The Joe Rogan Experience - #1430 - Raghunath Cappo

Episode Date: February 21, 2020

Raghunath Cappo was the vocalist for punk bands Youth of Today and Shelter, and after living as a monk is now a yoga teacher and is the host of the "Wisdom of the Sages" podcast on Spotify.

three two one boom we're live what's up ray how are you buddy pretty good great to see you man it's been a while it's been 10 years no more than that really 2007 i moved out of la wow damn it's weird i talked about you in the podcast several times though you know what? I never listened to the podcast until recently. Someone told me the second time you said, I think three times you've mentioned me. Probably. Yoga Ray. Yoga Ray.

All these kids are contacting me. They mentioned Yoga Ray on the show. Yeah, it was cool. I appreciate it. I appreciate you. I appreciate you, too, man. I always thought, truthfully, I always thought Joe Rogan's gonna do something good

I honestly I can tell you that and it may be embarrassing to say but I'm proud of you oh thank you that's very nice I hope you don't mind me saying that

I'm proud of all you've done thank you that's very nice that's a funny thing to say though and you've had great just Joe Rogan time you've done some great stuff first of all

stand up comedian that's a great gig it's a fun gig it's a great gig and if I could pick Great. Just Joe Rogan time. You've done some great stuff. First of all, stand-up comedian. That's a great gig. It's a fun gig. It's a great gig. And if I could pick a second thing besides stand-up comedian, it'd be the announcer. I wouldn't want to be in the UFC, even if I was good, because you get pounded on and it's a tough job. Right?

Yeah, for sure. I went to Thailand to see those kids fight. They're retired at 21. Yeah, they get beat up. They get beat up bad. But to be an announcer of the UFC? And you're also skilled at this stuff. Most people think the announcers aren't so skilled sometimes.

You're very skilled. I just remember rolling around with you. Yeah. Those were some of the greatest memories of my time in LA is when Eddie opened 10th Planet. Yeah, we had a lot of fun, man. I mean, it was such a special, interesting time of jujitsu, I think, that it was going to no gi. There's this demographic of jujitsu guys who didn't want to wear a gi anymore. Yeah. Well, it was a lot of people wanted to learn things that would transition directly into MMA and to not have

the clothes to grab onto, it changed the grips. And Eddie was one of the very first to really, truly concentrate on using wrestling grips, gable grips, over-unders, things along those lines. And the other people were still really clinging to the gi. He was like a, and I think the thing that I was attracted to about the ultimate fighting, when I first saw, I think the first one I saw was two, you know, UFC two. And I was like, oh man, this is,

and you watch those Gracie in action videos. It's like, yeah, this is real stuff. I want to learn real stuff. And so I started even noticing in my gi game, I just played open guard and I was lackadaisical and I'd always have to tell the guys, hey, do me a favor, just try to slap me because this is getting a little unreal.

I want a real-life situation. And I'm figuring, okay, I don't want to get caught up in the gi-no-gi thing right now. But I always felt like real practical fighting. The guy may not be wearing a tuxedo. I think both are good because you live in New York. New York gets cold. If you get into a scuffle with someone, I hope you never would do,

but if you did and he was wearing a jacket like yours, you could manipulate him with that jacket and they really probably wouldn't know what to do. Yeah. You know, this is a real benefit to like being a judo player. If someone has a winter coat on. Yeah.

Like if you had a fight with Cairo Parisian or Ronda Rousey or someone like that and they, they're wearing a winter coat, they'll fuck you up. They just grab that thing. Boom! Yeah. Okay, yes. Well, I'm glad I learned that way.

Yeah. It's a good way to learn. It's good. It's good for defense, too, because the gi keeps you from just yanking out of stuff and exploding out of things. You have to be very patient. You have to use correct technique. Anyway, it was appreciation, and it was one of my biggest lamentations of moving away

was not to be around that whole posse and then i never expected it to get as big as it did i know it's unbelievable because back then it was like the seed i used to bring my my big kids who are big now i used to bring them and they used to just box. We used to do it at Legends. No, before Legends. Oh, Bomb Squad. At the Bomb Squad. Oh, wow. That's crazy. That's old school, old school.

Yeah. That's 2000 what? Two? Somewhere around there? Yeah, it was cool. It was a great time. I had just got my purple. I was super excited

and then Eddie just got his black. He got his brown and his black super quick. Yeah, well he got his brown and then he beat Hoyler and then he got his black. Yeah, i was there that day yeah that was crazy when john jock took it off his back unbelievable heavy that was heavy

yeah it was a good place to be at a good time it was it's like when you look back at those times it's an it was an interesting era it was an interesting era for us as humans it was an interesting era for martial arts there's a lot going on and that 10th planet was really a hub of exciting innovation and still is but i mean back then it was this really unique thing this this completely nogi branch of jujitsu that's directly connected to janjak machado which is a totally very conservative legit jun-jock was is i mean i was so always impressed with him he still rolls man he's my age and he doesn't get injured like he he might have like a little tweak here and there but he's so intelligent and he's so technical and he's just so good that was i'm saying was

only because i'm not there anymore. But when I was going there, I was like, this is such an amazing place, Jean-Jacques Academy, the quality of fighters you would get there. Yeah. I mean, that was also at a time where there was no jiu-jitsu in America. I mean, you have to travel to get to a jiu-jitsu school. You have to be into it and go somewhere. to get to a jiu-jitsu school.

You have to be into it and go somewhere. And to have that many black belts at a school, that was like unheard of in jiu-jitsu schools. I remember I was in his class one day and there was like 11 black belts. I was like, this is crazy. And it wasn't like that back then. No. There was a random rogue black belt somewhere in Portland or something like that. You had to find them.

It was a lot of purple belts teaching schools and blue belts teaching schools in some places even. That was a great time to get into jiu-jitsu also. Oh, yeah. Like I went – I started with Henzo in New York. Yeah. I went there the day that Matt Serra got his purple belt. Wow. That's crazy.

Isn't that crazy? It was such a cool, interesting time in Jiu Jitsu. That place is still the top place in the world. It's pretty impressive. And Henzo was such

a great guy too. He's the best. He's so nice. Sweet. I gave him a CD of my band just as a gift. I just met him

and he gave me a Krugan Gi. Wow. Yeah. That's legit. It was super legit. Krugan's was the Gi back then. That was the Gi. Yeah. If you had a krugan gi wow yeah that's legit it was super legit krugans was the the gi that was the gi yeah if you had a krugans like you know it was a fair trade i wasn't a trade i just wanted to give him a gift and he just like without thinking just threw that back at me he had a great attitude

well he still does he's so loved that guy said i mean that's one of the really nice things about jujitsu is the camaraderie and the friendship. It's very different than – I always compare it to other martial arts in that the problem with striking martial arts is that you hurt each other all the time. You never develop the sort of closeness that you do with jiu-jitsu because you're always trying to kick each other's fucking heads off. Well, you know, I did astanga yoga for years where it's sort of silent and you're just doing a set series of poses. where it's sort of silent and you're just doing a set series of poses, I could be with people like every day for a year and practically never speak to them. I remember meeting a guy at the DMV. I was like, I know you.

You're right next to me every morning for two hours, but we've never spoken. Jiu-jitsu, you become best friends with the guy. You walk out with like 20 new friends. You know each other so well too. Like you know when someone's breaking. You know when someone's exhausted. You know when someone's getting better. You know when someone's really been consistent.

You know, you roll with someone and they're super sharp. You're like, what have you been doing? Right. Going four days a week now. Right. Oh, wow. You see it, right? Yeah, they become like your best friends.

Yeah. Well, it's also like we appreciate when someone's really good. Like if you roll with someone and they're really good and they start getting you and they didn't used to get you before you like a pre you like you get excited like all right i gotta ramp up my game because he's doing something you're doing really you have a different metric with all these yeah well i remember you being one of the first guys that i knew that got into yoga and yoga is a huge part of jujitsu now so many people that train in jiu-jitsu. By the way, I'm jiu-jitsu illiterate now. You still know.

When you stopped, were you a brown belt? I was purple. I was purple because I stopped going to John Joss classes. And I think it's sort of before Eddie started giving out. Actually, maybe he did. He was giving out belts pretty early. He gave out belts, actually. Yeah. But I just wasn't,

it was confusing. It was confusing because I was sort of with John Jacques. Right. But I just, I wanted to do the no-gi stuff. Yeah. And Eddie has this natural flexibility

that I related to, and he's my size, and I related to that. And I'm not like, I was never super athlete in high school or anything like that. I was not like, I was never super athlete in high school or anything like that. I was short, but I was reasonably flexible

and yoga got me really flexible. And so I was like, okay, he has a really great close guard game. I want to learn that from him. And I really sort of like honed in on what he could give.

And so, yeah, I never like approached him, hey, can I have a belt? Do you ever feel that feel it was a vulnerable weird time in my life but you know did you ever feel the desire to do it again

yeah I do every now and then I go back but I tell ya when I train because I trained with you guys and trained with

Jean Jacques it's hard to go to some it's hard to do it now it's 20 years later all the stuff I just you know I just did some jujitsu the other day at some school, and someone got mad at me for, I guess it's illegal,

some of the stuff I did. What did you do? I did bicep scissors. That's not illegal. It's not illegal? No. Someone could play. Then I sat on someone's chest.

I do a mount where I put the feet forward. I don't remember how I used to do that. And I would crank their neck. Not to tap them, but just to have them react and give me an arm or something. So my feet are forward. I'm sitting on their mount. I pull their head up in a panic or something and throw an arm up. And then I'll take a triangle or an arm.

So I did that to someone. You can't neck crank. Listen. I didn't know. I didn't know. That's not a good school. Those are legit techniques. Neck cranks are legit.

Right? You can't do that? All right. It's crazy. You just went to a bad spot. I'm jujitsu illiterate. Yeah, but no, I don't think so. And here's the deal.

I didn't learn this stuff to win points. Right. Now I want to learn. That's how I know this other guy that was on your show, James Wilkes. Yes. Great guy. The ultimate fighter. Great guy. You know, I wanted to learn, now I want to learn, you know, that's how I know this other guy that was on your show, James Wilkes. Yes. Great guy. The ultimate fighter.

Great guy. No, I knew him because I used to do some knife fighting with him. Oh, yeah, he's a tactical instructor. Yeah, he's a real, he's a super rounded guy. Yeah, very rounded guy. But I knew him right when he just started jujitsu. Did you see his, he did a debate with this guy. I saw it. About his documentary.

It was very interesting because that debate really should be like 15 hours long. We only got into some points that the other guy fucked up and got incorrect. And you get in the weeds with nutrition stuff, you know, because he was a part of that Game Changer documentary. Yeah. You know, I heard the documentary was good. I sat down with my kids to watch it. It's interesting.

It's like, there's a lot of it it it's interesting it's like there's a lot of it that's not legit and then there's a lot of it it is like you can eat only plants you can you can be healthy eating only plants but you have to do it right and it's not easy and it's different for everybody and some people it does not agree with their body it's not the optimum way for them to eat for some people when they get off of it and just start eating like more paleo or they start eating grass-fed meat they feel so much better like i just i just don't know if there is a perfect no i do know there's not a perfect diet for any like for every single human being on this planet it's not like one diet that you could lock in and if you ate that way you'd be fine everybody's different people have all these weird autoimmune disorders and shit and a lot of them are triggered by

certain carbohydrates and plants and and when you eliminate those things from your diet you find all these skin problems clear up and right people are trying to figure out what's that all about and there's all these people that think that maybe it's there's certain toxins like oxalates and polyphenols and stuff that exist in plants that might trigger your your gut sensitivity or autoimmune issues in the gut this it's so in the weeds man it's like confusing you can go on and on and on and you can debate about details and everyone has a point they all have a point the the vegan people have a point when it comes to ethics when it comes to ethics, when it comes to animal rights, when it comes to cruelty and factory farming. They have a point.

And then the health-conscious people, the people that are like, you know, I don't give a fuck about that. I'm just trying to be healthy. And I cured up all my diseases by just eating grass-fed meat. I'm just going to buy it from ethical ranchers. They have a point, too. Right. Well, last appreciation for Joe Rogan for what is – I'm appreciating your independent thinking. It takes a lot because it's really easy just to opt into one side and dig your heels in. It's bad for you though.

It's bad for you. It's bad. It stops you from actually free thinking and that's a problem with anything you get into be it politics yes or be it uh religion or spirituality or be it uh ethics and diet everything everything the way behavior i think people have to realize that you are not your thoughts you are it's my yoga thing yeah you are not your thoughts you're you're a person and you you accept thoughts and sometimes become attached to them but they're it's my yoga thing yeah you are not your thoughts you're you're a person and you you accept thoughts and sometimes become attached to them but they're it's not good to do sometimes you should re-examine those thoughts and don't don't hold on to them as if they're a part of you

people argue points they'll argue subjects and topics as if they're arguing their very value as a person their very value to exist, and it's crazy. It's not a good way to think. If someone tells me I'm wrong, everyone's instinct when someone tells you you're wrong is like, no, you're wrong, fuck you, you're wrong. You get into this very petty world. But my disciplined reaction when I'm doing it correctly

is to go, hmm, okay, how am am i wrong what did i do wrong and just do don't take it personally just these are not this is not i mean if you've made a mistake that's just a mistake people you're not a perfect person no one is everyone makes mistakes so if you make a mistake about a fact or a subject or just pause just pause and take it go okay what what is wrong and then is this person correct are you wrong or are they incorrect and you know can you can you correct them without getting personal about it too like can you that's another thing like can you tell someone that they're wrong or that you believe they're wrong without it getting weird you know that's that's hard to do as well because

then that other person is going to be very attached to what they've said i mean people dig their heels in it's yeah these are all these are all points i'm working on in uh you know my book i'm working on which is sort of extracting all these teachings of ancient yoga but not not getting lost in just philosophical thought not getting lost in um how to make it relevant and practical but it's exactly what you're saying. It's hard for people. It's hard. Independent thinking is difficult nowadays because it's not the easy way out. It's easy to have your clothes picked out for you

and your ideology picked out for how you're supposed to look and where you're supposed to, and if I'm a Democrat, I'm supposed to be like this and not like this. Do you remember Bud, Bud Bretzman?

He was one of the guys that trained with us at Gen Jocks. He was... Older guy? Younger guy? He was my age. At the time, you know, he was in his 30s. Anyway, Bud only wears black.

He's been on this podcast before. He's a good friend of mine. He lives down the street from me. He only wears black. Okay. He wears black shirts. He wears black pants. I go, why?

I remember him. I go, why do you only wear black? And he goes, I don't have to think about it this way. It is good. It's a nice way to think. He goes in his closet. He's like, oh my God, why? I remember him. I go, why do you only wear black? And he goes, I don't have to think about it this way. It is good. It's a nice way to think. He goes in his closet, like, oh my God, this is a crazy person.

It's like all black t-shirts, all black jeans. Like, what the fuck are you wearing? But he never thinks. He just puts his pants on. Like, that's one less thing I have to think about. I was like, all right.

That's his thing. Everything's black. Easy. Yeah. Black sneakers? Check. Black pants? Check.

Black socks? All right. That's his Check. Black pants? Check. Black socks? All right. That's his thing. And he doesn't have to spend time thinking about his image. Like, it's just this is what he wears. It's a burden. Yeah. That was the one thing I really was relieved from me as a monk.

I was a monk. Did you know that? I don't know if you know my bio or know me just from jujitsu. I don't even know how you called me up, truthfully. But it was a weird situation. I was traveling with a bunch of students. I'm a yoga teacher, by the way. My name's Raghunath Ray.

Well, how did you get that name? So Raghunath was my name since about 91. A teacher in India gave it to me. Oh. How does that work? How does that work? it works where you approach teachers that resonate with you

that sort of speak to you the universe sends you people that speak to you I'm sure you've found that in your own life there's certain people that explain something better than anybody might be at different times in your life and then the teacher feels you're ready,

and they want to sort of give you a mantra. So they give you a mantra, and the mantra is sound. And the sound is very powerful because sound affects the way we think. They say as far as transformation in yoga, like we do something very physical, and it starts to transform the body. You're into yoga now, from what I know of you. We both, I guess, have been researching each other. And you have an appreciation for yoga because it radically starts to change your body.

And then it starts to sort of slow down the pace of your thoughts and your mind. And it helps with your endurance and your cardio and all that stuff. So the grossest way to change is the change of the body. So the grossest way to change is the change of the body. And the breathing start to also change your cardiovascular system, your endurance. And then, of course, the sounds that we hear, they say, are the most transformational. And it's almost hard to believe, especially coming from the West, because in the West, we're thinking, you know, sounds, how's that going to make me healthy? But it's all about sound that creates a healthy mind, a calm mind, a connected mind. The mind can, the idea behind yoga is it can go to a dark place.

