Special Edition Conversations With KD May 7, 2020

Call and Response with Krishna Das

Call and Response Special Edition – Conversations With KD May 7, 2020

Taking time to look back and move forward. Conversations With KD episodes are derived from the recordings of KD’s online events from his home during the 2020/ 2021 days of social distancing and quarantine from the onset of COVID and beyond.

“All we have is what’s in front of our faces, which is the ups and downs of life. So, you have to learn to deal with those situations in the best way… and there’s no God outside of your Self, your true Self. And that true Self is the same in every Being. So, if you treat other people the way you would like to be treated, you won’t have any problems at all.” – Krishna Das

“Ram nam karne se sab pura ho jata”

My Guru used to say that to us quite often.

“From going on repeating these Names, everything is accomplished. Everything is accomplished.” A very simple statement. Easy to kind of just say, “Oh, yeah, ok,” but I’ve been thinking about that, or trying to truly believe that for 50 years or so. 40 Years. 45 years. So, if I truly believed that what He said, that from repeating these Names, everything is accomplished, I would probably be giving more of myself to the practice as I’m doing it. But, you know, we have our own karmic predicaments that we live in. Very distracted lives. Very fast lives. Although it’s a little bit slower these days. Although we can fill it up with stuff quite easily.

I remember many many years ago, before I went to India I was up in the mountains of New Mexico with Ram Das at the Lama Foundation for about a month in the winter. It was fantastic. And every day we would spend many hours meeting together, singing, talking, meditating. And we heard about this New York artist who had moved out to New Mexico and lived just down the hill, down the mountain from where the Lama was, and he had been to India and he knew how to meditate. This was Big Time. So a group of us went down to meet with him, to see him. And we spent a couple of hours with him, talking to him. I just sat in the back of the room, listening. And as we were leaving, I was the last one to go out the door. As I was about to go out the door, he grabbed my arm and he looked at me and he said, “You. You have to find out why it is you can’t give yourself 100% to whatever you’re doing.”

Oh.

He nailed me to the wall. That was unbelievable. That was in 19-, the winter of, let’s see, ’69. That’s what? 50 years ago? I can still feel his hand on my arm. You know, if we look at ourselves, we notice how difficult it is to be fully engaged in something. We’re not talking about watching a movie where you’re fully lost for as long as the movie’s on or some kind of entertainment, but whatever you’re doing, being fully engaged. Not thinking about the future, not the past, not this and that, not the chatter that goes on in the brain all the time, but truly present. Truly present and aware.

So, I’ve been working on that a long time. Or, at least noticing how little of myself I really can give to each moment. So, when it comes to chanting or a practice that you do regularly, you create a situation where you’re training yourself to let go and come back. Let go and come back. Over and over again. It doesn’t, it’s not about up here. It’s about in here. And it’s not an intellectual process. It’s not a learning process. It’s a training process. So, little by little your Being gets familiar with these sounds, with these Names in this case, and you begin to relax into the Name. And the Name, as we come to know it, has been brought into this world by a Being who has fully realized the reality of that Name, the reality of what is Named, and has brought that Name into this world for us as a practice, as a doorway into that Name, into the reality, which is our own true nature, which is our soul.

The love we’re looking for exists within us. It lives within us. We look outside ourselves in the outside world. We look for it everywhere and we don’t find it. We don’t find it until we look within. It’s not like you look with your eyes within. It’s not like that. It’s moving more deeply into ourselves by releasing the stuff that holds us and takes us away again and again and again. That naturally moves us within.

Letting go again and again.

And we don’t have to make this up. We don’t have to manipulate ourselves. We don’t have to be looking for anything specific, any kind of experience. Once we know who we are, we’re wide open. Everything is here and now. Everything exists within us. We’re so achievement oriented in the West. We’re in such a hurry because everything is done so quickly here. But that’s not how we find ourselves.

So, anyhow let’s take some questions for a while.

Q: Who was Neem Karoli Baba’s spiritual master and what were some of the practices they would do?

