SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Beat the Prosecution, presented by Northern Virginia criminal defense and DUI lawyer Jonathan Katz, where we are here to regularly present you information and ideas for beating your prosecution as best as possible. Nothing on any of our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Katz only provides legal advice to current clients or for individuals who have paid for a consultation. And now for your host, John Katz.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Hello, everybody. I'm John Katz. I'm a criminal defense and DUI defense lawyer in Fairfax, Northern Virginia. I am delighted to have today's case. His name is Ragu Marcus. I just met him uh three weeks ago at the uh Boone uh Ram Das Mountain Legacy retreat. Uh why would I have someone on here who's connected to Ram Das? Many of you will know who he is. Maybe uh not everyone. He was a great uh spiritual teacher, a great human being. Uh before he was named Ram Das, he and Timothy Leary were uh uh introducing a lot of people to LSD uh in the early 1960s when it was still lawful. Well, you know, if you've watched enough of these podcast episodes, you know that uh mindfulness is a very important part of being a good person and a good or great tra. And Ram Das was about uh love and having an open heart and uh about mindfulness, and he was a really great person. And this isn't only going to be about Ram Das because I want to know more about Ragu. Ragu, please introduce yourself to the audience.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

Hi, happy to be here. Or as uh Keith Richards said, happy to be anywhere. We're getting to that getting to that state. Yeah, no, it's a good question. Like, you know, why do you think people would be interested? And you're doing stuff around mindfulness. Ramdas, yes, it's uh so I I'm the executive director of Love Server Member Foundation, which is devoted to the teachings of not just Ramdas, but a whole cohort of uh uh great teachers like Jack Cornfield and Joseph Goldstein and Roshi Joan Halifax that he was friendly with forever. So they they've been part of our family. And uh so and all of it stems from when he met his guru, my guru, Neem Karoli Babba, in India, and uh he was looking for a map of consciousness and he found it through this being. And fortunately, we caught on to the caught on to it and went back to India with him when he went back the second time. So that that's in a nutshell. Uh the arc obviously is over a long span of time, and but the initial thing that happened in the early 70s, well for Ramdas, he went there in '67. So that has lit up a generation because he came back and wrote that book, Be Here Now.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Yes, indeed. And I first uh he first came to my attention when I was at a corporate law firm uh when I was trying to figure my path. This was around 1990, and we had the monthly Vegetarian Society uh lunch. And uh Howard Lerner mentioned this man named Ram Doss, who interested me most of all at first because he was talking about the acid tests, even though I was never interested enough in psychedelics to take them. And then I finally met Ram Doss in 2003, uh, and probably which was one of his last uh talks outs on the mainland, and this was at the uh Lerner Auditorium at uh in Washington, D.C. at George Washington University. And after the talk, I mean, this was just a few years after his stroke, he was probably more than exhausted, and yet he was receiving everybody who wanted to talk talk to him. This was how loving and caring he was. And when I got my turn, he grabbed onto my wrist with his good hand, and he talked to me as if I was the only person on the planet. It was amazing.

SPEAKER_02 4:29

We yeah, that that's a common experience. It's my experience the first time I met him as well, and for many people, because he was entrenched in in a place that you know what this work, mindfulness, meditation, chanting, uh, teachers, yoga, whatever it is that you might do, you you end up doing because you realize, boy, oh boy, I absolutely know that there's another plane of consciousness that I can my perspective can be coming from that not only will help me in terms of my resilience on on a day-to-day basis with life, but also it'll affect whoever I'm with or around or interacting with. So that uh, you know, that's that's crucial and key to the whole game of spirituality.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

Now, I certainly want to know more about you, and before we dive deep into that, please tell everybody uh your URLs. You've got the Mind Rolling Podcast, you have the Love Server Member uh Foundation website, and that's maybe just for starters.

SPEAKER_02 5:42

Yeah, just just go to romdust.org and put yourself your email in and get wonderful newsletters that have a lot of fantastic uh uh uh teachings, information, gives you an idea of what we're doing. Like, I don't know, how did you get there, Jonathan? You probably you know, how did you get to Boone?

SPEAKER_01 6:03

How did I get to Boone? So, in preparing for my podcast a few months ago with uh Robert Thurman, which was uh dynamite, I saw that he was gonna be talking in Boone. And I said, I'm there.

SPEAKER_02 6:16

Oh, okay. That's simple.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

That was simple.

SPEAKER_02 6:20

But uh that's fortuitous, but obviously, yeah, romdust.org, just uh get on the email list so you you get an idea of all of what this represents and uh and all of the activities because we do a lot of different uh things, not just that retreat and boon, it's just one of many, many things that we do. And yeah, I also uh we have a podcast network and Be Here Now Network appropriately so. And on it, uh I for years introduced Ramdas uh material that we would put up as podcasts. I don't do that much anymore just because of the humongous activities that we have going on. Um it doesn't allow me to have that time, but I have a podcast as well called Mind Rolling. So it's be here now network.com slash mind rolling.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

Now I have no idea yet what led you to go to India and uh and meet Name Karoli Baba. If you could at least start there and maybe give a background to what led to that.

