Serendipitous Bookstore Conversation

Nine Inch Nails, that music genre, but Nine Inch Nails wouldn't be here without bands

like Skinny Puppy or Coyote or Ministry.

Yeah, there's a lot of those kind of hardcore sort of alternative bands that came out of

Vancouver.

Yeah, electronic.

Yeah, he's really into industrial music.

But the older stuff, not like the new vampire trance BS, no, the real stuff.

So you wanted to know about publishing?

The publishing and maybe for the podcasting, what was your content?

You said stream of consciousness, but was it centered around anything in particular?

When I first started doing it, I did my show and we did a show together.

It was just like, we were what, 25?

We were 25, yeah.

Some of us were younger.

We were just a group of friends.

We would meet at an open mic, right?

And then we would have conversations, have a cigarette, smoke weed or whatever people

are doing.

People are...

Drinking and stuff like that, right?

I'm not that guy anymore.

But, you know, we met all these people.

We're like, well, here's this new thing.

Let's try that.

Put the mic, like what I was using at the time, I was using a mini disc player.

Yeah.

With a microphone, like a cheap microphone.

And over time, like now, you can buy a Zoom microphone for a hundred bucks or whatever.

But back then, like, you know, people were like, I don't want this on the internet.

People have privacy, right?

Don't want anything on the internet.

So we would go off on our own in that alley or whatever.

Sounds shady.

Freestyle rapping and, you know, making jokes and stuff, right?

Were you the rapper?

I'm the rapper.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I got that.

Don't get me to do it right now.

Well, maybe.

I mean, like, we're...

You know, all cards are on the table now.

Okay, well, here we go.

Are you okay?

What the...

I did not expect that there.

Oh.

I thought you were going to put the camera in.

What are you doing?

Oh.

You should get it first.

Thank you, thank you.

God, I'm good.

No problem.

You okay?

I'm good.

Did not expect that there.

You're, like, right in line with it.

Did I say, what the hell?

Hindi?

Yeah, I know, right?

I was just talking Hindi now.

Did you teach him Hindi?

Like, did he teach you?

No, he doesn't pick up anything.

Hindi.

Did you speak Hindi?

No.

No, I know you don't, but maybe living in Surrey, you might have picked up something.

Well, that would be Punjabi.

That would not be Hindi.

That's true.

True that.

Predominantly Punjabi.

No.

Hindi there.

I have a melanin deficiency problem.

Did you guys watch The Romantics on Netflix?

Oh, my God, I did.

Right?

So did I.

Aditya Chopra actually taught me by watching that.

Yes.

I'm going to sound like a flighty here, but I'm going to go flighty, okay?

Go for it.

Here we go.

Okay, I'm just going to say it.

Without, okay.

Say it.

Basically, before I can, I'm just going to say it, okay?

I'm a straight-A student, but I was studying to become a neuropsychologist,

so for me, to start any endeavor, I've got to figure out the hack behind it,

because when you know the hack, then you can streamline everything out, right?

So I'm like, what's the hack?

What is really happening with the romance genre?

What's the hack that I'm looking for?

So I'm slowly, like, we're on the sixth round of edits of our first romance.

Our first erotica is out, but I listen to this one entrepreneur,

and he's like, don't be a perfectionist about it,

but this guy's a 1.8 GPA, and so I put it out.

Like, this is what I get for listening.

I have a fucking 1.8 GPA.

My 4.3 GPA, I should listen to myself and just said,

wait until it's perfected, then put it out.

So now I don't listen to him anymore.

I just listen to him, like, loosely, right?

But what I do now is, like, I let myself do it like how I did with academics.

Wait for the hack, and I'm very Indian about it.

Like, I'll be like, let me know when it comes,

and then it'll be direct download, and then I'll understand,

and when I grasp it, then I can.

And I can go, that's how I've always worked.

You wait for divine intervention.

It always happens.

It's okay.

The divine is in everything.

He'll tell me about his dreams and stuff.

It's like, it came to me in a dream.

There's some truth to that.

There is.

There is some truth to that.

I mean, you can walk it all you want, but there's some truth to that.

There is.

It's weird.

Your brain is doing a lot of work on its own.

I thought you even have to think about it.

Well, we, in India, we found a mechanism for biologically, chemically,

biochemically engineering ourselves to become psychically aware

through clairvoyance.

clairaudience and clairvoyance and clairsentience and all these things

to attain siddhis so that we expand our consciousness

so we're able to see things in other realms

through the power of the trinitra.

Well, you say we.

There's not a lot of people who can do that, but some folks.

Some folks, yeah.

Right.

Who have the faith and who are like, blind faith.

That's not even like they know what they're walking into.

It's like blind faith, blind leading the blind kind of thing.

It's not even blind faith a lot of the times because we go into reincarnation,

and then so sometimes.

Yeah.

Sorry.

Where you might have been in your two lives ago or previous life,

it's like what you didn't finish, your sadhana didn't finish,

your worship didn't finish, and your growth didn't finish,

so then you're continuing it until you even attain enlightenment.

And even when you attain the prefix of enlightenment,

sadhikap samadhi, then you have to have nirvikap samadhi,

which is before nirvana.

