From Punk to Monk: Raghunath Cappo on The Wisdom of The Sages, Bhakti Yoga & The Pursuit of a Spiritual Life

This week I am joined by Raghunath Cappo, a hardcore punk icon turned modern-day spiritual warrior and Bhakti yoga devotee, to discuss various facets of living a spiritual life. We talk about the transformative principles guiding the path of self-transcendence, examining cultural differences between India and America regarding spirituality and identity. We discuss the vital roles of mentors and the essence of yoga practices like mantra meditation, japa, ritual, kirtan, and devotional dancing as avenues for spiritual expression. Raghunath reflects on navigating the challenges of ego and ambition while nurturing spiritual growth, emphasizing the importance of mindful choices, boundaries, and self-regulation. Additionally, we underscore the power of storytelling, community, and positivity while looking ahead to Raghunath's continuing mission to inspire spiritual fulfillment. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Bon Charge: Wellness products designed to help you sleep better, recover faster, and boost your overall well-being. Get 15% OFF w/ code RICH ROLL 👉boncharge.com On: 10% OFF your first order of high-performance shoes and apparel w/ code RICHROLL10👉on.com/richroll AG1: Get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs 👉drinkAG1.com/richroll Waking Up: Get et a FREE month, plus $30 OFF mindfulness resources 👉wakingup.com/RICHROLL Brain.fm: Science-backed sound for optimized productivity 👉brain.fm/richroll 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.

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• 1:05Raghunath Cappo?

  Don't worry about changing the world. Worry about changing these things within yourself, and you will shift the world dramatically.

• 1:13Rich Roll?

  How can we transcend the formidable barriers of ego and selfishness to embrace a life of service?

• 1:20Raghunath Cappo?

  I think there is something innate that is always tapping us on the shoulder. Hey, it's time to upgrade.

• 1:26Rich Roll?

  Back for round two is my friend, Raghunath Kapo, otherwise known as Ray. Ray's a guy who left an indelible mark on the vibrant punk scene of Manhattan's Lower East Side with his band, Youth of Today, advocating for clean living, vegetarianism, and self-control.

• 1:43Raghunath Cappo?

  It's a moment-to-moment choice of light over darkness. Am I gonna evolve today or devolve today? And I'm gonna choose it by what I put in my mouth, and what I put in my ears, and what I put in my eyes, and how I treat other people.

• 1:57Rich Roll?

  His journey led him to immerse himself in the rich, spiritual culture of bhakti yoga, the details of which unfold in his new fantastic memoir, From Punk to Monk.

• 2:07Raghunath Cappo?

  I can do all the things I've always done, but in a different way. And I tell you, that different mindset changes everything.

• 2:22Rich Roll?

  Let's do it, man. So good to see you. I'm delighted to have you back here. Congratulations on the new book. So much to catch up on. There's a lot going on in your life these days.

• 2:32Raghunath Cappo?

  A lot going on, a lot going on in your life. Full appreciation for all that you do. So many of our listeners on our podcast talk about ritual and the transformational effect that you've had. You know, I really think that a lot of the ways we transform is what we put into our ears on our downtime. And to have like, communities of uplifting podcasts really transforms culture.

• 3:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's cool.

• 3:00Raghunath Cappo?

  And you're doing it.

• 3:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you are as well. I mean, you do it every day, right?

• 3:04Raghunath Cappo?

  We do it every-

• 3:04Rich Roll?

  A daily podcast.

• 3:06Raghunath Cappo?

  We do a daily podcast. It has some, I have to skip some days because of traveling, but I have done it like on a mountains in Nepal. I've done it on cross-country drives where we just pull over and I do it from my iPhone. So it's not as refined as this beautiful studio, which I would like to get to one day. We get points for, we're trying our best to be every day on it.

• 3:27Rich Roll?

  It's pretty cool. I can't imagine doing it every day. But I think there is something, to your point around the power of podcasts, like the intentionality of that form of media. It's not a passive media. You have to seek it out. So anybody who ends up listening to your show or to this show, it's a different connection with what is being transmitted than, you know, just what's on TV in the background or what's on your radio where you're a passive consumer of it as opposed to somebody who's seeking it out for a reason.

• 3:57Raghunath Cappo?

  Sure. The senses always want engagement. That's like a principle within the yoga system. The senses always want to be engaged, but how will they be engaged? What are you gonna feed the tongue and the ears and the eyes? And so if there's something uplifting, something liberating, something grounding, then it's a good thing. So-

• 4:16Rich Roll?

  Or confronting, or challenging.

• 4:18Raghunath Cappo?

  Or challenging, or make you ask those scary questions.

• 4:21Rich Roll?

  Who wants that? Nobody wants that.

• 4:25Rich Roll?

  You are here at a very auspicious time for me personally, because I'm on the precipice of traveling to India for the very first time at the end of this week.

• 4:33Raghunath Cappo?

  Wow.

• 4:34Rich Roll?

  And I've never been.

• 4:35Raghunath Cappo?

  Wow. What are you gonna do? Why are you going?

• 4:37Rich Roll?

  The catalyst, the impetus is that I got invited by Arthur Brooks, who's a guest of this show, a professor at Harvard, who's taking a small group to Dharamshala to visit with the Dalai Lama.

• 4:51Raghunath Cappo?

  That's right.

• 4:51Rich Roll?

  So I'm gonna do that, and then my wife and I are gonna go to Jaipur and travel around. So you're the perfect person to help me figure out how to best embrace this experience that I'm about to have, given the many pilgrimages that you've made.

• 5:07Raghunath Cappo?

  You know, I went to India in 1988 for the first time as a pilgrim, and I was 22. So India, pre-internet, pre-cell phone, pre-digital television, was almost like you're going to another planet. If your intention, and I think yours and your wife's are, is something like substantial, the universe will arrange that you find that. But India has always historically been a great place for spiritual seekers. In my love of spiritual paths, I always found like there's a nugget of wisdom here, there's a pearl of wisdom there, there's a pearl of wisdom here. I find that the Vedic culture is the thread that ties all these pearls together.

• 5:47Raghunath Cappo?

  Like, if you want to understand self-improvement, self-betterment, metaphysics, you know, mindfulness, calming the mind, looking inside, everything from diet health to life on other planets, to seeing beings, to see spiritual beings and animals and plants and the earth itself. India is that thread that ties all these mysteries together. It's like a treasure chest of spiritual goodies that you can just uncover. And it's all there, and I've found so much joy in going there. And I remember a prayer when I was 22 that one day I want to take people here to experience that.

• 6:31Raghunath Cappo?

  And so that's part of my annual joys. I take people on pilgrimages, not as tourists, not as backpackers, but to find some spiritual or...

• 6:43Speaker 02

  Transformational experience. And if a person wants it, they get it. And it's not like a conversion thing. The yoga system is about not converting a person. Okay, you're this, now I'm gonna turn you into this. You're wearing this set of religious clothing. Now I'm gonna want you to wear this set of religious clothing. It's more of... It's here to remind you of what you already are. Uncover what we are... Everybody's a spiritual being. Everybody's a spiritual being that's forgotten. Now I think I'm an Italian-American New Yorker. And that's a temporary truth. It's not an eternal truth. And when we see everybody like that, when we find everybody's commonality,

• 7:27Speaker 02

  that's the magic of living in harmony in this world. What do we have in common instead of finding, "How are we so different?" That is where the world is leaning into right now. "How are we different? How is he different from me? Why do I not like this person? How about what we have deeply in common?" And that's what you get on a pilgrimage.

• 7:46Rich Roll?

  Well, there's the distinction between traveling there as a tourist, traveling there as a pilgrim, quote-unquote pilgrim. So I'm interested in that distinction. But more broadly, the great differences between the culture of India and the culture of America with respect to how we think about identity. I mean, you touched on it. Like, we love to craft these stories about who we are. "I'm a podcaster, I'm an author, I'm an athlete." These things, these labels that we attach that become stories, stories that inform a very calcified sense of who we are, what we're capable of. All at the cost of understanding that we are all spiritual beings having a human experience, that we are one, that we are united in that.

• 8:30Rich Roll?

  And that spiritual essence isn't just something that unites us as humans, but all living things, all things. And this is something that, because of the...

• 8:44Rich Roll?

  Sort of pressures or incentivizations, the whole structure of Western, modern society, kind of pushes us away from.

• 8:55Raghunath Cappo?

  Sure, it makes you latch up. I have an identity with a small i, a lowercase i. That's, that's, I'm Ray Cappo, I'm Raghunath, I'm a yoga teacher, or a singer of a punk band, or, and that's a real identity for a moment in time. But the message behind the teachings of the Vedas is, okay, but there's a real you too. There's a real you too, and that real you is the way you have to start to craft your mind to see everybody. And not just every human, but every animal, every plant, the planet itself, higher beings, and ultimately, God, or how you perceive a higher power. And when you have that type

• 9:36Raghunath Cappo?

  of vision, and that's something you sort of got to work for, because we're caught in a world of friends and enemies. We're caught in a world of differences. We're caught in a world of, you know, extracting the soul out of a animal, or out of the forest, and just seeing them as commodities. And when you live in that world that depersonalizes the personhood in a horse, in a cow, in a plant, in a forest, you've lived in a really sort of a me-first, an I-me-and-mine world, and it gets ugly, quick.

• 10:11Rich Roll?

  And what is it about India that unravels that knot?

• 10:15Raghunath Cappo?

  I think it's really sort of the disseminating truths that have been passed down since, you know, before recorded time, which is that very wide-gate, inclusive idea of spirituality, which is, not going to protest Christmas, look at these Christians trying to understand God. You're not going to protest a 12-step program, you're not going to protest, you know, we want to rally behind people on their spiritual path. You know, when I was doing the band thing, years later, in Shelter, and we had a message of bhakti, of connecting to your spiritual self, and I got a letter in the mail from a kid who was like,

• 10:58Raghunath Cappo?

  Thanks to your message, I became a Greek Orthodox monk.

• 11:03Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 11:04Raghunath Cappo?

  I didn't look at them, "Oh, man, the Greek Orthodox got them." To me, that's a win, to have anybody connect with their spiritual self, where they're seeing their temporary self or the ego-driven self as secondary. That's a great thing, and it's great because, one, it's gonna give them a little bit more peace in this world. You need to, because the way the material world is designed, it starts to wreck the small i identity. You know, I just went through a very tough split up after a long marriage, and it was like, I saw myself, I'm a family man. I'm married, I have children.

• 11:46Raghunath Cappo?

  It was sort of devastating to my secondary identity, which is, you can take a type of pride in what you are in this world. Not even like a bad thing, not like I'm a criminal or I'm a drug dealer. It's like, I'm a family man, that's like a good thing. But the way the material world, it just keeps pruning at your secondary identities to make you ultimately understand what your real identity is. And throughout the whole thing, if you can work through it, and Radhanaswamy, who's one of my mentors, who you had on your show, he just said, "You go through this without resentment, without spite, and without revenge." Which are very common things, which draw up when you're heated and you're frustrated or you feel hurt.

• 12:32Raghunath Cappo?

