Gregory David Roberts | What it Means to Walk the Spiritual Path

Srini Rao

Greg, welcome to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Gregory David Roberts

Thank you very much for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here. And what a nice name, Srini Raovas, meaning the abode of good fortune. Such a nice name. Go ahead, please.

Srini Rao

Hehehehe

Well, it's funny that you know that, you know, as I as I finished reading your book, The Spiritual Path, all of which we will talk about. I remember thinking to myself, I'm like, wow, this guy is more Indian than I am. He seems to know more about my own religion that I did. So on that note, I thought I would ask a very fitting question to start. And that is what religious or spiritual beliefs were you raised with? And how did that end up impacting and shaping the choices that you've made throughout your life?

Gregory David Roberts

Hahaha

Gregory David Roberts

I was raised in the Catholic faith, in the Catholic belief, and baptized, confirmed, and attended church, went to a Catholic school for all of my primary and secondary education. My parents were not well off, they were working class people, working very hard, and it was a big commitment to afford to send me there. But like many other people...

from a tough working class background. The principle was if you went to a Catholic school and managed to survive it, you would get entrance to a university. There was a high probability that you'd make it through and get to university. Whereas in the local high school and tech schools in the area for other working class kids, there was a lower probability that you would succeed into tertiary education. So my parents struggled to put me through that primarily.

for that reason, that they valued the education system. They didn't attend church too regularly. They went on all the major feast days. They went on all the days that we were required as a family to attend school functions on feast days, and they went to those, but they were not regular mass goers. My mother was a very devout devotee of Jesus, and she knelt in prayer for an hour every day of her life.

every day of her 85 years, as soon as she was old enough from the age of five to begin that, and she never missed and loved Jesus, had an abiding love for Jesus. So I was raised in a Catholic tradition that was principally bound around the education that it provided, but it also provided a set of moral precepts and a way of looking at the world, which in itself, stripped away perhaps of dogma,

not a negative moral instruction. It's ironic that so many Catholics who are lapsed Catholics, so to speak, who don't attend church anymore, who don't really think of themselves as practicing Catholics, but who meet one another across the world and share much in common, and it comes from that early instruction. So I was raised as a Catholic in the Catholic education system and quite a bit of that has remained with me through the years.

Srini Rao

Well, you know, I think the thing that's struck me the most about what you just said is being stripped of dogma. And I feel like so often religion, you know, tends to be incredibly dogmatic for certain people. They're almost fanatical. Why? Why is that? Like, for somebody like me, I mean, the joke I always say is like part of the reason I'm not big on a lot of Indian religious traditions is they're incredibly time consuming. Like, you know, I always joke is like, just go to an Indian wedding, you'll see what I'm talking about.

Gregory David Roberts

Yes indeed, it's true. You know it's a complex question. Really if we go back, we need to take a meta perspective on our humankind. We tend to think of human beings only in terms of the last 25,000 years or so since we domesticated ourselves. But for 250,000 years before that, we were gatherer hunters. And that world is a very different world to the world in which we live today.

The principal difference being that in that world no human being could own the planet the planet owned the human beings and In our world we have a fiction that a human being can own a piece of this planet which in private property Which of course is nonsense The planet was here before us the planet will be here long after the last human has been Extinguished the planet will be here for another four billion years So that we the planet owns us we don't know in the planet

And for 250,000 years we lived that way. We didn't work for a living. The planet provided what we needed to sustain us and to survive. Our numbers were small enough that we didn't deplete the resources in any given area. And we managed to cover the entire planet. Every single place where we could walk, we walked. Over 250,000 years and from Africa to Australia. So that really is the big picture of who we are. And in that...

250,000 years there is no religion as such. Religions were founded once we domesticated animals and crops and stayed in one place. But were we spiritual in those 250,000 years before religions were born? Yes, I think we were profoundly spiritual, perhaps even more spiritual than we are today because we were more intimately connected with our natural planet. Nevertheless.

That bigger picture of who we are gives us a bit of a perspective on religion and where it fits into who we are. We were spiritual for a very, very long time before we became religious.

Srini Rao

So.

you know as somebody who has this perspective i mean one of the things that struck me most was this thing that you said at the very beginning of the book that god is by definition so huge so immense beyond imagination that i don't think anyone can know anything about god directly it would be like matter and antimatter colliding so to speak leading to our annihilation so with this perspective in mind how does that explain you know things like religious extremism and you know and we see it you know in every religion it's not just you know

you know, terrorists in one country or another, but it's in all forms we have this sort of extremism that, ironically, the comedian George Carlin said, you know, he's like, more people have been killed in the name of God than almost any other, than any other cause.

Gregory David Roberts

Yes, I mean, well, I think that's pretty hard to say. The name of God maybe been bandied about, but most of the killing was in the name of greed and the assumption of power and had very little to do with God or any concept of God. It was us butchering one another for a definite net benefit for someone who always benefited from it and it wasn't God.

We tend to blame God for the things that we've done to one another and so forth, and say these things are done in the name of God and so forth. Here's a simple formula for me. Fanaticism is the opposite of faith. A fanatic is someone who's lost their faith. They are filled with religion but have no faith. People who have faith understand that every single thing that happens to you is an individual test of your faith.

whether it's a good thing that happens, and how are you going to react to that? Are you going to react as a faith-filled person, or are you going to abuse that good fortune that came your way? And every misfortune that happens to you, are you prepared for this? Are you ready to handle this with faith, to accept it? So, this deep understanding of faith is a different thing. There are many, many religious people, I'd say probably most religious people, have a lot of faith. But...

you can be deeply religious and have no faith at all. And if you know what I mean, and you can have no religion and be profoundly filled with faith. Faith in yourself, faith in your loved ones, faith in your friends and those around you, and faith in the Divine, in whatever conception you have of that. It may be just the universe that you say, I just have faith in the universe, whatever it is. There can be people filled with faith whose lives are constantly reflecting how much faith. See we say

Faith is invisible. It isn't. Faith is visible in every single person who has it.