KD: We don’t know. We don’t know who His gurus were. We have no idea. He never spoke about it. He had some… We hear stories, when He was very young, He went to this ashram, that place, He met this guy, that guy. But nobody really knows that we ever spoke to, ever told us anything definitive about that. He never spoke about it. He never had pictures up of this and that, you know? He was very much believed to be a manifestation of Hanuman himself. I don’t even know what that means. You know, we use all these words, all these words that we bring, we learn from India or from the spiritual path, but we don’t really know what these words mean. But, the lineage that He seemed to be a part of was a Ram lineage, the lineage of Ram and Hanuman. But more than that we don’t know. We know that He, He spent many years in a cave, in caves. There were two small caves, well, one big cave in a town called Neeb Karori, which is where He got His name, the Baba from that town, that village. I visited there and it was a very small village, a very funky village and they told us not to leave the temple, especially at night. You needed to be very careful. Apparently, there’s a lot of murders in that part of the country. But that’s where He decided to build the cave. The villagers dug out a cave for Him in this field, or it was, I think, in the jungle at the time. Later on it was cleared. And nobody knew that He was there. And He was existing on, existing on one glass of milk a day, which, this old village lady used to bring to Him. And then, she died and so He was starving. Nobody knew He was there. So, the story goes that He picked up His chimta, which is this metal tong for moving fire around, moving the logs around, and He threatened Hanuman. He had a little murti of Hanuman that He had in the cave. He threatened Him. He said, “You’ll starve me so I’ll beat You.” And apparently, the next morning, there was milk outside the door.

Q: Do I draw any inspiration from Eddie Vedder with my vocal style?

KD: Excuse me. Eddie Vedder is a kid. I’m 20 years older than him. No, I mean, he’s great. In fact, I think his wife said something to somebody I knew, that she reminded me of him.

No, I love Eddie Vedder, but I just sing. I don’t have a vocal style as far as I know.

Q: How do I remain focused on God when I have to deal with the ups and downs of life?

KD: If you have to ask that question, you don’t know what God is, where God is or who God is. So, you can’t be focused on God, because you don’t know. We don’t know. All we have is what’s in front of our faces, which is the ups and downs of life. So, you have to learn to deal with those situations in the best way and there’s no God outside of your Self, your true Self. And that true Self is the same in every Being. So, if you treat other people the way you would like to be treated, you won’t have any problems at all. Calm yourself down. Calm your mind down little by little and find a way to get through the day without falling on your face too many times, or creating negative karmas by being angry at people and hurting others and hurting yourself. There’s no God out there. The God that you’re looking for is within us and until you learn how to be kind to yourself in a real way, which is to give yourself a break and learn to trust your own intuition about where to look for these deeper realities, you know, you need to do some practice. And you need to treat others the way you want to be treated.

Q: Towards the end of your film, One Track Heart, you use a word. Someone said you were giving something to people. I tried looking it up but I found only something…

KD: Yeah, Maharajji had asked me to be the pujari or the priest of the Durga temple that He had built in Kainchi in the courtyard and I had to distribute the charanamrit. That means the nectar of the feet, which is the water that was used to wash the feet of the Goddess in the pujas, in the rituals. Yes, it is water, but it’s blessed water because it was used in the ritual. So, distributing that charanamrit was a way of distributing the blessings of the ritual that the other pujari did. I just watched. “Charanamrit” is the name.

Q: I need advice on suicide.

KD: You mean how to do it? I can’t help you.

I needed advice, too, you know? I was going to jump in the river and kill myself. I was having a nervous breakdown in Kainchi, right there in the temple. Maharajji was there and it’s a long story. It’s in my book, Chants of a Lifetime. It’s in that book. But the short story is that I was completely flipped out and I was going to kill myself and He called me over and He said, “What are you going to do, jump in the river?” And He laughed. “Ha.” He said, “Worldly people don’t die.” Us. Worldly people. People who are attached to this world and to the ego. “Worldly people don’t die. Only Jesus died the real death.”

