Cast of One: Non-Dual Spirituality and the Diversity of Divinity (dialogue with Sami Chhapra)

Sami Chhapra: Hi, Matt!

Matt Segall: Hello, my friend.

Sami Chhapra: Hello!

Matt Segall: How are you doing this morning?

Sami Chhapra: Good, thanks. How are you? Are you feeling better?

Matt Segall: Yeah. I slept in. Philo allowed me to sleep in, which is very nice of him.

Sami Chhapra: You look nice and rested.

Matt Segall: Good.

Sami Chhapra: So we’re recording already.

Matt Segall: Oh, yeah, I just started. I can clip it later if you want to discuss what we will discuss in advance of the discussion, we can do that.

Sami Chhapra: Well, I mean I don’t know. I don’t know how you guys do it.

Matt Segall: You guys, what do you mean? You guys?

Sami Chhapra: Podcasters.

Matt Segall: Oh, well, I have my own ways. I tend to keep things as spontaneous as possible. Just allow what wants to emerge to enter into the conversation. I very much like that we’re doing this on a Sunday morning, and I appreciate that you are willing to not go to Unity this morning, and to instead meet with me. And so, yeah, maybe we can make the best of it by convening the sacred and dropping into a space of reverence together to explore not just ideas, but realities that both of us think are important. I was going to say missing in our world, but I felt immediately that you would probably say, but it’s not missing. It’s present. The divine is present.

Sami Chhapra: Present in a kind of hidden way.

Matt Segall: Yeah. So I mean, maybe it’s best to start with just a little introduction. I know you very well. We were in graduate school together. But maybe you can just share a bit about yourself, and how you have journeyed so far in this life, and what’s brought you to your current perspective.

Sami Chhapra: Yeah, I don’t know where to begin, but the more that I’ve lived, the more I’ve realized how early it began. You know, this journey and this kind of quest. And it’s easy to project into the past something that maybe wasn’t there. But it feels, you know, I mean, I believe our lives are paved way before we walk along our path, and so—but you don’t know that when you’re a teenager, because you’re so in it, you’re so confused and traumatized and afraid and insecure, and all those considerations kind of overshadow what is just underneath that level of vigilance or consciousness.

And I’m like 44 years old now, and I’m just now beginning to understand, and just now beginning to be with it in a way that I haven’t been able to before. And so I mean, yeah, it’s like everything that’s happened has led to this point inexorably. Like there was nothing that could have—there’s no parallel universe I could have inhabited, or a different path I could have gone down, or a different choice I could have made. This is how I see it. This is what I feel. It’s like everything just had to lead to this moment.

Matt Segall: Hmm. So this is not an “everything everywhere, all at once” sort of world in your view.

Sami Chhapra: I haven’t seen the movie. But there might be, because my level of awareness doesn’t reach to the furthest corners of the universe. But there might be. I don’t know. But for the purposes of just my own—what can I do that is gonna bring me into alignment? The way I look at it is, it’s about not knowing exactly what ultimate reality is, but knowing enough to be moving in the right direction. That’s all I’m concerned about. I just want to move in the right direction, and it’ll unveil for me what I need to know at any given stage or at any given moment. I’m on a need to know basis.

Matt Segall: Yeah. You know, I’ve been thinking about that—just the limitations of my own consciousness, and what I’m capable of knowing and trying to understand how knowing and not knowing interfaces with faith. And it struck me that faith is like knowing that you are known. Fully. Even if I don’t have full access to that, someone does. And that’s faith. So it’s not the opposite of knowledge. It’s just a different position in the knowing, in the relationship of knowing.

Sami Chhapra: Yeah, I love that.

Matt Segall: And that’s given me some comfort, because, like you’re saying, life is understood backwards. We live it forwards, we stumble forward. It can be very dramatic sometimes, especially in high school, when we’re teenagers. And maybe into adulthood, too. And I think we all have different, as the integral theorists would say, lines of development. And emotionally, some people can remain in adolescent consciousness for quite a while, and the drama continues. And I think for others, we can gain a little bit more clarity as we enter into our 30s, 40s, 50s, 60th decade of life, and finally understand who we are to some degree.

Sami Chhapra: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I think this also brings up—I read your—I mean, I couldn’t read it in full, but I read your transcript from that talk, or maybe it was another AI related thing.

Matt Segall: I’ve been doing a lot of those recently.

Sami Chhapra: A lot of them. Yeah. So I really liked, because you address the whole idea of what kind of a god are we talking about here? One that’s dictating everything and controlling everything and micromanaging everything versus one who is sort of coaxing you into a—lovingly coaxing you into alignment, and for you to do the best that you can do. I don’t know exactly how you put it.

Matt Segall: You got it.

Sami Chhapra: Yeah. And I was thinking about that in terms of how to understand that thing or that being or that consciousness that knows us.

Matt Segall: Can we? I mean, we can understand with the heart. I’m sure of that.

Sami Chhapra: It’s exactly right. Exactly right. Again, it’s about knowing enough to be moving in the right direction. Not knowing all of it. I mean, that’s not—because if we were to know all of it, we would be there. So there has to be some separation while we’re in this embodied form or slightly unconscious form. But that thing also is us, you see. That’s what I think is what allows us to move in that direction. And I’m hoping it comes up. But those points are kind of not really registering right now, but I’m sure in the course of conversation they’ll come up.

Matt Segall: So when you think about your own biography in your past, were you always spiritually inclined and in relationship to the divine? Or is that something which dawned on you later in life?

Sami Chhapra: Later. I mean, because I grew up in a Sufi family. So there’s these mystical gatherings many times a year with like music and drums and people in trances. And so I mean—

Matt Segall: But you were like a fish in water, maybe.

