Rick: OK, Robin, you can start anytime. Say something first so the picture switches over to you.
Robin: Cool. Is it working?
Rick: Yeah.
Robin: OK. Hello, and welcome, everyone, to Buddha at the Gas Pump. It is my pleasure, honor, joy to introduce Rick Archer, who is the host. And Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of conversations with spiritually awakening people. And he’s done nearly 700 of them now. And if you are new to this, you can go on the website and under batgap.com, look under past interviews, and you’ll find them categorized in a variety of ways and interests according to you. And most importantly, this beautiful, amazing, lovely show is made possible– sorry to sound like PBS– but from the kind and generous support of viewers like you. So if you’d like to contribute either one time or regularly, please go on the BatGap website and do that as well. And there is an option for PayPal as well as many other things in case you don’t like PayPal. And if anyone wants to contribute to BatGap on my behalf, that would be really a blessing because I don’t have money of my own to contribute to anything, and BatGap has been absolutely life-changing for me. And I’d like to add to that that I would like a personal award, like a prize, for supposedly having watched the most BatGaps by now, besides Irene, of course. But if someone wants to dispute my prize, then they can do that. But besides that, I think I hold the title.
Rick: Actually, Irene’s only watched a couple of them. She doesn’t watch them. She just hears my end of the conversation.
Robin: So I definitely– the award is already mine, then. OK, you got it. Cool. OK, so I will introduce myself as well. Rick’s guest today is Robin Chaurasiya. And I just had a very– I guess what I love about BatGap is this whole idea that it’s with ordinary people and awakenings that ordinary people are experiencing. And like I said, it’s been life-changing for me to hear all of these interviews. I’ll get into it more in detail later about why it’s been so magnificent and such a special part of my life. But basically, just to introduce myself, I was born and raised in the US, spent some time in the US military, and was kicked out under the policy called “Don’t ask, don’t tell” for being lesbian. I have traveled the world, worked with a lot of NGOs, but always knew that that’s where my heart was. So at the age of 25– is an organization in Mumbai that empowers girls from Mumbai’s red light areas– so survivors of trafficking, daughters of sex workers– to become agents of social change. And I did that for ten years. I lived and worked at the shelter home. So I lived in a house of 25, 30 people– women, girls and women. And 2 and 1/2 years ago, was diagnosed with burnout and told to take some time away from work, which somehow, for some crazy reason, I ended up in a mud hut at 4,000 meters, 13,000 feet in the Himalayas in Nepal without any electricity, light, water, running, toilet, anything. And I spent a year and a half in complete and utter silence, maybe talked to two people about groceries and things like that. I carried my own water. I meditated 6 to 10, sometimes 11, 12 hours a day, and had a lot of breakdowns in that process. And at one point, found BatGap, which has been a big part of the journey since then. Got in touch with Rick. That was a year ago, I think, that we first started emailing. And since August of 2020, I came down the mountain and have spent a month at Kranti with the kids of my organization. And then I’ve been traveling in Europe, supposedly writing a book and also visiting friends and stuff in Europe. So here we are.
Rick: Good. All righty. And I just want to say that I absolutely love Robin. I think she is a wonderful person. I’m incredibly– I just feel a wave of love when I think of what she’s doing to help these girls. And she’ll tell stories about the girls, by the way. Some of which will be blood curdling because of what they go through. And others of which– and even those blood curdling ones, hopefully, will have some kernels of inspiration in them. But some of them are incredible success stories, where the girls have gone on to get college degrees, graduate degrees, and really flourished in life. And I just think it’s so– spiritual service, or seva, as it’s called, is an important form of sadhana, of spiritual practice. And a lot of traditional teachers have engaged in it and recommended it. And even the pillars of Vedanta, like Shankara, advocated karma yoga to purify oneself to the point where one could actually understand and benefit from Advaita Vedanta. And that’s not what Robin’s motivation is. I mean, she’s motivated, as I would see it, as a force of nature, an instrument of the divine, whatever you want to call it. She sent me some photos just the other day of some Buddhist monks who came to visit Kranti. And one of them is the translator for the Dalai Lama. And they, like many people, have been encouraging her to keep doing what she’s doing. And I have, too. And I was arguing that she should get off that blasted mountain. She’d been there long enough, and it kind of reached its end of its usefulness at that stage. But at the same time, I’m urging her not to go back to the mountain, at least for any long-term extent. One needs a balance between rest and activity. And as I was talking to Nipun Mehta the other day, whom I’ve interviewed, who said, yeah, all these people who do this kind of service work end up burning out, because the task is monumental. I mean, you know the story of the old man and the young boy who are walking along the beach.
Robin: Rick, I know all of your stories, absolutely all of them.
Rick: You want to tell that story, or you want me to?
Robin: Of course. So a man and a little boy are walking– or a man sees a boy on the beach, and he’s picking up these starfish and tossing them into the water. And they’re all stranded up on the beach. And this man walks up to the boy and says, “Wwhat the heck are you doing? Look at how many thousands or millions of starfish are here. What do you think you’re going to do? Like, how are you going to make a difference?” And the boy just does– continues on, carries on with what he’s doing, and picks up one starfish and tosses it in and says, “I made a difference to that one.” And the next one, “I made a difference to that one.”
Rick: Yeah, it gives me goosebumps to hear that story. It literally does. That old saying, “think globally, act locally.” I think that even– I don’t know. I don’t want to elaborate on it. I think everybody gets the point. But I think what you’re doing is just so lovely. And I just love you for it. So let’s continue on. And other people may have questions and whatnot to ask as we go along. As I mentioned in the beginning, they can send those in if they like. I think maybe we should go back to your earlier life and what your childhood was like and when you first got some inkling of spiritual motivation and things like that. Let’s start with that.
Robin: Cool. OK. I don’t know where to start, but let’s just see where it goes.
Rick: Well, you were born, but you don’t remember it. But then what?
Robin: Exactly. I think some of my earliest memories are from being two, three years old– three or four, very specific, because it was the first time in my life, I had an older sister who was one year older than me, And I have a lot of memories about the time I spent with my mother while my sister was in school. And my mother was a bit– she had schizophrenia and struggled a lot with mental health. And never mind. I don’t know all of her baggage. But she was really, really dedicated to– have you heard of Radha Soami?
Rick: That’s a woman, apparently, Radha Soami.
Robin: It’s kind of– I don’t know what to call it. It’s a sect of some sort.
Rick: A sect, OK.
Robin: Yeah. A meshing of Sikh and Hindu philosophy all in one. And the founder was from the Sikh tradition. So she was really obsessed with it and dedicated to it and would sit me down to do these prayers and satsang chanting and everything with her from a very young age. And I spent a lot of time in that. I was always upset my sister didn’t have to do it because she was in school. So I was dying to get to school. And yet, something was always kind of seeping into my brain or mind, in a sense. And one of the big moments for me was when I was three years old. And my mother and I would go shopping. And this was in California, by the way. And every time we’d walk into the store, I would steal two pieces of chocolate. And my mother would be somewhere else, but I would steal the two pieces. And I’d take one to her. And I would eat one. And she never yelled at me about it. But one day, I went to steal, and something about the satsang we had done in the morning just kind of came into my mind in this weird way. I was so convinced, Rick. In that moment, I was so convinced that God was watching me steal. And I put the chocolate back, and I walked away. And my mother was like, “Where’s the chocolate?” So that was one very strange but strong moment. And I know what’s really beautiful about a lot of the people you’ve interviewed is, I don’t have memories that– a lot of people have really incredible memories from their young childhood. Mine were slightly traumatic because my mother, as I said, had schizophrenia. My father was quite violent. But these memories stick out to me connected to spirituality more because of that. And I think my next big, big memory was when I was 9 or 10. And I remember we had just come back from a trip to India, so 9. And my mother and father were fighting like crazy. I’m talking like my mother would try to burn my father with an iron in the middle if they got into a fight while she was ironing clothes and things like that. And anyone can imagine kind of the trauma that a child goes through, that my sister and I went through, trying to break up the fights and everything. I remember going into my room crying and just sitting down on the bed like, what on earth am I supposed to do? How do I stop this? How do I get over it? Why doesn’t it change? And I saw this book also of Radha Soami that was just kind of sitting near my mother’s altar. And it was the first book that she had in English, or the only book. And I picked it up and opened it randomly just thinking like, oh, maybe this will help in some way. And something about– I don’t even remember what line I read, but something about the peace that came over me in that moment, like somehow the fighting melted away, the anxiety about it, the what do I need to do about it, everything melted away to the point of like, it will be all right. No matter what, it will be all right. So yeah, that was kind of a second big moment. And then the third one I would say from my childhood was about 13 or so. And I had this crazy– I don’t know. I just looked out the window one day. I remember exactly what I was wearing, where I was sitting, everything. And just had this moment of feeling non-existent, as if– it was really scary. And that was my time of like, I need to get on this path of materialism because that’s the only thing offered to you in America often as a child as well, that do well in school and earn good money and go off to– and that was when I started– I put aside all the spiritual things and the seeking and just went to, now I’m going to travel the world. I’m going to accumulate whatever I can. I’m going to get into the best– all of those things. And I set literally from the age of 13 until I started meditating again after I started Kranti, during that time, there was nothing spiritual. Of course, it’s all spiritual. There’s no doubt about it. But it was almost like I’d completely set aside the spiritual part of me or shut it down and went around for a decade acting like I was the most sophisticated, intellectual atheist who could justify and talk anyone out of believing in this bullshit of God and religion. So it was quite a dramatic turn. But all I can say is the fear I felt in that moment of not existing was, the only response I knew was I need to go out and do things and I need to be out there in the world and accumulate things and stuff. So it was quite a big change in the approach to life, I guess, if you will.
Rick: But it sounds like, from what you sent me, that from a very early age, 14 or so, you were volunteering with various nonprofits. And you said and traveling the world. I mean, did you start traveling the world at the age of 14? Or you mean you volunteered locally and then when you got older, you started traveling?
Robin: Yeah, more like that. So 14, 15, I was volunteering with organizations just in the Seattle area, which is where I grew up. And then eventually at 17, I think I did my first kind of trip abroad by myself. And started volunteering and stuff then. But also, I should just go back to 12 as well. I just– had 11 or 12– it’s very strange to think about now. Maybe it’s not strange, especially after hearing so many of your interviews and stuff, but at 12, I had this crazy, absolute obsession with finding out– I needed the truth about something. I don’t know what. And so I was doing all of this. Is there a God? Is there not? My father was very– I don’t think he was atheist so much as he was against my mother’s religion and the time that she spent on it. But there was just this like, somebody tell me, somebody’s got to have the answer. And I remember I laughed when I heard the interview you did with this woman– I forget her name– but basically, she had this as well at 12. And then that night, Ramana Maharishi showed up in her bed or something like that.
Rick: Yeah. It’ll come to me. I got a book from her on the shelf. All right, it’ll come.
Robin: I’ll probably keep referencing different people as well.
Rick: Pamela Wilson. Pamela Wilson.
Robin: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, and so I was so envious the moment I heard–
Rick: Wait a minute, it’s time for a joke. OK. I don’t know if you’ve heard this one. So you said you’re wondering with all this intensity whether there’s a God. And it reminded me of the one about the agnostic, insomniac, dyslexic who stayed awake most nights wondering if there’s a dog.
Robin: I do remember calling this one, yes.
Rick: Because he’s dyslexic, right? So he mixes up the letters of “God” and it becomes “dog.” OK, let’s get serious again.
Robin: Please forgive me because I’m not going to laugh at any of your jokes. I’ve heard–
Rick: Oh, come on. You got to laugh. Otherwise, I’ll feel insecure.
Robin: OK. So yeah, and I literally– Rick, I can’t even explain to you. It’s insane. I lived in the suburbs. So you know how Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons and all these people came walking. It was like everyone knew to come to my house because everyone knew there was this 12-year-old kid there who was going to grill you. And my mother would make them chai. So they’d leisurely kind of sit around for two hours thinking they’re doing their converting work and everything. I was vicious, absolutely vicious with these people. Like, wait, you explained this in the Bible at this point? No, this doesn’t make any sense. How is it possible that– how can revelation and this be true? And I mean, I was absolutely brutal with them.
Rick: That’s really impressive at that age. I mean, I was definitely in a different place when I was that young and a very superficial place. So I’m really impressed by that.
Robin: No, it was definitely the trauma and the growing up in this family that forced me into that at a very young age because my mother had schizophrenia. I mean, I’m telling you, like, she would call the police and tell them that there’s somebody hiding in the attic planning to kill her. And quickly I realized, like, she doesn’t speak the greatest of English. I’m supposed to talk to this police officer. How do I explain what’s going on? And then between my parents as well, sometimes, like, I remember one time calling my mother– or calling my father at work because my mother was just having this, what I would call today, a panic attack. And he just said, I don’t care, and this isn’t my problem. Tell her to shut the heck up. And very illegally– but I had already started driving at the age of 12 or 13– but I took my mom to the hospital. So it was like this being forced to grow up at a very young age and along with it coming all these questions of, like, well, “What is this?” I don’t quite know if this is normal. Obviously, I went on to study psychology for a reason. But I just didn’t quite know what I was seeking for, but there must be some answers about the situation I’m stuck in. So yeah, and I even vaguely remember this woman who came along– a neighbor’s friend or something– and standing out on my lawn and talking to this woman literally for 3 and 1/2 hours about God. And my dad was working in the garden. And he kept saying, “Do you guys want to go inside?” An hour later, “Do you guys want to go inside?” And we didn’t. It got dark. But the last words that woman said to me was, with the amount of questions and dedication that you have, I am certain that you will find God one day.
Rick: Nice.