The mind can go to a very dark place very quick. And those thoughts, you were just, we're not our thoughts, but our thoughts can get us into trouble. They can get us in jail. They can get us divorced. They could, the thoughts create an action. get us into trouble, they can get us in jail, they can get us divorced. The thoughts create an action. And so we might have an external cleanliness, but if we don't have that internal cleanliness,

you're not actually healthy. So there's a different metric of what health is in the yoga system. And we've always taken it in the Western world to be, well, we're going to, you know, health means fitness, you know, and so we're going to become fit but you could be fit and be angry you could be fit and be resentful you could be fit and be um unforgiving and so then the next question is what is actual health then where is where what is full spectrum health look like right and that's sort of what i i love what yoga addresses. And I feel like what we are doing there in these great martial arts teachers that we've had teach us is how to be sort of almost like you're fighting this fight, but there's no rage. You're not actually even angry at the person. It's actually just you're just doing what you're supposed to do

right now. Can I be completely relaxed and do this? Under stress. Under incredible amounts of stress. A guy's trying to, a guy's trying to choke the life out of you.

Yeah, literally. Yeah, I had, I had, you know, I had a, I had a fight back then. I don't like to fight. I'm not like, I don't look at myself as a fighter.

I looked at myself more as a meditator. I got in a fight right at that time, probably when I saw you last. What happened? It was in Santa Monica. A guy stole my car. Oh, wow. It was my first date with my wife. So this is our first date.

We've married 16 years. The guy stole my car. And how did you catch him? Well, we are walking up the street, and she said, oh, you left your lights on in your car. And I said, no, I have a sob. You need the keys to get the lights on, so that can't be my car. But my top was down. It was a convertible sob.

And the top was down. And I was like, man, that is my car. How are my lights on? And then I realized there is this dude in my car trying to start my car and my wife left her keys in the glove compartment and i guess he opened the glove compartment went into a convertible which was open i had no alarm it was one of those old sob 900s i used to have and you and you put the keys in and he just couldn't start because it wasn't the right keys so i don't i don't know if it was because of yoga or jujitsu or whatever it was, but I was so calm about it.

I just said, hold my sweatshirt. And I was super skinny then. I was like, I don't know if you remember, my diet was 100% raw foodist, vegan, like, you know, a buck 47 soaking wet with a crystal in my pocket, you know? And I just said, in a very calm way, I just said, hold my jacket. And I ran. I jumped on the back of the trunk. I jumped over and jumped on his head. And then I, and I'm small.

So I drive real close to the steering wheel and I slipped behind him and tried to choke him, but I couldn't get deep enough behind him to get the choke in. And it was this big dude. I couldn't really tell from when I jumped, but it was this big dude. And he said, you trying to choke me? I'm going to kill you. But it was such a stalemate because he couldn't move. I couldn't get the choke in deep enough. And it was just a stalemate because he couldn't move. I couldn't get the choke in deep enough. And it was just a stalemate.

And it went on for like three minutes just there. Whoa. But I was just breathing. And then he went back to grab my face. And you do that thing in jujitsu where you hook the guy's arm with your leg. So I had that arm trapped. He couldn't move. I couldn't move.

My wife was looking at me. She's not calling the cops. She's just like looking there shocked. This is your first date. It's our first date. It's midnight in Santa Monica. Right in the coffee bean or something. And finally we stand up in the seat.

We're standing in the front seat. My windows are up but the top is down. I cup his neck and I punch him twice and he grabs me by the shirt I grab him by the shirt and we throw each other through the windows

oh Jesus and they snap and shatter and we fall out of the car over the door and roll in the street and I put him in my guard and then he just

at that point I think he just turned and ran and I pulled his shirt off check this out I had his shoes cause his shoes fell off. They were sort of like untied Adidas. His shoes fell off. His pants dropped to his ankles because they were low-hanging pants, sagging pants.

His baseball hat fell off, and I had his shirt, and he ran away. And we're both covered in blood because there's glass all over us. And he runs away in his underwear, pulling up his pants in his socks. And that's the story. My wife looks at me. I was like, why didn't you call the cops? She's like, I don't know. That was the coolest thing I've ever seen.

I was like, that was the coolest thing I think I've ever done. She's like, he could have had a gun. I was like, yeah, I know. He could have actually killed me i've never you know i don't know how i would react again if that ever happened but that's just what happened i think it's because it was sort of like in that mood of this is my duty i have to protect my car right and also the other thing is you are used to like pretty intense conflict when you're doing jiu-jitsu all the time and then you know we did mma yeah it's a week too and that was always

yeah yeah and all those guys at john jockster you're the cops i'd call them cops or robbers they were like one of them well the thing about jiu-jitsu is you do it full blast right you don't you don't break arms or actually choke people unconscious. If they tap, you let go. You go to that last moment. Yeah, you're going as hard as you can. That's the difference. You're so accustomed to that.

So when you're rolling with this guy also, people that aren't accustomed to that, they feel vulnerable. Panic. What is this guy going to do? You feel it right away. They feel awkward. They feel strange. Yeah. I've rolled with people that don't know how to roll. joking around rolling with people like come on let me do jujitsu

with you let me see what it feels like they're helpless they're helpless helpless it's a weird feeling it's like what you look like a norm you look like my size you know you look like we and i should be but you're you're vulnerable you're so vulnerable right it's just like a there's such a big learn a little the learning curve is so sharp It's just like there's such a big learning curve. It's so sharp. It's so sharp. It's so sharp. But once you get to like Blue Belt, Purple Belt, it's like that area, like a regular person is really helpless.

They really are. You know what's interesting? Even with that fight, I don't look at myself as a fighting guy. I definitely don't look for fights. But it's almost like you're learning a game yeah and then you realize oh this game is completely deadly yeah it is a deadly game i mean this is exactly what it is you're playing a game i'm trying to kill you you're trying to kill me but we're really good friends that's the crazy thing it's like a lot of guys who have technically killed me you know because i had a tap, they're my really good friends.

They're my best friends. Yeah, they're really nice. And I can't wait to try to kill them again. It's a very strange thing to practice, but it's very cleansing. The people that do it all the time. It's like therapy. Yeah, they're so peaceful. Yeah, I don't know if any other – I didn't really study other martial arts except a little Muay Thai in Thailand.

But I wonder if you get the same feeling because you don't have to pull yeah you don't have to you know either go light or you i mean in thailand it was like i went to kick a guy and he blocked it with his shin you know he lifted his knee and i got a bruise from my ankle to my knee that was like yeah it's brutal it's brutal it's brutal yeah you really have to condition the shit out of your shins it takes years too yeah that it's just a different sort of camaraderie there's real camaraderie with striking but again it feels weird because you do hurt each other so you don't have that same sort of bond that you have in jiu-jitsu also there's a thing in jiu-jitsu is body contact. Like body contact is different.

You know, it's like you're like people who don't have good friends. They never hug. Yeah, they don't hug. There's a lot of men who don't want to be touched by another man. Like I don't know why. I'm not giving a reason why, but if you go, hey, what's up? And you go and hug them or just shake them. They're just grossed out by the touching of another man.

You've got to get over that quick. Yeah, I mean, how many times have I talked about jiu-jitsu with people and the people that don't do it? So you roll around with other guys? Isn't that kind of gay? People say that all the time. There was that video out there at one time. Jiu-jitsu, that's the gayest sport around. Remember that?

It was from some TV show. Oh, yeah. They're like, I'm going to learn Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, look, some of the positions like being the guard

or being on someone's back, you know? Whatever. So you were the first guy that I knew that was really into yoga back then. I knew Hickson

like when that documentary Choke came out. Yeah, that was a great documentary. That was a great documentary and showed how much Jiu-Jitsu and yoga together made Hickson this really incredible force. The yoga had affected his mind in this great way because he was able to meditate and he would do all these incredible yoga poses. He was so flexible and he had such dexterity of his arms and legs.

I mean, a lot of people got excited about yoga because of hickson but you were the first guy that i knew that really went so deep into it you actually became an instructor because when i first knew you i knew that you were in a band and that you you did yoga then a little bit because everybody called you yoga ray but it's like i felt like you were on this path and this this yoga path i could tell and then paying attention to you on social media and following you it's like well he's really into this shit i remember when you were moving to new york we had talked online and you were going out there to teach jujitsu or excuse me uh yoga and uh i was like i don't even think he does jujitsu anymore

i think he's just all doing yoga now. And that's what happened, right? You know, I did music for most of my life with Youth of Today. Youth of Today was the band before I became a monk. And at the height of that career, this was a New York City hardcore straight edge band. We didn't drink. We didn't smoke. And we were all strict vegetarians that's me yeah in a more relaxed form that's a good photo so that's what i did as and and um the idea of the band we were teenagers we were all teenagers

me and my uh my buddy buddy parmananda who also later moved into an ashram so uh we started this when we were in 16 17 and um it was a cool scene making our own music and stuff like that but when we got youth of today together it was about sort of a message of better living positive mental attitude um these spiritual principles like karma and what goes around comes around and respect, dignity, controlling your senses and your mind. What led you to that? I don't know. Really? I don't know.

Really? I've always been interested in... My idea of a good time was, this was like 80s in New York City, was you find these like Eastie Westie bookstores that have books on yoga and metaphysics and reincarnation and just plop it down and read

books all afternoon by Swamis and Sadhus and weirdos and palm readers and stuff like that. That's my idea of what a good time was. And I always felt like life is meant for our self edification. That's why we're here. We're here on a mission of growth. And when I read books by sages or mystics and things like that, I was always like, I

want to be like that. That's what I want to be. That's bigger than anything out there that I want to be. So truthfully, the band, I never really want – I'm not a musician. I play a little bit of everything. I wrote all the songs. But I always looked at myself as more like a seeker and maybe a spokesperson. But then at a certain point in the success of that band, I started realizing, okay, now we're big.

And there's a lot of people who are following those sort of principles of controlling your senses. We don't drink. We don't smoke. We don't take drugs. We can care about what we eat. But that's not the goal. That's like a doorway to something bigger. And so for me, I had to step away from that.

Even though it wasn't bad or anything, it wasn't what I wanted to become. And it was a certain point in my life. You know, you get to a certain end of a chapter in your life. And for me, at the time, it was the height of the band's career as well. We started touring internationally and stuff like that. But I realized there was no amount. And by the way, this was 80s in New York, which is a very cool time. Run DMC, Madonna, the Beastie Boys. You

never knew like what was about to like blow up and you were with all these other people that they were your inspiration and they were your friends and stuff like that. So at that height and excitement, I just said, there is no amount of material success I want that's going to fill sort of like a God-shaped hole in my heart. There's nothing out there that I want. And it was also a very precarious time in my life where, not precarious, but a time where my father went into a coma for three years. Oh, Jesus. I know. It's so horrible to even think about it. What happened?

What happened was he got some unknown lung infection. He was young, 64. Unknown lung infection, and there was some neglect in the hospital, and his lung collapsed and so comas are one of these places where you don't is he not dead he's is he alive and it's so confusing for a person that loves that person how to even react and uh you know in i'll say in a humiliating way, I couldn't deal with it. And I sort of shut myself off. And I went and just started working on my music, something I could do.

And then at his death, when he finally left his body, I was cultivating a strong desire to go to India and study more. And at that time, I was also studying yoga, Ayurvedic medicine. So he went into a coma for three years and then he expired? And then when he died... At the end of the coma. He never came out of the coma. He never came out of the coma. And when he left his body, I decided, I'm going to India now.

That was a sign for me, and I quit the band. And this is at the peak of the band. It was at the peak of Youth of Today, yeah. Was that hard to walk away from all that? You know what? I was at a point where I was saying, and you've probably experienced this too, and I'm sure Eddie probably does too.

Sometimes when you become very successful at something, that same thing, the thing that you love sort of can eat away at you as well. Sometimes the people, I'll share with you how I saw it. I remember sitting in an ashram on 24th Street, a Sivananda ashram. Sivananda was like a swami. He came, he traveled the world, He taught the teachings of yoga outside India. And he wrote lots of books.

And there's a library of books or a bookstore up on 24th Street where he has an ashram in New York City. And I remember reading this one quote by him in the midst of my life as in a band and being a teenager living in New York City. And it was before you first, the first one was really interesting. Where is your happiness coming from? Is it coming from your day to day living? Or is it just happiness from your ego? And I thought, where is my happiness coming from? Is it from me being a person that I want to be? Is it from, you know, people nowadays, they collect houses, they collect cars, they collect so many things.

I collected records. I collected rare punk records. And in my brain, I thought, oh, man, this. And you got to understand what the music scene was like that. If you're unfamiliar with it, there was a band that was great and they put out 1,000 seven inch records and then the band broke up yet the punk scene always grew so these records you bought for two bucks are now worth people pay a hundred dollars for that record and so me and my guitar player Purcell we had like thousands of incredibly rare punk records that if you remember the world of records, no one played their records

because you could damage them. What you did was you put everything on a cassette. And so I started thinking about this quote by the Swami who said, man, where am I getting my pleasure from? I'm thinking, well, my records are pleasurable. I was like, well, actually the music's pleasurable. The records are only pleasurable

when somebody comes over my house and says,, my God, you got that record. That record's so impossible to get. And so once I've read that, it was the first shattering of my concept of self and what is joy and what is pleasure based on my ego. And all those records that I really valued, and I had really valuable records. And we started our own record company at the time. So we would basically print limited editions of their band. We put out all our friends records, sick of it all, Gorilla Biscuits. These were all bands that we grew up with, our own band, Youth of Today. And so we put out these records, we'd make limited edition, and then we trade these. It's like printing your own currency, basically. To make a long story short, after i've read that one quote my whole concept of pleasure

changed and i took all those records and i threw them out on stage to all fans record collector fans it was all the rare ones all the rare ones it was so liberating for me to do that it was like the it was like maybe like the first attempt of shedding my ego. That was a roundabout story. But the second part that Swami wrote was, and I'm paraphrasing this, of course, the diseases of the soul are not new. They're ancient. The soul is pure.

The spirit is pure but it gets covered by lust greed, anger, and envy and I started thinking well not me lusty I'm not greedy, I'm not angry I'm in a band, I have no money

and if you've ever been in a band it costs money to buy a guitar got a guitar, costs money to buy strings got strings, costs money to buy an amp it's a money pit ever been in a band, it costs money to buy a guitar. Got a guitar, costs money to buy strings. Got strings, costs money to buy an amp. So it's just like it's a money pit to be in a band. You get paid 50 bucks or whatever. So I'm thinking, not me. But as my band got more successful, I realized, man, I do have, there is money out there that I want.

And I remember I got offered money for the first time being in a band. Wow. I can get money. I should get, you know, I wrote these songs. I should get more of that money. Then you get in a fight with the drummer. No, I should get that money. We should split it four ways.

No way. I do so much more. I book everything. And I realized, wow, I wasn't not greedy. I just had no money. I'm covered with greed. All these people hate the greedy, hate the rich, hate the 1%. You got to see what would happen if you were in that position.

Yeah. So that was like my first lesson in like, actually, I'm complete. I thought I was above it because I didn't drink because I didn't smoke because I was a vegetarian. Big deal. Big deal. And it was this, and spirituality starts to work on these subtle things that are plaguing me. And, you know, the people who really want social justice out there,

it's very easy to point the finger at everybody and watch what everybody else is doing wrong. But in, on the yogic path, it's about like putting the microscope on ourself. Where am I wrong? If I really want to change, how can i start to really do some psychic surgery of my own ego of all these other things that are that are that are baked onto the spirit so anyway that was i can't remember how you got on that tangent sorry i'm i go on tangents feel free to go on tangents but that was was my first glimpse of where I'm at. And so my point was, my success.

Oh, you said, well, was it hard to give up the band? Yes. And I was like, no, I was so over it. I was over. Because here's another one. Envy. That plagues the soul, they say. So there's people that are looking up to Joe Rogan.

I want to be like that. And there's people that maybe you're looking, although you're pretty big right now. I don't know if you're looking up to anybody. But the feeling like in a corporate world where someone wants your position, and that plagues a person, a person who's not gracious or a person who's like there's a scarcity mentality. There's a younger – I know in the music world, there's a band coming up, and there's a scarcity mentality there there's a younger i know in the music world there's a band coming up and there's a band i want to get to and i realized that all these real subtle things they were plaguing my heart and these are the things i wanted to work on and um yeah so yeah was it hard to give up no it wasn't it was great i relinquished

it you were on like a spiritual quest. I was on a spiritual quest. A legitimate one. People talk about that kind of stuff all the time, like getting spiritual or being on a spiritual quest. But you legitimately went on this quest, and that's why I found it so fascinating. That was what was so appealing to me. It's like, okay, this is a real one. Because there's not a lot of real ones.

There's a lot of people that pretend to be on these spiritual clubs. But really, they just want everybody to think they're spiritual. It's like you were talking about the pleasure. What's the pleasure of owning records? Well, the big pleasure was people coming over your house to think you're cool because you have these records. That's the coolest record, man. That's the same thing with spirituality in a lot of ways. What people love is the fact that someone finds out that you do yoga every day

right someone finds out that you meditate someone finds out that you've read these books the ego's so damn sneaky isn't it oh it's so sneaky and sometimes it's fucking obvious as shit like uh you know it's like a funny story um brian callen when i first met him um he did you just with us too yeah yeah um yeah i love that guy to death but when i first met him um he's did you just with us too yeah yeah um yeah i love that guy to death but when i first met him i went over his house he had an apartment in venice uh no doorknob that's a doorknob had been broken out so you could just open his door and walk in anybody could open his door and people would walk like he would come downstairs and there was a homeless lady cooking in his uh in his kitchen she goes son you got it going on. And he was like, what?

