Strength in Stillness: Bob Roth On The Power of Transcendental Meditation & Bringing Calm To The Center of Life’s Storm

Long-time listeners know well that meditation is a recurring topic of exploration on this podcast. Today I continue this tradition with a man who has played a very large role in pioneering meditation, specifically the practice of Transcendental Meditation (“TM”) throughout the West. Meet meditation legend Bob Roth. Bob first discovered meditation as a freshman at Berkeley during the height of the 1960's – ground-zero for the anti-war movement and the many cultural changes that were sweeping the country at that time. Once a skeptic, he was soon hooked, ultimately training under the tutelage of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the legendary albeit controversial meditation guru made globally famous by the Beatles. Every day since, he has meditated twice a day every day, devoting his life over the last 45 years to teaching what he has learned to millions of people across the world. Today, Bob is one of the most experienced and sought after meditation teachers in America. A proper meditation teacher to the stars, his student roster includes such recognizable names as Oprah, Russell Brand, Jim Carrey, Jerry Seinfeld, Martin Scorcese, Ray Dalio, Howard Stern, Tom Hanks, Hugh Jackman, and countless other notables. But Bob would much rather talk about his work as the executive director of The David Lynch Foundation, where he has helped bring TM to more than 500,000 inner-city youth in underserved schools in 35 countries, as well as to veterans and their families suffering from PTSD, and women and girls who are survivors of domestic violence. Bob is also the national director of the Center For Leadership Performance, another non-profit which introduces meditation to Fortune 100 companies, government organizations and non-profit charities. And he has spoken about meditation to industry leaders at such gatherings as Google Zeitgeist, Aspen Ideas Festival, Wisdom2.0, and Summit. In addition, Bob penned the authoritative text on the subject of TM, a book aptly titled Transcendental Meditation, and recently released his newest book, Strength in Stillness* – an accessible meditation primer that breaks down the science behind TM and provides a simple, straightforward roadmap for reducing stress, accessing inner power and building resilience. As you might expect, this conversation is a 360-degree primer on everything meditation. We delve into Bob's introduction to meditation as a young Berkeley student as well as his experience training under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. We discuss how TM differs from other types of meditation. We talk about his work with the David Lynch Foundation, as well as his personal experience with the quirky, brilliant film director himself. And we cover the many scientific benefits of meditation, including how and why a consistent practice can transform your life by reducing stress and anxiety while simultaneously improving everything from focus, concentration, sleep, creativity, acuity, and productivity to emotional and physical resilience. But most of all, this conversation redresses the excuses that prevent you from meditating while empowering you with the tools and inspiration. Enjoy! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

  Eating well rarely falls apart because of one big failure. It's the daily question that wears you down. Like, what am I actually going to make tonight? What's in the fridge? And it's exactly why we built the Plant Power Meal Planner. It's a personalized, plant-based meal planning program that matches you with recipes based on your taste, your allergies, your cooking skills, and how much time you actually have. You build, through this program, a balanced, nutrient-dense plan for your entire household in a few minutes. Then it generates a grocery list for you with one click that plugs right into our delivery partners. All the recipes in the program are built by dietitians with culinary training. Plus, you get your own food coach to help you problem-solve along the way.

• 0:44Rich Roll?

  It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout.

• 1:05Bob Roth?

  Nobody wants to be anxious. Nobody wants to be stressed. So I think the more we understand about the deadly impact of stress, the more people are seriously looking at alternatives to just a pill. The trajectory that we are all on, as a society, as a culture, as individuals, is not sustainable. It's just not sustainable. We're falling apart. And so this is an intervention. This is my own intervention. I'm going to take 20 minutes from my morning, find it, get up earlier. I'm going to take 20 minutes in the afternoon for myself, and then the rest of the world will adjust. And the nice thing about this is, so many people who come say, "I could never close my eyes for two minutes, much less 20."

• 1:48Bob Roth?

  And because this meditation is so enjoyable, the experience is so satisfying, 20 minutes flies by. That's Bob Roth, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:10Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Longtime listeners of this show know well that meditation is a recurring topic, a theme, a thread of this podcast. It's something that I've explored in depth with many people over the years, really a litany of prominent teachers, practitioners, and advocates, people like Sharon Salzberg, Headspace founder Andy Pudicombe, Charlie Knowles, Dan Harris, Light Watkins, Guru Singh, and on and on and on. And today, I continue that tradition with a man, a pioneer, I think it's fair to say, who has played a very large role in mainstreaming meditation, specifically TM, or Transcendental Meditation, throughout

• 2:55Rich Roll?

  the West. My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. And today, my guest is Bob Roth. Bob is a man who first discovered meditation as a freshman at Berkeley at the height of the 60s, at the time, ground zero for the anti-war movement and the many cultural changes that were sweeping the country at that time. And he's a guy who has meditated twice a day, every day, ever since. Today, I think it's fair to say Bob is one of the most experienced and most sought-after meditation teachers in all of America. And he's kind of popularly known as a meditation teacher to the stars. He's got this insane student

• 3:37Rich Roll?

  roster that includes such recognizable names as Oprah, Russell Brand, Jerry Seinfeld, Martin Scorsese, Ray Dalio, Howard Stern, Tom Hanks, Hugh Jackman, and countless other notables. But I also think it's fair to say that Bob would much rather talk about his work as the Executive Director of the David Lynch Foundation, where he has helped bring TM to more than 500,000 inner-city youth in underserved schools across 35 countries, as well as to veterans and their families suffering from PTSD, and women and girls who are survivors of domestic violence. Bob is also the National Director of the Center for Leadership Performance,

• 4:20Rich Roll?

  another nonprofit which introduces meditation to Fortune 100 companies, government organizations, and nonprofit charities. He is the author of Transcendental Meditation, which is considered the authoritative text on the subject. And he recently released his newest book, which is called Strength in Stillness. And what's great about this book is it really breaks down the science behind TM in a very simple, straightforward, and accessible way, as this means of helping people understand how they can reduce their stress, access inner power, and ultimately build resilience.

• 5:05Rich Roll?

  Bob Roth, meditation legend. That's really the most fitting title for this man. I love this conversation. It's a little bit briefer than my typical chats. Bob was on a very tight schedule at the time, but do not be fooled by its brevity because it is packed with gems. We talk about his introduction to meditation back at Berkeley. We talk about his experience training under the legendary, albeit controversial Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, made famous by the Beatles. We discuss the scientific benefits of meditation and how a consistent practice can help reduce stress and anxiety while also improving everything from focus, concentration, sleep,

• 5:47Rich Roll?

  creativity, acuity, and productivity, all the way to resilience. It was an honor to spend an hour with Bob. So pull up a chair and let's break some bread.

• 6:03Rich Roll?

  I met Dan originally...

• 6:07Bob Roth?

  I would think the two of you had hit it off.

• 6:08Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah, for sure. I met him at a conference several years ago and heard him tell his story. And then I just reached out to him and I said, I really want to share your story on my podcast. So I went over to his office at ABC News a couple of years ago, did the podcast. He didn't know who I was really, but we just hit it off and we've just become friends.

• 6:27Bob Roth?

  Yeah, I think.

• 6:28Rich Roll?

  I did his show, then he came back and did my show again, you know? And it's just, it's cool that, I mean, you guys are very different people, but in a certain respect, you guys are both incredible ambassadors of this meditation movement that is exploding like crazy right now. It's very interesting times.

• 6:47Bob Roth?

  It's like, I mean, I've been at it for 45 years. I've never seen anything like this.

• 6:52Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 6:52Bob Roth?

  It's like all the resistances, all from everybody.

• 6:56Rich Roll?

  And what do you, what do you attribute? I have an idea of what you're going to say, but I'm interested in your thoughts on what you attribute the timing to. Why now?

• 7:10Bob Roth?

