this whole code you know what's also done is i think people are getting more competitive they understand you know it's it's the law of the jungle right as in the fittest one is gonna survive right and uh exactly right so if you want you know to do well professionally you need to be educated you need to know more and i mean that realization i can see you know kind of kicking in right as in uh like right now i'm in a resort and one of these guys was asking me about stock markets and it's never happened you know i mean i've never come into a resort and someone not asking me what stocks to buy you know he's asking me questions about like you know what you're asking me what's portfolio management what is stuff like that right and i'm like dude you know this is there is some change happening around us you know this whole covet is pushing people to say that you know i need to get better in life to survive this you know this


better in life to survive this you know this otherwise the the number of jobs will reduce only the fittest ones will you know be able to continue to have those jobs you know so so maybe you know that can in a way benefit you know uh you know people like you as well yeah so i honestly the answer to the question about long form is that this is raw material what you and me are building like right now and then it's a sales and design game so for example i'll take each of your questions and create a mini video out of it and mini video stays online over time so it's a content piece and the flip side is that even if this conversation like a two hour long conversation totally gets hundred thousand views in its lifetime which it won't it's gonna cross millions and millions of views over like ten years but even if it crosses hundred thousand there will be 10 000 people out of that hundred thousand who will apply a lot of the somewhere in their life and make


a lot of the somewhere in their life and make their families lives better so this is like high impact content man absolutely and honestly honestly this this realization of creating impactful content and directly impacting people's lives took away the seductive aspect of money from my life uh like the same thing like i think i grew up with those intentions of or cars or whatever and then once i realized oh i've landed up in a job where i can talk to a teenager and change his mindset that just changed it up for me so that's that's the world on this side but i wanna thank you man this was a gorgeous rich podcast uh i'm sure it's going to impact a lot of people of course i'll be linking all your handles down below even if you aren't active on social media but forget that you were a podcast guest i appreciate this on a human level thank you for all the stuff you shared man really appreciate it cheers yes nice nice for sure yeah thanks


it cheers yes nice nice for sure yeah thanks i'm glad i'm glad


that shows billion to one that intuition is real like hundreds of billions to one something is going on but again it wasn't a hundred percent either so in short intuition is real but it's not it's not always reliable but it does increase the odds when you go to a business and someone is giving you a proposal and you feel something off that could be your intuition if you are going on a date with someone for the first time and you feel something off that could be your intuition but maybe you also feel something right that's your intuition and so we have to learn to discern now when you get really good at intuition you what happens is you are able to bring in an additional faculty to to augment your intelligence this is where the magic happens in walter isaacson's book on steve jobs and i'm picking jobs because he's probably the greatest entrepreneur of our time right the first man to build a trillion dollar company isaacson said that jobs belief in prana prajna


isaacson said that jobs belief in prana prajna or an intuitive understanding of the world jobs was introduced to this concept during his travels through india i'm sure you've heard the story steve jobs backpacked across india with daniel shotsky his friend and isaacson said that jobs leaps was so imaginative they were not coming from pure intellect he called it like there were magical leaps of a genius magician and that is what intuition does namaste it's an honor having you on the ranvir show i'm very familiar with your work uh your work at mine valley what surprised me was that you began it in 2003 and i'm gonna ask you a ton of questions about mind valley itself but initially i'd love to introduce you to my uh listeners through your story so why do you think life chose you to do the work that you're doing what's the back story well well okay well firstly for your listeners who might not have heard of mindvalley let me just tell you


have heard of mindvalley let me just tell you what mindvalley is doing what i'm trying to do is to give every human being on the planet the advantages in life of having the best education in the world a harvard degree plus more plus being in great shape being in great mental conditioning having the mindset of professional athletes of billionaires the best education in the world but unlike a harvard degree to do it for under five hundred dollars we're taking the world's best education which one could say is habit making it even better than harvard by using exponential technologies bringing the price down to 500 bucks so anyone can afford it that is my mission in life for the next 10 years at least so just this week i issued a challenge to harvard i issued a million dollar bet that starting 2025 if you take a group of students who are studying at harvard and studying at mine valley after five years you measure who is most successful in life by a set of predetermined markers that scientists can


by a set of predetermined markers that scientists can determine to ensure they are fair we will beat harvard and i'm betting a million dollars of my own money against harvard university and i'm betting that we can do this because and i and you know i hope hobbit bit wins so i want to give them a chance so i'm going to do it in a city in a scenario where my graduates they pay 1 100 the price of harvard so i'm giving harvard 100 x price advantage and i bet you i'm still gonna win now how am i doing this over the last decade or so i've been assembling a team i've been building a company called mindvalley and my goal at mindvalley is to completely disrupt education globally we are already at this point probably indisputedly the number one education platform on the planet that any living adult can enroll in relative to money we are probably the most powerful product you can buy better than a tesla better than an iphone because mindvalley


than a tesla better than an iphone because mindvalley completely changes your life we extend your lifespan we improve your peace of mind we assemble we bring you all the great teachers in the world and give you that wisdom we connect you to a tribe we take away loneliness we take away anguish we give you hope and people who go through mind valley emerge like like lights in the world they are the best people out there the trick is to do this for as many people as possible for under 500 bucks we used to be about two thousand dollars we've been bringing the price lower and lower and lower as we scale because anyone a boy or girl growing up in a village in india right should be able to have access to the best education so that's where mindvalley is going and the reason i'm talking to you is because we're about to expand massively in india we're about to launch mine valley india in a matter of months oh beautiful uh again i'm very familiar with all


oh beautiful uh again i'm very familiar with all the kind of waves mind valley is making you are right but i want to make sure everyone in india is familiar because in a few years will be the most important education institute in india yeah i think people have woken up to it we see a lot of mind valley ads on our youtube as well and uh i feel generally our audience on this particular podcast is very inclined towards self-help and self-improvement anyone who's heard of self-help or self-improvement as concepts has heard of mind valley but what i want to take you back is uh to 2003 and pre-2003 uh again i'm completely familiar with what happened in a podcast with joy shetty you spoke about an ayahuasca experience you had and how you kind of just knew that you had to create mind valley in life and if i dial you even further back into your teenage you kind of fought your own teenage insecurities and the older version of


your own teenage insecurities and the older version of yourself through a concept like meditation so you're someone who's completely embraced you know these in india we call it hatke which are slightly alternative mindsets to change yourself your company and then the world through your work so could you could you run us through that entire journey as well okay so so you you often bring up the date 2003. mindvalley was started in 2003 but but just as a correction mindvalley was just a company name i registered the mind valley that you see today really started in 2013. mindvalley's in education back in 2003 i registered a company and this is a good tip for anybody who wants to be an entrepreneur i believe the universe rewards intention i remember reading a book think and grow rich by napoleon hill and he says don't just make a decision take some action right so when i decided i wanted to be an entrepreneur i went online and i searched for a good domain name for the future


i searched for a good domain name for the future company i would stop and the domain name i found was rainbridge.com and so i thought this is amazing i'm going to start a company called rainbridge and we're going to make a website but very soon i realized how depressing the name rainbridge sounded you know it sounded like you were a little troll under a bridge as it's raining found mine valley and thank god i registered that so that is 2003. we tried many different things we were selling meditation cds we launched the world's second biggest social bookmarking engine we developed web applications i developed an early version of instagram that ultimately failed uh because mobile phones were not sophisticated back in 2004 and eventually 10 years later because it does take a while i stumbled upon the idea that is mind valley today and that was education and transforming education and infusing it with relevancy the skills that truly matter to human beings today that's mind value right now but it's been a


that's mind value right now but it's been a 10 year journey run there but uh what are the skills that matter today like why do you think the edtech platform that you've built stands out from the rest absolutely okay so i that same question you asked me i'm a big guy in research so i went deep and i sought the number one living philosopher in the world can you guess who he is the world's most undisputed number one living philosopher the most cited academic in america jordan peterson uh oh not jordan peterson no absolutely not ken wilbur henry ken wilbur founded integral theory he's developing sort of a theory of everything to connect all of the wisdom in the world jordan peterson is a good philosopher he's a great writer but his claim to pay mostly came from you know like being political and and poking things that get conversation i i strongly disagree with many of jordan peterson's ideas uh respectfully i think he's a wonderful guy but disagree with him ken


a wonderful guy but disagree with him ken wilber however is brilliant now ken wilbur i interviewed him on friday we've had many conversations over the years but just last friday in an interview for my podcast i decided to to ask him summarize how should we reform global education to give every human being every human being the best wisdom knowledge transformation that we as a species deserve and wilbur said this he said today we educate not for the complete human being we educate for a tiny slice of what it is to be human not even human 101 we're not even there yet we educate for human 0.1 wilbur went on to say there are three things we need to educate for the first is multiple lines of intelligence today we know that there are at least 12 different types of intelligence but the entire basis for education which started in the 14th century in bologna italy the modern idea of the university is to educate for two of these 12 lines the first is um verbal


