The Nathan Crane Podcast
Ancient Indian Wisdom, The Vedas, Upanishads and Natural Healing: Ashok Gupta | Nathan Crane Podcast
- Wow, I am really looking forward to this conversation. Today with my friend Ashok Gupta. Ashok, what's up brother? Thanks for coming on the podcast. - Yes, I'm very well, thanks Nathan. It's lovely to be with you again. - So for anyone who doesn't know, Ashok is an internationally renowned speaker. He's a filmmaker, he's a health practitioner. He is a published scientist. He's been helping people through his Gupta program to retrain their brain. He'll subconscious, he'll trauma subconscious belief systems as well as helping with chronic fatigue and all kinds of chronic health conditions. But we were just talking offline Ashok and a lot of your past experience, including a documentary film series that you were just telling me about is on the ancient Vedic wisdom and knowledge out of India. And we were just talking about the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita and the masters from India and those incredible wisdom teachings that basically teach humanity how to be one with God, right? How to achieve our highest potential as human beings, how to master control over the mind and the body, how to heal disease. And to me that's really fascinating. I was just sharing with you a big part of my morning practice now in addition to reading the Bible and prayer and meditating and I'm also reading the Upanishads and I'm reading the Bhagavad Gita and I'm reading these ancient Indian texts and Raja yoga and I'll do a practice. I'm learning Kriya yoga right now as well. So these in Pranayama and practicing these teachings that teach us how to basically gain control over our mind and body and overcome disease and really achieve our enlightened selves as the Buddha taught, as these ancient rishis taught and as I believe and many of us believe that Jesus taught the same. So anyway, I'm excited about diving in that conversation with you as well and curious on your, like what really got you, yeah, tell me a little bit about your kind of background with studying this ancient knowledge. - Yes, well, like many of us who have come on this healing journey, this healing path, it started with our own challenges and for me this started in the mid 90s. So until then I had, you know, I wouldn't say I was particularly religious or spiritual, I had some belief, but I wasn't really engaged with that. I was a young man, I was doing partying, enjoying life and that was the priority. And this was the mid 90s and I was studying as an undergrad at Cambridge University and I got some kind of illness. So it was a virus, bacteria, whatever it is. And the bacteria seemed to go away or whatever the viral thing was, but my illness got worse and worse and worse. To the worst moment I had to crawl to the bathroom. I was almost suicidal, I felt ill all the time. And I go from doctor to doctor and they say, we don't know what you've got, we have no treatment for it, you're on your own. And by the way, you might have this thing called ME or chronic fatigue syndrome and you might have it for the rest of your life, goodbye. And that was to a young man, a brick wall, you know, I mean, I literally, people say, what does that feel like? I said, it feels like your worst day of flu times five. Like literally you can't do anything. And that started my lifelong quest to understand myself, understand healing, understand my spiritual side and put all of this together to be able to just out of necessity heal myself. But then once I did that, it became a boon for, you know, hopefully other people as well. And I remember my worst moments I said to the universe, if I can just get myself well, I promise you, I will dedicate the rest of my life every waking moment to supporting others with their healing. And so I read a lot of books on brain neurology, I studied physiology, and I managed to retrain my brain in a very ad hoc way when this stuff wasn't even recognizing those days. Got myself 100% well, and then set up a clinic to treat and support others. And then we published the Gupta program, the Neuroplasticity Program in 2007. And since then we've been doing randomized control trials, improving the program, and now we have an app. So yeah, that's been, that's been my journey over the last 30 years to get to this point. And I have to say, something that at the time felt like, how can I even go on in life, has become the biggest gift to me to transform me and hopefully transform the lives of others. - Yeah, that's very often what happens, right? So many of us go through really hard times, addiction, health challenges. And by seeking answers, seeking truth, seeking solutions, we end up going down this incredible rabbit hole. For years and years, and discover so many interesting, exciting things, like this ancient Vedic knowledge, this ancient Vedic wisdom, for example, that our ancestors from India have known for thousands of years how to heal disease, how to transcend the limitations of the human body, how to master our mind, how to overcome suffering, and stress, and anxiety, and disease, and so forth. So I've been reading the Bhagavad Gita lately, and I think that it's such small texts, right? Such small verses that are just filled with so much wisdom. I mean, in a single verse, you read it, and you're like, wow, just mind-blowing how much wisdom is in that single verse. - Oh, yes, absolutely. I mean, the Bhagavad Gita was something that, in fact, Einstein was a big fan of, and said it was one of the most incredible pieces of literature on the planet. And that ancient wisdom is now coming fourth to the world. Because if you look at, let's say, what we're now practicing, 30, 40 years ago, yoga was seen as like very fringe, very crazy, now it's becoming mainstream. 20, 30 years ago, meditation was for weirdos, now that's becoming mainstream. Now silence retreats, getting connection with nature, these are becoming mainstream things. And in a similar way, that ancient Vedic knowledge, which was never ascribed to a single writer, it was a group of issues that had no ego that just channeled this knowledge and wrote it for humanity, is now also coming fourth as this next wave. So our first wave was yoga coming and infiltrating. And the next wave was meditation. The next wave then came breathwork. And now this next wave will be that deep core, spiritual knowledge that is so fundamental to our wellbeing. So we're seeing that it's not from an ego place of, oh, this all this great wisdom was in India, but it was just the authenticity of it is now coming forward and waiting the world. - Yeah, it's interesting how so much of these wisdom traditions and this wisdom does come out of India and Tibet and Eastern countries, you know, China, you have traditional Chinese medicine, you have qigong, I mean, you have, so you have India and you have the Vedas and you have all that knowledge and wisdom that comes, you know, potentially 5,000 BC, maybe longer, depends, you know, maybe older, depends on, you know, who you believe. We don't really know for sure, but likely 7,000 years ago, maybe much older, right? And during the similar time period, then out of China, you have a similar kind of knowledge and wisdom coming forward, you know, traditional Chinese medicine, qigong, this is what they call qi, the master of, mastering, learning to master our qi, our life force energy. And in India, it's called prana, right? In the Vedas, it's called prana. Prana yama is mastering our life force energy. Here in the West, we still think prana yama, if you've heard that, it's just breath work, right? But as I read in Raja yoga from Swami Vivekananda, he says, look, the breath is just a mechanism to help you to get to the point of being able to control your prana, which the prana is the life force energy that manifests behind all things, right? The akasha, and correct me if I'm wrong, but he talks about the akasha is the manifestation. It's all the material things. It's everything comes from the akasha and goes back to the akasha. That's all the material, the human body, the table, the sun, you name it. And the life force that gives the power to manifest these material things is the prana, and that is the magnetism, the gravity, the life force energy within our minds and bodies. And so, Raja yoga, which I think is a pretty incredible practice that I'm learning right now, and prana yama, which is learning to master the prana within. And he talks about how when you have healers, like I've done healings on people, when you talk about another time, and literally healing has happened, I don't really know how I did it, but he explains it that even healers may not understand what they're doing as they are controlling the prana. Well, the qigong masters understood this as controlling the qi, and by balancing the qi, you create the flourishing of health in the body. - Oh, absolutely. So day to day, we are made up of different bodies. So we have the physical body, right? And that's what mainstream medicine looks at, is the physical body, the enzymes, the cortisol, all these different things we can measure. And yet there is another layer behind that, which is the subtle body. And that subtle body is the realm of emotions and mind and consciousness to an extent. And that realm is provided for by the prana. That is the key resource to be able to energize that subtle layer of our existence, the more energetic layer. And that's why the control of the breath is one of the most powerful ways in which we can elevate that prana. So that life force, we all know when it's low, right? So let's say we've had a hard day's work and we've been on a screen for 10 hours. Guess what, prana goes low? We've been having fried foods. I mean, I find if I have a plate full of French fries, prana dips, if we haven't been connecting with nature or whatever it may be, or being around high vibrational spaces, our prana then comes low. - You know, with the cold and flu season here, it's critically important that we enhance and strengthen our immune systems. Yes, would you agree? The problem is though, that there's so much confusion out there when it comes to what actually works for our bodies and for our health. Well, I'll tell you what I used. 