Psychedelics and Perspective: Exploring the Path to Living Young – Episode 201

Jeffrey Gladden (00:04.31)
Welcome everybody to this edition of the Gladden Longevity Podcast. I am your host. Let me take that again. Welcome everybody to this edition of the HHACKrS Podcast powered by Gladden Longevity. I’m your host, Dr. Jeffrey Gladden and my co-host today, Steve Ryder is playing hooky someplace. I’m not sure what he’s up to, but he’s probably on a mountain someplace hiking. Maybe he’s, maybe he’s got a fishing pole in there too. I’m not sure, but so we’ll take this by ourselves today, but I’m, um,

Udo Erasmus (00:29.854)
Hehehe

Jeffrey Gladden (00:34.046)
I’m joined today by Udo Erasmus, who I just met a few minutes ago, but I’m really, really intrigued to have this conversation with you, Udo. And so welcome to the show.

Udo Erasmus (00:47.994)
I’m glad to be honored.

Jeffrey Gladden (00:50.922)
Yeah, good. Great to have you. So I’d like to start off a little bit with, you know, your background. So you grew up with some stressors in your life. The first being that, you know, you were a child during the war. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Udo Erasmus (01:11.186)
Yeah, my parents came from Latvia and Estonia, German Swedish background. And in 1938, Hitler and Stalin made a non-aggression pact. And as part of that pact, they broke it later, of course, but as part of that pact, Latvia went to the Soviet Union and part of Poland went to Germany.

Jeffrey Gladden (01:14.967)
Okay.

Jeffrey Gladden (01:22.882)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (01:35.723)
Okay.

Udo Erasmus (01:38.578)
but there was nobody from Latvia or Poland at the meeting. So they just took it because they were big and they could. And my parents loved the Russians and hated communism because communists took everything away from everybody, made everything state owned. And that was a disaster. He owned a farm. So he left Latvia and ended up being given a farm in Poland. And the Polish farmer worked for him on his own farm.

Jeffrey Gladden (01:39.114)
Okay.

Jeffrey Gladden (01:44.076)
Right.

Jeffrey Gladden (01:54.099)
Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (02:03.413)
Okay.

Udo Erasmus (02:07.142)
You can imagine there was a little tension there. So they’ve sorted out, they said, look, we’re living in crazy times, let’s run the farm the way this farm needs to be run. And we’ll sort it out when all this stuff settles down. I was born on that stolen farm, so to speak. And we were refugees when I was two and a half. We were on horse-drawn hay wagons, mothers with young children on dirt roads, trying to get out of Poland.

Jeffrey Gladden (02:09.419)
Yeah, I can imagine.

Jeffrey Gladden (02:19.635)
Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Udo Erasmus (02:33.886)
chased by the communists in tanks and trucks. And there were dead horses and dead people in the ditches because the good guys, the allies, were using us refugees as target practice, shooting at us from planes. And it was pretty intense. And so my mother couldn’t, she had six kids with her, six years and younger. She decided to go through the fields in winter because it was safer than to stay on the roads.

Jeffrey Gladden (02:37.745)
Okay.

Jeffrey Gladden (02:41.971)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (02:49.043)
Oh wow.

Jeffrey Gladden (03:02.135)
Mm-hmm.

Udo Erasmus (03:03.122)
So she had to leave four kids behind and she dropped us off at a farmer’s and he took us to Berlin. But the relatives in Berlin were already gone because everybody was fleeing. And I ended up in an orphanage for some time and eventually her sister caught up with my mother and she then came back and picked us out of wherever we ended up.

Jeffrey Gladden (03:13.602)
Right.

Jeffrey Gladden (03:24.694)
So you ended up in an orphanage in Berlin, Germany. Right. So this is, I mean, World War II has to be going on while this is happening. Right.

Udo Erasmus (03:28.4)
Yeah.

Udo Erasmus (03:33.33)
This is 45. This is at the end of the war. Yeah. So

Jeffrey Gladden (03:36.21)
End of the war. So where were you actually during, during all the war, you were in Germany or you were in the Portland?

Udo Erasmus (03:43.094)
No, in the part of Poland that had been given to… Yeah, because I was born on that farm. Yeah, so I was two… Yeah, yeah. Forty-two.

Jeffrey Gladden (03:48.01)
Right. I didn’t know how long you lived on that farm. So, what year were you born? Forty-two. Okay. So you’re born in 42. So you kind of had your first few years on that farm. And what was life like on that farm? I mean, I guess they weren’t shelling anything. No.

Udo Erasmus (04:05.046)
I don’t remember it, but it was reasonable, although you would hear the war noises. But, you know, being on the farm, not in the city, not where the armies are marching, you know, not… So it was, you know, given that on the farm, you know, there’s a certain pace to life on a farm, even in war. So that part wasn’t so bad. The flight was horrendous. And I just remember not feeling safe and not knowing what I could count on.

Jeffrey Gladden (04:10.334)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (04:23.342)
Sure. Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (04:29.378)
See you on the track.

Udo Erasmus (04:33.306)
And I remember being really shy as a kid, like always like this, you know, with your arms crossed over your chest. I lived in books because books were safe. You could read about a war, but there’s no real bullets flying. Right? So I got into books and I spent a lot of time by myself because, you know, and I felt like I didn’t have a lot of support on the outside. So two things can happen when you don’t have support on the outside. One is you die. And the other one is you find support inside.

Jeffrey Gladden (04:39.349)
Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Yep.

Jeffrey Gladden (04:53.856)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (05:03.106)
That’s right. Now that’s.

Udo Erasmus (05:03.99)
And I was lucky enough to find support inside. And in a way that the whole war was a gift to me, looking back, wasn’t at the time, didn’t feel like it at the time, but looking back, because it rubbed my nose really early in what happens when we don’t cultivate peace and harmony and cooperation when we can. Because then we’re always going to drift downhill, and downhill always ends up in conflict and war.

Jeffrey Gladden (05:12.471)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (05:31.53)
Yeah, absolutely.

Udo Erasmus (05:31.846)
And so I got my nose rubbed in that. So I’ve lived my life trying to figure out how to make life better in as many ways as possible for as many people as possible.

Jeffrey Gladden (05:43.01)
Beautiful. Now that’s quite beautiful. I just want to revisit this point. So you went to an Orsfinnage in 1945 in Germany. This was after the war had ended in 45. Okay.

Udo Erasmus (05:55.814)
Yeah, well, sort of during the, you know, the war ends, that’s like a date that the army puts on it. But what’s going on in the country, people are fleeing, people are leaving, and it’s, you know, that goes on. That’s a protracted time that takes place, because everything’s unsettled, right? And so…

Jeffrey Gladden (06:11.822)
Sure, sure, sure.

Right. OK. So how long were you in the orphanage? You were you went into the orphanage when you were then three years older. Something like two and a half. OK, two and a half. And then how old were you when you came out of the orphanage?

Udo Erasmus (06:21.423)
Two and a half, yep. Two and a half.

Udo Erasmus (06:29.127)
I wasn’t there probably for more than four weeks. Yeah, so I don’t know exactly how long that was, but.

Jeffrey Gladden (06:32.338)
Okay, okay, okay. Okay, so your mom circled back and was able to, sister picked you up. Right.

Udo Erasmus (06:38.482)
Well, my mom’s sister. Yeah, and then reunited us with the family. But you can imagine for a two-year-old, all of a sudden your mother’s missing, and you’re in a strange place where you don’t know anybody that probably was not my most pleasant experience. But I don’t have a real memory of it, other than just that feeling of not feeling safe.

Jeffrey Gladden (06:47.655)
Oh yeah, it’s massive.

Jeffrey Gladden (06:54.07)
Yeah. Okay.

Jeffrey Gladden (06:59.754)
Yeah, it gets imprinted though, right? It gets imprinted into the nervous system. So you have a memory of it, whether you can cognitively recall it or not.

