I've never been in trouble in my life. I didn't even have a parking ticket, you know what I mean.
I was brought up like cops are the good guys.
I didn't know what was going to happen, but I do know that everything was stacked against me.
Everything like everything.
This isn't supposed to happen this way.
I'm innocent. I know I'm innocent. I know I had nothing to do with this.
How is this possible?
I grew up trusting the systems. I grew up believing that every human being should do the right thing. And that's why, even though I knew I was dealing with corerough people, I wasn't going to break anyone to get me out of prison because I wouldn't live with the fact that I break my way out of my wife's death. I'm not innocent, too proven guilty. I'm guilty until I prove my innocence. And that's absolutely what happened to me.
Our system.
Since I've been out ten years, it's come a little ways, but it's still broken.
I totally lost trusting humanity after what's happened to me.
This is wrongful conviction.
Welcome back to wrongful conviction with Jason Flamm. Today I have that's me, But today I have an extraordinary treat for me and for you the audience.
My guest today is sad Guru. And sad Garu is.
An internationally renowned yogi and mystic teacher of meditation, a New York Times bestselling author, and a man who has done fantastic work in prisons all over the world, teaching meditation and enlightenment to people.
Who most needed. I think you could say so, sod Guru, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me here.
So this is so exciting because the idea of being able to explore this aspect of the mind and the you know, the mind inside the prison and how to transcend these most terrible circumstances, which I've heard you talk about in videos, It's something that I think can help people both on the inside and the outside. Family members
as well, but everybody. So I'm really interested in knowing how you how you got started first of all, on this journey, and even more so, how you became interested and involved in taking this practice inside the prison walls.
So this is almost twenty seven, twenty eight years ago, I think twenty eight years ago, there was a ladies club in cormetor city where we are located now. They invited me to speak in that ladies club. This is, you know, a group of maybe two hundred very elite women of the town. So I was talking to them and just outside their club building there's a nice tree. We were sitting under the tree and I was speaking to them. Then I saw this big wall which is
nearly twenty feet tall wall. I looked at the wall and said, why such a big wall here? And the fantastic thing is none of them knew. Then I just enquired with the volunteers that were around me. They said, this is the prison. It is in the heart of the city and there's a prison. These ladies that club, the you know, one part of their club is touching the wall and they don't know it's a prison. And then I discovered the road, the main road in the
city is called jail Road. Yes, then I said, I would like to meet those people who are on the other side of the wall. I would like to do something with them. I would like to see who are they. Then we discovered the superintendent of the prison was somebody who was known to me. Then I tried to put an application saying that I would like to come and do something.
So you're breaking into the prison.
Yes, breaking into the prison is not easy. It took me over two years to get inside. I did not have the qualifications.
And what was your application when you were saying that I want to go inside?
Because because I said I would like to do something with his prisoners and see who they are. Then I discovered there were over fourteen hundred prisoners inside. I said, fourteen hundred people, what are they for? It doesn't matter. My work is with human beings. It doesn't matter where they are, So let's go. So when I went inside or and I tried to get inside, they put me through some three interviews that I'm fit enough to go to the prison or not. And they've said Seth Grew,
don't waste your time here these guys. You just can't do anything with them. Every Sunday some Christian priests comes. All they do is mischief, and Friday, some Islamic guys are coming. No good and another festival days and other things. The Hindu people are coming. It's no good nothing. You can't teach them anything, you can't do anything with them. All they understand, is just beating punishment? This all you don't waste your time here.
Well, let me ask you this prison. Was this considered a maximum security prison. It is, and so the people there are mostly in for murder or silent crimes.
Nearly nearly, probably six hundred to seven hundred them of them are for murder, but largely long term prisoners. Long term means in India anything over eight years is considered long term prison. So my said, give me a chance, let me just talk to them. It took me a little over two years to convince them that they should let me in. So when we went in, there were twelve words. You know, in each word there is something
like one hundred and thirty two hundred and forty. So we picked a ward which had over two hundred prisoners, the largest ward, and this is everybody has come there for life imprisonment. This means they have done either murder or more. So I said, let me do this. So they put full security armed police. I said, take them out. They're not going to harm me anything. Just take them out. It's not a problem. They said, no, we cannot do that. Anyway.
