EPISODE 005 | VIVI LETSOU & ERAJ SHAKIB - BUILDING THE DREAM

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Written By Sascha Kaus
 
 
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“This land is healing. It's here to support people in the process of healing. It's here to support people in their process of finding the meaning in their lives, to finding whatever it is they will make. As that will allow us to be better human beings. It happens everywhere in the world and it happens in a condensed way here, because this land has this intention and we have this intention.”

Vivi Letsou

PODCAST 005 | VIVI LETSOU & ERAJ SHAKIB - BUILDING THE DREAM?

Vivi Letsou and Eraj Shakib are the owners and hosts at Zen Rocks Mani a stunning retreat center in the Mani area in the western Peloponnese in Greece. They both have been living in the US for more than 20 years and It has been Vivi's long time dream to return to her home country Greece and build a retreat center. It took them many years and a lot of effort and dedication to get closer to their dream. Along the way, they have opened the leading Yoga and Pilates center in Greece and they are running Avocado a vegetarian restaurant that is famous for its great food far beyond Athens.

In this episode, they share their journey with us and how they have always believed in their dream. It's inspiring to listen to the two and feel how their love for each other and the practice helped them to go through all the different challenges and follow their hearts.

Kalimera Vivi & Eraj

Retreat Affairs is recorded and hosted by Sascha Kaus.

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Sascha Kaus owns the copyright in and to all content of the Retreat Affairs podcast as well as in all transcripts of the Retreat Affairs podcast, with all rights reserved, as well as his right of publicity.

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Sascha Kaus: Petros. Very nice to have you on the show. I’m so grateful that you take the time to talk a little bit to me

Petros Haffenrichter: Of course, I’m happy that you’re talking to me. Otherwise, it would be silent today. Also, good choice.

Sascha Kaus: Okay. Lovely. So tell me a little bit, where are you at the moment right now?

Petros Haffenrichter: Right now. I am in my house in Crete, the island of Crete. Oh, it’s my mother’s house, actually. Well, it’s my great, great, great-great grandfather’s house and it’s an old mill. And we have the good luck that we could restore it. And over the past 20 years. And that’s a nice place to stay. And I come here in summers with my family and my kids love it. And it’s a little bit, you know, old school village style. I like that.

Sascha Kaus: Is this kind of a retreat for you?

Petros Haffenrichter: That is a good question. The question is, what is a retreat? Is it any anything that is just changing your present location as it is different to what you are habitually situated in? And no, I would say it needs a couple of more attributes that you consider something a retreat. But, well, you retreat from something. Meaning you go away from something and you try to change the circumstance which you are finding yourself in. But then, of course, then you can consider it a retreat, but then going to the toilet is also to retreat.

Anything that is a break from the norm is a retreat then. And it’s not that easy. I don’t think so.

Sascha Kaus: Okay. So what would be a break from the norm for you? What would be a retreat for you?

Petros Haffenrichter: Well, as there are always many layers to everything. Let’s be a little bit more specific. Right? I mean, are we talking about, um, as I said, just a change from the norm, um, or.

OK. So if I consider something a retreat, it must have some attributes. It should start with an intention somehow, as everything good somehow starts with an intention. That allows you to see or to experience something or to have time for something or with something that needs your full commitment.

So the normative distraction that you usually experience, the normative routine of, you know, things calling upon you and life happening is not distracting you from that.

So that means that you take away all the factors that would be a distraction to what you want to concentrate on. So you retreat away from, you know, the sensory information that usually has a pull on you. So you can witness a different state or different experience or a different depth to, you know, to your life than you would usually have.

And by the way, we are in the village. And it’s noontime. So it should be quiet. But sometimes there’s these merchants pass and the cars and the creeks and villages and call for, you know, that they have apples or fish or chairs or anything. So we may hear that.

And so, if you ask me if this is a retreat. Yeah. This is a retreat in the sense that I go away from where I usually live and I spend time in a different place. Alone that gives you a different perspective on many things anyways. But I’ve also learned that if I just spend time with my kids, for instance, I don’t have that many intentions or plans other than spending time with my kids or with my family. Because we also sometimes we need to free ourselves from making too many plans.

I’m sure that, you know, that also like with people coming to you and, you know, you also host retreats and you’re a great teacher and a great cook, as I hear that, people come and then, you have a set of lists of things.

You know, you want to go and you want to free your mind and you’ve got to get fit and you want to hike, you want a draw, and you want to read a good book and decide that you want to have good food and decided that you want to be on a diet and besides that, you’re gonna also be enlightened. And besides that, you also going to achieve a certain kind of physical state in which you can do a handstand for an hour or things like that. So we have a list of things usually that we take with us.

And what I’ve learned in my you know, in my practice days is that the longer I’m doing this, the less is on my list what I want to see achieved or the less expectations I have to what I want to see happening.

Sascha Kaus: And how do you create that when you create retreats for yourself? How do you try to communicate that to your guests? Or how do you try to facilitate an atmosphere, a space where it’s just possible?

Petros Haffenrichter: So are you asking me as a retreat host or how I would host myself when I retreat for practice? Because that’s something different.

Sascha Kaus: The question was more aimed like how do you make that happen for others? As a retreat host, when you invite people to come with you, do you give the frame?

Petros Haffenrichter: Mm-hmm. Well, first of all, I think it’s a Greek saying and I think it’s also Indian or it’s universal, that you must know how to be a good host. But that also requires that, you know, how to be a good guest somewhere in life. Um, so I tried to know and we have to bring in my experience on both levels. So as my retreats, you know, I teach retreats. I have taught retreats in many places. And it’s not always the same frame. Sometimes I teach, you know, pilgrimages or Jatharas or I go to places where I myself I’m a guest. And I take other guests with me. And then I’m in a situation of being a co-host as a guest. Then sometimes I get invited and I don’t really take care of the overall frame of what the basic, you know, offering of accommodation and food is. I just bring in, let’s say, the part of yoga practice or meditation or philosophy onto the plate, on the table.

And then sometimes when I’m here in Crete, that’s a different situation because I co-manage the retreat place. And then, of course, the set of host skills that you must have, or that you should have somehow is a long one because I think you need first as Krishnamacharya said: “You sincerely must like people.” If you don’t like people, well then don’t be a host or don’t call upon people to come to you. So meaning if you called people to come to you, you can never be overwhelmed by what their needs are. Then you must be very patient, very open-minded, very open-hearted to understand that, in a retreat that as it happens nowadays internationally, there are international people with different backgrounds, with different lives, with different setups in their lives, in different stages, in their lives. It’s not you know, sometimes, of course, you have a group of friends or, you know, or one club coming. And then it’s there are many similarities.

But then sometimes when I teach a retreat, let’s say te average yoga retreat in Crete in the Kretashakla that I manage. Sometimes I have people from 15 different nationalities ranging from three, five, fourth, six, seven, eight, nine years olds, 10 to 12, 16, 18 to I had retreat guests that were 85 years old and others around 80. And some practice yoga for, you know, 50 years, others practice yoga for never, not ever - first-timers. And they all come there because then, of course, there’s some mutuality of their interest. And for them, of course, then you must be quite flexible because everybody has specific needs and wants. And I think for some people, it’s a great thing to feel challenged that they can accomplish something through a challenge and they can do that. You know, they can go to retreat and then they have a, you know, fasting time through the retreat and then they get up at five o’clock in the morning and they want the Pranayama. They want meditation. They want the full-on Sadhana. so to say, and that they go into no longer contemplation sessions. And there are those people, but then there are other people who feel they need some kind of home feeling and they don’t want to be challenged too much in the beginning. “Let’s not have the sessions too early” because they don’t know about their sleep. Then, you know, it’s a foreign place. There are foreign people. Many times in a retreat the situation is because this is one of the basic ingredients, that I like to give in retreats, is that I actually ask people to share rooms together because I feel this is something very important that… We so much declare that we want the world and everything in it according to my boundaries. So my boundary is my, my life, my choice, my yoga practice. I have my food, my way. I practice my time and I want to retreat into my room where I have my, so to say, private firewall and nothing, comes into my room and to my space, and I need my space and I need my space but I feel it’s one of the basic messages of retreat’s is that there is no “my space” in the world. There’s only our space. And that’s one of the most important things we have to learn again that we are sharing the world together. And if you feel that you want to actually do your thing and retreat from the world, then actually do that. Then, you know, there are many great places in the Buddhist tradition, great places in the Christian tradition where you go and you just you go into your cell and you are alone or do it even better, go into nature alone to that, you know, take your tent, go into the forest and retreat. And that’s what I do. If I go on retreat, I start walking into the forest and I stay in nature alone. No books, no telephones or computers or anything. And I spend time there.

Sascha Kaus: When did you do this last time?

Petros Haffenrichter: Well, actually, last week I did a little session not too long, only for three days. But before that, as we are in the midst of the virus crises in the world and everybody feels, we all are responding to that in our own ways. So there was a time in May where I felt that I need to take a break from continues five-hour online yoga teaching. I had enough.

And so I walked into, you know, as I have the great fortune to live close to the Alps. And I know some hiking places there. So I just walked into the woods and I stayed in the forest for 10 days and I shut up. And that was quite helpful for the situation to deal with, the challenges that we have and all the different levels of perspectives on that.

´Sascha Kaus: So how can I imagine that? Do you really, pack up your backpack, take everything you need for a few days, all your food and everything, and you just go into the woods and find a spot for yourself? How does it look like?

Petros Haffenrichter: As I like to be in nature and I have done that quite some times - In the beginning, you think you need a whole lot of things. If you do your first time. So to say, to go camping, then you take, you know, everything you can imagine. In the beginning, as I like music I would take my guitar, my flute, and I even took my harmonium once. And then, you go and you have all this stuff with you and then you need the survival kit and you need the first aid kit. And then you need, the sleeping bag in the tent. And I don’t know what. And then each time you go, you actually feel that you don’t require that many things, actually. If you just sit and you are with nature, then you don’t need that much food. When you’re in nature, you feel quite nourished. It takes a moment and you need to know that, if you panic because you feel you’re somewhere alone in the woods. But nowadays. To be honest, I don’t live somewhere in Canada or somewhere in Russia where then the next living being is, a seven day walk away. So if you’re somewhere in the Alps, the Bavarian Alps the next people you will find somewhere within the range of one or two hours. So you are never in the situation that you could actually, meet the grizzly alone and you have to fight them and you run out of…. What was that movie? Into the Wild - So that kid goes somewhere in Canada and gets lost and he gets sick and he dies. Horrible Story.

