From Punk to Monk: An Extraordinary Spiritual Journey

Will & Karen: [00:00:00] Karen. Yes. What would you say if I told you that we are welcoming a punk rocker to the show today? I would say that sounds like fun. But then you'd also say, what does that have anything to do with our topic? Right? I don't know. Maybe. Probably. I should say that. That's a good point.

Actually. I think I'd be so shocked. Well, today's story is about a hardcore punk legend, actually the lead singer of the band Youth of Today, who has turned into a spiritual beacon. that's right. Today we're talking about the, ultimate transformation tale and we're going from punk to monk. Oh, I like that.

Did you write that? No, I didn't. I wish I could take credit. You should have just said yes. That's quite clever. No, I can't. You'll know why in a second. Welcome to Skeptic Metaphysicians. [00:01:00]

Welcome to The Skeptic Metaphysicians. I'm Will. And I'm Karen. And today we are thrilled to welcome a legendary figure in the hardcore punk scene who underwent a profound transformation from punk to monk.

Now once the front man of the iconic band Youth of Today, Ray traded packed clubs for serene ashrams, embarking on a spiritual journey that led to the creation of Shelter. A band that now blends hardcore energy with spiritual wisdom. Now, Ray's memoir, From Punk to Monk, thus I couldn't take credit for it, has a foreword by none other than Moby.

Ooh. Wow. And it tells this incredible story of finding life's true meaning beyond [00:02:00] fame. And now, as a yoga teacher, And co host of the Wisdom of the Sages podcast, Ray continues to inspire others on their own path to spiritual connection. We're excited to dive into this journey today, which I heard the grapevine includes a near death experience.

So welcome to the show, Ray Raghunath. I'm so sorry. I know I

Raghunath: I was pretty good. It was a tongue twister. You made it. Ray. You know, it's half the, half the, my people call me Ray Capo from the old days of the music scene. And then through the yoga world, everybody knows me as Raghunath. And so I go by either name depending on who's calling me

Will & Karen: Well, I'm going to try to say it correctly whenever I

Raghunath: is easier. You can just stick with ray It's okay.

Will & Karen: I think you can say that correctly. Oh, yes. I know a couple, I've known a couple of Rays in my life. Thank God. But okay, well, so then Ray, your story from what I've learned of it is astounding. So I don't usually do this. I usually, I don't like starting with the beginning.

person's story because I'd like [00:03:00] to get to the meat of things and then find out about the story afterwards. In your case, however, I think it's integral to what we're going to be talking about. So, tell us, how did you go from youth of today to where you are now?

Raghunath: Interesting. It's it's been an interesting story all outlined in my book from punk to monk available on amazon also on audible but You know, in the punk, usually when you think of punk scene, which is like sort of shocking, you think of you know, lethargy and laziness and finger pointing and criticism of the government and sloth. We were punks, but we were nothing like that. We, we, our band champions, clean living, sense control, positive mindset. Clean diet and you know, we didn't drink or smoke and we were vegetarians. This was going on in the mid eighties when that wasn't even in the conversation in [00:04:00] the regular, you know, now you can go to any, you can go to McDonald's and say, is that what, what are your vegan options?

But back then this was very peculiar, fringy lifestyle. What to speak of. What was going on in these alternative scenes like the Lower East Side of New York, which was in the times of corporate rock and arena rock in the mid eighties, we were playing dirty little nightclubs and under

Will & Karen: you know, it's kind of the place. Yeah.

Raghunath: The dance interior, all these crazy places, crazy scenes, colorful characters.

It was a very colorful scene, very violent scene, have heavy twist of violence. in that mix entered, Monks from the Krishna temple in Brooklyn that would come and they would give out free food Because part of Hindu Dharma is that you prepare food with love You initially, you grow it with love, you prepare it with love, you offer it to God, [00:05:00] and then you distribute it to people.

If you go to any holy place in India, you'll see that happens on a regular basis. So the Swami that taught this Bachta Yoga in America, Swami pbo pod, that was a big part of his mission. He said The only thing that people really lack is this. love. That's the missing ingredient of the foods. So what happens is these monks are giving out food to the punks and the punks are getting inspired by into spirit and starting asking questions about spirituality.

And it affected me and I was already on a path of You know, I believe that life is short and we should, you know, try to live the best life we can and improve the quality of our, our, our body and not let drugs in the body and let crazy things in the mind. So I was already sort of on that path. So then I got turned on to the message of the East and I found that.

Wow. This connects with me in a very, very deep way. Again, this was before [00:06:00] yoga, yoga was even popular. If you were into yoga, it was connected to some Indian guru in New York city before yoga became like a secular sort of fitness class at a, at a gym. It was sort of connected. So that sort of drew me in and I liked India's very broad understanding of spirituality and welcoming inclusive concept of spirituality.

