Jagatjoti Khalsa - How To Lead With Your Heart

30:17And that pure form of divinity would then return back to its source, basically. So you become God in that definition, whatever God is, which basically is a great explanation of heaven because the description of heaven as you can get anything you want, that's sort of like the creation abilities of God. It's a good explanation of reincarnation because basically you're not pure enough. You still have residual karma. So you need to come back and cleanse that from your attachment to materialism. And it's an interesting explanation to a lot of things. And when it comes to intention in that case, then basically the right intention is because I'm trying to approach my divinity.

31:03Okay. I'm trying to purify myself from my lower instincts and desires and refine myself up to the point where I reach to my divinity. And then the intention becomes different. The actions are exactly the same, but the intention becomes different. That's a beautiful explanation. And I think now your daughter is about to become my spiritual teacher. So thank her for that. She's done so much work for a 2018. Now I just need to know where to bring the two coconuts and the hazelnut. The place in front of her. We all know who's the teacher here. So thanks for the humbleness. But we all know who the teacher is here in this sitting.

31:44you know there's a concept in Sikhism about the true beloved the reference to my true beloved to God I never understood what true beloved meant until I looked in my daughter's eyes and then I've always called her my true beloved so that's when I really understood it that's always been, she had two nicknames I called her monster pants and my true beloved anyway, but you're right about intention it's sort of embedded in there I just realized the bigger thing was I have no concept to understand the infinite. I watch all these great videos on YouTube about astrophysics, about the discovery of new universes, about this small slither and the concept of an ever expanding and into what and creating.

32:29And the whole, I was listening to some scientists the other day and they said, what's the most amazing thing? He goes, the fact that I can't understand how big and vast and everything that sort of exists is. So I realized the same thing about God was more of just like, I can't understand so I'm not gonna I'm just gonna try to be at whatever 100 % I can't that's actually the pure pure spiritual connection is to say that's beyond my understanding I believe there is a higher power but that's beyond my understanding to understand and that was my thing and in in one of the Sikh Shabads it talks about how you if you were to begin in Japji the first prayer of the morning it says if you were to begin upon your first breath and repeat lacks and lacks of times which is lack is a function of a hundred thousand, lacks and lacks of time, even then, even upon your last breath, you wouldn't know an iota of God's greatness.

33:20Absolutely. And so, and they also talk about how a grain of sand can't even understand the vastness of its own beach, let alone the beaches of the world, of this one planet. So, but I still had this yearning of wanting to understand of also, I think home, a feeling of home, which I didn't really have. I had a home, I had structure, we had food, we had the rest of stuff, but emotionally, I never had home. And therefore, I never really had safe, I never felt it never felt safe. Therefore, I also never understood intimacy. I never understood connection, I learned these things, and I trusted myself to build them.

33:58But when I went through this period of reflection, later on, I realized how many things, how much of that foundation I could really retrofit for earthquakes, that was not retrofitted, so to speak. And so go backwards 40 years, 35 years or so, I started a business that sold antique replica baseball hats called the Hat of the Month Club. Now, I had been doing a couple different businesses. I started this home delivery, which was essentially the first seamless grub hub in the country, where first it was room service for your home. So it was called evening, spend a night out at home. And I went to the old milk companies, Hood, and they had those silver boxes that you would leave outside your house where they would bring the milkman, milk person, I guess mostly men at the time, milkmen would bring milk and leave it outside your house.

34:50Then you'd bring your milk in, you'd leave the old bottles for them to retrieve. I bought some of them, I repainted them. And then I said, okay, you know what we're going to do is we're going to have people order in advance. There was no such thing as food delivery in 1986 other than crappy pizza. And we're going to deliver Nouvelle Cuisine food or 87 or whatever. Nouvelle Cuisine food to people's homes. So now they can have beautiful food delivered to the house on China and then they'll just leave the dirty dishes outside. Well, it didn't really work and it wasn't really cost effective and I'm doing it in my apartment.

