Welcome to Destiny. Now here's your host, Cliff Dunning. Hey, Hi,
how are you come on in and have a seat. I am back
from a twenty one hour flight from Egypt from Cairo. What an excellent group
of people we had on this tour, the fifth annual Grand Egyptian Tour.
Our host was the one and only Mohammed Imbraheem and his wife Noha, and
the team Sammy and the others who were with us for a couple of weeks
were just fantastic. I gotta say this. The weather was just exceptional.
A lot of times we go to Egypt and it's in the hundreds and it
can make a really daunting tour. You want to get out of the sun
and into the shade. But these tours are fabulous and if you get a
chance to join us on a tour, consider it. Because I've been very
lucky over the last i want to say, eight years in having hosts and
guides that are exceptional, provide an exceptional experience and also provide wonderful accommodations.
And that's everything from the hotels, the food, the transportation. It's perfect.
I can't think of a tour that we've had that was bad, and
that's rare, especially when you're in Mexico or you're in the Middle East.
Things are not great in the Middle East. I mean, Egypt is a
developing country. Sixty percent of the population is considered below poverty or at a
poverty level, and so it's tough to see that and it's tough to experience
that on a social level. But if you're into the ancient, ancient historical
buildings, temples, statuary artifacts, Egypt is a fabulous place. So had
a great time. You know, over the years that we've launched and have
been doing Destiny, I always say that we try to offer tools for transformation,
everything from meditation to yoga to everything in between, energy work, and
I've been fortunate to have worked with a number of celebrities who have written books
on their spiritual journeys, people like Shirley McClain, Will Smith, Kevin Coosner.
Has done a number of conferences over the years and on and on and
on, and when these people speak, people the public listens. And my
guest today is a punk rocker. His name is Ray Cappo and he is
the leader of the band Youth of Today. He also was with shelter,
and he's written a book called From Punk to Monk, a Memoir. And
you know, I was going, well, should we have something like him
on the program? But when you listen to his transformation, what he went
through and where he is today, it's really kind of inspirational in a way,
and I've decided to have him on the program. In fact, my
producer, Hello Gail Tour who's in Hollywood, said hey, Cliff, you
got to have this guy on the program. He speaks well, he has
a lot to say, and his story is fun and it is kind of
revealing. And I have to admit that I wasn't sure about it, and
because I've had other, like I said, celebrity types who have written perhaps
great books, have presented good information, but the interviews are not always the
best. So this is fun. This is a great deal of fun.
So today's program is From Punk to Monk, a Memoir. My guest is
Ray Capo, by the way, it's Ray Ragna, that's his spiritual name,
Ray Ragoneth Capo. And we're gonna hear from him and what he has
experienced and his spiritual transformation. So I hope you will enjoy this. We've
got a good one for you. Today, we are speaking to a musician
who has written a book called From Punk to Monk. It's a memoir and
his name is Ray Cappo. His spiritual name is Ragunath. Reaganath. Okay,
Reaganath okay, thank you, and uh this book I just finished it
and it is a really a look at a young person who is very creative,
who's seeking more than just what is offered in the States, and eventually
becomes a spiritual, deeply spiritual person and converts to I guess you could say
Hinduism and becomes a monk. So Ray, welcome to destiny and I'm really
looking forward to speaking with you on this on this word. Thanks. It
was great talking pre show banter was great as well. I feel like we're
cut from the same cloth. Yeah, it's interesting. One of the things
that I wanted to start with is you really open in high school when you're
kind of highly creative, and you know, I remember when I was in
high school, I was very artistic. Actually got I was not a good
student at all. I was academically terrible, but I was an artist and
I actually got used that talent to get into college with my portfolio. What
was music for you? Was it a departure from the troubles of family life
or was it just a way to express yourself? A great question. A
music for me was sort of a It was sort of a catalyst to sort
of find myself. Everything in the early eighties, if you're anywhere near my
age is it was arena rock, corporate rock, corporate music. And I
just didn't want to be part of like a rubber stamp like everybody else.
I wanted to find my own groove in this world. And so I started
at a young age because I had older brothers and sisters that lived in New
York City. I started going to New York City and watching bands play and
punk punk or hardcore music back in the early eighties of New York was very
raw. The people wrote their own Sometimes they were lacking in talents, but
they were they made up for in heart in creativity. Most of the people
in my high school who were playing music were really just playing cover music.
They were playing other people's music. Even if you go to the New York
City Philharmonic, we're hearing Mozart or Hayden or Chopin. These are things.
It's cover music. It's not necessarily creative. You're just writing playing someone else's
music. And in high school you were playing whatever Jay Giles band or Rush
or Led Zeppelin cover songs. And so when I first started seeing young kids
in New York City doing this, writing their own music, getting on stage
heart over technique, I was like, Wow, I want to do that.
This is cool. These people are their own people. They're unique,
they're not cut from the same old mold. They're finding they're finding themselves.
It's a it's a creative a creative community. And so then I just started
doing music. I went from being playing violin and orchestra to just start immediately
start learning how to play drums and getting a few other of my freak friends.
We all grew up in Connecticut, so a few of my other freak
friends and just started writing music. And you know, we don't even know
how to play music really, but we were just writing music and putting out
records and are making our own records and recordings, and that's sort of how
it started. That's how you know Moby who wrote the introduction to the book.
Yeah, I want to say Moby's I'm a huge fan of Moby is
I'm an ambient freak. In fact, my ambience all over the place.
But that's very cool that your friends with him. Well we you know,
we were friends from like sixteen, yeah, because he was also like that.
But in another city in Connecticut, and what would happen is, you
know, all the freaks of the high school would like we'd migrate together.
And there were some like cool underground clubs in the eighties, and one was
in Stanford, Connecticut, and it was a cross between an art gallery and
you know, street art was real big in the eighties. It's you know,
I remember the refrigerator downstairs was all painted by Keith Herring and I was
thinking, whoa that must that refrigerator must be worth the fortune right now,
Yeah, serious money. But there was an art gallery upstairs and bands played
downstairs, and all the kids from Connecticut, he had Danbury, New Haven,
Stanford, Norwalk, weird towns, rich towns, poor towns. They'd
all come together and they'd migrate to this place on the weekends and that was
our hangout. And it was completely different than everything everybody else was doing in
high school. But you know, there's always a few people that don't just
fit into their high school, but don't just want to give up on life.
They just want to try to find their own pace. So between that
and hanging out in New York City anyway, that's how I met Moby because
he also in a neighboring city. Was the same way. He was an
artist and very good guitar player. People don't know that about him, but
he's a very good guitar player as well. White Punk Ray because punk.
I'm not a musicologist. I don't understand it, but when I think of
punk, I think of like anger and violence, but there's a subtlety too
punk that maybe you can describe that is what you you expressed in your music.
