want to do that and and you know from a neuroscience perspective your hands and your feet are the two sort of uh what's the word for it uh you know in in physics there's a device which is controlled by heat so basically they're insulators in some way uh they release heat oh yeah and they absorb or heat right or they there are points in your body which releases absorbing and your face yeah uh this which is what people don't understand you understand after you've been in like extremely cold weather yeah if your hands are warm your body will also sort of start coming up yeah so that's why you wear socks gloves and you add muffins like you cover your ears and stuff um so yeah that's that's exactly what started happening with him right he couldn't move after a point and he started screaming and i'm like dude don't scream you're not supposed to scream over here you don't know if you'll cause any problems so if there's a very loud noise you


any problems so if there's a very loud noise you could like trigger and have a launch or something like so i'm like don't scream you know our shareholders will look down they'll come get the gear for us and we'll be okay and he's like i can't move and we stay there for 10 minutes and 10 minutes is a long time when the sun is going down and in that one minute i thought okay i'm done now that's it if he doesn't move i can't move i was very tempted to go around him which is very very selfish but when you're drawn down to that point where it's either i go around him and i survive you make selfish decisions so i had that thought of course i didn't act on it but i have to acknowledge i had that thought you just think about yourself when you're in in that situation but yeah my life like flashed before my eyes and i was like okay maybe this is where you know like i'm i'm not gonna make it after this


like i'm i'm not gonna make it after this either i lose my hand or you know i let go and i like go down the rope or i don't know what's going to happen i just hope that our share pass like spot us on time come back down and what not fortunately they did um they did spot us they came back they helped us get up we got in my climbing partner's hand was completely blue and uh you know it was we we basically got saved by the bell like it was it was a miracle what happened to his hand nothing he was fine after that it was turning blue so he was fine after that we gave him like a lot of heat and what not uh you have these electronic machines now like so you could like heat your hand and he literally we got saved that time and uh he didn't even attempt to summit he's like i'm done man i'm i'm not gonna attempt also i'm done like this is as close to death as we get


like this is as close to death as we get i am done i'm not even going to attempt i of course went and attempted but he didn't this boils down to your fitness or something in your mentality you can train as hard as you want mentally and physically if nature doesn't want you to do something you're powerless the best of the mountaineers all face altitude sickness right no matter how much you train you've seen some happening because of altitude sickness oh yeah i've seen someone fall face first on a rock and die he didn't die but he was seriously injured because he had no consciousness like he he was he was trying to walk and there was a rock up there and he just like fell down face first and he had to be rushed back from the base camp and then what not so i've seen that happen yeah it's crazy how we feel like we are in control and we can train ourselves and we can do everything right uh there are always elements in nature that humans can


uh there are always elements in nature that humans can never control and we just have to accept the fact that there are things that are way too more powerful than us any last message dr ani last message live your life nothing can stop you all problems are too small if you decide to do something about it crazy we'll be linking your handles down there thank you brother thanks man this was awesome this was great yes these podcasts are the most fun for me so thank you yeah man thanks a lot for having me for sure at the end of this particular episode i felt like this man has three or four more podcasts in him he's actually heading to the states to take up ai and learn more about it and you know while i said that for me success is all about gaining experiences i also feel it's about what you do with those experiences in your mind dr saurabh is inspiring all the people around him now hopefully he'll inspire all of you who are consuming his voice and his thoughts and


who are consuming his voice and his thoughts and his perspectives through the internet for more inspiring and exciting perspectives like this watch out for our future episodes of the ranvi show every episode is available on spotify 48 hours before it's available anywhere else in the world dr saurabh rani is going to be back on the show very soon [Music]


every once in a while there's a conversation we have on this show which just blows me away this was one of those conversations it wasn't extremely spiritual it wasn't extremely far-fetched it wasn't extremely deep it was simple practical but still full of the nectar called practical spirituality this is on the ranvi show speaking about sikhism speaking about all of sikhism's teachings not really the entire story but what are the modern day applications of sikhism how has it evolved to suit modern day lifestyles why anyone can be a sikh the goodness of the sikh community in general that and on this episode of the ranvi show make sure to follow us on spotify every episode's available 48 hours before it's available anywhere else in the world it's episodes like this that i know the team and myself were destined to do at some point in time this one's close to my heart it answered a lot of questions for me and i hope it does the same for you thank you enjoy


hope it does the same for you thank you enjoy the episode [Music] welcome to the ranvi show such an honor having you on the show i love the message that you're putting out in the world i love the way uh you're a modern representation of the spiritual school of sikhism and for me this conversation is all about learning much more about sikhism for me this conversation is about learning about your journey and for me this conversation is about just putting some goodness out there for the world to consume so welcome to the show sir thank you so much for having me ranveet it's a real pleasure i've been following your content for quite a while and it's so inspirational how you've taken the younger generation on your own spiritual journey and how much you're exposing people to what it means to live a busy modern life but still have that spirituality at your core so it's a real honor for me to be on your show as well i'm i'm really inspired by the work that you


i'm i'm really inspired by the work that you do no the the admiration the inspiration the honor it's it's all mutual trust me uh but you know you mentioned something specific you mentioned how it's important to have that spiritual core when you're going about your modern day life i feel modern day life especially considering where we are as a race of human beings it's all about speed and pace and power to some degree you know you're supposed to kind of run at it with life be it your career be it any kind of growth someone once told me that if you do want to run with speed and you do want to help other people that means there's going to be a loss of energy from you and your mind and your body and therefore you need to gain that energy back from somewhere else think of it like a petrol pump for your uh mind and your body and your soul so uh that that's how i look at spiritual learnings or even spiritual practices like meditation like prayer


or even spiritual practices like meditation like prayer that's what all this is for me somewhere it is a practical selfish kind of intention in my heart absolutely and i think what's really fascinating is bringing spirituality into every aspect of your life um i grew up where religion was really just something you did on a sunday you went to the gurdwara you went to the temple and then monday to saturday you just get on with normal life there's no part of of the spirituality which feeds into your life that's how i was just brought up where something was just a add-on religion was just something that you added onto your life whereas as i've grown up i've begun to realize that actually if you begin to understand that spirituality is really just a mindset then that mindset needs to be carried through into everything that you do and more importantly it's about how you interact with everything how do you interact with stress how do you interact with the pressures of your boss


do you interact with the pressures of your boss giving you too many things to do at work how do you deal with things in life happening that don't go according to plan or people not acting in the way that you would like them to all of that is spirituality to me it's not really something to do with a different religion or something that you just add on on a sunday yeah 100 you know even speaking about religions i feel like every single religion in the world basically says the same things and it's probably interpreted differently but what every religion says is you know be a good person help out others help out your community do the right thing um and while i know that your message is much more spiritual for me this the selfish angle on this conversation is i want to learn about sikhism deeper so for this conversation just imagine i'm your younger brother who's just entered this world and teach me about sikhism like i would just love to know what it is for you


would just love to know what it is for you specifically you know be it the stories related to sikhism be it what it stands for in the modern day context what is it for you i think sikhism has something that has massively transformed my own personal life and everything that i talk about is very much based on something that i've experienced personally and i think that's the beauty of it i grew up in quite a normal punjabi sikh family and for me religion was something that i never questioned my parents said that we belong to this religion i said fine you know there is a god fine you know you just have to learn you know go to your punjabi class on a sunday so you learn how to read your native language fine i had no problem with all of those things and i never questioned it i never had an issue with my own personal identity or anything like that but as i grew up and i started to learn that there was a really deeply personal aspect to it where


there was a really deeply personal aspect to it where it wasn't about just some religious facts that you had to learn and some actions that you had to perform but it was really something to do with who you are and how you understand yourself i began to understand it as a psychology and once i understood it as a mindset and once i began to practice meditation in myself the impact that it had on my life was so huge that i became almost like this excited little kid like i had found some buried treasure and i just needed to tell everyone hey hey you've all been missing it there's something amazing right here so in my own journey what i realized was 99 of the six that i knew had no idea of what the spiritual message was really about they had no idea what their religion was about even though they had been attending all the religious festivities their whole life and once i understood how it was really about personal transformation i couldn't help but try and help other


transformation i couldn't help but try and help other people my whole motivation that just became how do i go about and teach people what it means to have some god in your life which is not some guy out there but actually a a fundamental aspect of who you are and i think this is where i was really motivated to go deeper into the philosophy of sikhism to go into what guru nanak who is the founder of this tradition was really talking about and to then figure out a way how does this apply to me and how does this apply to other people and that's just been my whole motivation so what what are some of those aspects what are some of those philosophies like you know you said that 99 of practicing six may not know about the spiritual angles of it could you shed some light on those spiritual angles yeah absolutely i think the first thing i realized was this old way of thinking or my immature way of thinking was that god was some guy out there