35:26So then I converted it to, I went to these restaurants and said, give me your menus. I'll put them in a book and I'll do the delivery. We'll add 15 % to your menu and you'll give me 15, 10 % off. You created Deliveroo in 1986. Yeah. 1987. Hey, by the way, my seventh grade science project was essentially TiVo because I kept missing goals while watching hockey and I wanted, I was like, why can't I just rewind it? So I built a tape system, like an answering machine that recorded on a loop. So long as you watched it within the next the five minutes afterwards you could re-watch your thing it was technologically a mess it was technologically a mess and and and i wasn't a techno person i was just an idea person so anyway i have a i have this issue i was with this girlfriend and i woke up at three in the morning and i realized to myself if i become rich right now i'm gonna be a terrible human being that's a very very eye-opening realization my friend yeah it was and i hadn't done anything wrong i just i just watched my behavior i just i could feel it so i gave the company to the my the partner that i have the business and i went on a walkabout but i never really went anywhere i only walked to the natural food store in providence rhode island called the golden sheaf and i somehow wanted to go read the new york times and have a scone and have a cup of green tea in the morning.

36:56And natural foods at that time was pretty old school. I mean, it basically smelled like nutritional yeast and vinegar. It's basically what a natural food store smelled like and body odor. And I met a Sikh man walked in the door. He was a sales rep for an organization called CBB. His name was Shiva Singh. Shiva in the Hindu tradition is the destroyer or the liberator. But destroyer, not, I think, as Western minds think of destroying as in destruction, but as in the sort of breaking down to rebuild, to liberate. And we started chatting. And we started talking on the phone. And I started asking him a lot of questions.

37:41And one day he said to me, I don't really understand all these questions that you ask, and your brain doesn't work like my brain. And so you should go have your own experience. So you should write the letter to this man, Yogi Bhajan, and you should go to, there's a Buddhist temple around in this area, and there's a Sikh temple. You should go visit them and see what it feels like. So I went to the Buddhist temple, and it was really lovely. It wasn't my vibration or my energy, but I really appreciated it. And it was delightful. But again, it didn't have the anchors that I related to as much as felt through.

38:16But when I heard the Shabbids, the songs of Sikhism, the poem set to rag, the rhythm, in the Sikh scriptures, I believe there are 36 different rogs. I think that the English translation would be like pantaminer, wouldn't it? Essentially, like an iamic pantaminer, like a rhythm of a poem. So I think rag is sort of similar to that. I was always trying to figure out what the similarity is. And there's morning rogs, and there's midday rogs, and there's evening rogs. And I heard Danna Danna Guru Ram Dass, and I cried. And it just felt like home. And over time, I learned to tie a turban and became a Sikh and really, really found a home in it, even as an atheist, so to speak.

39:06but the concept of the free kitchen the concept of the consciousness of what Guru Nanak and the Guru's taught the balance between the soldier and saint the concept of carrying my kirpan by knife as a reminder it is my duty to defend others' rights to live as they choose. It's not for my own defense it's for me to have a mechanism and the hope that my heart that my heart is the sword that my tongue is the sword that my projection is the sword that the last thing on earth may ever wish to do is to draw the sword which is why it's very traditional in siki that if you are to take your kirpan out of its sheath you must cut yourself or draw blood with it as a reference as relationship to you only draw it at the last at the last purpose now of course i'm not a cutter and i don't have cuts all of my body nor do i take my kirpan off but understanding that the consciousness behind that or that sort of spoke to the free kitchen that before anyone could go see the gurus, the 10 Sikh teachers, starting with the third one and Guru Amardas, you took longer.

40:13Whether you were a Ranzad, the Muslim leader, or you were a leper, you were a shepherd, you all sat together and you ate. And then you saw the guru. It didn't matter who you were. There are two things, we all needed breath and that made us all exactly the same. And food was the other need and it should be shared and without ownership. And every day at the Golden Temple, just one of the Sikh temples, the one in Amritsar, some people call it the sort of Vatican of Sikhism. It's not really that because there's five seats of Sikhism, but it's the most understood and the most seen visual. It's golden, it's big, it's in the water.

40:57It's an extraordinary thing. There's four doors to the temple to signify that all walks of life are welcome from every direction. The only requirement to be there is to cover your head and to not be intoxicated. Two seemingly easy things to overcome. And that's the free kitchen, the Guru Ram Dass free Lunger Hall, which every day serves 100 ,000 people meals of vegetables, of dal, of rice, of chapati, of yogurt, of tea and biscuits, 100 % donated, 100 % of the wood, 100 % of the legumes, the grains, the wheat, the vegetables, all prepared by hand, all donated, all offered for free. No one is paid.

