. Doctor Arschet's sentiment resonates with me.
Our religious values in the West are crumbling, and I'm
one of the people weaning off my Episcopalian upbringing and
Catholic fascination to find my own comprehension of a higher source,
the universe, God, whatever you want to call it, most
(26:24):
would understand it broadly as spirituality. It's fluid, not constrained
by doctrine or organized through a system of power. Spirituality
can be what you want it to be. Is your
own unique journey. But as we've heard, there's no promise
you won't be led astray. According to the Chambers, Ryan
(26:50):
didn't identify as a seeker, but India still draws seekers
in droves in search of spiritual connection, quests, and awakenings.
There's one seeker, Justin Alexander Schettler, who would more aptly
call himself an adventurer and nomad, whose spiritual curiosity and
trust in someone who could lead him to enlightenment ultimately
(27:14):
led him astray. Before we dig into that story, it's
important to know why Westerners like Justin are drawn to
India's mystique. Here is academic David Hammerback. Personally, I think
that there is no such thing as India's syndrome. I
do think, however, that there are India because of this
sort of cultural alert that it has, which is I
think really become doubled or troubled or quadrupled since the
(27:37):
nineteen sixties, and the sort of association of India and
Hinduism and all sorts of aspects of South Asia and
Central Asia with counterculture. I think that that led to
even more interest by certain groups of people, mostly younger
people who've been disaffected by society and it seems to
(27:58):
offer a different way of living. According to Hammerback, Westerners
have been romanticizing India's mystic alert for more than a millennia.
This obsession dates back to ancient Rome and Greece. I
think that there's so many of these really tantalizing aspects
of India. And it was fabled going back to the
Greeks as being this sort of extraordinary place where other
(28:21):
things happen, where are different kinds of beings. Even Herodotus,
the Greek historian, wrote about there was like anthesize of
dogs and humans. There were many many, you know, three
or four times the size of normal people, all sorts
of strange things. So I think even going back to
like Alexander the Great One as far as India, he
went there partially to conquer, but also because he was
(28:43):
drawn by these stories of the foreign otherness of India,
and part of that is the mysticism. There's definitely obviously
a mystical tradition in India. Hammerberg Snapali's wife is Hindu,
so he's felt tied the religion for the past fifteen
years and believes Hinduism plays into the Western fascination with India.
I think they're drawn to the mysticism of of Hinduism
(29:07):
because in many ways it forms such a clean break
from the culture of West and in many many aspects
from the way you practice, to the way you live,
to the food you eat, to the iconography you're surrounded
with it, to the community you're in. But a fascination
can come with suspicion. We heard earlier from Karni about
(29:29):
the detrimental, if not dangerous, effects India can have on Westerners,
which Hammerback calls the destabilizing dangers of India. There has
been a series of text novels and other things Britain
which show that India can have a detrimental effect. But
it's autocomis means like it grows out of the soil itself.
(29:51):
There's a number of romantisist Gothic texts in the early
nineteenth century in which just happens where you know, Westerners
are having to do battle with these strange beings that
come around almost always at night. And there's all these
other tropes such as the Thugs, which is part of
India as well. The Thugs were an organized gang of
professional assassins sometimes described as the world's first mafia, who
(30:15):
operated from the thirteenth to nineteenth centuries in India. Members
of the fanatical religious group, who were infamous for their
ritualistic assassinations, carried out in the name of the fierce
Hindu goddess Collie. Were known as thugs. This is where
the word thug comes from in America. Though the thugs
were a real threat, Hammerback doesn't believe that India the
(30:39):
country is a threat and chalks sees destabilizing dangers up
to virtual Orientalism, which is a blend of received truths, stereotypes,
but most of all, the media's repackaging of India's mystics,
spiritual and exotic into a salacious story that will catch
and hold someone's attention. But he doesn't necessarily think the
(31:00):
media is trying to exploit India. I think it comes
from a lack of comprehension under standing of the religions
of India. This includes a flam and how they cohabitate,
and how you know what their specific practices are and
their beliefs. I think it's easy to create our own
narrative around the unknown, in this case India. It's also
(31:21):
common to view the unknown or someone or something different
or other than us as dangerous, which might be why
these culture bound syndromes, including India syndrome, were established. I
want to get in Keytis thoughts someone born and raised
in India on her country's deep rooted spirituality. India was
ruled by people of different religions, people who came from
(31:43):
different parts of the world, which is why it saw
such a huge mix of religions and therefore it is
seen as a religious country. So I think there is
so much diversity that it's hard to kind of escape
some form of religion or some form of spirituality or
mysticism if anyone comes to flor India. I assumed India
(32:07):
was primarily Hindu, but it's actually a melting part for religions,
which according to India's religion census, includes Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism,
and various offshoots of these religions depending on the location
of the followers. So India is spiritually prosperous, which in
Kita believes is a draw for westerners, I mean the West.