Srini Rao

So you basically talked about the fact that we were spiritual before we were religious, which makes me wanna ask the question, on a dating profile, I never fell off saying I'm Hindu, I always say spiritual but not religious. Like that's my, even though I was raised Hindu. So what is the distinction between the two? What's the difference between spirituality and religion?

Gregory David Roberts

The spiritual has no lawyers. The spiritual has no bank account. It is a relationship between you and a spiritual essence in this universe that is imbued throughout the universe by the creator. Now, people can believe that or not. I don't care. I'm just saying it. I'm not trying to convince someone of anything that I say. I'm saying what occurs to me. If it makes sense to you, great. And if it doesn't...

Fine, throw it aside and keep going, keep searching for answers that do make sense to you. So for me, the spiritual has no lawyers and no bank accounts. Religions have lawyers and bank accounts. If you offend the religion, they can come after you with lawyers and they can pay them because they have bank accounts. When you are connecting to the spiritual as an individual person, there's no lawyer to intercede for you. It's you and whatever your conception of the divine is.

And it has no bank account. There's no way you can buy your way into it. It's not possible. Or buy your way out of it. The spiritual is beyond this. So in a simple sense, religions are deeply connected to this material world. They have a set of moral precepts that are about how people should behave in this material world. The spiritual is not about this material world. It is about the spiritual world, which is as remote from this.

material world as the quantum is. Just as the quantum world in the quantum realm of quantum particles and fundamental particles breaks most of the rules that apply in this material world we live in, even though it's right here and we're enmeshed and immersed in it, all those rules are different. When you get to the microcosmic and when you get to the very, very fast moving and the very, very tiny particles, all those rules break down.

And yet it's right here and we know and we accept it and believe it. Well the spiritual is like that too. It's right here but it has a completely different set of rules. And it is beyond this material world and nothing to do with this material world. In a sense, if I can just say this as a last point, Srini Raovas, for me religions are there to help people to behave in this world. And the spiritual is not about being right or wrong or about being good or evil. The spiritual is about being connected.

Gregory David Roberts

or not connected, about being profoundly connected or only having a thin attenuated connection. But it is not about being, it is not going to make you a better person, not going to make you a nicer person. Following a religion in a sincere and authentic way might help you to be a better person in this world, but the spiritual is not about that. It's about being connected and it is not about being better or worse, right or wrong, good or evil. That's my perception of it.

Srini Rao

Yeah, well, it's kind of funny because people, I always joke with my friends that, you know, Randy Comasar, a venture capitalist, talks about this concept called the deferred life plan in his book, The Monk and the Riddle. And I always jokingly say Indians believe in a deferred life plan because they believe in reincarnation. And I'm like, at the rate I've been going and given the skeletons in my closet, I'll be reincarnated as a cockroach. So I'm going to maximize this life as much as possible, which makes me wonder. So with this perspective, what is your belief on about the afterlife?

How old were you when you started to see the world through this lens? Because this is a very strange sort of lens for, you know, what I might imagine somebody, you know, my perception of somebody from a working class background, you know, that went to Catholic school. Like, when did you start to think about these things?

Gregory David Roberts

Well, I've always been thinking about it, but in a hostile and antagonistic way. Like many lapsed Catholics, I studied religions in order to break them and destroy them, to attack them, to find weaknesses and internal inconsistencies. I'm sorry, we've got some Jamaican noise in the background here, some trucks. You might be able to hear that. It's fabulous. The noise of the trucks here is just incredible. It's like theater.

Srini Rao

No worries.

Gregory David Roberts

How can you hear that? As just a passing truck, it's fabulous. So, you know, I...

Each one of these things that we are looking at in terms of belief systems and so on, when we finally reach a point where we start to deeply and profoundly ask the question, is there something there beyond this? Is there something there? Whenever that happens to us in life, there have been many, many steps along the way. So being a kind of soldier against God, studying

comparative religion and theology just so that I could find the weaknesses in the logic and so forth, the inconsistencies, the things that broke down, the coherence of that religion for the and so on. And I had actually argued so well, knowing other people's texts so well, that I'd made more than once made a believer cry. And I didn't set out to make the person cry. I set out to attack the...

lack of logic that I found in it. What I discovered over time is much closer to, I think, you know, a Kierkegaard as a Catholic philosopher when he was challenged and they said, but God is illogical. He said, of course God is illogical. If God were logical, I would not believe in him. So there is a sense in which you have to break down the way that you think about the laws, the

the logic, the systems that you've applied from this material world to a spiritual understanding. So along the way, while I was struggling against the concept of God, I was studying religions, learning how to pray, traveling the world, immersing myself in other people's religions and so on. And it was just, despite my sort of hostility, intellectual hostility, I was learning along the way.

Gregory David Roberts

And it's a fairly recent thing. I can say about eight years ago, I made the decision to go off the grid to look after my parents, who were both very ill. As it turns out, they were both dying. We weren't entirely sure at the time, but then mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and dad passed away six months before mom from a massive heart attack, which had been an ongoing condition for him. So I went to Australia to look after my parents and...

decided this is the time to go off the grid and I had been observing my teacher in India for about five years and watching him perform his ceremonies and he was the first and only teacher I'd ever met who cut through the there's that word again the dogma and the text to speak only from his personal experience to just tell you look the Text will tell you this and that if you want to know it's all there, but this is what I know from my experience

And I loved his teachings and observed him. And when I had that opportunity to go back and look after my parents and go off the grid, off the social grid, no parties, no lunches, dinners, breakfast, no movies, no outings, just stay home, look after my parents and go into the spiritual. I then decided to take the leap of faith and to say, all right, I'm going to do this. And if I do it, if I stand there and say hello,

to the divine, I acknowledge you, I need to be ready for that. So I prepped for about a year and got myself ready emotionally, psychologically and so on looking deep into my flaws and my weaknesses, my problems that I'd faced in life that I'd maybe passed on to other people but they were really my own. Accept responsibility and leave my ego, my vanity and my pride at the door because they're not required.

blessings, those are not required. And that was about a year of prep and then I said, okay, I'm ready and made that leap of faith, stood there and said for the first time, I acknowledge you. I surrender the negative things in myself that are not required to give you devotion. So I'm surrendering my vanity and my pride and my any sense of malice or any ill thought I might have anywhere inside me. I've surrendered all of that. I don't need that when I'm coming to acknowledge you.

