The Rich Roll Podcast - Everything Is A Practice: Raghunath Cappo

Episode Date: February 25, 2021

Replace ego with the eternal. Trade selfishness for service—and self-absorption for unity. Together, let’s explore the spark of divinity that resides within us all. Meet Raghunath Cappo. Punk rock icon. Spiritual warrior. Bhakti yoga devotee. A teen in search of meaning, Ray Cappo fled his suburban Connecticut enclave for New York City—and found community among the misfits of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. He fell in love with punk rock, so he started a band and a record label. Success soon followed. By the late 1980’s, Youth of Today had thousands of fans, cementing Ray as a leading voice and trendsetter at the bullseye of hardcore culture. However, a growing existential itch led Ray to call it quits. At just 22, he walked away from his band and label and decamped for India—a spiritual pilgrimage that led him to the holy village of Vrindavan. It was there that Ray fell in love with the wisdom and traditions of Bhakti yoga. It was there that he would remain for the next six years, living as a monk. It was there that Ray became Raghunath. This is the incredible story of a modern day yogi. But it’s also about the search we all go on. The journey for personal meaning beyond the ego. And the quest for universal consequence beyond the material. It’s about the timeless that lives and breathes within all of us—that which is eternal, and past our limited senses. It’s about transcending the illusions that hold us back. What it means to truly devote oneself to greater truth. And the modern day challenges of trudging the path towards higher consciousness. All told, it’s about what it really means to be a spiritual being having a human experience. If you’ve enjoyed my conversations with musicians John Joseph & Toby Morse, spiritual leaders Guru Singh & Radhanath Swami, or modern seekers Andy Puddicombe, Jason Garner & Russell Brand, then I’m confident this will be your jam. FULL BLOG & SHOW NOTES: bit.ly/richroll583 YouTube: bit.ly/raghunathcappo583 Thank you to Robert Sturman, Perry Julien, Sherry Sutton & Davy Greenberg for the portraits & photo use permission. Let the Jedi Warrior training begin. Peace + Plants, Rich

So fundamentalism in any spiritual path is ugly. We dig our heels into some nuance and we find those differences. Whereas woven right into the teachings of the Vedic paradigm is that, no, no, no, no, don't you understand? There's one truth and truth is for everyone. And no one's got a monopoly on truth. Not your skin color, not your gender, not where you were born. Indians don't own truth. It's for everyone because actually we're not Indian and

we're not white and we're not black. We're actually spiritual beings. And if you think you're white or black or Asian, I got news for you. It's like a rental car. You got it for a few years only. Don't get too proud of it. Don't feel so privileged with it. It's not even you. Your real identity is your spiritual being. And your pain in this world is going to come from identifying with your body as yourself. It's a temporary world and we're eternal beings. Life isn't about trying to put your foot on every continent, on every like perfectly Caribbean beach.

It's about what is my offering in this world? And when I see people like yourself, people are just connected, like, okay, we're here for a short amount of time. What am I here to give? That's when life I feel like really becomes successful. I'm Raghunath Kapo, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Greetings, astral travelers. It is I, Rich Roll, traveling parsecs across the multiverse, arriving as a digital apparition in your ear canal to deliver a public service announcement,

which is that today's show is not to be missed. It is not to be played at 1.5X speed or taken lightly for that matter because spiritual warrior Raghunath Kapo is not only in the house, he is burning it down. Should this be your first foray into this man's world, Raghunath is a former straight edge punk rock icon. His band Youth of Today was front and center in the 1980s New York City hardcore scene. But then he takes this really interesting, amazing turn. Despite experiencing success as a musician, he has this growing existential itch,

which ultimately provokes him to walk away from his musical career. And at 22, super young, he goes on this pilgrimage to India and then proceeds to live as a monk, a renunciant for the next six years before ultimately returning to the States to live, I guess you could call it a devotional life in the bhakti yoga tradition in service to humankind and the pursuit of higher consciousness. Today, he is married, he's got five kids and he runs Super Soul Yoga and Farm in upstate New York,

where he, with his wife, leads yoga training, as well as a variety of spiritual quests throughout India and hosts Wisdom of the Sages, a daily spiritual podcast. Ragu's story is incredible. This journey is unbelievable. It's quite the incredible journey. It is that of the modern day yogi. Raghunath drops many a timeless wisdom pearl

and has crazy mind-blowing stories for miles. It's all coming up quick, but first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment, an experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care.

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the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide,

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go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, I don't wanna say too much about the conversation to come, but I will say that this is about a search we all go on in some form or another, the search for meaning, personal meaning beyond the ego and universal meaning beyond the material.

It's about the timeless that lives and breathes within all of us beyond the senses. It's about transcending the illusions that hold us back and what it means to truly devote oneself to greater truth and this path towards higher consciousness. If you've enjoyed my many conversations with musicians, John Joseph and Toby Morse, my PMA ambassadors, or spiritual leaders like Guru Singh, Radhanath Swami,

Jason Garner, and even Russell Brand for that matter, then I'm pretty confident this is gonna be your jam. So let the Jedi warrior training begin because class my friends is in session. So cool to have you here. I've been looking forward to this for a long time. I'm honored to be here, truthfully. And the more I find out about your life,

the more honored I'm, I've been binge listening to Rich Roll. Oh, cool. Probably for like eight months, actually. Oh, really? Wow. You were, it was a big help during the pandemic, which I would get to ride my bike. We live in the upstate New York,

so there's a lot of beautiful places to ride a bicycle. So just listen to Ritual. Oh man, I'm honored. You've got a great guests too. It's really inspirational. And for the last two weeks, I've been thinking, oh, please, may I say something substantial and not stupid. I have a lot of stupid,

I've got a lot of stupid stuff stored up here. You are the wise one, not to put pressure on you, but- No, but you're doing great work. Oh, thanks, man. Can I share one other inspiration? Sure. Well, I've always been into the whole idea of transformation through diet, through lifestyle,

through spirituality and stuff, but you get stuck at certain points of your life in different facets of your life. So I remember when I lived in California, I was a hundred percent raw foodist, do cleansing on a regular basis. And I was a yoga teacher here. That's where I met my wife.

We got married in Laguna Beach at the Krishna Temple down there. And, you know, moving back East, a lot colder, got 20 degrees right now, black ice everywhere. You gotta insulate yourself a little bit. Yeah, and then I, what do you call it? You know, I was very, before I was married, I did nothing, but jujitsu and yoga every day, you know,

and I was in a band and make some money, store that money and just do jujitsu all day and eat fruits and vegetables. And you can, living in California, you could just pick fruits and vegetables. You can do it. Pick avocados are literally growing off of people's trees. Your neighbor had a fig tree or an avocado tree

and you just live like that. And then slowly as you, I married a wonderful lady with two kids and I got to play dad immediately. And I had to get used to that. And I had to start working. I stopped touring and I had to get used to that and worked as a yoga teacher. And, and I took on a whole new role of, you know, sort of growing up quick. And then we moved to the East coast and it wasn't used to that weather anymore. And then I started to change my diet and change my lifestyle and started to neglect myself. And because I was a yoga teacher

and I was always very open and strong in a yoga practice, I sort of could get away with it because I was pretty flexible. But I remember about this year, I went to a doctor and he said, Ragu, you're about 30 pounds overweight. And this was from a doctor who was very overweight. Oftentimes the doctors are the most out of shape

bachelor for me. And I was like, oh, come on. In my mind, I was like, hey, come on, you're overweight, dude. You don't know what you're talking about. And then I was like, I am overweight, actually. I am overweight. And I have been like definitely deviated. You know, you can deviate in small increments.

And over a few years, it totals up. And I started, and my wife saying, okay, we're all getting season passes for snowboarding this year. And that's how we're gonna deal with the winter. And I was like, I don't wanna snowboard this year. I'm like, I feel I'm at the stage of my life where I feel like I might like have a heart attack,

shoveling snow, that's how people die. And so you had Dr. Alan Goldhammer on the show. And I love him. He's pretty cool, right? He's very cool. People love that one. And I was into his whole thing of like water fasting. I was into that for, you know, years ago.

And I was just said, you know what? I've been making too many excuses for too long. And I've been saying, well, I've been going internal. I've been going, you know, well, I can still do all these yoga poses. I'm still very open. I'm still, and I just realized, you know what? You gotta live this stuff too.

And so it made me start on December this year, or 2020 rather. And plus all the stress of the pandemic and stuff like that. I said, you know what? It's not a good time to do a water fast and I'm gonna do a water fast. And I just did a beautiful 21 day.

Wow. Water, broth, mainly water, but some broth and juice. And I just decided on that day, I'm gonna reconnect with all this stuff that I've just neglected that I know about. And it was an incredibly beautiful transformation. So I wanted to give this appreciation because what you're doing on the show has a ripple effect

because it's sound vibrations of transformation. And that's the whole Bhakti thing that I'm into. Yeah, that's mantra and kirtan. It's a different version of that, I suppose, but. You know what? It's sound vibration that lifts people up and higher. And I just want you to know, I appreciate it. Oh man, that means a lot.

That's very cool to hear. I appreciate that. And that's great. You did a water fast. So how did you feel at the end of that? Well, I'll tell you, I felt that, you know, the first three days are always sort of like, okay, deal with it.

It's the worst. It's the worst. It's the worst. And truthfully, I usually, by day four, I usually feel pretty good. I didn't this time. I didn't feel good. And on day nine, it's, and it was very cold. It was getting colder and colder. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to do a colonic and I'm going to feel great. And I went in for my colonic and I felt worse. And I almost felt like I was catching a cold. And I was like, this is no good. I got to break this. And by day 11, I was flying so high. I felt worse. And I almost felt like I was catching a cold. And I was like, this is no good. I gotta break this. And by day 11, I was flying so high. I felt so good.

But another thing was, I've always hated running. I did jujitsu and I did yoga, but running, I hated. Matter of fact, when I was 30 pounds overweight, I started, I said, you know what? I'm gonna run. And I would run to the railroad tracks. I live on a dirt road. I ran to the railroad tracks.

And the first time I did it, I hurt my knee. And I was like, this sucks, running sucks. But that day when I started doing that cleanse, I was like, you know what? I'm gonna run 10 minutes, 10 minutes, in the morning and the night. And now I'm just running every day. And we did this great hike today.

My wife was going to Tour de Mont Blanc this summer. I said, I'm gonna go too. I'm gonna go backpacking with you. And we just started. And you know, it's one thing leads to another and that's the power of like making one good choice. Yeah. Well, a couple observations on that.

First of all, the fact that you did a colonic in the middle of a 21 day water, it's like, that's so, you know, endemic to your personality of like gravitating towards these extremes, like punk rock's not extreme enough. So I'm going to be, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to do straight edge and then I'm going to do the whole Krishna, like the road keeps getting narrower and narrower, right? I'm a fine connoisseur of cults.

The second thing being that despite all the work that you've done and your laudable extreme devotion to cultivating higher consciousness, we all have our blind spots. And you're like, you know, you're recounting like these excuses that you're making for yourself. Well, I do this, so this is okay. Realizing that no matter where we are on the path,

we still are experts at, you know, pulling down the blinders on the stuff that we need to look at most. know, pulling down the blinders on the stuff that we need to look at most. I feel that most of us aren't on jets. We're sort of tacking like a sailboat, go a little up, a little down, a little up, a little down. And I'm okay with that in my life. And I can see that's happened. The tacking has been sometimes a little bit more extreme, but I feel like if there's a reasonable, if you set your compass, even if you tack too far North or too far South, if you're, if you got that compass set, you'll end up in a good place. And the compass is helpful to have, you know, you know, people of

integrity in your life. And I've always sort of kept people like that close. Even when I've gone, feel like I've gone really off. I felt like the people have sort of encouraged me back. And so I've had great people in my life, friends, peers, some you probably know, Radha Naswami, who you've had as a guest, whom I love. And I spend time with him every year. What a beautiful- Great soul, great people.

So lucky to have great people in our life. And what do you do? What you're creating with this podcast is like, you just have great inspiring people on a regular basis visiting you. And it's been such a gift to be able to share space and spend time with people that I respect and look up to. And then these people become my friends and part of my life.

And our world sort of have intersected in that regard, like John Joseph, you probably go way back with that dude, right? Those guys in the Cro-Mags have been a big inspiration to me and to a lot of people for sure. I mean, John's one of my best friends. I texted him the other day and told him you were coming in. He said to say hello.

Yeah, they're inspirational guys, inspirational guys and transform their lives, transform people's lives, transform my life directly, you know, in debt. Also, Toby Morse. Toby Morse, I think I'm joining him for dinner tonight. Oh, you are, oh, cool. I texted him and told him you were coming in as well too. So he said to say, what's up?

I'm glad that you're gonna see him. Very cool. Well, let's talk about the origin story a little bit. You know, I'm like obsessed and fascinated with New York city in the 1980s and like that. I thought you meant the origin of the universe. I was like, yeah, everyone's got a good creation story. How many hours you got, right? I'm going to take your, you know, 90 day course. Well, Lord Brahma appeared on a lotus flower from Lord Vishnu's navel. And many other things, right? That period, you know, I moved to New York in 1989 and lived there on and off for several years. So I was at the tail end of that. You were in New York in 89. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I grew up in Washington, DC, but I grew up kind of in an inside the belt way.

My dad's a lawyer and I went to an all boys prep school. And even though- What school? The Landon School for Boys. Okay. Like coat and tie, like the whole thing. So, the 930 club is all happening down the street. And that was another universe.