(32:29):
It has a lot in terms of material resources, right,
So if you're coming from the West to India, people
would think, well, why would you leave that country which
has so much to give you in terms of wealth
and come to a place here which is struggling when
it comes to resources. So it must be something that
(32:51):
is im material and therefore it would probably be something spiritual.
But apparently the raw for Westerners is not only spiritual.
My grandfather the years ago, he said, Oh, I read
somewhere that lot of Westerners are looking for Indian wife
because you know, Indians have such good family values and
(33:12):
all their marriages are ending up in divorces. And that's
why they are now coming to India looking for Indian
women to marry. Why that's awesome, but yeah, he said
it with a lot of pride. Westerners are drawn to
the spiritual depths and strong values India offers. But like
us in the West or an increasing number of people
(33:32):
identify as spiritual rather than religious. India's new generation is
also rejecting their country's archaic religions and read a finding
spirituality for themselves. I was asking a Hindu preach something
and I said, there was a notice on the temple
in a village in western India, and I said it
says women are not allowed. Why is that so? And
(33:56):
he says, oh, you know, this is Hanuman and he
always stayed a bachelor, so he's not he doesn't like
interacting with women. Hanuman is a Hindu god, usually represent
it as a monkey, And I said, but God is
open to all. He didn't answer my question. He said,
where there is faith, there are no questions in my generation. Again,
(34:16):
when I talk about there is this kind of dissociation
and atachment with mainstream religion. There's also an attraction towards mysticism,
and a lot towards mystic poets who do not see
God as this being to be feared, or do not
(34:38):
believe in this extremely hierarchical relationship between God and human
I mean, God would be more like a conscience. God
would be more like a friend. And that is the
kind of thing younger people relate to more rather than
this kind of scary authority imposed. I mean people, young
(34:59):
people want to do something because they understand it to
be right, not because they are told they would be
punished in hell. They would not be talking about rights
and rituals and practices. They would be talking about humanity,
because that is less about conducting certain rituals and more
(35:20):
about meditating, more about the journey of the self, more
about understanding the higher powers rather than fearing the higher powers.
And where do Westerners go for these spiritual practices when
they hit India. I don't see as many foreigners in
(35:41):
temples if I just look at Delhi, but I would
see many more of them in yoga studios. So you
can say that they are maybe practices associated with both.
But then yoga would be a practice where the self
is the center. Right, you do this and you meditate
and then think about God. But if I go to
(36:03):
a temple, I would say, okay, bio a land of flowers,
buy this packet of incenstics, by this holy threat, to
tie around a tree and then make this plate, offer
this to the idol, go around it five times, and
then take some of that holy water, drink it up,
and then you know your wish is supposedly hurt and
(36:23):
so on. So these are more external practice of the
violence is more of again what we were talking earlier,
of self reflection in a journey seeking inwards. So on.
We don't have time to break down India's handful of
religions and tie them Alti mysticism. Scholars have spent lifetimes
(36:43):
examining religions in the East and they're still figuring it out.
But what I took away from this conversation within Kita
is that there is a palpable sense of spirituality and
mysticism in India built on the foundation of a handful
of religions. But India's new generation is adapting their own
version of spirituality, which is a version Westerners can relate to,
(37:05):
as it's something they get a whitewashed version of in
their yoga studios and the States. But the mysticism of
India is still a draw and very real. But not
every story of a spiritual awakening ends in self discovery.
Justin Alexander Schuttler's ended in a different kind of discovery,
one that involved a police investigation. I'm thirty two and
(37:28):
last week I retired. Maybe retirement isn't the right word.
If there's a word that means I'm free to live
the life of my dreams, I'm that. That's a voice
over actor reading an excerpt from Justin's blog eight years ago.