But even when you do that, sometimes, like there's two classes of teachers,

upadeshis and nirvana.

Upadeshis are meant to teach in the world.

Nirvanis are the ones that stay in their repose in the Himalayas,

and they meditate for the kalyan, the beneficence of the world, of earth,

or whatever other earth in a different bhumandal.

Bhumandal means like a galaxy that they're situated in,

and then they just keep things energetically balanced so that things are safe and good.

And then while you're doing that, you will get dreams from different deities

or different entities that will help lead you there to whatever,

needs to be brought out at what point.

You'll get your allotted duties and your allotted job,

and you might even be told and given what your previous lives were

so then you know it in context of where to go.

A lot of these mahants talk about this.

They've written books about it, too.

A lot of them, when they talk about it, they'll keep it in very, like, ancient scriptures

that just stay hidden in people's households that only the family has.

And the families will say,

this was your great-great-great-grandfather's guru who wrote this book.

That's so fascinating.

And, yeah, and then this kid says,

well, I had a dream last night that Ganesh told me to take this scripture

that was Dadaji's, you know, book,

and to give it to this Gora guy that's going to be coming over.

Which Gora guy? I don't know.

And then some Gora guy will show up.

Yeah, well, I had a dream of, you know, like,

I'm Hare Krishna, and I had a dream of, like, you know,

Krishna telling me to come here for some reason,

and I was reading a book, and that shit happens, right?

And the kid says, oh, yeah, you're the person that Ganesh told me to give the book to.

That stuff happens.

Yeah.

But it's so minuscule, like, it just, it doesn't really get aggrandized.

Because we don't want any government involvement in that.

It's like, that's where the gnosis, the knowledge has to be passed down

away from the scrutiny of, you know, the scientific or academic institutions

that would otherwise try to nip that in the bud

so then they don't, they can have control over the people.

It's a weird...

Yeah, well, the problem is with technology,

it's, when you make things easy,

communication and interpretation of things,

all this knowledge...

all this knowledge is getting passed around, right?

Everybody takes the easy way, right?

You get the dopamine hits.

And you get addicted to trivial things.

And then you lose, you lose that deep sense.

Like, when you talk to old people,

and they tell you these stories, right?

They, it's like, oh, like, I, like,

old ladies like to talk about people falling in love, right?

It's like, oh, you know, they,

and something horrible happens,

you know, he was on a ship,

and then the ship crashed on this reef or whatever,

and they had to get rescued,

and then he went to this hospital,

and he met this nurse,

and then they fell in love,

and then the war happened,

and then all of a sudden they're in Canada, you know,

and here you are, right?

Those stories get told, right?

That it becomes like a serendipitous thing.

We were talking about serendipity earlier.

Oh, wow.

Where, like,

we, you know, we did, when we moved to Canada,

we didn't know this neighbor happened to be

from the same village that we were from, right?

And then their kids got together

and were continuing the village, you know,

totally accidental, you know.

Or is it accidental?

Well, that's, well, that's the point, right?

So when, you know, I like talking to old people

about that stuff,

because they always have some story, right?

But do you notice that, you know,

these kinds of cult stories, storytelling,

or even sharing doesn't happen

beyond a certain age?

Beyond a certain set of age group.

It's coincidental that we're here,

that there are no accidents, I get that.

But predominantly, and even in India,

I don't know when was the last time you guys were in India,

but I...

1989.

Right, 2015, I think.

But, no, the point being that, you know,

that kind of transmission hasn't happened in a while,

because now people there,

I'm going to say my age group,

I'm like a mid-30s,

my age group are all addicted to the dopamine hit

that we talk about.

It's all about Westernization.

And I know when I used to live there,

all this used to be like,

but that was the expression on my face.

Spirituality.

Spirituality was something you looked down upon

because it was native, and it was indigenous,

and you were like, eh, there's no use to me.

It's no value.

It's just perpetuated that way.

Coming here is when I discovered

and re-learned, I had to rewire the mind

to learn these things and have these conversations.

Now when I go back home,

my peers are looking at me with weird eyes,

and I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with you?

What did you do to yourself in Canada

that's kind of got you wired this way?

But the point, all of that to say that

there is a generational gap

where those stories don't happen anymore.

And if they do, it's just to an extreme

where they've become devotees

and there's just no semblance of normalcy in a way.

You know what I mean?

There's an extreme end to it.

It's a folkiness that kind of goes away.

And I think an intentional separation,

almost like decolonization happened at some point too

that created a forced separation from your own identity.

That's what they did with the academic institutions in India.

In some sense.

It's a decolonization, a colonization.

One of the problems with being on the internet

is you don't have an identity when you're on the internet.

Well, you don't have a choice.

You don't have a body when you're on the internet.

So what I mean by that is you have an image.

You're like consciousness just surfing over everything.

You're looking at things, but your mind is there,

but your physical body is not there.

So you lose sight of your entire identity

until you create it for yourself.

So it's a projection is what you're saying.

Yeah, it's a creative act.

Anything you write, anything you click on,

you're creating cookies and paths

and all these interconnections

and things that you input,

things that you search for,

builds a, what do you call them,

like an astral body almost

or something like a psychic body,

a mind body that exists in that world.

Outside of your body.

