EPISODE 245 · JUN 19, 2025 · 1H 29M
Dr. Pran Yoganathan Self, Nature, Death & What It Means to Be Human
EPISODE 245 · DR. PRAN YOGANATHAN
Self, Nature, Death & What It Means to Be Human
Dr. Pran Yoganathan returns — gastroenterologist, regenerative farmer, bow hunter, student of myth and depth psychology. A man who treats gut pain as primitive nervous system memory, not pathology. Who walks the tension between light and dark without dissociating into either. Who says we are gods without ego, we are consciousness without performance, and death is the lifting of the veil without fear.
Joel and Yerasimos move with him through ego as vessel and self as ocean, hunting as spiritual reconnection, marriage as sacred mirror, the bloodless diet fallacy, free will as observer rather than author, Agent Smith as sentinel of the matrix, and the moment Pran's son asked — after killing a nanny goat whose baby bleated nearby — Dad, there's a lot of devil in hunting, isn't there? Yes. The light and the dark together spark the story. Without both, there is no game.
- Ego as vessel, self as ocean Pran frames consciousness as an ocean. Individual egos are ships on the surface — separate, distinct, buffeted by archetypal currents. The deeper you descend, the more the partitions dissolve. Ego dissolution isn't destruction; it's remembering the underlying unity while maintaining the vessel necessary to exist, act, and teach.
- Depression as breaking point, not endpoint Pran's depression stripped him of his grip on sanity, success, fatherhood. He wouldn't change it. As Rumi said: you need to be broken to allow the light to enter. The darkness balanced the light he'd always inhabited — revealing the totality he'd been unwilling to face.
- Gut pain as psyche, not pathology Most of Pran's gastroenterology patients test normal. What medicine calls irritable bowel syndrome, Pran sees as primitive nervous system memory activating when the external environment turns toxic. He's become a psychologist without the credential — merging allopathic knowledge with esoteric psyche work.
- Hunting as spiritual reconnection Yerasimos attends a five-day hunting course with Bruce McLenn, a third-generation hunter. The men who hunt with reverence — who honor the animal, the land, the cycle — are the most centered, grounded humans he's met. Hunting isn't cruelty. It's alignment with nature's maternal algorithm.
- Nature as maternal archetype Cities are masculine: logic, lines, order, logos. Nature is maternal: producer, creator, womb. Farmers and hunters align themselves to her cadence. The deep connection isn't performative spirituality — it's presence forged through responsibility, ritual, and respect.
- The paddock and the gates Most humans graze contentedly inside barbed-wire enclosures — technological, monetary, ideological. A few gravitate toward the edge, longing for what's beyond. Those outside the gates are considered wild animals by the herd. Freedom is uncomfortable. The herd prefers chains.
- The bloodless diet fallacy Australian studies show grain farming kills exponentially more animals than cattle farming. One cow feeds a family for a year and a half. A bowl of cereal? Multiply the death by orders of magnitude. People disconnected from food supply chains preach bloodless morality while ignoring the killing their choices require.
- Death as unveiling, not annihilation Pran looks forward to his own death — not morbidly, but curiously. Death lifts the veil. We see less than 1% of the light spectrum, hear less than 1% of auditory frequencies. Our five senses are limiters. Death unleashes consciousness from the flesh-and-blood capacitor.
- Boundaries within oneness At the deepest layers, partitions fall away. But to function in life — to raise children, to teach, to act — you need strong ego and clear boundaries. To remain dissolved in the deep unconscious is psychosis, not enlightenment. Love people from afar when necessary.
- Free will as observer, not author Pran rejects Abrahamic free will. The game has predetermined paths — a fifth-dimensional Tesseract where past, present, and future exist simultaneously. Your true self pre-programmed your fate before stepping into flesh. The only free will you have is to step back and observe.
- Agent Smith and the sentinels of the matrix The Matrix as allegory: Agent Smith is the guardian designed to keep you looped in the center of the paddock. Dark archetypes aren't evil — they're sentinels of the simulation, programmed to trap you. Once you step outside, you see them for what they are: weak, resentful, envious of your ability to transcend.
- The devil in hunting Pran and his son kill a nanny goat. Her baby bleats nearby. His son asks: *Dad, there's a lot of devil in hunting, isn't there?* Yes. The light: feeding the family. The dark: taking a mother's life. Without both, there is no story, no growth, no game.
Standout
Quotes
"What I'm fundamentally saying is we are gods. We are a deep awareness. But people interpret that where I'm saying if we are gods, then we are omnipresent and all powerful. That's looking at it from an egoic sense. I'm saying we are consciousness. And consciousness collapses into one awareness."
Dr. Pran Yoganathan
"I believe the self seeks evolution in itself. It's not a static thing. It's a dynamic force that seeks growth. And it's using us to grow."
Dr. Pran Yoganathan
"For us to exist, there has to be an amnesia about that process. Like we can't remember too much because the self, again, seeks evolution. Without the ego, there is no emotion in the game."
Dr. Pran Yoganathan
"In the process of unraveling, you can really lose a sense of who you are as a person. Fundamentally lose your grip on sanity. But as Rumi has said, you need to be broken to allow the light to enter."
Dr. Pran Yoganathan
"Most of what I sit with in my consulting suite is just an abdominal discomfort, like there's a pain in the guts. My industry has called it irritable bowel syndrome, but I'm starting to realize this is a primordial, primitive memory within this beautiful nervous system in our gut that's being triggered."
Dr. Pran Yoganathan
"When you go into a grocery and or a supermarket and you pick up a piece of meat, there are so many levels of disconnection in that supply chain system. There is no love in that food. Whereas with hunting, there is just you and the animal really."
Dr. Pran Yoganathan
"These two men are two of the most present, centered, grounded human beings that I have ever come across. They're not out there studying with some guru. Like these are some real men of the earth that are connected to the land and connected to themselves in a way that is rare."
Yerasimos
"The girl in her becomes a woman through your presence and the boy in you becomes a man through hers. We lead each other along that path of completion. We need these mirrors of our spouses with their energetic opposites to be able to unite the halves within ourselves."
Dr. Pran Yoganathan
"There are few amongst that herd that will gravitate to the edge of that fence. We gravitate, we see beyond at the freedom. The vast majority do not. They are quite happy grazing in the middle of that paddock."
Dr. Pran Yoganathan
"The fundamental question here is time. When you're burdened and you've given away time, you really have no option but to consume what they feed you. So one must free time because I believe our soul, we've got a universe. We've got the gate that opens into the universe. And as we enter into the universe, the gift, the actual currency you're given is time. Use it wisely."
Dr. Pran Yoganathan
"I look forward to when I die. Saying that, I'm not saying that I'm not appreciating life. I'm appreciating every moment. I'm merely a camera, an instrument for something bigger. So I'm going to give that something a great time."
Dr. Pran Yoganathan
"Death is an unleashing of your consciousness from the capacitor or the limiter, which is our flesh and blood."
Dr. Pran Yoganathan
"When we pray to the light and we constantly focus on the light, the dark grows in silence. And then we are forced to go to war, world war, to discover the wretches that we are."
Dr. Pran Yoganathan
"The only free will you've got is the free will to observe a predetermined set of events that are occurring. And that's what synchronicity and deja vu and so forth is. It's the self having a flashback of something that had programmed itself well before it stepped into the hall of mirrors."
Dr. Pran Yoganathan
"My son said to me, Dad, there's a lot of devil in hunting, isn't there? And I said, yeah, absolutely, there is. The light in the act of hunting is that I'm going to feed my family. The dark in that act of hunting is I've got to take this mother's life. And that duality allows for there to be a story where a man and a boy can step into these hills and seek sustenance."
Dr. Pran Yoganathan
Episode transcript (hidden by default — readable by search engines)
(0:00 - 0:06)
Coming up in this episode. What I'm fundamentally saying is we are gods. We are a deep awareness.
(0:07 - 0:18)
But people interpret that where I'm saying if we are gods, then we are omnipresent and all powerful. That's looking at it from an egoic sense. I'm saying we are, we are consciousness.
(0:19 - 0:33)
And consciousness collapses into, into one awareness. You are now listening to the Year for the Truth podcast, hosted by Joel Rafiti and Yerasimos. All right, everybody.
(0:34 - 0:41)
Welcome back to the Year for the Truth podcast. Such a pleasure to be here with you all. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening.
(0:42 - 0:50)
Today, we have the return of Dr. Pran Yoganathan. I don't know if I'm pronouncing his name perfectly correctly. I think you did it right.
(0:51 - 1:11)
I think there's many pronunciations, obviously, different accents, all the rest of it. I just love this guy so much, just so diverse in terms of his knowledge, what he can speak into, his life experiences. We cover a lot of ground here, diving deep into his perspective on the soul.
(1:12 - 1:31)
What is consciousness? He's a hunter and a farmer himself. We get into some nice conversations around the allegory of the matrix, free will, and just our personal journeys here. I think you guys are going to get a lot of value and depth from this episode.
(1:33 - 1:57)
A single favor, if you can, wherever you're listening or tuning in from, if you could hit that follow button on the podcast and leave a review, or rate the podcast if you're on Spotify, we would appreciate that so much. All that being said, please enjoy this episode. Today, Dr. Pran Yoganathan returns.
