September 7, 2023 • 43 mins
Successful entrepreneur Rizwan Virk talks about his new book Wisdom Of A Yogi: Lessons For Modern Seekers from Autobiography Of A Yogi.
Wisdom of a Yogi, the new book from Rizwan Virk, founder of Play Labs @ MIT and the
bestselling author of The Simulation Hypothesis brings ancient spiritual teachings into the modern world of the internet and video games, using the teachings of Yogananda’s classic Autobiography of a Yogi as a starting point. First commissioned by Harper Collins Publishers India for the 75th anniversary of Yogananda’s classic book, Wisdom of a Yogi is now available for bookstores and libraries in the United States and internationally.
Have you heard of Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi? It’s considered one of the most influential spiritual books of the twentieth century and has inspired millions of people around the world to pursue a spiritual path. However, in today’s world of technology and science, how do modern spiritual seekers view the book’s stories of gurus, swamis, and Himalayan miracles? Wisdom of A Yogi shows us how.
In his book “Wisdom of a Yogi,” Rizwan Virk, a bestselling author, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist, shares the teachings of Yogananda’s classic and reinterprets them for the modern era. Virk weaves together stories from the Autobiography with anecdotes from professors, students, entrepreneurs, and modern seekers to create fourteen unforgettable lessons. His aim is to bring the ancient lessons of karma, yoga, meditation, and Siddhas into the modern world of YouTube, video games, mobile phones, and social media. Whether you are new to reading the Autobiography or have read it several times, “Wisdom of a Yogi” will assist you in enhancing your spiritual practice in today’s increasingly complex, busy, and connected world.
We Talk about
Rizwan Virk is a multifaceted individual who has achieved great success in various fields. He holds degrees from MIT and Stanford and is an entrepreneur, video game pioneer, film producer, venture capitalist, computer scientist, bestselling author, and college professor. Among his published works are The Simulation Hypothesis, Startup Myths & Models: What You Won’t Learn in Business School, Treasure Hunt, and Zen Entrepreneurship. Virk founded Play Labs @ MIT and has invested in several thriving startups, including Discord, Theta Labs, Upland, and Tapjoy. His video games and indie film projects have been enjoyed by millions. Virk and his books have been featured in numerous publications, including Forbes, The Telegraph, NBC News, vox.com, Techcrunch, Inc., VentureBeat, Digital Trends, BBC Science Focus, and Scientific American. Currently, Virk serves as a venture partner at Griffin Gaming Partners, one of the foremost video game VC funds in the world. He is also teaching and conducting research at Arizona State University.
zenentrepreneur.com.
Wisdom of a Yogi, the new book from Rizwan Virk, founder of Play Labs @ MIT and the
bestselling author of The Simulation Hypothesis brings ancient spiritual teachings into the modern world of the internet and video games, using the teachings of Yogananda’s classic Autobiography of a Yogi as a starting point. First commissioned by Harper Collins Publishers India for the 75th anniversary of Yogananda’s classic book, Wisdom of a Yogi is now available for bookstores and libraries in the United States and internationally.
Have you heard of Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi? It’s considered one of the most influential spiritual books of the twentieth century and has inspired millions of people around the world to pursue a spiritual path. However, in today’s world of technology and science, how do modern spiritual seekers view the book’s stories of gurus, swamis, and Himalayan miracles? Wisdom of A Yogi shows us how.
In his book “Wisdom of a Yogi,” Rizwan Virk, a bestselling author, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist, shares the teachings of Yogananda’s classic and reinterprets them for the modern era. Virk weaves together stories from the Autobiography with anecdotes from professors, students, entrepreneurs, and modern seekers to create fourteen unforgettable lessons. His aim is to bring the ancient lessons of karma, yoga, meditation, and Siddhas into the modern world of YouTube, video games, mobile phones, and social media. Whether you are new to reading the Autobiography or have read it several times, “Wisdom of a Yogi” will assist you in enhancing your spiritual practice in today’s increasingly complex, busy, and connected world.
We Talk about
- How this book has changed the lives of many seekers
- Why is it important to share this old but new information now
- The Karmic Tiger
- The importance of daily rituals
- Bilocation
- Levitation
- Telepathy
- Synchronicity
- The fourteen lessons presented in the book
- Why today east is west and west is east
- The Pizza Effect
- Role of a Modern Yogi
Rizwan Virk is a multifaceted individual who has achieved great success in various fields. He holds degrees from MIT and Stanford and is an entrepreneur, video game pioneer, film producer, venture capitalist, computer scientist, bestselling author, and college professor. Among his published works are The Simulation Hypothesis, Startup Myths & Models: What You Won’t Learn in Business School, Treasure Hunt, and Zen Entrepreneurship. Virk founded Play Labs @ MIT and has invested in several thriving startups, including Discord, Theta Labs, Upland, and Tapjoy. His video games and indie film projects have been enjoyed by millions. Virk and his books have been featured in numerous publications, including Forbes, The Telegraph, NBC News, vox.com, Techcrunch, Inc., VentureBeat, Digital Trends, BBC Science Focus, and Scientific American. Currently, Virk serves as a venture partner at Griffin Gaming Partners, one of the foremost video game VC funds in the world. He is also teaching and conducting research at Arizona State University.
zenentrepreneur.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(01:00):
Welcome to it. Over it theConsciousness Transforming Podcast for exceptional twenty first century
living folks. We have a treattoday. We're gonna have Rizwan work with
us. And he's talking about thebook Wisdom of a Yogi and this is
based on the Autobiography of a Yogi. And as I was telling him before
we started the show, I hadbought that book and I attempted to read
(01:23):
it literally forty times, and Ijust wasn't getting it. However, once
I read his book, I wasable to go back and piece the two
books together and I have a fullerunderstanding. So we want to thank him
for that. But again, thebook title is Wisdom of a Yogi,
Lessons for a modern Seekers from Autobiographyof a Yogi. And you're really going
(01:48):
to enjoy the show today. Now. The information Share don't get over It
uses intuitive and pragmatic insight to helpyou shift your consciousness to break through the
blocks and release energy that is nolonger needed. Yes, going to help
you let go of the BS thatis holding you back. But you guys
know I always ask are you trulyready to? And by the way,
folks, BS is belief system abit about me from my new listeners Intuitive
(02:13):
since birth. I'm a third generationIntuitive with over three decades of experience supporting
people to break through the blocks alongtheir path. I'm a strategist for personal
and professional transformation, revealing cutting edgeinformation that enables you to prosper and thrive.
I spent twenty five successful years incorporate America as an executive sales professional,
and I am the founder of HealingVisions Ministries and the Northern California Children's
(02:38):
Education Network, a five O oneC three nonprofit. I provide consultations and
healings in all areas of life thatheal the mind, bloody spirit connection,
allowing you to live your very bestlife. My clients tell me that I
keep it real while providing them withaccurate information to a system along their journey
as a spirit living a human existence. But they also say, if you
(03:00):
really don't want to know, don'task Monique. My background includes a doctorate
metaphysics, Ricky Master teacher or DanMinister, and clinical hypnotherapist. So whether
you are stress, depressed or posess, I can hope to find out more
about me and the services I offer. A food to my website, and
that's Monique Chapman dot com. Iinvite you to liken follow me on Facebook
(03:23):
and LinkedIn. Don't look for meon former Twitter because I'm not there now.
My guest today, Rizwan Werk isa successful entrepreneur, vincial capitalist,
and founder of play Labs at MT. A graduate of MT and Stanford,
he is currently at Arizona State University. He is the author of Zen Entrepreneurship,
(03:46):
Startup Myths and Models, Treasure Huntingand the Stimulation Hypothesis and the Stimulated
Multiverse, which is an excellent book. Folks. You should check that one
out and you can check them outat his website and that's Zen Entrepreneur dot
com. Again. His website iszen Entrepreneur dot com. Welcome riz Hi
(04:11):
Monique, thanks for having me onyour show. It's great for you to
be here today. I really youknow, as we shared earlier, I
was having a difficult time getting intothe autobiography. You know, I really
wanted to, I mean forty times, but you simplified it and to my
opinion, you made it accessible fortoday's world. What made you decide to
(04:32):
take this work and bring it intopresent time. Well, you know,
I've been a big fan of Yogananda'sAutobiography of the Yogi. You know,
since I first read it back inthe nineties, and you know, of
course the book was that book waspretty well known to within a certain generation,
(04:53):
like in the sixties and seventies.That was, you know, probably
one of the most passed around booksof that generation, and people like George
Harrison used to give away copies ofit to everyone he met, you know,
from the Beatles, and for SteveJobs, it was his favorite book.
And so, you know, whenI first started getting into the spiritual
world as a gen xer myself,you know, it was sort of passed
(05:16):
down to me by my kind ofboomer mentors, if you will. Uh,
And so so I've been a bigfan of it. But I've also
been in the computer industry, beenan entrepreneur, been in Silicon Valley,
and have been writing about how tobridge you know, the spiritual worlds with
the business world as well as withthe worlds of science and technology. And
(05:36):
it so happened a few years agothat I was I was going through some
health issues, and so I wasstuck on the couch, and so I
decided to reread it one more time, and then I decided to write a
series of essays about both about thisbook about Autobious Yogi as well as you
know, other books that were likeit, because I liked to, you
(05:57):
know, read the stories of likethe miracles of the you know, the
saints with the two bodies or thelevitating saint or the or the ones who
lived for hundreds of years in theHimalayas, and I thought that was kind
of unique. But uh, youknow, so I just wrote a few
essays about it. And I wasn'treally planning to write a book about uh
Yogananda and about autobiography the Yogi.And then sometimes we plan to seed that
(06:21):
just you know, grows into somethingin the universe, gives us a task
that we're supposed to do. Andthat's what happened, you know, with
this book. Was you know,I had just finished my books about the
simulation hypothesis, which is about thisidea that we live inside a video game,
and I had read referenced Yogananda bitand then out of the blue,
I got an invitation from Harparacollins,India and they basically said, it's the
(06:46):
seventy fifth anniversary of Autobiography Yogi andwe don't want to want to reprint it.
