Call and Response Podcast with Krishna Das | Special Edition – Saint Junky

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“When we sit down to chant, the biggest obstacles are our expectations. We think something’s supposed to happen. Problem is, it already happened. We’re here, but we don’t know it. So, what we’re trying to do is come back home. We’re not looking for any particular kind of experience. You might be looking for bliss or ecstasy, but that actually might be just running away from suffering. And you can’t run away from things, nor can you hold onto things.” – Krishna Das

Cover photo: Lonnie Raffray

TRANSCRIPT: 

“What am I going to say? What do I do?” You know?

I say, “Look, just go out and say, ‘we will sit in silence until someone has something to say.’”

And he said, “oh, that’ll never work.”

I said, “just try it. Just try it.”

So, he came out and he said, “we will sit in silence until someone has something…”

Everyone, all the hands went up like in about a quarter of a second.

He was worried that, you know, nobody would say anything.

So, could be nappy time for the Das, too. You never know.

Q: So you didn’t smoke today?

KD: Huh? Did I smoke today? I, not only did I not smoke today, it’s probably been about 40 years or maybe more… What am I talking about? 50 years.

Hi.

Q: Hi.  I hope this isn’t too silly, but…

KD: I hope it is. Turn it up. If it’s silly, I really want to hear it.

Q: Okay. I’ve always wondered, after Maharajji gave you the orders to sing, what you sounded like when you first started.

KD: You’ll never know. I just…

Q: Does she know? You know?

KD: No, she doesn’t know.

Q: Maybe she can do an impression

KD: Somewhere, actually… the first thing I recorded was probably about a year and a half or two years before One Track Heart was recorded. We recorded it out in Taos, New Mexico, and how should I put it? It’s cringe-worthy. It’s so horrible. I can’t even bear to think about it.

And even…. you don’t want to hear all this shit. Oh, you do? I even don’t like One Track Heart. I’m sorry. Except for the Devi Puja was very good. Because I can hear my mind, you see> I was thinking, how do you do this? What should I do? And I could hear my mind. Every time I listen to that, it’s like, ooh.

But by Pilgrim Heart, that was a whole other thing. And then from then on, God knows what it is, I hope. So, yeah.

There’s just so much less in between my ears these days. It’s scary sometimes.

Anybody else?

Yeah. It’s been a strange… long, strange trip. I mean, Ram Dass and I, in Maui, after breakfast, we would sit at the table together for hours and hours. Everybody else would go away, and we’d just kind of sit in silence, and talk, then silence, then talk. So, one day I turned the phone on… a recording and we sat there for hours. So, when it was over, I said, “you know, I recorded this.”

And he goes, “Oh.”

I said, “What should I call it?”

He said, call it, “Dick And Jeff’s journey to,” what did he say… Oh, “Dick and Jeff’s journey to Soul Land.”

Yeah, what a journey.

Q: Hello, Krishna Das. I’ve waited 20 years to say this. You’re on my bucket list and I’m sorry, I’m going to tell everybody how old you are right now, but…

KD: Don’t be sorry. I’m still alive. Be sorry if I wasn’t.

Q: Last year when I realized you were 75, I knew I had to come and see you after 20 years. Because I’m like, “he might be gone!”

KD: I’ve got at least 20 minutes left.

Q: I wanted to give you a hug. I’m like, “oh my God, you’re still alive. Thank you for breathing. Thank you for continuing to breathe. I know it’s an effort, but make that effort.”

KD: I’m actually not any more alive than I was before I had this body, but that’s okay.

Q: That’s good. That’s good. Actually, I have a question. I’ve been studying Sikhism, I’m sorry, and I noticed that the name’s Krishna Das…

KD: I’m sorry. No, I’m just teasing.

Q: Krishna Das and Ram Dass. I noticed that Ros. Was a name that came from the Sikh tradition and I was wondering if …

KD: It didn’t come from the Sikh tradition. It just means servant of God. It’s from all the traditions.

Q: Okay.

KD: All the same. There is Guru Ram Dass, of course, in the Sikh tradition. But the name itself is, it’s just like John or Frank or Tony in English.

