Gurucharan Singh Khalsa & Karuna Interview

Summary

The conversation explains Kundalini Yoga as a practical path for waking up awareness, balancing the body and mind, and living with more joy and authenticity. It also describes how classes work, why the teaching is experiential rather than secretive, and how specific practices are chosen to meet different needs.

Questions This Interview Explores

• What is Kundalini Yoga meant to do in daily life?
• How does a Kundalini Yoga class usually work?
• What kinds of practices are used in Kundalini Yoga?
• How can yoga help with emotional and physical imbalance?

Key takeaways

• Kundalini Yoga aims to awaken awareness and help life feel more alive and balanced.
• The practice is meant to be tested through experience, not accepted as doctrine.
• A class usually combines tuning in, kriya, breath, movement, and meditation.
• Kriyas are designed to address specific physical, mental, and emotional patterns.
• The goal is to act from stillness, heart, and present awareness.
• The teaching emphasizes joy, humor, and practical self-transformation.

Transcript

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer and once again I am filming an interview at the Science and Non-Duality Conference in San Jose, California. Today my guests are Gurucharan Singh Khalsa and Karuna and they are both students in the tradition of Yogi Bhajan, which is Kundalini Yoga. I became aware of Yogi Bhajan back in the 70s. I was with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and I remember he and Yogi Bhajan had a meeting. And then, as I recall, I was up in the mountains of France and Yogi Bhajan wanted Maharishi to come to Mexico for some conference or something and Maharishi just didn’t want to do all that traveling and so he didn’t go. But as I recall, I heard good things about the meeting. So this is one of those interviews which I have not prepared for.

I know very little about Yogi Bhajan, Kundalini Yoga, although I do have a good friend in this group, Kulmeet, who is up in the Ottawa Center.

Karuna: She’s lovely, yeah, love her. Good cook.

Rick: And I haven’t seen her in years. Oh she, yeah.

Karuna: Great cook.

Rick: And, um…

Karuna: It’s important.

Rick: For years I’ve been actually thinking of, you know, I’d like to, in tribute to my friend Kulmeet, I’d like to interview somebody in that tradition. And I kind of had that in the back of my mind when I came to this conference, I wonder if I’ll meet somebody, and you guys would be the ones to talk to.

Karuna: Thank you, thank you. It’s really lovely to be here with you.

Rick: Yeah.

Karuna: I love the name of your company.

Rick: Thank you. It’s not exactly a company, but it’s a good name.

Karuna: It’s a great, well it should be.

Rick: It’s a 501c3.

Karuna: There you go.

Rick: There’s a donation…

Karuna: That had to come up.

Rick: There’s a donation button.

Karuna: That’s already Yogi Bhajan’s working.

He’s already manifesting a huge prosperity for you. So…

Rick: Good.

Karuna: Nice job.

What Kundalini Yoga is about

Rick: So what I’d like to do in the next hour or so is have you give us what you feel is the cream of the message that you could give in an hour or so. You know, what Kundalini Yoga is, what benefits, if it’s relevant, what its history is, but maybe not too much time on that, cuz mainly we want to focus on the practical stuff, you know. What would a person do if they were to get involved in this and what benefits could they expect to get from doing it? And where would they have to go? And you know, that kind of thing. Would they become – would they have to wear a turban or different kinds of clothes?

Karuna: No, you can like not wear a turban.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: You can take it off.

Karuna: I’m taking the turban off.

Rick: He’s not gonna take his off. So yeah…

Karuna: [INAUDIBLE] not playing.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Let me start with that.

Rick: Yeah, okay, good.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Okay and then Karuna, you can chime in as you wish.

Karuna: Okay, yeah.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: But Kundalini Yoga is essentially about how do you live a life that is one of consistent delight and elevation. As a human being—

Rick: Consistent delight.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Delight.

Rick: and elevation.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Yeah, and elevation.

Rick: Okay.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Because as a human being we have that capacity to be with whatever the plot of our life is and yet birth within that plot a story. Because a story is not the plot, right? The story is that thing that we write with our heart. You know, it comes from that inner dimension that we talk about in spirit. Not all fuzzy and mystical in that way, but sort of powerful and present. But you know a lot of times we get caught just in the plot. Plots are interesting as plots and drivers, but the story is how we transform. It’s the nature of our choices and what we do and how it develops us in our inner dimension. So Kundalini Yoga was always about how do you awaken the human, that possible human in us, and open the heart center and live beautifully within this world. Okay?

Now, traditionally, let’s say, there—when I got interested in it anyway, you would—this is old guy talk, this is back before intranets, and half the journey was finding the bookstore and the dustiest book and then learning to translate into Sanskrit, you know, that kind of thing. Now you can get it on your watch or something. Yeah. But along with that, there was a lot of veiledness around this thing that I always heard about, Kundalini. You know, now the translation is varied, but essentially it means awareness, and it means the central property of you as a human being, which is awareness.

Rick: Kundalini means that.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Yeah. So…

Rick: I’ve always associated Kundalini with the Sushumna and the energy that rises up inside.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Right. So before you get into all of the interpretive symbology and iconology and the putting it into certain cultural context, if you talk about it experientially, what is it? Right. It means you awaken your sense of presence, that space of grace that you talk about. It’s when you have a relationship in every breath, basically, to that. Now, every system that approaches that from all directions, right, has some kind of a map, fuzzy or otherwise, to kind of get there, practices and such. And Kundalini is that way. The basic distinction to think of is in the Eastern way. Right? You’ve got meridians and pranas and all that kind of stuff, or chi, these things. So you’ve got a whole energy system that has to do with balancing, right? Mmhmm. Our senses, our attachment, our things like that.

So think of that as one whole way of being, and that connects us to sitting in this place, you know, with these smells and colors and such things. And that’s, to a Kundalini Yoga person, that would be equally real as the oneness. They’re co-equal, they’re co-extensive, they don’t exist without each other. So it’s never an issue that something is beyond illusion or in or out. Right. The question is, here in my heart, in my experience, right? How do I act in a way, right, that delivers that kind of reality, authenticity, being of me as a person? Right? So I’ve got these pranas and balancing flows and all this stuff going on that lets me particulate my experience and get it.

And then there’s this thing called Kundalini. So Kundalini, in this way of thinking, isn’t like a prana. It’s not an energy, actually, although people refer to it, but it’s not what it is. It’s more like the, you could call it the urge of self-transcendence. You could call it the inner dimension that starts to open the flower. So Kundalini then, traditionally, is looked at as it “rises.” And it’s really built in the West, because you think here, always climbing ladders and getting to the top. Okay, so you’ve always got to put all the ladder stuff in a circle with a center. Alright, so you have to kind of think, it always is about this heart center, and around it are all of the different manifestations and challenges. Right? So what constructs this outer rim of experience is all these pranas and stuff like that.

