Dr. K On TRS #462: Kundalini Activation & Chakras (Transcript)

Like, what’s the rush? So I decided to detach and let myself become attached to this world. So now I have a wife, I have kids. And that was huge for me. Sort of like acknowledging, okay, like, I’m going to just be attached and that’s okay. And interestingly enough, that’s where a lot of my detachment comes from, is just admitting I’m married. This is the material world. It’s okay to want material things.

Higher Purpose and Modern Reach

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah. Kind of have a half question, half opinion. So I don’t know how I’m going to pose it to you, but like, dude, I think it’s crazy that podcasts where you’re featured and questioned correctly are clocking in like millions of views. That doesn’t happen to every intellectual. There’s a lot of intellectuals out there, but only some people get highlighted the way you do.

I genuinely believe you have higher purpose and more importantly, you’re equipped for the higher purpose because of your medical science degree. Like, I feel like that’s your biggest tool. And I have met a few doctors from the states who are in the same realm, but no one’s words are being highlighted on the modern day Internet the way your words are being highlighted. So I just want to go way deeper into my own questions for you. But, you know, also questions that my audience has at this point because we’ve done so much of the basics of spirituality, basics of psychology on this show. People are ready for the next level now.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: I think it’s wonderful.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Do you kind of feel yourself that your words are being highlighted? Well, like every podcast with you is clocking in like 3, 4 million views.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. So some things I agree with, some things I disagree with. So you can look at metrics and analytics and you can say these are getting lots of views. Yes. I think the interesting thing is when you say I wouldn’t consider myself an intellectual and I don’t think the primary reason for the views is the medical expertise. Like you said, there’s many people who are medical doctors. I think what I offer that people resonate with I would not attribute just to the medical degree. I think it’s actually what I’m excited about and what I love about medicine. And part of is the blend.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: So is it fair to say that the psychiatry degree at Harvard gave you the templates and then you’re studying on your own post that?

Bridging Eastern and Western Psychology

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So it’s actually interesting because I learned about the mind through yoga and meditation for many years before I went to medical school.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: That’s crazy.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So I started, I did seven years of pretty serious spiritual practice with different kinds of gurus. Like, I couldn’t find a tradition that. So I was like, okay, I’m going to do this. So everything, every spiritual tradition and guru and teacher that I studied with felt dissatisfying to me for some reason. So then I would go to a different one and then go to a different one, and that was my spiritual journey.

Then I go to medical school and I’m learning about psychiatry. And they would say things about the mind. Right. So they would say, like, okay, you have like into like the parts of the mind or like, you have your emotions. And you have your logical reasoning. You have all these different parts of the brain. But everything that they would say about the mind, there’s a conscious mind and there’s a subconscious mind, unconscious mind. I was like, wait, but that’s not the whole story.

So there’s this Eastern system of psychology, which I think in many ways is superior to the Western system. And we can talk about scientifically why that is. And so when I went through medical school, I was skeptical because all of my colleagues were learning about the mind in sort of their first way. But there’s a whole different system of the mind in the East. A different system of psychology.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Also give you a tiny piece of perspective. I had a friend who was studying psychology in a college in Mumbai. Top college. And I remember years ago, the psychology textbook would discourage meditation, prayer, and they called it escapes. That same person today is a practitioner now. And now she’s, like, opened up to it because of, like, experience. Even in the east, we often kind of discount these.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: I think what’s really wild is that that gets discounted more in the East. Right. So there’s such a separation. It’s so interesting because in the west, everyone, part of the reason I, you know, in my application, part of what I emphasized is that, hey, I spent some time studying meditation. This is really what I’m interested in. And so there was a lot of interest in that. And so that worked out well.

But I think the key thing is that I had a system of mind. I understood something about psychology before I went to medical school. And then in psychiatry, what I tried to do is bridge these two systems. So for all these things that we have from, like, yogic shastras, how do I understand the neuroscience of it? So I had kind of a very clear goal when I went into my training.