Like it's interesting to me, like this, either the percolation up through culture of punk rock and the hardcore scene was going on, but it didn't intersect with my life at all. And now later in my life, people like John and Toby, some of the hardcore people are like my favorite people. They're just like amazing human beings that have been, you know,

sort of sculpted from that movement. And yet that was not part of my growing up experience at all. And I still have to be completely honest. Like I have trouble connecting with the music. It's the people that I love. Colorful personalities. And for me, when I was 14 and 15, visiting my older brother, I'm like a six out of seven kids, New York City parents that moved to Connecticut to raise a family. So when my family all eventually started moving back to New York City as they grew up. So I used to visit my brothers in New York and I used to hang out in the Lower East Side. And that's how I'd see all these people. And the Lower East Side, for those who don't know New York, then it was a whole different world. And it was scary, but exciting. And for a 15-year-old, it was like, everyone was almost like bigger than life, like cartoon, like comic book

characters of villains and heroes. And sometimes they blended into one, is he a villain or a hero? and heroes and sometimes they blend it into one. Is he a villain or a hero? Things like that. So especially in the punk scene, everybody had a punk name and their weapons of choice. And it was sort of a scary scene, but it was exciting compared to a suburban high school.

Right, and you just took the train down from Connecticut and just- Yeah, from Westchester. We used to, sort of on the border, we used to take the Metro North to New York City. And my parents were, you know, I was, I mean, I get it. I have five kids. So when my, you know, the youngest one, you get exhausted being a parent, you know,

and you're slacking up. So by the time I came around, my parents were like, yeah, you want to go to New York this week and have a great time? I'm going to see some music, mom. And they were like, yeah, you wanna go to New York this week and have a great time. I'm gonna see some music mom. And they were like, okay, Philharmonic, what could he be possibly doing? Unbelievable.

I know. And so what were the clubs that you were going to at that time? CBGB's, A7, you know, I've been to the Mud Club, I've been to, you know, the Ritz, which is now Webster Hall. And how did, so what was the process of? They were like gross, you know, the Ritz, which is now Webster hall. Um, and how did, so what was the process of, they were, they were like gross. You know what I mean? When we talk about them, they sound like fantastic. They were grotesque by, by normal civilians. Like my wife, I call a civilian. She has no clue what hardcore is. She doesn't know anything about it. You know,

didn't even know I was in a band when we were started dating. But they were great. If you were into that music, it was like that, that was like the music Mecca. For us, it was so much more than, well, we want to play another band's songs. I want to play the best of Rush or the best of Cheap Trick or the best of Zeppelin. We just wanna write our own music. And it was sort of cool. And what was it that you connected with? Like when you're 15 and you're going to these clubs

for the first time and you're being exposed to this scene, like what was it about that that like excited you? I think it was that originality that like, these are just guys my age. You know, the first band I saw was like the Beastie Boys first band. They were in a band called the Young and the Useless. And they were 14 or 15 like I was, and they were making their own music on stage. I was like, I think I could do that. I think I could do that. And from there, I went back and me and my three nerdy friends from my big suburban high school,

we just, you know, we created a band. We started playing and the local radio station played our cassette. Oh, wow. And from that, we got asked to play at a big punk club in, it was funny because you probably know Moby. Yeah.

So Moby was in a band that also played, we played this big show. The Vatican Commandos. Vatican Commandos. So Moby was, we played with Moby's band and Agnostic Front back in the very old days, all these old classic hardcore bands. This was like 1982.

We played a big show in Bridgeport, Connecticut at a place called Pogo's. And I was 16 years old. It was like the most exciting thing for a 16 year old to dad, we got a gig. Can I drive to Bridgeport, Connecticut? And there's like every, you know, when you're sick, everything's intimidating. There, a guy with a Mohawk is standing outside with a leather jacket and there's all these older guys and everyone's getting drunk and smoking. And you're sort of like new to this whole thing and you're in the band and you come in and then all of a sudden the cops raid the place because you weren't supposed to be underage. The cops are raided. After the gig, we're all hiding underneath the stage until the cops get out of there.

And when the whole night's done, I played. I got offered to a gig in New York City. And, you know, I'm driving back to my other suburban town of Danbury, Connecticut, and I'm feeling like that was the most exciting night of my life. That was the most exciting night of my life. I was 16 years old.

Yeah, you become like an overnight legend. Like the stories you're gonna tell when you go back to high school the next day. I mean, are you kidding? You can't even explain it. You can't even explain it. So what happens is you start to create your own friends that have nothing to do with your high school friends.

And that's what happened. I created a whole second life. That's sort of like where these friends that would go to New York City all the time. And then there was a local little, it was an interesting little art gallery where Keith Haring and a lot of like these New York City street artists and original graffiti writers, there was an art studio in Stanford, Connecticut, and they would have punk shows in

the basement. And so that became sort of a hub. And that's where I met Porcel who later became Parmenanda. And he was our guitar player now in Shelter and Youth of Today. And it was a place for sort of like kids in the Connecticut to come together and experience. That's how I met Moby. And that's, we all used to hang out at this one underground art gallery.

It was called the Anthrax. That's wild. Well, it sounds like it all happened pretty quickly. It was, you know, that was high school, you know, and it was high school. And then, And then you just moved to the city after high school? Then as soon as high school, we moved to New York city.

Right. And Youth of Today started and that band became sort of popular. Right. And Cro-Mags must have been around at that time as well. Was that, did that coincide or was that a different? They were around, you know, I knew Harley from the Cro-Mags better

and they were sort of into Krishna because I think the Krishna got, part of like all Hindu Dharma is you, is a very interesting thing. In India, every temple gives sacred food out. Like you can walk through a holy village and they will give you sacred food. That's part of Hindu Dharma is you're supposed to be growing the food with love, preparing the food with love, and then offering the food with love. And then you distribute the food with love. And that's called prashad or food cooked with the intention of love to God behind the food.

And so one of the missions of the Krishna Swami that came to America, Swami Prabhupada was, this is part of our mission statement is we cook food. And because everyone needs love, ultimately, it's not everybody needs food. We give this to the wealthy or the poor, whoever will take it. So these Krishna devotees would set up giving food out.

And I think the guys from the Cro-Mags used to get food from here. Yeah. And they used to read the Bhagavad Gita. And so Harley from the Cro-Mags, who was, you know, he was a very interesting like street kid, grew up on the streets of New York. He was in a band when he was in sixth grade,

you know, while most people are in Cub Scouts, he was in a punk band and he used to like, you know, and he was a leader of a street gang on top of it. Right. And so they used to preach to me. It's such an interesting, weird clash of cultures. Like, you know, I only know all of this through John's lens. I've never met Harley, but John talks about,

I mean, John, you know, grew in and out of all kinds of foster homes and, you know, his life story is insane, but he falls into this scene and kind of is taken under the bad brains wing. And that's where he learned kind of about, you know, I tall and like all of these ideas about, you know, treating the body temple. I think Krishna, the Krishna aspect came a little bit later, but the food aspect of this culture

becomes front and center, super important. He's working in some vegetarian restaurant or food market or something like that. And I know like Angelica's Kitchen was like a big kind of focal point. And I was at a place called the Himsa, that's where I worked. And Purcell, our guitar player, worked at Prana.

And there was a bookstore called Ayurveda. And now we just went to Joy Cafe, incredible cafe. And even yoga, it's just like wasn't in the conversation. Veganism, animal rights, vegetarian, it wasn't in the conversation. But the Lower East Side was a weird subculture of freaks, basically. And whether you were into punk or hardcore or death or goth or vegetarianism or there was all weird, just peculiar people would gravitate towards the Lower East Side. And we all sort of accepted each other as we're all a bunch of outcasts here, you know.

So, yeah, there was these random Angelica's kitchens and, and, and we all sort of grew up interested in, I mean, I remember just eating spirulina in 1985 when no one know what spirulina was, you know? Yeah. But where does the, where does the Hare Krishna thing intersect with that? Was that community just living in the same neighborhood? Like how does the, how does the, how does the like straight edge hardcore scene, you know, in the Venn diagram, you know what I mean? Like it's one thing to be punk, it's another thing to be straight edge

and then to just gravitate towards the Hare Krishna movement and you know, follow the Bhakti path. It seems like the straight edge community is a little bit of a feeder to that community. Like if you telescope out, it's like, all right, well, these are about, this is about like taking a stand against mainstream society.

Like we're not buying into this paradigm. We're looking for something more meaningful, something that's a little bit more authentic. So perhaps it's just an extension of that learning curve or that kind of spiritual trajectory that would attract somebody to the straight edge scene to begin with. But what did that look like for you?

For me, there was not a straight edge scene in New York per se. And I was just sort of like, I was just more into like sports and healthy living. Right. I don't know why. But that made you a freak among the freaks, right? Well, yeah. Because you can't be into sports and But that made you a freak among the freaks, right? Well, yeah.

Because you can't be into sports and be into punk. Exactly. Especially then in 1982, because it was really dark and there was a lot of heavy drugs, drugs that they didn't even do in high school. I mean, I thought high school partying was sort of lame and I didn't want to be like that. But when I started hanging out in New York, I was like, you know, these guys are much worse. These guys are taking, these guys are putting their face in a brown paper bag and huffing glue. So what the hell is going on here? And I was just into like positive living and I just didn't jive with that stuff. And so I never expected it to become as big as it was, but we had a band and I'm very outspoken about what I believe in. And a straight edge scene sort of quickly, a culture of it sort of quickly started forming. And then that year we got into animal rights. It just seemed like a natural progression of, okay, I want to keep my mind under control, my body under control, my tongue under control, my genitals under control.

mind under control, my body under control, my tongue under control, my genitals under control. And I gotta figure out like, why am I killing this cow, but we're not killing this dog? And when you start to think like that, you start to realize like, oh, I get it. I'm like a sociopath who can sort of like, hey children, let's play a game.

Then all of a sudden you murder another child. So what am I doing with my mind? And I got that in my mind living with my family, but I didn't know how to cook. And so I made this deal, like when I turn 18 or when I move out of my house, I'm not gonna eat meat anymore. I'm just not gonna do it. And then I read Peter Singer's book

and the Krishna people also put out a book on vegetarianism. So then I was like, I'm just gonna choose this lifestyle. I'm just gonna deal with it. And I'm gonna find support. Cause there's not like real support. Like there's, you couldn't go online and find support. You just had to figure it out. Okay, what am I gonna eat?

You know, spaghetti every day or Coca-Cola. And so it was sort of like a process. And then New York city did have that support with health food stores. I got a job at a health food restaurant. I started getting into yoga then. What was the yoga scene in New York like at that time? It all was spiritually based yoga.

It wasn't athletic based. No, no, no, of course not. But there were yoga studios. It was all connected to ashrams. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And where it was like, I mean, David Life and Sean Dannen were like around at that. I mean, they come from the punk movement too, right?

Yeah, yeah, they were in the neighborhood. David had a Life Cafe. Right. And he's cool. And Sharon's cool. And they live not far from me. But when you go to Jeeva Mukti now in New York and it's like, it's so swank and like the cafe is amazing.

And you're like, but you're like, these are just punk rockers who were, they came out of that movement when yoga was like an act of rebellion. Yeah, and they still have that in them too. And yeah, they're wonderful. I remember practicing next to them at Dharmamitra's place. Dharmamitra's probably 85 years old this year maybe.

But he was long-term yoga teacher, but spiritually based. They all had gurus and it wasn't as secular as yoga has become nowadays. So you said today, get some traction. You guys are playing all the time. You make a name for yourself. You like create this band that tons of people are into. You start a record label.

Like you got a lot of stuff going on. By like, when is this? Like early nineties? No, this was 1985, 86, 87. Oh, wow, earlier than I thought. And then in 88, I started getting more serious about my spiritual life, which sort of came from a combination of success and feeling like questioning what success is.

You know, you had these bands that were sort of like the Beastie Boys, where they were like peers and they were like blowing up and getting huge. i was like you watched a documentary i didn't the beastie boys documentary no i heard it was great yeah it's great it's great i mean you would love it because they have so much footage from the very early days but i remember being on tour and they were on tour and i saw them when they left new york at webster hall um and it was just like i remember when the record license

to Ill started blowing up and I was like, this is unbelievable. This is actually unbelievable. And then we were on tour and we saw them in LA and Run DMC are there. We're like, this is unbelievable. And it was just like,

the whole thing was just shocking. And Murphy's Law was friends of ours and they were on tour with them too. And the whole thing was like, it was like shocking, like, cause no one's expecting hardcore. We're just having fun. Like we're doing DIY stuff.

We're printing our own, you know, flyers and all that kind of stuff. Like there's no expectation or attachment to any kind of like broader success. Or this is a career. This is a career. No one thought about it. When I grow up, I wanna be in a band.

It wasn't like that at all. It never, we just sort of like, I don't know, on a mission. I don't know what it was. Yeah. So yeah, that was a little shocking when that happened. But what was your question? Basically, like I wanna walk you up to this point where you end up walking away from the band and everything.

So the band's getting bigger, you're getting more success. You know that my father got sick and he died. I mean, now it seems like that was the big inflection point. Yeah, and I think sometimes it takes a tragedy to sort of, to make you reevaluate life. These spiritual epiphany is like. But you'd been doing yoga and you know. I had been into it and sort of on a spiritual quest

and this had really just slingshotted my desire to go deeper because I really felt like there is nothing of this world that will really satisfy my heart. There is no amount of success. There's no soulmate. There's no, you know. There's this beautiful statement in Bhakti literature that there's, this is how I phrase it anyway, there's a God-shaped hole, a God-shaped hole in the heart,

and we'll shove anything in that hole. We're looking to shove anything to feel connected, but only God will fit in that hole. And we try to, the three main things that we really try to put in that hole are we feel like there is a person out there that will make me complete. And it's been romanticized. And there are people that we connect with. There's people that we love, but they're not our God.

