What If It Did Work?
What If It Did Work?
From Apartheid to Enlightenment
What happens when a young man born into the chaos of apartheid South Africa embarks on a spiritual quest that intersects with the counterculture revolution of the 1960s? Michael Shandler's remarkable life story unfolds as he guides us through his transformation from a struggling teen in a violent household to an accomplished author, life coach, and organizational consultant.
Growing up Jewish in apartheid South Africa, Michael faced both family dysfunction and societal hostility. His Holocaust-survivor mother and PTSD-affected father created a volatile home environment, while outside, anti-Semitism followed him from school to the South African army. After a pivotal moment where he physically confronted his abusive father—leading to a 16-year estrangement—Michael found himself searching for meaning beyond his restrictive homeland.
His path led him through Israel during the aftermath of the Six-Day War, then to Vancouver in 1968, ground zero for consciousness exploration. There, psychedelic experiences opened doors to spiritual awakening, eventually connecting him with Ram Dass (formerly Richard Alpert), who became a profoundly influential mentor. Michael's vivid account of his first mescaline trip, where he surrendered to a "python" of transformative energy, marks the beginning of his conscious spiritual journey.
The heart of Michael's story lies in healing and reconciliation. After sixteen years without contact, he reconnected with his father, who offered the wisdom: "If you want a relationship with me, it must begin today and go forward." This present-focused approach to forgiveness gave them sixteen meaningful years together before his father's passing.
Michael's journey reminds us that no matter how challenging our circumstances, transformation is possible. Through small steps, self-reflection, and openness to new opportunities, we can transcend our past and create meaning from our struggles. His memoir "Karma and Kismet" offers not just an extraordinary life story, but a roadmap for anyone seeking purpose and healing in their own life.
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I never told no one that my whole life I've been holding back. Every time I load my gun up so I can shoot for the star, I hear a voice like who do you think you?
Speaker 2:are All right, everybody. Another day, another dollar. Another one of my favorite episodes of my favorite podcast. I'm biased, it's my own podcast. What if it did work? This week's guest, Michael Chandler. He's an award-winning author, life coach and organization development consultant. Mr Chandler's boyhood and dysfunctional family during the apartheid era in South Africa provided powerful grace for his transformational personal journey. Michael's a multi-published author as well as a co-author with his wife, Nina Chandler, of several books on health and communication. These include the Marriage and Family book, a spiritual guide, Yoga for Pregnancy and Birth I'm assuming more of Mrs Chandler on that one. The Complete Guide and Cookbook for Raising a Vegetarian Child and a Lesson in Leadership about Chandler's Experience in Johannesburg During Apartheid was published in Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work. Chandler's graphic novel, co-authored with Michael Egan-Broom, was published by the American Management Association in 1996. How's it going, Michael?
Speaker 3:I'm doing great, thank you. How are you, Omar?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great. So what's your definition of dysfunction? Because I grew up in a dysfunctional household. Single parent in the early 70s, mid to late 70s, early 80s felt different. And Johannesburg during apartheid? I can only imagine. So how was it like growing up.
Speaker 3:I'll tell you what I, you know what, why I said this functional. Give you a little bit of background about my parents first, and then I'll talk a little bit about the society that my circumstance, my karma, if you will, provided you know sent to me, gave to me. So my mother is a survivor, a Holocaust survivor, and she was rescued from Europe in late 1938, just after Kristallnacht, and taken with her family to Palestine. It was the only country in the world that would basically take her. So my mom is a refugee living in Palestine now. She was 16 years old when this happened, and the next year 1939, was the war and my dad, who was a Jewish South African, volunteered for the British Army. South Africa in those days was a British colony, and so he joined the British Army. He was in the British Eighth Army and at one point the army sent him to British Mandate Palestine and he met my mother at a dance and and he and my mother were married in 1945 in Tel Aviv.
Speaker 3:I was born the next year in Cape Town, so my mother and father went from Palestine to Cape Town. I was born in 1946. Now I mention all of this background about my parents because my dad was a PTSD sufferer for sure. He had been wounded in the war and in those days of course they called it shell shock, they didn't call it PTSD, they didn't have that language in those days. So he was a shell-shocked guy. He was very unpredictable, very violent at times and I write about this in my book. And so that was my dad very, very violent, very unpredictable, was also a little violent, not like my dad, but she was also unpredictable and you know you couldn't really tell what was happening with her. So I had a tough, pretty tough life at home and then, of course, in the society that I grew up in, apartheid, south Africa, a few years after the Second World War was over, in the early, you know, late 1940s, early 1950s, was still suffering. You know, you could say, from the hangover of the war South Africa was, as you may or may not know, the white population of South Africa were divided into two parts.
Speaker 3:One were the English-speaking, the descendants of the British colonists, and the other were the Afrikaners, and the Afrikaners were descendants of the Dutch colonists that had come in the 1650s. And these two groups of people, even though they were both white, they hated each other and they had even gone to war a couple of times, the most serious war and the most famous one being the Anglo-Boer War at the end of the 19th century, the beginning of the 20th century, so 1899 to 1902. And the Afrikaners and the British hate each other, but the Afrikaners not only, or, let's put it this way, the Jews in South Africa, which was a very, very small minority. There were only 120,000 Jews in the entire country. It's not much. There were only 20,000 in Cape Town, where I was from. Later I went to Johannesburg, that's what that was about. But I basically grew up in Cape Town and anyways, these two groups hated each other.
