INTERVIEWS
On California Radio with hosts Trip Holt & John 'Wiz'Troy
CONVERSATIONS WITH AVANT-GARD SAGES
An Interview with Muz Murray (aka Ramana Baba) on Californian Radio by Trip Overholt, with guest John (the Wiz) Troy. (Edited transcription)
TRIP (Host): Our very special guest today, Muz Murray, is a world travelling mystic with an international reputation, having given guidance for many years in his Sharing the Quest workshops on Mantra Yoga, Mystical Awakening, Massage, and Meditation in UK and Europe. He follows the way of the universal mystic, the path of the heart, embracing the essence of all traditions but is attached to none. Although endowed with the saffron Robe and spiritual name of Ramana Baba in India, he sees himself neither as a swami nor a new age teacher, inclining rather to the notion of no age, sharing the teachings suitable for any age of the world through attunement to the eternal verities. Thus his way of unlearning is a simple sharing of the inner quest warmly appreciated by those who inquire about trustworthy guidance without bondage to any form of cultism.
You're a heck of a writer.
MUZ MURRAY: Thank you.
WIZARD (John Troy): Right on.
TRIP: Wow, what a life you've had. You've been compared to Indiana Jones, but I think that he's a shut-in compared to you, my God!
MUZ MURRAY: Cheers.
TRIP: I mean, what a life you've had. I mean, just unbelievable.
MUZ MURRAY: Yes, it's been very differently spaced, like growing up as a bohemian painter, and then going on as an actor, and then hitchhiking all the way down Africa, and then three years round India as a spiritual seeker, a lot of different changes have happened.
TRIP: In the early '20s you had that seven years of vagabondage around the world, I mean, you were just a fearless young man, you just threw yourself into life, didn't you?
MUZ MURRAY: Yes, well I wanted to test myself to understand how much I could face without money, without home, being thousands of miles away from anywhere, to see how I could survive and what my capacities were.
TRIP: And you barely survived, it sounds like, I mean, there were knifings you managed to get through, and muggings, and you had your money stolen and…
MUZ MURRAY: Poison darts and shootings, and ambushes by Somali tribesmen, and stuff like that; it was very Rider Haggard stuff all the way down Africa.
Many times I was starving down Africa. I remember at one time I had one dried apricot, which I cut into four pieces and sucked one piece per day trying to convince myself that I was being sustained by that. And eventually I stopped by a stall that had bananas, and I said "How much are they?", and they said something like three pence or three cents each, so I said, "All right, give me two". And it turned out to be two whole branches of bananas, which I carried on my back for several days. [Laughing]
TRIP: Our program is an affirmation of Oneness, and in the past I've felt compelled to drill down into the teachings of the people that have come on our program. Your life has been so extraordinary I want to talk about it a little bit.
MUZ MURRAY: Okay, no problem.
TRIP: You were born in 1940, and you can remember sitting there as a three or four year old watching the bombs come down on Britain.
MUZ MURRAY: Actually, I was only two at time, but I remember it very well.
Yes, Coventry, which was just over the fields from my house, was the target of the Nazis because there was a lot of aircraft factories and the like there. I used to sit terrified watching the flames over the fields, and the searchlights crisscrossing the sky, and all that kind of thing, and a bomb fell in our garden and blew all the windows out over my cot.
TRIP: What a way to grow up.
MUZ MURRAY: It didn't give me a very good idea that this was my kind of world, which I suppose laid the foundations for my wanting to go round and help establish peace in people's minds all over the planet.
TRIP: Muz, you write so well, and the way you write is the kind of writing that I love which is real life, it's dramatic. It just really appeals to me. I'm going to read something that you wrote about your childhood. It's good, it's about a page, and I'm going to read it because it strikes that tone that I feel so many young people like me had, and the Wizard too.
You wrote, "I dragged myself through the mean streets of what others considered the "real world" as if through purgatorial treacle (molasses).