  You wanna get to spite, you want to dig for revenge, you wanna say like, "This isn't fair, it's not fair, why me?" Or, "Why did this happen to me?" And you start getting that other mantra going through your head, "This is happening for me." Start to reframe your identity. The universe, God, Krishna, however you want to perceive your higher power, is bringing you back to a more subtle, but more real, identity. And the subtle is actually the solid. I'm sure you could look back at times, you know, when you were with, had a girlfriend for two years, and you text each other every day, "I love you," and some had previous marriages, and it seemed like this is forever.

• 13:15Raghunath Cappo?

  And then you look back 20 years later, five years later, 10 years later, it almost seems like a dream, like... Matter of fact, my dream last night was even more clear than what happened 10 years ago in that deep, interwoven relationship. And so you start to realize, okay, I get it. This whole damn world is dreamlike because it just fades into these memories. And so what is the real? And that's sort of what that Vedic culture, that yogic bhakti culture brings you to. Identify yourself as a spiritual being. That's never going to change. And people come into your life and I can't possess them. I can't possess my kids.

• 14:00Raghunath Cappo?

  I've tried to. I can't possess my spouse. I can't possess my house. I can't possess my wealth. It will just come into me and then go away from me. Come back greater, come back less. And it leaves you just sort of like, all I can do is take what I have and use it in a good way and love the people that I'm with, but don't think you're going to ever possess anything. It's all going to get pruned. And I use the pruning example because, you know, if you don't know anything about gardening, when they're lopping down the lilacs, you're thinking, what are they doing? They're killing these good trees or lopping the roses or lopping the berries. It's not to destroy the garden, it's to enhance the growth of the garden, it's to enhance

• 14:45Raghunath Cappo?

  the fruit production, it's enhance the flowers and the scent. And so this is what the material world has designed. And when you see it like that, which is hard, I'm not saying I'm above all this, it's hard. I had, you know, first time in my life anxiety attacks in the breakup of my family unit. Definitely not saying I'm above anything, but I will say to have that perspective like, okay, this is for me.

• 15:13Raghunath Cappo?

  It gave me some type of banister to hold on to when the sinkhole of the material world just fell out underneath your feet.

• 15:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the ballast, like when everything gets stripped away, what's left? Short of having a spiritual connection or a sense of transcendent meaning in one's life, you're going to feel lost. And it's interesting that amidst this process of you having to grapple with non-attachment and the impermanence of things with all the work that you've done and all the talks that you've given that God or your higher power or the world just hurls at you, this very relatable, real-world problem that a lot of people go through, and you have to go through your own struggle with it, just like anybody else.

• 16:03Rich Roll?

  So, we talk about the fact that we are spiritual beings, but the other aspect of that clause is we're having a human experience. We're still in human form, and we're prone to all of those frailties and emotions and things that come up. And yes, it's here for your evolution, but I'm sure that didn't make it feel any easier and perhaps even made you angrier, right? Like, haven't I done enough work and now I have to do this? But as humans, what are we attaching to that make us feel safe? That make us feel like our lives have meaning? It's our relationship to other people, it's our membership in certain groups, and it's the identities that we craft. And even when you've done all this work to transcend that, to some level, this idea of being a family man, when that gets threatened, you're like, well, why this?

• 16:47Raghunath Cappo?

  Right. This is a good thing, right? Let this be the good thing. I'm being good. Yeah, that was beautiful. You know, your work and what we were talking about earlier, outside the story of my book, one of my big takeaways was, after writing it, was...

• 17:04Raghunath Cappo?

  What we do on a regular basis starts to create us. You know, that with running or with working out or doing yoga or doing martial arts, what we do out on a regular basis starts to create the fabric of our being and our thoughts. And so, one reason why I started our podcast was really not for anybody else but me, because I had a group of all my students who liked to hear this philosophy. And then I thought, you know what? The very teachings say, the way to transform is to hear truth on a regular basis, hear wisdom on a regular basis. So, people do it reading the big book, you know, reading the Bible, or reading, you know, Vedic teachings, or reading the Bhagavad Gita. Cultures do it around the world, but hearing your podcast,

• 17:48Raghunath Cappo?

  anything that's gonna deliver some type of direction, appropriate stepping in this world, appropriate movement in this world, appropriate thought process in this world. If I can hear something like on a regular basis. So, I really started my podcast really for me, so I'd have some accountability, so I'd have to show up on a regular basis. I think the success of the Rich Roll Podcast, if you don't mind me saying, is, is you're not preaching to us. You're sharing your experience in the struggle of the human meat puppet that we're in, and the mind that goes with that meat puppet, and how to deal with the gain, the loss, the success, the failures,

• 18:31Raghunath Cappo?

  the betrayals, the love, yet still staying on a path. And I think that vulnerability permits other people till now to drop the bravado and also be vulnerable as well. And I think that's why we're so attracted to your podcast.

• 18:45Rich Roll?

  Well, I think one thing we share in common is that we don't preach. I think people might misjudge you and think that you're in this preacher form, but that's not really what you're doing. I mean, I really try to avoid giving people advice or telling people what they should or they shouldn't do. I share my experience. That's something I've learned in recovery. Like, that's like a core principle. I'm not here to take your inventory or judge your life choices. I'm here to share my experience, and I'll have interesting people on, and I'll probe their minds. But I never look to camera and say, "Don't do this," or "Do this." I think you have that same sensibility in the way that you share your experiences and the wisdom of the people that you've spent time with. But like, what is the mission that you're on?

• 19:30Rich Roll?

  Like, how do you articulate it?

• 19:33Raghunath Cappo?

  We all have some different karma, you know, in this world to affect ourselves and our universe around you. And some people have very big universes. They're big influencers, so to speak, or they have an influence in a small way. Everyone has some influence because they are energy going out. Even we think, "Well, I'm not that influential." You are, to a certain degree. And sometimes you are to maybe three people. And that one person that you're influencing will reach tens of thousands of people. You know, there's been people that have touched my life deeply that don't have much influence in this world. But then I took what they said and I wrote a song about it. And, you know, tens of thousands of people got into animal rights or something.

• 20:17Raghunath Cappo?

  So we never know how much influence we have. But the focus always goes back to us. How can I change? Don't worry about changing the world. Worry about changing these things within me. And you will shift the world dramatically, whether you even realize it or not. And if I zoom out of my own life, we'll see, actually, there is a change there. So my biggest responsibility is, how am I gonna react? How am I gonna treat myself? How am I gonna treat other people? Can I walk with integrity, even though I'm coming from maybe a dented can background? Or I'm a little broken myself? We're a little broken in this material world. Sometimes we've come from broken families or sometimes we've come in from some dysfunctional, traumatic past.

• 21:02Raghunath Cappo?

  Can I piece myself together? And can there be some hero's journey through it all? And sometimes I deal with people, and I too, I don't like to give unsolicited advice. But if a person comes to me like, "Here's what I'm struggling with. This is all the marks I had against me as I grew up and abandoned parents, or I was homeless, or I was traumatized as a child. What do I do with that? I suffer from self-loathing." If you fall into one of these categories, you gotta understand your climb out of that, your recovery out of that, you're recognizing yourself to being, "I'm a spiritual being, and whatever happened is the past.

• 21:45Raghunath Cappo?

  How I move forward is gonna start to set an example, and it's gonna be a very beautiful, major motion picture or a novel that people are gonna read, and they're gonna be inspired, and you're gonna affect people that went through the same hell you went through. You can't make some of that past go away, but you can show how to move in this world, you know, with dignity and grace, having had that done to you, having had what happened, happened to you, and can you move forward? That is gonna be an example, a shining example for a lot of people. And so, you live that life, you write that book, or you just tell your story. If you've been to a 12-step program where people tell their story,

• 22:30Raghunath Cappo?

  that's the most encouraging thing out there.

• 22:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and you realize all of those stories have a three-act structure to them, and they are all mini-hero's journeys in their own right. Like, we all have the opportunity to, you know, embark on our version of that, even if it's, you know, even if that arc is very small, it can be meaningful in the transformation of that singular life. Right? And I think fundamentally, at its core, that's about whatever has happened to you, kind of owning that as a lever or an opportunity to grow or evolve. And if your life is lacking meaning or purpose, it can be found through that ownership and deciding that you're gonna walk that path and say, "Well, here's what happened to me. How can I grow? How can I evolve?

• 23:17Rich Roll?

  And then, how can I share my experience with others?"

• 23:20Raghunath Cappo?

  I like that that's a big part of recovery. It's a big part of bhakti as well, is, is we're not just taking care of ourself. We're taking care of ourselves and then we're just extending hands. And that's part of our own healing. If I can now help somebody else. So your initial question was, you know, what do you see as your mission? It's really just to keep my own head on straight. And then extend a hand and give love and don't try to be possessive. And sometimes you do give a lot of love and you'll get betrayal. And that's okay. And, you know, sometimes I've had to live with, man, I gave so much love to that person. And that's almost part of the life lesson too. Like, well, why were you given that love? Did you want something in return?

• 24:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 24:04Raghunath Cappo?

  It's like the universe is conspiring to teach us how to be lovers again. Not like the most basis type of love, like a 17 year old kid going, I love her. I'd love to get with her, which is not love at all. It's misusing this very, very high conception of love. It's, it's, you just want to consume that person. You're looking at that person like a lion loves a lamb. You're not looking at like the highest form of love, which is, how can I give this person, care for this person and nurture this person? And not really expect anything back.

• 24:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, in the most non-transactional way.

• 24:39Raghunath Cappo?

  In the most non-transactional way. And I feel like that's one of my lessons right now, I'm going through right now.

• 24:46Rich Roll?

  It's a tough one.

• 24:47Raghunath Cappo?

  It's a tough.

• 24:48Rich Roll?

  It's a tough one. But the other piece to this in your story and what you just related is something I think is very powerful, which is the power of one, the power of the individual. Like there's great agency in that because when you look at your story, you're somebody who basically has always been this rebel within rebellious scenes. Like you were a rebel even in the punk movement, you know? To be a straight edge hardcore punk in the broader punk movement was somewhat rebellious. And then to once again, within that, become like this spiritual punk rocker, to talk about like God and all the like within the punk movement.

• 25:30Rich Roll?

  Also, that might be the most transgressive thing yet until I kind of own that. And then in turn, see how that ripples out and creates consequential change.

• 25:40Raghunath Cappo?

  Hmm.

• 25:41Rich Roll?

  It was. I was just a guy.

• 25:44Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah, I was just sort of like raising the bar for myself because I was a spokesperson. It had a ripple effect outward and it was an artist. It was a songwriter and therefore the songs go out into the ether. I got into clean living at a young age. I don't even know why. I was just attracted to it. And then Ian McKay from Minor Threat coined that phrase and then I just sort of ran with that phrase and it became like a culture of, you know, clean living, animal rights, positive thinking, which was, you know, the early 80s punk scene was getting a bag of airplane glue and snuffing it and smoking with angel dust. And it was like depressing and sad and I watched young people run away from

• 26:29Raghunath Cappo?

  home and die. And so it created a bubble because in the early 80s, everything was corporate rock and roll. So we were bound, and I write about this in my book, but going from Connecticut suburb to hanging out in the Lower East Side of New York in the early 80s when New York was a completely lawless, serpico time of life where the cops were corrupt and there was violence everywhere and you're hanging around this dingy Lower East Side. You're taking your life into your hands, but you're connected with everybody, not just punks, just any, we were just connected by freakdom. Any freak out there, we'd all congregate on the Lower East Side and anything, anything out of the norm was like freakdom

• 27:14Raghunath Cappo?

  and you learn to live. Truthfully, it was a lesson that the world could use right now. We learn just to live and tolerate everybody because we're all felt like outcasts. I wandered off your initial question.

