The Rich Roll Podcast - From Punk to Monk: Raghunath Cappo on The Wisdom of The Sages, Bhakti Yoga & The Pursuit of a Spiritual Life

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

This week I am joined by Raghunath Cappo, a hardcore punk icon turned modern-day spiritual warrior and Bhakti yoga devotee, to discuss various facets of living a spiritual life. We talk about the transformative principles guiding the path of self-transcendence, examining cultural differences between India and America regarding spirituality and identity. We discuss the vital roles of mentors and the essence of yoga practices like mantra meditation, japa, ritual, kirtan, and devotional dancing as avenues for spiritual expression. Raghunath reflects on navigating the challenges of ego and ambition while nurturing spiritual growth, emphasizing the importance of mindful choices, boundaries, and self-regulation. Additionally, we underscore the power of storytelling, community, and positivity while looking ahead to Raghunath's continuing mission to inspire spiritual fulfillment.  Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Bon Charge: Wellness products designed to help you sleep better, recover faster, and boost your overall well-being. Get 15% OFF w/ code RICH ROLL 👉boncharge.com  On: 10% OFF your first order of high-performance shoes and apparel w/ code RICHROLL10👉on.com/richroll  AG1: Get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs 👉drinkAG1.com/richroll Waking Up: Get et a FREE month, plus $30 OFF mindfulness resources 👉wakingup.com/RICHROLL  Brain.fm: Science-backed sound for optimized productivity 👉brain.fm/richroll

Don't worry about changing the world. Worry about changing these things within yourself, and you will shift the world dramatically. How can we transcend the formidable barriers of ego and selfishness to embrace a life of service? I think there is something innate that is always tapping us on the shoulder. Hey, it's time to upgrade. Back for round two is my friend Raghunath Kapo,

otherwise known as Ray. Ray's a guy who left an indelible mark on the vibrant punk scene of Manhattan's Lower East Side with his band, Youth of Today, advocating for clean living, vegetarianism, and self-control. It's a moment-to-moment choice of light over darkness. Am I going to evolve today or devolve today? And I'm going to choose it by what I put in my mouth and what I put in my ears

and what I put in my eyes and how I treat other people. His journey led him to immerse himself in the rich spiritual culture of bhakti yoga, the details of which unfold in his new fantastic memoir, From Punk to Monk. I can do all the things I've always done, but in a different way. And I tell you, that different mindset changes everything. Let's do it, man. So good to see you. I'm delighted to have you back here. Congratulations on the new book. So much to catch up on. There's a lot going on in your life these days.

A lot going on. A lot going on in your life. Full appreciation for all that you do. So many of our listeners on our podcast talk about ritual and the transformational effect that you've had. You know, I really think that a lot of the ways we transform is what we put into our ears on our downtime and to have like communities of uplifting podcasts really transforms culture yeah it's cool you're doing it yeah you are as well I mean you do it every day right

we do a daily podcast we do a daily podcast has some, I have to skip some days because of traveling, but I have done it like on a mountains in Nepal. I've done it on cross-country drives where we just pull over and I do it from my iPhone. So it's not as refined as this beautiful studio, which I would like to get to one day. We get points for, we're trying our best to be every day on it. It's pretty cool. I can't imagine doing it every day. But I think there is something to your point around the power of podcasts, like the intentionality of that form of media. It's not a passive media. You have to seek it out. So anybody who ends up listening to your show or to this show, it's a different connection with what is

being transmitted than just what's on TV in the background or what is being transmitted than, you know, just what's on TV in the background or what's on your radio where you're a passive consumer of it as opposed to somebody who's seeking it out for a reason. Sure. The senses always want engagement. That's like a principle within the yoga system. The senses always want to be engaged, but how will they be engaged? What are you going to feed the tongue and the ears and the eyes? And so if there's something uplifting, something liberating, something grounding, then it's a good thing. Or confronting or challenging. Or challenging or make you ask those scary questions.

Who wants that? Nobody wants that. You are here at a very auspicious time for me personally, because I'm on the precipice of traveling to India for the very first time at the end of this week. Wow. And I've never been. Wow. What are you going to do? Why are you going?

The catalyst, the impetus is that I got invited by Arthur Brooks, who's a guest of this show, a professor at Harvard, who's taking a small group to Dharamsala to visit with the Dalai Lama. That's right. So I'm going to do that. And then my wife and I are going to go to Jaipur and travel around. So you're the perfect person to help me figure out how to best embrace this experience that I'm about to have, given the many pilgrimages that you've made. You know, I went to India in 1988 for the first time as a pilgrim, and I was 22. So India pre-internet, pre-cell phone, pre-digital television was almost like you're going to

another planet. If your intention, and I think yours and your wife's are, is something like substantial, the universe will arrange that you find that. But India has always historically been a great place for spiritual seekers. In my love of spiritual paths, I always found like there's a nugget of wisdom here. There's a pearl of wisdom there. There's a pearl of wisdom here. I find that the Vedic culture is the thread that ties all these pearls together. Like if you want to understand self-improvement, self-betterment, metaphysics, you know, mindfulness, calming the mind, looking inside, everything from diet, health, to life on other planets, to seeing beings,

to see spiritual beings and animals and plants and the earth itself. beings, to see spiritual beings and animals and plants and the earth itself. India is that thread that ties all these mysteries together. It's like a treasure chest of spiritual goodies that you can just uncover. And it's all there. And I found so much joy in going there. And I remember a prayer when I was 22 that one day I want to take people here to experience that. And so that's part of my annual joys. I take people on pilgrimages, not as tourists, not as backpackers, but to find some spiritual or transformational experience. And if a person wants it, they get it. And it's not like a conversion thing. The yoga system is about not converting a person. Okay, you're this, now I'm going to turn you into this. You're wearing this set of religious clothing,

now I'm going to want you to wear this set of religious clothing. It's more of, it's here to remind you of what you already are. Uncover what we already, everybody's a spiritual being. Everybody's a spiritual being that's forgotten. Now I think I'm an Italian American New Yorker. And that's just, that's a temporary truth. It's not an eternal truth. And when we see everybody like that, when we find everybody's commonality,

that's the magic of living in harmony in this world. What do we have in common instead of finding, how are we so different? That is where the world is leaning into right now. How are we different? How is he different from me? Why do I not like this person? How about what we have deeply in common? And that's what you get on a pilgrimage. Well, there's the distinction between traveling there as a tourist, traveling there as a pilgrim, quote unquote pilgrim. So I'm interested in that distinction,

but more broadly, the great differences between the culture of India and the culture of America with respect to how we think about identity. I mean, you touched on it. We love to craft these stories about who we are. I'm a podcaster, I'm an author, I'm an athlete. These things, these labels that we attach that become stories,

stories that inform a very calcified sense of who we are, what we're capable of, all at the cost of understanding that we are all spiritual beings having a human experience, that we are one, that we are united in that, and that that spiritual essence isn't just something that unites us as humans, but all living things, all things.

And this is something that, because of the sort of pressures or incentivizations, the whole structure of western modern society kind of pushes us away from sure it makes you latch up i have an identity with a small i a lowercase i that's that's i'm ray capo i'm ragunov i'm a yoga teacher or a singer of a punk band. And that's a real identity for a moment in time. But the message behind the teachings of the Vedas is, okay, but there's a real you too. There's a real you too. And that real you is the way you have to start to craft your mind to see everybody. And not just every human, but every animal, every plant, the planet itself,

higher beings, and ultimately God or how you perceive a higher power. And when you have that type of vision, and that's something you sort of got to work for because we're caught in a world of friends and enemies. We're caught in a world of differences. We're caught in a world of, you know, extracting the soul out of an animal or out of the forest and just seeing them as commodities. And when you live in that world that depersonalizes the personhood in a horse, in a cow, in a plant, in a forest, you've lived in a really sort of a me first and I me and mine world and it gets ugly quick and what is it about india that unravels that knot i think it's really sort of the disseminating

truths that have been passed down since you know before recorded time which is that very wide gate inclusive idea of spirituality which is not going to protest christmas look at these christians trying to understand god you're not going to protest a 12-step program you're not going to protest you know we want to rally behind people on their spiritual path you know when i when I was doing the band thing years later in shelter, and we had a message of bhakti, of connecting to your spiritual self. And I got a letter in the mail from a kid who was like, thanks to your message, I became a Greek Orthodox monk. I didn't look at them, oh man, the Greek Orthodox got them.

To me, that's a win. To have anybody connect with their spiritual self, I didn't look at them, oh man, the Greek Orthodox got them. To me, that's a win. To have anybody connect with their spiritual self where they're seeing their temporary self or the ego-driven self as secondary, that's a great thing. And it's great because one, it's going to give them a little bit more peace in this world. You need to because the way the material world is designed,

it starts to wreck the small I identity. You know, I just went through a very tough split up after a long marriage. And it was like, I saw myself, I'm a family man. I'm married, I have children. It was sort of devastating to my secondary identity, which is you can take a type of pride in what you are in this world. It's not even like a bad thing, not like I'm a criminal or I'm a drug dealer. It's like, I'm a family man.

That's like a good thing. But the way the material world, it just keeps pruning at your secondary identities to make you ultimately understand what your real identity is. And throughout the whole thing, if you can work through it, and Radha Naswami, who's one of my mentors who you had on your show, he just said, you go through this without resentment, without spite, and without revenge, which are very common things, which draw up when you're heated and you're frustrated or

you feel hurt. You want to get to spite. You want to dig for rebrands. You want to say like, this isn't fair. It's not fair. Why me? Or why did this happen to me? And you start getting that other mantra going through your head. This is happening for me. Start to reframe your identity. The universe, God, Krishna, however you want to perceive your higher power, is bringing you back to more subtle but more real identity. And the subtle is actually the solid. I'm sure you could look back at times, you know, when you were with, had a girlfriend for two years and you text each other every day, I love you. And some had previous marriages and it seemed like this is forever.