Speaker 3:After the Anglo-Boer War, the Afrikaners, of course, the British won the war and the Afrikaners were very bitter about the British treatment of them during the war. I mean, just to give you one little example, over 27,000 Afrikaner women and elders died in British concentration camps. These were the first concentration camps, by the way, that we know about, long before the Second World War. This is, you know, a good 40 years before the Germans, you know, employed concentration camps. So there was a lot of bitterness between them, as I said, and they began to hate the Jews because they surmised that the Jews had helped the British to keep them, the Afrikaners which, by the way, was about 50% of the English, I mean of the white population in poverty. So they blamed the Jews for helping the Brits to keep them in poverty.
Speaker 3:Whether it's true or not, I don't know, but I do know that that's so. There was a lot of and, of course, in the Second World War, because of the animosity that still existed between the British and the Afrikaners, the Afrikaners, many of them tended to side with the Germans, so there was a real schism in the country, country in the country, and so after the war, when I was born and growing up, there was a lot of anti-Semitism, a lot of violent anti-Semitism, which I faced both at school and in the neighborhood and you know. And then eventually in the army, where I was, you know, badly injured. So you know. So that, just to give you a little flavor of why I say, you know, dysfunctional family, and I also say a sick society, and that's the. Those are really, in a nutshell, the reasons why I say that.
Speaker 2:Now, why did your parents pick South Africa?
Speaker 3:Well, my dad, you know my dad was born in South Africa. He was first generation. My dad was born in South Africa. He was first generation Lithuanian Jews. Lithuanian Jews had began to immigrate from Lithuania and from the Eastern Europe Latvia, lithuania. They had begun immigrating to South Africa around 1870. There had been various waves and those. Why did they want to get out of Lithuania? They were simply trying to escape pogroms against them and also to escape being conscripted into the Tsar's army Much, by the way, like what is happening today in Russia, you know. But so it was like that. They wanted to get away.
Speaker 3:South Africa was short, south Africa being a very racist place, going all the way back then, and, especially then, wanted white people. They wanted Europeans, so Lithuanians. You know, they spoke a weird language, but they basically passed as whites and Jews. Well, you know, they were accepted because they were white, basically. So that's how my dad got. My dad was born there. His father was one of these people escaping the czar and escaping these problems, and he went to South Africa basically to search for, you know, a safer place to be a place where he could make a better living, et cetera.
Speaker 2:Well, with such chaos going on, it's hard to imagine. How did you wind up being in personal development? It clearly wasn't your parents. I mean, you're a life coach.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know a very I had an. First of all, let me just say that, and I want to reference my book if I may.
Speaker 2:Of course, that's what we're here. That's what we're going to talk about.
Speaker 3:Great. Here it is Karma and Kismet. A spiritual quest across continents, cultures and consciousness. A spiritual quest across continents, cultures and consciousness. So my journey really began. My conscious journey really began when I was 13, and I began to fail at school. And I began to fail, I think. Now, looking back on it, I think it wasn't because I was stupid, but although I believed I was stupid, I honestly did. I think I began to fail because of just the tension outside and the tension in my house and it was really, it's quite violent. I mean, I won't go into the details. If you want to read it, you can read graphic details in my memoir.
Speaker 3:But when I was 13, my dad, I failed Latin. I got 19 percent for Latin in grade eight and I must sort of add that at that time I was going to the oldest English colonial school in the country. It was a very prestigious school and here, 13, I began to fail and and then I failed Latin, which was the most sort of symbolized British colonial heritage in South Africa, and I failed. So there was no doubt that I was going to fail the year in various places decided that he would send me to a boarding school in a remote part of the Cape province, about 300 miles from Cape Town, in a desert area that was famous for one thing, and that is it was famous for ostriches, of all things. And so why was it famous for ostriches? Because, again, I have to give you a little history Before the First World War, a little known fact women had fashions.
Speaker 3:For the 40 years before the First World War, Women's fashion had. They used ostrich feathers for boas around their necks, for ostrich hats and so on, and they were very, very popular. And at one time I mean just to give you an idea they were the fourth ostrich feathers were the fourth largest export out of South Africa and they were worth more than gold by weight. That's how much money was involved in this ostrich business. So my dad sent me to this place and it was basically all that was. There was a small country town where nobody spoke English. So I really couldn't communicate, I couldn't understand what was happening and it was really a godforsaken place, you know, in the middle of nowhere, you know surrounded by desert. I wanted to run away but I couldn't. I mean, where would you go? There's miles from anywhere and surrounded by mountains in the distance, so sort of enclosed in this kind of ostrich desert prison. So that was the first, the first real kind of conscious challenge that I had where I was kind of thrown back on myself, where I didn't even have my parents messed up as they were to sort of protect me in some way. So that was, as I say, that was the beginning of me kind of looking at myself. Who am I? Who do I belong with myself? Who am I? Who do I belong with? Do I belong with these people? And I'll fast forward and just say that by the time I was 20 years old I had been conscripted.
Speaker 3:I was conscripted into the South African army 10 days after I finished high school and it was a fiasco. They threw me out after a few months. I was injured, got thrown out and, to cut a long story short, I was really very depressed and miserable in South Africa. I felt no sense of purpose. My school marks were so bad I couldn't go to college or university marks were so bad I couldn't go to college or university. And then I went to live in Johannesburg and I worked in a factory and again it was a kind of a shoe that just didn't fit. I wasn't happy and then a very strange phenomenon happened In June 1967.