• 27:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no, well, it's just the power of the individual to affect change. But I think, you know, when you were sharing that story, I was thinking about the foreword that Moby wrote to your book and, and, you know, he's somebody who has a similar backstory, Connecticut kid, you know, then he was like squatting and, you know, these places on the Lower East Side and Soho and Tribeca, et cetera, when the scene was happening.

• 27:46Raghunath Cappo?

  Have you had him on the show?

• 27:47Rich Roll?

  I have, a long time ago. Yeah, I know, Moby. But the interesting reflection that he had was that. And you would share before the podcast, like, oh, you're out in the world and you meet lawyers and all different kinds of professional people who have some connection to that scene and, you know, were part of it back in the day, but they go on and they build lives within the construct of the Western world.

• 28:08Speaker 02

  Like this Crossroads.

• 28:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like, like, like you, yeah, like, tell that story, like, Tal, the chef and the owner of Crossroads, you see him at dinner last night.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  Went out to dinner last night and Tal, the owner of Crossroads, it's great, incredible vegan restaurant in Los Angeles, and they opened one in Calabasas, so we went there. And I don't really know him that well, but I met him once before and he just, he just said, I want, he just took me around the restaurant and then just said, and introduced me to, I think, his lawyer and said, this is Ray, he's the reason why this restaurant exists. And I was like, I didn't know what you're talking about, but, you know, he's a kid somewhere in America, I don't, I don't know where he was from, truthfully, but they got a record and they get inspired, they change the trajectory of their life, and I never, like, wrote a

• 28:57Speaker 02

  song for him, but it's just, when you internalize something and it changes you in a deep way, positive or negative, it goes out into the universe and you have a ripple effect. And what he's doing is, you know, creating a culture of, you know, clean diet, refined eating, where people can come and have these incredible meals and promote a cruelty-free lifestyle, and it was very impressed. And the thing is, it's, they, they get it at this young age, it really doesn't matter what age, but for a lot of these kids in the music scene, it was at a young age, changes the whole trajectory of their life. And whenever we've had, and I'm sure for yourself as well and myself, when we're on

• 29:40Speaker 02

  a speeding train going south and someone pulls a lever, now that train's now going north, and we start to feel like, wow, I was on a runaway train to hell on earth, and we start to develop a lot of gratitude.

• 29:52Raghunath Cappo?

  Towards the people in our life. And I could just tell by the way he spoke with such soft humility. He doesn't have to be humble. He's got very successful restaurants. He's doing great things, but he was just so humble and grateful. It was so sweet to have that exchange with him. The writing of the book too, and I'm sure the writing of your book too. You start to realize how so many people have been sent to you as messengers, as deliverers of truth. And sometimes they were handing me a message and I just looked away. But they've always been there. There's always been sort of, you know, lighthouses or guides or messengers that have come. And at different times, we just take them.

• 30:36Raghunath Cappo?

  I was just meditating on that this morning. I was like, if I was to fully embrace everything that's been offered to me right now, I would be a whole different person. But I'm only taking as much as I want because I have some plan B perhaps. So yeah, if we can fully embrace, and maybe it takes sort of lifetimes of heaven and hell on earth to fully embrace 100% light instead of darkness.

• 31:15Rich Roll?

  There is something about looking in the rearview mirror and trying to make sense of one's life and all the things that have happened along the way to deliver you to this place. And I think your book speaks to this idea that when you do that rigorously, you will see how people arrive right at the right moment.

• 31:34Raghunath Cappo?

  Right at the right moment, right?

• 31:36Rich Roll?

  To create these formative experiences for your growth and benefit. And within that, you can't help but see a spirituality that God is showing up for you.

• 31:47Raghunath Cappo?

  Sure. And sometimes you can see that just in meeting a person. And I know people who are just spiritually evolved, they can look at your face and they can just tell a person. Like, I've had to make some certain choices in my life, and I would consult with a guru or a teacher, and they say, "Let me see a picture of them." And just through seeing a person's face, they can see the karma of a person. It may sound otherworldly or not, but I've seen that happen. I've also seen through good astrologers that I've had that study, you know, jyotish, you know, Vedic astrology, where they say, "Yep, this person, no matter what you give them in this lifetime, they can only get this far."

• 32:32Rich Roll?

  They're gonna have to go around a couple more times.

• 32:33Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah. And then certain people are very, they have, you know, some moksha yoga in their chart, where they're so accessible to this as well. That doesn't mean you should stop extending your hand, because life is eternal. It doesn't end. I was listening to your Tommy Rives podcast, and he was sharing a lot of that stuff as well. Yeah, it just keeps going. We don't go away. And we choose, right in this moment, am I gonna evolve today? Or devolve today? And I'm gonna choose it by what I put in my mouth, and what I put in my ears, and what I put in my eyes, and how I behave, and how I treat other people, and how I treat myself. It's not like, "I joined a religion, now I'm saved." It's not

• 33:17Raghunath Cappo?

  that black and white according to Vedic teachings. It's a moment-to-moment choice of light over darkness, truth over illusion, you know, however you want to word it.

• 33:28Rich Roll?

  Hmm. To bring it back to the thing that I wanted to raise with you, which is what Moby reflected in the foreword, was this idea that so many people from that scene that you two were both part of, like, ended up, like, going into the world, like, tall, like, they become professionals, whatever. But life, instead, made you dig even deeper. Like, you decided not to go that route. You become more disciplined and more invested in those formative principles that were at the core of that scene, all the way back when you were a kid.

• 34:03Raghunath Cappo?

  Sure. Yeah, and I don't know why. You know, you don't know why sometimes you get...

• 34:10Speaker 02

  I meet people like who listen to our podcast and just be like, you know, I'm 55 years old and I need to live a different life now. I've worked a corporate life and now I want a spiritual life. You don't know when that thing is gonna click. Sometimes a midlife crisis is like, what am I doing with my life? You know, what am I doing here? Okay, I have kids, I've raised a family. What, now what? We do that. I've, I've checked off the bucket list. I've been to Aruba, I've been to Cancun. Now what? It's like, I want some substance. And sometimes you get it at a young age. And I've met people younger than me who are just spiritually focused at 11. I can't believe it. And then for me, it was just like a loud calling like at 22.

• 34:55Speaker 02

  And so I don't know why. It's some karmic thing meets some mercy. You meet someone who touches your heart and you realize, oh, that's an option? I can be like that? I thought this was normal. There's a higher version of normal. So I think the biggest catalyst for change in anybody is to associate with people who have a high caliber of what normal is, a refined, high vibe. This is normal. And then by getting around people, and that's why I think pilgrimage is so important, because you search out people like that who live this type of life. And you're just like, wow, that is an option. I could add some of that to my life.

• 35:39Speaker 02

  And I think there is something innate in the living entity, in the living being, that is always sort of tapping us on the shoulder. Hey, it's time to upgrade. Just like you get that thing that drops down on your computer. Time to download the new operating system. And you're sort of like, remind me later. Never see this message again. It's never at a convenient time. And upgrading is never at a convenient time. How to upgrade my life is never at a convenient time.

• 36:06Raghunath Cappo?

  But you gotta do it, or you hit that, never see this message again. And then you just figure it out in your next life, or your next life in your next life. And for people who think, "Oh, next life? What the hell are you talking about?" Guess what? We've had next lives within this life. I could look back 20 years ago. I was in a different house, a different part of the country, had a different, you know, career, different circle of friends, a different partner. I've had many next lives, past lives, in this life. So if people can't believe, and I get it, you know, all I see is this life. If you can't believe in some afterlife or some previous life,

• 36:49Raghunath Cappo?

  think about the many lives we've had in this life. Think about the many incarnations we've had, both physically. You know, I remember when I was a raw foodist, you know? I was like a buck fifty soaking wet with a crystal in my pocket. Or I had a different body when I was doing jujitsu every day. And I've had different physical frames within this life. And with that physical frame comes a different type of mind or a different type of intelligence. I've reincarnated, so to speak, that mind. Or think about your 17-year-old intelligence, your 17-year-old ego, your 17-year-old mind. It was a completely different mind. Everything, and that physical and that subtle physical, is constantly in flux. And I'm just witnessing and choosing.

• 37:34Raghunath Cappo?

  And it's in the refinement of my choices that I create my next body. Meaning even tomorrow, what my body is tomorrow.

• 37:44Rich Roll?

  What is bhakti yoga? When you talk about yoga in the West, we think it conjures up a certain image, a very Lululemon-oriented kind of lifestyle. So maybe share a little bit about the origins of yoga, how we should think about it, and what is specific or particular about this bhakti yoga strain of yoga consciousness?

• 38:10Raghunath Cappo?

  Well, within Vedic culture, Vedic culture is a way of settling the mind so we can focus on our spiritual self and ultimately source.

• 38:21Raghunath Cappo?

  Within bhakti, bhakti is a way of the spirit-soul connecting with source. Who would you say, a sorcerer? That's what a sorcerer is, isn't it? Spirit-soul connecting with source. And there's a process to doing it. And when we think of yoga, we think of a physical practice. And it's important to take care of your body. But if I'm taking care of my body merely to endorse my ego, which is the reason why a lot of people go to the gym. There's a line between I'm taking care of my body because I don't want to be a couch potato. You get a certain type of good feeling of showing up on a regular basis to exercise or to breathe or go into the sauna. But there can be a certain point where you're doing this

• 39:04Raghunath Cappo?

  to cement yourself tighter to the body. So in a spiritual paradigm, the body is a gift. It's not you, it's a gift that you have. And if you were to lend me your bicycle and I gave it back to you trashed, I wouldn't be a good friend. So our bodies should be taken care of. But within the yoga system, the emphasis for the teacher should be always encouraging you to see yourself underneath the body and the mind. And in bhakti, we use certain practices to reconnect to source and to see myself as a spiritual being. And the kind of practices we use are mantra meditation, japa, which is Indian rosary, where you're chanting divine sound.

• 39:49Raghunath Cappo?

  Ritual, which can be worship of spiritual forms of deity. It's through kirtan, through singing, which is basically you're singing and calling divinity into your life. And even dancing. And it's interesting because things like singing and dancing, it's like you can't figure them out. Like you can't try to like put that under some type, bring it into the lab and try to figure out what is. But there's something transformative about singing and dancing that when we do kirtan, which is call and response chanting of sacred sounds or sonic meditation.

• 40:33Raghunath Cappo?

  You can see a transformation happen in people. And people will share their experience. They're, they'll, "I don't know what happened, but I just started crying." And it has a, I call it a scrubbing bubbles effect. Remember that commercial for scrubbing bubbles? It was like, spray it on and it cleans your bathtub. But there's scrubbing bubbles on the consciousness, they say. The idea is it's a pure soul theology. That you're not born sinful. You're not born, uh, broken or dented. You're actually pure. But for lifetimes of bad choices, that's the sun of the soul gets covered. In the same way, a window of your old barn gets covered by dirt and dust and grime.

• 41:17Raghunath Cappo?

