Episode Transcript
Glenn Harper [: 00:00:00
Well, hello, everyone. Welcome to another edition of the Empowering Entrepreneurs Podcast. I’m Glenn Harper.Julie Smith [: 00:00:05
Julie Smith.Glenn Harper [: 00:00:05
What’s going on, Julie?Julie Smith [: 00:00:06
Well, you know, winter has struck here.Glenn Harper [: 00:00:08
26 degrees, snow, wind, cold, ice.Julie Smith [: 00:00:11
I think it’s gonna be like the coldest December of my lifetime.Glenn Harper [: 00:00:14
Are you talking through your nose this morning?Julie Smith [: 00:00:16
No, because the winter gave me a cold, too. It’s terrible.Glenn Harper [: 00:00:20
Well, we’re gonna figure out how to solve these wintertime ailments by our next guest here, which I’m so excited to meet and chat with today. And it’s. I’d like to introduce Udo Erasmus, owner and founder of Udo’s Choice, a global brand focusing on fats and holistic health. He’s an author of at least two books, your Body Needs an Oil Change and Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill. He has a diverse background that includes simple things like biochemistry, genetics, zoology, nutrition counseling, psychology. If he only had an accounting degree, he would have been the cherry on top of his accolades. He has an incredible stage presence as he loves to be in front of people from all over the world and educating and giving hope to all who will listen. It is still hard for most of us to believe that the food manufacturers and government oversight agencies allow poisons to be put in the food we consume.Glenn Harper [: 00:01:08
But today, that is not okay. Udo is on a mission to educate and help people understand what their body needs to function at peak performance and what the foods and ingredients that should be avoided. There is no reason for us to be killed slowly and methodically because we assume the foods are good for us. Instead, he wants to help educate ourselves, but we should be eating. His journey from Europe across America into Canada is the lore that legends are gleaned from. I am beyond intrigued to hear from Udo as he shares his incredible journey. Please welcome Udo to our show as we dive into the battle of udo’s Choice Products vs Megafood Corp. Poison.Glenn Harper [: 00:01:39
Thanks, Udo, for being on our show.Udo Erasmus [: 00:01:42
Thank you for having me.Glenn Harper [: 00:01:44
Oh, it’s great. Well, I tell you, this is going to be a joy. I believe on this one because normally when I research guests and go through the history and see what’s the facts and such, it’s going to have a certain leaning toward it on yours. I am just blown away on your life story journey and I don’t even know and I’m hopeful that you’re going to be comfortable sharing some things because I think just the perspective that you have gone through, you’re born in second World War, in Europe in the middle of hell. And here you are today. How did that happen? Your story was amazing that I found out on you. So, you know, can you share with us what that was like?Udo Erasmus [: 00:02:29
Well, I was 2 when the war ended. Okay. We were in. My parents were from Latvia. And the. Hitler and Stalin made a non aggression pact in 1938. And part of, as part of that, Latvia went to the Soviet Union and part of Poland went to Germany. But there was nobody from Latvia or Poland at the meeting.Udo Erasmus [: 00:02:51
They just took it crazy. And my father had a farm in Latvia. He loved the Russian people. He hated communism because they took everything away from everybody. And because he had German Swedish background, he was given, at that point, Hitler looked better than Stalin. And between the two of them, he chose Hitler and he got given a farm in Poland where I was born. I basically born on a stolen farm.Udo Erasmus [: 00:03:17
And.Udo Erasmus [: 00:03:19
The farm owner became his farmhand. That would have been a little crazy. And he said, look, we’re living in crazy times. Because they had just gone. Like their life in Europe was First World War, Bolshevik Revolution, Depression, Second World War. That was their life. And they followed one the other. And so he said, look, we’re living through crazy times.Udo Erasmus [: 00:03:43
Let’s run the farm the way the farm needs to be run. And when this craziness settles down, then we’ll figure it out. And then they became friends and they helped us get out.Udo Erasmus [: 00:03:53
So 1945, winter. Were refugees in horse drawn hay wagons on dirt roads, women with young children. And the communists chasing us in tanks and trucks. And the Allies, we like to think of the Allies as the good guys. They were shooting at us from planes and using refugees as target practice.Udo Erasmus [: 00:04:16
There was no military presence on those roads. And so my mother decided to get off the roads because that’s where their shooting was, and go through the fields. But she had six kids with her. Snow covered fields, winter, and she had six kids. She couldn’t handle six, so she had to leave four kids behind. And I got left behind. So I got to be a war baby. Then I got to be an orphan.Udo Erasmus [: 00:04:39
I mean a refugee. Then I got to be an orphan. And then eventually her sister found us and reunited us with the family.Glenn Harper [: 00:04:49
How old were you then when you got reunited?Udo Erasmus [: 00:04:52
Two and a half. Well, I was only, I was only an orphan for I don’t know how many weeks.Glenn Harper [: 00:04:56
Okay.Udo Erasmus [: 00:04:57
Just. It wasn’t like a long time.Glenn Harper [: 00:04:58
Okay.Udo Erasmus [: 00:04:59
But still, you know when you’re two and a half and your mother is gone all of a sudden, that’s horrible. Yeah. Two that’s probably not the best experience. That’s not the recommended experience.Glenn Harper [: 00:05:11
No.Udo Erasmus [: 00:05:11
And then I, I guess what, in a way, I look back at it now, it was a huge gift because we got stripped of everything, literally. The country, the farm, the house, the. The community, the culture. And what got out of there was just like the clothes we were wearing, the body we were in, and the life in that body. That’s it. Even the mother was gone. Right. And so I kind of grew up not being sure what I could trust or what was true or whether I was safe.Udo Erasmus [: 00:05:46
And so that’s, it’s a. That’s a way to focus a kid. Right.Glenn Harper [: 00:05:51
Boy.Udo Erasmus [: 00:05:52
And when I was six years old, I. I listened to people argue. We’re living in Germany at that point, and they get into these arguments about really crazy things, stupid, like, irrelevant things to me as a six year old. Right. And. And it always made me uneasy. And I listened to one of those arguments and I. This thought occurred to me, man, there has to be a way that people can live in harmony.Udo Erasmus [: 00:06:15
And this little cocky voice comes up and says, and I’m gonna find out how at six years old, six years old, not knowing how complicated everything is. And that’s been basically my driver. You know, we could live better than we do. It doesn’t matter where you look. We could all be living better than we do. And, you know, in North America, we’re pretty entitled because we haven’t had those kinds of, you know, we’re kind of into them now because we’re doing stupid things that are heading us in that direction. And I went through that like 80, I don’t know, 70, 77 years ago.Udo Erasmus [: 00:06:56
So I. So I’m sort of a. A forerunner of the survivability of craziness and maybe some deep thoughtfulness about how we should be living instead.Glenn Harper [: 00:07:08
So when you’re in Germany at six years old, the war’s already been over for four years. That had to be insane. What age did you. You said you escaped or got out of East Germany. When did that happen?Udo Erasmus [: 00:07:24
Oh, well, for 1945 is when we went through Poland, through Germany, and then Germany got divided, so I was in West Germany.Glenn Harper [: 00:07:32
You were in West.Udo Erasmus [: 00:07:32
Okay, yeah, I was in West Germany. And then I went to school there, and the teacher was a really old guy. He hated dps. You know what, you know, DPS are, right? Oh, the, what’s it called? The refugees.Glenn Harper [: 00:07:48
Okay. Yep.Udo Erasmus [: 00:07:51
D Something people, you know, decontrized people. Right, right. And so he hated us. He caned me every Day for four years.Glenn Harper [: 00:08:02
And that was normal, right? That was just normal. Nobody could do anything about it. Right. That’s just the way it was. Right.Udo Erasmus [: 00:08:09
Where was I gonna go?Glenn Harper [: 00:08:10
Nowhere.Udo Erasmus [: 00:08:11