SPEAKER_02 7:26

Name Karoli Baba.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

Yes. One day finally I'll pronounce it right.

SPEAKER_02 7:35

Well, uh the actually the very first podcast that I did, introducing Ramdas as as a podcast using talks and so on, I paralleled told my story of how my arc of uh being on the path with Ramdas is. So you can go, that's one thing that you will absolutely enjoy because it gives no less than Ramdas's initial impetus for going from Harvard professor to psychedelic pioneer to well, wait a minute, I keep coming down, so there must be some way where you don't have to come down off of uh you know acid LSD or psilocybin. And it prompted him to go to India, and that's how he met Neem Karoli Baba, who we call Maharaji because it's just uh everybody called him that. It means great king, and it's but the sweepers call, hey Maharaj, what's up? You know, so it's a very common expression of reference. But in this case, when you put the JI on the end, it's an you know, obviously uh uh honorific. Um so anyhow, there I am in Montreal, where I'm from, and I was the program director of a major rock and roll station that actually re had tremendous reach, it was like 50,000 watts. And uh so we were doing rock and roll, jazz, we were free form, which back then there was a few excellent free form stations. We were one of them. And one day I get a call, somebody calls and says, Hey, do you mind uh can you put up a notice and you know, announce that Ramdoss is giving you a lecture at McGill University, which is the big school there, right? Like the Harvard of Canada. I said, Yeah, well, who's that? You know, I did not know that name, Ramdoss. And he said, Oh, you know Richard Alpert and Tim Leary. Oh, okay. Uh, you know, those were heroes, basically, you know, of the of the uh psychedelic movement, which we were all part of. Not all, but everybody I knew was part of that back then. And I said, Well, send over a tape, because I gotta hear, I don't know what you're talking about. Send or you must have a tape from a previous lecture you gave. And um let me listen to it. So he did that and he sent this over to me. And I went into a a studio and listened to it by myself sitting there in the dark, going, just is what I have been waiting for to hear many, many years. It's an I could I recognize truth in it, and it intuitively lined me up with, okay, wait, I gotta find this guy. And of course, we announced it and played a part of that lecture, and people went crazy.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 10:39

I mean, just the switchboard was completely clogged, you know, you couldn't. I mean, just they had never heard anything like this. And if you listen to Ramdas for the first time, not only was he a great translator of the of Eastern philosophy, spirituality, whatever you want to call it, but he was extraordinarily entertaining.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 11:03

So that is what people got totally turned on by this. Many people from that, though, and I used to then I used to have play it on on air, you know, on a weekly basis, basically. People went to India just from Montreal. I'd met them in India later. And they said, Okay, yeah, we heard you on the radio, that's why we're here. So it was pretty amazing. But I uh so the I told uh so we did that, we helped them out, and then I said, Look, I want to see this person, and they just gave me an address and I bombed over there and just opened the door, and there he was, a few, you know, and we were just resting in this place of like it was a pool of what could I do for you? And nothing, just like you said when you went and you, you know, connected with him after that talk. And you just felt, you know, that he he completely paid attention only to you. Same kind of a thing. For me, it got to the point where, you know, I don't think I ever trusted, I had immediate trust, which l led I followed my intuition and went to India when he went back, you know, about a year uh three-quarters of a year later. And uh that was the beginning of the end for me. I mean, meaning that I there was no more searching or anything like that. I uh I was naive because I was in early 20s. I was naive that w I had a lot of karma to fulfill, work and marriage and children and all of it, you know, and dealing with all of that was the program. But the reality of being present with someone who was no more a someone. There was no polarization, there was no you and me or anything like that. That was an extraordinary experience that uh is as present today than it was then.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Uh visit and meet Maharaji. Was it easier for you to uh go and meet him?

SPEAKER_02 13:21

Well, uh, you mean you saw the movie, right? Where he talks about that? Yeah. Um it's Bridge of Grace, a great movie uh that we did about uh one of our mentors who was an unusual, very unusual man. Um we all went through a something, it wasn't that big a deal, okay? Yeah, it was true. He was the first he, along with a couple of other friends, they were the first people to pester Ramdas, basically, and say, because he kept Ramdas kept saying, Well, I can't tell you where he is or who he is. He, you know, I can't do that. So they finally went, look, uh, we're gonna go, you know, gonna uh we'll find him, and they went, and then Ramdas went, okay, wait, hang on. You know, and he arranged for them to to actually connect with KK Shaw, who is the subject of this movie, Bridge of Grace. And so they went through all of those permutations. I just said, When are you going to India? He said, Um October. I said, Okay, I'll be there in November. How do I connect with you? I've got to find and he said, All right, well, just write to me at American Express in Delhi, and that's how it happened.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

Okay, so you're you arrived at the temple, and uh, how many days do you have to wait to finally meet Maharaji?

