Hey, humans. How's it going? Susan Ruth here.
Thanks for listening to another episode of Hey Human Podcast.
This is episode 375,
and I had a conversation with Udo Erasmus.
You may know Udo as a bestselling author.
He's the co-founder of Udo's Choice,
which you see in grocery stores all over the place.
He's the guy who invented flaxseed oil. How's that for ?
An invention? Uh, well,
we'll talk about all of that on another episode later on.
For this one, we get straight into the heart and soul of humanity,
and we chat about his take on how to move the needle to kindness, compassion,
self-love, and awareness of the energetic force that connects us all.
He tells a couple of really great stories starting all the way back from his
time as a child during World War ii and some really phenomenal
experiences he has had in his life on the planet.
Really interesting guy. Fascinating conversation.
He's gonna come back for a part two to talk about the health food aspect of his
life, but we got really into the,
the depth of the spirit on this one.
I want to recommend this week, uh, reading the book,
good Omens by Neil Gayman and Terry prt,
and then immediately go and watch the series on Amazon,
season one and season two. I just finished season two.
I don't get paid to say it. I'm gonna say it because I love it and I mean it,
it's so freaking good. I absolutely loved it. I'm also,
I've been devouring the COR O'Connor Mysteries by
William Kent Kruger, really enjoying those as well.
So if you're looking for some fun reads or fun watch stuff, that's,
that's what I recommend. Check out. Hey, human podcast for links.
And to learn more about my guests in the show,
check out Susan ruth.com to learn more about me and my other artistic endeavors,
follow Susan Ruth and hey, human podcast on social media.
Find my albums on Spotify, apple music, Amazon music,
wherever you get your music.
And check out my relationships and sex show with sexologist and healthcare
practitioner, Mara Edelman. It's on YouTube under Are We There yet?
Podcast show rate review, and subscribe to, Hey,
human podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
And thank you for listening. Be well, be kind, be love,
take care of each other.
Let's lift each other up and make every day a little bit better than
how we found it, if we can. That's, that's what I try to do.
It's not easy. I fail a lot, but, uh,
the effort is is in the try. Yeah. All right.
Enough of that. Let's get into this. Thank you for listening. Here we go.
Udu. Erasmus, welcome to Hey, human.
Hi. Hey, human. Hi.
Hello. Hello. Welcome. Welcome.
The first thing I always ask my guests, where were you born?
How were you raised? ? What, what, how was, how did that shape you?
Yeah.
I, I was born during the Second World War, so I'm 81 years old.
I was born in Poland. It was at that time part of Germany.
And my parents had come from Latvia and Estonia, and if you know,
history or politics in 1938,
Hitler and Stalin made a non-aggression pact,
and of which said they were gonna f they were not gonna fight each other.
Of course, they broke the pact a few years later, but they signed the pact.
And as part of the pact, Latvia,
which is where my parents lived, went to the Soviet Union,
and part of Poland went to Germany.
But there was nobody from Latvia or Poland at the meeting.
They just took it because they were big, right?
So my father loved the Russians as pe as people, human beings.
They have a lot of heart and a lot of,
lot of depth of feeling hated communism,
because it took everything away from everybody.
And he owned a farm and farming was a, was a noble,
a noble profession in Europe more than it is here.
And so he lost his farm and he was given a farm in Poland.
And the Polish farmer who owned the farm that was given to him became his
farmhand.
And that was a little intense apparently until they said, look,
we're living in crazy times.
Let's just run the farm the way a farm needs to be run.
And then they basically ran the farm together and then they helped us get out.
When the communists were chasing us afterwards, they became good friends.
I was born on this so-called stolen farm,
and I was a refugee kid when I was two years old.
We were on horse-drawn hay wagons, on dirt roads with no military presence.
Pretty much all women with young children.
There were dead people and dead horses in the ditches.
And we were fleeing from the communists who were chasing
us in tanks and trucks. But the allies,
the good guys, they were shooting us at us from planes.
They were using refugees as target practice. And it was,
I don't remember a lot 'cause I was only two and a half,
but I remember not feeling safe,
not knowing what I could depend on. 'cause every day was a different story.
And then my mother had six kids, six years and younger in her,
on her horse drawn hay wagon.
And she decided it was winter and she decided it was safer to go through the
fields than to stay on the road. 'cause they weren't shooting on the fields.
They were shooting on the road. 'cause that's where the traffic was.
But she only had two hands,
so she could only to take two of the six kids with her. And the other four,
she left them with a farmer. And he then tried, took us to,
uh, Berlin, um, where,
where we had some relatives, but by the time he got there,
the relatives had already fled because everybody was getting the hell out of
there. And so I ended up in an orphanage with my,
one of my sisters for, I don't know exactly how long.
And eventually her sister found out that she had had to leave a couple
of her kids behind. And she then came back and found us,
and then eventually reunited us with the family. So that was my,
that was like, my first two years were pretty good,
although we were in a war and we could hear the noise. But the farm is pretty,
you know, it's pretty, farms are pretty relaxed places. But this was like,
um,
really shaped me because I basically lived like this for the first 30 years
of my life. Found that just protect, always under protection,
not feeling safe. I got, I really got into books because books are safe.
You know, you can read about a war, but there are no bullets flying.
I already knew about the, the bullets flying and I, so I was very bookish,
loved stories. Stories are just, I mean, you can live,
you can travel the world in books and have so many different experiences
secondhand, of course. And, uh, and then when I was six years old,
we made it out to ger. We were in Germany at that point.
And I listened to adults argue all the time. I mean, they argued all the time.