School was an asylum for psychological misfits called teachers who attempted to rule by screaming, hurling books, endless canings, or hissing threats, which created a white-out in my mind, rendering me incapable of learning school subjects for many years. Was this how life was meant to be lived, I wondered, but what else was there?
“Being sent to Sunday school and subjected to this sugar-coated evangelism of Christian good-bodies did nothing to fill the gap, but only increased my desolation of soul. For even then at the age of seven or eight, I perceived with a nauseous certainty that they neither understood nor truly believed what they were telling us kids, but needed us to believe them to make them feel secure. The disgust that this inspired in me created a deep-seated aversion to evangelism and all things even faintly smelling of religion for all of my teenage years.
“I grew up considering myself a professional atheist, I was anti-God, and anti-religion and proud of it, therefore my about-face was all the more miraculous to me when it occurred. It was years before I realized that atheism was as much a conditioned religion of ignorance as any mindless religious fundamentalism. What I'd always been seeking unknowingly was spirituality as opposed to religiosity, but I had always derived some spiritual solace from nature. Perhaps I had the makings of a mystic even as a teenager as I used to regularly get up at dawn and cycle out of the city to the woods and sit there for an hour or so listening to the sounds of the natural world awakening. Or I would go to my favourite spinney at twilight watching a fox hole, and sit there wrapped in a blanket imbibing the quiet spirit of the woods long into the dark. Not normal I was told". [Laughter]
MUZ MURRAY: Never have been normal.
TRIP: My gosh, though, I can't help but just marvel at your life. After college you had this stint of selling shoes in a shoe shop, and then you worked in an advertising agency, and then you set off to see the world on this seven-year hitchhiking around Europe, and you slept under the bridges of Paris with tramps, and you starved in Spain.
MUZ MURRAY: Yes, not very romantic I can assure you.
TRIP: You then landed a job in Sevilla Film Studios painting the set for King of Kings, which is like a classic film, and El Cid¸ another one, and you worked as a stunt man in the films themselves, and there's a picture of you as an extra in King of Kings. And then you, with some cash, you went to live on the Costa Brava, wherever that is, and you became a member of a group of surrealist painters and you breakfasted with Marcel Duchamp, the celebrated Dadaist, and you cultivated a relationship with Salvador Dali, who allowed you to watch him paint in his studio for six months while you were there. I could go on, and on, and on, your whole life is like that, it's amazing.
MUZ MURRAY: Yes, I'm in the process of writing a very fat book about that. I've had about three lives in one already.
TRIP: Hey, what's it going to cost me to option your life [Laughs]? I tell you, I should just do a couple of books, one on the Wizard, and one on you and then I can retire on the royalties.
So moving on…
The science of sound, audible and inaudible frequencies, you say it works on deep levels of consciousness purifying the subconscious and even affecting the mind of the cells. You're a master at Mantra; tell us about some of the benefits of Mantra, what you're currently doing with Mantra? It's not something I've ever done, but sounds like it's very beneficial.
MUZ MURRAY: Yes, this is a major practice with which I help people to get into the no-mind state as I travel around the planet, I do workshops everywhere. And this is a good first step into entering into the state of one's own being. It's the quickest form of meditation whereas most forms of meditation is one part of the brain talking to the other part of the brain saying, “did I feed the cat, have I got enough for breakfast, perhaps I left the gas on, shut up I'm trying to meditate,” and all that kind of thing going on. But with the Mantra, the second you stop, suddenly there is no more brain-wave happening, you've moved from beta into alpha and the consciousness is very tranquil.
WIZARD: I found that to be true for me.
TRIP: Wizard? So what's an example of a Mantra that you would do? I didn't know you did the Mantra.
WIZARD: Yes. I do Aum Namah Shivaya.
MUZ MURRAY: Yes, there's Aum Namah Shivaya, Gayatri Mantra, (Muz chanting Maha Mrytyunjaya Mantra), that's one of the most powerful and magical Mantras available.