of thinking was that god was some guy out there who you just go to to pray for things so god was always an impersonal person being that was out there in the sky you know i like to think of it as an old man with a white beard sitting in the clouds your typical idea of what a god is and what i was realizing was most youngsters completely rejected that by the time you you reached the age of about 13 you know i've so i've spoken to so many of them and they just they say that i'm an atheist because by the age of 13 they said you know the god that everyone keeps talking about i haven't heard about it it doesn't make any sense to me and when i began to meditate and understand that there isn't a god out there or more accurately the god that is out there is also in here and so the first message that guru nanak brought to the world was this message of oneness and most sikhs interpret that as there


of oneness and most sikhs interpret that as there is one god there isn't multiple gods there's one god but the reality is oneness is something quite different to one god and where i began to understand it was this body mind this thing that i call me is actually not me and as i began to understand it made me realize that all the things that i call me are nothing to do with me so if you just take the example let's look at this body did i make this body and you say no i didn't make this body it was just given to me did i choose my own name no i didn't even choose my own name did i choose my religion no i didn't so what you begin to realize is all the things that you think is me my identity i began to realize none of these things are me and so it led me on this quest well is there really a me and the teachings of guru nanak made me understand that the idea of me is the


made me understand that the idea of me is the cause of all my problems and i was able to to reduce and simplify guru nanak's message into really a message of oneness which was that we don't know who we are and who we think we are is making us miserable and that was the big change in my life that i think i am me and because i think i am me it makes my life full of misery because there are so many things that come with me me then says well i want this and i want that so i have an ambition i have desires i have frustration that life is not going according to my plan and once you begin to realize the root cause of all of that is me this idea that i think i am once you're able to let go of something so close to you which is me you begin to realize there is no me all that there is is oneness and that's quite an uncomfortable thing for most people most people are saying well i'm happy


most people most people are saying well i'm happy with being me i don't want to let go of me i quite like me i just want to change everybody else i don't want to change myself and i realized that the biggest problem in life was really this idea of me and over time i just got more and more fascinated by trying to dissolve this idea of me letting go constantly letting go of all these things which attach onto the me my negative thinking my self-imposed limiting beliefs all of these pressures that i have but i think life should be like this and like that and every time life doesn't turn out that way i feel depressed i feel anxious i feel worried and so it's not that i've solved all those problems in my life i'm just able to catch myself now every time that i do that and that's what sikhism has really taught me that you're able to live a totally different way of life compared to what the media and society and your parents


to what the media and society and your parents tell you there's a completely different way of living yeah you know i'd like to kind of bring in a teaching from the buddha he said that every kind of sadness arises out of either expectation or ego and that's pretty much kind of in line with what you're saying even expectation comes from a place of ego i want that thing but the key word is i i want that thing because it'll give me happiness and this is it's kind of a very deep spiritual lesson you've touched upon which you may not even learn in your in the beginning of your own spiritual journey takes you some time to understand that i also feel that this concept of god i think it's ikonkar the concept you're basically talking about i'd love to hear what ikonkar means to you uh specifically and when you had that switch when it came to the meaning of ikonkar for me i feel god is a very personal thing it's different for everyone it's subjective


very personal thing it's different for everyone it's subjective for everyone someone might visualize something someone might think of god in a certain way what i've come to realize after six years of meditation and really opening up spiritually is that i feel there's some sort of an energy or a light inside you and it's inside everybody even the most evil people even the worst human beings have that energy or light inside them and the spiritual journey just brings you closer to that light think of a road that goes and hits that light the more spiritual you get the cleaner that road gets and that's why the habits of meditation that's why the habits of treating people better it cleans up and smoothens out that road to finding that light inside you do you look at it in a similar way or i mean i'd love to know your subjective opinion on this absolutely for me how it began was exact exactly how you're describing it was that god was no longer out there god was something that


god was no longer out there god was something that was within me but the more i've studied the more i've meditated on it i begin to realize that god is not just something that's within me in fact it's absolutely everything and the way i try to describe it is it's as though a fish is swimming around and trying to ask all the other fish where's this water that everyone keeps talking about and the idea is that this becomes so difficult to see because the fish can't see the water he's in the water he's breathing it in every time he opens his mouth the water is there he's made of water and it becomes a realization that if you are going searching for god as soon as you do that you've lost the plot you you you've gone the wrong direction and the first realization is to understand that every single thing physical and non-physical is god so this is where if we take these ideas of nirguna that which is formless and that which has form absolutely everything


is formless and that which has form absolutely everything is god so the idea of oneness now becomes what isn't god and that becomes a very interesting question because as long as you say god is something inside me what it allows is for some part of you to be not god so you can say yeah god is the good part of me but i have some bad parts as well and what you do is you retain your ego and guru nanak's philosophy is all about complete self-destruction to the point at which there is zero part of you that you can call you this is not my hand this is not my body this is not my mind these are not my thoughts this is not my past this is not my family this is not my future and that for most people is almost a step too far but the gurus and all the spiritual masters of all traditions are basically said if you want to know god you have to completely dissolve in it it's like you can't keep reading about the ocean


it's like you can't keep reading about the ocean and doing lectures on the ocean and um doing exam papers on the ocean but you've never been there you've never swam in the ocean you've never tasted it you've never felt it the best way to know the ocean is to go and swim and you have to dissolve in the ocean and then you begin to really understand what it is and so this is the best way to understand what god is is god isn't a one thing in fact everything is god and this is where oneness really starts to make sense that it is absolutely everything and everywhere so i'm so right now it's god talking to god it's not me talking to you does that make sense yeah no no i i get i get what you're saying and when you have that mental switch it also brings a lot of peace to what you call your mind uh that's that's one aspect of it from a practical perspective you know if there's someone who's listening


perspective you know if there's someone who's listening to this conversation and is asking themselves that how do i actually begin to view this world that way how do i begin to unlearn all the things i've been told since i was a child what's the practical way of going about it is there a kind of meditation you do to perceive the world in a certain way i mean i strongly believe that we're living inside a simulation and that kind of encompasses encompassing encompasses a lot of the things that you said right now you need to begin viewing the world as a simulation and you're just playing a role because if you don't view the world as a simulation you're again feeding into your ego and your sense of what you've learned till this point in life but the moment you start looking at people as pieces of yourself you start treating people better what you put out there starts returning to you you start living a much easier better life uh you know and of course then there's a


life uh you know and of course then there's a whole journey you can go on uh uh where it's about meditation it's about habits about things you eat the kind of exercises you do that just kind of strengthens that idea of god being all around you that's what the world of yoga says as well that you get connected to your body more you get connected to that inner source of energy more but uh what's a practical way of beginning this process of changing your reality this is a really interesting question and i'll give you the example of if you wanted to make a stool what's the minimum number of legs that it needs in order for it to be stable let's take that example if you have a stool with just one leg it's not going to be very stable you can try and sit on it but you'll have to be doing a lot of the balancing yourself you'll use your legs to try and balance it but the stool won't support you you add a second leg it might work


support you you add a second leg it might work as soon as you add three legs you can sit on it comfortably and all three legs are supporting you and guru nanak introduces three different things that you need in order to be able to practically experience this the first is you need to have the wisdom you need to have access to this wisdom the second is you need a practice and the third is you need to spend time with other people who are also practicing this so we can call that gyan the wisdom dhyan the practice and the people the spiritual people who are in your communities call it a spiritual community and he says these are the three things that you need now let's let's look at what happens in the world right now where you have yoga which is a practice that has exploded all over the world but it's being taught without the gyan without the wisdom without the deep spiritual knowledge and without that spiritual knowledge what you end up getting is things like goat


knowledge what you end up getting is things like goat yoga beer yoga so many ridiculous types of yoga that are out there so so-called yoga because they're trying to position yoga in a very secular way that oh well there's no religious side of it you it's just good for your body it's good for your health and what you're getting is really um an insult to what yoga really is the deep spiritual meaning of what yoga really is so you can't segregate these three things in order to start really living it i always think of this example that if you wanted to be an entrepreneur one of the things that you would do is you would start studying the best entrepreneurs in the world you know you'd start reading the background of steve jobs and and bill gates and and musculomusk and people like that if you wanted to be a really good musician you start to go and get training from another musician and you spend time with other music practitioners so what is it that