two of these 12 lines the first is um verbal speaking communicating the second is cognition thinking right these are not bad we need to be able to communicate we need to be able to think but there's so much more you can educate for aesthetics sense of art beauty design when steve jobs was at reed college he skipped all his classes except for a class on calligraphy and you've heard that legendary story that class and calligraphy developed jobs in a sense of aesthetics that aesthetics became the hallmark of the macintosh computer you can educate for values how do we create people who are more loving who are more kind who are more compassionate a great tragedy happening in the world today is that so many people vote for hate mongers for nationalist politicians look at america 42 of college graduates in america voted for donald trump in the last election how do we account for that why did they vote for a man who so badly spoke about muslims who so badly spoke


spoke about muslims who so badly spoke about mexicans we don't educate for values we don't educate and then and then there are other lines of intelligence right there is self-awareness there is spiritual intelligence this is what the great teachers and sages and mystics of the world ranging from india to china to to to to the middle east have been speaking about for generations we educate for none of them so that's the first category multiple lines of intelligence now the second category of education has to do with the idea of educating people to expand their levels of compassion to greater and greater degrees of wholeness in 1872 charles darwin predicted that mankind is going to start becoming more and more and more unified he said it will become self-evident that tribes will unite to become nations but their nations will unite to become unions of nations and unions of nations will continue uniting until we have earth centered identity he called it diffusion of sympathy and he said this is


it diffusion of sympathy and he said this is just where human beings are going to go ken wilbur a hundred years later said this is one of the most important things we can educate people for most human beings okay at what you call the ethnocentric level of existence 70 of human beings are ethnocentric so they believe i'm kind i'm wonderful i'm amazing but they cap that with people of the same color religion ethnicity or nationality this is the illusion wilbur says we have to educate people for world-centric identity why is it that growing up in an indian family i'm a sindhi okay so that's my ethnicity i remember growing up and and my grandfather who was a wonderful man super kind super generous but he existed at the ethnocentric level he probably would have been very disappointed with me if i married someone who was of a darker indian skin tone and you know i ended up marrying um i ended up marrying someone of a completely different race and i remember


someone of a completely different race and i remember they were members of my family ethnocentric kind awesome smart people who were upset with that because how dare i marry someone outside the right religion in the right race this is epicentrism it exists in the world today uh seventh of the population is there and this is what we have to educate human beings to move beyond we have to move people to what is called world centrism world centrism is where you basically understand that color is simply a function of melanin in the skin that religion is beautiful but all religions have equal parts truth equal parts and that national borders are arbitrary and random sindh which is the part of india that my grandfather left in 1939 was part of afghanistan before 1850 part of india between 1850 and 1947 part of pakistan since 1947. so what the hell am i we take these borders to be so so so cast in stone and that is where things get messed up so we got to


is where things get messed up so we got to educate to go towards world-centric identity but there's a level beyond world centric itself means we see all human beings as as as one that's great but we need to go beyond because our planet is going through an upheaval right now global warming is going to the fundamentally damaging to our species we need to educate to what is called cosmocentric identity and this means that we become human beings who seek to be one with nature or in scientific terms to create a civilization that is net positive to nature for every year human beings are on the planet the planet is getting better and better and better and better look at ants ants have three times the biomass of human beings yet for every year ants are on the planet the planet gets better we pillage the planet that's the second pillar now the third pillar is the most interesting if you're indian it is teaching people how to access altered states of experience the great indian mystics


altered states of experience the great indian mystics knew this they knew that we are not just waking consciousness there is the feeling of oneness there is the samadhi experience there are priya experiences there's lucid dreams there's out of body experiences we need to teach people to access altered states you mentioned ayahuasca earlier plant medicine is is one one means but not the most efficient and when you bring these things together multiple lines of intelligence moving towards cosmocentrism which is species-centered identity and then altered states of existence going within now you have education and that's just the starting point this is what mindvalley is doing so i have a couple of questions specifically speaking about education firstly as a species what do you think is the next stage of our evolution because uh you know a lot of intellectuals all over the world are talking about how we're still evolving we're not this isn't our final form and we're evolving into something else and it's very likely that with advancements


something else and it's very likely that with advancements in technology with information being this spread out we're going to be evolving into a newer version of ourselves so that's the first question that where do you think we're going as a species and the second thing i'd like to ask you is again and this is from a very indian perspective but indians like to know how your product is going to actually add value to their life in terms of only money like i'm i understand i hear you completely but do you think that the skills that you speak of will make you a better professional will it earn you a fatter pay package will it give you better business absolutely so you asked a whole string of questions there right so first let's answer the really easy one where's the species evolving i just gave you a clue we are balling to become a species that is going to be embracing multiple lines of intelligence the artist is as important as the engineer yet i grew up in an indian family


engineer yet i grew up in an indian family and if you didn't become a lawyer engineer or entrepreneur you became a family failure so so we got to stop this like this this thinking this occupation bad this occupation good because it leads so many indians to misery and funny enough i was just watching an indian movie last night three idiots and i was just like laughing my ass off when i was looking at like all the things that happened um at an indian engineering school so so i get that because i came from that culture i became an engineer because my parents wanted to be an engineer i became an engineer because in the 90s bill gates visited india it was all over the news and my grandfather sat me down and he said you must be like bill gates like go into computers it's going to make you rich and so i actually went into computers i got a job at microsoft i became one of bill gates employees he i remember being invited to


bill gates employees he i remember being invited to his house on lake washington he was cooking burgers for for all of the employees and everyone was gathered around him all the young engineers were like so excited to shake his hand i couldn't shake his hand because i was miserable at microsoft and i knew i hated my job and i quit two weeks later or rather i got fired i had to say i quit so i didn't you know so i didn't get in trouble with my family but i got fired i got myself fired and you know what i did next i joined a non-profit something that in many indian families would be considered something for losers right didn't make any money i lived before below the poverty line but in that non-profit i discovered the world i discovered how to speak i met the woman who i would later marry and have two kids with i met the man who i would later start a business with and so i believe that life places you in the


and so i believe that life places you in the right place at the right time your soul knows more than your tradition than your family you have to follow and listen to your soul steve jobs said listen to your gutter intuition they somehow already know who you are to become yet in indian culture we say be the engineer be the entrepreneur you know if you open up the mayan valley um app right now and you specify your career we deliberately we deliberately put 8 000 different careers we analyze all the possible careers out there we put 8 000 different careers there's a reason for that we then ask you to add a second career identity so what is eight thousand times eight thousand let's do the math okay so in mind valley we're not asking you to label yourself a lawyer or a doctor you have to add two careers that is 64 million then we ask you to add a third identity so we're going to time 64 million times 8 000 boom this is roughly 512


64 million times 8 000 boom this is roughly 512 billion identities now why do we do that it's because when you decide you're going to be one career you put yourself in a box the truly great revolutionaries of the world combine careers we live in this distorted society like encouraged by bs modern education that you are one thing you are the doctor you are the lawyer i'm a writer but i'm also a computer engineer i'm also an entrepreneur i'm also a podcast host i'm also um a father and i'm good at all of it and that's what makes me me everyone should have three careers and merge it together be very good at two or three things that is the education we are doing now how does mindvalley get you there you asked a relevant question how does mindvalley help you make money recently i was you know i was having a live call with some of our students and there was a there was a woman who started a company a handbag company after listening to money


started a company a handbag company after listening to money eq by ken honda that's a money program on mindvalley and it teaches you the right mindset on money the first thing you want to do to get rich is to fix your money mindset to remove all the beliefs that limit you from money in one month this woman her name was rene started a handbag business and in one month she made more money than the previous 12 months and now she's an entrepreneur now what was that mindset shift in school they teach you you need to budget budget budget budget budget budget budget but in mindvalley we actually take a more professional approach a little bit of budgeting is fine but you got to play and invest in money overcome fear of failure experiment with multiplying that money experiment with entrepreneurship budgeting puts you in a scarcity mindset you must be in an expansive mindset that's how rene became an entrepreneur so many mindvalley people become incredibly wealthy now one of the things we're doing right


wealthy now one of the things we're doing right now is we are bringing entrepreneurship training in mind rally we just announced it on friday and because we're expanding to india many of the entrepreneurs we are bringing on board are indian legends they may not be in india but they are indian ethnically for example nadine jain who just became the first private citizen to get permission to land a robot on the moon naveen grew up in a village in india he went on to go to america worked at microsoft and started several billion dollar companies he has three kids all of whom are graduates from harvard lee ivy league universities and who have started incredible ngos naveen jain has navin chain's program is on mindvalley he teaches people to dream big but great you dream big now how do you execute so our new program is with mickey agrawal mickey agrawal is an indian woman in canada who started 200 million dollar companies she started um a woman's