And it was about really trivial stuff. Like, to me, at six years old,
it seemed trivial. So it must have been like, you know, it was nothing.
And I, I didn't understand why they would argue about such trivial stuff.
And, and it always made me uneasy. This intensity, you know?
It was like more, more that. Right? And it,
and one day when I listened to yet another one of these arguments,
the thought went through my head,
there must be a way that people can live in harmony.
And this little cocky voice that came out and said, I'm gonna find out how,
you know, six years old, don't know how complicated everything is. Yeah, yeah.
Right. You're gonna find out how, how to live in harmony.
But that became my driver.
How many years were you in the orphanage?
Uh, no, it probably was more a matter of weeks,
but still in pretty intense a kid, kid at two years old,
mother's there and then all of a sudden mother's gone.
And you're in a completely strange place. And, uh, and the bond, like the,
the care bond I think got broken to some extent.
Although, you know, we, they did the best they could. I mean,
it was crazy times my parents went through the first World war,
then the Bolshevik Revolution right after that.
Then the depression right after that.
And then the second world war right after that, that was their life in Europe,
in the place where they lived.
And they couldn't get the hell out of there fast enough. So when I was 10,
we immigrated out of Germany to Canada.
It took about six years to get the papers. 'cause bureaucracy is slow .
And so we, then we got out and my father loved the north country,
and he came to Canada, British Columbia.
And then he went north, halfway up the,
up the province, about 500 miles straight.
And he bought himself 112 acres of bushland for
$960. And then we built our own house.
We, uh, built our own barn.
We cleared 40 acres by hand and by horse.
While we didn't have running water, we didn't have indoor heating. Uh,
our outhouse, which we used at 40 below was outside an outhouse,
not an in-house. So we didn't have indoor plumbing or anything like that.
So it was very rustic, very simple, and, uh,
very character building and close to nature, because for them, for my parents,
nature was their church. You know, it's because here's something,
because they didn't, like, my father didn't like big religion or big business,
or big government or big anything big. He big so-called healthcare,
big disease management. He didn't like any of those. And he said, and,
and his slogan kind of was, I just wanna be left alone ,
you know, 'cause I, he'd had it up to here in Europe for so long, right.
So we, we left, uh, Germany in 1952,
and he was born in 1907, so he was like 45 by that point.
So.
Did you then get reunited with the other two siblings?
Yeah, yeah. We, we got, we got reunited, uh, after a few weeks.
And, uh, then we lived together in Germany, uh,
basically over a, uh,
above a stable of horses in a little two room
place. Five, five kids at that point, five kids. And,
uh, the walls would, would get, uh, condensation on them.
So the water was always running down the walls because they were made outta rock
out of, out of cement, basically.
What was the experience of knowing the Nazis were in control of everything?
Did you have a concept of that at such a young age?
Or overhear your parents talking about it?
No, no. Uh, I had no concept of it at all. And, uh,
they didn't talk about the war much. They didn't talk about,
because they kind of like,
thank God we've survived and, uh, let's, let's look at,
let's look at where the light is basically, you know?
And so they didn't talk about all of that stuff. Everybody got bamboozled in,
I mean, what happened to 'em? I mean, Germans are smart people, you know,
they tend to be pretty well educated. You might be opinionated,
but they're pretty smart. They're thoughtful.
Their literature is very thoughtful, their poetry is very thoughtful,
and a lot of them just could not believe that they got,
that they got bamboozled.
So some of them denied what happened just because they couldn't come
to grips with the fact that they themselves
got so misled willingly. Right? I mean,
here we are smart thinking people, right? And we got completely
suckered. They had a hard time with that.
So, and they didn't talk about it, you know, 'cause, and I, it probably,
it's hard to say. I mean, I, you know, sometimes people say,
if you don't study history, you're bound to repeat it.
I think that's complete crap. Because in fact,
the more you study the stupidity of, of humanity, the more you,
it becomes normal for you. So what we actually need to not study history is,
but we need to study what's possible. And, uh, interesting. Yeah. And,
uh, and, and as we go along, you'll see where, so see where that took me, right?
So then when I, when I, uh, got older and went to, went to get educated,
'cause we, my parents believed in education, went to university,
started in science.
'cause I wanted to understand how things work because when you're insecure,
but you get, you, you understand how something works,
it becomes predictable and that's, that's makes you feel a little more secure.
Then I got into biological sciences.
'cause I wanted to know how creatures work because, you know,
I live on a planet. You,
you live on a planet with nature all around you with trees and things buzzing
around and flying around and swimming around and people, and,
you know, pollen and, you know, all, all so many things in nature.
And I didn't want to get to know nature better as a job.
I wanted to deepen my appreciation for it. And I literally, in biology,
I had religious experiences of awe.
Sometimes when we looked at how things are put together on a molecular level,
I, I was, I was in bliss. Oh my God, this is so interesting.
You know? But not, not as a job thing.
just interesting for itself.
Then I got into psychology. I wanted to know how thinking works,
you know, if, if, uh, finding out how to live in harmony together,
those are probably all pretty good subjects. Then I got into medicine.
I wanted to know what health is. 'cause they call it healthcare.
And I found out it's just disease management. You know, it has a place,
but it ain't healthcare. So I went to the dean and I asked the dean,
what is health? What is health? I came here to study health. He said,
we don't know. We're working on it. I was very disappointed.
So I I, I lasted one year in medicine. I did the anatomy course. It was,
again, was awesomely fascinating,
how a body is put together and you get to look at it from the inside and from
the outside and everything.
