Enna Reittort The Gods Envy Us

[Speaker 2] (0:00 - 0:25) What's up, everybody? Two more days left in the Cyber Weekend sale of Rise Above the Herd. If you're listening to this episode on the Sunday that has come out, we're offering the biggest discount ever on this course, and there will be no further discounts during the regular sales period. This course, round eight, starts January 8th, and you can get $400 off the usual price for only today and tomorrow. You're asking us, why should people consider joining Rise Above the Herd? [Speaker 3] (0:26 - 0:44) They should consider joining it because it's a freaking awesome program, and there's nothing like it out there. If you feel like you're not playing to your fullest potential in the world, if you feel like you're not honoring yourself on the deepest levels, if you feel like you're not living your truth, this is a program for you. [Speaker 2] (0:45 - 1:30) Yeah. Really, to put it succinctly, if you're ready to stop fucking around, then I think Rise Above the Herd is the place to be. Round seven, there's a couple of weeks left in that round. To me, in many ways, this has been the most successful round. I think the results get better every time that we do this program. This is about stepping into your unique trajectory in life, your vocation, and how do you ground those deepest inner dreams and desires into reality, and really live with purpose, and live with self-acceptance, and live as consciously as possible. We often say this, but the greatest conspiracy of all is the fact that you're alive as a living being right now. If you value your potential as a living being, what are the necessary actions that you need to take to really live life to the fullest? [Speaker 3] (1:31 - 1:41) Yeah. Do you really want to walk your unique, authentic path unapologetically, in your strength, in your power, and do the things you want to do and live out your dreams? Yeah. [Speaker 2] (1:41 - 2:14) We'd love to go on this eight-week journey with you, deprogram from disempowering philosophies, perform authentic shadow work, heal your relationships, and live your purpose. RiseAboveTheHerd.co or the link is in the show notes. You can get a massive $400 USD off today and tomorrow only. After that, it's going to go back to the regular price until January 8th, when this course starts. Next year, if you're feeling like you want to lit that fire, then let's go. Enjoy this episode. [Speaker 3] (2:14 - 2:22) You are now listening to the Here For The Truth Podcast, hosted by Joel Rafiti and Yerasimos. [Speaker 2] (2:25 - 3:37) All right, everyone. Welcome back to Here For The Truth Podcast. Today, we have an incredible guest with us, Anna Ray Taught. She's a human being fiercely and tenderly in love with Lady Earth. She's devoted to our human co-evolving bond with her and endlessly exploring what it means to be human. As an anthropologist, she leans into traditional cultures and grassroots wisdom. After 10 years in an esoteric, caste-denying Indian subculture, she left her academic PhD behind to go barefoot as an aspiring peasant in the spirit of regenerative farming. Perhaps this is deep anthropology, experiential rather than theoretical, and in apprenticeship to nature, the greatest teacher whose language our subtle bodies can understand better than our restless minds. Both West and East have made her a polyglot who takes words seriously and delights in silence that nourishes her contemplative spirit. She lives at the edge of a village in Southeast Asia among tropical trees and paddy fields and a large free-ranging menagerie. Writer, anthropologist, linguist, peasant, mystic, Anna, welcome to Here For The Truth. Wow. [Speaker 1] (3:37 - 3:39) Where did you find that bow? [Speaker 2] (3:40 - 3:43) Well, it just so happens that you sent it to me. [Speaker 1] (3:43 - 3:46) Ah, well you read it really well. [Speaker 2] (3:46 - 3:46) Thank you. [Speaker 1] (3:46 - 3:54) You read it really well. I mean, you know, it's difficult to read stuff that is written, that is, you know, it's written not orally. [Speaker 2] (3:55 - 4:05) Yeah. No, I enjoy it, actually. I find it's like a little bit of a skill that I have. I've actually been complimented previously on this podcast for my via reading, so it's nice to get that. It's nice to get that feedback. [Speaker 3] (4:06 - 4:13) It's that Aussie accent. Plus, you know, Joel's like a poet and a conscious hip-hop artist, too, as well. So, you know, it's innate. [Speaker 1] (4:13 - 4:15) Yeah. All these things help. Right. Yeah. [Speaker 2] (4:17 - 4:38) Anna, I've been looking forward to this conversation for a very long time. You're a first-time guest here, and I know you shared your story previously, but one way we always like to kick this off is, like, we want to dive deep into your personal hero's journey. What are some of the major, catalyzing, transformative moments in your life that you feel got you to this path? [Speaker 1] (4:41 - 8:17) Well, there are several. You know, coming from a, you know, the kind of abused childhood that you have in high society. Actually, it made me realize the value of the so-called little people around, the real people who do the actual work. You know, I would always find refuge in the with the staff, and I think that probably predisposed me to, you know, wander off and, you know, go and be with that grassroots esoteric movement in India. Spent 10 years with them, and, you know, when those 10 years were over and I had to move, there was just no way I could go back to being a, whatever, a normal Western person. So I just moved east a little bit further, and Thailand, and landed in this village where the silk weavers of the village sold me some of their stuff, and I saw, as the anthropologist that I already was, I saw that the tradition was, you know, in terms of both the materials and the actual inspiration, the aesthetics, it was losing ground. And they sort of, you know, they said, find us a market. And I didn't think, I thought afterwards, but I didn't think twice on the moment, and I said, okay. Never having done, you know, marketing, never having done anything specialized in textiles, none of the, I mean, you know, I had a huge, steep learning curve, you know, to take up after that. And, but that's what got me rooted in this particular village where I've been living for now nearly 20 years. And where, well, you know, it's nature that, nature in the tropics, I mean, she either repels you or she grabs you. And initially, she repelled me like crazy. Well, you know, mosquitoes, and snakes, and, you know, mud, and parasites, and every single thing that you could catch in your gut. But when I came to terms with it, it's miraculous. So yeah, you know, now I'm a happy apprentice tropical peasant, forever apprentice, because, you know, I was not born with it, with those instincts. And, you know, and perhaps my presence can also have a positive effect, it has to some extent, on this village, where, well, they've realized that it's quite nice, actually, to grow things organically. They come to me and they say very proudly, wow, it tastes so much better. And you know, it's going to be better for our health. So they start teaching me about the virtues of organic. Okay, then I know that, okay, I have, you know, there is at least, you know, a shadow of a purpose in why I am and why I'm there. So that's one part. That's one part of the history. You know, that's one of the strands of what got me here. [Speaker 3] (8:18 - 8:27) Did you guide them towards, like, looking at things more organically from a, I guess, agricultural standpoint, or was it? [Speaker 1] (8:27 - 13:02) It started with the silks, because the silks, as I, you know, started getting into the project, I said, okay, you know, I have one condition, is that you're going to get fair trade prices via me. How I was going to ensure these fair trade prices, I hadn't a clue. But I know that you're going to have to be doing this organically. You're going to have to go back to organic natural dyes. And this started a fight that lasted at least one year, because in their minds, modern dyes were much better. And foreigners, the rich foreigners who could buy silks, wanted the modern stuff. So it took, you know, after the first batch that they had done with, reluctantly, with natural dyes, versus the other batch that I had bought that they'd done with the local chemical dyes, which I went to show to, you know, my friends and acquaintances in Europe. Well, none of the chemical ones sold, and all the even shitty natural ones sold. So I came back with this report, and I, you know, I saw the very sort of tortuous sort of awareness of this thing percolating where, okay, this is not what we thought, but okay. Okay, okay. So they started making an effort. But it involved, okay, you have to grow the mulberry trees with the leaves that the silkworms will eat. And then once you've harvested the silk, the raw silk from the worms, then you have to boil it. And they would boil it with some kind of bleach or something. I said, none of that. What did your grandparents use? Oh, banana trees. Okay, banana trees. Go ahead, use banana trees. And then everything. Once we had gotten everything, including all the different colors and the time it takes, you know, certain colors you can get in a couple of days and other colors like indigo, it takes a month. They would still do the final wash of the final piece before ironing and bringing, you know, to me. They would still wash them with commercial detergent. And it would, you know, the more natural the whole thing had become, the more this detergent was, you know, it was shocking to the nose. And, you know, I asked them what, what, what, what, oh, of course we have to make it clean. It's 100% natural. That's, that's my motto. That's how I'm selling this stuff for you people. What are we going to do? I said there, I, you know, by then I knew there were certain plants that you can use to do that final wash very gently, and it'll help to consolidate the colors. Ah, okay. So by then, by the end of that first year, I had this, they, you