Spend Some Quality Time With Thom

Spend Some Quality Time With Thom

[00:45] A Retreat Taste Test

Jai Guru Deva. If you enjoy Thom’s podcast, then we know you’d love spending quality time with Thom on his worldwide retreats. We wanted to give you a sample of what the retreat experience was like, so in this episode, we are sharing just a small portion of Thom’s recent retreat in India.

As you’ll hear, the atmosphere is intimate yet jovial. On retreats, you get to explore subjects that might not normally be covered on the podcast, and you certainly get to hear stories from Thom that you wouldn’t hear anywhere else.

We’d love to have you join us at one of Thom’s upcoming retreats, so please sit back and enjoy this taste test of the retreat experience, then find out how you can join us in person at thomknoles.com/retreats. That’s thomknoles.com/retreats.

[01:35] Q – How Can We Mend a Broken Heart?

What do you want to know about anything? No limits, hmm? What should I do with my crazy auntie?

Oh, there’s a Bee Gees song about that.

A broken heart—there’s more room in a broken heart. It gets a few cracks in it, and it can expand more. And in the end, what we always discover with heartbreak—things ended up turning out better, actually. We don’t like to admit it at the time, because we can’t imagine, “Oh, I wanted this to happen, I thought it was forever, I thought it was this, I thought it was that…”

And from the cosmic perspective, Cosmic Intelligence is saying, “Yeah, yeah, just keep watching.” Eventually, you’re going to be very happy that a transition occurred because something new opens up. Always something.

We know—remember high school? —Hey, Marco— Remember high school? We had broken hearts then. Aren’t we glad that we moved on?

When you think about the high school broken hearts, or even younger than high school, middle school or something, we got a broken heart. “If only, oh, little Sherry, or little George,” or whatever it is. And later on, you find out they’re a drug dealer now and doing time at San Quentin or something.

Narrow escape.

So, is this a romantic thing? And you’re asking for a friend, yeah?

Keep your eyes open. Some big transition is going on, and somebody who is a better match for your consciousness state is also somewhere having a broken heart. “Where is he? Where is he?” You like the female, yeah? I didn’t want to make any mistakes. And, “Where is he?” “Where is she?”

Right now, she’s thinking, “Where is he? Where is he? The one who’s going to match me. The one who’s going to match me.” And here you are going, “Oh, the one I loved so much is now not here anymore?” And then we just need to get these two question marks together, and it turns into an exclamation mark.

[04:21] Something Good is Happening

You’re such a handsome man. You’ve got a good 30 more years in you. Keep the electromagnet on. Keep radiating, keep radiating, and watch what happens. You’re going to be just fine, Scott. Everything will be fine, and you’re going to be happier than you thought you were going to be with the previous experience. You’ll be happier.

And she, who’s off now exploring, she’s also going to end up being okay. She’ll be okay. Good. You’ll be okay. Good. Whoever is new is going to be okay. Good. We just need to let some time unfold.

In the meantime, believe me, enjoy some blessed solitude. You’ll look back at these days and go, “What was I complaining about?” Some blessed solitude. Self-determining. Self-sufficient. This is actually really nice if you can just relax and enjoy it.

You want to eat at this time and not that time—you don’t have to check with anybody.

Everything has a blessing. Everything is a blessing if we can just relax. We just need to relax and let what is unfolding unfold.

And always, we have this one theme: Something good is happening. We may not be able to see exactly what it is, but that doesn’t disqualify it from happening. You’re being set up for something good.

Something good is happening, so you’ll tell your friend. Pass all this along to your heartbroken friend and tell him from me: something good is happening.

We’ll have another conversation in far less than five years, and you’ll be saying, “How did you know?” It’s not specifically you—it’s everybody. Everybody. Everyone’s going to be alright, and everything’s going to be alright.