41:47And that's at one temple that people get to sit together and just eat. And the wealthy and the poor are all the same. and so i became eventually i just i wore my turban and just became and realized it was like being a cup of water reunited with the ocean and so for me that was my that was the feelings there was no reaction to being something that i wasn't i still identify as jewish and um i did i'll tell you this funny story there's this wealthy real estate developer I won't mention his name because he was mean to me. I met him and through another investor of mine, and we had lunch at the Pierre Hotel.

42:36And we were sitting there, two very, very wealthy, very, very wealthy men. One had pledged, one had offered, given me a million dollars. And we went to his friend. And this man says to me, you know, I don't understand what's going on here. He reaches his hand across the table when he puts his hand about this far from my face, I don't really get what's going on here. You sound like this, but you look like that. I'm all confused. I don't know what's up. He wasn't being mean. He was being, he was like, whatever. He's in his 70s and so he's just being free to speak. And I said, well, sir, here's the thing.

43:09I grew up as a Jew and I loved being a Jew, but I didn't resonate to it on the religious and on the practice side. And I discovered Sikhism. So religiously, I'm a Sikh and I love it. Economically, I'm still a Jew. And I love that too. And he goes, okay, I'll give you half a million.

43:30Many of my friends are my best friend. I either Sikh or Jewish. And one of my best friends in LA, who was one of the creators of Ticketmaster Online and a really beautiful brain, we're like two old Jews walking down the street to go to bagel nosh for breakfast together. The only thing we're not complaining about is our sciatica. But otherwise, we're basically like my grandfather and his best friend.

44:00So that was my conversion. And then you spent 30 years learning, right? Yeah, it's been 30 years. I think I was probably about 24 or so, 23. My transition was starting when I was 23 or 24, and I'm 56. So there was a period I read, I read that online because I stalked you a little bit. There was a period where you would meditate for three hours or do yoga for three hours a day for six years in a row or something like that. Yeah, I did the morning sadhana. And so I was up at 345 in the morning. I read Japji and then I would do yoga and then we would meditate for 62 minutes. And then if I had enough time, I would sit, I would sit at temple.

44:43I still meditate every day and it's mostly breath now, though I love to chant. And if I have a gong available around me, then I might play the gong or listen to the gong being played, which I find to be a really beautiful. But music, mantra and kirtan every morning when I put my turban on every morning when I'm getting ready, the music from the Golden Temple streams. And I'm listening to this evening's music because it's the evening there now. And I am Jagat Yoti. And that's what I've always related to much more than earlier. I've been a Sikh longer than I was not a Sikh. What was it before Jagat Yoti?

45:24I never really say so, so that it doesn't wind up creating confusion. Don't say it. I don't share it because then it creates duality for people looking at me. And then they wind up debating which one it was. But my family name, when we came over in the late 1800s, was Kalvaminovich. And the man in front of us at Ellis Island, who we had met on the boat, said to my great-grandfather, I told them we were together. So you're all set. So therefore, we lost our name and our name became Leon because his name was Leon. And then when my grandfather on my father's side, like my family name on my mother's side was Gottlieb, which translates in German to God loves.

46:09and on my father's side, it was Leon. And then it became, the S was added to it for lions when he was in seventh grade, because his teacher said, since there's more than one person in your family, shouldn't you have a plural?

46:28And so we wound up becoming a plural as a result of my seventh grade, my grandfather's seventh grade teacher. And the other thing that Sikhism did for me was I gave a visual to my weirdness. So it was for lack of a better. I was different and thought differently and had a different language pattern and processed life differently, but not by any architecture or good or bad, not comparing good or bad to anyone else, just different. And having a turban gave it context for people. I became much better understood. They were like, oh yeah, Like I felt my appearance was congruent with my oddness. Yeah.

47:14Then you're rested in it. You're like, okay, that's me. I'm okay with it. You know, you know, what's really interesting as every time we speak about this is I never, I actually do not, I will have to think about this deeply. I do not recall any major transformations in my life. I was always very gradual, very, you know, I morphed every day a little bit from a very shrewd, very temperamental, very aggressive, greedy young man to what I am now. But it's always been very, very, you know, you almost couldn't feel the transitions. They were just constant everyday transitions, which is quite interesting.