(1:57 - 2:11)
He first joined us in March of 2023 for episode 111. He is a cog in the wheel of the medical industrial complex. He's a farmer, hunter, writer, thinker.
(2:12 - 2:17)
Pran, welcome back to Here for the Truth. Thanks, Nate. Lovely to be back with both of you.
(2:19 - 2:30)
Looking forward to having a bit of a discussion with you both. Absolutely, man. Obviously, it's been a couple of years since we last had a discussion and the world looked very different back then, certainly.
(2:31 - 3:07)
I guess just in your own words, how has the last couple of years been for you, even from just a personal evolution perspective? What are the textures that you've noticed in your personal growth journey as we continue to evolve on this human journey as well? Yeah, Joel. Last two years have been fundamentally massive. From the perspective of our soul's transmutation or learning, I believe experience adds to growth, right? And I'm sure you guys will kind of agree with that.
(3:08 - 3:26)
And we have to thrust ourselves out of our comfort zone. So the last two years has been destabilizing geopolitically, personally, professionally. But in all that process, I've learned and continue to learn.
(3:26 - 3:54)
And I experience emotion, whether it's pain, happiness, joy, love, all of that. And all you can do is kind of take that and transmute it into something higher, which I believe is just an enhanced level of consciousness. And I don't mean that from an egoic sense of, I'm growing, I'm just perhaps starting to remember what I am.
(3:55 - 4:12)
And it seems like an amnesia that's kind of fading away. Let me dive in there. What are you? What am I? I believe I am you.
(4:13 - 4:37)
And that is interchangeably used. I believe we are the self, right? A deeper layer of consciousness where we're all interwoven fundamentally. But this nervous systems of ours give us a sense of ego, right? And an ego is not necessarily a bad thing.
(4:37 - 4:56)
I think it's been painted in these modern spiritual practices as a terrible thing and that we should somehow dissolve the ego. Great, yeah, you could certainly dissolve it through practices such as meditations, pharmacologically, active imagination. There's many ways to do it.
(4:56 - 5:15)
But the ego is there for a reason, to allow the self to evolve. And when I speak of the self, that is the deeper layer. Like the way I look at consciousness, Joel, because fundamentally the question that you've asked is in relation to consciousness that underpins that question.
(5:16 - 5:36)
I see consciousness just from a very allegorical perspective as an ocean, right? And upon that ocean, we have vessels like ships and boats, and some are bigger than others. And that's our egos. That's our respective egos upon the surface of that ocean.
(5:37 - 6:20)
And I believe we've got these ancient primal blueprints called archetypes, which are currents that move these vessels, as in they've existed before the birth of time and they're pre-woven into this simulation, creation, whatever you wish to call it. But once you start sinking deeper into the ocean, should someone throw themselves from a vessel into the deeper layers, that illusion of separation of the vessel starts separating, sorry, starts losing that illusion. And I think the deeper you go, the more interwoven we are.
(6:20 - 6:35)
These partitions between ourselves kind of dissolve. And that is the process of ego dissolution, I believe. And it's this greater understanding of really a respect for each other in that regard.
(6:36 - 7:02)
If I am the same as you and you are the same as me, well, we've got a responsibility towards each other. And I think if the world understood that at a deeper level, if 8 billion souls understood that, I don't think we'll find ourselves in the turmoil that we find ourselves today. Where does individuality and selfhood play into all this? When you say, I am you, you is me, I understand that like a foundational base layer.
(7:03 - 7:34)
But what are those words, individuality and selfhood, mean to you? Yeah, I mean, the self, there must be a purpose behind all of this. These elaborate mechanisms or timepiece or chronograph, which is this matrix of time, must serve a purpose. I mean, it's not without purpose, right? We understand what a lack of purpose does to a man's soul or a woman's soul, it leads to nilism.
(7:34 - 8:02)
And this is why some of the greater thinkers on existential topics can sometimes succumb to that. You know, the Schopenhauers and there's various thinkers in our time that you read their works and it's extremely nihilistic. Because if they identify with the ego, right, I am me, and this is my purpose in the world, there is an issue with that.
(8:03 - 8:43)
Whereas when we start looking into the deeper layers, well, you start unraveling something, which is that, well, perhaps the self, it needs us to become conscious. I mean, Carl Jung called these deeper layers the deep unconscious, and he often wrote that the deep unconscious needs man to become conscious. So I believe individuality, right, this purpose of self and ego allows us to go about the world and evolve each of our souls, which in turn benefits the deeper layer, the self.
(8:44 - 8:57)
What I'm trying to say very simply is that I believe the self seeks evolution in itself. It's not a static thing. It's a dynamic force that seeks growth.
(8:57 - 9:13)
And it's using us to grow. When you say self, you mean like big S self, ocean self, as opposed to like individual self? Yeah. You, Pran, are obviously a separate human being than me, Yerasimos, right now.
(9:13 - 9:16)
You're on the other side of the world. We're having a conversation. So I'm just trying to get some clarity there.
(9:17 - 9:56)
Yeah, I think Rumi said it beautifully, right? Jalal Rumi, the Sufi poet and mystic, beautiful writer, great writer. And he said, like, we've got this perspective that we are the drop in the ocean when in reality, we are the ocean itself, right? And that's what I'm speaking to. I'm speaking to the fact that it is very difficult for us to separate the fact that we are all interconnected because everything we've built is based on our individuality.
(9:56 - 10:22)
But at the deeper levels, I do believe there's a great level of interconnection. Yeah. So in that context, when, I guess, this human experience ends, what is your perspective on the soul's journey therefore? Is there still a sense of like individuality, a separate soul, a separate entity? Or obviously, there's no correct answer here.
(10:22 - 10:48)
I'm just curious where you're currently at with that. Yeah, absolutely. For me to claim absolute knowledge over something like that would be, there's a real danger here, guys, which is that when the ego starts transcending some of these deeper layers, it can fuse with some of these archetypes and it can fuse with the self, which then leads to this messianic complexes.
(10:48 - 11:27)
This is how cult leaders are born, right? And it's a very, very tricky journey here to navigate because sometimes I read my work, my writing, and I'm embarrassed at the absolutism that I've shown in some of that. And I realize that I'm in dangerous territory, that my ego is in danger of fusing with the self and I'm at danger of speaking almost prophetically in the sense that, but that's ego. I can see through it and it's something that I continue to work on.
(11:29 - 12:12)
And to kind of dance around the question that you've asked, right? It's impossible for us to know, but looking at many, many, many reports of near-death experiences, and there's plenty of it even in my field in the medical literature, there seems to be an overwhelming sense of a singular emotion, which is love predominantly, right? This overwhelming sense of belonging and unity. And that makes sense because at the deeper layers, as I said, these partitions of us fall away. And what is love, but kind of this trend towards unity, it's unification.
(12:13 - 12:29)
And I suspect that that's what occurs, like these partitions fall away. And we start seeing the deeper layers of the game. But for us to exist, there has to be an amnesia about that process.
(12:30 - 13:14)
Like we can't remember too much because the self, again, seeks evolution. Without the ego, there is no emotion in the game. And I often wonder, guys, like a lot of these Buddhist monks and so forth that are deep in meditation and touch on the deeper unconscious layers, like what purpose do they serve the self? And that's something that I sit with because they're fundamentally remembering, but do they help evolve the nature of the self? But perhaps the aim of the game is for each of us to individually remember who we are and head back to that deeper layer.
(13:14 - 13:43)
Yeah. Earlier, you kind of mentioned the last couple of years have definitely had their challenges. Is there anything specific you'd like to get into and what your journey has brought you and how you've worked through it and just like what's been going on more specifically in the last couple of years that's inspired kind of where you stand currently in your life, your worldview, et cetera? Yeah, these are some difficult layers for the mind to walk.
(13:44 - 13:58)
It's a process of unraveling. And in the process of unraveling, you can really lose a sense of who you are as a person. As a businessman, I've been very successful.
(13:58 - 14:08)
As a doctor, I've been very successful. As a father, as a husband. But in that process of unraveling, you can lose your grip on all of that.
(14:09 - 14:24)
Fundamentally lose your grip on sanity. And I would say that that certainly happened to some degree. I've suffered my bouts of particularly serious bout of depression.
(14:25 - 14:39)
And I think the depression was the final straw that broke the camel's back. But as Rumi has said, you need to be broken to allow the light to enter. So if I could go back and change that, I wouldn't.
(14:39 - 14:55)
I wouldn't because it really allowed for me to see something deeper, something darker. And it allowed me to kind of bring in my light, which I've always lived in. Everyone's kind of looked up to me as the successful guy.
(14:56 - 15:18)
But to see the darkness allowed me to kind of balance the two halves of myself. And of course, that had a massive impact on my marriage and on my relationship with my children and so forth. But I'm glad to say that I've been able to work through all of that and sort of emerge out of it, I believe, a more enlightened soul.
(15:19 - 15:42)
And I've had the support of an amazing wife who's sort of really kind of helped me through it. And a good partner is just incredible, incredible in this journey. And it seems that as souls, we're on this individual path, but there are some that just kind of hold your hand along that path, and you diverge, but you come back.
(15:43 - 15:52)
And it's a beautiful thing. I believe we're all kind of walking towards the same destination. We're just doing it at separate paces, using different paths.