Sami Chhapra: Correct. Yeah. And then the more dogmatic aspects of formal religion didn’t really resonate. I mean, I tried to imagine what it would be like. I had an active imagination. My parents or some elders used to say that on the Day of Judgment, everything will sort of give witness to what you did, and like the walls will be speaking. And so I tried as a child to imagine that. And so there was, I think, always a sense of being watched—that you’re not alone, and that you can’t have any sort of private misdeed that you do when no human is looking. There’s something that sees and knows and is present. So there was that.

And I think I did have my rebellious phase of being a kind of agnostic. Atheist, maybe not really. But even then I wrote something—I did some free writing, and I was like, fine, I have these rational sort of thoughts, and I’m interested in just what is material, and I’m interested in the brain and those kinds of things. But then I also wrote that in times of adversity, I would feel that there is something. And I wrote that we are that power. We collectively run the universe. I mean, I wrote that as like a 19 year old.

Matt Segall: Hmm.

Sami Chhapra: I mean, I guess 19 year olds these days are very, very enlightened, but back then it felt to me like an unusual thought.

Matt Segall: Yeah. At what point did you feel like you were embracing psychology and feel like you were on the path to becoming a counselor and a therapist?

Sami Chhapra: I think after I came out of the meditation retreat in 2002. I went to do a Vipassana 10 day meditation retreat. And actually, before that, I had asked my mom to get me a copy of Edward Podvall’s “Recovering Sanity: A Compassionate Approach to Understanding and Treating Psychosis,” which was written by—he was the founder of the program at Naropa that I then eventually went to do my graduate studies in.

So it was beginning—after I came out of the hospital in New York, I was just working at a dot-com in the village in New York City. And then I came to Pakistan, and I was working on some film projects with my aunt, and I was very depressed because I was not in my purpose. I was not in my purpose, and I was not even allowed to be in my purpose, because it made other people uncomfortable. And so that’s how I spent a large part of my life, secretly trying to pursue my purpose without really living it in an overt manner.

And so I think inevitably after the hospitalization, I’m like, there’s too many unconscious people around me, and I need to figure this out. And I’m also in a lot of pain. I need to figure out what the hell is going on and how to channel what I want to do in a constructive way. So therapy was the obvious choice. I mean, I don’t even have to think about it too much. I think I just kind of was led to it.

Matt Segall: Hmm, yeah, it’s bringing home for me how paradoxical the degree to which we are individual and the degree to which we are relational beings becomes entangled in something like what you’re describing. We’re also intimately related, and we need each other. We feed on each other’s attention and recognition as much as we might want to say, “Oh, I don’t care what other people think.” We’re made of each other’s thoughts and feelings and projections.

And so when one of us at some point in life is ready or is only—is not capable of denying these deeper truths and realities, and wants to acknowledge them and talk about them, but people around us are just—they’d much prefer to remain in the usual everyday sort of consciousness. Then, if they’re not able to reflect back to you, or acknowledge the piercing insight that you might be bringing because it burns away their habitual—

Sami Chhapra: Yeah, ways of coping.

Matt Segall: —then what they reflect back to you is you’re crazy. Leave me alone.

Sami Chhapra: Crazy, irresponsible, whatever.

Matt Segall: Yeah. So like awakening is both a collective endeavor, but also requires each of us as individuals to decide that we’re not satisfied with anything less. And it just leads to—I mean, I guess that’s how evolution works. This interplay between the species and the individual. And it creates a lot of tension, and it drives a lot of creative but tumultuous moments of transformation.

Sami Chhapra: Yeah. Yeah. You said it perfectly. Yeah, I’m in one of them right now. And my mother said, “It’s a test.” The divine through other people, through life circumstances, puts the squeeze on at times. And I have a reaction sometimes, but I recover very quickly from it thankfully. And sometimes I have people close to me who will be like, “Hey, you don’t want to be here. You don’t want to stay in this angry, resentful state. So come, you know better, and come back. Come back to what you are all about.”

And so it’s the only thing to do. And then when you come back, it’s like, “Oh, thank God,” and it makes sense why the tumult happened in the first place. Because it strengthens your sense of your own purpose and your own center. It brings clarity about so many things. It motivates you in a particular direction. And so that’s why the idea that the divine is everything, the divine is behind every mask, really rings true. There is no enemy as such. Nothing is ever working against us, even if it feels like someone’s bombing you or killing you or hating on you—whatever—it’s all the divine acting.

And that’s problematic. Because then people think you’re condoning negative action, which is not the case. It’s not about condoning negative action. It’s about just—because if one adopts the attitude, “Oh, it’s all the divine. So it’s all fine. So people can just continue to do exactly what they want to do without regard to anyone else’s safety, security, well-being,” right? But that’s not the case. I mean, that’s just a foolish man’s argument, because you have to meet that energy.

But let’s meet it in such a way that we’re not losing sight of the bigger picture or the actual reality that might be at play here. Because if one reacts to the mask, then the mask just gets strengthened, because the mask itself is so unconscious it doesn’t know what’s running it from behind. It doesn’t—it has no clue. So then, when you attack it, it just freaks out even more, and it hangs on to what it knows even more. And so it’s even more cut off from its own divinity.

Matt Segall: Yeah, I—it’s—I think it’s in moments of clarity. This dynamic becomes apparent to me when I look at world history, when I look at various conflicts between peoples. But it does feel problematic when I’m not the one suffering to be the one describing the situation in that way. But like, how would you—I’m not asking you to solve the conflict, but you know India and Pakistan are in a very tense situation, and it’s been that way for a long time. And these are two nations, two peoples—Hinduism and Islam. How does one begin to go about bringing this perspective, which both of these traditions should be very well aware of if they were to take stock in—

Sami Chhapra: Correct. And they’re very much complementary to each other. They actually work together. They’re not—I mean, of course they are individual, beautiful ideologies, but they really reveal their essence—basically the essence of the message can only be received when you have a more comprehensive view. You’re not just stuck to that one tradition.

