#1 - Devdas Sahaja - Walking the yogic path

In this absorbing conversation, I speak with Devdas Sahaja of Sahaja Collective, an engaging and insightful yogi with over two decades of experience. We explore Devdas's early journey into yoga, influential figures in yoga history, particularly Paramahansa Yogananda, and the evolution of yoga in the West. The discussion delves into the depth of yoga practice, the energetic aspects often overlooked, and Devdas's transformative experiences in India, including meeting his teacher. The conversation highlights the importance of understanding yoga beyond its physical practice and emphasizes the interconnectedness of all beings. Devdas and I also explore the themes of pranayama and the journey of self-discovery. We discuss the cultural dynamics of teaching yoga in India, the essence of service in teaching, and the differences between modern breathwork and traditional pranayama practices. The dialogue emphasizes the importance of sincerity in spiritual pursuits and the balance between learning and unlearning on the path to enlightenment.

https://sahajacollective.org/

Transcript

Welcome And First Guest

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Dave Das Sahaja, welcome to My Best Life.

SPEAKER_03 0:09

It's such a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me, Peter. It's a joy.

SPEAKER_02 0:13

Well, it's uh it's uh it's a wonderful experience for me to be to be chatting with you. You are officially our uh first guest on the podcast. And uh so thank you for for agreeing to speak with me. It means so much. I uh I wanted to start with with a quote. I was as I was driving home from work today, I was uh listening to another podcast. It was a podcast on Taoism. And it yeah, it was it was really interesting actually. And this particular episode was talking, I forget the exact title of the episode, I'll have to look that up, but was talking about you know achieving one's goals through through small steps.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

And you know, the the famous quote from Lao Tzu was was mentioned, which many people are are familiar with. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:20

Now I know that you have been a yogi, a practitioner of yoga for, what is it, two decades, three decades more?

SPEAKER_03 1:28

Yeah, probably, probably somewhere between two and three.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

Somewhere between two and three. So what were your first steps like on that journey? Can you recall back to that time and what was it that attracted you to

First Steps Into Yoga

SPEAKER_02 1:45

the yogic path?

SPEAKER_03 1:47

Great question. It it really is sort of like rolling back into the fossil record almost. But if I if I think back, actually, I started yo, I started kind of Hatha yoga when I was in high school. And that was just that was just sort of good fortune, you could say. They had a program at my high school where sort of talented people in the community could come and offer afternoon activities, and there was a very serious yogi, highly qualified from India, and he was my kind of my first Tatha yoga teacher. And looking back, you know, even that was just such good fortune. I mean, it I had a highly, highly, highly qualified, very beautiful teacher. I really trusted him and enjoyed his presence and his company and his insights, and even sometimes would seek him out and say, hey, you know, this is going on in my life. What do you think? I didn't really kind of realize in a weird way what a treasure I had. And then when I was in college, I started meditation also, and then I found the book, Autobiography of a Yogi. And that book that book really propelled things strongly forward in many different ways. I kind of remember reading it and feeling like, you know, it presents the kind of a yogic life and all of the different beings that are part of that life, and some of them seem to have kind of extraordinary abilities. And I rem I remember just feeling like these are all my old friends. Interesting. Like I I can't like put it into words, but it just felt like I know I like everyone who's in this book, I know them. And you know, then I you know something of my story. Then I had the privilege of actually going and living in India and mostly mostly running meditation centers and yoga centers for 12 years. And you know, that was a huge blessing. And along along that pathway, I met my own teacher, and he actually was kind of not

Autobiography Of A Yogi

SPEAKER_03 4:05

directly in that lineage, but he was in the same family tree, let's say.

unknown 4:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 4:14

So so speak to me, if you will, about that book because it's an important book. It's it's a book that many people are familiar with. I've read it myself a few years ago. And I've I've heard the story that when when the the late tech entrepreneur Steve Jobs, when he passed away, he actually gave orders that this book be distributed to everyone that attended his funeral because the book had inspired him so much. And I think he the story goes, he he read it when he was quite young, and I think he may have even reread it several times. And it's the story of Paramahansa Yogananda. And and well, what can you tell us about uh that particular individual and the impact that he's had on yoga in in the West?