We were DPs. Yep. Right. And then I changed schools and I became one of the best students. This, this guy always tried to fail me and he. And, and so, you know, you’re really stupid. And you know, I mean, it was like, it was endless. Every day, literally every day.Udo Erasmus [: 00:08:29
And then I got, went to another school and I wrote the exam to go to the school. They made me write it twice because they couldn’t understand how a stupid guy could have gotten good marks on the test.Glenn Harper [: 00:08:40
So you were learning regardless, right? You did.Udo Erasmus [: 00:08:43
What’s that?Glenn Harper [: 00:08:43
You did learn regardless. You were learning. That guy.Udo Erasmus [: 00:08:46
I’m pretty smart, you know, I’m, I’m aware. I think it’s more about being aware, paying attention. And when you don’t feel safe, you tend to be pretty vigilant.Udo Erasmus [: 00:08:58
And then, so we were there. I was in that school for a year and then we left for Canada when I was 10.Glenn Harper [: 00:09:04
In Canada at 10 years old. And what year was that?Udo Erasmus [: 00:09:06
In 1952.Glenn Harper [: 00:09:08
Wow. That had to be a light years difference of what you were used to, was it not?Udo Erasmus [: 00:09:14
Yeah. Although we came, we had wore short pants and that was. Everybody in Europe wore short pants. So they called us Nazis. I didn’t even know what a Nazi was.Glenn Harper [: 00:09:22
How could you attend? Yeah, but, but you ended up in British Columbia, correct?Udo Erasmus [: 00:09:27
In British Columbia.Glenn Harper [: 00:09:28
You went all the way across and, and how did you guys end up in British Columbia? Of all the places to go, leaving.Udo Erasmus [: 00:09:34
West Germany, we had, we had, we knew some people in Germany that emigrated that were also from Latvia, like they called the Baltic Germans. And they sponsored us because the government didn’t want us to become a burden on, on the government. So we had to have a sponsor who would say, well, if they, you know, if they run out of money or whatever, if there’s problems, then we’ll make, we’ll take care of it. So they sponsored us. And so we ended up in the same place where they went, which was in the Okanagan in British Columbia.Glenn Harper [: 00:10:07
So here we are at. By 10 years old. You not only had to be what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, you had to have the street starts beyond belief. But you were still developing from learning how things work. Educational wise, you were still doing that. You probably went through 50 lifetimes by age 10.Udo Erasmus [: 00:10:29
Yeah, you could say, I don’t think of it that way, it’s just my life.Glenn Harper [: 00:10:33
Right, Right.Udo Erasmus [: 00:10:34
But it’s kind of like that.Glenn Harper [: 00:10:36
But most people wouldn’t even have last past 10 years old and here you are still slaying it. So I, I gotta believe that somewhere in here that, that had to, that foundation was like you, you can do anything you put your mind to. There’s nothing can hold you back. Right. That, that start was unlike anything we’ve ever heard on this show.Udo Erasmus [: 00:10:56
Yeah. And, but I wasn’t, you know what? It wasn’t. I wasn’t thinking of it like that, but it was true. Right. It can’t get worse. It can’t get worse than it’s been. Yeah.Glenn Harper [: 00:11:07
You’re just day to day. Right.Udo Erasmus [: 00:11:09
And, and because I was insecure. I was a born scientist, you know, always trying to figure out how things work. Because that’s what science is about is like, you know, then you can predict and control. If you don’t know how things work, then you, then you almost become victimized by them. Right.Glenn Harper [: 00:11:27
That was probably your safe space to.Udo Erasmus [: 00:11:29
It was a safe space. And I found nature unbelievably interesting. I had religious experiences studying biology. So I got into the life science, biology, biochemistry, genetics is where I ended up at the end. And then psychology. And the reason I studied those is I wanted to know what life is. Biology means study of life. But we didn’t learn about life in biology.Udo Erasmus [: 00:11:53
We learned about form and function.Glenn Harper [: 00:11:55
Right.Udo Erasmus [: 00:11:55
We never got a beaker of life where we could look at and say, wow, life. Look at that. Right. Not like that. Same with psychology. I thought soul might be an interesting thing to study. And we didn’t study soul there. We studied beliefs, thoughts and emotions.Udo Erasmus [: 00:12:12
So I, I, and then I went into medicine because I wanted to know what health is. You know, they call it health care. Well, what is health? Because if I know what health is and you come to me sick, I can turn you around in the direction of health, get pushed, give you a push, watch you get better. But I have to know where to push you. Nope. And they didn’t teach health in medicine. I asked, I talked to the dean, I said, what is health? He said, we don’t know. We’re working on it.Glenn Harper [: 00:12:39
You know, it’s so funny, ironic, whatever the word is. Like the things that you were studying in, in the, in the 60s and, and how that worked versus what we know today.Glenn Harper [: 00:12:53
Is it was it more of. You knew there had to be something different. You just, you were still questing for it and then you affirmed it when you learned it today because most people just accept what they teach you and that just is what it is. But I don’t think you were like that.Udo Erasmus [: 00:13:08
I did, but there was always something missing, something there. And I felt it. Something missing. And it was missing in me.Udo Erasmus [: 00:13:16
I started feeling heartache when I was 17 and I couldn’t shake it. Felt it every day. Something’s missing, something’s lost. I don’t know what it is. There was nothing wrong with me physically. I was a strapping lad off a farm, right? And, and. But there was always something missing and I couldn’t find any distractions for it. That’s what we usually do.Udo Erasmus [: 00:13:38
Either we find a distraction or we ignore it, or we deny it, or we blame it on somebody, or you mask it, or you. Or you try to rationalize it away by some ideology, whether it’s political or religious or whatever. Right? And I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it. And so I was always searching for, what is it? What is it? What is it? A good driver, like heartache is a really good driver.Glenn Harper [: 00:14:06
That’ll keep you focused. No.Udo Erasmus [: 00:14:08
And. And so I left. So when I found out that I couldn’t find it in. In biology and psychology and medicine. In medicine we were told a doctor should always sound as though he knows what’s going on, even when he doesn’t. And that was the end of my medical career. Because we like call that lying on the farm.Glenn Harper [: 00:14:26
Yes.Udo Erasmus [: 00:14:27
And so I left university. Then I got into psychedelics briefly and I got an lsd. I took lsd a very small trip. And that melted the door off my war baby personality because in that I was laughing and crying, rolling on the floor, listening to Mozart, laughing to Mozart music. And it struck me as the funniest thing I had ever come across that everything I was so studiously looking for out there was all already present within me. Oh my God, it’s all inside. That was a huge door opener.Glenn Harper [: 00:15:09
So that was the turning point for you, right?Udo Erasmus [: 00:15:12
That was. Well, there were a lot of turning points, but that was definitely one. And then I got out of that because I started saying, no, you know, I get one body, I need to look after it. And doing psychedelics can be pretty hard on your body. So then I got into the red letter, red letter edition of the St. John St. James version of the Bible, because I decided if I wanted to model myself after that was the best I knew. Model after Jesus.Udo Erasmus [: 00:15:42
Why? Because they’re still talking about this guy 2,000 years later, and I’m 2,000 years late to the party. So how do I find out what that was about? And my question was, I want to feel what he felt that made his life, the poetry that it was. Because poetry comes from feeling. So he must have felt something. So I want to know what that is. So that’s why the red letter edition, everything he said was in red ink. And the rest of the Bible, I wasn’t interested in.Glenn Harper [: 00:16:14
Well, how about that? I didn’t know that.Udo Erasmus [: 00:16:15