know, it's as if I'd evangelized them. You know, I had these, you know, 50 women who were absolute believers in the natural thing. And they, and they went crazy, literally as a kind of, um, barefoot, barefoot, um, natural colors laboratory. And competing with each other, you know, how am I going to get this green? How am I going to get this yellow? And the best possible combination, this, that, and the other. So, you know, it was, it was great. And from then they started agitating, you know, with the local village council to get clean water, because they realized that the water they were getting from whatever pipe was making their colors shitty for certain plants. And so they started putting two and two together. And as they started using rainwater, which was at that point, not yet contaminated, they noticed the same dyes, the same plants would produce a much more vibrant color. Ah, so then they clamored for clean water in their pipes. And then they came to me and they said, oh, well, we're no longer going blind for a whole month. And our kids are much healthier. Okay. You know, and so then, you know, gradually from that, it could be extrapolated to, you know, farming, growing stuff. [Speaker 2] (13:03 - 13:06) Amazing. You're a modern day peasant capitalist. [Speaker 1] (13:09 - 14:20) Well, it wasn't, I mean, you know, trying to teach them, trying to teach them how to deal with their concept of money in a capitalist world, you know, bridging that, nope, not working. It's just, you know, there's the whole social caste thing. The peasants are the bottom of the pile, basically. And whatever the upper people say, okay, you know, the thing that you've been slaving on, you know, making the most beautiful piece of silk for the past two months, if the rich person comes and says, you have to cut the price in half for me, they'll just, you know, bow and scrape. So it took a lot of work to make them own the discourse of fair price. So, you know, trying to make the fair price discourse work in the capitalist world, where it's all about basically cutting costs and cutting prices and maximizing profit for the profiteers. [Speaker 2] (14:24 - 14:42) On the flip side, I mean, a capitalist adheres to this free market policy. And it seems in this scenario, the free market has determined that the better product, meaning the natural, the more organic, is what the market wants. And it seems as though the producers have shifted that way in that regard also, right? [Speaker 1] (14:43 - 19:28) Yes, but it's the discourse. I mean, you know, we know about information and misinformation and disinformation. Now, when the little people have completely integrated for centuries, the discourse that they are the little people, and it's the upper class people who have the power to decide, you're having to go against that. So of those 50 women, there are only two who mastered the art of, you know, speaking to the upper class people who were, you know, coming to buy their silks, and who could put across this message of fair trade, and who, you know, had the arguments, the real life arguments of, you know, oh, so you want me, knowing that I have expenses of, let's say, on average, 200 baht a day, with the kids to school and this, that and the other, you want me to do all this with 20 baht a day? Is that what you want? So they had mastered this art. But the fact that only two of them out of 50 mastered it, was a clear indication of how much has been internalized. And, you know, the other aspect is, well, the profit aspect, everybody took for granted that I, as the rich foreigner, like stereotypically rich, was obviously making a killing, exploiting these poor women. Until the poor women, you know, eventually realized that, you know, I was putting out a lot of money up front. And I was working full hour days for absolutely free, so that we didn't need to inflate the prices, so that we could make the silk more affordable for lower middle class people who wanted it, who could appreciate it possibly even better than the higher caste people. I had to cut myself out of it. I had to put all my work into it, but I had to cut myself out of it as the capitalist entrepreneur. So, you know, I encountered the whole nexus of the contradictions of, you know, of how all this works. And in free market, I think, you know, across all peasant societies, the business of free market is understood only by a very small number. You know, I see from all the projects, including in the past, of people who have been the leaders of whatever project, and who have the wherewithal, they have the intelligence, they know how to talk to the people higher up, to bring them over to their side. But most of the little people do not have that ability, because it means an ability to put yourself in the shoes of the rich person, which by definition, a poor person doesn't have. They're only going to think in terms of being rich in what I call the lottery mentality. It's like, you know, I'm seeing it all over the place around me. They keep wanting me to invest in stuff that they're going to do. And I know out of experience for the past 20 years, that okay, once I put the money in there, the idea may be good. So it's going to work well for the first month, for the first year. And then, you know, because it requires a sustained act of will beyond the cycles of nature. You know, when you're just a peasant, you are working within the cycles of nature, and you know how to navigate those. When you're trying to develop an enterprise that wants to change the status quo, you are having to engage your will at times which are not the times dictated by nature. Most of those people don't have that ability to switch. They just don't have it. So, you know, it's easier for them to go and buy a lottery ticket, because they can, you know, they can invest their sense of magic of, okay, the latest license plate that I saw on the road had these numbers. I'm going to keep those numbers and, you know, and bet on that for my lottery ticket. And because sometimes it works, you know, you've got all sorts of things that people in this country are going to go after for lottery tickets. So a lot of the investment into what we would call free market is still in the magic mentality for them. And in a way, there's a kind of a healthy resistance to abiding by the rules of how money works, if you see what I mean. [Speaker 2] (19:29 - 19:34) Yeah, I definitely see what you mean. It's fascinating. It infuriates me. [Speaker 1] (19:34 - 20:27) You know, me being the ATM machine for them, you know, I don't mind, as long as I've, you know, as long as I've got money, I'm happy to give it away to them, as long as they make it work. So, you know, I can demand repayment, of course, I always demand repayment, knowing full well that I'm 80% of the case is not going to get it. But if they can start something, they can get it off the ground, and they can get it to work for them. That's my human repayment. But what pisses me off over and over and over again, they go up, you know, with this great enthusiasm, because they have faith in the magic of it. And then where you have to sustain that difficult phase where you have to sustain some kind of stability, it all falls apart. [Speaker 3] (20:28 - 20:47) Yeah. Do you think the two out of the 50, like, what is it? Is it something innate in them that they're able to see beyond generational conditioning, in terms of them seeing themselves as peasants? Like, what do you think is the reason that a low percentage can kind of take the reins and run with it? [Speaker 1] (20:48 - 22:33) Those two also are the most gifted, the most talented of the weavers. And they are very proud of their heritage. And, you know, one of them is the only one who has girls whom she has taught the art of traditional silk weaving. Nobody else in the village has learned. So, you know, that was another aspect, was to pass this on to the younger generation, because it was bringing in money, at least for that, you know. So, yeah, they were those two because they had a deep sense of the satisfaction that they derived from making something very beautiful. And, you know, in addition, they would make good money out of it. And they understood what I was saying. You know, I could see that the others were kind, well, they were kind of following along, but these two would ask questions. And, you know, one of them one day said, can I really represent this whole group in a fair with all the rich people buying stuff? Can I really do this? Like, I'd really like to do it, you know. So, you know, the conversations that I had with those two were absolutely full of education for me about the different layers of this empowerment. [Speaker 2] (22:34 - 22:49) Yeah. I think when you've had a lived experience of an incentive being satisfied, and you realize that, wow, I made this happen through my own productive, creative efforts, like to me, like, that's the glory of humanity is like, I am capable, you know. [Speaker 1] (22:51 - 23:55) Yep. Yeah. But, you know, and but beyond that, just be I being capable, they get very lonely. You know, these all these peasant societies, the world over have always been collective societies where, you know, this, okay, this or that individual is very good at, you know, repairing boots, this one, you know, makes beautiful kites, whatever. But they are a collective. And there is this sort of egalitarian ethos, which is also very important in terms of keeping the balance of the whole, and keeping the society resilient to climatic drought or whatever may happen. So, they ended up being pretty lonely. And, you know, at one point, they started applying the human talent, you know, of being able to take initiatives, they started applying it in other aspects of their lives. So, you know, it's not wasted. [Speaker 2] (23:56 - 23:56) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (23:57 - 24:53) But, you know, doing what I was trying to do was, it was, it was a fabulous experience. It was probably, but it was way too much for just one person to handle. And there was no way I could