And then you look back 20 years later, five years later, 10 years later, it almost seems like a dream. Like, matter of fact, my dream last night was even more clear than what happened 10 years ago in that deep interwoven relationship and so you start to realize okay i get it this whole damn world is dreamlike because it just fades into these memories and so what is the real and that's sort of what that vedic culture

that yogic bhakti culture brings you to identify yourself as a spiritual being that's sort of what that Vedic culture, that yogic bhakti culture brings you to. Identify yourself as a spiritual being. That's never going to change. And people come into your life and I can't possess them. I can't possess my kids. I've tried to. I can't possess my spouse.

I can't possess my house. I can't possess my wealth. It will just come into me and then go away from me, come back greater, come back less. And it leaves you just sort of like, all I can do is take what I have and use it in a good way and love the people that I'm with, but don't think you're going to ever possess anything. It's all going to get pruned. And I use the pruning example because if you don't know anything about gardening, when they're lopping down the lilacs, It's all going to get pruned. And I use the pruning example because, you know,

if you don't know anything about gardening, when they're lopping down the lilacs, you're thinking, what are they doing? They're killing these good trees or lopping the roses or lopping the berries. It's not to destroy the garden. It's to enhance the growth of the garden. It's to enhance the fruit production. It's to enhance the flowers and the scent.

And so this is what the material world is designed. And when you see it like that, which is hard, I'm not saying I'm above all this. It's hard. I had, you know, first time in my life anxiety attacks in the breakup of my family unit. Definitely not saying I'm above anything. But I will say to have that perspective like, okay, this is for me. It gave me some type of banister to hold on to when the sinkhole of the material world just fell out underneath your feet. Yeah, the ballast, like when everything gets stripped away, what's left? Short of having a spiritual connection or a sense of transcendent meaning in one's life, you're going to feel lost. And it's interesting that amidst this process of

you having to, you know, grapple with non-attachment and the impermanence of things with all the work that you've done and all the talks that you've given that, you know, God or your higher power or the world just hurls at you this very relatable real world problem that a lot of people go through. And you have to go through your own struggle with it, just like anybody else. So we talk about the fact that we are spiritual beings, but the other like aspect of that clause is we're having a human experience. We're still in human form, and we're prone to all of those frailties and emotions and things that come up. And yes, it's here for your evolution, but I'm sure that didn't make it feel any easier and perhaps even made you angrier, right? Like, haven't I done enough work, and now I have to do this?

But as humans, what are we attaching to that make us feel safe, that make us feel like our lives have meaning? It's our relationship to other people. It's our membership in certain groups and it's the identities that we craft. And even when you've done all this work to kind of transcend that to some level, this idea of being a family man, when that gets threatened, you're like, well, why this? Right. This is a good thing, right? Let this be the good thing. I'm being good. Yeah, that was beautiful. You know, your work and what we were talking about earlier, outside the story of my book, one of my big takeaways was, after writing it, was what we do on a regular basis starts to create us. You know, that with running or with working out

or doing yoga or doing martial arts, what we do on a regular basis starts to create the fabric of our being and our thoughts. And so one reason why I started our podcast was really not for anybody else but me because I had a group of all my students who like to hear this philosophy. And then I thought, you know what?

The very teachings say the way to transform is to hear truth on a regular basis, hear wisdom on a regular basis. So people do it reading the big book, you know, reading the Bible or reading, you know, Vedic teachings or reading the Bhagavad Gita. Cultures do it around the world, but hearing your podcast, anything that's going to deliver some type of direction, appropriate stepping in this world, appropriate movement in this world, appropriate thought process in this world. If I can hear something on a regular basis, so I really started my podcast really for me, so I'd have some accountability. So I'd have to show up on a regular basis. I think the success of the Rich Roll podcast, if you don't mind me saying is, is you're not preaching to us. You're sharing your experience in the struggle of the human meat puppet that we're in and the mind that goes with that meat puppet

and how to deal with the gain, the loss, the success, the failures, the betrayals, the love, yet still staying on a path. And I think that vulnerability permits other people to now to drop the bravado and also be vulnerable as well. And I think that's why we're so attracted to your podcast. Well, I think one thing we share in common is that we don't preach. I think people might misjudge you and think that you're in this preacher form, but that's not really what you're doing. I mean, I really try to avoid giving people advice or telling people what they should or they shouldn't do. I share my experience. That's something I've learned in recovery. Like that's like a core principle. I'm not here to take your inventory or judge your life choices.

I'm here to share my experience and I'll have interesting people on and I'll probe their minds. But I never look to camera and say, don't do this or do this. I think you have that same sensibility in the way that you share your experiences and the wisdom of the people that you've spent time with. But like what is the mission that you're spent time with. But like, what is the mission that you're on? Like, how do you articulate it? We all have some different karma, you know, in this world to affect ourselves and our universe around you. And some people have very big universes. They're big influencers, so to speak, or they have an influence in a small way. Everyone has some influence

because they are energy going out even we think well i'm not that influential you are to a certain degree and sometimes you are to maybe three people and that one person that you're influencing will reach tens of thousands of people you know there's been people that have touched my life deeply that don't have much influence in this world. But then I took what they said and I wrote a song about it. And, you know, tens of thousands of people got into animal rights or something. So we never know how much influence we have. But the focus always goes back to us.

How can I change? Don't worry about changing the world. Worry about changing these things within me, and you will shift the world dramatically, whether you even realize it or not. And if I zoom out of my own life, we'll see actually there is a change there. So my biggest responsibility is how am I going to react? How am I going to treat myself? How am I going to treat other people? Can I walk with integrity, even though I'm coming from maybe a dented can background where I'm a little broken myself? We're a little broken in this material world. Sometimes we've come from broken families,

or sometimes we've come in from some dysfunctional, traumatic past. Can I piece myself together? And can there be some hero's journey through it all and sometimes I deal with people and I too I don't like to give unsolicited advice but if a person comes to me like here's what I'm struggle with this is all the the marks I had against me as I grew up and had abandoned parents or I was homeless or I you know I was traumatized as a child what do I do with that I have suffered from self-loathing. If you fall into one of these categories, you got to understand your climb out of that,

your recovery out of that, you're recognizing yourself to being, I'm a spiritual being and whatever happened is the past. How I move forward is going to start to set an example, and it's going to be a very beautiful major motion picture or a novel that people are going to read, and they're going to be inspired, and you're going to affect people that went through the same hell you went through. You can't make some of that past go away, but you can show how to move in this world, of that past go away. But you can show how to move in this world, you know, with dignity and grace,

having had that done to you, having had what happened, happened to you. And can you move forward? That is going to be an example, a shining example for a lot of people. And so you live that life, you write that book, or you just tell your story. If you've been to a 12-step program where people tell their story, that's the most encouraging thing out there. Yeah. And you realize all of those stories have a three-act structure to them and they are all mini hero's journeys in their own right. Like we all have the opportunity to, you know, embark on our version of that, even if it's, you know, even if that arc is very small, it can be meaningful in the transformation of that singular life, right? And I think fundamentally at its core, that's about whatever has happened to you kind of owning that as a lever or an opportunity to

grow or evolve. And if your life is lacking meaning or purpose, it can be found through that ownership and deciding that you're gonna walk that path and say, well, here's what happened to me. How can I grow? How can I evolve? And then how can I share my experience with others? I like that that's a big part of recovery. It's a big part of bhakti as well

is we're not just taking care of ourself. We're taking care of ourself and then we're just extending hands. And that's part of our own healing, if I can now help somebody else. So your initial question was, you know, what do you see as your mission? It's really just to keep my own head on straight, and then extend a hand, and give love, and don't try to be possessive. And sometimes you do give a lot of love, you'll get betrayal and that's okay. And, you know, sometimes I've had to live with, man, I gave so much love to that person. And that's almost part of the life lesson too. Like,

well, why were you given that love? Did you want something in return? It's like the universe is conspiring to teach us how to be lovers again. Not like the most basest type of love, like a 17-year-old kid going, I love her. I'd love to get with her, which is not love at all. It's misusing this very, very high conception of love. You just want to consume that person. You're looking at that person like a lion loves a lamb. You're not looking at like the highest form of love, which is how can I give this person, care for this person and nurture this person and not really expect anything back. Yeah. In the most non-transactional way. In the most non-transactional way. And I feel like that's one of my lessons right now I'm going through right

now. It's a tough one. It's a tough one. It's a tough one. But the other piece to this in your story and what you just related is something I think is very powerful, which is the power of one, the power of the individual. Like there's great agency in that because when you look at your story,

you're somebody who basically has always been this rebel within rebellious scenes. Like you were a rebel even in the punk movement. To be a straight edge hardcore punk in the broader punk movement was somewhat rebellious. And then to once again within that become like this spiritual punk rocker to talk about like God and all the like within the punk movement. Also, that might be the most transgressive thing yet until I kind of own that and then in turn, see how that ripples out and creates consequential change.

