Why We Crave Gurus: A Skeptic's Reckoning With Belief, Bitcoin, and Burning Man | Vikram Gandhi

What a fake guru discovered about genuine connection, why ancient wisdom survives even the most rigorous skepticism, and the real reason humans crave spiritual authority. Vikram Gandhi is an award-winning and boundary-pushing director of fiction and non-fiction film and television. Vikram most recently co-directed The Man Will Burn https://www.hbomax.com/shows/man-will-burn/6e69de11-44dc-472a-a7bb-1f0b4be7738b — a five-part HBO Original Documentary Series on the full arc of Burning Man, from its countercultural roots in San Francisco to the 80,000-person desert event it's become. In this episode we talk about: Why an experiment built to reject capitalism ended up swimming in it What playing a fake guru taught him about how belief actually works Why people are often more comfortable opening up to a stranger than to those closest to them What religion, cryptocurrency, and Burning Man all have in common How to find meaning in ancient wisdom without needing to belong to anything And much more Get the 10% with Dan Harris app here https://app.danharris.com/membership Sign up for Dan's free newsletter here http://www.danharris.com/ Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris This episode is sponsored by: Jiyu Skin: Our listeners can now get an additional 20% off plus free shipping with our code HAPPIER at jiyuskin.com http://jiyuskin.com/. Tonal: Right now, Tonal is offering our listeners $200 off your Tonal purchase with promo code HAPPIER. Rosetta Stone: Ten Percent Happier listeners can get 20% off their Rosetta Stone Sapphire subscription when they sign up today. Visit rosettastone.com/happier http://rosettastone.com/happier to redeem your 20% off.

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

• 0:03Dan Harris?

  Hey, everybody. Welcome to the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. For decades, various friends of mine have very passionately encouraged me to go to Burning Man, the annual festival in the desert of Nevada that draws tens of thousands of people. And these passionate invitations and exhortations have landed for me as sometimes inspiring and intriguing and sometimes irritating. People who really are into Burning Man a little bit remind me of that classic cartoon in The New Yorker from a decade ago. It has two women eating lunch, and one of them says to the other, "I've been gluten-free for a week, and I'm already annoying."

• 0:45Dan Harris?

  And that can really happen with people who get deeply into Burning Man. So today, we're going to talk about the truth about Burning Man, but we're going to talk about it much more than that because my guest is a fascinating figure in the culture. His name is Vikram Gandhi. He's the co-director of a new documentary on HBO called The Man Will Burn, but he's done a lot of other stuff that I want to talk to him about. In fact, he burst onto the collective consciousness in the early aughts when he made a documentary called Kumare, in which he plays a fake Indian guru who is able to inspire a real following, conundrum that creates a real reckoning for him.

• 1:29Dan Harris?

  So we're going to talk to Vikram today about whether a skeptic can find meaning, why we're so drawn to gurus, what is the truth about Burning Man, and much more. Vikram Gandhi, after this quick break. A few things before we hear from our sponsors. I've got exciting news. If you love this show but do not love listening to the advertisements, a subscription to my app, 10% with Dan Harris, now includes a private, ad-free feed of the 10% Happier Podcast, available on whatever platform you choose, whether that's Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or right inside the app itself. Plus, along with an ad-free listening experience, the app also gives you a growing library of meditations from world-class teachers,

• 2:13Dan Harris?

  exclusive livestream events with me and many of our incredible instructors, and robust and supportive discussion threads where you can ask questions, share your struggles, and connect with our growing community. We've got a free 14-day trial. If you want to try it before you buy, join the party. DanHarris.com. We'll be right back after this.

• 2:34Dan Harris?

  Most of us can remember being about 15 and feeling completely invisible, or worse, extremely visible but for the wrong reasons. I remember one year when I was a teenager, I had a pimple in the crevice of my nose for the entire year. I didn't like that. Either way, even if we have painful memories of that age, most of us tend to soften it in memory, and it was actually harder than we remember it now. That is the territory of Carrie, now streaming on Prime Video, the first-ever television adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie. Eight episodes from Mike Flanagan with Stephen King as an executive producer. Flanagan had described this show as a tragedy. It's about a girl who doesn't feel seen by anyone,

• 3:19Dan Harris?

  and about how small, everyday acts of unkindness compound into something nobody meant to cause, which happens now at a speed and scale that would have been unimaginable not long ago. What I really appreciate about the show is that the show takes Carrie seriously as a person rather than as some sort of symbol. And the season keeps circling around one major question. Are you watching the making of a hero, a villain, or something more complicated than either of those options? Carrie is now streaming on Prime Video.

• 3:57Dan Harris?

  Vikram Gandhi, welcome to the show.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thanks for having me.

• 4:01Dan Harris?

  I love your new documentary on Burning Man. It's awesome. For people who don't know what Burning Man is, can you just describe what it is?

• 4:09Speaker 01

  Burning Man is a social experiment of people building a city in the middle of the desert. And in that city, there is no exchange of money. And it is an experiment in sort of communal living. In some ways, people could look at it as a temporary utopia. Some people call it a festival. Some people accidentally think it's a music festival because there's so much music, or an arts festival because there's a lot of art. But I would say for the people who started it and the attempt to maintain its roots, it's a social experiment in basically living in a different culture, like reinventing culture in the desert.

• 4:53Dan Harris?

  Your documentary, which again is called The Man Will Burn, it's on HBO. And again, I loved it. It does a lot of things. But one of the things it does is like trace the arc of Burning Man. And as you said, the original founder, I think his name is Larry something.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  Larry Harvey, yeah.

• 5:09Dan Harris?

  Larry Harvey. His idea was really kind of anti-capitalist?

• 5:14Speaker 01

  I would say it's very much anti-capitalist in its roots. I mean, Burning Man first started when Larry Harvey told his friend, "Hey, I want to go burn a man on a beach in San Francisco called Baker Beach."