You know, I don't know. I can't speak for anybody else,
but for myself, that music had sort of a teen rebellious aggression, monal
burst, and it just served me at the time. It was powerful,
and you know, this is sort of the origins of the mashpit and upstage
dive, which before nineteen eighty two was unheard of. Yeah, and it
was sort of aggressed. It was almost like a football game. You know,
you get together and you can lose yourself in the music physically, emotionally,
mentally, but there was something also the way I started moving towards in
which what my band Youth of Today got into was instead of that anger,
frustration, rage being forced like outward blaming the world, we turned it more
on an inner, our inner struggles, our inner demons, climbing our own
personal everest to try to work on ourselves. Whereas punk music in general was
a blaming thing, was a political thing, it was a finger pointing thing,
and I think the straight edge movement was more positive. It broke away
from that, it became self reflective and that created a very very big scene
internationally, and that was what I was a part of, and champion champion
change. Was there one or two songs that really marked Youth of Today or
some of your early bands that you can say, yeah, this is who
we are. This song was what we are remembered for, and we were
put on the map for this. Sure again just putting this out there,
Youth of Today was not the Rolling Stones, but yeah, but I mean
it was well enough that you had a good following. So we had an
internet and we still have, strangely enough in international following. But we we
tended to write like anthems, so at the time when there was sort of
division not only within the punk scene but within the within all different types of
people. Because as as human beings, we try to find our tribes and
we sort of rally behind our tribes. It could be a national tribe,
or a political tribe, or a I'm a punk and you're a metal head
tribe, or I'm a skinhead and you're a you know, whatever it is.
Everybody had something they're trying to find themselves. So I'd say the song
that youtha Today wrote that we could all rally behind was break down the walls
and see see people beyond their economic status, beyond their race, beyond their
religion, and try to find something essential in everybody that we can uh and
we can approach people with a type of dignity, dignity and respect. And
I think that that song sort of set us on a different pace than a
lot of the punk bands out there, even our tribe of being straight edge.
We didn't drink, we didn't smoke, and it it we don't want
to let things that we're doing for our self betterment just become another form of
ego aggrandizement. What can happen with diet, with with politics, all these
things. We can get into these things for good causes, then it just
becomes part of our ego oftentimes. Yeah, no, I totally hear.
It's funny because you're we're gonna talk about your soul age. You're very much
an older soul who is cutting to the cutting to the chase, rather than
coming up and taking drugs and getting high and just becoming a rebellious kind of
person. Somehow I was saved from all that in the midst of I was
in the midst of it too. I was. It was not like it
wasn't around me. It was everywhere on the Lower East Side of New York
City nineteen eighty two, eighty three, eighty four. But I was somehow
in a bubble and protected. Well, it's funny because you're one of seven,
You're you're from a big family. Yeah, and a lot of times
when you have that many kids, there's a need to to get out there
and express yourself. And it's not always harmon harmonious. It can be you
know, violent and you know you're jail and you're high and you die young.
I had a lot of friends like that who were taking drugs in high
school. I'm a little older than you, but not that much. And
expressing yourself through taking acid or taking uh cod cocaine, or or taking uh
uh cannabis and getting high is uh is important. I'm curious when was what
would you say with the point where you sign a big contract and you knew
that you're on your way on a spiritual path. No? No, As
a musician, you know, truthfully, I never did music to be a
professional musician. It only turned out to that. I did music as a
form of expression. I never thought it would even be popular. I just
I never went into it like I want to be in a band, I
have a calling to play rock and roll. It was never like that.
It was like this is something cool. I did it to sort of find
myself, and very soon I realized there's a message I have, and there's
a message of self betterment. And I sort of clicked into that right away,
and I became a spokesperson for clean living, positive thinking, a clean
diet. You know, do unto others as you like to be others to
do to you. A twist of spirituality, what goes around comes around,
and these were all just sort of became part of because at this while I
was creating music. I was also somehow very very interested in Eastern mysticism,
spirituality, Uh, this reincarnation, life on other planets. Where does the
soul go after depth? What is the purpose of reality? Is this a
real world? What's the purpose of life? And that started getting almost like
cooking on the flames as my band got bigger and then and and and sort
of and this is expressed in the book How my Father. At the time
I really started my first popular band, Youth of Today, my father got
fell into a coma and it was quite sort of mysterious, and it just
went on and on and on, and it let me lose faith in the
material world. And I think that's a big part of our spiritual growth is
to make to get to this point where like, you know what, there's
nothing here that's actually going to port. There's nothing, there's no safety here.
Are you saying all that is helpless because your dad was constantly ill with
these lung issues. He wasn't constantly ill. He just got sick quick and
then his lung collapsed and he went into a coma. Okay, so I've
never remember him as being sick, but when he got sick, he got
sick, and then it was just out. And so I just started realizing,
like, well, he was reasonably young, you know, only a
few years older than I am. Now, he was reasonably young. He's
done everything sort of right. He was a good father, you know,
honest, hard working, raised seven kids on a school teacher's budget. Why
is death? Why does death as a sniper single this guy out out of
all the people to kill, want to kill a pol pot al capone?
Uh? You know, why go after my dad Mussolini? You know stylin
Since Yeah, it seems unfair, it seems pointless or not pointless, but
it seems so random. And then I started asking these questions, why do
bad things happen to good people? You know, this is like a what
is the point of living in a how do you find eternal happiness in a
temporary world? How do we find lasting happiness in a temporary world? So
these were like the pestering me and pushing me towards spiritual ideas spiritual teachers,
and it reflected in my songwriting. It went from not just okay, control
your senses, control your mind, control what you consume, to what about
some inner engineering of the consciousness? What about how to find peace within your
own mind. Why worry about the world when you can't even take care of
your own consciousness, your own mind. I'm part of this world. If
I want to make this world better, I got to begin with what's going
on in my head? Were you ready music about your interests in spiritual realm
and reincarnation? I mean, I mean that would really lock it in for
you as a musician and your bandmates to begin writing about these other dimensions.
