A spiritual life doesn't mean you need to retire into the mountains and in fact, spirituality can be used to make your life Garmo and also can be used in your career. This is part two of our special mythology to reveal one of India's most respected entrepreneurs and how his spiritual journey and spiritual learnings have affected his own business career and his own existence. Please check out Episode one of yours, someone who stimulated by the concept of business or the world of business in India.

And if you're someone who's already checked out that episode, you'll know that you're in for something beautiful with this one.

If by any chance you haven't checked that one out and you just want to know about the spiritual aspect of his life. Trust me, Zappos is going to open up your mind in many, many beautiful ways.

I strongly feel that when you enter the world of spirituality, it opens up your mind in some ways. And when you enter the world of entrepreneurship, it opens your mind in other ways. These two worlds combined create a 360 degree world view about materialism, about meditation, about Sidis or superpowers, as we call it, in ancient yogic wisdom.

Lots of beautiful wisdom with a little practical edge to it. In this episode of the NBC show.

Welcome to a sexual episode with Mr. Eight of the kids also. So this one's going to be about your life outside of selling start ups. We're talking about spirituality. I think we ended the last episode with a very interesting nugget. I asked you, what does spirituality give a businessman that, you know, other businesses, other businessmen cannot have? And you said insight. So I think that's a great place to begin this conversation.

How did you first get into this school of thought that, OK, there's a parallel journey, there is a spiritual journey, as well as not just all about business.

So it goes on, obviously, because of my upbringing and I was born and brought up by a man I don't know who was but who surrounded themselves with these interesting people. You know, they had these spiritual people who would keep coming to our house. And I was a young boy and I would keep meeting them, not really liking them. That's part of the book initiative out of the book, How I Detested These, you know, men and women in robes and different colored costumes.

But every time I make them these people, I would get something that I didn't have myself. You know, they would have black ones. They would be able to see things that I didn't know and they would have a magnetism that I did not find in my company of friends and family. So as much as I detested them, I said, what is this power that these people have? And when I would travel on these spiritual pilgrimages with my nana nanny, I would feel uplifted.

So it was a pure, experiential curiosity that said if people of places can make me feel different, then I want to know more about them. Yeah, you used a very interesting word, clairvoyance, I'd actually love to hear you expand on that concept for the listeners. Sure.

So without making this sound like a voodoo interview, there are so many people I met in my early part of my journey who would, because of their deep meditations, because of their deep sadness, because of their ability to, you know, probably just read people like gather.

You said something very, very nice in the earlier interview that you get it, you get to know, but you do read people. And the more people you meet, the more you can understand the. And I would just get these kind of questions that they would ask me about, you know, OK, how is your company doing? You know, I bet this guy is very who said so, you know, I was a successful guy and I had no clue how he knew how to export.

So what made him understand that I was in this business? Now, I don't know what must have happened to him or how he figured it out, but I think that over a period of time, I realized that apart from the guys who were trying to pull a fast one on me, a lot of ways people had this deep, intuitive sense of understanding how life unfolds. And therefore their questions were predicated on making me question that and understanding what they were saying was, is being suppressed.

So while I think you discovered this at a very early age, I would probably I had a I had a very deep spiritual experience.

Have you heard of what ayahuasca is? No, I've heard of ayahuasca. No, I haven't.

So it's a SouthAmerican ritual where it's like a spiritual ritual where they have a brew, they make you consume it. And there's like devil, you know, a pundit who put you to a whole ceremony.

Now that randomly, like, happened to me. I was on a vacation somewhere and it just came to me and that shifted a lot of things for me in my head. The guy who made me experience it, he also introduced me to meditation at 22. And meditation kind of make me at a very interesting point because I was just starting out. You do. But I didn't know what I was doing. And I think I got I got divinely led on to like the right path.

So even today, a lot of my key decisions come out of, like, deep meditations or a lot of that.

That's it. That's exactly the point. That's exactly what I'm saying. So wisdom, insight into utility creativity comes to you from meditating. Yeah, so like, you know, when you started out, all these businesses, you sold businesses to Disney, you're investing in businesses, you're so deeply involved in the world of startups and business.

Where do you find that time to get into spirituality? One, how do you exercise that muscle? Two and three, again, like do the two worlds clash?

