Mooji - An Invitation To Freedom

Full transcript: Mooji on London Real

4:47 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is the spiritual teacher known as Mooji, originally from Jamaica. You moved to Brixton in London as a teenager and became a street portrait artist in the West End and later taught art at a local college. In 1987 you had a chance meeting with a Christian mystic and you had a life-changing encounter through prayer that brought you into the direct experience of the supreme within.

5:11 This inspired you to walk out of your life, and in 1993 you embarked on a spiritual journey through India, eventually landing at the feet of the man who would become your master, the late Shri HWL Poonja, aka Papaji. Following in his footsteps, you now regularly conduct large satsang gatherings throughout the world, sharing self-inquiry and directing your students to question who or what they are at the deepest level. Mooji, welcome to London Real. Thank you.

5:38 Thank you for inviting me. It’s a pleasure having you here. I was wondering if you could explain to people what the satsang gathering is like, because when I watch your videos online, I see this kind of gathering and, as we said before we started here, kind of impromptu. And what are those like and why do you choose to kind of communicate with people that way? Okay.

6:05 I cannot say what it is like for the viewers and even for the participants even, and we also started in a very impromptu way, you know. I had not really set out to do that. It started out with very, very just a few people coming to my house, and in those early days I was not really inclined to speaking very much. In fact, there was a kind of shyness in me, so I was most comfortable just being quiet, and that was the most easy and natural way to be, and it seemed as though they were fine with that, so that went on for quite some time.

6:41 They would just hold the space with you and not a lot of words would happen. There was no rules about it, you know. I just found it like that. People would come and for some reason there were not so many questions then, and they would express that they just simply enjoyed to sit in my company. I couldn’t see why, actually.

7:02 I just, it was, it just felt comfortable, you know. Okay, but at some point some visitors came. If the earliest time I can think was one visitor came from Ireland, from Dublin. It was a woman and she spent a few days with me. She asked some questions also, and at the end, before leaving, well, something had happened for her during this time and she invited me.

7:41 She said, “I have a group sitting in Dublin regularly on a Wednesday and we also just sit in silence, but we’d love to invite you to come and for people to sit and maybe just ask you some questions.” And it was my first traveling out with satsang, so I went to Dublin, and that was my first experience with a very formal and organized satsang gathering. Now, satsang, it’s a Sanskrit term that simply means to associate with truth, or to practically like a number of beings in search of the experience of self-discovery or whatever would come and sit with someone who they feel a natural empathy with or they resonate with that being.

8:42 And in my case it was just to be open to the questions that arise and so on. I remember the very first time sitting in a satsang, I was staying in a in a room that was called the Choir Boys’ Room, so right next to the church, and I heard people coming up and entering the hall and I was like, wow, there’s a lot of people are coming here. I felt nervous, you see. And somehow doesn’t seem like a man who gets nervous? Well, I do, and it happened that time that I felt quite nervous, like, wow, you know, these are all new people, we have never met, and perhaps you know they’re going to want me to talk about something, and I’m not used to preparing speeches and so on, but I felt no, no, no, I felt a bit nervous and I lost my composure for a bit, and I thought about it for a few minutes and thought, yeah, okay, I’ll talk about attachment and fear, fear and attachment and like this.

9:48 Okay, that’s a good start. And that was the first time I sat with the people and opened the meeting and said, okay, perhaps we can start off by just maybe talking about perhaps one of the most familiar topics, about fear and attachments and how to transcend. And quite surprising to me, in about three minutes I’d covered all that I needed to say about it and I was just left floating in the air for a minute. They’re lost, you see, and that was a very painful and profound lesson to me, and that was the only time that I’ve ever really prepared for a meeting, like have an idea, this is what I want to do.

10:36 Since then everything has just been to come as we are now and just to sit and see what comes, and I felt that is the most authentic way of meeting and for sharing, in such a way that sometimes my own responses feel fresh for myself also. And so you just feel the energy of the room, of the people, and kind of the ideas and questions, and just go with it, not in any deliberate way. I’m just there. And now, after being around the meeting, so having the privilege of meeting so many beings, it’s just something that unfolds.

11:16 I just, I know that something wonderful is going to happen, even if it’s painful or, in whatever way it comes, and I cannot really see it in just negative terms. It always seems like somehow something flows through and it becomes meaningful and impactful for many people and enjoyable for myself also. And how many people are usually at these things? How long do they last? And how many questions do you usually feel?

11:43 I mean, there’s a rough idea. They vary from place to place, and you know, these days it can be very, you, okay. In next month there is a gathering in Lisbon, and the place where we are going to hold these meetings holds the capacity is 1,500 people, and it’s already full like this. So that would be the kind of numbers that maybe happen. In India would be like 3,000 people or so on, but also smaller gatherings, 100 people sometimes.

12:19 I just met now, being in London, I really wanted to meet some of the groups that are in London, because there are beings who felt so connected to what they’re experiencing and they were opening up their homes that other beings could come and they could sit and watch a satsang together or some recording or something, and I just wanted to have the chance to meet up with them a bit more face to face. So these were smaller gatherings, you know, like two or three hundred people and also very comfortable, you know, 50 people also very comfortable, 10 people also very comfortable, but increasingly when I’m traveling then they seem to be more and more. We don’t predict.

13:01 No. Okay, and how long will they last and how many questions or comments do you usually field? On average, you know, we usually put the satsang sessions, they last about an hour and a half, but really, do they last an hour and a half? They sometimes goes to two hours, sometimes three hours, it doesn’t even happen, four hours, it can happen like that if, in the moment, it feels as though the the energy is there to go on and feel somehow it seems to happen.

13:34 And the funny thing is about that is, like, I have in my physical form this condition of diabetes and I tend to normally need to go to the bathroom sometimes, you know, twice in an hour and so on, but during these periods it really happens and for some reason I’m able to sometimes go on for two hours or three hours without going to the bathroom. So it’s a strange thing. And how many people will you hear from over the course? It varies. A question may come and I may be so touched by it and the response may go on for quite some time.

14:10 They vary. I like interviews because, like, we can cover a lot of ground in interviews, but in that dynamic sort of environment of satsang it can be anywhere between, you know, 5 to 10 to 15. Really, it’s not so many people come. Normally what happens is a questioner may present a question and so much comes up in response to that question, and I have a sense that everyone is being fed through that interaction. It’s not, sometimes it’s like it’s really answering a question and sometimes it’s answering the questioner, and sometimes someone may even put a question and the response is more for almost everyone except the one who asks it, you see.

15:04 It’s very odd how it comes, but I don’t predict that, I just watch it happen. Okay. You recently did one in India last year at a very famous former ashram where the Beatles used to go, I think in the 60s, and I watched it on YouTube. What was that experience like, being in this place that, like I said, one time was, you know, very well known and a beautiful place, but then had kind of then been run down and you came back? Can you just talk a little bit about that?

15:32 Well, how it came about is that I was staying on the other side of the Ganges, you know, and right in front of the place where I’m staying I can see the, what they call the Beatles Ashram, the ashram of Sri Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. There are some buildings that were made there. They were made out of stone, they’re unusual shape, is sort of like looking at the top of half of an egg or something, and it’s all built of its own, and I’ve always been curious about it.

16:03 And sometimes I’d go walking on that side of the river, on the temple side. We call it the temple side because all the ashrams and temples were on that side and the main forest is there. In fact, many years before, I was chased by an elephant, a wild elephant, on that side of the river, so I would walk past it quite a few times, and but it was always closed and the government was not allowing anyone to go there, but people would sometimes jump over and go there, but I never did that.

16:38 Then this last year an initiative was taken to open it up for a kind of a festival, and they asked me would I participate in ensuring satsang. So that was the first time of going there, and it was really wonderful, you know. We were given a tour just two days before I was intended to be there, and it was just ruins mostly for the main hall where the Maharishi gave his talks, but there was a wonderful feeling there also, you know, that kind of decaying charm or something.

17:17 There was something wonderful there. In fact, I was told that the person was showing us around said that, you know, the tigers were but made their home in this place and there are many little almost like tunnel-like places that you could go and coming to another place and that sometimes they would stay in these little enclosures, sometimes also while elephants were moving through that I’ve seen them myself there. So that was always all that was what was offered to us for satsang and I felt it was a beautiful privilege for us to go there, so we went, and I was familiar a bit with the history of the place, particularly in association with the Beatles being there, and in particular I think it was more what is his name now, Harrison O’Hare, oh, Harrison.

18:17 Okay, the drummer? Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, guitar player. Yeah, what is his name? I’m not sure. And I believe probably John Lennon also, and I’d watched some old footage, and again it was shown to me closer to this time that we’re invited to have a look, and it was really felt like a really charming place in that time when the Beatles and their friends and associations and so on, that people from all over India would come to this place.

18:51 It was very famous, so it felt a nice place to be, and the satsang day was just a wonderful turnout of beings. Many also were there in the whole days and they were that experienced the Maharishi’s satsang’s first hand, you know. Some people come may perhaps with nostalgic reasons or something, but the satsang that took place that day was really wonderful and I very much enjoy. That it was interesting to see because there was, you know, graffiti in the hall.

19:24 Yeah, and then you obviously made it kind of very kind of pleasant to be in, but you didn’t cover that up, so it had this kind of old and new. It would have been sad to do that, I agree. To, I felt that, I don’t know when those images were made if it was during the time. I think it would perhaps been after, I think different artists over the time, over time, had gone there and left their their messages. I mean, it was not anything, no kind of perverted artwork or nothing, it was quite a sort of celebration of the times and it felt very beautiful there.

19:56 Images of Mahatma Gandhi and the Beatles and Amma and, you know, it felt very nice there. It’s interesting because the Maharishi was the one that started Transcendental Meditation, correct? And funny story is, I was a banker in the City of London for 10 years and it was Transcendental Meditation that got me to quit my job and start London Real about seven years ago. It was definitely that practice, so it was very interesting for me to see that on your video and to remember you know what I was taught as my meditation practice.

20:35 You say beings when you talk about the people in the room. What do you mean when you say that term? Well, generally it applies to everybody, you know. I mean, I don’t give it especially to like spiritual beings. I mean everyone, it’s just another way of saying people, but over the years I’ve come to to feel more comfortable with the breath being more than just people, but I often use the word, you know, just interchange depending upon who I’m speaking with and the environment I’m present in and so on, and it just comes very, very naturally to say beings, but I feel it’s a higher term.

21:20 My perception of them is less as persons and more as manifestations of consciousness. Of course I don’t say that to them, but it’s a little bit more true to how I experience, or we experience each other. Okay. Oh yeah, and when you talk about the journey into the self, how do you explain that to people who maybe aren’t familiar with some of your teachings or aren’t even familiar with these concepts? How do you explain to people what you do when you sit next to him on the plane, I guess, is kind of what I’m asking you.

22:05 You know, I really don’t interfere with people and I’m not on a movement to try and convince people of anything at all. Everything that has come to where it is at this present moment has been a very natural evolution. We have not strained to try and get more people interested. I don’t feel this would be consistent with my experience, but I find that by itself it seems to grow. And so by the time they come, many people have discovered satsang through internet, through YouTube and programs like this, for instance.

22:39 They has been their first encounter and they have a chance to watch in the comfort of their own home and they can really listen to things if it resonates with them and they will listen again and they find that over the years my pointing is more than I would say teachings. It’s been for myself, I feel, very, very practical, and I remember the first time I read somewhere in some of the ancient texts that out of millions of people who are searching for truth, one out of millions are searching in the right way, you know. I’ve sort of read this and I can’t trust it, and that out of those few a rare one finds it as it is, and I was disturbed by that because I could not accept it, seeing what I was privileged to come to the realization of, the naturalness of the self, that everyone is this, you know.

23:43 It was more than an intellectual conviction, it was an experiential and experienced truth for me, and yet I could see that the way in which the beings or the people were conceiving of themselves and how they presented and portrayed themselves was in terms far less of who I knew them to be, and so there was some, there was a challenge there. But over the years, you know, the pointings and teachings became more simplified because I just could not accept that, you know, it was so difficult to discover this if we are that essentially so, and perhaps because of that stubbornness or insistence on really trying to convey what was for me an obviousness that was overlooked, that gradually somehow the pointings became more and more simple and simplified because I didn’t want to mesmerize people with sort of spiritual sort of concepts only.

24:53 And I remember some time ago while I was in Boston, you mentioned Boston, someone had come and would made a video earlier, a famous video from my own master Papaji called Call Off the Search, and this men had approached and asked if he would do an interview with me, and I was very happy, and on the very day just a few minutes before the interview start started, he asked me, can I just put one thing to you? And I said yes, go ahead. And he said, is it possible that we could have this conversation and you’re not using any spiritual terminology at all, as though you’re speaking to kids who have never heard of these terms?

25:29 Is there a way that you think you could speak, that you could convey what you really experience without these terminologies like consciousness and Brahman and, you know, vasanas? And then, okay, let’s go for it. So I like this type of challenge, and I felt it to be that is something that has stayed throughout the years and only recently before I come to this part, you know, my master and my master’s master, they really pointed to a path called atma vichara, or self-inquiry.

26:13 Now, if I can go back a little bit to say that something my life made by the first radical change in my life was about 1987, and it wasn’t until 1993 I came to had the opportunity to travel to India, but before that, what led to that is that the so profound was the experience that took place for me and something wanted to know more about it. I wanted to speed it up because I felt I was so on fire with it, and I went into a bookshop in London called Watkins, a very famous bookshop for spiritual seekers, you know, in the center of London, and I’m not used to reading books, even to this day. If you saw me with a book, it’s because it had pictures in it.

27:03 I loved pictures. I was trained well as an artist, not even trained, I just loved drawing, but at this time I felt compelled to look to find something that would help me to come to a deeper understanding, to analyze or to explain things, and I’d went to Watkins and was searching along amongst the Eastern religions and spirituality, because I was brought up in Christianity. I feel well comfortable with the Bible and the teachings of Jesus and so on, but now I felt somehow drawn somehow to look at Eastern spirituality.

