Speaker 1: School of Humans. I want to recognize the devastation that
Speaker 1: India is facing with the pandemic. As a country that
Speaker 1: has given Astray so much, we're giving back to organizations
Speaker 1: assisting Indian civilians right now. My co producer in Kita
Speaker 1: Nand has suggested a few organizations that we've listed in
Speaker 1: the show notes. Last episode we followed Charlie Marinelli's trip
Speaker 1: to the Edge of Enlightenment in India, and that was
Speaker 1: supposed to be the end of Astray until Charlie told
Speaker 1: me about Datah, a psychoactive nightshade which he thinks might
Speaker 1: have led to a psychosis. But he only suspects this
Speaker 1: because he witnessed what he believes were the dangerous effects
Speaker 1: of data firsthand. It was scary to see her like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was like, what the hell, what is
Speaker 1: going on here? Charlie is commenting on the American woman
Speaker 1: in psychosis who he helped, a story we covered in
Speaker 1: episode eight, but we're bringing it up again because of
Speaker 1: a possible connection to to Torah. It was August twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: a month into a stay in India, when he ran
Speaker 1: into this woman at a cafe. I could tell immediately
Speaker 1: that something was off, and I had the manager come
Speaker 1: over to me. He was like, hey, we got this
Speaker 1: American woman. She won't leave, like she's just kind of
Speaker 1: sought refuge in this cafe. She keeps her questing like
Speaker 1: the music to be turned down, and you know, she
Speaker 1: was freaked out and she was kind of like looking
Speaker 1: for a safe, quiet space, which the cafe is not.
Speaker 1: She was reacting to the music and chatter of the
Speaker 1: cafe and was visibly disturbed when anyone approached her. To Charlie,
Speaker 1: she seemed paralyzed, like she couldn't leave the cafe or
Speaker 1: was too scared too. She had a blank stare in
Speaker 1: her face. I mean, like I said, I don't even
Speaker 1: know her name. To Charlie mentioned this woman in episode eight.
Speaker 1: I asked him to track her down for an interview,
Speaker 1: but like he says, she couldn't tell me her name.
Speaker 1: And when I first talked to her, I went over
Speaker 1: and she wasn't really talking. I just asked her as like,
Speaker 1: can I sit down. She's kind of like nodded, and
Speaker 1: I sat down next to her and I just started,
Speaker 1: you know, talking, Hey, I'm you know, I'm from America too,
Speaker 1: and you know what's going on? And there wasn't much
Speaker 1: information that she was giving me. It was just kind
Speaker 1: of like, I mean, the lights were on, no one
Speaker 1: was home at the time. Charlie was hanging out with
Speaker 1: an Austrian guy who'd been living in India for eight years.
Speaker 1: He had traveled from Austria to India with a terminal
Speaker 1: cancer diagnosis. Healed himself there and with his passport expired,
Speaker 1: he just stayed one of the many who followed the
Speaker 1: grid in India. And I trusted the guy who was
Speaker 1: very intelligent, knew something about everything type guy just had information,
Speaker 1: just a lot of information. He said, he's like, it
Speaker 1: looks like Totra. The Austrian automatically identified this woman's erratic
Speaker 1: behavior as a reaction to the poisonous and psychoactive nightshade
Speaker 1: to Torah, and he gave me the whole rundown about
Speaker 1: like the Yogis will give it to people that that
Speaker 1: aren't going far enough in their opinion, what does that mean?
Speaker 1: They're they're not having as as deep of a spiritual
Speaker 1: experience as they hope. They're not going inwards enough. They're
Speaker 1: not they're not making progress in their opinion, They're not
Speaker 1: making it to the next level, and so the satura
Speaker 1: will be used to take these people to the next level.
