Creative Status is a podcast about using creativity as a vehicle for improving your life by deconstructing ego, integrating the shadow self, and designing and manifesting a real life.
Every episode explores how the creative process can help you GROW REAL by moving towards wholeness in yourself by making the unconscious conscious.
In this episode of Creative Status, I had fun talking to Ranga Padmanabhan about many of my favourite topics:
-DEATH
-Dogs
-Guinea pigs
-Transcending the ego and its limitations as we move from a state of fragmentation to wholeness
-TRUST and the attitude required to live a real life without being so open-minded that your brains fall out
-Loads more
In short, this was a really fun but powerful conversation that covered a lot of ground and came to a foundational understanding that ultimately the best way to live life is to let life live throughh you; if you can do this then everything will take care of itself (but it often takes strength to hold your nerve on the way there).
Ranga is a really chill but wise guy who has learned a lot of lessons about being a REAL human being by experimenting with psychedelics, turning inwards, and looking at his own ‘stuff’ to find universal truths.
I really enjoyed this one and I hope you do too!
Stay real out there,
Oli Anderson
(Scroll down for show transcript)
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Show Transcript: Everything Takes Care of Itself
Intro
Oli Anderson: Oh hi there, Oli Anderson here, you’re listening to Creative Status – if this is the first time you’ve found the podcast, the welcome, this is a place where we talk about the creative process of being a human being, moving towards wholeness, stepping away from our egos, or sense of identity, and basically moving from a place of fragmentation to wholeness.
If you don’t know, my name is Oli Anderson, I’m a creative performance coach, but I also like talking about these philosophical themes around humanity, realness, creativity, that’s what the podcast is about. Today’s interview is with a guy called Ranga Padmanabhan.
Ranga is super cool. I met him on the internet and we go into some deep conversations. His whole thing is that he’s just trying to let go of all his labels. He’s used psychedelics to help him on that journey.
He’s learned loads of lessons. He’s trying to make peace with his own death, which is very important in my opinion. If you’ve heard the podcast before or you’ve read my books or anything, you know that I like to talk about death. Ultimately, this is just a really fun conversation coming up. We talk about all kinds of things. We talk about cats and dogs. We talk about death. We talk about psychedelics. We talk about the ego. We talk about fragmentation to wholeness. We talk about being a real human being.
There’s loads of cool stuff in here, loads of amazing insight. I’m so grateful that I found Ranga and got into this podcast. So yeah, really hope you enjoyed this episode. Loads of insight, like I just said.
If you find it helpful, if you unlock some stuff and block some stuff, unleashes the real you, then please leave a review somewhere. Ranga, thank you so much for your time. Everybody else, hope you enjoy this. Here we go. Boom.
Interview
Oli Anderson: Oh, hi there, Ranga. Thank you so much for joining me today on this episode of Creative Status. I feel like this is about to be a very deep conversation, so I’m a little bit nervous. But before we get into it, would you like to introduce yourself and tell people what you do, what you’re all about, and what you want to get from this conversation?
Ranga Padmanabhan: Yes. Hello, Oli.
Thank you for having me here. Yeah, I don’t do well with definitions because I always feel like definitions are very constricting. We kind of tend to say what we are doing at that point. So in that terms, I’ll tell you, I’m just, there is just one thing I’m doing here is working towards being equanimous towards my death.
Oli Anderson: Wow.
Ranga Padmanabhan: Because the nature of her reality is very temporary, it’s always changing. And I have come to my realizations in psychedelics that it’s our clinging to that some kind of stability in the sensitivity that brings suffering. And I have a couple of dogs and few guinea pigs, you know, who if I have given good health reasons, like if I live out of them, they’re going to have to witness their death. And I believe that attachment is quite strong. And it’s something that I have to work towards.
I also believe that, you know, I don’t know if you know about existential therapy by Dr. Irvin Yalom, he suggests that the when we are sad about the death of other beings, we are internally raising awareness to our own death. We might not get it to our conscious awareness, but it’s just that our own death is going to come that makes us so fearful and not just the sadness that we are not going to see the being that has departed.
So I would like, as you asked me, why am I just working towards my death? Any being it could be. So yes, we can start from there.