Because people often have this outlook on spirituality. That means no material benefits, but then business means the exact opposite.

Let's start with the last question. The last thing for us, actually, is a symphony. It's not even a clash. It's a beautiful symphony of ghouls. And from them, as I write in my book that I'm a spiritualist and a capitalist and a very happy one at that, and I'm as comfortable in a corporate boardroom as I am in a money give. That's the kind of expression that I have. So I'm not alone. You know, if you look at the great lives of entrepreneurs worldwide and let's talk about Steve Jobs, you know, Steve Jobs Autobiography of a Job in India that became his book.

He gave it away. It was the only gift giving away on his funeral. Now, what is a guy who's creating Apple and the company we know today? Why is he coming to India and going there? I mean, edgy in Senegal and then even telling Zuckerberg to go there after so many years? Has to be a reason.

So the reason is that in extreme situations of entrepreneurship, startup business, building your mind is completely frazzled. It's destroyed. You don't have any kind of semblance of your clear, you know, let's say, meeting. It's always clouded by a decision. And when you get time to meditate and you are able to be cloud your mind and define your mind, the original thoughts that you're supposed to have gone through. So it's a very simple thing, right?

It's like, oh, where would you rather be on a street full of traffic and cars or would you be on an empty street? That's when you can hear the wind blowing in the trees. You can not even there are too many cars on the street honking. So that's one point as far as the time goes. It's very simple because, I mean, we sleep, what, six, seven hours a day. So there is 18 hours, 16 to 17 hours left.

I mean, no one can work for 17 hours a day, boss. And meditation and any mindfulness doesn't take more than a couple of hours at the max.

So, I mean, that's fine.

I mean, we I think we all spend more time on inside and social media than we would ever spend on meditating. So who cares? It's a couple of hours at the most.

Yeah, but when did you start meditating? I know you're deeply involved with the art of living formation and I had the honor of interviewing guru as well on the same show.

Yeah. And, you know, every time I have a spiritual guest on the show are always, you know, they give me some advice that I need exactly at that point in my life or, you know, some shift.

Again, it's not for the general public to understand. There's a lot of people that want they'll hear this and other Cavaleri is just talking gibberish and all that. But this is something you understand once you're on the spiritual journey.

I want to ask you, how did you get into the art of living like in the first place?

That's an interesting story. And it comes out of a very practical experience that we all know, which is the threat of shutting down or something went terribly wrong, but this institution out of control. So in 2000, my first business was going to go bust and I was extremely stressed and I had no way to get rid of that stress other than just suffering. So a friend of mine told me, listen, I don't know what I can do for you, but I really do this out of living costs because at least it can help you alleviate the stress.

It is one time, boss. And I said, OK, let me go. There it is. My mind will be taken away from this trauma of not being able to control things. And I learned the ācārya, I learned breathing, I learned meditation and everything changed for me. Now I call it not a coincidence, but you can call it a coincidence. My business not just survived, which was going to shut down in 40, 50 days, but saved.

You know, I'm still sitting in front of you, you know, 22 years later talking about the same. You know, they just I started sort of did this meditation suddenly give me pools of money that came in my bank? No, really excited me. Give me claims of customers. It did not. What it did give me was a deep insight on how I should really look at my business. So if I explained in one lane. I was using voices to give me a little amount of money to survive, and after I did this meditation course and I came back to my office, my partner said, I look, forget all this here.

Let's just go to our customers and beg them, borrow them and deliver this. And I'll work for you for the next five years. Please advance me some money so that I can continue my business. I did that and there were customers who were saying, I know. Why didn't you ask before? Was What do you want? So we survived because of customer love. And that insight came because I never thought of it before. Hmm, and how old were you when this happened, when you were introduced to, say, 27, 28?

So, you know, at 27, 28, at least, my entire generation is fighting all the vices could be alcohol could be read, it could be excess meat, it could be excesses of junk food. And since I know you are an art of living or teachers, well, I'm pretty sure you're living like a very, very clean lifestyle as free of these vices.

Could you highlight the aspect of vices in a spiritual journey and spiritual progress?