Udo Erasmus (07:01.866)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Udo Erasmus (07:07.986)
Oh yeah, and I would say there’s a certain amount of anxiety because I know when I don’t pay attention, I’ll start going like this, totally anxiety driven and usually based on a fantasy of something not working out. Still there, I mean, I can stay out of it, but I have to be conscious in a way. That’s also a nice thing because it keeps reminding me to be present.

Jeffrey Gladden (07:15.827)
Okay.

Yep.

Jeffrey Gladden (07:22.643)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (07:32.674)
So where did you go, where did you go, where did you and your mom go and your other siblings go once you were all reunited in 1940?

Udo Erasmus (07:41.21)
We lived outside of Dusseldorf in Germany till I was 10. And my father, you know, he wanted to get the hell out of Europe because they had gone through the First World War, which was… No, it’s not even that. It’s worse. First World War followed by the Bolshevik Revolution, followed by the Depression, followed by the Second World War. That was their life.

Jeffrey Gladden (07:54.698)
World War and the Second World War.

Jeffrey Gladden (07:59.595)
Okay.

Jeffrey Gladden (08:03.218)
Okay. Right. Second World War. That’s right. When was he born? When was he born?

Udo Erasmus (08:10.758)
He was born 1907.

Jeffrey Gladden (08:12.978)
Okay, so yeah, they talk about that generation that was… Oh, 1910. They talk about the generation born in like the 1890s, you know, the late 1890s, early, early part of the 20th century there, 1905, 1902, whatever, that those people had such a rough go of it depending on where they were, right? World War I, well, there you go, the Bolshevik

Udo Erasmus (08:17.586)
No, sorry, 1910. So the, yeah.

Udo Erasmus (08:24.795)
Yeah.

Udo Erasmus (08:38.307)
Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (08:43.25)
I mean, talk about a hard road to hoe. That’s really, really tough. And how did your, so your dad was done with Europe. Um, and, and so you moved to where?

Udo Erasmus (08:51.483)
Yeah.

Udo Erasmus (08:55.338)
So we went to Canada. We had people that we knew from Latvia who sponsored us to come to Canada. And so my father liked the North country because in Latvia there’s lots of birches and alders and fir trees. And so he liked the North of Canada, not just Canada as a Northern country, but North in Canada. So he was up about…

Jeffrey Gladden (08:57.784)
Okay.

Jeffrey Gladden (09:02.571)
Okay.

Jeffrey Gladden (09:11.673)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (09:21.159)
Okay, so where’d you end up?

Udo Erasmus (09:23.91)
Well, first in the Okanagan, which is about 250 miles east of Vancouver. And then he went north about 500 miles to a place called Smithers. It was actually a little town called Doughty, which was a whistle stop on the train, on the CN train. And he bought it. Yeah. And he bought a hundred and he bought 112 acres for $960. And, uh, we cleared 40 acres by hand and by horse. And we lived in a house without electricity, no running water.

Jeffrey Gladden (09:30.603)
Okay.

Jeffrey Gladden (09:38.674)
Okay, so you’re really up there.

Jeffrey Gladden (09:45.812)
Mm-hmm.

Udo Erasmus (09:53.874)
and outhouse at including at minus 40 below.

Jeffrey Gladden (09:58.698)
Okay. Well, that’s, uh, that’s always a wake up call. 40 below is always a wake up call. So, yeah. Um, yeah, that’s, that’s really intriguing. So you, you grew, I mean, 700 miles north of Vancouver. I mean, that’s a, you know, ballpark, let’s say that’s, that’s way up there. Uh, but it’s beautiful country, beautiful country. Yeah.

Udo Erasmus (10:17.062)
Yeah, yeah. If you love nature, it’s a great place to be. And he loved nature. You know, my parents, like, he didn’t like big business, he didn’t like big religion, he didn’t like big government, he didn’t like any of those things. Nature, for him, was the place where you found rest. And there’s a pace to nature that isn’t as crazy as the pace of the mind. And so he liked that.

Jeffrey Gladden (10:32.662)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (10:36.716)
And.

Jeffrey Gladden (10:42.538)
Right. So tell me about your journey towards safety then after the start that you had. Well, you had another episode that popped up actually that kind of. Yeah.

Udo Erasmus (10:52.846)
Yeah, that was much later. Yeah. My journey towards safety included spending a lot of time by myself because I was comfortable with myself. Not so much, I was not that socially adept for a long time. And I was very interested, when I was six years old, when we were in Germany, I listened to adults argue.

Jeffrey Gladden (11:04.391)
Mm-hmm.

Udo Erasmus (11:21.842)
And it always made me uneasy because they were so intense. And this thought occurred to me, there must be a way that people can live in harmony. And then a little cocky voice came up and said, I’m gonna find out how. And that has been my driver all my life actually. So I ended up going into science to understand how things work. Because when you understand how things work, you get a certain amount of predictability and that gives you a certain amount of safety.

Jeffrey Gladden (11:24.877)
Right.

Jeffrey Gladden (11:30.309)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (11:35.243)
Nice.

Okay.

Jeffrey Gladden (11:42.524)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (11:49.27)
Yeah, sense of safety. Yeah, let’s call it sense.

Udo Erasmus (11:53.615)
Then I got into biosciences because I wanted to understand how creatures work. Then I got into psychology because I wanted to know how thinking works. Then I went into medicine for a year because I wanted to know what health is, but I realized we’re only going to learn about disease there. And I even had talked to the Dean. I said, what is health? He said, we don’t know. We’re working on it.

Jeffrey Gladden (11:55.47)
Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Jeffrey Gladden (12:04.871)
Mm-hmm.

Udo Erasmus (12:17.618)
but they’re not even working on it because they always keep looking at disease. If you want to know what health is, you need to look at health. And so I went back into biochemistry and genetics because I realized in biology, I learned more about health than I’m ever going to learn in medicine. And I ended up in that. And then there was still something missing. So there was a restlessness. I felt it in my chest from the time I was 17 till the time I was 30, every day, couldn’t shake it, and I didn’t know what it was.

Jeffrey Gladden (12:17.767)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (12:21.358)
That’s right.

Jeffrey Gladden (12:31.374)
Mm-hmm.

Udo Erasmus (12:47.714)
And then I played around with psychedelics a bit. That was very helpful because it sort of blew the door open on my very restricted war personality and said, wow, there’s a hundred, there’s a thousand ways I could live. So then I had to figure out which one of the thousand ways I wanted to live. So that was helpful.

Jeffrey Gladden (12:52.371)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (13:00.undefined)
Okay.

Jeffrey Gladden (13:07.746)
So let me ask you, yeah, that is helpful. Let me ask you about that a little bit. So you go through these different disciplines, let’s call it, kind of looking for your, looking for answers and also I assume on some level looking for a fit, right? Where do I fit? What fits with me? I’ll absorb this information because it’s useful, but where am I finding my fit, right? Where do I fit in? And then you get to a point where you’re introduced to psychedelics.

Udo Erasmus (13:12.477)
Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (13:37.566)
somewhere along the line. And then which psychedelics were you were you utilizing? What was the context in which you were introduced to them?

Udo Erasmus (13:45.514)
Well, I started, I was in science and the people in the arts faculties, they were smoking marijuana and they were experimenting with different things. And I asked somebody, what is it like? What is LSD like? And he just looked at me and he said, if you haven’t tried it, I can’t explain it to you. And if you have tried it, I don’t need to explain it to you. And in…

Jeffrey Gladden (13:55.278)
Sure. All right.

Jeffrey Gladden (14:01.876)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (14:07.844)
Mm-hmm.

Okay, so that’s

Udo Erasmus (14:12.91)
In hindsight, that was really good advice because it was really clean. You can’t, you can’t explain it. It is an exp, because it’s a personal experience and it’s different from the usual kinds of interactive experiences we have in the world.

Jeffrey Gladden (14:16.647)
Mm-hmm. That’s right.