(15:53 - 15:58)
And it's a beautiful thing. There's no such thing as right or wrong in this game. Yeah.
(15:58 - 16:13)
Are you still practicing as a doctor? I am, I am. I really enjoy what I do. I'm a gastroenterologist, which is a doctor of the gut, supposedly.
(16:14 - 16:28)
But most of what I sit with in my consulting suite is just an abdominal discomfort, like there's a pain in the guts. And we do colonoscopies and tests and blood tests and so forth. Most of these are normal.
(16:28 - 16:57)
My industry has called it irritable bowel syndrome, but I'm starting to realize this is a primordial, primitive memory within this beautiful nervous system in our gut that's being triggered. So what I've realized along the way is that when the environment or the external world turns toxic, the primitive memory is being activated. And to write that off as irritable bowel syndrome, I no longer do that.
(16:58 - 17:16)
So I sort of delve into the psyche. And in the course of this journey, I've really become more of a psychologist, but I don't really believe in labels anymore, mate. I feel that I don't need a degree as a psychologist or a psychiatrist to be able to delve into one's psyche.
(17:16 - 17:36)
We just need to do the kind of inner work. And it's been a really beautiful thing to be able to merge that allopathic knowledge of medicine, that logic with some of the more esoteric concepts around psyche and mind. And I feel like I've been able to benefit a lot of people in that regard.
(17:37 - 17:55)
And it's not something that I want to give up on ever. It's not just income for me. In fact, sometimes I grapple with the embarrassment of having to charge for that service because it feels more honourable.
(17:56 - 18:12)
It feels so honourable that I struggle with it being transactional. So that's my inner sort of grappling with the industry. But I really enjoy kind of giving back and allowing people to understand the inner labyrinth of their minds and the minotaurs that lurk within it.
(18:13 - 18:45)
Yeah, thank you for sharing, man. Um, has there been any kind of conversations or dialogues or potential pushbacks from colleagues with, I guess, your unique approach or even, you know, dropping, you know, the allopathic terms like Idol-Bowel Syndrome, etc.? Is there, has there been anything spark in that arena with, I guess, more conventional peers? Yeah, look, I think when I started, you've been with me for a fair bit in this journey, Joel. When I first started, I was certainly more brash in my approach.
(18:45 - 18:57)
But as time's gone on, I've become fairly esoteric. And I think people have kind of witnessed that journey. My colleagues, you know, I'm pretty open on social media and platforms like that with my thoughts.
(18:57 - 19:19)
I think initially, it allowed some sort of spectacle where they could, you know, peek in and sort of laugh and speak about it, perhaps behind my back. Not many have said it to my face. But, you know, over time, I think it's just kind of evolved into, you know, this man's just crazy.
(19:20 - 19:30)
We'll just kind of leave him alone. At no point have I ever compromised the safety of my clients. And everything I've done has been pretty simple, really, mate.
(19:30 - 19:49)
I've said, look, farming's a problem. Modern-day agricultural methods are leading to a system of food supply that may be contributing, that is strongly likely to be contributing to illness. And so there's very few people that can argue with that type of rhetoric as a doctor.
(19:50 - 20:16)
With regards to my focus on the esoteric aspects of this realm, I genuinely believe my colleagues don't grasp that. I think medicine is so rooted in logic, right? And science and reductionism. When you start touching on some of these, you know, other mythical aspects of our existence, they just write that off.
(20:17 - 20:29)
So it's to a point where initially it was a spectacle. And then speaking about me, perhaps in sort of hush tones behind my back. And now I just kind of get left alone to practice the way I want to practice.
(20:30 - 20:45)
And I think I must have pretty thick skin too, Joel. It just seems to sort of bounce off me and I don't pay too much attention to it because I have a strong understanding of who I am. I know my ego and I know it is a considerable ego.
(20:46 - 20:52)
I acknowledge that, but I know who I am. Beautiful, man. I really, really appreciate that.
(20:53 - 21:07)
Erasmus recently had a little getaway where, I guess, if you want to speak into it, Erasmus, I know Pran's a hunter as well. And I feel like we could get into a deep conversation about nature and spirituality. Yeah, I just wrote an article called Returning to the Land.
(21:08 - 21:20)
Initially, it was just about my wife and I. You know, we moved about five years ago from Santa Monica to Topanga. We have more land. You know, we've been really getting more into permaculture and cultivating our land and bringing life back to the land.
(21:20 - 21:28)
And we have chickens. And yeah, it's been amazing. I've been working with this guy, Eric, who's a friend, who's just like a permaculture agroforestry wizard.
(21:28 - 21:45)
And like, we've completely transformed the land. That being said, I've always been really curious about hunting and just connecting more to our food in that way. As opposed to, as Bruce, the teacher at this hunter course said, like hiring a hitman to do the dirty work for us.
(21:45 - 21:50)
You know, and we just show up to the store and everything's neatly packaged. And yay, let me get my protein. Which I get it.
(21:50 - 21:58)
This is the modern world that we live in. But I went to a five-day hunting course. This was a guy, Bruce McLenn, held in Washington.
(21:59 - 22:03)
And it was a really beautiful experience. With a dear friend of mine. We just kind of learned some foundational things.
(22:03 - 22:09)
We shot some guns. It wasn't hunting season. But, you know, he ended up shooting a goat that he had on property.
(22:10 - 22:15)
And we field dressed it and butchered it and went through that process. And it was really deep, man. Like to connect.
(22:15 - 22:23)
I mean, granted, I wasn't hunting. But even to witness the process of taking another animal's life. And to be there for it and to see it happening.
(22:23 - 22:32)
And then to go through that process to take a living being. And then turning it into something that looks like something that, when you go to the store. You know, like that process.
(22:34 - 22:45)
So, yeah, it's kind of reawakened this desire to want to hunt. And to, as someone who does eat meat, to get closer to it. And to build a greater connection to the land.
(22:45 - 23:02)
And to my food. And something I've told Joel and I've told some other people is, you know, about 15 years ago, I took part in this other, it was like a weekend course with someone known at the time as a locobore hunter. And we went and learned about deer ecology and deer hunting.
(23:02 - 23:12)
And then afterwards, I went to a hunting course in Vermont. And I met this guy who's been a lifelong hunter. And between this guy that I met 15 years ago, who led this class.
(23:12 - 23:25)
And Bruce, who's a third generation hunter. Like these two men are two of the most present, centered, grounded human beings that I have ever come across. They're not out there studying with some guru.
(23:26 - 23:43)
Or like, you know, calling themselves a priestess or a goddess or whatever, you know, on social media. Like these are some real men of the earth that are connected to the land and connected to themselves in a way that is rare. And so that, you know, it's a kind of hunting that honors the animal, honors the land.
(23:43 - 23:55)
It's not just like, oh yeah, look at me. I'm just shooting animals and taking pictures with the animals. And so, yeah, man, I'm looking forward to, you know, cultivating my connection to food in a deeper way.
(23:56 - 24:07)
So I'm curious what your experience has been as a hunter and, you know, any comments that you have on what I just said. Beautiful, man. It's really nice to hear your journey there.
(24:08 - 24:18)
And it's very similar, very similar to mine. You'll remember that we spoke on archetypes. You know, nature herself is an archetype, one of these.
(24:18 - 24:34)
She's a maternal energy. I don't think anyone can, you know, who's sat in nature long enough would say it's a masculine energy. You enter a city, right, with all its lines and tall buildings and logic and order.
(24:34 - 24:56)
And you say, well, that's logic, logos. And logos predominates in that masculine energy, whereas nature to me is just a mother, you know, that she's a mother and she's a producer and she's a creator. And what you've done there by hunting is you've aligned yourself to the algorithm of her cadence fundamentally.
(24:57 - 25:19)
And it's the same with farmers, man, like farmers that are truly deeply connected, you know, permaculture farmers and regenerative farmers, just farmers in general, even the ones burdened by these modern day agricultural systems that have shackled them. They are so deeply connected to the land and it's all about connection. So we spoke on love as an energy that seeks to unite.
(25:20 - 25:44)
When you go into a grocery and or a supermarket and you pick up a piece of meat, there are so many levels of disconnection in that supply chain system, right? Someone's grown the beef, someone's killed the beef, then someone's cut it up and someone's driven it and delivered it. And then someone's put it on the shelf, like there's levels of disconnection. There is no love in that food.
(25:45 - 25:58)
Whereas with hunting, there is just you and the animal really. And that level of connection is, there's an element of love to it. And I think that's the beauty of it.
(25:58 - 26:10)
It's a sense of connection. And when you say you find these men to be deeply present, of course, because again, it comes down to connection. They are just deeply connected to the land.
(26:10 - 26:28)
The most primal and beautiful algorithm that exists. Civilizations, they're cyclical. Great civilizations are built, great civilizations burn and we reemerge out of those.
(26:29 - 26:47)
But nature always kind of stays constant. And when civilizations do burn, there is a tendency for mankind to return to her womb, to kind of recultivate that ancient knowledge that we've always known. And hunting to me is just a deeply spiritual process.
(26:48 - 26:58)
Spending time in mountains and I bow hunt. Yeah. And it's a difficult art and there's a lot of frustration with it.