Speaker 1: Precisely the way that I understand it is it's used
Speaker 1: as like how I would use psilocybin to get to
Speaker 1: another level, but it's a much more intense psychedelic and
Speaker 1: is used without people's knowling because it can just be
Speaker 1: slipped in food tea as well. Charlie managed to get
Speaker 1: some information out of the woman. She had traveled from
Speaker 1: Hawaii to India to attend two back to back silent
Speaker 1: yoga retreats and was participating in a dry fast during
Speaker 1: the second, which might have set her off. But according
Speaker 1: to the Austrian, what was going on with this woman
Speaker 1: didn't look like a response to her conditions or lack
Speaker 1: of sustenance. Her behavior looked like the effects of something
Speaker 1: far more dangerous and deadly. Data The nightshade this woman
Speaker 1: was allegedly altered by as a trumpet shaped flower that
Speaker 1: blooms in a variety of colors. It can be pure white, purple,
Speaker 1: a golden yellow. It blossoms in a shrub found in
Speaker 1: ornamental gardens or growing wild along roadsides in India, and
Speaker 1: because it's common there, it can result in accidental exposure,
Speaker 1: though there aren't times its potent toxin is used intentionally.
Speaker 1: The entire plant is poisonous from the roots to the seeds,
Speaker 1: though according to an article in the National Library of Medicine,
Speaker 1: the most concentrated levels of tropain alkaloids are found in
Speaker 1: the flowers, blooms, and seeds. These tropain alkaloid properties include hyociamine, atropine,
Speaker 1: and scopolamine, which when used separately with an awareness of dosage,
Speaker 1: can help aid anything from digestive issues to motion sickness,
Speaker 1: to Parkinson's to heart problems. But when these three are
Speaker 1: combined in a toxic trio, they're deadly and can easily
Speaker 1: lead to psychosis. When I was looking for stories about
Speaker 1: people who have been dangerously affected by tetaura, I found
Speaker 1: one reported in Vice about a man in Romania who,
Speaker 1: after consuming detaura seeds, fell into a deep sleep, but
Speaker 1: when he woke, he didn't know if he was awake
Speaker 1: or in a knight. He experienced terrifying hallucinations of monsters
Speaker 1: chasing him, and like Charlie, he didn't see things as
Speaker 1: they were. At one point during his episode, he was
Speaker 1: desperately trying to find his girlfriend and what he thought
Speaker 1: were train cars but were actually bushes. Eventually he found
Speaker 1: out that he'd been drugged by some guys who had
Speaker 1: robbed him. They took everything but left him in a
Speaker 1: psychotic state. He barely survived. As he said in the article,
Speaker 1: under the influence of tatora, you can't really tell whether
Speaker 1: or not you're awake and could easily jump in front
Speaker 1: of a truck. Tatora can be ingested, smoked, or absorbed
Speaker 1: topically and something like a lotion, and it can be
Speaker 1: used against others without their knowledge, which is something Charlie
Speaker 1: pointed out earlier from what he had heard from the
Speaker 1: Austrian Tatora's used on yoga or meditation retreats to get
Speaker 1: people to go deeper, further and hit this edge of
Speaker 1: enlightenment that, as we've heard, is psychosis. Though I couldn't
Speaker 1: find someone to talk to in the yoga meditation world
Speaker 1: with experience around datra, I did speak to a shaman
Speaker 1: from Costa Rica or a contemporary corndero, which is what
Speaker 1: Alberto Roman prefers to be called. Alberto is very aware
Speaker 1: of the potential dangers of data and ayahuasca circles. Ayahuasca
Speaker 1: is considered the vine of the soul, in some cases
Speaker 1: the vine of the dead. So most people who drink it,
Speaker 1: one of the experiences that they will consistently share is
Speaker 1: a connection communion with something beyond their ordinary awareness that
Speaker 1: is fulfilling. Deep. Ayahuasca is an Amazonian brew that originated
Speaker 1: among indigenous communities in South America. As a courandero, Alberto
Speaker 1: leads people through these ayouasca ceremonies. So when I do
Speaker 1: a ceremony, I treat everyone there as if they are
Speaker 1: shamans themselves, because typically in the old days, you know,
Speaker 1: there was a woman or somebody who would drum and
Speaker 1: chant and dance and receive some sort of information about
Speaker 1: what's happening in the habitat, or they would drink a
Speaker 1: potion and from their dispense wisdom. But now everybody wants
Speaker 1: to drink. So when I bring people into my circle,
Speaker 1: I tell them they're self shamanizing, not only for themselves,
Speaker 1: but for the group. So there's a level of accountability
Speaker 1: and responsibility that they have to also meet me at.