27:42 And even though your realization came with the Christian mystic, you still wanted to look east? Yes, you know, it was just an urge, not a calculation, and I sort of felt to go there, and while sort of like looking through to find the smallest book, because, you know, I’m not a bit overwhelmed or intimidated by big books again. I saw one book that was turned this way and it had a portrait of Ramana Maharshi, and I didn’t know anything about Indian sages or prophets or saints, but I was very, very touched by the serenity I found in that was shining through this picture of this Indian man.

28:29 And so, wow, this tiny book, and it was on self-inquiry. It was the first time I heard the term, you know. So I picked this little book and I sat down and started flicking through the pages and I was so shocked at what I found because what I saw was it felt very mental to me, you know, like, you know, you’re not this and you’re not that and you know this and so on, and so I actually felt that there was a mistake in the printing and that they had put the wrong cover on this book.

29:03 So I actually went to one of the guys and said, actually I think you need to take this off, and there’s a printing error because I feel that this is a wrong photograph for this book. And I said, no, no, no, this is Ramana Maharshi, it’s his teachings. I was appalled in that I was so, I said, okay, okay, okay, I put it back and I went along a bit further and I found a book called The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, and perhaps the word was gospel that sort of connected with me, and I pulled this fat book that looked like a Bible also, and I started just to flick through the pages and was reading and it really resonated with me, something there, you know, and that was the first book I bought and I took it home, I started to read from the beginning, and I could not put it down.

29:50 And even though Sri Ramakrishna was such a typical Indian man and worshiped God in the form of Kali, who was a very fierce-looking Indian goddess, you may say, like this, yet the wisdom and his teachings were so potent and so profoundly impactful for me that I just could not dismiss, I could not put this book down, and it was true the reading of Ramakrishna’s message and teachings that the urge to go to India arose in my heart from that. That’s how it came about. But he wasn’t teaching self-inquiry necessarily?

30:30 No, he was not. He was not. I didn’t go looking for self-inquiry. Okay, you know, I don’t know what I was looking for. I was looking for answers, to not answers even, but maybe some words of encouragement or something that could make more sense somehow to my mind of what these experiences that were happening for me.

30:47 In fact, it seems strange talking about it because I’m not such an analytical, I didn’t come from that background much. It’s much more intuitive, much more spontaneous, but this urge arose to find out, and that led me on this search that ended up with buying that first book of Shri Ramakrishna and subsequently the journey to India in 1993. Now those six years between that first spiritual moment, you know, when you were in prayer with the supreme, and then the trip, six years, do you look at that period sometimes and when people ask you questions, do you think to yourself, well, it took me six years to go to India, was that through all of that processing yourself and inquiring and studying, and does that just show you that this takes time for people?

31:40 What happened was that from the very first moment that that prayer took place, and prayer was not something new for me, being brought up in very much a Christian family, but on that occasion, you know, sometimes it slipped away between going to church and growing up as a young person in London and so on, so I was not thinking about these things. It just, when I met Michael, it was like that. It was just seeming coincidence, but I was so struck by his humility and just it it was just so natural, like you meet someone and you like them immediately, and somehow his presence opened up questions in me to ask until the point that he, I asked him one day, you know, after maybe just a few weeks of meeting, I said, Michael, next time when you pray, will you pray for me?

32:38 And he said, sure, but why not now? Wow. Okay, so he’ll be scared? No, it was a strange excitement, but he prayed for me, and at the end of his prayer, I don’t remember what he prayed, but at the end I remember myself praying, and I often speak about this moment because it was a real turning point in my life, that even immediately after the prayer we just hugged at the door and said goodbye, said, Michael, thank you so much, and he left and I closed the door and there was just this tremendous feeling of peace and lightness and a quiet joy, a deep joy inside, and I did not want to go to sleep because I felt, I don’t want to lose this feeling, and that perhaps if I’d gone to sleep I’d wake up and it would just be different, it would have been gone.

33:34 I wanted to preserve these sensations, these inner feelings, for as long as I could, but of course I was overtaken by sleep at some point. The following morning I woke up and the feeling was still very present. There was some, I was lying in bed and there was a little crack in the curtains and the sun was just was just sort of like it was just floating in, and I was looking just at these little dust particles in the sun and for some reason just felt like I was looking at a miracle or something, but it was already something inside, and a deep peace arose inside my heart and my being, and it has never left.

34:21 I’ve had periods of turmoil, but it seemed like the peace was there too, you know, in this time. So you ask a question, I don’t remember what triggered that, I felt was important to tell you about this. Yeah, and what do you know what happened during that prayer moment? Did you, do you know what you saw and what you felt, because afterwards you felt that peace, but have you ever tried to describe what happened with Michael? No, it was, I felt it was very, it was just very, very, it felt very clear inside my heart that I had met God.

34:59 I met God, and I had no doubt about it. I wasn’t deliberating about it. All I knew is that I don’t want to lose this feeling. That’s all. I didn’t think much about it.

35:14 I felt like the luckiest being alive at that point, and so the years leading up to going from 1987 until I had the privilege, an opportunity to go to India, every day felt like it was miraculous for me, the way that I would meet people and also, you know, was teaching and so on, and that came to an end and things were just, you know, it was not all, you know, a bit of roses, right, but something behind was not changing, but my life in front was changing a lot. Okay, and you moved in with your sister at the time? Yes, after I went.

35:58 But you weren’t really focused on necessarily the outside world at that point and making money and all that, you were really on an internal journey? Yes. So I was never really so much drawn by money or so. No. Okay, but I was so deeply moved by this, by what was happening inside, that my interest in the outer play of life was not so strong, you know.

36:26 Okay. I enjoyed being by myself and sitting alone, and just yesterday I was talking about this, that because even in my apartment now I have a piece of tree which I found in my local park, Brockwood Park. They just cut a tree and I used to look at this tree, it turned it upside down so the roots part was up and we sliced it off there, and it used to be in my room, I used to look at this tree and I had this feeling, I have to become as quiet as you. I just spend this time like this.

37:07 What does this mean, as quiet as you? Meaning that I perceived that the tree was so empty and so silent and I could feel the sound of existence in me. You would started your self-inquiry? No, it wasn’t an inquiry, it wasn’t an inquiry at that stage. It was just it was just an intuitive feeling that I, you know, because also the way that my sleep was taking place and things were happening in my sleeping time that it was all like I was on a 24-hour transformation or something.

37:53 Nothing deliberate, I was not forecasting, but I just wanted to speed things up. I just felt if it feels good like this now, then I want to go all the way. It was so strong that because prior to that, I cannot, I feel like I’m just a coward in life and not anything so special now. No direction? Well, no, not no direction, I mean I had a very creative life, I was working as an artist, I was very, very much involved in that.

38:23 There was, it was almost an obsession of painting. I even felt at one time that I was furiously painting, painting, painting, I was just obsessed with trying to make an ultimate painting. I was never happy with my work, I was just not satisfied enough. I even had a dream that I had made the ultimate painting, but it was always moving, it was always changing because if it could not just be still, it had to be alive in another way. And only later I came to see that there was a deeper on the current of some urge to find this, because when it rose inside my heart, I am, the urge to paint subsided and I felt that I was not just painting for the joy of painting, it was like I was searching for something and I found it.

39:24 In that moment, I would never have guessed it would be something like this. I thought it would be something that I produced or something that I created, and I had nothing to do with what it is, you know. It just is, you see. But he said, you found this, what is this? The thing I was trying to find when I went to Watkins Books, I was trying to find some way that I could see it in a more tangible form.

40:01 It was tangible enough, it was tangible in the fact that it was my being was completely flooded with it, but there was some urge to have another kind of understanding, maybe a kind of. It’s funny because, you know, I’m not drawn to sort of like mentally understand things, but at this time it felt like I had to know it in another way, and but I couldn’t know it in a way that I could describe because it was already inside, but something, somebody, my mind was not accepting that that was enough, it wanted to have the knowledge of it. Okay.

40:38 Yeah, and it took you six years from that day in ’87 until you walked out of your life in ’93 and went on to India? No, I walked into my life. From that very first day I felt I’ve been walking out of my life because it was so profound that nothing I’d done before could equate with it. I was so stung that I could not fight. I did not live a monochromatic life before, it was could be seen as fairly exciting in so many ways, but nothing could compare to what this change took place in internally for me.

41:20 So this walking out was just a way of saying that I tell you, Brian, what it felt like. It felt like if what I call God said, okay, son, you come with me today and you’ll drop your body today, I would have gone without thinking about it. That was how strong it felt for me, you understand? Yeah. When I went to India, the impact of Ramakrishna’s teachings was so resonating also.

42:00 I knew there was something, something I had to find. I don’t know if it was more, but I felt compelled beyond my experience, you know, to explain why India, why, you know. And so by the time I went to India, my only intention was to visit Ramakrishna’s place, although it left the body many, many, many years before, but the book or the gospel of Ramakrishna was written by one of his disciples in such a selfless beauty about it, it totally captivated me. I felt like I wanted to go and sit in the room where Ramakrishna taught and this type of thing.

42:44 I had no other interest in India, you know. I didn’t have a, you know, a Lonely Planet guide to India, nothing. I just took a plane. I didn’t even know if Delhi was the right, I just took there, and it was as though all my footsteps was already planned or something. How I came to meet Papaji, I had no knowledge or experience of meeting anyone of that stature, such as a saint or a sage.

43:12 I was not even so much familiar with the terminology of a sage and so on, you know. It was not, I was not at this big curiosity about them. I only want to go and sit in Ramakrishna’s room. But you never did? I never made it.

43:28 To this day I’ve not been to Calcutta. Many people have come from Calcutta and come to satsang and invite me, that I still haven’t gone to this day. I don’t feel badly about it. I feel Ramakrishna may himself also have guided me to Papaji. And so what happened for you to make maybe that left turn when you got to India and pursue a different route?

43:48 What happened? Miracle happened because I went to, I was in Delhi, and my first time to India I was in Delhi for 10 days, just still arriving in a way. It was also new, such a powerful assault on the senses and everything. What do you remember? But I just felt that I was in a different universe altogether, but something that felt deeply comfortable in form for me also.

44:16 So I remember going to, in the hotel where I was staying in Connaught Place in Delhi, I saw a poster, bus trips to Rishikesh. Rishikesh was the only place I’d heard of before because I knew it was a temper place, a place of pilgrimage. And so what happened was that I I decided, I left all my things, my back luggage and everything, in this hotel and I just took a little bag, almost a big plastic bag, with a few things. I said, listen, I’m going to go to Rishikesh for the weekend, I’ll be back by Monday.

44:54 I left my things, I never went back for them for six months. In fact, six months later I didn’t even go back for them, someone went and picked them up for me. The journey just unfolded like that. I was in Rishikesh at one point and in coming up from the Ganga, from the Ganges, at a taxi, at a taxi stand on the plateau at Lakshman Jhula, this is one of the big bridges there, a taxi drove up and they were seeking directions for something, and one of the local friends I was walking with, they called him over and he was talking about.

45:29 Finally I stood away, back maybe three meters away, four meters away, and from the back of the taxi somebody looked out and said, hey, man, how you doing? Long time I don’t see you. And I was looking at me, so I knew instantly, you don’t know me? Okay. So I said, hey, are you doing, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you’re making a mistake and so on.

45:53 And then a woman in the backseat looked out, she says, yeah, I remember you, what’s happening? What do you mean? And so on, and I started laughing. There was two other people, Europeans, one from Greek and one Italian. And they’re speaking English to you?

46:05 Yeah, yes, yes, this couple, it was an American couple. Okay. And then the driver, the Indian driver, says, yeah, I remember you. And then we all cracked up laughing and so on. So the guys were saying, you’ve got a brother or something like this here that you don’t know about, and so on.

46:22 So we laughed and laughed. I said, no, no, it’s not me, I’m just here a few days, I arrived, and laughing, they were also laughing, and then they went off. When I went up to my hotel, they were unpacking at the same hotel, and they invited me, please, please come, you have to have a meal with us, and I accepted. I went, had a meal. They told me, have you heard of Papaji?

46:48 I said no. I mean, I only know they know Papa because I called my father Papa, you know, Papa, just Papaji. And they sang in a second, so the wife went and got the book and showed me. That was the first time I saw Papaji, and they pleaded with me, look, we are only here for a night, our master is familiar with this place, he used to come here, we just came here for tonight, just to be here for the night and we’re going back tomorrow. Come with us, you have to come and meet Papaji.

47:15 And I had dinner with them and the next morning they knock on my wind on my door and says, we’re going to go, we give you off, and I’ll come and say, listen, tell me, give me the address and I will come in time. And then they left, and when they left, suddenly I felt I have no reason to be here anymore. I needed to go, and it took me another 10 days to go there. I went to Varanasi first and then eventually I ended up in front of Papaji in 1993. Okay, yes, and tell me about Papaji.

47:52 As I said, I went there and the morning, the first satsang, I was one of the people, new people were brought to the front. I sat there in satsang and the tallest Indian man I saw came in, big walking, it was like a lion, you know. He came in and sat down and I just knew this is something different about this man. I don’t know anything about satsang or nothing. He sat and I don’t remember what he spoke about, but I just knew I’m going to be here for a while.

48:24 That was my meeting. Okay, and so you stayed to learn from him? I stayed with him. What was that process like? Papaji, up until then my life was just like full of this love-bliss feeling, and when I met Papaji, what I experienced for the first time was just vastness.

48:49 There’s a sense of vastness, and it felt like so profound, so powerful, but inside this vastness, like it’s not a teaching, it’s just that this vastness. And true, Papaji, then I discovered Papaji was a direct disciple of Ramana Maharshi, and I thought, wow, how does this come? Now, but through meeting Papaji, Ramana’s teachings became very available to me somehow. I started to feel some attraction to it. I found a wonderful book written by one of Papaji’s followers, a man called David Godman, had written a book called Be As You Are: The Teachings of Ramana Maharshi, and I started to read that a bit and I could really relate to it.