They can't be our God. And we shouldn't make them our God or we're setting ourselves up for hell in the future. Or we're going to become incredibly needy or they're going to be needy. It's going to be a real dysfunctional relationship. So the person shouldn't be our God. And the next one is there's no amount of financial height you can go to that will actually satisfy that yourself too. There's no amount of money you can put in that God-shaped hole. And the final one is there's no amount of validation, material validation.

You can find people who sometimes get the most validation and they're sometimes even more screwed up. And I started feeling like, yeah, there's nothing of this world. And I remember sitting in a yoga center once and reading this quote from a Swami saying, you must become materially exhausted to start your spiritual life.

You have to like be cynical with material success, give up hope. And I was always a very positive person. Matter of fact, I'd read these books early on in my life and think, oh, these yogis, they're so negative about life. What's wrong with life? Life is good. I've got so much hope.

But you have to be cynical with material hope. You can be very, very, you can believe in spiritual fortune. Like there is a spiritual success, but material success is a dead end. And so when I saw my father going down so hard, so sad, I started to realize, yeah, this material world is an unfair place.

Well, that's an amazing kind of epiphany to have as a young person. And it's not like you were living in a mansion at the top of the hill, like you were getting success, but you didn't have to hit some kind of crazy bottom or, you know, spend the better part of your entire life chasing some material need in order to have that reckoning. Like, I think it's unbelievably true that you have to have that existential crisis of one form or another to shock you out of your, the Maya of your daily existence.

That can come in the form of something disastrous or when you've just exhausted as much, chasing of material success as is humanly possible. But at either end of that spectrum is a reckoning that will compel you to confront yourself in a more meaningful way. But you were able to do it as a very young person. I think most of us in Western culture who are,

you know, in the biggest picture of things, we're haves, we have. We've been to the best beaches. We've been to the coolest places. We've been to the coolest places. We've traveled around the world. It always boils down to this whole big deal. I did it. I went to the Eiffel Tower. Big deal. But the persistence of the illusion is so woven into the fabric of our, like, it's like, yeah, I did that, but okay, so I felt good for a minute. That faded. Well, it must be the next thing. And when it's not that, it's the next thing, I did that, but okay, so I felt good for a minute, that faded. Well, it must be the next thing.

And when it's not that, it's the next thing because I gotta keep up with this guy and most spend their entire life chasing that. Yeah, we're trying to get some material bucket list, which it really boils down to big deal. Here I am, it's perfect, big deal. Now what? Or this is another great one, now what, now what? And I think when you get to that point, you're like, deal. Now what? Or this is another great one. Now what?

Now what? And I think when you get to that point, you're like, yeah, now what? Then it makes you realize, okay, life isn't about trying to put your foot on every continent, on every like perfectly Caribbean beach. It's about what is my offering in this world? I had such a great day with Greg today. What is my offering in this world? I had such a great day with Greg today. What is my offering in this world? And when I see people like yourself, people are just connected, like, okay, we're here for a short

amount of time. What am I here to give? And that's when life, I feel like, really becomes successful. And you feel very fortunate and very connected, and you enjoy waking up in the morning and there's no, oh crap, it's Monday or Friday. Thank God it's Friday. We're like, I feel like I could do what I do 24 seven. I'm one of these very like hyper, I could do what I do every day and for hours a day. And I love what I do. And I just feel like it's important to shine light

on the romance of what Hollywood creates or what even just people's personal Maya creates in their mind. Like, well, if I was in this situation, I'd be better off. If I lived out here, I'd be better off. If I could only find some time away. Getting fame at an early age, and even though it wasn't huge fame,

getting that fame, it punctured the romance of what a lot of people, it's a long, long, attractive dead end. I'm sure you can relate to that. No, I mean, that's beautifully put, but I suspect that most people who, you know, have been in some analogous version of that situation might think I need to do something

a little bit more meaningful. Maybe I'll, you know, volunteer at a nonprofit or I'll double down on my yoga practice, or, you know, figure out some way of living more in seva in my day to day. But what very few do is say, I'm gonna go on a walkabout and end up in India and a monk for six or seven years or however long you were doing that.

Like that's a- I'm an extremist. Yeah, it's an extreme thing. I'm not asking everybody to be extremist either. I'm just a little bit extreme. You're talking to an extremist. Yeah, you're an extremist. I'm vibrating on that wavelength.

Like I get it and I celebrate that. And I've also gone through phases of feeling guilty or feeling like I have to apologize for being an extremist, but it's an amazing lever for all things good and bad. It's led me down dark alleyways, but it's also been something that has catalyzed tremendous growth and progress in my life. So when I see that kind of hardcore pivot,

hardcore to put a pun on it, like that's awesome. Most people wouldn't do that. But you took that thing inside of you that's attracted to those kinds of extremes and like put it to this amazing use that completely changed your life. Well, probably people like you and me and John and stuff like we're, we're like, like fast moving trains. And it's just like, there's, you know,

guy working the switch on the train pulls the switch and the train's going to go South or it's going to go North. And we've just like through the company of like-minded people, we've just chose, all right, let's, let's work really hard to go North here. Because it's a force and it's a determination and it's a focus that if it's like misdirected, it can cause a ripple effect of destruction as well. Yeah.

And so I'm like, you know, I'm well aware of that when it's channeled in the wrong way, the problems you can cause. So your dad gets very ill. Doesn't he slide into a coma or something like that? He goes into a coma for three years. Wow. Which is a, you know, coma is a weird place

because you don't quite, is he alive? Is he dead? Right. You know, half the family thinks he's dead. Half the family thinks he's alive. And I am like in a state of like teenage denial. Like I can't, I can't even deal with it. It's quite humiliating to admit,

but I just couldn't deal with it. I just didn't know how to, where to put it in my brain. In the meantime, I have a band that's sort of like asking me to go on tour. And when you're 19, you've never left New Jersey, New York and Connecticut. That's like, what? You're gonna go on tour?

You're gonna go to California where there's palm trees and fruit that grows on trees? Like what? And you know, my mother just said, just go, just, you know. And then I just went on tour and then I had to like sort of digest it. And I think between the band doing their thing and my father, you know, eventually leaving his body,

I got to this point where, and the scene getting created around me, I just realized I need something more in my life also. So that was sort of, I just, at that point, at that height of the band, I left the band and went to India not even knowing as much of sort of what I was getting into, but I just had a strong, first of all, I had a strong faith in Vedic culture, the yoga culture, which I started

really studying. Because when you get into spiritual culture, it can be very confusing. And the Vedic culture is very, very broad, very, very open. I went to one year of college broad, very, very open. Like I know I went to one year of college and I didn't know why, because all I wanted to do was music. And I know I didn't want to be one of these like, what was it in our generation? There was like Animal House was the movie. I didn't want to be like one of these frat boy, Animal House guys. So I started hanging out with all these Christians because I felt like, you know what? These Christians, they're sort of grounded. They're not those frat guys. I like the New Testament. I think it's a good book.

I'm gonna hang out with them. But I also love the teachings of Buddha. So I remember reading the Dhammapada, which is a great book on compassion and mindfulness and introspection. And I remember reading this. I was like, oh my God, this is so good. Wait till I tell all my Christian friends about this. They're gonna love it.

That's so funny. And they just didn't love it, Rich. Way to read the room. Yeah. My argument was, are you kidding? These are the same teachings of Jesus, where they're right here. Don't you understand? And at that time, I started to realize like, it's so easy to find differences and it's so easy to find commonalities. And it's one thing that like we're facing off in this country right now, we're looking for differences and we all have so much more like in common. If you read the teachings of Buddha and

read the teachings of Christ, you'll find so many wonderful commonalities. We identify with the differences and spend most of our time arguing over those, but isn't a big cornerstone of the Bhakti path. The Bhakti path has a set, not ideology, but sort of philosophy of living. But part of that is embracing that which is consistent in all religions, like the idea that you can go to the mosque

and you can go to the temple and sit with these people who are all seeking something greater than themselves. Yeah, it's an appreciation of how everybody's on a path. And everybody is a spiritual being. That's not something I have to convert somebody to. It's just the idea that we are that, we just forgot. And so the path of yoga is a path of remembering what we already are, not converting me to join one club.

Okay, change your costume to this costume. This is a different religious costume, different religious haircut. And we wear beards over here. It's remembering what we already are, but we just forgot. And why do we forget? We're programmed. We're programmed.

Okay, now you're this guy and you wanna be loved, you wear this. And we've been programmed that I can speak for myself being in like in a junior high school. Ever have that experience from like, everything's cool in in elementary school and at least when I was growing up elementary school was like nothing it's just everybody's friends you're all friends but all of a sudden once you get into junior high school it's like you're wearing the wrong jeans what's wrong with these jeans they're the wrong jeans man you're wearing the wrong sneakers you gotta go wear the

right shirt you got to wear the belt buckle and I was like oh my god mom I got the wrong sneakers. You gotta wear the right shirt. You got to wear the belt buckle. And I was like, oh my God, mom, I got the wrong jeans on. What do you mean? My mom grew up in the depression, you know? It's like, what do you mean? Those are great jeans. No, they're not. They're the wrong jeans. And you realize if you wanna be loved,

if you wanna be accepted, you have to wear the right outfit. And slowly we'd start becoming conditioned to how to be loved, how to be accepted, how to be validated and valuable. And it's so painful. And identity is formed in opposition to others or as a definition of how you're sort of fitting into your particular tribe as opposed to any kind of self-reflection, right? Like our educational system isn't set up for that.

It's exactly it. And we're creating others all the time. And it took me about three years, probably from seventh to ninth grade to be like, and I worked my way up. I was at the bottom. I worked my way up because I literally had to like- Got the right jeans.

I got the right jeans. I got the right shirts. I had my hair parted the right jeans. I got the right shirts. I, you know, had my hair, you know, parted the appropriate way. I learned all the, and then I started to fight because at least where I was going to school, it was you get picked on. And so when you get picked on and bullied

and extorted from, you either have to become a wallflower and like literally hide and make yourself unknown or you get picked on or you fight back. And so I said, okay, I'm just gonna start fighting back. I'm gonna, I was the bully, now I'm gonna bully. And I just switched roles. And then I realized I don't wanna win these people over. Right.

And that's sort of like my entrance into punk. So in a lot of ways, punk rock saved me from being that high school jerk. Well, you're just opting out of the entire paradigm, basically. Exactly. Right. And then you're part of that paradigm.

And then you're like, I gotta opt out of this now. I know. So what was it about India, the Vedic tradition? Maybe like we can talk a little bit about what that means and why you were drawn to that and how you ended up in India? I think the inclusivity of it, like the way we say, in English, we say the sun, and in France, they say soleil, and in India, they say surya. I can't argue with the French guy and say,

no, no, no, it's sun, and argue with the Indian guy. No, no, no. So fundamentalism in any spiritual path is ugly. We dig our heels into some nuance and we find those differences. Whereas woven right into the teachings of the Vedic paradigm is that, no, no, no, no. Don't you understand? There's one truth and truth is for everyone.

And no one's got a monopoly on truth. Not your skin color, not your gender, not where you were born, not country, not Indian. Indians don't own truth. It's for everyone because actually we're not Indian and we're not white and we're not black. We're actually spiritual beings. And if you think you're white or black or Asian,

I got news for you, it's like a rental car. You got it for a few years only. Don't get too proud of it. Don't feel so privileged with it. It's not for you. It's like a rental car. You got it for a few years only. Don't get too proud of it. Don't feel so privileged with it. It's not even you. Your real identity is your spiritual being. And your pain in this world is gonna come from identifying with your body as yourself.

And so I love that as the threshold to, even as myself as like straight edge or in the leader in the straight edge community, I started thinking, yeah, I'm not straight edge. I'm a spirit soul. I'm a spiritual being. And I like that identity. And I was like, that is the identity I want to,

that's the suit of clothes I wanna try on. Let's see how that feels. And I don't even want to be considered a, a Harry Krishna or a, when people are like, what are you? What's your story? What are you into? I just say, I'm a spirit soul. Yeah. I'm a spirit.

You know why? Because that's what it ultimately is. It just shuts down the conversation. It shuts down the conversation because they already have a preconceived eye. Oh, you're that guy. But you have to decouple or you had to decouple the identity that you had created

around being this punk rocker, the successful punk rocker, sort of an entrepreneur also within that space and your attachment to the success and the validation and developing an understanding that if you continue to pursue that path, you'll continue to be seeking that validation. It will never be enough.

The God hole can never be filled. And the more you try to fill it, the greater it will expand in lockstep with that drive. And that's like, I mean, I already said it, but like to have that kind of epiphany as a young person and say, I'm gonna completely walk away from this and pursue this other path that is even more extreme than what I've been doing is,

that's the story of the modern day yogi. There aren't that many people that have done that. You're not the only, but- Some people get it at a younger age, some people get it at an old age, and some people never get that epiphany at all. Who's the one who was like eight years old and left to family.

There's a lot of people historically, there's a lot of people in India you hear about these people at age eight, at age four, you know, Radhanath Swami's guru's guru at age four was a master of the Bhagavad Gita, you know, four. I was like pulling the head off my GI Joe. I know, I know.

It's hard to even believe this, but there's people like that. There's Sanskrit scholar children who can give discourses on the Bhagavad Gita. And it's just- When you read the book, "'Autobiography of a Yogi," the Yogananda's book, he talks extensively about having that awareness

as a very young person and walking away from his family to basically be this. He tried to run away to Brindavan. Yeah. He tried to go to Brindavan to be, yeah. And the way we understand that is that everything that we do in this life is a practice. Like you're really good at interviewing.