47:57I think the only big transition in my life was when Ali died. And then I chose to be an author and, you know, a champion one billion happy rather than be a businessman anymore. But other than that, you know, the idea of going to India and going to the Golden Temple and sitting with teachers and making a choice, I don't think I ever did that, ever, which is a very interesting way of life, I think. Actually, I don't think we're not that dissimilar. The Siki was about the only big shift, and it was really because my GPS coordinates were off. I just was on the wrong road. And all of a sudden, when I took the wrong road, then it progressed without a lot of fanfare.

48:39I wasn't a particularly... I didn't have a very drama-filled life and not a lot of quick, jerky movements. And I changed a lot of things. I did a bunch of stuff. And some of it was on a hunt for... I think a lot of it, actually. I was a really sensitive, gentle kid. My father was relatively loud. I think he had really bad anxiety and he had really bad behavior and reactions. Not physically damaging in any way, but very loud. And I wasn't really loud, though I developed, this is what I learned to be, which I've shifted. But it's all that I grew up seeing. and thankfully for my aunt my grandfathers they were gentle but that that those days of asking god why it made me like that was part of it was because you and i were born at the same time though in different parts of the world so different cultural experiences but i think we'll both we may both acknowledge particularly at the early stage of this gen x there was not a lot of promotion to lead with your heart oh not at all and demonized yeah and then there was you would be excoriated for doing it you'd be accused of stuff you'd be projected at stuff there'd be a whole bunch of stuff that i just didn't buy into so i walked that line between being heart and being a jock i played ice hockey i played tennis i i didn't relate to any of the yeah, any of those boys, I relate to the other kids, but, and I didn't really relate to one particular constituency.

50:20I was connected to all, most, but I didn't, it took me a long time to get to a space. When I did my book, I'm Down With You, the portraiture book from Down Syndrome, it was me also saying, hey, I'm going to start leading with my heart more. And I started realizing everything I wind up creating is really in my heart. That's why I didn't go to Starbucks or Unilever or these other sort of big companies. I wanted the heart of the human. I just kept searching for, can I build something? Can I do something organic? Can I do something good for people and planet? Can I, the Down syndrome book, all of the books I've ever come up with, all the concepts, all the philanthropic things I want to do or create.

51:07It was always against what can I do for people. I like the satisfaction of that and the fulfillment of it. And I always wanted to find a partner. I never found the partner, the creative partner. I have some, but someone who is a real – I have it now in this new company partially because he lets me do be me and he gets to be him and it's a really nice compliment i'm a i'm a really wonderful number two person but when you're in the gen x wow you're you're pushed to be the number one the alpha you're pushed to be the leader and the rest of the stuff you're pushed to be the ceo you're pushed i don't actually want to i've been it i don't actually like it i like being behind the scenes.

51:59I like the work of moving everything along quietly without the fanfare, without the monikers, without the, I don't care about the credit. I used to say, I don't take credit for my own work and neither can you. Because people would take credit for, I don't care. But none of that stuff was promoted when I was a kid. The soft part of being number two, you know, I used to fantasize about being I'll confess to you. I don't think I've ever said it out loud to anyone. I used to think about being a butler when I was a kid. Oh, man, best job ever. There was something just there was something elegant about the anticipating someone's needs and taking care of them and giving somebody all this stuff that i realized in the end energetically i never really had an experience of in my youth and as my adulthood i sought to understand it and in my again middle ages i've sought to integrate it and to lead for the rest of my life through my heart i think that was part of what the conversation was i wanted to have with you about when i was thinking about writing was about leading through the heart and a permission structure for people to be okay with that because it seems to be we've lost that as part of our life.

53:20We've just gone to intellect and power and money. And all those things can still be filtered through the heart. But I find myself, I find the feeling when I talk to the people that I lead at the business. And these are really nice people. And they're very thoughtful. And they're very, and the way they respond to this, to the smallest amount of being seen, which I realized is one of the greatest gifts I can give anyone that I have, I can interact with is the ability for them to feel seen in totality by me, the wholeness of their, whether they present those parts of themselves or not, but seeing them as a whole and seeing all the parts of them without judging and just speaking to who they are.

54:08And there, when you do that, there seems to be a really beautiful release that happens with people in an exchange. And from that exchange, you get to create intimacy without the fear of intimacy and without it being emotional or unsafe. Because you've begun with, I see you without having to say, I see you because I'm speaking to you, not to what you present you are and not to your brand, but to you. Now, the downside of that is I don't always get the timing right. And it's not always what someone actually wants to live through. and live being. They still may have their fears and their anxieties around leading with their heart or doing it.

