Hear For Now

God: Fact or Fiction? | Hear For Now Ep.16

• Joseph, Abhi, Ananda

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0:00 | 44:28

When you hear the word God what comes to mind?

From three different religious and spiritual backgrounds, Abhi, Ananda and Joseph present God from a non-sectarian and compassionate approach.

Maybe you feel fed up with the exploitative and war-driven approach of modern-day religion separating and dividing humanity based on caste, colour and creed.

Tune in to this episode of the Hear For Now podcast to have spiritual realisation which is not based on religious division.

SPEAKER_04

Sectarianism or non-sectarianism, it's in the mind of the practitioner ultimately, you know, like you could be a practicing Muslim, but you could be practicing in a sectarian way or a non-sectarian way. Yeah. Because you can have the understanding, the deeper understanding that okay, I'm a Muslim, I go to the mosque, I have these ways of praying, I have this Quran that I read, I have these words that we say, these types of prayers that we say. But ultimately, I know that I'm not this body, I'm a soul. And my soul is is in a connection with this, and that somehow Joseph is really likes what I'm saying, or he's thinking of something funny.

SPEAKER_01

I just a joke came out. A joke came to my mind, but we'll tell it later.

SPEAKER_02

We're gonna um go in deep today on the podcast with a very relevant topic. You could say an eternally relevant topic, because we're gonna speak about the G word, which in my opinion is God. Uh other G words now. I mean I don't know. Okay. I don't know. What else could there be? But yeah, we thought, yeah, it's actually taboo to speak about God or the idea of God. What does God mean? If I say God, what do you guys think of what what comes to your mind and and what came to your mind actually throughout your life when you were young or growing up?

SPEAKER_07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08

Obviously religion's there. Um and interesting me growing up, my my mother was quite religious. My dad was quite atheistic in many ways, and so I had this sort of confusion. Didn't know w which way to term made me question life. But yeah, I think that for a long period of time I just thought people who believed in God were maybe deluded at a point in my life, and then yeah, I opened up to it and changed, but yeah, people have all these different ideas that religion's destroying the world, and because of a belief in God, yeah, that's the cause of it. Semi-different ideas. There's a few that come to mind. What about you, Abby?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I mean I was atheist for as long as I can remember, actually. The only memory I have in terms of in my youth of believing in God, the only memory I have is when I was really, really young. I must have been six, seven years old, and then I had a friend who was much older than me. I had a like a friend group with many different age groups that were all kind of hanging out together. We used to play football together and things like that. And I had one friend who was telling us all, like, guys, God doesn't exist, actually. And I figured it out, and uh, you know, I've been listening to this song. Like Santa Claus and yeah, yeah, it's like that. And he's like telling us all like God doesn't exist. And I was thinking, What?

SPEAKER_07

Are you crazy?

SPEAKER_04

I was just like little six, seven-year-old kid, you know, in a Muslim household. I was thinking, What are you talking about? You know, like just the classic arguments that a religious person gives, like, you know, what who created the mountains and this thing and that thing, and how does you know a woman give birth and she has immediately milk to feed her child, all these different kinds of quote unquote miracles in life.

SPEAKER_02

Quite an advanced six-year-old.

