78 Four Aspects Of Awakening, India, Bhutan - Q & A

55:15

55:15

78 Four Aspects Of Awakening, India, Bhutan - Q & A

by William Cooper, M.Th., Licensed Professional Counselor

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This recording of a live Q & A has been edited for clarity, length, and helpfulness. We discussed four aspects of awakening, Experiencing your Being, Trusting that the universe is you and knows what to do....the personality does not have to know all, Releasing all that you are not, and Letting your body open into this infinite trust and flow with the qualities of your Being, Peace, Love, Wellbeing, Happiness. Discussed India, Bhutan, and powerful ashrams in the US. These podcasts are a compilation of what I have found to be the most helpful over the last 50 years on my path of awakening. These podcasts are most powerful when listened to in sequence from podcast one forward because each is built on the last. They, also, all stand on their own. But, if anything does not resonate, please disregard it. All are free. Though I am a psychotherapist, these podcasts are offered to be spiritually helpful. They are not psychotherapy. Please reach out to a psychotherapist if ever needed.

Meet your Teacher

William Cooper, M.Th., Licensed Professional Counselor

Tallahassee, FL, USA

Meet your Teacher

William Cooper, M.Th., Licensed Professional Counselor

Tallahassee, FL, USA

Transcript

Hello, Everybody. Thank you for joining me. I'd like to start off with, While perhaps you're thinking about your questions, Let's just take a breath and relax. I'd like to talk about awakening. Because you all are listening, I can tell that really you're very interested in awakening from some deep, Deep place. Perhaps it's motivated by pain, Or perhaps it's motivated just by a deep intuition. It's just who you are, To be whole. I think everybody feels that way. But the fact that you're hanging in there this long and this deeply, Lets me know that it will happen. Awakening will happen for you if it hasn't already happened. That's a guarantee. And I want to talk a moment about awakening and how I know that. I remember I had a teacher, This was back in, I think it was 1998 maybe. And he said the same thing to me. A number of teachers said that, And I took great hope in that. And it turned out to be true. In my process, It's just been sort of an inch by inch process. I did have a period of 10 years where I experienced awakening through my Guru's energy. That's a different story. And once having it experienced awakening through his energy, He said I was ready to go out on my own and then I could experience it through my incarnation, Without seeing life through his energy. It's a little bit of a strange situation, I realize, Unusual. But the advantage of it was that I got to experience what awakening was like. I kind of learned the ropes, You might call it training wheels, With somebody else's clear awakening and he's very powerful. In awakening, What I experience, First of all, Is great light. That's who I am, That's who you are. It's this one light shines through all of our incarnations. It's always there. Yes we can block it, Yes we can be so distracted by our thoughts and emotions, Which might be in turmoil that we don't feel it, But we are a great light. The first thing to do in awakening, I think, And I'll mention three or four things, But the first thing is to know who you are. This is what meditation is about mostly. Meditation is really about two things, Knowing who you are and letting go of who you're not. Ramana, A great saint in South India, Used to say when people would come up to him, They'd say, Ramana, What about my life? Ramana, What about my relationship? Ramana, What about my spiritual practice? Ramana, What about this and that? And Ramana would say, Wait, Let's find out who you are before you decide about your relationship. What you find about who you are will greatly impact your plan of action and your interactions with others. And he would direct people back to themselves. What I found, And it took, And I'm saying this because we're all the same. I'm a person just like you. And most of what's happened with me has been a great surprise every step of the way, Just like for you. I'm sure you have great surprises where you've read things and then suddenly you realize that thing that you read 10, 15 years ago. That's what's happened to me. And it's been baby steps all the way through. Lynn says, For me, It seems like I go along at the same level for a long period than a great jump towards awakening. That's my experience also, Lynn. And it can seem a little gloomy during those long periods of time. Sometimes you can begin to doubt yourself. That's the value of practice, Daily practice, Baby steps. And what I've learned in this daily practice is, I'll say four things, We'll see if I actually come up with four, But I think it's around four. In the awakened state, Which I'm in and out of now, And I'm very grateful, It feels like sometimes there's a fog, But it's something I can see through and other times there's no fog. It's just clarity. And what I've found are these four things. We, And I'll talk about me now because that's my experience, But we are, As I started off saying, A bright light. We are, This bright light has qualities that exude. We don't have to do anything to obtain these qualities. They just radiate from our bright light that comes down through our body. It's