54:52But I find when we, when I talk to people, some of our common friends, we met at Robbins and some of the folks and a lot of the Robbins folks, which I really am inspired by. I wrote Tony a really sweet note after that last visit. And I realized I said to him, him and Sage, going to that event in Mexico was like going to a temple without the conversation without an altar and without a deity and without a minister, but a group of, a collective group of people that were really there doing their best and were willing to put themselves in spaces in front of people, acknowledging behaviors that are societally judged.

55:31There was that woman that spoke about her affairs. There was our friend who grew up in abject poverty from India who spoke of, and he was working on the VR stuff. there was people that were willing to stand up and cry and confess and to be. And I found that space to be as holy as any temple I had ever been to as a result of. It really was. And I think the mix, the blend of Sage and Tony together is just nuclear, honestly. I mean, they are such an interesting couple because they're very different in their approaches to the same destination. And I think they both hold space very differently. Yeah, I have to say I was very moved by that event myself.

56:18I mean, it's been, to me, when I was going, I was like, I have to say I wasn't very into Tony Robbins' work. I really didn't know it very much, honestly. I knew that he was very good at what he was doing. But then to see people open up that way is magic. Like, you know, there are people that don't open up this way in front of friends or even, you know, loved ones. And then to see them in front of 300, 400 people just opening their heart and saying, and every one of them, you know, would come to me afterwards and we would have a chat and they would, you know, it's just a very unusual, almost temple-like.

57:03You're very right. There is a space of safety, a space of this is the time where I can find myself and be open. It was really quite moving, I have to say. Yeah, I really, you know, I've met Tony in 92. So I saw him with his first wife. I saw him in the early stages of his career. One of my, two of my dearest friends had been with him since the early, early days. and then watched his sort of evolution. And I've always been a pretty, my experience with Tony has always been really, really genuine. Yeah, he's very, very, very genuine, yeah. And really nice. And he has his mechanisms for doing things.

57:45I think his ability to take complex concepts, whether it's Kundalini Yoga or it's NLP or it's Freudian or Jungian or any number of other studies he brings in, and then his ability to contextualize them and kind of move them into a new space for them is really, I find, quite lovely. But anyway, the experience was really quite lovely. And I think this last 30 years of my life is going to be much more about, is much more about leading with my heart and figuring and seeing where that winds up taking me, what I wind up creating with that. So here is what got me really close to you. So you were at Tony's event, sort of teaching meditation and mindfulness and, you know, inviting people to introspect and go within and so on and so forth.

58:39Right. And then we meet over that breakfast afterwards. And I'm expecting, you know, especially with your look, Mr. Turban, I'm expecting I'm sitting with Mr. Guru. Right. And you're a shrewd businessman. No, seriously. You started businesses in health and organic food and most of those things before they became things. And you sold several companies and so on. And you're still, when you're looked at, you're just honestly not interested in life. you seem that you're not interested in this material life at all. That duality is quite interesting for me. You come across as the most gentle human being alive, and yet you make decisive business decisions, and you start businesses, and you end businesses, right?

59:35That duality is very interesting for me. I really have to say it's very rare to find that. Well, it's interesting that that's your view. It's true. I've been a part of companies that have built and grown and have been at early stages of a lot of parts of stuff. You know, I joined Max McKenzie and Tyler Florence to launch the first baby food in a pouch, Sprout Baby Food. We were ahead of stuff. Yogi T, I joined early, early and really scaled it in the cereal business, which we ultimately sold and baby food companies sold. But I didn't, you know, I like business and I'm really enjoying this new thing.

1:00:13this new one that I joined very, very much. And I realized the reason that I really enjoyed is I can find success, the measures of what success is in business. And so long as I can stay accomplishing the measurement of success that the private equity firm that owns this new company wants, or my friend who's the CEO, providing I can keep hitting their metrics and scale the business for its ultimate exit. I then have a place to do the stuff that I really find fulfilling, which is to have each of the people that have sat in those cubicles that for sometimes 18 or 20 years have been very poorly acknowledged.

