Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:14 Welcome to my Bob Thurman podcast. I'm so grateful and some good trends enabled me to present them to you. If you enjoy him and find them useful, please think of becoming a member of Tibet house us to help preserve Tibetan culture. If that house is the Dalai Lama control center in America, All best wishes have a great day.
Speaker 2 00:00:48 And this is episode 276 an interview with Phillip Goldberg.
Speaker 4 00:01:15 And I'm so delighted that I'm with my dear friend, Phil Goldberg, who I only recently discovered, but he's like a long lost friend. There's no doubt. And he has been setting the rules, spiritual traditions for more than four to five years. You're such a youngster, actually only 45, more than a desert languages. His book American video that's the one was named by Huffington post a library. John's one of the top 10 religion books of two 10. And that means it still is in two 20. Don't give me that he was followed in two 18 by the popular biography, which is a really great book that was so kind and wonderful and to America and this land of crazy our sodas. And, uh, and then I have this book where I liked this little about unquote spiritual practice for crazy times, powerful tools to cultivate calm, clarity, and courage, which we surely need. And the days of Joe mentioned as posing as a Democrat. So, uh, wonderful to see you feel, how are you, I'm sure. You know, since you are the expert on Hinduism, so what are you up to now? You know, tell me
Speaker 5 00:02:38 I'm doing my podcast. I'm working on a novel that, uh, is long the way that the pandemic, uh, was my, uh, ruined my last excuse for not working on the novel. I've been wanting to write for 20 years. And, um, so I've working on that and it, it has, it has, um, the theme has a lot to do with my non-fiction because my recent books have a lot to do with sort of, uh, the, the coming to America of the, uh, the teachings we call Hinduism or the yoga, uh, legacy, and, you know, all the gurus and swamis who came here and, and the, the infiltration
Speaker 4 00:03:28 <inaudible> for crazy times, but this work is truly marvelous in the way, the history that had towels, um, about, um, how America has finally discovered that the Pacific ocean is on the other side and the Atlantic ocean on this side, um, um, uh, began in the 1790s by a president of Yale. I don't know, um, I forget his name, but this was brought to my attention by someone else. And I'm saying that when American would really come into its own is when he would realize it was a bridge between Europe and Asia across the two oceans. And that it was in orange it's Asian heritage and connection was as important or more than as European one. Although not many immigrants had come from Europe. And I was really impressed when the gentleman who mentioned it first to me mentioned that, and I'm in an academic conference, could it be something styles or did Joshua styles or somebody named styles?
Speaker 4 00:04:46 It could be said that popped into my mind maybe from somewhere else who knows the way the old grain gets, but somebody called styles just said something to my head. And, um, I I'm, uh, I can't remember if the name of my colleagues had told me I would call it up in the link. Uh, but, um, uh, so tell, tell us, feel so feeling it's written 25 books and, uh, the one, this one that a few rivers press.com and it is American Veda. It's called from Emerson and the Beatles to yoga and meditation. How Indian spirituality changed it? The west foreword by Houston Smith, man, you know, general trends, Houston Smith. Yes. So it feels, so tell us, where were you in 1960? And this is what we call it, the volcano decade in their wonderful book
Speaker 5 00:05:42 And 60, I was still in high school. And then I spent a few years in college, but, but I, uh, during my college years, I was a pretty indifferent student and, uh, just trying to figure out how to live life. And I was very politically active, you know, into the mid sixties, uh, with the, uh, with, uh, antiwar, uh, movement and civil rights. And, and then my, uh, entree to things spiritual came later in the sixties, 66, 67, uh, during the, the counterculture years of, uh, of psychedelics and, uh, exploration of, uh, trying to figure out what, who we were and what was life was all about. And in that mix were, uh, were books by people. You probably knew Alan Watts and all this Huxley and Joseph Campbell and all those, those books, uh, about Vedanta, uh, Alan Watts's way of Zen, Zen, flesh, Zen bones, all these books started circulating and our autobiography of a Yogi, which I've written about a lot, which is now celebrating its 75th anniversary.