He's just eating my food. She was just cooking food in his house. But I came over his house and he had a book. I forget what book it was. It was something obvious, like Catcher in the Rye or something like that, sitting on his, I go, it was just sitting on his coffee table. I go, you're not reading that book. I go, you put that book out here so when girls come over, they think you're smart.

And he's like, you're so right. I'm a fraud. And we were both howling and laughing. But that's a thing that people do. People want a well-stocked library, not just to read those books. Read the books, then. Read the books. Yes.

But it's also, there's an issue where people want people to think that you're this brilliant, erudite, interesting person because you have all these books in your house. Like that's – there's a factor in that. They say the jiva or the spirit has to go through eight elements and each element to leave the material universe. This is according to the yogis. And they get progressively double in size. And the last one, so the first one is earth. And then that last one is ego. It's the hardest.

It's the biggest of all of them. And it's so refined. Even people, you do altruistic things. You do things for your self-betterment. It gets wound up in religion. It gets wound up in diet. It gets wound up in religion. It gets wound up in diet. It gets wound up in politics. It gets wound up in race.

It gets wound up in animal rights. It gets wound up against animal rights. Everything. The ego is the biggest thing. And you can sort of see it on a person too. And almost better than seeing it on someone else is to see it on yourself. That's the work of the yogi is try to see, man, I was motivated by that. Yeah.

Look, that was ill-motivated again. Mm-hmm. So, yeah, it's a constant checking in with the ego. I think that was part of my – I mean, think about it. I came from sort of like a scene where everything – everybody had to be cool a certain way. There was a certain look, a certain dress, certain sneakers we wore, certain haircuts we wore. And now I'm wearing a dopey robe. And I'm walking around in a dopey robe.

How long were you a monk for? I was a monk for about six and a half years. Wow. Yeah. And it was a great time in life. How old were you? I was 22. So from 22 to 28, you were a monk.

I was a monk. That means celibate, no masturbating, nothing for seven and a half years. Where did you live? I lived in ashrams in India and in America. I traveled all over the world, actually. Wow. But I'll tell you what brought me to that place. After being very materially frustrated, and I said those two main factors were some type of material success.

I wasn't the Beatles when I wasn't, you know, Michael Jackson, but I had some materials, I had fans. And then realizing how life can get taken away from you in a moment with that precarious place my father was at. It just made me start thinking, what the hell am I doing in this short life? What am I supposed to do? Give me some GPS. Give me some, where do I go from here? What do I want out of life? What is a home run?

Is it just to be very famous? Is that the home run? Is it to collect tons of stuff? Is that a home run? Is to live a natural life? Is that a home run? Is to learn some art, some type of art? Is that a home run? Is to live a natural life. Is that a home run? Is to learn some art, you know, some type of art. Is that a home run? And so this was

my burning question. And I was still a New Yorker. I was still sort of like, you know, New York in the 80s. I was like a little street smart New Yorker. I'm actually from Connecticut, but I started hanging out in New York City. My parents

were New Yorkers. And so we used to, my older brothers lived in the city, so I started hanging out in New York City. My parents were New Yorkers, and so we used to, my older brothers lived in the city, so I'd visit them. But from the time I was 14, I used to just go to New York City and just hang out on the weekends. And when I became a monk and went to India, I had saved about $25,000. Not a lot of money, not tons of money, but it was some money I made. And I thought in my brain, okay, this is my cynical self. I'm going to go to India, I'm going to meet a guru, and the guru's going to want all my money.

This is how it works. But when I actually lived with the monks, India, especially India then, 1988, there is no central AC and it's hot. There's no heat and it's cold. In the winter, the showers are freezing because all the water's kept on a tank on the roof of the ashram. In the summer, that water's super hot because it's all kept on a tank on top of the ashram. There's no creature comforts whatsoever. You go to bed early, you wake

up super early. You go to bed, you know, 8.30, you wake up three o'clock in the morning. There's nothing to buy. There's nothing to purchase. All the fun things that we like to ease the pain of existence are not there. You know, there's no movies, there's no television, there's no comedy, there's no movies, there's no television there's no comedy, there's nothing and so two things happen when you strip everything away from a person they lose it they hop the fence so to speak

and I've seen that happen or they learn to find their pleasure from something more subtle and so when I first went there and saw the joy of the monks I realized they don't want my money. They don't want anything I have to offer them.

I want what they have. That was sort of a game changer moment for me. I want to figure out how to be connected with nothing. What did these guys do all day? I don't know. They all did different stuff, I think. Everybody does. Every ashram's got their own thing.

You know what I mean? Did you have chores that you had to do to earn your food? Yeah. You know, every ashram is going to be different. And every spiritual path. There's Christian monks and, you know and monks from different traditions around the world. I'm sure they all got their thing, different things. But later I started doing my next band because the interesting thing about the Bhagavad Gita,

the Bhagavad Gita you're familiar with, it's one chapter of the biggest epic in the world, the Mahabharata. And it's the most studied and discussed and commented on by all the saints of ancient India. People even bring it into politics and stuff. But it's a real conversation between the spirit and divinity. It's a conversation about, just about, it's just considered ancient wisdom for all people. So one of the ideas of the Gita is you don't give up what you're born to do.

You do what you do, but in a spiritual way. You don't try to like wipe out your desires. It's not going to happen. You take what you do and you do it in a way that is going to assist you in your liberation and is going to assist everybody else so um even i'll say i love comedy but i want comedy that uplifts me and not doesn't degrade me i like entertainment that when i walk away from it i learn something i feel like i'm growing i feel connected i don't want stuff that's going to just give me darker thoughts. Like the Joker?

I've never seen it. You didn't see it? I want to say that. I live on a farm. I live on a farm. I rarely watch anything except comedy. I love comedy. Because I think laughing is important.

But I don't watch so much TV. So I'm pretty – if I do go to the movies, it's out of like with my wife, let's just – we want to get away from the kids. We want to do something. Right. But there's no plan on what to watch. But I'm open to good ideas. The Joker is a really good movie, but it's really dark.

It's really dark. Like you walk out of there feeling really confused. Like you're like, did I like that? I don't know if I liked that. I know it was awesome. I know it was really well done, but did I like that? And it's just, it's complicated. I mean, we could talk about the Joker for the next two hours.

You know, the mind is like a garage, and you become like what you store in that garage. So the thoughts, the thoughts that we put in the mind, we've got to be careful with. Yeah. The words. Just we were talking about mantras before. The mantras are like repetitive sounds, but they're considered transcendental sounds. So I chant the Hare Krishna mantra.

So the Krishna mantra, you might have known it from the soundtrack of Hare. Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. It's considered a transcendental sound for the mind. And it sort of connects the soul with divinity. It doesn't matter what religion you are, it's considered a mantra, a sound vibration that has a potency on the man. That's where they get the word mantra from.

It delivers the man or the mind. So what we store in the mind starts to create our external being. And if you don't believe in it, it's one of those things. We have mantras in our mind anyway. I have things on loop running through my mind that have been handed to me from parents, from elementary school teachers, from a crazy uncle, for whatever. We get things handed to us and we play them on repeat. And sometimes they're mantras of self-deprecation, self-loathing, you're not good enough. And these are the mantras running through the mind.

So, the yoga system says, notice those mantras. That's part of self-edification or self-realization. You notice what's playing in the mind, and you replace those mantras with transcendental sound, or at the very least, training the mind to see greatness in people. That's a big thing. Because the mind, the material mind wants to see, what are Joe's shortcomings? Because if I find your shortcomings, it makes me feel better about myself. That's crazy thinking. If you've got thousands of shortcomings,

that doesn't make me better at all. So the material mind, which is, sees one as so insecure that I have to lash out at other people to make myself feel whole. And it's just crazy, crazy thinking, stinking thinking. Whereas the yogi trains, I specifically teach bhakti yoga, which is, it's called the yoga

of connection or the yoga of the heart, and starts to deal with all the essence of the teachings of the Gita, which is you train yourself to see greatness in other people. And if I start to note, it's good, you could take this from a micro, like my relationship teachings of the Gita, which is you train yourself to see greatness in other people. And if I start to note, it's good. You could take this from a micro, like my relationship with you. I want to notice all of Joe's great qualities. Now, when you hear that, you might think, well, he doesn't really know me. I got some bad qualities. Immediately makes you a little vulnerable and you start to think, well, but you appreciate it. And anybody in our life who appreciates us, sometimes they even see things in us we can't see in ourselves.

We want to become like that. That's why this idea of changing the world really starts with your self-connection is I am a spiritual being. Joe is a spiritual being. And I start to train myself in not seeing what Joe does wrong, seeing everything he does right. And it's a great exercise for the brain. What does that person do right? What is the good in this person that I'm overlooking?

Because I'm just, I've got this lens. It's a lens that we wear. I'm trying to find shortcomings in people. And it screws people up tremendously, even so-called spiritual people. I just had to roll. You can cork me anytime you want so you spent six and a half years living like this in the sashram just trying to sort things out no no sex no masturbation what are you eating none of it what kind of food they serve you uh Strict vegetarian diet. And not only that, the – this is an interesting point too. And it's debated about, especially – you know, I was a raw foodist, so these raw foodists, they're all – everyone's got their take on medicine and healing. Let me share the yogi perspective of it.

Okay. The missing ingredient in food, the vitamin, the superfood that is never spoken about is love. Food is supposed to be grown, prepared,

and then offered. And the offering is not even to a human. The offering is to God. That's called prashad. Food is first called boga. Boga means it's for enjoyment. And then you take that enjoyment,

but before you enjoy it, you're offering it first back, like in sacrifice. The idea is that everything in this world is not for me. Everything is, I'm not the center. I'm here to serve the center.

So all the food takes on the consciousness of the preparer of the food. So to eat junk food or to have people in very low consciousness cooking your food, you're taking that into your body. You're taking the consciousness of the preparer of the food. Do you believe that? I definitely believe it. Yeah. of the prepare of the food.

Do you believe that? I definitely believe it. Yeah? I definitely would feel a tangible effect if I walked outside that line. So for years, I'd only eat food cooked by Brahmins, like the priests of the ashram, or I would cook it myself. Or later, I have a very weird story,

which was I became a bunch of my friends that were monks. We started our own band and we started a record label, a second record label in the ashram. I kid you not. It's almost an unbelievable story. And perhaps the first time historically there was a celibate rock and roll band. But this band ended up becoming bigger than the second band. This was my band Shelter. And so what happened was this band,

when we started though, we were all monks and we would take a candy stove on tour with us and we'd pull over the side of the road and we'd make kitchery with rice and doll and, you know, fan of Greek and coriander and cumin. And we just cook. And because we wouldn't eat outside food, because if you did,

you would feel, you would, you would you would feel it you would feel it affect your mind really i kid you not that like that i can say there's certain things like i don't know there's certain things that they speak about in ancient indian literature that i can say maybe i don't know so you think most people there are certain things i can say i know i definitely experienced that most people are just numb to that? There are certain things I can say. I know. I've definitely experienced that. You think most people are just numb to that? Numb to the effect of taking in the consciousness of someone who's on a low vibration who's

cooking your food? You're just numb to it? You just eat the food because you're hungry? Are people- Yeah, are numb to it. The people that aren't aware of that concept. Yeah, people that aren't aware of the concept. I mean, that's the-

My point is- For example, a home-cooked meal definitely feels – Yes. Tastes better, tastes different, or feels different. Yeah. As opposed to some guy just making burgers at White Castle or whatever. Yeah. So I don't know.

It depends on the individual. But is this a perception, or is it an actual energy? And does it matter? I think it's both. It's almost like fire is going to burn whether I believe it or not. Right. But there is a concept of once you get that food, you don't eat the food. You honor the food.

So it's not going to be like me shoving stuff in my mouth, which I do occasionally. Right. If you've seen my eating habits. But it should be more of a – the eating itself should be a meditation and it's been proven i'm not one of these guys there's a thing that's there's a similarity that's going to seem like it's not it like it's not a parallel but in hunting when you hunt an animal and you kill that animal and you butcher that animal and then you feed it to your family. It sounds almost hypocritical. It sounds like there's no way that would be a spiritual feeling.

But there's a connection to your food that's very, very different. Well, we've divorced ourselves from killing animals for the most part. Most people hire people. Most people have no clue where their fruits come from, their vegetables come from. What do Brussels sprouts look like when they grow? Right. What do bananas look like when they grow? What is ground round?

Right. So we've divorced ourselves from our food, and that's sort of – anyway, I understand what you're saying. understand what you're saying there's we've definitely divorced ourselves from our food but even agriculture i'm sure if you raised cattle and then killed them and ate them you would feel differently than buying it in a supermarket but there's something even more intense about the quest of acquiring a wild animal you're going into this world the first time i ever saw a wild deer that i was going to shoot i swear to god it was like a psychedelic experience i was like i was looking in the eyes of this thing in its world this wild world in montana and i realized like whoa this is a different dimension like i'm entering into

this wild this thing might not have ever seen a person ever and it's looking at me and i'm going to take its life and i'm'm gonna eat it and but in the way i was encountering this thing because it was so intense and there was so many it was nerve wracking it was difficult i was exhausted we're in the mountains we're trekking for hours and hours and hours to try to get close to a deer but the locking eyes with the deer, I was like, oh, I didn't expect this. Like he saw you. He saw me and I saw him, but it was also, there was a sharing of information. There was an acceptance of the roles that we both had that made me realize that this is his life. This is how he does every day.

Every day he's looking at mountain lions and there's a wolf over there and there's a bear over here. I got to get the fuck out of here. Like this is the existence. And bringing that meat home was infinitely more enjoyable than getting something from a store. And also just felt differently. It gave me gratitude. I had a connection to that animal. It made me think about it every

time every bite i took i didn't take any of it for granted it meant a lot i wish that everybody that ate meat went out and hunted yeah it's just there's not enough animals there's too many people and it's just we you know look we we fucked it already we fucked it already with cities we fucked it already with large-scale agriculture we fucked it already with monocropping we fucked it already. We fucked it already with cities. We fucked it already with large-scale agriculture. We fucked it already with monocropping. We fucked it already with you being able to buy food any way you want. This is the reason why there's so many of us. Is it like the end of the world, Joe? It's not the end of the world.

It's a new world. It's, I mean, obviously, right now, ready? Everything's fine. Feel it? Feel that? Everything's fine. We're in this room. It's sustainable.

I mean, people look at it in terms of they extrapolate like if this happens and that happens we keep going oh my god it's going to be awful in 10 15 years guess what they thought that when the car came out they thought that when the printing press was invented they thought that when when people stepped out of the caves and and started building huts this has always been the case with people. We're terrified of change. I'm not terrified that the world is ending, that it's unsustainable. We have problems. We have challenges, for sure.

But one of the big ones is that we're divorced from nature in a very, very strange way. And most people, our urban population centers centers most people don't encounter nature if you're in manhattan your best bet is central park which is the most bastardized zoo-like form of nature you're ever going to find right it's not real nature like where you live you live in upstate we got bears yeah you have real nature that's real nature do you guys have ticks do you get i don't have Lyme disease? Have you gotten Lyme disease? I don't have Lyme disease, but it's a serious thing. It's a huge thing.

It's a huge thing. And I pulled off many tics. I've got the bullseyes on my arms. And did you get antibiotics right away? Yeah. Yeah, you got to. Yeah. They're fuckers.

And a lot of kids have Lyme disease where I live. A lot of people have it. It's terrible. It's horrible it's they said there's some area of the east coast where something like 60 of all the ticks lyme connecticut well yeah that too yeah you know a lot of people think that that was initially some sort of a biological weapon i heard yeah you ever get to the bottom i figured if anyone knows you do i don't think anybody's gotten to the bottom of it but there's enough inquiry that serious people have started researching this and there's a there's enough real concern that that was the original origin of it that it really was some sort of a biological

weapon that escaped from a lab because there's no doubt that they've invented biological weapons no doubt they've experimented on different ways to fuck people up. And one of them is mass illness and sickness. I mean, it's just a fantastic way, especially if you have an immunity. If you're vaccinated, you can expose other people to it. They had a vaccine for Lyme disease, but it wasn't effective.

Not only was it not effective, it actually gave people Lyme disease. In fact, my manager's dad got lyme disease from the vaccine for lyme disease yeah fun times yeah like boy i don't want to get this lyme disease better get vaccinated and then all of a sudden why do my joints hurt how come my knees are in fucking pain every day how come i can't walk right well you know when i lived out here you just have to actively look for nature we We used to go to Stony Point. Remember that place?

Sure. Topanga. Beautiful. I used to take my kids when they were little all the way down Victory. I think Victory dead ends, and then there's all those mountains up there. Yep. Victory, yeah. You just got to make like a plan.