And it was all in black ink. And then I got in with the Christian group, thinking that they were searching like me, and we would all share our stories, and we would end up all feeling enriched at the end of the evening. So I went to the coffee house, and I didn’t introduce myself, sat down at a table. This guy immediately swooped in next to me. That should have been a warning, but I missed it. I missed the cue. And I looked him in the eyes. I didn’t introduce myself.Udo Erasmus [: 00:16:44
I said, it must be possible to see God and live. And I thought that would be the beginning of a deep conversation. One would think, oh, he jumped out of his chair and he’s dancing around the room with his arms wildly flailing around his head, screaming at the top of his lung, you’re from the devil. You’re from the Antichrist. Get out.Udo Erasmus [: 00:17:07
Like it? Yeah.Glenn Harper [: 00:17:08
That’s good. Good choice.Udo Erasmus [: 00:17:10
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, the follower, the teacher of love, you know?Glenn Harper [: 00:17:13
Yes.Udo Erasmus [: 00:17:14
Anyway, I. I go slinking out of there. I’m standing on the sidewalk, and I’m saying, well, I haven’t seen God, so maybe I shouldn’t have asked the question, you know, so, you know, so I got really confused. And the. In the end of it, it was like I got confused. I felt desperate, and I was very sincere. It was just like, I really want to know. I really want to know.Udo Erasmus [: 00:17:39
So I hitchhiked into nature.Udo Erasmus [: 00:17:42
To clear my head for the weekend. That’s how I used to do that. And in the middle of the night, on this deserted beach that I ended up on in the middle of the night, I woke bolt upright, and there was a being made of light.Udo Erasmus [: 00:17:57
No label, no words, but the being embodied, a message. And I could put words to the. To the. To that embodiment. I am come not to judge, but to love. That was the. That was the message. I am come not to judge, but to love.Udo Erasmus [: 00:18:14
Now, if you think about it, I don’t know if you can crystallize the message of the masters any better than that, any more clearly than that. So I say, okay, and all of my confusion was gone. I have never had a question about what the message was. And then I realized later, oh, this is the message of the masters to humanity. I am come not to judge, but to love. But it’s also the message of life to your body. And life is the master. In the body runs everything, weighs nothing, omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient in the body.Udo Erasmus [: 00:18:55
And guess what?Udo Erasmus [: 00:18:59
If you follow the advice which was, kingdom of heaven is within you. You know, there’s my second pass at it, right? The first one was lsd, right? Kingdom of heaven is within you. And then he says, seek first the kingdom and everything will fall into place.Udo Erasmus [: 00:19:19
So then I feasted on this and there was my life, by the way, you know, I, that I was trying to study. I got to see life. Oh, okay. And then there’s the soul. And then you could call it Christ and you could call it, what else? Spirit. All the same, in, in my, in, in my understanding from that experience. And then I, I got to a point where I said, you know, I really, you know, it started to become a memory, you know, this one shot experience, unbelievably beautiful, A lot that I learned from it. But then it started to become a memory and I said, no, I want to live in that experience.Udo Erasmus [: 00:20:02
And that took me to someone who showed me a stillness practice that I didn’t think would work because it was too simple.Udo Erasmus [: 00:20:11
But I’ve been doing it now for 53 years.Glenn Harper [: 00:20:15
So you’ve been on this quest to figure out, quote, the meaning of life and all these things, right?Udo Erasmus [: 00:20:20
Yeah, there’s got to be a better way to live. And I’m going to find out.Glenn Harper [: 00:20:25
Have you discovered it yet?Udo Erasmus [: 00:20:27
Yeah, I live in it.Glenn Harper [: 00:20:28
I’m outstanding.Udo Erasmus [: 00:20:30
And if I could talk to 8 billion people, I would love to.Udo Erasmus [: 00:20:37
Correct the misinformation they’ve gotten from the world they live in about who they are, what they are, and what the beauty of life is and where the fulfillment lives.Glenn Harper [: 00:20:50
You know, and that’s, you know, one of the things that we, when we interview our guests and have great discussions, it’s what people think things are versus what they really are is just absolutely opposite. And how is it that some people get to be enlightened and some do not? What is the holdback? What is the, what is the thing that’s stopping people from seeing the truth? And this is in everything, just in life in general, like good foods, bad foods, you know, spirituality.Udo Erasmus [: 00:21:23
I, I, I, I think the, is that they ignore heartache.Udo Erasmus [: 00:21:29
Because heartache, if you figure out what heartache is, there’s lots of things that trigger heartache. You know, your girlfriend dumps you or your grandmother dies or your dog runs away, or somebody promised something and they didn’t deliver, right? So heartache is triggered by lots of different things. And so we give it lots of different names. So, you know, emptiness and restlessness and longing and loneliness and blues and, you know, I have 10 pages of different words we use for that uneasy feeling in your chest. Uneasy, uncomfortable, painful. Right? So we give it lots of names because there are lots of triggers. And we name the feeling by. Not by what it is, but what, but what triggers it.Udo Erasmus [: 00:22:12
We do that with love too, by the way. But that’s a whole other story. But what is the cause of heartache? The cause of heartache is our disconnected from ourselves that began that. That we were connected in the womb because there was no place to go and nothing to do. So we were living in paradise. You didn’t have to, you know, everything was taken care of. It’s pretty safe. We had no thoughts, we had no culture.Udo Erasmus [: 00:22:38
We were just biological beings floating in what I call the Buddha tank, right. And getting created, right?Glenn Harper [: 00:22:45
Yep.Udo Erasmus [: 00:22:46
And there was. We were in a oneness because there was no place, there was no separation of anything. Then we got kicked out. Paradise lost, right? Then we got to know the. Get to know the world. And then through our senses, our focus goes out into the world to monitor change for survival. Because everything, something changes. It’s like, oh, what’s that? Is that friend? Is that forward or is it irrelevant? And we have to do it all the time, right? And if people want your attention, they keep making changes, right? That’s how you get people’s attention.Udo Erasmus [: 00:23:18
That’s a survival mechanism. But in that process, we went from being present inside in our oneness to gradually getting present outside and disconnected inside. And that’s where heartache begins. And then we look forward to. Then we try to fulfill it by something on the outside, whether it’s money or people or status or whatever it is. And on the outside, it’s a world of change and things end. And when something ends, we go back to our default, which is we’re disconnected from ourselves. Then we feel heartache.Udo Erasmus [: 00:23:55
Then we try to cover it, ignore it, deny it. We just went through that. Blame it on somebody. And what I say to people is, no, if you feel heartache, don’t look for it, because it’ll come to you. Right? But when you feel it, sit with it.Udo Erasmus [: 00:24:14
Quietly. Don’t judge it, just feel it. You might have some tears will not kill you. But if you sit with heartache, you’re sitting with in the disconnection. And that far less than a hair’s breadth behind your disconnection is your reconnection to the magnificence of your own being.Glenn Harper [: 00:24:37
How about that?Julie Smith [: 00:24:38
I’m just sitting over here listening. I’m being a podcast listener instead of a host. So you’re doing a great job.Glenn Harper [: 00:24:44
Yeah. This is awesome.Udo Erasmus [: 00:24:46
Do you realize that that makes you the best possible host for a podcast?Glenn Harper [: 00:24:49
That’s right.Udo Erasmus [: 00:24:52
Well, so and so and so. That’s the. So the story of humanity is we all get disconnected. We all have a oneness within us. The master lives within every human being called life. Right. If you want to not be religious about it. And nobody in any culture that I know of makes that journey and the understanding of that journey part of the education of the key people.Udo Erasmus [: 00:25:21
And that’s why it’s. Nothing’s working.Glenn Harper [: 00:25:24