find anybody, any, you know, local or even, you know, big city person to come and be my assistant, that the different professions, sort of corporate jobs that I had to do, I counted them one day, something like 15. It was just too much, you know, and with nobody who had the skills or the desire to learn and sort of take over, I just burnt out a couple of times, and I figured, well, can't do this anymore. And so, yeah. [Speaker 2] (24:56 - 25:01) Not the way I expected this conversation to start, but I'm very glad that it did. I think this was a, this was very useful for sure. [Speaker 1] (25:02 - 26:09) Well, it's, you know, it's important, you know, I don't see it as a failure. I see it, I see it as a, you know, a great, a great sort of learning experience for me and for those who actually learned something from that process. And, you know, it has left traces. It's still, what we did was unique in pretty much all of Asia. Completely natural, unique. And so, you know, it became a reference for others who tried to come and, and vampirize us to get us to teach them, you know, all the natural dyes for free, you know, the stuff that we spent years working on. And so, yeah, you know, there's all sorts of different social dynamics and things like that, but whatever, you know, it was, it was important at any rate for me to get really closer, intimate with, you know, nature in a way that I hadn't before and to really start getting my hands and my feet dirty. [Speaker 2] (26:12 - 26:31) Yeah. So, one thing we didn't mention in the bio is that you're the author of the book Krivda, the God Tricks Against the Matrix. And for those that have, are listening to you for the very first time, you know, right now, I guess, can you dive into a little bit about the inspiration for that book? And I guess we'll take it from there. [Speaker 1] (26:36 - 27:24) I, once I'd done my PhD, I figured I'm never going to write again. I swore to myself, I'm never going to write again, because, you know, okay, being academically trained, which is a very good thing, you know, it's useful to train your mind to work with that kind of thoroughness. But then, you know, of course, I did do bits of writing around the Silk Project. And then, you know, COVID hit, 2020, and couldn't go anywhere. And I was then connected with a very interesting fellow called George Kavasilas. [Speaker 2] (27:25 - 27:29) It's, yeah, I'm familiar with George. He's obviously Australian as well, right? [Speaker 1] (27:30 - 27:32) Yep, that's right. He's Greek too, isn't he? [Speaker 2] (27:32 - 27:34) Yeah, Greek-Australian, that's right. There we go. [Speaker 1] (27:35 - 37:25) So he, you know, he has his sort of theorization about the gods, which I found very, very apt, very, very much to the point. And, you know, in one of his webinars, I said something, because he was saying that we're going from the gods of religion to the gods of artificial intelligence, or technical intelligence. Okay. And I said, well, there's an intermediate god, it's the god of money. And he said, ah, you should write a book. And I said, don't you dare say that. I hate you. I'm never going to write a book. And the next day I started writing. So that's the short answer for that one. Because from there, I immediately I saw that there was an unnaturally natural concatenation of the structure of religious religions, all the way into our modern secular religions of money, science, etc. And then I had to write the book to put flesh on this. And when something is supposed to happen, its resources are going to happen to you. So I, you know, at every stage of writing this book, the sources that I needed just fell into my lap. You know, this book was referenced on somebody's program, or whatever, you know, I happened on an internet podcast or whatever, this is it, this is that, this is it. And as I wrote the book, as the book wrote itself, basically, it became apparent to me that there is a structure, there's a particular structure that goes with the creation of institutional religion. And so, taking it from basically, ancient Hebrew situation, with the Elohim, and the work of Mauro Bellino, who is now, I think, pretty famous in the English speaking world, too. He deciphers the ancient testament, the Old Testament, you say in English, the Old Testament by direct literal translation from Hebrew. And what the direct literal translation from Hebrew says has nothing to do with no God there, there's no God, there are Elohim, and Yahweh is one of the Elohim. And they're basically pretty ruthless colonizers, who impose certain rather horrific rituals on their chosen people. So, okay, so we've got the beginning of a structure there, which brings in the figure of the high priest, who is going to be the mediator between the God, alleged God, fabricated God, or whatever, and, you know, the flock of human beings. And that structure is then refined as we go into the New Testament. What is important here is the insertion of the priest class that breaks up the natural connections we have as human beings with who we are as cosmic beings, as unincorporated, unembodied beings, who we are out there and who we are here, and the out there lives in here. But when you introduce these priests and their scriptures that tell us that we have original sin and that, you know, matter and the feminine and nature, they're all yuck. And that so, you know, we have to save our souls by, you know, keeping our souls as pure as possible from the defilements of the flesh, all this kind of stuff. Well, they're introducing separations between the reality of us as multidimensional beings and the multidimensional beings that express themselves in the flesh. Both of these dimensions being important, because if we were just multidimensional beings floating around out there, we wouldn't be able to do the stuff that we are here to do. So, then I carried on with this, sort of, once I'd gotten the whole picture of the whole structure of how this was really formalized in the Christian religion, which is basically, it's the impeccable model of how it has to be done. Other, you know, extra-European religions, when I'm thinking mainly of, you know, India, they've got a very, you know, strong system, but it's very flexible. You can invent your own divinities. And the gods and goddesses of India are basically, it is more clearly understood by the people that they are concepts or qualities that you are going to revere in order to absorb them inside yourself, in order to make those qualities. Well, I'm not going to bring the, you know, the Jungian understanding is kind of different. In India, it's a much more emotional thing. There's an emotional bonding. There's a sensory bonding with the deity figures. So, it's, but basically, they're not sort of individual persons like the Christian god or the Yavi figure. There's a different flavor to them where you feel that there is something behind the deity. The deity is kind of a, well, an anthropomorphization. Hey, I actually managed to say the word. Anthropomorphization of something abstract, of a quality, a flavor, a, yeah, something like that. And so, once you've got the structure, and the structure was the priesthood, the scriptures, with the geographical implantation, with the rituals, and the rituals are really, really important. The way they are enshrined in the Christian religion shed light on what came before in terms of what sacrifice is necessary for these rituals. And how these things, then this whole structure, once it's, you know, I've got two pages of the different elements of this structure. And when you take this list of elements of the structure, you can see that there is a religion of the money god, of the god of money, that has exactly the same ingredients. The priesthood, the geographical implantation, the modalities of mind control, the central dogma, the scriptures. But they're secular now, but they operate like a religion. And then, well, from there, you can very easily go into the god of science, as it evolved in the West from the 17th, 18th century, as opposed to the open-ended science that was also connected with a more mystical side of knowingness that would inform the quest of the scientist in the earlier times and in extra-European cultures. Okay, and then we move on, you know. Okay, now, with the whole COVID thing, we've had it exploding in our faces that there is a god of medicine, that there are high priests of vaccines, you know, all these things. And all the pronouncements that the Wefers and, okay, you know, all the other, the Kissingers, the Schwabs, you know, all of them, the Gateses, they all come out with these pronouncements as if, well, they are the high priests and the popes of these things that operate exactly like religions. And the way they own the minds of people is exactly in the lineage of what was done to us earlier on with the religious religions. And so, now it comes, you come all the way, sorry, you come all the way into the god of artificial intelligence, or what I call the techno-mind god, the god of technology, basically, that is absolutely seeking very, very clearly to take everything over and to take us over lock, stock and barrel, body, mind and soul. So, there we are. That's it in a nutshell. [Speaker 3] (37:27 - 37:38) Yeah, it's interesting, even just looking at it from an allopathic medicine standpoint, you know, even like the doctors have become the priests, in a sense, and the outfits they wear and the white coat and people bow down to them. [Speaker 1] (37:38 - 37:39) Exactly, exactly. [Speaker 3] (37:39 - 37:56) They kind of put all their trust in them as if I'm not a sovereign being and I can't, you know, discover something for myself. I have to just give my power over to these individuals. Can you explore the history of sacrifice? [Speaker 1] (37:59 - 37:59) Yes. [Speaker 3] (38:00 - 38:06) I know it's an intense subject, but I feel like it sets the stage for things that happened for thousands of years. [Speaker 1] (38:07 - 51:59) Yeah, no, and we really need to understand to what extent the human species is a sacrificial