Jeffrey Gladden (14:27.382)
So did you go into that, you know, you had this restlessness in your chest that you were describing. You know, as you look back on it now, can you articulate what that restlessness consisted of or what it was about?

Udo Erasmus (14:32.646)
Yeah.

Udo Erasmus (14:38.862)
Oh, I wonder how 100% know it. The restlessness, it has a lot of names. Sometimes we call it blues. Sometimes we call it loneliness. Sometimes we call it sorrow or grief or sadness, but some or loss. You know, it’s uncomfortable and what it is, what it is, it is the result of. A normal natural.

Jeffrey Gladden (14:42.978)
What was it?

Jeffrey Gladden (14:51.778)
Okay.

Jeffrey Gladden (14:54.99)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (15:00.706)
question.

Udo Erasmus (15:07.762)
necessary process for every human being when they come out of the womb, where there’s nothing to do and nowhere to go and everything’s taken care of and it’s pretty safe. And we’re in deep meditation, if you want to call it that, because there’s no place to go. So our focus is inside at rest in its source in life and behind that in awareness. So we’re there for nine months.

Jeffrey Gladden (15:25.752)
Yep.

Udo Erasmus (15:36.37)
Because nothing, we didn’t have, we had no words. We didn’t have to go pee. You know, there was nothing calling us out. And then we got pushed into the world. Now we had to get to know the world because now we needed to understand, is it friend? Is it foe? Is it irrelevant whenever something changes? Our senses are attracted to it or our focus is attracted to it through our senses. Then we have to make an assessment, you know, run.

Jeffrey Gladden (15:39.799)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (15:47.691)
Mm-hmm.

Udo Erasmus (16:05.39)
embrace or ignore, then we respond to it. And every time something changes, we’re drawn out to it again. And then we live our whole life like that. And that happens so many times. And then within, you know, so what happens is we started present inside with our focus of awareness and absent outside. And then through this process, we end up absent outside in our awareness, in our focus of awareness. And

Jeffrey Gladden (16:14.333)
Mm-hmm.

Udo Erasmus (16:35.406)
Absent inside so present outside absent inside and that’s where heartache begins Now then we try to find it because we don’t know that we have to go back inside because nobody tells us that So then we try to find it in the world and we don’t find it because everything ends because everything changes, right? And so the girlfriend dumps me so that’s the trigger for my heartache But the trigger is not the cause of the heartache

Jeffrey Gladden (16:36.607)
Yeah.

cut. Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (16:47.771)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (16:54.242)
Yep.

Jeffrey Gladden (16:59.204)
Okay.

Udo Erasmus (17:02.098)
The cause of the heartache is my disconnection from myself. And the heartache is the call to come home. Just like thirst is the call to drink, and hunger is the call to eat, heartache is the call to come home to the inherent wholeness in our nature. And when we do, and then what we don’t like that feeling, because it’s uncomfortable, it’s uneasy, it’s like painful sometimes. So we distract ourselves or ignore it or…

Jeffrey Gladden (17:05.943)
That’s right.

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (17:20.674)
Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (17:26.032)
Mm-hmm.

Udo Erasmus (17:31.678)
try to explain it away or blame it on somebody, what we actually need to do is we need to sit with it. Because it’s not gonna kill us, it’s calling us home, it pulls us out of our head, makes us simple, puts us into feeling, and a hair’s breadth behind the feeling, less than a hair’s breadth behind that feeling, is our reconnection to our wholeness.

Jeffrey Gladden (17:54.806)
Yeah, that’s right. I call this a hero’s journey, really, to come, right?

Udo Erasmus (17:59.402)
It is, yeah, one way, yeah, it’s also the journey from, you know, paradise to paradise lost to paradise regained. But it’s also the hero’s journey. Yeah, the hero feels uneasy. He goes looking for a thing. What he always finds, he has to fight his dragons, right? And what he always finds is something that has to do with love. And that’s the gift he brings back to his community.

Jeffrey Gladden (18:07.21)
Yeah, it’s a.

Jeffrey Gladden (18:12.962)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (18:21.134)
Yeah. And it’s inside of him or her. Yeah. That’s right. That’s right. Yeah, it’s the hero’s journey to reclaim what I call the hero’s journey to reclaim our birthright, to live as our unencumbered selves, where we’re no longer living in reaction to all those traumas that happen to us. Right. Because we go back and we actually even transcend what we had when we were in the womb, let’s say, or when we when we were completely on the inside focused, there’s an ability with our

Udo Erasmus (18:23.942)
It’s an inside transformation that takes place. Yeah.

Udo Erasmus (18:38.851)
Exactly.

Jeffrey Gladden (18:51.542)
our development and brain development to heal the old and then transcend it. And then with that, it creates a new realm of reality, if you will.

Udo Erasmus (19:05.41)
Yeah, the way I put it is, I’m not transcending, I’m reconnecting. So that means I leave the outside and keep the inside inside. But I now go into the world with that reconnection, but with the ability to articulate it.

Jeffrey Gladden (19:18.283)
Okay.

Jeffrey Gladden (19:25.726)
Okay, well, let me give you a little different take on that. So in the transcendence, when you transcend the outside world, you actually welcome it in because now you can move in it freely. You’re no longer encumbered by it. You have the ability to work there, move there, create there, love there, nurture there, and yet you’re not impacted by it in the way that you were before. So now…

Udo Erasmus (19:28.829)
Yeah.

Udo Erasmus (19:47.357)
Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (19:54.674)
the world external to you becomes a playground too. It becomes, and so when you’re able to transcend it, right? And so that’s kind of the unencumbered element of it. Yeah. Right.

Udo Erasmus (20:02.662)
I completely agree with you. That’s exactly because from my experience, that’s how it is. Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (20:10.75)
Yeah, that’s right. This is my experience as well. So what I love about this is so many people have had these parallel experiences, you know, throughout history, throughout, throughout the ages, throughout different wisdom traditions or, you know, whatever you hear this story over and over and over again, and it’s a, it’s a, it’s a very common human story. What I’m interested in is, um, what did the LSD experience do for you in this process that it, that it

Udo Erasmus (20:23.88)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (20:37.506)
kind of jumpstart some insights or change your perspective or what actually happened.

Udo Erasmus (20:40.742)
Yeah, well, it’s yeah, it’s not the whole story. Okay, but so what happened is I was with two friends. I took it on a sugar cube. It was Sandos LSD. It came out of a neurological research lab. So I got the real stuff. It was no strychnine in it or anything. And, and, uh, 60 micrograms, which is a pretty small dose. And I was lying on the floor laughing with tears running down my cheeks.

Jeffrey Gladden (20:47.017)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (20:52.31)
Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (20:55.722)
Okay. You got the real stuff. Okay.

Jeffrey Gladden (21:04.756)
Okay.

Udo Erasmus (21:10.722)
listening to Mozart and I was laughing in tune with Mozart. I mean, it was really quite funny. And, but the, the insight, the biggest insight that came from that is I realized, oh my God, all this stuff that I’ve been looking for in the world so seriously is all within me already. That was like, that was the door blow opener.

Jeffrey Gladden (21:10.766)
Mm-hmm. Okay.

Nice. Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (21:35.586)
That’s right.

Jeffrey Gladden (21:40.307)
Mm-hmm.

Udo Erasmus (21:40.61)
Oh my God. And then it was, and then, and they put me in touch with something that I hadn’t been in touch with for a very, very long time. Of course, then it goes away. You know, then the experience ends. Then you’re still left with, you know, I was left with the insight that what I’m looking for is inside of me. So, but then the story goes.

Jeffrey Gladden (21:44.796)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (21:49.39)
that. Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (21:58.466)
That’s right.

You’re left with the insight, but then you’re also left with how do I actually access that? How do I integrate it? How do I make it my own? How do I build on top of it, right?

Udo Erasmus (22:09.511)
Yeah, so.

