Gaur Gopal Das - Energise Your Mind: A Monk’s Guide To Mindful Living

Full transcript: Gaur Gopal Das on London Real

2:51 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose, my guest today is Gaur Gopal Das, the Indian monk, lifestyle coach, motivational speaker and author. You spent the early part of your career working as an electrical engineer for Hewlett-Packard before leaving the company to pursue life as a monk at an ashram in Mumbai there.

3:20 You’ve studied ancient wisdom and philosophy for the past 26 years, while traveling the world, speaking to universities, charities, governments and the United Nations. You have nearly 5 million followers on YouTube and over 1 billion views across social media, where you post regular content helping others to achieve fulfillment in their lives. In 2018 you published Life’s Amazing Secrets, which focuses on how to find balance and purpose, and your second book, The Way of the Monk, outlines the four steps to peace and lasting happiness.

3:50 Your latest, Energize Your Mind, and Monk’s Guide to Mindful Living, looks at how all of us can master our thoughts, feelings and emotions in order to achieve our goals and improve our mental health once and for all. Or welcome to London Real. Thank you very much, Brian, for having me over on London Real. I’ve seen so many of these episodes and I really enjoy watching this show. Oh, wow, that means so much.

4:15 I really appreciate it, and thank you very much. Now, it’s my pleasure. I can’t wait to jump into it. I love watching your videos on YouTube, thank you so many great lessons and parables, and you’ve got this great energetic style, and then we have a bunch of links because we had your original mem tour in Mumbai, and yes, he had mentored Jay Shetty, who was on the show. and there’s all these amazing absolutely, absolutely.

4:40 Such the world’s a small place. Yeah, you know, and all these connections happen, and like I said earlier, I come here and I feel like I know you for so long, and these are the connections we have. Like we often say, don’t we? We are not uh we’re not human beings on a spiritual journey but we Are Spiritual Beings on a human Journey so since we are all spiritual, if we were just humans, this energy wouldn’t connect, but we are spiritual beings and a human journey, and suddenly this connect happens.

5:08 In all of these connections, come forth and here we are sitting and feeling so deeply connected. Yeah, there’s more happening here than just a couple of random guys bumping into each other, right? There’s like energy connections, absolutely, between even the people I just mentioned, right, pulling us in these different spheres, right, and there’s more going on than meets the eye. Yes, yes. Now, you studied electrical engineering.

5:35 I studied mechanical engineering at MIT, and I don’t know about where you went to school, but where I went to school, we didn’t talk about spiritualness or energy. Matter of fact, I was taught by science that doesn’t exist, but now as I’ve gotten older and I’ve talked to incredible people like you, I’m starting to realize that yeah, there’s more going on here, yes, than meets the eye, right? How did you start to realize that? Did you always know that, or were you a hardcore engineer, and did you have to retrain your mind to be aware of, like you said, these energy fields or more going on, right?

6:11 I think being born India, it came very easy from a family tradition and a family culture like to be able to pursue or explore some kind of spirituality was a part of the Indian culture and Indian families. So as I was being brought up at home, before my family, my parents, they weren’t like spiritual, spiritual, but they had that element in them, and because that element was there, it wasn’t an alien thing for me. So I was exploring answers to questions, existential questions, life questions, questions like what happens after death.

6:51 I don’t know. And for the very first time, I saw, I attended a funeral was when I was, what, 21 years old, is when I for the first time saw a dead body in front of me. My family didn’t allow me to go for a funeral until then. You know, so these existential questions, what exists after this life ends, so divorce their life before this, you know, are we all connected in some way? Is there a purpose to life?

7:17 Like Mark Twain said, didn’t he, that there are two most important days in your life. One is the day you were born, and second is the day you find out why. And that existential question, why was I born? I mean, I’m born, I’m studying engineering, I have a job at Hewlett-Packard. Why am I born?

7:35 Is there a purpose? Is there something more than just paying taxes? Is there something more than just earning a salary? Is there something more than just achieving that position up there? Is there something more than just having a family?

7:47 Is there something more than just uh having a luxurious life? Is there something more? That existential question, why was I born, who’s there nagging me at the back of my mind. So I was exploring different parts, spiritual paths, religions, trying to find answers to these questions. And uh while working at Hewlett-Packard, HP, I made this simple calculation in my mind that if you were to work for an an average about eight hours a day, we were we spent eight hours a day at our workplace, and if we do a five days work week, that’s 40 hours at our workplace spent a week, and if you work a 50-week here, two weeks of holidays, it’s 2,000 hours at our workplace a year, and if you on an average work for about 45 years, it’s 90,000 hours of my life are being spent at my workplace.

8:48 It’s a daunting number, that accounts to about 10 years of my life. And then I ask myself this question. Do I see myself doing what I’m doing right now for 90,000 hours? It’s paying me well. It’s giving me a good, thick, fat paycheck and high status on high status.

9:08 Parents are proud, parents are proud, but is it fulfilling me? Is it satisfying? I mean, this is what people just can’t get today, so much about getting the numbers, but it’s not about finding fulfillment as well. Today, so that was a question that I had, and this is what then these two things combine, my spiritual calling and this moment of epiphany, that you know, I don’t think I can see myself doing this, but the obvious question was, what do I see myself doing?

9:35 And that’s when I got interested in spirituality even more. It was there as a part of the family culture, but it kind of uh, it kind of developed more, grew more within me with all this realizations and with all of this uh reflections and contemplation that I had in my mind as I was working. Yeah, that was the journey. Was there a day you just decided, I’m gonna quit and walk out? It’s like the last straw on the camel’s back.

10:07 It can’t be one day. I saw the pile up. It’s all kind of just brewing inside, brewing inside, brewing inside, brewing inside, and one day there happens to be probably that one thing the world sees, that last straw and the camel’s back, that makes the camel sit down. People who actually see, there’s been a lot on the camel’s back already, and this was just the last little thing that really made the camel sit. So I really don’t think it was that any one thing or one day that caused the change, because I feel that if it’s that one thing that makes us change, it’d probably be one thing that may take us back to something else too, you know.

10:47 But if it’s like deeply ingrained within ourselves, that purpose, then I feel it’s sustainable. These little things that I make a shift, like it’s like job hopping these days, you know. I change a job, but then I change the job and go somewhere else because I really haven’t mulled over it. I haven’t, I haven’t uh allowed what I’m doing to sink. So I don’t think it was that one day or that one thing.

11:14 It was a journey, and I feel the journey still continues. It’s a journey, and it’s a journey, a lifelong journey. Sometimes I tell people, you know, why do we have to have everything figured out right away? You know, this urge to have everything figured out, this urge to have answers to all questions, beautiful journey, and things will be revealed, you know, the curtains will be lifted slowly and steadily, and things will get better, clearer, and probably way till the end of our life.

11:46 So I feel it’s a journey, and it was a journey, it is a journey, it will remain a journey. So I’m having flashbacks to 2010 when I walked out of my corporate job. I was in banking here. I didn’t go to an ashram, but I went to my my spiritual healing place, which is this place, real, and correct. Um, again, it wasn’t one day, but it had been gnawing at me, and I had been on paper.

12:11 I always used to joke, my LinkedIn profile looked amazing from the outside. I had everything correct. I had the job, I had the car, I had the holidays, I whatever. But then if you look deeper in my life, you could see in my big house, I was alone on the weekends, you know, drinking myself to death. That’s not good, you know, of course.

12:29 And I was pursuing all these things that I had told myself would make me happy. The money would make me happy. And then I’m telling you, Gaur, one time I’m an engineer, and I was looking, because in the city we got paid quarterly bonuses, and I was looking at my last three quarterly bonuses, and they were going up, and I was like, but I’m not happier in any one of those quarters. So it was finally I could see there was no correlation, and I actually, I took it.

12:52 Transcendental Meditation class on a whim, and about two weeks later I woke up one morning and I said, what am I doing? Like the first time ever, I could actually observe Brian and I was like, that guy’s massively unhappy. This is ridiculously stupid and then I walked out, and then that’s when the journey began. Wow, and it continues. Like you said, you know, similar stories.

13:16 Yeah, in some kind of ways, in some ways, and again, so I’m 11 years past that. You’re more like 26 years. Those first 10 years in the ashram must have been challenging, I’m guessing, for you. You must, time maybe, sometimes you were wondering, am I doing the right thing? Am I doing it right?

13:34 Yeah, I, I’m guessing uh that because that’s such a very new environment. Yeah, yeah. I think it was a mix of things. Ah for me to come to the ashram and to take a path like this was I would say my love affair, like when you’re on madly in love with somebody. You really don’t look at the inconveniences, madly in love.

14:01 You don’t look at socio-economic statuses, you don’t look at upbringings, you don’t look at cultural incompatibility. You don’t look at ethnical differences, you don’t look at anything. It’s just love, and when you’re so absolutely, madly, insanely in love, everything else just becomes inconsequential. You just kind of take it in your stride and move on, you know, uh sometimes I joke and I say love is blind, but marriage happens to be the eye opener. Because, because when you start spending time with somebody, then you start seeing every little nuance of their personality which you didn’t see when you were just madly in love, because you’re just there with each other all the time.

14:48 And I was kind of thinking, if this is my love affair in this path, this ashram life for me, it’s kind of now I’m getting married. It was only love when I wanted to do it, and now it’s marriage. I’m going to have to stay with this for the rest of my life. And yes, it can be an eye-opener, so that which is why I was saying, it was a mix of things. One was, it was, it didn’t seem too hard, because such so much love for this, and then we start living there.

15:16 I was the only son. I have a younger sister. So a pampered son, lovely family, beautiful childhood. I never ate anything in my childhood up until the day I came to the ashram, if it wasn’t made according to my dictates and demands. If my mom cooked something that I didn’t want to eat, I didn’t eat it and here I come to the ashram and I have to eat food that’s cooked there, the community kitchen food.

15:45 I don’t have a choice. There’s no choices. What your favorite, what you served is what you have to eat. Waking up early in the morning was the cakewalk, because I anyways was an early riser before that. Wasn’t too hard, and then sharing space with we were about 20.

16:01 Then when I, when I joined the ashram, sharing physical space with 20 people and we had very little space, like lying down on the floor right next to each other, right? We just had a little straw mats and little bed sheets, and we were using our hands as our pillows and just covering ourselves with his little bed sheets and just lying down there, sharing physical space. Even that wasn’t all that hard. Waking up early wasn’t hard. Food wasn’t hard.

16:27 Sharing physical space wasn’t hard, because I think it’s just that passion to do this, that love with the thing that had chosen uh, you also have to share mental space, and never shared that space with anybody. We had a family of six. My grandpa, grandma, mom, dad, me, and my sister. And here I am with 20, 25 people certainly sharing mental space. Everybody’s looking at what you’re doing.

16:55 Everything’s being observed and everybody comes from a very educated background. There were people who’d come from universities way better than mine. People would come from corporations that worked with corporations way better than mine, and you suddenly start sharing that space with people like that who have been achievers in their field. It was, I think, those days look beautiful, because in your formative years, when you put into that situation you’re forced to grow.

17:25 You’re forced to come out of that shell. You’re forced to adjust. You’re forced to make some compromises. You’re forced to value people. You’re forced to value relationships.

17:35 You’re forced to value the path that you’ve chosen, and I think, yes, there were a few of these inconveniences, but this, I feel, inconveniences are distractions when our eyes are off our goal. when our eyes are so focused on what we want to do, we don’t even, not that we don’t see them, but we are okay with them, and I think that’s how time really flew by, you know. I, I, it was a mix of thing, and then rather not Swami, of course, my spiritual teacher, my mentor, my guru.

18:09 Oh, he, he is such an amazing man. What makes him amazing? His, his wisdom, of course, his wisdom, his a spiritual level. you know, it’s you, you don’t meet so many people who are a different plane, right? You’re constantly interacting to people who are on the same plane as ours, and when you meet somebody who’s in such a higher plane than yours we just get so drawn into that space, so drawn into that energy, so drawn into the zone, you know.