Gregory David Roberts

So I acknowledge you, I surrender the negative in myself, and I am devoted to you. And whether you are beyond needing or wanting my devotion, you are whatever you are. You are the magnitude of this thing that created it all, the source of everything. So in this gigantic creation machine, all the multiverses combined. And so you don't need wanting and you don't have this. You are beyond wanting, you are beyond needing.

But you created a universe in which I'm free. I have free will. I can freely give this to you, or I can freely withhold it. So I freely give this, knowing that you don't need it and want it, I freely give it to you in the hope that it connects us, that in some way I can be connected to you, that I, and by offering something to you. So I started to blow the conch twice a day, every day for five years, took notes on this. Every time I finished, I'd take notes on what I felt and what I experienced.

and then condense that five years of experience into a little book called The Spiritual Path.

Srini Rao

Well, what I wonder and we'll get into the book right after this. So what was the trajectory post high school after finishing school, college? Like, I mean, obviously I know about your previous book, Shantaram. Somebody gave that to me once. And I remember I think I put it I got there about 150 pages and I stopped reading. I don't remember why. And now I'm kind of curious to go back to it. But what happened in between, you know, high school and getting to writing this book?

Gregory David Roberts

Well, quite a lot, a number of lifetimes in fact. I left school and home at 16 and went to work in factories. I wanted to marry my girlfriend who was two years older than I was, she was 18 then, and I was 16, but my parents wouldn't give permission and we couldn't marry until I was 18. So I left home, got a job in a factory and became a sheet metal worker and a welder and loved the job, loved the work, terrific work, hard on the body.

Welders, they go in the eyes and they go in the legs from standing in concrete all their lives. They end up in factories, they end up with varicose veins and burned out eyes. And every welder, I tell you this, is hard. The safety equipment is much better now than it was back in the day. But it was a terrific job with hardworking, decent men and I really loved it. Really good people. Good men and women working around me in those factories and I enjoyed it. Then my wife at the time insisted that I go to night school. I went to night school over two years and loved it.

and did very well at night school and got a scholarship to university. Went to university, was studying philosophy and literature and everything was going well and then my marriage broke up and for a year we had a custody case and I lost custody of my daughter and I fell apart. I didn't have the guts and the strength of character to deal with it properly and I started taking heroin with

The first shot of heroin, I was an instant junkie. And within a period of time, I dropped out of everything, as you do when you're a junkie, dropped out of everything. Just give me one sec, please.

Gregory David Roberts

Yeah, or the day after. We're going to miss out on the box. Yeah. So good to see you. Blessings. Thank you, bye. Bye, goodbye. Be safe, now. Sorry to interrupt your podcast to say goodbye to some artists just leaving, okay, from the studio here. I beg your pardon, Shrinivas. Be safe, everyone. Be safe. God bless. So, yeah, you know, I didn't have the strength of character. I became a junkie. Within a short time, I was doing...

stick ups with a toy gun to get money for drugs and putting fear into people and expecting to get killed by the police every time I did it. And eventually I was caught and put into prison and sentenced to do 10 years. After two and a half years I escaped from the prison and I spent 10 years on the run as a fugitive with a price on my head, wanted, and was eventually recaptured in Germany. Spent 19 months there fighting the expedition to win some concessions and did when...

won four concessions in a row, conducted the case in German, taught myself how to read and write German and fought the case in German. In Germany I won several concessions, then returned to Australia, was put into solitary confinement for two years, and really that was the big turning point in my life. There were two big turning points. The first one was solitary confinement for two years. That was really the making of me, I think, as a person. Not the breaking, it was the making. It's either breaks you or it makes you solitary for two years.

And the second was meeting my teacher and seeing what authentic, sincere devotion really looks like when someone gives everything they have and how they're not exhausted at the end of it, they're charged by it and watching this. So those are the two big turning points. So you know, returned to Australia, did the two years in solitary, then did four more years in the max, became a teacher in the prison and was teaching men who could not read and write, but were doing life sentences, how to read and write.

and to enjoy the library which is available and it's a whole universe of experiences and adventures there that were previously closed to them but they could suddenly take those books out and read them and immerse themselves in them. And that made the time go very fast, the last four years. A sense of purpose is the thing that will really help the time pass in any prison very quickly when you have a sense of positive purpose. When I got out of the prison I had five years parole to do.

Gregory David Roberts

I started a little company. I thought, what can I do? I'm a counterfeiter, forger, smuggler, gun runner, escapee, bank robber. Oh, of course, advertising. So I started a small ad agency and that worked really well. I paid the bills and I wrote the book, Shantaram during that time, which I'd been working on in the prison, but then finished when I got out. And when the book was successful enough through movie rights and sales, paid the bills for the family and looked after everyone and then returned to India.

Srini Rao

Hahaha!

Gregory David Roberts

because I feel I had always, I'd never really completed my connection to India and of course that was true because I'd been so close to Guruji, my teacher, but had never actually met him in all the years I'd been there until I returned to India.

Srini Rao

Well, two big questions come from this. Heroin was one of those things that every time I saw anything about it or heard about it, I thought to myself, yeah, that just seems like a recipe for instant addiction. And I had a roommate when I was younger who counseled heroin addicts. And I said, what is the deal? Like, why is it? Why does it have the effect that it does? And he told me, he said, imagine winning the lottery, you know, getting everything you've ever wanted and having the girl of your dreams, millions of dollars and never having to do any of the work.

but getting the feeling you get from it. He said, that's what heroin does. That's the euphoria. I don't know if that's entirely accurate. The other thing I have to ask is, how the hell did you escape from prison?

Gregory David Roberts

Well, just by going to the one place where they thought no one would ever try. I'm not recommending it to anyone out there who may be listening, and especially to anyone who's serving time. God bless you and keep you safe. If this too shall pass, rise above every situation every day, rise above, this too shall pass, and your life will continue. So I'm not recommending it, but for me the only way out of that prison, maximum security prison was by...

going over the front wall next to the front gate at one o'clock in the afternoon. It was the one place where they thought no one will ever try to escape from here.