And so that's sort of what drew me in. And I sort of adopted that into my life. And then at a certain point in the band's success, I just realized, you know what, this is not what I want this as good, as good as it was for me. Cause it was a good thing. I got to travel the world and speak this message and change people's lives and change my life.

I still felt there was inner work you had to do that wasn't available for me. Because let's face it. You could maybe not eat junk food, have a clean diet, have a good attitude [00:07:00] even, but just still be sort of like, have your mind and your consciousness filled with anger or envy or greed, all these things that Buddhists and Hindus and Christians speak about.

How do you deal with your mind? And that was the next step of after refining your body. Now, how do you deal with your mind? And that became my, my next quest in life. And that's when I. I left for India when I was 22 and that was. Pre internet India, pre cell phone India, pre, it was pre direct flights to India.

It was a whole different world back then

Will & Karen: Before we get to that, cause tail takes quite an unexpected turn from this point, but how did you initially your message with youth of today, I mean, a mosh pit was not a place where a lot of people, I guess some people did go through spiritual awakenings from hitting their heads against each other.

But how was your message. welcomed in that space because right from [00:08:00] the get you were already in that space, right?

Raghunath: is a great question. And you think it's either going to be hated or it was going to be embraced and it was a wonderful, miserable combination of both. I didn't ever expected it to blow up as big as it did because even to this day, which is, you know, 40 years later or so, there are bands that follow this message.

It's part of their identity and persona. But for me, it was like, yeah, this is what I'm into. I like very aggressive music, powerful music, music that You know, inspires change, but at the same time, I think that change has to be directed in internally. And that became a very big straight, they called it a straight edge movement.

And there's bands all over the, all over the world, truthfully, Southeast Asia. And I've even met straight edge bands in India and straight Edge bands in all over South America. It's in all over Europe and Eastern Europe. so. your question is what did people think about it? A lot of people hated it. They really felt like who are you introducing [00:09:00] this into our scene where it's a scene where anything goes? That was a common argument I'd get. It's, it's punk, man. We don't have to follow any rules.

Anything goes. And I said, okay, well, this is, this is something, this is going to go for us. And we, and we just tried to spell, and we were a little sophomoric perhaps because we were teenagers. And whenever teenagers try to like give this like message of wisdom and it, it's, you're looked at as like who you guys think you are, but truth, but 10 years later, 20 years later, 30 years later, if you're still like a drunk punk sleeping on the streets, you know, truthfully, you know, if you're doing the same things you're doing when you're 18, when you're 28 or 38.

Oftentimes, you're not holding your family together, you're not holding a job together. When punks grow up, that's the whole, that could be another book out of this.

Will & Karen: Or a reality show. Oh my god, yeah. All okay. So,

Raghunath: I just want to jump in one more time, but strangely, there [00:10:00] was another demographic who were like, Yeah, this resonates more with me than sloth, lethargy, negative attitudes, depression, etc. So it, it, it, it, it's sort of like, it, it sort of created a scene within a scene already,

Will & Karen: It's almost like the parallel, it's a very distant parallel, but a Christian rock now these days, right, where it's now becoming this thing where you wouldn't think of that, like the rock and roll world is not along those lines. Same thing back in the day, the punk scene was very different, but

Raghunath: Yeah, for sure.

Will & Karen: Vegan punks. You just wouldn't think, put those, especially not in the eighties. I mean, nobody would put those two together then. Maybe now I

Raghunath: 60 rock and roll. I think the original of the word rock and roll is from the brothel. You know, it's the music for the, for a brothel.

Will & Karen: know, that makes

Raghunath: Someone told me I'm not positive. We can make my back. Check me on that.

Will & Karen: it makes like a weird kind of sense though. Rock and roll.

Raghunath: yeah. Rock and roll. Yeah, [00:11:00] yeah.

Will & Karen: there goes our family rating. All right. Um, Okay. So then you found yourself going to like called to India. So I mean, you just, one day you just woke up and said, I've got to, I've got to go. Wow. Yeah. Cool.

Raghunath: It was, you know, it's like saying what was the straw that broke the camel's back, you know, and it was, it was a building up a pressure over, you know, You know, my life, I wasn't super old. I was 22 and I finally went, but it was a spiritual calling at a young age. It was fulfilling some of my material desires, being in a band, traveling the world, getting recognized, putting out records, being prolific as a musician.