And I will say when people come up to our farm, you know, we run a retreat center. And when people come up there, the first thing they think is, oh, my God, the stars. It's like you're divorced from the moon and the stars. Yes. The stars are big, man. I remember the first time I went to Hawaii, I went to the Keck Observatory on the Big Island. And we went up there and we got out of the car and it was like you're in a spaceship. Like you're in a spaceship and you're looking out a spaceship, and you're looking out a giant window,

and there's nothing else, just space like a movie. You see the full Milky Way and all the stars. It's spectacular up there. And this is one of the reasons why they have the observatory up there because it's really high. It's like where we were was not the very top. There's the top, and then there's a visitor center. That's right.

Yeah, the visitor center I I think, is like, I want to say like 10,000 feet or something like that. But then you get even further up, like 12, 13, and then you hit the telescopes up there on the big island. It's fucking amazing. It's amazing. If you get up there on a clear night when there's no moon, which is what we got really lucky,

because I've been back since. One time it was cloudy, and the other time we fucked up and got up there on a clear night when there's no moon which is what we got really lucky because i've been back since one time was cloudy and the other time we we fucked up and got up there and it was a full moon and just wasn't the same wasn't the same but when it was no moon man it was spectacular like life-changing like like you look at it and all of a sudden you you have a fresh perspective like oh we're a part of the infinite there's a spiritual experience you get when you just throw yourself under the stars and you're like oh i get it yes i'm tiny i thought i was big but that's a that's a real symptom it's a real issue and a real cause of why we're so disconnected and why we're so

egocentric and so we're not humbled like here's here's an example where do when you think about people that are humbled like cool people you think of. When you think about people that are humbled, like cool people, you think of two things. You think of people who live by the ocean, and you think of people who live in the mountains. Because those people are confronted by undeniable evidence of the majesty of nature. Undeniable. I'm tiny. Yes. I'm part of something much bigger.

You're surrounded by, like, I lived in the mountains outside of Boulder for a while. And when you're driving up there, you're confronted with undeniable spectacular beauty that really is, fuck every painting that everyone's ever made. It's all an imitation. You see snow-capped mountains with a lake and just trees. And you see a deer bouncing across the road. You see a fox. You're like, fuck, this is amazing. I mean, it just changes your physical state to look at it.

You're like, whoa, like no artwork could ever do. But we don't think of it like that. We just think of, oh, there's the mountains. Well, there's something about beauty, right? There's physical beauty in terms of like you see a woman that's beautiful and you're looking at symmetry and you're looking at genetics and there's something that's attractive about that because of your DNA, right? You want to breed with this person because this person has beautiful symmetry and they're attractive. But there's another kind of beauty. There's a physical

beauty in nature that's spectacular that doesn't serve any real purpose for you like why do you feel that way why are you enamored by this the vision of this glacial river running down through these mountains and seeing these birds fly around an eagle soars over why is that so spectacular why is it so attractive that's I don't know but whatever it is there's a feeling that you get when you encounter those things that's unlike any other feeling and we are divorced from that feeling it's one of the best feelings that a human being can can get when you can sit down like one of the best best things about hunting is just sometimes like you take a break

and you sit down on a ridge and you're just drinking water and just looking out like fuck right this place is amazing it's just amazing ever do the grand canyon yeah i've been but not since i was a kid yeah yeah another one of those things it's like is this even real yeah i know i mean but you know what i used to have a bit about the grand canyon about people telling you oh my god you have to go you have to go the grand canyon is so amazing i go yeah you know what's amazing that look up look up above you is infinity you're looking at a fucking ditch you're looking at a tiny deal like oh god i can see the bottom it's pretty good look up look up you're in fucking space there's actually quite unbelievable yes it's space is the ultimate one yeah but that is the one that we're most divorced from so think about the the beauty of seeing nature trees and lakes and seeing fish jump and amazing

this the beauty that i got from seeing the sky from the keck observatory with no moon just all stars it was just like humbling just humbling beyond words like reset my idea of where i fit in and where earth fits in where people fit in and made me feel in a weird way at least temporary before it wears off because it's just you know normal conditioning temporarily more connected to people i felt more more in tune with people more like we are in this together we're all we all need to help each other because we're all flying through infinity and any at any point in time a rock could just come down here and slam into this fucking planet take a quarter just like it did yeah, just like it did with the dinosaurs. Yeah. And kill us all.

It looks like it has done multiple times throughout history, and they're constantly recognizing these new areas where impact craters happened 70,000 years ago, 100,000 years ago. Yeah, they're always finding them. They're always finding them, and they're like, oh, geez, look at this. And no one prepared for it for it no we can't that you know there's still these reductionist scientists these guys you'll talk to them like we have a solution we could stop it we could do this we could do that but then you talk to the real hardcore people that actually study the the complications involved in deflecting asteroids and stuff and they're like no, we need years. We need years and years and years of planning.

If we find something coming our way, we know it's coming at us, we need all the best minds in the world and it still might take a decade to figure out how to do something about this. Well... And then we might see the other one that's coming behind the sun.

We might not see one that's coming from a direction that we're not observing. How about one you can't perceive? Yeah, there's a lot of those too we don't even know we don't even know what we can't perceive right yeah but the vulnerability that comes from that feeling is also very freeing it's not a bad vulnerability it's the vulnerability that i got from looking off in the space didn't make me sad or scared. It made me in awe. Yeah. I felt better. I'm – my kids went to a Waldorf school.

Yeah. Are you familiar with that? Yeah. My oldest kid went to one in Boulder when we were really there. Yeah. So they went there. Some graduated from there. And my kids went there.

They've been homeschooled for the last two years. But there's a strong – now they go to this survival homeschool camp. Oh, really? Yeah. Whoa. They make fire by friction. They're outdoors like all day long. Flying Deer,

I'll just give it a plug right now, flyingdeer.com.org. But they're outside all day long, like nine o'clock in the morning, three o'clock in the afternoon. Wow. They're built, it doesn't matter what the weather is. It's like, I'd even drop them

off in the rain. I was like, I'm so sorry, but get out. But you know, they become resilient. They become strong. And you know what they do when they come home? Them and all their friends, they've got 13 kids. It's like 50 degrees out. They're playing outside in the

drizzle barefoot. And they're just like strong and happy and connected kids. Yeah, they get used to it. They get used to it. And I become like a domesticated dog. Yeah. Right? Where it's sort of like, you know, they're not wolves.

Right. They're domesticated dogs. They like their food from a jar or from a bag. Like Marshall. You met Marshall. Is he domesticated? Oh, my food from a jar yeah from a bag like marshall you met marshall is he domesticated oh my god what do you think he's as domesticated as you get yeah that dog is the sweetest thing that's ever lived oh like marshall your dog yeah marshall the dog i thought marshall i thought one of the guys that worked here i didn't explain i was like is he no no no

i'm sorry yes that dog is retriever he says yeah. Yeah, he's well kept. He's the sweetest of sweetie pies. Sure. But that is a domesticated animal. I know. When it rains out, he gets outside and he's like, hmm. I had coyotes come into my, on my property and I'm sheep. And so I got my dog all right. Come on, let's get those coyotes to see him.

I ran outside. The dog is just like, goes back inside. Yeah, you got to get a dog who's used to coyotes to see them i ran outside the dog is just like goes back inside yeah they're just so yeah you got to get a dog who's used to coyotes just like your kids are used to the outdoors yeah you got to get a dog who knows the coyote's an enemy i'm living my i'm living reliving my childhood that's interesting my kids how far away are you from civilization up there you know the cool thing is not that far if i need to go to an apple store or something it's like an hour to albany that's not bad yeah um two and a half from uh boston oh you're only two and a half hours from boston two and a half from new york city oh that's not bad yeah super

soul farm and uh yeah it's uh we do like our yoga workshops and things there. So do people travel to you? People travel to us. We have weekends. We have a whole second 5,000 square foot house for guests, a yoga studio on the property. Oh, that's amazing. It is cool. That's amazing. We've got a creek.

We've got a swim pond. Wow. There's something cool about when it's hot out like it does get in the East Coast. Yeah. You can just jump in a pond. Oh, yeah. Yeah, but you also get parasites. Be real careful. Don't drink any of that water i drink it man it comes right from the mouth and i drink spring water okay well you're pretty high up then are you high there's nothing above me

oh okay yeah then you're all right sort of in a valley and it comes right from the hill the real issue is beavers yeah if something dies above i get well it's shit too it's beaver fever you get giardia. Right. I drank out of a lake in Alaska, and I was really tentative. I wouldn't drive out of a lake. You can, because this lake is a glacial lake, or excuse me, it's a high elevation lake, and there's no beavers at that altitude. It was on Prince of Wales Island.

And you can actually dip your thermos into this lake and drink it. And it's the cleanest, clearest water you've ever seen. It tastes perfect. Exciting. Yeah. It's actually exciting. Yeah. I think when I first moved to the East Coast, I was just looking up different springs.

Saratoga Springs, great place. There's just all these natural healing springs. You should test that water before you drink it though. Just bring it to someone to shake that bitch up. There are ones that are just coming out of the side of a hill that I just go to on a regular basis. We have an artesian well on our property, which means it's just naturally coming up.

Artesian, I've got to get the wiki on that one. I think it's the pressure of the downward push is forcing it up. The pressure of the downward push is forcing it up. What is the – yeah. Artesian, I always see it used in terms of like handcrafted things. Artesian? Yeah. It's like an artisan.

That's artisan. That's artisan, I think. Artesian work. I think that's maybe artisan. I'm sure I'm fucking this up. Yeah, one. There's a bit of a struggle there. What is that cover of your phone? This is our podcast we do, Wisdom of the Sages.

Oh, you have a podcast too? Everybody has a fucking podcast. I'm waiting for my mom to start one up. Wisdom of the Sages. It was born out of an hour. It was born out of an hour. A daily yoga podcast. Okay. It was born out of a. Artesian. Related to or detonating a well bored perpendicularly into water bearing strata laying. I hate when I read something that makes less sense. At an angle so that natural pressure, I think you're kind of getting it though.

Natural pressure produces a constant supply of water with little or no pumping. The water from an artesian well. Okay. So I was fucking it up with artisan. Yeah. The water from an artesian well. Okay, so I was fucking it up with artisan. I was connecting the two of them. Artesian. I spelled it that way when I looked at it first. That's A-R-T-I-S-A-N. This is A-R-T-E-S-I-A-N.

Yeah, the place that I lived in Boulder had a well. It was amazing. You'd get this beautiful spring water, like straight out of the ground it's just incredible all your water that you drank was just perfect spring water to come out of these copper pipes it's great there goes artisanal versus artisan is pronounced artisan a person skilled at an applied art that's what you have that's personcribes water with spouts out of the earth under natural pressure.

That's it. Yeah. And so sometimes these old houses in upstate New York or Massachusetts have water that's just coming up, and they build a tank in the house to hold this water. Yeah. It's a great way to get water. Yeah. If you think that's going in your body, on your body, in your skin, in your mouth, it's becoming you.

As long as no one's fracking nearby. That's a problem. It's a giant issue. It's a massive problem you ever seen that movie gas land no it's a great movie to it's heartbreaking you angry it's heartbreaking yeah they because they're doing the right there's people in pennsylvania that i was just reading a story about recently where they can't drink their water they can't shower with their water they have to get bottled water they travel someone else's house to shower it's fucking horrific it's heartbreaking yeah they they poisoned the water supply with the this desire to get oil but on the other hand we don't need middle east oil anymore so everybody's like look the united states produces we're self-sustaining

we no longer need the middle eastern oil but yeah but what about these fucking people that can't drink their water or it comes out of the spout and they could light it on fire? My teacher, Radnath Swami, who you would love on the show, he wrote a great book. If you ever want to read a good, sort of a, it's a modern day autobiography of a yogi. It's about a Jewish kid in the 60s, travels, hitchhikes from London toon to india wow you can do that you gotta take yeah for the most part you can you gotta go through afghanistan all these tough khyber pass and he hitchhiked afghanistan that's gangster it's super gangster man he had he had a good he had a great experience but it's it's an all real adventure

too and he ends up in india living in the himalayas with sadhus wow incredible incredible story it's called auto bug what is a journey home autobiography of an american yogi wow yeah i want to talk to that guy you could hook me up with him yeah he's great i i spend a month with him every january really we do it we spend a month with him every January. Really? We do a teacher training, a yoga training in India every January. I just got back from it. Yeah, I saw it on your Instagram. It's great.

It's super fun. We have three academies. We have a music school where we study Indian music in Kirtan. We have a 300-hour training for people who are already teachers. And we have a sacred sacred literature she studied the bhagavad-gita and all these sacred texts we were talking about that before the podcast i really wanted to get into that eventually i just didn't know how to like the the the mystical aspects of the bhagavad-gita and of the mahabharata all the the ancient indian texts which are filled with really wild out there shit you know i mean it's all real

all that crazy stuff is real in what way just like all the things that you say like oh that's interesting that's fast fascinating that's fantastic the more you get into it you realize that's freaking real like what like what's real um everything from like... The Vimanas. Vimanas. Things like that I can't say are real, but I could understand how things can be made of subtle energy. Well, explain Vimanas to me. Vimana is like a spaceship. Yes. It's like it's a spaceship from, and they speak of spaceships and flying crafts, but they're not made of the same elements of this earth.

Right. So we have all these things about, and I get it, there's a bunch of people making up shit about, I saw an alien, et cetera. But there's also very qualified people, Air Force colonels and things like that. I've had them in here. You've had them in?

Yeah. And they suffer from the same thing, these people who claim abduction. It's not like a type of neur neuroses or schizophrenia they suffer from like post-traumatic stress syndrome yes like they something happened they disappeared they were found two weeks later do you remember the story of betty and barney hill no it's the most famous abduction story it was an interracial couple from i think it was the 1950s or the 1960s and uh just randomly my interviews always go here i had this girl on the podcast

this woman on the podcast yesterday uh she's an mma fighter her name is angela hill uh she's a couple days ago actually um this badass mma fighter and at the end of the podcast she goes i forgot to bring this up my grandfather is barney hill i was like that guy i'm like no fucking way that guy barney hill was the very first like really public ufo abductee and there's record and he describes his craft that's eerily similar to the crafts that bob lazar has described and different people described and he and his wife lost time while they were driving and then woke up with these bizarre horrific memories that they both shared of this encounter with these space beings and that they were abducted and they were medical examinations were run on them then they were replaced with missing time

and it's crazy if you listen to recordings of him being hypnotized and going through it like screaming in fear that they're touching him and where are they taking him what are they doing to him it's not like a guy acting it's not like a scene in a movie where someone's screaming in fear it sounds real and i just the teachings of ancient india is that life exists on all planets. It even exists on the sun. And so the first argument would be like, come on, how are we going to exist? They just don't have bodies that are different than yours.

They'd have a fire body. And therefore, I'm trying to look at how does a person with earth and water body live in the sun? They can't. You have to have a body. I mean, I used to think like this when I was 13 years old. Right. I used to think like,

okay, why can my dog hear those sounds but I can't hear them? Right. What am I missing? What sense am I missing that I can't have objective reality? Yeah. You know, what am I missing?

Am I missing a sense? Well, I have this principle called the fart theory. Like, if someone farted but you didn't have a nose you'd have no idea you'd have no idea you have no idea but oh god what is that that fart theory is the beginning of transcendental thought yeah because it's there's a sense that you possess that allows you to access yeah recognize something that's invisible you can't see it you can't feel it you can't hold it there's

not there you you don't there's no way of detecting it other than your olfactory senses but through your nose you can detect that something's awful what sense am i missing that's keeping me from understanding absolute reality sure i mean that's one of the things that you feel when you take psychedelics like is this opening up some new sense that i wasn't i mean is this around me all the time i'm just not tuned into it because i don't have the right chemical composition flowing through my brain when i start to teach a bigger training um like a yoga training and philosophy that's one of the things i do mainly um i start with this concept of this is how you understand like when i first approached teachers when i went to india i would say things like and

i'm reading this mahabart i think it's a great book, a lot of great lessons here. But come on, we're adults. Am I supposed to understand that a elephant-headed man scribed this entire book? Can't we just extract a useful lesson? And the answer was very good that I got was, and it was very sweet. It wasn't like cruel. He just said, what do you know? It sort of like caught me off guard.

Like, what do you actually know? Right. What do you know? And I use this example from New York. Okay. Suppose 300 years ago, you're living in New York. Your family's living in New York. Your tribe is living in New York.

You have a certain amount of animals and animals that you keep, animals that you ride, animals that you hunt, foods you eat. And then one of you goes on a boat to Africa and you come back and you think, you're never going to believe what I saw. I saw a striped horse. You're thinking, well, I've seen striped horses, white head, black neck. No, no, no, no. I saw a striped horse. You're thinking, well, I've seen striped horses, white head, black neck. No, no, no, no. I saw a striped horse. If you've never seen a zebra, it's almost unbelievable if all you know is ponies. Or I saw this horse with a really long neck that ate the leaves on the trees. Come on, man. It's all fantastic because we've never seen it right but that doesn't mean it does so to really understand the vedas the teachings of ancient india you have to go into

it like not that it's all real i'm not saying to just blind faith but i'm not saying don't be a blind doubter like it's all unreal that's bullshit that's crazy that's nuts it's got unreal. That's bullshit. That's crazy. That's nuts. It's got to be, could be. I don't know, but I don't know a lot. What do you think the elephant, what do you think like Ganesh was? Ganesh's a being. By the way, when I speak, I'm speaking, it's not my feelings. Whether I'm right or wrong, I'm saying this is what the, I'm a yoga teacher. So I teach what the yogis teach.