  I think one generation dying, what do they say that science progresses one funeral at a time? No, I mean, a generation that was very resistant is, is passing. But I think there's three reasons. And the first reason is, has to do with stress and the, the understanding of the impact that what stress actually has on the brain and the nervous system and the digestive system and the respiratory system. And I remember 20 years ago, someone said they were stressed and people made fun of them. And to try and say that there was a link between stress and high blood pressure was just like false science. But I think it's more than that. I think there's this desire, increasing desire that people want to

• 7:50Bob Roth?

  and need to perform at higher levels, the whole interest in brain, potential of the brain and how you can optimize brain. So that's the first thing, stress and on the other side, optimization of potential. The second is, when it comes to stress, where do we go? You know, medicine cabinet, where do we go for ailments? Well, there isn't any drug on the market or off the market that addresses that. We mask it and manage it. And the third is science, science and more science and shows like yours, talking about meditation, making it more familiar. Lots of times it's just hearing about it, just hearing about it. What do you think is the reason?

• 8:25Rich Roll?

  Well, I think stress is, is probably number one. I mean, we're in an epidemic of. Of of stress right now. It's a stress fueled culture. Most people, when you ask them how they're doing, they're going to tell you they're stressed. And I think that goes hand in hand with depression, which is quickly becoming, you know, basically our number one disability.

• 8:44Bob Roth?

  Yeah.

• 8:45Rich Roll?

  And people are starting to wake up to the fact that the pills that they're popping are really not working.

• 8:51Bob Roth?

  Yeah.

• 8:51Rich Roll?

  That's their temporarily masking symptoms that lead to side effects and other problems that compound.

• 8:58Bob Roth?

  And when you say stress, would you throw in anxiety as that sort of thing?

• 9:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I would. I would characterize that as a subset of stress.

• 9:06Bob Roth?

  Because that's one thing that I was I was talking with some mothers, parents, and they said, who are more and more people are learning, coming to learn to meditate as a whole family, not just the kid or the parent, but the whole family. And they're very concerned about their kids because they're so anxious about everything.

• 9:23Rich Roll?

  Which is insane.

• 9:24Bob Roth?

  No.

• 9:25Rich Roll?

  It shouldn't be. It should not be the situation.

• 9:28Bob Roth?

  I know. But they're just, they're just, they're worried about school. They're worried about how many clicks they have, just everything. They're just, and I gave a talk in New Jersey. I was giving a talk to some teachers, school teachers, and they said, well, come into our second grade, second grade classes. They brought 60 second graders together. Talk to them about meditation. I thought, okay, that's an interesting one. And my first question was, how many of you feel anxious? Every hand went up.

• 9:54Rich Roll?

  That's heartbreaking.

• 9:55Bob Roth?

  Second graders. How many of you have difficulty sleeping? Half the second graders. So we're, I think genuinely, we're in danger, danger of losing a generation. I mean, the generation spans from that all the way up to college kids. And I think that's a reason that's fueling the interest in meditation, because there's got to be something else.

• 10:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:15Bob Roth?

  Than than just medicine.

• 10:17Rich Roll?

  Well, it's got to be sort of not vindicating. That's the wrong word. It has kind of a pejorative flair to it, but sort of interesting for you, as somebody who's been in this for 40 years.

• 10:31Bob Roth?

  Forty five.

• 10:31Rich Roll?

  To see this mushroom cloud, you know, sort of of expanding awareness and openness to these ideas that you've been talking about for so long.

• 10:39Bob Roth?

  And it cuts across all demographics. It even cuts across left or right politics.

• 10:46Bob Roth?

  Nobody wants to be anxious. Nobody wants to be stressed. And now we know when you have high levels of anxiety, then your body, the adrenals secrete cortisol. And cortisol is a stress hormone. It floods the hippocampus in the brain, which is a memory center. So when, that's the reason why if you're anxious about something, you can't remember. You know, a kid goes to school and they've studied hard, and they go anxious and their hippocampus shuts down, and then they can't remember anything. And it's the same with the athlete, you know, who can hit the jump shot over and over and over again, when there's no pressure, but when there's pressure, you freeze. So I think the more we understand about the deadly impact of stress, the more people are seriously looking at alternatives to just appeal.

• 11:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the cortisol reduction aspect of it is super interesting. I was reading that sleep only reduces your levels 10 to 20%, but meditation, specifically TM, can reduce it 30 to 40%.

• 11:44Bob Roth?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:45Rich Roll?

  And this is backed up by the studies that you guys are doing.

• 11:47Bob Roth?

  Yeah, published research. And now, it used to be complicated to get cortisol levels. You know, you had to take saliva, but you can get it from hair. You can get it from a sample of hair. And so we're looking at, with kids, to see. Now, we have a program going on in the Chicago Public Schools. Should I go into that?

• 12:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 12:07Bob Roth?

  Yeah, so the University of Chicago Crime Lab, which is a premier research institution, three years ago, or two years ago, was very concerned about the number of the crime and the violence in these toughest schools in Chicago. And so they put out what's called an RFP, a Request for Proposals, and to grassroots organizations in Chicago. And we have offices, David Lynch Foundation has offices all over the country. So 230 organizations submitted proposals, gardening and all these different things. And we submitted something called Quiet Time, a proposal where you begin and end each school day with 10 to 15 minutes of meditation. And they accepted. We were one of three. So they gave us $300,000. For us, a lot of money for something maybe not. It was so successful, last year they increased

• 12:50Bob Roth?

  it to $1 million. And it was so successful, this year they increased it to another $2.6 million. And the findings have been so marked in terms of reducing arrests among meditating school kids, improving attendance, and other school programs have found improved academic performance, test scores. Closing of the achievement gap between people of color and the white population. So huge transformation. And I really think, and I never would have thought this a few years ago, I think within a few years, quiet time or meditation is going to be, it's about voluntary, but it's going to be offered in schools.

• 13:25Rich Roll?

  That's remarkable. Wow, that's crazy. What is the, the sort of onboarding process of trying to just acclimate kids in that scenario to just being open to the idea of even doing it to begin with?

• 13:38Bob Roth?

  Well, I have learned and I know you do, what type of, you do a mindfulness technique. So there are, and at some point we can talk about, but there's three basic types.

• 13:47Rich Roll?

  But after this conversation, I'm probably going to be signing up for my DM class with you. But go ahead.

• 13:52Bob Roth?

  Yeah, the thing is, is there's three different, according to research, there's three basic types of meditation, because we know that every experience changes the brain in a distinct way. You listen to classical music has a different impact than if you listen to electronic music. So, or you watch a horror movie or a romantic comedy. So they know now from research that the three basic types of meditation, based on what you do, one is called focused attention, and that's a concentration form of meditation. That's your classic, clear your mind of thoughts, or concentrate on your breath or the mantra, but it's a focus. It's, it's hard work. And that creates something called theta, I mean, excuse me, gamma brainwaves, in particularly the front left prefrontal cortex. And that is, this is too much detail.

• 14:37Rich Roll?

  No, no, please.

• 14:38Bob Roth?

  20 to 50 cycles per second. Means you're concentrating. When your kid is studying hard for an exam, a lot of gamma brainwaves, you hope he's studying hard. Second is called open monitoring. And there are many mindfulness techniques in this. And that is an observational tool, where you observe your thoughts. You observe, you do a body scan. You observe sensations in your body. You observe the environment. You have a dispassionate stepping back witnessing. And in that witnessing, there's an equanimity. You're not caught up in the moment. That creates something called theta brainwaves, which is a pre-onset dream.

• 15:14Bob Roth?

  That's six to eight cycles per second. And the third is transcendent, self-transcending. And that is no effort, completely effortless. And that is accessing, not minding the thoughts, but accessing a field of calm that already exists within everyone. That's the hypothesis.

• 15:32Rich Roll?

  So perhaps this would be a good moment to just define transcendental meditation in the context of that and what it is about that practice that allows you to enter that self-transcendent state.

• 15:46Bob Roth?

  So I like to use an example of an ocean where you're stuck. You're in a little boat and you're stuck on the middle of the Pacific Ocean and you get these humongous waves, 30, 40-foot-high waves. And you could think the whole ocean is an upheaval. But if you could do a cross-section of the ocean out there, you'd realize you've got these little itty-bitty 30-foot waves. But the ocean in reality is over a mile deep. And while the surface of the ocean may be turbulent, the depth of the ocean is by its nature silent. And that's analogous to the mind. So the surface of the mind is this active-thinking mind, "gotta, gotta, gotta monkey mind," all that. And every human being thinks that sometimes, "I'd like to have some inner calm, some inner quiet, some inner ease, some inner silence, some inner focus." And the operative word there is "inner."