What?

“Why? Because He never thought of Himself. He gave His life for His people. He never thought of Himself.” So, the idea is that, all we do is think about ourselves and suicide is not going to change that. You go from this body to some other body and the karmas that you have, that you can’t deal with now, you won’t be able to deal with later, either. So, the best way is to try and find a way to be in this world in a good way. Whatever you have to do to find some peace of mind, you should do. Counseling, therapy, antidepressants, whatever works for you. And that’s what you should do. You should dedicate your life to finding a way to live here. Because you got born here for a reason. We all did. And what’s in our life is what we have to deal with and there’s nowhere we can go to get away from that. Suicide is not going to change that. You’re not going to have this body but you’re going to have another one and who knows what it’ll be? It might not be as good.

Q: These days I have to wear a police radio by my ear while I’m on duty.

KD: That doesn’t sound like too much fun.

Q: I have to listen and talk to others and write, etcetera. Any suggestions about how to not ignore the least urgent but to include?

KD: Once again, it’s all about when you’re not on duty, what you do. It’s about developing a practice that helps keep you in line as the day goes on. You just pay attention to what you’re doing. You do the best job you can do. Don’t try to… give yourself 100% to what you’re doing. Whatever it is. Just do the best that you can. And do that when you’re doing your practice, too. I’m sorry I can’t really get into that one.

Q: What’s your advice on sannyasa, to dedicate one’s heart and mind totally in service and surrender to God and also does Guru have to have a physical form?

KD: Absolutely not. Guru doesn’t have a physical form. We see it that way because that’s what we’re attached to, a physical body. A Guru is never identified with the physical body although a Guru might take a body to help us if it’s necessary for us, but Guru, God and our true nature, the Self, the Soul, are not different. And, you know, these days it seems like there’s Gurus on every corner, but those are not Gurus. Those are not Satgurus. Those are not real Gurus, true Gurus. They might be teachers, they might be more advanced than us. But a Guru, a real Guru is something else entirely. So, you can read books about some of the real Gurus; Swami Nityananda, who was Muktananda’s Guru; Shirdi Sai Baba; and my Guru, Neem Karoli Baba; there are many, Sri Ramakrishna. Read those guys. Read how they lived. Read what they said. Read how they got through the day. What did they do? That’s how you get a feel for what a real Guru is. They don’t do business.

Q: Can you get the grace of the Guru even though He isn’t in the physical form, through Bhakti?

KD: Of course, absolutely. Of course. Grace is always here. We’re just not paying attention. We are not paying attention. It’s raining everywhere all the time but we can’t drink until we cup our hands. So practice, devotion to practice, the path is what trains us to cup our hands to get the water that we need to drink. Absolutely. No question. Grace is all the time.

And the other part of that question is surrender.

What is sannyasa, to dedicate one’s heart and mind?

That’s wishful thinking, that’s what it is.

You know, that’s wishful thinking. Good luck, you know? It’s not so easy to do, you know? You’ll go to some cave, you’ll put on orange clothes. You’ll just have a big ego about having orange clothes and thinking you’re more humble than other people. Give yourself a break. Live in this world like you are now and don’t let your neurosis fuck you up and make you think you have to go be a sannyasi because you’re too scared to deal with your shit. There’s no where you can go where your shit is not going to be right there with you. Deal with it. Find a way to live with it. Find a way to love yourself. That’s sannyasa. Clothes, initiations don’t do anything unless you’re ripe and if you’re ripe, you’re ripe. You would know it.

Q: How do you know if your difficult, painful, stressful life situation is part of your dharma?

KD: Well, it’s certainly your karma…

Q: and you stick with it all through ups and downs and pain and sorrow or if it’s time to make a change?