Ganesh is a being. He's a jiva. Jiva means he's a soul. Like in India, they say, you don't have a soul, you are a soul. You have a body. So the bodies change, but the soul is eternal. So that's called the jiva tattva. You understand that you're separate than your, we are separate than our bodies.

Like you said earlier, we're separate from our thoughts, we're separate from our subtle body, our mind. So you take on a different Rogan machine, a Raghunath machine, and sometimes the machines are good at warfare, fighting. Sometimes the machines are good at art. Sometimes the machines, they're just like a different vehicle you would drive. They're different.

So you got a Porsche or you got an 18-wheeler. They're both good for different things. So in the same way, we have some karma. These were karma ties. And you have some karma to have this body that has such good fortune or poor fortune or some great success. And it's the karma of the body, but you have to leave that body. So Ganesha is also a post.

Brahma is also a post. You could have been a Brahma in a previous life or could be one in a previous life. And you get a body, just like you get a body in this life, according to how you act and how you behave and how you think and the people you associate with, they give you a body. For example, if you and I grow up together and all we talk about is

martial arts, we got pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger on our wall, we start to create a body that emulates those heroes. And if we couldn't care less and we just like watching TV and doing nothing, we get a body according to... So in this lifetime, we're less, and we just like watching TV and doing nothing, we get a body according to... So in this lifetime, we're making bodies, and we're making our minds, we're making our intelligence. But the yogis say that everything that we do is a practice. Just like I just found out today that you were a Taekwondo champion by reading your bio on Wikipedia.

Oh, you read my bio? I read your bio on Wikipedia. I was like, I got to know more. Because I just know you from just rolling around with you, that type of camaraderie. So you got that way from a practice. It didn't just like spontaneously come. You practiced.

And you bring that practice with you wherever you go. And you can get better at the practice or you can get a little down in the practice. But the yogis say that everything that we do is a practice. It's our thoughts, our intelligence, our skills, our spirituality, our addictions. They don't just fall from the sky. We work on them. And that's why there's these things, which is another thing.

I don't know if you've ever done this on your show. Study the lives of, what are they called uh savants or like these uh prodigies it's unbelievable four years old musical prodigies yeah like where is that coming from the yogis say it's not random it's not weird it's not quirky it's not unexplainable it's a practice or that was that child chess player from norway who could play like six people backwards and beat them? He was not facing them. He's memorizing their board. Where do you get that type of intelligence?

The yogis say it's a practice. Or Mozart and Chopin who are like virtuosos at four. How? And you'll see like the saints of India. They'll be spiritual virtuosos, like from a very early age. Like my teacher's teacher's teacher, like a grandfather teacher, he was like a master of Sanskrit at age four.

Whoa. And could give class on it. Imagine that at age four. Giving Sanskrit classes at age four. You know what I was doing at age four? I was know what i was doing you know what i was doing at age four i was wrecking shit i was breaking things yeah lighting things on fire you know shankar acharya another great like teacher of india age eight he renounced the world at eight initiated 10 000 disciples changed the course of all of india at eight at eight he wrote commentaries

you go to columbia university read commentaries on the Gita by this person who at age eight walked away from his mother and said, I'm leaving for the forest. It's unbelievable. This stuff's real. You find this. And I tell you, when you go to – one of the fun things I do usually is I do that school in January, the academy. But in October and autumn time, I do a pilgrimage where we go

to holy places. And I take students, like 30 or 40 students to holy places. And we just meet interesting, cool people. We go to temples, we'll go to sacred places, we sing. It's fun. At the very least, it's like a fun experience, but it's also like very transformational. At the very least, it's like a fun experience, but it's also like very transformational. And you just meet the most fascinating people. It's still there. India's changed dramatically since I went there in 88. How so?

Huh? How so? Oh, man. It's like the whole, you know, I mean, there was no phones. If you wanted a phone, you go to the village, there's one phone in the village, you know. And also because when the internet came, you know, if you think about India, it's such an interesting place. Like when Greece was in its infancy, India was like a respected hub of learning, metaphysics, spirituality, etc. So India, it's been invaded by moguls, by British, by Portuguese.

So many different cultures came there, and they could never really quite change it. It was so woven into their DNA what they were. Nothing changed it until my lifetime, And I watched it. I watched when cable TV hit India. And it was paradigm shifting. Because you got to think, you know, people dress, you know, you go to Germany in the 80s, people dress different. You go to Italy in the 80s, people dress different. I mean, there was no like globalization of now. It doesn't matter.

You go to Paris, Beverly Hills, Scranton, Pennsylvania. there's the same victoria's secret there's the same gap oh you don't you don't want to dress like gap well we got this other store you could dress like and they're just selling us sort of the same thing people used to go places for spices places for silk places right india was sort of like that too you went there and you feel like, I'm on another freaking planet. And now you got to dig a little deeper to find that. That's why I recommend people go as soon as possible because everything is going to... I mean, we're in the valley right now.

And there's one point up on one of these streets up here. We went to Follow Your Heart yesterday. Have you ever been to that restaurant? Yeah, sure. Love that place. It's a great place. Follow Your Heart. Great little grocery store too. Great grocery store. But there's one little tiny block where it looks like the valley from 1950, and then there's massive high rises around it.

And so in our lifetime, we've watched places just get paved over. And it gets sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. But truthfully, there is a disconnect with nature often. Even sometimes in the, it's better now. That disconnect with nature, I sort of just like. I feel more connected. I mean, now I take people on pilgrimage and we stay at hotels. And it's definitely not like the old days when I used to slum it in the ashrams but i miss that slum in it too i miss sort of like just being out there

in the elements when it was freezing and there was no heat you were forced to take a cold shower you had no there was no creature comforts you took a bus and you enjoy it now looking back on it. I enjoyed it then. Yeah. There's something pleasurable in renunciation. I bet you can identify with that. Yeah, yeah. When you have to do something that you don't want to do for a higher purpose, but you're going to do it anyway, there's a pleasure you get. This is a giant roundabout we went to, but I want to get back to Ganesh. Oh, yeah. So what do you think Ganesh is?

They're higher beings. Now, you might say, well, what the hell does that mean, a higher being? The idea in Vedic thought is that there's devas or higher beings, and then there's the devati deva, like a Judeo-Christian tradition would say God. How much of what these people are experiencing and talking about in the bhagavad and all the texts has to do with soma and has to do with uh psychedelic rituals that they were

participating in while they were doing these things so how do you know about soma so funny i can't believe you said that yeah it's a commonly known thing i think yeah soma is a beverage on the moon oh okay the moon makes sense but it's it's uh it's a beverage right it's just like it's a combinatory beverage a psychedelic sacrament that we don't we haven't established by the way i'm speaking like a matter of fact i understand i don't i don't know this yeah i'm saying it could be true and this is what they teach. So that's how we learn the Vedas. What are the ingredients?

It's otherworldly. You can't try to recreate it on Earth. There's plants, they say, that grow that don't grow here. And there's beings that grow. Now, we just hear these stories, and we just, it's myth. But you know what? The zebra's a myth. I live around a bunch of beautiful turkeys.

But if you've ever seen a peacock, turkeys look like boring. You know what I mean? Peacocks are unbelievable. Yeah, they're pretty wild. A quetzal is unbelievable. I don't know what a quetzal is. A quetzal is a South American, bright colors. What's his name?

Montezuma wore his feathers on his hat. What's his name? Montezuma wore his feathers on his hat. So if all you know is robins, an occasional cardinal, when you see a quetzal or a peacock, it's like, what the? Yeah. Right? So someone could say, well, you know,

you're really going to believe in the wind god? Come on. But we say, hey, look, there's an ant on the table, and I blow on the ant. The ant runs for his life. In the ant's brain, he's not thinking, oh, Ragu is blowing on me. He's just thinking, danger, danger, danger. Yet I'm actually, I'm a being.

I'm a being with a family, with ideas, with thoughts, with a home. So the yogis say, you don't know. But they say that everything is a personality. Not just you. Because in one sense, if I look at you, you're just a big lump of earth and flesh, water, blood, whatever lens you want to look, the periodic table, earth, Chinese elements, Indian elements, however they kind of look at matter. But you're not. The yogis say you're not that. You just have that.

So they say the earth itself is a being. It's a living being. And all the animals are living beings. And outside of the earth, there are living forces. All the planets are beings. That's why there's, here's's a get ready for a detour that's why if you study jyotish or vedic astrology there's different mantras to the different planets because the planets affect your karma so some people want to they realize man like i would love to get your chart done because when you have people like yourself or even myself on a lesser level where we have some types of extremes in our life, you can read it in their chart.

It becomes very obvious. Same with criminals. It's in their chart. Really? If you really knew how little control we have of our life, it's shocking. Now, this – what kind of astrology is this? They call it Jyotish or Vedic astrology. And it's based on –

I'm no astrologer. I just have had my charts done a lot. It's an ancient system. It's not based on the sun. It's based on the moon. And what do they need to know? They need to know your birth time, your longitude and latitude of where you're born. Like, for example, I was born on...

I'll tell you a good story. Do you mind? Sure. I went to a great astrologer once. And these guys were real, like, simple, humble, like, humble people. And he lived in an ashram, and I said, I want to know my chart. And he just said, I'm not very good. I said, come on, I've heard you're the best. He said, I'm not very good. And he said, but I will tell you

what Parashara thinks of you. Now, Parashara was the father of the person they say scribed or spoke all the Vedas, Vyasadeva, who was one of the great sages of India. So Parashar was his father, and he's responsible for Jyotish, or what's called the horror shastras, where they get the word horoscope from. And these are all to do with studying the luminaries, studying celestial bodies, and to pinpoint you in relationship to them. So he said, well, at a certain period when you were born, there was a rising sign, a

rising star, and from that star we can calculate your chart. So he asked, I gave him all my statistics, birth time and date and longitude and latitude, and then he opened up these books that he had on the shelf. This guy doesn't know me from Adam. He just goes, this is the star of music and spirit and you will spread music and spirit throughout the world. Whoa. It's pretty right on.

I've been through some very powerful astrologers, palm readers, mystics who don't even need your palm. They say they're astrologers or they say they're palm readers they look right in your face and tell you all about your life and I'm not one like I've met many who could blow your mind you have to be someone who doesn't know who I am it's harder for you

but I'm less known but in India no one knows you anyway I don't want to have to go to India It's harder for you, but I'm less known. But in India, no one knows you anyway. Right. I don't want to have to go to India. You know, it's one of those things, and I'm not one of these New Age guys. Right. Like, I'm a New York skeptic. Okay. But you believe in Ganesh.

No, I believe Ganesh could be. Could he be? Sure. Sure he could be. Could he be? Sure, he could be. I think most likely people were taking Soma and Ganesh appeared to them then. Or that could happen too. I've seen things on psychedelic experiences that are very similar to that, very similar to a god. I think psychedelia can bring you into this otherworldly realms.

I think psychedelia can bring you into this otherworldly realms. And even according to the Vedic concept is there's other realms and everything's divine and everything's a person. And there's 33 million gods. And then, of course, out – and that's within the material universe. Right. And the material universe has higher planets. It has lower planets like the Christians would say hell. And the material universe has higher planets. It has lower planets, like the Christians would say hell.

But they talk about whole mandalas or disks of layers of hells. But differences from Christianity, and I don't know where the Christians actually got it from or when it was added or subtracted, but the Vedas teach about none of them are eternal, meaning you don't stay there. Just like we don't stay here. We're just sort of doing time on this planet. We do time. We learn a lesson. You get some karma.

You get some good or bad karma. And if you don't learn your lesson, just like jail, if you don't learn your lesson, sometimes you get an added sentence. What do they call that? Yeah. You get two life sentences. Right. But sometimes people are out early. They get paroled, they get pardoned, or they just say, okay, you're in charge of the library, you're not dangerous, you're not a threat, and we're going to let you out, you're good behavior.

So according to how we behave in this world, we're perpetuating ourselves, we're going way low. Or we sort of go high. And people go high all the time. It's impressive. And you take that micro and put it on a macro as well. And to the degree that you sort of don't learn your lessons, you just – that's okay. I've noticed in my own life, if I don't learn a lesson, I've got to get that same lesson again. You know what I mean? Yeah.

don't learn a lesson i gotta get that same lesson again you know what i mean yeah i've had this conversation with someone about the idea that you will live your life over and over and over again until you get it right and that you'll be reborn you'll have the exact same existence and you'll do it over again and this is a this is a concept that some people believe in now i said how do you feel about that and they're like that's terrifying and i'm like why is it terrifying when living is not right it's the same thing it's the same thing like right like if i had to live this life over and over and look i'm having a great time i have a lot of great friends i have a fantastic family i have a wonderful thing that i do for a living i i i'm very very very blessed i'm very fortunate if i had to this forever, why the fuck would I complain about that when I'm not complaining about it now?

Maybe his life's not as good as yours. But am I scared of the eternity of this existence when I'm not scared of the temporary nature of it? That doesn't make any sense. Like, why would I be scared of something that's ultimately very pleasurable? Like, I enjoy life. I enjoy my children and my wife. I enjoy my friends. I enjoy my occupation.

I enjoy reading. I enjoy watching documentaries. I enjoy encountering new things. I enjoy these things. Why would I be upset if this went on forever? Why would I be upset if I'm going to be reborn i be upset if i'm going to be reborn again and then i'm going to be confronted with the exact same problems that maybe i fucked up when i was 10 and 20 and 30 and 40 but this time i'll have a better insight i'll have a subtly better perception

of what is the correct thing to do what's the best thing to do for everybody what's the the moral the ethical thing to do you know and i don't i don't know why that's terrifying to people but it is it's terrifying the idea of doing it over and over and over again ilio gracie believed that ilio gracie believed that you must do the the exact right thing at all moments in your life or you're going to live your life over and over and over again until you get it right i don't know what those graces were connected with india somehow right well they were connected with everything man i mean it's one of the most spectacular families that's ever walked the face of the earth i mean you want to talk about a contribution like the the contribution that the graces have made to martial arts including our instructor

john jock machado who was right he's a cousin of the gracies like they're all they're all trained together they're all together that that family elio carlos you know unbelievable yeah i mean every carlson all those people they they created this most spectacular martial art out of the origins of Japanese jiu-jitsu and judo and then introduced it to the whole world and literally changed hundreds of millions of people's perceptions about fighting out of this small family in Brazil. It's unbelievable. It's amazing. And they're all champions.

Their whole family is filled with champions. And look, that's what made our, you and look that's what made our you know that's what made our friend eddie when eddie tapped out hoyler gracie and hoyler was the most disruption to the family to tradition and i was there i flew you went to brazil yeah we flew together with uh who else was there the blonde jamie jamie jamie yeah jamie who was jamie walsh i don't know what i haven't lost touch with him. I don't know. He owned a moving company. He had a fight organization for a while called Pangea. He was putting on MMA fights. Yeah, Jamie was my trainer for a long time.

Oh, really? He was good. Yeah, he was a really good trainer. He was good. Fighter. Yeah. I remember. I didn't know you went.

I know he went. Yeah, we all flew together. 2003. Flew down to brazil and um eddie caught hoyler in a triangle and i'll never forget it i was watching it happen i mean i was right there i was on the side of the map let's get that up on the screen i was watching it happen i was i watched the triangle get locked up and i'm like oh my god he's got him oh my god i was like i was thinking hoyler probably is going to get out of this, right?

He's Hoyler Gracie. But I'm like, that doesn't look like he's getting out of that. That was so locked in. And Eddie had that masterful guard. Still does. But he always had this incredible guard. And it was so sneaky. And it was unique.

Yes. And if you're not used to somebody's game. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I don't think it says anything bad about Hoyler. Oh, no. But it does say that Eddie is genius. He's creative.

Like his music was. And he tapped another world champion right before he tapped Hoyler. He tapped Gustavo Dantes right before he tapped Hoyler. I was there for that, too. And I was like, holy shit. And Eddie was a brown belt at the time, which is really crazy. But then when he locked up that triangle, I mean, I'll get emotional if I think about it.

I was there on the side of the mat watching, and I was like, I can't believe it. There it is. So he tries, what he did is he threatened on one side and then cinches up the triangle. You know what? Tell me what the crowd was going like. Dude, total silence.

Let me tell you what happened. What they had done before this had happened, see, and then he starts pulling the head. And once he pulls the head, this is right where Hoy was fucked. He's tapping. He's tapping. He had to tap. He was going to sleep. It was on you.