with other music practitioners so what is it that we're trying to do if you want spiritual wisdom then you have to spend time with the spiritual masters and these are the kabirs the fareeds the nambes the guru nanaks of the world once you spend time with them you not only just learn the practice but you also learn where a practice is going wrong and then you go back and you say guruji can you tell me what i did this and then you read some more of the wisdom and then you realize ah this is where i fell up fell down this is where my practice is letting me down so i think there are three things that you need meditation i'm a massive believer in but meditation on its own i believe can without the wisdom can actually increase your ego you can you increase your sense of self-importance so you have to have that guru there that teacher there that really humbles you that that tells you every time you're doing something wrong and actually gives you


time you're doing something wrong and actually gives you that little bit of groundedness and you need that other community of people that are just supporting you saying yeah this meditation is not working right now and that community tells you well i try this try this now try this you need all three angles and that i think is the most important thing if you really want to progress in this uh surprise you said something very interesting right now about how meditation without the right guidance or the right information could actually lead to your ego swelling up so again in the world of yoga there's a concept called siddhis which means that as you meditate your inner world becomes much calmer and as your inner world becomes much calmer it leads to sort of your mind unlocking its own abilities now some people might experience those abilities and think to themselves oh i'm becoming smarter oh i'm becoming capable of this oh now when someone's in front of me i can scan them you know from a to z is that what


them you know from a to z is that what you meant by your own ego swelling of where you experience these so-called superpowers and you think that you're doing something great uh i mean that's one part of the question the second part of the question is um what are some of those things that you've experienced through your own journey and and how you corrected those because i'm sure even you must have gone down a path of your ego slightly swelling up and you having to correct yourself yeah i mean that's exactly what the idea of ego swelling up means that without having a master there to keep your ego in check it's very easy for you to increase this idea of self-importance look how great i am i'm meditating i'm better than you i've got a golden ticket to heaven i'm definitely going to go there now but look at you and and so this is where for me anyway guru nanak's philosophy has massively impacted my life because when you read some of his wisdom he


life because when you read some of his wisdom he does not allow room for even one shred of ego he completely destroys the ego at every moment because he's so convinced that ego is the biggest barrier to you connecting with oneness god divine whatever it is that your sense of self-importance that i am something it's very interesting that there's the ego is so subtle and so easy to trip you up there's another side of the ego which you may not even catch one is the spiritual ego which you've talked about that i'm better than you that i can do all these spiritual things but you can also have another ego which is i'm such a sinner look how small all i am i'm nothing i'm so i i'm humble i'm nothing but even if you do that you retain a little bit of i am at least i am i'm a sinner but at least i am and guru nanak doesn't allow for this at all so his whole philosophy is constantly teaching you nothing is


whole philosophy is constantly teaching you nothing is you learn to let go at every single level that nothing belongs to you no part of this belongs to you the very idea that you exist is an absolute fallacy it's just false and only when you go into your meditation and there are many different meditation techniques that essentially ask this question who am i who are you and when you meditate on that idea you realize i can't actually find the thing that i call me yet all the time that i'm driving around and and and walking around and speaking to people i believe i'm in control of this body but when you close your eyes and you start to introspect you realize i can't find this thing called me and that's where you realize the delusion of me itself it's not actually there when you go look for it i do have a supplemental question which is related to competition in the middle of all this and i personally feel like competition is of two kinds one's with your other competitors


is of two kinds one's with your other competitors people who are competing with you say in your same career now for some people that might be kind of the forefront of their motivation that i need to beat this person etc that isn't the case for a lot of people like for me i'm not a very competitive person i look at everyone as friends around me but what i do compete with is my own past where maybe i didn't achieve what i wanted to maybe i didn't have the childhood that i wanted and i'm constantly competing with myself to get ahead of that darker past and i feel i mean especially after talking to you i feel even that is wrong because you're being harsh on yourself uh so i'd love to know what the spiritual angles on competition are because we honestly see competition bringing out our country and our culture as a whole that i am better than you my thought is better than yours my political belief is better than yours my religious belief is better than yours but


yours my religious belief is better than yours but that's just going to be a source of misery for you and your mind and we've also got influences from the west and again i'm not i'm not using the west to say that that's how they think wrong or this is how we think right but there are a lot of western influences which really highlight competition as a forefront the last dance featuring michael jordan or you know when you see your favorite athletes talk about competition it fuels competition mindsets in a young person watching sport so in in this world that teaches you to be more competitive and is built out to make you competitive how do you kind of break past that that's fascinating because when we look at the most successful people in the world the most competitive people in the world let's look at the billionaires of the world the question i always ask is are the richest people in the world the happiest people in the world and we all know deep in our heart that they're not


we all know deep in our heart that they're not the happiest people yes they have a lot of material wealth but there's also very high levels of depression at the people who have so called succeeded either in business or in sports or in the arts or in any part of their career because what you've done for such a long time is misery has been fueling you so i'm not happy now i will only be happy when this level is achieved and because you're you're you even if you achieve that level the practice that you've been doing every day is i'm not happy i'm not happy i'm not happy so guess what happens when you actually reach that level you're still in that mindset of i'm not happy there are very few people out there that have said i've made all the money i want to make i'm done or i've reached the level of success that i've done that i needed to and i'm done most people who do that all of their life they are so wrapped up in


all of their life they are so wrapped up in constantly trying to achieve more that they've let their mental health completely deteriorate and i'm sure with so many people that you've interviewed you've realized that the successful people are still not mentally healthy they're still struggling on on that aspect of it so it goes back to asking yourself a very personal question why do i want to compete what is at the root driver for me is it happiness is it something else is it to please my parents what is it and so you realize that if happiness is your goal save yourself the trouble realize right now that you can achieve material success competitive success but you will not get happiness in that particular method so then you have to ask yourself the question am i willing to do that am i willing to compromise my own sanity and mental health for all of those potential worldly gains and this is something where religion and spirituality is at this point not trying to be prescriptive it won't


this point not trying to be prescriptive it won't at any point tell you don't go out and chase a career it won't tell you don't do these things it'll tell you these are the things that you need to sort out right now and if you can sort them out then let those other things come in but these worldly things are not going to be the things that that give you the deepest happiness because the reality is whatever you achieve in life you're not going to be able to take it with you absolutely everything including having perfect fitness with your body having a perfect house and a great car and a perfect family and great career none of those things are actually going to last so you're building all of your happiness on these very shaky foundations so the spiritual wisdom is always saying it doesn't matter what you do go ahead and do those things that's not the problem but while you're doing it can you be centered can you be still unhappy and can you be happy right now in this


unhappy and can you be happy right now in this moment and not have to think about the next moment as delivering happiness it's that whole if only you know we're always living if only this would happen if only that happened and just from my own personal life i've seen so many of those if only and i still struggle with them sometimes i still have career ambitions there's still things that i want to achieve but in my mind i catch myself when i see that do you somehow have you fallen into that trap again do you somehow believe that happiness is over there happiness is tomorrow and then i have to remind myself no happiness is available to me right now peace and bliss is available right now and every human being at the root of it is really only chasing peace and what we don't know is that peace is inside of us we think that peace comes when you have all of these things and i i think that's the that's the only way that i can answer the question


that's the only way that i can answer the question around competition is figure out why you're trying to compete i mean though the kind of um practical way i've gone about this in my own recent past is if i'm feeling any sense of competition any sense of feeling lesser any sense of feeling anger or greed or any emotion that i think is that shouldn't be there in my mind i go into a deep meditation session and for me that's what works and by the end of that meditation i'm fine i have both contentment and inner strength to a certain degree and the reason i bring this up is this is the kind of uh benefit of six years of meditation five six years of it when you meditate in the long term that session of your meditation becomes a safe place for you uh and if you are feeling those negative emotions it's like going in for a shower you know you've got dirt on you you just like wash it off so that's one practical kind of angle


it off so that's one practical kind of angle on this that i wanted to highlight uh but sat pal you you mentioned about things that you take with you after your own death and i know that you know every spiritual person consciously has this moment where they start thinking a lot about death and it's a subject that i've thought a lot about over the last two years seeing the amount of death we've seen in the world with koid uh i've thought of my own death i've thought of the death of my loved ones my teams uh the people closest to me what i have strongly started believing in is a concept of rebirth i do feel that things will begin again things will reboot again what do you think about rebirth is it something you think about consciously because it'll it'll be about uh i mean they say that your rebirth and your your next birth is decided based on what you've done in this birth i have two questions for you one is your opinion on rebirth the second is why is