Oli Anderson: That is an amazing place to start the conversation from. So we’ve been talking literally for two minutes and we’re already onto the death topic, which is basically one of my favorite topics in the whole world. Because like you, I am also kind of working towards my own death and just embracing the journey between now and then whenever it happens to be.
And I found that by thinking about death daily and just reflecting on it, it’s made me like way more present, way more alive, on an even deeper level potentially. It’s made me move more and by move more, I just mean that it’s got me out of this static idea about what it means to be me, “Oli Anderson”. In fact, it’s helped me to realize that that is just an idea that really there is no me. I’m just like a thing experiencing a relationship with itself and everything else.
And by living like that, it’s helped me to basically just create a life that I really love and enjoy. So let’s follow this thread a little bit further. What have you learned on this journey so far of embracing and I guess facing your own inevitable demise?
Ranga Padmanabhan: Yeah, you’ve wonderfully worded it. Before I get into that, it’s beautiful what you’re doing with respect to at least thinking about death. It might not be the actual thing and it might not even be what you think about death in your altered state of consciousness.
For example, on a high edible of cannabis or on a micro dosing of psychedelics, it can be much more, it could bring much more fears and sensations in your body. But even the thinking of death is helpful to ground us. I kind of try to do that every time when I… I’m caught up in a situation which I prefer to not have that particular emotion.
Sometimes I get angry at my co-workers at my work and I know at that point I have gotten to a point where I believe anger is not even justified for a minute second. The righteousness is not gets us through.
So I have to drop it, but how do I drop it? And it’s that nature of death right there. Everything here, everything on this planet here is going to pass away. So why delay any moment of rejoicing with that being?
Oli Anderson: Yeah, yeah. Well, I was just going to say that’s why the death thing is so important, I think, because it shows you the value of your time. Like time is the most precious thing that we have. And if you can understand that, it affects the choices that you make. You’ll either choose something real or unreal, which I’m sure we’ll get into as we go down this rabbit hole we’ve opened up.
But with that example you’ve just given of anger and the righteousness and all the expectations and bullshit that come with it. If you are not conscious and aware that you’re a temporary being, then that’s when you start to feed into all the negative, fragmentary, unreal things and experiences that are here on life’s menu.
But basically what you seem to be saying is you’re so aware of your mortality that it’s made you more real, it’s made you more alive, it’s made you more virtuous even if you want to throw that word out there.
Ranga Padmanabhan: Yes. So you asked me about how this started or perhaps like who, what was your question before this thing? Basically just what have you learned by putting yourself on this path of… What have I learned? I think more than learning I would say what has happened along the steps of the path. So I think my initial psychedelic trips were pretty, pretty heavier in the sense that they would be focused on my personal storylines.
I had these kind of traumas from my childhood or these kind of abuses from my so and so times that I have so much anger towards them. But my first few trips were initially about dropping the baggage and it put me in a state of such present moment. I wasn’t thinking about things, I was able to be there and slowly further on and on the trips offered something new. Like whenever I took a psychedelic it did not take me into a personal storyline like why I am going through this.
It broke all that and question at the fundamental level. I keep saying I, what is this I? And that’s the moment I look back and you see that it’s… You can give this, this I is convenient for conversation but if you see it’s nature is always changing. We pick up things, we have so many things going on like maybe I get it in my head, I become dumb, I don’t speak this language, I don’t communicate with the world but there is still an I that within me that resides.
So I was being able to be aware of that particular part during my subsequent psychedelic trips and to be honest in my psychedelic trips thinking about that just was kind of very natural in the sense that it made sense.
Right now I would be much more sadder knowing that oh fuck my dogs are gonna die in a few years versus like on the on a peak of let’s say 300 MCG acid I would be like yeah it’s the nature of the reality like why what is that to be sad about you know it’s everything is changing form like nothing ever that dies here goes anywhere you see like physically you die your body let’s say it’s burnt or buried based on whatever customs and traditions people follow but either way it becomes smoke and goes to the air ashes to the ground or when you’re buried food for the other beings and where are we going right there is no going anywhere you know even physically this concept of I is just a very temporary thing you know that’s where I think the awareness comes into play whatever we call us I I think the I between me and I between you is very common right.
