Everything Is A Practice: Raghunath Cappo

Replace ego with the eternal. Trade selfishness for service—and self-absorption for unity. Together, let’s explore the spark of divinity that resides within us all. Meet Raghunath Cappo. Punk rock icon. Spiritual warrior. Bhakti yoga devotee. A teen in search of meaning, Ray Cappo fled his suburban Connecticut enclave for New York City—and found community among the misfits of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. He fell in love with punk rock, so he started a band and a record label. Success soon followed. By the late 1980’s, Youth of Today had thousands of fans, cementing Ray as a leading voice and trendsetter at the bullseye of hardcore culture. However, a growing existential itch led Ray to call it quits. At just 22, he walked away from his band and label and decamped for India—a spiritual pilgrimage that led him to the holy village of Vrindavan. It was there that Ray fell in love with the wisdom and traditions of Bhakti yoga. It was there that he would remain for the next six years, living as a monk. It was there that Ray became Raghunath. This is the incredible story of a modern day yogi. But it’s also about the search we all go on. The journey for personal meaning beyond the ego. And the quest for universal consequence beyond the material. It’s about the timeless that lives and breathes within all of us—that which is eternal, and past our limited senses. It’s about transcending the illusions that hold us back. What it means to truly devote oneself to greater truth. And the modern day challenges of trudging the path towards higher consciousness. All told, it’s about what it really means to be a spiritual being having a human experience. If you’ve enjoyed my conversations with musicians John Joseph & Toby Morse, spiritual leaders Guru Singh & Radhanath Swami, or modern seekers Andy Puddicombe, Jason Garner & Russell Brand, then I’m confident this will be your jam. FULL BLOG & SHOW NOTES: bit.ly/richroll583 YouTube: bit.ly/raghunathcappo583 Thank you to Robert Sturman, Perry Julien, Sherry Sutton & Davy Greenberg for the portraits & photo use permission. Let the Jedi Warrior training begin. Peace + Plants, 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?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Raghunath Cappo?

  So fundamentalism in any spiritual path is ugly. We dig our heels into some nuance, and we find those differences. Whereas woven right into the teachings of the Vedic paradigm is that, no, no, no, no. Don't you understand? There's one truth, and truth is for everyone. And no one's got a monopoly on truth. Not your skin color, not your gender, not where you were born, not Indian. Indians don't own truth, you know? It's for everyone. Because actually, we're not Indian, and we're not white, and we're not black. We're actually spiritual beings. And if you think you're white, or black, or Asian, I got news for you. It's like a rental car. You got it for a few years only. Don't get too proud of it. Don't feel so privileged with it. It's not even you.

• 1:50Raghunath Cappo?

  Your real identity is you're a spiritual being. And your pain in this world is gonna come from identifying with your body as yourself. It's a temporary world, and we're eternal beings. Life isn't about trying to put your foot on every continent, on every, like, perfectly Caribbean beach. It's about, what is my offering in this world? And when I see people like yourself, people are just connected, like, okay, we're here for a short amount of time. What am I here to give? That's when life, I feel like, really becomes successful. I'm Raghunath Cappo, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:35Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Greetings, astral travelers. It is I, Rich Roll, traveling parsecs across the multiverse, arriving as a digital apparition in your ear canal to deliver a public service announcement, which is that today's show is not to be missed, it is not to be played at 1.5x speed, or taken lightly for that matter, because spiritual warrior Raghunath Cappo is not only in the house, he is burning it down. Should this be your first foray into this man's world? Raghunath is a former straight edge punk rock icon. His band Youth of Today was front and center in the 1980s New York

• 3:20Rich Roll?

  City hardcore scene. But then he takes this really interesting, amazing turn. Despite experiencing success as a musician, he has this growing existential itch, which ultimately provokes him to walk away from his musical career. And at 22, super young, he goes on this pilgrimage to India and then proceeds to live as a monk, a renunciant, for the next six years, before ultimately returning to the States to live, I guess you could call it a devotional life in the bhakti yoga tradition, in service to humankind and

• 4:01Rich Roll?

  the pursuit of higher consciousness. Today, he is married, he's got five kids, and he runs Supersoul Yoga and Farm in upstate New York, where he, with his wife, leads yoga training, as well as a variety of spiritual quests throughout India, and hosts Wisdom of the Sages, a daily spiritual podcast. Raghu's story is incredible. This journey is unbelievable. It's quite the incredible journey. It is that of the modern day yogi. Raghunath drops many a timeless wisdom pearl and has crazy, mind-blowing stories for miles. It's all coming up quick, but first...

• 4:48Rich Roll?

  Okay, I don't want to say too much about the conversation to come, but I will say that this is about a search we all go on in some form or another. The search for meaning, personal meaning beyond the ego, and universal meaning beyond the material. It's about the timeless that lives in breeze within all of us beyond the senses. It's about transcending the illusions that hold us back and what it means to truly devote oneself to greater truth and this path towards higher consciousness. If you've enjoyed my many conversations with musicians John Joseph and Toby Morse,

• 5:30Rich Roll?

  my PMA ambassadors, or spiritual leaders like Guru Singh, Radhanath Swamy, Jason Garner, and even Russell Brand for that matter, then I'm pretty confident this is going to be your jam. So let the Jedi Warrior training begin because class, my friends, is in session.

• 5:53Rich Roll?

  So cool to have you here. I've been looking forward to this for a long time.

• 5:57Raghunath Cappo?

  I'm honored to be here, truthfully. The more I find out about your life, the more honored. I've been binge listening to Rich Roll, probably for like eight months, actually.

• 6:08Rich Roll?

  Oh, really? Wow.

• 6:09Raghunath Cappo?

  You were, it was a big help during the pandemic, which I would get to ride my bike. We live in the upstate New York, so there's a lot of beautiful places to ride bicycle. So just listen to Rich Roll.

• 6:20Rich Roll?

  Oh, man, I'm honored.

• 6:22Raghunath Cappo?

  You've got a great guests, too. It's really inspirational. And for the last two weeks, I've been thinking, oh, please, may I say something substantial, not stupid? I have a lot of stupid, I've got a lot of stupid stuff stored up here.

• 6:34Rich Roll?

  You are the wise one, not to put pressure on you, but.

• 6:37Raghunath Cappo?

  But you're doing great work.

• 6:38Rich Roll?

  Oh, thanks, man.

• 6:39Raghunath Cappo?

  Can I share one other inspiration?

• 6:41Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 6:42Raghunath Cappo?

  Well, I've been, you know, I've, I've always been into the whole idea of transformation.

• 6:49Raghunath Cappo?

  You know, through diet, through lifestyle, through spirituality and stuff. But you get stuck at certain points of your life, in different facets of your life. So I remember when I lived in California, I was a hundred percent raw foodist. Right. Do cleansing on a regular basis, and I was a yoga teacher here. It's where I met my wife. We got married in Laguna Beach at the Krishna Temple down there. And, you know, moving back east, a lot colder. About twenty degrees right now, black ice everywhere. Insulate yourself a little bit. Yeah, and then I, what do you call it, you know, I was very, before I was married, I did nothing. But jujitsu and yoga every day.

• 7:29Raghunath Cappo?

  You know, and I was in a band, I'd make some money, store that money, and just do jujitsu all day. And eat fruits and vegetables, and you can, living in California, you could just pick fruits and vegetables. Pick avocados that are literally growing off of people's trees, your neighbor's tree, your neighbor had a fig tree or an avocado tree, and you just live like that. And then slowly, as you, you know, I married a wonderful lady with two kids, and I got to play dad immediately. And I got, had to get used to that, and I had to start working, I stopped touring, and I had to get used to that. And worked as a yoga teacher. And I took on a whole new role of, you know, sort of growing up quick. And then we moved to the East Coast, and I wasn't used to that weather anymore.

• 8:12Raghunath Cappo?

  And I started to change my diet, and change my lifestyle, and started to neglect myself. And because I was a yoga teacher, and I was always very open and strong in a yoga practice, I sort of could get away with it because I was pretty flexible. But I remember about this year, I went to a doctor, and he said, "You know, Raghu, you're about thirty pounds overweight." And this was from a doctor who was very overweight. Oftentimes, the doctors are the most out of shape guys you'll ever meet. And I was like, "Oh, come on." In my mind, I was like, "Hey, come on, you're overweight, dude. You don't know what I'm talking about." And then I was like, I am overweight, actually. I am overweight and I have been like

• 8:54Raghunath Cappo?

  definitely deviated. You know, you can deviate in small increments and over a few years, it totals up. And I started, and my wife saying, okay, we're all getting season passes for snowboarding this year. And that's how we're going to deal with the winter. And I was like, I don't want to snowboard this year. I'm like, I feel, I'm at the stage in my life where I feel like I might like have a heart attack shoveling snow. That's how people die. And so you had Dr. Alan Goldhammer on the show.

• 9:23Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 9:23Raghunath Cappo?

  And I love him.

• 9:24Rich Roll?

  He's pretty cool, right?

• 9:25Raghunath Cappo?

  He's very cool. And I was into his whole thing of like water fasting. I was into that for, you know, years ago. And I was just said, you know what? I've been making too many excuses for too long. And I've been saying, well, I've been going internal. I've been going, you know, well, I can still do all these yoga poses. I'm still very open. I'm still, and I just realized, you know what? You gotta live this stuff too. And so it made me start on December, on December this year, or 2020, rather. And plus all the stress of the pandemic and stuff like that. I said, you know what? It's not a good time to do a water fast. And I'm gonna do a water fast. And I just did a beautiful 21 day.

• 10:06Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 10:06Raghunath Cappo?

  Water broth, mainly water, but some broth and juice. And I just decided on that day, I'm gonna reconnect with all this stuff that I've just neglected that I know about. And it was incredibly beautiful transformation. So I wanted to give this appreciation because what you're doing on this show has a ripple effect. Cause it's sound vibrations of transformation. And that's the whole bhakti thing that I'm into.

• 10:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's mantra and kirtan. It's a, it's a different version of that, I suppose. But.

• 10:37Raghunath Cappo?

  You know what? It's, it's, it's sound vibration that lifts people up and higher. And I just want you to know, I appreciate it.

• 10:44Rich Roll?

  Oh, man. That means a lot. That's, that's very cool to hear. I appreciate that. And that's great. You did a water fast. So how did you feel at the end of that?

• 10:52Raghunath Cappo?

  Well, I tell you, I felt that the, you know, the first three days are always sort of like, "Okay, deal with it."

• 10:56Rich Roll?

  It's the worst.

• 10:57Raghunath Cappo?

  It's the worst. And truthfully, I usually, by day four, I usually feel pretty good. I didn't this time. I didn't feel good. And on day nine, it's, and it was very cold. It was getting colder and colder. And I was like, "You know what? I'm gonna do a colonic and I'm gonna feel great." And I went in for my colonic and I felt worse. And I almost felt like I was catching a cold. And I was like, "This is no good. I gotta break this." And by day 11, I was flying so high. I felt so good. But another thing was, I've always hated running. I did jujitsu and I did yoga, but running, I hated. As a matter of fact, when I was 30 pounds overweight, I started, I said, "You know what? I'm gonna run." And I would run to the railroad tracks. I live on a dirt road. I ran to the railroad tracks and the first time I did it, I hurt my knee.

• 11:41Raghunath Cappo?

  And I was like, "This sucks. Running sucks." But that day, when I started doing that cleanse, I was like, "You know what? I'm gonna run 10 minutes. 10 minutes, in the morning and the night." And now I'm just running every day. And we did this great hike today. And my wife was going to Tour de Mont Blanc this summer. I said, "I'm gonna go too. I'm gonna go backpacking with you." And we just started. And you know, it's one thing leads to another. And that's the power of like, making one good choice.

• 12:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, a couple of observations on that. First of all, the fact that you did a colonic in the middle of a 21-day water. It's like, that's so, you know, endemic to your personality of like, gravitating towards these extremes, like punk rock's not extreme enough. So I'm gonna be, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do straight edge. And then I'm gonna do the whole Krishna, like, the road keeps getting narrower and narrower, right?

• 12:27Raghunath Cappo?

  I'm a fine, uh, I'm a fine, uh, connoisseur of cults.

• 12:31Rich Roll?

  The second thing being that, uh, despite all the work that you've done and your, you know, laudable, extreme devotion to, you know, cultivating higher consciousness, um, we all have our blind spots. And you're like, you know, you're recounting like, uh, these excuses that you're making for yourself. "Well, I do this, so this is okay." Realizing that no matter where we are on the path, we still are experts at, you know, pulling down the blinders on the stuff that we need to look at most.

• 13:00Raghunath Cappo?

  I feel that most of us aren't on jets. We're sort of tacking like a sailboat. Go a little up, a little down, a little up, a little down. And I'm okay with that in my life, and I can see that's happened. The tacking has been sometimes a little bit more extreme. But I feel like if there's a reasonable, if you set your compass, even if you tack too far north or too far south, if you've got that compass set, you'll end up in a good place.

• 13:25Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 13:26Raghunath Cappo?

  And the compass is helpful to have, you know, you know, people of integrity in your life. And I've always sort of kept people like that close. Even when I've gone, feel like I've gone really off, I felt like the people have sort of encouraged me back. And so I've had great people in my life, friends, peers, some you probably know.

• 13:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 13:48Raghunath Cappo?

  Radhanaswamy, who you've had as a guest, whom I love.

• 13:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 13:52Raghunath Cappo?

  And I spend time with him every year.

• 13:53Rich Roll?

  What a beautiful.

• 13:54Raghunath Cappo?

  And great soul, great people.

• 13:56Rich Roll?

  That guy is, I know.

• 13:57Raghunath Cappo?

  So lucky to have great people in our life. And what do you do? What you're creating with this podcast is like, you just have great, inspiring people on a regular basis visiting you, like.

• 14:06Rich Roll?

  And it's been such a gift to be able to share space and, and spend time with people that, that I respect and, and look up to. And then these people become my friends and part of my life. And, you know, our worlds sort of have intersected in that regard, like John Joseph. You probably go way back with that dude, right?

• 14:23Raghunath Cappo?

  Um, those guys in the Cro-Mags have been a big inspiration to me and, and to a lot of people for sure.

• 14:30Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. I mean, John's one of my best friends. I texted him the other day and told him you were coming in. He said to say hello.

• 14:35Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah, they're inspirational guys, inspirational guys, and transform their lives, transform people's lives, transform my life directly.

• 14:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 14:43Raghunath Cappo?

  You know, in debt. Those are people you're always in debt to.

• 14:47Rich Roll?

  Toby Morse?

• 14:48Raghunath Cappo?

  Toby Morse. I think I'm joining him for dinner tonight.

• 14:50Rich Roll?

  Oh, you are? Oh, cool. I texted him and told him you were coming in as well, too. So he said to say what's up. I'm glad that you're gonna see him.

• 14:56Raghunath Cappo?

  He texted me yesterday.

• 14:57Rich Roll?

  Very cool. Well, let's talk about the origin story a little bit. You know, I'm, I'm like obsessed and fascinated with New York City in the 1980s and like.

• 15:06Raghunath Cappo?

  I thought you meant the origin of the universe. I was like, yeah, everyone's got a good creation story.

• 15:10Rich Roll?

  How many hours you got, right? I'm gonna take your, you know, 90 day course.

• 15:14Raghunath Cappo?

  Well, Lord Brahma appeared on a lotus flower from Lord Vishnu's navel.

• 15:21Rich Roll?

  And many other things, right? That period, you know, I moved to New York in 1989 and lived there on and off for several years, so I was at the tail end of that.

• 15:31Raghunath Cappo?

  You were in New York in 89?

• 15:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I grew up in, I grew up in Washington DC, but I grew up kind of in an inside the belt way. My dad's a lawyer and, you know, I went to an all-boys prep school and even though-

• 15:45Raghunath Cappo?

  What school?

• 15:46Rich Roll?

  The Landon School for Boys.

• 15:48Raghunath Cappo?

  Okay.

• 15:49Rich Roll?

  Like coat and tie, like the whole thing. So, you know, the 9:30 Club is all happening down the street and that was another universe. Like, it's interesting to me, like this, you know, the percolation up through culture of punk rock and the hardcore scene was going on, but it didn't intersect with my life at all. And now, later in my life, people like John and Toby, you know, some of the hardcore people are like my favorite people. They're just like amazing human beings that have been, you know, sort of sculpted from that movement and yet that was not part of my growing up experience at all. And I still have, to be completely honest, like I have trouble connecting with the music. It's the people that I love.

• 16:32Raghunath Cappo?

  Colorful personalities. And for me, when I was 14 and 15, visiting my older brothers, I'm like a six out of seven kids, New York City parents that moved to Connecticut to have a, raise a family. So when my family all eventually started moving back to New York City as they grew up, so I used to visit my brothers in New York and I used to hang out in the Lower East Side and that's how I'd see all these people. And the Lower East Side, for those who don't know New York then, it was a whole different world. And it was, it was scary but exciting and for a 15-year-old, it was like, it was, everyone was almost like bigger than life, like cartoon, like comic book characters, villains and

• 17:13Raghunath Cappo?

  heroes and sometimes they blended into one, is he a villain or a hero? Things like that. So especially in the punk scene, everybody had a punk name and their weapons of choice and it was sort of a scary scene, but it was exciting compared to a suburban high school.