your opinion on rebirth the second is why is someone born as a sikh why is someone born as a hindu why is someone born as a buddhist a muslim uh why someone born in a tribe in africa why someone born in some other kind of religion what do you think decides all that do you think sikhs are born often as six again like just i'd love to know your opinion on this it's interesting that death is so intertwined with many spiritual traditions and becoming comfortable with your own death is seen as a fundamental part of any spiritual practice being comfortable with the idea that this entire story that i've built about my life my life story this whole character i am like this and i am like that and i want to achieve all these things all of those are going to end when i look at the guru's teachings guru nanak's teachings one of the things they try to do is they remind us that death is always hanging over you they give the


that death is always hanging over you they give the example that a crane is a crane is is a type of bird that's standing very still and looking at the water he looks like he's meditating but really he's keeping really still so that he can catch the fish and he says that's what people are like that people are thinking that they're meditative but in reality what they're doing is they're trying to just always grab more things out of life and he says that crane doesn't realize that while he's busy fishing and trying to to grab the fish and trying to grab life there's a hawk that's flying around his head and the hawk can come and grab him at any time so the idea that death is going to happen to you is not only a absolute fact but a fact that we don't like to think about is that it can happen at any time so my in my own practice how i've become comfortable with death and i'll move on to the rebirth question that you had as well


on to the rebirth question that you had as well how i've become comfortable with death is that every single day there is a chance that i may die in fact my personal practice is i wake up every morning and one of the mantras that i say to my head is today could be the day that i die and i become very comfortable with that idea that today could be the day today is no more or any less special even though i'm perfectly healthy and we all know so many people who were perfectly healthy one day and then the next day they were gone and so you have to become very comfortable with this idea and that also helps with your previous question around life and achievement i'm saying well today could be the day that i die and i'm very comfortable with that idea one of the things i try to do when it comes to me personally trying to help anyone with spirituality is i i only talk about things that i absolutely have experienced and what i'm very open about is


have experienced and what i'm very open about is i haven't experienced what the next life is going to be and the only way that i've reconciled it in my own mind is i have so many things to sort out in this life i have a mindset that i need to sort out i have a spiritual journey in this life i honestly couldn't care less what happens in the next life as far as i'm concerned the body goes back into the ground the air goes back with air life energy goes back into life energy and then that same life energy is then recycled so in this whatever we can call it let's call it the soul for example whatever this energy is that's inside of us has to have come from somewhere and when it goes back and it goes back to to the universe itself and it makes me think about the lessons that you learned in your very first science lessons about energy that energy cannot be created or destroyed it can only move from one form to another


destroyed it can only move from one form to another form and i think about life energy in the same way and that's how i have begun to understand what reincarnation is it makes absolutely scientific sense that if there is some sort of ball of energy that's inside me that's keeping me alive when that energy leaves where is it going to go it has to go into everything and actually that's how i see the people who have passed on that they haven't disappeared in fact they're in the plants they're in the birds that are flying around they're in all of the animals and the trees life energy must continue it really is a harmony that is something that you're going to go into as well you have to go back into mother nature and mother nature will then do whatever it wants with you whether there's a soul that then travels into another one for me i say i have no experience with that i'm too busy trying to sort out this life to work out what's going to happen with the next


work out what's going to happen with the next life and in the same way i think some questions we can come up with our own theories why was i born like this why was i born into this family but the truth is they're just going to be speculation it's just you and me trying to rationalize some things that are beyond our understanding there's a really nice example that says why are leaves green and you can say well the leaves are green because of chlorophyll and this and that but that doesn't answer why they agree that just answers how they agreed but the why is beyond our understanding some things are just the way they are and one of the the main teachings that guru nanak gives in very one of the earliest verses in the spiritual text called the guru granth sahib he says that nobody can explain how the universe works he calls the universal law he says the universal law continues to create but it cannot be explained these things we can rationalize and try


be explained these things we can rationalize and try to come up with our own theories but the reality is we are here now that's the only thing that you know as a fact i am here now and i'm not interested in in beliefs i'm not interested in some belief system why i was like this or where i believe i will go i'm interested can i make the most of this moment right now and so it allows you to just let go of even some of that spiritual debates that sometimes we love to get into it allows you to let go of all of those things and say i have no ability to answer that question that is life is just the way it is and it allows you to just become very harmonious with whatever life is doing you say whatever life does i'm okay with it yeah i think the concept of humility in one's mind causes you to understand that your mind isn't capable of understanding everything the true knowledge is knowing that you know nothing but with the stuff that


knowing that you know nothing but with the stuff that you do know you try doing your best with that like everyone was not born to be a bowler you know some people just want to be batsman that's what i'd say so if if you're just born to be a batsman you focus on your batting and let go of the bowling but you try being the best possible batsman out there so that's a cricket reference that keeps kind of sprouting up in this podcast um i do i do have some more questions about sikhism and i come from a place of being from a punjabi family so every single punjabi family is deeply connected to sikhism in some form it's either you've grown up going to gurudwaras you've grown up with a lot of sick friends the one thing that i connected with when it came to sexism other than uh the stuff you've already spoken about i was always connected to the humility of it the concept of ikonkar the other aspect that i was extremely


of ikonkar the other aspect that i was extremely connected to was the warrior spirit um you know not not to go out and uh be a part of war but kind of to wake up with a warrior spirit every day that no matter what difficulties in front of me if i wake up with the spirit of a warrior it's something i could take on and that's something that's helped me so much in my own journey of my career and my own journey of even my meditation my peace that i will be able to overcome this i'll be able to move forward um i'd love to know that warrior kind of aspect of sikhism because even if we talk about the sikh community in the modern day in india all indians owe a lot to the sikh warrior community be it the independence movement be it before that when the country was undergoing invasions the six were the first line of defense they're the warriors that go to the forefront so it was so inspirational for me to just


so it was so inspirational for me to just be a punjabi and and kind of know that okay these these are my brothers you know who who went who went there they're all indians brothers they you know you could you could kind of look at that from many angles but on a personal boyhood level for me the warrior aspect of everything that guru gobind said was so kind of important in shaping up my own mind so i'd love to know uh what you have to say about that warrior aspect of sikhism it's a beautiful part of the tradition and i just give you a little bit of the backdrop for those of your audience who who don't know the story around why uh sikhism came it started with the birth of guru nanak in the 1400s and in the early 1500s india began to see invasion from mughal emperors so the real mughal empire into india was around those 1500s and it started with an emperor called babur and what you saw


with an emperor called babur and what you saw at that time was huge amounts of political divisions a lot of segregation a lot of tension and really he was acting like a dictator coming in and and mass killing so many people because he just believed that i am owed this country i'll just come and take whatever i want so if you just think about the geography of punjab and where it started that was where the the arab invasion started around from those sorts of areas and so you had a group of people rise up and say this is this is our home you have to you have to stand up for what you believe these are our brothers this is our this is our family so we have to stand up for these people and that's really where the whole warrior aspect started from you mentioned guru gobind singh ji one of the key lessons that he teaches about being a warrior he says only when every other method of diplomacy has failed only then should you pick up the sword


has failed only then should you pick up the sword and sometimes we think that you know sometimes you have quite a negative stereotype of a sick his you know he's always hot-headed and he's always ready to pick out the sword and ready to fight but actually that's not the real sick the real sick or the khalsa which is this warrior class of the sikhs itself is that there are essentially meditators first and warriors second so when your determination to stand up for injustice stand up against human rights abuses when that comes from a sense of peace first when that comes from a sense of equality that everybody deserves to live a peaceful life when that comes from a sense of i may not follow the same religion as you i may not um be of the same traditional background as you but it's my job to defend your right to live however you want everybody deserves to live and really you can talk about the the human rights act and all the human rights privileges that we we we allow


all the human rights privileges that we we we allow ourselves in the world today these things have been pioneered by some of these warriors who actually said i'm here to defend you but it doesn't come from from agitation it doesn't come from anger it actually comes from love so when you are loving then you are in a position that you can help other people and so the the sword that all um baptized seeks um which we call somebody who has taken uh amrit which is this this spiritual initiation the actual name of the sword that we carry is called kirpan and kirpan means to give kippah to others to give blessings to others it is you are doing it out of your own grace out of a sense of love for everyone else so you never fight a war or anything like that out of a sense of agitation the other thing that guru gobind singh ji taught was the khalsa is one who fights a battle daily every single day whether that doesn't mean you get up


