Cults & Sects Explored | Thinking Bhakti Podcast

A thought-provoking journey with our inaugural podcast episode. We delve deep into the intriguing concept of Bhakti Marga: is it a sect or not? Unraveling its origins and significance in today's spiritual landscape.
Do we truly need religious institutions in our lives, or does spirituality extend beyond organized structures? Our exploration delves into the intricate world of cults and sects, examining their definitions and implications.

We discuss discipline and consistency in personal growth and spiritual practice, exploring the connection between obedience and a fulfilling spiritual journey. How much obedience did Jesus expect from His disciples, and how does it relate to contemporary traditions?
Navigate with us through the complex Guru landscape, delving into the question of irreparable damage. Is there a point of no return in the realm of spiritual leadership? We also shed light on the enlightening legacy of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, a visionary who left an indelible mark on spiritual thought.

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https://www.youtube.com/@SwamiRevatikaantaofficial

Transcript

all right we're good we're amazing yeah Jacob Swami Revati welcome to Ananda thank you welcome to my podcast yep um so today we're going to talk about two topics as we've agreed we're going to talk about institutionalization of religious movements in general and the notion that um perhaps bhakti Marga is a sect or a cult what an allegation I'm going to sort of unpack all of that and share our thoughts with that um but before we do that what I would appreciate is if you could talk a little bit about yourself so that our audience gets to know you it's your first time on the podcast okay um where you from what's your background that kind of thing okay so I'm Sean and I was born and raised in England in the United Kingdom and for the past three years I've lived here in Germany in the vicinity of the ashram so just a few minutes away by foot and um up until recently I held a directorship here which is just a fancy way of saying that I had some responsibility for the running of the ashram and the mission and I still have some roles in relation to public relations Etc you need to start again because of that do we start again no no just just uh maybe repeat uh the last section so we can cut through I think you should just start again I think yeah yeah that's in future if that happens we just keep going yeah yeah okay cool Sorry exactly I'm okay with that it's true even if the worst case scenario we hear the beep and the thing it's weird is what it is my bad yeah but I think now the flow's too interrupted isn't it for sure we'll start again okay okay for future reference if that happens yeah we'll blast through it okay okay we're good start again do you not have a filming in progress thing who was that who was it [Laughter] not even interrupted for a good reason s yeah all right let's do this okay cool yep Swami gravity welcome to my podcast thank you so today we're going to talk about two topics we're going to talk about the institutionalization of religious movements spiritual movements in general and the notion that bhakti Marga is considered by some as a cult or a sect and we need to unpack all of that see the merits of that argument or not um but before we do that what I wanted to ask you is if you could please introduce yourself a little bit so it's your first time on the podcast so people can get to know you and then you won't have to ever do that again in the future okay so I'm sham I have been involved with bhakti Marga for about 13 years now and as my life with bhakti Marga has evolved I've had different hats on and one of them obviously being involved with teaching and the knowledge aspect of the mission and so I've given lectures and songs and talks and I've also been involved in the general running of the mission so I held a directorship for some time and also I have some other roles still and currently I live in Germany very near to the ashram and with my family and I grew up in England in uh the UK and um yeah I guess uh you've asked me to come along because my background's a bit because first of all first of all because you're an intelligent person as he was just saying as he's one of his roles he's had his teaching we've obviously worked together for many of those years as well and so I I know your thoughts on a lot of subjects and I appreciate them very much and I think it's it's fitting but also as you're about to say I think your your religious background is also interesting and I think it makes sense to sort of touch upon that a little bit yeah I I I mean I had a mixed parentage like quite a strange um sometimes volatile and very changeable upbringing um but you know the the part that's most relevant to the discussion today is that I had an Irish Catholic father who wasn't particularly religious but you know as a kind of residue it's it's there but he always deferred to my mum to well that's your business what the children are taught and she was obviously as a Muslim um not a classically strict staunch Muslim because she was with an Irish Catholic man right so and and also um although Pakistani origin she herself was born and raised in Uganda in East Africa and you know so the the kind of cultural lens through which she experienced that Islam and then herself took to it and practiced it and then imparted it to us was not particularly Orthodox I would say but having said that I still had to learn to read the Quran in Arabic like many well all nominal Muslims do right um and then in the school holidays yeah she'd say you've got to go to Friday prayers you know which obviously I loved that's why you're sitting here yeah um and so I I could experience um those religions Christianity more so through school I would say because you know if you go to a church of England school there's like nominally a kind of Christian like overlay to what you're doing right you can't you can't avoid it it's not being rammed down your throat but you can't avoid that you're gonna have um a Christian religious service at Christmas and Easter you're not going to avoid a Bible reading at every assembly so I I could experience both of these and get a quite a good handle on both of them um but whilst also being a little bit arm's length from both of them I wasn't that deep in into either of them and um and then on from that whatever journey I had that brought me here to be with guruji and bhakti Marga and practicing vaishnavism yeah so um I I'd say the other thing that I really got an Insight um from is experiencing my extended family so while my own parents weren't particularly religious in their Lane so to speak there were people in their families like aunts and uncles who I would see some more than others who were more religious right right and I could get a feel for the mindset particularly on the Islamic side there were there were two or three who were much more staunchly following Islam than than my mother which also cause problems yeah between her and I can imagine her siblings right so yeah I I say I wouldn't call it a unique view um but it's pretty different well it's a well-informed view I think yeah I think one of the things that I've always shared with people from my my childhood because my childhood wasn't particularly religious but what I did was I moved a lot from country to Country and when you just get exposed to different cultures and different sort of religious groups even just people of different types um even if you don't participate in it in a big way just being exposed to it already informs you a lot and it helps you expand your world view in unique ways and I think that's that's what makes it unique that's what makes it special so I definitely get where you're coming from um yeah so that makes sense that's a little bit why also I think this is a good topic for us to dive into um just that broad perspective it's going to help us unpack this before we do that though I have to address um your nails just saw you now um what's going on there what's going on there well it is Saturday and I do like to dress up for the weekend no that's people don't know you they're gonna know year old daughter and um one of the joys of being a dad with two girls is you're you're just a big doll so she painted one side and then I think got bored and walked off and I didn't get there well I think it looks great the other side but yeah I mean you got you need acetone to get this stuff off like it doesn't just wipe off yeah so um yeah yeah grateful enjoy it thanks what would you call that is that a kind of uh is that lavender lavender lilac yeah brilliant okay brilliant all right let's do this let's unpack a little bit the topics I think we can maybe start off with the institutionalization topic um I think I think the the overriding theme both for this question of institutionalization as well as the the sect and cult thing is General mistrust my my experience at least when I've been dialoguing with people of all sorts of religions is they enjoy um the idea of spirituality and Spiritual Living and spiritual Concepts but the minute it gets institutionalized for them it's like that's religion religion that's sort of where they draw the line and I've heard it being said to me before it's like the idea of for example um people people like how to put this they like healing but they don't like hospitals if you get my if you get my meaning so they enjoy the practice of the thing they don't like the institutions they like learning they don't necessarily like the universities and I think this is somehow this this inbuilt mistrust that people have of institutions and it starts to make me always go on the back foot of having to justify the existence of the institution to people why do religious movements have to have institutions in the first place and I think the conversation from from my side starts there it's at what point is it necessary and is is the tool necessary is it actually a redundant thing could we do it in a different sort of format because it helps people make their peace or not with it well I think the first thing is that people view institutions particularly religious institutions as agents of control yeah yeah you're trying to control me and my behavior and and they are aren't they to an extent I I think that that may not have been the original intention right but yes it comes to that it it comes to that um like the thing that people are probably most aware of or have a feeling for in Europe is the church right right the and the growth of the church and I don't Catholic Church well I guess um the church in general because I if you look at the history of the church and I'm no expert but all of the codifying and the hierarchy and the institutionalizing it was a gradual process that came from the point where Jesus isn't there anymore right so you've got this Divine personality who can impart what is needed in the moment to the person in real time and specific to them and their level of understanding and what they need to hear at that moment then that Divine personality goes and you're left with some people who want to carry on spreading as they say in Christianity the good news we want to spread the good news and in their anxiety to do that right they more and more codify and form a Doctrine but then once you form a Doctrine you need a body to hold that Doctrine and dare I say enforce the doctrine yeah so and that's why you had things like I think in the early Christian Church it was called anathematization where you say that church and that Bishop who is preaching that Doctrine we no longer Advocate that because this is now the doctrine that's been agreed in the council and you are essentially exiled or excommunicated and back then it was called anathematization right and and it's this uh need to get everyone on the same page but then in that anxiety to get everyone on the same page and believing the same thing it becomes hardened yeah and I think this kind of sclerosis you know this kind of calcifying of things where the free and flexible exploration of what that Divine personality was saying becomes something else don't you think that's motivated by fear like from my analysis on it it's always that is you have that phase of the charismatic leader the founder the formative sort of phase of the religious movement um and as you said it's flexible only because the leader is capable of sort of monitoring and correcting where where needed the minute he leaves as you said there is this immediate feeling of now what like we need to continue it but we also make want to make sure we don't lose it we don't sort of dilute it or change it in any sort of way and I think people then they do what you said they codify it rules regulation hierarchies Authority and I think a lot of it is just out of the sphere of we can't lose the The Amazing Grace or the amazing teachings or practices whatever that we had from him and so we have to protect them solidify them and in doing so yeah it becomes extremely rigid and ironically less attractive than they were um and it creates a very different movement to what was originally intended and I think that's I think it's borderline inevitable I've never really seen any movement that doesn't follow that pattern I mean if you study sociology of religion there are plenty of people that sort of speak on this these sort of life cycles of religious movements and it's almost always the same it's very rare that you can think of any religious movement that bugs that Trend yeah I I agree with everything you've said but I think the mistake that people make is that that life cycle they think that it happens in a very short space of time and and when you think that Something's Happened