• 16:31Bob Roth?

  And the question is, is there such a thing as an inner? And if so, how do you get there? So Rick, when we talk about transcendental meditation, as I said a moment ago, we hypothesize because there's no belief, there's no philosophy here, that deep within you and your wife and every other person you know and everyone in the world, right now, there's a level of the mind, deep within a transcendent level of the mind that is already calm, quiet, peaceful. And yet, the source of our creativity, intelligence, happiness. And transcendental meditation gives effortless access to that.

• 17:05Bob Roth?

  How? Should I answer that?

• 17:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, how? Because I'm thinking, when you're describing the other methodology of kind of noticing your thoughts and being the dispassionate, neutral observer of the meanderings of the mind, that probably best describes my experience. So what are we doing differently?

• 17:23Bob Roth?

  So in that, it's a cognitive process. It's attending and adjusting to, you could say, the waves. So focused attention is stop the waves. The idea is that thoughts-

• 17:35Rich Roll?

  But you're on the surface.

• 17:36Bob Roth?

  You're on the surface. And the same with this, when you're stepping back and observing the thoughts, you're still on the surface. In transcendental meditation, we recognize or we identify that there's a vertical dimension to the mind, that we feel things deeply. You love your wife deeply. You don't want to do something profoundly. There's that feeling of, an athlete, you're an athlete. There must be moments of the zone-

• 18:03Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 18:03Bob Roth?

  That goes way beyond what's up here. And there's just this pervasive silence. And so that quiet calm, that we access during meditation, transcendental meditation. And I'll tell you how we do that effortlessly.

• 18:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, please do.

• 18:16Bob Roth?

  So other approaches to meditation, see thoughts or the wandering mind as, not the enemy, but sort of the obstacle to a calm mind. So if you could control the mind, it's a monkey mind. It just wanders and you've got to rein it in, or you've got to give more space between thoughts. And Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who was a physicist who became a great meditation teacher, his insight was, the mind is not wandering aimlessly. Your mind is not just a monkey mind. Your mind is in search of something more satisfying. You sit in a room and you listen to some wretched music, and some beautiful music comes on in the other room. Your attention is drawn to that music. You bring two books

• 19:01Bob Roth?

  on vacation and one book is terrible and you can't read it. Another book is great, absorbed in it for hours. It is not- People say, "Well, it's an acquired skill to meditate, to do this mindfulness." It's not an acquired skill to listen to the most beautiful music you've heard in your life. It's not an acquired skill to see the most beautiful sunset you've ever seen in your life. You're drawn to that. And the idea, or the hypothesis, again, I use that term, is that inside of everyone in that transcendent level of the mind is a field of satisfaction, quiet, bliss, peace, happiness. All the people have talked about it forever. In transcendental meditation, you learn how to give the attention,

• 19:45Bob Roth?

  I know this is abstract, but you learn how to give the attention of the mind in inward direction, like you want to teach a child how to dive. You say, "Honey, stand like this, bend over like that." Rest is automatic. There's no forcing. Gravity takes over. So when you learn TM from a teacher, you learn how to just allow the attention of your mind to be drawn inward, and without any effort, as a matter of fact, any effort stops the process. Without any effort, your mind is just gently settles down. And when that happens, then you have Alpha 1 brainwaves, completely different than mindfulness. And I want to talk a little bit more of that, some of the other brain research. Your body gains this deep state of rest, cortisol levels are reduced, and you feel rejuvenated.

• 20:30Bob Roth?

  Do I think there's a role for other, do I think TM is the only way? Of course not. Of course not.

• 20:37Rich Roll?

  But in TM, so what I gather from this description is that on some level, it's about attenuating that effort, right? Because the mind is always searching to do.

• 20:48Bob Roth?

  You give it something more satisfying to go for. If you, if you're going, if you're sitting in front of a TV and you've got 20 horrible shows, you're just clicking, you can't. But if there's a great show, and someone says, "Oh, my God," you just, you can't stop. So that's the mind with nothing satisfying on that horizontal level. Nothing is that satisfying. But the transcendent, just beneath the waves, and increasingly so, there's just that calm, that silence, that is very attractive. And how do you access that? And that's where the personal instruction, TM is never taught in, just out of a book, because if I teach you, or a teacher teaches you, it's how do you have that innocence? How do you just let your attention turn within?

• 21:33Bob Roth?

  And then afterwards, people go, "Oh, my God." I had no idea.

• 21:37Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 21:38Bob Roth?

  And 20 minutes goes by quickly, not like painfully.

• 21:42Rich Roll?

  So then, how, what is your perspective then on, on all of these apps that are popping up, that are introducing people to meditation?

• 21:49Bob Roth?

  They do that, they introduce people.

• 21:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but, but on some level, I mean, I would imagine there's good in that, right? You're sort of co-opting this device of distraction and, and

• 21:59Bob Roth?

  I think everything

• 22:00Rich Roll?

  getting people to use it in a more positive way.

• 22:01Bob Roth?

  I think everything has a role. And I teach a lot of people who've done Headspace, or Calm, or these things. And it was a big help. And then they did it for a while and they said, well, is there something more? Because mine looks for something more.

• 22:13Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 22:13Bob Roth?

  So I think their entry, entry, and for if it works for a person, it works for a person. But

• 22:19Rich Roll?

  But there's something about that, that relationship with a teacher.

• 22:22Bob Roth?

  It's never gonna be transcendent, yeah. And even we've tried teaching it online or something like that. There's something about you're in the room with a teacher, one to one, for that first hour. And then I'm with, and there's nobody else in the room. It's, and then, where I'm with that person. And it can be yourself, it could be CEO of a company, it could be a professor, it could be a homeless kid. And they have the same experience. Every one of them can transcend equally well.

• 22:49Rich Roll?

  Right. And, and the distinguishing thing here, or one of the distinguishing things here, is that rather than focusing on your breath, or noticing your thoughts as they come and go, your intention is on this mantra that you repeat.

• 23:04Bob Roth?

  It's actually, the mantra is the vehicle. The difference is, you're sitting in the, you're sitting in Los Angeles and it's hot and horrible. Mantra's like a car that takes you to the beach. So the car is not the end in itself, concentrating on a mantra. The mantra is a vehicle that takes you to the ocean. The mantra is a vehicle that takes you to your inner calm. So the transformations that take place in TM, and the changes in brain, is not from the repetition of the mantra, it's from accessing those realms within, those calm, settled levels of the mind, which we occasionally, rarely access. You know, again, when you're running, or when you're listening to music, or you hold

• 23:49Bob Roth?

  a newborn baby in your arms and time slips away, or you're with your partner and there's just a moment of unity. It's got nothing to do with breath, thought, anything. It's just silence.

• 24:07Rich Roll?

  Let's track back to how you got into this to begin with. It all goes back to like the flower power age in 1968 at Berkeley, right?

• 24:17Bob Roth?

  Well, the funny thing is, is I tell people when you think of what a meditation teacher would be, a traditional, I ain't that guy.

• 24:23Rich Roll?

  No, I know. That's why we were talking about Dan Harris, like how I kind of see you sort of like him.

• 24:27Bob Roth?

  I'm a skeptic.

• 24:29Rich Roll?

  As a natural skeptic, right?

• 24:29Bob Roth?

  Yeah. So I grew up, I was born in Washington DC. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. My father had been in, this won't be long, when I was two years.

• 24:37Rich Roll?

  We can go as long as you want, by the way.

• 24:39Bob Roth?

  So my father, well, you're putting your audience to sleep.

• 24:44Bob Roth?

