Speaker 1: School of Humans. It's August twenty fourth, two thousand and five.
Speaker 1: It's sweltering hot in India. Mosquitoes swarm even by the
Speaker 1: banks of the River Ganges and the holy city of Raishikesh.
Speaker 1: The sun rises over the river, casting a shadow on
Speaker 1: ed nikitin Ashram. The gates of the Ashram open slowly.
Speaker 1: Out walks a boy, brown hair, pins of gaze. He's
Speaker 1: not wearing a shirt or shoes and looks out of
Speaker 1: place next to the elaborate Indian architecture. Barefoot, he wanders
Speaker 1: down the road away from the Ashram. He's headed somewhere
Speaker 1: where we'll never know. This will be the last sighting
Speaker 1: of Ryan Chambers, but it won't be the last time
Speaker 1: you'll hear his name. Ryan Chambers is the first poster
Speaker 1: child of India syndrome, a controversial psychosis that presumably affects
Speaker 1: Westerners confronted by the culture shock, spiritual influence, and destabilizing
Speaker 1: dangers of India. But was it enlightenment Ryan was seeking
Speaker 1: that ultimately set him astray. A child's death is agony
Speaker 1: for any parent, but to have a child disappear without
Speaker 1: a trace as a whole different kind of torture. Diane Chambers,
Speaker 1: the mother of the missing twenty one year old Australian
Speaker 1: Ryan Chambers, shares a term for this kind of loss,
Speaker 1: ambiguous loss. It's a loss but you don't know whether
Speaker 1: it's a permanent loss or a part time loss, or
Speaker 1: whether you've lost them forever or you haven't, or you know,
Speaker 1: like it's just or what is the loss? There's no
Speaker 1: evidence of the loss. There is no evidence. Ryan's body
Speaker 1: has never been found, and his having disappeared in India
Speaker 1: adds an additional layer of stress to the situation, which
Speaker 1: was armed when Diane reported Ryan missing to the Federal
Speaker 1: police and she was taking all the details and she said,
Speaker 1: oh a lot. Where did he go missing? And I
Speaker 1: said in India? She said, oh India, of all places,
Speaker 1: not India. And I feel like, so I don't need
Speaker 1: to hear that. I know it's hard enough as it is.
Speaker 1: I don't need you confirming it for me. India is
Speaker 1: difficult to navigate. It's dense, crowded, there's a language and
Speaker 1: culture barrier, and it just operates under a different set
Speaker 1: of rules than the West. As Aaron, Ryan's brother points out,
Speaker 1: it's a culture shock. Even if you're prepared for it.
Speaker 1: The thing I was say from the moment I stepped
Speaker 1: off the plane, it's just the sensory oakload. There is noise,
Speaker 1: there is rubbish, There are beggars, There are cows in
Speaker 1: the middle of the street eating like standing on mounds
Speaker 1: of rubbish, eating plastic bags. Cars everywhere, people coming up
Speaker 1: to you that you don't know if friendly, who want
Speaker 1: to rub you. As we discussed in the last episode,
Speaker 1: this culture shock or sensory overload, as Aaron puts, it
Speaker 1: had an effect on Ryan, an effect that could have
Speaker 1: pushed him over the edge. Ryan's is one of the
Speaker 1: many stories we'll share of people who were presumably seeking
Speaker 1: a spiritual edge in India and then disappeared. But first
Speaker 1: let's further investigate the syndrome associated with these tragedies India syndrome.
Speaker 1: Is it a myth or a legitimate risk. We spoke
Speaker 1: to a vetted psychiatrist and Delhi to find out. To
Speaker 1: be honest, I have not come across the doom at all.
Speaker 1: Probably was used by the French psychiatrist register or This
Speaker 1: is doctor Harshett. He's worked as a psychiatrist for the
Speaker 1: past ten years and hospitals in Bangalore, Racia, Cash where
Speaker 1: Ryan went missing, and Delhi. And like he said, he's
Speaker 1: not come across the tremendous syndrome at all. He attributes
Speaker 1: the term to reach us a rome. Different psychiatrist we
Speaker 1: talked about last episode who coined the term. It's eight
Speaker 1: thirty pm in Delhi. Doctor Harschet is taking a break
Speaker 1: from his busy shift to speak with me. His voice
Speaker 1: bounces off the white tiles of a sterile horse program.
Speaker 1: It is a miss number to be said that it's
Speaker 1: India syndrome. I would rather say it is a syndrome
Speaker 1: of illnesses which are seen in migrants or tourists. Migration
Speaker 1: as such is known to cause a lot of stress
Speaker 1: on people. If you look, if you look into data,
Speaker 1: be it in America or in the Europe, you would
Speaker 1: see that migrant population have higher number of mental illnesses
Speaker 1: compared to their home state population. Let's say someone from
Speaker 1: Africa comes to us, he may have a higher chance
Speaker 1: of mental illness compared to his own population in Africa.
Speaker 1: It is nothing to do with his genetics. It is
Speaker 1: due to the stress of the migration. So the other
Speaker 1: thing is the cultural shock they receive when they come
Speaker 1: to that place. So doctor Harschett does believe it's possible
Speaker 1: for foreigners to develop a psychosis due to travel and
Speaker 1: culture shock. But labeling at India syndrome isn't accurate, So
Speaker 1: why has this term gone on? The term is quite catchy,
Speaker 1: so people would obviously would love to hold on to it.