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And to raise our brainer, then there are a number of things as you say that perhaps traditionally we may not think of as raising that. So there's the breath work that controls it and then of course our diet and what we put into our physical being impacts on our brainer levels. But the most important powerful thing is how much have we got control over our mind? If what lowers brainer the most is not what we think it might be, it's actually when we worry. When we have uncontrolled patterns of thought, this uses up that subtle life force. And when we actually have stillness, centeredness, peace of mind in the moment, which is facilitated by regular meditation and breath work, then we stop losing those layers of prana within ourselves and we maintain that high vibrational awareness. And that comes not only through breath work, it also comes through spiritual knowledge and spiritual awareness and self-awareness. You know, the biggest piece of the missing piece in a lot of spiritual practice, you know, people think, I'm doing yoga, I'm being spiritual, I'm doing this, I'm being spiritual. It's actually moment to moment awareness of what this little part of us is doing our minds and how it's taking us uncontrollably down different paths and being aware of that and bringing it back to our center. And it's a bit like riding a horse. So you're riding a horse, this happened to me once, I was riding a horse and this is a very fidgety horse. So it would see some branches over here, it would go over there and start sniffing over there. And the rest of the people were on the horse going, "Ah, shop, where are you going?" I said, "I've got no control over this horse, it's going all over the place." And then it would go and stop here and do this. And I had to pull the horse and say, "Come on, there's an element of self-awareness, self-discipline that says, "No, this is the path we are on, this is what we choose for ourselves." And we lose just little snippets of prana each time our mind goes off into these cheeseless tunnels of worry that our mind is obsessed with. - You can literally worry yourself to death or worry yourself to sickness, right? I mean, it's very interesting that, you know, our ancient ancestors knew this in terms of the need to control the mind, to create a sense of wellbeing and the focus on, you know, wellbeing for yourself and wellbeing for others, focus on gratitude, the focus on God, you know, putting our mind there as often as possible, but when we worry, when we stress, when we have resentment, we have fear, we have guilt, and we do that chronically, as you know, with the patients you work with, and through your program, it leads to disease. It literally down-regulates the immune system. It up-regulates our sympathetic nervous system. It puts us on, you know, kind of a fight or flight or freeze or basically this response that is preventing our body from doing what it is designed to do, which is, you know, fend off bacteria and viruses and pathogens and cancer cells and clean all this stuff up. When we're in that state of continual worry, which unfortunately so many people are today, right, we create as a Buddha taught, we're creating our own suffering through our minds, we're also creating our own physical disease, aren't we? - You know, one of the most important things I've learned over the years in helping many people get and stay healthy is to help them shift their mindset into thinking of themselves as an athlete, no matter their age, whether they just walk 30 minutes a day in the mornings, for example, or they play sports for fun on the weekends, or they go to gym a couple days a week, no matter what your activity level, if you think of yourself as an athlete, then you start to naturally take better care of your body, focus more on your nutrition, recovery, sleep, other health protocols that optimize your performance as an athlete and in turn may help you prevent and heal against chronic diseases and help your body be the healthiest that it can possibly be. 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So our nervous system is our brain and all the nerves that connect to all the cells and muscles, like our electrical system, the information system. And what happens is, when we blow up the balloon to a normal level, it's nice and soft and spongy. So this is when we have a good level of brana, we're able to feel happy feelings, good feelings. We're able to connect with people around us, right? And we are soft and spongy and malleable. So an impact comes to us, you know, perhaps a disappointment or some bad news. And, you know, it bounces off because we're soft, so we're malleable, we're flexible to the ups and downs of life, yeah? And so many things like meditation and breath work, being around good company, eating hyperana foods. This can all keep us in this nice, soft, spongy state to handle life. But then when we start worrying and stress starts coming, guess what? People say, my cup is full. So this is when we start getting really stressed. And now the balloon is super tight. And now when it's impacted, it's really making an impact. We are no longer flexible anymore. We're stiff, we're tight. And this is when our nervous system no longer has the capacity for flexibility or being neuroplastic. And this then leads to diminished brana. This leads to anxious thoughts feeling overwhelmed. And when I speak to people, Nathan, I don't know if you noticed this, more and more people in life seem to be just on the edge of burnouts. They're pushing their mind and body to the nth degree because of screens and overstimulation of information overload. They can't handle another piece. And this is often how we're living. We're living in this stressed state. And often when we work with our clients, we say, if you stay in this stressed, stressed state, this fight, flight or free state, eventually what happens is all the air comes out with a funny noise and you get into this flop state where you now feel burnt outs, depressed, lethargic. You don't feel like doing anything, right? I'm sure we can all recognize periods of time in our life when we've had that. Where now the brana is low and it's remaining low because the system is exhausted. And our two skills in life, first of all, when we get to this exhausted state, knowing how we can bring ourselves back to this soft, spongy good state, how we raise our vibrational energy and our brana to do that. And secondly, when we do get to the stressed state, how we can recognize this and release that stress and bring our nervous system back to a balanced state. So I would say the first stage of our growth is just managing life and managing stress in our emotions. And then once we can do that and keep ourselves in this soft, spongy state, then the next step is our spiritual journey where we can look at that higher vibrational energy, you look at this knowledge. But the first stage is just dealing with life day-to-day. That's where I think a lot of people are. - Yeah, that's a good point, is how do we live in this crazy, stressful world with all these demands and bills and bill collectors and social media pumping fear driving messages and assassinations into your inbox 24/7 where you're constantly on this fight, your nervous system's constantly in this fight or flight state. It's like the squirrels outside in my backyard every morning when I let the dogs out, they go chasing the squirrels, right? And I see those squirrels, when they're on the backyard picking for food, they're in this constant fight or flight. They know their life could be threatened at any moment. They're on high alert and they're getting nuts and seeds and different things. And all of a sudden, these two wolf-like dogs come chasing on the squirrels go flying up over the kid's little toy house thing and the dogs are like chopping, trying to bite them and their tail's almost in the mouth and I always feel bad for those squirrels. The squirrels are just like, they're in constant fight or flight and then they really have their life threatened and then they're flying through the air, jumping over the fence every single morning. What happens, unfortunately, most people are living like a squirrel today, right? Most people are in that constant nervous system, fight or flight or freeze mode where it's like every little thing kind of throws them off. There's a danger everywhere, even though there's pretty much no real danger. There's no lines and tigers and giant wolves and things coming to attack you and eat you every single day. You know, yeah, you're in a car, there's car wrecks and stuff like that, we're so used to driving very rarely do most people and most of us just drive subconsciously, right, that we're not really worried about a car wreck. The stress is coming from, oh, I'm gonna be late for work. Oh, this traffic jam, oh, this car wreck has now made me late. This is terrible or my boss is gonna be mad at me or, you know, I don't have enough money to pay the bills. All these very valid concerns, but we take them on and don't know how to self-regulate, don't know how to deal with those situations and then