Alright, so as you all know that we are planning a amazing new expedition to Angkor Wat and Vietnam next month, right. So, what we are doing is I want to give you a quick story about the Vietnam Cambodia story, so that you get an understanding of why this is so important for us to understand, especially as Indians, because from both sides we have given them the culture that's emerged there, you know. And so I'll just show you, this is the original drawing that the French, the explorer, what was the name, Henry Mohot, he gave this original drawing in the 1860s.

So, he gave this, it was discovered about 300 years ago, covered in jungle, they found this amazing city, right, like right out of some mythology, like they thought it was Xanadu, they thought it was all kinds of things. And the French explorers, they discovered this city because it was a French territory for a long time. They discovered this city that had been lost.

People didn't even know it existed. Even the locals told stories about not to go there because there were cobras and snakes and you shouldn't go there, you know. So, they started digging and they found this vast city, Angkor Wat, which we now know as Angkor Wat.

And so they discovered that there was an ancient kingdom there, right, that was the most advanced, that even more than, it was the largest temple complex in the world. You know, nobody had seen such a vast space before. So, it was an incredible discovery and to understand how this fits in, can I get up? Okay, alright.

So, to understand how this fits in, this is where we are, right. And at that time, let's say, turn of the century, second century, third century AD, the Guptas were in power here and down here the Pallavas were in power in the south, right, in Tamil Nadu. And these Pallavas along with sailors from the east-west coast would sail across every monsoon.

They would sail across and they would do business with what we call Indonesia, Thailand, all those countries now, right. There was huge business activity going on. And what we find is that they would sail across and they gave the name to this place, Phunan and in India it was known as Suvarna Bhumi, right, which is the space of the suns, right.

So, you know, and they used to sail right across there and this is Phunan, which today is Thailand, Cambodia and that is Vietnam, there. That one there, yeah. So, they used to sail across and they would bring their culture, they would bring their ideas, they would bring it and they would stay with these people for six months and then sail back with the new winds of the monsoon again.

So, it was a, it wasn't a journey of just go drop off goods and come back. They would go and they would bring all their Pallava culture, they would bring all their Hinduism, their, and Pallavas were not Shaivites like later Cholas were. They were Vaishnavs.

They were Vishnu worshippers, right. So, very interestingly, these were the kind, they actually got their shipping knowledge, a lot of the larger ships from the Romans because the Phoenicians and Romans would come around the coast and buy goods and services. So, they'd come and in fact, they say that most of the sailors that were floating then were of Arab origin.

So, they weren't like local Tamil sailors. These were imported experts from the Roman Empire who would come and carry these goods and big ships across, you know. Because the local sailors would go along the land.

They wouldn't go across the sea. But the Romans knew and the Phoenicians knew how to travel the sea. So, the early Indian ships looked like this.

They would go like this, these kind of ships across the water. So, they were quite an advanced civilization. It wasn't just, you know, backward civilization back then, right.

And what they would do is they would come and they would come to what is now known as, we call Funan, which was this whole area, which today is Thailand, Cambodia. And then this was a different country, Vietnam, right. Kampa, it was called.

Cochin, China, it was known. Champa, it was called, right. Lam Ap was the Chinese name for it.

So, very two different cultures occurred. One, this culture became completely Indianized. And this culture was completely China.

Yeah. So, this is just like India and China in the north. Same here.

India and China, right, literally. This went Hindu, Vaishnav first, then Shiva culture, then Theravada Buddhism, right. And this went Chan, Confucianism, Chan Buddhism, right, Dhyan, Zen, what we call Zen now.

This went into all kinds of things. So, when we go further, we see that around 800 AD, the Pallavas are now fading. The Cholas are coming into being in India, right.

But the Pallava culture is very strong. In fact, the Cholas continued the Pallava culture. It wasn't a new culture.

And what they found was that a group came into being in Cambodia area, Thailand area, called the Khmer. They were already local, but they suddenly organized and they became the dominant force there. Because they took all the Indian mythologies and they became kings like Ramayana and Mahabharata and they did the whole thing.

And they became these kings, you know, great kings. And it was a few hundred years later that this king, right, married. The story goes that Kambu Swayambhuva was a Brahmin from Tamil Nadu, comes and marries a local princess called Naga Meru, Soma.

And so this is metaphorical because Soma is Amrit of the gods. And this was the dragon kingdom. It was known as the dragon kingdom.

And the great Indian king comes. And so we're just tracing the origins of the Khmer culture in Cambodia. And so this great king comes and he meets, the marriage occurs between India and the local Khmer tribe.

And the marriage, which was called Kambu Swayambhuva, because of the marriage between Kambu and Meru, it becomes the Khmer. This is the story of the Khmer. So India and the local tribes get married and we have this marriage of two kingdoms in a way, culture in a way.

And you'll see it everywhere. You see that the Pallavas were Vaishnavites. So their headgear, their outfits, everything was copied by the Khmer kings.

So wherever you go, you will see Vaishnav culture, Vaishnav in Cambodia. Even though it's a Buddhist state now, Theravada Buddhism. Theravada, you know the difference between Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism? I'll explain it to you.