Robin: As an atheist, of course, I spent many years laughing about, like, oh, she was an idiot. But then the moment when I did experience samadhi, or whatever you want to call it, I instantly– her voice came back into my mind– as if you dig deep enough and if you pursue it deeply enough, that you will find. And I also had a very strange obsession. This was when the internet had just come out, and I was 12. And you will not believe, aside from spiritual things and reading the Quran and the Bible and this and that, I became really obsessed with astral projection and lucid dreaming and out-of-body experiences. I put that same kind of dedication and energy into practicing all of these things. Never got anywhere. So then again, I became extremely jealous when I heard all these interviews that you’ve done with people who kind of– either for whatever reason, luckily fell into that or whatever it is. But yeah, this was my absolute obsession at the age of 12. And finally, one day after a year of keeping a very strict journal of my dreams and following all the things you’re supposed to follow, I felt like nothing’s happening. I just gave up one day. And of course, the day that I gave up was the day, that it was the only kind of astral projection experience I had. And yeah, I’ve come to realize, even on this journey in the mountains, how much the day that you give up is the day that everything changes. So that was my obsession at the age of 12. But then that moment at 13 of non-existence, if you will, struck me so hard, I just abandoned all of that and got on with making it in this world. and stopped wasting my time on that. But the odd thing is, I also wanted to share that those three kind of things have come back to me in that exact same way. So these stealing, and then the book situation, and then the non-existence situation. So one of them was, I got into Buddhist meditation and started attending these 10-day retreats and everything in Dharamsala about, I think, in 2013, 2014. A lot of the meditations that they have, you must be familiar with– like Tonglen– just trying to put yourself in other people’s shoes in so many ways. I had started stealing again at that point, because for whatever reason. But I remember going to steal something, and just looking in this person’s eyes and realizing, oh my god, I’m you, and you’re me, and I’m stealing from myself. Ffrom that day forward, never stolen anything in my life. And it was just such a– I didn’t connect it at the time to the fact that stealing had been a big moment of God watching me or whatever as well. And then the book situation. The book that I had mentioned, the Radha Soami book that I picked up, and it just brought this peace over me. There was also this moment in 2018, when I went into a friend’s house and happened to open a drawer, and this book was sitting in front of me. The drawer was empty. There was just this book, which was Paulo Coelho’s The Pilgrimage. And it’s about the Camino, of course. Tthe moment that I opened it and started reading, I just knew that one day I was going to take these damn 25 kids that I have, and I was going to walk the Camino with them. In that moment, I knew.
Rick: Tell people what the Camino is.
Robin: Yeah, sure. So it’s an 800– it depends where you start, but most people start in Western France– And it’s about an 880 kilometer pilgrimage that people walk to St. James Cathedral in Santiago in Western Spain. And so you can take– many people take 30 days to do it, 35 days to do it. Some people walk much faster or do whatever. But it’s quite– a lot of people these days obviously walk it for the sake of the beauty and trekking and whatever– but for 1,000 years, it’s been one of the most important pilgrimages in all of Europe.
Rick: Yeah, there was a nice movie about it. Who was the actor that played in that? The guy who was in the West Wing, who played the president in the West Wing?
Robin: No idea.
Rick: You know. And he has a son who’s kind of a wild man who is doing all kinds of crazy things. I don’t know. That’s another one of those that’ll come to me.
Robin: Yes, yes, yes. I think I watched that. Is it called The Way?
Rick: I think it might be.
Robin: Yeah, yeah. We showed that to the girls before we went on the Camino because just for them to get an idea of the type of the– because they’ve never seen fields of Spain or that kind of space. So yeah, it was quite beautiful.
Rick: Yeah. OK. So then– well, then you got into the military, the Air Force at some point. But maybe there’s some more things you want to say before that.
Robin: No, I guess the volunteering thing, everything that you said before about karma yoga and all of these things, I think I’ve been very unfortunate in the sense that I’ve kind of focused on all of these paths, the jnana, the bhakti, the karma yoga, and just kind of pursued them all as hardcore and seriously as I could. For better or worse, it’s been quite a stretch and quite difficult in all aspects of all paths. So of course, I mentioned I have– I guess, I should say there are three people that I consider my gurus or three main teachers that I have. One of them is, as you mentioned, he just came to Kranti a couple of days ago, he used to be the translator of the Dalai Lama. Now he runs Tibet House in Delhi. So he’s one of them. Another is Sri M, who you have interviewed twice as well. And the third is somebody named Om Swami, who– so I have kind of this whole Hindu-Muslim-Buddhist thing going on as well. But they’ve all played really, really, really incredibly key and important parts and roles in my journey. I have to say that if there is anyone who is completely and utterly responsible for this journey, it’s my kids. They have, in some ways, when you sit back to look at everything that you’ve done in life, it’s literally them. Anything– when people talk to me or say to me, like, “Oh, what amazing work you’re doing and what an amazing thing to sacrifice your life in America and move to India,” I can’t explain to those people how lucky I am to do this work and lucky to have these kids in my life and the whole process of the journey with them and being on all of their individual journeys. But we also talk often about– even in Mumbai, I can’t explain to you, but there’s 15 million people, And yet, we often walk into cafes and stuff, and people will come up to me all the time like, “Oh, you guys are from Kranti.” And it’s such a– everything I am, whatever I am, but everything that I am as a human, on the human level, is because of them. Tthere’s no question about it. So without my gurus, would I have gotten on the spiritual journey? Yes, because the girls were there. Without the girls, would I have ever gotten into spirituality? Never, never.
Rick: So they’re your gurus.
Robin: Yes, absolutely. And in the hard way as well, when you have to practice patience and anger management and all of those things too. But yeah, they’re my gurus.
Rick: Yeah, boy. Robin has told me some stories, over the time that I’ve known her, and she’ll get into some of them here. But boy, some of the things these girls go through and that Robin goes through trying to help them is really something. OK, so I don’t know if we’re going to spend much time on the military. You got into the military, you got kicked out of the military. And I’m glad you got kicked out of the military. You’re doing a lot more for the world, believe me, doing what you’re doing.
Robin: Yeah, I actually went into the military because, as you know, they pay for your university education, and my sister, like I said, was a year older than me, but she was kind of the brilliant one in the family. She has a PhD in physics now. But I was a year younger than her, and the thought of living in that house without my sister was so appalling to me that I finished high school in three years. I didn’t have all the amazing scholarships that she had. So I just had to get to college somehow, and I had to pay somehow. Yeah, the military was the fastest option. Yeah, it is what it is. It was quite a journey as well, a learning process, when I got into the activism side. I think I learned a lot from being an activist– I mean, we used to do absolutely crazy things, like, I mean, handcuff ourselves to the White House fence and stop eight lanes of traffic in Las Vegas, and I was speaking almost every weekend at different queer rights events and pride parades, things like that. It was quite a learning experience of a lot of important things that helped me later with Kranti as well. So yeah.
Rick: Great. OK. So all righty. When you left the military, how old were you then?
Robin: 24.
Rick: 24. And that’s when you started Kranti. So how did the idea of Kranti pop into your head?
Robin: Very long story, short, part of all of that volunteering and traveling, I had come back to India and spent six months at another organization that does similar work. they basically do the raids in the brothels and bring the girls out, and then for me, it was really a matter of seeing these girls just moving from the brothel into another prison where they were kept locked up, had no possibilities for anything that they could do in life, being shamed for having gotten trafficked or ended up in sex work, which just, as an American, didn’t make sense to me. I met somebody there who turned out to be my co-founder of Kranti. Wwe kind of used to joke about, oh, one day– I was going off to do my master’s at that time– and I kept joking that I’m going to come back and start this organization. And she always said that she would obviously work with me. But I have to say, Rick, that I have some bones to pick with you about free will and quite a few other things, but one of the things is that for me– starting this organization and doing this work– somehow it just wasn’t a choice. I had absolutely no say in it whatsoever. The entire time I was doing my master’s, every day I would go to sleep– before I slept, I would– these thoughts would circulate in my head about, I wonder how this girl is. I wonder if anyone ever did anything about this kid. I wonder if she ever went back to her village. I wonder if her family accepted her. It was just this constant– and this was before internet and data and iPhones and stuff. So I think I really– it wasn’t a choice. I had to go back, and I had to do it. And no matter the consequence. And I mean, already just having been as a volunteer, I’d been beaten up by people. I dealt with, done these raids in the brothels and stuff. Already I knew what I was getting into, and yet I had no choice to get into– to not get into it. I have a quote for you, by the way, that– I don’t remember who it was– Schrodinger– not the cat Schrodinger, but some other Schrodinger. (It was Arthur Schopenhauer) And he says, “You can do what you want, but you can’t want what you want.” And when I read that, it struck me so much, because somebody can come explain to me for the next 3 and 1/2 hours, every single day for the next ten years, why I should spend my time pursuing the most important thing in the world– a BMW or a Ferrari or whatever. And no matter what happens, I can’t want that just because that person tries to convince me. And probably in the same way, I can’t convince people that being beaten up by the police and dealing with traffickers and having your kids turn on you and do crazy things and run away– I think I mentioned, too, I had to spend one day looking at all the dead bodies of all teenage girls in Mumbai– I can’t convince anyone that this is what they would want to do or should want to do with their life. So this desire that comes from me, that I wanted to start this organization and blah, blah, blah. I could do what I want, but I just couldn’t want what I want. I couldn’t stop wanting, no matter how everyone tried to dissuade me, it was a stupid, absolutely financially speaking and in every other way, it was a dumb decision. And yet I couldn’t stop wanting it. So that quote really struck me. I remember when I read it, and I thought, I’m going to take that one to Rick because–
Rick: Well, I love it. I feel that way, too. I was that way about BatGap. Once the idea popped in my head, it wouldn’t leave me alone. And a lot of people have been that way about various things. They just get a bee in their bonnet, so to speak, and it won’t leave them alone. They have to do it. I very much am a believer in divine guidance or guardian angels or whoever it is, higher levels of intelligence, urging us or motivating us to move in certain directions. I think we can dig our heels in and ignore them long enough that maybe it’ll go away, but then we’ll just be frustrated, and we will have missed our calling. We will have missed a precious opportunity. So you know, I– and you know, when you– well, you tell me. I mean, once you did plunge into this, do you feel like you’ve gotten kind of– even though it’s been tough and you’ve met with a lot of obstacles– do you also feel like you’ve gotten a lot of support in almost magical and mystical ways?
Robin: Oh, God. OK, so let me just tell a couple stories that I think will answer that question so perfectly and beautifully for everyone. And I guess one of the things that we do with the Kanthi girls is theater. So we started off doing theater mostly in India, and we would go to different festivals and stuff. And the girls basically have this show that they put together. And it’s very dynamic because it’s all their own stories that they’re sharing, but the girls– the amount of girls, the amount of, the different stories– change. And it can be performed with people, without people. So it’s a very dynamic show. And we first decided that we were– we did quite a few performances across India, and then all of a sudden, one of my friends in New York, also a queer rights activist, kind of contacted me and was like, why don’t you think about bringing this show to the US? And I thought about it, and I said, within a day, I was like, yes, I think that’s exactly what I should do. Now, how do you go about taking 20 kids to the US? I don’t know. But I remember this so clearly. For the month of April 2015, I stayed up, and I worked– I slept every other night, because I had so much work to do organizing this trip. And yet, not for a minute did it feel like work, and not for a minute did I not want to do it. And I literally slept every other night in order to get all of this organized. And as it happens, we have– everything was lined up. I’m telling you, we had performances in New York, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles. JetBlue had written and said that they would sponsor all of our domestic flights within the US. I had written to somebody at Yellowstone. They had agreed to– we could bring the girls, they would house us for free, we’d go whitewater rafting for free. Just everything was organized, except that I didn’t have flights or visas, which is like a little part. And two days before the first show– no, sorry, one week before the first show was supposed to happen– some guy called me and was like, I’d really like to talk to you about education and sponsoring education. Can you come have a chat? And I said, “No, look, I’m really busy. I have all this work to do. Can I talk to you in a couple of months?” He said, “No, you have to come now because I will be traveling.” So I went. Mind you, I don’t have all– we had a girl who had just come to Kranti. She was deaf and mute, and we didn’t even have her passport made. So I went to make her passport, and his office happened to be on the opposite side. I walked into his office. I explained everything to him, like I’m working on XYZ, and this is the situation. Everything is sorted, but I have no way to get there. I don’t have flights or visas. And he says, you just got there. And he took out his checkbook and wrote me a $10,000 check on the spot. I went home. I booked all the flights. And the next morning, I walked into the US consulate with like 20 passports. And the guy who was in charge of visas came out and was like, what in the heck do you– and he’s a good friend now as well. But I said, “Look, please, I’m begging you. Can you just?”– and sometimes you find the right people, magical people. And 24 hours later, he had all the visas ready. The next day, we’re on a plane, landed in New York. And I had $800 in the bank account or something, or maybe $700. And I bought those 20– it cost $20 to buy those seven-day passes for the metro. I bought all of those. I was down to like $20. And now what to do? We literally went to where we’re staying, dropped off the bags, and went to our first performance. It was that like– got to the first performance. I didn’t see– I don’t remember a thing from the performance because I was just sitting there thinking, how am I feeding 20 people dinner on $20? And somebody came up to me after the show and gave me a $5,000 check. And on it went from Chicago to the Grand Canyon to Yellowstone. There was not a single place where the doors weren’t open already in some ways. And I think that was when I started to learn or started to realize that as long as I’m working my butt off to take these girls and to give them the best experiences and opportunities, education, everything possible, the door will always be open for me. So that was in 2015. And I had just kind of gotten serious about meditation. And “God” is not a word that was even in my repertoire at that time. So I very much had this idea that I’m doing the work. And yeah, maybe I would stop for a minute and show some gratitude to the universe or whatever, but I never would have used the word “God” at that point. And then in 2017, we did another trip to the UK, and we performed at Edinburgh Fringe Festival. And some guy contacted us off Airbnb, gave us his five-bedroom house in Edinburgh for a month for free. And literally, the Indian community there was doing everything possible to keep us fed and taken care of. And then when– our last performances were in Glasgow– and the night before, I mean, the last performance we had, I went there, and I called my sister. And I was like, can you please just loan me and I don’t have flights. And some guy was standing behind me listening to this whole conversation. And it turned out he was the owner of the venue where we were performing. And he got on stage. And he basically threatened the audience. He was like, you didn’t pay to come to this show. But I just heard this poor woman outside talking to her sister. And nobody should have to deal with this. By the time you walk out of here, there better be 2,000 pounds in this donation box. And of course, we finished the show, we did everything, whatever, and I counted the money at the end of the day. It was 2,010 pounds. And that trip, I kind of started to feel as if the ego in me that, oh, maybe God is doing a little bit or the universe is doing something and I’m doing a little bit. And then it was the third trip in 2019 that really made me realize that I am nothing in this whole show. It is you. And it is orchestrated and written in this way that I found the pilgrimage book. We had organized several plays across Geneva, Paris, all of this stuff. Then we started the Camino. And the day that we started, I had less than $500 in the bank account. We needed 300 euros a day to feed and clothe everyone. And we kept coming up with these kind of fun, creative ideas about how to make money. So the girls would go sing on the street and dance to Bollywood and just put out a little thing explaining that we’re walking the Camino and everything. But Rick, it was like every single day, either I would meet someone who would say, “Oh my God, I’d love to help,” open up their wallet and give me 100 euros. Or we would reach some town, some little middle of nowhere hostel, and just stop for the night. And people would be like, oh my God, of course, we’re not going to charge you. You can stay for free. And slowly, we got on this rhythm of we needed exactly four kilos of rice every day, four kilos of lentils every day. And we would go to the place, make the food, cook lunch for the walk tomorrow and everything. And we fell into this rhythm. But let me just put it this way. By the time that we left Santiago, the girls had been dancing on the street every evening. And I went to church and spoke to people. So when I started, I had less than $500 in the bank account. When I finished, we had 5,000 euros in the bank account. And that was my moment of like, OK, clearly it’s not me. What am I doing here? I am not even a significant actor in this whole dynamic. And it’s all those people. Because the girls would also talk to people as they walked. We were quite a big group, so it would spread out. And the people, maybe one of the older girls would talk to somebody all day walking for 20 kilometers. And just by the end of the conversation, somebody would be like, here’s 100 euros or whatever. So it was really– I have no words, I guess. And I think it’s really beautiful because the girls, even as they’re getting older, some of them were, say, 19, 20 when they walked. And now to be able to say how that changed them or the ways in which it impacted them, it was one of the most beautiful, magnificent experiences of all of our lives. Just to be taken care of by pilgrims the entire way. And I just can’t explain what it’s like to carry 25 teenage kids, to get everyone’s butt moving in the morning and all of that. And yet I look back at it with such gratitude and joy. I can’t explain.
