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

0:03Hey, everybody, welcome to the 10 % Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. For decades, various friends of mine have very passionately encouraged me to go to Burning Man, the annual festival in the desert of Nevada that draws tens of thousands of people. And these passionate invitations and exhortations have landed for me as sometimes inspiring and intriguing and sometimes irritating. People who really are into Burning Man a little bit remind me of that classic cartoon in The New Yorker from a decade ago. It has two women eating lunch, and one of them says to the other, I've been gluten-free for a week, and I'm already annoying.

0:45And that can really happen with people who get deeply into Burning Man. So today, we're going to talk about the truth about Burning Man, but we're going to talk about it much more than that, because my guest is a fascinating figure in the culture. His name is Vikram Gandhi. He's the co-director of a new documentary on HBO called The Man Will Burn, but he's done a lot of other stuff that I want to talk to him about. In fact, he burst onto the collective consciousness in the early aughts when he made a documentary called Kumare, in which he plays a fake Indian guru who is able to inspire a real following, a conundrum that creates a real reckoning for him.

1:29So we're going to talk to Vikram today about whether a skeptic can find meaning, why we're so drawn to gurus, what is the truth about Burning Man, and much more. Vikram Gandhi after this quick break. A few things before we hear from our sponsors. I've got exciting news. If you love this show, but do not love listening to the advertisements, a subscription to my app, 10 % with Dan Harris, now includes a private ad-free feed of the 10 % Happier podcast available on whatever platform you choose, whether that's Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or right inside the app itself. Plus, along with an ad-free listening experience, the app also gives you a growing library of meditations from world-class teachers, exclusive live stream events with me and many of our incredible instructors, and robust and supportive discussion threads where you can ask questions, share your struggles, and connect with our growing community.

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4:14bhikram gandhi welcome to the show thank you thanks for having me i love your new documentary on burning man it's awesome uh for people who don't know what burning man is can you just describe what it is burning man is a social experiment um of people building a city in the middle of the desert. And in that city, there is no exchange of money. And it is an experiment in sort of communal living. In some ways, people can look at it as a temporary utopia. Some people call it a festival. Some people call it accidentally think it's a music festival because there's so much music or an arts festival because there's a lot of art.

4:56But I would say for the people who started it and the attempt to maintain its roots it's a social experiment in basically living in a different culture like reinventing culture in the desert your documentary which again is called the man will burn it's on hbo um and again i loved it it does a lot of things but one of the things it does is like trace the arc of of burning man and as you said the the the original founder I think his name is Larry something. Larry Harvey. Larry Harvey. His idea was really kind of anti-capitalist. I would say it's very much anti-capitalist in its roots. I mean, Burning Man first started when Larry Harvey told his friend, hey, I want to go burn a man on a beach in San Francisco called Baker Beach.

5:42A wooden man, not an actual man. Yeah, a wooden man. Excuse me. And there's a lot of myths around why he did it. Was it just a spark of an idea? Was it supposed to be this like pagan ritualistic thing? Did he watch the movie Wickerman like right before that? Like these are like kind of myths that I've heard. And the idea of it being a myth is, I think, important to it. Yeah, Larry Harvey started it. And as this sort of experiment happened, it started on Baker Beach. And then, you know, the first burn was like 10 people. and I think that what they saw was that there was this almost religious fervor that people had when they were looking at this man burn and it it felt like a pagan ritual when you look at it but you know it's happening in the 80s and they did it again the next year and there were like 100 people and then they did it again the next year and there were many many more people and they would start throwing a party around and there's music and you know at some point so many people started coming that the cops shut them down and they realized they had to go somewhere else.

6:50And that's when they went to the Black Rock Desert. And the Burning Man that we see in images started then in the 90s. And it's now, you know, what, 80 ,000 people a year, something like that? It's 80 ,000 people a year who come together, build this city from scratch in the desert. You know, all kinds of people, builders and people who are working on the infrastructure. And then all these people who are coming to make art, create camps, throw parties, all of that. So 80 ,000 people, most of whom are 80 ,000 people there for about a week. But there's a lot of people who go there for weeks before to build it.

7:31I think you mentioned there's no money. It's fully a gift economy. Yeah. I think the founders of Burning Man, there's a book, I'm forgetting the name of the author, but called The Gift. And I heard that they read that book. And in it, it was the idea that things, objects that we have, they hold a different meaning when they're gifted to you. There's a story behind them. It's not about purchasing something. And I think they thought, well, what if in this environment, you just can't buy anything? And of course, in the beginning, it was in the desert, like there's no stores around there. So you couldn't buy anything.