I just want you to know that. You are a great interviewer. Thank you. We're only a part of way into it. I just want you to know that you are a great interviewer. Thank you. We're only a part of way into it. I can still screw it up. Go ahead. No, even if you blow this one, all the interviews I've heard you do, I was like,

man, he really knows how to interview. He's really systematic going through. These questions are good, but you get that way. You probably didn't come out of the womb doing that. You practice it and you refine it and you sharpen your skill, you hone your skill. I can do handstands, you know, and I didn't come out of the womb doing handstands. I practice it.

So everything that we do in this life is a practice, both material things, good things, bad things, drinking alcohol is a practice. Being unforgiving is a practice. If you're not good at forgiving people, means you've been practicing not forgiving people. And if you forgive people, generally that you gotta practice to forgive people.

Some people say, well, I'm not good at forgiving. You gotta practice it. You gotta work it. So whatever we do, both good and bad in this lifetime, the Yogi accepts, you know what? This is all a practice. If you have some spiritual epiphany or some depth in your spiritual life

or your material life, it's coming from your previous life. I mean, you're picking up where you last left off. Have you seen that? What I've been talking about this on my podcast, surviving death, it's on Netflix. Oh no, my daughter was telling me I gotta watch it. Episode six is so good about all these children who are just speaking.

I mean, I'm a card carrying believer in reincarnation. I speak about it. I philosophically understand it. But when you hear these children speaking about it, after you watch it, you're like, oh my God, I totally get this now. The kid is like recalling their previous life. And it's not every kid, it's a handful of kids and they documented them all. And they're saying things about their names and their parents and how they died.

And they're four years old. And the mother's like, what are you talking about? And the mother Googles the name. Can you go find the person? Yeah, I was gonna ask that. And they find the people. No way. Yeah, it's episode six, watch, I was gonna ask that. And they find the people. No way. Yeah, it's episode six, watch it, it's so good. And there's thousands of them. That's nuts. That's a close cousin to the stories that we all hear of the prodigy who at age super young

is able to just master a musical instrument or do something that it just seems impossible that they would know how to do that. We hear this young four-year-old Indian kid who's playing tablas and they couldn't believe how good he was. And they brought this master in from India and the master was like, there's no way this child can know these beats at this age. And the idea is whether it's a musical practice, an intellectual, they're carrying something from a previous life, even bad habits, even addictive habits. They're coming from somewhere else.

And then when the gross body dies, they stay with the subtle body. And that's the mind and the intelligence. And we pick them up. So who knows? Maybe both of us are on a spiritual path. Maybe it's from a previous life. Maybe we've just met great people in this life.

I don't like to take credit like, oh, I must've been on a spiritual path. Maybe it's from a previous life. Maybe we've just met great people in this life. I don't like to take credit like, oh, I must've been a great spiritualist. Everybody in their past life was some noteworthy person. I think I was Cleopatra. Yeah, exactly. Well, I like to think that all the people that come on the podcast are people that, over my many past lives, I've encountered in different forms

Could be. And we're having a convention, a reconvening. A reunion. Yeah, I don't know. It's a family reunion. All right, man. So I'm still trying to get to this thing about you going to India.

So did you know where you were going? Did you like- Not really. I didn't really know much about anything, but I knew that I wanted to become a monk. So you had that. And I had that. And I believed in the Bhagavad Gita. I thought that I wanted to become a monk. So you had that. And I had that and I believed in the Bhagavad Gita. I thought that was right,

but I didn't really know all the nuances of everything. So I did go in very green and sort of like, even though I accepted it, I was like really sort of not two feet in until I started, I started applying all this stuff to my life immediately. I mean, did you go on like a walkabout, like Ram Dass or Bhagavan Dass, or did you have an ashram that you were traveling to

where you knew you were gonna have a bed and a place to sleep? I had no commitments, but I knew there was a Krishna temple in Vrindavan, India, a holy place in India. And I met some monks who were visiting in America and they invited me. They say, if you wanna stop by at our ashram

while you go through India. I knew I was going to India after my tour. And it happened when I got back from tour, my father left his body and I was booked a ticket. And I just left and realized like, all right, this is my path now. And you got to the ashram and then- I got to the ashram and you know-

That was your home for a while. Yeah, and I was, you know, I had some money saved from touring, not tons of money, but I had like 25,000 bucks and I was real, you know, I'm a New Yorker, so I'm cynical of everything. And I'm figuring like the monks are gonna try to take my money probably and- Yeah, it's all a scam.

But when you, it's all a scam, these guys. But when you see how they live and India is a tough place to live, especially back then there was no hot water. It was like a jail house showers and it was cold. In the winter it was cold and the summer was hot and there was no, nothing was comfortable and there was no comfort anything. There was no Netflix and there was no, nothing was comfortable and there was no comfort, anything.

There was no Netflix or there was no like, you know, what do we do for comfort? We shop, we have sex, we, you know, we go out to dinner, we watch movies. You couldn't do any of that, you're a monk. There's nothing to buy. There's no shopping. And so I realized, but I started being shocked

about how happy the monks were. And I started thinking, man, what makes these guys tick? Like, how can they be so happy with nothing? They've given up everything. But you've probably experienced that when you've like cleaned out your garage and you're like, you feel free from the clutter of life. And that's, I felt like, God,

if I can just learn what these guys have, my life could be successful. Like, how can you get joy? How can you be joyful with nothing? So it's not the things that are giving me joy. I'm not going out there for my joy. The joy has to come from something inside of me. And that was like a beautiful thing to observe because it's not a happy, they're not having fun. They're just experiencing a joy from living. And it's not based on their watch or their outfit or what they're driving. It's based on like an integrity of existence and the way they treat each other and the way, and also the thoughts that are in your mind, the way you're thinking on a regular basis. Because I realized a lot of my pain is from my mind

or my anguish or my envy for someone else or some hate we might have for somebody for no good reason. You know, you see somebody, who's that idiot? Who's that idiot? You know, like, why is my mind thinking like that? Like the guy's an idiot, I don't even know that person. So what is the process of rewiring that? Like when you go to the ashram

and you start living as a monk, what is the teaching like? And what is the day-to-day existence where you start to, you know, intuit these teachings and put them into practice? Well, there's a lot to share. I'm working on a book right now that extracted six very powerful principles that I taught from the teachings.

And the first one is, and these are based on the teachings of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, who is a great, considered by some as a child prodigy because he was a child prodigy in Sanskrit. Other people that knew him more intimately thought that he was a mystic because he performed so many mystical things, Christ-like mysticism. But his intimate followers, who are great gurus in their own right, they considered him an avatar.

So his teachings were very simple. And one of him is very basic basic and it's a great takeaway. If you want to take away anything from today, you can take this way. Stop criticizing other people. Like the sound coming out of your mouth can be toxic. And that was a powerful thing. Stop criticizing.

I realized I'm living with so much criticism in my mind. That doesn't mean we should throw discernment out. We need discernment, but the condemning language that happens on a regular basis from finding fault with other people and how you would do things so much better if you were doing them, cut it out. Stop letting that pour out of your mouth.

That's a big one. If you want, I'll just run through these six. Yeah, let's do it. No, this is great. That's one. And first of all, when did this guy live? What is this like? 1400, same time Columbus was showing up here.

This person Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was in Bengal and traveled throughout India. And basically it was a renaissance of bhakti. Bhakti means, bhakti yoga means connecting to source through love. That's all the word really means. And so a lot of the practices are singing, are cooking, are meditation,

but everything is an action. Like you're acting in a loving way and dealing with other people. And so, yeah, this is one of the teachings. The book is called The Six Pillars of Bhakti. And so one is not criticizing. The second one is being tolerant, whereas criticism deals with other people.

Another one is just dealing with life situation and stop blaming the world for your unhappiness. And one is just dealing with life situation and stop blaming the world for your unhappiness. And this is very powerful. It's transformational. Even if you're a materialist, this main teaching can transform your life. But if you want to really experience like the higher echelons of meditation, it's got to be there. Criticism, tolerance, and this't a huge one that number three and if if you can add this one to your life it will it's such a game changer it's um i take no offense meaning i will not be offended on a regular basis and that's a very common thing sometimes we could see somebody talking over there and i get offended i think think they're talking about me. So without provocation,

I think someone's got something against me. And sometimes we'll walk around holding some resentment for a person who didn't even mean anything. And that gets split in two things. Cause sometimes people don't mean anything, but due to some proclivity that I have that I don't trust the world,

that I take an offense and I carry that resentment around with me, and it becomes a burden. But sometimes people have hurt me. They've actually deliberately hurt me. But still that desire or that need to forgive has to be there. Because in the bhakti culture

is nothing's actually happening to me, it's happening for me, that there's a benevolent energy lifting us higher and higher and higher. And we have to see that everything is for my edification, for my purification, and sometimes even tragic things. And so there's a firm faith that everything's happening for me.

Now we shouldn't be heartless when it comes to someone else's suffering. I should see, okay, he's having a hard time. We should feel like I have to reach out to that person. They're having a hard time. But for my own situation, I should feel like, I'm going through a hard time and this must be for my benefit.

What is that benefit? And I can look at life like that. So we don't hold any resentment. We don't criticize, we're tolerant. Next one, we see the good in others and we let them know it. Find good. And this is what we're talking about.

Instead of finding what this person's doing so wrong, what are they doing right? Why are they good? This is such a powerful practice in this day and age, because otherwise we're going to lock in and we're just going to foster hate with others. And we're going to have no commonality whatsoever. What do we have in common? What is right about this person? And it's such a great thing. Truthfully, it's a marriage saver. It's a relationship saver. What is good about this person? And it's such a great thing. Truthfully, it's a marriage saver. It's a relationship saver. You know, what is good about this person? And then sharing it with them, telling them why I appreciate you. And that lack of appreciation can really kill, it can kill love quick. I mean, isn't that what romance is? Is full 100% appreciation for that person. Right, and the piece, the second piece

about letting that person know is crazy powerful. Right. And it's something that most of us don't do nearly enough of. I mean, we might have a person that would do anything for us. They would come anywhere at any time, at any moment. Hey, I need your help.

Can you come here? Yeah, that person, I never let them know how much I appreciate them. Sometimes the people that are the closest to us, we never share with them how much we appreciate them. And in you recounting these lessons, I'm thinking, this should be the terms and conditions on Twitter. Like what if you, before you could log onto Twitter,

you had to read through these sort of guidelines you know, guidelines or, you know, sort of guideposts for how to behave or acquit yourself because everything that you just shared is so anathema to the way that we conduct ourselves in the kind of public conversations that are happening on social media. And we're all seeing, you know, the fractures, the fissures that are starting to expand in the fabric of, you know, our society. Like we're no longer able to productively communicate in a healthy way. And it's because we've lost sight of these very things that allow us to remember that we are truly one.

And no one's happy. They're all sad. Even if they're righteous, they're just like sad in their righteousness of their rightness. So that anyway, that's, see the good in others, let them know it. The appreciation is such a powerful, it's powerful in this world and it's powerful in the spiritual realm as well. That's

why I love this stuff because it's relevant. It's real. It's not just like, when I die, I'll go to heaven. Who cares? I don't know about heaven. I don't know anything about heaven. I don't even know if it's real, but I do know these are very, very practical in this life for my own personal joy, my own personal integrity, my relationships. You were saying like, yeah, people in Twitter should learn this. The reason why I sort of like extracted these from the teachings, because I was taking groups every year. I take a group on pilgrimage this year. I'm going to Nepal. It's sort of like, you would like it. You should go. You go to these various like spiritual sites

all over the world, right? Spiritual sites all over the world. So we go trek, this year we're going trekking through Nepal in April. Wow. And so half the time is trekking and then holy places. And Nepal is like an old part of the Indian kingdom. One of the Indian kingdoms,

they preserved a lot of the ancient Hindu texts, the Buddhist texts, and it's got whatever, 1300 Himalayan peaks. So we're gonna do day hiking half the time. When are you doing that? April, come. Wow. Great. That's tempting.

But keep going. And then we do India every year, which is also great and holy places. But you're bringing a bunch of people to India who've never been to a third world country and we're traveling together and they're not used to it. And it's a little shocking sometimes. So I've really set up these six pillars as sort of behavior sort of guardrails. This is what we do.

We don't criticize. It's sort of a contract. We like mentally sign. I read them over every day. This is what we're doing. We're not going to criticize. We're not going to find fault. We're not going to be resentful, right? And we're going to find the good in others. We're going to let them know it. The next one was quick to apologize. If you feel like you hurt someone's feeling, if you're a little obtuse and you apologize first, you say, hey, I'm sorry. I don't know

if that offended you, but please forgive me if it did. A big game changer. And another one is we keep a tally of how we are blessed. We keep a list of how fortunate we are. A gratitude practice, basically. What's that? A gratitude practice. A gratitude practice.

And sometimes people don't have a gratitude practice. They have a, this is unfair practice. And sometimes people don't have a gratitude practice. They have a, this is unfair practice. This is why, or an entitlement practice. And the problem with that is it's simple math. Entitlement makes you sad. Gratitude makes you happy. If you feel like the world owes you everything, you're always going to be miserable. There's never enough the world can owe you. Right. This architecture is not that different from 12-step. And I know you've got this like Bhakti 12-step recovery program.

I wanna spend a little bit of time talking about this because there's a lot of similarities, like do a personal inventory, hold yourself accountable, like take the next right action, make your amends, practice gratitude. All of these things are endemic to recovery and are applicable to humanity at large. This is not like just something that

alcoholics and drug addicts need to figure out a way to master. Because truth is for everyone and no one owns it and no one's got a monopoly on it. And there's people, Bill Wilson, they're like inspired. They're somehow inspired and they've got the receiver on. Just like right now, there's like radio waves in this room, but we don't have our receivers on. We can't pick up the ham radio receivers or the channels from France or the channels from the country Western station. But when you have that receiver,

you can start picking up of all. When you start to fine tune your radar into spiritual truth, not for your ego. If you tune in with your ego in spiritual truth, you'll find your little group that finds others, but you won't find commonality and connection. It'll be just another way for your ego to live out in the name of I'm better then. And we find that in any type of, I mean, come on, like I said, I'm a cult

aficionado. I found it when I was a raw foodist. I found it when a local farmer growing straight edge, Krishna. You can always find people who are into things, you find it in politics, you definitely find it in religion, that if I'm doing something for myself betterment, I shouldn't become more hateful. If I'm becoming more hateful, I think I'm doing something wrong.