Sascha Kaus: Did you have one of those moments where you totally felt lost and that it’s too scary.

Petros Haffenrichter: No, no. But I had that once on a boat. I was sailing alone and one of the sails broke and I was quite off coast. The next coast was somewhere 50 miles or something. And the wind was very lame. It was like nothing happening at all. So I thought if it stays like that and I only had a small outside motor on the boat and I just want to go actually from Crete to the mainland. I was just out there and you don’t see any island or anything, and you’re out there and you think: “Oh my God. Now I am alone.” But then again, it’s the Mediterranean, the next coast is somewhere around. But so anyway, back to what you want to take and how you pack and so on. So that is also a nice analogy for life. You know, you think you need to be very equipped. You need to have all the vaccinations and all the security measures that you can take to be safe in life. But life is not generally dangerous. We have to understand what the normative is in life. You know, what is the rule and what is the exception? The exception is that life is life-threatening. That is not happening every day for us. It’s happening the least days. It’s happening one day. Life is so threatening. That is actually, you know, passing. But for most other days of the year and the years' life, it’s not such. So that is the rule. And you can trust that a little bit. And, you know, when you spend time, not with that suggested state that we hear in media a lot, of course, you have to take precautions to be safe from life. And life is life-threatening and life is dangerous. And then you never stop taking care of what could threaten you. And then the list is very long. What you have to prepare for because then you have to wear a helmet because potentially a meteor could hit your head. It could happen.

Sascha Kaus: Do you remember a time in your life where you had more of those fears, where you experienced more of those fears? I just listened the other day I just listened to an interview of a guy who really made this a challenge for himself to go into his fears to overcome them, like every time he felt: “OK. I’m really afraid of going into the water. I cannot swim.” So he made himself swim. I cannot run. So you run 100 miles and even longer. And all of those things. Is it something that resonates with you?

Petros Haffenrichter: Well, I think we all have to be honest about what scares us and how to be honest about that and how to learn that part of life that we have to overcome a couple of projections that we have. I said that if we collectively project that life is something threatening, that we try to collectively find measures, but we don’t expose ourselves to that which is threatening, so to say. We only take precautions that what potentially could happen, it’s not harming us, but we don’t expose ourselves to it. And, you know, our common teacher David Life once said that life is an experiment. And I totally, totally agree. I totally agree. But a little bit on the humoristic side, too. I mean, you don’t have to. If that’s your thing. I mean, if you’re scared of heights. So, you know, you climb the mountain. Well, that’s one way. But I would do it in a light way.

So if I feel that something is scary. Look at it and then check what is the precondition? What is your experience? What is the suggested format of where does that fear arise from?

Sascha Kaus: Do you feel we have a tendency to run away from those things at the moment or in our lives? Do you feel that it’s something we’ve totally unlearned also by not being exposed to nature? I mean, like who goes into nature is really exposed to something that might be dangerous and like you said, in our surroundings, at least like we are living in Europe. It’s quite hard to really get away from civilization, to really find nature that is maybe in the archaic sense, dangerous, there is no big animals that are threatening. I mean even poisonous animals, we hardly find them here in Europe, in other parts of the world, for sure. But his there this kind of tendency of running away from everything that might be in a way, scary?

Petros Haffenrichter: Is there? Asking you! What do you think? Because, of course, we are human beings and we repeat ourselves. And that tendency always was there to be in love with your own illusion and try to keep it up and then make everything work accordingly so that illusion can be taken as reality.

Sascha Kaus: I wouldn’t consider myself a fearful being, but I definitely see that I had things in my life that scared me in a way. Sometimes it’s maybe not about going into nature or things like that, but there are things in life that scare me. Sometime it might also be emotional. And then I feel, okay, there is something that… I learned over the past years that there’s a way to lean into those things, to lean into those fears and slowly and subtly overcome them. So there is something and now it makes me more and more curious. Now, when I observe for myself that there’s something that gives me a kind of, I don’t know, anxiousness, I feel like, okay, what is it? I ask myself, what is it and how is there a way that I can overcome it? Is it really important? Is it something that serves me to be in a way aware of maybe a potential danger? Or is it just like a story that I tell myself? And why do I tell it to myself? So I find it quite interesting to go into that.

Petros Haffenrichter: Were you able to turn around those fears ever?

Sascha Kaus: Yes, absolutely.

Petros Haffenrichter: Or are they just happening on a different level? Are they happening in a more of the more intellectual level? You know, I feel that, for instance, let’s say the physical feeling of vertigo. I know some people who have it. I never had it until a couple of years ago. And I have been told, if you get older, so maybe as I said, you get older, you get it.

So when I was younger, I would, you know, climb up every rock that I would see. And I like climbing. I like jumping off cliffs. I like diving. I like, you know, motorcycle racing. You know, I like stuff like that. You know, that’s my conditioning. I would say, you know, I always liked to, because that was the initial question, to conquer my fears. That was something that is just happening. I was growing up with, with all my cousins in Greece. And I was the youngest. And everybody was kind of, showing how a little scared they are from I don’t know what. And so I also had to do that somehow. But over time, I feel that’s very interesting. And that’s why I’m asking you. It’s like I don’t think that we actually overcome the fears. I think they’re always there. But we put them in a different place so we can learn from them. And I couldn’t stand why they are in our lives. Like Krishnamurti has this beautiful lecture on fear.

If something scares us, then. Well, if you have the courage and the patience to look at it, you learn a big deal about your conditioning. Maybe even if you have the patience to live long enough and close enough, then you learn about karmic preposition in life somehow because you feel the same kind of pattern of fear repeating in different relationships of different situations. So I don’t think that we are actually, overcoming those fears. I think we just put them in a different place and, in our installation of who we are so we can accept something or we evaluate something in a different way. And we feel that was necessary because honestly, it’s totally fine to be scared of a poisonous snake. Totally fine. You know, to be scared of heights that if you fall off that height, you may die. It’s totally good. Not a bad thing to have that security system installed.

So growing up with and being, you know, a dad to a couple of boys and, like all boys, they’re like that game of trying to understand how far you can go. What scares you? How to challenge your own fears and how to overcome them somehow, especially if someone is looking and or especially if someone is not looking. So to balance a little bit and to give yourself good feedback in life. What is the area that you can live in? What is the range? Being too scared is not a good thing not to be scared at all it’s not a good thing. So it’s always to learn moderation.

But the idea was a little bit. The question on the collective and what is the normative and if you’re too scared and if you’re too scared to be nature, for instance. And are we taking too many precautions? And do we have established a system of culture that suggests that culture is safe and nature is unsafe? I think that was a little bit the initial question. And yes, we have established that culture and it’s horrible. I feel that nature has no drastic danger for the soul.

Maybe some dangers for the body and the person that could even die by snake bite. But culture has, you know, a list of concepts, or life concepts, how we should live life, that it actually is creating a pattern of illusion. And I think that is more dangerous as I am interested in yoga. So I’m interested in the soul and the health of the soul. That is more dangerous than whatever could happen in nature to you because whatever happens in nature is something very important for the person especially. And let’s go back to that, to the theme that you spend time in nature alone. That is the main retreat. I feel this is the main retreat theme that everybody who’s interested in spiritual growth should aim for everybody who’s interested in understanding about what the person is, what the condition of the person is, what the person underneath the person is, what creates the person like Ahamkara is what Dharma and Swadharma, your own natural understanding of righteousness or what a natural, universal path of wellbeing for your soul in this body is. If you want to know about those things, then I think you can get around spending time alone with yourself. And spending time alone with yourself In culture, that is not happening. In culture, you always living a version of yourself. That is a suggestion by culture. And as Nietzsche says, that we like to spend time in nature because nature has no opinion about you. So you don’t create a response to that opinion, because what we are very much in a cultural context is the response to the opinion of what we feel is external.

So I would encourage everyone to actually try to do that, to spend time in nature as much and as alone and without distraction as possible. I think that’s actually the easiest and fastest Sādhanā of all Sādhanās. If you’re interested in yoga, that’s the thing. Do that.

Sascha Kaus: Is there any way of experiencing that are getting close to that in a group of people when you go into a retreat?

Petros Haffenrichter: Yes, of course, because I mean, as we said, it’s a change from a normative. So you do something that is not on your daily plate and you emphasize the practice. That is also, you know, hopefully special. And then what I feel is very important is either that you have a very strong subject that you can work with as a theme in a retreat, and that theme could be that it is meditation or the theme could be that it’s a specific form of practice, like it is Pranayama or so, or service, could be a great retreat theme.

Then you have that theme and that maybe the main thing. Why? What is the motive of the retreat? Or you have a very strong spiritual content, something that is if you go to a pilgrimage like a retreat, you retreat away from the worldly demands and duties and tasks and you offer your time, and the space that you are giving in your life to a higher principle other than the mundane world or than, of course, and this is maybe my favourite is that you find a place that is a place that is very much in nature. This, I find, is the most effective way to, you know, to bring all those things together, because nature to me is very spiritual. And to be nature is an act of spiritual union and that the themes of any yoga practice resonate better in a place where nature is not manipulated that much, that you have it in comparison to a city.

I don’t think, for instance, that city retreats are actually working. If you do that, as you know, with a specific theme, then, of course, everything has its place.