SPEAKER_04

But I'm more yeah, so um, I was explaining all these things, but obviously he was a bit older and he had looked into this and he studied a bit, so he kind of philosophically defeated me and anyway. I brushed it off and didn't think about it too much. But then later on, by the time I was 12 or 13, I was yeah, I took up that philosophy, atheism. And um, I can't really even point my finger as to what it was because I wasn't reading scriptures and trying to figure out if they're true. I also wasn't really listening to to um a different scientist or philosophers online. I just kind of came to that conclusion. There's almost like a feeling or an intuitive thing. I even went to my father. I don't know again, I don't know why I had this thing. I had to tell him. So I went to my father, I told him, I need to speak to you. Don't listen. This is what I've concluded now. I don't believe that God exists. And he was quite taken aback. What? Can you imagine an average um Muslim father in the household in Dubai, Egypt? He was really, really surprised. He called my everybody, called my sister in the room, he's like, look at what he's saying. They're like, Oh, this is haram. I was like, I don't believe in God. Why are you telling me it's haram? That's not gonna work. I remember thinking that that's funny. Anyway, it caused such a like um uh this disbalance, uh imbalance in the house that I just kind of externally let go of it. I was like, okay, okay, I believe in God, don't worry, guys. But it internally I had the same idea. Yeah, until many years later, this was a turning point for me, maybe around 17-18 years old. I came to the conclusion, again, conclusive for whatever reason, uh, based on my logic in my brain, that okay, I'm very small, this universe is very, very big, so I don't know whether God exists, I don't know where whether God doesn't exist, or anything in between. And actually, there's no way that anyone can convince me of either. I just don't know, and I'm okay with that. We don't know. That was my conclusion. Very common that philosophy.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I thought I was a genius because of it, yeah. So common your conclusion was that there's no conclusion, exactly.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, and I was thinking about this recently, actually, it's a really silly thing because you know, in hindsight, I thought I was very, very open-minded to have that idea, right? But then because of my like I'll die by it, you know, that there's no way you can convince me of anything. It's like a circle rather than a spectrum, you know. And you have like on one side of the circle you have atheists, on the other side you have believer of God, or or on one side you have open-minded, the other side you have closed-minded, right? So you want to be so open-minded, but you become so open-minded that you actually end up on the side of closed-mindedness because you're gonna die by this open-minded idea. No one can convince you about this, yeah. You know, no one can convince you otherwise. So, in the name of open-mindedness, you're actually being extremely close-minded, not open to any other idea. No matter what anyone says, nope, there's no way convince me. There's just no one can know, you know. I've come to that conclusion. So you're being closed-minded in the name of open-mindedness, you know. I think a lot of people do that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I was quite I was always, I think I was like I was always quite open-minded, but just curious. And my my dad's side of our family, so his father was a painter, then his father's father was a priest, then his father's father's father was a priest, and then there were priests, priests, priests, so many priests. And so it became kind of um indelibly etched in our family culture that we were Christian. But we weren't the sorts of Christians that, you know, didn't take any intoxicant or didn't do, you know, anything like that. We didn't live by the word of the Bible per se. But we go to church every now and then on a Sunday, and um and so the idea of God was there, but I yeah, I never really I f again like you, I a hunch or an intuition or a feeling, but I had that, yeah, God's God's there. Like, how does all this exist anyway? Like, where does all this come from? And I would pray sometimes. When I prayed, I would imagine God, but God in my mind is like a um an old man who's like had his arms draped over the clouds in the sky with like a long white beard and long white hair. You had an image in your mind? Yeah, I also did, but I had much what was yours like it's really random.

SPEAKER_04

It was like it was like someone sitting on the beach with a Pepsi, or something covered for full of beavers. Yeah, um, it was yeah, kind of similar, like this guy in the clouds, and um he had glasses for some reason and a bald head and a beard, but then for whatever reason, I always imagined God had like and his top half looked like a human, but his bottom half had like many limbs and many all standing kind of. Wow, this stretch of different limbs and different species also connected. Wow. I don't know why I always imagined God is gonna help. That's just my image of God. Yeah, that's all it's supposed to tentacles just like stretching as far as see. That was my childhood image. Wow, Lurga. Yeah, such a powerful image. Kind of like a cartoon, pretty advanced mind, yeah. Maybe it was like in a previous live I could have been worshipping some kind of deity or something like that. Yeah, maybe maybe this stuck with me. Yeah some animal or some syringe or something.

SPEAKER_08

Yeah, I had quite a few different experiences which put me off good and which put me on good. One was yeah, I I also went to the synagogue quite a lot, like most not most Saturdays, but yeah, maybe every other Saturday. And um, there's a teacher there and he would like just teach us from the book, but it just seemed so bland, and so just buy the book, it's just no life to it, and then um he would say one thing and then afterwards he would like shout at us and like do the opposite of what he said, and so I was like, this guy's just not really living by his values at all, and then um yeah, no, even on the streets, see so many people who are fanatical, and it made me question like what causes one to be fanatical, and that you know if you don't follow this way, you're going to hell, or you know, the Jews say we're the chosen ones, and the Christians say Jesus is the only way, the Muslims say Muhammad is the last prophet, that all these contradictions, just because I believe in this, because I was brought up with this, like does that mean that's wrong just because of my upbringing? And um, and so I always found that very quite strange. Um, and then I was recently reflecting on this like what actually makes one fanatical because so many people nowadays are just completely hard-lined fanatics, polarized, polarized, and so I asked a spiritual teacher about this, and he said it's because of too much material desires. So, for instance, you know, in the Middle East, um on both sides, one side, you know, if I do this and we get 72 virgins and all these things, or um, on the other side, we're the chosen people, so like this is our land, this is not your land, all these types of beliefs is based on material desires. I want this based on you know my body, and you want that based on you know the afterlife, um, all these things, and so is it possible to come to a conclusion of God based not based on you know our physical predicament, not based on our being brought up as a Jew, Muslim, Hindu? That always interested me, and so I yeah, from about 16 years old, I started reading other scriptures, looking into Christianity, Buddhism, and all these things. Did you read the Bible? I didn't finish it, but I read most of it. Wow. Yeah. I read like other books by Christian guys, so I found it quite interesting. Did you read the Torah? The Torah's quite quite extensive. I read bits of different things, yeah. Like if we had like a daily prayer book I would have in my room, I read bits of that.