You know, plenty of people haveread it, but then there's plenty
of people in kind of the newergenerations and in the modern world who have
not read it, and that youknow, who may have a tough time
getting into it. And so we'dlike to write a book about lessons someone
has learned from the book and alsorelated to more modern ideas like computers and
(07:11):
the internet. And you know,Yogananda was very good at doing this.
He always tried to bring in thelatest technology of his time. But he
came to the US at nineteen twenty, so he was the first Indian guru
to really move here to make animpact. That that was one hundred years
ago that he came here. Uh. And so you know, basically,
I got this invitation dropped in mylap to write this book, and at
first I wasn't sure. Are yousure you want me to write it.
(07:33):
I'm more of a business guy,you know, a technology guy. I'm
not a Swami. You know,my background is in Islam, you know,
culturally and from Pakistan. But butI had written a lot about Yogananda,
and they said, no, wethink you're the right person to write
this book to bridge the gap,you know, for things that people talk
(07:53):
about today. And so then Irealized this was a task that the universe
was putting in front of me.And that's one of the less you know,
that I talk about in the bookas well. It has fourteen lessons
that you can learn from autobiography Yogi. But really it's about bringing ancient yoga
wisdom into the modern world. Thatthat's really you know what my book is
about. Yeah, because in yourbook you say, today east is west
(08:16):
and west is east, So whatis a modern yogi? Well, that's
a good question. And you knowin that book, I'm quoting the old
there's an old line from Rudyard Kiplingwhich said, you know, east is
east and west is west, andnever the twain shall meet. And I
said, well, that's relevant todayfor not really being relevant at all,
(08:39):
right, because today, you know, you can find a yoga studio on
every corner, you know, herein California for example, or in the
West, right, and if yougo to India or China, you know,
you can find probably as many startupsthere as you'll find in Silicon Valley
technology startups. And so you know, back in the time when Yogananda came
(09:01):
here. Uh you know, hethought of the West as the maturialistic place
in India, this more spiritual place. And today all those lines have been
blurred, right, and and thesephilosophies have traveled h and like I said,
in no small part thanks to Yogananda. You know, when when the
(09:22):
sixties happened here and the young peoplebegan looking for uh you know, alternative
ways of thought, they turned tothe Eastern traditions and that's what led to
it becoming so popular here. Butsome of these philosophies have now been transformed
here in America and now they've goneback to India. And this is what
some scholars call the pizza effact,which is something that I discovered when I
(09:46):
interviewed a few religious studies scholars forthis book. So the book contains not
only my own stories of lessons thatI learned from autobiotic Yogi, but also
stories from other people that I interviewedalong the way. And the pizza.
The fact is when something comes toone country from another. So pizza came
originally from some small region in Italy. It came to the US, but
(10:09):
really it was transformed into what wethink of as pizza today. Right,
the original pizza was just some breadwith a little bit sauce on it or
something, Right, But what wethink of as pizza today is really almost
like a US would say, invention, but let's say transformation of the original
concept. And now if you goback to Italy, you can find something
that's closer to what we think ofas pizza pretty much anywhere in the world,
(10:31):
in Italy or anywhere else. Andso the pizza e fact is when
something travels back. And so Yoganandacame here trying to adapt the ancient yoga
practices for what was modern at thattime, which was after World War One.
And you know now it's gone backto India, and so for that
reason, you know, he's actuallyhis book is probably more popular there now
(10:54):
than it ever has been. Andyou know, my book was released first
in India and then here in theUS, and it's actually it's actually in
bestseller in India. It's available atthe airports, you know, on the
bestseller lists, the shelves, they'reat the bookstores. But so, you
know, folks there are living modernlives as much as here. And so
a modern Yogi is someone who reallywants to integrate you know, ancient Eastern
(11:20):
philosophy into his life or her lifehere in the West. And so it's
not about becoming a renunciate. AndI would even say today it's not as
much as it was during Yogananda's time. You know, go and find a
guru and stay with that guru.I mean today you can find you can
find videos of pretty much all thesegurus online right on YouTube, So that
(11:43):
tends to be you know, wherepeople go first. They can find,
you know, speeches by all theseguys. And so it's a very different
world than it was in the pastbecause we're so connected, right, you
can find videos of gurus in Indiawithout having to go there. Now.
Steve Jobs, when he was younger, he traveled all the way to India
(12:03):
to look for, you know,some kind of spiritual enlightenment. What happened
was in his dorm room there wherehe was staying, somebody had left a
copy of autobiov Yogi, right,and then he brought it back here and
then he reread it every year andthen you know, according to his biographer,
you know, there was that famousbiography that came out a couple of
years back when he looked at hishis iPad. There was only one book
(12:24):
on there. It was autobiograpy vYogi. And when he you know,
when he died, at his memorialservice, they gave out this little brown
box, wooden box. And thenwhen people went home and opened up the
box, they found that there wasa copy of Autobio Yogi in there.
And so you see that these conceptshave traveled back and forth. But back
(12:45):
then, you know, he triedto go to India, but then he
ended up realizing, oh this,you know, this whole This guy who
was called the first modern Yogi orthe first modern guru, Yogananda, lived
in the US, set up hisoffice is his headquarters in Los Angeles on
top of Mount Washington. It's abeautiful area there, and and so so
(13:05):
you know that really being a modernyogi, you know, you're you're you're
pulling these ancient ideas and you maybe pulling them from different places. You
may be pulling them from books likeautobag to Yogi, from videos, and
and that that's part of it,you know, the other part of it
is that when Yogananda was alive,he tried to use modern metaphors to try
(13:26):
to get people to understand these ideas. And one of the main ideas within
the Hinduism and Buddhism is the conceptof maya or illusion, right, And
so maya means illusion typically, butif you look more closely, it means
like a carefully crafted illusion, whichgenerally means almost like a magic show.
(13:48):
Like if you go to a magicshow. You know the guy or you
know, the magician on the stageisn't really sawing that woman in half,
right and putting her back together.You know it's a trick, but you
kind of spend your disbelief because itlooks real, and you want to enjoy
yourself. That's why you enjoy yourself, right, And so Yogananda used the
analogy of a movie projector right.He saw the suffering during World War One,
(14:16):
which was called the Great War atthe time. Of course, they
didn't call World War one because peoplehadn't died on that scale before. It
was the first mechanized war, rightwhere they had like machine guns, and
you know, it was right duringand after the Industrial Revolution. And so
he said, you know, Lord, how can you allow such suffering?
And he got a clear answer whenhe was meditating, and he saw scenes
(14:39):
from the battlefield in France, andhe said, which were much worse and
more horrific than what he had seenon the newsreels in the theater, and
he got the message saying that whatyou're seeing played out is like a large
movie projector. Right, it's aplay of cherascuro, which was a word
for Italian art that I had tolook up and it meant light and shadow,
(15:01):
art that was constructed from light andshadow. And he basically got the
message that without light and shadow,you don't have a picture, and that
we should view he should view everythingthat's happening like a great motion picture.
And when the actors but when thecharacters die in a motion picture, the
suffering is real. But on theother hand, the actors don't really die.
(15:22):
That is part of the part thatthey are playing. And so that
was a very powerful metaphor, andit was one you'd like to use to
tell people. Look away from thescreen, you'll see the light coming in.
Right. And so today though that'syou know, movies are no longer
a new technology, but for youngpeople today, video games are kind of
the new technology that is most popularand where we spend where they spend a
(15:46):
lot of time. And so youknow, in my previous book, I
had talked about this idea of thesimulation, which is like the matrix,
that the world is like a computergame. I mean, I'd like to
think that if Yo Gona know ourlives today, he'd say, it's like
a movie. But we're all theactors, and we're all the players who
are also watching it, and wecan change our scripts because we have free
(16:07):
will, and we're all doing ittogether. And what does that sound like.