who we are. But the qualities that exude, The qualities of being are love, Peace, Joy, Well-being, Calmness. I know if I feel anything other than those qualities of being, If anything other than that is coming through my mind, My emotions, Or my body, It's not who I am. And we've talked about that a lot in past podcasts, And maybe we'll talk about it a little bit more today, But it's not who I am. So in sitting still in meditation, As I am present with myself, There's a deep quietness that is aware of everything going on within me and around me. That includes thoughts and emotions. I'm aware of them, But I'm not them. I've created most of them, Maybe not all of them, Maybe I've absorbed a bunch of them. None of them are me. They're in my body. They're in my mind. And quote unquote problems are made of thoughts and emotions. I don't have a problem. I might be holding on to thoughts and emotions that are creating problems, But they're not me. They're things I have created in ignorance in the past, And because I haven't just created them, They're still pounding around inside of me, Causing me troubles. So what I've realized is I am a bright light with these qualities, Love, Peace, Joy, Well-being, Bliss, So on and so forth. But more than that, In oneness, The universe comes through me. The universe is me. And in that is deep trust. There's nothing but trust. There are no problems because the universe is orchestrating everything. I don't have to know how to solve every quote unquote dilemma in life. I don't have to know. The universe knows and the universe will work it out long after this body is gone off of this earth. Dilemmas will be solved in this world, And they have been solved long before I existed. There's a deep trust in that when you feel the deep intelligence of everything is you. Even though your brain doesn't know the solution, You do because you are the universe. So there's an awakening. There's infinite trust. You don't have to figure anything else out. Everything is good. Everything is, As they say in unity, In divine order. There is only one power and one presence. And everything's in divine order. Everything's fine. Every spiritual teacher says that. It's not a philosophy. It's just true. So in awakening, I realize that. I don't think about it. I don't philosophize about it. I don't finally come to that conclusion. That's my experience instead. Instead I experience that. Now to me, That's saying a lot because deep inside my personality is afraid. My personality is lacking. It feels unsafe. Trust is the opposite of that. So the beautiful thing that's been happening within me is my personality has now started to be informed. And this has been going on just like you said, Len, For a long time. But now another big leap. My personality is now reoriented. And the deep trust and knowing of the universe is flowing down through my personality. And my personality, Which is simply a collection of thoughts and emotions, Is reorienting. And the old thoughts that would say otherwise and the old emotions that would say otherwise are breathing in, The truth of things, My direct experience that everything is okay, And then they can let go. And when an emotion lets go, When a thought is satisfied, What happens? It disappears. It's gone. There's nothing left to solve. There's no more books to have to read. There's no more inner equations having to be worked out. Because you know. Now this isn't simply true of my experience. It's true of you. You know this deep down inside. You know this. And you are experiencing this. And some of you are well down the road past me. So I'm not, This is not a foot race. It's just me saying what my experience is just because so many people have told me what their experience is. And that's given me some hope in those long stretches. And I'm here just to say, Hey, All the people that told me things and pointed me in certain directions, They were right. So in awakening four things. One, The experience of myself. When I meditate, How did I find out the experience of myself? I sat down every day and I meditated. And I started noticing that which is observing everything, What's that like? What's that like? Normally I wouldn't think that way because my attention is in the thoughts normally and in the emotions. It took me about probably 15 years of meditating just to realize I wasn't my thoughts or my emotions. That I was the one observing or constructing them. It's a very different, It sounds easy but it's not. To extract yourself from your thoughts and emotions and most of our earlier podcasts are about that. Most all of the podcasts in this series are about that. So we've talked about it plenty. And in that, As I said, The second thing is deep trust. And this isn't an order, It all happens sort of at the same time or in an ebb and flow. You go forward on one level and then suddenly something else opens. Maybe trust opens up a little bit later after you start to experience yourself. Another thing that starts to happen is you start to see through the fog of your thoughts and emotions. At first they're so intense and hurtful that I didn't have any energy except to hang on for dear life and try to work through them in every possible way that I could. I literally felt like I was drowning. Like I might not make it. That's how I felt. A lot of pain. Many of you have felt that way yourself. It's hard. Reading every book, Talking to every person, Listening to