  My father was in World War II. He was injured war veteran. He got a job in San Francisco at the VA hospital, Fort Miley. So we moved out at the age of three. And I had a very political family. My parents talked politics all the time and I debated issues. And I tell people that when I was growing up, I knew I was a Democrat before I knew I was Jewish. We just talked about that all the time. Now I vote for the person, not the party. But, and I had, I remember in high school, I worked for Bobby Kennedy, 50 years ago today. I was working for Bobby Kennedy to be, to get the Democratic National, you know, the presidential nomination.

• 25:25Bob Roth?

  And I had a column in my high school newspaper in Marin County, in Redwood High School. And it was, I was a co-editor of my paper and the column was called "The Gripes of Roth." So that was 68. He was complaining about everything. So Bobby Kennedy, he was assassinated. And it like destroyed my life.

• 25:49Bob Roth?

  He was my hero. He was whatever as a 17-year-old kid. I went to Berkeley in October, September 1968 with the intention of going to law school to become a US Senator like Bobby Kennedy. I wanted to change the world. I was interested in social transformation. I was interested in equal access. You know, just everybody should have an equal shot. It shouldn't matter what gender, what color. You get an equal, what you do with it is your own doing. So I go to Berkeley and it's insane.

• 26:18Rich Roll?

  Right. It had to just be bananas.

• 26:19Bob Roth?

  Insane. And I wasn't a crazy person. I wasn't a druggie. I was just a guy who, an activist who wanted to do good. And suddenly I realized that...

• 26:31Bob Roth?

  Politics wasn't going to heal the soul of the country. Just going to be more divisive. So then I thought, what am I going to do? And my mother was an educator, so I thought, I'll write educational curriculum and work with kindergarteners and build up from there.

• 26:46Rich Roll?

  It's interesting that you had that reaction because it could have gone the other way and just confirmed your resolve to get even deeper into politics.

• 26:54Bob Roth?

  It was too much compromise. By that time, there was this thing of I had to be absolutely true to myself. What was most important was authenticity. And I was already, I saw on both sides, left and right, too much violence, too much destruction on the left, destruction towards women, I mean, just destructive behavior.

• 27:14Rich Roll?

  Do you see parallels with what's going on right now?

• 27:17Bob Roth?

  Yeah. And we have an office on Capitol Hill, the foundation, who I teach people on Capitol Hill. We can talk about that. But so I'm stressed. And I had a friend who was like a normal guy who said, you should learn transcendental meditation. And I said, first of all, it wasn't a word in my vocabulary. And I also said, I got enough issues with my own religion. And he said, no, you don't have to believe in anything because I'm a skeptical person. You don't have to believe in anything. Try it. And I learned it and it was so marked. It was because I'd tried other things. And it was such a deep relaxation and such a transcendent moment. Completely awake. I didn't go anywhere. And one of my first thoughts was, oh, I'd like to teach this to inner-city school kids. It wasn't, I want to get enlightened.

• 28:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, from the way you describe it in the book, which I love, by the way, I just got, I just started it, but I skipped to the last chapter to read, you know, where you tell your personal story. It seemed like you had that response right from the get-go. Like this was from the very, very first experience with this.

• 28:17Bob Roth?

  And I don't, it was an innocent sort of thought. It wasn't like, oh, now in my five-year plan for my life, I was in this gap. Politic, I wanted to make a difference in the world. That was classic vintage 68 behavior. Politics wasn't it. Education, I thought, okay, instead of sweeping reform, I'll do one at a time. And then I thought, the thought was, oh, I like to teach, kids, little kids could use this. They could, they could use this. So it was one of my first thoughts. People learn to meditate, oh, I want to get enlightened. Wasn't my thought.

• 28:47Rich Roll?

  Right. It's interesting how the light switch just went on. And in that moment, you just, you just knew immediately.

• 28:54Bob Roth?

  June 1969. So it's like, All those years later.

• 28:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 28:58Bob Roth?

  Forty-nine years later.

• 28:59Rich Roll?

  And it began with it, you were working in an ice cream shop, right? This guy comes in, he seems pretty chill.

• 29:04Bob Roth?

  No, no, there was a guy I was working at, if anybody of your listeners know Berkeley, on the north side of Berkeley, there's Swenson's Ice Cream.

• 29:12Rich Roll?

  I think it's, is it still there?

• 29:13Bob Roth?

  Probably it is, yeah. And on the south side, they had one near the dorm and a top dog they had. So I'm work, I used to work there and there was this guy named Peter Stevens, who was the one chill guy, who was normal, who wasn't crazy. And he was a kind person and he was working on a master, I mean, he had a masters. Anyway, I went to see him one night at 10 o'clock in the middle of studying to get ice cream, which only a kid can do. I get ice cream at 10 for helping my studies. And I said, where's Peter? And he said, he's in the back meditating. And it was like, what? What? Because meditation, if I'd even heard it, was just kind of strange. And he was not that way. So I asked him about it. And he said, I'm not going to tell you. If you want it, there's a TM center across town. So I went to a lecture.

• 29:58Bob Roth?

  And I remember at the end of the lecture, it was very, it made sense. And I said to the woman, how much of this stuff do I have to believe in for it to work? Because I was very skeptical. And she held up a piece of chalk. And she said, you don't have to believe in gravity for the chalk to fall. And I dropped it. Same with meditation.

• 30:14Rich Roll?

  Was this before the White Album?

• 30:18Bob Roth?

  White Album was, is very interesting. That was October 68.

• 30:23Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 30:23Bob Roth?

  Right now, this is being recorded February 11th, 12th. Yeah. And, and the Beatles had just arrived, or just arriving in India to be with Maharishi. And so 50 years ago, they were there writing the White Album. And then they recorded it in, I think, or came out in September, October.

• 30:41Rich Roll?

  Right, as you're being introduced to this. And then fast forward to you going to spend time with him in Spain in 72, right?

• 30:48Bob Roth?

  Became a teacher, loved it. Maharishi was a... Had been trained as a physicist in in college and unlike how he was portrayed in the press, he was he was just a wise man who had smart new physics and he was surrounded by Nobel laureates and he was talking about there's this field inside that anyone doesn't matter what your religion or philosophy, it's there. And one of the first things he did when he came to the United States is he went to UCLA and Harvard Medical School and said, you got to study this, the effects, because look at me, no one's going to trust me. I'm a guy from India wearing a dotty.

• 31:27Rich Roll?

  Right. But he became a mainstream cultural figure after the Beatles went and visited visited with him. And then there's all this controversy swirling around whatever may or may not have happened there. But my understanding is that, you know, this guy learned how to do this from the great Guru Dev. And, you know, this comes from the Vedas and the Upanishads.

• 31:48Bob Roth?

  Ancient, that's right.

• 31:49Rich Roll?

  Gita. And it was sort of bestowed upon him by Guru Dev, like, look, go forth into the world and, you know, be amongst the people and, you know, propagate this message for the betterment of all.

• 32:01Bob Roth?

  And, you know, it's kind of when you think of 1958 and 59, you had Sputnik, I mean, you had just the world was so materialistic, it was none of this, there was no yoga, there was, Time Magazine recently did some retrospective and said Maheshi was responsible not only for bringing meditation, but yoga and even organic, all that stuff that came out at that time came from that period. And he built up a huge organization, nonprofit organization. And one of the most amazing things is, I meet a lot of interesting people who I'm not, you know, I mean, celebrity types, but I got to know Paul and Ringo quite well, and I taught member of their kids. And that was quite a

• 32:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, tell me about that.

• 32:46Bob Roth?

  Well, okay, so I'm going to tell you one other story. So there was all this talk about John Lennon and, you know, he didn't like

• 32:53Rich Roll?

  Right, there was a little bit of a falling out there, right?

• 32:55Bob Roth?

  Turned out it was like for an hour, but it got in the press because I was teaching, I was in, I was in New York City and I got a phone call one afternoon about four or five years ago. And it was this young man on the phone and he said, I'd like to learn to meditate. And he didn't give me his name, his fine, so we're just talking. Why do you want to learn? He said, well, you know, I'm a little anxious and my friends thought it would be very good for me. And then we're talking and he said, well, actually, the reason I want to learn is I grew up in my, both my parents meditated from when I was born, my whole life. Twice a day, they meditated and it was great for them and I think it'd be good for me. And I said, oh, do I know them? And he said, John and Lennon and my mom, Yoko. And I said, yeah, I kind of know them.