Speaker 3:A big war broke out in the Middle East and, being Jewish, I was very, very in those days. It wasn't sort of as complex, if you will, as it is today, and you know I don't want to spend our time talking about that particularly, but I'll just say that in those days, being Jewish and being a Zionist was kind of it was very idealistic. I didn't feel any, you know any. My mother was a survivor. She had been saved in Palestine, which was now called Israel, and so I had nothing but positive feelings toward the place. So the Jewish agency said you know, young Jewish people, please volunteer to go to Israel and help, lend your, you know, lend your energy to help this country. That's, you know, been at war and so on.
Speaker 3:So a week later I was living on a kibbutz in Israel and I lived there and I had an opportunity to really experience the place and there was a lot about it that I really liked and there was a lot about it that was really, really difficult. And one of the things that was really difficult was a couple was assigned as my mentors on the kibbutz. They were 10, maybe 12 years older than me and the guy was a colonel in the Israeli Defense Forces and he took me to the Golan Heights, and this is shortly after the war. So the place was strewn with, you know, with burnt up tanks, you know blown up tanks and artillery and you know armored cars, et cetera, et cetera, and it was obvious that a lot of people had been killed there and it was kind of it really hit me hard.
Speaker 3:I had been in the South African army. I hated it. I didn't want to be there. I certainly didn't want to be part of the white South African army, but I was. You know it was hard to get out of it.
Speaker 3:But anyways, here I was and I knew that if I stayed in Israel I would be conscripted into the IDF. And I just thought to myself, how much allegiance do I feel to this country? And the answer came back no, I don't feel that kind of loyalty, that's sort of. I just don't feel it. I know I'm Jewish, I know my mother was saved here, et cetera, et cetera, but I honestly, in my gut, don't feel the connection. So I had my mother had two brothers who were also saved, with her saved at the same time. They had gone to live in Vancouver after the war and one of them got there about 1950 and the other got there about 1960. So in 1968, 1967, I wrote to them and I said you know, can't stay in Israel, can't go back to my horrible life in South Africa, you know, can I come to Vancouver? So they wrote back. After a long time they wrote back and they long time they wrote back and they sent me $100. And they said so I remember it being just a torn off piece of paper and they said we hope this helps $100. And if you can, you know we'll be happy to see you if you come here. So I took that as a yes, so off I went to Vancouver and I arrived in Vancouver. And you have to understand that Vancouver in 1968, I got there in January, the 15th, 1968.
Speaker 3:I had arrived in a kind of a youth culture. I was, I was, I just turned 21, in a youth culture where everybody was turning on, everybody was taking psychedelics, smoking dope, but the big thing was psychedelics. And I went to college and soon after I started at college I befriended a professor there. He's quite a young guy and he said to me one day he says, hey, he says I've got some great masculine which is the equivalent of peyote, and it's the synthetic version of peyote which the Mazatec Indians have been using for, you know, for centuries in their ceremonies. And he said come over on the I forget, you know two weeks Saturday, come over and we'll, we'll, take this trip together. And that's what happened.
Speaker 3:Now you asked me how did I get into personal development? Well, I told you about my some, about my let's call it my karmic background, of what I went through in South Africa. And here I arrive on the very, in the very sort of how can I say right in the existential heartbeat, one of the most sophisticated, cutting edge places on the planet I think I'm fairly safe in saying that and where the whole thing was about experimenting with consciousness, finding out who are you really deep down, what does it mean to be a human being? What is life all about?
Speaker 3:And I remember the first trip that I took very, very vividly, because something happened to me that has stayed with me to this day and I'll share it with you, and that was that once I had taken the mescaline. First of all, nothing happened for almost a half an hour, but then I started to feel this incredible feeling, this powerful feeling taking me over, and eventually I felt like, oh my God, a python. A python has gotten a hold of me and it's squeezing me to death. I'm going to die Right. And I fought it with all my strength, just trying to hold this python from squeezing the life of me, and eventually I couldn't fight it anymore. It was much, much stronger than I was and I thought to myself wow, the answer to this is that I've got to let this python kill me. If that's what it's going to do, I've got to let it do it. And that's what happened. I let go. The python killed me. If that's what it's going to do, I gotta let it do it. And that's what happened I let go.
Speaker 2:The python killed me, so to speak. So so timothy leary would have been proud with the tune in, and what's that? Timothy leary would have been proud yes, so that brings up.
Speaker 3:So, um, timothy leary was partners with, uh, alpert at Harvard. I don't know if you knew that, but they were co-professors and Timothy Leary gave Richard Alpert, who was a co-professor, gave him magic mushrooms, psilocybin. Simon and Alpert reported that this six or seven hour journey had been the most profound experience that he'd ever had in his life, which was similar, by the way, to what I had felt about my mescaline journey and, again, cutting a lot. You know I'm cutting a lot of details out here, but eventually Leary and Alpert went separate ways and Alpert went to India and he took with him, by the way, a bottle of LSD, very powerful LSD, which he proceeded to give to anybody that he thought looked like a holy man, thought they might be enlightened. He'd give them some of this LSD to quote, unquote test their enlightenment.
Speaker 3:And nobody passed the test. Everybody failed, even the best looking yogis. They all failed. Until he got to the Himalayas and somebody introduced him to a little old man with a blanket, a toothless little old guy with a blanket, and this guy looked at him and he said and this guy looked at him and he said your mother died of spleen cancer. And it completely blew Alpert's mind, because his mother had died two months before of spleen cancer and this little old guy has never seen him. This is some guy in the Himalayas never seen before in his life and he comes up with this. So, again, fast forwarding.
