HealthyGamerGG - An Honest Conversation w/ Sadhguru

Episode Date: October 11, 2025

Dr. K sits down with Sadhguru for a rare meeting between science and spirituality to explore the roots of the modern mental-health crisis. Together they discuss how rapid sociological change, poor nutrition, and disconnection from nature are weakening our “human software,” and why inner engineering like learning to manage our chemistry and consciousness may be the antidote. Sadhguru challenges the Western split between “mind” and “body,” explaining how thought, emotion, and physiology form one system. He argues that most psychological suffering stems from compulsiveness, not illness—when the mind runs without conscious control. Dr. K probes how that idea fits clinical psychiatry, sparking a thoughtful exchange on chemistry, choice, and the limits of scientific frameworks. They move from philosophy into practice: what it means to take charge of your inner experience, how attachment and ego (“ahankara”) shape identity, and why love, relationships, and even stress are reflections of how well we manage our internal state. The episode closes with reflections on modern dating, dopamine vs oxytocin, and practical tools for returning to conscious, intentional living. Topics include: Why society’s pace and environment are breaking our mental “software” The chemical basis of emotion, and learning to manage your inner factory Consciousness vs compulsiveness: the true axis of mental health The body as mind - why nutrition, breath, and movement matter Ahankara (ego) and the illusion of self-identity Suffering, stress, and the art of engineering your interiority Dr. K’s reflections on dopamine addiction, relationships, and meaning This conversation bridges psychiatry and yogic science, offering both insight and practical philosophy for anyone seeking peace in an overstimulated world. HG Coaching : https://bit.ly/46bIkdo Dr. K's Guide to Mental Health: https://bit.ly/44z3Szt HG Memberships : https://bit.ly/3TNoMVf Products & Services : https://bit.ly/44kz7x0 HealthyGamer.GG: https://bit.ly/3ZOopgQ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Want to get started? Head to CarMax.com for details and get pre-qualified today. Want to drive? CarMax. This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking, maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing.

It's built to help you find and own a home. With agents who close twice as many deals, when you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started at Redfin.com. Own the dream. Hey, chat. Welcome to the Healthy Gamer Gigi podcast. I'm Dr. Alokinoja, but you can call me Dr. K. I'm a psychiatrist gamer and co-founder of Healthy Gamer.

On this podcast, we explore mental health and life in the digital age, breaking down big ideas to help you better understand yourself and the world around you. So let's dive right in. So just a reminder that today's live stream, while I'm a medical doctor, welcome everybody to another Healthy Gamer Gigi stream, just because I'm a medical doctor and a psychiatrist doesn't mean that anything we discussed on stream today is intended to be taken as medical advice. Everything is for educational or entertainment purposes only.

Welcome everyone to Mental Illness Awareness Week, where we have all kinds of conversations with people just to learn about different perspectives on mental health. And today we're going to be speaking with the one, the only Sud Guru, about his understanding of what's going on in the mental health world, why the world is in a mental, why the world is in a mental health crisis. And so let's hop in. Welcome, everybody. Now that you said it's entertainment, I can say whatever the hell I want. Absolutely. Let's go for it. Welcome. So first question, so the first question we ask everybody is, is what do you go by? What should I call you on today's stream? How should I address you? What's the proper way to do it? Generally, I'm non-asad guru.

You can stick to that. Perfect. Thank you so much. for coming, Sub-Guru. So my first question is, there's an increasing amount of mental illness diagnosis happening. What's your understanding for why this is happening? Well, there are many, many aspects to this. Let me cover at least a few. Awesome. Because it's also entertainment. I can say a few. Yeah, if you've got jokes, go for it. Maybe we're training a lot of psychiatrists. So we You need more patience. Maybe. You're not the only one who's joked about that.

Well, jokes are sad. There are many aspects. Sociological changes are too dramatic, and a whole lot of people don't know how to handle it. They're not geared to handle it. And our educational systems are too unipolar. They're not for enhancing a human being. They're just to facilitate

a human being to fit into the larger financial machine that's running on the planet, a cog in the machine. So they're suffering that. And there are nutritional aspects. Nutritional aspects in terms of commerce deciding what we should eat, not our bodies. Our bodies are not deciding what we should eat. Commerce is deciding what we should eat. Another thing is the food, 95% of our food, comes from the planet or the soil.

And this top soil, where the, our crops grow, our cereals, pulses, everything grows, is just approximately 18 to 20 inches of top soil across the planet. And this is becoming very weak in the last 50 to 70 years of industrial level of farming and hugely contaminated with chemicals. Water that you drink is contaminated. It's considered purification, but it's actually contamination if you drink a bottle of chlorine. You will know. You said you're a medical doctor, you know what will happen.

And air is polluted. Everything. We are taking in too many chemicals as if that is not enough. To be healthy, you need chemicals. To be peaceful, you need chemicals. To be joyful, you need chemicals. To be ecstatic. They have their own chemicals.

So too much chemicals. So too much chemical intake, not enough micro nutrient nourishment happening, and sociological changes, lack of emotional stability in the society, that is the anchors that were there in the form of family, maybe even religion, and a few other structures which were there in the society are all being removed without being replaced by an appropriate replacement. I'm not saying they are sacrosanct they should never go. All I am saying is when you rip, when you demolish an old structure, a new one should immediately come up. Or it should be ready before you demolish this, I would say.

But that's not happening. So I think emotional insecurity is one serious, serious issue. And life is beginning to happen to people much sooner and faster. Like what used to happen at 18 is happening at 12. what was happening at 30, he's happening at 18. So these things also people are not, you know, prepared for it or mature enough to handle those situations. So all these things put together and many more, you know, minor sociological issues that individual people may face of discrimination, of loss changing, of technologies changing, not able to cope with the changes around you, all this.

But fundamentally, the most fundamental thing is our software is becoming weaker because of too much chemical intake through food, water, air. And even if you are not on any alcohol or drugs or anything, just the way we live in a modern society, we are taking in too much poison. One thing we need to understand about life on this planet is whether if you can kill a bacteria with a certain chemical, We must understand fundamentally life on this planet is engineered the same way in a very fundamental level. If something can kill a bacteria, it can also kill you. It's only a question of dosage. You may need a bigger dosage.

So we are trying to kill everything that we think is dangerous for us. In the process, we're killing ourselves. And one of the most serious things is the soil degeneration that's happened across the planet. soil doesn't have the strength because what we call as our body is just the soil that we walk upon. And we called it dirt. Slowly we're becoming dirt bags. Yeah. The soil in Eastern cultures, for example, in India we call it Thai-Manu.

That means mother soil. But it became dirt, it became a commodity, food became a commodity, the source of life is dirt. When this happens, human consciousness. suffers in so many ways. And there is not enough attention for human evolution within oneself. There is too much expression all over the place. Everybody is trying to do things too soon. And for which there is a certain price.

Like if a tree grows too fast, we know in the next wind it will break. So software is breaking. I think in another 20, 25 years, serious health issues will come anyway. have a doctor's degree also. You can very easily shift from psychiatry to regular medicine because that will be the future market. Yeah. I'm saying first software will break, then hardware will break.

I'm sorry, the serious things and jokes, because you said entertainment, I'm taking it. No, no, I think it's totally fine. I mean, you're, I enjoy listening to you speak. So I have so many questions about that. And so is it okay if I ask a couple of questions? Yes. So the first question, so it seems like you're saying that there are a lot of sociological changes, systemic changes, the quality of the nutrient intake we take is changing the water we drink, the air we breathe. Can you help me understand how that results in mental illness? Or what we understand is mental illness.

So how does help me understand the connection of those two dots? I mean, I totally agree with you, by the way, but I'm just really, really, you know, when I say I agree with you, I think about it from a scientific perspective. I understand that your background is a little bit different. And of course, some of the stuff you say is perfectly aligned with science. I think there's scientific statement, scientific research to back up basically every statement that you've made. But I'm curious about how you understand the connection between these two things. When we say science or scientific, we are talking about systematic observation of life. And this observation, unfortunately today, unless it's funded by a grant and comes from a laboratory, it's not science, this we have to change if we really want to find solutions.

So, what you're calling as science or what I call as science is this, that if we observe something, it's true for me, it's true for you, it's true for another million people. This is generally understood as science because it is repeatable and there is a system. to it. Yep. Now, there is enough understanding today. In most recent studies also, there is substantial understanding that if the necessary micronutrients are not there in your food that you eat, and those nutrients are continuously missing, the first thing that fails is your software, which you're calling is psychological. When we say psychological, unfortunately the keyhole view of the this psychological is it's all happening in the brain. No body is a chemical soup.