SPEAKER_03 5:11

Wow, it's a very interesting question. So if you look at kind of like the older history of yoga, the first real yogi to land in the West, specifically in America, was actually Swami Vivekananda. Vivekananda was a student of the great saint Ramakrishna, and he gave this absolutely stunning talk. In fact, I think the history of that talk is quite interesting and quite funny in itself. He stood up and he said, Brothers and sisters of America. And everybody got onto their feet and he got a standing ovation, and he'd only said one sentence, you know.

SPEAKER_02 5:54

And and that was

How Yogananda Shaped The West

SPEAKER_02 5:55

at the Parliament of Religion, something like that.

SPEAKER_03 6:00

And then, but he didn't stay in the United States. He just came and he visited and he went back to India and he lived most of his life in India. Whereas Yogananda actually came to America and stayed in America and spent most of his life in America. He did briefly go back to India for his own teachers, Mahasamadhi, his own teachers passing from the body. But most of his life was spent in the West teaching Westerners. And that was extraordinary dharma, actually. I feel like, you know, when I when I first discovered this, this is also kind of a funny joke in the sense of that it shows something of my age. But when I first discovered yoga, I was at a sort of Christmas party, you know, fairly, fairly well-to-do, fairly intelligent folks. And I walked around to that party and I asked, have you heard of yoga? Have you heard of meditation to every single person there? And basically, quite a few people had heard of yoga before, actually. I think that was not that uncommon. It was maybe like 60% of the people. But meditation and pranayama, almost nobody. Like meditation maybe 30%, pranayama maybe 10. Or less than 10, actually, now that I think about it. I think there was one woman in the whole party that had heard of pranayama before.

SPEAKER_02 7:28

And this was where exactly?

SPEAKER_03 7:30

In California. California. Probably, yeah, probably when I was a like now that would be about 35, 34, 35 years back. And if you think about that now, like my friend is a teacher in California, and she was helping the students make drawings of the houses, and she said every single child had a yoga or meditation room in their house. Oh wow. It's just now like, you know, like common, common knowledge or accepted. Yeah, at least people have heard about it, at least people know about it. And even sometimes, you know, even on the meditation side, even on the energy work side, I feel like it's much more common now that people have at least some information about it.

SPEAKER_02 8:26

So what do you think has changed? Because as as you've just alluded to, you know, 20, 30, 40 years ago, there were not quite as many people who were interested in these subjects. And I mean, these days you you'll find a yoga studio, well, maybe not on every corner, but there's certainly much more almost in in certain parts of the world. I mean, you're out in in Bali, in Indonesia, and there I think you probably would find a yoga

Why Yoga Became Mainstream

SPEAKER_02 9:00

studio on every corner. So so what what what has changed? What has shifted? Why are people seeking this path at this time? What do you think?

SPEAKER_03 9:11

I mean, I I I do feel like part of it is beings like Yogananda, who really came and you know, sort of paved the way. His what he said his mission was, which is interesting, is that he said his mission was bringing the best of the East and the best of the West into collaboration. And if you sort of think about the history of that, it's like that was kind of like he left the body in 1952. So in 1952, was that like a common thought pattern or a common idea? I would say no. Like now we have the internet, we can reach around the world all the time. The the kind of concept that we take the best of the East and the best of the West is I think a lot more present than it was at that time. And, you know, in addition, it's like the kind of more unfortunate side of things is that we really have created a very unsustainable world system. And that's unsustainable on every single level. It's unsustainable on the sort of ecological level, it's unsustainable even on the human physiological level. It's like people are sick in proportion that's really never been present on this planet in quite this way. And so, you know, if you if you're sort of living in a world that's quite out of balance, and you have a several thousand-year-old system that's designed to recalibrate and harmonize and balance your inner system, like of course that would be wildly popular. The kind of unfortunate side of that thing is much of the way that yoga is being taught now would not give you the fullness of the experience that I was just talking about, you know, really recalibrating your system, really come back into sustainable inner alignment. Is it a possibility in yoga? Of course it is. It's a it's not just a possibility, it's kind of an inevitability if you practice correctly. But there's a lot of different branches in the yoga system, and not all of them are equal, let's say.