species. You know, some people are discovering that they're treating us like cattle. Yes, and we have internalized their mindset of how we treat cattle. You know, that's the other aspect of it. You know, the sacrificial mentality that they have applied on us has been internalized in us to be applied to, you know, our brothers and sisters, the animals and, you know, to the beings of nature and all that. So it seems that at a certain point in time, most pagan religions, you know, even we're talking, you know, before the whole Yahweh thing, because one thing is the Yahweh comes in the footsteps of what is generically called the Anunnaki. I'm not a specialist in that domain, but there seems to have been, especially in Babylon, a particular perversion of their sense of the religious, whereby human sacrifices and animal sacrifices had to be offered to the gods. And, you know, people say to Moloch. Now, actually, I think it's Bellino who says that the word Moloch is a verb that has to do with sacrificing. But okay, that's in brackets. But in those millennia, it seems that the pagan populations around the world had become addicted to using animal sacrifice and human sacrifice. My sense of what used to exist for a very long time before that was a non-sacrificial, mutual communication between humans and the spirits of nature, the spirits of the elements, perhaps even on an equal footing. When humans still knew themselves to be the embodiments of subtle beings, who took on the challenge of being a human to do the stuff that humans have to do here on this earth. So, there must have come a point in time, and I'm working on this, I haven't yet finalized, but I understand that there's a temporal aspect where the disempowerment of that relationship of humans with the invisible world had become such that we figured, and we had priests already, priestly figures, perhaps shamanic figures, whatever names they had in these different earlier societies, whereby rituals had to be enacted involving at least animal, if not also human, sacrifice. Okay, and we get that in a very big way with the Aztecs. I mean, that's a really prominent one, which appears to be contemporaneous with the stuff happening in the Hebrew land and in Mesopotamia. So, it looks as if there was the same crew of gods who were implementing this. What we're dealing with here is, I think, apart from the other pagan cultures, the many other pagan cultures around the world, what we're dealing with here are some kind of extraterrestrial or interdimensional beings taking some kind of physical form on earth and requiring tribute, and requiring tribute all the more efficiently for having a priestly class that would enact these rituals where humans had to be sacrificed. In particular, this involved sacrificing of infants. This is stated clearly in the Old Testament, where Yahweh required eight-day-old male infants to be holocausted, which means to be burnt fully. A holocaust is not the mass slaying of 100,000 people. It is the fully burning. So, there's that aspect of fire and fully burning that is important in terms of the kind of subtle energies that get released to feed the gods or the egregores and the priesthood. I mean, whatever they derive. Then, when the New Testament comes around, we have this ritualization of the torture on the cross of this figure, Jesus, that is treated as a sacrifice. Whereas, the Romans basically had him tortured as a political rebel, and he got the same treatment that other political rebels got. So, the story of Jesus, as it needs to be worked upon and chiseled by the scribes of the upcoming Christian church, is to turn this into a sacrifice, and a sacrifice that people are supposed to perpetuate by consuming, symbolically, the flesh and blood of Jesus at least every Sunday. So, the sacrificial motif is still based on the horrible thing done to one human being, with the interesting addition of the fact that this one human being, Jesus, is being the sacrificial lamb who takes upon himself all the sins of the world. I mean, this is the beginning of some serious mindfuck. And Christians internalize this. They internalize. So, they've got the guilt of primordial original sin, which I understand to be invented at the same time as the Babylonian banksters invented debt, whereby the money god was discreetly being born in the shadow of the official religious gods. But that's a parallel story. So, then sacrifice, but it's not a parallel story, actually, because it involves the sacrifice of all the peasants who, the minute they get a bad harvest, because there's been a drought, they have to take out a loan, which they're going to have to repay with interest. And they have basically mortgaged their fields or whatever it is. They have nothing left. They have to start giving themselves in bondage to their money lender, the bankster, and or their kids and or their wives. So, they who had basically been free farmers have come into bondage to both the god of money and the greater gods, religious gods, let's say, in whose temples the money god operates surreptitiously. And so, there is the sacrifice of human labor. The peasant, as a bonded peasant now, is literally sacrificing his life force and everything to repay the money, the interest to the money lender. And so, that's the beginning of the whole business of debt. It also revolves around gold, gold mining, and wars, other forms of sacrifice contemporaneous with the ritual sacrifices. War is, apart from many other things, in those ancient times is a necessary procedure whereby the prisoners you're going to make in the enemy camp will be used as slave laborers in the mines to mine the gold that feeds back to the money god of the banksters who lives in the shade of the religious temple. And then, when you start seeing these different parts of it, you see that there are different aspects of sacrifice. They're all sacrifice. They're sacrifice of different aspects of the human being. There is the raw, pure essence that is embodied in a tiny infant. That's what is the most shocking to us. But then it's derivations. You've got these other forms where you're going to enslave human labor so that that labor no longer belongs to that human who has the pride of tending his fields or her fields properly. That labor is sacrificed to produce the wealth of the money god. And exactly that thing continues all the way through to the money god still operating now. But those are the aspects that are, let's say, exoteric. Then you've got the esoteric aspects with the sacrifice rituals which are conducted by the very same religious institutions, be they religious religions or secular religions, where you have all the strange things that have now come up to the surface much more in recent years with all the revelations about satanic ritual abuse and lineages that inflict horrible things on their own children to indoctrinate them into continuing these lineages. Because doing these things is connected with your status as a member of the priesthood, of the money religion, of this or that god religion. They all continue underground, literally underground in the tunnels and the basements, including in Australia. So there are all these different aspects. And it is esoteric because it has to do with feeding the different energies that are embodied in human beings and that these different forces require to be able to keep their egregores moving so that these egregores will serve their priesthoods while the priesthoods serve the egregores. Of course, the biggest sacrifice numerically is war. And not just war in the battlefield, but also war on civilian populations and on the children. All these different aspects. So if you look at pretty much everything that human beings do, there's something sacrificial everywhere. Even though most of us normal, kind, human humans don't go around killing infants in the undergrounds to have their flesh fully holocausted to the gods. We're all somehow, to some extent, at least passively participating in sacrifice of this or that aspect of who we are as humans and who others are as humans. Once you come face to face with that realization, it's kind of... Have I more or less covered it? [Speaker 3] (52:00 - 53:03) Oh yeah, you definitely did. You definitely did, for sure. I mean, it's something we all have to contend with. I mean, I think a lot of people, they want to stick their heads in the ground and pretend that this stuff isn't happening and, quote unquote, spiritually bypass it or bypass it. But I think it's important to have the awareness and feel into it. Hopefully not let it overwhelm an individual, overwhelm yourself and take you over. But just understand that these things are happening. These are part of our lineage, part of our history. And then how does an individual choose to live their life? Which kind of segues into something I found fascinating that I heard you talk about where some of the people you spent time with, I believe it was India, that were separate from religion in a sense, and they follow something called the human path. Am I correct in saying that? Because that fascinated me. I felt very aligned with it. And I'd love for you to really get into that and how you came upon these people and also the impact that it had on your life and share a little bit about it. Now a short break from the episode. [Speaker 2] (53:04 - 54:03) On the 19th of December, we're inviting all our HFTT listeners to come join us in a global community hangout. This is a no-cost call. We want to meet you all. We want to connect with everyone. We want to get you guys having fun and meeting each other and just really get to know our listeners on a more interpersonal level. So there's a link in the show notes. So sign up and get the link for our free global virtual hangout on the 19th of December. And just another reminder that for the next two days, if you're listening to this on the Sunday, the 26th of November, that Rise of the Herd round date is currently undergoing a huge sale, $400 off the price of the usual course. This course changes people's lives. This is our eighth time running