• 17:30Rich Roll?

  Right, and you could just, you just took the train down from Connecticut and just?

• 17:33Raghunath Cappo?

  Uh, yeah, from, from Westchester. We used to, we were sort of on the border. We used to take the metro north to New York City. And my parents were, you know, I was, I mean, I get it. I have five kids. So when my, you know, the, the youngest one, you get exhausted being a parent, you know? And you, you slacken, slacken up. So by the time I came around, my parents were like, yeah, you want to go to New York this weekend? Have a great time. I'm going to see some music, Mom. And they're, and they were like, okay, Philharmonic, what, what could he be possibly doing?

• 18:04Rich Roll?

  Unbelievable.

• 18:05Raghunath Cappo?

  I know.

• 18:05Rich Roll?

  And so what were the clubs that you were going to at that time?

• 18:08Raghunath Cappo?

  Uh, CBGB's, A7, you know, uh, I've been to the Mud Club, I've been to, you know, the Ritz, which is now Webster Hall.

• 18:17Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. And how did, so what was the process of?

• 18:21Raghunath Cappo?

  They were, they were like gross, you know what I mean? When we talk about them, they sound like fantastic. They were grotesque.

• 18:26Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 18:27Raghunath Cappo?

  By, by normal civilians, like my wife, I call her a civilian. She has no clue what hardcore is, doesn't know anything about it, you know? Didn't even know I was in a band when we were, started dating.

• 18:39Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 18:41Raghunath Cappo?

  But they were great. If you were into that music, it was like, that, that was like the, the, the, the music Mecca. For us, it was so much more than, um, well, we want to play another band's songs. I want to play the best of Rush, or the best of Cheap Trick, or the best of Zeppelin. We just want to write our own music. And it was sort of cool.

• 19:02Rich Roll?

  And what was it that you connected with? Like when you're 15 and you're going to these clubs for the first time and you're being exposed to this scene? Like what was it about that, that like excited you?

• 19:14Raghunath Cappo?

  I, I think it was that originality that like, these are just guys my age. You know, the first band I saw was like the Beastie Boys first band. They were in a band called The Young and the Useless.

• 19:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 19:26Raghunath Cappo?

  And they were 14 or 15, like I was, and they were making their own music on stage. I was like, I think I could do that. I think I could do that. And from there, I went back and me and my three nerdy friends from my big suburban high school, we just, who, you know, we created a band. We started playing and the local radio station played our cassette.

• 19:52Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 19:52Raghunath Cappo?

  And from that, we got asked to play at a big punk club in, it was funny because you probably know Moby.

• 20:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 20:00Raghunath Cappo?

  This big guy. So Moby was in a band that also played. We played this big show.

• 20:04Rich Roll?

  The Vatican Commandos, right?

• 20:05Raghunath Cappo?

  The Vatican Commandos. So Moby was, we played with Moby's band and Agnostic Front back in the very old days, all these old classic hardcore bands. This was like 1982. We played a big show in Bridgeport, Connecticut at a place called Pogo's. And I was 16 years old. It was like the most exciting thing for a 16 year old to, Dad, we got a gig. Can I drive to Bridgeport, Connecticut? And there's like every, you know, when you're, everything's intimidating there. A guy with a mohawk is standing outside with a leather jacket and there's all these older guys and everyone's getting drunk and smoking and and you're sort of like new to this whole thing. And you're in the band and you come in and then all of a sudden the cops raid the place. Because it's, you weren't supposed to be underage.

• 20:50Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 20:50Raghunath Cappo?

  The cops were raided. We, after the gig, we're all hiding underneath the stage until the cops get out of there. And when the whole night's done, I played. I got offered to a gig in New York City. And, you know, I'm driving back to my other suburban town of Danbury, Connecticut. And I'm feeling like that was the most exciting night of my life. That was the most exciting night of my life. I was 16 years old.

• 21:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you become like an overnight legend. Like the stories you're gonna tell when you go back to high school the next day. I mean, are you kidding?

• 21:19Raghunath Cappo?

  You can't even explain it. You can't even explain it. So what happens is you start to create your own friends that have nothing to do with your high school friends. And that's what happened. I created a whole second life. That's sort of like where these friends that would go to New York City all the time. And then there was a local little, it was an interesting little art gallery where Keith Haring and a lot of like these New York City street artists and original graffiti writers. There was an art studio in

• 21:47Raghunath Cappo?

  Stanford, Connecticut, and they would have punk shows in the basement. And so that became sort of a hub. And that's where I met Porcell, who later became Parmenanda. And he was our guitar player now in Shelter and Youth of Today. And it was a place for sort of like kids in Connecticut to come together and experience. That's how I met Moby. And that's, we all used to hang out at this one underground art gallery. It was called The Anthrax.

• 22:15Rich Roll?

  That's wild. Well, it sounds like it all happened pretty quickly.

• 22:19Raghunath Cappo?

  It was, you know, that was high school, you know? And it was high school. And then.

• 22:23Rich Roll?

  And then you just moved to the city after?

• 22:25Raghunath Cappo?

  Then as soon as high school, we moved to New York City. And Youth of Today started. And that band became sort of popular.

• 22:31Rich Roll?

  Right. And Cro-Mags must have been around at that time as well. Was that, did that coincide? Or was that a different?

• 22:37Raghunath Cappo?

  They were around. You know, I knew Harley from the Cro-Mags better. And they were sort of into Krishna. Because I think the Krishna got, part of like all Hindu Dharma is you, is a very interesting thing. In India, every temple gives sacred food out. Like you can walk through a holy village and they will give you sacred food. That's part of Hindu Dharma is you're supposed to be growing the food with love, preparing the food with love, and then offering the food with love. And then you distribute the food with love. And that's called prashad, or food cooked with the intention of love to God behind the food.

• 23:21Raghunath Cappo?

  And so one of the missions of the Krishna Swami that came to America, Swami Prabhupada, was this is part of our mission statement is we cook food. And because everyone needs love ultimately. It's not, not everybody needs food. We give this to the wealthy or the poor, whoever will take it. So these Krishna devotees would set up giving food out. And I think the guys from the Cro-Mags used to get food from here. And they used to read the Bhagavad Gita. And so Harley from the Cro-Mags, who was, you know? It was a very interesting, like, street kid, grew up on the streets of New York. He was in a band when he was in sixth grade, you know, while most people are in Cub Scouts, he was in a punk band. And he used to like, you know, and he was the leader of a street gang on top of it.

• 24:06Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 24:06Raghunath Cappo?

  And so they used to preach to me.

• 24:08Rich Roll?

  It's such an interesting, weird clash of cultures. Like, you know, I only know all of this through John's lens. I've never met Harley, but John talks about, I mean, John, you know, grew in and out of all kinds of foster homes and, you know, his life story is insane. But he falls into this scene and kind of is taken under the Bad Brains wing. And, and that's where he learned kind of about, you know, Ital and like all of these ideas about, you know, treating the body temple. I think Krishna, the Krishna aspect came a little bit later. But the food aspect of this culture becomes, you know, front and center, super important. He's working in some vegetarian restaurant or food market or something like that. And I know like Angelica's Kitchen was like a big kind of focal point.

• 24:52Raghunath Cappo?

  And I was at a place called Ahimsa, that's where I worked. And Purcell, our guitar player, worked at Prana.

• 24:59Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 24:59Raghunath Cappo?

  And there was a bookstore called Ayurveda. And, you know, now we just went to Joy Cafe, Incredible Cafe. And even yoga, it just like wasn't in the conversation. Veganism, animal rights, vegetarian, it wasn't in the conversation. But, you know, the Lower East Side was a, was a weird subculture of freaks, basically. And whether you were into punk or hardcore, death or goth or vegetarianism or, there's all weird, just peculiar people would gravitate towards the Lower East Side. And we all sort of accepted each other as, we're all a bunch of outcasts here, you know? So, yeah, there was, there was these random Angelica's kitchens and, and we all sort of grew up interested in, I mean, I remember.

• 25:43Raghunath Cappo?

  Just eating spirulina in 1985 when no one know what spirulina was, you know?

• 25:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But where does the, where does the Hare Krishna thing intercept with that? Was that community just living in the same neighborhood? Like, how does the, how does the, how does the like straight edge hardcore scene? You know, in the Venn diagram, you know what I mean? Like, it's one thing to be punk, it's another thing to be straight edge. And then to just gravitate towards the Hare Krishna movement and, you know, follow the bhakti path. It seems like the straight edge community is a little bit of a feeder to that. Like, if you telescope out, it's like, alright, well, these are about, this is about like taking a stand against mainstream society. Like, we're not buying into this paradigm. We're looking for something more meaningful, something that's a little bit more authentic.

• 26:30Rich Roll?

  So perhaps it's just an extension of that learning curve? Or that kind of spiritual trajectory that would attract somebody to the straight edge scene to begin with? But what did that look like for you?

• 26:43Raghunath Cappo?

  For me, there was not a straight edge scene in New York, per se. And I was just sort of like, I was just more into like sports and a healthy living.

• 26:54Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 26:55Raghunath Cappo?

  I don't know why.

• 26:55Rich Roll?

  But that made you a freak among the freaks, right?

• 26:58Raghunath Cappo?

  Well, yeah.

• 26:58Rich Roll?

  Because you can't be into sports and be into punk.

• 27:01Raghunath Cappo?

  Exactly. Especially then, in 1982, because it was, it was really dark and there was a lot of heavy drugs. Drugs that they didn't even do in high school. I mean, I thought high school partying was sort of lame and I didn't want to be like that. And so, but when I got, started hanging out in New York, I was like, oh, these guys are much worse. These guys are taking, these guys are putting their face in a brown paper bag and huffing glue. So what the hell is going on here? And I was just into like positive living and I just didn't jive with that stuff. And so, I never expected it to become as big as it was. But we had a band and I'm very outspoken about what I believe in. And a straight edge scene sort of quickly... A culture of it sort of quickly started forming.

• 27:46Raghunath Cappo?

  And then that year, we got into animal rights. It just seemed like a natural progression of, okay, I want to keep my mind under control, my body under control, my tongue under control, my genitals under control. And I got to figure out, like, why am I killing this cow, but we're not killing this dog? And when you start to think like that, you start to realize, like, oh, I get it. I'm like a sociopath who can sort of like, hey, children, let's play a game. And then all of a sudden, you murder another child. So what am I doing with my mind? And I got that in my mind, living with my family. But, you know, I didn't know how to cook.

• 28:28Raghunath Cappo?

  But so I made this deal, like, when I turn 18, or when I move out of my house, I'm not going to eat meat anymore. I'm just not going to do it. And then I read Peter Singer's book, and the Krishna people also put out a book on vegetarianism. So then I was like, I'm just going to choose this lifestyle. I'm just going to deal with it. And I'm going to find support. Because there's not like real support, like there's, you couldn't go online and find support. You just had to figure it out. Okay, what am I going to eat? You know, spaghetti every day, or Coca-Cola? And so it was sort of like a process. And then New York City did have that support with health food stores. I got a job at a health food restaurant. I started getting into yoga then.

• 29:09Rich Roll?

  What was the yoga scene in New York like at that time?

• 29:12Raghunath Cappo?

  It all was spiritually based yoga. It wasn't athletic based.

• 29:15Rich Roll?

  No, of course not. But there was, there were yoga studios.

• 29:17Raghunath Cappo?

  It was all connected to ashrams.

• 29:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And where it was like, I mean, David Life and Sharon Danen were like around at that. I mean, they come from the punk movement too, right?

• 29:28Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah, they were, they were in the neighborhood. David had a Life Cafe.

• 29:31Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 29:32Raghunath Cappo?

  And he's cool. And Sharon's cool. And they live not far from me.

• 29:35Rich Roll?

  But when you go to Jiva Mukti now in New York, and it's like, it's so swank, and like, the cafes amazing, and you're like, but you're like, these are just punk rockers who were, you know, it's like, they came out of that movement when yoga was like an act of rebellion.

• 29:48Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah. And they still have that in them too. And, yeah, they're wonderful. I remember practicing next to them at Dharma Maitreya's place. Dharma Maitreya's probably 85 years old this year, maybe.

• 30:02Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 30:03Raghunath Cappo?

  But he was... Long-term yoga teacher, but spiritually based, they all had gurus and it wasn't as secular as yoga has become nowadays.

• 30:21Rich Roll?

  So use it today, get some traction. You guys are playing all the time. You make a name for yourself. You like create this, this band that tons of people are into. You start a record label. Like you got a lot of stuff going on. By like, when it, when is this? Like early 90s?

• 30:36Raghunath Cappo?

  Uh, no, this was 1985, 86, 87.

• 30:40Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow. Earlier than I thought.

• 30:41Raghunath Cappo?

  And then in 88, I started getting more serious about my spiritual life, um, which sort of came from a combination of success and feeling like questioning what success is. You know, you had these bands that were sort of like the Beastie Boys, where they were like peers and they were like blowing up and getting huge.

• 30:59Rich Roll?

  Did you watch the documentary?

• 31:01Raghunath Cappo?

  I didn't.

• 31:01Rich Roll?

  The Beastie Boys documentary?

• 31:02Raghunath Cappo?

  No, I heard it was great, though.

• 31:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's great. It's great. I mean, you would love it because they have so much footage from the very early days.

• 31:09Raghunath Cappo?

  But I remember being on tour and they were on tour and I saw them when they left New York at Webster Hall. Um, and it was just like, I remember when the record License to Ill started blowing up and I was like, this is unbelievable. This is actually unbelievable. And, um, then we were on tour and we saw them in LA and, you know, Run DMC are there. I'm like, this is unbelievable.

• 31:30Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 31:30Raghunath Cappo?

  And it was just like, the whole thing was just shocking. And our friend, that Murphy's Law, which are friends of ours, and they were on tour with them too. And the whole thing was like, it was like shocking, like, cause no one's expecting hardcore.

• 31:42Rich Roll?

  Right. Cause we're just having fun. Like, we're doing DIY stuff. We're printing our own, you know, flyers and all that kind of stuff. Like, there's no expectation or attachment to any kind of like broader success.

• 31:52Raghunath Cappo?

  Or this is a career. This is a career. No one thought about, I wanna, when I grow up, I wanna be in a band. It wasn't like that at all. Never. We, we just sort of like, I don't know, on a mission? I don't know what it was.

• 32:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 32:03Raghunath Cappo?

  So, yeah, that was a, that was a little. That was a little shocking when that happened, but what was your question?

• 32:09Rich Roll?

  Basically, like, I want to walk you up to this point where you end up walking away from the band and everything. So, the band's getting bigger, you're getting more success.

• 32:19Raghunath Cappo?

  You know that my father, my father got sick.

• 32:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 32:22Raghunath Cappo?

  And he died.

• 32:23Rich Roll?

  I mean, now it seems like that was the big inflection point.

• 32:26Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah, and I think sometimes it takes a tragedy to sort of, to make you reevaluate life, these, you know, these spiritual epiphanies, like.

• 32:35Rich Roll?

  But you'd been doing yoga and, you know.

• 32:38Raghunath Cappo?

  I had been into it and sort of on a spiritual quest, and this egg had really just slingshotted my desire to go deeper, because I really felt like there is nothing of this world that will really satisfy my heart. There is no amount of success, there's no soulmate, there's no, you know, there's this beautiful statement, this, in Bhakti literature, that there's, you know, this is how I phrase it anyway, there, you know, there's a God-shaped hole, a God-shaped hole in the heart, and we'll shove anything in that hole. We're looking to shove anything to feel connected, but only God will fit in that hole. And we try to, the three main things that we really try to put in that

• 33:20Raghunath Cappo?

  hole are, we feel like there is a person out there that will make me complete. And it's been romanticized. And there are people that we connect with, there's people that we love, but they're not our God. They can't be our God, and we shouldn't make them our God, or we're setting ourselves up for hell in the future, and, or we're going to become incredibly needy, or they're going to be needy, it's going to be a real dysfunctional relationship. So, the person shouldn't be our God. And the next one is, there's no amount of financial height you can go to that will actually satisfy that, yourself to. There's no amount of money you can put in that God-shaped hole. And the final one

• 33:59Raghunath Cappo?

  is, there's no amount of validation, material validation. You can find people who sometimes get the most validation, and they're sometimes even more screwed up. And I started feeling like, yeah, there's nothing of this world. And I remember sitting in a yoga center once, and reading this quote from a swami, saying, "You must become materially exhausted to start your spiritual life." You have to like... Be cynical with material success. Give up hope. And I was always a very positive person. Matter of fact, I'd read these books early on in my life and think, oh, these yogis, they're so negative about life. What's wrong with life? Life is good.

• 34:43Raghunath Cappo?