It sounds like a massively multiplayer onlinerole playing game. And so you
know, that is one of thelessons in this book is the world is
like a movie, a dream,or a video game. And that is
perhaps I think for today's audience,a more powerful metaphor for the world is
that everything is stimulated and built uppixels of light, just like Yoganando was
(16:30):
saying. But I believe if hewere alive today, he'd be attuned to
the latest technology. I think hewould too. In are you basically saying
that we are in the matrix,but we can utilize lucid dreaming maybe to
wake up from the matrix. That'sone of the things absolutely, So you
(16:51):
know, I said the world islike a movie, a dream, a
video game. And I use thedream metaphor, you know, because it's
been a very popular one within theEastern traditions, in particular in Buddhism as
well. And Yogananda himself said,life and death are birth and death are
like moving from the doors, fromone dream to another dream. And in
(17:14):
the Tibetan traditions, you know,they've preserved the practice of dream yoga,
which actually came out of India andthen traveled you up through the Himalayas by
a guy named Marpa, the translator, who took it from Kashmir back up
to what they call the land ofSnows, which is to Bat and there
(17:36):
it's been preserved and that is oneof the six yogas of Nuropa. And
this is about what we think oftoday is lucid dreaming. Although there's a
whole spiritual idea related to dream yoga, which you know, we in the
West we tend to strip some ofthese practices of their spiritual significance. Like
with meditation, we focus on mindfulness, which focuses on the stress benefits and
(17:56):
the health benefits and the mental benefits. Only even though meditation was originally meant
as a way to realize the natureof reality, right, and so we've
done the same with lucid dreaming.But the idea with lucid dreaming and would
dream yoga is that if you canwake up in the middle of a dream,
you can recognize that what's going onaround you isn't real, right,
(18:18):
that these uh, these are whatYogananda called the you know movies of the
night, right, the movies thatwe are the directors screenwriters of, and
we screen for ourselves, and thenwe get so involved in them that we
forget that they're not real. Allright. We've all we've all had that
experience where we wake up in themorning and we're like, oh, glad,
that was just a dream, right, or you run to the check
(18:42):
on everybody and say, oh,there's fear right exactly. But you know,
there are practices, and many peopleare able to do this at some
point in their life spontaneously, althoughthere are techniques to help you do it,
you know, more regularly. Butwould dream yoga, the idea is
you realize it's a dream as thefirst step, and then as a second
(19:03):
step, you learn to manipulate thedream. Because if you if you realize
the dream is not really you cando things. And you know, for
me personally, my lucidity test isif I can fly, right, So
I try to. If I noticesomething unusual in a dream, I'll say,
okay, can I fly? IfI can, then it must be
a dream, right. And youyou would be surprised the number of times
(19:26):
I've said to myself in a dream, Oh, this isn't a dream,
this is obviously real. You know, why should I even bother testing out
if I can fly? Because Iwon't be able to because it's not a
dream. And then suddenly I floatit up, you know, from my
chair or whatever, and so youknow the dream is meant to be fool
less, right. And you knowthere's a whole other element to dreams about
(19:48):
karma, which we can talk aboutin a minute. But you know,
this is the basic idea of dreamyou because once you learn to have that
awareness within the dream that what you'reseeing is not real, there's a part
of you that's outside of that worldand that it has it is to some
extent an illusion, right, lacking, as the Buddha said, lacking inherent
(20:08):
reality. And when the Buddha becamean awakened or enlightened. A woman asked
him what are you and he usedan ancient word that was based on the
soundscript both, which means to awakenin the sunscript. So basically he said,
I am awake. And that's whatBuddha means, which means if he's
he's awake, the rest of usmust still be asleep, right, And
(20:30):
so so that is the basic idea, and so within the video game as
well, if you think about it, you know, you can be inside
a video game on like League ofLegends or a warcraft for Fortnite, and
you get so involved in it inyour character, you identify with that character,
and sort a video game, wehave the player who exists outside of
the game, and then we havethe character or the avatar, who exists
(20:55):
within, and that avatar character iswho we associate ourselves with. And so
the idea is our body is basicallylike the character in the video game.
Right. And I was just Iwent to the UK this summer and I
gave a talk about Islam and thesimulation hypothesis, and that was interesting because
you know, you had a lotof some very conservative guys and some very
(21:18):
modern guys, you know, peoplefrom like Egypt, Germany had Ayatola from
Iran. You had all these guysthere. It was a very unusual conference.
And I was talking about video gamesand NPCs, which are nonplayer characters
inside videgots. But one of thethings they were debating, which religious people
tend to do in various religions,is insulment. When does insulment happen?
(21:40):
Right? When does the soul gointo the body? And there were different
answers based on different scriptural things,and I said, well, I'd like
to give a different perspective on whatinsulment is. It is like when you
put on a virtual reality headset,right, and when you do that and
you forget that you actually have aphysical body and you think you're just inside
(22:02):
the VR headset. Now, howI got into all this was I was
playing a virtual reality ping pong gameat a startup in Marin County, just
across the bay from San Francisco intwenty sixteen, and I was playing a
ping pong game, a table tennisgame, and this the headset sure pretty
bulky back then, and the graphicsweren't even that great compared to today,
and certainly not nowhere near as goodas they're going to be, you know,
(22:23):
in a few years. And fora moment, my body forgot instinctively
that I wasn't playing a real gameof ping pong, and instinctively I tried
to put the paddle down on thetable, and I tried to lean against
the table, but of course therewas no table, so it was all
in the VR headset, and mycontroller fell to the floor and I almost
(22:44):
fell over. And that's when Irealized, weird almost getting to that point
where we can fool ourselves that wereinside something like the matrix, that we
think it's real, and that Ithink is an app description for what's going
on, and the way to getout of it is to remember that there's
a part of you that chose tobe here, right, and that there's
a part of you that may haveeven chosen some of the difficult quests I
(23:10):
called them as they're called it videogames there. So so that's kind of
the overview of that idea that insidethe video game, you can remember that
there was a time you weren't playingthe game. Okay, now, when
do we escape it? If youwill the video game, I mean,
we can be we be released fromthis matric energy that we seem to find
(23:32):
ourselves. So right, well,you know, I believe one we all
first of all automatically get out ofthe game during certain periods of our time,
and that that is accessible through thedream state. But obviously when we
die, we are leaving this physicalreality, and so it's like we're saying
(23:52):
game over for that specific game,right, but we also have to come
back. According to the eastrict isbecause of karma that we have generated a
long way. And so the ideais that we have a database, and
this is sort of the modern kindof interpretation of karma that I bring about
(24:14):
in my book, is that wehave a database of all these different experiences,
which I call quests and achievements,because that's how video games are built,
and those that database. As longas there's stuff in that database,
you have to keep going in toplay the game, because then you will
basically take on another personality and anotherbody, and you will choose a script
(24:37):
that says, here's the ten thingsthat I might do in this life.
But while you're playing the game,you could forget about those, right.
You might decide, okay, wehave something unresolved between myself another person we
need to have a romantic relationship,but perhaps you never even encounter each other
in this life. Therefore, thatquest is still in the database. And
so I think the idea with artwith karma is that you need to then
(25:00):
exhaust that database. Now, someof those people think of karma as big
actions. Right then you've taken.But if you look at the Eastern traditions,
you know karma has generated often bythe reactions two things and desires.
Now, there's a great story inthe autobiography. Later on in the autobiography,
it's about the seemingly immortal Babaji,who was Ryogananda calls the maha Avatar
(25:26):
Mahamatar Babaji who lives up in theHimalayas, who supposedly has been around for
hundreds of years, maybe even overa thousand years in the same physical body,
and Yogananda's guru, who was aguy named Shu Yutaswar in Veneer,
Calcutta, and his guru was aguy named Lahiri Mahashai who was the main
guy who contacted Babaji and then thenot the twentieth century, in the nineteenth
(25:52):
century, around eighteen sixty and duringthat time, Babaji said Lahiri, I've
been waiting for you. Don't youremember me? You encounter them in the
mountains up near Ronicat, which isa small town in India. And Lahiri
was worked for the like a governmentaccounting office and he was sent up there.
It turns out to be a mistake. He was sent up there,
but he had nothing to do,so all he did was wander around the
(26:14):
mountains while he was up there,and he came across this guy in a
loincloth who looked like he was twentyfive years old, and it turns out
it was Bobbai goes, don't youremember me from your previous lives? And
he goes, no, I don'tremember, and then he put him through
an initiation where he then remember hisprevious lives and he did something amazing.
Supposedly, these are where these miraculousstories that we hear and we read about,
(26:37):
which which kind of got me andmillions of others excited, you know,
from autobiography and Yogi. The bookisn't just about these miracles. It's
about the spiritual lessons behind the miracles. But there's a story that just sounded
unbelievable. It sounded like it wasstraight out of the Arabian nights, right
like like a lad we said both. Bobbaji created this giant palace, resplendent
(26:57):
with jewels, right there in themiddle of the Himalayas. He materialize that
out of nothing so that Lahiri coulddo his initiation ceremony there. And when
he asked them about it, hesaid, Lahiri, don't you remember in
your previous life you expressed a strongdesire to live in a palace like a
prince. Well, that desire hasto be extinguished somehow. Now you can
(27:19):
do it in a future life.But if we just create this for you,
we will resolve that quest. Andat the end of the night,
he said, close your eyes inthe entire palace disappear, right, which
gets back to one if it happened, how did you do it? Is
matter even real, which gets backto this idea of a video game.
But the underlying lesson is a strongerlesson than Oh wow, look at that.
(27:41):
I mean those are if you readthe original story of Aladdin. That's
what the gin the genie does.He like creates this palace. Right.
It's about karma and how our intentionsand our desires and our attachments are stored
somewhere and somehow we have to resolvethem. And so in this very unusual
(28:02):
case, granted this doesn't happen often, right, it was resolved in an
instant by through the maturialization of aof a large palace. In another story
about Bobajee, who was one ofthe most intriguing characters. You know,
they were sitting around a fire upin the Himalayas somewhere at night, and
Bobajee grabs a log off the fireand burns the shoulder of one of the
(28:26):
cellas, one of the students,you know, the disciples. And Lahiri
was there because now this was afterhis his initiation, and he said,
well, sir, that's so cruel. Why would you do that to your
own disciple? And he says,well, would you rather have him die
a fiery death? Right? Thatwas his karma, was that he was
supposed to suffer a fiery death.But by providing this little bit of discomfort,
(28:49):
and then he healed it shoulder afterhe burned it. You know,
he said, by providing him withthe suffering of this little bit of discomfort,
we were able to resolve back.And so now he doesn't have to
die a fiery debt, so that'san experience he no longer needs to have,
and so, you know, andtrying to bring this into kind of
language that we can understand. Youcan think of it as a video game,
where these are experiences where we're goingto have at some point. And
(29:12):
the whole point of within the Easterntraditions, particularly Buddhism and Hinduism, and
some of the mystical traditions of theJudea Christian religions as well, But the
idea is to stop generating more karmaby stop having too much desire and fear
and being so attached to things.And as the Buddha said, you know,
(29:33):
if you stop doing this, thenthat won't happen, right, and
that this is feeding the database andthings you have to take care of now.
