Nice to meet you. Thank you.

After an introduction like that, I have to sit up much more.

Well, we're all children, really. What one loves is what the mind will be attracted to. People love what they're doing. They love it because they believe they're going to get something from it, some connection or some feeling they're looking for. In business, of course, success brings a lot of wonderful feelings. The issue is whether we want something that's going to last or are we going to be satisfied with things that come and go? Nobody likes to lose happiness, love, connections or lose success and suffer. But the question is, how do we get a real success that lasts with us all the time, regardless of what's going on in the outside world? The answer is really very simple. We need to look within somehow, because every saint that ever lived, every religious tradition, every spiritual tradition, they all say that in our hearts lives that one being that we're all a part of, the real love that we're all a part of.

So, it's a question of how much tolerance we have for pain and suffering. Some people can take a lot of it and never look to figure out why it's happening. I had a low tolerance for pain, and I just didn't like it. I had the blessings or the good luck to run into these traditions that teach how to find something that lasts. How to find something that's surreal. Something that can remain with us through the day and give us some inner strength. That's what all these spiritual traditions are about, finding that place within that you can depend on, regardless of what's going on out there, which we have no control over.

Well, music was very important to me from a very young age. It was my way of avoiding all the disturbing emotions that were inside of me. All the problems, all the unhappiness, all the depression and all the stuff. It was my way of stepping out of that world. The problem is that it didn't last. Because if music was enough, every musician would be happy. And that's not the case, as you know.

So in the chanting process and in that tradition, music is used as a way of helping us enter into a deeper space inside. It's like a child when a child needs to take medicine. You hide the medicine in a sweet syrup. And in this case, the music is the syrup. But it's the medicine of the mantra or the names that cures the disease of unhappiness. And so the music is important in that way because it attracts us and it gives us an initial good feeling, which helps us do the practice that we need to do in order to find that deeper place.

Well, let's back up a little bit. There's plenty of devotion in the West. But it's devoted to the wrong kind of things. It’s devoted to sense objects. It's devoted to money. Devoted to fame, devoted to sex, devoted to stuff. Everybody's devoted to something. The question is whether that devotion is going to bring them what they want? If you keep your eyes open, you begin to notice that no matter how much stuff you get, you're not happy. The question is, do we want happiness? We want love. But we don't know where to look because the West is a very materialistic, externally oriented culture. We're taught from day one that everything we need is out there.

In India or in the archetypical East, everything we need is inside. The outside is just secondary. Which is why they talk about how everybody's happy, but the roads don't work. Everybody's okay, but nothing works. Because the outside is of secondary importance. But in the West, the outside is the ultimate importance. And people are locked out of their own being, their own hearts. They don't know how to get what they're looking for. It's not a question that they don't have devotion. It's a question of redirecting that devotion through recognizing, number one, what we really want and number two, what we're not getting.

Also to be honest, I think you also have to have, whether you call it luck or karma, the ability to actually be hungry for something deeper. Some part of you has to know that there might be that possibility. For most people, unfortunately, in these times they've lost contact with that hope that there would be something to find that's more real than what we think is out there? It's a combination of things. It's not something you can just do in a way. It comes from what they call wisdom. Recognizing the situation. No matter how much stuff I get, it really hasn't made me happy. It's given me some little hit, made me happy for a while, but it doesn't last. What am I going to do? At that point, you either just go get more stuff and go through the whole cycle again, or you start to recognize that you might need to find another way to get through the day.

Unfortunately, even though it's possible for everyone and everyone has that inside, not everyone even wants to look. That's the sad part of it.

Well, I only had one bag. My whole life, I always felt something was missing. It's funny. I go to dinner every once in a while with my old high school friends. We're talking 50 plus years, we've known each other. So one day, one of the women asked me, “Why did you go to India?” And I thought, “Whoa! They're asking me a real question.” I couldn't believe it. I said, “Well, I always felt there was something missing in my life. In my heart. I didn't know what it was.” And she said, “Really? I never felt that.” And that just broke my heart because she never felt that. So she never looked. So she never found. This is a woman who's a wonderful person, a good person, a caring person, stage 4 cancer on an experimental drug, and she's been alive for years on that drug and doing fine. It's not that she doesn't have struggles, but she's never looked. She never felt that. That's something that you can't explain. Why I had that and have that still and why someone doesn't. So I always had that feeling. And then, also being very unhappy, very depressed and unable to really connect with people in a deep way. I was suffering a lot. I was looking for some way out of that fire that I was living in all the time. A friend of mine gave me the gospel of Ramakrishna, and Zen and Japanese culture, and then Yogananda Ji's book, “Autobiography of a Yogi.” That was life changing. I said, “Wow, this is amazing.” It was like I was remembering it. That really jumpstarted my journey.