And so yeah, it’s—so it’s by design. First of all, that’s how I look at it. This was always going to happen. No one fucked anything up. This was always going to be the case. And again, it’s alchemical, right? In order to have an authentic union, you have to have separation before. And it mirrors the very act of creation which was separation. So anything that intensifies separation is actually reenacting the very first act of creation. And so there’s forces, there’s people, there’s groups that are intensifying the separation. And that’s been really kind of gaining momentum and gaining strength in recent years because it’s getting us closer and closer to that limit, the region of the limit.

Matt Segall: Hmm. The limit of pain and suffering and division, or—

Sami Chhapra: Yeah, just the—the diagram that I made for my dissertation, just that the maximum distance away from Source. That arc of descent that begins at creation and that goes all the way up to the limit, because beyond that it’s not like—there’s nothing there, there’s no creation beyond that. So it has to flip. And what flips is the consciousness. And that begins the journey back towards origin, the return. The arc of ascent back to origin. And it’s all about consciousness, that’s all it is.

Which is why it’s so important, I feel, to understand or to move in the right direction. But having said that, I mean, we can’t help but move in the right direction, because God—the divine is dictating it. It’s dictating the fact that we are reaching that limit. And so it’s causing people to intensify. It’s archetypal. It’s archetypal activation.

Matt Segall: Hmm. As you know, thinking of the divine as a dictator is something that—I won’t say it triggers me, but I want to find other ways of imagining this divine action. And I wonder if you would—how you would feel about thinking of these—there’s I think there are sort of rules that like this limit, and the coincidence of opposites, and the way in which when you go to an extreme and you push through that limit you end up with a kind of—an enantiodromia, as Jung would say, a reversal.

Sami Chhapra: Okay.

Matt Segall: So the opposites coincide.

Sami Chhapra: That’s right.

Matt Segall: And that seems like a rule that I think even the divine is—I don’t want to make the divine subject to it. Maybe it’s that the divine is inseparable from that. So it’s not like God is the Dictator who’s deciding that this must happen. It’s just that the nature of the divine is that this shall happen, right? I mean, it’s a subtle difference. Maybe it’s no different from what you’re trying to say. But I just—the dictator image, because it makes people feel disempowered and subject to the will of another.

And even though I said earlier, like knowing that I am known gives me a sense of faith, that being known is an act of love rather than of force. You know I’m not forced to be what I am. I’m free to be what I am, and known in that freedom, and loved in that freedom, regardless of what I do. Because, as you’re saying, there is no way to stray from the path, really, because even if you take the wrong path and go all the way to the end, you might suffer, but it’ll open out into the opposite. Right. The fool who persists in his folly, I guess, is a version of that.

Sami Chhapra: Yeah, yeah, I mean, ultimately, it’s all full of paradox. Right? I mean, it’s complicated to talk about it. But I don’t think of God as a dictator. It’s more like, just as a fact that in the last 100 years the whole world of cinema has come up—the camera, and acting and directing. So God more as the director, and any actor would love to be in the hands of a good director. Yeah, where the director is coaching the actors. But the director also has a vision and is coaching and directing the actors accordingly.

Matt Segall: And it’s a collaborative effort. It’s like the director creates the conditions for the actors to convincingly—yeah.

Sami Chhapra: Oh yes! Yeah. But in this case the director is not separate from the actors or the crew or the set. It’s a cast of one.

Matt Segall: Hmm.

Sami Chhapra: So it’s not ultimately an external power entity that we’re subservient to. I mean, we are, in a sense. But it’s more empowering than just that kind of following direction. It’s actually bringing us closer to our own divinity. It’s letting us ultimately realize that we are the director. We designed all of this, and we agreed to live it and experience it. And I think that’s just what we’ve been doing forever. And will continue to do forever. I mean, there’s no end to it.

Matt Segall: So we can approach the divine through—let’s say there are various cuisines that allow us to taste the divine. And you were raised in a Sufi family. But it sounds like now you feel—maybe, would the word be trans-religious or multiple? You have multiple religious affiliations, or you feel like all of the traditions—the wisdom traditions—are delicious in their own ways?

Sami Chhapra: Yeah, I mean, my college professor opened me up to that. Because that’s how he sees it. And it’s remarkable, because it’s not about any one tradition. It’s all coming from the same source. That’s the—how can you exclude anything? Why would you? Why would you just pick one tiny little thing and then disregard everything else? It’s like—I don’t know where I read this or someone said this. It’s like, if you love God, then why would you not love everything that God is associated with?

Matt Segall: Yeah, for people that remain kind of ensconced within one tradition, but very deeply committed to Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, whatever it may be, and it’s authentic for them. There’s a sense, maybe, of—I guess a fear of relativism. And a fear that one would need to lessen commitment to a truth in order to make room for at least different ways of rendering into language and symbol and practice that truth. And I think it can be difficult sometimes for people to be open to the possibility that the truth could be translated in various ways.

Sami Chhapra: Yeah. But I think a key insight that I had which helped me to see what’s going on here—why are people so attached to one particular tradition, or a way of seeing? Because if you want to keep something alive, if you want to have it be represented till the end, let’s say, you’re gonna have to have people who will follow it and preserve it and defend it and promote it. Otherwise there’d be just one religion from a long time ago. But if you want to preserve the diversity, if you want to have different creative expression, if you want to have different traditions emphasize different aspects of reality, if you want all of that, then you will have to ensure that there are people who will take it forward. And so you’ll have to have those people be attached to it, and only it, so that they can do a good job preserving it, building upon it, and perpetuating that particular way.