every single day whether that doesn't mean you get up and you physically start fighting it means every single day you need to see life as an opportunity to destroy negativity to destroy injustice even in your in your workplace even in your family even if there are things going around around you just with the people in your in your close circle you need to be the person that says right is right these are the things that need to be done this is the right way and sometimes that's a big sacrifice a lot of us we don't want to do that we don't want to stand up for what's right we don't want to we don't want to agitate anyone i'm probably the least confrontational person i hate getting into arguments with anyone but sometimes it has to come from a place of am i going to stand here and watch this injustice happen in front of my eyes can i can i be happy with myself allowing that to happen and when your agitated internally from the things that are going on


agitated internally from the things that are going on around you and you say no something has to be done that's who a true warrior is so a warrior is one who's coming from love not from hatred or segregation in fact even the person that you are fighting against so to speak you're doing it with love i'm doing it so that you may understand that there's a better way to live i'm doing it out of blessing for you that you need to understand that there's a better way to live and i won't do that with a sword first i'll do that first with my kindness with my words with my compassion towards you while i i would love to know a little bit more about the kirpan the kadha what is the significance of what non-six know about sex when we look at people with turbans when we look at people with beards i feel that six have a different understanding of it and most of the outside world doesn't so i'd love for you to highlight these outward


so i'd love for you to highlight these outward elements of sikhism what does it actually represent first and foremost it's really important to clarify that these things the kirpan the kara the cache all of these things these don't make you a sick and it is not a sick is somebody who has a turban on their head a sick is not somebody who wears a kara these are simply just spiritual reminders for a lifestyle so i want a lot of people to understand that when when i say the word sick i don't mean a group of people from punjab that's not what i'm talking about that's not what a real sikh is a sikh is not a punjabi they're not synonymous with each other a sick is somebody who is willing to learn about their true self and willing to follow and practice all the things that are required to remember that this is all oneness so a really a student of oneness is what we would define as a sick now going back to


we would define as a sick now going back to the where these sort of religious symbols or or or articles of faith as some people describe them where they come from is these are really some of the practices that develop as the the the the later gurus came in so for those who are unaware guru nanak was born in the 1400s and he had nine other successes and the last one is the one that you've mentioned guru gobind singh ji and from about the time of the fifth and the sixth gurus what we started to see was that there was a need for not just spiritual people but spirituality and the warrior side of things to to merge because we were starting to see real oppression in india so the fifth guru some people may not be aware is known as guru arjan devji he was actually a martyr so the mughals actually assassinated him he was tortured because they were trying so hard to convert the rest of india that they were just even going after


rest of india that they were just even going after the spiritual masters so the fifth guru was was tortured and he was assassinated by the mughal elite his son guru hargo binji took on the guru ship next and he decided that i can no longer just be a meditator now i have to be a meditator with a sword and so as it goes on and on you begin to see that then his his son was the ninth guru then his grandson guru gobind singh was the tenth guru so you began to see that these gurus were now spiritual and warriors at the same time so they were the ones who were actually going and fighting some of these battles they weren't just sitting in the back saying you guys go i'll stay back here they say no we have to be at the forefront so these gurus became warriors and meditators so they were trying to teach that this is what the society needs right now this is what the


what the society needs right now this is what the world needs right now we need to be both and so in doing that they they created a code of conduct that if you are to live this lifestyle there's a couple of things that you need to do and and they gave us what they call the 5ks basically five religious symbols that were something that you have to keep with you all the time but they were really five reminders of different ways different practices that you need to hold on to so the first one is kara which you'll see every sick will wear a a a bangle around their their hand but all of these have very deep spiritual meaning and actually we could spend a lot of time but i'll very quickly go through those so why does a sequoia well for multiple reasons number one it's round so it has no beginning and ending and this is a reminder to you that actually god is always there there is always a oneness so you have to kind of see this as a way


you have to kind of see this as a way of reminding you that no matter what you do you know when we were kids we were taught that you know whatever if you stick your hand out to do something wrong the kadab will be there as i remind you as a reminder and there are so many beautiful parts of this symbolism you see this is intrinsic in in indian culture that whenever a student historically would go and uh take on a guru even if they were like a music teacher some some sort of teacher the teacher would initiate and say that i now accept you as my student and they would wrap a string around their hand and say i accept you as my student so we see the kara as the guru saying i accept you as my student and this is basically why every sikh or anybody who identifies as a sick even if they don't wear anything else they basically say this is my symbol that i belong to this guru that i belong to this school of thinking and


that i belong to this school of thinking and i'm allowing this teacher to influence my life and teach me how to live and in that same way we were given a kirpan which we talked about which is the sword we were given quesh and we were told that if you keep your hair completely intact so some people are very surprised when they look at me and i tell them that i've never cut my hair from the day that i was born so they ask oh how long is your hair how long has your beard all these sort of questions come about and and again these are just reminders what is the purpose of keeping long hair you'll begin to see all spiritual masters in all different traditions have a long hair and there's something very beautiful about watching your hair grow watching the color change and it's again another reminder when you look at yourself in the mirror you realize i'm not even control of i mean i'm not in control of this body this body has its own life cycle this


this body this body has its own life cycle this body is doing its own thing so when you watch your own hair grow and you watch it turn gray you begin to realize this body is going to go one day this is not me so it's all part of the spiritual training so you've got your kada your kirpan and you've got your cash and then you've got your kanga kanga is a little comb that you wear at the back of your head and that's just a reminder of cleanliness some some people say that it's to do with having a a clean and holistic lifestyle that you're always reminding yourself that i have to be clean in the world i have to allow myself to be presentable in such a way i can't just be somebody that goes sits in the jungle and meditates you know guru nanak was invited many times to join the spiritual elite around the world every time he went and spoke to spiritual masters the spiritual masters would ask guru nanak what is


the spiritual masters would ask guru nanak what is happening in the world and guru nanak's reply was the world is burning and the people who can help are sitting up here on a mountain meditating and guru nanak rejected this idea that you need to go sit in a mountain or be a monk in order to be spiritual he said i'm going to show you that i can have a job i can have a wife i can have children and still reach spiritual peak and the reason i'm going to do that is because that's what normal people do normal people are doing this so i need to show them how do you be spiritual doing normal things that's what that ganga represents living a lifestyle where you're just carrying out your daily duties and the final is a kashera kashera is these briefs these shorts that you wear underneath your clothing and again that's about self-restraint your kashira is about don't think that your life is just about trying to get as many relationships


life is just about trying to get as many relationships and sleep with as many partners it's about having self-restraint and not thinking that life is all about um going out there and just grabbing all the all the sensual experiences in the world so all of these things are really practical reminders of how you can live your life because there are so many instances in life where your mind does get tempted your mind does go in the wrong directions and you you use these tools to remind you that this is not what i'm really here to achieve in life and when you look at yourself in the mirror the idea is you shouldn't see your own reflection when you look in the mirror you should see your guru's image and when you when you see the guru in front of you then you realize oh my life is about my guru it's not about me it's about my master teaching me how to really live not about just me trying to figure out life in my own way but it doesn't mean that if


in my own way but it doesn't mean that if you don't have these things that you're inferior in some way or that you're not a good sikh anybody from any background can be a sikh guru nanak's most beloved companion was somebody called by mardana who was a muslim so guru nanak and bhai mardana traveled around the world for decades and so his best friend was a muslim but you wouldn't call him a muslim because he was also following guru nanak so a sikh is not somebody who is rejecting other religions and saying i've given up other religions and i'm now going to only be a sikh that's not what guru nanak sikhi is you can be a hindu who is following the guru's tradition you can be a muslim who is following the guru's tradition and guru nanak went around the world and spoke to so many people and he said let me teach you what being a muslim really means and there are verses


being a muslim really means and there are verses in his writings which are teaching people about how to do an amaz how to do fasting properly people are surprised that guru granth sahib actually has this sort of information and it teaches people from the hindu traditions this is what this is how you really look at krishna this is what shiva really means this is how you celebrate wholly and it's all about how do you use all of these as opportunities to understand your mindset and all of these they go back to don't worry about the external the external doesn't define who a sick is these things do do not define who sick his a sick is completely defined by the person who sorted out his own mind and sorted out his mindset wow okay this was the highlight of this episode for me uh just having this conversation with these are questions that i've had in my mind since i was a little boy and uh it's it's why i was waiting for this conversation for


it's why i was waiting for this conversation for two years uh but satvarwa i mean i have to bring it back to 2022 and and you and your mindset with the amount of spiritual knowledge you have already uh you know i know i know you're someone who studies different faiths as well i know you're someone who possibly accumulates a lot of knowledge what have you learned about sikhism at this stage of your life and are you still going deeper into it are you still learning more i think what's very interesting is when you put yourself in a position where you are educating others you actually become the best student at that point you're forced to constantly reflect on your own life and look at am i actually doing all the stuff that i say and i put my hand up all the time and i try to be as open and and honest as i can on my own youtube channel where i where i do all of my my sort of education and my lectures is i at never at any point want