Well, what happens is as human beings, there's something hardwired into us that wants to find a tribe of like-minded people and we craft our identity around that. So whether it's raw food or Ayurveda or yoga or whatever it is, the more you gravitate towards a certain practice and everything being a practice, you're gonna be surrounding yourself

with more of the people that do that. And before you know it, you're attaching a label to that. And that is now working at cross purposes with the expanded awareness that you're trying to cultivate. Like it's like this weird whack-a-mole thing that never ends, right? Yeah. And so I think you have to go into it

with a little bit of a broad mind. And I look at that as red flags. If I'm finding like I'm creating and that person's an enemy, then I fall off on my track. All these six pillars, if I'm finding I'm holding a resentment towards someone, that's a red flag, means I'm off my path. If I'm finding myself being intolerant

or criticizing someone, bing, bing, bing, red flags are just going up. That means if you accepted that you're a spiritual being and you're doing these things now, you're off your path, sir. And so it's a good way for accountability for myself as well. And I'm definitely far from perfect.

Right. But I use these things to hold me accountable. And I find it's great. And I try to like, and I'm okay with going to other sources. I'm okay. I'm great with going to the Rich Roll podcast and hearing from, like I said,

I heard from Dr. Goldhammer and I felt like that guy helped put me back on my path. I'm in debt, I'm grateful. And we need spiritual influence on a regular basis. So yeah, we'll go hand in hand with Bokta Recovery. I feel like, I mean, with recovery. We have a Bokta Recovery, part of our- Right, so tell me about what that's all about.

Well, we have a, you know, our podcast, Wisdom of the Sages, where we study sacred literature of India. And a lot of people get into yoga and they want to get deeper into yoga. They'll get more into the body, into their health, into their breathing, and then they'll get more into the body, into their health, into their breathing, and then they'll get a section of that yoga training, which is whatever, a certain amount of hours of yoga philosophy. And what we do, and even if you like it, that's all you sort of get. But to really change yourself,

you really gotta do it, you gotta hear every day. To really change your habits, you've gotta hear this philosophy on a regular basis. So we're talking about philosophy of truthful living, of integrity, just like if you wanna get good and you wanna go through recovery, you don't check in once a month. People who are going through recovery,

they need to go to recovery sometimes a couple times a day, check in with their sponsor, or you go many times a week because they need to hear it. Cause the Maya or the illusion is such a strong pull in the other direction. So we have created a podcast where we can hear this yoga philosophy on a regular basis. We do it every morning at 5 a.m.

And the more we do it, the more we realize a lot of people have very, very strong attachments. And some attachments have dismantled their life. They're coming from recovery programs. But the philosophy of bhakti, it accepts that there's different ways to perceive your higher power. And in bhakti, the higher power has personal form.

Now, sometimes people can't stand the idea of a personal deity because the persons in my life have driven me crazy. Maybe I had an ex-wife or ex-husband or I had a bad relationship with a parent or a teacher or a priest, what to speak of a priest. And so we hate any concept of organized spiritual anything. But there's sort of two forms of ideas, basically. You'll hear this idea of we are God, or that God is a separate identity. You'll hear both of those being taught in Eastern thought. Although that is also in Western thought,

you'll hear about that as well. And sometimes Christians will argue about this as well. Is God a being or is God an energy or a force? And in India, they're very clear about it. They say it's both. Why not? Just like the sun is a globe and it's also an energy. It's like the sun is a globe and it's also an energy. Yeah. It's both.

And so the people who have had such a bad taste in their mouth, I always say things like, hey, you might've gotten dealt many counterfeit $20 bills. And every time you spend a 20, you get busted. That doesn't mean there's not real $20 bills out there. So just because everything spiritual has been maybe a fraud, that doesn't mean there's not something genuine. So that's for people who are doubting any spiritual and anything spiritual. So anyway, with our recovery

group, which we have like six days a week, six meetings a week, it's based on higher power, but the higher power is the name Krishna. And Krishna, it's just a name of God and God can have unlimited names, but we put a name and a form on God. And that's just one of the names and forms of a multitude of forms God can have, because God is unlimited and why can't God can have form and have no form at the same time. So people in the Bhakti tradition, the deity actually has form. And some people worship that form in the form of Krishna or of Ram, of Nisringa. But it's the idea of we are one with God, but we're also different.

In the same way, a drop of water from the ocean is in one sense the ocean, but in another sense, you can't float a boat on it. So it's minute and it can also be, it can be covered by illusion. So in one sense, we're spiritual beings, but we're sort of marginal and we can get covered by illusion. I can vouch for that. I've been covered by illusion many times repeatedly,

sometimes even willingly choosing illusion. And just when you break through, you realize there's another layer of illusion. There's another layer of illusion, yeah. But in my purest form, I'm a spiritual being. And that's a, I love that theory, that there's a pure soul theory that we are actually spiritual beings

that have just forgotten. And we're sort of covered by a plaque that we're in a scrubbing process. A removing as opposed to adding on. Yeah, or born sinful or born. I don't like that even that concept. I mean, the people that are gravitating towards you and dialing up the podcast,

at least from a recovery point of view are gonna be people that are already spiritually inclined. And what you find in traditional 12 step is people whose lives are broken and are desperate and in a lot of pain. But as you mentioned, a lot of them have scars that come from various religious and spiritual traditions that calcify them from being open to the spiritual component

that I think is required in order to get and maintain sobriety. And a lot of people can't, they just can't grok it, you know, and they just, they walk out the door because the minute the word God is uttered, or, you know, the phrase that this is a spiritual program, the lights just go out because of their life experience or whatever trauma they've weathered.

It's horrible. Yeah, that's baked into the very problem that they're trying to transcend and overcome. It's, it's, it's, it's sad and I get it. And, um, I never had a traumatic experience with spirituality, but I can understand that. Um, and all I can say is that just because there's counterfeit doesn't mean there's not something substantial as well. When people use the argument philosophically, well, you know, I don't believe in a higher power. I think that's just nonsense.

I always say, well, come on, that guy can kick my ass. He's a higher power. Or how about the sun? The sun is a higher power. The wind is a higher power. There's many, many higher powers. I always say the collective consciousness of the group, like if you walk into a room and there's 30 people who've all been able to maintain sobriety for some set period of

time, then that is a power greater than yourself. There you go. That's another way to be nicely put too. So yeah, I don't think that is so far-fetched, a higher power. And I think people just have to break these things down. But yeah, if there's trauma behind it, it's tough. All right, so you're in India and you're doing the monk thing. How long did you do it? Six or seven years, something like that? I did a monk thing for about six and a half years.

Six and a half years, celibate monk in your 20s. It's a tough, it's a tall order, but I did it. And I didn't cheat. Did you travel during that period of time? I did travel, I traveled all over the world. Oh, you did? Yeah, I traveled all over the world. As a renunciant, like sort of reliance

upon the kindness of strangers? I had nothing. Three years in after studying the Gita, the Gita is not about renouncing the world. It's about taking the gifts that you have and using them in a spiritual way. Right. And the more the Gita clicked in- It's like Arjuna going to war against his will, right? Like having to fulfill his blueprint or his destiny. destiny. Yeah, exactly. And I realized, wow, this is the Gita. My job isn't to give up music or truthfully, I'm not a great musician myself. I mean, I've written songs, I've printed out tons

of CDs, I've traveled, you know, I've been on MTV or whatever, but I don't consider myself a musician. I'm more of a speaker. I like to speak. I like to tell stories. I like to explain things. I like people. I found that I'm meant to do music again. So I sort of re-put myself together with a bunch of monks that were sort of musically inclined, and we started a second band after I'd given up that band. And that's how Shelter started. And it probably, historically, was the first celibate rock band in the history of the world. Well, it's gotta be the only band comprised of monks, except for some kind of Kirtan situation, right? I mean, it was like a full on punk hardcore band,

but of all monks, it was actually very crazy. A matter of fact, we had no clothing. We didn't even know what to wear. Like we couldn't wear robes because we felt that would be a little- Were these dudes like all in your ashram? They were all guys like living in an ashram or an ashram near me.

And yeah, it was almost like comical in one sense. And so I remember when we first started, we're like, well, what are we gonna wear? I was like, well, maybe we should just go to Salvation Army, buy a bunch of white clothes and dye them all orange. But that whole tour, like we looked like Devo circa 1983 or something, but we did. That's how we rolled for a while.

And you would open these concerts by doing chanting, right? Like with incense and stuff like that. Yes. That must have freaked people out. We'd have big here, you know, it's I think cause the punk scene was anything goes. And so we're a bunch of Hindu monks and it was almost like, why not?

Why not? Like it's either you loved us or you hated us, but it was sort of in the conversation. And if a lot of our fans who are already straight edge, they didn't smoke, they didn't believe in consumer culture so much and they believed in higher purpose. So it's sort of like fit right in.

I mean, everybody was selling their wear, so to speak. They were selling anarchy or they were selling DIY or some other facet of punk culture. And there were definitely people in the scene that were saying, oh, you can't bring God into punk. This is bullshit. You can't do that. And my answer was, why not?

That's even more punk then to do it, right? You know what? Who are you to tell me? What are you like some conservative? You're not allowed to tell, I'm not allowed to do, what's the punk rule book I have to follow? Isn't all music started as a spiritual celebration? Isn't that the origins of music anyway?

Who are you to say I can't do this? And as far as punk scene goes, I was like a big player in that scene. Who are you? If I can do it, because I'm me. I can say, if you're gonna make the rules, I can make the rules too then. And if you don't like it, don't listen to it.

And so that's how we sort of rolled. And it was interesting because we maintained a strict two-hour meditation every morning. Even on tour, we would not eat food that was not cooked because a big thing of the diet is we try to eat food that's been cooked with the proper consciousness, especially when you're a monk. And you know this, that food affects your consciousness.

Love is the super food. Love is the, it really is. It really is. And that's why if you go to some diner where you got some guy couldn't care less, you're eating that consciousness and it really affects you. And that's not gonna show up under some, you know, when you're breaking down food

and it's made up this vitamins, it's not gonna show up on the list of ingredients. Love is not gonna show up. On the nutrition facts panel, how much love was infused into the preparation of this food on a scale of one to a hundred? It makes a difference. It's why people love home cooked meals.

So we did it. So you're making your own doll and like. We brought our own candy stove on tour with us. And we not only cook for ourselves, we cook for people would come around, would feed other people. Cause that's just part of the culture is you cook with love and you offer it with love matter of fact some tours we'd even do we would go to kids houses you know some teenager or 22 year old kid has a house they're renting and we'd go in there and we'd stay at

their house because you know we never stayed in hotels generally we cleaned their entire house unlike any other punk band coming to their house. Clean their entire house, clean their entire kitchen, and then invite the entire concert to their backyard the next day. Wow. Where I would give a class on the Bhagavad Gita, we'd have kirtan, and we'd serve out a meal to everyone.

And just blow the mind of that kid. Blow the minds of all the kids. What's more punk rock than like cleaning somebody's house? A punk guy coming here, especially if you're like, you're punk here. That's a cool thing about punk rock. You're supposed to trash the house. I know, we clean their houses.

Oh my God. So you just were on tour. When did you end up, you ended up in LA at some point. Then afterwards I moved to LA in 99. And sort of like, LA was sort of a, that was like out of the ashram. I was already out of the ashram then.

And I was just sort of going through it like a re, almost like a rebranding of my identity then. It's very difficult. I will say it's very difficult to refine yourself in the material world after you've given up becoming a monk. It's like a tightrope because as a monk, the answer is no. Do you do this? No, I don't. Do you do this? No, I don't. Do you do this? No, I don't. And it's sort of a safe parameter. Whereas the material world, it's yes, yes, yes, yes. I'll do anything. I'll try anything. But to be really regulated in what you put in your eyes

and your ears and your mouth and be, it's probably the equivalent would probably be an alcoholic who goes to a bar but doesn't drink. It takes a lot of sobriety probably for an alcoholic to go to a bar and be like, I'm good with this. And so I found a very slippery slope dealing with the material world again and trying to find my footing there.

And I truthfully went through a very tough time. And I got very focused on my physical yoga practice, pranayama and martial arts with jujitsu. And that's when I got into jujitsu. And that's when I got into jujitsu and that's how I know Joe Rogan. Right, now I remember, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I listened to your podcast with him right when it came out.

And I just remember, first of all, I remember like, wow, this monk's talking about MMA. If you have any MMA knowledge whatsoever and you go on Rogan, it's gonna be a lot about that. So it was interesting that you had that background and that's how you knew Joe. But I just remember that that conversation stuck with me. Like when that was done three hours later, I was like,

I was really impacted by the conversation that you had with him and it stayed with me. And I've, what was that like two years ago or something? It was a couple of years ago. One year ago today, maybe. Like practically a year ago. Yeah, I loved it. And I was like, I remember thinking like,

I need to meet this guy, you know, took a year later. But yeah, it was interesting you sharing about how devoted you were to your martial arts practice. And I remember thinking like, how does that gel with the monk consciousness? And that led me to think about my own relationship to yoga and how, you know, the difference between the way that the typical Western person interfaces with yoga

versus the ancient tradition and purpose of yoga, which is to yoke mind and spirit, right? It's like the asanas are preparation for, you know, getting you into a state of still mindedness so that you can connect with something greater than yourself. It's not about how good you can, you know, do a handstand or a warrior pose.