SPEAKER_02 14:44

There was nothing like that. Nothing. There was no protocol, no formality, nothing. You get there, there's a temple with uh you know, those beautiful, they're called mandaps, you know, uh circular thing with a spine at the top. And each, you know, and there's Hanuman, there's the goddess, there's Shiva, there's Krishna, you know, so everybody's represented there, or at least not everybody, because there's a billion Hindu gods and goddesses, but the ones that he was connected to. And you get there and and they just said, Okay, and there's only a few of us. You just consider this is a few, uh, how many people I went with, you know, maybe five or six Westerners. When I went, that's all that was going to see Nimkaroli Baba that day.

unknown 15:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 15:43

Just a handful. And there was a translator. So we sat down and he wasn't there, and then he came out. And you know it's not not able to really describe uh, you know, the what that experience was. I I do I guess I do tell people though I had a couple of thoughts that I remember from when he first opened the door and came and sat down. And one was the main one, I know you. This is not some I knew oh my god, I've known you forever before, now, and into the future.

SPEAKER_01 16:26

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 16:27

So there was no absolutely nothing but that total realization, which is incredible. You know, I've never met somebody like that, obviously. Um, and and then I had another thought. Oh, that's what Ram Das was all about. He was just transmitting that kind of unconditionality, unconditional love, basically.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

And yet it took at least a few hours for Ram Das to take to Maharaj, and it took at least a few days or a few weeks for uh Larry Brilliant to warm up to him.

SPEAKER_02 17:00

Larry Brilliant, yes, Ramdas, no. Ramdas sat down and he had had some paranoia because Maharaji said, Is that your car? And he said, Yeah. He said, Can I have it? And Ram Das is thinking, What do you mean can you have it? It's not my car, I can't give it away. What is this about? And but then um he told Ramdas what was happening in his life in that moment about his mother's death, exactly, and even in English, which he supposedly couldn't speak, he told Ramdas, your mother died, spleen, and he pointed. And when that happened, which was not which was in minutes, within minutes of him coming up the hill and being there in that presence, in his presence, uh Ramdas, that was it. He just that word, spleen. That word got many of us. Oh my god, you know, wow, what's this? You know, how how does any human being actually have access to everything inside somebody, you know? So yeah, no, Ramdas it Larry was different. Yeah, Larry had to go through uh a little bit of something, you know, uh before it opened up for him. Everybody had a something. I mean, it it wasn't like instant for everybody, but um whatever your karma dictated.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

Well, for me, uh, I don't know if you see the whole table behind me. I have at least three Hanuman statuettes over there. I don't know if you can see. Yeah, over to my right, I've got two more because Hanuman, and of course, uh Hanuman was very important to Ram Das and Neem Karolebaba, and I guess Maharaji was said by many to be uh uh a reincarnation of uh Hanuman, I think.

SPEAKER_02 18:51

Yeah, but that's all astral stuff. I mean Astral meaning like we would know that there's not a chance in the world that we would actually. I was I was with one of the uh one day, one of Maharaji's closest devotees, a man named uh Dada Mukherjee, Sudir Mukherjee. He was an economics professor in a Lahabad, and he wrote a book, he wrote a couple of books, one by his grace, which is the best description of what Neem Karoli Baba is, in my mind. Um and that's available by the way. You go to Ramdas.org and go to the shop, and that book is there, along with lots of other cool things. Um so I was there and we had dinner one night, and this is after Maharaji had left that body, and this man, as I said, was an economics professor. He wasn't a woo-hoo guy at all. Okay, and his wife was with him, and he said to me um one time I was with him in his sort of dining area, and then he pointed down the hall where Maharaji's room was, and he said, one time he went off to go to his room after eating dinner, and I I turned, and then I turned, some reason he said I turned back to him, and I saw coming out of the bottom of his blanket was a tale of a monkey, and he told his wife, and she saw it as well. And so there I have it, you know, this is like firsthand experience of that thing, and I just uh I was like, wow, that's incredible. Have I ever really, you know, the reality for me is more around, I did meet Hanuman by virtue of Maharaji talking about him all you Christ and Hanuman are the same. That's the first thing he said. So it was about the energy. And I did understand, not understand, but I rather experienced it to some degree. And then, many years later, I came, you know, I was uh we were back in America, and uh towards the end of the 70s, Ramdas had gotten a statue of Hanuman brought to Taos, New Mexico, and and it was put into somebody's little sh farm shed kind of thing. Now there's a beautiful huge temple for him that was put in a number of years ago. So the first time I saw that statue, and I'm like Ramdas used to say, more into Buddhist kind of thing rather than Hindu. And Maharaja was not uh yes, he came from a Hindu background, but he that that was he was an everything. He was not a Hindu specifically. Yes, we did practices that came from that tradition. But we also all of us uh had Buddhist meditation at that time while we were with him. He'd say, Oh, you're going to the meditation? You know, and he's like getting rid of us. Uh anyhow, I sat in front of that statue of Ram of Ramda of uh Hanuman, and I had the same experience of spaciousness and completely settled within myself as I had with sitting in front of Maharaji. That is what's meaningful to me. For me to th think about stuff like, you know, he's really an incarnation of Hanuman. Really, yeah, I believe anything. I've I have had enough experience with Maharaji, miraculous things happening that everything's possible. So, you know, I I'm fine with it in that way. I'm more interested in my direct experience sitting with this with Hanuman.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

So what uh inspires me about Hanuman is he's about service, and as a lawyer, I believe I'm about service.