It’s just the awareness I don’t think anything else is common between us as in like all other things are are temporary doesn’t matter like the language you speak it’s amazing we could connect and communicate in it but the height you are the color you are it doesn’t matter what you and I if you if I had to define and you had to define we would end up having the same definition because you and I are the same thing right and this this awareness that we are awareness is something that we try to have a technique to build towards like yeah sustain that awareness in this field rather than attaching ourselves with the ego which is ego I would say in this case would be a very an automatic reactive mechanisms that’s trying to survive which has been doing for ages now – it is just this temporary nature of things it is trying to hold on and you know create that and you can see it out there most of the things as you said when we do it out of a ego based mind we instead of if you have 10 minutes to live instead of searching for how to live the 11th minute we would live the 10 minutes that’s the lesson we have to learn instead of trying to expand what we got that can happen very naturally when we are here and now.
Oli: Hmm it all comes down to presence but when you’re truly present you are aware of wholeness. And this is something we talked about before, like I mentioned it every flipping day of my life. It all boils down to either wholeness or fragmentation.
When we have a fragmented relationship with our lives, we lack awareness because we are identifying with this concept that you’re talking about, the concept of I. And if we can put ourselves in some situation where we can transcend that either by having some kind of a peak experience where I don’t know, maybe we see something sublime in nature or we have an amazing love-making session or like we’re riding a motorbike really fast or we’re taking psychedelics that you’re talking about or we have a religious experience.
When we have a moment like that, we transcend the I and we connect back to wholeness for just a moment. And I think when we do that, it raises awareness, like we’ve said a few times now in this conversation, that we don’t, we’re just ideas. We don’t really exist in the way that we think we do. And when we can step back from that, that’s when life really opens up and we don’t actually have a fear of death anymore.
That’s what I found anyway. We don’t really have fear of being judged. We don’t have a fear of risk or all these kinds of things. We’re not afraid of uncertainty anymore. Because by getting an awareness of this wholeness and the fact that we are wholeness, like you just said, and I love the way you said it, the awareness that we are awareness, we can trust life and we can flow with it a lot more. But what I want to ask you now is you keep talking about this thing about the pets, the dogs and the guinea pigs.
And this is something that I think there’s something there probably that is going to teach us some stuff that’s quite interesting. So I think it’s fair to say best what you say and like I’m making an assumption about you. You’re not really scared of dying anymore. I like, is that is that fair to say?
Ranga: I don’t think so. I’m thinking that our ego is working so efficiently that it suppresses the fear of death to for us to function naturally. So I do not think the work can be done when the situation is not there. So we can try to project ourselves into the future and think that we might be okay. But I truly believe until the moment comes we won’t know. And each step along the way is all preparation for death in a way.
It goes so well and well together. And I the technique, any meditation technique you follow, it’s kind of what you said, to meditate is to be aware. You do not do anything. You cannot push or pull things. You just, you simply drop whatever it is and you watch. We kind of go with this so much of inertia in religions it would be called karma, but it’s just inertia of cause and effect and it’s going.
And all you’ve got to do is like, just stop and watch and it stops. The moment you’re aware of your ignorance, it stops being ignorance and it becomes awareness. Funny enough, it’s so paradoxical.
So many things are paradoxical, this plane of existence. And with respect to combating my own death, of course not. I definitely think there are steps along the way that I tend to deal with today’s thing.
I tend to maintain my equanimity, my present moment of awareness with whatever that is I’m doing could just be just sitting. So with respect to that, why I mentioned my dogs in the guinea pigs because when you have a human kid, according if everything goes well, they outlive you. You really do not have a chance to face that death. There is no learning, but with respect to dogs and now we got guinea pigs like three months back and their lifespan is five to seven years.
So you’re having that, if you have your diet properly and you’re going to live another 10 years, you’re going to have to witness the death and it’s pretty intense, these feelings that come to awareness. So for example, when I talk with you, it’s still in order for me to maintain a conversation without getting detracted in that emotion. My ego is suppressing the fear and getting you the content.