But what brings us into transformation, what brings us into the height at which you might want to live, would be the Kundalini. So sometimes you have problems in the body and the mind. As someone here said very nicely, all of our human problems are psychological and all the solutions are spiritual, in the sense that we reconnect with the wholeness and the flow, the inner part, with the outer parts. We combine these. Or as I would say, take the heavens, take the earth, and bring them together at the heart. Because you know your being, your totality, right? And how you know is resolved by action, which is what we call dharma, right? Dharma is the right step at the right time in the right place in the right way that has a natural, blooming quality to it, let’s call it, which I call the fulfilled sense of destiny and heart that we are in our own authentic self.

So Kundalini is about all the different ways. And so in this way, I mean, I founded the Kundalini Research Institute back in ’72 or something. And so we’ve collected and put publicly now online just recently, literally thousands of meditations. And these were given and shared by Yogi Bhajan over the years. And those were collected. There’s Sikh meditations, there’s Sufi meditations, there’s Christian meditations, there’s things that we don’t know what they were, but they were sort of passed on. So a lot of that tradition was oral.

Rick: Mmhmm. A lot of it was secret. A lot of it required initiations. So one of the things that truly attracted me. Well, there’s a lot of reasons, but one, was that having been kind of raised in myself as a scientist and a mathematician and such, right? I didn’t like things that were secret. I saw them in part as I understood the esoteric side of it, but mostly it got applied as cultural hierarchy basically in binding. Okay? So I’d rather say that what is truly unique and subjective in each of us is ultimately the secret and known only through our relations, interactions, like that. There’s no secret, secret. The only secret is the uniqueness, because if it’s unique, it’s not comparable, right?

Mmhmm.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: So I didn’t do—I kept coming across Kundalini references or something that would parallel that, and Taoism and this, and many different traditions, right? And a lot of them would say it’s secret, it’s this and this. But when I met Yogi Bhajan, he was the first one I met that said, “No secrets, no initiations. If you can’t initiate yourself, if you don’t have the responsibility to engage, in an authentic way, your own soul, how are you going to make the progress, really?” And so it appealed to me in the sense that it was open and I could test it. And then the prescription he gave was, “Try it. It worked for me. If it doesn’t work, throw that away. Try something else.” And I said, “Okay.” So that experimental approach and experiential approach appealed to me, because I think that’s how the universe is. I think the universe is a constant play, and I don’t think it knows any more than we do.

I think it’s winging it. So someone says, “Do you know what God thinks?” I say, “Yeah, God’s winging it, and we’re the wings.” And so we are in a constant co-evolution, and that’s the fun of it.

God’s winging it, and we’re the wings.

Rick: It’s like Harrison Ford in Raider of the Lost Ark. Somebody said, “What’s the plan?” He said, “I don’t know. I’m making this up as I go along.”

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: That’s right.

Karuna: There you go.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: And if we’re joined with the One, so is the One. But it’s, you know, it’s funny ways of talking about it, but I like the playfulness of it.

Rick: Yeah. because I think without joy and without coming from your heart and without embracing all the plot that you’re in, without even knowing about it, how can you play an infinite game in a finite world? And you’ve got to do both. Karuna, do you want to add to that?

Karuna: No.

Rick: Okay.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Oh, she does.

Karuna: Well, I mean the only thing that’s coming up for me with listening to an amazing dissertation on Kundalini Yoga, as a student of Yogi Bhajan, and having really never encountered Yogi Bhajan, this is as close as I can get. So my relationship with Gurucharan has just been so exquisite, because he actually gives me the leeway and the freeway to really be who I am in this process of a teacher. And with the teacher training programs and all the evolution that you get through the teachings… I’m teaching on an everyday basis that I do in Boulder, that it helps you to grow and extend an authentic relationship that you were just talking about with joy and humor. And just being able to freely flow with these teachings and not being somebody who’s so, you know, they’re very physical in the sense that they move your heart. And that’s how I look at physical.

I don’t look at physical as, you know, when triathletes come to my classes and long-distance runners, and they’re winning their races with the mantra of “Sat Naam, Sat Naam, Sat Naam” instead of “Oh my God, I can’t do this.” When I heard somebody in class say, “Today I can’t do it,” I was like, “Ow!” I was like, “No, you can, you can. You have grit, you have passion, you have compassion.” And it’s, you know, it’s that movement that this yoga gives you that looks so wild, but it’s yet so incredibly devotional. It’s bhakti, shakti, and raja.

Rick: The yoga is wild?

👁️ Questions about being enlightened

Karuna: The raja of this yoga. Yeah, this yoga, this yoga, the Kundalini Yoga is such a raja yoga. It’s a royal yoga. It wants you to become as enlightened, if you want to use these terms that we’re using so much around here, or as awakened, or awake in the sense of awareness, of just how are we communicating with each other?

Rick: Okay, so let’s say that somebody wants to check this out, and they come to your center or your class or whatever. What specifically are they going to learn, and what are they going to take away in terms of a daily practice?

Karuna: Well, we start with “poke, provoke, confront, and elevate.” That’s a rule.

Rick: What is that?

Karuna: Well, to poke, okay, so you start with a practice. And you poke. You start to poke those little things that don’t feel so cozy in you anymore.

Rick: You poke your own things.

Karuna: You poke your own things.

Rick: How do you do that?

Karuna: So with the teachings of Yogi Bhajan… well, you tune in, and that could be a poke right there, just going, “Om namo guru deva namo.” What is that? And that pokes something in you that asks a question, that provokes something in you to confront something in you, to even ask, “Why am I even confronted by this? Why can’t I just be in the experience?” which is the elevation ultimately that you’ll get by the end of the class.

Rick: So you might get a mantra, “Om namo guru deva namo.”

Karuna: Guru deva namo. So you might get a mantra.

Rick: You might get a mantra.

Karuna: You might get a sound current that you’re not used to in a class. So we really look at the things that you’re used to.

Rick: And you chant it out loud, with your eyes closed?

Karuna: Yeah, you tune in. So if we were to rub the palms together at the heart—

Rick: So they don’t rub them on the microphone.

Karuna: Right. This balances the right and left hemisphere of the brain.

Rick: It does? Okay.

Karuna: So all of a sudden—and I say this to my brother, who’s an NFL football coach, to tell his quarterback, like, “Tell him to do this, because this will balance the right and left hemisphere of the brain, and when he goes for the goal, he’ll hit it, because he’s balanced.” So it’s fun. It’s fun just to use the technology—

Rick: Do you do this for a long time?