• 5:25Dan Harris?

  A wooden man, not an actual man.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, a wooden man, excuse me. And there's a lot of myths around like why he did it. You know, was it just a spark of an idea? Was it supposed to be this like pagan ritualistic thing? Did he watch the movie Wicker Man like right before that? Like, these are like kind of myths that I've heard. And the idea of it being a myth is, I think, important to it. Yeah, Larry Harvey started it. And as this sort of experiment happened, it started on Baker Beach. And then, you know, the first burn was like 10 people. And I think that what they saw was that there was this almost religious fervor that people had when they were looking at this man burn.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  And it felt like a pagan ritual when you look at it. But, you know, it's happening in the 80s. And they did it again the next year, and there were like 100 people. And then they did it again the next year, and there were many, many more people. And they would start throwing a party around, and there's music. And, you know, at some point, so many people started coming that the cops shut them down, and they realized they had to go somewhere else. And that's when they went to the Black Rock Desert. And the Burning Man that we see in images started then in the 90s.

• 6:40Dan Harris?

  And it's now, you know, what, 80,000 people a year, something like that?

• 6:45Speaker 01

  It's 80,000 people a year who come together, build this city from scratch in the desert. You know, all kinds of people, builders and people who are who are working on the infrastructure, and then all these people who are coming to make art, you know, create camps, throw parties, all of that. So 80,000 people, most of whom are 80,000 people there for about a week. And but there's a lot of people who go there for like weeks before to build it.

• 7:14Dan Harris?

  And I think you mentioned there's no money. It's fully a gift economy?

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the founders of Burning Man, there's a book, I'm forgetting the name of the author, but called The Gift. And I've heard that they read that book. And in it, it was the idea that things, objects that we have, they hold a different meaning when they're gifted to you. There's a story behind them. It's not about purchasing something. And I think they thought, well, what if in this environment, you just can't buy anything? And of course, in the beginning, it was in the desert. Like, there's no stores around there, so you couldn't buy anything. But if you brought everything that you could be self-reliant, and then you brought some more to share with people, and that just kept happening and happening, and you brought art or you brought a party,

• 8:04Speaker 01

  that that would change human interaction. And that would become, in some ways, a release valve for capitalist society. I've heard people say that Burning Man is trauma bonding around, the trauma bonding of capitalism. And so its roots were definitely anarchic. It's definitely anti-capitalist. They had a lot of connection to performance artists and street art in San Francisco that were like critiquing culture. There were people aligned with Burning Man in the beginning that did something called the Billboard Liberation Front, where they would satirize commercialism and capitalism. I would say to get it right, it was a lot more anti-consumerist

• 8:49Speaker 01

  than necessarily anti-capitalist, if there is a difference. I think that's debatable. But, you know, that was the idea of kind of mocking our consumer culture, that everybody was consuming things. And that's the way that we live, that we were just all about consumption as opposed to what if it was all about giving, building, creating, in their case, making art.

• 9:11Dan Harris?

  One of the critiques you hear, and I kind of gently made fun of Burning Man and burners in the intro, which you were sitting here while I recorded, so you heard it. One of the critiques you hear is that this was supposed to be this, if not anti-capitalist, at least anti-consumer or consumer culture event. And yet now, it is populated, in no small measure, by billionaires who have a whole parking lot of their private jets in the desert. And they build these, you know, incredibly expensive private camps that they attend. And some of these billionaires are, you know, I think you can make a pretty strong case.

• 9:51Dan Harris?

  Not necessarily nudging humanity toward its best, uh, its best version of itself. So how do you square that with the, the original intentions of the founders?

• 10:03Speaker 01

  I think that what's really beautiful about the way this social experiment started is that there are so many accidents, like, did Larry Harvey know that one day when he built the man that this, you know, city would emerge, that people were gonna all come there? And did he know that in the beginning? Uh, probably not. Like, I think that it was, it was, it was an experiment in the beginning and it just kept going. And I, and in some ways, I say, I think, uh, one could say that like, he, he burnt this man and people gathered around it. And for the last 30 years, people have been debating what it means.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  And there was a point where Larry, you know, in our, in our documentary, one of the, one of the, um, early members of Burning Man explains that Larry went out on like a pilgrimage to Mexico and he came back and he said, I have nine principles. And then, um, this guy, Stuart Mangram jokes that he's, you know, they said to him, you need 10, like any self-respecting cult. That is actually the tone of Burning Man, which is that, yes, we have these beliefs, but like, it's also a big joke, like the world is a big cosmic joke. So that being said, I think one of the more important guiding principles of what the, the

• 11:23Speaker 01

  place has been is that, you know, they kind of don't tell you what you're supposed to believe. I remember when I first went, I thought, you know, I brought a tent. I went to, I went and bought like everything I just needed for myself, like I was going camping. And then when I arrived, uh, and I met the people, they, we, you know, in Reno that I was going with, my friends, we went to Walmart and they started filling all of their, all their carts up with steaks, steaks, steaks and champagne and beer. And I was like, wait, what is going on here? I thought we were like camping in the desert. And when I got there, I realized it was totally not what I thought. It didn't have this sort of ethic or moral around it. It was like, this is just, this is just the planet.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  This is just humanity and we just come here and do, uh, this, whatever we want to do. And there's not like a rule here, but there's like a guiding principle, like where this, this is a place where you have to be self-reliant, you have to be part of it. You can't, you can't just be a spectator. The early Burning Man days were, were, you know, strictly about one thing or another. I feel like, I just don't think it, it happened like that. And I don't think there is a moral grounding of, of how to judge how people go to Burning Man. Uh, I do think the way people talk about it can change the way that the outside world perceives it because they talk about in the same, with, in the same way that a lot of