Speaker 1: It is something like Stockholm syndrome. Stockholm syndrome as such
Speaker 1: is about someone who is having post traumatic stress disorder,
Speaker 1: but then if you look at it, it's completely taken
Speaker 1: off by that name. Stockholm syndrome was a term first
Speaker 1: used by the media in nineteen seventy three when four
Speaker 1: hostages who were taken during a bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden,
Speaker 1: defended their captors, and though the syndrome is rare, according
Speaker 1: to the FBI, about five percent of hostage victims show
Speaker 1: evidence of Stockholm syndrome. It's still featured in police hostage
Speaker 1: negotiation courses, but as one chief negotiator said, I would
Speaker 1: be hard pressed to say that Stockholm syndrome exists. Sometimes
Speaker 1: in the field of psychology, people are looking for cause
Speaker 1: and effect when it isn't there. But Stockholm syndrome is
Speaker 1: still a widely used term in the media just like
Speaker 1: India syndrome. See, any article to be published needs to
Speaker 1: have some eye candy, needs to have some eye candy.
Speaker 1: So you have something which is sense nationalizing that it's
Speaker 1: India as such has been known as the land of
Speaker 1: mystics and mysteries in the West. So when you put
Speaker 1: something like India syndrome, obviously you are catching eyeballs. He's right.
Speaker 1: As an American, articles and books that featured the phenomenon
Speaker 1: affiliated with people who go missing in India definitely caught
Speaker 1: my attention. But I've also gotten to know the families
Speaker 1: of those missing people. And in Ryan Chamber's case, it's
Speaker 1: just inaccurate to assume a syndrome had anything to do
Speaker 1: with his disappearance. He woke up in a train station
Speaker 1: in India, had no idea who he was, where he
Speaker 1: was when he was That's Aaron Chambers, Ryan's brother, And no,
Speaker 1: unfortunately he's not talking about finding Ryan. He's explaining and
Speaker 1: experienced journalist David McClean had in two thousand and two
Speaker 1: in India that he shared on an episode of This
Speaker 1: American Life. According to McClean, he woke up on a
Speaker 1: trained platform in India with no idea of who he was,
Speaker 1: no passport, no money, no identity. He was taken to
Speaker 1: a mental hospital by police for he started to hallucinate
Speaker 1: so severely he had to be tied down. After hearing
Speaker 1: about mcclean's experience, Ryan's bizarre behavior before his disappearance a
Speaker 1: lot more sense tod Aaron. His mind would be basically
Speaker 1: wiped and somehow got in contact with people he knew
Speaker 1: and then his family and they got him home and
Speaker 1: it was his story about him like that journey in
Speaker 1: him rebuilding his life, and he basically puts it down
Speaker 1: to the anti malarial drug he was on, which was larium.
Speaker 1: Ryan was taking the same anti malarial drug larium. Well
Speaker 1: he was in India, So that's I guess what really
Speaker 1: sort of hit me as like, wow, maybe that's the
Speaker 1: reason for this, because you know that they can always
Speaker 1: be speculation. Was Ryan seeker? Did he do drugs there?
Speaker 1: You know? It was he prone to some mental illness
Speaker 1: that we didn't know about. I don't know, maybe and
Speaker 1: maybe maybe larium and its potential psychotic side effects, like
Speaker 1: maybe that has something to do it. And it just
Speaker 1: that seems to me like the most likely scenario if
Speaker 1: I look at it and I think that's where I
Speaker 1: probably sit on what actually happened. I'd say it's down
Speaker 1: to that than anti malarial drug. That's where I've settled.
Speaker 1: Larium is the brand name from map Laquine, which was
Speaker 1: the antimalarial drug of choice for soldiers in the British
Speaker 1: Army deployed in certain areas like India, Southeast Asia, Sub
Speaker 1: Saharan Africa where they may be at risk of contracting
Speaker 1: from mosquitoes, but the Military Police concluded that it should
Speaker 1: be a drug of last resort after an investigation into
Speaker 1: reports of severe side effects which include visual and auditory hallucinations,
Speaker 1: acute anxiety, depression, unusual behavior and suicide. I met an
Speaker 1: Australian guy when I was there the first time who
Speaker 1: was with Ryan the night before he left and said
Speaker 1: he was running around the Ashram grounds trying to fly.
Speaker 1: And then you look at his journal in the last
Speaker 1: couple of pages, this big scrawl across the last two
Speaker 1: pages in colored markers, just saying something along the lines
Speaker 1: if I'm missing, I'm not dead. I need to free minds,
Speaker 1: but first I need to free my own. And it
Speaker 1: look like an alternate person an Olidia written it or
Speaker 1: someone else altogether, and apparently he couldn't sleep. Probably he
Speaker 1: went into someone else's room in the ashram, not John's,
Speaker 1: but another person's and asked if he could stay there
Speaker 1: the night because he was just afraid of something. The
Speaker 1: guy said, no, go back to your own room. Diane
Speaker 1: share is more information about Ryan's encounter with this guy,
Speaker 1: one of the last people to see him before he vanished.