200 million dollar companies she started um a woman's underwear company called things she started a bidet company and now it's a mother she started a diaper company for biodegradable diapers it's probably going to be her third hundred million dollar company mickey knows how to build hundred million dollar companies you want to learn from her she is choosing to teach on mindvalley so that is how mindvalley adds more income to your career probably if you take naveen jane's course mickey's course you take my course you'll probably be wealthier than getting a harvard degree because you learn from people who have done it before not from professors in the university who have never built a hundred million dollar business mentorship matters but mind value also we're building a better social utility so as you learn you're plugged into other students we call it guilds so if you decide that branding is one of the places you want to learn and then say um let's say writing is another skill you're plugged into guilds


say writing is another skill you're plugged into guilds with other brand experts other writers and we are building a brain-to-brain interface where you get to multiply each other's intelligence that's some of the fancy fact that's going to be emerging in the next one year any graduate from mind valley has access to more brain power because of our brain to brain connection utility than a graduate from a regular university more on that in a bit but that's some advanced tech that's coming thanks to the rise of exponential technologies so you know i have two questions to ask you on a very personal level the first is a personal question uh which is something i ask all my guests because this podcast is a reflection of my evolution as a person as well the first question is i constantly feel a bit too hungry for more and i don't know where to draw that line in terms of settling for where i am and just being at peace with what i've achieved till now versus kind of always wanting more and i'm


now versus kind of always wanting more and i'm sure you've watched the last dance with michael jordan so that messes that while it does give you a lot of motivation like as a young 20 something man it does a lot of harm to your mindset as well so i i see the same thing in you i feel like you've gone on the same journey that i'm on right now so how did you overcome that face because i'm dead sure you had that phase i'm asking you on a very personal level and the second thing is the topic you spoke about a lot with jay shetty which is the intuitive net i'd love for you to expand on that because i do feel like these two questions are linked uh but i will let you take over so you pick because you've asked me two big questions okay let's yeah let's let's go the first one first about how do you know when hunger can actually cause more harm than do you good okay so first let's talk about what you mean


good okay so first let's talk about what you mean by hunger right what i think what i believe you're saying is desire it's desire it's one thing it's the it's the idea that you want to do more you want to accomplish more you want to get more is this correct uh i want to do more like i want to be able to create all the products that i can visualize in my head which i know i'll visualize on the n which i know i'll be able to do in the next 10 years but i want to do it sooner than 10 years okay so let's go back to that idea of hunger okay to understand where i'm going to go with this you have to understand the concept of hunger itself when you talk about hunger do you always eat when you're hungry yeah you always eat when you're hungry good then you don't understand hunger you see there are six types of hunger when we talk about hunger in the body there are six types of


about hunger in the body there are six types of hunger hunger can actually be a bio physical um response where your body needs water because in the old days we got water was dirty we got water from fruit so you could drink a glass of water and that might stop your hunger hunger could also be nutritional hunger it means you haven't been eating nutritional food you've been eating junk so you need some nutrition hunger could also be just a normal response that your stomach is empty we're not trained to recognize that our stomach is empty and so we feel we got to fill it that's actually a bad thing so that is actually a good type of hunger it means oh your stomach is empty no problem you don't have to do anything when you actually get educated and hungry and interestingly enough mindvalley educates people to recognize six different types of hunger so they can respond to their body correctly when you educate that you understand that hunger is an illusion human beings simplify a complex


hunger is an illusion human beings simplify a complex world into words when you give all of these six different reactions that your stomach is having and you call it all hunger you don't know what to do but when you differentiate into thirst nutritional hunger empty stomach actual hunger where you're starving right then you know the right action to take there's even such a thing as emotional hunger where you feel hungry when you're getting through a downward emotion and you can actually solve that through meditation and that feeling disappears so you got to recognize the feeling so in your case we have to first look at what you mean by hunger and break it down what you mean by desire and break it down and there are multiple forms of desire there's desire where you want something and you feel it's hard to get and you feel envious so you feel a negative charge because someone else has that and you don't that is the type of wanting that you want to avoid but there's desire


wanting that you want to avoid but there's desire where you want something and you know you're gonna get it and you want it because it's going to be phenomenal for you the desire for money the desire for the expensive car that's not bad but sometimes it's masking something else for example the expensive car could be because you need a certain form of like self-identity or self-confidence that you are lacking i for example drive a 300 bicycle i have no desire for an expensive car then there could be the desire to go forth and heal the world the desire to serve humanity the desire that you know propel someone to be a monk or to be a billionaire to serve humanity that is probably one of the best forms of desires so the question is what is your hunger the the third one for sure the third one good if it's the third one then you're on the right track now if you have that third form of hunger which i do which nabin jain does


of hunger which i do which nabin jain does which miki that's why mickey has started 300 million dollar companies it's the same hunger that pushes someone like jay shetty forward it's a desire to serve you're on the right track and that is the best form of hunger to have but here's the thing in my book the buddha and the badass i explained that all of us need to reconcile these two archetypes of our being the buddha and the badass the badass is the disrupter the innovator the person who wants to change the world that is phenomenal but you got to also embrace your inner buddha your inner buddha is your spiritual anchor if you don't embrace your inner buddha the badass could stress you out you could overwork you could you could screw up your cognitive abilities because you're not getting enough sleep you're not exercising well you're not taking care of your health but if you are rock solid in your inner buddha and you're also


rock solid in your inner buddha and you're also using some of the other spiritual tools tools such as um being able to use the power of your mind to to to to manifest tools such as intuition tools such as being able to align with higher intelligence to get the right guidance now you move towards your desires with ease and eventually you move towards your desires with such ease that they are no longer a desire their inevitability that you simply know is coming this is the highest form of manifesting expectancy you just know it's coming i can speak so confidently of mindvalley being the most important education company in the world because i just know it's coming there's no doubt like i don't doubt that if i breathe right now i'm going to take air in my body so the great trick run there is to take this desire that you have and move it towards such profound expectancy that it is inevitable now this is what spiritual teachers sometimes call being in a state


is what spiritual teachers sometimes call being in a state of surrender when you're in that state of surrender you just know it's coming and you operate in a different way now we can go more into why that works but i'll pause there the podcast you did with jai shati probably was the most impactful podcast i heard this year spoken about that podcast on many episodes of this particular podcast and um i i mean it just it shifted things in my own head for me i actually started applying a couple of the things you spoke about be it manifestation be it being conscious of that intuitive net so while i wish to speak to you a lot about my personal questions on that front maybe let's answer that intuitive net question first let's explain it to this audience because it can be a slightly deeper concept than what people are expecting so let's go for that and then i'll take you ahead okay so firstly the reason that podcast i'm happy you said that podcast was the best


i'm happy you said that podcast was the best podcast that is validation to what i'm saying what you experienced on that podcast wasn't jay shetty uh interviewing me jay's a very close friend jay let me go and speak about what mind valley is doing and if that touched you that's evidence that everyone listening to this right now should go to mindvalley.com and become a member and enroll in our university okay so i just want to point that out there that was a taste of the mind valley philosophy and the mind valley way of viewing the world just go to mindvalley.com forward slash start forward slash start and become a member and soon everyone who joins from india is going to be put in a private indian social network and we're going to be amplifying their intelligence connecting them with other people in india even introducing them through a predictive algorithm to potential allies friends gym buddies even the person you might fall in love with so that's where we are going


fall in love with so that's where we are going with india you're going to see all of that unroll very fast and you're going to see more and more indian teachers come on mahatriya maybe a sri sri ravi shankar because there's so much great wisdom in india um hint potentially satguru as well uh we are currently in talks so a lot of amazing indian teachers indian entrepreneurs and so on okay now let's go back to the question on intuition is that what you'd like me to address yes the intuition and your intuitive net that you spoke of okay so i believe that all of us have this this power of intuition but the modern world teaches us to ignore it so there's a new field of science it's called perceptual diversity or or rather it's a term that anthropologists use perceptual diversity is when you perceive the world through a diverse set of input not just your eyes or your ears or your fingertips perceptual diversity according


ears or your fingertips perceptual diversity according to um an anthropologist bogano in a 1973 paper 90 of cultures in the world had some form of perceptual diversity if you go back you know to the roots of indian culture when you look at meditation when you look at prayer all of that were perceptual diversity if you read the book autobiography of yogi by paramahansa yogananda he talks about all of these these instances where insights would come to him where he would see apparitions he talks about how the sages communicated this is all perceptual diversity it was beyond the physical senses but as the world goes more and more and more and more and more rational there's a backlash towards religion but the problem is while you know religion does deserve sometimes a bit of a uh um a pope because there's a lot of nonsense in religion we end up saying that anything that cannot be explained by science is rubbish and that's where we hurt


