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Comparison of India and Australia

The Australian outback presents a vast, unpopulated landscape distinct from settled farmlands. It is not a sandy desert but open scrubland with immense distances and little sign of civilization. Travel there is unstructured, allowing one to stop freely and experience peaceful campfires. The historical and cultural situation of the Aboriginal people is complex, marked by cultural destruction and a loss of self-esteem following European settlement. There are noted linguistic similarities with Indian languages, suggesting an ancient connection. Government policies of forcibly removing Aboriginal children created a lasting social gap, leaving many caught between two worlds.

"You can see a long way and you don't see anything."

"I'm not really accepted in the Western culture because I'm black... you talk like a white fella."

Filming location: Strilky, Czech Republic

Very good. I think he can tell us more about your country, about the land you are entering. That will be very good, yes? I was on the last desert trip we took. There were only twenty or thirty people; it wasn't a big crowd. Most people were in cars, with one or two campervans. There is a really big difference between the country there and the country here. Everywhere you go here, it is all farmland, or there is a village just down the road. It has been populated for a long time; all the buildings are old. But if you go out into the outback of Australia, there is no sign of civilization at all. Before I went, I thought it was a desert like the sands of Arabia. But it is actually not really like that. There are a lot of scrub trees, little trees like bushes. You can see a long way and you don't see anything. A friend of mine drove from the east coast to the west coast of Australia, and it took him two days without sleeping. He just drove for forty-eight hours. So it is a long way from anywhere. Most of the time, you are just on a straight road and you don't see much. It does rain sometimes there, every few years. And there are salt lakes there too, which I hadn't realized. They are not huge, but they are very pretty. The army had bases out there. When we were with Swāmījī, we accidentally drove onto an army testing ground, and we had the army descend upon us. They actually refused to let us go, even just to sleep over a fence. It was just a small area which would have been really great for us to camp. I think they have rocket testing ranges and things like that; they did have it at one stage anyway. Yes, because it is sort of in the middle of nowhere. You can't hurt anybody. They can drop bombs and do whatever they like there. So when we drove with Swāmījī, we didn't see that many people. We could just sort of stop on the side of the road, stop wherever we wanted to. There were no camping grounds or anything really organized. You just look for some place that has a bit of space, not a lot of fences. And we didn't see a lot of wildlife, kangaroos and things. There are some, but they usually keep their distance. The thing for us, when we were traveling with Swāmījī, was just so great. In the evening we could stop, light a fire, and sit around the campfire. It was a peaceful time. When we were driving, we were somehow busy, but in the evenings, and sometimes when we'd stop for a day... I'm part of Australia, but he saw a picture of Swāmījī and said, "Oh, he looks like Jesus. I must go and see him." He came with a swag, which is sort of a blanket, a mattress they sleep on. He lived in Tasmania, quite a simple, open-hearted soul. And that bhakta who died, actually, he made him an honorary member of his tribe. He was so honest and sincere, and the bhakta who died in Tasmania was so happy that he was made an honorable member of their tribe. The Aboriginals in Australia are a sort of complex situation. Before the white man came, they had tribes right throughout Australia, all fairly small tribes, I think. And now it is only really in the middle of Australia, where nobody really wants anything, that they have a bit more freedom to exist. But their culture was destroyed. They don't have any real self-esteem. You know, from India, India here, India we are, from there till Australia, all is from India. Some of the languages are quite similar. Some people, I mean, I can't understand Hindi, but I have heard that if somebody comes from India, they can understand some of the things the Aboriginals are saying. Some of the words they use are from India, and the Indians understand them. So the language base is the same there. That's a proof of that. Then we have to go by aeroplane, and then get down, and then it is better quickly. Now, of course, he flies a plane quickly. I think Indian culture, actually, because you have got Bali, which is a bit north of Australia. It is Hindu, and the whole, I think all of that was once a part of India. The Indian culture is actually strong there because through Bali, which is to the north of Australia, and it was all part of India many, many... but now this, but we have many people went there, it's very... Otherwise, it was not this. It was others, many other people, and there was mostly all of India, yes, the whole. There was, but after then, there were people who were not good, and so they put it on the other side. And then, what could they do? There were so many, many problems. It was. But then they come, good these people, and now they are making everything very good, and this and that, everything, and they are now trying to help them and trying to fix it all. Yes? Yeah, it was a penal colony originally in Australia. And so they were the sort of people who settled Australia. They did do a lot of damage with the Aboriginals, but you do see now that more and more of them are establishing themselves in our society. It's not so long ago, like it's only two hundred years ago, only a few generations. We had the problem there too, that the government decided to take children from the Aboriginals and educate them in the way of the West. They'd give them to Western families. I was talking to one of them that I met in Dungog. He'd been taken from his family forcibly and for no particular reason, except they decided they needed more children to adopt to other families and the white families. So he'd grown up as a westerner in our sort of culture. I said to him that was a lot of trouble then, but surely now he had the ability to communicate between the European culture and the Aboriginal culture. And he said, "No, it's not like that, actually. I'm not really accepted in the Western culture because I'm black." And if he visits his Aboriginal parents, they say, "Oh, you talk like a white fella," and they don't really accept him there either. There is still quite a large gap. And I've heard it said that if a North Korean tries to escape and settle in South Korea, they find it really, really difficult because the way of life is just so different. And that's actually even more within the same generation. They're not even that far apart, and so it's much more difficult. Thank you.

This text is transcribed and grammar corrected by AI. If in doubt what was actually said in the recording, use the transcript to double click the desired cue. This will position the recording in most cases just before the sentence is uttered.

The text contains hyperlinks in bold to three authoritative books on yoga, written by humans, to clarify the context of the lecture:

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