[00:00] Intro: You're listening to the Real Enneagram podcast, a Spiritual Quest, brought to you by the Institute for Conscious Being.
[00:11] Joe: Well, hello. Can I get you to say your name again?
[00:16] Sujit: Sujit.
[00:16] Joe: Sujit. And Sujit, we are sitting here together in India, in Hyderabad. And you are a student and a volunteer here at the Heartfulness Meditation Center. And it's a center that is open to all faiths. And why do you love to be here?
[00:30] Sujit: This place is something else, like this place has a different energy. This place is about transformation. You can see things in action. You can see people, like a lot of people, like many people who meditate and who help you through this movement, through this and that makes it easier, even easier.
[01:09] Joe: So what what does the soul have to do with this center and meditation?
[01:18] Sujit: I feel it's as anything like plants do grow. Our bodies are taking something and we grow. So our soul also needs to grow, so it not so...
[01:29] Joe: So the soul is what grows?
[01:32] Sujit: It's evolving consciousness.
[01:35] Joe: Evolving consciousness.
[01:36] Sujit: With our understanding of place. Clarity, basically.
[01:40] Joe: Clarity. Unity.
[01:43] Sujit: Unity. Yeah. That is love.
[01:45] Joe: Love.
[01:46] Sujit: That covers everything.
[01:49] Joe: And how old are you?
[01:53] Sujit: I'm 25.
[01:54] Joe: 25. And how long have you been here at the Heartfulness Meditation ashram?
[02:01] Sujit: I've been here since past two years. But I've been visiting even before, but I've been stationed here for the past two years.
[02:09] Joe: What did it for you? What made you want to give up a very promising career in technology and then come here?
[02:21] Sujit: It was an accident for me. I was not quite interested in technology. I wanted to get into photography. And it was pandemic, pre-pandemic. I didn't plan on coming here. Actually, I came here just for a week and lockdown happen and I ended up staying back.
[02:40] Joe: What happened that week to you?
[02:44] Sujit: I traveled. I'd come here for a week and just to say bye to some friends that were flying back to the U.S. It was just surprise them and just say bye to them. Because I thought I would not see them for more than a year, I guess. So I came here and then this whole COVID thing was really high. The cases were rising and there was a strict lockdown announced and we could not travel anywhere else. I had to stay back. So I stayed back.
[03:14] Joe: And you're glad you did.
[03:16] Sujit: I'm very glad I did.
[03:17] Joe: Because it changed your whole way of life.
[03:21] Sujit: I say that a lot, because my life... I cannot even imagine how much it has changed. I cannot describe in words how much it's changed. Because of the mindset I had, or the life I had, basically everything that was there pre-Kanha, me living in Kanha. Everything has changed, right? I will not speak this much before.
[03:44] Joe: You were quiet.
[03:46] Sujit: I was quiet.
[03:47] Joe: But when you transformed you got to a bit of extraversion.
[03:53] Sujit: Yeah, I guess so.
[03:55] Joe: Yeah, I can tell that you love to talk about the spiritual transformation that's happening here every day with 1000s of people.
[04:08] Sujit: 1000s of people coming here. Everybody has... they come for different reasons, different purpose. Maybe I'm coming for... I came here to just see few friends, but I also came here to meditate and all that. And you're coming here for something else, but in the end, we get some... we don't know what we're looking for, but we obviously get more than what I guess so.
[04:41] Joe: You don't know what you're looking for, but you get what you need.
[04:44] Sujit: Yeah.
[04:45] Joe: That's right. And so transformation is really... Let me get this straight, transformation is a continuing thing for you.
[04:53] Sujit: Yeah, continuing. I can say I'm more open to change and more accepting of change. I am more open and more willing to change. And that's something I, myself surprised to see right now because I was not this person.
[05:14] Joe: You were not this person? How would you describe the person you were before you began this meditation?
[05:24] Sujit: I was a good kid. Good, okay, in terms of studies and education. I was not so extroverted. I was very quiet. I always kept to myself. I was quite helping in nature. So I would help people. I was involved in most of the physical volunteer work, that you can say I was more interested to be a part of something that would eventually impact lot of people or something like that. So be part of a lot of activities that have seminar conferences, in and around youth and plantation activities that would happen. But I was always the quiet one.
[06:09] Joe: You are always the quiet one, but you always had a heart for the good of other people.