Speaker 3:Al Albert stayed with this man who became his guru, and then he went to study with a yogi who had been silent for 20 years and who taught by writing on a kind of a chalkboard, and he would write things like if a pickpocket meets a saint, he sees only his pockets. So Alpert spent months learning from this silent yogi in this sort of fashion and eventually Alpert went back to the States and he began telling his story about how he had been a professor at Harvard and Timothy Leary, et cetera, et cetera, and then gone to India and basically gotten into the spiritual path, and that his big message was it was possible, it is possible to attain the enlightenment high that you experience, you can experience with psychedelics without using psychedelics, and that it behooves all of us to be on a spiritual path. It doesn't matter which one, but get on a spiritual path, was his big message.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's good, Because years ago, every time I ever did LSD, I never got closer to God, never got closer to the Dalai Lama. In fact, the last time I had, I did try magic mushrooms, but it was in Amsterdam. My ex-wife and I were dating and she took me for my birthday and we did the Anne Frank to study. I had a bad reaction to the magic mushrooms because I was crying in the subway and I was like how could they have done that?
Speaker 3:You're really moved by the Anne Frank Museum. Well, the mushrooms brought it yeah well, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah, wow, that's okay, that's's okay, it sounds very real no, I gotta ask you because, I mean you grew up.
Speaker 2:I I mean literally hate ashbury, ground zero. Uh, everybody was starting to do yoga, which you're. You're a master at people's the, the heyday of meditation, and I'm assuming karma and kismet talks about it goes everywhere, goes, goes off the rails, just like your life it's a very you know.
Speaker 3:You know what I discovered when I sat down many years ago, and it took me years and years and years to write this story, because there was a lot to work through, as you'll see if you read it. I mean there really is.
Speaker 2:Now is it more of just a memoir autobiography, it's a memoir.
Speaker 3:It has a big one of the big arts in it Omar, arc, arc, ac, arc, arc, arc, arc, arc, arc, arc, arc, arc, arc, arc, arc, arc, arc, arc, arc, arc, arc, arc, arc, arc, arc, arc, arc, arc, ARC, arc, arc, arc, arc, arc, ARC, arc, arc, arc, arc, ARC. I had just come back from the army. My dad I mean, I'll just sort of lay it out without giving too much of the book away my dad beat my mom up and I had seen him do this one other time when I was small, when I was a little boy, and I had sworn to myself that when I got big and strong I'd never let him do this again. And yet here it was happening, and I was a 19 year old boy and I ran into their room and again, to cut a long story short my father told me to get out. I said I won't get out until you control yourself.
Speaker 3:And he kicked me and I fell. But I fell like a cat, or I should say more like a lion or a cougar. But I felt like a cat, or I should say more like a lion or a cougar, and when I came up I punched him and his jaw, the skin in his jaw split open and he just stood there. He took the punch and he stood there but he was completely disbelieving. He couldn't believe. And he said he says you're my son and you hit me. And he said he says you're my son and you hit me. And he said that's it. And he took his. He took a suitcase and he started just putting his clothes in, closed the suitcase and he walked out and that was the dissolution of our family.
Speaker 3:So so then, my mother, I mean the thing is, my mother then said hey, this is your fault, you lost your temper. You know this would never have happened. You should have just let you know, let things be, you shouldn't have interfered, etc. Etc. And uh, you know, this is your violent temper that's behind this, and so on. So that was a big, that was a tough one for me to take um, I really believe I believe then and I believe now that I was being protective of her now did.
Speaker 2:Did you guys ever mend?
Speaker 3:so okay so here's the next part of the story, fast forward. We don't have any contact for 16 years. I go, I'm off in Canada and the states, doing my seeking and trying to get straight with myself, trying to work all this stuff about who am I, what do I need to do to be clean about my father, and so on and eventually I come to the States. And, by the way, I'll just I'm not going to tell you all the details, but I'll just tell you one thing that the silent yogi, Haridas, had come to live in California. He came from the Himalayas and he came to live in California and then he became my teacher. So I spent five very intense years working with the silent yogi and during this process of working with him, he essentially and I won't tell you how it happened, although it's a wonderful story and it's in the book it's an amazing story Essentially he got me together with this woman and he claimed at the time that I knew her. But when I met her I said I don't know this woman. She's very attractive and I'm drawn to her, but I don't know her. And he kept saying you know her. He kept writing you know her, you know her. So again, to cut a long story short, shortly after I met her name was Aparna.
Speaker 3:Shortly after I met, Apar was a partner. Shortly after I met a partner, I said to her look, I'm going to Maui for the uh, for the winter. It will be nice there. Let's go there, we can meditate and we can do yoga together. And I had no idea, by the way, how I was going to pull this off. I had very little money. But you know, we were sort of you know young free. And she said we threw the I Ching. The I Ching said it furthers one to cross the great water. So we took that as our sign and off we went.
Speaker 2:Well, you were also motivated because it was a beautiful woman too.
Speaker 3:Oh yes, absolutely, Absolutely. That always motivates one to California. We went to see him and he said I knew three months ago when you came here that the two of you were supposed to be together, that you were, you know that you will be married. He says I knew this. So I said to him. I said Babaji, that's, everybody called him Babaji. I said Babaji, how did you know? So he said someone told me Of course he was joking. So, anyways, we went to a partner and I got married in Santa Cruz, california. We went up to Vancouver and let's see what am I leaving out here. Have I told you about how I came to Ram Dass?
Speaker 2:No, but he's a very influential. Yes, but go ahead, but real quick, real quick. I have to ask because it's been is Kismet Yiddish? Because we all know what karma is, but what is Kismet?