And then I got back into biochemistry and genetics because by that time I'd
realized that I'm gonna learn more about health in biology,
where you study the normal functioning of normal creatures in normal situations
than in medicine where they study sick people in abnormal
situations and then treat them with abnormal methods that are not natural.
And so, and so then, and but then there was still something missing. You know,
this, like, when I turned 17,
my heart started to ache and I couldn't shake it. And I didn't know what it was,
but it was there all the time. Heartache, you know,
just like uncomfortable feeling, empty loss, you know?
I mean, we have lots of names for that feeling because we call that feeling
by what triggered it. But the feeling,
but what triggers that feeling is not what causes that. And we'll get back,
we'll get to that. Um, so, and I couldn't shake it. And so I was always looking,
what is it that I'm missing? There's something missing here.
That's what you know.
And so then I left university because I'd gone through everywhere.
I thought I could find it. And I sat around in some, uh,
other classes in social psychology and sociology and
a little bit of theology and said, no,
I'm not finding what I'm looking for. I'm not finding it here.
And I think it's because what I was looking for is not in words. I,
I was getting fed things here. That's what you do when you go into a school.
Like, like university. You're feeding this, but you're not feeding this,
right? It's all theories and all talk and all,
all of that pictures and all of that.
But you are still missing.
You're just filling your head and your heart's still empty.
So I left university and then I
experimented with psychedelics. I'd actually started that, uh, before,
uh, while I was still in university. And I, and I said to somebody,
because I was in science and nobody in science was doing anything with
psychedelics, but in the arts faculties, there was quite a bit of that going on.
Were you doing L s D or mushrooms, or which.
No, I, my first one was L s D. Yeah. And, uh,
and it was Sandoz, l ss d. So it was the real clean stuff. Anyway,
I asked this guy, so what is it like to do L S D? And he just looked at me,
he said, you know, he says, if you haven't tried it,
I can't explain it to you. And if you have tried it,
I don't need to explain it to you. And what I, and what I,
uh, had that experience, I thought, what a,
what a clean answer he gave me. 'cause you cannot explain what that's like.
You can talk about what it does to the, to the brain connections.
It broadens brain connections, which, which is kind of cool. Uh,
but in terms of what is the experience like,
either you've experienced it and you know,
or you haven't experienced and you can't know . So what happened at,
what happened to me is I was, uh,
I was with two guys and I was lying on the floor.
I was rolling on the floor laughing,
and the tears were running down my cheeks and they were playing Mozart. I,
I, I like classical music. So Mozart,
I was laughing in time with the Mozart music.
So I was like laughing.
And the thing that made me laugh so hard is that I was really serious and
studious.
And I realized during that experience that all the things I was so
studiously looking for on the outside are all within me.
So I was looking on the outside for what I can only find on the inside.
And that struck me as the funniest joke. So,
uh, so that was, and, and that sort of blew the door off my,
off my war baby personality, because I realized,
also realized that, oh my God, there's a hundred,
there's a thousand ways I could live.
And I didn't ever saw that before. 'cause I was just so, like, so,
oh my God, there's a thousand ways I could live.
And then it took me about 15 years to figure out how I wanted to live.
I think that's why they use psychedelics now in treating depression and anxiety
disorders.
Yeah. What, what,
what what does psychedelics do in the brain is they make connection between
nerves that are not usually connected. And whenever you are in a, uh,
in a, uh, um,
in an addiction,
an addiction is always that you run a brain track over and over and over and
over and over again,
and it becomes a well trod track so that there'd be a trigger.
And you don't see that you have a thousand choices.
You only see that one choice that you're habitually taking because it becomes so
well born.
So what psychedelics do is they open that up and all of a sudden you have a
thousand options. And if you're depressed, for instance,
or you have P T S D or you have anxiety,
or O c d or you're addicted to sex, or you're addicted to,
to a way of thinking, to a religion, to a, to a philosophy.
Like if you're stuck in a rutt in a thinking, rutt,
psychedelics, open that up.
And then you see you have more options. And a lot of people,
when they're depressed,
they don't wanna pick the depression option if they see they have other options.
'cause depression isn't fun. Right.
And so anything that can open that up can be helpful to dealing with those,
those kinds of addictive brain tracks.
Yeah, I, I mean,
I personally did a lot of l ss d in high school mm-hmm.
and I,
I cite that as being one of the reasons why I can see and feel.
That there's hope for the world.
So much. Well, it's just in general,
just they see the connections in so many different directions and yeah. I,
I think that that's part of it. Yeah.
It opened up a part of my mind at such an important age.
I'm not advocating drugs for young people, but for me, yeah, it was awesome.
. Yeah.
Yeah. Same, same with me. I think they're, you know, they're powerful.
They're best used under supervision.
You want the supervision of people who know what drugs do, what drugs.
They really, they call 'em plant spirit medicines.
We used to call 'em drugs in the sixties. And, uh, they were, uh,
so I was 1964 is when I did that, had that l s d experience.
And, uh, and yeah, so it, that, that was part of opening up my world.
I complained a lot because, because I was shy and I was nervous, and,
you know, and people would kind of be like, well, what do you expect? I've,
I was born in a bloody war, right? And so I, I kind of had that,
but one day I sat on a porch and I wasn't doing anything. No, no,
no spirit medicine or anything, just sitting in the sunshine.
And it occurred to me that all this time,
all this stuff that I'm complaining about,
and by this time I'm like 26 years old.
So that war's been over for 24 years.
I'm still bitching about it.
And it occurred to me that all this time when I went through the war and
afterwards when I was bitching about it and everything,
all my dramas and all the traumas that I went through,
something inside of me took perfect care of me through all of that.