Sascha Kaus: You mentioned before that you’ve gone on to a retreat for yourself in May when you’ve been tired of doing all these online teaching. And talking about how the connection to nature is so important. Many of us have been really locked away. We’ve probably been quite lucky in Germany to be able to still go out. At the moment, I’m here in Ibiza. I’m living in Ibiza. Everybody in Spain was really locked away. I’ve been talking to friends that haven’t been able to go anywhere for a few months other than the supermarket around the corner. I was quite lucky. I was in nature almost every day in the beginning of the lockdown. What do you feel about this? What are the effects right now and how can we overcome this or how can we find back to a way where we are more connected with nature.

Petros Haffenrichter: Well, we change our diet? Number one. We change our attitude about who we are as a species. And then we lose through understanding who we are, we lose our fear of death.

Sascha Kaus: Why diet? Let’s start with that.

Petros Haffenrichter: Without the proper diet or without a diet that is conducive to a finer level of sensitivity you will never understand who you are. And, you know, illusion is just too predominant. That’s why. You cannot have any kind of an experience of unity. A profound experience of unity. You can have many experiences of upliftment, of joy, of periodically being, more merging with divinity somehow. But an overalls continuous fine current of awareness is only possible if your Pranas can flow freely. And your Pranas cannot flow freely if your Nadis are clogged. And then it’s a little bit physio energetically. Then the knots of consciousness that are in the way of understanding of what reality is, they’re just too tight. The Granthis, you cannot just get through them. And then you will manipulate yourself into some kind of inferior versions of potential unity. And you mistake them for unity. So that’s why the diet is… you can’t get around it. You can!

Sascha Kaus: You can explain that a little bit more for our listeners, but maybe not so much grounded in a yoga practice. I mean, you’ve mentioned a few words to Granthis the Nadis that are not familiar with everybody.

Petros Haffenrichter: OK, so let’s leave the space of belief and disbelief for a moment. OK. I’m not here to teach anyone anything. But let’s say we all have the experience that there are things that we can witness when we are at our best. We know when we have slept well when, you know, life is not, pulling us in a specific way or pushing us in a specific way, when we are emotionally at ease, when we are physically we feel OK. There is nothing nagging us. There’s not: “Oh, my back or my head or my life situation” You know, something balanced, moderate, Satva, satvic state. So the Yogi tries to create that Satvic state, tries to aim to actually be in that state where you find moderation, there’s not too much of a pull to one side or to the other side.

So how do we start to create this balanced starting point? If you want to ask, you know, if you life daring questions if you want to know about who. Who am I? If you want to know about what is the universe? Who is God? Is there any God? Like if you start on a very desperate leg, like in the Bhagavad Gita, great scripture. Everybody should, could study that. It’s a good pastime. And of course, more than that. You know, there’s this picture of a very strong man, a warrior, a Kshatriya Arjuna. And he has a moment of despair. He is doubting his life, like we have collectively right now, with this moment of the virus where he goes like: “Oh, what is happening?” And then you see what is happening in a society that is not in balance. The imbalance is becoming bigger. You know, if you have something that is life-threatening and you go like: “Oh, my God, now we have the virus.” Now, if we would be a calm society. Meaning, if we would know. Now, if it would take the teachings and experience of life, that life never ends, and if we would take that serious, if you would understand that life is eternal. If you would know the soul not as a concept, but as an experience than maybe we would not run around like frantic, ants on an anthill where someone stuck the stick in.

But we are as the whole as a whole culture. I mean, you know, we are very much an illusion. We are, as you know, selling stuff to each other that we don’t need. We are emphasizing the wrapping more than the content of anything. And I don’t want to be highly critical about it. But if you don’t see that, if you don’t see that participating in media and then you’re participating in an interesting game of illusion that is repetitive and it’s triggering the same easy triggers of dopamine rushes and they’re very easy to get. And everything is coming in bright colours and everything is designed in a way that stimulates you to go back to it and to want stuff that you don’t need for life and to identify as things as beings and those identities that are illusionary. Well, I could go on and on. But back to the case.

So we are as a society, emphasizing very much the ideology of the person as an object and that is not a balanced state from a yogic perspective. That’s an illusion. That’s Avidja. And if you bring something challenging to that, if you bring the question of life, do or die to that, it will bring more imbalance. That’s why you see so much diversion nowadays happening, so much blame one side and the other side emphasizing the polarities. And that’s why there’s a lot of imbalance. And I hope to be wrong, but it will be worse than what we experience now.

But back to the question. So what can we do? And what is the terminology of yoga? So I don’t want to come, too, from a place where those things are just, coming from a book. So we all know that if you make a decision, a clear cut decision on a good day with a good intention in a good mood, it is substantial it can carry you somewhere. If a decision is made out of, the urgency of the moment in despair, then usually we are short-sighted and the effects also are of such condition. So what the practices of yoga are, is the summary of the experience of people who balanced out their life. Took the precautions to do what they need to do. That starts with physical life. And what you need to do to find balance in physical life is you have to understand that the main yoga practice is how you live your everyday life and what you do every day is eating. So if you’re conscious about your food. If you don’t create an imbalance with your food, either outside or inside, then this is the main ingredient.

And so if you have a good balanced diet, then the energies in the body can function in a good way. So you can understand and perceive the body in a finer level. And then you can start balancing the body and the physio and energetic processes of the body out. And for thousands of years, millions of practitioners have done that. And they succeeded. And they handed down that knowledge and they said, well, you know what? This does not work. Try that. This works for sure. And, you know, there we are amidst of a discussion on yoga tradition.

Yoga is, you know, nothing that we have to invent. Yoga is: “Atha Yoga anusasnam” . It is what it is. Everything is connected. You can be conscious of that. It needs a couple of ingredients in your life. And a couple of things to fall out of your life to experience that.

And then you see and you feel and you experience that you live in, a different world than you would experience if you are, let’s say, a citizen of a city trying to achieve the statuses, as the external statuses that suggests that you are the object. I don’t know. Arch architect, married, a boss, wealthy or, you know, creative or whatever those external attributes are, because we are all actually, one big movement altogether and our consciousness is able to get it and not as a concept, our consciousness is able to understand what itself it is.

Now, that’s a trip and you need to be stable to do that. And there is something like an equation to do it. And as I said, one first part of the equation is that you have a stable life. A stable life derives from stable health, stable health comes from stable activity, balanced food. And then you go on and you practice what you know, all the thousands of years of practitioners have practised, and that is to slowly fine-tune the body. And then from the body, you understand that the body works through energetical processes, which is, let’s say, the temperature the body, and then you learn to manipulate the temperature. So you don’t have to manipulate any genes.

You just change the balance of warm and cold in the body and the organs and in your left and right hemisphere and your left and right side of the physical body, which is the shell around a finer body that is inside. We know of nerves. We could think it like that. So you learn through the body to actually address the nervous system and through the nervous system, you address the density of information flow in the body. The more dense the information flow is, the more heated it is. The more male it is, or the more spacious it is, the more cool it is or the more moon or female it is. And you learn to balance out those things. And when you do it regularly, then slowly you feel that you can actually feel that that there is a different level of experience that is, let’s say, deeper or higher than the external feeling or physical physicality.

Then you have emotionality, you have thought, and then there’s something underneath that that is an overall feeling for energy or awareness for space and density that is not any more physical or emotional or intellectual. It’s kind of, you know, a combination of all those and the yogis practising all those things that I was trying to explain for a couple of minutes. Practice that over hundreds and thousands of years and they had their experience.

And then, they met and said, like, well, you experienced the same. As I explained the same thing, and you do the same practice, what do you do differently? So they exchanged their knowledge about and slowly over, you know, generation to generation. We fine-tune that in that information, the how to access the finest layers of what we can address and experience. And those finest layers are a web of light that we are.

They call it the web of light. That we are as a physical energy body, is consisting out of Nadis that are the web. And through those Nadis , energy, light, prana, life-force is flowing and the same way that you can actually, manipulate your skin through exposure to radiation or, or taking that out of the radiation. The skin is responding to it the same way you can do it with muscles. You can train the muscles. More density will bring more awareness or more strength or more male, or you can relax it and you could stretch it and it brings balance. And then you couldn’t go deeper and then you can have it on an even on skeleton level. If you actually challenged the bone through penetration, the bone structure will become more dense, or if you take that away, it will become more spacious.

And that also is happening on the hormonal level. So if you have more testosterone than the structures are getting more male or more tight or more dense, and if you have more estrogen, then you have more space and the bone structure is getting more soft. And then beyond the hormones, then, of course, there is no more layers that you address.

So all that is within the range, what we can interact with inside of us. It starts with diet. And then slowly, slowly, it goes deeper and deeper and deeper. And then you feel that your thought and the way your breath and the way that you live, your breath has an effect. The breath is food also. Light and the way that you expose yourself to light is food also. Thought and the way that you expose yourself to thought or to silence is also, it’s the same has the same characteristics and you learn to include that into your practice. And then the yogis saw and felt and heard mainly those principles working within us that are very fine that you don’t understand if you are just bound into an awareness of the physical body. And so they felt that there are these locks. Or also, there are these energy centres, that people write books about, the Chakras, but you don’t need to write a book about it. It’s a field of experience that you actually cannot name it. You don’t have to name because I would say it’s beyond or underneath any language that we should use to experience or to practice with such things. If it’s language, then there’s some kind of visualization practice that we do, which is also effective.

So and then we have the ability to go with our whole consciousness beyond the places that we are bound to on a physical, physio-emotional setting of life. That life is anything just what I can see and emotionally grasp. And beyond that is, well, there is God. And this is what yoga is all about. You have a meeting with God or it or her or whatever you wanna call it. And then if that is something that happens regularly, then, of course, the whole architecture of what we understand life consists of, has just a different depth. It’s not different than what everybody perceives, just has a different depth.

Sascha Kaus: So you talked a lot about balance. And you talked about that this is all really ancient wisdom. This is something that’s been around for thousands of years. And you said there is there have been people that have been practising this and out of their experience, they have been able to share: OK, we’ve experienced this is how it works. And so go try it out for yourself. You can have the same experience. And nowadays it seems like we’re just not willing to experience things for ourselves, which is like taking on advice from others. We just take on what media tells us what we are supposed to believe in, especially in those days right now with the crisis, with the virus. There’s a lot of things that we are told, but we actually don’t know. What would be your advice at the moment to handle this situation, like how would you bring this into life? Like, how would you advise people to look at this?