Speaker 3:Kismet comes Yiddish, Because we all know what karma is. But what is kismet? Kismet comes from three languages. You find it in Turkish, in Arabic and in Hebrew. It's a Middle Eastern, it's a real Middle Eastern concept. You find it in all of those, all of the Middle Eastern cultures, and it means. It basically means what's fated to be. You know, sometimes you say, wow, that's like it's fate, you know, unseen hand of God.
Speaker 2:Well, I know the Muslims believe that because Sir Lawrence of Arabia yes, he said it is written, it was meant to be.
Speaker 3:It's that kind of concept. So, yes, so that's how I came to Kismet, because there was a part of my life that was not so karmic, it wasn't so filled with problems and overcoming problems. It was more like, wow, amazing, things are starting to flow. But let me come back to Ram Dass.
Speaker 2:Of course, why not Of course?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So so I wrote to Ram Dass. I was very enamored with his talk. It was like it was like somebody had handed, somebody handed me a tape, a cassette tape, of him giving a talk. It was three hours long and I just hung on every single word that he said. And then I listened to the tape again and again and I couldn't believe it. It was like the next message that I needed to get in my journey, and so I decided I would write to him and ask him, if he could at the time I was living in Montreal would you come to Montreal and give a talk like the one that you did on the tape? And lo and behold, he said sure, I'll come to Montreal and give a talk like the one that you did on the tape. And lo and behold, he said sure, I'll come to Montreal. So he came to Montreal and he and I went on the radio together and he had a tambura, an Indian drone instrument, and he played it, a string instrument, and he was playing away and singing Ram, ram Ram, and I had never heard Hindu chanting before in my life. I mean, I was a quick study and I got into it and he encouraged me and so we were ramming away on the air.
Speaker 3:The next evening was the first event and thousands of people showed up. I had rented a hall at McGill University. It had a capacity of 1,500, but the capacity we were soon over capacity. So he says to me can you get this hall for tomorrow night? So I said I'll try. So I did, I got the hall for the next night, no problem, and we had the same kind of huge turnout. So he says to me you're really good at this. I had basically kind of huge turnout. So he says to me you're really good at this. I had basically honestly done very little. I got in the hall and so on. But he said, you're really good at this. How would it be for you to, you know, go around and set up a few more of these talks for me in different places? So I said okay. So that's what happened. The next phase of my life was going around, going to Toronto setting up, going to Vancouver setting it up, going to Ann Arbor, michigan, at the University of Michigan, ann Arbor, and so on, and tripping with Ram Dass.
Speaker 3:Well, we went, we went. I mean to be, you know, to be fair, you know, he, we, he was in, his was mostly in his post-psychedelic phase at that point and encouraging the youth to get more serious about things like meditation, yoga and being on some kind of spiritual path. So he wasn't, at least publicly, and certainly not with me. He wasn't taking psychedelics. He wasn't, you know, he wasn't taking psychedelics. Although I didn't, I did find out later that that he, in fact he did from time to time still take psychedelics. So, and that's, you know, that's public knowledge, not just me saying it.
Speaker 2:No, I yeah no. Well, I mean he associated with Timothy, Timothy.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Associated with Timothy Leary. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, no.
Speaker 2:You're a master at Eastern, whether it's yoga tripping.
Speaker 3:By the way, master is a very big you know. Thank you for the compliment. I hardly feel, I hardly feel truly worthy of, you know, calling myself a master really at anything. I just want to say that Thanks for the compliment.
Speaker 2:That's okay, you deserve it I have been steeped.
Speaker 3:I will say this I have been steeped in several modalities of Indian, modalities like eight-limbed yoga and also, by the way, buddhism as well. I studied Buddhist psychology and, you know, came to a very deep appreciation of it.
Speaker 2:Now you know some of the most famous Buddhists and the most famous meditators. It's spiritual when it comes to that eastern side are Jews.
Speaker 3:Yes it's true, no, jews are seekers. You know that's. You know we are sort of. You know, round pegs that don't, or square pegs that don't fill in round holes, or whatever the metaphor is. Often, I mean, that's a big generalization. It's often true no, no, it's.
Speaker 2:I mean you've. You've really lived a life. That I mean from being, from looking back when you're in johannesburg. You never thought your life would be so a world traveler.
Speaker 3:If I tell you that I had no clue, you can believe me. No clue, nothing I knew about going. I had to be in the factory floor by seven o'clock in the morning. That's what I knew I had. I was a white, a young white guy. I had 10 guys that were given to me, who were my guys. All of them were far more masterful at the work we were supposed to do than I was. So no, I knew nothing. I was completely clueless. I had never even smoked dope at that point in my life, although dope smoking is a major part of South African culture, particularly in the Cape Colored culture, which is about half of the population of Cape Town, where I'm from.
Speaker 2:Well, even well for Jews, even if you're Orthodox. Kosher kush, which is marijuana blessed by a rabbi, right, it's a big seller. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Right right.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I mean, I find it mind blowing that you know your whole life story should be a movie. Talk about going from johannesburg to kibbutz, to leaving the promised land. Yeah, usually jews, when they I mean especially at that time they're just moving and staying and you're like this isn't, this isn't what I want, this isn't I. I don't want to fight a war because, no, it wasn't your country, it wasn't. I mean, you know, yeah, sure, it's a promised land for christians and for jews and arabs, but in your heart, in your soul, that wasn't, that wasn't what you wanted you. You wanted to seek out, which you did.
Speaker 3:And let me, I mean, you know I'm also feeling a little remiss that I didn't honor my father quite and my relationship with him by just finishing that little arc story.
Speaker 2:I just want to tell you that after we have this 16, if it it's okay to interject this- no, you can interject all you want, sir, because, like I said, it's been a strange trip this hour, to say the least.