Q: So, there wasn’t like a significance to why Neem Karoli Baba named you guys Krishna Das and Ram Dass?

KD: Well, the significance is that Maharajji is Hanuman. And that’s the Ram, the tradition of Ram, and Das means “servant.” Hanuman is the servant. So, part of that lineage. So Dasses and the non Dasses are all part of that with Maharajji.

Q: Thank you.

KD: You’re welcome. Was that worth 20 years waiting?

Q: One of them, one of the things. Just being in front of you is enough.

KD: Oh, really?

He can’t pay for that. I mean, how do you get something like that?

Q: So, God bless you. Thank you for all your music. Thank you for a lifetime of music. You’ve changed my life, and you’ll continue to change my life for the rest of my life, so I appreciate it.

Q: I was introduced to your chanting when I was 12 years old, and then…

KD: two years ago?

Q: no, no. Oh no, no. 15. And then about five years later I got involved, heavily involved in a spiritual institution where I did kirtan a lot, both leading and just being in the audience, responding, but it was an environment where there was, it was just very damaging and destructive and there was a lot of ego and spiritual bypassing.

And now that I’m out of it, I’m feeling that really damaged my relationship to the holy names of all kinds. And I still want, of course, to cultivate a relationship with them in my heart. But as I’m starting to be exposed to kirtan outside of that environment that I was in, I’m just feeling all of the blockages. And I’m wondering if you have any suggestions or advice on how to…yeah… repair that

KD: First of all, let’s just think about chanting for a second. When we sit down to chant, the biggest obstacles are our expectations. We think something’s supposed to happen. Problem is, it already happened. We’re here, but we don’t know it. So, what we’re trying to do is come back home. We’re not looking for any particular kind of experience. You might be looking for bliss or ecstasy, but that actually might be just running away from suffering. And you can’t run away from things, nor can you hold onto things.

So, when you sit down to chant or remember the name, silently or outwardly, you just… when you notice your thinking, whether it’s positive or negative, or fantasy or fear, you notice it, and you come back to the name.

You see, you can always come back. That’s the beauty of the name. You can always come back from whatever you’re thinking. You have to notice that you’re thinking. So, you notice you’re stuck. You have all these negative stories that are going on. Okay, so come back. That’s all you have to do. And the more you do that, the more often we come back, the less glued we are to those stories, and then they’ll eventually, they just come through like Indian food. Right through.

But they call it practice for a reason. It’s a repetition of training ourselves to let go again and again. And you might think, “oh, it’s unfortunate that I have all this negativity about the name,” but it doesn’t matter what the negativity is about. It’s not really about the name. It’s about your experience with that group and the names involved with that. But it doesn’t really matter what the subject matter is of the negativity. As soon as you notice that you’re stuck, you’re actually not stuck at that moment. I mean, the mist of the stuck might be around, but you actually, if you’re noticing, you’re no longer that stuck. That’s when you rededicate yourself just to the sound of the name.

You don’t push it away and you don’t grab onto the name. You just remember it. You see, inside, everything’s totally cool. It’s just the next bump out, we’re totally fucked. Everybody’s the same, you see. It doesn’t matter what the subject matter is. Everybody’s screwed up, one thing or another, but the letting go is exactly the same for everybody.

And here’s the other thing. So, you sit down, you’re going to practice and you, you know, all of a sudden, you’ve got all this stuff going on, and then you notice it. How did that happen? That you noticed you were stuck or that you noticed you were thinking? You woke up for a second.

Now nothing can happen without a cause. Can the cause of waking up be “asleepness?” No. The cause of waking up can only be that we planted seeds of waking up previously. So, that’s already working. Underneath what you think you are and what you think you’re doing, there’s a whole karmic flow going on. So, you just keep letting go into that again and again, and you don’t try to push away the negativity. Look at it. Allow it to be. You can really learn a lot.

You know, like one of the lamas I study with talks about the handshake practice. He says, “well, okay, you see something comes in, like some negative thing, a negative feeling, and you go, ‘oh, hi. How you doing? I know you, yeah, you weren’t you here just 10 minutes ago? I think you were, yeah. You know,’ so you say, ‘come on, come on in. Have a cup of tea. What do you like in your tea? Poison. Okay, I got some of that. Oh, okay. Never mind. I won’t give you poison. Just come in, have some something. How about sugar? That’s pretty bad for you.’”