TRIP: I recall hearing that chant at Ramanashram. You've been all over the world, you've been to so many ashrams that you've written a book about travelling through India.
MUZ MURRAY: Yes, I visited 360 ashrams on my three years of the wandering monk around India.
TRIP: That's incredible. And in additional to personally visiting all those ashrams, you also checked in with other people who were visiting ashrams and you gathered up all of this data on all of these different ashrams.
MUZ MURRAY: Yes, because as I was travelling around so many people kept asking me where can I go for this teaching, or that teaching? And so I started to compile information on every ashram about the kind of things they taught there and eventually I realized that a book was necessary. So I created that, it was kind of bible of India goers for about ten years.
TRIP: And the title was?
MUZ MURRAY: Seeking the Master: A Guide to the Ashrams of India and Nepal.
[It’s now long out of print, but available from my website as a download.]
TRIP: And every other year, you will take a group of young people or is it anybody?
MUZ MURRAY: No, everybody; I think the youngest I took was 16 and up to 92.
TRIP: You know, you're right about India, here's another thing you write that speaks to me.
You say, "India is a land of amazing extremes, even my travels in the wilds of Africa did not prepare me for the outrageousness of India. Being there is a vital experience of life in the raw; you can see birth, life, and death actually going on in the streets. There's none of our pre-packaged over-protective, and hidden away aspects of life there. Psychically I felt it was like stepping into a vast pool of consciousness of a totally different mental wavelength, it was an atmosphere like it must have been at the beginning of the world".
WIZARD: I concur.
TRIP: Yes, I stepped off an airplane, like a wasp from Connecticut, stepped off an airplane and we went to Tiru, and we did that circumambulation of Arunachala. Have you done that, you've done that I'm sure?
MUZ MURRAY: Yes, yes.
TRIP: That blew my mind, oh my gosh; I mean, you'd look down at the asphalt and there'd be this person sort of growing up out of it, who hadn't received treatment here for some kind of disease that we conquered here like 60 years ago, and they're like growing up out of the asphalt. And over there somebody's doing a spiritual blessing of their new car, and here's a monkey running across the street, and then a bunch of street urchin kids that don't have any parents who are playing and running off, and Sadhus in orange robes, and senses going around, and cows walking. It was like the Wizard of Oz.
MUZ MURRAY: Yes, you should be there at Deepam when there's something like 15,000 people marching around the mountain in a steady stream, and it's impossible to cross the road, the amount of people are so… it's like a flowing river of humanity, it's impossible. If you step into it, you're swept up and you go round the mountain with everyone.
TRIP: I wanted to ask you, I jump around here just from thing to thing; you actually met with Krishnamurti, the great sage.
MUZ MURRAY: Yes, I knew him quite well because one of my original masters was Dr. Ramamurti Mishra, who had an ashram in the Catskill Mountains and also in California, and he was a friend of Krishnamurti. So I was able to sit having tea with Krishnamurti once or twice, and I also worked in his school teaching meditation which caused a furore there, because Krishnamurti was against meditation at the time, but when I explained how I operated he was quite happy about it.
TRIP: Yes, you said that he was against meditation because he thought that spiritual practice might often be used like sticking a plaster over a festering wound.
MUZ MURRAY: Exactly.
TRIP: And yet it's interesting, I find you an interesting cat, because on the one hand you've tried everything, you've mastered many of these spiritual practices and yet you're against dogmatic adherence to anything.
WIZ: That was kind of like Ramakrishna's MO, he went through all of the different traditions and reached a Self-discovery through each and every one of them, and pulling them all together.
MUZ MURRAY: Yes, exactly. That was my interest, to participate in every different type of spiritual culture that I could do. I lived with the Dervishes in Konya, in Turkey, and learned to chant the Dervish chants with them, and I taught them Sanskrit Mantras as well. So I've been with Buddhists, I've been with Chinese, I've been with Tibetans, Sikhs, every kind of spiritual group that I could, and squeezed the juice to synthesize the whole of spiritual life.