Yeah, and then you just connect with kids.

Young kids are like,

I don't know what to do.

I don't have my phone.

Because they don't know how their identity works

in their bodies.

It's funny you bring that up.

I don't think I thought about it this way.

So all of yoga,

I've been teaching yoga for a while,

and all of that is about bringing connection,

bringing union to your mind and body.

It's originally about bringing your union

of your consciousness to God's consciousness.

Well, that's the greater consciousness,

but here in the westernized version

where you're dumbifying it

on almost saying what's the palatable version of it,

we're saying that, all right,

so let's just, why do we do prana

and why do you do breathing exercises?

It's just to bring yourself back into your body.

So I'm not even going to the philosophical side

of what the true meaning is,

but how do you practice it?

Yeah, just how people use it.

How are you using it, right?

So if I'm going to be breathing,

if I'm just going to slow down,

my nervous system enough

so that I can come back into my body,

there's a big disconnect happening there.

It's not even mentioning the thing you just talked about,

which is there's a whole part of you

that's living outside of you.

And every time you turn on your phone

and every time you're just going and scrolling

and doing scroll or whatever,

it's not a conscious act of connecting.

It's not a conscious act of saying,

I'm going to engage with that part of me.

Yeah.

I don't know if I can talk about the reasons behind it,

but...

They call it an act.

They call it an avatar.

Yeah, call it whatever.

It's a form of consciousness

that we just need to maybe be more conscious

of how we're navigating through it.

Well, some people who are conscious

would then become mindful of when they engage.

So I had this struggle

and had to come back on Instagram.

And so I asked around,

how do you guys do it?

Because I had a terrible...

It affected my mental health so much.

There were repercussions.

And so what I heard from...

I'll call them businessmen.

Business owners, I guess.

That they were using Instagram purely as a tool,

knowing that, okay, during my hours,

when I'm engaging,

like I've switched on my...

I'm an instructor or I'm a publisher,

I'm a whatever.

Your business mind.

My business mind.

Then that's a tool I'm going to use

to drive up my engagement,

to drive up whatever.

Whatever my tool is there to do.

And after that, I'm going to tuck it away.

That's not separate from yoga, though,

because that's karma yoga.

Right.

Vidur said this to Bhishma.

Sorry, I'm getting into the Mahabharata.

No, no, go for it.

Vidur said this to Bhishma

when Bhishma wanted to bring...

Ambalika and Ambika

from where they were insulted.

Where was that?

From their palace to Hastinapur.

And he said,

it's your karma yoga,

meaning you're a man of action

because you're a Kshatriya,

you're a warrior.

Because of that,

you grabbing those three princesses

and bringing them here,

that is what a valiant, courageous knight

is supposed to do.

So you're in unison with God right now

by doing that action

because it's justified,

because it's your union with God

through your work.

Something you have to do.

Well, it's the...

For your work, you have to engage.

Right.

But if you are not a business owner,

you're a regular Joe, 22-year-old,

and you've just got an Instagram

because that's how you keep in touch.

Yeah.

Then what's your karma?

You're the product.

You're selling yourself online.

You're selling your brand, your identity.

At least that's how a lot of people view it.

Well, that's the mechanism behind the scenes.

That's why your data gets sold.

That's why it's so important.

It's so important for all these companies

to have you engage with...

Even to communicate.

You're selling your identity to somebody, right?

But then the point is

you haven't figured out what your identity is.

Well, that's the thing.

If you're just a 22-year-old,

I'm going to pick on an age.

It's being created for you in a weird way.

Right.

With other things interacting with it,

pushing you, like streams of a river, right?

It's pushing you around.

But if you don't have a karma...

Just this culture.

Yeah.

If you don't have that,

then you're this lost identity

that just floated around.

That's why you're supposed to tie your karmayoga

to an occupation.

And then you become the identity of the occupation,

unfortunately, right?

Well, I'm going to say something a little off-topic.

I'm going to throw this out here.

So when this technology

became available to consumers,

we had producers and consumers merge,

and they became prosumers.

Have you ever heard that term?

Prosumer?

No, say that again.

Producer, you know,

people that produce media.

Right, right, yes, yes, that's true.

And then when it came to consumer level,

like this microphone that's recording here,

we've become prosumers.

That's a buzz marketing word, right?

Now, the consequence of that,

like the byproduct, let's say,

is con, like portmanteau,

con-ducer.

We've become conducer.

Which is another way of saying influencer.

So while, for when I started,

that was the big buzzword, right?

You know, you watch a TED talk or whatever,

and they talk about this kind of stuff, right?

But they missed that part, right?

So there's this influence thing that is a result

of everyone having a, you know,

movie studio in their pocket, right?

It means that we're all producing, consuming,

and we're the subject of our own art.

All the time, everywhere we go, right?

The things we choose to buy, the things that we choose to say,

people we hang out with, it's all creating this identity

in a way that used to happen organically, you know,

in the village, right?

The global village situation that we're in, right?

It's, when it, when it comes to like having it all,

the communication all over the world, we're all tapped in,

to this nervous system that surrounds the entire world.

It will all become part of it, right?

We're all connected to it, right?

So when somebody says something mean on the internet,

we feel it like a raw nerve.