Mahayana Buddhism says that I can become Bodhisattva right now, me. I don't have to be a monk. I can become the Buddha.

I can achieve nirvana in the world, living in the world. It's the Mahayana school. Theravada school says it's the little raft.

You have to become a monk. You give up the world. You row the little monk across the ferry boat and you go to the other side.

That is Theravada means little boat. I mean, you go with the little boat and Mahayana means everybody can be Buddha. Right.

And the great divide occurs because Mahayana became Tibetan Buddhism, becomes Nalanda, becomes China, Zen. All these are Mahayana schools. That means anybody can become Buddha nature, you know, that Buddha mind.

This is a great thing. So, but we have a story of Vaishnav culture first. So you can see this is Vaishnav palava painting of a court ritual in 4th, 5th century.

And this is modern day Khmer kingdoms, right? Still wearing the same gear, the same outfit, the same temple structures, everything. And you see it in the architecture. This is Mahabalipuram near Chennai and which was a architectural playground.

All the kings used to design things there and then take it to other parts of India. You see the same thing in the Khmer, right? Almost identical, right? Except some variations occurred. And you see it with the palava style of frescoes and murals.

Same thing you see there, right? But it gets that Khmer touch. So it goes oriental, it goes mystical, lot more snakes and serpents. And I'll explain snakes and serpents why so much more, you know.

The carvings have been to Angkor and the sculptures are not like, there's not enough depth. There's no relief. There's no relief, correct.

So there was a reason for that because the stone was not very strong. So you had much stronger stone in the south of India that could sustain deep sculpturing, right, on that stuff. So, in fact, today the UN is preserving it because it's falling down and crumbling, you know.

Because they have to maintain that sandstone, limestone and sandstone, things like that. That whole area is full of limestone, you know. So it's not good for big sculptures.

They wanted to be like the Indians, but they couldn't match the stones. That's not the case on the Angkor on the top, which is the Buddha faces. Correct.

And you see that, but even they are crumbling like a lot. The Buddha faces, the Datta faces, the three-headed Datta, right, which is the three-faced ones, right. They're aging not well.

They're not aging well, you know. These are only a thousand years old. But yeah, they survive.

There's a lot of stone sculpture there also. And so around then a remarkable king comes to power in the Khmer, right, around the 11th century called Suryavarman II. And he is the Ashoka of the Khmer.

He brings it all together. You know, he brings this entire Khmer culture together. And he builds this empire that we call the Khmer Empire now, right, which was Thailand, Cambodia, all of that region was the great Khmer Empire.

In fact, right into Indonesia and all of those countries there also. But the Chinese part of Vietnam and Champa remains Chinese. So you have this very line dividing Hindu and Buddhist, Chan Buddhist culture, you know, very interesting line, right.

And what you get also is that, I mean, this, this is what it's like to be there. You know, it is just incredibly beautiful. You know, I went in my 20s.

I haven't been for a long time, but it is so stunning, you know. And in fact, the day we are going on is the vernal equinox, is we'll see the sunrise as you're meant to see it. And I'll explain the mysticism of that is very powerful, you know.

So the architecture is built on five Mount Meru's across the whole thing. And Meru is a symbolic mountain, which in the Vaishnav, Shaivism, Kundalini culture, Meru represents the mountain of ascent to spiritual enlightenment. As you go up the body, as you go up the Mount Meru and the five Meru's represent you're overcoming the five senses and you're rising to this amazing enlightenment that occurs.

So Meru's are meant to be that bridge, right, between you, heaven and earth is that bridge. And a Meru has a point at the top, which is called the Bindu right here, which is our Sahasrara right here. So we are a Meru.

We build Meru's. We worship Kailash as a Meru. We see each mountain as a holy mountain.

And then who lives there at the top? Shiva. So we understand that Shiva is that consciousness that we're tapping into. But wherever you live in the heart, you're with Vishnu, right? You're dealing with a Vaishnav culture.

So the Khmer understood that and you see that in the architecture also. So when you look at this beautiful place, the design is they've created these artificial lakes and ponds and goes right up to the mountains in the north here, which I'll explain why. And at the south is big water river and lakes down here, right? So north to south axis and east to west is very important for them.

They were very obsessed with east and west. And if you look carefully, you see that this is exact east, the main architecture, the main structures. And why was this? Because there was an obsession for astronomical and astrological reasons to measure the sunrise at two particular days of the year.

In fact, the entire architecture was designed to look at the sun like this. So on 21st March and on 21st September, if you stand along the King's Way, the arcade that goes into the temple, you will see the sun rise along the temple structure and go up. And I've seen this in five places in the world.

In Mexico, here, I go and I chase the sun. I'm a sun chaser. And Easter Island, you can see it.

Egypt, you can see it. You know, you see this obsession with equinox, because that is the day that the sun is perfectly east. Right.

That is the day. So we want to focus on that day. But there's a reason for that, because they are looking for what star systems are in the sky on that day.

So that the sun goes through a cluster of stars and that's their sign of where they are in their civilization. So we come to that. So just look at that.