TRIP: So you've had so many esoteric, wild esoteric experiences, would you share what it is like to be in the centre of a secret Whirling Dervish ceremony. You were actually overcome with…
MUZ MURRAY: Yes, I had a very deep spiritual experience when they pulled me into the circle of dancers, and there was one group in one corner chanting, "Allah, Allah, Allah", another group chanting, "A-Allah, A-Allah, A-Allah", and another group chanting “Alaa-ha, Alaa-ha!”, and other group chanting “Allah-hu! Allah-hu!”, and then all chanting— [Muz is here chanting the Azan]. And they had syncopated rhythm on top of that with music, and in that it was like being in the beating heart of the universe, and I felt I was among the stars and planets with the turning of the Dervishes. It was quite incredible.
TRIP: I love listening to you chant, we'll have to do some more of that chanting.
MUZ MURRAY: I haven't chanted the Azan for a long time now. Normally, I have to prepare my throat for that one.
TRIP: You must have an elephantine memory; you're able to remember this stuff perfectly. The Wizard and I talk about how impossible it is to give worded description to THAT, to the “I am-ness”, but I'll say in your description of your meltdown, you do a pretty good job, and I wanted to read that, if you don't mind.
MUZ MURRAY: Okay, thank you.
TRIP: "It was January 1964: I was heart and head weary", "friendless and fundless and at a crossroads in my life. Then it happened. On my third evening in Cyprus, near the port of Limassol, I was sitting gazing vacantly at the sea, when the unbelievable turning point of my life occurred. The sun had gone down. My mind was empty. Slowly a strange feeling crept upon me, as if some ghostly hand was caressing the back of my neck and tingling its way over the top of my head. My skin goose-pimpled and the hairs stood up all over my arms. Then my body seemed to dissolve. Suddenly my consciousness was no longer limited to the body. It rapidly "expanded" beyond its confines, across the ocean and the land and out into space in every direction. Instantaneously I was aware of being everywhere in the universe at the same time, not only viewing countless things occurring, as if seen through the myriad lenses of a fly's eye, but I actually felt myself simultaneously being all those experiences at one and the same time."
WIZARD: Seamless sentience.
TRIP: That's a heck of a good job of explaining a profound spiritual experience I must say. It really takes you there.
MUZ MURRAY: Yes, yes. And I wanted to get back into that space for about 15 years but eventually I realized you can never go back into something that's happened before. [Laughter] And once I stopped trying to go back then I entered into a different form of samadhi, and that again was an experience of becoming one with all the environment, I was like a diver walking about in an ocean of my Self.
That was through the practice of what I call whipping out the carpet from underneath every thought. Every thought that came up I pulled out the carpet from under it, saying “that's not my business, keep quiet, shut up, stop rabbiting away in my head.” And after three months I woke up with no movement of mind at all.
WIZARD: Yes, I was a recovering seeker after my initial awakening, and losing it, trying to get back to it. And it was a couple of decades trying to get that experience back not realizing that the experience was just the phenomena around the awakening, and missing what is always already here Now.
MUZ MURRAY: Yes, we don't realize that we are already back, as we've never left it. It's just covered up with all kinds of other crap.
WIZ: It took a long time for the clouds to clear.
TRIP: Yes, I was thinking, maybe you could confirm my suspicions about the way things really do go down because we're interviewed a lot of folks on this program, and almost all of them like you, like the Wizard, and like myself, came into their initial taste of this beautiful reality that's actually unnoticed without any anticipation, it just kind of happened, or it was kind like a two by four across the head.
MUZ MURRAY: Completely out of the blue.
WIZARD: Out of the blue; absolutely.