And then feeling that success, seeing even peers become even more successful, very successful witnessing this whole culture of the Lower East Side and seeing their choices and, stepping into my own, you know, manhood sort of from, from teen to, to a man. And then started questioning, well, what, what is a win in this life?

What is a, [00:12:00] what is the goal? What am I supposed to do here? Is this what I'm supposed to do? How long do I do this for? What, what, is it supposed to, do I raise a family? Is that the goal? Is it to be a good person? Is it to save money? Is it to collect things? Is it to go have wanderlust and travel to all different continents all over the world?

What is the actual win in life? And then when my father died, it sort of like, It gave me such a sort of a clarion call just like a wake up and it made me start to think Although he died that could be me. It was very random that he died. It wasn't expected and I could also die an unexpected death Therefore what am I doing?

Am I wasting my life here? And so I took that tragedy as an impetus and sort of a Sort of a champ a catapult To ask those deeper questions. and I'm sure you've probably experienced this in the, in the workplace also, if you, whenever someone's had some [00:13:00] success in their workplace or in their passions, that sometimes the very thing they love to do is causing them so much more conflict.

Then before they were even successful at it, like now there's competition. Now there's envy. Now there's a guy who wants my position. Then there's somebody else. I want their position. Then greed comes in, then lust comes in, then envy comes in. And all of a sudden, these very things, which were innocent and fun and joyful now become very complicated in the consciousness.

And so as I was leaning into my spiritual self. And watching the material world lift me and then drop me and lift me and then drop me. I finally got to this point where like, you know what, I, I need something else and I have to cut myself from everybody I know. And that's when I first, that's when I first left for India.

Will & Karen: That I understand but I didn't go to India. I just left Miami. All [00:14:00] right. So then you did you know anyone in India? Did you go on your own? Did you got to connect with a

Raghunath: a traveling, I met a traveling monk and in New York and he, and, and I, at that point I was already, I believe in, I believe the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, which is one of the holy books of India. In India, there's many holy books. In all different traditions, but India has canons and canons of holy books and their books basically have had how to control the mind, how to purify the mind, how to purify the senses, how to, how to live a progressive life, how to identify yourself as a spiritual being.

And for, and I was like, this is what I want to do. This is what I want to focus on. This is what I want to become good at. So I already made up my mind. I'm going to India. I don't know how to do it. It's, you know, nowadays you can go to trip advisor and say, how, how do you go to, you know, how do you figure this out

Will & Karen: Cheapoair. com.

Raghunath: Yeah, that you could book your airline on tape. Everything's so much easier now. [00:15:00] Back, I didn't even have a credit card when I went to India.

Will & Karen: Wow.

Raghunath: Yeah, just imagine traveling with

Will & Karen: Yeah.

Raghunath: And India was, it was completely another world. Because what, we forget how much the internet has influenced everything from the way we talk, the way we dress.

I mean, people in India will say, Bro, Like we say, bro, because there, the internet makes, has homogenized the entire world,

Will & Karen: Oh Ray, don't, don't, don't crush that for me. I can't, I can't see a Hindu going bro to me. I can't. That would, that would, that would

Raghunath: everybody says, bro, everybody dresses the same. Everybody it's like,

Will & Karen: that is sad. Oh bro.

Raghunath: back then it was like, you're actually going to a different, almost like a different planet. You know, the rituals are different. The lifestyle is different. The foods are different. The, you know, the language is different. The customs are different.

The cars were different. You know, everything was absolutely different. And so for me, it was really shocking. it was sort of like, to me, it was like a [00:16:00] punk rock country. It was like, everything was sort of like all in a part in decay. We're driving around on these trains that look like they were built during the times of like, you know, the 1930s or 1940s, everything needed a good power washing.

And um, yeah, it was quite adventurous,

Will & Karen: Yeah. I mean, how did that affect you? Like you have this mission of these things you want and then you go to India and I traveled a lot back in the day too. And I know that like some places like in China where you're like, Whoa, it's, it's rough. I mean, how, how did you like, did that make you want to stay more?

Did that make you think like, Oh my God, I got to go home.

Raghunath: You know, I always had this strong Like I, at this point it was really firm on my spiritual path, but there were times where I was like, I'm going to do my spiritual path somewhere else. So yeah, so it was, there were times where I wasn't, I, I, I def, I definitely was not, as I would have liked to been, but there were times where I would, I mean, just to make that trip, I felt like I was pretty stoic.

I was 22. I didn't know anybody, but at the same time I definitely wasn't a complete [00:17:00] stoic where I was like, I'm going to do this no matter what there was times. And I, and I share in my book all my vulnerabilities and my self doubt and my doubts of everything. And my inspirations, my excitement, and then my doubts again.