SPEAKER_02 11:44

Okay, well, well, let's let's explore that a little bit because that's that's a very interesting, very insightful

Superficial Yoga Versus Real Energy

SPEAKER_02 11:50

uh comment. I have observed the same in my much briefer yogic journey. I think I've I've been on this path for about seven or eight years, so not quite as long as you have, but nevertheless, it's been an incredibly profound experience for me. I I wish I had started 20 or 30 years earlier. But yeah, so so all that to say, you know, I've had some experiences work working with yourself in particular, and I and I will disclose to our listeners that you are one of my teachers in those last eight years, and I and I truly, truly value all that I learned from you and and from other teachers. But I've also I've also noticed, you know, parts of the yoga world that maybe seem a bit more superficial.

SPEAKER_03 12:48

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. It's I mean, even here in Bali, where I feel like we're we're quite blessed with a fairly vibrant yoga world, within that world, there's lots of different variation. And I think a lot of the a lot of the depth of the tradition has not been fully represented well. And, you know, in a weird way, I this is kind of a strange story, but it just happened a few weeks ago. So a few weeks ago, we my wife Kirsten and myself went, they had a sort of grand opening of this spa, and you could you could get a free day pass for a cold plunge and you know, sauna and all these things. So we thought, okay, let's go. So we went and inside of that was a gym also. And inside of the gym was one of the big Bali kind of yoga influencers, and he was like pushing like extremely heavy weights and kind of had this look of despair on his face. Like, you know, I just looked at him and I was like, wow. You know, the sad thing is like when I when I thought about it, I felt, I bet that's his job security.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

Sure.

SPEAKER_03 14:16

You know, it's like he needs to look, you know, like he stepped out of the gym when he goes and and delivers a class or you know, does his Instagram or does whatever else that he's doing. But then it's like it's not a hundred percent to say that that would mean that you weren't caring for the energetic side, but the energetic side of yoga is so powerful and so beautiful and so tremendously underrated. And definitely when you refine that system more, you would not be interested in going to the gym in that way, which sounds like kind of an extreme thing to say, except we can go back to Yogananda here and say Yogananda had a very advanced student whose name was Rajasi. He was a very beautiful, amazing yogi. And he he wouldn't let Rajasi carry his suitcase to his room when he would come to visit the ashram. And someone said, well, someone was like, What? Like, you know, why? And he was like, a soul like Rajasi with that kind of command of his inner energetic shouldn't be lifting heavy things.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

Interesting.

SPEAKER_03 15:38

And it's like I mean, that's definitely not what we're normally thinking in in our world, and of course, that's relative and also probably specific to that particular being. But if you kind of think about it in a weird way, it makes a lot of sense. Like if you're working with the subtle, you come out of working with the gross at least a little bit. It doesn't, it doesn't, and you know, gross means more material, it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the body. The body's a huge gift, but you know, you come out of body awareness. In fact, one of the great modern yogis, one of the things that he really recommends to people is wear loose clothing. Like, why would you wear loose clothing? Because your actual body, your actual energy body, your actual body of uh prana and the other more subtle bodies, are much, much, much larger than the physical body. If you cramp the physical body enough, you cramp the energetic body also. And, you know, then it cannot express and interact with life. You know, this is kind of one of the places you eventually land in in the yoga world is that the idea that we're isolated beings is just completely laughable. It's like the air and the sun and all of the elements and everything else is profoundly interacting with our system, not to mention planetary influence and you know, all kinds of interaction is happening. And that's good. You know, like it's it's the profound life force and the system of life is moving as us and through us. And you know, when you become really aware of that, it's like what a tremendous gift. You're part of the tremendous intelligence and flow of life and life force. And this concept of you being a completely isolated being, and you know, it's just like sort of an impossibility because you recognize that on every level, from from the sort of most material to the most subtle, everything's interacting with everything.

SPEAKER_02 18:18

Wow, that's uh you're giving me a lot to uh to think about and chew on. We can go so many different so many different directions with this conversation. But before

India As Spiritual Soil

SPEAKER_02 18:30

I dive deeper into that, I wanted to take a step back because we had started talking about your your own personal journey, and you had mentioned something that I was already aware of that you had spent some time in India, and I wanted just to talk about that experience a little bit more, the experience of going there and meeting your teacher. And can you talk a little bit about your time in India?