Letting Treatments Fail

And I think the really cool thing, and this is something that we don’t say much in the in yoga and, you know, Eastern medicine. So I was at an integrative medicine conference hosted at Harvard, and someone asked one of my mentors a question. They said, why isn’t Ayurveda taken as seriously as allopathic medicine? And so this guy is a psychiatrist. He’s faculty at Harvard Medical School, and he says, you guys make one mistake, which is that you don’t let your treatments fail.

So if you go to an Ayurvedic practitioner and you ask them, rasa shastra versus panchakarma or whatever, like an Ayurvedic doctor won’t differentiate the efficacy of these things. And even if we look at our shastras, are the teachings of the Gita better, more correct, less correct than Patanjali’s yoga sutras, than Hatha Yoga Pradipika from Vigyan Bhairav Tantra? Right. If I were to ask you, Ranveer, and I don’t know if people are familiar with those texts, but if I were to ask you, do you think the Gita is more correct or less correct than Patanjali’s yoga sutras, what would you say?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Depends on my own subjective experience of life. But for me I’ll turn to the yoga sutras because it appeals to my personality more.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Right. So, but this is, it’s a beautiful answer, but I want you to think about it for a second. Do you think it is possible that one text is more correct on average than the other text? No. Right. So that’s a problem. You have faith. I’m assuming. But if we sort of think about it, we have so many texts written by Adi Shankaracharya and Patanjali and Krishna. Are they all equally correct? Maybe if you take some Advaita Vedanta perspective. Sure. And there’s all these different paths. Right. There’s lots of answers to it. But it’s very possible that, you know, one take on Maya is not as good, is another take on Maya.

So when I was going through my medical training, what I was sort of doing is filtering these practices based on, okay, what is scientifically valid. And so then I gravitated in a particular direction.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: And you found hits and misses?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Absolutely. Hits and misses. So the really scary thing is the things that were misses for me 20 years ago, 15 years ago, the more I’ve advanced in my practice, the more they’ve become hits.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Hold on. So you extracted actionables and concepts from Indian spiritual literature? Yes, actually applied scientific templates, scientific studies upon this stuff. You found that some stuff worked and some stuff didn’t. But a lot of the stuff that didn’t work, eventually you figure that, hey, this also ended up working.

Developing Meditation Protocols for Mental Illness

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yes. So I will give you a precise example of this. So before I left, I was faculty at Harvard for a little while and my area of focus was developing meditation protocols for mental illness.

Okay, gotcha. So we have mindfulness. So you have an app and there’s a guided visualization. And then if you look at meditation, there’s all kinds of meditation. There’s mantra meditation you can do like Tantric Sadhana, you can do, you know, like you can do like whatever Swami Vivekananda teaches. We have all these different teachers and all these different techniques. You have all these different pranayams.

Now, which of those work for depression? Someone will say all of it works for depression if I do Mantra Sadhana. But the question is, which one’s more effective? If I have a patient in my office who suffers from depression and is suicidal, are they going to get the same effect out of Mantra Sadhana as they will from doing pranayam and Nadi Shuddhi, which is like a cleansing technique. Right.

So this is where they’re not all equal for all things. And so then I started to develop these particular protocols for different mental illnesses. Found that some stuff worked, some didn’t. And I started to discard a lot of the weird spiritual stuff. So stuff like, you know, Kundalini Shakti and some of these other things. And then in my own practice, as I became more developed and learned and things like that, now I’m beginning to realize that like all of that stuff is correct.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: So back then, what did you categorize as weird?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Anything that was not scientifically verifiable. So you know, there’s this idea of atman which, like, is that a thing? Is that not a thing? Like, I don’t know, like our souls. Yeah, our soul. But what I do know is that if you look at a pranayam practice that is affecting your physiology, it’s affecting your brain.

So we know, for example, that your mood in your mental state is connected to your pattern of breathing. And this is really simple. So if I look at you, Ranveer, and I go like this, what emotion do you think I’m feeling?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Anger. Anxiety.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Perfect. Right? So now let’s differentiate the two. That was anger. What is that?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Anxiety.