1:00:59And I remember talking to this team the other day, and they had lunch for the first time. And afterwards, there was one person who I had heard has been very negative. The person's been there for many, many years and is starting to be kind of be a little jaded and a little negative. And I think some of the information that has been provided or she's gathered along the way is not wholly accurate. And she pulled me aside the other day and she said, I don't know what it was, but there's something that shifted and we're all looking at each other differently. People are stopping and giggling more often.

1:01:40She goes, it just started when we just ate together. And I remember that's the longer haul. It just started when we ate together. Because when you sit and eat with somebody, it's almost impossible to hate them. It's almost impossible to mad at somebody when you're sitting there sharing food. It's one of the reasons why I love pizza. I love pizza, of course, because it's the greatest food in the world. That's true. Look at you with all the healthy food stuff. That's true. But what it does, it's something that nothing else does. When a pizza shows up at a house or in an office, everybody wants to watch it open up.

1:02:19It's like the jack-in-a-box of food. And no one runs to the kitchen to go look at the pad thai when you open the container, right? But they all want to see what the pizza looks like. But the thing that I love most about pizza is that everybody can have a piece of pizza at the exact same moment, at the exact same temperature. So long as there is the requisite amount of slices for the amount of people, let's just say six slices for six people. Though I always remember Yogi Berra saying once, he goes to a pizza place and they said, Yogi, do you want to cut into six or eight pieces? He says, you better make it six.

1:02:55I'm not that hungry.

1:02:59but there's this there's an equality about pizza that no other food shares because we get to eat it at the same time with who we share it with at the same temperature it's the same moment we don't have to pass it we don't have to worry about what our portion is we don't have to worry about leaving enough for anyone else it's just there and we can all be together and so the food part while is important as part of why we gathered gets pushed aside and becomes less important than the gathering of the people and the souls together and the dialogues, discovery and exchanges that you can have when you're not starting the first 10 minutes passing food around the table, trying to see who else is eating, how much we have to leave.

1:03:38There's no interpretation. It's just food arrives and there it is. And now we can be together. Yeah. It's like getting for dinner as a family, a tradition that used to make family is now not happening anymore. Or honestly, the way friends used to be. It's quite interesting how we changed those habits, because I have to say that you're absolutely right. Just breaking bread with someone is definitely an interesting way to connect, right? And the truth is, if I had enough money, just plenty of just stacks of cash, I would probably spend my whole life building the fair share program, basically the food for...

1:04:19I had this concept of doing this food, which we still have written. I actually sent it to Tony and offered it to him called fair share. And it was 30 staple items, organic staple items for a four foot set in the grocery store. So four feet wide row that every fifth package that sold this, an equivalent of the sixth was given to the food bank in the state where you're, where it was purchased. So I said, it was like inviting your neighbor to dinner without setting the table. essentially what I eat, you eat. So none of this like, Hey, I'm going to give string beans and pumpkin pie filling to the food bank.

1:04:55None of this food that I'm grateful that the large companies give that are, that are largely nutrient less and dilapidated value of food, but healthy organic food. Because what I learned in Oregon, for instance, many years ago was that 85 % of the people that use our food banks are working poor, that they don't have enough food dollar days to make it for the whole month. And so I thought, well, let me create this sort of program. And so it's basically, well, I called it the first public brand as opposed to private brand or business brand. It was a public brand. It was a brand for the people. And there was a quote that I put on the front of the deck.

1:05:35And I paraphrased it, but it said, I want to ask God why he allows so much famine, disease, and hunger in our world. and why he doesn't do anything about it. But I'm afraid he'll ask me the same question. Ah, I was going to answer you that way. I'm sure you would. I was going to answer you that way. So one of the statistics that kill me, kill me, is that for every malnourished human on the planet, of which I think there is around a billion now, there is one obese person on the planet, of which there is around a billion now. So it's quite interesting. that if you leave it to nature or to God, no, nature and God are providing.

1:06:23It's just we're distributing it wrong, right? That's right. And it's quite shocking when you really look at the amount of food that goes to waste as garnish, the amount of food that goes to waste just because portions in restaurants have to look big when no one is going to eat them, the amount of food that goes to waste because you have to have a meal choice on a flight and so on and so forth. And it is just staggering. Of course, I couldn't miss the opportunity to talk about the amount of food that goes to really, literally be destroyed just to keep the prices fixed. And in reality, the world provides, life provides.