Speaker 5 00:07:11 All these books started to come around and they essentially blew my mind. And I was, I was raised by non-religious atheists, uh, in New York. And I had no use for anything real religious, but, but then in the middle of all this searching that the teachings that came from the east, the Indic teachings, the Vedic teachings and the Buddhist teachings, they just opened up new doors to me and millions of others like me and we, uh, and we started to think there's something in them, something rational, something empirical, something that made sense that wasn't superstition and, and I just turned eastward and, um, you know, Zen practices and so forth. And then at a certain point after the Beatles went to India with Marashi Mahesh Yogi, which is a big watershed moment in the whole story of east meeting west. Uh, at that, at that point I was living in Cambridge and Boston and Cambridge. I had moved from New York and, uh, I had started graduate school, but, but I, I in sociology and I just couldn't hack it, it was just boring. And all I wanted to do was study Indian philosophy and, and learn how to meditate and all that. So I weaseled my way out of the draft and got a job and just turned in that direction and eventually became a teacher of transcendental meditation. And though the seventies began a whole new life. So yeah. And then, you know, over, over, over the years.
Speaker 4 00:09:09 So
Speaker 5 00:09:12 That was my, that was my, uh, home, my spiritual home for several years. I trained as a teacher. Uh, and then, and then, you know, became, became this sort of pragmatic mystic later and just learning from everybody and everything, including you.
Speaker 4 00:09:37 Oh, that's really good. So we were probably down the street from each other in various times. And, uh, and, uh, did you go to India at all? Did you go to India and visit there? And
Speaker 5 00:09:54 It took me a while. I was.
Speaker 4 00:09:56 What, what, when did you first go to India?
Speaker 5 00:09:59 Well, at first it was going to go to India in 1970 and that some things happened and I didn't go, and I was trained as a TM teacher in the U S instead of a Rishi cache. And, um, didn't get to India for a couple of decades, but I've been there six times since I take tours there now and go visit gurus and swamis. And, uh, we'll do it again after the pandemic. Oh man.
Speaker 4 00:10:29 Yeah. It's amazing that it has every extreme India does. It has every extreme of difficulty and then it has beauty beauty, and
Speaker 5 00:10:40 Yeah. And, and when you take a tour group, as you know, you have to be very careful about all that. And for the first time in our next tour, next fall in October, uh, Dharmsala will be part of the trip. I've never been.
Speaker 4 00:10:58 That's really great. And who did you go with? <inaudible> travel. Who do you travel with? You arrange it yourself. Or
Speaker 5 00:11:07 I have a, I cold lead the tour and it's called American Veda tour is essentially we're following the theme of my book and taking people to places associated with the gurus they're familiar with, who came to the west, um, and had an impact on, on everybody's lives. But, uh, uh, we have a tour person in India who takes care of things.
Speaker 4 00:11:30 I love your treatment also of Emerson and Wickman. How do you connect the three of them? Can you tell us a little about that? Of course, a century before all of us write hundreds and hundreds of years before us all,
Speaker 5 00:11:46 I see them and the transcendentalists as, as a whole they're, they're sort of the founding fathers of, uh, American spirit of independence seeking and searching and direct experience of the divine. And they were of Emerson was among the very first people to be, um, deeply influenced by the teachings that came here from the east. Of course there were no, uh, Lamas or gurus at the time. There were no yoga studios or meditation centers, but, but they had the books, they were starting to get reasonable translations. And commentaries Emerson was deeply influenced by, by, uh, the early work about the life of the Buddha. The lightwell was called the light of the east or something. And, um, and, uh, Vedic texts or first translations of the Gita and other books. And they were deeply influenced by a Thoreau called himself a Yogi in, um, Walden. And I remember reading that in college and saying, what does that mean? And, and he wrote about reading the Bhagavad Gita. And I, I remember, I remember going to look for one and not being able to find a copy in New York until I was told about Weiser's bookstore, where's your problem?