Yeah, yeah. So I wasn’t at that point yet. So then, so then I did a number of different experiences and they were all pretty similar. They all had that element of what you’re looking for is inside of you. And then I got into, but that still didn’t put me there on a daily basis. And so I started looking where else, where else can I find what I was looking for? Being from a Christian culture, I went to the Bible.

Jeffrey Gladden (22:21.771)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (22:25.395)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (22:31.767)
Mm-hmm.

Udo Erasmus (22:41.178)
I got a red letter edition. Red letter, everything Jesus says is in red ink, everything else is in black ink. And I wanted to know what the master talked about because they’re still talking about him 2000 years later. Nobody remembers my grandfather. So I started putting little things in what he said to the test and had some really magical experiences like a whole raft of them, little ones. And a year later, there was this group of people who came up the coast.

Jeffrey Gladden (22:41.23)
Sure. Okay.

Jeffrey Gladden (22:46.89)
Right? Right.

Jeffrey Gladden (23:02.91)
Okay.

Udo Erasmus (23:09.846)
to Vancouver from California. They call themselves the Jesus People’s Army.

Jeffrey Gladden (23:12.631)
Mm-hmm.

Udo Erasmus (23:17.086)
That should have been 1970. So by now I’m 28, right? So that should have been a warning to me because army was not exactly a happy word for me, right? But I missed the cue. I thought in my head, I thought, okay, well, these guys, they’re probably all looking for what I’m looking for, trying to understand the master seems like a pretty good model to me. And my question was,

Jeffrey Gladden (23:17.803)
Okay. What year was it? Okay.

Jeffrey Gladden (23:24.418)
Yep.

Jeffrey Gladden (23:30.126)
Yeah, it doesn’t. Right, right. Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (23:43.671)
Mm-hmm.

Udo Erasmus (23:46.226)
What did he feel that made him live like he did, talk like he did, do what he did? I didn’t wanna be the master, I didn’t want a religion after me, I just wanted to know what was his experience. Because there seemed, you know, because poetry comes out of experience. So there must have been something that he felt. That was pretty outstanding. So these guys came up, I figured, we’re all on the same track, we’re trying to figure that out.

Jeffrey Gladden (23:52.716)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (24:01.899)
Yes.

Udo Erasmus (24:12.73)
and we’ll all share our stories because we’ve all learned something on our journey. And we’ll share the stories and we’ll all leave this meeting enriched. That’s what I thought. So they had a coffee house. They had a coffee house, invited people. I said, okay, I’ll go to coffee house. Went to the coffee house, sat down at a table. And the moment I sat down, this guy swooped into the chair next to me at the same table.

Jeffrey Gladden (24:17.702)
Sure. Right.

Jeffrey Gladden (24:23.37)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, sounds like it didn’t work out that way.

Udo Erasmus (24:42.078)
That should have been a warning too, but I missed that cue too. So he sat down and I looked him in the eyes. I didn’t introduce myself. I said to him, it must be possible to see God and live.

Jeffrey Gladden (24:45.736)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Udo Erasmus (24:57.134)
And I thought that would be a good beginning for a deep conversation. While he jumped out of the chair, like, like a bullet went off. He jumped out of the chair and his arms were flailing wildly over his head. And he screamed at me, you’re from the devil. You’re from the antichrist. Get out. So I go and sleep. So I went slinking out of there and I’m standing on the sidewalk and I’m thinking, well, let’s see.

Jeffrey Gladden (24:59.746)
Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (25:18.411)
Interesting.

Udo Erasmus (25:25.522)
I haven’t seen God, so maybe I shouldn’t be asking a question like that. And I got really confused and really desperate and really sincere because I really, really wanted to know. And again, this was an awful experience when it happened, but I have to thank this guy because here’s what happened. I decided to clear my head and I used to go to nature to clear my head, just like my dad used to, right? So I went to the west coast of Vancouver Island. There’s a beach there.

Jeffrey Gladden (25:30.442)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (25:35.67)
Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (25:41.686)
Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (25:51.095)
Yeah.

Udo Erasmus (25:55.154)
with logs on the beach and all of that. There was nobody there, it was in the summer. And somebody had draped plastic over some logs and made a little dwelling. And I said, okay, here’s my hotel for the weekend. And you couldn’t stand up in it, so I had to crawl in and I could sit in it, but I couldn’t stand in it. And I crawled in, I laid down, went to sleep. And in the middle of the night, I woke Bolt upright from.

Jeffrey Gladden (26:07.984)
Okay.

Jeffrey Gladden (26:19.074)
Somebody else crawled in.

Udo Erasmus (26:23.07)
dead asleep and there was this being made of light.

Jeffrey Gladden (26:26.399)
Okay.

Udo Erasmus (26:28.462)
And I don’t believe in stuff like that. But there it was, it was a being. I couldn’t tell if it was male or female. I couldn’t tell if it was old or young, but a human being made of light, no words, no labels, but embodied a message. And I could put words to that message that he embodied or that being embodied, it’s not a he. And the words are, I am come.

not to judge but to love. I am come not to judge but to love. Now my question is, do you know a more succinct way to express the essence of the teaching of the Master?

Jeffrey Gladden (27:00.194)
There you go.

Jeffrey Gladden (27:15.442)
No, actually I don’t know more succinct way. No.

Udo Erasmus (27:16.664)
I can’t.

I am come not to judge but to love. And what I realized later is like, who was that? Was that Christ? Was that my soul? Was that spirit? Because what are all those things? You don’t know until you know, right? And it turns out they’re all the same. Because what is Christ is life. And life in every human being could be called Christ.

Jeffrey Gladden (27:37.762)
That’s right. They’re all the same.

Udo Erasmus (27:49.494)
the common word is life. And that life is solar energy, a fraction of solar energy, filtered through space, filtered through earth’s atmosphere, stored in bonds between atoms and plants. Then we eat those plants and the bonds are broken in our cells, that energy is released and now we call that energy life. We are actually solar energy gadgets. Every plant, every animal, every…

Jeffrey Gladden (28:15.55)
Oh yeah.

Udo Erasmus (28:18.658)
Microbe and every human being is a solar energy gadget. So now we call it life and the message of life to the body I Am come not to judge but to love same message Right, and if you go subjective on it where you do a stillness practice and you bring your focus into that energy Inside the space your body occupies then you’re in the realm of the master. That’s what all of the masters talked about that’s

Jeffrey Gladden (28:18.749)
No example.

Jeffrey Gladden (28:22.935)
That’s right.

Jeffrey Gladden (28:32.514)
Mm-hmm.

Udo Erasmus (28:48.41)
and the difference between the masters and us was not that we were different, but that they took it seriously. They took it seriously, they did their stillness practice, and they discovered the nature of human nature within their own space, and then spoke from that space to that space and other people. Right? And so eight billion people have the master living inside of them, running their show.

Jeffrey Gladden (29:08.338)
That’s exactly right. Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Udo Erasmus (29:17.454)
Life, you know, weighs nothing but runs everything, is omnipresent in you, omnipotent in you and omniscient in you, knows everything about it, runs, show, and is your individual essence, is that energy. And that’s like, whoa.

Jeffrey Gladden (29:25.165)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (29:33.646)
That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. This is what it means. This is very cool because this is what it means to be made in God’s image, right? Is to actually be that energy itself. Exactly. That’s right.

Udo Erasmus (29:42.394)
Yeah, well, I heard the words, but it isn’t real until you experience it. So what happened when I, you know, this came later, this understanding developed later. But when that being was there, I am come not to judge, but to love. All of my confusion and my desperation evaporated. I have never had a question about what was the essential message of the Master. And fractally,

Jeffrey Gladden (30:06.667)
Okay.

Udo Erasmus (30:11.314)
Buddha and Krishna and other masters had the same message. They said it in different ways because they were in different cultures at different times. But that is the great master’s message. I am come not to judge but to love. And you in your individual essence are also unconditional love. And if you can bring your focus there, you can actually help without always trying to get something back.