Speaker 3:Maybe not your usual thing, but through a strange set of circumstances and again you have to read the book to get this, I don't want to spend our time telling you the details of it.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, we have to keep on promoting it's Karma and Kismet, Karma and Kismet, and it's available. I know it's available on Amazon, amazon where else Books a Million. Are you going to do an audible version?
Speaker 3:Maybe, maybe, maybe. But that'll be later, but let me just finish the story.
Speaker 2:Of course, that's what we're here for.
Speaker 3:So OK. So so we were really estranged, no contact, and by a miracle I managed to get a master's degree and a doctorate. And when I say by a miracle, I'm not exaggerating, because I did not have an undergraduate degree and, as far as I know, it's impossible to go to graduate school unless you get your bachelor's degree first. But the.
Speaker 3:University of Massachusetts because I had demonstrated that I was making some kind of contribution. I had published a few books by then they decided that they would waive the usual requirements and they gave me entry into a master's degree program and then a doctorate. So on the day which was given honestly I was a kid who failed Latin I was a failure. Okay, a I was a failure, okay, a real, a fuck up, honestly. And here I am getting I get a doctorate and on the morning that they signed my dissertation, all the professors signed. You know you're now dr chandler.
Speaker 3:I called my father in south africa. We we had no contact. I just. You know. This is such a pity. My dad would be so mind blown and so proud of me if he knew this. So I called and his secretary said I'm sorry, he's not in the country, he's in the United States. I was calling from the States, from Amherst, actually in Massachusetts, and he said if you call back in 15 minutes I'll get a number where he is, where you can find him. So it turned out that he was in LA, he was visiting some friends in LA and that he was coming to New York. And I called him up and he said I've been thinking about you. And he said I'm coming to New York, can we meet in New York? So I said absolutely. So.
Speaker 3:By then I had, I was married with a partner and I had two kids, so the whole family. We went down to New York and we met my father and his second wife, who I knew as a boy, but that's another story. And eventually everybody left us alone. This is the first time we've been together in 16 years. The last time we were together, we were, you know, we were fighting with each other. I mean serious fighting.
Speaker 3:And so everybody felt like, well, it seems okay with them. I think we can leave them alone together. So they did, and I said to my dad I said you know, dad, I got a lot of baggage left over from what happened between us. I said, you know, family breakup, et cetera. And he says to me, he says I'll tell you something. He says I've thought about the past. He says, and I'm not interested in doing a postmortem of what happened and he says if you want to, if you want a relationship with me, it will have to begin today and go forward. Let's not, let's not dwell on the past well, the past is the past.
Speaker 2:You can't visit it. There's no time machine, but it's. It's abstract, it's just like the future. The only thing you have is the now right, right, right see I got that from from ram das by the way Did you get that from Ram? Dass, yes, when I was going through a bad breakup, a friend that I knew since elementary school, kindergarten, got me into the now Okay.
Speaker 3:So yeah.
Speaker 2:Right. I have to ask you this, though what happened to her though it, or did she change her name, anina?
Speaker 3:She changed her. Yeah, she changed her name to Nina. She didn't want to have a partner, she didn't want to have a kind of a obviously spiritual name and she just wanted to be, you know, was a partner. Her real name, or a partner was a name that Haridas gave her.
Speaker 2:Okay, so so it was like, how ram das gave himself, or?
Speaker 3:well, haridas actually gave ram das his name also. So so anyways, uh, if I just just to combine I know I'm taking a long time to do this, but we had my dad and I had after that my dad and I had 16 or 17 pretty good years, you know, I would fly out to South Africa and hang out with him. He would come and stay with us in Amherst hang out with us. We had, you know, he would send parcels, he would fax me regularly and we had a real sort of father-son relationship after that and it was good relationship after that and it was, it was good. And then one day in 1998, march 98, 98, he, he, he sent me a fax and he said please can you come to South Africa? I'm not well enough to come to the States, but you know, come as soon as possible.
Speaker 3:So I got the vibe I should go and I got on a plane and I flew out and, as you know, it's no small thing to go to Cape Town. It's a, you know, at least a 20 hour flight usually, if not more. And anyways, I got there and on the fourth day that I was there and I'll just tell you a little of the story I'm going to leave out some details because I I it's the final chapter in the book because it's the final chapter in the book and my dad says to me, he says pick me up at my business at one o'clock today. And he says I want to take you out for lunch at this outdoor restaurant at one of these place called Kruitskier, which is a very famous kind of winery in a part of Cape Town. So I picked him up and he said that he wants to drive.
Speaker 3:So my dad was driving and I was in the driver's seat, and we're driving on the biggest highway, we're going about 60. And all of a sudden he says I've got a terrible pain in my stomach and he collapses over the wheel stomach, and he collapses over the wheel and I'll just I'll just say that, uh, it fell on me to to see if I could save his life, but but mostly save my own life, because we were on this big highway and he had collapsed over the wheel. So, by the grace of God, kismet, I was able to. God has met, I was able to able to save the day and my dad had passed away, and so you know. So that's the, that's that story, that's how it ended with us and his wife said to me at the funeral he said she said you know your dad died a happy man because he was with you when he died. So that's the end of the story with my dad and how it came out. It's honestly a pretty remarkable story, given where we started.
Speaker 2:Well, there are no coincidences.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:Things are always meant to happen the way they were.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you know you forgave them.
Speaker 2:yes yes, the power of you know so many people hold on to anger and resentment, hold on to the past, which you can't revisit, the past and like for your father who had zero personal development. He even said it. You know we can't do anything about it. Let's have a relationship now and.