SPEAKER_03 23:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

And uh interestingly, it's my son who's in college now. He alerted me to that uh Hanuman did not uh retreat from engaging in violence if he had to uh to serve justice in Rom. And I don't use uh violence in the work I do, but but I have to be ready to you know take off the kid gloves for sure.

SPEAKER_02 23:33

Yeah, but not a good analogy. Sorry.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Well, then I'm gonna brought it up.

SPEAKER_02 23:41

You're talking about, you know, a um Hanuman is a is uh an enlightened being, although his personality is still monkey. And he had the power, he had incredible powers to be as as large, huge as he wanted to be, or as small, he could fly. So uh that's a bit of a different thing. And and the analogy is more about what he represents is the guru. Ram being the undivided god, if you want to use that term. And then Sita, which is in this story, the Ramayana, is Ram's wife. And she gets abducted by a demon named Ravana and taken to Sri Lanka. And Ram enlists enlists Hanuman to help find her and bring her back, which uh he found her, and then Ram and the army went and vanquished the demons. Okay, so the demons are inside ourselves. The guru is who helps us transform. We are Sita in this particular instance. There's many levels of the story, but we uh are taken to uh through our uh demonic activity, which is uh you know that's a maybe a too Christian kind of a word, but the reality is th we all have that th stuff inside ourselves that makes us completely self-interested. 24-7. That is the that's the demon. That's what the guru does. Takes you helps take you through and transform that uh self-interest, basically. So that's what this story is about, not Hanuman violence or any of that.

SPEAKER_01 25:40

Okay, well then I'm I'm happy I brought it up so that you could uh you know help help enlighten me on that. And do you have any examples you're willing to share about your experiences with um Maharaji? Uh you want to prompt me about like what well it seems like each person had their own different experience of sorts with Larry Brilliant. It was amazing that once Maharaji stepped on his hand, I guess when he was going to pick up an apple, he was transformed. Uh I've heard you already say on your podcast before you were speaking to a guest, I think, who uh had a challenging father to say the least, and you said you had a challenging father. I mean anything.

SPEAKER_02 26:30

Uh yeah. What I said was to this person who had a challenging father. Many of us have had that. Right. Uh yeah, I was my my father was uh flew a bomber pilot in World War II for the Royal Air Force, and only he and somebody else survived in the squadron. He had really bad PTSD, which back then they didn't have a that word for it. Uh he thought he wasn't afraid to die. That's how screwed up he was. I mean, he was really disconnected from the deepest part of himself or from his feelings as well. And anger and you know, and I rebelled and the whole teenage horror, you know, that many people went through back then and still go through. And uh so uh off I went to India, but I would still my brother, I got my brother over, so it was me and my brother and my future wife were hanging out with Maharaji. And then uh I would write to him, say, Wow, this is really incredible, you know, telling him how great a time we were having, you know, his sons. And then at the end of the letter, everyone I saw this because we actually somehow he kept them, and now we've got them digitized, part of actually Ramdas library, that we're in the midst of uh creating, you know, a wonderful way to access all these uh beautiful things. And I said so at the end of every letter I'd say, you know, I could use six hundred bucks actually, if you don't mind. So when he got so he but next uh at one point he sends a letter saying, I'm gonna come.

SPEAKER_01 28:29

Your father?

SPEAKER_02 28:30

Yeah. He's like what, fifty odd years old? He was like, you know, uh advertising guy, advertising marketing guy. Maybe he had I don't even know if he had smoked uh a hit of a pot or I don't even know if he did that. So I was shocked. And I was thinking, oh God, he's actually gonna come and I'm gonna have to, you know, it was like it was like, okay, we'll take acid together. Little did I know what was to happen, which was he came, he sat down, and uh Maharaji told him everything that nobody could know except him. You got on an airplane in Montreal, you stopped in Frankfurt, you sat next to an Indian businessman, blah, blah, blah. On and on, my father's jaw just dropped. I mean, this was so foreign. You can't imagine. I mean, at least we had had, you know, we had had psychedelics, so we had some way of, you know, kind of understanding what this energy was, you know. So then suddenly, and and during that thing, by the way, Maharaj said, he turns to me and he goes, You only love your father because he gives you money. Wow. All those letters I wrote with the money, and I didn't remember then, but I actually just saw this recently. So then he looked at me and said, Did you give him the medicine? And I go, Yes. He had a cold. I gave him some aspirin. I'm taking care of it. He said, Yogi medicine that Ramdas gave me. Because you know that story, of course. Ramdas had given Maharaji acid, and nothing happened. And I said, Acid? And my father went, LSD. He said, Take care of your father while he's in India and meet me in ten days in Allah. And sure enough, my we went to Benares. Do you know if you know you know what Bonaris, the city in India?

SPEAKER_01 30:25

I recognize the name. I have not been to India yet.