  So the mantras have a scrubbing effect on the consciousness, scrubbing effect on the heart, scrubbing effect on the mind. Not to recreate you, but to uncover you. So more than like preaching a religion, this is something you could do in the privacy of your own home. You don't like religion? I get that, makes sense. So religion takes people sometimes in crazy ways. In the privacy of your home, you can sit. We use the Hare Krishna Maha mantra, or Maha means like a great, like a Mahatma, Maha mantra. Where you chant anmalas or beads. And you chant as if you're calling divinity into your life. The sounds have effect.

• 41:59Raghunath Cappo?

  And that's a huge part of all spiritual culture, especially from the East. The sounds we hear have the greatest effect of transformation. I think it's safe to say, you can analyze that. You can hear, there can be sounds. We can listen to YouTube, or CNN, or Fox, that makes us like angry. After you turn off that, "I'm angry now at the world. I'm angry at this enemy." Then there's, uh, sounds that sort of uplift us.

• 42:31Raghunath Cappo?

  You know, I always like to start like an interview. And this isn't like forced or manipulative. This is genuine. I meditate on appreciating the person that I'm with. And so, sounds of appreciation, of glorification of another person. That's something we don't learn in high school. In high school, I learned how to take everybody down. Cut people down, cut them down to size, make myself look better. But there are spiritual sounds where you start to appreciate another person. Appreciate your parents. If you walk through that world of gratitude, of appreciating, of not complaining, that changes your landscape. So there's positive and negative sounds, and then there's actually transcendental sounds.

• 43:12Raghunath Cappo?

  And the entire Vedic system deals with a refined, refined sound, actually. In bhakti yoga, we use this one to actually transcend the body. These mantras to transcend the body and to connect with source. The very basic ones I said were like negative sounds, like gossip. Positive sounds, appreciation. But the whole Vedic culture uses all these other interesting sounds. There's mantras you can chant for abundance. Mantras you can chant for progeny, or hmm. I was taking a handful of students to this one temple where I knew one of the priests. And he was a young man from this seminal succession of priests. And he said, "Raghunath, if any of your ladies want to get pregnant,

• 43:56Raghunath Cappo?

  my older brother can help." And I was just, I was laughing to myself. And all the women were like, "What?" But the idea was that, yeah, they just know mantras and yogyas to perform. That if you have a prob... Sometime women have a hard time having a baby. There's different, we can help with that.

• 44:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's fascinating that over many centuries, this culture has figured out certain sounds that have a variety of impacts on the human vessel's ability to connect with the divine. And how they determined that.

• 44:30Raghunath Cappo?

  And not just the divine. Like, that wasn't a divine... That was reaching out to higher beings, to the devas, to, you know, they're just, for some material benefit, like having a child. Like, having a child. And that's a whole nother facet of Indian understanding of devas and daves, or higher beings for giving you material prosperity. In bhakti, we're not asking for stuff. You know, we don't pray to Vishnu or to Krishna for what we want. We pray for, give me what we need, which is a very scary prayer sometimes. Give me what I need, because sometimes what I need is not what I want.

• 45:09Raghunath Cappo?

  Sometimes I have to pray, help free me from my desires, because my desires, my desires can cause me lots of trouble.

• 45:20Rich Roll?

  Sure, but yoga fundamentally means to yoke, right? It is this idea of how do we take this human form and connect it with something transcendent? And these practices in all these different traditions, the bhakti tradition that you just shared, are really about preparing the body or orienting the body into a state in which it becomes more receptive to that.

• 45:46Raghunath Cappo?

  Sure, and it creates a new mind. That's what's happening. The gross things that we do initially, okay, you know what? I'm getting, this is what I tell my kids, there is no good that can come from alcohol. There's no good. There's no good. I have certain ones that I say on a regular basis. Like my mom used to say things to me on a regular basis, and thank God she did, because they stuck with me. Like, never take drugs. That was my old Brooklyn mother, just like putting that in my ear thousands of times.

• 46:17Rich Roll?

  Usually that ends up creating the opposite effect.

• 46:20Raghunath Cappo?

  Sometimes it does. It depends how it's delivered. But yes, I always say, you know, no good's gonna come from alcohol, you guys. No good. Your highest self is not gonna come from that. You don't need it. And if you say, well, no, it doesn't affect me, hey, you should see what you're gonna be like without it. You can be able to do much more. And some people say, well, it's not a big deal. I just have a glass of wine with dinner. And some people, a glass of wine with dinner doesn't hurt them. But it might hurt a person that looks up to you. That can't have one glass of wine. Because some people can't have one glass of wine. They need seven glasses of wine with their dinner. They can't be normal in the world. They have to be extreme because that's somehow. I'm wired to be a little extreme myself.

• 47:02Rich Roll?

  Just the idea of, of, you know, yoking the body, connecting the human vessel to something more divine and self transcendent.

• 47:13Raghunath Cappo?

  What I was saying earlier, what we do on a regular basis creates us. And our morning rituals, and I'm sure you have a whole set of morning rituals, but our morning rituals creates us as well. And in Bhakti, there's a real emphasis on morning rituals. And it can be slightly different towards the person. And then if you start getting a taste for them, because like some people like say, okay, I gotta run every day. You're like, what the hell? I can't run. I gotta wake up and run. But after a while, you get, it's like a taste for it like now. I want to run. I'm eager to do it. So in Bhakti, there's morning rituals. And then when you get a taste for doing it for five minutes, for 10 minutes, for 15 minutes, or sit there for two hours of, you know, concentrated focused meditation.

• 47:56Raghunath Cappo?

  When you get a taste for it, then it starts to bleed into your evening rituals. Then you want evening rituals. You don't want to wind down. You know, my father used to wind down, you know, with hard liquor. You know, he had, he had seven kids. He was a school teacher and that's how he would wind down. Sit in the dark and just drink alcohol.

• 48:14Rich Roll?

  God bless him.

• 48:15Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah. And God bless my father. He was a great guy, actually. But we want to take those morning rituals and we want to add an evening ritual as well. And then what's happened is you sandwiched in your day. And then everything you've done in the morning and the evening start to happen in the course of your thoughts in the day. And they affect how you're going to move throughout the day. I think it's safe to say in my life that if I start off with a strong morning rituals, that's changing the way I treat everybody, treat myself, the words that come out of my mouth. If I start off bad for some reason or another. It's affected me all day long.

• 48:57Rich Roll?

  So what is that morning ritual?

• 48:58Raghunath Cappo?

  The good one or the bad one?

• 48:59Rich Roll?

  The good one.

• 49:00Raghunath Cappo?

  Oh, the good one for myself?

• 49:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 49:02Raghunath Cappo?

  The good one for myself. I'll show you my abbreviated one today. My abbreviated one was, we woke up from traveling, and we basically got here, had an hour to take a break, and then we went to dinner last night. So, but I wanted to have some peace of mind. Now, when I get back, I'm gonna take a red eye tonight, and I'm going to play a show tomorrow night. So I've gotta be like, okay, I've gotta take care of this body 'cause I can't work like I used to work when I was even, you know, 38 or something like that. So this morning, I just sat in a focused place for 32 minutes and just chanted on Japa. Actually, at first, I sat in bed and prayed to

• 49:46Raghunath Cappo?

  previous teachers, teachers that I've never met, but I've read their works. And I prayed for them to give me some type of intelligence to sort of work through my body in the same way they've changed me, that I can say something that can lift up somebody else. So there was a, I'd say about 20 minutes of that.

• 50:07Rich Roll?

  And Japa are the prayer beads?

• 50:09Raghunath Cappo?

  Japa is like an Indian rosary, which is like a refined type of just like focused, where it's not just like you're clearing the mind. You're actually inviting spiritual sound, inviting spiritual God into your heart and to asking for direction in the course of the day. And then I did a pranayama for 12 minutes. And then I did a, as cold as a California shower can be.

• 50:38Rich Roll?

  So it's sort of...

• 50:39Raghunath Cappo?

  And then I did, like, before that, I did 15 handstands, back to back, one after another.

• 50:43Rich Roll?

  There you go.

• 50:44Raghunath Cappo?

  That was my movement.

• 50:45Rich Roll?

  So breath work, cold shower, this is like very much an ancient version of a very modern, you know, of the moment protocol.

• 50:51Raghunath Cappo?

  All these guys, whether it's like Huberman or Joe Rogan, or they're all talking about these stuff that I learned in the ashram. We take cold baths every morning, intermittent fasting, that's the stuff we did in the ashram. The thing is, now that they're really into the science about it, and I appreciate that, but I just sort of, I don't know why, but I just had faith in...

• 51:12Speaker 02

  In these yogis from ancient traditions, because I had an interest in metaphysics and and mystics and hermits and saints. So I would read these books as an 18 year old about the life of yogis and autobiography of a yogi and Swamirama and Swami Prabhupada and their lifestyle and their life. And I thought, oh, I could do that. I could try that. I could adopt a little bit of that into my life. But now, you know, here it is 40 years later, and these are things are actually in the conversation because I think truth is universal. I don't think any religion or any country has a monopoly on God, or has a monopoly on truth, or has a monopoly on wisdom. It's all there. And

• 51:54Speaker 02

  it will go back to this, I'm not a body. I'm going to sit in this cold water. The yogis of ancient times would sit in the Ganges in the winter when it's freezing, not for the the health benefits or the inflammation, you know, gets rid of inflammation and stuff like that. It does all that, too. Just like your yoga practice, it gets, it has a very positive effect on the body. What it really does, like sitting in a cold plunge, is you start to understand, I'm not these sensations. I'm not my mind. I can make this miserable by going, it's so cold. I can give meaning to the experience. Or I can just notice a

• 52:37Speaker 02

  sensation. And that's, I can take outside of that experiment into my world. Oh, this is happening to me. Oh, my heart was broken. Oh, I got so much good fortune here. Oh, this person betrayed me. And I can just say, this is happening to me. What am I going to add to this? Am I going to add some meaning to this? Or do I just see this, these are things are just coming and going?

• 53:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, there's all these onramps to receptivity to all these practices. And currently, science and all the kind of studies around sauna and cold plunge and fasting and all of that, connect with a lot of people who have no relationship to anything beyond, you know, the kind of immediate material world, right? But

• 53:24Speaker 02

  Which is a good thing. I don't want to poo poo on that.

• 53:26Rich Roll?

  It's fine. It's fine. But I see them as like portals of entry that set people in motion on a path towards the possibility of a higher state of awareness. And when you look at any religious tradition,

• 53:41Rich Roll?

  They all have these strains of renunciant practices and asceticism that are really about getting outside your comfort zone, or interrupting the pattern of your life, so that you can be more present and you can connect with something bigger than yourself, whether it's a cold plunge, or a fast, or a silent meditation. Like, these are all uncomfortable practices, right? But they're all oriented around developing a greater spiritual receptivity.

• 54:11Raghunath Cappo?

  A greater spiritual receptivity, or just to separate yourself from your conditioning and your mind. I mean, nothing separates you more from the mind than choosing not to eat for a week.

• 54:24Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 54:24Raghunath Cappo?

  And when your mind is saying, "Okay, it's time to eat, it's time to eat", and then you're getting some sensation, and then you realize, "I don't need to eat? I don't even need to eat to feel like I'm in peak performance right now." Have you ever run on a fast?

• 54:37Rich Roll?

  I have.

• 54:37Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah.