  I've got so much hope. But you have to be cynical with material hope. You can be very, very, um, uh, you can believe in spiritual fortune. Like there is a spiritual success, but material success is a dead end. And so when I saw my father going down so hard, so sad, I started to realize, yeah, this material world is an unfair place.

• 35:10Rich Roll?

  Well, that's an amazing, you know, kind of epiphany to have as a young person. And it's not like you were, you know, living in a mansion at the top of the hill, like you were getting success, but you didn't have to hit some kind of crazy bottom or, you know, spend the better part of your entire life chasing some material need in order to have that reckoning. Like, I think it's unbelievably true that you have to have that existential crisis of one form or another to shock you out of your, you know, the Maya of your daily existence. That can come in the form of something disastrous or when you've just exhausted as much, you

• 35:53Rich Roll?

  know, chasing of material success as is humanly possible. But at either end of that spectrum is a reckoning that will compel you to confront yourself in a more meaningful way. But you were able to do it as a very young person.

• 36:08Raghunath Cappo?

  I think most of us in Western culture who are, you know, in the biggest picture of things, we're halves. We have. We've been to the best beaches. We've been to the coolest places. We've traveled around the world. It always boils down to this whole, "Big deal. I did it. I went to the Eiffel Tower. Big deal."

• 36:27Rich Roll?

  But the persistence of the illusion is so woven into the fabric of our, like, it's like, "Yeah, I did that, but okay, so I felt good for a minute. That faded. Well, it must be the next thing." And when it's not that, it's the next thing because I gotta keep up with this guy. And most spend their entire life chasing that.

• 36:48Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah, or trying to get some material bucket list, which it really boils down to, "Big deal. Here I am. It's perfect. Big deal. Now what?" Or this is another great one, "Now what? Now what?" And I think when you get to that point, you're like, "Yeah, now what?" Then it makes you realize, okay, life isn't about trying to put your foot on every continent, on every like perfectly Caribbean beach. It's about what is my offering in this world? I had such a great day with Greg today. What is my offering in this world? And when I see people like yourself, people are just connected, like, "Okay, we're here for a short amount of time. What am I here to give?" And that's when life, I feel like, really becomes successful.

• 37:30Raghunath Cappo?

  And you feel very fortunate and very connected and you enjoy waking up in the morning. And there's no, "Oh crap, it's Monday or Friday. Thank God it's Friday." Where like, I feel like I could do what I do 24/7. I'm one of these very like hyper, I could do what I do every day and for hours a day. And I love what I do. And I just feel like it's important to shine light on the romance of what Hollywood creates or what even just people's personal Maya creates in their mind. Like, "Well, if I was in this situation, I'd be better off. If I lived out here, I'd be better off. If I could only find some time away."

• 38:15Raghunath Cappo?

  Getting fame at an early age, and even though it wasn't huge fame, getting that fame, it punctured the romance of what a lot of people, it's a long, long, attractive dead end.

• 38:29Raghunath Cappo?

  I'm sure you can relate to that.

• 38:31Rich Roll?

  No, I mean, that's beautifully put. But I suspect that most people who have been in some analogous version of that situation might think, I need to do something a little bit more meaningful. Maybe I'll volunteer at a nonprofit, or I'll double down on my yoga practice, or figure out some way of living more in seva in my day to day. But what very few do is say, I'm going to go on a walkabout and end up in India and a monk for six or seven years, or however long you were doing that.

• 39:07Raghunath Cappo?

  I'm an extremist.

• 39:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's an extreme.

• 39:08Raghunath Cappo?

  I'm not asking everybody to be extremist either.

• 39:11Rich Roll?

  You're talking to an extremist.

• 39:13Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah, you're an extremist.

• 39:14Rich Roll?

  I'm vibrating on that wavelength. Like, I get it, and I celebrate that. And I've also gone through phases of feeling guilty, or feeling like I have to apologize for being an extremist. But it's an amazing lever for things good and bad. It's led me down dark alleyways, but it's also been something that has catalyzed tremendous growth and progress in my life. So when I see that kind of hardcore pivot, hardcore to put a pun on it, like, that's awesome. Most people wouldn't do that. But you took that thing inside of you that's attracted to those kinds of extremes, and like, put it to this amazing use that completely changed your life.

• 39:57Raghunath Cappo?

  Well, probably people like you and me and John and stuff like that, we're like fast-moving trains. And it's just like, there's a guy working the switch on the train, pulls the switch, and the train's going to go south, or it's going to go north. And we've just, like, through the company of like-minded people, we've just chose, all right, let's work really hard to go north here. Because it's a force, and it's a determination, and it's a focus.

• 40:25Raghunath Cappo?

  That if it's like misdirected, it can cause a ripple effect of destruction as well.

• 40:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 40:31Raghunath Cappo?

  And so I'm like, you know, I'm well aware of that.

• 40:34Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 40:35Raghunath Cappo?

  When it's channeled in the wrong way, the problems it can cause.

• 40:38Rich Roll?

  So your dad gets very ill. Doesn't he slide into a coma or something like that?

• 40:43Raghunath Cappo?

  He goes into a coma for three years.

• 40:44Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 40:45Raghunath Cappo?

  Which is a, you know, coma is a weird place because you don't quite, is he alive? Is he dead?

• 40:49Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 40:50Raghunath Cappo?

  You know, half the family thinks he's dead, half the family thinks he's alive. And I am like in a state of like teenage denial, like I can't, I can't even deal with it. It's quite humiliating to admit, but I just couldn't deal with it. I just didn't know how to, where to put it in my brain. In the meantime, I have a band that's sort of like asking me to go on tour. And when you're 19, you've never left New Jersey, New York and Connecticut. That's like, what? You're gonna go on tour? You're gonna go to California where there's palm trees and fruit that grows on trees? Like, what? And you know, my mother just said, just go, just, you know? And then I just went on tour and then I had to like sort of digest it.

• 41:31Raghunath Cappo?

  And I, I think between the band doing their thing and my father, you know, eventually leaving his body. I got to this point where, and, and, and the scene getting created around me. I just realized I need, I need something more in my life also. So that was sort of, I, I just, at that point, at that height of the band, I left the band and went to India. Not even knowing as much of sort of what I was getting into, but I, I just had a strong. First of all, I had a strong faith in Vedic culture, the yoga culture, which was, um, which I started really studying. Cause you know, when you get into spiritual culture, it can be very confusing. And the Vedic culture is like very, very broad, very, very open.

• 42:15Raghunath Cappo?

  Like I, I know, I went to one year of college and I didn't know why, because all I, I wanted to do was music. And, um, I know I didn't want to be one of these like, what was it in our generation? There was like Animal House was the movie ever like, I didn't want to be like one of these frat boy, animal house guys. So I started hanging out with all these Christians. Cause I felt like, you know what? These Christians, they're sort of grounded. They're not those frat guys. I like the New Testament. I think it's a good book. I'm gonna hang out with them, but I also love the teachings of Buddha. So I remember reading the Dhammapada, which is a great book on compassion and.

• 42:51Raghunath Cappo?

  Mindfulness and introspection. And I remember reading this, I was like, oh my God, this is so good. Wait till I tell all my Christian friends about this. They're gonna love it.

• 43:05Rich Roll?

  That's so funny.

• 43:06Raghunath Cappo?

  And they just didn't love it, Rich.

• 43:08Rich Roll?

  Right, way to read the room.

• 43:09Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah. My argument was, are you kidding? These are the same teachings of Jesus. Where they're right here, don't you understand? And at that time, I started to realize like, it's so easy to find differences. And it's so easy to find commonalities. And it's one thing that like, we're facing off in this country right now. We're looking for differences. And we all have so much more like in common. If you read the teachings of Buddha and read the teachings of Christ, you'll find so many wonderful commonalities.

• 43:41Rich Roll?

  We identify with the differences and spend most of our time arguing over those. But isn't a big cornerstone of the Bhakti path, the Bhakti path has a set, not ideology, but you know, sort of philosophy of living. But part of that is embracing that which is consistent in all religions. Like the idea that you can go to the mosque and you can go to the temple and, and you know, sit with these people who are all, you know, seeking something greater than, than themselves.

• 44:12Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah, it's, it's an appreciation of how everybody's on a, on a path. And, and everybody is a spiritual being. That's not something I have to convert somebody to. It's just the idea that we are that, we just forgot. And so the path of yoga is a path of remembering what we already are. Not converting me to join one club. Okay, change your costume to this costume. There's a different religious costume, different religious haircut. And we, we wear beards over here. It, it, it's remembering what we already are, but we just forgot. And why do we forget? We're programmed. We're programmed, okay, now you're this guy and you want to be loved, you wear this. And, and you know, we've been programmed that, I can speak for myself, being in like, in a junior high school.

• 44:57Raghunath Cappo?

  Ever have that experience from like, everything's cool in elementary school? And at least when I was growing up, elementary school was like, nothing. It's just everybody's friends, they're all friends. But all of a sudden, once you get into junior high school, it's like, You're wearing the wrong jeans. What's wrong with these jeans? They're the wrong jeans, man! You're wearing the wrong sneakers. You gotta go wear the right shirt. You got to wear the belt buckle. And I was like, oh, my God, Mom, I got the wrong jeans on. What do you mean? My mom grew up in the Depression, you know? It's like, what do you mean? Those are great jeans. No, they're not. They're the wrong jeans. And you realize if you want to be loved, if you want to be accepted, you have to wear the right outfit. And slowly, we'd start becoming conditioned to how to be loved, how to be accepted, how to be validated and valuable. And it's so painful.

• 45:42Rich Roll?

  And identity is formed in opposition to others or as a definition of how you're, you know, sort of fitting into your particular tribe as opposed to any kind of self-reflection, right? Like, our educational system isn't set up for that.

• 45:59Raghunath Cappo?

  It's exactly it. And we're creating others all the time. And it took me about three years, probably from seventh to ninth grade, to be like... And I worked my way up. I was at the bottom. I worked my way up because I literally had to like... I got the right jeans. I got the right shirts. I, you know, had my hair, you know, parted the appropriate way. I learned all the... And then I started to fight because at least where I was going to school, it was you get picked on. And so when you get picked on and bullied and extorted from, you either have to become a wallflower and like, like, literally hide and make yourself unknown, or you get picked on, or you fight back.

• 46:43Raghunath Cappo?

  And so I said, okay, I'm just gonna start fighting back. I'm gonna... I was the bully. Now I'm gonna bully. And I just switched roles. And then I realized, I don't want to win these people over. And that's sort of like my entrance into punk. So in a lot of ways, punk rock saved me from being that high school jerk.

• 46:59Rich Roll?

  Well, you're just opting out of the entire paradigm, basically.

• 47:02Raghunath Cappo?

  Exactly.

• 47:02Rich Roll?

  Right. And then you're part of that paradigm. And then you're like, I got upped out of this now, right? So what was it about India, the Vedic tradition? Maybe like, we can talk a little bit about what that means and why you were drawn to that and how you ended up in India?

• 47:19Raghunath Cappo?

  I think the inclusivity of it, like, the way we say in English, we say the sun. And in France, they say soleil. And in India, they say surya. I can't argue with the French guy and say, "No, no, no, it's sun." And argue with the Indian guy, "No, no, no." So fundamentalism in any spiritual path is ugly. We dig our heels into some nuance and we find those differences. Whereas woven right into the teachings of the Vedic paradigm is that, "No, no, no, no, don't you understand? There's one truth, and truth is for everyone. And no one's got a monopoly on truth." You know, not your skin color, not your gender, not where you were born, not country, not Indian.

• 48:03Raghunath Cappo?

  Indians don't own truth, you know? It's for everyone, because actually, we're not Indian, and we're not white, and we're not black. We're actually spiritual beings. And if you think you're white, or black, or Asian, I've got news for you, it's like a rental car. You got it for a few years only. Don't get too proud of it. Don't feel so privileged with it, it's not even you. Your real identity is your spiritual being. And your pain in this world is gonna come from identifying with your body as yourself. And so I love that as the threshold to, even as myself as like, straight edge, or a leader in the straight edge community. I started thinking, "Yeah, I'm not straight edge. I'm a spirit soul.

• 48:47Raghunath Cappo?

  I'm a spiritual being." And I like that identity. And I was like, "That is the identity I want to, that's the suit of clothes I wanna try on. Let's see how that feels." And I don't even wanna be considered a Harry Krishna, or a, when people are like, "What are you? What's your story? What are you into?" I just say, "I'm a spirit soul." I'm a spirit, you know why? Because that's what it ultimately is.

• 49:11Rich Roll?

  That just shuts down the conversation.

• 49:12Raghunath Cappo?

  It shuts down the conversation, because they already have a preconceived, "Oh, you're that guy."

• 49:18Rich Roll?

  But you have to decouple, or you had to decouple, the identity that you had created around being this punk rocker, the successful punk rocker, sort of an entrepreneur also within that space, and your attachment to the success, and the validation, and developing an understanding that if you continue to pursue that path... You'll continue to be seeking that validation. It will never be enough. The god hole can never be filled. And the more you try to fill it, the greater it will expand in lockstep with that drive. Right? And that's it. Like, I mean, I already said it, but like to have that kind of epiphany as a young person

• 49:58Rich Roll?

  and say, I'm not, I'm going to completely walk away from this and pursue this other path that is even more extreme than what I've been doing is, that's the story of the modern day yogi. You know, there aren't that many people that have done that. You're not the only, but.

• 50:14Raghunath Cappo?

  Some people get it at a younger age. Some people get it at an old age and some people never get that epiphany at all.

• 50:20Rich Roll?

  Right. Who's the one who was like eight years old and left walk the family?

• 50:24Raghunath Cappo?

  Actually, there's a lot of people. Historically, there's a lot of people in, in India, you hear about these people at age eight.

• 50:30Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 50:31Raghunath Cappo?

  At age four, you know, Radhanaswamy's guru's guru at age four was a master of the Bhagavad Gita. You know, four, I was like pulling the head off my G I Joe.

• 50:40Rich Roll?

  I know, I know.

• 50:41Raghunath Cappo?

  It's hard to even believe this, but there's people like that. There's Sanskrit scholar children who can give discourses on the Bhagavad Gita. And it's just.

• 50:50Rich Roll?

  When you read the book autobiography of a yogi, the Yogananda's book, he talks extensively about having that awareness as a very young person and walking away from his family to basically be this, you know.

• 51:02Raghunath Cappo?

  He tried to run away to Brindavan.

• 51:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 51:04Raghunath Cappo?

  And he tried to go to Brindavan to be, yeah. And I, and the way we understand that is that everything that we do in this life is a practice. Like you're really good at interviewing. I just want you to know that. You are a great interviewer.

• 51:18Rich Roll?

  Thank you. We're only, we're only a part of way into it. I can, I can still screw it up.

• 51:21Raghunath Cappo?

  Go ahead. No, even if you blow this one, all the interviews I've heard you do, I was like, man, he really knows how to interview. He's really systematic going through these questions are good. But you get that way, you probably didn't come out of the womb doing that. You practice it and you refine it and you sharpen your skill, you hone your skill. I can do handstands, you know, and I didn't come out of the womb doing handstands. I practiced it. So everything that we do in this life is a practice, both material things, good things, bad things, drinking alcohol is a, is a, is a practice. Being unforgiving is a practice. If you're not good at forgiving people. Means you've been practicing not forgiving people.

• 52:03Raghunath Cappo?

  And if you forgive people, generally that you gotta practice to forgive people. Some people say, "Well, I'm not good at forgiving." You gotta practice it. You gotta, you gotta work it. So whatever we do, both good and bad, in this lifetime, the yogi accepts, you know what? This is all a practice. If you have some spiritual epiphany, or some depth in your spiritual life, or your material life, it's coming from your previous life. I mean, you're picking up where you last left off. Have you seen that? I've been talking about this on the podcast. Surviving Death. It's on Netflix.

• 52:36Rich Roll?

  Oh, no. My daughter was telling me I gotta watch it.

• 52:39Raghunath Cappo?

  Episode 6 is so good. About all these children who are just speaking. I mean, I'm a card-carrying believer in reincarnation. I speak about it. I philosophically understand it. But when you hear these children speaking about it, after you watch it, you're like, "Oh, my God, I totally get this now." The kid is like recalling their previous life. And it's not every kid. It's a handful of kids, and they documented them all. And they're saying things about their names, and their parents, and how they died. And they're four years old. And the mother's like, "What are you talking about?" And the mother Googles the name.

• 53:15Rich Roll?

  Can you go find the person? Yeah, I was gonna ask that.

• 53:17Raghunath Cappo?

  And they find the people.

• 53:18Rich Roll?

  No way.

• 53:18Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah, it's Episode 6. Watch it. It's so good. And there's thousands of them.

• 53:22Rich Roll?

  That's nuts. That's a close cousin to, you know, the stories that we've all, we all hear of the prodigy who, you know, at age, super young, is able to just master a musical instrument, or do something that it just seems impossible that they would know how to do that.

• 53:38Raghunath Cappo?