science is rubbish and that's where we hurt ourselves intuition no that's not real turns out not only is it real but science in the last 20 years is validating it more and more and more so for example there was a study done at the university of edinburgh it was called the gansfield test experiments and they would take two people and they would put these people in different rooms one person would be put into a meditative state using what is called a sensory deprivation chamber basically a float tank right float tank they are there so they cannot feel when you turn off all your sensors like you go into this intuitive state the other person is in a room where he's watching he or she is watching a television screen they show you one of four images it could be horses running through a stream it could be an image of a war-torn landscape it could be an image of a gorgeous building or an image of an apple on a table now they then wake up the person who's


a table now they then wake up the person who's in the sensory deprivation chamber they show that person that those four images and they're like what did the other person in the room look at now if being purely rational and being rooted in probability what are the odds that the person who was woken up would guess the right image assuming there's no such thing as intuition so 25 percent yeah okay but it turns out that in the gan field test studies with even untrained subjects the actual odd was 33 33 now that's pretty interesting that shows billion to one that intuition is real like hundreds of billions to one something is going on but again it wasn't a hundred percent either so in short intuition is real but it's not it's not always reliable but it does increase the odds when you go to a business and someone is giving you a proposal and you feel something off that could be your intuition if you are going on a date with someone for the first time and you feel something


with someone for the first time and you feel something off that could be your intuition but maybe you also feel something right that's your intuition and so we have to learn to discern now when you get really good at intuition you what happens is you are able to bring in an additional faculty to to augment your intelligence this is where the magic happens in walter isaacson's book on steve jobs and i'm picking jobs because he's probably the greatest entrepreneur of our time right the first man to build a trillion dollar company isaacson said that jobs belief in prana prajna or an intuitive understanding of the world jobs was introduced to this concept during his travels through india i'm sure you've heard the story steve jobs backpacked across india with daniel schrotzky his friend and isaacson said that jobs leaps was so imaginative they were not coming from pure intellect he called it like there were magical leaps of a genius magician and that is what intuition does the vision


magician and that is what intuition does the vision that i'm building right now for mine valley a large part of that vision when i spoke earlier about connecting all our people in india being able to predict who's going to be your friends that vision came to me in a seven hour trip on ayahuasca and then i refined that using the silva method which is one of the most advanced altered state meditation programs in mind valley refining it putting all the pieces together and then we raised a large sum on it and now we're building it i build products by going deep into my intuition and then understanding what the universe wants me to deliver to the world and then i find when i trust and i go into that everything in a state of surrender everything flows flawlessly towards the outcome this is how i know mindvalley is building the most advanced education curriculum in the world the universe has our back the universe is guiding us everything is moving towards this goal because it's noble


everything is moving towards this goal because it's noble it's good it can change humanity and move us towards becoming a true cosmocentric earth-centric society that anyone can do that everyone you don't have to want to change the world maybe you have a book that you're dying to get out maybe you have a podcast idea maybe you're trying to change the way your business runs you gotta learn to go within first yeah um i mean kind of a rude question but uh is there any moment now where you meet any form of stress in your mind because you seem like i mean i feel you like you're a very divinely guided person i feel like you know you've landed up in the right place at the right time so again from the outside it seems like you're kind of a train which is on like a very sturdy stable railway track so it would be hard for me to imagine that your mental piece gets shaken up at all very rarely but it does you don't want to completely


but it does you don't want to completely eliminate stress so for example if you're crossing the road and all of a sudden if you're crossing the road and you're busy you know with your phone or whatever or your mind is somewhere and all of a sudden you hear a horn and a bus is like this close you want your body to create a stress response so you jump out of the way you don't want to eliminate stress it will freaking kill you stress is a safety response but what happens in the world today is that we get stress for non-threatening situations okay sales go down and we don't know why or we lose a business deal or you know we're working with someone and they're stressed about something that happened with their family and they snap at you and then you get stressed you're not going to die you're not in any harm's way the response still happens in your body it's biochemical response but you can train your the way your brain responds to it so


train your the way your brain responds to it so you don't hurt yourself because that stress response while it can get you to leap out of the way of a moving bus it also slowly kills your body stress has a damaging effect on your body and so the less stress the longer you live stress for example shortens telomere length which is one of the the the core biomarkers of aging so you can train that response now how we do it in mindvalley is um of course meditation is a great way now i'm using a new tool by paul mckenna he produced a program on mindvalley called everyday bliss those of you who are mindvalley members it's in your account and he he developed a form of hypnotic trans audio that programs your subconscious to deal with stress in a different way so what i'm finding right now is that as i'm i'm on day six of the program it's a 21 day program i'm finding that when i sleep and i measure my um my heart rate


i sleep and i measure my um my heart rate variability which is another measure of stress i'm certainly so much more calm right and so you can subconsciously train your way to become resistant to stress using these types of technologies base level you got to meditate you want to go advanced you use something like everyday bliss by mindvalley to trans yourself speak to your subconscious to change your physiological response to stress so you're always perfectly calm in non-threatening situations but you're still alert you know if someone runs with you with a knife or the bus is barreling down the street towards you gorgeous um and coming back to your indian roots as well as your global entrepreneur when you're within your mind i'm gonna ask the question to both these two versions of vishen uh how do you look at india how do you look at the future of india what do you think india's role is going to be on the world stage going forward because this has been a cultural hub for


going forward because this has been a cultural hub for the world for centuries now and i feel like we've had a bit of a dip in the last 200 300 years in terms of being a cultural hub and there's numbers to back that where the gdp of the country 200 250 years back was bigger than the gdp of all of europe put together and we were reduced to like you know one of the lowest in the world uh right after we got independence but i feel we're bouncing back especially over the next 20 30 40 years especially the biggest businessman in this country believe so so i'm asking you from a very objective perspective while i know your roots are based in this country you've seen the rest of the world you've spoken to global entrepreneurs uh where do you think our country is going and i'm also going to request you to kind of dive into your own intuition and answer this question right well the unique thing about india right is that everybody treats it as one country


right is that everybody treats it as one country but india is like europe you go to tamil nadu you go to punjab you go to to what remains of sindh in india and it's as different as germany and belgium and estonia so india is so different state by state region by region it's an it's a beautiful amalgamation 800 860 different dialects and so there is no one india there's a multitude of india but for me to answer that question i can because i'm i've i've moved towards a cosmocentric world view in other words i appreciate my indian roots but i also appreciate the side of me that's american beside me that's malaysian the side of me that's estonian i'm a member of earth first my indian dna is secondary and so i love india but i don't love india more than i love pakistan or i love china or i love europe i want to see all of humanity elevate and so i have a great appreciation


elevate and so i have a great appreciation for my indian roots i told you last night i was watching um an indian movie by myself laughing my my my face off because it was so good um three idiots and um and i was just so so i just love seeing india in that movie it's that bit of like time-wise separation that prevents me from accurately answering your question with true knowledge i still have to go to india and discover that country anew and it's changing so fast right uh i mean and i feel like i don't know i feel like a lot of the mind valley uh concepts wisdom there are parallels with ancient yogic culture from this country as well now you will you will notice something very unique in mind valley you will notice a huge amount of indian faces on nine valley now there's a reason for that there's a reason for that primarily our audience is 54 american but you will notice huge amount of indian faces from me to sri


huge amount of indian faces from me to sri kumarao to naveen jain to um to miki agrawal and there's more there's there's more indian faces coming and the reason for that is because there is a desire in me to show that indians can be extraordinary individuals we just did a fitness program and we featured um a picture of kumar nanjiani i don't know if you know the indian actor who became a really buff right um thanks to kumar like indian men are no longer seeing and so but all of that was done deliberately and branding india and indian culture in a subtle way through mind valley which is why you see a huge indian impact in mind valley hmm beautiful and uh that is absolutely 100 percent deliberate and you know i hear you speaking of autobiography for yogi a lot which is another hot topic on this particular podcast we keep talking about that book but if you had to reference other reading material you know for people to kind of


other reading material you know for people to kind of just open up to these possibilities in this kind of world things that had an influence on you growing up could you um kind of direct people the book that started it all for me the silver mind control method for getting help from your other side if there's an award for little-known books with maximum impact it's this notice there's even nothing in the cover that's how little known this book is right but the silver method i'm now the face of the silver method the silver method is now on mindvalley if you're a mindvalley member go to mindvalley.com and start the silver method program it teaches you how to access altered states in 30 days your life will be transformed if there's a program that can teach you how to get deep into your spiritual core and experience polyphasic living tap into intuition to the point of waking psychic ability this is it right this is on mind value that's the first thing i would recommend to anyone and then um so