When I sit for one hour for meditation and if those thoughts originate, all I could think about is not think about what’s happening is this fear in mind is nothing but sensations in the body and these are changing and I just have to practice to remain calm with it and that’s all it is about and to answer your question again for the third time, I do not know until the day I die if I’m going to be frantic, jumping and running or I’m going to sit like, yes, I’ve had my life. This is good.
Oli: Maybe I need to reframe it because as you’re talking, it’s bringing me back to what you said right at the start. I think you use the word equanimity, it’s about having equanimity around your own death and I think I was a bit naive saying, yeah, you’re not scared and I was kind of projecting my own stuff because I like to think that I’m not scared of dying but you’re right, maybe I’ll get on my death bed and I’ll be terrified. Like I don’t know but right now, I have equanimity about my own death.
It doesn’t bother me. I know it’s coming and I feel like because I’ve got that awareness, I am making real choices every day. I’m making the choice towards wholeness and more expansion into wholeness as much as possible and I obviously I’m just human. We’re not always doing that but I think I have a very high degree of making real choices which is paying off in my life but if I think about animals in my life, in the way that you’re talking about, There’s definitely a contradiction between the way I see life and the way I feel about those animals. So the animal I’m thinking about is I don’t have my own dog.
I’m going to get one. But I have a friend whose dog, I dog say all the time, and I love this fucking dog so much. Like it’s actually crazy how much I love this dog.
I’ve made so many amazing memories, taking it out on walks and all that kind of stuff. But when I think about my death, I’m not projecting forwards and mourning anything. Like I’m not mourning the loss of myself, and I think it’s because I’ve kind of detached from the idea of myself. But if I think about the death of that dog, like I know that is going to depress me so much, even though it’s the same underlying principle. Like when that dog dies, okay, it’s going to return to a wholeness and like that dog is just an experience anyway.
It’s not filtering everything through ego and it’s present all the time and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Beautiful. Yeah. Yeah, but there’s a contradiction inside me between the way I attach to myself versus the way I attach to other people. And that attachment and dogs as well in this particular example.
And so what is going on there? Do you think like my attachment to that dog? Is it because, you know, I’m projecting positive qualities of my own shadow onto it or something or just I’m living vicariously through it as it’s present and like what do you think is going on? Like I’m not mourning the death of myself, but I’m already mourning the death of that dog in the way that you are with your dogs and your guinea pig.
Ranga: Yes, and I will go back to the part where I said that I think our subconscious is doing an extremely nice job suppressing our own fear of death to keep us functional, right?
Because we need to create that space and time, right? That is this meditation program. I do not know if you have heard about it.
It’s by S.N Goenka. It’s Vipassana. Vipassana.
So he has around 200-250 centers around the world, right? So the meditation program is basically 10 days silent retreat where they provide you accommodation and food and it’s all free and you know, donation based so that you do not go with any sort of why I paid for it. So I’m going to have to get something, you know, you really go as a recluse where you don’t have righteousness.
Like, you know, when someone is giving you food, you’re not going to complain. Sorry for adding those parts. But the whole point is for a person to go there for 10 days and they do tell you a technique, but the technique is going to be very simple and straightforward. It’s so simple that sometimes, you know, our ego might complicate it. It’s so simple. Just watch. Just watch. Keep watching.
Right? And what do I watch? You know, because my eyes are closed.
It’s a silent room. What am I going to watch? And watch whatever is happening within your body, right? And for 10 days, you do not talk to anyone. You do not have any sort of communication with anyone, even through eye contact and stuff. And you don’t read, you don’t write, you don’t engage your senses, right?
So these 10 days when you go, what happens, right? Like, now you’re creating the space in your consciousness for things to arise. Because we distract ourselves, you know, people, we, most of our problems happen with not processing grief, drama or abuse or whatever it can be, right? From minute to even so, so big, not processing it instantly, right?
Processing happens instantly, but we distract ourselves. Not that we choose it. It’s just that it becomes a coping mechanism or ego. It’s defense mechanisms that are built very young, right? It’s history passed on by hundreds of generations of people, right?