  We hear this young, four-year-old Indian kid, who's playing tabulas. And they couldn't believe how good he was. And they brought this master in from India. And the master was like, "There's no way this child can know these beats at this age." And the idea is whether it's a musical practice, an intellectual, they're carrying something from a previous life. Even bad habits.

• 54:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 54:02Raghunath Cappo?

  Even addictive habits. They're coming from somewhere else. And then when the gross body dies, they stay with the subtle body. That's the mind and the intelligence. And we pick them up. So who knows? Maybe both of us are on a spiritual path. Maybe it's from a previous life. Maybe we've just met great people in this life. You know? I don't like to take credit like, oh, it must have been a great spiritual. Yes.

• 54:24Rich Roll?

  Everybody in their past life was some noteworthy person.

• 54:27Raghunath Cappo?

  I think I was Cleopatra.

• 54:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly. Well, I, you know, I like to think that all the people that come on the podcast are, you know, people that over my many past lives I've encountered in different forms.

• 54:39Raghunath Cappo?

  Could be.

• 54:39Rich Roll?

  And we're having a, we're having a convention, a reconvening.

• 54:42Raghunath Cappo?

  A reunion.

• 54:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 54:44Raghunath Cappo?

  It's a family reunion.

• 54:45Rich Roll?

  Um, all right, man. So I'm still trying to get to this thing about you going to India. So you, did you know where you were going? Did you like?

• 54:51Raghunath Cappo?

  Not really. I didn't really know much about anything, but I knew that I wanted to become a monk.

• 54:57Rich Roll?

  So you had that.

• 54:58Raghunath Cappo?

  And I had that. And I believed in the Bhagavad Gita. I thought that was right. But I didn't really know all the nuances of everything. So I did go in very green and sort of like, even though I accepted it, I was like, really sort of not two feet in until I started, I started applying all this stuff to my life immediately.

• 55:16Rich Roll?

  I mean, did you go on like a walkabout like Ram Dass or Bhagavandas? Or did you have an ashram that you were traveling to where you knew you were going to have a bed and a place to sleep?

• 55:27Raghunath Cappo?

  And I, uh, I had no commitments, but I knew there was a Krishna temple in Vrindav in India, a holy place in India. And, um, I, I met some monks who, uh, were visiting in America and they invited me. They say, if you want to stop by at our ashram while you go through India. I knew I was going to India after my tour. And it happened when I got back from tour, my father left his body and I was booked a, booked a ticket and I just left and realized like, all right, this is my path now.

• 55:58Rich Roll?

  And you got to the ashram and then

• 56:00Raghunath Cappo?

  I got to the ashram and you know

• 56:01Rich Roll?

  That was your home for a while.

• 56:02Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah, and I was, you know, I had some money saved from touring, not tons of money, but I had like 25,000 bucks. And I was real, you know, I'm a New Yorker, so I'm cynical of everything. And I'm figuring like the monks are gonna try to take my money probably.

• 56:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's all a scam.

• 56:19Raghunath Cappo?

  But when you, it's all a scam, these guys. But when you see how they live in New York, India is a tough place to live, especially back then. There was no hot water. It was like a jailhouse showers and it was cold. In the winter, it was cold and the summer it was hot. And there was no, nothing was comfortable. And there was no comfort, anything. There was no Netflix or there was no like, you know, what do we do for comfort? We shop, we have sex, we, you know, we go out to dinner, we watch movies. You couldn't do any of that. You're a monk. There's no, nothing to buy. There's no shopping. And so, I real, but I started being shocked about how happy the monks were. And I started thinking, man,

• 57:02Raghunath Cappo?

  what makes these guys tick? Like, how can they be so happy with nothing? They've given up everything. But you've probably experienced that when you've like cleaned out your garage and you're like, you feel free from the clutter of life. And that's, I felt like, God, if I can just learn what these guys have, my life could be successful. Like, how can you get, how can you be joyful with nothing? So it's not the things that are giving me joy. I'm not going out there for my joy. The joy has to come from something inside of me. And that was like a beautiful thing to observe, because it's not a happy, they're not having fun. They're just experiencing a joy from living. And it's not based on

• 57:44Raghunath Cappo?

  their watch or their, you know, outfit or their, what they're driving. It's based on like an integrity of existence and the way they treat each other and the way, and also the thoughts that are in your mind, the way you're thinking on a regular basis. Because I realized a lot of my pain is from my, my mind or my anguish or my envy for someone else or some Hate we might have for somebody for no good reason. You know, you see somebody, who's that idiot? Who's that idiot?

• 58:09Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 58:10Raghunath Cappo?

  You know, like, why is my mind thinking like that? Like, the guy's an idiot, I don't even know that person.

• 58:15Rich Roll?

  So what is the process of rewiring that? Like, when you go to the ashram and you start living as a monk, what is the teaching like? And what is, what is the day-to-day existence where you start to, you know, intuit these teachings and put them into practice?

• 58:33Raghunath Cappo?

  Well, there's a, there's a lot to share. I'm, I'm working on a book right now that extracted six very powerful principles that I taught from the teachings. And the first one is, and these are based on the teachings of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, who is a great, considered by some as a child prodigy, because he was a child prodigy in Sanskrit. Some other people that knew him more intimately thought of him as a mystic because he did, he performed so many mystical things, Christ-like mysticism. And then, but his intimate followers, who are great gurus in their own right, they considered him an avatar. So his teachings were very simple.

• 59:16Raghunath Cappo?

  And one of them is very basic, and it's a great takeaway. If you want to take away anything from today, you can take this way. Stop criticizing other people. Like, the sound coming out of your mouth can be toxic. And that was a powerful thing. Stop criticizing. And I realized, I'm living with so much criticism in my mind. That doesn't mean we should throw discernment out. We need discernment. But the condemning language that happens on a regular basis from finding fault with other people, and how you would do things so much better if you were doing them, cut it out. Stop letting that pour out of your mouth. That was, that's a big one. If you want, I'll just run through these six.

• 1:00:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, let's do it. No, this is great.

• 1:00:02Raghunath Cappo?

  That's one.

• 1:00:02Rich Roll?

  And first of all, when did this guy live?

• 1:00:05Raghunath Cappo?

  About fourteen hundred, same time Columbus was showing up here.

• 1:00:08Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:00:09Raghunath Cappo?

  This person, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, was in Bengal and traveled throughout India. And basically, it was a renaissance of bhakti. Bhakti means, bhakti yoga means connecting to your source through love. That's all the word really means. And so, a lot of the practices are singing, are cooking, are meditation. But everything is in action, like you're acting in a loving way and dealing with other people. And so, um, so yeah, this is one of the teachings. I call, the book is called The Six Pillars of Bhakti. And so, one is not criticizing. The second one is being tolerant, where it's criticism deals with, with other people.

• 1:00:54Raghunath Cappo?

  Another one is just dealing with life situation and stop blaming the world for your unhappiness. And this is very powerful. It's transformational. Even if you're a materialist, this main teaching can transform your life. But if you want to really experience like the higher echelons of meditation, it's got to be there.

• 1:01:15Raghunath Cappo?

  Criticism, tolerance, and this is a huge one, the number three. And if, if you can add this one to your life, it's such a game changer. It's, um, I take no offense. Meaning, I will not be offended on a regular basis. And that's a very common thing. Sometimes we could see somebody talking over there and I get offended. I think they're talking about me. Without provocation, I think someone's got something against me. And sometimes we'll walk around, uh, holding some resentment for a person who didn't even mean anything.

• 1:01:54Raghunath Cappo?

  And that gets split in two things, because sometimes people don't mean anything, but due to some proclivity that I have, that I don't trust the world, that I take an offense and I carry that resentment around with me, and it becomes a burden. But sometimes people have hurt me. They've actually deliberately hurt me. But still, that desire, or that need to forgive, has to be there. Because in the bhakti culture is nothing's actually happening to me, it's happening for me. That there is a benevolent energy lifting us higher and higher and higher. And we have to see that everything is for my edification, for my purification, and sometimes even tragic things.

• 1:02:36Raghunath Cappo?

  And so, there's a firm faith that everything's happening for me, and that we shouldn't be... We shouldn't be heartless when it comes to someone else's suffering. I should see, "Oh, he's having a hard time." We should feel like I have to reach out to that person, they're having a hard time. But for my own situation, I should feel like, you know, "I'm going through a hard time, and this must be for my benefit." What is that benefit? And I can look at life like that. So, we don't hold any resentment, we don't criticize, we're tolerant. Next one, we see the good in others, and we let them know it. Find good, and this is what we're talking about. Instead of finding what this person's doing so wrong, what are they doing right? Why are they good?

• 1:03:19Raghunath Cappo?

  This is such a powerful practice in this day and age. Because otherwise, we're gonna lock in, and we're just gonna foster hate with others. And we're gonna have no commonality whatsoever. What do we have in common? What is right about this person? And it's such a great thing. Truthfully, it's a marriage saver, it's a relationship saver. You know, what is good about this person? And then sharing it with them, telling them why I appreciate you. And that lack of appreciation can really kill...

• 1:03:50Raghunath Cappo?

  It can kill love, quick. I mean, isn't that what romance is? Is full 100% appreciation for that person.

• 1:03:56Rich Roll?

  Right, and the piece, the second piece about letting that person know is crazy powerful.

• 1:04:04Raghunath Cappo?

  Right.

• 1:04:05Rich Roll?

  And it's something that most of us don't do nearly enough of.

• 1:04:09Raghunath Cappo?

  I mean, we might have a person that would do anything for us. They would come anywhere, at any time, at any moment. "Hey, I need your help, can you come here?" Yeah. That person, I never let them know how much I appreciate them. Sometimes the people that are the closest to us, we never share with them how much we appreciate them.

• 1:04:27Rich Roll?

  And in you recounting these lessons, I'm thinking, this should be the terms and conditions on Twitter. Like, what if you, before you could log on to Twitter, you had to read through these sort of, you know, guidelines, or, you know, sort of guideposts for how to behave or acquit yourself? Because everything that you just shared is so anathema to the way that we conduct ourselves in the kind of public conversations that are happening on social media. And we're all seeing, you know, the fractures, the fissures that are starting to expand in the fabric of, you know, our society. Like, we're no longer able to productively communicate in a healthy way.

• 1:05:12Rich Roll?

  And it's because we've lost sight of these very things that allow us to remember that we are truly one.

• 1:05:22Raghunath Cappo?

  And no one's happy. They're all sad. Even if they're righteous, they're just like sad in their righteousness, of their rightness.

• 1:05:33Raghunath Cappo?

  So that, anyway, that's, see the good in others, let them know it. The appreciation is such a powerful... It's powerful in this world, and it's powerful in the spiritual realm as well. That's why I love this stuff, because it's relevant, it's real. It's not just like, "When I die, I'll go to heaven." Who cares? I don't know about heaven. I don't know anything about heaven. I don't even know if it's real. But I do know, these are very, very practical in this life, for my own personal joy, my own personal integrity, my relationships.

• 1:06:06Raghunath Cappo?

  You were saying like, yeah, people in Twitter should learn this. The reason why I sort of like extracted these from the teachings because I was taking groups. Every year I take a group on pilgrimage. This year I'm going to Nepal, it's sort of like, you would like it.

• 1:06:18Rich Roll?

  You should go. Various like spiritual sites all over the world, right?

• 1:06:22Raghunath Cappo?

  Spiritual sites all over the world. So we go trek, this year we're going trekking through Napal in April.

• 1:06:26Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:06:27Raghunath Cappo?

  And so half the time is trekking and then holy places. And Nepal is like an old part of Indian kingdom. One of the Indian kingdoms, they preserved a lot of the ancient Hindu texts, the Buddhist texts. And it's got, whatever, 1300 Himalayan peaks, so.

• 1:06:41Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:06:42Raghunath Cappo?

  We're gonna do day hiking half the time.

• 1:06:43Rich Roll?

  When are you doing that?

• 1:06:44Raghunath Cappo?

  April, come.

• 1:06:45Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:06:45Raghunath Cappo?

  Be great.

• 1:06:46Rich Roll?

  That's tempting.

• 1:06:47Raghunath Cappo?

  Um.

• 1:06:48Rich Roll?

  But keep going.

• 1:06:49Raghunath Cappo?

  And then, and then we do, and we do India every year, which is also great. And we've got holy places, but you know, you're bringing a bunch of people to India who've never been to a third world country and we're traveling together and they're not used to it and it's a little shocking sometimes. So I've really set up these six pillars as sort of behavior, sort of guardrails. This is what we do, we don't criticize. We're, and it's sort of a contract. We like mentally sign, I read them over every day. This is what we're doing, we're not gonna criticize, we're not gonna find fault. We're not gonna be resentful, right? And we're gonna find the good in others, we're gonna let them know it. The next one was quick to apologize.

• 1:07:30Raghunath Cappo?

  If you feel like you hurt someone's feeling, if you're a little obtuse and you, you apologize first. You say, hey, I'm sorry, I don't know if that offended you, but please forgive me if it did.

• 1:07:39Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:07:40Raghunath Cappo?

  A big game changer. And another one is we keep a tally of how we, of how we are blessed. We keep a, a list of how fortunate we are.

• 1:07:50Rich Roll?

  A gratitude practice, basically.

• 1:07:52Raghunath Cappo?

  What's that?

• 1:07:52Rich Roll?

  A gratitude practice.

• 1:07:53Raghunath Cappo?

  A gratitude practice. And sometimes people don't have a gratitude practice, they have a, this is unfair practice. This is why, or entitlement practice. And the problem with that is it's, it's simple math. Entitlement makes you sad, gratitude makes you happy.

• 1:08:12Raghunath Cappo?

  If you feel like the world owes you everything, you're always gonna be miserable. There's never enough the world can owe you.

• 1:08:19Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:08:19Raghunath Cappo?

  You know?

• 1:08:20Rich Roll?

  This architecture is not that different from 12-step. And I know you've got this, like, Bhakti 12-step recovery program. I want to spend a little bit of time talking about this because, you know, there's a lot of similarities, like, you know, do a personal inventory, hold yourself accountable, like, take the next right action, you know, make your amends, practice gratitude. You know, all of these things are endemic to recovery and are applicable to humanity at large. This is not like just something that, you know, alcoholics and drug addicts need to figure out a way to master.

• 1:08:54Raghunath Cappo?

  Because truth is for everyone and no one owns it and no one's got a monopoly on it.

• 1:08:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:59Raghunath Cappo?

  And there's people, Bill Wilson, they're like inspired. They're somehow inspired and they've got the receiver on. Just like right now, there's like radio waves in this room, but we don't have our receivers on. We can't pick up the ham radio receivers or the channels from France or the channels from the country western station. But when you have that receiver, you can start picking up of all. When you start to fine tune your radar into spiritual truth, not for your ego. If you tune in with your ego and spiritual truth, you'll find your little group that finds others, but you won't find commonality and connection. It'll be just another way for your ego to live out in the name of "I'm better than." And we find that in any type of...

• 1:09:44Raghunath Cappo?

  I mean, come on, like I said, I'm a cult aficionado. I found it when I was a raw foodist. I found it with a local farmer growing straight edge Krishna. You can always find people who are into things. You find it in politics. You definitely find it in religion, that if I'm doing something for my self-betterment, I shouldn't become more hateful. If I'm becoming more hateful, I think I'm doing something wrong.

• 1:10:21Rich Roll?

  Well, what happens is, as human beings, there's something hardwired into us that wants to find a tribe of like-minded people, and we craft our identity around that. So whether it's raw food, or Ayurveda, or yoga, or whatever it is, the more you gravitate towards a certain practice, and everything being a practice, you're gonna be surrounding yourself with more of the people that do that. And before you know it, you're attaching a label to that, and that is now working at cross purposes with the expanded awareness that you're trying to cultivate. Like, it's like this weird whack-a-mole thing that never ends, right?

• 1:11:03Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah, and so I think you have to go into it with a little bit of a broad mind. And I look at that as red flags. If I'm finding like, I'm creating, and that person's an enemy, then I fall off on my track. All these six pillars, if I'm finding I'm holding a resentment towards someone, that's a red flag, means I'm off my path. If I'm finding myself being intolerant, or criticizing someone, bing, bing, bing, red flags are just going up. That means I'm, if you accepted that you're a spiritual being, and you're doing these things now, you're off your path, sir. And so it's a good way for accountability for myself as well. And I'm definitely far from perfect.

• 1:11:44Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:11:45Raghunath Cappo?

  But I use these things to hold me accountable. And I find it's great. And I try to like, and I'm okay with going to other sources. I'm okay, I'm great with going to the Ritual Podcast and hearing from, like I said, I heard from Dr. Goldhammer, and I felt like that guy helped put me back on my path. I'm in debt, I'm grateful. And we need spiritual influence on a regular basis. So yeah, it will go hand in hand with bhakti recovery. I feel, I mean, with recovery. We have a bhakti recovery, part of our-

• 1:12:17Rich Roll?

  So tell me about what that's all about.

• 1:12:19Raghunath Cappo?

  Well, we have a-

• 1:12:22Raghunath Cappo?