Then through a series of events I met Ram Dass who was an American who went to India and returned to the United States after about 9 months. He had met Neem Karoli Baba. Some friends of mine had gone to see him, and then they told me about him, so I felt very drawn. I don't know why, but I was. I drove up to see him in his father's place in New Hampshire. The second I walked into that room, his bed was on the floor. He's leaning against the wall. His eyes were closed. I walked into the room. In that instant, I knew something hit me and I knew that whatever it was I was looking for. And I really couldn't say what it was at that point. Whatever I was looking for, it was real, it was in the world, and you could find it. And that was the beginning of the rest of my life. That was without a word being spoken or any eye contact. That was 1968.

These days it is a lot better for sure. I went there in the summer of 1970, nothing worked.

Well, that's what Buddha said when he came out of the jungle. The first noble truth was, there is suffering. There is dissatisfaction. And the recognition of that, that it's unavoidable in this world is the first step on the path. Most people try to avoid recognizing that. They try to anesthetize themselves, push it away and find temporary pleasures. Wherever there's pleasure, there's going to be pain. Whenever there's pain, there's going to be pleasure. That's what they call the pairs of opposites. In this world, the key quality is dissatisfaction. Nothing here will ever be enough. Nothing here will last. There's an expiration date on every organ in our body. There's an expiration date on our lives. It's already there, and we're hurtling towards it every second of the day. Are we aware of that? Does it matter? Or are we just going to try to just avoid it? You can't avoid it. For most people, it doesn't dawn on them. Their lives are essentially clinging to things that will never satisfy and never bring relief from suffering.

The next thing Buddha says, there's suffering. There's a cause of suffering. There's a method to relieving suffering. And then there's freedom from suffering. He doesn't say it's always suffering. He says, this world, which they call the world where people die, has these qualities. You can do this, you can do that, and then that will happen. But unfortunately we don't pay attention.

Wow! That's beautiful. I never heard that before. That's beautiful.

After I met Ram Dass, I began to feel this presence everywhere. He would talk about his Guru, Neem Karoli Baba. I would feel him all the time. Anytime I looked, he was there. I didn't look that much in those days, but still, I felt something that I'd never felt before. Anytime I looked for it, it was there.

At first I thought it was Ram Dass, but he himself helped me get over that. I understood it was coming through him. After about a year and a half of traveling around with Ram Dass and being with him, I came to India and met Maharaj Ji. I walked into the room where he was with two other friends from America. I was immediately very confused because he was this vast presence. He was everywhere. It was always there. And I walked into the room and I saw this little body wrapped in a blanket, and I was like, “Wait a minute, how does that all fit in there? I don't understand this.” It was like a crazy figure ground reversal kind of thing. But he must have done something because I calmed down. But it was quite a moment. He was very sweet to us. He fed us. He said, “They're good boys and they come from good families.” I thought, well, maybe he doesn't know everything. But he was seeing things from a different perspective, obviously.

At first he said, “Come back in three days.” We were staying in Nainital, a town about 45 minutes from the temple. Then we'd come and we'd see him for a few minutes and he said, “Come back in four days.” Then we got sent to Mussourie for a week and then this and that all around. But gradually, more Westerners came and the doors opened a little bit more and we began spending more time with him.

I had never been in the presence of that kind of love. It was like the sun shining full blast all the time and no sunscreen was needed. It was just extraordinary. There was no manipulation. We didn't have to do anything. We didn't have to be in a certain way. We didn't have to wear the same clothes. We didn't have to be Hindus. We didn't have to be anything. He led us in the room where love lives, just as we are. It was so wonderful. And also very difficult because we come in that room and then our minds would drag us back out, and then he'd look at us and laugh and we'd be back in the room. Then we get dragged out by our stuff. And then he hit us with a banana and we'd be back in the room. This is how he taught. Every time our minds took us out of that room, something would happen and would be brought back into it. He didn't give lectures. He didn't write books. He didn't teach much. Mostly it was this bringing us back into that incredible love, which for a long time, and especially in my emotional makeup. I got attached to that body. That body was where I wanted to be near. I wanted to be as close to that body as possible, because that's the only thing that ever worked for me. Get me out of my mind. Out of my stuff.