• 54:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, you realize you can do much more than you think, which is empowering. And also, it connects you with the power of discipline to change your life. And you're somebody for whom, like, discipline goes way back, whether it's the straight-edged lifestyle as a kid, or like martial arts and jujitsu. I mean, you were doing all of that with Eddie Bravo and Joe Rogan, like, way, way back in the day, and realizing, like, "Oh, this thing that you do that requires that level of discipline and focus plays out, or translates into the spiritual realm as well with these morning rituals, and the way that you kind of approach your daily life."

• 55:20Rich Roll?

  So talk a little bit about how discipline spills over into the bhakti yoga lifestyle, and how that can be a vehicle for growth and evolution.

• 55:31Raghunath Cappo?

  You touched on jujitsu and I was thinking, one of the beautiful parts of jujitsu are just grappling on a regular basis with people with all different body sizes. You know, I'm not that big, so sometimes a big guy just laying on top of you, sweating and stinking on top of you. You don't fight out of rage. You fight like, if you see like, great jujitsu fighters, they're moving slow and methodically. It's not something, when you think of, these guys are just raging on each other, like road rage. It's actually, it's like a mindfulness. It can't describe it anyway, you're actually mindfully, like a warrior would be training. And that's, that's a huge difference.

• 56:14Raghunath Cappo?

  Because once you act out of rage, or out of, you know, in the yogic system, they call it rajas, rajaguna. It means you're acting with like, a passion, or of, it's not done with a clarity of intelligence. It's just done without intelligence behind it, almost the intelligence is locked up. So if you can do it in a very calm mind, and that's why a breathing practice, or a pranayama practice, which I've had for a long time, is, it gets you in that place, no matter where you are. Even in great times of stress, even, even in a physical fight. If you practice yoga on a regular basis every day, and you're practicing deep breathing while you're doing, that follows you through the course of a day.

• 56:55Raghunath Cappo?

  What we do in those rituals, it follows you through the course of the day, just saying, I'm saying early with our thoughts. Your question was?

• 57:03Rich Roll?

  The relationship between discipline and spiritual growth.

• 57:08Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah, first of all, there's a feeling of, any type of discipline, you get, you feel a type of integrity that comes with showing up on a regular basis. And integrity, or lack of integrity, affects the mind. You try to tell a kid to, you know, be a good kid, and get out there, and don't be depressed. Hey, if you're not doing integrity-driven acts, of course, your mind is gonna be sad. Of course, there's gonna be self-loathing. We can't forget the initial thing. If you want some self-worth, you gotta act in a worthy way. And this is a problem with, you know, raising teenagers, is...

• 57:49Raghunath Cappo?

  Kids get addicted to things and get addicted to habits that aren't worthy. And therefore, there's a lot of self-loathing, there's suicide in teenagers and adults. So integrity is not the goal in our spiritual life, but integrity is a foundation. And so, and it's hard because culture is luring you away from integrity. Every minute, it's like, "Interest only, zero down." You know, "How close can we get to?" And I guess one Christian priest said, "How close can I get to sin without sinning?" You know what I mean? It's like, we're always getting tempted to the edge. And culture will do that to us and then chastise us for crossing that line, immediately for crossing that line.

• 58:33Raghunath Cappo?

  But we've created a whole culture that is trying to throw us off the tracks. And so, it is extra difficult. And back to that thing where if you associate with people or a community, which you have here, and which we're trying to create with our podcast and our people, is community that lifts us as well. And the community emboldens you when you're weak. And then you lift them when one of their... They use the analogy of a twig. Easy to snap a twig, hard to snap 50 twigs. You know, so we're weak, we're fallible. And we want to be around people that lift us higher. And I think that's an important premise in what we're doing.

• 59:17Raghunath Cappo?

  And to recognize that, you know, we are frail and we are weak. And we need positive uplifting people as friends and within our community. And all this stuff, the integrity, the community, that helps us get to our next level of, okay, now, they're not going to do the work for you. They're just going to be there as an environment. And in that environment, then our own spiritual life can grow. And that's sort of like a one-on-one thing, God. I can give my kids the facility, I can give them the appropriate household, I can give them the appropriate foods and, "Hey, you guys don't watch that media, don't consume that stuff." But ultimately, everyone's got to fly their own plane. There's no 12-step program, or Catholic Church,

• 1:00:02Raghunath Cappo?

  or anything that's gonna save you. They're just gonna provide an environment for you, or an ashram. I've seen people come to an ashram and do all types of nonsense, or live a duplicitous life, where they have a public presentation and a private life as well. And really, that spiritual growth, that comes from you just opting in to, "I'm gonna be my authentic self today."

• 1:00:34Rich Roll?

  One of the things that trips me up, or one of my weaknesses, I mean, I consider myself a pretty disciplined person. But all of the noticeable growth in my life is really the result of pain, or being backed into a corner, in which, you know, I had no other choice. And I'm in a situation right now, probably somewhat analogous to, you know, how you're interfacing with life, where things are really good. My kids are doing great. I've got this thing here that's very fulfilling. It feels meaningful. I know that other people out in the world get meaning from it. And I love it. And I get up in the morning excited to do it.

• 1:01:17Rich Roll?

  But on some level, I'm stuck. There's no impetus to continue to grow. Fundamentally, I know I'm here to grow, to evolve. But it's very difficult to do that when you're not being pressured to do it. You were talking about how the community can make you stronger. It can hold you accountable as well. Or as a mirror to show you where you still require some level of evolution. And this is like a conversation that I'm always in with my wife, right? Who's a much more spiritually committed person than I am. I still have my ego rooted in the material world in ways that I'm working on.

• 1:02:01Rich Roll?

  But I find my ambition, or my...

• 1:02:07Rich Roll?

  You know, proclivity to care too much about what random people I've never met think about what I'm doing influenced me in ways that I, you know, really, you know, don't like.

• 1:02:19Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah, it's amazing how with all the validation we get, one rogue comment on a social media like, ah, hurts so much.

• 1:02:30Rich Roll?

  I've gotten better at it, but yeah.

• 1:02:32Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:33Rich Roll?

  It's a thing. And so as much as I can sit here and say, oh, this podcast is an act of seva and like, I'm here, you know, and there is that aspect of it, but these things are not binary. Like, I can identify where my ego comes into play here in ways that I know need some work and some redress. So how do you think about ego and ambition? As somebody who has lived the monk life, but isn't a renunciant, you're in the world and you're doing things and, you know, creating experiences for people and, you know, in some ways, very much straddled between these two worlds.

• 1:03:09Raghunath Cappo?

  You know, first of all, I want to address your

• 1:03:14Raghunath Cappo?

  humility or you just being genuine. When you're in it, it's hard to notice it, but the fact that you're showing up on a regular basis, it's like the hands of a clock. It doesn't appear like you're changing because you're like, it's just me doing it again. But you're changing. I bet if you look five years ago at yourself, you're a whole different person today. And I think the ego is also not an on off switch as well. I'm gonna turn off my ego now and I'm gonna... But the more of that external ego identifies with the genuine self, there's a real self that wants to serve divinity and other living beings. Once that's in line, that's the perfection of the ego in this world. We're not going to abolish the ego. It wouldn't exist. But when the ego exists within serving God,

• 1:03:59Raghunath Cappo?

  serving the divine, whatever you want to call your higher power, or in serving humanity, and I mean, I won't say I'm gonna make it wider than humanity, all living entities, then that's a beautiful place to be. And it might appear like, okay, you know, you've got all this and you've got, everything's are going well, et cetera, like that. That's okay. You don't have to, you don't have to like, kill your family and, and move to a cave to get rid of your ego. That's not gonna work. You have to love and you love and you don't, you understand. Because everything is going good. And I think for most people, I don't think for you. Most people, good karma can ruin their life. Good karma could make them think, yeah, the material world is a great place.

• 1:04:43Raghunath Cappo?

  What's bad with the material world? I'm getting all my desires met. And it becomes a stunt to their growth. It becomes a stunt. Keeps you stuck. Generally, I always say, give it time. Reversals happen. Sure. These things are all very impermanent. I think you do this too. We cultivate exactly what you just said. These things are impermanent. And so when the reversal happens, which inevitably does, you're a little bit more prepared. And, and it becomes more of a lesson and less of a bitterness. In the same way we use that example, why is he cutting down my garden? He's not cutting down your garden. He's enhancing the growth right now.

• 1:05:24Raghunath Cappo?

  I had the, the beautiful opportunity, one of my students, who I was very close to and lived locally, uh, got cancer. And wasn't sure, and he didn't get through it, so to speak, physically. But spiritually, he got through it. And I had the ability to witness him slowly letting go of his attachments. And he was just attached to God. I grew through so much of his experience. I had to be his sort of life coach, death coach, eternality coach. And I never thought I could do such a thing. I, I was always a little freaked out about what happens if a friend dies. And he was a young man, married with kids.

• 1:06:08Raghunath Cappo?

  And good looking and, you know, he was, when I would go away, he would assist. He would sub my classes for me. He's a yoga teacher and, and did everything right, so to speak. And to be with him. And to watch him grow through that process was so beautiful to witness that it inspired faith in me, that things do reverse sometimes on a dime. And what we're doing on a regular basis is preparing us for that. And we understand that actually, there is no loss. There is no loss. There's just gain. That loss, or that bitterness, or that why me-ness, or

• 1:06:50Raghunath Cappo?

  that victimhood, that's going to plague everybody in this universe. Everybody gets that. Once you sign up for a material body, you're going to get that. Are you going to run with that? Are you going to relinquish that and see my life as blessed? And those who've opted in to see my life as blessed, they live a blessed life because they're seeing those blessings happen at any moment. And those are the people I want in my life.

• 1:07:15Rich Roll?

  Have you seen people go from being victim mindset oriented to having that sense of being blessed in the way that you just described? Like, can you make that leap? Are some people just wired to be pessimistic and, you know, woe is me and bad things happen to me and it's never going to change to that place of gratitude and understanding?

• 1:07:42Raghunath Cappo?

  I think we are wired certain ways with good attitudes and bad attitudes. And by inviting people into our lives, just like people, every time they turn on the Rich Roll Podcast, they're inviting you into their life, they're inviting your guests into their life. So by inviting people into our lives, it sort of opens maybe a different door that was bolted shut. So I think it's important to be like really, really careful who we invite into our life, because some people are like creating real problems in our life. And we're inviting them randomly by whatever I tune into my podcast or my radio. And we're inviting that into our life. We're inviting lyrics of songs into our life. We're inviting media or movies and attitudes that go with those movies, you know, the characters, the

• 1:08:27Raghunath Cappo?

  archetypes of these movies. And like, I like that guy. That guy's cool and tough. I want to be like that guy. We're inviting that into our life. And so- As we refine ourselves in our spiritual practice, we're very refined, just like people are refined with, you know, checking ingredients. Does this have gluten? Does this have refined sugar, high fructose corn syrup? You get very refined about like, what am I putting in my ears today? What am I putting in my mind today? What am I putting in my thoughts today? And I have seen people who've done a little, they've taken a little in and it's changed them. And in this particular case, this friend, student of mine, who left his body, he fought it. And when I say fought, I meant had some bitterness.

• 1:09:12Raghunath Cappo?