Rick: That’s wonderful. Reminds me of Peace Pilgrim. You probably heard me talk about Peace Pilgrim.
Robin: Yes, I have. I went and Googled after I heard you talk about her.
Rick: Yeah, except you’re like a group of 25 Peace Pilgrims. [LAUGHTER] That’s fantastic. You told me the other day that there had been like 50,000 sex workers in the red light district of Mumbai. But real estate is getting so expensive in Mumbai that it costs a million dollars to get a nice apartment. And all these high-risers are encroaching on the red light district. And now it’s down to about 3,000 sex workers. And so the other thousands are dispersing around the country and presumably staying in the same profession. And we talked about the starfish story earlier– made a difference to that one. But is there any thought or do you ever think is there a way with government collaboration or something, where this could be ramped up so that anybody who wanted the opportunities that your relatively small group of girls have had could get those opportunities and get out of the horrible lifestyle into which they’ve been born?
Robin: It’s definitely not coming from the government, that’s for sure. It never will. And I think one of the whole process of breaking down my ego as an individual has been just kind of seeing– because when I started the organization, I had so many critiques and criticisms about other people who are already in this space. And they’re not feminist enough, and they’re not taking care of the girls well enough. And I had all of these ideas that somehow the work that we do is somehow going to transform Indian society in some way. And not to belittle by any means the things that the girls have accomplished. One of our girls at 18 got a scholarship to Bard College in New York. And oh my god, it was just absolutely all– there was not a single Indian newspaper that didn’t write about her. And she kind of went through a couple of months of like, people in the metro asking for her autograph and that kind of thing. And so the story is important. And the story is out there. But to me, it was always a matter of– I had this stupid belief that when people realize that these girls– if these girls are capable of such extraordinary things, every girl in whatever situation, born anywhere in India, is capable of these things. Because so much of this has to do with gender inequality in India, the preference for a boy, the idea that a boy is going to support the parents financially and is a better investment. It’s still commonly talked about as– girls are talked about as watering the neighbor’s plant. Why would you raise and take care of somebody who’s going to go off to somebody else’s house then become the caretaker of somebody else’s parents? So in that sense, I always thought that somehow something we were going to do and these amazing stories, which all of them are individually, so I’m not– will never belittle the things that the girls have done and accomplished. And yet I’ve realized that it just doesn’t make a dent in anything. And that’s been quite a journey for me spiritually, egoistically, if that’s a word. But yeah, it’s been really unpleasant realizing that, man, I could dedicate the next 50 years of my life to this work. And many people already have. It’s not that I’m the first organization or anything. There are plenty of people who have. And yet I used to criticize those organizations about, yes, you help these certain amount of girls, and yet how do you change the system? And yet the more and more that you battle with this system, you just realize it’s not in one individual’s hand. It’s just something that’s going to take its time as anything, as queer rights, sex workers’ rights, and anything, absolutely anything. Unfortunately, that’s where I’m pretty stuck right now.
Rick: Yeah, well, as you said that, I thought about it, what you’re saying and my question. And my question kind of conflicted with the whole thing we had discussed earlier about the divine motivation of this and how you’ve just been kind of moved in ways that you wouldn’t have foreseen. And things have worked out well so far. So I guess my guess is, my hunch is that if it’s supposed to get bigger somehow, that’ll just happen. And it’ll be obvious that it should get bigger, and you’ll be shown how to do it. And if it’s not, it’s a great thing just as it is. And there can be others doing other things. But you’ve already bitten off sometimes more than you can chew. And in fact, there’s another thing you’re going to start doing, which you’ll tell us about. Because the girl who was doing that has gotten so traumatized by something that happened. So by all means, I mean, I don’t want you to become a fried potato from having too much going on. And as I’ve been saying, I think that a stint in the mountains every now and then will still be in order. Maybe not the mountains, maybe something warmer with a toilet. And more comfortable with good food.
Robin: And water.
Rick: Yeah, and water. But I think there’s a definite value– and many people listening to this will know, having been on a lot of spiritual retreats and all, that there’s a definite value in just pulling back once in a while. And there’s always more that can be done. But once in a while, you just need to retreat and go deep within and get rested and rejuvenated. And then you can come out and do it again with fresh batteries.
Robin: Yeah. And I think the hard thing is, especially as somebody who was so young when I first started this, there’s a lot of stuff around in the sector, in the nonprofit sector. There’s a lot of things about scaling your impact. And all those kind of social entrepreneurship fellowships and grants that you apply for, everyone wants to know how you’re going from 50 kids to 5 million tomorrow. And it’s all just bullshit in the end, let’s be honest. I can barely manage a damn house of 20 kids over here, right? It’s exhausting. It’s– and on some level also, somebody introduced me to, connected me to, someone in another city recently. I’m sure you’ve heard of Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, who the woman–
Rick: Yeah. Yeah, Cave in the Snow. So she has been– I’ve interacted with her a couple of times, had a couple of private meetings with her and everything. And she introduced me to a friend of hers who runs this organization in Pune, which has quite a large– so they have one home for girls who have been kicked out of their home for whatever reason, another home for kids with special needs, blah, blah, blah. And Jetsunma was trying to convince me that I needed to meet with her and figure out how I’m going to scale this work in that, why am I getting exhausted by this one organization that I’m running? Oh, look at this other sister who has these ten organizations under her umbrella. And I just– so we’re all going. I’m taking all of Kranti. I’m not going to go visit her. I’m taking all of the girls. And we’re all going to go to visit her organization. But when I look at those photos of people sitting in front of– you go on the website, and there’s this woman sitting in front of these 800 smiling kids. And I’m like, do you know the names of those kids? And for me, it’s like– we keep joking because along with me, there’s two other women who are full time living in the house and stuff. So technically, we’re cheating. We’re three mothers. And everyone else who works at Kranti is a mother of a Kranti girl. I’m the only person without any biological children. But we keep joking that as these parents, we know– I’m not kidding, Rick. I know every child’s birthday and passport number. My colleague who does most of the cooking knows every single person’s food, what they like, what they don’t like, what they’re allergic to. My other colleague who does most of the shopping, she knows everyone’s shoe size, bra size, pant size, everything. And this is what it means to take in– literally, take in these beings into you to the point that everything becomes so intertwined that– I mean, for me, I think most of my kids know that I’d be ready to give my life for them, for some who I’ve already been beaten by the police for them or had to deal with so many things. And yet, I think the spiritual journey, one thing it’s really showed me is it’s just about the depth. It’s like the deeper and deeper we get into spirituality, whether it’s meditation, whatever it may be, and the depth of joy of watching a sunset, the depth of gratitude when interacting with a donor for me, the depth of the taste of food. And I think one thing I always had right, intuitively, was that to me, it was so much more important to have these deep– to literally take them into me. I don’t know if that makes sense, but literally take them into my being on a level that it wasn’t just like, oh, you’re number 458, and I have no idea what your likes are, your dislikes are, what food you like, what– And that has been– because of that, this has been my spiritual path, not just as a way of karma yoga, but as a way of– two people are coming to mind, actually, right now. There is somebody named James Finchley that you interviewed. Finchley.
Rick: Finley. Finley.
Robin: Finley, Finley, sorry, yeah.
Rick: Christian guy.
Robin: After I heard his interview, I went on the website and started listening to his podcast called “Turning to the Mystics,” which has been so beautiful and amazing and so special to me. Aside from you, it’s the only thing I listen to on the mountains. And just to put out what a privilege it is to be listened to, I have to walk three kilometers in knee-deep snow in order to get data and download everything that I listen to. So it’s quite a big deal.
Rick: How do you charge up your phone? Do you have a solar panel for it?
Robin: Yeah, small solar panel that charges just my phone. And I remember on one of his podcasts, he was talking about how some of these professions aren’t professions, like teaching or whatever it may be. You can be a teacher and just kind of on top, on the surface level, deal with your kids and go home every day. Or you can give your all to the point it becomes who you are. And he said something really beautiful– that he said these paths demand nothing short of everything. And that is literally, to me, what I have given at this point. To the point of burnout, that’s a whole separate topic. But when you’re ready to give nothing short of everything, that’s where the growth is for us. You can spend 50 years as a teacher in a space where you’re just doing your lessons and going home and not interested. And yet, you can be the most transformative teacher, which a lot of American movies have been built around, especially with people in low-income communities. So it’s up to us how deeply we’re willing to go into that, dip your toes in, or just kind of your feet. Or if you’re willing to just drown in the work, in the love for the kids, in the sacrifices you’re willing to make. And for me, for whatever reason, it was always just this like– I just knew that I’m going to absolutely give everything from the moment I stepped in. Because nothing about society or about trafficking, sex work, any of these things is going to change unless I, at least, give my all. So that was one person, one BatGap that was coming to mind. And another one was, of course, Tim Freke. And so not his interviews necessarily, but it just so happened I was in London. And for the last three weeks before I came here, and I spoke with you, and you said– one of my kids is in an art residency in Ireland right now. So she came to stay with me for five days. And we said, oh, let’s go somewhere fun. Where do you want to go? And we’ll do a day trip. So we decided to go to Glastonbury. And then you called that night. And you were like, oh, I have this friend. Do you want to visit him? And I said, no, I’m not going anywhere out of London. And you said, oh, well, there’s this guy, Tim Freke. And oh, he lives in Glastonbury. And I was like, what? I didn’t know before that that’s where he lived, but I’d watched every video of yours with him. And we were talking about all these things. And I remember one thing that really always moved me about his interviews was the ways that he talks about his daughter and being in love. And I guess at some point, he had ended up in Mumbai with a teacher, Ramesh, and asked him, so what am I supposed to do now? Which is a ridiculous question, of course. But then Ramesh said to him– Ramesh Balsekar– and he said to him, go home and have a family. And he was like, what on Earth? What a stupid– and of course, he goes home, and within a couple of years, he’s madly in love and has a family. And we were talking about this. I mentioned to him how special it is to me when I hear him talk about his daughter. And so this was just a conversation we had a couple of weeks ago when you told me to visit him. And I said, on one level, it’s like, you’re so screwed. When you’re that deeply in love, you’re just so screwed. To the point of, yes, that you’ll be beaten by the police or do whatever you have to do in order to fulfill or follow through on that love. And he also then, at that moment, he said, the Buddha always talked about the end of suffering, and yet, to me, when I held my daughter in my hands, I knew that was the beginning of suffering. And just that depth of how you become that person or that child, that your joys are my joys, your suffering is my suffering, your pain is my pain. And that’s the only way that– I mean, karma yoga is not about serving this many meals to this many people and whatever. This is what– I mean, I don’t want to divide them because they so overlap. This is bhakti in a sense as well, to be so deeply dedicated and devoted to a child or to a cause or whatever it is, to the point that it takes over you so that that you disappears. And I guess that’s what Kranti has been for me, like the opportunity to fall so stupidly, madly, and ridiculously in love that there’s no way out. And I guess from the mountains as well, regardless of what happens in the future in the next few months for me, because I am going back to the mountains in January, but regardless of what happens, it’s like, I am– oh, I have a quote for you that you have quoted many times. And I think it’s from the Gospel of Philip, but that “those who become free because of gnosis eventually become slaves because of love.” And it’s such– I don’t know if you said that or somebody else on the show.
Rick: I think it’s somebody else, but it’s a good quote.
Robin: And I mean, that’s it. In the end, if you can sit on a mountain for the rest of your life with great joy and bliss, fine. But if you’re not a slave to love, then I don’t think you’ve actually lived the human potential.