TRIP: It was completely out of the blue. And so you are in the stateless state that Ramana Maharshi was in, there's no difference, but then usually decades will pass before you become established in that. And you say that, “at long last in 1980 through constant meditative practices I finally entered in the state of samadhi, the God conscious condition, which I had been striving to reach again since my 20s”. And so it seems to me that the true utility of teaching and the meditative practices is after the two by four has hit you across the head you become established. But it seems to me so many people engage in those practices and in the teaching in order to get the initial experience. That isn't going to happen, right?
WIZARD: It doesn't work that way.
MUZ MURRAY: No, no, because the practices don't get you where you already are. [Laughter].
TRIP: Do you ever have the temptation to ask somebody that comes to you if they have already had a taste of who they are or not? It seems to me kind of a critical question. If they haven't had a taste are you going to be able to help them along with that?
MUZ MURRAY: Yes. I try to guide them through; first through Mantra to have a taste of the mindless condition, and then encourage them to expand on that space in between two thoughts, because this is what I call “fleeting Samadhi”, it's not something that is so far from everybody's capacity. Once you recognize what it is, then you can begin to immerse yourself in it and don't allow the interruptions made by all this mental movement.
TRIP: These students that you have, you call them your spiritual heroes, I really liked that, what did you mean by that?
MUZ MURRAY: That most people need to join religion, a club, a sect, anything to give them the feeling that they are belonging to something or other, but those through mystical consciousness, they go it alone, they don't belong to anything. These are the spiritual heroes that are open to every kind of possible spiritual teaching or experience, without needing to be a Buddhist or a Zennist, or a Christian, or a Muslim or whatever; these are the spiritual heroes that go it alone.
WIZARD: So you're saying it's not a group sport.
MUZ MURRAY: No way. Even those Christian monks who transcended the religious canon were ostracized and put down because they had gone beyond what was acceptable. And these are the people who the church denounces, and you can be sure if the church denounces someone, they are very interesting people to look into.
TRIP: And then on the other side of your teaching equation there is you, and you say, "I practice tuning in to what the “Guruverse”—this universal teaching environment known as "God" wants me to do. I look for the signs and listen with the heart, ‘let go and let God’ as they say, and then roll along with the unfolding of the plan. When we can attune to that, everything flows, there's nothing else to do but learn to surrender to the process".
WIZARD: Amen.
TRIP: Damn, that's good. [Laughs] You know, you've seen it all, you've done it all, you have a practice that you go around the world, and you’ve really tuned in to what's going on. And I too have an aspiration and it's to provide people with a platform to affirm others in this beautiful Truth of who we are.
MUZ MURRAY: That's great; that was my intention in the first place when I created Gandalf's Garden in London; in that period every spiritual and esoteric group was isolated and tucked away in their own corners, and nobody knew about their existence. So I created a platform in Gandalf's Garden for druids, for Buddhists, for Christians, for flying-saucer people, for colour therapists, for every different type of spiritual group. I invited gurus from all over the world to come and teach there and that became the first real platform giving a whole picture of spirituality for young people in London.
WIZ: Beautiful model. I think Oprah Winfrey should have a show like that.
TRIP: Yes, I'm hoping that we can just keep on keeping on the way we are but perhaps have a more far reaching platform to do it from, and give people the microphone to share this beautiful truth. That Gandalf's Garden sounded like one creative atmosphere that you were involved with.
MUZ MURRAY: Yes, it was also a magazine which went all over the world without any advertising, and stimulated a lot of other centres of a similar nature in various countries, Holland, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, and the like. And it's still in many people's hearts so that's why I created a CD-Rom with all the issues of the magazine in it, and all the history of the hippy period in London. I discovered when I got back from India that I was considered as a flower-power hero, and so many people have Gandalf's Garden in their hearts, and that's why they're very happy to have the CD of everything that happened in that period.
TRIP: By the way we're on the radio, so people don't know what you look like, but you are one handsome devil. [Laughs].
MUZ MURRAY: Oh, go on, I bet you say that to all the gurus. [Laughs]
TRIP: No, you look like a movie star, you could play the king in some top-rated movie, and you really are.