Petros Haffenrichter: That now is not any different than any other time. We want to….

So life is always life-threatening and we always must, take the position that we have the responsibility for our own body and for our own emotions and for the thoughts and we have it collectively together because we are sharing the space of life together. If I am trying to manipulate you in any specific way to make you understand, believe, hope or fear, what I understand leave hope and fear. I don’t respect that you come with your own arrangements, to understand, to see, to experience what you have to experience in your life as a soul in this body.

Now, this time is not any different than any other time. But what we see clearly now is that you have…. We don’t know our own body because we have rejected the responsibility for the body, through cultural imprint. We grow up and whatever we feel in our body and whatever we experience as a human it gets used and interpreted it in a way that is common sense.

I remember the time when I was a kid and I got sick and I really enjoyed being sick because I liked the buzz of having fever very much. I didn’t feel anything, you know, wrong.

And I also feel that the rush of hormones and neurotransmitters that are that is happening when you’re when you actually in disease if you’re also pain is something very interesting.

There is this pain that you cannot deal with. This is one thing. But then there’s a whole variety of pains that is a whole language on its own to teach us something, you know, change your life. Pain means change your strategy. That’s it. You know, nature’s tap talking to you. Nature doesn’t tell you: “Take aspirin.” Nature tells you. Change your strategy. Do something. Change your rhythm of life. Change your thoughts. Change your diet. Change your habits. Don’t use toxins. Get some rest. Get some sleep. Change your relationships. Don’t hang out with those people.

I mean, the set of pain is a very like if you understand it a little bit. It’s the easiest way to have a great life. Really? I mean, if you shut it off, then you may not get the teaching. But if you just go through, what life is telling you with pain, then you go quite well. If your headache. Well, if you have a headache, there is something in it, in that headache. And there is a story that is preceding the headache.

Now look at the story that is preceding the headache. Look at the rituals that you have, the habits that you have. Look at how you’re living your life. And look where the pain in the head is taking place. Is it taking place at the frontal lobes where the person is? Is it taking place, somewhere elsewhere, where the society is, is it taking place in a different way, where the root of your physical existence is? Is it taking place at the Hypothalamus where your coordination and the set of orientation is taking place. Where am I? Who am I? So pain is very specific. And of course, that’s very naive. And I do, of course, respect that. There is pain that you just cannot ignore. And you have to address it somehow. And then for everybody sometimes, that the pain is gone, is the only thing that we are interested in at that moment.

But you are very, very naive with what information was because the only thing what we want is that the pain is gone. And then we don’t backtrack. We don’t go like: “OK, I did didn’t take care of brushing my teeth. I was eating too many sweets. I was not taking care when there was a slight pain. I was not paying attention. Then there was more pain. Now the tooth is really killing me. So do something with it. Give me an injection and take the tooth out.”

But there was a preceding story to that. And the preceding story is giving you the whole set of practice in life that you can apply into your life to have a good life. And the same is happening emotionally. That same thing is happening. You know, intellectually, they are all different pains in life.

Sascha Kaus: I like the expression, when you said that you enjoyed this feeling as a little child feeding the buzz of a fever.

Petros Haffenrichter: Until someone comes and tells you, oh, my God. And you see the expression on your momma’s face and you get all like, oh, my God, something’s wrong. But until then, nothing was wrong.

Sascha Kaus: Yeah. And maybe even before there were moments where it felt like, OK. They’ve been telling you about what it is like. And then you’re afraid. But then you actually go through it yourself and you find out, God, it’s not that bad. And actually, there is something to it. I have to say, like over the last few weeks, and especially during the crisis, there were a lot of things that were coming up emotionally, physically and in a way, being able to feel that was something that it was really, really grateful for, to really be able to observe, to see: “OK, what is going on with myself.” Feeling very emotional at times. Feeling ungrounded. Feeling anxious, but also observing everything coming and going. And I definitely remember also a time in my life where I’ve been numbing those feelings, which with different things, with psychoactives, with food, with sweets especially. And I was just not allowing myself to feel. And that’s something that I’m really, really grateful for because it teaches me a lot. I’m able to listen. I’m able to hold still and then feel like: “OK, where is this coming from?” And what does it actually telling me? And to I have to stay with it. Or can I let it go.

Petros Haffenrichter: OK. Why are you and why am I? OK, well why am I not able to carefully watch? We talked about here now we talk about pain. That’s also a great topic. And there’s a very uplifting subject. I feel we could talk. Talk about death in just a moment because it’s also very uplifting because to talk about fear and pain and death is very important because they are great parts of our life.

And trying to negate that will just bring about confusion. Anyways. So why don’t I have the moment of clarity and the patience to take care of my fears and to take care of what scares me? Because there’s a certain kind of routine in culture that we have, that we seem that we must function according to some ideologic pattern. You know, from Monday to Friday, you have to function. And then Saturday, Sunday you waste yourself and then you have to function again and only to a degree that you can participate in the world as it has the set of expectations towards you as a human being to fulfil the part that you have to fulfil in this society. And then usually that means you have to work.

I don’t agree. Generally, I don’t think that we are made for working.

But if you have and if I have the time and the patience and I don’t have to rush. I may not even take the aspirin to kill the pain. I may be able to evaluate pain in a different way because I just have the space and the time to look at it and not to be scared of it because I have to overcome it. The whole idea of I think why we are afraid of fear. I mean, we have fear of fear and why we are afraid of pain is because it could stop us from participating in the normative pattern. And then we are losing our social integrity.

Generally, I think or social you know, our social systems have lost their integrity a long time ago after we have suggested that we all have to participate in a merchant’s version of life where everything is hierarchical and in competition and where we are merely working or spending time. Spending time is such a great expression as it describes very much how we use our time. I’d like to, enjoy time and celebrate time and live life and not spend my life and spend my time. And as we are doing that. How do you, scratch, how do you gather that little little bit, a bit of time that you have to make your own decisions that you use then for, you know, participating in social media and I don’t know what you do. But all that system is suggesting that you have to be, fulfilling that system. And now if you’re in pain, then you cannot fulfil the system because then you cannot go to your job. And then and then you cannot pay your rent. And then, other uncertainties will kick in.

So back to the question, what’s happening if you have the time to look at your pain? What if you have the time to acknowledge it? What if your time to slowly allow fear to rise and to come? And to get bigger and then to dissolve. What if you don’t cut it and then beginning in a moment whereas just approaching and you don’t even see where it’s coming from and what it is? That overall, I think it will bring a feeling of depression if you have no space for your fears. And if you have no time for your pain, then at some moment you will have rejected and avoided so much that the dark cloud of unconscious input or internal input or internal mechanisms that you cannot backtrack has just gotten too big. And then you don’t know what that pain is. You don’t know what that fear is. That is just that big thing of something.

You also said that a little bit that that: “Aren’t we living in a time off and so on?” Yeah. But, you know, we always have human tendencies that we are in a specific way and dealing in a specific way with the challenges that we are living, going through. But I think, what the yoga practice and the tradition of yoga bring to the plate is, that first, it is a system of relationship. Of relationship in the best way that we respect and we learn from each other because we are each other. Meaning what you go through, I go through somehow. What I go through, you go through somehow. And there is beings. And because you also said that, that aren’t we just listening to someone telling us something, preaching something, and we just kind of like following the choir and everybody singing: “I’ll be afraid” and we are afraid and somebody’s sick: “You have to wear this.” And we wear that. B

But there is a different kind of relationship that is at the basis of yoga. That is the guru relationship with the teacher. Pain as a teacher. Fear is a teacher. Now, what would you do? A death, by the way, is the great the greatest of all teachers. Now, what would you do if you recognize if you’re ever able to recognize a teacher? That’s a Siddhi. That’s an achievement to be able to recognize the teacher. Because if you don’t see the teacher, you know, you cannot learn and most people don’t see the teacher.

But anyway, so if you recognize the teacher, wouldn’t you like to pay attention to all you know, to the last word and to everything that the teacher has to tell you? And now, come on, honestly. Everybody could state that earlier pain and fear where teachers in our life. Did we pay attention?

And now that brings us to back to your question originally saying so in the time that we are witnessing right now where everybody is going through, a phase of trying to understand what is threatening our life, on what level? What does that mean? What is the condition in it? Where will it take us? What are the measures to be taken?

And to me, it all comes down to the drama that we are experiencing is not so much that people are suffering and dying because people were always suffering and dying. That’s the condition of the world. We are decaying and we are dying. And we’re doing a lousy job accepting it as a teacher. And we’re trying to avoid it on, you know, an all means necessary. And we think that this kind of ideology trying to be safe and healthy is the best choice to be content and to be, what our human potential can be. I don’t think so.

I think that that the teaching here is that we must hold for a moment and look again very carefully. Look again what scares us and are we really afraid of dying? This is why we’re doing everything. And do we think that we can be safe of death? And this is why we’re doing everything. And then we are actually trying to avoid, the health system to collapse. And we call it. And, you know, that’s something collective. The health system. Meaning and I agree that the health system is something collective, but I don’t mean the beds at hospitals. I mean our consciousness that we share together. If we like what we are doing right now is we dividing the world into, you know, people on one side of fear and people on the other side of fear.

Yet there is nothing to be afraid of. That is the whole that’s the whole teaching that, you know, that nature is teaching us is like, don’t be afraid because everything is coming and going and coming and going. So what are you afraid of? Why are you acting? And you could say, well, again, Petros that is very naive because what if your kids get sick? And what if you get sick? And wouldn’t you use vaccination and so on. And I’m sorry, I don’t really know. But what do I know is that. I actually I’m not afraid of decay and I’m not afraid to die because I don’t think that dying is any bad thing. And if we together could decide that if we actually together get out of the dogmatic state, too, by all means necessary, save human lives over, by like over the life of any other species over the life and that first, you know, save the youngest. And then, you know, do whatever it takes to keep old people alive. If we could get out of this dogma, I feel that we would have a different life altogether and that life wouldn’t be so dramatic on that on that page. Because then you die. And then we meet again. And then we go like, what was all the fuss about? You know why? This is great. We’re having a great time because there is no time. So it’s amazing. We cannot imagine that because, that that weird perspective on a finite life, as you know, the common sense.