If this chemical soup is not well managed, things will freak in many places. You may notice in your head because you get headache first. But that doesn't mean it's not, it's just happening in the head. Well, even if you prescribe some pharmacological solutions for a psychiatric situation, nobody puts it into the head. they put it into their stomach. So it goes everywhere and it, at least temporary solutions are achieved by that. Otherwise, a lot of people would be in serious suffering without those, you know,

medications or chemicals that we are prescribing. Having said that, it's very important to understand, we don't look at mind as just here. Brain is one mechanism. But we see mind as an entire across, The escape is across the body, we call this mental body. Because what you call as mind is essentially a certain combination of memory and intelligence. Every cell in the body has more memory than your brain can ever think of processing.

If you look into your one cell, what happened a million years ago is still there, your forefathers, their skin complexion is still there on your epithelial cells. And, well, your 10 generations ago, your great-grandfather's nose is sitting on your face. You may not remember him, but it's sitting on our faces and, you know, body has enormous memory. Every cell in the body has enormous memory. And the number of functions, a single molecule of DNA is doing or processing per second, is much more than what the brain can do. So both in terms of complexity of action, intelligence, and intelligence.

memory, body has much more than the brain and brain is not separate from the body. We don't see it as a separate thing. It's part of the body. And if you want to nourish the brain, we don't inject something here. We eat well, we nourish ourselves well, so the brain grows to its fullest possibility. As you know, malnourishment of the body leads to maldevelopment of the brain. There's no question about that. So how is it that it's difficult to connect these two dots of nourishment,

and mental well-being. They are very directly connected because this bifurcation of what is physical and mental is a very wrong idea because mind is functional in the physical body and what is physical body is the mind. Where is a separation? There is intelligence, there is memory

and there's functionality at all levels. Right now the misunderstanding has come because people are classifying Only intellectual activity or psychological activity, which is thought process and emotion as mind, which is a very wrong thing because that is a consequence of various things that are happening in the system. The human system is complex. If you want to look at it just as a chemical process at one level, because medical sciences today are largely focused on this, I'm talking in this context, this is not my context, because any ailment physical or mental,

they have a certain chemical which will bring some relief if not cure. Definitely it's brought relief to millions of people. Otherwise, people will not be popping pills. Obviously, it's brought relief to people. So, thanks to that, because when somebody is in deep suffering, whatever you say they will not understand, all you need to is put a pill or an injection into them. But chemistry is deciding your experience of life.

So every human experience is a chemical basis to it. Now, in other words, this is a chemical soup. The question is, are you a great manager of this chemical factory? Or are you a lovesy manager? That's all the real thing is. So how to become a great manager of this chemical factory so that this chemical factory produces chemistry of blissfulness, chemistry of well-being? This needs to happen.

And this is not some new rocket science I'm talking. This is something people have known forever. It's just that they might not have approached it in a very specific, scientific manner, but in the yogic systems, there is an entire science, how to manage our chemistry. Today, modern, so-called modern science in the laboratory and universities, they're studying this aspect and showing that there are phenomenal changes in the chemistry just by doing a few simple things. Yeah, so that's awesome.

So let me, I mean, I completely agree. I think that one of the really misunderstood things by Western science is the depth of things that are understood in yoga. Oh, now you put an extra word to science. What? Which one? Western. Yeah. Absolutely.

So I... The moment we divide east and west, I think it's no more scientific. It's a prejudice, isn't it? Yeah, I think so. So I think we see that a lot in a Eurocentric version of science. that there are certain biases that are implicit in the West. And so I think what you caught on, I would actually completely agree with,

that there are, once you load the question, once you say that Western science isn't the general science, I think we see that, or I believe that that is absolutely the case. And I think one of the great examples of that is that if we look at something like a yogic practice, we can see that there are some yogic practices

or practices of Tai Chi that will outperform, physical exercise because these yogic practices do assume certain ideas around, or not assume, but they've had their own verification methods, but, you know, some of these ideas around Brana or some of the stuff that I think you're talking about, you haven't used that word, but and so I think that some of those practices will actually outperform purely physical practices, but there isn't a clear sense in the West of why that happens, or in science, in Western science. See, this is because I'm, I don't want to divide science as Eastern West or Eurocentric or Anglo-centric or Asian-centric.

It's a wrong way to approach science because science is, we call something science because it's true at least it's a fact at certain level. Whether there was a, you know, people were killed just because. They said the planet is round, all right? This happened in the Western Hemisphere, not in the East. Somebody said planet is round, so they got killed? So are we going to argue about that even today? No. So the thing is this.

Is it true that what we call as our physical body, we were not born this way. We slowly gathered this. How did we gather this? The food that we have eaten. What is the quality of food that we eat? Will it not have an impact on the body that we constructed with the kind of bricks that you've used to build this wall? Does it not have an impact on the quality of the wall when the brick quality is in a certain way, whether it's good or bad?

So the same goes for the body. We gathered this body. And what we call as mind is the variety of impressions that we have gathered. If we do not consciously decide what should be the source of my body, what should be the source of my body, what should be the source of of my mind, what should get into my body, what should get into my mind. If this consciousness is not there, obviously you will be an accidental being. So all these accidents, you call them as ailments. All right, physical ailments are different. In that you can bifurcate, there are infectious diseases and their chronic ones.

Infectious diseases are a invasion upon our body by some other organism. That means, you must go to the doctor for that. There is no even thinking twice about it. But chronic ailments are self-help. This may sound cruel to a lot of people, but actually knowingly or unknowingly, we are manufacturing it. We do not know how to handle our mind, our emotions, our chemistry, our body. People don't even know how to sit and stand properly in what kind of posture will this body do best. Even that is, that much education is not there.

I'm just saying this because it's also entertainment. Is it okay? Hello, I can keep it. Absolutely. Okay. See, if you allow me to redesign all the furniture in United States of America, I will tell you the Medicare bill will come down by 40 to 50%. Absolutely. Yeah. So, so... The way they're sitting, the way they're sitting, sinking into the cushions, that itself is ailment.

Completely agree. Hey, y'all, just a reminder that in addition to these awesome videos, we have a ton of tools and resources to help you grow and grow. overcome the challenges that you face. We've got things like Dr. K's Guide to Mental Health, personalized coaching programs, and things like free community events and other sorts of tools to help you no matter where you are on your mental health journey. So check out the link in the description below and back to the video. Can I ask a couple of specifics about that? Yes, Seth. So in the system of psychiatry, we'll sort of diagnose people with different kinds of things. So their internal experience, one person may be very sad,

One person could be very anxious. One person may have difficulty focusing their attention. We'll call this major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder. How do you, can you help us understand? So find that there's a certain nutritional makeup that makes our body. I think you also alluded to we're not just an accumulation of physical substances, but mental impressions as well. and if I missed that, please let me know. But how do you understand why people end up

in a different kind of quote-unquote mental illness? See, we are clearly separating physical ailments from mental sufferings. Instead of ailments, let's call them different levels of suffering because mind is the place where people manufacture a variety of suffering. Okay. All the misery on the planet, where is the manufacturing unit? Is it in Milwaukee?

I think it's the mind. It's in the human mind. So human mind, which is the greatest miracle on the planet, almost everything that we have created on this planet, has come, is a drop of this mind. Where you take the most highest level of technology, everybody is now raving about AI. It's a drop of our mind. A spacecraft, a computer, name it, anything, is a drop of our mind. All right? It's just one little bit of our mind.

This can do much more. So now why a miracle like this has become a misery manufacturing machine? Simply because it's not taking instructions from you. If your mind took instructions from you, would you make it blissful or miserable? Don't think in terms of anxiety, this, this, this, these are all various levels of suffering. Would you cause suffering to yourself or would you cause joy to yourself if your mind was taking instructions from you? It's very simple. No human being would want to create suffering for themselves.

But right now, mind has become a compulsive cycle. They can't help it. It's running by itself. Suppose, you know, like I was talking to, during the COVID time, some of the top psychiatrists from UK wanted to speak to me. I was not a client, I'm just making it clear. They wanted to talk to me and they said there are 72 varieties of mental ailments. I was surprised. In my understanding, maybe they're five, six, ten, something like that, like you mentioned a few just now. I asked, what are these 76? They said many, many things and one thing I struck me is that they said, compulsive nose picking.

I said, what? Yes, people are compulsively picking their nose even if they bleed, they cannot stop. So essentially we need to understand all mental suffering is compulsiveness. What is the solution for compulsiveness? I'm asking you, if you're in a room and it's dark, what is the solution for this? Is there a way to kick this darkness out of the window? Or you just have to turn on the light? So the only solution for compulsiveness is consciousness.