Rick: Yeah. One thing you’ve heard me quote many times is just that most of the non-dual teachers that I can think of, the great ones, the famous ones, the ones we all admire and quote, have been great bhaktas as well as being great jnanis. They have– their hearts are as big as their intellects, and it’s well-balanced. There’s a famous Nisargadatta quote about that, about wisdom and love and so on. So a lot of times that’s–
Robin: –”Wisdom tells me that I am nothing. Love tells me that I’m everything. In between those two, my life flows.”
Rick: There you go. You should just sit in on all my BatGap interviews live, and whenever I need a quote, say, Robin, what’s that quote? [LAUGHTER]
Robin: It takes too long to reach you, I think.
Rick: But we’re human beings, and as human beings, we have all these different components. We have an intellect. We have a mind. We have the heart. We have senses. We have all these different things. And I’ve always thought of spiritual development as the holistic, simultaneous growth of all of these to as high a degree as possible. So when someone says you can sort of be an enlightened SOB, I think, no, that’s not enlightenment. That means your heart hasn’t developed yet, and that’s going to have to happen. Anyway, you want to comment on that before we go on?
Robin: Obviously, because I think it’s one thing. I really like some of the videos that you have done. Interviews you’ve done with people about the damage that Neo-Advaita has brought to certain communities. And I mean, I won’t comment on anything, anyone’s teaching any of that. But I have to say that it was quite a– it’s almost like the stuff is out there, and you have to pick through what’s actually best for you as an individual. But also, I think if those teachers, everyone that you’re talking about, Ramana Maharishi, and the real– everyone was a bhakti, as well as being this jnani– nobody would say that Neo-Advaita is what they were teaching. Nobody, right? We all know that. So yes, being an enlightened SOB or being just hurtful– and I know you’ve done so much work around everything that kind of can go wrong between the guru and shishya dynamic and all of that stuff. But I don’t think that there’s a question. I mean, if you can’t be loving and kind, and it’s not flowing through you, then–
Rick: What’s the point of it?
Robin: Exactly. If it’s just a head. And I think– so on to more BatGaps. I think that you’ve interviewed Swami Sarvapriyananda a couple times, and you’ve also mentioned in several interviews that you listen to his courses and everything. And I started listening to some of his things after that. But I guess this is what I struggle with, with jnana– because of course, my Buddhist teacher as well, his name is Geshe-la Dorje Damdul. He is such a jnani and so brilliant and so exceptional. He went to Cambridge. He was chosen as a young monk to go to Cambridge after he’d spent his time in the mountains and everything. And he’s so brilliant and so sharp and very– so he teaches a lot of master’s courses online and in person on Buddhist philosophy. And you can read until– let me be American here– you can read until the cows come home. You can read until– there is just some– you meet so many people who get it intellectually, and yet their life is such a disaster. They’re unable to maintain healthy relationships. They’re unable to control their emotions. They’re unable to– and so on some level, to me, the idea– and I think I shared this with you when we were messaging a little bit back and forth when I was in the mountains– that it’s one thing to say that the jnana, the path of jnana, Swami Sarvapriyananda often says that once you know, you know. Yes, I, this body, mind, whatever it is, I, this Robin, knows. And now I know. Every moment that I sit down and think, OK, let me think of that experience again or let me recall, yes, I know. It’s with me and it will never leave. And yet what I had– the analogy I’d given you when I was in the mountains was I said, I love coffee, absolutely love coffee, and all you can get in the mountains there is either Nescafe or whatever. So I took these little packets of Starbucks instant coffee this time. And sometimes I just get tired of that as well. So I quit drinking coffee for a month. And I know that whole month that the coffee’s in the cupboard. I know. And yet after a month when it was my birthday, so I thought, I’m going to drink coffee today, and I made coffee and I sat down in front of the mountains and I should have you put some photos of my hut and the mountains up as well.
Rick: Yeah, send them to me.
Robin: Yeah, there’s something– there’s no words to explain what that is, sitting in front of– all the peaks around me are 7,500 meters tall. And it’s my own hut and my own mountain. I don’t see anyone. Sometimes I see people once a month or a shepherd or something. And to sit outside with that coffee after that month and to enjoy it is an experience that no amount of knowing that the coffee’s in the cupboard is enough. So in that perspective, I think for me, jnana was like, yes, I attended endless retreats and I read endless books, and there was some point in my life when the longing– that’s the word I would use now. I wouldn’t have said it then. But the longing was so intense that I need to know. I went through three or four years of the only thing I listened to or watched or read was spiritual books. And this was about 2016, ’17, ’18, something like that. And it was so– I’d read it all and I got it all. And that moment of seeing, yes, it will always be with me and I will always know. But it’s not the same as the experience of sitting and drinking coffee. And it’s not the same as the joy of looking your child in their eyes after you see them after a long time and the joy of sharing a meal with somebody after you see them after months or whatever it may be. There’s something to be said about the experience of this knowledge that isn’t, for me, just the knowledge and the intellectual understanding and the experience still somehow wasn’t quite enough, which is where we had a lot of discussions back and forth about why I’m still on the mountain and what the hell I’m doing there. But yeah, when I hear Swami Sarvapriyananda talk about it and he just has this, once you know, you know, and the knowing will always be with you. Yes, the knowing is always with me. But there are days when– I mean, just a couple of days ago, I was sitting by a fire downstairs in my friend’s house. And I’m supposed to be writing a book. That’s why I’m supposedly here. But I was, of course, sitting by the fire and enjoying a coffee and something about the magic and beauty– you know those– how you always imagine or you see in photos, people sitting by a fire while it’s snowing outside and a dog snapping on the floor? I had all of it. I had my coffee. I had my dog. I had everything. And I just was like, I don’t think I’m supposed to be writing right now. And I went back and literally for an hour, I just wrote these amazing gratitude messages to people that I was just so thankful for. And you just don’t take enough time to thank the people who– unfortunately for me, it’s a list of like 10,000 people who make my life and the girls’ lives possible. So I can’t possibly get around to thanking them enough. But it’s just nice sometimes to say like– I don’t know how to explain this, but one thing that really fell away or happened on the mountain as well was sometimes I can zone in on a person and just see them in all their beauty and perfection and nothing else. And everything else just falls away. And just one example I have to give is I have this kid who she’s 23, 24 now, and she’s studying just outside Philadelphia as well. And she used to as a teenager, 16, 17, 18, she would literally– Rick, my God– she would make this giant thing of chai, like a huge pot of chai, and take the chai and sit in the corner. And all day for like two hours, the girls would come and sit and drink chai and chat about classes and boyfriends and this and that. And I would come out of my room, having slept like three hours because I was up planning blah, blah, blah all night, and now I have to go do this for you guys. I would come out and just be livid, like absolutely livid. And I would just launch into this, how dare you guys waste time? Can’t you be studying English? Can’t you be– like that kind of thing. And when I was on the mountain, I just– this girl is also just one of the most amazing, beautiful people you will ever meet in your life. She’s studying to work with special needs kids. And Rick, the joy in her face when she talks about her kids and does impersonations of them and tells stories about them. And I mean, she has like a stipend that she gets. And you won’t believe, she saved her stipend the entire time she’s been doing this work to buy phones for the two girls in our house who have the most severe mental health problems and stuff. And so she saved her money to buy phones for them because they don’t have anyone in their life who can buy them a phone. And just it’s almost like I saw her for who she is. And now I can’t ever forget that either. Yes, she might annoy me sometimes, still. I get pissed off at her because she’ll still be on her phone until 2 in the morning when we have to reach XYZ at 9 in the morning. But there’s just something so– like literally, I can think about a person, and there’s just something so– like the perfectness and the divinity– let’s call it that– the divinity of them shines through. And it just erases everything that I was ever irritated about, anything they could possibly have done wrong. And it’s just nice when you’re in that, seeing people in that moment, it’s just really nice to send a message to say thank you. But like I said, I’ll never get around to the 10,000 people I owe those emails to. We’ll see.
Rick: That’s great. I sense that you’ve had your coffee today. You’re going at a pretty good clip here.
Robin: Oh, good. I actually used to talk very, very quickly, and whenever I gave speeches about Kranti stuff, the girls would always make sure that one of them is sitting in the front row to be like, slow down, slow down. I think I’ve slowed down from meditation quite a bit.
Rick: Yeah, I grew up not far from New York City. And when I was teaching meditation in the early ’70s, I had a good friend in New York City. And I’d go into the city, or we’d talk on the phone or whatever, and I just kind of like resonate with her frequency, which was like, go a mile a minute, really. And we used to teach courses together, actually, retreats. And the two of us would be like, boom, boom, boom, boom, going back and forth, this sort of quick style of thinking and talking. Anyway, I like it. So there’s a lot of things I could ask you, but you mentioned that there are about three different particular stories of girls that you often tell when you give presentations. Let’s get into some of that. Maybe I’ll have some questions as you do that.
Robin: Sure. So I’ll just go on with the speech as I would normally speak it. And I guess mostly I do this with TEDx Talks at universities. I speak a lot to younger students, and they invite me often to just speak for ten minutes or whatever it may be. So I always– because it’s targeted at young people, and part of what I really want–, part of whyI’m writing this book is also because the girls’ stories are so special, so exceptional. We have so much to learn from these people. And we have this idea that we’re supposed to be learning from people who are Harvard graduates and that kind of thing. And yet, maybe we have a lot to learn from illiterate, unlettered sex workers, maybe. So I really want to share their stories in this really– their stories deserve to be told and shared, and there’s so much that every single human being on this planet can learn from them. So yes, when I speak to students especially, I want to inspire them to realize that you can dedicate your life to– I mean, call it social justice, call it social change, call it the karma path, whatever. And yet, it’s a completely legitimate thing to spend your life on. So yeah. There are three situations that I speak of that I think explain things really well or demonstrate on some level. So when I go in, I usually ask students, first of all, if you had to give me in a sentence what what you think the purpose of life is, what is the purpose of life? And thus far, especially in the Indian space of engineers and doctors and this and success and that kind of thing, so many of us have been taught that it’s all about doing well in school and doing well in school in order to get into a good college and then have a nice house and job and blah, blah, blah. But is that really the purpose of your life? And the kids kind of like, take their time thinking about it. And in the end, we come down to the fact, which is a very Buddhist principle, that the purpose of life is to seek and spread happiness. And this is something that you have in common. Your desire for happiness is something that you have in common with every single dog on this planet, with every single cat on this planet, with every single human on this planet, with every single sex worker on this planet, with every single trafficker on this planet. Everyone is doing whatever they can in order to achieve more happiness. And then there’s always those students who are like, wait, what about this? And I want money; I don’t want blah, blah, blah. And then I have to go back to like, okay, but where does the money actually get you? Hypothetically, you want it because it’s going to make you happy. So I always share the story of one particular girl who was trafficked at age nine and has a lot of struggles, like a lot of mental health issues, self-harm, cutting herself, trying to kill herself on occasion. It’s been much better the past few years. She’s been on regular medication and stuff. But if you asked everyone in our house, she is the person who laughs the most and makes other people laugh the most. I mean, sometimes we’re trying to help her be able to hold down a job. and that doesn’t always work out. But one thing is for sure that like, she’s just such a, just the joy of having her in the house, her ridiculous jokes, her, you know, the ways in which she entertains people. Like, I’m just so moved by, like, it’s really simple for me to just look at her and say, you know what, if you can laugh your life away, who am I to not be laughing every day as well? And if you can be happy after all the things that you’ve been through, what are my problems in comparison? You know, so I think like, she’s just this constant reminder in my life of the fact that we all have the ability to be happy. And it’s just, it’s within our reach. If it’s within her reach, it’s definitely within our reach. So it’s kind of a, I won’t say a choice, that’s not the right word, because choice and all of that, but it is, you know– we get up and we determine our day every day as well. So yes, she’s one girl who’s really taught me a lot. Just watching her has taught me a lot. And then I asked the kids, the students usually that I’m speaking with, I say like, and what is the definition of success? Like, how do you go about defining this whole, you know, being happy or whatever it is? How do you measure these things? And like, literally, how do you measure success? How do you measure happiness? Clearly, if we know it’s not in money, it’s not in BMWs, it’s not in the number of houses, you know, that kind of thing. How do you measure success? So I was talking about this girl named Sheetal, who basically studied in fourth and seventh, and that was it. And she basically at age 12 started working and was kicked out of wherever she was staying, and she went to work. And then she came to us, to Kranti at 17 and-
Rick: Went to work as a sex worker, you mean?
Robin: No, she actually was doing domestic work in a brothel.
Rick: Oh, some kind of a job, okay.
Robin: Yeah, yeah. And so, and she would work 16 hour days in order to get her one meal of the evening, and sometimes she wasn’t given that food if the work wasn’t good enough. So this is how she lived for several years. And then eventually she came to Kranti. And we, of course, you know, we put her in 10th grade, which didn’t go very well. She failed 10th grade twice, I think. And then at some point we just, you know, thought like, okay, if this isn’t working, what else might? And she was really into drumming, like absolutely obsessed with drumming. And she eventually ended up becoming a drum circle facilitator using the djembe and stuff, and she got, sorry?
Rick: I didn’t say anything, Irene coughed.