in a short space of time and you say these people had an anxiety to make sure there was a Doctrine and these people did x y z it sounds like it's happening virtually overnight and there were this there was this kind of cabal of people who got round a table and said hey we've got to write this all down and enforce it and but when you look at it historically these things were happening over hundreds of years and it's just in the course of the expansion and growth of the following of that teaching that problems arise and had to be ironed out yeah so like the major controversies in Christianity in the beginning for example were to do with the nature of Jesus so many so many of the controversies yeah yeah christology christology what what was he was he fully human and fully Divine at the same time was he was he one unified Divine being that or dual nature yeah what was was he human in the beginning but the Divinity overtook that humanity and then and then the other controversies were about the other persons in the Trinity yeah so the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost is the Holy Ghost equal to them all of that stuff and um I guess there's um an anxiety that oh if we get this wrong then it will affect the outcome for the individual who's following it yeah yeah and that's why they say oh we've got to codify it and get it right and we'll have a council and we'll bash it out and we'll agree this is the doctrine and then everyone can just sort of get on with the better things yeah they don't have to be worried and I think I think in the example of Christianity the institution obviously comes post-christ right and so it's easy to sort of um see the very very human element to it and the Very human sort of anxieties and thoughts and whatever concerns I think in bhakti Marga in our case we have an institution it is bhakti markets the it's the organization the movement founded by Burma but obviously he's still very much alive very much Among Us in teaching us and so it creates almost a different scenario where in in I always feel like in some parts we are living that post-charismatic phase during the life of the charismatic leader because he's very forward-thinking guruji like he he he thinks about what we're setting up for the future what are the the systems of authority and who's in charge and and all of these things he is very proactive about these things but at the same time it creates I think sometimes a conflict and in a conflict in the movement where you have devotees who who see him as this incredible being Transcendent free um very adaptable very flexible I mean guruji is one of the most adaptable people I've ever met in my life if not the most he he can really mold his way of speaking behaving everything to the circumstances that are in front of him he's not rigid at all in that sense but at the same time he has created an organization and given us rules and regulations we have protocol we have um an order of of monks nuns devotees who all follow a variety of rules and we are tasked with somewhat enforcing those protocols and those rules and those processes and all of that and I from my experience it creates sometimes this resentment in the devotees where they feel like I want him and I want everything that he brings to the table seemingly publicly what what they see they say in front of the curtains of of this freedom and flexibility and understanding but I'm sort of annoyed by the by the organization that's asking me to comply with this and with that and I I resent that so they resent that I resent that resentment in a sense because my feeling is that maybe it's a strong word but I feel like if only they would know how much guruji has asked for this and how much guruji is also the person that orchestrates and is the architect of this institution um and here's like maybe just a very very obvious thing to me at least but maybe not just certain people you reach a size where I don't know how it works to have a movement without the institution because guruji can't attend to thousands of people personally he can't physically in a sort of discernible external way yeah and and um you've more or less concurred with that birth story of Christianity because in the beginning of Christianity there were only a handful of people yeah that could be guided one-to-one or one to many but by that Divine personality then so The Story Goes whether it's you know historically accurate or not you know on Pentecost the um Holy Spirit came down on the apostles and then they had this inner command to go and spread the mission and immediately one of the Apostles I can't remember made a speech and converted 3 000 people right so immediately you've gone from a handful or a few hundred to three thousand people yeah and and so if the following had been that size when Jesus was there there's every chance that it did need to be institutionalized because you have to we're disseminating the message and the instructions and all this yeah and I think a lot of people you know they sometimes hear devotees from the early years with guruji sharing their experiences and their stories and and they they get I'm jealous again jealous has been negative but they say oh I wish I wish I had that experience the proximity the sort of naturalness of it of it all and I think that's the thing on the one side our hearts want to spread this as far and wide as it can go because we have found something wonderful when you find something wonderful you want to share with people but there's another part of you that goes but every extra person that comes means less time for me yeah yeah and I remember having a conversation with one of the residents here at the ashram a few years ago it was exactly about that and they told me my heart is so splitting too like because guruji was encouraging us to to spread what we've learned and to share in all of this but she was she was openly telling me she's like but you know I'm not ready to sort of distance myself from him letting go of that and every extra person that walks through these doors means less time for me and less time for everyone I mean it's a it's a negative for everyone was the the opinion at the time and I I've sort of tried to stay away from um the idea that institutions are a necessary evil I've heard this been having been said many times about the Vatican and about all sorts of religious organizations it's a necessary evil I don't want to see it as evil because I'm a part of it right I'm a part of this it's not evil it's not evil in in I I think what it comes down to is maturity because the thing is what people are being asked to do I can't necessarily speak for other religions but in in bhakti Marga what guruji is asking people to do is to have an immense amount of maturity yeah and the story is basically something in your heart has called you to something bigger than what you know with your senses yeah you have some inherent feeling that there's more perhaps it's just their own your own knowledge of your own existence you just think well I'm a conscious being and I know that I'm not just a very sophisticated algorithm I can feel that there's something more to me than that and then for whatever reason that seed that thought that yearning has pulled you into the orbit of a master or even we could just say into the orbit of spiritual instruction of any kind right but you're then being asked to acknowledge the existence of something that you don't know firsthand and the the great Wonder of guruji and the great blessing of of even just encountering what at once or a few times is you can see in him the truth of that suspicion you had there's something more because when he uh behaves miraculously when he says something to you where you realize oh he knows me inside out oh he heard my prayer or he knew something that happened to me in the past or he knows the desire of mine you say there's some field of existence beyond what I know yeah that is beyond space and time and he is it or he's tapping into it you don't even have to go mad on trying to Define guruji right you can just see there's something there special and that gives you the faith to try and know that in fullness yeah because the moment you're told there's some part of you that you don't really know truly you're like well then I can't be complete surely I'm not complete if I don't know that part of myself and then you embark on a journey to know yourself but if your whole life you've been programmed not in a nefarious way from some Outside Agency just because of the way Society runs and the way you are as a human being when you first come into the world that no this is all you are it's a great leap of faith and a great amount of discipline needed to break free of that and to know yourself as bigger than what you know yourself to be now and and the problem is we don't have the maturity yeah to to do the work I I before you say there's one thing because I don't want to forget it I saw this um a loop or um real real yeah I saw this real where I don't know whether it's true but I've seen things like it like um you know in books like Power of Habit and other books about how we work and how we operate this guy was saying that if you just do like 20 minutes a day of any particular thing you know learning an instrument learning a language but you do it every day the main thing is the doing it every day you will be better than 95 of people at that thing yeah right now if that's true and I think I don't know what the data is on that I haven't investigated it but I've heard other things like it and I've seen data driven examples where you know all you need is to do something regularly it seems logical yeah yet no one does it because our natural state is not one of discipline and consistency I agree yeah and we do we are disciplined and consistent when we're forced to be so for instance I have a duty to my children I I have to do it yeah there's nothing that's going to um that's not driven out of necessity right I I'd say we are actually quite consistent people um in two facets the one driven out of Necessities you just pointed out and the one which is pleasure seeking yeah like I don't need to be told to eat every day yeah yeah yeah you know what I mean I know that you could either come down that ice cream that's it you can argue to necessity but I know I know that I eat beyond my Necessities yeah you know what I mean and we all do so I think there there is a we are we are disciplined in some respects yeah yeah but but for instance um you know anyone who goes to a gym yeah but but has gains you know get gets the gains right they'll all tell you you will not experience anything for months yeah but just stay in the game and there's even these reels that are like designed to motivate you and pump you up right but but when you go to a gym the best thing you can do is have a routine and a program go every day and then have arm day have leg day an OM day and leg day look a certain way yeah and and you it almost becomes automatic yeah you you're so in the routine that is what an institution does in my view yeah a well-functioning well-meaning institution that's not designed for control is designed to give you the discipline that you don't have yourself it's organized spirituality yeah an organization is a is a is a plus it's not a negative yeah and I think to touch upon two other things you mentioned one is the maturity one and then just I'll I'll talk on this one first I think that's a big big big role of the institutionalization it's it's creating organization where there is otherwise um quote unquote freedom but really it's just a free-for-all Fantasyland yeah and I think people need to be willing to submit to that if you think you're going to transition from Material living an uncontrolled mind to the perfect path and immediate progress and immediate realizations doing it your own way regulated by yourself with no controlling mechanisms whatsoever it's delusional it really is delusional and I think people need to embrace that in a non-judgmental way it's not that we're pointing the finger and saying you're all stupid it's we're all conditioned and that doesn't make you stupid it makes you conditioned it's like a sick person a sick person can't be blamed for being sick but factually you're sick yeah and if you accept that you can take the the smartest root out of that sickness then it's the same thing here it's like okay as you were just saying the data May support this that if you perform an organized sort of set of practices methodical consistent addressing the exact root issues that are making you conditioned that are making you quote unquote sick you're going to heal much better than a sort of scattered random approach and I think I fully agree with you in the sense that what it should be the institution is that it's the systematized approach to this that it is able to disseminate to anyone in any situation that doesn't require the physical presence of the leader of whatever it is because it's just a well-oiled machine that helps you take it takes you 90 of the weight I I will always say that there is still there are things the institution can never provide because life is a bit too customized to the individual that the institution can't fully accommodate all of that but if it gets you 90 of the way that's that's fantastic the other point about about maturity I think people need to start to see things in a different way I I think a lot of the Hangouts people have with institutions is is the loss of Freedom the loss of personality and individualism because they feel like it becomes the number right a replica of others a robot I'm supposed to follow the same rules dressed the same way attend the same events whatever else and and meet the same criteria as everyone else and I think I understand the concern