KD: I have a feeling you’re talking about relationships, because you can’t change your life. You can change the people in it and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that if you, if you find yourself in a situation that is causing you pain and causing others pain and it’s just not working, you certainly can find a way to make something work for you. You know, we grow up thinking relationships are going to make us happy. We get turned on by somebody and we so-call “fall in love” and we fall in love and we are in a relationship. Relationships are busines. You give, you take, you give, you take. When somebody stops giving, you freak out. When you stop taking, they freak out. So, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with trying to find a more peaceful way to be in the world but you can’t avoid, by changing the external circumstances you can’t necessarily, necessarily make yourself happy. So, whatever you do, you should do with as much kindness to yourself and others that you can do, whatever that means to you. You’re the only one who knows.

Q: How does it feel to offer the chants without the large energy you’re used to in the church or in a theater?

KD: It feels fine. Better than robbing banks. I’m having a good time. I’m singing and you’re singing. That’s good. You know, because we’re attached to the physical body, because we’re attached to the physical body, we think we’re here and other people are somewhere else. That’s only one way of looking at it. In the space of the heart and the sky of the mind, we’re all within that and when, certainly when we’re doing practice, we’re all tuning into that space together and it’s all about doing the practice and if I was missing the energy of the people, I would notice that and I would let go and I wouldn’t be missing it anymore. You keep coming back to the chant. Anything you think about it, you keep letting it go and coming back. So, for me it’s not, I mean it’s very different on many levels, but it’s also very much the same.

Q: I feel my devotion scattered over many aspects: Christ, Kali, Hanuman; and it keeps spreading over more. What are your thoughts over devotion: many aspects versus one aspect with full attention?

KD: The more the better. More love is good. You’re overthinking this. It’s the love that’s important, not the object. The object is allowing you to release that love feeling in your own heart. When the whole universe becomes objects for you to release that love feeling then you’re enlightened. So, keep going. Don’t stop with Christ and Kali and Hanuman. Keep going until every Being you see turns you on and no beings turn you off. It’s all good. It’s all good.

Q: Much has been said about being mindful of the company you keep. Do you think it presents in issues in relationships or detours one’s path with relationships, in relationship with them when they have no spiritual path of their own?

KD: Maybe. But maybe not. If you’re in relationship with somebody, that’s the karmic imperative for the moment. That’s what’s there in your face. How it got there is irrelevant, but it’s there, so you have to be with that. And yes, the Buddha said that satsang or sangha is the most important thing in the spiritual life because our hearts are so hesitant and fearful and challenged that if we surround ourself with spiritual friends it can help us open up but it can also be completely negative because what we think is spiritual might not be spiritual at all. And the reasons you might move into an ashram or a so-called ashram or some kind of spiritual community might turn out to be very negative. Like you’re trying to hide from yourself so you want to go be with a group of people who turn out to be hiding from themselves. So, it’s all about learning to trust yourself and following your heart and yes, it’s difficult if somebody doesn’t understand what you’re doing, but you know, we probably don’t understand it.

I once got an email from a friend of mine who said she and her husband were about to get divorced, and I said, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Why is that?”

And she said, “Well, you know, I play your music all over the house; in the bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen, the living room and he just hates it.”

I said, “Turn it off!” You know, what do you need to do that for? Turn it off. So she did and they’re still happily married.

Q: As a householder mother, how can I attain moksha?

KD: Be the best householder and mother that you know how to be and sooner or later you will be enlightened.

There seems to be theme here today about trying to get away from stuff. Trying to and not accepting what’s in your life as the given, or what you have to deal with. You can’t change things. It’s not so easy to change. If you go off to a cave, you know, you bring everything with you, in your mind at least. So, it’s a question of seeing God in everyone and everything, even the people you don’t like. Even the people, especially the people who give you a hard time. There was a wonderful lama who was going on a long journey in Tibet and He had to take an assistant with him to help. He was a very old Lama. And so He picked this guy, this young Lama in the monastery who was the most difficult person in the world, just really difficult. And all the other Lamas said, “Why did you pick him? You’re going to go on this long trip with this guy?”

He said, “Exactly. He’s going to teach me patience.”