Sometimes the Tibetans saying, these thingscan be taken care of in dreams
if they're just little impressions you mayhave noticed, you know, in a
dream, sometimes you'll see something yousaw on TV that day, or something
made an impression on right. Thatwas what the Tibetans call a karma trace,
(29:56):
and it was a small trace,but it was enough that it needs
to be resolved, and so itjust gets resolved in the dream, because
dreams are like little relations or littleworlds, if you will, that we
create for ourselves, but some haveto be done in the physical world anyway.
So that's kind of an interesting wayto think about all of this.
Okay, Well, in the bookyou talk about less than five and that's
(30:17):
by location, levitation and telepathy.And I remember back it was back in
nineteen ninety four, ninety five.I was still in sales at the time.
That was in the office, youknow, making phone calls, and
all of a sudden, I noticedthat everybody on the team was standing around
me. And I looked up andI'm like, well, what's going on?
(30:37):
And they said, well, Nick, you were like six inches off
the ground. And I'm like,oh really, because I had no clue.
So I'll talk to us about howwe can get to the point of
levitation by location and telepathy. Wellthat's very interesting that showing that this is
still going on. Right. So, you know, I spend a lot
of time in academia with scientists andyou know, Intel Coon Valley with technologists,
(31:03):
and you know, there's a lotof skepticism about these old stories.
Uh, and you know, ifyou read Yogananda, it sounds like these
things were happening all the time.Right there was a leven hidden saint just
down the road from where he lived. There was this saint with two bodies,
you know where Yogananda went to visitthis guy in Benari's His father sent
him with a note when he wasa kid and said, go find my
(31:23):
friend kettering off Babu. But Idon't know where he is, so go
visit the swami first. So hegoes to visit the Swami and says,
I have a note for this guyBabu. And the Swami says, okay,
sit down, and the swami meditatesfor half an hour, and Yogananda's
the young kid was kind of impatiently. He's like, okay, well,
how are we gonna go tell himto come he or give him the note.
(31:45):
The Swami opens up his eyes andsays, I just told him.
Don't worry, he'll beat her soon. Right. And so the guy shows
up like a half hour later,and he looks and he sees the Swami
sitting there and he's amazing. Hegoes, wait, I just saw the
Swami like you know, thirty minutewalk away in the marketplace. He was
here the whole time, and sothat was, you know, one of
many cases of this by location.Uh. And you know you mentioned your
(32:07):
own levitation, and so you know, I went to to talk to some
religious scholars about this traditions and doesthis stuff still happen today? And you
know, one of the scholars Italked to was Diana Pasolka, who's a
Catholic professor. She studies Catolicism.She wrote a book called American Cosmic UFO's
Religion and Technology, which is prettywell known in certain communities. But anyway,
(32:30):
she said that, you know,in the Catholic traditions, there's there's
a whole host of that. Inacademic they train you to not believe that
this stuff is possible, and evenas a religious scholar, you're supposed to
say, well, we're just theseare just stories, they're not real,
right. But then when she wentto the Vatican and looked at their archives,
she found the canonization records of Josephof Cupertino, and what she found
was the testimony of the Devil's Advocate, who is the guy that the Catholic
(32:53):
Church puts in charge of disproving itis to say this. Whenever somebody says
there's a miracle, the devil's advocateis supposed to show that's not the case,
that this was just yes, right. And she goes and she read
those and she saw there were athousand signatures of people that had seen Joseph
flowed up in this town of Cupertinoin the square up high and just like
(33:15):
in your case, right, Andso you know, then she began to
believe that, okay, these thingsare really happening. So, you know,
yoga Ada talks about and yoga itself. If you look at the definition
of yoga in Patanjali's Yoga sutras,it's not necessarily the physical postures. It's
about stealing what are called the rittis. The rittis are like these whirlpools of
(33:37):
thought and feeling in the rivers ofconsciousness. The ton of kind of translated
his famous saying, which is yoganarroda chita Ritti's which is the yoga is
the cessation of the whirlpools of thoughtand feeling in the rivers of consciousness.
Now what that means is these theseworldpools were having them all the time.
They're like storms, right, andall we do is it's almost like a
(33:59):
snow and we're constantly shaking up thesnow globes, so we can't see inside.
But what happens is these Rickney's,according to the ancient Indian traditions,
hardened into some scaras in our energyfield, what they called kosas, and
then those become masanas or tendencies acrosslives, and so they harden into karma.
And so what happens is that ifyou loosen these through yoga, any
(34:22):
type of yoga really doesn't have tobe the physical asanas. They were just
one of the eight limbs of yogasthat your energy field becomes light and then
your physical body becomes lighter. Andthis can be done through devotion like there
are many Catholic saints who supposedly thishappened too, like Padre Pio's when in
the twentieth century, who would floatup from devotion to God. So clearly
(34:46):
you know you've lightened your energy fieldenough that it happens spontaneously, and you
know the same is true in thedreamstate. I talked about locid dreaming and
flying. There are days when Itry to fly up and I can just
barely get off the ground. It'slike I'm heavy. There's other times when
the energy body, they're so easyto fly up and float, you know,
thousands of feet in the air anduh, and what's the difference.
(35:09):
It's usually how much stress I'm underand then and how much stuff I'm carrying
in my field. And so youknow, I think the answer to these
things is partly in this model thatthe body is made of light. And
if you have a light body,you can, like in a video game,
you can you can create two copiesof your avatar. I mean,
(35:30):
that's technically possible within a game.But it's it's also about how we lighten
our load in our energy field.So you know, that's that's really interesting
that you have some witnesses there forhaving done that, So that that's probably
one of the more recent stories I'veheard about levitation. Yeah, well that
was more at that time I wasreally into and studying light body, and
(35:53):
you know, it came through,so I took it as a firm understanding
and validation that I was on theright path for me at that particular time.
Now, you say in your bookthat you should practice a daily ritual
no matter what it can be asshort at five minutes or an hour or
(36:15):
fifty hours. So tell us aboutwhy that's so important. Well, you
know, it's it's important for thesame reason that I just you know that
I just talked about in the definitionof yoga itself, right, because we
are constantly creating these you know,these worthies, and so we need to
(36:37):
find a way to settle them down. And I talked about the snow globe
and you shake it. You haveto wait for you know, the confetti
or the snow to settle before youcan really see what's in the scene.
And so every day it's like allwe're doing all day long is just constantly
shaking, and we shake it throughour reactions, we shake it through the
(36:58):
things that happen to us. Right, And so the reason to have a
little bit of right, it doesn'teven matter how much time there is.
And one of the things that Yogananda'slineage did was bringing this idea that you
know, yoga and at that time, you know, these types of particular
practices were only for the months andthe renunciates. I mentioned Yogananda's gurs Guruvaheri
(37:24):
Mahashai, who had a you knowhad been married, had kids, and
was a government employee. And youknow, he supposedly became enlightened after that
experience because he remembered his previous enlightenments, and he basically continued to work for
the government, continued to live thelife of a householder. And so which
(37:45):
is more akin to where we aretoday. Right at that time, even
when Yogananda came overton into America,India was modernizing, and you know,
his brother in law and his olderbrother were like, what are you doing
putting on these dirty robes of amonth? Go get a job, right
to something something real right in theworld. Be responsible. But because that
(38:07):
is the norm for most of ustoday. Most people who are involved in
the spiritual path or interested in thespiritual path, you know, have jobs,
have families, have things that weighus down. But they're also the
spice of life, right, ifyou think about it that If you've ever
remember that old game, I don'tknow if you remember that, but there
was a game called the Game ofLife. I used to play as a
(38:28):
kid, right, And you'd rollthe dice and you'd have your little car
or whatever, and you'd have yourfamily, you have your job, you'd
move up, and you know,that is a way to think about the
game. And in the Hindu Vedasthere's the tradition of the leila, which
is the divine play of the gods. You know, we could also be
thought of as a stage play oras Shakespeare said, you know, all
(38:52):
the worlds of stage, and themen and women are merely players. We
make our entrances at our exits.We start our stuff for you know,
a period of time, and sothat is part of the game of life.
But we often forget about the thingswe're meant to do, and we're
constantly not only are we playing thegame, having the experiences just to have,
(39:12):
but we are also stuffing that databasethat I talked about earlier called karma
based upon our reactions. And ifwe can take some time every day to
just calm those and that could bea form of meditation, a breath meditation,
energy meditation, chakla meditation, mantracould be you know, in Islamic
(39:35):
traditions, they have a prayer.In various Catholic traditions, there are various
prayers that you do know. Ilive in your google in Mountain View for
a part of the year, andthere's like a little park called Shoreline Park
that looks out over the bay andyou feel, I feel like I'm a
thousand miles away from Silicon valid when. Yeah, and so just taking a
(39:57):
walk with the air from the breezefrom the bay blowing cleans the aura.