Well, I think what happened was the first band really branded themselves straight edge,
clean living, vegetarian, animal rights, things like that. So that
was sort of the brand. And then as I started developing in these other
things, the rest of the band members were like, you know, you're
going off brand here. You're taking this to a whole new level. And
then I realized, this is my thing. This is maybe it's not their
thing, and you're right, I am off brand and im and then my
father left his body and so I said, you know what, now I'm
leaving this band. And that's when I took off for India. It just
everything sort of came to a head, came to a boiling point where I
realized that it's so much more than not just putting junk food in my mouth,
or you know, not smoking or not drinking. Big deal. I
mean a squirrel doesn't smoke or drink, does that mean he's like an enlightened
being. I want I want to enlightenment. I want I want, you
know, my consciousness shifting. I want to be able to control my senses
and not just act on impulse. This is why I think you're what you
know, if we look at soul levels, you're a very older You're you're
an older soul. And I want to just make a comment that in the
book, you're not taking acid, you're not getting high, you're not drinking
until you're unconscious, which is some is a theme for a lot of bands,
music especially, you know, and and it's like I don't want to
do for every band practically, well, it's almost like it's, ah,
you have to go through this uh pillar of fire and come out. If
you live, you are a success. If you die Hendrix, Janis Joplin
and so forth and so on, you're the martyr for the movement of that
time period. Right. And we can see historically these musicians who die through
overdose, and it's just the you have to wonder, and I'm interested in
your point of view, in who you are. When you look at these
other musicians and go, wow, they took a drug and they died.
Where was it for you that you didn't need to do that to evolve as
a musician? You know, I will say Cook, it's a there is
a point where you can't handle what you're getting, and so something whether it's
your beautiful Some people fansist with beauty. They're so breathtakingly beautiful that they get
whatever they want. They use that as their currency. Where some people are
born with the trust fund. They have so much wealth they can't even spend
it in this life time. And then this other very eluding thing which you
cannot purchase and which you and it seems like uh is random. Also is
fame, and sometimes people get famous and fame and this helped me understand this
more when I got Intoto serious Yogic studies, which was fame is a type
of energy that if you can't control it, it will destroy you. And
these things have to work for you, but you can't let them be your
master's fame, beauty, strength, knowledge. You see sometimes people too also
they're very very smart, but they use their intelligence in horrible ways, whether
to manipulate people to be crueled or to build, you know, weapons of
mass destruction. And that's what they're that's what all their straight a's did.
So the fame is the same thing. It is like an electric wire that
falls from a telephone poll after a storm, and if a little child picks
up that wire, they'll burn themselves up. But it doesn't mean that electrician,
a qualified electrician can't come up and take that wire and put it back
on and now the entire street has light. Again, electricity is not bad.
It's like if you can't handle it, then it's problematic. So in
the same way, all these different types of you know, the the yogis
called them shokds or like the divine feminine energy is that we get it might
again, wealth, beauty, fame, strength, intelligence, all these things
are powerful, and we believe you've got to take this feminine energy and connect
it with the masculine energy. You got to ground it all to the masculine
energy. This is different than the male female thing. Don't get hung up
on that then, as we have in the material world, but there's an
idea of a masculine, a divine masculine and feminine. So you got to
take your shocked and you've got to offer it back to source. And that's
what bakti is. Bakhti is when your feminine energies are connected to your masculine
energies and they're grounded, and therefore you're using your fame or your strength,
or you're if like, for example, you're a great speaker, you're a
great communicator. You know, you're a deep thinker, but you're using it
towards enlightenment. You could use that same thing towards degradation. And so when
these people have these powerful shaktis, like Jimi Hendrix you mentioned, or Janis
Joplin, they have so much power, so much shockedy, but if it's
left ungrounded, they fry, they can't handle it, and it always becomes
a sad story. Yeah, it's really bad. I want to talk real
quickly about one other thing that you bring up in the book that I thought
was just amazing, and that is your decision to be celibate. And you
know, you talk about having a girlfriend who's gorgeous, you know, and
who's desirable, and it's like, I don't feel I'm in a place right
now where I want to be sexual, I want to explore other things.
And a lot of people at that age group would just say, screw you,
I don't want to have anything to do with you, you know,
and you'd be kind of left on a desert island. But talk about celibacy,
because it is such a profound way to live your life, especially in
the Western culture where where it's tits and ass everywhere and everybody wants to get
laid and everyone's working to be slim. To be pretty sure, it lay
people up in the morning. Sometimes as a musician, I would think women
are throwing themselves at you, you know, and you're kind of going,
you know, a stand back or whatever. But talk about that's a really
huge decision to make, and I want to hear about that. Sure.
I always felt like there was a difference between love and lust, and somehow
they've we intertwine them both together as one thing. But sometimes we'll just say
things like, oh, yeah, man, I love her, she's so
hot, Whereas we're using this word, which is sort of a hallowed sacred
word to describe your appetite, how you want to consume somebody and so it's
almost like we need more death, We need more words to describe these emotions.
Lust and love are two different things. One is like iron, one
is like gold. They're both metals, you know, but one has value
and one actually sort of can wreak havoc on your consciousness if it possesses you.
No one wants to be possessed by their body. No one wants their
senses or their mind or their lower passions to take control of their intelligence.
So in Vedic teachings of the Yogis they break these things down. There is
me, a spirit soul. Then there's the senses which are desiring, the
tongue and the belly and the genitals which are always passionate. Am I gonna
let them work for me? Or am I gonna work for them? Right?
Am I gonna work for my lower passions? Or are they gonna work
for me? So there's a power in controlling your senses, and it's a
new take on freedom. Freedom doesn't mean like I'm just like free. I'm
on a tropical island. I can do whatever I want. Oftentimes, people
who can do whatever they want ruin their lives. Oftentimes people who have the
ability, the resources do whatever they want. They become depressed, they become
alcoholic. Not all the time, but oftentimes. You see that. Whereas
our take on real freedom means I control my senses, I control my mind,
I control my thoughts, I don't. I'm not possessed by rage.
I can evoke anger, but I don't want to be possessed by it.
When I heard about this, I was like, that's what I want.
I want to be like that and that, and believe me, I'm far
from it, but that's what I feel like I'm working towards. So in
my twenty is it not like it was an easy task. I'm going to
be a celibate monk. But I felt like, you know what I've seen
in my life, in my own, my very short life, how lust
can you know what yours? The best way to even understand it is you're
not even looking at a at A For me, I wasn't even looking at
it as a woman anymore. You're looking as them as objects. It's almost
like you're depersonalizing them and you're thinking I want them. It's got nothing to
do with them as a being. So what I would my realization then was
lust is almost the beginning of misogyny, because you're looking them as a thing
and not as a being. Once you put a being in something, then
you have to deal with their emotions and their heart and their mind and their
their sense of It's one reason why I became a vegetarian, because I started
thinking, well, this dog is a being. I've given it a he
sleeps on my lap, he's my best friend. Yet I have a pig
over here, and this pig is a commodity. It's a thing. This
cow is a thing. How much different is a cow and a dog.