We don’t want to learn. We don’t want to transform our own negative thinking. We just want to change the outside world. But that doesn’t work. It does not work.

What we need to change is the way we engage with the so-called outside world and so-called other people, and that’s what practice is about.

Q: Can you talk about how the music you make connects with your practice? I’ve noticed select melodies reoccur throughout the chants and I’ve been fascinated by how they might empower each other.

KD: Really? You know, if you have a good melody, you just use it to death. The music is part of the practice. It’s a way of transmitting the Name. If I sat here and went “Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram. Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram.” I don’t think many of you would hang out much and neither would I. So, the music is, you know, when a child is sick you have to give it medicine, so you hide the medicine in a sweet syrup. So, the music is that syrup and the Name is the medicine. Music will not cure us of our suffering. It could calm our minds down a little bit but it’s the Name which has the power to transform our lives and change the painful into living reality. So, it’s the Name that’s the medicine.

Q: Years ago, you said something at a concert in Brazil that never left my mind. You were talking about Jesus and said He lost himself in love. Can you talk a little bit more about this state of the soul?

KD: Well, you know this happened in India with Maharajji. This Canadian guy came to see Maharajji for the first time and he didn’t know, you know, Maharajji didn’t talk about meditation and spiritual practice and stuff like that. He didn’t talk about those things. He just fed you more than you could ever eat and told you to go away. So, this guy comes and Maharajji says to him, “What do you want? Why did you come?”

And he thought he should give a spiritual answer. So, he said, “Well could you teach me how to meditate?”

“Get out of here. Go in the back with the other crazy people, the westerners. Go on, go.”

And as the guy is going, walking into the temple, into the back of the temple, He says, “Just meditate like Christ. Go on. Go.”

So, he came to the back and we were all back there. Ram Das was there and others and we were debriefing him because we debriefed everybody. “What did He say” and “What did you say” and “What did He say?”

And then he said, “You know, He told me to meditate like Christ.”

What? What does that mean.

So later on, Maharajji came in the back to hang out with us and Ram Das said to Him, “Baba, you said to meditate like Christ. How did He meditate?”

So, it seemed like Maharajji was about to answer the question, but instead He just kind of stopped and His eyes closed and He sat in front of us completely still. It was like the earth stopped turning. It was so powerful. The vibe was so powerful. And after a couple of minutes, two tears came down his cheek, you know and He just shook His head and He opened His eyes and He said, “He lost Himself in love. He lost Himself in Love. That’s how He meditated. He never died. No one understands. He lost Himself in Love. He’s One with All Beings.”

That wasn’t what I was taught about Jesus.

So, it was very shocking and very beautiful. Very moving. Very moving.

Q: Did you ever ask Maharajji when you were sitting with Him or listening to Him, “What is there after this life? And what is the purpose of this life? Do we just come here and do what?”

KD: Yes. No. We didn’t talk to Him about those things. He didn’t talk about those things. He didn’t teach like that. When we were sitting with Him, we understood what the purpose of this life is. It’s to merge in love and to live in that love all the time and that means including everyone in it. Everyone.

You can’t have any shadows. You can’t leave any shadows behind you. You have to follow that longing you have to be free of suffering and that leads you on to the path, to relieve yourself of suffering and then you start to recognize everybody’s suffering. So, you try to do your best to help whoever you can and learn how to be kind to yourself and others. We’re here to become good human beings. There’s no place else to go. This is it for now.

Q: What’s the connection between Maharajji and Sombari Baba?

KD: Now Sombari Baba was a very great Siddha who lived in the hills of India. I think He left the body. I’m not exactly sure when. I think maybe in the 1920’s. Something like that. And Maharajji, when He had His places, when He came to the hills in the 30s and 40s and 50s, He picked certain places that He built temples and a few of them were places where Sombari Baba had lived. He was a very great Siddha and “Sombari” means “Monday.” And Monday is Shiva’s day in India and He would do bhandara every Monday. Feed people. He was a great Sadhu. A great Siddha.