Speaker 3:But you know, at that time of course I'd been heavily trained in psychology. I was a therapist and you know the coach and a counselor and etc. And and all my training was about how you help people to process their you know their stuff and you're like you were mind-blown because you weren't expecting something like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I wasn't. But the thing was that I learned that even if you don't have the other person to cooperate with you and do listening checks, et cetera, et cetera, and to hear how bad it was for you and how painful, et cetera, you have the ability to work through those feelings in yourself. You have the ability to work through those feelings in yourself and you can come to peace in yourself and self-acceptance. Maybe you need some individual help to get there, but it's entirely possible.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's all within everybody. But the thing is is a lot of times people love to carry the pain, the anger.
Speaker 3:They carry it like their badge or their cross to carry. I love what Eckhart Tolle says about that. He calls it the pain body.
Speaker 2:Of course, and then that's who you identify. Yes, exactly, and it's. I mean, the whole world would be so much prettier, happier society if we just all forgave Absolutely. Who cares who's right, who's wrong?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm right with you, man, really.
Speaker 2:So you coach yoga, or is that just on?
Speaker 3:No, no, I don't. I used to be a yoga teacher at one point when I was a lot younger. I'm not a very good yogi these days, oh don't worry, I'm pushing I'm going to be. You know I'm 78, you know I'm as limber as Herman Munster.
Speaker 2:So there was no part of my, even my 20s, I couldn't do it. I've done the meditation. So at least give me that, michael. I do want meditation and the power of forgiveness.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's plenty good medicine.
Speaker 2:So then, primarily besides being.
Speaker 3:I basically, after I got my doctorate, I had the good fortune to get hooked up with a cutting edge firm in consulting firm in the Boston area called Innovation Associates, with people like Charlie Kiefer and, and with people like Charlie Kiefer and Peter Senge, who became famous. He wrote a book called the Fifth Discipline and he was one of the principals at Innovation Associates. And anyway, to cut a long story short, I did a two-year postdoc there. Basically it was a paid internship and Charlie Kiefer, who was the owner of the business, took me under his wing and my, you know, my academic stuff had been helpful.
Speaker 3:I'd learned systems thinking, I'd learned a lot about therapy, but nothing had really prepared me for being on the ground to work with real people in, you know, in an organizational setting, to work with real people in, you know, in an organizational setting, and thus began my venture into the inner sanctums and eventually I mean eventually I began working with, you know, top teams in big organizations, both in the for-profit world and the nonprofit world. I mean I was, you know, doing amazing. I mean I couldn't believe some of the places that I found myself and you know you talk about. Did you think in Joburg that you would ever be in a situation like this? Absolutely never. I couldn't have even envisioned it. Even if I knew about visioning, I wouldn't have had the imagination to think this stuff up.
Speaker 2:I just you wouldn't have been able to expand your vision and say, say I'm one day I'll be dr. No way, no, no. Author of multiple books no world traveler honestly.
Speaker 3:Honestly, even though I taught and I teach people to, you know that it's important to have a direction, have a vision of where you're going as a sense to guide you, and have it come from your sense of purpose. But I have to say for myself I was so sheltered and so closed off in South Africa that it was not possible to think like this. I would have laughed at you if you told me this is what the future will be. I would have laughed and said absolutely impossible.
Speaker 2:Now your grandchildren possible? Now your grandchildren? Yes, surprised by the life that you lived.
Speaker 3:You know, the book was just published a week ago, as a matter of fact, and I just received my copies on this very day, and so I was busy going through. I have five grandkids and only two of them, I think, are eligible to read this book at this point. But I'm sure later on all of them will read it. But at the moment the others are too young. I mean, one of them is only 12. And I think that there's stuff in the book that probably a 12 year it's a little young.
Speaker 2:I don't want them to read it now, but my other, the two older, grandkids are 19, almost 20 and 21.
Speaker 3:And they're you know, one of them is already reading the advanced reader copy of the book and she loves it and it's not freaking her out in the least, you know.
Speaker 2:Now, did they know any history? Yes, their grandparents of you and your wife.
Speaker 3:Yes, they know. They do know they met, you know, they met their grandmother, my mother, and they met my father. No, they did not meet my mother. They met my mother, not my father. My father died before they were born.
Speaker 2:Before they were born.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, but they did meet my mom, so they knew her and they knew my wife's parents as well, and who were, by the way, very different than my parents. They were wonderful people, model people. By the grace of God, I had wonderful people become my parents-in-law, people who actually loved and cared about me and accepted me and you know who I didn't freak out and who weren't judging me and so it was amazing, amazing gift to have my wife's family, who was sane, come into my sane and loving, I will say, to have my wife's family who was sane, come into my sane and loving.
Speaker 2:I will say Well, I got to say, dr Chandler. Even I'm going to buy one of your books, michael, because talk about like a strange trip yeah From everything.
Speaker 2:This sounds from everything, from the counterculture, the Six-Day War to Bud's Johannesburg. Yeah, I mean, you've lived such a fruitful life, you've lived lifetimes all within your life, which is pretty amazing and pretty incredible. Now I call you Drandler now because out of respect. But how, how? How does how do the listeners find you and how do they find you? Whether it's to how you? You are a life coach, so I'm, I'm assuming, yes, yes, to find you on social media, to find you, to learn more about you. And then, of course, we're going to promote that book two more times, maybe three.