thing i would recommend to anyone and then um so get also you can get this book if you can find it it's very hard to find but you can also get my book the code of the extraordinary mind or the buddha and the badass both of which are very easily available in india they were both new york times bestsellers got it beautiful vishen lakyani thank you we reached the end of the podcast i really appreciate you sharing all your knowledge of course as with any podcast i use this as a personal uh mentoring session for myself so i appreciate that that side of the conversation as well and you answered some questions that have been like bothering me for a while now so from the bottom of my heart brother thank you god bless you and i hope that you achieve everything you're meant to achieve in this lifetime and beyond thank you thank you thank you thank you randy i appreciate that [Music] you


at the end of 2018 and beginning of 2019 i just fell into a really deep depression i was experiencing extreme ocd in the form of obsessive negative thinking um to the point where i just i couldn't for like a month straight i couldn't really get out of bed much i couldn't i couldn't write music i fell out of love with it i couldn't really connect with anyone except for if i was like crying or complaining or you know talking about what i was going through mentally i i was calling my family constantly looking for reassurance and um it wasn't until i like you know learned really what it meant to be depressed and got diagnosed with depression and this obsessive anxiety form of ocd that i started to get better is that why you talk this much about mental health like you want to use your fame as a platform to talk about it yeah just for me i think like uh just experiencing that and experiencing the journey to getting better and just


and experiencing the journey to getting better and just coming to realize how important that is and how much i love that process myself and i love seeing that in other people [Music] ari love welcome to the ranvi show brother what's up thank you for having me so i wanna deep dive into your story because you're one of the fastest rising stars in the world of music uh what's it like right now in your life what's your life like right now are you happy where you are do you want to wish to go i've been i've been really good i mean obviously you know right now with with uh covet and everything it's been a bit up and down for me mentally and emotionally but right now i'm in i would say i'm in a really good place i'm i'm super happy about that i'm thankful why is it down at all um i just think there's been a lot of you know just like having to be home and dealing with a lot of i've been just doing a


with a lot of i've been just doing a lot of like self-exploration like emotionally and spiritually and mentally and kind of dealing with like periods of like existential crisis vibes um which has not been the most fun but i think it's been important for me to kind of like work through that stuff so i can get to a better place you know when the world looks at a career like yours from the outside people assume that everything's perfect and um when when they hear someone like you say okay that even you're facing existential crisis uh it's a little weird for the rest of the world so what would you like to tell the rest of the world yeah i know i totally understand and you know i think um the probably the initial thing is for people i imagine to be like well you have a lot of success and you have probably you know i have a lot of the things that i've wanted you know for my whole life you know it's like i grew up wanting to be


know it's like i grew up wanting to be an artist you know i started writing songs and i was like 12. um but you know the thing is like and i mean this in the least like i'm not complaining but you know the reality is i was chasing something for so long and i thought it would bring me happiness you know i thought that reaching a certain level of success would make me happier um in my career and just in general my life but the reality is like you reach any of these any of these milestones i've reached you know whether it's like something going like platinum or like doing a big show or something you realize that anything external can't bring you true happiness and that's just the facts like it's just i've come to realize that true happiness doesn't come from accomplishments it has to come from like within so i've had to do a lot of work you know with things like meditation to just try to recognize that and find a place of peace


try to recognize that and find a place of peace and happiness aside from that stuff and that kind of like messes with your head because you're like okay i have like a beautiful life you know i have a you know a beautiful home and i'm doing what i love to do every day but then you sit down you're like why am i still suffering from things like depression or you know ocd or existential crisis mode and i think i've come to realize that it's because like deep down i wasn't really happy or fulfilled or i had a lot of kind of stuff i had to work through myself on the inside um how have you answered some of those questions is it books is it meditation is it talking to people because i know you talk a lot about spirituality so i mean what are the what are the instances that have helped solve those questions for you yeah um definitely meditation talking to friends talking to a therap therapist um yeah uh reading a lot to podcasts there's one


yeah uh reading a lot to podcasts there's one guy named ramdas that i like to follow um and i think in like some of my meditations and like therapy i've come to realize the root cause or one of the root causes of my existentialism where i'm like okay i don't deserve anything i should give everything away i should become a monk or whatever which i know sounds really crazy is because i think deep down there's a part of me that believes i don't deserve happiness whether i consciously believe it or not there's something deep down inside of me that kind of feels that way and i don't know how deep we want to go it's like you know based on certain stuff from childhood and growing up but learning how to like recognize that and be like no like every single person on this planet deserves a chance to be happy and i you know i have the ability to do things you know like with my foundation for example to try to take resources that i've gotten


example to try to take resources that i've gotten through my music or otherwise you know donating and getting involved in like the field of mental health i think like there was a period of time where i was like i don't deserve to be happy you know like i should give everything away and i don't know it sounds really crazy but that's kind of like the thing i was going through no it doesn't sound crazy man i'm gonna share something with you about my life like from the time i was growing up and uh you know in india your teachers your school teachers have a huge role to play in the way you end up thinking in life it's just how indian society is built so uh my entire primary school like from my first grade till the fourth grade i had every single school teacher telling me i won't amount to anything and uh it sort of happened at home with relatives as well so it it [ __ ] me up but in a very positive way like i feel like


but in a very positive way like i feel like i always wanted to prove people wrong in life and that allows me like an unlimited uh amount of hustle like i can keep working and i don't get tired but that's from that slightly messed up place in childhood and initially it kind of affected me really badly created a lot of mental health issues but combined with meditation and like the right people around me i've turned that into you know some kind of a i don't i don't call it super power but it's definitely a weapon uh i'm still like i constantly think i'm not working hard enough but uh it benefits me there's um i definitely grew up you know i grew up in a situation where my mom especially was really inspiring to me because she worked so so so hard and super dedicated to her career but i think also i forgot what it was like to just enjoy happiness outside of working and i'd always make myself i'm always chasing another song always chasing


myself i'm always chasing another song always chasing another high that way you know but you realize that there's got to be so much more to life you know because it's like i realized that being obsessed with work was coming from this place of like lack of self-worth like i'm not worth anything if i'm not accomplishing things and that is like it's an endless battle and i don't want to live that way so i think you know i've been trying to dismantle that uh mindset so many of those questions for me have been answered by studying the world of indian spirituality like are you attached to india are you attached to india at all like do you feel any kind of attachment you know i've actually never really dug into the spiritual practices i will say when i've been to india which has been you know not that much i found it really fascinating and i think i find maybe some of the i'd be curious for some of the more the philosophy and the


for some of the more the philosophy and the spirituality behind it you know what would you like to know would you like to know anything in specific well you're talking about you know like your meditative practices or just really what your experience has been i think would be really cool to like learn from bro i i read a lot of books so here's here's the deal right have you heard of sanskrit have you heard of the so sanskrit is our ancient language and it kind of died out like in the same way that hebrew died out in the world and then it was brought back to life sanskrit is gradually being brought back to life and most of us spiritual scriptures were written in sanskrit but if you translate sanskrit into any other language you'll always have a loss of information just because there's certain words in sanskrit that mean a lot of things and there's no way to translate them into any other language so so every single book that was written by spiritual sages or


single book that was written by spiritual sages or spiritual masters always had to be translated and therefore there was always a loss of information um so there's this guy called i mean there's this there was this master called paraman's yoga nand who took indian spirituality to the west he went to california he uh have you heard of encinitas yeah so uh he set up a foundation in encinitas and he took the world of indian spirituality there but the uh the the peculiar thing about what he did was that he took all that sanskrit knowledge and spoke directly in english wow so he he wrote it in the way that the american world or the european world or the international world was supposed to understand those texts okay so he wrote a bunch of books but the most important book was this book called the autobiography of a yogi which steve jobs referred to a lot okay and you know yeah you know steve jobs was chucked out of apple and he had an existential crisis


out of apple and he had an existential crisis himself yeah he had a dark phase in his life yeah uh but he used to always turn to that book he read it once every year yeah and it always answered a lot of questions for him and here's what they say in india right about spiritual books they say that you don't read the spiritual books the books read you and the books answer you things based on what you're looking for but you need to have that kind of a belief system and you need to be open enough to receive the answers yeah i found like i have to i grew up in a family was very logical you know science both my parents are scientists and like over the years i've had to turn to being open in every single way you know meditation one of my friends um literally he came into my life at the perfect time i was really really depressed this was last year and he taught me you know his meditative practices and it's totally changed my life because you know