It was- As just a guy. Yeah, I was just sort of like raising the bar for myself because I was a spokesperson. It had a ripple effect outward. And I was an artist. I was a songwriter. And therefore, the sort of ran with that phrase and it became like a culture of, you know, clean living, animal rights, positive thinking, which was, you know, the early 80s punk scene was getting a bag of airplane glue and snuffing it and smoking angel dust. And it was like depressing and sad sad and I watched young people run away from home

and die and so it created a bubble because you know early 80s everything was corporate rock and roll so we were bound and I write about this in my book but going from Connecticut suburb to hanging out in the Lower East Side of New York in the early 80s when New York was a completely lawless, serpico time of life where the cops were corrupt and there was violence everywhere and you're hanging around this dingy Lower East Side. You're taking your life into your hands, but you were connected with everybody, not just punks, just any, we were just connected by freakdom. Any freak out there, we'd all congregate on the Lower East Side, and anything out of the norm was like freakdom, and you learned to live. Truthfully, it was a

lesson that the world could use right now. We learned just to live and tolerate everybody because we're all felt like outcasts. I wandered off your initial question. Yeah, no, well, it's just the power of the individual to affect change. But I think, you know, when you were sharing that story, I was thinking about the foreword that Moby wrote to your book. And, you know, he's somebody who has a similar backstory, Connecticut kid, you know,

then he was like squatting and, you know, these places on the Lower East Side and Soho and Tribeca, et cetera, when the scene was happening. Have you had him on the show? I have, a long time ago. Oh, okay. Yeah, I know Moby.

But the interesting reflection that he had was that, and you had shared before the podcast, like, oh, you're out in the world and you meet lawyers and all different kinds of professional people who have some connection to that scene and were part of it back in the day, but they go on and they build lives

within the construct of the Western world. Like this Crossroads. Yeah, like tell that story, like Tal, the chef and the owner of Crossroads, you see him at dinner last night. Went out to dinner last night and Tal, the owner of Crossroads, was great, incredible vegan restaurant in Los Angeles. And they opened one in Calabasas. So we went there and I don't really know him that well, but I met him once before and he just, she said, I went, he just took me around the restaurant and then just said, and introduced

me to, I think his lawyer and said, this is Ray. He's the reason why this restaurant exists. And I was like, I didn't know what you're talking about, but, you know, he's a kid somewhere in America. I don't know where he was from, truthfully, but they got a record and they get inspired. They change the trajectory of their life and I never like wrote a song for him, but it's just when you internalize something and it changes you in a deep way,

positive or negative, it goes out into the universe and you have a ripple effect and what he's doing is, you know, creating a culture of, you know, clean diet, refined eating, where people can come and have these incredible meals and promote a cruelty-free lifestyle. And it was very impressed. And the thing is, they get it at this young age. It really doesn't matter what age, but for a lot of these kids in the music scene,

it was at a young age. Changed the whole trajectory of their life. And whenever we've had, and I'm sure for yourself as well and myself, when we're on a speeding train going south and someone pulls a lever, now that train's now going north, and we start to feel like,

wow, I was on a runaway train to hell on earth. And we start to develop a lot of gratitude towards the people in our life. And I could just tell by the way he spoke with such soft humility. He doesn't have to be humble. He's got very successful restaurants. He's doing great things, but he was just so humble and grateful. It was so sweet to have that exchange with him. The writing of the book too, and I'm sure the writing of your book too, you start to realize how so many people have been sent to you as messengers, as deliverers of truth. And sometimes they were handing me a message and I just looked away, but they've always been there there's always been sort of you know lighthouses or um guides or messengers that have come and at different times we just take them i was just

meditating on that this morning i was like if i was to fully embrace everything that's be be offered to me right now i would be a whole different person. But I'm only taking as much as I want because I have some plan B perhaps. So yeah, if we can fully embrace and maybe it takes sort of lifetimes of heaven and hell on earth to fully embrace 100% light instead of darkness. There is something about looking in the rearview mirror and trying to make sense of one's life and all the things that have happened along the way to deliver you to this place. And I think your book speaks to this idea that

when you do that rigorously, you will see how people arrive right at the right moment. Right at the right moment, right? To create these formative experiences for your growth and benefit. And within that, you can't help but see a spirituality that God is showing up for you. see a spirituality that God is showing up for you. Sure. And sometimes you can see that just in meeting a person. And I know people who are just spiritually evolved,

they can look at your face and they can just tell a person, like I've had to make some certain choices in my life and I would consult with a guru or a teacher and they say, let me see a picture of them. And just through seeing a person's face, they can see the karma of a person. It may sound otherworldly or not, but I've seen that happen. I've also seen through good astrologers that I've had

that study, you know, Jyotish, you know, Vedic astrology, where they say, yep, this person, no matter what you give them in this lifetime, they can only get this far. They're going to have to go around a couple more times. Yeah. And then certain people are very, they have, you know, some, you know, moksha yoga in their chart where they're so accessible to this as well. That doesn't mean you should stop extending your hand because life is eternal. It just, it doesn't end. I was listening to your Tommy Rives podcast and he was sharing a lot of that stuff as well. Yeah, it just keeps going. We

don't go away. And we choose right in this moment, am I going to evolve today or devolve today? And I'm going to choose it by what I put in my mouth and what I put in my ears and what I put in my eyes and how I behave and how I treat other people and how I treat myself. It's not like I joined a religion. Now I'm saved. It's not that black and white according to Vedic teachings. It's a moment-to-moment choice of light over darkness, truth over illusion, however you want to word it to bring it back to the thing that i wanted to raise with you which is what moby reflected in in the foreword was this idea that so many people from that scene that you two were both part of like ended up like going into the

world like tall like they become professionals whatever but life instead made you dig even deeper like you decided not to go that route you become more disciplined and more invested in those formative principles that were at the core of that scene all the way back when you were a kid sure yeah and i don't know why you know you don't know why sometimes you get i meet people like who listen to our podcast and just be like you know i'm 55 years old and i need to live a different life now i've worked a corporate life and now i want a spiritual life you don't know when that thing is going to click sometimes a midlife like, what am I doing with my life? You know, what am I doing here?

Okay, I have kids. I've raised a family. Now what? We do that. I've checked off the bucket list. I've been to Aruba. I've been to Cancun. Now what?

It's like, I want some substance. And sometimes you get it at a young age. And I've met people younger than me who are just spiritually focused at 11. I can't believe it. And then for me, it was just like a loud calling like at 22. And so I don't know why. It's some karmic thing meets some mercy.

You meet someone who touches your heart and then you realize, oh, that's an option. I can be like that? I thought this was normal. There's a higher version of normal. So I think the biggest catalyst for change in anybody is to associate with people who have a high caliber of what normal is, a refined, high vibe. This is normal.

And then by getting around people, and that's why I think pilgrimage is so important because you search out people like that who live this type of life. And you're just like, wow, that is an option. I could add some of that to my life. And I think there is something innate in the living entity and the living being that is always sort of tapping us on the shoulder. Hey, it's time to upgrade. Just like you get that thing that drops down on your computer. Time to download the new operating system. And you're sort of like, remind me later.

Never see this message again. It's never at a convenient time. And upgrading is never at a convenient time. How to upgrade my life is never at a convenient time. But you got to do it or you hit that never see this message again. And then you just figure it out in your next life or your next life and your next life. And for people who think, well, next life, what the hell are you talking about? Guess what? We've had next lives within this life. I can look back 20 years ago. I was in a different house,

a different part of the country, had a different career, different circle of friends, a different partner. I've had many next lives, past lives in this life. So if people can't believe, and I get it, all I see is this life. If you can't believe in some afterlife or some previous life, think about the many lives we've had in this life. Think about the many incarnations we've had, both physically. I remember when I was a raw foodist. I was like $1.50 soaking wet with a crystal in my pocket. Or I had a different body when I was doing jujitsu every day.

I've had different physical frames within this life. And with that physical frame comes a different type of mind or different type of intelligence. I've reincarnated, so to speak, that mind or think about your 17 year old intelligence, your 17 year old ego, your 17 year old mind. It was a completely different mind. Everything and that physical and that subtle physical is constantly in flux. And I'm just witnessing and choosing. And it's in the refinement of my choices that I create my next body, meaning even tomorrow, what my body is tomorrow. What is bhakti yoga? When you talk about yoga in the west we think it conjures up a certain image a very lululemon oriented kind of lifestyle so maybe share a little bit about the origins of yoga how we should think about it and what is specific or particular about this bhakti yoga strain of yoga consciousness?

Well, within Vedic culture, Vedic culture is a way of settling the mind so we can focus on our spiritual self and ultimately source. Within bhakti, bhakti is a way of the spirit soul connecting with source. Who would you say a sorcerer? That's what a sorcerer is, isn't it? Spirit soul connecting with source. Who would you say a sorcerer? That's what a sorcerer is, isn't it? Spirit soul connecting with source. And there's a process to doing it. And when we think of yoga,

we think of a physical practice. And it's important to take care of your body. But if I'm taking care of my body merely to like endorse my ego, which is the reason why a lot of people go to the gym. There's a line between I'm taking care of my body because I don't want to be a couch potato. You get a certain type of good feeling

of showing up on a regular basis to, you know, exercise or to breathe or go into the sauna. But there can be a certain point where you're doing this to cement yourself tighter to the body. So in a spiritual paradigm, the body is a gift. It's not you. It's a gift that you have. And if you were to lend me your bicycle and I gave it back to you trashed, I wouldn't be a good friend. So our body should be taken care of. But within

the yoga system, the emphasis for the teacher should be always encouraging you to see yourself underneath the body and the mind. And in bhakti, we use certain practices to reconnect to source and to see myself as a spiritual being. japa, which is Indian rosary, where you're chanting divine sound. Ritual, which can be worship of spiritual forms of deity. It's through kirtan, through singing, which is basically you're singing and calling divinity into your life, and even dancing. And it's interesting because things like singing and dancing, it's like you can't figure them out like you can't try to like put that under some type bring it into the lab and try to figure out what is but there's something transformative about singing and dancing that when we do kirtan which is uh call and response chanting of sacred sounds or sonic meditation you can see a transformation happen in people and people will share their experience there