• 12:49Speaker 01

  people talk about going to church or religion or some mystical experience they had. So I do think like the big conundrum, the big conundrum of, that's in our documentary and I think is in Burning Man culture right now, is the exact question you're asking. Like, look at all the money. There's, I, I think we estimated that like $400 million of things come to Burning Man. Uh, we've, we filmed with people who have multimillion dollar art cars that have speakers on it to throw parties. And I think the bigger question is, if this place is supposed to be a way to kind of

• 13:28Speaker 01

  create a new culture outside of capitalist society, how do you mark where, where what's happening inside starts replicating what is actually on the outside? I think it's human nature to think you can escape all of those rules. So you will see that it's not structured so differently. I think that the idea is that it's trying to guide people in a way that like, when you meet people, you give them a hug, like their family. When you, when you go to a party, there's no, you, you can't be exclusive. It's all inclusive. Uh, and I just think that it's a rare place where that is the direction.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  And whether or not it actually fulfills what these principles are, I mean, it's pretty hard to act like that, you know? I sometimes think it, it works really well in the first few days and then just like everything else, like, things start falling apart. So, so I think that the criticism of its not being what it stood for is totally like valid. And I think it's something we struggle with in the documentary and something that becomes very obvious. Hey, there's no money here. And then you see private jets flying everywhere. Like, how does this work? Um, but at the end of the day, it's, it's a big experiment. And I think once I went the first time and I realized that, that this wasn't some ethical thing I was doing, like there's no morality to it. All that stuff we bought in Walmart, we had to get rid of.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  And I remember we drove through the Native American Reservation on the way back to Reno with garbage bags. And there was a sign that says, said it on the reservation, we'll buy your, uh, you pay us to take your garbage. And I was like, so we, we gave, we, for $5, we paid, you know, uh, people on the Native American Reservation to take our garbage. And I was like, this is the most American thing ever. It is not what I thought it was. It's not like, hey, you go to Burning Man and you're a better person than everyone. It's just like a full expression of it. Uh, it's not, so I think like, that's the impression that people have, um, that there's maybe these new age or mystical or religious sort of connotations or even environmentalist

• 15:37Speaker 01

  connotations, but it's definitely, I think there's an effort to do that, but I would say that's not an accurate portrayal. In, in some ways, it's just like an alternate culture and direction that has its own kind of aesthetic and art, and it's like its own civilization for a week. Um, but I know exactly what you mean. And I think it's still a question. Um, can a place actually function and be anti-capitalist or anti-consumerist and then still have all this money poured into it? It does make a lot of burners scratch their head as well.

• 16:08Dan Harris?

  I have to say, I came away from the documentary a lot less skeptical. Like, I, I landed, I, where you just took us, which is, this is an experiment with very interesting ideas behind it, but it's also a big, beautiful, hypocritical mess. And that's kind of awesome.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  I mean, I think that's actually the beauty of it. I mean, it's not a place that you censor yourself. Like, I think actually, one of the reasons that, one of the main reasons Burning Man has changed also is because of social media. Like, this was a place that it was okay to be naked. Uh, I mean, it, it's okay to say anything. And all of a sudden, when cameras start coming in there, people become less free and open. I mean, I think in some ways, it felt like it transcended all this stuff that was happening, you know, in the world with cancel culture and stuff like, I think a lot of burners didn't want that to happen to Burning Man. Like, even though I think many of the people who go to Burning Man, most of them actually

• 17:12Speaker 01

  believe in those ideals in the outside world. But in the, but in this like little community where it's, you're supposed to be sort of creating a family, uh, where everything is safe and there's no rules, those moral and ethical rules from the outside world, uh, are also scary because they just keep pouring in. Like, I would say that the world just started, the outside world is seeping into Burning Man. There's really nothing we can do about it because, um, now people like, now there's phone reception out there and, and you can get on the internet. So I think there was a force field around it before, and that force field is like, is very weak unless, you know, uh, any, anyone can decide. So I think in a lot of ways, that's happening. Like, the culture is changing because it's hard to keep out the outside world.

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• 18:32Dan Harris?

  Where do you land? I mean, you spent many years, you and your co-director documenting not only the event itself, but you got incredible access inside the Burning Man organization during some tumultuous times with lots of infighting, some of it involving Elon Musk's brother. Is that his younger brother, Kimball?

• 18:52Speaker 01

  Kimball, yeah.

• 18:52Dan Harris?

  Kimball Musk, who joins the board and tries to disrupt things, which I recommend people watch the documentary to see how that plays out. I'm just curious, like, where did you net out? Will you, now that you've finished this documentary, will you go back as a, will you keep going back as a participant, or are you kind of just like done with the thing for a while?

• 19:11Speaker 01

  One of the reasons that this all happened was, you know, my co-director, Jahan, who is an amazing filmmaker, she directed The Vow on HBO, and she, she had connected with, with the CEO of Burning Man and the, and the board of Burning Man, and they wanted people to document their journey. And she came to me as she was finishing season two of The Vow and said, we need a director to come in who's been to Burning Man, you know? And I, at that point, had gone probably like eight or nine times. I would say I was not as hardcore. I'm like a New Yorker, and so I would just go there for a few days. And I knew like my counterparts in California might have been thinking about Burning Man

• 19:56Speaker 01

  for, like, they're the ones really building it. You know, in some ways, I was parachuting in, which is, you know, not part of, not actually part of the culture. This is one of the most fun things on earth. And if I don't have to go to a wedding on that Labor Day weekend in the end of August, and I don't have anything on my schedule, that's, that's the place I'm gonna go. Of course, this has changed my relationship with Burning Man. I mean, taking a camera out and filming in that location, it's not just the camera, it's also the microphones and the sound. That is almost completely against the vibe. It took me understanding the Burning Man culture and being, being somebody who went to Burning