• 33:40Bob Roth?

  But he made the point that they meditated, they meditated together. So what was in the press was just sort of nonsense. And Paul and Ringo continue to meditate, continue to support Maheshi's work. They've been big, big. I run this foundation, which is brought-

• 33:56Rich Roll?

  Right, we're gonna talk about that. Yeah, but, but George was like the main guy.

• 33:59Bob Roth?

  George was the main guy.

• 34:00Rich Roll?

  He was all in.

• 34:01Bob Roth?

  Yeah, from the beginning and he brought the others and George was also very close. I mean, they just saw Maheshi for who he was. A person who was a simple man, not self-aggrandizing. Had learned from his teacher, this meditation technique of effortless transcending. It was very annoying when he started traveling in India, saying that this was good for everyone. There's no caste, just everyone. Some people like the hierarchy and the elites. And he built it until it's now thousands of centers all over the world.

• 34:30Rich Roll?

  And what was it like when you were studying underneath him? In, in that guy's presence?

• 34:35Bob Roth?

  There was one time, I remember to this day, it was like 1975. And I was in a meeting where you had, Maheshi was in the middle and he was sort of overseeing this conference on religion. He had all these great religious leaders on one side and all these great Nobel laureates on the other. And they were just talking about these universal principles of life. And it struck a chord and I thought, this is a conversation you could have had during the times of Plato, or if you know, Lao Tzu, anybody, any time, wise people, without an agenda, wise people who were just interested in exploring and plumbing the deepest truths of life, whether it's from the perspective of science, or religion, or philosophy, or art, or music. And a very universal feeling, timeless.

• 35:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 35:20Bob Roth?

  And I loved it.

• 35:21Rich Roll?

  Is there, is there something specific that you think you gleaned from, from learning from him directly that you could have not learned from, you know, reading his teachings in a book?

• 35:31Bob Roth?

  I think the way, it's a good, because I was around him at different times for over 40 years. So I saw him in 1970 at a course at Humboldt State College and then trained with him in 1972 to become a teacher with thousands of other people. And then periodically over the years for meetings and conferences. And the way he was, the way when I was around him, the way he sort of managed me is like a lot of room, a lot of space, use your own creativity, figure it out. Never told me what to do, you know, though I went to my guru and he don't, never, just use your common sense, be true to yourself. Those lessons, be true to yourself, listen to yourself.

• 36:15Bob Roth?

  And there was one lesson that I heard that I've never forgotten where a person, a reporter one time asked Maharishi, they said, what's the single most important quality any person needs to have in order to live a healthy, have a better chance of living a healthy, successful, happy life? And, you know, I'm thinking, love, compassion. And he said, discernment. The ability, you have to have a quiet intellect and a good intellect and a, and a good intuition. How do I spend my choices? Who do I spend my life with? What do I, what do I eat? Where do I invest my time?

• 36:56Bob Roth?

  Because those choices are what brings back happiness, those deep, simple choices. So I, I never forgot that.

• 37:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I think discernment goes hand in hand with.

• 37:10Rich Roll?

  Intentionality.

• 37:11Bob Roth?

  Yes.

• 37:11Rich Roll?

  And sort of sits at the opposite end of the spectrum from reactivity, which is the sort of function of the monkey mind.

• 37:19Bob Roth?

  Yeah.

• 37:19Rich Roll?

  We're all living our lives reflexively, reactively, and it's that white space in between, you know, what's going on in your head and the behaviors that you choose to engage that define what your life is gonna look like, right? And discernment means that, that, that moment, that moment of pause and, and perhaps deeper reflection that allows you to make a better choice for yourself.

• 37:43Bob Roth?

  In the ancient meditation texts, they call it the Bhagavad Gita, they call about like a flame in a windless place. So that intellect is just nothing outside. You know, you're not emotion, you're just like calm and clear, and you just see into the reality of things. And they also used to say, an enlightened person, he defined as a cool mind and a warm heart.

• 38:07Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 38:08Bob Roth?

  And I like that. So you have that, you know, wind, that intellect that just sees into the reality is not swayed, but also has a huge compassion and kindness, loving kindness for others.

• 38:19Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. Yeah, I've noticed in people that have well-honed discernment that they almost appear omniscient. You know, like they can see so clearly where they need to go and what they need to do and what's right and what's wrong. Like, there's no hesitation in their, in their perspective.

• 38:39Bob Roth?

  And a truly, you know, I mean, the purpose of meditation or transcendental meditation is not just to get rid of the stress that you get from driving on the FDR, the 405. It was always full, you know, self-realization. I mean, they talked about that or enlightenment. And now, today, when you're looking at the research on people who've been meditating for five years, 10 years, 20 years, 30, 40, 50 years, you start seeing connections in the brain that start in meditation, but because of the neuroplasticity of the brain, those connections, that communication between the front of the brain and the back of the brain and left and right hemispheres lasting in activity. So you don't lose that resolute intellect. You don't lose that, that kindness and compassion.

• 39:23Bob Roth?

  You're not overshadowed by anything small outside. It's, that's why, I mean, originally, transcendental meditation was the domain of the warrior classes. Because you couldn't fight. With anger, revenge, pettiness, any of those things. And you didn't want to fight. It was a failure if you fought.

• 39:42Rich Roll?

  Right, yeah, that's super interesting. As a natural skeptic, how do you personally reconcile, you know, on the one hand, the kind of, you know, the Vedic traditions that are steeped in Hinduism and the like, and whatever, you know, you may have learned from Maharishi directly, versus the scientific studies and the kind of predicament of the modern human and what they're trying to deal with? As a communicator of this...

• 40:10Bob Roth?

  Well, first of all, Maharishi repeatedly emphasized that Vedic knowledge predates Hinduism's like 2,500 years old. That Vedic knowledge has no geography, has no culture, has no... It's just knowledge. It's just like, um, the theory of relativity is not a German Jewish reality because Einstein discovered it. Einstein was a voice in a culture at a time who cognized that. And I think that, um, Vedic, when you talk about Ayurveda, that's not a religious thing, that if I eat this food, it strengthens my immune system, or if I take that herb, it's just, or if I bend this way and bend that way. So he really went out of his way to really say,

• 40:55Bob Roth?

  someone used the example, if you saw a Catholic school, kids doing jumping jacks, jumping jacks aren't Catholic. It's just being used. So I would say that Hinduism or Buddhism adopted these practices, but in their essence, they're devoid of all that philosophy, all that sort of cultural baggage. And I think, and Maharishi also said, that every single thing, if it's true from Ayurveda or Stupachiveda, which is like Feng Shui, it will be able to be documented by modern science. There's not a division.

• 41:30Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 41:38Rich Roll?

  You start experiencing the benefits of this immediately. And what I think is interesting about you is, you know, there's a lot of hype about all the fancy people that you teach. You know, like, that makes for good clickbait, or what have you. And there's some super interesting people that you've had the opportunity to teach meditation to. But I think what's really cool about what you do is that your heart is really in trying to help people that fall outside of this elitist rubric. And it's something that you did immediately. Like, your dad was volunteering at San Quentin, right? And that was kind of like the first place that you took this.

• 42:14Bob Roth?

  Yeah. I don't know, it's just whether it's just sort of a hopeless 60s idealist or something, but I've never been, from the beginning, when I learned this, I always thought, this is something that should be made available to everyone. There should be no obstacle, whether money, or access, or time. This is something that should be every human being's birthright. And particularly since the way I was brought up with my parents, whether it's prisons, or working in the schools in Marin City, which was such a diversion, where you have Sausalito on the one side, which is this fancy schmancy, and then just across the highway, Marin City, which was the, at the time, used the term ghetto, you know, in 1968.

• 42:57Bob Roth?

  And I was always drawn to that, to bring to those kids. And not because I'm this do-gooder who has to work out something, and I want praise. It's like, here's a tool. Use it on your own. You know, it takes me an hour a day over four days to teach it to you? It's yours, buddy. Or whoever, take it. Make what you want of it. And that's always has been my interest in. And the funny thing is, all these different people, because I get asked, well, how about this person? I thought, okay, let's say I taught 30 well-known people. I've taught thousands of inner-city schoolkids, veterans, you know, regular moms and dads. But it's just one of those things. But I don't mind, because those people that I get to teach...