And he pointed to Jamie, who was right there in his corner. And then I am. The whole crowd must have been like, what the hell just happened here? Who is this man? And then he walked off, and he made it look like it was no big deal, because he had to fight Leo Vieira right after that. He had fucked up his rib somewhere in this scramble, too. And when he fought Leoo viera he was

really messed up um but when you guys came back that day it was unbelievable it was pandemonium that people don't it's hard for people outside of the jiu-jitsu world yeah to understand the magnitude of that accomplishment but for me you know uh eddie's my best friend so you know flying with him to brazil was like you know epic it's it was just this like ultimate support thing it was like we're gonna do this you know i'm gonna help him we're gonna he's gonna do this but when he did it dude they shut off all the matches while it was happening they killed all the matches outside of this main match and they put it on television

because Hoyler was the multiple time world champion he was the most accomplished he was the most accomplished nogi grappler right well even gi I mean Hoyler in competition had accomplished more. He had competed more than any of the other Gracies in straight jiu-jitsu.

He had competed in MMA a little bit, but Hoyce obviously accomplished the most in jiu-jitsu in MMA. Hoyce was the innovator. He was the first guy. UFC 1, UFC 2. I mean, those are the most important moments in martial arts, Hoyce's accomplishments. In my opinion, that's the most important moments in martial arts, Hoyce's accomplishments. In my opinion, he's like, that's the most significant impact. But Hoyler, in terms of jiu-jitsu and just jiu-jitsu competitions, he had accomplished more than anyone. He was a multiple-time world champion.

And when he was competing, everybody watched. Everybody knew Hoyler was the fucking man, right? And so when Eddie tapped Hoyler, it was silent. I mean, silent. We're in Sao Paulo, Brazil. I mean, and we're sitting there. And Eddie is walking around like this. And Jamie is just going, holy shit.

And I'm going, holy shit. We were just like, what just happened? And we walked off. And there's a video of us going through the back hallway of the arena. We're going, what just happened? How the fuck did that just happen? It was crazy. It's crazy.

People stunned. No one could believe it. You know? No one could believe it. But, you know, I think he gave hope. Even people like myself. Like myself like oh I get it you can just figure stuff out

and there's hope for me it's not like I think that's a great thing about martial arts you always we're always looking for who's God and you

back then I remember Vietra Belfort no one could be Vietra Belfort everyone takes turns and then he gets beat and it almost like

breaks your hope in God. Yeah. We're looking for that superhero. Right. But I think the beautiful underlying story is like, you can do that. You can work your way up this ladder and figure out some unique stuff. And with Eddie, it was like, he wasn't even a black belt yet. That was the most crazy thing.

And he just got that brown belt. Yeah, well, he had it at least a year or so, I believe. I believe he was a black belt or a brown belt for at least a year or so. Because 2003, when I met him, he was a purple belt. And I met him in 99, 98? That's when I met him, in 99. I used to train with Hanato. Yeah.

Look at how he's squeezing the head there. That's us That's incredible Frame it We just couldn't believe it Frame that photo He was just crying He couldn't believe it

It's crazy It's crazy I wish I went Dude it's crazy to just watch now. And they interviewed him after he did it. It was crazy, man. It's hard to even watch. I can't believe I won.

I can't believe I won. He doesn't believe it. He doesn't believe it. He says that Oler is a legend of Abu Dhabi. He doesn't believe that he won. It wasn't just that he won. He tapped him out off his back. I mean, he used the ultimate expression of jiu-jitsu,

which is, you know, in a vulnerable position. The man's on top of you, and you still tap him. It was amazing. You know, as sort of loud, as a big person as Eddie is, he's actually, and if you know him, which you do, he's got no ego about him. There's no, I never feel like. He's always making fun of himself. Yeah, he's super.

If you don't know him, he seems like, who's this big mouth, boisterous. He's super humble. He's super, he gives all the credit to the Gracies. Yeah, for sure. He loves the Gracies. Yeah. He loves John Jock. Yeah. the gracies yeah he loves the gracies yeah and he loves jock jock yeah that was a you know there's

moments in your life where you just realize like wow like things are possible that was a possible moment yeah things are possible the weird things can happen you know um i was talking to a friend of mine about imposter syndrome that um imposter syndrome yeah you know that feeling you know expression no it's you get it when like when people think that you're really good at something and you don't have a lot of self-worth or you you you have this perception of yourself that you're not worthy right you know like maybe as an artist that's that's a big one that you have it as an artist like i had it forever as a comedian and i probably still have it a little bit, but less so than I used to because I'm just more accomplished and more understanding of what it is and the more engrossed in the process.

And I, I know what it is now more than I did before. Okay. And you like when I meet famous people, they know who I am. I'd be like, Oh my God, I got to get out of here.

This fucking person knows who I am. I'm tricking them. Right. It's a trick. They don't know. And they hey man i love your stuff i'm like no you don't you think you do you don't trust me let me get away from you right it's like this imposter thing and then sometimes things enough things happen where you go you know what i think i might be legit i think i might be legit like this is so crazy like i thought i was an imposter forever but i think i'm be legit i think i might be legit like this is so crazy like i thought i was an imposter forever but i think i'm i'm gonna relax and just concentrate on the work and not worry about whether or not i'm an imposter anymore and just concentrate on the work that ego is always there yeah it's always there man and but the ego it's interesting imposter syndrome is

often more prevalent in people who are legitimately talented. And for some strange reason, because when you're legitimately talented, one of the ways you become legitimately talented is to be ruthlessly self-critical. Because that's how you get really good at something. And in ruthless self-critical, like, I remember Cat Williams was talking about himself once. And Cat Williams is a crazy person but a brilliant comedian and he said something that i have always thought and he's like i'm not a fan of me and he goes he goes like i don't you know i don't particularly like me you know it like, that is why he's great. Because that makes you work so hard.

Like, the worst thing a comedian can be in the beginning is sure of themselves and then incompetent at the same time. It's horrible. It's horrible. Because you're not good, but you think you're amazing. And then you understand. You don't know why the world doesn't think you're amazing. Because you think you're great. Because you're delusional.

You have this sort of artificial image of the world that you've put up. And in the world, you are the center. You are the center and you want everything to evolve around you. And the worst thing in terms of, for comedy, people have to enjoy what you're doing. They have to enjoy. not not everyone's gonna you're always gonna have some people that don't enjoy no matter what but you're trying to make it an enjoyable experience for the people watching you now if you are delusional and clueless and if you you don't understand how people see you, you have a distorted perception of reality, distorted perception of your own presence.

It fucks up the vibe for the audience. They recognize it too quickly because comedy in a weird way is a spiritual pursuit for the person who's making it. is a spiritual pursuit for the person who's making it because you're putting together thoughts and ideas and you're trying to get it into these people's minds in a way that elicits a response that makes them feel good. And the only way that you could really do it is you have to hit those notes. You have to reach that resonance. You have to find that frequency, whatever it is that works on them

and you can't be thinking about yourself too much and you can't be pleased with yourself can't be happy with yourself you always have to be analyzing you are you are the the sculptor you have to be critical you always have to and so in doing that it's really easy to develop imposter syndrome You always have to – and so in doing that, it's really easy to develop imposter syndrome because even when you're doing well – I've had like, I don't know, nine or ten comedy specials. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how many people like them. They suck. I've got to keep going.

You've got to keep working at it. It's like a sick type of perfectionism. someone would i don't remember how we even got onto this but that imposter syndrome exists because your your ego won't like your mind understands that your ego will fuck this up if you if you let your ego say oh i'm the fucking man you're gonna ruin this whole thing like you have to you have to be aware of what this is like this this this ride requires you to stay within a certain frequency you have to stay inside that frequency as soon as you start going yeah everything's fucking awesome it all goes away all of it goes away you have to stay inside that frequency and that frequency is not a frequency where you're very pleased with yourself um i think you've gone for full circle back to the bhagavad-gita yeah because the Because the Bhagavad Gita is the warriors have to fight the war.

You think the Bhagavad Gita is going to be like, here's Krishna telling Arjuna not to fight. Arjuna doesn't want to fight. He's got his guru on the other side. He's got his family on the other side. What's Krishna going to say about this? And Krishna's saying, you got to actually fight. You're born to fight.

You just have to get out of your ego with this and you have to do it as just a service and I think when I apply that type of teaching to my life like sometimes I'm not a great singer I'm not a great

you know Indian classical music but I like to do it and I'm enthusiastic to do it and to me it's not about me it's about like sort of like an offering it was like one of the first teachings i got in the ashram was um when you're on stage don't do it to make sure you're doing it to serve god and not be God. That statement changed my entire life.

And I was like, oh shit, everything I do is to be God. It changed the way, it didn't just change the way I sang, it changed the way I parent, changed the way I react to friends, to fans, to my parents. It was powerful. So that I have to sometimes, I like to publicly sing on this. Have you ever heard kirtan? No.

It's so interesting. What is it? It's chanting, call and response chanting, chanting mantras. And you use like this pump piano and Indian drums. I'll play some for you later. Okay. But it's great. And it's popular in America.

It's been sort of a little bit Americanized, but it's good, and it's great. And so what we do on pilgrimages, I have my assistant's an incredible drummer. He's from India. And then I play the harmonium, which is a pump piano, And we just sing publicly, call and response. And all the Indian people in India will come around and they'll sing with us. And it's like, it's overwhelming. So there's one particular temple I go to

and one particular holy place where singers come from around the world. It's like basically, you know, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin. It's like the best kirtan singers from around the world come and they sing. And I remember one time I came with a bunch of students of mine and they called me up to sing.

And in my brain I was like, you guys are like the real deal. I don't want to sing. And they're like, no, no, no, you sing. And I was like, no, seriously, I don't want to sing. Please, you sing. And like thousands of pilgrims come in at the time. And somehow I felt like I have to do this.

I have to sing because that's what they're ordering me to do. I have to do it in a loving way. I have to do it in a way to make everybody excited, but I can't do it with any ego whatsoever. And it becomes like this incredible tightrope walking. Can I do my best? Can you get on stage? It's not about me as the great comedian.

Can I do that sort of as an offering where I feel like people are going to walk away with something and they're going to be changed a little. They're going to be lifted a little. They're going to go home a little bit more connected. It's going to help me and it's going to help them. And can I do it? little bit more connected it's going to help me and it's going to help them and can i do it when when people we have this thing where we say uh we deflect our praise people say hey great show uh you're a great yoga teacher um this is how i train my students you're great yoga that was a great thing you did our quick answer is by the mercy of my teachers like we don't want to hold

on to praise because praise exacerbates the ego. Yeah. And so we immediately want to say, and it's not even like we're being falsely humble. We actually are made up of the teachers in my life. All the people that have loved me, cared for me, maybe people have like screwed with me,

but they also taught me a lesson. So the yogi's conception is everybody is creating what I am, and therefore, I don't own any of this. You want to praise me? I'm going to give the praise back to my teacher. Now, the teacher's mood is by the mercy of my teacher. I look back at my life, and I've realized I'm just like a ball of energy. And generally the energy goes to like feed my ego. How can it feed my ego? How can I use that to manipulate girls, to people like me?

How can I use everything I've got gifted for my own self-aggrandizement? Of course. And so when you get these teachers in your life, spiritual teachers who sort of like give you a loving slap or a loving hey, and they turn you on in some way, they take what you already have and they redirect that north instead of south. Everything I was doing was just snowballing devastation.

And now you don't give up those qualities that you have, but you use them in a way that brings people up instead of brings them down. That's what we were saying about movies too too or any entertainment or sounds in our mind that state of mind that you're trying to achieve when you get on stage where you're trying to sing with no ego that's exactly the the frequency that you have to hit when you're doing comedy you do your best but you don't do your best so that people love you you do your best because that's what you're trying to do that's your craft that's your this is your thing your thing that you do your your expression your art form you have to manage it and the way to manage

it correctly is you have you can't you can't go out there with ego. You'll turn people off. They won't feel it. There's moments where you can use that, especially with comedy, where you turn. But it's not ego. But even if you're doing it, though, in comedy, you're doing it for the effect of making people laugh. You're not doing it for the effect of pumping yourself up. And you have to be very careful about that. And if they know that that's what you're doing, they will accept it. That's the art of it. Yes, that's the art of it. It's a dance. There's a strange sort of dance that goes on.

I would notice, this is humiliating to mention, but I will. If I wasn't doing it in a mood of service as an offering, if I got off stage and that wasn't my motivation, I'd be depressed. Yeah. Because, and maybe you can relate to this, on stage, I'm the center. I'm the coolest. I'm it. They're singing song lyrics I wrote on my bed, and now they're all singing them, and I'm in another country. Right.

Now I'm off stage and I'm a nobody. So if you're not medicating with any type of drug or sex, then all you're left with is a bunch of emotions. And I don't know if this is true, but I think this is why people who are entertainers can move towards addiction or ways to mask that loneliness that comes with being the center. Where the whole world is trying to convince you of the maya. You've heard that word maya? The illusion. The illusion of life to convince you of the maya. You've heard that word, maya? The illusion. The illusion of life is that you are the center. Yeah.

By the way, Joe, there's an interesting thing I want to mention to you too because you brought up this point where like, I like living my life. I live a great life. Why wouldn't you want to do that again? Yeah. Because, and I don't know, and I didn't sort of challenge it a little because you were saying in retrospect to Helio. The idea of doing it over and over and over again.

Because the whole Buddhist and Hindu thing is that I don't want to take birth again. And since we were talking about these higher planets and higher beings, they say that planet like Earth, and they say there's other ones like this as well, there is some pleasure and some pain. There's people who live in a penthouse and there's people who are sleeping on the streets. Or you can be on the 100th, whatever floor it was, of the World Trade Center and be a CEO

and then a plane can be wrapped, you know, two floors underneath you. You can go from pleasure and pain, the most excruciating pain, and the most incredible highest of pleasure in a moment. So in this sort of, I mean, we've got places that are like, places in the world that are like the rape capital of the world. And then you've got places that are sort of like, you know,

go to Switzerland or Norway where the currency is strong and the people are beautiful and everything you see is like, it's from like a postcard. So we have like great amounts of pain and great amounts of pleasure on this planet. In such a condition, you could start to question like, why am I here? What is life about? It gives you a window to even ask those questions now if there's just so much pleasure in your life they say that higher beings don't have the impetus to evolve because there's so much pleasure higher being higher being so according to the vedas there's higher planets yeah there's higher planets okay now i don't want to say ganesh but there's a higher planets. Okay. Now, I don't want to say Ganesh, but there's higher planets with higher beings who just living a high life. Right.

And therefore the impetus to get out of samsara, you know, this word repeated birth and death. There's no impetus to get out. Sometimes people are suffering so much, there's no impetus to even see a spiritual light. People who are suffering tremendously maybe go to prison or they get caught up in more degraded activity. Sometimes people will have so much. So I'm like saying in your life, you have so much good karma, so to speak. But because you're still embodied, there will always be sort of like a pinprick because that's part of having a body. Right.

But my point was this journey is enjoyable. For you, but you got good karma. Is that all it is? Because I've had bad moments. Is it all just boiled down to karma? If you look at yourself like an autobiography, it is choices. Is it the direction you choose to push forward and the understanding of the push and pull, the understanding of the discipline and the work and then the kindness and the generosity and that all these things are connected together? And then also the expression, the ability to express yourself through podcasts or through stand-up comedy.

Sure. That all these things are enjoyable and that there's a pursuit in that and that the real benefit of it is that other people get entertainment out of it and that no your choice your choice is perpetuated yeah obviously but there's other people have done podcasts have done comedy and they're just not successful at it yeah but it's a puzzle though it's like it's like saying other people sing songs but people don't play them back yeah there are bands before green day you're sure like the buzzcocks from the 70s who who my opinion was better than green day but they just weren't at the right time historically to be yeah yeah look there's always going to be that but my point is like you don't have to be famous to be happy it's just life is interesting life is enjoyable sometimes it's hard

and sometimes it's painful sometimes it's emotionally devastating for sure but the idea if you are alive and enjoying life the idea of doing it forever is terrifying to people that was what my point was like why is it terrifying if it's not terrifying to do it now why is the eternal existence so disturbing to people. Right. Unless they have had a traumatic life. Yeah. Which a lot of people have. Yes. A lot of people have.

A lot of people have had a traumatic life. Yes. A lot of people have. I don't think my life was so traumatic. I think I got some life lessons. Well, let's leave them out of that equation and let's just talk about people who have not had a traumatic life, who have a fair... Look, if you're in America and you're not sick and you have friends you're doing

infinitely better than most people on planet sure you know that's just we're really fortunate in terms of like the environments that we exist in if you're not being abused and you have a job and you have a you know hobbies and things to do god damn are you lucky you could be born in afghanistan you could be living in the congo suffering from a host of different pathogens and bacteria and viruses and so but your thing is according to that person was it helio made up that yes well i don't think he made it up i think well helio obviously was a great warrior as well as a great jujitsu teacher but he had this philosophy on existence and that you had to live your life and do the right things always and if you didn't you would come back again and do it all over again well the vedic system is is similar but it's not the exact you don't

get born as joe rogan again living a parallel life and like oh i didn't take out the garbage that day i should have taken out the garbage it'd more be like according to your desires and your activities and your thoughts and the people you associate with you moved up um psychically you got a little more degraded or you know we either upgrade or degrade basically similar do you think of yourself like that do you think like when you think of yourself and your your fortune and the the interesting life you've carved out do you feel like your past life has had some sort of an impact on who you are right now for sure for sure for sure really why are you so sure i'm well it's just sort of like my uh worldview is that there's not a randomness, that everything is building upon something. And the same way I'm building upon tomorrow today.