It's a condiment of a much greater meal and we've made it the meal. We've made the salt, the meal, which is very awkward. If I said, hey, come on over, we're having some sea salt tonight. And yet having a strong body is an important thing as well. And there's something empowering about that. Like, I don't see that as being anathema

to a spiritual practice, but I guess it's about calibrating that. Like, what is the balance? In truth, it was a little bit of my falling into a questioning of my faith and questioning to this nebulous idea of what an advanced spiritualist is. And I was at this point and stepping away from being a monk and like getting

into the material world and trying to find my footing there and getting back into physical yoga practice, very strong physical yoga practice of doing the stunga yoga every day. And started saying, well, in martial arts, you know who the advanced master is. The guy that kicks your butt is the advanced master and you're not, and you don't have, it's nothing like, it's nothing metaphysical. It's like they're-

Very tangible. You're tapping out, you're tapping out. And this was sort of like at the beginning of jujitsu. So it was also, not the beginning, but there was at the beginning of jujitsu. So it was also at the beginning, but there was not a lot of jujitsu in America back then, this in 1999, you know. And you were studying at a high level with some, you know, some of those top people.

These great guys, these great guys. Now they're guys, they're all legends. Jean-Jacques Machado and like 10th Planet, is that? Yeah, it was before 10th Planet started. So when they opened Eddie Bravo, who's like incredible, they're, you know, we watched them open and we started going there immediately. And it was, now it's huge, it's international.

But it's not that different than punk rock. Like that was the early days, that was a new way of finding a certain kind of expression, right, that was new and different and kind of counterculture. And I will say that when you added my background of yoga to that, it helped me fight without rage. That comes with fighting.

You can lose your cool, you can lose your breath, you can lose your mind. And it helped me apply all those yogic principles to fighting. And of course, there is a time to fight. It's not a time to be a thug, it's a time to protect. And I think there's always, whenever you have a society, you have a group of people that wants,

that it's important to protect the vulnerable and there's always vulnerable in culture. And so fighting is not a bad thing. It's just depends on how it's used. Being spiritual doesn't mean necessarily you don't fight. Now, if you find that it's gonna trigger a part of you that is a very dark place, you might consider maybe fighting's not for you.

I've had people that have given up. One of my mentors told me that they were a guitar player and he gave up guitar. I was like, why'd you give up guitar? He's like, for me, it was Maya. And I was like, what are you talking about? The pocket baguette, you told me the pocket baguette, you shouldn't give up what you're good at.

He said, yeah, yeah, yeah, for me, it was Maya. I was like, that makes no sense, man. You're the one telling me I should not give up what I'm born to do. And he said, all right, next time you're on stage, see if you're doing it to be God or to serve God. And I was like, oh man, I'm trying to be God with all this stuff. And so sometimes people recognize even something they're good at, they cannot do in spiritual consciousness. And therefore they just choose to walk away from it. Or for most of us, we'll say, you know what?

I can do this, but it's gonna be different now. And that statement he said to me, a mentor of mine, that really changed my life. It really made me perform on stage in a different way, relate to my loved ones in a different way, relate to friends in a different way. That to my loved ones in a different way, relate to friends in a different way, that am I doing this to be the cool guy or to be like of service? And that's the big part of, again,

come right back full circle to the recovery community because the big thing of recovery from what I understand is of service. Can I be of service? Can I be a contributor of this world? And it actually satisfies the heart. What can I contribute? Yeah, I mean, that's something

that I wrestle with all the time. Every podcast or whether I get up on stage to give a talk, I get like I've done almost 600 of these. I get nervous every time because my ego is wrapped up in how am I gonna come across? Am I going to ask good questions? Is the guest gonna like me? How is the audience gonna respond to that?

All that noise. I walk up on stage to give a talk that I've given many times and I start sweating. And I have to remind myself that that's just, it's my ego. It's my ego that wants to be approved of, that wants the validation, that wants to look cool or whatever it is. And it's only by when I catch myself and think like,

how can I just be of service here? Like what is the greater good that can be achieved by me showing up in this role? And all the nervousness dissipates if you can flip that switch. And it's not my default, like, and I don't always do it very well. I get caught up in my own bullshit constantly.

But when I am able to do that, like then it always goes better because you take yourself out of the equation. You're like, just allow me to be a channel for what is sort of the highest purpose here. And it's your practice. You know, I think both of us are blessed with great wives. And I asked my wife to come also.

You know, last year she came when I did Joe Rogan. And, you know, I've been talking on stages since I was like, you know, 15 and 16. So I'm generally don't get nervous. And I've played big concerts too. I don't get nervous. I'm very comfortable in front of people. A lot of people aren't so confident like that. I am. I was so nervous for Joe Rogan and it wasn't because it was a big podcast. Truthfully, I didn't even know that much about podcasts back then at all. I just knew that his audience was very different. There was not, it's not like the

yoga community where everybody's into yoga and they're into Ayurveda and they're into, you know, and they want, they want to see me do a handstand. It was like, you have right wing, you have left wing, you have, you know, people believe in UFOs, you have scientists. And I was like, I don't know anything. What am I going to say? I'm going to say something stupid. And I've known John for years and he's a sharp guy. And if he wanted to turn on me, he could easily turn on me and just like, and I was thinking, and I told my wife, I was like, I am nervous. Like I'm gonna vomit.

And she just looked at me and she said, well, what would Radhanath Swami do? Radhanath Swami is one big lighthouse in my life. And I said, well, he'd appreciate the person. Start the conversation with an appreciation. And so even today coming in here too, it's like, you know, even my mind was like, okay, what should I do?

How do I prepare for things? You don't prepare, we're just gonna talk. How do I prepare for this? And I was just like, you know, I'm gonna prepare. I'm gonna pull out my malas and I'm going to chant. And I'm going to go for a hike today in the mountains. And I'm not going to think about it whatsoever. And then I'm going to appreciate how the ritual podcast has affected me.

I'm going to appreciate him and share how I appreciate him. And say a prayer in my mind, which I did before the show, that everything I do is an offering. So please accept this offering. And that's how I prepare. And that way- It's a beautiful practice. It is.

And it protects you from trying to, oh, I gotta impress somebody. It's the world of impressing and being overly concerned about what people think about me. It's like, it's exhausting. Exhausting world. It's good to know we're both in the same boat.

Oh, trust me. You know, I'm my own worst enemy with all of this stuff. And I create ridiculous amounts of suffering and angst and anxiety. You know, I'm far from a master at any of this, but I did notice that you did give Joe that appreciation. And I thought it was an amazing conversation. The one thing that I thought was super interesting though,

was that Joe got really hung up on this idea that your relationship to the Bhagavad Gita is one of reality, right? Like he really wanted to pin you down on like, do you think all these, like there's an elephant faced man, like he wanted, he was really all, and you, you told this incredible story, which I would actually like you to tell again here of being on tour, playing the show in Buffalo and having this experience. Right. And you, you tell this unbelievable story.

He wasn't impressed by that story. As soon as it ended, he just pivoted right back to this thing about like, do you actually think about, and I was like, no reaction to this story. I know. I was like, oh, come on. We didn't react to that story. Did you just hear what I heard? I couldn't believe that. I was like, I can spend three hours talking about this story. This story in and of itself is like a movie. That story was so transformational in my life. Actually, more than any saint or Swami or pilgrimage I ever went to, that getting beat up so bad was such a deep faith builder in my life.

I was shocked that he wasn't. Right. So walk us through it because people here probably haven't heard it or many of them haven't heard it. Well, it was, we were all monks and we are on tour. This is shelter.

This is shelter when we were on tour. And, you know, we had a, you know, by material standards, it was successful. Again, we weren't, we had our own record label in the ashram, by the way. We started a record label in the ashram, which you know now, Steve Reddy, a friend of yours. I don't know. Did tri you know now, Steve Reddy, a friend of yours.

I don't know. He did triathlon with you. Steve Reddy? Equal vision records and Montrology. He was friends with John Joseph, but I don't know if I saw him on Instagram. Maybe I met him, I'm not sure. Anyway, go ahead. He's an old friend of ours.

So anyway, we were on tour, we had a record label. Nevermind, yeah. You got it. Yeah, go ahead. Anyway, we were on tour, we had a record label. Nevermind, yeah, go ahead. Anyway, we were on tour and by material standards, it was a great show. We were headlining the show. It was, we like to do Kirtan before the performance,

like outside, we just set up and we cook. And that's how we did monk life. We cooked, we gave out food, sacred food, and then we just sang like outside, like in the parking lot. And then the show was like a big warehouse in Buffalo, New York. Turned out to be a ghetto,

which we didn't really realize how dangerous a neighborhood was. And after the performance, I was getting interviewed outside and the van, our band's van, had driven in the club, and we were loading in the gear, and I was getting interviewed, and all of a sudden a car pulled up. And our fans, you know, their ages are between like 15 years old

and 26 years old maybe. I was probably 26 or 27 maybe at the time. And all of a sudden a huge guys got out of this car and they grabbed one young kid, 16 year old and just beat the crap out of him. Like it was like, and I was witnessing this while I was getting interviewed and you know, the show was over, people were leaving

and there's violence sometimes that happens at a show. So I didn't like get really worked up, but it was awkward for my peripheral vision and then the gang moved to another person and beat that person up really bad and then by the third person everybody started running scattering so i was like okay this is what happens when you stay up late at night crazy stuff starts going were there like dudes that worked at the venue there also or just your band? I don't know where anybody was. I don't know.

It wasn't like a venue. It's probably some kids, it's a DIY thing. They rented out a giant warehouse. It's not like there's a security team. Right. So I ran inside. Our van is like all the windows and doors are open and our roadies are loading it in.

The roadies are also monks. And so I was like, you guys, there's some crazy guys out there. We gotta get out, let's get in the van and let's get the hell out of here. And the roadies are looking at me like, we can't go anywhere. It's like, we're not even loaded in yet.

Like everything's out of the van, everything's open. And then something incredibly eerie happened, which is the bad guys, their car drove into the club and parked like a T right in front of our van. So we couldn't get out and sort of sealing up the exit. And the only people left in the club was the bands who were shutting things down, the PA guy, a few, you know, not many people left in the venue.

And this guy gets out of the car. The whole gang gets out of the car. And this one guy, who is massive, like just like a massive hulk of a man, horse of a man, puts his hand in his back pocket and grabs a gun and just says, in a very commanding, yet just sober voice, he just says, I got a gun and I'm gonna kill everyone tonight. And it was like one of these moments in your life where like, okay, tonight's the night, we're gonna die tonight. It wasn't like run for your life, let's fight back.

It's like, tonight's we're gonna die tonight. It wasn't like run for your life, let's fight back. It's like, tonight's we're gonna die. And I was sort of like the older one. And I had all the other monks that were with me, were a little younger than me. So everybody gathered around me like, Raghunath, what are we gonna do? And to me, it was just like, we're gonna die.

What do you mean, what are we gonna do? We're gonna die. So you know what we're gonna do? We're going to die. So you know what we're going to do? We're going to chant. I don't know where that came from. I'm not a spiritually evolved being. If you get to hang out with me long enough, you'll realize that.

What do you do when there's nothing else to do? Was this before or during your MMA? Before, much before. This was me eating lots of Indian sweets. Yeah. There was no way I could have MMA'd my way out of this one, though. It was one of those things, massive man with

a gang of other massive people with weapons. I wasn't going to get out of this one. So I just thought, we're going to die right now. It was one of those, have you ever had one of those experiences where you're going to die? It felt like they were were gonna die right now. So I went in and I got a clay Indian drum, which I play, and I started chanting these mantras,

these Neshringadev mantras, these prayers to Lord Vishnu as the protector. And we all gathered a circle. It was incredibly surreal, Rich. We're in a circle chanting these mantras while these guys are going around the club, just demolishing people. I don't know what, people say, well, why didn't you run?

I don't know. I don't know what the, what was going on, but we started chanting and then they all started coming towards us. And all my guys ran. Some guys ran under the van, in the van, over the van. It was just like everybody scattered and I was surrounded by these people holding the drum

and I didn't even know what to say. So I just put my hands like in a namaste, still holding this drum and I said, oh, the guy pulled out a gun and he said, you want some? I thought to myself, oh my God, how am I supposed to answer this? Do I want some? I said, Hare Krishna, I'm a Krishna monk.

I have no idea why you guys are so angry. And then I felt a barrage of fists coming to my face, and I've never, ever felt helpless in my life, but at that time, I felt, like, incredibly helpless, and as I'm getting punched, I was just chanting, chanting, like, different names of God, Krishna, Ram, Govinda, Chaitanya, like this,

just like running through my mind. And as I'm getting pounded, I'm starting to think of all these great stories I've studied, the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, the Bhagavata Purana, Srimad Bhagavatam. They're stories of sort of people in destitute positions in their life and how they leave their bodies.

And they generally, the auspicious way, the wonderful way to leave their body is they focus their mind on the supreme being, on God, on your higher power. They've had their focus and they're just chanting these mantras. And I'm thinking about these great personalities in these great personalities

in these great epics of India thinking, wow, all these people died like this, and now I'm gonna die. And I'm also dying in the same way they are dying. I am so fortunate. And I can honestly say there was not fear and there was not anger. There was just a type of like great appreciation

for the way I'm gonna leave my body. And it got worse because as I started getting beat up, I saw these women coming at me with baseball bats. And I thought they were coming to save me, but they were the girlfriends of these guys. And they started pounding me with baseball bats. But the same thing too, I was like chanting and chanting and chanting. And then it just all stopped.