SPEAKER_03 18:56

Of course, yeah. I mean, India is just you can say it's a quite an unforgettable place. It can be for certain for depends a lot on the person. For some people, it can be a very challenging place.

SPEAKER_02 19:13

Yeah, I experienced that for sure.

SPEAKER_03 19:16

Yeah, yeah. But also I feel like like in a weird way, when you become serious about your spiritual life, you also become serious about facing whatever challenges are there with joy and equanimity. And like the the great science of yoga emerged from India, and it's just such a tremendous blessing to be there. You know, I was I was once on a podcast actually with a scholar, like university professor, and he said to me, I he said something quite funny and quite interesting, he said to me, Would you have had to go to India to achieve what you achieved? And I said two things to him. He had started the conversation by saying, I'm a complete disbeliever in yoga, I don't believe in anything, I don't believe in any of the spiritual things. And I said, Well, that's just not true, actually. It's not true that you're a disbeliever, because if you say, I achieved something, I never told you I achieved something. So that means that you recognize something in that happened here. But aside from that, it wouldn't it would not be a requirement that you live in India. But it does provide a certain soil that would allow things to grow in a little bit of a different way. And definitely my own teacher, I mean, my feeling about my teacher is to have spent one day, even one day, with him was so far past what I ever could have asked for from life. It's just ridiculous. And he and he said to me one time, one time I was sitting there and he was talking about the West and you know, having a true teacher. And then he said to me, Oh, there are there are realized beings in the West. And then he paused for a minute and he said, but they have to hide. And it was like, whoa, I I think that's true. Like, and you know, one of the great blessings of him was that he didn't have to hide. You know, he he just could offer what he was what he was offering, and if

Writing Excerpts From Infinity

SPEAKER_03 22:00

If anybody's particularly interested in that topic, there is a whole book about that. And it's available for free on our website and it's available on Amazon. It's called Excerpts from Infinity. And it's all of the conversations that I had with my teacher. Actually, when I first came to my teacher, I think it was the very first day that I was there. He said, I want you to write down all the stories that we talk about. And I said to him, Oh, I'm definitely not the right person for that job. You know, like sometimes my memory's good, sometimes it's not that great. Like I don't always remember every detail of every conversation. And he sort of stopped and he looked at me and he said, I'll help you remember.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

Interesting.

SPEAKER_03 22:48

And then I just said, okay, if you'll help me remember, I will write down every story. And I wrote down every story. And at some point I had this quite large stack of journals of all the times that I'd been to visit him and all the stories that he'd told. And then eventually I took that and wrote it all down. And I was very blessed, actually, and very lucky. Like I brought the manuscript back to him about a year before he left the body. And he was able to read through it himself and give comment and feedback. And he read the whole thing, and then he he handed me back this tiny little slip of paper. And this tiny little slip of paper had all of his corrections on it. And what was so funny about it was that they were all factual. Like it was nothing spiritual was corrected at all. It was all like you said that this person's name was this, but it's actually this. You said the name of this city was this, but it's actually this, you know. And it was sort of five, six things that he corrected from the manuscript. But I mean it it's written in the scripture of India that even one moment in the company of a realized being can be your raft over the ocean of delusion. And definitely that was that aligned with my experience.

SPEAKER_02 24:33

So there's an expression in Zen Buddhism which comes to mind, and I'm sure you've heard this before. When the student is ready, the master appears.

SPEAKER_00 24:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:46

So how how did that first meeting with

How The Teacher Appears

SPEAKER_02 24:50

your teacher come about?

SPEAKER_03 24:52

You know, the funny thing is that I actually just heard his name in a conversation. Like somebody was talking and they said, Oh, you know, we went and met the Swami Swami Gyanananda. I and immediately I just looked at the person and said, Stop. Like, I need to meet that person. Do you have contact information? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so he gave me Swamiji's phone number. And then I called him and asked if I could come. And he gave me directions to his house. And he told me also kind of like how to get there. In India, it's not always so easy to get places. And so I came by bus, and it was a fairly long bus ride. And the conductor of the bus never took my money. And we finally got to where he lived in Derridoun. We finally got to Derridoon where he lived. And the guy that was taking the money got off the bus. And then the driver got off the bus. And then I chased down the driver and I said, Hey, look, I, you know, I never paid anything for this bus trip. I'd like to pay something. And no, no, no, no, no. And he wouldn't take my money. And what why is that? The most unusual thing. I I never had it a single other time in India. I think why the bus driver wouldn't take it is that it's not his job, it's the ticket guy's job. And so he he sort of didn't want to didn't want to get involved or thought, who knows? And then I went to go visit my teacher and I said, you know, something really unusual happened on the way here, which is that I made it the entire way here without paying, and I'd come quite a distance. And he just looked at me and he said, That's because you're meant to be here.