Speaker 1: He said that he had an appointment to see a
Speaker 1: yogi that was staying at the ashram, and apparently he's
Speaker 1: the guy that when he went, he must have gone
Speaker 1: back and met with him, and he asked him if
Speaker 1: he could stay in his room that night, and the
Speaker 1: guy said yes, and then he said no. See, this
Speaker 1: is what's telling me that Ryan was mentally unstable at
Speaker 1: the time he was looking. He was calling out for help.
Speaker 1: He was looking for help. He was looking for somewhere
Speaker 1: to something to anchor him, and it didn't happen. From
Speaker 1: these stories, it's possible that Ryan was displaying the severe
Speaker 1: side effects of larium, acute anxiety, visual hallucinations, unusual behavior, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: maybe even suicide. And a two fifteen article in The Independent,
Speaker 1: it was reported that the British Ministry of Defense had
Speaker 1: been accused of knowingly risking the mental health of its
Speaker 1: own soldiers after new figures showed that nearly one thousand
Speaker 1: British servicemen and women have required psychiatric treatment after taking larium,
Speaker 1: and in the States, larium was most famously investigated after
Speaker 1: four soldiers from Fort Bragg who took the antimalarial drug
Speaker 1: while serving in Afghanistan killed their wives in two thousand
Speaker 1: and two, even though in two thousand and nine, to
Speaker 1: United States military stopped prescribing larium to the majority of
Speaker 1: its soldiers. In two thousand and twelve, staff Sergeant Robert
Speaker 1: Bales pleaded guilty to killing sixteen Afghan and civilians while
Speaker 1: he was on the drug. When we talk about larium,
Speaker 1: we're talking about big pharma, which wields a lot of power,
Speaker 1: So these detrimental side effects aren't exposed until they've affected
Speaker 1: so many people the danger of the drug can no
Speaker 1: longer be concealed. In two thousand and one, a double
Speaker 1: blind study done in the Netherlands was published showing that
Speaker 1: sixty seven percent of people who took larium experienced one
Speaker 1: or more adverse effects and six percent had side effects,
Speaker 1: so severe they required medical attention. So now there are
Speaker 1: stories out there about the potential dangers of larium and books, articles,
Speaker 1: and programs like sixty Minutes that are featuring them. The
Speaker 1: brand Larium is no longer sold in the United States,
Speaker 1: but that's just a brand name. Mefloquine, the actual antimalarial drug,
Speaker 1: is still available and commonly prescribed in the US. Since
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, the US Food and Drug Administration added a
Speaker 1: warning to the prescription label regarding the potential for permanent
Speaker 1: neuropsychiatric side effects that might continue even after you stop
Speaker 1: using the drug. This is medical speak for permanent brain damage.
Speaker 1: And other clinical write ups about methyliquine aka larium, it's
Speaker 1: noted that the drug should be used with caution and
Speaker 1: patience with a previous history of depression or mental illness.
Speaker 1: I've had a belief right from the beginning, not that
Speaker 1: I realized it necessarily before he left, but when you backtrack,
Speaker 1: lots of things I think he tainted on the board
Speaker 1: of a mental illness. These clinical warnings cautioning patients with
Speaker 1: mental illness or depression came out eight years after Ryan disappeared,
Speaker 1: so no one, including Ryan's family, could have prepared for
Speaker 1: what happened to him in India. Aaron believes the side
Speaker 1: effects of larium led to a brother psychotic break and disappearance,
Speaker 1: but Jack and Diane aren't completely sold on Larry I'm
Speaker 1: being the cause of Ryan's disappearance. After three investigations, one documentary,
Speaker 1: and years searching for their son, the Chambers don't want
Speaker 1: to close the door on any speculations. But maybe just one.
Speaker 1: There ever a moment where you thought he had sort
Speaker 1: of just left his leg bye for me. No, no,
Speaker 1: but that's only that's only instinctively, you know, I did
Speaker 1: for short times. Yeah, yeah, yeah, nah. But he might
Speaker 1: might have been a situation where he will leave it
Speaker 1: wouldn't contact us, but he's so close to his brothers
Speaker 1: that wouldn't be the case. And now fifteen years well, no,
Speaker 1: why in the world do I think that? So, the
Speaker 1: Chambers don't believe Ryan is out there after fifteen years
Speaker 1: trying to free minds on some spiritual quest. Though after
Speaker 1: he was reported missing, there were multiple sightings of Ryan
Speaker 1: around India which were investigated by the family and unfortunately
Speaker 1: led nowhere. Ryan is still officially missing. His body has
Speaker 1: never been found, but Kundenegi, who was part of Rishikesh's
Speaker 1: local police force investigating Ryan's disappearance. Has been quoted saying
Speaker 1: that the Ganges, the Holy river running through Rishikesh, was
Speaker 1: especially high when Ryan went missing, so if Ryan had drowned,
Speaker 1: the high water and intense current of the river might
Speaker 1: have had something to do with there being no evidence
Speaker 1: of his body full disclosure. The Chambers didn't get much
Speaker 1: help from the authorities in India during their multiple investigations.