Robin: Okay, sorry. She got a scholarship to study drumming in Washington for ten months. And I mean, for that, when she got the scholarship, I mean, she was literally on the front page of every single newspaper in Mumbai. Eventually she came back to India, started working as a drum circle facilitator, and literally, at this point, she works with orphans, she works with terminally ill children, she works with sex workers and children of sex workers, and she works a lot in, I don’t know how to explain this, but basically when like a building is being constructed, everyone will live on that, on the premises– their children, their families, their wives, everyone– while the building is being built. And so the kids don’t have access to school or anything, so she works a lot in these types of communities. And Rick, one of the most rewarding moments of my life is watching Sheetal drumming with these kids. And the sheer joy on her face, the joy on the kids’ faces, the kids who would never hold a drum if it wasn’t for her, right? To me, it’s literally about like that pursuing happiness, seeking and spreading happiness. How are you spreading happiness? How many people did you make smile today? And this doesn’t mean that you have to go around running workshops with thousands of people. It just means how many people did you smile at today? Whether you’re walking down the street, whatever it may be. That’s also– what we spread in the world or what we give out to the world really matters. I mean, not on an ultimate level, but on a human level, it really, really matters. And so, looking at her, I’ve really just fallen in love with the way that she– who she is while she’s drumming. It is the most beautiful thing possible for me. So she’s another one that I’ve learned a lot about redefining success from. Because it’s not just about, she hasn’t passed 10th still. She’s 26 years old now. She still hasn’t passed 10th, but who cares? How many– you have been a meditation teacher, fine, but for the people who haven’t ever taught or haven’t ever done anything to bring a smile to thousands of people. She feels much more successful to me than those people ever will be. And then lastly, one story that I share is about a woman named Zarina who was trafficked at the age of nine and sold, auctioned. I think I explained this to you before as well. When they start menstruating, then they’re auctioned off to the highest bidder, and that’s supposed to pay the debt of what they paid for the girl originally. So she was auctioned off at 11 and whatever. And I mean, had these horrendous freaking stories about like, she refused to sleep with the guy because she didn’t know what sex was at the time. And so the brothel keeper basically poured chili powder on her genitals and told her, “Well, you’re doing this tomorrow. You better shut up, and this is your life.” So she did that. But then kind of for me watching her– she’s in her, she’s quite older now, she’s in her forties– but when you hear this story, automatically you go like, “Oh my God, what a victim, what a helpless person that we should pity.” And you know, that kind of thing. And yet the magic of the story is that she’s become this incredible community leader. And one of the situations that happened was one of my kids’ mothers passed away, and we were kind of in a hurry to get things sorted because I was traveling, nobody was at Cromptie. And they, in the red light area, I’ve never seen this, but the girls have told me that if a body, like if somebody is not taking responsibility for a body, it’s just dumped out on the street and the government comes to pick it up like they do dead dogs. So I was trying to make sure that whatever happens, this woman doesn’t end up in this situation. So I called this woman, Zarina, and she answered the phone, she took care of all the arrangements. And then she called me back and she said, “You know, I guarantee you, or I promise you that as long as you’re doing this work, I promise you that I will sleep with as many people, like as many customers as it takes to pay for the cremation or burial of any woman who dies in this red light area.” And for me, it was just one of those moments of like, you know, I think of myself as the social worker, and I’m so generous and I take care of people. And yet with the resources that I have behind me, what am I actually giving? Like maybe it’s this percentage of this much, right? But for her, what resources does she have? She has her body, and she is still willing to sleep with as many people as it takes to pay for the cremation or burial of a woman she’s never spoken to. And I think for everyone to pause, and when we think of ourselves as generous– we drop a coin in somebody’s cup at McDonald’s or whatever it is, like– are we as generous as this illiterate sex worker who was a victim and absolutely, has absolutely nothing to her name, to her life, whatever. And yet in some ways I feel like is one of the most inspirational people I’ve ever met. You know, everything I was talking about before about giving nothing short of everything. It’s also literally like, she’s absolutely ready to give whatever she has because in her mind, if I don’t give what I do have, what was I doing on this planet? So yeah, those are some of the incredible people that I’ve had the chance to work with. And I hope this gives people a sense of why I say like, I’m the student here, I’m the learner here, I’m the person who’s– I’m the beneficiary here in some ways, right? That I’m really, yeah, it’s been quite a spiritual journey. It couldn’t be anything besides a spiritual journey, of course, and yet it’s been quite a journey in many ways.
Rick: That’s great. Did you ever hear the story of the yogi and the prostitute that lived next to one another?
Robin: Yes.
Rick: Yeah, you want me to tell the story?
Robin: Are you talking about a real story actually or a story?
Rick: This is a story story, let me tell it. So a friend of mine told me this story and he had heard it from some teacher or guru or something. So there was a yogi and a prostitute who happened to live next to each other. The yogi had a little hut on the empty lot; the prostitute was in some building. And the yogi was always watching the people coming and going and to the prostitute, and he would take a tally of how many people were coming, and he would give her lectures on how immoral she was and how she really had to change her ways or she was gonna go to hell and all that. The prostitute meanwhile was like your friend here that you just mentioned, who didn’t have any other alternatives, and was doing the best she could to live. And when she wasn’t applying her trade, so to speak, she was worshipping God, and she would be very devotional and do pujas or whatever she was doing to worship God, and had her attention on God, and so on and so forth. But meanwhile, the yogi, whenever he got a chance, he would harangue her about her lifestyle and how she was going to hell. So one day it so happened that they both died at the same time, and the yogi found himself sinking down into hell, and he saw the prostitute going up to heaven and he said, “Wait a minute, what’s going on here? This isn’t fair, I’ve lived this ideal life as a yogi, I’ve been so pure and everything. She’s been a prostitute, I’m going to hell, she’s going to heaven.” And the voice, the booming voice or whatever came to him and said, “It all depends on where you put your attention. Your attention was always on sins, her sins. Her attention was always on God.” And so that’s the way it goes.
Robin: I have to say that some of these women are the most spiritual, wise, loving, caring, generous people I’ve ever met in my life. And I think that on a very basic level– like, I mean, you’ve spent time in India, so you have this idea more or less of like, you know how much spirituality is just kind of seeped into the culture in so many ways– but one of the things that, you know, many of the sex workers– one of my colleagues, she used to do this for many years when she lived in the brothels is, they get a group together and they walk barefoot from the red light area to Ganapti Mandir, which is, you know, one of the biggest temples in Mumbai– and Siddhi Vinayak. And the most amazing and beautiful thing about it is that nobody’s praying for like– I mean, maybe on some level they’ve resigned themselves to this is what this life is and, you know, this is where I am so I might as well make the best of it– but it’s not like they’re praying for money or to be saved by something. It’s not like that. They’re always praying for the community to be free of disease, for all the people and women around them to be healthy and happy, for their kids to get a good education. And it’s not that I’m praying for my own kid, I’m praying for everyone’s kids. And these are the things that when you watch a community that has literally almost nothing to its name and, you know, considered the bottom of the bottom of society, and yet the amount of compassion that they have. And, you know, one of the things that the girls often talk about is that, and in our house, I take the girls also to like, I mean, everything– Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Sikh, they’re like everything. We go to, you know, sometimes we’ll go to a Hindu ashram, sometimes we’ll go to a Buddhist teaching, sometimes we’ll go to listen to Sufi music at the masjid, sorry, the mosque. And I think one of the really beautiful things about this community as well is that everyone is the bottom of the bottom from wherever they are, but that all the shit that goes on with, you know, as is the case in the US, but the Hindu Muslim issues and, you know, the we’re from this community and you’re from that community, it just doesn’t exist in the red light area. Because you’re all screwed, you’re all at the bottom, and you better make the best of all the resources that you have around you. So it’s always been that in this community, the girls– I joke about this or I complain about it– because they’ll be like, you know, they’ll say to me like, “Oh, it’s a really big holiday. We have to go to our moms and we have to go to the area so that we can celebrate Diwali.” And then the next week they’ll be like, “We have to go to the area, we have to go eat, you know, biryani because it’s Eid.” And I’m like, “Weren’t you Hindu last week? And you tried to get the Hindu holiday and now you want the Muslim one and next week you want Christmas?” And you know, like that kind of thing.
Rick: Well, Hindus are like that, they believe in all those things.
Robin: Yeah, but it’s so beautiful that like literally Rick, I can’t, the political situation in India is absolutely horrendous as it is, but the situation being that like, if we could just sit down and learn from these women, like everything would be sorted.
Rick: That’s nice. You mentioned a number of times that you’ve been beat up by the police. Is that because the police are on the take from the pimps or whatever they’re called and they’re corrupt, and therefore beating you up because you’re interfering with the business, or what?
Robin: Yeah, yeah, it depends. So we’ve had quite a few situations where we’ve kind of, you just never know what the police want, let me put it that way. And one of the situations especially was, you know, that I was like, I don’t know, locked up all night until six in the morning or something. But there’s so many things that could go wrong, and basically everything at some point will go wrong. So one of the things that happened was, one girl ran away from another organization and came to us because she had friends in our organization. And then that other organization put out like this police report that she was missing and whatever. But long story short, in that organization, they are constantly– and this is a Christian organization– and crazy things happen there. One of them being that all the girls who are Hindu are forced to eat beef. And then if they throw it away, then they’re forced to take it out of the trash and wash it and eat it. And they were being beaten and all this stuff. So I think the organization was panicking. The more and more girls of theirs who were coming to us somehow, we knew what was going on at the organization. So whatever the reason was, they paid the police to come bust down our doors at midnight one night. And all these police officers come in– nobody’s wearing a name tag– and the moment that I realized nobody had a name tag on, something clicked in my mind, like something is off. And I started my recorder on my phone. And so for the next, I mean, whatever happened until the morning– so this was almost five, six hours– every time, I mean, they beat some of the girls as well. And then they took me to the police station. They took five or six girls to the police station. And the girls were in one room and they could hear in the next room, the police beating me, like they could hear the sounds or whatever. But long story short, in the end, luckily it was all recorded. And it just so happened that, I took the recording off to the chief of police who happened to donate to Kranti sometimes. So anyway, it’s quite a you just never know. It’s such a strange space of like– and then there are times where we’ve had girls from our own house who, to put it frankly and honestly, like girls with the most severe mental health issues, who might run away for some reason, whatever reason. And then they end up back in the red light area. And then they go around telling people like, we just had one girl who’s trafficked from Bangladesh. She’s been with us like four years, five years or something. And she was a teenager when she came, but now she’s like, “I’m 22 and I’m an adult. And I know what I need in life”, and that kind of thing. So she ran away and then ended up somehow with another police officer. And then she complained and complained about all these terrible things that we do to her. And the police officer was like, “What’s going on in that organization?” And so she was like, “They make us do yoga every morning at eight in the morning. They don’t let us sleep after eight. And they take our phones at night. I’m 22 years old. How dare they? You know, that’s my phone”, and stuff. And we have a policy at the house that after such and such time, you can’t have your phone. So, you know, it was like hilarious. This is this girl’s perception of what terrible people we are, but yeah. What can you do? You just, okay, go figure it out. If you think you need to go back to sex work for a couple of weeks and then you decide that you want to come back, we’re still here. What else can you do, right?
Rick: Yeah. Huh. Now you mentioned that it’s getting so expensive in Mumbai that, you know, you don’t know if you can afford to keep Kranti where it is. And you’re thinking of moving to some other part of the country and all. How’s that thought process coming along?
Robin: I think, you know, COVID has changed a lot of things for us as well. And part of it was that before we were a very activist kind of organization, so every protest for Dalit rights, for sex workers’ rights, for queer rights. Anything going on in Mumbai, we were always there. Every new film screening, every documentary. I mean, I have taken the girls to absolutely everything you can possibly imagine. Every single play that’s ever played in Mumbai for five, six years, we’ve done everything. And I think on some level, because all of that shut down during COVID and, you know, it was quite a transition period to see like, what is Kranti and how can we live elsewhere, keeping the programs intact and the important parts intact? But also kind of, I mean, we have paid anywhere from $1000 to $1,200 a month for rent for the past six years. And yes, granted, it’s a, I mean, it’s small– it’s a three bedroom flat, like 1200 square feet. And yet, it’s 25 people sometimes. During lockdown, it was more than 25 people at points. So yeah, it’s-
Rick: Wow. So you’re sleeping like five or eight or people to a room.
Robin: I showed you that photo of the library, right? The-
Rick: Yeah, the words Kranti had books in it, yeah.
Robin: Yeah, so it’s about ten people on the floor there and we don’t have beds. We just have, like, these mattresses. So everyone lays out their mat at night, and then you roll it up in the morning and put it away. That space is our classroom. It’s our dining area. It’s everything.
Rick: But if you had, if you ended up moving to Rishikesh or someplace and some, it would be harder for girls to leave the red light district and get to you. Would you have like a representative in Mumbai who would be a liaison or something?
Robin: Yeah, we would definitely have to– So one of the things that we’ve been talking about is probably moving a bit more towards the, like kind of having a formal school- school a little bit more. And literally going out to meet these other organizations and getting girls from different red light areas across Kolkata or Delhi and Mumbai and Bangalore, and sticking with those. Let’s say we take in 20 girls, and we’re gonna– for three years or four years– do this entire curriculum and everything with them. So maybe moving a little bit more towards that so that we take in girls and we stick with those girls for at least four years. So I have no idea where anything’s going.
Rick: An old friend called me yesterday who said he’s on the board of directors of a school in Rishikesh that has now 600 students or something. He wanted to know if I wanted to join the board of directors. And I said, well, I got a little bit on my plate, but I thought of you and I thought, well, maybe some of your girls, maybe you could somehow, affiliate with that school in some way so girls could go there or something. Anyway, I’ll talk to you about that later. Okay, now there’s this other thing where this friend of yours who has been running this hospice for terminally ill children reached the burnout point through some incident which you might wanna recount to us. And you have agreed to take over her position as well as your Kranti work.
Robin: Thanks for reminding me about this every day, Rick. (laughing)
Rick: Well, just wake up Robin, pinch yourself.
Robin: Oh God. So yes, I, in Mumbai have always had kind of like– we have a group of four or five friends, six friends who– so I obviously run Kranti and then one person runs this hospice for terminally ill children. Sorry, I’m trying to learn their language so it’s not terminally ill, it’s life-shortening and life-threatening diseases.
Rick: Okay, and these are children who are maybe orphans who don’t have anyone to care for them or anything like that, right? Yeah.
Robin: And then there’s also within our friend circle, there’s like this, a gay couple. One of them is, runs a school in like the lower income, like slum communities and stuff. And so all the kids from the hospice go to his school. And it’s kind of a network of support that we’ve built for each other. And I guess I’ve been friends with this woman for almost seven years or something. And that night when I was being beaten by the police until five in the morning, like I called her and, or somebody called her and-
Rick: What are they doing, slapping you, hitting you with a stick, punching you? What do you mean?