Imagine that a culture that spent today equivalent of billions of dollars just to build a perfect kingdom on earth that reflected heaven. This was their entire. So the only other place we see this in the world, not in India, you know, Madurai a little bit, not too much.

Right. You see it in Egypt. You see it in Mexico.

You see it in this kind of sun obsessed, star obsessed culture. Right. So let's look at that a little bit.

And I want to. This is where we get into the mysterious. And it's very interesting.

The obsession with the ancients was with the Milky Way. This beautiful Milky Way. So if you can imagine the science that was going through their minds at that time, they would imagine that they saw certain things going on in the heavens with their limited tools and architecture and whatever they had.

And the way they saw it was that there were seven moving bodies in the heaven that moved regularly. Sun, Moon, Venus, all the planets. And they couldn't see Uranus and all that.

So they saw seven. They saw seven moving bodies that tracked the sky daily, monthly, yearly. It just happened.

And there seemed to be this background of immense stars. Right. That created the heavens that seemed to be permanent.

But they were so obsessed that they were watching whether they were permanent or not. And they found they were slightly moving. They would wobble.

They would be a little one degree. Every 72 years it will move one degree. Can you imagine 72 years of measurement they were doing to see how many has it moved? And they built all the architecture to map that, to see whether it would move a little bit, whether it would go a little bit more.

And we did that in India as well. They were obsessed with star signs and things like that. I'll explain that.

It's called precession. I mean, we know the science now, but imagine what they were thinking. So the stars were, look, everybody was looking for something permanent in the universe, right? We still are.

We want that one single source, that one point where it all happened. And the problem occurs is that everything seems temporary. I'm born, I live, I die.

A planet born lives, dies. Nature comes and goes. The moon lives and dies.

The sun lives and dies, goes under the earth. You know, it's like continuous cycles of nature going on from me to the macro. And human beings have been looking for that permanent one not star that will give them hope that there is something permanent in the world that I'm going towards, right? And even then they failed because they saw it moving.

And then it became. So what they decided that was, we see it through, and I'll explain this. In Angkor Wat, wherever you go in Angkor Wat, you will see this architecture, this relief.

It's called the Samudra Manthan. You've all heard of Samudra Manthan. Samudra Manthan is the great asuras and devas in order to save the amrit for the world, to get the amrit for the world, decide for the first time, darkness and light work together to churn the ocean of milk so that this amrit will rise.

And part of the amrit rising has to create poison first, and then the amrit will come. And the Naga, the serpent, is the snake that you pull and you're pulling and pushing. And you see this all the time with Vishnu dancing there in the middle.

And then Shiva comes and drinks the poison and saves mankind and gives them amrit through Ganga. This is the mythology of the amrit, right? It's a beautiful mythology. What most people don't realize is that it is the mythology about the Milky Way.

It is the Milky Way. And we have been obsessed with the Milky Way, the number of planets in it, stars in it, how it is churning, you know. And the belief was that from the middle of the Milky Way, Ganga would come into Shiva's locks and into the earth.

This was a beautiful idea. And wherever you go in Angkor Wat, you're going to see this over and over again. So this was a group that were focused on the sun.

And they also were focused on the stars. They were looking. So there was an astronomical cult that existed for them.

And we only have that in a few places in India, not everywhere. So the belief was that, and this occurs throughout the ancient world, was that the what is out there as above is also in here. So below, as below.

We've talked about this, this idea that I am a microcosm of everything that's going on out there. This is the fundamental thesis upon which Indian mysticism, Egyptian mysticism, Merkaba, Kabbalah, all are built upon. This fundamental thesis is that I am a perfect replica of the entire universal forces out there.

So if I can know my body and my architecture and my city and my cosmos, I am in harmony with that universal idea. So everything was designed to bring harmony between you and the cosmos and you and your internal biology. So whether you call it Kundalini or whether you call it Milky Way galaxy, you're trying to create alignment, harmony.

So these people went to the full extent of that harmony. They believed they were going to create a kingdom forever. Perfect harmony between heaven and earth.

Can you imagine? What a great idea. You can just imagine that some secret astronomers and Brahmins were sitting there with them and saying, Maharaja, you know, you need to build this city like this. Because if I build it for you like this, you will be kingdom of heaven on earth and you'll be the king forever.

Thalia. How much do you want? Here's crores of rupees. Go build it.

And show me a golden jacket also. So this is Jyotishis and all have been doing this for since the beginning of time. But you can see how they convinced him, you know.

And it must have been a society of astronomers that was global because they knew about this stuff all over the world. Right. I'll just show you.

So this is an interesting diagram. This shows you that they believe that the earth energy is reflected around the earth as in the body. So there was a strong belief in this.

And we see this. And there's an ancient belief called ley lines that we see throughout the world. Right.

And we are seeing it more and more now. Researchers like Graham Hancock and Robert Boval have been traveling around the world, looking at correlationships to longitude, latitude and sacred places. So we find that there is a curve and a geometry that seems to unite many of the sacred places that are considered ancient or astronomical.