Speaker 1: I think the place's job is to rule out the
Speaker 1: fact of it being a homicide. Yeah, really didn't have
Speaker 1: any evolvement, and we looked in search. Basically from their
Speaker 1: thorough search that expanned years with one of them instigation
Speaker 1: captured and the two eleven documentary Missing in the Land
Speaker 1: of Gods, which you can access on the Ryan Chambers
Speaker 1: Missing in India Facebook page, Jock and Diane have been
Speaker 1: able to piece together information on what might have happened
Speaker 1: to Ryan's body at the time Ryan went missing, if
Speaker 1: he had of drowned in the Ganges River because they
Speaker 1: opened the barrages, they opened the barrages to prevent the flooding,
Speaker 1: So if he had drowned, his body just would have
Speaker 1: washed right down the river. In two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: a team checked out all of the river barridges, offshoots,
Speaker 1: and flood overflow areas. In total, the Ganges River was
Speaker 1: searched on three occasions, but as Diane points out, the
Speaker 1: baradges were open when Ryan disappeared, so instead of being
Speaker 1: caught in the barrage gates like most bodies are, Ryan's
Speaker 1: body would have flowed right down the river, potentially washing
Speaker 1: up on a bank somewhere or being dragged out. I've
Speaker 1: heard that lots of bodies of pulled from the Ganges,
Speaker 1: and conversations Dad's had with people said that they generally
Speaker 1: don't take photos of people that aren't Indian, So this
Speaker 1: is an issue. If Ryan's body was found and because
Speaker 1: he's not Indian, there was no picture taken as evidence,
Speaker 1: then nobody would ever know. We'll hear from someone in
Speaker 1: a later episode who experienced this firsthand, but for now,
Speaker 1: it's important to think about this. If the authorities only
Speaker 1: take pictures of drowned Indians, what happens to the bodies
Speaker 1: or any evidence of non Indians or drowned foreigners, And
Speaker 1: why aren't there pictures also taken? I imagine if you've
Speaker 1: got lots of foreigners coming over and going missing, meeting
Speaker 1: an untimely end. That's kind of home tourism. In other words,
Speaker 1: a dead foreigner isn't good for tourism, but a missing
Speaker 1: foreigner Yeah, And I guess you think about it, there's
Speaker 1: a bit of a mystique about someone going missing, right,
Speaker 1: like what have they gone seeking? And what are they?
Speaker 1: You know, have they reached this enlightenment? Have they have
Speaker 1: they become? You know, are they now one of these
Speaker 1: kind of mystical people in India? Like yeah, that's very
Speaker 1: very different too. They died, Yeah, I guess that probably
Speaker 1: adds to the mystique of the place in a way.
Speaker 1: A missing person builds mystique, and mysteries can be seductive,
Speaker 1: but they can also lead to inaccurate theories, like India syndrome.
Speaker 1: But India syndrome is just that a theory, but that
Speaker 1: theory has been tagged onto a real psychosis that could
Speaker 1: affect foreigners and non foreigners alike in India. Those seekers
Speaker 1: might be more susceptible to it. India syndrome is not
Speaker 1: technically a thing, because it's not an officially recognized disease,
Speaker 1: but the psychosis that it's inaccurately labeled. Is a thing.
Speaker 1: As doctors explained to me, Foreigners who experience extreme culture shock,
Speaker 1: illicit drug use, or have mental illness in their history
Speaker 1: and quit their meds to go to India looking for
Speaker 1: alternative medicine or a lifestyle change could potentially experience a
Speaker 1: psychotic break. But what's most alarming is psychotic breaks occur
Speaker 1: in some of the most popular places in circumstances that I,
Speaker 1: as a seeker of sought out and it felt safe
Speaker 1: to me. Here's talk to her share again. A lot
Speaker 1: of these people come to learn yoga. A lot of
Speaker 1: these people come to learn meditation. People do have misconception
Speaker 1: about yoga in the sense yoga includes exercises as well
Speaker 1: as meditation. Now, a lot of people who do intense
Speaker 1: meditation that I'm talking about the mental aspect of it.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about the physical aspect of it. I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about the exercises. Let's say something like chakra.
Speaker 1: These are all exercises. There is intense medica also done
Speaker 1: a part of yogic meditation. Now, when people go into
Speaker 1: intense meditation beat Indian meditation or European meditation, it has
Speaker 1: been seen that they are more prone to develop psychosis or,
Speaker 1: like you said, bipolar effective disorder. In fact, I have
Speaker 1: seen few cases Indians themselves who have want to for
Speaker 1: some spiritual discourses where they have had some ten day
Speaker 1: intense meditation and they have come to me with depression.
Speaker 1: Doctor Herschet's words echo what we heard from Scott Kearney
Speaker 1: who told us about the adverse effects meditation had on
Speaker 1: a student MLA. So basically, meditation doesn't only help focus, stress,
Speaker 1: pain really for give you an overall zen, but as
Speaker 1: doctor will Be Britain, Assistant professor of psychiatry and human
Speaker 1: behavior at Brown University notes in a Yoga Journal article,
Speaker 1: meditation can also unearth unpleasant emotions, painful memories, or physical
Speaker 1: mental disturbances that can be unsettling at best and debilitating
Speaker 1: at worst. She shares a story about working as a
Speaker 1: resident in two thousand and six at an impatient psychiatric
Speaker 1: hospital in Arizona and witnessing two people who were hospitalized
Speaker 1: after a ten day meditation retreat. She looked for scientific
Speaker 1: research to explain this and came up short, so she
Speaker 1: started to informally ask meditation teachers about the issues they'd encountered.