and the fear of individualism but I also think it ties into people's understanding of what spirituality truly is meant to be because if you buy Into The Vedic conception especially the division of a conception of the false ego that we are actually wrongly identifying with ourselves and who we think we are is not who we really are and there has to be a sadhana as a practice-based transition from who you're not to who you really are then you look at the organization and say if this is in any way diminishing my individualism in any way diminishing my quote unquote freedoms it's actually to my benefit because it just gives me a vehicle by which I can gradually relinquish this notion of who I think I should be and who I want to be and who I am I can relinquish that and then serve it's a vehicle of service and service is one of the key things that we talk about in our path that helps you transition from someone who wants to be served a pleasure seeking individual which is what human beings are it doesn't matter religion doesn't matter this is General observation about human beings we seek pleasure we seek gratification the idea of relinquishing that in favor of um seeking to to serve in any capacity I'm not making it specific now to serving a deity or God or whatever but just service using the tools that you have to make a difference in this world and the difference in the lives of others it makes you in a positive way forget yourself I don't mean neglect yourself because you're not being neglected by this process if you really give yourself the service the beauty of it is that you're not neglected you are satisfied you are made happy and and if everyone participates in this service culture you'll always have what you need right yeah I I think that's totally correct and if I if if people could just stick with this one truth yeah the I don't think it's voiced actually anywhere or maybe it does and I I'm not aware enough but If people could understand that you have to win your happiness like you have to win anything else yeah if they could just understand that because the the problem is it's this feeling in the material world that if I get whatever I want yeah and um you know that happiness is something effortless there's an effortlessness to happiness and it's effort that makes me unhappy yeah and that is actually the kind of ill and Corruption of society that we live in at the moment people have never had so much they've never had it so easy and they've never been so unhappy right so so the thing is in the same way as you win your strength in the gym in the gym but in the same way as you win your um Poise over your body and your Brilliance in martial arts in a dojo your intelligence at school your intelligence at school your happiness is to be one yeah you you are not born in the natural state of understanding mathematics yeah but you win it yeah and you're better for it yeah you understand the world better for having that knowledge likewise happiness is to be one it isn't given to you it's not innate yeah and um when you if you truly truly hold on to that then I think you'll one have discipline and see the benefit of consistency but you'll also understand that in the same way that I'm willing to go to a dojo and completely submit to that Kung Fu Master right and do whatever he says to train me in that art I will likewise go to a guru and understand that he has laid out a particular path that will get me to a certain state and I can either do it well and consistency consistently with discipline or I can do it in a haphazard way and kind of figure out oh do I have to do it today and and the result will be the same in this Arena as it is in that Arena yeah my daughter doesn't do her piano practice she gets Rusty she's not as good crack the whip and say you got to do your practice and not literally [Laughter] depends if I've got the nail polish on um yeah and and uh I I think that's it you you have to win your happiness and everyone should think about the times when they are happy yeah it's a kind of satisfaction and fulfillment that comes at the end of effort yeah really when you're really happy it's like I've achieved something I've done something I've improved myself I'm better um that happiness of like of pleasure and Leisure is so short-lived and it's an illusion well I fully agree I mean even to go to go to the Gita Krishna talks about the different types of happiness and he speaks about regossic happiness is exactly that it's it's pleasurable in the beginning but it ends up as poison whereas the satwik happiness the higher happiness is poison at first and ends up in happiness in nectar and I've always sort of pointed out that the most important part of this is that it's poison at first and you have to persevere to get to the true nectar at the end of it and it's people have this idea that if something is really good and really is going to bring you true happiness it should be good all the way through like if it brings you any discomfort it's not meant for you it's discarded it's not good it shouldn't you shouldn't feel that way about things that are good it should always be natural and and happy and great and I just think there's no support for that it's not true there's no like if You observe the world you see that there's no support for this if you see the scripture there's no support in this if I listen to Guru just speak there's no support in this because he talks about purification transformation and so I think people need to embrace the grind they need to embrace that exactly what you've been saying you've got to work for it you've got to earn it and I think if they if they just shift that mentality the things they're complaining about or that their mind tells them to complain about could say about organizations and institutions and rules and or and consistency and discipline and all these things start to at the very least make sense to them if not be something that they actually actively Embrace yeah and also you can't complain and say that something's not serving you until you've done it for a certain period and tested oh okay this isn't serving me and uh you know the Mind complains because the mind the mind is fueled by complain it lives by complaints yeah that's what we're finding them yeah yeah yeah yeah I think another thing is is when you when you join an organization or when you come to religious movement in the beginning you're coming there for your personal needs like you you obviously have a need that you've identified that you want to solve and I think what sometimes puts people off and I want to address it so that people understand a little bit where I'm coming from with this is that they'll join the organization and very quickly they'll be told to serve the purposes of the organization instead of their own so for example the organization needs money to sustain its temples and whatever else and so you're asked to contribute or to go out and make money for the organization or the organization needs to propagate and grow and accrue more devotees um or whatever it may be and suddenly you're working like you came to run away from the stresses of work life and and all of these sort of things in in your material life and you come to a religious movement a spiritual movement to drink from the fountain right to get nourished and within minutes you're asked to go and work for the purposes of the organization and I think people people sometimes develop resentment for that and I think it's wrong and I think they need to understand why I think it's wrong and that's because it's not that you're being asked to work for the benefit of the organization at the cost of your of what's good for you it's that what's good for the organization is also good for you and the reason I say that is because the organization and especially in our case in bhakti Marcus case it's it's much easier to trust that because guruji is around the person who you have placed your trust in as your Guru who knows what's best for you and you you at this point in time believe is acting for your benefit that person is also guiding the activities and projects and and I am and sort of daily operation of that organization he's on top of that and so what the organization is trying to achieve for example in opening ashrams he sees that as the greatest benefit for you even if you don't see it you think you just want to go listen to some bhajans meditate in a forest and that's what's best for you here's a different opinion and so that transition of I'm going to trust the doctor's opinion rather than my own of how I'm going to heal for example makes you not compliant out of obedience not compliant because out of ignorance but compliant out of a positive affirmation that I trust and know that what you're prescribing is for my personal benefit even if it's an indirect benefit I'm not addressing my immediate personal perceptible needs but by serving this Mission by spreading this by creating the temples and the ashrams and whatever else it is by Distributing these books whatever it may be I am actually feeling a much deeper hole inside of me I'm giving myself the tools in the community and whatever else that is actually going to solve me my issues at a deeper level because I think most people and this I've experienced as a Swami so many times because people come to me asking for advices and so many things they recognize they're sick they want to treat the symptoms they don't want to treat the sickness all the time so they they say I'm unhappy right and they say um can you help me learn to enjoy Puja or Temple prayers or reading the bhagavad-gita so can you give me a fleeting moment of Happiness can you help me enjoy something like that and I and I often tell them that no I can't because it would be irresponsible of me to say that that's the solution to sort of just say oh do you know what let me just give you a better musician that you enjoy a little bit more and then it will solve all your problems because you'll enjoy the music more the musicality of it no it's it's something deeper you have to actually um you have to to address what is it the core of it what is it the core of it in the sense of why don't you enjoy the kirtan why don't you enjoy the temple prayers and don't answer me because you don't like the musicians or because you don't like the the Aesthetics of the temple go deeper and I think when you go deeper you realize that it's often a mixture of things and I'm going off in a tangent here but I think it's it's relevant in one way it's a mixture of things for example you're afraid of letting go of the world you do know and the Comforts that you you do have you're afraid of what's coming because you don't know what's coming so what happens if I do give myself to all of this what happens if I do place my hands my on my life in the hands of God and so often you find that people are don't enjoy things not because the things aren't enjoyable but because they're just resisting they have a mindset that isn't compatible with it and that mindset is the root thing that needs to change and so it's like okay maybe the solution to the problem of you not enjoying prayers is not go to prayers 20 more times it's change your mindset so do some japa analyze yourself introspect talk to people be around people that inspire you to be better and and that leads me on to my the critical point I wanted to make about institutions they give you community whether you think you need it or not and then once you're in it you invariably see I did need this not because it's fun every time but because what I stand to learn from watching everyone else walk the same path I'm trying to walk I could never get if I was doing this by myself if I was having this free uninstitutionalized religion where I'm just sort of doing my own thing and I can tell you as much as I have seen people around me do things that I am not inspired by in the sense that I don't want to do that when you do meet that one person that has one trait it doesn't have to be everything there's no perfect people around here but when you meet one person that has a particular quality particular competence in something it inspires me in such a way that nothing else does like I look at that and I go I want to be more like that and I'm going to push myself and the more time I spend with that person the more I get almost like motivation out of nowhere and and that then is is the the Crux of me I think most people know what's good for them I don't think they need to be told I think most people um just lack the motivation we were talking about this do you mean within bhakti Marga or yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah not in the wider world I think I think in The Wider where people do have an internal compost they generally do know what's better and worse for them although with quite a bit of error there still but I think in bhakti Margaret for example once you've once you've heard three or four sat songs from guruji lectures right once you've participated in the devotee course you broadly know what you should be doing do some meditation do some career yoga chant your japa go to the temple read some bhagavad-gita like most people know this if you ask any devotee should you be reading by Vegito they'll say yes I should are you maybe not and so the only thing I see missing there is is motivation it's the drive it's the motivation and and I've been sort of diving into that I'm curious to hear what you think about where motivation comes from because you talked about discipline and that's obviously linked yeah but motivation for me seems to be that a golden ingredient yeah I mean so you're saying that once you're in the environment that can bring you more consistency and discipline you've nonetheless can be led to water but not made to drink and that has