Meanwhile, there are some changes in the storyline. New chapter. In a new chapter, we turn the page on a really good book, and a new chapter is there. We look back, and we say, “Oh, why is this author doing this to me? I was so attached to the characters in the previous chapter and what they were up to.” And now, you open the new chapter and you think, “Who are these people? Who are these people?” Just being introduced to by this author. So, the author of all things is changing your chapter right now. Go with it.

If it’s not a happy ending, it’s not the ending.

So we have Scott fixed up. Now, what else?

Hi. Jai Guru Deva.

[07:59] What’s the Vedic Worldview on Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT)?

I was wondering what the Vedic worldview was on things such as like HRT, like hormone replacement therapies and things. 

[08:14] Ayurveda Has the Answers

Let’s, rather than me making a blanket statement about it, because individual, individual, individual, different. In one or two days, the world expert on Ayurveda will be here, Dr. Harsha, and you’ll have an opportunity to have consultations with him.

And, we want to ask on an individual basis, because Ayurveda doesn’t make blanket recommendations. “This one thing for all, everybody should do this, nobody should do that.” It’s not in Ayurveda. It’s all, “Let’s feel your pulse.”— Hey Brian— it’s, “Let’s feel your pulse, and see, let the body talk.” And, if you can be aided with a bit of HRT— is that what that is? I think so. That was a good guess— then, he’ll let you know.

And then there are degrees of it. 1%, 10%, 100%, whatever it may be. But, probably, there is some herb— for those who are Americans and Canadians, forgive me for saying herb. It’s the proper way to say it, by the way. The Commonwealth way of saying it. There’s some herb, there’s some, something missing in the diet, something that could be added, something that could be taken away from the diet, and some herbal thing.

And then, like that, you would test that for a period of time and see, and then if you could be aided by a little bit of modern pharmaceutical medicine, that may be also part of the solution, like 20%, 50%, or 60%, whatever. Ayurveda doesn’t rule anything out. What it does is it finds what’s going to be balancing for you individually.

That was an easy one, an easy out for me. Ask Dr. Harsha. He’ll come here and go, “Thom!”

Okay.

[10:34] Q – Is it OK to be Guru Resistant?

Hello Maharishi. My name is Jennifer. I’m a searchaholic and my question is, what would you say to someone, asking for a friend, who’s guru resistant? So, very much on the path, but has resistance to following a specific individual. And…

[10:56] Scepticism vs Cynicism

Continue being… there’s a very good word in English that we’ve learned to misuse, and the word is skeptical. Skeptical doesn’t mean cynical. The proper definition of that word is, “I haven’t come to a final conclusion yet, I’m inconclusive, and I’m open to evidence.” Right? That’s the proper meaning of the word skeptical.

Now, as of now, inconclusive, but open to evidence. Now, what we’ve done through our misuse of English, abuse of English, we’ve turned the word skeptical to mean cynical, meaning, closed to everything. “I’ve already arrived at my conclusions. Don’t even bother me with anything new.” And I don’t think that’s what you are.

I think you are truly properly skeptical, meaning inconclusive but open. And that’s the proper scientific way. Continue to gather information. Why would anybody get all devoted to a guru just because that’s a thing? We need to…

If there’s going to be devotion, it has to be on the basis of evidence. And what does devotion mean anyway? It just means that you found some kind of source of knowledge that reliably can give you good guidance, good information, and practical, not faith-based. Based on faith, you’ll never hear come from this mouth, “Just believe and then it’ll happen.” No, no, no. Experience and then form your conceptual delineation based on your experiences.

I’m a scientist. This is the proper way of doing things. You carry out your lab work, empiricism, you get your empirical experience, and then when you start getting consistent outcomes, you form a theory that is explanatory of your observations. And that theory we call conceptual delineation.

[13:19] Beyond Reasonable Doubt

Something that rather elegantly describes all the observations that you’ve made. And only then would you say that a theory and a methodology is— never use the word proven in science. In mathematics, we have proofs. In science, we don’t have proofs. Something can be demonstrated, and here’s the criterion of science: beyond reasonable doubt.