And I realized, oh my God,
I have never said thank you to whatever that is,
because I didn't really know what it is. 'cause I'm,
I'm out there and I'm in here, but I'm not in here so much, right? Oh my God,
I've never said thank you. And gee,
maybe I should get to know it a little better. It's been alu bloody good friend.
And so that, again, for, you know, pointing back into,
there's something in us, just like the, on the, on the l s d journey,
right?
There's something in us that is unconditional love for the,
for the body. And, uh, maybe,
maybe we need to take time to sit with that,
to rediscover it,
to bring our focus back to the core of our own being where that lives.
And to get to know it and to get to feel it.
And when you feel unconditionally loved,
then it's not about you anymore.
Then there's the only thing left to do. If what I, I'm good, I'm taken care of.
If I don't know, if I don't feel taken care of, I know where to go.
So I'm, I'm good. Okay, where can I help?
That's all that's left to do in my life. Where can I help?
What needs to be done? How can I make the biggest splash for good in the,
in the time that I have? Right? That's, uh, and,
and then I've, but it goes further than that. You know, it's a theme.
It's like, yeah, it's inside. It's inside, it's inside. And there were,
it happened many times. One of the things I did after I left university,
I was trying to figure out what it was that was missing,
and I didn't know where to look.
'cause I'd had looked at all the mainstream stuff. So then I said, well,
you know, one of the things I haven't looked at, and,
and it's also like, who is a good model? Like,
I'm young enough to wanna have a model. You know, what do I,
who do I wanna be like, right? My son's model was Arnold,
Arnold Schwartzenegger, because he,
he was into body because he loved that you could do certain things and then
shape the body in any way you wanna do that, right?
So mine was just maybe about for a living. And so it was,
'cause I came out of the war, it was like different, right? So I figured,
you know,
the best model that I know in my culture is the model
of Christ.
And so the question that I asked, it's a very specific question.
What did he feel? What did he experience?
How did he experience himself that made him memorable
so that people are still talking about him 2000 years later.
Nobody remembered my grandfather. I don't even remember his name. Right?
What was the difference?
What was it that he experienced that made him live?
Like he did speak, like he did do what he did.
I wanna have that experience because that seemed like he seemed,
he seemed to be a guy who wasn't missing something, right?
He seemed to seem, he seemed to be solid.
So I got the red letter edition where everything Jesus says is in red ink and
everything else in the, in that Bible is in black ink.
Because I just wanted to know,
I wanted to get as close to what he was about as I could.
And then I started putting little things to the test and started thinking about,
well, what did he,
what does that mean when he says what you have done to one of the least of these
that you have done to me? What does that mean? You know?
Well,
the only way I can scribe it to make sense of it is I am in
everyone. Maybe that's what he said. I don't know.
So anyway, so I put it to the test and then,
and then about a year into it, this group of
Christians came up from California up the coast to Vancouver,
and they call themselves the Jesus people's Army.
And that should have been a warning to me. 'cause army is not exactly a, a,
a positive word in my dictionary, , right? Given my experiences.
But I missed the cue. And I thought, in my head, I thought, you know,
talk about fantasy, right? I, in my head, I thought, well,
these guys must be looking for what I'm looking for.
They're trying to figure it out. They're probably doing what I'm doing.
They're reading and thinking about it, having experiences.
We're all gonna get together and we're all gonna share our stories,
and we're all gonna leave that place enriched at the end of the evening.
So like, so I say, okay, I'm gonna go, that sounds good.
It sounds like maybe my, my my tribe ,
we, we didn't, we, I didn't think of it that way, but these days you'd say,
oh yeah, look for you, find your tribe. Right? So I thought,
this is kind of like that. So they went to, had a coffee house.
I walked into the coffee house, they had a table, a bunch of tables set up.
And I sat down at a table. And the moment I sat down,
this guy swooped into the other chair at that table.
And that should have been my second warning, but I missed that cue as well.
So as soon as he sat down,
I looked him in the eyes and I didn't introduce myself.
And I didn't do any preamble. I just looked him in the eyes and I said,
it must be possible to see God and live. 'cause as kids, we were told,
if you see God, you die. You know, it's like, what is this? He's,
he's my father. He loves me unconditionally.
He makes sure that I wake up when I sleep. You know, he keeps me breathing,
keeps my heart beating. He does everything good for me. But if I look at him,
he kills me. It's like, ah,
there's just some not right about that. And, uh,
and so I thought this would be the, the,
the beginning of a deep conversation. And I wasn't wasting any time,
right? Well, this guy jumped,
jumped out of his chair and he's jumping around in the room with his arms
flailing around over his head. And he screams at me, you are from the devil.
You're from the antichrist. Get out.
So I go slinking out of there.
I'm standing on the sidewalk in the dark and I say, well, let's see.
I haven't seen God. Maybe I'm not supposed to ask this question.
Because how do you know when you don't know? Right? And, uh,
I got really confused and really desperate. And when you become desperate,
you tend to become pretty sincere. And I really wanted to know,
you know, it just made that question I had, what did he experience?
It made that so real for me.
And so I decided to spend the weekend in nature.
'cause that's how I used to clear my head when the city got too much for me.
So I went to a beach on the west coast, and there was,
the beach was deserted. I was the only person on the beach logs all over.
Somebody had draped plastic over the logs. So there's my hotel for the,
the weekend. Couldn't stand up in it,
but you could crawl into it and you could sit in it and you could lie down and
sleep it. So I went in, went to sleep,
and in the middle of the night, I will bolt upright from dead asleep.