The Two-Way Street of Breath and Emotion

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Very good. So it’s so easy. Anyone who’s listening at home can pay attention. So if you pay attention now, we can break them down. So anger has rapid, deep breath. Anxiety has rapid breathing as well, but shallow. Right.

And we also know that everything in your body is a two-way street. So what do we tell people if someone’s feeling angry? They tell, okay, slow it down.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: If you’re feeling your body is a…

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Two-way street. Absolutely goes both ways. Right. So if you breathe a certain way, if you feel a certain way, you will breathe a certain way. But if you breathe a certain way, you will feel a certain way. And we know that. We say, okay, hey, you’re freaking out. Calm down, take a couple deep breaths. We all know this, right?

So I started to really focus on the things that were scientifically verifiable. And then I ran into problems. So I was at a lab at Harvard where someone was trying to discover prana, the science. Like actually detect prana with a device, Chi. Chi. It was actually a lab on chi.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: But universal energy, the quick context here is pranayam are breathing exercises. And we believe that when we breathe in, we also take in universal energy, which is probably present in the oxygen, we don’t know. Or it’s present in the ethereum.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. Right. So that’s exactly. So then the question is, when we do these breathing practices, are we taking in this mystical substance that has never been scientifically detected, or are we activating our physiology and our neuroscience in a particular way?

We know that if you do this breathing practice, you will get better with anxiety or depression. But the question is, why? Is it this mystical energy or is it just physiology and neuroscience? At the beginning, I used to think it was just the physiology, neuroscience. And I was like, okay, this prana stuff isn’t real. This chi stuff isn’t real. This soul stuff isn’t real. This energy Shakti stuff is. None of that stuff is real because we have no scientific evidence of it.

And as I’ve become more developed in my own practice, as I’ve started working with patients more, as I’ve started helping people and seeing the clinical benefit, I now have really started to believe or experience some of this weird, like shakti kundalini kind of stuff.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Wow.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: As I start using that kind of stuff with my patients, we see better clinical outcomes.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Okay, let’s take kundalini.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Sure.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: To begin with, stick a tangent here.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: If someone’s never heard the word kundalini and they’re of a scientific temperament.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Like, they think science first.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: I’d love for you to explain what kundalini is to that person and then also give me a definition for people who are fully open to these spiritual concepts.

Understanding Kundalini and Enlightenment

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay, so the problem with that. Love what you’re asking. The problem with that is even if I give a definition to a skeptic, a skeptic is not going to understand. Right. I can define it, but they’re going to be like, this thing isn’t real.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Okay. Save the not a skeptic. And they’re spiritually open, but just want some scientific backing.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay. That’s hard. But let me do what I can do.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay. So first thing is, there’s this idea. Okay. So like a couple thousand years ago, there was this guy named Gautam Buddha. And then he becomes enlightened, right? So there’s this idea in these Eastern meditative traditions of something called enlightenment, which is like this permanent change. It’s not like a temporary state, right? It’s like something happens to this guy. He used to be a regular dude, and then something happens to him.

And then suddenly, like, people start gravitating towards him and he starts teaching people. And the stuff that he teaches profoundly affects people’s lives. But he’s not the only one. There are people, like, in the Hindu tradition, we have Rama Krishna. You know, we have these different kinds of, like, enlightened beings. Arguably, in the Christian tradition, there’s this dude named Jesus. But something was different about Jesus. There’s a certain divinity about him.

So first thing is that there’s this concept of enlightenment, which we call moksha or nirvana. And so that’s like something that can happen to some human beings. And arguably, there’s historical evidence that at least some human beings were different, right? There are these people that started religions. So that’s the first thing we have to understand.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Can it happen to all human beings?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: We’ll get to that later. But let’s understand that there is something that happens to people that makes them different to where, like, they walk around and they open their mouth and a religion is born around them. They don’t usually try to start a religion, right? They’re not opening up a shop and saying, hi, come and worship me. They just start teaching human beings, and then a religion pops up.

So there seems to be the state of moksha. So kundalini. Now you’re asking, can it happen to kundalini? I mean, can it happen to human beings? And what I would say is, okay, how does it happen? Let’s figure we’ll figure out if it can happen to everybody in a second. But how does it happen?