it. So for the next two days only, if you're down to join us at a discounted price, you can do that before it goes back to its regular price until January 8th, which is when the course begins. [Speaker 1] (54:04 - 55:39) Back to the episode. I think the last thing we need to understand in relation to the whole sacrifice thing is that that mentality of the gods and the high priest class that serves and is part and parcel of that operation, a major trick of theirs has been to implant, so to speak, violently through torture, through all sorts of horrors, something of their mentality into our minds. And so the hardest part in coming to grips with this whole sacrifice thing is to come to terms with the fact that our minds are poisoned by that. Because we perpetuate. If we do what they do to us, we do the same to animals or to children or to whatever. But then there is that part that is replicated in us. So that's an important aspect of comprehending how this sacrifice thing applies to all of us. And we all, in some kind of past life, we have all been sacrificed many times over in many lives, and we have all been a sacrificer. We've had to have those experiences on both sides. So, OK, closing that parenthesis. [Speaker 3] (55:39 - 55:45) The abused becomes the abuser, unless they do the work necessary to break the cycle. [Speaker 1] (55:46 - 56:45) This is true, but we have it intergenerationally, and we have it in the collective subconscious of humanity. OK, that's a whole other conversation. But basically, the human part. How did I land there? I landed there because a group of friends was going to go and spend two weeks in one of their villages studying their songs. And I was at the time, I was a singer, and I was fed up with everything I was doing in the West. And I was looking at non-European different forms of music. I was traveling all over, and I figured, OK, I'll join these people. And so, OK. [Speaker 2] (56:47 - 56:49) Who are they? Sorry, Anna, who are they? [Speaker 1] (56:51 - 56:56) This was a group of French friends. I was living in France at the time. [Speaker 2] (56:56 - 56:56) OK. [Speaker 1] (56:57 - 1:09:47) OK. And one of them had already been a couple of times to that particular village. And it was a village where there were one or two people who spoke sufficient English. And they were minstrels. People usually characterize them as more or less mystical minstrels. And so they have a very sui generis style of music, folk music. And they have these songs, the lyrics of which are multi-level with an exoteric level. Speaks to the masses and different esoteric levels. And so, OK, off we go and we start sort of studying these things. And our local host gives us a kind of translation. I mean, these songs cannot be translated because they're so multi-level. But he starts to give us a kind of translation. And because I'm used to juggling different languages, I immediately sensed that there was something else here. And, you know, I started sort of torturing him to find out, well, OK, that word, you're saying that word there, whatever it was for that song. Oh, it's very complicated. I can't explain. OK, well, by the end of those two weeks, I understood that I was not going to be staying for the music. I was going to be staying for what these songs were saying. So I started going back regularly for longer and longer every year. And I moved out of the Hindu side of that movement because they were more attuned to Westerners. They had seen, you know, new age people, that kind of people had been to them. And so they were actually, they were catering to the spiritual need of Westerners. And I wasn't looking for that as an anthropologist. So I went over to the Muslim side. And as you probably know, Joel, you know, most of Muslim Asia converted to Islam via the Sufis who went, you know, they went east and, you know, all over the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia. I mean, the parts of China, it's Sufism that was embraced by these other cultures because the Sufism embraced them. So anyway, I found it much more rigorous, much more austere in a way. And unadorned on the Muslim side. And so, well, you know, here I am. I'm a woman alone in, you know, what is at least externally on the outside, a very patriarchal society. The first question that people would say, you're alone? Yes, I'm alone. Don't you have a husband? I used to. Do you have children? Yes. I have a son. Okay, that's good. You know, so I satisfied the different sort of, you know, necessary stereotypes to partly justify the fact that, okay, and I was no longer a spring chicken by then. So, you know, being in my 40s, it was okay. Okay, they could deal with it. But, you know, the more I visited with them, and there's the linguistic aspect too. I had learned Bengali at university in Paris. And, you know, with two years of Bengali, I could translate Rabindranath Tagore high Bengali language into beautiful French. But I end up in these villages, they don't understand me and I don't understand them at all. Nothing. Because in all these cultures, language is also a caste thing. So, I spent the next two years just doggedly going back, just doggedly going back, catching every bug, you know, going back to the West with all sorts of diseases. But there was something compelling. I had to keep going back and going back and going back. After two years, they suddenly decreed, oh, she can speak Bengali now. I didn't feel the difference, but they decided that I could now speak Bengali and I could now understand them. And so, they started talking. And I went more and more to their assemblies and their sort of seances where they sang these songs. Their esoteric songs, you know, each esoteric song inviting a response from another guy or another gal with another esoteric kind of counterpoint and challenge, a kind of, you know, debate in song form, which used to be pretty characteristic in the old days. And a lot of it I could not understand rationally, but a lot of it somehow percolated subconsciously. Like, I don't know, in some past life, I must have already have been there. But the remarkable thing about these people who really are, you know, in terms of the caste system, they are at the bottom of the pile, if not outside the pile. But they absolutely refuse the notion of caste. For them, there are only two species of human, and that's male and female. That's the only two kinds of humans that exist. The business of being kings and queens and priests and peasants, irrelevant. And the other thing is, you know, we don't need any kind of religion because we have no gods, and thus we have no priests. We are after what it is to be the real human, you know, with what we would use a capital H for. They don't have capital letters, but the real human for a real human path. And so they have their practices and they have a pretty sophisticated sort of philosophy, which is inherited from Tantra, from Sufism, from, you know, all the indigenous tribes that lived in around that area. And the time when the Bengalis were indigenous also, prior to their Hinduization and then Sufization or Islamization. So they're a melting pot of different tenets, esoteric tenets, which are all centered on the fundamental complementarity of male and female. And, grassroots offshoot of certain very ancient Indian systems of philosophy. So perhaps we don't need to go there now, because that would be... But the fundamental pair is the masculine and feminine that are called Purusha and Prakriti. Prakriti is the feminine principle, which they talk about their women, not by using the word woman, but by calling their women Prakriti. And Prakriti means nature, but it means what is also beyond nature, the energetic procreative principle. So women are the embodiment of that. Now, this was the first time that I was encountering the notion of us humans embodying not just a soul, like in the Christian concept, but embodying a huge masculine or feminine principle. And men are of the masculine principle called Purusha, which in the official mythology is some kind of primordial being from some time before time existed, that is said to have sacrificed himself to create all living beings. Now, there again, we've got the sacrifice vocabulary, which I think comes in later in Scripture. A primordial being does not need to sacrifice themselves. That's in the same way as the primordial feminine does not need to sacrifice herself. It's just they emanate bits of themselves or copies of themselves or fractals of themselves or whatever it is. So the whole paradox is you've got these people at the bottom of the social ladder who are busy through the body of a peasant woman and a peasant woman reconstituting the primordial being, possibly beyond the primordial feminine and primordial masculine. So that's quite something, you know, when you're really at the grassroots level of people who are, well, when I was there, they were still largely illiterate, most of them. So that's quite a path, actually. And the way they were managing or not managing is a whole other aspect, because in the phase when I was there, the first five years, I learned a lot from them, because they were still in possession of themselves. But the second phase, the next five years, I stayed on and I started to do projects with them because they were losing it. TV had invaded every village. Money had invaded every village. The need, all of a sudden, to acquire consumer goods. The Green Revolution, so-called Green Revolution, had taken over all the farms. And so, all of a sudden, all these things coalesced, like all the gods coming together coalesced. And these people who had understood that I was coming to them as, you know, a rich person who knew that she was poor in terms of their wisdom, they themselves who had told me that they understood that they were rich vis-a-vis me, were now saying, we're poor. We've become poor because now the money god is greater than the Allah god. And they couldn't understand that. They couldn't understand. They were stating the fact that the god of money was running everything now and was