  You know, our podcast Wisdom of the Sages, where we study sacred literature of India. And a lot of people get into yoga, and they want to get deeper into yoga. They'll get more into the body, into their health, into their breathing. And then they'll get a section of that yoga training, which is, whatever, a certain amount of hours of yoga philosophy. And what we do, and even if you like it, that's all you sort of get. But to really change yourself, you really got to do it. You got to hear every day. To really change your habits, you've got to hear this philosophy on a regular basis. So, we're talking about philosophy of truthful living, of integrity. Just like, if you want to get good, and you want to go through recovery,

• 1:13:07Raghunath Cappo?

  you don't check in once a month. People who are going through recovery, they need to go to recovery sometimes, a couple times a day, checking with their sponsor. Or you go many times a week, because they need to hear it. Because the Maya, or the illusion, is such a strong pull in the other direction. So, we have created a podcast where we can hear this yoga philosophy on a regular basis. We do it every morning at 5:00 a.m. And the more we do it, the more we realize a lot of people have very, very strong attachments. And some attachments have dismantled their life. They're coming from recovery programs.

• 1:13:48Raghunath Cappo?

  But the philosophy of Bhakti, it accepts that there is a... There's different ways to perceive your higher power. And in Bhakti, the higher power has personal form. Now, sometimes people can't stand the idea of a personal deity, because the persons in my life have driven me crazy. Maybe I had an ex-wife or an ex-husband, or I had a bad relationship with a parent or a teacher. Or a priest, what to speak of a priest. And so, we hate any concept of organized, spiritual, anything.

• 1:14:25Raghunath Cappo?

  But there's sort of two forms of ideas, basically. You'll hear this idea of "we are God," or that God is a separate identity. You'll hear both of those being taught in eastern thought. Although that is also, in western thought, you'll hear about that as well. And sometimes Christians will argue about this as well. Is God a being? Or is God an energy or a force? And in India, they're very clear about it. They say it's both. Why not? Just like the sun is a globe, and it's also an energy. It's both. And so, the people who have had such a bad taste in their mouth, I always say things like, hey,

• 1:15:06Raghunath Cappo?

  you might have gotten dealt many counterfeit $20 bills. And every time you spend a 20, you get busted. That doesn't mean there's not real $20 bills out there. So just because everything spiritual has been maybe a fraud, that doesn't mean there's not something genuine. So, that's for people who are doubting any spiritual, anything spiritual. So anyway, with our recovery group, which we have like six days a week, six meetings a week, it's based on higher power. But the higher power is the name Krishna. And Krishna, it's just a name of God. And God can have unlimited names.

• 1:15:50Raghunath Cappo?

  But we put a name and a form on God. And that's just one of the names and forms of a multitude of forms God can have. Because God is unlimited. And why can't God can have form and have no form at the same time? So people in the bhakti tradition, the deity actually has form. And some people worship that form in the form of Krishna, or of Ram, of Nishringa. But it's the idea of, we are one with God, but also different. In the same way, a drop of water from the ocean is, in one sense, the ocean. But in another sense, you can't float a boat on it. So it's minute, and it can also be...

• 1:16:32Raghunath Cappo?

  It can be covered by illusion.

• 1:16:33Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:16:34Raghunath Cappo?

  So in one sense, we're spiritual beings, but we're sort of marginal. We can get covered by illusion. I can vouch for that. I've been covered by illusion many times repeatedly. Sometimes even willingly choosing illusion.

• 1:16:46Rich Roll?

  And just when you break through, you realize there's another layer of illusion.

• 1:16:49Raghunath Cappo?

  There's another layer of illusion. Yeah. But in my purest form, I'm a spiritual being. And that's a beauty. I love that theory, that there's a pure soul theory, that we are actually spiritual beings that have just forgotten and we're sort of covered by a plaque that we're in a scrubbing process.

• 1:17:08Rich Roll?

  A removing as opposed to adding on.

• 1:17:13Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah, or born sinful or born. I don't like that, even that concept.

• 1:17:18Rich Roll?

  I mean, the people that are, that are gravitating towards you and, and, you know, dialing up the podcast, at least from a recovery point of view, are going to be people that are already spiritually inclined. And what you find in, in traditional 12-step is people who, whose lives are broken and are desperate and in a lot of pain. But as you mentioned, a lot of them have, you know, scars that come from various religious and spiritual traditions that calcify them from being open to the spiritual component that I think is required in order to get and maintain sobriety. And a lot of people can't, they just can't grok it, you know?

• 1:17:59Rich Roll?

  And they just, they walk out the door because the minute the word God is uttered, or, you know, the phrase that this is a spiritual program, the lights just go out because of their life experience or whatever trauma they've, they've, they've weathered.

• 1:18:14Raghunath Cappo?

  It's horrible, isn't it?

• 1:18:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's, that's baked into the very problem that they're trying to transcend and overcome.

• 1:18:22Raghunath Cappo?

  It's sad and I get it and I never had a traumatic experience with spirituality, but I can understand that. And all I can say is that just because there's counterfeit doesn't mean there's not something substantial as well. When people use the argument philosophically, "Well, you know, I don't believe in a higher power," I think that's just nonsense. I always say, "Well, come on. That guy can kick my ass. He's a higher power." Or how about the sun? The sun is a higher power. The wind is a higher power. There's many, many higher powers.

• 1:18:54Rich Roll?

  I always say the collective consciousness of the group. Like if you walk into a room and there's 30 people who've all been able to maintain sobriety for some set period of time, then that is a power greater than yourself.

• 1:19:08Raghunath Cappo?

  There you go. There you go. That's another way to be nicely put, too. So, yeah, I don't think that is so far-fetched, a higher power. And I think people just have to break these things down. But, yeah, if there's trauma behind it, it's tough.

• 1:19:23Rich Roll?

  All right. So you're in India and you're doing the monk thing. How long did you do it? Six or seven years?

• 1:19:29Raghunath Cappo?

  I did a monk thing for about six and a half years. Six and a half years, celibate monk in your twenties. It's a tough. It's a tall order, but I did it. And I didn't cheat.

• 1:19:39Rich Roll?

  Did you travel during that period of time? Or were you in India the whole time?

• 1:19:42Raghunath Cappo?

  I traveled all over the world.

• 1:19:43Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did?

• 1:19:44Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah, I traveled all over the world.

• 1:19:45Rich Roll?

  As a renunciant, like sort of reliance upon the kindness of strangers?

• 1:19:48Raghunath Cappo?

  I had nothing. I had nothing. Three years in, after studying the Gita, the Gita's not about renouncing the world. It's about taking the gifts that you have and using them in a spiritual way.

• 1:20:04Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:20:05Raghunath Cappo?

  And the more the Gita clicked in...

• 1:20:07Rich Roll?

  Hence Arjuna going to war against his will, right? Like having to fulfill his blueprint or his destiny.

• 1:20:14Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah, exactly. And I realized, wow, this is the Gita. My job isn't to give up music or... Truthfully, I'm not a great musician myself. I mean, I've written songs, I've printed out tons of CDs, I've traveled, you know, been on MTV or whatever, but I don't consider myself a musician. I'm more of a speaker. I like to speak. I like to tell stories. I like to explain things. I like people and I like to, you know... I found that I'm meant to do music again. So I sort of re-put myself together.

• 1:20:47Raghunath Cappo?

  With a bunch of monks that were sort of musically inclined and we started a second band.

• 1:20:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:52Raghunath Cappo?

  After I'd given up that band and that's how Shelter started.

• 1:20:54Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:20:55Raghunath Cappo?

  And it probably historically was the first celibate rock band in the history of the world.

• 1:20:59Rich Roll?

  Well, it's gotta be the only band comprised of monks, except for some kind of Kurtan situation, right?

• 1:21:06Raghunath Cappo?

  I mean, it was like a full-on punk hardcore band, but of all monks, it was actually very cra- a matter of fact, we had no clothing. We didn't even know what to wear. Like, we couldn't wear robes because we felt that would be a little...

• 1:21:17Rich Roll?

  Were these dudes like all in your ashram?

• 1:21:19Raghunath Cappo?

  They were all guys like living in an ashram or an ashram near me.

• 1:21:23Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:21:24Raghunath Cappo?

  Um, and, yeah. It was, it was, it was almost like comical in one sense. And so I remember when we first started, we're like, well, what are we gonna wear? I was like, well, maybe we should just go to Salvation Army, buy a bunch of white clothes and dye them all orange. And we'll wear- but that, that whole tour, like, we looked like Devo circa 1983 or something.

• 1:21:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:46Raghunath Cappo?

  But we did. That's how we, that's how we rolled for a while.

• 1:21:47Rich Roll?

  And you would open these concerts by doing chanting, right? Like with incense and stuff like that?

• 1:21:53Raghunath Cappo?

  Yes.

• 1:21:54Rich Roll?

  That must've freaked people out.

• 1:21:55Raghunath Cappo?

  We'd have big here- you know, it's, I think because the punk scene was, anything goes. And so, we're a bunch of Hindu monks, and it was almost like, why not?

• 1:22:05Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:22:06Raghunath Cappo?

  Why not? Like, it's either you loved us or you hated us, but it was sort of in the conversation. And if a lot of our fans who were already straight-edged, they didn't smoke, they didn't believe in consumer culture so much, and they believed in higher purpose, so it's sort of like, fit right in. I mean, everybody was selling their wear, so to speak. They were selling anarchy, or they were selling DIY, or some other facet of punk culture. And there were definitely people in the scene that were saying, oh, you can't bring God into punk? This is bullshit. You can't do that. You know? And my answer was, why not?

• 1:22:42Rich Roll?

  That's even more punk then to do it, right?

• 1:22:44Raghunath Cappo?

  You know what?

• 1:22:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:46Raghunath Cappo?

  Who are you to tell me? What are you like some conservative? You can't, you're not allowed to, I'm not allowed to do, what's the punk rulebook I have to follow by?

• 1:22:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:54Raghunath Cappo?

  And be like, isn't all music started as a, like a, a spiritual celebration? Isn't that the origins of music anyway? Who are you to say, I can't do this?

• 1:23:01Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:23:02Raghunath Cappo?

  You know? And as far as punk scene goes, I was like a big player in that scene. Who are you? If I could, I can do it because I'm me. Well, I can say, if, if you're gonna make the rules, I can make the rules too then. And if you don't like it, don't listen to it. And so that's how we sort of rolled. And it was interesting because we maintained a strict two-hour meditation every morning. Even on tour. We would not eat food that was not cooked. Because a big thing of the diet is we try to eat food that's been cooked with the proper consciousness. Especially when you're a monk and you know this, that food affects your consciousness.

• 1:23:37Rich Roll?

  Love is the superfood.

• 1:23:38Raghunath Cappo?

  Love is the, it really is. It's, it really is. And that's why if you go to some diner where you got some guy couldn't care less, you're eating that consciousness and it really affects you. And that's not going to show up under some, you know, when you're breaking down food and it's made up this vitamins, it's not going to show up on the, the list of ingredients. Love is not going to show up there.

• 1:23:59Rich Roll?

  On the nutrition facts panel, how much love was infused into the preparation of this food on a scale of one to 100?

• 1:24:05Raghunath Cappo?

  It makes a difference. It's why people love, you know, home-cooked meals.

• 1:24:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:10Raghunath Cappo?

  So we did it.

• 1:24:10Rich Roll?

  So you're making your own doll and like?

• 1:24:12Raghunath Cappo?

  We brought our own candy stove on tour with us. And we not only cook for ourselves, we cook for, you know, people would come around, would feed other people. Because it's just part of the culture is you cook with love and you offer it with love. Matter of fact, some tours we'd even do, we would go to kids' houses. You know, some teenager or 22-year-old kid has a house they're renting. And we'd go in there and we'd stay at their house because, you know, we never stayed at hotels generally. We cleaned their entire house, unlike any other punk band coming to their house. Cleaned their entire house, cleaned their entire kitchen, and then invite the entire concert to their backyard the next day.

• 1:24:47Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:24:47Raghunath Cappo?

  Where I would give a class on the Bhagavad Gita. We'd have kirtan and I'd, we'd serve out a meal to everything.

• 1:24:54Rich Roll?

  And just blow the mind of that kid.

• 1:24:56Raghunath Cappo?

  Blow the minds of all the kids.

• 1:24:57Rich Roll?

  What's more punk rock than like cleaning somebody's house?

• 1:25:00Raghunath Cappo?

  A punk guy coming here, especially you're like, you're punk here. That's a cool thing about punk rock.

• 1:25:05Rich Roll?

  You're supposed to trash the house.

• 1:25:06Raghunath Cappo?

  I know. We clean their houses.

• 1:25:07Rich Roll?

  Oh my God. So you just were on tour? When did you end up, but you ended up in LA at some point?

• 1:25:12Raghunath Cappo?

  Then afterwards, I moved to LA in 99.

• 1:25:15Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:25:16Raghunath Cappo?

  And, uh... And, and, and sort of like, LA was sort of a, that was like out of the ashram. I was already out of the ashram then, and I was just sort of going through it like a re, almost like a rebranding of my identity then. It's very difficult, I, I, I will say, it, it's very difficult to refine yourself in the material world after you've given up becoming a monk.

• 1:25:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:41Raghunath Cappo?

  It's like a tightrope because as a monk, the answer is no. Do you do this? No, I don't. Do you do this? No, I don't. Do you do this? No, I don't. And it's sort of a, a safe parameter. Whereas the material world, it's yes, yes, yes, yes, I'll do anything, I'll try anything. But to be really regulated in what you put in your eyes and your ears and your mouth and be, it's probably, the equivalent would probably be an alcoholic who goes to a bar, but doesn't drink.

• 1:26:08Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:26:08Raghunath Cappo?

  It takes a lot of sobriety, probably, for an alcoholic to go to a bar and be like, I'm good with this.

• 1:26:13Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:26:14Raghunath Cappo?

  And so I found a very slippery slope dealing with the material world again.

• 1:26:20Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:26:21Raghunath Cappo?

  And trying to find my footing there. And I, I truthfully went through a very tough time.

• 1:26:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:27Raghunath Cappo?

  And I got very focused on my physical yoga practice, pranayama, um, and martial arts with jiu jitsu. And that's when I got into jiu jitsu and that's, that's how I know Joe Rogan.

• 1:26:40Rich Roll?

  Right, no, I remember, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I listened to, I listened to your podcast with him right when it came out and, and I just remember, first of all, I remember like, wow, this monk's talking about MMA. They, you know, like, if, if you have any MMA knowledge whatsoever and you go on Rogan, it's going to be a lot about that. Um, so it was interesting that you had that background and that's how you knew Joe. Um, but I just remember that that conversation stuck with me. Like I, when that was done, three hours later, I was like, I was really impacted by the conversation that you had with him and it stayed with me and I've, what was that, like two years ago or something like, a couple of years ago?

• 1:27:18Raghunath Cappo?

  One year ago.

• 1:27:19Rich Roll?

  One year ago.

• 1:27:19Raghunath Cappo?

  Today, maybe.

• 1:27:20Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:27:20Raghunath Cappo?

  Like practically a year ago.

• 1:27:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I loved it. And I was like, I want, I, I remember thinking like, I need to meet this guy.

• 1:27:27Raghunath Cappo?

  Oh.

• 1:27:27Rich Roll?

  You know, took a year later, but.

• 1:27:28Raghunath Cappo?

  Thanks.

• 1:27:29Rich Roll?

  Um, but yeah, it was interesting you sharing about how devoted you were to your martial arts practice. And I remember thinking like, how does that gel with the monk consciousness? And that led me to think about. My own relationship to yoga and how, you know, the difference between the way that the typical Western person interfaces with yoga versus the ancient tradition and purpose of yoga, which is to yoke mind and spirit, right? It's like the asanas are preparation for, you know, getting you into a state of still-mindedness

• 1:28:12Rich Roll?

  so that you can connect with something greater than yourself. It's not about how good you can, you know, do a handstand or, you know, a warrior pose.

• 1:28:21Raghunath Cappo?

  It's a condiment of a much greater meal. And we've made it the meal. You know, we've made the salt the meal, which is very awkward. If I said, hey, come on over, we're gonna have some sea salt tonight.

• 1:28:34Rich Roll?

  And yet, having a strong body is an important thing as well. And there's something empowering about that. Like, I don't, I don't see that as being anathema to a spiritual practice. But I guess it's about calibrating that. Like, what is the balance?

• 1:28:49Raghunath Cappo?

  In truth, it was a little bit of my falling into a questioning of my faith and questioning to this nebulous idea of what an advanced spiritualist is. And I was, I was at this point and stepping away from being a monk and like getting into the material world and trying to find my footing there. And getting back into physical yoga practice, very, a very strong physical yoga practice of doing the stanga yoga every day. And started saying, well, in martial arts, you know who the advanced master is. The guy that kicks your butt is the advanced master and you're not. And you don't have, it's nothing like, it's nothing metaphysical.

• 1:29:31Raghunath Cappo?