SPEAKER_02 30:28

Yeah, well, this is where people go to die for like thousands and thousands of years. Not probably along the banks of the Ganges. We took my father there, not far from the burning. There's a lot of burning gas. There's a main one called Monaconika. And uh we were on a houseboat washing our teeth, you know, shit is flying down the ocean, the uh the river. Um sometimes bodies that don't get completely burned or floating along. I mean, it's really they call it the end of the world, Benares, Kashi. Anyhow, so he has I did find some acid. He did take it in the middle of this. If you can imagine, obviously his karma was set to do this. Then we walk through Benares and the dead bodies. We people, you know, you need to put money on to get enough wood, you know, throw money, and they get enough wood to burn completely the body. That's a big thing for poor people. The dead animal, there was a dead donkey, I remember. Anyhow, he had a complete death trip, basically. And we went back to see Maharaji, and who said nothing whatsoever. How is the trip? You know, there's no rational kind of thought like that was going on. Nothing happened, but then he further told him a lot of stuff. My father had a farm and he saved a horse from being euthanized. It was a huge thing for him. Every night he'd get up and put clay on this horse's leg, uh green clay. And uh Maharaji told him the whole story, the horse was white with a black tail, whatever. The whole thing my father boom fell on the floor, and that was the end of him. I'm being euphemistic. What happened from then on is we had a great we still fought a little bit, but we had a a wonderful relationship all the way to his death about 13 years ago. He saved my whole family. My brother, my sister, their husbands and wives, my mother came with me later. Not that she he wasn't around, but Siddhima was around, who's a saint that was there in Maharaji's place. So how about that?

SPEAKER_01 32:44

That that that's several books in itself right there.

SPEAKER_02 32:48

Yeah, yeah, really. Yeah. That was fun.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

Have you written a book yet?

SPEAKER_02 32:55

No.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

That's why I didn't find any.

SPEAKER_02 32:58

No, no, no, no, no. Uh yeah, no, just no time.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

Maybe, you know, I'm I'm still working, so when you were um when you were there with Maharaji, did you have any interactions with do I have his name right? Uh Hari Das Baba or Hari uh Baba Das?

SPEAKER_02 33:18

No, Hari Das Baba. Hari Das Baba. Ramdas is yoga teacher, basically. Uh no, he left uh before just when I got there, he he had just left. We missed each other.

SPEAKER_01 33:31

Didn't he relocate to the United States?

SPEAKER_02 33:33

Yeah, he he was in California, and uh he just passed not that 10 years ago, maybe less something. Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:44

Uh but was Anandamaya Ma still alive when you went to India and did you meet her?

SPEAKER_02 33:50

Yep, yep. She had an ashram uh not far in Brindavan, not far from Maharaji, and he used to say every day, go see Ma, and we used to go there and have her darshan. It was a very Brahmic Brahmanic uh scene. In other words, uh when it was time to eat, we as Westerners were considered this as low, you know, as sudras in the caste system. We couldn't be in the environment where they were. This is you know, this is not what we were used to with Maharaji. Nothing like that. In fact, he made a big deal about breaking the caste system. Uh but around her they were protecting her, is what they thought, and we'd have to leave whenever there was food. So we'd go back to Maharaji sitting there going, Did she feed you? Fully well, no, no. He said, Go eat. You know. So he you know, he we had a lot of fun. He had fun with us. There's no teachings. I mean, he would say things like uh you know, Hanuman and Christ are one, and I yeah, you know, very um simple direct reality. Like Ramdas said at one point, you know, he said, I have all the he thought to himself, I have all these friends, Buddhist friends, and they're getting these incredible teachings and meditating and going into, you know, just atmospheric uh planes of consciousness. Why not me? So he said, uh Maharaji, can you um can you uh uh r ri uh make my kundalini rise, right? Which is a very uh essential uh energy that takes place I don't know, you know, in terms of what kundalini is, but it's the energy that comes from the base of the spine to the top of the head, and that's where you become realized when you are actually activating uh meditative uh processes. And my this is what Maharaji said, yeah. Um feed people. And Ramdas thought, feed people? I'm talking about getting my kundalini raised. This is penny annie, this is what he's thinking, right? And then he said he'd try again. You know you know, what about um some other form of enlightenment that he was asking for? And Maharaj said, Love everyone. And he realized that we we were uh in a framework of a being that was living in a non-dual state, although in a human body, which is rare. They call them siddhas. Okay. They they are completely uh non-engaged with any kind of desire systems or anything, they're just there to take whatever anybody needs they provide to get through this life in a way that's going to be of service, in a way of compassion, of love. This is what the teachings were. They weren't about uh, you know, raising kundalini at all or anything like that. Now, all of us did different meditations and practices and so on, and still do. Uh but the essence of what is truly real, about what the outcome is, once you realize there is a path to becoming happy, let's even start in the most simplistic way of becoming not so caught up every day in our, as I said before, self-interest, then you realize this is what I can do. Ramdas used to say, fix your heart. And once you do that, then you can radiate that to people around you. That is a purpose in our lives.