(26:58 - 27:11)
They can sometimes come about and it's humility. You know, as a bow hunter, sometimes you can injure an animal if you're not careful and not kill it cleanly. Then stalking it through the mountain and watching an animal suffer, et cetera.
(27:12 - 27:30)
It makes you appreciate the food that you're butchering and taking back to your family. But as I've gotten better as a bow hunter, that there is minimal suffering for the animals that I'm taking the lives off. And man, I think it's the most beautiful process.
(27:30 - 27:58)
Yesterday, I put on a dinner for a few of my farmer friends here on the farm surrounding neighbors of mine. And it was a couple of goats that I'd killed and butchered a few months ago that I pulled out of the freezer and did a beautiful curry for them, an authentic Sri Lankan curry. And though they must have consumed a few liters of water while eating it, there was just so much love in that food that I'd made for these dear friends of mine.
(27:58 - 28:08)
And that's ultimately what it kind of comes down to. It's this connection, aka love. How long have you been hunting for? Mate, I got into hunting.
(28:08 - 28:19)
Actually, my wife booked me this surprise trip a few years ago. Probably, I think it was about five or six years ago with a guy who's gone on to become one of my best friends. His name's Eamon Waddington.
(28:19 - 28:41)
He runs a business called Broadside Hunting, which teaches people exactly what you did. It's a course, three-day course, where people are kind of taught how to hunt with guns and bows and so forth, and butcher up meat, et cetera. And initially, I was very skeptical, right? Like, I've been in medical school since I was young.
(28:41 - 28:55)
You know, I was about 16 or 17 when I was in medical school. I really had no time to learn some of the more practical aspects of life, you know, with my hands. My entire life has been a very science-based existence.
(28:55 - 29:19)
So, when she initially booked it, I was pretty reluctant because, you know, I thought hunting was something that was cruel, et cetera. But those days in the mountains with Eamon was some of the most spiritually enlightening times of my life. And as time's gone on, you know, Eamon's been more one-on-one with me, teaching me how to hunt on my farm and butcher.
(29:19 - 29:35)
And it's just gotten better and better with time. And it's something that not only do I enjoy, I believe should be essential for many men and some women who seek interest in that. I think it's a beautiful thing.
(29:35 - 29:45)
Everyone should know where their food comes from. My wife did the same thing. She met Bruce's wife at a... It was a workshop up north in Canada.
(29:46 - 29:54)
And so, she came home. She's like, I met this woman and her husband, Bruce leads... He's a third-generation hunter. And he leads these five-day experiences called Awaken the Hunter.
(29:54 - 29:58)
And his business is called Human Nature Hunting. And so, she sent it to me. I was kind of busy.
(29:58 - 30:08)
And then like a month went by. And she's like, are you going to check it out? So, I checked it out. And, you know, the way he spoke about everything on his website just really resonated because it was more holistic and it had this spiritual vibe.
(30:10 - 30:26)
And as I, you know, connected with him over the last five days, we had some opportunity to have some one-on-one time. I mean, that is a deep spiritual practice for him, his connection to the land. You know, it goes beyond like, let me go into a church or let me go in to some, you know, kirtan.
(30:26 - 30:45)
I'm not saying those things are inherently bad, but it's just a direct relationship to like the mother, to creation, to earth. So, yeah, I find it interesting that our wives are the ones that help give us a little bit of a nudge to be a little bit more open to this. I mean, I was open to it.
(30:45 - 30:59)
You know, 15 years ago, I did have that experience. But just to find that and to have that synchronicity and then to go on this experience and, you know, to be there with several other people. One of my really dear friends came with me too, who has had some hunting experience.
(30:59 - 31:10)
And he, I mean, he works all the time. So, for him to spend five days in the woods and a break from everything was like really, really important. So, yeah.
(31:10 - 31:13)
That's beautiful, man. That's beautiful. And that's what a marriage is.
(31:14 - 31:23)
It's a very sacred act. You know, these vows that we take are fundamentally being commodified. But at a deeper level, marriage is exactly that.
(31:23 - 31:50)
The girl in her becomes a woman through your presence and the boy in you becomes a man through hers. You know, we lead each other along that path of completion, you know, and we need one another. You know, we need these mirrors of our spouses with their energetic opposites to be able for us to be able to unite the halves within ourselves.
(31:51 - 32:22)
Ultimately, that journey, as we've spoken about, is solitary, like it's a solo journey. But these beautiful souls that we meet along the way and, you know, especially for me, you know, the spouses are just so critical in allowing you to sort of complete yourself. And I don't think it's coincidental that, you know, our respective spouses did that because they're pushing us to become the men they see in us, you know, and it's very humbling for a lot of men to hear that.
(32:22 - 32:37)
That, well, am I a boy and is she pushing me towards manhood? Well, I'm a man, aren't I? But no, that maturity comes through agitation and that's how we grow. So, it's a beautiful thing, mate. Yeah, man, well said.
(32:39 - 34:02)
Pran, how does the modern day human kind of, I guess, consume animal products in a way that, I guess, is more spiritually aligned when not everyone really has the opportunity or really has the accessibility to kind of go about it in the ways that we've discussed? What are, like, proactive steps that one can take to, I guess, bring more love into consumption in the midst of modern disconnect? Beautiful question. Actually, that's a glorious question, Joel. What I'm starting to realise, again, with great humility here, is we live in, let's simplify it, right? As a population, we live in a paddock, right? The barbed wires that hold us are probably technological, they're monetary, they're ideological, they're chains or gates that enclose us, right? There are few amongst that herd that will gravitate to the edge of that fence, right? Like yourselves, like me, right? We gravitate, we see beyond at the freedom, right? And we yearn that.
(34:02 - 34:17)
The vast majority do not. They are quite happy grazing in the middle of that paddock. They're quite happy with their lives, right? So, we can't speak to everyone broadly.
(34:17 - 35:05)
So, when you say, how can the modern human do this? I can't speak for those that choose to remain within those barbed gates, right? And so, I speak to those that wish to step outside, that not only have stepped outside, but those at the edges looking with longing at that. Now, those that choose to stay and graze, there is a deep pain within them, right? There is the pain of not being free, yet they would still prefer their chains than seek the discomfort of freedom because freedom is extremely uncomfortable. You defy tradition, customs, laws, values to seek that, okay? You essentially, in their eyes, you're considered a wild animal when you exist outside those gates.
(35:06 - 35:24)
But they have an existential pain, which the system, the herders within this paddock throw them hedonism, alcohol, gambling, whatever it is. And this is why the herd is sick, okay? They consume not because they're hungry. They consume because there's a void within them.
(35:24 - 36:04)
And the herders throw them what's needed to keep them overfed and not volatile. But for those that choose to leave, if you are asking me, how do they consume? Well, the fundamental question here is time, right? When you're burdened and you've given away time, you really have no option but to consume what they feed you. So one must free time because I believe our soul, to look at it again allegorically, we've got a universe.
(36:05 - 36:15)
We've got the gate that opens into the universe. And as we enter into the universe, the gift, the actual currency you're given is time. Use it wisely.
(36:16 - 36:56)
So how do you free time? And that's the big question. Once you are able to start freeing yourself and increase your time, I believe that now you've got the option to start looking at nuance, like how do I eat? I think a deep connection to the land is not only critical, it's absolutely essential. And I think it's connecting with people that have a similar mindset.
(36:56 - 37:27)
I think community is important and little things like learning how to fish, learning how to hunt, learning how to butcher an animal, just little things that reconnect us back to that algorithm, which is nature. I think when I looked at my cattle today, when I went to inspect my cattle, it was beautiful to see. I put out a little bit of molasses for them for some energetic needs, but the rest of them were just grazing on grass in a beautiful open paddock.
(37:28 - 37:42)
And it's so beautiful to see that. There is a bit more of a connection to what I'm going to consume there. And whilst not everyone can economically have that freedom, I think we can seek it.
(37:42 - 38:09)
We can seek it. We are trapped within these enormous mortgages within city, debts to banks that are incredible, yet regional centres offer a much lower entry point into land. But the fear is that we can't leave the city behind or these urban regions behind to pursue that.
(38:10 - 38:22)
So what holds us back towards achieving connection is fundamentally fear. And I can't speak for the herd. I can only speak for those outside the gates or close to the gates.
(38:22 - 38:34)
We have to seek connection to the land like Erasmus did. I think those sort of hunting courses are beautiful because it sparks something. It spirals into a need to explore something greater.
(38:35 - 39:06)
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head with the time thing because you do need to have time. If you're on the grind, you know, 10, 12 hours a day, you know, and then if you have a lot of responsibilities and family to take that time away to go hunt or to butcher an animal, like it takes time also, as opposed to I just swung by the supermarket and picked up a couple of ribeyes, threw them on the grill, and there we go. So yeah, I'm not, again, I'm not sort of speaking ill of people that are doing that.
(39:06 - 39:26)
And I think, you know, seeking meat as sustenance is the first step in realizing connection and the importance of nutrition. It's a gateway that opens up all these possibilities first to get your health in order through the consumption of nutrient-dense foods. It doesn't necessarily just need to be meat.