MUZ MURRAY: I wanted to play Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, I didn't even know that they were making the film because I was in India or somewhere, so I lost my chance there.
TRIP: Well you're a gorgeous guy and you look really great.
MUZ MURRAY: Well, the Mantra must be doing something.
TRIP: So you're a big believer in breath, now we have a couple of friends, Pam and Donald T, and they say that breath is the basis of health, do you share that viewpoint?
MUZ MURRAY: Yes, I will go along with that, together with the sound vibration, because the sound vibration combined with the breath is Mantra. Many people think that Kirtan and singing Bhajans is Mantra, but that's a totally different thing, that's devotional ‘singing’, it is not Mantra. Mantra has to be intoned, and using the breath in between each line of Mantra, and that energizes the cells, and pumps them up to their optimum frequency. Because when we are surrounded by negative sound or negative thinking, then the cellular structure diminishes like a football going down that's been punctured, and one needs to pump those cells up again with the specific Mantra frequencies every day to keep the body in optimum health.
TRIP: I tell you, you're inspiring me, I never could have cared less about Mantra but you have got it together. And you've produced several cassettes and CDs on the study of Mantra, Yoga Nidra, Agni Hotra, other esoteric subjects, and they're available from your website?
MUZ MURRAY: Yes, indeed. Here’s the link: www.muzmurray.com
WIZARD: In Nirvikalpa Samadhi, my initial turning inside out, because I didn't know any of these words, but as the locality of my sentience imploded and I was the universe, then there's recognition of having no form, and then the sound like a tremendous bell the size of a house ringing. And that was my last identification with anything before I went into total absorption where there was no other, it was just seamless sentience. My mind can't remember but it plucked that thorn of death away, but that last vestige of existence for me was the vibration.
MUZ MURRAY: The mind won't remember, but the cells remember, that is why it took about 10 years for the cellular memory—after my Cosmic Conscious experience—to filter through into my conscious mind.
TRIP: Now you're currently teaching the Mysteries of Mantra, but you're also teaching something you call the way of sun consciousness. What is that?
MUZ MURRAY: It is the opposite of unconsciousness. I rediscovered the practice of Surya Yoga, which is thousands of years old, but without knowing that I had done so, by visualizing a sun in the centre of my being. With that image I felt people would be able to fix their consciousness on Anahata chakra, the heart centre, and easily with that focus. The idea was to visualize the sun in the centre of the being. And on the in-breath the sun expands, and on the out-breath, the sun sends out thousands of little luminous particles called lightrons out in every direction through the body, and then eventually out through the pores of the skin, out into the world, out into the universe.
This is exactly what is going on all the time with electrons, and we are sending out electrons right across the universe, saturated with our particular spiritual frequency, or non-spiritual frequency. So we are saturating everywhere with the quality of our beings, and this is a very good way of focusing on your real centre of consciousness. Consciousness arises from Anahata Chakra.
TRIP: From what?
MUZ MURRAY: Anahata Chakra, the chakra of the heart centre.
This spiritual centre is the centre of consciousness; I should say consciousness is coming through the spiritual heart centre which is just off centre of the heart, more on the right side, and this is where consciousness arises first thing in the morning and shoots up and activates the brain. It is not the brain which is thinking, the brain is only organizing thought processes, like a jukebox choosing records. But the consciousness is actually happening in the spiritual heart centre, and that is where one needs to fixate ones consciousness instead of being in one’s head all the time.
WIZ: Yes.
MUZ MURRAY: And that was the easiest way I found to get people to be in that place. Because when you're falling asleep in a chair, what happens is your head nods and goes down, because the life force or consciousness has descended back into the heart centre. It shoots up again upon awakening. But if you can try and grab it in that place at the moment of waking up, and keep it there, you find a great difference in the balance of your life, if you get up from that inner sun space, and walk from that space, talk from that space, and relate to other people from that space, rather than from the head, it makes a tremendous difference in your equilibrium, spiritually.