Speaker 1: But not all courandero or sammons have a moral compass
Speaker 1: like Alberto. That's when the torah comes into play. There
Speaker 1: has been a lot of controversy among people in this
Speaker 1: horizon around the use of datura because at certain doses
Speaker 1: it can have benefits, dosage and intension like anything else.
Speaker 1: Courandets and are not gurus. These are people also in
Speaker 1: a process of understanding who they are. They can be
Speaker 1: seduced by the money, by the power, by the status
Speaker 1: that's being brought to them by different cultures. And so
Speaker 1: when you mix ayahuasca, which is really you know, two
Speaker 1: main ingredients of the ayahuasca line and the chatuna leaves,
Speaker 1: then you have the traditional Ayahuaska experience. Not some people,
Speaker 1: when they add the tuda, they open up a space
Speaker 1: where where the participants is a little bit more suggestible
Speaker 1: to the influence of puddos or pandas who who might
Speaker 1: have either good intentions. I think that the tuda will
Speaker 1: will accelerate a process or might use it to suggest
Speaker 1: to a woman to have sex or to you know,
Speaker 1: bring more money to themselves. We've always had that in
Speaker 1: any tradition, you know, there's always there's always people that
Speaker 1: appropriate the lineage for their own their own gains. So
Speaker 1: it's not only a problem or a challenge within our communities.
Speaker 1: It happens in zen you know, you know the West
Speaker 1: Coast is always full of scandals with the zen Masters
Speaker 1: that all of a sudden have not dealt with the
Speaker 1: with their shadow of sexuality and intimacy and get all
Speaker 1: the boundaries confused. So data it can be very, very dangerous.
Speaker 1: So you know it's all about dosage. But there's enough
Speaker 1: of a discussion in the community around it that's proven
Speaker 1: that there's too many people that are have walked into
Speaker 1: the tradition without really spending the requisite amount of communion
Speaker 1: with these things. You know, could you speak to like
Speaker 1: more of the effects of data when it's used or
Speaker 1: when it's odd, it's so horrific, so you just kind
Speaker 1: of go into this dark space. Sometimes you're you're talking
Speaker 1: about larger doses and you're you're in mobile. Immobile is
Speaker 1: how Charlie described the American woman at the cafe. He
Speaker 1: said she was paralyzed, like she couldn't leave the cafe,
Speaker 1: which is what as soporific like data will do. You
Speaker 1: can have beautiful visions and you're also more suggestible, so
Speaker 1: when somebody tells you something or feeds you something information,
Speaker 1: you're less likely to challenge. This makes me think of
Speaker 1: Babbage's influence over Charlie. Like it was stated last episode,
Speaker 1: he was a puppet on a string. So the torah,
Speaker 1: like any mind altering drug, can be used as a
Speaker 1: form of control and an abuse of power, which is
Speaker 1: a dynamic that can easily come into play between a
Speaker 1: student and teacher or a follower, and they're a leader.
Speaker 1: Powers the capacity to affect and be affected. There's a
Speaker 1: positive side to power, which affirms liberates as active, and
Speaker 1: there's a negative side to power, which typically hinders, hampers,
Speaker 1: and restricts. So I think the boucles, the dark magicians
Speaker 1: what they're doing. Ultimately we use that example of power.
Speaker 1: They're restricting your capacity to be free, to live, to
Speaker 1: be liberated, to be active, to activate all all your potential.
Speaker 1: They're keeping that within a certain a certain range for
Speaker 1: their benefit. Tatora is not only abused in some spiritual ceremonies.
Speaker 1: In an article published by Wilderness and Environmental Medicine, it's
Speaker 1: been called roadside poison when it's baked into a cookie
Speaker 1: or another digestible and offered to unsuspecting devotees attending Hindu
Speaker 1: festivals like Ali and Shivaratri. The effects of the Tatorah
Speaker 1: forces people into a suggestible state, which has in some
Speaker 1: cases resulted in their being robbed or sexually assaulted. Is
Speaker 1: tata as common a threaten India as it seems, I
Speaker 1: asked in Kita about this. I have heard of the plant.