If you think or if anybody thinks it's unscientific, I'm sorry for their science. Yeah, so let me ask you a couple questions. So when you say, you ask the question, would you choose to suffer or be blissful? So if it sounds like you're separating out the youth. You must answer that question also, a look. If you had a choice, would you choose misery or blissfulness?

I think I would choose, yeah, blissfulness. Blessfulness. You're a smart guy. And I'm telling you every human being has that much sense. Yeah. That if there is a choice between pleasantness and unpleasantness of experience, they want pleasantness of experience. Those who have given up that life can be wonderful here,

they're all planning to go to heaven. Because it's been advertised that's the most pleasantness. that's the most pleasant place on the planet. Not otherwise. They're not going there for anything else because here they've given up a pleasant possible experience. So they think if they go there, everything will be pleasant. So now the important thing is this, if you were consciously choosing, you will choose blissfulness. There's no question about it. But if you're in a compulsive state of mind, it causes misery. It's as simple as that. So a couple of questions about that. One is what is the

you if it's not the mind. And secondly, what makes it hard for people to, so people I think, think they are choosing blissfulness all the time. Right. So just like you said, everyone's going to choose blissfulness. So how is it that people are striving for pleasantness, striving for blissfulness, and end up in suffering and compulsion? How does someone bridge that gap? No, not suffering and compulsion. Because of compulsive nature. See, right now, if these these two fingers pop up and poke my eyeballs. If I have such a comp- like somebody said, there's compulsive nose-picking, even if it's bleeding, it's compulsive activity of the body.

So the compulsive activity of the mind, they are not able to take charge of it. You know how to take charge of your hands. If I want to keep it here, it stays here. If I want to keep it here, it stays here. If I want it to dance, it'll dance. But with the mind, nothing has been done that. it should follow instructions from you. I am asking, what is the most sophisticated machine on the planet? Is it human mechanism or no?

I think so. Yes. Have you read the user's manual? That's, I'm not, this question is not just for you, for the entire humanity. Have they read the fundamental user's manual? How this works? I think, well, I don't know if there's one, but I've read many things that I think. There is one. No, no, there is one. It's built into the system yeah i think i've read some of it i've gotten through the first few chapters that's nice right i imagine maybe you've read a lot extent we've to what extent you have to what extent you have read it and understood that extent your life is pleasant

so is there a particular methodology that allows people to bridge the gap between behaving in a compulsive manner so like let me take take a step back and kind of ask in a different way. So I have some patience. And I teach a fair amount of yoga and meditation to my patients. And I think it's a fascinating take that I also agree that there's a lot of compulsion when it comes to mental illness. I think the key thing that defines mental illness is that you can't control where your mind

goes. So if you start to think negatively about yourself, you literally can't stop it. Can I correct the question a little bit? Is it allowed? Please. Always. See, the mind doesn't go anywhere. The mind is only here.

It's just that you have misunderstood your psychological activity as existentially true. That's the problem. Agreed. I think that there's a lot of evidence of that, that the more severe the mental illness is. So if we take a case like psychosis, so in psychosis, someone believes that their thoughts are 100% true, to the point that we call it delusional. Then we have anxiety where you're worried that your thoughts could be true, but you have maybe some sense that it's not true.

And then we have what I would call a regular human being who has some ability to question the results of their mind. I'm still kind of curious, how does someone get from a compulsive mind to a mind that listens to what you tell it to do? Yes. So, see, right now, I'm taking the example as myself. Don't take this seriously.

Right now you hate me. Is it made up in your mind? Yes. You love me. Is it made up in your mind? Yes. So both your ideas of love, whom you love and whom you hate is made up within you. You know, it's a made-up drummer.

Yeah. I mean, I think so. I'm not going to tell your family. Tell me it's okay. Yeah, yeah. I- You're serious, man. Look, you're too serious. This is the problem. This is the problem with the human beings. They've become dead serious about their lives. Okay?

Can I? We are just a pop-up on this planet. We come, brief amount of time pop-up and we'll pop out. So if you become too serious, our thoughts become real. If we stand aside and look at it, it that we are just a tiny microscopic life in this cosmos and we pop up and pop out in no time. Countless number of people like you and me who thought they are smart, walk this planet, where are they all top soil? So, just learning to look at life with a right perspective.

When I say right perspective, see this planet, this planetary system, this solar system is a tiny little speck in this cosmos. Do you agree with me? I think so, yeah. Yes, it is so. Neither the so-called men of science or the men of God know where this cosmos begins, where it ends, isn't it? Yeah, I mean...

So in this seemingly limitless cape, this solar system is a spec. In that spec, planet Earth, which is a small mudball, is a microspeck. In that micro spec, where are you right now? In another micro spec of a microspec. Houston, Texas. Houston. So, Houston is a micro-micro-speck. In that you're a big man.

That's the problem with human beings. It's because of that we are fundamental lack of perspective as to who we are. Lack of context of our existence, we are beginning to think what I think is everything. No, no, what we think is nothing. It's psychological drama. You can think whatever you want. When you can think whatever you want, right now if I say think of a tiger, can you do it? I think so.

You're an Indian origin guy. You know what's a tiger, all right? Yeah. Yes. Can you think of an elephant? Yes. Yes. Yes.

Man, woman child? Yes. Yes. So see, you can think of whatever you want. But you start thinking about a tiger, you can't get the tiger out. Tiger goes on and scares the hell out of you. You think about a woman, your mind goes crazy about a woman. You think about this.

that nonsense, it becomes compulsive. Why is it becoming compulsive? Is, fundamentally, there's no context to our existence. First and foremost thing is to understand where we stand in this existence. Where we stand is where a microscopic, nothing, all right? But to this microscoping nothing, creation has given us individual experience. We are misunderstanding that. Once you misunderstand that, your mind cannot be stopped. It will run. I call this. I call this I'm sorry for these words, but I generally tell people you have a mental diarrhea. Like people have physical diarrhea, you have a mental diarrhea. Why do you get physical diarrhea?

You have eaten something that doesn't agree with the body. Same thing with the mind. You have consumed something which is not true, not incompatible with your existence. So you are having mental diarrhea. First and foremost thing is this, that the things that you identified with, the misconceptions that you have about the grand, of your existence needs to go down, then your thought becomes insignificant. Once your thought is insignificant, you can consider what is useful, what is not useful.

Once you know, you can think what you want, you will naturally things that work for your well-being and everybody's well-being. How does one, so pardon me if I'm kind of leaning into some words here. You can. You can. You need to be leaned into because this is not something on the surface. This is a profound aspect. If you don't lean into it continuously, you will never touch it.

So I'm hearing you talk about what I understand to be ahamkar. Is that fair? And see what ahankar means is, today I know it's being interpreted as ego. No, ahankar means identity. Right now you're identified with your body. first identity that everybody gets. Your body as we already went through is an accumulation of the food that you've eaten. Mm-hmm. Or it's just a piece of the planet that you've gathered, you either realize it now or one day we will get it from the Magots, all right? That we are a part of this planet. So this is an accumulation. But you think it's me. It's just like I have this vessel here. There is water in this. And here when it's here, I don't think this water is me when I

drink it, I think it's me. Or after some time, I start thinking this vessel is me, then you know you have a client. Hello? Yeah. If I say I'm this vessel, you know you got a client or no? Absolutely. I've got a client either way. No, no. The thing is, right now, similarly, you gathered this body and you start thinking, this is me. You got a client. So you don't have a client in me. You got a client in yourself and in the whole world, I'm saying, entire world. Heaven forbid.

We made it very clear that you're never going to be a client for a psychiatrist. No, I will not be. Why not? So, because my mind doesn't need treatment. Because my mind, I look at my mind as not an entity, but as a activity. It's like right now I'm in this activity. If I don't want, it goes still.

My mind is an activity. When I want, it's active. Otherwise, it's gone. I can sit here without a single thought in my mind for days together. How does, how does, so can you tell us a little bit about how, were you born in this way? You're asking me if I was a, I'm born as a freak or something? No, so you're saying that one of the things that, you know, you're capable of doing is that you're able to shut off mental activity? No, why do you call it shutting off?

Are you walking right now? No. No. So have you shut off your walking? Stopped it. Have you stopped it? Yes. Or are you just not doing it?

I'm not doing it. That's it. But the process of going from walking to sitting involves an arrest. And what you described of, I have mental activity and then it shuts off. I think there's a transition. Let us look at it from the other perspective. Okay. The process, generally, you're not walking 24 hours of the time.

You are sleeping, you are sitting. Then maybe you're walking. Yep. So from sitting, you decide to walk. from walking, you may decide to sit, but actually sitting is more natural posture than walking, isn't it? So, from sitting, you go to walking, not from walking to sitting. Okay. Essentially, I am saying any activity is from non-activity to activity.