But the thing is, don’t be afraid. You’re here. Whatever happened, happened, but you’re still here. You’re here now, and 10 minutes from now you’ll still be here now. And tomorrow and next week you’ll be here now. So, it’s just a matter of remembering to let go, and just be. Don’t try to make something happen. It  already happened, and nothing we can create in our minds or you know, “I want this kind of feeling. I want to have this.”

None that could never last, because we created it.

This is why Groucho Marx is my guru. He used to say, “I’ll never join any club that I’m invited to to join.”

And that’s perfect, because I don’t want to join anything I can create in my mind, or my emotions. It won’t last. But what last is what is here now, and what will always be right here now, which is our true nature, who we really are.

So, it’s good. And then you have resentment for being stuck. But there’s a secret in that, and the secret is, the lesson of betrayal is trust. Not only other people’s betrayal, but we gave ourselves away.

So that’s how we learn to trust. We forgive ourselves for being, how should we put it… assholes, and needy and greedy, and wanting this and wanting that, and all the reasons we would join any kind of group, and be attracted to that underneath the surface. We have to forgive ourselves for that, because it’s just like everybody, we’re just like everybody else.

But the lesson that we learn, that’s imprinted on us from betraying our own hearts, is learning how to trust that heart, because that’s what you’re doing now. It’s just a little unfamiliar. That’s all. But that’s okay.

Q: Thank you.

KD: Yeah. I was in a cult myself, you know? So, I know what it’s like. Fun.

Q: Thank you. Hi.

KD: Hi.

Q: Two things. One may be silly. And then the other one’s more practical. The first one is, I think I remember seeing or reading that Maharajji threw fruit at you.

KD: Everybody.

Q: Right. If you were thinking?

KD: Anytime.

Q: Anytime?

KD: He needed no reason to throw fruit. He wasn’t throwing it at you. He was distributing Prasad in all directions, but if He wanted to, it could hit you right in the head, you know?

Q: Okay. Maybe I misunderstood.

KD: Yeah, it wasn’t a violent act.

Q: Okay. Oh, because then, yeah, I wanted to ask if it worked.

KD: Sometimes. No, it didn’t work. It could be a wake up call, you know, like bringing you back from outer space. Because you’re sitting in front of him thinking about, you know, some movie you saw back in New York three years ago. Boom.

Q: Okay.

KD: But very gentle. I mean, yeah.

However, I once got hit in the heart with a hard unripe guava from about 50 yards away by by a baba who was 270 years old.

Q: Wow.

KD: He hit me, and I turned away from it, and I went, what? And he was so far away I could hardly see him. You know, there were like a thousand people there, like, you know, and Maharajji, you just kind of….

Q: Oh, okay.

KD: Soft bananas. Usually not hard.

Q: I’m going to update my visual.

KD: Yeah. Okay.

Okay. And the other question was, I have a family. I have three kids, and many people in my house and I don’t really have like a sanctuary that I couldn’t go to and do this. And so, and I’m from Iceland, so I…

KD: That’s what the bathroom is for.

Q: True. And I’m from Iceland and I do the Thursdays a lot.

KD: Oh, I love Iceland. I’ve been there so many times. Did I see you there?

Q: No.

KD: No? I love it there.

Q: I found you after. But, and so it’s at like midnight or something and sometimes or 11 at night. And so I’ll go for walks in the empty cold tundra with my dog and so I’m walking and moving when I’m listening and chanting. Is that okay?

KD: Sure. Any, anytime you remember the name is good. Yeah. You’re planting a seed. You know, if you’re walking on a tight rope, 3000 feet off the ground, maybe you should pay attention more to the rope. But you know, if you fall, the name will be there.So that’s good.

Q: Thank you.

KD: Where, where in Iceland are you from?

Q: I’m from the north, but I live in Reykjavik now.

KD: Very good. I loved it there.

Q: will you come back?