  It's like they're, yeah, you're tapping out, you're tapping out. And this was sort of like at the beginning of jiu-jitsu. So it was also, not the beginning, but the... There was not a lot of jujitsu in America back then, in 1999.

• 1:29:44Rich Roll?

  And you were studying at a high level with some, you know, some of the top people.

• 1:29:50Raghunath Cappo?

  These great guys, yeah. Now they're guys, they're all legends.

• 1:29:53Rich Roll?

  Jean-Jacques Machado and like 10th Planet, is that?

• 1:29:56Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah, it was before 10th Planet started. So when they opened, Eddie Bravo, who's like incredible, they're, you know, we watched them open and we started going there immediately and it was, now it's huge, it's international.

• 1:30:10Rich Roll?

  But it's not that different than punk rock, like that was the early days, that was a new way of finding a certain kind of expression, right? That was new and different and kind of counterculture.

• 1:30:21Raghunath Cappo?

  And I will say that when you added my background of yoga to that, it helped me fight without rage that comes with fighting. You can get, you can lose your cool, you can lose your breath, you can lose your mind. And it helped me apply all those yogic principles to fighting. And of course, there is a time to fight. It's not a time to be a thug, it's a time to protect. And I think there's always, whenever you have a society, you have a group of people that wants, that's, it's important to protect the vulnerabilities. And there's always vulnerabilities in culture. And so, fighting is not a bad thing, it just depends on how it's used. Being spiritual doesn't mean necessarily you don't fight. Now, if

• 1:31:06Raghunath Cappo?

  you find that it's going to trigger a part of you that is a very dark place, you might consider maybe fighting's not for you. I've had people that have given up, you know, one of my mentors told me that they were a guitar player. And he gave up guitar. I was like, why'd you give up guitar? He's like, he's like, for me it was Maya. And I was like, what are you talking about? At the Paga Baguina, you told me the Paga Baguina, you shouldn't give up what you're good at. He said, yeah, yeah, yeah, for me it was Maya. I was like, that makes no sense, man. You're the one telling me I should not give up what I'm born to do. And he said, all right, next time you're on stage, see if you're doing it to be God or to serve God. And I was like, oh, man.

• 1:31:50Raghunath Cappo?

  I'm trying to be God with all this stuff. And so sometimes people recognize even something they're good at, they cannot do in spiritual consciousness. And therefore, they just, they just choose to walk away from it. Or for most of us will say, you know what? I can do this, but it's going to be different now. And that's, that statement he said to me, mentor of mine, that really changed my life. It really made me perform on stage in a different way, relate to my loved ones in a different way, relate to friends in a different way. That, am I doing this to be the cool guy? Or to be like of service? And that's the big part of, again, come right back, full circle to the recovery community. Because the big thing of recovery, from what I understand, is of service. Can I be of service?

• 1:32:35Raghunath Cappo?

  Can I be, can I be a contributor of this world?

• 1:32:38Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:32:39Raghunath Cappo?

  And it actually satisfies the heart. What can I contribute?

• 1:32:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, that's something that I wrestle with all the time. Every podcast, or whether I get up on stage to give a talk, I get, like I've done almost 600 of these. I get nervous every time. Because my ego is wrapped up in, how am I going to come across? Am I going to ask good questions? Is the guest going to like me? How is the audience going to respond to that? All that noise. I walk up on stage to give a talk that I've given many times, and I, and I start sweating. And I have to remind myself that that's, that's just, it's my ego. It's my ego that wants to be approved of, that wants the validation, that wants to, you know, look cool, or whatever it is.

• 1:33:22Rich Roll?

  And it's only by, when I catch myself and think like, I just, how can I just be of service here? Like, what is the greater good that can be achieved by me showing up in this role? And all the nervousness dissipates if you can flip that switch. And it's not my default, like, and I don't always do it very well. I get caught up in my own bullshit constantly. But when I am able to do that, like, then it always goes better. Because you take yourself out of the equation. You're like, just allow me to be a channel for what is, you know, sort of the highest purpose here.

• 1:33:58Raghunath Cappo?

  And it's your practice. You know, I think both of us are blessed with great wives. And I asked my wife to come also because, you know, last year she came when I did Joe Rogan. And, you know, I've been talking on stages since I was like, you know, 15 and 16. So I generally don't get nervous and I've played big concerts too. I don't get nervous. I'm very comfortable in front of people. A lot of people aren't so confident like that. I am. I was so nervous for Joe Rogan and it wasn't because it was a big podcast. Truthfully, I didn't even know that much about podcasts back then at all. I just knew that his audience was very different. There was not, it's not like the yoga community where everybody's into yoga and they're into Ayurveda and they're into, you

• 1:34:43Raghunath Cappo?

  know, and they want, they want to see me do a handstand. It was like, you have right wing, you have left wing, you have, you know, people believe in UFOs, you have scientists. And I was like, I don't know anything. What am I gonna say? I'm gonna say something stupid. And I know John for years and he's a sharp guy and if he wanted to turn on me, he could easily turn on me and just like, and I was thinking, and I, and I told my wife, I was like, I am nervous. Like, I'm gonna vomit. And he, she just looked at me, she said, well, what would Radhanath Swami do? Radhanath Swami is one of the big lighthouse in my life. And I said, well, he'd appreciate the person. Start the conversation with an appreciation. And so even today, coming in here too, it's like, you know, even my mind was like, okay,

• 1:35:28Raghunath Cappo?

  what should I do? So how do I prepare for things?

• 1:35:31Rich Roll?

  You don't prepare, we're just gonna talk.

• 1:35:33Raghunath Cappo?

  And how do I prepare for this? And I was just like, you know, I'm gonna prepare? I'm gonna pull out my mala's and I'm gonna chant. And I'm gonna go for a hike today in the mountains. And I'm not gonna think about it whatsoever. And then I'm going to appreciate how the ritual podcast has affected me. I'm gonna appreciate him and share how I appreciate him. And say a prayer in my mind, which I did before the show, that everything I do is an offering. So please accept this offering. And that's how I prepare. And that, in that way,

• 1:36:03Rich Roll?

  It's a beautiful practice.

• 1:36:04Raghunath Cappo?

  It is. And it protects you from trying to, oh, I've got to impress somebody.

• 1:36:08Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:36:08Raghunath Cappo?

  It's the world of impressing and being overly concerned about what people think about me. It's like, it's exhausting.

• 1:36:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:16Raghunath Cappo?

  Exhausting world.

• 1:36:18Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:36:19Raghunath Cappo?

  It's good to know we're both in the same boat.

• 1:36:21Rich Roll?

  Oh, trust me, you know, I'm, I'm my own worst enemy with all of this stuff. And I create ridiculous amounts of suffering and angst and anxiety. You know, I'm far from a master at any of this. But I did notice that you did, you did give Joe that, that appreciation. And I thought it was an amazing conversation. The one thing that I thought was super interesting, though, was that Joe got really hung up on this idea that your relationship to the Bhagavad Gita is one of, you know, reality, right? Like, he really wanted to pin you down on like, do you think all these, like, there's an elephant faced man? Like,

• 1:36:58Raghunath Cappo?

  Right.

• 1:36:59Rich Roll?

  He wanted, he was really, and you, you told this incredible story, which I would actually like you to tell again here, of being on tour, playing the show in Buffalo, and having this experience, right? And you tell this unbelievable story.

• 1:37:14Raghunath Cappo?

  He wasn't impressed by that story!

• 1:37:16Rich Roll?

  And then as soon as it ended, he just pivoted right back to this thing about like, do you actually think the, and I was like, no reaction to this story?

• 1:37:23Raghunath Cappo?

  I know. I was like, oh, come on. He didn't react to that story.

• 1:37:26Rich Roll?

  Did you just hear what I heard? I couldn't believe that. I was like, I can spend three hours talking about this story. This story in and of itself is like a movie.

• 1:37:35Raghunath Cappo?

  That story was so transformational in my life. Actually, more than any saint or swami or, you know, pilgrimage I ever went to, that getting beat up so bad was such a deep faith builder in my life. I was shocked that he wasn't.

• 1:37:52Rich Roll?

  Right. So walk us, walk us through it, because people here probably haven't heard it, or many of them haven't heard it.

• 1:37:58Raghunath Cappo?

  Well, you know, it was, we were all monks and we were on tour.

• 1:38:02Rich Roll?

  This is shelter.

• 1:38:03Raghunath Cappo?

  This is shelter when we were on tour. And, you know, we had a, you know, by material standards, it was successful. Again, we weren't.

• 1:38:11Raghunath Cappo?

  We had our own record label in the Ashram, by the way. We started a record label in the Ashram, which you know now, Steve Reddy.

• 1:38:17Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:38:17Raghunath Cappo?

  Friend of yours.

• 1:38:19Rich Roll?

  I don't know.

• 1:38:20Raghunath Cappo?

  Did triathlon with you.

• 1:38:22Rich Roll?

  Steve Reddy?

• 1:38:23Raghunath Cappo?

  From Equal Vision Records and Monrology. He was friends with John Joseph, but I saw him.

• 1:38:27Rich Roll?

  I don't know if I know him. Maybe I've met him. I'm not sure.

• 1:38:30Raghunath Cappo?

  Okay.

• 1:38:30Rich Roll?

  Anyway, go ahead.

• 1:38:31Raghunath Cappo?

  He's an old friend of ours. And so, anyway, we were on tour. We had a record label.

• 1:38:36Rich Roll?

  Never mind. Yeah.

• 1:38:37Raghunath Cappo?

  You got him.

• 1:38:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, go ahead.

• 1:38:39Raghunath Cappo?

  Anyway, we were on tour and by material standards, it was a great show. We were headlining the show. It was, we like to do kirtan before the performance, like outside. We just set up and we cook. And that's how we did, that's how we did monk life. We cooked, we gave out food, sacred food, and then we just sang, like outside, like in the parking lot. And then the show was like a big warehouse in Buffalo, New York. Turned out to be a ghetto, which we didn't really realize how dangerous the neighborhood was. And after the performance, you know, I was getting interviewed outside and the van, our band's van, had driven in

• 1:39:20Raghunath Cappo?

  the club and we were loading in the gear. And I was getting interviewed and all of a sudden, a car pulled up. And our fans, you know, their ages are between like 15 years old and 26 years old, maybe. I was probably 26 or 27, maybe, at the time. And all of a sudden, a huge guys got out of this car and they grabbed one young kid, 16 year old, and just beat the crap out of him. Like, it was like, and I was witnessing this while I was getting interviewed. And, you know, the show was over. People were leaving. And there's violence sometimes that happens at a show. So I didn't like get really worked up, but it was awkward for my peripheral vision. And then the gang moved to another person.

• 1:40:04Raghunath Cappo?

  And beat that person up really bad. And then by the third person, everybody started running, scattering. So I was like, okay, this is what happens when you stay up late at night, crazy stuff starts going.

• 1:40:16Rich Roll?

  Were there like dudes that worked at the venue there also? Or just your band?

• 1:40:20Raghunath Cappo?

  I don't know where anybody was. It wasn't like a venue. So probably some kids, the DIY thing, they rented out a giant warehouse. It's not like there's a security team.

• 1:40:30Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:40:31Raghunath Cappo?

  So I ran inside. Our van is like, all the windows and doors are open and our roadies are loading it in. The roadies are also monks. And so I was like, you guys, there's some crazy guys out there. We gotta get, let's get in the van and let's get the hell out of here. And the roadies are looking at me like, we can't go anywhere. It's like, we're not even loaded in yet. Like, everything's out of the van, everything's open. And then something incredibly eerie happened, which is the bad guys, their car drove into the club and parked like a T right in front of our van. So we couldn't get out and sort of sealing up the exit.

• 1:41:13Raghunath Cappo?

  And the only people left in the club was the bands who were shutting things down, the P A guy, a few, you know, not many people left in the venue. And this guy gets out of the car, the whole gang gets out of the car. And this one guy, who is massive, like just like a massive Hulk of a man, horse of a man, puts his hand in his back pocket and grabs a gun and just says, in a very commanding, yet just sober voice, he just says, I got a gun and I'm gonna kill everyone tonight. And it was like, one of these moments in your life where like, okay, tonight's the night, we're gonna die tonight.

• 1:41:55Raghunath Cappo?

  It wasn't like, run for your life, let's fight back, let's, it's like, tonight's we're gonna die. And I was sort of like the older one and I had, you know, all the other monks that were with me were a little younger than me. So everybody gathered around me like, Raganoff, what are we gonna do? And to me, it was just like, We're gonna die. What do you mean? What are we gonna do? We're gonna die. So you know what we're gonna do? We're gonna chant. I don't know where that came from. I'm not a spiritually evolved being. If you get to hang out with me long enough, you'll realize that.

• 1:42:28Rich Roll?

  What do you do when there's nothing else to do? Was this before or during your MMA?

• 1:42:35Raghunath Cappo?

  Before.

• 1:42:35Rich Roll?

  Before.

• 1:42:36Raghunath Cappo?

  Much before.

• 1:42:36Rich Roll?

  Maybe this motivated you.

• 1:42:38Raghunath Cappo?

  Eating lots of Indian sweets.

• 1:42:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:41Raghunath Cappo?

  There was no way I could have MMA'd my way out of this one, though. It was one of those things, massive man with a gang of other massive people with weapons. I wasn't gonna get out of this one. So I just thought, we're gonna die right now. It was one of those, have you ever had one of those experiences where you're gonna die? That felt like that we're gonna die right now? So I went in and I got a clay Indian drum, which I play. And I started chanting these mantras, these Nasringa Dev mantras, these prayers to Lord Vishnu as the protector. And we all gathered a circle. It was incredibly surreal, Rich. We're in a circle chanting these mantras while these guys are going around the club, just demolishing people. I don't know what, people say, well, why didn't you run? I don't know.

• 1:43:26Raghunath Cappo?

  I don't know what the, what was going on. But we started chanting and then they all started coming towards us. And all my guys ran. Some guys ran, under the van, in the van, over the van. It was just like, everybody scattered and I was surrounded by these people holding the drum. And I didn't even know what to say. So I just put my hands like in a namaste, still holding this drum. And I said, oh, the guy pulled out a gun. And he said, you want some? I thought to myself, oh my God, how am I supposed to answer this? Do I want some? I said, um, Hare Krishna. I'm a Krishna monk.

• 1:44:09Raghunath Cappo?

  I have no idea why you guys are so angry.

• 1:44:14Raghunath Cappo?

  And then I felt a barrage of fists coming to my face. And I've never, ever felt helpless in my life. But at that time, I felt like incredibly helpless.

• 1:44:28Raghunath Cappo?

  And as I'm getting punched,

• 1:44:33Raghunath Cappo?

  I was just chanting, chanting like different names of God. Krishna, Ram, Govinda, Chaitanya, like this, just like running through my mind. And as I'm getting pounded, I'm starting to think of all these great stories I've studied. The Mahabharata, the Ramayan, the Bhagavat Purana, Shumad Bhagavatam. They're stories of sort of people in destitute positions in their life and how they leave their bodies. And they generally, the auspicious way, the wonderful way to leave their body is they focus their mind on the supreme being, on God, on your higher power. They've had their focus and they're just chanting these mantras.

• 1:45:15Raghunath Cappo?

  And I'm thinking about these great personalities in these great epics of India, thinking, wow, all these people died like this and now I'm gonna die. And I'm also dying in the same way they are dying. I am so fortunate. And I can honestly say there was not fear and there was not anger. There was just a type of like great appreciation for the way I'm gonna leave my body. And it got worse because as I started getting beat up, I saw these women coming at me with baseball bats. And I thought they were coming to save me, but they were the girlfriends of these guys. Right. And they started pounding me with baseball bats.

• 1:46:01Raghunath Cappo?

  But the same thing too, I was chanting and chanting and chanting and then it just all stopped.

• 1:46:08Raghunath Cappo?

  And I didn't know what happened. And I had covered in blood. And what actually happened was the rest of the band had jumped in our van and just started the van and plowed through their car and escaped. And when they did a head count, they didn't realize I wasn't in the van with them. So I didn't know what was happening and I guess I was experiencing some type of, you know.

• 1:46:34Rich Roll?

  Altered state.

• 1:46:36Raghunath Cappo?

  Altered state, so I, I, I, I, I just, I was looking for the band, basically, and I was out in the, uh, streets, looking through the-

• 1:46:44Rich Roll?

  But the attackers dispersed.

• 1:46:46Raghunath Cappo?

  They, they, when, yeah, I guess they dispersed, and I went into the streets and I was trying to flag down cars, because I thought my band was getting beat up or killed or something. And every time a car would see me, they'd slow down, and they'd look at me, and I was- ever see that movie Carrie, when you were a teenager? Like, covered in blood, and I'm still holding this clay drum, covered in blood.

• 1:47:06Rich Roll?

  I'm thinking like, uh, Yogi, John Wick.

• 1:47:09Raghunath Cappo?

