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Finders
Keepers |
By
Kavita Chhibber |
Robert
Arnett’s spiritual connections with India
and its people.
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A transforming
spiritual experience at a yoga meditation
workshop led Robert Arnett to his passion
— India. His journeys to the many
villages and cities of India resulted
in the magnificently created, award
winning book India Unveiled that captures
India’s spiritual, cultural and
historical essence with breath taking
pictures and a picture perfect text!
In October Arnett released Finders Keepers?,
the first in what he says is a series
of illustrated children’s books.
It’s based on a true incident
that moved Arnett profoundly, when a
little boy, Gopal, found a wallet Arnett
accidentally dropped while shopping.
It contained enough money for Gopal
to be set for quite some time, but he
not only returned the wallet, he refused
a reward.
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Arnett
skillfully interlaces glimpses of India
and Indian life while narrating the incident,
and touches on the various religious,
cultural and social aspects of India that
make the country so unique. Subtly, in
simple words, Arnett weaves a tale that
not only leads the reader to stop and
savor the beauty of India, its warmth,
and hospitality, but to reflect on how
the path you choose in life determines
not just how you evolve as a person, but
also how it affects the people and the
world around you.
Robert Arnett spoke in
an exclusive interview with Little India
about his journey, his deep spiritual
connection with India and its people,
and why his books are such a labor of
love.
Let’s start
at the beginning. Tell me about growing
up in the South?
I think when I was in
the 8th grade in high school my mother
had a doctor’s appointment in Atlanta.
I came with her and since the doctor’s
office was across from the High Museum
of Art, I walked and still remember how
disappointed I was that all the art was
European and not from other parts of the
world. My older brother Bill had a profound
influence on me. He came home one day
talking about the greatness of the teachings
of the Buddha and this was when he was
a sophomore in high school. I thought
he had lost his mind, but he was always
ahead of his times as well. I grew up
in an era when there was tremendous discrimination
against Jews and more so against the southern
Jews. My brother, who was in the honors
society, didn’t get admission to
a northwestern university because the
Jewish quota was filled and they felt
that students from the South didn’t
do as well as students from other parts
of the country. When I grew up there was
much more discrimination against Jews
in the South than there is against other
ethnic groups today in America, so I can
certainly understand what it feels like
living in America today, not being from
the mainstream. |
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You
had a spiritual experience when you were
invited to the Detroit Arts Institute
for a yoga workshop. How did that change
your life?
During meditation
at the institute, I saw a glimpse of my
soul which changed my life. I knew what
I was missing in my life was not being
taught in the western world. All of us
are children of the one creator, that
there is something within all of us that
is the unifying force regardless of our
religion, ethnicity, creed, color, race
or anything else. I could never understand
why religions tended to divide rather
than unite and here was an orientation
to religion that was uniting the whole
world.
This was 1969, but I continued from 1969
to late 70s in business with my brother
and traveled around the country to antique
shows setting up art exhibits, then went
into holistic health and understood that
behind every physical disease are thoughts
and emotions that are creating it. I enjoyed
that, but continued to feel very compelled
to go to India and finally went for the
first time in 1988.
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What was your first
impression of India?
That I have come home.
I went to Mumbai and stayed with this wonderful
family whose sister I knew in Atlanta. They
took me to a lot of temples and ashrams,
something they did typically on their weekends,
giving me a wonderfully spiritual introduction
into Indian culture. Without them I would
have been lost. I remember the night that
I left on my own to see the Ajanta caves
without them. It seemed the darkest night
of my life to go on my own, alone without
the security of their warmth. It took a
lot of courage to venture out, but I will
always remember this kind man on the train
who spoke English and saw I did not know
where to go and what to do and helped me
out. I had read all these horror stories
in guidebooks and western travelers had
told me others, but all I saw was this incredible
hospitality in India.
I only stayed in hotels
for a handful of days, because when the
Indians saw that I had a sincere interest
in the culture I was invited to stay with
so many people at their homes that even
though I practice yoga, I still haven’t
mastered manifesting the ability to be in
two places at one time! Southern hospitality
is well known, but the Indian hospitality
made the southern American hospitality pale
into nothing.
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At the
end of the many trips you have made, what
were the lessons learnt?
I learnt
to live in the here and the now for the
first time in my life. I tended to be
one who had to be in control of the situation
and spent most of my life in the past
and future and not in the present. In
India to go anywhere you couldn’t
buy a round trip ticket and you had to
deal with the return on your return, so
it was a big change to live for the here
and the now and deal with circumstances
as they arose, rather than having to have
everything orchestrated and it was an
amazing thing. Spiritually I learnt that
time is an artificial separation from
the one indivisible creator and God can
only be found in the present tense, in
the present moment and here I was searching
for God, but not living in the present
moment, and that it would be impossible
to unite with the force when I am not
even in the moment where the force can
be experienced.
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You met Mother Teresa.
What was that like?
I had gone to her home
and was told she would be attending the
evening prayers. I went, arrived late. The
room was dark and 20-30 nuns were kneeling
there, but I sensed that she wasn’t
there. I didn’t see anyone that was
of her physical description so I sat and
joined the nuns in prayer.