SPEAKER_02 26:39

I believe that India is a fascinating place. I I I lived there not as long as you, just a couple of years in my case, and this was well before I began my yogic journey. Although even back then I was I was curious about it. But uh Yeah. But yeah, I I I keep meaning to go back at some point. But uh India is is it's a beautiful country. It is at times a frustrating country.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

Definitely.

SPEAKER_02 27:09

Yeah, it and it's just so different from from the West. That's the one thing that that really stays with me. Is and I don't mean on the on a physical gross level, but just in terms of the way people think, the way people perceive the world around them. Yeah, it's just it was hard to put my finger on exactly what it was, but I just felt that it was so different from what I was accustomed to growing up, in my case in Canada.

SPEAKER_03 27:41

Yeah. Yeah, beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 27:43

So how how how long were how long were you there?

SPEAKER_03 27:47

In India for 12 years, and then you know, I've been back, I've been back several times since I lived. I I was running a meditation center in Kolkata for for some years. That was really, really, really beautiful and really fun because Kolkata is entirely dedicated to Divine Mother, and there's almost no place in this world anymore that is completely and totally 100% dedicated to the Divine Mother. So that was quite fun. And then I lived for a while outside of Delhi. I lived in Bangalore, I was kind of teaching all over India, all the way from the north, all the way to the south, and lots of spots in between. So quite fun.

SPEAKER_02 28:31

And and and so, I mean, you you grew up in the West in the United States, correct? Yeah, yeah. And so how did Indians react to a Westerner coming to their country and teaching them this practice that goes back, you know, millennia in India?

SPEAKER_03 28:53

What was the reaction like?

Teaching In India With Sincerity

SPEAKER_03 28:55

People often ask me, like, okay, you know, you taught in India for so long. How many of your students were Indian? Like 99%. Uh occasionally. I had occasionally I had a Westerner, but the vast majority of people who studied with me were Indian. And you know, what's kind of fun about it is that until I started teaching Westerners, I had no qualification at all to teach yoga. I didn't have any certificate, I didn't have any, you know, yoga alliance, anything, I didn't have anything. But that's not how people in India would ever look for a teacher. Like they wouldn't care at all if you had a thousand certificates. They come in the room, they read you energetically. If they feel like you can support them in their journey, they stay. And, you know, we were we were very popular. We had successful centers all over all over India, and I think it's because, you know, partially you can say by grace, we were very genuine in our approach. And like if I if I look at my own life, I mean Peter, I probably you know the name Dave Das. Das actually means servant, and Dave means divine, means divine servant. And if I look back Yeah, if I look back in my life to when I was quite young, that was the thing that I wanted to do. It was like I wanted to be of service to people in some way. And that's really kind of in a weird way, almost the only thing that I've wanted in my life. And partially, I think, as a result of that sincerity, there was tremendous openness when I was teaching in India. And so you were teaching, you said meditation primarily or also pranayama or meditation and pranayama, and occasionally some kind of like in certain traditions of pranayama, there's like preparatory asana that you would do before you come into pranayama practice. When you when you get into very advanced pranayama, in general, that then kind of like tips over into something called kriya. Kriyas are like very specific sets of practices that have been laid that have been laid out that you just follow the kind of standard for lack of a better word, you just do the same practice every day. And just doing the same practice every day. I think in the in the modern world of yoga, many people would be like, oh, that's boring. It's like, no, like you go deeper in that practice every single day.

SPEAKER_01 31:48

Right.