There were some policemen. Then I asked them together outside, they all came looking at me. Okay, what is this guy going to do with us? So we just arranged a small game and started playing the game with them.
So, okay, so it's you and two hundred.
Yes, and fifteen criminals hardened and softened. I don't know all of them are there for murder or more. So we started playing a game and they got so involved like little children. They screamed and yelled, and they played the game full on for about an hour. Then I stopped and then for about half an hour because they gave me only two hours maximum two hours you have to leave the prison. So then I spoke to them for half an hour and told them, see, this is
what I wish to do. All of you guys should write to the authority, to the superintendent that you want this program for you. You won't believe when I had to leave at the end of two hours, at least sixty percent of them were all in tears. They're saying, you don't go, you stay with us. So seeing this, then they allowed me to conduct a program. The first program I did it was a ten day thing, two hours every day, ten days. So I sought permission to
stay inside the prison. I said, let me stay there ten days with them, so that they feel I'm there really wanting to do something with them, not just for cosmetic purposes. I couldn't get that permission because there were some militants in India they called terrorists, so some of the terrorists were in prison in that prison. They said, no, we can't let you stay there. But every day I went there. My thing was only for two hours, but I went there, served mail to them, participated with them
in their break times. I was there. We participated in all activity in the prison, in that ward where these prisoners were there.
I want to back up a second. So you would go in and even the first time you said you'd play a game, what kind of a game.
We just played simple games. We have certain games like dodgeball and that kind of stuff.
Two hundred people. Yeah, that sounds.
Insane, rolicking fun we had. So every day in the two hour program ten days, we had about half an hour to forty five minutes was just games. Then we thought them some simple process of yoga and spoke to them a variety of things. The kind of transformation it brought about there. This prison on that day had one hundred and thirty six years of history. It was during the British era that it was set up as a maximum security prison. In these one thirty six years, every day,
literally every day, someone was always in the solitary. The solitary in that prison is like a four by four box, four feet by four feet steel box. You can only sit, you can't stand up, so in that they put you for a week ten days like this. But after we did the program, after we did three programs, I think nobody went into the solitary for more than two years. Not a single person entered the solitary. That's the kind of difference it made. And they burst forth into poetry.
Most of them are school dropouts or many of them illiterate, but they all burst out into poetry, writing poems. We have over three to four thousand poems which is being released in India as a part of this program. Be called as in a Freedom for the imprisoned.
In her freedom for the impression, I must tell you this.
There was one guy's name is Shanmogum. I think he's been executed now. He was there for three murders which he committed in the courtroom. He killed three people in the courtroom. Wow, so that is a kind of crime. You can't get away in the courtroom. When you do it, it's considered the worst thing.
Well, and it's pretty hard too, yeah, I mean it's that of the judge, I mean.
Your judges, the eyewitness.
So yeah, you're pretty much done there.
So he wrote a poem which you brought the entire prison into tears and just about anybody who reads the poem. He just said he's been in the on the death row for about seven years. By then, every time in the evening, see, daytime is quite okay in the prison. From morning six to evening six, it's fine. Sunset, everybody goes into the cells and the cell door closes. Normally in India it's a eight by five cell. Three people will be there. That is when all kinds of horrors begin.
One thing the prison psychologists told us is every day in the night, in their sleep, people are howling like animals. One simple thing that happened with the simple meditation process we brought is people first sharing is their sleeping peacefully. All these sounds and ailings stopped. And this guy poem. Every day when the cell door closes, I thought this was my grave but now this has become my body tree. If the cell door closes, you know, the Bodhi tree
were Buddha, God enlightened. When the cell door closes, I close my eyes and I'm in a different world altogether. This has become my body tree. He wrote this poem in Tamil in the local language. So like this there we've seen many, many fantastic transformational stories. See, the law has its ways. I mean, it's not for me to suddenly ask for a change in law or something, because you have to maintain law and order in a country. There are many issues, but no matter where a human
being is. Actually everywhere they call it a correction center, but there is no room for correction. In fact, people who go to prison for short stints and come they become really hardcore criminals when they come out. At least that's true in India. So when they go in they may be just pretty criminals, when they come out they become serious level of crime.