Matt Segall: And seeing what it leads to.

Sami Chhapra: Right. And so that’s important. Yeah, that’s important. But it’s like, it’s up to a point. It’s important. After a certain point, it’s just like a habitual pattern that no longer serves you. But the habitual pattern also, from a psychological point of view, the way I look at it is very important, because it conceals a jewel that you have not yet received. So the pattern will continue until you’ve gotten that jewel. It’s like, “Man, I’ve got this for you, and you’re not taking it. So I got to keep coming back because I want you to take it. I need you to take it.” And so it’ll just keep repeating. But once you’ve gotten it, it doesn’t have to repeat anymore.

So, which is where consciousness comes in. If some people can get that and communicate that—that’s what might be happening. We might be just unconsciously wedded to our own particular traditions by design, for this purpose. But only up to a point where we actually realize that very purpose and that design. And then it just falls away, not immediately, but gradually.

Matt Segall: Hmm. I’m reminded of Nietzsche’s criticisms of what he called monotonotheism. Because of this, the repetitiveness you’re talking about. The manyness of these paths—some aren’t even theistic—is an important stimulus to fresh revelation and ongoing dialogue and mutual discovery. It would be very boring if there were only one religion, one language, one culture. We have no opportunity for the learning that comes through reflection, seeing yourself reflected, not just in a mirror, but in the other. In difference. It kind of compels us to grow continuously.

Sami Chhapra: Up to a point, though. Up to a point, I believe. After that it becomes problematic as it already is.

Matt Segall: So not diversity as an end in itself; that’s relativism.

Sami Chhapra: No. Diversity as a stimulus to deeper unity. In a dialectical relationship.

Matt Segall: Right.

Sami Chhapra: Yeah. Yeah, I mean everything—there’s a thing, there’s a hermeneutic—ta’wil, right? Returning everything to its source. And just as an example, something that recently I thought about was the whole phenomenon of women veiling themselves, some women. So in Islam, and especially mysticism, Islamic mysticism, the feminine is like the real creative power. That’s, I think, common to many traditions, right? Mother Earth, and—

Matt Segall: Yeah, the great divine Mother, the divine—yeah. But also Shakti is like the active—

Sami Chhapra: Right, immanent power. Yeah. And so if you think of women embodying that in a certain way, the feminine, then women veiling themselves is symbolically representing the fact that that reality, that divine reality which is feminine, the creative reality, is veiled. And so an actual veiled woman is representing that in some way, is holding that. Yes, it may come about through traditional culture, whatever social factors and whatnot. But the deeper reality of it is that that’s what it’s holding. That’s what it’s carrying. That’s what it’s representing—that the divine reality is veiled.

Matt Segall: Yeah. I was thinking about your use of the term “designed,” and how it implies that there’s a meaning implicit in things, right? And so the veiling isn’t simply—I would say, not just an artifact of patriarchy and the need to control women or something. It’s an expression of the meaning of the hiddenness of God in each of us, in women.

Sami Chhapra: Yeah, in everything. Yeah.

Matt Segall: And that we can and must participate in this design, and the enactment of these meanings in our often idiosyncratic cultural ways. And culture evolves, and it evolves through encounter with other cultures, usually. Or sometimes internally, things just get—pressure builds, and there needs to be a break and a revelation of something new, a new design.

Sami Chhapra: Yeah, or a revelation of a new aspect of the design.

Matt Segall: A new aspect of the same design.

Sami Chhapra: Yeah.

Matt Segall: Yeah. But ta’wil—am I pronouncing that right?

Sami Chhapra: I don’t know.

Matt Segall: Is it like the sacramentalization of things which might otherwise appear mundane and common?

Sami Chhapra: Yes, I think so. I think so. Yeah, that definitely rings true. Yeah, absolutely.

Matt Segall: So, seeing the archetypal in the everyday.

Sami Chhapra: Yes, yes. Yeah, basically relating everything back to its source. And its, I think, probably original intent. How does the source see it? What is—how does this—what role does this play in the particular grand design or purpose?

Matt Segall: Hmm, yeah. So keeping that in mind, tracing everything back to its origin and source, I think helps me distinguish between the relativism of “Oh, everyone has their own truth” versus the—maybe the term would be the relationality rather than the relativity of the way in which we are all diffracted colors of one light.

And when I—I think you too—feel compelled to make room for different angles of approach to the divine. But I think the way to avoid relativism in being open to those different angles of approach is to, for me, if I enter into a dialogue, and there’s a disagreement with somebody, particularly if I respect this person I’m disagreeing with, and I feel like, “Wow, they clearly have the life experience, and the knowledge and the intelligence and the moral grounding that I would expect that what they’re saying has some validity.” But why am I disagreeing? It clues me into this relational reality that I’m trying to speak to. It clues me into the fact that if there’s a disagreement, it must be that the truth that I thought I had is limited in some sense, and I need to expand it to include this other truth.

Sami Chhapra: Correct. Yeah.

Matt Segall: And so I’m dissatisfied with simply disagreeing with somebody or just saying that my way is different. It’s not that I’m ever going to fully agree with everybody, but to the extent that there is disagreement, it seems to me like a sign of further growth that I need to undergo. Right? And that can happen in the instant that you have that realization.

Sami Chhapra: Yeah. Yeah. We’re all right, and we’re all wrong. But there is a unified something that holds it all together. And it’s just about finding alignment with that, letting it guide us, letting it teach us, letting it nudge us, letting it push us sometimes, if needed, letting it squeeze us. I mean, it’s hard to—I mean, it’s easy to say if you’re not really going through something really horrible which a lot of people are right now.

And yet, just whatever I see—I mean they’ve been screaming, “We’ve had enough, we’ve had enough, we’ve had enough.” But how have they been able to even withstand everything that they’ve already withstood? Like, who can do that? I can’t imagine going through that.

