with my friend Olga Castrova. She's on the Eastern part of the country in Virginia Beach and I'm out here in Utah. And we just love connecting and sharing our joy and our happiness with everyone. So thank you Olga for coming on with such short notice. I love you so much and I'm so happy to commune with you today. I saw your message, so something that you shared on YouTube that you lost an account. But oh, no, no, not Facebook, because that's how we connect and we see each other updates and always come into each other updates. So I'm happy that we connected. All is good. Yes, yes, that brought us. Yeah, I love how anything brings us together. Yeah, yeah, and every time I think of you, my heart opens so, so, so much. I love you, dearly. Oh, I love you too, Olga. It's so beautiful to have a deep connection like this. And we've kind of known each other through the years in the sense of not meeting personally, but you invited me to just talk about spiritual awakening and spiritual enlightenment on your show. I think maybe you were out in maybe California at the time. Yeah, that's so beautiful. And we've had such a strong connection from that point on where we kind of are on the move and we've gone through many different experiences over these years since we've known each other. And so I just, maybe you could just share what are some of the insights or what is your experience currently as things are going on in your unfoldment? Yeah, let's see what's on to show up. Yes, there's so many events that have been happening. So I don't want to speak on the level of events and the level of form, but I will just see what wants to be witnessed on the level of how it all feels, yes? Yes, yes. So this morning, it's interesting. This morning I was walking and walks is my meditation. And just this nature feels so strong. That's my very early morning start. And I saw ducks walking and then there's a predator. Suddenly they started making such a loud sound. I never heard them being in such panic. And then the predator jumps and attempts to grab one and it runs so fast under the car, right in front of me. It was like right here. And it was so interesting how close and how untouched the nature is by our presence in a sense, by our potential intrusion. It's just happening. Everything just happening. Yes. It's such a privilege. I felt so privileged to witness that and also to witness the fact that in front of me, nothing was in, forgot English word for some reason. Sometimes it loses me. Nothing was damaged, no critter died. It just, it just attempt and it's gone, right? Like I look at events in our life is kind of in a similar fashion. It scares us for a second. The form shows up so strongly and create all the emotion but then nothing happens. It just, it's like a huge wave. It's huge, huge wave. And I was thinking, it was walking and sometimes when I walk, I ask my harsh self in your language, you would call it spirit. So show me what I cannot see now. Give me some piece of knowledge for today. And it's so interesting. I wanna ask a question that is so generic like this. Like nothing specific, not particularly inquire or particular guidance. It always the same experience.  The leaves became brighter, the color green. The wind became stronger, the grass again became much brighter color. Sun became so blinding, bright. And it always, always feels like the universe reminds me, oh God, you don't need any knowledge. Just be here now. This is the deepest knowledge you can go. Just be in the present intensely in the now. That's what every single piece of knowledge is. Every single insight you ever need. Just go deeply in what's now. Happening or not happening. There's something always happening even on the micro level. Just be now, but go so intensely in it. It's so beautiful. There's something so beautiful about it because it's always like this, always conversation with the spiritual transcendental realm. If I forget it, if I want something for the mind, because give me piece of knowledge. It's for my mind, right? The ego wants to be entertained. Oh, give me something that advances me, right? It enhances Olga in some way, right? But the answer is only the same. It's now, here is the deepest depth you ever can go into. It's now, it's a more profound knowledge you can extract it. It's just right here, right now. I know that it sounds very kind of, yeah. It's banal, banal, what is it in English? But going into that through experience so deep, it feels extremely intense to me. It's so, so intense. I feel my body shivers. When it's happening, even if it's not the moment of grace, which sometimes does happen, this moment of unification that is so strong, but even if it's not that moment of grace, but there is still very strong sensory response from the body, it's like you can't deny it, you can't lie about anything else than the most. Yes, yeah. More than that, so that's all. And I think for that very reason, my life lately has been very solitary, I can say. Yes, I remember in San Diego, I was doing a lot of education. I was doing a lot of teaching, a lot of workshops, a lot of group events. I enjoyed a lot of experimentation, a lot of themes that I would introduce if you remember, right? Yes. And since I came to Virginia, sometimes people ask me, so why did you come to California and come to Virginia? My answer is, I don't know. It all just happened and so I came. And at some point in a few months, and my son was making so why exactly am I here? Like what is here? But as I'm looking now at this, I think it was a mutation to get outside of my role as an educator, right? As a teacher, facilitator, whatever. I still do coaching one-on-one, but I play less in public.  It just feels like there's this in between whatever that means, but focus less on external, because you know, as a human being, I speak, I, older. Even if we are, so to speak, there is still energy source from external, imaginary external, right? It's, you know, even from the standpoint of being a teacher, in that sense, right? The facilitator, still part of me always would be fed, okay, how did my clients, my agents receive what I'm trying to deliver? How did they receive that? So emotionally, I would be still moved. Oh, I see that they very fulfilled at the end of the workshop. Oh, people didn't reach them, right? So the ego, and it's not negative aspect of the ego, but it's still the ego, because it still analyzes what is my relationship to the forum, because the event and people as a forum, right? So what is my relationship to that? And I could see at the end of the workshop, I would be moved the state one way or another, it's like, oh, it was such a good workshop, people come to me and say, oh my God, Olga, what an insight, what a transformational experience it was. And I, you know, all the things in the world. Or I see that they, like I seen some eyes, they're not getting it. And I kind of, yeah, because I want something better and I could have done. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is what the experience that was flowing. I gave what was flowing to me. It was, it was, it was the experiment. And there was the witness that was judging it. Yeah. Dude, you are semi, semi-awakened, semi, somewhat. Why are you reacting to that? So there was this, there's this dependence on the interaction with the world, world. Yeah, yeah, very subtle, very subtle. So I enjoy the fact that I had to remove my body out of the environment where, for whatever reason, well, for 20 years, from Northern California, Silicon Valley, when I came as a technology entrepreneur to play that, you know, money technology game. And then when I moved to Southern California, and it's more about the kind of new age spirituality and so on and so forth, like, but it's all just forms. Spirituality doesn't have a form, it's just all playground and, and, and, so, so, and Virginia became this very different kind of animal for me. Now there's not less all this spiritual happening in the, in the communities here. And, and I found myself enjoying this solidarity time. And it allowed me to drop in so deep, much, much deeper. So my learning right now is not too much from the teaching anymore, because, you know, when we teach, we learn always, right? It, it's just, just observing my reaction on to not happening. And therefore in non-happening, everything is more intensely felt, the micro, micro events, micro-media form feels so intense, right? But I think I'm coming back to desire to retain the only thing that I think when feeling my movement is going, is towards, at least, articulated. So, so, you know, in spirituality, in, in spiritual communities, probably that's better to say. Which is this, this common, not single, not singular, but common perception that, you know, if you're spiritual, that's how it should be, right? That's how you should look. That's how you should talk, you know, you talk lower.  This is what you do, this is what you do. Can I hear? It's very fun in that sense, it's very fun, right? So, of course, none of it is true. It's just one of those ideas of the mind that it tries to accommodate, it pities everything in some sort of order and makes sense, right? But I don't think, if you remember or not, I was enjoying, I started to play with this, this contrast, the polarity of dark and light. Because again, if you're talking about common view, it's like spirituality is all about light. Well, but light makes for of light and contrast. You know, people say it's all light because ultimately it's light, but when you talk about the level of forms or level of emotion that is still a form, there is a polarity and that's why the appearances of the world I find myself to be so beautiful, that there is a contrast, there's a polarity in everything. It's not monochrome, it's very, very polar, right? So I know that a lot of people on spiritual path, they try to get away from polarity and into the singular mode of lightness and light. It's beautiful, but I find it's only one of the expression of what is. Yeah. Light, but what is? So lightness does not mean it's light, it's only one of the four that light takes. As I see it, I don't know. I'm just speaking obviously what's coming from here. Don't claim to know anything. Just, just for me it's always and probably partially because I'm an artist or I'm an artist because I'm interested in that either or, right? It's how can I bring together the most color light, the polarity, the amplitude of it, the highest amplitude swing, the biggest one. And I can bring darkness without the judgment of either preference to neither. You bring them together and find this amazing cocktail of experience in which self-learning obviously emerges. It's happening. It's always happening. So for me, like sometimes people look at my artist like, oh, wow, it's so interestingly dark. I'm like, I never thought about that that way. But it's all desire to express something that has different phases, different moods, right? So I think that education that the part of like, you know, my workshops, they all had some themes. And one, if you remember, I was exploring, what did I call it? I don't remember. Shadow work, exploring power, dynamic and relationship through BDSM. Remember that one? I don't know if you remember. Yes. And people like, but don't you kind of work around spirituality? How is it sexuality? Okay, let me press pause button. First of all, how is, my workshops are not erotic and not sexual. But it would be, how sexuality is excluded from what is? Yeah, I think, yeah, beautiful. Because I think, you know, when we look deeply, even a course of miracles, Jesus is basically saying, you have to bring the darkness to the light. In other words, don't hide it, don't deny it, don't repress it, but allow it to be brought to the light. So I have a friend in Spain, Monica Playa, who's been doing shadow work and a course of miracles her whole life. And I've always felt that about you, that you've been able to, you have to welcome the darkness up into awareness. And if there is any kind of polarity that we're dealing with, it's really not so much in the world of form as much as it is that we'll say, part of our mind is aware and part of our mind is unaware. And we want to bring the unaware part, welcome it, actually welcome it up into, to be more fully aware. And that seems to be the journey that we're on. And it's great with you because I do have a friend from Syria named Grace who she would always want to talk to me about all of her issues, BDSM. And she would be saying, my goal in life is to have a mistress. And she would just explain everything. And I said, I talked to her about a couple of weeks ago. I said, well, thank you. You educated me on a whole area that I had not a lot of familiarity with. But it was still all based on bringing what was hidden into awareness so that you could see that in the end it's harmless when we bring it to the light. When we bring it to our inner wisdom, then we can start to look on all things without judgment. And I was even talking to a friend of mine today. She was planning to come here to Utah from Bali and she had a 36 hour flight planned and then six hours before the plane was supposed to take off, she seemed to come down with intense food poisoning. And so we were talking this morning, we did a little video call and I said, well, you know, I don't think there's ever anything going wrong in form. It can't be that something's going wrong, but it's just that we have to allow whatever needs to come up and whenever it can come up, we have to be grateful and thankful for it coming up. And I was saying to her, cause she was kind of asking me, you know, was there something going on in my mind or what do you think caused it? And I said, we don't really need to diagnose those things. And that's our old way of trying to diagnose everything, but that's just looking into the past and the present moment like you were sharing has everything, it has absolutely everything. And we just have to have allowance there so we can connect with our strength. We can connect with our joy, our invulnerability. And to me that is spirituality. It's not about trying to deny or repress things and have platitudes or affirmations or throwing just flowers everywhere. Everything's love and light, but can we welcome whatever is coming in this moment and be with it without judging it? Yeah. Spirituality, I think, you know, I was another day trying to define it for a friend who he was asking, so what is spiritual for you? It's between important for you, what is it for you? And you know, he said, well, is this spirituality? Is this spirituality? I was like, well, everything is, but