18:44 So it was a spiritual level, a spiritual energy. Of course, it’s wisdom and uh, I spawned in him a person who cares a person who loves. You know, I read this beautiful quote. It’s in the first book I wrote, which said, I don’t care how much you know until I know how much you care. You know, there’s so many people who know but they don’t care, or damn who you are.

19:13 You know, they’ll ask you how you are and what’s happening with you, and they’re barely interested in listening to your answers. They don’t care. You know, Radhanath Swami says something interesting. He said once, once, I think in a conversation he was mentioning, he said, the warmth of love is so much more important than the light of knowledge. You know, imagine you’re in Chicago.

19:34 It’s minus 26 degrees Celsius. I was there once in February. Oh, goodness me horror, that cold is just horrifying, and then the, the wind factor as it adds to the chill. It’s like sword slashing onto your face when you walk out. Minus 26 degrees Celsius.

19:54 Imagine you’re in your house. It’s nights, like half nine, and and the lights go off. It’s okay, you can still live in darkness. It’s all right, it’ll manage. Imagine the heating goes off.

20:08 I’ll die to death if it’s minus 26. Which is why, in a situation like that, warmth is so much more important than light. And when I heard that quote that Radhanath Swami once was in a conversation, is mentioning this, the warmth of love is so much important than the light of knowledge. A person who cares, a person who genuinely feels, a person who genuinely wants wishes well for you in a world where everybody’s so narcissistic, so self-centered, everybody’s just about them.

20:37 And then you find somebody who truly cares for you as a well-wisher. Oh, I have such a breath of fresh air. So I found in him that, like I said, that spiritual energy, of course, the wisdom but a person who truly cares, a person who truly loves. And I haven’t seen him change. I know him for the twin last 26 years, and back in the day he wasn’t such a known figure.

21:00 That’s in his journey that he started kind of being known to people out there. and through that entire journey he hasn’t changed. All this popularity, all this fame, to him and people know him today. He’s a big spiritual leader. Is a person who cares, a genuine well-wisher.

21:19 So he was there. He was there, available in the ashram. So all these inconveniences were like, then swine, you know. It’s like I didn’t feel I left home to come here I felt I came to a second home. So my family homes, one home, but here’s another home.

21:33 Now, when did you finally feel that maybe you could pass that wisdom on to others? Like, I’m just curious. Is it like after 10 years where some of the newer members are looking to you? Is it after 20 years where you’re comfortable to speak in front of people, or did that just happen right away? What was your evolution like?

21:50 Yeah, yeah, because now you speak in front of all these crowds. I see your videos on YouTube, and like, you’re entertaining them, you’re cracking jokes, they’re, they’re with you, they’re laughing. It’s, it’s, you know, you know what you’re doing now. Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. I think when I came to the ashram, one of the things that Radhanath Swami wanted us to do as a teacher, as a guide, was to start speaking to people all already from day one.

22:17 I like him even more, you know, day one, right? Share what you’ve learned share what you’ve learned, because the best way to learn is to share. The best way to remember something is to repeat, not just like repeat as in word by word, go by the letter of the law, but understanding the spirit behind the law, and share it based on our understanding, based on our realization, based on our own our own context. There’s the text, but then there’s the context, and it’s the context that renders so much value and meaning to the text.

22:55 So I, I remember even, I think, within the first three days of my coming to the ashram, they wanted me to go and speak to people, and I was like, gosh how do you do that? What do I say? And some of the senior monks there said, just say what you’ve learned, share, just speak to them. They speak to them, just share what you’ve learned, and I, I feel it was so beautiful it was so beautiful, because then it just became a part of you, right? And then he, he’s he made this thing for us in the ashram, because in the journey of sharing what you’ve learned with others, you’re evolving as an individual.

23:37 People are probably listening to you, connecting to you. They start respecting you. They start putting on a pedestal, worshiping you, maybe admiring you, this is a huge fan followership that you get, it’s just but natural when you start sharing something that’s so heartfelt that you’ve received. It’s not that you’re going and giving a lecture, or you’re doing a workshop, or you’re doing a seminar, you’re just sharing your heart, and then people connect because you’re sharing your heart.

24:04 It’s a very different space. It’s not the head space. It’s the heart space. So when you do that, these are just consequences of what you do, you know, position and fame and numbers and followership and fans. All of this just comes as a consequence.

24:19 And I think those formative years with Radhanath Swami, I mean, I cannot thank him enough for what he’s given me. Uh he taught us, you be a lion in the chase and be a lamb at home. All right, when you go out there, be confident, share speak, learn what you need to do to connect to people, when you come back is being that home space, in that space of humility, in that space of being a no one, nobody, because when in that space, when I live like a nobody and then I go out, that power is something that doesn’t come by just reading books, and that power is not something that comes by learning public speaking skills.

25:05 That power is not that something that comes by, you know, uh, by disturbatory skills. No, it doesn’t. It’s a very different power. It’s an internal power. So the power of humility, the power of being grounded, the power of being deeply connected to yourself, to your, to the divine that you try to connect to deeply, try to connect to your fellow inmates there so that, that teaching that came from him, I think that’s been the trigger, the catalyst in my journey of evolution to what I do today, you know.

25:38 A, it was just like started right away, and B was this statement, be a lion in the chase, but be a lamb at home, and I try my bit, not that I’m humble, not that I’m grounded, but I, I try my tiny bit to go back home in the ashram and just be another person. One of the things that I enjoy doing and love is listening to other monks, which is just sit and listen, learn, just be there, like, no, like a nobody and, and it’s such a beautiful space. Is it strange to be a celebrity monk?

26:10 And when you started, there were no celebrity monks. Yeah, even that concept was probably completely foreign that it could ever happen. I mean, there have been some in the past, but it’s usually very, very few, but now, well, you are, and it’s a thing. I mean, you know, there’s celebrity, everything’s now. But is that strange?

26:29 Is it a natural progression? Was it weird to watch it happen? Yeah, uh, it felt very strange. It felt very strange initially when the whole journey started. Like, like I said, when you’re trained to go speak out there and then come back and remain in a space of, you know, like being a, just an ordinary person, and the events I was doing, the people who I was speaking to, they were respectful, obviously, but it’s not like what it’s today.

26:57 It’s not like this insane thing that, like, a fan girl and a fanboy and people like the cheering, rooting for you, crying, doing this crazy stuff. No, nobody crazy in the sense that, you know, to me it seems crazy for them. It’s just such affection and love. So I really respect that, but to me it sounds like, oh my gosh, what’s happening here? So it was a little strange in the beginning.

27:19 Of course, I wasn’t used to it at all, and uh, it felt a little weird. It felt a little strange. Then I realized that to me what really matters is service. I want to serve people. I want to help people.

27:35 I want to try and make a difference, not that I can, but sharing what I’ve learned, try and make a little tiny difference in the lives of people, because people are just going through so much. They’re going to hell in their lives, so much suffering, so much pain, so much agony, so much anguish, right? And we could be agents of change. We could be instruments of change, you know, to be able to bring a smile on somebody’s face, to be able to help them find their purpose, to be able to find, help them find their space of peace and calm.

28:08 So uh, I feel that’s what I really wanted to do, and that’s what I want you to do. And I hope, fingers crossed, that’s what remains as my purpose till my last breath. I think when I, when we met first today, I was quoting Rabindranath Tagore, who said, uh, when I, I slept and I dreamed that life was life was joy. I woke up and I saw life was service. than I acted and I realized service was joy, you know.

28:46 So when it comes to serving people, we’re going to have to do what is required to be able to serve them initially that service could be done when people, there were few people the principal was still service. The mission was still to serve. The purpose was still to serve, but all this huha wasn’t there around there, and today this is the soul who are around it but if this is how I could serve people, then I realized initially there was a little bit of discomfort, and I realized, but that’s what makes people happy.

29:23 One selfie taken with them makes them happy and opens their heart to this message. I’m happy to take those selfies, if coming up on stage and they’re rooting for me and cheering for me and whistling for me, which was not what they would do for a monk, if that’s what makes them happy, if that’s what makes them open their hearts up to what I have to say, I’m okay with that, if coming up on social media and and you know, sharing all the snippets is what makes them happy, and what through, if it’s, if this happens to be the medium through which I can serve, I’m happy to do that, you know. So I at a point in time realize that service is the foundation, and the edifice the building that we build upon this foundation in a way that we can serve people.

30:14 Uh, it’s going to change with time, all of our lives will change with times, externally they do, we’re not going to remain the same externally. We age, our situations change, the external modalities through which we serve change. But as long as we are aligned to that lighthouse principle I want to say, then yes, even the discomfort is fine initially, and then eventually we kind of get used to it. That’s the beauty of the human potential, that we can uncondition ourselves and recondition ourselves to what we want to now do, whereas the foundation always remains the same.

30:53 To serve, how? Why is it that this lesson to serve is very hard to find in this world, you know? When I look out there, I don’t remember being taught that in school. When I used to watch MTV, I didn’t see people being uh put on a pedestal that we’re serving. When I go on Instagram and Tick Tock, I don’t see service being louded by everybody.

31:15 I had to learn the hard way that this service was the ultimate way to find joy, and so many people will even listen to us and be like, oh yeah, yeah, click, and go back to a default life. What we’re almost told in this world, consciously or subconsciously, that you gotta get what’s yours, and then you’ll be happy when you have the jet, you have the money, you have the distance, and yet so many people get there and they feel very hollow and they don’t find the joy. Yeah, um, how do we get that lesson out there, and why is it not there, or is that the beauty of that lesson, because it’s not obvious?

31:49 Yeah, yeah, I think two things I’d like to say. Number one is we live in a world which is a game of narratives. It’s all about narratives, and the people who sometimes create those narratives are the ones who say we don’t want the world to serve. We don’t want the world to serve. We want the world to consume.

32:18 We want the world to achieve, because they don’t achieve. They don’t consume. If they don’t consume, we run out of business. All right. So it’s a game of narratives.

32:27 It’s a battle of narratives and there’s a narrative out there, have more, consume more, and you’ll be happy. I remember this quote by Jim Carrey. I think he said something very interesting. He said, I’m just paraphrasing, not the exact words. He said he said, I, I think he said, I pray that everything that everybody aspires for and dreams about, I pray that they get it all because then they’ll know that that’s not the answer, right?

32:58 Because until the time we’re just chasing it, we feel probably there’s the, that’s the answer. But we all know that when we reach there, like you said earlier on, we know that that’s not the answer. Again, I’m not against material affluence at all. There’s nothing wrong with having stuff, but stuff only has utility value, not happiness value. I mean, I wouldn’t mind driving in a Lamborghini if somebody gifted me one.

33:24 What’s the, what’s wrong with having a Lamborghini? But to think that Lamborghini makes me happy is an erroneous notion. I have a beautiful 10 bedroom apartment or even a massive bungalow. What’s the problem? It’s okay.

33:40 But the thing that, that’s what makes me happy is an erroneous notion. So I think it’s the narrative, a narrative that have more and then you will be happy, is what I think the issue is. I asked a friend of mine, what’s your equation for happiness? He said, happiness is directly proportional to what you have. As a, hang on, man which means then people who have the most would be the happiest.

34:05 Then he gave it a thought. He said, I think happiness is inversely proportional to what you have, which means the less you have, the happier you are. I said, hang on, man, which means the homeless people would have been the happiest. so there are two movements. There’s the hedonistic movement, hedonism, materialism.

34:21 There’s minimalism so hedonism and materialism, as you, happiness is directly proportional to what you have. That’s not the answer, and minimalism is you say, okay, the minimum you have, you’re going to be happy, but if minimum was making you’ve chosen to chosen minimalism after having so much as a movement, but the homeless have already had minimal, they’re not happier either. So I told this friend of mine, happiness is neither directly proportional nor and mostly proportional to what you have.