Srini Rao

They didn't have like armed security guards ready to shoot people?

Gregory David Roberts

Of course, I escaped between two gun towers and they were heavily armed. And if they see you, their job is to shoot you. It's not to warn you. If they see you on that wall trying to escape, their job is to shoot you. And there's a perimeter around the prison where they can continue to shoot on the street outside if they want to, if you're trying to escape. No, that's the point. It was next to the main gate and between two gun towers. So it was impossible to get through there, but we did.

Srini Rao

Okay.

The other thing you mentioned about solitary was that, you know, for some people it breaks them and some people it makes them. And you seem to have come out of prison actually reformed in here in the United States. You know, I've talked to enough incarcerated people on the show at this point that it seems that the system is actually not designed for reforming people. And we have one of the highest recidivism rates in the world.

Srini Rao

because that's what they learn. And I remember very distinctly, I went to San Quentin prison and somebody was getting out after 20 years. And it was a very like intense moment because I thought to myself, wow, somebody's here to meet him. But what if there was nobody here at the gate? Because I've been told they just give you $20 and a bus ticket and you're kind of on your own.

Gregory David Roberts

Definitely. In fact, I actually preferred it that way. I wanted to be released after all those years and have no one there. My family were waiting for me at a certain designated point and I could walk in a straight line for three kilometers to meet them, which is the first time I've been able to walk in a straight line that long in years. The thing is most men in prison, in my experience, are not reformed. They're deformed by it.

you know, a thing inside us is deformed. Most men who come out of prison, especially five years plus, but any time in prison, it's probably going to do it to you. You have PTSD. You know, soldiers will usually do an 18-month tour of duty, maybe two of those. Some soldiers do even three. Prisoners can do 10, 15 years. And it's PTSD every single day.

It's seeing people murdered. When you're trying to eat, there's a man being murdered opposite you, and you have to keep eating because you're not going to get any other food. That is the only food you're going to get, so you quickly have to scoop it up while that man is bleeding out and dying in front of you because his throat's just been cut. The PTSD that we suffer is extreme. But the main thing is this for me, after my 10 years in prison and being in prison on three continents, in Europe, in India, and in Australia. So having a

bit of a perspective on it. I think that the three juridical components of sentencing traditionally are punishment, deterrence and rehabilitation. For me, those three don't make any sense really without a fourth one, which is forgiveness. When we're released from prison, we have gone through the programs, we've done the steps and we've completed our time. We've been released by a parole board or we've been released because the time was completed and it's a non-parole sentence, but we've been released.

But we know that we are not forgiven. We are unforgiven men. When we get out, there are so many opportunities, careers, and other things that are literally closed to us for life. We are constantly reminded in our interactions with the society that we are unforgiven men. I think that a component of sentencing that says, we as a society will forgive you for this thing you've done if you meet these steps.

Gregory David Roberts

You must meet these criteria. You must do these things to earn the forgiveness. But if you do this and you fly right and you don't mess up in this time and you do the various programs and you come out, you will come out forgiven. Now, there's an analog for this. In many tribal societies and traditional societies, when a person offends against tribal law, one of the customs is that they will be marked in such a way that the...

that anyone can see this. It may be a mark on the thigh, on the face, on the arm. It may be done with, reinforced with ash, so that the mark is permanently visible. But what it means is, when anyone sees it, this person has offended, this person has paid the penalty, this person has been forgiven. That's what that mark means. We have the offended.

paid the penalty but we don't have that forgiven part of it and I think if we have a pilot program set up for those who are who pose the least risk to the community but who are at a high risk of reoffending start a program where you earn your forgiveness and that forgiveness goes on if you're three years clean a number of jobs that were closed to you suddenly become open if you're five years clean and no reoffending and

meeting all your obligations as a citizen, another range of jobs become available so that you can earn your way back into that top tier of being a fully empowered citizen in the community who is forgiven. And that's something that's missing for me.

Srini Rao

So we'll get into the book right after this, but having read your book, having read your work, nothing about the way that you come across in your books would make me think you're the type of person who would become a heroin addict and end up in prison. So what is it about that? How does somebody like you, who clearly is very smart, who clearly is ambitious, who clearly has a very deep understanding of the world, ends up in a situation like that?

Gregory David Roberts

Weakness of character in a simple phrase. You know, not having the strength of character, not having the guts to do the right thing when you're confronted with that big challenge. I would say to any father out there who has lost custody or has had a very reduced custody access to a child and they're they sincerely love their child, it's just happened in this particular way. I would say what I should have done then.

work hard, save money, write a letter every week to the kid and keep it wrapped up. If you can't deliver that letter to the child, if you're not permitted to or it's not part of the conditions of your visiting, keep them in a box and so on. Sooner or later that girl or that boy is going to want to know their father better, is going to want to come to you and that little box of letters that you've collected over the maybe one a month but here it is an open letter. That child is going to read that when they're a grown-up person. It's going to mean something.

is going to be very significant. It's going to help them deal with the fact that you were not there when they were a child. Work hard, save your money, and when that child comes to see you, and do whatever you can along the way of course to help the child, but then when that person is growing up and they're 15, 18, 20, whenever it is that they want to see their father more, I would say, and this is for mothers too, because this happens to mums as well, horrifyingly, they lose custody of their kids and so on.

be ready and when that child comes say what is it that you want to do and let them talk to you about their dreams, their wishes, their visions and then when you know that one that rings the spiritual bell that you know is right for that child and right for their life say I'm here to help you, I've been saving some money for you and so on. That's what a man should have done, that's what I should have done but I became a junkie and because of weakness in my character and basically gutlessness.

And it took me a long time to realize that whenever I was confronted with something, I was very good at running away from it. And that was basically my one talent, was running away from responsibility, running away from consequences, and so on. And solitary confinement required me, after the first year of moaning and whinging in solitary, when the calendar clicks over and you hear everyone outside celebrating in the car horns and the...

