Ep. 56 – Ancestors

Living with Reality with Dr. Robert Svoboda

Dr. Robert Svoboda explores the Vedic perspective on ancestors, detailing how they influence the living through genetics, epigenetics, and s

Key takeaways

• Ancestral influence is most potent within the first three generations of a bloodline.
• The concept of 'Rana' (debt) includes a specific obligation to ancestors known as Pitru-rana.

Main topics

• Vedic Ancestry
• Genetics and Epigenetics

Notable quotes

The ancestors are not in the past. The ancestors are with us in the and are what are creating the conditions in which our descendants... are going to be living.

Conclusion

Honoring one's ancestors is presented as a vital responsibility that f

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) On Sunday, October 4th, three of the most influential voices in meditation will come together in person in New York City and online for a special event benefiting New York Insight Meditation Center. Join 10 % Happier host and best-selling author Dan Harris and renowned meditation teachers Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein for a rare live conversation about how meditation and Buddhist wisdom can help us navigate anxiety, uncertainty, polarization, and rapid change while staying connected to joy, compassion, and one another. Attend in person at Symphony Space or participate live online. Tickets are free for those under 30 years old. Reserve your spot today at nyimc.org. That's N-Y- IMC.org. Speaker 2 (1:13) Welcome to Living With Reality, a podcast featuring archived teachings and modern conversations with Dr. Robert Svoboda, brought to you by the Be Here Now Network. Living With Reality explores Ayurveda and other wisdom traditions of India, which Dr. Svoboda has been studying for nearly 50 years. For more information, please visit BeHereNowNetwork.com slash Dr. Svoboda. That's D-R-S-V-O-B-O-D-A. Speaker 2 (1:48) Hello and welcome to Living With Reality. On this episode, Dr. Svoboda talks about the ancestors, what you need to understand about them from the Vedic perspective and how to honor them. And this is the season for doing that. So it's the perfect time to be listening to him share about the ancestors. Before we jump into the episode, I would like to recommend joining the Satsanga, which is Dr. Svoboda's membership group on Ghost. The address to find that is satsanga.ghost.io. And for $10 a month or $99 a year, you can be part of a community that is talking about the Vedic sciences in live Q &As with Dr. Subbata every month. And he is publishing two essays and sometimes more a month. There's also bonus content that is put up regularly, and there's several courses up there now. And I'm sure we'll have a few surprises up our sleeve over the coming months. So go to satsanga.ghost.io to join us there. And now, without further ado, here is the episode. Speaker 3 (3:00) On this episode of the podcast, I'm going to be talking about ancestors and our relationship to them. Speaker 3 (3:09) For most modern people there is no relationship with ancestors other than for those people who've pursued genealogy as a hobby. All too often grief is a very private affair and once you're dead you're simply gone. In traditional cultures, however, the ancestors are not really gone. They're certainly not passive. They actively remain participants in the lives of their descendants. They can help. They can also hinder. Indian tradition has a very precise, rather technical, and practically applicable Speaker 3 (3:49) practically applicable understanding of who the ancestors are, where they are, what they need, and what happens when they're ignored. I've been aware of my ancestors since childhood. I became more aware of ancestors in general after I joined the Pocot tribe in Kenya. And in the ensuing years, particularly after living in India and working with Vimalananda, I have been paying a lot more attention to ancestors and observing the ancestral patterns in the lives of people that I've interacted with, been related to, and worked with. Speaker 3 (4:29) It is, of course, the case that many people do not believe that it is possible for intelligences to remain intact after death. But even if you don't believe that it's possible for an ancestor to be contactable, As an ancestor, our ancestors absolutely influence us very strongly, and for some people, overwhelmingly strongly. They do this via our genetics, of course, via the genes and chromosomes that we inherit from them. Also by our epigenetics, by which genes are turned on or turned off according to the environment in which we find ourselves. Speaker 3 (5:18) in particular by whoever raises us. So when we think of ancestors, we have to think of blood ancestors who are influencing particularly by genetics and epigenetics, but also by who actually is controlling our upbringing and childhood. In infancy and in early childhood, in infancy, of course, before children are verbal at all, they are picking up things still. They're learning through emotional bonding. They're learning through learning how to move and how people either resist or impede their movements. And as they get older, they're still strongly connected to the Russas of the emotions as they attempt to find ways to understand and interact with their environments. And they are imitating, much of the time, what's going on right around them. So, we can think, if we want to, of ancestral influences as being completely internalized. Whereas most cultures, particularly in the past, believed that they were substantially externalized. And some cultures believed they were completely or wholly externalized. Both influences are there. There are all of the influences that you have accumulated genetically and according to your early childhood upbringing. But my experience is that there are also ancestors who are existing, not necessarily as in the way that we might think of a ghost existing, but who their influence continues to exist and continues to influence us. So the word for ancestor in India is the Pitru. Pitru comes from the Proto-Indo-European root pater, which means father. So father is definitely, it's the same root. This does not mean that the mothers have been ignored, but traditionally in India, the lineage is passed down via the father. And so they're spoken of as Pitrus. But when you work with your ancestors, you work with both your father's line and your mother's line. Speaker 3 (7:54) The most important level of ancestors is the first three generations because they have the greatest influence on you. As you get older, As you get further along, the influence of the ancestors becomes significantly less. And after seven generations, it's effectively negligible. It's very similar in the context of thoroughbred racehorses. If you have an