Right, that's a generalization here. I shouldn't say that, but it does happen because it's logical. And also when we people here come out, they come out with a stigma having been incarcerated. It's harder to get a job, and it's harder, you know, they.
If they had what else come out of it?
Skills, they may learn criminal skills. But I want to say too, just not to direct your flow here, but today is it particularly an interesting day for you to be here, because as we were discussing before, today is the day when Washington State abolished the death penalty, becoming it's wonderful the twentieth state in America to do so, and hopefully we'll get all fifty because it's preposterous that we send it's disgusting that we as a country still
execute people. It's also the eve of and you brought this up. You know, we call it correctional, as you said, but it's just punitive. All we do is punish people.
I mean, there are some little programs here and there, but they've been cut back and cut back and back, which of course is crazy too, because the more we invest inside the prisons in helping people to better themselves and to advance themselves spiritually as you do, or educationally or whatever it is, the better chance they have of not reoffending, it to becoming productive citizens and paying taxes and not causing problems on the outside and to that
end Today tomorrow group is going of about thirty correction officials. My friend Dan Slepion is going with them to tour prisons in Scandinavia and parts of Europe to see how they do it there, because there they focus on rehabilitation and they do it right. So by and large, so hopefully that some of those practices will be brought back here.
But I think it's exciting that there is some progress and some momentum, more than any time since I've started working on this twenty five years ago for this type of change.
See, of all the things, the most important thing is that one who is imprisoned learns to handle this condition in a healthy manner within himself or herself.
Please explain.
My work is Essentially, see, it doesn't matter where you are, whether you're in New York City or in India or in Africa. You're a prisoner, you're a politician, you're a musician, it doesn't matter who you are. Essentially, every human being has the right to be joyful and peaceful outside conditions. In our lives. What the world throws at us is not always determined by us, but what we make out of it within ourselves is entirely ours one hundred percent.
So to empower people like this, whether they're inside the prison, outside the prison, because those who are outside the prison doesn't mean they're living joyfully. Many of them suffer more than the prisoners. When I went into the prison in an Aquimeto where I personally worked, after that we trained teachers, and now in the last twenty three years it's become a mandatory program in southern Indian prisons. What I saw was see when you go into the prison, it's a
pretty organized place. Your food comes on the dot, your door open, somebody who opens doors for you, she'd said for you. I'm saying it's a very organized place. A lot of people aspire for that in their lives, and it never happens. The only problem is I've never been into these prisons, either in India or in the United States, and come out without tears in my eyes, simply because there is pain in the air. This is how important freedom is for a human being. There's nothing else. Food
is on time. In fact, people who are living in prison are far fitter than those people who are living outside. They're very physically fit, they're well fed. Everything only thing is there's no freedom, and how much it hurts a human being is unbelievable. There's simply pain in the air. If you just breathe that air, you know, tears well up in your eyes, not because I think of something emotional about them, simply the very atmosphere is full of pain.
This is how significant freedom mets for a human being. If you just take away that one thing, how much pain and how much damage it does to a human being in a very profound way is unbelievable.
Well, and I do want to say in America, of course, we have you know, conditions in the prisons, in many prisons that are really terrible. And that does extend to the food. Yes, you get three meals a day, but the food is could be rotten, it can be it's certainly not nutritious, and you know, it is something that I think there's disease prone, you know, because of the quality and the substance that they're being fed. So I don't want to sugarcoat that, but you are absolutely correct it is.
I'm not saying they're getting the best food. I'm saying regular food. Regular they're never hungry. Food is given to them, and they're healthy because they're fit. They kept themselves fit inside the prison. I am not trying to elogize a prison. I am trying to point out just because freedom is taken away, how much it hurts a human day.
I think that's a very good point and it's interesting too. I'm reading a book now. I'm almost finished with this book by Anthony ray Hinton called The Sun Does Shine, and it's his story of spending thirty years on death row in Alabama for a crime he didn't commit, and how he was able to escape from his you know, taking is his own mind and using it to escape from this five y eight.