SPEAKER_03 31:48

You know, like Yogananda specifically said, go deeper in your practice every single day. Don't miss, don't miss a day. And I think most people, when I even when I first heard that, I was like, that's impossible. That's like some crazy thing that somebody made up. And then I started practicing every day the same thing for years and years and years. It is possible, and not only is it possible, it's facilitated strongly by doing the same practice because there isn't any variation in it. It's like you're doing what you did yesterday, but the inner experience of that is definitely going to be different day to day. And overall, it's getting deeper and deeper and deeper and

What Pranayama Actually Means

SPEAKER_03 32:45

deeper.

SPEAKER_02 32:47

Can we can we maybe talk about this word pranayama? Because for you and I, it's it's obvious what we're talking about. And and for you know, most people who are steeped in the world of yoga, it's obvious. But for any listeners who may not be familiar with that term, what exactly is pranayama?

SPEAKER_03 33:05

Beautiful question. So prana is universal life force. And often it's translated as energy or breath, and that confuses people, but it's all has the same root system, and that's why it's in a weird way, even though those might not be perfect translations, they are sort of acceptable because the energy system in your body runs the breath system in your body. And so to and that's all run by universal life force. The life force that's flowing in an animal or a plant is not really in any fundamental, different, fundamentally different than what would be flowing inside of the human form. And so, you know, just thinking of it as universal life force. But what the yogis studied for a long time is what are the pathways of that life force, how to come into right relationship to that life force, how to purify and work with the forces of the body for vibrant health and energy and spiritual discovery. And that really is a science, actually. I think, you know, in in the West, people have this idea of like, oh, you know, energy, it's kind of like a bit of a unexact thing. And it's like, no, no, no, it's uh it's exactly exact. Like the yogis have every single pathway in the body, every energetic pathway in the body mapped out. And if you really begin to understand that not as a concept, but as a functional reality in your system, your system will come alive in a much different way. And you know, that's in a weird way. One of the one of the great modern yogis said you should keep your system in a constant state of overflow. If you sort of think, what does that mean? It's like your energy should just be absolutely overflowing constantly. Like, is that a possibility? Of course. Like, but it's not most people's reality because of what we were talking about earlier. It's like even the food that we eat doesn't have the same kind of prana that it used to have in it. So then we have to double down and get serious about our pranayama practice, get serious about our energy and and our awareness and our relationship to the universal force of life.

SPEAKER_02 35:55

So a lot of people tend to interpret or translate pranayama as breathwork. And as I'm sure you're aware, there's you know a modern breathwork movement in the West. Yeah. And there are some practitioners who have you know achieved quite a bit of fame, renown, thinking

Breathwork Compared To Pranayama

SPEAKER_02 36:20

of people like Wim Wim Hof, for example, the Iceman, who uh who many people may be familiar with. What are your thoughts on this modern breathwork movement? Is it the same as pranayama? Is it different?

SPEAKER_03 36:34

Is it you know it's a it's a beautiful question. I think it's a little different because the intention of it is a little bit different. And, you know, does the intention of your practice affect the outcome of your practice? Yeah, of course it does. Like, that's obvious, you know. When I meet people who meditate, especially in the modern world, the first question I ask them is why? And they don't always know the answer. You know, it's like I've been told that this is a good thing to do. It's like, okay, like that is gonna be a very short engagement. Like, you know, you have to recognize the value of it inside of your experience directly and see the value of it inside the experience directly. Otherwise, you won't continue to practice it. But the the aim of pranayama, I mean, one aim could be what we said before, which is getting your system into a state of energetic overflow, which is just to say that you have an abundant vitality and health and wellness. But that's not really the end result. The end, the kind of end game in yoga is knowing all of the different aspects of who we are. And that is the physical, which it, you know, there's nothing wrong with that side. That's actually a very beautiful side. The energetic, the lower mind, the higher mind. And then the last one, the yogis sometimes just calls Tatschidananda, ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new bliss, which, in my estimation, is kind of another word of what people in the West would use for soul, basically. It's like the invisible side of you that's nevertheless present and not just present, it's the physical presence wouldn't be possible without the subtle being there first. You know, because we live in a material world, we tend to think that the material is more important and the subtle less important. Rudolf Steiner, who kind of started Waldorf schools, he said the physical reality is the footprint of the divine. And that's a fairly accurate description. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with a footprint. Like that's also part of the beauty, that's also part of the power and and the joy of the experience. But it's not the most subtle of the experiences in inside of us that are going on right now. Like choicelessly. If you didn't have an energy body, your physical body would no longer function. So you have these bodies, you have these other parts of who you are, but in most people, those are either unexplored mostly or unexplored completely. And the intention behind the yogic science is understanding all of those different levels. Like from what I've seen in some modern breath work, I feel like it's more tied into psychology, which certainly has its place, but I feel like if you go to breath work and you go to psychology, that is not necessarily going to reveal to you all of the aspects of who you are.