(39:26 - 40:05)
It can be, you know, well-grown vegetables and fruit that are grown in an organic setting on good soils. The entry point into that realm outside the gates is nutrition. How do I nourish my body so that I might free my mind? But to do that, look, time is a critical thing because people are so energetically depleted after these days that just strip them of their energy and power in these jobs that take away, these jobs that take away their autonomy and sovereignty through bureaucratic mechanisms.
(40:05 - 40:30)
I mean, most jobs are so laden with this evil that is metastatic and parasitic bureaucracy that people are just depleted. So at the end of the day, what they want to do is just pick up a simple meal, order a takeaway, have some alcohol to calm the nerves and, you know, some hedonistic treats and so forth just to be able to regulate themselves. It's a tragic set of circumstances.
(40:31 - 40:42)
Yeah. Yeah, and to the people you were talking about, the ones that are more at the edge of the paddock, you know, that care a little bit more about freedom. I mean, there's levels to the food thing.
(40:42 - 41:04)
I'm not saying everyone's going to go out there and hunt. And so, sure, do you even know where your food comes from? Like, if you're a meat eater, do you know the farm? Do you know the person who butchered your food as well? So it's like, sure, you don't need to pick up a rifle or a bow or learn how to hunt. But what are the different levels of it that then go down to the supermarket where you're getting factory farmed meat and you have no clue where it comes from? So, you know.
(41:05 - 41:17)
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think, you know, there's a big difference between a cattle fed in a feedlot that is extremely sick, cramped for room, you know, in its own waste products like that.
(41:17 - 41:31)
That cattle lives poorly. And that karma, you know, to use a Vedantic philosophy, that negative energy that that poor animal carries has to translate into the consumer. Like, there is a great sin in putting these animals through that.
(41:32 - 42:02)
And I'm not saying that I'm absolved of that transgression of holding my own cattle in these paddocks, but largely speaking, they are given an element of freedom and care. You know, a few cattle I picked up from up north and they were held in a farm that was super crowded. They've arrived with liver flukes, skeletal, and I picked them up at a good price, but I will nourish them back to health, you know, on the land because I look after my land very, very well.
(42:03 - 42:18)
And that's what this game of farming is. And it's not free of sin, trust me. You know, we sell cattle and we separate mom and calf and, you know, the mothers cry in pain for three, four days.
(42:19 - 42:41)
And it absolutely breaks my heart. But I am aware, I'm conscious of the process that it takes to deliver that beef on the shelf, which most people are not. So they would deem a farmer such as myself a cruel man or a hunter, a cruel man, yet they've got no clue what happens.
(42:41 - 42:56)
So it's a sense of disconnection, a lack of consciousness. Their perspective is very narrow. And when your consciousness is narrow, well, it's not just narrow in the realms of nutrition, it's probably narrow in many aspects.
(42:56 - 43:04)
And this is what we're fighting against. It's that apathy and lack of perspective. Yeah.
(43:04 - 43:24)
How many animals do you have? Like, what does your farm look like? What does it consist of? You know, do you focus on fruit trees as well, vegetables, different types of animals? Yeah, look, I've got quite a number of cattle. It's quite a large commercial-sized farm. I don't grow any crop on it.
(43:24 - 43:46)
Cropping generally is a very labour-intensive process and it's not something that I'm interested in. There's a few wild fruit trees that grant a few ugly fruit during summer, but that's the beauty of it is when fruit is wild, it's a fairly ugly thing. It's not this beautiful, pretentious thing that you pick up in a supermarket that lacks blemishes.
(43:47 - 43:53)
It's beautiful and tasty. It's nutritious, but it's seasonal. Fruit is seasonal on this farm and it's on wild trees.
(43:53 - 44:15)
I've got plenty of wild goats here that we've got to control the numbers of them and so I do hunt them and we gather them sometimes as well. There's not much money in goats, although I don't quite understand that because there's such an incredible source of protein. Did you try some of that goat that you hunted? Well, yeah, that was the whole thing.
(44:15 - 44:31)
The first day of the five days is we went through the process of hunting and butchering the goat and the chef that was there, that's all the meat that we ate was the goat prepared in a bunch of different ways used for different meals. Yeah, it's beautiful. Yeah, it was delicious.
(44:32 - 44:59)
We actually also, for practice, we had air rifles and we went out hunting squirrels and the last day, like 10 minutes before we were to finish and head back to wind things up, I shot my first animal and it was a squirrel. Iron sights, no scope, I'm proud. I don't know how far away it was but it was like, whoa, man, that was a real thing.
(44:59 - 45:31)
Granted, it's a squirrel and I have an interesting relationship with squirrels because we have ground squirrels here in Southern California that love to go after our fruits and vegetables and over the years, I've been a little frustrated. So, there was that part of me that was like, yeah, fuck you, squirrel, I got you, you know? And then also like, man, this is a live animal and we decided to process it and I skinned it and my friend taught me how to kind of clean. It was pretty simple, how to clean a squirrel and we ended up cooking it that night and I had squirrel, you know? That's brilliant.
(45:32 - 45:35)
That's an awesome year. That's beautiful. And it wasn't that bad.
(45:36 - 46:28)
So, if you told me 10 years ago, in 10 years, I'd be telling you how I eat squirrel, I'd probably be like, really? But yeah, I mean, if you're going to kill an animal, I mean, and especially if it has meat on it, then I feel like on some level, it's your duty to honor the animal and eat it. Now, I know hunting and meat eating is controversial to some people and they're ethical considerations that some people make arguments about, but I don't know, man. It's only ethically controversial or a paradox to those that are disconnected, you know? On my farm here and on neighboring farms, we've got a huge pig problem, right? And these pigs are so destructive to crops, not so much to my property, it's a cattle property, but they're hugely destructive to the fencing that we put in.
(46:28 - 47:03)
So, I've got to keep the numbers down. So, we kill a lot of pigs, but the crop farmers that farm grain, right, which is used to feed the pretentious in urban regions, right, those that espouse that they consume a bloodless diet, the whole concept of a bloodless diet is so flawed because there are so many pigs that die in Australia to allow that grain farming to occur. And that, again, goes back to what I said.
(47:03 - 47:12)
It's a sense of disconnection. They can't preach morality because they don't know the truth. They're only seeing their very narrow perspective.
(47:12 - 47:27)
So, I mean, there's so much battles online, and I guess I used to sort of get involved with them and so forth, but I don't get myself involved in them anymore. I just refuse to buy into all that polarity. You know, I just do what I do.
(47:28 - 47:45)
Yeah, you do what you do, and then you can do what you do. As long as you allow me the freedom to live my life the way I see fit, I'll do the same to you. I think the problem is when people become a little bit morally superior and virtue signal and think they're better than you because they don't eat meat.
(47:46 - 47:58)
Yeah, and it speaks to moral absolutism, which I believe is a curse, which a lot of ideologues can do. And as Nietzsche said, we murdered God, right? He said that. And he didn't speak to atheism.
(47:58 - 48:16)
He said, we've killed God. Like, metaphysically, we've got his blood on our hands. What ridiculous thing will we dream of so we can worship? And that's fundamentally what a lot of these moral arguments regarding diet have become.
(48:17 - 48:35)
It's a form of replacing one form of worship with another, and that's why they can deal in moral absolutism, which is a very black and white. As a farmer, I've just explained to you that I farm cattle. I am broken when I separate the mother and calf.
(48:35 - 48:43)
I go through pain, and yet I've got to do what I've got to do. So there's many areas of gray there. There is not just, I'm a good man or a bad man.
(48:44 - 49:00)
Well, there's so much nuance to that. And I think these people that argue about the black and white, the light and dark, evil and good, they miss the point. They've been drawn in by the duality, and that's a problem.
(49:01 - 49:04)
Yeah. Thanks, man. Now, I appreciate this conversation a lot.
(49:06 - 49:35)
I guess maybe to play devil's advocate a little bit for those that might be listening. Yeah, sure, there might not be such a thing as a bloodless diet. But I mean, is there such a thing as a reduced level of suffering diet? Well, I mean, that's, I think, one of the arguments is when people bring up the fact that how many animals, how many gophers, how many squirrels, how many whatever are killed in order to clear fields to grow corn and soy.
(49:35 - 49:43)
They're like, well, we're doing less harm. It's further down. There's been scientific studies.
(49:43 - 50:26)
Actually, I think it was done in Australia a number of years ago that shows, I can't remember the absolute numbers off the top of my head, but the amount of death to produce grain and fruit and vegetables is like many multiples higher than that which is required to feed someone whose diet is primarily meat. You know, a cattle, one cow could feed an entire family for a year and a half, right? As opposed to a bowl of cereal, right? If you extrapolate that over the year, I can tell you plenty of animals have died for that. And this is the nuance that people have to grasp.
(50:26 - 50:57)
That whole concept of a bloodless diet, it just doesn't exist. Yeah, got you. And what do you think about on an individual karmic level? Is there anything that's preferable in terms of, sure, it might not be bloodless to an extent, but when it comes to just the individual consuming something that has been more sentient than others? By the way, I agree with you philosophically.
(50:57 - 51:04)
I'm just putting the questions back. This is a brilliant question, actually, Joel. I have to be honest.
(51:04 - 51:37)
I do believe that to reach the deepest, deeper levels, there's an element of sacrifice that needs to occur, whether it's through fasting, abstinence, and sometimes even kind of letting go. To reach the self, you've got to let go of the ego a bit, a very unsettling journey, very, very unsettling journey. When I eat well, when I exercise, when I consume meat and other nutrient-dense foods, I'm very much wrapped up in me, pran.