SPEAKER_02

Because there's um our friend Radharaman, he speaks about the book or something. What is it? The Talmud. Talmud or something that everyone has to read, or you know, he's a have you done or have you done the test or something? He said, Have you done the I didn't have a test.

SPEAKER_08

The Bal mitzvah, I don't know if that's the same.

SPEAKER_02

But there was something else. We're disputeing about like some exam or some assessment that you everyone has to do.

SPEAKER_08

I don't think I had that. It might it might have been for his ball mitzvah, maybe. I don't know. Anyway, whatever. Anyway.

SPEAKER_04

That's something that bothered me a lot too. It's like, okay, I'm born in this part of the world. Yeah. Therefore, these are our beliefs. Yeah. So only based on my birth, that's what decided what I'm gonna believe. So, and same same thing applies to all these different people from around the world. And some people in in different rural areas and villages have their own like specific form of religion just in that village that they came up with over thousands of years. So, who is to say that what is right and what is wrong? How do we know? Yeah, the only reason we believe this is because the family that we're born in, you know? Yeah, it was a bit strange to me.

SPEAKER_08

Something I heard recently was um, yeah, a good friend of mine was telling me how in in Kerala, in India, 2,000 years ago, there was a shipwreck full of loads of Jewish people, and they all landed on Kerala. They've been there for 2,000 years, so all over the world, in all different countries, um, there's been anti-Semitism, but only in Kerala there's been no anti-Semitism. They've just and Kerala is very multicultural. Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Christians. Um, and so that struck me quite hard. Like, why is that? Is there something to do with this ancient culture, Vedic culture, that's um non-sectarian? And obviously, from our studies we find that to be to be truth. Something called Snatan Dharma, which means the duty of the soul to love and be loved, not based on your body or your identity or the externals, but based on the internals.

SPEAKER_02

You have to come to a point of openness, don't you, before you can. Well, like you said, there's so many people that are fanatic about their faith based on material desires or for material reasons, but yeah, necessarily, obviously, you have to come to a point of being open, however that might be, and um in order to move beyond the stage of fanaticism. Yeah. And when I went to university, yeah, like you guys, I just reached the conclusion that uh there is no conclusion that I currently understand, 'cause I'm not knowledgeable enough. I haven't studied enough religions, I don't I would wear a crucifix around my neck. And I would s if people ask, Are you Christian? Then I would just say, um I would say Yeah, in a way, but I'd say this just represents God. I don't really know who God is, or um God might be an energy, might be a a person I don't know, but uh this just represents my respect or love of God. Like they're always I mean, like you were saying, it seems logical that it's impossible for us to understand everything with our limited intelligence, mind and senses and all these things. But there's like um um a little story that one of my spiritual teachers shares, um, because he is Jewish, and when he was growing up, he went to his best friend's house, um, and they were just playing there, and they went down into the basement, and his his friend said to him, Oh, um, he said something like, He said, Oh, you know, my parents hate you.

SPEAKER_04

And it's it's a classic. It used to happen to me all the time. It was just like different friends.