Matt Segall: But the divine gives them that capacity.

Sami Chhapra: It gives everyone the capacity to withstand whatever they are tasked with withstanding.

Matt Segall: And that does not mean that you again say, “Oh, yeah, this one has the capacity. Why don’t you just lay some more on them.”

Sami Chhapra: That’s again just a foolish way of looking at it. Because when I see people in deep suffering, I don’t feel sorry for them. I feel reverence. I’m in awe of them. Because they took it upon themselves to experience that. And they’re somehow doing it on behalf of all of us. For now. Who’s to say at some point we haven’t gone through something like that? Who’s to say at some point we won’t go through something like that?

Matt Segall: So what is our responsibility to one another when we are incarnate in these forms in a particular lifetime? Because I do think spiritually that Karma and reincarnation and these things are active realities. And so, yeah, in some sense, we make our own beds. Or we don’t make our beds. But we have to sleep in them. And yet that doesn’t in any way make me feel less responsible to—as much as I am capable—be of service to alleviate the suffering of others who are not actually other, because, as you’re saying, I mean for me, reincarnation I think in some sense entails the reality of how we’re all—we’ve all been everyone. We all will be everyone.

Sami Chhapra: That’s right.

Matt Segall: And so anyone’s suffering is really my suffering. Even if I’m not—

Sami Chhapra: Muslims have a very good understanding of that, and maybe even the Hindus.

Matt Segall: Right. So how do you relate to our responsibility in this life, as finite embodied creatures, when we encounter the suffering of others? There’s this spiritual point of view on it, and I think it’s important to always hold that front and center. But also—

Sami Chhapra: Well, just let it bring you to your heart. Approach other people with that level of intensified, enhanced awareness. And then you see that in other people as well.

Matt Segall: Do any of these problems that the world is facing have political solutions, you think, or is there a deeper transformation needed? I mean, I know the answer that you’re thinking.

Sami Chhapra: At the very end—it’s not about the AI awakening. It’s about when will we awaken? And that is the key. When will we awaken? What will it take? How much will it take? And I’m not content with saying, “Oh, it’s going to happen way in the future,” because that means you’re okay, perfectly okay with more suffering and more intensified suffering.

And also the whole idea of Karma can be used to—it can become an instrument of your resentment. “Yeah, Karma will get you. Don’t worry about it.” And I think that’s the wrong approach because there is no punishment. I do not think this world is about punishment or this whole creation is about separating the good guys from the bad guys. It’s not that. That is just the dramatic condition that allows for separation up to a certain point, up to a certain limit, up to a prescribed time. And then things have to just come back. It’s like, “Okay, enough fun and games,” or enough pain. “And now we need to basically come back and enjoy that.”

Because the trajectory of this is just leading straight into the abyss. There’s no—and so in answer to your question, political solution? No, unless there is some kind of a spiritual understanding within political disagreements. Not like a private—even that could work. Like if someone had a private spiritual awakening, and then was to apply that to a political dispute or situation, that would work. It doesn’t have to be an overt spiritual principle being brought to the dispute.

Matt Segall: Yeah, I mean, we see Gandhi and Martin Luther King and those examples.

Sami Chhapra: That’s right.

Matt Segall: They get to express that spiritual insight in powerful ways to totally transform society, and then gets to a point where the center of gravity among the collective isn’t quite high enough to sustain that level of change and that intensity of injection of love and truth force that—they end up getting assassinated, right? People who have that type of awakening and then are activated politically and socially because of how it motivates them. I don’t think they seem to know immediately, as soon as they say yes to that, it’s going to kill them. But it’s totally worth it.

Sami Chhapra: But here’s the problem. This is a very important point, I think. That there can be no politics with this kind of an awareness, because politics inevitably is putting one side against another. So it can’t be applied to politics, in my opinion, because it will lead to those kinds of things. Because even if it’s very well intentioned, it’s still separating out the bad guys or the oppressors.

Matt Segall: Yeah, it’s very important when we talk about Karma for me to remind myself and all of us, there’s no such thing as other people’s Karma.

Sami Chhapra: That’s right.

Matt Segall: It’s all yours. It’s all mine, right? You’re doing it. I’m doing it.

Sami Chhapra: That’s right.

Matt Segall: You know it’s our action, and we suffer the consequences for our own action, not as punishment. It’s literally just cause and effect.

Sami Chhapra: That’s right. Yeah.

Matt Segall: You know, but it’s not “Oh, they have good Karma, they have bad Karma.” It’s all Karma.

Sami Chhapra: Everyone’s got good Karma. I mean ultimately, right? Because we’re all on this path, and we all fulfill our roles, and we all come back to the same place. So ultimately it’s all beautiful Karma that takes us out on a unique adventure and then brings us right back. But along that path, the cause and effect is applicable.

Matt Segall: Right, and there are—you know, spiritual ways of rendering this. And then I also think of what Jung is always saying in terms of—if you reject your destiny when it calls, then it becomes your—

Sami Chhapra: Fate, right? Yeah.

Matt Segall: You know, like the unconscious will get its way. And we can either develop a neurosis because we’re resisting what we’re afraid to become, or we can just accept that fate, and then it becomes our freedom. So there’s no escape from Karma, but nor need there be, because it’s all good.

Sami Chhapra: That’s right, that’s right, no matter what. Again, it’s easier said—it’s easier said when you’re not being terribly oppressed or in real horrific situation. And so that’s why I’ve been feeling so almost helpless, but not helpless, because everything has to happen at the right time. So use that helplessness to really refine your own understanding and awareness and prepare. But it’s been quite intense for the last I’d say 10 years.

Matt Segall: For you.