And there was a being made of light.
I don't believe in that kind of stuff, but that be ,
that being was there .
And I couldn't tell if it was male or female or older, young,
but made of light and embodied a message. But no words,
no labels, no introduction, no conversation. You know,
some people talk to spirits, nothing like that.
Just there it was embodying a message. And the message I could put words to,
I am come not to judge, but to love.
That was the message. That was the message that,
that being embodied, I am come not to judge, but to love.
And all of my desperation completely evaporated.
And I've never had a question since that night.
What was the central message of that master?
But also the other ma the other great masters like Buddha and Krishna and all
those guys. I am come not to judge, but to love.
And then I started thinking about, well, who was that? You know?
And I, I came up with three options, Christ,
spirit or life.
And it turns out they're all the same.
Because your life is solar energy, right?
A fraction of solar energy. The the sun radiates, hits the earth, right?
Filter filtered through 93 million miles of space,
filtered through the atmosphere and filtered through plants that,
so a fraction of that energy is stored in bonds between atoms
to make molecules. We eat those molecules as food.
And in our cells, those bonds get broken. And the solar energy is released.
And now we call it life, life energy.
Life energy, solar energy. So you may not know this,
but you are a solar energy gadget. So is every human being,
so is every plant, so is every animal. So is every microbe pretty much, right?
Same energy animates all living creatures on the
planet.
Right? This, this is the indigenous, the indigenous way.
Yeah. So, so the, the, the, the tribes that worshiped the sun were not far off.
It's not like, oh, that's weird. No, it's, no, we were the weird ones.
They actually were, they were actually closer to it than we were.
And those who understood,
I just finished a book that's incredible called Braiding Sweet Grass. And.
I've, I've read it.
It's fantastic. Yeah. And it's, to me, that whole book is a prayer.
Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, anyway,
so then, but then the, the, the second part of it is that,
um,
that energy in you is the master because it's
omnipresent in your body, omnipotent in your body,
omniscient in your body. So it's everywhere present,
all powerful and all knowing in your body. 'cause it,
even though it weighs nothing, it runs everything, right?
And that message of the master to humanity, I am come not to judge,
but to love is also the message of life to your
body. See?
'cause even if you're crazy in your head and you're thinking about all kinds of
weird things, depressed or, or, or, uh, confused or,
or dictatorial, autocratic or whatever, you know,
all the time and you're doing maybe doing really stupid things,
but life is moving all the molecules of essential nutrients
that you need in the various places in your body.
It's moving them to the cells when they call for it. And you don't,
you actually, you don't have any conscious control of that.
So it runs your show.
And then the other thing is that if you bring your awareness,
your focus of awareness
inside into the space that your body occupies,
and you get in touch with that energy, that that energy is called the master.
It's the master within your body.
But that's also what the great masters were in touch with.
And they talked from and talked to in other people.
Oh my God. It's like the whole thing completely fits together,
right? And uh,
when you look at, when you look at,
you're talking about how you started doing your podcast from,
from some nasty shootings that happened, right?
Well, when you look at all of the things in the world that are not working,
they all come from our disconnection
from the master that is unconditional love
inside of every human being. Just being out of touch. Now,
that's a natural process. It's a natural, normal,
necessary process because when you're in your mother's womb,
there's nothing to do. There's nowhere to go. Everything's taken care of.
And it's pretty safe. So while you're in there,
you don't even know there's a mother.
You don't even know there's an outside world. You have no words.
You have no culture, you have no religion.
You're just a little biological creature. And your focus,
because this had nowhere to go,
your focus of awareness is at rest inside,
in its source within the space.
Your body occupies in life and beyond that in awareness.
So you're in there for nine months if you're a normal term baby,
and you're in deep meditation, 'cause there's nothing to do and nowhere to go.
So you're in deep meditation and then you come out and now you have to get to
know the world because you have to survive. You have to figure out very quickly,
is it friend, is it enemy or is it irrelevant? As soon as something changes,
you are attracted to that. That's how people control you. By,
by moving things around. 'cause it attracts your, for,
it attracts your, uh,
focus outward to the change, to, to make an assessment.
So you can figure out, should I run, should I embrace it or should I ignore it?
And so, in the process of getting to know the world,
our focus goes out. It goes from being present inside and,
and, and absent outside.
Now it goes to being present outside and absent inside.
And when we disconnect from that focus inside, that's where heartache begins.
What I was feeling when I was 17 was the feeling of my disconnection.
And uh, you know, we call it,
I mean we call it loneliness or blues or heartache
or grief, sorrow, sadness or emptiness.
Restlessness or striving.
Longing or wishing, wanting, hoping, praying.
So there's lots of names for it. And we name the, the,
we name that feeling by what triggered it. 'cause we're trying with,
because you know, once we're out there and our heartaches, we're looking to,
to get that connected again, that's our driving force.
And then we look for an outside and then things on the outside end.
And when something that you've put your heart into ends,
you feel that ache in your heart again. So the,
it's triggered by something on the outside,
but the cause is your disconnection from yourself.
And so what came out of that is when your heart aches,
you don't have to look for heartache. You, you know,
you get it often enough, but when your heart aches, sit with it.
You know, we, we don't like it. We, we like it, it, it's uncomfortable.
It's unpleasant, it's painful. Sometimes, you know,
we might feel like crying, you know, and boys don't cry, you know, whatever.
You know, when you feel it,
it's actually the greatest gift you've been given other than being alive because
it's call to come home. If there wasn't that call,
you'd never find your way home. It's just like hunger for food,
thirst for water, heartache for wholeness. So,
so sit with it, be gentle with it. Don't judge it. Just feel it.