It goes through, through our, like it doesn't filter

out the way that physical contact does.

And it hits our identity because we, we're creating an identity.

When you attack someone's identity,

you're attacking their body, right?

That's why people react that way.

So we're, we're, we're like, we're like in a, in a open-air womb.

You know, the matrix, you know, from, you know,

the cliche matrix world is what, the world we live in now.

But it's a, it's an inside-out womb that we're living in.

Because we're all, we're all feeding off of the system.

So the only person who doesn't get affected

by that mean comment is the enlightened,

who knows exactly why they're there.

Everybody, everybody, everybody hurts.

There is one, yeah, there is one,

Swamini, I'm not going to name her name.

So Swamini means a female, like a saint.

And she felt insulted over something that was really,

I would consider trivial.

So then I had to take her aside and be like,

Didi, you're overreacting about this.

And when you say that things, those things, like it makes you,

because other people would consider it trivial and small.

Was it personal?

Was it targeted?

Was it?

It was, it was personal.

It was personal towards Hinduism.

And then she took it personally because she,

that's tied to her identity as a spiritual icon.

And so I told her that, you know, and then, yes,

this is social media, but you can't talk about your personal trials

and tribulations that you're going

through as a religious leader.

Because I told her the type of, the type of sadhvi you are is,

we're supposed to, you're supposed to experience,

and only a few of us are supposed to.

Yeah.

That means good karma, sin and good, good, good actions.

Good deeds, yeah.

So whatever, like whatever karma you get from your past sins

and your past good deeds that happens in this life,

you become a sadhvi or a sadhvi.

So then you can process all that.

This is normal.

You're supposed to go through this shit,

but you're supposed to be at the caliber of a level

where you're able to process it, not show other people,

because you as a swamini are supposed to take on the karmas

of even your followers and process that shit for them.

That is why you were given that posting.

So if you can't do that, then, you know, like,

it just might not be the path for you,

but if you're going to be a social icon in this,

you can't show the people that, you know,

you're breaking down or reacting.

But isn't there something to be said about being open and vulnerable

and then sharing that processing?

I don't know in what context it happens.

I have no idea.

Not if you're...

Theoretically, you know.

Adleto mamuli, sorry, if you're a regular person,

then that's fine.

But when you're a religious icon,

like someone who's supposed to be like a priest or a saint,

that doesn't look good on you.

That's just not part of the game of that.

Like the mayor of Toronto had to resign because he had an affair.

Right?

These things happen, right?

Yeah.

When you're a politician, when you're in the public eye,

when you're representing a larger group of bodies,

you know, it's a corporate world, right?

And when I say corporate, I don't mean, like, businesses.

I mean, like, a corporate body, corporal.

Like, we're all part of this big body.

And that's why we feel everything.

And it's, you know, some of us are organs

that have to pump blood through the system, right?

And we can't, you know, we can't just bleed out.

I would argue with both those points, actually.

Sure.

Because I would say two points come up.

One is, I think that's what social media has kind of done,

is just sort of break through those barriers

that sometimes you tend to put people on pedestals

who are saints and who've been...

given a certain title, so to say.

She's supposed to transcend that.

Sure, sure she is.

And I get the whole, the connotation of it.

I get all that.

But social media's, one of the pros of it is

it breaks down those barriers

and then brings you closer to that being.

And thereby, if...

A horrible example, if it were me,

I would imagine I've had a shit day

and I'm processing it, and I want to share it with you.

And you're somebody who just watches.

You're somebody who just watches me online.

But I'd also want to share how I came to this

and how I'm processing it.

I'm going to get to the other side

and use that moment of truth and reality to say,

hey, I'm real.

I'm a person.

But if you don't have this mechanism,

if you don't have this MO right now,

then it takes you back to 1980s, pre-internet,

pre-1990s, in fact, pre-internet, pre-social everything.

Because then there's this almost glass-clean

separating you and them.

Yeah.

I would argue that I understand the responsibilities

to create power and this re-responsibility.

Forget all that.

If you're...

Okay, I don't know the whole context,

but just principally speaking,

if you're on social media,

I think it really should bring you closer,

breaking down those barriers and saying,

I'm going to uphold all my responsibilities,

but here I am.

I'm a person.

I'm a man. I'm a woman.

I'm going through shit.

I don't know.

The same would apply to the mayor, too.

I mean, yes, he had to step down

because that was a cardinal sin.

He was in our society.

Dad is a cardinal sin.

We could do all other kinds of things.

My mother reacted to that on the news.

Asshole.

Right?

It touches a nerve somewhere.

Happened to her.

But the intellectual class,

they don't have the luxury of that

because they're the leaders.

They're who people look up to as leaders.

What has to happen is that the society

and the leaders, like what you're saying,

have to realize that we're also all humans.

We all go through stuff, right?

And I would use the word forgiveness.

That's something that you should practice

on a daily basis when you're interacting with people.

And you misunderstand something that somebody says to you.

You don't get the tone right or whatever.

You've got to find that forgiveness

that this is a person I'm talking to

and they made a mistake or I misinterpreted it.

And not to take it on yourself,

but, oh, I'm dumb on my own.

I misconstrued whatever happened.