They're not that much different, but one has become depersonalized, and therefore it
makes it easier to kill. And so the same is with lust, and
whenever we control our passions or let our passions go rather it's really I just
want to do whatever I want to do, and it's the core of materialism,
which means I want to satisfyt by my senses first. And whenever you
start to think like that, whether it's within the family, whether it's within
the city, whether it's with the nation, whether it's international, there's always
war because it's like throwing thirty rocks in a pond. All the ripples of
those rocks are going to collide with each other. But when there's one focused
self and we're focused and we're connected the spirit, then it's like throwing a
thirty rocks in the pond, but they're all landing at the same point in
the pond, and those ripples never hit each other. They're always there are
always perfect concentric circles. So a big part of a spiritualist is I have
to get out of my selfishness. And that's very, very tricky, and
that's that's like a huge task and that's what we work on. H So,
yeah, so controlling the senses of my twenties it was huge. It
was it was difficult, but it can be done, and there's and there's
and there's ways to do it, and there's it's pretty amazing that you that
you took that route because you know now that you're a spiritual person. You've
been to Indian Now you're a monk. We look at the shakra. By
the way, I'm no monk. Now let me interrupt your I'm no monk
now. I have five children. You know, I live on a farm.
Oh yes, okay, this is this is this is the second book
My life Now after being among mon to monks, yoga teacher. But but
now kids, in the period of time when you were celibate. You know,
we look at ancient Hindus traditions and in the sitting monk or yogic individual
who is focused on their chakra systems, and if you bring that that genital
energy up into the other parts of the body of the heart, the head,
and the brain and crowns, Yeah, it actually enhances those other creative
centers. And so without really knowing it, you were actually achieving this.
Well, I knew it. I knew it. That's what you did know.
That was the point of it. Yeah, I mean, that's the
point of it. You don't you don't release your energy. And this is
Chinese medicine, it's Indian medicine. Is you're not you're not subjugating it.
You're not feeling frustrated. This was Freud's you know complaint people aren't having enough
sex or they're just they're repressing their desires. It's not repression, it's sublimating.
It's bringing it to a higher place. You're taking that energy and you're
using it for uh the creative uh, a creative change or for lifting your
consciousness higher well there, and it becomes a struggle, it becomes mind,
and you start to realize the coolest thing was. You start to realize,
like, geez, everything I'm doing is to impress somebody else. It's very,
very powerful when put into the recipe of a spiritual practice, because if
you just say I'm gonna be celibate, then you're gonna be frustrated because you're
gonna be looking around and you're gonna be I want it, but I can't
have it. But if you're actually because I promised myself I'd be celibate.
But when you're putting it into your spiritual practice, like I'm doing this because
I'm trying to train myself to see everybody as spirit and what actually and what
enjoyment is there outside of a mental concoction which exists in my mind. For
a fleeting moment of happiness or a fleeting moment, There's got to be something
deeper. There's got to be something that lasts longer. There's got to be
a joy rather than a fun. And so when you keep that in the
forefront of your mind, it changes the way you think of people and changes
the way you think of yourself. And your mind and yourself as a spirit,
and it becomes an interesting experiment that you're throwing yourself in. Let me
see if I can just treat people with a type of like integrity not based
on their butts or their ass or their abs or there. And when you're
twenty two, that's a massive challenge because the whole world is recommending it.
If you're celibating. If you're celibat in your twenties, you know they're you're
a loser. It hits an ass in the Western culture and the ancient cultures
like Indian and China, they're covered up. They appreciate male and fear email
energy, and people in the West, it's like, push those boobs up,
you get those tight abs. Yeah, and it makes something very sacred
cheap if it is, Yeah, it is. And Yeah. We're going
to take a short commercial break to allow our sponsors to identify themselves, and
we will return shortly with my guest today, Ray Cappo, and his new
book From Punk to Monk, a Memoir, will be right back. My
guest today is punk rocker bandleader Ray Cappo. He is the author of a
new book called From Punk to Monk, a memoir where he actually goes through
his spiritual emergence from a young artist and travels to India and we're learning about
his transformation and what he's all about today. Talk about the opening of your
book. Could you describe your first visit to India in this miserably hot train
and you're packed in with people, and you're with monks, and it's a
pretty surreal experience that you're challenged with. Have you ever traveled on an Indian
train? I haven't, but I've had a lot of friends do it,
and uh, and it's pretty for Yeah, it's it's something that's just undescribable.
It is. They're they're like I think they were. I think the
Indian Railway was built by the British and the forties perhaps, and they're almost,
you know, eighty years old to this day. And you're riding some
really old trains and these there's first class, which you know, if you
have some money, you can afford the first class, and even those are
pretty tough, but the second and third class trains, those were very,
very tough. And for me it was sort of adventurous because you know,
I was a punk from the Lower East Side. I'm used to dirt and
grime. But it's just, uh, I've realized actually how intolerant I was,
and how the people on the train were so tolerant. And I was
like, I mean, for me yet twenty two to go to India,
pre cell phone, pre credit cards, pre internet, it was like traveling
on a whole another time. It's hard to even explain it to kids nowadays,
like, yeah, well you playing it very well, thank you.
Ray. You described the swell train heat, no air conditioning. I think
he even described the bathroom as a hole on the floor that you just squat
over. It was, which is right in the train tracks I've heard of.
I've had friends go there for spiritual retreats to India and go outside of
the cities and people are literally crapping in the streets and it's just unimaginable.
It's yeah, things have to be tweaked, composting toilets have to be introduced.
But I want to use that opening and take a into your journey to
become a monk and your spiritual growth, I guess is my point. But
talk about that ride and meeting people and how it I think it actually changes
you in a profound way. And I think that's how you opened them,
why you opened the book with that experience. Sure, it was a trip,
you know, a twenty four hour train trip should have been a twenty
four hour train trip to CA. From Delhi to Calcutta. I was going
from one sort of holy city near Delhi to another holy city in Calcutta.
And I was sort of packed into with you know, two monks on either
side of me and three months across from me. And I was brand new.
I was green to all this stuff. I had read the bog of
a Gita and I was like, you know what, I'm gonna try.
I'm going to try this out and see if it works. I ask if
they could host me at the Ashram. But I will tell you I was
sort of like it was a little overwhelming. And I was never celibate in
my life, and I felt like it's getting sort of intense, so maybe
I should just spend some time. And I was going to stay in at
Ashram and Calcutta actually for a while. And on the train ride, I
started noticing that, Okay, I can do this. Okay, there's no
ac Okay, there's a hole in the toilet, you know, to the
train tracks. Okay, I'm wearing a robe that I barely know how to
wear. Okay, I can do that. And then I started noticing that
people are getting on the train but sitting on the floor. And I was
thinking, and I talked to the other monks, who I barely knew they
were all Indian. I said, you know, why are they sitting on
the floor and they said, well, they have no money, and you
know, so they just ride the trains for free. And I thought,
so they're going to sit on the floor for twenty hours, Well, it's
crazy. And instead of just saying yes, it's crazy, he thought I
was inviting them to sit with us. So in a very sweet way,
he said, yeah, yeah, just come sit with He waved these people
to come sit with us, and then we just start and I was like,
before I could even say no, please, I don't want them to
sit with me, I was just noticing that they were sitting on the floor.