they're just causing this nervous system overdrive, which is absolutely leading to this part of massively leading this chronic disease epidemic that we experience today. So learning to control our nervous system, right, learning to control our breath is one way to do it. I mean, that's a basic thing people can do every single day, right, is just start practicing some basic pranayama, start practicing some basic breath work, learning how to take those deep inhalations and slow exhalations, right? So you can actually start to get some control over the nervous system. Would you agree that that's probably a good place for people to start at the very basic? - I think that's foundational, yes. That for some people, even meditation can be a bit of a stretch. So we start with basic breath work. And the breath work works at many different levels. It's working at the physical body level in terms of oxygenation, but it's also working at the subtle level in terms of raising our brana and energy, raising that vibrational energy within us. And there are lots of different subtle components, but for example, when the out breath is controlled through the nose as we breathe out and it is longer than the in breath, that has always been a part of the ancient Vedic tradition that in doing so, that is a way of raising your prana. And then there's lots of different pranas. You say the pranayama breathing technique, then there are lots of Kriya breath work. And for me personally, I use the one from the Art of Living Foundation call, Sudarshan Kriya, and I find that incredibly powerful. - What does that look like? - So the Sudarshan Kriya, it's a breathing technique that you learn on one of their courses. And essentially, you learn a long version of the breath technique, which takes about 45, 50 minutes that you do face to face with them on the course. And then they give you a shortened version you use every morning, it takes about 15 minutes. So what I do is in the morning, my morning routine, so I can show you what I do to keep my prana high. So my morning routine is I will do my cardio in the morning. So I will do 20 to 30 minutes of cardio, which could be hits protocol. I'll do different things each day, some strength training or some jogging. So I'll vary it up. Do that 20, 30 minutes in the morning, or if you don't wanna do that, just go for a brisk walk, if that's what you can manage. 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Then the next step, which has been misinterpreted in the West, is the physical stretch in yoga was never designed to be just an outcome by itself. - Right. - It was designed as this is the meditation for your body. So this is getting the body in its optimal state to facilitate a deeper state of consciousness. So then you do the yoga first, which then leads onto the breath work, which then takes you to another door of meditation. And then you can enter a deeper meditation by following that process. And actually, it is often the depth of the meditation, the stillness of the meditation, which then determines how much that has been able to raise your prana overall through this process, but also how you've been connecting with your witnessing awareness. So normally our mind is engrossed in things. I always take the example of imagine, imagine this cup of water and it's got a pen inside it, yeah? I won't put it in 'cause I'm gonna drink this water. But imagine this a pen in here and this represents our mind and our sense of ironis, our identity is here and we are swirling around your unconscious thoughts around and around we go in this cup. And we're trying to solve our problems whilst we're swirling in this cup. But as Einstein said, you can't use the same thinking to solve a problem that created the problem. So the purpose of all of these practices is enable us to step out of the cup, say, ah, now I'm the witness and I can see the swirling water in the cup of my unconscious mind and my mind's thoughts. I am now this awareness, ah-ha. Now I can see what's going on. I have insights on my thoughts, my emotions, my reactions. I can see what I'm doing 'cause I no longer caught up in them. This is in that witnessing awareness and that door of meditation will decide how much you've connected with that witnessing awareness and that high level of vibrational brana to enable resilience in your nervous system. So when we're not resilient, we are in this cup constantly swirling around and we haven't got the brana to be able to jump out and be awareness. But these things all coincide that with high brana, it's easier for us to associate with the witnessing awareness, the loving, wise self, see what our mind is doing and say, ah, my dear beloved mind, I see what's happening here. And we love our mind, we take care of our mind, we soothe ourselves. This is where some of the inner child work comes in. And through that process, meditation is the primary facilitator of that witnessing awareness. And that's how I see it. - It's a beautiful example. I am reminded of autobiography of a yogi, you know, Yogananda's life and the many stories and accounts that he shares of the various teachers that he learned from over his life in India before he came here. You know, and what we would call superhuman abilities that they cultivated through these practices that we're talking about. And to me, that's such a very fascinating and kind of exciting prospect, right? That we too could develop the ability to read someone else's thoughts for the higher good. Like think, you know, many examples of like simple things of someone's in need of something and you understand exactly what they're in need of and you can direct them to fulfill their need. You know, simple examples like that. Or, you know, the story of one of the rishis that he tells that had his arm accidentally chopped off and then he said, don't worry about it, I'll be fine. And three days later, they checked on him and his arm had completely reattached with no scars, you know, the amazing stories like that. Whether people believe him to be true or not, I mean, I believe him to be true. You know, his own guru that he eventually came to live with and study with for the better part of 10 years, Sri Yukteswar and his ability to divinely see the future and know when things are happening and prepare for them and heal ailments instantaneously like Jesus did, right? So, so many people here in the West think that, well, Jesus was only one that had these abilities. Well, in fact, there are many accounts of other master teachers very similar to Jesus coming out of India. And recently, I mean, we're talking in the last 100 years that have done everything that Jesus has done, you know, in terms of the stories in the Bible. I mean, to the point of resurrection, to the point of duplicating their body and being in two places at once, the point of healing people by channeling God, you know, all these amazing things. And so, I think most of us believe, well, that's only available to, you know, point zero, zero, zero, zero, one percent of special people. But what the Vedas teach us is, no, this is our God given inherent right and ability if we commit ourselves to the process of knowing God. And I think that's our higher purpose at some point, isn't it? - Yeah, so what you're describing here are what they call Siddhis, these gifts that are given to us. And we might think, oh, maybe these are only given to special people. But as you say, I think everybody at some point in their lives has an experience where they just had a sense of knowing about something. Like, I know that someone's gonna call me or I have an intuitive feeling. And that's the first stepping point of these Siddhis is that inner intuition becomes even more powerful and some may call this psychic gift or whatever. You kind of have this intuitive knowing about your life or some situation. And this all comes when, as you say, we are able to calm and still the minds more, engage with these practices, which then connects us to this higher realm, this higher universe, whatever we want to call it. 'Cause at the moment, we're playing small. We're playing small just in the physical realm with our physical body. And when we see that as all that exists, then that's the level of the game that we play it at, right? But people say, well, I only believe what I see. Well, you know, do you see x-rays? Do you see radio waves? Do you see cosmic radiation? Do you see quarks? All of this stuff exists and we've come to realize it exists, but we can't see it. Dark energy, dark matter, 96% of the universe, we can't see, we can't touch, we have no proof of its existence. 