49:39 Then, yeah, but Papaji well, he spoke English. Okay. I’m guessing you’re the only Jamaican guy there? Well, as far as I know. Who are the rest of the disciples, are there Westerners or mostly?

49:55 Many, many, many Westerners. At this point quite a number of Indian Hindus were there also, and also Papaji’s son was there and some of his family would come, and this was, you know, many Osho sannyasins, followers of this teacher called, you know, Rajneesh. I did not know about him before. After the passing of Osho, many of his followers started to come to Papaji. Okay, I didn’t know all about this history, but gradually I came to see that there was a little bit of a difference in the way that they I could detect who was a rational follower or something like that, different energy?

50:48 No, it’s not so much different, different kind of behavior maybe, a little bit on the surface, you know, or just on the surface on me. Okay. And what did you learn from Papaji? And I know it wasn’t always blissful, your experiences with him. Well, what I realized is that in the beginning, I realized in pubg that I wasn’t learning very much, but I was changing a lot, because people ask, you know, what is he teaching?

51:15 I couldn’t articulate nothing, you know, but more that there was something here inside, like beyond words. He of course spoke, but what he was pushing you is to go behind the facade of the thinking mind to the space that was not touched by thoughts, you know. And you know, it was like I kind of knew that, but now it was being presented in such a way that it was like, you know, I was astonished as that he had made that so so powerful. I know it was different, you know, because I always quit, this is God, but it was like he was more pushing you to a concept-less experience, free of interpretation, and just this immensity.

52:11 I was having these kind of blasts of that, but my mind was thinking no, it’s, you know, I had to understand something at that time more and more, but some changes were taking place. I was feeling more like there was nobody in this house kind of, but just flashes was happening like that, until I had the occasion one time to actually write him a letter, and presented, he called me up and he began to speak with me. And how long was this after you first met him?

52:44 Maybe three months or so. Okay, so you’ve been there, stayed there learning from him? Yeah, yes, in the sort of satsang sort of field, you know, like being in satsang, benefiting from other people’s approaches and questions and so on, but a bit sort of a bit hiding a bit until the courage, you can say, came to write to him, and then he called me on that day. Okay. I decided to read my letter and somehow just this great anger arose inside me and, whoa, it’s like, whoa, strange thing, I was not expecting that.

53:23 Was he unhappy with your letter? No, no, no. What was your letter, what did it say? Well, just introducing him a little bit to what had happened to me before and how I came to be here and out of miracles and talking perhaps, I don’t remember so much about, you know, but I think it might have been hinting at how I felt it was miraculous to come and meet him and this type of thing, and he was just reading, but I don’t think I was reacting to it as my mind had created something that he was making a fool of me or something, you know, the ego in me came up, you know, which I thought it, I passed it, you know, but it was and it was so loud that I could not hear him.

54:09 I could just watch because inside was this something like that. So at the end of that encounter I was full of rage. I just wanted to get out of the place and I felt this was what I was waiting for. I just waiting for this sign to show that I was in a place for a wrong, it’s enough time to leave this place and all these Westerners. And so I went home after satsang and I started packing my things furiously, and it was a hot day and I felt, okay, I got cool off in the town.

54:45 I went there and sat under a tree, like I was still like frying sausages inside me or something, like shh. And then after a bit I thought, okay, okay, I go, I move on, and I got up and started walking, maybe about 15 meters. It was like I walked into some, I don’t know, strange void or something, like this dark cloud I was walking in just vanished and I was totally empty. I couldn’t find myself. I couldn’t find myself.

55:34 What I felt was myself, I was looking this on my hands and it was like there was nobody in them. It’s a strange thing to say, but it was like there’s nobody in here, but it’s like I should have been afraid or something, but that’s what my ma, but I was not feeling, I was just feeling just this immensity. I didn’t know what my size was or the context of my life. I couldn’t find a reference for a life that was called mine or something. It just was just gone, and in its place I saw this just Papaji’s face.

56:12 It was like he was feeling everywhere. In that moment I was, when I met Papaji, I felt so much love, so much love. I started to run to his house. His house is maybe two miles away. Started run, run, run like a little school while running or running home, run, run, run, run, run to get there.

56:32 I never arrived his house. What happened? I went home and I was completely finished, all my energy was gone. Was this enlightenment? I don’t know what it is, just I’m just careful to use this term too easily, you know, but the sense of the mind and person kept coming slowly back in, but it never felt the same.

57:09 It was like, but I can see you, I can see this. There was just this space, in the inmost place I could not find a resident there. And when I say I could not find this, this is also I’m watching this this alleged one speaking about. I could not find something like that. Is this a dissolution of the ego, is that what this is, or is that the role of terminology?

57:44 Everything changed. Okay. And what happened after that, after this? Well, of course I was in love. In love with what, Papaji?

57:56 Ah, okay. And just this, whatever this, you know, like he was this also, but this was not just Papaji, you understand? This has no face. And I stayed with Papaji until Christmas. Did he notice something changed in you?

58:18 Yes, you know, you always know these things. He spent more time with you? Yes. I remember on Christmas day he gave me this rose and sort of said, oh, you’re so beautiful, or something like this. No, I was just his.

58:36 And coming up to my birthday in January, it was just, you know, I felt I wanted to go to Tiruvannamalai, which is in the south of India, to visit the place that Ramana Maharshi lived, who was the guruji of my master, and I told Papa about it and he said, yes, yes, you go and come back. So I went and spent some maybe two months into the malay then in the south of India. And then you came back and continued to train under Papaji? I came back, and for the first time I came back things were not feeling right at all, and for that time I could not.

59:19 Everything before this was like walking through the Red Sea, everything was just happening without any effort, but this coming back I was sick for a while, diarrhea for a few days, and one satsang I came to satsang and at the end of satsang I had this urge to go to the room that Papaji would retire to just after satsang and before going home would stop for maybe 15, 20 minutes to meet the devotees coming in and some going out. And just like that, I never went there, I never even knew about it, but I found myself at this door knocking. Somebody came to the door, I found myself saying, I need to see Papaji urgently.

1:00:05 Inside? What then? They say, come. I went inside, I fell at Papaji’s feet and I said, master, whatever is about to happen, can I leave it at your feet? And he says, yes.

1:00:20 I don’t know why I’m saying these things. But after this we went outside and there was a man. In those days we used to have something called faxes, and what is now email in those days was called faxes, you know. Yeah, I remember faxes. You remember fax?

1:00:37 Yeah, of course. So we had a blackboard and people would go every day to see if their names are on it. It was like receiving a letter or something. Yeah, and I saw my name, Tony Moo-Young. I went there, I took it, I went to the side, it’s opened, and it said, please call home urgently.

1:00:57 And already some perpetrators coming because it was by my girlfriend at the time, and she doesn’t write these things lightly. So I went to the phone and I phoned and she told me that they said, Jason, my son Jason passed away yesterday. You need to come home. And so quickly I had to come back to London and to bury my son and whatever was required at that time. Yeah, wow.

1:01:27 Okay. Well, that’s, and so that’s quite a change on what was then your spiritual journey. What happened after that? Did you go back and learn from Papaji? Then Papaji later passed.

1:01:38 Papaji came with me, I think. Okay, to London, well, to my life. Okay, you know, I went back and all the things that I found would have found challenging became more easy in this period. Okay, when I most needed some support. you know, like that.

1:01:56 My mind was very clear and my heart was very quiet, and we just had to go through the motions of burying my son and to really be with my other two children and to, you know, to just be there, whatever was needed like that. Okay, but you were different now? Did your family know you were different? They knew I was different from 1987 or something. Okay, okay.

1:02:22 I don’t know if they knew to notice anything different internally, it was, I don’t know. It, I don’t know what to say. I just, okay. And then it would take many years before you started holding your own satsangs? I went back to see Papaji in 1997.

1:02:38 Okay. I was with Papaji and I came back to England just one month before Papaji left his body in 1997. Okay, yes. Was that difficult when he left his body? No, it was not difficult.

1:02:49 I was in London, a friend called from Australia and said, we have, I’ve got strong news for you. He said, what is it? And he said, Papa just left the body. Okay. It didn’t have that kind of impact because what everything that Papaji had said to me was alive inside my heart.

1:03:10 Papaji was here, so I didn’t feel that anything, it didn’t have that kind of, you know, that kind of impact that you would imagine would be. Okay, but that was also kind of the end of your, I wouldn’t call it formal training, but training by someone, there’s a guru? Yes, you know, it’s funny because Papaji did not speak about self-inquiry in such a methodical way, you know. He just is that, and when he speaks with you, that is automatically what is happening.

1:03:49 Okay. It was like I’m teaching self-inquiry, he just spoke. And for myself also, when I came back to London, when people were coming to the house and sitting and so on, I was very comfortable just to be quiet, and then at some stage some people started asking questions about, you know, you know, what happened after you leave your body, and you know, how does consciousness function differently in someone, these kind of questions, and I remember praying and saying, you know, Father, you’re bringing these people now, I don’t know what to say to them.

1:04:23 You have to speak with them. Who are you praying to? Just to the Supreme Self. Okay, amen. And so people first just wanted to spend time with you and share the space with you.

1:04:36 Was that a strange feeling? I got used to it somehow. I was just not inclined to talk much. I didn’t know what to say. They seem to be content enough to just be in a certain state of stillness.

1:04:55 I knew that something was flowing out. You know, I could experience this, that there was it was flowing out into them and they would just be sitting right there in a state of some kind of contentment. I was quite happy with that because I was not comfortable to speak much about it. I didn’t know what to say. Okay, but after praying, spontaneously somehow ice, when people ask questions I could see the answers inside me and I could just answer them.

1:05:26 After this, are you naturally shy? I’m always shy if I feel I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ll be devastatingly shy. Okay, but if you’re getting messages, it’s not like in some kind of supernatural way, it feels so natural, like I knew what they were talking about, I knew who they were, and that was the most important thing. What they speak about was secondary to that, right?

1:05:52 And so something just responds to that. Okay, how is your method of self-inquiry slightly different than Papaji’s, or do you have a similar style? Well, I don’t know. I found incredible, incredibly that I could go very deeply into the processes of what was happening in the minds of people, to kind of break it down into bite-sized ways, you know. It was incredible because I could see it is like opening up a clock and looking.

1:06:25 It was like this in the beginning, and I thought, wow, I was excited by it. I thought, wow, it’s so, as much as you want to go into, that we could go into that in those days, you know, and now I don’t do that. I just try and get to the point. Okay, okay, and the basis is that when someone asks you a question, you believe that all of the answers lie within them? I know who they are, if I can say like this, they are just like me, you see.

1:07:00 So it’s just like, if I can make a kind of like a kind of metaphor or a kind of thing, it might sound really arrogant but I don’t mean like that, but if you imagine, like, say you were sitting on the top of a mountain, where you were sitting on the top of a mountain. Okay, and it’s like you can see all the different routes of people trying to come up to that mountain, like you can see all, you know, and people say, you know, and you see someone going, like you can say, hey, no, no, don’t go this way, come back here and come this way, you know, that you can see that it was as clear as that, and then someone go, oh, then it’s like this, something you can just see. And but I don’t know how good that analogy is because the seeing of what is is simpler than that because I know and I receive or interactive beings knowing who they are, and say no, no, no, not personally, I’m not interested in person, but I know fundamentally who you are, that you are the Self, you are of the nature of truth.

1:08:25 I know this. I don’t have to study you personally, you personally don’t mean so much, you know, that is. You see, what is different in each of us, there is some unique fragrance in each one and that is appreciated and like this, but behind that even, you know, is the ultimate, but not behind in terms of any distance. And I hope we’ll have time also to demonstrate that with you, what that is, but you know, it’s just very clear and I see where questions come from and that the belief in the questions create a kind of veil of apparent separation between the seeker and what they’re searching for, which I know is also imagined also.

1:09:11 So it’s just to try and remove that, that veil of misunderstanding, and the seeker just merges inside their own hearts. That’s what happened and this is what I say that for years I was trying to guide you, I’m self-inquiry, which is a very powerful tool and it’s on sparing in revealing and exposing the myth of the personal self as a fact. You see the myth of the personal self as a fact? Yeah. Can you explain that?

1:09:51 We are not who we think we are, largely speaking. We largely were brought up and conditioned to believe that we are the body and shaped by conditioning and environment and so many things are contributing to who we take ourselves to be in any given moment, and many of these contributing factors, these are really untraceable, we cannot really, you know, but it’s like a continuously changing self-portrait. It is not consistent. You see, what is consistent is the source from where these these thoughts and ideas they emerge from this fundament, this place.

1:10:33 I call it the source or the God-Self or the heart or something like that. Yes. I do. Now most organized religions are quite the opposite. The answers here in the Bible, the answers here in the Quran, the answers here and what happened in the past.

1:10:48 This is quite different, whereas when people ask you questions, from what I’ve seen at the satsangs, you kind of look at them and feel their energy and you try to get them from what it seems to to look within or to question what they think they are. I have nothing against any religion, you know. What I’ve discovered recently and I want to introduce this now is that also because of these years of trying to guide through self-inquiry, which is, as I say, it’s a very, very potent tool in any authentic seeking, but something came by grace, I call it a wonderful grace from God, and I call it the Invitation to Freedom.

1:11:35 It just arose. I see now it had started back way, way back a few years ago, but it was quietly sort of like developing somewhere in my subconscious side or something, but it found full expression in India this year and I found because the challenge for me is that there are thousands of beings who are searching, you know, and yet the success rate seems so slow. It’s a bit frustrating, but when this Invitation to Freedom arose and really took shape, it was facilitating the deeper seeing and the direct recognition of the Self in thousands of people now, and that has been a great joy, and one of the most wonderful things about it, I don’t have to be against anything.

1:12:38 It doesn’t have to be against any religious view or any political view. It’s like I was saying before, you know, you have to be like the cow that jumped over the moon, and by that I simply mean you have to be like the moon. Here means the mind, because very often we try to go to the mind and work our way out to come to the other side into what we call like spiritual awakening or something, but here was sort of something like a mind bypass. It’s like something just jumped over that, and this is one of the most wonderful things, two things.