  But every time I'd see him, he'd go with, he'd be in a good spirits and we'd sing together. It was part of our practice. We'd sing together and we'd read together. And there was one time I came in and he was broken. And he just started crying to me. And he said, "Raghunath, why would God do this to me? I've got two little girls." And, you know, Raghunath, the guy who has the answer for everything. I just said, "Let's read and maybe we'll get an answer." Ever do one of those things?

• 1:09:55Raghunath Cappo?

  "Let's read and the answer is there." And this is the beauty of bhakti, actually. It's not just us reaching up. It's also energy reaching towards you. It's not like we're just desperate reaching, "Hey, God, help me." It's a higher power, a source, reaching out to you, embracing you. So this is what we read. We opened up, it was the purport of this book, the Srimad Bhagavatam. It said, "For a person practicing bhakti, there is no bad karma." Because that's what he first said. "Why is my karma so bad? This has happened to me." He said, "For a person practicing bhakti, there is no bad karma.

• 1:10:37Raghunath Cappo?

  But if it's seen that there is some reversal in their life..." You can't get more of a reversal than you get cancer and you're going to lose everything that you've worked for. If they were seeing there's some reversal in their life... That is Lord Krishna accelerating their spiritual practice. And I witnessed this guy accelerate his spirit. I go, and we looked at each other like, wow. This isn't bad karma. This is a, see in a material concept, we look at our astrological chart. This is good. Oh, I have a malefic planet here. Like right now, I'm going into like a Saturn period, but it's a strong Saturn. So, you know, you can, you know, wear a particular gem and you can count around a malefic planet. This is a whole weird.

• 1:11:21Rich Roll?

  Well, it's the human compulsion to make judgment calls and value statements about things that happen. Like things happen. They are neither good nor bad until we decide they are so, right? And we create a narrative around that. And to like liberate yourself from even making that judgment call and the relief of being delivered this message right at the right time when it was needed most, that like this is an acceleration of your growth and you know, whatever, there's comfort in that, obviously. And it is that thing, you know, and I've noticed it many times in my life and with so many of the people that I know in the recovery community. It's that idea that

• 1:12:00Rich Roll?

  like the higher power is always there. The more receptive you are to it, the more open you are to it, you will begin to notice it showing up in your life in the ways that are needed to accelerate that growth and that evolution. But it's a subtle attention.

• 1:12:18Raghunath Cappo?

  It's a subtle, like sometimes it's a whisper.

• 1:12:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You'll get clobbered if you keep ignoring it at some point, right?

• 1:12:26Raghunath Cappo?

  Sure. Yeah. It's a whisper. Sometimes it's loud. Sometimes it's not a whisper. Sometimes it's real loud, like no more of this. No more of this. Like the universe just says, this part of your life is over. If you don't see that as God's hand, the universe's hand, I keep saying the universe, but there was a G word at one time. You couldn't say the word God. I think people are just shifting a lot.

• 1:12:47Rich Roll?

  Well, it's an interesting time. Like we are in this, you know, we live in a secular, Western democratic republic where religious and spiritual institutions, for the most part, are on the wane due to the higher priority that we have given higher institutions of learning and science as a vehicle for all knowledge. The path to total understanding is through science. Like that is sort of the. The kind of primary operating agreement or, you know, operating system of our, of our culture. Meanwhile, so many people have had negative, bad experiences with religious institutions and spiritual traditions.

• 1:13:29Raghunath Cappo?

  Sure.

• 1:13:29Rich Roll?

  Due to the fallibility of human beings and what happens when we organize around ideas and create institutions. And so we're bereft of spiritual connection. And you come along as somebody who has a powerful voice because of your musical background, you're able to connect with people in a way that other leaders of spiritual traditions, perhaps are, are, are less capable. With that comes a responsibility. But it's also interesting because it comes in this package of Krishna consciousness, right? And I know as a kid, what it was like when I saw the Hari Krishnas at the airport or congregating in the park with the weird tuft of hair and the things and banging the, you know, and you're like, I don't know what to make of that, but like, there wasn't anything inside of me that was like, I want to go hang out with them.

• 1:14:14Raghunath Cappo?

  I want to be like that.

• 1:14:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I was like, did they let them out of the mental institution?

• 1:14:18Raghunath Cappo?

  I want to cross the street.

• 1:14:19Rich Roll?

  Like, what is going on, right?

• 1:14:20Raghunath Cappo?

  I want to cross the street.

• 1:14:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so as a messenger, as this vehicle for spiritual awareness and this also awareness that you have of this position that you hold amidst a culture that prioritizes things that are orthogonal to spiritual growth, like, how do you connect with people for whom the idea of anything spiritual is met with, you know, a sort of cringe-worthy repulsion?

• 1:14:50Raghunath Cappo?

  You must write a lot because you're, when you speak, it's like, it's like you're reading from a book.

• 1:14:56Rich Roll?

  You're buying time to answer the question. That's what you're doing.

• 1:15:01Raghunath Cappo?

  I find that there is a desire for spirituality in, in this like secular world. And people do get to this point where they're, they realize there is a limit of science and there's things that we can't know. And people have had experiences that are like, this is beyond rational, yet I've had this experience. And I think it's also important to...

• 1:15:26Raghunath Cappo?

  Conclude that just because we've been dealt counterfeit bills,

• 1:15:35Raghunath Cappo?

  and every time we mess around with them, we get in trouble. The cops come in. This is not a real hundred dollar bill. I've been dealt counterfeits and I've been prosecuted. Every time I've used counterfeit hundred dollar bills, doesn't mean there's not a real hundred dollar bill. Just because I've heard, oh, there's corruption here, and this priest did that, and that guy's a pedophile, and this guy was misled, and this guy started a cult, and this guy was not sincere, that doesn't mean there's not a genuine spirituality. Just because either people have done it wrong, or people have been duplicitous, or an organization was tweaked, or broken,

• 1:16:16Raghunath Cappo?

  that doesn't mean there's not a genuine spiritual truth. That's living. That's living and alive and affecting both you and I right now. Again, no ashram, no church, no synagogue, no mosque owns it. You know, spiritual truth is for all people of all times. It stands the test of time, and it's sort of the gold standard of like how we want to move in this world. And even if everything was like wiped out, somehow there would still be light there that people would magnetically move towards like a true north. You know, I've had to meet with it in different circles. In the yoga community, it was pretty easy. You want to learn yoga? I'm going to teach you the whole thing of yoga here. You came to my workshop. This is the origins of the yoga system.

• 1:17:00Raghunath Cappo?

  In the punk scene, it was a little bit more difficult because you're dealing with atheists, and how dare you bring God to the punk scene? This is a scene where we do it, you know, there are no rules. And then I just have to say, well, if there are no rules, then I can do whatever I want. Some people will say that music was founded on it's a glorification of higher powers. So I'm just putting God back into music, whereas you've artificially taken spirituality out of music and made it political, or complainy, etc. And that was my argument with the punk community when my second band Shelter started, when we were all monks. And I was like, if

• 1:17:41Raghunath Cappo?

  there are no rules, if that's your mantra, that there are no rules, well, okay, then welcome embrace me.

• 1:17:47Rich Roll?

  And if there are gonna be some rewriting of some of those rules, you're one of the OGs, right? Shouldn't you have a little bit of a, you know, latitude to?

• 1:17:58Raghunath Cappo?

  I've used that argument too.

• 1:17:59Rich Roll?

  Rather than the guy who went to a couple of shows and has lots of opinions.

• 1:18:02Raghunath Cappo?

  I've used that argument too. Hey, you know what? I can do whatever I want. I grew up on the music you were listening to. So if, you know,

• 1:18:10Rich Roll?

  If anybody's gonna do it.

• 1:18:11Raghunath Cappo?

  If everyone's gonna change the rules.

• 1:18:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah. But I love that idea of God or the divine being the origin story of music itself.

• 1:18:19Raghunath Cappo?

  Right?

• 1:18:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Wasn't music crafted in the beginning to connect us to something bigger? And there is that magical unknown that happens when you hear music that brings us together and allows us to have some kind of transcendent experience.

• 1:18:36Raghunath Cappo?

  Yes. And being a quote performer, so to speak, in a band, I had this great experience, and I think I mentioned this in my book too, but I'll just share it again because it was, it was a powerful, ever have someone say one thing to you and just changes everything in your life? So one, when I first would go visit an ashram, there was one mentor of mine, we'd have very spiritual conversations. Every morning I'd go to the ashram at 7:00 AM and we'd do a morning's singing and then we'd have breakfast together. And it was just, I wish I had all these questions and answers recorded because it was, it was a real spiritual dialectic back and forth every day. And then one day he asked me a question. What kind of guitar does your guitar player play?

• 1:19:21Raghunath Cappo?

  And I thought, wow, this is the first time he ever asked me like a regular question, like about material life. And I said, well, he plays a Gibson Les Paul. Why do you ask? He said, oh, I'm just curious because I used to play the guitar, but I don't anymore because it's Maya, meaning it's like illusion. I said, wait a second. What do you mean it's Maya? You always told me that you don't give up what you do. You take what you do and use it in a spiritual way. He said, but for me, it was, the guitar was Maya. And I said, wait a second. You told me, and I've read in the Bhagavad Gita that we don't, like Arjuna doesn't give up his, his fighting. He just fights in service. You don't give up what you do. That's the whole essence of the Bhagavad Gita here.

• 1:20:06Raghunath Cappo?

  He said, yes, but for me, the guitar was Maya. And I wouldn't let him off the hook on this. And he said, okay, next time you're on stage, see if you're doing this to serve God or to be God. Because I argued, well, you told me I should do music as a service. And so he said, yeah, see if you're doing it to serve God or be God. And immediately I was like, it was one of those, um, what's that movie, Sixth Sense? When everything like, I see dead people. What was that movie called? It's like, everything changes at the end movie. Like everyone's, the guy's been dead this whole time. I was like, oh my God, my whole life, I've just tried to be God. Whether it's a performance, whether it's a friendship, whether it's a, you know, relationship

• 1:20:51Raghunath Cappo?

  with a woman, I've just tried to use whatever I got to manipulate the universe to worship me. It was like my first step out of my ego. And I was like, that statement changed everything in my life. Am I doing this to serve God or be God? And it was an ongoing theme in my life because once you see yourself as part of something bigger.

• 1:21:16Raghunath Cappo?

  And not trying to have you as the center, you lose a manipulative edge. You don't want to be a manipulator. You want to be a person that extends your hand, extends your love to people. And I could still be onstage doing what I do, but in a whole different frame of mind. I could still be in a relationship with a person. I could still raise kids. I can do all the things I've always done, but in a different way. And I tell you, that different mindset changes everything.

• 1:21:46Rich Roll?

  It's all in your relationship to it. The Gibson is Maya or a tool, depending upon what's going on in your soul, right? And it's not an on-off switch. The same can be said for this microphone sitting in front of me. Some days, I'll catch myself too much in my ego or looking at all the metrics and thinking of plotting and thinking about how I'm going to do this or that. But fundamentally, I always have to return to, this is an act of service. Like, how can I be of service? And this is what I was referring to earlier. It's like, it's an ongoing thing that I have to always try to develop some hyper vigilance around and catch myself.

• 1:22:29Raghunath Cappo?

  Hands on the clock.

• 1:22:30Rich Roll?

  Because it is a commercial pursuit and all this stuff and all of the, you know, everything that goes into it, it's another version of you getting up on stage. Are you doing this to glorify the self? Or are you doing this as an act of service to others?