96% of the stuff around us, we have no scientific proof even exists. And yet we know it's there. So it's not always about, you'll believe it when you see it. There's a whole bunch of stuff that is beyond this purely physical realm. And many people have had those glimpses of that experience. So yes, part of our journey, our purpose, if you like, can be to build our awareness of when we've played small with a small mind, elevate our consciousness. So we can play the game at a higher level. And that is one way of looking at it. It's such a perfect explanation for my own life right now because, you know, 20 years ago when I really dove in and kind of head first into my spiritual journey, you know, there was the first seven or eight years, I was like all encompass focus on everything we're talking about here. I had some great mentors and spiritual teachers and meditating hours and hours a day and journals and journals of downloads I would write and all these practices. And then over the years, it's like then I go to the body, the physical world, the science that I kind of get, then I'd say almost play small, if you will, like try to understand everything from a scientific viewpoint and how, you know, the organs work and how food affects us and diet and all these different things, which has been important, has been an important part of the work that I've done absolutely. But, you know, at some point, like I find, I kind of found myself, even though I have my spiritual practices and meditations and qigong and all these things, a huge part of my focus was the physical, the material and getting kind of stuck in that, if you will. And then actually I went through some kind of recent injuries in my training as an athlete and they gave me such a blessing. You know, once I finally let go of the attachment to it and my, you know, what I needed to do and my goals of being a professional athlete and these kinds of things just was like, okay, let go and let God, right? Let me trust God in this and just let go and then really start diving in to inner wisdom, to prayer, to meditation. It just opened this whole new channel now again of this deeper spiritual practice and deeper spiritual yearning that I'm just like, you know, hours a day I'm focused on now. Again, as I used to, with a different perspective now, the different perspective on diet and nutrition, different perspective on the physical world, different perspective on health and healing and exercise and all these things. So I'm glad I've gone through that, but I think if we get stuck there, like you said, then we're playing small, we're playing at this amateur level forever instead of getting ourselves to this professional level, you know, this higher level, this super conscious level that they talk about, innovators. - Yes. And it's a balance of both, I think. So many of us, if we visited, you know, an ancient Indian temple and may have seen this symbolism, you'll see that the symbol of a dancing shiver, it's a, where you see this statue and he's got one arm raised, sorry, one leg raised in terms of dancing and then one leg on the floor. And the symbolism behind that is that we are human beings and also spiritual beings. And yes, is that famous phrase, we're spiritual beings having a human experience, but we all have one foot grounded in the material world. And that's still important because that serves the purpose of being here. And then we have one foot which is raised, which is that higher plane of imagination, creativity and consciousness. And both are important. And if we become too much in that grounded phase, as you say, of playing small and don't appreciate the higher planes, then we will be just absorbed in the day-to-day suffering of life. And yet in a similar way, we know about people who become too high on spirituality and meditation and they are just focused on those higher planes and they lose their ability to function in day-to-day life or they become homeless or whatever because they've completely let go of that material plane to too much of an extent that they are no longer grounded. - I've been there. - I've been there. Literally, exactly as you said, wandering the streets, homeless, just in bliss in San Diego with no desire to do anything material, you know? And it was a beautiful experience in my life for that time. But then I had that download that was like, okay, but what's next? Like, I have a different purpose here on the planet. Like, I need to be grounded and do something physically, you know, I need to be a part of this world if I actually want to contribute to the world in a meaningful way. My, I realized my purpose was not to go even as much as I wanted to at the time, go live in a cave, you know, somewhere in Himalayas or wherever, I could feel it intuitively, that was not my purpose here on the planet. I needed to be grounded, you know, with this higher spiritual awareness as you're talking about so that I can actually make a positive difference, you know, in people's lives. And so I think what you're saying is so true and so spot on that we need to balance and they even talk about it in the Vedas where, you know, as you said, yoga, it's not just about the physical yoga, it's not just about the stretching, it is preparing the body for deeper meditation, it's, it's, they talk about keeping the body healthy, keeping the body strong, even meditating on a strong and healthy body because it's our vehicle. We have to take care of it, right? We have to take care of this vehicle while we live here on earth. And if we can get it to a place of strength and mobility and flexibility and we can sit in a, you know, meditation posture for up to two hours at a time without the body demanding, you know, I'm in pain or this hurts or whatever, we can really get into those really deeper, deeper meditation. So taking care of the body is essential. And I, you know, I think that I've seen a lot of, a number of spiritual people when I lived in Encinitas they were like all in on the, the, you know, spiritual side, but like forgot all about the body and forgot all about it. And even like, didn't care about the body, it doesn't matter. And it's like, well, no, it matters. It's not everything. It matters and it is matter, right? But it's, it's not the only thing we should be focused on, which I think today is where most people are focused. Like that's kind of where our social media, the evidence-based approach, the, you know, health and healing, if it doesn't have a double placebo blind controlled trial, then it doesn't exist. And we know how faulty that is. I mean, you've published some science, you know, how we can, how helpful science can be and also how detrimental, 'cause you could publish science on, you have a hundred peer reviewed, you know, published articles saying that vegetarian is the best diet in the world. And you could do the same thing for an omnivore diet. No, omnivore's not there yet, but eventually they'll find a way to do it, right? So. - Yeah, and I think what you're describing here is the balance between love and discipline and every parent knows this, right? So the love is like the arm raised in a dancing posture and the discipline is like the foot firmly on the ground that when you're raising a child, if you do too much of one or the other, there's an imbalance. And so there is always a balance between the two, the boundaries and various things. And similarly with those as human beings, that paradigm of learning spiritual knowledge and going off to the Himalayas and separating, that paradigm isn't what the current need of the time is. Actually, the gift that we're here to give this planet is to raise our consciousness and help others raise their consciousness, to wake ourselves up and wake others up to the truth of our identity and who we are. And that is a profound experience both internally and relationally. It's a beautiful experience. And I think that as we go along that journey, we ourselves are letting go. We're letting go of all the stuff that is holding us back. Well, they sometimes refer to as a small mind, but in a loving way. And I think that's where some of the Eastern texts have become a bit misinterpreted. It is not that we reject who we were, but this higher space. But that we incorporate who we were and those things in a healing space to be able to transcend it. But it's not ignoring it. And that sometimes, once again, some of this misinformation that's out there about kind of Eastern thought. And so as we heal that, and then we move to those higher and higher planes, we have done it in a way that is not a spiritual bypass, but is a spiritual engagement of who we were. And personally, I find parts work very powerful for that. What is that? Parts, so parts therapy, internal family systems, it's sometimes known as what we're looking at, the fact that we've got lots of sub-personalities with us, within us, that we're not made up of just one mind, but different parts of us come out at different times. We'll have the angry part, we'll have the frustrated part, we'll have the part of us itself is, the part of us that is, you know, an achiever wants to push forward. And all of these parts compete for our resources and attention. And from a spiritual perspective, these are what they call the vastness. So these are the very strong impressions in our unconscious that pull us away from our witnessing awareness. And the job is not to ignore them and push them away, but to heal, to work with that, with awareness and love, and kindness, and heal those isolated upset parts of ourselves, so that they then evolve, and all parts of us evolve, to become an integrated self, versus a disintegrated self. - Yeah, I think you're gonna love Collette Stryker's work. You guys are gonna really resonate a lot, her map program, I think you have a lot of similarities there. And she kind of discovered a way to, you know, integrate, you know, the parts therapy and internal family systems and other modalities in a way to get complete, rapid, gentle, full healing on all levels, mind, spirit, body, emotions, the meridians, traditional Chinese medicine, meridians, the chakras, everything, by engaging the use of the super conscious to do all of the healing for you without having to go and relive those traumatic experiences. And they've been documenting it scientifically and seeing, you know, people at a level 10 phobia, going up, you know, just a few fly the stairs and just can't even overlook a balcony and just scared to death and literally doing, you know, a handful of minutes of a session and dropping that phobia from a 10 to a five, doing another short session to a three, so I mean, within minutes to a zero to where that person can go up and look over and there's no more fear, like deep, profound, rapid healing. So, and I know your program