34:49 It has nothing to do with what you have. What you have only helps you with your standard of living. How you live helps you with your standard of life or your happiness, right? So when it comes to that joy, that happiness, that fulfillment, that contentment, that inner satisfaction, I think there is no debate that service can do that. Right, and some people, like you rightly said, learn the lesson the hard way.

35:20 What if you could include it in our education? What if, what if the celebrities, what are the top influencers, spoke about it? And which is why I think we should do that. We should do that. We should use our platforms.

35:32 We should use what we have today, the medium that we have, to teach people to speak to people about this, that selfless service, and we’re not saying we need to be 100 selfless or anything, but we need to begin that journey, and we can find that satisfaction. So we need to now make that narrative happen. If this is the narrative that has existed for so long, today with the power of social media, today with the power of thought leadership, today with the power of digital media, where we can disseminate what, what’s important, what’s a value, we, I think, are in the best space in the history of the world so far to be able to bring this message to the world, that service can bring true joy.

36:14 And then yes, apart from just the battle of narratives, I I can say this with hand on my heart. Apart from people who are just so hardwired to not see it, like some people are just so hard-wired to say no, I’m not going to see services joy. I think a good 85, probably 95 percent of the people resonate with this principle that service is joy, because they’ve tasted that experience. They’ve had. They’ve seen It may not have gone out just doing something selflessly for your child, or for your family, for your dad, or for your mom or a colleague at office, just covering them up for the weekend, because she gave birth to a child, and her maternity leave is over, now she can’t come because there’s some family emergency.

36:58 Just cover them up, cover for them. This is joy, which cannot be spoken in words, which cannot be defined, uh, by mathematical equations. People experience that, and when we are at the receiving end of service, somebody selflessly serves us, we know what that feels like. It strikes a chord deep there within our souls. It’s not the mind, it’s not the ego, it’s not the intellect, deeply touched enough, the very core of our souls.

37:30 So we know what it feels like, and we know what it feels like when we serve others. So it’s just a matter of putting these two together. People have that experience, and now creating that narrative, and that’s how a revolution can happen. A massive revolution. At, hey, it’s okay to have the stuff that you want.

37:48 No worries. Have the best cars, the best homes, the best clothes, the best gadgets, have the best, the best bank balances, but look at this too, and that’s how that balance can then bring quality to life. I’m having flashbacks here too. Well, people who have served me, uh, where I had that feeling of like, wow, wow. I don’t know this person.

38:09 They don’t know me. Anything, but they just went out of their way and served me in the time I needed it so much. A teacher, a mentor, this, a stranger, and it’s, it’s so touching. It’s more touching than when your mom does it, even though it’s amazing, but you know, you know her, and it happens all the time, and, and yet we seem to forget the power of that also when we served we get into this amazing moment where, um, it’s this moment of grace, perhaps, absolutely, um, and when I started experiencing service on a regular basis, when I started doing this, I started really untapping everything, and um, I remember the first year I did London Real.

38:47 I kept asking myself, like, what am I doing here? This was never a business. It’s never anything. This is just me doing this, because it felt like the right thing to do, and every year I would look in the mirror, and I’m like, this, there’s no money, you do, what are you doing? But I would be like, but your life is better.

39:01 I had more friends. I was happier, and I was like, I want to do this one more year, and next year come around and be like, wait a second, I mean, I’m even better. I’m, I’ve got more things. I got more energy, more okay. I must be doing something right, so I just, as an engineer, I didn’t know why it was happening, but I knew it was happening, so I said, all right, let’s do it another year.

39:20 And then I started to see this great thing, and if anyone’s watching or listening, definitely see if you can meditate on this concept a little bit. Um, I’ve got a former guest, his name is Wes Watson, uh, probably very different from you and me. He spent 10 years in the California Penitentiary system. He is now, I guess, a celebrity, uh, ex-con, as you would say, and he said, Brian, he’s like the only time I can find happiness is when I’m teaching my students and serving my students, and he said it to me in such a way where I thought, when I teach and I have an academy and I teach, it is that one moment of the day that I forget about all of my problems, and I’m in this flow state where they’re more important.

40:03 Absolutely, and, and then I come out of it, and I’m like, wow. Um, if I really think about it, that is a beautiful, beautiful place to be, right? Where I can actually escape what sometimes can be a world of my concerns. Correct? And so another piece of evidence that it’s a wonderful thing that’s a place we all need to go to.

40:24 We’ve all been of service, but probably we don’t go out of our way to engineering into our lives, and like you said, you can have both. I agree, you can have the bank balance, you can have the lambo, and then if you put the service in there, brilliant, on top of the cake. So 26 years ago was 1997. The internet was barely getting started. I remember now, 26 years later it’s everywhere.

40:50 Yeah, you know, and I want to jump into the book shortly, but have you noticed that the people that you serve are different? Is there more anxiety? Is there more depression? Is there more narcissism? Is there more?

41:06 All these things that you talk about in their book, have you noticed that, because of mobile’s social media interconnectiveness comparison, um, what is your take overall on that phenomenon? No, 100. I, I definitely have seen it increase. Okay, a hundred percent. Okay, and it’s all because of connectivity, right?

41:27 Because they’re supposed to make us happier. Yeah, earlier we just, uh, we were just looking at two people and feeling insecure, right? Today we look at 200 people and feel insecure. We can look at 2,000 people’s Instagram stories and feel insecure, feel FOMO, oh, he’s in London doing a London Real podcast, and I’m sitting in Mumbai, and nobody’s calling me for a podcast, you know, nobody’s inviting me for a podcast. So earlier nobody got to see that.

41:59 We were in our own lives. Lives were private. Lives were private, and lives are meant to be private. That’s how we live our lives. Again, not the internet has done so much good, right?

42:13 Which is why I feel the internet social media is like a tool. We have to know how to use it well. Nothing’s good or bad if you don’t know how to use it, right? It’s going to be a bane rather than a wound to us as individuals. So I feel we lived very private lives earlier, and love life is very public.

42:37 Everything’s everywhere. We post everything. It’s less about eating, but taking a picture and posting it. This is what I’m eating, right? It’s not so much relishing the food.

42:47 It’s not being there, but it’s being there on the social media platforms, not being there in the moment. So lives have changed, right? What I’ve also seen over the years is people, I, I’ve always seen people to have that potential sincerity in them that has never changed. That will never change. People are good people are good.

43:17 We always look at the bad side of people, and the bad side of people is so much blown out of proportion that we create a world which is only filled with bad people. Hi, people have the inherent potential to be good. They’re good people. They have sincerity. They have genuineness.

43:34 So what if social media has taken over? So what? This Instagram story is all over the place. So what? Now I see 2,000 people and feel insecure, but I still have that sincerity, and to be able to fan that spark of sincerity and say, hey, look, this is there, and it’s okay to have it, but how do you navigate through it without being affected by it is what we need to learn, because the sincerity is there, the goodness is there, right?

44:00 So I feel that change has happened, but what hasn’t changes with the goodness in people. What hasn’t changed is the sincerity in people. In fact, over the years people have kind of come to a conclusion that materialism isn’t the answer, right? Although they’re running after it, they’re chasing it, but there’s something that’s kind of resonating in there saying, I don’t think this is the answer. Why suddenly there is, there are people who are listening to a monk like me if there was no sincerity?

44:28 Yeah. why suddenly there’s this booming followership on social media for a monk like me if there was no valuing what I was saying? Why suddenly people are wanting to listen to a monk like me if they felt that what they are doing is the answer to life? So which basically means it’s all there, right? But sometimes we just present the dark side of it so much and then we are all the time debating and having conferences about, hey, what to do about social media, what to do about this, let’s use that platform to, like, be that was discussing earlier, to create a narrative that can transform life truly.

45:04 So yes, people have changed in terms of the externals, but internally people are still very genuine. They’re very sincere. Uh, they value what is real, right? They value what is real, which is why they’re watching content, the kind of content we create, and the, uh, we need to really tap into that potential and serve accordingly. So yes, comparison is there.

45:29 There’s a lot of comparison. There’s a lot of insecurity there’s a lot of inferiority that people feel, so that’s precisely why we have to go out there and tell them that you know, it’s all right. Here are some, a few things that you could do to navigate your journey through this, through this maze and still be secure. You don’t need to feel insecure because somebody is doing well. They’re doing well is not going to change anything in your life, right?

45:57 Nothing in your life. You’re going to have to work on yourself, and people love that when they listen to that they connect to it, and I find so many people come up to me when I travel on planes, pilots, captains, towards toward this, is, you know, security staff at the airport, someone who’s frisking me, random people coming and telling me that this is adding value to their life. So how, how is it if they’re not genuine? Yeah, you know. So I think that’s there.

46:23 Yeah, you’re right. It is like a tool, I guess. Like the first knife, people could say, wow, you can use it to stab somebody, but you can also use it to cut your food and smoke each other ones. So it’s a tool that, when used improperly, guests can cause harm and be dangerous, but when used properly can advance your, your life. Yeah, and improve your humanness.

46:45 Absolutely. And yeah, on one, on one hand, like you said, used to live in a very small group of people. Yeah, and it’s very unlikely that there would be a billionaire in your group or a movie star or someone with a jet. Right? These days on Instagram you’re literally one swipe away.

46:59 Yeah, from someone with all of those things. There’s, I always tell my, my students, there’s always someone with more money than you, a more attractive husband or wife than you, a better body than you. There’s, there’s always someone out there. So yes, stop, stop either looking for that or judging yourself by that, because you’ll always be able to find something. Absolutely.

47:19 They say you can’t compare someone else’s chapter 20 to your chapter two. And so true, but at the same time you said the connection is amazing, and uh, I’ve connected with so many amazing people around the world because of social that I would have never had the chance to in a small peer group in my town. So true. Matter of fact, they always say you’re never, I’ve had guests on before that say you never appreciate it in your hometown because they know you so well.

47:41 You actually have to get out, and then people are like, wow, you’re special. Yeah, so that is literally priceless, and this same guy, Wes, this um former penitentiary guy, he said he actually goes on social and says, I love all of you guys, you’re my friends more than even people in person, because we’ve found a wavelength that we’re all on, and we’re going there. And I guess the last thing I’d say is, whereas, you know, 60 second Tick Tock videos are important also.

48:09 Long form content, absolutely. Embraced, absolutely. This is unedited, unscripted content. It doesn’t get much more real than this. We first, we just met.

48:17 Yes, and so you’re going to get a real dose of Gaur and me today, and people love it, and they know the truth even on social, even digitally. Absolutely. People can tell, oh, that’s real. Yes, and that’s, uh, that’s an important real in London Real. There you go.

48:32 There it is, there it is. Look. I want to jump into the first chapter of the book because you really got my attention when you did that, because I think you were talking about this AI robot named Sophia. That’s right, and again, there’s some weird energy things going on because I just had Dr. Ben Goertzel on the show of SingularityNET, who made Sophia. Oh wow, yeah, and so he was on, the, he was in the show in 2019.

48:57 He just came back on. Lovely, yeah, and so I was like whoa, all right, so we’ve got another connection, and obviously lately everyone’s talking about AI. Yes, it’s the ChatGPT that’s got everyone’s on their mind. I’ve played with it. I’m sure you played with this, everyone’s playing with it, and everyone’s been blown away by how advanced it is, how sophisticated it is.

49:20 Now, some people will tell you it’s just a narrow AI. It’s not a an AGI, a general AI. It’s not going to become Skynet, like Terminator, yet. but we’re still like wow. And then again, you look at Sophia, but when you saw Sophia you also saw, I think what humans are and what machines aren’t.

49:41 Absolutely, and you open the book with that. You know, it’s the first part of the book. I’m wondering, why did you choose her? What lessons can Sophia teach us about ourselves? Yeah, yeah.

49:53 This was an event in Singapore 2019. It was called Masters of the Century, and I spoke there, and after I spoke this beautiful audience, about 1,000,500 youngsters, a very lively audience, and then I finished my talk. They gave me a round of applause. I went backstage, and then she started shouting Sofia, Sofia, Sofia, Sofia, and I’m like, they get the name wrong, because if you’re asking somebody to do an encore, it should have been. Yeah, then I kind of guess is probably the next guest is somebody like a big person, right?