And you only live once and you have to live your life and you have to you know, all this have to. That brings so much pressure. Oh, my God. You know what? If you don’t get it. What if you don’t get it in first class, then, you know, you do it again and you get it in second class. What if you don’t? What if you fail in second grade? Then you don’t get your diploma. And that this is all based on the idea that life is linear. It’s all based on the idea that if you fuck up, you fucked up forever. That’s all based on the idea. If you don’t reach the goal, you don’t reach the goal. But that’s ridiculous. Because there is no goal. There is no goal that you can achieve where you know that as we sell that to each other. That if you then achieve that and then you did it, then you what?

Let’s look at it. What are those stages in life. And then you have children. Then you got that job, or when you get the salary, or when you have a house, or when you get divorced, or when the children will leave the house, or when you got the diploma, or when you will move to Hawai, or when you will accomplish the Mahakumbhaka, when you accomplish a certain kind of stage of enlightenment and then when you come, you know, it’s all aiming into this concept that you reach some predetermined ideological state, and then you’re OK. And then you got it. And that’s not happening. It never happened. It did not happen in school. It didn’t happen when you grew up because you never grew up. You never stop. Like it wasn’t the case. When they tell you, oh, when you've grown up, then this and that. But then you never stop growing. And then so you never can arrive at that stage and then they tell you if you practice, third series Ashtanga, and then you practice third series Ashtanga then. Well, there’s more to come. And then you practice meditation. Then you practice meditation and you think there, there must be a point, there must be some cooking point of consciousness and then, it will evaporate and then, you know, the water of your life will have become steam and then you will know. But see, all that is not fulfilling is not possible

That’s why you live one day and then you live one day and you live one day. You live one day, hopefully sometimes in retreat of all that stuff. And you live one day again. And then you wake up to your consciousness again. You wake up to your consciousness again. You wake up to your consciousness again until you don’t wake up to your consciousness again, but then you wake up to consciousness again.

And why is that so hard to understand is because we have that very powerful ideology of a finite life, which if you just a little bit with your senses, it’s nothing that you can witness. All you witness is that maybe bodies and people are not present as they were before, but they actually never leave. When my father died, you know, he left his body. But I cannot say that he wasn’t present. I may not experience his physical presence, but I’m very sure that I experience his presence because he is part of my consciousness. And if we understand that in practice, we addressing that part of our reality, that we are that consciousness. So nothing is ever missing. So nothing can ever be gone. And if your consciousness stops, your consciousness, be the least to be concerned with it. So there’s only win-win on all sides all the time. Win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win. Everybody is happy all the time.

But yet we believe technocracy, that we have to, you know, invest everything into a life and lifestyle that is based on some kind of material identity. And in a retreat, maybe you can approach a different experience a little bit. And if you have that different experience, then it’s all good. I mean, as you are a chef, you know, you’re a cook. I know for sure that you have experienced the moment where your cooking was just right and the ingredients were just right. And the time of preparation for it was just right and there was no hurrying for it. And the people who would actually enjoy your cooking then that were just the right kind of awareness to enjoy, a good cooked meal. Nobody suffered for that meal. Nothing was thrown away. And then everybody sit there and there was that sense of, you know, infinity of that state that is just, you feel nourished if it nourished in the act of cooking, of putting everything together. You feel nourished by sharing, you’ve been nourished by being nourished. You want to give back. And everybody goes like, oh, I could die right now. No problem, cause it’s all just very OK. Now that states that is the balanced state, that is the state of yoga.

I never read the book of Eckhart Tolle but I take it what everybody tells me, that is what he’s talking about. You know, this is now, that’s all there is.

Sascha Kaus: I experience it when everybody is sitting down at the table and there is no talking. There is no talking. You just get a little bit off Mmmmmhhhhhh and you have these kind of sighs where people are just chewing on their food. And they’re totally in that moment and there’s nothing to think about. I also have moments where I feel I haven’t done it right. I mean, I didn’t really make that dish on point. I wasn’t at my best. And I always see it like going on the matt, not every practice is the best practice of my life. Yeah. And then one day I might blame it on the teacher. The next day I might blame it on the weather, or maybe I blame it on the food that I had so my practice is not right. But then I try it again and I go again on the matt. I’m able and that’s at least what the practice is teaching me again and again that I can be with that what is in that moment. And I can observe it and accept it. And this is also where I feel in retreat. It creates this kind of space that’s possible for the observance of awareness in that moment where we can just be with why this and there are all these moments in like every retreat that I’ve been on myself and the ones I’ve given an organized. There’s always a moment where something comes up for someone where there is the space that we usually don’t have because we’re always running. You’re always running like the bunny behind the carrot under a stick. We’re always running for something. We’re always trying to get somewhere to achieve something. And we’re just not aware of where we are. And then in a retreat. Then there is this space where things can open up. And we have the time to feel. And those things that have been started somewhere in our body and our mind suddenly find a release. And this is the guru coming up, or the teaching is coming up, whatever it might be. Might it be the beautiful food that’s bringing tears to your eyes or might it be your roommate that’s annoying you? Something’s coming out and learning can happen. And that’s definitely the beauty that…

Petros Haffenrichter: Could be the other way around. It could be the food that is annoying you and your roommate. That is just.

Sascha Kaus: Well, yeah. Could be. Could be the teacher. Could be the location. Yeah. Could be anything. I mean there’s enough triggers in a retreat that can happen. We’ve talked a little bit about these crazy times, at least they seem maybe a little bit more crazy than other times. But you’ve just ended a retreat. Was it your first retreat now after the lockdown?

Petros Haffenrichter: Yeah. Yes. Well, I don’t know. Well, I did retreat, but I taught a retreat like that and where people had to travel to get somewhere. That was the first time. But that takes me one step back because you were asking before. How I how experienced the whole lockdown situation. And that, yes, I enjoyed very much that people got out of their, cages and an open to life again. But on the other hand, I feel that. If you were able to just live a natural life, there actually is no lockdown.

So on no level, I don’t think so because go into the go to the woods. Stay in the woods. I mean, if you live in Alaska in winter, it may not be an option if you live in the Sahara. It may not be an option, but in many moderate places in the world, that’s an option. So everything that we’re experiencing is happening because we are gathering, large entities of people in the same place, the urban, the urbanization of the world.

And we are very many. So that said, is one motive for people, I think, to be in retreat is to also have the power of like-minded support of other beings, like if you are interested in a yoga retreat. And to me, by the way. You know. Well, yoga and surfing, yoga and hiking and yoga and whatever, you know, side activity. So that’s one thing to approach the topic of practice. But. A retreat also should have a sincere basis and sincere basis is that the practice is not just a mere repetition of a certain routine, a retreat should actually take you to a deeper place and not just, contribute to the fun factor of life, which also is, OK, I’m not. But that’s my personal trip. I feel that me personally, if I offer and I share retreat, it’s always Satsang and it’s always a group of like-minded beings coming together in good and virtuous company that is a very auspicious, very, has the potential to bear great spiritual fruits. If we come together and we have other content. It’s fine. But the sincerity of the practitioner is very important and the sincerity of the teacher is also very important, that doesn’t mean that sincerity doesn’t come with a grumpy face. But that was what I actually felt in the last, this retreat and also and everything that I offer that as I offer yoga retreats now in the 20th season. So I’ve taught 20 years of yoga retreats, quite many.

I feel there’s always, you know, joy and laughter and dance and lightness, but there’s also depth and there’s also, you know, questions. And there’s also the space that opens If you have a sincere approach for many people. If everybody’s just on the superficial page, then you know it’s there. It’s what it is. And it’s not bad. But if everybody allows two to inquire to go into internal and to spend time with the main questions of life. I mean, other than: “How do I get a promotion?” I mean, who am I? That is, you know, that could take many lifetimes.

And then you have a group of people who are interested in that kind of, they spend your day with offering your time and your space and your energies, your Pranas to that question or to a dialogue with God that. That inspires me a lot. And this was what I experienced in the past retreat, because I feel that for those people coming to the retreat, nothing much changed.

Those are the people who would, you know, travel to India with me, let's say on to the Khumba Mela, where you have, typhoid and cholera and pest and lepra and malaria and I don't know what. And a Coronavirus would be something minor in comparison to those things. And yet, you go and you make the decision and you travel. You always have those people. And this is what I feel. I have somehow I have the great luck of the great fortune to be in the Satsang, in the presence of such people who dare to live their life, who dare to lockdown. I don't know. You know, they talked about the lockdown and the media said that all the borders were closed, all the borders were closed.

Well, they are. Honestly, the borders were closed for leisure travel. Meaning like you cannot go on vacation. There was no border closed whatsoever for business. I mean, isn't that crazy? So, you know, means that you cannot live your life if it's not contributing to the markets. But you can offer your life and you could potentially die because you cross the border and there is danger in crossing the border because now we have nations again and you know, you have the border and then you have a different virus and a different agenda on the other side. That's a ridiculous thing. So whenever the mainstream media was reporting on borders closed. That's a hoax. It's not true. The reality that's happening in the world is a very different thing that what we experience in media. And it's like that for decades now. Come on. When will we wake up? What is that? You know, just couple years ago, we announced that, you know, we are in the post-factual era, meaning that facts don't matter anymore. And now all of a sudden, like, the mainstream media has all the facts, really.

Sascha Kaus: What are the facts? They're different every day. And there's so many ways of interpretation at the moment.