1:13:11 One is that you could come to a direct recognition, an experiential recognition and discovery of the Self, and unfadingly, I put it like that. And the second great point is that we have no enemies. I have no enemy with anybody. I don’t have to try and fight, you know, Christianity or Islam or Buddhism. It’s not against anything, it’s just because all those shapes, not the essence of them.

1:13:42 The essence of the religion is the same thing that I’m pointing, but where humanity has become entangled and enmeshed into this misunderstanding and these kind of aggressive conflicts and it’s not necessary we have to go through that. I don’t see that was so frustratingly painful is that, where are we going if we have to always have someone to fight against? It’s not to fight, it’s not the people you have to fight against somehow. I don’t think I have to fight against anything.

1:14:17 If you accept the way that you think and who you conceive yourself to be makes it, if you believe that you’re merely flesh and blood and bones and your environmental conditioning or social or religious conditioning, that is a severe limitation on who I discovered you are to be who you are. And I wanted somehow, by the grace of God, to be able to not just turn this into another philosophy or something, but something that was accessible for everybody, children also, and people even of different religion, because I’m not trying to convert or convince anyone to change their religion or whatever. They can practice whatever their religion is, because the source of what I’m speaking of is the same one that you may call, you know, Jehovah or God or Krishna or whatever, it’s the names of God in the essence of this.

1:15:17 So they can work parallel with religions, this is just another form of. Yes, yes, and it’s an experience that cannot be contradictory to any genuine discovery. Okay, okay. You said in 1987 you met God, and I wanted to ask you a satsang-type question which I’m guessing one might walk up to that microphone and say, Mooji, what is God? Yes.

1:15:44 Anything I would say about God will only be conceptual. If I make an answer, somebody say, you know, I mean what, you know, who is God or something, I cannot, I don’t feel I can satisfy them with just words I say about God, because God is not an object, it’s not a thing. You see, things may appear within the God immensity, created by God, you may say, but I can’t just satisfy. You know, what I am concerned with is not philosophical exchanges and so on, but in direct experience.

1:16:24 You see, so I would rather say to them, why don’t we take a look together and see if you can meet God, what I call God, because God is not for me a person. It can manifest, it can manifest in the form of person, whatever, but that’s not God’s shape. You cannot put a shape to God. You cannot enclose God within any scripture or any philosophy. It is just so far beyond the scope of human, ordinary human thinking, and yet we cannot exist independent of this power we are.

1:17:10 It, but when it’s manifesting somehow in this play of life and gives rise to the feeling of beingness and the feeling of individuality or personhood, then it is very difficult to, once certain conditioning takes hold of that pure expression, it’s very difficult for that expression to comprehend the might of what I call the Supreme Being, but to experience it, to be in the experience of this, not that you have an experience, oh, I had the experience of that, but an experience which really reveals experientially the harmony that is at the root of your true existence. I feel that that is something worth knowing and discovering, not something to have, but that which you are. Okay.

1:18:18 I’ve got actually a few other questions that I want to kind of ask in a satsang-type style later. Oh, that’s okay. Yes. I was wondering if you could take me from, say, around ’99 when you started having your own satsangs up until now, it’s been 18 years, what’s been the evolution of Mooji as we know you now, what kind of happened, and if you had to kind of bring me on your journey? For that time in the 21st century, in the deepest place, nothing has really changed in, you know, in the manifest, more dynamic expressions, many things have changed.

1:19:13 I feel that my life is only in response to a kind of calling that is not necessarily verbal, it’s just like an urge to move. I often say to people, if I say like this, that one who has been kissed from within and now has the urge within them to the urge towards a sense of completeness, that life will be always putting clues in front of you, and clues that you must pick up on them as you become more less mind or person-centered, but more in the stream of discovery, in the evolutionary stream of discovering more and more a movement from yourself being a thing to experience the formless, the immeasurable, the indestructible, imperishable, unborn awareness is you, may say the evolution of consciousness in its human portrayal. And so what has happened, I would say, is I call people to, as you become more less personal so that the consciousness is not just localized in the form of a person only but it’s becoming more open and you’re able to sense those, what I call clues.

1:21:13 And as you become sensitized to recognizing the clues, the more the intuitive functioning of consciousness coming in more and more, your powers of discernment is getting more acute, more like this, then you’re catching more clues, and your spiritual life, if you want to call it, the sense of being is ripening or maturing in some way. Yet at the same time this maturity is happening against a background of unchanging awareness. It’s a strange thing to understand but it’s the most natural thing to experience.

1:21:56 In the dynamic aspect of our portrayal as the manifest consciousness things are changing, but they’re becoming more refined, more beautiful, less wasteful, more kind, more open, more loving, more peaceful, less selfish, more universal in its like this we see. So that is really what I would call the more evolutionary characteristics of one who is growing in the spirit or becoming, coming home, you know. So of course we are so many people looking through so many different, having so many different paradigms of what life is and so on, and of course many people disagree what I’m speaking and so on.

1:22:48 This is fine, there’s room for that, but I’m not here to argue with them. I only ask you’re open to look or not, and then see if you can refute what you see because it’s not my ideas. I’m not trying to graft on my ideas unto you, that would be deeply disrespectful for me, but I’m asking that for those of you who care to look, let’s look together, but the seeing and the experiencing is on your own. And so as soon as I stop identifying with being Brian Rose, American host of London Real, and I can dissolve this concept of myself, the more apt I am to be able to tune in with.

1:23:33 I thank you for saying that, but I would not put that in front of someone because it is not appealing to say you must dissolve all, you know. So it’s what a terrifying thing to hear. Well, I think it’s just, it is true, but let me tell you what I would mean by this, what I simply mean is that rather than trying to disprove what you already take to be real, I’d rather show you what is experientially real and irrefutable, and thereafter experiencing that, then that which is not true will begin to fall away by itself.

1:24:10 Okay. And how would I experience some of those things, by asking myself questions? Well, this is what satsang is for now. Okay, I introduce ideas, not ideas but just a guidance that takes actually just a few minutes just to see what is here, and if those ideas of any ideas, because I’m not actually working with ideas, and I hope we can look at that together at some point, that I’m not trying to plant any seed in anyone. I’ve got nothing to give you that you don’t already have.

1:24:50 I can only point out the things that create limitations in you, and then you can see from your place and you will know if I’m hypnotizing you or not. You will see that it is very, very clean, very pure thing. Okay, but in your experience, as I tune into some of these things, most likely I will kind of drop some of these stories about myself and this concept about myself, that kind of naturally? Yes, yes, that which does not serve your truth, because for me the sense of the person, it’s really more becomes more playful.

1:25:28 It’s okay, this playfulness, it’s fine. What is the mistake is when we take that so deeply as though that is a fact, whereas we will discover it’s more like a fiction, but it’s not disgusting because of that. It’s just that we’ve taken something that is by nature changeful and trying to make the better part of it unchanging, when all of it is like clouds passing, you see. So I cannot turn you into something you’re not, you’ve done that already. Life does that already, our old culture, everything has done that already.

1:26:04 It’s as though we are living in a sort of an idea of ourself, like a veil that we have believed in somehow, and what I call truth or truth satsang is simply peeling away this this cataract of illusory identity so that one sees from the truth of themself. It doesn’t mean, no, suddenly, you know, oh, you’re going to start to become something else, no, you’re not becoming, you you see the truth of what is here, but the life can still continue to, in fact I’ll tell you, your life becomes more beautiful in every way in coming to the recognition of what truly is, beyond merely belief systems but experientially, that recognition blesses every aspect of your expression, and it all starts when I take, start peeling away this concept of the idea of myself because that blocks me, that like you said, what keeps me from not being able to see things or feel things?

1:27:18 Yes, there comes a time in everybody’s life, it may come through, you know, falling out of a tree, having a bicycle accident, or reading a good book, or meeting someone who has a tremendous, you know, sort of inspiring connection with someone, or the loss of someone who is dear to you, can be triggers that shakes our world a little bit from the promised safety that our minds make us think and actually open you up to a more profound, a deeper realization of what is true. It has to be like this, it cannot be that a genuine search for truth, you know, because there are people also who have come to satsang and who have had experiences that they say, no, but I didn’t find it, my life has become more and more difficult, my life has become more difficult, you know.

1:28:18 And I said, yes, for the moment, sometimes we don’t know what we have absorbed at a subconscious level, even at conscious levels, that is not in service to a happy life in you, and how much we have carried these seeds of insecurities or deep wounds or emotional wounds or anger or whatever, and we have done the best at living a life suppressing these energies, whereas in satsang may just expose, and why does it expose? Because now perhaps it’s the right time and the right environment. If you find you’re in the company of someone who you naturally have a sense of trust towards, and if that one has the power, the grace, you see, and to help you to go beyond those imagined boundaries into the fullness of what you are, which I find is a great beauty and a purity and a light, then if you say that you should not experience some cathartic reactions or something, then that’s rather naive.

1:29:39 I can’t stop people because there’s some people, all kinds of people come to satsang, not only seekers of truth. Some people come to satsang who want to become teachers, they’re looking for some new ways to be or something. Some people come because they have some delusion about being the chosen one. I don’t know where people come. We try as best as we can to say, if you have a background where you have some, there’s been psychological and other things, we advise you just to talk to one of my staff a bit first before you just come on the course.

1:30:16 And some people feel so strongly they want to go, sometimes they say, nothing is wrong with me, I don’t have the background and so on, or someone may genuinely feel that way, and then somehow in satsang the seeing is so powerful, but it is truthful and it is good, and maybe for a time, as myself also experienced periods when it was like, well, am I just imagining all this stuff? It was a lot of time with Papaji, you know, even, you know, when I felt really, really shuffled up and I felt, you know, I’m in the wrong place and all, and you really believe what is happening, you believe in your mind at that time, but later something kind of took it out. It was just, it was actually squeezing out a poison.

1:31:02 So these things can happen also, so some cathartic reaction will happen in any genuine case and any genuine search for truth. These things may come and we don’t just leave you dangling in the wind. I mean, it is very important that you’re in an environment that actually have some experience with these things and can guide you, but I would say, you know, the huge majority of people have experienced tremendous awakenings when the families have come together and so on, you know.

1:31:32 So there are some people who say, oh, no, it doesn’t work for me, and so, you know, this is life. I can’t guarantee anybody’s going to get it, but I can assure you perhaps why you don’t see something because I’m not going around throwing magic powder in people’s faces. I don’t need to do this. I’m only telling that is inside you already, that truth, and also the lies inside also. And sometimes understanding doesn’t just happen first, misunderstanding happen, and gradually with persistence and with guidance and encouragement and love and reassurance, something continues to, and you can begin to let go of these these things which are like, you know, like hairs in the mouth, you have to get them out or something.

1:32:22 Isn’t that a Gandhi quote? When they say, first they ridiculed and they fight you and then they accept you, and is that what you do? I think Gandhi said something like, first they ridicule you, then they fight you, then they accept you. Well, I hadn’t heard that before, but it is already so true, and true about our own realization of truths sometimes. It’s not all nirvana and pleasantries, like you said, sometimes there’s difficulties.

1:32:51 Yes, but in your experience, the satsang is the best environment for you that you’ve found for people to learn and grow and feel this? This seems to be the best setting that you know why. I would say, I would agree with that, say satsang, because I feel it gives, we have like, for instance, like a course that would be, say, seven days or something, and people will come like a retreat, and they will, so they’re waking and they’re going to bed, they’re waking up in the same environment, and where we live, I am living right in the middle of where everyone lives.

1:33:24 I have a hut like others, my heart is a little, it’s a one room, but it’s not just a room, about the same size as this, where we live in a wooden hut in Portugal. And what happened is that in the beginning you may say it takes initially some time for people to defrost a little bit from their whatever their fixed, you know, mode of thinking is, but gradually you see that it is like, I sometimes say that, you know, the experience, the true experience of a seeker in satsang is like, it’s like a piece of ice in a glass of warm water. It’s like a melting is taking place.

1:34:06 You may say the ice is surrendering to the water, we can say whatever, but a melting is taking place because the ice is constitutionally water, and what is what, and it’s not two things really meeting. So it is a very supportive environment is necessary, you know, in the beginning. I would find that people would come, we were having satsangs that maybe once a week, people would come, at the end of satsang they leave so wonderful, hugs and kisses and all this kind of stuff, I see them next time, or I go on a retreat, at the end of the retreat everybody’s, oh, wonderful, I see them a couple of weeks or a month later and they’re all grumpy.

1:34:58 I thought, oh my God, when will this end, you see, up and down, up and down. But in a retreat environment these days, what happens is that so much support is there also, and we’re not just support because, oh, we’re expecting all these cathartic reactions. No, some comes for some people, but largely now it’s just, it’s even these are rare, even it does happen, but more it is just such a smooth recognition that is not that, oh, everybody’s getting ready for a breakdown or something like that, because I find it’s more you get ready for an uplift.

1:35:33 I don’t like promising things, I don’t want to give anyone any false hopes, you know, you come and this is going to happen. I say you come, let’s see what happens. If you have a feeling about this and especially the wonders of YouTube, since Facebook and these things, what people have these days is that you can get a chance to warm up to it, to see if it strikes a note with you, if it resonates with your heart, and if you feel you like to look more, it’s there for people.

1:36:02 So by the time people actually come over face to face, many of them have been watching satsangs on YouTube for some time. We have a huge bulk of material that’s freely available on YouTube for anybody. Can you tell us a story of a difficult satsang for you where you got a question that threw you off guard? Well, generally what I can say is questions which focus and insist on focusing on the person, they’re the ones I don’t like. They’ll send me to sleep because the group is there to learn and it’s not just about that person.