So sure enough, these two old ladies and two old men are now
packed in these seats of that hell three now we got five in them,
and they're you know, different cultures are different, and in India there's no
like personal space. You know, people can just like rub and touch you.
And so I have these ladies with their heads like resting on my shoulders
during the train, and I was just at that point, I was like,
Okay, I get what's going on. I wanted to approach God.
I'm praying to learn things like tolerance, love, compassion. Okay, how
are you going to deal with it now? So you're getting it in dose,
You're getting in a massive doses of tolerance, compassion, love. Can
I do it? Or am I going to crack? And then to make
matters worse? How could it get any worse? The train breaks down on
in a field for eleven hours, and it's like no one is complaining about
anything. No one's even like, you know, if that happened in a
Jersey transit or somewhere in the Metro North train in New York City, everybody
would be living where are you going? I've got places to go? Who's
in charge here? And I started to snap into my psycho white kid New
Yorker mode and everyone else was just chill and relaxed, and I just started
spiraling out of control. A lot of the book and my trips in my
time in the Aschroon was just me noticing my own mind and how sort of
broken and how sort of what is the true north? I want to get
my mind and my consciousness too, and how far I am from it.
Just like if you have you ever done a fast, you realize, well,
big deal'll just fast for a few days, and you don't realize that
how much food controls you. And or if you're ever trying to control any
of your senses, whenever you try to put it control them, you say,
okay, I'm not going to date for a year, and all of
a sudden you just realize, Man, it's like I can't control my mind.
I can't control my senses. People experience that when they try to,
you know, quit porn, quit cigarettes, quit any of these things,
do something on a regular basis that's good for them. They find it very,
very difficult. So I was feeling like all these things and controlling my
mind, controlling my senses, I'm putting through these tests, and I've just
started to notice like, wow, I'm putting my whole psyche in an experiment
right now, and I'm failing tremendously. And then I'd get then every now
and then when I'd feel like I was going under deep, I resurface,
I say, nope, this is what I want this So I think my
whole time, every time I go to India, it's something that's like this
struggle with my mind, back and forth, back and forth, back and
forth. And I think that's part of the game I signed up for,
is can the mind become a friend instead of an enemy? And I think
that's sort of the lesson, Like if I could learn in this lifetime how
to use the mind as a friend instead of the mind as an enemy.
If I could, if we can just crack that Rubik's Cube, we can
we can attain real peace in this lifetime. The guru that you met at
this ashrom is he somebody that you returned to on a regular basis or were
you experimenting with different ashroms as you grew older, because at twenty two you're
very impressionable. If you didn't have a good time, maybe you thought about
going to other are sure? You know, I've been blessed that have really
great teachers in my life, and some I find that the universe sends a
teacher for a season. There's like a leaf, you know. Sometimes the
leafs are there for a while, then a strong wind comes and some leaf
goes away. And so I've had some teachers that come into my life for
a season. Some teachers have been like branches. They're also there for a
while, but sometimes they can also snap off or I go away for some
reason. And then some teachers in my life have been like trees. So
I've had some teachers in my life that have been there for many many decades
actually, and then sometimes different. I just feel like the universe is real.
It's a real benevolent and dynamic energy that that sort of sends you what
you need as a directional uh, you know, landmarks on your on your
journey, and sends you someone exactly when you need them. You know,
if you if you put yourself out there and put yourself open to the to
God or the universe to send you teachers and instructors, then I've always find
every time I get blessed with that fantastic talk about the first time you received
your mantra for meditation and how meditation changed you, I want to just mention
that because for those of you listening, I'm you know that I'm a big
advocate of meditation for so many reasons, and I learned meditation when I was
eighteen the Maharashi Meshiogi in the TM program, and it was so profound for
me the first time I meditated with an instructor. And I'm just interested in
your experience and how that began to change you and if you noticed the changes
that were taking place when you meditated. Well, sometimes the sometimes the meditation
practice can be like a cuckoo clock or an alarm clock, where it's like
and sometimes it can be like the hands of a clock where you're not noticing,
like I don't think anything's happening. But if you stare at a clock,
but if you look at a clock, the hands of a clock are
moving. They're just not moving at the pace you think they should be moving.
They are actually moving over time. You see, Oh, actually the
hands are the hands are moving. Yeah. So I've had I feel like
I've had both experiences. And the type of meditation I do is sonic.
It's it's sound vibration through mantra. And when in a in an Ashraam experience
especially, you're not so distracted. There's just a time to sit and chant
in peace, and the mantra is uh. The Harry Kushna mahamantra, which
is what i've what I chose to chant is the mantra for It's sort of
like asking the universe not to give you what you want, because there are
mantras for that. Please give me abundance, Please give me you know,
progeny, Please give me this or that. It's it's more of a mantra
for give me what I need in this life. Sometimes if we get what
we want, we could people people get what they want, they ruin their
lives. Sometimes yay, But but give me what I need. And when
you say that, when that's your sincere, heartfelt prayer, give me what
I need, it says, if you're already liberated, because you'll accept that
anything that you get is a gift from God. Anything that you get is
a gift from God. It could be good fortune. It could be great
distress. It could be chronic illness. It could be you know, a
blessing. It could be a child. It could be the death of the
death of someone you love. Please give me what I need to grow in
this lifetime. It sounds like a manifestation mantra in a way, but it's
not, is it. If anything, it's sort of a petitioning of God
to sort of take the driver's seat of your life, not that we were
ever in control, but to become fully cognizant of it and to understand that
all the karmas that were going through, which becomes evident if you look at
your astrological chart, your jote's chart, you're going through some karma, some
planetary position, some molific planets, some benevolent planets. Whatever you've got laid
out in your in your chart right now or not just ups and downs of
your karma. Now they're actually being used for your liberation and so there's no
more. Oh man, I've got a this is big within hinduism as.
I've got to counteract this, you know, Mars or this Rahu planet which
is calling me, that causing me all these problems. I have to wear
a particular jewel to count. Oh I love Rahu. I used to wear
a gold ring with that. I can't remember the jewel, but you got
it on. I took mine off because I don't know, I kind of
fell off of it. But uh, Siderial or Hindu astrology is very accurate,
very powerful, very powerful stuff. It's like reading reading, it's like
reading your autobiography. Yeah, it's amazing if you get a good astrologer,
and it makes you start to really think. I was like, how much
control do we have? Actually, there's a it's a very very good question.