SPEAKER_01 38:10

I want to address that now because it took me uh two retreats, separated three weeks from each other, uh, for me to better apply what I learned at these retreats, including in Boone and what I've known for decades anyway, and to apply it to when I'm back with the general population. So after that great time in Boone, where no matter who I sat with in the uh dining hall, I had a uh great connection and um I I particularly enjoyed um Krishna Das's uh uh kiratan and getting a talk with um Nina Rao and getting a talk to uh to uh David uh Nicktern. Um but then uh I went Saturday through Sunday, then I get back home Monday and I'm interacting with people in the courthouse and plenty of people who seem to be nasty and perhaps getting tailgated once or twice uh on the highway the next few days. And um I said to myself, I'm not applying this retreat well enough. So let me uh let let me uh restart here. So last weekend I was with my uh peace teacher Junyasuda, who uh did this beautiful calligraphy behind me, you know Horenge kyo, the Odai Moku. She's at the Grafton New York Peace pagoda, and I've known her for over 30 years because I met her when she was fasting on water for peace in the Gulf War won for 30 days in Lafayette Park, and I was at a law firm three blocks away, and that's how I met her when I was joining the peace demonstrators during lunchtime when I felt totally isolated at my law firm about expressing my feelings that the war was uh started prematurely. And so I spent this weekend with her this past Saturday through Sunday. After lunch, I went immediately to mixing uh concrete and helping to lay that down in the bathhouse and then uh stacking wood and getting ready for a couple of uh uh events that are coming up there, and then taking her on a beautiful ride to Bennington, Vermont nearby to the grocery store and for other supplies. And that helps cement it because for the Boone retreat, it was reminding me to have an open heart. And with June Sun, she's much bigger on peace. Now, of course, they they they have their overlaps, and then finally it clicked. And it shouldn't have to take this many decades, but it has clicked the open heart and the peace. And I've been doing pretty well since getting back uh among regular society, and this reminds me of what Ram Das uh said about how uh uh certain people create the police and the police create certain people. And he talked about how one day a police officer stopped him and a traffic stop and was asking what was in the center console. And Ram Das said, The mince, would you like uh some? And and the police officer was trying to find every reason not to leave, just to keep interacting with Ram Das. But as I was rethinking this story today, I thought to myself, but maybe Ram Das was only able to be so open to the police officer at the time because I guess Ram Das didn't have any acid with him because he once mentioned, I think when he was on stage with Timothy Leary, that Timothy Leary kept getting busted and Ram Das never did. And I'm well, maybe let me bring bring it to this then. Is it mere coincidence that Ram Das never got busted, or did he just emanate something that made uh police not want to uh go further and try to find something to bust him about?

SPEAKER_02 41:54

Nothing can happen. Karmically, it is you you you create these worlds, and in this case uh uh this is uh the reality of his connection to the universe through this being presupposed that there was care going on about does that mean that maybe Ramdas shouldn't have put a few hits of acid in his pocket? But if he did, karma's involved, maybe he needed to get busted. But that never happened because that was not part of his karmic uh uh predilection. So uh the other part of it is yeah, no, he this is a great story. Yeah, the reality is he was not in any kind of fear about the police, he was just naturally in a state of uh, you know, here we are. You've got your uniform on, I got my uniform on. But here we are. Beneath all of that, we're just souls. He definitely could dip into that place, and let me say uh at one point in India, when we were in India, Maharaji said uh there was I won't tell this story because it's too complex and long. But basically, Ramdas was very upset, and uh Maharaj was saying, you know, you gotta let go your anger, you know. I'll give you some milk, you just drink it, you'll be fine. That's how he dealt with it. But he said, Ramdas, love everyone and tell the truth. And Ramdas said, The truth is I don't love everyone. From that moment to the time when he died at the end of 2019 in December, by that time he actually got closer than anyone I saw that was not an enlightened being, let's say, no longer polarized, to the reality that he did that. You experienced it in that moment that you just mentioned earlier in this conversation when you went to see him. Yes. And that was that happened and blossomed over those decades.

SPEAKER_01 44:16

And so uh have do you still have challenges applying all these lessons from Maharaji? Uh, for instance, when someone's tailgating you on uh on the highway and uh you know giving you the finger or or anything similar to that?

SPEAKER_02 44:31

Yeah, no, I I'm completely finished with all that now. I'm just totally relaxed as I drive, as I get calls, or as I try to speak to people to who want uh you know don't have the credentials right and you know all of that. I'm completely at ease with it all. Not not not of course not. I was with I was with a friend, I'm not gonna tell you who you do because he's from the retreat, but um I got in the car, a few of us, and someone did it and we had just spent, you know, all these hours. It was oh yeah, it was this beautiful day that we spent together of spiritual practice and love and opening and everything. And then we get into the car and driving, and and you know, one of those things he gets cut off or something, motherfucker, you know. And I said, We just had this nice day. What's wrong? Yeah, no.

SPEAKER_01 45:40

Now you uh apparently for years have devoted yourself as being the executive director of the Love Server Member Foundation, if I'm calling that right. What has motivated you to do that? Because that that's devotion.