they'll i don't know what happened but i just started crying and it has a i call it a scrubbing bubbles effect remember that commercial for scrubbing bubbles? It was like spray it on and it cleans your bathtub. But the scrubbing bubbles on the consciousness, they say. The idea is it's a pure soul theology that you're not born sinful. You're not born broken or dented. You're actually pure. But for lifetimes of bad choices,

that's the sun of the soul gets covered in the same way a window of your old barn gets covered by dirt and dust and grime. So the mantras have a scrubbing effect on the consciousness, scrubbing effect on the heart, scrubbing effect on the mind, not to recreate you, but to uncover you. So more than like preaching a religion, this is something you could do in the privacy of your own home. You don't like

religion? I get that. Makes sense. So religion takes people sometimes in crazy ways. In the privacy of your home, you can sit. We use the Hare Krishna Maha Mantra, or Maha means like a great, like a Mahatma Maha Mantra, where you chant on malas or beads, and you chant as if you're calling divinity into your life. The sounds have effect, and that's a huge part of all spiritual culture, especially from the East. The sounds we hear have the greatest effect of transformation. I think it's safe to say you can analyze that. You can hear, there can be sounds. We can listen to YouTube or CNN or Fox that makes us like angry. After you turn off that, I'm angry now at the world. I'm angry at this enemy. Then there's sounds that sort of uplift us. You know, I always like to start like an interview and this isn't like forced or

manipulative. This is genuine. I meditate on appreciating the person that I'm with. And so sounds of appreciation, of glorification of another person, that's something we don't learn in high school. In high school, I learned how to take everybody down, cut people down, cut them down to size, make myself look better. But there's spiritual sounds where you start to appreciate another person, appreciate your parents. And if you walk through that world of gratitude, of appreciating, of not complaining, that changes your landscape. So there's positive and negative sounds, and then there's actually transcendental sounds.

And the entire Vedic system deals with a refined sound, actually. In Bhakti Yoga, we use this one to actually transcend the body. These mantras to transcend the body and to connect with source. The very basic ones I said were like negative sounds, like gossip, positive sounds, appreciation. But the whole Vedic culture uses all these other interesting sounds. There's mantras you can chant for abundance, mantras you can chant for progeny. I was taking a handful of students to this one temple where I knew one of the priests. And he was a young man

from this seminal succession of priests. And he said, Raghunath, if any of your ladies want to get pregnant, my older brother can help. And I was laughing to myself. All the women were like, what? But the idea was that, yeah, they just know mantras and yajnas to perform. The idea was that, yeah, they just know mantras and yajnas to perform. That if you have a problem, sometimes women have a hard time having a baby. There's a sound for that. We can help with that. Yeah, it's fascinating that over many centuries, this culture has figured out certain sounds that have a variety of impacts on the human vessel's ability to connect with the divine and how they determined that. And not just the divine.

That wasn't a divine. That was reaching out to higher beings, to the devas, just for some material benefit, like having a child. And that's a whole other facet of Indian understanding of devas and devis or higher beings for giving you material prosperity. In bhakti, we're not asking for stuff. We don't pray to Vishnu or to Krishna for what we want. We pray for, give me what we need,

which is a very scary prayer sometimes. Give me what I need, because sometimes what I need is not what I want. Sometimes I have to pray, help free me from my desires. Because my desires can cause me lots of trouble. Sure. But yoga fundamentally means to yoke, right? It is this idea of how do we take this human form and connect it with something transcendent. And these practices and all these different traditions, the bhakti tradition that you just shared, are really about preparing the body or orienting the body into a state in which it becomes more receptive to that sure and it creates a new mind that's what's happening the gross things that we do initially okay you know what i'm getting this is what i tell my kids there is no good that can come from alcohol there's no good there's no good i i have certain ones that i say on a regular basis like my mom used to say things to me on a regular basis. And thank God she did because they stuck with me.

Like, never take drugs. That was my old Brooklyn mother just like putting that in my ear thousands of times. Usually that ends up creating the opposite effect. Sometimes it does. It depends how it's delivered. But yes, I always say, no good's gonna come from alcohol, you guys.

No good. Your highest self is not gonna come from that. You don't need it. And if you say, well, no, it doesn't affect me. Hey, you should see what you're going to be like without it. You can be able to do much more. And some people say, well, it's not a big deal. I just have a glass of wine with dinner. And some people, a glass of wine with dinner doesn't hurt them, but it might hurt a person that looks up to you that can't have one glass of wine. Because some people can't have one glass of wine. They need seven glasses of wine with their dinner.

They can't be normal in the world. They have to be extreme because that's somehow... I'm wired to be a little extreme myself. Just the idea of, you know, yoking the body, connecting the human vessel to something more divine and self-transcendent. What I was saying earlier, what we do on a regular basis creates us and our morning rituals, and I'm sure you have a whole set of morning rituals, but our morning rituals creates us as well. And in bhakti, there's a real emphasis on morning rituals, and it can be

slightly different towards the person. And then if you start getting a taste for them, because like some people like say, okay, I gotta run every day. You're like, what the hell? I can't run. I'm gonna wake up and run. But after a while, you get, it's like a taste for it.

Like now I want to run. I'm eager to do it. So in bhakti, there's morning rituals. And when you get a taste for doing it for five minutes, for 10 minutes, for 15 minutes, or sit there for two hours of concentrated, focused meditation, when you get a taste for it, then it starts to bleed into your evening rituals. Then you want evening rituals. You don't want to wind down.

My father used to wind down with hard liquor. He had seven kids. He was a school teacher. And that's how he would wind down, sit in the dark and just drink alcohol. God bless him. Yeah. And God bless my father.

He's a great guy, actually. But we want to take those morning rituals and we want to add an evening ritual as well. And then what's happened is you sandwiched in your day. And then everything you've done in the morning and the evening start to happen in the course of your thoughts in the day. And they affect how you're going to move throughout the day. I think it's safe to say in my life that if I start off with the strong morning rituals, that's changing the way I treat everybody, treat myself, the words that come out

of my mouth. If I start off bad for some reason or another, it's affected me all day long. So what is that morning ritual? The good one or the bad one? The good one. Oh, the good one for myself? Yeah. The good one for myself. I'll show you my abbreviated one today. My abbreviated one was we woke up from traveling and we basically got here, had an hour to take a break. And then we went to dinner last night. So,

but I wanted to have some peace of mind. Now, when I get back, I'm going to take a red eye tonight and I'm going to play a show tomorrow night. So I've got to be like, okay, I've got to take care of this body because I can't work like I used to work when I was even 38 or something like that. So this morning I just sat in a focused place for 32 minutes and just chanted on Joppa. Actually, at first I sat in bed and prayed to previous teachers, teachers that I've never met but I've read their works. And I prayed for them to give me some type of intelligence

to sort of work through my body in the same way they've changed me, that I can say something that can lift up somebody else. So there was a, I'd say about 20 minutes of that. And Japa are the prayer beads. Japa is like an Indian rosary, which is like a refined type of just like focused, where it's not just like you're clearing the mind. You're actually inviting spiritual sound, inviting spiritual God into your heart and to asking for direction in the course of the day.

And then I did a pranayama for 12 minutes. And then I did as cold as a California shower can be. Uh-huh. So it's sort of- And then I did, like, before that, I did 15 handstands back to back. There you go. One after another.

There you go. That was my movement. So breathwork, cold shower, this is like very much an ancient version of a very modern, you know, of the moment protocol. All these guys, whether it's like Huberman or Joe Rogan, they're all talking about this stuff that I learned in the ashram.

We take cold baths every morning, intermittent fasting, the stuff we did in the ashram. The thing is now they're really into the science about it. And I appreciate that. But I just sort of, I don't know why, but I just had faith in these yogis from ancient traditions because I had an interest in metaphysics and mystics and hermits and saints.

So I would read these books as an 18-year-old about the life of yogis and autobiography of a yogi and Swami Rama and Swami Prabhupada and their lifestyle and their life. And I thought, oh, I could do that. I could try that. I could adopt a little bit of that into my life. But now, you know, here he is 40 years later, and these things are actually in the conversation because I think truth is universal. I don't think any religion or any country has a monopoly on God or has a monopoly on truth or has a monopoly on wisdom.

It's all there. And it will go back to this, I'm not a body. I'm going to sit in this cold water. The yogis of ancient times would sit in the Ganges in the winter when it's freezing. Not for the health benefits or the inflammation, you know, it gets rid of inflammation and stuff like that. It does all that too. Just like your yoga practice, it has a very positive effect on the body. What it really does, like sitting in a cold plunge is, you start to understand, I'm not these sensations. I'm not my mind. I can make this miserable by going,

it's so cold. I can give meaning to the experience or I can just notice a sensation. And that's, I can take outside of that experiment into my world. Oh, this is happening to me. Oh, my heart was broken. Oh, I got so much good fortune here. Oh, this person betrayed me. And I can just say, this is happening to me. What am I going to add to this? Am I going to add some meaning to this? Or do I just see this?

These are things are just coming and going. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, there's all these on-ramps to receptivity to all these practices. And currently science and all the kind of studies around sauna and cold plunge and fasting and all of that connect with a lot of people who have no relationship to anything beyond, you know, the kind of immediate material world, right? But there is something really-

Which is a good thing. I don't want to poo-poo on that. But I see them as like portals of entry that set people in motion on a path towards the possibility of a higher state of awareness. of renunciant practices and asceticism that are really about getting outside your comfort zone or interrupting the pattern of your life so that you can be more present and you can connect with something bigger than yourself, whether it's a cold plunge or a fast or a silent meditation. Like these are all uncomfortable practices, right?