So it's about not having these thingshardened. And then turns out that also
has great benefits for our mental healthand our physical health as well. And
so you know, I think sometimeswe think, okay, we were not
able to meditate for an hour,like all these self help gurgles do say
they should do it, right,the guys who say they get up at
(40:20):
five am and they meditate for anhour, And yeah, that's not practical
for most people, right, Soit's good to have any kind of practice
that stills the whirlpools of thoughts anddesires and feelings in the river of consciousness
and whatever that is. That isyour spiritual practice. And and that's why
it's important to have even a littlebit of that. And the Bagoland Geetha
(40:43):
it says a little bit of thisyoga right will save you much troubles down
the road. Down the road,Yes it will. Now, what are
your thoughts when working with mala beats. Is that also a form of meditation
and a daily practice or daily ritual? Well, it certainly could be absolutely.
I mean different people have different typesof beads, and you know,
(41:05):
I don't know specifically those of themala beads. I don't know those specifically,
but in a lot of traditions,you know what you have the rosary
beads and the Catholic tradition. InIslamic traditions, we have the best speed
which are like these beads that youused to say a mantra over and over
again. So there's a lot ofdifferent traditions that do use being this as
part of your practice. Okay,right now, when we go to your
(41:28):
website, zen entrepreneur dot com,what are we going to find there?
Yeah, so it's zen entrepreneur dotcom, which was based on the title
of my very first book, whichwas called Zen Entrepreneurship, which was about
bringing spirituality in the world of startups. And so there they can download three
chapters of my various books, includingthe you know, Wisdom of Yogi as
(41:51):
well Simulation Hypothesis and Simulated Multiverse.They'll find links to articles that I've written.
They can also find links to mysocial media. They can follow me
on Twitter at Riz Stanford, RizStanford, just like the university, and
I usually post, you know,some of my interviews there and then there's
(42:12):
links to my podcast and they cancontact me there as well. Okay,
I've really enjoyed speaking with you today. Could you leave us with a pearl
of wisdom? Please? Sure?Absolutely so. You know, I'll quote
from the autobiography with Yogis and stuffthat we were talking about, and he
said, you know, man's intuitionis soul guidance coming naturally to him or
(42:37):
her these days, in times whenthe mind is calmed, right, So
we get soul guidance when the mindis calmed. And that's why I'm important
to have a little bit of practiceto calm the storm of Ridley's every day.
All right, Absolutely beautiful, andRiz, thank you so much for
being my guest today. I greatlyappreciate it, and of the audience does
(42:58):
too. I'm truly honored to havespend time with you, and I know
the audience has the same sentiment.And everyone please remember that the most important
choice that you can make is whatyou choose to make important consider making the
mathtible choice of discovering the wisdom ofa yogi above the blessings, light and
love to all. A goping
Welcome to it. Over it theConsciousness Transforming Podcast for exceptional twenty first century
living folks. We have a treattoday. We're gonna have Rizwan work with
us. And he's talking about thebook Wisdom of a Yogi and this is
based on the Autobiography of a Yogi. And as I was telling him before
we started the show, I hadbought that book and I attempted to read
(01:23):
it literally forty times, and Ijust wasn't getting it. However, once
I read his book, I wasable to go back and piece the two
books together and I have a fullerunderstanding. So we want to thank him
for that. But again, thebook title is Wisdom of a Yogi,
Lessons for a modern Seekers from Autobiographyof a Yogi. And you're really going
(01:48):
to enjoy the show today. Now. The information Share don't get over It
uses intuitive and pragmatic insight to helpyou shift your consciousness to break through the
blocks and release energy that is nolonger needed. Yes, going to help
you let go of the BS thatis holding you back. But you guys
know I always ask are you trulyready to? And by the way,
folks, BS is belief system abit about me from my new listeners Intuitive
(02:13):
since birth. I'm a third generationIntuitive with over three decades of experience supporting
people to break through the blocks alongtheir path. I'm a strategist for personal
and professional transformation, revealing cutting edgeinformation that enables you to prosper and thrive.
I spent twenty five successful years incorporate America as an executive sales professional,
and I am the founder of HealingVisions Ministries and the Northern California Children's
(02:38):
Education Network, a five O oneC three nonprofit. I provide consultations and
healings in all areas of life thatheal the mind, bloody spirit connection,
allowing you to live your very bestlife. My clients tell me that I
keep it real while providing them withaccurate information to a system along their journey
as a spirit living a human existence. But they also say, if you
(03:00):
really don't want to know, don'task Monique. My background includes a doctorate
metaphysics, Ricky Master teacher or DanMinister, and clinical hypnotherapist. So whether
you are stress, depressed or posess, I can hope to find out more
about me and the services I offer. A food to my website, and
that's Monique Chapman dot com. Iinvite you to liken follow me on Facebook
(03:23):
and LinkedIn. Don't look for meon former Twitter because I'm not there now.
My guest today, Rizwan Werk isa successful entrepreneur, vincial capitalist,
and founder of play Labs at MT. A graduate of MT and Stanford,
he is currently at Arizona State University. He is the author of Zen Entrepreneurship,
(03:46):
Startup Myths and Models, Treasure Huntingand the Stimulation Hypothesis and the Stimulated
Multiverse, which is an excellent book. Folks. You should check that one
out and you can check them outat his website and that's Zen Entrepreneur dot
com. Again. His website iszen Entrepreneur dot com. Welcome riz Hi
(04:11):
Monique, thanks for having me onyour show. It's great for you to
be here today. I really youknow, as we shared earlier, I
was having a difficult time getting intothe autobiography. You know, I really
wanted to, I mean forty times, but you simplified it and to my
opinion, you made it accessible fortoday's world. What made you decide to
(04:32):
take this work and bring it intopresent time. Well, you know,
I've been a big fan of Yogananda'sAutobiography of the Yogi. You know,
since I first read it back inthe nineties, and you know, of
course the book was that book waspretty well known to within a certain generation,
(04:53):
like in the sixties and seventies.That was, you know, probably
one of the most passed around booksof that generation, and people like George
Harrison used to give away copies ofit to everyone he met, you know,
from the Beatles, and for SteveJobs, it was his favorite book.
And so, you know, whenI first started getting into the spiritual
world as a gen xer myself,you know, it was sort of passed
(05:16):
down to me by my kind ofboomer mentors, if you will. Uh,
And so so I've been a bigfan of it. But I've also
been in the computer industry, beenan entrepreneur, been in Silicon Valley,
and have been writing about how tobridge you know, the spiritual worlds with
the business world as well as withthe worlds of science and technology. And
(05:36):
it so happened a few years agothat I was I was going through some
health issues, and so I wasstuck on the couch, and so I
decided to reread it one more time, and then I decided to write a
series of essays about both about thisbook about Autobious Yogi as well as you
know, other books that were likeit, because I liked to, you
(05:57):
know, read the stories of likethe miracles of the you know, the
saints with the two bodies or thelevitating saint or the or the ones who
lived for hundreds of years in theHimalayas, and I thought that was kind
of unique. But uh, youknow, so I just wrote a few
essays about it. And I wasn'treally planning to write a book about uh
Yogananda and about autobiography the Yogi.And then sometimes we plan to seed that
(06:21):
just you know, grows into somethingin the universe, gives us a task
that we're supposed to do. Andthat's what happened, you know, with
this book. Was you know,I had just finished my books about the
simulation hypothesis, which is about thisidea that we live inside a video game,
and I had read referenced Yogananda bitand then out of the blue,
I got an invitation from Harparacollins,India and they basically said, it's the
(06:46):
seventy fifth anniversary of Autobiography Yogi andwe don't want to want to reprint it.
You know, plenty of people haveread it, but then there's plenty
of people in kind of the newergenerations and in the modern world who have
not read it, and that youknow, who may have a tough time
getting into it. And so we'dlike to write a book about lessons someone
has learned from the book and alsorelated to more modern ideas like computers and
(07:11):
the internet. And you know,Yogananda was very good at doing this.
He always tried to bring in thelatest technology of his time. But he
came to the US at nineteen twenty, so he was the first Indian guru
to really move here to make animpact. That that was one hundred years
ago that he came here. Uh. And so you know, basically,
I got this invitation dropped in mylap to write this book, and at
first I wasn't sure. Are yousure you want me to write it.
(07:33):
I'm more of a business guy,you know, a technology guy. I'm
not a Swami. You know,my background is in Islam, you know,
culturally and from Pakistan. But butI had written a lot about Yogananda,
and they said, no, wethink you're the right person to write
this book to bridge the gap,you know, for things that people talk
(07:53):
about today. And so then Irealized this was a task that the universe
was putting in front of me.And that's one of the less you know,
that I talk about in the bookas well. It has fourteen lessons
that you can learn from autobiography Yogi. But really it's about bringing ancient yoga
wisdom into the modern world. Thatthat's really you know what my book is
about. Yeah, because in yourbook you say, today east is west
(08:16):
and west is east, So whatis a modern yogi? Well, that's
a good question. And you knowin that book, I'm quoting the old
there's an old line from Rudyard Kiplingwhich said, you know, east is
east and west is west, andnever the twain shall meet. And I
said, well, that's relevant todayfor not really being relevant at all,
(08:39):
right, because today, you know, you can find a yoga studio on
every corner, you know, herein California for example, or in the
West, right, and if yougo to India or China, you know,
you can find probably as many startupsthere as you'll find in Silicon Valley
technology startups. And so you know, back in the time when Yogananda came
(09:01):
here. Uh you know, hethought of the West as the maturialistic place
in India, this more spiritual place. And today all those lines have been
blurred, right, and and thesephilosophies have traveled h and like I said,
in no small part thanks to Yogananda. You know, when when the
(09:22):
sixties happened here and the young peoplebegan looking for uh you know, alternative
ways of thought, they turned tothe Eastern traditions and that's what led to
it becoming so popular here. Butsome of these philosophies have now been transformed
here in America and now they've goneback to India. And this is what
some scholars call the pizza effact,which is something that I discovered when I
(09:46):
interviewed a few religious studies scholars forthis book. So the book contains not
only my own stories of lessons thatI learned from autobiotic Yogi, but also
stories from other people that I interviewedalong the way. And the pizza.