to come from within you yeah like guruji even says you know I can get the food prepare the food chew the food in your mouth all you have to do is swallow and then you're even not prepared to do that I think one of one of the things is that even though earlier I said you're trying to win happiness that it's not it's a happiness that is enduring and along the way to achieving that comes in you know moments of kind of I don't want to say euphoric experience but different experience yeah yeah you you gain a perspective that you've never had there's something that happens internally and I think most people that have been on the spiritual path um that keeps them in the game yeah they have certain experiences where they're like yes that's a glimpse of the ultimate happiness that I'm striving for but the happiness doesn't come like that yeah it's something that requires patience and endurance and consistency and I think the the motivation can only come from really understanding the magnitude of what you will ultimately have and again we come back to Doctrine and belief systems and why there's so much anxiety about you know knowing the nature of God knowing the nature of yourself knowing what you attain when you realize those things what is eternity what is all of this stuff because when you when you really focus on that aim yeah it's the thing is it's more than happiness isn't it it's it's the full meaning of everything it's the highest truth and it is your highest happiness because Bliss is what you are yeah right so it's it's it's happiness and Beyond it's it's absolute yeah it's non-relative it's by absolute I mean that it's the kind of love and happiness that you never would have the sense that I can have more bliss than this yeah it's it's it's a certain completeness you're literally striving for completeness and if you hold on to the magnitude of what you're doing and again that's where I think the the guru is such a blessing because he's the constant reminder one thing that guruji keeps saying at the moment is all of this is just a reminder yeah I'm just a reminder the guru's just a reminder yeah of the the magnitude of what you're going for yeah and I think that that if you can hold to that so when um someone does something incredible like we go to the moon or um someone wins a grand slam they will go through all manner of discipline and pain and heartache and knockbacks and everything you can imagine because the goal is so profound and big for them and they believe it's possible yeah they believe it's possible and in and that is bound up in guruji as well first of all you see the magnitude of what we're going for and you see the possibility of it and then you go for it and I think that's where it comes from I fully agree but don't you don't you think there's so many ingredients that have to come together for that to work so there's like knowledge of of what's possible and knowledge of that goal you're aiming knowledge on right and then you have to have you have to have the drive and the discipline and the motivation you have to have expertise of someone guiding you to that place otherwise you're just you know on a journey of sort of random Discovery maybe I can do this maybe I can't and so there's so many things that have to come together and isn't that really the purpose of the institution it's to put all of these things at your disposal in front of Youth almost like so that you can passively consume those things like you're just constantly exposed to the structures that are there to help you to advance as much as can be done because I was thinking you know what really helps me walk this path towards that God realization that ultimate truth knowledge knowledge helps me it's always helped me to understand to know myself more deeply to know God to know this world all of these things but it can't be dry it can't just be theoretical so I've got to feel because feeling drives me forward it makes me want more so okay I need to go sing in the temple I need to go do something right and then I maybe I sometimes start questioning myself am I getting it wrong now like have I have I got something inside of me that I'm not seeing like a black spot on your nose that kind of thing and so I need someone that I trust to be able to look at me and correct me and how on Earth are you supposed to get all these things if you're just sitting at home practicing solo spirituality this is what I can't wrap my head around and people who try to defend this people who try to say that that's a superior form of religion or spirituality I I don't want to be rude but it it come again I just the word delusion just keeps coming back to me I don't understand the the the benefits that that will bring compared to when you're living in an environment that is constantly pushing you towards these things if I don't want to think of guruji or if I don't want to think of God because I'm just so immersed in my selfishness right now I almost can't because I'm living in the ashram everywhere I walk I have a picture of guruji around or I have people talking about philosophy and God and it pulls me back to where I should be it pulls me back to something that is beneficial to me by my environment otherwise I have to go and create it myself well I mean my feeling about those people you describe who say I can do it all alone yeah I think um there are two categories one is that they're just amazing fluke individuals yeah like they're all they're like almost Saints who then don't need to do much to get over the line to sainthood and from previous lives yeah yeah and there's another category of people and I think everyone has maybe been this actually at some point like people in bhakti Margaret I think I've been this right where like to use that going to the Moon analogy again right if you can't fly you know we we don't have the capacity to fly as human beings but you you um somehow develop a plane yeah and you ascend into the air and you're like wow I've defied gravity this is the most amazing thing oh my God I think you can be so enamored by that change that you don't even consider that you could go to the Moon right and so it's often I've because I've met people like this and they're often the people who like you know but I've experienced these things and you know I felt this real peace or this real Bliss but I don't think what they've experienced is the profound fullness of everything right right and yes you can absolutely achieve that stuff on your own absolutely if you have a bit of discipline you like meditation um you you like going Within yeah I think you can I do get that I do get that I think it's just a more question of what are the odds you know that you're you're the the one out of a hundred that's gonna succeed in that way and I would rather recommend people to to be more humble most people are I I think that a lot of us I know for instance that I was doing spiritual reading yeah I know that I was dipping in and out of staff and and and I'm by no means saying that I'm like super disciplined now sure yeah sure but I know that it was very flaky right yeah and um that's just my nature I guess you know like having that little bit of Solace for that moment and that almost that idea of I'm going towards something higher was enough to keep me going than actually striving to realize that idea and and then when you encounter guruji and you're like well I I thought it was real but now I actually know it's real it guruji is a massive challenge because he's saying well it is real do you really want it then yeah and then when he lays down that challenge you you are compelled to either strive or say no I'm happy with a kind of shallowness yeah and a lot of people say yeah I'm gonna go for it yeah and this is what bhakti Margaret is a bunch of people who said no I want to go for it yeah I see in you that which I won okay and um the the thing is it's still difficult it's still difficult and um it's and it's that much more massive it it's more difficult than what you were doing before because it's so much bigger it's suddenly so much bigger like it's real you're gonna do it and when when it's so big I think that human nature such that it is consistency discipline that need for help that need for guidance it's just becomes doubly important or 100 fold more important and yet you you still some of that discipline needs to come from within but like you said if if you know every time you go on YouTube for example the algorithms pushed a satsang from guruji and you and you watch it and our guruji is speaking to me or um you know you've seen your calendar uh janmashtami is coming up I'm going to make the effort to go to the ashram or you know you just live nearby to an ashram and there's someone in Orange and you just get that Pang of oh yeah I should probably go to prayers today I haven't been for a while right then then it yeah it's it's a set of guide rails guard rails that just keep you in the game but I actually want to make that point clear when I say that you know this is an environment that supports your spiritual growth I don't mean just physically like so you have to live near an ashram or in an ashram or anything like that because I feel like for example the YouTube video of guruji that's that's an extension of the organization of the institution yes it is because you know we you need structure and money and all of these things to make those things available so when you're sitting at home you can sit there and participate in the organization in the institution by consuming all of these things that are beneficial for you um and I think that's sometimes the thing that people forget love doesn't pay the bills right yeah yeah and I don't see that in a derogatory way um but definitely people need to sometimes be reminded of that and and so there are certain things this world you know works by certain rules and you you sort of have to you you there is a necessity to all of this there's a necessity to to the organization I think I just want to probably from my side at least wrap this up from from my thoughts on it because I've talked we've talked a lot about I think some of the positive elements that the organization brings to the table organizing your life and organizing your your heart and mind in a way that you sort of lean Less on on fantasy and sort of free-for-all I think there are two things I would I have to mention I feel like are very important for especially the followers of bhakti Margaret to listen to firstly advancing in the institution doesn't mean advancing spiritually if you get a role of responsibility in the institution because you're competent in a particular area circumstances align for your service to be to be given in that way this doesn't equal advancement in bhakti advancement in in spiritual life so to speak and I think if people were to first of all just understand that they would look at the organization with far less um judgment on the one side and hunger on the other side of like I want positions and titles and responsibility because that means I'm greater and those who don't get it don't need to look at those people and think why is that person there you know they're not better than me and all of those kind of things that always happen in hierarchies and and very human institutions right as I have to say that because I feel like it's a constant issue in all institutions we look at the people at the top and think they must be the best it's not like that Guru just made that point abundantly clear and and we don't need to mix the domains of the material competency that is often needed to run an organization we need Architects we need construction people we need lawyers we need all sorts of people that doesn't mean that they are Saints it doesn't mean that they are great great buckters they can be that the person scrubbing the floor is the greatest bucket of them all right so we need to make that point abundantly clear and the the second Pitfall I think of the organization is that we have to constantly check ourselves we have to constantly look in the mirror and see if we're still aligned with the words and the instructions of them of our spiritual master of guruji in this case because as much as we can say and we do I do believe this that we are an extension of him he has said it himself bhakti Marga is an extension of myself it doesn't mean that we're infallible people who have been given responsibilities within the organization are still human and so when I say that guruji is monitoring he's on top of things he's he's part of this organization and we're an extension of him um I don't say in saying that I'm not saying everything that goes on in the organization is perfect and I'm excusing everything and everyone forever now from this point onwards has to have the sort of blind faith and trust that everything is perfect I'm not saying that and I think as an introspection we always have to look at ourselves and think am I complying because guruji is critical of the organization sometimes openly so not just in private not only speaking to us individuals he will sometimes openly say you know they didn't listen to some instruction that I gave yeah and for me that isn't a sign that you shouldn't trust or that isn't a sign that you shouldn't help it's a sign that we're human we're all human and we're all obviously struggling with the same the same issues an uncontrolled mind personal desires misidentification all this all these sorts of things so I think my my final request almost to to people who are not affiliated with bhakti Marga and then to the bhakti Margaret people is look at organizations and try to be as fair and grounded in your approach to it as possible which is understand the purposes for why they are created in the first place it's to organize disseminate to handle Mass size right