Jeffrey Gladden (30:14.619)
Mm-hmm. That’s right.

Jeffrey Gladden (30:29.89)
That’s right.

Jeffrey Gladden (30:38.678)
That’s right. Now, this is exactly right. It also points out something that I’ve come to understand about what we’ll call an enlightenment process. What you’re describing here is a process of enlightenment. We could say that, right? Right. Yeah. Being being lit up from within, right? A new a new understanding, a new way of being. What’s interesting about that is that you had done a lot of preparatory work to get ready for that. But when it happens, right, you’ve been searching, you’ve been, you know,

Udo Erasmus (30:39.794)
because you’re now taken care of.

Udo Erasmus (30:51.146)
Yeah, getting lit up from within.

Jeffrey Gladden (31:08.358)
asking questions, communicating with people, taking particular psychedelics, et cetera. You know, you’re working on this, right? Sort of preparing the soil, if you will, for the farm analogy. But when the but when the and while I use the word transcendence, the enlightenment, the whatever happened, it’s a quantum event. It’s like an atom moving from one energy into another higher energy shell. It happens instantaneously. Is there’s nothing gradual about it?

Udo Erasmus (31:38.216)
Yep.

Jeffrey Gladden (31:39.538)
And so just for the audience listening to this, if you’re looking at your own pathway to finding peace, finding your own enlightenment, if you will, we do a lot of work to kind of prepare the soil, understanding our psychology, understanding our history, understanding how we got here, the things that influence us, what we’re living in reaction to, what our blind spots are, many, many things go into this understanding.

But ultimately it’s going to come down to not that being enough to get you there. It only sets the stage for a moment of enlightenment when you will go there instantaneously. Right. This is how I experience it. Yeah.

Udo Erasmus (32:21.437)
Yeah, I think that last step is a jump. And you may not even know how to take the jump.

Jeffrey Gladden (32:24.103)
It is a drum.

Jeffrey Gladden (32:28.03)
No, you don’t know how to jump, it happens. I’ve had the same experience.

Udo Erasmus (32:29.586)
Because it’s not like, yeah, because it’s, yeah. And then so let me finish the story. So, yeah, it just completely, I’ve never had a doubt about what the message was since that day. I also realized that that’s the standard that I need to live by. I am come not to judge but to love. And of course, if you don’t set a higher standard, when you set a higher standard, you’re doomed to fail. But every time you fail, you learn something.

Jeffrey Gladden (32:35.702)
Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (32:46.345)
Mm-hmm.

Udo Erasmus (32:57.734)
So never give up on the standard, just end up failing your way to success. And the more you hold the standard and the more you look at, pay attention to what you’re doing and how you’re carrying out to that standard, the more you learn how to actually live by that standard. And I’m still a work in progress, but it’s an incredibly good journey. Now then something else happened, it became a memory. And I was like, damn it.

Jeffrey Gladden (33:11.303)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (33:16.664)
Yep.

Udo Erasmus (33:26.502)
I want to live in that experience on a moment to moment basis. How do I do that? And that took me to a, by that time I’m 30, and that took me by some incredible coincidences to a 14 year old boy who said, the peace you search for in the world is within you. I can reveal you that peace. And I then learned a method.

Jeffrey Gladden (33:29.694)
Right, I don’t want it to be a memory. Yeah, nice.

Jeffrey Gladden (33:36.802)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (33:52.192)
Okay.

Udo Erasmus (33:55.53)
for bringing my awareness. And it’s not complicated, you know, it’s like a method to bring the focus back inside.

Jeffrey Gladden (34:02.818)
Yeah, why don’t you share that with us if you don’t mind? What is the method that you learned?

Udo Erasmus (34:07.572)
Well, the message is always make a safe place where you’re not gonna be distracted.

Jeffrey Gladden (34:14.708)
Mm-hmm.

Udo Erasmus (34:16.538)
And then see how still you can become and see how deeply you can go into that stillness and see how long you can hang out there. And while you’re in that stillness, what is there, what do you observe in the space your body occupies? You can see light there, you can hear sound there, you can feel love there, you know, sort of like light in your darkness, sound in your silence.

Jeffrey Gladden (34:24.904)
Mm-hmm.

Udo Erasmus (34:45.294)
love in your heartache, you can even taste it. Basically, you’re using your senses now to monitor the energy inside of your body, because your senses monitor energy on the outside as well as the inside. We don’t monitor things, we monitor energies with our senses. Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (34:51.368)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (34:58.679)
That’s right.

Jeffrey Gladden (35:05.398)
100%. Yeah, we talk about five senses, but really the sixth one I always describe as energy. We’re reading every each we’re reading everybody’s energy. They’re reading ours as well. Right. So

Udo Erasmus (35:15.834)
Yeah, but I’m talking about, you know, color, pattern, movement. That’s all energy. Sound energy, silence energy. You know, so everything on the outside and everything on the inside. Because the energy aspect is where the power is, is where the love is. Unconditionally empowering love is your life and your life is energy.

Jeffrey Gladden (35:19.746)
Yes.

Jeffrey Gladden (35:25.102)
Yes.

Jeffrey Gladden (35:38.414)
That’s right. I so love that you’re talking about this in terms of energy because this is also my experience of it. We’re connecting to an energetic field, a field of all possibilities, if you will. And it is at an energetic level. You don’t think your way into it. You actually quiet your frontal lobe so that you can actually feel your way. That’s right.

Udo Erasmus (36:00.098)
No, you surrender your way into it. You let go into it.

Jeffrey Gladden (36:03.822)
That’s right. You let go into it and you can come back and analyze it or talk about it as articulated about it now as we are. But that’s not how you get through it. It’s.

Udo Erasmus (36:11.638)
Right, right. Because you actually… Because everything that we process in our heads is stuff that we didn’t have in our mother’s womb. We’re going back to the place we were in before we had all those… learned all those skills. You don’t need a skill for that. You need to surrender to it. You need to let go of what’s outside. So let go of the world. Let’s go of your thought. Let go of your body.

Jeffrey Gladden (36:24.718)
That’s right.

Udo Erasmus (36:40.098)
And then what’s left, let go of the energy. And then you eventually you get into awareness, undifferentiated awareness, and you can’t let go of undifferentiated awareness because there’s nowhere else to go, because that’s, because that’s the foundation. That’s, that’s the container.

Jeffrey Gladden (36:54.624)
That’s right. And what comes out of that and what comes out of that, quite honestly, is this deep, profound sense of rest and deep, profound sense of peace, which is kind of where you started with all this, you know.

Udo Erasmus (37:06.787)
Yeah, peace is the core of it. And then around it is the unconditional empowering flow of love, of the energy. And then around that, it shines into the world as inspired purpose.

Jeffrey Gladden (37:14.114)
That’s right. 100 percent. And the lack of judgment.

Jeffrey Gladden (37:20.234)
Yeah. And the lack of judgment. I think what’s really cool is in this space, there’s only compassion. There’s love and compassion, right? But there isn’t there is no judgment. There’s love and compassion, right? For yourself and for everybody else. Yeah.

Udo Erasmus (37:26.598)
Right. Yeah. And you want to sit. Yep. And you want to sit in the heartache. Just accept it and feel it. No judgment. Don’t make it mean anything. Don’t try and explain it. Don’t think about it. Just feel it. Just feel it. Be in it. And actually, the heartache is the greatest gift we’ve been given other than being alive. Because if it wasn’t for that call to come home.

Jeffrey Gladden (37:39.32)
Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (37:53.774)
Well, yeah, sure. That’s right. Yeah. If you didn’t feel uncomfortable, you wouldn’t know that you needed to move, right? So to speak, or take action or figure something out or make a shift or whatever. Um, what’s interesting is how we, um, normalize the pain, so to speak, or we, or we, we’ve, we’re overwhelmed by it in the sense that we can’t figure it out. And then we go to all the numbing mechanisms, right? Uh, what?