So one theory of how this spiritual progression happens is this thing called kundalini shakti or kundalini energy. So there is some weird energy that sits at the base of our spine. And as we spiritually develop, as we spiritually level up, right? So if we think about how do I level up my muscle? If I lift weight, my muscle will hypertrophy, it’ll grow, and then I’ll be more capable. So we know that human beings can level up their physical body.

So as you level up spiritually, this kundalini energy rises along the back of your spine. And when it reaches the top of your head is when you become enlightened. So that’s what kundalini is. It’s this weird mystical energy that can get upgraded and as it becomes upgraded will lead you to this moksha.

Now the fun thing about kundalini is not so much the moksha part, which I know everyone’s like. The fun thing is that as it rises through your different chakras, which are these energy centers, it like opens up and awakens certain things about your life.

The Chakra System and Mental Health

So I’ll give you a quick understanding of what. When I do kundalini meditation for my patients, I’ll do it based on their chakra. So if it’s in their Muladhara chakra, which is your base chakra, the Muladhara chakra governs your primal desires, so your animalistic needs. So when my patients have problems in their muladhara, when their energy is trapped there, they run into addictions.

So if you sort of think about what is an addiction, there’s a part of me that says I shouldn’t eat these French fries. But then there’s a more primitive part of me, the animal part of me. If I give French fries to a dog, a dog isn’t able to restrain itself. So these people don’t have power over their basic desires. Sexual addictions, substance use addictions. That’s a problem in Muladhara chakra.

Svadhisthana chakra, the second one up, situated kind of at your pubis, is governs a lot of our relationships. So when people have difficulty connecting with people, when they get addicted to relationships, when they are unable to have healthy relationships, I’ll sometimes do Swadisthana practices with them.

Then comes a very important chakra for mental health, your Manipura chakra. So this is situated at your navel. This is where your agni or digestive fire is. Now, what does that mean? So we as human beings have the capacity for metabolism. Metabolism is the ability to take something and turn it into something else. So you and I will, let’s say, eat a mango. And a mango gets transformed into us, right? Becomes eyes, nails, fingers.

But that’s not the only thing that. So metabolism or agni, our digestifier, is what digests things, takes one form and turns into das. But agni is also important for mental functioning. We have this concept in a book, but that is not understanding in our head. We have to take that and we have to digest the knowledge in the book. So if you have problems with your agni, then you can’t understand things.

The way that I use it is with trauma. So if you think about trauma. Trauma is not digested. It is like a negative experience that lives within you and like messes you up. So what we need to do is digest that experience.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Gut brain axis, gut health.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Absolutely. There’s a lot of stuff around gut health too. That’s not something I’ve really connected to Agni explicitly. I haven’t been able to do that. But we can talk about.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Scientifically speaking.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yet. Yeah. So I’d have to think about that. But what I sort of think about is like, you know, when we have a trauma, it’s undigested. And even in psychotherapy, you know, this is what I kind of love about my medical training is like, I realize, okay, there’s a trauma that’s in the mind that has not been processed.

So in psychotherapy and psychiatry, we’ll talk about emotional processing. What is processing? It’s metabolism. So what I was thinking about it and I was like, okay, what would happen if I take someone with a trauma disorder and I teach them a Manipura chakra practice? Will their trauma get better faster than if I teach them mindfulness or something else? So it turns out that in clinical experience it seems to work. But sample size is small. No official studies or anything like that.

So that’s the third chakra. Then the fourth chakra is our heart chakra. This is where we learn a lot of self compassion. A lot of metta meditation comes from here. So it’s like love and things like that.

Then we come to the Vishuddha chakra. This one’s super fun. This is about manifestation of energy in the external world. So if you sort of think about my capacity to make change outside of me actually comes from here. The power of our words. We think about your podcast to the work that I do. We’re just talking. That’s all we’re doing. And yet people are being affected by this.