(51:37 - 51:59)
I've got to maintain my health, right? But if I am to reach that deeper level, there is almost a sense of having to let go of that. I think fasting is an example of that. Prolonged fasting in particular, you break down your own muscle, bone, fat in the process of reaching an element of clarity.
(52:00 - 52:15)
I've said it before, I love aging. I love aging. I love the fact that I'm breaking down, that I'm getting older because there is more clarity in my own decay, as my body is fundamentally, to use a grotesque term, rotting.
(52:15 - 52:39)
I am becoming more clear and conscious. And so I get what you're trying to say, which is that a lot of these great sages of India and so forth, they eat a plant-based diet. I think they do that because they are fundamentally sacrificing their body in the pursuit of greater awareness.
(52:40 - 52:53)
So it's a sacrifice. Yeah. Yeah, I think also too, it's interesting to think about historically, for so much of human history, we were hunters and gatherers.
(52:53 - 53:15)
And for people to stand on their pedestals and soapboxes and be like, a huge part of our history was based on eating meat. And to be like, all that and where we came from was evil and wrong, just seems ridiculous to me. Well, it's anti-mankind, really.
(53:16 - 53:36)
It's a form of self-loathing. Remember I said at the center of the paddock where they graze, unwilling to move from where they stand, there is a pain, right? And that pain has to manifest not only through mindless consumption, but a form of self-loathing. And you will see it in modern day society.
(53:36 - 53:52)
I mean, I see it all the time. A lot of these disenfranchised people claim that we must cull populations and reduce farming and stop farming altogether and so forth. It's an anti-human rhetoric.
(53:52 - 54:05)
It's a Malthusian mindset, which actually deviates from the divine. And it's a horrible, horrible way to think about things. We have to respect where we came from.
(54:05 - 54:21)
And I understand what Connor Joel's saying is what is the karmic aspects of taking another animal's life. I get that. And I get that we need to sacrifice to have some clarity.
(54:22 - 54:45)
But that whole rhetoric of us not appreciating our origin, our primal roots, that to me is a lack of knowledge about the past. And a species that is unaware of its history can never create a future. They are forever trapped in that recursive time loop.
(54:46 - 54:59)
It's horrific. If I can- And I also, I just want to real quickly say, I have friends that are plant-based or vegans and I have the utmost respect for them. And they tend to not be ones that look down on me as some evil killer.
(54:59 - 55:09)
So there's a difference there. I think it's those people that are like we talked about earlier, like moral absolutists is where it kind of rubs me the wrong way. Yeah, absolutely.
(55:10 - 55:23)
Yeah. If I can return and serve again, I guess your initial comment, Yerasmos, in terms of rejecting our history. Like also you could argue that a big part of human history is slavery and human murder and all the rest of it.
(55:23 - 55:38)
No, I hear you, man. I mean, I don't claim to have all the answers and nor do I think everyone should hunt and everyone should eat me. It's the absolutism that I have an issue with in that regards.
(55:38 - 55:49)
And maybe, I don't know. Maybe one day we'll get to a point where we don't eat meat and we don't kill animals. But again, blood will still be on the hands of everyone that eats because things need to die.
(55:50 - 56:04)
Like nothing lives forever. And if you're cultivating land, if you're removing a natural ecosystem to clear way to grow certain things, there are things that are going to displace and there are things that are going to die. Absolutely.
(56:04 - 56:25)
And I think we'll reach the stage of a bloodless diet when we transcend our own flesh and blood, when our consciousness is fundamentally unlinked from our corporeal bodies is when we establish a bloodless diet. Till then, it doesn't matter. Even if nutrition is packed into a pill, that nutrition has to come from somewhere, which is the soil.
(56:26 - 56:36)
There is no other way of growing nutrition outside of that. So it's a tricky one. It's a tricky one.
(56:36 - 56:54)
And the important thing is making sure that we don't deliver judgment on others. You do you and I'll do me. But I'm not out here protesting people that choose to eat in a way that destroys farmlands.
(56:54 - 57:04)
I'm kind of out here just raising awareness and that's the end of that. I don't think we're capable of judging another human being. Yeah.
(57:04 - 57:39)
Thank you, man. What is your perspective or, I guess, personal relationship with, I guess, death in terms of, I'm talking primarily human life, what is the real role of the elderly and the death cycle for a human in your understanding? Big question, Joel. I've had a fascination with death ever since I was a child, not a morbid one, but just a curiosity.
(57:40 - 57:50)
I've always been a curious child. And as I've grown older, I've lost that curiosity. I was actually reflecting on it yesterday during my 20s and 30s.
(57:50 - 58:08)
I lost curiosity and became more rational and became deeply unhappy as a man. But since re-sparking my curiosity, I'm very much more childlike in my approach to everything. I ask questions and I research, I read.
(58:08 - 58:21)
And death for me has been a source of fascination. I'm actually fascinated about my own impending mortality. And it makes some people very uncomfortable when I say that.
(58:22 - 58:41)
But I actually look forward to when I die. Saying that, I'm not saying that I'm not appreciating life. I'm appreciating every moment, every minute that I spend with my children and wife and people that I love is deeply, it means something to me.
(58:41 - 58:56)
I'm making memories for that repository, which is that deep unconscious. I'm merely a camera, an instrument for something bigger. So I'm going to give that something a great time.
(58:56 - 59:09)
I'm going to give it experience. But when death finally comes, it's a lifting off the veil, right? Because you've got to remember something, Joel. We have this vision, which we think is immutable.
(59:09 - 59:27)
Yet we see less than 1% of the light spectrum. We've got these years that hear things, but we hear less than 1% of the auditory spectrum. Why? We are limited by our own five senses, by our own nerves.
(59:27 - 1:00:05)
So death is an unleashing of your consciousness from the capacitor or the limiter, which is our flesh and blood. I'm very fascinated by Vedantic philosophy because it says that your true self is God, right? And that sounds blasphemous to anyone who's from an Abrahamic faith, but even the Messiah, the Redeemer, Jesus Christ, spoke to that when the Pharisees were persecuting him. He said, ye are gods, right? As in there is something divine about every single one of us.
(1:00:06 - 1:00:30)
And I think at the deepest levels, death is a fusion with the self, where your consciousness becomes the singularity. And that's hard for people to visualize because what I'm fundamentally saying is we are gods. We are a deep awareness.
(1:00:31 - 1:00:51)
But people interpret that from an egoic perspective, where I'm saying, if we are gods, then we are omnipresent and omnipotent and all-powerful. That's looking at it from an egoic sense. I'm saying we are consciousness, and consciousness collapses into one awareness.
(1:00:52 - 1:01:08)
And I'm very, very confident of that. And people say, well, show me the evidence. To ask for evidence is to ask for a corporeal reductionistic data-based system that's typical of a world ruled by technocracy, with the high priest being the scientist.
(1:01:09 - 1:01:42)
I'm coming from imagination. I'm coming from the realm of thought and dream and myth. And it's so interesting to me that almost all religions, when you strip away the commodification of them and the levers of control that have been used to control population, they are all basically saying the same thing, that we're all just one and love thy neighbor makes so much more sense in that context, doesn't it? Yeah, definitely, man.
(1:01:45 - 1:02:19)
It's interesting to think about that perspective universally in our current, I guess, emanation when it comes to concepts like love thy neighbor. Is everyone worthy of that level of love? Despite us all coming from the same source on some deeper level, like what role do behaviors and actions and self-responsibility in this existence play in that? It's a beautiful question. I think we have to have boundaries, Pio.
(1:02:20 - 1:02:48)
I think an existence without boundaries is problematic because we, like Joel, for instance, or Pran, or Erasmus, we are possessed by specific archetypes, those primal currents, right? And we think we are having thoughts. No, we are possessed by thoughts, right? And this strips away individuality and free will. What I'm talking to is a deterministic cosmos.
(1:02:50 - 1:03:16)
But once your self starts becoming aware, you can step outside yourself and observe, but what you'll see is people possessed by darker archetypes. And to allow them into your boundaries would mean that you're letting problems into your life. So you need to establish your gates and allow people very selectively into that inner sanctum.
(1:03:17 - 1:03:25)
So love them, but love them from afar is what I'm saying. Don't unravel your boundaries. I remember a very dark point in my life.
(1:03:25 - 1:03:34)
All my boundaries had unraveled. Probably my lowest point, I couldn't go to the shopping mall. I could sense everything around me.
(1:03:35 - 1:03:43)
And I'd look at a person and just weep. I could see their pain and I'd unravel completely. And that's a very, very dangerous place to be.
(1:03:44 - 1:03:54)
What I've learned is to be selective in the way I dive into the deep unconscious. Now I'm back on the vessel upon the ocean. I know my ego, I know myself.
(1:03:55 - 1:04:08)
And sometimes this process of individuation carries with it narcissistic traits. When you're starting to understand who you are, you really have to delve into who you are. So there's this deep focus on self.
(1:04:09 - 1:04:35)
And some people get caught in that recursive loop forever. And that is pathological narcissism and messianic traits, et cetera, that we've discussed before. But now when I dive into the deep unconscious and I do it through the process of active imagination and music, et cetera, not through meditation, I've got an anchor from which I can pull myself out and back onto the ship.