1:07:05It's just that we humans are quite mean sometimes. We have enough ability to grow and feed those that are hungry on the planet without a single rich person losing a dollar. Absolutely. Not one company would have any less revenue if we fed all of them. Because those people that are hungry in our world are not buying Doritos anyway. Exactly, yeah. And we don't want them eating Doritos. You know what? Someone asked me, I'm really quite religious about tracking my food. So I track everything that I eat, and I eat 1 ,500 calories a day. and one of the ways I people are all that's pretty neurotic of you and I go no it's not because I like data but it's not neurotic because what I do is I was really craving like junk food the other day I was like I want something like salty and over flavored you know some sort of chip or something and I realized the small bag of chips was 380 390 calories wow right so 390 calories is about 27 or 28 of my daily caloric intake but that bag of chips was not going to last me 27 or 28 of my day it was only going to last me about 10 of my day and then i'd be hungry again and so i chose not to eat it as a result yeah and it would have also made you crave more of it so yeah that's right and so so i i believe there was in that i created a project I've outlined a project for Alzheimer's because I realized that the average Alzheimer's patient loses about 200 of our family stories into their brains as the disease progresses.

1:08:40We're losing all the oral history and all the stories. So we came up with this program. We didn't do anything with it. We've outlined it called A Billion Stories. And basically, it was Facebook for the family. It was just basically an app-based thing where you would capture audio, video. You'd have a teleprompter so you could interview your family member and ask effective questions, to take pictures, to have quotes, to get audio, to have this one social place for all of your family stories. So forever, we would have a database of our family stories that could ultimately be anonymized and shared because we're losing these stories of perseverance, of love, of romance, of our transfer.

1:09:23We're losing all this stuff because social media is like fish, right? It just lasts a day before it starts to stink or go away, right? It's just like, I don't mean any judgment from it. It's just like, it's not really, there's no longevity to it. And it's not searchable. Have you ever tried to go back in Facebook and find anything that you've posted? It's an impossible feat to do. So there was that project. There was this other one that I created during just before COVID that I wish that I had. This is where I really disappoint myself because I didn't know what to do. I didn't have anyone around me to give it to.

1:09:54I created this program called A Love Story. And it came from the fact that when my friends are having bad days, one of the things that I've done for them is I read to them. And I'll choose a book or I'll read something. It could be Osho talking about the true name, which is his book on the Sikh scriptures, Japji, which is extraordinary. It's a most beautiful. Or another story or fiction or whatever. And I created this app, this concept of this app, which was basically a way it was YouTube met Audible. It was a place for you to have a public or private channel to read to people. So if I couldn't sleep one night and I just wanted to be read to, I could just go on.

1:10:43I envisioned also being able to take an audio test that lets you evaluate and learn which pitch and temper and tone and et cetera really vibrated with you and really resonated with you. so you could then search the database the app for all the people who have that audio marker that makes you feel you're such a californian man and then you could just be read to and then people like my daughter who have to read let's just say the iliad and there she doesn't want to right and so she could have she could send invites to all of her friends to come to this one channel They could take turns reading to each other and it would record it so that if someone didn't make it, they could come back and catch up.

1:11:29Or a group of like my wife and some of her friends read a book. So imagine them having a book club, an audio book club. I didn't know how to make it because I'm not in the technology world. I didn't have anyone in the tech world to talk to. But all the projects that I wind up dreaming up are that kind of thing. It's about solving something that's really simple. I'm not going to change the world from solving a cancer or solving things that are meaningful. And I listen to these think tank friends of mine, and I hear the philosophies and their theories and all this work and all this stuff is way much too heady for my simple, I used to call myself a simple shopkeeper.

1:12:12My simple mind that tries to distill it down to, uh-huh. but I think change can be that sort of one-on-one and so just hearing someone read can give a sense of peace a moment being making sure that we have people fed making sure we save what we're losing in the minds without judgment without fighting a bad thing just solving a nice thing I've been avoiding the tech side of it but for a while now I've been really committing myself but failing to start the idea of what I call bedtime stories. So a daily podcast or some kind of a, you know, a way to distribute one 15 minute story to hear before you sleep, which has a bit of, you know, nature sounds in the background or whatever, a bit of meditation at the end.