Cell that he was trapped in.
It's quite extraordinary, and I think that he, like a lot of people, found some variation of the principles that you teach on his own because it was the only way that he could survive this unbelievable ordeal seeing so many of the people around him executed, smelling that smell of death and all the other deprivations of death throw It's quite remarkable, and to me, I get so much inspiration and gratitude from being around these extraordinary individuals who
have persevered through these impossible conditions and found, like I said through necessity or despiration or inspiration or some combination thereof again some variation of the very things that you are able to bring inside. And I want to turn to that too, because you've done work in prisons in America as well.
And how did that happen?
When I came to Nashville, because we kind of centered around Nashville, I visited this old prison from the kind of colonial times, and they took me into this place where where the executions happen.
Just the.
Energy that the stones around the stone walls have absorbed and still exchued is so terrible. So right there I decided we need to go in to the prisons and do something. But we didn't get permission in Tennessee, so we went to Kentucky and then we came to Pennsylvania. These are two which allowed. But then I found that there was a lot of resistance from religious groups and others for any yoga or anything to come. And they openly argued with me, we will put them in prisons
because we want them to suffer. We don't want you to have them blissed out. There was a lot of resistance and struggle. So we have not done much in the last few years in America, but in India it continues.
Yes, I'm glad you brought that up too, because I am trying to remember a friend of mine who I met acquaintance several years ago, had been teaching yoga and meditation in prisons in America and was so successful in terms of the results being like what you described in India, where the violence, the rates of violence inside the prisons plummeted, right, the infractions of the prisoners, every aspect of it just was so much better. The inmate on inmate violence, inmate
inmate to guard, vice versa. Everything just was so much better. Of course, so they canceled the program, right, and it's really remarkable.
You know.
There's a case that I'm involved with now, and this is how crazy our system is in America. In South Dakota, where and you brought this to mind, a guy his last name is Rhymes. He was sentenced to death by a jury who said that they sentenced him to death instead of life because he's gay, and they felt that sensing him to life in prison would entitle him to a life of enjoyment because he would enjoy being in
there in amongst the presence of other men because he's gay. Now, this is such an outrageous and terrible thing for anyone to say, and the idea that it's allowed to stand in this country. It's almost like the jury was committing
a hate crime. So many of us are working now, including people at the MISS Project, on trying to get clemency from the governor because it's it's an extreme version of what you were talking about, the idea that we sit there and say, well, we don't want there to be any joy of any kind or any and you contrast it with places like Norway, right where in Norway the guards are trained for two years. My understanding is that only ten percent of the ones who apply actually
are accepted. They're trained in psychology, they're trained in conflict resolution, they're trained in all types of different protocols.
And when people are brought to the.
Prison, the warden gives a speech where he says something along the lines. So this is first of all, the guards sing a song and then and some people listening are gonna say, well, this is outraged, this is too much.
We can't do that, it's too nice.
Or whatever whatever, But this is the way they do it over there, and the Warden says, it makes a speech and says something like that, I recognize that your people, your human beings, like me, and when you come out you might be my neighbor. Therefore, I want to treat you as my equal and treat you, as you know, with dignity, so that when you are done with your sin.
The intention of correction is very alive. That's what it means.
Yes, over there, it's a very very don In Germany, it's true too where they have the cells have locks, but they lock from the inside. You know, how different is that?
Right? What?
It's simple change they lock from the inside, so you could have privacy.
Huh, that's a home when you lock from inside, it's a home.
I mean, you don't want to be there, right, I don't want to be there. You don't want to be there, No right minded person wants to be there. But at least again, it provides a certain level of dignity that allows for and it's quite opposite.
Form that way, that form that he wrote about every time the cell door closed it felt like my grave in that he describes the clang of the boat when the damned door and clang crack they lock it. He always thought it's his debthnel, you know, when he heard the sound that life is over every day. It's just the way somebody locks the door from outside, if you could lock it from inside. It's a world of difference.
It's a world of difference.