Something demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt, there’s been research of two types. Direct experience, and good, strong, rigorous conceptual delineation, a rigorous theory that can explain rigorously those observations, and then we feel we have something that’s been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt.

And so, when we look at Einsteinian special relativity, why does everybody look as though they bow to that? Came from 1902. Long, long time ago. More than a hundred years ago. Nobody has found any other way of explaining things, explaining observations better than his explanation.

And so why is Einstein considered the guru of modern physics? Well, because he was actually himself not an experimenter. He got other people to do the experiments, but he was very good at making a unified description of all the observations that allowed you to arrive at an aha moment. Then he’s worthy of… when Einstein says something next time, you’re going to think, “This guy gets it right, and so I’m going to give perhaps greater prestige to Einstein than I would have given if he hadn’t had it right so many times.”

So, I don’t think you are cynical. I think you’re skeptical, meaning you’re being scientific. Keep doing that. Just keep doing that.

Don’t do anything on the basis of faith. Faith means suspended disbelief. You have disbelief and you suspend it because somehow you think that if you believe hard enough, a thing will come true. Not scientific. Stay scientific. Okay? Good.

Jai Guru Deva.

Our microphone people sign up because they need some aerobics.

[16:11] Q – What is the Significance of the Moon in the Vedic Worldview?

So, Guruji, this morning I went—we went—to town, and I found this beautiful little statue of the Adiyogi Shiva, and that beautiful moon on his head. And I was thinking, “Thom always talks about Surya,” so can I make you talk about the meaning of the moon?

The crescent moon in Shiva’s hair? Not necessarily, I think that was the— Or just the moon itself? Yeah, Soma or Chandra, what do you call it?

[16:42] The Role of Mythos

In the Vedic consciousness play—and for Jennifer, it’s a consciousness play—we’re not literalists. Literalism is the beginning of fundamentalism, which is the death of pure knowledge. It kills it. Literalism, no.

We are connotative. We are—we’re into that which is allegorical. We’re into that which is mythos.

Those of you who haven’t given yourselves yet the opportunity to read my old friend Joseph Campbell, who was teaching at Sarah Lawrence University for decades on the subject of the power of myth—

Myth is not fallacy. We’ve done a great disservice to the word myth by saying, “Oh, that’s an urban myth.” “Alligators in the sewers of New York. It’s an urban myth.” Meaning, what we really mean is that’s a fallacy.

A myth is something much more dignified than that. It comes from the word mythos, which comes also from the word maitri, friendliness, and mata, mother. Myth is the matrix point. That word matrix is related to the word myth. Forget about the movie.

Matrix means a birth canal, the narrow neck in an hourglass. So when something is moving from here, through something narrow, into something larger—this is a matrix point, something that brings everything together, and then metamorphoses that and releases it into another container. This is the role of mythos.

[18:37] A Big Asteroid with Remarkable Qualities

So, in the mythos of the Vedic worldview, we celebrate Soma Chandra. We know what that really is. Scientifically, it’s a great big giant asteroid, which, millions and millions of years ago, whacked into the Earth—called the Theia event. It was called Theia—we call it that—in those times before it was the Moon.

It knocked the Earth into its slightly angular axis by hitting it so hard and knocked it to its side like that so that we have seasons now. And now that big chunk of rock went into orbit around the Earth. And the orbit around the Earth is amazing because, from our unique standpoint on the surface of the Earth, when you look up—even though the Moon is only one-quarter the size of the Earth and the Sun is one million times the size of the Earth, 92 or so million times the size of the Earth—

But from our unique standpoint on the Earth, they’re exactly the same size in the sky. And the orbit is such that the Moon manages to get in front of the Sun and creates a total solar eclipse, and they fit perfectly. The two disks fit so perfectly, you can see the corona of the Sun and all the flares coming out.