what is for me, it comes down to one thing. It's experience in transcendental dimension through whichever experience this body finds itself in. Right? It's exploring, not experiencing. For me, I think it's exploring it to the, the further's degree I can take it. So this is my spiritual path, as I showed you along. Spiritual path, and in my path, it's multiple, it's plural paths, kind of a nice plural. Whatever form it takes in the moment, whatever call me to stretch my limits to get to the deepest depth of the being, because if consciousness is experiencing itself through me, I don't want to give it very boring experience. What is the point? Let me bring it on. So I always catch myself, do I find myself in this stagnation and I go and start wallowing in some emotions and is boring comes up, sometimes this prominent emotion, but nothing happening, Olga, nothing happening. Where is the advancement? Where's the progress? Okay, where's the path, right? That's funny, funny, funny kind of things to observe and just sit with it. But I still listen to that voice too and I take a clue from it. It's like, if there is a stagnation, am I suppressing some potential for experience? Because I deny it's validity in spiritual path or within my self-identification. Like for example, the fact that I was publicly sharing my interest in BDSM and educating, it's a little hit on my business coaching aspect because people would, they had curiosity about it, but it's like, because it's identity. It's like, so what is your identity?  So I'm waiting. I just want to talk about sex, I'm talking about psyche. I'm talking about exploration of psyche, nothing to do with sex. And even if it would, we are multidimensional beings. This form, whatever form appears, doesn't have, we have this 2D expression. If everything is multidimensional, it has so many aspects, so many facets, right? So, and if, I only go to BDSM aspect of the explanation, for me, it's truly, well, it's both, it's psychological journey and transcendental, right? Because there is, how far can I stretch my psyche and the body, the limits of it, to either reach transcendental stage or observe very strong aversions and very strong resistances, right? Because that's exactly the world of the ego. Resistances and aversions, it's like, that's the optical to the light. That's the optical to be, stay awake. I am resisting what is, right? So, and then exploration there is, can I take my expressions of personality because we all kind of born with some sort of imprinting patterns, why we can speculate and there's enough speculation from different astrology to that, to another, to reincarnation. We have all the things that we can get to that, but it's irrelevant, what is true, it's irrelevant, but we can observe because that's what we observe. Ooh, is it cat? Yes. She has something to say. Yes, she does. Before we start our live stream, I said, do you want to be here in the room or not? And she plucked herself on my bed behind me, but now she's getting quite active as you're talking. She's like the subject. But what's interesting too about what you're talking about is that there's a part in chapter 13 of A Course in Miracles where Jesus says, you believe in one dimensional time, past, present, and future. And you just seem to fall and keep repeating the same mistakes that you believe in. You believe in the past mistakes, you go and get kind of a karmic repetition of them and skip over the present moment, which is your escape hatch, and then you believe that your future is condemned to do that. Here comes, she's getting quite active now. So what I like is that when we get so present, like you said, it can get intense when you get so, so, so present because I think we're more open and aware and available to be shown whatever without just accepting that there are things we don't know or we're not aware of, but we see them acted out in our relationships, in our body, in everything, the trees, the grass, the little critter that was, the prey was coming down the duck, we can see it. And then we can just be present and notice our emotions. And then we've got something to work with. So we're like working with the emotions, not trying to fight against them. We're actually saying, let's do it together. I think I'm gonna let the cat out because otherwise, this is live stream, right? Anything goes. Anything goes. There you go. She thought the live stream was a good idea for a moment, but then if she is curtailed in any way from her freedom of movement, that's a no. That's a word I'm saying again. Even cats are screaming for a piece of paper. Yeah, so how beautiful that we can be so open to look at that. Cause I like how you just, you know, you start with something that people recognize where there's a curiosity, like you're saying with BDSM, but for you, it's not sexuality. It's like, where are the, where are the pulls and the pushes? Where are the things in the mind where you're still resisting or you're still drawn in some way? And I guess if you really boiled it down to BDSM is just an opportunity to go inside to where am I still believing in ego dominance and submission where I just want to be perfect equal. I want to know each one as I know myself with the same love, but we have to, we have to go through the healing. You know, we have to let whatever comes up. So it's beautiful that you kind of allowed that in even though you're a job coach and then, okay, we're going to throw in a few themes here. And it's, it seemed a little bit off the, out of the norm. It was built in people like also a business coach. You help people to build businesses. You work with all the, you know, CEOs and entrepreneurs and when you do this, how does it work together? Everything works together. Everything works together. If you look in the world, everything that has contrast and it goes together somehow, magically falls into place because everything is expressions of what is. And the tools you said that it's all works for healing. And I find it exactly that. For me, the BDSM component of it is just one of the modalities. And I expect to explore so many different modalities before and I came up with my own things and all that. But this particular one, the interest is such that I can explore my addiction, very common addiction of human psyche, addiction to control. Yeah. Right, addiction to control. And to play with it almost like the SNM aspect of it, allow them to take control as an object and play with that because if let's say, for example, I'm prone to some sort of aspects of domination in my daily life, partially because of my automatic role of authority in my work, right? When I work as a coach, automatically in a priority position. So there is element of domination very subtle, it's there, right? Now I need to create a polar edge of it and bring it in consciously to observe how that which become habitual and kind of natural and become habitual, how that can be let go. Can I surrender? Can I look at my discomfort when I surrender, right? Because sometimes it's extremely uncomfortable. I don't like to be told what to do, right? Well, but you step into that and it's a practice. Now it's a practice you surrender to whoever plays as your partner in the moment of this joint education. How do I completely let it go and put it in his or her hands and allow