If it's conscious. If it's unconscious, it's non-stop active, it'll exhaust itself and it'll kill itself. See, right now, nothing I have to do. Let's say 24 hours, my hand is jumping like this. Initially, you think Mr. Parkinson is visiting me or something. But after some time, this will kill me. If I can't stop this for 24 hours for a few days, this is going to kill me, yes or no? Absolutely.

That's all it's doing. I don't know if you're going to die in 24 hours, but yeah. Not in 24 hours. Eventually, yeah. You will die because of non-stop activity. The same thing is happening with your mind. non-stop activity, you're dying. So, but that non-stop activity, since you're saying the base state is rest, right?

The kind of, and I may not be using the right words there, but that. Rest is the basis of all activity. Okay. So you're saying that you engage in mental activity and then there is a natural extinguishing of that activity when it's done? Why are you thinking of extinguishing? Right now my hand is moving naturally and it stopped, is it? No, it's here.

If I want, I can do all the dance I want, and then when I don't want it comes here. Come here. Yeah, so I'm talking about the activity, not the object of activity. So when I'm doing this, right, and then I stop this in some way. Or maybe you're not saying it's stopping. Is that stopping or just resolution of the activity? See, when activity is not needed, you stop, isn't it?

Yes. The same should be true. Well, I think that's true for you, right? So I think that the challenge is that- But any human being, I'll come to the challenge. First, let's understand the fundamental. See, right now, because you're on the, on this, whatever you call this podcast or whatever, your eyes are open.

Your visual apparatus are on. Yes. Now, if the screen tires you, you close your eyes. Okay. Or anyway, when you, when the nightfall comes, maybe you fall asleep. Most people cannot fall asleep these days, you know that. Yeah, absolutely. A lot of people must be coming to you.

Not me, I sleep like I went dead. Yesterday night, it seems alarms went off in the house because of some animal movement or something. But I didn't wake up, I slept through the alarm and woke up at my right time at 3.45 in the morning. So why I'm saying this is, activity must always be a conscious process. If activity becomes involuntary activity of your heart, liver, kidney is a different matter. All other aspects of activity must be voluntary. There are people if they have to say two words, their hands are moving all over the place like this. But you can sit like this and talk, isn't it?

I didn't see much of your hands except when you wanted to imitate me like Mr. Parkinson. So I'm saying you have that much control over your body. Why not on the process of mind? How we will get there? First, let's understand this is just a consequence of compulsive nature. Okay. You can call it by dozen different names or 72 different names or whatever number of names it is. But essentially, from consciousness, you have fallen into compulsiveness.

That is a thing. Okay. Instead of light, there is darkness. Darkness is a certain absence, isn't it? It's absence of light. It is not an existence by itself. So similarly, compulsiveness is an absence of consciousness. How to get there?

You are in a hurry to get there. So let's go. Yeah, I mean, I think we've, because I know we have a couple questions that we want to get to. And I am super curious about that because I think this is the, this is the, I'm sort of sensing a major. underlying thread to what you're saying, right? Which is intentionality, consciousness, voluntary action. And so what I'm curious about is like, you know, if we've fallen from consciousness into compulsiveness, how do we go back? See, there are some people, if they start talking, they cannot stop talking.

Sometimes they're successful. All right. Sure. Absolutely. Sometimes they're successful for whatever reasons. But suppose you start talking and you can't stop. If somebody comes to you as a patient, I hate that word client, so I'm shifting to a natural terminology. If a patient comes to you and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah they're talking and they can't stop, you will probably say they them and make them sleep so that at least then they will shut up.

But there are people who talk in their sleep also. I'm sure you've seen those people. Absolutely. They're talking in their sleep also. So if speech becomes compulsive, it's very obvious. What should be a conscious process of action has become compulsive. Speech is a consequence of thought, isn't it? Something in your mind is trying to find expression.

Sure. So I think when you say mind, I think it depends. So I think a lot of time, yeah, there's some. I said thought process. There is some thought process, diarrhea going on in the mind. And mouth is also blabbering that. Okay. Let's just say yeah for now.

No, no, that won't help. Tell me, somebody is compulsively talking. Why are they talking? Because their thoughts are going so rapidly. They don't know what to do. And it's just finding expression like this compulsively. Compulsive expression is called compulsively. talking. Compulsive thought process is called mental diarrhea, all right? So why that is occurring is fundamentally your psychological structure has lost its context.

So this is why we are doing what is called us today millions of people have gone through it. Now our numbers have crossed into billion digits. But fundamentally, this is called inner engineering. Engineering your interiority in a certain way. What is engineering? You will say a particular machine is well engineered only if it does what you want it to do well. So you have a car, you say this is a well engineered machine because it's doing what you want. If it does something else, you will say this is a badly engineered machine. Does that not work with your system? This body and this mind only if it does what you want, you're well engineered. otherwise you're not. Why does this need engineering, hasn't the creation already done the job?

That is the privilege of being human. For all other creatures, nature has set two lines. Within those two lines, they live and die. For the human being, the top line is reasonably obliterated that you can be any way you want. This is the reason why we call you a human being. We don't call an elephant, an elephant being, a tiger, a tiger being or anything else a being. But we call this one a being because this can choose how to be. They function by their instinct.

This can choose. Even if my basic instincts are in this way, I can choose to go this way because that much awareness and consciousness is naturally invested in me. Only if you exercise that, you become a human being. Otherwise, you become a human creature. So compulsiveness essentially talks about we being creatures like everything else. Is it right or wrong?

It's not about right and wrong. It's just that we are not exercising our evolutionary choice that is naturally bestowed upon us. We are not exercising that. We need to exercise that. Many simple things, somebody is a smoker to give it up a few struggles so much, somebody drinking alcohol, they were not born smoking or drinking. But it becomes compulsive.

Maybe there is a chemical factor to. that, but there is a chemical factor to everything. Right now I'm getting angry 10 times a day. No, this is not a confession. I'm just using myself as an example. I could say you, but it won't be nice, so I'm saying me. You can say you can try. Ten times a day I'm getting angry. Well, there is a chemical basis to this. Yes or no? I, yeah, absolutely. So there is a chemical basis to this, whether there is drug addiction, angry,

addiction, you know what anxiety addiction, there is a chemical basis to it. We need to fix that chemistry. So to fix this chemical soup, you need to be a good cook. You need to learn how to cook. So is it that, so when you talk about inner engineering, do you think most people require, so you talked about being a mechanic, right, and engineering. So do most people's chemical soups have the same problem? Or is there a specific way to fix a particular problem? Everybody has a unique problem. In terms of problem, it is unique. But the fundamental problem is it's going into unconscious patterns. Unconsciousness means in some way it becomes cyclical. Why does it become cyclical? Let's go into this fundamental physics. See, everything that's physical

in this universe, in this cosmos, is cyclical. The larger picture of the world. the cosmos is cyclical, the solar system is cyclical, our mothers had cycles, that's why we were born. Our atoms are full of cycles. Everything that's physically cyclical. If you get identified with the physical stuff that you gather, you will become cyclical in all levels. This cyclical thing, if it is going at a certain pace, let's say it's a large cycle, it looks like the human being is reasonably balanced. If it gets into a short churn, then you see he's simply. to have a he or she seems to have a psychological problem.

Okay. So are you saying that the conscious nature, you said everything in matter is cyclical, everything in the universe is cyclical, but when you talk about voluntariness, when you talk about intention, when you talk about being conscious, is that a cycle too? See, everything physically is a cycle. If I drink water, enough water, I have to go to the low, low. it is a cycle. If I work this much, then I have to go into sleep. That is a cycle. I am born and I will die. That's a cycle. Everything physically cyclical. But if you are not identified with your physicality, you yourself need not become cyclical. Because human intelligence has broken free from instinctive existence. That means our cerebral flower bloomed in whatever number of of years and now if we want, we can expand without being cyclical. This is the privilege of being

human being. When you don't exercise that, you will become mentally ill. When I say mentally ill, not only people come to you for treatment or those people, unfortunately, who are in the asylums and stuff, which is the most unfortunate place to be in the world. And not just that. most human beings are cyclical in their thought and emotion. But they manage because their cycles are reasonably large. They do crazy things, but it's okay. People around them also equally crazy. So they adjust and go on.

They look normal. See, it is maladjustment that you're calling as illness. I am calling illness as if you get into a compulsive state, if you do not exercise the privilege of being human, that itself is a sickness. If you don't look at it that way, at some point everybody will be ill in a way that you can't stand them.