(1:04:35 - 1:04:41)
And that to me is my purpose as a man and my duty as a father and a husband. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
(1:04:41 - 1:05:02)
Brian, so just because I'm trying to get some clarity here, because when we talk about oneness and things of that nature, so at the deepest levels, we're all one and we're all connected. But then in life, we talked about having boundaries. How can you have boundaries if separation is an illusion? Yeah.
(1:05:02 - 1:05:41)
You know what I mean? So what's the delineation? Is it in the realm of ego and flesh and blood that we are these separate individual beings? And then as we dive deeper and deeper, we connect to that, let's say, that ocean of interconnectedness and oneness? Absolutely. You've hit the nail on the head, right? And to dive into those deep layers is not fundamentally, you know, it's not compatible with existence. With life, right? Like what use am I to my children if I spent my entirety in meditation, right? Yeah.
(1:05:41 - 1:05:58)
Well, I don't teach them anything. It's actually, in a way, it's almost a selfish existence. And I do sometimes ponder the life of these Buddhist monks that choose solitude, perhaps their older souls and they're on their final stages of their reincarnation cycle, whatever it is.
(1:05:58 - 1:06:16)
But to me, I need to have a strong ego. I need to be upon that vessel so I can grant my children the ability to help navigate themselves. If I'm constantly immersed in these deeper layers, that's fundamentally a form of psychosis.
(1:06:17 - 1:06:33)
And, you know, you're almost dead to your society. So my children didn't choose to come into this world. I've brutally snatched them out of a realm of souls and given them these bodies of flesh myself and my dear wife.
(1:06:33 - 1:06:48)
So it is my duty to kind of equip them with the weaponry to go to war in this realm. Because this realm, this four-dimensional reality that we exist in is no utopia, right? It's no utopia. We know this.
(1:06:48 - 1:07:07)
We are in a very difficult and dense realm where there is a massive spiritual war being waged. And so I need to be able to equip those I love with the shield and the swords to be able to combat that. Yeah.
(1:07:07 - 1:07:27)
Pran, are you open to the possibility, I'm not saying this for everyone, but when we talk about these individuals from, let's say, the East potentially that are looking to transcend flesh and blood and connect to those deeper layers, that that ultimately could be a trauma response? Yeah, absolutely. It's a form of dissociation. I think you've hit the nail on the head.
(1:07:27 - 1:07:33)
Absolutely hit the nail on the head. I don't mean to speak ill of these spiritual types. I see them on social media a lot.
(1:07:36 - 1:07:42)
They're always in the light. They're always in the light. But they have fundamentally forgotten the dark.
(1:07:43 - 1:08:02)
And Jung said it beautifully, right? When we pray to the light and we constantly focus on the light, the dark grows in silence. And then we are forced to go to war, world war, to discover the wretches that we are. And that's the issue, mate.
(1:08:02 - 1:08:21)
I think people dissociate from this very, very difficult reality. But we're here to play this game and play it well, straddle both sides. Can I play within the matrix is the big question that needs to be asked rather than existing outside the matrix.
(1:08:21 - 1:08:44)
We have a responsibility within this difficult realm to the greater self, the self thrust itself into a difficult zone. It's like a hall of mirrors where the self walks into a hall of mirrors and it's looking at all these reflections which are fundamentally us. But within that hall of mirrors is one consciousness and it is trying to learn.
(1:08:45 - 1:09:00)
But it requires us as an instrument. So I say, well, use me as an instrument, go for it because that's what we are. But to speak like this strips away that whole concept of I'm an individual and I've got free will and so forth.
(1:09:00 - 1:09:22)
No, the only free will you've got is the free will to observe a predetermined set of events that are occurring. And that's what synchronicity and deja vu and so forth is. It's the self having a flashback of something that had programmed itself well before it stepped into the hall of mirrors.
(1:09:23 - 1:09:51)
So you don't think we as individuals have free will at all to make certain choices? Like, is it just like a program that's running that's guiding you to, let's say, even say yes to come on the podcast with us again? Yeah, no, I don't think we got free will in the way that the Abrahamic faiths determine it. It is that if you make wrong choices, you burn eternally in hellfire. I don't think that.
(1:09:51 - 1:10:15)
I think the actual game itself has a certain amount of energy within it, okay? And it's like any role-playing game. Your character has the ability to make choices, right? But they're fundamentally predetermined by the programmer of that role-playing game. And there is a final endpoint that can be reached.
(1:10:15 - 1:10:37)
And that endpoint can't really be changed. I think the only free will that we've got is to step back and become a bit of an observer of your own life. It's not dissociation, feel the emotions, but understand that your true self pre-programmed your fate before it stepped into this game.
(1:10:38 - 1:11:45)
So are you saying you think there's free will in terms of there's options that we have to choose from, but there's not unlimited options? There's a predetermined set of options? Am I understanding that correctly? Yeah, that's exactly right. Because if you think about it in a fifth dimensional state, fundamentally, beautifully done by Kip Thorne and Christopher Nolan in Interstellar, right? Such a great movie because there's so many scientific concepts in there that can be broken down. But when he's in the Tesseract, which is this fifth dimensional place where time is experienced both past, present and future, how can there be free will when time in itself is a creation in a dimension above us, time is experienced simultaneously, right? So within that, you can see in the Tesseract and in Interstellar, there is a series of events all kind of filed away.
(1:11:45 - 1:11:59)
So a few predetermined choices that he can take. And I don't know how many of these predetermined parts there are. The game is so complex and obviously coded by an exquisite coder or programmer.
(1:12:00 - 1:12:19)
But I don't think you're granted free will in the sense of you can rise above the game. I think there is a certain amount of fate written into our code. Karl Jung actually wrote to this.
(1:12:20 - 1:12:39)
Some of his more esoteric writings are not well known. He said, if you look at a murder victim's true past or the part that's been coded for him, you will see that he has chosen to murder himself, as in the self makes the choices before it sets into the game. Yeah, for that particular ego.
(1:12:41 - 1:12:58)
Lots to contemplate and chew on. Interesting, trying to wrap my head around that for sure. Yeah, man, because definitely seems like there's been like key threshold or perchance moments in my life where key decisions could have led me in different directions, which are drastically different.
(1:12:59 - 1:13:34)
And it seems as though the more that I learn to understand myself, the more I build coherence, the more I grow authentic self-esteem, the more power I have to make higher decisions in my life. So maybe like more options and more beneficial and better options. Maybe they're always there, but I guess they become more visible and more accessible as you gaze more inwardly and do self-work.
(1:13:34 - 1:13:40)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can see it in your writing. You're within your psyche.
(1:13:40 - 1:13:47)
You're navigating your own psyche. You've gone within. And it's just like the Redeemer said, the kingdom is within.
(1:13:48 - 1:14:13)
You're now walking the kingdom, right? You're navigating these dark beings, light beings, etc., all within that realm. And the further in you go, the more chances of meeting your authentic self, which pre-programmed this whole process for you, that your authentic self wants something out of Joel. Joel's the ego.
(1:14:13 - 1:14:43)
Joel's the avatar of flesh. But your experiences and your emotions go towards the evolution of that little fragment of the self, which is your soul, which then leads back into that greater repository that allows it to grow. And this is what we struggle sometimes as a society, or as a species to wrap our head around, is that our purpose might be for something greater than ourselves.
(1:14:44 - 1:15:05)
So what I'm speaking to is fundamentally ego dissolution. And that makes a lot of what I write about or talk about not so popular, because it feels like I'm stripping power away from the individual. But I think if we thought collectively like that as a species, there certainly wouldn't be wars.
(1:15:06 - 1:15:15)
We would kind of work together in a more efficient way. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting the way that you're framing it.
(1:15:15 - 1:16:03)
Because for me, it's like I feel as though, I guess from a Randian perspective, that as a society, we need to embody more healthy selfishness in the sense that we're currently at a place where we think the most moral thing that we can possibly do is to continually sacrifice ourselves. Yet, what is the deeper place that that sacrifice is coming from? I feel like it's coming from an external collective moral code that one feels they must adhere to through mechanisms of guilt and obligation, etc. As opposed to what if the greatest thing that I can actually do for the collective and for humanity is walk this individuation process, which also can be seen as an inherently selfish act.
(1:16:04 - 1:16:34)
But for me, it's like the more that I become who I am born to be, the more that I tap into the deeper wellspring within me, and I see that reflected external to me in greater purpose and greater mission. Despite that, from the outset, being a selfish act to walk away from a family business, to move across the world, to say no to so much more than I ever have before. That's right.
(1:16:35 - 1:17:10)
Sorry to cut you off, Joel, but I've just got the stream of thought, which is you established clear boundaries, which I said was critical. Additionally, the initial process of individuation to the herd or the sheep appears to be narcissism. They perceive that as a narcissistic act, you going inward to really understand yourself, because these people get their morality externally, right? But true morality is only possible once you've really united those aspects of yourself.
(1:17:10 - 1:17:41)
Once you've understood your darkness, therein lies true morality. And so, what you're forging is you're, allegorically or archetypically, you are Moses going into the mountains to forge these commandments, and you're doing it for yourself, rather than being told to the rest of the herd that you must follow these rules. You are writing your own rules, and society will hate that.