Udo Erasmus (37:56.306)
we would never find our way home.

Udo Erasmus (38:21.946)
Yeah, or, yeah, or the distraction or the explain it away or let’s just ignore it or let’s just deny that I’m feeling it. Well, let me blame it on the foreigners or the neighbors or the government or different skin colors, whatever it is, you know. But it’s actually our disconnection from ourselves. And we can’t blame ourselves for it either because it’s a natural process. It’s something that happens to everybody.

Jeffrey Gladden (38:24.778)
distraction, numbing, etc.

Jeffrey Gladden (38:33.364)
Exactly. Yeah. Or let me have another drink. Right? Yeah. Or let me have another drink. Yeah. Exactly.

Jeffrey Gladden (38:45.695)
Mm-hmm.

Udo Erasmus (38:52.078)
And then so, so if it’s, if we can sit in that and not judge it and just be with it, then it is calling us to go just a titch deeper. And then it goes away. And then we’re filled with love and filled with peace and filled with joy and filled with fulfillment and filled with, you know, everything, every totally safe, 100% safe in that place.

Jeffrey Gladden (39:06.186)
Not for you, right?

Jeffrey Gladden (39:13.826)
and safety, we’re filled with safety at that point too. Yeah, yeah, that’s right. That’s right.

Udo Erasmus (39:20.806)
Yeah, speaking of where I came from looking for safety, 100% safe. And so I’ve been doing this practice of this stillness practice for like over 50 years now. I’m 81 now, right? Started when I was 30.

Jeffrey Gladden (39:24.undefined)
Exactly.

Jeffrey Gladden (39:31.09)
Okay. So is this a daily practice for you of doing the stillness or?

Udo Erasmus (39:36.034)
I do it daily. I sometimes joke with people. I say, well, you know, when I wake up in the morning, I want to check in to see if I’m still there. Because if I’m not there anymore, there’s no point getting up. But seriously, what I do is I want to start my day. Your mind wanders when you’re sleeping. You have dreams and stuff. This morning I was in bed. I thought I heard the phone ring. And then I came upstairs and I wasn’t sure if the phone had rung or if I had dreamt that the phone had rung.

And there was no message, so I think I probably dreamt that the phone rang, right? So, so your mind wanders while you’re asleep. So I like to get up. I like to get present in the space my body occupies as fully present as I can. And feel that peace and feel that love and feel that inspiration and then get out of bed and then. Drag that into the world because that’s how we, that’s how we rebuild the world, because there’s a lot we need, a lot that we’ve were screwed up.

Jeffrey Gladden (40:18.823)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (40:25.003)
100%.

Jeffrey Gladden (40:29.486)
That’s it.

Mm-hmm.

Udo Erasmus (40:35.954)
because we haven’t done our homework. And we need to do the homework in order to change it, to fill it, to make it better.

Jeffrey Gladden (40:37.918)
I think you’re absolutely right.

Jeffrey Gladden (40:42.702)
That’s right. I think you’re absolutely right. And if you’re listening to this, I think there’s just something I know in my own meditation practice, I do it first thing in the morning when I first get up, when I’m still, you know, kind of, I wouldn’t say groggy, but I’m not fully awake. I sort of start to rest into it, sit into the meditation space at that point in time. Yeah. Yep. I do it.

Udo Erasmus (41:04.23)
Yeah, I do it lying down because I want all the pressure off my body because I want to get into the energy, out of the body, into the energy.

Jeffrey Gladden (41:12.33)
Yep, I do it one of two ways, either lying down or sitting up in a comfortable chair. But yeah, but I think the idea of doing this first thing in the morning before everything gets going is great because what it does is it puts you into an energetic space that you start to redefine the day. And one of the insights that I’ve had recently around this is that…

Udo Erasmus (41:17.2)
Yeah.

Udo Erasmus (41:31.603)
Yep.

Jeffrey Gladden (41:39.97)
You know, when you wake up in that energy, you wake up into this really loving space, right? This very loving space and connected space. You feel very connected to everything and everyone and a great deal of love. I recently had an insight, however, that I wasn’t feeling. Uh, support. And what I mean by that is that I was still had a construct in my head that the world was on some level antagonistic to me.

Udo Erasmus (41:48.23)
Yep.

Udo Erasmus (41:52.392)
Yep.

Jeffrey Gladden (42:09.854)
and that it wasn’t there to sort of support me. But then I realized that’s just a fabrication because total fabrication, and so total fabrication, exactly the place we all came up with, right? Living in reaction to things that have happened. And so just switching that into, no, this is love and support. This energetic is both.

Udo Erasmus (42:16.422)
Total fabrication. Where’d you come up with that crap? Yeah, yeah, of course. Of course.

Udo Erasmus (42:36.328)
In fact, love is the support. And love is the support for every human being. And within every human being is that love. And sometimes you catch a little bit of it and you feel supported from the outside, as well as having the support on the inside.

Jeffrey Gladden (42:38.178)
That’s right. Well, then.

Jeffrey Gladden (42:42.914)
That’s right.

Jeffrey Gladden (42:50.25)
That’s right. And then other forms of support can be actually expressions of love too. It’s, it’s kind of circular, right? In that sense. So, but, but I’ve just been carrying that with me that every meeting that I go into, I’m walking into a fabric of love and support, there is no antagonism anymore. There is no other agenda than that. And since we create reality based on the energy we bring into the situation.

Udo Erasmus (42:58.406)
Right. Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (43:19.178)
It’s just fascinating to see how things unfold with that. So my point is that when you start your day, first thing in the morning, in this energetic space, you will redefine your life, you will redefine your life, you will redefine your health, and you will actually redefine your longevity, not to mention your satisfaction, relational satisfaction, business satisfaction, whatever else, right? So.

Udo Erasmus (43:19.335)
Yeah.

Udo Erasmus (43:22.768)
Yep.

Udo Erasmus (43:32.263)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Udo Erasmus (43:42.286)
Yeah, yeah, unconditional love.

is actually perfect health. Life energy is perfect health. And when healing happens, it’s life energy that makes the, you know, whatever manipulations we apply for healing, life energy puts them, you know, puts them into the structure for the healing to happen.

Jeffrey Gladden (43:50.019)
That’s right.

Jeffrey Gladden (44:01.539)
That’s right.

Jeffrey Gladden (44:06.37)
Yeah, and so removing the obstructions to that, right, which is kind of the process that you went through, which was removing the obstructions to being able to experience and live in and out of that life energy, right?

Udo Erasmus (44:16.762)
Yeah, yeah, and most of most of those obstructions are mental stuff. I don’t feel safe. I don’t feel safe. Yeah, so. Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (44:21.138)
Oh, it’s all mental. Yeah. Psychological, mental. Some of it’s imprinted. Yeah. I don’t feel safe. Right.

But the other interesting thing, just like in my case, with the support, we have blind spots too. So if you’re on this journey, realize that there’s things that you’ve so normalized about the world that you don’t even see them for what they are, right? That they’re just constructs. Until you see them. That’s right, until you see them.

Udo Erasmus (44:41.402)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, until you see them. Yeah. And then the insight comes and then and then you’re done with it. You know, it’s like you say it’s a really good, good process. I just wanted to go back to what you were saying about support or how we see the world. You know, if I’ve if peace is actually everywhere. Like has always been everywhere. Peace, perfect peace, all encompassing peace.

Jeffrey Gladden (44:48.674)
That’s right, exactly.

Udo Erasmus (45:11.246)
everywhere. It’s the foundation of my existence. It’s the foundation of the existence of everything in the universe. So if I’m feeling peace, then I see that peace in the world. It’s like, oh my god, how cool is that? And I live into the world as though it was peaceful.

Jeffrey Gladden (45:27.398)
Mm-hmm.

Exactly.