Speaker 5 00:13:22 That's right. And so, so people Whitman and, uh, Emerson in particular and, and, and of course, a lot of, um, M uh, Whitman's poetry. They evoke India, they've evoke, uh, Hindu and Buddhist precepts and teachings. And sometimes explicitly, sometimes you have to read between the lines to see the influence, uh, that these teachings had the books had on them. But that is the beginning of the, of a transmission from India through prominent Americans, into the mainstream culture. Everybody reads Emerson, everybody reads Thoreau, but we don't always know we're being, uh, influenced by Indian philosophy when we do. And that, that was the beginning. And then by the end of the 19th century, you know, and they had a big impact on the new thought movement, Madame Blavatsky and all those people. And then the girl started coming first, uh, Swami Vivekananda in 1893. Uh, and, uh, then Yoganonda in 1920 and then the explosion of the gurus and Zen masters in the post-war, uh, world that you remember very well. It's amazing here. You
Speaker 4 00:14:51 Said that, uh, you know, the three types of yoga in the belly of a Gita, you have, <inaudible> the mural grand devotion yoga, and you assigned to three <inaudible>, which, which was
Speaker 5 00:15:10 To me, Emerson is the, Ganny the man of discernment, intellect. Yes. Miss and Thoreau was more of a karma Yogi, especially in his civil disobedience, a, an action oriented way. And a whip. Whitman was the American Bhakta. Whitman was a Bhakta, right? Whitman was
Speaker 4 00:15:38 One of them.
Speaker 5 00:15:39 Yeah. He was celebrating the divine in everyday life and everyday experience. And, um, so I gave them those, those later
Speaker 4 00:15:48 That's totally ingenious. But did you ever, did you ever expect you to, I know you didn't mention it in the book. Where did you ever suspect that any of them might be the rebirth or reincarnation of some Indian yogis or said, or scholars or pendants or something, did you ever, like,
Speaker 5 00:16:06 Why not? I mean, I, it, that's way above my peg, my pay grade to even speculate about such things, but you wonder sometimes, you know, why, why was I this kid who grew up in Brooklyn with atheist parents? Why would, why did I resonate so much when I first read the Gita? When I first read the way of Zen, why did I resonate with all this? And you can't help, but think, you know, I must have had previous lives in, in, you know, ma Zen monasteries or something. Uh,
Speaker 4 00:16:46 Well, how come they went to Harvard, right?
Speaker 5 00:16:48 Yeah, they right. Emerson wasn't
Speaker 4 00:16:51 I think so myself, I had some kids, right. I had some kids in their class of mine played a trick on me and they said, oh, I used to teach a course called poetry of enlightenment in which I read different Indian sedans and Zen and Zen, uh, you know, a haiku like that. And, um, and there was a classical Indian post poetry. And then they brought in a pet, some passages of Rickman. And I hadn't read that for years at that point. Yeah. We read this thing somewhere and they pretended they didn't know who wrote it. And they said, we don't know the name of which Indian said of this was, and they was just quoted by somebody and they read about five, six lines of loser, Americanize it right away. And they said, which city do you know this one and something. And I was scratching my head and I didn't say that's, that's it. And I was really ready to find that quoted and all this. And then that's brilliant. That's one of the great Indian cigarettes. You know, I see them as doing that. And, you know, India has such an amazing relationship with the America because we were the first to break out of the British empire. Right. Right. Did you know that? Did you ever know this, that tipo sold talent? You remember who he was? Did you ever hear of him? No.
Speaker 4 00:18:34 Dolphy of the 19th century. He was the British empire was a Gaddafi figure in India, Mysore. Oh, he was a Francophile and he didn't like England conquering, or it was before the Indian mutiny in the early part of 19th century. And he sent three chests of Juul to the American revolutionaries. Wow. You know, in the late 18, 18 with different European ship captains who rubbed each one. So none of them ever arrived. Wow. Remember reached a Washington or something, or big chest of Indian jewels. He was trying to help fund the revolution. He liked showing off the empire, you know? Wow. He was because he wanted, he knew he didn't want the British east India company taking over India. They hadn't solidified their holes or totally yet. And, uh, so then he was vilified by the British. He killed by him. Eventually it had, they really didn't like him.
Speaker 4 00:19:43 He was a fight. He was found as a French. Right. You know, like we know about Lafayette, but we don't know about tipo. So town was his name. He was a very colorful figure. I don't know that much about him, but I was amazed by that. Amazing. Yeah. And the second thing we owe to the Indians is that apparently some politician in London, parliament, when the Cornwallis had gone up into Canada and was asking for reinforcements to get back after Washington. And we were at a low point, right. Washington was in valley forge or something around that time, there was a vote in the British parliament where the peers, the people, I guess, a lobbyist of the east India company said to the assembled Lords road, sir, we can either reinforce Cornwallis in Canada or we can, you know, solidify our whole in India. One another, we can't do both. So rich, do you prefer for Zen lumber and tobacco or jewels? And they said <inaudible>. So then they decided to let America go as far as more heavily militarily in America to suppress the colonists. Wow. Isn't that amazing? I only learned that. Not that I didn't know that of course from school, but I learned that someday. Isn't that amazing. So, you know,
Speaker 5 00:21:22 I never knew that
Speaker 4 00:21:23 Isn't that something that's really great. So you can then Julia say, did you have meditated at any particular Zen center, Cambridge Zen center or something? What did you do now?