SPEAKER_02

He wasn't yeah, he wasn't joking though. He said, My parents hate you. And he said that to you. No, to to this is to my spiritual teacher. So this is my spiritual teacher's story when he was young. He said, Oh, so it's very wow, my parents hate you. And so my teacher, he was probably like six years old, seven years old. He was just really confused, you know. He said, What do you mean? And he said, Um, like you're Jewish. You killed Jesus. My parents hate you. Well, yeah. And he was just like, you know, six, seven-year-old Jewish boy, and his best friend was saying this to him. So he was actually quite scared, you know. Um and he started looking around the basement, and then there were all this Nazi paraphernalia in the basement of the house. And anyway, he goes upstairs and um his friend's mother's there and she says, Oh, would you guys boys like some cookies? And he's thinking, Oh, have they poisoned these cookies? Like, what anyway, he was terrified. I just so bewildered. And the boy said, Oh, my parents say that we're not gonna be friends when we grow up like this as well. Anyway, so he left and he went home and um he went into the kitchen and his mum was cooking him his favourite affle strudel. I just remember this detail. Anyway, and um he was called Richie. Little Richie, he's he looked at his mom and he said, Um, Mum, um Oh yeah, because the parent um the boy had said my parents said he said God hates you. That's what he said. Sorry, he said, God hates you because you killed Jesus. Forgive me for my mistake. Anyway, so he goes back home and he says to his mum, Mum, uh does God really hate me? I guess. And then his mother just like started tearing up, you know, and she said, Of course God doesn't hate you, you know, God is all loving. And anyway, but he concluded in his mind at that point that um Yeah, in this in this world of division and sectarianism um that there must be an all-loving God, a God that every faith says is all loving cannot and must not um enable all of this division and hatred based on religion, but which is actually like you said, based on material desire and that there must be an essence somewhere that is shared. Anyway, and then he imparted he embarked on his spiritual journey and um he found the Indian practice of bhakti anyway, which is non-sectarian. But yeah, it's just a nice anecdotal story and um Yeah, you have to all of us have to come to that point of um accepting or at least asking some questions, you know. We shouldn't blindly accept anything shouldn't blindly doubt anything. But yeah, we have to ask questions at least before coming to some g before coming to conclusions.

SPEAKER_08

It's a beautiful story, Henanda.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you for sure.

SPEAKER_08

Yeah, it's an amazing story. It says that there's four types of people that come people that come to spiritual life, those who are distressed, those who are looking for wealth, those who are inquisitive, and those who are looking for the absolute truth. What is what is the purpose of life? Why am I here? How can I live with no regrets? These types of questions. And in in just the verse after it says there's four types of people that don't come, which is those who are um grossly foolish, who are lowest among among mankind, whose knowledge is stolen by illusion, and who partake in the atheistic nature of demons. And then I was reflecting on that and then looking at you know the modern world, the leaders of our time. We even have people like Donald Trump who are essentially trying to be God. So that God is full of all opulence, beauty, wealth, fame, knowledge, renunciation. And so when we want when we value those qualities as um as that is myself, all of these things that I'm being blessed with, uh wealth, fame, all these things, that is myself. Then we're our knowledge is stolen in a way by this illusory energy. So Donald Trump, he I heard I heard recently that he wants his he wants his face on all the part spots in the US, which has never been done before. All fame. All fame, yeah. And he wants um the east wing of the White House to be demolished and rebuilt into a ballroom and spending 400 million dollars to do this, and that East Wing was uh originally designed for the first lady of the US, and so just going against all culture, all um etiquette in order to put himself as number one to make himself God essentially. He's the enjoyer, the proprietor.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, wow, that's crazy. Trump. I always used to think this that, you know, why how could someone want to be the president already? If someone wants that, just to run for presidency of such a country as in the United States, or in any country at all. I mean, I think someone who's just like a kind-hearted person who wants the best for everyone, I don't know if they would have such a strong motivation to be up there as president, you know. They'd probably be more of an activist or help people in their communities, that type of person, you know. So to want to go through all the trials and tribulations and austerities and and sacrifice and and and difficulty and spend all the money, you have to spend so much money to get there to that position. I mean, that you have to really, really want it. You know, you basically have to want power, you have to really desire power more than anything, and you you feel like you you just that's how you can live. The only way you can live is to have that much power. That's the only way that it can motivate you to go all the way up to that position, you know? And it's crazy. I also found out recently how crazy it is. You know how much money it costs for these campaigns that they do? A lot of money. I just heard about one person um who donated a billion dollars to Trump's campaign. One person. Wow, crazy to his most recent campaign and to become president, do it for the second time. That's just one person. Donated a billion. A billion dollars that's a lot of money is spent from one person, one donor to you know advertise himself and all these things, all these different promotions that they do. And arenas that they rent out so you can speak to people. I mean, that's just mad. That's crazy. One person, one donor gave and why did that person give him a billion dollars? What is Trump doing in his presidency in order to you know create a motivation for that person to give up a billion dollars for him? He must be doing something you know that's that's on that person's side, that's helping that person make more than a billion dollars. It has to be a return on investment for people like that who have that much money. They're not just giving up money like that, it has to be a return on investment. So Trump has to be doing something that's worth more than a billion dollars to that individual, something that we don't know about.

