Ep. 62 | The Spiritual Heart, Addiction, Longing

Call and Response Ep. 62 The Spiritual Heart, Addiction, Longing Q: I was curious to hear about your experience with your sobriety… “If I had to fight with my desire for drugs, I would have lost. That’s the deal. That’s the way I was made. If it had been up to me, every day to fight that desire, I couldn’t have done it. I just, you know, I’m being honest with you. So, I have such respect and honor so much the people who really do have to work with that every day and do work with it. Whether they’re successful every day or not. It’s a fierce battle for survival. And it’s very difficult. And truly, I don’t think anybody can do it on their own. I think if a person is doing it, it’s coming out of some kind of spiritual strength, inner strength which is not ego-based. Which is not based in the separate self, it’s based in the real self and that real self, your own self, your own true nature, is strengthening you to fight that battle.” – Krishna Das KD: Anybody? Q: Over here. KD: Hi. Q: Hi. There’s some talk in quantum physics community or whatever, for really some years now, maybe 10, 15, 20 years that consciousness is non-local and we are more like satellite dishes and it’s about, you know, your thoughts or absence thereof would be more about tuning into different channels, so to speak, almost like the radio. Like you get tuned to the channel of love or you know, or you could get caught in some just train of thought that is just in the vicinity or just happens to, you know, tune or something and then you could choose to maybe change it if you’re able. I don’t know. Have you heard anything about that? I was just curious if that resonates or anything like that. KD: Well, Ramana Maharshi who was one of the greatest saints that ever lived, said that, like you say, “Consciousness is everywhere all the time,” but there’s one spot in the body where we connect to it. It’s called the hridayam or the spiritual heart. But it’s not the heart chakra, He says. It’s on the other side, He says. I don’t say because I don’t know. So, that’s what He said. And there’s like a little kind of thing that connects us to the universal consciousness and that, the seed of that consciousness is here and when the body dies then that connection, obviously, dies with it. The body is no longer connected to consciousness. It’s just what it usually is, as in, inert. The light goes off. The light was not in there. It wasn’t coming from the body. It was coming from the connection to the light, so to speak. That’s what He says. Q: That’s beautiful. KD: And He says, “That’s the seat of the Self.” That’s where the Atma, the connection to the Paramatma, the Supreme Being, the individual connection is there through that spot. Q: Beautiful. Thank you. KD: Yeah. There’s one over here. Why are you sitting out there? Q: Hi. I asked you a couple questions yesterday. KD: Good because I don’t remember. Q: It’s ok. I gave you a high five on the beach… and I, instead of asking you about that, I asked you other questions and it was just kind of, I was curious to hear about your experience with your sobriety and like, the longevity you have there, like that, and your relationship to… KD: I don’t think of myself as sober. Q: Ok. Yeah, I just want to hear it because I’m going to be coming up on 12 years. KD: Yeah. Good. Q: And I don’t really… my relationship with it has changed over the years. In the beginning I was like, proud of it, and now it’s just become part of my lifestyle and I just thought I’d ask you KD: Sure. When I say, “I don’t think of myself as sober,” it’s not, in other words, it’s not a way I identify myself, in that way. But, in fact, I am sober. Very sober. Sober and boring. For many years. And sometime in the 80’s I was strung out on freebase cocaine for about a year and a half and I was going down. There was no possibility I was going to make it. And my Indian father, Mr. Tiwari, he came to America to visit Maharajji’s devotees here and he first came to Canada and I flew to New York from California where I was living and I stayed up all night smoking freebase and in the morning I got on a plane to go and see him up in Canada. And when I walked into the room, he was sitting on the other side of the room with his back towards the door, ok? So, I walked into the room and I kind of went… and I really, I was starting to back out of the room. I don’t know why. But I just felt this like, and I just started to back out of the room. And he turned and he said, “You. Promise me now you will give up cocaine. Promise me now!” Like that. Now, I loved this guy more than anything. He’d been my best friend, my teacher. He kept me alive after Maharajji left the body, he and his family. And there was no way I was not going to do what he asked me to do. So, I didn’t really have a choice. I just said, “Ok.” And that was it. From that ...