Speaker 1: I've also seen it very commonly growing in the wild.
Speaker 1: Whenever I see at my first thought is this is
Speaker 1: a plant which is supposed to be a favorite with
Speaker 1: Lord Shiva. I regularly see it being offered in Shiva temples,
Speaker 1: and the second thought, this is poison. According to Hindu
Speaker 1: religious text, tatorah is believed who have emerged from Lord
Speaker 1: Shiva's chest after he drank the deadly poison Hallao. This
Speaker 1: makes sense saying that Shiva is the god of death
Speaker 1: and destruction because Tatora is associated with Shiva. The plant
Speaker 1: has regularly offered, but not consumed, at Shiva Ratri, the
Speaker 1: annual festival honoring Shiva. Now, people drinking bang or what
Speaker 1: you call bang over there to get a high is
Speaker 1: very common, But I do not know of anyone personally
Speaker 1: who has ingested datura, maybe because of how deadly it
Speaker 1: can get. I was talking to someone who has spent
Speaker 1: a lot of a life in villages, and she said
Speaker 1: that some people who like to stay high twenty four
Speaker 1: seven would use a couple of tatura seeds along with
Speaker 1: whatever else they're taking for their high. But it is
Speaker 1: clearly not something people are as casual with as they
Speaker 1: are with some their natural intoxicans like bang or bang.
Speaker 1: Do you know anything about a toora being used in
Speaker 1: these Hindu festivals? Again, no, it's bang or bang that
Speaker 1: is used in holy but I have not personally seen
Speaker 1: being used in festivals. I actually read last year this
Speaker 1: newspaper report that said that around three people in a
Speaker 1: family got really sick because they put the tura seats
Speaker 1: in their shoes and they drank it because someone had
Speaker 1: told them it can cure them of COVID And they
Speaker 1: got really ill after it, and they were rushed to
Speaker 1: a hospital and thankfully they were saved. But this is
Speaker 1: how we hear of the tura when someone tries to
Speaker 1: bring it into their daily life. I mean, as a child,
Speaker 1: it was grilled into me that you will see this
Speaker 1: plant around and just know that this is poison. So
Speaker 1: when you listen to Charlie's story with Baba Ge, do
Speaker 1: you think that it could be possible that he would
Speaker 1: have been drugged with tatorah. From his account, he did
Speaker 1: seem drugged, not in his usual state. Now, I can't
Speaker 1: say if it was the tourah that was being used
Speaker 1: to have some kind of hold over him. Only a
Speaker 1: medical expert can qualify that. But if there is someone
Speaker 1: who has been using plants pollingestion regularly and knows that
Speaker 1: only a certain amount will get deadly and not beyond that,
Speaker 1: they could have used it. It's definitely a possibility. This
Speaker 1: is known first as something fatal and then as something
Speaker 1: that is an intoxicant. So basically, if someone possibly Babaje,
Speaker 1: had a knowledge of dosage with tatorah, they could use
Speaker 1: the plant as an intoxicant to affect another person whom
Speaker 1: they wanted to control, but would have enough awareness of
Speaker 1: the plant's potency not to kill them. After the break,
Speaker 1: we'll hear with Charley thinks was he drugged by tatorah
Speaker 1: or is it something else? Entirely, Charlie Marinelli got something
Speaker 1: out of his visit to India. He wasn't prepared for
Speaker 1: a psychotic break. He had never been diagnosed with mental
Speaker 1: health issues in the past, nor had he taken anything
Speaker 1: that wouldn't do such a long episode. But to Torah,
Speaker 1: I mean it can last six months. It can never
Speaker 1: go away, but it can last six months of psychosis. Charlie,
Speaker 1: psychosis lasted two months, not six, but it was two
Speaker 1: months too long. Why do you feel like you might
Speaker 1: have been slipped to Tora? It just adds up that
Speaker 1: Taura makes sense because I mean, even being on heavy
Speaker 1: antipsychotics after the fact, I was still in a psychotic
Speaker 1: state until I got out of the hospital in Austin,
Speaker 1: until I really got that dose of lithium for a week.