Petros Haffenrichter: I would really say let's go with reality. Meaning what surrounds you? What are the communities around you? What is the suffering in the communities within you, within you and around you? Do you witness a crass increase of disease, of suffering, or is it really just something that is happening if you read the newspaper and it is a large scale happening in the media, it is not happening really in the world.

You have right now in the world 99,98 % rate of people who got infected and survived the virus. Well, that should be in the media all the time. You should have in the media that from a hundred people being infected of a virus, 80 people don't even notice that they are infected. So, yes, you read that you have those large numbers of people infected, but you don't have sick people. Now, how about, showing that those people sick of a disease are the only ones who actually matter? And of those the ones who are hospitalized, those matter. And do those being hospitalized, do they actually make the health system, as we talked about it, make it collapse? Well, that did. You know, it did. And it did happen locally on different events. But that same thing happened locally on different occasions with other disease situations like influenza.

Three years or four years ago, the same scenario happened in, for instance, Italy or New York. So I'm not saying no, I'm not taking it lightly. And I have to respect everyone who wants to act in a way that's maybe the nice motive is that we want to act in a way that we don't want to endanger someone else.

But just by living your life, you endanger a variety of species. You're OK with eating a pig. Well, then you are endangering life as you are just making your life choices and back to what the picture and the narrative of the media is. And this is something that I don't get. And again, I want to respect everyone making their choices.

But as I heard that, you know, the borders of the Czech Republic were closed. I just travelled to the Czech Czech Republic the day after. And nobody asked me anything. I just crossed the border. And the same happened with Austria. It says the borders are closed. This was the media thing. Borders are locked down, borders closed. You cannot go. What you could do, of course, is you could do anything if you if you're working. If you do it for your job, no problem.

Sascha Kaus: So you say, nobody asked you. So you didn't have to justify why you travelled.

Petros Haffenrichter: In Czech they didn't. And in Austria, I was crossing the border when it was locked down. Locked like lockdown. Absolute lockdown in April, May. I was crossing to Switzerland, to France, to Austria to Czech, just to check. I checked. I checked in to Chez to check if the border closed.

Sascha Kaus: Did you have to make up a story? Did you have to tell them that you were on a business trip?

Petros Haffenrichter: No, I'm just saying… Yeah. They asked me like I was stopped two times and one time I was asked what my business was. And then I said that I'm a meditation teacher and I'm going to a meditation spot. So and that was Satya. I teach meditation and I meditate in nature. And this is what I did. And that's it. I mean, we have to be real we have to overcome this. This is crazy.

But then again, I think that each time has to go through their sets of illusion and ignorance and unawareness and having, a state of fear and potential threat making our life. And then we have to ask again, what is the rule and what is the exception, and this is for the first time that we like over the rare moments in life where we collectively agree that we make laws based upon the exception, not about the rule, that this is strange.

And there we see that we have a very…. That we have created a state of collective awareness that is so easy to be manipulated and that is far off from some kind of self-awareness of who we are. Of what we are, what our responsibilities are as a person. And what our responsibilities are as a society and how we respond to that, how we actually, you know, support each other because like what we're doing right now is not it's not that.

Sascha Kaus: Would we what would be your response to someone saying: “Yes, it's good that you are a person that's aware, who is conscious that his also a person who is taking care of others so you don't put others in risk. I mean, you don't do anything that puts anybody in risk who might be easily affected by the virus. But people saying: “Yes, but so many other people that aren't that conscious, that are aware. So we need a certain kind of rules to protect others.” So this is like what's helping us on a broader societal level to find a way of dealing with this situation? And we cannot everybody cannot be responsible for themselves.

Petros Haffenrichter: OK, that's a long story. So not everybody can be responsible for themselves. That's why we have to install traffic lights. That's why everybody is, using the traffic according to the traffic lights. And that's why there is dead people where everybody was using traffic lights because some people didn't pay attention. Now, how can we deal with that? That somebody is not paying attention. We have to trust people more. We need a different school system that we learn to pay attention, not just fulfil the rules. And then. Okay. Your question started with. I think that if somebody tells me about my responsibility, we should have a dialogue about that. We should have a dialogue over responsibility with each other, not about each other. Number one. We are living in it in a time where it seems to be normal that we talk about other people all the time. You know how Brahmananda Sarasvati said: “Mind your business.” So that's your business, your mind and what you're doing and what your duties are.

OK, so if we want to open that chapter, I think. We want to talk about collective responsibility. OK, fine. That we should do that, but then we have to open the full book. We kind of keep it on some kind of ideology about the threat of a virus. Then if you want to open that book, then we have to talk about the production of weapons and the sales of weapons in the world. Then we have to talk about borders, about national agendas. Then we have to talk about refugees. Then we have to talk about people waiting in concentration camps somewhere outside Europe. And Europe is paying people that, you know, there are other countries to keep them there, that we have to talk about people flying jets over other people and throwing bombs then we have to talk about, you know, millions of people, dying of starvation because they don't have the right food or they don't have access to water. Then we have to talk about all those people including all four-legged people and, you know, more than four-legged people who are dying in those innumerable chambers of horror every day. Then we have to talk about the health system, that is a system for, you know, for that is a big industry that is not supporting health that is promoting disease? We have to talk about it. You want to talk about it? You want to talk about, you know, social responsibility. Then we have to talk about social responsibility and we really have to do that.

But we cannot start with raising the index finger and saying that right now you are endangering someone. Because, for us to talk about other people, if you feel that somebody is doing that, then OK. You know, live your life accordingly to what your set of values are in life and allow other people to be in a way to accept that they have their own duty to do that in their life and trust that they will do it. Because if someone wants to meet someone, despite the fact that we could die, then that's just normal because this is happening every day.

Now, do you think that we are dying more of the virus if we are ignoring the fact that we could die? So we take precautions so we don't hug each other. We wear masks. We are in isolation. Well, that has also deriving matter as an impact to our lives. And those slow triggers in life that are very potent. Never underestimate that. And as a person with a German passport, I don't underestimate the slow triggers of social change. We know very much how crass and how traumatic it can be in society. I think we need dialogue and no dogma and we take responsibility what we are doing and what we're thinking and how we are acting. And as a yoga practitioner, I always work. I am concerned about those things that didn't start now. But you want to have a dialogue. I'm not talking about you, but socially, globally, that we have to talk about all those things. We have to talk about HIV. We have to talk about hunger. We have to talk about sales of weapons. We have to talk about the power of the NATO agenda. We have to talk about the finance system. We have to talk about the pressure of the finance system. We have to talk about Bob. Where do we want to start and stop about it?

I am happy to talk about all of those things, but I refuse to solely raise the finger and say that this now is your responsibility and duty as a human being. But the same moment you know, then you have to, take the alcohol out of the stores. Then you have to take cigarettes out of the stores. Then you have to open up to all different kinds of dialogue about what suggested, the wrong diet is killing more people than the virus potentially could. I think there's almost 30 per cent of the Northern American people are obese. It's not overweight. That's obese. That's one-third obese, meaning that's very large. And I'm not judging them or me for being in such condition. And if it's right and wrong. But do we want to talk about responsibility? Then we have to start on a very deep level and then go step by step and not just kind of like, shout around that now, we want to take precautions about the virus. Take precautions about your health, your physical health, your mental health, about your relationships in the society, what your duties in society are, and then it's infinite. And I don't see that as happening. I just see a lot of know shouting about this one thing. And that, to me is not sufficient. And that just really shows me that we didn't take care of all the other aspects for too long.

Sascha Kaus: So is it something that can also happen in retreat or is it something in general? Do we have to have more of a conversation again with each other?

Petros Haffenrichter: Continuously. I mean continuously we have to talk to one another and learn what it takes to have a good dialogue because what we are doing together now is that we are learning to use technical devices that take us out of our responsibility to properly call and respond in a respectful way with each other. Everybody's talking about each other. As I said, nobody is talking with each other because that would take personal integrity. And you or me willing to bring everything that I have onto the table. Even with the possibility and with the option that I'm totally wrong with everything and that I can learn and then I don't know anything, by the way, that maybe I have to learn again tomorrow. Maybe I have to wake up tomorrow again. Maybe what I knew so far is not what should make it work, should be the whole set of the way that I perceive the world. Maybe I can…. Well, you have to wake up to a different kind of strategy. Maybe I have to change. Maybe I have to stop using this kind of device. Maybe I have to start doing other things. Maybe, the willingness and this is one of the great human options that we can choose, the willingness to learn.

And to be, you know, and to use that potential that we don’t know anything in a way that it could be that something is happening tomorrow and that puts, that discredits completely everything that we knew up today. And it happened a couple of times in human history, it wasn't a case like we didn't know what would happen. You know, as Mr. Oppenheimer said after they threw the atomic bomb at the end of the Second World War in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “We didn't know what it would do. But it changed us forever.”

To the worse or to the good?

Sascha Kaus: What did you just learn from the people that came to your retreat that you just finished?

That we deserve to listen to that voice that is in constant research and wants to be inspired and surprised all the time.

Sascha Kaus: How was the communication among the guests? Where did they come from? Where did they travel from?

Petros Haffenrichter: Well in this retreat, because it was a German retreat it was mainly Germans, of course. Some people from Switzerland, some people from Italy, some people from Greece but speaking German. For some days, I had friends who didn't speak German, so it was English. Um, that's nice because we can kind of like, you know. We are having an international community like that.

Mm-hmm. I would say there's. Okay.

I'm very tempted, like we all are, to make divisions according to how people are dealing with the virus situation. And I think we should refrain from that. We all, again and again, have the same kind of motive in life. Nobody wants to suffer too much. And we all have to. We all feel that some joy is necessary, or it's good that it's there.

I felt, actually, nobody was very really concerned about the virus or about that, we just kind of did what we always do in retreat, we hugged, we massaged, we chanted.

And, um, well. If you die of chanting, then according to the Bhagavad Gita. You are very lucky. Very lucky. I mean, you may laugh and the people go like, oh, my God. But that's you know, that's irresponsible. But what is responsible? What do I do? What do you respond to? What is responsible? What do you respond to?