Twenty minutes later I
felt a powerful magnetic force go through
my heart and intuitively I said, ah mother
Teresa has arrived and there she was, this
frail looking woman not too far from her
physical death who gave her blessing and
feeling the powerful spiritual vibrations
I thought all she had to do was come into
someone’s presence and they were spiritually
uplifted. It was an unforgettable moment.
India has changed
considerably today from the time you went
in 1988. Does the materialism and industrialization
worry you?
I particularly see
the differences in the major cities and
how much more westernized the people are
becoming, especially the younger generation.
They are far more materialistic today than
even the American youth here in our country
and that was disturbing since I have idolized
the ancient values of sanatan dharma and
thought it was coming to an end. There is
a little village of 200 people near the
Bangladesh border and there was a little
boy, the only one who spoke English. I called
him young Gopal and wrote about him in India
Unveiled.
When I went back
to the same village, as soon as I entered,
some of the elders who knew how much I adored
the little boy couldn’t wait to tell
me that young Gopal had won the twist contest
in the elementary school! But then I visited
the villages of Tirumala and Tirupati and
sanatan dharma is ingrained so deeply in
the psyche of people, particularly in rural
areas, that I have no doubt that while due
to influence of industrialization from the
west, the pendulum has swung too far, once
it swings back to the middle, India is going
to be a far stronger and greater country
as a result.
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India
Unveiled has won many awards and was a
labor of love but it almost became love’s
labor lost. Tell me about that.
I wanted
to get it published in conjunction with
India’s 50 years of independence
and couldn’t get a publisher. It
came to the point where I realized that
I had to either self publish it or it
was not going to get published. It is
very expensive to get a book of this kind
published; with all of the color photographs,
and then I knew nothing about publishing.
I went to my mother, borrowed all her
savings to publish this book. The first
month we sold books to all our friends,
which paid the interest to the bank, but
in the second month I didn’t know
who or how to sell the books and I went
into full blown clinical depression, because
I did not know how I was going to redeem
my mother’s collateral.
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The third month however
was amazing. Publishing this book has done
more to teach me about spirituality than
all the yoga lessons I could ever study
in my entire life. It put me in the act
of doing and realizing that God is the doer
and nothing is in my hands. All I did was
pray and the books start selling. You may
say, oh come on now that sounds kind of
spacey, but the fact is such wonderful things
started happening. The phone started ringing
for invitations to speak, the books started
selling and I realized I had nothing to
worry about as long as I did my part. And
though I worked so hard to make this a success,
the experience was like jumping over a cliff
and thinking you are going to land on the
rocks, but you find instead landing on safe
secure ground, because a higher power intervened.
And after that happens several times you
develop faith. Now the book is in its third
printing and I just threw away 1,900 rejection
slips I received denying my request to publish
this book. I believe that if you persist
long enough and hard enough, be patient
and have faith it will be impossible to
fail. But things will happen on God’s
timetable not yours.
Tell me about
the latest book, Finders Keepers?
Finders Keepers?
is based on my experience with the little
boy Gopal, who found my billfold and returned
it and would not take money as reward. He
couldn’t understand why I would want
to give him money for returning something
that was mine to begin with. It came out
in mid October and has been very well received.
I love speaking directly to the youth, for
their minds are so flexible and always seeking
the truth. But the beauty is that we know
truth when we hear it.
Tell me about the
High school library project as well the
Author on Campus Series.
The high school library project came about
as a result of the non profit Indian American
Educational Foundation in Seattle Washington,
which loves India Unveiled and has taken
upon them to put it in as many high schools
as possible, which is the first phase, and
in later phases in all public libraries,
middle schools and hopefully elementary
schools ….
I get such touching emails and letters from
people who have read these books in libraries
that it has become my mission to make it
accessible to as many libraries across America
as possible. I just got a very nice letter
from a lady who saw a slide presentation
I made in Nashville. She wrote to let me
know how much she appreciated it and added
that we Indians come to America in droves
to chase the American dream and forget the
simple values with which we were raised.
I think what really impacts the students
when I tour campuses is the fact that they
see someone in the mainstream who in spite
of having achieved material and professional
success went beyond that to seek something
more to enrich his life and they too want
to stop and see what they can learn from
other cultures of the world.
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You
have spoken before big corporations. What
attracts them to your presentations?
Yes, I have
spoken before big corporations like Coca
Cola, G.E., and Delta. I think these organizations
see the advantage of getting their employees
to look beyond the traditional yet culturally
confining upbringing in a multicultural
business world, and how it is to their
benefit to understand the mind and motivation
of people in other parts of the world.
Spirituality may be the last thing on
the mind of Corporate America, but as
my favorite saying goes: it doesn’t
matter how you get in heaven, once you
get there, you get to stay. Similarly
it doesn’t matter what their motivation
is, but I see these corporations and their
staff get exposed to the wonderful principles
of eastern thinking, and hopefully it
will lead to more harmony in diversity
and more dynamic thinking within the corporation.
It’s a global world and we need
to understand other cultures; only then
can peace prevail.
That is
even more of a requirement especially
after September 11 and the shadows of
war that loom on the horizon.
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