So question on that then. So it sounds like there’s probably there’s this internal thing to know who you are and the life and the love, but then there’s these external things that, what we breathe, what we see, what we consume, what we eat, and a lot of those things are a poison, if you will, that disrupts it. So we can’t think that way. Right. It’s impossible. If you don’t feel good, you can’t. If you don’t feel good physically, mentally, you can’t get there. And like in your case, you’re literally drilling and blasting crew in British Columbia in the mountains.Glenn Harper [: 00:26:04
But it was more dangerous being a pesticide sprayer applicator person. That was more deadly than blowing up things and being in harm’s way. Who would have ever guessed that? Right?Udo Erasmus [: 00:26:18
I don’t know where, I don’t know where you got that, but. Yeah, but it’s true. Yeah, yes. Yeah, but, but of course, when you’re drilling and blasting, you know when to, when to light the fuse and you know which direction to go to not get hit by something. Right.Glenn Harper [: 00:26:32
There’s a science to it.Udo Erasmus [: 00:26:33
You have control. When I got poisoned by pesticides, I, you know, I, I got trained. I got 99 and a half percent on the exam that trained me to be a pesticide sprayer. Not once did they talk about toxicity of pesticides until I got poisoned. Then I went to the people who trained me and said, I want to read some of your literature. They wouldn’t let me do it. They said, oh, no, you probably just got the flu. It’s going around.Udo Erasmus [: 00:26:58
So then I went to Greenpeace because Greenpeace had a stack of papers and I found out that 60% of the pesticides that we spray cause cancer. And my palm started to sweat because I said, oh, my God, I have cancer to look forward to. I definitely got poisoned. So now what do I do? And then I became really interested in using my background in biochemistry and genetics and biological sciences to find out about what health is, because I didn’t study that. Right. But you get a good, pretty good foundation when you know how molecules work. And so then I got into looking for self help and I looked at everything about nutrition and health and disease. And health.Glenn Harper [: 00:27:41
Sorry.Udo Erasmus [: 00:27:41
And. And nutrition and disease. Because if your body is made out of food, and I know, you know, the body turns over, in fact, 98% of the atoms in your body today will be gone and replaced if we meet again next year, this time, 98%. So what does that mean? Means if something goes wrong with your body, if you raise your standard of intake and it’s actually water, it’s actually food, water and air, if you increase. If you raise your standard, in one year, you will have rebuilt 98% of your body to a higher standard. That’s called healing. That’s why healing is possible. There’s no other reason why if your body wasn’t always turning over, you couldn’t heal.Glenn Harper [: 00:28:27
So you had to be some kind of rebel back then doing this stuff.Udo Erasmus [: 00:28:32
Really? Really. Do you think?Glenn Harper [: 00:28:33
Yeah, because nobody would have believed this, right? It was like, this is what the FDA says. This is how it rol. This is what Mansido says. And we got to listen to them. Right.Udo Erasmus [: 00:28:43
A part of, you know, part of it is that we were told by my parents, especially my father said, question everything because what. What they went through, you know, they did. And my father, actually, my father, when it was. When he had a heart attack, he. He checked himself out because he didn’t trust big government, he didn’t trust big media, he didn’t trust big medicine, he didn’t trust big business, he didn’t trust anything. So he was living in nature, north 500 miles north of Vancouver on 112 acres of bushland that he bought for $960 in 1953. Right. So, yeah, question everything.Udo Erasmus [: 00:29:30
Why wouldn’t you want to question everything? You know, people lie to you. You catch them sometimes. So why wouldn’t you question what you get dished up?Glenn Harper [: 00:29:41
So how did you decide on the. On the oils on the seed oils and all the things. How did you. I mean, of all the things you could have picked, I mean, there’s gajillions of them. How did you zero in on that one?Udo Erasmus [: 00:29:52
I think it’s because the most difficult one. So the way I was doing it is, okay, so I’m looking at everything, like everything that affects everything in nutrition. Okay, so you got minerals, vitamins, amino acids, fatty acids. Those are the four sets of essential nutrients. What is an essential nutrient? You can’t make it in your body from anything else, but you have to have it to live and be healthy. So you have to bring it in from outside. Okay? Essential building blocks of body construction. If you don’t get enough of any one of them, your health will go down.Udo Erasmus [: 00:30:30
And if you don’t get enough long enough, you die. These are super important if you’re going down because you’re not getting enough. But before you die, you bring enough of it back into your body, all the problems that come from not getting enough are reversed because life knows how to make a body that works, provided you take responsibility for bringing in all of the building blocks it needs. And if you want optimum health, you want to bring them in in optimum amounts. Okay, that’s the definition of an essential nutrient. And there has to be some chemical biochemical reaction that requires that nutrient that has been identified. So that’s the definition of an essential nutrient. There’s 42 of them, 18 minerals, 13 vitamins, nine essential amino acids, and two essential fatty acids that come from oils.Udo Erasmus [: 00:31:21
Well, I read a study says Omega 6 is an essential nutrient. You have to have it by the definition I just gave you. And the very next study I read said Omega 6 gives you cancer and kills you. And I’m going, what? What, I have to eat it so it can kill me? It’s like, no, no, I must be missing something. And then I started looking deeper into it and I started looking at how oils are made. They’re the most sensitive of our nutrients. They’re damaged by light, oxygen and heat. They need the most care, and we give them the least care.Udo Erasmus [: 00:31:55
We throw them in the frying pan where light, oxygen and heat damage them all at the same time. So I said, so. And then I phone, talked to the Umbrella organization of the oil industry, talked to scientists. Why do you do that? So I found out that in order to give an oil a shelf life, they have to.Udo Erasmus [: 00:32:17
Mess it up. And so when they make an oil that’s colorless, odorless, tasteless, that’s what most of our oils are they’re in plastic bottles. Plastic leaches into oil quicker than into water. They have pesticides in them because they don’t use organically grown seeds. And they’ve treated that oil with sodium hydroxide, which is a very corrosive base. Then with phosphoric acid, which is a very corrosive acid. Then with bleaching clays to take the color molecules out so that they don’t absorb light, and the light then damages the oil. Then when they’ve done that, the oil is rancid and it smells bad, and so they have to heat it to frying temperature for 30 minutes to get rid of the.Udo Erasmus [: 00:32:59
The rancid molecules. So. And then he said, the other reason we do that is because we can get rid of half the pesticides in the oil when we deodorize it at frying temperature. And I’m going, wait, pesticides and oils? I didn’t know there were pesticides and oils. You know, when I studied oils in university, never. They never talked about that. So Pest says. So I said, well, why don’t you start with organically grown seeds? Then you don’t have that problem.Udo Erasmus [: 00:33:31
He didn’t know what to say, and so he got mad at me. What the hell is your problem? You got 99 good and only 1% damage. And if you got 99 on an exam, you’d be damn happy, wouldn’t you? And so I say, okay, well, maybe I’m overreacting. So I decided to find out, how many damaged molecules am I going to have in a tablespoon of an oil that has been treated the way industry treats it and is 1% damaged? So give me a number.Glenn Harper [: 00:34:02
40%.Udo Erasmus [: 00:34:03
How much?Glenn Harper [: 00:34:04
40%.Udo Erasmus [: 00:34:05
No, no, it’s only 1% damage. Okay, so I want the number of molecules in a tablespoon of oil that is 1% damage.Glenn Harper [: 00:34:13
I have no idea.Udo Erasmus [: 00:34:13