is similar in a way that takes people through brain retraining and helps, you know, heal the subconscious and help heal the emotional traumas and so forth, which is so powerful, help regulate the nervous system, but I think you guys are really, I think you guys are really connect. - No, that sounds amazing. I'd love to find out more about her work. And I think, as you mentioned earlier, in a point, there is healing going on all around us all the time. And we sit in our clinic, whether it's through spiritual healing or brain retraining, we see when people get it, when they understand that they're not there as a victim waiting for some doctor to give them a drug or a pill, but actually they can influence the course of their illness and their condition. Profound healing can take place. And we've also seen it in our program that sometimes within hours, someone who's had a neurological paralysis has then been able to walk, right? Because they realize that the brain at the unconscious level is what's holding them back. So the key is how do we access some of these unconscious patterns? And that is always by going inwards. We're too focused on being outwards in the world. But as they say, when you go, when you keep in the outside world, you go without, but we need to go with it. - Have you studied Buddhism much at all? - It is not something that I have studied. But interestingly, I was listening to one of my teachers just yesterday talking about the Buddha. And what people have to realize is that with the Buddha, his journey was as he lived the life of a sannyasi, of a Hindu sannyasi. He didn't label himself as a Buddhist or Buddhism doesn't exist at that particular time. So he was following a lot of the ancient wisdom of the Vedas in his lifetime and in his awareness. He just had a particular bent on it, which was about the importance of, he tried many different things. He tried fasting, he tried this, he tried this, he tried denying the body what it needs. But in the end, for him, it was just sitting still and being with himself and meditating that became his unique flavor of how to reach enlightenment. So certainly that knowledge all comes from that consistent space. - Yeah, and I mean, really the essence of Buddhism is to end suffering, right? And suffering, overcome suffering in ourselves and help to, by becoming enlightened, help to end the suffering of all living beings. And so that's really the main focus of Buddhism. Buddhism is not a religion that's meant. It's a philosophy, it's a spiritual philosophy more than anything, even though it's become a religion. As Jesus didn't start the religion of Christianity, that wasn't his intention, actually, he was kind of against organized religion. As most religions end up being formed by people who want power and control, right? At the end of the day, that's how it was to inform. But the thing I have been meditating on and reading a lot about in Buddhism, and I just wanna hear your thoughts on this concept, is the concept of emptiness. And I'm starting to, as I read Raja yoga from Swami Vivek to Nanda, and Raja, Raja yoga, is, there's a similar concept that I'm reading that comes from Devadehas. It has so far, hasn't been called emptiness, but trying to understand this deeper knowingness of emptiness that the body at its inherent, existent core level is emptiness. The mind is emptiness. Everything is emptiness. And so, I'm starting to get some, some kind of understandings of it. I mean, certainly, I have different concepts about it, but they say, as you meditate on more and more and more and more, you get to the experience of fully knowing emptiness. And at that point, you're considered an enlightened being. It's one of the paths to enlightenment. And so, you go beyond conceptual, like understanding it to fully knowing it. And I'm starting to see a similarity in Raja yoga of like how, because everything is one, everything comes from the same source, everything goes back to the same source, that there is no separate individual, other than just kind of this personal experience we have. Even in the quantum field, we know that every particle and atom in the entire universe is connected to the same source. And so, this kind of revolving of creation and disintegration and disintegration, to me, is starting to give me a deeper understanding of this concept of emptiness. But I want to hear your thoughts on it. - Yeah, well, Nathan, we're really going deep today. Hey, wow, you're asking the easy questions today, the easy discussions. So, this is a really important point around the philosophical basis of Buddhism, certain sects of Hinduism, and then the Vedic knowledge and the original source of that, which is hugely important for people to, certainly for what I want to say for others, for me personally was an important step of my awareness. So, when we're involved at the material plane, we see separation. So, I'm over here, you're over there, there's a plant behind you, we see multiplicity in the material universe. And that's the classical physics, that everything is different and separate, like the billiard ball's analogy. I hit a ball over here, that hits that ball over there, and we have predictability in our existence around us. And that's what is called scientific materialism. So, that's the first step, yeah. And we see all of that separation. And we take all of that for real as the ultimate reality. And the ancient Vedic word is Maya. And actually, Maya is the root of the word mind as well. And when we see that as that's all that exists, and then we play small in that environment. And then, whatever challenge comes in our life, something happens and we suddenly realize, oh, maybe it's not just this. Maybe there's more to life than getting up, going to work, getting stressed, coming home, watching Netflix, going to bed, rinse, wash, repeat, as they say, right? Maybe there's more to life. And then we start thinking, maybe there's something behind this multiplicity that I can see, this duality, yeah. And with a lot of these traditions, what we are doing is negating that which we see as real and separate. So, it's an act of negation. And in the Buddhist philosophy, there is, that was his path. It was negating that which was not real. With an attempt to come to a space of emptiness. As if emptiness is the ultimate reality, or nothingness is the ultimate reality. And we see that in certain sets of Buddhism and also traditional Eastern other philosophies as well, that nothingness is what exists. It's almost like non-existence is the ultimate existence. - So, in just to clarify a little bit, that might be a certain sex, but this, what I'm learning on the deeper teachings of emptiness is actually, they clarify. And that thing that comes from the Buddha heart sutras, potentially, the book I'm reading, I think it's called Modern Buddhism. It's a spiritual Buddha teacher. They clarified a difference that the knowingness of emptiness is actually not nothingness. It's not the void, it's different. And that's, there's a deeper layer to that, right? And they don't, and they also don't, this, again, particularly not saying other things you're talking about, but just for clarity, they also don't completely negate the existence that we have, like this physical existence, the fact that we see each other, the fact that we can recognize our separateness. They actually don't talk about the negation of that. They talk about, as you get to a deeper layer of understanding that at the deepest essence, it is emptiness, even though, you know, the manifestation that we see is this, you know, what we believe to be an inherent existence is actually a false understanding, you know, even though we see it. And so it's not necessarily a complete negation of it, but under, you know, going deeper to understand what's at the essence, if that makes sense. - Right, so, yeah, so I wanted to just also clarify this. So thank you for clarifying that. I see that as two steps. So there is an awareness of the emptiness and the negation, which then leads to the second step, which is the everythingness and the oneness. And so we cannot become who we are destined to be if we don't let go of who we were. And so there is a letting go and a surrender of who we were, the old identifications. So that's letting go of our old patterns, our own thoughts through a healing process, to come to a more empty space. So that that's empty space is the platform by which we can realize and recognize our everythingness. - Let me ask you this. Do you think, or have you seen, that by meditating on that emptiness, that we can just, the fact of doing that alone can release and heal trauma, subconscious beliefs, these attachments, these alternative negative belief systems, these alternative personalities, just that alone, can they be released and healed? - So this is the analogy I give of the dove. So imagine a dove, it needs three things to fly. It needs two wings and tail feathers. So the Western tradition is more the cognitive tradition, which is talking through these things, working through it, the therapy. And that is a beautiful wing. The Eastern traditions looked at it slightly differently, which was to observe and release, observe and release. Because in the ancient times when these things were being made available, people had more time on their hands, right? There was less an intensity and busyness of life. So people had the opportunity to meditate for many hours a day, notice what was coming up for them and be able to let go and release, yeah. And so therefore, I see it as for a dove to fly, if we have both components, it magnifies each other's effects. So we have the interaction and the talking and the letting go at a conscious