When I have patients who want to accomplish a lot but they are not able to achieve what they want to achieve, they. Then you do Vishuddha chakra practice that’s less related to psychiatry because usually people are coming to me with like addictions and trauma and depression and anxiety and things like that.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Lower chakra.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Lower chakras, exactly. So Vishuddha is a higher chakra. That’s more when I do like coaching, like if I’ve got a, you know, a client or patient who’s like, has a hundred million dollar company and they want to turn it into a billion dollar company, then we do Vishuddha chakra practices.

Then comes the agna chakra. This is the chakra of intuition. So agna chakra won’t improve anything, won’t fix anything, won’t give you more money, won’t improve your relationships. All it’ll do is give you understanding of things so you’ll know how things work.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Better pattern recognition.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Absolutely. So way better pattern recognition. And so that’s the sadhana that I primarily do in my life. So my teacher taught me, initiated me into agna chakra sadhana. So that’s what I do. There are a handful of patients that I’ll teach that too.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Just want to expand this topic a little bit. Yeah, let’s dive deeper. Okay. So the broad topic we’re speaking about is enlightenment.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: I think you’re linking it to the kundalini rising.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yes.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: That’s what we say in India, that the Kundalini rose through the spine.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah.

The Cerebrospinal Axis and Chakras

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: My next question is about the spine and the cerebrospinal axis. They say that all the chakras are in the center of your body. And they also coincide with important glands or organs. So while you’re trying to dive deeper into the science of kundalini and chakras, do you consider the particular glands or organs located at the positions of those chakras?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Largely speaking? No. Ooh. So this is where, like, I think. So we have to understand something. So first of all, this is just my opinion.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah, that’s fine.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: I think there’s a basic problem when people try to connect spirituality and science, which is that the majority of people who understand spirituality don’t really understand science. Okay. So if you think about, like, who’s the most spiritually developed people that you can find? If I go to a, if I go high up in the Himalayas, I find some cave and there’s some yogi there, their understanding of anatomy is not going to be great.

People will make these correlations. A good example of this is the pineal gland or the pineal gland in the agna chakra. Let’s walk through that argument. And then let’s also be critical of the argument. Let’s understand what the pineal gland is. This tiny little gland that’s behind our forehead, right where the agna chakra is supposed to be. Or actually the kshetram, the agna chakra is back here, but it has a thing in the front. Whatever.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: The friendlier word for agna chakra is third eye.

The Pineal Gland and the Third Eye

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Third eye. So we have this third eye. And so we have this thing called the pineal gland. And the pineal gland basically does one thing that we know of, it makes melatonin. So it has these very primitive photoreceptors. So this is what’s really cool about it. We talk about a third eye. So we have photoreceptors in three places in our body, or actually way more. But generally speaking, there are three. We have two eyes. And then the pineal gland actually detects.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: What’s a photoreceptor?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Photoreceptor is something that detects light. Okay, okay. So like we think we detect light with our eyes. And the reason is because the pineal gland makes melatonin. So melatonin is hormone that governs our circadian rhythm and our sleep wake cycle.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: It basically when it’s released in your body, suddenly feel a little bit of sleepiness.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Exactly. Its release is inhibited by light. So if you kind of think about, you know, people will say like, you shouldn’t use screens before bed. And one of the reasons for that is that there’s this idea that if you use a screen, the pineal gland is detecting light and it thinks that it’s daytime, so it will not release melatonin, so it won’t help you go to sleep. And then if you’re trying to recover from jet lag and stuff, people will sometimes take melatonin to help them sleep.

So there’s this idea that, okay, sure, there’s like some melatonin production, there’s some, you know, stuff related to eyes, but what does that have to do with like intuition and understanding? So that, that gets a little bit disconnected. There’s some theories that DMT, which is a hallucinogenic compound found in Ayahuasca, found in ayahuasca. And so we know that DMT can be produced by the brain. So this is really fascinating. But we don’t know where it’s produced. So some people will claim that it’s produced by the pineal gland. We can get into that if you really want to get into the biochemistry of it.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Maybe now.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay, so here’s the key thing. So I don’t know if it’s produced by the pineal gland, but what I do know. Okay, this is going to get a bit technical.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Okay, that’s fine.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So the building block of DMT. So first of all, let’s decide what we know and what we don’t know.