Speaker 1: And realized negative reactions to meditation were common, and it
Speaker 1: was evident that a lot of people knew about these
Speaker 1: potentially dangerous effects and weren't talking about it, which Britain
Speaker 1: attributes to the multibillion dollar mindfulness industry exposing the dark
Speaker 1: side of meditation. It's about for business. Doctor Harshitt, however,
Speaker 1: is an open book about what happens to the brain
Speaker 1: during meditation and what could potentially lead to a dangerous
Speaker 1: experience when you are in a trance or when you're
Speaker 1: doing intense meditation. One thing is there is a lot
Speaker 1: of cognitively, you are realizing a lot of things about
Speaker 1: your life, okay, and other things that a lot of
Speaker 1: neurotransmitter change is happening, just like you would know that
Speaker 1: a lot of yogis can stay for longer periods. You
Speaker 1: can say in a suspended animation where they don't eat food,
Speaker 1: they breathe lesser, their heart rates slows down. These are
Speaker 1: all because of the neurotransmitters of our body, which they
Speaker 1: are able to control. They are trained from years or decades.
Speaker 1: You can say, but someone let's say me, if I
Speaker 1: go down there and I do that, and I'm not
Speaker 1: trained enough and I go into an intense meditation goals
Speaker 1: for ten days fifteen days and probably it may affect
Speaker 1: So not being primed for intense meditation could lead to
Speaker 1: an adverse effect. In twenty seventeen, doctor Britton did a
Speaker 1: study where she looked at nearly one hundred interviews with
Speaker 1: meditation teachers, experts, and practitioners of Western Buddhist practices who
Speaker 1: described their meditation related experiences as challenging, distressing, or functionally impairing.
Speaker 1: Eighty eight percent of the meditators in the study are
Speaker 1: reported that these meditation experiences had an impact on their
Speaker 1: lives beyond their meditation sessions. Seventy three percent indicated moderate
Speaker 1: to severe impairment, which means they're meditating prompted a reaction
Speaker 1: or result that kept them from living their normal daily lives.
Speaker 1: Seventeen percent reported feeling suicidal, and another seventeen percent required
Speaker 1: inpatient hospitalization for psychosis due to meditation. The research showed
Speaker 1: that these distressing experiences were not limited to people who
Speaker 1: had a history of mental illness, though trauma survivors can
Speaker 1: be a purely susceptible to the adverse effects of meditation
Speaker 1: because it forces them to lean into their emotions as
Speaker 1: opposed to avoiding or compartmentalizing them. This leaning end can
Speaker 1: retrigger their trauma. I have to say this as a meditator.
Speaker 1: I don't think meditation is bad. I'm just highlighting rarely
Speaker 1: discussed issues that bring awareness to a practice that's presumed
Speaker 1: to have only positive effects. Meditation is good, but you
Speaker 1: should know which type of meditation is good for you.
Speaker 1: There are multiple types of meditations. Transcendental meditation is quite
Speaker 1: used a lot, even in therapist So my point is
Speaker 1: not all meditation is bad. You should know what you
Speaker 1: need to choose. So unless you have a learned teacher,
Speaker 1: it's foolish to go for it, is what my beliefies.
Speaker 1: Is there anything that any meditation you can tell us
Speaker 1: now that we might want to stare care of. I
Speaker 1: am not an expert on meditation and yoga. I'm a
Speaker 1: medical doctor, so I would be the wrong person to
Speaker 1: suggest anything. There are some upcoming stories will be covering
Speaker 1: or the dangers of meditation will be suspect. So this
Speaker 1: conversation isn't over, but my conversation with doctor her share is.
Speaker 1: And before you signed off, here one final thought on
Speaker 1: India syndrome. Another thing what I would say is not
Speaker 1: only about mental illness, but if you look at it
Speaker 1: with terms to the West, the religious values and the
Speaker 1: cultural values in the West is crumbling, which is true
Speaker 1: by the number of people who are winning off religion.
Speaker 1: If you look at the West, so somewhere people are
Speaker 1: searching for a truer meaning to their life. When they
Speaker 1: don't find it back home, they tend to go somewhere else.
Speaker 1: It's just like the famous proverb the grass is greener
Speaker 1: on the other side. Doctor Arschet's sentiment resonates with me.
Speaker 1: Our religious values in the West are crumbling, and I'm
Speaker 1: one of the people weaning off my Episcopalian upbringing and
Speaker 1: Catholic fascination to find my own comprehension of a higher source,
Speaker 1: the universe, God, whatever you want to call it, most
Speaker 1: would understand it broadly as spirituality. It's fluid, not constrained
Speaker 1: by doctrine or organized through a system of power. Spirituality
Speaker 1: can be what you want it to be. Is your
Speaker 1: own unique journey. But as we've heard, there's no promise
Speaker 1: you won't be led astray. According to the Chambers, Ryan
Speaker 1: didn't identify as a seeker, but India still draws seekers
Speaker 1: in droves in search of spiritual connection, quests, and awakenings.