SPEAKER_02 40:20

Interesting. Yeah, so I you know, I mentioned earlier that, you know, in in my brief yogic journey, you have been one of my teachers. And specifically in the in in in the area of pranayama, and we have practiced together. Well, I mean, uh, some of the sessions were uh were recordings, but we've we've spent so much time talking together. And and I so value all of your insights. Yeah, pranayama is so I of you know I I did start my journey with, you know, quote unquote breath work with Wim Hof some some years back, as it was recommended to me at the time by someone that I knew and respected very much. And so I tried it out and and I thought it was just it was fascinating. It was unlike anything I had ever done before. And there was something going on inside of me. I I couldn't explain what it was, but I definitely felt something. Yeah. And so I, you know, continued with that practice for some time before eventually stumbling into yoga and and and the pranayam path. And from my perspective, there there were certainly some similarities, but I would I would tend to agree with you that you know when you when you mentioned intentionality and the importance of that, I that is something that I find that is such a uh powerful practice, intention setting, yeah, and and really affects the outcome of whatever you're doing, definitely. In in including yoga. So yeah, all of that to say that you know, while while I still, you know, from time to time do practice Wim Hof and other methods that I've learned on the non-yogic path, there is something about all of the different lessons that I that I learned from you in particular, something about those practices that just invites a sense of of awe is the only way I can express it.

SPEAKER_03 42:37

Peter, you hit you you hit exactly in the right uh spot. It's like if yoga just brings you into awe and wonder over the tremendousness of life. What a gift.

SPEAKER_02 43:07

So before we uh we started recording this evening, I I was just looking for some

Bringing Forth What Is Within

SPEAKER_02 43:16

insightful wisdom, ancient wisdom. As as I think you know, I like to I like to read old, you know, sacred texts from different traditions. I I'm not dogmatic whatsoever. I was I was raised in the in the Christian tradition. But uh you know, I've I've read the the Hindu sacred texts, I've read the Buddhist sacred texts and and many others because I just find them so fascinating. And you know, the the overlap between all of them, like to me it it really seems like it's it's the same message.

SPEAKER_03 43:59

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 44:00

maybe you know dressed up a little bit differently, but but there's so many similarities. Anyhow, as I was as I was you know searching through some different texts, I came across this, which I thought was really interesting and pertinent for for people on any kind of uh spiritual path or contemplating engaging upon such a path. So this is from the the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas.

SPEAKER_03 44:30

Beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 44:30

And for anyone who isn't aware, any listeners, so in the in the Christian Bible there are four gospels which tell the life of Jesus Christ. But there are several other accounts of the life of Christ that were left out of the Bible and one of them is the Gospel of Thomas. So anyhow, this is the quote If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you what are your thoughts on that Wow very strong.

SPEAKER_03 45:20

You know it reminds me of something that my teacher in India said that he read in the newspaper what he said he read in the newspaper was everyone is born original but most people die as copies.

SPEAKER_02 45:52

And yet not everybody gets to the point at which they're singing the song of their soul are you familiar with the work of Joseph Campbell the hero with a thousand what is it called the hero with a thousand faces I think is is the title of it. Because it kind of that that that's what I'm reminded of as you say that the basic theme of this work being that and it and it's a work on ancient myths and the thread that ties together pretty much all ancient myths and and it's the hero's journey.

SPEAKER_03 46:32

Right.

SPEAKER_02 46:33

And it's this idea that that this is essentially what life is that this is our chance to live out our own hero's journey and so so yeah just coming back to this this quote bringing forth what is within you which kind of implies well what does that mean living an authentic life living with integrity I suppose and then the opposite if you don't bring forth what's within you then you know what is that what does that mean?