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Man to, to be able to bring those cameras in there. And, but, so, but to also your point, we got behind the scenes. Yeah, one of the, you know, one of our, our characters who is in it is, is Kimball Musk, Elon Musk's brother. In the show, in the, in the series, he, he also plays a, a part of talking about sort of the early ideas of Burning Man that didn't have an organization. Like, when Burning Man started, didn't have an organization. It wasn't supposed to be safe. It wasn't supposed to have any rules. And people were just going out to the desert. And in it, he actually really embodies the voice of a lot of people at Burning Man who said, we don't need an organization. I mean, it was

• 21:22Speaker 01

  really fascinating that it was happening. You know, those scenes happened kind of before Kimball's brother was, was working on Doge. But it was similar, like, it was interesting, it was interesting parallel in that, like, a critique of the governing body, you know, of Burning Man that was spending money and, and, and people who were, who loved Burning Man were saying, hey, like, why do we have this organization? They're questioning leadership. And I think in the movie, you know, in our, in our film, Kimball really embodies, I think, a lot of the opinions of a lot of people who maybe just like were afraid to speak

• 22:03Speaker 01

  up. And, and I think, you know, in, in some ways, that's the dilemma, that like, if you can have the organization do things and set things up, or you can have the people with means and resources help you set up. And that's not dissimilar to the outside world. You know, if you, if you want to rely, do you want to rely on the government, or do you want to rely on, on big corporations? And I think the same thing that happens in the outside world is happening inside Burning Man, the same question. And, and it's a threat to the, the organization, what he, what he says. But I think in some ways, he also embodies

• 22:47Speaker 01

  the real feeling of, of people who go to Burning Man. It's like, why, why do we even have this organization? And the organization really believes that they're helping make sure that some of those cultural elements that we were talking about before, that they stay in there. And so it's a funny back and forth, and it's not that dissimilar to the outside world. And I think that's actually what's so interesting about the inner mechanisms of a place like that. Like, you just keep replicating the same thing, you know? You can't change the human nature. You can change the look and feel of it, but human nature is the same, so.

• 23:20Dan Harris?

  I may be feeling less skepticism than what many of your viewers may walk away with. I, part of the reason why is that I have spent a lot of time up close with meditation organizations, including retreat centers. And I've seen that even people who have spent decades of their life practicing the Dharma, practicing deep meditation, when you bring any group of humans together, no matter how enlightened or close to enlightened they may be, there will be politics. And of course, that's gonna happen with, even with an organization like Burning Man, where the principles are super idealistic. Yeah, it's just hard to

• 24:02Dan Harris?

  get humans together to cooperate on a, on a joint project. So I was, I was less surprised by that.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  I, I was always seeing the story of Burning Man resembling a lot like any church or religion. I mean, in the Burning Man story, there's a schism early on with a lot of these ideals built into how Larry was thinking about it. You know, Burning Man has a temple, Burning Man has a symbol, Burning has a ritual, there is a hero's journey that goes through that week that leads up to a communal ritual. And there's an organization that's running it, that's trying to keep the place pure. But of course, there's donors who come in. And I mean, you can, you can hear the story of the Catholic Church and almost any, like, large religious organization, if it, whether it's Buddhist or anything, or Christian,

• 24:51Speaker 01

  all of these organizations have a similar kind of thing that they have to deal with. Like, you're talking about donations, you're talking about people with more means, do they get access to something? And Burning Man's just struggling with the same thing. But also, at the same time, it's also a city. So they have to provide, they have to build, they have to have a hospital, and then they have roads. And so, weirdly, this experiment is very complicated. And, and, you know, you definitely need some kind of organization. And, and I would say that Larry Harvey, in some ways, was sort of like, you know, a Messiah figure to it. I think the joke is that, that he's at once that, but he's also the opposite. Like, he, as far as I know, he was just a great storyteller who loved talking to people.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  And they were just all building it around him. Like, it's not like he actually, there are other people who are there, were like, we should build a road here, we should shape it like this. But he just kind of gave everyone this vision of like, well, why don't we just go for this thing? And then everybody's sort of aligned. And in that way, it does resemble like a cult or a religion in the way that it's happened. And then, just like, all of these things, we hear the story of like, is this church, or is this society, or this culture, or this meditation group, is it still authentic? Can you still have an experience? And I think that's also what we try to explore, is can you still have, like, an actual mind-blowing,

• 26:16Speaker 01

  mystical experience in this place? And I think, I think you can. And even though maybe the whole city has changed, like, you know, it's like Brooklyn, you know, or, or something, like, it's, Burning Man has been gentrified. But can you still have a really good time and, and find what you're looking for? I think, I think we've seen that people are still having that experience. So it's not over, you know? I think, I think to some degree, it's like, oh, well, I would have gone 20 years ago. Like, I don't think that's true either. I think it's just evolved, and more people have come.

• 26:47Dan Harris?

  I remember when I was a kid, and I would go to summer camp, and every summer, all the kids would say, yeah, the summer's okay, but last summer, man, last summer was the best one. I want to broaden the discussion, though, because this is not the only film you've made. Let's go back to the, the film that kind of got you noticed, Kumare. I'm, I was telling you this before we started rolling, I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that I've known you for a while, and I, I hadn't watched it until today. It's extraordinary. Basically, in it, you kind of masquerade as an Indian guru, even though you're not.

• 27:28Dan Harris?

  And you, you, you're this fake guru who develops a real following. Why did you do it in the first place?