So there seems to be some knowledge, right, that was more global than we give it credit for. And it's spread over thousands of years also. So you can.

I'll show you. I'll show you. So Teotihuacan in Mexico, Easter Islands, pyramids of Giza.

Right. And they were so obsessed that this is staring out at equinox sun. They're all staring at me.

Look. And when they dug down, they found full bodies of them. So these were not sitting on the sand.

They were actually standing on the ground and then they were buried later. Right. So they were full standing men with hats on looking, you know.

So Graham Hancock and all are trying to figure out the mysteries. But they found that of these three, four major sites are astronomically aligned pyramids, India. India also has them like we have ley lines going through Kailash, Mansurabad.

We have ley lines going through Arunachala. So all the great Jyotilingas tend to be in places where these ley lines cross. Right.

That was in my research was that they, if you draw a line from Kailash, Mansurabad, straight down in longitude, right. Within one degree are all the most sacred sites of India and Shiva worship. So Jyotilingas placed exactly what they thought? No, it's no more than that.

No, if you look at the Jyotilingas, they're not that, it's not that much. No, only Kedarnath and one or two others down south are on that alignment. The ones mostly are in Gujarat and Maharashtra, which is about seven, eight degrees off.

And this side is about two degrees off. We're looking at the astronomy and astrology of Angkor Wat and what it meant. Right.

And how it matches to ancient sites around the world. And it belongs to a sacred culture of astronomy that correlated heaven on earth and an obsession with trying to bring heaven to earth. So forget all that for a second.

Just imagine that they built this entire city in about 35 years. So this is not Pyramid of Giza that took, you know, a hundred years or something or Taj Mahal. This is an entire city, the largest temple structure in the world.

35 years. Right. That means it was a national effort.

People came from all over. Craftsmen from Pallava dynasty, craftsmen from Cholas, you know, architects, astronomers, astrologers were there for like 35 years. Can you imagine? They brought artisans from India.

They brought artisans from all over the world to come and work there. It must have been an amazing effort. We think, ah, it just happened.

No, no, no, no. This is serious planning. Right.

And the obsession is serious. So what I want to show you is that we talked about the Milky Way. Right.

Two forms occur in Angkor Wat a lot. One is the Naga, the serpent, the seven hooded serpent that comes, which is both Kundalini, right, which is the opening up of the serpent over your head. And it is also astrological.

And I'll explain that to you. And you will see that the astronomical also represents the churning of the Milky Way. The Samudra Manthan is going on here.

So wherever you go, every bridge in Angkor Wat and Angkor Tham has this. It means these people were obsessed with it. This is not some accidental, ah, chalo ek Samudra Manthan laga dekhte hai yahan pe.

No, no, it didn't happen like that. This is obsession. Right.

That means they were mapping stars in earth. Entire system was going to map. So when you look at it, Graham Hancock and others have drawn a map now, that like Egypt is designed to pyramids of Giza to the star of Orion, Orion's belt, same thing, we are aligned exactly to Dracos.

Right. The star system called Dracos. And the alignment of the architecture of Angkor Tham all the way, the journey that the kings would take was reflecting exactly of the Draco system.

Right. And the reason being Draco is called the dragon. Right.

And the dragon is the serpent. And so the Khmer people saw themselves as the serpent kingdom. They brought the serpent down to earth, you know.

So beautiful, no, this whole thing. So when you go to a place like this and you see these understanding of these mythologies, it makes so much new sense and ideas to you. And that's why we want to do it that way.

Another thought was crossed my mind, Indians west and east. Is the white house also the west wing and east wing? We are going to do a sacred tour of Masonic sites of the world. I'll do that soon.

When we, if I take you to Masonic sites, you will be blown away how man-made power is created. You know how to induce power. So there was a belief and there is some validity to it, that if you aligned yourself perfectly to these star systems and internally, you will get new power.

You know, you create power. And that kingdom did last for 600 years, you know. So all said and done, they dominated Khmer.

The Mayans did it in Mexico. The Aztecs did it. The people have done it.

Right. So there was this. And also psychological, that if you believe that this is your power, you will be powerful.

You know, if you believe your kundalini is waking up, it will wake up. It will wake up for you because it's waiting for you to say hello. And then it comes.

It's halfway. It's 50% faith, 50% grace. So the cosmos comes down to meet you when you reach up to it.

This is the importance. So when you build the building, grace will come. Hello, you want power? Theek hai beta, have some power.

And it's a very funny, it's a funny power. But can you imagine what faith it takes to spend billions of dollars like this? Can you imagine going to Modiji or Trump and saying, I can build you a city, right? That'll give you 600 years of power, you know. But I won't win next election.

What about next election? Their vision had to be 500 years, you know, hundreds of years, you know. And that's why they were dictatorships and kings. Mythology.

The stories keep you. The way you may sustain a mythology like Egypt did for 2000 years is mythology. Is that you believe that the pharaohs are connected and you are a part of the system and you go storytelling.

We're a storytelling species, you know, whereas, you know, Trump is telling new stories now. All right, let me continue because I want to. This is an exciting adventure.