The fact is when something comes toone country from another. So pizza came
originally from some small region in Italy. It came to the US, but
(10:09):
really it was transformed into what wethink of as pizza today. Right,
the original pizza was just some breadwith a little bit sauce on it or
something, Right, But what wethink of as pizza today is really almost
like a US would say, invention, but let's say transformation of the original
concept. And now if you goback to Italy, you can find something
that's closer to what we think ofas pizza pretty much anywhere in the world,
(10:31):
in Italy or anywhere else. Andso the pizza e fact is when
something travels back. And so Yoganandacame here trying to adapt the ancient yoga
practices for what was modern at thattime, which was after World War One.
And you know now it's gone backto India, and so for that
reason, you know, he's actuallyhis book is probably more popular there now
(10:54):
than it ever has been. Andyou know, my book was released first
in India and then here in theUS, and it's actually it's actually in
bestseller in India. It's available atthe airports, you know, on the
bestseller lists, the shelves, they'reat the bookstores. But so, you
know, folks there are living modernlives as much as here. And so
a modern Yogi is someone who reallywants to integrate you know, ancient Eastern
(11:20):
philosophy into his life or her lifehere in the West. And so it's
not about becoming a renunciate. AndI would even say today it's not as
much as it was during Yogananda's time. You know, go and find a
guru and stay with that guru.I mean today you can find you can
find videos of pretty much all thesegurus online right on YouTube, So that
(11:43):
tends to be you know, wherepeople go first. They can find,
you know, speeches by all theseguys. And so it's a very different
world than it was in the pastbecause we're so connected, right, you
can find videos of gurus in Indiawithout having to go there. Now.
Steve Jobs, when he was younger, he traveled all the way to India
(12:03):
to look for, you know,some kind of spiritual enlightenment. What happened
was in his dorm room there wherehe was staying, somebody had left a
copy of autobiov Yogi, right,and then he brought it back here and
then he reread it every year andthen you know, according to his biographer,
you know, there was that famousbiography that came out a couple of
years back when he looked at hishis iPad. There was only one book
(12:24):
on there. It was autobiograpy vYogi. And when he you know,
when he died, at his memorialservice, they gave out this little brown
box, wooden box. And thenwhen people went home and opened up the
box, they found that there wasa copy of Autobio Yogi in there.
And so you see that these conceptshave traveled back and forth. But back
(12:45):
then, you know, he triedto go to India, but then he
ended up realizing, oh this,you know, this whole This guy who
was called the first modern Yogi orthe first modern guru, Yogananda, lived
in the US, set up hisoffice is his headquarters in Los Angeles on
top of Mount Washington. It's abeautiful area there, and and so so
(13:05):
you know that really being a modernyogi, you know, you're you're you're
pulling these ancient ideas and you maybe pulling them from different places. You
may be pulling them from books likeautobag to Yogi, from videos, and
and that that's part of it,you know, the other part of it
is that when Yogananda was alive,he tried to use modern metaphors to try
(13:26):
to get people to understand these ideas. And one of the main ideas within
the Hinduism and Buddhism is the conceptof maya or illusion, right, And
so maya means illusion typically, butif you look more closely, it means
like a carefully crafted illusion, whichgenerally means almost like a magic show.
(13:48):
Like if you go to a magicshow. You know the guy or you
know, the magician on the stageisn't really sawing that woman in half,
right and putting her back together.You know it's a trick, but you
kind of spend your disbelief because itlooks real, and you want to enjoy
yourself. That's why you enjoy yourself, right, And so Yogananda used the
analogy of a movie projector right.He saw the suffering during World War One,
(14:16):
which was called the Great War atthe time. Of course, they
didn't call World War one because peoplehadn't died on that scale before. It
was the first mechanized war, rightwhere they had like machine guns, and
you know, it was right duringand after the Industrial Revolution. And so
he said, you know, Lord, how can you allow such suffering?
And he got a clear answer whenhe was meditating, and he saw scenes
(14:39):
from the battlefield in France, andhe said, which were much worse and
more horrific than what he had seenon the newsreels in the theater, and
he got the message saying that whatyou're seeing played out is like a large
movie projector. Right, it's aplay of cherascuro, which was a word
for Italian art that I had tolook up and it meant light and shadow,
(15:01):
art that was constructed from light andshadow. And he basically got the
message that without light and shadow,you don't have a picture, and that
we should view he should view everythingthat's happening like a great motion picture.
And when the actors but when thecharacters die in a motion picture, the
suffering is real. But on theother hand, the actors don't really die.
(15:22):
That is part of the part thatthey are playing. And so that
was a very powerful metaphor, andit was one you'd like to use to
tell people. Look away from thescreen, you'll see the light coming in.
Right. And so today though that'syou know, movies are no longer
a new technology, but for youngpeople today, video games are kind of
the new technology that is most popularand where we spend where they spend a
(15:46):
lot of time. And so youknow, in my previous book, I
had talked about this idea of thesimulation, which is like the matrix,
that the world is like a computergame. I mean, I'd like to
think that if Yo Gona know ourlives today, he'd say, it's like
a movie. But we're all theactors, and we're all the players who
are also watching it, and wecan change our scripts because we have free
(16:07):
will, and we're all doing ittogether. And what does that sound like.
It sounds like a massively multiplayer onlinerole playing game. And so you
know, that is one of thelessons in this book is the world is
like a movie, a dream,or a video game. And that is
perhaps I think for today's audience,a more powerful metaphor for the world is
that everything is stimulated and built uppixels of light, just like Yoganando was
(16:30):
saying. But I believe if hewere alive today, he'd be attuned to
the latest technology. I think hewould too. In are you basically saying
that we are in the matrix,but we can utilize lucid dreaming maybe to
wake up from the matrix. That'sone of the things absolutely, So you
(16:51):
know, I said the world islike a movie, a dream, a
video game. And I use thedream metaphor, you know, because it's
been a very popular one within theEastern traditions, in particular in Buddhism as
well. And Yogananda himself said,life and death are birth and death are
like moving from the doors, fromone dream to another dream. And in
(17:14):
the Tibetan traditions, you know,they've preserved the practice of dream yoga,
which actually came out of India andthen traveled you up through the Himalayas by
a guy named Marpa, the translator, who took it from Kashmir back up
to what they call the land ofSnows, which is to Bat and there
(17:36):
it's been preserved and that is oneof the six yogas of Nuropa. And
this is about what we think oftoday is lucid dreaming. Although there's a
whole spiritual idea related to dream yoga, which you know, we in the
West we tend to strip some ofthese practices of their spiritual significance. Like
with meditation, we focus on mindfulness, which focuses on the stress benefits and
(17:56):
the health benefits and the mental benefits. Only even though meditation was originally meant
as a way to realize the natureof reality, right, and so we've
done the same with lucid dreaming.But the idea with lucid dreaming and would
dream yoga is that if you canwake up in the middle of a dream,
you can recognize that what's going onaround you isn't real, right,
(18:18):
that these uh, these are whatYogananda called the you know movies of the
night, right, the movies thatwe are the directors screenwriters of, and
we screen for ourselves, and thenwe get so involved in them that we
forget that they're not real. Allright. We've all we've all had that
experience where we wake up in themorning and we're like, oh, glad,
that was just a dream, right, or you run to the check
(18:42):
on everybody and say, oh,there's fear right exactly. But you know,
there are practices, and many peopleare able to do this at some
point in their life spontaneously, althoughthere are techniques to help you do it,
you know, more regularly. Butwould dream yoga, the idea is
you realize it's a dream as thefirst step, and then as a second
(19:03):
step, you learn to manipulate thedream. Because if you if you realize
the dream is not really you cando things. And you know, for
me personally, my lucidity test isif I can fly, right, So
I try to. If I noticesomething unusual in a dream, I'll say,
okay, can I fly? IfI can, then it must be
a dream, right. And youyou would be surprised the number of times
(19:26):
I've said to myself in a dream, Oh, this isn't a dream,
this is obviously real. You know, why should I even bother testing out
if I can fly? Because Iwon't be able to because it's not a
dream. And then suddenly I floatit up, you know, from my
chair or whatever, and so youknow the dream is meant to be fool
less, right. And you knowthere's a whole other element to dreams about
(19:48):
karma, which we can talk aboutin a minute. But you know,
this is the basic idea of dreamyou because once you learn to have that
awareness within the dream that what you'reseeing is not real, there's a part
of you that's outside of that worldand that it has it is to some
extent an illusion, right, lacking, as the Buddha said, lacking inherent
(20:08):
reality. And when the Buddha becamean awakened or enlightened. A woman asked
him what are you and he usedan ancient word that was based on the
soundscript both, which means to awakenin the sunscript. So basically he said,
I am awake. And that's whatBuddha means, which means if he's
he's awake, the rest of usmust still be asleep, right, And
(20:30):
so so that is the basic idea, and so within the video game as
well, if you think about it, you know, you can be inside
a video game on like League ofLegends or a warcraft for Fortnite, and
you get so involved in it inyour character, you identify with that character,
and sort a video game, wehave the player who exists outside of
the game, and then we havethe character or the avatar, who exists
(20:55):
within, and that avatar character iswho we associate ourselves with. And so
the idea is our body is basicallylike the character in the video game.