Generational drama. And it takes time for these things to stop and for us to realize that, oh, I am actually like none of these baggages that I came with, right? But in order for you to realize that you’re not these baggages, you need time to sit. But you never get time to sit because these baggages make you keep running, right? And it’s a loop. It’s a loop.
It gets so tiring. Some were lucky. Like, I consider myself very lucky because I don’t know what got me into psychedelics. It would have been something similar to, you know, I was, I really like weed, right? Weed was good. And someone introduced psychedelics saying that, oh, it’s also something that would be curious.
But it totally changed my perception towards what is, what is that that’s happening, right? And when I, I am saying all these to get to the park where if you sit and see your subconscious starts brewing things, a lot of things, you know, many people say they get bored or they have work to do as or the as if the world is going to stop without them. But none of this are true. There is no boredom in truth. You’re bored because you’re complicating things. Sit, the whole life is a miracle. If you just sit for 10 days, you will understand that there is nothing to be bored about.
You know, even the term boring is a kind of a defense mechanism, which you have to first break for the subconscious to give you certain other thoughts. Right. And what I believe is when I see other dogs, even though I know they are going to die, it doesn’t make me as sad as I it is the dogs that live with me, right?
So there is some part that is changing this habitual pattern of seeing them every day, this behavior, you know, it could be stronger with you and your friends dog, you know, it might not be maybe once you get your own dog, it’s going to be a little bit more, what do you say, it becomes more complicated, you know, intertwined this attachment, right?
And that’s how it is. It becomes more difficult the more time you spend with but The funnily enough the only thing you can do is spend more time with them and be equal mess with it and Yeah, and one more thing with respect to being okay with their death is to Spend their time here and now right? That’s that’s funnily That’s ironical because like my partner and I will be talking about this and we’ll be like wait if they’re going to die And if we are talking about their death now, which means we are missing out on so we’re gonna go and sit with them and But these these conversations helps us bring us here because yeah, yeah, I think there is no nowhere else to be.
Oli: Yeahah, like two things mainly it makes you value Your own time in the way that I’ve said so basically you if you understand you’re gonna die and you can circumvent that Programming that we have to hide and deny the fact that that’s gonna happen If then basically you make choices that are real that’s the short version, right?
So I don’t need to run about that again. The other thing though is if I’m gonna die everybody else is gonna die and everything’s gonna die and so not only is my life precious for the other people in my life are precious and if I want to Make the most of them then I need to spend time with them basically. That’s why it boils down to you so I actually I think this about my Mum – like my Mum she’s getting older and sometimes I just get so busy like I’m caught up in my own life.
I’m doing this I’m doing that and I don’t necessarily feel like going to see my mom and I’m in a cup of tea or something like that but then I’ll say to myself, “Oh well, she’s gonna be dead eventually”, so I should go make the most and create some memories and have some quality time with my mom and and that’s what I do and so I try and see her as regularly as I can and even just knowing that she’s gonna die one day and I’m gonna die it’s caused a shift in the focus of the relationship.
So there’s no drama or anything like that you know like sometimes you have drama with your parents because you’re getting triggered with your childhood stuff or whatever Like none of that stuff bothers me anymore because I just think “Okay this person like me is temporary and I don’t I don’t want to waste time on on bullshit”, so I’m just using my Mum as an example. I tried to be like that with all the important people in my life but death in that sense, yeah, it’s a gift because it shows you what life truly is.
But I actually want to backtrack a little bit to what you were saying. When you were talking about the past, yeah, basically Vipassana meditation, that kind of thing, it tunes you into the same thing that death is tuning you into, which is an awareness of how things actually are. Again, because everything is ultimately the same, in my opinion, it goes back to the wholeness-fragmentation thing. This podcast is ultimately about how creativity involves allowing the unconscious to become conscious so that you can become more whole. I think that all of us, not just human beings but all life, have a natural drive towards wholeness.
It’s constantly moving and flowing if you look at a tree. Lately, I’ve been using this example: if you observe an apple tree or something similar, there is a continuous process occurring beneath the surface that allows the fruit to develop. Yes, it’s a process you can’t escape from. However, you can block it with your ego. When you block it, you lose touch with your creativity in relation to creativity, and the desired results elude you.