1:36:49 No, no, no, sometimes I will speak about the person if it feels relevant, but if I find a space where someone is insisting on just, you know, it’s like it’s holding on to the sense of personhood or something, then anyway we go past that more quickly these days. We don’t indulge that so much. Okay, but you asked me a question, if I can remember something that was very yes, if I can recall something we had in one gathering, one girl who went to a very cathartic thing and a lot of stuff was coming up and she was screaming and all this type of stuff.

1:37:25 No, which I don’t panic about these things, but sometimes people knew that satan poor people looks like, what’s going on? And we’re like, I don’t want that, I don’t want that to happen to me, kind of stuff. And someone got up out and saying, oh, you know, look, look, look what’s happening to her, go and do something. And so I said, just relax, relax, it’s okay, just watch, it’s fine, see, simply just the beingness is burping out some stuff, you know, and it has to come out, you know.

1:37:56 I can’t always just present you with roses and pretty pictures. It’s coming out like this, there’s a reality to this also. Let’s give some space to it, and we have people in my team who will go and spend time with the person and so on, and we sometimes people reactions are so strong, we find out that the people have had some background to these things, we have had to take them some time to a psychiatric unit and stuff like this, you know. It I’m not telling lies about that, we have to do that.

1:38:26 We take all that build, we do everything about it. We don’t send anyone away who needs help. I know sometimes people say, you know, what I need to do, it’s really if we know about it, we do everything we can to support that, but that is rare. It is not an everyday occurrence. Things do come up for people, but as they mature they’re able to stand with it and say, okay, they know what’s happening, and if they can articulate it, they’ll tell you that, look, you know, it’s yeah, just some old stuff is coming up and whatever, and says, you know, you need to be with someone?

1:39:01 No, no, no, I’m fine, I just feel like I want to go and sit in the temple for a while or something. Okay, so you’ve had some times where people were screaming and cathartic, and those were the times you remember of you know what, in we have some time in satsangs these things happen just as a course of thing, and we don’t like over edit things or something. They happen, when they do happen you’ll see that we don’t shut it down, we just let it happen. I feel it is also important that others who are sitting in such a gathering get familiar that this is okay, it is okay to have a bit of a freak out, you know, rather than to be shut down and taken out and somehow it’s okay, and to see that in the end nothing is happening that you should be so afraid of.

1:39:47 I remember having one satsang meeting in the Ukraine and I was on a stage, like it was like a theater, small theater, and during the course of the satsang then people, poof. I said, what is going on? It looked really theatrical actually, and people were looking around and I would say, bring them here, bring them here, and then bring them on the stage and be shaking around the state of the floor like this, and I ask them, what is happening with you? And they say, freedom.

1:40:21 Freedom, I see. It was very, very, you know, surprising for people to hear that, but that doesn’t look like freedom? Yeah, some reactions were struggling, was trying to come out, but behind that they were present in the space, behind that there was no panic there. It’s important for others to see that because we panicked too quickly. There are other cultures, not even so long ago, even present day, where space is given for cathartic reactions to come up, and it’s something very loving also, very kind, because you’re not just sent away, the time is given to look and to see and to help people through those processes if and when they come up, but by no means are they the norm.

1:41:08 You know, and they come out of it and many of these people, they write and say thank you, thank you for this, you know, thank you for helping me to go through this or for this to go through me or whatever it is that they speak, you know. I’ve got about 10 questions from some of our viewers and I’d love to ask you some of those, but before we do that, I was wondering if you could tell me what was it like growing up in Jamaica in the 1950s? Do you remember much of that?

1:41:36 I grew up with my father. My father is a Chinese man but he was also born in Jamaica. We have a big mixture of people in Jamaica. In fact, the Jamaican motto says, “Out of many, one people.” So we have a lot of different racial types and so on, the predominant racial type is more just from, you know, African background, but so much mixture happened in Jamaica like this, you see.

1:42:12 How did a Chinese man get to Jamaica? Well, he come to his parents, they came to Jamaica, you see, and well, at one time, and the rebuilding and reshaping of our country, I mean many people were allowed to come from different places, many from China, some from Syria, many people from Scotland, and many, many Jamaican people are called MacDonald and Mack Murphy’s and all of this kind of stuff, you know. And yes, and so it’s a big mix, a lot of German, some German communities there still, very, very Jamaican Germans and so on.

1:42:46 So it’s quite a, it’s quite a fruit salad, you know. So growing up in, I came, I come from place called Port Antonio, which is on the north east side of Jamaica, the side most close to Cuba. Cuba is 90 miles away to the north of Port Antonio. I had a very sheltered of bringing with my father. My father’s brother was a Seventh-day Adventist Chinese Christian, and there was a little bit some tensions between he and my father because he and my father, because he felt that my father was too over gentle with me and always hugging and kissing me and this type of stuff.

1:43:36 My uncle was much more strict in his up way of bringing up his children, so when my father died in 1962, which was the year of independence in Jamaica, my uncle took charge of my upbringing and he was quite a strict man. I don’t remember many moments of his sort of tenderness or something like that. It was very strange the time that I started to receive beatings and so on, floggings and so on from him, also his own daughter had that. We grew up together like brothers and sisters actually, but you know, I never, I didn’t have in my heart any deep resentment towards my uncle to this day.

1:44:22 And growing up in Jamaica, I loved athletics, I was more physically driven, you know, sort of athletics or table tennis. We played a lot of this, you know, one of my brothers is now the captain of the Jamaican team and both of my younger brothers were in the Jamaican national teams and so, and myself was the first one playing. We used to play a lot in those days. It was, we lived very much, it was like a rainforest just by the sea, it’s a very beautiful place in those days growing up.

1:44:59 And it was really funny, I tell you just one funny story. We were playing, I think we were playing football or cricket on the back, one of the back lanes of just behind my house, Love Lane, and I remember I used to tell the story that one time a group of tourists were passing and I remember one of them saying, I thought it was a one of the adults but turned out to be not, this woman saying, you know, you live in paradise, you know, you live in paradise. And yeah, thank you, we don’t know what it means apart from we all grew up knowing about paradise through the Bible and so on and just felt like they were making something complementary and that was it.

1:45:38 We have no way of going any further with that until years later when I traveled from Jamaica in 1969, and then five years later I returned to Jamaica, and as we are coming into the approach, you know, my town, we go around the corner and then the whole bay opens up and it’s just, and I, the feeling came, this is paradise. It’s wonderful because I feel until you experience the opposite or the contrast you cannot have a way of evaluating things, you know. Now this is what happened, this funny part where I told you that in one satsang a woman wrote, I hear you telling the story, I was the person who came to you and said this is you live in paradise, because at one time I thought, would I imagine this, you know, a woman from the United States actually wrote and she says, I’ve been watching your satsangs and I’m coming to a retreat with you, and she came to a retreat with me in Portugal and she stood up and said, I am the one, but I wasn’t the adult, that was my father.

1:46:52 My father was there and I was the one, I was a young girl just a little older than you, and I said, you know, you live in paradise, could you, this is so amazing, so beautiful. And when you moved to London at age 14 or whenever it was, just about 16. 16. Did you want to go? Most people around that time who were immigrating from Jamaica to other places were mostly going to United States, but some numbers go to United Kingdom because they were involved, their parents or someone was, they were involved in just after the war rebuilding the country and so on, so many, many beings from the Caribbean and all these Caribbean islands, you know, were part of the British colony.

1:47:49 That’s why I said that we had independence from Britain in 1962, and so many of these beings traveled. My father also was in the Royal Air Force in the British Army and that’s how he lost, he lost one lung and died from pneumonia and the other one and so on, but he, so my mother had already come when I was a child, she came to the UK along with some of her relatives, they traveled to UK and became that wave of beings who traveled from the Caribbean and came to live, the first settlement of Afro-Caribbean immigrants to come, or they were actually came with British passports actually to the United Kingdom. And your mother was of African descent?

1:48:43 Yes. Okay, and what was Brixton like in the late 60s? Well, when I first told my teacher, and by the French teacher in Jamaica, when I was a child and young little boy, and you know, it was quite a big deal I was leaving, you know, and then we’ve been able to leave him, it was like, wow, it’s a big thing, you know. And I said, you asked me, where are you going, he said, I’m going to England. He says, well, where are you going?

1:49:04 He says, London. But where in London, do you know? I said, a place called Brixton. He laughed. Okay, he says, Brixton, that place.

1:49:12 And all the kids were laughing and I felt very embarrassed, like, what’s wrong with Brixton? Coming to Brixton was great for me because it’s such a change in culture and climate and all of this, but at 16 I was very, very pliable, you know. You could could leave me with a straw, I would just go like this. And the first time I came, actually I came to England in 1969 and the first time I came, I was not allowed in. I spent one night in jail basically and was put on a plane back to Jamaica the next day.

1:49:53 That was a very strong experience for me, but anyhow. Why? I didn’t have the correct stamp, you know, in my class, but it was called, I needed something called an entry permit. My mom hadn’t researched enough and we felt like she felt we had enough, we bought the ticket, we came. I was held at the airport and at Heathrow Airport, and I was kept in a holding station for that night, effective like a jail basically, locked up and everything, and then the next day I was sent back to Jamaica.

1:50:21 The whole experience was very, very strong because nobody explains anything to you, and it wasn’t until the next morning when I was brought back to the airport that I met an angel basically, one of the flight attendants came, a woman, and she she sent a very sweet voice, she called me Anthony. You know, would you like to, would like something to drink? And I said, yeah, Coca-Cola or something, and she brought me some biscuits and things and she explained what had happened and why I had to go back, and it was just the voice of someone, I could hear it in my heart again and I just felt all this warmth, you know.

1:50:59 But so I went back to Jamaica and I came back again maybe six months later. But coming to Brixton, it was not so difficult because of the church community. My mother was already in church community and that really sort of gave a nice cushion for landing in such a new place for me, and people were very loving, very kind, and you know, made friends, you know, within the first week, you know, you made friends and so on, so it was quite a soft landing for me.

1:51:25 Did you feel segregation? Did you feel racism? No, I did not really feel anything like that. Hmm. The Brixton riots happened in the 80s and I know you were around then and I know your sister, you know, was wounded, yeah, quite famously in those riots.

1:51:42 Can you tell me what you remember and the way you remember those times? There was a time in 1985, this was, and there’s a time when there’s some tensions between the Afro-Caribbean communities and the police that’s been going on for quite some time, and you know, Brixton felt like a very volatile space for a while. We are so close to the center of London, I mean it’s in 15 minutes you can be in Buckingham Palace or Piccadilly Circus, you know, so it’s quite close, but it’s a very, very alive environment to Brixton in those days.

1:52:16 It was, it seemed as though it was predominantly Afro-Caribbean but it was overwhelmingly English actually, but it’s just a risk were quite the presence of a Caribbean was one of the places that accepted us more easily than other places. Notting Hill was another one, and just it was full of Jamaican music, Jamaican smells and people on the street, so it was very, very well, reasonably comfortable for me in that period because of this church. This church embraced, you know, and so it was a smooth enough transition for myself.

1:53:02 And what happened in ’85, what happened is that as a result of these tensions that were growing and now so many incidents were happening, even I think unjustified police violence was kind of. Yes, my sister, they were looking for my sister’s eldest son who had been in trouble with the police before, small, small time things, but what happened was that they came early in the morning to her house, she lived away from him, and she always slept in the same room with her children, same bed actually, they were with most of the young ones and so on, and they just did that, that was their way, they slept all together in one room and so on, and they, when they kind of kicked the door down looking for her son and she was in bed and she sort of got up but they were already inside her room, in the early hours of a Sunday morning, and she got up and saw them aiming towards her and then she turned away in the shot and then it hit her in the chest and it went right through, came out to the back.

1:54:16 So initially looked like she was shot twice, but she was shot once. And it really, the feelings were so strong in those days. I remember when my mother called me where I was living and said, you know, she was, she just said, you know, you’ve got to come, you know, your sister’s shot and things. What? Went down to the house, we got down to her house and there were two police, a man and a woman, outside the door.

1:54:43 We went inside the house, there was a policewoman playing with other children in a kind of strange kind of way. I said, where’s my sister? They said she’s in this hospital. We went to, like, St Thomas’ Hospital to see her. It was all very surreal.

1:54:58 We went there and I actually, we went to see her and she was there and she was conscious actually and she was just in a lot of pain and so after seeing her we were sure that she was okay, she wasn’t dead. On the way back we were all as a family driving or traveling back and wondering, what do you do, what do we do, we have to let the news know about it or something has to be told, we didn’t know, but as I went back to our house, by then we arrived on the road and it was just full of reporters and police and people, you know, swans of people. So how did this happen, you know?

1:55:35 And when my mother saw all of this, then she, it’s just she became overwhelmed. She started to cry, all those things, and the reporters were coming and trying to question her but she couldn’t speak, and so they spoke with me and I was a more sober one, and so I spoke with them and then they felt, oh, really gonna speak with him. So throughout this entire thing I was the one that they were speaking with quite often. But when I went back home to my place later on, in the two hours later, some friends came and said, listen, you know, something is about to happen in Brixton because the air is very thick, you can cut it with a knife, you know, the tensions are so strong.

1:56:20 And I felt that I wanted to go and try and just really try and pacify the crowds, you know, because I went down into the center of town and went to the police station. Already the police were on horse, many of them were on horseback and shields and stuff like riot gear and things, and I went to the top officer, you know, and said who I was and said, listen, you know, I can soften this, you know, they give me a loudspeaker, man, these people know me and everything, I can talk them down. And he said, no, it’s too late for this and whatever.

1:56:52 So what happened, as we were walking back someone shouted like, Cherry Groce is dead. Is this your sister? Yeah. And it was strange because I knew I had seen her, but they still under her on the radio, Cherry Groce is dead, and somehow it was so strong that I actually believed it also, and it was right at that point everything just went into flames basically. It just went completely crazy.

1:57:20 Wow. That was how strong the feelings were in people’s minds and so on, and yeah, the result was not nice, it just went crazy. What were the next 24 hours like for you? Well, it was on the news about this and then we learned, we later found she was not dead and was all made up, and it was not a good time for everybody. It felt.