Speaker 5 00:21:32 I, I, in those days I was just trying, I was picking it up from books. I was reading books on Zen and thinking, oh, he's supposed to meditate. There's there's this, there's this thing called Zen. Okay. I'll, I'll read the instructions in the book and do it. And I was just giving myself a headache. And so, uh, when TM came along, it was a lot easier and there was actual instruction. And I thought, okay, well, let's try this. And it, it resonated deeply with me and was very transformative in my life. And so I, I decided to drop out of graduate school and become a teacher of it,
Speaker 4 00:22:10 Uh, teaching to these many, many books. And, uh, you teach it, you know, that manly a whole place in Los Angeles. You know, that philosophy plays what to call it.
Speaker 5 00:22:22 Philosophical research. Yes.
Speaker 4 00:22:24 Yes. Have you ever taught there?
Speaker 5 00:22:26 I gave a talk. I gave a talk there once when name is beautiful. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:22:31 Yeah. They have a nice lecture hall and I
Speaker 5 00:22:34 Gave a talk there once when American Veda came out.
Speaker 4 00:22:37 I know. And I met the previous, not the present head, but the previous one who I'm afraid passed away and he wanted me to come and really grow up her curriculum and all that. But I couldn't because I'm too busy here on the east, you know, a couple of times. And I'd say it's a written would be a wonderful center for the type of teacher. They should give the place to you actually. No, thanks. No thanks. But maybe you don't feel like
Speaker 5 00:23:04 Fetus show up, but I don't want to don't give me any administrative tasks.
Speaker 4 00:23:10 And then you have this east wind section about all this heart. Yes. You have a wonderful thing. Tell us about excellent. Did you, how do you fit into the picture and Mike Murphy
Speaker 5 00:23:23 And, and what was called Michael and, uh, all the, the, the, the sort of card or between excellent and big sir, and, uh, events in San Francisco around the same time, what came to be called the San Francisco Renaissance? That was enormous in this transmission of Eastern west, Michael Michael Murphy started SLN in 1962 as a, as a, as a S essentially consciously as, um, as a meeting ground of, of east traditional Eastern teachings and modern Western thinking. He had been strongly influenced. Did you ever know Frederick Spiegelberg the scholar,
Speaker 4 00:24:08 But I know many people who are very strongly Stanford professor. Yes, very strongly influenced by him and who have been friends of mine. And, uh, he really had a big impact.
Speaker 5 00:24:19 He had a big impact on Michael Murphy and Murph. Michael went to India and studied with the Sri Aurobindo at well at the Sri Aurobindo ashram for a while, and then came back and eventually started S sullen. And at the same time, there were things going on in San Francisco, uh, with people like Alan Watts. And Spiegelberg giving lectures on the various forms of a Asian philosophy and teaching, but excellent started doing workshops with people like your friend Houston and, uh, Aldous Huxley, and Abraham Maslow and Joseph Campbell and Alan Watson, all these people. And it, it, it was a tremendous catalyst for this integration, uh, for, for transformation of Western psychology, for one thing into humanistic and transpersonal psychology and the integration of Eastern Eastern spiritual teachings into the west.
Speaker 4 00:25:20 Right. It's <inaudible> then they're C I S you know, the California Institute of integral studies, but they're sort of, or Aurobindo name and then, but they don't seem to relate to each other much. Do they? Or do they, you know, can you explain more about that?