The reason for this blockage lies in the shame, guilt, and trauma hidden beneath the surface—the things we’ve pushed into the shadow self or the shadow territory. Usually, unconsciously, we construct an ego that prompts us to obstruct that process, so we don’t have to confront difficult emotions in the short term. Here’s my prompt for you: What do you think about the idea that there is always a drive towards wholeness? If you can find something in your life to unblock your relationship with that drive, things will ultimately work out because you will embrace life instead of denying it.
Ranga: So, at first, I thought I heard you say that if you’re creative, we can push towards wholeness, but I think I got it wrong. I definitely believe you meant it the other way, right? Because when we are whole, creativity becomes a symptom, not the cause. You can’t force creativity; it happens naturally, just like meditation. You can create the right environment for it, similar to how wholeness relates to the underlying shadows—whether it’s shame or anything else. It could be as small as parents not paying enough attention or not taking proper care of you. Even if you’re provided with everything necessary, there may be subtle neglect, and as a result, the child seeks extraordinary ways to gain attention. This leads to a hustle culture, where people constantly seek validation.
In reality, we don’t need validation from anyone, but we push ourselves to the extreme. So, when you mention that we fail to stop and observe the process of roots nourishing a tree with water and nutrients, it’s like observing the umbilical cord that connects an apple to the tree—it’s a beautiful sight. However, due to our constant rush, we hardly notice these things. We’re caught in a loop where we’re too preoccupied to reflect on these details, like noticing an apple or a grain of sand. Even something as seemingly trivial as my dog’s poop can be interesting and beautiful. For instance, a guinea pig may produce around 120 to 150 poops per day as they consistently eat dried grass. These observations occur when we aren’t rushing somewhere, when we let go of the drives pushing us underground, occupying our minds. There’s no compulsion to do anything; we drop everything and embrace the present moment.
That’s where creativity lies—when we simply observe certain things. And here’s the funny thing about the world: there are no inventions; everything is a discovery. When people claim to invent something, they actually discover a particular combination and bring it together. It’s called an invention, but in truth, it’s a discovery. Similarly, there’s no clear distinction between natural and artificial. If mushrooms grow naturally in the ground with the help of certain beings, and humans intervene to create LSD, it’s a combination of natural and human influence.
When we stop and create that space in our consciousness, when we simply observe, we allow new combinations to come into existence. This brings us back to your point about creativity, and again, it forms a new loop. When you’re creative, you express it in beautiful ways, not through abusing others or overworking. I’m not a fan of capitalistic viewpoints, but let’s not dive into that discussion. Creativity is not driven by an underlying mental illness that can be solved by antidepressants; it’s about being aware and accepting its presence. The funny thing about shadow work is simply letting it be and acknowledging its existence. Yes, I have this ugly nature, so what? Just understanding it and not acting upon it in a harmful way. Acknowledgment is always the first step in almost everything. Just acknowledging it is beautiful.
Oli: Yeah, yeah. It’s about stepping away from judgment ultimately, right? So, if you’re caught up in fragmentation and ego and lack awareness of all the stuff we’re talking about, all you’re doing is living according to a set of judgments you’ve picked up from the outside world. Those judgments are stopping you, and they’re doing two things. First, those judgments are either making you run around taking meaningless actions just for the sake of being busy, or they’re making you try to force life to fit into what your ego tells you it should be, even though it can never be that way. Second, those judgments tell you to hold back and hesitate because you feel like you’re not good enough or your idea is stupid, or whatever negative belief arises.
However, when you find space and can drop into wholeness or that feeling of realness we’ve been alluding to, all the judgment slips away. And when judgment slips away, if you do take action, it must come from a place of acceptance and awareness. In this state, action becomes organic, not forced by any conceptual ideas like capitalism or societal expectations or seeking validation from others. It’s a more natural action, something that genuinely needs to happen. It emerges rather than being imposed upon life from the outside. You can’t really force anything, so if you end up forcing it, you’ll only get unfavorable results anyway.
That’s what I believe all this stuff is about—getting to that place where the actions you take, or most of them, are inspired actions, or you can use any word you prefer, but it’s about taking real action that stems from a place of wholeness.