Gregory David Roberts

There's, you know, firecrackers and there's skyrockets and people celebrating outside beyond the wall and you realize you've just done a year, you know what that year is and you've got one more in front of you. That's when the bell rings and the penny drops and every cliche comes home to rest with you in that box that you're in and you realize, I am to blame.

For all the mess of my life, it's my fault, it's my responsibility, I have to take first, whoa, let me think this through, and go back and go back and go back, and then realize, wow, if I am responsible for all of that, then I can shape my destiny going forward. I can promise myself that I'm never gonna do this again, I'm never gonna do that again, and when the confrontation happens, I'm gonna try and stick it out and be there, and see it through. That was the turning point for me.

Srini Rao

Well, I think that makes a perfect segue into the actual book and the first section of the book where you kind of broke this up in a very nice, easy to organize themes and for us to have a conversation about it. So you start with acknowledgement, which is you say, acknowledgement is a commitment to the ultimately unknowable and the mind rebels against such a leap. Moreover, acknowledgement is a lifetime deal. There's no backing out or trial period. So what do you mean by that? Are we talking about acknowledging the things that you're ready to do?

responsible for or what you've created in your life. I mean, expand on that for me.

Gregory David Roberts

I think as a lifetime soldier against God, the commitment for me was perhaps a more complex commitment than it might have been for another person who, let's say, has led a fairly spiritual life and then suddenly says, you know what, I want to go a bit deeper into this. But for me, I'd led a largely anti-spiritual life.

So it was much more of a complex decision to make to say I'm going to do this. And I realized that to be authentic and do this and say I acknowledge you, if there's a way of backing out of this, of saying down the line, you know what, actually I take that back, I don't acknowledge you anymore and so on, that's just faking it. And I knew that. And I knew that if I do this, it's big. It's a big change in my life. I have to stick with it. And there's no point in making the acknowledgement.

and making a commitment to surrender the negative in yourself and become devoted, there's no point in that if it's not sincere. So I had to really think long and hard and that's where I came up with this lifetime commitment that for me at least, it is a lifetime deal. You can't back out and say, oh I've changed my mind, you're not there, God's not there and whatever you are, I'm sorry about that. That was miscommunication. It's not that, it's a lifetime deal. And secondly, it's a big thing to...

acknowledge the unknowable because you're literally, you know, standing in the wilderness shouting at the sky. You feel this sense of it, but on the other hand, it is required because we have free will. If we didn't have free will, then probably God could just drop a little bit of, you know, understanding into each mind and we'd all be connected really well all the time. But we have free will.

Whether people agree with that or not, I don't really care. I know I have free will, I know you have free will, and I'm not interested in the debate about it. For me it's a real thing and it's something that I exercise every single day using my free will and consciously using it. So if we have free will, then it's required for us to pick up the phone and dial the number.

Gregory David Roberts

If we don't have free will, we don't even need the phone, we don't even need the acknowledgement because God's going to be inside our head and so on. So it's that aspect that means that it's up to us to pick up the phone and say, hello, I acknowledge you. And for me, when I did this, the affirmations began on the first day and they've never stopped. It's a constant affirmation of the path, constant. The natural world responds to every beneficial, loving thought.

We have.

Srini Rao

Well, we'll come to affirmations. I really love what you had to say about that. But in the chapter on Sender, you say that every enhancement of the authentic self diminishes the ego, and every enhancement of the ego diminishes the authentic self. So what is the difference between the two? How do you define the difference between ego and authentic self?

Gregory David Roberts

The authentic self is the voice that chastises and chides the ego when the ego is playing up and performing its antics. When we say, that was silly, why did I say that? Why did I do that? Or, oh man, I shouldn't have done that. Or, you know what, I should have said this. That voice that's saying that, that's you. That's your authentic self talking. The ego, in my view.

is a carapace, it's a membrane that we create around ourselves and it has two, from the time we're children we start creating it. As in very little children, innocence means an absence of ego. But as soon as the ego starts showing itself, the innocence starts diminishing and we have to dig deep to find it again, that very early innocence we have. So the ego is a thing we create from childhood, a membrane around ourselves and it has two jobs.

It is there to project the narrative of who you are, this is me, and so on. It's a narrative, it's not every single thing about you, it's not every wicked thought you've ever had, you don't share that with everybody. It's a narrative about who you are. It projects the story of you, and it protects the self from the slings and arrows of the world. So the ego is out there doing its job, projecting and protecting.

And in this world, we need this. We need some ego to protect ourselves because it can be a very bruising encounter with the world. But in the spiritual, they're not required. The ego's not required, and we need to leave that at the door. Then go into that spiritual space and leave our vanity, our pride, these other things at the door. Our fears and desires, not required. Go into that spiritual space empty of that, as innocent as you can be.

And then when you come out of that space, the ego jumps back in again because it's required and you have that membrane around you. So if you think of it this way, it's up to you to construct what kind of membrane the ego is. What is it going to project to other people? What is it going to protect you from? What is it not going to protect you from? How is it going to do that? It's a practical thing in this world but not required in the spiritual connection. Can I make one more comment about that? Sorry. Just to make a sort of...

Srini Rao

Um, yes, please, absolutely.

Gregory David Roberts

panic fear from a predator, maybe a predatory human being, or a wild animal, or a mad dog, and we have to run because that thing has gone crazy and it's running at us. When we do that, we are not thinking, am I running elegantly? Is my running style looking cool? Do I look cool doing this? We're in mad flight, knees in the air, legs going left and right, we do not care. We just wanna get out of there.

Similarly, so the ego is not required for that flight. We don't need ego for that. We might need it for parading in the supermarket, but we don't need it in this moment of panic fear. When we're running, we're not thinking, are we doing this elegantly? Similarly, in the spiritual encounter, the ego is not required. Just as it's not required in panic flight, it's not required in the spiritual.

Srini Rao

So one thing you say about worthiness is anger, hostility, resentment, jealousy, envy, vanity, pride, malice, and fear. None of these are required for connection and some are serious impediments to connection. And I read that and I thought to myself, every one of us feels those emotions at one time or another. Is it entirely, is it even possible to rid ourselves entirely of those things?