And again, the recidivism rates in these countries are so much lower than ours because partially because of the fact that these people are treated as human beings when they go there and you know here, and of course I do want to touch on this too, and I'm interested in your take on this because in America we treat people with mental illness as pariahs and we lock them up instead of treating them for the syndromes that they
suffer from. Now, I'm not saying that if someone's mentally ill and they go and kill, you know, people, that they shouldn't be punished in some way. But and I, like you, believe in a system of law and order. I do think we need a justice system. We need to be free society, but we also have everyone is entitled to be safe. So but it is incredible that we lock people with mental illness up in these prisons
at the numbers that we do. The estimates of the number of people who suffer from a diagnosable medical you know,
recognizable mental illness that are incarcerated in this country. I think it's something like thirty five percent of the inmates in this country have this and so, and those people are damned to an even more dire faith because of the fact that they can't obey the rules, right, So they're constantly being punished on top of their punishment because they're not mentally able to sometimes understand or go along with due to whatever it might be, schizophrenia or whatever
they have. And so they end up in the hole, or they end up in these you know, the shoe or even worse can additions, and of course all that does is exacerbate their mental illness. So what is your I mean, do you have any insight into this?
See, the thing is in the defense system of when people want to lawyers want to defend their clients of very terrible crimes that have been committed, the first step that they take is mental disorder because it's the easiest way to get away. So I think even those who make judgments, either a judge or a jury system in America, it's very hard for them to really decide for sure
which is real mental illness which is not? Because every one of us, if we are willing, if you push ourselves a little bit, we can cross the line of sanity and behave in a certain way. A lot of people do under all influence of alcohol or a drug. They are crazy today, but tomorrow morning they may be fine. Having said that, when somebody is diagnos with an illness, treating him as a normal person and punishing him for
those things is inhuman. But at the same time, the system might not have evolved to a place to handle such people. Well, there may be no systemic in a country like America, you should be able to do it. In India, I'm saying we don't have a systemic arrangement
to be able to handle such people. But in being in all these prisons, being in no communication with various prison authorities, I've not heard of mental illness patients being there because usually they will be sent to a mental institution rather than keeping them in prison, because prison is simply not equipped to handle those things. But we do not know how many people are there who have an ailment but who have not been properly diagnosed as such
and being treated as normal with punishments and stuff. It must be happening, I'm sure.
Yeah.
In New York City, we don't have facilities for people in those conditions. We don't have the type of treatment centers that you would associate with what many people think is the greatest on one of the greatest cities in the world.
I do, I grew up here. I love my city.
But it's crazy that we have We have no ability to house these people in a secure but safe environment where they can be treated and hopefully get the help that they need in order to overcome or get some progress on these conditions that are afflicting them. And so we put them into the criminal justice system where they are you know, they're going to be abused in ways that that are even worse than people who are mentally fit.
For these situations. For these individual sufferings, and if it's also a systemic situation. One significant aspect is we've made a huge difference. The reason why it's mandatory now in southern area because the difference it made to the people and how their behavior has changed, and many of them who are known to be a little crazy and doing wild things inside the prison, all of them leveled out just taking yoga into the prisons can be a big thing. But when I say yoga, not the kind of yoga
you're doing in the studios in New York City. There is another dimension of yoga. If we take this dimension of yoga into prisons, if the right kind of people take it in with at most care, concern and compassion for the people inside, it can make a phenomenal difference. It has made a big, big difference in India. We're doing largely in southern India. There are other people who
are doing in northern part of the India. And without doubt, every prison has reported significant changes in the behavioral patterns and the amount of violence was there in the prison because everything is settled. You know, hands are the first things which move in these people.
And how does this How long does this particular? How many minutes a day do people need to devote to the practice.
They just have to devote twenty one minutes a day.
Twenty one minutes and seven days a week. Yes, yes, And and the change is.
Sax days a week, just every day, every day that you can't carry seven days. There's too much of a burden to caddy.
I agree.
When I heard myself say that. I said, well, it sounds like a lot that you said every day. I was like, well that I could do. It's like it's like aa one day at a time, right, So.