everything I could. Sitting still, Which was for me extremely painful because I had so much unresolved stuff. And when you sit still, It's like a whirlwind. Your thoughts going everywhere, Your emotions until things can release and settle. So this third thing that all happens simultaneously with the first two, Deep trust and seeing myself as light or experiencing myself as that. The third thing that happens at the same time is you start to see through these emotions and thoughts and they begin to release or dissolve or melt or expend their energy. You'll feel it all different kinds of ways. At least I have. And as they dissipate and dissipate and dissipate where it is now for me, It's like a fog. It's not like a brick wall. It's now like kind of a light fog and it obscures my vision some, But I can see through it. And as I see through it, I'm the light that melts the fog. That's just my experience. It's not a metaphor. It feels like I am light. Melting off this fog, Burning off this fog. And the fog kind of hurts, But it feels good at the same time because as it melts, It's the last layer of the delusion or the obscuring part of the mind or the emotion. And everything is made of peace, Love and well-being. Everything is made of that. That is the only building block in the universe. There's only one building block because there's only one essence of the universe and beyond. And that is the infinite. And the qualities of the infinite are the same as the qualities of my being. Because like Jesus said, Every time somebody said, Oh, Good teacher, He'd say, Wait a second, There's only one good and that's God, Not me. But that's true for all of us. And I can pick any religion. I just have gone to theological school for four years. So I know some Bible verses, But I've gone to India 13 times and I've had a lot of good instruction from Buddhists, From Hindus, Mostly from Hindus. Seen a lot of awakened teachers. So as things melt, They melt into their basic building blocks, Which is consciousness and the qualities of being or consciousness is love, Peace, Joy, Well-being. So the fact that it's a block hurts because that's separating me and you from ourselves. But as it melts, It's what it's made of feels good. Love, Peace and joy. So it kind of hurts, But feels good as it's melting. In the earlier stages, It just felt bad. There was no good feeling. It just felt bad. But now as it gets looser, It kind of hurts in a good way as it melts. The fourth thing in awakening is the energetics of it all. When I was with my guru, I said I experienced awakening through his energy. Vastly powerful. Miracles would happen around me through his energy. I thought it was my energy. I thought he had opened me up. It turns out he was letting me borrow his energy. But now I feel through my incarnation, This energy coming through me now without his help. And when I say my energy, His energy, Yes, I'm talking from a personal level, But it is only one energy. There's not his and mine. It's only one. But I'm saying this is now coming through my incarnation without the energy arcing over from him, His body, His incarnation. As it comes through my incarnation now, It can only come through because these things that I'm not are melting away. This hurt, Fear, And anger. The symptoms of separation. The things that my personality is made of. The things that when I sit down in meditation, I watch. Thoughts are fueled by emotions. That's the engine that keeps them going. So if your head is spinning with thoughts, You just stick with it and you'll feel a pretty strong emotion right behind it. And that's the painful part generally is the emotion. When I awakened, So-called awakened through my guru's energy, My blocks, My thoughts and emotions still remain. So it was a weird thing. I felt deeply awake and one, But deeply depressed and anxious all at the same time. When you awaken through your incarnation alone, That happens when your blocks in your incarnation disappear and dissipate and open up. So I don't feel that same depression and pain and hurt as this fog melts off. It feels good that it feels bad actually. So the fourth part that I'm getting to is the energetics of it. As I open up, A radiance begins to flow through my channels. In India, They call them nadis. Maybe in China, The acupuncture points might be along meridians. These are energy channels. You can feel them in your body. They really exist. And the big hubs are called chakras. Seven major chakras all through your body, Up your spine, And then lots of little ones, Thousands of little whirlpools of energy all through your body. But here's the interesting thing that I want to get to. Depending on what our thoughts are or our emotions are, It affects how we hold our body. If somebody gives you bad news, Your body might slump or it might tense up and get tight. You might get a tight stomach. That's clamping off your energy systems. You can feel it. I mean, You just, Wow, I feel anxiety. You said this and now I feel that. I feel anxiety. I feel tense. I feel stressed. I got this news and I am stressed. I am not flowing. I am not happy. I am stressed. Now remember, I started off saying, Anytime I feel anything but flowing, Love, Joy, Peace, And wellness, That's not me. Well, My body is the overflow system for all that's not me. It holds all this hurt, Fear, Anger, And you know, That's got to affect my health, Right? I'm all clamped down and tight. That can't be great for