1:57:50 Were you angry? Strangely, I was more numb, I was not angry. Was it scary to be there when all that was happening? Yes, because I don’t like to see violence in people, I really don’t like it. Do I see people be hurt, you know?

1:58:13 Yeah, and it just felt like that, but somehow, you know, throughout this whole thing, you know, perhaps because of my interactions was always kind of more pacifying and you know, I felt that may have had some impact on how things turned out. It could have been worse, I feel. And the riots did have some good that came. Yeah, they have some good, always burps out a lot of things needed to, you know, invert a lot of things happened. We don’t know exactly, but some more attention was given to you know, creating opportunities for more young people and, you know, just attention was turned a bit more and there and to try and rectify the clear mistakes that the government made and the police had made and so on like that.

1:59:01 So yeah, some good came out of it also. And she ended up surviving but she was paralyzed, right? She ended up surviving, she never regained the use of her legs, she was paralyzed from her solar plexus down and she died a few years ago as a result of those injuries. Yeah, and I think they did an inquest and I think finally took responsibility of the shooting and everything. Okay, wow, that’s one interesting time to grow up in.

1:59:28 I grew up very quickly. It also seems like you went inside very quickly, you know, when that happened. I feel I had to, because what happened is that we’re just plunged into the limelight in a way, I was, we had no experience in these ways. We had very good support from the local churches and so on and just angels, they came by your side and it was good, it was good for it was good. I’m glad it turned out as it did, given the the intensity of the experience for everyone.

2:00:10 Do you ever think that that incident caused you to go inside more or moved you on your journey? It must have contributed. I don’t know directly, but I’m sure it, you know, because before this I was working on the street as a portrait artist for many years in the West End of London, and that put a certain end to that period of my life. Okay, you didn’t want to do that anymore? I couldn’t.

2:00:37 Something just changed, you know, like I say, these changes happen, you cannot explain them. Right. Interesting. Yeah, interesting. Interesting observation.

2:00:45 I wonder if we could hold our own private satsang here. Oh, okay. And I can ask you a few questions from some of the people they’ve asked you that, but before we get started, I’m curious what it’s like to be Mooji, and I’m wondering, you know, what it’s like to have thousands of people that come to your set, you know, your satsangs, and I’m sure there’s people that look up to you as their guru, and what is that like, and how do you either process that or not process that, because that must be a strange feeling?

2:01:19 I don’t take anything personally. I don’t take it personally. I can’t take it personally, it’ll be too much. I’m only moving as compelled by what I call the Spirit of God. Those are my words, that’s what feels most true.

2:01:39 I am, I don’t have any ambition to be famous, even from now the attention given. I’m not, I never take anything. Sometimes people say things, of course, which are deeply hurtful and really untrue, and they are painful, but I okay such as lies that people tell. When you get this big they call you a cult, I’m guessing? Yes.

2:02:07 Okay. Yeah, that’s just that’s a soft accusation now. Okay, that’s nothing compared to, you know. It’s not nothing, it is something. It’s, I are sometimes asked, what is the definition of a cult, you know, and in the time of Jesus Christ he was, their movement was called a cult.

2:02:25 I mean many, it’s not such an unusual thing, but it’s then what do you go on to say about you know what we do, and I know that my heart is clean of all those kind of accusations that people make, some people make. So the cult is soft, it compared, what else do they say? People have said that I used to sell drugs and things like this. People have said that one year I was late in going to India and they said that, you know, Mooji was refused entrance into India, and they said that one time that I died.

2:03:04 It was the most ridiculous thing because surely somebody’s gonna find out that’s not true. I mean, who says these kind of things? Okay. People say that, it’s just things that happen, you know, that it will provoke a certain kind of reactions and allegations which are totally unfounded and so on. People who say that I’m a multi-millionaire and I have lots of different you know, Rolls-Royce limousines and just things that means ridiculously stupid things to say, and I don’t, well, I kind of know why they say, but why do they say things like that?

2:03:51 I feel that some beings feel threatened by my being here and that so much attention is given to me, even unwanted attention, I don’t want any attention from anyone. I’m happy you asked me that, I can say that very openly. I have fame, I don’t care about money, I really have never cared about that much. I care about it, that’s in a community something has to come to support the community, but about my, I don’t want anything, I don’t want anything. I really, in front of my most beloved Father, I tell you, I don’t want anything from people.

2:04:37 What do you care about? I care about what is true. I care, I care about life and anything that can change the pain, the anguish, the suffering I see in the world and to bring more light and joy and peace and openness and genuine discovery, nothing pretentious, or not just to try and give anybody feel-good feelings. I care about truth. I love God totally and from my way of looking, I have no enemies in the world.

2:05:42 I have nothing, I want to see bad happen to anyone, and yet I know it is necessary for people to feel pain and suffering if it brings you to the opportunity to discover who you are. It is inevitable. Do you feel pain and suffering? I feel pain and suffering on behalf of everyone. Can you explain that?

2:06:05 I don’t worry for myself. If my life is just for me, I don’t want it. If my life is only for my own indulgence and to feel, you know, oh, I’m successful, this is nothing for me. But if I see that my actions or the guidance you can bring people into an awakening to what I know is real and that brings great joy to guide them according to my present light to a higher, deeper, truer place within themselves and to watch those fruits that come from that tree, that is a great joy, but I’m not attached to that joy.

2:07:12 And I feel things, I’m more feel than I think. And the pain and suffering of other people, is that, can that be overwhelming for you? Oh no. Okay, but you do feel that? Sometimes I feel it, and I feel it and I know what causes it also.

2:07:36 Very often we are really, we are really accomplices to our own suffering, but we don’t do that intentionally, but where there’s an openness to hear that pointed out in a loving and kind way, in a way that leaves options open to you, I will take that opportunity if it is presented to me. Can I ask you some questions? Sure. And so these are about 10 questions taken from social media when people found out you were coming on London Real. I’m guessing this will be similar maybe to what you might get asked in a satsang and maybe not, and if there’s anything you want to add.

2:08:17 Well, let’s see then, let’s see what happens. So let’s start with the first one, Mooji, does time exist as we believe it? I don’t know how people believe it, so I think time is also very, very subjective. Experientially, I don’t think time is what you find in a clock. It’s a very, very subjective phenomenon, you know.

2:08:42 When you are enjoying things, time seems to go very quickly, when you’re suffering them, time seems to go very slowly. It’s a great seeming, but I want to help those who are open to it to discover the timeless, what is timeless in you, because knowing that, then we will experience time in a more kinder way. And how do you think about time? I don’t think about time. I believe you, Mooji, our love, life, truth, death and God, all the same thing?

2:09:35 No, because God does not die. Love is also often interpreted emotionally, limitedly, subjectively. For me, love, when the definition of love is the unity and harmony of being, then it is found its highest expression, the recognition of the harmony of being. Then it is also the other definitions also, but it is more wholesomely experienced as the unity of being experienced. And you mentioned some other words, life, truth, death.

2:10:44 Death is nothing. Death is one of God’s great ideas because it so terrifies the beings that it compels them to search for what is imperishable. Our bodies die or gets recycled, if you want to say that, our minds, our identities may go through a process called reincarnation, but our essential being is beyond reincarnation. It is the unborn awareness, the absolute Self. And so you say left the body, you don’t say the word died?

2:11:36 I don’t mind using words, I can use any words, and people die, I mean every day I’m hearing some, this person die or whatever. I don’t feel sorry for them in that way because I know they’re not in a sorrowful state, but I will feel compassion for those who miss them and who suffer their absence. And sometimes this concept of death can be, I don’t know if I want to use the word good, but sometimes it can be something to get humans to take action. Yes, yes, it can.

2:12:12 I mean the passing of my own son I think has contributed. I say sometimes I use the term like the darshan of death, which is the blessing to taking the what it has to offer. Sometimes can be tremendous, you know, if you use the passing of someone to really wake up to the truth of what life is, like this. Yeah, but when I say you ask if they are the same, I would say that truth and God are one. What I call truth, and by truth I don’t mean some sacred cluster of concepts, I mean truth as the living spirit and God and awareness, I put them as one.

2:13:02 Yes, I’ve used a death sometimes to get me to see things. Yeah, sometimes it can be, but every day things about us die and reborn, ideas we have about who we are not perish continuously, maybe not at such a speed as we would comprehend and feel terrified by necessary dying, you know. The life can be rejuvenated. and like pruning of a tree or something. Next question is about mental health, and someone said, if someone is paralyzed by depression, what can they do?

2:13:56 There’s not much anybody can do of such. I would I encounter people who are in states of varying states of depression. Some I know that you can come out of it. I know it is not original to you. I know it’s a condition and it has a cloud passing.

2:14:18 It depends on how deeply we are involved in it, you know, and some beings have allowed themselves to be guided beyond what is depression. You know, it is certainly curable. I think depression is not just in the state itself but it’s in the identity with and the belief in the state that seems to prolong its seeming existence. I am depressed, I am depressed. Yes, to associate your sin, your I-am-ness, because the feeling I am is the godly principle within each form.

2:14:57 The I am can never be depressed. You see, to say I am depressed, to link that is an atrocity. Your I-am-ness is never depressed. Your person, which is really a myth more than a fact, experiences the state of which is the idea we have of who we are. When the consciousness paints a portrait of itself as a person, that limited state of consciousness undergoes so many varied states when it is believed to be the fact and the foundation of our existence.

2:15:36 When we come to see that it also is a myth, this kind of cultivated self, then you begin to taste the immensity of what truly is. What is consciousness? You, your consciousness, all is consciousness. Consciousness is not a choice you have, we are choicelessly consciousness. I feel that the whole game of life is to awaken to that truth, to awaken from the sleep of personhood into first the state of conscious presence, to be aware of ourselves as presence, which is a more subtle form of consciousness, and then when even the state of presence is itself observed, then you’re in the state of the unborn.

2:16:40 But I don’t want to say these things lightly and flippantly as though, click, click, someone has first some longing, some urge must already be, you know, some seed must already be sprouting within you to give that kind of longing or that curiosity or that hunger for what you may call a spiritual journey to really be triggered or awakened in you. Just any regular person of the street, just like that, who is really dedicated or loyal to their identity as a person won’t just necessarily happen across this understanding, but they’re not responsible for it also. It is as though a deeper movement is behind this facade that we call life, and in God’s timing each one comes to that rightness, that opportunity to look.

2:17:42 It’s inscrutable. I’m going to continue. How can someone be unconditionally loving? Nobody can be unconditionally loving. Nobody.

2:17:59 Well yes, Mr. Nobody can, but not a person, you know, a person, not even Mooji, not even Mooji, if Mooji is conceived to be a person doing unconditional love, it is not possible. Unconditional love can only be found or discovered when one has transcended the limited mode of personhood, then love flows effortlessly as your perfume. It is not, it’s not a doing. Someone once asked, how do you manage to stay so intuitive? I said, me, I don’t do, me, I don’t have no intuition to be holding on to in intuitiveness and all other wonderful what you may call virtues or qualities, they flow unimpeded in the state of awakening.

2:18:55 They’re not something that somebody possess. When you are free of your somebodiness, the smallness of this, then you find that love is your natural climate, that it’s not something that you’re doing. Any sense of worship in invariably leads to a sense of pride and an arrogance, you know, and soon followed by deceit and so on. I wouldn’t put it that it is the person. You know, awakening or freedom is not for the person, it is from the person.

2:19:29 The person is a limitation of consciousness, it is also consciousness, but it is really handicapped by its own self-infatuation. It’s not for a while, each one must taste that mode of personhood, but gradually, on the great grace of God, and you know, we evolve out of that. Transcendence is the name of the game, I would say. How can a person let go of anger? Yes, there are various support systems and guidances that can help us to overcome anger, but when you come to satsang, you know, the easiest way is offered to you, and it can come not by focusing on anger necessarily but on focusing on the truth as you discover the truth, because anger is not original to you, none of these states are original to you.

2:20:32 When you discover experientially your original nature, anger drops away like a dried up fruit or something on the tree. It really, it does. Anger has a place also. There’s a place where sometimes there’s a kind of righteous anger, I mean I would not want to take that away from people when sometimes a situation provokes anger. Anger is also can be useful, but anger when it is under the leadership of the ego itself, that can be very destructive, but there’s a place for anger also, for every emotion has its place in the immensity of the what is, you know, every emotion has its place, it has a space to be given to express itself and to finally exhaust its expression and then to again subside into the bliss of being.

2:21:31 I hope my words are not taken in some kind of poetic context because for me they are deeply practical and they are backed up with experience also, not just mind, but I hope each one that comes is brought into that opportunity to become the proof that the truth exists. And you had your moment of anger in India, didn’t you, when you walked out and went under the tree, so that was part of yours? Oh, more than that. I get angry at that thing actually. I’m glad I can experience anger for a long time.

2:22:10 I suppressed anger. I just felt like I’m going to get spanked or something or just, you know, I get to be trouble. So when it came a time actually, it’s only as I became more aware of what I am that I can start to feel angry about things. The one thing about it is that it doesn’t linger and it doesn’t it doesn’t perpetuate or develop into something, it doesn’t leave any footprints in the consciousness. It seems like it’s something a space can be all can happen where you can feel anger, or you know, but it doesn’t last, it doesn’t, it doesn’t, it doesn’t proliferate in some way, it just happens and it’s gone.

2:22:54 What’s the best way to find inner peace when living in a busy city like London? Come to satsang, find a little space and maybe attend, or you can watch a YouTube. Now we have also sort of guided meditations in the mornings for people, like in Portugal for instance, we’re in the same time zone, so when we have our guided meditation at 6:45 in the mornings five days a week, people can just sit and give a little time to just being in that and just to get centered again in that inner stillness, and that will take you right through the day also.

2:23:32 You see, like that, so that will help, and you know, there are many marvelous teachers around, they are also sharing satsangs in their own way. Open your mind. Okay. Someone from Facebook asked, I often feel loneliness and fear, I would like to leave those feelings, but they feel like they’re stuck on me, how can I help myself? I often feel a loneless and fear.