8:10But if you brought everything that you could be self-reliant and then you brought some more to share with people and that just kept happening and happening and you brought art or you brought a party, that that would change human interaction. And that would become in some ways a release valve for capitalist society. I've heard people say that Burning Man is the trauma bonding of capitalism. And so its roots were definitely anarchic. it's definitely anti-capitalist they had a lot of connection to performance artists and street art in san francisco that were like critiquing culture there was there were people aligned with burning man in the beginning that did something called the billboard liberation front where they would satirize commercialism and cap and capitalism i would say to get it right it was a lot more anti-consumerist than necessarily anti-capitalist if there is a difference i think that's debatable but you know that was the idea of kind of mocking our consumer culture that everybody was consuming things and that's the way that we live that we were just all about consumption as opposed to what if it was all about giving building creating in you know in their case making art one of the critiques you hear and i kind of gently made fun of Burning Man and Burners in the intro, which you were sitting here while I recorded, so you heard it.

9:38One of the critiques you hear is that this was supposed to be this, if not anti-capitalist, at least anti-consumer or consumer culture event. And yet now it is populated in no small measure by billionaires who have a whole parking lot of their private jets in the desert And they build these, you know, incredibly expensive private camps that they attend. And some of these billionaires are, you know, I think you can make a pretty strong case, not necessarily nudging humanity toward its best version of itself. So how do you square that with the original intentions of the founders? I think that what's really beautiful about the way this social experiment started is that there are so many accidents.

10:28Like, did Larry Harvey know that one day when he built the man that this, you know, city would emerge, that people were going to all come there? And did he know that in the beginning? Probably not. Like, I think that it was it was it was an experiment in the beginning and it just kept going. And I and in some ways I say I think one could say that, like, he he burnt this man and people gathered around it. And for the last 30 years, people have been debating what it means. and there was a point where uh larry you know in our in our documentary one of the one of the um early members of burning man explains that larry went out on like a pilgrimage to mexico and he came back and he said i have nine principles and then um this guy stewart mangram jokes that he's you know they said to him you need 10 like any self-respecting cult that is actually the tone of Burning Man, which is that, yes, we have these beliefs, but it's also a big joke.

11:31The world is a big cosmic joke. So that being said, I think one of the more important guiding principles of what the place has been is that they kind of don't tell you what you're supposed to believe. I remember when I first went, I thought, I brought a tent. I went and bought everything I just needed for myself, like I was going camping. And then when I arrived and I met the people in Reno that I was going with, my friends, we went to Walmart and they started filling all their carts up with steaks, steaks, steaks, and champagne and beer. And I was like, wait, what is going on here? I thought we were camping in the desert.

12:13And when I got there, I realized it was totally not what I thought. It didn't have this sort of ethic or moral around it. It was like, this is just the planet. This is just humanity. And we just come here and do whatever we want to do. And there's not like a rule here, but there's like a guiding principle. This is a place where you have to be self-reliant. You have to be part of it. You can't just be a spectator. The early Burning Man days were strictly about one thing or another, I feel like I just don't think it happened like that. And I don't think there is a moral grounding of how to judge how people go to Burning Man.

12:57I do think the way people talk about it can change the way that the outside world perceives it, because they talk about it in the same way that a lot of people talk about going to church, or religion, or some mystical experience they had. So I do think the big conundrum that's in our documentary and I think is in Burning Man culture right now is the exact question you're asking. Look at all the money. I think we estimated that$400 million of things come to Burning Man. uh we've we filmed with people who have multi-million dollar art cards that have speakers on it to throw parties and i think the bigger question is if this place is supposed to be a way to kind of create a new culture outside of capitalist society how do you mark where where what's happening inside starts replicating what is actually on the outside i think it's human nature to think you can escape all of those rules.

14:00So you will see that it's not structured so differently. I think that the idea is that it's trying to guide people in a way that like, when you meet people, you give them a hug, like their family. When you go to a party, there's no, you can't be exclusive. It's all inclusive. And I just think that it's a rare a place where that is the direction and whether or not it actually fulfills what these principles are. I mean, it's pretty hard to act like that. You know, I sometimes think it works really well in the first few days and then just like everything else, like things start falling apart. So, so I think that the criticism of it's not being what it stood for is totally like valid.