SPEAKER_02 45:56

Well, the the motivation was I mean, it was a not complex, but Ram Das almost died in Maui after he went to India in 2004. And I was told we a few of us were told by Siddh, who is a whole other something to talk about as well. She was our Indian mother, but she she was a saint in her own right. She wrote through one of our friends uh and said uh because Ramdas uh had went septic in a hospital. He was dying. She said, You better go. And he's so but he got through it and he was ready to leave the hospital. She told us, Take care, you better take care of him, or you won't you'll be sorry, kind of a you know, not quite like that. But um so uh at at that point Ramdas had given everything away. Literally. I'm talking about r you know, the rights to be here now, the royalties, everything. So and he could no longer you know travel and teach. They had raised money to get him the therapy needed, you know, but at this point here's a whole new thing. What to do? So a few of us got together and we um put to you know, we put enough together that he could continue to live on Maui. And because I come from media, obvious, if that's how I met him, I had you know, I I had the direction to be able to support what he was doing through at that time when the internet was blowing up. And we started ROMDAS.org then in 2005, and started doing retreats over there. You know, so and I started thinking of all the other incredible things that we could do with uh these decades and decades of fantastic material, not to mention that we continued to make this material, which we're doing now by virtue, you just saw it in uh in Boone, right? I mean, I just put out on Mind Rolling a podcast with uh Robert Thurman and uh Nina Rao. Uh and you know, we were addressing the theme, and it was uh beautiful. And so that it continues, is all I'm trying to say. It continues. And that I loved doing that. And it at the time in 2004 four, five, I we created a board and we were guiding how to, you know, make sure Ramdas would be okay. But uh after we went through a couple of directors that weren't doing the right thing, I just said, look, like I had sold my record company around then in LA, and I said, I'll I'll temporarily do this. Well, it ended up, I've been doing it now. 16, 17 years.

SPEAKER_01 48:59

I listened to your podcast episode because I had to leave because uh my wife and son, I need to bring them back home, and and they weren't at the retreat uh just before the mala ceremony. Can you uh Mike was great, he sent me my malas, but at that ceremony that can be made public that I missed, including how I'm supposed to use those malas.

SPEAKER_02 49:22

Oh, okay. Well, that I'll give you a brief thing on that, since here we are, and uh this is going to be on YouTube too, I hope.

SPEAKER_01 49:33

Yes, indeed.

SPEAKER_02 49:35

Okay, here's a mala, which is just uh in English a rosary. And uh the idea is whatever that's the month mantra that Maharaja used all the time. He didn't use a mala, he used his indexes Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram. He did that. So Ram, which is uh Ram is God, but it's also got you know through a Sanskrit uh each Sanskrit vowel has a certain vibration that does something to one's nervous system. But you start Rom Rom Rom Rom, each beat, rom, rom, rom, it's 27 beats, which times four is 108. 108 is the guru number. Rom Rom Rom Rom Rom Rom Rom Rom Rom Rom Rom Rom Rom Rom. You don't cross over, you go back, and you keep doing that. Rom nom. And if you you know, you can do it, you know, if you're in a a meeting with some people that might catch your uh ego, shall we say, and you just have it in your pocket and you're just okay, rom, I'm not gonna react here. Got my rum.

SPEAKER_01 50:59

Because I I wear my my wrist molas, and when a uh judge is ready to start raising his voice to me, sometimes I'll just touch my wrist molas, and then I'll uh just honestly and uh compassionately talk back to the judge about why I'm doing what I'm doing, and sometimes it brings the judge right over me because the judge sees he hasn't gotten a rise out of me, yeah, right is making sense and uh brings it right back to center.

SPEAKER_02 51:24

Yep. Isn't that reality incredible? You know, so then we just got to do the practice so that we can be in that place where we're not reacting to every phenomena that comes at us. You know, that's the whole purpose.

SPEAKER_01 51:40

And that's why uh Ram Doss, this retreat, uh visiting with my peace teacher is so important for me as a person and in my criminal defense practice. And of course, my teacher Jerry Spence uh started off his trial or his college when I was at his ranch in western Wyoming for an entire month. He said you have to improve the person before you make the lawyer. Terrific. Absolutely terrific. So I really thank you so much, and everyone else who made this retreat possible and who makes Ronda's.org possible and everything that's on there and mind rolling, and I'm looking forward to uh uh learning more from it than I haven't. And I told you we would finish at uh three o'clock your time, and we're getting there in three minutes. So I I want to ask you, even if you're not a lawyer, which apparently you aren't, do you have any uh thoughts other than what we've been talking about about what might help uh lawyers or criminal defendants in uh you know obtaining justice?

SPEAKER_02 52:47

I mean, really, we are so polarized. Look at this country, how polarized it is, right? It's extraordinary. We are that inside ourselves because there's a me and there's an object, and I gotta defend myself against whatever that might be. I have to protect myself, I have to um maybe not tell the complete truth all the time because I think I'm hurting somebody. I mean, there's so many permutations of this kind of polarization. Uh it it doesn't matter if you're a lawyer or if you're a uh uh you know postman. You're running into people, you're having interactions and uh reacting in a way that is either you know self-interested or defense-oriented, whatever it may be. You get sick of it after a while. And y it's not a matter of what can I do to become a better lawyer, it's what can I do to become a better human. And you realize that that's that's as Ramdoss would say, the only game in town. And so what do you do? You do what you've done, Jonathan. You know, you've you're going to you you have somebody that you can relate with that is an incredible being, and uh you you've gone to retreats and and so on. You do that stuff for only one reason to get healthier inside.