So there's one particular cycle that I think a lot of people are struggling with right now, which is dating in relationships. Do you have any thoughts about, you know, so the birth rates are in some countries at an all-time low, people are entering relationships later,

moving out of the house later, at least in many parts of, of Europe and North America. Do you have any thoughts about what's going on here and a lot of people are suffering? So do you have specific thoughts about this or does this basically track back to what you've already said? They all believe that people suffer in marriage. Now they've decided to suffer without that institution of marriage. Yeah, absolutely. So this suffering is not about anything else one thing about this new culture that we have created is there is no emotional security nobody trusts anybody there was a time you come from India all

the movies they were singing songs Janum Janum that means lifetime after lifetime we will love each other but now they're talking about when they they're signing what is these agreements pre-naptual agreements and when they date they already know, you know, the expiry date for that date. Because you're looking at everything in terms of gratification. You're not looking at it in terms of engagement, involvement. You're thinking in terms of how can I give less and take more? With this, you will never know joy in your life.

This is not just about dating. This is about economics. This is about everything. When the moment you think, how can I live this life by extracting everything that I can extract from you or not offer anything to you, you will move into misery. Today, it may look like a great pleasure because I'm getting what I want from you. But tomorrow, it will be something else. What is the difference between gratification and engagement?

See, gratification is touch and go. Involvement means in some way, some way to involve, you have to put something of yourself down. Like the English expression, falling in love is good. You have to fall. You don't rise in love. You don't fly in love. You don't walk in love.

You fall in love. That means something of you. When I say something of you, you don't have to cut off an arm or something. What you have constructed as myself, your persona has to fall, at least in part, to accommodate the other. Otherwise, there is no profound experience of that. It's just simple pleasure. So I'm getting a sense from engagement of, like you said, kind of just being involved, right? Not necessarily trying to extract the most positive out of it.

But when I think about engagement and listening to your answer, it's like, okay, I'm in this. Whether it's good, whether it's bad, for seven lifetimes, that's what I committed to when I got married in this one. And so is that kind of what you mean? See, the thing is this fundamental, this is coming from the fundamentals of one human being is better than the other. All right? When you're young, somebody may be physically better than the other. It's true. Somebody may be intellectually better than the other.

That is true. But the fundamental judgment that one life is better than the other is a, of basic flaw that you're bringing into the society. Once you do that, this is happening right from kindergarten, who is better than whom, who is first, who is second, all the time this is going on. Once you bring this, there is a certain kind of mental ailment, let me put it this way so that, you know, it's in the right context. If you are going through stress in your work, whatever the nature of your work, whether you're the president of this country or you're doing a menial job, if you're going through stress, I think you're mentally ill.

Because it's the first stage. You think you don't need treatment, maybe you don't need, but it needs attention for sure, one way or the other. If you don't, it will graduate into various things, naturally. Otherwise, you'll withdraw from your activity and think you're fine. This is what people are doing. Right now you talk to anybody, people are talking, what is it? In India, I think it's a 48-hour work week in America.

I don't know what it is, 40-week, 40 hours is it, in Europe. they're shrinking it to 36 hours, 34 hours. I work 90 plus hours a week. I'm fine. Seven days of the week, 365 days. You think this is a stress? No, this is not a stress. Stress is not because of what you're doing.

Stress is just your inability to manage your own body, your mind, your chemistry, your energies. You're not able to manage that. That is stress. This friction inside the system, friction is stress. This stress can become anxiety. This can become so many things. So don't name it by different things. Essentially, psychological process is not something where there is physical moment. Where there is physical moment, there is friction. Your heart is beating. There is some friction there. It has to wear itself out some point. All right? If you keep it well, it may last for 100 years, otherwise it may go in 50 years.

That's a different matter. But anyway, anything is physically doing that will wear itself out. Psychological process is not like that. You are making it fructious by being acidic in the process. So your chemistry is not well kept. So it's fricious. Otherwise, can you sit here and think of the most grotesque figure that can land from the space here? You can think about it.

can think about it. Maybe it's a good idea for a new movie you can make. Or if it lands, maybe you would have figured out some things how to handle it. We don't know. But you can think about anything you want without stress. If you know how to think, you are not thinking. Mental diarrhea is happening. That is causing friction. Friction is stress. Friction is anxiety. Friction is various levels of distress. All right? So don't give it different names. Friction is happening essentially because compulsive, forceful thought process is happening. Like my physical moment is conscious, my thought should be conscious. If it's conscious, when I want to think, I will think clearly. When I don't want to think, I don't think. Okay. So we have a couple. Yeah?

Yeah. You have questions, is it? Just two minutes, let's finish this because I'm in a bind. Okay. Do we have time for one question from... One question. Let's do it. Yeah, let's do a question. Trevor.

Hello, Seth. I'm Ludwig. I don't ask me very difficult question. Easy question so that in one minute I can answer. Hello, Sadgueru. I'm Ludwig. I'm friends with Dr. Kay. And I don't really have an intelligent question for you,

but I do have one that is pertinent to me. I saw on your channel that you ride motorcycles. Why? I also ride motorcycle. for some contexts and I really enjoy it. But I've gotten into two small accidents where I was relatively unharmed, but it's made me question whether I should continue to ride because it makes the people in my life worry for me.

I'm not personally worried. I'm kind of okay becoming an organ donor. That's all I end up being. But is that selfish of me? Should I continue to ride? Why do you ride? And also where is the greatest place you've ever ridden a motorcycle? Should I go there?

That's it. Okay. All right. Bye. If you crashed twice in a few months of riding, you should not ride. Because riding is, riding a motorcycle is not rocket science. But it needs a certain keenness of attention. Otherwise, you know, it costs bones or sometimes, as you said, organs.

So please, if you want to ride, if you want to learn to ride, I'm sure in the United States there are places where you can train to ride. And till you're sure of yourself, don't go on the road because road is a cruel place if you don't know what to do. Do you have any recommendations for where he should go riding? That's what I said. First, train a little bit and be sure of what you're doing. And if you're a beginner, have you chosen the right motorcycle? Don't pick it up from online.

You know, you'll see some Kenny Roberts riding. Don't pick up that kind of motorcycle. They'll pick up something that's suitable for you, get used to it. And there is a certain one thing is it's quickest mode of transport on the land, apart from the airplanes and stuff. So it's good and it's safe if you ride well. And it's quick and speed limits don't apply to the same extent that it applies to cars. That's the greatest benefit.

All right. Thank you for your time today. So, Guru. Thank you very much. Thank you. Namuskara. Quick, choose a meal deal with McValue The $5 McChicken meal deal

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Kraft Mac and Cheese is better than 90s hip-hop We'll remind you of your childhood Without making you feel incredibly old Craft Mac and Cheese Best Thing Ever All right, so I'm going to go Trevor we still streaming okay cool so what's the

yeah so that was interesting for sure yeah so I'm not sure what can you show me the overlay that people are seeing Trevor yeah so I hope you all enjoy that I think you know it's interesting because I think so this is sort of like my experience when I learned yoga and part of the reason that I teach yoga and meditation and stuff like that is so I think that in the

So if we listen to Sadguru, I think here's kind of what I took away from the conversation. Is there are a couple of fundamental processes that result in what we call mental illness. Right. So his big theme today was compulsiveness versus consciousness. And I think we kind of see that. I think I've always been curious why from an evidence-based perspective, we have all of these different diagnoses. So we have diagnoses like major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, ADHD. Now, that's the one that I think is a little bit different.

But, and so I always thought it was interesting that you, you know, if we look at the treatment of these things from a psychotherapy standpoint, from a medication standpoint, these are all very specific, right? So if like if the mind has a particular problem, it has a particular solution. But I think that what's interesting about meditation is that there are studies that basically show it's like you can do one technique and it is equally efficacious for all the different stuff that you do. Like basically if you have an anxiety disorder or a mood disorder, there is, if you have narcissism, there's basically one technique which will help everything. Which got me really curious from like an outcomes perspective, right? because if all of these diseases are different, how is it that there's like one treatment for everything? And we sort of see this on the physical side as well.

If you look at something as simple as exercise, if I have a heart problem, if I have GI issues, if I have blood pressure issues, if I have insomnia, we can look at something like exercise is a whole-scale treatment that improves all of these things. And I think it's, in a sense, I'm not too surprised because I think in the yogic discipline,

They're not super concerned with a particular pattern of suffering or mental disturbance, right? They're just like, okay, the contents of the pattern are not what's important. It is a certain amount of repetiveness. So the two things that I kind of pulled away from this conversation are compulsiveness versus consciousness, which I think he said several times. And the second thing is the misidentification with the self, right? And that's stuff that we kind of talk about. And the interesting stuff is, I think he had a couple of good points about, you know, science and Western science, and those were super fair.