Speaker 5 00:25:39 Sure. There are still connections between <inaudible> and CIS, but CIS started as an offshoot of this. Uh, what was it called? The American association of Asian studies with Spiegelberg and, and, uh, Alan Watson, people like that. And then they started California and suit grew, uh, Institute of integral studies. And it was very strongly east, west psychology oriented. They still have that east west psychology program, but I, I, I, I don't know the extent to which that, uh, Sri Aurobindo Eastern teachings, uh, orientation is still at the center of what they do. It's still certainly a part of it. Uh, and, and a leading place for transpersonal psychology. Yeah. Uh, and it's a lot of what they were doing uniquely. And the Institute of transpersonal psychology, uh, also, uh, has been more integrated into the mainstream. You, you see a lot of the kind of programs they do, uh, in, in, in other universities and institutions, but they're still functioning and they're still training people in, uh, integrating spiritual, uh, methodologies and spiritual orientations into the practice of psychotherapy and other disciplines. So it's still a vital place. And in fact, I know the, yeah, the person who's, um, person who's running the east west, uh, program now is a very, uh, uh, a scholar of Sri Aurobindo. So I know Indian descent of Bengali descent, so that's good. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:27:25 So that's still happening. Yes. I taught there and eighties, and for one semester I took her sabbatical semester and I taught there, and I flirted with the idea of leaving Amherst and moving there because, you know, every new Yorker thinks they might move to California. I know, But I haven't been able to extricate myself from Manhattan somehow. Like Walt Whitman, the man, now I'm a man, that's a native and I love California, but I've never been able to go there and stay, you know, other than short periods, but that's it, I'm wondering, do you think there has been some kind of reaction to all of this, in other words, what about the relationship between Hinduism and Buddhism and what he was thinking about
Speaker 5 00:28:12 In the first, well, you're the scholar of that, but in the first part of the book, I have to explain why I covered only what we think of as Hinduism, which is really mainly Vedanta and yoga that came here and found, uh, found his way into the, into the fabric of, of the culture. Uh, and I have I acknowledge in there that there's a parallel, parallel history of Buddhism coming to America. Uh, but I, I knew less about that. And it would have, you would have doubled my research and doubled the size of the book. Plus people like Rick field had already done histories of Buddhism in America. So I didn't feel I needed to cover that, but there was always this interplay. So you had the Suzuki's, uh, you know, uh, running the Zen center in, in New York and in San Francisco, each of the Suzuki's having a big influence, uh, an influence on the beat poets and the Zen became very popular. And th the same people who were influenced by that were also have been influenced by yoga and by Vedanta philosophy and reading books, like, you know, so I think most seekers in America who leaned to the east, we're very pragmatic and we'll draw from Buddhism. We'll draw from Hinduism, we'll draw from yoga, and Vedanta draw from Tara Teravata and Meyana and whatever works, whatever it gives us some insight, whatever it gives us, whatever seems right. Don't you agree? Haven't you seen that?
Speaker 4 00:29:54 I do. And I think it's interesting that like, this is it like DTC Zuki was very sort of perennialism and his fondness of various Hindu or Western teachers and Indians that he knew, and they love to go around these kind of people. In other words, it was interesting that in America, they would meet there and they would, they would not be caught because in India itself, of course, they would sort of lost the Buddhism. And they think of Buddhism as kind of sure, long time nowadays, I think that's a thing from Sri Lanka and Buddhism day associated with China and Tibet those days, they didn't, the bedroom was not really on the horizon, but China and Japan and Zen, you know, but they were very friendly mutually, and they knew a lot about each other in the American setting. So they sort of had a new, a new union in a way, which may have been something more like how Buddhism was when, before the Muslims came to India. At the end of the beginning of the second millennium, where there was a lot of interaction between them, there were debates, but there were, and there was borrowing back and forth, and there was fairly strong interconnectedness for almost 1500 years. And then that lost for 800.
Speaker 5 00:31:15 I know a lot of, a lot of Indians, as, you know, a lot of Hindus consider Buddha an incarnation, uh, you know, one of the avatars and they'll, they'll, you know, venerate him and, and, and, you know, they love having them in there in their country. They love people going to SAR NARTH and Bodh Gaya, and, um, you know, they, they, they don't make those, every groove I've ever seen or spoken to, or heard lecture every Swami they'll quote, Buddha, just as readily as they quote Shankara or, you know, they'll quote, uh, you know, they, they, they understand, especially the non-dualism they understand that th this, these are eternal teachings. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:32:04 That's, that's
Speaker 5 00:32:04 Wonderful. Certainly a figure, a figure like Rama Krishna.