50:32 Like somebody very renowned and well-known. I thought it’s probably Sofia Vergara from Modern Family. Okay, and then there’s somebody backstage asked me, would you like to go see Sofia? I said, when is a monk like me going to get to see Sofia Vergara? I better grab the opportunity, and then it took me, and I went to the room, and there were these two security guards like standing there, like big, like really muscular, muscles rippling out of their suits.

51:02 They’re standing there, and I said, oh, we’d like to see Sophia. I said, yeah, said but Sophie is getting plugged in. Said, what’s this new slang, plugged in? You know, because language and jargon has changed so much with this millennial generation. Like, I never heard the word, she ghosted me, or he ghosted me.

51:21 Such a new term. So what’s this plugged in then? I felt maybe plugged in as like when you, like when you go to a place to speak, you just plug into the venue, just get plugged into the space before you go up on stage. And then the doors opened, and they brought this robot and the one thing we had in common was a hairstyle. She’s bald.

51:42 I’m bald. So they brought her out, and I said, oh my goodness me. It’s a robot. That’s when I kind of clicked, when they said she’s being plugged in. Literally, being plugged in to charge her up, and I was excited.

52:01 I went and I sat there in the front row, and she came up on stage. She was precise, you know, the movements of her eyes, her head, her expressions, and the questions that the moderator was asking, size answers. The beauty was, none of those answers were her answers. They were all programmed into her. Every movement was programmed.

52:28 And people were applauding, and Sophia were smiling. She was programmed to smile. People were not kind of really appreciating something. She was like it’s a hung face. It’s programmed to do that.

52:41 When I speak up on, from, from stage, the energy of the audience feeds into my energy. When they laugh, I’m inspired to share more. When they cry, I’m inspired to share more. So that’s the day I realized, you know, until they asked her a question. Actually, they asked Sophia, do you think artificial intelligence will be a competition to human intelligence?

53:07 And I remember the answer Sophia gave there on stage. She said, she said, you humans created me not for me to compete with you to complement what you do. So the purpose of artificial intelligence is to complement human intelligence, not to compete with human intelligence. the original purpose. The original purpose.

53:30 Yes, the original purpose, and hopefully it will continue to happen. Their fingers crossed. So that day, then I realized that we are human beings, not humanoids, with real emotions. Sophia doesn’t have to worry about mental health. Sophia doesn’t have to worry about a heartbreak.

53:47 Sofia doesn’t have to worry about a divorce. Sophia doesn’t have to worry about the guilt she feels because she wasn’t there by her father’s side when he was leaving this world. Sophia doesn’t have to go through any of these things, no matter how much the world changes and how much AI develops. We’re going to be real human beings going through real emotions. That’s why I chose this as the first chapter to establish that no matter what happens, no matter how technologically equipped we be in the world it’s going to be, the human beings will still be there, and we as human beings are created to experience.

54:21 We are we experience. A robot cannot experience. Technology cannot experience. We can only put it all and try to simulate that experience. It’s we, the souls, the beings, the real, real being within who are experiencing everything in this life.

54:38 So that’s why I chose this chapter as a story to begin, because then it establishes this fact that we’re going to have to deal with our mental health. You’re going to have to deal with these insecurities, you know, do you have to deal with the feelings, the thoughts, or emotions and you structure the book into kind of four really fascinating sections. The first is me and my mind and others in my mind, then me in the mind of others, and then the universe in my mind.

55:02 That first one, me and my mind, is where a lot of people are, I think, and a lot of people get stuck, and you talk about things like FOMO. Yeah, missing out, big one today, maybe it always has been. Mental chatter, anxiety, depression, guilt. Those are kind of the big ones that you talk about. Um, why those are those ones that you find yourself talking a lot about in your ashram, because they’re on people’s minds and they want direction.

55:31 Yeah, I think four more, because we just surrounded by people all the time, even before social media, we had FOMO. It’s just that we didn’t have the word FOMO, right? And it’s just then we didn’t have the magnitude at which the firm was experienced because of all the public exposure to everything in the world today because of social. Everybody had FOMO, right? Comparison is just an integral part of our conditioned mindsets, right?

55:58 We are going to look at other people’s lives. We are going to look at what they have. We are going to see that they’re probably better than us. We are going to do all of that stuff. We’re going to think, what if I did this?

56:07 We are going to think, what if I had that? You know, so it’s such a thing, and it doesn’t stop even if you’re up there, because there’s going to be somebody better than you whom you’re looking at, you. You’re never going to be the best. It’s going to be somebody who has something better than us. Always, you want, right?

56:21 Yeah, and even if you’re at the pinnacle of whatever it means, you probably didn’t have time to do these other things, and someone’s going to be at the pinnacle of theirs, and you’re going to see that, right? You’re going to see that and say, I couldn’t do this. Yeah, I think the stoic said comparison is the thief of joy. Yes, yes. Absolutely.

56:37 So what do you do about it? Yes, but just precisely why then I included this in this chapter. Even in the ashram, they’re going to be people who are going to looking, be looking at each other, or he was living with us. Today is a celebrity monk. I am going to be looking at them saying, oh, how I miss this, being here, you know.

56:54 I’ve just been traveling around like a crazy insane man. I wish I had wings so I could fly and I didn’t have to go at the airport. That’s how much I travel, you know, and then I look at their lives and say, hey, this is such a beautiful life. We’re going to be looking at each other’s lives all the time. So which is precisely why we need to have this tools.

57:14 We need to have the right mindset to be able to look at our own lives more than the lives of others. And we have to look at the lives of others, why not? What if I can seek inspiration from somebody’s life to follow my own journey? You know, I can, I can take inspiration to follow my aspiration, but I don’t need to kind of really look at their life and think, oh, I need this. I need to have this.

57:35 I need to be better than this. If I need to be better than anybody, I just need to be better than my own self. I don’t need to be better than anybody else in the world. I just need to be better than my own self, you know. And I, we were created to be originals.

57:54 We, why be a photocopy of somebody else? An original is always better than a photocopy, even if it’s not that way, but I am an original, you know. So I felt this was something that was needed not just for millennials who probably experience it a lot because of social media, but for everybody who reads this chapter in their own ways, in their own space, because we look at the lives of others constantly, and like you rightly said, comparison indeed is the thief of joy, you know, rather than counting our blessings.

58:27 Envy is counting others blessings than counting our own, you know. In gratitude is counting our own blessings rather than counting somebody else’s blessings. So that was the purpose of writing four months. Of course, mental chatter, such an important thing. People just can’t sleep.

58:45 The mind is just on all the time and so I tell the story of Joshua, this little Jewish boy who I saw at the airport. This Jewish family there are three kids, and they were holding this boy. The boy just slipped out was running around. The mother didn’t know where the boy was. She was yelling, Joshua, Joshua, West, Joshua.

59:04 It’s like a pandemonium at the airport, and then suddenly somebody said, oh, there’s a little boy running there. Is it easy? Oh, boy and then the mothers kind of had to do with the other child, to the father, to a husband, and she started running after Joshua, and then she held Joshua by the hand and brought her back and didn’t leave the leave his hand and then I compared our mind to Joshua, a child who just runs away. I’m here and I’m just gone. Who’s just talking?

59:33 We’ve seen how children just blabber things, meaningless stuff sometimes, and the mind is chattering, chattering, talking meaningless stuff inside, like a child and we know that a child at least goes to sleep at some point. I’m asleep and my mind is still so active. People get up zombie they just don’t feel fresh. Why? Because they’re not rested.

1:00:01 Rest is not just sleeping. Rest is the mind being calm and peaceful. When I’m resting, so I thought it’s very important to talk about mental theater. How do I stop it? Is recognizing it one start?

1:00:12 Yeah, step in the way. Yes, and just catching yourself, oh, I’m just chattering away. Yeah, because if you don’t recognize it, then you’re just 80. We need to recognize it. Okay, and then I give four steps.

1:00:22 The book to deal with mental chatter number one is to neglect the chatter. You know, like if a child throws tantrums and the parents parent gives attention to the child, the child is going to grow in its volume and crying and yelling. But if I don’t pay attention, we see the child kind of settles down. I’m not saying we should neglect the legible needs of the child. If a child has hurt itself, we’re going to definitely take care of the child, but this winding and crying away for no reason the more attention we give to the child, the wilder it gets, but sometimes we just have to neglect what’s going on right in the mind.

1:00:57 Number two, I say that we should note things down when things are going on. If I realize that I can’t neglect it, journal, at, art, vent it out, right? You know, because otherwise the chatter, I’m feeding that chatter right? So if I find myself sleepless one night, don’t just lay there in bed tossing and turning and just feeding the chatter. Wake up, take a paper, take a pen, write it all down.

1:01:23 You will see how the mind slowly starts to settle down, because you’re not paying attention to it. Now just lying there, but you’re just venting it out. The third thing I say, dealing with mental child, mental chatter, is to negotiate. Negotiate with the mind like we negotiate with a child. Work now, play later.

1:01:39 Just do your homework. I’ll allow you to play but not play now, right? If you allow the child to play, the child is going to play all day long. You’ll love the mind, it’s way all day long. The mind’s gonna play its games to negotiate.

1:01:52 I’m not saying I won’t give your time, but right now let’s focus. To negotiate, and the fourth thing is being a neutral observer which is like you said earlier, just to step back, right, and look at that. Like you said earlier, I like that when you said, you said, I stepped back, and I said, hey, this is Brian. Is this what Brian was doing for all this while, for all these years, stepping back? You know what happens is we are so involved with our chatter.

1:02:19 The more involved we get, the greater it grows sometimes. they just need to take that step back and just observe, note, resist your thoughts. No need to resist them, but no need to feed them, right? Just be and let them be. If I get a thought, I’m not let it come, let it go.

1:02:38 Let it come, let it go. We see how slowly the mind starts to settle down. So I felt this was so crucial because people need to find their peace, which is why I included the chapter in the first section of the book. It’s so important because without those techniques, you could be, you could be just submerged in your own chatter your whole life. Absolutely, absolutely right, absolutely, and not even know how to get out of it or know that there might be another way, and it’s dialed up maybe with social media a little bit, with the phones buzzing and the constant input of things and more things in the world to worry about and people to see.

1:03:15 And true, it’s there. Yeah. Um, anxiety, and one of the things about you, go, which I really enjoy, is that you’re very honest and vulnerable about your own, well, what some people would say shortcomings, but you know, you’re not the master of everything. You feel these emotions yourself. Yes, and you talk about them honestly.

1:03:37 Yes, because some people say, well, he’s the monk’s got it all figured out, but you’re quite open and saying, I, I don’t always have it all figured out. I feel these things. Yes, and do these things. What, what do we need to know about anxiety? Do you get anxiety?

1:03:51 Yeah, yeah, I, in the first book, Life’s Amazing Secrets, which is The Way of the Monk, here in the UK, I wrote the story of how I had in one of the stocks that you mentioned, you you saw this, the ashram, it’s all these youngsters sitting there. I’m giving a talk and I’m cracking them up, and they’re making a great point, and I was making a point, and I love cracking jokes. I love making things hilarious, because it opens that space up. It makes, allows people to be themselves, you know, and then grave wisdom can go in, it can sink in slowly.

1:04:28 Otherwise you come and then you just start hearing some strong stuff immediately. It’s a little hard for people, so I love to crack people up, so I was cracking a joke, a joke, and I said, you know, I said, how much does an average teacher save after an entire career? Maybe like a couple of thousand dollars. How much does a, does an engineer save after his entire career? At the end of this lab, like a couple of hundred thousand dollars.

1:04:52 Well, how much does a corrupt politician? I said, I use the code, corrupt politician, or a good, clear corrupt politician, end up saying, I’ve got a couple of million dollars, a billion dollars, and then I pointed to my attire. And I said, guess how much does a guy dressed up like this save here in India? Billions of dollars. And then I said, choose your career wisely, guys.