14:47And I think it's something we struggle with in the documentary and something that becomes very obvious. Hey, there's no money here. And then you see private jets flying everywhere. Like, how does this work? But at the end of the day, it's a big experiment. And I think once I went the first time and I realized that, that this wasn't some ethical thing I wasn't doing. Like, there's no morality to it. All that stuff we bought at Walmart, we had to get rid of. And I remember we drove through the Native American reservation on the way back to Reno with garbage bags and there was a sign that says set it on the reservation we'll buy your uh you pay us to take your garbage and i was like so we we gave we for five dollars we paid you know the people on native american reservation to take our garbage and i was like this is the most american thing ever it is not what i thought it was it's not like hey you go to burning man and you're a better person than everyone.

15:40It's just like a full expression of it. So I think that's the impression that people have, that there's maybe these new age or mystical or religious sort of connotations or even environmentalist connotations. But it's definitely, I think there's an effort to do that. But I would say that's not an accurate portrayal. In some ways, it's just like an alternate culture and direction that has its own kind of aesthetic and art. And it's like its own civilization for week. But I know exactly what you mean. And I think it's still a question. Can a place actually function and be anti-capitalist or anti-consumerist and then still have all this money poured into it?

16:22It does make a lot of burners scratch their head as well. I have to say, I came away from the documentary a lot less skeptical. Like I landed where you just took us, which is this is an experiment with very interesting ideas behind it, but it's also a big, beautiful, hypocritical mess. And that's kind of awesome. I mean, I think that's actually the beauty of it. I mean, it's not a place that you censor yourself. Like, I think actually one of the reasons that one of the main reasons Burning Man has changed also is because of social media. like this was a place that it was okay to be naked um i mean it's okay to say anything and all of a sudden when cameras start coming in there people become less free and open i mean i think in some ways it felt like it transcended all this stuff that was happening you know in the world with cancel culture and stuff like i think a lot of burners didn't want that to happen to burning man like even though i think many of the people who go to burning man most of them actually believe in those ideals in the outside world.

17:31But in this little community where you're supposed to be sort of creating a family where everything is safe and there's no rules, those moral and ethical rules from the outside world are also scary because they just keep pouring in. I would say that the outside world is seeping into Burning Man. There's really nothing we can do about it because now people like now there's phone reception out there and and you can get on the internet so i think there was a force field around it before and that force field is like is very weak unless you know any anyone can decide so i think in a lot of ways that's happening like the culture is changing because it's hard to keep out the outside world As a man of a certain age, I've become increasingly sensitive to the need to take care of my skin.

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23:03Where do you land? I mean, you spent many years, you and your co-director, documenting not only the event itself, But you got incredible access inside the Burning Man organization during some tumultuous times with lots of infighting, some of it involving Elon Musk's brother. Is that his younger brother, Kimball? Kimball, yeah. Kimball Musk, who joins the board and tries to disrupt things, which I recommend people watch the documentary to see how that plays out. I'm just curious, like, where did you net out? Will you, now that you've finished this documentary, will you go back as a, will you keep going back as a participant or are you kind of just like done with the thing for a while?

23:42One of the reasons that this all happened was, you know, my co-director, Jahan, who is an amazing filmmaker, she directed The Vow on HBO. And she had connected with the CEO of Burning Man and the board of Burning Man. And they wanted people to document their journey. And she came to me as she was finishing season two of The Vow and said, we need a director to come in who's been to Burning Man, you know. And I, at that point, had gone probably like eight or nine times. I would say I was not as hardcore. I'm like a New Yorker. And so I would just go there for a few days. And I knew like my counterparts in California might have been thinking about Burning Man for like they're the ones really building it.

24:31So in some ways I was parachuting in, which is not actually part of the culture. This is one of the most fun things on earth. And if I don't have to go to a wedding on that Labor Day weekend in the end of August and I don't have anything on my schedule, that's the place I'm going to go. Of course, this has changed my relationship with Burning Man. I mean, taking a camera out and filming in that location, it's not just the camera. It's also the microphones and the sound. that is almost completely against the vibe it took me understanding the burning man culture and being a being somebody went to burning man to uh to be able to bring those cameras in there and and but um so but to also your point um we got behind the scenes um yeah one of the you know one of our our characters who is in it is is kimball mussel and musk brother in the show in the in the series um he he also plays a uh a part of talking about sort of the early ideas of burning man that didn't have an organization like when burning man started didn't have an organization it wasn't supposed to be safe it wasn't supposed to have any rules and people were just going out to the desert and in it he actually really embodies the voice of a lot of people at burning man who said we don't need an organization i mean it was really fascinating that it was happening you know those scenes happen kind of before kimball's brother was uh was working on doge but it was similar like it was interest it was an interesting parallel in that like a critique of the governing body you know of burning man that was um spending money and um and and people who were who loved burning men were saying hey like why do we have this organization they're questioning leadership and i think in the movie you know in our in our film kimball really um embodies i think a lot of the opinions of a lot of people who maybe just like we're afraid to speak up um and and i think you know in in some ways that's the dilemma that like if you can have the organization do things and set things up or you can have the people with means and resources help you set up and that's not this dissimilar to the outside world you know if you if you want to rely do you want to rely on the government or do you want to rely on on um big corporations and i think um the same thing that happens and the outside world is happening inside burning man the same question and um and it's a threat to uh the the organization what he what he says.