And I think that what we've found is, is that that's, you know, there's a lot to that. I mean, we know that when you think your thoughts are true, when you no longer have space between you and your thoughts, we talk about some of that as like getting distance or even detachment, Vairagya. when you and when there is a compulsive way of thinking that's absolutely correlates with mental illness. So he's like spot on there, right? So if we look at OCD generalized anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, what is the root problem? The root problem is a certain compulsion to a way of thinking. And then if we look at the other bucket, even if we talk about something like social anxiety, right? It's like when I am out with people, my mind has a compulsive way of thinking. I'm thinking. I'm thinking, oh my God, what do people think? Do people like me? Do people not like me? So I think that's spot on. And the other thing is the identification with the self. So I kind of think of that as a hunkard, a humkar. And I think he, I would also agree with him that this gets translated as ego, which is not a very good translation. One of the things that I've come to appreciate is that translating certain Eastern concepts to Western words, it, I'm attaches a certain Western implication to it.

Right? So if we say like someone, when we think about ego in the West, we tend to think about it as sort of like negative. And then Freud meant a different thing by ego and stuff like that. So it gets kind of complicated. But I think the other thing that we see with mental illness is a over attachment to our belief in who we are.

So someone who's suffering from depression will think in terms of like, you know, oh, like, I'm terrible. I'm a bad person, right? So that's actually like, that's their identity. That's who they believe they are. And if we look at things like narcissism and stuff like that, some of these personality disorders, which also have compulsive thought patterns, right? So the whole point, I think, and it was interesting to hear his take on it, right? Because I think he's sort of spot on that if you look at the majority of mental illnesses, there are a couple of exceptions here. There is a misidentification with the self, and there is also a compulsive thought pattern. And what we do, even in a very heavy-handed sort of way, right?

So when we think about the role of psychiatric medication, what they're designed to do oftentimes is to stop a compulsive thought pattern. So if you give someone with a panic attack of benzodiazepine, and this is, I kind of also appreciated his emphasis on physical. stuff, right? That your brain exists within a body, that your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system are going to affect the function of your neurons and then the subjective experience of your mind. So I think like all that stuff is, it seems super fundamental, but also I think is like kind of spot on. So I hope you guys enjoyed it. I'm sorry we didn't get enough chance for

questions, but it seemed like the conversation was kind of going. So. Yeah, do you all have any questions? Yeah, so someone's asking, Dr. Kay, you talk a lot about teaching yoga. Do you have any recommended yoga routines or guided yoga I can do at home? Do you have any plans to release a yoga module? So we did a boot camp a few years ago where I went through some super basic yogic postures. And then in terms of meditation regimens and stuff like that, if you guys want, so here's where, so being a psychiatrist, I spent a lot of time.

and I think this is true, we didn't get a chance to get into this, but I do think, you know, he mentioned that there are specific ailments. And I think that he didn't talk about it here, but I have no doubt, maybe I'm wrong, but I have no doubt that if we had gotten to points of the conversation about particular imbalances, that he could have talked about that. But I think that there, you know, the work that I was kind of doing was, it, this was, more research work at Harvard Medical School was trying to develop particular yoga and meditation regimens for particular mental illnesses. So a lot of that kind of information is in Dr. Kay's guide, right? So when we think about depression, anxiety, ADHD, trauma, and meditation,

I've tried to map out particular regimens or particular ways. What are the patterns of the mind? And this was kind of what I was, you know, he was sort of saying you're very interested in how you're trying to rush to the how because I think that's where the money is like I think that discussing a concept only has so much utility maybe I'm wrong there but what I found is very helpful is teaching people the very practicalities of okay if your mind is compulsive in this way here is something here's first of all how do you become conscious if you're compulsive and that's where I think there's a really really interesting um take on one of the ways that I've found is helpful to, that helps people become conscious more rapidly, is to show them ahead of time

what the compulsion actually is so that you're on the lookout for it. And so that helps a lot. So if y'all are interested in particular regimens and stuff like that, we have meditation tracks and things like that too. So hopefully that'll help. Isn't a humkhar better translated like eye making or the making of eye? Yeah. So I would, I would say that a hum card, the best.

way to understand it is the I feeling. So when anytime you have a feeling of I, like I, and the way that I sort of more technically describe it as I am dot, dot, dot, right? So I am tall, I am short. I am rich. I am a loser. I'm a winner. I'm successful. All of these are abstractions. They're not things that you can biopsy. So even if I say I'm a doctor, you can't biopsy. Without a shared mental abstract illusion of that, you can't find a doctor in me. It's not a real thing. It's something that I identify with. And that's something that's really hard for people to understand. And I think it's very valuable to think about kind of what he's saying, which is that how much of your suffering, it's not so much that something is happening. Right. So that's not really what suffering is. Pain is a part of life. So you can't avoid pain, but suffering is different. Suffering is the attach the associations with the thing that is painful. So breaking up with someone arguably is painful. The real suffering comes with the associations that you attach to it. I'm going to be alone for the

rest of my life. If I can't make it with this person, then this, then this, then this. And so if you really think about it, there's the actual pain of the breakup, which even then is not actually that bad if you really think about it. So this just means that you won't see this person for some period of time. But if you kind of think about it, you don't see that person for an hour during the day and you're fine. Right?

I shower and eat and whatever without this person. This person won't be a part of my life and that part of my life when that person is in my life, I really enjoy it. But where does the real chunk of suffering come from?

The primary chunk of suffering doesn't come from their absence. It comes from, because you can survive with them without for an hour, totally fine. And then you can survive a second. second hour and a third hour and they've been on vacation and you were totally fine.

Everything was totally fine even in their absence. It is that it is when your mind piles those absences together accretes them, right? Now it'll be forever. It'll be never again. And never again is where the suffering comes from, even though you can survive for an hour. And what do we find from a clinical perspective, from a practical perspective? As people let go of never again and forever and these kinds of thoughts and they start dating again, well, that facilitates their ability to date again. Then they find they are able to date again,

and then they find that they're doing fine, right? You fall in love again and then you're engaged in this relationship. I also like that, right? So I think that there's a big part of, and it's not just trying to be gratified in a relationship. I think half the problem in the world today is that we're trying to extract as much. We live our lives as if we're trying to extract as much dopamine as we can from our brains. My life becomes a dopamine extraction machine. And the more that I extract dopamine from my brain, and I've seen this with people who are addicted to methamphetamine where they're, you know, releasing a thousand times a regular dose of dopamine, the more that life or relationships become the extraction of gratification, the worse you're going to get. And there's a lot of

beautiful stuff in engagement or involvement. See, engagement or involvement, he's precise with his language. Engagement or involvement doesn't have a particular valence of positive or negative. I don't know if you all caught that. Right? So he says you should be involved. People aren't involved. Involved doesn't mean good.

It doesn't mean bad. There's no valence of positive or negative there. It is just being there in a full way, in a total way. in a total way. And that's what creates good relationships for better or for worse, right? In illness and in health, till death do us part, which is what people who are, you know, get married in North American or European Christian sort of ceremonies will say. So, and I think that's really important. And I think we have good evidence that that works. And the reason we know that is because we have some of these, you know, principles from psychiatry or psychology like radical acceptance.

And if you look at some of these systems like acceptance and commitment therapy, which are rooted in some of the concepts I think Sudh Guru talked about today, you know, if you look at these things, like basically we've sort of figured out, even from a scientific evidence standpoint, a standpoint, that when you just accept what comes, as opposed to attach a bunch of conditions and try to make it perfect. If you accept that marriage or life will have problems, then that's totally fine. Things get better. Okay, I'm scrolling down. Yeah, so another thing that for people asking about ADHD, we did a partnership with Audible. So 30 days to strive with ADHD. And that's live now if you all want to check it out. It's basically like a 30 day guide to some really practical

stuff about even if you don't have ADHD. It's helpful. It's just basically principles that I found are useful for people who have a growing number of executive function deficits due to things like technology usage. So you all should definitely check that out. What do you do when you feel alone on the spiritual path when everyone else is living exclusively through their egos? That feeling of aloneness comes from your ego. I am alone and everyone else is egotistical.

Not trying to troll you. I'm not trying to be disrespectful, but like really, that is something you need to think about. So one of the interesting experiences that I've had along my journey is that I've become more and more alone, but it's totally fine. Like, I feel good when I'm alone. I think that aloneness has some degree of, like, stillness to it. So be careful about that. But if you aren't getting oxytocin, how can you stand life without dopamine? So this is a great, great, great, great question.

Right? And Sudgrew also emphasized a certain amount of, what is it? the importance of chemicals. So he's definitely like the first guru that I've heard talk about that in that way. So here's the thing. If you have a life without oxytocin, if you aren't getting oxytocin, how can you live a life without dopamine? So this is where like no amount of water is going to be a substitute for food. Right.