and it's totally changed my life because you know you're you're open to something beneath the mind you're open to universal souls and also i've come to realize so many of my negative thoughts come from old patterns come from the ways the ways in which i was made to feel growing up or the thing the messages i internalized and i think the really special thing about practices like meditation is you can come to realize that you don't have to react to these thoughts and these feelings you can just let them be and you can just kind of exist and be present and be aware and life is so much more peaceful that way you know you can't control everything you think you can control you just gotta like be happy where you are you know 100 bro um i mean that's that's the outcome of having meditation as a lifestyle but i'd want to share this one thing with you that it helped me a lot like early on in like my meditation practice which was that uh it doesn't matter


meditation practice which was that uh it doesn't matter what kind of technique you follow in your meditation because eventually when you're beginning you're using meditation as a tool to become calm but once once you feel calm and if you have negative thoughts within your negative memories you go within those negative memories and feel it entirely you feel it to the extent where you feel like you're present within that memory again and you release it so even if you feel like crying man cry it out in the meditation at the end of your meditation i cry a lot in my meditations you know and i meditate with people and i feel like sometimes i just get this overwhelming sensations and i actually do a lot of spoken meditation which i don't know how common that is but you know where i just speak from whatever comes to me and it feels like it's not coming from my mind it's coming more so from my heart and i tap into i do like um inner child meditation where i visualize


do like um inner child meditation where i visualize myself at different ages and i go back and i try to learn from young ari and see what memories do i need to bring up and then i try to uh just work through those things and a lot of times it does end up in crying but it ends up in crying from like a place that feels like i'm releasing it and then i feel more loving afterwards 100 and you know what once your heart is lighter your creativity becomes brighter like you feel that yeah there was a lot of this negative stuff that i was like kind of pushing down and i've come to realize that you just have to express that stuff and a lot of your feelings i have a lot of feelings of like insecurity and fear that i think are me or i am that fear i am that insecurity but sometimes i realize you just have to express that part of you to get it out and to realize oh my god like these insecurities of


to realize oh my god like these insecurities of these fears are kind of ridiculous like they're not they're not really representing who i am or who i want to be and what i want in my life you know could you could you share like an example of a meaningless insecurity that you've had yeah um i feel like oftentimes when it comes to like romantic situations you know i get really insecure about the slightest thing i get insecure that i don't know the person i'm with doesn't actually want to be with me and they talk to somebody else and i see them having fun in a conversation and i assume that the whole thing is or i um i i think i take a lot of my insecurities and then i project them as anger on other people i start to judge them in my mind or part of me judges them because i'm angry or i feel less than and i've come to realize like it's not about the other people it's more so about this part of me


other people it's more so about this part of me that's still very wounded on the inside that feels hurt and you know they say hurt people hurt people you know what i mean so like i take out that pain in a way where it's a valid emotion but it's not it's not really the reality i'm creating a false reality that is i mean i don't know what a true reality is you sort of do just create your reality on some level um but i create like a unhealthy reality that's not gonna serve me and there's no reason to identify with it but you know that girls all over the world die to be with you and like they they think of you as like the ideal romantic partner because of your music because of what you've achieved because of the vibe you give out nobody wants to be with me i'm telling you people think you want to be with me but i am crazy i am crazy why why do you say that bro you have a good


why do you say that bro you have a good vibe i i appreciate that i think i have a really good heart but i do have a lot of pain inside of me and a lot of insecurity and fear and i have come to learn about like my attachment style um you know i apparently classify as like basically like a anxious avoidant attachment style meaning i want love and affection so badly like i want it so badly but as soon as i get too close intimately friends or romantic situations i freak out subconsciously and i find reasons to push people away so i think that's one of the huge things and in doing that i think i put people through a bit of a roller coaster which i'm working on and i'm getting better at and i've recognized it and i'm i feel very confident that it's it's a journey that i've had to go on but i'm going to come out way better and way healthier can we forget for a minute that you're a superstar in


forget for a minute that you're a superstar in the world of music and can i just talk to you as another human being yeah i don't even think i don't think of myself as a superstar man i think of myself i don't even know just like some weird kid who's making music so absolutely you need to spend time in the himalayas and i'm only saying that out of experience yeah you will you know what will happen like there's a part of you like that you're discovering and you're discovering it at a certain pace which is good like you're making progress every single month i'm sure even corona virus the lockdown helped you yeah but that pace of self discovery will get accelerated in this country and i'm not just i'm not speaking from just my experience but that's what they say about the himalayas because of the people you meet that's you know when you go to a different country you feel a different energy or when you go you feel to the energy yeah the


when you go you feel to the energy yeah the energy you feel in the himalayas is extremely healing so you might cry in every single meditation i love the amount of yeah the amount of self-discovery that you'll have here you won't have anywhere else you need to spend time in this country have you have you spent time in the himalayas yeah bro so there's sages in the himalayas okay people who've given up on life entirely there's sages from all over india who escape into the himalayas regularly so you'll you'll be you'll be trekking around and you'll randomly find like these little huts where this sage is just living there for like the summer or the winter you know and you'll ask him questions about your life and he'll give you the answer that you need at that point wow but again you need to be open to receiving things like that yeah um i i asked i asked i had a tennis elbow you know what a tennis elbow is yeah so i


know what a tennis elbow is yeah so i i basically uh i had it partly because of the gym like i was going too hard in the gym yeah but i knew there were other factors related to it and none of my physiotherapy none of the injections that i was taking were helping me and when i went to the himalayas i asked that guy that you know what what do you think i should do i met a sage randomly on one of my treks and i asked him like what do you think it is and he said that one of his early lessons in in the world of yoga and the world of ayurveda in in the world of spirituality was that very often traumas from your life or traumas that you're putting on yourself in the present manifest themselves as injuries so if a physical injury isn't healing because of physical medicine or uh science you turn inwards and you meditate over that injury and that night in the himalayas like i was under


that night in the himalayas like i was under this you know like open sky you can see all the stars you can see like snow snow-capped mountains i meditated and i thought about exactly this that i was putting too much work pressure on myself i still do but back then i was putting way too much work pressure yeah and i [ __ ] you not you know people don't believe me when i say it but within a month my tennis elbow was okay that is so beautiful and i honestly i really believe that stuff i have a friend whose wife was at diagnosed with stage four i believe it was ovarian cancer which is obviously horrible and obviously she did all the medical stuff but that's a very scary reality and they started meditating very very deeply and he started visualizing like he was removing like energy from her and i know that i know for a fact that that experience played a role in her recovery like yeah yeah it's crazy how much it's just crazy


yeah it's crazy how much it's just crazy how that works they say that like if you're the kind of person who has negative intentions towards other people that could be jealousy anger hate whatever eventually in life that will manifest itself as a form of cancer as a form of disease and they say that any disease or any injury that you experience always happens to you to teach you something and it could even be mental health issues it's trying to teach you something yeah man and that's all these realizations happen when you talk to people who are way more evolved than yourself which you find in the himalayas like just like that for sure i would love to go i don't know when is the right time but i would love to well after the virus is done go to go to this place in india called himachal pradesh and uh yeah you you just go anywhere in himachal pradesh go for a trek okay you will find sages go have conversation with them like get


will find sages go have conversation with them like get a translator with you but go have conversation with these people you you'll they'll open up a dimension for you well when i go if you want to go with me let me know because that would be for sure but let's let's talk about your career because i know you're a hard-working dude and you've you've worked for what you've earned so what was it like as a teenager because you completed your education and then you stepped into this process yeah as a teenager i was just obsessed with it i was playing in bands i was learning how to produce i was writing my first songs i was booking my own tours with my best friends touring around the u.s playing small shows all over the place uh i was trying to in high school like trying to like beg people to buy tickets to my concerts i was i was very into myspace at the time and that was a huge thing for music and but none of the bands or anything really like blew up


none of the bands or anything really like blew up or worked out so i kind of was like i'm gonna go to school and learn how to be a songwriter and a producer and not try to be an artist i did that for a few years i was working at some studios or interning rather and then i kind of went through something and i wrote my first song that i ended up releasing as loud and it was kind of like a super unexpected accident you know i just it just happened and from there it just grew and grew and grew and i just became i i fell in love with the idea of being an artist again and i'm really thankful for that beautiful so you know i spoke to arman malek he's this friend of mine he's actually making it big in the international scene as well in india the way it works is you need one piece of art to take off and that can be the biggest turning point of your career yeah so is it the same in the