Speaker 1: Charlie describes this lithium dose as a chemical lobotomy, and
Speaker 1: then I started coming out of it, but I was
Speaker 1: still so confused up until that point, and just thinking
Speaker 1: that I was controlling a whole lot more in my
Speaker 1: surroundings than I was. The timeline makes sense. We're wired
Speaker 1: as humans to connect a cause to an effect, So
Speaker 1: to say that Charlie psychosis was an effect of to
Speaker 1: Torah makes his surreal experience makes sense, and knowing this
Speaker 1: information could prevent us from falling into the same trap.
Speaker 1: But like the other stories we've covered an astray, this
Speaker 1: is a gray area. We don't definitively know what triggered
Speaker 1: Charlie psychosis, just like we don't know what happened to
Speaker 1: Ryan Chambers, who presumably had a reaction to the anti
Speaker 1: malarial drug he was prescribed. Or Justin Alexander Schetler, who
Speaker 1: allegedly trusted a bad Sadu. Or Jonathan Spalen, whose disappearance
Speaker 1: is surrounded by endless possibilities, or Russell whose body was
Speaker 1: found but his cause of death remains a mystery. There
Speaker 1: is no conclusive cause behind the disappearances of these men,
Speaker 1: but there is one thing we know. India syndrome didn't
Speaker 1: have anything to do with it. Why isolate India? This
Speaker 1: is New Delhi based therapist, author, and international speaker on
Speaker 1: karma and consciousness Susie Singh, who I spoke to about
Speaker 1: black magic in the last episode as a listener of AUSTRAI.
Speaker 1: Singh has insightful thoughts on issues that have been raised
Speaker 1: in the podcast, which he shared in an interview within
Speaker 1: Keyta and Me. What about the praise for shamanism in
Speaker 1: Peru and the Iowa's tourism in South America? There have
Speaker 1: been reports of people who died after consuming the hellucygenet
Speaker 1: teach a plant. So perhaps the term should be Sika syndrome,
Speaker 1: not India syndrome. When Singh redefined India syndrome as seeker syndrome,
Speaker 1: it's so clearly articulated what I've been examining the podcast,
Speaker 1: what it means to be a seeker and how far
Speaker 1: one is willing to take that quest for enlightenment. But
Speaker 1: it also shed light on my own compulsion to seek.
Speaker 1: As seekers, we look outside ourselves for answers, which can
Speaker 1: lead to profound experiences, and as we've witnessed, can also
Speaker 1: lead to dangerous ones. But what if the answers we're
Speaker 1: seeking aren't outside of us at all? So how do
Speaker 1: you advise people to trust themselves more as opposed to
Speaker 1: looking outside of themselves for answers. So the first principle
Speaker 1: in the search is to know yourself. People think that
Speaker 1: they know their mind, but that is one of the
Speaker 1: hardest things to do. One needs to start by observing
Speaker 1: your thoughts, yourself talk, your constant judgment about people and things,
Speaker 1: your beliefs, behaviors, triggers, hot buttons, likes and dislikes, so
Speaker 1: mechanisms and fears, and practice with this regularly so that
Speaker 1: you can understand what is making you suffer, because what
Speaker 1: we are really striving to do is to give up
Speaker 1: the suffrag. The second principle is to own responsibility for
Speaker 1: finding your own truth, whether it's enlightenment, whether it's healing.
Speaker 1: We cannot expect that to be done by a second
Speaker 1: or third person. You must make it your own responsibility
Speaker 1: to find your troop or to find your healing, because
Speaker 1: that's the only way that will motivate you to work
Speaker 1: upon yourself. And the third principle is never give your
Speaker 1: power away. Learn to question things, and a true teacher
Speaker 1: will always take the trouble to explain it to you.
Speaker 1: A false teacher will subject you to authority and demand
Speaker 1: your trust. Trust, however, even by a teacher, must be earned.