Karuna: You know, just half a second. You actually don’t even need to do it. You could actually just put the prayer mudra together, put the thumbs into the thymus gland, turn the palms up, sit with your sit bones grounded, elevate from your crown chakra, and just feel that is a different frequency already in you.

Rick: If it’s not too simplistic to ask, give us an overview. I mean, what is the whole scenario here that people are going to discover, and without going into great elaboration on specific things, what are they going to be doing? What are they going to learn?

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Right. What are they going to take home and do every morning? Sure. In a typical class, you’ll come and do an hour class, let’s say. And so you do something to tune in so that you’re present, and then there’s probably some talk or something to give some topic, right? And then you engage in what we call a kriya. And a kriya is a sequence of actions that leads to sort of predictable realms of exploration of yourself. Okay? Now that includes physical exercise.

Rick: Like yoga?

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Yoga, asanas, postures, breathing. It could be silent, using the breath control. That’s right. Think of that there are tens of thousands of kriyas, okay? So there’s a big bunch of stuff you could do, much like any physical exercise.

Rick: Not all in one hour.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: No, no, no. Some things are extremely simple, and I still do the very first one I ever learned. You know, it takes like 20 minutes, that’s good. But there will be movement, stillness, out loud, silence, focus, non-focus, guided internal visualizations. So the variety of things you do is one of the kind of interesting things to me in Kundalini Yoga. Some it’s like, “Here’s the 16 things you do in sequence,” and you get really good at that, which is a good thing. You can really master that. Kundalini Yoga is difficult. It’s difficult to master it, just because of the size of all the things that one could do. And it kind of focuses you on mastering yourself. And so each of these things is to help you and sort of consolidate that sense of self at your heart.

So you come to class, you tune in, get a little talk, you go through some kind of a kriya process, which usually involves meditation, either during the process or at the end. And the meditations, depending on the class and the purpose, might be anywhere from 3 minutes… in advanced classes, half an hour, like that. And meditation and the physical movements and all this are completely integrated. They’re not thought of as separate in that way. Okay? And then you consolidate and you close the class and you have some food and you have a little sangha and enjoy. Right? Now out of all that, you’ll have some experience, some elevation in yourself, that you can find applications as you go into the world, because what you’re taking is not a big bunch of stuff to do, but an alignment of yourself with whatever your plot is, as I was saying. Right? That’s what you’re doing. It’s like a tune-up.

Now, just one more little kick on that. When I said kriya, this kind of odd word, kriya. Okay? It’s a nice origin word. Okay? So kri is like action.

Rick: Right.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Ya is infinity. It means being. Kriya means an action done with excellence in the presence and integration with the all. So it has the connotation of fulfillment and spontaneity. It has the connotation of rightness of the moment and kind of a flowering of that potential that was right there, without effort. Okay? So then now you take the person, this is the big picture. You and I walk in and we got wounds, you know? We do. They’re good wounds. They’re wounds that make us think. Right? Precious pearls of pain, as we call them. Yes, we have those. That’s why we have a good plot. And what good is a big drama with no villains and no challenges? I mean, we all get bored and go home, right? So we all have some fantastic drama or war we’re coming from. Now, in that, we don’t always use our best responses. We’re automatic, we’re impulsive, we have a lot of things.

So we pattern our body, we pattern our soma, we pattern our thoughts, we pattern our beliefs in order to cope, right? With our own experience of ourself and the plots and the families and the cultures and everything else we find ourselves in. What’s the goal of Kundalini? Well, as you raise this kundalini as part of the process, you start being able to reboot, basically, these patterns. So we talk about that in ways like, take this energy here, do this particular kriya, this particular process, this little journey of this kriya is like a gesture of internal energy that essentially accumulates it to, we say, the central channel.

Rick: The movements you’re making are almost like tai chi.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Sure, because you bring these various movements and flows into “the stillness of the central channel.” So ultimately, you develop a sort of present stillness and you start learning how to act from that stillness, because in the stillness, you’re inviting a flexible wholeness so that you can do what? Notice what is. Where am I?

Karuna: Yes. That’s you right there.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: What’s happening? And so we have a state, there’s an old word for it. I kind of like this word. It’s in the Sikh tradition. They call it “Ang Sang Wahe Guru.” It’s just fun to say it. Whatever it means, right?

Karuna: So Shakespearean.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: So you say “Ang” means like a part, an atom, a living consciousness unit, “Ang,” right? A part. “Ang Sang,” all of them, like “Sangat,” “Ang Sang.” When your 30 trillion cells, “Ang Sang,” all come together in a resonance, and “Wah!” The ecstatic, inexplicable moment is present, “Wah!” “Hey!” right here, now. “Wah!” “Hey!” Not “Wah!” somewhere. It’s not “Wah!” somewhere else, but “Wah!” “Hey!” “Guru.” “Guru” is now in the presence of transformative wisdom. So “Guru,” right? Darkness goes to light, “Gu” and “Ru.” “Guru” means a technology, technique, or procedure. So awakening the Guru through the stillness is to allow yourself to understand your own knowledge, and bring out of that wisdom of how to act from the heart. So that’s what it’s all about, but what it’s not about is really getting a philosophy.

It’s more about gaining a capacity of sensitivity, a sentience in your body, and a clarity in your mind, and a kind of embrace of wholeness in your heart. Those are the three goals.

It’s more about gaining a capacity of sensitivity, a sentience in your body, and a clarity in your mind, and a kind of embrace of wholeness in your heart.

Rick: And an experiential emphasis.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Absolutely.

Rick: Yeah.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Absolutely. And I think that’s one of the things that attracted me, it’s an experience and test. And Yogi Bhajan was a force of nature, and he would say, “Here’s all these kriyas I’m sharing, and some were the Akashic Records, some were things he learned, there was a lot of places these came from.” But he would always say, “Look, I tried these, or I know about them,” or whatever he did, “and these are pretty good ones.” And he’d say, “There’s a whole lot more.”

Rick: How many do you need?

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: One good one would really do just fine. In terms of kriya, just like good exercise, you don’t want to just work your legs. You want to use, you know, your love and your anger and all the emotions, and you want to engage transcendence.