SPEAKER_03 47:15

Are you therefore living a life full of regret and and what are the implications of that's a lot to chew on isn't it yeah it it's I mean one thing that I've been reflecting on recently which is maybe a little bit strange but many yogis and probably I I know Peter's a great yogi also probably you have something similar is like we're just used to things happening really fast. Like if you want something it just happens like you don't have to think about it you don't have to talk about it it just happens and something I've really been appreciating in the kind of physical side of life is the fact that everything's not instantaneous. Like you can learn something you can expand you can become aware of things that you weren't aware of before and that journey of you know discovery either outwardly or inwardly it's just so intensely beautiful and you know my own teacher said about originality the word people think originality means that you do something that not nothing's ever done nobody's ever done before he said originality doesn't mean that it means it comes from your origin its originality interesting and my feeling is like even even when we were talking before about different spiritual paths I've worked with many many many thousands of people over the years from all kinds of different spiritual paths and observing them I think people have this idea like oh it's so important what is my what is my path which techniques do I use how you know am I meditating am I doing pranayama am I singing you know what like what's my what's my practice like the the characteristic unquestionably that is the most important for any spiritual person from any spiritual path is that you're sincere. Because if you don't want to know guess what like you won't know if if you say okay I'm I'm I'm happy in the dream and I just want to live the dream you'll go on dreaming.

SPEAKER_02 50:08

Like the minute that you say no I really want to know like I really want to know what's happening in this world I really want to know myself from the inside out the pathway to discovery is already opening like the minute that that sincerity is there the universe itself will reaccommodate that possibility what you are

Enlightenment As Dropping Something

SPEAKER_02 50:35

seeking is also seeking you i i don't I don't recall who said it I I might have heard that from you actually I might have heard that from you yeah yeah very beautiful that sounds like something Dave Duss would say it sure does it sure does it sure does what you are seeking is also seeking you yeah wow look at the time we I have so many so many more questions so many more threads I would love to explore but we're we're coming to the end of our discussion here may maybe maybe I'll leave you with one more one more thought to chew on because I found this one also really interesting for anyone on on the spiritual path on the yogic path this this is again from Lao Tzu the the ancient Chinese sage and founder of Taoism to become learned each day add something to become enlightened each day drop something what does Dave Dust think about that I love it absolutely it's it's the hardest thing to get across to people I I used to say to everybody you come to yoga and you think you're learning something but what I'm actually trying to do is help you unlearn but but you know what's fun in the end is that both are possible and you know it's it's like when you talk about subtle things and energy and the the realms of the heavens one of the great modern yogis said in looking for heaven we've made this world into hell and there is some truth to that and that's because we think oftentimes that subtle is better and subtle is not necessarily better it's all one thing like you could say the footprint of the divine is the physical but is your foot less important than your hand you know it's all one experience.

SPEAKER_03 53:17

That's the that's the sort of side of what we would think of in yoga as being embodied and people sort of take that to mean the wrong thing. It's like I'm embodied in my practice. What it means is you're reflecting all of the different levels of who and what you are and the song of your soul and the song of your life and the song of your physical body and the song of your energy body are all one song that is a wonderful thought to

Where To Find Sahaja Collective

SPEAKER_03 53:55

end our conversation.

SPEAKER_02 53:57

Dave Dust thank you so much for chatting with me on this first episode of our podcast I I truly value all of your insights all of your wisdom this has been a truly enlightening discussion for me and thank you again if if listeners want to find out more about yourself about Sahaja Collective where do they go? What do they do?

SPEAKER_03 54:26

Peter, first let me just say it's been such a privilege and such a joy. So thank you so much for having me. I hope we get another chance sometime it's just really been a tremendous pleasure. And we have if you're new to yoga and you're interested in the breath we have a free breath course on what's called Sahaja Portal. That's also where the book Excerpts from infinity is for free that is Sahaja S A H A J A collective dot O R G. And if you're more interested in retreats and things like that, that's our website Sahaja Collective again, but dot or g not dot so com is the portal and org is the website and of course we're on Instagram and all of the other magical places and yeah please feel free to reach out and connect if you're interested.

SPEAKER_02 55:27

Well thank you again Dave Duss. It's been such a uh wonderful conversation too short i i we'll have to do it again at some point in the future because I've got like a thousand a thousand other questions I wanted to ask you that I didn't have time to get to thank you Dave Duss so much. It's been a pleasure thank you Peter