The commercialism of yoga, the commercialism of Ayurveda, the commercialism of guru-ism, is difficult. It's difficult because it confuses, it confuses the general populations as to what this is all about, but yet those of us who are trained within a certain tradition, who trained from the ancestral gene bank, so to speak, it is fine, it's not bothersome at all because we must live.

I am a traditionalist, I'm not a conventional person, but I am a traditionalist in the true form of the word, in that your heart is opening, you're absolutely there for everyone, the face of pain has no tradition, by the way, and in my tradition, a guru simply means the removal of darkness.

Physicians can't really dictate our protocols. They can inform us to the extent that they can as to what would best serve us, because we're not medical geniuses, no human being is, but intrinsically there is inside of each one of us, the knowing of what's going on.

Women come to me and would never tell a male guru the things that they tell me. to me and would never besiege the male guru with some of the things that I hear. And that is because mother is mother and that is the phenomenal thing, it's the most irreplaceable thing in the world because whether we're an earthly mother or a spiritual mother, a divine mother, and everyone is divine by the way, we all have the power of divinity, the power of full consciousness, whether we are awakened to the potential of it all is a different matter.

I love women because of their spirit, courage, and the things they go through in the process of family and life and then all the complexities and now the careers of the family and life and the whole thing. But I feel badly for our men in all of our traditions.

I think path in spirituality chooses us. I doubt seriously that we really have much choice in the matter.

The development of personal awareness is the only thing the human person can control, and once we understand that, a lot of the appendages fall away, and we look at purpose and karma and not get besotted by the karmas of other people because we carry them from life to life and year to year and day to day.