The other thing I want to share with you is that as above so below also relates to the body. Right now in the Kundalini idea, the Vishnu culture is the heart. Brahma is the Yoni, Vishnu is the heart and Shiva is the third eye and the sits here.

So if you were to do an architecture, you would have Brahma at the bottom, the land of the Nagas and snakes and water. You'd have Vishnu at the heart, which is the power of man's continuity in the world. And you'd have the sacred Buddha, Shiva at the third eye.

Now, this is a map of, I'm sorry, I love these kind of things, right? This is a map of Angkor Wat, which shows the river base where they started. They actually built false rivers to connect it. OK, the kings connected the south.

So the ships would come here from other countries and other places and they would come up here. This is a lake that connects to the main river, the big river and it takes you up. And this is Angkor Wat.

Siem Reap is the commercial center, which is at the Manipura area. You'll see in a second. In fact, let me just show you my picture.

Right. So if we look at it, the base, we'll be going there, is full of fish, snakes and crocodiles down here, the land of the Nagas. You come up here.

This is the commercial center, the Manipura. You come to the heart where the capital lived, where the kings lived, where the temples are. And that is directly connected to the heart.

Right. And then you go up there. So according to this, whatever is up here should represent Shiva.

Right. Predict that and we'll be right. It is the only Shiva temple in the entire kingdom.

Only Shiva temple is about 20 kilometers north. We're going to go there and it's right there. And it looks amazing.

Look at that. You know, this is right out of some fantasy. And it's the middle of a jungle.

Right. And that means that the most sacred place to all the Angkor people was way up there in the jungle, connecting you to your third eye and out into the cosmos. Right.

And then right above that is what? Mountains. Meru. You're again going to the real mountains.

Right. Right there. Right.

There's the mountains. So it's a fascinating story. So my conclusion for Angkor Wat is that it was a culture that was obsessed with the sun, astronomy, power, astrology, and it lasted for hundreds of years.

And it was a Hindu culture. It then became a Theravada culture, which is Buddhism of the monks. So today when you go to Cambodia, it's all monk run.

There's no religion. People come and give devotion to the monks who then talk to the Buddha, whatever you want to do. And they still have names, their kingdoms, their dances, their culture, their food is Indianized.

And it's worth seeing. If you get a chance, if you don't come with us, it doesn't matter. Go see it, you know, just to see what can happen when an Indian idea or mythology gets blown up into a super story.

You know, you can imagine, right? So now I'm going to cross the border. And oh, by the way, this is the water area down south where the Nagas live and the crocodiles live. So Muladhara, Swadhisthana, Manipura is the commercial capital, Anahata, the heart, throat, and then straight up here, Shiva, you know, third eye and then you're off to the higher planes.

So it's a very fascinating cosmology and mythology there that we'll go and check around and look at. All right. Now, Vietnam, completely opposite.

Yeah, please. Shiva, the chances of third eye opening, awakening is a lot better there because of the energy out there. Just like if you go to Arunachala.

The grace of almighty, one is more there to incline to get the grace than over here. So the geological places also exist in India. The Jyotilingas are them.

The Shaktipeeths are them. These are ancient stone and rock and power formations that have comets or meteorites have come with huge power. What is it? Imagine you're going to a geological place where the earth energies are at their peak.

You will trip. You will go on a trip. It'll happen.

You will trip out. Now, when you trip, if you are meditating on that trip, something profound will happen to you. A kundalini awakening, whatever you want to call it.

If you go there with a cynical attitude, you will just come away going, holy crap, what was that? Right. And or if you don't know what it was, right, but it is transformative just by being there. So I've explored these power places.

When you go to Stonehenge, when you go to Egypt, in the King's Chamber, when you go into different places in India, right, Manasarava, Arunachala, right, any of the Jyotilingas you go to, right, some of the Shaktipeeths, oh my God, you know, Tarapeeth, you go down to Dakkineshwar, you know, any of the peeths, right, the energy that's there will send you spinning. Also water sources like Narmada source, Gangotri, those places, you will just go spiraling. You won't even know what's going on.

So imagine now you know how to meditate. You know how to be still and lift your kundalini up and you go to a place like that. What will happen? It'll be like a 40,000 volt bomb will come on you, right.

So you go there to initiate yourself further and further and further, which is more powerful than any drug you can take. Or any Shaktipath you can get from a teacher. It is, these places are, that's why people used to go on pilgrimages in the old days.

Because they'd go to these energy places to get rid of their basic boring life and say there's more, you know. So even, forget God, the super potential of your own mind in those places is what is really the divine, you know. What I can become.

So why do we go to these places? To see what we can become. So now next time you go, it'll be a different trip. Right? This time it was with Land of Seven Rivers, Sanjeev Sanyal's book.

Okay, it guided you. How Indian art was and I sat on one of his steps and I read it to be guided. Very cool.

So now you started the company. So I think that what you have to understand is that psychic transformation, right? Which is what this is, right? Is about you, not about the place. If you have no desire for those things, then you go to that place, it'll be nice.

Pretty. What a beautiful temple, right? Like the people who are going to have two days workshop tomorrow and day after, they would have more, you know, result oriented over there while they have that energy if you do this workshop over there. Those will be open.

This is what you are telling, like. Absolutely. Absolutely.

But we meditate there also. So you can come. We'll do it.

Transformation happens faster if you are willing to practice, right? So you cannot take it just from a teacher, right? A teacher can give you a Shaktipat. I can give you a mantra. I can give you a Shaktipat.

You know, there are teachers who will give you Shaktipat. You come away two, three days, you're intoxicated, right? Then when you come back to the realities of life, unless you are practicing and maintaining that energy level at a higher level, it'll deplete. It goes down.

So you want to pick it up again. But once you get to a certain point, like after practice, it comes here and then it stops. It'll stay up only.

And that's where you want to get to. The heart. That's why these people built all these things so they could sit in that.

And apparently the Khmer were not ruthless. They were very kind. There was a loving kingdom.

People loved their kings. It wasn't like torture, like the Mayans didn't kill everybody and sacrifice the enemies. No, no, no, no.

Very pious. And that's why they brought that's why they brought Theravera Buddhism because they wanted that Buddhist peace, you know, And it was so it was heart based. It had to be like that, you know.

They're very loving people. They're so nice. Okay, let me just finish Vietnam because otherwise we'll be here for a while.

So Vietnam, I want to take you on a different journey. Okay. Vietnam comes from China.

Right. It is a China. It is an X. It was a colony of China.

It was the lower China. It was it was called, you know, South China really. It was known as that.

It was known as that. And the reason being is that, you know, you see that if you go there, you will see immense Buddhist art and immense Confucian and Taoist culture. Right.

So when we go to China, just look at look at this divide. Right. This is influenced by India.

Everything here because India is right there. Right. This is southern China.

So Chinese culture came in from fifth century B.C. even earlier. It has been Chinese. Right.

And Confucianism was at its peak in the fifth century. So that came in early. Buddhism came in third, second century, came in early.

Now Buddhism that went to China was different from Buddhism that we practice in Sri Lanka, Theravada and all and Cambodia. Very different. Right.

It was a Mahayana Buddhism. So we had three cultures in China. I'll just explain.

One is Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. Lao Tzu, Confucius and the Buddha. This is the medicine Buddha.

Now, the way it worked was that China had codes of conduct, ancestor worship, but no God. It was not a God divinity culture. It was never a God culture.

But they believed in ancestors, in merit, in doing good. Right. And Confucianism was built on that, that the moral principles by which you live, right, they create the world that you want to have, the Confucian culture.

Buddhism came into China, right, from India, right, third century onwards through Silk Road trade and through Nepal that way. And it came in through translations of scriptures. Then the Chinese scholars came to Nalanda, took back scriptures and they took.

And then a great teacher called Bodhidharma, right, took, this man, took what we call Dhyan Buddhism to China and it became Chan Buddhism. And Chan Buddhism then later became Zen, later became all these schools of Buddhism that came out of it. He was from Tamil Nadu also.

Isn't that Tamil Nadu connection to everything? And he was a Tamil thing. And he is also the father of Kung Fu. He's also the father of the Shaolin temple.

He's the great Indian proselytizer who went and brought Buddhism in the third century A.D. to China. And from that, the great Chan school of Buddhism started, which was called the five mountain school. Shaolin and four other mountains, the great mountains of China.

And it affected everything on Chinese culture. But Confucianism and Buddhism and before Confucianism was Taoism, was nature pantheistic worship like our Shakti and Tantra, which is that everything is energy. I am an energy being.

I do energy work. I can heal with this energy. I have to flow with this energy, this Shakti, this Prana, this Qi, they call it Qi, Qi, this Qi culture, Qi culture.

So, Qi Gong, these things all come from Tai Chi, Kung Fu, all come out of the Taoist culture. But the three melded in China. So, a single household could have Taoist practices, Confucian values and also Buddha.

Right? In fact, they had pictures of all three all the time in every house. It was just in case. Because Chinese believe in luck.

That, you know, what if bad luck comes? Let's do all three. Like we do all the, all the devis and bhagwans will be in our house. We do the same thing.

You know, sabko Ganesh ko bhi karo, Lakshmi ko bhi karo, yeh bhi karo, yeh bhi karo, yeh sabko. Same thing, the Chinese also, but they do not believe in deity. Meaning, no supreme Brahman, no Shiva, no Brahma, no Vishnu, no cosmology, no Tantra, no.

But man can control the cosmic energy, bring it in. He can then thrive in the world and become strong and become focused. He can then do good in the world, meritocracy.

You have to do good, try not to do bad, Confucianism. And you must walk the Mahayana path, that at every moment you should strive to become Buddha. That means compassion, kindness, center, meditation.

So these three cultures, boom, fused in Chinese culture. So very different values from what was going on in Cambodia. Cambodia was intricate cosmology, right? That the body, the goddesses, the stories all make you stronger.

In fact, our Hindu goddess system and God system is the most elaborate. The Chinese one is much simpler. You know, do good, meditate, you know, simple.

What dictates China to be moral and expert? Diet, climate, diet, climate, it's colder, it's further north, right? It's a colder culture, right? You'll see all colder cultures are very practical, less God, right? All colder cultures, right? They go to Siberia, there's no God. There's just shamanism and meat, right? You know, and things like that, right? Why is there no goodness without almighty? Why is there no goodness? Almighty is a concept, right? Even in Tantra, we don't follow an almighty, right? The Hindu idea or any idea is that there is this source of where I come from, where everything comes from, right? I am the same as that source, but I've covered with clouds and I can't see, right? So, if I am able to unfold, I will see my true self in the face of God, right? Now, that is the explanation of all religion, right? Whether it's Judaism or Christianity. But what happens is that the Judeo-Christian tradition went with a different model that God is outside of us, right? So, we have to surrender to that power and then it will forgive us and welcome us back into the light, right? Indian culture said no.

You are God. You just don't remember or know it. So, wake up.

How do you wake up? Yoga, dhyan, puja, bhakti, all these traditions wake you up to your divine nature, right? Correct? So, when you do that, everything is a practice to go to that divinity. Whether you do yoga, whether you do tantra, whether you do, you know, gurumukhi, whether you do any tradition, right, you are going to follow. You know, what is Sikhism? Sikhism is a bhakti tradition, right? Shabad.

That means you're going to hear the sound of God, right? It's going to come to you as sound, right? Then light will come and then, ah, Vaiguru, right? That is the whole principle. Forget all the other stuff. It's all in India's PhD program.

Everything else is that detail, padak, straight to that, right? Same thing with all of these cultures. But the Chinese went the other way. They said human beings have to survive in the world and be good and try and stay moral and just and… Because Chinese, they beat people regularly, you know.

It's a very punishment culture, you know. Not divine punishment, man-made punishment, moral codes, moral codes. That means, and you will find the culture is such that they're not lazy.

They will get up and do exercise in the morning. They'll all do it. Everybody, literally everybody, even old people.

They'll go out and do their tai chi and whatever they're doing. So, it's a culture of action, doing, you know, luck. And they believe in luck.

What is the governing factor there? The governing factor there is that how did I live my life, right? So, there's no tomorrow, right? There's no hereafter, right? There's no heaven to go to. Yes, when I die, I'll join the ancestors and I'll be able to hang around for a while and then maybe go further and further into the Taoist woods and nature of sorts, right? That's too much. This world, this life, did I make money? Did I do good? Did I help my family? Did I look after everybody? Was I good? These are the guiding principles of the Chinese culture.

Make sense? Which is very different from ours. Because ours is a mukti culture. Ours is a moksha culture.

And ours is a moksha culture, which says that, which is liberation. That means this, actually it's been misinterpreted. Because today it's interpreted as liberation from the attachments to the world.

That's not what it really means. What it means is connection to source. Right? And you can call it divine, you can call it Atma, Paramatma, Paribhuvaneshwari, whatever you want to call it.

Irrelevant. But you are connecting to that which is really you. Right? But what has happened, that is also you.

So, I am supposed to be good to you. I am supposed to be nice. I am supposed to feed you and look after you.

We don't do that. So, if we really went to the core of Indian philosophy, we would treat each other as God. But we don't.

Right? In China, they said, no, forget the divinity. You treat each other well because there is punishment if you don't. And it is good to do it.

And you'll get merit. Right? In this life, you'll get merit. And then you go to the ancestors and thank them and Buddha.

And Buddha will bless you. And you'll be all right. So, it's a very much more productive culture.

No, they don't have an almighty idea. Buddha is the best example of what I can be. Okay, the goodness.

The highest potential in me is Buddha. Buddha mind. Which means I see everybody as one.

To see everything as one. Medicine Buddha is a particular school of tantric Buddhism from Tibet and all, which is a particular set of mantras and tools to bring healing into the body and mind. Yeah, it's a technique.

It's like Tantra. It's a Tara Tantra. We have Tara.

We have things like that. So, you know, I'm a student of Sri Vidya. So, I know this.

So, here you see in Vietnam, ancestor worship. They put incense, they do. So, they pray to their ancestors saying, please guide us, look after us, protect us, look after us.

Right? Big time. They also practice Tai Chi and Qigong everywhere. You see them people doing it in the parks and everywhere.

Just like China, ancestor worship. And you see the monks also everywhere. So, it's an interesting culture of, you know, most… Yes.

Correct? Yes. Which is that, forgive me. It is like going to Jesus and asking for forgiveness or going to Ganesha and asking for plenty.

Or whatever you are going to do. It is their pantheistic way of doing it. You know.

See, in India, our culture is such that Buddhism, Hinduism is the most inclusive of all religions. Because anybody can be a Hindu. You can worship a stone and you are a Hindu.

Right? And you put divine power into it. You look at it and you do the, you know, learn the thing. You can do it.

The Chinese are a little different because they organized it into moral codes of living by. In fact, in India, that's why Buddhism ruled for 600, 700 years. Because Ashoka's ideas was very popular.

That you forget what your local religion is, keep it, but go at the higher dharma level of moral codes, you know. So, China went all out with the moral codes. They said that's the most important thing.

And that's how they work. But there is crime, there is corruption. There is all that in China also.

It is no different. It is not a religious people. But now Christianity is the fastest growing religion in China.

Strange. We'll have to watch that one. Okay.

So, just very quickly. Ancestor worship is fantastic, elaborate temples they have. Right? Confucian temples, where you can go and give thanks to the ancestors and go and do different things.

Huge. Across Vietnam, across China. So, when you see an elaborate temple, it's usually not a Buddhist pagoda.

It is a Confucian ancestor worshipping, you light incense, you thank. And then, and what, but you still find the Buddha there. The Buddha will be there.

And Tao, Lao Tzu will also be there. All there. And next door will be the Qigong centre and the Kung Fu and all there.

Acupressure, everything will be there. So, it's all one shopping mall of spirituality for you, you know. Just like here.

No different when you go to the Brahmins in the South. Same thing, right? Tao is the way. A way.

A path. An energy flow. A way.

Tao means way. Wu, way. Tao is everything.

Namaha, like we say. What do we say? We say namaha, right? Not me, everything. Namaha.

Same principle. Everything is Tao. I have to flow with Tao.

And ha, ha is the sound of Shiva. So, everything is Shiva in our culture. So, that's, I could spend hours on this.

And we're going to see this place also, which is called the Temple of the Thousand Buddhas. That means over like 1,500, 1,600 years, they've been piling Buddhas there. Very much like the Birlas and all have been doing here.

But we have one place where they put all the Buddhas there, right? And so, the bigger the Buddha, the obviously the richer the family that brought it. Things like that. But it became, it's an amazing place.

And, you know, I've not been there for a long time. I want to go. I'm looking forward to going.

And it is really, I mean, I hate to say this because there are beautiful places to meditate for this. But it is like a supermarket of spirituality. But it is beautiful.

It is worth seeing just for the magic of how much meditation became a religion. Buddhism, what is Buddhism? Meditation. Simple.

Meditate and all trouble will go away, all pain will go away, all suffering will go away. Pure. And then when you meditate on the heart, you become a good person.

Beautiful places. The beauty was a very strong part of Taoist culture, of Zen Chan culture, which is that if I see a flower bloom, I see Buddha. I see the nature of the universe, you know.

So they're obsessed with beauty in parks, in buildings, in centers. You know, you find the streets very clean in China, in Vietnam. The people are obsessed with, you know, yeah, the toilets will be filthy, but the streets will be clean.

You know, people try and keep beauty, you know, even in the apartment buildings, you will see people put little flower. You know, there's a kind of culture which the Japanese have even more for the Zen culture, which comes that I have to be reminded all the time of my Buddha nature, you know, that I am peaceful, I am beautiful, I am compassionate, I am kind, right? So our Angkor Wat culture was to come and see the majesty of the kingdom, right? I don't know how the ordinary people live. I think they all lived in shacks, right? You know, as you've seen.

You know, it's terrible how they live there. It's just like India, bastis and all. But you go to Vietnam and you go to China or Hong Kong, even the most basti will be, they try and keep it clean.

They try and look after it. You know, there's a kind of obsession with order on earth, order in heaven, you know, that order, order, you know. Energy flow, chi, everything is chi, not chi.

It is bad chi. And they have good chi and bad chi. They have good karma, bad karma.

They always talk in terms of good and bad. You know, this is good karma. This is good chi.

You know, do it. But they are meat eaters. They're not all vegetarians, right? So it's not about vegetarianism that makes for a better person.

So there's no logic to that argument. There's, it is a cultural thing. And it evolved over two, three thousand years, you know.

So their Buddhism is very different from our Buddhism in a lot of ways. But the ideals are the same. And then the culture of Cambodia, of Vietnam, is very much about traditional color and richness.

You see these puppets, you see all these things, right? And then the last place we're going on our journey is this is one of the most beautiful places in the world. This is called Halong Bay, which is, they call it the dragon descended there and just sat. So it's all these little, little mountains.

I've never been. I'm looking forward to this one. And here they have like 1,500 kilometers, square kilometers of this.

And you sail through it. And we're going on this boat and we're going to sail all the way through it for a 24 hour ride just to taste it. I wish I could do a whole week there.

And we'll practice Qigong on the boat. But it is the most spectacular. And in March, it is like it's all limestone mountains.

So they're filled with nature, you know, and it's beautiful. So it's like one of those Chinese paintings you see, you know, of the mountains in the mist, you know, that kind of thing. So you end with this sublime.

So the Chinese culture for me is very much about the sublime, you know, how can I sublimate my life, right? While the Indian culture for me is very much of how can I liberate my soul to its biggest soul, right? So we are obsessed with two different values, right? And my whole life I've lived in both values, you know, because I'm a martial arts. I have fought half my life, right? Aikido, Kung Fu, I've done it all. I do Qigong every day.

So I know what energy is like when you do the martial arts. But then you combine it with the Kundalini. So this is what I wanted to share with you.

I hope that helps. Thank you.