Karuna: And also, a lot of them are specific for kidneys, adrenals, endocrine system, glandular system, the brain. You’re working all parts. So if you come in with something that’s failing you right now, in your physical body, mental body, in all your different bodies, even your heart. You know, you come in with heartbreak, there’s a specific kriya that’s designed that we can find for you, to help you with your adrenals, to help you with your kidneys. With your, you know, the whole system is covered in each kriya, so each kriya is designed around a different part of your body, actually. And it is up to the teacher to really read that before the class, to understand that before the class, because there is over 4,000 kriyas we can choose from. So think about it. If you’re going into an hour or a 90-minute class, you have to be ready to deliver something to that class.

Rick: How in the world do you keep track of 4,000 kriyas?

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Books.

Karuna: Yeah, we have a lot of books.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: So like an online.

Rick: Like a doctor who might have a pharmacopoeia he can refer to.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Sure. You go and figure, “Oh, this person has that, let me check the book.”

Karuna: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And of course it’s very intuitive. So that, you know, really it’s very intuitive for the teacher to bring in the right kriya, and to really, sometimes it has to be switched up, because the class could be all of a sudden, you know, 80 and over, and you’re not going to do, you know, Awakening of the Ten Bodies in an eight, you’re not going to throw them into Breath of Fire in stretch pose.

Rick: What if you have 30 people in the class and they range in age from 15 to 80? Do you somehow customize it for each person?

Karuna: A lot of times, it happens. Well, not for each person, and you really don’t, you know, pinpoint or point a finger or call out a name or anything. We have such regard for this whole group consciousness that it just happens—it just works. Something works in it.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Again, think of the kriya as a flow, and everybody shares all the meridians and all the flows, right?

Karuna: We all have the same heart.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: So every kind of kriya is going to work in one of these areas. So some people are very clear in that area, they find that sort of easy. Somebody else, there’s more constriction, and it’s like, “Wow, that was the greatest thing I ever did, because I suddenly have all this free energy I didn’t have.” Another person who’s really clear just goes, “Yeah, that was really nice.” Whereas this person’s going, “Amazing, where did that come from?”

Rick: Yeah.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: So there are general things, just like I’m playing jazz today, I got a little rock here, got myself a little bit of country dance. You know?

Karuna: I quite like that. And so you come in, and what you get in Kundalini Yoga has a lot of variance.

Rick: Because of the makeup you come in with.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Right. So I’m just thinking as a clinical psychologist, right? So I do destiny counseling and such things. But look, I have all sorts of trainings, right? Everything from, you know, cognitive and NLP, and I work with Vinyasa Therapy and all these therapies and all these things. So do you go to it like a pharmacopeia? What did you say?

Rick: Pharmacopeia.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: And then select from that? No. With expertise, eventually you integrate all these things, and the focus is always on first perceiving what’s real and what’s unique in this person. If you can do that, in terms of applications, right, then you know. And this is one of the things that I’ve had a chance to do over the years, is design the curriculums and applications for addiction programs and prisons and executives and creativity and all this. And there, it’s about a syntax, you know? A particular grammar, sort of, you know, of experience that just helps you go through a process that leads to what you want. So it’s not just a prescriptive bunch of tools. People do like to do that, you know? What’s the thing for the kidney in this? Because we want an answer, right? But ultimately it becomes about the individual or the uniqueness of the group in the situation.

Applying pretty universal tools that people have their own experience in. Hence, we don’t tell people, “You should experience the following, and now you’ll have samadhi, and now you’ll do this.” Because that would counter the respect, in a way, in this tradition then, for what will surprise us and emerge.

Rick: Yeah, okay, so what I’m gathering so far is, the teacher is important. It’s not a “learn from a book” kind of a thing. You need a trained teacher. And it’s not a, like a, “one size fits all” kind of a thing. There is a whole toolbox.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Highly adaptable, that’s right.

Rick: There’s a very diverse and extensive toolbox of all kinds of things that Yogi Bhajan came out with, and maybe even you developed some or something. There’s a whole lot of things you can do.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: That’s right.

Rick: And if you choose to get yourself involved with this, there’ll be a lot of customization. And I presume that it’ll be modified and adapted to suit your particular makeup and need and capacity and so on. And that you wouldn’t just do the stuff in a class once a week or something, but I’m presuming there’d be something you’d take home with you and do on a regular basis.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Yeah, sure. Well, number one, think of it this way, you know? There’s a big, beautiful tree out there in the landscape, and some travelers need a moment of shade, they step under and then they leave, right? And others are going, “Hey, I want to eat some fruit from up there,” and they get stuff from the tree, you know? And they take some food with them too. And other people are going, “I’d like to actually just, you know, have a treehouse,” and they stick around. So it’s a very open system in the sense that you’re not trying to be driven to a certain place. This is, “Let’s meet you where you’re at, what do you need, I’m happy for you on your journey.” You know, a concept you might like is, because people ask me all the time, “Well, is it this way or is it that way, and which is the way?” You know, this kind of thing.

And, “How do we do interdisciplinary and inter-spiritual and all these things?” And I like to say, “Look, there’s one way.”

Rick: One way.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Yeah, there’s one way. And whatever you’re going to call that way, it’s got lots of twists, like going up a mountain. And so in some part of it, it looks dark, in another it looks, you know, light, in another there’s water, in the other it’s a clearing. But it’s all just one path of the fulfillment in relationship with your whole being to your particular situation. Right? And it’s that elegance of being, it’s that brilliance of mind that engages. That is what you’re after. So, sure, there’s tons of different maps and all that, but it’s sort of, it’s not the issue. And so that’s why I come back to saying an experiential base is important. And then tradition is important because it gives you other people’s experience, it gives you some guidelines, because it’s easy to be fooled and used and all that in a normal human way.

So you like to have some guidelines that you can sort of check with or understand.

Karuna: Boundaries. And they do need to be really aware of that individual soul, because anyone that comes into class is so unique and so authentic that if you know, you have an understanding about how to open their heart and share the wisdom and the grace of this teaching, of some kind of, then you can really see exactly what they need. And you can almost see it, you can really read it very compassionately and know that each one has a story. Each being that comes into your room, into your class, has a story, has a very authentic story to who they are, and they know that story well enough to come and walk through that door and say, “I’m willing.” And that’s all we really ask is that we, you know, we can open the door. We never close the door on anyone. Yogi Bhajan never turned his back on anybody. He’s always willing to listen to the story.

And that’s really important for people to understand that, you know, we don’t have rules that say you can’t come in. I always have, you know, a chair, there’s a cushion there. You can stand up, you can do it. You can stand on your head the whole time, you can meditate the whole time. I don’t—just get the energy of the room, get the sound current, because we use so much amazing sound current. And sound current being incredible—we have incredible musicians. The first thing that drew me to Kundalini Yoga was the music. You know, I was taken to Yogi Bhajan’s samadhi. I didn’t ever even meet him, and I was the first one there at his samadhi—at his funeral. I was the first one there. I had no idea what I was even doing there. I didn’t take the left turn into the right place, so I took the right and went straight to Espanola from Vail and landed there, and the musicians were setting up.