• 43:40Rich Roll?

  Well, they become mouthpieces. They become ambassadors in their own right.

• 43:43Bob Roth?

  And they're good people. Tom Hanks is a really good person. You know, Jerry Seinfeld. Very good person and they on their own, I don't ask them on their own, they say, "How can I help?" And so they help raise the funds so that we can bring this to people who need it.

• 43:58Rich Roll?

  So you, you have this opportunity then to begin to really scale this when, when you end up connecting with David Lynch, right? Who, who I would imagine somebody you've probably known for a long time, but you guys formalize your relationship in this foundation that you created when in 2004.

• 44:15Bob Roth?

  Five.

• 44:16Rich Roll?

  2005.

• 44:17Bob Roth?

  Yeah.

• 44:17Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. So tell me a little bit, I mean, like, I'm obsessed with this guy. Like, what, one of the most unique, creative voices walking planet earth. I mean, what an, what a, what an original human being David Lynch is. So how did this all come about with you?

• 44:34Bob Roth?

  He's more true to himself than anybody I've ever met. More true to himself, most self-referral. I look to him as a, as a sort of a reference point. He's an original, I mean, all those things are just sort of, but the best thing about him is he has a huge heart.

• 44:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 44:52Bob Roth?

  You know, he started, a lot of people start foundations and they disappear and they put their name, you know, David traveled around the world. He's been meditating since 1973, beginning of Eraserhead. He traveled around the world many times in support of meditation and he wrote a book and he did a, a.

• 45:08Rich Roll?

  Catching the big fish.

• 45:09Bob Roth?

  Catching the big fish.

• 45:10Rich Roll?

  Which you should listen to on audio book.

• 45:12Bob Roth?

  The only way to do it.

• 45:12Rich Roll?

  Because it is like, yeah, don't read it.

• 45:14Bob Roth?

  No, no.

• 45:14Rich Roll?

  You gotta hear him read it.

• 45:15Bob Roth?

  It is.

• 45:15Rich Roll?

  It's priceless.

• 45:16Bob Roth?

  Yeah, it is.

• 45:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 45:18Bob Roth?

  Unbelievable.

• 45:19Rich Roll?

  It really is.

• 45:20Bob Roth?

  Unbelievable. So my, what I've learned from him is originality and he always says, in life, you have to have final cut. You've got final cut.

• 45:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, his conviction, his conviction for his own creative voice is unparalleled.

• 45:43Bob Roth?

  No, there's nobody like him.

• 45:44Rich Roll?

  And uncompromising, completely.

• 45:46Bob Roth?

  No, and he, it's just final cut, you just can't, he said, if a painter was painting something, and at the very end, some guy in a suit came in and said, I want some blue in there, you didn't get out of here.

• 46:01Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 46:01Bob Roth?

  Well, why can somebody do that when you're working on a film? And he said, his only biggest mistake that he ever made was in, with the movie Dune, where he gave up final cut to Dino de Laurentis.

• 46:11Rich Roll?

  Man, it became a disaster.

• 46:12Bob Roth?

  Yeah, disaster, and he said, you die two deaths when you give up. He said, if it fails and you did your best, fine, but if it fails and you weren't true to yourself, it's impossible to deal with.

• 46:25Rich Roll?

  So what do you think is, what is it about him that, that makes him such a powerful?

• 46:34Bob Roth?

  Fearless, he's fearless, he's fearless. In his life, like, I'll, he loves and is fascinated by, let's just say, a hamster, this little baby hamster growing up to his full life, and he's just as fascinated by the laws of nature to watch that little, that dead hamster decay. Now, it sounds crazy.

• 46:59Rich Roll?

  I think I saw a video once where he took like a raw piece of meat and put it on the floor in his garage, and he just filmed it, or, you know, wanted to talk about it.

• 47:06Bob Roth?

  Well, he says, it's laws of nature, it's laws of nature that create, and the laws of nature that destroy, but there, those are laws of nature with that little hamster that is dead. And so, why is it okay, you know, there's light in a day, there's light and darkness, that's a full day, why is it they'll only look at this and not look at that? And so, when some people have called him on, you know, his films, and he's a meditation guy, and who, what's Mr. Bliss doing making films like this? He said, first of all, an artist reflects the world around him or her, and...

• 47:46Bob Roth?

  We change the world, I'll change my art. And the other thing that is great that he says is you don't have to suffer to show suffering, you know, like you don't have to die to do a death scene. You just have to be empathetic and intuitive and be able to show scenes. But he's not, he's fearless. I'll be watching a film with him and my natural inclination when something really horrible comes on is to just sort of like glance away and he's just, and not in a weird way, he just loves the whole thing.

• 48:13Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 48:13Bob Roth?

  And one thing he said, someone was on him about his films and he said, have you read the Old Testament? You know, a million times worse than everything I'm doing.

• 48:22Rich Roll?

  Well, he's funny. Yeah, he's really funny.

• 48:25Bob Roth?

  We'll have to get him on your show sometime.

• 48:26Rich Roll?

  Oh, I would, I would kill for that. That would be amazing. And what I loved about the way you described how you created this foundation was how easy it was, like you just said, hey, let's do this. And he was like, okay. And then it just kind of happened without any grand design or plan.

• 48:43Bob Roth?

  It was like it had been my desire for a very long time. You know, I've worked in businesses and I worked in schools, but always for 30 years teaching TM, I've taught TM for 45, 46, almost 46 years, doing all this, but always was kids, kids, kids, kids, kids. And so at one point it just, I was reading about the horrors that children face in schools. And you can focus on the under-resourced schools, but it's really across the board. We're losing a generation. And so I just, it had built up and I just said, David, I really want to start it. We should really start this foundation. And he said, fine. And I said, I want to put it in your name. I don't think he thought anything was going to come from it. He said, fine. And then I said, can I write a press release about it? And he said, fine.

• 49:28Bob Roth?

  And then two days later, it was like in papers all over the world. And I say in the book, he called, well, he called up, he said, what's a 501(c)(3)? And I said, I don't really know. That's a nonprofit organization.

• 49:38Rich Roll?

  So now today, you guys are, I mean, you have millions of dollars in grant money that are being allocated to not only helping kids, but what I love is you're helping, you're helping inmates in prisons and also specifically veterans with PTSD. I think that's super interesting. So can you talk a little bit about those programs?

• 50:03Bob Roth?

  When you look at veterans, and I've taught many, I mean, when you look at inmates, and they've done research, and across the board, almost every one of them has suffered some trauma in their sustained or moments of huge trauma in their life. Nobody just kills somebody for no good reason. But if you grow up in a violent community, and they call it ACE, which is acute childhood experiences, which means some traumatic experience. And if a child has three or four of them at an early age, they see the father beat the mother, they're witnessing, then they are on a pipeline to prison, because it just skews them.

• 50:46Bob Roth?

  And when we bring them to transcendental meditation, again, because the body gets this deep rest, it heals the body in a profound way. It unknots those stresses. And there's research that shows a 50% reduction in recidivism rates when inmates leave prison. 80% of all crimes are repeat offenders, because some kid at the age of 18 ends up in an adult prison, it's penitentiary for doing something bad. And then it's like a college for criminals, you know, criminal behavior. So 50% reduction in recidivism rates. When it comes to veterans, my dad was a veteran, I grew up around veterans, those are a completely different story.

• 51:29Bob Roth?