And even the Christian missionaries went to India, they they condemned it all
because they said, well, no, because once you say there is destiny,
then there is no free will, and that's how you approach God with
your free will. But the Yogis of India say no, no, no,
no, there is destiny. But there's also how you react to your
destiny, and that creates future karma's future reactions. So you all have some
karma and a lot of times we can't avoid it. But how you react
to it, that's your free will. And to the degree that you raise
your consciousness higher to this, they call it sut vaguna, or this mode
of goodness where you're regulating your senses. For example, if I'm addicted to
something, how much free will do I have? Nothing? I take a
snore cocaine and it ruins my life. I lose my wife and my family
and my children. And then someone says, you want more cocaine, I
say, yeah, yeah, because why, because the from addiction, we've
lose our free will. So the entire yoga system, no matter what tradition
you are within, that vadic system, is to bring the consciousness up,
to control the mind, to pacify the mind, so between stimulus and response,
spons there's more space in between, so you can make a better choice
and eventually get out of this wheel of some sorrow, this repeating repetition of
birth and death, this repetition of making the same secular choices again and again
that you can't get out of. And we see it happen in our lifetime
in small circles. I make the same stupid choices again and again, but
it happens actually over lifetimes, and so that's what we're trying to do.
Raise the consciousness off. That's why everything within the yoga system is about pacifying
the mind, calming the mind, becoming more regulated, regulating the senses,
controlling your tongue, controlling your passions. Why because we can make better choices,
because our choices that we make create our next body, Create our next
body, not just in your next life, create your new body tomorrow.
Yeah, it's funny you're mentioning that, because that was something I wanted to
ask you. Do you have a sense of your previous incarnations? And from
a yoga perspective, what are you trying to burn off karmically right now?
That's a good question. I mean you could like for me, I look
at it, there could be like one lifetime that's influencing and it's you have
to be really tripping in your meditations to go out of body and go okay.
That lifetime as a doctor, as an engineer, as a musician is
really influencing me right now. I don't know how far you go. I'm
not saying I go that far. But in your spiritual practice, what are
the influences if you can, if you know them. I mean it sounds
like you have a pretty spiritual audience that gets this type of thing. Oh
yeah, but if people don't get it. And I like to explain things
for people who don't get it, because even if you say, well,
I don't believe in a previous life, the Bagha the Gita teaches it in
a real pedestrian manner for anybody to understand. Just like when you were a
little child, you were observing your body. Then you were a teenager,
you're observing your body, you're observing your mind, You're observing your passions,
just like when you're in your twenties, you're observing your mind, your passions.
Your body has changed, and you're the witness. As C. S.
Lewis said, you know, you don't have a soul. You are
a soul that has a body. And so the body is always changing,
the ego is always changing. Had we had this conception of ourself as a
teenager when I was little, I wanted to be a baseball player, right
then in your twenties, you have another self conception in your thirties or your
forties. So all this time we're almost like playing roles, different personas,
different bravados, different egos, almost like we're wearing different costumes. But there's
always been an observer, and even the body right down to the molecule,
has changed. So in this lifetime, I've had different bodies, I've had
different minds, i'd have different egos, i'd have different intelligence, I've had
different personas. They're not me. They're just a change of clothing, a
change of body, a change of matter. Nothing here in my hand that
I'm waving with was here when I was five years old. This is molecularly
completely different. So there's reincarnation going on in this lifetime. Western science says
that every every molecule in the body has changed every seven years. Every seven
years, everything's different, thing's been replaced. So the question is what we
Who am I that's observing these changes? And the question is your otman or
a spirit soul just witnessing and just almost like a wave, you just witness
a wave. And so anyway, the idea is that the atman or the
spirit it also had another body and that it animated and in the same type
of maya or the same type of illusion. Was completely convin it's in the
same way. I'm completely convinced. I'm an Italian American New Yorker. I
was completely convinced I was something else in a previous life. And we forget
due to the trauma of childbirth going down. That's like a traumatic experience.
Although it seems we romanticize it. It's very beautiful, but the birth canal
is trauma. And then in just like any trauma, you forget, You
forget what happened, like you get in the car accident, you wake up
on an operating table in the ICU and they say, well, what happened,
I don't know. I was out with my friends and I just woke
up here. Everything got shut down. The consciousness is a way to make
you forget that pain and bury it somewhere so you can just deal. So
I've had hypnotherapists who specialize in calming the mind, of course, and then
taking you back to childhood. And the first time I back to like my
childhood, I knew this was real because I was remembering things that I know
that I just forgot. The busyness of the mind forgets it. And so
then after being thoroughly acquainted with that part of my life and these things that
I forgot about, like things you play a big rock I used to play
on as a child, what my old house looked like, where I grew
up when I was, you know, three years old. Then it would
take me back to previous berths. So you could find these people who specialize
in that if you're interested, or you can find something. So you can
find astrologers as well that can take you back there as well. I'm not
I'm gonna save you the I'm gonna save you the the story of my own
personal one. But yeah, I've been taken back a few different times.
I don't like to say well I was definitely that, because I don't know
that I could be wrong. I could have just I could just fabricate this
in my mind. I can't say for sure it was mine. But the
fact that we have talents coming into this world. Sometimes people are musically talented
or uh people, we call them child prodigies in this in this world,
that talent, the Jogi say, is coming from a practice from a previous
life that you're bringing into this world. Hmmm, that's not Yeah, because
we keep the subtle body, we keep the intelligence, we keep the mind.
And that's why we might say something like, well, my daughter has
a proclivity towards art, my son has a proclivity towards you know whatever,
martial arts. Yeah, that's because they've been practicing for like, you know,
for who knows, maybe lifetimes exactly How otherwise, how you're gonna under
how you're gonna explain, you know, a Mozart writing a symphony at h
four, Well, you said prodigy, or you know, a savant of
some kind, somebody who's just brilliant on something. Yeah, say, yeah,
it's it's not it's not like they're brilliant at it. It's it's brilliant
because they've been practicing it for lifetimes, right in your book. So I'm
sorry, go ahead, there's so much when I cover, I'm kind of
moving through this quickly. I'll just keep talking. So I want to I
want to bring up the anointment of a monk monk lifestyle. What when it
happened when you decided you want to become a monk and the responsibilities. Now
you say you're not a monk anymore, so you you gave it up,
But right, what were what were the conditions? Because in your book there
is you're wearing the robes and you're like, whoa a white boy? Who's
a monk? You know, Indian Hindu monk talk about that well a lot
of times because, especially in the eighties, when Indy was more of a
developing uh nation, sometimes monks were very poor. They're coming from poor families,
not all the time, but especially back then. I remember a lot
were very poor and sometimes moving to an ashrom can be a almost like a
step up, like now they have flush toilets. Now you know they didn't
have flush toilets, but you know, just because for a Westerner to become
a monk, you have to give up a lot. You don't have your
I grew up well, I didn't grow up like that. I had three
boys in my room when I was growing up because we had had four brothers,
so for four boys in my room. But you know, for a
lot of Westerners, if they're going to go to India, a living in
of ASTRM, they give up their privacy, they give up their uh governance
of like when you wake up in the morning, when you go to bed
in the morning, it's almost like joining the army. Well from a culture
where you don't understand the newest of the language. You know, but are
you are you renouncing money, sex and meet vegetarianism. I mean I was
pretty close there already. You were pretty close already. I didn't drink or
smell. For me, it was that sort of a natural step. You
went from like controlling my when I'm put it in my ears and eyes and
nose and mouth, They're like, more, now what am I putting in
my mind? And that was that was the That was the real like like
trade off. And even as a householder trying to follow the principles, it's
a little it's a little trickier, but you have to find that bubble that
you have to find that balance. It's almost like walking a tightrope. You
know, you're raising children. You want to want to say, Okay,
we're all gonna be monks. You know, the kids will, kids will
rebel. The kids need some type of you know, material sense gratification.