level, and also the meditation, which supports that, which supports neuroplasticity and letting go. So yes, it is perfectly possible to sit and meditate and just be aware of when these patterns come up and observe them with a neutral, friendly mindset. So they are released, that's what somatic work is. You're allowing yourself to experience that, which you repress. The physical sensations in your body are representations of those old emotional, vastos or patterns. You observe them, you let them go, observe them, you let them go, you don't get carried away with them. And in that way, you release all that emotional baggage. And if you combine it with the other wing, I think it accelerates that path and magnifies that path. So it's a two together, I think very powerful. - Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I mean, you could almost add, you know, to your, I love your analogy. You could almost add to the tail feathers, right? Like a, you know, either reprogramming or a, you know, positive reprogramming, if you will, to redirect the mind and the direction that you want it to go. - Absolutely. So we call the tail feathers is actually your purpose. It's the grounding, yeah. So you can elevate your consciousness, absolutely. But if it doesn't have that grounding of a direction, an intent, a purpose, then you actually lose some of the reason that we've come to this planet. We could have just stayed high as it were, not literally high at a drug level, but just stayed high, right? But we came rooted to this grounded level for a specific gift to give to this planet. And that is the tail feathers to be able to give you direction. And that's what happens. Many people can heal, but they can become even more depressed because they haven't got that purpose and that discipline in life to reach out for. But coming back to this point about you, we're moving, and this is something that Sri Sri River Shankara uses as an analogy, is that sometimes in certain traditions, there's a missing step. We are moving from somebody to nobody to everybody. And so we are negating the somebody to become the nobody so that we can realize that we are the everybody. And a way that this can really come to light is, imagine that you are God for a moment. Yeah, I'm not sure we'd all love to imagine that. And nothing exists apart from you as pure love. You are God, you are omnipotent. You can do whatever you want. And it actually scares me, as I was reading about in Raja Yoga, is like the control, learning to control all of prana means, you know, if you can control prana, you can control everything in the universe. I'm like, oh, that's actually kind of scary. I don't think I want that. (laughing) But the kind of thing, once you reach that state, you would have enough of the ethical backgrounds and all of that. (laughing) Right, right. And I'm like, man, that's a lot of responsibility there to not mess something up for people, but. (laughing) Exactly. So imagine you wake up in this beautiful white room. You can do whatever you want. So beautiful white canvas to paint whatever you want. And so you have a dream, you are just one thing. The only thing that exists is this consciousness. And you decide within this consciousness, which is one thing, the ultimate everythingness of, that's all that exists, like behind you, that there is a table, there is a plant, there is a microphone. What is the common component is the isness, the existence. So if we say that the ultimate is existence, there is just one thing that exists, this one consciousness. And that consciousness decides to have a dream. Just like when we go to sleep at night, we have a dream. We are one consciousness, but guess what? In that dream, we create a multiplicity. This suddenly a road, and we've got friends, and there are trees, and there are experiences we go through. So that oneness, that one consciousness has created multiplicity. And we can now identify with the characters in that dream. And so imagine, this is one dream that is going on, one consciousness, and we have identified with those individual people in that dream. So of course, we're gonna be playing small, because we now believe in this body, we believe in this existence as the ultimate reality. And suddenly as we let go of that existence, that old person, that somebody we think we are, we realize that we come to a space of nothingness, that I am not just this person. We negate, negate, negate, and realize there is that nothingness, which then opens us up to let go of that old identity and realize that we are the everythingness. We are the one dreamer that is having the dream. And that is that second step from nobody to nobody as in negating the identity in the dream, to them becoming the everybody. We are that all that exists, the one consciousness, and we blend and merge with that everythingness. So I think philosophically, there is a difference between these different sects, which is this movement from an identification of a certain space to a nothingness, but then there is that second step of realizing we are oneness, we are everything that exists. And we are that one dreamer and that is the ultimate samadhi. - Mm, that's beautiful. And I'm just reminded of Ephesians 4/6 from the Bible, and it says, "One God and Father of all, "who is above all and through all and in you all." Right, so if God is in all of us and in all things and all living things and all material things, God is above throughout in all. There's no delineation in here. In some of you, or God is in some things, it's in above all, who is above all and through all and in you all. That's really the oneness that you're speaking about, isn't it? - It is, and some people call it monotheism, pantheism. It's this idea that you can't observe God. Because if God is the very existence, if it is existence itself, it is everything that exists, it is the field within it with everything exists, then all of us are a part of that one God. Now, then it becomes, for some people, blasphemous to say, "I am God, you are God," because we behave in very ungodly ways and so do people around us. So you say, "How can we all be God?" And yet there's this counter-argument that how, you know, it doesn't make any sense. The point is that we are on a journey to go from realizing what God is not to what God is. We're just doing it in a field of possibilities where everything can exist. The opposite of what we might describe as Godly can exist in order for us to play the game in this relative universe to get to that which exists. And in Vedic knowledge, they call this sakchit ananda. So the sakth is the truth, the existence. Sakchit is that consciousness, that there's one consciousness. And ananda is that it is the nature of bliss and love. And in my documentary series, I talk about blue. So I say that the ultimate existence is the one blue consciousness. And blue stands for bliss, love, unity. So that's the oneness and E stands for eternal existence. So beyond time and space. So we can represent that oneness as blue, the one blue consciousness, Brahman, whatever you want to call it. And within that space of the blue consciousness, that blue consciousness says let's play a game or like a game. Let's create a relative universe where all the opposites of bliss, love, unity and eternal existence can exist in this field, this relative field. And let's create these, let's split myself up into infinite numbers of unique souls who can then come and experience this relative universe. And they have the complete freedom to do whatever they want, to choose whatever they want, to experience all the opposites of blue in order to transcend that old identity, become the nothingness to then fully then realize the fullness of being who are the blue, the one blue consciousness. So it's a rebirth into oneness and fullness. The ultimate existence is not non-existence. The ultimate existence is existence. That's everythingness is the way I humbly. - Yeah, that's a fascinating way to look at it. And as I continue to study the Bible, I just find more and more evidence that it's basically teaching very similar if not the same things that were taught in the Vedas. Psalms 82, six, I have said, ye are gods and all of you are children of the most high, right? So there's, I mean, there's so many of these passages that are, but as many as John 1, 12, but as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God even to them that believe on his name and believe in the original language that it was written in you have Aramaic, you have Hebrew and you have Greek. When you look up that the original language that believe was written in actually meant to put your trust into, to follow, to basically do as they do, do as Jesus did, for example, right? So it's not just a, some people have this idea of like, just believing in Jesus or believing in God. It's actually no stepping into, you know, having that, the action. The action is the most important part. But yeah, I mean, there are so many, you know, Genesis 2, 7 in the Lord God, four men of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul. And then we look at the Vedas teaching Pranayama and controlling the breath and the breath is our direct, you know, connection to God, to our higher power, it connects us into, you know, the inner world so that we can, you know, connect with the subtleties, the subtle energies within our body and start to control the prana, start to control the life force. So, I mean, it's all throughout the Bible if you just look, right? If you're not conditioned to believe that, oh, you're this weak, sinful human being that can never, you know, be great in the eyes of God. You, you know, have to, you have to, you know, constantly be reminded