Misconstrued.

Screwed.

Misconstrued.

Screwed up.

I said a word wrong, right?

I'm a publisher.

Do you have to correct me in the middle of when I'm talking?

Do you need to edit me while I'm speaking?

I'm always editing.

This is autonomous to me now.

Right.

And so the way that we communicate is

we have to forgive each other for anything like that.

If you know something that I don't know

and I say something stupid,

there's a lot of people that use that to their advantage.

They hurt other people

because they still think they're in a conflict zone, right?

That you're competing in an animalistic sort of way.

No, for me it's just like,

it's just because I'm in the publishing mode

and I'm always editing,

so it just comes out natural.

You still have to tell me the story of editing.

I'm aware of that, yeah.

Like, I'm aware of that when I talk to you, right?

But if I'm talking to someone online,

I don't know that about them, right?

We're going to be getting into a fight, you know?

And it's like bacteria is, you know,

kind of bumping into each other.

Yeah, that's what it is, yeah.

At the macrocosmic level, yeah.

So you have to operate on multiple levels, right?

Just understanding that when you're on the internet,

you know, you're without a body and a consciousness zone

and you're bumping into minds, right,

who are tethered to a body that feels pain,

that people feel pain when something is said to them,

hurtful.

Oh, man, I'm visualizing a painting here,

like this.

Abstract painting of just, like,

neurons going in and out of this globulous

and then just faceless minds attached to it.

That's exactly what happens.

What happens in the microcosm happens in the macrocosm.

In the macrocosm, it looks like people getting their feelings hurt

and people, you know, becoming non-binary,

but it's no different.

Now, only if this was true to us as a people without the internet.

We're going through so much hurt right now collectively,

globally, right?

And there's a lot of apathy.

There's a lot of apathy.

There's a lot of apathy because as long as you're comfortable,

you don't really look around and say, like,

who else is uncomfortable, right?

And so one almost feels like,

I almost feel like I wish this analogy that you gave

about this big globulous, the macro and the micro,

I wish that was possible at a global level

for us to be able to feel each other's feelings.

Listening to this,

there's an Indian stand-up comedian called Kunal Kamra.

If you ever get a chance.

What's his name?

Kunal Kamra.

Oh, I know who he is, yeah.

So he just released,

he does a lot of,

podcasts?

I don't know what to call them.

Sure.

He gets people on to a show and they talk

and very concerted talks,

not just streamer consciousness,

but he'll be addressing one specific topic at a time.

And so today was all about caste.

If you're familiar with caste,

which it's just socioeconomic stratification,

but made for the Indian paradigm to put shame on it.

But it's no different from socioeconomic stratification in actuality.

I'm going to send you the link for all of you.

Go watch it.

He's interviewing this Harvard emeritus professor.

I've forgotten his name now,

but a big part of that conversation was this apathy

that kind of came up for me as I was listening to you.

The caste system has been around forever.

It's embedded into, some might say,

the Indian civilization.

The civilization, the way that it was divided.

But it was never at the forefront of our culture

until about the 1800s or 1700s.

Until it was twisted around to say that

here's how you're going to segregate people.

Here's how you're going to, you know,

somebody's better than the other.

That's when a lot of Western thinkers came in

and brought in the Aryan invasion theory

and postulated it as truth in academia,

which was a part of the Western social engineering

for Indian people to decry their cultural values

and dismantle their entire cultural praxis,

which was what led us to be at the forefront

scholarly, scholaristically, scholarly,

and economically for many, many years,

for many centuries.

That's why we kept getting invaded

because we were doing so well.

So now imagine 200 years later, right now,

if you ever visit India and you see somebody on the road

with a red light begging for food

or we get a meet at home

or my dad was in the army,

so we got to see a lot of hierarchy

still embedded in the Indian army.

People who would wash your toilets and bathrooms

specifically belong to a certain caste

because that's just embedded, codified into...

The culture, unfortunately.

The culture and the institution.

Yeah.

So that's where the apathy is.

My grandparents, fortunately, raised me enough to say

that they funded their...

I don't like using the word mate,

but she is their mate,

their entire children and grandchildren's education,

giving uniformed arms, spokes, and everything.

So we kind of grew up with that.

And on the other hand, you go back home

and you figure out, oh, wow,

there's a lot of apathy.

Like, yeah, that's your karma,

that's what you were born into,

out of sight, out of mind.

But in original Indian culture, it wasn't like that.

In the time of Maharaja Bharat,

going back like a few million years,

it was supposed to be whatever your skill set was,

that's your aptitude, that's what you do.

That's why it was invented, yeah.

And it said that even getting out of your class designation,

it said it takes three generations.

Now, when we look at environmental conditioning

and social conditioning, systemic conditioning,

and familial conditioning,

we can see where people are like,

if one family member is doing good

and the other family member is doing bad,

the other family member says,

so what, you think you're better than us now?

What, you're better?

You're too good to be going hunting and shooting?

What, you think you're fancy pants?

You're trash, get the fuck over here.

Stop thinking you're so better than us.

And then that person would have to break away

in order for them to progress, right?

It's like crabs in a bucket.

And so this concept, conceptually or structurally,

can be taken away from just the Indian diaspora

and even apply here, over the East Side.