But they're all oriented around developing a greater spiritual receptivity. A greater spiritual receptivity or just to separate yourself from your conditioning and your mind. I mean nothing separates you more from the mind than choosing not to eat for a week. Right. And when your mind is saying, okay, it's time to eat. It's time to eat. And then you're getting some sensation and then you realize, I don't need to eat. I don't even need to eat to

feel like I'm in peak performance right now. Have you ever run on a fast? I have. Yeah. I mean, you realize you can do much more than you think, which is empowering. And also it connects you with the power of discipline to change your life. And you're somebody for whom discipline goes way back, whether it's the straight edge lifestyle, this thing that you do that requires that level of discipline and focus plays out or translates into the spiritual realm as well with these morning rituals and the way that you kind of approach your daily life. So talk a little bit about how discipline spills over into the bhakti yoga lifestyle and how that can be a vehicle for growth and evolution. You touched on jujitsu, and I was thinking

one of the beautiful parts of jujitsu or just grappling on a regular basis with people with all different body sizes. You know, I'm not that big, so sometimes a big guy just laying on top of you, sweating and stinking on top of you you don't fight out of rage you fight like if you see like great jujitsu fighters they're moving slow and methodically it's not something when you think of these guys just raging on each other like

road rage it's actually it's like a mindfulness. I can't describe it anyway. You're actually mindfully like a warrior would be training. And that's a huge difference. Because once you act out of rage or out of, you know, in the yogic system, they call it rajas or rajaguna. It means you're acting with like a passion or of, it's not done with a clarity of intelligence. It's just done without intelligence behind it. Almost the intelligence is locked up. So if you can do it in a very calm mind, and that's why a breathing practice or a pranayama practice, which I've had for a long time, is it gets you in that place no matter where you are, even in great times of stress, even in a

physical fight. If you practice yoga on a regular basis every day, and you're practicing deep breathing while you're doing, that follows you through the course of a day. What we do in those rituals, it follows you through the course of the day. Just saying earlier with our thoughts, your question was? The relationship between discipline and spiritual growth. The relationship between discipline and spiritual growth. Yeah. First of all, there's a feeling of any type of discipline.

You feel a type of integrity that comes with showing up on a regular basis. And integrity or lack of integrity affects the mind. You try to tell a kid to be a good kid and get out there and don't be depressed hey if you're not doing integrity driven acts of course your mind is going to be sad of course there's going to be self-loathing we can't forget the initial thing you if you want some self-worth you got to act in a worthy way and this is a problem with you know raising teenagers is kids get addicted to things and get addicted to habits that aren't worthy and therefore there's a lot of self-loathing there's suicide in in teenagers and adults so integrity is not the goal in our spiritual life but integrity is a foundation and so and it's hard because because culture is luring you away from integrity every minute.

It's like interest only, zero down. How close can we get to... I guess one Christian priest said, how close can I get to sin without sinning? You know what I mean? It's like we're always getting tempted to the edge. And culture will do that to us and then chastise us for crossing that line immediately for crossing that line. But we've created a whole culture that is trying to throw us off the tracks. And so it is extra difficult. And back to that thing where if you associate with people or a community, which you have here and which we're trying to create with our podcast and our people, is community that lifts us as well. And the community emboldens you when you're weak. And then you lift them. They use the analogy of a twig. Easy to snap a twig, hard to snap 50 twigs.

So we're weak, we're fallible, and we want to be around people that lift us higher. And I think that that's an important premise in what we're doing. And to recognize that, you know, we are frail and we are weak and we need positive, uplifting people as friends and within our community. And all this stuff,

the integrity, the community, that helps us get to our next level of, okay, now they're not going to do the work for you. They're just going to be there as an environment. And in that environment, then our own spiritual life can grow. And that's sort of like a one-on-one thing, God. I can give my kids the facility. I can give them the appropriate household. I can give them the appropriate foods and, hey, you guys don't watch that media, don't consume that stuff. But ultimately, everyone's got to fly their own plane. There's no 12-step program or Catholic church or anything that's going to save you. They're just going to provide an environment for you or an ashram. you, they're just going to provide an environment for you or an ashram. I've seen people come to an ashram and do all types of nonsense or live a duplicitous life where they have a public presentation and a private life as well. And really that spiritual growth, that comes from

you just opting in to, I'm going to be my authentic self today. One of the things that trips me up or one of my weaknesses, I mean, I consider myself a pretty disciplined person, but all of the noticeable growth in my life is really the result of pain or being backed into a corner in which, you know, I had no other choice. And I'm in a situation right now, probably somewhat analogous to, you know, how you're interfacing with life, where things are really good. My kids are doing

great. I've got this thing here that's very fulfilling. It feels meaningful. I know that other people out in the world get meaning from it. And I love it. And I get up in the morning excited to do it. But on some level, I'm stuck. There's no impetus to continue to grow. Fundamentally, I know I'm here to grow, to evolve, but it's very difficult to do that when you're not being pressured to do it. You were talking about how the community can make you stronger. It can hold you accountable as well, or as a mirror to show you where you still require some level of evolution. And this is like a conversation that I'm always in with my wife, right?

Who's a much more spiritually committed person than I am. I still have my ego rooted in the material world in ways that I'm working on, but I find my, you know, ambition or my, you know, proclivity to care too much about what random people I've never met think about what I'm doing influenced me in ways that I really don't like. Yeah. It's amazing how with all the validation we get,

one rogue comment on a social media like, oh, it hurts so much. I've gotten better at it, but yeah. Yeah. It's a thing. And so as much as I can sit here and say, oh, this podcast is an act of SEVA and, like, I'm here, you know, and there is that aspect of it. But these things are not binary. Like, I can identify where my ego comes into play here in ways that I know need some work and some redress.

So how do you think about ego and ambition as somebody who has lived the monk life but isn't a renunciant? You're in the world and you're doing things and, you know, creating experiences for people and, you know, in some ways very much straddled between these two worlds. You know, first of all, I want to address your humility or you just being genuine. When you're in it, it's hard to notice it. But the fact that you're showing up on a regular basis, it's like the hands of a clock. It doesn't appear like you're changing because it's just me doing it again. But you're changing. I bet if you look five years ago at appear like you're changing because it's just me doing it again. But you're changing. I bet if you look five years ago at yourself, you're a whole different person today. And I think the ego is also not an on-off switch as well. I'm going to turn off my ego now.

But the more of the external ego identifies with the genuine self, there's a real self that wants to serve divinity and other living beings. Once that's in line, that's the perfection of the ego in this world. We're not going to abolish the ego. It wouldn't exist. But when the ego exists within serving God, serving the divine, whatever you want to call your higher power, or in serving humanity, and I'm going to make it wider than humanity, all living entities, then that's a beautiful place to be. And it might appear like, okay, you know, you've got all this and you've got, everything's are going well, et cetera, like that. That's okay. You don't have to, you don't

have to like kill your family and move to a cave to get rid of your ego. That's not going to work. You have to love. And you love and you don't, you understand. Because everything is going good. And I think for most people, I don't think for you, most people, good karma can ruin their life. Good karma could make them think, yeah, the material world is a great place.

What's bad with the material world? I'm getting all my desires met. And it becomes a stunt to their growth. It becomes a stunt. It keeps you stuck. Generally, I always say, give it time. Reversals happen. Sure. These things are all very impermanent.

I think you do this too. We cultivate exactly what you just said. These things are impermanent. And so when the reversal happens, which it inevitably does, you're a little bit more prepared and it becomes more of a lesson and less of a bitterness in the same way we use that example. Why is he cutting down my garden? He's not cutting down your garden. He's enhancing the growth right now. I had the beautiful opportunity. One of my students who I was very close to and lived locally got cancer and wasn't sure. And he didn't get through it, so to speak, physically, but

spiritually it got through it. And I had the ability to witness him slowly letting go of his attachments, and he was just attached to God. I grew through so much of his experience. I had to be his sort of life coach, death coach, eternality coach, and I never thought I could do such a thing. I was always a little freaked out about what happens if a friend dies, and he was a young man married with kids and good-. And, you know, he was, when I would go away, he would assist, he would sub my classes for me as a yoga teacher and, and done everything right, so to speak. And to be with him

and to watch him grow through that process was so beautiful to witness that it inspired faith in me, that things do reverse sometimes on a dime. And what we're doing on a regular basis is preparing us for that. And we understand that actually there is no loss. There is no loss. There's just gain. That loss or that bitterness or that why-me-ness or that victimhood, that's going to plague everybody in this universe. Everybody gets that. Once you sign up for a material body, you're going to get that. Are you going to run with that? Are you going to relinquish that and see my life as blessed? And those who've opted into seeing my life as blessed, they live a blessed life because they're seeing those blessings happen at any moment. And those who've opted into seeing my life is blessed, they live a blessed

life because they're seeing those blessings happen at any moment. And those are the people I want in my life. Have you seen people go from being victim mindset oriented to having that sense of being blessed in the way that you just described? Like, can you make that leap? Are some people just wired to be pessimistic and, you know, woe is me and bad things happen to me and it's never going to change to that place of gratitude and understanding? I think we are wired certain ways with good attitudes and bad attitudes. And by inviting people into our lives, just like people, every time they turn on the Rich Roll podcast, they're inviting you into their life. They're inviting your guests into their life. So by inviting people into our lives, it sort of opens maybe a different door that was bolted shut. So I think it's important to be like

really, really careful who we invite into our life because some people are like creating real problems in our life and we're inviting them randomly by whatever I tune into my podcast or my radio. And we're inviting that into our life. We're inviting lyrics of songs into our life. We're inviting media or movies and attitudes that go with those movies.

You know, the characters, the archetypes of these movies. And we're like, I like that guy. That guy's cool and tough. I want to be like that guy. We're inviting that into our life. And so as we refine ourselves in our spiritual practice, we're very refined, just like people are refined with, you know, checking ingredients. Does this have gluten?