myself to be completely completely cracked open without my own desires, but this is such a great playground to observe them because they show up when you take it away from someone almost by force, it shows up so strongly. I can see where that would really bring help bring it into awareness. There was a, I love the movies and there was a movie called I Heart Huckabees. You might have seen it with Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman. And at the beginning of the movie, Dustin Hoffman just tells the young man who comes in there everything you could ever want or need, you already have an R and then he says, but now you have to see that for yourself. You have to experience that you already have it and already are it. So I can see where just like you're kind of doing like Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman, you're like an existential detective, but an experiential detective that's trying to get at where is the still the control elements or where is the resistance still? And then let's through things, opportunities, exercises, how can we bring this to the surface and go beyond it? How can we transcend it? So that's the purpose for everything you do. So it makes everything, it gives everything a real deep healing purpose, I think. And I think that's really your purpose is just to go through a deep spiritual healing. Yes, and also what I love since we're still in the subject, the aspect of showing how the body is not our reality. Yeah. Because if I allow myself consciously to experience pain, because in BDSM the component of it, you can bring in pain, right? Now I have to consciously play with the discomfort of the body and explore where the mind goes with that when it's experienced discomfort. And then again, from some point of transcendental dimension of it is like in that moment, I must remember I'm not my body, I'm not my body. I cannot believe that I'm my body and do this work, because for me it's a work, it's my awakening work, so to speak, right? Spiritual work. So if I am inviting pain, I have to transcend the idea that the body is precious, that the body can have scars, the body has pain, whatever the body does, right? I must transcend the idea of it and remind myself that the body is idea in the mind. And the mind in my mind, the mind and my mind is as well going through huge transformation when the body is subjected to, let's say for example, stimulus of pain, because then I go into this BDSM called subspace. So it's a very transcendental space where your mind almost gets exhausted to be there, to deal with this pain, this comfort, and you let go of attachment to the body. And there is this amazing space of transcendental experience. I'm not saying that it is altered state of consciousness, but it could be in a sense altered, well, I think we live altered state of consciousness. We live in these little human beings, right? But it takes us away from altered that way, state of consciousness, into more open spacious awareness of everything that just is. Yeah. Anyway, I just, I just can't talk about that. That's good. You have a perfect lingo to talk about it, because I know Eckhart Tolle talks about the pain body, but you're actually speaking of reaching a point of release or let go of what even would be considered, Eckhart might call the pain body, and that's a release in our mind, in our consciousness, some where deep in the consciousness we're letting go, letting go of an attachment or identification, because I think it all comes down to identity. Am I a one-dimensional being? Am I a multi-dimensional being? Or maybe am I a higher self, a spirit that is way beyond even the multi-dimensional? You know, you see, we're going, opening, opening like that. And isn't it a great journey? This is really exciting. What happened, it always is amazing journey, whatever happened, right? Yeah, yeah. I'm so blessed to experience this form. See, I remind myself at any moment, I'm especially somehow it hits me in nature. I don't know, just nature especially brings it all to me. I remind myself even when I'm feeling discomfort, you know, we just were talking about the health moment ago, before we started, right? You reminded some events in my life as a way to help. When we go through that, the habitual notion goes, oh, poor me, it shouldn't be happening to me, but what if I'm awakened that my body will be healthy and you know, some expectation what awakening should bring us, as it should, as if it should, right? Or as if something's wrong with illness should be part of what is, right? Yet, how I observe it is when my body is ill, I look at it, well, where is my invitation in it? Yes, like I've been struggling with headaches, like severe, sometimes I can get out of the bed and it takes me a lot of efforts to come to my Zoom clients and everything and you know, put a face on and make sure that performance is done and they got what they needed, but the body is completely, completely all I want is to lay down and be like a log. So then the invitation is like, can I not fight it in hope that, oh, it will be gone tomorrow because there is still hope to change what is, right? Or, okay, let me take some, you know, my distant coffee, whatever, and feel better. Again, I try to change what is, and there is discrimination in it, right? There is rejection of what is. I'm not saying you shouldn't take care of our body, of course, it's part of the whole human experience, but the invitation is always, it's like, where this can take me? And I noticed that my, I don't want to call them illnesses, but tough conditions, they bring me closer over here and over there, right there, right? Not in the box, right there, right? Because it takes me out of my mind to go outside, I don't know, outside of this, of course, I mean, outside of myself, see, I think that doesn't lend right, because I'm myself, it's almost like here is me, and I'm like, it's angry, it's just hard to, but going into form world, right? That's it. Right, so, and if I don't feel well, if my body is exhausted, it can't, just can't have no strength to do anything.  And I can't. So, invitation is, well, go outside of the world of form into formulas, that's that, the rest in space that is needed right now, where I can go into intensity of now, that's what you talk about, right? The intensity of now in what is in the formless, because there's not so much form when you're laying on the bed and standing at the ceiling, not so much form, not change at least in the form. But it allows the attention to be this so net of focus on the space of the beyond, the space of, and here, and I focus on literally nothing, right? Yes. And I transcend that the ever-changing impact of the form world, that is exciting in so many different ways, and stimulating in so many different ways, right? So, I feel more and more, not only accepting of this, but I feel it as a gift. Like you're playing somewhere, it's invitation to slow down a little bit. If I feel fatigue, it's invitation to not fight there, but what it could be, this moment, could be so different right now. But that's what it is. Yeah, I can see that with you. I see when I talk to you when you were in Northern California and you were more the entrepreneur and the business and the coach, and then in Southern California it was more you were exploring all kinds of things, the music and art and going places with people, different scenes and the ocean and everything. It was a lot of stimulation, but I can see what you mean by a little more solitary because you really have to go very deep inward to transcend when you start to feel intense fatigue.  