Robin: Slapping and the, yes, the baton that they carry around.
Rick: Oh, right.
Robin: Yes.
Rick: And did anybody face consequences for that?
Robin: Yes, one person got fired, yes.
Rick: Hmm, should have been more than fired.
Robin: But it’s really, you know, money. The organization had paid the police a decent amount of money that they thought it was some easy, you know, corruption on the side. Let me just earn my 5,000 rupees extra for tonight by, you know, they never imagined that–
Rick: That you were taping it, yeah.
Robin: Exactly, exactly. And she also has these nights when, you know, when her kids die, like, who are you gonna call? And we’ve always had this kind of ridiculous connection that we both stay up until four in the morning every day. And, you know, so she always calls me at two in the morning and whenever she’s calling at two, I know it’s ’cause somebody died. And so I answer the phone and, you know, just let her cry it out and whatever. And long story short, when I was coming down the mountains, she had contacted me saying that one of her girls had been claiming that she’d been sexually abused by another, by a staff member, a male staff member, and they didn’t really believe the story or know what was actually going on. So they asked if we could take her into Kranti. So we did. And eventually that girl was struggling so much, we had to put her in a mental hospital and she has only been out like less than a week now– back at Kranti. And as it turns out, it wasn’t just this one girl, it was quite a few people and–
Rick: That the guy was molesting, yeah.
Robin: And I mean, mind you, all these kids have thalassemia, cancer, HIV, you know, like it’s, I mean, what, I don’t know what to say. And basically she kept calling me, the whole time I’ve been traveling in Europe, she keeps calling. One time it was like, I’m so done. I am done with this organization. I can’t manage this anymore. I’ve given all I can. I just don’t have any, like. And also the guilt of, you know, having trusted this guy or the wrong person or whatever it was. So she kept saying this over and over, like, “I’m so done, I’m so done.” And then finally one day I answered the phone and Rick, you better believe it, I have no free will because these words were being spoken through my mouth and I had no desire to speak them. And I’m, even as I was saying them, I was like, “I don’t want to say that. I don’t want to say that. Why am I saying that? I don’t want to say that.” And it was obviously not me. And I said, “Look, if you need to take a break of some sort, then I will manage things for you.” And she said, “I’ll get back to you on that tomorrow.” And she called back the next day and was like, “Yes, please, I’m going on a ten month sabbatical and I’d like you to take over.” And so, you know, I wish I’d shut the hell up the day before. But I guess also– and my kids and everyone around me was like, “Wait, what the hell are you talking about? We’re barely, you know, we can barely keep–” I do so much fundraising and I can barely keep afloat with Kranit work. It’s another 25 kids in the shelter home, but they support almost 300 kids in hospitals across Mumbai. And I just, you know, I had to say like all these years of everything that she’s done for me– and I’ve done for her as well– but when I was talking about this concept of love, like all those times that you see each other and you have pizza and wine together, and then, you know, we get together, we bitch about our kids.We complain about the, you know, politics and police and this and that. And then, you know, of course, every night when we part ways, I hug her and say, “Thank you, and I love you.” And if in that moment of when you need to take space for yourself and figure out your own life in some way, after all you’ve given to these hundreds of kids, if I’m not there for you, then what was all of my love ever worth? And unfortunately, this is the whole thing about being a slave to love, right? That it’s still not a choice. It’s really not. And unfortunately, I said the words, I can’t take them back. So I had asked you as well, if you would be willing to post links at the end of the interview about, you know, fundraising for Kranti where people can make tax-exempt donations in the US and around the world, as well as for this organization, which is Happy Feet Home. And yeah, I mean, I’m, if I couldn’t– for all the people who came together to give me my space for my break as well– you can’t pay it back, but at least you can pay it forward, right?
Rick: Yeah, I’ve already set up a page that I’ll be putting up when I put up your interview and it has links to the things where you can donate to Kranti and to Happy Feet, as it’s called. And I hope that you get a lot of support from that. One other thing you’re gonna talk about is, you gave me this list of about ten different things that all had three in them: three gurus, three spiritual moments in childhood, et cetera. We’ve talked about most of those things already– three Kranti stories. But another one was– a couple of them here towards the end– three big moments on the mountain: surrender, samadhi, and goats meditation. What’s that one?
Robin: Yeah, so yeah, let’s shift to the mountain part of life. Leave Mumbai and go to the Himalayas for a bit.
Rick: Incidentally, if I ever get to India and you happen to be in the mountains, I’d like to come up and visit you and hang out with you in that hut for a few days.
Robin: I don’t know if you might wanna do days, but a few hours might be really great.
Rick: If I had a good sleeping bag and brought some water, some food, whatever.
Robin: Yeah, I’ll send you the photos of the inside of the house as well, you haven’t seen those.
Rick: Hey, I’m a tough guy. I’ve done a lot of camping. Anyway, go ahead.
Robin: There’s something absolute, look, Rick, as difficult as it is and as shitty as it is, there’s not a single day I open the door and–
Rick: Yeah, it’s gorgeous, right? Best view in the world.
Robin: In the world, not that I’m biased, but I’m biased, so it’s okay. Most beautiful view in the world, in the world. And yeah, so– oh goodness, I don’t even know how far back to go. But long story short, in 2019, late ’19, I was diagnosed with burnout, whatever that means, because obviously it was a very–
Rick: Yeah, it’s smoke coming out of your ears, right?
Robin: For people who– you’ve spoken quite a bit about Ayurveda, and I think you said your brother-in-law is an Ayurvedic doctor or something?
Rick: Yeah, so he runs a PhD program here at Maharishi International University training Ayurvedic people, students.
Robin: Yeah, so I’ve started to believe a lot more in Ayurveda after I went through this burnout and kind of, you know, read a lot and learned a lot, and especially on the mountain, because I’m only eating one meal a day and able to pay so much more attention to what’s going on in my body because of certain foods. It was quite a learning experience in terms of that.
Rick: Yeah, and it was a skimpy meal, just some rice and dal, and you lost tons of weight– not tons, but you lost a lot of weight, which you have since regained.
Robin: Yes, I was 100 pounds when I came down the mountain, and I’m 125 now, so I gain about a kilo a week, and I’m on a very– I keep joking with everyone– I’m on a very strict cheese and wine diet in Europe. (laughing)
Rick: You’re like a bear, you just need to fatten up before you go back into hibernation.
Rick: Exactly. So yeah, the meal in, I mean, what can I say? I did not, because of COVID and because of lockdown and everything, I went nine months, ten months without seeing a piece of fruit, without seeing a tomato, without seeing– I mean, all that I had was what was grown locally. So I had rice and lentils, a whole supply of them. But potatoes is the only thing that grows up there, and carrots, and sometimes a bit of like colored greens in the summer. So that’s all I ate for nine months, ten months I didn’t see anything except for that. And I also, I went eight months without bathing at one point. So it was quite a-
Rick: But fortunately you didn’t have to interact with anybody.
Robin: xactly. (laughing) Yeah, and so in Ayurveda, there’s this whole concept around what burnout is, which is very different from what the Western medical, allopathic medicine might talk about it. So it was really interesting kind of watching the process of the fire come back, because that’s literally what it is– burn out. So, and then interestingly enough, I returned from Europe, was already kind of struggling health-wise, work-wise, everything, and I unpacked all of my stuff when I got back to Kranti. And for some odd reason– I always had a photo of Sri M, one of Geshe and one of Swami up on my altar– and when I unpacked everything, for some odd reason, I just couldn’t find Geshe-la’s or Sri M’s photos anywhere. Like somebody had done something, but they had just disappeared. And that was my first inkling that whatever Swami, my Hindu guru says to me, is going to be the most important thing. And so I went shopping, if you will, asking my gurus what I was supposed to do at this point. And Sri M is a very, very, I mean, he’s very, “Get your butt in gear and work” kind of thing., The Buddhist one is as well, Geshe-la is as well, but Geshe-la was a bit more trying to urge me to move towards maybe three or four hours of meditation every day along with, you know, so in the morning, I just dedicate that time to meditation and then do the Kranti work throughout the day. And I was like, “Geshe-la, what planet are you living on? Because you don’t live in my life.” I mean, literally another girl we had who was 16 when I left for the mountains, she was, I don’t know what happened, came back from Europe and just, what can I say, was running away, running off with random guys late at night. I was literally– the only thing that would make me be able to get her home was say, I messaged the police and if you don’t want to come home now, we can meet at the police station at seven in the morning. So this was the only way I could like get her home. So she went through a couple of months of that– really struggled. She’s quite well, she’s studying in, just outside Boston now. So got her shit together somehow and just really realized during lockdown that she had to get her butt in gear. And when I, so then everyone saw me, I’m sorry, Geshe-la and Sri M have always very much been on like figure out how to make Kranti and your spiritual life balanced. And I just couldn’t find a way. And I tried this for years, but I just couldn’t. Sri M had also been saying this to me for years, like, you have to dedicate this time to meditation and everything. Actually on some level, he was also like, the meditation doesn’t matter. It’s not important in your life. As long as you’re doing this work and you’re doing it, completely giving your all, it’s not that meditation is going to be the big thing that somehow changes or whatever. And then my Hindu guru Swami– so his name is Om Swami– and he had also, again, I had very weird and curious kind of situation with him. I found his book while I was waiting for– in Mumbai in 2016– while I was waiting for a girl to get done with the hospital appointment. And I picked up the book and something about it really struck me. Like it talks about how he moved to Australia at 18. At 25, he became a multimillionaire with companies in five different countries. At 29, he walked to his colleague and said, “It’s all yours, I’m renouncing.” And something in that struck such a chord with me that I knew that was going to happen to me sooner or later, somehow. Maybe not in robes, but that I was going to take that path. And so I put the book down because I couldn’t afford it. I can’t buy books anyway. So I left the book and left the bookstore. And two days later, somebody called and was like, hey, we’re wanna send a really big donation of clothes and whatever, whatever, and art supplies over to Kranti. I said, great, wonderful. The shipment arrived and on top of it was Swami’s book. So I read this book and, of course, ended up meeting him, but just something about– I don’t know how to explain it– I just always knew that that was going to be part of my journey. And when I went to him with this whole thing about burnout, he said, “Take a break. You tell me how long the break is going to be, then I’ll tell you what you’re supposed to be doing as meditation.” And the crazy thing is that he has, after people read his book, literally thousands of people have come up to him saying, “I want to go to the mountains” because he spent two years in the Himalayas meditating 22 hours a day. And his brain, of course, is on some different level. There’s a lot of people who come to kind of research his brainwaves and things like that. And he told me to find a place that is remote, but safe, blah, blah, blah. And it was really, as far as everyone I know who’s affiliated with his ashram, I’m the only person he’s told to go do this. And everyone else, especially female disciples, whenever they go for some long stint of sadhana– three months, six months, whatever– they’re always given, they’re always placed in somebody’s home where they have access to water, toilet, food, safety, that kind of thing. And I’m the only person, as far as I knew, that he’s ever said to go sit in the mountains. So I listened and I left in February of 2020 just before the pandemic started, just before lockdown happened. And what can I say? The last thing he said to me before I walked out the door was, “Stay offline, nothing drastic is gonna happen in the world.” Well, that obviously COVID happened. So it was probably the most life-altering or world-altering thing that’s happened in the past several decades. And what can I say? I mean, living with these kids and in this home for the past ten years of my life, in some ways it was all I knew. And the anxiety that came with leaving them behind– it’s one thing to leave behind a family of healthy and happy, high-functioning adults or kids, and it’s another thing to leave behind traumatized teens with so many mental health issues, all these financial struggles. And then my co-founder who was handling everything. And it was quite a really, really, really, really, I can’t say enough to explain what this was. And when I got up there, and the day that I went offline was just like, I mean, I literally set down the phone, turned off the phone and everything, sat and cried for hours. And then that was the moment of surrender that I finally just had to let go. And I still would not have used the word God at that point, because I was just meditating as a practice, not necessarily as a seeking darshan or anything like that. And for some reason, this thing arose in me that, who am I to think that I can, first of all, this girl is doing these things whether I’m there or not. So it’s not like my being there actually improves her life or fixes anything in any way. And yet to that moment was also just like, “Okay, I just have to leave it up to you.” Whatever this “you” is, whether it’s God, whether it’s the universe, whatever it is the ground of being, whatever it is, I just have to give it up completely. And who am I to think that I love this girl more than you do? And who am I to think that I know what’s best for her life more than you do? And it was the hardest letting go I’ve ever done of my life– just that this is going to go where it’s going to go. To found this organization, to live with these kids, everything that I had been through the past ten, decade of my life. And yet to just say like, “Okay, I hand it over, I surrender.” There was absolutely nothing else to do at that point. And of course, I followed this crazy regime of getting up and sitting down to meditation first thing in the morning and everything. And within a week of going offline, in my morning meditation, I had a, I don’t know, I don’t want to put a time on it, but something like, let’s just say for the sake of time, let’s say God, let’s say Samadhi, let’s say whatever you want to say. And of course it was everything that you’ve ever read about, right? Sat Chit Ananda, like it’s literally, I mean, and yet going back to that whole thing as a child, when at 13, I had that glimpse, weird glimpse of like non-existence and how much it scared me. And yet this was something like the liberation of being non-existent was something else completely. And literally whoever came up with the word “bliss”, that’s the only word that fits. There is no other word that fits. And then as I told you, basically after that experience– it took a couple hours for the kind of ego and the mind and everything to come back. And then there I was still with eight months, nine months to go of silence and solitude and no phone and nothing. And I went into the–
Rick: Incidentally, you told me that you have no trouble sitting in lotus, without back support, for 90-minute meditations and then taking a break. And then doing another one like that. That alone is impressive. I mean, yeah.