SPEAKER_01 54:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 54:26

You know, and that's the only thing to say. You know, I mean, there's a beautiful I let me give you a few things if people want to follow up. There's a beautiful movie, Ramdas, called Becoming Nobody. And uh you can uh you know go on any of the TVODs, which is uh Amazon Prime or Apple or YouTube, and you can find it there. Or you can go to Gaia TV. We have it, you know, Gaia TV, which is a great uh network for spirituality. Um so that has becoming nobody, which is uh a prime thing about identity and how to get transformed from the identity that you develop and that you cling to. I my I am a lawyer, and I uh and you go from there. You know, there's a lot of I, I, I going on. So that's one great thing. Um actually I did a I did an audio book with Duncan Trussell, another podcaster, and we did this wonderful book, The Movie of Me to the Movie of We, and we talk about everything you and I have been talking about, how we how how our habitual patterns develop, our neurotic tendencies, and how they developed in our youth and and how they express themselves as we got mature, and what do we do to transform these things into a world where it's not about you, it's about you in a generous, compassionate uh mode, you know, where you that starts to help people, which the book ends, the audio book ends with Ramdas a talk about compassion and generosity. That is one of the big uh antidotes to become to the movie of me. You know, you wake up and you wake up in the morning and me, me, me, I gotta do this, I gotta do that. You know, you write the thing, you you're the producer, the director, you're the whole damn thing. You even write your own review. This is all Krishna Das's uh little story, by the way, which he told, I think, at the retreat. And so, yeah, so that's one thing. Go to Amazon uhudible.com and you can pick it up or Apple. And uh one other thing, I will give you a tip. It's worthwhile getting uh your name, your email into Ramdas.org. In the beginning of October, we're running a course that'll include Ramdas, Jack Cornfield, and other people called Walking Each Other Home, which is Ramdas's primary thing about when we age, when we die, when we are in any kind of difficulties, we turn to each other. And what does that mean? And what how do we deal with suffering? How do we deal with uh what we're speaking to right now, polarization? How do we deal with the grief? How about this grief that we have collectively? Okay, what's going on with the environment? What's our political situation, our social situation? And and in so many aspects of our lives, you know, I mean, how many uh every day it's brought up? I know, I hear it every day. Oh my God, did you hear what's happening now? And it's it's grief. And how do we deal with this collectively in a way that we are going to bring ourselves into a transformation rather than getting lost in recrimination?

SPEAKER_01 58:10

Yes. Well, Ragu, this has been wonderful. And uh I was so delighted when you agreed to talk with me. And I I want to share with everybody that uh if you uh do like what's at romdoss.org, I don't know how you you can't. There are some um local uh groups that get together. In fact, this Sunday, Ragu, I'm gonna be getting together um over in Rockville, Maryland with uh Karuna's group over there afternoon. This is listed on that website, everybody. I do recommend everybody definitely to go to romdas.org and to sign up for their newsletter and to donate there. Uh Ragu, do you have any uh other thoughts that you wish to share with everybody before we sign off?

SPEAKER_02 58:59

No, I think that uh yeah, a big suggestion if you've got any kind of connectivity with feeling for if you haven't known about Romdas before, or if you have, but you don't really haven't really delved into it, uh it's worth going to ROMDOS.org, period. Signing up there, but you can just go through, you know, there's lots of stuff. We have a wonderful platform where we have all of our I mean, added to it all the time, but hundreds of hours of courses that we put out on all sorts of different themes. Retreats like the one that Jonathan just went to in Boone, all of it is gonna is available or will be available. Uh this retreat we haven't even edited yet, but uh so that is uh also included uh with uh you can see the movies that we're we're doing. You there the free part, so that's you know an 18-month $18 a month thing, you know, totally reasonable to have all access to all this content. And then the other part of it is there's a wonderful forum where people interact and we have all sorts of material that you can just no problem, you can access and uh include yourself in. You see my podcast partner, by the way?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:16

I see him.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:17

A her. It's a her, Maya. Hi, Maya.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:20

Oh, great name, Maya.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:23

So yeah, no, it's been great. Thanks for having me, and uh I'm happy to you know um chat with you. I have a very good friend, by the way. I haven't told you this, Jonathan, who was uh Jonathan, who was in India. His name is Bruce, but he's a lawyer in uh he's just retiring in uh Los Angeles, and he helped a lot of people over the years. And uh so I'm kind of familiar because I spent a lot of time with him with the process.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:57

Yes. Yes, I like connecting with the lawyers who are into this uh path. Thank you so much, Ragu. You have heard from Ragu Marcus, who clearly is a very busy person, has taken the time to speak with us today. This is John Katz. I'm a Fairfax DUI and criminal defense lawyer in Northern Virginia. This is Beat the Prosecution. Thank you again.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:20

Thank you for listening to this week's episode from Beat the Prosecution. This is a regular podcast giving people a leg up against police investigations and prosecutions. Nothing discussed on our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Katz only provides legal advice to current clients or to individuals who have paid for a consultation. We welcome you contacting us via email at info at beattheprosecution.com by calling our office at 703 383 1100 or texting us at 571 406 7268.