SPEAKER_03

That's interesting.

SPEAKER_04

So that to me, when I just heard that fact, is one person give a billion dollars, that was just mad. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_08

Yeah, because the taxes are so high in America, people, a lot of people are struggling at the same time. And so even the constitution it says for the people and by the people, but you see, already it's for the leaders and by the leaders. Yeah, a hundred percent. Um, who the leaders are? Exactly, yeah. The real leaders, the real leaders, who knows? Yeah, but my point is in a way that through this materialism and through this wanting to be number one, we're trying to be God essentially. We're trying to hold that position, but it won't, it can't last, it's impossible. Yeah, everything will have to be given up. I even met this lady recently on um at studio 108. We sometimes go out on um like a volunteering group to share books. And I met this one lady recently, and it was just opposite um a station, uh Warren Street station, and there's a big hospital there, and she said, Um, you know, one year ago, today, um, something happened in that hospital. Um, my father died. Um, and then anyway, I just spoke to her a little bit. She told me about her spiritual journey and her children, and and then at the end I showed her this mantra that we chant, the Hare Krishna mantra. Um as I showed it to her, her face was like, Whoa. And I was like, Have you heard it before? She said, You wouldn't believe it, but literally one year ago, after my dad passed away, my auntie sent me this mantra and she said, Chant it every day. And I was doing it and it really helped me, and I feel like it helped my dad, but I just completely forgot about it. And then as soon as you said it, my my memory sparked. And so my my point in saying that is that all of this material material happiness that one may enjoy, at the end, we know it goes completely. Um even in this life, sometimes we have wealth, sometimes we don't, sometimes we have beauty, sometimes we could get into an accident and lose it in old age, etc. But our spiritual progress doesn't go. As soon as she heard the mantra, she was immediately transported back to when she was doing it in the past, um, based on her spiritual progress in that time. Whereas, you know, if I told her about you know one million pounds that she had, it she wouldn't immediately immediately get the one million pounds back if she lost it. So that was something that I found quite interesting.

SPEAKER_04

Wow, it's amazing how those things can stick with people. It's also amazing how easily people can forget about those experiences that they have. Yeah, you do a certain type of meditation or or uh you meet a certain person who gives you some wisdom and you just forget about it. It's so easy to forget. It's easier to forget than just to remember for sure.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

That's why I like this thing of journaling that I've been trying to do recently again, which I can never keep up somehow. You do it like for a few days, then you just again forget about it. But journaling, then you can kind of keep a track of all the different things that you do in life, then what really worked and what doesn't work. And as soon as you write something down, it's easy to remember it.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and you help us organize your thoughts. I was gonna ask questions. So, what what would you guys say? Because we were speaking about, you know, God and sectarianism and all this stuff. And when you're speaking about Hare Krishna chanting, um and yeah, what would you say to somebody who you know say, oh, the way that you're speaking um sounds almost sectarian or like the way that you're speaking, you know um saying, Oh, you have to be open and open initially in order to discover um who God is and to understand God. Like isn't that just another um way of closing yourself off to all these other possibilities as well? Of relating to to God.

SPEAKER_04

Well the broad-minded person thinks, you know, okay, I have these set of beliefs, I have this understanding of this philosophy, but I'm ready for someone to show me something better. If you can show me something better, I'm ready to go for it at any moment. You know? That's the broad-minded person who's ready. And of course, after some time in a spiritual practice, you know, uh it's it's good to be philosophical and have logic and rationality and reason and all these things, but after some years, some years go by, you develop also faith. Faith is that faith is a thing, it's also an aspect that it's there. But ultimately, because you have you've developed that sense of intelligence, you know, that we're not just whimsically following something, it's you know, I've I've found something which is explaining the concepts to life and everything that I experience. So we're broad-minded, you're ready. If someone shows me something better, I'm ready to build this up in a second. You know, that's the intelligent person actually thinks in that way. But of course, if you're really intelligent, then you'll search until you find that thing which is the best, you know, that you can stick with. Still open-minded, but you've you've you know you find something you feel comfortable in. Something which is philosophically sound. Yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_08