Speaker 3:You know I have a website, if I, if I can just go ahead it's basically Michael Chandler and that's SSHANDLER. No C in there Michael Chandler dot com and that's my website that you can read about the book. There you can find out where to get it if you're interested, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 2:Now do you do one-on-one coaching?
Speaker 3:group coaching. No, I mean honestly. Now I'm doing less and less. I'm really wanting to get the message out about my book. Not because it's me, it's not really about me but there's an important message in my book.
Speaker 2:What's that message? I know what the message is.
Speaker 3:I think it's a message of faith, really, that no matter how tough stuff is, no matter how hard it seems on a particular day or a particular moment, moment, Just you know, hang back. Wait Time takes care of a lot of things. Things will change and there'll be new opportunities. You don't know what those are right at the moment, but they will come. And that's honestly been true in my life, even though I can say that there were moments and many moments. It wasn't, you know where it was really tough, where I didn't know and I felt very alone, very much on my own. And that began, you know, basically when I was 13, when my dad sent me off to that godforsaken boarding school with the ostriches.
Speaker 2:Well, Dr Chandler, too, I I get the messages of is of relationships relationships that you had with your mother, the relationship that you had with your father, the relationship with ram das but, more importantly, the relationship that you had with yourself and with nina to create this life, to go on on a journey without any real funds, but just to go on it. Yes, just for the moment.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:And you know, you guys have lived a life together created a life.
Speaker 3:You know, it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me, and the scariest, I'm sure, because you know, as you well know, when you step off the abyss there, you really don't know what you're stepping into. Maybe nothing, maybe you're going to fall forever.
Speaker 2:Well, michael, karma and kismet, buy that book. I know it's going to be such a great book. Buy all the other books. Unless you're a male, you really don't need the pregnancy one, but but buy this one, yes this one's just come out yeah, this, this one's everybody, everybody's your target audience. I read who you you know you don't have to be a baby boomer, or jewish this is.
Speaker 2:This is an inspirational book to me because I mean talk about a life now, michael, this is my final question to you. What words of wisdom, dr Chandler? You're a professor, you're an author, a guru in a positive way not, not in a negative way About so many people closed off, they stopped dreaming. If maybe they never even had a dream.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And they're, they're they don't realize that they're living their dash. They're writing their legacy. They're writing their legacy. They're writing their unfortunately, their obituary. They think it's it, it is what it is. What words do you have to impart to that person?
Speaker 3:Well, I'll tell you honestly, the first thing that comes to mind is that you have to want it. I can point something, you know, I can point something out to you. But unless you want it, unless you really, from the inside out, you really want it and you're in touch with that, you know, I think that's where it really starts is get in touch with you, know with yourself, with who you know, who are you really, deep down, deep, deep, deep in there, not your ego self, and keep making that inquiry who am I, where and with whom do I belong? What's important to me, you know, what's my purpose? How can I, how can I help other people? I think that's a big clue is sometimes, you know, you can't think up like a grand purpose, like a huge thing that's going to change dramatically, change your life.
Speaker 3:Maybe that's too ambitious. You know there's the metaphor of the rubber band. You know you stretch the rubber band out. If you stretch it too far, it breaks. If you stretch it just the right amount, that has a tension in it. And one side of that tension is what you want, what your vision is. The other side is the truthful answer to where am I now?
Speaker 3:And you've got to learn to work that tension in your life and it's always like that, sometimes starting in a small way. Starting, for example, how can I be of help to the people around me? In simple ways, not looking for anything super ambitious, just looking for how can I be of help? A person dedicated to finding the compassionate and kind thing to do in the situation? How can I bring the highest consciousness to my situation? What can I do to move the ball further down the field?
Speaker 3:You know how can I do that? What can I do? Taking responsibility in the sense not of I'm to blame, but in the sense of I'm here. I am able to respond to my situation in a constructive way and just be using that metaphor of the tension between what you have and what you want and just learn to stretch a little bit. Stretch and bring your current situation, bring it a little forward toward what you want, even in small ways. Begin somewhere. Don't start off too ambitious, because you know you don't want to set yourself up for failure. But if you do small things you can be successful. Learn to be successful in small things, then bigger things can happen.
Speaker 2:And, of course, being open to bigger things happening at any moment. Dr Chandler, what an amazing answer. You are an amazing man. Karma and Kismet available where Amazon, Barnes, Noble Books, A Million. This book, just by looking at it and just by hearing you, I can tell it's going to be captivating, riveting, inspirational, motivational, spiritual.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's a really good history, a really good history of the, you know, really the dawning of the human potential movement in America and probably in the world actually.
Speaker 2:And Michael. Thank you for taking the time, thank you for entertaining, Thank you for giving us such an amazing hour. You are an amazing man, love you and it was a pleasure speaking with you.
Speaker 3:Omar, thank you. Namaste right brother. Thank you All the best. Oh, are we still on? Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wanted to know if I could send you a copy of the book, just as a kind of a Heck. Yeah. Well, I have to hit stop, though I don't want everybody to know my yeah no. I can hang in here.
Speaker 2:Well, you'll tell me yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, no, I, I, I, if, if everybody, if we lived in a time in the 60s and 70s when you, when there weren't, you know, unhinged people, that's for sure I wouldn't mind. But you know, I'm sure there's plenty of them I understand there's plenty of them, no no, I understand.
Speaker 1:Thank you, sir. Yeah, yeah. What if you took action and made it happen and started living inside of your purpose? What if it did work? Right now you can make a choice to never listen to that negative voice no more. The hardest prison to escape is our own mind. I was trapped inside that prison, oh, for a long time. To make it happen, you gotta take action. Just imagine what if it did work.