KD: You know, this is a country that the government, they believe in gnomes and stuff like that, you know, and there’s these certain rock formations that they believe these gnomes live in. So, if the government’s building a road, they build the road around the foundation. Not like America where they destroy cities just to put a road up. You know? They move 50,000 people just to make a highway. In Iceland, they go around it like that.  It was so cool.

Yeah, I had a great time there. I loved it. Was I there twice, or once? I don’t remember. Once maybe.

Q: What were we like?

KD: We were very nice.

Q: I’ve just never seen a harmonium or anything like this there, so I was just curious.

KD: This one group, this one spiritual group brought me over. But we sang, I sang in that beautiful new… I think it just built when I got there.

Q: And will you come back?

KD: Yeah. You know, it is. Iceland is amazing. We went down to the beach, it was like 110 degrees, and then we got into a car, and we drove maybe 15 minutes up to this canyon, and then we got into this machine. It had these paddles, but they’re like 15 feet wide, right? These big paddles going around like this, and we get up on this thing. And it starts going up the mountain. In 10 minutes we were in a blizzard and it was like 30 below. Unbelievable. We went up right into a glacier. It was extraordinary. Within like, you know, 10 minutes, you’re like on the beach, then you’re in a glacier. It was amazing. What a place. Yeah. Good.

Q: Thank you.

KD: Yeah. Nice place. I love that.

Q: I have a Haman Chalisa question. Um, So I enjoy chanting, and like today I loved it, but a lot of times I mumble through certain parts because I just can’t pronounce everything. And when COVID hit, then you talked about the Hanuman Chalisa, I decided I really needed to learn it. That it would be important, but I really struggled with it, and it caused a lot of stress. Because I thought, “I need to learn this so I can find some peace and I, and I wasn’t.”

And, so I think it was you that told the story about. Neem Karoli Baba put, that he put a song in someone’s head in India, and he was able to sing it and knew it perfectly.

KD: Oh yeah, yeah. That was the Bhagavad Gita. Yeah.

Q: And so I thought, you know, I’m going to ask if Neem Karoli Baba would put this in my head so I could just repeat it. And so I get down on my bicycle and I spin and I put like a YouTube of the Hanuman Chalisa, on or a cd and I just spin and I try to repeat it and learn it. And usually like I’ll listen to Nina’s,  because she has that nice long one. And normally another Nina one pops up, But this time the, the next one that popped up was Neem Karoli Baba, who I’ve never Googled. And he’s just going, “Ram Ram Ram.” And I thought, “I can do that.”

You know, it kind of took me off the hook from learning it, and I feel like I can just “Ram Ram Ram.”

And I was just wondering what your thoughts were.

KD: My, my thoughts are you are the hook.

If we could repeat the name constantly, we would be, but it’s not so easy. We have a lot of other stuff going on, habitual patterns of thought, et cetera, et cetera. And the Hanuman Chalisa is a practice that purifies the heart, and the effort that it takes to learn it….

Now, it doesn’t have to be memorized. Nobody said you had to memorize it. Okay? Carry on a little piece of paper. You know, it’s not a test. But the Chalisa itself, the practice, Maharajji gave us that practice. And if you read the Chalisa, the translation, you learn a lot about Hanuman, and about a lot of things.

You know, and Maharajji said, “Go on saying your fake Ram Rams.  One of these days the real, your call will come and the real Ram will come.” So it’s not that you can just go Ram Ram… and that because we say Ram…

But it’s said that the name and what is named, or God, are not different. But when we say “Ram,” you know, nothing happens.

So, we don’t have that awareness. We’re not open that way. Our bandwidth is still too constrained. So, repetition of the name is also purifying. No question about it. And Maharajji just said, do it whether you feel any devotion or not. Whether you’re angry, whether you’re tired, whatever. Just do it. Because if you don’t do it, then what? You don’t plant seeds, nothing will grow.

That being said, the practice of chanting the Hanuman Chalisa is very powerful, and it’s a direct connection with Maharajji, who is Hanuman himself. And so, if you want to learn it, there’s those two, you know, the Flow of Grace cd. And the second CD has every word or every phrase very slowly, easy to repeat. And you can just do it, just do it a thousand times. You’ll know it, it doesn’t have to be memorized. It’s just some kind of weird trip that we do to ourselves.