All of them. I know you had. You don’t have a basis. That’s the reason why I’m doing it is because your. Your audience doesn’t know either. Because we don’t have a basis. There is a basis for doing that in science, but we don’t learn that. So just give me a number.Udo Erasmus [: 00:34:27
I’ll see. You’ll see why this is useful?Glenn Harper [: 00:34:29
40.Udo Erasmus [: 00:34:30
40?Glenn Harper [: 00:34:31
Yeah.Udo Erasmus [: 00:34:32
Okay, so you want to know the actual number?Glenn Harper [: 00:34:34
Yes, please.Udo Erasmus [: 00:34:35
It’s a six followed by 19 zeros.Udo Erasmus [: 00:34:40
Oh, my. In one tablespoon of oil, that is 1% damage. That’s 60 quintillion molecules. And the reason I asked the question Is because we are doing. We’re using something that is at least a billion times. In your case, it’s like a quadrillion times lower than we think it is. So we’re doing something that is doing that much more damage to us. A billion dimes is the closest anybody ever gets when they do that.Udo Erasmus [: 00:35:13
So if you’re doing something that’s a billion times worse than you think it is, might you consider changing the habit?Glenn Harper [: 00:35:20
But that’s the education. That’s why you were unemployable and why you had to start your own thing because you were going against everybody, which is how most entrepreneurs get started.Udo Erasmus [: 00:35:29
No, I was never go against anybody. I was just looking for truth.Glenn Harper [: 00:35:33
But they didn’t like that, right? They didn’t like that.Udo Erasmus [: 00:35:37
Well, though.Udo Erasmus [: 00:35:39
I actually got away with a lot.Glenn Harper [: 00:35:42
Well, but, you know, as our entrepreneurs, Listen to this. You know, the premise is, how do we go from, you know, working somewhere, doing your thing, and then you’re like, there’s got to be a better way. And then you decide, I’ve got to hang my shingle. And I think it was at an 86 or something. You kind of did your started your.Udo Erasmus [: 00:35:59
Business and yeah, first oil came out.Glenn Harper [: 00:36:03
And at that point in time, you’re just like, I got to do it my way. And you’re just, I’m done with the institutions, right?Udo Erasmus [: 00:36:08
Yeah, Okay. I didn’t think about it that way, but what happened was when I said, okay, I can’t get healthy on oils like that, we should be making oils with health in mind. So how do you make oils with health in mind? You know, I come from off a farm. We know how to tinker, and I’m creative that way anyway. So it’s like, okay, well, you need to make a very tight program process where no light, no oxygen, and no excessive heat can damage the oil while it’s being made. And then at the end, you have an undamaged oil. Well, the industry was not interested in undamaged oil or health. They were interested in shelf life.Udo Erasmus [: 00:36:46
So I decided, and then I was, I. I was just crazy enough and just desperate enough about being sick and getting healthy that I said, I’m going to do it. And so we developed the method and then had some engineers carry it out. We didn’t have any money, so we literally started from scratch. Total shoestring operation. But the thing that really got me is that in 1981, the year after I got poisoned, it was established that Omega 3 Alpha linolenic acid is. Its name is an essential nutrient by the definition I used. Right, okay.Udo Erasmus [: 00:37:23
And I found out that 99% of the population doesn’t get enough omega 3s for optimum health. And it was like, oh my God, if we could make it with health in mind and we could bring it back into the population.Udo Erasmus [: 00:37:39
We could help almost everybody. And there’s something in your chest that feels good when you’re helping. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. Just like it feels bad when you hurt people and then you feel bad. Right? You feel bad. It’s always in your chest. Right. Well, I got so excited.Udo Erasmus [: 00:37:57
Oh my God, we could help almost everybody. It’s like mission from God. Right? Right. And it was that enthusiasm for, oh my God, we could actually do this. That’s what drove the whole program. And we, we worked day and night. We went, we did a tour in 1988 through the US in a van without air conditioning in the hottest months. And I slept on the floor of the van between the steering wheel in the back.Udo Erasmus [: 00:38:25
My driver had built himself a bunk in the back. We had our clothes on, a broomstick in the, in the wheel well. Like, not the wheel well, the, you know, with the inside, the, the, the doors. And we were sweaty and sticky. And we would go into a Marriott hotel every two or three days and walk in like we owned the place so nobody questioned us. And then we would shower, wash our clothes in the shower, and get back into the van and go on. And we did a 101 day tour. 85 cities, 35 states, 17,000 miles by road, eating nothing but raw vegetables because that seemed the best way to do it.Udo Erasmus [: 00:39:06
Carbs made us tired and, and stakes made us feel heavy. So, you know, and so we literally drove all, worked all day, drove all night and developed, you know, we had developed flaxseed oil. That was the first oil we made with health in mind. And within two years.Udo Erasmus [: 00:39:26
The buzz we created because of the enthusiasm that came from, oh my God, I can, we can help so many people. That buzz turned flaxseed oil into the second highest selling oil in the health food industry, where we were active in two years.Glenn Harper [: 00:39:43
But the flaxseed oil that you produce versus what I go buy off the shelf from somebody else is way different. Correct?Udo Erasmus [: 00:39:50
Yes. Yes. We made it with health in mind. In 2005, I got inducted into the Canadian Health Food association hall of Fame for beginning, for starting an industry of making oils with health in mind.Glenn Harper [: 00:40:06
That’s amazing. And so that your Udo’s Choice, that is that website you could Go and buy those oils. Correct?Udo Erasmus [: 00:40:14
No, you get them in the health food stores. They’re in a brown glass bottle in a box, in the fridge, in the supplement section in the health food stores.Glenn Harper [: 00:40:21
And that’s the brand name that’s under, right?Udo Erasmus [: 00:40:24
Yeah, it’s called udo’s oil or 369 oil.Julie Smith [: 00:40:28
And what health. What health stores can they get them in?Udo Erasmus [: 00:40:31
Pretty much any that have a. Have a refrigerator, have the oil or know the oil.Glenn Harper [: 00:40:39
You know, I just love these kind of stories. Again, you didn’t, you didn’t. You didn’t become an entrepreneur for what everybody thinks, well, you’re going to make a billion dollars. You did it because you had an idea.Udo Erasmus [: 00:40:54
It was never about money.Glenn Harper [: 00:40:55
It was about, I want to help people and eventually money will come. But that wasn’t the priority. But you literally sacrificed everything. I think somewhere, I read somewhere that I think all your kids were born at home. Is that true?Udo Erasmus [: 00:41:10
Yes, because I studied biology and I did not think that pregnancy was a disease. So you shouldn’t go to a hospital when you’re not sick.Udo Erasmus [: 00:41:21
And it’s not like, it’s not like, I mean, she did all the work. I just caught them and tied to court.Glenn Harper [: 00:41:27
Well, that’s a lot. I mean, you know, that takes a lot of effort to do that. From your being joking, of course.Udo Erasmus [: 00:41:32
Yes. The experience of it is so focusing that it didn’t seem like a lot of work. Like, they, it’s a, you know, they’re like around childbirth. Like most men don’t, don’t. Don’t witness their children being born. But if you did, you would. It was, it was like, I mean, she’s really concentrated, your buddy. Right.Udo Erasmus [: 00:41:59
And it pulls you into that concentration as a very powerful experience.Glenn Harper [: 00:42:04
Two of my sisters were born at home, so I, that’s where I resonated. Like, that was unheard of in 1970. Right. Like, who would do that?Udo Erasmus [: 00:42:11
That was 1972, 1974 and 1975. Yeah. In those days, the, the, you know, the. What do you call them, doulas and, and midwives. That was just beginning. Correct. I mean, I mean, beginning in North America, you know, because there’d be midwives in every culture forever, going all the way back to the Egyptians and before that. Right.Glenn Harper [: 00:42:33
Not here.Udo Erasmus [: 00:42:33
Right? Not here, no. Because the doctors kind of own pretty much all the territory legally. Even if they don’t get results, they own the territory.Glenn Harper [: 00:42:43