Look at colorism, look at any kind of ism you can find.

Yeah, but in the downtown East Side,

it's a different thing,

because in this country,

there's so many opportunities available.

A lot of it is that people either don't want to

utilize those resources,

or they just get comfortable with just the freebies,

and they're like, well, whatever,

I could just still get high, get my dick sucked,

and get free alcohol from this faction anyway,

and get free food three times a day,

and da-da-da-da.

There's a lot of that.

Like when I was working at Dollar Tree

to pay off my student loan for two years

on Pender and Main,

I went into that work,

being a socialist still.

I was like age 32 at the time.

By the time I was 33, working there a year and a half,

I went and transformed into a capitalist.

It just happened within a year and a half,

because I'm like,

all these people I gave a lot of compassion to

and my open-mindedness and love to,

I just realized that a lot of it got thrown in my face.

Some of these people just spat in my face.

A lot of them made fun of my disability.

Some of them made fun of my race.

I'm like, these motherfuckers deserve to be here,

because they're not doing anything to improve themselves,

so fuck them.

That's it.

I'm going to be a fucking capitalist.

Fuck this shit.

Yeah, straight up.

It's like, fuck this shit.

You know what?

I strive.

I don't have to sit on my ass for a long time

and just do nothing,

but I actually fucking try to thrive in life.

And because of that perspective,

I'm like, I'm going to respect other motherfuckers

who also try to thrive in life too.

And people who don't,

I'm just not going to bother with them,

because you know what?

It is a waste of my time.

It is a waste of my energy.

I have a pacemaker, right?

So I'm like, with this truncated amount of energy

I have to expand in a day, week, month, year,

I'm going to allot it to people

who can help me progress

or people who value me for me

and I value them for them

and then we kind of stay in our sphere of positivity

and not tear each other down,

not try to, you know...

Yeah, but the things that you mentioned,

I mean, that's a person almost screaming out in pain.

That's their problem.

That's not mine.

I don't give a shit anymore.

I'm not saying it's yours.

I used to give a shit.

I don't know, but I'm just saying that,

recognize that, like,

I could...

I'm like, oh my God,

why are you talking to me?

Oh, I recognized that before.

Oh, yeah.

But it's their...

I mean, it's not my shit.

I don't give a shit anymore.

I'm just saying,

because if we were indefinite,

we would be here right now

helping you out.

I was.

I volunteered in the downtown.

Yes, this guy.

Volunteered in the kitchens and stuff.

I think we've all kind of hit that level

without kind of admitting it to ourselves.

But, like, we just want to surround ourselves

with certain people and positivity

and, yeah, they don't want to be helped,

we don't want to help.

Like, I think there is a certain level of that

that we all are needing.

Well, how much...

of yourself are you willing to give away

to somebody that is not grateful

for what you're giving?

Yeah.

There are some people

who will just take and take and take

until you're drained dry

and then they bring you with them

and they all...

they form a community together

of people that do drugs and stuff

and to break those people out of that,

they have to...

they have to leave that safety

of that...

that community

and that bond that they've created, right?

Of people...

we're all down here...

we're all down here together, right?

A lot of them built their identity on that, too.

You can't leave us.

You're leaving me.

You're going to leave us here to die

if you're not here.

You know, there's a lot of guilt

that goes into, like,

trying to save yourself.

So you're...

what you're expressing,

like, you have to...

let me say, like,

the flip side,

the flip side of apathy

is empathy.

And people that are empathetic

will open themselves up

to all that hurt.

And being able to, like,

separate yourself from that,

you go into a shell or whatever,

you push that away

to make sure that you can rise up

and not be pulled down, right?

So you almost...

you have to...

like, for you to succeed in life

and not be...

not stay down there

at the Dollar Tree,

you want to be a neuro...

you were training...

I was studying to become

a neuropsychologist.

Right, so you can't stay there.

But the thing is,

that was a means to an end.

That was just work

to pay off my student loan

from when I went to film school,

right?

Yeah.

20 years ago.

But then...

It's not to say that they deserve

necessarily to be there,

but you don't deserve...

You don't deserve to be there.

Well, I chose to be there

because I had two job options,

one to be a manager

at Sage Natural Wellness

or one to work at Dollar Tree.

Dollar Tree paid me

a dollar more per hour,

and I asked them...

I asked Sage Natural Wellness,

would you match them

and give me $11 per hour as well

so that I can work here?

And they wouldn't match me,

so I'm like,

well, I've got to go

where the money is

because that's an additional

$64 a month

I could go towards

paying off my student loan,

and that covered

more than just interest, right?

So it was for an economical reason,

and I'm like...

After, like, you know,

being abused verbally

and emotionally and mentally,

because I care.

That's what I'm saying.

I really care about those people.

Right.

But there's only so much

before you...

Before we come back,

become too damaged.

And then I was like,

that's it.

I even had to...

I went AWOL, actually.

I left my...

It was the day

of Chinese New Year,

and I went to a different location

of Dollar Tree in Richmond,

and I logged in,

and she looked at me,

and the manager,

he's like,

you don't work here?

I'm like,

I work for the company.

I'm working here today.

And I'm like,

if you've got a problem with it,

call Sal.