Speaker 1: There's one seeker, Justin Alexander Schettler, who would more aptly
Speaker 1: call himself an adventurer and nomad, whose spiritual curiosity and
Speaker 1: trust in someone who could lead him to enlightenment ultimately
Speaker 1: led him astray. Before we dig into that story, it's
Speaker 1: important to know why Westerners like Justin are drawn to
Speaker 1: India's mystique. Here is academic David Hammerback. Personally, I think
Speaker 1: that there is no such thing as India's syndrome. I
Speaker 1: do think, however, that there are India because of this
Speaker 1: sort of cultural alert that it has, which is I
Speaker 1: think really become doubled or troubled or quadrupled since the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, and the sort of association of India and
Speaker 1: Hinduism and all sorts of aspects of South Asia and
Speaker 1: Central Asia with counterculture. I think that that led to
Speaker 1: even more interest by certain groups of people, mostly younger
Speaker 1: people who've been disaffected by society and it seems to
Speaker 1: offer a different way of living. According to Hammerback, Westerners
Speaker 1: have been romanticizing India's mystic alert for more than a millennia.
Speaker 1: This obsession dates back to ancient Rome and Greece. I
Speaker 1: think that there's so many of these really tantalizing aspects
Speaker 1: of India. And it was fabled going back to the
Speaker 1: Greeks as being this sort of extraordinary place where other
Speaker 1: things happen, where are different kinds of beings. Even Herodotus,
Speaker 1: the Greek historian, wrote about there was like anthesize of
Speaker 1: dogs and humans. There were many many, you know, three
Speaker 1: or four times the size of normal people, all sorts
Speaker 1: of strange things. So I think even going back to
Speaker 1: like Alexander the Great One as far as India, he
Speaker 1: went there partially to conquer, but also because he was
Speaker 1: drawn by these stories of the foreign otherness of India,
Speaker 1: and part of that is the mysticism. There's definitely obviously
Speaker 1: a mystical tradition in India. Hammerberg Snapali's wife is Hindu,
Speaker 1: so he's felt tied the religion for the past fifteen
Speaker 1: years and believes Hinduism plays into the Western fascination with India.
Speaker 1: I think they're drawn to the mysticism of of Hinduism
Speaker 1: because in many ways it forms such a clean break
Speaker 1: from the culture of West and in many many aspects
Speaker 1: from the way you practice, to the way you live,
Speaker 1: to the food you eat, to the iconography you're surrounded
Speaker 1: with it, to the community you're in. But a fascination
Speaker 1: can come with suspicion. We heard earlier from Karni about
Speaker 1: the detrimental, if not dangerous, effects India can have on Westerners,
Speaker 1: which Hammerback calls the destabilizing dangers of India. There has
Speaker 1: been a series of text novels and other things Britain
Speaker 1: which show that India can have a detrimental effect. But
Speaker 1: it's autocomis means like it grows out of the soil itself.
Speaker 1: There's a number of romantisist Gothic texts in the early
Speaker 1: nineteenth century in which just happens where you know, Westerners
Speaker 1: are having to do battle with these strange beings that
Speaker 1: come around almost always at night. And there's all these
Speaker 1: other tropes such as the Thugs, which is part of
Speaker 1: India as well. The Thugs were an organized gang of
Speaker 1: professional assassins sometimes described as the world's first mafia, who
Speaker 1: operated from the thirteenth to nineteenth centuries in India. Members
Speaker 1: of the fanatical religious group, who were infamous for their
Speaker 1: ritualistic assassinations, carried out in the name of the fierce
Speaker 1: Hindu goddess Collie. Were known as thugs. This is where
Speaker 1: the word thug comes from in America. Though the thugs
Speaker 1: were a real threat, Hammerback doesn't believe that India the
Speaker 1: country is a threat and chalks sees destabilizing dangers up
Speaker 1: to virtual Orientalism, which is a blend of received truths, stereotypes,
Speaker 1: but most of all, the media's repackaging of India's mystics,
Speaker 1: spiritual and exotic into a salacious story that will catch
Speaker 1: and hold someone's attention. But he doesn't necessarily think the
Speaker 1: media is trying to exploit India. I think it comes
Speaker 1: from a lack of comprehension under standing of the religions
Speaker 1: of India. This includes a flam and how they cohabitate,
Speaker 1: and how you know what their specific practices are and
Speaker 1: their beliefs. I think it's easy to create our own
Speaker 1: narrative around the unknown, in this case India. It's also
Speaker 1: common to view the unknown or someone or something different
Speaker 1: or other than us as dangerous, which might be why
Speaker 1: these culture bound syndromes, including India syndrome, were established. I
Speaker 1: want to get in Keytis thoughts someone born and raised
Speaker 1: in India on her country's deep rooted spirituality. India was
Speaker 1: ruled by people of different religions, people who came from
Speaker 1: different parts of the world, which is why it saw
Speaker 1: such a huge mix of religions and therefore it is
Speaker 1: seen as a religious country. So I think there is
Speaker 1: so much diversity that it's hard to kind of escape
Speaker 1: some form of religion or some form of spirituality or
Speaker 1: mysticism if anyone comes to flor India. I assumed India
Speaker 1: was primarily Hindu, but it's actually a melting part for religions,
Speaker 1: which according to India's religion census, includes Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism,
Speaker 1: and various offshoots of these religions depending on the location
Speaker 1: of the followers. So India is spiritually prosperous, which in
Speaker 1: Kita believes is a draw for westerners, I mean the West.