I don’t know what their real connection is, but I know that Maharajji respected Him greatly. And Kainchi, the temple in Kainchi where I lived, is built, the Hanuman temple is right in front of, it wasn’t even a cave, it was just under a ledge of rock where Sombari Baba had His sacred fire, His fire, for a long time. And Maharajji built the first Hanuman temple right there in front of that in that place.

Q: How did I know this was my path in life?

KD: I’m not sure yet, but I think it is.

I don’t even know what it is.

And why did I go to India?

I went to India because I felt pulled there. I felt tremendously pulled there. I wanted to go there more than anything. I just had to go. Had to go. So, I went. And in my mind, I was never coming back to America. I gave everything I had away. I sold my car, my guitar, gave my jeans away. I was gone. I had a couple of boxes of stuff in my mother’s basement but, you know, I didn’t think I was ever coming back. And then, after two and a half years, He sent me back. That’s why I’m here.

Q: Can you please kindly explain how to adopt forgiveness and move on in life? Some mistakes are blunder and are difficult to be forgiven.

KD: Yeah, forgiveness is a big thing. The sting of being betrayed and being hurt is something that is very hard to let go of. Very hard. But you know, on one hand, if we really look at the people who betrayed us and hurt us, we can see that their actions, just like our actions, are coming out of our own suffering and just like we’ve hurt many people without wanting to, it’s a very similar situation for other people. They hurt people out of protecting themselves, out of all kinds of reasons and yeah, and we take everything so personally. So it’s very painful. Very hard. But it’s a very powerful practice, trying to forgive. Trying to forgive… and we’re so involved with “me” and protecting “me” from pain that it’s very hard to forgive people who have crushed us, you know? But that’s why we do practice; to get strength, to do whatever we have to do to allow our hearts to unfold again and again and again. Because that’s how we get strength.

It’s very hard to forgive ourselves, too, truly, for hurting all the people we’ve hurt. But I think once we can forgive ourselves a little, then we can forgive other people a little bit, too. Not easy, Not easy.

Q: My memory of events from 50 years ago is uncanny. Do you remember everything in your life that clearly? Or is there just some special way that you’re preserved.

KD: I can’t remember my name half the time. I don’t remember what happened 10 minutes ago or yesterday, but things that happened with Maharajji, I can remember so much but Oh My Goodness, so much is gone. You know, like for instance, some years ago, about 15-20 years ago I was, I found my diary from India and I opened it up just at random and I read in the diary, “Today Mahrajji looked at me and this other Westerner, Balaramdas, and He said to the Indian people sitting there, ‘these boys are my disciples.’ And He put ash on our tongues and our heads and said, ‘these boys are my disciples.’” I didn’t remember that. I didn’t remember that. How do you forget something like that.

But I did.

I had forgotten it. I forgot it for like 20 years. So, the funny thing, being with Maharajji, it was like a dream. It was a different kind of reality. Things happened and you were aware of them but you didn’t grok them in a certain kind of way. Later we would talk about things and we would go, “Wow, did that happen? Oh, yeah.” So, but there’s so much of it I don’t remember from, you know, spending so much time with Him in certain periods. So much would happen in a one hour darshan. You could never, you know there’s a really nice book called “Love Everyone.” Parvati Markus who was with us in India put this incredible book together from the diaries from a large number of us who were there at the time. And it’s called “Love Everyone” and it kind of reconstructs a day, the days with Maharajji and how He played with people and interacted and it’s really fantastic. “Love Everyone” is the name of the book.

Q: So, are we to love the corrupt liars and evil-doers? I try every day to practice Metta Meditation and there’s great resistance I encounter with this. How would Maharajji advise?

KD: Well, He would say, “Love everyone.”

Love everyone.

When Ram Das was very angry at the rest of the Westerners, you know, he felt that we’d, we had kind of stolen Maharajji from him in a way. Because we were taking up all the time and he had to share Maharajji with all of us. Of course, he did that by talking about Him when he came back from India the first time. But he was, Maharajji was working with Ram Das’s anger.