• 27:36Speaker 01

  You know, looking back after years, it becomes very obvious. Like, I grew up in a home where my father started temples. Like, there was a Hindu temple that started in my basement in New Jersey. And his father before him started a Hindu temple in Burma. So I was around these sort of mechanisms of how a religious organization worked. Because, like, my father was running one, and my parents were deeply involved. They're still very involved in, in like, their community. But I also met a lot of gurus growing up. And I met a lot of pundits who did rituals. And I just had an inside look. I mean, we went to a lot of ashrams growing up.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  I was, my, my father started meditating and so, and doing yoga. And so, we, we went, we really just like, we're very much in searching for spirituality in America, or Indian spirituality in America. And I think my parents wanted us to keep our culture. And so, what was around was less, you know, was, was the sort of American version of it, you know? Which is the tri-state area. So we would go to ashrams and I would meet all of these different swamis. And I would watch their reaction. And some of them were like, this, this place is not for us. You know, like, it may have been too hippie dippy, or new agey, or the person who was running it seemed like a charlatan.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  And we ended up, I ended up going to an ashram when I was a kid and got really close with the swami who ran it. And he was kind of like, you know, like a, you know, grandfather figure. So I was very close to watching it. But I always was the guy, the kid in the class, who was like, pointing out the mistakes, you know? Hey, I remember I had this whole, I remember outing one of the swamis I, who, we were, we were, we were cooking smores. And everything was supposed to be vegetarian. And I said, isn't the gelatin in this, like, have animal products? And he was like, you know, don't ruin it. And then at the, at the campfire, and he got angry at me, I remember that. And I remember I outed him at the campfire and be like, Swamiji's lied to us.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  I was always like, seeing these people as regular people. I never believed any of these gurus had any kind of like, magical powers or were any way enlightened. Even the idea of enlightenment seemed so ridiculous. It was, it felt like it was just like, the heaven, or, you know, angel myths being, you know, transformed into an eastern version. So I was always like, really skeptical, but also really incredibly knowledgeable about it. Like, I mean, the mythology I grew up with, like, I, kids were reading like Marvel. I was reading like Hindu comic books, like. So I was super educated in it, and I was around it, and I had a lot of questions.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  And then what really made me want to make Kumari is that I just, I was watching yoga and meditation and eastern philosophy becoming a big trend in New York, and becoming a scene, and being commercialized to, in a way, that was in its roots and its early days back then. Now it's indistinguishable from like wellness. But I was watching that happen, and all of these kind of, you know, crazy gurus getting followers. This is like, this bizarre version of, of what was happening in India. And what happens in any society with like, you know, mega churches and the critiques we can have about anything. So this was my way of, of kind of looking at my entire life up to that point and trying to reflect on it,

• 31:05Speaker 01

  to see how I fit into American society as an Indian American. I also would say that in a lot of ways, I made an entire movie that was talking about cultural appropriation. And I didn't even know what that word was back then when I made it. I wonder if I knew that word, if I needed to make the movie. But ultimately, it starts off about that, like, an Indian American pretending he's from India. And I, but I also look at it as like, a deep experiment in sort of showing that, like, religion is also an illusion. And, you know, it's a structure that we don't really need. And maybe it's not part of spirituality. Maybe these gurus don't need to be part of spirituality, and maybe nothing is.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  In a, in a way, I looked at the whole thing as a Zen koan. Like, that's the idea. Like, it's a big joke or big thing, and at some moment, you get this like flash of realization, oh, I don't need anyone. And that was like, my hope, like, can people watch that and go, oh shit? Like, I, I start following people. I believe in stuff that's not real. I'm, I'm looking for an outside person to help me, and I'm not empowering myself. So in a lot of ways, it was aspirational of like, what I wanted to believe in. And, you know, by changing my voice and changing my character, I could embody the character who could deliver that message.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  And also, the part that I was fake is actually, to me, the strongest part of Kumari the Guru was that, like, the strongest and, you know, the most, the most enlightened guru is actually the one that's like, not real. Because all humans are flawed, but like Kumari isn't real. So you could, you could say that he's, he's a fraud. He's like, that's actually part of my identity. Part of Kumari's identity is he wasn't real, so.

• 32:53Dan Harris?

  There are so many questions that arise out of this social experiment. It really starts as a social experiment. You set up the movie, you talk about your background, you talk about why you're doing it. And you say, okay, I'm gonna go to Phoenix, Arizona, where nobody will recognize me. I'm gonna, I'm gonna see if I, as a fake guru, can develop a real following. But very quickly, like, it gets complicated because you do develop a real following. And then you start feeling quite conflicted about the fact that you, you have essentially tricked these people into a, a relationship with a guru who they believe in, even though he's not a real guru.

• 33:32Dan Harris?

  So just talk a little bit, like, at what point did you start in this process to develop feelings of like, oh no, what have I gotten myself into here, and what am I doing to these people?

• 33:42Speaker 01

  You know, some of the sleight of hand in the storytelling process and editing process is to kind of create this hero's journey where realizations come and different emotions happen at different times. But I think the reality is that from the first moment I started, which I think is portrayed more like a joke, and we go into it lighthearted and not knowing. From the first moment I started, it was terrifying that I was crossing a taboo that I shouldn't be crossing. And all the way in the last moments where it feel, you know, later on where it feels really heavy.

• 34:16Dan Harris?

  Like when you're revealing the truth to the followers?

• 34:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and, and when people are telling me really intense things, like, it was really heavy, but we were also still laughing every day because it was so ridiculous. And I think in the narration of it, it feels like, okay, it started as a joke and became really serious. And it is true, we went deeper and deeper. As I got deeper and deeper, I lost myself in it. But from the very second, I, I mean, I thought, this is actually playing with fire. The first time I tried out, a mutual friend of ours helped me set it up. And I went to New Jersey to try out the character, to see, hey, can this work?

• 34:58Speaker 01

  You know, like, I'd grown out my beard, you know, a little bit longer than this. And I went to a yoga studio. We were shooting like, some, you know, some images to kind of fundraise off of. And basically, we shot in a yoga studio with like extras that we hired. And then the woman who ran the yoga studio said, who is this guy? Like, can he teach in my studio? So we're like, this is a great opportunity to really do it and test it out. When we tested it out, there was a woman who came up to me. I was making up rituals, making up mantras. I was doing exercises that made no sense. And, and I had this ritual that I did where I put my forehead against someone else

• 35:42Speaker 01

  so I could shoot like, you know, spiritual energy into their third eye. And this girl looked at me and said, I will, I will just like, follow you anywhere. And from that moment, I was like, oh shit. Like, this is some real shit. This is not like me, it was a joke before, and I thought maybe I could do it. And I was going blindly into it, like, just, yeah, I can make, I could do it. And then all of a sudden, I had the realization, like, maybe I can do something. Maybe this is actually like, a real film. Yeah, and that's when it started. Sorry, I'm rambling here. What was the?