Does this have refined sugar, high fructose corn syrup? You get very refined about like, what am I putting in my ears today? What am I putting in my mind today? What am I putting in my thoughts today? And I have seen people who've done a little, they've taken a little in and it's changed them. And in this particular case, this friend, student of mine who left his body, he fought it. And when I say fought, I meant had some bitterness. But every time I'd see him, he'd go with, he'd be in a good spirits and we'd sing together. It was part of our practice.

We'd sing together and we'd read together. And there was one time I came in and he was broken. And he just started crying to me. And he said, Raghunath, why would God do this to me? I've got two little girls. And, you know, Raghunath, the guy who has the answer for everything, and, you know, Raghunath, the guy who has the answer for everything, I just said, let's read, and maybe we'll get an answer.

Ever do one of those things? Let's read, and the answer is there. And this is the beauty of bhakti, actually. It's not just us reaching up. It's also energy reaching towards you. It's not like we're just desperate reaching, hey, God, help me. It's a higher power, a source reaching out to you, embracing you. So this is what we read. We opened up. It was the purport of this book, the Srimad Bhagavatam. It said, for a person practicing bhakti, there is no bad karma. Because that's what he first said. Why is my karma so bad? This has happened to me. He said,

for a person practicing bhakti, there is no bad karma. But if it's seen that there is some reversal in their life, you can't get more of a reversal than you get cancer and you're going to lose everything that you've worked for. If they were seeing there's some reversal in their life that is lord krishna accelerating their spiritual practice and i witnessed this guy accelerate his spirit i go and we looked at each other like wow there this isn't bad karma this appears see in a material concept we look at our astrological chart. This is good. Oh, I have a malefic planet here. Like right now, I'm going into like a Saturn period.

But it's a strong Saturn. So, you know, you can wear a particular gem and you can counter out a malefic planet. This is a whole weird. Well, it's the human compulsion to make judgment calls. Exactly. And value statements about things that happen. Like things happen. They are neither good nor bad

until we decide they are so, right? And we create a narrative around that and to like liberate yourself from even making that judgment call and the relief of being delivered this message right at the right time when it was needed most that like this is an acceleration

of your growth and you know, whatever there's comfort in that obviously. And it is that thing, you know, and I've noticed it many times in my life. And with so many of the people that I know in the recovery community, it's that idea that like the higher power is always there. The more receptive you are to it, the more open you are to it, you will begin to notice it showing up in your life in the ways that are needed to accelerate that growth and that evolution. But it's a subtle attention. It's a subtle, like sometimes it's a whisper. Yeah. You'll get clobbered if you keep ignoring it at some point, right?

Sure. Yeah, it's a whisper. Sometimes it's loud. Sometimes it's not a whisper. Sometimes it's loud. Sometimes it's not a whisper. Sometimes it's real loud. Like no more of this, no more of this. Like the universe just says, this part of your life is over. If you don't see that as God's hand, the universe's hand, I keep saying the universe, but there was a G word at one time. You couldn't say the word God. I think people are just shifting a lot. Well, it's an interesting time. Like we are in this, you know, we live in a secular, Western democratic republic where religious and spiritual institutions for the most part

are on the wane due to the higher priority that we have given higher institutions of learning and science as a vehicle for all knowledge. The path to total understanding is through science. Like that is sort of the kind of primary operating agreement or operating system of our culture. Meanwhile, so many people have had negative, bad experiences with religious institutions and spiritual traditions due to the fallibility of human beings and what happens when we organize around ideas and create institutions. And so we're bereft of spiritual connection. And you come along as somebody who

has a powerful voice because of your musical background, you're able to connect with people in a way that other leaders of spiritual traditions perhaps are less capable. With that comes a responsibility. But it's also interesting because it comes in this package of Krishna consciousness, right? And I know as a kid, what it was like when I saw the Hare Krishnas at the airport or congregating in the park with the weird tuft of hair and the things and banging the, you know, and you're like, I don't know what to make of that. But like, there wasn't anything inside of me that was like, I want to go hang out with them.

I want to be like that. I was like, did they let them out of the mental institution? I want to cross the street. Like, what is going on, right? I want to cross the street. Yeah, so as a messenger, as this vehicle for spiritual awareness and this also awareness that you have of this

position that you hold amidst a culture that prioritizes things that are orthogonal to spiritual growth like how do you connect with people for whom the idea of anything spiritual is met with you know a sort of cringey repulsion. You must write a lot because when you speak, it's like you're reading from a book. You're buying time to answer the question. That's what you're doing. I find that there is a desire for spirituality in this like secular world. And people do get to this point where they realize there is a limit of science and there's things that we can't know. And people have had experiences that are like,

this is beyond rational, yet I've had this experience. And I think it's also important to conclude that just because we've been dealt counterfeit bills and every time we mess around with them we get in trouble the cops come in this is not a real hundred dollar bill i've been dealt counterfeits and i've been prosecuted every time i've used counter just because i've been dealt counterfeit hundred dollar bills doesn't mean there's not a real $100 bill. Just because I've heard, oh, there's corruption here, and this priest did that, and that guy's a pedophile, and this guy was misled, and this guy started a cult, and this guy was not sincere, that doesn't mean there's not a genuine spirituality. Just because

either people have done it wrong wrong or people have been duplicitous or an organization was tweaked or broken. That doesn't mean there's not a genuine spiritual truth that's living, that's living and alive and affecting both you and I right now. Again, no ashram, no church, no synagogue, no mosque owns it. You know, spiritual truth is for all people of all times. It stands the test of time. And it's sort of the gold standard of like how we want to move in this world. And even if everything was like wiped out, somehow there would still be light there

that people would magnetically move towards like a true north. You know, I've had to meet with it in different circles. In the yoga community, it was pretty easy. You want to learn yoga? I'm going to teach you the whole thing of yoga here. You came to my workshop. This is the origins of the yoga system. In the punk scene, it was a little bit more difficult because you're dealing with, you know, atheists and how dare you bring God to the punk scene. This is a scene where we do it, you know, there are no dare you bring god to the punk scene this is yeah this is a scene where we do it you know there there are no rules and then i just have to say well if there are no rules then i can do whatever i want some people will say that music was founded on it's a glorification of

higher powers so i'm just putting god back into music whereas you've artificially taken spirituality out of music and made it political or complainy, et cetera. And that was my argument with the punk community when my second band, Shelter, started when we were all monks. And I was like, yeah, if there are no rules, if that's your mantra, that there are no rules, well, okay, then embrace me. And if there are going to be some rewriting of some of those rules, you're one of the OGs, right? Shouldn't you have a little bit of latitude to write rather than the guy who went to a couple shows and has lots of opinions?

I've used that argument too. Hey, you know what? I can do whatever I want. I grew up on the music you were listening to. If anybody's you know, if everyone's going to change the rules. But I love that idea of God or the divine being the origin story of music itself. Right? Yeah. It wasn't music crafted in the beginning to connect us to something bigger. And there is that magical unknown that happens when you hear music that brings us together and allows us to have

some kind of transcendent experience. Yes. And being a, quote, performer, so to speak, in a band, I have this great experience. And I think I mentioned this in my book too, but I'll just share it again because it was a powerful...

Ever have someone say one thing to you and just changes everything in your life? So one, when I first would go visit an ashram, there was one mentor of mine, we'd have very spiritual conversations. Every morning I'd go to the ashram at 7 a.m. and we'd do a morning singing and then we'd have breakfast together.

And it was just, I wish I had all these questions and answers recorded because it was a real spiritual dialectic back and forth every day. And then one day he asked me a question. What kind of guitar does your guitar player play? And I thought, wow, this is the first time he ever asked me like a regular question, like about material life. And I said, well, he plays a Gibson Les Paul. Why do you ask? He said, oh, I'm just curious because I used to play the guitar, but I don't anymore

because it's Maya, meaning it's like illusion. And I said, wait a second. What do you mean it's Maya? You always told me that you don't give up what you do. You take what you do and use it in a spiritual way. He said, but for me, the guitar was Maya. And I said, wait a second. You told me, and I've read in the Bhagavad Gita that we don't, like Arjuna doesn't give up his fighting. He just fights in service. You don't give up what you do.

That's the whole essence of the Bhagavad Gita here. He said, yes, but for me the guitar was maya and i wouldn't let him off the hook on this and he said okay next time you're on stage see if you're doing this to serve god or to be god because i argued well you told me i should do music as a service and so he said yeah see if you're doing it to serve God or be God. And immediately I was like, it was one of those, what's that movie? A Sixth Sense? When everything like, I see dead people. What was that movie called? Everything changes at the end of the movie. Like everyone's, the guy's been dead this whole time. I was like, oh my God, my whole life, I've just tried to be God. Whether it's a performance, whether it's a friendship,

whether it's a relationship with a woman, I've just tried to use whatever I got to manipulate the universe to worship me. It was like my first step out of my ego. And I was like, that statement changed everything in my life. Am I doing this to serve God or be God? everything in my life. Am I doing this to serve God or be God? And it was an ongoing theme in my life because once you see yourself as part of something bigger and not trying to have you as the center, you lose a manipulative edge. You don't want to be a manipulator. You want to be a person that extends your hand, extends your love to people. And I could still be on stage doing what I do, but in a whole different frame of mind. I could still be in a relationship with a person. I could still raise kids. I can do all the things I've always done, but in a different way. And I tell you, that different mindset changes everything.

It's all in your relationship to it. The Gibson is Maya or a tool depending upon what's going on in your soul, right? And it's not an on-off switch. The same can be said for this microphone sitting in front of me. Some days I'll catch myself too much in my ego or looking at all the metrics and thinking of plotting and thinking about how I'm gonna do this or that. But fundamentally, I always have to return to, this is an act of service. Like, how can I be of service?