Robin: I think what we were talking about then was that, the whole choice and whatever it is, but that’s something that’s acting within us is something that’s driving and preparing us in all ways, on all levels, at all times. And one of the things that happened is, while I was working at Kranti 2016, ‘17, ‘18, I just had this thing for yoga. And I would literally– I would do my whole day of work. I would go to Starbucks in the evening and work at Starbucks until it closed at 1 a.m., come home at 1: 30, and from 1: 30 until three, every single day without fail, I would do hardcore yoga. As if, I don’t know why, I have no idea why.
Rick: And then you’d get up at seven, eight, six or seven or eight in the morning after that?
Robin: No, no, no, no, no, no. I was a 10 a.m. kind of person.
Rick: Oh, okay, good, I’m glad.
Robin: Yeah. (laughing) But, you know, and for whatever reason, as they say that yoga cleanses all the things that are supposed to be cleansed. And yes, I was so fortunate that, you know– it’s funny because I kind of notice now that I’m not meditating, I’m eating whatever the heck I want. And now that, you know, I’ve been on vacation for three months, I guess, I am starting to notice these differences in like, you know, for example, when I’m in the mountains, I don’t have any place to lay down or lounge or anything. So I’m sitting up straight all day, all the time. And so I noticed now that I have like a sofa, I’ll be like, “Oh, I’m going to go lay on the sofa.” And these things that change within our body that, you know, how we’re living and of course, the meals that we’re eating, cheese is very different from, you know, Dal Chawal. So yeah.
Rick: Yeah, you deserve a little opulence, I think.
Robin: I think so too. Because also, when I go back in January, probably, I’ll stay for at least a month. I don’t know how long I’ll stay before my friend decides to take her break, then I’ll have to come back. That month, I’m definitely going to lose 20 pounds again, so I deserve the cheese for now. And yeah, I guess for whatever reason, it was like this preparation had already been rolling before I reached the mountains, obviously. So I had the, and I never, not even once would I say, did I experience any body pain. Like a little bit of knee pain from the sitting, but besides that, like absolutely nothing, never, no. Of course, I’d also been in therapy for many years. So the therapy also has a lot to do with, you know, kind of somatic work that’s looking at the body and looking at where things are stored in the body. So I had had years of therapy at that point as well.
Rick: So anyway, you had your Samadhi experience and then you were about to say that things started to go downhill from there?
Robin: Yes, not started to go downhill. They just–
Rick: Went off the cliff.
Robin: Yeah, went off the cliff. That’s a good way to put it, yeah. And I think, so after that experience, of course, just like many people who are completely delusional about what enlightenment means or what, you know, awakening looks like or what it means exactly. I also had this idea that somehow I was going to be, you know– first of all, that this experience was going to be regular. That was one delusion I had. Second of all, that there comes a time when, like, I really liked how you interviewed somebody named Jessica a couple months ago, and she had said that enlightenment is not a permanent LSD trip. And that’s totally exactly how I thought it would be. So that’s, you know, my expectation of it. So the fact that I couldn’t get back into that, “I”, even though I had seen at that point that there was no I doing this, and it was not in my hands, and it finally clicked that it doesn’t matter whether I sit ten hours, it doesn’t matter whether I am in the mountains, whether I’m, you know, wherever, only you are in charge here. So no amount of sitting, no amount of fasting, no amount of– like, nothing can get anyone there by any means. So once I saw that, then I just felt screwed. Well, first of all, what the hell am I doing here? Second of all, nothing is in my hands. Third of all, you know, it’s like saying– Swami always says that, you know, if you put in those hours– because He’s put in, I don’t know, some, I don’t know, 15,000, 30,000 hours of meditation– if you put in what I put in, then you will get what I got. And it’s, I came to realize that that’s just not true, because, you know, it’s like saying, well, you and I and Irene, we’re all going to start playing the piano tomorrow, and in five years’ time, we’re gonna meet and all put in these exact amount of hours, and we’re going to see where everyone’s level is. Well, guess what? We come with those proclivities or the past or, you know, whatever. So me putting in X, Y, Z amount of hours actually doesn’t, you know– you will be at a very different level, and I will be at a very different level when we sit down to play the piano five years from now, no matter how many hours we put in. So once you know that, then what the hell do you do with your mind? Because nothing I do can get this “I” any closer to this “you”– let’s call it that for now. And I literally would like sit in meditation, and I can’t stop my mind. I can’t do anything about stopping it. I would literally bang my head against the wall, stone wall, mind you. I would literally bang my head against the wall, because when you realize just how not in control you are of it and that it’s not in your hands, well, then what, right? And this whole idea, I think– let me just say that the experience with BatGap, when I finally got online a little bit and started downloading these interviews and listening to them, I think the joy of it was like realizing– one thing that I say to the kids is to use God language– for the God that took the time to give Rick and Robin and every single one of my kids, not a fingerprint– but it’s not that I have one fingerprint and you have ten– and I have ten and everyone else has ten. The God, the being, whatever, energy, the ground of being, that took the time to create all of us as so special and individual, how could the journey ever be the same? It can’t be. And I think, let’s just personify God for the fun of it right now. God kind of got bored with this whole story of monks sitting in a cave, and now clearly God’s on a different– experimenting with different– and so I know a lot of the people that you mentioned– What was her name? Cheryl, I think, the French, the American woman who had this thing in France, Cheryl, sh, sh, sh, sh, and-
Rick: Thing in France.
Robin: A book, a book that you quote quite often. She was standing at a bus stop in Paris.
Rick: Oh, oh, oh, oh, yes. Suzanne Siegel, “Collision with the Infinite.”
Robin: Suzanne Siegel. And then also you interviewed one woman who, I think her name was Ananta, and she shared this crazy story, but also she has a, like, I saw her book and where she talked about how she was enlightened after a three-year solitary Zen retreat in Japan. And what that meant was that she got caught trafficking drugs from Osho’s ashram into Japan, ended up in jail, was in solitary confinement, and basically could do nothing but meditate.
Rick: Kranti Ananta, right.
Robin: Yes, and so she had this awakening or whatever, and what if she said to us, “If you do what I do, what I did, you would get what I got.” Well, then what, we all go off trafficking drugs, you know, like. So obviously it was quite, the biggest thing that I got from BatGap was just realizing how different and extremely beautiful and exceptional every single story is in so many ways. But yeah.
Rick: And that was one of my motivations for starting BatGap, as I’ve heard you say, I mean, as you’ve heard me say, which was that, you know, I have friends here in this community who had undergone spiritual awakenings, and they would tell a friend, and the friend would say, “Wait a minute, you’re not like Maharishi or somebody. You seem like an ordinary Joe. How could you have had this spiritual awakening?” And so I thought, “Wait a minute, I’ve got to somehow let people tell their story so people realize that you don’t have to be some, you know, white-robed special person. It’s something for everybody.” Anyway, yeah, I just wanted to sort of spread that notion in the world a little bit.
Robin: Yeah, and then also everyone’s awakening might be different and some people are meant to go on and become amazing teachers, the Adyashantis of today, and the, you know, those kinds of people. And those, that’s who Ramana Maharishi was as well, and that’s who, you know, Nisargadatta was as well. That’s who Ramakrishna was as well. But for every Ramakrishna who was there, there were probably a thousand other people who might’ve been awakened, but first of all, there was no BatGap at the time, so we don’t know their stories. But also just being the teacher is not the only path that comes as a result of awakening. Many paths come, or maybe you continue walking the same path, but this idea we have of like, you know, oh, once you’re awakened, then you’re going to become like a spiritual teacher and you’re going to, you know, wear XYZ, like that’s what really fell away for me from listening to BatGap and all these different interviews over and over, yeah.
Rick: Yeah, and you could be, you know, highly awakened and living a so-called ordinary life and never tell a soul, and yet be having a profound influence on the world by your very existence.
Robin: eah, and I think some of the most beautiful– that kid you interviewed a couple of weeks ago– what was his name? Matt?
Rick: Matt, yeah, forget his last name.
Robin: Gorman or something. I remember watching the video, and it was one of the first videos I’ve watched because when I listened to you, I would only just download the audio. I didn’t have enough capacity for the videos. And listening to him and how beautifully he articulated so many things, like that was really lovely, but also like, what was it, he’s working with like security at a clothing store or something?
Rick: Yeah, maybe he’s doing something else now, but he was doing that, yes.
Robin: And how lovely, you know, like that, I think one of the big things for me when I first kind of got onto the Buddhist path was, and this is why I love the name of the show as well, but the biggest thing for me was like a conscious practice to treat every single person I encounter every single day as if they’re enlightened or they’re awakened, they’re the Buddha, and it just so happens that I’m interacting with you, but you never know who those people are. So treat everyone like you would treat a Buddha. Treat a sex worker like you would treat a Buddha.
Rick: There’s a verse in the Bible about, you know, you’ll never know when you might be entertaining an angel. So, you know, treat everyone accordingly.
Robin: Yes, what was that interview also really shook me– that Australian woman who basically was awakened by while she was being raped.
Rick: Yeah, Isira, Isira, I’ve interviewed her twice.
Robin: Yeah, you know, so these kinds of stories– like first of all, thank you, because, you know, they need to get out and it’s really beautiful that they’re being told. But these kinds of experiences– and of course she had a crazy saga after that as well, the Dalai Lama and all of that stuff. But just that the, I mean, I think that’s a really clear and beautiful story sharing that everything is contained within this love or within this, call it the dream, call it the play, call it leela, call it love, call it whatever you want, but everything– even the experience of being raped– is contained within that on, you know, and can’t not be contained within that.
Rick: Yeah, I mean, if Brahman is the all pervading, all inclusive reality, then like it or not, everything is contained within that.
Robin: Yeah, yeah.
Rick: Although some would say nothing is contained because nothing ever happened, but that’s a whole Mandukya Upanishad angle. We don’t have to go off on.
Robin: But also I just wanted to say, so to me, this whole concept of the three realities and that all of the realities are, you know, whatever, simultaneously, constantly, I mean, it’s just one. But one of the stories that I heard on BatGap once, I always used to talk to the girls when they asked me about this whole spiritual experience or whatever, and it was about– I mean, I’m butchering the story because I’ve told it so many times and I’ve edited it so many times to kind of tailor to my 15 year old, 16 year old kids– but I remember this woman sharing the story kind of as a joke but that some people are waiting around at a bus stop and, you know, everyone is like chit-chatting and the bus is actually going from heaven to earth. And people start talking about, “)h, how was your life? And how was your life? And where are you going now?” And that kind of thing. And somebody there says– again, I’ve added a lot to the story in order to make it engaging for my 15 year olds. So I don’t know what she’d shared and what is mine now at this point. But I always say to the kids, like, so, you know, these people start talking about where they’re going. And this one man says, “I experienced this really amazing experience called forgiveness in my last life. And I thought that it was the height of the human experience. And it was like, you know, but then I got to heaven and I found out it was only like a level-two forgiveness. It wasn’t even that high. So now I’m going back and I want to experience like a level-ten forgiveness.” And everyone says, “Oh, wow, how amazing. What is that going to be like? And he says, “well, I’m going to go back and, you know, have a normal life, a family, kids, everything. And one day I will, you know, while I’m driving, be hit by a car that will kill my wife and children or whatever and paralyze me. But on my deathbed, I’m going to finally forgive that person. And that’s going to be like, you know, a level ten forgiveness.” And everyone is just kind of like, “Oh, wow, how amazing. That life sounds wonderful.” And he says, “I need somebody from the bus stop to be the drunk driver.” And then everyone’s like, “Oh, no, no, I don’t want that job,” right? Nobody wants Putin’s job. Nobody wants Trump’s job, right? But I don’t want that job. And then he says, “But the bus isn’t going to come until somebody from here agrees to be the driver.” And so I share this with my kids also, mostly for them to see that it’s quite easy to take an experience like rape, like trafficking, like abuse, and on some level, be so stuck in that becoming your identity to the point that, you know– I asked one of my girls, “Is it possible that the person who abused you, that you asked him to at the bus stop, is that possible?” And then I have some people, you know, at Kranti who are just like– I have plenty of girls who are in that space already who would say, whatever happened to me is the best thing that ever happened to me, because otherwise I never would have come to Kranti. I would have just had this ordinary life as, you know, whatever. I never would have gotten to see the world, to interact with people, would never have had access to therapy, would never have had the chance to get into spirituality. So plenty of the girls are there, but some girls are like, everything can be contained within the one, except rape. You know? (laughs) That’s very like, and I like to personify God sometimes just to kind of give him the finger. It’s the finger, because, you know– like even just last week there was a series of earthquakes in Nepal. And my friend who’s like the one who owns the house where I stay, I was messaging with her and she was like, “Oh, but thank God nobody’s died. There’s no reports of death yet.” And I’m like, “Wait, thank who? Because who do you think caused that earthquake?” You know? So like, I’m kind of stuck in this space right now where it’s just, I’m swearing and cussing at God all the time. And, you know, it’s just so bullshit for lack of a better word on some level. You know, I was thinking about when we were in Paris, I also took the girls to the Eiffel Tower because I was like, yo, let’s go see. And of course the girls are doing their thing for two hours, taking selfies and taking each other’s photo and everything. And I’m standing in line for two hours without any money, Rick. I had $12 in the bank account, but I was like, I’m gonna go up there and I’m gonna see if I can start talking to somebody and convince them to give me tickets. And let’s see. Start talking to this Indian-American woman from Colorado. and we started chatting and she was there for her son’s graduation. He had just finished 12th. And we talked for an hour or something standing in line. By the time that we got up to the front of the line– she was before me– so she turned around from the line, I was about to go around her and she said, “No, no, Robin, wait, here’s your 24 tickets.” And she handed me those tickets. And now when I look back on it, I was like, okay, wait. So first of all, you gave Robin the idea that you’re supposed to go to the Eiffel Tower and you made everyone miss the bus and be late. And so therefore we reach at this time. Then you stuck Robin in this line next to this woman. And then you started talking as Robin to this woman about Kranti. And then as this woman, you said, “Oh wow, let me get those tickets.” And then at the end of the day, we’re like, “What’s a miracle?” And I’m like, “Do you get bored from this game or not? ‘Cause literally you’ve been playing it for billions of years.”