if it was just a mission of five people or 12 disciples in the case of Jesus you don't need any organization because you're there Hands-On we are obviously not living in that reality and we don't want to we all we want this to reach as many people as possible so therefore embrace the need for it and after you've embraced the need for it whether this be an Islamic organization Christian Hindu it doesn't matter in your own context embrace the need for it once you've understood the essential need for it then we can transfer on to the and how is it executed phase and in that I agree sort of we have to have conversations introspection transparency honesty and all these sorts of things it helps a lot build trust in the institution um but for bhakti Margaret people now specifically I would say trust in your Guru he is a very Hands-On Guru and talk talk to people if you want to understand something ask talk right now we're having this conversation and I think we're all open to have these conversations yeah well I mean that all makes um great sense and the thing that I think that bhakti Marga does that is most important actually having heard you say all that is to get guruji to you wherever you are and whatever you're doing and quite right that couldn't happen without some kind of organizational apparatus and if you feel you benefit from there so you know we don't live in the first century where you can only benefit from the instruction and Grace of your master by being there in person or a best receiving a letter because they were sending letters to each other it's all Epistles isn't it yeah pigeons of Paul yeah um you you can in real time experience your master wherever you are in the world but that can't just happen like that in a vacuum and what you put in is what you get out yes so the many people putting themselves in mean that you also are receiving that benefit it's a cycle of service yeah there is a cycle and um you know to to be able to be on a boat or in Australia when guruji's in Germany and still experience in real time that connection is is a wonderful thing that couldn't happen without an institution yeah and uh you know to put yourself into that and make it happen for you and everyone else you win and everyone wins right well it's help us help you right yeah and I think that's what we say the same in Reverse um and I and I feel like on that level bhakti Margaret is actually um quite phenomenal to be honest because any devotee doesn't matter where they are the minute they're initiated as devotees they have access to an educational platform that can keep them busy with knowledge for hours and hours a year plus they have the ability to follow guruji around the world with virtual pilgrimages video content so many things and I just feel like no matter where you are in the world if if you're able to participate in this cycle of service you're always going to get plenty back from it um but as I said I think the most important thing is if you feel that that's not the case if anyone feels it's not the case in any context approach that organization that institution and talk just talk because it helps us to understand how to serve you um but I'm happy with that and I think it's important people come to terms with the necessity and the benefit of the organization so that they stop demonizing it um it doesn't need to be organizations don't need to be institutions don't need to be demonized but maybe in a future episode if if um if if it makes sense we could talk a little bit more about that um post sort of charismatic leader thing because there's a lot to unpack there and you can observe in in Christianity and in pretty much every other religion after the leader does leave there are very clear patterns Elite schisms and all sorts of things for bugti markets are relevant we're not in anywhere near that stage and so we don't need to go into it now but I think there's more to unpack there but I'm happy with that you yeah yeah Okay cool so for the cult and SEC thing um what I want to do if you're if you're good with it I want to read Oxford dictionary definition of those terms oh cult sect and religion yeah and then from there I think that will give us plenty to work with to sort of unpack um what the issue here is and I think firstly it's just similarly with institutionalization people use these terms as pejoratives it's it's a negative thing oh it's a cult it's a sect um and I find that to be uh hypocritical massively hypocritical and I think my my great challenge that I would like to post today is um once we've seen these definitions then either bhakti Maga isn't a cultural sect great well everything else is or everything else is too I'm not playing it any other way so let's get to it um cult so occult is a system of religious veneration and devotion directed towards a particular figure or object I mean right there it's almost like every religion possible fits into this but okay sect is a group of people with somewhat different religious beliefs typically regarded as heretical from those of a larger group to which they belong and the religion is the belief and worship of a superhuman controlling power especially a personal God or gods um however these are just the basic definitions when you just dig one result deeper on a Google search for example you'll get an alternative definition of a cult which is a cult is a term in most contexts pejorative for a relatively small group which is typically led by a charismatic and self-appointed leader who excessively controls its members requiring unwavering Devotion to a set of beliefs and practices which are considered deviant right by who I don't know but and then literally there's a quote I found this morning just as I was coming here um that I think is the nail on the head I don't know who said this but the quote is as follows a cult is an unpopular religion and a religion is a popular cult [Laughter] um and I think that's exactly it what do you what do you what are your initial thoughts on that it it's it's tough because um like if you think about um Waco in Texas yeah this uh cult and then the Jonestown cult Jim Jones yeah then you're like there are some nefarious things out there that need to be guarded against yeah because um you know Jonestown ended in the massacre where they all poison themselves right not suicide right on the orders of the cult leader yeah and um that fits into the definition but then there are other things that are far from nefarious and look very much like mainstream religion that also fall into the definition and this is a problem with words and labels that um it's a blunt instrument which captures something that is edifying and good for the adherents and they say no I'm happy and I'm free to do this and I'm doing this willingly um well actually even I mean both of them would say that they're free and they're doing it willingly that's the thing um but from from the outside looking in you would say well you know you guys ended up by taking your lives and you guys are maybe doing some odd things but it's not dangerous it's just different from what I'm into right and it and it's very hard because they must well I guess my instinct is to say there must be more nuanced definitions and uh deepening that that needs to be done a more deeper interrogation yeah unless it's like a deeper analysis and perhaps the real problem is the societal problem of let's just Chuck out an accusation without even thinking you're a cult yeah yeah and um you know you said at the beginning that some people would say that bhakti Marga is a cult and if you interrogate more deeply you would see well there are the Hallmarks of religion um and actually the only difference really between bhakti Marga and a mainstream religion religion is numbers and time and time um and then and then I'm sure if you interrogate things about um Jonestown you would see things that are very specific to that or or that kind of Dane I think I think I think what it is is people people associate Cults with danger yeah is this dangerous to the persons brainwashing and restriction you know full submission and obedience and all these sort of things I think let's see I think this is the right way to go about it let's just do away with the terms for a bit and let's just discuss what the real concerns are right yeah when people look at book The Market they think well here's a guru he requests obedience and service and they worship Him um that's enough basically to make people very very dubious of it all and and until you start using these these pejoratives right and I think that um there's two ways I want to address this firstly if you look at Christianity um especially in its early days we're looking at Jesus because that's what you have to do if you look at Christianity it's no point judging it by what it is now um he was exactly exactly this if you look at the Gospel of John I mean I can literally pick out so many quotes to talk about exclusivity of Truth only Jesus is the way right and absolute surrender submission obedience um 14 15 15 14 he says he goes as far to say you're only my friends if you're obey my commands if you're obey what I tell you to do then only you can be my friends um if you love me obey my commands it's all in the Gospel of John and and I look at that and I think isn't this just standard religious practice that here comes a person let's just theoretically talk about this here comes a person who knows something you don't about God about the nature of reality they know it for certain and they look at humanity and they say I want to help them and they see the humanity doesn't help itself like our Tendencies our ignorance makes us take such awful decisions all the time yet they'll come to us because they're Touched By by our Transcendence of the individual and say I want to follow you isn't it reasonable that that person would would look at them and say but you need to follow my instructions because I cannot take responsibility for you if you're not willing to follow my instructions it's the same thing a doctor will not ever take responsibility for the actions of a patient if they don't follow their own instructions the doctor says you've got to follow the prescription follow what I'm saying you then you'll get healed if you do Your Own Thing If You Freestyle I can't take responsibility for what's about to happen you go to a jungle you're following the guide the guide says look if you don't listen to me you can get killed in here right but if you follow what I'm telling you you'll get through this jungle safely yeah it's I don't see any difference in the model yeah but where I do agree with you fully is that we have to have common sense and you have to have um logical I think Frameworks by which you can assess a claim that is being made by somebody and say is this nonsensical or is there something to this in the case of guruji and bhakti marker it isn't anything like a Jim Jones situation because he's first of all saying yes I am a guru he's enlightened whatever we should submit um two key points here first of all it's a voluntary submission from our side and it's at any at all times voluntary I can back out I can come in at any time I want first of all second he's not teaching innovations that have never been taught before he is following a tradition we are vaishnavas within Hinduism we do japa we do uh kriya yoga we do Puja and all of this even if there are some differences here and there is rooted in thousands of years of tradition this is not something being made up as much as sometimes bhaktima devotees would like to say guruji is a revolutionary it's iterations he's just changing it's iterative yeah it's not it's not a revolution in in many ways and I think people need to come to terms with this and I think this touches upon something else which is most of these accusations of Cults and sex come from Western audiences this isn't something that Indians are broadly concerned with unless they've been westernized and I've lived in India and I can sort of attest to this um and it's I think quite a and I usually don't like to accuse people of this but it's quite a bigoted and sort of Hindu phobic lens with which people view things because and again I do recognize the existence of the Jim Jones's of this world but but can I play Devil's advoca go for it go for it I think that there are quite a lot of charlatans in India there are and there are a lot of people and that's a shame who put themselves up as gurus in India but um I think what it comes down to is intention yeah because if the intention of the leader of the movement or the mission is selfish for instance I want to enrich myself I want to gain power over people and um you know it's all basically narcissistic then that can corrupt anything yeah so you can insert yourself into a tradition and you can use in fact it's almost easier in India because the um extent to which the guru is upheld gives you that opportunity to insert yourself and say well I'm one of those and I'm only here for your benefit and follow me and give me your money right and and and there are plenty of them so really I think it's for um it's it's a very nuanced and it requires a lot of analysis a lot of experience of the situation yeah to come to the conclusion or to answer the question rather is this self-serving or is it for the service of the adherence yeah and um and when when maybe that is the barometer by which you can separate the good from the bad yeah because certainly we cannot just say that because something is small and heterodox that it's wrong and bad for those people you you that that you just can't do that yeah otherwise we're living in a monotone Society where everyone it's that's totalitarianism yet to say anything heterodox or different or off the wall or offbeat um is wrong yeah it's crazy but but