Speaker 4 00:32:08 Yes. Yeah. That's wonderful. Well, I'm a Christian. So he did, he did Islam, Hinduism and Christianity as a personal practice. Right. All those treat to show their thing, but he did not do
Speaker 5 00:32:21 Not that I know of. It just wasn't there. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:32:24 It wasn't, it wasn't available to him, but he did the Hindu view. And, uh, I know, you know, as you say, as if, as if whatever was a part of Hinduism, which is good, which is very good, I'm very in this nowadays myself, because the dollar has been emphasizing where he calls this fourth theme in life. He has a famous three aims that he always has been emphasizing as a human, as a Tibet, as a bit of smoke and as a Tibetan. But his fourth name is as a son of India and a son of Nalanda. He calls it, you know, the great Buddhist university that was there for a thousand years in Bihar. And he would choose to bring the Buddhist aspect of Indian science, psychology, contemporary science, and so on back to India, not as good as him, but just as Indian science, do your notes or to read Kindle, the Sanskrit interaction is a little different from Sanskrit. And there was no, there are no Hindu works in poly, but the Sanskrit Buddhist works and the Hindu works are there, but unfortunately most of the Sanskrit were lost and only translated in tomato. And so they have to be reconstructed from Tibetan. And that has been very much my work also, uh, I've been trying, I've been trying to do his fourth name, you know, so that's why I look to you as an authority.
Speaker 5 00:33:58 I think it's great that, that he's doing that. It's wonderful that somebody of his stature, I mean, he's the best known Buddhist in the world. And if he, if he does that, uh, you know, I'm sure it'll be a very welcome development in, in
Speaker 4 00:34:11 Yeah. Collection. They have two collections. They have the Buddhist scripture collection of translations from India from sounds great, right. And some terrible things they also have. And then they have these Shastras these sort of treatises like shortcut, you know, the kind of work said, we're debating with denials with moms, they have those texts. And those are the ones that he's particularly excited about. He wants those because they are like, not, they're not denominational. There's more like scientific treatises. And he wants them to be accessible to Indian intellectuals. And he wants Indians to feel more proud of their own science as, as a compliment, but different from Western science in the sense that an Indian science, the inner science psychology is the king, not physics, maybe physics is the king Zion's cause you can blow up to fill up the world with it and you can make cannons, you know, and make explosives and things with chemistry. But mine science was the most by far the most important that's
Speaker 5 00:35:33 Compatible with some of the aims of many of the gurus I'm familiar with Vivekananda spoke about that kind of thing as well. The, the, the sort of meeting of the subjective sciences of, of, of India with the object of sciences of the west Vivekananda used to have, uh, discussions with, he used to have discussions with Tesla about things like that. And Yogananda's spoke about those things. When I was, uh, spending time with Mari, she Maya Shogi in the seventies, he would have conferences with people like Bucky fuller and other eminent physicists and chemists. And they would talk about this integration of Eastern and Western science. So it's, it's just, it's wonderful. What, what the Dalai Lama was trying to do. It was fascinating. I went to a number of those yeah. In the seventies, every, oh, they were not only, yeah, they were transcribed, but they were also video recorded.
Speaker 5 00:36:39 There were always cameras going. And in fact, I think you can, you can find if you Google, uh, talks with, uh, Marashi and Bucky fuller, uh, I seem to remember, uh, uh, Nobel prize, winning physicist named Brian Josephson and others being there, uh, biologists high-level biologists. And they were talking about, um, their disciplines and how the subjective science of consciousness related to those and amp could amplify their findings. And so for, it was fascinating even to someone like me just sitting in the audience at bet. If you look at Tesla, Tesla would talk about, uh, Indian concepts that he learned from Vivekananda in, in some of his writing. Okay. Even going back to the late, late 19th century.
Speaker 4 00:37:44 Well
Speaker 5 00:37:45 Maybe, uh, you're, you're going to be a catalyst for this east and west.