Right. And I was just Iwent to the UK this summer and I
gave a talk about Islam and thesimulation hypothesis, and that was interesting because
you know, you had a lotof some very conservative guys and some very
(21:18):
modern guys, you know, peoplefrom like Egypt, Germany had Ayatola from
Iran. You had all these guysthere. It was a very unusual conference.
And I was talking about video gamesand NPCs, which are nonplayer characters
inside videgots. But one of thethings they were debating, which religious people
tend to do in various religions,is insulment. When does insulment happen?
(21:40):
Right? When does the soul gointo the body? And there were different
answers based on different scriptural things,and I said, well, I'd like
to give a different perspective on whatinsulment is. It is like when you
put on a virtual reality headset,right, and when you do that and
you forget that you actually have aphysical body and you think you're just inside
(22:02):
the VR headset. Now, howI got into all this was I was
playing a virtual reality ping pong gameat a startup in Marin County, just
across the bay from San Francisco intwenty sixteen, and I was playing a
ping pong game, a table tennisgame, and this the headset sure pretty
bulky back then, and the graphicsweren't even that great compared to today,
and certainly not nowhere near as goodas they're going to be, you know,
(22:23):
in a few years. And fora moment, my body forgot instinctively
that I wasn't playing a real gameof ping pong, and instinctively I tried
to put the paddle down on thetable, and I tried to lean against
the table, but of course therewas no table, so it was all
in the VR headset, and mycontroller fell to the floor and I almost
(22:44):
fell over. And that's when Irealized, weird almost getting to that point
where we can fool ourselves that wereinside something like the matrix, that we
think it's real, and that Ithink is an app description for what's going
on, and the way to getout of it is to remember that there's
a part of you that chose tobe here, right, and that there's
a part of you that may haveeven chosen some of the difficult quests I
(23:10):
called them as they're called it videogames there. So so that's kind of
the overview of that idea that insidethe video game, you can remember that
there was a time you weren't playingthe game. Okay, now, when
do we escape it? If youwill the video game, I mean,
we can be we be released fromthis matric energy that we seem to find
(23:32):
ourselves. So right, well,you know, I believe one we all
first of all automatically get out ofthe game during certain periods of our time,
and that that is accessible through thedream state. But obviously when we
die, we are leaving this physicalreality, and so it's like we're saying
(23:52):
game over for that specific game,right, but we also have to come
back. According to the eastrict isbecause of karma that we have generated a
long way. And so the ideais that we have a database, and
this is sort of the modern kindof interpretation of karma that I bring about
(24:14):
in my book, is that wehave a database of all these different experiences,
which I call quests and achievements,because that's how video games are built,
and those that database. As longas there's stuff in that database,
you have to keep going in toplay the game, because then you will
basically take on another personality and anotherbody, and you will choose a script
(24:37):
that says, here's the ten thingsthat I might do in this life.
But while you're playing the game,you could forget about those, right.
You might decide, okay, wehave something unresolved between myself another person we
need to have a romantic relationship,but perhaps you never even encounter each other
in this life. Therefore, thatquest is still in the database. And
so I think the idea with artwith karma is that you need to then
(25:00):
exhaust that database. Now, someof those people think of karma as big
actions. Right then you've taken.But if you look at the Eastern traditions,
you know karma has generated often bythe reactions two things and desires.
Now, there's a great story inthe autobiography. Later on in the autobiography,
it's about the seemingly immortal Babaji,who was Ryogananda calls the maha Avatar
(25:26):
Mahamatar Babaji who lives up in theHimalayas, who supposedly has been around for
hundreds of years, maybe even overa thousand years in the same physical body,
and Yogananda's guru, who was aguy named Shu Yutaswar in Veneer,
Calcutta, and his guru was aguy named Lahiri Mahashai who was the main
guy who contacted Babaji and then thenot the twentieth century, in the nineteenth
(25:52):
century, around eighteen sixty and duringthat time, Babaji said Lahiri, I've
been waiting for you. Don't youremember me? You encounter them in the
mountains up near Ronicat, which isa small town in India. And Lahiri
was worked for the like a governmentaccounting office and he was sent up there.
It turns out to be a mistake. He was sent up there,
but he had nothing to do,so all he did was wander around the
(26:14):
mountains while he was up there,and he came across this guy in a
loincloth who looked like he was twentyfive years old, and it turns out
it was Bobbai goes, don't youremember me from your previous lives? And
he goes, no, I don'tremember, and then he put him through
an initiation where he then remember hisprevious lives and he did something amazing.
Supposedly, these are where these miraculousstories that we hear and we read about,
(26:37):
which which kind of got me andmillions of others excited, you know,
from autobiography and Yogi. The bookisn't just about these miracles. It's
about the spiritual lessons behind the miracles. But there's a story that just sounded
unbelievable. It sounded like it wasstraight out of the Arabian nights, right
like like a lad we said both. Bobbaji created this giant palace, resplendent
(26:57):
with jewels, right there in themiddle of the Himalayas. He materialize that
out of nothing so that Lahiri coulddo his initiation ceremony there. And when
he asked them about it, hesaid, Lahiri, don't you remember in
your previous life you expressed a strongdesire to live in a palace like a
prince. Well, that desire hasto be extinguished somehow. Now you can
(27:19):
do it in a future life.But if we just create this for you,
we will resolve that quest. Andat the end of the night,
he said, close your eyes inthe entire palace disappear, right, which
gets back to one if it happened, how did you do it? Is
matter even real, which gets backto this idea of a video game.
But the underlying lesson is a strongerlesson than Oh wow, look at that.
(27:41):
I mean those are if you readthe original story of Aladdin. That's
what the gin the genie does.He like creates this palace. Right.
It's about karma and how our intentionsand our desires and our attachments are stored
somewhere and somehow we have to resolvethem. And so in this very unusual
(28:02):
case, granted this doesn't happen often, right, it was resolved in an
instant by through the maturialization of aof a large palace. In another story
about Bobajee, who was one ofthe most intriguing characters. You know,
they were sitting around a fire upin the Himalayas somewhere at night, and
Bobajee grabs a log off the fireand burns the shoulder of one of the
(28:26):
cellas, one of the students,you know, the disciples. And Lahiri
was there because now this was afterhis his initiation, and he said,
well, sir, that's so cruel. Why would you do that to your
own disciple? And he says,well, would you rather have him die
a fiery death? Right? Thatwas his karma, was that he was
supposed to suffer a fiery death.But by providing this little bit of discomfort,
(28:49):
and then he healed it shoulder afterhe burned it. You know,
he said, by providing him withthe suffering of this little bit of discomfort,
we were able to resolve back.And so now he doesn't have to
die a fiery debt, so that'san experience he no longer needs to have,
and so, you know, andtrying to bring this into kind of
language that we can understand. Youcan think of it as a video game,
where these are experiences where we're goingto have at some point. And
(29:12):
the whole point of within the Easterntraditions, particularly Buddhism and Hinduism, and
some of the mystical traditions of theJudea Christian religions as well, But the
idea is to stop generating more karmaby stop having too much desire and fear
and being so attached to things.And as the Buddha said, you know,
(29:33):
if you stop doing this, thenthat won't happen, right, and
that this is feeding the database andthings you have to take care of now.
Sometimes the Tibetans saying, these thingscan be taken care of in dreams
if they're just little impressions you mayhave noticed, you know, in a
dream, sometimes you'll see something yousaw on TV that day, or something
made an impression on right. Thatwas what the Tibetans call a karma trace,
(29:56):
and it was a small trace,but it was enough that it needs
to be resolved, and so itjust gets resolved in the dream, because
dreams are like little relations or littleworlds, if you will, that we
create for ourselves, but some haveto be done in the physical world anyway.
So that's kind of an interesting wayto think about all of this.
Okay, Well, in the bookyou talk about less than five and that's
(30:17):
by location, levitation and telepathy.And I remember back it was back in
nineteen ninety four, ninety five.I was still in sales at the time.
That was in the office, youknow, making phone calls, and
all of a sudden, I noticedthat everybody on the team was standing around
me. And I looked up andI'm like, well, what's going on?
(30:37):
And they said, well, Nick, you were like six inches off
the ground. And I'm like,oh really, because I had no clue.
So I'll talk to us about howwe can get to the point of
levitation by location and telepathy. Wellthat's very interesting that showing that this is
still going on. Right. So, you know, I spend a lot
of time in academia with scientists andyou know, Intel Coon Valley with technologists,
(31:03):
and you know, there's a lotof skepticism about these old stories.
Uh, and you know, ifyou read Yogananda, it sounds like these
things were happening all the time.Right there was a leven hidden saint just
down the road from where he lived. There was this saint with two bodies,
you know where Yogananda went to visitthis guy in Benari's His father sent
him with a note when he wasa kid and said, go find my
(31:23):
friend kettering off Babu. But Idon't know where he is, so go
visit the swami first. So hegoes to visit the Swami and says,
I have a note for this guyBabu. And the Swami says, okay,
sit down, and the swami meditatesfor half an hour, and Yogananda's
the young kid was kind of impatiently. He's like, okay, well,
how are we gonna go tell himto come he or give him the note.
(31:45):
The Swami opens up his eyes andsays, I just told him.