• 1:22:44Raghunath Cappo?

  And you'll know what you're doing when the performance is over. Because when the performance is over, and I've had that experience too, performing in front of thousands of people. And if I did it in the mood of, I'm the center, when I got offstage, there'd be a lull. You're no longer important. And you'll want to like, seek out importance. And that's why I can understand how people move right to drugs, move right to, you know, reckless sex, move anything to keep the dopamine flowing. But if you do it in the mood of service, when you come up that stage, and I've had that experience too, because again, it's not an on-off switch. It's a moment-to-moment checking with reality. You get offstage and you're completely peaceful. No matter how active and crazy and jumping and kicking and stage diving you were doing,

• 1:23:29Raghunath Cappo?

  you come off like a sage. I also wanted to address that this person who said, I gave up my guitar playing because for him, it was Maya.

• 1:23:40Speaker 02

  I thought it took a type of maturity to, for him to realize there are certain things we just can't do. We just choose, you know what? This is too overwhelming for me and I'm just not gonna go there. I'm not gonna try to like, I'm gonna push it through it. There's certain things like, you know, if you're addicted to gambling, you just don't go to Vegas. You just draw a line and say, I'm not gonna hang out in Vegas, not gonna look at succulents in Vegas, I'm not gonna go to a good vegan restaurant in Vegas.

• 1:24:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:06Speaker 02

  I'm not gonna go on a hike in the desert.

• 1:24:08Rich Roll?

  Rationalize it.

• 1:24:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, ways to rationalize it because to have that foresight that there are people, places and things that are massive first dominos that are gonna knock over and are gonna take me down a dark tunnel. It's good to have that insight.

• 1:24:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm thinking about something that just came up in the news the other day, which is this news story that seemed to like really create a lot of energy, which was this story about Steve-O. He relates this story about how Bill Maher invited him on his podcast and Steve said, hey, listen, if I do it, can you just not smoke pot? Well, I'm sitting across from you because I'm coming up on 16 years of sobriety. And Bill Maher's team said, no, that's a deal breaker. Like, cause that's part of like what he does or whatever. And it created this news cycle. And there was a contingent of people who were claiming that Steve was just being, you know, difficult or something like that. Like, oh, you know, can't he just show up and do this? But I think it's a great show

• 1:25:09Rich Roll?

  of strength for him to say, my sobriety is the most important thing. I'm not gonna put myself in a position where that would be threatened unnecessarily. It's a different version of the Gibson story to say, this is just something I can't do, or I'm going to take a precautionary measure to not put myself in a position where I am going to threaten that spiritual connection that's keeping me on this path that, that is the most important thing for me.

• 1:25:35Raghunath Cappo?

  It is an act of bravery and it can come off like ego. Like, I don't go where there's, you know, these toxic things. I'm sure if a person's been through some type of recovery or rehab or 12-step program, they're not going in with that attitude. They're going with, with, this is my boundary. I've created this boundary with my sponsor. I've created this boundary for my own personal accountability. I know it might be not the best choice for my career, but this is what I'm gonna do. That's incredibly brave. I don't know the intention, but I always give the people the benefit of the doubt that, and I've had to do that myself with certain things. I just don't go there. I just don't do that. I don't put myself in a very compromised situation, not because I don't trust you, but there's human foibles and triggers that I suffer with and I'm just, I'm not gonna go there.

• 1:26:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but ultimately, those guardrails and those boundaries create more freedom than restriction. I think there's this idea that if you do that, you're gonna be living your life within a very narrow lane. But by doing that, you open yourself up to a wider variety of experiences than you would have otherwise.

• 1:26:38Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah, they say you get a ding on your car by hitting that guardrail, but it could save you from the greatest catastrophe, from going over the, going over the side. So, yeah, and I think there are people who are 20 years sober. They don't need a tight leash because they're not triggered anymore. You know, if you're 20 years sober from heroin and someone offers you heroin, there's a space between stimulus and response. Would you like heroin? And you'd have to think, there's more space now. I can think, well, last time I did that, I lost my family, I lost my job, I lost my fortune. No, I'm not gonna, thank you for offering, no, I don't do that. I don't do that.

• 1:27:18Raghunath Cappo?

  But in a very new recovery state of your life, hey, do you want heroin? There's no space between stimul-, yes, I do. Well, I thought you don't do it anymore. I know, but if you got it, I'll take it. So, yeah, I think we're trying to, and the yoga system has that, to get our consciousness, no matter what path of yoga you're on, to get your consciousness to a point of sattva guna, or this consciousness where there is stimulus and then there's a space before response comes right in. No, I know that's my pattern. I'm not gonna choose that pattern anymore. It never served me. That helps everybody.

• 1:27:56Rich Roll?

  That adage of, or that notion of, are you serving the ego? Are you serving the self? Or are you serving God? Is a recurring theme throughout the book and it shows up in the epilogue with this crazy, beautiful story that you share about this dentist that you sit next to on the way to India. Can you tell that story?

• 1:28:18Raghunath Cappo?

  It was a good story. It was a real story. It was sort of afterwards, after I was married, me and my daughter on our way to India. I like to talk to people. I don't know if you picked up on that.

• 1:28:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I get it. My job today is getting out of the way, Raghunath.

• 1:28:33Raghunath Cappo?

  What's that?

• 1:28:33Rich Roll?

  I'm just getting out of the way.

• 1:28:35Raghunath Cappo?

  I apologize.

• 1:28:36Rich Roll?

  The floor is yours, my friend. No, it's good. That's why you're here.

• 1:28:40Raghunath Cappo?

  And I like to talk to anybody. I don't care if a person's famous or I just like to talk to people. And I like to talk to people on planes because it's sort of almost like free therapy. You can just like talk and they can share with you. And so I especially like Indians because Indians have generally an interesting story of how they got to the United States. And because I'm a fan of the Bhagavad Gita and Vedic culture, I always like to pick their brain and see where they're at and then I tell my story. So I was sitting on an aisle and across the aisle was a collegiate, you know, dressed in, I can't remember, UPenn or something outfit. He's probably 24 years old or something. And we started talking. I said, where are you going now?

• 1:29:25Raghunath Cappo?

  Are we going to India? And we started talking about his parents. I said, did he grow up in America? He goes, yeah, I grew up in America, but my, my parents came over and they lived a very, very difficult life and they struggled to put me and my brother to college. And I, I go to the University of Pennsylvania now. My brother's a dentist and I just graduated. I'm going to be a dentist. I said, oh, that's great. He said something like, my brother was a dentist. And I said, oh, what do you mean he was a dentist? And we were sort of happily engaged and his face sort of shifted. I said, what do you mean he was a dentist? He goes, well, that's why we're going to India right now. My brother has become a sanyas. And sanyas means is a stage of life where you give up. Material life, you, you give up your material identity.

• 1:30:10Raghunath Cappo?

  And it generally happens traditionally when you're elderly. Because you realize like, I'm not of this world. There's a whole system in India for this stage where I'm not of this world. I'm, I'm with God. I've been training myself from childhood. Then I got involved in material activities. I had kids, drove the kids to soccer, et cetera. But now I'm an old man or old lady and now it's just me and God. And so he was, his brother was doing it at like 26, which is, you know, young saints. This, they happen in traditions all over the world. And I started feeling for the parents. Because I'm a parent. And at the same time, I want my kids to be spiritual, but would I want my kid to leave me? And so all these emotions started flooding through.

• 1:30:55Rich Roll?

  Right, because part of it is you're renouncing your like, status and place in the Western world, but you're also cutting yourself off from your family. Right? It's a goodbye.

• 1:31:05Raghunath Cappo?

  It's a goodbye. And his particular tradition, he said, we're going to India to wish him well. But we'll never see him again. I was getting all my fatherly buttons, which is my small I, identity. Again, I'm a dad. I started going, oh, I said, how do you feel about that? Were you close to him? He said, yeah, we were very close. I said, are you upset? He goes, I was upset. And then he started sort of lecturing me in a, in a sort of a beautiful, noble way. I didn't quote, look spiritual. He didn't know that I was on a spiritual path myself. But he said, you know, in my culture, we believe there is good and great. And so to be a good dentist and to be responsible, that's a good thing.

• 1:31:48Raghunath Cappo?

  But to find your spiritual calling, that's a great thing. So I had to sacrifice good for his greatness.

• 1:31:56Raghunath Cappo?

  And now I've decided to move back in with my parents. I was living in my own apartment, moved back, and I'm gonna take care of my parents. Because they took care of me when I was vulnerable. He goes, "This is another thing I don't like about your culture, even though I grew up here." He goes, "You neglect your parents. And your parents have changed your diapers for you and taken care of you when you're vulnerable, and it seems like no one takes care of their parents here." And I just started feeling, okay, I'm gonna text my mother when I get off this plane. And he just sort of lectured me heavy. And I had an appreciation for that culture. And so, a lot of these old cultures, and India still has it really intact,

• 1:32:35Raghunath Cappo?

  where there is check and balances, and there is this conception of good and great. And it made me reflect on my, my life as a dad, and what I actually really want out of my kids. What do I want? Do I want my kids' success for my ego? Or do I want my, their success for their deeper connection? And I wondered how I'd react to such a thing, too.

• 1:33:03Rich Roll?

  He says, "I just opened the last page of your book." And he basically just says to you, quote, "This is the problem nowadays in culture, and it's ruining our planet," he said casually and confidently. "People don't want to serve God, they want to be God." He paused, rearranged his sitting posture, and looked more deeply at me. Wouldn't you agree? That's it, man, right?

• 1:33:29Raghunath Cappo?

  That's it.

• 1:33:31Rich Roll?

  It's heavy.

• 1:33:32Raghunath Cappo?

  It is heavy, and that's been an ongoing tap on my shoulder, too.

• 1:33:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:39Raghunath Cappo?

  Especially for a person like myself, who's in the public eye, and sort of got that entertainer karma, entertainer persona, what you wanna entertain, you want people to like you, you want, you want to give to people, checking in with your intention while you're doing it in the first place. And that changes everything.

• 1:33:59Rich Roll?

  What else did you learn about yourself in the process of telling this story and, and writing the book?

• 1:34:06Raghunath Cappo?

  Again, I said it earlier, that the idea of messengers, it's not like we're just reaching up. There's source reaching down. In India, they give it the analogy of the monkey holds on to the mother. That's us reaching up, but the kitten is being saved by the mother. The mother's grabbing by the nape of the neck. So it's two things happening. When we start to make these personal declarations to God, to the universe. Sometimes people just break, fall on my knees. Oh, God, what do you want from me? That type of destitution is a beautiful thing. It's like that gift of pain, that gift of destitution,

• 1:34:50Raghunath Cappo?

  where you have nowhere else to go. And so it's not just you reaching up. The universe starts to send, or starts to inform and starts to direct. That's a very real thing. And you can't necessarily, that doesn't necessarily show up in a lab, but it shows up in your real world experience. That other world is a real world. And everyone can tap into it. You just have to want it. What would be an example of that in your life? See, the very beginning, when my father left his body, and I had a certain amount of success in my life with the music.

• 1:35:33Raghunath Cappo?

