Rich and Anonymous — From Billionaires to Ancient Sages
Morgan Housel wrote a fascinating blog titled Rich and Anonymous, discussing an interesting concept called social debt. The United States has two key outlets for people to jump straight from crippling poverty to millionaires before they come crashing down again into poverty. The first outlet is the gigantic lottery, and the second one is the football draft. Morgan explains that when people from poor backgrounds win the lottery or get a multi-million dollar deal in the NFL, they feel morally obligated to help their extended families and the larger community. They risk social ostracization if they don’t offer to build a house for their distant cousin. This is called social debt.
A subtle problem with money is that assets are easy to measure, but liabilities can be hidden. Measuring lottery winnings is simple: $3.9 million, down to the penny. But how do you measure losing your privacy? Or the nagging doubt that some friends only like you for your money? That’s way harder.
I often looked at the amount of misery fame and money inflicted on people and wondered how they coped. The small joys of eating out, walking in the rain, shopping, meeting a friend, and watching a movie are almost impossible. Every word you express is deconstructed and analyzed, and you are supposed to represent entire communities and genders just because you happened to make money or fame in life. How can you escape this vicious cycle that accompanies wealth?
“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” — Henry David Thoreau.
Morgan gives the example of a family he met whose net worth is more than eight billion dollars. He could find absolutely no information about them when he googled their name. It was almost as if they did not exist. In this podcast, Morgan explains the ridiculous lengths the family went through to maintain their privacy. They donated anonymously, did not attend galas and parties people use to climb social ladders, and ensured they were never captured in the Forbes List of Billionaires. Morgan had been called in to counsel the children about managing wealth, and he discussed how normal the kids were and felt that this was masterful parenting.
In a society full of influencers, thought leaders, social climbers, and celebrities, the best people may be the rich and anonymous.
Mantra Sciences and The Rishis of Ancient India
My guru Om Swami wrote a beautiful book called The Ancient Science of Mantras. It took me many years to start appreciating the beauty of what he was offering to the world because I was not ready to receive such knowledge. Most people write books derived from ancient Indian texts but have minimal practical experience. Swamiji has done intense meditation and Mantra Sadhana and experienced the divine vision of both Devi and Lord Vishnu. Hence, he says many times that the mouth that utters the name of the holy mother can never speak a lie. In this book, he talks about how Mantras came into being.
Lord Shiva had returned from Kailasha after an intense meditation and solitude lasting eighty thousand human years to his abode. Devi Parvati was waiting for him, and after spending time in her company, he said he had to go back to Kailasha and start intense meditation. The transformation cycle needed Lord Shiva’s energy from his intense penance. When Devi asked him to stay back, Lord Shiva explained how many planets needed his energy to be relieved from grief and suffering. The Devi said she experienced grief every time he left her, but she did not understand suffering and was curious to experience emotions like suffering, sadness, and sorrow. Unknowingly, she had started a cycle where the Devi would play a crucial role in creation in the form of energy and movement. She saw the different worlds, but since she was not in them, she still could not experience suffering. Lord Shiva then told her that she would witness his dance of destruction and then be born as Sati, the daughter of Daksha.
After a vast expanse of time, the Devi watched Lord Shiva get up from his meditation and dance to the tune of his damru. Planets exploded, his body expanded beyond all possible dimensions, and new universes poured forth. The Devi was born as Devi Sati, and she married Lord Shiva after doing intense tapas. She felt all the emotions that he described and prayed to him to give humanity a way out of this cycle of life, death, and fear. The beautiful Lord Shiva played his damru playfully again, and the sounds that emerged from his dance became the seed syllables of the mantras. The ancient sages who meditated on the formless divinity perceived them and systematically shared it with humanity when they found worthy receptors.
Unlike modern religions, it’s impossible to date Sanatana Dharma. I will lean into a book called The Science of the Rishis by Devi Vanamali. She explains that Rishi derives from the Sanskrit word that means “to see.” The rishis were called mantra drashtas or the “seers of the mantras,” not the composers of the mantras. Just like Newton discovered gravity and did not create it, the rishi, through intense concentration, tapped into the cosmic sounds released by Lord Shiva. When they chanted these mantras, immense creativity flowered within them, which is captured in the Vedas. The Vedas offer insights into every single aspect of human existence, from metallurgy to ritualistic worship. We call Maharishi Ved Vyasa the compiler of Vedas because he collated the scattered knowledge and brought it together under four key categories. However, we don’t even know about the hundreds of thousands of anonymous sages who kept this esoteric knowledge alive by chanting the Vedas through years of invasions, cultural genocides, and abject poverty. We know of a few amazing rishis, such as the Saptarishis, Maharishi Vyasa, or Maharishi Valmiki. However, think of the army of rishis needed to memorize and transmit the Vedas, Mahabharata, and the Ramayana orally. The unknown heroes who spent their entire lives preserving the tradition through the dark ages without knowing when the sun will shine again on Bharatvarsha?
We are currently doing the Sri Sukhtam Sadhana by using the Vedic Sadhana app. This app came into existence because my guru wanted to ensure that all this knowledge preserved by the ancient sages who chose anonymity over fame is now available to seekers like you and me.
That’s why I love the part of the Sadhana where we pay regard to all these sages and invite them to join our yagna and bless us to cross over this cycle of life and death.