Don't worry, he'll beat her soon. Right. And so the guy shows
up like a half hour later,and he looks and he sees the Swami
sitting there and he's amazing. Hegoes, wait, I just saw the
Swami like you know, thirty minutewalk away in the marketplace. He was
here the whole time, and sothat was, you know, one of
many cases of this by location.Uh. And you know you mentioned your
(32:07):
own levitation, and so you know, I went to to talk to some
religious scholars about this traditions and doesthis stuff still happen today? And you
know, one of the scholars Italked to was Diana Pasolka, who's a
Catholic professor. She studies Catolicism.She wrote a book called American Cosmic UFO's
Religion and Technology, which is prettywell known in certain communities. But anyway,
(32:30):
she said that, you know,in the Catholic traditions, there's there's
a whole host of that. Inacademic they train you to not believe that
this stuff is possible, and evenas a religious scholar, you're supposed to
say, well, we're just theseare just stories, they're not real,
right. But then when she wentto the Vatican and looked at their archives,
she found the canonization records of Josephof Cupertino, and what she found
was the testimony of the Devil's Advocate, who is the guy that the Catholic
(32:53):
Church puts in charge of disproving itis to say this. Whenever somebody says
there's a miracle, the devil's advocateis supposed to show that's not the case,
that this was just yes, right. And she goes and she read
those and she saw there were athousand signatures of people that had seen Joseph
flowed up in this town of Cupertinoin the square up high and just like
(33:15):
in your case, right, Andso you know, then she began to
believe that, okay, these thingsare really happening. So, you know,
yoga Ada talks about and yoga itself. If you look at the definition
of yoga in Patanjali's Yoga sutras,it's not necessarily the physical postures. It's
about stealing what are called the rittis. The rittis are like these whirlpools of
(33:37):
thought and feeling in the rivers ofconsciousness. The ton of kind of translated
his famous saying, which is yoganarroda chita Ritti's which is the yoga is
the cessation of the whirlpools of thoughtand feeling in the rivers of consciousness.
Now what that means is these theseworldpools were having them all the time.
They're like storms, right, andall we do is it's almost like a
(33:59):
snow and we're constantly shaking up thesnow globes, so we can't see inside.
But what happens is these Rickney's,according to the ancient Indian traditions,
hardened into some scaras in our energyfield, what they called kosas, and
then those become masanas or tendencies acrosslives, and so they harden into karma.
And so what happens is that ifyou loosen these through yoga, any
(34:22):
type of yoga really doesn't have tobe the physical asanas. They were just
one of the eight limbs of yogasthat your energy field becomes light and then
your physical body becomes lighter. Andthis can be done through devotion like there
are many Catholic saints who supposedly thishappened too, like Padre Pio's when in
the twentieth century, who would floatup from devotion to God. So clearly
(34:46):
you know you've lightened your energy fieldenough that it happens spontaneously, and you
know the same is true in thedreamstate. I talked about locid dreaming and
flying. There are days when Itry to fly up and I can just
barely get off the ground. It'slike I'm heavy. There's other times when
the energy body, they're so easyto fly up and float, you know,
thousands of feet in the air anduh, and what's the difference.
(35:09):
It's usually how much stress I'm underand then and how much stuff I'm carrying
in my field. And so youknow, I think the answer to these
things is partly in this model thatthe body is made of light. And
if you have a light body,you can, like in a video game,
you can you can create two copiesof your avatar. I mean,
(35:30):
that's technically possible within a game.But it's it's also about how we lighten
our load in our energy field.So you know, that's that's really interesting
that you have some witnesses there forhaving done that, So that that's probably
one of the more recent stories I'veheard about levitation. Yeah, well that
was more at that time I wasreally into and studying light body, and
(35:53):
you know, it came through,so I took it as a firm understanding
and validation that I was on theright path for me at that particular time.
Now, you say in your bookthat you should practice a daily ritual
no matter what it can be asshort at five minutes or an hour or
(36:15):
fifty hours. So tell us aboutwhy that's so important. Well, you
know, it's it's important for thesame reason that I just you know that
I just talked about in the definitionof yoga itself, right, because we
are constantly creating these you know,these worthies, and so we need to
(36:37):
find a way to settle them down. And I talked about the snow globe
and you shake it. You haveto wait for you know, the confetti
or the snow to settle before youcan really see what's in the scene.
And so every day it's like allwe're doing all day long is just constantly
shaking, and we shake it throughour reactions, we shake it through the
(36:58):
things that happen to us. Right, And so the reason to have a
little bit of right, it doesn'teven matter how much time there is.
And one of the things that Yogananda'slineage did was bringing this idea that you
know, yoga and at that time, you know, these types of particular
practices were only for the months andthe renunciates. I mentioned Yogananda's gurs Guruvaheri
(37:24):
Mahashai, who had a you knowhad been married, had kids, and
was a government employee. And youknow, he supposedly became enlightened after that
experience because he remembered his previous enlightenments, and he basically continued to work for
the government, continued to live thelife of a householder. And so which
(37:45):
is more akin to where we aretoday. Right at that time, even
when Yogananda came overton into America,India was modernizing, and you know,
his brother in law and his olderbrother were like, what are you doing
putting on these dirty robes of amonth? Go get a job, right
to something something real right in theworld. Be responsible. But because that
(38:07):
is the norm for most of ustoday. Most people who are involved in
the spiritual path or interested in thespiritual path, you know, have jobs,
have families, have things that weighus down. But they're also the
spice of life, right, ifyou think about it that If you've ever
remember that old game, I don'tknow if you remember that, but there
was a game called the Game ofLife. I used to play as a
(38:28):
kid, right, And you'd rollthe dice and you'd have your little car
or whatever, and you'd have yourfamily, you have your job, you'd
move up, and you know,that is a way to think about the
game. And in the Hindu Vedasthere's the tradition of the leila, which
is the divine play of the gods. You know, we could also be
thought of as a stage play oras Shakespeare said, you know, all
(38:52):
the worlds of stage, and themen and women are merely players. We
make our entrances at our exits.We start our stuff for you know,
a period of time, and sothat is part of the game of life.
But we often forget about the thingswe're meant to do, and we're
constantly not only are we playing thegame, having the experiences just to have,
(39:12):
but we are also stuffing that databasethat I talked about earlier called karma
based upon our reactions. And ifwe can take some time every day to
just calm those and that could bea form of meditation, a breath meditation,
energy meditation, chakla meditation, mantracould be you know, in Islamic
(39:35):
traditions, they have a prayer.In various Catholic traditions, there are various
prayers that you do know. Ilive in your google in Mountain View for
a part of the year, andthere's like a little park called Shoreline Park
that looks out over the bay andyou feel, I feel like I'm a
thousand miles away from Silicon valid when. Yeah, and so just taking a
(39:57):
walk with the air from the breezefrom the bay blowing cleans the aura.
So it's about not having these thingshardened. And then turns out that also
has great benefits for our mental healthand our physical health as well. And
so you know, I think sometimeswe think, okay, we were not
able to meditate for an hour,like all these self help gurgles do say
they should do it, right,the guys who say they get up at
(40:20):
five am and they meditate for anhour, And yeah, that's not practical
for most people, right, Soit's good to have any kind of practice
that stills the whirlpools of thoughts anddesires and feelings in the river of consciousness
and whatever that is. That isyour spiritual practice. And and that's why
it's important to have even a littlebit of that. And the Bagoland Geetha
(40:43):
it says a little bit of thisyoga right will save you much troubles down
the road. Down the road,Yes it will. Now, what are
your thoughts when working with mala beats. Is that also a form of meditation
and a daily practice or daily ritual? Well, it certainly could be absolutely.
I mean different people have different typesof beads, and you know,
(41:05):
I don't know specifically those of themala beads. I don't know those specifically,
but in a lot of traditions,you know what you have the rosary
beads and the Catholic tradition. InIslamic traditions, we have the best speed
which are like these beads that youused to say a mantra over and over
again. So there's a lot ofdifferent traditions that do use being this as
part of your practice. Okay,right now, when we go to your
(41:28):
website, zen entrepreneur dot com,what are we going to find there?
Yeah, so it's zen entrepreneur dotcom, which was based on the title
of my very first book, whichwas called Zen Entrepreneurship, which was about
bringing spirituality in the world of startups. And so there they can download three
chapters of my various books, includingthe you know, Wisdom of Yogi as
(41:51):
well Simulation Hypothesis and Simulated Multiverse.They'll find links to articles that I've written.
They can also find links to mysocial media. They can follow me
on Twitter at Riz Stanford, RizStanford, just like the university, and
I usually post, you know,some of my interviews there and then there's
(42:12):
links to my podcast and they cancontact me there as well. Okay,
I've really enjoyed speaking with you today. Could you leave us with a pearl
of wisdom? Please? Sure?Absolutely so. You know, I'll quote
from the autobiography with Yogis and stuffthat we were talking about, and he
said, you know, man's intuitionis soul guidance coming naturally to him or
(42:37):
her these days, in times whenthe mind is calmed, right, So
we get soul guidance when the mindis calmed. And that's why I'm important
to have a little bit of practiceto calm the storm of Ridley's every day.
All right, Absolutely beautiful, andRiz, thank you so much for
being my guest today. I greatlyappreciate it, and of the audience does
(42:58):
too. I'm truly honored to havespend time with you, and I know
the audience has the same sentiment.And everyone please remember that the most important
choice that you can make is whatyou choose to make important consider making the
mathtible choice of discovering the wisdom ofa yogi above the blessings, light and
love to all. A goping
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