  And, you know, we all expect if you go down a specific path of success, of building community. I mean, I had that community when I was 22. We had hundreds of kids would hang out together in New York City every weekend to do these, you know, all our friends' bands, shows, and stuff like that. When you still felt like an emptiness in the soul, and then, of course, something as solid as your father dying, who was like a pillar in your life, it leaves you to this point of, now what do I do? And it's in that destitution, you're left with these bigger questions like, who am I? Why am I here? What is success in this world?

• 1:36:18Raghunath Cappo?

  What is success in this world? When those questions come up. When my friend slash student left his body. You know, I could probably think of like things that happened yesterday. Cause these, it's not like you're ever just put in that position once. Again and again, we're put in this crisis situation of destitution. You know, when I went through a divorce and I thought I was gonna, you know, lose my house. When I was worried about my children, how they're gonna react to that. 2007, when, you know, there was a real estate collapse and they declared bankruptcy and all these things. When all those types of things and you're, and you're so raw and you have nothing.

• 1:37:00Raghunath Cappo?

  You can have the option to resort to bitterness and sadness and victimhood. Or you can extend your hands up, right? Like sometimes you'll go to a kirtan and you'll see people just reaching their hands up as they're singing. Cause it's, it's the mudra of trusting. I trust, just like a little child will reach his hands up to the father or mother. Cause they trust the mother and father. And if they don't know somebody that comes in the door, they'll hold on to the leg of the parent. Like who is this person? And so in those positions where you just sort of like reach your hands up, okay. Now what do you want from me?

• 1:37:35Rich Roll?

  In recovery, they would call it a deepening of surrender. Like are you willing, when your back is up against the wall? This is your moment to really test your level of surrender. You're being asked to deepen that level of surrender. What are you willing to give up? How receptive are you truly?

• 1:37:56Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah, you appear devastated and not cool and collected like you usually present yourself. And, um, you know, I'll give a shout out to Jiva G. If you know her, you're gonna meet her. You'd love her. But she does a thing called the Bhakti Recovery Podcast, which sort of grew out of a whole 12-step community from our Wisdom of the Sages community. Which is she does a Bhakti, Bhakti podcast. And we've known her since she was a teenager, a young teenager from the Upper East Side. But she was crazy and out of control, shaven head, six, 15-year-old or 13-year-old. But she went through a hard path and got into drugs, everything, crazy story.

• 1:38:40Raghunath Cappo?

  And she went into recovery and got into Bhakti. And now she leads this very- Life-changing transformative bhakti recovery, which is a beautiful group too. So she always says to me, Raghu, you can't save your face and your ass at the same time.

• 1:38:55Rich Roll?

  That's an old school tried and true one.

• 1:38:57Raghunath Cappo?

  It's a good one. It's a good one. And sometimes it's the beauty of destitution, I call it.

• 1:39:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, not fun now.

• 1:39:09Raghunath Cappo?

  It's not fun, but neither is being fake.

• 1:39:15Rich Roll?

  That takes a lot of energy.

• 1:39:17Raghunath Cappo?

  Being fake is exhausting.

• 1:39:19Rich Roll?

  For sure.

• 1:39:22Rich Roll?

  As we kind of wind this down, for somebody who's listening to this, for whom these ideas are brand new, they've never heard of bhakti yoga, but perhaps they're suffering from the great affliction of being in the Western modern society, which is that we're on these hamster wheels, chasing these things only to discover whether we succeed in achieving them or fall short of achieving them, to understand that they're not delivering on the promise. The promise, of course, being a life of happiness and meaning and purpose.

• 1:39:53Raghunath Cappo?

  Eternal happiness in a temporary world.

• 1:39:57Rich Roll?

  There has to be something else, Raghu. Where do you direct these people? How does one begin their spiritual odyssey or embark upon this journey of self-transcendence?

• 1:40:09Raghunath Cappo?

  Well, I think if they're listening to this podcast, they've already started. You fuel your mind with what you consume. So I love Radhmanath Swami's book. I like my philosophy peppered into a story. That's why I like all the paronic stories of these archetypes of heroes and villains and gods and goddesses. But Radhmanath Swami's story, A Journey Home, autobiography of an American Swami, is such a great story about him going to India in the 60s and his, you know, search for truth and balance and God. And it's a beautiful story. And even if you're not a punk, my book is my story also. It's got philosophy peppered into it and what I, in our struggles. Because as different as we are, I'm a punk. Radhmanath Swami was not a punk.

• 1:40:54Raghunath Cappo?

  And you could find other memoirs of people on their spiritual journey. They're not meant for you to become a punk. It's meant for you to find your struggles. Because as different as we are, we're all pretty similar too. We all struggle with heartbreak. We all struggle with hoping that some material success will give us internal fulfillment. We all struggle with trying to find eternal happiness in a temporary world. We all struggle sometimes in relationships. We struggle with this concept of purpose. And I find like in these spiritual memoirs, I found a little bit of myself in Radhanaswamy's journey home. And like, okay, this is my journey. I didn't do it like he did. And I'm never gonna be his signature. He has his own signature.

• 1:41:39Raghunath Cappo?

  I have my own signature. And in that, I feel like it can perhaps pose these questions and answers that will help a person on their own journey. And of course, you know, the Bhagavad Gita, which is a beautiful gold standard of spiritual truths.

• 1:41:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's hard to just jump into that.

• 1:41:59Raghunath Cappo?

  It's hard to, for me, it was. For me, I was really discouraged just because I felt like I was philosophical, but just I couldn't go through all the words and the different language. So for me, just really hearing from people who are on a spiritual journey. Nowadays, there's so many good podcasts or there's so many good lectures on YouTube. It's the perfection of the information age. You can really pick out what you want to listen to and let that fill your ears and heart.

• 1:42:27Rich Roll?

  Well, there's the precepts and the principles and the pillars of this tradition. But we learn through story. And we learn best when that story is told by someone that has something relatable about them. Some aspect of their story that we can key in on. Maybe the facts of that person's life, like your upbringing is very different from mine. But I can connect with the emotional sensibility and kind of what you went through that led you on that path. And I think that's what really solidifies somebody's connection to a new idea. And then they can read the Bhagavad Gita or they can go deeper, right? But storytelling is really powerful. And then the precepts.

• 1:43:13Rich Roll?

  Are so powerful because they actually are very practical. It's like an operating manual for life. It's not just theory or some kind of ethereal idea that's interesting. It actually grounds you and helps you make better decisions about how to direct, not only your actions, but also how you do that inventory on your own behavior. For example, to evaluate, where does my ego sit with this?

• 1:43:40Raghunath Cappo?

  Love that. I love that phrase, my inventory, my personal inventory, taking my inventory. Don't take my inventory.

• 1:43:48Raghunath Cappo?

  It's such a good phrase, isn't it?

• 1:43:49Rich Roll?

  That's all recovery speak.

• 1:43:51Raghunath Cappo?

  Yeah, it's so good. But yeah, getting rid of those essential things. These things are contaminating my consciousness, contaminating my mind. I'm going to cut those out of my life. And that's where, talking about earlier, I got distracted. But I'm not going to let that in my life. There's no good that's going to come from, out of that. I'm going to regulate my senses. I'm not going to be a slave to my senses. I'm going to start to notice my mind. I'm going to start to notice my mind's silly choices and good choices. I'm going to cut those silly ones out. And once we, once we start to regulate the senses, get the big pollutants out of our life, then we start that inner engineering of the consciousness. And I'm, no, I'm going to let go of resentment. I'm not going to be a resentful person. I'm not going to see myself as a victim any longer. I'm not going to see myself as this is happening to me.

• 1:44:34Raghunath Cappo?

  This is happening for my growth, that there is a benevolent force in this universe that's bringing me higher and higher. And then I'm going to apply this stuff on a regular basis when I want to resort to my old way of thinking, which is like, why me? So unfair. How dare they? Who they think they are? Don't they know who I am? I'm going to cut that languaging right out of my mental vocabulary, my thoughts. My thoughts are like a garden. And like what I'm planting in there is going to grow into something. And if I'm planting resentment on a regular basis, it's gonna grow roots and it's gonna be harder and harder to uproot. If I've been resenting somebody for 20 years, that's a much harder tree to get rid of than a sapling.

• 1:45:19Raghunath Cappo?

  So, these are things that we might necessarily be taught as a child. However, they came to us, we realized these are like important, but they're gonna just make us not only joyful in this life, but not only joyful in some spiritual life, but just have a happy existence in this world, at the very least.

• 1:45:39Rich Roll?

  That's like the most punk rock thing ever, right? That's what it means to be punk.

• 1:45:46Raghunath Cappo?

  Rich Roll, I'm being punk.

• 1:45:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, through and through, always, all the way to the beginning. I love it, man. That was, that was beautiful and powerful.

• 1:45:54Raghunath Cappo?

  Thank you. I hope I didn't talk my talk.

• 1:45:56Rich Roll?

  No, that's what you're here to do, brother.

• 1:45:58Raghunath Cappo?

  I tend, I tend to just step on people and talk all over them. Please forgive me.

• 1:46:02Rich Roll?

  You didn't step on anything except, except the truth. You let the truth flow through you. So, the book is From Punk to Monk. It's out everywhere. And final thing before I let you go, I wanna let everyone know that Raghu was kind enough to donate a dozen books that he's gonna sign. I guess I might scribble my name on these as well or whatever. That we're gonna give away to all of you guys. We'll put details about that in the description below if you're watching this on video or in the blog post on the episode page at richroll.com. So, thank you for that and everybody has that to look forward to as well.

• 1:46:42Raghunath Cappo?

  Thanks, Rich.

• 1:46:43Rich Roll?

  And what else is on the horizon for you? I think I heard you talk about maybe you're launching a new podcast.

• 1:46:49Raghunath Cappo?

  I'm working on a thing that's called The Vedic Path and it's about, it's sort of like the teachings of India, but it can be, it covers everything from metaphysics to reincarnation, to spiritual, to Jyotish astrology. For anybody who has an interest in this. A vault of wisdom that comes from ancient India. So, but also very practical, not just other worldly things, but practical things. To deal with a depression, how to garden, how to, things like that. So I'm looking forward to that.

• 1:47:19Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 1:47:19Raghunath Cappo?

  That's in the works right now. Yeah, I mean, Vedic teachings have everything from the very practical.

• 1:47:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:24Raghunath Cappo?

  How to heal yourself from, you know, indigestion to, there's life on other planets. Let me explain how. That, that's what I love about it. It's like.

• 1:47:32Rich Roll?

  All right, well, come back in and share a little bit more with me. More about life on other planets.

• 1:47:37Raghunath Cappo?

  Eh.

• 1:47:38Rich Roll?

  And less about the indigestion.

• 1:47:41Raghunath Cappo?

  Thank you so much. Keep up the good work.

• 1:47:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, your gift, you are a change agent. And I think your, your, your presence in this world is, is a beautiful thing. You're changing lives all the time and making the world a better place.

• 1:47:53Raghunath Cappo?

  I feel the same way about you, Rich. Thank you so much for all you do.

• 1:47:56Rich Roll?

  Thanks, Ben. Peace, plans.

• 1:48:05Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.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, and leave a review and/or comment.

• 1:48:50Rich Roll?

  Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo with additional audio engineering by Kale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg. Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Sages.

• 1:49:33Rich Roll?

  Thank you Georgia Whaley for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Tractor Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste.

• 1:50:06Rich Roll?

  Subtitles by the Amara.org community