And once they set up, I was elevated into—like my heart just opened up. I didn’t even know who I was there for. I knew I was—suddenly something was happening in me. So that’s what we really get into class is that shift. There’s something that happens with the energy that shifts outside of any other type. Because I’ve taught, you know, Hatha for 20 years prior to becoming a Kundalini Yoga teacher, I never, ever experienced that shift. There was a high from maybe sweating too much, or, but then there was this low in 20 minutes. I was like, “Oh, my God, I’m angry again.” But with yoga, with this yoga, it stays with you.

With yoga, with this yoga, it stays with you.

Rick: Yes, one of the points I was going to bring up is that I would hope that there would be a cumulative effect, as there should be with any spiritual practice, and that the longer you stick with it, the more it will accumulate.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Sure. And like you were saying, with the tree analogy, right, the tree metaphor, sure, we always give people practices if they’d like to do things outside of class. A lot of people just come to a class and go. But then if you develop, like anyone, a personal practice, a time where you’re still in the morning, get up and take your cold shower, that’s one of our favorites, you know? And then do some exercise and then do some meditation, and really intentionally be present with what is an important thing in your purpose and heart for the day. So there’s a practice, and usually we do a morning practice. But he said, “Well, could you do it in the evening?” “Okay, you know.” “Well, is the morning special?” “Yeah, traditionally it is.

It’s quiet, it’s before the day has started, everybody’s prepping up, it’s not a bad time to go in there before the noise starts.” “Good idea.” “Oh, and there’s mystical reasons and energetic reasons.” But again, think of these things as enduring records of practices that have worked for a lot of folks.

Rick: Yeah. Did I hear you say you advocate cold showers?

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: I love cold showers, don’t you?

Rick: I went through a phase for several years, cold showers, I was like, “I’m going to tell you a funny story. A little diversion here, but I was in Switzerland and living in this…

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: And that’s cold.

Rick: I was in the cold showers anyway, but they were working on the plumbing of Maharishi’s rooms upstairs or something, and we didn’t have hot water anyway, if we wanted it. So I’d go in the bathroom in the morning in Switzerland and I’d start filling up. There wasn’t a shower, it was a tub. And I’m sitting there on the toilet waiting while the tub fills, and the window is broken and snow is blowing in. You know? And I’m looking at that water and it’s kind of blue, it’s so cold. And then, “Got to do it! Get in there!” And you’d be cold the rest of the morning.

Karuna: Really? Because actually the theory behind a cold shower is you’re warm when you come out.

Rick: Well, if your room is also cold, it takes a while to…

Karuna: That sounds funny, yeah.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: No, it’s a good example of, you know, technique and purpose, right? So the idea is to stimulate your skin and to use cold or whatever to wake up and be fully present to your practice. That’s all. That’s a nice quick way in average climates, in average climates.

Rick: And so people… since that was a bit of a facetious kind of little story, but this is not necessarily an austere thing, is it?

Karuna: Austere?

Rick: Austere.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: No.

Rick: You know, if you have some grandmother coming in, you mentioned 80-year-olds, you’re not going to, you know, get her on beds of nails or anything, are you?

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: No, no, no.

Karuna: Also, we look at, also, we also work a lot with Ayurvedic healing, so if you’re a Vata type and that cold is hard on you…

Rick: Cold would be bad for you.

Karuna: Cold is sometimes hard on you, but you can also just stick your big toe in for half a second. You know?

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Or in that case, do warm-cold-warm, which would work fine.

Karuna: Yeah, there is a way.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Which you work with a lot.

Karuna: So one of the five sutras is that there’s a way through every block. Just start.

Rick: Yeah.

Karuna: Just start. You’ve got to start somewhere.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: One thing is, in the tree analogy, I kind of stayed and built a house or something, so not everyone’s going to do that, right?

Karuna: Right.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: My particular karma and interest was to do all this stuff for my life, right, for years.

Origins and calling

And I think origins are interesting. You know? How do you get in? Someone always says, “How do you get into stuff anyway?” Because you can come in and just have a class and go, right? You don’t need to get into something. You find out what it is in relationship to you and what you’re doing. For me, it was part of a journey of knowing oneself and growing, and we had lots of connections that led to such long involvement. I suspect you have some kind of, I haven’t heard it, but an origin story of sorts of why you find yourself not even, you know… These kind of things, ultimately, if you do the level that perhaps we’ve done, it’s not really choosing, right? It’s a feeling of calling, we call it, or “Oh, well I realized I was always here but I didn’t know it,” or “God, I really don’t want to do this but, yup, my gut says I must.” There’s a different level of relation.

Rick: I have a story very similar to Adyashanti’s. Did you hear his talk the other night? Remember how he said when he first heard the word “enlightenment,” he thought, “That’s it! That’s what I need.” I was driving down the post road in Westport, Connecticut with three friends in the car, and some guy in the back seat was reading Ram Dass’s book about, in Timothy Leary’s translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and they started talking about enlightenment. I thought, “That’s it! That’s why we’re here! We’ve got to do that!”

Karuna: Yeah. Kind of, kind of. It’s that direct relationship to the higher source. And you know, so many people say in these conferences, “I’m trying to get there,” and actually we’re there.

Rick: But… We do exist there, but we like to drop down into, you know, becoming very lazy in a way, and you have to make an effort. Sure. And it is effortless. We talked about this, Gurucharan and I, he whispered in my ear, “It’s effortless.” And I was like… Were you straining or something?

Karuna: No, we were talking about trying to find consciousness, the intimacy or the relationship with consciousness, or no, infinity. And actually, infinity and intimacy. The intimacy of understanding infinity. Remember we were talking about that whole waking-awaking place? There’s no words to describe infinity. Where, you know, how do you describe infinity? How do you… I can’t even say it.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: I like to say you become intimate with the infinite, and in that relationship, then you show up unprepared, which means you’re perfectly prepared, because how would you prepare for this anyway? But it’s that sense, see? Because life is exactly that way. If you think you’re prepared and you know all that, you’ve already constrained it in a certain way. So you have the knowledge, you know the map of France or whatever, you know? But then when you get there, that’s a different thing. So it’s always this balance, I think, of what I call finite and infinite games, and then having the creative game of the heart. And simply put, that’s the game. You know, like when I started this stuff, right? Just a few personal histories, I guess, I don’t know. How do you summarize a history clearly? As a kid, right? I wanted to know. Basically.