Sami Chhapra: Sure.

Matt Segall: Yeah, do you feel collectively that our species is in a uniquely apocalyptic moment? Or do you feel like as individual souls when we awaken to this non-dual perspective, that we have our own sort of individual apocalypse or revelation of the soul? Or how do those two interface? Because it does seem like the species is undergoing some kind of—I mean, I know there have been prior cataclysms, but this one seems uniquely all encompassing.

Sami Chhapra: That’s correct. That’s right. Yeah, which is itself a sign, right? Because the previous ones were just kind of—it’s like rehearsal, preparation, indication of something coming down the pike. And so now yes, this resembles stuff that’s happened in the past, because obviously the stuff that happened in the past is inextricably linked to what’s happening now. It was the stuff that was preceding. And it’s like a rolling stone—no, it says gathers no moss, right? But like a snowball going down—it builds. And so I do think—I mean, obviously the signs are everywhere. It’s like everywhere. Like people talk about it now as if it’s common knowledge. Everyone. But they do it in different ways, and they have different locations and orientations within it.

As far as the individual—I’d never had someone close to me pass away. And I’d always told people, friends, parents, or loved ones or clients whose loved ones, parents, whoever passed away, I would say, “Now you have a more expanded relationship with that person. They’ve gone into the ether. And it’s just like they’re everywhere, in a sense. You can relate to them. It’s an even more intimate relationship now.” And I sensed that, but I never really lived that in a sense, right? Until just recently, with my father’s passing. And I’ve seen how his gifts have come into sharper focus. Everything that was like a covering over them, or that was hiding his essential self in any way—all of that just falls away. And his true being becomes even more acutely felt and experienced.

And so the soul does—I think they—and it changes. It’s been what, 40 days now. It changes. You see, like in the first few days, it’s really intense. And then they say it takes the soul about 40 days to reach the divine light. Like there’s some kind of a maybe cleansing or adjusting or transitioning period. And I can feel that now. I can feel like he’s progressed.

And so but then I also know that he’ll be back at some point, if that’s supposed to happen. I mean, they say that you can also have evolved to such a point where you don’t need to come back. And you just become part of like a spiritual council that helps souls who are thinking about their next life, try and find the right role for them. So maybe you become part of that council or something. And maybe there are different councils of souls doing different jobs from behind the scenes, right? But the focus is on the action that’s happening here. And it doesn’t help this place if all the fully realized beings and souls just go up and hang out in heaven and congratulate themselves. Like we need them here.

Matt Segall: Right.

Sami Chhapra: Right? Because this is the place that is being transformed into the heaven. As above, so below. And so the apocalyptic moment is the moment of recognizing that that is what’s happening, and that everything that we have built, physical and non-physical, based upon our unconsciousness has to give way to building something that’s based on our more consciously received guidance from that place. What people have referred to as conscious evolution? I think in the seventies. I think someone by the name of Barbara—she’s got a book titled “Conscious Evolution.” So that’s what the apocalypse, I think, prepares the way for. It’s just a kind of rattling the cage. It’s saying, “Hey, people, wake up! Wake up! Wake up! This is not sustainable. This is not sustainable. This is not meant to last in this direction. You’re supposed to wake up and then see what happens.”

Matt Segall: Yeah, yeah. I mean the interplay between the apocalypse of the soul within our own individual awakening and the collective apocalypse of the end of the world—that connection reminds me of just this sentiment that you see in the early Church fathers like Origen and others that because of how interconnected all persons are, all souls are, either we’re all saved or nobody is saved. The Greek is apokatastasis. I’m not sure how to pronounce—

Sami Chhapra: That’s exactly—

Matt Segall: But yeah, that even if there is a hell, it’s just a burning off of—

Sami Chhapra: That’s right.

Matt Segall: —the illusion.

Sami Chhapra: That’s right.

Matt Segall: So as to liberate the soul. And so hell is not a punishment. It’s a process of purification, but that ultimately everyone is saved. Is there a similar or equivalent—

Sami Chhapra: And it’s not—

Matt Segall: —in Islam or in Sufism?

Sami Chhapra: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there’s a hadith—the tradition of the prophet Muhammad—where it’s like God commands the angels to go through hell and remove anyone who’s done even a little bit of good and transfer them to heaven. And then the angels come back and report, “Okay, we transferred so many.” And then they’re like, “Well, there’s still some left.” So why don’t you go back? And even if they’ve done like an atom’s worth of good, just transfer them to heaven. And so eventually everyone gets transferred.

Matt Segall: Hmm. And what is—what is that called? The—there’s a hadith?

Sami Chhapra: So some traditions say hadith, some say hadees.

Matt Segall: And it means literally what?

Sami Chhapra: It’s the tradition of the prophet. So it’s like his sayings and lessons from his life or details about his character and how he lived and what he taught.

Matt Segall: So, not in the Quran, but the tradition around the Quran.

Sami Chhapra: Correct.

Matt Segall: Got it. Hmm. Yeah.

Sami Chhapra: Yeah. Because I mean, in the Quran, it just talks about the return, right? Everything returns to me, God says. And I mean there’s—it’s all there, in a sense, right? That’s how the Sufis put it together. Their inspiration comes directly from the Quran. They meditated on its deeper meaning. They were like, what is it really trying to say? Because the emphasis is on love and compassion and mercy constantly. Like every verse, every Surah of the Quran begins with God’s infinite compassion and infinite mercy. Like only someone who’s loving would want you to know that they’re loving, even though they’ve put you in a situation that’s not always loving—doesn’t feel loving all the time. So they kind of really need you to know that this is also part of that. And so then you have to engage the imagination and figure out how that’s possible.

Matt Segall: Yeah. There’s so much potential in the Abrahamic faiths, as they’re called, so much potential for them to enter into deeper communion and mutual reciprocal growth together.