You know, one of the things we, you know, most entrepreneurs don’t really have regrets. They’ve learned on everything but when I was looking at your things, I think you might have one regret, and I want to know if it’s true. It says you traded your Winchester 30. 30 for a trumpet.Glenn Harper [: 00:43:02
Do you wish you had that Winchester? I think you would have.Udo Erasmus [: 00:43:05
I did.Glenn Harper [: 00:43:07
I knew it.Udo Erasmus [: 00:43:07
Traded the Winchester for a trumpet. And then a guy took the trumpet and cut the head off the, you know, the funnel off the trumpet and.Glenn Harper [: 00:43:15
Nailed it on a broomstick to have that Winchester.Udo Erasmus [: 00:43:20
It was the 60s. There were some really crazy things going on.Glenn Harper [: 00:43:22
Oh, boy.Udo Erasmus [: 00:43:24
So. But I didn’t. I didn’t dwell on it.Glenn Harper [: 00:43:27
Nope.Udo Erasmus [: 00:43:27
I actually loved it. I loved the trumpet. It was a cornet. Right. And I would sit on the. I didn’t. Wasn’t trained in it, but I knew how to get the tones out of. So I would make up melodies sitting on the back porch stairs, you know, in the middle of the city, and put out these little blasts.Glenn Harper [: 00:43:47
It was fun, I bet. And you know, as entrepreneurs, they figure out, you know, they always end up where they’re supposed to be. I mean, that’s just for everybody. But you just wonder how you ended up where you’re at. And here you are, you’re in British Columbia. You’re looking out, and you can probably just see the 9 o’ clock gun sitting there. And you’re right where you were 50 years ago, 60 years ago, and you never left there to move anywhere else. Did it just feel like that is where you got your start and you wanted to stay there? Was it centrally located for what your mission was? How did you decide to stay there and never went anywhere else?Udo Erasmus [: 00:44:24
You mean in Vancouver?Glenn Harper [: 00:44:25
Yes.Udo Erasmus [: 00:44:26
Well, aside from the fact that Vancouver is a beautiful place, lots of nature in it. Well, I did actually move away for a while. You know, in one of my crazy thoughts, I said, oh, God, I hate the city. There’s no life in it. Forgetting that all the people are life and all the trees and all the greenery, that’s in Vancouver. Right, right. And I got it in my head that, you know, I got to get out of here. So I ended up moving to the mountains in Colorado, living at 9,100ft in a cabin in a beautiful place.Udo Erasmus [: 00:44:58
And a week in, I’m saying, geez, what I hated in the city is up here with me. And I realized it was my attitude. And I. Then I said, okay, geez, I have no idea how I developed that attitude, and I have no idea how to dismantle it and develop a better one. And I’m sitting with that and said to My ex. I know there’s a perfection within me. I know I’m not connected to it. And I need to find someone who can show me a step.Udo Erasmus [: 00:45:30
And the next day, I met this guy whose practice I’ve been doing for 53 years. And I was pretty skeptical about the practice. It was all too simple because, you know, we got to the moon, it was really complicated. We haven’t gotten to. Gotten to peace. Peace must be more complicated than going to the moon. That’s. That’s how I thought about it, right? But then it was like, okay.Udo Erasmus [: 00:45:52
He said, just give it a fair chance, you know? And I. By this time, six months were up. I stopped rising to the bait of the arguments that we used to get into every day, right? Like, okay, this actually works. And it just is because if you spend time going, bringing your focus into the space your body occupies, you take it out of the world of change, and you’re bringing it closer to something in you that is stable so that it grounds you so that you become calmer. And that’s where your peace lives.Glenn Harper [: 00:46:29
And so as advice to our listeners, as an entrepreneur, it is absolute anarchy trying to leave a real job, start your business, raise your family. The world’s against you. You’re getting poisoned with everything. How, what. In your cycle, how did. What is the. Let’s call it the one thing. You know, what is the one thing that as an entrepreneur you should try to get in touch with or solve first to give you the best chance of success to get to your next level?Udo Erasmus [: 00:47:02
I think you got to do the homework. Homework? What’s the homework? Homework is the work you do at home with yourself. Get present in your space. Because if you have. You already have a purpose, you know, first of all, you already have peace. It’s. It’s part of your nature. It’s the core part of your nature.Udo Erasmus [: 00:47:19
So you want peace from the. From the overwhelmed, changing world you live in. Go to the peace that’s within you. It’s always there. Even the. But your focus in is here when you’re overwhelmed, and it’s peace when you’re here, right? So go do that first, just like the master said, you know, kingdom of heavens within. Do that first. So then you find you also discover that life loves you unconditionally.Udo Erasmus [: 00:47:48
24 7, 365, lifelong, never takes a day off, never goes on strike. Just gives, gives, gives, gives, gives and runs everything in your body. There’s your. Your inner leader, right? So your life is taking care of you. So if you think that your love is out there somewhere. Maybe you need to rethink that, because actually the love is in here. And when you feel it, then you can start putting it out, and then some pretty better things are going to happen, right? And then the third part of it, the shine of love into the world, I call it inspired purpose. That purpose is already baked into you based on everything in your life.Udo Erasmus [: 00:48:35
What life is, what peace is, what inspiration is in terms of human nature, but also what you grew up with and what the problems were and what are the things that really bugged you, you know, and all, and what your talents are and what your experience is. And that’s already baked inside of you. But you got to get still for it to come out. You know, Einstein had a saying that I really like. He said 99 times, I think and think and think, and I get nothing. And one time I stop thinking, I float in silence. The answer comes to me, and I have to tell you that most of, like, whatever is innovative in my life comes from silence. Comes from, comes, arises from within as an, as an inspiration or an intuition or, or, or an insight.Udo Erasmus [: 00:49:35
And I have 10,000 pages of insights that I’ve written down because I used to in the practice, when I did the practice. You know, I do the practice, and I’d have these insights after the end of the practice. Oh, I had this really great idea. What was it? Oh, I couldn’t remember it. So I started interrupting my practices to write down the insights. And so I’ve been doing that since 2006. I’ve got 10,000 pages. Wow.Glenn Harper [: 00:50:01
You know, it’s, it’s, it’s so bizarre that for whatever reason today most people are, are unable to sit in silence or sit without the device and looking at it or, or looking at a paper, looking at a book, looking at TV to just sit.Glenn Harper [: 00:50:23
People just don’t do it.Udo Erasmus [: 00:50:25
But to be fair, we’ve always had that problem. We’ve always been human beings who live like human doings. We’ve always thought in every culture I’ve ever come across, that doing is more important than being. And it’s not because you can be without doing, but you can’t do without being. So being is your foundation. And we have lived without foundation for as long as humanity. That’s how, why we’re so stupid, and that’s why we wreck so much. Because if you actually sat on your fanny for a whole day and did nothing except breathe, you wouldn’t wreck anything.Udo Erasmus [: 00:51:02
If 8 billion people did, that would be the most peaceful day we’ve had on this planet ever.Glenn Harper [: 00:51:08
That sounds so easy. That can’t be true. It can’t be true. I’m kidding.Udo Erasmus [: 00:51:12
It is.Glenn Harper [: 00:51:12
I. I know it. It truly is.Udo Erasmus [: 00:51:14
But the thing is, we don’t. We don’t think of it as easy. Oh, I got to do this. Oh, I got to do that. Oh, what about that? And. And of course, everybody supports your doing because when you’re being, it’s for yourself, and when you’re doing, it’s usually for somebody else. So they benefit from keeping you. Keeping you not from being, getting quiet and finding your own power and finding your own presence and finding your own fulfillment and that you don’t need them or their money to get your fulfillment because you were born fulfilled.Udo Erasmus [: 00:51:47