me. I don't know how it affects me, But it has to affect me. So as I open up, As you awaken, You'll find your body opens up and that which comes through you, The one, The oneness flows through your body and that becomes radiance. Also stored radiance is old pain and hurt that's been balled up and jagged edged pain as it releases, Relax, And dissipates, It melts into its basic ingredients, Love, Peace, And joy, And that adds to your radiance. It just goes into the pool of free flowing radiance. It has to be created and frozen into a shape to turn into a thought. Love, Peace, And joy has to be frozen into a sharp edge to turn into a thought and turn into an emotion. It's an object that we've created and that's just floating around inside of us. But as it melts, As we de-create it, Dis-create it, It turns back into the flowing energy that it is. Love, Peace, And wellbeing. These are qualities of your being. So everything is informed. The reason why it's so important to know who I am is because everything is informed by that direct experience of who I am, The infinite. My thoughts think that I'm not that way because they were created before I knew that. So they have an attitude that's coming from a different direction. But when I experience myself as infinite being, They begin to absorb that information, Relax, Release, And disappear. We talked about that. Same with the emotions. Well, It's also same with the body. The body begins to open up. The body begins to hold itself differently. Your energy channels, Your nadis, Or your meridians, Your chakras, Open up. They begin to flow. Everything starts to shift and it becomes informed by who you are. And it just feels inside like suddenly you can see through and beyond what you felt that you were before. And some of this stuff is so. . . We've been doing it so long, Or I've been doing it so long, That it just seemed like the way I was. It didn't seem like there was anything wrong with it. It didn't seem that miracles would naturally flow through me. It seemed like they naturally would not because that's what everybody says and believes and that's what I said and believed. It feels like I should be anxious when I hear bad news because that's what everybody does. It felt like I should be working out my issues and that is a valuable thing to do, But at some point everything opens up and just flows and there are no issues. That's not to say to get to that point you don't have to work through a bunch of issues. You do. I'm a big believer in therapy. I'm a therapist. So no spiritual bypasses. A spiritual bypass is when you say, Oh, I'm an infinite being. I don't have problems. Problems don't exist. They're just an illusion. I don't need to work on them or I'll meditate instead even though I have PTSD. Maybe I need therapy. Maybe meditation would help for that, But maybe it wouldn't. And the key to awakening is to be true to yourself, To listen. And the reason why I don't subscribe to following one teacher, One guru, One everything, You change. If the teacher's doing a good job, You grow and then your perspective changes and then you realize, Oh, This other teacher is now more helpful to me. So any kind of plan that tries to lock you in, I'm not a big proponent of that. I'd say trust yourself. You're your own teacher. Trust you. So continuing with this fourth essence of awakening, Because I'm so ingrained to how my body should be and I hold tensions I don't even know that I'm holding, That's the value of yoga. Because what does yoga do? It stretches you out. You hold poses you don't normally hold and on a physical level, Things open up. Or any kind of physical activity can be helpful for that. You can do yoga at home. You can find lots of yoga on any of these channels. People are doing and offering yoga classes. I love going to a yoga class in person even better, Because you share that energy that's flowing through everybody in the same room. Yoga or you can go online. I love Yogananda's energization exercises. There's like a 15, 20 minute video of a number of them online. Just Google Yogananda energization exercises. You'll find somebody demonstrating them. Wow, They just blow me away. I do them every day. Now I have to say the first couple years I did them, I didn't get much effect. But I just trusted there was something good and I did them. You know, I felt somewhat good, But now I almost, I don't know what to say. I just go into oneness almost. They're just lovely. And they're easy and they're things you can do right at home. But any kind of yoga would be very good. Kundalini yoga uses a lot of energy, Channels a lot of energy as well as physical postures. Hatha yoga, Physical posture. I love it all. Even Bikram yoga. Wow. Wouldn't send you in that direction right off the bat. It's pretty intense. But those are the four components that I found in awakening. Knowing who you are by sitting still. At the same time, Trusting the universe knows what's going on. You don't have to because when I feel like I have to, I tense up and close off. Oh, I need to know that. How do I answer this question? How do I do this? How do I do that? Just trust and who cares? I didn't start that way. It's progressively happening. The third thing is letting go of the things that I'm not. Seeing through them. And the fourth is stretching my body, Doing physical postures, Because it's not just my mind, My thoughts and my emotions. My body is also a part of my incarnation