And that's what I've learned from Jesus with the Course in Miracles is he's teaching us that he says fatigue doesn't come ever from lack of sleep. It's the strain of constant judgment that he says is virtually intolerable. While Jesus knows that when we're judging anything, even in the slightest way, we start to get fatigued because it's not natural. But when we go into that transcendent self, that beautiful higher self, that light self, then everything feels so vibrant and energetic and joyful. So it's beautiful the way that, you know, we have to take it in steps and stages, you know? In one sense, we have to get it out of our system. And you, if anybody I've known, you have really pushed the boundaries in terms of just really going for it, whatever it is. If it feels helpful or intuitive, then you just go for it. You don't hesitate. And now it's more of a solitary like, okay, I can do this too. I can go inward and have even what seems to be a little more solitary life, certainly then in Northern or Southern California. And I so love what you just said, rephrasing Jesus, right? So I noticed it too. I totally, totally noticed it from my experience that my fatigues disappear as soon as sense of lack disappear. So, you know, I've been on this journey after my second divorce. I was on this journey. I want to find a life partner with whom I really, really vibe, who can share all my expressions of binoga from intensities to sexuality, to curiosity, to adventure, to moods, to whatever. I don't know. And it felt like it just, the journey was so much deeper with someone versus alone.  No, love is love. And the relationship is a relationship. I feel they serve quite a different purpose. We love, the practice is loving everybody, being in a relationship. So people have a very different idea what it means for them. And I know what it means for me, why I want relationship. Because I also have other relationships for learning. Yes, all the relationships for learning, you know that. But the partnership, I know exactly why I want my partnership to take me. So, you remember, I had a little discomfort with the fact that, okay, it's been a couple of years. Yeah, I had short relationship here and short relationship there, but it's not it. It's not a partner for life situation where you really, really, really go the way there. And there was so much protection about it. And I noticed that soon as somewhere, I let go of the desire. I said, you know what, maybe I just don't have in the seven billion world, seven people, the seven billion people would, I don't have my match. Maybe I cannot meet anybody on the level I hope to. Or there's somebody and I cannot just be with them. Who knows? And I think the desire was so strong and the resistance to not having it was so strong that it caused me going, my body was going in overdrive. And as soon as I let it go, I'm not saying permanently, but there was period, I'm going through this motions. I did go and wanted a game. Desires, human desires. But as soon as I noticed the huge drop of intensity around it, I suddenly don't have a text. Go figure. It's that I really lack the reach, the identity of Olga became smaller, right? There's lack, like I don't have that. I want that, I don't have that, right? And so identity was kind of became very contracted around it. It was causing me to go out of all the spaciousness that I experienced through inner work and just grace. And it was going back into the contracted state. And that's what was partially causes the fatigue. It's this, it's this, fight it. It's saying no to aspects of life versus saying, yes, this is what's happening now, yes. And this is what happening, yes. And yes to everything. Even if I don't like it, it's been there. We can make little cards for everybody. If you believe in lack, you contract. If you believe in release, you have peace. Yeah, he's quiet and he doesn't know it. Yeah. That's sweet. Wow, that is so beautiful. Well, that's why I really enjoy doing these lives because we come together and we can learn from each other. We can learn from the experiences of our beloveds. As we open up to just truly listen, then we sometimes can receive things that we really need to hear just through the connection, just through the love, the joy, the friendship, the connection, then it seems like that vibe draws in what we most need to hear.  Right? There's everything in such a trip. If you need to send train and some people say, oh, but I can't get out. It's like, why would you want to get out?  There's great things every time when you look in the window all the time, great things. Yeah. That's it. Well, thank you so much for spontaneously joining me. I saw you had made a comment and I thought, oh, I'm going to try to reach out and connect to you. And then that was, that was beautiful.  So that is really just wonderful. And I hope everybody watching enjoyed us because whenever we come together to talk about anything, we have a lot of fun and there's so much joy and deep love and connection. So yeah, my heart goes out. Thank you. I love you so much. So what are we talking about? Is it, of course, a miracle of the day, Sam? What does the conversation about the day mean? That's right. That's right. Because if you're watching, they're like, well, they, they got into all kinds of topics today. That'll be the buzz. What, what were they talking about? Healing, this is our vision. I love you too. Okay. Well, thank you and thank you everyone.


Hi, welcome to our show. I mean what we were doing, what the talk at the Central Vista instead we are doing sit and talk on the Central Vista issue. And as you know we're doing a series of episodes. The whole issue of redevelopment of the Central Vista right from the Rashtapati Bhavan to India gate along the Rajapath. And as we have pointed out a lot many buildings are going to be torn down. A new parliament is going to come up. And today we are very fortunate to have with us Mr. Ram Rahman. Thanks Ram for joining our show. And let me also apprise you that Ram happens to be someone who not just inherits the DNA of I mean of Mr. Habib Rahman who was the principal architect with CPWD. In fact was brought by Nehru to construct the post-independence Central Vista buildings along the Central Vista. But also the intellectual who also inherits the intellectual DNA. So Ram I think straight away if we have to start you're taking. No I'm only smiling because you know he didn't design any of the buildings on Central Vista. No but apart from that I saw in one of his interviews I mean he has a comment on this. Oh yeah yeah there's a lot on the building of New Delhi. So we'll talk about that. So the foremost question that I think which is really coming to the fore is that the government is equi-propounding a theory that look we have to Indianize the Indian architecture. And one of the reasons that is pushing this whole redevelopment process is this Indianization of the architecture. And if I may ask because we've done episodes even in the past where Latin's Delhi was