1:05:15 Kind of self-deprecating, and in a spiritual space sometimes people have big ashrams, a lot of money, charities. So I kind of joking. Now, this talk wasn’t meant to go up on social media. It wasn’t meant to go up on YouTube. I didn’t know they put it up.

1:05:30 The ashram team, they put it up. I had no clue it was up there until 2016. When a friend of mine, one evening, sent me that clip, just that much joke out of context, and then two to three hundred people that same evening sent me the same video clip. Some were appreciating, hey, this video clip is going wild and you’re getting famous. Some were being very strong.

1:05:56 How could you speak about men who are dressed up like this, who have a noble purpose to serve? And some were just concerned. What is he saying? And then I looked at it, this clip, and I was worried. I was anxious, not so much for myself, but for the ashram and the truth that I represent.

1:06:19 Right? Like if it was me, it’s fine. I lose something, it’s okay, but my Guru Radhanath Swami, you know, the ashram that I represent. It was a little, I was anxious, of course, and I feel when monks say that they don’t go through these emotions, I feel there’s a lie. It’s a lie.

1:06:42 Everybody, every human being goes through every emotion, unless you’re a master staying in the Himalayan mountains. If you’re a monk integrated with the society, having an ashram, having to pay bills, everybody’s gonna have to go through their anxieties. So I feel this big line needs to be busted, right? Even when the world of spiritual leaders and monks, that they don’t feel this, it’s a big lie. I feel sorry, right?

1:07:08 Uh, yes, I can definitely say that they know how to deal with it well, like myself. I have learned the techniques, the tools to deal with this properly, so I can bounce back like this. If I feel it’ll probably take 30 seconds, a minute, to bounce back. If it’s really hard, maybe a 30 minutes to bounce back, which probably people would take months to bounce back. That’s the difference.

1:07:31 So then this video clip, oh gosh, 200 people sending me this, and I’m thinking and other spiritual leaders in India are going to think, what is he saying? And what I had said can’t repeat it here, because it is in Hindi. It was a joke in Hindi. Just following this could have alluded to one of those men there that was even more worrisome, right? You know, so then I called her, a lawyer, one of our monks is a lawyer, solicitor, so I called them in.

1:08:04 I said, look, what do we need to do with this? He said, well, I don’t think there’s anything serious because you haven’t taken any names. I mean, freedom of expression, it’s fine, but we’ll still draft a letter just in case somebody says something. So we drafted a whole letter that evening, just in case somebody says, we put it out. And then just on time, just, I’m lying in my bed, you know, the universe, some say the force up there, some say God.

1:08:31 I prefer to call him God, whatever you say, energy, doesn’t matter what people call. I just don’t queue, you get something that you need, just that evening. People have their, had that experience. What you need just comes to you, just on time, as if as if a magical wand, just going around. That, how, how is this happening to me right now?

1:08:57 So I got this infographic, somebody sent it to me just randomly, and I put it in the book, the first book. It said, do you have a problem in life? No, then why worry? Do you have a problem in life? Yes, can you do something about it?

1:09:15 Yes, and why worry? Do you have a problem in life? Yes, can you do something about it? No, then why worry? Came just on time.

1:09:29 I realized I do have a problem here, and I’ve done what I could do. Spoken to the lawyer, I’ve drafted it later. Beyond this, there’s nothing I can do about it. Why am I losing my peace? We’ll see what to do about it that night, was, it was such a peaceful night, deep sleep.

1:09:52 I woke up completely fresh, ready for the challenge of the day. If I have to deal with it, I’ll deal with it. What’s the point getting worked up about it? So I feel it’s not that monks don’t have anxiety. It’s not that there won’t be situations that causes anxiety.

1:10:07 There will be things that cause anxiety. We have to learn how to navigate through these anxieties, and that’s, that’s where then my monkhood helps. I come from that space, and rather than saying that it doesn’t happen to me, I say, look, it happened to me once or twice, authorized, and I did this. See if it can help you, and what a beautiful space that is. Rather than being up here and people are down there and there’s no connect, say okay, I’m like you, but probably in a better position.

1:10:40 Not in a better position, because I am better when, a better position because I was blessed. I was fortunate enough to, you know, bump into this path, understand this practice, this experience, this, and now share it with you. So that’s why the chapter, of course, this has a whole different story, but I went to the earlier book because the story is a story that’s very close to my heart. Yeah, and so you go through that simple decision tree of, do I have a problem, kind of, yes or no, and it’s like, can I do something about it?

1:11:11 Yes, then okay. If it’s no, okay, so it’s just a way of kind of reminding the minds that I mean, you know, anxiety is always kind of frivolous, right? Because it’s worrying about something that’s not yet happened, yet that you can’t control. Almost in the definition, absolutely, but you have to kind of walk the mind through that, walk the mind through that. And I also feel like if you can’t do anything about it, like the second one, do you have a problem?

1:11:41 Yes, can you do something about it? No, the end, the mind says no, but it’s still playing on your mind. If you can’t do something about it, that gives you confidence, but you can’t do anything about it, it’s still hard to deal with it, because it’s, you just feel helpless, you feel overwhelmed with what’s going on. So I think at that point in time, it’s so important and crucial to speak a heart up with somebody. Today, we live in a world where we are lugging so much in our minds.

1:12:07 I was saying the other day to somebody, how heavy is this phone? Probably about 200 grams, 250 grams. If I hold this phone on my palm, right, it’s 200 grams. If I hold this phone for the entire podcast, the duration of the podcast, about an hour, it’s going to start hurting my wrist. What if I held this phone like this for the rest of the evening, the rest of the week, start paralyzing my wrist, numbing my wrist, losing sensations here.

1:12:34 It’s not so much how heavy it was, it’s for how long have I been lugging it, right? This is what’s happening with people’s mind, their anxieties, their insecurities, their worries, their, their negativities, the toxicities that they carried. Their mind just there all the time. Imagine if I were to hold this phone all the time, what happens to my wrist? That’s what I’m doing with my mind.

1:12:58 Why are we having so many mental health issues? Because I’m just not able to take this off my mind. So which is why I feel a lot of people just able to take this phone off, at least for a while, not all the time, because we’re going to have to deal with things in our head. But which is why I think we need to take things off, which is journaling, meditation, opening our hearts up, or probably just taking professional help if required, therapy, counseling, healing sessions, psychiatric sessions if required, right?

1:13:29 So that we can just at least occasionally excuse me, pull the phone off right now. Another way to look at it is sometimes we are in a situation where we just can’t take it off. We’re dealing with something serious. It’s playing on my mind. I have to deal with it.

1:13:47 I don’t know what to do with it. What if somebody put their hand underneath so that the burden is a little lighter so we don’t have to struggle alone. You know, and that’s the problem with the world today. We live in our own silos. We live in our own shells.

1:14:01 We live on our own in our own tiny apartments with no personal, real, offline relationships. And when we have those relationships, just somebody to just put that hand down, they say, okay, we’re not wearing it together. Oh, it’s makes life so much different, so much different. So when we deal with anxiety issues help is so much needed. Opening our heart up is so much needed, and there are going to be certain secrets to our life which we can’t share with everybody.

1:14:28 Practice generally write them out. Let it come out. Let this come out. Let’s not just lug it in our minds all the time, and such a beautiful way to experience peace and calm. I feel, yeah, that’s just a powerful moment.

1:14:42 We were talking earlier about FOMO and how people scroll through the Instagram and see all the people and things that they think they want, but it’s important for people to remember that each one of those people are also dealing with their ownings. Absolutely, absolutely. One of the things I realize, um, or I think it was like about six years into doing this show, is that one day I, I went to someone and I said, you know what, our guests on London Real sometimes they need more love than anyone else, because I started sitting down with these brilliant minds, and people would see them for their brilliance and this one thing they do amazingly, and then I get to chat with them all off camera, and I would realize that they’re also carrying a really heavy burden, or the person that got you to listen to them because they did some epic thing, correct?

1:15:29 Also is weighing a lot of burdens and anxiety, and what they go through to become that person for you. Absolutely. You don’t see that. You just see their best day, right? And so to know that all these people have these feelings too, I think is important, and it’s not like, oh, once I get a billion dollars, enough to worry about that, once I became famous, I don’t worry about that, once I get Lamborghini.

1:15:50 No, you, you’ll always have to worry about that. Human beings. Yeah, human beings get those tools. Now, um, you keep going in this, and you get some really juicy stuff, or good stuff, important stuff. You talk about depression, and you talk about guilt, right?

1:16:07 And they’re so core, I think we should talk about them. Let’s talk about depression first. Yeah, you know, there’s a lot of medication these days. Yes, there’s a lot of people that are depressed. Um, there’s that old phrase, which I don’t know if it’s right or wrong, but depression is living in the past, and anxiety is living in the future.

1:16:30 I said that recently to a guest, and they said that’s probably oversimplifying it. And it is. How do you see depression? What do you see that it is? How do you see people recognize it?

1:16:40 What can people do about it? I think a lot of times we mistake sadness with depression, with two different things. Like, sadness could be, I’m sad, but I know the immediate cause for it. I lose a partner, I’d lose somebody to death, there’s a heartbreak, there’s a divorce, I lose a job. I know the cause.

1:17:03 A lot of times depression, I don’t even know what’s happening. I can’t see the cause. You know, a lot of times with me, when it’s sadness, I know if the cause is dealt with, I can come out of it. With depression, because I don’t even know why I’m depressed. I kept taking pills, I’m taking medication, I’m still not feeling better, and that’s taking me into further downward spiral of negativity, you know.

1:17:30 So a lot of times depression is not so easy to detect, because you don’t know what the cause is, and people mistake sadness for depression. If I say sadness, then I know the cause. It’s very clear, right? Whereas depression is something that’s hidden deep within, which I haven’t addressed. It could be a memory from my childhood, a bad childhood, could be a traumatic relationship, it could be a serious insecurity that I didn’t pay attention to, could be serious lack of self-esteem, that is that I’m not dealing with, because things that I don’t deal with and push to the back burner are brewing up internally, causing a lot of toxicity and negativity internally, which I think everything is going fine, but I don’t know what’s happening internally.

1:18:19 You know what I mean? So which is precisely why today, more than and medication is needed 100. There are things, times when we just hit rock bottom, and without taking medication it’s really hard to come out of it. But for everything, if you go to medication, I think it’s just kind of over the, over the top, because we need to also start taking control of our own lives. You know, how are we going to live our life entirely for the rest of the duration of our life just taking medication?

1:18:49 No, we can’t, because it’s going to have a hell of a lot of side effects, you know, which we all know how hard it is to handle those side effects with the drugs that we take. So not at all dismissing the drugs, 100, we need to look at them, right? Because we know how hard it can get for people just. They can’t just function without a truck. Now, over and above all of these things that I feel are indeed important is of course the psychology, the psychiatry, but today we have something called a psychotherapy, talk therapy, and psychotherapy and talk therapy, more than counseling and everything else, beliefs, that we need to go to the bottom, the root of the issue.

1:19:35 We can’t just numb our mind with the medicine, a pill or a drug. We can’t just in the moment say a few things and make me feel better. I need to go to the root cause of why do I feel like this, whereas with sadness I know what the cause is, but with depression I don’t. There is a cause. There has to be a cause.

1:19:55 How can they be in effect without a cause? We live in the world of cause and effect. It’s just that I don’t know. It’s just that people around me and specialists can’t figure it out since psychotherapy and talk therapy. I think people are trying to see if we can talk, discuss, make a person feel absolutely comfortable, bring them into us, bring them into a space where they start speaking, bring them into a space where they just are themselves when they’re speaking, and then start finding connections, then start finding connections in the entire narrative, in the entire narration.

1:20:29 Several sittings could this be the cause? And if this be the cause, could we address that in some way that the person starts feeling better. You know, so I feel it’s such a problem in the world today, and I feel I hope and pray that this field in the science, you have psychotherapy and talk therapy, develops more and we can actually start identifying those hidden causes, you know, which are lying there in our subconscious mind, which we are not even aware of.