we now live in that Society we're becoming more and more totalitarian in terms of ideas and what you're allowed to believe and what you're allowed to think yeah do you see it which is weird given people think of our times as being highly Progressive but there's a very different undercurrent going on of restricting oh don't deviate thought speech everything else don't don't deviate from the the um given from on high narrative narrative yeah but but that's that's plainly wrong and um you know so um and and we see examples of persecution of sects that the mainstream religion views as heterodox for example sufis are not well regarded by the mainstream sunnis and the what's the other one the uh somebody's or whatever yeah um and so um but really are those people coming to harm because of what they're following right I know they're a bit different because they're not rooted in a charismatic leader but you know the the principle remains but then if you if you go to sort of a Jonestown situation and you look mentally unhinged um obviously self-serving and then was it to the ultimate benefit of the adherence that they committed mass suicide right and um you can only really know from inside yeah that's that's how it's going to come to that yeah yeah and the the fact is that um when you for instance know guruji and you know the work that he does and the incessant traveling and um the modest way that he lives yeah um you have a very clear picture that it's not self-serving yeah and also when you've um stuck to the path felt the benefit felt the inner transformation and you just say but I know for a fact that this is benefiting me I is a rational ordinarily skeptical individual who nonetheless has seen something in guruji has had some faith has followed it benefited from it and also can see that everything that's being done is of a service to everyone else not to be served you know in a selfish way back um that then then your then you're not in a cult situation right I think a major thing you touched upon is there are just so many charlatans right oh so many but I really no really and it makes me feel sorry because it means that the landscape is damaged right that the spiritual religious Guru landscape is damage to a point of no return in my opinion and it's therefore the reasonable position to be skeptical it's the reasonable position to be doubting and scrutinize and and I think here there's a new problem which is because of um social media in general but the internet in general is not not social media only it's just the internet in general um we're able to have very superficial experiences of people that wasn't the case before so for example satis Sai Baba you know if you heard in the 90s about him performing Miracles you've basically got to get on a plane and go to India and meet him and experience him for yourself yeah right nowadays if you hear about Parma Hampshire vishwananda let me just pop on YouTube and have a little you know five minute clip and okay I made my mind up about him he dresses this way he acts this way got it that's who he is it's wrong that's not how you get to know people that's not how you judge people but we've all become highly superficial in my opinion but again I I sympathize because of how many charlatans are out there but it's also so easy to make an accusation yeah that someone is the child I said yeah and um as I said the landscape is really destroyed oh it's it's but but it it can be destroyed the other way by people who just like throwing out accusations I mean that that's also the Hallmark of our society is like I will accuse anything and everything despite not being fully aware of the facts despite not having experienced it myself because there's no consequence often to me accusations no there is there isn't any a lot of the time and that's the thing like I wish people I've had these conversations before they've come to me complete strangers and say you know how do you how do you really know that your Guru is good and everything you're doing is good and I say to them you know I wish I could open my heart and show you because words are never going to convince you if I tell you now you're just gonna it's gonna all gonna come down to how much you trust me now I try to present myself as a rational thinking logical uh grounded person because it helps people to um relate to me to and to experience everything that I then have to share as being authentic and real but at the same time I know nothing can replace personal experience and the fact of the matter is as we've already said unless you do your personal investigation you're always making assumptions from what you can see from the outside or trusting in other people's testimonies it's no there's no other real way to go about this and we throw away we can throw all these terms we want sect cult religion as I said these can be sort of molded to fit any religious group I can look at Christianity and say that is the the epitome of a sect or a cult they were Jews yeah that deviated they were deviant heretical Jews a small little group and they worshiped this charismatic leader and they gave him absolute obedience they were willing to die for him they did die for him right isn't that every negative stereotype of a cult that you could possibly imagine and there's biblical evidence of all of this it's not even made up stories it's in their doctrinal text but because with time it grows and develops over thousands of years 2000 in this case and now it's so huge that you just look at this and say no this is bona fide organized religion right and and I always find it so bizarre I I remember I'll never forget I was in a a spiritual sort of health esoteric holistic Fair here in Germany and uh I was walking around dressed as a monk and I came across a German couple there were I have to confess I don't really know what they were doing on their stand there I didn't pay too much attention because the the gentleman sort of spoke to me in one of the other devotees that was with me and said why do you have to bring your culture from this culture from India to Germany is you know why can't we use sort of German spiritual Traditions to to you know better ourselves and whatever else and I said oh such as what and he said well Christianity I said are you joking like Christianity German you mean middle eastern like what is the difference but is this idea that Christianity has just rooted itself as being the West's religion it's not Western right it came from the East the Middle East right in the middle of the East so to speak and it's just like that's what I mean by the landscape just being so distorted and so broken up people's conceptions of all of this is so conditioned and and indoctrinated that they just lose perspective and if you tell this to a Christian Jesus was demanding worship he was demanding obedience he was putting all of these things that that you're accusing Hindu gurus or in this case um either they just go into denial or they they actually become shocked at how they've not looked at this and not seen the evidence and said you know what you're right there's not really any difference in this except size and time as we said earlier and so the the truth of the matter is to avoid the the Jim Jones's of this world you've got to you've got to inspect and analyze and be and be a bit more sincere about your your analysis of the situation because superficial analysis is based on what people wear or what you know how they present themselves superficially it's just it's immature it's it's really immature it's not how you you sort of get to know anybody in in the world why would you apply this to gurus suddenly as if that's the standard and Hindus are very guilty of this I'll now sort of turn the lens on ourselves Vice universally we will we love we love condemning um a sort of false Guru or not Bonafide Guru an improper Guru based on arbitrary things like the clothes that he's wearing and it's so nonsensical and I and I I campaign strongly against this and I speak to people you know very strongly about this and I think people need to be sort of jolted into shaking their Paradigm of how they look at this if you want to know the legitimate legitimacy of somebody get to know them and to get to know the means talk to them spend time with them observe them and exactly as you said when you start to see that he doesn't live life for himself but rather for others consistently not once in a while but consistently over years again I wish people could have the experiences that I've had I've been living here in tribute any Lion in Germany the ashram for 14 years now and I've been following Burnham station under for 17 18 years you can't replace that sort of experience and so I've seen firsthand what he actually does in his free time right um and if you just saw his fancy clothes and some nice jewelry and him getting some worship on a guru purnima live stream for example he'll go wow look at him it's just in it for himself isn't he and it's it's it's this kind of immature superficial analysis that I'm trying to that I hope by this kind of conversation people can sort of snap out of well there are there is like a kind of um discipline of cultic studies like it does exist I don't know how well developed it is but there's like um these measures of what is a cult um people have tried to go deeper than that dictionary definition to um make the distinction between the nefarious and the non-nefarious the the um bad for the adherent and the the good or neutral for the adherent and um even by those measures bhakti Marga doesn't count yeah it doesn't fall foul of those tests guruji and bhakti manga doesn't fall foul of those tests yeah because there are things to do with like compulsion and um separation from family and your life and and all of these um sort of descriptors of what what makes a bad cult should we say and um so even with those tools in place people still throw accusations around because they are unwilling to just do that little bit of work to find out well what is going on there and how does it compare to these definitions that have been developed and yeah it so it's not wrong for people to want to be skeptical it's not wrong for people to want to be cautious and careful and to know that something is good for them or good for a loved one or good for people in general who are encountering it and um I don't begrudge anyone doing that I don't begrudge anyone applying that critical lens on something what I think is the problem is the unwillingness to develop a framework of what is actually bad and what is good and also to be consistent in the application of that framework and um to yeah just always use it in in every situation and and and the fact is if you applied that framework to quite mainstream beliefs and yeah religions even you might uncover things that you don't like there absolutely and I think this is both true of the Christian world of the Viking of the world we we care a little too much sometimes about proving ourselves as being legitimate and and sort of almost harm yourself more than you're helping yourself so for example when Vice never say everything must be in Scripture it must be if it's not in Scripture it can't be true when the scripture itself says that there are things outside of itself yeah yeah uh Sumit bhagavatam for example says that the laws incarnations are innumerable to the point where it cannot mention them all it cannot list them all but then we'll say okay but let's only then follow the incarnations that are mentioned well is that really sensible um if you take Christianity they'll Christians will stress so much the prophecies in the Old Testament of Jesus's um arrival right because it helps them to solidify his person in Tradition in history it's not just the sort of momentous thing of these guys thinking oh yeah he is great uh it's it's foretold but you do realize that the Jews study that very same scripture and don't come to this conclusion right so it's not that just because you've pointed this out this is now universally accepted and obvious for everyone and now this makes you irrefutably legitimate I mean will the Jews ever be forgiven for having rejected two Messiahs right you have the Christians who look at them and say Here's your Messiah and they say no and then the Muslims come Mohammed this is the one that you say no again like and this is the thing are they just having legitimate other opinions about these matters and it's the same thing here and I think we need to be more nuanced we need to be more understanding we need to have a a wider lens of analysis as well because I've met people who are very religiously tolerant or at least they claim themselves to be but they'll be so anti-gurus in general and they'll say Guru means sect Guru means called and I'll look okay but you do realize that it is embedded in Hindu scripture that the guru is a key figure almost like a a necessary figure and almost the highest necessary figure in a successful Hindu life right and so for you to just condemn gurus as a blanket statement that's what I mean when I mention Hindu phobia it's almost like you're unwilling to understand the wider Hindu lens and treat this as a genuine bona fide religious principle and rather just sort of say oh Guru means cheater and some charlatan right that doesn't take away the fact that you mentioned there are many charlatans and so yes we do have to to have some sort of a framework that's why I said there is tradition there is scripture device numbers will point to sampradaya you have to have some Prada if you have a succession like a parampara a disciplic succession of gurus this helps to add legitimacy but the thing is I could start a religion yeah right what's stopping me yeah the the thing is I could say look I've I've read some things I've experienced life