You got to be like a chef. You know, you got to put
some salt on it. You know, if you don't put enough salt on
it, you don't taste it. And if you don't put you know,
if you put too much salt, you spoil it. So even with raising
a family, you have to give a little bit of sense gratification. But
if you give too much, then you spoil the child and you spoil yourself
in the process as well. Like you want to find a balance in can
I have it create a spiritual bubble with it being sort of in this world
but not of the world, Because I remember why I got into the ashram,
because I didn't like being of this world. You know, I wanted
to find a spiritual bubble, and so I think that I didn't. I'm
not recommending everybody become a monk, But there still has to be some regulation
in your your behavior and your thoughts and in your how you treat other people,
how you treat yourself, even if you have a household, a spiritual
household. So how long were you a monk? I was a monk for
six monk six and a half years. Okay, So you you didn't have
a relationship during those periods, right? I had lots of relationships, just
not with the opposite sex. Oh, great relationships with men. Well,
of course you're having friendships, your spiritual community, the astron so forth and
so on. But when you came back to the States, that must have
been a bit imposing for you to carry on this persona and live in a
Western culture where it's, like I said it, for me a beer,
how about a steak? Yeah? Yeah. I think if anybody I get
where you're going with this, I think if anybody wants to have a spiritual
life and they're not living within a spiritual community, then you have to sort
of like surround yourself with people that lift you higher. You have to have
friends. You have to have good friends, good company, because it's it's
the company we keep. You know, if you're an alcoholic, don't hang
out at a bar. If you're a gambler, don't go to Vegas.
It's like, it's that simple. If you find like you're trying to upgrade
your life and you've got all these people saying, hey, come on,
let's do let's do this, it just it just won't jive. So I
had to I had to start to recreate myself. How am I going to
be in this material world and relate and relate again? I mean, it
was it was a balancing act, and it did take me along to It
took me a while to find my stripe and and it was almost comical at
times. Truthfully. You know, do you wear robes for seven years seven
and a half years just wearing robes? Did you come to America wearing robes?
Well, I didn't stay exclusively in India when I lived in and I
share that in my book. I go back and forth between India and America,
right, but stayed in Austros. But I had no clothes. I
had no regular clothing. So for me, it was almost a little peculiar,
like I got to figure out, like I don't even know, fashion
changes every decade, every sometimes every six year. When I went. When
I went into the Ashram, everyone had like in nineteen eighty eight, everyone
had like tight jeans, and then in nineteen ninety five everyone had those stove
what were they called, like stove pipe pants, Jenko jeans that were really
huge. They covered your foot, they dragged in the ground. The girls
wore the middrift shirts and these are like fashion changes. And I was just
like, well, who am I? Not only does our bodies change,
it a fact, I gotta figure I gotta refigure out who I am.
And that was like a balancing you're out. You had to figure out,
like how am I going to carry myself in this world? So anyway,
that was a little fun adventure. Also, Hey, I could talk with
you forever. The book's called You from Punk to Monk is a memoir.
My guess has been Ray Ray and that's the that's your spiritual name. Yeah,
Raguanov is like a very common name in India. It's a name for
Ram who's like Avatar Vishnu. But Ray Kappo is the name I was born
with. I love that you have on the cover, So it's very It's
like a tattoo. It's part of who you are. Hey, as we
conclude, Ray, what would you like people to take away from this book?
I mean, there's so many different elements, but if you had one
thing to say that would be what you hope people receive. What would that
be? Sure, treat each day like it's your last day on earth.
Wow, Treat each day because it could be your last day on earth.
And so if it is our last day, then we want to make sure
we don't have any unsettled business with people. If we want to find peace
in this life, we don't want unsettled business. When we have unsettled business
with people, we have unsettled business with God. And so therefore it's time
to say some thank you. Some I'm sorries and some I love yous before
it could do it immediately as soon as you hear this, send out some
text messages. I love it, fantastic, thank you. Hey, give
people a link to your website. How can people get a hold of you
if you want people to get a hold of you and what's going on in
the future. Sure? Well, I have a daily podcast on yoga philosophy
I do with my good friend. It's called Wisdom of the Sages, right,
And it's like We've done like over thirteen hundred episodes. We do it
every day since twenty two went January first, almost every day. Sometimes I
travel a lot so I can't get it in, but for the most part,
we try to do it every day. Big yeah, thank you.
And we have a big, beautiful community. And also I have a Instagram
Ragunath r A g h u n A t h Ragunath Yogi or or my
website is ragunaf dot Yoga r A g h u n A t h dot
Yoga. And I take people every year on pilgrimages to India. It's just
like I used to go, but I make them not you're not you're not
You're not sleeping on an ashron floor. We make it comfortable. But also
we have a strong spiritual experience. We also do a two hundred hour training
at three hundred hour yoga training if people want to become yoga teachers in India.
All that stuff's available on my website. Oh, this year I'm taking
a group to Nepal because Nepal is a very special place too. Yeah,
very cool. Yeah, thank you very much, Cliff keep Yeah, it's
been a pleasure. I want to mention also when you get this book,
there's a photo of Ray in a yoga pose that's amazing. It's almost a
handstand, and I don't even know how long ago that is, but that's
that's a pretty intense. So you have a regular yoga practice, I guess.
Yeah. Fantastic. Hey, much success on this book, and real
nice having you with us. Great pleasure, my friend, Keep up the
good work. I was trying to think where I had heard about soul ages,
young souls, infant souls, old souls, ancient souls, and I
came across some earlier books that I had read on Indian philosophy, Chinese philosophy,
spiritual philosophy that is. And I need to get somebody on the program
who can discuss it more full. But when you hear somebody like Ray talking
about wanting to be in adhering to a celibate lifestyle, that is very,
very challenging, especially somebody who's celebrity, who's in the spotlight, who has
people throwing themselves at him, men and women, I'm sure, and to
be celibate at that point in your life is just a real challenge. And
he told me off when we finished that he does have he is in a
relationship and he has kids, so that all changed the older he got.