  A lot of these were just kids, 17 years old, 18 years old, they go off to Iraq or wherever they go, and then one day, they're in a tank, and everybody gets killed but them, and they come back like a shell of a human being, and they can't sleep for months because of nightmares and cold sweats. And then they learn to meditate. And it's not an exaggeration to say that within a few days, the first thing that happens is, because they've gotten this deep rest, they start sleeping through the night. And we have, the Department of Defense, just to lock this down to some science, the Department of Defense... Several years ago, gave us 2.4 million dollars to do a study on the effects of TM

• 52:12Bob Roth?

  on post-traumatic stress on post 9/11 veterans, comparing it to what's called prolonged exposure, which is the gold standard of treatment. And the study showed that TM was as good, if not a lot better, than prolonged exposure for healing, reducing symptoms. And one of the big differences is prolonged exposure is they show videos or films of people getting tanks getting blown up and people, as that they don't, the veterans don't like doing that and they love meditating. Long answer to a short question.

• 52:41Rich Roll?

  No, but I mean, it's amazing that, that the, the benefits are so dramatic. And also, second to that, that you have like the DOD on board who's seeing this and is willing to fund it to the tune of millions of dollars, which is huge progress, especially in the face of the opioid crisis that we're looking at right now. And how many of these poor veterans who come back and are suffering are just hopelessly addicted to these pills that are just, you know, creating, wreaking havoc.

• 53:15Bob Roth?

  Well, I think one reason why veterans like TM, like anybody does is, a year and a half ago, they were healthy. They were like, it's not like they've been living and building up some, they were just normal kids. And then all of a sudden, they're not and they know it. And they're embarrassed because they're weakened and they're taught as a, you know, military personnel to be tough and not to show any weakness. And so, rather than seek out help.

• 53:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they just internalize it.

• 53:44Bob Roth?

  And they commit suicide, you know, 21 veterans commit suicide because they can't admit. And when they go to the VA, if they get diagnosed, and people don't know this, if they get diagnosed with post-traumatic stress, it's like a black mark on their record. They can't get a job as a police, as a security guard. They can't even get a job as a crossing guard at a public school.

• 54:04Rich Roll?

  So a chilling effect on even redressing it to begin with.

• 54:07Bob Roth?

  And then, or else they're given a handful of, of drugs and they're drugged out of their mind. That's not what they want. They remember still two years ago and they were fine. And the beauty about TM is they learn a technique, they just go, you never see them again. They just meditate on their own. They can come back for follow-up, but they don't need to.

• 54:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think I read also in the prison context, at some prison you taught TM and the prison guard or the warden said to you, "I've never seen these guys sit together in the same room quietly, like with their eyes shut," like you just couldn't even believe it.

• 54:43Bob Roth?

  Yeah, that was at San Quentin Prison where I was there when we were working with men on death row and men who were in shackles, you know, so when they came to, you learned one to one from a teacher. And so, one to one, in order to do that, he was in chains and shackles because of violent person. And every one of them, because it's not hard, it's the, even that guy, it's his, the nature of the mind to be drawn to something more satisfying. And so, they go for, so people say, "Well, why do they take a drug?" Because for that moment, there's a relief from the pain. It doesn't say afterwards, but there's a relief for the pain. And so, they have that experience. You don't have, it's not

• 55:27Bob Roth?

  an acquired skill. And you teach them to turn the attention within and effortlessly, everything happens. The transcendence takes place on its own, settles down.

• 55:36Rich Roll?

  Right. And it doesn't require a belief system. It works whether you're skeptical of it or not.

• 55:40Bob Roth?

  No, you don't have to be, I don't, what if, if I didn't believe in gravity, I'm still sitting here. I don't have to believe in electricity. I can turn on a light switch.

• 55:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sort of like, like how the 12 steps work, whether you are dismissive of them or not. If you do them, they will work.

• 55:55Bob Roth?

  I actually like it when, you know, it's often one person in a partnership, one person learns to meditate and then, "Oh, I really want my husband to learn. I really want my wife to learn." But she's so negative and she's so skeptical and, you know, she won't believe it. And I say, "I don't care."

• 56:09Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 56:10Bob Roth?

  If they want to come and, and take four days, and I say to them, "Do the four days, hour a day. If you don't like it after the four days, don't do it."

• 56:18Rich Roll?

  You can go.

• 56:19Bob Roth?

  You know, there's no, there's no, it's, there's no loss here. Try it. And if people say, "Well, I do mindfulness or I do Vipassana," I say, "We have to stop siloing. Oh, I do this and therefore I don't do that." There's many tools in a toolbox and these three different approaches, focused attention, open monitoring, mindfulness and transcending, they have different outcomes. They have different purposes. You don't say, "Well, I'm, I eat protein so I don't eat leafy greens."

• 56:47Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 56:48Bob Roth?

  It's like, it's a balanced life.

• 56:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah. What if, has there been long-term studies on the impact of this on people that struggle with addiction?

• 56:59Bob Roth?

  There was a study that just came out, big problem with addiction is relapse. So they go away for a 30-day, $8 zillion something, but they go away for, you know, 30 days or they get off alcohol or drugs or any other addiction, food, sex, and then it was a high proportion relapse. And so they just, a study just came out, it was conducted at Avery Road, which is an alcohol treatment facility in Bethesda. And the findings showed that in a control group, that the people who were not meditating, every one of them relapsed. And the people who did, who were meditating regularly, there was like a 60% reduction. They didn't relapse.

• 57:43Rich Roll?

  Wow, that's amazing.

• 57:44Bob Roth?

  Huge. They don't see anything like that.

• 57:46Rich Roll?

  How big was the control group?

• 57:48Bob Roth?

  It was, it was a phase one clinical trial, so like 40 and 40. Now we're going for a phase two clinical trial, which will be 200. And then the third, which we really want to do is 1,000. My goal is highest, best, toughest, most rigorous research. So you can, with largest numbers, independent, so you can, we can change public policies. And it goes back to my desire from the beginning, was to affect public policy.

• 58:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 58:14Bob Roth?

  And if, if the VA is paying gazillions of dollars for medication, well, why not pay a fraction of that for meditation?

• 58:22Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah, it's in their economic interest to invest in that as a viable alternative. Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm in recovery. I've been sober for a while, but.

• 58:33Bob Roth?

  You love this.

• 58:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah. No, I, yeah, I do. And I think, you know, as somebody whose life has been transformed by the 12 steps, of which meditation is one, my perspective as a member of that community is that that step, which involves meditation.

• 58:51Rich Roll?

  Kind of gets the, it kind of doesn't get the attention that it deserves. It's part of it, but the meditation, there isn't really any kind of focus.

• 59:00Bob Roth?

  People don't know what to do.

• 59:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 59:01Bob Roth?

  They can't do it.

• 59:02Rich Roll?

  So they do it for 60 seconds and no one tells them how to do it. And so it doesn't really stick. And so it doesn't really become an integral practice in that recovery equation for most people.

• 59:14Bob Roth?

  Well, I, I mean, what I tell people is the problem of stress, the problem of drugs, these are serious problems. And you wouldn't just, if you had a physical ailment, you wouldn't say, well, just go online and see what they tell me to do. You know, you go to an expert. You go to a person who's a proper diagnostician, who could prescribe something that's proven. And I think the same way is with mind. We, we shouldn't be so casual. We should do research. You know, meditation, there's a lot of hippie dippy stuff. There's some cheap stuff, but there's also some substantive stuff. And learn from a teacher who knows what she or he is doing. You know, you have a certified teacher. One of the big problems, and I have a lot of friends in the mindfulness field, and Sharon

• 59:59Bob Roth?

  Salzberg was telling me that she said, problem with mindfulness now is they've lost their brand. Anybody can say they're doing whatever. And so, science doesn't know what it is. If you do a mindfulness program at a school in Spokane, what are you doing in St. Petersburg?

• 1:00:14Rich Roll?

  There's no control.

• 1:00:14Bob Roth?

  Yeah, there's no control. Whereas with TM, it's specific. It's absolutely precise and the training program is, is high level of certification.

• 1:00:25Rich Roll?

  Right. And it involves doing 20 minutes of this practice twice a day, essentially.

• 1:00:30Bob Roth?