this is how I think it is right now if I do that I even without any claim to sort of having a a profound Beyond mundane experience in the world I can just say look this is what I believe yeah and then I could say that with such conviction and such Force and and in such a compelling way that people say well we're going to start following you and then I'll say well this is what I want you to do right and I could do all of that would it be wrong would it be wrong because um and and would it and would it be wrong for people to follow it would be wrong for them to trust you blindly yes yeah I don't think it'd be wrong to if they feel like they agree with what you're saying and it brings in benefit of course it wouldn't be wrong of course it wouldn't be wrong and we need to make that clear yeah it would not be wrong exactly but it would be wrong for them to trust you implicitly yeah exactly so so if if um if I do all of that yeah right and I don't I don't compel them there's no compulsion yeah you must do this that there's no sense of um you need to give me everything yeah yeah just just give me everything um without question without knowing you know there's no um force or coercion and all of that but I'm just a guy who's who just said well this isn't what I think the world is and um you can either follow me or not right what what is what is um disallowed by that if those people want that and I hope but you know what it is I think the filter there is you're making you're basically presenting yourself as a philosopher Theologian right yeah and if you do that and you don't make any Supernatural claims about yourself then you don't require Supernatural behavior from from your disciples right they just need to sort of adhere to your teachings as long as it's beneficial for them they will yeah I think that in the case of Someone Like Jesus or guruji where there is a little extra sort of in the culture of obedience and and all of this I think to to justify those requests of worship or obedience or whatever it may be there has to be some Transcendent display um for us disbelief that this person is of a different nature this person is in a different state of consciousness or whatever it may be yeah and I think that's what comes my purpose in saying what I've just said is it's say it's not easy to come to conclusions about what's right and what's wrong no yeah it's a cult what's bad what's good I I could you I mean you just said philosophy I could say that you know there's a lot of good stuff in Plato right yeah and and um that Greek concept of the world is really compelling you know there is a kind of panentheistic concept that's quite like Hinduism there's a sense of the unity of everything um this this flowing with nature you know stoicism yeah yeah right and I could just say I'm I am now the head of the neoplatonic Society of Springer Germany yeah that's me that's who I am come and listen good to have you on the podcast yeah come and listen to my talk yeah yeah and and then you come and listen to my talk and I say um in order to achieve some realization akin to what Plato must have had to come to these conclusions from within himself yeah we need to do what Plato did let's behave like Plato yeah all of the things that Plato did I'm doing and I'm coming to realizations and you should do them as well right and then and then I feel good and then the people following me feel good and you know but we need a place to to do our Plato stuff right so can can you all stamp up a bit of cash yeah so that we can rent that place right and then we rent that place and I keep talking and a few more people come and we're like hey why don't we own the place that would be more secure and then we're free to meet more often and everything and so then people give a bit more money we actually buy a place right you tell me now what's wrong with that is there anything wrong with that everyone's happy everyone's feeling edified everyone's feeling good and also tell me what is different between that and you going into a church being told these things like the priest is not making a claim that he's Supernatural he's just saying there's some guys back in the day that knew this Supernatural guy and and this is what we're following you can feel good if you do but you hit the nail on the head there the priest is not making Supernatural claims about himself so in the example you just gave I think it's all right nothing wrong with it yeah yeah I think the the the the most important thing is the responsibility on the individual who is heading the religion or the spiritual movement or the alleged cult to be transparent and honest about how who and what he is right so not to make any false claims about himself yes on that side and on the side of the of the devotee or the follower whatever you want to call it to to um scrutinize every belief that they hold about that individual because in this case you're just teaching a philosophy about the world so to speak nothing about yourself in the example you gave right and that's there for relatively safe there's not much that can come from that but what but but just to push it yeah because the reason I'm saying this is It's So subtle and nuanced right because you know what what I've just said about me doing this is is it that difference from a Jonestown kind of thing because I don't know much about it yeah but I think his thing was Society is done yeah we're going to create a Utopia in South America wherever it was where wherever Jonestown is and we're going to live by a set of ideals that you're going to be happier in I don't think he was saying he was divine no no I think at that point you're right but I think eventually didn't he start to make claims that um he knew what was going to happen he knew the future and then he knew what would be the result of that matter yeah I think so yeah yeah right that's a supernatural yeah yeah yeah yeah that's what I mean the minute it goes to the supernatural realm the claims right that you have powers that others don't yeah that needs to be heavily scrutinized yeah so um that does put us in a unique position then doesn't it because we are making such claims yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but but that's why I like to point out the similarities to Christianity because the same claims were made there right or very similar claims the same thing with gaudia vaishnavism which is and so this comes to my final point I guess really about this is at the end of the day every single religious movement that is successful spiritual movement all started with one person who displayed Transcendence of some sort and then some people believed it enough to tell others who then chose to believe it too yeah and to some extent there has to be um either political reasons to prop up that belief and to keep it alive on the one side of the coin or on the other side experiential reasons that you're able to reproduce the experiences that their first people who who followed alleged to have so in the case of Chris because sometimes it could be a marriage of the two as well so in the case of the history of Christianity you can point to the tradition of saints that have had the Transcendent experiences of Christ and God the Father through the the teachings of Christ but you can also point to political influence and political agendas for propping up Christianity at different moments in history both of those things are true and so both of those things have contributed to the to the propping up of Christianity into the maintenance of Christianity but at some point you have to break it down to why did Islam ever take you know take root because people believed that the prophet Muhammad was receiving Revelation from the Archangel Gabriel if they wouldn't believe that there is no Islam to talk about people had to believe in that that was going on in that moment well the the problem the problem is that today and I guess uh any one time in history but it's more profound today because of the so-called Enlightenment yeah you know from the 1700s on um you know the scientific Enlightenment that people talk about that they're going to be a bunch of people who staunchly cannot believe that a Transcendent being exists right because they don't believe in Transcendence they don't believe in God they only believe in materiality and um that that's the that's the problem is that a group of people who themselves have an inherent bias although they'll see a very well-informed bias because there's no tangible scientific scientifically verifiable evidence of what you're saying then just look at anything that claims Transcendence has to be wrong yes there's no discussion or debate it's not like oh let me test paramahams of vishwan under your um claims or even adherent of paramam's of ishwananda that you've experienced that let me test it it's like I must disregard it because also one thing I've noticed is the when you talk to very skeptical skeptical people who who are highly atheistic and and just like this is not possible even when you say oh but there's this saint with an Incorruptible body it's all historically verified that is their body you can visit their body you can see their body they will find a way to explain that away and it's funny it's almost like they're in their own cult yeah or Michael of not believing in the possibility of anything Transcendent but this this is that you touch upon the most important thing and I think that everyone needs to realize this and that is when you have conversations with anybody about belief in God or the assessment of the validity or not of some Guru or whatever set the paradigms of what is acceptable proof like what what where's the line where you're saying that would convince me because if you don't have that from the person you're just arguing with the wall yeah like there's people who you say to them like do you believe in God they'll say no and you say Okay imagine now that you say you look up this guy you say God are you real and then the clouds form the words yes I am Jonathan and that's your name right um and you'll go yeah but that could be just you know technology oh that's an alien that's not proof of God and and if you can't if the person wouldn't accept that as sufficient evidence right what are you doing you're just wasting your time right yeah and so this is something I've been in countless religious debates I've been there and debated against Muslims and Christians and whatever else and it's just the biggest takeaway from those experiences has been that you need to set the framework of the conversation ahead of schedule like you need to understand what would be satisfactory evidence for you to say that this is a legitimate movement and not a cult what would be satisfactory evidence for you to say that this is truly a Transcendent experience and not just some charlatan or something that can be explained by material under our material empirical understanding of reality right if those things are not mapped out in advance or if somebody says um I don't know most of the time you're just wasting your time you're absolutely wasting your time and and that's the thing I I have experiences with guruji that I've personally had right that I believe to be fully Transcendent and have no material explanation whatsoever I can share them I probably will share them in several episodes or several podcast episodes but at the end of the day it's just okay do I seem like a reliable person yes or no that's going to be the the criteria of people to believe me or not and most people as you've said in the society we live in today are going to look at that and say I just reject it outright and to those people I would say now I set the sort of challenge now and leave it there open-ended is that the scientific method is that the rational mature method to just dismiss things outright because they don't suit your preferred understanding of reality but it's also so arrogant I have to say that the arrogance of people when they dismiss right because and and when we think about Jesus and um those more historical figures where there was science yeah people say there wasn't there was some signs it wasn't in anywhere near the dead she is now right but there was there was logic there was rationality Etc um but now with that times 10 or however much right um it's it makes what guruji's done even more incredible and amazing and and the people who attack yeah it it shows their arrogance their deep arrogance because he's in Europe most of the adherents have a level of Education where they would at least question things yeah they understand they've been taught um scientific principles in school they've um done experiments they understand the scientific methods Administration I've spoken to religious leaders right prominent religious that have said Europe is the last place I would ever go to try to start my movement because of how rational educated cultured they are and how unlikely they are to believe anything there you go and and um you know some of the most atheistic societies are in Europe for that reason because um and and it's just only what I can measure or experiences with my experience with my senses is true yeah even though one can conceive of at least in an abstract way that there might be something called metaphysics something that's beyond physics and beyond our comprehension Consciousness giving a signal to that because no one can really explain Consciousness or understand it but still because the scientific method is to form a hypothesis and test it and that's not testable I'm not going to do it and I'm going to hold at least my judgment on it but most of the time just say actually it's not true right so then you've got um a master who's come to an environment where people are educated they don't live in a superstitious Society