1:21:01 We are not even aware of. Imagine a child in a broken home, seeing the father abuse the mother, or any which way, and seeing that traumatic scene, a mother whom he or she loves so much, she’s traumatized by that chain, but whereas, was it an age where he or she couldn’t even process what was happening, and it’s there in the subconscious mind, but grew up with this, probably the father and the mother divorced each other, and this wasn’t happening any longer, and he’s growing up, or she’s growing up in school with this going on in the background, nobody knows why it’s happening. Why is this person suddenly just switching off, you know?

1:21:41 So I think so much empathy, so much, I mean, I feel really emotional when I talk about these things, because people are just suffering. Believe me, you’re suffering like hell out there, and we need to have so much empathy and kindness, not label people, brand people, judge people, you know, and take this entire taboo away of mental health. If I have a fever, wouldn’t I go to a doctor? Right? If I have a mental health issue, I have a body, I have a mind.

1:22:12 Why is there a taboo around mental health? Why shouldn’t we talk about it openly? Why should people talk about it? So I feel there’s such a great need to help people with this, and I I, on, I sincerely pray that, you know, this, this field develops more, and experts really kind of do more research in this space, and psychotherapy develops more, and we can learn how to figure out what is that underlying cause. I had a friend of mine here in London I used to do hypnotic regression, you know, and very interesting person, very interesting person, local British, and he would talk to people.

1:22:55 I think he still does it. He would talk to people and take them into their past, take them into past lives at times, because a lot of times the trauma that people go through is not even from this life. It’s from a space that they don’t even know about, and no practitioner of psychotherapy can figure that out, you know. So this gentleman used to do this for those who believe in a life before and after life. He would take them back into the, a previous life, or a life before, to see what they’re saying, and then he found out that there’s something that they’re going through, then that’s causing them trouble here, and then in as a therapy, as a treatment, as healing, he would then have sessions where he would again regress them back to that stage and counsel and help them there in that life to heal that and this patient started responding well, you know.

1:23:54 So I think, yeah, these are things that I feel very much needed, so that’s probably, of course, I don’t write all of this stuff in the book, but a little something has been mentioned in the book. Yeah, do you believe in past lives? I, I am forced to. I’m forced to, not because of my faith, is beyond faith, you know. Let’s not keep faith here at all, and I, if you heard me speak and my writings, I don’t, I don’t bring too much of the faith aspect to it at all.

1:24:21 Uh, when I talk to people who study past life, you know, like we had Dr. Ian Stevenson from University of Virginia, who was dabbling into this field and doing research into this past life memory cases and it’s, it’s shocking to see how little kids can reveal to things that they have absolutely no exposure to. It’s science. It’s not faith, you know. It’s science studying it. Dr. Ian Stevenson is not practicing any spirituality or any religion.

1:24:51 He’s just looking at it completely from a scientific perspective, and then he had a student who was studying this as well in India at an institution called Institute called NIMHANS, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences. I’m supposing it’s in Bangalore in India. Her name is Dr. Satwant Pasricha, and she was also kind of guessing that was the name. She was assisting him in studying such cases in India and one of Dr. Pasricha’s case studies, I met him.

1:25:24 He lives in Mumbai. He was a past life regression case, and he told me his entire story. He was just three years old, talking a language that was not spoken in his family, not spoken in his neighborhood, talking about places that he’s never been to. He doesn’t know geography. He doesn’t know the map of the country, and talking about having a wife and a child, about being murdered.

1:25:46 And then Dr. Pasricha, along with the parents and the team, took him to wherever he wanted. He was saying he belonged to, and every detail was substantiated and proven. So then I kind of say, let’s keep faith aside and all of that stuff. Here’s science talking about it. There must be something, otherwise this guy, the brain is a new, fresh brain.

1:26:08 It’s a three-year-old. What is the connection? You know, so yeah, I do. I do actually believe in a life before. Yeah, there’s a strong possibility.

1:26:17 The more, the longer I live, the more I consider it, and I think with depression, maybe some of it comes down to some things we talked about earlier, which is you recognizing that the job you were in was maybe not something you wanted to be in the rest of your life, and if you hadn’t made that decision, maybe 10 years later, 15, 20 years later, you could have found yourself in a depression, possibly. Well, you couldn’t see the cause because you had been enveloped in it for so long. Yeah.

1:26:44 On that same note, this concept of being of service, you know, if you’re not taught that and you don’t know that’s important. Yes, you’ve had brushes with it. Where have you been given service or discussed others, but if you don’t know that and you’ve lived a life without it, again you might find yourself in this place. So yeah, maybe it’s that deep talk that psychoanalysis, and maybe even looking forward to your life and maybe trying to figure some of this stuff out now might help.

1:27:12 Um, this question just came to me. Do you believe in karma? Do you believe in what you do comes back to you, even in a non, you know, traditional Indian sense of the world? Do you believe what you do, and do you believe it’s instant? Yeah, I’ve been pondering this lately.

1:27:25 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I, let’s keep the word karma away again. Okay, let’s just use jargon, this very common place in the world out here. Okay, uh, I feel every choice that we make will have a consequence. How can I make a choice and not have a consequence?

1:27:44 Can’t be right. I say something to you, there’s going to be a consequence, right? I connect to your, I disconnect from you. You disconnect from you. You connect to me.

1:27:53 I’ve done it. I made my choice. I mean, I showed I made my choice to hurt you. It’s going to be a consequence to you, right? So every choice I make is going to have a consequence.

1:28:03 Now you call it karma, you call it the law of action and reaction, or you call it the law of choices and consequence. It doesn’t matter what we call it, but it’s a law of nature. It’s the law of the world, right? So whether does it come instantly, does it come after a while? Uh, I, let’s say I heard you.

1:28:24 I say something. I won’t. I’ll never hurt you, Brian. You’re such an amazing gentleman. I hope so.

1:28:30 You don’t know, I’m pretty tough, though. No, no, no. In the little time that I’ve known you, it’s been so, so beautiful to just chat with you and know you. Thank you. That’s just been a very beautiful, uh, experience to know you in this little time.

1:28:42 So, but if you did. Yes, as an example, if I hurt you, right? Uh, you are a wonderful gentleman, so you probably kind of take it in a style. It’s okay. Maybe he’s going through a tough day.

1:28:55 I hurt you twice. Second time I come here online, real, and I say, what the hell’s going on here? you say, it doesn’t look like it’s just a tough day. Looks like he’s wired to do it this way, right? you’re still, probably because of wonderful person that you will, probably take it a third time, will probably take it, so your reaction to me is not an instant one.

1:29:20 Your tolerance has allowed you to stay put and keep quiet and stay calm for people three times, four times, five times, ten times, twenty times. The 21st time you’re going to say, I’m not a doormat. I don’t want to be a pushover. I mean, okay, I respect you. You’re a monk, fine, if you can’t see what you’d like to say.

1:29:43 You can’t come here and just, you know, say anything you like. So what I did, the choice I made didn’t get an instant reaction. The reaction was postponed to a year, two years, my 21st visit on London Real, probably two and a half years later, 20 years later. You know, uh, let me give you another example. You, you, a person is a compulsive alcoholic, right?

1:30:08 Like real bad. Does that person get liver cirrhosis instantly? No. Serious liver issues? No.

1:30:16 It’s made a choice. The consequence is going to be there. How can there be no consequence to the choice that’s been made? We may not come instantly, because the body has a certain capacity to handle it. So taking these examples, if we see every other situation in our life as well, in the universe, there will be reactions that we may get instantly, but there may be reactions that we may get after a while, because it might take a while to build up before the reaction comes to us.

1:30:47 So now here, there’s no religion, no faith, no no philosophy involved. It’s just a straight life here, right? Uh, call it karma, call it choice. This consequence is called action and reaction. I think it does work very powerfully, and we all experience it in our daily life.

1:31:06 Me too. I think any kind of energy comes right back. Yes, it does. It does. And yeah, you’re right, the time can change, but more so than they taught me at MIT, that’s for sure.

1:31:16 I believe that it’s real and it happens. Yes, um, talk to me about guilt. Talk to me about your father. Yeah, oh, that’s a story. That’s a story, man.

1:31:32 I want to hear it. I’ve started talking about the story. Imagine, but it’s not on London Real, so I still share it. It’s a very emotional story for me, and it’s like reliving it, you know. When you share it, it’s like going through those moments again.

1:31:44 It’s a very emotional experience. I, I remember my father was an amazing man, incredible gentleman, and great love, great affection for me, uh, great dad. I had great affection for him too, but then you know, like we, we as human beings, we a lot of times we get into the trap of right and wrong, but life is beyond right and wrong. How much you want to prove, I’m right, you’re wrong. What do we gain out of it?

1:32:17 What are we gaining out of it? That instant pleasure, that instant gratification, that I prove I won, winning over an arguments, lab manages, win arguments. I’m not saying we will prove. I’m not saying we wouldn’t argue. I’m just saying, is life meant to all the time just be right, or is there something beyond right and wrong?

1:32:35 This love, this genuine connection, this body bonding, but this whole trap of right and wrong killing relationships, killing relationships. So I, I remember my father was a chain smoker, really, really hard smoker, and me and my mom knew that it wasn’t good for him. Obviously it wasn’t gonna be like really bad. It was also hurting all of us at home. You would probably take it, but it was really hurting him really bad.

1:33:07 So mom used to tell him that you should smoke in her own way. She’d coax him, should try and inspire him, but you know how men can be sometimes, and I remember I thought I would, in my own way, kind of pass that message, and I said I’m not going to talk to you for two years. I didn’t speak a single word living under the same roof, eating our meals together. I wouldn’t look him in his eye. How old were you?

1:33:34 Probably 20 years old. 20. Wouldn’t look him in his eye, two years. And they’re probably 19. I think yeah, 19, 20ish, and you’re very determined.

1:33:49 Yeah, I was very determined. I think I need to see if he can quit smoking, and then one day my mom comes up to me. My dad actually comes up to me in India. When you really kind of make an appeal to someone, you put your head on their feet and says, please don’t do this to me. You know, like even in the Christian faith, you see sometimes like you know, put your head at somebody’s feet like a respect and make an appeal.

1:34:15 Yeah, please do this. So my dad, he put his head on my feet. That’s not what you do. You won’t have your dad do to you, not in a culture that I come from. My mom is looking at this like, come on, son, you can’t be doing this to him.

1:34:32 Can’t be doing this, and I had a very good chemistry with my mom, not that I didn’t have it there, but it was a very different chemistry. So then I start talking to my dad just because Mom said it, and then in a couple of weeks I left home to be a monk. That was 21, so two years back it’s like 19. So then every year I would go home to see my parents, and I was, I had this resolve in my mind that I’d go say sorry. Dad, I’d put you through this.

1:35:09 But this is three lettered word ego, which stops you from saying the five-lettered words, sorry, right? And as a monk, I put up my best foot in front of everybody else, but when it comes to very personal close relationships, especially family, it’s funny that my ego still told me that I was right. I was really meant to stop him from smoking, right? What wrong did I do? And which is why I say often, saying a sorry really doesn’t mean you’re wrong.

1:35:45 It just means that you value the person and the relationship more than being right. It’s about, it saying a sorry doesn’t mean you’re wrong, just value that person and the relationship more than being right. You know, I didn’t say you’re sorry obviously, and the year 2009 had come here to London for my annual lecture tour. Stay over a month usually, just a week before my mom called me before I came to London, and she said, Dad’s really in a bad shape. It was bedridden at that time.

1:36:26 He had Parkinson’s disease. He said, be good if you could come see him, so I went to see him and he changed a lot when I had come to the monastery. He had his apprehensions. I mean, you know, your son just going, becoming a monk after, after going from Hewlett-Packard. So then he, he changed a lot.