Udo Erasmus (45:32.706)
When I’m angry, I see enemies. And even if there are no enemies, I will create enemies because the anger needs enemies. So I’m creating them. So then I live into this world of complete peace as though it had enemies in it. And if I’m fearful, if my state is peace, is anger, is fear, when I’m fearful, then I see danger. Where…

Jeffrey Gladden (45:35.972)
Mm hmm. That’s right.

Jeffrey Gladden (45:40.437)
That’s right.

Jeffrey Gladden (45:47.778)
That’s right. Right.

Jeffrey Gladden (45:59.874)
That’s right.

Udo Erasmus (46:01.266)
where when I’m in peace, I see peace. And then I’m gonna duck and hide and trying to protect myself and try and figure out how I can get away from whatever dangers. So I’m making that up in my head and then living into it. And it’s like, it’s like crazy. It’s crazy. I will create danger out of fear.

Jeffrey Gladden (46:03.766)
That’s right.

Jeffrey Gladden (46:16.014)
That’s right. You know,

Jeffrey Gladden (46:21.682)
It’s interesting. Yeah. The inner, I completely agree with you. I think you’ve articulated that really, really nicely. You know, one of the biggest hurdles for people to get over in this process is the idea that their thoughts are real. Right? We tend to think that how we’re thinking is real. Like, of course it’s this way. This, I see it this way. This is how I think about it. This is, it’s real.

Udo Erasmus (46:39.538)
Oh yeah, that’s…

Udo Erasmus (46:43.592)
Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (46:49.31)
When you, one of the first steps you have to make is to understand that your thoughts and what you think is real is really just a fabrication. That’s a fabric, it’s all made up. It’s all made up, right? Well, yeah. Yeah. Well, create your own reality, right?

Udo Erasmus (46:57.094)
Yeah, it’s all made up. It’s all made up. That’s why they say make up your mind, right? Yeah, we always make up. Or, or, or you say nothing you think is true. Nothing you think is true because it’s just made up stuff. It’s symbolic, right? Or I have a friend who says there’s nothing wrong with beliefs. As long as you don’t believe them. It’s like, oh yeah, I nailed it. Nailed it. Right.

Jeffrey Gladden (47:08.718)
That’s right. Yeah.

That’s right.

Jeffrey Gladden (47:18.486)
That’s right.

Jeffrey Gladden (47:22.862)
Yeah. Oh, that’s right.

Udo Erasmus (47:24.946)
Because you want to be present in experience. You want to be present in reality, and reality is experience. And you don’t need any thoughts, and you can be alive without thoughts, but you can’t be thinking without life. So life is actually more important than thinking, right?

Jeffrey Gladden (47:27.722)
You want to be connected and experience and love. That’s right.

Jeffrey Gladden (47:42.318)
That’s right.

That’s right. So if you’re listening to this and you, this either sounds wacko to you or it sounds like, you know, I’ve been thinking that some stuff is always gonna be this way. This is who I am, this is how it goes, this is what it is, blah, blah. The first thing to understand is that all that is a fabrication and all of that is completely modifiable. You just have to be able to, you know, set up the stages to walk through it and.

Udo Erasmus (48:07.142)
Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (48:14.258)
ultimately transcend it, right?

Udo Erasmus (48:16.554)
Yeah, sit with your heartache and then beyond the heartache, find the master within you. You are perfectly cared for, perfectly cared for 24-7-365 lifelong. I mean, amazing, right? I mean, you can sit here. You know, I can sit here and I can have doomsday problems about the end of the world and that molecule of folic acid that one cell at my left ankle needs.

Jeffrey Gladden (48:23.949)
Exactly.

Jeffrey Gladden (48:29.73)
That’s it. Yeah. And everything that shows up.

Jeffrey Gladden (48:38.293)
Mm-hmm.

Udo Erasmus (48:45.37)
Life has taken it there while I’m having my fabricated, fear-based doomsday scenarios. Life is taking perfect care of me even if I’m really stupid in my head, even if I do stupid things. Life takes care of it.

Jeffrey Gladden (48:50.071)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (48:53.582)
That’s right. And

Jeffrey Gladden (49:05.43)
Yep. And yeah, and so it’s.

You know, we think that we have to do certain things to feel safe, but actually safety is just something that you claim. It’s not an event that’s going to get you to safety. It’s a state of need. It’s not something you’re going to attain. Like if I only, we have this fabricated construct that if I only make this much money or if we only get that house or if I only get this degree, then it’s going to be safe. And it never is, of course.

Udo Erasmus (49:22.078)
Safety, yeah, it’s a state of being. Safety is a, yeah.

Yeah, you’re right.

Udo Erasmus (49:37.518)
Yeah. Well, yeah, that’s the creation out of fear. Right? I’m afraid that if then whatever, right? Or I’m afraid, you know what? You can’t, you can live without money. Every creature on the planet, except human beings does. You can live without money, but money means nothing without life. So it always comes back to that.

Jeffrey Gladden (49:41.854)
That’s right.

Jeffrey Gladden (50:01.378)
That’s right. In fact, another insight I’ve had is that, well, it’s actually it’s affirmation for myself is that I wake up 27 every day. The audience knows this. I wake up 27 every day. I was born in 54. I wake up 27. And I have unlimited resources. I have access to unlimited resources. And

Udo Erasmus (50:17.761)
Oh, right.

Jeffrey Gladden (50:29.158)
What I’ve discovered is that actually money is the least useful resource. And yet it’s interesting that people, we, people focus so much on the acquisition of money, and then we call a resource, we start to call it an asset, right? And we have asset managers in actual fact. This is another quantum jump.

You actually, all of us on this planet, in this fabric that we just talked about of unconditional love, acceptance, non-judgment, support and safety, we have access to unlimited resources, right? And to take that and break it down and say, well, I’m going to focus on dollars and cents and what’s in an account here or there is really, it’s so destructive to

And it’s also so limiting because it’s like, well, I couldn’t do that because I don’t have enough money. The answer is you can do absolutely anything you want to do. You have access to unlimited resources. You just need to be able to access them. And so what

Udo Erasmus (51:31.965)
Mm-hmm.

Udo Erasmus (51:35.971)
Yeah, and inspired purpose is never about money. It’s about increasing light. It’s about sharing light. It’s about sharing lightness, sharing enlightenment.

Jeffrey Gladden (51:38.85)
That’s right, never. Impact.

Jeffrey Gladden (51:45.641)
That’s right. No, that’s right.

Jeffrey Gladden (51:50.526)
That’s right. And resources flow to that. It attracts.

Udo Erasmus (51:53.922)
Helping people have less pain and more joy. You know, it’s always about that. Like the hero comes home with a gift of love. It’s always a gift of love. And then the hero doesn’t come home to, you know, to rob the bank. The hero comes off, because what happened to me is when I started feeling cared for, because I got in touch with what cares for me, my whole orientation changed. Before that, it was always like,

Jeffrey Gladden (51:56.706)
That’s right.

Jeffrey Gladden (52:01.421)
That’s right. Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (52:09.152)
No, that’s right.

Udo Erasmus (52:22.61)
you know, my anxiety stuff, right? What can I do that’ll get me taken care of? Because I didn’t feel taken care of. When I started feeling cared for because I started going to where the care lives, completely changed. I said, oh my God, it’s not about me anymore. I’m cared for. And if I don’t feel cared for, I know what to do to feel cared for. Because it’s there. It’s always there. So then it’s like, okay, if I feel cared for and it’s not about me anymore, then what is there left?

Jeffrey Gladden (52:24.471)
Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (52:28.046)
Mm-hmm. Right?

Jeffrey Gladden (52:38.774)
That’s right.

Jeffrey Gladden (52:45.015)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Udo Erasmus (52:52.074)
How can I help? What, yeah, and then it’s like, what needs to be done? How can I make the biggest splash for good in the time that I have? Completely changed it. And then all of the stuff that I’ve done in business in like with the oils and enzymes and probiotics, never did it for money. It just was something that I felt needed to be done. I was actually broke for 15 years. I moved in with my mother.