WIZ: I've noticed that Mantra can go on quietly in the Heart and…
MUZ MURRAY: It does, it resonates in the cells, and it resonates in the Heart centre.
WIZ: And you can listen at the same time, whereas if you're thinking in the head it's hard to hear, it's hard to listen because you're formulating thoughts. But when the Mantra is in the heart it doesn't interfere with the facility of listening.
MUZ MURRAY: Exactly. This is why Mantra should be concentrated in the Heart centre not just in the voice, not in the technique, not in the head, but in the Heart centre. This helps to keep you out of the head.
WIZ: So I was aware at one time (I was at a pretty high state) of this little thin almost like lightening, skinny lightening from my heart up to my head, and it looked like the tip of a word balloon, like the word balloon in a cartoon. And that thing went up into my head and was a whole realm of consciousness, and then it began in my heart reaching a place where it disappeared. But it went down to this tiny little piece of lightening then and there.
MUZ MURRAY: Yes, this will be very like kundalini energy moving very fast up the nadi which goes up to Sahasrara, and then it must descend again by the secret Amrita nadi down to the heart centre. This is the problem with many great gurus; they have become illumined intellectually because the lightning went up to Sahasara and illumined the consciousness, their intellect—that intellectual faculty, but it did not descend again to the heart centre to consolidate in spiritual enlightenment.
This was the reality of Ramana Maharshi, which is why he is revered by all the great sages in India as being the most God conscious, spiritually conscious rishi that has ever been for many, many hundreds of years. Every sage reveres Ramana Maharshi and you'll see his portrait in many, many different ashrams because his energy dropped down through Amrita nadi back to the heart centre and awakened true spirituality.
TRIP: So many folks, myself and some of my dear friends, in fact my New Year's Resolution last year was to come from that place of heart rather than head that you spoke of, waking up to.
MUZ MURRAY: Absolutely. Wonderful!
TRIP: Is there something that you can suggest as a way to enhance that, something I could go to on your website or someone would do if they were interested in cultivating that?
MUZ MURRAY: Well, my suggestion was that Sun-conscious practice. You can find it on a CD called “Surya Yoga”. Also I have a Yoga Nidra practice which helps you to get into that space, also on CD.
As Ramana Maharshi says, “whatever is going to happen is going to happen; whatever is not going to happen is not going to happen, however much you try to make it happen. So the best thing is to keep quiet and just accept.”
WIZARD: Right on.
TRIP: Muz, I just want to say that you are a delightful man. It's been a great pleasure speaking with you, and learning of your life.
MUZ MURRAY: Very kind of you to invite me.
TRIP: What a life!
TRIP: We've got one minute; quick question. The only place I've been in India was Tiru, and we had an epic trip there, it was synchronistic and a totally affirmation, I felt like I hit the zenith of potential, I was out of my mind with happiness. Did I hit the homerun in Tiru, or is there some other place that rivals it?
MUZ MURRAY: Well it all depends on your needs, whether you're a devotional type or whatever, there are many very intense spiritual places in India, but really Arunachala and Tiru is the spiritual naval of the planet as the Maharshi said, and so I don't really like to go anywhere else now apart from there.
WIZARD: Yes, I've been there six times.
MUZ MURRAY: If the world is coming to an end in this year as most people foolishly think, well what better place to end than in Arunachala? [Laughs]
TRIP: We don't think it's going to end in a big snap over here.
MUZ MURRAY: No, not at all, there might be a few more storms and land breaking up here and there, but this planet is the lunatic asylum of the universe and there would be nowhere for all these lunatics to come if this planet was destroyed.
TRIP: Well on that we've run out of time, you've been a magnificent guest.
WIZARD: Thank you, Muz.
TRIP: Thank you, Muz; we hope to meet you some day in the flesh. Be well.
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