1:36:51 He had started appreciating what I was doing, and that year he said to me, a son, would you mind bringing your, the recordings for, of your lectures in London for me? I was, that was like a joyful moment for me. For the first time ever my dad said that. I said 100, and I joked a little bit. I said, but you’ll have to come to the airport to get me, fetch me, then I’ll get this joke till I made him feel a little better, happier.

1:37:18 And then I came to London, I got back, I brought all the lectures back for him. And in just about two or three weeks my mom calls me and says, dad’s gone. He’s gone, and that’s what happens with the Lord of our lives. Please use those opportunities to reconcile. We lose those opportunities to do what’s important in our life, what is of value in our lives.

1:37:49 We hold this silly, crappy stuff in our head and lose this golden opportunities to truly do what’s of value, what’s of deep meaning. So I lost it. I remember copying all those lectures into a pen drive. That’s what the chapters are entitled. Last Wish in a pen drive, dealing with guilt.

1:38:13 I copied those lectures in a pen drive, and as I drove to my parents’ home, I held that pen drive in my palm and looked at it, and everything was just flashing back in my mind, you know. And I feel life sometimes teaches us in different ways, and this was such an important lesson, and this is where I really wanted to be vulnerable, right? So that people don’t make that mistake. It’s good that, what if we don’t have to reinvent the wheel and learn from somebody else’s mistake?

1:38:50 People are of great value to our lives more than anything else. So I looked at that pen drive, came home, my father’s body was lying there. Family was around. I remember opening his fist and putting the pen drive in his palm, on his palm, and closing it back again. I don’t know.

1:39:13 I don’t know if you would ever get to hear this anywhere in this world, wherever it’s going out of nowhere, and when I went to his feet and I put my head at his feet, just respect him, cried a few tears, and said sorry, that I shouldn’t have done this to you. A lot of times we say sorry that I shouldn’t have done this to you when it’s gone. What if he could just say it while he was alive? What if, what if I could make somebody feel special when they were alive?

1:39:52 The nature of the world and the nature of the human mind is often we only realize the value of something when we’ve lost it. Do we need to wait until we lose people to value them? Do we need to wait until we lose people to value that relationship? I really don’t think we should, and that was such a lesson for me. And then I told the story in the book to talk about the guilt.

1:40:21 You can imagine the guilt you carry in your mind when you were to say a sorry and you didn’t and you lost that person, right? I talk about processing that guilt in the book, right? Guilt can be constructive, and guilt can be destructive. Guilt is constructive when it helps us improve, guilt can be destructive, and it paralyzes us and just makes us mental. You know, it’s mental in our own mind, which is constantly just feeling low, doing nothing about it.

1:40:58 That’s destructive guilt, and we need guilt. Guilt is good. Constructive guilt is good. Imagine a society that didn’t have guilt, or people didn’t feel bad. We would have no moral compass.

1:41:08 We would have no moral compass. We’ll all be shameless people living in this world, doing anything, any, any damn thing to each other. Good that we have this, print, this feeling of guilt, which is like a good compass to align ourselves with, you know. And then guilt can be reasonable. Then it can be unreasonable.

1:41:27 Reasonable guilt is feeling guilt for the wrong we did, like I felt I did it. It’s a very reasonable. It’s very reasonable to feel that guilt, and we deal with that reasonable guilt in three ways. Number one, we try to fix the situation, the wrong that we did. I couldn’t had lost that opportunity, and I, if he was still there, I could go, I could fix it, and I could, I could rid my mind of the guilt, but he’s not, he’s not no longer there.

1:41:56 Hi, I could fix the situation, if I realized that what I’m doing is happening multiple times, like I did with my dad, probably doing with some other monk, and I realized somebody brings it to my attention, I need to fix myself so that I don’t go to the guilt trip again. What I did to my dad, I should, shouldn’t happen again. If I don’t fix myself, it’s going to be history repeats itself. I won’t say a sorry to another gentleman. He’ll leave, and I’m going to feel double the guilt.

1:42:24 I didn’t say sorry to my father. I didn’t, sorry, to my fellow monk. So I need to fix the situation if I can. I definitely need to fix myself if I see I have trouble, or somebody else can see and can help me see that I have trouble, and if I fix, try it, fixing this, you have tried fixing myself too. But there’ll be times when, like my dad’s case, I can’t do anything about it.

1:42:50 In such cases, I need to move on. I need to rise about these feelings. Why and how? I asked myself a simple question. No matter how tense those two years were between me and my dad, I loved him.

1:43:07 He loved me. No debate here, period. It’s very clear. I know it. He knew it, and when you have love, and you have genuine love, would anybody who loves you want to see you go through pain and suffering?

1:43:25 Would my dad be happy, wherever he is, to see me wallow in this feelings of guilt? No. The answer was allowed, clear, no. So I realized for him I need to get about this, if I can’t get out for myself, but I can’t have him see me go through this. He cries, weep, to see that my son is feeling guilty because of me, because he didn’t say a sorry to me.

1:43:54 The other way to get over it is to see what would please him. What was it that he would have wanted of me? He would have wanted to me to be a kind person, wanted me to be successful, for, wanted me to be a b c x y z. Can I work on that rather than just following in this negative feeling that oh, I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it. It doesn’t do any good to him.

1:44:14 It doesn’t do any good to me. That’s reasonable guilt, but this is unreasonable guilt, which is like, I didn’t do the wrong. I didn’t do anything, but I feel guilty. A friend of mine in America, he lost his father, right? And he couldn’t be by his father’s side.

1:44:34 Father was desperately wanting him to be by, and then the father left his body in India. He was still in America. A friend, and he couldn’t come here to India. He was just going through so much guilt. He called me.

1:44:46 I said, look, you wanted to come. You were ready to come. There were visa issues. So why are you killing yourself in guilt for no fault of yours? And just look at the kind of life you gave your dad.

1:45:02 He was saying, if I hadn’t come to America for a job, I would be by his side, or, you know, all those warts and ifs and buts, then your mind puts you into. I told him, look, keep the ifs and buts aside. If you weren’t in America, your father wouldn’t have got the top-class treatment. He would have died probably 10 years earlier, correct? And I said, now instead of thinking I was not there, see what you could do to please your dad.

1:45:29 Let’s see what you could do to make him proud, wherever you are, wherever he is. So this is unreasonable guilt, where you kind of really imagine that it’s me who’s been the cause, and it’s because of me that this happened. So rather than going through that emotion, we see, okay, what is the best I could have done? And these were things beyond my control. A few of those things I’ve written in that chapter dealing with guilt.

1:45:52 Yeah, I appreciate you telling us, thank you so much, because I know it’s, it’s not an easy thing to do. Oh yeah, it’s hard, and I appreciate you putting that in the book, because a lot of people spend their whole lives riddled with guilt. And you know what it feels like? Yes, 100. These are powerful emotions you speak about here that, that run people’s lives, and that’s only in the first section.

1:46:16 Yeah, yeah, exactly. So you should be already. Yeah, I mean, you go on and talk about others in my mind, and you talk about some fascinating things about criticism, uh, grief, um, developing empathy. I gotta mention criticism, because I want to get to the universe in my mind. Yes, I love this final section, but criticism, because that’s another thing with this whole area of social media.

1:46:41 We get, we get criticism, and it’s something that I’ve gotten the lesson in the last 11 years, and a lot of my students do, and a lot of people do. And again, it’s, it’s new because back when we were in our small communities, you wouldn’t get anonymous critics. Correct? Now we all get a lot of criticism, perhaps. Um, what are your thoughts on that?

1:47:08 Yeah, welcome to the world of social media. Yeah, anonymous critics, it’s amazing. Yeah, I’ll tell you what, and you can post a picture of you in a beautiful furry kitty, and you’ll get critics. Yeah, yeah. I, in the book I write about this, uh, how to deal with criticism, and the first thing I say is just don’t react instantly.

1:47:37 The one thing that we do is when we are criticized, I need to clarify, I need to explain, I need to justify why I did this, you know, and a lot of times when we are emotionally disturbed, the way we react is not to actually answer the point. It’s to just clear our emotional disturbance away, and if the reaction is meant to just clear my head of my emotional disturbance, what I’m saying is not even making sense to the person who’s in front of me. I haven’t answered his criticism.

1:48:17 I’m just trying to clear my burden off my head, you know. So I really don’t think we should be, whether it’s physical criticism for somebody in front of me, an email, my colleague, or even social media, I really don’t think we need to react instantly to anything, because we need for our mind and our head to just cool down a little bit. And if I shake this glass of water up, like really bad, and the water’s like going all over the place, what if we had a coin down here?

1:48:50 We wouldn’t be able to see the coin clearly, because the water’s all shaken up. But we allow the water to settle down, we can very clearly see through the water. So when we are emotionally agitated and disturbed, this is what’s happening to us. We can’t see with clarity, but we may allow for the mind to settle down a little bit, and it does. If we do the right things, it does.

1:49:13 Not that we’re not going to address it, but with the mind settled down, we’ll gain the right perspective and then see what to do. So the first thing I say in the book is don’t instant react, instantly, right? Uh, second, be open-minded, right? Criticism, why? What’s the problem?

1:49:32 People, we criticize, how can everything be good about me? Right? Sometimes it may be meaningless, sometimes maybe meaningful, but we need to be open-minded, right? Minds are like parachutes. They function only when they’re open, right?

1:49:44 Parachutes don’t function when they’re closed, and minds don’t function when they’re close. So we need to have open minds. The third thing that I say about handling criticism is to do a fact check. Is this person, this what this person saying, has some element of truth in it? Right?

1:50:02 That requires tremendous honesty, that requires for us to be conscientious. But if we are thought leaders, if we are influencers, if we are a public figure, we are somebody out there, shouldn’t we be having this in us, right? To see that, okay, there may be an element of truth to what this person is saying. I’m not going to publicly say that, but in, on in my own reflection, in my own introspection, I’m going to see if there’s an element of truth. Sometimes the mind may fool us to say, well, no, no, no, there’s nothing wrong, just making something up, which is why we may need to check, check with a few other guides, friends, mentors, to see that.

1:50:41 I think there is nothing, but do you also see there’s nothing in there? So that’s the third, the fact check. Right? The fourth is, if I, after, if after a fact check I find, if there is an element of truth, then the hard work to correct myself, right? Hard work to correct myself, not necessarily getting into an argumentative battle with somebody, because that gets nothing.

1:51:06 I’m just going to reply back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth. There’s no end to these battles unless there is a legal thing. If there’s a legal thing, I’m going to have to prove myself. There’s a legal implication, it has some serious implication, it has to my life or the work I do. I’m going to have to respond to that.

1:51:24 But if it’s not that, I’m just losing myself, and what Susie says of Sally, says more of Susie than Sally. You know, why am I responding to that that much? So I’m going to have to correct myself if I need to. At that point, after being honest and after talking to a few people to see if there’s an element of truth objectively, not the subjective moment, objectivity, and then if there’s no element of truth to it, then I have asked myself a question always.

1:51:57 This has guided me through this 26 years, not just in criticism and everything in my life. One simple question. Does this deserve my reaction? The problem with us is we want to react to everything and everybody all the time. That’s ruining our mental health.

1:52:17 Why do I have to react to everything and everybody all the time? Is this of value as that person, of value to my life? No, if it’s not, why am I just, why am I reacting so much to this person? It’s all right, you know, it’s all right. So I have this question always in my mind, even if it’s situations.

1:52:37 Does this situation deserve my reaction? Getting worked up about it, and it may be a serious situation, getting worked up about is doing nothing. I’d rather look at what I can do and resolve it. So these are the four or five things that I’ve spoken about in the book, deal with criticism when it comes, and this applies to an anonymous critic or replies to a critic who’s in front of me, talking to me directly, or sending me an email, to. I like how you choose to react, of course.