And a lot of it had to do with my health and how I was feeling. And then also just like, well, okay, if my goal in life is to be connected and to serve, how am I going to do that? And I, I left, I left my mother who had just her husband had just died. You know, I left my, all my fans back home and I was just like, I never had real closure.

I just like disappeared. And so anyway, I share that story in the book as well, what I did and coming back to India and the back and forth throughout the ashram years.

Will & Karen: Well, then, while you were in India, how long were you there?

Raghunath: was only there about four or five months. but for six and a half years straight, I was a celibate monk. So I practiced my monk vows in and out of ashrams all over the world and [00:18:00] regularly going back to India, if not annually going back to India.

I still go back to India, India about I'd say percent of the year. Okay.

Will & Karen: what would you say is the biggest takeaway from your transition from one to the other?

Raghunath: Well, there's been a next transition, which is not written in the book from punk to monk to father of five. I've raised five children,

Will & Karen: Wow.

Raghunath: Yeah. That's a, that's the opposite of punk actually a monk and monk. And I live on a farm retreat center in upstate New York where we host retreats.

And now I take people on pilgrimages to holy places in India. That's what I do for, for my job. But it's my pleasure. It's my, my greatest joy too. So people can experience, have that experience. We go for a couple of weeks of people like check in and we try to create the appropriate environment. And because I've been there so many times, I know all the good places to go, the people to meet, the rivers to see, the temples to see, and it's a night really [00:19:00] nice.

India, Transcendental India experience

Will & Karen: in your new transition to father of five, you actually are, went from punk to monk to funk then,

Raghunath: to find

uh,

Will & Karen: a lot of mess, a lot of diapers.

Raghunath: it's funky.

Will & Karen: Well, before we get into that, I would just a question. So, you know, you hear of India and it's this incredibly spiritual place and so many people go there to help move them along their journeys.

So many people can't go, you know, whether it's financial or whatever, they don't have the resources to go. Do you think they're still able to get the same level of inspiration that you had when you went to India here?

Raghunath: Great question. I think that God is real source, higher power, whatever you want to call God is a real benevolent force and you don't need to leave the comfort of your own living room. But sometimes I think it's safe to say that environment affects our mind as

Will & Karen: Mm hmm.

Raghunath: You know, sometimes when you drive into the desert or you go [00:20:00] to the Grand Canyon or you go into the forest, it's the environment that assists the mind.

So, God's everywhere. You don't have no, no one country, no one religion has a monopoly on God. so I believe that anybody can find God. But it's good to have good guides and good teachers, just like if you were to learn martial arts or learn how to play the violin or the harp. It's good to have good guides and good teachers who have, who are expert at harp playing or violin playing, and they can show you the shortcomings and how to accelerate your practice.

And the truth, the same as with spiritual life, you get pro tips from people who've been practicing

Will & Karen: Life hacks.

Raghunath: life, life hacks, pro tips. I love all these new words we invent every week, new

Will & Karen: And probably if you're going to go through all the effort to get there, you're going to really focus more. Yeah. I would think like, Oh, I better pay attention.

Raghunath: sometimes, and sometimes people are just

Will & Karen: Right.

Raghunath: bring their scattered brain with them.

Will & Karen: You, you touched on the fact that you've got the, this retreat [00:21:00] center in upstate New York and I, I believe you do curatons there and all that kind of stuff, right?

Raghunath: Yeah. Kirtan is call and response chanting for those who don't know. And we have yoga, yoga seminars and our podcast wisdom of the sages. We do our own retreats there for people who are also into bhakti yoga and chanting and Kirtan. So yeah.

Will & Karen: all right. So then how would you compare, right? The modern day Kirtan to a mosh pit,

Raghunath: Oh, to a mosh pit. Very good. Hey, well, you got to come to some of our Kirtan sometime.

Will & Karen: because they can, they can get pretty

Raghunath: You know what? Truthfully, it's when I first went to some yoga societies in New York and some of the kirtans are very sedate, but when I saw how the bhakti yogis do kirtan, it is filled with like, I've never seen anything close to it except like a mosh pit where it's like high end. It can be very sweet and soft also, [00:22:00] but it can also be jumping up

Will & Karen: Super raucous. And

Raghunath: Yeah, really raucous because why? Because it's a, it's a calling of the heart to God that it's like, it's like full contact prayer, you know, you're jumping up and down. I mean, I bet if you YouTube search ecstatic Kirtan, you'll see just like people like losing it in dance and, and it's a process of spiritual life that, that, that requires.

song and dance. It's pretty interesting. It's song and dance. And those are two things that are very difficult to analyze under us with scientific instruments. How do you analyze song? It's just a song. How do you analyze dance? What's it doing to the body is just endorphins. Is it just, you know, this, this podcast is called the skeptic metaphysician.