So you feel like – And I'm building on next week by the way I act this week. And it could take it bigger and bigger and bigger. So in that sense, it makes sense. But there's a little bit more of a leap of faith. There is a little bit more of a leap of faith, like, and I'm building up to a climax where I'll take another body, or I'm coming from a place where I have some talents. You know, we call them your God-given gifts or your – you know, my daughter is a gifted artist. But the idea is that it's been a practice that we've been practicing and bringing with us for lifetimes. And both good and bad.

And this is a belief system that you just sort of adopt because there's not really any evidence. It's not that I've adopted. That's how the yogis view karma. I understand, but you've taken this in yourself as well. I've taken it in myself because I see it in this lifetime. I take it myself because I see it in this lifetime. Now, like I said, there's blind faith and then there's reasonable faith. So my reasonable faith lies in this lifetime, I've witnessed my body change.

I've witnessed my mind change, my intelligence change. I've witnessed myself cultivate desires that heal me, make me stronger, make me lighter, make me more connected. I've witnessed myself choose bad choices, things that are addictive, things that are defiling my consciousness or my body or my health. So in this lifetime, I know I can steer my karma. And at the same time, there's certain things that are out of my hands. Like you and me are on a flight to San Diego. And the plane's going to San Diego. What we do on that plane,

the plane journey is our karma. What we do on that plane, that's our free will. So that's the difference between free will and destiny. There is a difference of the two. Just because there is karma doesn't mean you're bound to it. You can move it. But the yoga system is to bring us to this, I'm trying to keep it simple, to this, it's called sattva, or it's a state of self-control, of peace, of balance. So all the

things of the whole culture is based to keep the mind peaceful. And when the mind is peaceful, I act less on impetus and more from a higher chakras or higher thoughts or higher intelligence. For example, if I slap a panther, panther's going to bite me. Why? Because panthers bite when you slap them. If I slap Joe, you could act from a different place. Hey, man, what's up? Or you could be like immediately. And sometimes I feel that also. I feel like I'm acting from a different place. Hey, man, what's up? Or you could be like immediately.

And sometimes I feel that also. I feel like I'm acting from a lower place. I'm angry. I want to kick that guy. Right? Right. And sometimes I feel like I do this with parenting. Sometimes I get angry at my child.

I say, don't you understand? He's just trying to talk to you. He's just trying to share how he experiences. And I have to pull myself back and let go of any way I was parented and try to act from a higher place. So there's always, they say in the human species, there's always this chance

to either upgrade your activities or degrade your activities. And they snowball off of each other. Like every good choice helps you make a better choice. We said that with diet, with exercise. How do we get talking about that joe is this we're talking about massive detours that we're taking no no no it's we're getting into places we're talking about your belief that your karma is connected to what

you've done in a past life sure so that's a that's a bigger leap of faith but and you say i see it in this life and you see it in this life. And you see it in other people as well. So when you see people, you look at their life and you think this person, where they are right now, is directly connected to what they've done in their past life. Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting philosophy. It's an interesting perspective.

It's an interesting lens. You know what's nice about it? Even in Western psychiatry, if I go and complain about my husband or my wife, a good psychiatrist will go, well, what's your responsibility in this? Is it all your wife or is it you? Right. They take you back. And when you really study this Vedic thought, you realize that there is no more blaming

anybody. I've just got what I've got for whatever reason. Now what am I going to do with that? Yeah. What am I going to do today? It's also... What am I going to do tomorrow? The why me shit never happens because I've got what I got.

I probably did something... And people don't like to hear that, but we don't know our backstory. And to be truthful, I have a blind side, a blind spot when it comes to anything atrocious I've done in this life. I forget all the times I've hurt people, broke people's hearts,

was rude or cruel or thoughtless. So I got to get some karma too. In this life, what to speak of a previous life where I'm oblivious to. Right. And if I just want to blame the circumstance, here's your option. You can either be free from that, be acceptance and accept that a divine puzzle that human beings are proposed and that you're you are given this infinite series of options and in choosing the right way of thinking and behaving you can carve out the righteous path as best you can. You will make mistakes, but that there's a spiritual undertaking that is a part of operating this puzzle correctly. And that this is what all these teachings are about.

And it's trying to, we're all trying to relay what we've learned and what we've experienced personally. And we're trying to relay it to other people so that they can relate and so that they can also make choices that will allow them to more refine their approach to life to achieve better spiritual balance. Yeah. Well said. There's, you know, the yogis call them yamas and niyamas. Sort of like... Say it again? Yamamas and niyamas sort of like yamas and niyamas

yamas and niyamas things you do and things you don't do and it's the equivalent of like sort of guardrails on a road right you drive a little bit off too far you scratch your car because of the guardrail

but if it wasn't there, it'd be complete tragedy. So there's sort of like things that we pull in with our sexuality, with our thoughts, with our words. It's how to use the vehicle in this lifetime. So the vehicle being the body. What we do, what we don't do. What to eat, what to think, what to speak, how to speak, how to relate to people, how to relate to juniors, how to relate to seniors. So the whole Vedic culture is carved out like this.

That in itself is not spiritual. It just assists you in driving a car. I still got to go north. And so once I can take care of how to like take care of this machine and keep it on the road, then I reach out for connection. Yeah. And that's the spiritual. So there's dharma.

But then there's dharma that's supposed to get us connected. What is the difference? That's what genuine yoga. What is the effect of dharma? What is that, the definition rather of dharma again? Dharma means sort of like a right living. It's not, some people confuse it with, well, doing what you're born to do. Because I don't think it's just doing what you're good at because you could be good at leadership and be a dictator.

And you're a great leader. Everyone's going to do what you do. Hitler was a great leader. Great leader. Great leader is probably in this chart. But then you also have great leaders like a Christ. It was like a great leader right also so it's not just leadership it's leading person towards connection so that your activity has a

benevolent effect on everyone it touches that's dharma that's that's dharma in its true sense and that's the dharma of your body like your dharma is you entertain um you're you could say a warrior you could all say you have also dharma as a father so that's it these are all type of like you're carved out for that you know if you weren't doing that you'd always feel like a little lack in your life but then there's like a nitya dharma or what you and the nitya dharma is actually the dharma of the soul and that's why in the Vedic system, it's not like you're trying to convert somebody to be of your religion. It's not like a home run to say, okay, I got a Christian to become a Hindu. That's not what it is. The idea is that everybody is a spirit soul.

You can change. It's not about joining the same church or the same ashram. It's like a soul is a soul. It's like truth. Truth is truth. There's no, no one's got a monopoly on truth. There's no such thing as, it's like math. It's not Jewish math or Hindu math or Christian. It's like math is math. So we want to apply truth to the life, to the vehicle. And that's going to give direction to the vehicle.

That's going to be the food for the soul. And that's what the genuine meaning of yoga. People say it's a balance the mind. It's going to be the food for the soul. And that's what the genuine meaning of yoga, people say it's to balance the mind. It's not to balance. It's to connect the atma or the soul with divinity, with Bhagavan. That's the real yoga. And that's when yoga means to come together. But in the original text, in the original ancient teachings of Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, it's all about is here I am lost in the crazy plan.

I'm driving my car everywhere. How to keep it on the road and where do I go? And that's the classical concept of what yoga is. How do we keep it on the road and where do I go? I like that way of looking at it. I mean, we go off the road. Yeah. And we need these discussions.

Are we fit off the road? We need these discussions. People need these discussions. We need, I mean, I need them right now, having it with you. I appreciate it. But we need to hear other people having these discussions. We need to have them personally ourselves. I do it every morning on my podcast, 5 a.m.

You do your podcast every day? Every day for an hour. And it's sort of like a check-in. It's on iTunes and all that jazz? It's on iTunes. It's called Wisdom of the Sages. And me and I co-host with another friend who was a monk for a long time with me. And we were both teenagers from the Lower East Side.

And so we do it together. Is he in upstate as well? He's in New York City, Manhattan. Okay, so you do it remotely? We do it on Zoom. Okay. But through Lipson with all the podcasts. Yeah, I've done it zoom i did a jordan

peterson podcast through zoom i saw that yeah great it works you can do it it's weird though but we have like 90 people join us live oh and so everyone knows each other and then it's also done public so it's fun it's i enjoy it there's something about doing podcasts that you you are working out ideas it's made me infinitely more aware of my thoughts, infinitely better at communicating. Speaking and writing, too. Since I'm writing two books right now, and they're both helping me. Yeah, I always thought that, but now this is a better way to say it. I'm sure you do that when you write material.

Yes, for sure. But my friend Eddie Wong, he had a really interesting take on that. He's like, that's what I do first thing in the morning he goes i write right and he goes and i write every day and he said and then in writing every day it helps me really understand how i think about things because i'm really really contemplating really concentrating on how do i actually think about these things what what is actually important to me and that that activity of writing for his own education for his own you know betterment is very important to him. And it made,

made a, like a big impact on me. Him saying it that way. I'm like, oh, okay. That makes sense. So many people,

by the way, Joe, it's so good that you're doing this. So many people I know listen to the show. Like it's weird. It's weird. And it's a real wide swath of people. Yeah.

I know. It's weird. It's a strange thing. I, I this gonna sound crazy uh but not any crazier than all the other shit we've said so far i feel like this show made itself i feel like i'm the person who's been granted the curator position on this show i feel like this show all the challenges that i've had through this show have sort of all the fuck ups and all the things that i've said that were stupid those were almost like were put in front of me to make me understand the consequences of not respecting it or of not treating it with the proper focus and concentration and that this thing is almost like it's always been here.

And I'm like an archaeologist who's just brushing the dirt away. And I'm the curator. And I have to show up every day and turn the lights on. Artists always describe themselves. I think it was Machiavelli, not Machiavelli. Michelangelo? Michelangelo.

Michelangelo described it like that. I can say myself as a puny songwriter, I felt like the song was already written. Yeah. And the lyrics were already written. I feel like that with comedy. When I come up with a good bit, like I have this new bit that I've only had

for like four or five days now and I've been working on it i feel like uh like it was a gift i don't i mean i know i wrote it i know i wrote it i know i typed it i know i thought about it but where from where from what yeah like what what is that what is creativity what is that coming from what is the gift and that's one of the things about pot and one of the things about booze and all the different ways that I achieve different states of mind. They help me get out of my own way so I could find these things better. That's really what it is. It's not as much of an escape from reality. It's an escape from me.

From your thoughts. Yes, from me, from my bullshit to so that i can find these thoughts better so that i can go on stage and then my reward is this strange feeling that you get when you know everyone's laughing this is wild but the better i get at it the less i enjoy it in the moment because i'm not thinking this this is great. I'm killing. I am just staying on point. You ever say something where you're just laughing at your own joke? Yeah, for sure. Because things come up that I don't know that I'm going to say.

And then I say it and then I start laughing. But it has to be organic. I'm not going to fake laugh on stage, but I will laugh on stage. My goal is always to just hit that frequency. The goal is to hit that frequency where people are laughing and say it with the right economy of words and the right order and find the best way to get it into people's heads. And that's the crazy thing is the better you get at it,

the more effect it has on people, but the less effect it has on me. Like, I could do, I'll do an arena, and I'll crush, and I'll get a standing ovation in front of an arena, and I barely feel it. I barely feel it like me, like I just did something. Right. I'm like a passenger on a ride. Like a passenger. Yeah, that's what it feels like. I mean, the better I get at it, the more I feel like a passenger on a ride Like a passenger That's what it feels like The better I get at it the more I feel like a pastor

But conversely If I fuck up I feel like I fucked up If I screw something up If I mess up a bit The pain is on me 100% So the pleasure kind of dissipates

Or it's like A more of an internal pleasure The pleasure's not From what they're Giving back It's confirmation It's confirmation That I'm doing the right thing

That's what it is It's like Everybody's happy I'm happy that you're happy And it's a genuine feeling Of appreciation It's like that concept Of the warrior

Just doing his duty Yes I'm just doing it This is what I do Now the Bhagavad Gita This is the thing That I wanted to talk to you about. When we're talking about the Vedas and we're talking about all the ancient texts, you think that all that stuff is real.

Could be real. Could be real. But you're saying it's real. You're like, that shit's all real. That's my sort of like hashtag, this is all real. It's because when you stumble upon this thing, it's like, man, this is all real it's because when some you stumble upon this thing that's like man this is all real like because there's something rational thinker i'm always holding back some reservation for like this can't all be real right but things always just show up

i was like damn that's so real can i tell you this crazy one sure i i don't want to tell too much about the details because i don't want to keep it private um and we're only doing it to 200 million people i had a uh person that an astrologer at my teacher training and i was training people to be teachers and one of the ladies was from a very wealthy family she's was older than me. Our kids went to school together. And he did this interesting, this astrologer did this interesting class where he did this class on karma, where he shows how karma is actually scientific and predictable.

So everyone would have to give their, like I said earlier, longitude, latitude, date and time of birth. I was born on January 11th, 3.30 a.m., 1966. And you'd have to give that all in. So he doesn't know anybody. And he's calling, okay, who was born on 1983, February 6th? They call the person forward and they said,

and he wouldn't do their whole chart, but he'd show some big hiccup in their chart. And he'd say, it seems like october you experienced great loss and the person would be like oh my god my father died in october and every person he was calling up he would just read the hiccup so one particular lady she said that was so good can you do my entire chart so he had it done now this lady i her. She grew up with somebody world famous. I won't mention who it is, but it's something, a household name. And they were best friends.

And she grew up in a very wealthy family. But as she got older, she just became a simple artist. But that famous person was always in her life. And then that person died a tragic death. And so she never had much after that financially. So a particular magazine, like a gossip tabloid, found out that she was friends with this person. And on the anniversary of this famous person's death, they were going to put out a special issue. And they found that she had all these intimate photos of this person.

So they offered her a massive amount of money for these photos. So I know the story and I'm standing there with the astrologer and the astrologer saying, okay, it seems like in July, you're going to have more money than you've ever had in your life. And she was just like, she looks at me and we look at each other like, oh my God. And she told him the whole story. And she said, yeah. And in July, they're cutting me the check. In July. How did you know that?

And the astrologer very humbly just goes, it's been known since your birth. So this is like the ultimate version of determinism, right? Yes and no. It's like, use that analogy. It's more cosmic. Well, use that analogy of the plane. There is a determinism, but there's also individual free will, which can sometimes affect. Sometimes you're going to just get what you get, but how I react to what I get, that's going to create a whole new set of karma for me.

Right? Yeah. How you react to what you get is definitely, yeah. We're all going to get I get. That's going to create a whole new set of karma for me. Right? Yeah. How you react to what you get is definitely, yeah. We're all going to get some thing. Yeah. And by me associating with people who are connected, by being associated with people who are a little bit more in tune, then when something happens to me, some great life reversal, some loss some chronic disease whatever i might react to it in different way and that's going to create a whole new pathway for me yeah well depending upon your actions you react to things differently depending upon your physical state and that's one

of the things that yoga really helps when one of the ways that yoga helps your karma is yoga relaxes you to consequences and to things that happen like i remember uh i was uh driving on the highway and there was this kid behind me um he's an illegal alien and he was on his phone and he hit the brakes too late and he slammed into my porsche i have a rare porsche it's a very nice car and he fucked up my car and i got out and he didn't have a license and insurance uh he had insurance actually i didn't think he did but took down his information i i took a photo of his uh insurance card and i told him i said you should get out of here man like you're gonna get arrested like you're right you said you should get out of here man like you're

gonna get arrested like you're right you slammed into me you don't have a license you're not even supposed to be driving they're gonna take your car his car was fucked up my car actually drove i drove it to the comedy store but i remember the way i reacted to him because i had done yoga three days in a row was cool and calm yeah i was i was happy i was okay because he slammed into me man like that fight story i told i wasn't angry yeah it it changes how you react first of all it changes how you react in the moment when you're doing the asana class yeah it has a secondary effect like you just said and the third way it affects you is at the time of death the idea and i'm i've actually had almost a near-death experience with this too, where

you are focused in the same way you're not angry, you're not freaking out, you become incredibly focused as if I'm about to leave my body. And you can say it once I was attacked. And I had probably the most spiritual experience of my life.

How were you attacked? It's such a story, but it's... I was at a show. The time of my life when I was monks. We were all monks. And we were traveling, and we played in sort of a ghetto part of Buffalo at a big show. Materially speaking, it was great. We were big.

People loved us. We sold merchandise. And which band was this? This was Shelter. It's my next band. And after the show, it was about 2 in the morning, and everybody's getting out of the club, and I'm in the alley getting interviewed for some magazine, and our van is parked.