And Sal is the district manager,

right?

And I said,

Sal, here's what happened.

I've had it, okay?

Working at that store

has made me...

I'm not a racist person at all.

But it's developed me

into having some biases

against certain communities.

I don't like when I'm becoming...

Yeah, I'm like,

I don't like when I'm becoming

working there.

So I decided,

I still want to work

for the company.

I love the company.

I'm just going to work here today.

He's like,

okay, Sean,

I could hear you're stressed out,

buddy.

Finish your shift in Richmond.

You know what?

Take the weekend off, Sean.

Tuesday, we'll start you up

at the Broadway location, okay?

On Broadway and commercial.

I'm like,

thank you, Sal.

He's like,

yeah, I'll give you

an extra dollar per hour, okay?

I'm like,

thanks, Sal.

That's it.

Because I broke...

It broke me.

If that...

If working in that area

for two years

was enough to break me,

imagine being, like,

born and raised in that area,

living in that area

all that time.

You just...

You just become inundated with it

and then it just becomes

a part of you.

You don't think to

even get out of that.

I guess it's a choice for some.

There's a...

Some is a choice.

This modern world...

I'm sorry to interrupt you.

We do have to leave soon

because it's 5.54.

Okay, we'll wrap this up.

Well, the show starts at 7.

We've got to find parking

at the Chan Center at UBC.

The modern world does give us...

I'm going to ask you something.

Oh, I'll just wrap this up

by saying the modern world

gives us the opportunity

to escape those...

like those holes

that you can fall into.

You know, living in a trailer park

or something like that,

you know, you've got to escape, right?

You have to change your life.

We have those opportunities

and we're...

more and more people

are getting those opportunities

and as long as people

are inspired

to change themselves

into something better,

we've got to, you know,

they'll be able to do that.

When things start to get dark

and there is no help,

you know, and you feel trapped,

you know, that's going to be

the end for anybody, right?

So, anyway.

Is that a good wrap-up?

Yeah.

Okay, first of all,

I'm going to remember

everyone's names.

I'm sorry.

I'm so sorry.

I should have repeated it twice.

Sahej.

I was going to say Teja.

Sahej.

And...

Christina.

Like Dr. Christina Yang.

Yeah.

I was starting to become

a little...

You go with the hair, yeah.

Shyam.

Like an Adhe Shyam.

Are you writing?

No, he's not.

Oh, my name's Adam.

Yeah.

I don't even think

about my identity.

Why not?

Is that your name?

I don't.

I never do.

Is that your name again?

Adam.

Adam Shyam.

That's a girl.

Adam Shyam.

Adam's mentioned, actually,

in the Bafisheh Quran,

Adam and Eve,

but they call Eve Satyavati.

Satyavati, yeah.

Okay, so my question

was going back to, like,

what you were first saying

about how,

oh, boy.

It was, like,

happening all, like,

so fluidly

when you were talking

about, like,

the before and after.

Like, how we,

basically,

this is a continuation

of previous lifetimes

of, like,

where we pick up

along the way

and depending on

the family you're born in.

Since birth,

death, rebirth.

And, like,

when you were talking

about that,

I was just visualizing

the sort of intersection

between all those lifetimes

is always death, right?

And the visualization

of standing

is, like,

sort of in a mathematical

kind of way

where there's, like,

infinity,

but then there's, like,

points in infinity

and just the mathematical

sort of makeup

of death in a way.

It is all mathematical,

I guess, yeah.

So I really want to know

what you think

of, like, death

and just, yeah,

the intersection.

That's a good threshold

I'm going to tell you then.

When I was 42 now,

when I was 15 years old,

sorry,

I was still 14 at the time,

but it was 1995.

I was going to turn 15

in July.

The operation

of open-heart surgery

happened in March of 1995.

When I had

my open-heart surgery,

I had an out-of-body

experience

where I was

in the ceiling

rafters looking down

and there was

a Caucasian

little girl

who was, like,

about maybe,

I want to say

9 or 10 years old,

8 to 10 years old

beside me.

She was really

pale,

so she still lived

under the delusion

that she is her body

and she's a ghost.

She took on

the ghost identity

for herself.

I didn't know that

at that time.

This is after studying

and doing it at Sadhana

and discovering it

in Northe.

So me and her

were looking down

on my body

and I was looking

down on my body

while they were

operating on me.

I remember

going through,

like, crawling

through the pipes

and through, like,

past the rafters

and, like,

some copper pipes,

some, you know,

big drain-like pipes

and hearing

the different sounds

and then

when I came,

came to,

I had a,

I,

before,

before coming to,

I had a vision

of Lord Shiva

coming out

of the Brahma Jyoti.

Brahma Jyoti means

everything that is

light,

where we are

all particles of light

coming from

a singular light

and Lord Shiva

coming out

from that Brahma Jyoti.

But I saw his silhouette.

I didn't see

his form, form.

So I saw a trishu

and I saw his

jata and the

chandrama,

his hair

and his,

the half moon,

crescent moon

and,

how he's

anthropomorphically

drawn for Indian people,

right?

Because that's how

my mind relays

that entity to me.