So our biological system is designed to have oxytocin. and dopamine. And you can't substitute one for the other. In fact, I think part of the problem is that when we start substituting or trying to use dopamine instead of oxytocin, that's what actually creates the most problems. Right. So, and I know that getting oxytocin is hard because oxytocin oftentimes requires another person. You can't hug yourself and get a dose of oxytocin. Terrible.

has to be another person or creature animal. And so then what happens is when we're oxytocin deficient, which comes from physical touch, hugging, cuddling, things like that, then there's a certain amount of mood disturbance that comes with oxytocin deficiency. Right? We feel anxious. We feel sad.

We feel alone. And then we want some way to get rid of those feelings. And this is where dopamine comes in because dopamine is a pleasure molecule. So when we get dopamine in the nucleus accumbens, we feel pleasure. And so even though we feel pleasure, it's not a substitute for anxiety, like relief. It's not a substitute for comfort, right? Safety. Dopamine doesn't give you a feeling of safety and comfort. All it gives you is pleasure temporarily.

And here's the real problem with that is that when we induce pleasure, when we, we're feeling uncomfortable, alone, isolated, then what happens is that kind of shuts, it doesn't shut it down, it drowns it out. But the whole reason why the human body and brain and mind make us feel uncomfortable, think about this for a second, why do we feel bad, why does the body make us feel bad? It makes us feel bad to induce certain kinds of behavior. And so what do I see when a human being feels lonely. And they turn to pornography, seen it hundreds, if not hundreds of times,

let's say hundreds. I don't know about thousands. I don't know if I've had like a thousand patients with porn. I haven't. So let's say hundreds. Is now what's happening is those negative feelings which induce action are now being drowned out by something like pornography.

So now, and this is the real problem, is then you kind of get stuck, right? You get stuck in this cyclic pattern of like, I feel bad, pornography, that's going to make the bad feeling go away. But I'm not actually moving forward in any way. I'm not actually fixing my problems. And then the thing that makes that even worse is as I engage with pornography, as I engage in a lot of high dopaminergic activities, the effect of that on my body, on my mind, on my ability to handle negative emotions, to sit with emotions, my

capacity for empathy, all of these things actually get impaired. And as those things get impaired, my ability to engage in relationships and end up with oxytocin drops. So the effect of chronic dopamine extraction on our brain sabotages my ability to engage in relationships. That's the real problem. But if you aren't getting oxytocin, how can you stand a life without dopamine? that's the thing, right? So there's so many words there that are really important. If you aren't getting something, then your focus should be on getting it.

And stand life, how can you stand life without dopamine? That's where there's a certain amount of distress tolerance, which I know y'all hate to hear, but there's tons of studies that show that people who fall into addictions have a low capacity for distress tolerance. And so the ability to sit and sit with something, without reacting to it, because this is really important to understand. See, when I have a negative feeling, if I have to react to it,

what that means is that I'm not in control of myself or my life. If I cannot sit with sadness and I have to turn to dopamine to make it go away, that means that if I am sad, I will engage in this action. A leads to B. And this is what we see with sort of behavioral patterns of addiction, is that the brain or body or human doesn't know an alternative. And what that means is that your feelings will dictate your actions. And if your feelings dictate your actions, then your feelings will dictate your life.

And this is why we have a mental health crisis. Because we have way too many people in the world whose feelings determine their actions and their actions determine their destiny. So all it takes, it's not easy, but it's simple. All it takes is to separate your action from your feelings. How do we do that? Really easy. This is why I love, so in, you know, the yogic system,

we have these things called yamas and ni yamas, which means they're like observances. So cleanliness is a really great way to start. So if you look around you and there is something that is not clean, And if you sort of think about why isn't it clean, it's because you didn't feel like cleaning it in that moment. You're like, I'll take care of it later. I'll take out the trash tomorrow.

I'll do this. I'll do this. It's something I'm very guilty of. So it's close to home for me. And so if we think about how do we separate feeling from action, notice when you have a feeling to do something and then don't do that thing. The big mistake that we make is we try to get separation from feelings and actions for big things. How do I survive this breakup?

Don't start swimming in the middle of the ocean. Start in the kiddie pool. Start by cleaning. Right? Notice within yourself, holy crap, I don't feel like doing this. Go ahead and do it anyway. Make sense? Really simple.

You guys are like, how do I start? Just start with cleaning. And not just like clean up your room for the sake of cleaning your room. Notice the internal drives when you don't feel like doing something and then run contrary to it. That is how you were going to be doing push-ups for your frontal lobes and taking control decreasing the size of the connection between what you feel and how you act. That's the really important training that you need to do. Because what happens every time you give into an emotion and you act when you feel a certain

way is it strengthens the connection between your emotional circuit and your behavioral circuit. We need to weaken that connection out to separate those two things. Can enlighten people just sleep four hours? I think human beings can be healthy with four hours of sleep. I don't know if being enlightened has anything to do with it, though. I think there's a lot of really interesting stuff from the yogic literature that we're sort of starting to discover. So a couple of my favorite studies, so we now know about free diving. But, you know, I've studied with yogis that will breathe once an hour or even less.

Once an hour, I think I've come pretty close to that. We know from free diving that that's something you can do. Another thing is there's a great study by Herb Benson that showed that practice of yoga, yoga and branae am in the right way can alter body temperature by a maximum of nine degrees Celsius, which is insane. That's been verified in a laboratory. And I think that similarly with sleep, there are certain things that you can do that will allow you to sleep for a very small quantity of time. And that just has to do with like physiology, right? So if you do the job that sleep has has to do, if you take care of your body and do some of the things that sleep normally does for

you, you can sleep less. And the second thing is that if we think about why do we need to sleep more, the life that you live will determine how much you sleep and how much difficulty you have sleeping. See, everyone gets this. We did a whole video about this, but I think this is a huge misunderstanding that people have. I have a lot of patients who have had insomnia, and they think insomnia is about going to sleep. I have difficulty going to sleep. And so we try to solve in psychiatry, we try to solve insomnia at bedtime. So we say, hey, take some mertazapine, take some Benadryl, take something to help you sleep, right? We'll give people melaton. We'll like, if you're having trouble sleeping, like take this pill so it helps you sleep. Here's the key thing to remember. Your ability to go to

sleep depends on your activity for the day. So the way that you spend your day will determine how easy or difficult it is to fall asleep. Now, some people have really bad insomnia disorders that this doesn't work for, or at least works in a very limited capacity, but I'd say that literally for 99% of the patients I've worked with who have insomnia, unless you have something like familial fatal insomnia,

which is a prion disease, or some other form of really, really bad genetic or weird neurological insomnia. I don't know if what I'm saying is going to work for people of familial fatal insomnia. But anyway, the rest of y'all, 99% of people, it's about how you spend your day. So a couple of things that people really make big mistakes on. One is, I think having a heavy meal before you go to bed is huge.

So have a heavy meal, get that insulin spike, go ahead and go into that food coma. Second thing is whether you physically exercise during the day will help you sleep at night. And this is the third most important thing that a lot of people lose track of. you know, there's this weird phenomenon where when you go to bed, you get this burst of energy. And you're like, man, I feel so much motivation. Like tomorrow I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this. Why does that burst of energy happen? Why does your mind say this?

So I want you all to think about a day where you've been super productive the whole day. You woke up in the morning. You went to set. You filmed for 12 hours. You prep for tomorrow. You went to the gym. You had such a full day. And then at the end of the day, do you ever get a burst of motivation?

Tomorrow is going to be different. Tomorrow I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this. Sometimes you get a feeling of satisfaction. Today was great. Tomorrow is going to be a repeat. And then you will be able to go to sleep. Your brain literally keeps track, has a mental calendar of what you should be doing, what you should accomplish on a daily basis.

And if you do not accomplish enough of what you are supposed to be doing, to do, and you know what that is, then your mind says, oh my God, I have fallen short. It's not time to sleep yet. I have so much more to do. And then what does the mind do? The mind says, okay, I'm going to do it all tomorrow. So you get this burst of motivation at the end of the day. So if you live your day in a way that there's no need for that burst of motivation at the end of day, if you hit the sack and you're like, oh my God, this is such a long day. This is a, you know, I did a lot. Then insomnia will get way, way, way better.

Okay, thoughts about on internal desires in of themselves being the purpose in one's life, finding satisfaction and drive in the continuity of life and present meaningful internal desires. Okay, I think this is a great question, but I think we have to be precise with our language. I don't know what an internal desire is. I've never seen a desire outside of me. So I don't know what that is. I do not think desires or the fulfillment of desires is a purpose in life. I don't think that's going to work.