Accept it, embrace it.
Maybe be grateful for the fact that it's so powerful and
gets you outta your head grounds you, puts you into your feeling.
And less than a hairs breath behind that heartache is your wholeness.
So you're coming home, right? Every time your heart aches,
you have a chance to come home. You know, we distract ourselves from it. We,
we ignore it or deny it or try to explain it away with a bunch of words
or we blame it on other people.
But heartache is our own disconnection from ourselves and
anything that, and, and, and we, and, and out of that miss,
often we have trauma in childhood.
That's because we get pulled out into something that's pretty intense.
And that's not our fault. And the disconnection is not our fault.
But finding our way back is our responsibility.
And when we find our way back to that,
the world changes goes from what can I do that'll get me taken of to,
okay, where can I help? I'm taken care of. Where can I help? And,
and literally it changes the way I see the world from wholeness.
Peace is everywhere. 'cause peace is within me. Love is within me.
Inspiration is within me. When I'm feeling that peace,
peace is everywhere. Oh my God, there's so much peace.
It's always been everywhere. Why am I looking for peace?
I'm filled with and surrounded by it.
But I only know that when peace in me is looking.
And that's why is stillness practice,
to bring focus inside is so important.
If we wanna change what's going on in the world, if we want a better world,
we ha it has to start there because we can't fix what we've broke in the same
state we were in when we broke it. We need a, we need a, a better state.
And so basically that's, that's kind of like the journey.
And you crawl out of the shelter of the beach and your path
completely changes.
Completely changed. Yeah. Then the next thing, what happened was this, this,
I mean, I, I was blown away. It was, I was so blown away. Oh my god,
you know? And it's like, okay, the question's being answered,
what did Jesus feel that made him be able to do that? Oh my God,
it's within me. Oh my God.
I just experienced it in very powerfully and very directly.
But then slowly it became an, uh, a memory.
And then my question became, man, I wanna,
I wanna live in that experience on a moment to moment basis. How do I do that?
And that led me to a 14 year old
boy who said, the peace you search for in the world and peace was big for me.
'cause I'm a war baby, right?
The piece you search for in the world is within you.
And I can reveal you that piece. And then I was sturdy by that time and I said,
ah, what's a 14 year old gonna teach me? And I was very skeptical.
And then he basically, uh, taught a method.
And the method is basically just, you wanna, you wanna create a space,
you wanna minimize your distractions.
And you can do that by closing your eyes, by wearing earplugs. You know,
there's all different ways of doing that. And then you want to see, I mean,
and this is not what he teaches, but this is my, my ver my version of it. So,
so you take time in a, in a safe place every day,
and you ask yourself, how still, how still can I become?
How, how still can I be?
And then how deep can I go into that stillness?
Then how long can I stay there?
What is there in that stillness? You can see something, you can hear something,
you can feel something. You know what, what is in the stillness,
in the space that my body occupies and then breathe.
You can breathe slowly and lightly and just observe what's there.
And the more you do it, the better you get at it. And the deeper you go,
the more you experience.
And that is where you make your reconnection to the energy.
Because that energy, that is the master, that is solar energy,
that is you, you are actually that energy. You are not the body.
You know, if I said to you, Hey, Susan, yeah, point Susan, whose body is that?
I would say, this is who I'm occupying at the moment.
. Yeah. Yeah. So, but most people would say, this is my body,
you know, because depends if you go really deep, you're,
you're not so much identified with the body anymore. But most people would say,
this is my body. But when they say that, they're saying, I'm not the body.
This is my body. My the body is my property.
Well then who are you as the owner of the body? Oh,
life owns the body, life builds,
maintains, repairs the body lifelong
24 7, 365, lifelong. Right? And you are actually,
in your individual essence, you are that life energy that is solar energy,
that is the master. Every eight, 8 billion people.
That's human nature. But that's not taught in biology.
And that's not taught in psychology. And that's not taught in medicine.
And that's not and that's not taught in science.
Who is the 14 year old? I'm curious.
Well, by now he's 65 .
So he's still going around talking about peace, right? And, uh,
his name is prem robot. And he showed me method. So,
and then he said, you know, I, I thought, oh yeah, that's too simple. I,
I thought the method was too simple. 'cause, you know,
it took a lot to get to the moon, but we hadn't made it to peace yet.
So I figured going, getting to peace
was more complicated than going to the moon. It turns out not to be true,
but that's how I thought. And then he said, well, give it a given,
it a fair chance.
And I found out that I would get into arguments with my ex,
my then lady, right? And I would just,
eventually, they would go so heated, just like ,
just like all the thing I complained about in Germany.
I was totally into it too, right?
And I go outside and sit on a log and do the practice for five or 10 minutes.
He suggested an hour. I couldn't sit still that long, you know,
five or 10 minutes. And within five or 10 minutes of just doing the practice,
I say, we argued about that, that's stupid.
And I learned that if I did the practice before the argument started,
I wouldn't rise to the bait. And by the time six months were up, I said,
oh shit, this works. This works. So I've been doing it for over 50 years now,
and it just gets deeper and deeper and it's more and more beautiful.
And there's something in us that never dies. And I,
I am, I'm in touch with it. And that energy is also perfect health.
You know, it's also what heals you when you, when you get sick.
And a lot of how we make ourselves sick is because we don't feel
loved. We don't feel inspired, we don't feel lit up.
We don't feel content. And so then we do stupid things.
We think stupid things that get in the way of health.
And then we do stupid things that get in the way of health.