You could drive the car in the van in the club, and all the doors and windows are open, and our guys were unloading all the gear, and basically only a few people left in the club breaking down the club, and I was outside getting interviewed. only a few people left in the club breaking down the club and i was outside getting interviewed and all of a sudden this car pulls up with these massive dudes who weren't from the punk scene they look like just sort of ghetto dudes and they were ripped and they were big and they just grabbed one of the younger kids i mean our show is everyone was 17, 19, 20. They grabbed one kid and just beat the living crap out of him.

And I was like, oh. I'm getting interviewed, so it's sort of awkward. And it's happening about 50 yards away from him. Just randomly started beating him up, didn't talk to him first. Didn't talk to him. Picked him up, threw him down, beat him, and then went to another kid and did that. By the time they got to the third kid, everybody just started running for their life. Here's like a, you know, you don't think of these things in times of great like fear and

anxiety. Why don't you do this? Why don't you do that? All I did was I ran back in the club to get my band. I said, you guys, we got to get out of here. There's a bunch of crazy guys outside. And all my roadies, we're all monks, by the way, but all the guys who were my roadies said, we can't go anywhere. Like the equipment's half in the car, the t-shirts aren't loaded.

And all of a sudden, the bad guys, their car drives into the club and parks like a T blocking our van. So we couldn't get out of the club any longer. And they get out of the car. And there's not that many people. There's a couple bands and sound men and stuff around the club. And the biggest guy gets out and he grabs a gun.

And he just goes in a really serious and unemotional way. I've got a gun and I'm going to kill everyone tonight. And it was one of these like eerie, sort of like eerie organ music you could hear. And I was like, it just felt like, oh, this is the day. You know, the day you always talk about that death day

where you don't expect it and you expect it and then you get the ace of spades. That's your day now. And I was like, oh, shit. And I was the older devotee, Krishna devotee. We are Krishna devotee monks or bhakti yoga monks. And so all the other guys in the band came up to me. What are we going to do?

What are we going to do? Now, they weren't right near us at the time. They were literally going around and beating people up. And all the other monks came up to me, Raghu, what are we going to do? And I had already sort of given up on escaping or anything. I don't know where I got this from, because I'm definitely not an elevated soul. But I said, we're going to die tonight. And so we're going to chant. And I went into the...

Jesus Christ. I know. Why wouldn't you just run? You know what? In retrospect, I don't know. But let me circle back with this. I grabbed the drum out. I play this Indian drum.

And we all started chanting these mantras to Nishringa Dev, who's an avatar of Vishnu. You usually chant for a type of protection, but we all started really focusing and chanting this mantra. It's an unbelievable story, but it's all true. And as they were beating up people, they finally came to us, and all my guys ran for their life. Some guys were under the van, in the van, above the van, and I'm surrounded by this gang. And the biggest guy just grabs the gun, and he goes to me, do you want some? I was like, freaking trick question, what am I supposed to say here? And so I just, you know, by the way, I didn't look like a monk. I had jeans on.

It's not like let's beat up monk day. It was just a random act of violence. And so I just put my hands like in a namaste and said, Hare Krishna, I'm a devotee of Lord Krishna, and I have no idea why you are angry. devotee of Lord Krishna, and I have no idea why you are angry. And then for the first time in my life, I felt completely helpless. I was just like repeatedly beaten and just punched. And it's just one of those things. It's not like you can even fight back. You are just getting pounded. But what happened was every time I got punched, I chanted a mantra.

So it was sort of like Vishnu, Narayan, Chaitanya, Krishna, Govinda, Gopal. Every time I chanted to the point where I was like, oh, this is amazing. I'm actually chanting. I was actually stepping outside myself saying, I'm actually in meditation on sacred names. And then all of a sudden my head was down and I looked behind me and there was these three girls coming to protect me and they had baseball bats. And then I realized, no, they're not. They're the girlfriends of these guys. And then I started getting hit by a baseball bat. Unbelievable.

Three times in the head, one on the shoulder, and two in the legs. And every time I – And this is a random thing. There's no reason. As far as I know, it was random. I didn't know them. They didn't know me. They weren't from that scene.

Our show was in a ghetto. There's always a cause of something, but I have no idea what the cause was. And so every time, but miraculously, and you read these stories in the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, all these epics of India, the great sage leaves his body. He calls Lord Krishna's chariot in front of him. Then he chants these mantras. And I'm thinking, oh my God, I'm chanting these mantras at the time of death. I'm chanting at the time of death. This is the perfection of my life. That was what was going through my head. I kid you not. And I was like outside of my body and I wasn't fearful. And then all of a sudden, to wrap up the story, everything stopped.

And I didn't really know what happened, but what was happening was all the guys in the band jumped in our car, our van, and plowed through their car and took off. And I can't remember how, but I ended up in the street, in some ghetto street, carrying this Indian clay drum.

I look like, ever see that movie, Carrie? The girl is covered in blood. I was covered in blood from my head all the way down, all over the drum. And I'm walking in the streets trying to flag down a car. The cars would slow down, see me, and then speed away because I looked like a zombie or something. And then I realized, oh, man, something. And, you know, you're running sort of high on adrenaline. I remember being very lucid.

And I went over to uh some light i saw it looked like a garage where they fix cars or house buses or something when it was open and there was a man in a booth and i said sir you have to call the police because i thought my friends now were getting beat up or killed or whatever and i said uh you have to call the police. My friends are in trouble. And the guy literally looked at me and just said, I'm busy. And I said, listen, you got to call the police right now. And if you don't mind, I'm just going to hide in this booth because I think these guys might come back and kill me. And so I'm kneeling down in this dirty garage at 2 in the morning. And the first thing in my mind is no one knows where I am.

My mother doesn't know where I am. Friends don't know where I am. My band members don't know where I am. They could be getting killed. And everything was so good today. Like I had a great day. And now it's over like a dream. And I even have these day. And now it's over, like a dream. And I even have these lyrics that were like,

this world's like a dream. It's not what it seems. We think it's solid, but it fades. I was like, I even, and I sort of, my self-talk became a prayer. And I started saying, I really wasn't expecting to die tonight. But that's what the dream is.

It seems real, and now it's over. And I started to think like, oh, my God. I was sort of like in a state of like samadhi when I was getting beat up. I was focused. I was connected. And I was chanting at that time. I said, but now, maybe my – if I got, I'm just trying to think my, you know, Boy Scout first aid is like, I might have a concussion. My brain's going to swell. I'm

going to fall asleep. And then I won't be in meditation. And I started saying, I said, I said, I started praying sincerely, Krishna, I wasn't expecting to die tonight. sincerely, Krishna, I wasn't expecting to die tonight. But you were so kind, considering I'm not evolved, to enter my lips so I could just chant. So please don't let me die with a concussion. If you want to take me, please take me right now. And with all sincerity, I started chanting these prayers that I had memorized, these very beautiful prayers from an ancient book.

But they were prayers – I focused a picture of Krishna in my mind, and I started chanting these prayers. And then unfortunately, I lived. Unfortunately. Because I was in such a perfect – That's ridiculous. Meaning I was at a – that's how I would want to die. Perfect. That's ridiculous saying the same thing. Meaning, that's how I would want to die.

So there was no book, there's no teacher, there's no pilgrimage, there was no... That taught me more about my spiritual path than that beat down day. Because I felt like... You were as close to dying as you can get. As so close to dying, but I felt like... And you had accepted it. And I had been taken care of.

Like, in that time of great tragedy, I felt connected more than I've ever been connected. And I wouldn't wish it again. Mm-hmm. But I'm so happy it happened. We still never got to the Bhagavad Gita. Sorry about that. We turned. A hard hairpin turn.

Why do you think that that's real? And what you think is going on in those stories. Well, first you've got the dialogue itself, which is cool wisdom for all people. Yeah, and some of it is like hyper bizarre, like what Oppenheimer quoted at the detonation of the atomic bomb. Right. I am become death, destroyer of worlds. Kalo shmi loksha ya kreet pravrido. Is that the? That's the Sanskrit.

How does he say it? Kalo shmi loksha ya kreet pravrido. Is that why? Time I am the great destroyer and I've come to destroy all worlds. Oh, that's the actual translation. That's the actual translation in English. Because his translation, Oppenheimer's, was I am become death. Is that because of an issue with the translation between Hindu and English?

It's just different people translate it. Slightly different. But it's similar. Meaning in that particular section that you pulled out that was Krishna explaining like God is beautiful, God is charming, God is your best friend. He's also death personified. So he's saying in that particular place, I'm actually also the destroyer of all the worlds. When we think of, the yogis explain that God is everything, both the beauty and the destruction as well. And so Krishna just is sharing his attributes.

And in that particular chapter, chapter 11, he's the most, almost intimidating. Where do you think all these stories come from? What do you think the origin of the Bhagavad Gita, of the Mahabharata, of all the ancient texts, what do you think the origin was? What was the motivation to put this stuff down? What was the original concepts that led them to write this? And where did it all come from? There has to be an origin of these wisdoms, right? Yeah. What do you think that is?

You know, to even answer the question, I have to take myself out of Ragu and just answer like a yoga teacher. Okay. Because to answer of what do you think, it's one thing you're sort of trained not to do as far as what is your personal opinion. I can give you my personal opinion, but I have to separate it from what the stories themselves say. Well, give me your personal opinion.

My personal opinion is I hear what the stories have to offer. I find some value in the stories, and I try to apply wisdom to my life. It helps the direction of my life. It helps me escape potholes. I understand. The stories themselves say these are all real. They're way beyond your perception. They were orally transmitted. At a certain time, historically, they understood people are getting dumber. See, we have a tendency to think we're at the pinnacle of evolution, but the Vedic teachings is that

as we go on in this age, we get more and more disconnected. There was a time where architecture was more evolved, where the sciences were more evolved. Wait a minute, stop. The sciences were more evolved? The sciences, like for example,

the building of these Vimanas, which when we read them now, we just think, that's mythological. Even weaponry. Weaponry, they say, we're done with sound. If you study, there's one book called The Donner. Okay, but do you think this is real? Do I think it's real? I think it could be.

I don't think it's definitely, I definitely don't know. At one point in time, human beings had Vimanas, and and they flew around the sky and then they had weapons that use sound could could why not was no evidence archaeological evidence that there was a flying craft or was that there was ever any technology that allowed people to leave gravity yeah there sometimes there may not be evidence just like this let me show you what was the guy's name hill or the the barney hill barney hill what's your evidence you could just say well it's my own experience i mean he's just laying that's that's a totally different thing he's just relaying his personal experience he could have had some sort of a psychotic break

he could have had i mean it could have been mass psychosis with him and his i mean with two people group psychosis with him and his wife i can say that there are things that make no sense to me yet i sort of tried them anyway and then after time they made sense like well wait a second that does make sense it or at different vantage points of my life, it didn't make sense when I was 20. But at 50, that makes a lot of sense. So there are certain things that are huge leaps of faith that I can't say I definitely know that to be true. Just like chanting on mantras.

Made no sense. Made no real sense. But over time, I realized actually that helps in this particular way. But it achieves a state, a state of consciousness. We've known that forever actually that helps in this particular way. But it achieves a state, a state of consciousness. We've known that forever, that achieving – that meditation in general achieves certain states of consciousness. And you can actually – with fMRI, you can actually monitor the changes in the way the brain is – See, this is what I like about you. You're one of those guys.

You get into these very interesting like subtle sciences and then you find it's like hard evidence for these things and just hearing that thing with james wilk and breaking all these things down i'm i'm i'm more of a simpler guy i find people where i trust the way they live and they've applied stuff and walk the it's more like i can tell time but i don't know how to take apart a clock and put it back together no i think exactly the same way. I'm fascinated by watches. Yeah. But then you see all the gears behind a watch, like a self-winding watch, and you're like,

I don't know what the fuck is happening here. I'm sure I can find it out eventually. I'm like that with a lot of things, and I'm always impressed when you dig into it with people like this. But truthfully, if you want to know the honest truth, I was like, oh, man, I hope Joe doesn't dig into it with me because i'm not that kind of hard science guy you don't have people like even all the stuff i did in your concern from with you as a human being what that's why i asked you very specifically what do you think right well i can say like the stuff that

you liked about me fighting was endurance, flexibility. I give all the credit that to yoga. You did at the time. Pranayama. I've told many people that you had crazy cardio and your cardio was, you never did cardio. You just did breathing exercises. Never did cardio. Just sat down.

You always had great cardio. You always led like really good endurance. And my cardio was even better i remember being at the bomb squad once on day 17 of a 21 day fast wow day 17 and i remember fighting i can't remember his name is a cool guy he's like what and you know how jujitsu class ends when we're all tanked and we're all like and i just kept on going and he's like man what is up with you i was like I don't know. I haven't eaten solid food in 17 days.

So it's not like I'm a genius. It's just that these are sort of like yoga, fasting, deep breathing. I've just been doing them. And I'm sure there's people that can give you the modern take on what the benefits are. Yeah, but that's not what I'm asking you. What I'm asking is why you believe the Bhagavad Gita is real. Sure. So my point is there's reasonable amounts of faith in these other things that I've applied

that have made me take a next step. So whether I believe it's real, I just believe – the truths I can extract from it are real. Whether the war actually happened, there's a leap of faith. The benefits of following those scriptures you apply apply, and you feel those benefits. So that's enough. That's enough to make me move forward towards those. Just for example, the idea of faith, because especially in America, we don't like the concept of blind faith. But if I saw you walking in downtown, let's take it the other way.

You saw me, you're driving your Porsche and you saw me walking in Manhattan and you say, hey, Raghu, how do you get to Times Square? And I said, so the first step is I could lie to you. People lie all the time when you ask them for directions, but you have some reasonable faith. I know him, he's a friend. Why would he give me bad directions? So there's a reasonable amount of faith.

But even still, people get into their egos and they just want to be the knower of directions. But I say, you go up the 14th Street and you're going to see a McDonald's, you take a right. Then you're going to go down all the way to whatever, I can't even remember Manhattan anymore, Union Square and take a left and go up third. And then at Union Square, you're going to see a park. At that park, you take a hard left. So again, you have some type of extended faith towards me, not blind faith, but you'd go up to 14th Street and there's that McDonald's. As you go to McDonald's or that next signpost, you realize, okay, maybe he does know where he's going. Then you go farther, there's Union Square. Okay, I think he actually knows what's going on. And all of a sudden you see the Times Square in the distance.

So faith isn't just like, I believe. And if anyone was to say, I believe this, I believe in these Vimanas, I believe in mantras, I'd start to question them. But it happens with small degrees of things being just shown to you that you want to take. All right, what's the next step here? What do they say about this? What do they say about that? And then you apply it and see, well, does that work with me?

And like I said, sometimes things didn't make sense. I remember when I first met monks and they said a question about, or not even monks, but people were just like following very strict with their sexuality, even in family. And the guy said, I don't have sex. I was 17. And I was like, you don't have sex with your wife? Are you crazy?

He's like, no other we do other things and i just couldn't understand that as a 17 year old boy or 18 year old boy i couldn't understand why would you be with the person what was his answer what was their answer it was because they said we were practicing detachment we're practicing going internal to find our pleasure and he said i said what do you do for fun and he goes you go for a fun? And he goes, you go for a drive. I was like, you go for a drive? Are you crazy? But it was where this person was on his path of really controlling the senses and finding his pleasure internally.

At time in my life, it made no sense whatsoever. Maybe he really didn't like having sex with his wife. Or that. He was looking for some sort of an excuse. Or maybe there was – We're going internal, baby. She's like, what? What's happening?

Maybe there was trauma. We don't know the whole story. I see what you're saying, though. That applying this stuff, whether or not you break it down scientifically and objectively and try to analyze each and every word and whatever the translation is, you could actually apply those truths, air quotes, to your life and have real benefits. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And other things are just, does it make a difference if Vimanas exist or not? No, it makes no difference in my practical life. Could they exist? Sure. It could, all these, yeah, it could answer a lot. I think a lot of these things we've talked about, like life on other planets and aliens, they all are very much explained. Or here's another good one. What do these spiritual paths have in common?

We train ourselves to find the differences in all of them. And the Vedic teachings say, don't you understand? You should be able to walk into a mosque, into a church, into a synagogue and say, how nice. These people are trying to connect. Not that we got to win these people over to our team. Right. Because they're all an illusion and they're all going to hell forever. Right.

Everyone's on a type of path and I appreciate them trying to surrender. And the only thing that's going to get in their way, because people say things like this all the time, it's religion that caused all the problems in this world. And it's not religion. It's the ego that goes with joining a particular church, synagogue, ashram, et cetera,

that we have it our way. And everybody else, they're a problem and we got to fix it. That's what gets in the way because you could say materialism causes lots of problems as well in the world. So I don't think it's – the ego is sneaky. It will sneak into your diet. It will sneak into your God.

It will sneak in. And that's why there's an appreciation instead of a uh instead of a condemnation of people that are different than us let's wrap it up right there those three hours man oh really yeah isn't that crazy that is crazy time flies we just started man we kind of did i hope it wasn't boring it was great it was great it, everybody. Thank you and Hare Krishna. Goodbye. Thanks, man. Brother.

You're doing great stuff. That was fun.