  Oh, it was, it must have been so creepy, to see me, and I wouldn't have stopped for me, either, if I was driving through a ghetto. But, everyone just kept on stopping, and I was like, "Oh my god, my whole band is about to get killed." And, um, I saw some light on, it must have been two in the morning, somewhere in Buffalo, and I saw some man in a booth, like, in a bus station, and I said, "Hey, you've gotta call the police, my friends are in trouble." And the guy looked at me and just said, "I'm busy." And I was so, like, shocked about how little this guy cared about human tragedy. And I said, "You gotta call the police, or I'm gonna go in there and call the police.

• 1:47:53Raghunath Cappo?

  Now get away from your phone, or give me the phone." And, um, I think this was before cellphones, maybe, or, maybe, I'm not sure, I didn't have a cellphone. Um, so anyway, he said, "All right, I'll call the police," and I said, "If you don't mind, I'm just gonna stay here, 'cause these guys might come back and kill me." And so, I realized at that point, like, "Oh my god, my head's probably split open, and this is how people die." This is, their head cracks open, their brain swells, and they fall asleep and die, and I was like, "Oh, crap, I wasn't expecting to die tonight, I have a whole tour planned, I have, like, I have so many plans, and I'm gonna die tonight, this wasn't the day." But I guess, this is what I always teach, this is what the books always teach, this

• 1:48:38Raghunath Cappo?

  is what the wisdom literature teaches, that you don't expect death to happen tonight. It happens what appears to be randomly. And, for some reason, Raghu, I'm talking to myself, for some reason, Raghu, you got blessed tonight, to experience what it's like to die, in a wonderful way. But now, you're in sad shape.

• 1:49:03Raghunath Cappo?

  Because you've lived, and if you've got this head trauma, I don't know much, I'm not a doctor or anything, but what I understand is your brain swells, you fall asleep, and then you die. Like you get a concussion and you die. So I was like, oh my God, my mom doesn't know where I'm here, my friends don't know where I am, I'm gonna die in this disgusting, you know, mechanic shop or bus terminal or wherever I am. And I started praying sincerely. I said, Krishna, God, you've been so kind to me. You gave me this glimpse into what it's like to be evolved, even though I'm not evolved. And now I'm gonna just die with a concussion. Please, if you want to take me, take

• 1:49:47Raghunath Cappo?

  me now. And I started chanting these beautiful prayers I had memorized, which we do, sometimes we're on tour, we have, there's all these beautiful Sanskrit stotums or stutis, or like beautiful Sanskrit prayers glorifying Vishnu or Krishna. And so I had a bunch memorized that I would just do for fun. And I just started picturing a picture of Krishna in my mind and chanting these mantras. And then I lived. And I was, it was a good time to die. But I lived.

• 1:50:15Rich Roll?

  And when you reflect back on that experience now, like what is, you know, what is, what is the, not necessarily the lesson, but like where is the wisdom, right? Like the ability to maintain your equanimity under such, you know, life-threatening duress, and to have this relationship with death that is, you know, either neutral or appreciative is unbelievable to me. Like, and that your return to your human frailty only occurs in the aftermath of, you know, the most intense aspect of that experience.

• 1:51:04Raghunath Cappo?

  The very strong realization, Rich, was not that I'm some great yoga master. There are yogic paths that require you to master your senses, require for you to master your tongue, your belly, your genitals, your mind, that require you to move your prana certain ways through different, almost like, technical things with your body to experience some type of high or spiritual oneness. Bhakti's not like that. Bhakti is you're connected

• 1:51:41Raghunath Cappo?

  through your, almost like a child. The child can either go out, get a job, make a living, or make some money so they can make themselves some dinner, or the child can just cry. The Bhakti path is sort of like, it's a path of sort of crying, and it's a path of crying in love. And then what happens is, there becomes like a bond where your higher power, they become your best friend and you become their best friend. And they're always, in the same way you're thinking about them, your higher power, your higher power's thinking about you, like, and is eager, and is eager and happy to serve. And even if that service

• 1:52:26Raghunath Cappo?

  might mean like, the miracle isn't that I lived, the miracle was that in my time of great distress, not due to some great yogic power of raising my kundalini that I was protected, it was the fact that Bhagawan, or my higher power, my source, entered into my mind at the most tragic time. That was the magic of that. Nothing of the material world is a safe place. And if you think you're safe, we're an illusion. There's danger at every moment in the material world. And safety, it's almost understandable that the world is suffering with anxiety, because it's normal. It's a temporary world and we're eternal

• 1:53:06Raghunath Cappo?

  beings. Of course, there's anxiety there. But the fact that we can feel connected in times of great distress...

• 1:53:15Raghunath Cappo?

  That shows that there's actually a benevolent, merciful, loving energy or force that's got your best interest in mind. Just like I was a, I was a parent in New York City for a while when my children were little. And you know, you're playing with your kids at the park and you know, you always got your one eye on the kids. They're playing, you're talking to another mom or something, but you always have one eye watching the kids. Because you're, you're a benevolent force and you're not gonna let anybody, someone's talking to my kid, I'm gonna, "Hey, what's up?" So, in the same way, you're always being, the theory in Bhakti is that you're always looked after. You're always loved, you're always cared for, wherever you're at. And so that was my, that was my big takeaway.

• 1:53:58Rich Roll?

  But if you're truly embodying that, then there should be no fear.

• 1:54:03Raghunath Cappo?

  Exactly, and that, that, it's called, that in Sanskrit, that's called abhaya. Abhaya means fearlessness doesn't come from like, "Yeah, I'm just gonna do it, I'm gonna jump off the cliff and go dive into the quarry, or jump out of the airplane," that's not no fear necessarily. That means you're a little courageous, you're risking your life, but there is actually a tangible yogic echelon that you get to, where actually you understand you can't die. And that's something, it's, it's something real. It, it becomes when you, when you fully understand that I'm not a body. The body will die, but I can't die.

• 1:54:43Raghunath Cappo?

  It's one of those like, you know, Socrates, the saying, "You can catch me, but you can't find me."

• 1:54:49Rich Roll?

  But isn't it also, like, on some level, there's a bit of surrender in that as well? And baked into that surrender is this relationship with fate, right? Like, isn't part of Bhakti, understanding that there are aspects of your life that are kind of pre-written, and within that, there's free will? But there is a story for you, and that story has already been told. Is that, am I mischaracterizing that?

• 1:55:19Raghunath Cappo?

  A little bit. There is definitely some, there definitely is some karma.

• 1:55:23Rich Roll?

  Like if you look at Vedic astrology, you know, it's like, there's crazy stuff.

• 1:55:25Raghunath Cappo?

  Crazy stuff.

• 1:55:26Rich Roll?

  But implicit in that is this idea that there is an architecture for you already.

• 1:55:31Raghunath Cappo?

  Sure. There is some, there is some type of karmic journey we're on. I just flew out to California, you know, but what I do on that plane, that's my free will. So we, we do have some karma that we have to live out to the degree that we have these yogic principles in our life, which are, in one sense, this is so related to 12 steps. Just like a person who is newly recovered, the noose is very tight around their neck. And so if I say, "Hey, come on, come into a bar, let's just hang out, you don't have to drink", they still might be like, "No, no, no, no, I don't go to bars", because the noose is still tight.

• 1:56:12Raghunath Cappo?

  20 years, 30 years of recovery, a person feels like, "I can go anywhere, I feel very safe", you know, "I have some healthy fear, but I'm pretty safe. I don't deal with people, places, or things that could trigger me, but I feel a little safer." So as we become this, this whole yoga culture that people are getting into nowadays, with Ayurveda and with meditation and with pranayama and with yogic lifestyle, it's to bring our consciousness to satva, they call it. And satva means a regulation, a control, where you're not dominated anymore by these lower passions. From there, you can make a better choice. Some of us are born triggered by lower passions.

• 1:56:56Raghunath Cappo?

  So we're triggered in this, the yogis call it, "Rajasatmas", we're triggered by them, we're born into them. Our parents were like that. We are born with these very lower qualities. So a yoga culture helps you change that culture. And in that culture, you're allowed more free will. Just like a drug addict has no free will, they've relinquished their free will. And now you could offer them something, like heroin or cocaine, and they'd be like, "Yeah, give it to me." "Are you sure? Because last time I gave it to you, you lost your family." "Yeah, give it to me, just give it to me." It takes away their intelligence. So there is some destiny, karmic destiny we have, but we can also transcend that because spirituality is higher than that material destiny as well.

• 1:57:43Raghunath Cappo?

  And that's part of what we have. And then the beautiful thing is, you'll start to see your karma. Not as this, "Oh, good luck and bad luck and good fortune and bad fortune." And sometimes, you'll see that a lot in India culture, too. You find your chart, and you find where your malefic planets are. And then you try to counteract your malefic planets with gems, or with poojas. If you know about dating culture, you do some ritual to overcome some malefic thing, which is gonna hurt your finances, or hurt your ability to have a child, or hurt your romance in your life. But in bhakti, oftentimes, there's a throwing up your hands in the air. "If you want me to be poor, I'll be poor. If you want to be successful, I'll be successful."

• 1:58:27Raghunath Cappo?

  Whatever you like. And we're not gonna play metaphysical Amazon Prime with God, or the devas, or the higher beings, that we just accept, like, there's a higher plan for me.

• 1:58:41Rich Roll?

  Right. The prayer isn't to have your will be done, but to serve God. Whatever God's will is for me, allow that to take place. Allow that to flourish in me. Let me be a vessel, or an expression of whatever that is. And that demands a certain humility, and it demands a level of acceptance and surrender to live in that place.

• 1:59:05Raghunath Cappo?

  I mean, I accept you, whether you accept that label or not. I accept, "This guy's on a bhakti path." When I see you, or hear about you, or hear you talk, I say, "This guy's on a bhakti path." And I'm sure you could see times in your life that might have appeared tragic on paper, to be like, "Thank God that happened."

• 1:59:21Rich Roll?

  Oh, every time.

• 1:59:22Raghunath Cappo?

  Right?

• 1:59:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And that's been the greatest teacher, outside of any kind of doctrine, to just track my own experiences and life trajectory, and understand that those things that happened, that were so awful in the moment, were happening for me, not to me. They've been my greatest teachers, and the greatest accelerants of personal growth in my life. And that's why, when I see somebody suffering, or meeting their, my wife calls it their divine moment, you don't want to rob somebody of that experience. Our instinct is to try to save them, or pull them out of that. And that may not be the correct approach for that person. That person is undergoing something that could be...

• 2:00:07Rich Roll?

  Ultimately, the best thing that ever happens to them. But there is a spiritual law at play, which is when you are in a karmic context, when you're living your life in a manner that isn't on that path, that isn't on the path of spiritual growth, the universe will knock on your door and it will knock gently, and then it'll knock a little bit louder, and it'll keep knocking, and the consequences of your actions will continue to slowly at first, and then very extremely ratchet up until you finally pay attention. And that culminates in your bottom, or you're hitting that, driving your car metaphorically into the wall,

• 2:00:52Rich Roll?

  so that God, the universe, Krishna, whatever you want to call it, has your full attention. Now you can hear. Now you are ready. The teacher has shown up and the student is ready. They can hear the message and they are prepared to actually do the work in order to shift. And that's how I've seen karma, or maybe there's another term for it in bhakti that's more appropriate, play out in my own life, and it continues to happen. But the more attuned you are, you can read those signals. When the universe is knocking gently, you can hear it. You don't have to wait until the cataclysm.

• 2:01:28Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah, you're already tuned into it. Okay, this is where we're going with this. And I can look back on my own life, think, oh, man. Thank God for that. Thank God for that failed relationship. Thank God for that economic downswing. Thank God when the sinkhole appeared in my life, where the black ice of my life was spinning out of control. And then you start to realize, man, I've been cared for my entire life. I've never been neglected. I've always been looked after. It just didn't appear that way at that time. As you look back at your life, you start to see all these messengers were also sent to me at different times in my life. And you realize how like, your life wasn't just some random karma.

• 2:02:10Raghunath Cappo?

  Your karma that you were born into actually has a divine play as well. And the material sense and even the metaphysical, spiritual, all your karma and overcoming some malefic planet, don't you understand those malefic planets are there for you as well? And that's the, another very interesting facet of astrology.

• 2:02:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:30Raghunath Cappo?

  I've never done that. I've never like tried to work the planet thing. That's a thing. You know, that's a big thing.

• 2:02:37Rich Roll?

  You could go down a crazy rabbit hole with that. I know you talked, you talked to Rogan about some of the crazy Vedic chart readings that.

• 2:02:44Raghunath Cappo?

  It was crazy. I mean, crazy Vedic chart readings. They're so incredibly accurate. You can't, I mean, I didn't talk to him about palm reading. We had like palm readers that were just like fascinating. And they predicted, I remember me and Parmananda Purcell, my guitar player, we were like monks in India, met some palm reader, just looks at our palm, just goes, you know, I'm a New Yorker, so I'm a cynical, cynical, but I love all this stuff as well. So he looks at, did I tell this? I don't think I told the story.

• 2:03:13Rich Roll?

  I don't think so.

• 2:03:13Raghunath Cappo?

  Looks at my palm, he said, he says a hundred rupees. I said, a hundred rupees? That's not a dollar fifty or something like that. A hundred rupees, I'll read your palm. I said, okay, I'll give you a hundred rupees, but you gotta tell me something about myself first. And then I know you're for real. So he looks at my palm and he said, well, you'll get married someday and you'll have so many children. I said, no, no, no, no. Don't tell me about my future. You tell me about my past. If you can tell me about my past, I'll give you a hundred rupees. And he looks at my hands, sort of like indignant and says, you're a famous musician. I was like, pretty good.

• 2:03:49Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 2:03:50Raghunath Cappo?

  Because he didn't know me from Adam. I'm dressed like a monk in the middle of West Bengal. And then he, and then Parmananda said, show my, read my hand too. And so he said, you too are a famous musician. And then for the next 30 minutes, this guy dissected my entire past, present and future. And it was like so uncanny, what this man knew about me. And finally, it ended with this. He said, oh.

• 2:04:20Raghunath Cappo?

  But you're going to get into a tragic car accident. Namaste. I was like, what do you mean namaste? You can't just walk away. Tragic car accident. I said, how can I avoid it? He goes, Prabhu, you cannot avoid. It is in your hands. You cannot avoid this. I was like, well, there must be something I can do to avoid this. He goes, do not worry, no one will die. And I was thinking, oh, great. There's a lot of horrible things that can happen where death isn't included.

• 2:04:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:46Raghunath Cappo?

  And so my friend immediately said, well, can you check my hand? He goes, yes, you too will be in a car accident. And so I'm just thinking, oh, my God, this is... So this guy leaves and fast forward three years later and Shelter had... I was no longer a monk and Shelter had a hit record in Brazil. And we're touring Brazil and the record company put a party on for us. And at the party, you know, this record company is trying to make a theme party. So they make a theme east-west yoga party. And they invited MTV and all this press and journalists. And they invited a famous palm reader from the Amazon,

• 2:05:28Raghunath Cappo?

  who's like a celebrity, Yogi Ni from Brazil. So I was like, oh, cool, palm reader's here. And I was like, hey, gotta read my palm. And so she reads my palms. Oh, very good. This is gonna be a very good tour for you. You're gonna travel all over South America. This is your first time here. You will come here many times. And I was like, oh, very cool. And then her face soured. And she said, oh, you will get in a very tragic car accident. And I was like, oh, come on, my God. And she's like, don't worry, no one will die. I was like, I know no one will die. I was like, you gotta check out my friend. So I grabbed Paramananda's and she... He looked at Paramananda's. Yes, him too. He will get in a car accident also. And I was just like, oh, my God. When is this gonna happen?

• 2:06:12Rich Roll?

  Is there like the classic car accident line on the palm?

• 2:06:14Raghunath Cappo?

  There must be a car accident. I'm no palm reader.

• 2:06:17Rich Roll?

  But you haven't had this accident yet.

• 2:06:19Raghunath Cappo?

  Hold the phone.

• 2:06:20Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 2:06:21Raghunath Cappo?

  Then I said, well, maybe the band will get in a car accident. Can you check our drummer and our guitar player's hand? So he checked the drummer and he checked the guitar player, the other guitar player. He said, no, these two are fine. And I was like, man, what's gonna happen? Fast forward a year. The drummer and the guitar player left the band. We got a new drummer and a new guitar player with two new sets of palms. On that tour, right after we had this incredible vegan meal at someone's house after the show, we drove through the night through the Rocky Mountains on the way to Salt Lake City.

• 2:07:03Raghunath Cappo?

  The driver fell asleep at the wheel and we rolled 150 feet down a cliff.

• 2:07:07Speaker 02

  Whoa, oh my god.

• 2:07:09Raghunath Cappo?