Gregory David Roberts

Yes, within the spiritual connection space, within the sacred space. I don't think that it's possible to rid ourselves of it all the time. There may be yogis, there may be yogis who achieve this and, you know, women and men who've given their lives to extreme penance and who've managed to overcome all of these things within themselves and they're in a benign state all the time. It may be, but I don't think it's something that...

Srini Rao

Alright.

Gregory David Roberts

is open to all of us because we're deeply bound up in this material world. We have obligations and duties and people we love and care for and so on and people we have responsibilities to and so on. So I don't think that's so much here but we can leave those things. See to me let's say vanity and pride are we need them without a measure of pride the world's going to step on you and without a measure of vanity you can look like a hobgoblin if you don't have a little bit of

Gregory David Roberts

pride, you know, in this world, we're probably less well off than we would be with a measure of both. However, I think of them as two dogs, I leave them at the door, lovely big fluffy dogs and I leave them at the door of my sacred space and say, you guys wait here. And then I go into my sacred space and every now and then one of them will creep in. I'll be blowing the conch shell and it'll be a really nice blow or something and I think my teacher would love that or...

or it'll just occur to me, now whoa, that was, because I lost my trance state and was actually thinking about what I'm doing. And I blew the conch and I think that's a good, and then I think, oh, that's my pride, man. And I'll say, allow pride, go back to the door, back you go, and pride will back up and I can continue. So I think it's a skill that we develop on the spiritual path of leaving those unnecessary elements, they're not evil, they're just not necessary in the spiritual space, leaving them at the door.

And in a way, an analog for this is musicians. Every successful musician who has a long career of working with other musicians is a musician who can leave their ego at the door of the studio. And everyone knows this in music. Those musicians who can't, and those producers and engineers and so on who can't do that, may be brilliant, but they don't keep in continuous harmonious work with lots and lots of people.

Those who do are people who leave their ego at the door. Well, it's the same kind of thing. Leave your ego at the door of the sacred space. It's not necessary. When you come out of there, it'll jump back in again.

Srini Rao

Well, let's talk about two other things, submission and renunciation. You say that spiritual submission is actually conscious admission of the inescapability of the logic. If there's a divine perfection, and if you know it, the only logical course of action is to offer sincere devotion in an attempt to connect with that divine perfection in any way possible, however tangentially. So what do we mean by submission?

Gregory David Roberts

people submission like surrender has a bad rep and surrender doesn't mean as said in the book surrender doesn't mean lying on the ground and being kicked by God it means surrendering the things that are not necessary to connect with the with the spiritual and similarly submission doesn't mean giving up your personal integrity your free will and your personal integrity are required for you to submit

It means submission in my personal experience of it. It means recognizing that the Divine is beyond anything that you can think, imagine, feel, experience, beyond this. That it is so vast, so huge, so immense and so on, that the Creator of all the suns in all the universes, in the multiverse, in this infinite creation machine.

and so on that feeds itself infinitely from universe to universe to universe. That the creator of this, the divine source is so far beyond any expression of a material object that we ourselves are minute. It's a recognition that we've been here for what, four million years? Humans? How much longer will we last? The planet was here for four...

million years before we appeared, it will still be here for another four thousand million years. Submission is this kind of recognition. When you submit to the planet, you recognize that the planet is way beyond your tiny, tiny significance on this planet. It's the recognition that you need the planet, but the planet does not require you. You are not required for this planet.

but you require the planet. If you know what I mean, this is submission. The recognition, if we do not do this, we are asserting mastery over the planet, over the process, and over the spiritual path that we should be taking as an innocent, not as someone who is manipulating this or using it. So submission is this kind of recognition of your minitude and of the magnitude of the things around you, whether it be the planet, the sun, or the divine.

Srini Rao

So when you talk about renunciation, you say it's no accident that every ascetic tradition I've studied involves some form of renunciation. I've discussed this with scholars and spiritual teachers and it seems to serve, that renunciation has two purposes. The first is demonstrate to yourself if to no one else that you're committed. And then you go on to talk about delayed gratification. So talk to me about renunciation in our day to day lives. Because like, I think about this and I'm like, oh, this is me resisting the temptation to scroll through social media as a form of renunciation.

Gregory David Roberts

Of course it is. We renounce all the time. And quite often those renunciations we're doing are spiritual in nature and we're doing it unknowingly, not recognizing or not even aware that what we're doing is both a material renunciation of something here, but also a spiritual act. The renunciation of violence is at the same time a

physical act in this world that someone has chosen, a decision they've made and it has consequences because it's a diminution, an elimination of violence from that person going forward. That's a physical commitment in this world with its own set of repercussions, but it's also a step on a spiritual path. And whether that person knows that or not, and they may have just said, you know what, I'm always getting into trouble, I'm not going to be violent anymore, and that's the end of it, and that's their only motivation, and so on, at the same time it is spiritual whether they know it or not.

So renunciation occurs all the time. We are renouncing things left, right and centre. We're moving from one country to another and setting up a new home. We're changing our house, our apartment, changing our job in a soft passive sense when we move from one job to another. We may still keep contact with some of the many friends we had in the previous job, but over time those will fade to a smaller and smaller number as we increase our connection to the people in the new position that we've taken.

in a soft passive sense we have renounced the world of the job that we had before. It's not an active renunciation as a spiritual person does it, but it is a renunciation. So this is happening all the time. When you get a new car you're renouncing the old one, if you know what I mean. So renunciation happens all the time. For the spiritual path it's a conscious step. It has two forms. One is that the teacher will come to you.

with the renunciation. The teacher will say at a certain point, are you ready for your Sankalp, for your vow? And you may say, I don't feel ready. The teacher will say, I'll ask you again at a certain period of time. If you say, I feel ready, then the teacher will say, again, are you ready? Because the vow, a Sankalp, is for your life. Are you ready? And you say, yes. Now that teacher can say anything the teacher thinks is right for you.

Gregory David Roberts

Teacher may say, you should go to Mount Kailash once every year, and go to this temple and put a flower at the feet of this idol. He may say, you should feed a stray animal once a day, every day for the rest of your life. Whatever it is, the Sun Kalp, this is a renunciation in a sense that is also, that is given to you a task, which is also in the form of renunciation. When my teacher said to me, are you ready for your Sun Kalp? And I said, yes, please give me my vow.