And I didn't know what happened. And I had covered in blood. And what actually happened was the rest of the band had jumped in our van and just started the van and plowed through their car and escaped, and when they did a head count, they didn't realize I wasn't in the van with them. So I didn't know what was happening, and I guess I was experiencing some type of, you know. Altered state. Altered state.

Altered state. Altered state. So I just, I was looking for the band basically. And I was out in the streets looking through the- The attackers dispersed. They went, yeah, I guess they dispersed. And I went into the streets and I was trying to flag down cars because I thought my band was getting beat up

or killed or something. And every time a car would see me, they'd slow down and they'd look at me. And I was, ever see that movie, Carrie, when you were a teenager, like covered in blood. And I'm still holding this clay drum covered in blood. I'm thinking like a Yogi John Wick. Oh, it was, it must've been so creepy to see me.

And I wouldn't have stopped for me either if I was driving through a ghetto, but everyone just kept on stopping. And I was like, oh my God, my whole band is about to get killed. And I saw some light on. It must've been two in the morning, somewhere in Buffalo. And I saw some man in a booth, like in a bus station.

And I said, hey, you've got to call the police. My friends are in trouble. And the guy looked at me and just said, I'm busy. And I was so like shocked about how little this guy cared about human tragedy. And I said, you got to call the police or I'm going to go in there and call the police. Now get away from your phone or give me the phone. And I think this was before cell phones maybe, or maybe I'm not sure. I didn't have a cell phone.

So anyway, he said, all right, I'll call the police. And I said, if you don't mind, I'm just gonna stay here cause these guys might come back and kill me. And so I realized at that point, like, oh my God, my head's probably split open. And this is how people die. This is their head cracks open, their brain swells and they fall asleep and die.

And I was like, oh crap, I wasn't expecting to die tonight. I have a whole tour planned. I have like, I have so many plans and I'm gonna die tonight. This wasn't the day, but I guess this is what I always teach. This is what the books always teach. This is what the wisdom literature teaches that you don't expect death to happen tonight.

It happens what appears to be randomly. And for some reason, Raghu, I'm talking to myself, for some reason, Raghu, you got blessed tonight to experience what it's like to die in a wonderful way. But now you're in sad shape because you've lived. And if you've got this head trauma, I don't know much, I'm not a doctor or anything, but what I understand is your brain swells,

you fall asleep and then you die. Like you get a concussion and you die. So I was like, oh my God, my mom doesn't know where I'm here. My friends don't know where I am. I'm gonna die in this disgusting, you know, mechanic shop or bus terminal or wherever I am. And I started praying sincerely.

I said, Krishna, God, you've been so kind to me. You gave me this glimpse into what it's like to be evolved, even though I'm not evolved. And now I'm gonna just die with a concussion. Please, if you want to take me, take me now. And I started chanting these beautiful prayers I had memorized, which we do. Sometimes we're on tour.

We have, there's all these beautiful Sanskrit stotrams or stutis or like beautiful Sanskrit prayers glorifying Vishnu or Krishna. And so I had a bunch memorized that I would just do for fun. And I just started picture to picture of Krishna in my mind and chanting these mantras. And then I lived and I was, it was a good time to die, but I lived.

And when you reflect back on that experience now, like what is, you know, what is the, not necessarily the lesson, but like, where is the wisdom, right? Like the ability to maintain your equanimity under such, you know, life-threatening duress and to have this relationship with death that is either neutral or appreciative

is unbelievable to me. And that your return to your human frailty only occurs in the aftermath of the most intense aspect of that experience. The very strong realization Rich was not that, I'm some great yoga master. There are yogic paths that require you to master your senses, require for you to master your tongue, your belly, your genitals, your mind, that require you to move your prana certain ways through different,

almost like technical things with your body to experience some type of high or spiritual oneness. Bhakti is not like that. Bhakti is you're connected through your, almost like a child. The child can either go out, get a job, make a living or make some money so they can make themselves some dinner

or the child can just cry. The Bhakti path is sort of like, it's a path of sort of crying and it's a path of crying in love. And then what happens is there becomes like a bond where your higher power, they become your best friend and you become their best friend. And they're always in the same way

you're thinking about them, your higher power, your higher power is thinking about you, like, and is eager and is eager and happy to serve. And even if that service might mean like, the miracle isn't that I live, the miracle was that in my time of great distress, not due to some great yogic power of raising my Kundalini that I was protected. It was the fact that Bhagavan or higher power, my source entered into my mind at the most tragic time. That was the magic of that. Nothing of the material world is a safe place. And if you think you're safe, we're an illusion.

There's danger at every moment in the material world and safety, It's almost understandable that the world is suffering with anxiety because it's normal. It's a temporary world and we're eternal beings. Of course there's anxiety there. But the fact that we can feel connected in times of great distress, that shows that there's actually a benevolent, merciful, loving energy or force that's got your best interest in mind. Just like I was a parent in New York City for a while when my children were little. And you're playing with their kids at the park and you always got your one eye on the kids. They're playing, you're talking to another mom or something,

but you always have one eye watching the kids because you're a benevolent force and you're not gonna let anybody, someone's talking to my kid, I'm gonna, hey, what's up? So in the same way, you're always being, the theory in Bhakti is that you're always looked after, you're always loved, you're always cared for wherever you're at. And so that was my big takeaway.

But if you're truly embodying that, then there should be no fear. Exactly. And in Sanskrit, that's called aboya. Aboya means fearlessness doesn't come from like, yeah, I'm just going to do it. I'm going to jump off the cliff and dive into the quarry or jump out of the airplane. That's not no fear necessarily. That means you're a little courageous, you're risking your life, but there is actually a tangible yogic echelon that you get to where actually you understand

you can't die. And that's something, it's something real. It becomes when you fully understand that I'm not a body. The body will die, but I can't die. It's one of those like, you know, Socrates saying you can catch me, but you can't find me. But isn't it also like on some level,

there's a bit of surrender in that as well. And baked into that surrender is this relationship with fate, right? Like isn't part of bhakti understanding that there are aspects of your life that are kind of pre-written and within that there's free will, but there is a story for you. And that story has already been told. Is that, am I mischaracterizing that? A little bit. There is definitely some, there definitely is some karma.

Like if you look at Vedic astrology, you know, it's like, there's crazy stuff. Crazy stuff. But implicit in that is this idea that there is an architecture for you already. Sure, there is some type of karmic journey we're on. I just flew out to California, you know, but what I do on that plane, that's my free will.

So we do have some karma that we have to live out to the degree that we have these yogic principles in our life, which are in one sense, his is so relatable to 12 steps, just like a person who is newly recovered. The noose is very tight around their neck. And so if I say, hey, come into a bar, let's just hang out. You don't have to drink.

They still might be like, no, no, no, no. I don't go to bars because the noose is still tight. 20 years, 30 years of recovery, a person feels like I can go anywhere. I feel very safe. I have some healthy fear, but I'm pretty safe. I feel very safe. You know, I have some healthy fear, but I'm pretty safe. I don't deal with people, places, or things that could trigger me, but I feel a little safer. So as we become this whole yoga culture that people are getting into

nowadays with Ayurveda and with meditation and with pranayama and with yogic lifestyle, it's to bring our consciousness to sattva, they call it. And sattva means a regulation, a control, where you're not dominated anymore by these lower passions. From there, you can make a better choice. Some of us are born triggered by lower passions. So we're triggered in this, the yogis call it Rajas or Tamas,

we're triggered by them. We're born into them. Our parents were like that. We are born with these very lower qualities. So a yoga culture helps you change that culture. And in that culture, you're allowed more free will, just like a drug addict has no free will. They've relinquished their free will. And now you could offer them something like heroin or cocaine. And they'd be like, yeah, give it to me. Are you sure? Because last time I gave it to you, you lost your family.

Yeah, give it to me. Just give it to me. It takes away their intelligence. So there is some destiny, karmic destiny we have, but we can also transcend that because spirituality is higher than that material destiny as well. And that's part of what we have. And then the beautiful thing is you'll start to see your karma, not as this, oh, good luck and bad luck and good fortune and bad

fortune. And sometimes you'll see that a lot in India culture too. You find your chart and you find where your malefic planets are. And then you try to counteract your malefic planets with gems or with pujas. And if you know about Vedic culture, you do some ritual to overcome some malefic thing, which is going to hurt your finances or hurt your ability to have a child or hurt your romance in your life. But in bhakti, oftentimes there's a throwing up your hands in the air.

If you want me to be poor, I'll be poor. If you want to be successful, I'll be successful. Whatever you like. And we're not gonna play metaphysical Amazon prime with God or the Deas or the higher beings that we just accept like there's a higher plan for me. Right, the prayer isn't to have your will be done, but to serve God.

And whatever God's will is for me, allow that to take place, allow that to flourish in me. Let me be a vessel or an expression of whatever that is. And that demands a certain humility and it demands a level of acceptance and surrender to live in that place. I mean, I accept you, whether you accept that label as I accept this guy's on a Bhakti path. When I see you or hear about you or hear you talk, I say, this guy's on a Bhakti path. And I'm sure you could see times in your life that might've appeared tragic on paper to be like,

thank God that happened. Oh, every time. Right? Yeah. And that's been the greatest teacher outside of any kind of doctrine to just track my own experiences in life trajectory and understand that those things that happened that were so awful in the moment were happening for me,

not to me. They've been my greatest teachers and the greatest accelerants of personal growth in my life. And that's why when I see somebody suffering or meeting their, my wife calls it their divine moment, you don't wanna rob somebody of that experience. Our instinct is to try to save them or pull them out of that.

And that may not be the correct approach for that person. That person is undergoing something that could be ultimately the best thing that ever happens to them. But there is a spiritual law at play, which is when you are in a karmic context, when you're living your life in a manner that isn't on that path, that isn't on the path of spiritual growth,

the universe will knock on your door and it will knock gently and then it'll knock a little bit louder and it'll keep knocking and the consequences of your actions will continue to slowly at first and then very extremely ratchet up until you finally pay attention. And that culminates in your bottom or you're, you know, hitting that, you know, driving your car metaphorically into the wall

so that God, the universe, Krishna, whatever you want to call it, has your full attention. Now you can hear, now you are ready. The teacher has shown up and the student is ready. They can hear the message and they are prepared to actually do the work in order to shift. And that's how I've seen karma or maybe there's another term for it in bhakti

that's more appropriate, play out in my own life and it continues to happen. Yeah. But the more attuned you are, you can read those signals. When the universe is knocking gently, you can hear it. You don't have to wait until the cataclysm. Yeah, you're already tuned into it.

Oh, okay, this is where we're going with this. And I can look back on my own life, think, oh man, thank God for that. Thank God for that failed that. Thank God for that failed relationship. Thank God for that economic downswing. Thank God when the sinkhole appeared in my life where the black ice of my life was spinning out of control. And then you start to realize, man, I've been cared for my entire life. I've never been neglected. I've always been looked after. It just didn't appear that way at that time.

As you look back at your life, you start to see all these messengers were also sent to me at different times in my life. And you realize how like your life wasn't just some random karma. Your karma that you were born into actually has a divine play as well. And the material sense

and even the metaphysical, spiritual, all your karma and overcoming some malefic planet, don't you want to see those malefic planets are there for you as well. And that's another very interesting facet of astrology. Yeah. I've never done that. I've never like tried to work the planet thing.

That's a thing, you know, that's a big thing. You could go down a crazy rabbit hole with that. I know you talked to Rogan about some of the crazy Vedic chart readings. There's crazy, I mean, crazy Vedic chart readings that are so incredibly accurate, you can't, I mean, I didn't talk to him about palm reading. We had like palm readers that were just like fascinating.

And they predicted, I remember me and Paramananda Purcell, my guitar player, we were like monks in India, met some palm reader, just looks at our palm, just goes, you know, I'm a New Yorker, so I'm a cynical, a cynical, but I love all this stuff as well. So he looks up, did I tell this? I don't think I told this story. I don't think so.

He looks at my palm, he says, a hundred rupees. I said, a hundred rupees, that's not a dollar 50 or something like that. A hundred rupees, I'll read my palm. He says, 100 rupees. I said, 100 rupees, that's not $1.50 or something like that. 100 rupees, I'll read your palm. I said, okay, I'll give you 100 rupees, but you got to tell me something about myself first. And then I know you're for real. So he looks at my palm and he said, well, you'll get married someday

and you'll have so many children. I said, no, no, no, no. Don't tell me about my future. You tell me about my past. If you can tell me about my past, I'll give you a hundred rupees. And he looks at my hands sort of like indignant and says, you're a famous musician.

I was like, pretty good. Wow. Because he didn't know me from Adam. I'm dressed like a monk in the middle of West Bengal. And then Paramananda said, read my hand too. And so he said, you too are a famous musician. And then for the next 30 minutes, this guy dissected my entire past, present, and future. And it was like, so uncanny what this man knew about me. And finally it ended with this. He said, what this man knew about me. And finally it ended with this.

He said, oh, but you're going to get into a tragic car accident. Namaste. I was like, what do you mean namaste? You can't just walk away, tragic car man. I said, how can I avoid it? He goes, Prabhu, you cannot avoid. It is in your hand.

You cannot avoid this. I was like, well, there must be something I can do to avoid this he goes do not worry no one will die and i was thinking oh great there's a lot of horrible things that can happen where death isn't included yeah and so my friend immediately said well can you check my hand he goes yes you too will be in a car accident and so i'm just thinking oh my god this is so this guy leaves and fast forward three years later and Shelter had, I was no longer a monk

and Shelter had a hit record in Brazil and we're touring Brazil and the record company put a party on for us. And at the party, you know, this record company is trying to make a theme party. So they make a theme East West yoga party and they invited MTV and all this press and journalists and they invited a famous palm reader from the Amazon. Who's like a celebrity yogini from Brazil. So I was like, Oh cool. Palm readers

here. And I was like, Hey, I got to read my palm. And so she reads my palms. Oh, very good. This is going to be a very good tour for you. You're going to travel all over South America. This is your first time here. You will come here many times. And I was like, Oh, very cool. And then her face soured. And she said, Oh, you will get in a very tragic car accident. And I was like, Oh, come on. And she's like, don't worry. No one will die. I was like, I know no one will die. I was like, oh, come on, my God. And she's like, don't worry. No one will die. I was like, I know no one will die. I was like, you got to check out my friend.