Q: Okay so it’s okay just to keep repeating it with you on the cd.

KD: Of course it’s okay. Right. Better than raping and killing, right?  Then?

Q: My name’s Peter, and I’m kind of on this almost opposite journey of everybody else where I’m a Gen Z. So, I’m kind of very young, especially among this group, and I don’t have, sorry…

KD: Gen Z? What happens after z? You start back at A?

Q: And I’m sorry if I offended anybody. I just…

KD: I don’t even know what language you’re talking Go ahead, go ahead.

Q: So I’m in this specific situation where I feel a strong calling towards service and towards kind of a spiritual path. And that’s very new towards my family and specifically even me. And I feel this calling towards specifically service in any way I can find it, but I don’t see many outlets in my, my current life to find that.

And I always hear Ram Dass talking about the classic “be here now” and your next step is always right in front of you. But that can be a little hard to find and especially when there’s, there’s so many paths, especially for the younger generation to go, and there’s so many needs of this world when it comes to different societies, and I was wondering if you had any help with the ability to find that path when it comes to specifically a spiritual practice, but also just a pragmatic way to live life, I guess.

KD: Whatever else you do, sooner or later you’re going to have to calm your mind down. So, start there, see what happens. And there’s a million different practices to do that. You can just simply watch your breath come in and out. And if you do it well enough, you know, you can get enlightened just with that.

But start somewhere. I mean, start practicing calming yourself down a little bit, you know, and then see how things go. See what shows up in your life. I mean, the more open you are and receptive, the more you become aware of what shows up. A lot of things are there that you’re not aware of right around the corner.

You know, Krishna could be living next door, but until you look, you never see. Actually, he is. He’s actually living in your house, as you.

Yeah. So, you know, this is what’s called life and living. It happens. So, according to what you want in life and how you greet every day and every moment, you see what happens. It’s exciting. Sometimes it’s very depressing, but that’s what’s called an emotion. Let it go. Come back to your breath. Don’t believe what you think. Okay? That’s the definition of insanity.

We all believe what we think. Isn’t that crazy? I mean, there’s no reason for us to believe what we think, but we do. And I feel like shit today. Why? Why did I think that? I don’t feel like shit. Why did I think I did? That’s weird.

Okay, but calm your ass down. That’s the main thing. Every day. Just a couple of minutes at first, right? If you try too hard, if you ruin everything. Just chill. You know? Three minutes, four minutes. Set a timer so you don’t sit there too long. Maybe an alarm clock to wake you up when you fall asleep in 30 seconds.

Q: Thank you.

KD: Yeah. Oh, good advice. Really.

Q: Hi. I wonder if you could…

KD: Nah…

Q:  No, probably not, because of your attitude towards your own stories now. But I was wondering if you could elaborate on a story from your autobiography where Maharajji asked you to have courage, and I’m not sure in the book, whether it, you go into detail of like later in your life when you thought that that. Like you looked back and said, oh, he’s addressing this moment. So I guess the question is can you continue that story and how did you find the courage and what sort of grace was involved?

KD: Well, he had just told me that he was sending me back to America, and I was sitting there, and my mind was totally spinning out. You know, I was thinking about chocolate chip cookies, and Wheaties and, you know, going to basketball games again, you know. I was just going crazy sitting there. Right? And I started to get worried. What am I going to do? I just didn’t know what I was going to do in America. And I still had January, I still had like three months in India.

He said when my visa was up, that’s when I had to go back. So, this was Christmas time, and my visa was up at the beginning of March, so I still had a couple of months.

So sitting there, all of a sudden he sits up and he looks at me really intensely and he says, “courage is a really big thing.” And the Indian guy goes, “Oh, Baba, God takes care of his devotees.”

“Courage is a really big thing.”

I was thinking, “what’s going to happen?” You know? So, I just remembered that, you know, because he put it in there pretty strongly and… there were a lot of times when all I had was the vague memory of that moment, which was just about enough to get me through whatever I was going through, internally or externally. There were a lot of, you know, horrible situations I found myself in over the years.