And in the culture of the ancient indian sciences of yoga, They say you actually it's not skepticism is the [00:23:00] word but discernment. It's important to be Have discern we don't I was never asked And when entering of studying vedic philosophy to just blindly accept this stuff just accept just trust And when you die, you'll go to heaven.

I was never asked to do that. It was always bring your intelligence here And challenge this But you have to you can't just challenge something just say if you just tell me, yeah, you're wearing a white baseball cap, but I refuse to look at your, your, your picture. I'm not, you know what I'm saying? I have to enter into the video monitor.

So in the same way, we can't just say, well, I don't believe in this. You got to enter into the experiment. So when I got into Bhakti. I thought, okay, this is interesting. These books are very deep and very thoughtful. I never thought like this before. What, how do I take a step further? And they said, well, you should try mantra meditation.

That's where you chant on like Indian rosary and you chant the Maha mantra. [00:24:00] You chant Hare Krishna on these beads and you try to control your mind. You try to control your senses. You try to control your thoughts because your thoughts are things and you try to just hear the mantra. And so you practice that.

Cause let's face it, if you get a gym membership, but you just go once, it's not going to have an effect. You got to practice on a regular basis.

Will & Karen: we haven't gotten once, not

Raghunath: You haven't got one? Alright, well that's not gonna

Will & Karen: I know, I know. I'm

Raghunath: can't get the membership, you can't just, you can't just buy the clothes.

You gotta show up on a regular basis so that in, in, in yoga culture, that's called your sadana. And in a spiritual Sona means it's a regular practice of meditation, a regular practice of control. Your senses, a regular practice of control, your mind, a regular practice of being careful what you put in your mouth.

You know and what comes out of your mouth and how you treat people and how you treat yourself So when you practice that and you try that for two weeks, you feel like oh something's happening here I'm noticing something. And i'm sure people do whenever people do any type of Austerity for their [00:25:00] better self they start running for a week or start weight lifting or doing yoga for a week They find that wow, I feel difference.

I feel better now And so what you want to do is you want to turn it up a little so you go to your You A mentor and say, well, okay, now what can I do? And they ask you, well, you, you take your discernment and you bring it further. And then you have a question and you challenge and you get, you challenge what they're saying.

And then you move closer and closer. So skeptic is no, but we say discernment is yes. You have to have a discernment. It sharpens our intelligence. Otherwise we're just a bunch of fanatics. I'll believe all this stuff. It's, it's true. It says so in the, Bhagavad Gita. Yeah. We don't want to be fundamentalists.

We want to experience this stuff. This stuff is experiential.

Will & Karen: Right. So it's funny. I grew up in, in the New York area. and I'd spend a lot of time in Manhattan because my best friend grew up in the Upper West Side.

And there was something about being in that area [00:26:00] that you had to be really on your toes because everyone was trying to, trying to Pull one over on you.

Raghunath: Exactly,

Will & Karen: Good winking. Right. So I became very pragmatic, very skeptical, but not cynical. So I would say that I was very spiritual even back then. Right.

Because I wasn't, I was just, I was practicing very strong discernment. I mean, why are you looking at me? I didn't know you. Yeah.

Raghunath: Well, I think, I think, I hear your point. You had to be a quick on your toes. You had to be a little you had to have a lot of discernment because everyone's trying to rip you off. And you had to be a, you had to be a little skeptical who you're dealing with. and you had to have a lot of street smarts because I used to go to Manhattan also.

We used to take the Metro, what was it, Metro North. Harlem line or whatever and get it in Brewster and take it to to 42nd Street and Grand Central Station and head downtown. And that was the ritual every weekend.

Will & Karen: was, yeah, exactly.

Raghunath: And if you went to New [00:27:00] York back then, New York was an entirely different animal. It was a completely different animal. And you, if you didn't have street smarts, you're about to be robbed. Yeah.

Will & Karen: Oh yeah. Or worse

Raghunath: Or were I I there, it's a, it's a miracle that I'm alive. 'cause I hung out in, I hung out with crazy people in crazy neighborhoods late at night and my parents had no clue where I was. I just told them, I'm going to New York City to see music. I think they thought I was going to the Philharmonic or something,

Will & Karen: yeah.

Raghunath: monsters I was, that were my good friends on the Lower East Side, they would never, they would've lost

Will & Karen: but if my brother was just in town a couple of days ago, we were talking about that same thing. We, my, my best friend, how we survived our childhood. We have no idea. And it was just like our parents were just the most. Ignorant. I think your mom just didn't want to know. Right. Right.