All of the good stuff is inside of you all your life, and all your life you miss it. And that I would have a serious regret of if I wasn’t able to experience the beauty of existence while I have it in human form.Julie Smith [: 00:52:09
I could talk to you for days.Glenn Harper [: 00:52:11
Yes. Or listen.Udo Erasmus [: 00:52:14
Apparently not. You haven’t said anything.Julie Smith [: 00:52:16
Well, I meant listen. I’m just listening.Udo Erasmus [: 00:52:18
Yeah. Yeah.Glenn Harper [: 00:52:19
Mind blowing.Udo Erasmus [: 00:52:20
Yeah. But.Udo Erasmus [: 00:52:23
Yeah, so. Yeah, so. And you know what? And you know, we have now we have like a thousand distractions available to us, easily available to us, but you only need one distraction to get distracted. So we’ve always had distractions available to us. So it’s not different now than it was then, other than there’s more complexity. But distracted. When you just get distracted, you get disconnected from yourself. When you’re disconnected, you’re disconnected.Udo Erasmus [: 00:52:51
And then your heart aches. Right. If you stop long enough to notice.Glenn Harper [: 00:52:57
In your experience.Glenn Harper [: 00:53:00
It’S somewhere between going off in the mountains in a cabin and being by yourself. It’s dealing with absolute anarchy on a daily basis.Glenn Harper [: 00:53:11
What’s the minimum that one person needs to go be and exist and just be and think. How often should one do that? Is that a. Once a week? Once a month? Once a. Once a day? What is the minimum that one would need to feel a difference?Udo Erasmus [: 00:53:34
Oh, well, I felt a difference before I even started doing that. Because when I met that being, I wasn’t doing the work. I had the desperation, but I didn’t have a method, right? So that was like a totally unearned gift. And of course, your life is an unearned gift too, right? You got given it as a gift, in fact, because why? Because you’re both sitting there. You’re just made out of a bunch of dust, you know, like a handful of Dust, three buckets of water, two, you know, three for you, two for her, right? And. And a little bit of air. And then that. That was designed with a genetic program that life created over eons.Udo Erasmus [: 00:54:19
And so life took dust, water, and air.Udo Erasmus [: 00:54:25
And made it possible for you to have the human experience, whatever that is. You know, all of that, what that entails, hunger and thirst and needing to go pee and eating and tasting and sensing and dancing and being happy and being sad. And all of the stuff that is human experience.Udo Erasmus [: 00:54:45
Is being had by three buckets of water, a handful of dust, and a little bit of gas.Udo Erasmus [: 00:54:53
And run by a solar energy fraction called life.Udo Erasmus [: 00:55:00
That’s a human being. So what is the purpose of anything to do? You got given this gift. You didn’t earn it. Your parents had sex, so you got the gift, right?Udo Erasmus [: 00:55:13
And of all the things to do in your life, the single most important and only completely fulfilling thing you can do is to become more and more fully present in all of your being and to appreciate and to enjoy and to appreciate.Udo Erasmus [: 00:55:32
That. You know, people ask me, well, what’s the purpose of life? The purpose of life is in the experience of it. That’s the purpose of life.Udo Erasmus [: 00:55:42
It’s not some other thing out there, oh, I’m going to conquer Everest or I’m going to make a million bucks, you know, but, you know, and in the midst of this world of change that looks like hell, sometimes.Udo Erasmus [: 00:55:59
Your essential being is actually in heaven. And so that. So what’s important is, where do you put your focus? You put your focus in the world of change. You’re going to experience change, and when it’s you. And then if you’re not having. If you don’t know how to get to the place where your stability is.Udo Erasmus [: 00:56:19
Then you’re going to try and stop the world, stop change from changing. And that’s why you get overwhelmed. Because if you didn’t care that things are changing, you wouldn’t get overwhelmed. Right? And it’s because we’re not doing the part that we need as a foundation that we get screwed up in our heads.Glenn Harper [: 00:56:39
That’s deep.Udo Erasmus [: 00:56:41
Well, yeah. Yeah. The thing is, so the peace is in you at the same time when your. Your mind is saying, I’m overwhelmed. Oh my God, get me out of here. So all it requires is for you to get good at putting your focus where you want your focus to be. Because the peace is always there in you. Every time you go there, I’m.Udo Erasmus [: 00:57:01
I can guarantee you every time you go there, if you actually go there, you’re going to experience peace. And then within that peace, you’re going to experience feeling unconditionally, empoweringly loved by life. And then that’s going to shine into the world as your inspired purpose. That’s all within you, only a matter of bringing your focus home to experience that.Glenn Harper [: 00:57:27
So I think it’s. Instead of looking out there, look in here, and that’s where your answers will be.Udo Erasmus [: 00:57:32
How about that? Well, in fact, when you think about it, who’s looking out there? What is it that’s looking? It’s not your eye, it’s not what you see that’s looking. It’s not your eyeballs. You use them as an instrument to look. But who’s actually looking? It’s not your brain that’s looking. It’s not your body that’s looking. It’s not even your life that’s looking. Awareness is what is looking. And that awareness is where your peace lives.Udo Erasmus [: 00:58:00
That awareness is peace.Udo Erasmus [: 00:58:03
So when you think about it, you know, if you do a meditation, if you strip everything, you can get rid of, lose everything. So you strip the outside world, you strip your mind, you strip your emotions, you can strip your body because you know you can lose a body, right? You can. The only thing you can’t strip.Udo Erasmus [: 00:58:22
Is the awareness. That’s who you in your essence are. And by the way, that awareness is sometimes called God, and sometimes it’s called peace, and sometimes it’s called the witness or the observer. Right. Something in you.Udo Erasmus [: 00:58:41
Is behind everything you think you are and everything you do. Something in you is behind that.Udo Erasmus [: 00:58:50
That’s where the peace lives. And you want peace. You know, I, I like peace because I came out of a war, right?Glenn Harper [: 00:58:55
Right.Udo Erasmus [: 00:58:56
So for me. But I had no idea that the peace was that close. You know, I, I used to think about, I used to see things in the 60s, things getting worse. And I say, okay, I see things getting worse, but I don’t see anywhere where they’re getting better. What is the renewing principle? You know, there has to be a renewing principle if you’re going to fix the problems. You. There has to be some kind of a renewing principle. And I didn’t know at that point that the renewing principle is inside of every human being.Udo Erasmus [: 00:59:25
It’s called life and it’s called peace. It’s called life and it’s called awareness.Glenn Harper [: 00:59:29
Do you think that most people are. The fear of the unknown is a real thing for people. Right. And that’s why we do the science and we have our comfort Levels, because we know the outcome by. We can control the environment. But when you. I have to look inward. And it’s quite terrifying to understand what that might be.Glenn Harper [: 00:59:52
Because you don’t know it. Right?Udo Erasmus [: 00:59:53
No, but you’re just making that shit up.Glenn Harper [: 00:59:55
Correct. But that’s what most people do, right? They don’t. As humans, we’re like, we can’t look inside. That’s terrifying. And we don’t know what that is.Udo Erasmus [: 01:00:02
No, I think we’ve been told, people have said, okay, well, if you shouldn’t dwell on yourself, go and do something useful. But the people who say that want you to do something useful that benefits them, you know, so there’s always an agenda in what they say to you, right? So if you. If you.Udo Erasmus [: 01:00:24
But you. But there are people who think different about it. Like the masters think different about it. So it goes like this, okay? You were given this gift. Okay, what is it? Awareness, life.Udo Erasmus [: 01:00:39
Radiance. Those three, right? So you were given those gifts, and those are internal. And if you don’t enjoy them, nobody else can enjoy those gifts for you. They can enjoy their own inner gift, but they can’t enjoy your inner gift. Well, if you don’t.Udo Erasmus [: 01:01:01