And so, that was what I was most devoted to because that was what worked for me. He allowed me to stay. He kept me in India, even after my visa expired. He got me a new visa. His devotee was the Chief of Police of Kanpur. He sent me there. He stamped my passport and all that. He kept me for two years after my original visas had expired. Then one day, we were in Mumbai. He had some devotees. He was in a Parsi apartment building in Mumbai. We went to see him and he looked at me and said, “Go to America. You have attachment there”. I said, “Baba, I'm just learning Hindi.” “Too bad you have to go. You have attachment there.” I didn't know what he was talking about. What attachment? When I left America, I didn't tell my parents, but I never planned to come back. I was going forever. I sold my guitar, my car, I gave my jeans away. I had one little box of holy books in my mother's basement, and that was it. Nothing. What was he talking about? Attachment in America. What does he mean? But I had to go.

Well, of course, now I know what he was talking about. Every single thing that's happened to me from March 3rd, 1973 until this moment is what he was talking about. I had so much stuff repressed inside of me, so much stuff I was hiding from myself. So much frustration and so much frustrated desire. And there was no way of working through that in India. I had to come back to America and be really stupid for a really long time. And I'm not so far from that right now, but I understand why I'm here. I don't like it, but I am.

Many years ago I had a dream. I was in outer space and I was coming back to Earth. I'm reincarnating. I could see Earth in the distance. I'm getting closer and I'm heading right to India. And at the last moment, I made a left turn and wound up in New York.

I can't agree to that. That's not the case with me. I started singing for one reason only. Very selfish. I was nose deep in the water. And if I didn't sing with people, I started to sink. If I sang with people, I stayed right here where I could breathe. And I needed to sing to save my own life. I never thought of it as service, really. I have to be honest. It's only as time went on I could see what was happening, that I understood that it is service.

I’ll tell you a funny story. Maharaj Ji had two great devotees that I know of. One was K.C. Tewari, who was my Indian father and the other was Shri Sydney Ma, who was an extraordinary being. After Maharaj Ji left the body, Ma took care of everybody, for years and years. So one day we were in Rishikesh, there was a Hanuman temple there. Maharaj Ji has a temple there. There were a bunch of Westerners in the room with Ma. I wasn't there that day. I don't know where I was. And she told one of my close friends, Nina Rao. She just turned to Nina and said, “Maharaj Ji gave Krishna Das the name, not a name, the name.” Nina told me that and I said, “What's she talking about? I don't remember anything like that. That never happened.” The next day I was in the room and she turned to me and she said, “In 1972, Maharaj Ji built a new temple to Durga. On the other side of the courtyard from the Hanuman temple, the Shiva temple and Lakshmi Narayan temple in Kainchi. They brought in a pujari to do the puja. They caught him stealing the money from the donation box. They sent him home. Brought in a second pujari. They caught him stealing the money. They brought in a third pujari. They caught him stealing the money. So the guys who ran the temple, they came to Maharaj-Ji and said, “Baba, we can't find a pujari that won't steal. What are we going to do?” Maharaj-Ji said, “My pujari won't steal.” Your pujari, who's that? “Krishna Das.”

I was called from the back of the temple where the Westerners spent most of their time, banished to inner darkness, and I was asked to sit out there and distribute the Charanamrit from the puja. Maharaj Ji asked me to distribute the Charanamrit. This was in 1972. So now, sometime in the 90s, Ma said to me, “When he made you the pujari and asked you to distribute the Charanamrit.” For those of you who don't know, that's the water that they use to wash the feet of the goddess whom you do the puja. He created this whole Leela of me going around chanting like this. She said, “And you're still distributing the Charanamrit in the form of the name.”

So I'm only doing what he asked me to do, and I'm blessed that I can do it. But even that's his doing, as far as I can see. I have to be honest with you, I'm just singing to him. Whatever happens in the audience has nothing to do with me. It's all him. I wish I could take some credit. Unluckily, I can't be so stupid? Even with me, I can't.

So that's how this happened. It keeps happening. I'm just distributing this Prasad. That's all I'm doing. And literally, maybe a little bit gets stuck to my fingers, I could taste a little bit.

Dunagiri

I've been there. I was there twice.

I know the family that runs. Girish Tiwari and the brothers.