everything about the society is geared towards production rationalism scientific Endeavor engineering everything yeah everything you can imagine but in spite of that loads of people who then say yes having grown up in that environment I am skeptical rational and all of those things when I encountered paramahams of ishwananda something Beyond happened or I experienced something that I've never experienced that I can't explain to you because it is not over the senses and you as the Arrogant person you are say well you're a fool I dismiss it yeah I dismiss it yeah and um and it's not just a singular experience it's corroborated experiences across time across continents hundreds of people thousands of people I dismiss them all is it isn't it isn't it amazing that you know you could you can dismiss something like Jonestown and say um you know well first of all he wasn't making Supernatural claims in the beginning right but then you know someone charismatic could gather up some people who have problems in their lives who are weak who are looking for an answer yeah that kind of manipulation can happen but then you look at you look at this Mission and you say he's come to Europe there are doctors dentists lawyers and everything and anyone and everyone a whole range of experience from a whole range of countries yeah and it's completely open you can just walk in the door has an open door policy you can literally walk in the door and say tell me about what you are two things to that actually right let me touch upon that this open door policy before you get initiated in bhakti Marga there's at least a two-year process of qualification where you have to see if you even want to adhere to the lifestyle of a devotee and it's done out of pure care for the people it's like I don't want you to get initiated into and to sort of commit yourself to something that might not work out for you so it's not even we're in a rush to just collect people and make devotees everywhere no matter what let's just cheat them guruge is very very careful and caring for the people it's like look here's the period of preparation just try to incorporate this into your lifestyle if it works great we can have a chat later and consider initiation if it doesn't work you're not getting initiated that's fine just continue to follow within your lifestyle firstly second of all people have left every rank possible at devotees amongst brahmacari's swamis they've all left and come back all the time yeah they're literally broken vowels left without sort of this big demonization and then come back sometimes a year later sometimes 10 years later and sort of okay there's there's a difficult chat to be had of like let's face the reasons why it didn't work out but then immediately welcome back in there's no issue right yeah and that for me is is another Hallmark of what we're really about yeah so so um the the I guess that was where we're talking is can you throw that accusation well first of all are you coming from a place of inherent bias because you you are not willing to even keep yourself open to the possibility of a mass physical reality right or are you in that chem admit to yourself that you're in that camp if you are yeah yeah but I'm good with it yeah yeah then then if you're not yeah and you say no I I am someone who believes in something metaphysical right but I don't believe that your master is there then you are free to come right and interrogate everything the experiences of everyone around their culture their background and and then also speak to to that personality themselves and hear what they say and know what they do right you're free to do that but don't just throw out that word cult yeah or it's untrue because of your own biases or your lack of interrogation of the situation yeah because then you're the cult in a way yeah you formed your own Cult of blanket denial of something without actually investigating you're the brainwashed one yeah yeah yeah yeah absolutely and and I think um yeah people people are so quick to say just because it happened in my head just because that thought was in my head it's got to be right yeah it has to be correct yeah and then when people who are of that nature speak they themselves form their own personality cult I tell you what some of the ways that the the behaviors around people like um Rich Dawkins yeah it's all it's like they're the god of their adherence whatever they say yeah yeah it's like wow yeah yeah yeah yeah um whatever his book's called what is it um oh I forgotten anyway God is not dead or God is dead or whatever I can't remember the name of his book right so we're always good at it Christopher Hitchens the God Is Not Great oh God it's got delusions yeah so Hitchens and Dawkins and and the the thing is yeah you you can none of this is provable except within you right but if you're unwilling to accept that possibility then yeah okay what are we gonna do what are we gonna do but be reasonable yeah yeah it's an invitation to to rationality and reasonability and I think uh open-mindedness free thinking and I think there's two one I mean my clutching remark on this is a I think uh scrutinize and question like be a free independent thinker but also don't do it to the extent where you're constantly scrutinizing and you're not willing to settle on a on a conviction as well so I think we have to have this dual-sided nature almost where we're like I'm open to sort of questioning and exploring but at the same time I'm also opening to accepting what I have found at the conclusion of my exploration because you have you have people who who sort of go too far in they believe too easily without any sort of analysis and questioning and then you have people who just question everything and never come to any conclusions and are never happy to settle at anything because they're it's inherently skeptical and and Vedic culture in general is all about uh inquiry but at the same time it condemns doubt so if you look at the Gita um it talks about the the jignas or the the investigator the one who searches for knowledge who's inquiring um the the vedanta sutras the Brahma sutras they start with the the injunction to inquire into the nature of Brahman into the nature of God the very first verse do this jignass for this investigation chapter 4 verse 34 of the Gita Krishna says when you approach a guru at approach with extensive inquiry so there's constantly this push to investigate investigate investigate these but these people who dismiss everything only investigate with their mind yeah but the investigation is actually experiential within yeah so it's actually not to go outside collect data find the empirical evidence the only route to that Transcendent reality is from within you you have to go because those are the claims the claims are about nature of self that you have to experience it in the self right yeah and and um so so there's so much bias the and Prejudice that these people who condemn even religion but then also point the finger at things that are not mainstream religion and say it's a cult and um it's it's all based in herent bias and or a lack of willingness to um go into it and really know more about it like for instance people there are people who go all religions are BS yeah and they're all the same yeah and they're frankly not the same they're making completely different claims and uh you know the the Hallmark of Hinduism and the thing that sets it apart from say Islam Christianity and Judaism is that it's experiential yeah you are here to experience yourself as you truly are yeah and and bigger than you are when essentially trapped in this body but I don't think these people who dismiss all religions as bad and the same have even bothered to find out oh that's what hinduism's about that would be a revelation to them they'd be saying Oh but you just worship God like they do or even worse weird-shaped Gods yeah yeah always go into that right yeah yeah yeah and it's always Kylie Kylie comes up yeah yeah yeah you oh you just you you you're you're they're Pro I'm scientific they're primitive and you're even more primitive how about we do this I think this is great material for a future episode on comparative religion because I think as much as who is Myron maybe maybe because I think as much as there is this introspection needed like or at least this analysis on on an experiential personal level I think there is also a logical coherence that has to apply there so for example if a religion claims that their God is all loving and perfectly merciful but then we'll send them to Hell forever that's part of the analysis that you have to do like this is a logical incoherence in your claims right and I think that it's a marriage of the experience and sort of rationality and logic coherence right all of that needs to marry together to form a mature well-informed unbiased opinion um and that's what we call in a sense in Hinduism is this idea that if I'm going to critique something let me first try to understand it fully from the other lens from the other side of the coin before I can make a full assessment on the on the situation and that's what they're not doing and that's what we're inviting them to do perform the purva paksha like come and see things from the other side of the uh of the of the coin um and I'm yeah I think that's what really is the Crux of the argument here I I am I allowed to like name people sure but and also that I don't like because because the whole time I was having that rant I was thinking of Stephen Fry yeah he really annoys me because like everyone upholds him as being oh he's so intelligent right yeah but he basically knows facts right and and I have seen um a YouTube video of him because he's he's a staunch atheist right and coming up with these arguments about why there's no God yeah and they're actually kind of infantile and they're especially infantile when you have the hinduistic world view and some experience of a Transcendent reality even if minor within yourself and also in your experience of guruji so for instance one of the things that Hinduism makes you realize is how insignificant this material life actually is we already know it is because we're going to die but when you see it in the grand scheme of um an eternal Soul yeah and uh the the distinction between property and purusha also and also that we reincarnate Etc but then you also touch upon that reality yeah you do some sadhana and you actually touch upon that reality certain things that you see are unfair or don't make sense to you or a benevolent God wouldn't do you're like well no in that grand sweep and Broad perspective they can make sense yeah they do make sense they are like so for instance oh you know children dying of terminal illnesses yeah there can't be a God why would a god do that yeah but in that grand sweep worldview that that can make sense yes the question becomes nonsensical yeah yeah and and uh you know you haven't even begun to uh look at um religions outside of the one that you grew up that's what I was about to say I understand where they're coming from and they're they're refuting the mainstream religions of their culture and that's what it comes down to because in a one life scenario the kids dying at Birth or whatever doesn't make much sense yeah yeah and so you can understand why the arguments will be made in that direction you understand the the issue so I think it's just it's just that it's it's a narrow lens or perhaps a targeted audience perhaps that he's someone like Stephen fryer whoever else is just targeting the the religions that he's exposed to right I do think with globalism and you know 2023 you do have to have a broader perspective and Hinduism is Global enough for people to make a serious investigation into it yeah and and uh well it just goes back to what we said before like you you just get on your soapbox about anything and the first thing that comes into your head it's and and we we mistake being articulate and um clever yeah with um being having truth and also just being well informed yeah you know are you genuinely well informed to the extent that actually you know what I've investigated all of the religions I've seen that there are Broad deep differences yeah the the their own thing some of them are more similar than others but there is actually broad spectrum um from the Salvation to the experiential yeah from the like Blind Faith to the actual revelatory internally revelatory and everything in between and um you know you just you can't just throw this stuff out in the same way in the same way that you you can't throw it out about a cult or or something that seems like a cult's you just because it's heterodox you know it's not mainstream there aren't a big number of adherents and and the message is a bit offbeat from what you know and understand you can't just say oh well that's a cult yeah but I understand there are some things that you should probably be wary of and say oh yeah uh that looks a bit dangerous but all of it is predicated on being well informed about things broadly and the thing you're looking at yes that's it isn't it it is and I agree yeah so there we go I just solved everything that's why we brought you on Sean just solve everything mission accomplished let's get Stephen Fry to come here and learn about vaishnavism yeah if he's operating any any if anyone can make that happen yeah like our challenge is that we'll get Stephen Fry to a point where he will understand and accept in the grand scheme of things why some children get cancer yes that's a very specific outcome that we can work towards I think I think we should do it I think we should do it I'm up for it okay challenge has been launched thank you so much for coming yeah great chat looking forward to future episodes okay let's do this again thank you Dave foreign