The gratification of desires is not how we derive meaning. So finding satisfaction and drive, that's good. But generally speaking, I think the best way to have a meaningful, fulfilling life is to be engaged with something. It doesn't come from the gratification or even the satisfaction. of your desires. It comes from the wholehearted attempt towards something. Right. So like it's not about even succeeding or failing or getting what you wanted. It's about giving it your all. And what you find with people who test highly for life satisfaction, a sense of meaning and purpose, the satisfaction comes from the living, not the object or the end of living, not the goal of living, not the goal of living, not the goal of

It comes from the action itself. So to participate fully in life, whatever it brings, the good and the bad, that's when people get satisfied. And that's where I think there's a lot of subtlety here. And I'm not sure that I think this person may, you know, understand that. They just, I'm reading into their question in a particular way. So, you know, you can have internal desires and the desires give you a general direction. So that's good, right? So if I have like a desire to do something, I'm not saying that you should move away from that

desire, but the satisfaction doesn't come from point A to point B. It comes from how you live this middle portion. And there are a ton of people that I've met that, you know, we'll work on this where they start to really focus on not even succeeding, but enjoying the thrill of the chase. Right? And if you really think about it, like, how, when do you have fun playing a video game? Is it the victory at the end that is really the majority of the enjoyment? If so, games would last 60 seconds and they would end very, very, very, very, very quickly. If we really think about it, right? If the end is about winning, the funnest game on the planet would be, hey, me versus you, heads versus tails, let's flip a coin.

Ah, you won, flip a coin, I won, flip a coin, you won, flip a coin, you won, flip a coin, I won, flip a coin, I won, flip a coin, I won again. That would be the funnest game on the planet if the winning or the lose. losing was really where the fun is. That's not where the fun is. The fun is in the gameplay loop itself. And this is what's wild. See, video games are awesome because video games have taught us so much about how we work. So what makes a successful video game?

Remember, video games are taking advantage of our neurology. They're leaning into what we already have there. That's the problem with video games. That's what make them so addictive is because they hide it. jack our existing circuitry. So what makes a game fun? Not the winning or losing, not even the loop box at the end. It is the gameplay loop.

Right? The loop has to be engaging. So in your own life, if you are trying to figure out how to do anything, it doesn't matter what it is. Focus on the gameplay loop itself. Focus on your experience of doing the thing, not whether the thing is good or bad. Give you all a couple of really simple examples. So I've worked with a fair number of people who are in cells or red pillars or whatever, and they really struggle with dating.

And what they really try to do is enjoy, like, they try to date and it doesn't work well. And they think, oh, my God, this person doesn't find me attractive. I don't find them attractive. But then you can change the way your experience of that date. You can look at that date and you can say, okay, I'm going to go on this date and it may work out, it may not work out. But hey, it's an opportunity to get to know someone. it's an opportunity to practice being on a date.

There are all kinds of opportunities in on a date that have nothing to do with getting late at the end of the night, finding your forever person, getting oxytocin. It is all entirely based on your framing. It is entirely based on how you see the gameplay loop. And the problem right now is that most people have a fundamental gameplay loop in their regular life that sucks. And they think that that is static. But this is the cool thing.

This is the really cool thing about a human brain is we can change our experience of an experience by changing our attitude towards the experience, literally. Right? So we have a growth mindset and we have a performance mindset. The mindset that you adopt will shape your subjective experience of an objective experience. So I'll give you all a really concrete example. when I work with people who have addictions. They try to be sober.

They're sober for a week and then they relapse. And then they try again. They're sober for a month and then they relapse. And then they try the third time. They're sober for four months and then they relapse. And then they're sober for three days and they relapse. And they think to themselves, oh my God, I am back to square one. Right?

Makes sense. You've lost all of your progress. But there's a different way to think about it. You are sober for three days and then you relapsed and now you're unhappy with that. What is the total days of sobriety? What's the total days of usage and the total days of sobriety over the last six months? That's a huge win. Are there challenges?

Absolutely. Does this need to be worked through? Absolutely. But the attitude that you take, the cognitive frame or reframe that you take, that you make will determine your gameplay loop. So the biggest problem here is that we don't have healthy gameplay loops. It's not that at the end of the day, we're not succeeding or failing. I don't think there are people hired by Sud Guru team here in chat. I think there are a lot of people in our community who derive a lot of value from

Sud Guru's teachings. Okay, how do we change our mindset or perspective? This is one thing that I wish he had really gone into a little bit more detail, but I've noticed he doesn't oftentimes. He really focuses on major central principles, a little bit less so on mechanism, but that's fine. You know, everyone has their own take.

I'm always curious when I hear him speak about more about mechanisms. There are good reasons to not focus on mechanisms too, but that's a conversation for a different day. So how do you change your mindset or perspective? So the first step to changing your mindset or perspective is to recognize that what is produced by your mind is not truth. It is a mindset or a perspective.

So if I take someone who's like a black pillar and I ask them, you know, what do you think about life? They won't, there's a fundamental problem. They do not think that their thoughts are simply produced by their mind. They think their thoughts are true. So mindset shift is impossible as long, or intentional mindset shift, I should say, is impossible as long as the thoughts that your brain randomly produces, you accept as true. The first thing is to look at the way that you look at life and try to see, really look at it. Okay, this is just my perspective. These are thoughts being produced by the mind.

The second thing that we can try to do is shift it in a different way. So we try to lay this stuff out for y'all, like, you know, in various exercises and things like this. But literally, what is a different way that you can look at it? So a lot of people will say, oh, my God, I've broken up with someone, now I'm screwed. But now you have experience in one relationship. Right? every mistake you make in life is part of the process of you learning and leveling up but if you see mistakes is fixed endpoints then the mindset shift is hard

the other thing that makes a mindset shift really really hard i'll give you all a cool i mean i hope this is helpful this has really helped me help other people is look at the dimension of time that your mind produces that's a mind mindset, right? This is forever. This means, like, look at the dimension of time. You'll notice that the more unhealthy your mindset is, the greater the dimension of time is going to be as part of your thought process. Things will linger for a very long time and your mind will think about time a lot. So one of the best ways to shift is to focus on the short term, really focus on the short term. Okay, I'm, I got dumped for someone. My mind is saying I'm going to be a

for the rest of my life. What am I going to do for the next hour? Am I going to clean my kitchen? Am I going to sit on my phone for an hour? Am I going to scroll through TikToks? They're Instagram reels that now realize that I've been dumped and are going to feed me this kind of stuff. What am I going to do in the short term? And I think the biggest thing that people grossly, grossly, grossly, grossly underestimate is how important experience is for changing your mindset. So this is, I think, a big weakness in therapy that we try to work on the mindset solely through the mindset, for the most part.

We try to help people cognitively reframe and stuff like that. Whereas if you look at what is the biggest thing that will change someone's thought process is experience. And this is why people get locked into mindsets because you can try to listen to me, talk about a mindset shift, but if your experience continues to be really, really bad

and terrible and I'm a black pillar, no one cares about me, no one's talking me and things like that, I can talk as much as I want to about mindset, but your brain is producing those thoughts based on your experience. So the best way to change it, the most automatic way, the most non-intentional way to change your mindset is to cultivate a different kind of experience. So if you have a very negative aspect in your life or mindset in your life, then think about what your day-to-day experiences. How can you change that? And there's a paper that I want to show y'all that just flashes.

Oh, I guess I can't show you all the paper. Never mind. Okay, so if you guys see this, so if you look at people who have endogenous depression, their experience is relatively constant. So this is reactive depression where you have some, you know, highs, you've got some lows, highs, lows, whatever. But if you look at a normal healthy functioning,

there's a lot of variety. So I think oftentimes what I see very practically, what I see very practically is that when people have the same fundamental daily experience and there's not variety, their mindset gets locked in. And I think this is what's so confusing is that oftentimes the way to fix our mindset problems is to not fix our mindset problems. It is simply to start to accumulate a different kind of experience. So whatever, like if you're stuck in a particular mindset,

step out of your daily life in its current form. It's really fascinating because if you look at research on quarter life crisis, one of the key things to overcome a quarter life crisis is literally a phase that they call checking out. Checking out is not a problem. It's part of the process of plugging back in. You got to check out to plug back in. You have to step out of your existing life

in order to figure out who you are so that you can plug back into your life in a much healthier way. I think we've been running for a little while, so it's about 2 o'clock, so we're going to wrap up. Any last questions before we wrap? How did I feel with the other girls? Fine. I think we were a little bit like rushed at the start.

So that was like I was thrown off a little bit there, but other than that, fine. Dark Night of the Soul, I think it's probably we're going to cover it in memberships at some point. a throat chakra lecture will not talk, I mean, some about Brana, but not so much, actually. Okay? So take care, everybody. Thanks for joining us today.

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