2:24:05 Is that what they’re saying, or loneliness and fear? You know, I like to say sometimes to people, just just for no reason at all, start, just go your room or wherever you are and just start saying thank you to life. You know, just say thank you. Maybe you don’t have an idea, some people think, what am I going to say thank you for? Has life been kind to me?

2:24:35 And it’s a U.S. but you go and you just say, thank you, thank you, even if you don’t mean it at first. Start, if you don’t mean it, it’s okay. If you don’t mean it, just say thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, existence, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Do this also too, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, little by little bit, thank you, thank you, thank you. Your whole field of being, you grow a nice aura around of just silence and joy.

2:25:08 You feel it, just say thank you, then gradually you start to think, actually, thank you for health, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, well, we thank you for my mind that I can think, thank you for the mistakes I make that help me to happy to learn from, thank you. Just do this a little bit. Okay, and why do this, why do this, why here with the hands? It is an arrogant person cannot do this. Okay, the gyaran person.

2:25:42 But just do it. If your hands won’t come together, tie them together for a moment and say thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, and this is good. Take your attention, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. And maybe you think, well, you know, your mind is saying, we’re saying thank you for, you know, what is lightsaber, just take your time and just keep doing that for just a little bit to see what happened.

2:26:09 I like that one. Mooji, how is it possible to open my heart in a world that is so full of violence and anger? Yes, there’s a lot of violence and anger, especially if you have some anger and violence in you. And you know, the world is not just full of anger and violence, it’s also full of many beautiful things also, but sometimes we fail to see it because your vibration is tuned into maybe a negative state of looking. You see, we’re looking at two different filters.

2:26:40 They say if you put on yellow glasses, the world looks yellow, if you put on green glass, it looks green, if you put on blue. The way we think shapes how we experience things. There’s not one single thing in existence that has a single inherent meaning. The meaning of a thing is in the perceiving of it, it’s in the mind of the perceiver. As you change internally, you change your world and you change yourself.

2:27:16 The things that the world, you can say this world is horrible, yes, there are horrible things in the world too, but we’re not going to get anywhere but you’re saying it’s horrible, horrible, heart. Don’t start to look for the things which are beautiful and just begin to, you know, hey, man, that’s really nice flower, you know. Sometimes you might, who knows how nice flower, I mean what’s the point of knowledge. Watch your grumpiness, be aware of your grumpiness and stop taking ownership for that, it’s just bad habits.

2:27:45 So that’s one simple way for the, you know, you don’t want to come to Saturday, okay, then okay, so look at them. At a certain point everything can start to show its own beauty. Things are not ugly, we are just, if I give an example, you know, I remember one thing that happened in a satsang in Mumbai many years ago in the presence of a great master called Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. In one satsang as he was talking, one young man put his hand up and say, excuse me, sir, you know, I want to thank you for your teaching and I, you know, you’ve helped me a lot and I really trust what you say, but if I am to be honest, I have to tell you this, I have to confess, I am always experiencing suffering.

2:28:30 The master said, no, it’s not true, you’re not experiencing suffering. You are suffering, you’re experiencing, what a twist, you’re not experiencing suffering, you are suffering, you’re experiencing, which means that there’s nothing called suffering. A suffering is about an attitude in which you meet things, it is not something that exists in itself. You cannot show a sample of suffering, it is a state in which you are meeting your life. What he did by answering in that way is he gave back the power to you to say, no, the thing is not out there, it is the way you are perceiving that shapes the way that you experience it.

2:29:14 You believe so much in that, you believed it into existence and it’s become your experience, and that can change. So if we really spend a little time to look into it, you understand that your world is shaped by your thinking, it’s lived from inside out, not from outside in. Lonely. What’s your favorite TV show?

2:30:16 One of my favorites is the X Factor. I like X Factor. That’s what I heard, it’s a good satsang for many people also, so it’s a satsang in itself. Everything in life is satsang. Life is satsang, it’s just that we haven’t come to see it yet.

2:30:39 Why do you like the X Factor? Well, of course I enjoy seeing, you know, some real talents, you know, being discovered, that’s a beautiful part of it, and it’s just fun to see how when the ego believes in itself, to watch it get crushed, it’s painful, but it’s kind of there’s something good because I know that it leads to something good, or the opportunity is there to leave, unless you are really tied in so much to your disappointment that you’re blind to what it has to offer you. You can see the evolution and the transcendence when that ego gets crushed.

2:31:18 You can see some development, not necessarily that I see it right there and then, it’s not said right there and then, but I see the seeds planted for a new opening, new possibilities, maybe for people to come back and try again, not to give up, or to see sometimes the arrogance that is inside coming out when, you know, disappointment is felt or something like this. All of it is quite a joy ride somehow, somehow. I’m going to start watching it as a sad son from now on.

2:31:49 You used to be a bit of a singer, is that true? That is not true. I am the best thing in the world in the bathroom. Okay, that’s it. Maybe Simon Cowell should be watching, get you on there.

2:32:02 I’ll save him with trouble. Mooji, how can one reconcile the modern goal-driven life of kind of having to work toward things with Zen? Can you say the question again? Someone asked, how can one reconcile this modern kind of goal-oriented life with, say, one of maybe more of a Zen attitude towards life? I believe that’s what they were asking.

2:32:26 They should ask you this question, isn’t it that big? Yes, because I mean, you know, we have to try things and also it’s written somehow within us that are in our being in our life expression, you may have to try some things. Everyone is evolving towards what I find without what I like to say is the great realization. They may not realize that. I did for a long time think it was going to mean in something, something else, but I wasn’t mature enough at that stage to recognize it and it was just like that, but what happens is that sometimes we have to have our dreams crushed also or to realize that these things in themselves are fine superficially but they don’t fill something inside that is yearning to be met, you see, and sometimes we have to try it out.

2:33:18 It’s not enough that somebody say, oh, you shouldn’t do that. No, sometimes you have to try it out and see if it works and if you’re happy with it, good luck, it’s fine. I’d rather be with someone who is happy in their delusion than somebody who is miserable in their spiritual search. You know, if there’s a time to have a good time and all this thing, and the best of time is to be awakened, to wake the truth, but life, I would tell you in all of its expression, an unawakened life, so to speak, I see great beauty there.

2:33:54 I see, I see God’s presence. I see I see everything and being touched by the hand of the supremacy. I don’t see or life of nothing until you win. No, no, I still listen to music from way back when. I was listening to Summer Breeze by the Isley Brothers just two days ago, singing in the car.

2:34:12 I love the many things in life, I don’t have a problem, I don’t have any, oh, thou shalt not, so much in my mind, nothing like that. No. Can anyone become enlightened? Everyone is the Self, everyone is the truth in the heart. If enlightenment means to become aware of this, yes, everyone can.

2:34:37 It’s a question of timing, you know, God’s timing, because my good news is that you are that already. It’s just a question of when you are ready to stop trying to find that in things only. Nothing wrong with things, but when you’re trying to find what you are in things, when we, when that opening come, the opportunity come, the time comes to look beyond things into what manifests them, where they come from. Yeah, I mean, what is the truth? It is not an event.

2:35:24 The event maybe is the event of recognizing it, but the truth is the very, it is the substance of life. And a question on the back of that, is enlightenment really all that great, is what someone asked, and is it worth chasing? It is the only thing that will give you unbroken happiness, unbroken peace, to remove the fear of death and even the fear of life, to be awake. I don’t want to put it in Hollywood lights. It is a simple thing, it’s only coming to the recognition experientially of what you are.

2:36:15 I have no criticism to put against the world. Once you know it, when I say as a dream, you know, sometimes people, you know, and be not being dismissive, everything we experience is a kind of dream also. How can you discover that which is not a dream and what is it in you that has the capacity to discern something to be not a dream or to be dreamed? When you discover it, you will know spontaneously. And you use the term awake as opposed to enlighten?

2:36:53 I like that term, it is okay. I think awake, dream, awake was okay. Enlightenment sometimes I try to avoid a bit to use terms that already are so imbued with or saturated with so much already social stigma and, you know, already so much interpretations and so on, just to give, bring a bit more freshness, a bit more to open the windows a little bit to look at the same thing again in the fresh light of a new perspective, but it is the same timeless one we are searching for.

2:37:26 And yet you said before that you were frustrated by how few people are able to become awake. Did I understand that correctly? It’s not that I, you see, I don’t want to put this in front of people because it might discourage them if I would say something like that. I may say that it’s I was, you know, a bit concerned that that which is so irrefutably true is recognized so rarely, and this is why I’m so happy to say that in these days it chew satsang and chew particularly this, I’m not advertising, so you’d have to show this on television.

2:38:22 This little book. Okay, is what we put the simpler, making a very simple way, just few words. I feel inside this book is a guidance for that will bring most people into the direct recognition of the truth. Okay. Mooji, An Invitation to Freedom.

2:38:37 And yet, and you think what you still think is that you would like to see more people becoming awake? No, I would like to see all the people who are consciously open and searching for truth find it. I don’t want to see people who are not searching for truth find it particularly. I don’t want to, that would be someone, they have a, we are free to be free and we are free to be bound, you know. If someone is not ready for something, I am not going to give, to offer that to them, you know.

2:39:12 Sometimes people, myself also are always trying to, people try to always do something good for my body. Okay, it’s the most irritating thing, you know, if I don’t want it. If I like spicy food and you’re trying to give me, you know, sort of like, you know, a sort of like a cucumber sandwich, you know, I’m not gonna be happy about it, so I don’t want to put that on anyone. I just say that there are enough people genuinely searching, and you know, I feel happier now because you asked me how sting evolved and so on.

2:39:48 I feel happier now because I feel I have something genuinely by grace that to share with people that seems to produce pretty good results in them and seemingly lasting ones, you see. So this, that’s all, I don’t want to find fault and you know, if they’re open to it, if they’re not open to it, then I don’t want to blame, I just don’t want to waste time trying to, you know, feed a pig, you know, sort of. But they probably eat everything, don’t they? I don’t know, I understand what you mean.

2:40:25 Sorry, maybe that’s not the best example. It’s not the right way to put it, but I’m talk, say like. Yeah, yeah. Do you believe in karma and reincarnation? Yes, but it is a limited concept that is only active while we are in the state of personal identity.

2:40:43 Then those seeds are a much more vigorous, viral, alive and potent in that state of consciousness, but in the transcendental state, in the state of your natural truth, they are exhausted. Exhausted? Yes, it means that you outgrow those concepts. Okay. We outgrow concepts, even non-spiritual, we are outgrowing things all the time, and some concepts will be, you outgrow very speedily once you, especially those who are fortunate enough to find a teacher of whatever persuasion who can speed up your awakening process or something like that, you see, then you must go beyond, because if you if you practice your own religious, you know, traditional road and come to the end of it, and if you’re at the end of your, you’ve done everything that you’ve been told to do, and if at the end you still have prejudice against other forms of loving God, you have not done it, can I say like that?

2:42:07 Yeah. If you have hatred towards other beings or other expressions of finding the truth, then I feel that that’s a limitation. I feel that one who is awake, you should really, you have looked into the heart of all the beings, how can you hate them? You may hate their behavior or something, or you may, you know, but you will know what they are and you see where it comes from. Mooji, what do you think about psychedelics?

2:42:39 You mean like drugs? Some call them medicines, but yes, I think we’re talking about the same thing. You see, you say, how open we are to interpretation, right? Psychedelic medicines, fine, take your medication if it brings you a happier life, whatever that may mean, you know, if it brings you peace of mind. Some people are so stressed, you know, I feel the modern sickness is a lack of inner space, you see, like we’re too crowded, too noise-filled in our life.

2:43:13 So meditation helps, taking a holiday, being out of your usual patterns and so on can help to just to level the playing field a little bit, you know. Going to satsang, I feel, helps enormously and gets you there very quickly in a very stable way, and some people they try certain kind of substances and so on, some seems to help to pacify their mind storms and so on. I can’t say, oh, that’s really wrong, I cannot say that. I know that there are some that are really not good, they destroyed human life.

2:43:59 You know, I mean, I don’t have my head down a hole or something, I hear about things that actually people in their desperateness and some people in their wickedness are giving to others that really destroyed human life. I’ve seen the outcome of it, so I cannot just put it under one umbrella and just say, yeah, it’s all good. No, I know that people, I mean, also people are drinking alcohol. They’re looking for some, it gives you a certain release and freedom to free up your life from many inhibitions and stuff that people sometimes have and so on.

2:44:34 I understand it, but it’s very difficult for us sometimes to control our projections and our desires, you know. So of all the things, I would recommend satsang amongst the highest. I hope that doesn’t sound bigoted, but I base up on the results of applied and good guidance. Is there a place for alcohol in people’s lives, or is that ultimately not a good choice? There is a place for everything in your life for time, you know, good and bad, painful and joyful, but I also see that we don’t do so well with alcohol.

2:45:22 It’s not it’s not a cure for things, it is just you know, a momentary, you know, and if it becomes too much of a habit, we all see the results of that very often, no. So I cannot recommend something like this. You know, many Mediterranean countries, people drink a lot of wine and so with this much more of a social thing, you have it with their food and they really get drunk to that. I don’t feel it’s good to be drunk, to drink until you’re drunk, but it’s very difficult to control if you get into the habit, you know, and I’m not judging these beings.

2:45:59 I would like to guide them to safer choices that really brings you into a place of lasting happiness, but I don’t condemn anyone at all. Mooji, have you seen aliens? It came up a few times, so I thought I’d have to ask you. Well, by aliens being mean beings who are, we are not accustomed to believing exists in the solar system and so on. I feel very strongly that they are, this is very naive to think that they are not.

2:46:31 Yeah, they are, I mean, you know, increasingly in our times these phenomena are becoming increasingly frequent, and they are not just beings coming to this planet is a recent thing, they have been here for thousands of years, you know, and yes, it will come a time when we will notice more, more in a way that we cannot refute. So you believe they exist, have you seen them? No, I haven’t seen any directly. No. Okay, but you believe that there are things out there that will reveal themselves to us?