Ranga: Yes it’s a it’s it’s pretty much that it’s funny I I’ve got into a point where where I slowly, slowly realized I kept going to different defense mechanisms which were leading me to a particular sort of action. But ultimately, there comes a point, at least in my life, it came a point where I was completely tired of having these thoughts of having to run away from them or fulfill them or so on and on. And there is a moment of brightness that comes where you just give it up. So, yeah, as you said, it all comes down to the part where don’t force anything.
Funnily enough, as much as sometimes common sense would go, you let it be. To let be is the only thing we have to learn. And if we learn that, that alone will change so many things. If the sun and earth formed at that particular interaction and all these conceived to exist in this material form, in this plane, and everything is so grand here. So much is so grand here, but our ego is so limited to think we can control how it’s going. There is no sort of control whatsoever.
People might think they order pizza and it comes to the house. Yeah, that’s where it stops. But understand even that is not under your control. The illusion of control exists, but it doesn’t. So, again, this goes back to what you said about judgment. So, all these judgments happen when there is a, again, when there is not wholeness, when there is separateness, like for example, you’re in this world and there is only sunlight, 24 by 7 sunlight. There is, relatively, there is no night. You wouldn’t stop and say there is light now because light exists because there is a time where light does not exist.
So, relatively, there is a crossing over to the other extreme, the polar opposite. And you make this line, the relativity in this dualistic world, therefore, the judgment arises. And most of these judgments seem harmless because what is there to say today is day and night is night. But you have to understand all these words don’t have meaning because the sun is the same. The nature of how light is created is the same. It’s an illusion that’s happening. Light is always there.
You’re not seeing it. And it’s all those things. Once we stop drawing lines between stuff and understand that there is only a non-dual force behind all of this duality that brings us back. And psychedelics, this is where it kind of helped me because I wouldn’t have any difference between things.
Right? There is no boundary. How we crystal see that, oh, my bed is sitting on a bed frame and then there is floor and so on. There is no boundary there. Everything is touching each other.
Yeah. Right now, I’m breathing in oxygen and carbon dioxide and the plants nearby are doing the opposite. And we are connected in a sort of a way. To be honest, we are just connected. Everything is connected. So even on this physical reality, there is only wholeness. That’s the only truth. There is one being.
There are no individual beings. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That applies to the mental self. Right? So you start with the mental work and try to eventually understand it, the physical realm.
Because in the physical realm, when you open your eyes, it’s much more difficult. Right? You see, for example, do you know about the Yulin-Dark Festival? No. No.
Yeah. So basically in Yulin, China, they have a dark meat festival where they not just eat dogs. They steal dogs from who are as pets.
They put them in containers by two by two square feet, where 20 dogs fit, where there should be one dog. And they beat them so much. And this arises a lot of anger and so much anger within me.
You know? And I stop and I’m like, I don’t want to, what crap is this? And how is this in this physical reality? The person who is hitting is the same being as me.
It’s the same being as the dog. Like how could you do it? Right? And for that moment, all my intellectualization and rationalization doesn’t work. The only thing that I could work is be equanimous at that point. Because my anger is not going to help. But my point being in that physical reality where you see an intense abuse happens and how do you not see the separateness?
Right? It’s very difficult. So, but it’s easier. I truly believe it’s much more easier to do the mental, to mentally see that there is no separateness. There is just this one being that’s operating within your body. There is no ego. There is nothing else.
There is no defense mechanisms. These are all concepts that originate when we are not present. When we are not aware, all these take up.
Oli: I think in that example of the people abusing the dogs. I think the only reason you would do that, like abuse a dog, is if you’re really, really, really fucking hungry and you need to survive, maybe that would motivate people to do that. Like if it’s literally a life or death thing. But if you’ve just been horrible, like it’s always, always, always because of what you said this all boils down to, which is the baggage thing.
People have baggage and it keeps them running towards unreal things. That person is not acting from a real place. They’re acting from pure separation that they keep getting pushed into because of their own stuff. potentially like, you know, like the whole, the golden calf thing where they wanted to use this or the scapegoat.