Because if I'm bummed out enough, you know, and it's like, uh,
uh, I don't know, you know, eating, uh, eating better. Uh, it's just too much.
It's just too much work. Uh, you know, and then I react to stuff,
and then I do do stupid behaviors. But when I feel inspired and lit up,
I'll just do whatever I need to do to have the longest,
most incredible life because it's so incredible.
And then making changes in behavior are not that hard.
So that's, that's a kind of, uh, that's sort of, that's,
that's the complete story, right? And now I, you know,
basically what I'm doing for the rest of my life is have these kind of
conversations. How important is it for us to be fully present
in all of our being and our surroundings?
Because we're, we're filled with peace and love and inspiration.
We're surrounded by peace and love and inspiration.
And if we can get in touch with that in us, then we can see it in the world.
And we can live into that kind of a world.
And we'll live into that world very different from when we're angry and see
enemies everywhere, or we're afraid and we see danger everywhere.
So state of being is the most important thing. It's like,
it's like it's you state of being is you and state of being
determines how you, you know, how you feel, how you think, what you say,
what you do, and the outcome of what you're doing.
Have you written a book about this? I know you've written several.
I've, uh, I've got 10,000 pages of notes. I,
I like doing this live best
because words go in your head.
And what I'm trying to do is talk from the talk, talk from the heart,
talk from feeling the heart.
So I don't know if a book will come out of it. Is it, is it worth reading?
It's worth reading. I have lots of, lots of,
lots of cool insights because when you're in that space, you also,
you, you get insights. You know, people ask, well, I'm looking for my purpose.
What's my purpose? You know, what am I here for? Well, first of all,
get get in touch with yourself
and you'll discover that the purpose is already there and it has to something
to do with shining love into the world. That's the hero's journey. You know,
you go through all of your stuff, you come back home, you fight the dragons,
you win the battle, you get the treasure. What is the treasure?
The treasure is always based on love.
And then you bring that treasure back to your community
and that becomes your gift
From your journey to your community, what are your thoughts on death?
Death. Well, the body is not, the body is not life.
The body is a shell when life,
which can never die. 'cause it's formless.
When life separates from the body, then the body falls down because the,
the power is gone, right? The all powerful life is gone.
That's what we call death, you know,
but we say we're alive because we got that backwards.
We're actually life in human form.
And a dog is life in dog form. And a tree is, is life in tree form,
and a bug is life in bug form. And we are not the form.
So fundamentally, if, if I know that I'm life,
that I am that energy, one day the body falls off of it .
And nothing happens to me because I'm not the body right now,
the right now life's project is, is running my body.
Right? When, when it's, when it's not,
when it's time to not run the body anymore,
then life is just freed from that and does what energy does without a
body. Yeah. But it doesn't go anywhere. It doesn't do anything.
It's, I mean, you people say, oh, you die and then it's over. Yeah. Well,
the energy that's in you, what happens to that energy? You can't just,
like, it just doesn't just like vaporize and disappear into nothing.
That energy is still around. And some people say they see it,
they see it leaving. I don't know if that's true or not. I've never seen that,
you know, but, but that energy is still energy and the awareness,
you know, your body's not aware. That awareness
also separates from your body. So now your body's not aware,
you can kick it and there's no response, right? So, but we do,
we do so much of, oh yeah, what happens when I die? You know,
that's because it's all head trips, you know,
they're all head trips because we don't know,
because we're not doing the homework. The homework is coming home.
The heartache is, is the, is the invitation to do our magnificent homework.
Right? And when you do the homework, death is not a big deal. Happens, happens,
you know, you, you are here. I, you know, see, you didn't live for four,
4 billion years or however long, 14 billion years, you were not alive,
right? You didn't exist. And then you get a hundred years,
and then for however long time is gonna go on after that, you don't exist again.
So here you are, this is the holiday, this is the gift,
this is the, this is, this is the, this is the magnificent gift.
If you don't unpack it and you don't get fully present in all of your beating,
you are wasting the gift because nobody else can, can enjoy it for you.
So not doing that homework is selfish. You know, people sometimes say,
doing the homework is selfish, but actually not doing the homework is selfish.
And then when you do the homework and you're fully present in all of your being,
you have insight and you have talents that you didn't even dream you had.
And you're literally in touch with all of what you're, what is possible for you.
And so then you can help in lots of different ways.
Sometimes it's by talking, sometimes by running,
sometimes it's by doing something. You know, sometimes it's by writing a book.
Maybe I will write that book. You know, never know, right?
But anything becomes possible because you are so much more
than the restricted little
skills you've learned in your head from being in a restricted place
where your magnificence and your awesomeness and your life were not
acknowledged.
For me,
I believe personally in that our
entire lifetime, if we're lucky, we learn it early, but, or we remember early.
But I feel like we are in a state of remembering if we're, if,
if we understand that remembering, that's a really beautiful thing.
And I think, I believe that our energy of who we are,
our true essence that gets shoved into these shells,
keeps coming back to do the remembering in a different capacity,
in a different shell, in a different experience. For all I know planet. Yeah.
I I have no idea. That's well beyond my pay grade. Yeah. Yeah. I have a.
Mine too.
Yeah. I have a feeling. Yeah.
I believe as well as you do in the transmogrification of energy.
And so for me,
and it's non-linear and it's very hard
once when we are in corpus to really wrap around the
ideas, but it's a sense more than anything. Mm-hmm. ,
it's a feeling Yeah. That I, that I cherish and that I have,
and that I am forgetful of. I remember mm-hmm. ,
and then I'll forget, and then I remember. Yeah. That's how I see it. Yeah.