He said, this is your Sankalp, never drink alcohol again. I said, that's it? He said, that's it. Alcohol will make you stumble from your path. It is not required for the path and it's unhelpful for you. This is your Sankalp, are you ready to accept it? And I said, I accept it. So that was a renunciation of something that I might've had to drink from time to time, I didn't drink that much, but...

It was a renunciation of something that was given to me by a teacher and I accepted it and did that and I've now renounced alcohol Other renunciations when I gave up motorcycles that I love and I gave them up I didn't even realize at the time. I thought I have to give up something I really love and I loved motorcycles. So I gave them up and thinking this is a Clear renunciation. I've given something. I love I'm not just giving away something. I don't particularly like giving it up

What I realized later was that it was exactly the right thing to do for me at that time spiritually, and I didn't even realize it. That the movement away from the whole motorcycle world I'd been in was sort of necessary for what I'm doing now, as an artist and as a spiritual practitioner. So funny enough, the things you choose to renounce at the time, you may not even realize that thing you've chosen to give up, later you'll realize, wow, that was actually very significant. If I'd still been doing that...

I don't think I'd be where I am right now on this path.

Srini Rao

So let's talk about another thing. In the interest of time, I want to add two things that really struck me. The one was manifestation. And I think this really stood out to me because when that movie, The Secret came out, there was this sort of idea that I can just create a vision board, stare at it, and money will fall from the sky and I'll be moving into a mansion. But you actually say that I don't think we can conjure up things in our lives just by wanting them. I don't think anyone can manifest something from nothing.

specific pathways, each one an alternate future, each pathway in turn will reinforce the intention that manifested it. A largely negative intentional will manifest a largely negative pathway which will tend to reinforce the negative intention cycle. A positive intention will manifest a positive pathway which will tend to reinforce the positive intention cycle. So how do you set the intention then to get what it is that you want?

Gregory David Roberts

Very, very good question. Fundamental question in fact. How do we set and reset our intention? One of the various practices on the spiritual path and one of the great aspects of it is that it is all about self-discipline. Penance is about self-discipline and penance is an absolute requirement for further steps along the spiritual path and this is all about discipline.

And self-discipline is something I lacked all my life and it's something I only discovered by realizing it was fundamentally important for a spiritual journey. And it's also fundamentally important in this material world as well. I think the path itself, the preparation to become devoted, requires those practices of getting yourself ready to be worthy enough to walk into a spiritual space and say,

Please accept this from me. I offer you this. My energy, my love, whatever it is that I offer you. Now, in the process of getting yourself ready to do that, you're cleaning up your intention. It's necessary to get rid of things like maybe malice, maybe a resentment, and sort of angry feeling about somebody. You need to let that go. You can't take that with you into the spiritual. It's going to keep interrupting.

and it's going to keep conflicting with whatever it is that you discover in that spiritual space. So that's one aspect of it. Being prepared and being worthy to give devotion actually helps in the discipline of shaping your intention. Most mystics will tell you, from my experience, the ones I've met and my teacher will tell you that this is a process of attainment that one of the most significant attainments is managing to fill your intention for most of the day with positive thoughts and so forth.

as a creative, for me, it is the wellspring of cleansing in a way. Creativity is like a cleanse, a deep cleanse on your mind, because for the entire period that you're focused on making that song, writing that music, playing it, writing that book, creating that artwork, for the entire time your mind is empty of anything but...

Gregory David Roberts

the trancing inspiration of what you're doing, the creative trancing of what you're doing. Some stray thoughts may wander in, but the creative process will push them out again. So if I find myself drifting into a negative thought, a thought of resentment or this or that, or whatever it is, I find myself drifting into a negative thought.

I'd plunge back immediately into creativity. I think of the next project, what am I going to write on this next page, what am I going to do in that next song when I go back in the studio and so forth. Before I know it, I'm in that space and that negativity is gone. Another aspect that I would just point out, and there are so many, this would be the whole program on how do you keep your intention as pure as you can, is basically what we're saying. That's an entire program. But here's one really vital thing that I discovered.

Having grown up in a tough working-class area surrounded by a lot of rough, tough kids in gangs, I never joined them but I knew the kids, they were all my neighbors in the gangs, I grew up in a world where people literally take from each other all the time. If you don't eat fast enough, someone's going to take your plate and eat that food. So there's a constant sense of taking. I discovered as I've traveled the world and moved around that the life doesn't have to be like that.

You can surround yourself with the kind of people my teacher would call holy souls. You can surround yourself with giving people. People who are givers, they give more than they take. And if they take, they share it or they give it back. Givers, genuine givers. People who are motivated by kindness and empathy. People who are motivated by optimism and by a love of life and a love of being alive. Surround yourself with people like this. If you don't, no matter...

how deeply you go into your own personal spiritual practices, that circle, that membrane around you, if that membrane of your, if you like the boundary of your personal protection in life, if that is allowing in negative people, meaning people who are only taking selfishly, people who don't share, people who are deeply unspiritual, whose only thoughts are about, say, money and more money and more money.

Gregory David Roberts

and so forth. This is definitely going to disturb your capacity to shape and fill your intention, to make your intention as clean and bright as you can. And you know, clean as a pin is what we're looking for. So I have discovered that having a membrane like the membrane around the human cell, the membrane around a cell, every single cell, that membrane allows nutrient to flow in, the nutrient of people who are givers.

and who are sharing. That nutrient of their energy will help you and help you to help them. The membrane allows nutrient to flow in, it allows waste to go out through the membrane of the cell. The waste is the things you discover in your connections and friendships that are not required. You get down to a purity of trust and faith and so you get rid of all the other stuff. That's the waste that's not necessary as you go deeper into trust and faith in one another.