And then

when I woke up

from my,

um,

operation

and I was under

the influence

of the morphine

that they had given me,

I had,

oh God,

I'll just say it anyway.

I'm 42

and what do I care?

I saw the Hindu

god of death,

the Hindu and Buddhist

and Jain god of death,

Yamraj,

Yam,

and I didn't,

I never,

I knew him from,

like,

what I saw in

Hindi movies

but I never saw him

just by himself

and he had,

like,

this teal-colored,

like,

um,

like,

this color,

this color skin,

not eye,

that color skin

and he was in a chariot,

a goat chariot

and it was,

like,

levitating in mid-air

and I'm just parking

right where my

hospital bed was

and in front of him

was a big black buffalo,

like a water buffalo

and he just kind of

looked at me

and I was like,

you gotta even remember

I was under morphine,

right?

Post-surgery.

So I said to him,

I was able to talk

to him telepathically

and I said to him,

you know,

like,

has my time come?

Are you taking me?

He's like,

no,

I'm picking up someone else.

I'm just,

I'm stopping him

to visit you.

I'm like,

oh,

okay.

You spoke to him

in Hindi?

English Hindi

because in telepathy

it's non-linguistic

but I said it.

How do you remember?

I remember saying it

in Hindi

and then he responded

in English.

He's like,

no,

I'm picking up someone else.

I just thought I'd stop by

and say hello

and spend some time with you

and I'm like,

oh,

and then I didn't know

what to do

because I've never

seen him in my life

except for in the film.

So then he just kind of

went away

and disappeared

into the ethers

and into the Akash.

He just disappeared

and my parents

were coming in

and brought me

to McDonald's

and it was just

a matter of fact

that's what happened.

That's just life,

right?

And it's like

my life's never been

the same since then

and so like

I don't talk to a lot of people.

I've never told him this

and the 20 years

I've known him,

I've never told him this.

So like,

you know.

I don't quite have the word

to have at the age of 15

or 14.

It's crazy.

Yeah,

it is crazy.

But at the same time,

I was very comfortable

with it.

A lot of it

I didn't tell anybody,

right?

Like I didn't tell this guy.

But I just,

you know,

keep it to myself

kind of thing.

But then that's when

my life completely changed.

I didn't fit in

with a lot of people.

Like I keep

my go-karts

from high school

with me

to remember

all the stuff

I went through

during that time

in high school.

What's a go-kart?

Go-kart is

ID.

So that was me

going into

high school,

grade 8,

listening to,

yeah,

I grew up,

I was born and raised here.

I went to India

in 1989.

L.A. Matheson.

Before it was corrupt

and crazy.

When it was still

a junior secondary.

And then it

successively turned

into a secondary school

while I was still there.

So we were always

in the same industry there.

Then when I graduated

from high school,

that's because

of the open heart surgery

I went all goth,

okay?

That's the open heart surgery.

You're going to be

shocked.

So you keep

all your past identities

in your wallet, do you?

This is just

to remind myself

that I can get

Are you still that person?

All of them

are still me.

Yeah, but do you

see them as like

a separate entity?

No.

Would you talk

to your 14-year-old son

or 15-year-old son?

If I was doing

some internal healing?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, well,

I think

Like would you go,

like mentally

would you like give

advice?

A 14-year-old son?

Give advice.

Like now that

you're a wise old man.

No, no.

But like,

no, because I don't

believe in like,

you know,

going backwards, right?

Yeah.

But sometimes I'll

like do like a retrospect.

Like what was I thinking?

What was my mindset

at that age

in juxtaposition to now?

It's completely different,

right?

But then like,

I'm just going to say it.

My mom's had schizophrenia

since I was six years old.

And that might be

a marker as to why

I had hallucinations

when I was under morphine

at the hospital.

And my dad's been

bipolar since I was seven.

My dad was also

not,

started becoming

an alcoholic

when I was 11 years old.

And my mom has been

in and out of the hospital

for schizophrenia

54 times.

And when I was in high school,

she attempted suicide

five times

because she was

so fed up with

getting sick all the time.

So I keep my go-karts

to remind myself like,

dude,

you'll have it

fucking good now, okay?

And I live on Beach Avenue.

I've been there 16 years now.

And the things are,

my life is cushy.

Not like cushy,

like cushy,

like Hindustani cushy.

Yes, cushy.

But the English word cushy

meaning English cushy.

Like it's really,

it's really cushy.

Yeah, kind of cushy, yeah.

It's a very cushy life, right?

So it's to remind myself like,

any,

like whenever I have like,

like some minor hissy fit,

like,

oh, this e-book

didn't do well on Amazon.

It's like, dude,

that's nothing

compared to what you,

you know,

went through.

So it's okay.

So does that answer

your question?

Yeah.

Oh,

the mathematical stuff, okay.

Yeah.

So then,

the mathematical thing is,

Is it like that?

When,

When you go through the,

the barbell?

Yes,

yes.

The Pratyabhigya Sutra

is actually,

who delves really into that,

as does the Shiva Sutras

and Spandkarika

of Kashmir Shaiv philosophy.

The three that you recommended.

Sorry?

I was going to write down

the ones that you were recommending

to go with this.

All right.

Do you want me to text it to you instead?

Yeah.

Okay.