Rick: Well, there’s never a dull moment. It’s a very dynamic universe. And if it’s a drama, it’s an extremely tragic-comic, intense drama with heights of ecstasy and depths of misery, and tremendous kindness and tremendous violence. And boy, what a play.
Robin: Yeah, it is. It’s absolutely perfect and beautiful, definitely. And I mean, nevermind the human experience, nevermind all of that. But one of the things that, whenever I hear you speak about this– kind of another bone to pick with you– was that there’s this kind of like, when people talk about what we’re moving towards or what we’re moving towards a more enlightened society or maybe we’re progressing towards something. And I’ve had a few moments on the mountain that have really shut this down for me. But one of the things, again, explaining to 15 year olds, I say, “Okay, let’s just imagine that you’re going to go watch a movie, and the movie is called ‘I Love You.’ And for two hours, we’re going to sit around. There’s going to be five people at the movie and/or for now there’s just Robin and Rick. So let’s say Robin says to Rick, ‘I love you.’ And then Rick says to Robin, ‘I love you too.’ And then I say, ‘I love you.’ And you say, ‘I love you.’ How long is this movie going to be entertaining?”
Rick: Right.
Robin: 30 seconds, right? And then we’re tired of it. So when I talk to the girls, I also try to explain to them in the sense that if God– to personify, because that’s the simplest way to talk to them– especially, if God is watching a movie, well, this “I love you, I love you” movie is going to be really boring, isn’t it? So yes, there has to be rape and there has to be trafficking and it has to be this and it has to be that. And all of those things combined to make the beauty of the movie. Everyone, there needs to be an antagonist and a protagonist. There needs to be a Trump, there needs to be a Putin, there needs to be a Modi. There needs to be all these people involved. And how do we, so much of the spiritual journey to not judge ourselves for the role that we’ve been given or that we’re sitting here playing, but also to not judge the people that we’re not so thrilled about, right? The Mobis and the Trumps and the Putins and all those people, but–
Rick: some people listening might be thrilled about those people. (all laughing)
Robin: Not sure about that, but yeah, I guess like we can’t fault them for the role that they’ve been given in this as well. There’s a really amazing Rumi story that I read once where he shares a story about a king who basically asks a slave of his, a slave girl, to go around and try to win over all of the men who work there. And then he wants the slave girl to come back to him and report to him who had kind of sold him out and who was loyal to the king. So it was a test of loyalty. Now, that girl in particular, she’s working for the king, just as much as all those men are working for the king. And we might look at her like she has this XYZ role or she’s a terrible person or she does this and this, but she’s just playing the role that she was given by the king. And the king, of course, in Sufi traditions in so many ways is to look at God in that way or whatever. And we’re all here doing our roles, but, but, but. I think a lot of the conversations that you and I had while I was on the mountain, we’re just kind of around, it’s hard to balance at that point, like, yes, this is my role and yes, this is fine. But no matter how hard Robin works, trafficking is never going to end. And no matter how much, what’s her name, Greta, that little girl.
Rick: Thunberg.
Robin: Yeah, no matter how much she works, climate change is not going to become fixed because again, in this drama, what would Robin have done with her life if there was no trafficking? Maybe something else, fine. But if there was nothing, no social work to be done, what would Robin have done with her life? And I always think of also, you mentioned in a couple of interviews how as a kid, when you were a little kid, you enjoyed pouring sugar on the floor and watching the ants come in. And I spend a lot of time watching nature in the mountains, a lot, because well, there’s only so much meditation you can do. And sometimes I sit on the ground and I look at these ants and I’m like– just to make things simple and personify God again– I look at these ants and I’m like, so God was thrilled by the idea of having these ants. And I don’t know how many they number in the quadrillions or whatever, I don’t know what the number is.
Rick: There’s a million ants for every human being in the world.
Robin: Oh, oh my God, okay. So when I watch those ants, it’s like, they all come out and sometimes I toss little crumbs at them just to watch what they’re going to do and everything. But I mean, I’m being very literal and basic here, but let’s just go with it for now. Basically God created all these ants and then God is like, “Wait, what are they going to do all day?” Oh, everyone has to run around several kilometers to go find a piece of sugar or a piece of something, a dead moth that they’re going to tear apart. And this is what is going to shape their lives for the next four hours or for the next five days or whatever it is. The work that ants do is just absolutely extraordinary. And yet somebody created you and then you then got bored– couldn’t leave you sitting around doing nothing. So you got put to work doing all these things. And if we just put ourselves in the place of the ants, that’s what we’re doing as well, right? And there definitely needs to be work to be done, whether it’s on climate change, whether it’s on trafficking, whether it’s on sex work, whether it’s on queer rights, there needs to be work that we are doing.
Rick: Yeah, I mean, God himself, Krishna says in the Gita, what would happen if I were not ceaselessly engaged in activity?
Robin: Yeah, and it brings a beauty with it and a joy with it to look at that ant and also, like I think I mentioned to you that I’d had these three moments of– sorry, we got way off track, didn’t we? I was supposed to be answering some specific question, but I forgot. But I’ve had these three moments of like just ecstasy that really stick out to me. And because I’ve had those experiences, then I always assumed that there was coming a time where I was going to be living in that kind of ecstasy all the time. Like I had that belief, I guess, that illusion, delusion, whatever you want to call it. But I think one of those moments was, when you think of everything– again, another way, simple way that I tried to explain to the kids is imagine that you are dreaming. So Rick is dreaming, and in that dream, Robin is sitting in Belgium with her wine and cheese and really enjoying her wine and cheese. And then Robin gets into a fight with her friend or whatever. So in this dream, what is Robin made of? She’s made of Rick’s mind. And what is the cheese made of? It’s made of Rick’s mind. And what is the pizza made of or the wine made of? It’s made of Rick’s mind. And in that same way, this is what we are made of. Now call it God, call it Allah, call it love, call it the ground of being, call it whatever you want, but this is what we’re made of. And there’s nothing else that you could be besides that. So that moment of realizing that every single being is in this dream, every single ant, every single human, every single Putin, every single, you know, everything is in this dream of existence because it’s wanted here. There wasn’t by mistake– somebody wasn’t just put into this by mistake, right? And I think like the moment where you see this is just so– I mean, there’s, what words can I use? It’s perfect and it’s beautiful and it’s magnificent. And yet, you know, I literally, when I have those days of ecstasy, I’m like, I don’t eat because I couldn’t care less about food. I’m just dancing across the mountains. And, you know, it’s these, those days are like the seeing and the clarity and the, I mean, I don’t know any other word except ecstasy. It just carries you in a way that– I guess part of when you asked me what I’m doing on the mountain is that in some way, I’m hoping that that ecstasy is going to settle into me so permanently that the work is going to become easy. And that, you know, I won’t have to cry over XYZ every single day. In some way, that’s what I’m hoping for. I don’t know if that’s what’s going to happen or what the journey is, but.
Rick: I think it’ll tend in that direction, but it takes a lifetime and it is never final and ultimate and complete, you know, or completely imperturbable. But it’s a lifetime journey where more and more and more one gets stabilized in what is referred to in Sanskrit as kutastha, the rock-like, which can’t be shaken. But it helps not only to– in my experience and opinion– not only to have like annual retreats to the mountains, but to have some kind of daily practice so you can dip into it every day and refresh yourself. And that helps to stabilize and integrate it more than if it were just, you know, once a year or something like that.
Robin: Yeah. And I guess, you know, the whole sitting on the mountain thing. So one of the stories that I wanted to mention as well was the rope story that at some point I was just like, so sick and done with everything. And it was still six months that I was supposed to be offline. And I would have a lot of like suicidal thoughts about like, well, I’m not in control. There is no I, what the hell am I supposed to do with this? Which is why I really connect with when you talk about the damage of, you know, Advaita type of teachings. Like I get it. I was in that space without having read any of these things. That’s the space I was in that, what am I doing here at this point? Because there is nothing that this “I” can do and I might as well just quit, whatever. And so one day I had a very bad meditation and I got up and I was like, “I’m gonna kill myself today.” And I took a walk and I happened to find a rope. And then I thought, “Aha, this is a sign because how would I find a rope if, you know, without the intention of killing myself.” So I took the rope back and into my hut and I tied up the rope and everything. And oh my God, I can’t explain like, I mean, many people can understand obviously, like the depths and shittiest, the lowest depths of despair. And I just, I wrote a little note to my guru and I said, “Look, I’m so done tomorrow. I’m giving you till tonight to, you know, figure out whatever and that’s it. I’m leaving, I’m exiting this game, bullshit game of yours,” that kind of thing. And I got into bed at 5 p.m. Normally I sit for meditation from like five to ten or something, but I was like, I’m not even going to bother trying. I got in my sleeping bag and cried. And I mean, yeah, I cried. And 4: 30, 5 a.m. or something, somebody bangs on my door. And I got out of bed and I was like, what in the heck is this? It’s pitch black outside. And I normally see one person a month, hardly. And I opened the door and there’s four men at the door. And one of them was a sadhu, like, you know, in robes and stuff. And I said, “Yes, can I help you? Chai, water, what can I do for you?” And they’re like, “No, no, we’re so sorry to bother you, but we saw your house and we’re actually going on a week-long trek. And the bag that is carrying all of our supplies and food broke. Do you by chance have a rope that we can borrow?” That was just another moment of like, you know, giving it to God. Fine, you know, I can’t lie about it either. So I gave them the damn rope and I was like, okay, well, if this is the sign, then fine, I’ll sit again today. And, you know, but it’s really hard to balance the nothingness with the role and all of that stuff as well. I had also one moment while just walking on the mountain one day where– you know, you’ve done a couple of interviews with people who kind of specialize in talking about the yugas and I don’t necessarily know that much about it and I don’t necessarily believe, I don’t know. I’m just not an expert. I don’t understand any of it.
Rick: Joseph Selby, I did one with him about the yugas.
Robin: Yeah, yeah, and he, Paramahansa Yogananda’s teacher had done writing. And, you know, I just, I was walking and crying, crying and walking as I did many, many, many days of the year, and I just had this moment of– it kind of like came into me or through me, whatever you want to call it– that, you know, I don’t know how many years from now, maybe 10,000 years from now, maybe ten million years from now, you are in love with this character called Robin who is sitting on a mountain crying and longing for you. And someday there will be another Robin with the exact same story, maybe not the name Robin. But there will be somebody else with this exact same story walking on a mountain crying either ten years from now or 10,000 years from now or ten million years from now. And in that moment, you realize that there is nothing but now and the experience that can be right now is all that matters and all that exists. There’s no other, I mean, what are we striving towards? Because guess what, no matter what I strive towards ten million years from now, you’re going to have another Robin back here and, you know, I don’t know if whatever I will be part of that other thing, whatever. But yeah, this is not, this is the journey, this crying and walking and crying and walking and, you know, running Kranti and being upset about, you know, everything, fundraising and everything. This is it. And this moment is it. And then you’re just kind of screwed because there is no progress that I’m walking towards. There is no progress that society is making. Even if you believe in the yugas, there is still, there’s an up spiral towards, you know, an enlightened society, but then there’s, again, the downward thing back into Kali Yuga and everything. So where are we going?
Rick: Well, there’s cycles, but for individual souls, there’s progress. And, you know, you won’t necessarily be playing the same role ten million years from now as you’re playing now. You know, you could have ascended to a much higher octave of creation. That’s what I believe anyway. Other people will be playing similar roles, but because there needs to be all stages for people to move through. But you won’t necessarily have to go through. Just because there’s cycles doesn’t mean that you’re gonna come back and be a sea slug or something like that and then have to work your way up again. ou’ve done that, been there. (laughing)
Robin: Yeah, but also because that whole monk sitting in the cave story, at some point, God was in love with that story, and that was something that was a common experience, but there’s also every single story that’s playing out., It’s playing out because you are in love with it, right?
Rick: Yeah, yeah.
Robin: There could be no other reason for everyone in that role.
Rick: The purpose of creation is the expansion of happiness. My teacher used to say that. All righty, well, Irene is saying that lunch is ready. She’s making these symbols, like, “Eat, eat, eat. Gotta eat.” Probably wine and cheese, we’ll see.
Robin: No! (laughing)
Rick: But anyway, you and I could go on for another couple of hours, I’m sure, and we’ll be in touch. I’m sure we’ll have regular private conversations and scheme about ways in which I can help you achieve what you’re trying to achieve. And I hope that this interview gives your whole endeavor a nice boost, and that people feel inclined to help support your work, ’cause it certainly is wonderful work. And on my BatGap page, if people wanna get in touch with you, I don’t know if I’ve, well– there is a Kranti website, and I guess there’s a contact form on that, right?
Rick: Yeah, definitely. –
Robin: Yeah. You can put my personal email.
Rick: Okay, I’ll do that too, if people wanna contact you. So I hope lots of good things come from this, Robin, and I’m really glad, I don’t know, you didn’t tell in this story how you first discovered BatGap when you were in the mountains, but I’m glad you did. And I’m really glad that we’ve gotten to know each other, and I feel like you’re gonna be a lifelong friend.
Robin: It’s been an absolute privilege. I don’t know whatever, I think when I had first reached out to you, I was still kind of in like, willing to kill myself stages, so. (laughing)
Rick: Yeah, as I remember you were, and I was sort of saying, “Not such a good idea, hang on.”
Robin: So yeah, and BatGaps’ been such a huge, huge, huge part of my journey. I can’t begin to articulate to you or to Irene the amount of gratitude and everything that I owe you. So thank you, that’s all I can possibly say, but may you be repaid a billion fold by the universe for all that you’ve done for me and for so many other people who I know have, you know, had similar experiences through BatGap.
Rick: Well, it’s really a joy, and I’m already receiving payment by getting to befriend people like you. It gives me great joy.
Robin: It’s not me, it’s…
Rick: It’s all God, it’s just God Godding with himself.
Robin: Yeah, the Paris story, right?
Rick: Yeah. All right, so thanks so much, and we’ll be in touch. And thanks to those who’ve been listening or watching, and we will see you for the next one.
Rick: Okay.