  Hundred fifty, I kid you not, and it was, some people say, well, you created it with your No, the driver didn't know. We didn't tell anybody this. It was, we went down 150 feet. No one died. The roadie, who was 19 at the time, the doctor said they'd never seen anyone survive this, the walk away from it, because he got the same break Christopher Reeves got. And he recovered. Matter of fact, the coolest thing that happened was I woke up, my harmonium, which is this pump piano that you use for chanting, I brought one in the car with me, smashed me in the head and knocked me unconscious. So when I woke up, everything

• 2:07:50Raghunath Cappo?

  was destroyed. We had one of those high top extended vans with the fiberglass roofs. That was ripped off. The van was at the bottom of a cliff, half in a river. And everything was just a mess. And our roadie was screaming and saying, I can't feel my legs. Am I gonna be okay? Ragged, am I gonna be okay? And out of all the mess and all the garbage in the van, his head is resting in a Bhagavad Gita. Like, the Bhagavad Gita is open, his head is like on a pillow in the Bhagavad Gita. I was like-

• 2:08:22Speaker 02

  Splitting the book open?

• 2:08:23Raghunath Cappo?

  Splitting the book open. And I was like, you know, I don't know what's going on, but you are resting in the Bhagavad Gita, Will. I think you're gonna be fine.

• 2:08:31Speaker 02

  What page?

• 2:08:32Raghunath Cappo?

  I should have checked the page. But truthfully, three or four of us literally walked away from, they climbed up the mountain, flagged down a trucker and got help. They walked, they were unscathed. And three of us, me and Parmananda, were treated and released that night. And Will had to recover, Harrody had to recover, but he recovered.

• 2:08:55Rich Roll?

  But he's alright. That's a crazy story.

• 2:08:58Raghunath Cappo?

  It's crazy story. Palm reading, astrology, brigu readings, these are all sort of mystical things. Not necessarily spiritual things, but sort of mystical things that I found that they're sort of real. And then there's a

• 2:09:13Rich Roll?

  It's more, it's more fun to

• 2:09:14Raghunath Cappo?

  You know, it's fun. It's fun.

• 2:09:16Rich Roll?

  What do you make of, you know, on the, on the mystical tip of the sadhus?

• 2:09:22Raghunath Cappo?

  What is the mystical tip?

• 2:09:23Rich Roll?

  The sadhus who are, you know, in the caves, who are like breatharians and don't eat or haven't eaten for, you know, there are these stories, I don't know whether they're true or apocryphal, of these mystics, right? Who kind of transcend the mortal coil through deep states of meditation.

• 2:09:44Raghunath Cappo?

  I think they're, it's all real.

• 2:09:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Have you ever encountered?

• 2:09:47Raghunath Cappo?

  I've, I've, I've met people who've, I mean, there's a very famous documented guy, I can't remember his name, in India, who's been on air, documented by Western science, there's people who've, you know, Ayengar's guru, Krishna, Krishna Namacharya was documented by, you know, a lot of this stuff is readable in old British newspapers. The guy that was buried, I've met mystics who could read minds, who could just see you and tell you about your life. And all my students, like shocking, shocking stuff they would tell you. And, and it, yeah, I've met mystics who, yeah, reading minds is a big one. And it's, it's, it's super shocking, the stuff they can come up with.

• 2:10:31Rich Roll?

  What do you think?

• 2:10:31Raghunath Cappo?

  I don't even want to, I'll share, I'll share it off.

• 2:10:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, right. It's too crazy.

• 2:10:36Raghunath Cappo?

  It's, it's too crazy, it's too personal with, with people that I know close, but it's stuff they say. And there's some mystics who can see, sometimes we see, I won't get too much into this because I will go off on a tangent, but there's some mystics who can see spirits.

• 2:10:53Raghunath Cappo?

  Who are haunting a person that you can't see. It just manifests in you as I'm depressed or I'm filled with anxiety. Or I'm filled with anger or rage or depression or sometimes even a sickness. And we'll say, well, you know, it's just a chemical imbalance. That's why it manifests as a chemical imbalance, but they'll see it as a subtle being.

• 2:11:13Rich Roll?

  Right. You have an infestation of dark beings inhabiting your.

• 2:11:18Raghunath Cappo?

  Exactly. And, and sometimes they stay and sometimes they're related to you and they haunt you. So this idea of a haunting, it means an unembodied being entering into your body. Like, you know, we say, growing up with the West, a ghost, but the ghosts are real. They're unembodied beings. By the way, this is the Vedic teachings. I'm a yoga teacher. I don't know if any of this is true.

• 2:11:39Rich Roll?

  Even if you don't believe that, just consider for a moment that we're all on, on some level haunted by, you know, the people that we've encountered in our lives. Just think about how often you think of that person who holds power over you that, you know, just neurochemically, like somebody, a teacher or a parent or somebody who wronged you. And you replay and replay and replay this tape and that dictates your actions and your worldview. And it's so determinative of how you live your life. That's an infestation, whether you can actually see some entity.

• 2:12:11Raghunath Cappo?

  You know what? I'm gonna steal that.

• 2:12:13Rich Roll?

  It is real and it lives inside of, you know, I think we all have some version of that.

• 2:12:17Raghunath Cappo?

  I'm gonna steal that. And in the same way, they have these epigenetics where you could pass these things on through bloodlines.

• 2:12:23Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:12:24Raghunath Cappo?

  The yogis, you know, science comes to terms with things that the yogis have been talking about forever. And yeah, so the idea of malefic beings.

• 2:12:37Raghunath Cappo?

  It's real.

• 2:12:37Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:12:38Raghunath Cappo?

  It's real. It goes back to that Netflix documentary. There's like the channelers.

• 2:12:43Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:12:43Raghunath Cappo?

  But there, but in bhakti, we don't mess with it so much. We don't mess with it. We don't mess with these like exorcisms and stuff like that. Unless you feel like.

• 2:12:52Rich Roll?

  No bhakti exorcisms.

• 2:12:53Raghunath Cappo?

  No bhakti. We just feel, we just throw our hands in the, throw our life. But you know, Radhanaswamy talks about that in his book, A Journey Home. There was like these malefic, malefic gut. You know, you gotta be careful like what you're, who you're dealing with because you're dealing. In India, there's so much access into these other worldly things that we just either take it. It's all crazy fictitious stuff. I've been with people that can read into my mind. And it's real. And then there's other cities. That's one city. City is a mystical perfections. And this is why people did yoga in previous times. They did it to either develop some type of city, some mystical perfection.

• 2:13:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, city, S I D I.

• 2:13:35Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah, I'm sorry.

• 2:13:36Rich Roll?

  Or I S. D D I S.

• 2:13:38Raghunath Cappo?

  They're Sanskrit words, so there's no real way.

• 2:13:40Rich Roll?

  It's like the special powers.

• 2:13:41Raghunath Cappo?

  Some type of powers, but we consider like Bhakti Siddhanta, the conclusion of all cities is Bhakti, right? Because we don't want to be some superhero, so to speak. We want to be connected and we consider that the highest thing. And the highest thing, they say the Bhakti master will have all cities anyway, because they can have whatever they want, because they, because of that same loving reciprocation with God.

• 2:14:08Rich Roll?

  And it's no big deal.

• 2:14:09Raghunath Cappo?

  It's no big deal.

• 2:14:10Rich Roll?

  The relationship to it is like, yeah, of course.

• 2:14:13Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah, whatever. Like Christ, the mystical things that we hear about of Christ doing, these were all like common things in yoga culture, not to downplay Christ at all. I'm saying Christ was.

• 2:14:27Rich Roll?

  That's all you got, Christ?

• 2:14:28Raghunath Cappo?

  Come on, walking on water, give me something. But you'll hear about these stuff in the Vedic tradition, about walking in water, levitation, healing people, making things manifest out of nothing, you know, these are cities that people can get. But Christ's beauty was not the mysticism, it was the fact that he was teaching people that you've got to trust your source, you've got to connect. This world is a temporary place. Don't make all your investments. There's very little return on investment in the material world. The bigger return on investment is in our spiritual life.

• 2:15:03Rich Roll?

  Well, speaking of teaching, we got to wind this down a little bit here, but I do want to talk about what you do at your farm, the Supersoul, the Supersoul Farm, right? You do yoga teaching and pretty like rigorous programs that you conduct, right? So what does that look like if somebody was to show up and they're like, tell me everything you know, teach me. Like what is the, you know, what is the? The program.

• 2:15:29Raghunath Cappo?

  Well, um, we sort of put a pause on the farm right now due to the pandemic.

• 2:15:34Rich Roll?

  Coronavirus.

• 2:15:35Raghunath Cappo?

  But, um, starting up, we're doing our trainings. We, I do a pilgrimage in India, which is a great way to dive into Vedic culture. And I teach every day, not just the physical practice. We teach philosophy and we go to holy places, holy people, holy temples, holy rivers, the whole thing. If you've ever wanted a, a beautiful experience, not as tourists, not as backpackers.

• 2:15:55Rich Roll?

  Places that you've gone.

• 2:15:56Raghunath Cappo?

  All over, but I think the next trip we're doing in November is Jagannath Puri. It's one of the holy dams of the east coast of India. Um, Rishi Keish, was the land of yogis on the riverbanks of the Ganga. Haridwar, which is also the, considered the entrance way into the sacred area of the Himalayas. And then Brindavan, that's where this trip is going in November. You can find that on my website, ragunath.yoga. And then, um, Nepal in April. We'll go to the holy city, holy places in Nepal. And then I do a training in India for about a month and we do it, it's a, for people who are already yoga teachers. We teach the facets of bhakti culture. We got like a, a part of Ayurveda, uh, as well as asana,

• 2:16:39Raghunath Cappo?

  pranayama. We teach Ayurveda. We teach music. We teach cooking. That's for our, our 300 hour trainees. But we also have a full on, huh?

• 2:16:48Rich Roll?

  You can't do this without teaching cooking.

• 2:16:50Raghunath Cappo?

  You can't do without teaching, yeah. It's, it's cooking with love. And then we also have a full on music academy that we do. People want to study Kirtan. And then we have a wisdom academy that people just want to study sacred literature. So that happens in January in, uh, 2022 is the next time.

• 2:17:08Rich Roll?

  And then meanwhile, you podcast every single day.

• 2:17:10Raghunath Cappo?

  And we podcast.

• 2:17:11Rich Roll?

  How you do that? I'm doing like two or three of these a week. It's killing me.

• 2:17:14Raghunath Cappo?

  It's exhausting.

• 2:17:15Rich Roll?

  How you do it every day? Even when you're traveling and everything? Like, how does that work?

• 2:17:19Raghunath Cappo?

  You know what? This is the biggest break I took. We, I had, took off Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. I've never taken a break this, this long. Usually I do it when we travel, but because of the time zone and because I'm on sort of a rigorous program this weekend, um, I just haven't had, it wasn't going to work out.

• 2:17:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:40Raghunath Cappo?

  And I wanted to give some quality time to my son and my wife who are with me as well. But yeah, we try to do it. And truthfully, the podcast, even though it's, it may sound corny, but I really do it for myself. I like to read every day. And it helps, it helps me.

• 2:17:57Rich Roll?

  Everything is a practice.

• 2:17:58Raghunath Cappo?

  It's a practice and hearing sacred literature, wisdom literature, truthful dialogue. It helps me in my life. And the secondary is a fact, it helps other people who are also getting into, into that. So today, I will also spend some time doing that meditational practice. I'll just do it privately.

• 2:18:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, cool. So, last thing I want to ask you, which is, if somebody's listening to this, and, and this is their first introduction into some of these ideas, what is the first thing that you, like some little nugget of wisdom that you can impart to somebody who's not familiar with yoga or the bhakti path, who's just starting to, you know, tap on the, the walls of the Maya surrounding, surrounding their own life? Like, where do you begin?

• 2:18:46Raghunath Cappo?

  Where do we begin? You know, you read a good book, Bhagavad Gita is a great book. Sometimes people find it a little heady at first.

• 2:18:52Rich Roll?

  I mean, it's, yeah, I don't, is that the fir-, I mean, it's

• 2:18:54Raghunath Cappo?

  I like Radhanath Swami's

• 2:18:56Rich Roll?

  Crazy stories.

• 2:18:56Raghunath Cappo?

  I like Radhanath Swami's book, because it's like a modern day autobiography of a yogi. It's his personal journey of hitchhiking to India.

• 2:19:04Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:19:05Raghunath Cappo?

  Which is quite amazing. Hitchhiking to India from, from Europe, and getting there and living with sadhus in the Himalayas. And even though it's a great story, it's, it's peppered with philosophy of practical philosophy, not just philosophy to sit in your head, but philosophy to sit in your heart and in your practice. So I, I find that as a good intro book, journey, a journey home autobiography of a, autobiography of a, I'm forgetting the title now, autobiography of a

• 2:19:34Rich Roll?

  Yogi.

• 2:19:34Raghunath Cappo?

  American

• 2:19:35Rich Roll?

  Amer-, oh yeah, I think it is American.

• 2:19:37Raghunath Cappo?

  American, okay, I have a mental block right now. But, but, but by Radhanath Swami. My name's Raghunath, his name's Radhanath.

• 2:19:46Rich Roll?

  Radhanath Swami. It's all very confusing.

• 2:19:48Raghunath Cappo?

  It's all, all these Sanskrit, and then it becomes easier. Then you start remembering these ones easier, because you start to learn the Sanskrit.

• 2:19:54Rich Roll?

  Where did you get that crazy mala around your neck?

• 2:19:57Raghunath Cappo?

  These? My friend

• 2:19:58Rich Roll?

  I've never seen

• 2:19:58Raghunath Cappo?

  My friend in Mayapur makes these silver talsi malas. They are Tulsi wood, which comes from the holy basil. It's considered a sacred plant. And my friend makes them and he lives in India and he makes them.

• 2:20:12Rich Roll?

  It's pretty cool.

• 2:20:13Raghunath Cappo?

  They're beautiful. I'll get you some.

• 2:20:14Rich Roll?

  Well, good, man. I think we, I think we did it. How do you feel?

• 2:20:18Raghunath Cappo?

  I feel good.

• 2:20:18Rich Roll?

  You feel good?

• 2:20:19Raghunath Cappo?

  Thank you so much for having me. I'm super honored and I'm really, I have great like respect for what you're doing and I will continue to be a regular listener.

• 2:20:28Rich Roll?

  Well, likewise, my friend, I aspire to your level of devotion. It's really, it's a beautiful thing and you're an example of the solution to what ails us as individuals and as a culture right now that's struggling with how to cohere and live in unity together. And I think that the message that you're putting out is, is exactly what everybody needs to hear right now. So keep doing what you're doing.

• 2:20:56Raghunath Cappo?

  I think you have the tendency to see the good in people. Thank you very much. You're kind.

• 2:21:00Rich Roll?

  Not always. I try to.

• 2:21:02Raghunath Cappo?

  Thanks, Rich. Keep up the great work.

• 2:21:03Rich Roll?

  Cool. So if you want to learn more about Raghunath, raghunath.yoga is your website.

• 2:21:09Raghunath Cappo?

  Raghunath.yoga or raghunathyogi at Instagram.

• 2:21:12Rich Roll?

  Instagram and Wisdom of the Sages.

• 2:21:16Raghunath Cappo?

  Wisdom of the Sages is our podcast. You can listen to it anywhere you get podcasts and you can binge listen and we're on every day.

• 2:21:24Rich Roll?

  And when's this book coming out?

• 2:21:26Raghunath Cappo?

  You know, the same people who did Radhanath Swami's book is doing a book about mice. I didn't want to put out my story, but they were like, no, you should put out your story first.

• 2:21:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:36Raghunath Cappo?

  And so we're doing a book on the six pillars of bhakti, which we're just talking about, but it's in the works right now and working on.

• 2:21:43Rich Roll?

  So a memoir also. You gotta do it. You have to. I mean, you've got so many crazy stories.

• 2:21:47Raghunath Cappo?

  I got a bunch of crazy stories. The more I'm writing them, I was like, well, this is pretty crazy.

• 2:21:51Rich Roll?

  Right. Right. Well, get that done because I know you were talking about it on Rogan and that was a year ago.

• 2:21:56Raghunath Cappo?

  That was a year ago.

• 2:21:57Rich Roll?

  Let's get this book done.

• 2:21:58Raghunath Cappo?

  Well, I put on the brakes and then the publisher told me, no, they want, we want your story instead.

• 2:22:02Rich Roll?

  All right. Well, when that's done, come back here and

• 2:22:04Raghunath Cappo?

  Okay.

• 2:22:05Rich Roll?

  share about that.

• 2:22:06Raghunath Cappo?

  Thanks.

• 2:22:06Rich Roll?

  Cool. All right. Peace, man.

• 2:22:08Raghunath Cappo?

  Keep up the good work.

• 2:22:08Rich Roll?

  Let's. Namaste.

• 2:22:13Rich Roll?

  Thanks for listening, everybody. For links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube. Sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, always appreciated. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page on richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis, portraits by Ally Rogers and Davy

• 2:22:58Rich Roll?

  Greenberg, graphic elements courtesy of Jessica Miranda, copywriting by Georgia Whaley, and our theme music was created by Tyler Piotte, Trapper Piotte, and Harry Mathis. You can find me at richroll.com or on Instagram and Twitter at Rich Roll. I appreciate the love. I love the support. I don't take your attention for granted. Thank you for listening. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste.