Transcription
[Music] All healing comes from inside ourselves. We have the pH on the outside and the pH on the inside, and all healing is based on love. We really don't understand our own power.
See, I have this kind of idea that when God created this Earth, whoever God is to whoever you are, created the Earth, and it was beautiful, and everything was in place, and the way it should be. But then he created the human being, and he said to us, "Now, you are the only creatures that have the right to choose and have free will. So therefore, I give you dominion over the Earth." And we decided that what he meant by dominion was dominance. And so we've taken over the Earth and done what we darn well choosed with it, and look where we are.
So it's that reality, the inner part of us. We're all reaching for our true humanity, and that true humanity understands that we are the ones who do the healing. See, I have, I've come up with what I call five L's. The first one is life and love. Without life, there's nothing. You know, you can be a, a seed in the Great Pyramid for 5,000 years, and no, nothing happens until love, which is light and water and so on, softens the shell, and the seed opens up, and it grows. Life and love are one unit. They work together. It's like a pregnancy. When a mother is pregnant, she and that baby are one unit. They, what she eats, the baby eats. What she thinks, the baby thinks. It's a constant process. But that aspect of reality that is that baby that is being nurtured and and grown within the womb doesn't really find its own identity until it takes its first breath. So it's this reality that life and love are one unit. As we work with each other that way, we can really understand aspects of ourselves, but aspects of the world around us, and aspects of other people too.
The first L was life and love, so those two came together, and I understood those. But the third one was laughter. Laughter without love is cruel. It's mean. It, it takes families apart. It has caused wars. You know, laughter can be cruel. But laughter with love is joy and [Music] happiness.
The fourth L is labor. Labor without love is drudgery. You just got to go to work. You just got to do this. But labor with love is bliss. It's why singers sing. Why painters paint. It's why I do what I do. It's why you do what you do. It's what makes our heart sing. It's that inner aspect of our being that comes alive and and we'll work five times as hard as we were when we were dragging ourselves along with the drudgery thing.
And the fifth one is listening. Listening without love is empty sound. It just doesn't make any sense. You, you don't understand. But listening with love is understanding. So these five L's have been very helpful for me in structuring and understanding the the philosophy and the life that I'm working with.
And and you've been a teacher. You've, you've been a doctor, but you've been writing books, and you've just put out a new book, The The Well-Lived Life, where you share six secrets. What do you hope people learn from that book? I hope they really understand love being the teacher and love being the essence of healing. My spirit needs to bear witness with thy spirit. We need to let the energy of our being move and help. And as we help others, we help ourselves. It's that life flow that is so essential. Spend time looking for what I call the light. You know, I kind of see myself walking along with a flashlight in the dark on my path, and it's dark, and I can just go as far as my flashlight takes me. But as I'm walking along, sometimes there's a on the side of the path, there's a light that is not very bright. It's just kind of shimmering. If I shine my light over there, all of a sudden that light becomes great. In other words, as we reach out for each other, just with whatever we have, whatever the opportunity is, and you use it and you work forward with it, you're helping people in ways that you know.
I understand that you had a chance to meet one of history's greatest teachers. You met Gandhi at one point. Can you tell me a little bit about that? I was 10 years old. We were leaving India. We were in the train and leaving Ruri to go to Bombay, and I was really sad because I didn't want to leave India, and I knew I had to. And so I'm, I'm sitting in the train with my face plastered against the window, really looking out. In India, there are always crowds of people. Well, there were crowds of people here, but the, there was a man walking in front of this crowd, and he had on a dhoti and a staff, and I recognized him as Gandhi. And he was just walking along, and when he, it came into my sight, and he reached down, a little girl was handing him a flower. He took the flower, and as he looked up, he looked straight into my eyes, and I looked into his. And something happened. I can't explain to you what happened. I can't explain it to anybody. I can't even explain it to myself. But I felt a connection of love that was really, really important to me. That, that was just a moment. I watched him go on with the Salt March that he was doing and so on.
30 years later, my parents were working with Gandhi as India was torn apart with the the partition, Hindus and Muslims, and killing each other. It was just awful. And, my parents had their little medical Jeep, and they took it around to camps and did what they could. When Gandhi was speaking, my dad would get up on on the platform with him, and they would talk together to the people. And Gandhi and my mother and father formed a friendship. Gandhi gave my mother a cashmere blue shawl and my dad a pyjama-put blanket. It was a close enough relationship in the family that this was being done. So I feel that that spark was started when I was 10 years old, and our family connection kept that going. It's recognizing when something like that happens and not shoving it under the carpet, because those are the things that happen. I've, I've, I've looked at people sometimes and been able to feel that, and I don't even know who they are. I recognize Gandhi, but there are a lot of people that are who seem lost and so on. And if you can smile at them and speak to them and and recognize them, people are waiting to be [Music] recognized. That's what Gandhi did when he looked at me and I looked at him. I recognized him, and he recognized me, and that's still with me. This ability to, to really recognize each other as real people, living beings that are in the same world as we are, that love flows, and love has to keep on flowing, or it dies.
What do you hope your legacy is? That love is what really matters. When you get down to the basic, central aspect of what healing is all about, it's about love and life.