Understanding DMT

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Okay, Can I just add a little bit? Let’s give the really casual understanding of DMT out there as well.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Sure.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: I think Joe Rogan’s Responsible for popularizing the understanding of DMT globally.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah, let’s take a step back. So sometimes human beings. So like, we’re sitting here, we’re talking, people are listening. This is an ordinary perceptual experience. Yeah. You can see, you can hear. You’re you, I’m me, they’re them. Right. We’re not like all some blend of consciousness or whatever, this weird stuff.

So then what happens is there are certain compounds, hallucinogens. Okay. So these are things like DMT. These are things like psilocybin found in magic mushrooms. And if you take some substance, people have these weird experiences where they feel connected to everybody else. I’ve had several patients who have tried this stuff, and it can be a part of treatment and things like that. We can get into that later if you want.

What actually happens with people. We also know there are now studies that show that taking some of these compounds in the right way, which is really important, can result in healing. So there are certain mental illnesses that are very difficult to treat. Treatment, refractory depression, chronic PTSD. These are the things that they’re now studies on. Things like psilocybin, more psilocybin than other things. Sometimes. We’ll also do studies on ecstasy, which is MDMA, so which actually people will have something called treatment refractory depression.

What does that mean? That means that they have depression. We try to give them treatment. They’ll try medications, they’ll try psychotherapy. Nothing really helps them very much. And they’ll do psilocybin in certain settings. And then they get so. And then if you ask these people what happens that allows you to get better. And this is where things get even more technical. But I remember we’re talking about DMT, so I’m not going to go there yet.

But so they have certain kinds of experiences where they feel connected to everybody. They feel like, you know, when I have patients who have depression and they feel suicidal, their thoughts are. Their minds are filled with, “I’m a loser, I’m pathetic, I hate myself.” And then when they take psilocybin, they have a different perspective on life. Okay, so this is just a fancy way of kind of getting around to what is DMT? When people. There’s this substance called ayahuasca, actually. DMT from ayahuasca?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay. And the ayahuasca has been used in spiritual traditions to evoke these greater conscious experiences. And as a part of these Native American, you know, South American, like healing journeys and things like that. So when you trigger these States of mind. Here’s the key thing. There’s a chemical compound that triggers a state of consciousness that can lead to healing and gives people an expanded perspective on life.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: I’ve made an entire podcast on this.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: But Ayahuasca visited my Life at age 22. I don’t go out chasing it. And it’s been my life’s most important experience. Lots of stuff shifted.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. So I think there’s a study that, you know, if you, when people take psychedelics, studies had found that, you know, most people will rank this stuff as one of the top five experiences, profound experiences of their life.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Probably number one. And I’ve meditated for years after that.

Chemical Compounds and Existing Circuitry

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. So we can get it. There’s all kinds of safety concerns. But here’s the key thing to consider. This is what I think a lot of people miss. So any chemical compound cannot create anything within you. This is what people really need to understand. All a chemical compound can do is activate your existing circuitry. Does this make sense?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Right. So if I look at alcohol, why is alcohol a drug for us? Whereas, like this plant behind you is not. That is because the chemical compound in alcohol triggers our existing machinery. Specifically, alcohol works on the GABA receptor. THC. Marijuana works on the anandamide receptor. Ketamine, for example, works on the NMDA receptor.

So we already have this machinery. It’s just DMT and psilocybin activate it in an unusual way. But what this means is that theoretically we can activate this machinery without the DMT. And this is where meditation comes in, or what happens is not where we’re activating without the DMT. We are producing the DMT in our brain automatically.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: What I will also say as an addition to what I said earlier, is that the 10 years of meditation since the ayahuasca has obviously been a thousand times more powerful. But if I just single out that one experience, it was intense and pivotal, and then I just stuck to the meditation after that.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. So we can talk about that, too. So that’s something that you’re lucky. Because what happens for many people is they have such a powerful experience with something like ayahuasca or psilocybin that is so easy. Like, you don’t have to work for it. Right. You just take it and then you, you go there.