Speaker 1: It has a lot in terms of material resources, right,
Speaker 1: So if you're coming from the West to India, people
Speaker 1: would think, well, why would you leave that country which
Speaker 1: has so much to give you in terms of wealth
Speaker 1: and come to a place here which is struggling when
Speaker 1: it comes to resources. So it must be something that
Speaker 1: is im material and therefore it would probably be something spiritual.
Speaker 1: But apparently the raw for Westerners is not only spiritual.
Speaker 1: My grandfather the years ago, he said, Oh, I read
Speaker 1: somewhere that lot of Westerners are looking for Indian wife
Speaker 1: because you know, Indians have such good family values and
Speaker 1: all their marriages are ending up in divorces. And that's
Speaker 1: why they are now coming to India looking for Indian
Speaker 1: women to marry. Why that's awesome, but yeah, he said
Speaker 1: it with a lot of pride. Westerners are drawn to
Speaker 1: the spiritual depths and strong values India offers. But like
Speaker 1: us in the West or an increasing number of people
Speaker 1: identify as spiritual rather than religious. India's new generation is
Speaker 1: also rejecting their country's archaic religions and read a finding
Speaker 1: spirituality for themselves. I was asking a Hindu preach something
Speaker 1: and I said, there was a notice on the temple
Speaker 1: in a village in western India, and I said it
Speaker 1: says women are not allowed. Why is that so? And
Speaker 1: he says, oh, you know, this is Hanuman and he
Speaker 1: always stayed a bachelor, so he's not he doesn't like
Speaker 1: interacting with women. Hanuman is a Hindu god, usually represent
Speaker 1: it as a monkey, And I said, but God is
Speaker 1: open to all. He didn't answer my question. He said,
Speaker 1: where there is faith, there are no questions in my generation. Again,
Speaker 1: when I talk about there is this kind of dissociation
Speaker 1: and atachment with mainstream religion. There's also an attraction towards mysticism,
Speaker 1: and a lot towards mystic poets who do not see
Speaker 1: God as this being to be feared, or do not
Speaker 1: believe in this extremely hierarchical relationship between God and human
Speaker 1: I mean, God would be more like a conscience. God
Speaker 1: would be more like a friend. And that is the
Speaker 1: kind of thing younger people relate to more rather than
Speaker 1: this kind of scary authority imposed. I mean people, young
Speaker 1: people want to do something because they understand it to
Speaker 1: be right, not because they are told they would be
Speaker 1: punished in hell. They would not be talking about rights
Speaker 1: and rituals and practices. They would be talking about humanity,
Speaker 1: because that is less about conducting certain rituals and more
Speaker 1: about meditating, more about the journey of the self, more
Speaker 1: about understanding the higher powers rather than fearing the higher powers.
Speaker 1: And where do Westerners go for these spiritual practices when
Speaker 1: they hit India. I don't see as many foreigners in
Speaker 1: temples if I just look at Delhi, but I would
Speaker 1: see many more of them in yoga studios. So you
Speaker 1: can say that they are maybe practices associated with both.
Speaker 1: But then yoga would be a practice where the self
Speaker 1: is the center. Right, you do this and you meditate
Speaker 1: and then think about God. But if I go to
Speaker 1: a temple, I would say, okay, bio a land of flowers,
Speaker 1: buy this packet of incenstics, by this holy threat, to
Speaker 1: tie around a tree and then make this plate, offer
Speaker 1: this to the idol, go around it five times, and
Speaker 1: then take some of that holy water, drink it up,
Speaker 1: and then you know your wish is supposedly hurt and
Speaker 1: so on. So these are more external practice of the
Speaker 1: violence is more of again what we were talking earlier,
Speaker 1: of self reflection in a journey seeking inwards. So on.
Speaker 1: We don't have time to break down India's handful of
Speaker 1: religions and tie them Alti mysticism. Scholars have spent lifetimes
Speaker 1: examining religions in the East and they're still figuring it out.
Speaker 1: But what I took away from this conversation within Kita
Speaker 1: is that there is a palpable sense of spirituality and
Speaker 1: mysticism in India built on the foundation of a handful
Speaker 1: of religions. But India's new generation is adapting their own
Speaker 1: version of spirituality, which is a version Westerners can relate to,
Speaker 1: as it's something they get a whitewashed version of in
Speaker 1: their yoga studios and the States. But the mysticism of
Speaker 1: India is still a draw and very real. But not
Speaker 1: every story of a spiritual awakening ends in self discovery.
Speaker 1: Justin Alexander Schuttler's ended in a different kind of discovery,
Speaker 1: one that involved a police investigation. I'm thirty two and
Speaker 1: last week I retired. Maybe retirement isn't the right word.
Speaker 1: If there's a word that means I'm free to live
Speaker 1: the life of my dreams, I'm that. That's a voice
Speaker 1: over actor reading an excerpt from Justin's blog eight years ago.
Speaker 1: As you can tell he's extreme. He cashed out his
Speaker 1: roth Ira and spent the money on a Sony A
Speaker 1: seven two camera to capture his escapades. And escapades is
Speaker 1: a belittling word for the adventures Justin sought out. He
Speaker 1: was a survivalist who in his youth studied the Apache Scouts,
Speaker 1: who moved undetected through the desert and lived off the land.