What do you think? I was thinking about a lady I met recently who she's brought brought brought up in Burma and um she was telling me about um she was brought up with Christian values, Buddhist values, and she's also she is a Muslim, so she's wearing hijab and all these things, and but she teaches her children all three of the religions essentially, and says you choose um because she believes in all of them simultaneously. And so I was thinking when you were talking it's which one has the most amount of love and connection in. We call it bhakti. So which faith or religion or or spiritual path has the most amount of love and connection in? Because essentially that's what we're looking for, love and connection. Whether that's with let's say it is with God, then that root that's the root of everything. That's the root of you know our relationships in the material world too. And so whichever one actually has the most loving connection in, then that one I can follow and I can know that that works. Like from my own journey, I found that not I'm not saying this throughout the whole of Judaism, but from my particular upbringing, my particular synagogue and experiences, there wasn't much loving connection there. It was ritualistic and um yeah, like I said, I had teachers who would do one thing and then say one thing and do the opposite, and so there wasn't a loving connection with divinity, with God. And so for me, yeah, along with you know, an intelligent person is broad-minded and chooses the highest path based on what's in front of them, that's based on how much you know loving connection we have with that, um with with God essentially. Um but to say this is this is the only way because I've been brought up this way, and there can be no higher path is um is definitely foolish, I think.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, and I think sectarianism or non-sectarianism, it's in the mind of the practitioner ultimately, you know, like you could be a practicing Muslim, but you could be practicing in a sectarian way or a non-sectarian way, because you can have the understanding, the deeper understanding that okay, I'm a Muslim, I go to the mosque, I have these ways of praying, I have this Quran that I read, I have these words that we say, these types of prayers that we say. But ultimately I know that I'm not this body, I'm a soul, and my soul is is in a connection with this. Somehow Joseph is really likes what I'm saying, or he's thinking of something funny.

SPEAKER_01

I just a joke came to my mind, but tell it later.

SPEAKER_04

So now if you have the practitioner, he can be thinking in that way, or he could be thinking that this religion is the all in all, and all other religions are wrong, and anyone who else who's practicing religion is not actually connecting with God, and that's sectarianism. Similarly, the Christian can be thinking, you know, Jesus is the only way, and there's no way to God but through Jesus, or he can have the understanding that you know Jesus Christ explained that that he's the only way to a certain group of people to a certain audience. But other prophets or messengers or teachers came in different parts of the world and taught a different thing to a different audience, and they're just as bona fide. And I'm following in this way and I'm connecting with God, but other people are also connecting to God, and in that sense, you realize that it's not that um non-sectarianism means all other all religions are right, it means that there's actually only one religion, only one way of connecting to God, but it's that one way is being practiced in different languages and different cultures, but it's not that all the different ways are right, no, there is only one way that's love and devotion to God. Yeah, that's what religion is religo to connect, to reconnect legion is that's the word you know, Lego comes from that to reconnect, re-legion, and so the non-sectarian person is it's a state of conscious, it's a perspective, yeah, you know, and so if you have that perspective, you can apply that to any religion and you can practice and you can understand that we're something beyond the title of Muslim, Christian, whatever. I was speaking to someone recently and they're asking me, Are you a Muslim? Because I explained that I grew up in a Muslim household, and I always say this: I say, by definition, the word Muslim, Muslim means someone who surrenders, Tislam is in Arabic, someone who surrenders to God. By definition, that's something I'm trying to do. So by definition, I am a Muslim, even though I'm not necessarily practicing it exactly like that. And she was going, no, but if you're not doing this and that, that means you're not, she just wouldn't, she couldn't comprehend it. And then I tried to explain it more clearly. Okay, you know, no, no, no, I'm not explaining it like that. Of course, in a sectarian way, I'm not a Muslim, I'm not doing these certain practices, so someone might not call me a Muslim, but by definition, that I I I try to, you know, love God. I I have these different practices like prayer and meditating on God and reading books about Him. So by definition, I'm following those principles of Islam and I'm a Muslim. But the conventional way, you could say I'm not a Muslim. She's like, How could you say you're a Muslim? It couldn't, yeah, couldn't go in. You know, there was not she couldn't have it because she didn't have that ability to in her own religion as a she was a Christian, in her own mind, it's a sectarian thing. I'm a Christian, I worship Jesus, and everyone else is wrong. Yeah, you know, no one else is connecting with God. The only way to connect to God is through Christianity. So if I try and explain in a non-sectarian way Islam, she will be able to understand it because she doesn't have that mentality.