Speaker 4 00:37:51 I hope so. They, we do have 20, 30 years of talking with scientists too, but mostly it's been a kind of one way where the science is more talking to him and they don't really ask that much about, about science. In fact, even some of them think there is no such thing. And I'm sure that if they had talked to me, they would think that, well, they call it science. There's a tendency because scientific materialism has post William James has become so strongly entrenched. You know, that, uh, the idea of anybody who thinks that there might be such a thing as the mind, or the spirit being a scientist is very hard for them. You're a professional scientists nowadays. It's kind of, it's not easy for them there. It's kind of against the, the, you know, the card carrying, um, standards of the Guild. Do you know what I mean? You ain't usually the only older retired somebody, you know, they're, they're the ones who are actively seeking tenure or active in some Caltech or somewhere in my mind, they're very reluctant to align themselves or associate themselves with the spiritual science, so to speak. You know, in fact, they don't get to that expression. Maybe not as capable expression actually oxymoron, you know, take off,
Speaker 5 00:39:20 But many of them are doing research on, uh, meditative practices and, uh, being guided by the Dalai Lama and other people. So some of them are obviously open, open to at least
Speaker 4 00:39:34 You're doing research in the sense of they're putting electrodes and putting people in MRIs to see what is materially and physically happening in the brain when they meditate. But they don't, they don't do research in the texts, in the books and the disciplines in the curriculum that they studied to be able to do the things that they do, that they don't ask questions about. And I know because that's what that's, my field is trying to develop more resources and they don't ask about it. They don't, they don't prioritize it for hardware, not so much software for hardware. So what is your next book? What is your next book? What are you passionate about now?
Speaker 5 00:40:23 Well, Bob, um, I'm passionate about the novel. I started working on a long time ago and the, uh, as I said at the beginning of our chat, um, the pandemic was my, uh, blew my last excuse. So I've been working, uh, to make progress on this novel, which, which is a sense in a sense, the character main character in the novel is living. What I described earlier about, uh, integrating the teachings of the east, into his life in, uh, in New York city, in the night in the sixties. Um, but I'm also working on some nonfiction and nonfiction books that I won't talk about at the moment. And, uh, because I'm superstitious, we'll see if they materialize, but also, you know, and I have my podcasts on which you've been a guest, you've been a guest twice. And, um, and yes, at the moment, I'm, I'm involved in a lot of, uh, uh, I'm going to be doing a course for Hindu university of America on, uh, the autobiography of a Yogi it's mark, Yogananda's his iconic memoir, it's the 75th anniversary of that book's publication. So I'm doing a lot of talks and stuff about it. You know, I wrote a biography of Yogananda. And so, so I'm doing a course, uh, starting in January, uh, all that deeply into the, into the book and, and I'll bring in stuff that's not in the book,
Speaker 4 00:42:05 Steve jobs at his Memorial service had that, all the people who attended, unfortunately, I was not invited or I would have happily gone. He gave a copy of the autobiography of a Yogi to everyone. He asked his family to give that to all the people who are yes. So that was a deep influence on Steve jobs. Marvelous.
Speaker 5 00:42:25 Yes, I do. And yes, it was. Yes. And, um, George Harrison used to keep copies around to give to people to,
Speaker 4 00:42:34 Oh, that's really great. It's a beautiful book. It's so it does teach you about the miraculous, miraculous things. There are things in there that are indeed miraculous, marvelous, miracles, and wonder. Yes, yes. Yes. I love about the novel who had the bad guys in the novel. Are there must be bad guys in an hour ride, or are you going to have to say if you don't, but no,
Speaker 5 00:43:05 It's, it's,
Speaker 4 00:43:05 It's
Speaker 5 00:43:07 No nothing, nothing of, uh, of an action, uh, oriented, uh, villains to sort of plot. It's more of an internal quest and, uh, overcoming inner
Speaker 4 00:43:20 Obstacles. I see. I see. And there's a little
Speaker 5 00:43:23 Baseball in it.
Speaker 4 00:43:26 Well then let me ask you, what about the planet do you think will make it, oh God, Bob in California, you're an optimist with all the fire and the drought. Where do you think personally? I worry, I worry profits in vain. Will they have towed in vain, rediscover of nature and nature, et cetera, will we make it? What do you think personally?