Sami Chhapra: And it’s going to happen.

Matt Segall: It’s already happening.

Sami Chhapra: In so many ways that we probably are not even aware of.

Matt Segall: Through conflict, it seems at this point.

Sami Chhapra: Through conflict. But even in the midst of conflict. You see, everything is hidden. A lot of things are hidden. You only know that in your own private interactions with people and just seeing what’s happening and extrapolating that that might be happening everywhere in those hidden pockets that are not being broadcast, that are not getting the light of day right now. But it’s time. I really—I’m feeling it’s time now.

Matt Segall: Yeah, it’s becoming so painful to remain on the surface.

Sami Chhapra: Yeah, for everyone involved. For everyone. And so it is here. I really do believe it. I mean, I’ve been saying it for a while. I completely feel it more and more. But how it happens, when it happens—it’s not up to any one of us. We just continue to do our work, and we continue to show up in the way that we feel inspired to and called to show up. But ultimately it’s up to that unified intelligence and power to decide how to make use of our individual offerings and actions and capacities.

Matt Segall: You used the line earlier “a cast of one.”

Sami Chhapra: Mm-hmm.

Matt Segall: That I’m gonna use as the title for this, because I really think that conveys and captures—I loved it when you said it, and then I wanted to make sure the rest of the conversation continued along the same vein, but it’s a good line. Yeah. Is there anything else that you would like to say that would cast everything we’ve discussed in the right light? Do you feel like you have spoken your truth in a way that comes across without the need to qualify or add?

Sami Chhapra: Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, I could just talk to you forever, and I think I will. I’ve always enjoyed engaging with you particularly, because it just feels different and unique and special. And I trust it. It’s not—it feels good. It feels important.

Matt Segall: Yeah, no, I feel the same. Always. There’s always a sense of the power of what we’re able to drop into together. But the playfulness of it, too.

Sami Chhapra: We’ve had our tussles, playful tussles.

Matt Segall: Yeah. And I really appreciate and thrive on that. And yeah, just really honor your willingness to—even though I think below any tussles and verbal disputes that we may have had, there’s a—yeah, that sense of trust and shared rootedness in something that we both honor as a mystery. And so we can meet in that mystery and navigate the different ways that we want to try to express it. Yeah, I find that very valuable and rewarding. So yeah, thank you for that opportunity, these many opportunities.

Sami Chhapra: Thank you, Matt. You know it’s—watching your videos actually led me to CIIS.

Matt Segall: Oh, yeah. I didn’t know that.

Sami Chhapra: You, Becca and Rick. But it was you and Becca, your videos. And then you particularly also because I was like, “Who is this tiny little man with such an incredible intellect and just a sweet nature?” So yeah. So that’s what I’m saying—what we do has an effect. It brought me all the way from Pakistan to San Francisco, and it’s been an intense journey, but very worthwhile. Very worthwhile, because when I was at CIIS it was just like—it was tough. It was tough, and the little solace I had was our conversations. Because I was like, if I can engage with Matt, then that’s worthwhile.

Matt Segall: Hmm.

Sami Chhapra: Yeah, and so, but I don’t know what else to say. One more thing that I think I do want to mention, because it is part of this whole thing—one man’s sacrifice for the redemption of everyone’s sins, right? And like, how do you relate that to the origin? And it goes back to the sacrifice of the Purusha in Hinduism. The Purusha being our true nature, right? The divine itself, the divine sacrificing itself not for our sins, but so that we may sin.

Matt Segall: Hmm.

Sami Chhapra: Right? It sacrificed itself so that we may sin.

Matt Segall: That means that’s so that we may go into creation and do our thing.

Sami Chhapra: And I mean, that’s just kind of maybe—I mean, I don’t want to say definitively what anything means, right? I mean, people can have their views. But the way I look at that, and especially in relating it to the origin, is like again, just like women wearing veils, just like someone being martyred—a martyr to love—what is that expressing? What reality is that symbolizing? It’s symbolizing that original act. The sacrificial act going into separation from our true nature, relatively speaking.

Matt Segall: Yeah, the school of sin. And I think the sacrifice allowing us to sin is the only way that we might grow and become conscious for ourselves.

Sami Chhapra: That’s right.

Matt Segall: Consciousness isn’t something that can just be given. You have to earn it through experience, through suffering.

Sami Chhapra: That’s right.

Matt Segall: Even death. This is present in all of the traditions, in various ways, if you know where to look. Like when St. Augustine says “felix culpa”—blessed sin—because that’s out of that that our freedom is made possible. And even death, it’s part of the design. Right? Because it’s only—as you began saying, as we age, we look back, and we understand ourselves in a way we never could when we were going through it as younger people. But I think the moment of death seems to me like such a condensation of the meaning of our lives.

Sami Chhapra: Hmm.

Matt Segall: And that, speaking of apocalypse, that’s the moment—

Sami Chhapra: That’s the moment. Yeah.

Matt Segall: —when the learning fully manifests itself. And without the intensity of however long we get to live, and then the loss of this bodily form, and the loss of all of the intimate relations that we were allowed to be brought into as a result of these incarnate forms—the loss of all of that, at least in its fleshy form, is so intense and tragic, and yet it does catalyze an evolution of soul that I think couldn’t happen any other way. So facing death as part of the design, rather than a departure from it, something terrible to be avoided at all costs, which is so much of what I think drives the—it’s like low grade terrorism of the materialist worldview, because that makes us so terrified of death all the time.

Sami Chhapra: Yeah. Yeah, that little shift—I mean, it’s not a little shift, but shifting our relationship to death, I think, might actually not solve, but dissolve a lot of the political, social struggles. Not that there’s any utopia possible on this earth, but I think a lot of the strife might be lessened by learning this lesson.