considered to be quite syncretic to the Indian ethos because they left the British architecture in Calcutta. And of course when Nehru was planning the development along the Central Vista and other buildings that also contributed a lot to the creation and construction of new buildings. So I mean if we discuss all these three phases from the Latins to 1947 and then from the 1947 to the present era and this whole process of redevelopment how do you really capture all this? Well you see Delhi has an interesting architectural history because Shah Jahanabad which was built by Shah Jahan was the great medieval post medieval city which was a very urban center. And east of that and between that and Tughlaqabad etc were all the ruined seven cities of Delhi. So it was scattered with ruins, there was a lot of open land. When the British decide to shift the capital in 1912 when they make that decision after a lot of debate etc they figure on that Raisina Hill where that village was down to the Jamuna where they'll build the imperial city. You know in all of this you've already discussed with many of the historians and sociologists and architects in your series. But you see what happens with the building of CPWD building of Delhi particularly the Central Vista which is done by architects who the very handful of architects who had been trained in India. We only had three schools of architecture when India became independent. There were more engineering schools you know that had been actually set up by the British and New Delhi was built primarily all by British architects. Some of these architects who remained in PWD had worked at that last phase with the British architects. So the buildings that you're talking about like Shastri Bhavan, Udyog Bhavan, Nirman Bhavan etc were designed by architects like Dio Lalikar who as my father says you know in this long interview which was done in 1989 he was the first chief architect after independence of the Central Public Works Department after the British. Now there's an interesting history to that because I'll quote from here which is my father's narrative which comes from an interview that he yeah this was an interview done by Molloy Chatterjee who was a professor at the School of Planning and Architecture and has been very involved in actually documenting the history of the building of New Delhi. So this is this is the quote, Nehru was disturbed by developments along Central Vista. Dio Lalikar's Bhavans did not appeal to him. Billimoria's Bhavans were under construction and Nehru was apprehensive. In those days a national library and a national theater were proposed along Central Vista. This was actually Lathyan's plan and it's a very important part that we should talk about the Central Vista that crossing of what we then renamed Jan Path and Raj Path. There was to be the National Archives which was built by Lathyan's and the theater which had been designed by Mansingh Rana never got built but that was incorporated into the Indra Gandhi National Center and on the other side was the National Museum which was designed by Dio Lalikar and that was 1950 I think finished in 54-55 and that was very much taking the idiom of Lathyan's but in Dio Lalikar's you know own way. So when you say idiom of Lathyan's I mean could you just define that? Yeah you see what Lathyan's devised for building Delhi. Now you know at this time when New Delhi is being designed the modern movement has already exploded in Europe. So you've got the Bauhaus has been set up, Walter Gropius, the Russian constructivist, the Dutch architects are all building highly modernist housing and office buildings. Now what Lathyan's was doing was completely different from that. He was still harking back to a classicism which was imperial that was the whole notion that the British wanted to do but the ambition was very great because Shusmith who was one of the architect has a wonderful quote saying that what Lathyan's devised which he called the Delhi order including for the columns and the detailing it was actually the last gasp of the Italian Renaissance. So the premise of the idiom is the Renaissance? Yes it is completely taking what Palladio started in Renaissance Italy, taking Palladio's classicism and New Delhi was going to be the grand end point of that style. So the ambition was very big. So here as I said the National Library and National Theatre were proposed along Central Vista. Rana's proposal was shelved and incorporated into the IGNCA. So Nehru set up a Central Vista committee in 1959 because he was so concerned about the building of New Delhi but in a very democratic manner and he had brought these young architects like my father like Kanvinde to Delhi from different cities in India. It was a sort of mini art commission with Joglaker, Benjamin, Billimoria, Kanvinde, Bijit Ghosh and myself amongst the members. Meetings were chaired by Dharam Veera, then Secretary, Ministry of Works and Housing. We could not succeed in improving Billimoria's Bhavans because Joglaker kept insisting that the designs were final and construction had started. So Joglaker is the chief engineer? He was the chief architect at that time after Diolalikar. The committee then turned down the proposal by Gill and myself for extensions to the National Archives. After the DUAC was formed, the Delhi Urban Arts Commission, of which my father was the first secretary in 1974, the Central Vista committee declined in importance but it still exists and can put a spoke in the wheels of any Vista-related project should any of its members be so inclined. I'm not sure whether the committee still exists or not. Let's find out if the committee still exists. But this gives you an idea of, you see Nehru did not override Joglaker or the Minister even though he was unhappy with the design of the buildings. Nehru functioned in a democratic manner and where he could intervene in design terms like with my father with Ravinder Bhavan, he did and helped create a modernist idiom which was to his liking. So Ram, I mean if you could just put it in in a chronological form. You know these days we speak about chronology a lot. So it starts from the renaissance to the modernist Nehru's views of modern India and of course modern architecture and eventually lands up here. See for instance this is 1959 that's the Mazhar of Maulana Azad and this was built at a very historic site in front of the Jama Masjid and what my father did is take the arch proportion from the Masjid from the entrance and abstracted into this thin-shelled cross vault concrete and Nehru loved this and this was this was the kind of Indian modernism that Nehru liked because it had a root in in Indian aesthetics and in Indian building traditions but was using modern material with a modern vision. That's the photograph of Habib Rahman and Pandit Joharal Nehru. So what is he showing? Yeah this was 1961. You see when you're talking about the whole notion of Indianism or Indian style in modern architecture. Ravinder Bhavan is actually a key moment in that whole debate because the first building that my father did looked like an office building. Which one? Avrabindra Bhavan. Now these were being built to commemorate centenary of Tagore in 1961 and they were to be cultural centers. They were being built in all the state capitals. So they were to be