So, one day Ram Das walked to the temple over the hills, about a four hour walk, and he was furious with the Westerners. Furious. Really. And he walks into the temple and we were… Maharajji was sitting on one side of the courtyard and the Westerners were sitting in a line opposite Him. He was feeding us. He was having us fed. So, Ram Das walks into the temple and one of the Westerners gets up with a plate of food and offers it to Ram Das and Ram Das takes it and throws it in his face, right there in front of Maharajji.

Maharajji goes, “Ram Das, something wrong? Come here.”

So, Ram Das goes over to where Maharajji’s sitting and Maharajji says, “What’s the matter?”

And Ram Das says, “I can’t stand impure things in people. And I can’t stand the impurity in my own heart.”

And Maharajji looks at him and says, like this, He says, “I don’t see any impurity.” Then he looks at Ram Das. He said, “Ram Das, love everyone and tell the truth.”

Ram Das says, “Maharajji, the truth is, I don’t love everyone.”

“Ram Das, love everyone and tell the truth.”

So, he understood that he was going to have to get with the program as soon as possible.

So, evil-doers. It’s a tough one. You know, I’ve told this many times, but back in the days when George W. was President, I wasn’t very fond of him. Not that I knew him, but I thought he was basically a bad guy. And one night I was going through the channels on the tv and I hit CNN and they were showing George W. going to meet the first group of widows from the Iraq war. Right? It was at some school in Florida, a public school, and he was walking down the hall towards this classroom where these women were waiting for him and the cameras are following him and he’s walking down the hall. “Yeah, I’m the President, hey.” “Hi Joe, hey Frank. How are you doing?” Walking down the hall all full of himself and he walked into this room. This was all live on television. He walked into this room and took one look at these women and he burst out crying like a baby.

I couldn’t hate him anymore. In that moment I saw that this guy was the pawn of different political interests, different business interests. He made deals, all to achieve the Presidency, which was his desire, and he started this, started or whatever, got into this war where so many people were killed all because he was the pawn of all this inner and outer vested interest, his own desires for fame and what he owed, that he was going to have to pay for this, too. There was no escape from the karmas. None. Ever. And to tell you the truth, that didn’t make me happy. I didn’t, in my heart I didn’t want to see him suffer but I saw that he was going to suffer because he didn’t know any better and he had no idea what he was doing in the greater of scheme of things.

He caused so much suffering, or was the primary cause, or the transformational cause of so much suffering. And he, himself, would have to pay for that. It was inevitable, but I didn’t want to see it. In my heart, I didn’t want to see him suffer. So, you know, I think as we learn to give ourselves a break and as we give some space to those negative places in ourselves and we see how hard it is to truly be caring and meet people in the best way, then we begin to give others a break, too. Even the worst people. It’s not something you can… It’s so emotional, and there’s no question when you’re in the emotions there’s no, nothing you can do about it. But, in the greater scheme of things, everyone has to pay, has to experience the fruits of their own actions. So, are we going to create more suffering with our own anger? Because we will have to pay for that ourselves. And our own hatred? So, it’s not just thinking of others only. It’s also recognizing that our own actions will be, we’ll have to pay for those karmas as well.

So, I don’t know if that’s clear, but it’s complicated. That’s for sure.

And you know, one time, Maharajji was sitting with one of His very old Indian devotees. Of all the devotees, this man was the sweetest, sweetest. Oh, he was so sweet. And he was sitting around with Maharajji and Maharajji pointed to him and said, “He was my enemy in our last birth.”

What?

What?

“My enemy in our last birth?”

“Enemy” means “enemy.” Right? So, that’s intense. So, who knows who anybody is, you know? We just, all we do is judge people by our own subjective standards and subjective understanding. So, it’s tough. It’s very hard to deal with those negative forces in a way that doesn’t create more karma for us, ourselves, as well.

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