Jeffrey Gladden (52:53.654)
Yeah, you start resonating with that bigger sense of purpose.

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (53:14.036)
Mm-hmm.

Udo Erasmus (53:22.27)
when I started the oils, when I developed the industry of making oils with health in mind. Yeah, yeah, absolutely will be another podcast. So yeah, it can’t be about money. It isn’t about money. Life is not about money. Life is about life. How do you… The gift, if you talk about purpose, the first gift is to do homework.

Jeffrey Gladden (53:23.905)
Okay.

Jeffrey Gladden (53:29.142)
Right. That will be another podcast, you know. Yeah, right.

Jeffrey Gladden (53:42.355)
Mm-hmm.

Udo Erasmus (53:50.994)
First gift is to be fully present in all of my being and my surroundings and not stuck in my head. That’s the first gift. And why is that the first gift? Why is that the most important purpose? Because I was given this gift, you were given that gift, everybody listening, everybody watching, you were given that gift. And if you don’t unpack it,

Jeffrey Gladden (53:53.399)
Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (53:58.038)
That’s right.

Udo Erasmus (54:17.038)
and enjoy the magnificence of that gift that you were given. It’s a wasted gift because nobody else can enjoy it for you. So that’s purpose one. Purpose two is help where you can. But you can’t even get in touch with the talent you have for helping if you’re not present in your own space. So you have to put that first. That’s contrary to what many people tell you when they want you to.

Jeffrey Gladden (54:25.8)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (54:36.002)
That’s right. Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (54:43.28)
Hmm.

Udo Erasmus (54:45.854)
help them get to their goals. But your goal, according to life, according to life, purpose one is be there. Because for four billion years, you didn’t exist. I don’t know how long before that. So you’d never existed. Now you get 100 years, 120, 150, if we do everything you say, right? And after that, you’re not gonna exist for another four billion years. So this is the deal.

Jeffrey Gladden (54:47.726)
That’s right. No, that’s it.

Jeffrey Gladden (55:06.489)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Udo Erasmus (55:13.598)
This is the holiday, this is the party, this is the thing, make the most of it. How do you make the most of it? Be fully present in it. Doesn’t mean do everything that could be done in the world. Be fully present in it.

Jeffrey Gladden (55:26.706)
Oh, and you’ll find that that’s actually quite effortless to do when you’re unencumbered, when you’re not living in reaction to things, right? Because when you’re living in reactions to things, there’s all this sense of urgency, fear, it’s driven by this, that, and the other thing. But when you’re, when you’re safe, sound, secure in this loving space, this fabric that exists, then all of a sudden the activities are there. Um,

And there’s a sense of wanting a deep desire to do them. So there isn’t any lack of motivation, but it’s not, it’s not the same sense of scarcity and urgency that’s driving the action, right?

Udo Erasmus (56:01.37)
Yeah, yeah, if you can get out of the motivation that lasts for a week and then it goes away, there is a deep current that runs through us that we float on. That current is more effective than any motivational speech. It’s always there and it’s quiet and it’s steady and it never lets up and it carries you to your destination if you let it.

Jeffrey Gladden (56:07.372)
Right.

Jeffrey Gladden (56:10.894)
That’s right.

Jeffrey Gladden (56:30.302)
And if you and if people are out there and they’re listening to this and it’s like, you know, I’m trying to find what my purpose is. Everything that we’re talking about here in this episode here is this is how you find your purpose. You really find your purpose once you get into this fabric of life that we’re talking about and you make these quantum leaps and you have these realizations and you read, you know, you throw out all the stuff that you thought was real and you actually create what’s actually much more profoundly real.

Udo Erasmus (56:42.943)
Yeah, but.

Udo Erasmus (56:47.462)
Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (56:58.538)
And then from there, your sense of purpose just starts to evolve. Uh, it’s, uh, and, and other purposes you can’t, it’s not that you can’t have purpose from other vantage points. But I find that for me, I’ve had purposes at various points in my life, but from this vantage point, the purpose has never been pure, it’s never been more sustainable. It’s never been more resonant.

and integrated with who I am and what it is I want to do. It’s like a really profound sense of purpose. So, yeah.

Udo Erasmus (57:31.959)
Yeah. So, yeah, so if the, if the primary purpose is to be fully present and you become fully present, your purpose in the world, you know, how you can help will show up. And I could be different every day. I talked to a guy today, I was walking without my shirt and I, I have this joke. I, I talked to strangers quite a bit and I, he, he’s, he’s sort of

Jeffrey Gladden (57:37.09)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (57:44.75)
That’s right. Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (57:51.303)
Okay.

Udo Erasmus (57:58.77)
did something because I was walking with a shirt. I’m an old guy. I’m pretty good shape. I have a nice tan, you know, look okay, right? But, and I, so sometimes I say to people when they don’t have a shirt on, I say, hey, I love the shirt your mother made you, right? Or the shirt life induced your mother to make for you. And so I, or I tell them about my shirt. I said, you know, I’ve been wearing the shirt for 81 years. It’s always form-fitting. The button never comes off.

Jeffrey Gladden (58:05.068)
Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (58:15.407)
Mmm, nice.

Jeffrey Gladden (58:20.103)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (58:26.498)
Yeah.

Udo Erasmus (58:28.794)
It doesn’t need a zipper. It’s drip dry. It doesn’t need to be ironed. If I sleep in it, I don’t wake up wrinkled in the morning. Right. And it goes on and on. It’s self repairing and it changes color with the season. So it’s always in style and it makes vitamin D for free. Right. So we get into that and it’s kind of funny, you know, cause people don’t think about their skin that way. Right. So I started talking to him and he, so, and I stopped and started that conversation.

Jeffrey Gladden (58:29.044)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (58:42.246)
Uh huh.

Yeah, exactly.

Sure. That’s right.

Udo Erasmus (58:58.278)
And then we got into the conversation that you and I are having right now, just on the street with the guy. He was so grateful because he had just had something that pulled him out of his piece, pulled him into a trigger, you know, and, you know, how do you fix all of these, these things that trigger you? Well, you have to go back to your, go back to your base, right? And leave the trigger outside. And it’s not personal because your wholeness.

Jeffrey Gladden (59:04.274)
Okay. Nice.

Jeffrey Gladden (59:12.287)
Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Gladden (59:21.799)
Exactly.

Udo Erasmus (59:27.198)
will still be whole if somebody tells you they don’t like you. Your wholeness is still whole. But if you make your wholeness depend on somebody else’s opinion, then you’re not in a really good shape. Then you’re not in charge of your own life. And you need to be in charge of your own life.

Jeffrey Gladden (59:31.67)
Yep. No, that’s right. No, that’s right. That’s right.

That’s right.

Jeffrey Gladden (59:43.006)
Yeah, you have to understand that. Yeah, you have to understand nothing external to you can ever make you feel safe. So ever. So that’s it.

Udo Erasmus (59:50.47)
Right. Well, one day it’ll make you feel safe and the next day it’ll cut your legs off. Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden (59:54.03)
Exactly. Make you feel completely unsafe. Right. So, well, Udo, this has been a really fascinating conversation. I know we were going to talk about health related things and I know you’ve done a lot of things with, um, with healthy oils and written books and this kind of thing, but this, uh, conversation just kind of unfolded. So, uh, I’m, I’m. Yeah. Delighted we had this one. Um, so.

Udo Erasmus (01:00:06.28)
Yeah.

Udo Erasmus (01:00:11.494)
Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s do another one. Yeah. Because it deserves its own time because that’s a that’s a big story.

Jeffrey Gladden (01:00:20.106)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, great, well, thank you so much. And just hang on for a minute. I’m gonna stop this recording and then we’ll ask you a couple of the extra questions. So let’s see, where do I?

recording.

Jeffrey Gladden (01:00:40.793)
Oh, here it is.