your career yeah so is it the same in the west was it the same for you with i like me better when i am with you yeah so that obvio like that definitely can be that is the way it oftentimes work because it works it's like one thing explodes on a huge level whether that's on tick tock now or i like me better just kind of blew up all over the internet and on radio but the thing about that is often times the song becomes way bigger than the artist to the point where the song is unbelievably viral everybody knows it but no one knows who the artist is so i think there's you know something that i learned that i think maybe i mean i'm not going to say i wish happened differently because it happened the way it had to but i think you know a situation a more ideal situation is when an artist has more of a clear clear platform and a clear intention and a clear message and really like laid the groundwork and then


message and really like laid the groundwork and then you start to put out music that i mean you can't really control it but what i'm saying is in an ideal situation the song doesn't become way bigger than the artist you know i think that's something that happens a lot and um then you have one huge song and then it's really hard to do it again you know i know i know i know for a fact i mean i know you're an ambitious guy and i'm i can see the goals you've set in front of you uh so i'm dead sure that you're the kind of person who puts pressure on himself about matching up and going ahead of it yes i do at this point though i try to let go of the accomplishment side and just think about making the best music i can the most honest music i can the most innovative music i can you know because that's that's how i made like for example that's how i made i like me better i wasn't like thinking


made i like me better i wasn't like thinking i need to write a huge hit i was just like let me make a song that i love and experiment and that just you know that turned out to be something huge so yeah but um did you find yourself putting more pressure on yourself after that song yes a ton of pressure i got real anxious and real depressed because i was i basically built an identity for myself that was partially real but partially contrived and partially just one side of myself and i wasn't letting out my full personality because i thought people wouldn't accept me for who i was so i like went through this whole time where i was overthinking everything and trying to portray myself in one way and i put a ton of pressure on myself to the point where i just fell apart fell apart yeah what what happened i just got to the point where like at the end of 2018 and beginning of 2019 i just fell into a really deep depression i was


i just fell into a really deep depression i was experiencing extreme ocd in the form of obsessive negative thinking um to the point where i just i couldn't for like a month straight i couldn't really get out of bed much i couldn't i couldn't write music i fell out of love with it i couldn't really connect with anyone except for if i was like crying or complaining or you know talking about what i was going through mentally i i was calling my family constantly looking for reassurance and um it wasn't until i like you know learned really what it meant to be depressed and got diagnosed with depression and this obsessive anxiety form of ocd that i started to get better is that why you talk this much about mental health like you want to use your fame as a platform to talk about it yeah just for me i think like uh just experiencing that and experiencing the journey to getting better and just coming to realize how important that is and how much


coming to realize how important that is and how much i love that process myself and i love seeing that in other people and just growing up you know in situations where there's mental health issues in my family i just hit really close to home and i just i don't know it just felt like the natural thing to do and the right thing to do bro but your music has a lot of happiness in it have you ever thought of that like you're giving so much happiness to the world so even if you know you feel that you're sad on the inside that's what that's the gift you gave to the world have you ever thought of that it's funny yeah because even like the thing about like yeah a lot of my songs though the music might sound happy and warm but a lot of times the lyrics aren't necessarily happy they're a little bitter or they they're nostalgic they're wishing for something or whatever you know but it's cool that it can turn into happiness for people i mean


that it can turn into happiness for people i mean that's i don't know that's that's crazy to me and i'm i'm appreciative that i have that opportunity so bro do you know what imposter syndrome is it happens to a lot of people oh yeah oh yeah what would you would you like to explain it to the listeners yeah i mean basically i think a lot of people experience this no matter how much you accomplish if you don't have a true sense of self-worth you are going to always think you're a fake you're going to always think you're worse than everyone you're going to always destroy yourself in your mind and yeah and so i feel like to work on that i've had to really do a lot of like self-work to to not feel that way but i still feel that way all the time i have friends who are so good at music and so good at lyrics and so honest that i get like intimidated i'm like i suck bro fame and creativity are


like i suck bro fame and creativity are both gifts that aren't given to everyone and especially together they aren't are not given to the average person so even even the world of yoga says that that if you're selected to be famous if you're selected to put out a massive amount of creativity in the world which you have done it's given to you with a purpose right while i understand yeah while i understand what you're going through you've you've left the world as a happier place so i mean honestly as a brother i'd like to tell you that dude you're in a good place and sometimes you just need outside perspective to tell you that i know that even today you might be thinking that you're not but you're in like a really good place and not and this kind of fame this kind these kind of creative gifts everything around you is a manifestation of the creativity that spoke through you in that song and all your songs so uh you're going in the right direction man i


so uh you're going in the right direction man i appreciate that it's funny because i would always like to think hearing what you say i would always like to think that anybody could do it if they honed in on the tapped into the universal whatever it is that speaks through you but it's interesting that there's a perspective of it's not meant for everybody that's interesting to me yeah have you like i mean uh are you are you like what what's where's your family from originally i know they're from latvia yeah but like um are they are they jewish are they christians so my dad's side of the family is jewish my mom's side of the family doesn't is not really religious at all okay so in i mean uh again judaism and indian yogic culture have a lot of parallels but um you've heard of this quote from the bible philippians 4 13 i'm not sure so it says that i can do all things through him that gives me strength yeah and the


things through him that gives me strength yeah and the yogic version of that is again anything you do in your career especially like any money around you if i'm sitting in my studio today and all this is like a gift that the universe gave me because at one point creativity spoke through me and came out through me you know when when you first thought of i like me better the tune rang in your head yeah and that's where you thought okay you know this is what i can write or the lyrics came up in your head yeah you were chosen and not anyone else because if it was if it was given to someone else if the creativity popped in someone else's head maybe that person wouldn't create a mental health foundation you did something good with your fame that's interesting i think i just suffer a lot i don't want to say i suffer a lot but i just i ask a lot of questions like why you know why because i truly do believe it's not from me i think


truly do believe it's not from me i think my interpretation of that creative higher power that's speaking through me my interpretation is gonna be different than anybody's but i'm like why you know why is it that that came through me you know and it can create a weird sense of like why like why you know it's like why do i deserve any of this you know because there's a lot of suffering in the world and it's like how do you justify that i just don't know how to justify that you know i try not to question why too much because it'll tear me apart and then i'll just lose everything like mentally i'll just lose my mind maybe maybe it's because do you believe in karma i don't know yet maybe i don't know so i mean karma is the basis of yogic thought that everything hasn't has a reason like basically you know how newton says that every action has an equal and opposite reaction but that matters specifically with how you treat other


but that matters specifically with how you treat other people how do you treat other living beings how do you treat other animals yeah what intentions do you have for them and if you yourself give out good intentions if you wish well for the world the world around you the simulation around you as in yoga they call it maya so they do believe that we live in a simulation everything's virtual reality around us but if you yourself internally feel good in an outward way you will receive things you will receive those creative pops i like me better might start playing in your head and you'll make it an international super hit so maybe because you were a good person till that point in your life you got gifted have you thought like that see i part of my like ocd manifestation was obsessed with the feeling of being a bad person you know i became obsessed with this idea what if i'm actually a horrible person deep down and my heart is horrible so it's interesting because i i don't


is horrible so it's interesting because i i don't know i get very when i ask some of these questions i get very honestly a bit confused i don't know or a bit like conflicted on how i feel because i know at this point in my life i have really good intentions and i i have a really big heart and i have a lot of love inside of me like i know that i have tons of love inside of me but i also have the ability to in my head do the things i was speaking of earlier you know feel pain based on my own insecurity or fear and then project that onto somebody else and that's not a that's that is causing pain to somebody else and it's like you know i mean everybody makes mistakes everybody in some way hurts other people at some point in their life but i'm very no i'm not very good at forgiving myself for those things i feel very bad for stuff like that so i want to tell you one thing and i want


i want to tell you one thing and i want to ask you one thing okay the first thing i'll tell you and and man you gotta pardon me for making this like such a direct conversation with me no i love everyone i love it so the one thing i'll tell you directly is that the fact that you've realized that there were some mistakes done by you in the past that's more than half the battle one that's 90 percent of it won and the second thing i'd like to ask you is that if now you tell me you go outside your house tomorrow okay imagine this scenario you go outside your house and you see a puppy that's injured like near you what would you do in that situation uh i would take the puppy and try to figure out if whose dog it was and if it's a it's funny there was a situation that just came up with somebody i know the other day but that's totally different um but yeah i i haven't come across that situation but try


i i haven't come across that situation but try to figure out if it was somebody's if i could call the person if not i guess figure out bring it to an animal hospital you know i mean probably probably first and foremost bring it to an animal hospital and then try to figure out whose dog it is yeah you'd you'd do the right thing right because your conscience would tell you that take this correct action and you're a good person man like when you do a podcast with someone you're diving deep into people's heads you don't have bad intent in life and all your actions would be positive all the time so don't look at that one mistake out of the 99 correct things that you've done yeah and be that harsh on yourself because they say that the biggest curse of our entire generation you're born in 1994 right yeah so i'm 93 and they say anyone born after 1990 the curse for us is the curse of negative biases and the fact that we're too harsh on