Never days come in bunches at you. It only comes one at a time. Yeah, that's good, isn't It's such a wonderful grace that creation never throws bunches of days at you. Suppose it came like a bunch of grapes, twenty five days came at you at a time, What would you do.
Especially if it's like Wednesday, Thursday, and Monday at the same time, or Sunday and Tuesday and Friday would be like so confusing, you know what I mean, nobody would know what to do. Then we'd have a metaphysical problem as well. So how can we full time in America?
Now? Not most of the time.
No, I have teams of people here, volunteers.
So we need to figure out a way to work together to bring this teaching inside more prisons here and see if we can.
You know, I think this would work much better on East Coast and West coast. But most of the work that we tried to do, we did it in the Midwest and the levels of resistance. See the I think when we attempted this also about eight ten years ago. From then to now, I think the opinion of what yoga is has changed dramatically. In America. People thought this is some religious practice from India. Now they understand it is the signs of well being. So I think that
understanding has seeped into the society quite well. Now. Should be much easier to do it now than when we attempted to do it here.
So yeah, I mean, I would love to see if we can work on it in New York State. You know, there are But the good news is there are. As much as there's a lot of people in positions of power who are maybe closed minded, there are also a lot of people who are open minded and who want to improve the conditions. And it's better for everyone when we're able to do that. It's better for I think everyone in that ecosystem of the prison, not just the inmates.
Even the closed minded people when they're very happy, they open their minds a little bit. Yeah, so that is my thing. People, they were amazed, So, how is it these criminals they're all behaving so well with you, They're so happy with you. I said, this is all it is. If you keep a human being happy, he's a wonderful guy always. If you're don't happy, he could be ready. That's different. That's true with everybody, isn't it?
So twenty one minutes a day not bad.
It's a way to put it very simply, to put it technically, it's like this. So all human experience has a chemical basis to it. What you call is stress, what you calls anxiety, what you call as tranquility, misery, joy, agony, ecstasy. Everything has a chemical basis to it within the system. Now, don't think about other chemicals in New York City. I'm talking about the chemistry in the body. So every human
experience has a chemical basis to it. Now, if you create a chemistry of blissfulness, you are blissful by your own nature. This is like a chemical soup. You are a chemical soup, actually a very complex chemical soup. The question is only are you a great, super or lousy soup. So this is just about teaching people how to make a great soup out of yourself, that it tastes really wonderful from within. And when you're feeling wonderful, you're naturally wonderful to everything around you.
And how can people? So people are listening now, right, I'm sure they're wondering, how can I get involved with this? How can I myself? I'm not in prison, I'm out bad about doing whatever I'm doing. A lot of people are listening in their cars.
Those who are in prison, not by the government but by their own nature.
But this practice, this magical twenty and this is like a tease to people. Right, they're listening now, they're going, where's this twenty one minutes? How do I find these twenty.
What do I do?
It's called inner engineering? They must look it up. Inner engineering, Yes, inner engineering.
And there's YouTube videos and things so I can learn, because I want to learn myself.
Now.
You know there's even appropriatory online program uh huh.
And you can just pull it up and.
Start doing it right now, Yes, they can. I can envision people now driving to work and pulling over on the side of the road.
Of people across the world have done it. We are an organization which is completely run by volunteers. We have about four forty six hundred full time volunteers and over nine million part time volunteers. It's all done by them.
Well, I mean you might have nine million and one by the time we finished with this podcast, right, So it's www dot inter engineering dot com. Www dot inter engineering dot com. And I want to also say, I mean, I've had the privilege of getting to know so many people who are either still on inside prison like y Ensuring who is.
Those people that you have helped to come out, those who are wrongly incarcerated, and now you help them to come out, we would be privileged to conduct a special program for them if they're in one place somewhere.
Okay, fantastic, We're going to know what we're going to do.
We'll organize that for the next Innocent Network conference, where we're going to have approximately two hundred people who are wrongfully convicted all gathering together.
We will do the program. We'll offer the program at our cost. We will whatever is needed for those people.
That will be wonderful and much appreciate, and we're going to make that happen. But I was going to say too that I've had the privilege of getting to know some extraordinary people like Sunny Jacobs, who I was talking to you about before, who was sentenced to death, who taught herself these practices from things she remembered seeing on TV.