Well, it wasn't all roses. It wasn't all flowers. After he left the body, I suffered a lot because I was very attached to the physical presence. Like I said, it was the only thing that ever really worked for me like that. I had never tasted that love anywhere like that. So when it was not there, it was devastating. I went through many years of torture. Because of my attachment, which is what he said I had, which is why I had to go back anyway. I really suffered for a long time. But eventually, I had some very deep experiences in Kainchi. I used to go back every year to see Ma, maybe twice a year and the tours to our family and many of the devotees, I would go hang out with them. So eventually I had some experiences that removed a certain kind of suffering that I was unable to deal with myself. If it had been up to me, I'd be dead. Let's put it that way. But there was so much grace and blessings that I'm still here. Maharaj-Ji used to say, “Once I take a hold of your hand, I never let go, even when you let go of mine.” And I had let go of his hand due to my own attachments, my own desires, my own delusions, my own unhappiness. And I couldn't find that hand again by myself.

Then I had a number of experiences, once in ‘83 and once again in ‘95, after I had started singing with people. I started singing to people because I needed to find that hand, and I understood that this was the way I could find his hand again. I had let go of that hand and gotten lost, and the only way I could find that again was to start chanting with people. I had this epiphany in my room in New York that if I did not chant with people, I would never be able to clean out the dark shadows in my own heart. And it was clear that all my unhappiness was coming from those shadows, and this was the only way that was given to me to begin to remove some of that darkness. So it took me a little while to get with the program, but eventually I started. Found a way to start singing with people and practice itself has been an ever deepening source of connection with that love, with that presence, with that being that I had shut down in my own suffering. I had shut it down, turned it off.

I wish I could keep it private, but it entails me singing with all these people. I have to do that. Private as a television show. I'm forced to do it this way. I need to do it for myself, which is the way he does things. He organizes it, that you do what's best for you and other people also benefit. So it becomes Seva. Even though you're selfishly doing it for yourself, he transforms it into Seva. That's the blessings of a great master. They purify everything despite your best efforts to keep it miserable, they make it beautiful.

Well, when I first started singing with people, I sang the chants that I had been singing in India that I learned just from singing. It's not like you study this. You don't study love. You fall in it. I used to sing with the Kiirtan while I was in Kainchi and Vrindavan. I recognized this was what I needed, and so I was doing it already. When I started singing in New York at the yoga center, that's what I sang. But my natural New York karmas started to percolate. First of all, I don't consider myself an accomplished musician at all. I have some musical ability, no doubt. I never had the discipline to get really good at something. So it was natural. Don't give me too much credit. That's what I'm saying. It just happened. I just started to sing what I liked to sing. I'm a rock n roll or a blues guy. So all that just naturally seeped into it, and melody started to show up that was influenced by the fact that I'm an American. I grew up in America in the 60s with rock n roll, blues and pop music. It just naturally seeped into the chanting because the name is the name. It doesn't matter how you sing it, how you pronounce it. It's not about the music. Indian music is an incredible discipline and it's a lifetime study. It requires tremendous discipline and devotion. I just never had the time. I was too busy trying to get into the love. I didn't want to study something that took me out of the love. And it was the chanting that brought me right into a better feeling about myself, which we call love. It allowed me freedom from the torture I used to inflict on myself. The stories I used to tell myself about myself that I hated, all that stuff. This was my way out of that. So when I'm in America singing to Americans, which is where I started, it was natural the music I immersed myself in when I was younger would just show up. And that's what happened.

But, this is the beauty of grace. Instead of it being entertainment and a show, it turns into Seva, it turns into a spiritual practice. I had been in a band when I was young and I quit. And then they asked me to come back, and I said no, because I had met Ram Dass and I was going in that direction. If I had gone back to that band, I would have been dead a long time ago. So Maharaj Ji took that desire of mine, which is to be a singer, and he transformed it so that he allowed me to satisfy that desire. But in a way that's not only good for me, but good for other people. It's relatively healthy, especially when I can get enough sleep. But if it had been the other way, if I had gone that other direction, I wouldn't be here now. This is what the grace of a great being can do. It can turn something that's going to kill you into something that gives you real life.

Me too. Everything I play is like 3 chords. It's not rocket science.