and it holds postures and emotions and thoughts. So let your body clean as well. Let me read some comments here. Yes, Lynn asked, Do I do a daily practice of yoga? Yes, I do. I do that Yogananda energization exercises every single day. And if there's a day when I can't do it, They're supposed to take 15 minutes. I get so deep into it and enjoy it so much and really let it work for me that I take maybe 45 minutes doing a 15 minute program. Because after each posture sometimes or during the posture, I just feel such release and relaxing. And like Yogananda said, He said, If you spend all. . . Remember he was from a time long gone and he was talking about the farm life. And he says, If you spend an hour milking a cow, Don't just get up and knock the pail of milk over as soon as you get up. Enjoy the milk, Take time with the milk, Drink the milk, Sip the milk, Have a good time with the milk. Same with meditation was his thought. He said, Don't just do yoga or meditation and just say, Okay, Got to go. I did this posture, What's next? I'm going to get done in 15 minutes. Don't rush because the point is to let go the sickness that says that I have to rush. Now I know we have schedules, So you got to do what you're going to do. But if I don't have time and I can only do five minutes or one minute, I just do one minute and really feel it. Just do one minute's worth. And the most profound part of the energization exercises, And it mostly opens up joints and muscles and stretches and things like that. But for me, If I had to only pick one thing, It's so simple. Just says you can just do it in the morning while you're in bed. And that's just tense up every muscle that you have, Tense, Tense, Tense, And release. Do that like three times and take a moment in between doing that and just soak up the good feelings. And what is that that you're soaking up? It is the quality of your being, Right? What is relaxation? Relaxation and being is the same thing. Relaxation and awakening is the same thing. What's happening is that which was blocking my tensions, My tense muscles or my emotions, That which is balled up in relaxation, I tighten it and then I let go. It releases and beingness flows in in the areas that were previously blocked. And beingness has a dissolving quality, A healing quality. So in awakening, Everything is being. There is only relaxation, Right? In awakening. And since we're all here because of awakening, It would be kind of funny for me to do yoga fast because I'm trying to do the opposite. Fast is tension. Tension is absorbing, Is enjoying. Enjoying is quiet. My favorite sound is quiet because in quietness I can hear the universe. I can experience the qualities of my being which is the same as the qualities of the universe. Why do people like nature? Because nature doesn't think. It's just the universe coming through lots of beings, Trees and birds and flowers and you can feel it. That's how you feel. You feel like nature. So I relax and I feel like nature. Yes I do a daily practice and thank you for asking these questions, Len. I remember two different times. I used to see so many teachers and I remember two different times. I would ask so many questions. I would wait respectfully for other people to ask questions but a lot of times people don't ask questions. Teachers sitting there and, Hey, I've got questions. So I would raise my hand and I'd ask questions. And at two different times I remember people in the audience would raise their hand at some point and they'd say to the teacher, Two different teachers, They would say, Could you ask him not to ask so many questions? He's asking too many questions. And independently these two teachers, Thank goodness, On their own because I was very vulnerable. It's a vulnerable place to ask a question, Right? Because you don't have the answer. You're asking. And what if you get made fun of or what if it's not a good question? It's tough to ask a good question or ask any question. So I felt vulnerable to start with and it was an act of courage for me to ask the question and I was so much pain. I was in so much pain that I really felt I should ask these questions. I needed to survive is what it felt like. But these teachers each said, He's asking good questions. They're coming from the heart. You need to listen. They said to the other person, You would do well to just listen. So I feel the energy of these questions and they're coming from a sincere place and they were. So please ask questions if you would like. Oh, Jennifer asked, How long did it take you to accept the pain when you were quote unquote letting it out? Well that's such a good question. Pain is hard to take. And what I finally learned was two things at least. One is to take it in baby steps just to stick with it as much as I could because after a while I couldn't. It was too much for me. It's like an ice cube. You take it out of the freezer if the goal is for it to melt, A big block of pain. If the goal is for it to melt, You take it out of the freezer and let some of it melt off. But when you can't stand holding that cold ice cube in your hand anymore and a lot of water has melted off of it and it's maybe 90% of the size it used to be, Well put it back in the freezer again and you can get it tomorrow and do another 10%. That ice cube will melt a little at a time. You don't have to do it all at once and I couldn't do it all at once. Life will also bring events to you that will