1:53:05 I guess that means that you have that at least mental observation of yourself, which means it shows how that’s so powerful, because um, that’s a, that’s a superpower if you can just choose not to react, you know. You could say I’m just not going to react because it’s not that important. Now they might be saying something venomous that would normally get anybody to react. Be like, no, I don’t need to react to that. That, I need to react to that, and then that person that I love and needs some attention, that with the rest, I’m just going to put them on hold or shovel them or ignore them, right?

1:53:36 That’s an incredible place to be. Yeah, yeah. But, but, but people have that choice. You don’t have to engage with it. Your lizard brain might want you to immediately.

1:53:45 It might feel good sometimes to engage with it. That’s the hard thing. Sometimes people feel good getting back and replying. Yeah, but it’s not worth the energy. Imagine the amount of service you could be to someone else if you took that energy towards the circle.

1:53:58 100, I think you buy that all the time. 100, you know, all the time. I think about that. Yeah, sometimes I see the reactions and I’m like, I’m about to do an episode or I’m about to teach a class, and I’m just thinking if that even takes me off my game a percentage or two, right? It’s not worth it.

1:54:14 It’s just not worth it. I should focus on what I do. What I do is create to these people. So absolutely, I do some triage there. Yeah, having said that, I would also like to add that, you know, what happens is we are human beings, so for that moment we may still feel affected.

1:54:29 Yeah, that’s okay. Yeah, as long as we respond rightly, it’s fine, right? And we will build our choice muscles with time. We have the power to choose, but because we haven’t been choosing, we are in a state of atrophy right now. Like we go to the gym and start working on the muscles so they come out of the state of atrophy.

1:54:50 Similarly, our choice muscles, we haven’t exercised them, so once we start exercising them, even as, even in a micro way, that, okay, now this guy said something today, I choose not to say anything. That’s a tiny little thing. We’re working on our choice muscles, and they grow, and then there may be major things that happen, and suddenly we feel, oh man, I’m doing well, but I’ve gone to the gym. I’ve worked on those muscles. I’ve not built up my muscles just overnight.

1:55:20 Wasn’t magic. It wasn’t a miracle. I worked on them. How do you finish the book, and how is the universe involved as you kind of leave people? Yeah, yeah, I, I, I talk about how we are a micro universe in a macro universe.

1:55:40 This whole universe, I’m a universe by myself, right? And all the elements that form the universe also are the elements that form my body. There’s the element of the, I speak from Vedic literatures, there, right? The literatures of the East, and I talk about how the human body is comprised of earth and water and fire and space and ether sound, and all of these elements are the elements that exist in the universe as well, and therefore when the micro universe learns how to stay in tune with the macro universe, the energies of the macro universe affect the micro universe and one element that I have internally is the mind.

1:56:21 A lot of mental health issues come because we are not in sync with the universe as well. How much do we really, how much are we in touch with the earth, the soil? How much do we really spend time with water? How much time do we spend with nature? Are we in, are we in sync with the circadian rhythm of the universe?

1:56:40 Look at the times we go to bed. Look at the times we wake up. When was the last one I saw the sun actually rising? Even the birds wake up at sunrise, and they go to bed at sunset, right? And we human beings today are going against the rhythm of the universe, right?

1:56:56 Like George Bernard Shaw said. He said, now that we’ve learned how to fly in the sky as a bird and swim in the water as a fish, I think it’s time that we also learn to walk on the earth as a human being, right? to stay in sync with the universe. So I feel a lot of our issues can be resolved if we are in sync with the universe, because that’s how we are meant to live life. Now again, we have to be realistic when we talk about the circadian rhythm, for example, waking up time and sleeping times.

1:57:30 We live in a world where it’s not all that easy and not all that black or white. People have to work a day job, right? They’re going to be coming to Central London to do a job, by the time they reach back home it’s 11, quarter past 11 for some people, right? And then what are they going to do? They have to take dinner.

1:57:46 They have to spend time with their family. They have to look at some other things of their life they’re getting to. They’re getting into bed at half one, half one. You’re not going to see sunrise then, right? So I, I am not, those, I’m not one of those idealistic kind of persons who say, okay, no, this is how we’re going to put your life in place.

1:58:03 What if we just start doing it one day a week or two days a week to just start connecting with the universe? I know we have a real life, five days a week, you’re not going to be able to do that. Understood, taken. All right. What if two days a week we could try practicing a few of these things, and see how the universe starts affecting our mind, start gathering that energy, start remaining in sync with that universe, start connecting to our own self.

1:58:29 A lot of our mental health issues come because we don’t connect to ourselves deeply. You know, our relationship with ourselves sets the tone for every other relationship in the world out there, but we don’t relate to ourselves. We’ve every other relationship we are trying to fix, and my own relationship with myself is a bloody mess. All right, so when we’re talking about the universe and me, I go beyond the body, beyond the mind, beyond the intellect, beyond the ego to my own self, right?

1:58:57 My own self, am I connecting to my own self? Am I connecting to the divine self? If I believe in one, what is that connection? What is that spiritual connection that I’m exploring? If I don’t explore that connection, I’ll make some stopgap solutions to my mental health issues, but I won’t really work on my holistic well-being.

1:59:17 Holistic well-being is more than addressing guilt. Holistic well-being is more than addressing depression. Holistic well-being is more than addressing mental chatter. It is about being in the right space it’s about being in the right kind of connect, and when you make that, we are going beyond just this. We will deal with all of these, obviously, but we are actually experiencing a very fulfilled life then.

1:59:39 So that’s what the last section is about. It’s a beautiful way to wrap it up. And what about you? 10 years from now, what are you doing? What is Gaur Gopal doing 10 years from now?

1:59:48 Are you still coming to London? Are you still speaking in the ashram, are you still doing books, or are there other things that you’re doing? 10 years from now, Gaur Gopal Das will do whatever it takes to serve others. If, if this what I’m doing today is the medium to serve others, 10 years later Gaur Gopal Das will continue doing that. If 10 years later the medium of service changes, if Gaur Gopal does, is it an age, and is he still, has the ability to adapt and learn, will learn to serve.

2:00:23 I really don’t think I’m attached to this way or another way of doing things. I’m attached to one thing, service, right? Service, and if this is the way to serve today, we serve this way. Ten years down the line, if there’s another way to serve, we’ll serve that way. One thing we can’t forget, serving people, making a difference, and really adding value to the lives of people.

2:00:46 That’s it. That’s your metric, that’s your barometer. Yes, service. Yes, that’s the lesson for today. Find a way to be observed, indeed, and then observe how it makes you feel.

2:00:58 Observe your world when you are of service, indeed, and just watch what, what evolves, what emerges, who you become. Yes, that’s our challenge to everybody. Um, boy, I always finish with a couple questions. I’m going to ask you these at the end. If you could pick up a phone and call up the 20-year-old Gaur who I guess wasn’t talking to his dad at that point, maybe working at HP.

2:01:20 I don’t know where you were. I guess you were, um, if you could give him some advice based on everything you know now, what would you tell that young man? I would tell the 20-year-old Gaur what I told the story in the book, right? That don’t hold your ego so seriously. People are more important than your ego.

2:01:44 I think I already said that in the story, but this, that’s the answer to the question anyways. Yeah, you don’t always have to be right, right? You don’t have to always be right, right? It’s not absolutely. Thanks, absolutely.

2:01:54 That’s a powerful lesson. Um, on that same note, best advice you’ve ever received could have come from, uh, rather dark, could have come from a book you read, a person else in your life, but is there something that sticks out? Well, that’s the best advice you’ve ever saved, uh. Yeah, the best advice I got was from Radhanath Swami. Again, many pieces of advice, but this one was also interesting.

2:02:16 I’d once gone to him, and I was talking to him about all the problems in the ashram, 45 minutes, is ranting and reading all the problems in the ashram, and he heard me out patiently. And then after 45 minutes, is right done. Yeah, he said, can I say something? I said yes, and for the next 45 minutes he went on to explain all the good things that were happening in the ashram, and then he said, look, I’m not saying what the issues that you’re mentioning are not there.

2:02:50 I’m just saying that you’re not looking at the bright side that’s happening too, and he said when you focus only on these and get consumed by negativity, lose the ability to actually solve those problems, whereas if you shift your attention to these good things and get consumed by positivity, that gives you the perspective, the wisdom, the energy, the inspiration to deal with these problems. So he said, I’m not saying the problems are not there. I’m just saying, he said, it’s not, he said, the problem is not the problem.

2:03:23 The problem is that you’re consumed by the problem. Damn, he is on another level, isn’t it? Yeah, and then he said that he should kind of shift, so that’s the story I wrote in my first book. That’s good. The problem isn’t the problem.

2:03:39 The problem is that you have the problem consumed by them. You’re consumed by the problem. That’s a way home. If you think about that on the way home, very powerful. Last question to that 20-year-old that’s out there listening to us or watching us.

2:03:54 This person grew up. They were born with a mobile phone around them and the internet, and that this new reality that we grew up to later in our lives. Um, you know, they look at the world’s, uh, and they see lots of crises and problems and arguments and wars, and, um, advice to them, what do they need to focus on? Think about what’s important. Yes.

2:04:18 I think again, like I said earlier, in this digital age, today social media age, we have a generation of youngsters who are very authentic, right? We have a generation who really believes in purpose. #purpose is probably the highest used hashtag. They may or may not understand what it means for Lee yet. They may or may not know it very well.

2:04:44 They may not know the nuances of it, but they have the willingness to live by purpose, right? So I feel we live in a beautiful generation at this time, as distracted as they may be because of social media, and it’s not their fault entirely, anyways, right? They’re very, very, very genuine in this regard. So I feel my advice would be, be genuine, be authentic, seek what is right. You don’t have to have everything figured out right now.

2:05:11 The world’s problems are not necessarily your problems alone. We’ll see what to do about it. There’ll be a way out. Don’t be hopeless. Don’t lose hope at every single time.

2:05:21 When there are dark moments, we will find a ray of light. The sun rising every morning tells us that the night will end. There will be hope. There have been dark moments in the past. We’ve bounced back.

2:05:33 There have been financial troubles we’ve had in the past. We’ve bounced back. The, the, the economic regression, the financial recognition we had, right? The, uh, the financial turmoil in 2008, when Lehman Brothers crashed, the whole world was in the soup. We bounced back.

2:05:49 Covered came, we bounced back. Wars will happen, we’ll bounce back. Let’s be human, let’s be authentic. We are called humankind. Let’s be human, and let’s be kind, then we’ll be a humankind.

2:06:00 That’s my message. Amen to that, and I agree with you there’s a, there’s generations and generations of people that are constantly say uh that the world is ending, and it doesn’t, it doesn’t. And, uh, this is what older people do sometimes. They tell you how the world’s gonna end, but we always seem to find ways to push through, and we will. So don’t get caught up in that too much, because there’s a lot of hope and positivity out there.

2:06:24 Um, the book is Energize Your Mind amongst Guide to Mindful Living. Um, it’s excellent. We didn’t even get to all the sections, but we did a lot. Um, I really appreciate that. Your YouTube channel is excellent, so people should follow you there and look at some of the videos.

2:06:37 I was watching your top ones today. Uh, I love the one about the guy that wanted to quit his job because of all the politics and gossiping at work, and I got some great parables in there and some great lessons, and they’re really unique, and you tell them very well. And then, of course, there’s all of your, um, snippets from your, what do you call them, not lectures in the ashram? What do you call those? Yeah, yeah.

2:07:00 I call them lectures. We call them satsang. Satsang, yes. Sit in the space. Yes, right?

2:07:07 They’re really good, and so all that’s on YouTube, and thank you. I’m so grateful, Brian, for you’ve, you’ve invited me over here to London Real, and I’m, I’m telling you, I just felt an instant connect, and you’re an amazing man. Thank you so much for the work you do, and I truly appreciated my other wonderful work you do too. Thank you, thank you for being here. Thank you for being present and honest.

2:07:25 I appreciate it. Thanks. Shout out to Radhanath Swami. Yes, yes, and uh, bless you. Come see us again next time.

2:07:31 Thanks. All right, take care. Thanks everybody. Thanks so much, bye.