Rock and roll and pop music, if you keep singing, “My baby left me. I feel so bad.” You’re going to kill yourself after a while. Because the mind gets caught in that and immersed in that feeling, in those concepts. With chanting, these sounds which we can call the names, the divine names, the holy names or the mantras, the real meaning is not conceptual. Through the repetition, the mind starts to sink into the sound which comes from a deeper place within us. And through repetition, your mind takes you away. You come back, and go back and forth. Every time you come back, every time you come home, you plant another seed of being at home. And gradually they say, you become more acquainted and more at ease with just being in here. And those thoughts lose their power to pull you out of that and to make you believe the concepts of the thought. I'm no good. I don't like this. I'm too anxious, I'm not tall enough. I'm not smart enough, all that stuff we do to ourselves. This frees us from that because it feels more natural. It just feels better, naturally. You don't have to make it up. You don't have to manipulate yourself. Being freed from all that stuff that we do with our minds all the time, it feels better and we naturally are called towards that and pulled towards that. Repetition just means training. If you want to learn to play the violin, you have to play again and again until it becomes natural for you. So this is the same. It's just that we're talking about finding something that's hidden within every single being in the universe. It's within every single being. It's looking out of everyone's eyes all the time, but we don't see it.

So we need to calm the mind down. Slow the mind down a little bit. Which you can't do. You can't get a gun and shoot the thoughts. You just notice your thinking and you're gone. When you just said you're going to be repeating this mantra, and now you've been thinking for twenty minutes, you just come back. And then you're gone again. Then you notice, “Ah”, and you're already back. Then you're gone again. And then you notice. It's a process. Every time you come back, they've actually shown with scientific research that every time you release a thought and come back, the neural pathways in the brain deepen the pathway back home.

Richard, my friend in Madison, Wisconsin, he's done all this practice.

He's done all these tests with people and actually measured how it works in the brain. The brain is neuroplastic. It changes shape. It actually transforms. It's amazing.

Absolutely, I agree totally. Those epiphanies, those moments, they support us and they keep us looking. They give us faith and understanding. There really is something to find. But, to make it something that's a flow rather than just a shock, that's what practice is about. Naturalizing it, normalizing it into our consciousness so it becomes all the time. Because that's the reality. Ultimately, we have this fake film over everything. Like in the Hanuman Chalisa, the first line, “Shree Guru Charan Saroj Raj, Nij Man Mukar Sudhari.” I take the pollen like dust from the lotus feet of the guru. Which simply means consciousness, love. What comes from a great being to clean the mirror of my heart. Because what we see out there, we're looking in a mirror. And there's dust on the mirror. So what we see out there is the dust. Our likes and dislikes. What we like, what we don’t, what we want, what we don’t. As the dust on the mirror is cleaned off, is wiped away, reality begins to become apparent. The deeper truth becomes experience-able.

That's what all practice is about. Whatever type of practice it is. Spiritual practice is all about overcoming our subjective version of things. And once again, what the heart longs for, what the heart loves. That's what the mind will be. That's where you'll be paying the most attention, whatever it is. When you become devoted to love, like in the Ramayana, it says “Ram Hi Keval Prem Pyara.” Rama loves love. Rama only loves love. Those who know that, they know what the truth is.

So once we touch that place where the heart understands what's possible, then there's no turning back. You don't want to turn back and you have found your direction.

Very similar. It's like we're locked in a dark room and we don't know where we are, what's going on. And all of a sudden the lights come on just for a second, and you see there's a door. Even when the lights go out, you know there's a door. You'll find it.

I was once very much in love with someone. I was telling K.C. Tewari, my Indian father, about it. He was a great Yogi, one of Maharaj Ji's great devotees. He listened patiently for a long time. When I finally finished, he looked at me and said, “My boy, relationships are business. Do your business. Enjoy. But love lasts 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It doesn't come and go. You don't fall in it or fall out of it. It's always here.” So how does that reality show up in my life, especially in relationships? With great difficulty. I'm just a kid that was born on Long Island, and I'm trying to get through the day best I can.

I know the love is there. I'm not always looking for it. Sometimes I watch serial killer movies. Sometimes I'm lost in this or lost in that. But, like we said before, once that light's gone on for a minute, you're now headed to the door whether you get there or not. Whenever you get there, you're on your way.

I think I know which one you're talking about, I'll check it out.

I had a good friend who was like a must. He would go to me every once in a while to say, “I'm having an in-the-body experience”. He was gone all the time. He was really amazing.

So did Jesus. And so did, great Yogi in the early 1900s. I forget his name.

Yeah, that's the one. They burn so brightly, they can't maintain the body. The body just gets used up.

There's a letter he wrote to this American nun, this Sister Nivedita. Did you ever see that letter? I'll send that to you. It's very beautiful. They do their work and they go back home. That's all.