But the membrane is there also to protect the cell from toxins, so that elements on the outside, in the cellular body, that they cannot enter the cell because the membrane is there to protect the organelles within the cell. Similarly, the boundary or membrane of protection you put around yourself should allow the nutrient of positive people with positive intentions and loving people to come in and share that energy with you. It should allow...

for the expulsion of things that are not necessary to true trust and faith. Waste throw that away and also should protect that group from people who would just take and not share and break down the cooperation circle that you build up. So number one building the worthiness within yourself to be devoted in the first place is a very positive way to bring yourself into a sharper and stronger focus on your intention.

and the second is surround yourself with holy souls and every day of your interaction with them will help you to shape your intentions in the most positive way.

Srini Rao

So let's wrap this up by talking finally about affirmations because this is something that always has struck me about affirmations is that people are basically bullshitting themselves and telling themselves things that aren't true, thinking that is going to make those things be true at some point. And you say that in my few years of experience, affirmations are not vitally important to evolving progress on the path. They're not signposts leading the way. So as far as I can tell, in any case, devotion is its own instruction in refinement of practice

with his own science and affirmations are not important to anyone, but the seeker who perceives them and it's almost impossible to articulate to someone else's satisfaction. So if that's the case, why do you hear this sort of constant need to, you know, in self help books and all these other things about why affirmations are so important?

Gregory David Roberts (01:00:39.262)

I think this is an outgrowth from the personal God theory in most religions. The relationship of the individual within the religion is between a person and God. And it's a personal reaction, a personal connection with God. And the statement is, do you believe in a personal God? You may believe in an impersonal God, but do you believe in a personal God that interacts with you individually through the interlocution perhaps of a church?

or a teacher, but that entity, that God, can react with you personally. So religions maintain this and I'm not saying it isn't true. I just think it's probably very difficult because that God that you're talking about is so huge and so vast that it is seemingly to me incalculable that we can actually personally interact. So I think it's outgrowth from this that says the universe is going to react to you personally.

just as God will react to you personally. I'm not sure that happens. As I said in the spiritual path, I've seen many, many cases of people pleading to the divine, screaming, crying, and achieving a result in the sense that the very thing they wanted has happened and they were saved. So I'm not discounting this. It's just that to me,

I don't see any logic behind this personal interaction. So if there are affirmations, for me the problem is if you try, if you tend to think that affirmation is either one thing or the other. If you're a scientist and you say that's the, when you are blowing the shell and you get a shooting star between your fingers and the first blow and going the other way in the sky which is virtually impossible. With the last blow.

exactly at the right moment. You ask yourself is that an affirmation? A scientific person will say no that would have happened whether you were there or not and I agree it would have happened whether I was there or not. It did not happen. God didn't scratch the sky for me if you know what I mean. I agree with them however I think that they have failed to see that at the same time it is both an event that would have occurred whether I'm there or not and an event that did occur when I was there.

Gregory David Roberts 

And so for me there is an affirmation experience and a physical phenomenon at the same time. So if we focus, if we think that was done just for me by the universe, I think we're going down a bit of a rabbit hole. If we think it's just science and nothing else, we're down a bit of a scientific rabbit hole. If we accept that both things happened at the same time, an event that would have happened whether I was there or not, an event that did happen when I was there and was an affirmation for me.

But beyond that, is it something that is appropriate or valuable for anyone else? No. It's a deeply personal thing, I think.

Srini Rao 

Wow, well, this is a very, speaking of rabbit holes, a very deep one, and I feel like we could talk for three hours if we needed to. But this has been really fascinating and just eye-opening and insightful. So I wanna finish with my final question, which is how we finish all of our interviews at Unmistakable Creative. What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable?

I'm still not getting it. What do I think of this?

Gregory David Roberts 

Oh, understood, understood. Well, of course, it is uniqueness, but that doesn't really help because each one of us is unique. But not every one of us is immediately unique. For me, the essential quality is authenticity. That's the unmistakable quality. Here's an example.

I can take a page, someone can read me a page of text and I will say, even though I don't know the book and I haven't read it, and I will say, that's Salman Rushdie. Someone else will read a page and I'll say, that's Virginia Woolf. Um, unmistakable. Someone else will read a page and I'll go, that's Lawrence Dorrell. That's Chuck Palahniuk. You will recognize Stephen King. That's Stephen King. I know you'll read, someone will read you two pages and you'll go, I bet that's Stephen King. That unmistakable.

about those things that you know when you hear it, who it is and where and why. That is authenticity. It's reaching for each artist, whatever it is medium they use, to dig deep down into their authentic self, not a projected version of themselves, not a narrative they were given when they were a kid, not something a teacher said to them or a previous lover or someone else or a friend or an enemy and so on.

the deep authentic self that is inside you, to reach into that, to find it, to connect with it and express it and come from that is going to make you unmistakable in my view.

Srini Rao

Incredible. Well, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your story and your wisdom and your insights with our listeners. This has been really, really fascinating and funny and insightful. Where can people find out more about you, your work, the new book and everything else you're up to?

Gregory David Roberts 

all that's very nice of you thank you uh... it would have occurred to me to say that uh... well i'm on i g it's uh... you know it's Gregory David Roberts underscore shantram at i g you can find me on instagram i'm on uh... also i have a really lovely team of very creative once again unmistakable creatives who were working with me and helping me put this together while i do the music we have uh... my music is available on apple music and some people can listen to it free it's on itunes it's on

Spotify, I've been with Spotify from the very beginning and everywhere else that you listen to music you'll find it. So we have four new albums coming out in the next two months. We have four singles, an EP, new artworks, three new love stories that are coming out in ebook, simple love stories, just pure escapist entertainment and so forth. So we have a lot of work coming out and there's

People can find me I guess through Instagram and here and there and stuff we put on Facebook and so on. So I'm out there. But as you know, Jamaica is my home now and I live here. I'm in my studio. I don't go very far. I don't go from where I am, from my studio. I'm working and creating all the time. And so, you know, people, if they are, anyone who's out there and so on, Jamaica is a wonderful, wonderful place. The whole world is a beautiful world.

that Jamaica is a wonderful place to visit. Keep that in mind when you're doing your travels. You'll find the vibe and you'll feel the vibe, the one love vibe here.

Srini Rao 

Amazing. Well, thank you so much. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.