It's completely, you know, the human right to offer his life or her life to call God. If you die for that. And with that. I don't mind if we die anyway. I don't mind. It's OK. That's what it is. If we go through, pain, suffering and disease, it may not be something that we want to choose. Yet. I must say, I've met my teacher. He was very sick. He's 90 years old and he lives here in nature. And he thinks he had Corona, but I don't know. But, um.

Several times I've met people who are very sick and about to die. And I just, you know, in a nice state, they're just very OK. It's fine. I've met people who you couldn't say that they have any specific real problem in life and they were miserable. So, you know, what does it say? What is it all? What is it all? If it's not your option to consider that you have a choice where you want to lean-to. And that never changed, if you are physically healthy or not. That never changed. You could always lean to a place in which you experience life as full, or you always can lean towards the space where you feel that always something is missing. No matter how much you have.

Sascha Kaus: Do you also see a chance in this situation right now that it. That allows people to wake up to something to bring something new into their life.

Petros Haffenrichter: But yeah, as I said, you know, some time ago here. I see that with people who have practised some kind of. Awareness, practice, meditation, yoga, consciousness, spirituality. All those people, they have an option. But for the rest of society, I feel that, and you can really see that in real-time that is bringing create imbalance and create insecurity and those effects are so obvious how we fall back to something very, you know, the inferior parts of the human options of emotions. Judgment, blame, insecurity intolerance, impatience. I see that is happening on a larger scale. I would like to see it happen. But of course, I also see that those people who have spent time in practice, that they have options. This is why we practice. Right? I mean, that we have options. Even one of my teachers Shymadas would say: “In good times better spent as much time in practice because when shit hits the fan, then you may not be in either, in the mood to practice or be, or the life circumstance will not allow you to.” So what will you draw your inspiration from? If you have no practise in the times that were maybe not so challenging at all?

Sascha Kaus: I always remember that. “When shit hits the fan.” I remember us In the yoga teacher training when you were my mentor, there was this conversation about why do we speak so much about God in the teacher training? Why is it always God? And some people were offended by it. They didn't want to speak about God. And I've been for quite a while, for quite some time in my life. I've somehow turned away from God. I turned away from everything that seemed to be spiritual in a way. And I couldn't really relate to that. And when you were always saying. “Call it whatever you want, but who are you going to turn to when shit hits the fan? If you have something that you can turn to, that's gonna be your saviour.” And that really resonated with me. I'm always having that quote in my head. And it's something that I deeply, deeply felt throughout the last few months because there were definitely moments where I felt like there was no ground beneath my feet. But I also felt that I have something through the practice that was giving me stability that was so deep in a way, and that was allowing me to feel everything that was coming up and just letting it happen and not being afraid, not being scared of what was there. But I had something that I could turn to when somehow shit was hitting the fan.

Petros Haffenrichter: Now, that's good. I'm happy for you.

Sascha Kaus: Thank you. Thank you for bringing that to my life. It is definitely going to stick around for sure. .

With all this kind of discussion about travel and everything? Can retreat's be something where we can come together in smaller groups? Can it be a new form of travel. Can it be something that might have different importance in the future for people to come together, to be in a group, to experience community in a different way than what society has been doing with the ways travel has been implemented in society

Petros Haffenrichter: You know, many, many, many of the cultural evolutions that appeared in the past decades. I would be quite critical about if it's you know, if it's something that is a good thing and has integrity. Such as, how we changed from making a journey to a mere travelling meaning, kind of like, you know, tourism. That’s something that is a strange thing, actually, because it just actually the place that you go to is secondary. It's more the attitude that whatever we can consume at that place is important.

Um, and I don't know where everything goes, and I don't like to forecast how or what will happen because I can't. But I would hope and see the option that content that is closer to some kind of…. that provides the space for introspective and for real change and for planting the right kind of seeds, that you can see them prosper somehow in life that may become more attractive. And I also feel that the path of spirituality will become more attractive because if you look around. What are you going to hold onto, because if it's just adding more to one's format of a life of consumption and consuming and just, just visiting places instead of actually grounding yourself, again and again, that means that it takes your offering that needs your also your affection for your life and the place that you're travelling, that you visit and your commitment? We will feel that if you are committed in life in such a way, then you gain insight and some powers out of that. And that is I think that will be more obvious. And then. Let's move back a little bit to the original and first question, you know what, every retreat is.

So if you have the normal times of being a human being. It comes in different stages. You know, you're a younger person, then you're in your middle age, then you get older and you're a very old person.

And each has its juices somehow and its challenges. And traditionally, a retreat would be that actually you would go and you commit yourself to a deeper and exclusive spiritual practice, which the yoga practices is. It's not a fun thing. To do many times, to learn about yourself and to learn about your depth and your illusions. So to remember that actually, that is something if you do that, you draw great strength out of. And I for my side, I'd like to participate and to provide those options.

It always comes also with joy and with some singing and with, you know, meeting great people. But that should be there somehow, that if you go there, then you actually start making different life choices. So, it's not yoga vacation situations that I'm interested in. And I think that kind of attitude in the world right now for good is a stage.

Can we, keep up for 8 billion people, a format of, first-world consumption and travelling. And anything that is attached to that kind of lifestyle? I don't think so.

So I feel that we're going through a great change and that it's good. And wherever that will lead us, it may take a couple of generations. We will learn what we're dealing with on planet Earth a little better. But I think also that it will come through suffering. It will come through going through actually the necessity to change.

Yeah, and that's OK, that's fine. And yoga retreats. You know, we'll be around because yoga will be around anyways. It may be not, you know, that kind of lifestyle format that we know. But that you move away from society and spend time in deep practice. That will always be there. For those interested in that. But that's only a few. We always have to also be honest. That's not everybody's interested in that. Some people are. And they're not the better people. It's just they're you know, they're karmas, are ripe in that sense to do that. And riper karma also is not in a hierarchical way better than an unripe, it is where we are.

Sascha Kaus: I want to talk about two different places. I want to talk about Greece and Crete and the place where you host your retreats. And you said you are also like you're running that place. And I would like to talk about India, where you take people. What's your relation to those two places?

Petros Haffenrichter: I grew up in Crete. My mother is from Crete and I love the place. And I think that's the main ingredient. Triopetra, you know, there's places in the world that serve energetically. They serve the practice quite well. And in that place, in that area for hundreds of years, people would go into solitude like eremites and ascetics they would go and retreat in that place. And there's like caves in the mountains where people stay in solitude. I was offering retreats in a different part of the island but I myself would always go, to retreat to nature there. So I would go to the beach and just hang out there for a month.

So after some time, I understood that it's a good idea to teach where I feel my practice is the strongest. And so this is why I went there and this is why I started the whole thing. And that’s Triopetra. And so people are coming there for many years now. And I think it's the 17th season that I'm there. So I'm very happy that I can share that place and people, come back. That's good. That's a good sign. They have been coming back. So over 70 per cent of the people joining the retreats are, repeaters. So that's a very important sign that it works.

And then, of course, India is you know, nothing is random. And that the place in the world that held up the Dharmic teachings that were present everywhere. If you look into ancient Egypt, if you look into ancient Greece, if you look into Babilonia, Persia the Zorastians, Africa, the Americas, you will see that that communion with nature as divine, that happened everywhere. Now, India kept the integrity of the teachings of life over thousands of years. And I don't think that it's random and the yoga that we know is actually coming from that place. So paying respects to that place is very important.

And also, it's an infinite source of inspiration. So when we retreat and we go on pilgrimage in India, I mean, that's the thing. You may say, well, maybe the future brings that you don't fly around that much. And I would totally support that. But I would you know, I would travel to India by boat and by train. I would maybe start cycling there. I don't know. I think it's worth it. Why? Because what you experience in India when it comes to yoga and to the potential of yogic teaching is unique. You only find it there. And what we experience in the world very much is a form of yogic interpretation through the lens or through the filters of, well North American marketing systems.

And because we grew up with them, we would respond to them. We feel they are attractive. But it's very good if you actually if you are a real seeker. And what is that? Everybody is a real seeker, even seek some kind of truth in what you do. Then that place is just very potent. Every time, actually, that I am that I'm about to travel to India and I have travelled there many times in my life. I think, like in the last couple of times, I was like: “Really, do I want to do that again? Do I want to go there again?” Like all of that. You know, there's many people and the dirt. And, you know, and the long travelling. I don't really enjoy it that much as I did when I was younger to say, you know, that lot of travelling. I'm travelling my whole life. But then I'm back in India. And then I know why I'm there.

Sascha Kaus: Yeah, I get it. The moment you get off the plane, it's very, very special. And it's like a homecoming.

Petros Haffenrichter: And there's no other place that's kept Dharma alive. So where are you going to do a pilgrimage to? You know, it's those teachings. Even if yoga nowadays in modern India is made and made the site track through the modern popular Western yoga systems and got back to India and the young Indians they like it because it's a cool thing.

But I think tradition prevailed for specific reasons in that area. And we can just call ourselves very, very lucky that we can actually draw the nectar from those who kept those systems and those principles alive.

Sascha Kaus: Do you plan on bringing people again to India?

Petros Haffenrichter: I don't make those men those many plants these days. If we learn one thing is that, you know, long term plans. Well, we don't know. That's for good. Let's see what's happening. I'm sure that I will go back to India at some point, but I'm not making any plans…. The plan was to go back to Kumbha Mela in Haridwar next year in 2021? But I don't know, let's see.

Petros Haffenrichter: So that's still not decided. It's still possible that you do that trip.

Petros Haffenrichter: It's still possible to do it. But, you know, I don't know if we are living through the craze of what we're living through these days, then it may not be possible. People also will become more and more scared through, the conditioning that we draw out of, living in our cell phones and our computers and we draw a picture of the world, that is not what it is. But we'll see.

Sascha Kaus: When you say people are getting more and more scared. What are the plans for Triopetra? You as a retreat host running a retreat company, do you feel any kind of effects? I mean, you also said that there's a lot of dedicated people and it seems like nothing has changed for those people that are dedicated to the practice and that come. But do you feel it in any way that it has an effect on your business?