my lectures is i at never at any point want people to believe that i'm somehow spiritually uplifted or somehow i'm high yes i've read a lot yes i've retained a lot of information and i'm able to i think quite well communicate it with people but i'm constantly going through my own inner battles because we're human at the end of the day i don't believe that i'm somehow spiritually superior it's very interesting i think it was back in maybe around 2010 2011 i was invited to sweden and i was um giving a talk and when they were introducing me they said uh we have a spiritual teacher who's going to teach you and the first thing that i said when i began my talk was in my tradition nobody is allowed to be a teacher in my tradition everybody is called a sikh and the word sikh comes from the word sishe which means student and so it's like you enroll in a school that you're never allowed to graduate from i'm always


that you're never allowed to graduate from i'm always a student i'm always learning because at any point if i say that i'm the teacher ego comes back in if you say that you're the teacher what you said is i've learned everything and so my mindset is constantly that i am still trying to apply this in my daily life and sometimes you fail so badly sometimes you get so angry so stressed so worked up in your own life and you have to take a step back and you have to look and say wow where's all those teachings gone now where's all those things that you've been studying and teaching other people and still you're falling down and it really humbles you to realize i'm nowhere i haven't achieved anything if i'm still doing this i mean being a parent is so difficult but so many times you just catch yourself getting frustrated at your kids because they're just doing something that you've tried to tell them 10 times don't do that and you see how easy it is


don't do that and you see how easy it is for the mind to get worked up and then you begin to realize actually i still haven't learned anything i still need to practice this every day and the only way that i've that i've begun to understand what this practice means in my life what meditation means in my life is that i used to think that i've met it meditated so many times that i've done so many years of meditation why am i not spiritually higher anymore why haven't i achieved something even higher and i realized quite recently that that's the wrong way of looking at it the better way to look at it is like the way we brush our teeth we never brush our teeth in the morning and think why do i still need to brush my teeth i've been brushing for so many years and by now my teeth should be clean we don't think like that we all know that every day dirt accumulates and so every morning you have to brush your teeth and


every morning you have to brush your teeth and in the same way i've begun to understand meditation in the same way that every day my ego increases every day my attachments to the world increases and my i fall down the trap of my own ego and so a daily meditation is allowing to daily cleanse that way of thinking to wipe the slate clean and remind myself this is what life is really about this is who you really are and so i always say that i'm i'm at ground zero i'm at like level zero i'm never any higher than level zero because every day i keep i find a way to get back down and fall down back back to the ground again what kind of meditation do you do and how long do you sit for for me meditation there are two things that i do one is a formal practice where you sit down you close your eyes and you actually meditate and the second is how do you actually do this in your daily practice and for me there are what the


your daily practice and for me there are what the the technique that guru nanak gives us is what he calls nam which we can also call mantra which is to use a wisdom word throughout your day that constantly reminds you of the to let go of this this idea of the sense of self and this is i think what is slightly different about guru nanak's approach to to mantra is that it's not a magic word sometimes people think of a mantra they say you don't need to know the meaning the sound itself can can take you somewhere and guru nanak actually gives a different definition of nam and mantra and he says that you need to understand what it actually means and what i've begun to understand what na means in my life is it's really got two levels to it the first is we would say bhagwan ka naam lina just to to call out god's name but once you do that you you thinking of god as somewhere else but that's the initial stage that


as somewhere else but that's the initial stage that how that's how it begins for everyone and what it simply starts with is to just what i call nam the first stage of naam is namo namaskar to just bow down i bow to you i bow to you at everything at every single thing that we see you see the sunrise i about you i see other people look at this beautiful baby i bow to you look at this traffic jam that i'm stuck in i bow to you look at this really busy crowded market place i bow to you so that's that initial stage of nam and whether you sit and you do that in your practice as you're closing your eyes or you're doing that as you go about your daily life that i bow to you about you about you becomes so habitual it becomes so much ingrained in your daily practice that it leads you to the second stage of what naam does is naam goes from namo namo namo to name name there is no me there is no


to name name there is no me there is no me there is no even this about you there is no me and so for me the whole purpose of meditation is to dissolve the sense of i am the dissolve the sense of ego that i am something that i and and this is the the real difficulty of of what i believe guru nanak's technique is is that he's not allowing you to say meditation is for you to improve your career meditation is for you to get to call god most people do god as naam and mantarjap as god calling it's almost as though you're sitting here and saying come on god come on god come on god and then god doesn't come and they say okay i'll try again i'll see you next week i'll try again so what i try to do with my own meditation is i am reminding myself to let go of the idea of me and whether i do that sitting down or whether i'm doing it as i'm walking around is constantly


i'm doing it as i'm walking around is constantly just reminding me that life is not about me this body is not about me this situation that is happening right now is not about me i'm here i'm participating it in it but i'm not here as a real sense of self it is god talking to god this is oneness talking to oneness and the amount of peace that that brings in your life and it doesn't mean that you don't do anything it doesn't mean that you don't react or you don't act or respond to the certain situation it means that you're able to just be in complete flow and harmony and that to me is what the real meditation is trying to get you to where you completely accept whatever life is doing even if that means that you may need to respond in a particular way i think a lot of the times when people have heard me talk online they think that when i talk about acceptance which is one of the big subjects that i that i try


one of the big subjects that i that i try and share is they think well you know i've got a really difficult person in my home right now who's abusing me do i need to accept that and they think that acceptance means inaction and that's not the same they're not the same thing and for me my meditation is constantly just trying to remind myself that whatever is happening in life i'm okay with it even if it means that i need to do something about it i am coming from a sense of peace so for me meditation is something that is just happening 24 hours a day when i remember to do it that's that's the goal to try and be that in that space 24 hours a day but i'm not stopping myself from meditating one of the best experiences i used to have when i was sitting on the train going to work every day going into london and i'm experiencing these deep senses of joy and and bliss and euphoria and i'm looking around me and


and euphoria and i'm looking around me and everybody else is on their iphones and and reading the newspaper and everybody looks miserable and i'm saying i'm thinking wow this is possible wherever anything is happening and i think that's what you begin to realize that meditation has the ability to lift you up in all scenarios of life and i think that's to me where you've begun to understand that meditation isn't something that you just do for five minutes or ten minutes a day or even if you do it for an hour it's the real world application where meditation really counts and that's that's what i try to practice as much as possible oh he says by just speaking to you left me feeling extremely calm by the end of this one hour so that we've recorded uh i asked you a lot of my personal questions and that for me is what i save for these spiritual podcasts so while i have a ton of questions about sikhism about the universe about how to go


about sikhism about the universe about how to go about your daily life from that place of the sikhi thought process i think we'll save that for another episode because i want people to go back to the beginning of this episode and reabsorb some of it because some of the stuff you've spoken about is a little heavy and i feel that with these kind of podcasts people do need to retain things to really kind of get the nectar out of this so just want to conclude this episode with me bowing down to you genuinely from my heart um you know i and i know that i know the humble way that you look at life but i do feel that you are a big kind of channel for god's work to be done in this world so just it was an honor hosting you on the show sir it was an absolute pleasure as well i said to you offline that i'm so inspired by the work that you do and for you to introduce spirituality to a younger generation for whom


introduce spirituality to a younger generation for whom atheism is now the norm for a lot of people to just begin to understand that spirituality is applicable to everyone it is for the atheist and the so-called religious as well and i think that's that's where you and i are are are working towards the same goal and i'm genuinely humbled by the fact that you've even invited me on the show it's it's a real inspiration just to be speaking to you and your ability to connect with other people by being so raw being so honest being so vulnerable i look at the the the stuff that you put out on on on your podcast and i say wow i don't think i could be that brave so it's actually such a joy for me to speak to you as well i would love to be invited back on the podcast if you'll have me if your audience will have me it'll be an absolute pleasure as well thank you so much i think there's there's hundreds of


you so much i think there's there's hundreds of episodes that we're supposed to do together and i'm hoping to have you in person for the next one i'm sure we're going to do countless episodes but that's the number of questions i have so genuinely thank you thank you for being a part of this and i hope that's my absolute pleasure i hope this conversation goes out to the right minds the people who need this so thank you this is not the last time you'll be seeing sarpal bhai on the runway show we'll definitely be hosting him in person i know that if you've watched this podcast till this point or if you've listened to it till this point it's given you some of your answers as well such simplicity in this man's voice such simplicity in this legends words such humility in his thoughts and that's what i gained from it humility is a subject and a concept that i've been fascinated by all my life but it's kind of come