1:12:59But then, you know, the idea is I get so many people saying your voice puts me to sleep. One of the most interesting comments that I ever get. It's like, oh, I play your audio books before I sleep. It makes me sleep. I'm like, oh, seriously, are they that boring? Like, what am I doing wrong? Anyway. No, they're actually that familiar. I have to admit to you, what I've been struggling with is finding those fables. I want those wise wisdom stories. And I have a few of them, but I never dedicated myself to finding them. So So for my listeners, guys, if you know nice wisdom stories, you know, Rumi or, you know, the Buddha or anything really, you know, stoicism, send them my way, please.

1:13:45I think that would be a nice idea. There's a great story, actually. I'll forward it to you because I don't remember the exactness and I don't want to mess it up. But it was in Osho's book. Yeah. And he talks about it was written by Tagore. who's one of my favorite poets. And I don't know what it is about Tagore's writing, but there's something so magical.

1:14:16Oh, how about I read it quickly to you? Do I have a moment to do so? Yeah, of course. So Tagore wrote this beautiful poem, and he says, in quotes, Since infinite births I've been seeking God. I do not know how many paths I have trodden, how many religious orders. God only knows how many doors I have knocked on, how many gurus I served, and how many yogas and penance I performed. One day, however, I ultimately succeeded in reaching his door. I used to get glimpses of him, though, but that would be as near as some distant star. By the time I reached there, the star had long gone by. But today, today I stand before his gate.

1:14:59I read the name outside. It is his. I climb the steps so overjoyed that the destination is reached. I hold the knocker. I'm about to knock and then? Then a fear catches hold of me. What if the door opens? What will I do then? And if I do meet God, what then? What will I do next? Till now there was only one aim in life, to attain God. Then there will be no more goal to work for. Till now, there was only one obsession, one occupation. It will all be destroyed. And what when I have met him? Then there will be nothing left to do, no future to look forward to, no journey to undertake, nothing for the ego to work on.

1:15:45Fear made me tremble. I quietly put the knocker down. So gently did I let it go, for fear lest a slight jerk may cause a sound and the door might open. Then I removed my shoes so that I could go down the steps noiselessly. Then I ran. I ran for my very life, so to say, and never even looked back once. I'm still searching for him. You will find me searching for him on different paths, though I know full well where he abides. And yet I ask others where I can find him. And I know where he stays. I seek him even now. Far away near the moon and stars, I catch a glimpse of him. but now I am confident because I know he will have gone far, far away by the time I arrive.

1:16:33Now I seek him in all the places save one, where he abides, and I never go anywhere near it. I guard myself only from him. That is brilliant. Isn't that exactly what we do? That's right. That is brilliant. We seek and we set to obtain the goal that we know if we obtain, we fear there will be nothing left to obtain, even though the whole story misses what the attainment and what the moment winds in, that there's more than what you get to see. But I know that struck me because that was me for some time. What do you mean? Well, I mean there was the seeking for it, but there was the fear of being it.

1:17:20I know for many years, for a long time, I really avoided and fought being the space of my heart that who it was I was. Because then I would have to be different. And it was already lonely as it was. And now what lonely would be there. Except that I missed the whole point. And it was all the wrong inputs. But when I read that a long time ago, it really struck me. And it also further cemented how extraordinary I found Tagore's writing, like Mirabai, like Rumi. The capacity that they had to write about love is just something I don't know English has ever accomplished. I think we'll leave it at that.

1:18:03I think I will leave everyone to think a little bit about this conversation. So for everyone listening today, you have been invited to one of my conversations with my dear friends. We had no objective whatsoever, no conversation targets, nothing to specifically get inside your head, just two old men chatting. Isn't that what you said at the beginning, my friend? So there we are. I hope that you enjoyed being with us for this. I hope that you found a few nuggets of wisdom. And I truly, truly hope that you will actually knock the door when you get closer to us. where you want to be. Because for most of us, we fear who we want to be.

1:18:49And I think that's really, really a key to finding happiness in life. Jagat Jyoti, I am so, so pleased that you joined me today. It's been a long time in the making, and I definitely think we shouldn't keep it that long next time. So thank you so much for joining me. Thank you, Mo. And for all of you listening, I hope you felt the pace of our conversation today slower than the pace of your day I hope you remember that regardless of how busy you are today there's always a tiny bit of time to slow down I love you all for listening and I will see you next time