There's an interesting story in the book, but I'll talk about it. So, yeah, right. I, I had the fortune of good fortune of growing up in and when I say good fortune, you know, in a vegetating family, so I didn't have to be a dick myself. But I was definitely drinking once in a while and I was also smoking once in a while. And there's a story in this book about, you know, a incident that happened to me in a monastery in Ladakh where I went with the desire of getting rid of alcohol because it wasn't gelling well with my lifestyle and meditation.

And the day I came back to Bombay, something happened and the memory of alcohol left me. I did not remember that I used to like to drink is incredible. Now, the point you asked is, yeah, I mean, vices are important in our lives because then we know we learn what dependency is. So if you don't have a race, then how do you learn what dependencies are right? Life is beautiful. Once you have independence and you want to go back, you understand the power of willpower.

You understand the power of how you feel when you don't enjoy that weight or indulge in the right answer. So for. Meditation and mindfulness are just tools and techniques that give you a alternative high or in order to do despite that, doesn't make you crave that. And I want to I want to conclude by saying something, saying something quite strange, so, you know, there are two ways for the relationship to break.

So let's think about it. They like each other. Now, the boy used the girl. The girl's relationship is or the girl leaves the boy in the relationship of Vice and us. We have a relationship advice. We will never leave the place because it's very hard. But what happens if the rice leaves us? The relationship is broken. So that is what happens when you put the mind to it and you meditate and you pray for miracles. And some things like this happen to all of us.

Hmm. Have you experienced miracles in your life? Many, many, many, many. They're all part of that book that I've packaged very carefully so that they don't look like the Americans. But, yeah, definitely. I mean, something that happened at Pondicherry for me, I was becoming very arrogant. You know, I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't have any worries. And I just told my life and someone else I kept meeting that, for example, that I'm such a vegetarian.

I don't know the taste of brawn. I use the word brawn. And my wife asked me, she says I look. Why are you saying Braun, you know, why don't you say chicken or something else? Because, you know, protein is taken off is like all the example.

And I said, you know, I am saying, Brian, because it's all it's all finally from you know, people might even eat chicken by chance, but how will I read Brian? Right. That's how far we are here.

And lo and behold, in 40 minutes of that last arrogant statement of mine, I was sitting in a hotel and I ordered a beautiful tomato russum and it came with bronze in it. And I eat it and I slowed it down. I said, oh, my God, what am I eating? They were brown.

So I tasted from that American. While and then it gave you what you needed at that phase of your life, like a tightrope seeing the Gualtiero gets out, get the government out, the world will not forgive you for being so cocky. Yeah, here's what people don't understand, my advice is that they don't always have to be external. They can be internal as well.

And sometimes your journey of spirituality and your spiritual practices actually force situations like this might be the other outcome of spiritual practice in general is what you highlighted early on in the episode clairvoyance. So could you explain Sidis like to the listener, like waterslides, I mean, in your own way?

And if you've had any experiences or any stories of people with these, if you've come across any which I'm sure you have.

Yeah. So, you know, we'll keep the guru out of it. But I think these are super powers, not supernatural powers. Super powers that you get because. Your mind is very focused, your mind is laser targeted at a certain kind of space or a point in your life. So far, in my case, I have begun to notice even today that, you know, a lot of issues that I make come true and it's amazing. Like I wish that, you know, a game of mine would start to do well and slowly and sadly, no one can say that or just make a wish and I'll go to sleep.

But I feel that by making a wish and by kind of committing my heart to it, something happens that leads me to probably enjoy the success of that game. Right. That is a story in this book about how and, you know, Babaji, which is a central part of this book, I just your name and your name. Your to have is Dushan in an airplane. An airport. I just I can imagine how bizarre the mind is.

I want to see you. Babaji and I had this desire and I was driving from Bombay Rebellion back. Now it's ridiculous. But and in the story it's called the incident in the plane, you will read that Babaji actually gave me that grace. He gave me that version. You know, he gave me someone or someone opening the autobiography of the union, actually trying to show it to me without knowing that that gentleman, by the way, is the managing director at Conine India, which is a very large a well-known consulting firm.

So he's not some guy that you can randomly pick out and call. And, you know, he's featured in the book and he keeps telling me that I look, I have no clue why I picked up that book on my iPad and kept showing you that picture, which you have if you know many Rouzbeh, I don't know why I did that. So that's a really great that's a Sydney. I wish for something. And it came true. Yeah.