by all my life but it's kind of come to the forefront of my mind at this stage of my career i know that one of my personal demons is that i deal with certain bouts of arrogance and it's something i've been wrestling with for the last two to three years of my life probably since the time you've got mainstream success i feel like this conversation helped me immensely in that chase quietening down the ego quietening down those voices of arrogance so by if you're watching this thank you again from the bottom of my heart it's been a week since we recorded but i think about the conversation almost every day and i think about what you said almost every day oh okay that was kind of heavy but what i do want to say to you guys is keep following the runway show lots of spiritual conversations like this will keep coming your way i wish to learn much more about sikhism if there are sex watching this please recommend most sick spiritual leaders that we can bring on


most sick spiritual leaders that we can bring on the show um this is only the beginning of this podcast so make sure you follow it on spotify every episode is available on spotify 48 hours before it's available anywhere else in the world and until next time guys from ranveer from the team and from the entire community thank you let's keep growing let's keep building let's keep staying humble [Music] you


i don't think we've ever created a video that's going to be as practical as this one is i'm going to reveal all the business secrets we've used in order to scale the income basically at beer biceps the story begins back in january of 2020 when uh lots was going on but we basically were a group of five people we were earning money and lacks and there was no chance of a scaling i was barely being able to sustain ourselves youtube income was really low brand money was all right salaries were all right things were just average there was this one day where i got very frustrated in office and i told rajas who i felt was the only other leader in that five person group that listen we need more leaders in this office we have no leadership which is when i decided that we need to hire someone with leadership skills that's where charmy sangui comes in who further hires sanjat keswani and together they further hire my aunt caution and i had a


further hire my aunt caution and i had a leadership core of three people i wasn't even breaking even during this phase i think we were kind of a loss-making company for some time for like a month or something but it was that risk we took and it was because of the amount of money in the bank that we could sustain ourselves even as a slightly loss-making company for another three months it was a gamble but it paid off big time because that's the beginning of going from lags to going across most people who can't scale businesses and especially social media businesses social media brands are not ready to go down the route of teamwork they're not ready to share profits they're not ready to share success they're not ready to help people around them grow and i think this was the turning point for us now what did we actually do to take it from lax to crows i will tell you the detailed breakdown of it but it's very important for me to break down five key aspects of your


for me to break down five key aspects of your self growth if you're stuck in a situation like that this is from my perspective these are the things that help me at one of the most difficult junctures of my life i had a bad breakup business wasn't going well and we bounced back from there into the best phase we ever had so here's the five point formula you're supposed to apply when you want to change things up when you want to increase the amount of money you're making through your business or your brand number one self-awareness i sat down i wrote everything i knew about myself as a professional on a piece of paper i repeated this process for weeks on end and that process of journaling taught me a lot about what's in my mind secondly i chased mentorship aggressively manish pandey was a mentor to me i told him no no no i want to honor some sort of a co-founder on beer biceps why because when it comes to mentoring you choose mentors


because when it comes to mentoring you choose mentors that you wish to become manish pandey had helped scale josh talks i was running a youtube channel that i needed a scale as well i wanted to learn his skill set i wanted to learn his operational skills he's still a very key part of biceps number three partnerships because you have to figure the kind of vibe you want to build your business partner is supposed to be the equivalent of your marriage partner you need to know them inside out you need to be on the same wavelength you need to be able to spend time with them socially that's the sign of a good business partnership with shade pick the bill for me my core leadership team raja sanchez everyone else in the organization akshat tiwari who was a kid at that time but even he fit that bill next your team spoken about this so much before but surround yourself with people who make up for your own weaknesses spend the money on getting the right talent which


spend the money on getting the right talent which makes your life easier and not more difficult higher slow fire fast and make sure you're getting value from your teammates but the fifth and final point most crucial of them all this is not spiritual like most things in my life are this is very practical from a professional perspective i asked myself what kind of energy i wanted to put in the organization what was the story or the fictional piece that spoke to me a lot in my head i'm very into sports so i took inspiration from the world of sports to be able to traverse through this process and these are the five pillars that really kind of helped me through the entire process now i'm going to talk about what we actually did back to storytelling back to the process of going from lags to crows when we had that three-person leadership core and i'm not counting rajasthan because raj was my leadership on the creatives on the editing charmy sangwi helped change the brand she


editing charmy sangwi helped change the brand she told me maintain an instagram feed change these fonts change the way of thumbnails look she got people together hired a whole army of interns got other social media platforms running sanjit was sort of the manager in the edit room because when it comes to creative professions it has to be someone who's a bridge between business and creative so sanchez just took up that role we were left with mayan kosher what did mayan kosher land up in he learned from manish pandey who was a mentor who had been involved in scaling georgetown understood the operations aspect of george talks in startups operations are all your financial stuff your accounting expenses to some degree your people management your hr your hiring some people would call this the boring aspect of business i don't think it's boring i think these skills come very naturally to some people and if you're one of those people gravitate towards that it used to come very naturally to viraj it as well some


come very naturally to viraj it as well some of my best teammates have been in that my uncautional mould where they are the defenders of the team and they let the attacking creative unit just do their thing you know you'll go crazy you'll play with the ball you'll take long shots you'll cross the ball so from being a five person unit back in january 2020 over the course of the pandemic we became about a 30 unit just on beer biceps we are about a 10 percent unit on big brain co we are a 25 unit on level and monkeys scaled itself i don't even need to talk about it but that is a strong number when it comes to bootstrapping everything isn't about raising money people need to learn these aspects of business in across all these businesses they have had massive roles because they let the creatives do what they want you know i spoke about that fifth pillar being inspired by your own interest to keep yourself going in the world of football is


to keep yourself going in the world of football is attackers and there's defenders i'll count the mentors the goalkeeper but it's the defenders who really make the game safe for the attackers the creatives to go and do their thing to work on their own schedules to work in their comfort zones the defenders have a hell of a time organizing things ensuring that you're paying the correct amount of taxes ensuring salaries get paid on time ensuring the accounts are managed really well ensuring hiring is done correctly ensuring so many other things there's countless things that the defensive unit does this is where i have to highlight our brand partners for this particular video because it's a brand we've used ourselves which has made systems more efficient and which will help your organization irrespective of how big or small it is it's called open money so open money is a single platform for banking needs and financial needs it's a place where you get to see your entire financial dashboard you know i spoke about journaling earlier


financial dashboard you know i spoke about journaling earlier journaling is a process of putting your thoughts on paper but when it comes to numbers and money the drivers and mathematics of your business the language of your business you need it all in one place in open money you can connect and manage all your existing current accounts and view bank statements on one dashboard alone before it was built before maya manishna were on board on the team they were told that a people always need to be taken care of salaries have to be paid on time the right amount of tds has to be deducted we have to take care of our people initially this was done through a long tedious process but today we use open money to do the same secondly because of the nature of my job as a youtuber our job as content creators and creative professionals we attack us we have to spend a lot of money on new equipment new cameras lights sound equipment when we travel we have to spend a lot of money in order to


have to spend a lot of money in order to create those vlogs imagine a place that you can use to account for all those expenses during travel all your expenses throughout the year and your back end then gets access to the same account they get to see okay this is how much money is spent by the front end it just organizes our life and finally all the features used by my defensive unit to make its own life easier the gst compliant invoices accounting automation bulk payments without adding beneficiaries payment gateways reward systems built for businesses and a lot more important accounting aspects highly recommend you check them out on www.open.money so that you sort out the hassle for your entire accounts team and you scale your business as much as possible by being organized by using open money and now the final part of the video how did all these systems all these tools all these mindsets actually result in the scaling of money here we go keep in mind this is during the pandemic during the lockdown when so many people were


pandemic during the lockdown when so many people were unfortunate to lose their jobs we were blessed the digital marketing sector influencer marketing was blessed throughout this space content creators not only scaled in numbers but we were blessed enough to even receive money so that was one aspect of it it gave me as the leader of the attacking unit the striker in the team the freedom to not defend there was aspects of defensive jobs like salaries or hiring that i would look into earlier but now i was just allowed to create more videos so this allowed me to go up from three videos a week to the three podcasts we do every week plus one vlog which trust me is a huge amount of creative work but i'm able to do it now because i don't have any back and forth like very minimal financial work so that was the first impact which meant i was able to think about how to bring back numbers on the podcast on the hindi channel we were really getting in the views so