Well, I have no experience regarding reincarnation,
but I have some questions about it. It goes like this,
in a lifetime of a hundred years, if you drink your three liters of water a day,
110,
110 tons of water go through your body,
you are like a little waterfall. You know, you, you,
you pour the water in the top and then you drain it out the bottom right?
Or you sweat it out or whatever, right?
But there's 110 tons of water.
It's about four tons of nutrients.
There's about 18 tons of oxygen go through your body so that everything in your
body's always turning over.
And the energy that keeps you alive is also a flow of solar energy through your
body. So which one of those gets reincarnated? All of it is in fluxx.
All of it is in flow, you know, which,
which a hundred pounds of water are going to be, you know,
because we're not static. We're, we're, we're a flow. Everything in,
in our body is a,
is a flow in the first place except for the peace that is the foundation of it.
And so and so, um,
so to understand how I come back,
is it like a personality or is it an energy or is it water or is it a
particular kind of body? And I don't have, I don't have an answer for that,
but I, I can't picture it, right? And so, you know,
for me, I, I, I don't, I I just know that when I'm present in the,
in that energy, everything's fine. Whether I come back or not,
doesn't matter whether, you know, what happens after I, after I leave,
I, I have a pretty good sense of that because I know what that energy is like.
So I, in, in that sense, I'm all already living in an eternal life.
I, I mean this is so interesting to me. Mm-hmm. .
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know what? That's what we're missing. That's every,
every one of the great masters said, put that first. Do that first. You know,
whether it seek first the kingdom of heaven,
kingdom of heaven is within you. They said,
seek first the kingdom of heaven where God lives that's inside of you.
Do that first and everything else will start to fall into place.
They didn't say it that way, but that's pretty much what they said.
And what we do and what humanity has always done, we've always done it last.
We've always let done it to last. When we run out of distractions,
all the things we try in the world,
and then finally eventually sums out like there's still something, you know,
I've done everything and, uh, maybe I need to come home.
Not only do we do it last,
but we also convince other people that they can't get it without us.
Hence religions who say, yeah, yeah, yeah, you can find God,
but only through my me, like a priest or whatever it is. Yeah.
That's not what the master ever said.
Of course not . No, I'm saying that's, that's what they,
that's what mankind tries to say. And I argue for the,
the temple of God is within,
I believe we are all aspects of God understanding itself. Yeah.
The body, the body is the temple.
Yeah. I I believe that's.
And, and, and God lives in the temple in form of,
in the form of awareness or in the form of energy, what,
however you wanna define that. Yeah.
And that's true for every living human being,
including everybody who's in jail for whatever they did,
and including everybody who runs a country in whatever way they do. And,
and everybody who's a politician and everybody who's honest and everybody who's
crooked, but you've,
the difference between honest and crooked is there's a tendency that people
who are more in touch with their actual nature tend to be more honest because
they don't have a whole bunch of other things they wanna prove to get more
stuff, to try and make themselves feel better.
And that's where all of our crime comes from, is because, you know,
it's kind of like a person gets really frustrated. They don't feel,
they don't feel peace, they don't feel loved, you know,
and they get somehow something happens and they get it in their head.
If this person was gone, I would be better off or I would be happier.
And then they kill somebody. Now, they're not doing it consciously, but,
but that's,
that's the subconscious con conversation they have with themselves.
Or the country says if we take part of Poland, you know, then we,
then we will be a better Germany, or we take, we get Latvia,
then we'll be a better Soviet Union, you know? So,
or if we can get the land where all this stuff grows and we can steal it from
those guys, and because we're bigger,
we can just take it from them and beat 'em up if they don't want to give it to
us, you know, that all comes from discontent.
Everything that's wrong in the world comes from our disconnection from
ourselves. Yeah.
And that's why the cure for every problem on the planet is first do your
homework, and then once you do your homework,
then you can actually help to create a better world.
But if you haven't done your homework,
you're just gonna live in frustration and you're just gonna do more damage,
don't come to me with big solutions. You know, clean up your own shit first.
.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Tell people how they might find you.
Uh, well I've, I do other stuff too. I'm, I'm best known for, uh,
being the creator of flax seed oil. That was my invention, 1986.
And, uh, I work with, uh, oils, uh,
something better than flax oil because flax oil is poorly balanced.
We could do a whole other show on, on, on that stuff if you want.
Yeah. We'll have to do another one, a part two. Let's.
Let's do it. Yeah. And, uh,
and I work with digestion and enzymes and probiotics.
Those are the most neglected areas of nutrition and huge benefits.
But this is for the physical, you know, right now we're talking energy.
That would be the physical one. And, uh, that one is@udochoice.com,
u d o s choice.com because Udo is my first name. Right.
And then I have another website that is a total work in progress, and that's,
uh, at the udo.com. If you go on Google, uh,
I do quite a few podcasts.
If you go to udo erasmus slash podcast or podcast slash
udo erasmus,
you'll find some other podcasts that I've done on these various topics.
And, uh, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Facebook, I'm on, um,
Instagram. I have a, I have a YouTube channel,
uh, so I'm not hard to find. If you go on Google and just punch in Udo u d o,
you'll find me on the first page.
'cause there are very few Udo's on this planet.
Udo.
I'll put all those rasmus human podcast.com for people also to find them
quite easily. Perfect. And I would love to call you back to talk about the body.
Yep. Wonderful. Thank you so much for being here today. All right.
Thank you everybody for listening. Bye. Thanks.
Susan. Thanks.
Rate review and subscribe to Hey,
human Podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. Thanks. Bye.