Probably so. Put her head right in the sand.

Raghunath: I was six out of seven kids. So I think by the time they got to me, they were like, all right,

Will & Karen: We got plenty to.

Raghunath: [00:28:00] you're on your own. You can figure it out. You're smart.

Will & Karen: Yeah. We got plenty of spares just in case.

Raghunath: it's unbelievable. My kids don't do anything. I keep them so sheltered.

Will & Karen: no. Oh my God. Same. We do the same thing. I mean I wasn't as bad as you, but same thing. My mom didn't know where I was half the time. Wait, wait. Why are you saying it's bad? Cause I, I know. It wasn't bad. That's a different podcast. Yeah.

Will: let's take a break and we'll be right back.

Will: And now back to the skeptic metaphysicians.

Will & Karen: Well, so Ray, looking back on all this kind of stuff, what do you think the youth of today lead singer that you were back in the eighties, what would you think of the Ray that is here in front of us today?

Raghunath: You know, I never looked that far ahead back then.

Will & Karen: Yeah. 30 years old. It was old back then.

Raghunath: 25 was [00:29:00] old when I was, when I was 15 and I was in a band with a bunch of 25 year olds and I was like, who are these old guys and why are they still doing this dumb music, you know? If I was to zoom out of my entire life, I can see how it's a continuum of what I was back then. I don't know why I got into clean living, positive attitudes, you know, clean diets and stuff.

I don't know why I got into it or how I got into it, but you know, I started finding myself in these weird New York bookstores about alternative medicine and alternative diets and alternative lifestyles and yoga, Qigong, and all these things are sort of interested me.

I got a job at a vegetarian restaurant on the Lower East Side and had a, we had a family apartment on 15th street. So I moved there when I was 18 and. I don't know but truthfully that what I'm doing now here with the farm and the retreats and stuff like that In reality, I've dreamed about it for about 30 [00:30:00] years maybe not when I was in youth of today, but years later probably it probably when I was maybe 30 I could see myself I'm gonna have a farm.

I'm gonna bring people to this place. I'm gonna teach them all this stuff I learned in the ashram. I did have that dream, I can honestly say. and I dialed it in as I got older.

And I've been here for the last 10 years.

Will & Karen: what was the biggest challenge going from that, that punk rocker to the, serene lifestyle of a monk? Like what was the biggest challenge that you found that maybe unexpected than anything else?

Raghunath: You can change your habits, but you got to change your thoughts. So the thoughts still follow you. And the stuff that was, and when you meet juxtaposing my mind, okay, sure. I got the orange robes on, I've got the clay on the forehead, I'm chanting, I'm rising early, can't, you know, dress up a lunatic like a king and now all of a sudden he's a king.

He's still a lunatic,

Even though I changed outfits and sort of changed my habits. to change the consciousness and to [00:31:00] change the mind. That's, that's a lot of work and to let go of bad habits and let go of bad thoughts and let go of resentments. It's, it's a lot of work and you know, people do it on a psychiatric couch.

People do it through, you know, talk therapy through all different ways. I was doing it through a meditational practice. I'm still practically doing it on as a meditational practice. I think my biggest realization from that was

this is a process. It's a process. It's not going to, and things like this don't happen overnight. You don't just join a club and like, now I'm saved. It's not like that. would be great if it was like that. I would love a self realization pill, you know, or,

Will & Karen: I say that all the time. I need that lever.

Raghunath: or a God conscious pill, that would be great.

But instead it but instead it's like this is this is real work you got to do and it's beautiful work and it's noble Work the the I found the biggest problem was Everybody in my life from all my friends and all my fans my bestest my besties and [00:32:00] my parents I felt like I was doing the most noble thing and they all thought I was crazy And that was I think that was the hardest thing to do like sometimes in india A young man will say, you know, mother, I'm going to drop out of engineering school and I'm going to become a monk.

And the parents are sad because, Oh, my son, he's becoming a monk. I wanted him to have kids and grandchildren and, and, and now he's going to leave his career behind and just live with these. Swamis, but in their heart, they're like, but it's a good thing. but for me, it was like, it was so foreign.

And again, there was no internet. So you can't just Google up. What does a Hindu monk look like? was like, are you insane? Are you brainwashed? Why don't you just, you're going to find somebody else's religion. Just make up your own religion.

Will & Karen: right.

Raghunath: they didn't understand the culture. It was hard for me to even articulate what I was doing, but I knew in my heart I was on a, on a right path.

Will & Karen: going back to what you said about you have to change your thoughts and how that, being a, I guess, a. [00:33:00] Challenge for you. What advice would you give to our listeners on maybe a simple step to get that process started? Okay.