Speaker 1: He made his own native tools based on drawings he
Speaker 1: did at New York's Museum of Natural History, and in
Speaker 1: the summer of twenty fourteen, he put his survival skills
Speaker 1: to the test trekking across the Himalaya and bet with
Speaker 1: little more than sandals and a knife. He called himself
Speaker 1: an NYC ninja and proves it with a photo on
Speaker 1: Instagram of his silhouette against a misty New York City
Speaker 1: backdrop six hundred feet in the air. He's standing on
Speaker 1: some sort of railing, presumably on a building he's not
Speaker 1: supposed to be climbing. There's another shot taken from a
Speaker 1: cherry red crane looking down on New York city scape.
Speaker 1: It makes me dizzy just looking at that photo. The
Speaker 1: shot is seven hundred feet in the air. One false
Speaker 1: move and he's done. Justin identified as a nomad and
Speaker 1: shared his extreme experiences with his eleven thousand Instagram followers
Speaker 1: and in a blog, Adventures of Justin, where he documented
Speaker 1: his eighteen thousand mile trips the American West on his
Speaker 1: Royal Enfield motorcycle and an experience he had living with
Speaker 1: the indigenous tribe the Montoway and Indonesia, where he helped
Speaker 1: make poison tipped arrows and wore a loincloth made from
Speaker 1: tree bark. His photos, videos, and visceral journal entries are
Speaker 1: intoxicating and they capture the feeling of the moment. And
Speaker 1: when Justin turns the cameron himself, he's honestly as breathtaking
Speaker 1: as a scenery he captures. He's an Adonis. Justin lives
Speaker 1: and looks like a romanticized version of a legendary explorer
Speaker 1: and as Mantra speaks to this, be kind and do
Speaker 1: epic shit. But did he also romanticize the dangers of
Speaker 1: living on the edge. In an online interview, an interviewer
Speaker 1: asked Justin, who was an influencer before you could make
Speaker 1: a living doing it? Why he goes by Justin Alexander
Speaker 1: Supertramp on Facebook. His answer Chris McCanless. Chris McCanless, also
Speaker 1: known by his nickname Alexander Supertramp, was an American hiker
Speaker 1: who in nineteen ninety two sought solitude in the Alaskan
Speaker 1: bush with minimal supplies and aspirations to live off the land.
Speaker 1: He used an abandoned bus he found in the back
Speaker 1: country as a makeshift shelter. The same bus were his
Speaker 1: dead body, weighing only sixty seven pounds, was found six
Speaker 1: months later. Chris died of starvation and the online interview
Speaker 1: Justin finishes his thought on Chris McCanless, saying vagabonding and
Speaker 1: living in the back country is a way to make
Speaker 1: social life feel fresh. I'm not trying to cut myself
Speaker 1: off from society like he was. I do have a
Speaker 1: lot of respect for the guy that said I think
Speaker 1: it's too bad we don't look at the many examples
Speaker 1: of people who went into the wild and lived to
Speaker 1: tell a great story. Justin documented so many stories in
Speaker 1: his lifetime, but unfortunately he hasn't been able to tell
Speaker 1: his last story. On August nineteenth, twenty sixteen, he wrote
Speaker 1: his last blog entry from India's Pivardi Valley. In the blog,
Speaker 1: he writes about a pilgrimage he is going to take
Speaker 1: into the Himalayas to meditate. The last line reads, I
Speaker 1: should return mid September, so if I'm not back by then,
Speaker 1: don't look for me. Justin's story sounds like an Eastern
Speaker 1: version of Into the Wild. The nineteen ninety six John
Speaker 1: Krakauer book about Chris McCanless. Though McCanless vanished in the wilderness,
Speaker 1: his body was found and that abandoned bus on Alaska's
Speaker 1: Stampede trail, but Justin's body has never been found. Do
Speaker 1: Justin meet the same fate as Chris? Or does Justin's
Speaker 1: last sentiment, if I'm not back by then don't look
Speaker 1: for me? Have anything to do with his disappearance. We'll
Speaker 1: find out on the next episode of A stre If
Speaker 1: you have any information or tips on Ryan chambers disappearance,
Speaker 1: please reach out to Job Chambers at Jock joc K
Speaker 1: dot Chambers C. H A. M. B. E. R. S
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com. Also, if you're interested, check out
Speaker 1: First Do No Harm, which is an online course that
Speaker 1: breaks down the adverse effects of meditation. It's led by
Speaker 1: doctor Willoughby Britton, who I mentioned in the episode, and
Speaker 1: it involves a series of methods for managing these meditation
Speaker 1: risks and negative outcomes. Astray is a production of School
Speaker 1: of Humans and iHeartRadio. Today's episode of Astray, Ryan Chambers
Speaker 1: was produced, written, and narrated by May Caroline Fodder and
Speaker 1: Kita Nanda is my co producer and Gavi Watts is
Speaker 1: our supervising producer. Astray was scored by Jason Shannon, with
Speaker 1: sound design and mixed by Tunewelders. Executive producers are Brandon
Speaker 1: bar Elsie Crowley and Brian Lavin. Special thanks to our
Speaker 1: voiceover band, Gunter School of Humans