displacing anything spiritual, anything esoteric, anything that had real value in terms of a human path. So, I also learned a lot by observing the falling apart of their previously very potent, powerful presence. [Speaker 2] (1:09:50 - 1:10:01) You mentioned they have a deeper understanding of the common hermetic principle as above, so below as well. Can you get into that a little bit? For them, it's a bit deeper from what I've understood previously. [Speaker 1] (1:10:02 - 1:16:50) Yeah. So, what they say is, what is in the body that is in the universe. So, basically, and that's the other point, which is really important, is that they conduct their whole esoteric path based on the reality of the body. So, there is no running away, you know, I'm going to cultivate my soul outside my body. I'm going to punish my body to save my soul. There's none of that Christian stuff. And there is also none of the very sort of new agey business of, oh yes, we're going to be lifted into fifth dimension. Okay, just like that, you know, without working for it. And what does it mean anyway? We've already got all the dimensions in us, but we've allowed ourselves to be brainwashed into believing that we are only 3D. Come on. For those people, all the secrets of the universe, all the invisible things of the universe or non-things, the energies of this, that and the other are expressed in the human body and it is through the human body, through working with the human body. So, I mean, you know, in very prosaic terms, this means what kind of diet you take in, how you deal with sickness, do you take medicines, or actually, do you consider your body to be self-healing? I mean, you know, they've known for a very long time that the body is a self-healing entity. And so they, you know, they, not now so much, but, you know, when I was there initially, they had, some of them at least, had a very, very strong practice with urine. Where, you know, basically urine, the different ways of consuming it, using it as shampoo, using it as mouth gargle, using it fresh, using it fresh first in the morning, aging it, adding ingredients, you know, exchanging urine with your spouse. I mean, it was phenomenal. The amount of things that, yes, because you don't, you know, you don't mess around with other people's spouses. You know, once you are wedded to another person, these two are the two complementary universal principles. And so your job is to explore how these two principles are in partnership, how they cooperate in creating and recreating the world. So if you're, you know, if you're going to be using this urine thing for yourself, well, sooner or later there's going to be a moment when you start becoming curious about, because we are already, you know, we've been making love together, we've been having babies together, we've been eating food together, we've been doing all sorts of stuff together, esoterically and exoterically. There is already a considerable epigenetic, we would say, interchange. So, you know, it makes sense. Anyway, I'm not going to say anything more about, you know, these sort of exchanges of bodily fluids, but they are very, very body-based. Through these practices and developing an acute kind of sensitivity to how your body reacts to this or that food, at this or that time, to this or that person, I mean, you start developing a sense for your subtle self. Yeah. It's very practical. And at the same time, it's very mystical. Because these people who've been doing these body-based practices together, Mr. and Mrs. together, I mean, the things that they can say, the things, the insights that they reach. Wow. You know, it was really, really, really, I mean, it was compelling for me. It didn't take very long, actually, because I was imbibing this stuff. The other thing is they teach by paradox. You know, I ask a question and I get a certain answer, and the next day I re-ask the question, I get the opposite answer. And that's normal. It would drive me nuts. And then, you know, okay, we're going to go travel to a fair at a particular holy site where all sorts of people from all sorts of denominations congregate together, and I'm going to tell you all sorts of things. Okay, we go to that place, we spend 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours, and he's told me nothing. I get pissed off. And then on the way back at three o'clock in the morning in a rickshaw, and I'm falling apart asleep, and then he starts telling stuff to me. And I never took notes. I could never, taking notes would have made me the university person, you know, using their stuff, because they also told me that they were pissed off with university people who took notes of all the stuff that they said, misunderstood what they said, published them, got themselves PhDs, and got themselves, you know, university professorships at the expense of their prime sources. So, you know, I just instinctively knew that if we're dealing with esoteric stuff, it's my business to somehow catch it. And I did not take notes. I would try to remember as much as I could, but you cannot process that. You can't process that kind of thing through the rational mind. And so, what memory retained was certain aspects. And, you know, after some months, or weeks, or even years, suddenly all these things, you know, they all fell together, fell into place. And yeah, in the second, you know, those second five years, you know, suddenly they started treating me like their guru, which was very hard. [Speaker 2] (1:16:51 - 1:17:20) Why do you think that, like, these, I guess, practices or belief systems, like, always end up coming across as being so fickle, like the moment, for example, consumerism came into the region, they abandoned their principles, or then they decided to revert to you as the guru, like things that seem to be generally revered, and ancient, and sacred, all of a sudden seem to be left on the back burner quite quickly when something else comes along? [Speaker 1] (1:17:22 - 1:21:26) They still cherished. They knew that they were still the holders of a tradition, but there's something, you know, a tradition, it's like all the traditional rituals. We do, we still do, you know, even in the modern West, we do traditional marriages. But we've lost the inner, lived power of what is basically a ritual of initiation, a major ceremony of transition from one life phase into another life phase. Like, we've completely erased that in terms of death. The way death used to be accompanied so that the living would sort of do everything for the transition to be as smooth as possible for the deceased, and so as to retain the goodwill of that deceased, who would soon become, you know, a discarnate spirit, who could help the living to keep that bond, and to keep that deceased spirit happy, and to come back into incarnation into the same tribe, so as to continue that particular life path. So, you know, there's the substance of traditions. When traditions have been going on for a very, very long time, and they suddenly get subjected to a completely different worldview, which is also very powerful. If it's not very powerful, well, okay, you know, it might get, bits of it might get encompassed into your tradition. But if it's very powerful, like when you've got the brainwashing of TV coming at the same time as the money god, on top of the previous layers of disempowerment and expropriation of the little people, there comes a moment when the dissociation between the lived practical knowingness, as part of the fabric of who you are, becomes divorced from the intellectual remnant of the philosophy. So, you continue talking about the philosophical remnant, but like everybody else, you're living in your head, and it's no longer embodied. So, you're no longer embodying your tradition. And this, once again, points to the importance of body, embodiment. We are embodiments of something much greater, much larger, much more subtle. But all of that is embodied in us, and we can only express it here through our bodies, including the body that does the thinking and the talking in our conversation right now. So, you know, I really became aware of that phenomenon with those people, because the contrast was so huge between those who took me in initially, because I acknowledged that I was poor vis-a-vis their wealth, and the same people, five years later, were coming to me saying, we're poor, and, you know, can you help us? I mean, the shock this was to me was absolutely crushing. And I had to, you know, then I had to do a lot of intellectual processing of what I knew from within the tradition, my experience, sense of it, in my knowingness, to somehow reflect it back to them as something that we could apply in the modern world. Yeah. [Speaker 2] (1:21:26 - 1:21:47) Do you think there's something, like, obviously, like, innate within human beings that has a general urge to enhance the quality of their lives materially? And maybe when they encounter that, maybe this belief system or this tradition is leaving me short in that regard, then that kind of dissonance causes the fracture that we see? [Speaker 1] (1:21:48 - 1:27:58) No, I don't think it's innate. I think it comes at a moment when your own tradition, your own age, old, whatever it is, culture, has reached a certain level of virginity. I had an example. Yeah. Oh, back to my weaving, my silk weavers. I remember going, we were invited to some event around silk in one of the major Thai centers. And there was, you know, there was going to be conferences, lectures and all that. And outside, there was a machine. It was a weaving machine that was not the kind of modern things that we would associate with the, you know, the Industrial Revolution in Manchester. But it was the first level of automation of what would otherwise be a manual weaving device. And I was curious. I asked the weavers who were there with me, would you like to have a machine like that? No, no, we're just, we're happy with what we have. We have, we have the machines that are perfect for us. We can repair them ourselves. We don't use electricity. And, you know, what they were not