And this is what I was referring to earlier. It's like, it's an ongoing thing that I have to always try to develop some hyper vigilance around and catch myself. Hands on the clock. Because it is a commercial pursuit and all the stuff and all of the, you know, everything that goes into it, it's another version of you getting up on stage. Are you doing this to glorify the self or are you doing this as an act of service to others? And you'll know what you're doing when the performance is over. Because when

the performance is over, and I've had that experience too, performing in front of thousands of people. And if I did it in the mood of I'm the center, when I got off stage, there'd be a lull. You're no longer important. And you'll want to like seek out importance. And that's why I can understand how people move right to drugs, move right to, you know, reckless sex, move anything to keep the dopamine flowing. But if you do it in the mood of service, when you come off that stage, and I've had that experience too,

because again, it's not a non-off switch. It's a moment-to-moment check-in with reality. You get off stage and you're completely peaceful. No matter how active and crazy and jumping and kicking and stage diving you were doing, you come off like a sage. I also wanted to address that, this person who said I gave up my guitar playing because for him it was Maya.

I thought it took a type of maturity for him to realize there are certain things we just can't do. We just choose, you know what? This is too overwhelming for me. And I'm just not going to go there. I'm not going to try to like, I'm going to push it through it. There's certain things like, you know, if you're addicted to gambling, you just don't go to Vegas.

You just draw a line and say, I'm not going to hang out in Vegas. I'm not going to look at succulents in Vegas. I'm not going to go to a good vegan restaurant in Vegas. I'm not going to go on a hike in the desert. You have to rationalize it. Yeah, ways Vegas I'm not going to go on a hike in the desert Rationalize it Yeah, ways to rationalize it Because to have that foresight That there are people, places, and things

That are massive First dominoes That are going to knock over And they're going to take me down a dark tunnel It's good to have that insight I'm thinking about something That just came up in the news the other day Which is this news story that seemed to like really create a lot of energy,

which was this story about Steve-O. He relates this story about how Bill Maher invited him on his podcast. And Steve said, hey, listen, if I do it, can you just not smoke pot? Well, I'm sitting across from you because I'm coming up on 16 years of sobriety. And Bill Maher's team said, no, that's a deal breaker. Like, cause that's part of like what he does or whatever. And it created this new cycle. And there was a contingent of people who were claiming that Steve was just being, you know, difficult or something like that. Like, oh, you know, can't he just show up and do this? But I think it's a great show of strength for him to say, my sobriety is the most important thing.

I'm not going to put myself in a position where that would be threatened unnecessarily. It's a different version of the Gibson story to say, this is just something I can't do, or I'm going to take a precautionary measure to not put myself in a position where I'm going to threaten that spiritual connection that's keeping me on this path that is the most important thing for me. It is active bravery. And it can come off like ego. Like I don't go where there's, you know, these toxic things. I'm sure if a person has been through some type of recovery or rehab or 12-step program, they're not going in with that attitude. They're going with, this is my boundary. I've created this boundary with my sponsor. I've created this boundary for my own personal accountability. I know it might be not the best

choice for my career, but this is what I'm going to do. That's incredibly brave. I don't know the intention, but I always give the people the benefit of the doubt. And I've had to do that myself with certain things. I just don't go there. I just don't do that. I don't put myself in a very compromised situation, not because I don't trust you, but there's human foibles and triggers that I suffer with. And I'm just, I'm not going to go there. Yeah. But ultimately those guardrails and those boundaries create more freedom than restriction. I think there's this idea that if you do that, you're going to be living your life within a very narrow lane. But by doing that, you open yourself up to a wider variety of experiences than you would have otherwise. Yeah. They say you get a ding on

your car by hitting that guardrail, but it could save you from the greatest catastrophe from going over the side. So yeah. And I think there are people who are 20 years sober. They don't need a tight leash because they're not triggered anymore. You know, if you're 20 years sober from heroin and someone offers you heroin, there's a space between stimulus and response. Would you like heroin? And you'd have to think.

There's more space now. I can think, well, last time I did that, I lost my family. I lost my job. I lost my fortune. No, I'm not going to. Thank you for offering. No, I don't do that. I don't do that.

But in a very new recovery state of your life, hey, do you want heroin? There's no space between stimulus. Yes, I do. Well, I thought you don't do it anymore. I know, but if you got it, I'll take it. So yeah, I think we're trying to, and the yoga system has that, to get our consciousness,

no matter what path of yoga you're on, to get your consciousness to a point of satvaguna, or this consciousness where there is stimulus, and then there's a space before response comes right in. No, I know that's my pattern. I'm not gonna choose that pattern anymore. It never served me. That helps everybody.

That adage of, or that notion of, are you serving the ego? Are you serving the self? Or are you serving God? Is a recurring theme throughout the book. And it shows up in the epilogue with this crazy, beautiful story that you share about this dentist that you sit next to

on the way to India. Can you tell that story? It was a good story. It was a real story. It was sort of afterwards, after I was married, me and my daughter were on our way to India. I like to talk to people. I don't know if you picked up on that.

Yeah, I get it. My job today is getting out of the way, Raghunath. What's that? I'm just getting out of the way. I apologize. The floor is yours, my friend. No, it's good. That's why you're here.

And I like to talk to anybody. I don't care if a person's famous. I just like to talk to people. And I like to talk to people on planes because it's sort of almost like free therapy. You can just like talk and they can share with you. And so I especially like Indians because Indians have generally an interesting story of how they got to the United States. And because I'm a fan of the Bhagavad Gita and Vedic culture, I always like to pick their brain

and see where they're at. And then I tell my story. So I was sitting on an aisle and across the aisle was a collegiate, you know, dressed in, I can't remember, UPenn or something outfit. He's probably 24 years old or something. And we started talking. I said, where are you going now? We're going to India. And we started talking about his parents. I said, did he grow up in America? He goes, yeah, I grew up in America. My parents came over and they lived a very, very difficult life. And they struggled to put me and my brother to college. And I go to the University of Pennsylvania now. My brother's a dentist. And I just graduated. I'm going to be a dentist. I said, oh, that's great. He said something like, my brother was a dentist. And I said, oh,

what do you mean he was a dentist? And we were sort of happily engaged and his face sort of shifted. I said, what do you mean he was a dentist? He goes, well, that's why we're going to India right now. My brother has become a sannyas. And sannyas means it's a stage of life where you give up material life. You give up your material identity. And it generally happens traditionally when you're elderly because you realize like, I'm not of this world. There's a whole system in India for this stage where I'm not of this world.

I'm with God. I've been training myself from childhood. Then I got involved in material activities. I had kids, drove the kids to soccer, et cetera. But now I'm an old man or old lady, and now it's just me and God. And so his brother was doing it at like 26, which is young saints. They happen in traditions all over the world. And I started feeling for the parents because I'm a parent. And at the same time, I want my kids to be spiritual, but would I want my kid to leave me?

And so all these emotions started flooding through. Right, because part of it is you're renouncing your status and place in the Western world, but you're also cutting yourself off from your family, right? It's a goodbye. It's a goodbye. And his particular tradition, he said, we're going to India to wish him well, but we'll never see him again. I was getting all my fatherly buttons, which is my small I identity. Again, I'm a dad.

I started going, oh, I said, how do you feel about that? Were you close to him? He said, yeah, we were very close. I said, are you upset? He goes, I was upset. And then he started sort of lecturing me in a sort of a beautiful, noble way. I didn't quote look spiritual. He didn't know that I was on a spiritual path myself, but he said, you know, in my culture, we believe there is good and great. And so to be a good dentist and to be responsible, that's a good thing, but to find your be responsible, that's a good thing But to find your spiritual calling that's a great thing So I had to sacrifice good for his greatness And now i've decided to move back in with my parents. I was living in my own apartment

Move back and i'm going to take care of my parents because they took care of me when I was vulnerable He goes this is another thing. I don't like about your culture, even though I grew up here. He goes, you neglect your parents, and your parents have changed your diapers for you and taken care of you, and you're vulnerable, and it seems like no one takes care of their parents here. And I just started feeling, okay, I'm going to text my mother when I get off this plane. And he just sort of lectured me heavy, and I had an appreciation lectured me heavy and I had an appreciation for that culture. And so a lot of these old cultures and India still has it really intact where there is check and balances and there is this conception of good and great. And it made me reflect on my life as a dad and what I actually really want out of my kids. What do I want? Do I want my kids' success for my ego or do I want their success for their deeper connection?

And I wondered how I'd react to such a thing too. He says, I just opened the last page of your book. And he basically just says to you, quote, this is the problem nowadays in culture and it's ruining our planet. He said casually and confidently. People don't want to serve God. They want to be God. He paused, rearranged his sitting posture and looked more deeply at me. Wouldn't you agree? That's it, man, right? That's it. It's heavy. It is heavy. And that's

been an ongoing tap on my shoulder too. Yeah. Especially for a person like myself who's in the public eye and sort of got that entertainer karma, entertainer persona. When you want to entertain, you want people to like you, you want to give to people, checking in with your intention while you're doing it in the first place, and that changes everything. What else did you learn about yourself in the process of telling this story and writing the book? Again, I said it earlier that the idea of messengers, it's not like we're just reaching up. There's source reaching down. In India, they give it the analogy of the monkey

holds on to the mother. That's us reaching up, but the kitten is being saved by the mother. The mother's grabbing by the nape of the neck. So it's two things happening. When we start to make these personal declarations to God, to the universe, sometimes people just break, fall on my knees. Oh God, what do you want from me? That type of destitution is a beautiful thing. It's like that gift of pain,

that gift of destitution where you have nowhere else to go. And so it's not just you reaching up. The universe starts to send or starts to inform and starts to direct. That's a very real thing. And it can't, you can't necessarily, that doesn't necessarily show up in a lab. But it shows up in your real world experience. That other world is a real world. And everyone can tap into it. You just have to want it. What would be an example of that in your life?