• 36:16Dan Harris?

  Well, I guess my question for you is, like, there have been, I mean, the film was extremely well received. It won the Audience Prize at South by Southwest for Best Documentary. I personally loved it. I think it, it's, it was critically reviewed very warmly. And yet, there were some criticisms about the ethics of it. You know, was it fair to the, to the followers who were thought they were in a real thing, but they were actually in a fake thing? Where do you come down on that?

• 36:43Speaker 01

  Well, I was younger back then, you know? And it's almost, I almost felt like I had my own ethical code, you know? Which is very cult leader-like, I guess, but, but also, like, this was the art I wanted to make. And I gotta say, I felt more strongly about this, doing it in this way, than I feel like I've ever really felt about any project. I would tell people, like, I would feel, maybe I feel weird about doing this, I feel strange, but I would feel worse if I didn't tell this story. Because I just kind of felt like, nobody else was saying it. I, I felt like, hey, I grew up with all, all this, this thing that's sort of new in America.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  And with this insight and this education from my childhood, also studying in college. And I was like, this is the thing that I want to do? And so, I just felt like, the message was more important than anything. That like, nobody is telling you this message. And you could do it in a scripted movie, or you could write a book about it. But like, nothing is better than actually seeing it play out in real life. It's a science experiment or a social experiment.

• 37:51Dan Harris?

  And the message is what?

• 37:52Speaker 01

  People can believe.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  In something that's not real and change themselves and empower themselves. And it doesn't matter if the thing they were focusing on is real. And that's what Kumari was. I mean, he was sort of a talisman or an icon, but he was, he was completely like, there was an empty vessel. There was nothing in there. I wasn't really teaching anything. Actually, what I told people was I asked them to make a plan about how they wanted to change their life. And just to promise me they were going to do it and look me in the eye and say, I'm going to do this. And that was actually the catalyst for them doing things. So when they look back at like, what was the teachings that Kumari were giving them? Yeah, there were a couple of chants and things that were just sounds that I made up.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  But really, the thing that people benefited was like, because they thought of it themselves. And that message, I felt like, I felt like this was saying something about all of religion. Like it was a takedown of all of religion. It was like, these are just stories. They're mechanisms to getting us to believe in things. I recreated all those mechanisms. I made a formula, a recipe of like, have a myth, have a character, have a chant, have a ritual. Like just imitate what all the religions are, make your own. And people will believe you because that's just like been working for thousands of years. So I think I was trying to take down all of religion. I was trying to show that gurus were fake. I was trying to talk about cultural appropriation.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  All of it was like the most meaningful thing at that time in my life I could, I could say. And now I look back and I'm very happy I made that movie. A lot of people who watched it, they were often, they were like, I totally agree with this movie. Some people would even say, my guru actually says the same thing. And then some other people go, I really, I really love your movie, but I'm kind of worried that this other person I know is going to be really offended. And I was like, everyone's sort of, it was interesting the nerve it hit because I felt like other, people thought other people might be offended by it. But they weren't because they actually believed in that too. So I think in, in everyone's heart, they kind of already believe that they don't need any of these people. We don't even realize sometimes when we're following things and following people.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  And, and now I think it's even more relevant because there are so many online gurus and so many people selling a lifestyle. And we gradually just see all of them fall. So many of them fall. I mean, every big yoga guru in America has pretty much fallen, you know, from, from Osho to Vikram. Like there's always a darkness behind them. Are they worse than the average person who has a lot of power and influence? Maybe not, but they definitely were making it seem like they were ethically higher than everyone else. And I think that's, that's the thing also that I was trying to say, like, these people are not, you don't have to dress like that and act like that to be spiritual. Like that doesn't mean anything.

• 40:43Dan Harris?

  To me, the most moving part of the film, and I, you know, I'm watching it with a lens of Vikram's friend. So, so I maybe almost certainly I'm biased in some ways, but to me, the most moving thing, and in some ways, the most important message of the, of the movie. And again, this is just me, and I'm not saying that all the things you just listed are not important. But the, there's a point in the movie where it becomes clear that you playing this character, who is essentially just the best version of Vikram, a guy who makes and holds eye contact, listens very carefully, is encouraging and loving. That's just the best version of you.

• 41:27Dan Harris?

  Somehow channeling the best version of you actually started to make you into the best version of you. And I found that very moving, but also instructional, like we can identify the best versions of ourselves and kind of fake it until we make it.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  I totally agree. And that was actually, there was an experience of feeling like, everybody loves this guy. He's such a good listener. He, I mean, I would practice almost like when I would talk to people, the practice that I had internally was, I was just seeing light in them. I told them that that's what I was seeing, but I actually would try to do that. I would look at people in the eye, hold eye contact, and I would actually try to look beyond what was in their eyes. And I was just doing this thing. And in some ways you could say it's method acting or something. I wasn't, I've never trained in acting, so I don't really know. And I don't think of myself as an actor in any way, but I was just doing this thing. Like what if you were stuck in that position?