libraries, theaters, performing arts centers. So this was the one in Delhi and Nehru looked at the first model and got very upset. He said this looks like an office building and this doesn't look like what you have done with Moolana Azad's Mazhar or Gandhi Ghat in Calcutta which had an Indian idiom to them but they were totally modernist buildings. You know they were not pastiche that you just put a chajja or something randomly on the building. So he forced my father to redesign it in consultation with Nehru actually and that ended up becoming Ravinder Bhavan. Now the material used in that building was very different from what he had done for the office buildings which were quite cheaply built and quickly built at that time because we had very little limited resources you know in those first decades after independence. So this is a key moment because it also shows how focused Nehru was actually on architecture, architectural style and urbanism. Yeah that aesthetics of... Yeah not just that but you see he even had a sense of the urban. He breaks down the western wall or the southern wall of Purani Dilli which was still there at independence to make the fleet street, not fleet street the business district where the stock exchange comes up the banks come up, delight cinema comes up. So that wall was broken down. Then he built fleet street which is where all the newspaper offices were, ITO, Indian Express, Patriot, Times of India you know they were all based on that one street and in that ITO area he also set up all the new buildings for government which were the University Grants Commission, Income Tax Office, you know all the buildings which were needed for the new government to function were set up in ITO. Now see that's the difference between putting all that kind of building in Central Vista. So Ram before we move out I think one of the reasons why we are at your place and we could have easily got you at the Central Vista and which we are viewers must know is that this house is a treasure trope. So can you just dig into some of the these trunks that you see here yeah they're all filled with my father's and mother's archives. And let us also inform that your mother was the first Miss India. Yeah that's my mother the photograph that my father took in Calcutta and you see this is the kind of I mean this is a very shoddy archive but this is this was an issue of design magazine on the Delhi Zoo which was designed by my father but here you've got you know many of his buildings these are all his photographs of the housing some of the plans that's Rabindra Bhavan which was the key. So you see this this kind of material there's a lot of Delhi's history here such as Curzon Road Hostels. Just continue our discussion. Yeah at your house. I think this is something very important that our viewers must know in fact the country must know that the whole process of redevelopment has something to do with the political ideological mooring of the government and you know and that was very clear as you have pointed out from the Latvians to the Nehruvin era and now to what is called the Modi era. So I mean what do you deduce out of it I mean. No I think you see these buildings we've been talking about Shasti Bhavan or Vigyan Bhavan etc which were built post 50s they may not be great buildings architecturally but you know these are buildings that we have grown up with so we have a cultural memory and you know it becomes part of your city yeah it's a cityscape and you know many cities you don't have buildings which are necessarily great buildings but they become lived in people get used to them you have grown up your whole life either going to the buildings or having pan outside or you know they are there you're they're familiar also Shasti Bhavan or Udyog Bhavan has those murals by Satish Gujral you know which are which are very important art art historically for that period because that was when public art was being done now you see to destroy cultural resources like the National Museum and the Indira Gandhi National Center and replace them it's a huge space to replace them with an office building is a complete disaster because you're taking away you know an important cultural resource which is for the people and Indira Gandhi Center you've got those open lawns where they have these cultural festivals exhibitions all the time you're going to remove that from the center of Delhi and put up these buildings which are identical blocks which is a very fascist idea actually now just hold on hold on yeah so what you're trying to say is from the renaissance to the modernist Nehruv in India which we you said was quite democratic yeah to a fascist outlook yeah I mean that's for the first time hearing it and what does that mean actually well you know the the whole notion of fascism if you look at the history in Italy particularly Germany when they gained control they went back to a classicism in architecture which is very conservative and there was this idiom that developed which was you know like long severe pillars you know grand buildings which were imposing buildings now what from the plans that we see of central vista you're going to get these identical rectangular blocks which is going to be very you know the grandeur of no and also they all going to be identical so you'll get like one after the other these bureaucratic you know office buildings which are going to replace the you know odd mixed architecture that developed after independence now that has a certain character of its own and it and it reflects actually a democratic spirit by having these different buildings which are in different styles which are open to the public the national museum now the other thing is when you're when you're tearing apart the national museum where are you going to put all the art which is inside it for the time that the building is going to be torn down and you know a museum moved somewhere else and this is highly valuable art which even to take out of a cupboard to show somebody is difficult to do and you know these issues I think of cultural memory and of a lived city which has a certain access to the public especially for cultural events and you know library cultural resources you're eliminating that and making this a babu babu dumb city which is going to be you know cut away from any public access and the other thing which I can't understand I mean there was a report in times of India that they were going to build nuclear bunkers you know and yeah now obviously that's part of the program but the funny thing is you put the president the vice president the prime minister and all the babus in this one location in Delhi so you just need one bomb so even in security terms it makes no sense you know so Ram I mean I mean you pointed to something very fascinating to us of the whole the grand idea of exhibiting once well or I mean power can you draw a parallel between Albert Speer what he was trying to do for Hitler and what what Bimal Patel is trying to do for our our our indigenous well I think it's a very obvious comparison because you see Hitler don't forget Hitler was a failed artist himself yeah you know water colorist and oil painter but I don't think our prime minister is a failed artist well no but you know failed artist is a very dangerous person because they're frustrated they're an artist well no maybe