Robert Thurman

It's a technique called universalizing, which I've been looking forward to sharing on the podcast since we started.

It's worth going deeper into what Robert Thurman calls the root delusion, the self-centered delusion giving rise to attachment and aversion that we discussed in episode 15, Am I More Important Than Everyone Else in the Universe? That's a cheeky title, but sadly I think it's true that it's the way that I and a lot of us view the world from the lens of what it can do for me.

One of the first steps to countering the delusions that are at the root of our suffering is simply to become aware of the workings of our mind without getting caught up in them.

Like Venerable Rubina Korten says, don't believe everything you think.

And when they don't, I get upset, angry, frustrated, sad.

Sometimes I even fall into hopelessness or despair when faced with a large setback like a big financial problem, a big fight at work, political decisions I strongly oppose, or conflicts with the people I love most.

Robert Thurman has a great way of explaining why our emotions overcome us like this when things don't go our way.

He says that we can each discover this root delusion of ignorance inside ourselves from which all our other delusions emerge.

And Govinda is in that category, you know.

So there's a great introduction to one of the copies of The Way of the White Clouds written by Robert Thurman, Uma's dad, who was very well respected within the Buddhist community in general.

I had no idea she was connected.

Who'd

Yeah.

Robert Thurman passed away last week or at this point.

I don't know when the podcast is coming out, but in the recent past.

And so we had I reposted a couple episodes a few days after he passed to the YouTube and.

And so it's a very concrete sort of example of what this looks like in real life, you know, which is, you know, which is cool to be able to.

you know yeah like be a beneficiary of

that we admire you know like a gallic ripache or llama glenn mullen or uh robert thurman they did a lot for us right

yeah

So imagine if there's a David bot, right? So there's a David bot that somebody asked a question from and this bot.

Well, you know, Bob Thurman was working on that right before he passed away.

That's

right.

And in this scene, though, he's receiving some kind of counsel from this oracle and involves a trance state and some ceremonial and ritual components to it.

But I was listening to an interview that you had with Robert Thurman with Tibet House a few years ago.

And this was around the launch of your children's book that we'll get into a little bit later.

But I remember hearing that you had... visited the Nechon Monastery and that you had also seen an oracle trance state before.

Tonight, my guest is Cheryl Costa.

Cheryl is the author of the UFO Sightings Desk Reference, United States of America, 2001 to 2015 and UFO Sightings Desk Reference, United States of America, 2001 to 2020.

Cheryl Costa is originally from New York State.

She is a two-service military veteran, United States Air Force and United States Navy, and a retired professional from the aerospace industry.

You can push it and give it a dimple, change its reality.

Very accomplished lamas, like the guy you were talking about, and some of the lamas that I met in monastery, okay? They're in deep, quiet meditation.

And to quote the author Robert Thurman, they are literally meditating at a level where they are changing the machine code of reality.

Okay.

Or, and again, you know, I, I, I'm trying to be open to different traditions, but I'm just pointing out there must be some misunderstanding, or I'm gonna transform myself into nothing.

And this is a big thing, obviously, for Robert Thurman, too.

Late, great Bobby T, it just occurred to me.

He would make this point a lot, too.

[laughs]

Mm-hmm.

It's a Robert Thurman-ism in a way, right?

Mm-hmm.