• 42:29Speaker 01

  What if somebody put you on a pedestal, which I'm sure happens sometimes? And they're looking to you for advice and you realize every word you say has so much weight, so much power because of the position you're in, that you got to step up. And I think, I think that is the experience of being a spiritual leader from the inside that is experiencing. I honestly could have been, anybody could have been in that position. And in some ways it's just optics, like, hey, if you decide to sit in the center of the room and everybody's looking at you, all of a sudden it seems like you may be the, you know, the person in charge. And that's kind of what was happening.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  And, but it also made, dawned on me like, I don't act like that with everyone. I'm not like, I would say Kumari was incredibly mindful. Like I was mindful in every interaction. I was mindful of saying, I have a moral code to how I speak. Someone's asking me for advice and demanding that I tell them what they should do. And Kumari's philosophy is never tell anyone what to do. You don't know anything. You don't know anything. You're saying that everybody's equal. Never break that rule. So Kumari was all about like, like he's kind of an idiot. In some ways by my, you know, my model was like, you know, the movie Being There, like a character who just, people, people projected things on.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  And that's actually, I think the most powerful part of that character that I learned from. It's like, I, I didn't tell people what to do. I said, what do you think you should do? And I would learn from them and just give it back to them. And they would hear it in my voice, like they were looking in a mirror in this, the person in the mirror, me, me was just telling them like the same thing that they already knew. And so I learned about, that's possible. And I would have to say that after I made Kumari, I be, made, started making more documentaries and interviewing a lot of people. I was, I was a correspondent advice. And I remember embodying a lot of that when I would interview people. I was like, Kumari was, taught me how to talk to, to interview people and make them feel safe and talk to them.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  Because that's kind of all I was doing in that character. I was basically just a documentary filmmaker too, but I, I trained myself through the Kumari method, if you will, in interviewing.

• 44:52Dan Harris?

  It was kind of poignant too, that there's, there's another moment in the film where you say that you connected more to people as Kumari than you ever did as Vikram.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, these, there was a group of people who were total strangers, who didn't know anything about me. They thought I was from the mountains. And I mean, I, you know, I meet them for an hour. Like I was like, I'm bonded with this person. That's what was so.

• 45:17Dan Harris?

  For real, like you felt bonded.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  I mean, this is real connection. I kind of feel like that way with everyone I film with, if I go deep with them. But that was different, like the cameras were invisible. It was just me and them. But also I think, I mean, there's so many reasons I felt like that. But I think the truth is that that was Kumari's gift. I went in thinking, oh, I'm going to do some Sacha Baron Cohen thing. Like it's all going to be jokes. We're going to take the piss out of everyone. And very soon I realized that's not Kumari's gift. Kumari's gift is the ability to make people feel comfortable, feel heard. I mean, the gurus stand in front of like thousands of people. My guru Kumari was going over their house and staring into their eyes for like, listen to every word. So I do, I do feel very connected to those people.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  I'm still in contact with some of them. It's been a minute since we're communicated because they're all over, you know, across the world, across the country. But yeah, I mean, I felt bonded with all of them. They, they were all part of this thing that was also very important to me. Like they unwittingly were part of like the full expression of what I was going through in my life. They were part of my art. I sort of trapped them in there. So there was a contract that happened where, hey, like we're in it, we're in this. That's why I, I did keep in contact with a lot of them for a while. And I wanted to make sure they were cool with it, you know? In a way, like very few people are really mocked in it. It's, it's actually just like, none of those people deserve to be fooled.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  And that's why I think they were also very confused at the end where like, they didn't, a lot of people were like, but I lost a bunch of weight. I got only good things. What is this weird prank where you make people feel good? That's not how pranks go.

• 47:01Dan Harris?

  We're almost out of time, but you, you also, you have another film coming out soon on the mysterious founder of Bitcoin, Satoshi. That's his, that's his kind of nom de coin, right? We don't actually know who Satoshi is.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  We don't know.

• 47:20Dan Harris?

  Just tell me about the project. Cause it, we were texting before we started recording. In your mind, like this, this thing on Bitcoin kind of is in line with Burning Man and Kumari.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, I think it's funny. I think, I think sometimes it's funny to me to think I, maybe we all, we just keep telling the same stories over and over again. And I keep making the same film over and over again. But like, you know, when Bitcoin was created, there was a person named, who, named Satoshi Nakamoto, who wrote a white paper explaining what Bitcoin was and created it. And that person, some people perceived as a person in Japan, but it turned out that it was a pseudonym. And nobody knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is, which is. An incredible idea, if you think about how many billions of dollars have gone and been invested into this thing called Bitcoin and the creation of all cryptocurrency.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  You know, there is a line from, what's the author of Sapiens name?

• 48:22Dan Harris?

  Noah Yuval.

• 48:24Speaker 01

  Harare, yeah. He says that, you know, the greatest story ever told is a story about money because money is the only thing that we all believe in. And, um, and that was like, you know, an interesting parallel that this mythical person that no one knows named Satoshi Nakamoto, who has, is totally become a mythical character. People have been searching him, for him since the beginning of Bitcoin. So people looking for 15 years. And I just got so fascinated by the fact that an entire world and economy and, and the economy of, of nations and the, and the wealth of people were all being, if we're all trusting that this person who nobody knows, knows created it.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  And I love pseudonyms and, and alter egos, as you know, and this was the greatest one of all. So I decided to go on a search to go find him. And since I started, there have been, I don't know, dozen, like long form articles, several books and a bunch of documentaries that people have made looking for Satoshi Nakamoto. But it's funny because the entire time I was like, this is actually all about the belief system. I'm just fascinated how we can all put so much trust into this person. I mean, right now, whoever Satoshi Nakamoto may be, would be worth, I don't know about, I don't remember the price of Bitcoin right now, but $80 billion and at a certain point

• 49:54Speaker 01

  could be one of the richest people in the world and nobody knows who it is. 5% of Bitcoin is owned by this person. And it's, it's crazy that we put our belief system. But what's so interesting is that, you know, on the dollar it says, in God we trust. And nobody really understands what, what the concept of God is, and that's what money is sort of based on. And nobody understands who Satoshi is, and that's what Bitcoin is based on. And in some ways, a lot of people believe that the reason that Bitcoin is still around and saw all these other coins aren't, is because no one knows who Satoshi is. If we found out it was one of, you know, some of the billionaires or tech moguls that we, that some people, that aren't doing so well in popular opinion, like people might divest out of it.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  But since we don't know, he remains a myth and there's more trust. And I think it's fascinating that we could put more trust into something where we, that's a black hole or a void, uh, which is kind of what Kumari was than a real person. And so, yeah, I mean, it's very much in line with belief systems. I do think a lot of people believe that cryptocurrency is a religion and people talk about it in the same way they talk about Burning Man, in the same way they talk about their guru. So those are a lot of the parallels and I, and that's what drew me to it as opposed to the story of, an economic story or, you know, it's, so I've made a film that's, um, the definitive story on all of it, um, kind of goes beyond, above and beyond all the other docs.