capable of telling me, but what I understood was it was the right, just the right degree, the right degree of machine's unsophistication for their creativity to be well-served by the machine. And when you look at, let's say, Japanese artisans who make the most exquisite baskets, pottery, what have you, they have not invested in all sorts of high tech, but they use the perfect traditional tools for each particular task. So, there is the adequacy of the technology to the creativity of the human. And this particular point is absolutely essential. You know, this is where going into robotization now is just, you know, it's another rupture from Homo Faber, you know, that we are. So, when another culture that is more powerful comes in, it can be a highly more, a more sophisticated culture. Like in India, the Mughal Empire brought, it integrated, it integrated the local multiplicity of cultures without imposing itself on them, but by putting an overall, let's say, envelope that could accommodate all of their different creativities. And there was a dialogue that began to happen between esoteric Hinduism and esoteric Islam. Absolutely remarkable. And, you know, the flourishing of the arts and of folk devotion under the, in the Mughal period was just phenomenal. So, I'm seeing the same thing where I live with the farming. You know, I ended up marrying one of the guys of the village, the poorest guy of the village who did not own anything. And so, I gave some money for us to buy some land. And I said, you know, and then we were going to have to do lots of earthworks, digging up ponds and planting trees. I mean, you know, there was a huge, huge amount of work to be done. And I said, okay, I'm going to invest in all this for you. My only condition is that we go organic. I don't want any chemicals in the water or in the soil. What are we going to eat then? This was another shattering moment for me, because these were still, you know, these were people who had, until 10 years prior, still been using, you know, organic by default. But they had already internalized the brainwash. And like, whenever they were sick, they would run to the doctor and get an injection of something. And I still have this, you know, I've got my whole panoply of natural medicines. And they know when they are at some extremity, they will come and find me. And I'll give them my natural stuff, and they'll get better. But they will before that go and get, you know, the crap from the doctor. So there is this switch that has happened because they were already weakened. There was, at a certain degree of weakness of the pre-existing culture, any more powerful culture that comes with not just the things, but also the mind control, TV, publicity, you know, movie stars, advertising for lipstick and all that kind of shit. It's the mind, those tools take hold of the magic mentality of traditional people. It creeps right into the magic mind. And it takes over the magic mind. [Speaker 3] (1:28:01 - 1:28:01) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:28:03 - 1:28:23) So does this mean that we have to take them, you know, that they have to be completely secularized by education to become completely rational, such as the magic mind goes away, like we've been in the West? Or is it possible to, you know, to put them together again? [Speaker 3] (1:28:25 - 1:28:25) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:28:25 - 1:29:53) You know, I tell them, this year, they've been complaining to me about, well, it hasn't rained enough. I said, you have to ask for it. I ask for it every day. I sit in contemplation every day. And I don't even ask for it. I say, you know, bring down the rain. I put out a command. Oh, so, okay, you may not command it, perhaps, but ask for it every day. And we've been having decent rain this year. So, you know, is it because I'm a rainmaker? I don't know. But because I'm reconnecting with nature the way that they are not, I have a sense for this, the reality of these things that we call magic. And so I experiment with them. And, you know, in certain things, it does seem to work. Nature does want to dialogue with us. But on nature's terms, not on ours, and not only on utilitarian terms. It's way, way, way more subtle than that. Way more interesting. So, you know, do I get to be, am I supposed to be the person who re-educates their sense of magic? That, you know, that notion just kills me. [Speaker 3] (1:29:54 - 1:30:44) Yeah. I love what you said in terms of how the newness kind of gets implanted in the magical thinking of them. Because, you know, you see this in a lot of different cultures. Even just, I grew up Greek. My parents are from Greece. And I remember going to Greece when I was a child, and it was so different there. And then once the standard American diet and all the corporations came in, the family structure, eating together, eating the local foods, that went away. And that impacted relationships between family members, that impacted how people looked. I remember when I went to Greece, and when I was a kid, everyone was fit and healthy and like glowing. And you go now, and it's, I mean, maybe it's not like it is in the US, but you definitely see a lot more unhealthy people. [Speaker 1] (1:30:45 - 1:32:23) Oh, yes. No, it's terrible. It's terrible. Across Europe. You know, when I was a kid, the diversity of landscapes, the diversity of, you know, every village had its own cheese, the taste of, you know, the local grapes. Okay, the whole Mediterranean, you know, everything was all, and it was all interconnected, you know, the physical and the spiritual. You know, and even the flavor of Christian belief was full of folklore, really, it was full of local animistic flavor. And I say that, you know, out of familiarity with Russia, which, you know, is complimentary with the Greek thing. So, there's, I mean, all these things that are natural to us, and that are being destroyed so easily. But it is because, you know, we've reached a period in time when the old traditions have to fade away. And on the ashes of our postmodern, now crumbling civilization, we're going to re-inhabit the magic that is in us that we have forgotten, but it's all, it's there, it's just dormant. We have to. [Speaker 3] (1:32:24 - 1:32:38) You're seeing it more, though. I think people are waking up to where this world's been going and more people are interested in older traditions and connecting back with the land and, you know, learning about permaculture and regenerative farming and these principles. [Speaker 1] (1:32:39 - 1:36:06) Yes, but Erasmus, it's all up here. It's still very much up here. You know, and this is a thing that, you know, I can say from the height of my experience of being, you know, my ego demolished, my Western rationality completely splintered, you know, by living for the past, yeah, 25, nearly 30 years amongst poor grassroots people, including those 10 years with esoteric grassroots people. I know that I was living up here and I am no longer just living up here. You know, I'm constantly, you know, it's more and more of my life is happening in the embodied knowingness. And then it feeds up to up here, but it feeds up to up here. It's way more interesting. I can't work out, I can't develop a theory and I can't allow myself to just follow the whim of my imagination, which is, you know, the imagination of all of us modern people is impacted by the mind control that we have. It's impacted by all the imagery we've been getting from our screens, much more than the imagery we're getting from nature. You know, people tell me, why don't you have a TV set? I've got the night sky. Are you crazy? I have got the fucking night sky and, you know, what it says to me. So, you know, re-inhabiting our bodies, which, you know, there again, a lot of people in the West have been re-inhabiting the body with fitness. With, well, perhaps some Kundalini yoga, things like that and yoga in general. But all of these things, it's the subtle, it's the subtle world that is encapsulated in this body, the whole of our field, it's gigantic around us and how this field interacts with other fields, interpenetrates with other fields. Wow. I mean, there's so much there, but for this, we have to be bold enough to step out of the security of being able to rationalize things and to go into this thing that is a dark continent for us, the body, that usually we remember about either because we have to go and do fitness or because we're in pain or because we have to change our diet. You know, I mean, it's been so, it's become so linear and so fragmented in the modern West and alas, we're exporting that to the whole world. Whereas when you start to just let yourself be in the dark continent of the body, wow. And that's part of the human path of, you know, my good Bengali friends. [Speaker 2] (1:36:09 - 1:36:27) I mean, I think ultimately it comes down to what an individual values, how do you have the experience to value embodiment, to value the magical and the mystical side of things, you know? And I think if an individual prioritizes and values these things, then they're going to be more present in their lives. [Speaker 1] (1:36:28 - 1:36:33) Yep. Absolutely. The true mystic is very practical. [Speaker 2] (1:36:33 - 1:36:53) Yeah. And there's no reason you can't have both. You can value rationality and you can value comfort and value convenience and still value being in touch with the subtle body and subtle world and nature and all the rest of it. And I think this is kind of what the path of the modern mystic is. [Speaker 1] (1:36:54 - 1:37:00) But they go together. I mean, we are on our way to reassociating what has been disassociated. [Speaker 2] (1:37:01 - 1:37:01) Agreed. [Speaker 1] (1:37:01 - 1:37:17) But we're going to do it where we're going to, you know, where we're going to end up. It's not going to be the same kind of thing that the traditional cultures had, or it will be the same, but with lots of new flavors to it. [Speaker 2] (1:37:18 - 1:37:18) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:37:18 - 1:37:23) Simply because we've learned