But it was interesting because, you know, we have all these ideas. “Oh, God does everything,” or “everything is karma” or “it doesn’t matter.” But he was telling me courage was really important. So that was a big thing. There’s not really much to elaborate about other than that. There were times that there was nothing but the memory of that.You know, there wasn’t any courage, but just remembering that moment kind of got me through to the next moment. Yeah.

Q: Thank you.

KD: Yeah.

Q: Namaste Krishna Dasji. You were introduced to me may be three, four years ago by a close friend of mine, and the first time I’ve heard you, the tranquility of your voice actually has taken me to a different plane. And since then, I’ve been a huge fan of you. So along with me, I brought about three, four friends of mine to attend this retreat.

So, the question to you, what has been your experiences or transformational journey to took you on this path of Bhakti Marga? I don’t think you’re born as a singer or probably you’re not born as a practicing singer. So, what took you, or what experiences led you to that path of Bhakti Yoga Marga?

KD: Bhakti, Jnana, Karma, it’s all the same. It’s your life. Bhakti means love. And when I met my guru, I fell in love, and I never fell out at that love. And that’s Bhakti. It’s also wisdom because Guru is everything. The whole universe. So, when you’re in a loving relationship with the universe, everything changes. So, I don’t know if there’s been much transformation, to tell you the truth. I mean, really, I just, you know. I just cut myself a break every once in a while now, when I didn’t use to, and as a result, I cut other people a break once in a while. Because everybody’s guru. When I can see that, when I live in that space, then it’s a very different universe, and that’s the way it really is.

Guru is not a physical person and not limited to a body, a physical body. We think that, because we think we are physical bodies. That’s what we identify with. And so, when somebody says guru, you think of somebody out there. That’s not what it is at all. Guru is like the space of the sky. Inside, everything is inside of that. There’s nothing outside of that vast space, that vast presence.

But we, our minds, our stuff is focused on stuff, on little things, on forms and shapes and egos and psychology, and all this stuff. So, we miss the space. We don’t see this. We don’t experience that presence in which we all live. When we do, then everything’s fine. That’s real devotion and that’s a mature devotion, a ripe devotion.

But it starts very simply, you know, with a loving connection with either yourself or a being. You don’t have to meet that being physically to feel the love. I felt the love from Maharajji when I met Ram Dass, and I didn’t know what it was at first, you know. I thought it was Ram Dass, but he very quickly abused me of that thought, disabused me, or whatever the word is.

Q: You beautifully explained that in your book though, by the way. That was very nice.

KD: Yeah. And he liked that too.

But you know, so one has to experience these things oneself. But we hear about them from other people. We hear about what’s possible, but it’s up to us to plant those seeds in our lives of the things that we want to experience. If we don’t plant the seeds, nothing can grow.

The Hanuman Chalisa is a very powerful practice for cleaning the mirror of the heart. The mirror is covered with crud, all our stuff. So, when we look into the mirror, all we see is the crud. We don’t see what really could be reflected, but as the crud is polished off, we see more clearly and more accurately what’s reflected in that mirror.

So, on one hand we’re looking in a mirror ourselves, and when the mirror is all our stuff, all the me, me, me stuff, all the ego stuff, all the greed, the selfishness, the shame, the fear, all that stuff, the anger… all that stuff. However, this is the mirror.

Right now, what you’re looking into is a mirror, and you’re seeing your stuff, all your, all our, our ideas, all our interpretations, all our likes and dislikes, all our frustrations, all our neediness, all our beauty, all the everything. So, as we clean our hearts, everything we see changes. It’s like you’re born with glasses on that are the wrong prescription, but you don’t know that.

So, you look around and everything, kind of what it is, doesn’t seem weird to you because it’s what you were born with. Little by little, that those glasses start, the prescription changes. It self-corrects and little by little, things come into clarity. And clear. Everything becomes clear and you see things as they are. I mean, you see yourself as you really are, and that’s the result of practice, spiritual practice, in a very general sense.

So, we’re all in our own little version of the universe. But we share a bandwidth, so we can talk to each other, and we can see all these bodies and all these minds and all this stuff. But when the mirror of the heart is perfectly clear, everything’s very different. And that’s when you, you experience the oneness of it all. And on the way to that oneness, a lot of different qualities arise, compassion and kindness, equanimity, happiness, just for no reason. Just because that’s who we are.