What an amazing co-incidence. I use the word that way because coincidence is like random, but it’s a thing that coincides. So I like to really emphasize the coinciding part by calling it a co-incidence. It coincides.

And then, where does the Sun rise? Well, it appears to rise in the east because the Earth is turning in the direction of the east. Where does the Moon rise? Also in the east. In roughly the same spot as the Sun, but not because the Earth is turning toward it—because the Moon itself is actually orbiting around the Earth. The Sun just stays put, looks like it’s going across the sky. The Moon actually goes around the Earth.

For completely different celestial mechanics, these two seem to be paired in the sky from our unique standpoint.

If the Earth was any smaller and it was all further away, there wouldn’t be any match. If the Earth was any larger, and we were closer to it, and we could see the real relative sizes of those two celestial bodies, there wouldn’t be a match. It’s as if it’s a play that’s just been made for us. A remarkable thing.

Humans look up there, and they go, “There’s a relationship between those two.”

[21:39] Surya Deva

So, in Vedic mythos, the Moon is called Soma Chandra. Soma Chandra. Soma is consciousness—flowing consciousness. Chandra is that celestial body. Soma Chandra is the happiest reflector of Surya Deva. Surya Deva, the Sun, is considered to be a celestial being.

Mythos, right? Let’s not go literal. It’s a celestial being, but from the point of view of biological humans, we’re rather persuaded by this because without the Sun, there’d be nothing. Photosynthesis, warmth of the Earth—everything that is biological here is 100 percent dependent on the Sun.

Our exact distance from it—any closer, all the water on the Earth would boil and turn into vapor. Any slightly further away, all the water would go solid. No flowing water. But exactly in the right spot, we have Surya Deva bringing us the blessing: liquid water. Mostly liquid water, except in the poles and a few very cold places. And in your tea kettle, you can heat it up and make it steamy. But there it is, right there.

And the temperature range for water to be liquid is a very narrow number of degrees. For hundreds of degrees colder, it’s solid. For hundreds of degrees warmer, it’s vapor. In this one particular tiny little range—liquid. And we need water to be liquid. We, meaning everything biological on Earth, requires water to be exactly where it is.

That means the Sun has to be exactly where it is, and then the Moon pulls the tides around. It causes the water to bulge in the direction of the gravitational pull of the Moon. And we know from the study of the ancient—very, very ancient—biology of the Earth, it was things that grew in water in the oceans that then got stranded when the tide went out, that those things learned how to crawl around on the Earth—including our ancestors.

Without the tidal pull, without the seasons, without the tidal pull, without the Moon, there’d be no life on Earth. No crawling or moving life on Earth. It would all be aquatic.

So here we are, walking around, going for dips in the water and things. Our very, very, very ancient forebears, who didn’t look anything like us, were purely aquatic. Now we’re land cruisers.

[24:32] A Tremendous Amount of Prestige

So, the Moon is given a tremendous amount of prestige because, first of all, it’s a very interesting co-incidence—it happens to have the same cycle as women’s menstrual cycle. You often hear women who are a little bit new-agey going, “I’m in my Moon cycle. I’m in my Moon,” like that. Which is true—29 days, right? It’s the average. It’s not exact, but it’s the average.

And cycles of the human body are very determined by the Moon because, for all the millions of years, our biological function has been influenced by tides, by the Moon, gravitational pull, and all of that.

The best reflector of the Sun. And from the mythos point of view, the Moon is very proud of being the one who turns the gold of the Sun into silver. The alchemist. The silvery light of the silvery full Moon flickering on the water, shining on the leaves and all of that. We celebrate the mythos of that—the alchemist who turns the golden sunlight into silver at night.

Beautiful full Moon night. On a beautiful full Moon night, there is consciousness everywhere.

[26:22] The Floodgates of Soma Are Open

Moonlight. Moonlight. Soma Chandra. So when the moon is full, we say in the Vedic—that made me thirsty—the floodgates of Soma are open. And anyone who works with institutions that incarcerate people, whether they are mental institutions or other incarcerating institutions like prisons and things, and all police forces in the world know: full moon night, double the staff. Why? Luna, moon, tics. Luna-cy. What does it mean?