a hell of a lot throughout this disassociation. [Speaker 3] (1:37:24 - 1:37:24) Yeah. [Speaker 2] (1:37:24 - 1:37:39) And that's the journey, right? That's the path. I think of the symbol of the Lemniscat, the infinity symbol. You know, we exit, we disassociate, we learn, we come back to the middle, we integrate. And so the journey continues. [Speaker 1] (1:37:40 - 1:37:48) Yes. But at the same time, this thing, you know, it's not just eternally returning to exactly the same spot. [Speaker 2] (1:37:49 - 1:37:50) No. It's spiraling. [Speaker 1] (1:37:51 - 1:41:11) It is a spiral thing. And because this is, you know, this is where we have, uh, you know, why the hell are we here? It's because it's, it's the great mystery. No, actually not. You know, the things that we can do as embodied human beings, those discarnate beings out there cannot do, you know, the spirit of a tree is only the spirit of a tree. It does not shape shift to become the spirit of a mountain. And so it's going to animate that tree in a particular way, but it's not going to do the things that the tree does. So likewise in us, all the different, I mean, all the different parts of the elements of the universe that are in us, in the human body, the human, which includes the human, um, what they mean by that is the human physical body, but also all the subtle elements, um, in and around our bodies, physical bodies. Um, it's by bringing all this together into an embodiment that we can do, can implement, can perform things in a way that is, uh, well, a impossible to do in the strictly subtle form, but also more effectively, uh, how should I say educational for the subtle world where we're here actually to contribute something to the universe. And with this particular planet, also this particular planet, who is also a very great embodied being, you know, which is, I, uh, I'm feeling more and more every day. And I, I find it a pity that, you know, too few people realize this, but, you know, going back to the gnostic myth of, you know, that of whom they call Sophia, that's just a name. There's a hell of a lot there, which we need to, you know, this planet is part and parcel of who we are, and we are part and parcel of who she is. So, you know, it behooves us to get our act together in terms of, of dialoguing with her and, um, doing stuff with her. I mean, she's a doer, you know, I mean, proof of it is all over the place. She's a doer. So what does our doingness, what does our beingness contribute to hers? How do we, how do we cooperate in a, both a utilitarian way and beyond utilitarian in a, there again, you know, a practical mystical way. So this, it's huge what we have to re, reinvest, re-invoke, re-inhabit. And I find that massively exciting. [Speaker 3] (1:41:11 - 1:41:12) I do too. [Speaker 2] (1:41:17 - 1:41:33) Anna, thank you so much for joining us. That's been a fascinating 90 minutes. I guess just in, just in closing, like how can our audience best connect with you? Find your, find your books and discover more about the wisdom that you've been imparting. [Speaker 1] (1:41:34 - 1:43:23) Thank you for the wisdom. I'm just, I'm just another human being. Anyway. The books are published in the USA by an outfit called Book Baby. So people in the Americas are, basically they're, it's best for them to, you know, get it directly from Book Baby. Otherwise Amazon has, Amazon, all the, you know, all the, all the sort of big platforms, the Apple thing and the Scribd and the Barnes and Nobles, they all have it. And other ones too, you know, sometimes, oh, who's that? I don't know. Anyway, I don't, I don't deal with that aspect. I don't do social media. I'm incapable of doing social media. I don't have time for social media. So I only have a Substack page where people are absolutely welcome. It's absolutely for free. There's no monetization. I wouldn't know how to do that anyway. And I post occasionally off on, you know, on things that are happening, connecting them with the analytical format of Scribd. Us, you know, and people are welcome to ask questions and I answer. So, you know, I'm a light presence on Substack, but that's basically, you know, that's the place to find me. And if people want to write to me, there's a tiny website, which I think is called ennerator.info, where there's a contact form and people can contact me through there. And that's it. [Speaker 2] (1:43:23 - 1:43:26) Amazing. There's no online store for the natural silks yet? [Speaker 1] (1:43:28 - 1:43:51) Well, there used to be, but my dear, Joel, it was so much work. Can you, I mean, I'd have to spend a day taking just the pictures for each individual piece. Every woman would bring nothing but individual pieces. The amount of work to do, you know, retail online, which I thought was a brilliant idea, but on my own. [Speaker 3] (1:43:51 - 1:44:01) Yeah. And it's such a pleasure. I know we were going to have you on last year. I'm happy that we were able to make it work and reconnect. [Speaker 1] (1:44:02 - 1:44:03) Yeah, it was very pleasant. [Speaker 3] (1:44:04 - 1:44:11) Appreciate your presence. And I know our audience is going to get a lot out of this and yeah, I wish you nothing but the best. [Speaker 1] (1:44:12 - 1:44:28) Great. Well, thank you. Same to you guys. And yeah. And Joel also, we need to have some interdimensional chit-chats with, you know, Yahweh and all those guys and tell them to back off. [Speaker 2] (1:44:30 - 1:44:31) Which kind of line? [Speaker 3] (1:44:33 - 1:44:42) Lay off social media, everyone go under the night sky and you know, send some good vibes out there. That's it. Thanks for listening guys. Take care. [Speaker 2] (1:44:43 - 1:44:44) What'd you think of that, man? [Speaker 3] (1:44:45 - 1:45:32) It was great, man. I mean, I know we were going to have an on, I think it was last year. And just fascinating to just hear different perspectives and different lived experiences. You know, it's very easy for people to go, I read a book about a certain kind of people or I learned something, but to, to, to hear someone's stories of living with people, you know, in different villages, in different parts of the world with different spiritual practices. Now that's really powerful. And I think people can get caught up in like, one way is the right way. Or, you know, they disagree with something that a person says, and then they want to throw everything else out the door. And it's like, we're on this path of integrating, of learning, of, of becoming more whole. And I think, you know, we learned that, especially with conversations like this. [Speaker 2] (1:45:33 - 1:45:52) Yeah, totally, man. For me, just like another affirmation that, you know, the greatest spiritual practice is this art of being human, you know, like the, but why, why do we need to separate spirituality from humanality, you know, on that level? Did you just make up a word? Well, it kind of started to harness my inner Jeff Brown. [Speaker 3] (1:45:53 - 1:46:12) Oh, humanality. I love it. I love it. But that's true, man. And it's like, I love being human. And like, even just to the, the, the profound nature of certain practical things. And, you know, how we can find the deeply spiritual through our work, through our daily toil, whatever that is, you know, as an individual. [Speaker 2] (1:46:13 - 1:46:51) Yeah, man, through the day, through the mundane, like, through all the things that I, that I need to do, through the responsibility that's in front of me, through the family that I have, you know, like, how to me, it's, it's a deeply merged, integrated experience. Like there's no separation where I'm like, okay, I'm going to go, I'm going to go focus on my spiritual self now. Like now I'm doing that through the groundwork, through the roots, through the fertility, that is my life, that is my lived experience. Like that is the spiritual practice through this conversation, through the work that I do, through what we produce together. Like, this is it, I'm here, I'm having it, look at me, you know? [Speaker 3] (1:46:51 - 1:47:17) Yeah. And I think this is where like that word that gets thrown around and people use it in different ways, but like embodiment, this is where embodiment comes into play. Can you be connected to your body, to your experiences, to your felt sense, what's happening through the day as you go through this, or do you kind of check out and disassociate and like, forget that you're even hungry, forget that you have to go to the bathroom, forget, you know, like, can you be in touch with what's going on on a deeply somatic level? [Speaker 2] (1:47:17 - 1:47:34) Yeah. And when you're forgetting about it, and when you're disassociating, can you then use that as the feedback to then fuel an even more integrated practice? You know, like the dark and the light, the separation and the integration, like it's all giving us something, it's all teaching us something, it's all fueling something. [Speaker 3] (1:47:34 - 1:47:35) Yeah. [Speaker 2] (1:47:36 - 1:47:36) Yeah. [Speaker 3] (1:47:36 - 1:48:03) I hear you, man. Yeah. Well, the journey continues. Definitely does. I love these guests we're having on and we're gonna keep doing it. And again, to everyone that listens, that watches, we really appreciate you. We wouldn't be able to do this without you. And yeah, feel free to reach out and say hello. If you're on our email list and you get our emails, send a response. We'd love to hear from you, where you're from, where you're listening in from. And yeah, appreciate you. [Speaker 2] (1:48:03 - 1:48:38) Yeah, absolutely. And Rise Above the Herd, round eight, we're kicking off January 8th. Riseabovetheherd.co to learn more. If this is during Cyber Weekend, you might get yourself a deal as well once you hit that website at the time that you're listening to this. And I mean, this is what the work is about for us. It's just about inspiring you to become who you were born to be, right? Whatever that means to you, when you hear those words, how that lands for you, that's what we consider our job to be in Rise Above the Herd. Much love. Thanks for the support. Take care.