SPEAKER_08

Yeah, you know, that's it's so funny. This mentality. I I I was speaking to a Muslim friend, and he was saying that, you know, we we believe that we're all Muslim actually. And we came down to this world, we're we're we're all Muslim in the spiritual world, and then we just came down and we forgot we forgot we're all Muslim, and so Muslims want everyone to be Muslim basically. But then I was also speaking to this. I was basically walking down the street and I was holding a Bhagavad Gita, and uh there was this rabbi there, and I got into a conversation with him, and he was said, you know, I read the Bhagavad Gita, and then I was speaking to him, and I pretended I wasn't Jewish because I knew that he would just you know start habit telling me to come for Friday night dinner and all these things, and then um I said, Oh yeah, no, so um he said he said, I actually said, I believe in reincarnation too, you know, Jews also believe in reincarnation. I was like, Oh yeah, cool. Um, and so is it possible for someone in a Jewish body for their soul to be reborn in a non-Jewish body? And he said, God forbid. And I was like, Oh my god, but is it possible? And then I spoke with him further and he said, Yeah, it is possible. And he's like, Oh, I didn't mean it like that, but like his immediate reaction was that, yeah, yeah. Um you know, so within Yeah, I also heard this Christian joke, I'm gonna bring it all together, but my mind sometimes works in sort of different areas. Um, but I heard this this sort of analogy of there was actually um someone who was on the top of a cliff and he wanted to commit suicide basically, and he was standing there, and then this Christian priest comes comes by and he sees him about to to jump off the cliff and he says to this person, No, no, no, don't jump, don't jump, don't jump. Do you believe in God? And he said, Yeah, I believe in God. Um he said, Are you a Christian? He said, Yeah, I'm a Christian. He said, Okay, don't jump. I'm I'm Christian too. Please don't please don't jump. Then he said, So are you Catholic or Protestant? He said, Uh, I'm Catholic, Catholic. No way, me too. Please, please don't jump. Please, please, whatever you do, don't jump. And then he said to him, So are you a reformist or Methodist? He said, I'm Methodist. Me too, do not jump, please. Whatever you do, don't jump. He said, Are you a Methodist in 1984 or 1932? He said, 1930, oh no, jump, get out of it. And so uh the reason I say that is like we're all just so conditioned and we use this religion to be the best, to show that we're we're the greatest, but actually there's no spirituality there at all. Um, not that they're I'm kind of going in on Abrahamic religions, but not that that aren't very pious, very well connected. Yeah, so the spirit there's so many. Many, yeah. But um, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, you meet many Muslims, at least in I'm from Egypt, and every country in the Middle East has their own kind of it's all the same philosophy, the same book. It's not like it's necessarily in Christianity have many different sects. There are some sects, yeah, but but less so. But even just within the standard, like most popular Sunni Islamic tradition, every country has slightly different flavor of how they speak and preach and things like that. Egypt seems seems to be one of the more chilled out ones. And many, I mean, I the way I grew up, I hear these extremist things now all the time, you hear these extremist ideas. But the way I grew up in a Muslim culture, everyone was saying, no, that the Christians they're you know, ultimately they'll go to heaven, and the Jews will also go to heaven, and the Muslim, you know, and actually, many people, at least my family, and definitely many other people I spoke to, they said, as long as you believe in one God, yeah, you don't believe that there's many days, there's one God, you go to heaven. Yeah, actually, you'll be fine. As long as you believe that and you you live your life that way, you go to heaven. You're not you're not gonna, you know, be it uh damned to eternal hell or anything like that. So I was quite yeah, that was cool to at least hear that. But then you hear, yeah, so it's almost like each time you ask it, you have a different answer. Like sometimes I would ask my mom about what happens to the Christians, and she would say, Oh, well, they go to hell for a little bit and then they go to heaven. But you'd hear different things like this, you know. So it's funny. You can't like change it based on the conversation of who you're talking to, you give a different idea, you know. I don't know what it actually explicitly says in the Quran about that, but uh, I know they recognize Christianity as a bona fide religion. It's just that Muhammad came later to give re-establish it, like re-you know, bring it back in the original way. Yeah. That's what they say.