Whereas so oftentimes what will happen is people will find meditation less. They’ll be less motivated for meditation because meditation takes so much longer. And there’s even some stuff that I now understand why my teacher said, “You should stay away from all this stuff,” which is not something that I understood before, but once you understand the mechanisms of things like spiritual experiences, which we’ll talk about, then we can talk about why you shouldn’t do them or why you should.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Key thing here, though is that. So taking a step back, remember that DMT can be produced by the brain. It’s been detected in people and in rats. So there’s some source of DMT in the brain. DMT can’t work on the brain unless it activates our existing machinery. So the machinery is there. DMT just turns it on.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Okay, okay. And different human beings have different degrees of DMT release.

DMT and Serotonin

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Undoubtedly. Now we’re going to talk about how that happens. So the interesting thing is that the building block of DMT is serotonin. Ooh, right. So not many people know this. So I was trying to figure out when someone meditates for 10 years and you have this profound spiritual experience where you’re like seeing deities and like all this kind of stuff, like what is going on in the brain?

And then I started to think, okay, well, clearly there’s some overlap between spiritual experience and psychedelic experience because people will describe similar things. So how, what’s going on here? What’s going on in the neurochemistry? So DMT is produced by serotonin, but chances are. Or, sorry, DMT is produced from serotonin.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: What do you mean?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So if you look at the chemical structure of DMT, it is derived from serotonin. So if you look at the chemical structure of serotonin and you make a couple of modifications to it, you end up with DMT. We’ve also discovered a couple of the enzymes that are probably responsible for that pathway. So it’s like I have this building block, I snip off a hydroxyl group, I add a carbon, I add a carbonic group or whatever, a carbonate. Like I add a methyl group over here, I remove a methyl group over there, and then I end up with DMT.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: This is the only point in my life where I’ve enjoyed organic chemistry.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. So this is why, like, it’s, it’s crazy, right? But we don’t, we don’t teach people like, like, you know, if you want to discover how to make DMT, you have to study organic chemistry.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah. I mean, it’s such a difficult subject to wrap someone’s head around unless they have a fun teacher.

The Science of Serotonin and Spiritual Practice

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. So here’s the key thing. So then I was thinking, well, and that for me was an interesting moment because now when I think about, so here’s what I had studied: if we sort of look at things like depression, we believe that depression has to do with poor serotonin activity in the brain. Even anxiety disorders, panic disorders, poor serotonin activity in the brain.

If we give someone a medication that boosts their serotonin activity, their symptoms of depression and symptoms of anxiety go down. Right, you with me?

Now, here’s the cool thing. If we look at meditation and yoga, we have all these yogis that are like, be detached, be content, be happy. This is not pleasure, it’s not dopamine. Dopamine is pleasure. Dopamine is playing video games, it’s doing drugs, it’s having sex, it’s having fun, it’s riding roller coasters. That’s not what yogis are talking about. They’re talking about contentment and peace.

Contentment and peace comes from serotonin. And a good example of the difference is when you work a hard day and you do a good job and you go home and you’re tired. It’s not the same joy as a rollercoaster, but you feel good, you feel accomplished, right? That’s serotonin.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Your brain releases it in your bloodstream.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Your brain releases it in your brain. Right. So it’s synaptic transmission. So one neuron will release serotonin and another neuron will pick it up.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: This feel good serotonin. What are some human activities that trigger the release? If you could just list out two or three.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So serotonin will get released with things that make you content. So a good example is if you accomplish a difficult task, that will release serotonin. If you just, anything that leads to contentment. So even watching a sunset, that’s not like, pleasurable, right? You’re not like, oh, man, like, I’m going to go on vacation and it’s going to be so fun.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: It’s not thrilling.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: It’s not thrilling. So dopamine is thrilling. It’s not fun. So we use different words.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: So every time you feel a thrill, it’s a surge of dopamine?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Basically, yeah.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: We can say that you feel like a sustained pleasure, like thrill spread out over slower.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: It’s not thrill. So I would say like when you sit in the morning with a cup of tea and you enjoy it. For me, a big serotonergic boost is watching my children sleep.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Gotcha. Gotcha.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So like, you know, when I first had my kid, like, everyone’s like, you love your kids so much. You love. And I was like, I didn’t feel that when my daughter was born. And I was like a little bit worried because I didn’t feel this overwhelming. People be like, the moment, you know, the child comes out of the uterus, you feel this. And I was like, I don’t feel that. This is just, you know, just a bundle of whatever.