So these things happen and these things happen. So let me conclude by saying these things happen to you and to me, but we don't pay attention. We all call them coincidences. Well, I was thinking about this. Suddenly this happened. But yeah, there coincidences for sure. But how can you make coincidences repeat themselves by practising what made them happen in the first place?

Do you think the the process of sacrificing vises or both external and internal actually increases incidents like this and increases the amount of spiritual experiences you're having?

No, I don't think so. I don't think there is any need for us to suddenly become, you know, crazy and start shedding all these habits. I think what these habits do, unfortunately, is the distract you. So if you drink alcohol, if you are in a different kind of space, you can be mindful, you can be attentive, you can be alert, you can meditate late.

So eventually let me rephrase it. Let's simply say if you're if you drink too much and you exercise when it's time to exercise, you've got if you've got a hangover. So it's a simple example. By not drinking, you'll probably end up exercising a little bit more, which will make you feel even better, which you say I don't want to do, given even even more. So it's a very virtuous cycle of experiencing the benefit of something by not doing something else was to say that that thing is bad.

Nothing is bad. And since you've been meditating for a while, what does meditation feel like in your 40s? Like what? I know what it gives you now. In my 20s, it makes me a lot calmer. It definitely guides me. There are mornings that I have some massive shoes or some massive commitments. And I know how the day is going to go. Can get my first message in my head is this is what is going to happen.

Let's expand on that for 30 seconds before I go to my answer. So what do you just share with you? And I'm so amazed. This is what I call telepathy or let's call it a small clairvoyance, that what happens in the morning is your mind is calm and composed and clear. And why does that idea is a good you know, why does clarity come in the morning more than afternoon and definitely not in the evening? Because your mind is less agitated.

It's less fatigued. So that's a good practical example of what can I do by meditation that makes my mind like morning all the time. So that's the that's exactly what you answer a see meditation at 20, 30, 40, 60. I think 90 will always be the same. It just makes you feel super light and super. You know, it's like seeing that your you feel like you're in a very weak full sleep. So you feel like you're relaxed.

Nothing is bothering you. You are conscious of where you are, but and you enjoy that. Versus your friends who don't meditate. Like, how do you see that difference in your mindset versus theirs? And I'm not I'm not trying to look down on anyone.

I'm just asking you, you know, I think there is a different set of qualities that come with people who don't meditate. Their energy, their enthusiasm, their ability to do things spontaneously is probably better. But eventually, right? There is always this claw back, right? You always the body in the mine always then feel tired. And I think there is not any one person, anyone in the world who's not tired on a daily basis because you get fed up or what you do.

So the real difference between the meditated and meditated is how the tiredness manifests and how you tackle it.

Beautiful song. And if someone has to explore spirituality, more books or part gospel you point them towards, I would say, you know what must be a spiritual hippie Vespasian shopper.

Do not worry about a book examining, you know, there's a saying drink Dowell's or drink the water of many ways. So I would say sample the eight or 10 publicly known institutions that teach meditation. One or two will resonate with you deeper. Try them out a little bit more and then stick to the person or that institution. That vibe's with you. And that's the way to find a spiritual path because you should not choose something that someone is truly, you know, read.

There are many books of meditation and mindfulness. Read if you pick up some, if you don't like it, just drop it and do something else. And if you had to end this episode with one big spiritual learning of your life, what would it be? That big spiritual learning is that there is a sense of happiness and a sense of, let's say, a good feeling or a warm feeling in every situation. So in anything you may be going through and the worst of situations or the bad of situations, there is a.

Positive to it, and nature puts us through these cycles like it puts itself through cycles. There is a similar summer and a winter in an autumn and a spring. It puts us through these cycles make to make us appreciate the fullness of life. So don't feel down or don't feel too up either when things are going badly or things going up because it's about the state of understanding what's going on. Deal or happening. Dubois is trying to experience it and then feeling bad about it.

Beautiful. Thank you, Mr. Hello, you are for two amazing Borgas is good at a lot of value out there. I'm going to link all your Hindoos down below. I hope that the listeners go places that give that new book containing all these little spiritual stories and major lessons. I really appreciate it. So we'll probably have you on the Hindi broadcast at some point whenever you're up for it. And we'll continue this vibe. Thank you so much.

So kind of good.