Let’s use that example. So a scapegoat is where ultimately you choose some creature as a vessel for all of your unresolved shadow stuff or your perceived sins and whatever else. And then when you kill that, you’re tricking yourself into thinking that you’ve dealt with the emotional stuff.
It’s a similar thing. It’s purely, purely, purely a way of all of the unreal ego fragmentation coming up with strategies to force life in such a way where it can feel like it’s solving the problems that are caused by itself without actually changing anything because it’s only doing it on that symbolic level. And I think we’re all real. But the problem is, some people are living in a very unaware way, because they’re projecting all of their own shit basically out into the world. And then it’s getting projected back at them.
And that’s dictating their behaviors. And it goes back to what we’re saying about the action. And this thing that you said actually about the baggage, I think that sums up most of this stuff that we’re saying. If you have too much baggage, and you’re not willing to face it, in the short term, because of the awareness that you need to transcend it, I would say the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off and make you miserable. And the reason it will make you, yeah, it sets you free in the long term, but a lot of people are ready for that, because they’re going to have to basically wade through all this baggage. And I think that explains 99.9 % of the problems on planet Earth, which is that people, they are real, but they blind themselves to that reality. And all these things that you’re talking about are about getting back on that path to understanding so you can move towards wholeness. And I think even these dog abusers, they could wake up and have some kind of an epiphany where they return to wholeness. But it might take them longer or whatever, because there’s a bigger gap between the real and unreal in that case.
Anyway, that’s me rambling. Basically, we’ve reached the end of our allocated time. And it’s gone very quickly. We’ve covered a lot. We dive straight into the death thing. We’ve gone over like the awareness stuff and like how the shadow can show up and be projected out, blah, blah, blah, my mind is a little bit blown. How would you sum this all up if you even can? Because obviously, there’s a lot that’s been said, but how would you sum this up?
Have you got any final words of wisdom? And if somebody wants to talk to you or get in touch or whatever they might want to do with you, where can they find you?
Ranga: Yeah, to answer that question first, I’m there on LinkedIn.
My name is Rangarajan. There is no words of wisdom apart from yes, we just that the whole thing is we talked about the one and the same thing because if it’s transitory in nature, like there is no planning for the future, there is no thinking about the past, because everything takes care of itself just be here and now and that’s what’s that’s what will have always happened.
You know, you know, I believe some people say that these times would be beautiful times. These are rapidly changing times or something, you know, technological innovation or so on and on, but that’s not too heavy generation, every existence that has lived.
For example, the first humans are the apes who, you know, did the stone fire that would have been great exciting times, you know, and move back the first farming would have been even more exciting times. Likewise, exciting times will always exist because as long as you’re present, everything is exciting. So don’t look back or forward because that’s all you can do that. But there is nothing that will happen.
It’s pretty much like beating the dog. You just think it’s harmless and it’s happening in a dream world, right? But there is no reality to it.
I believe 99.9 % of the beings that live on planet earth are very present moment beings. It’s humans. We what what served as a tool to survive at a mass scale, right? What we see out there with the banding of this much of global society and being able to communicate and get over boundaries and not just play a game of like, oh, or 100 of us are a pack and you know, it’s not tribal.
It’s getting closer. What has served as a tool to band us together is also has become the brain has become the problem that’s going to stab us if we are not aware enough, you know, that it’s it’s like the knife. It’s so simple. Like you can either use the knife to cut the vegetable or cut yourself and we have lost where the knife is where the hand is where the apple is and we have become so blind. That’s all.
All we have to do is when we look at our open our eyes and we’ll see it was such not a bad thing. It’s a tool. I’m going to use it to cut the right things, right? And yeah, I guess open your eyes.
Oli: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Perfect.
Yes. I love what you said. Everything takes care of itself. Like if you can understand that and you could trust, then it all kind of dissolves. All this, it just dissolves.
It’s gone. If you understand everything takes care of itself. So Ranga, thank you so much for your time today. Like I’ve really enjoyed this one. And we should talk again sometime like do it again because I could keep going.
But anyway, I had fun. Thank you.
Ranga: So thank you so much. Thank you.
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Very Nice
What a wonderful discussion 🔆
Thank you🙏