Speaker 5 00:43:59 Just say, one of the things I admire about you is that you're a deeply spiritual man and a leader in bringing spirituality and spiritual ideas out to the world, but you're very much in the world and very active and very, uh, oriented toward the, the real issues that we all faced by the way. It's one of the things I came to admire about Yoganonda cause he was a monk, but he was also, he would speak out against things that were going on in his time. And I think, you know, talked about America and India. We have the influence of Thoreau on Gandhi and then Gandhi's influence on Martin Luther king. And these were all deeply spiritual people who are also activists. And it requires that of us. Now it requires all of the Dalai Lama's compassion and all of Gandhi's, uh, fire and energy, uh, and Martin Luther King's righteous indignation, and it requires all of us to, to get up off of our cushions afterward and, and, uh, do something.
Speaker 5 00:45:09 Cause I, it, I just, it's urgent. That's true. I mean, we're in the middle I'm, I'm living in LA and we're, we, we love, we love the sunshine and the warm weather in the winter when you guys in back east are freezing, but, um, every day is a beautiful day, but we're, but we don't have any water. It's the drought is very serious and the Hills are burning, you know, from time to time and, and, and now the Pacific Northwest now it's now there are a huge floods, a few months ago was the fires and, uh, and, um, excessive heat. So where we need to do something quick and, um, and the resistance to it just is so irritating. I can't, you know, <inaudible>, it's a, it's, it's ignorance to a willful ignorance and really
Speaker 4 00:46:09 Is, it really is well, and you're not sure in other words, we'll make it, you know, I feel
Speaker 5 00:46:17 Sure. I
Speaker 4 00:46:18 Don't know intellectually as you're sure. I feel very sure when nobody knows, but I feel very sure intellectually that we will, but emotionally I keep feeling that we'll do well. We'll do some really stupid things, stupid things, you know, I really will.
Speaker 5 00:46:37 Yeah. And, and, and I'm, I'm confident we will, but I've, I'm, I'm, it's agonizing to think of the, the suffering and destruction that's going to happen along the way.
Speaker 4 00:46:51 Well, people who read your books are not going to engage in the destruction. That's one thing they're going to do something suitable practice, and they're going to, uh, to act in the right way. So thank you for that. And it's good not to be sure, I guess, because then people don't take it for, take it for granted and Cuba. And, uh, I tried to, I sort of followed the idea that we should visualize success and I love Paul Hawkins writing for that. I admire his regeneration book. I don't know if you know, but if your daughter is, she would really enjoy it. I think he's saying, I know this book is called regeneration and he kind of, he's just very positive. He's saying, listen, millions of people are doing millions of little things and they don't really even get, they don't get on CNN and you don't know what's happening, but it's all adding up and we're getting there and we will get there in this generation. He, he's saying, he's saying, and he's a very strong data-driven confidence, which I find very, very solitary. I really, really appreciate it. So let's, let's, let's join in prayer for that and dedicate this to the head, you know? Absolutely.
Speaker 4 00:48:08 I may well be peace and thank you so much for your <inaudible> of America. And may I put in a plug for any non-fiction books that you were looking at the interconnection? Did you ever read loud monies <inaudible> book <inaudible> he died prematurely Indian. He was Indian. He was the chairman of the department at the department of, um, uh, the Punjabi university of, of world religions. The only world religion department in India founded with influence of Wilford, capitalist Smith, and people like that. Houston Smithville for Chapo Smith. And he was the chair of that. And then he blew it. He was moving to Banaras. Then he died tragically and he kind of accident, but he wrote a book called cities in the ancient Buddhistic culture of India. That is really marvelous about the ancient relation between Buddhism and Hinduism. That is I think really quite wonderful. And, um, it might, it might stimulate you to use your <inaudible> and all the great international Indian teaching figures to see their own, to associate a different light, some of their connections to Buddhism, to Indian burdensome.
Speaker 4 00:49:33 And so you might go in that direction in your nonfiction. Okay. Okay. Lots of money and take you so much for coming on on the podcast and folks, you can catch catch Phil at the Indian university of America in January and a wonderful course about his wonderful book. As you'd read the book ahead of time, if you can. His biography of Yogananda, his study of the man who wrote the grant, very seminal figure here on us, here in America, who came a century ago, but a wonderful person. So thank you, Phil, and all the best
Speaker 2 00:50:33 The Bob Thurman podcast is brought to you in part through the generous support of the Tibet house, us Menlo membership, community, and listeners like you, and it's distributed. You're a creative commons, new derivatives license, please feel free to share like, and post on your favorite social media platform Tashi today. And thanks for tuning in