hindi channel we were really getting in the views so youtube adsense revenue went up and your views go up obviously the amount you charge for brand deals goes up therefore your overall income of your organization goes up so we built out a new unit which was able to run our content on linkedin was able to keep our twitter much more active was able to keep facebook much more active which is very difficult for modern day content creators to be present across all social media platforms i don't think there's too many people even now who are spread across social media platforms keep in mind even linkedin brand deals pay well twitter brand news pay well youtube obviously pays incredibly well instagram also pays well but more importantly pays you often so we had more time and width to make more money a wider brand you're present everywhere that's how we're doing it today because that three person leadership core has now expanded to a new generation of people for example social media is headed by someone called sanjana aswani


media is headed by someone called sanjana aswani who has an entire social media team under her who runs the content across all social media platforms i'm personally only required now to shoot youtube videos to write youtube videos and to conceptualize things for instagram my twitter is just a very raw representation of some of the thoughts i think about i get i tweet and i forget about it but all the other social media platforms you see are run through a team next when i was done attacking on youtube and when we felt like okay this youtube game is good enough we went and built out more startups because i had that space of mine because manish bhai had that space of mine we created big brainco by creating level now because of that space of mind and finally when you do something big outside of social media it actually impacts your social media numbers but more importantly it creates a buzz in the pr world in the world of journalists in the world of people who would regularly not be on youtube there's a


who would regularly not be on youtube there's a lot of people out there because of all the newspaper articles we featured in the magazine articles we featured in now those people have never seen youtube videos or seen us on instagram but they know we exist and we're social media entrepreneurs great example of that is all the fantastic minds i've met on twitter they just know me as a social media entrepreneur very good branding fantastic branding helps us to charge more for brands because we know the kind of impact we're bringing to a brand when we do a brand deal so that's how just free time and space of mind allows you to build more allows you to progress and allows you to make more money basically right now focus on team building give away your tasks create free time for yourself because from that free time you'll be able to create more money or more growth if you want social media growth you'll be able to create that first create a free time which finally brings me to the end of the video


which finally brings me to the end of the video it's easy to talk about these changes and the effects that they had what people don't see is the glue that sticks all these moments together and the glue that sticks all these situations together the glue is what i call a very strong company culture a cultural document we actually have rules written on paper for anyone who is joining beer biceps or one of the sister organizations rule one straight talking you don't let ego swell up you don't let anger swell up you don't let tension swell up straight talking if you want to put a point across you put it across rule number two sports team mentality not family mentality because that's a mentality that's caused us harm in the past people take their jobs for granted when there's a family mentality in place we cancelled that from a company culture we brought in sports mentality where you have to earn your place if you're playing on the right wing perform that's how you get to


on the right wing perform that's how you get to keep your place otherwise there are the right wingers who can come and take that role number three there's no hierarchy in beer biceps even though we talk about leadership course the leadership is decided on the basis of merit if you perform if you are result oriented if you bring in more money if you bring in more numbers you will rise up the ranks number four there is a system of helping the people around you so if you are in the editing room your merit is decided based on how easy you make the life of those around you and the same rule applies to our defensive unit if your actions are making the life of your teammates more difficult and they could even be your juniors that's a red flag that goes against company culture so whatever job you're giving you make everyone's life more easy and finally there is a potential for growth in the future now that's the big kind of trade-off that manish bhai and me had in our


trade-off that manish bhai and me had in our own minds that we'll part ways with our mental peace but go ahead and create more businesses where the co-founders will be people who were teammates early on who were brought in as employees on beer biceps and then rose to the rank of co-founder by proving themselves by performing and trust me it's not everyone's cup of tea not everyone's built for entrepreneurship not everyone's built to build a personal brand the basis of it is hard work have you constantly hustled consistently over a very long time next are you able to manage teams well are you able to be a good people's person next are you able to think outside of the box and finally do you have that entrepreneurial spirit of taking actions yourself without being told to take actions and not everyone has entrepreneurial spirit but the ones that do rise up the ranks in the age of shark tank and the age of twitter and the age of all this financial content we see on youtube


age of all this financial content we see on youtube there's so many kids who want to make big money very fast but don't have the great it takes to make big money and that's what i hope that this video gave you because trust me for the 25 team on beer biceps we've had a huge amount of people come and go as well because people have not been able to stick to these cultural norms it's a difficult organization to stick to because we do demand a lot we demand excellence but for the ones that find their flow in their work in this organization i promise you is the best job in the world for them and it's the best trajectory in the world for them that's how you go from lakhs to crores because when you have enough don't build a higher fence build a longer table thank you [Music] [Music] foreign


hey guys i'm a huge believer in the fact that if you want career advice you've got to talk to people who are young professionals but with a little bit of experience for me that 30 to 40 years age bracket is the right age bracket to take career advice this episode is called why an mba is not dead we're going to cover different aspects of doing an mba from a top indian college what the world of investment banking is like which by the way is the top job out of most indian mba colleges but also what happens in the process of transitioning from being an mba climbing up the corporate ladder to getting into the world of entrepreneurship this is nikhil agarwal talking about mbas and a lot more if there were to be a practical modern day mba what would be the concepts covered what would a great mentoring session be from a 35 year old to a 25 year old that's the soul of this podcast it was an extremely emotional deep discussion


this podcast it was an extremely emotional deep discussion i enjoyed it i hope you enjoy it as well this is nikhil agarwal who's currently successfully running grip invest but more on grip invest and the man's journey in this podcast makes you follow trs on spotify every episode is available on spotify 48 hours before it's available anywhere else in the world because we're a spotify exclusive and without further ado enjoy this episode of the runway show [Music] when i was growing up mama always told me you gotta turn to the smart finance people nikhil agarwal welcome to the ranvi show thanks so much for having me dude i've learned a lot about money and making more money from you over the brief period that i've known you but i feel like this particular podcast is going to be a gold mine of information for the for the audiences in terms of money making possibilities so welcome and teach us master i i wish my team would think the same way but yeah i i'll definitely do


the same way but yeah i i'll definitely do my best and and great to be here no for sure dude uh honestly i kind of get bored sometimes in the media world and content world because the conversations are always the same and then i turn to my finance friends who always talking about the next big money-making you're the first person to call finance guys interesting and the grass the grass is green on the other side fair enough no no i've begun to find finance guys interesting honestly but i've understood about money i also feel generally the world of content is at that juncture where people now know the basics and they want to know like sort of the advanced for lack of a better word ways to make money sure so uh you know let's begin with that what are the people in the world of finance thinking about making money now which is different from say even pre pandemic which only finance guys know uh okay that's an interesting question um i think a lot has changed actually um i think


i think a lot has changed actually um i think we're living in a fundamentally different world the first thing that comes to my mind is you know pre-pandemic the expectation of an event like a pandemic used to be almost rarely modeled in right it used to be okay we can draw a 10-year model or a 15-year model and there was no expectation of an event like a pandemic to be factored in the biggest thing that has changed is across investments people are saying this has to be factored in right we are likely to see or we have to expect that we will see an event like a pandemic which will significantly destroy all assumptions okay so i think that is the number one change that has happened whether you're investing in equities whether you're spending fixed income whether you're buying commodities whether you're buying gold right whatever it is i think that's the number one the thing that has changed second is that um there used to be a philosophy that countries like


there used to be a philosophy that countries like the us will never have high inflation rates okay um sorry it was super technical but the u.s has had almost 40 years absolutely low inflation okay which determined their foreign exchange policy uh it used to be called the new monetary policy where the u.s could pump as much money and it didn't make a difference to inflation the u.s is now seeing 40 her high inflation almost 10 percent inflation which is unheard of which is impacting how all assets will get priced because u.s monetary policy will now be determined by this new paradigm okay and why did they not see any inflation in 40 years because um lots of reasons but the most important one was all assets were normally traded in the u.s dollar right so if you printed more money it was still in the u.s dollar and hence every country was ready to buy it what has happened over a period of time is that things have changed right china has become more powerful oil and gas


right china has become more powerful oil and gas prices have risen u.s is isn't you know from if it is importing a certain amount of assets it gets impacted by foreign exchange fluctuations so and at the same time between 2008 financial crisis and subsequent crisis the u.s has pumped so much money into the market that it started to finally impact their their inflation rates okay so these are these are definitely two big trends that have happened i think the third one um very very different is uh the emergence of a very powerful retail investor individual investor right all over the world all over the world um which means which has extra money and they're looking for personal finance means to multiply their absolute money i don't know if you um remember that a year back there was a stock called gamestop okay which suddenly caught everyone's attention when it rocketed okay and people like elon musk tweeted about it there were many funds who actually had a short position against gamestop and they all lost money