• 51:19Speaker 01

  Um, and it's, and it's been a long-term journey and, uh, and, uh, and I think it has strangely similar themes as like all the other films that I've made.

• 51:28Dan Harris?

  When's it coming out?

• 51:29Speaker 01

  We're hoping it comes out in the fall, but the more, more on that, uh, there's been some updates into the story. The New York Times pointed their finger at somebody, um, that's quite interesting. And so we're kind of just making sure that the whole thing is, um, the, the whole story is kind of revealed in this, in this film. But yeah, excited to get out to the world because it's also probably the longest thing I've ever worked on.

• 51:50Dan Harris?

  I asked you earlier where you netted out on Burning Man, but I, I want to ask where you net out on meaning and belief for yourself. You've built this career as a skeptic, uh, in the fields of belief, but not fully a skeptic because you're not mocking it, but you're not actually fully buying into it. So where do you, Vikram Gandhi, uh, derive meaning? Uh, I, I know, I know just from personal experience that you're, you take part in this group of guys that I put together to do meditation to get, uh, once in, once in a while, uh, you, you show up and practice with us. But what does it for you?

• 52:33Speaker 01

  I think when it comes to Eastern religion, um, and philosophy and tradition and stories, I mean, I think, you know, this also goes for Western, but like Eastern philosophy, I mean, there's just like an incredible amount of useful information, tools, insights that was combined with the way we think, you know, in the Western world, you know, is profound. And so I appreciate like the writers of, of these things. I look at the people who maybe people think of as gurus or philosophers, I think of them as writers, you know? There are like artists expressing things or they have a way of looking at it.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  Um, you know, I, I would say I have that, the sort of Kumari ideals is this, is the sort of like when you meet the Buddha on the road, kill the Buddha. That's very much like a way of looking at things that I see, but I don't think it's necessarily complete. As I get older, I realize like, you need to have, you know, sometimes like the meditation happens because there was somebody there to say, hey, you want to meet me at 2:00 PM? You want to go on the walk? Like it doesn't happen. And, and that's, and that's actually what's really important. Like people come together because somebody said, hey, let's do this, who had the motivation. And then of course, like humans are flawed. So I really just have tried not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

• 53:59Speaker 01

  I mean, there's just such a, you know, the tools to deal with stress, the tools to deal with things that we take medication. It's all like in these ancient books. It's all very much there. The, you know, the ideas of the Buddha are, are profound and, and you keep coming back to it. Even as technology and society grows, we get closer to the ideas that are in Buddhism. But like I, you know, I don't really revere the Buddha. I think of Siddhartha Gautama as kind of like all of us in America, just like rich kids, people in like this, you know, privileged society who had to slum it a little bit to try to figure out how the world works. And all the stuff that he says is not really that profound, like, oh, people are suffering.

• 54:43Speaker 01

  But the thing that's been created from that is like an amazing wealth of wisdom. And to deny it because you're like, I don't want to, you know, oh, I'm not Buddhist. Like there's so much in there and there's so much in like kind of every faith. So I've just tried not to be cynical. Like I think in, when I, before I made Kumari, I was like, I mean, I had gotten really academic about all this stuff. I studied in college. I was like, basically you see the mechanism of religion. It's all bullshit. This is all just human psychology and people preying on each other. And after I made Kumari, there was a moment of being like, no, you can't throw that out. There's actually something great in here. Yeah, it's just the mechanism is human, human nature is flawed. It's the same thing that maybe you could say the Burning Man, uh, like humans, humans fuck it all up in every situation.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  And that's, uh, and I think that's the thing that I try to hold on to is that there's actually real, real wisdom here, but all the apparatus, all the thing around it, you don't have to call yourself a Buddhist to meditate. You don't, you can still believe in all of these ideas and think about it with a different language and context, and you're still like, you know, coming to it. So I, so I just try to think like, I, I think I have a lot of reverence and, uh, and I see the importance of doing practices. I just don't, you know, I'm like, I don't, you know, any club that would have me a member, I don't want to join kind of vibe, you know?

• 56:01Dan Harris?

  That's why I'm glad you, you show up at my club sometimes. And I just want to remind everybody, if you want to watch, uh, The Man Will Burn, I, I think you should watch it. It's available on HBO. The Satoshi, uh, documentary, who knows when that's going to be available. Kumari, I watched it on Tubi. Is it available anywhere else?

• 56:19Speaker 01

  We're figuring out distribution. The rights are just up, but yeah, I think it's on Tubi. I'm, I know people are watching on YouTube, but we will have a more proper place to watch it. Right now, just, I think people should enjoy wherever it's free for the time being.

• 56:31Dan Harris?

  You do amazing work. Thanks for coming on the show.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me. I was looking forward to this, so I'm happy we did it.

• 56:37Dan Harris?

  Thank you so much to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. 10% Happier is produced by Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme. Also, one last thing before I let you go. Our Summer Sunday Live series is officially underway. Every Sunday at 4 Eastern, you can join the legendary meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg for a deep dive into the Buddha's Cookbook for Happiness, The Eightfold Path. You can catch up on replays if you've already missed a few of the sessions and you can

• 57:18Dan Harris?

  join the next live meditation and Q and A only on the 10% with Dan Harris app. Go to danharris.com to start a free trial.