(1:17:42 - 1:18:02)
They will absolutely hate that. Everyone becomes an Agent Smith within the Matrix, once you've got an individual doing that. And the Matrix spoke beautifully, didn't it? When you've got a member of the herd witnessing someone from outside the Matrix, aware that they were outside the Matrix coming in, Agent Smith would come into that body.
(1:18:03 - 1:18:35)
Everyone becomes an Agent Smith around these dinner tables when you speak of your plans openly. And the more it goes on, you speak less of your plan, because you know that you're on this path for yourself and those that you truly love. But part of that requires letting go of society's preconceived notions of what love is, that I must be faithful to my father, mother, brother, and sister, because they're my bloodline.
(1:18:35 - 1:19:02)
Although you respect them, you love them, but you've got your boundaries that allow you to walk this path of individuation, because not all people are on that path. You must protect yourself against the darker archetypes that will continue to keep you trapped within this illusion, because that is their role. You know, when we talk of demons or dark entities, they're not dark so much as they are the sentinels of this program.
(1:19:02 - 1:19:09)
They're the ones designed to keep you forever looped in the center of the paddock. They don't want you getting out. That's their role.
(1:19:09 - 1:19:19)
They were designed for that. But, you know, once you step outside, those darker archetypes are no longer really dark, so you just see them for what they are. Yeah, that's right.
(1:19:19 - 1:19:29)
Which is primarily weak, really. Yeah, yeah, that's right. They don't really have as much power as we think they do.
(1:19:29 - 1:19:55)
They were designed for that purpose. It was like Agent Smith in The Matrix, right? He was designed to be a guardian within that matrix, and he resented his role but had no way to transcend it. There was an event in the part one of The Matrix, towards the end, where he's liberated from The Matrix and he runs havoc within it, but fundamentally, again, he's eliminated.
(1:19:56 - 1:20:22)
These things, these archons or sentinels of the simulation believe they're truly envious of our ability to see beyond the game, and therein lies our free will, as opposed to these sentinels that lack the free will. We are more dear to the creator than the angels and demons that patrol this matrix, if that makes sense. Yeah.
(1:20:22 - 1:21:09)
And it's curious, from the perspective of Earth being a school or a playground to learn and to evolve, the real role that these sentinels and these Agent Smiths play is for the Neo's to develop courage, for them to learn their own power, for them to know themselves, for them to build upon that as well. Neo never knows himself as Powerful Neo if it isn't for the Agent Smiths. 100%.
That's right. And Neo's character is the Christ character, and that's what he's built on. And Agent Smith is the anti-Christ character, right? But beyond them is an unfathomable energy that allows these two polarities to spark up a simulation to play the game.
(1:21:09 - 1:21:24)
Because if Agent Smith didn't exist, you'd have complete utopia, right? If the Devil didn't exist, you'd have complete utopia. And if Christ didn't exist, you'd have a dystopia. There is nothing to be learned from that.
(1:21:24 - 1:21:46)
It's through these two polarities that you can spark creation, which allows our souls to be able to navigate and learn and transmute, which then feeds back to the greater self, which in itself is a process of evolution. It seeks to evolve and grow. And we've got a responsibility to that self to give it a damn good time.
(1:21:46 - 1:22:11)
I had this profound moment on the farm where I was sort of deep in thought about these sort of concepts that I often ponder and outside was my wife, and she's so in the moment with the three kids playing on the skateboard. And there I was able to step outside myself and think, well, I could either enjoy that moment or go back into my thought. And in that liminal space, I had free will.
(1:22:11 - 1:22:27)
And that's where free will exists. It's not so much that I could go outside and kind of play with them or be here. It's that ability to step outside and to be able to observe the actual events that are playing out, which, as I've said, I think are predetermined.
(1:22:29 - 1:22:44)
Man, this is deep. I love how broad-reaching this conversation has been. And that friction and that tension that you speak to that exists within that duality, that's really the catalyst for all of life.
(1:22:45 - 1:23:00)
And it's that which most people actually call evil, that which gives birth to life. Because if it wasn't for that friction, that tension, that resistance, then growth is not possible on any level. No.
(1:23:00 - 1:23:10)
And I had this profound moment in the mountains with my son. We'd just killed a nanny goat, and the baby was bleeding close by. And we didn't realize this nanny had a baby.
(1:23:11 - 1:23:17)
We didn't see it. And I'd shot it, and my son had butchered it. And we were sitting there, and this baby was bleeding.
(1:23:17 - 1:23:26)
And my son was really... He was emotional about it. He knew that we had to harvest meat. We hadn't eaten good quality protein for about a day or two.
(1:23:26 - 1:23:35)
And we needed that. But he said to me, Dad, there's a lot of devil in hunting, isn't there? And I said, yeah, absolutely, there is. There is.
(1:23:35 - 1:23:53)
And there's so much wisdom in that little statement, which is that, Dad, I love what I do in terms of hunting, but there is the devil in it. So the light in the act of hunting is that I'm going to feed my family. The dark in that act of hunting is I've got to take this mother's life, you know, this mother goat's life.
(1:23:54 - 1:24:09)
And that duality allows for there to be a story where a man and a boy can step into these hills and seek sustenance. Without those two, there is nothing. So, I think it's critical to understand duality.
(1:24:09 - 1:24:21)
Yeah. And, you know, really, all personal growth is growing the tolerance to withstand both of those opposites, you know? Absolutely. Yeah.
(1:24:21 - 1:24:37)
Most people want to avoid those and shy away from them. And, yeah, kind of wish upon that they weren't there. But I think engaging with them deeply, and as Rasmus often says, learning to sweat between the tension of opposites and building that capacity is what personal development really is.
(1:24:37 - 1:24:44)
Absolutely. And a lot of my writing reflects that. You know, I speak to a man's lust.
(1:24:44 - 1:24:59)
I speak to a man's rage. You know, very few people can ever speak about me because I'm speaking about myself, right? I'm essentially unraveling myself. And I understand that I contain both dark and light elements.
(1:25:00 - 1:25:18)
And that's what I'm a reflection of our creator, who is the creator of both the light and the dark. And therein lies our truth. Because we are closest to the creator because we embody exactly that, the light and the dark.
(1:25:18 - 1:25:32)
Whereas these creations or these emanations that have come forth, and we've called them the guardians of the simulation, they don't embody those halves. And they can never embody those halves. They serve a purpose to allow the game to exist.
(1:25:32 - 1:25:44)
And I don't mean to reduce it down to a game. It is not. It's an exquisite creation that is serving a huge purpose.
(1:25:46 - 1:26:04)
Man, I just appreciate you so much. I think you're just such a rare individual. You know, it's come from such a, you know, conventional medical background in many ways, yet not relinquish you going on your own personal journey, diving into the depths, you know, having this whole hunting branch of who you are as well.
(1:26:04 - 1:26:08)
I just appreciate the ability to have these conversations. And yeah, man, thank you. Thank you so much.
(1:26:09 - 1:26:27)
I really appreciate the platform you both have given me to speak on some of these thoughts. I don't do podcasts very much nowadays, because everyone kind of just expects me to talk about, you know, eating meat and vegetables. And they expect me to kind of, you know, engage that polarity that exists in nutrition and health.
(1:26:27 - 1:26:34)
I no longer engage it. So, you know, when you reached out, Joel, I've always loved your writing. I think you're a fantastic writer.
(1:26:34 - 1:26:42)
And, you know, both of you guys are just a pleasure to deal with. And I'll definitely do it again with you guys sometime in the future. Thank you so much, man.
(1:26:42 - 1:27:00)
We appreciate it. I guess in closing, is there anywhere that you'd like to direct our audience to engage with you further or to, you know, consume your content to a bigger capacity? Yeah, sure. Look, I write a lot of my thoughts on my Instagram profile.
(1:27:00 - 1:27:10)
I think it's an instantaneous platform in which to kind of push these thoughts out. I'm working on a book, but that'll be some years away. I think, you know, I'm not in a rush to push that out.
(1:27:10 - 1:27:24)
But my, you know, handle is Pran Yoganathan, which is just my name. And, you know, I speak to a wide variety of topics, physics, metaphysics, light, that, et cetera. And I just post whatever comes to mind.
(1:27:24 - 1:27:38)
Yeah. I mean, I love your content, you know, especially like your poetry. It's just particularly in today's day and age, with the continual rise of the homogenization that's taking place with AI in particular.
(1:27:39 - 1:27:46)
It's a breath of fresh air for sure, man. So keep doing you. I definitely recommend people to go check you out on Instagram.
(1:27:46 - 1:27:52)
And yeah, we'll do it again one day for sure. Everyone else, thank you for listening. Thank you, guys.
(1:27:52 - 1:28:32)
Thank you for sticking with us for another awesome episode of Here for the Truth. Every single Friday, Erasmus and I are interchanging and dropping fresh articles, diving deep into personal insights, our personal views on subjects that we're currently exploring and things that we're just navigating and just trying to share, I guess, more knowledge and, you know, explore the written word on a deeper level. So to sign up for our regular articles every single Friday, you can head to hereforthetruth.com forward slash Friday, simply input your email and every single Friday, expect a new article from either one of us.
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