Petros Haffenrichter: Well, we had to cancel 20 retreats. That's quite an effect. I would say that, of course, and that has many derivatives on what it does. Many effects, many waves on many layers. As many people are locals living of the retreats, so they, they have their income with the people coming to the retreat and than there is no income. Many of restaurants or pensions and places around. Also, of course, for me, as I also run yoga studios or other schools, you know, it has an effect for the teachers. They don't have income. It has an effect on it's it's multilayered somewhat.

Sascha Kaus: Talking about the time when the lockdown was more effective. But now that people are again able to travel, that they are allowed to travel. Do you feel that there is more demand or a need is there a kind of response that you get from people that they really wanted to come now and experience that?

Petros Haffenrichter: Well, you know, I think the yogis are quite stable. But still, there's I mean, again, there's an overall atmosphere of fear. And people are afraid. So, you know, and then if you read in the newspaper every day, there's quite a propaganda happening that the borders are closed. Don't travel, stay at home. I mean, it says it on the telephone: Stay at home, stay at home, don't travel, social distance, keep your distance, stay safe. You know all that. But it does something. You hear that four a week. That's one thing. If you hear it for six months, I mean, that's crazy. And if people are being beaten back into their houses, not in Germany maybe, but in many places in the world, people are afraid. People are so afraid. And, you know, we're not dealing with Ebola, but people are afraid, like they are, because they're listening to the main influence and the main influence as that. Be afraid. Stay at home.

But OK. Most of the people that that that I that are regular practitioners or retreat participants. Again, they decided to come to a Kumbha Mela in India, where you have by far more dangerous than the COVID virus. That's a life decision. How do you want to live your life? What do you want to do? Stay at home and live your life through the digital version of life. By the way, that stimulates the dopamine perfectly. No problem. If you don't have any other experience, that may be sufficient. If you grew up with a computer as your main stimulus, you may not want anything else because anything else is strange. Smells. Things like that. This is the new normal that we are creating. And it's not a conspiracy theory. This is what's happening in real-time. We're seeing it.

You know that, that in Germany, kids between 12 like guys between 12 and 18, 19, they spent 97 per cent of their free time on social media. That's the main stimulus. They don't even know how to touch another person or how to be touched. This is why young people don't have sex anymore. Well, you know, we must see what this is doing. I'm not very much interested in all that, but there will be people who will want to live their lives like that. And that's also OK. And I don't need to change their minds about it. The problem will be that those are the people who will make the laws around by life as well. So we'll see how that goes.

Well, the numbers have dropped. OK, so lots. You know, maybe I would say 60 per cent less people booking retreats right now. But that's also good for something. Like I'm looking for a place, for instance, that is that is more in Central Europe or in the Alps, more close to where people can travel by train. They don't have to fly. So I actually found a place in nature and I'm on it to realize that somehow. Until next year or for next year, I may be able to offer retreats that are based in Germany on more retreats in Germany. Although right now I hang out in the Mediterranean and somehow, you know, part of my genes is Mediterranean. And I like it very much. I like the colour and I like the air. I don't know. For some people, it's OK.

When I saw the advice of my telephone, where it said, on my telephone: Stay at home!

Sascha Kaus: Where did you see it on your phone?.

Petros Haffenrichter: If you were a client of a specific telephone company, it said it instead of the name of the company. It said it on the telephone. It said: Stay at home!

Sascha Kaus: Yeah? I haven't seen them. It's really strange.

Petros Haffenrichter: You are a client of a different company and attached to other contributors to your reality. So when they said: Stay at home! I felt immediately that I have to go home, I have to go to Greece. I want to say, if I would have to choose a place where to stay, during you know, you can't move. I'd like to stay in nature or I'd like to stay at least somewhere where I have the sea. I like the sea I must say, there are some personal preferences still kicking in.

Sascha Kaus: Absolutely. Absolutely. I feel it. I feel the same. I mean, I was locked away in away. I was not able to go to my home, in a sense. Ibiza or quite a few months and I had a lot of positive experiences through this. So I really felt the hospitality of friends. And it was beautiful to reconnect with friends that gave me shelter and spend time with family and be there. So that was really something that I enjoyed a lot. And it opened up a lot of new doors and also closed a few old ones that needed to be closed. But I totally have to say, yes, being here back in Ibiza at the moment and seeing the ocean being in nature, it's such a different thing. I remember the first few days when the lockdown was pretty intense I was in Berlin and I've been living in Berlin for quite a while and in that moment, there was a kind of slight little thought about: Should I go back? Because it was so nice to go running in the morning through the empty city and there were no people at all. So like, the city felt totally different.

Petros Haffenrichter: Didn't we all love it? Those empty cities?

Sascha Kaus: It was amazing. No tourists. Nothing. I loved it. But then as soon as it started to go back to be more busy, I mean, there were still no tourists. But as soon as it started to go back to being quite busy, I felt like, no, no, no, no. I want to go back to nature. I want to go back into nature. Absolutely.

So what would you recommend others organizing and doing retreats at the moment? What do you feel, does it need right now?

Petros Haffenrichter: Well, nothing has changed. It's the same like to lean away from illusion is a plan for life. And you may be successful one per cent. And that's a success story already. And whoever can be honest about that and contributes to that one per cent. I think that's a good idea. And besides that, be kind!

Sascha Kaus: Besides looking for places more in Central Europe and in Germany. Did you do any other changes to your business? Did you do anything else in the way you approach your business at the moment?

Petros Haffenrichter: Well, I, unfortunately, had to let go of my employees because there were no retreats happening. Maybe, maybe we all feel that what works through your own personal integrity will always work, and whatever is an add on, you know, in critical times will fall off with everything. Is it your practice, is it your lifestyle? So if everything falls off, then you didn't have a life. Just imagine that, like people who were in lockdown and everything fell off because they. I don't know. Then what did you have before? Because the main life is happening within you, as you, that unfolds into the world, that can happen, in one room. Very much. But if you cannot be alone with yourself, then you are trying to get to external places to find inspiration. That's OK. That's fine. Fair enough. But, you know, whatever we experience and what we practice and what we share should be based on some kind of interest for the divine nature of life and growing out of that. And if that is the case then you see that unfolding everywhere.

So I don't have really a recommendation. I feel that there is people who are like have it easier to express that and to share it and other people have their way. But everybody's dancing through this life somehow. And we all will end up exactly with the right circumstance and people and places that we deserve through our own practice and our practice will make it available.

So my recommendation to everyone is: Keep up the practice and the practice is manifold. It is what you know, it starts how you are structuring the content of your mind, where you feel that you are freeing yourself from an attachment to the ego and where you’re able to offer where you are in service. Where you can overcome those degrees that create separation, if you do that every day somehow, then you don’t actually need my advice for anything. But we can share what our experience in it is as we do.

Sascha Kaus: I really felt that because of the practice over the last years, I’ve been definitely able to let go of a lot of things, of a lot of attachments in many different forms and emotionally, physically, materialistically? And I really felt during those last weeks that it helped me a lot, that there was not much that I could lose anymore. So and that gave me a space of freedom and I was able to be quite calm about everything that was just in front of me. And I was able to just look at the things that were in front of me. And I feel that’s partly due to the practice. It’s really something that I’ve been able to establish over a long period of time now. And it was also a good reminder for everything that I might have neglected in terms of the practice. Also, a good reminder that maybe at some points I feel like I’m already there. So I don’t need to practice. But then I was seeing how at least there was still something left, there is something really, really deep inside of me that I could connect to the practice. I felt, OK, this is what it has given me. This is what it has enabled me. These are all the layers that are already taken away. Observing friends and people around me that we’re dealing with certain fears. I feel like, OK, maybe there is something that I have already worked through and not being in any kind of way better are superior or whatever, but being more free of things that I just don’t need any more in my life. And that I can let go and being more open to whatever is, whatever wants to arise right now. And just being able to embrace that with open arms and welcome it into my life. And I’m really grateful for that.

Petros Haffenrichter: That’s the way it should be. Hopefully, a little.

Sascha Kaus: What was the biggest surprise that you had in the last few months?

Petros Haffenrichter: Well, I was not really a surprise, but it was more an affirmation of what I thought could be.. is that the digital format of life is not sufficient. Far, by far, not sufficient. It’s actually nothing. It’s a hoax. It’s not real. It’s just mere intellectual stimulation. We have enough of that. And how easy I run out of energy on a digital level? While in real life, I could go for days. Digitally, I felt like I’ve lost all my blood in our hour.

Sascha Kaus: Yeah, I there’s this there’s certainly a few positive things about the digital form where we can connect. And in many ways, I am super grateful that we are able to connect here over time and space and time. But I am definitely looking forward to be able to give you a hug any time soon.

Petros Haffenrichter: Yes.

Sascha Kaus: To connect in the real world and to make that happen again. And it just doesn’t take away from that. Also, really, I mean, we see each other here now. People will be listening to the podcast, but we see each other now. And that’s definitely the beauty of this kind of format or at least one benefit of the digital world. But it also doesn’t come up with being in the presence of another being in one room and feeling the energy between each other and really sitting together and having a conversation. So I’m really, really looking forward to have more of that conversation with you in the physical realm in a shared space any time soon.

Petros Haffenrichter: I hope so.

Sascha Kaus: Before I close this year, is there anything that you would like to add that you would like to bring out to the world?

Petros Haffenrichter: No. Be kind. Don’t eat other beings. Life is happening. Every time, every day, every hour, every minute, every second in present tense. And it’s not conceptual and you can’t control it. But you can directed. And the direction happens through devotion. And through humility. And then, and then the rest is. Enjoy it a little bit. Don’t demand too much. Little things, you know. That’s it.

Sascha Kaus: Thank you so much, Petros. It was beautiful to have you.

 
 
Sascha Kaus http://www.saschakaus.com
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EPISODE 004 | PETROS HAFFENRICHTER - WHAT IS RETREAT?