Raghunath: Yeah, I can give you a couple simple steps that you could just practice immediately. Stop blaming people for anything that's going wrong in your life. full responsibility for everything that's happened to you in your life. That's a big one that we can't get out of the world of blaming.

And when, and when, and when we do, we can never heal from that. And how we live our life today, if we can stop the blaming and stop complaining, that alone can radically change our life. And then from there shift to stop criticizing people, stop micromanaging the way people do everything and finding fault with them and just running like on autopilot, like shooting everybody down from the way they look, the way they dress, the, you know, how they hurt you, you know, going into some old resentment from 20 years [00:34:00] ago, how you were wrong by your father, by your mother, by your uncle, and how, you know, get rid of any type of victim mentality.

See that the source or God or Jesus or whatever you want to call your higher power is benevolent. Nothing that I've got was nothing happened to me. It happened. It didn't happen to me. It happened for me. Everything is for my growth, for my evolution. And when that becomes the mindset, it is like a fast track to your spiritual life, that there is a benevolent source of benevolent, higher power.

And that even tragedy. I'm sure we could all find times in our life where we, where we look back now and we didn't get it at the time where we can say, thank God I was fired. Thank God she cheated on me and left me. Thank God he betrayed me. Thank God I lost all my wealth. Thank God this tragedy happened because it's from.

The tragedies that we have forced to dig deeper. And if we [00:35:00] lean into truth instead of leaning into alcohol or drugs or romance or sex or shopping, whatever we do to forget pain and we eating is a huge one. Cause you get it. Cause you get a quick release, you know, but then you're left with the same problem and you're a little bit overweight, you know, and so, and so if we can just lean into spirit and introspection and thoughtfulness, then radically we can, we can, we can change the trajectory of where we're going and we can make that lemon into lemonade, if not, if not lemon gelato or

Will & Karen: Ooh,

Raghunath: Yeah,

Will & Karen: that sounds good. I like gelato. Those are good. No, but not just the gelato, but, those are really good pieces of advice. Great, great, great tips. They're helpful. Because people like me who I have some challenges ahead of me in those particular spaces, as you can tell, I, my way to cope is to eat.

It's easy to get [00:36:00] discouraged because you're doing this all the time. You're meditating all the time. You're taking what you think you're trying to take. responsibility for your own actions and trying to understand that everything that happens to you is Ordained it's for a reason is to for your better good all that kind of stuff But we live in a 3d world, right?

We live in a physical world that we've got to get up and feed the kid take the kid to school then go to work and work for how many hours come home and and then make dinner and and then after that all make sure the kid does the homework and How can someone Maintain that thought form that keeps them on the right path in light of all the chaos that is our everyday life.

Raghunath: that's a great question. You have to find some type of peace in the chaos. Like, you know, my story, I raised kids. That's, it can be totally chaotic. What to speak of if you're going through some chronic illness or you have some issue [00:37:00] with a loved one in your family or a sick mother or father you're taking care of or problematic parent you're taking care of something like that.

So chaos is coming. Expect it. and then it will, chaos will go away. Expect that also. It's like the season's coming seasons, seasons change. Every time there's a winter, there's a spring around the corner as well. So within the chaos and without the chaos, we got to find a steadiness comes from one, the people we associate with on a regular basis.

And so it helps to have a partner that is like you guys, you can, you can support each other in this regard too. It helps to have. of some like law books, so to speak. We use sacred literature in India on a regular basis. We read, we study. Matter of fact, my podcast is all about studying sacred literature of India on a regular basis because when we do things on a regular basis, we create different, we change, we, we create different set of reactions, [00:38:00] right?

I always react in a way that's not good, and then I have to break that chain for me to become a different person. So by hearing truth on a regular basis, when I want to do something that I know is not good for me, and I think it's safe to say we've all made choices and perhaps we still make a lot of choices that aren't good for us, but when I hear truth on a regular basis and I'm going to make my bad choice, which has been programmed in me, and I've been practicing it for a long time.

By hearing truth on a regular basis, it chips us down. And now I go to make that bad choice. I was like, I have too much information here. I can't go against this information. Previously, I had no information. I was just running on autopilot. So the indulgence in wisdom literature on a regular basis changes us in the same way, going to a gym changes us on a regular basis, going to yoga class, going to a violin class, going to those things change us, our ability to play music, our artistic ability, our physical.

our physical culture, our physical ability, [00:39:00] but it's the wisdom literature that we read on a regular basis. And India had a whole practice of that. It's morning reading is before you get the kids up, before you're making breakfast, before you're, you know, you wake up and you have private time where you just read and recalibrate your consciousness.

And then when you master doing that. With all the juggling and getting the kid off the soccer and getting this kid lunch packed and get a breakfast made then you also Figure out how to manage it in the evening time as well So you have a little in the morning and you middle little in the evening and then you sandwich your day of busyness Because we're all busy

Will & Karen: Mm. Mm

Raghunath: truthfully as the kids grow up and things get a little less chaotic And I'm sort of like going through this phase.

My youngest is 10, but my older kids are older now. But I can see that things are getting a little less chaotic and I can add more of my morning and more of my evening and that sandwich. Is getting, you know, the bread is getting thicker and what's in the middle is getting [00:40:00] smaller and and then you start and that's what in in Indian culture.

That's what spiritual life was. And that was what retirement was. Retirement was retirement didn't mean well, I'm going to just, you know, pretend I'm young and I'm going to golf my life away. Retirement months. I'm going to get really focused now on my spiritual identity. And there was that you would increase your, you know, your, your, your, your meditation, your focus, your you know, your determination and all that stuff.

So it's good while we have the chaos to practice and creating some time, even if it's five minutes in the morning, five minutes in the evening.

Will & Karen: So, you are basically being proactive in order to not just, you know, So you're either putting that intention

Raghunath: Yeah,

Will & Karen: um, reading the books and all that stuff to change the way you feel when you're, or how you're affected when certain events happen. And that's the hard part is not letting it affect you in a certain way.

That's, that's [00:41:00] the hardest part for

Raghunath: Especially cause we've been practicing bad habits. Bad reactions, you know, something happens and I get quiet. I go silent. I don't express my feelings. I bury him You know or you know or or or you really mask him you you know You drink liquor you go to a bar and then you really can mask your emotions And that's why a lot of times when people give up these things intoxicants or even junk food or Donuts, whatever then after a while.

It's like You have nothing to medicate your pain, so all you get is the pain. And then you're left like a total vulnerable emotional being, which is quite beautiful, because for years we've been suppressing our emotions. So these things have to surface in, in a spiritual culture and on a spiritual path.

They will naturally start to surface, and they're gonna, and then it's gonna make you realize how ugly we are. You're not ugly. We're all a mess. We're all broken and all this stuff is surfacing and it's coming to the top and we [00:42:00] face it and it's ugly and it's beautiful though, because we're purging it.

Will & Karen: Well, we're very quickly running out of time. I want to make sure that we are conscious of that because I know that you've got to go. We talked a little bit about your retreat center in upstate New York. Is there anything that you want to make sure that everyone understands about your place and why they should go there?

Raghunath: Oh, sure. Well, I my website is Raghunath. yoga and you can go to our events tab if you want to see the things we're doing at the farm. But also we, I do um, a training in India every year. where you people want to learn yoga, study yoga. We have an incredible facility there that we use. We're hosted by a bunch of monks and every year we do 200 hour, 300 hour training and even kirtan training.

That's also on my website. And then every year I take a group on pilgrimage in the autumn and we do that. And that's a really fun trip. We're doing that in October this year. And this year we added a second trip. We're going to Nepal. So some people are going to Nepal and we go trekking, but [00:43:00] we also treat it like a pilgrimage.

We have our morning session and our evening session. I give lectures and talks and it's, it, they're both wonderful trips and um, people are doing both or people can go to one or the other and yeah, check out my new book, punk to monk

Will & Karen: just the title alone is worth the price of admission. So you mentioned you can find it wherever books

Raghunath: wherever books are sold and audio. I read it as well.

Will & Karen: Awesome. So we're going to lay in some direct links in our show notes. So if you missed any of this, all you need to do is go to skepticmetaphysician. com, go to his episode page. You'll see the links laid in there directly in the show notes. It makes it easy for you to access the book and access Ray, which is probably the most important.

Right. It's been a pleasure getting a chance to speak with you. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us and I look forward to picking up that book thanks so much for being on the

Raghunath: you guys. Keep up the good work. The podcast seems

Will & Karen: Thanks. Likewise. Likewise.

Raghunath: Okay, bye bye.

Will: And a huge thank you to you. We know that there are tons of options out there and having you decide to come along on our journey of discovery with us is an [00:44:00] absolute honor for us. We hope you've enjoyed this conversation as much as we have. If you did and you feel called to give back, we invite you to visit our website at SkepticMetaphysician.

com where you can donate to the show or subscribe as a member through our Buy Me a Coffee campaign. Your support will go a long way towards allowing Karen and I to bring you these wonderful conversations and teachings in more and more robust ways. Well, that's all for now, but we'll see you on the next episode of The Skeptic Metaphysician. Until then, take care.