biases and the fact that we're too harsh on ourselves we don't give ourselves a break whether it's career whether it's that one small wrong thing we've done but you've got to focus on the 99 things that you've done correct dude there was a reason you've got what you've got and no one else i appreciate your perspective thank yeah but i i know that somewhere in your heart you're still not uh like i mean you still can't forgive yourself for what you've done yeah it's it's yeah i don't know it's hard it's hard for me i think i just have a tendency to beat myself up to just and i know that's not helpful beating yourself up it doesn't help anything but it's sort of i think i'm very i've been used to making comfort out of pain and loneliness and suffering to the point where i've realized that i've pushed happiness and love out of my life at points and i'm done doing that i'm so done doing that because i've


doing that i'm so done doing that because i've found that happiness can and can feel foreign or can feel like uncomfortable because you're a bit out of control my feeling of control is like this sense of isolation and feeling in pain feeling mad at myself wanting to sit alone in a room and cry or whatever it is or push people away and just because it's comfortable doesn't mean it's a good thing to do but do you feel you're getting happier in life and do you feel you're becoming a better person yes then that's all that matters bro no i mean your present actions and where you're headed is a good place and you know i i always hope the best for you man like you tell me what's your what's your what's your present day like like what do you wake up thinking do you where do you want to be in life what are you working towards i don't want to be anywhere except for where i'm at i don't even right now my only goal is to


i don't even right now my only goal is to i think what i've realized is when i'm present and i feel like i'm coming from a loving place all of the right things happen i'm way better to people i'm way better to myself i'm more creative i'm a better i can be a better partner and you know in in a relationship i make more societally conscious decisions environmentally friendly decision like i feel like my goal is literally to be present and to be in that state of peace and happiness and love so that i can make decisions that reflect that you know yeah do you think your life needed a covet 19 pandemic to happen in the world it's crazy i mean i certainly needed time i needed time for sure i mean i would and that's a weird thing too because it's like you know everyone i think it's a very privileged thing for people to be able to say it's like oh you know in a weird way this was good and i'm like what so


way this was good and i'm like what so many people are dying from it so it's like this weird oxy paradox rather you know it's weird yeah but what did it do for your mind do you think it helped you yes it did i mean it put me through some big questioning huge questioning and a lot of pain but also i've come out i am coming out and i have come out way more self-aware way more spiritually evolved i think and more creative in the best way and yeah yeah you ever try like okay i'm gonna put it out there i had an ayahuasca trip when i was 22. have you heard of ayahuasca yes it was life-changing because it changed neural patterns in my head i was a different i was a different person after it for sure yeah the one thing i lacked was self-belief but i used to think of this question a lot about suffering that you just said that you know if there's so much suffering happening out there why do i deserve


suffering happening out there why do i deserve a good life yeah um exactly you know what they say about all ayahuasca trips or all have you heard of what peyote is do you know what is yeah so they say peyote is the male version of ayahuasca so you're a guy i'm talking to you i feel like i'm talking to a guy but when you do ayahuasca you feel the presence of a feminine entity during that trip you feel like there's a woman around you okay and every everyone who does ayahuasca feels that you know if you're sharing the room with another girl it doesn't have to be romantic it could be a mom it could be a girlfriend whatever but you know it's a woman's energy yeah but in the same way i know you're a man's energy so ayahuasca gives you a woman's energy peyote gives you a man's energy when i did ayahuasca i asked that mother the question in my trip i asked her that why do


question in my trip i asked her that why do i deserve the happiness when they're suffering around me and the answer i got is that yes there's suffering around you but you have to concern yourself with your immediate surroundings and figure out what actions you can take which can strengthen you up to annihilate the suffering later in life yeah wow i mean never thought about it in the the last part of what you just said was so interesting yeah because like it forces usually it forces me to feel like okay i must give up everything and then go and just you know like i have to go help and help and help but i probably am not the right person where i'm at in my life right now to do that and if you focus on everything in your immediate surroundings like you're right emanating that positive energy and helping people in that way that's so crazy that that seems like it makes a lot of sense that that strengthens you and puts you in a place where you're


you and puts you in a place where you're evolved enough to then make a bigger impact and you keep working on your strength that's what i learned from the weight room the gym that if you can't lift a certain weight you lift the lighter weights you get stronger you get more powerful and when you can not you know and when you actually become stronger you can lift that heavy weight and you can protect the people around you if they ever need physical protection which nobody really needs in the modern world yeah but my point is that the same rules apply to life fame money power it's okay if you see suffering around and you want to change it first focus on yourself fill your own glass make yourself stronger make yourself more powerful and then use that height of power to create the change later even if you have that intention and you're not taking actions towards it right now it's okay yours if your intention with your work okay i want to get richer i want to get


okay i want to get richer i want to get more famous i want to get more powerful through my work to help people later if that's your intention it's okay it's good work the world the universe god will come and help you in your work if your intentions about life and changing the world are clean so that's what ayahuasca told me yeah wow i think at some point in my life i will definitely do that yeah but um i mean where do you want to be in your career purely from a professional standpoint what are you trying to do i'm just honestly right now i'm trying to make the best album ever like the the literally the best possible music i could create like i need to listen to my next album in every second of every song i need to feel like it is my truest and best work and that's really it you you'll do it you'll do it bro yeah no i feel it i've i'm hitting a point where i feel it and other than that i cannot


where i feel it and other than that i cannot control everything else i'm not interested in making myself obsess over goals and accomplishments because i truly believe when you're doing your best work the universe will do what it's meant to do you know with your with your work you know do you ever see any of your future songs in your meditations do you ever hear any of them in your meditations not really i haven't actually really that doesn't really come up i think there's been a couple of times where i get like small ideas but that's pretty much it but maybe after this i'll meditate and the song will come you know search for it man uh i don't know how in the podcast you are but jai shetty uh who's a he's a motivational speaker i'm sure you've heard of him there's a guy called jai shetty there's another guy called vishen lakhyani so they got together and they created a podcast which was probably like it changed a lot of my


which was probably like it changed a lot of my perspectives i heard it during the lockdown yeah they said that around us like all around you there's little bits of data you know people listen to the radio they tune their radio to a certain frequency and then they capture it yeah so in the same way there's data and creative solutions all around you the music that you're trying to create is actually in what they call the intuitive realm yeah and and there is a way to tune your own radio and pull it into yourself yeah which is probably where i like me better came from yeah and that's why it became what it had to become so if you really one i would request you to listen to that podcast whenever you have time jay shetty and vishen lakhyani okay um and the second thing is you know at the beginning of your meditation be open enough to ask a question if you actually want the next song to come to you ask for it okay and if you meditate with an


ask for it okay and if you meditate with an open heart it'll actually come to you but you need to have that kind of belief that it will come to you okay i'm gonna i'm going i'm like literally going to do that when we're done with this yeah so uh i mean i don't have uh much else to ask you honestly i'm glad i spoke to you brother yeah you too i appreciate you sharing all of this from your heart you know and this is what i'm interested in doing in life is just connecting with people and learning different perspectives and yeah so i appreciate it so um like well how's your your own relationship with love changed over time are you single right now are you dating anyone um yeah my my relationship with love uh has been i've actually thought about this a lot i feel like i've been love obsessed and i've always been like why do i always write songs about love or confliction and love or breakups or love everything always has to do with that


breakups or love everything always has to do with that and i think it's because i haven't evolved past reckoning to be until recently um to reckoning really with true love and what that means and so i've always been obsessed with it because i never really feel like i truly had it growing up like i never really feel like i had you know like i always wanted relationships i was always trying to feel this whole whether it was a lack of self-love or whatever it was i don't know if i ever really felt like i had that true feeling of deservingness of like i love you to the core you know what i mean and i think that's made me very fixated on it throughout my career but i've started to recently you know honestly through a relationship and through um this experience of somebody who's been super super patient with me and a lot of all of my demons related to love um and who's given me unconditional love despite all of that i feel like you know she's opening


all of that i feel like you know she's opening my heart into a totally new place that makes it so creatively i start to feel like i'm getting inspiration for other things because i'm starting to really feel like my heart is truly being opened and there's way more than just relationships to write about in the world you know what i mean it's not only just always relationships relationships relationships you know so it's like i feel really thankful for that like do you think you're a more creative person when you're in a relationship because that happens to me man i think i am usually yes yes yeah no but um like i mean do you think that like right now you're consciously a better boyfriend than you were in your previous relationship yes but then why do you why do you still uh hurt yourself so much about your past if you're doing the right thing in the present ah i don't do it all the time i just you know i think when i do things that remind me of my past then it