Oh, I don't know. They're all special moments. Every one of them. It's pretty much all the same for me. Also, people ask me, “What do I feel when I sing? And I say, “How do I know? That's not my job. My job is to sing. And if I'm thinking anything, I'd let it go and come back to the sound. I don't write it down. I don't make a note like, “Oh, 1 hour and 32 seconds, I was feeling really good. No I don't.. It's the name, it's the sound, the mantra. For me, all of it is the presence of my guru. It all dissolves into that.”

The first chant that really dropped on me was right after my Indian father, Mr.Tewari, left the body. He was a great devotee of Shiva. Their idea of a hot night was Shivaratri, doing 3 hour Shiva pujas in a row all night long. Mr. Tewari ringing the bell, making the offerings and him chanting the mantras at the top of his lungs. This was their rock n roll. So when he left the body, it was right after that that “Namah Shivaya” kind of showed up in my consciousness.

All of the chants, they come from somewhere else. I'm just the receiver. I'm not the creator. So that was very beautiful. It's funny, you hear him on that CD, ”Pilgrim Heart.” The first thing you hear is Mr. Tewari chanting of Shiva Puja in Jageshwar, which I recorded many years before. I put it right at the beginning and at the very end of that little stuff, the music comes in and the chant starts. That was the big moment. That's my big hit.

The ego grabs ahold of things and thinks I'm doing it. It’s me, me, me. But people with wisdom see what's really going on. Even Keith Richards from The Rolling Stones said, “We don't write this stuff. It just comes to us and we just channel it.”

No, I haven't met either one of them, and I really don't have much to say about it. But Steve considered Maharaj Ji his guru, and he slept with Ram Dass’ book about Maharaj Ji right by his bedside. I'll tell you a funny story. So he stayed in a temple in India for some time. At that time there was a man named Yudhishthira who was the son of a great old devotee of Maharaj-Ji, who was the Police Chief of Kurukshetra. Omkar Singh was his name. Yudhishthira was a wild man. You never knew what would happen with him. He was really wonderful, but kind of crazy. So I was told that one night Steve Jobs was in the temple, Yudhishthira walked around the Hanuman temple naked all night long saying, computer computer. All night long.

I have no idea what that means, but I'm sure he didn't speak with Steve directly about anything, but something was going on there.

Somebody told me that. I didn’t make anything up.

By the way, it reminds me of one thing. Have you ever read Doctor Larry? Brilliant book, “Sometimes Brilliant,” a story of Maharaj Ji sending him off to eradicate smallpox in India. It's an incredible book, an incredible story.

You would want to talk to him sometime. He is really an amazing guy. He ran Google Foundation for a while. Started the Seva Foundation. Wonderful, great being. He's a great writer. The book is phenomenal, really.

Well, it's very simple, really. Not to turn away from the chaos, the suffering and the horror that's happening in the world. Not to turn away, but also not to allow it to destroy my heart. That's what I tell everybody. Because if you allow it to destroy you, what good are you to anybody?

You have to do whatever you can do to keep your heart engaged. Whatever that means to you, whether it means going out and demonstrating or it means sitting cross-legged in a corner for 3 weeks. Whatever that means to each person, that's what you need to do with your life. There's always suffering out there, there's always crazy stuff going on out there. With the internet and computers, now we know if somebody trips and falls in a little village in Assam, it's in the papers. We're so aware of every suffering and all the suffering in the world. We can't protect ourselves against it. One has to be able to absorb it and not let it destroy us.

I'll tell you one thing. Many years ago, there's a story in one of the books about Maharaj-Ji. This is back in the 60s, some old devotee came to Maharaj-Ji and said, “Baba, the world is in such bad shape. I wish there was a king like Janaka who could take care of everything.” For those of you who don't know, King Janaka was a legendary figure in India, and he's considered to be what they call a Raja Rishi, an enlightened king. An enlightened being who was actually a king still. So Maharaja-ji said, there is a king much greater than Janaka. And if it has to go this way, let it go.

These are cycles. We are just ants. These are huge cycles. Time and space. We're just scurrying around here in our little lives. But still, every one of us has the responsibility to not allow it to destroy us.

But there's very little as an individual you can do in the big picture if you can take care of your own life and live so that you're available for yourself and you're available to be there for other people who are also suffering. You must find a way to swim in this horrible ocean of suffering. You have to do that. Or you also suffer for no reason. And that's a terrible thing.

Maharaj-Ji talked about Lincoln to us. He said, “Abraham Lincoln was a good president. He knew God was the president and he was only the acting president.”

If I can be a little gross, I'll just say it. I do this to save my own ass. But over the years, my ass has gotten bigger and bigger despite my best efforts, there's nothing I can do about it.

Thank you.