See, the very beginning, when my father left his body, and I had a certain amount of success in my life with the music. And, you know, we all expect if you go down a specific path of success, of building community. I mean, I had that community when I was 22. We had hundreds of kids would hang out together in New York City every weekend to do these, you know, all our friends, bands, shows and stuff like that. When you still felt like an emptiness in the soul and then of course something as solid as your father dying, who is like a pillar in your life,

it leaves you to this point of, now what do I do? And it's in that like destitution, you're left with these bigger questions like, who am I? Why am I here? What is success in this world? What is success in this world? When those questions come up, when my friend slash student left his body, you know, I could probably think of like things that happened yesterday. Because these, it's not like you're ever just put in that position once. Again and again, we're put in this crisis situation

of destitution. You know, when I went through a divorce and I thought I was going to, you know, lose my house. When I was worried about my children, how they're going to react to that. 2007, when, you know, there was, real estate collapsed and they declared bankruptcy and all these things. When all those types of things and you're so raw and you have nothing, you can have the option to resort to bitterness and sadness and victimhood

or you can extend your hands up, right? Like sometimes you'll go to a kirtan and you'll see people just extend your hands up right like sometimes you'll go to a kirtan and you'll see people just reaching their hands up as they're singing because it's it's the mudra of trusting i trust just like a little child will reach his hands up to the father or mother because they trust the mother and father and if they don't know somebody that comes in the door they'll hold on to the leg of the parent like Like, who is this person? And so in those positions where you just sort of like reach your hands up, okay, now what do you want from me? In recovery, they would call it a deepening of surrender. Like, are you willing when your back is up against the wall, this is your moment to really test your level of surrender. You're being asked to test your level of surrender.

You're being asked to deepen that level of surrender. What are you willing to give up? How receptive are you truly? Yeah. You appear devastated and not cool and collected like you usually present yourself. And, you know, I'll give a shout out to Jeeva G. If you know her, you're going I'll give a shout out to Jeeva G. I don't know if you know her. You're going to meet her.

You'd love her. But she does a thing called the Bhakti Recovery Podcast, which sort of grew out of a whole 12-step community from our Wisdom of the Sages community, which is she does a Bhakti podcast. And we've known her since she was a teenager, a young teenager from the Upper East Side. But she was crazy and out of control,

shaven head, 15-year-old or 13-year-old, but she went through a hard path and got into drugs, everything. Crazy story. And she went into recovery and got into bhakti, and now she leads this very life-changing, transformative bhakti recovery, which is a beautiful group too. So she always says to me, Raghu, you can't save your face and your ass

at the same time. That's an old school tried and true one. It's a good one. That's a good one. And sometimes it's the beauty of destitution, I call it. Yeah, not fun though. It's not fun, but neither is being fake. That takes a lot of energy. Being fake, it's exhausting.

For sure. As we kind of wind this down, for somebody who's listening to this, for whom these ideas are brand new they've never heard of bhakti yoga but perhaps they're suffering from the great affliction of being in the western modern society which is that we're on these hamster wheels chasing these things only to discover whether we succeed in achieving them or fall short of achieving them to understand that they're not delivering on the promise. The promise, of course, being a life of happiness and meaning and purpose. Eternal happiness and material in a temporary world.

There has to be something else, Raghu. Where do you direct these people? How does one begin their spiritual odyssey or embark upon this journey of self-transcendence? Well, I think if they're listening to this podcast, they've already started. You fuel your mind with what you consume. So I love Radhanath Swami's book. I like my philosophy peppered into a story.

That's why I like all the paronic stories of these archetypes of heroes and villains and gods and goddesses. But Radhanath Swami's story, A Journey Home, autobiography of an American Swami, is such a great story about him going to India in the 60s and his search for truth and balance and God. And it's a beautiful story. And even if you're not a punk,

my book, it's my story also. It's got philosophy peppered into it in our struggles because as different as we are, I'm a punk. Rana Swamy was not a punk. And you could find other memoirs of people on their spiritual journey. They're not meant for you to become a punk. It's meant for you to find your struggles

because as different as we are, we're all pretty similar too. We all struggle with heartbreak. We all struggle with hoping that some material success will give us internal fulfillment. We all struggle with trying to find eternal happiness in a temporary world. We all struggle sometimes in relationships. We struggle with this concept of purpose. And I find like in these spiritual memoirs, I found a little bit of myself in Radhanath Swami's journey home.

I'm like, okay, this is my journey. I didn't do it like he did. And I'm never gonna be his signature. He has his own signature. I have my own signature. And in that, I feel like it can perhaps pose these questions and answers that will help a person on their own journey.

And of course, you know, the Bhagavad Gita, which is a beautiful gold standard of spiritual truths. Yeah. It's hard to just jump into that. It's hard to, for me it was, for me, I was really discouraged just because I felt like I was philosophical, but just, I couldn't go through all the words and the different language. So for me, just really hearing from people who are on a spiritual journey. Nowadays, there's so many good podcasts or there's so many good lectures on YouTube. It's the perfection of the information age. You can really pick out what you want to listen to and let that fill your ears and heart. Well, there's the precepts and the principles and the pillars of this tradition,

but we learn through story. And we learn best when that story is told by someone that has something relatable about them, some aspect of their story that we can key in on. Maybe the facts of that person's life, like your upbringing is very different from mine, but I can connect with the emotional sensibility and kind of what you went through that led you on that path. And I think that's what really solidifies somebody's connection

to a new idea. And then they can read the Bhagavad Gita or they can go deeper, right? But storytelling is really powerful. And then the precepts are so powerful because they actually are very practical. It's like an operating manual for life. It's not just theory or some kind of ethereal idea that's interesting. It actually grounds you and helps you make better decisions about how to direct not only your actions, but also how you do that inventory on your own behavior. For example, to evaluate, where does my ego sit with this? I love that phrase, my inventory, my personal inventory, taking my inventory. Don't take my inventory. It's such a good phrase. Well, that's all recovery speak.

Yeah. It's so good. But yeah, getting rid of those essential things. These things are contaminating my consciousness, contaminating my mind. I'm going to cut those out of my life. And that's where I was talking about earlier. I got distracted, but I'm not going to let that in my life. There's no good that's going to come out of that. I'm going to regulate my senses. I'm not going to be a slave to my senses. I'm going to start to notice my mind. I'm going to start to notice my mind's silly choices and good choices. I'm going to cut those silly ones out.

And once we start to regulate the senses, get the big pollutants out of our life, then we start that inner engineering of the consciousness. And no, I'm going to let go of resentment. I'm not going to be a resentful person. I'm not going to see myself as a victim any longer. I'm not going to see myself as this is happening to me. This is happening for my growth, that there is a benevolent force in this universe that's bringing me higher and higher. And then I'm going to apply this stuff on a regular basis when I want to resort to my old way of thinking, which is like, why me? So unfair. How dare they? Who they think they are? Don't they know who I am? I'm going to

cut that languaging right out of my mental vocabulary, my thoughts. My thoughts are like a garden. And like what I'm planting in there is going to grow into something. And if I'm planting resentment on a regular basis, it's going to grow roots and it's going to be harder and harder to uproot. If I've been resenting somebody for 20 years, that's a much harder tree to get rid of than a sapling. So these are things that we might necessarily be taught as a child. However they came to us, we realized these are like important, but they're going to just make us not only joyful in this life, but not only joyful in some spiritual life, but just have a happy existence in this world at the very least. That's like the most punk rock thing ever, right?

That's what it means to be punk. Rich Roll, I'm being punk yeah through and through always all the way to the beginning i love it man that was that was beautiful and powerful thank you i hope i didn't talk my talk no that's what you're here to do i i tend i tend to just step on people and talk all over them you didn't step on anything except uh except the truth you let the truth flow through you. So the book is from Punk to Monk. It's out everywhere. And final thing before I let you go, I wanna let everyone know that Ragu was kind enough to donate a dozen books that he's gonna sign.

I guess I might scribble my name on these or whatever, that we're gonna give away to all of you guys. We'll put details about that in the description below if you're watching this on video or in the blog post on the episode page at richroll.com. So thank you for that. And everybody has that to look forward to as well. Thanks, Rich. And what else is on the horizon for you? I think I heard you talk about maybe you're launching a new podcast. I'm working on a thing that's called the Vedic Path. And it's about, it's sort of like the teachings of India, but it can be, it covers everything

from metaphysics to reincarnation to spiritual to Jyotish astrology. For anybody who has an interest in this, a vault of wisdom that comes from ancient India. in this a vault of wisdom that comes from ancient india so but also very practical not just otherworldly things but practical things uh to deal with a depression how to garden how to things like that so i'm looking forward to that that's in the works right now yeah i mean vedic teachings have everything from the very practical yeah how to heal yourself from you know indigestion to there's life on other planets. Let me explain how. That's what I love about it. All right.

Well, come back in and share a little bit more with me. More about life on other planets and less about the indigestion. Thank you so much. Keep up the good work. Yeah, you're a gift. You are a change agent. And I think your presence in this world is a beautiful thing. You're changing lives all the time and making the world a better place. I feel the same way

about you, Rich. Thank you so much for all you do. Thanks, man. Peace. That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and or comment. Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful.

And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo with additional audio engineering by Cale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davey Greenberg. Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Salis. Thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis.

Appreciate the love. Love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste. Bye.