Appreciate and enjoy your inner gift, then it’s a wasted gift because nobody else can enjoy it for you. So then they say, no, actually, what. What is true to truth? What is true to life? What is true to existence? Make time to be with yourself. Discover how incredibly beautiful you are. Even if you have a wart on your nose and hair coming out of the wart. Right? How beautiful it is to be a human being. And then be. Bring that to expression in how you live your life into the world.Udo Erasmus [: 01:01:42
That actually makes sense.Glenn Harper [: 01:01:44
It does.Udo Erasmus [: 01:01:45
Right? Because you can’t. Because you can’t give what you ain’t got. Correct. Or in this case, you can’t give what you ain’t in touch with that you’ve got.Glenn Harper [: 01:01:55
Well, I’m telling you what, I usually.Julie Smith [: 01:01:58
Have all these questions and I even usually at the end, have one big question, and I’m going to ask it, but I already know the answer. And you’ve already described it multiple times. Multiple ways.Julie Smith [: 01:02:10
Okay, but what is your end game?Udo Erasmus [: 01:02:13
My end game?Julie Smith [: 01:02:14
Yeah.Udo Erasmus [: 01:02:15
Well, for the body, the end game is it gets recycled.Julie Smith [: 01:02:19
What about your soul?Udo Erasmus [: 01:02:21
Soul? Depends what you mean. Something in you is indestructible because it’s formless to begin with, and destruction only applies to what has form. If you have no form, you can’t destroy. You can’t destroy formlessness. Right? So something in you is formless. Awareness is formless.Udo Erasmus [: 01:02:41
Love is a. Or life is a flow of energy, flow of solar energy. And its nature is unconditional, empowering love for the body. Those two are not destructible. Energy can change, but awareness doesn’t even change. You know, there’s more peace in the world, in the universe, than anything else. So galaxies explode in speed in peace, and peace is not affected. So something in you, you know, your liver kicks stuff up and your guts kick stuff up, and, you know, there’s breathing going on and there’s immune system going on.Udo Erasmus [: 01:03:20
So there’s lots of activity going on in your body. But the peace that is the foundation of existence, that is your being not affected by any of it. So when. So what happens when people die? There’s a separation between the body, which has form and will lose its form, and the formless in you, which then basically is no longer confined to a body. Where does it go? I don’t know. I haven’t. I don’t remember. You know, I don’t know.Udo Erasmus [: 01:03:53
I haven’t gone there yet. Right. But is it a problem? No. You know, when I feel the pace, I say, you know, if I didn’t have a body, I’d be just as peaceful as I am now. Right. And it’s. So one of the things about when you focus on that and you actually pay attention to it, you actually get a sense of yourself.Udo Erasmus [: 01:04:13
That takes the fear away. What is it? The perfect love casts out all fear. You know, if you know the truth, it will make you free. Right. What else is that? There’s a peace that passes understanding. That means it’s not in words. It’s actually an experience, you know, and all the masters always talking about that stuff, teachers of human nature. They’re teachers of human nature.Udo Erasmus [: 01:04:37
Nobody else touches it. The scientists don’t touch it. You know, you had one question about the scientific basis for, you know, the scientist would like to go there. I had a philosophy teacher, he said, you can’t be. You can’t be objective about anything about yourself, about anything subjective. And you know me, I question everything. So I’m thinking, I don’t think that makes sense. So I said to him, okay, so what is.Udo Erasmus [: 01:05:04
What is objectivity? He says, it’s an attitude. So I said, well, if it’s an attitude, can you learn that attitude? He says, of course. We teach that in this course every. Every year. So I say, okay, if I. If it’s an attitude, I can learn the attitude. I should be able to once I’ve learned it. I should be able to direct.Udo Erasmus [: 01:05:23
There. Yep. There. Yep. There. Yep. Into the past. Yep.Udo Erasmus [: 01:05:27
Into the future. Yep. And in here.Udo Erasmus [: 01:05:32
And he went apoplectic, I would imagine, because. Because he couldn’t argue the logic.Udo Erasmus [: 01:05:41
But he had been told that you can’t be objective about subjective, and he never thought about it, and so he just repeated it, and I called him on it. Right. So then I started thinking, you know, that that was the end of that. He. He. He didn’t change his mind. And. But then I started thinking about, okay, you go to a doctor.Udo Erasmus [: 01:05:57
You said, I got a problem. What’s your problem? My knee hurts. Okay.Udo Erasmus [: 01:06:05
You know, and you. That’s objective. You’re giving objective. An objective report about a subjective state. Right. My knee hurts. Then he says, well, is it front or back? He said, it’s a back. Okay.Udo Erasmus [: 01:06:18
You just gave him objective information about something subjective. Then he says, is it sharp or dull? You say, well, it’s dull. So then he pokes his finger in there. So does it hurt more? Does it hurt less when I do this? So you tell him, so the whole time you’re giving him objective information about your subjective state, and he requires that of you because otherwise he can’t do a diagnosis. So when somebody says you can’t be objective about subjecting, it’s BS. You can be. You aren’t always. And often people, you know, when.Udo Erasmus [: 01:06:57
Especially when emotions get involved, they will be. They will. What do they do? Generalize or delete or embellish or something. So they may not be honest about it, but you can be honest and be objective about what is subjective.Julie Smith [: 01:07:16
So to full circle, my question.Udo Erasmus [: 01:07:18
Yeah. Yeah.Julie Smith [: 01:07:20
There really is no end game.Udo Erasmus [: 01:07:24
Well, something in you never ends, but it had no beginning either. Right. If it wasn’t born. Awareness wasn’t born. Awareness was always there. Awareness wasn’t born. And awareness will never die. Right? Yeah.Glenn Harper [: 01:07:38
Well, I’m telling you, this was awesome. Udi, I can’t thank you enough for being on our show. And I. Yeah.Udo Erasmus [: 01:07:44
You know, I had some misgivings about talking to.Udo Erasmus [: 01:07:51
What are you, accountants?Glenn Harper [: 01:07:53
Yes. We’re not all bad, I swear.Udo Erasmus [: 01:07:57
Yeah, well, you know and I know, because accountant is just what you do. It’s not what you are.Glenn Harper [: 01:08:02
Correct.Udo Erasmus [: 01:08:03
It’s always. It’s always the same. It comes. Always comes back to that. And within whatever it is that people are doing, there is a being that deserves some attention and needs some attention. And if we want to fix all the craziness that we’ve created in the world.Udo Erasmus [: 01:08:20
That’S how we get it done.Glenn Harper [: 01:08:22
Well, I got a lot out of this. I hope you got a lot. I hope you got a lot.Julie Smith [: 01:08:26
I mean, I just listened.Glenn Harper [: 01:08:27
I hope our listeners are going to get a lot. Could you give a plug of where our listeners, if they wanted to buy your products, where they would go or get your book, where would they go to do that?Udo Erasmus [: 01:08:37
Yeah, I have a website. It’s udoarasmus.com I’m on Facebook and I’m on Instagram and I have a YouTube channel.Udo Erasmus [: 01:08:45
But I think they think talking about this, I want to recommend a book that I didn’t write.Glenn Harper [: 01:08:51
Okay.Udo Erasmus [: 01:08:52
I wrote the book. You can. It’s called. The newer one is called your Body needs an Oil Change. So that’s. You can get that off my website or find how to get it off the website. The book I recommend is called Hear yourself. Hear Like Hear yourself How to Find Peace in a Noisy World.Udo Erasmus [: 01:09:13
And it was written by a man by the name of Prem Rawat. And he’s the guy who taught me my practice 53 years ago. He’s now 68. He was 14 when I met him. Wow. He started doing what he’s doing when he was 8.Glenn Harper [: 01:09:31
I’m getting that book. Well, I really appreciate your time. I know it’s early. We’re over all the way on the northwest corner, or I guess the southwest corner of Canada. And appreciate your time.Udo Erasmus [: 01:09:43
Well, I’m awake now.Glenn Harper [: 01:09:45
That’s good. You’re ready to go. Well, again, we appreciate your help. And again, another stellar episode of Empowering Entrepreneurs Podcast. I’m Glenn Harper and Julie Smith.