And this was in the seventies when she was convicted late seventies, early eighties, and who got her, you know, who managed to maintain her sanity in her years in isolation on death row by using some similar techniques practices.
And then there's a guy who I always think about him, Yen Surring, who's still in after thirty one years in Virginia, who is a meditation practitioner and a tai chi master, and I know he's teaching others in the in the prison that he's in Virginia some of these practices and writing books about it and other things like that. So you know it's out there and it's already percolating, and you know it's helping people, but it needs to be done on a much more organized and.
More organized scale. Scale is important if you want to see the difference.
That's the word I was looking for. Scale.
So I would love to see if we can start. I mean, for instance, I think New York State is a good place to start. We have some very good people in positions of great authority inside the correction system who I think would be very open minded to this and I have a prison in mind right now, or my friend JJ Velasquez John A. Trivelasquez, who's been on the show, it's still locked up in sing Sing and I think we're going to let's explore and see if
we can bring this practice inside there. They do a lot of wonderful things their voices from within and other programs that are that are progressive, I would say, but this would be I mean, there's so many good things that can come out of you being here and starting this process.
Now.
Now, it's interesting because you're such a such an interesting and inspirational man, and yet you are a victim of the same affliction as I am, which is called golf. So why do you suffer.
I don't suffer that as an infliction. It's just that I used to play a variety of games. I played a lot of field hockey when I was young. I played soccer, being in India, played cricket. I was when I was in school. I was in some twelve disciplines of games. That's all I did, just sport most of the time. But about seven eight years ago, I was playing soccer with the kids and I tore my a cl and my left knee cartilage. So after that injury,
I was just sitting. I had a event and I was sitting at a dinner table and somebody brought one brand new tailor made golf and they said, sad, grow, it's time you play golf. You're too old for the other games. Time it's time you understand this. The next day, all packed up my knee, I went to the golf course, straight onto the course. I've never been to a driving range till now. I just went straight, straight on the course and I hit the ball. It went straight the
amazing I said, what's a big problem. It's a bloody sitting ball. Nice not moving, He's not moving. It's a sitting ball. Any other game I played, the ball was coming at me at different angles, different velocities, different spins. Here it's sitting. What's a big deal about hitting it? So I never took a lesson, I never been on a range. Now I'm playing for a handicup of nine ten.
Not bad, pretty amazing.
You'd like going to be the successor to Tiger Woods or something like that.
We're going to get you on the tour. It's going to be amazing.
Self taught and everything else. So and I think we may we may have to go out and hit some balls together tomorrow. I think the weather is going to cooperate. So that's the plan, and I'm excited about that. We'll with the ball will sit there and wait for us, and we will go out there and address it problem.
I will never go anywhere. It's hits and weights.
Yeah, and it doesn't know who we are either until we hit it.
And it is amazing because when people ask me about golf and they say, we're getting way off topic here, But people who don't play golf, they ask me, why why do you do?
This?
Is waste a time? Four hours just that the other what First of all, you're out there in nature.
It's beautiful.
It's grass and water and trees and birds and air and whatever, which is very nice, you know, nice day whatever. With friends, it's social. But moreover, on those rare occasions when you actually hit a golf ball properly and you can the physics are the same in golf as other
sports with balls. Right when you hit one side of the ball, it compresses and then that energy has to go somewhere, so it explodes out the other side of the ball and then the ball flies and on that rare occasion when I have had the privilege of hitting it properly, you can actually feel that compression and it goes through the ball to the club, into your hands, and through your body into your soul and connects you to the center of the universe in a way. That
is that's my that's my definition. I don't know it does. Like I said, it happens maybe once every few rounds, but that shot is what I live for when I'm out there. You know, it's just such a great, amazing feeling. And then unlike other sports, you don't have to run, Nobody tackles you, nobody's.
Saying to take your ball left.
You just go and walk and look and catch up with the ball and think a little bit.
What kind of shot. And it's a very nice little breeze.
It's nice, nice nace. So hopefully tomorrow will have that experience.