And Maharajji said, “from going on, repeating these names, everything is accomplished.” Whatever it is, it’s accomplished. It’s made full and complete.

Q: I like, I’ve had…

KD: Dysentery?

Q: Not yet. A long way to go, though. It’s probably going to happen.

So I’ve had, like, I’ve had these deep and profound awakening experiences in my life, and I used to be a person who sought ceaseless pleasure.

KD: Good luck,

Q: Right? And so I recognize that that’s a fool’s errand. And I no longer seek that. I want to be here for all of life. That includes all of it, the horror, pain, love, beauty, all of it. And so, like I feel this resistance to the possibility of enlightenment. Partially because I don’t believe, I guess I question if there would even be a me there to experience it, like this idea of enlightenment being a transcendence of being human, being here, being here in this form. I love that you’re making these faces at me.

KD: It is totally the opposite of that, of course. You’re totally here and there’s nothing in your way. Everything is experienced because there’s nothing to filter or to push away or to judge or evaluate. It’s wide open total presence, which is who you are already. So, there’s no sense fighting it. That’s who you are. All this other stuff is just stuff. Let it go.

By saying you want to be here for all of it. You’re actually narrowing it down pretty fiercely. Don’t say it. Don’t even think it. Just be here. But that’s not so easy.  Because we’re always thinking all this stuff.

When, when the me is not functioning, you’re completely present with everything and everyone and everything completely. Absolutely. There’s no fear, there’s no distance. You’re out of your own way. It is just exactly the way you know it is. But you can’t get there yet. And it’s just another storyline that you’re identifying with, which is gotta go anyhow, so let it go.

Q: Thank you. I had a, another question.

KD: He’s, he’s, he’s saying something. Oh, okay.

Q: So, you’ve lived this amazing life with these amazing experiences.

KD: You think so?

Q: And these awakenings, we’re being….

KD: falling asleeps

Q: A guru, right? And so I’m curious about your current experience. Like we all, we’re all coming starry-eyed, looking at you, and if there’s a need for you, like, do you look outward for something, to a person, a discipline? And is your current experience, is there a deepening, a deeper awakening? And or what, like what challenges you now in, in life? I’m curious about your current experience.

KD: I am just hanging out. I don’t have much of an agenda. I signed the line and said I’d be here for a few days, so I drove over from my house. Other than that, I didn’t make any commitments to be especially holy or anything. I just said I’d be here with y’all.

What did you ask? We could roll the tape back.

Q: Oh, like there, well, I asked like a shitload of questions. That’s really the problem here. But like, one, if you’re seeking inspiration elsewhere, is there like a current deepening or awakening, or like, what is showing up as challenging or like in the way for you these days?

KD: Having to get here at two in the afternoon is really hard. Okay. So, I love, yeah. I get inspiration. I love to find saints, yogis. I met a couple of really great yogis in India this time. Wow. They’re still here. It’s unbelievable. Let me tell you, they’re here. It’s extraordinary. So that’s what I am. I’m a Saint junkie. That’s what I am.

And it’s all Maharajji. Everything that happens, happens inside of him. So, I don’t worry about that. But I love, I love finding, you know… I just love saints. You know, I love the beings that, that shine so much. It’s great. That’s very inspiring. Just knowing that they’re here is very inspiring. Because we get, you know, we see the world going down the toilet and we wonder is there any use or any hope and how could it get like this? But there are beings who know exactly what’s going on, who are doing what has to be done. And it’s all…

Maharajji used to say, “It’s all perfect.”

It’s a hard one. That’s a really hard one. Ram Dass wanted to take his van and go be a, like an ambulance out in in Bangladesh when all this bad stuff was happening. Maharajji said, “Ram Dass, don’t you understand? It’s all perfect.”

That’s really hard, because people are suffering. That means suffering is also perfect, but we don’t like suffering. So how could it be perfect? Well, that’s a good question.

So that’s very inspiring to me. And the only thing in the way for me, is me. So, I’m working on it. I’m not in a particular hurry, but I’m working on it. Time goes by though. Things happen.

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