Speaker 1: When it's given without truth, What the other is doing
Speaker 1: is taking your power away. They are taking away your
Speaker 1: power to think, to discern, to say no, to walk away.
Speaker 1: To protect yourself, never trust anyone blindly, do your checks
Speaker 1: on the person who wish to follow. Always follow and
Speaker 1: trust your own intuition because you do have what I
Speaker 1: call an inner guide, and that guide awakened you to
Speaker 1: your own quest. How can you not listen to your
Speaker 1: own inner guide. For women especially, I would say never
Speaker 1: meet baba's alone. The funny thing is women know this,
Speaker 1: and yet they continue to do it, you know, regardless
Speaker 1: of what claims these babas make about healing you. And
Speaker 1: this applies for people who are highly respected in society.
Speaker 1: It applies to people that your family may no one
Speaker 1: trust very deeply. I've had many incidents myself where I
Speaker 1: have been asked to sort of meet in private, and
Speaker 1: I have always said no. So it's very important that
Speaker 1: we do not fall into this trap because we have
Speaker 1: to understand there's a whole spin off industry related to
Speaker 1: spiritual healing, so we should not walk into any movie
Speaker 1: traps yet. Seeing also mentions being weary of taking food
Speaker 1: or drink from spiritual teachers, especially if you've just met them,
Speaker 1: or being initiated, and to any spiritual practice you don't
Speaker 1: have awareness or understanding of when we are really yearning
Speaker 1: for enlightenment over some answers of the spiritual response. We
Speaker 1: are very suggestible and we get very excited, like little
Speaker 1: children in a toy shop when we find someone who
Speaker 1: seems to know more than we do, or who promises
Speaker 1: us more than we can imagine, but be patient because
Speaker 1: nothing is going to accelerate your growth like your own
Speaker 1: spiritual practice. So trust in your own practice more than
Speaker 1: trusting in some third person to come and make it
Speaker 1: happen to you. When Singh was fifteen living in jaiper
Speaker 1: a baba appeared outside the gate of her home. He
Speaker 1: was wearing a string of holy basil beads around his neck,
Speaker 1: which he removed and with no words exchanged, handed a
Speaker 1: sing through the bars of the gate. She immediately put
Speaker 1: the beads on, and when she looked up, he had vanished.
Speaker 1: This exchange activated something and saying, she started hiding in
Speaker 1: the quiet of the house's storeroom so she could meditate,
Speaker 1: something she'd never done before, but she now knew advanced
Speaker 1: meditative techniques after the brief interaction with the unnamed baba.
Speaker 1: Because of this, the baba ended up becoming one of
Speaker 1: her greatest teachers. In all cases, in mind, I've had
Speaker 1: the teachers appear for me, come to me, and I
Speaker 1: have always told mine and tees, test your teacher before
Speaker 1: you thrust your life innocently into their hands, and never
Speaker 1: give you a power of discernment away to another. This
Speaker 1: is a mistake a lot of people make where they
Speaker 1: will blindly say, let the teacher decide for me what
Speaker 1: I should do, and they call it faith. Like Sidhartha says,
Speaker 1: your first requirement on the path is the ability to think. Sidhartha,
Speaker 1: a character in Hermann has his nineteen twenty two books
Speaker 1: by the same name, is on his own spiritual journey
Speaker 1: to self discovery, which unfolds in the book, and he
Speaker 1: says that on this spiritual path, the number one requirement
Speaker 1: is one's ability to think. That is something that they
Speaker 1: must never give away, because then you will not see
Speaker 1: harm coming, you will not listen to your intuition. A
Speaker 1: lot of the times we find that there are people
Speaker 1: who are in very authoritative positions in large organizations, and
Speaker 1: they're very well presented, and they speak very eloquently. The
Speaker 1: greatest guru speak very little, but their words ring with truth.
Speaker 1: There is one word these gurus are familiar with, and
Speaker 1: we've used it a lot in Astray, and that's enlightenment.