he has many other skills yeah no I think the equivalence with what happened with Hitler and Albert Speer which was with you know who became his kind of favored architect in Berlin is very apt in this context because you know again Hitler wanted to project this whole notion of Aryan purity and Aryan power through this through this very grandiose building project which was harking back to ancient Rome you know the architecture is a theater set to depict power and Albert Speer worked on the stadium where the Nuremberg where the you know great sports events happened the great Nazi rallies happened and there's this amazing story that he designed it to be these rallies to happen at night because would hide the portliness of the Nazis with the night lighting oh that's interesting yeah so you know this whole notion of projecting power through a grandiosity and you know sort of uniformity of building as a you know these blocks going down where you is actually a fascist idea because you know a democratic architecture has its own nuances some of it is bad some of it is good but it it is democratic and it reflects very very yeah it reflects that spirit of openness of you know a little bit of jugar you know happenstance now to do these very linear buildings is is actually a example of fascist control through architecture of urban space but tell me Ramam the last thing that I want to know I mean a all uniform I mean all sorts of uniformity it leads to towards fascism and B if you would I mean this one single point that point because Indian fascism ought to be different from the Italian fascism or the European fascism and here it has to be quite ingrained to the whole bunch of Hindutva ideologies you know so this architecture also has to come closer to that I mean do you have anything to say on that no you see this idea of Hindutva ideology you can see that more in the new temples that are being built like the Akshadam etc you know we have a great tradition of temple building including contemporary which I have seen Bimal Patil's presentations yeah where he speaks about the triangle you know coming up instead of the circle the circular parliament yeah it'll be triangular and he speaks about the the three gods I mean the Brahma Vishnu yeah so I mean don't you think I mean well you know you once you get into that the funny joke is you see the triangle apparently according to Vastu traditions is not a good shape and Jawahar Bhavan which was built by the congress is a triangular building and the congress never moved into it because of Vastu issues so if you're building a parliament which is triangular you know this Vastu issue is there but you see this this whole idea of Hindutva building of Modi is a sort of misnomer because partly what Modi is trying to do you know by tearing down the Hall of Nations for instance of Rajeevan which was a great modernist structure in our history and we couldn't save it even though we tried for years to try and save it as a you know great cultural resource and it didn't happen you see Modi's when you read the language that they use which is to build something iconic and world-class now his idea is to project you know some sort of you know fancy modernist glass covered you know steel yeah yeah yeah now I think that that actually is a very regressive lower middle class attitude because it's you're thinking that something like that is a world-class building whereas you're not thinking in terms of architectural you see when Nehru brought in so how do you link it to the whole concept of fascism that you wanted out well enough in many ways you see fascist ideology is actually very simple it is a question of controlling population through symbols which are either political or cultural or architectural which are actually quite simplistic so this whole notion that you build something which is grand and on a big scale and identical that this projects it's actually very simple notion and that that is a you know that is the unfortunate aspect of fascist ideology thank you Ram I mean thank you so much once again and I think this is a new facet that has come to light I mean we spoke about the different facets right from renaissance to the democratic construction of the central Vista and now to why the whole idea of redevelopment of the central Vista is linked to the idea of fascism thank you so much oh you're welcome


Hello everyone, this is Amit Don of amitdon.com. If this is your first time here or if you're a repeat visitor, thank you for your support. On this channel, I'm always trying new and different ideas. If that is something you're interested in, please come back for more. If you're only interested in tutorial videos, there are more links in the description box below. Today I'll talk about how to copy formatting in Google Docs. So copy formatting allows you to transfer or take same style across different parts of your document. So you don't have to do the same thing again and again, which can be very time-wasting. Instead, you just copy the formatting and apply it to different parts or any parts or any section of your document. So we're looking at an article which I wrote for my Egypt travel journals and this is actually I'm publishing on my website. So I'm going to take a part from this document. So let's say we're going to copy the title formatting and I'd like to transfer this formatting from here onto the other parts of document. So what do you need to do? You have to just put your cursor anywhere from which you'd like to copy the formatting. So just put your cursor here and then you can see that you know the cursor is right there or you can just you know even highlight the whole section. You can do it that way. So let's say we'll just you know put the cursor here and you're going to go to this tool which is called paint format.  So let's do that. So we click on here and now you can see that you know your cursor is a paint roller and you have to just you know go over where you want to change the formatting. So right now we have copied formatting from this sentence and let's say you'd like to put it here. So what I'm going to do I'm going to just drag it and if I let my mouse go then you can see that you know it changed formatting and again my cursor is back to normal so I don't have any more paint roller. So let's say instead of just you know doing it one time you want to do it many times then what you can do you can apply the same thing but instead of a single click you just do a double click. So for example let's do it again. We'll put our cursor right here and we'll just double click and now you can you'll see that you know I'm going to format this portion and I will let my mouse go but still I have the paint roller icon on so that means that you know I can just keep formatting as long as I want. So if I don't want my cursor or if I want to get rid of the copying portion then all you have to do you have to just you know click here and then it's going to be gone. Another way to do the same thing instead of pressing the button right here is that you can use the keyboard shortcuts which would be Ctrl-Alt-C to copy and to paste you just use Ctrl-Alt-V and you see these you know comments in the description box below. So that's all for today. Thank you for watching this video. There will be more videos coming up so I'll see you shortly.