Raghunath Cappo: We’re Just Doing Time on This Planet

The idea in Vedic thought is that there's devas or higher beings, and then there's the devati deva, like a Gnao-Christian tradition would say God. How much of what these people are experiencing and talking about in the Bhagavad Gita and all the texts has to do with soma and has to do with psychedelic rituals that they were participating in while they were doing these things? How do you know about soma? So funny. I can't believe you said that. Yeah, it's a commonly known thing I think. Yeah, soma is a beverage on the moon. Oh, okay, the moon. Makes sense. But it's a beverage. Right, but it's a combinatory beverage, a psychedelic sacrament that we haven't established. By the way, I'm speaking like a matter of fact. I understand. I don't know this. I'm saying it could be true and this is what they teach. That's how we learn the Vedas to hear. What are the ingredients? It's otherworldly. You can't try to recreate it on Earth. There's plants, they say, that grow, that don't grow here. And there's beings that grow. Now, we just hear these stories and we just, it's myth. But you know what? The zebra's a myth. I live around a bunch of beautiful turkeys. But if you've ever seen a peacock, turkeys look like boring. You know what I mean? Peacocks are unbelievable. Yeah, they're pretty wild. A Quetzal is unbelievable. You know, a... I don't know what a Quetzal is. Quetzal is a South American bright colors. What's his name? A crazy bird. Montezuma wore feathers on his hat. So if all you know is robins, an occasional cardinal, when you see a Quetzal or a peacock, it's like, what the fuck? Yeah. Right? So someone could say, well, you know, you're really going to believe in the wind, God. Come on. But we say, hey, look, there's an ant on the table and I blow on the ant. That ant runs for his life. In the ant's brain, he's not thinking, oh, Ragu is blowing on me. He's just thinking, danger, danger, danger. Yeah, I'm actually being, I'm a being. I'm a being with a family, with ideas, with thoughts, with a home. So the yogis say, you don't know. But there's, they say that everything is a personality. Not just you. In one sense, if I look at you, you're just a big lump of earth and flesh, water, blood, whatever you, whatever you want to, whatever lens you want to look at, the periodic table, earth Chinese elements, Indian elements, however they're going to look at matter. But you're not. The yogis say you're not that. You just have that. So they say the earth itself is a being, it's a living being. And all the animals are living beings. And outside of the earth, there is living forces. All the planets are beings. That's why there's, here's a, get ready for a detour. That's why if you study Jyotish or Vedic astrology, there's different mantras to the different planets. Because the planets affect your karma. So some people want to, they realize, man, like I would love to get your chart done. Because when you have people like yourself or even myself on a lesser level where we have some types of extremes in our life, you can read it in their chart. It becomes very obvious. Same with criminals. It's in their chart. Really? If you really knew how little control we have of our life, it's shocking. Now this, what kind of astrology is this? They call it Jyotish or Vedic astrology. I'm no astrologer. I just have had my charts done a lot. It's an ancient system. It's not based on the sun. It's based on the moon. And what do they need to know? They need to know your birth time, your longitude and latitude of where you're born. Like for example, I was born on, I'll tell you a good story. Do you mind? Sure. I went to a great astrologer once and these guys were real like simple, humble, like humble people. And he lived in an ashram and I said, I want to know my chart. And he just said, I'm not very good. I said, come on, I've heard you're the best. He said, I'm not very good. And he said, but I will tell you what Parasara thinks of you. Now Parasara was the father of the person they say scribed or spoke all the Vedas, Vyasadeva. It was one of the great sages of India. So Parasara was his father and he's responsible for Jyotish or what's called the Hara Shastras, where they get the word Hara-scope from. And these are all to do with studying the luminaries, studying celestial bodies and to pinpoint you in relationship to them. So he said, well, at a certain period when you were born, there was a rising sign, a rising star and from that star we can calculate your chart. So he asked, I gave him all my statistics, birth time and date and longitude and latitude. And then he opened up these books that he had on his shelf. This guy doesn't know me from Adam. He just goes, this is the star of music and spirit and you will spread music and spirit throughout the world. Whoa. It's pretty right on. I've been through some very powerful astrologers, palm readers, mystics who don't even need your palm. They say they're astrologers or they say they're palm readers. They look right in your face and tell you all about your life. And I'm not one. I've met many who could blow your mind. You have to be someone who doesn't know who I am. Yeah. Well, it's harder for you, but I'm less known. But in India, no one knows the other way. But I don't want to have to go to India. You know, it's one of those things and I'm not one of these new age guys. I'm a New York skeptic. Okay. But you believe in Ganesh. No, I believe Ganesh could be. Could he be? Sure. Sure he could be. I think most likely people are taking Soma and Ganesh appeared to them then. Or that could happen too. Because I've seen things on psychedelic experiences that are very similar to that, very similar to a god. I think psychedelia can bring you into this otherworldly realms. And even according to the Vedic concept is there's other realms and everything's divine and everything's a person and there's 33 million gods. And then of course, and that's within the material universe. And the material universe has higher planets. It has lower planets like the Christians would say hell. But they talk about whole mandalas or discs of layers of hells. But they, differences from Christianity, and I don't know where the Christians actually got it from or when it was added or subtracted, but the Vedas teach about none of them are eternal. Meaning you don't stay there. Just like we don't stay here. We're just sort of doing time on this planet. We do time. We learn a lesson. You get some karma. You get some good or bad karma. And if you don't learn your lesson, just like jail, if you don't learn your lesson, sometimes you get added, an added sentence. What do they call that? You get two life sentences. But sometimes people are out early. They get paroled. They get pardoned. Or they just say, okay, you're in charge of the library. You're not dangerous. You're not a threat. And we're going to let you out. You're good behavior. So according to how we behave in this world, we're perpetuating ourselves. We're going way low. We're sort of go high. And people go high all the time. It's impressive. And you take that micro and put it on a macro as well. And to the degree that you sort of don't learn your lessons, you just, that's okay. I've noticed in my own life, if I don't learn a lesson, I got to get that same lesson again.