Speaker 1: After the break Seeing clarifies this term. But first she
Speaker 1: asks a simple question, why are you seeking enlightened? Why
Speaker 1: do you want that enlightenment? As a seeker herself saying,
Speaker 1: as a firsthand relationship to the quest for enlightenment, and
Speaker 1: she survived two near death experiences on this journey, which
Speaker 1: enabled her to have an even clearer understanding of what
Speaker 1: it all means. Most people seek enlightenment to escape their suffering.
Speaker 1: This is one of the key reasons why they fall
Speaker 1: victim to false gurus and meet with dangerous consequences. People
Speaker 1: want instant hirana. Everything today is I want to know
Speaker 1: over the counter kind of just a drug. Just give
Speaker 1: me a pill that will make me feel peaceful, that
Speaker 1: will make me feel instantly better. But that's addiction. That
Speaker 1: is not enlightenment. That is not spirituality. Spirituality is about
Speaker 1: doing the work, and it's called work for a reason.
Speaker 1: It's called work because it feels like work. The work
Speaker 1: is the hard stuff, the issues we avoid that keep
Speaker 1: us up at night or have haunted us our entire lives,
Speaker 1: throwing us into the same patterns we relive until we're
Speaker 1: too damned tired too. Only then are we ready to
Speaker 1: do the work, asking for help, going to therapy, joining
Speaker 1: recovery group, finding spiritual guidance through a vetted teacher. This
Speaker 1: is about sitting with our shadow, the dark stuff we
Speaker 1: don't want to look at, but finding awareness and understanding
Speaker 1: around it. That's the work from someone who's a practitioner.
Speaker 1: Her stuff, i can tell you, is terrifying. It's hard
Speaker 1: struggle about struggling against yourself. It's about battling your own
Speaker 1: bad habits, your own tendencies, about not getting provoked. It's
Speaker 1: about someone insulting me to my face and me wanting
Speaker 1: to react sharply and yet trying to hold on to
Speaker 1: my center and my piece in that moment when you're triggered.
Speaker 1: It's very, very hard to do that. But that is
Speaker 1: the practice, and that is the struggle. So it's not
Speaker 1: comfortable and beautiful. It's extremely uncomfortable, and like I said,
Speaker 1: it's a continuous battle. So what thing is saying is
Speaker 1: that enlightenment is not a quick fact, nor is it
Speaker 1: a destination. Enlightenment is a gradual process of purifying one's consciousness.
Speaker 1: It unfolds through intense in a work, quite like water
Speaker 1: coming to a boil, and once the boiling point is reached,
Speaker 1: the transformation occurs. A teacher can only guide you, but
Speaker 1: the inner work of transforming harmful habits, resisting damaging tendencies,
Speaker 1: creation of virtue's building of capacities, intensification of your aspiration,
Speaker 1: dissolving the equal mind. All these have to be done
Speaker 1: by the seeker himself. So if someone is promising you enlightenment,
Speaker 1: we want that, it is deception. In nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 1: when I was training under Shishu Rashankar Shui Shri Ravishankar
Speaker 1: was one of Thingh's earliest spiritual teachers. He said to me, Susie,
Speaker 1: I can open the window and point you to the move,
Speaker 1: but I cannot get you there. You will have to
Speaker 1: make that journey yourself. So enlightenment is a process and
Speaker 1: one the seeker has to be their own guide. For Akita,
Speaker 1: would you still consider yourself a seeker after doing a
Speaker 1: dry Yeah, definitely, I remain a seeker or even after
Speaker 1: doing this podcast. Our hectic life today does not allow
Speaker 1: the in build time, space and encouragement for someone to sit, contemplate, introspect, meditate,
Speaker 1: or take a mental health break. And that's why seeking
Speaker 1: becomes such a thing. Our mental and emotional health needs
Speaker 1: get postponed and suppressed to such a point that they
Speaker 1: feel the need to drop everything and desperately look for
Speaker 1: answers outside. If anything, this podcast has reinforced to me
Speaker 1: that seeking, questioning, openness of mind, curiosity, and understanding new
Speaker 1: things need to be on our everyday to do list,
Speaker 1: not just on our bucket list. As always in Ket's
Speaker 1: response is thoughtful answer sinct, but this question wasn't as
Speaker 1: easy for me to answer. In reliving Charlie's story with
Speaker 1: him and speaking to others who've experienced similar psychotic episodes
Speaker 1: in India and other countries, I've observed something about all
Speaker 1: of them. These see do not view their psychotic breaks
Speaker 1: as being solely harmful or scary. One person I spoke to,
Speaker 1: who wanted to remain anonymous, said her psychotic episode didn't
Speaker 1: happen to her. It happened for her. It's given her
Speaker 1: a deeper awareness of herself and the world around her,
Speaker 1: and in doing so, it was empowering. Charlie has said
Speaker 1: the same thing. I know this is a skewed way
Speaker 1: of viewing an experience that most of us would consider terrifying,
Speaker 1: but it makes me think of Plato's allegory of the cave.