that you're a sinner and then hopefully if you do all the right things when you go to the pearly gates that, you know, you'll be led into heaven. But if not, you might be burned in hell for the rest of eternity. It's like, you know, that concept to me, yeah, is absolutely not in alignment with a loving, all compassionate, all caring, you know, God. And when we really-- - Yeah, sorry to, I mean, I sympathize with you. We have a lot of people who come into our clinic who strong Catholics and, you know, different Christian traditions, different religious traditions. And we have to work a lot on that, even the self-esteem aspect of, you know, imagine you've come from a rough background, you've had a traumatic background anyway, and then your philosophy tells you that you are evil and in sin and can't be forgiven. You know, the impact that that has on someone's psyche and someone's consciousness is, you know, is profound. And it helping people recognize that there are so many different aspects to the philosophy that they can look into themselves in these traditions, in these books. And the reason that you will see so many crossovers between ancient texts, between different religions around the world is because not many people realize this, but in the ancient times in India, the Indian Empire was not going and conquesting the-- conquest, it wasn't rule over. It was actually the spread of knowledge. And so the ancient Swamis, they would go in boats around the world to spread this message of love and kindness over thousands and thousands of years. And that influenced so many different races around the world, so many different cultures and brought some of these teachings into those spaces. So as an example, you go to lots of spaces in East Asia, so Thailand, you go to Cambodia, et cetera. They are replete with ancient Hindu temples that were then changed into Buddhist temples at that particular time, because that knowledge, that was the Indian love that they had, they wanted to spread this knowledge far and wide. So Swamis would travel. And that's why you see so many crossovers with even the kind of Ayurvedic knowledge and the ancient wisdom of China. Now, I'm not saying that it didn't originate in China, but I'm saying these influences were spread far and wide. And that's why you see that in many texts around the world. - Yeah, there's the famous Tibetan Buddhist monastery, the Hemis, or Hemis, however you say that, that they have even there someone, I mean, in their monastery, a story and a mythology of a man coming from, basically the area of Israel and coming and learning their ways and calling even using the terms of like son of man or son of God, I can't remember what terms learning and then going back, bringing the wisdom back to his people. And you have the lost years of Jesus and there are many who believe and have looked into it that it's very possible, Jesus, during those years, traveled to India and learned these concepts and then took it back to Israel and to all of the Middle East there and taught these concepts. It's a very, very plausible, that trade route, there was a very common trade route. It would have been very possible to travel that and then come back and it's interesting because when you look at Jesus' life and what he did and what he taught, it's very, very similar to what's taught in the Vedas. So I believe it more and more that that's a real possibility. - Which is where we go to learn. - There are sects in India that, as you say, claim that this was where certain Western figures as we might put them in inverted terms, came to study, came to absorb this knowledge and then it was spread far and wide. And what, there are 30 gospels. People think there are four gospels. There are 30 gospels. And if you read some of those Gnostic gospels and some of those original sources, they talked of a very different character who was playful, that laughed, that talked about love and kindness and didn't talk about this idea of kind of punishment, but talked about your own journey. But of course, when the Christian religion became officially part of the Roman Empire in the fourth century with Constantinople, they had to pick the specific gospels that they decided went into the final version of the Bible. And that, we can talk about that for ages and how that process happened and why they chose the books that they chose and how they edited them in order to facilitate, then once again, the top-down approach that the Roman religion took at that particular time and used the religion as a way of investing in that. And that's why we, if you read the Gnostic gospels, yeah, it's a very, very different character to what you read in the core four gospels. - Yeah, absolutely. And much more in aligned with the New Testament of Jesus. I mean, everything that Jesus was espoused to do through the New Testament was a very loving character, right? I mean, if someone hits you on one cheek, turn the other cheek, right? Never retaliate, never attack, never harm somebody else. I mean, he gave the ultimate sacrifice of his life. Even when he was being stoned and he was being, you know, basically crucified, it was like, no, there's no retaliation. You know, father, please forgive them for they know not what they do. I mean, to the last words of his breath, he was a living testament of a pure compassionate, pure loving, right? Pure caring human being, you know, son of God. And just as, you know, it's written in the Bible, you too shall become sons of God. Jesus also said, you too, you know, believe, I can't remember the exact passage, I haven't written down the exact first, but you will do these things and even greater than I. You know, and he was talking about how, if you believe in me, you follow me, you do as I do, you too can do the things that I've done. They were amazed, you know, as a healer. I mean, you know, helped all these lepers, you know, heal from all these diseases. And he's basically teaching, you know, do as I do, follow me and you too shall do these things and even greater. And that wasn't for a select few. That was, I mean, that was the teachings that he shared with everybody openly. I mean, this was, and somehow, you know, whatever, without getting into, you know, we could, we could theorize on this or talk about, you know, conspiracies or ideas, but somehow, even though those are into Bible, they get overlooked, they don't get talked about, they don't get preached about in churches, like, and people are constantly filled with this idea that, you know, you can never be like Jesus. In fact, that is unreachable and unattainable and blaspheme me if you say that you can. I had a really great in-depth conversation on the love of God and through the Bible with my good friend, Jonathan Otto, it's on the podcast, people can go listen to that. And, you know, how this concept has been completely misinterpreted and misunderstood through the Bible. And this is somebody who spent literally tens of thousands of hours, or at least 10,000 plus hours studying the Bible and reflecting and meditating on these things that really God is not only a mirror through the mirror of, you know, this vengeful God is showing a mirror of himself to the person they're speaking to in the Bible, but that God is all loving all the time. There is not a vengeful God, there's not a hateful God. And even in the passages that say fear God, when you look up the original meaning of fear in that original language that was written, it actually means to revere. So to revere God, not fear God, not be a fear God-fearing man, not be afraid of God, but to revere God, which is totally different, means to respect, to respect. And then in the same passage says fear God, fear God, love God, right? Revere God, respect God, love God. You know, these concepts start to make so much more sense of what was being taught to us in the Bible. Yes, and I think it's beautiful how you're explaining this. There is a, it's our own evolution through these scriptures. So rather than it being a top-down approach, it's actually that studying of the scriptures so that we evolve a higher understanding. And what's interesting about these scriptures is that, you know, as you said, with the Bhagavad Gita and these Eastern scriptures, they always required a Swami or a teacher to lead you through it because there's so many misinterpretations that can be taken. You can justify anything if you read a passage, if you haven't got that support of a teacher. Now, in the case of, you know, many different texts, what's happened is, well, there's two belief systems. If we say that our book is literally the word of God, literally, then that puts us in one belief system. Yeah, and then secondly, our way is the only way. So these are the basically only two core belief systems that then separate those and cause so many problems on this planet. My book is the word of God and it was written by God and it's the final word on it. It didn't talk after that. And then secondly, my way is the only way to reach God. And when we were able to, perhaps just open ourselves up to loosen up those two belief systems and say, "Hang on, there's more here. "There's profound noises. "Praven things are gonna lift me as a human being." But can I temporarily let go of those two core beliefs and open myself up? Then we start evolving our understanding of that religion and we start incorporating the beauty that's there. 