And I had these two modes of knowing, which is, I’m asking questions and doing this. I had a grandmother who was a Russian grandmother. She had survived the various things you survive in Russia and getting out of there. This side’s killed, that side both. White and red Russians, they both killed each other. So she got out and went through Canada and decided to go up there on the farm, a huge farm. You know? And she put me on her knee one time. She says, “My Zorlakov, my gold, my precious, never trust a priest. They live on the darkness of the heart and they take the blood and turn it into money.” That’s what she told me. So I was a little kid, and she’s telling me, because she had certain experiences, apparently, in her life. You know? I’d listen to that and say, “Whatever, okay.” But then we’d sit down and we would fly with the birds, or we would know when to do this.

Or, you know, I always had an amazing sense of that, not mystical, but that sort of standing at the mystical edge, that sort of mystic stance, you know, where when you open to the vastness that’s there, when you allow awe to be there, then there’s a kind of way you’re with things, you know, just that. She was the furthest thing from a philosopher. She was a hardcore organizing and farm woman, right? But she would have these moments of stillness. Now, I’d call it that. I didn’t call it then. And then she’d sit down with me and we would do that. Or one time she said, “Go with the cow.” And I said, “Go with the cow?” And I’m a little kid, okay? “Okay, sure.” I went with the cow and I went over and I’d stare at the cow, and the cow would stare at me. You know, this thing was going on, cow staring. It’s probably similar. I have a new school.

Rick: You do that in Iowa all the time.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: You know, okay, well in Iowa, cow staring school. I was initiated into the cow staring school by my grandmother. But I noticed that it was so easy to just merge. I wasn’t thinking merge, but that’s what happened. I would simply merge. And the cow and I, I don’t know, no one was pushing, but it would respond. So I could go like this to the cow and the cow’s head would go around, and I’d go this, and the cow would stop like this. So later, you know, this is a funny story, I was in Rishikesh, right? And so I was, you know, it’s all advertising. You get computer programming and gurus you can pick your avenue there. And I wanted to get some incense to take over this temple. So I was looking, and then suddenly I’m nudged from the back.

Rick: It’s a cow.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Big one. You know, they’re not like little guys there, you know, like the horse ones. And so I looked and I kind of went right back to that first way of knowing. You know, just fun. It’s a fun–no big purpose, just “Hi, cow.” You know? And I looked and the cow started looking at me, and I started looking at the cow. I felt quite young for a moment. And then I did this little thing, and he started doing the head, and I’d go like this, and the cow is fixed in space like this. And we just sort of held that stillness together. And then I laughed. I said, “Cow!” and it shook itself, and like this. And the guy behind me in the shop was watching this. He says, “Free incense! Free incense!” So the cow gave me free incense. That’s how I look at it. It was a cow benefit, you know, from my initiation in cow staring.

Rick: They have those snake charmers with the cobras, and then they have cow charmers.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: That’s right.

Rick: You’re a cow charmer.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: But it was a kind of openness to just experience, you know, in these funny nature ways. So I was always a nature boy in that way. Right?

Karuna: But that brings me to thinking about how I’m working with the children now. How old was that when you were with the cow? Five?

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Yeah, about that.

Karuna: Because when the five-year-olds come to my class, I have five through fourteen-year-olds that are coming to class, and I put them deliberately together.

Rick: Yeah.

Karuna: Because the five-year-olds are like that—inquisitive, inventive. Remind me of everything I said about it from the class before. They actually start teaching the class at five. And then, you know, that’s the memory that we were trying to figure out in these lectures about where does it start from, where do those memories come in that are relived through your adult life, they are remembered—you know, way back when you were a kid on that farm having a relationship with that cow for a half a second, relived when he’s in his fifties now, you know, in Rishikesh, India. Where has that journey gone? Where has that remembrance come from originally, and where is it reminded to us later on in life? And it is really in our spiritual practice that we can remember these things because we’re so silent, we become so one with ourselves, we get to know ourselves again as when we were a child.

And in that innocence of remembering, that brings so much joy to ourselves, meridians, our nadis, our whole brain like awakens to creative consciousness within and around us, and we become one again. We become so happy again. And this, Yogi Bhajan said, “Happiness is your birthright.” And to come back home each day—can you imagine if you sat still each day and found that stillness? What would actually arise from not living in the past, but from the now, the presence of your being now, and what you’re going to expand into?

Rick: Yeah.

Karuna: And that’s the fun of it, and that’s the joy, and there’s so much humor in that.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: To finish the farm analogy, right? I also would go out—no animals were harmed in this, I’ll tell whoever cares, right? But this is the fun—farm fun, right? So I would go out and you put a log in, and you put another beam, and then you take the chickens and you move them around and put their head in, and you hypnotize the chickens. Then you put them on the end, and then you’re a little kid, right? And then you do it and you launch the chicken. So the chicken goes up in the air, because it’s there, and it wakes up in midair.

Rick: And starts flying?

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Yeah, of course. Yeah, that’s what they do. But what I started doing was going, “Well, how long does the beam have to be, and how high would the chicken go, and what would the time of thing?” And so then I would start taking notes, and I’d start figuring out the system. So that was the other side of knowing. There was the merger, the cow staring, right? And then there was the chicken plotting, okay? Now the chicken plotting later became science, because then I got involved as a young kid and onward into high school, once we had the space programs and people wanted to find kids. So I had a six-room, seven-room maybe school out in Oregon woods, basically outside of Portland. And then they came around and said, “Hey, who are you?” You know? And so I started physics, chemistry, math. By the time I got to college, right? I was a triple major in that.

I skipped two years in physics and math and so on. I was very interested to know what could be known, the beauty—like Frenkel. And he and I were talking, and we’re like, “So related, I get it.” Because you go to a certain level of beauty, of aesthetic pattern, that just strikes you like a big flower in the world. Every look you see these amazing, colorful, engaging, poetic flowerings of existence. And you can mathematize it. You know? So I was fully into that. And so my early idols in that time, although I still was cow staring, was, you know, Eddington and Einstein and this and, you know, all the great mathematicians, the German. So I studied German, read the German text. And so then I was in Westinghouse. I got scholarships, blah, blah, blah. You know? So I became very heady and very fascinated in my own kind of aesthetic way with all of this.