Matt Segall: Hmm.

Sami Chhapra: So you don’t think that there’s—I mean, utopia is a very misunderstood term.

Matt Segall: Sure. I thought you might push back on that.

Sami Chhapra: Yeah, the earthly realm is just—

Matt Segall: When you’re an embodied organism, you’re hungry, you’re scared. There are just ways in which it’s hard to avoid getting startled and lashing out violently. It’s just, even if we don’t intend it. Existing in the earthly plane is messy.

Sami Chhapra: But our conception of what is perfect needs to be revised. Because again, I do believe—I feel it with every part of my being that this place is in a process of becoming heaven. For all—I mean, it is clearly—like, children being born are like little nuggets of heaven being shot at Earth. Go and make it—no, I’m serious. Everyone is like—heaven is like bombarding earth with little pieces of itself, because it wants to ultimately make this like itself. That’s where children are, and that’s what the purpose of everyone who comes here is—is to contribute to that transformation. It just is, I think.

And so that’s why people have the rebellious phase. Because when children come here, yes, they’re gifts from heaven. But then we very quickly condition those gifts and teach them our unconscious ways rather than listen to their gifts. And a cousin of mine just had this very realization. He approached his kid from that same perspective. And then there was pushback from the kid. And so then he was guided to change his approach and actually follow the child’s lead. And it brought about that transformation, you see. So I think that is absolutely essential. We need to be able to see clearly. We need to orient ourselves in such a way that we understand what that intelligence is doing. And as we respond with our more enlightened understanding, things begin to shift.

Matt Segall: And as things begin to shift, this place becomes more heavenly because we are—

Sami Chhapra: Doing that. So that’s—that has to happen. That is the way. What that leads to, I don’t know. But for me, it’s a paradise here.

Matt Segall: But that doesn’t mean there’s no pain, and there’s no confusion. Sure they’ll remain.

Sami Chhapra: But for the most part, like we would be living in a radically different environment. Radically different. Because we would not be polluting. We would not be wasting. We would not be fighting unnecessarily. We would not be doing any of those things. And then maybe it gets boring after a while, and then maybe it just goes—maybe it just all goes up in flames once we’ve reached that perfection, and then we start over somewhere else.

Matt Segall: Hmm. It seems unavoidable that the deep structure of human existence has this expulsion and return dynamic. Whether it’s Plotinus talking about the overflowing of the one and then the return, or you were describing the Quran emphasizing all returns—Allah says, “all returns to me.” And so that sense of the path back to Paradise seems like inescapable as allure for all of our action and contemplation.

Sami Chhapra: That’s right. And it’s not just up there. It’s not just up there. I mean, if you look at God’s creation, there’s certain perfection to it. There’s a certain beauty and this harmony of sorts, right?

Matt Segall: If you can—yeah, if you can see it. If you can—

Sami Chhapra: There’s a lot of violence.

Matt Segall: You have to intuit what paradise might mean in a non-dual way, so that it’s not separating the light from the dark. It includes it. It’s inclusive of the darkness as well.

Sami Chhapra: Yes, one final point that I just remembered, if we have the time. About Jung’s notion of shadow. I totally get it, right? We get it. But I think it’s all about relative and absolute. Okay? So if we have been positing a relative good, and Jung is like, “Oh, well, you’re overlooking the bad or the shadow or the evil side,” so that for me is still a relative bad or relative evil. There can’t be absolute evil in the sense that something wants to actually cause suffering for its own sake. It just can’t be. I mean, there’s just not—it’s not intelligible to me. So the relative good and bad surely exist, and maybe that’s embodied in the divine, the God image, right? It’s a relative level, let’s say. But the level that transcends that is absolute good. So Jung was responding to people’s relative notions of good.

Matt Segall: Yep.

Sami Chhapra: You know, saying, “No, no, it’s not just all relatively good. There’s also this relative bad.” But at the level of the absolute, there can only be the absolute good. Because it just can’t—it just doesn’t make sense. Nothing points to that.

Matt Segall: Yeah, he also—yeah, I mean this sort of trinity of relative good, relative bad, absolute good. But he also has this notion of the missing fourth, which is too much to get into today. But that even in that Trinitarian tying up of the duality, he felt like there was something left out which he identified with the feminine, the unpredictability of the feminine.

Sami Chhapra: And he felt that because of his mom. That was his own psychology getting in the way.

Matt Segall: Oh!

Sami Chhapra: That was his own unresolved relationship with his own mother.

Matt Segall: Which came from where?

Sami Chhapra: Which came—we can’t just—to his mom. She was—she had some mental health stuff, and religion was a big part of it, and the whole relationship to Christ, and the little boy being frightened by his mother’s intensity. That’s where it came from. He never really trusted the feminine.

Matt Segall: Hmm, interesting. Yeah. I hadn’t considered that just because Jung is always inviting us to in a way collectivize our personal dynamics, because these archetypes don’t just belong to us.

Sami Chhapra: That’s right.

Matt Segall: But maybe in the case of Jung it is helpful to sometimes personalize his analytic psychology, to understand how his own—

Sami Chhapra: Psychology gave rise to his psychology.

Matt Segall: Yeah, interesting.

Sami Chhapra: Yeah.

Matt Segall: Alright Sami. This has been a delight and I’m sure others will appreciate this, and maybe spend their Sunday afternoon with us, because I’ll post this later.

Sami Chhapra: Oh, you will. Okay. Cool. Well, continued hopefully.

Matt Segall: Oh, yes, over many lifetimes, I’m sure.

Sami Chhapra: Yeah, that’s right.

Matt Segall: Well, thank you for your time and your insight.

Sami Chhapra: Thank you, Matt. Thanks so much.