  Yes, once in the morning for 20 minutes. You get up 20 minutes earlier and you, people say, I'm not going to give up my time, my sleep. And you say, no, no, it's better than sleep. It's deeper than sleep. And then sometime in the afternoon or early evening before dinner. So the morning is like rejuvenating and you have a high level of energy that takes you sustained, so you don't need multiple cups of coffee and that sort of thing. And makes you more resilient. And then you do it at the end of the day to sort of wash off the stresses of the day, whatever you've picked up, and be more present with your partner, with what you're doing in the evening and sleep much better at night. So traditionally, for thousands of years, it used to be done at dawn and dusk, but it was first thing morning and afternoon.

• 1:01:13Rich Roll?

  Do you ever miss?

• 1:01:14Bob Roth?

  Yeah, of course. Yeah, I mean, I try not to.

• 1:01:17Rich Roll?

  So you're human. Most people say, "I don't have time," or "I don't know how I'm gonna make the time." But like, myself, like a good alcoholic, I'm like, "Well, more must be better," right? And when I was talking to Dan Harris, he told me that he's experimenting right now with meditating two hours a day. Because he wants to just see, you know, like, he wants to like-

• 1:01:36Bob Roth?

  He wants me to teach him T M.

• 1:01:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I would imagine that he would. Just to see like, what that, what would happen if he does that.

• 1:01:44Bob Roth?

  He must be interesting for his wife. I was actually, no, we can close, but I was actually talking to this businessman in New York who was with his 12-year-old son. And they were sent by, his wife was meditating. And I think the wife took this son aside and gave him some tips on what to say. So, the husband was saying, "You know, I'd like to learn how to do it. I don't think I can do it because my mind is so busy, but I don't have the time. I just don't have the time. 20 minutes do I sit down, I don't have the time." So, the kid said, "Dad, there's 1,440 minutes in a day. You don't have 40 minutes." And then, this is where the mom came in, "For self-care." So, and the fact is, it has to be a priority.

• 1:02:27Bob Roth?

  The trajectory, the trajectory that we are all on as a society, as a culture, as individuals, is not sustainable. It's just not sustainable. We're falling apart. And so, this is an intervention. This is my own intervention. I'm going to take 20 minutes from my morning, find it, get up earlier. I'm going to take 20 minutes in the afternoon for myself. And then, the rest of the world will adjust. And the nice thing about this is, so many people come say, "I could never close my eyes for two minutes, much less 20." And because this meditation is so enjoyable, the experience is so satisfying, 20 minutes flies by, just flies by.

• 1:03:07Rich Roll?

  I think even beyond that, there is a weird spiritual equation that takes place where time bends in on itself. And because, by virtue of doing a practice like this, you suddenly have more time. Because you're more efficient in your day, you're more focused, you get more things done, there's no procrastination. And suddenly, that list of to-dos shrinks precipitously compared to what it looked like when you're not practicing this sort of-

• 1:03:38Bob Roth?

  And can I close by just giving the brain research on this? So, everybody wants to be more creative. Everybody, nobody wants to feel they're stagnant, they want to grow. They don't want to feel they're stagnant or stuck in a relationship and their own feeling inside and their job, they want to grow. And so, a lot of very creative people, I teach a lot of very creative people. And so, I was curious, what's the brain mechanism of a creative, what's a creative brain? And they say that there's three, they used to think that there was regions of the brain was governed creativity. Oh, the right hemisphere, that's the creative side, and then the scientists, it's not, it's not regions, it's networks, it's connections. And there's three networks that are involved in the creative process.

• 1:04:21Bob Roth?

  The first is called the prefrontal cortex, which is the executive network, the executive control center. That's focus, concentration, judgment, planning, that's attention, focus. Then the other element, opposite of that, is called the imagination network, or the clunky name, default mode network. And that part of your brain gets awakened when you take a hot shower, go for a run. Where you're not like in front of the computer typing and figuring it out. Then there's a third part of the brain called, I'll just say, it's what navigates. It shuts down, when you need to focus, it shuts down the imagination center.

• 1:05:02Bob Roth?

  And when you are sort of blue skying, it shuts that down, the attention. Sorry, this is complicated. But a creative person, and meditation develops this, has both networks functioning at the same time.

• 1:05:16Rich Roll?

  Because those neural pathways are communicating with increased efficiency.

• 1:05:19Bob Roth?

  That's right. So that means you can focus, but not lose the wandering, the open, the imagination. And you can have the imagination, but not lose the ability to make it real.

• 1:05:31Rich Roll?

  I'm sold, Bob Roth. Will you teach me TM?

• 1:05:34Bob Roth?

  Yes, next time I'm in LA, I would be, I'd be honored to teach you.

• 1:05:37Rich Roll?

  No, it'd be great. I would love to take you up on that, I appreciate it.

• 1:05:40Bob Roth?

  When I come back, and I'm going to spend more time in LA. I would like to teach you.

• 1:05:44Rich Roll?

  All right. Well, thank you, sir. I know you got to get going.

• 1:05:47Bob Roth?

  I'm doing something with David Lynch.

• 1:05:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, say hello to him for me.

• 1:05:51Bob Roth?

  I'm going to.

• 1:05:51Rich Roll?

  The invitation is wide open for him to come on the podcast anytime. The new book is great, Strength in Stillness. So it just came out February 8th, right? February 6th, so brand new on the shelves. It's very accessible. You can read this in like two days.

• 1:06:06Bob Roth?

  No, two hours.

• 1:06:07Rich Roll?

  Two hours. Yeah, it's like it's super easy. And the best way, the best place for people to find out a little bit more about you and your work, davidlynchfoundation.org.

• 1:06:17Bob Roth?

  Or TM.org.

• 1:06:18Rich Roll?

  TM.org. Okay.

• 1:06:20Bob Roth?

  Great.

• 1:06:21Rich Roll?

  Excellent, man.

• 1:06:21Bob Roth?

  Thank you so much, buddy. Appreciate this a lot. Okay, really great.

• 1:06:25Rich Roll?

  Peace.

• 1:06:29Rich Roll?

  All right, we did it. It's done. What did you guys think? Brief, but awesome. Short, but sweet. Hope you guys dug it. Do me a favor. Share your thoughts of this conversation with Bob himself. He's at Meditation Bob on Twitter. I am at Rich Roll on Twitter and Instagram. Would love to hear what you thought. While you're at it, make a point of picking up Bob's new book, Strength in Stillness, wherever you buy fine books. I'll put a link in the show notes to make it easy for you to do just that. And speaking of show notes, check them out. We put a ton of time and work into them. They're almost like a syllabus to extend your learning, your edification, your infotainment beyond the conversation. And because they're awesome. Look, if you're looking for nutritional direction, maybe you're listening to this podcast

• 1:07:14Rich Roll?

  because of the plant-based thing, you're trying to get your diet in check. I got good news for you. Check out our meal planner. Go to meals.richroll.com and there you will find thousands, I'm telling you, literally thousands of plant-based recipes, all customized based on your personal preferences, how much time you like to spend in the kitchen, what your budget is, how many you're cooking for, foods you don't like, foods you do like, foods you're allergic to. In addition, we offer you unlimited grocery lists, even grocery delivery in most US cities with international delivery in certain cities coming soon. You get all of this for just $1.90 a week when you sign up for a year. It's an incredible program. Everyone who signs up loves it. The feedback is insane. We're so proud of this product.

• 1:07:57Rich Roll?

  It really is solving so many of the problems, the confusion, everything that kind of goes into adopting a plant-based lifestyle. The solution is right here. It's super handy, simple to use. For more, go to meals.richroll.com or click on Meal Planner on the top menu at richroll.com. If you would like to support my work and this podcast, tell a friend, share this podcast with your buddies or on social media. Hit that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts or on whatever platform you enjoy this content. Subscribe to my YouTube channel, youtube.com/richroll. This episode is available on YouTube as well. All of this really helps spread the word. It enhances the show's

• 1:08:39Rich Roll?

  visibility. It extends the reach and the audience. And that in turn makes it easier for me to book the very best guests for you. You can also support the show on Patreon at richroll.com/donate. And as always, I want to thank everybody who worked hard and diligently to put this show on. Jason Camiello for audio engineering, production, show notes and interstitial music. Blake Curtis and Margot Lubin for video editing and graphics. And theme music, as always, by Analemma. Thanks for the love, you guys. May you be strong in your stillness.