Okay, now, here I am with two ways of knowing. And the more I get into the science—and I went to Harvey Mudd, which is the top two engineering schools, right? So it was like, from here you go to nuclear science or something. But I still had a beard, and I was a vegetarian. There were no Sikhs then. There was no Kali Yuga then, right? But people would talk to me through the grid in the door to make sure their security clearance wasn’t lowered by talking to me. So it was that period of time, right? But I was fully engaged in this, the pursuit of what? Some kind of knowledge and cow staring as well. And so I always had the two sides. So I had many artist friends and artist colonies, and I always had these two sides going on, two ways of knowing, you might say.

But I got to a certain point—and this brings us to our Yogi Bhajan—I got to a certain point where, without describing the details, it was one of those mystical moments we tend to get in our life. And I was alone, 2 in the morning, and so on and so forth. And finding a little bit of green in L.A., that was at the time. And it just hit me in that way that is not arguable, that said, “Oh, I forgot one thing in my equation.” People must be in the equation, or my whole system doesn’t work. And it’s sort of like, you know, you see those funny diagrams where the woman has the diagram and says, “Oh, I forgot to have my child.” Because I got too old.

Rick: Oh, she left her child on the bus.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Sort of, yeah. Well, it’s sort of like… Well, I always loved people. I’ve totally been in love with people. And I was always cow staring and people-staring too. And then suddenly I realized, I can’t know a certain aspect. And I could see that in the people I was with, because I was with some of the most brilliant people you can imagine. And they had drug problems, they had this, they had—their lives still were messes, they still had brilliance, but there was a missing kind of core. And I looked at that, and so then I started helping a guy named Mansoor with drug counseling and this sort of thing. He was this beautiful psychiatrist guy there. Started exploring, and I had been exploring even in high school, actually, mystical things and parapsychology and such. But I really realized that people was the fundamental thing that had to be in the equation.

So I said, “Okay, there’s got to be a way that I’ve got to rebalance this heart.” Now I had no teachers that I would identify anyway, maybe my grandmother, a few beetles I saw watching on the ground. Anyway, a few things. A lot of reading. And then I just started meditating more and doing whatever I could find at that time. I studied a lot of stuff. And this Kundalini stuff kept coming up. And I kept thinking, “You know, I really like, there’s something here. I can tell there’s something here I need to do.” So then, the beginning of the story we were telling, was you start having these dreams, right? And so for like three months I would have this recurring dream. And every time it would come up, and it would say, “This date.” So I’d literally see a date, like a ticker tape date sort of thing. Not a very nice dream. And I would get more and more in argument with that dream.

I did not want to have this dream. I was ticked off, because it looked to me like what I’d seen around me in the ’60s. People were drugged out, spaced out, dreamed out, trying to transcend, and full of illusion and craziness. It was fantastically creative. But sort of from a scientific point of view, “Whoa, where are you going to go with that? You know? Really? Is that going to get you that? Are you going to really depend on some other new thing?” So to me this was like, I mean I always had, as a kid, I mean you’d see auras and lights, and so I was aware of those realms. But I was also aware of how attached people get to those sensations, as if they’re solutions to something, which I don’t agree. So here I found myself having this sensation that I didn’t want to agree to. So it was called an upset stage one.

So that day came, two months later, and I said, “That’s it.” I was working on a Sloan Foundation grant for engineers to give them experience of who they built stuff for. I said, “I’ll lock myself in the room,” which I did. I’m not doing nothing! Because that thing was timing to stay. So three times people knocked on the door and asked stuff about meditation, because they knew I was doing it. The third guy who came handed me a little brochure. You know? I looked, and there was a little teeny ad about this big that says, “Kundalini Yoga.” I went, “Oh yeah, sure.” Nobody’s teaching Kundalini Yoga, and in those days nobody did. No one called it that. And so I looked, I said, “Really?” And it said, “Yogi Bhajan.” And this was when he first arrived. He was in L.A. So I called up. I could not, you know. I mean.

It’s not like I said, “Oh, this is the day for this.” It’s just that there it was, and I hadn’t actually associated it. I said, “Oh, okay.” So I called up and said, “Yeah, hi. Is this…” Someone answered and goes, “Satnam Ji.” I saw visions of bean sprouts and long, flowing grasses. I said, “I don’t know. It’s too Southern California for me.” You know, an engineer, I don’t know. And I said, “Okay, okay, look. What’s the initiation?” He said, “Oh, there’s none.” I said, “Okay, so after you do it for a while, what’s the initiation?” You know how you do hand a flower first, and you… “No, it’s totally open.” “Really? Anybody can come?” “Yeah.” “Really? And it’s Kundalini? Are you sure it’s Kundalini?” “It’s Kundalini.” We had a discussion. I said, “Oh, that’s incredible. Okay, so where is he?” “Well, today he’s not here. He’s in Claremont College.” That’s where I was.

Rick: Yeah, there.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Harvey Mudd College, yeah. And then I said, “Oh, what?” “Well, he’s giving a lecture in a half hour.” “Oh, where?” “Well, out my window.” “Oh, okay, thanks.” So I went to the class. How could I not? Right? So then I went, and it was a fantastic class. Most of you couldn’t understand him. He was fresh off the boat, as it were. And he was like a drill sergeant, because he had military training. And so his classes were like… “Drop your left leg!” “No, the other leg!” You know, you try to understand the accent and all this. And it was like, I’ve never had a class like that. Usually it’s like, you’re supposed to have these Hittleman postures or something. No way. This was like tsunami time, guys. And then you get to the end, and it was like, “Go into stillness. Be this.” And then, boom, there I was. The auras got so bright in that room, you had to have shades. It was like that.

I mean, normally it’s a little bit of this and that. But this was ridiculous. And so I went, “This is the real deal. This is great!” So exactly, I went up to him at the end of class. Right? First class. And I always remember this conversation. Because I went up and I said… You know, it’s a student. I was in grad school by then, and had done scholarship. I said, “Sir, I have a question.” And he just looked at me, and it happens like this quick. There’s no… you know. He’s looking at me, and it’s right there. And he goes, “You’re stupid.” I said, “Wow, what a great way to start rapport, right?” “You’re stupid.” “Oh, well.” But the mind’s going, “Yeah, but I’m a mathematician. I’m doing this, I’m in physics, I’m doing this, I’ve got scholarships.” You know? But in a half a second or something, “Yeah, he’s on a different conversation than I am, right?

This is another conversation.” And he just looked at me and he said, tapped me on the side of the head, and he said, “You’re a teacher.”

Rick: You’re a teacher?

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: You’re a teacher. And that’s the answer. And I was like, “Okay.”

Rick: Are you a stupid teacher?

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: No, he said, you’re stupid because I’m asking the wrong kind of conversation, right?