[06:14] Sujit: Yeah, I don't know how because I think it comes from the parents and all this that usually we turn what we see. So that's what I've been seeing. I've always had people that were very helping in nature and so I can say... So growing up, I grew up in a village, so I think that also has an impact.
[06:40] Joe: And that impact on you was what?
[06:45] Sujit: Since beginning I've been very close to nature. I always love being in nature around plants. And generally when you see life in a village and then in a city, and then we slowly start progressing in a different direction. I didn't know what is internet until I was I think 14. I think 12 or 13 years old.
[07:17] Joe: You didn't know about the internet until you were 13 or 14.
[07:21] Sujit: I knew of it through news but I didn't know what to do with it.
[07:26] Joe: Well, your village may not have had a whole lot of WiFi connection.
[07:30] Sujit: Yeah, even though my father was from an urban city person, he was into banking and everything. And then he moved to village, he started doing agriculture. He got involved in agriculture. He got some piece of land. He used to always do big things, something big, even in agriculture. He had always that bringing in new kinds of technology, small, small equipments doing something large scale always. And he always got people together.
Just growing up in a village having the... even the community, the whole village was family. So just being around a lot of such people always grown to add some sense of grounded me always. Like, okay, I know where I'm going. I know how difficult life can be for a person, and to see all this right now. The opportunities that we have right now is amazing.
[08:34] Joe: To see all this going on here...
[08:36] Sujit: Oh yeah.
[08:36] Joe: ...at Heartfulness
[08:37] Sujit: I wish the whole world knew what is happening here, because everything basics, you can see plants. I have never seen plants growing this well ever, anywhere in the world. I don't know. Because personally, I've been in a village. We moved out of village because my parents didn't want us to get into agriculture because it was not a practical thing to do at that time.
And right now what I'm doing, the business that I'm getting into, that I'm currently doing pursuing is actually agriculture. I'm growing lettuce. I'm growing micromachines. I'm growing all kinds of vegetables and using them, all this in my products.
[09:18] Joe: With new technology?
[09:20] Sujit: Yeah, with new technology and a sustainable fashion and a very practical approach to everything. Because I think in villages all these things, and basically I don't know, even in the city or anywhere, I have not seen a place like this. There is a lot of things here as well, but the way each thing is done, the intention is...
[09:47] Joe: The intention behind it?
[09:48] Sujit: Behind things. Because the story, if you know the story of Kanha, there were hardly 5,000 trees in the whole of the campus. We have more than... not or more than seven/eight lakh plants, and that is done in a very short span of time.
[10:08] Joe: Eight years.
[10:09] Sujit: Eight years and in that, two years was COVID.
[10:13] Joe: Yeah. So, how many trees do you have here now?
[10:16] Sujit: More than eight lakh surplus.
[10:19] Joe: Eight lakhs?
[10:21] Sujit: They're not strong, yeah.
[10:22] Joe: What is that? 1,000?
[10:25] Sujit: .8 million?
[10:28] Joe: .8 million. Okay, that is a lot of trees. And I can look around me and see all of these trees.
[10:36] Sujit: And you will be surprised, I had come 15 days back here. I had not seen all this coconut trees. This have all been planted just I think two-three days back. And everything happens in a very fast manner. But for a person who might come from outside might look and say, Oh, this is all the technologies is that. But the science behind and the care behind all these things, this is all pre-planned.
The kind of sand, the kind of soil it is needed, the kind of nutrients that is needed, the given water. That you can see the tractors are going around giving water, as you can see. So small, small things. We use biochar in the plantations. Like there are so many things. And behind everything, there's... I could say it's this place. Sorry, because of magic. His vision is something that I'm always ah, you know, like...
I don't know how he can come up with all such things. Like we didn't have this mountain here. This is man-made mountain. And we didn't have such a huge farm it is here right now. So this is all containing water and, before eight years, we didn't have this kind of rainfall that we have right now. It was around 500 to 600 level rainfall. Now we have more than 2,700.
[12:18] Joe: Well, thank you for letting me talk with you and for you to be on this podcast.
[12:23] Sujit: I'm glad.
[12:24] Joe: And we are very, very grateful. Thank you. God bless.
[12:33] Outro: That wraps up another episode of The Real Enneagram, brought to you by the Institute for Conscious Being. If you're interested in furthering these conversations, please reach out to us through our Instagram at @TheRealEnneagram or if you're interested in our upcoming trainings or other resources, please visit our website, www.instituteforconsciousbeing.org. Thanks for listening.