I can't guarantee it, but we'll see what.
It freaks people, mainly because they got nobody to blame, but the ball that went into the lake, they know it's them.
That's true.
That's what you see people freaking because they know if it's any other game, you can say the other guy did it here. There is nobody else when the ball lands in the lake, you know, it's just you. That's what makes them make people go totally crazy.
So there's a strong element of personal responsibilities which you're out there, which I can see that. So, Saguru, before we close, I wanted to do the same thing I do when i'm every more or less every episode, which is to ask my guest if I can just turn the microphone my microphone off and thank you again for being here and sharing your thoughts and your experience and your wisdom with me and with the audience, and then just turn it over to you for any other ideas that you would like to share.
So this is something everyone should understand. That everybody is some kind of a prisoner of their own making, some unfortunately by the state, but rest by themselves. When I say prisoner, people have limited themselves in some way. They've drawn their own by boundaries. The boundaries may be of gender, race, or religion, or ethnicity or nationality. We've drawn boundaries that we cannot cross in our own minds, which is the basis of so much of suffering that's happening within human beings.
So we need to understand this, as there is a science and technology for external well being. When I say science and technology for external well being, if you just look back and see what is the level of comfort and convenience that people enjoyed one hundred years ago, and what is the level of comfort and convenience we are enjoying today, it's just unbelievable. No generation ever knew these kinds of comforts and conveniences, so we should be the
most joyful generation. But such a thing has not happened simply because we've fixed the outside too much, done nothing about our interiority. So as there is a science and technology for external well being, there is a whole science and technology for inner well being. You don't have to believe anything, you don't have to belong to any group, if you just learn a few things about how to manage your body, how to manage your thought process, your emotion,
and your energies. If these four dimensions your body, mind, emotion, and energy take instructions from you, you will live healthy, you will live blissed out, and you will live a powerfully intense life. This is possible for every human being when it comes to the outside action, not to human beings are equal. What we can do with our body, what we can do with our mind. No, to human beings are equal, but when it comes to the inner dimension,
all of us are equally capable. Such a thing has not happened to most people simply because they never paid attention to what is within. They thought, by fixing the outside, everything will be okay. You see the hammer and banging, because they think by fixing the outside, everything is going to be okay. We have more comfort and convenience than any generation ever had in the history of humanity. We
are the most comfortable generation ever. But we are almost complaining, like neurotic complaint level, simply because we have not done anything about the inner nature of who we are. So what we are referring to us in engineering is this possibility. This is not only for people who are in some
state of suffering or imprisoned or whatever. First and foremost thing is people in positions of responsibility and power must get this because if they don't break their limitations within themselves, though they don't erase the boundaries of their individuality, they cannot change the situation. They cannot bring about a new possibility. You have heard the word yoga. Of course, the word yoga means union. The word yoga does not mean twisting
and turning. Yoga means union. Union means there is you and the universe right now. If you look at individual human beings, their life is like it is you versus the universe. You versus universe is a stupid competition to get into the Yoga means consciously you erase the boundaries of your individuality. Where there is no you and the universe. You are a part of the universe in your living experience, not as an idea, not as an intellectual process, not
as an emotional process, but as a living experience. Like you experience the ten fingers of your hand, you experience all life around you. If a human being is touched by this experience, even for a moment, the very way you perceive, experience, and express your life alters dramatically, And that is what needs to happen. We're just doing cosmetic changes to human beings by teaching them morality, ethics, small
changes in attitudes. This is not good enough. Only when you experience the other as myself, everything about you changes. This is what yoga means. This is what engineering means. In a way.
On that note, I want to thank you again for.
In whatever way we can be useful for these people who have been unjustly punished by a society. We will do our best. Please call upon us whenever we needed Thank you.
I will be doing so. And thank you for that very kind and generous offer.
And also get ready to be beaten in the golf game tomorrow.
Oh boy, I thought we are one and one is two and the other one is together and we're gonna We're gonna be one with the universe. So okay, Well, it's good to know that that doesn't That doesn't extend all the way to the golf course. It stops at the entrance to the club. So anyway, well, this has been a real treat for me.
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