So I grabbed Paramananda's and he looked at Paramananda's. Yes, him too. He will get in a car accident also. And I was just like, oh my God, when is this going to happen? Is there like the classic car accident line on the palm that they all know? There must be a car accident. I have no palm reader. But you haven't had this accident yet. Hold the phone.

Okay. Then I said, well, maybe the band will get in a car accident. Can you check our drummer and our guitar player's hand? So he checked the drummer and he checked the guitar player, the other guitar player. He said, no, these two are fine. And I was like, man, what's gonna happen?

Fast forward a year, the drummer and the guitar player left the band. We got a new drummer and a new guitar player with two new sets of palms on that tour. Right after we had this incredible vegan meal at someone's house after the show, we drove through the night, through the Rocky Mountains on the way to Salt Lake City.

The driver fell asleep at the wheel and we rolled 150 feet down a cliff. Whoa. Oh my God. 150. I kid you not. And it was, some people say, well, you created it with your,

no, the driver didn't know. We didn't tell anybody this. It was, we went down 150 feet. No one died. The roadie who was 19 at the time, the doctor said they'd never seen anyone survive this, the walk away from it because he got the same break Christopher Reeves got

and he recovered. Matter of fact, the coolest thing that happened was I woke up, my harmonium, which is this pump piano that you use for chanting. I brought one in the car with me, smashed me in the head and knocked me unconscious. So when I woke up, everything was destroyed. We had one of those high top extended vans

with the fiberglass roofs that was ripped off. The van was at the bottom of a cliff, half in a river. And everything was just a mess. And our roadie was screaming and saying, I can't feel my legs. Am I gonna be okay? Raghunath, am I gonna be okay? And out of all the mess and all the garbage in the van,

his head is resting in a Bhagavad Gita. Like the Bhagavad Gita is open, his head is like a pillow in a Bhagavad Gita. Like the Bhagavad Gita is open. His head is like a pillow in the Bhagavad Gita. I was like- Splitting the book open? Splitting the book open. And I was like, you know, I don't know what's going on, but you are resting in the Bhagavad Gita, Will. I think you're gonna be fine.

What page? I don't know. I should have checked the page. But truthfully, three or four of us literally walked away. They climbed up the mountain, flagged down a trucker, and got help. They walked. They were unscathed. And three of us, me and Parmenanda, were treated and released that night.

And Will had to recover. Her grody had to recover. But he recovered. He's all right. That's a crazy story. It's a crazy story. It's crazy story. Palm reading, astrology, Brigu readings. These are all sort of mystical things.

Not necessarily spiritual things, but sort of mystical things that I found that they're sort of real. And then there's a- It's more fun to believe in the real. What do you make of, on know, on the mystical tip, the sadhus- What is the mystical tip?

The sadhus who are, you know, in the caves, who are like breatharians and don't eat or haven't eaten for, you know, there are these stories. I don't know whether they're true or apocryphal of these mystics, right? Who kind of transcend the mortal coil I don't know whether they're true or apocryphal of these mystics, right? Who kind of transcend the mortal coil through deep states of meditation. I think it's all real.

Yeah. Have you ever encountered? I've met people who've, I mean, there's a very famous documented guy. I can't remember his name in India. Who's been on air, documented by Western science. There's people who've, Iyengar's guru, Krishnanamacharya, documented by Western science. There's people who've, you know, Iyengar's guru, Krishna Namacharya was documented by, you know,

a lot of this stuff is readable in old British newspapers. The guy that was buried, I've met mystics who could read minds, who could just see you and tell you about your life. And all my students, like shocking, shocking stuff, they would tell you. And yeah, I've met mystics who, yeah. Reading minds is a big one.

And it's super shocking, the stuff they can come up with. What do you think? I don't even want to, I'll share it off. What is that? Yeah, right, it's too crazy. It's too crazy, it's too personal with people that I know close, but it's stuff this. And there's some mystics who can see, sometimes we see, I won't get too much into this

cause I will go off on a tangent, but there's some mystics who can see spirits who are haunting a person that you can't see. It just manifests in you as I'm depressed or I'm filled with anxiety or I'm filled with anger or rage or depression, or sometimes even a sickness. And we'll say, well, you know, it's just a chemical imbalance.

That's why it manifests as a chemical imbalance, but they'll see it as a subtle being. Right, you have an infestation of dark beings inhabiting your... Exactly, and sometimes they stay, and sometimes they're related to you and they haunt you. So this idea of a haunting, it means an unembodied being entering into your body.

Like, you know, we say growing up with the West, yeah, a ghost, but the ghosts are real. They're unembodied beings. By the way, this is the Vedic teachings. I'm a yoga teacher. I don't know if any of this is true. Even if you don't believe that, just consider for a moment that we're all on some level haunted by, you know, the people that we've encountered in our lives. Just think

about how often you think of that person who holds power over you that, you know, just neurochemically, like somebody, a teacher or a parent or somebody who wronged you and you replay and replay and replay this tape and that dictates your actions and your worldview and is so determinative of how you live your life. That's an infestation. Whether you can actually see some entity. You know what, I'm gonna steal that. It is real and it lives inside of,

I think we all have some version of that. I'm gonna steal that. And in the same way they have these epigenetics where you could pass these things on through bloodlines. Right. The yogis, you know, science comes to terms with things that the yogis have been talking about forever. And yeah, so the idea of malefic beings,

it's real. Right. It's real. It goes back to that Netflix documentary. There's like the channelers. Right. But in Bhakti, we don't mess with it so much. We don't mess with it. We don't mess with these like exorcisms

and stuff like that, unless you feel like. No Bhakti exorcisms. No Bhakti. We just feel, we just throw our hands in the, throw our like, but you know, Radhanath Swami talks about that in his book, A Journey Home. There was like these malefic, malefic God.

You know, you gotta be careful, like what you're, who you're dealing with, because you're dealing in India, there's so much access into these other worldly things that we just either take it, eh, it's all crazy fictitious stuff. I've been with people that can read into my mind and it's real.

Right. And then there's other cities, that's one city. City is our mystical perfections. And this is why people did yoga in previous times. They did it to either develop some type of city, some mystical perfection. Yeah, city, S-I-D-I. Yeah, I'm sorry, S-I-D.

Or I-S. D-D-I-S, right? They're Sanskrit words, so there's no real way. It's like the special powers. Some type of powers, but we consider like Bhakti Siddhanta. The conclusion of all Siddhis is Bhakti, right? Because we don't wanna be some superhero, so to speak. We wanna be connected,

and we consider that the highest thing. And the highest thing, they say the Bhakti master will have all cities anyway, because they can have whatever they want, because of that same loving reciprocation with God. And it's no big deal. It's no big deal. The relationship to it is like, yeah, of course. Yeah, whatever. Like Christ, the mystical things that we hear about of Christ doing, these were all like common things in yoga culture.

Not to downplay Christ at all. I'm saying Christ was- That's all you got, Christ? Come on, walking on water, give me something. But you'll hear about these stuff in the Vedic tradition, about walking on water, levitation, healing people, making things manifest out of nothing. You know, these are cities that people can get,

but Christ's beauty was not the mysticism. It was the fact that he was teaching people that you've got to trust your source. You've got to connect. This world is a temporary place. Don't make all your investments. There's very little return on investment in the material world.

The bigger return on investment is in our spiritual life. Well, speaking of teaching, we gotta wind this down a little bit here, but I do wanna talk about what you do at your farm, the Super Soul Farm, right? You do yoga teaching and pretty like rigorous programs that you conduct, right? So what does that look like if somebody was to show up

and they're like, tell me everything you know, teach me. Like what is the program? Well, we sort of put a pause on the farm right now due to the pandemic, but starting up, we're doing our trainings. I do a pilgrimage in India, which is a great way to dive into Vedic culture. And I teach every day, not just a physical practice,

but we teach philosophy and we go to holy places, holy people, holy temples, holy rivers, the whole thing. If you've ever wanted a beautiful experience, not as tourists, not as backpackers. What are some of the places that you've gone? All over, but I think the next trip we're doing in November is Jagannath Puri. It's one of the holy doms of the East Coast of India.

Rishikesh was the land of yogis on the riverbanks of the Ganga. Haridwar, which is also considered the entrance way into the sacred area of the Himalayas. And then Brindavan, that's where this trip is going in November. You can find that on my website, ragunath.yoga.

And then Nepal in April, we'll go to the holy city, holy places in Nepal. And then I do a training in India for about a month. And we do it, it's for people who are already yoga teachers. We teach the facets of Bhakti culture. We got like a part of Ayurveda,

as well as asana pranayama. We teach Ayurveda. We teach music. We teach cooking. That's for our 300-hour trainees. But we also have a full-on- Gotta teach cooking. Huh?

You can't do this without teaching cooking. You can't do it without teaching. Yeah, it's cooking with love. And then we also have a full-on music academy that we do. People wanna study kirtan. And then we have a wisdom academy that people just wanna study sacred literature. So that happens in January in 2022, next time.

And then meanwhile, you podcast every single day. And we podcast every day. I don't know how you do that. I'm doing like two or three of these a week. It's killing me. It's exhausting. I don't know how you do it every day, even when you're traveling and everything,

like how does that work? You know what, this is the biggest break I took. I took off Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. I've never taken a break this long. Usually I do it when we travel, but because of the time zone and because I'm on sort of a rigorous program this weekend, I just haven't had, it wasn't gonna work out.

And I wanted to give some quality time to my son and my wife who were with me as well. But yeah, we try to do it. And truthfully the podcast, even though it's, may sound corny, but I really do it for myself. I like to read every day and it helps me. Everything is a practice. It's a practice and hearing sacred literature,

wisdom literature, truthful dialogue. It helps me in my life. And the secondary is effect. It helps other people who are also getting into that. So today I will also spend some time doing that meditational practice. I'll just do it privately. Yeah, cool.

So last thing I wanna ask you, which is if somebody is listening to this and this is their first introduction into some of these ideas, what is the first thing that you, like some little nugget of wisdom that you can impart to somebody who's not familiar with yoga or the Bhakti path, who's just starting to tap or the bhakti path, who's just starting to, you know,

tap on the walls of the Maya surrounding their own life. Like, where do you begin? Where do we begin? You know, you read a good book. Bhagavad Gita is a great book. Sometimes people find it a little heady at first. I mean, it's, yeah, I don't know. Is that the first, I mean, it's crazy stories.

I like Radhanatswami's book because it's like a modern day autobiography of a yogi. It's his personal journey of hitchhiking to India, which is quite amazing. Hitchhiking to India from Europe and getting there and living with sadhus in the Himalayas. And even though it's a great story, it's peppered with philosophy of practical philosophy,

not just philosophy to sit in your head, but philosophy to sit in your heart and in your practice. So I find that as a good intro book, a journey home autobiography of a, autobiography of a, I'm forgetting the title now, autobiography of a- A yogi? American-

Oh yeah, I think it is American yogi. American yogi, I'm having a mental block right now. But by Radhanath Swami. My name's Raghunath, his name's Radhanath. It's all very confusing. It's all these Sanskrit words. And then it becomes easier. Then you start remembering these ones easier

because you start to learn the Sanskrit. Where did you get that crazy mala around your neck? These, my friend in I've never seen. My friend in Mayapur makes these silver Tulsi malas. They are Tulsi wood, which comes from the holy basil. It's considered a sacred plant. And my friend makes them and he lives in India and he makes them.

It's pretty cool. They're beautiful, I'll get you some. Well, good man, I think we did it. How do you feel? I feel good. You feel good? Thank you I think we did it. How do you feel? I feel good. You feel good? Thank you so much for having me. I'm super honored.

And I'm really, I have great respect for what you're doing. And I will continue to be a regular listener. Well, likewise, my friend. I aspire to your level of devotion. It's really, it's a beautiful thing. And you're an example of the solution to what ails us as individuals and as a culture right now that's struggling with how to cohere

and live in unity together. And I think that the message that you're putting out is exactly what everybody needs to hear right now. So keep doing what you're doing. I think you have the tendency to see the good in people. Thank you very much for your time. Always, I tried it. Thanks Rich, keep up the great work.

Cool, so if you wanna learn more about Raghunath, raghunath.yoga is your website. Raghunath.yoga or raghunathyogi at Instagram. And Wisdom of the Sages podcast. Wisdom of the Sages is our podcast. You can listen to it anywhere you get podcasts and you can binge listen. And we're on every day.

And when's this book coming out? You know, the same people who did Radhanath Swami's book is doing a book about my, I didn't wanna put out my story, but they were like, no, you should put out your story first. Yeah. And so we're doing a book on the six pillars of bhakti, which we're just talking about, but it's in the works right now.

I'm working on- So a memoir also, you got to do it. You have to, I mean, you got so many crazy stories. I got a bunch of crazy stories. The more I'm writing them, I was like, well, this is pretty crazy. Right. Well, get that done. Cause I know you were talking about it on Rogan and that was a year ago. That was a year ago. Let's get this book done. Well, I put on the brakes and then the publisher told me, no, they want, we want your story instead. All right, well, when that's done, come back here and share about that.

Thanks. Cool, all right, peace, man. Keep up the good work. Let's, namaste. Thanks for listening, everybody. For links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com.

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