'Cause as you say, there's so many things which are contradictory in terms of these two faces of divinity, one face being loving and kind and warm, as long as you do it my way. But if you don't, I won't even just dispose of you. I'm gonna talk to you for eternity in hell. And you're gonna give you one chance. I won't even give you multiple chances, thousands of chances, I'm gonna give you one chance. And if you don't get to me, bad luck. This is what's gonna now happen to you. And that philosophy is incompatible for most beings with this idea of a unconditionally loving God. And that's what causes so much internal turmoil around this knowledge. - It's true. I can tell you, I've been to hell. I know what it feels like to burn in hell. I know, and that was of my own doing. That was of my own unconscious doing. That was drug addiction, alcohol addiction, sexual addiction, sugar addiction, living a completely opposite godly life, living a life of deceit and lies and lust, and that is hell. Absolutely hell on earth every single day. Seeking that next high, seeking that next, you know, pridefulness and an egotistical life. Like that is absolutely hell. And I've experienced hell, and I know many people have, and there are many people suffering in hell today on this planet, I don't think we get sent to a hell to burn in some other realm. Even though that concept is in Buddhism as well, actually they're called hell beings that if you don't, you know, if you live with bad karma in this life, you do go into another life that is, you know, similar to burning into hell. So kind of find that kind of interesting that you do find that in the Buddhist text as well. But I can tell you, you can burn in hell in this life. And we do it to ourselves. And I really think that's what is meant by those teachings that when you go against God, when you are not godly like, when you are not forgiving and caring and compassionate and loving, and you lust and you covet thy neighbor's wife and you kill and you murder and you use drugs and all these things, that the Bible teaches us in these ancient teachings, teach us not to do, and you do these things, you do live and burn in hell, and yet through forgiveness and through compassion and through love and through self-awareness and healing, we can then be freed from that hell and live in a heaven. I can tell you, the life I live now is so much more heavenly and I know there's more to go than ever it's been in my entire life, but it's been 20 years of work, you know? 20 years of spiritual study, 20 years of meditation, 20 years of healing my subconscious, 20 years of changing my life and my, you know, transforming. And so, you know, on the forgiveness and kindness of God, you know, Ephesians 4.32 and be he kind, one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. Matthew 6.14, if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. Speaking to Jacob about people not honoring God, Isaiah 43.25, I even I am that, that blotted out thy transgressions for my own sake and will not remember thy sins. So even all the terrible things I've done earlier in my life, unconsciously addiction, all the people that I hurt, I've asked for forgiveness. I've had to go through and forgive myself and do this many, many, many times and heal these traumas and, you know, in my own meditations and try to find all the people I heard and ask for their forgiveness and send them love and kindness for the transgressions that I have acted upon them. And I feel the freedom from that and knowing that that's coming from this understanding of being forgiven by God. And so, you know, I do believe we can transcend our sins and transcend, but we have to work at it. It has to be a daily practice. - Yeah, yeah. And I think the interesting, the word work, I always love for people to recognize this as a beautiful evolution. That it is the path that we are on, whether we take it consciously or unconsciously, we're all on the spiritual path. We can choose a bit consciously or it can just be an accidental process where we're buffeted by the world around us. And it reminds you of that song, that beautiful song by Belinda Carlyle, all right? ♪ Ooh heaven is a place on earth ♪ - There you go, there you go. - Hey, you got a great voice, keep going. - Oh thank you. ♪ Say in heaven, love comes first ♪ ♪ We'll make heaven a place on earth ♪ - All right, so this is completely neutral, right? It doesn't care whether you make heaven or hell. That heaven and hell is created in our own minds through our own responses, our own tragedies, our own emotions that overwhelm us. We create that heaven or hell here in this thing that experiences the world. The world is neutral. And we then get to decide, okay, I'm aware of that. Now, I have so many desires, I want this, I want that. And this is causing this turmoil and emotion within me. So I am at that somebody's stage. I think I am somebody. I'm involved with my ego. I want all of this stuff. And this is stressing me out. And as you say, it causing the suffering. And as we recognize that, that our suffering is, I won't say totally self-created, but partially self-created in our response to our environment. We begin to work on that with awareness, to let that go, let that go, to then lose that old identity of who we were to become that nothingness. Which is the person who is letting go of needs, wants and desires from the outside world and becomes that self-sufficient nobody. But in that space of nobody, guess what? Our natural divine self starts manifesting. So that's when we start moving towards the everybody. With it, natural state of joy, natural state of bliss, the natural loving state of who we are, there's a divine qualities. They start coming through. And it was Buddha who said, he asked him, how did you become enlightened? He said, I gained nothing and lost everything. What Buddha was talking about was that first step. I've lost everything. I've lost that person who I was. I've lost all those desires. I've lost that engagement in the small mind and the small world. I've let that go and I gained nothing. I didn't need to gain anything. Because when I let go of that first, everything in that first step and become nobody and nothing, guess what? Naturally, the next step evolves within me, which is I become everybody. Which is the such that under the natural bliss, love, unity starts manifesting through me. And I start achieving that potential. And I become my destiny, who were all destined to become whilst in the physical body. Mic drop. Boom. (laughing) Ashak, that was beautiful man. This has been a great conversation. I think it's a good place to put a pin on it. Where can people learn more about you and your program and get in touch with you? Sure. So if somebody has a chronic condition, so we treat, as you know, neuro-immune, long COVID, fibromyalgia, all those, cups of conditions and sensitivity reactions, even anxiety, they can come to our website, which is goopterprogram.com, so GUPTAprogram.com, or indeed download our app. So you go to App Store and Play Store and start retraining your brain straight away. We've got exercises, videos, et cetera, loads of great stuff there. And if people are interested in this more esoteric conversation that we've had today, wow, it's been some amazing questions, Nathan. So really deep. They can watch my documentary series. So they can also go to the App Store or Play Store, search for meaning of life experiment. And when you search for that, you can download the free app. It's a complete not-for-profit program. And in there, it's a 30-day program to discover more happiness, meaning and your life purpose. So each day you have a 20-minute video, a 10- or 20-minute meditation. And so it's a structured program to really go deeper into many of the concepts that we've discussed today. It goes through quantum physics. It goes through meditation. It goes through manifestation. And it builds a whole model of existence and the universe in a logical step-by-step process. So I'd love for people to experience that and give me their feedback. And it's completely free. - I'm literally downloading it right now. So thank you. (laughs) Yeah. Thanks, brother. This has been amazing, man. Your wealth of knowledge, you absolutely... We've had some good conversations over the last few years, but I think this is definitely the deepest. I see how much just wisdom and experience you have and how all of your esoteric and spiritual research and deep experimentation with as you live it, even through your own meditations, has informed the work that you do in helping people heal from chronic ailments. So that's such a beautiful thing to see. So thanks, brother. I appreciate you coming on the podcast. - No, much love. It's been amazing. Thank you so much, Nathan. - Thank you for listening to the Nathan Crane podcast. Please make sure to subscribe and share this on social media. Then head over to Nathan Crane.com for your free ebook. - So when we're talking about, you know, what are these underlying cause and conditions of these chronic diseases? Cancer, diabetes, heart disease. They all have very similar, if not, identical causes. And that's the thing, is when we get to the root cause of these diseases, we can not only prevent these diseases from ever happening, but empower our bodies to heal from them. - In every one of ourselves, we have tens in hundreds of thousands of chemical reactions that are happening every second that are cycling back and forth. And so it's sort of a yin and yang. - And, you know, for me, the sole purpose is evolution. It doesn't care about comfort. It cares about evolution. And so I think so long as we are following our soul, then we will evolve. And I think what sometimes blocks us from living our purpose, from manifesting that next level of our expression, is we have not evolved. - There is also a time for letting go all the expectations and relax and just breathe and be grateful for what you have achieved. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)