27:16But I think in some ways he also embodies the real feeling of people who go to Burning Man. It's like, why do we even have this organization? And the organization really believes that they're helping make sure that some of those cultural elements that we're talking about before, that they stay in there. And so it's a funny back and forth and it's not that dissimilar in the outside world. And I think that's actually what's so interesting about the inner mechanisms of a place like that, like you just keep replicating the same thing. You know, you can't change the human nature. You can change the look and feel of it, but human nature is the same.

27:51So. I may be feeling less skepticism than what many of your viewers may walk away with. Part of the reason why is that I have spent a lot of time up close with meditation organizations, including retreat centers. And I've seen that even people who have spent decades of their life, practicing the Dharma, practicing deep meditation. When you bring any group of humans together, no matter how enlightened or close to enlightened they may be, there will be politics. And of course, that's going to happen with even with an organization like Burning Man, where the principles are super idealistic. Yeah, it's just hard to get humans together to cooperate on a joint project.

28:38So I was less surprised by that. I was always seeing the story of Burning Man resembling a lot like any church or religion. I mean, in the Burning Man story, there's a schism early on with a lot of these ideals built into how Larry was thinking about it. Burning Man has a temple. Burning Man has a symbol. Burning Man has a ritual. There is a hero's journey that goes through that week that leads up to a communal ritual. And there's an organization that's running it that's trying to keep the place pure. But of course, there's donors who come in. And I mean, you can hear the story of the Catholic Church and almost any large religious organization, whether it's Buddhist or anything, or Christian, all of these organizations have a similar kind of thing that they have to deal with.

29:27You're talking about donations. You're talking about people with more means. Do they get access to something. And Burning Man's just struggling with the same thing. But also at the same time, it's also a city. So they have to provide, they have to build, they have to have a hospital and then they have roads. And so weirdly, this experiment is very complicated. And, you know, you definitely need some kind of organization. And I would say that Larry Harvey in some ways was sort of like, you know, a messiah figure to it. I think the joke is that that he's at once that, but he's also the opposite.

30:03As far as I know, he was just a great storyteller who loved talking to people. And they were just all building it around him. It's not like he actually, there are other people who are there who are like, we should build a road here. We should shape it like this. But he just kind of gave everyone this vision of like, well, why don't we just go for this thing? And then everybody's sort of aligned. And in that way, it does resemble like a cult or a religion in the way that it's happened. And then just like all of these things, we hear the story of like, is this church or is this society or this culture or this meditation group?

30:36Is it still authentic? Can you still have an experience? And I think that's also what we try to explore is can you still have like an actual mind blowing mystical experience in this place? And I think you can. And even though maybe the whole city has changed, it's like Brooklyn or something. Burning Man has been gentrified. But can you still have a really good time and find what you're looking for? I think we've seen that people are still having that experience. So it's not over. I think to some degree it's like, oh, well, I would have gone 20 years ago. I don't think that's true either. I think it's just evolved and more people have come.

31:19I remember when I was a kid and I would go to summer camp and every summer all the kids would say, yeah, this summer is OK. But last summer, man, last summer was the best one. I want to broaden the discussion, though, because this is not the only film you've made. Let's go back to the film that kind of got you noticed, Kumare. I was telling you this before we started rolling. I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that I've known you for a while and I hadn't watched it until today. It's extraordinary. Basically, in it, you kind of masquerade as an Indian guru, even though you're not. And you're this fake guru who develops a real following.

32:06Why did you do it in the first place? You know, looking back after years, it becomes very obvious. Like I grew up in a home where my father started temples. Like there was a Hindu temple that started in my basement in New Jersey. And his father before him started a Hindu temple in Burma. So I was around these sort of mechanisms of how a religious organization worked because my father was running one and my parents were deeply involved. They're still very involved in their community. but I also met a lot of gurus growing up and I met a lot of pundits who did rituals and I just had an inside look I mean we went to a lot of ashrams growing up I was interested my father started meditating and so and doing yoga and so we went we really just like we're very much in searching for spirituality in America or Indian spirituality American I think my parents wanted us to keep our culture.