Speaker 1: In the allegory, prisoners who have been confined to a
Speaker 1: cave from birth are chained facing a blank wall. There
Speaker 1: is a fire behind them, and when an object passes
Speaker 1: in front of the fire, these prisoners classify the object's shadow,
Speaker 1: perceiving the shadow as an actual entity, so the shadows
Speaker 1: are the prisoner's truth. One of the prisoners is set free.
Speaker 1: He's let out of the cave into the sunshine, which
Speaker 1: initially blinds him. He slowly adjusts to the light. He's
Speaker 1: told the objects around him, trees, birds, people are real,
Speaker 1: while the shadows in the cave are an illusion, just
Speaker 1: a reflection of the truth. Excited, the freeman returns to
Speaker 1: the cave to tell the prisoners about what he's learned.
Speaker 1: When he enters the cave, his eyes don't adjust to
Speaker 1: the darkness, so he can't see the shadows the prisoners
Speaker 1: are still identifying as real. When the freeman tells the
Speaker 1: prisoners what he's discovered outside the cave, they're hostile and
Speaker 1: resist his trying to free them, so this newly awakened
Speaker 1: man leaves the cave free but alone. Plato's allegory shows
Speaker 1: that like these prisoners, most people are satisfied staying in
Speaker 1: their comfort zone and can be resistant or reject anyone
Speaker 1: who points us out, sees things differently, or just wants
Speaker 1: to escape. The Cave, Charlie relates to this, I have
Speaker 1: to say that probably the biggest cost for me that
Speaker 1: I think I'm still struggling with is being discredited by
Speaker 1: my family and being kind of treated as I guess
Speaker 1: lesser comes to mind treated how people with mental illness
Speaker 1: in America are treated. It makes you wonder to such
Speaker 1: a deep level of what your reality is to you
Speaker 1: and why other people won't accept this reality and go
Speaker 1: farther than not accepting it but ostracize cue for it.
Speaker 1: Though Charlie's dad, having traveled through India with similar intentions
Speaker 1: to Charlie, is more aware of what he's going through,
Speaker 1: it's been harder on the rest of his family, who
Speaker 1: are understandably concerned about Charlie slipping back into psychosis. But
Speaker 1: if we look at the freeman who escapes the Cave
Speaker 1: as someone like Charlie who's awakened to a new reality
Speaker 1: that others might not understand and or want to understand,
Speaker 1: a reality that can be isolating but also liberating, then
Speaker 1: I think the answer to the question we've been examining
Speaker 1: is the cost of enlightenment may be enlightenment itself, but
Speaker 1: I guess that's ultimately a question for you to answer,
Speaker 1: and Keita's suggested organizations aiding civilians with the pandemic in
Speaker 1: India are listed in the show notes. Thanks for your support.
Speaker 1: Astray is a production of School of Humans and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Today's episode of Astray, Seeker Syndrome, was produced, written, and
Speaker 1: narrated by Me, Caroline Slaughter and keitaand is my co
Speaker 1: producer and Gavi Watts as our supervising producer. Astray was
Speaker 1: sound produced by Tune Welders, with score and sound design
Speaker 1: by Jason Shannon and mix by Harper Harris. Executive producers
Speaker 1: are Brandon Barr, Brian Lavin, and Elsie Crawley. Thanks for listening,
Speaker 1: School of Humans.