stimulate that pain. Life will bring it out of the ice box whether you want to or not. Sometimes you want to. Sitting down in meditation brings it out too because in meditation what are you doing? You're sitting still and when you sit still it's hard to repress stuff, Hard to repress pain. So it comes up naturally. But life will bring it up. Somebody will say something, Somebody will do something. The universe knows what you need and your journey is to awaken. So that pain has to melt. The second thing that I learned, First is bite-sized chunks and trust the universe. I guess that's two things. So making this now the third thing I suppose is that a teacher pointed out to me, A German in India, Pointed out, Hey you have a weak nervous system and I did. I didn't know that really. I never thought of it that way, Let's put it that way. He pointed out you have a weak nervous system. The more you sit with pain, The more you can be with it and not block it out, By blocking it out I mean watching too much TV, Drinking too much, Going for too many good events like jogging but jogging so that I don't have to think about my pain. So that's a double-edged thing. It's both good for you but it is distracting. Can be. Instead just sit with it. Don't try to get away from it. If you want to do a good thing like jogging, Just do that on your own time. Do that another time. But right now sit with the pain. How long can you do it? He would have me sit with my pain for as long as I could. Maybe an hour. Maybe I could only do a half hour. Maybe two hours. Maybe three hours. It was excruciating. But just like weightlifting, Your muscles get bigger when you work out. And what appeared and felt like a big pain when my nervous system was skinny and scrawny, When you have big muscles, When you have a big nervous system, That same size pain doesn't feel so heavy anymore. It seems like a little pain. It's still the same size. And therefore I can be with it longer and therefore it can melt out more quickly. I hope that answers your question, Jennifer. It took me a long time. And the actual time span, I'm talking 40, 50 years. So I'm not, You know, This hasn't been a blink of an eye for me. Now I would assume most of you weren't as messed up inside as I was. You probably don't have as big a hunks of pain as I did. But you might. I don't want, I'm not looking to be the champion of that. But it did hurt. My life was just one hurt. I learned, Why do you think I became a therapist? Why did I go to theological school? Why did I go to India 13 times? India is not an easy place to go. By the way, I'm posting a podcast now on India. It is in my normal lineup of podcasts, Awakening Together on Insight Timer and every other platform. But right now where we are on the series is traveling to India. And I talk about some of my experiences in India and how to travel to India, Where to go. Because for me, It was a daunting task. I didn't know what to do. So you might enjoy that. Let's see. Ah, Sandeep said he heard the first part, Or she, I don't know. Pretty interesting. And I grew up there, Grew up in India. Wow. That's a blessing. Growing up in India to me is a blessing. Now I know it's a little rugged compared to the United States, Or at least to me, But the spiritual depth is amazing. If you want spirituality, Go to India. You got to look, And I describe this in the podcast. Right now I've released the second of four. Next week, This will be posted, This talk. And then the week after and the week after will be three and four of the traveling to India. I think you'll enjoy it. Oh, Thank you, Len. Len says, So great. I just listened to one this morning. Thank you for sharing. Yes, Jennifer and I are going to go for the 14th time. At least it's my 14th time. It's her first time. We're going to go in January. We go at the end of like December 30th, I think, And we actually land at 10 minutes after the first 10 minutes of next year. The first 10 minutes of January is when our plane touches down. If the plane gets there early, Then we'll already be down and just bring in the new year while we're in India. It's fun either way. Sandeep says, But in Mumbai, So completely cosmopolitan and like growing up there, But yes, A blessing due to the spiritual surroundings. Yes, Sandeep, I've been to Mumbai. It's very cosmopolitan. It's a big city, Big financial center. You know why I went there? There used to be a guru named Ramesh Balsakar, And he was the disciple of Nisargadatta. Nisargadatta had a beady shop in Bombay, Mumbai. Back when he was around, It was called Bombay for that period of time. And Ramesh Balsakar became awakened through Nisargadatta. Well I had the high blessing too, And I went there for this purpose to be with Ramesh Balsakar. Amazing experience. And later I'm releasing a podcast on books that I find very helpful. And Ramesh Balsakar was one of my first profound spiritual books. It's called Pointers from Nisargadatta by Ramesh Balsakar, And that'll be in the book podcast. Another good one is transcripts of the actual conversations that people would have with Nisargadatta, And that is called I Am That by Nisargadatta. But you're right, Sandeep. It's a blessing just because of all the spirituality that's around. Yes, India is everything, Like an Indian man I know said when somebody asked, What's India like? He says, India is everything. Best description I've ever heard, Because it is everything. It's a financial center. You