We had an old saying: somebody was moonstruck. You know what happens when you first learn to meditate? You have a honeymoon period. Oh, you do your little technique. You have this little mantra. You settle down. It’s really good stress management. Whatever excuse you need to get to the chair, it’s fine with me.

No orange robe needed. Just… no guru needed. Just you got your word and now you sit in the chair and take it as it comes. It’s fantastic. Little thing, close your eyes, and somebody’s talking about, “Oh, that’s the Unified Field you’re going into and all that.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. I just really enjoy the sensation of being able to drop into my less excited consciousness states.” We might even not use a fancy word like consciousness. “My mind feels better and my body feels better. I don’t know why. It doesn’t matter why. Just do the thing, right? It’s mechanical.”

But then after a while, you start having experiences that need some kind of a theory to explain them. We want to know in a kind of exhaustive fashion, why is there such consistency of experience?

One of the things that happens when the honeymoon is over: stress release. You start hitting that point where your body regularly, strategically, systematically, morning, evening, morning, evening, is loosening up, as it were, the stresses that need to unwind. I can give a much better biological explanation than that, but too much science and I’ll make you fall asleep.

Let’s just think of it like the stresses are loosening up and they start coming out. And then what happens? You start having lots of thoughts while you’re meditating. You start getting a little moody while you’re meditating. Something good is happening. Unstressing is a positive, good happening because meditation is not all about “going deep.”

Meditation is about what happens when you come out. How do you feel during the day? Is your night better? Is your day better? Whether you go deep or you go shallow, you’re getting results in the waking state. And so stress release may sometimes create some fog and miasma of thinking. And once we get a little bit used to it and we understand the theory of it, we’re into it.

“Whatever has to happen, happens. I don’t care. I’m just going to sit in the chair and take it as it comes.”

[29:55] Soma Chandrah Namah

Where was I? Moon. Moon, same thing. Moon. Moon Soma. You know that silvery reflected sunlight is well known for—you walk out in the full moonlight and you’re like, “Ah, oh, it’s beautiful.” You look over at the person who’s looking at you and you think, “I’m in love now.”

Whatever it is. Moonlight. Oh, we even have a beautiful song, Moonlight Sonata. Moonlight, moonlight, moonlight. You can practically read a book under it. It’s amazing. That’s the honeymoon. Honey-moon. Honeymoon. And then the unstressing starts. Because moon and moonlight also make you—if there’s some stress that has to come out, it can make that happen too.

Just like meditation, anything that connects you more with nature, it can either be deep and relaxing and fulfilling, or it can be those other few words—purifying, normalizing. Like that, to use the vernacular of meditators, unstressing. Unstressing, releasing stress.

All good, but obviously, we prefer the deeper, more celestial, lovely, nice feelings. But sometimes moon can do that to us too. We have to be open for a bit of lunacy on the luna, on the night of Luna, the moon. Luna is moon in Latin.

So moon, Soma Chandra. And then just as there are sounds to celebrate Surya—

Bhur Bhuvaḥ Suvaha Tat-savitur Vareñyaṃ Bhargo Devasya Dheemahi Dhiyo Yonaḥ Prachodayāt, 

Gayatri Mantra—

there are also special celebratory verses in celebration of the moon.

Now you’re going to wonder if I can teach them to you right now. I have to check my notes. I can’t remember everything, but they’re there. It’s enough if you just look at the moon. If you feel good about it—not faith-based—just try it out, see what happens. Be an experimenter.

Soma Chandra Namah. Soma Chandra Namah. What it means is, “I surrender. I surrender to you, oh beautiful Moon. I surrender to you. Do with me what you will. Make me feel silvery and expansive and in love with everything around me, or make me unstressed like a banshee, I’m into it.”