2:47:18 Yes, and I know people who have encounters with them. Yes, it was startling to me at first when I first, you know, heard about these things, and then also see also, you know, I mean there are countless, innumerable videos about these things, some of them are clearly hoaxes and stuff like that, but there are some things which are very difficult to just dismiss. I don’t have an excessive interest in these things, but now am I north of my, so neither am I willing to just kind of like disregard and say no, not at all.

2:47:54 I feel that, you know, they are, I’m very happy that we can, we have to one time be humbled that there are beings who are sometimes wiser and much more intelligent than the human expression in its present age. What did I miss? Question-wise, what’s something you would get in the satsang that I didn’t ask you? I would like to take the opportunity at some point when you are just to, for the sake of your viewers, to simply demonstrate the simplicity of the invitation, how natural it is and how to make it accessible to the many people who have so many questions which you don’t have to necessarily go through to find what is really here.

2:49:00 It’s the most natural thing and that would be the only thing. Something like that is for people to know that they don’t have to have what specific questions. Oh no, we, I cannot shut people’s questions down initially sometimes. We have, if it’s just coming from our loyalty to personhood, then you know it’s like trying to prune a banyan tree. By the time you finish pruning here, there’s growing back right behind you.

2:49:33 If what we are genuinely searching for is just to be at peace within ourselves and to be happy in our existence and to be free from depression and, you know, a climate of anxiety and and haste and so on, then I like to not just talk about these things but to just to invite the people into this kind of guidance. It’s very, very simple, you see, and but I’m very, I’ve really enjoyed sitting with you, talking with you, and that you give me this opportunity to share with Londoners or whoever it is that’s looking in and other perspectives amongst many about life, and I know that you have a strong passion to see positive changes in life. I looked up a little bit before I accepted your invitation to come.

2:50:51 Yeah, well, I’m very glad you came and I’m not all completely finished with you. What’s Mooji doing 10 years from now? I know this year, you know, you’re not traveling to India for the first time in a while, and you know, what’s out there in the future, and I know you probably don’t like to necessarily plan or do those things, but if you had to close your eyes and see 2027, what do you believe you will be doing then? That’s, I tell you, Kevin Brown, it’s a ridiculous question.

2:51:23 I don’t even know what’s going to happen later on tonight. I don’t, I’m not so interested in it at all. Whatever it will be, if I’m still in farm, you know, and so I have the physical senses of a human being and my heart is where it is. If you ask me what I hope in some way, if I can bring it down to something, if I say hope, I hope there’ll be increasing numbers of people who are awake to the truth, but the form it will take and the shape, and I’m not concerned about these things at all.

2:52:06 It’s in the hands of the infinite Self which is here unfolding even the movement of one neutron or an atom cannot exist in this movement independent of the Supreme Being. However, saying that, I don’t want to limit what we call future as merely expressions on the surface because they are very highly interpretive, you know, you see. So when I say that nothing can exist or act contrary to the will of the Supreme, what is that will? I don’t want to put it down into some concepts because they’re very different layers of the way in which consciousness function.

2:52:53 The more you are in the heart of your true nature, the you changed the way the world is seen. So those who are looking from the heart will see the world, if you want to say, in one way, and was of looking from the mind will see it in an entirely different way. And you want people to see things more from the heart? I cannot help but to wish that upon them, to bless the beings of this world, whoever they may be, from whatever religion, whatever political, social, religious climate they may come from, the best in their lives, and the best in their lives, I cannot conceive of anything more than to have at least a living experiential relationship with the Supreme Being, and that comes from the heart.

2:53:53 That is the heart, that is the heart. What are you scared of, Mooji? I’d be scared if Mooji is only a person. What am I scared of? I’m scared of something is a very strong word for me.

2:54:51 If there are things I don’t like, this they always turn out to be momentary, so to give a term like scared of is a much stronger flavor to it. I cannot say, I can search a little bit to see, but I because I’ve had to do this, I’ve had to say, supposing every single being on this planet should in one voice say, we don’t want you on this planet, we hate you, everything you do, everything you stand for, will I still be able to stand up? Yes, because of him that which is the life, which is the heart of my heart, that is true.

2:55:57 I’ve gone through that already, I have died already. When was this? I started dying in 1987. I loved that dying. I still keep dying, but there’s no sadness in this.

2:56:38 It’s an immense choice, it is at the height of life, the death I’m speaking about, the dying of what is false, and to search inside my heart for where I find pride or or an action that is just whatever like that. You said you were scared that Mooji is only a person, is that what you said? What does that mean? It came out before I got the meaning and tell you now the meaning. If what I am was only something, it’s a ridiculous statement.

2:57:33 If what I am is only a person, what is conceived of as a person, what is a person? An idea formed in consciousness. I believe that it is merely the body and the conditioning or programming that is experienced in the body. I’ve already proven that that is not true, and having proven that it’s not true here, I’ve proved that it’s not true anywhere. For me it’s not my way to go around telling everybody, and I don’t undo this because there’s an etiquette in seeing.

2:58:13 It’s not my place, so to speak, if you say my place, whatever that may be. What keeps you awake at night? Love. Worth not sleeping for? Love.

2:58:40 Yeah, the one that’s looking out through you, those eyes. That’s a good answer. Mooji, what would we be surprised to learn about Mooji? Something that we would just be like, I, you know, besides the X Factor, what would be surprised? I heard you like a good plated duck.

2:59:07 I, if you dig deeply, just scratch believe the surface, you’ll find lots of things. What was the question? I guess what would you, what would be, so what would be we be surprised to learn about you? What you would be surprised to learn about the idea of me, it could be many things, you know. I was not, I was not born under a radiant star or something like that.

2:59:43 As a human being, as a person growing up, I did many things that were I would have been ashamed of if my parents knew, so I’m not some golden child or something, but that is done with long ago. If people want to search for things in that realm, they’re free, I don’t know, it’s not so bad, but you know, but they will be surprised. People are always surprised, they’re too easily surprised, you know, they’re too easily. No one is ever quite as bad or as good as you think they are.

3:00:45 Yes, I am nothing. Mooji, I always ask everyone that comes here a few final questions. I’m going to ask you, if I could give you a special phone that would allow you to make a call to the 20-year-old Mooji, I know you called yourself Anthony then, but if you could and give that young man a bit of advice, I guess he would be in Brixton, right, 1974? What would you tell him? It depends on what he’s open to here.

3:01:25 Well, he was, you, well, he’s walking, he’s walking in steps already made for him. I have to go through everything I went through to be here right now talking with you, so I have no regrets about it, even the things have done wrong, so to speak, you see. Yeah, I love something I remember, you know, I was in India with the Lakshmi, one of our, you know, the people very close to me, and I was standing in a very busy place in Connaught Place in Delhi, very, very busy, and some of the sangha was already shopping and so on, we were together outside, she’s listening now, she knows what I’m going to say, and I said to her, Lakshmi, you know, whatever you’re doing, you do it with all your heart.

3:02:39 And she said, you know, Guruji, I always do things with my full heart, even when I’m doing wrong things, you know. And stayed with me, I don’t know what I was ever doing with my full heart, I don’t know if I ever did anything with my full heart, whatever that may mean. So whatever steps had been taken, of course, yes, perhaps things that I may say that may have hurt people in my attempt to be funny about something, this I would regret, I regret it, and just things that said out of anger which could have been spoken out of love, I would wish to change that, but seeing who I was in form and in self-belief at that time, I don’t think I was capable of making those changes.

3:03:46 So if that 20-year-old Mooji was really open to a 63-year-old Mooji, I would tell him all this energy, all this passion you have towards the life that you perceive to be outside yourself, all that is meaningless if you don’t know who you are. All that you love, all that you conceive, all that you believe, all that you taste and value, one day will be gone. Find a thing that will never leave you. I would tell him that if he was able to hear it. Yeah, would he, would he listen?

3:04:55 I don’t know, I don’t think he would. Okay, well, at that stage, thank you for telling me what you would have told him. On that same note, the best advice you’ve ever received could have come from Papaji or your father or anyone. A few things have come. I remember one time when I was at college, it was the early years of the changes that were taking place to me, and I had, I think I’d seen a behavior from a fellow teacher that it didn’t resonate with me and I kind of challenged it, and it just turned out to become a kind of a very sour thing, and there was a lot of really not pleasant feelings towards my saying openly to the other teachers what I felt was wrong in that, and it was so painful what I perceived and experienced as a counterattack or an attack on my person or whatever like that, and I remember I at that time, in those days at Brixton College, we had the headmaster, I mean the principal of the college, was a big strong Jamaican lady, you know, I don’t remember her name, I’m very good with names, and I had nobody to talk to, I needed to talk to someone, knocking her door like this, and she just come in, I went inside and she said, okay, what’s the trouble, because I see you’re troubled, you know.

3:06:36 And I explained to her what, and I was in such despair because of the pain that I felt, and she said to me, don’t say to God, oh God, I have such a big problem. say to the problem, problem, I have a great God. And that lifted me out of that despair and I never forgot what she said. That was good advice for me. Okay.

3:07:10 I’ve received many good advice also from different beings. There’s a lot of good advice in the world, it’s just a question of whether you’re able to hear them. Yeah. I was really ready and able to hear that and it really had a strong impact upon my mind at that time. It was very helpful.

3:07:29 With your luck, now she’s going to show up at one of your set things. Yeah. Last part of that question and the last question is, to that 20-year-old that’s watching us right now somewhere around the world in South America and the States and Africa and Europe and Asia, what advice do you give to them if they want to understand themselves, they want to transcend, if they want to go deeper into the Self? What do you tell them? Let them come quickly and let’s meet up.

3:07:59 I have good news for you. I would really tell them, I’m telling them right now, if you let me, come, sit down with me if you genuinely are searching for what is true. I’m really longing to meet you. I’m more longing to meet you than anything else in this world. Just give it a chance.

3:08:25 I’ll tell him that because you enjoy this because I am this and I live for this and has this. There’s hope in your voice there. My heart is just full of God, of truth, and so it’s so easy to misunderstand. I’m not making any claim, I’m not better than anybody at all, but for what has been revealed inside, and it’s not always understood by others, and so, but I’m not daunted because I’ve seen the result of it, that yes, if you’re searching, say, let’s have a cup of tea, let’s see how much we’re able to look together.

3:09:32 I have a good feeling that we’re going to find something good today. You know, that’s a wonderful way to finish this conversation, and Mooji, I just want to thank you for taking the time to spend with us. I’ve heard a lot about you, you’ve kind of been on our radar for a little while over here, and I really enjoyed my time with you, and probably because I’m ready to receive certain messages, some of the things you say resonate deeply with me and some don’t, and that’s natural.

3:10:05 Yes. I believe, but I do believe that you know, when you do find that truth, then everything changes, and I do believe that when you awaken again, everything is almost limitless and the true expression of love is there, and not in the way that we understand love, and not a Valentine’s Day card love and these kinds of things, but this indescribable, you know, uniting force. And it’s nice to hear you articulate some of these messages, and I very enjoy your concept of satsang.

3:10:42 I know it’s not yours, but the fact that you do it more than anyone I know, and it’s a very interesting forum and a way to what I see is you exchanging energy with people in the forms of speaking, ideas, feelings, and it seems like a beautiful way to communicate this message, and so thank you for doing those and putting all that information, and again there’s countless videos on YouTube of you holding these satsangs in places all around the world, including the ashram we spoke about, and they’re very powerful, but it’s also very powerful to be in your presence, so thank you for the time. And thank you for inviting me, and I watched some of the things that were sent to me to say, you know, this is Brian Rose and check him out, and so on, and I’ve watched, you know, and I felt, okay, I’m good for that, I’d like to meet you.

3:11:43 I love anyone who comes to life with that force, that positiveness, that dedication. I feel because if there was not there, I don’t feel I would not feel happy to be interviewed. I don’t think you would ask the right questions and so on, and I don’t feel that you only ask right questions, I feel that I feel you in them in the way that you are, and and if that was not there, I’d really be struggling, and I’m a little bit wary these days to be put in positions where I’m really answering questions which are just not, there’s no faith or belief in them or like that, so I just want to acknowledge that I enjoy your questions, enjoy you.

3:12:29 I feel really much better now than when we first met. I didn’t feel bad just walking into a place and like this, but just having this chance to sit together, it’s been something very much beautiful for me. Thank you. We’re on our own journey here, searching out truths and trying to discover and asking questions and bringing people into the space and listening, you know, that’s my job, to listen, and everyone now is to just quiet themselves and listen to some new ideas, and so yes, so I’m searching too, but that’s what we do around here and it’s perfect to have you on.

3:13:09 Thank you so much. Thank you, sir. Namaste. Namaste, namaste to you and all the viewers. Let me just say if I can that I am if in my, if I’m permitted to say that I I just, yes, I can say that I wish that all the beings who somehow are maybe watching this show and somehow there’s some underneath this, there’s some search for some a deeper understanding, a more experiential truth, that may you come to that that realization in the heart and be timelessly happy, because I know that that is possible.

3:13:58 And I say further that may you become so attuned to your natural state that whoever meets you on the path of life becomes so touched or inspired by your presence and light, and openness, love, wisdom, joy, fun even, and that they’re so touched by your presence that they are compelled to search within their own self to find the light that they see in you and also find lasting peace and happiness. And I wish this for everyone and all goodness, everything good for all the beings wherever they may be, just whatever it is that brings joy and real understanding and wisdom about the true nature of the world and existence. My blessing is that that grace will flower inside your heart.

3:15:18 Thank you for allowing me to share that. Thank you, those are beautiful words, and on London Real we say it’s about the journey. I wish you well on yours, and perhaps I’ll see you sometime in Portugal. Okay, let’s see. Okay, let’s see.

3:15:36 All right, thank you, sir. All the best. Thank you. How was that? It’s beautiful.

3:15:47 Yeah, right. Yeah, I love you, man. Thank you, man. Thank you. I love you too.

3:15:53 Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.