could go to Bangalore, A high tech center. You can find gurus where I like to go, Tara Vanamalai. You find them all over. In Bombay, Where I went, Mumbai, Chennai. I like to go up to Andhra Pradesh. That's where my big guru is. But now we could just go to Tara Vanamalai. That's where Ramana used to live. And the best time to go there, I've found, Any time is good. But January through, It's wintertime down south. January, February, First part of March is cooler and nice. And there's so many spiritual teachers and awakened people, And they flock there during those months. And very powerful. You hardly have a moment without somebody chanting mantras or teachers teaching or gurus guru-ing. It's just a beautiful place. Lynn asked, Are there any places in the US that have energy similar to India? Yes, I would say so. Sedona, Of course. The problem you get, There's so few places in the United States that people flock to it, And it can get very crowded. But Sedona, Any of Yogananda's ashrams, I like the Lake Shrine out in Malibu. It's really in, Oh, What's that? It adjoins Malibu, Santa Monica. If you've read Autobiography of a Yogi, You can just email them and say, Yeah, I'm into Yogananda. I'm familiar with Yogananda. And you can stay there. I think, I'm not sure if they've opened up after COVID, But you can stay there for something like $65. Your own private room overlooking the ocean, Dinner, Lunch, And breakfast all included. Maybe it's $85. I don't know. You stay at the grounds all the time. Food is amazing. Butler waits on you. I mean, It's just crazy and such good energy. Also down in Encinitas, Yogananda has an ashram there. And you can just go there. I think you can stay there as well. And these are unguided meditations. You just go and stay on the grounds, Two night minimum stay. Very powerful. I used to fly out to California just to go to these ashrams. They're that powerful. And I don't follow any one guru at all. I'm not a Yogananda person, Quote unquote, Or a Bhagavan person, Or a Ramana person. I'm everything. But these are powerful to answer your questions, To your question. Sandeep says the Ananda Institute, And I don't know anything about the Ananda Institute. That may be very powerful. Is that the one in New York? I'm not sure. What I'm talking about is the Yogananda ashrams. The one up in Santa Monica is called Lake Shrine. And the one down in Encinitas is, I can't remember. Just Google Yogananda Encinitas or Yogananda ashrams. Those two are very good. OK. Yes. I Sandeep talks about Swami Kriyananda, Who was Yogananda's disciple. And he's got a, Or they have a ashram called the Ananda Institute. And I have heard about that. And I've heard good things. I've never been there. But you all are on the right path. Lynn is in California. Yeah. Check those places out. And as far, Lynn, As far as going to, Even if they're, To the Yogananda ashrams, Even if they're closed, To stay there, You can go to the grounds now. Those are open. They were in the height of COVID just giving you, You'd have to sign up to go to the grounds because they only wanted a certain number of people to be there at one time. But the whole point of staying there is you go to the grounds. You just sit on a bench and they're so beautifully manicured and the energy there is so high. It's amazing. So and that's free. You can go to the grounds for free. So Google it and just see what the situation is and go there if you'd like. OK. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you, Sandeep. Sandeep says thank you. I would love to visit the places you visited in India. Listen to the podcasts on India and I think I give you a pretty good description of it and make it easy if you want to go. And Sandeep, Another thing I'll tell you, Everybody, If you can go to a Hindu temple in the United States, There's one in Malibu. There's a Hindu temple in Malibu. They're all over the place, But I mean these old time Shiva temples, They bring in stone carvers from India and they make these temples. Go to those. They're powerful. Find one of those. But for those of you in California, There's one in Malibu that's powerful. You just sort of have to check it out and trust yourself. You're like a little mini Geiger counter. And when you go up to a temple, If you feel it, Then just sit there. Buddhist temples are great too. I love going to cathedrals when nobody's there. I love the energy there. Heidi states that she's been blessed to be to the Himalayas and Kathmandu, Nepal. Yes, I've been to Kathmandu, Nepal. Also Bhutan, Himalayas, Amazing. Bhutan, Incredibly powerful. As powerful as India, But in a different way. You just can't stay there as long as you can in India. And I talk about that in the podcast as well. Good question. Thank you. Yes, Bhutan is great, Sandeep. And if you haven't, Sandeep, If you have an Indian passport, You're not bound by time limitations. You can go to Bhutan pretty much as much as you want. So all Indians, They've got it made as far as Bhutan is concerned. And it is just amazing. I would highly recommend it. India and Bhutan, And Brazil's different, But we can talk about that. But India and Bhutan, Really focused and powerful. Thank you so much, Everybody. I've really enjoyed it. I hope you are enjoying the podcasts. I think now we've got about 75 of them or something. Have a great day. And I look forward to talking to you again in three weeks. Bring your questions. Thanks so much. Bye.