As you can tell he's extreme. He cashed out his
roth Ira and spent the money on a Sony A
(37:49):
seven two camera to capture his escapades. And escapades is
a belittling word for the adventures Justin sought out. He
was a survivalist who in his youth studied the Apache Scouts,
who moved undetected through the desert and lived off the land.
He made his own native tools based on drawings he
did at New York's Museum of Natural History, and in
(38:10):
the summer of twenty fourteen, he put his survival skills
to the test trekking across the Himalaya and bet with
little more than sandals and a knife. He called himself
an NYC ninja and proves it with a photo on
Instagram of his silhouette against a misty New York City
backdrop six hundred feet in the air. He's standing on
(38:32):
some sort of railing, presumably on a building he's not
supposed to be climbing. There's another shot taken from a
cherry red crane looking down on New York city scape.
It makes me dizzy just looking at that photo. The
shot is seven hundred feet in the air. One false
move and he's done. Justin identified as a nomad and
(38:54):
shared his extreme experiences with his eleven thousand Instagram followers
and in a blog, Adventures of Justin, where he documented
his eighteen thousand mile trips the American West on his
Royal Enfield motorcycle and an experience he had living with
the indigenous tribe the Montoway and Indonesia, where he helped
(39:14):
make poison tipped arrows and wore a loincloth made from
tree bark. His photos, videos, and visceral journal entries are
intoxicating and they capture the feeling of the moment. And
when Justin turns the cameron himself, he's honestly as breathtaking
as a scenery he captures. He's an Adonis. Justin lives
(39:36):
and looks like a romanticized version of a legendary explorer
and as Mantra speaks to this, be kind and do
epic shit. But did he also romanticize the dangers of
living on the edge. In an online interview, an interviewer
asked Justin, who was an influencer before you could make
a living doing it? Why he goes by Justin Alexander
(39:58):
Supertramp on Facebook. His answer Chris McCanless. Chris McCanless, also
known by his nickname Alexander Supertramp, was an American hiker
who in nineteen ninety two sought solitude in the Alaskan
bush with minimal supplies and aspirations to live off the land.
He used an abandoned bus he found in the back
(40:19):
country as a makeshift shelter. The same bus were his
dead body, weighing only sixty seven pounds, was found six
months later. Chris died of starvation and the online interview
Justin finishes his thought on Chris McCanless, saying vagabonding and
living in the back country is a way to make
(40:41):
social life feel fresh. I'm not trying to cut myself
off from society like he was. I do have a
lot of respect for the guy that said I think
it's too bad we don't look at the many examples
of people who went into the wild and lived to
tell a great story. Justin documented so many stories in
(41:02):
his lifetime, but unfortunately he hasn't been able to tell
his last story. On August nineteenth, twenty sixteen, he wrote
his last blog entry from India's Pivardi Valley. In the blog,
he writes about a pilgrimage he is going to take
into the Himalayas to meditate. The last line reads, I
(41:24):
should return mid September, so if I'm not back by then,
don't look for me. Justin's story sounds like an Eastern
version of Into the Wild. The nineteen ninety six John
Krakauer book about Chris McCanless. Though McCanless vanished in the wilderness,
his body was found and that abandoned bus on Alaska's
(41:45):
Stampede trail, but Justin's body has never been found. Do
Justin meet the same fate as Chris? Or does Justin's
last sentiment, if I'm not back by then don't look
for me? Have anything to do with his disappearance. We'll
find out on the next episode of A stre If
(42:08):
you have any information or tips on Ryan chambers disappearance,
please reach out to Job Chambers at Jock joc K
dot Chambers C. H A. M. B. E. R. S
at gmail dot com. Also, if you're interested, check out
First Do No Harm, which is an online course that
(42:30):
breaks down the adverse effects of meditation. It's led by
doctor Willoughby Britton, who I mentioned in the episode, and
it involves a series of methods for managing these meditation
risks and negative outcomes. Astray is a production of School
of Humans and iHeartRadio. Today's episode of Astray, Ryan Chambers
was produced, written, and narrated by May Caroline Fodder and
(42:53):
Kita Nanda is my co producer and Gavi Watts is
our supervising producer. Astray was scored by Jason Shannon, with
sound design and mixed by Tunewelders. Executive producers are Brandon
bar Elsie Crowley and Brian Lavin. Special thanks to our
voiceover band, Gunter School of Humans
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