SPEAKER_02

I I always I always used to think as well, just like I mean, like you were just saying, you know, that every faith every mainstream uh actually every faith speaks about the essence of something beyond the mind and body the soul. And also pretty much every faith speaks about the mood this mood of servitude to God as well. Um and if those are fundamentally there, like everybody has a soul and everybody has a mo a loving relationship with God ultimately, which is in the mood of s it's the mood of servitude. Um then to to yeah, the idea of sectarianism and demonizing one group at the expense of another, it's just it's just completely absurd naturally. Yeah. And a lot of the faiths that we practice nowadays are no more than a couple of thousand years old as well. Yeah. Yet people like cultures, countries are so fundamentally attached to what they're practicing, it's hard. It's just totally absurd actually. When you think about it. Like that you know, before that period, of course, there were so many cultures, so many countries, so many practices and things, yet people are become so fundamentally attached. It's just it's it's it's so absurd, you know. But yeah, when you come back to that root and that fundamental essence that yeah, everybody is a spiritual being and everybody has everybody is a servant of divinity. According to these if you look at what you know all these faiths seem to have in common, those fundamental principles are there. You can really make it very simple as well. Um sometimes we can make it too simple, and like you say, when you're when you're not fixed in knowledge and you come up with these ideas like, oh yeah, the Christians will go to hell for a bit and then to have a yes or et cetera. Where does it say that, man? But um But yeah, ultimately it comes on both sides it comes from lacking um inquisitiveness and lacking a deep understanding of what you're actually doing. Um so you can at least logically come to those understandings and um Yeah, to come back to the initial question I asked, which was about you know, aren't aren't you just practicing something that says, okay, this is the only way, there's no other way as well. Um These logical uh understandings and conclusions that like you said, they're inc they're inclusive and they're not um um they don't necessarily demonize or diminish the value and and practice of people according to their time, place, circumstance, and culture. These practices of yoga or meditation, these things are um I mean so phenomenally ancient and also so incredibly detailed. And I can speak in my personal life that studying these texts I'd never found anything as detailed in a stara in analysis, from the broad questions of God and who is God down to like the atom, but written about in spiritual context as well. Um it's just pretty remarkable. Everyone can come to their own conclusions, of course, but that just factually it's pretty remarkable the knowledge that's so so old and it's so thorough and so detailed. Um you know, the modern religions that we practice are like a drop in the ocean comparatively. Um of course there's truth there, like I was saying, but it's just interesting to see the contrast in detail and um yeah, it's it's pretty amazing. Like there's a text called Sri Madhavatan, and in there, um yeah, like I say, from God down to the atom, mathematics. Thousands of years old, these books, thousands and thousands of years old. And um even you know, things that we've apparently only discovered in the last 50 years, 60 years in terms of technology about the atom and about science is there already. Um details and knowledge of actually the period that we're living in currently as well. The rise of technology and materialism and all of these things is detailed. Um, you know, the I this I found very powerful when I when I read it, but details of the experience of the fetus in the womb and and uh that process as well, which again we've only apparently discovered things in the last hundred years or so. It's just amazing the detail that you um that you can find in these texts. So the knowledge that we've discovered materially in today's society. Um if in theory they didn't have the same technology that that we have, then where are they deriving that knowledge from? It's an interesting question to ask. Yeah, the detail it's fascinating, yeah, at the very least.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, it's amazing because they knew about atoms which we didn't know about until a certain point in time in scientific history. They knew about, like you said, the womb and the progression of the baby in the womb, even which position it's you know there in from the in the beginning stages and how it grows and when its feet and hands become clearly clearly apparent and all these things, you know, health diets and health, the whole Ayurvade is so extensive. What things to eat at which times for which type of bodies. And you know, we get taught in you know, in PE physical education. I don't know if you guys have in the UK. We got taught in this idea of ectomorph, endomorph, and mesomorph, the three body types. They had them back then, and they're explaining based on your body type what foods you should eat, what kind of skills you'll have, even what kind of what the way your brain works, all these different things, and they're so perfectly accurate. Everything's there before modern technology existed. It's like a big evidence thing.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah it's um yeah, it's mystical levels of detail. Mystical is a good word. Um so yeah, we encourage everyone that's tuning in and listening to um find your own conclusions. Don't blindly accept things, but also don't blindly doubt things. Um be thorough in your research, um but be intelligent also because we don't have all the time in the world unfortunately in these bodies. Um yeah, thank you for tuning in once again. Thank you, Joseph. Thank you, Abby, and we'll see you guys next time.

SPEAKER_06

You drama go bright.