Rick: Oh, I see.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: “Yeah, you’re a teacher, right?” And then he looked at me and he says, “I don’t have time for your nonsense. It’s smoggy.” And it was really smoggy in those days. “I came all this way to see you.” “Who the hell am I?” You know? And he says, “Are you with me or not?”

Rick: Boy he didn’t beat around the bush, did he?

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: No, and I had no idea what he was talking about. “Show me the contract. What is this, a short-term loan?” “What do you mean, am I with you?” And then I got that look in his eyes, it’s sort of an amused, clever, entertained, zeroing look. That’s how I explain it. You know? And so I realized it was the same thing as that stupid look he gave me. Because he just said, “Are you with me or not?” And I remember, very explicitly, I stopped, or he stopped me, I guess, and my breath went zero, and I looked at him in a way that you kind of remove your concepts a bit. You know, like, “psshh!” And I just had this whole body, every cell recognition, and I went, “You’re my teacher.” And I said, “Yes.” And it was exactly the kind of “yes” you say.

When I met my wife, 43 years now together, I met her one day, she moved in a day and a half later, and we’ve been 43 years, and it was, “This is it.” And it is. And of course you’re working on it every day, you know. But it’s it. There’s no question. There’s not an assessment of plus and minus.

Are you with me or not?

Rick: Right. And exactly with him, he took me in the very first meeting beyond plus and minus. And so then he laughed, he started laughing, he had a great laugh. Took me down to the cafeteria and said, “Come on, I’m going to read you the rules.” And he sat down and we had a long conversation, and it was very, very funny. And then when he left, he had a Shakti who was the very first, his very first student was driving him, and he waved goodbye, so he’s driving out, and suddenly the car stops and you see a big finger, and he left to do this kind of thing. So I run down, “Sir,” you know, and he brings down the thing. He says, “Do you remember that class?” I said, “Every moment of it, sir.” He says, “You teach that tomorrow. Start teaching.” And then he started to leave and then he stopped again. You know, so I’m going here, and he’s probably having fun, you know.

Just go further, let’s see if he’ll run. He’s playful, right? But I didn’t know. I’m just being very serious. I run up to him again, like, “Oh my God, what happened?” And he says, “If you don’t see me again, until you die, this is enough.” And then he left. That was dramatic.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: It was, wasn’t it? So then I went back to that dream thing, and I went, “Okay, I get it.” So that began a long relationship. That was 1969, and the very beginning of it. I was already running, so I started running an ashram. I started ashrams, communities, all the long story after that. But that was the origins coming from what? I want to know. I like to understand. I don’t want to put humans into the equation. Well, to do that, I took a little 40-year journey here to clear out the insides, like we’ve been talking about, get rid of the blocks, be a counselor of destiny and opening these things for people, because I believe that that’s important, to have a life like that.

Rick: Very nice.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: And so now I’m doing consciousness and science and the mathematics of consciousness and working with my team at Chapman University, Jeff Tollaksen and Yakir Aharonov and others. And now that’s what I want to dedicate myself to, doing as good a clinical practice as I can, but now taking the teaching, because I’ve established the school. That’s going, that’s global. Now the question is, can we now do some of this modeling that takes those two types of knowledge and finds some kind of bridge that’s not, as Frankl said in his lecture, he says, “Well, you finally know, the temptation is that your math and all that elegance could somehow capture all this transcendence, which of course it can’t.” So I’m interested in what I would call the emergent boundary between the oneness that is what we are and the parts through which we express, and the manner of that arising does have structure.

And that is where this one type of knowledge meets the other. But you can’t even ask the question of how to approach that boundary, unless your heart is open, unless you’re present, unless you’re already, you’re not seeking anything, you already have that. Because then your intuition can give you forms that give you one of many, many ways of doing it. So that’s an origin story that kind of, I don’t know, might be what you like.

How to connect

Rick: Interesting. Now, I kind of need to keep this to about an hour because there’s something I have to get to. And so what I’d like to ask at this point is that if people are interested in finding out more about this, what do they do? Is there a website? Are there centers all over the place, or here, there? How do they connect with you guys in order to learn more?

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: So as far as Kundalini Yoga, there’s a lot of websites that list Kundalini Yoga teachers. Karuna has a website, which is …

Karuna: www.lightonkundalini.com And then there’s a general website, 3HO, Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization. There’s Kundalini Research Institute has a website.

Rick: Actually, so what I’ll do is…

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: And we’ll post that stuff.

Rick: I always put a page on that BATGAP for each interview on that BATGAP.com. So I’ll put a page and you can email me whatever you want me to put on that page in terms of websites, books, or anything.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: And if somebody wants to get me for any of the reasons, coaching, lectures, teaching, whatever, yogamaster@aol.com.

Rick: Okay, we’ll put your email on the site. But I like it, because who uses AOL? It’s like not even Yogamaster1001, because I love living on the bleeding edge of technology. So back in the old days, AOL was the beginning, right? So it’s still there, yogamaster. So I’ll link to all that stuff.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Fantastic. Okay, thank you very much.

Karuna: So appreciate it.

Rick: Thank you for your time. Yeah, so this concludes another interview. I think I’m going to do at least one more while I’m still here with Unmani, not that people are necessarily looking at all these in order. But if you’re familiar with this show, I don’t need to tell you all the details, but if you’re not, this is an ongoing series. And if you go to www.batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P, and just explore the menus, you’ll find out what it’s all about. At this time, there are well over 250 interviews to listen to or look into, and we have them categorized in various ways. So there will be a category for Kundalini Yoga now.

Karuna: Yes, yes, thank you.

Rick: And then if you’d like to be notified of future interviews, or notified whenever an interview is posted, there’s a place to do that. There’s a donation button. There’s a place to sign up for the audio podcast, if you don’t want to just watch the video.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: Fantastic.

Rick: So go to www.batgap.com, check it all out. Thank you for listening or watching. Thank you to both of you.

Karuna: And as we would say in the Kundalini Yoga world, Satnam and many blessings to you all out there. Thank you so much.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: I appreciate your time and your audience. I want to give one plug. There’s a most recent book I did, “The 21 Stages of Meditation,” which is a really lovely book, frankly, and I mean, the printing, and a beautiful thing, and we’re doing those kind of courses around the world, and on the way to Europe. If you really want a good hit, get that one, “The 21 Stages.” That will give you a whole lot about the system.

Rick: On Amazon or something?

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: You can get it off Amazon.

Rick: We’ll link to it.

Gurucharan Singh Khalsa: “21 Stages of Meditation.”

Rick: From the BATGAP page, I’ll link to it. Okay, great. Thanks.

Karuna: Satnam. Bye.

Rick: Satnam, everybody.

Karuna: Satnam. Yay.