That's just really a challenge, you know. And also to not be involved
in drugs mine altering substances of any kind is also a challenge because it's so
freely available when you're in that setting. So and we mentioned Jimmy Hendricks his
untimely death. We didn't mention Jim Morris of the Doors Janis Joplin. When
I was growing up, there was just one death after another, these wonderful
musicians who were consuming drugs. And that's the whole ruling of the times.
You know, one need to experiment. I have to wonder what it would
have been like if ayahuasca was available in the sixties and seventies, during this
transformational period, the Hippie period, the beginning of the New Age. I
was kind of at the tail end of the New Age and was really fortunate
to be a program director and have people like Timothy Leary, who's the father
of LSD, come and speak to our audience in San Francisco. You know,
he was in LA He lived in La but God the room standing room
only, and I mean he traveled with us to a number of different cities
when we were doing traveling conferences. The program was Whole Life Expo, based
on Whole Life magazine. The guy I worked for I purchased the conference arm
of that catalog and it was you know, featuring people. I mean,
I came on really funny. I'll tell you a quick story. I was
in the high tech had a design business and my clients were high tech people
who were making chips. I see chips, silicon wafers, making hardware machines
that created the chips. I had a I worked with Apple Computer, worked
with Microsoft. I had a lot of big clients and it was it was
fun, but it was very I was an artist and it was dead to
me. It was like these peopleeople were like robots, robatons. Nobody was
like tapping into, you know, the potential. And I went to a
Whole Life Expo because the lineup of speakers was phenomenal back then, people like
Deepak Chopra, Mary Williams and so forth and so on. And I sat
in the audience and I thought to myself, after listening to I think it
was Deepak Chopra and give a really inspirational talk. I was like, there's
something missing. Here. And I mean I had no background as a as
a conference producer, but I was an artist. I was creative and successful.
And I walked up to after that presutation with Deepak, I walked up
to the producer Kent, guy named Ken Kaufman, and I said, you
know you can do this better. You can, you can make this more
impactful. And I, for some reason, I sat there and I was
telling him what he could do to enhance the show, to make it more
impactful, to make it more memorable, and and I thanked him and I
walked off, and a couple of days later he called me up and offered
me a job as his program director. And I mean, that's kind of
a marketing job. I had my own. I was. I was not
happy at my job, so I quit my job as a designer and I
became a program director for the Whole Life Expo. And it didn't pay anything.
I mean it paid enough to make to live, but I mean it
was half of what I was normally making. But I wasn't I was in
I was in heaven. I really enjoyed it. And I enjoyed learning about
these people and bringing them to San Francisco and creating panel discussions and it was
world class, you know. I mean, it was just something that was
I was natural at and uh you know, and I had a talent for
it. And it's like that behind the guy behind the curtain, you know,
kind of a situation where producers are not standing on stage. I mean
I was. I would introduce one or two people occasionally and maybe do a
panel discussion on a topic because we couldn't find anybody else. But I wasn't
really in the forefront like I am now as a podcast host. But that's
really where I cut my teeth on developing programming and really reaching out and bringing
to stage to you the audience, unique voices and unique perspectives. And now
I have Gail Torr, who's in Hollywood, and she's former Hollywood publicist and
also currently publicists for some of the biggest publishing houses in America, and so
we make a good team and we have other people too. But anyhow,
that's a little side note on my exploration and my you know, kind of
evolution from high tech too to transformational spirituality, personal growth wellness. And it's
funny too, because I would occasionally have I didn't have Graham Graham wasn't on
the scene yet, but I had John Anthony West when he was first you
know, his book had come out Serpent in the Sky, and I had
him repeatedly, and he was kind of like my introduction into ancient civilizations because
he was in his book introducing Schwaler de d' lubich, who was talking about
the perfect design of temples in Egypt and so forth and so on. So
anyhow, a little highlight on Clifford Paul Dunning your host, So that was
fun. Anyhow, Yeah, Ray was fun to have the program and really
a transformationtional journey from punk to monk a memoir. Hey, I mentioned earlier
in the program that I have just gotten back from Egypt. We are we
still have two events left for this year, and there's a beauty coming up.
Our first visit to Turkey. It's August fourteenth through the twenty fourth,
and we're going to meet in Istanbul, and I have to say this,
it's the first time that we've been there. We're going with Muhammed Imbraheim.
He is also we're also going to be joined by an archaeologist who is a
kind of our leader and who's taking us to these secret places. Come out
and join us if you can. This price, which is roughly five grand
for two weeks, is unheard of. It covers everything everything, your food,
your beverages, the flights, the buses, the accommodations, the private
visits, everything, everything everything. And I can tell you this, it's
not going to be that price next year. It's going to be double.
In fact, most of the tours that we we emulate are double the price.
Most of these Egyptian tours, these Mexican tours, these Turkey tours are
ten grand or more. Ours are half that. If you can join us,
come out and see the program. Go to Earth Ancients dot com Forward
slash Tours. Look at the itinerary. We got a like, we got
five spots left, five for Turkey, and that's going to be a blast.
Earth Ancients dot com Forward slash Tours Mexico is in November the seventh through
the eighteenth. We're gonna meet in Mareda. This is really a week of
intense exploration of temples, pyramids and artifacts. There's a couple of museums we
will go to, but I can guarantee you this. We have made preparations
to climb pyramids and people are like, I want to climb pyramids. There's
something special about climbing Mayan pyramids. And we'll do that at Yucatan, will
be at Mayapan, which is kind of like a training ground, will be
at Ushmo, my favorite city with feminine energy, will climb the Grand Pyramid
or it's called the Great Pyramid. And then we also will be at Ekbalam
the Black Jackuar Jaguar, and that is an opportunity to climb the main palace
and what a view you get when you're at the top of that staircase.
So for more information to come out and join us, go to earth Ancients
dot com, Forward slash Tours, look at the itinerary. If you have
any questions, if you have any concerns, if you want more information and
you want to talk to me, send me an email earth Ancients for you
at gmail dot com, and I promise I'll get right back to you.
These are not to be missed. They're special, they are unique, and
it's a great chance to connect with others, including myself. I love to
meet with you in a tour setting earth Ancients dot com Forward Sla Tours.
All right, that's it for this program. I want to think. My
guest today, Ray Capo, coming to us from Connecticut. As always,
the team of Gail tor, Mark Foster and everyone who makes this thing happen.
You guys rock all right, Take care of you well, and we
will talk to you next time you m