And then over time, I used to like watch them sleep. And it’s like, you just feel peaceful, you feel content. So working hard is a great way to get serotonin and feeling accomplished. And then using all these yogic techniques too, developing vairagya detachment that will boost your serotonin. Right.

So the whole point of yoga is to be content in spite of your circumstances. So I don’t know that they understood this, but they’re cultivating contentment. Right? You do this meditative practice so that you’re content every day. Divorce yourself from the fruits of your actions. Focus on the action itself, not the fruit of your action.

Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Science

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Tiny anecdote. I had a yoga teacher friend and my own yoga coach has said something parallel. Mumbai is a very noisy city. We were in traffic once and I said that, dude, I can’t wait to move out of the city because of the chaos and the noise. So my friends told me that, hey, you know what? The chaos and the noise is actually inside here. There’s no chaos and noise outside.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Well said.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: And I’m like, okay, yeah, that’s nice. And then I started doing yoga. Yeah, life changing.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So I would say, you know, being here in the city, there’s absolutely chaos and noise in there. The tricky thing is when that chaos and noise enters us, we have the ability to block it off or we have the ability to receive what the environment has.

But if you look at all these yogic practices, they’re all basically serotonergic boosting practices. Which is why when you have all these yogic inspired things like mindfulness that are now parts of psychotherapy, if you go see a psychologist or psychiatrist today, most of them will teach you how to meditate. Right? So these people figured out certain practices that essentially boost serotonin.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Gotcha.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: And then you do the practices very rigorously. You do them for hours a day. You do sattvic diet. Right? You control your diet. What is a sattvic diet? It’s feeding your serotonin producing neurons. So I think what they’re basically doing is boosting their serotonin a lot. And we’re talking in sort of a reductionist, simplistic way. But they do all of these things to where their serotonin level skyrockets and then a small percentage of that turns.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Into DMT and excess of serotonin.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Exactly. That’s what I think compared to the average human being. Right. And that’s why you have to do yoga seriously in order to have a psychedelic experience. You can’t just do meditation for 20 minutes a day or maybe if you’re lucky, and blessings of Shakti and God and whatever, that maybe can happen.

But generally speaking, from a scientific, mechanistic standpoint, and this is where I’ve had some personal experiences and I’ve seen the difference in my own spiritual practice, when I eat meat, when I drink caffeine, when I wake up and meditate at 4am versus doing it at the end of the day, there are all these things that people are doing.

Another good example of this is when I start patients on serotonin medication for depression and anxiety. If they follow an Ayurvedic diet, then I can take them off of the medication in about six months to a year without problems. And I think what the Ayurvedic diet is, most of our serotonin comes from our gut.

So when you eat the right kinds of things and you produce, when you select for the right kinds of gut bacteria, and there are two kinds of gut bacteria that are very low in people with anxiety, for example, and two kinds of bacteria that are very high in people with anxiety. So when you alter that gut through Ayurvedic diet, which is what I think is going on, then you’re producing your own. Your serotonin factories turning on, then you no longer need to ingest it.

That’s my understanding of it. And there’s science, basically, just to be clear with people, there’s science for like 50% of what I’m saying, but it’s like 50% here, 50% there. And I try to fill in the gaps a little bit.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Man, I think it also leads you to your next steps for your research, exactly what you’re doing. And these kind of conversations also push you in that direction.

I don’t know if you’ll be able to quantify this exactly, but say there’s an average human being, like a college student who’s just living a normal college life. And then there’s a yogi. And the yogi has a hundred units of serotonin in his entire body and some of that serotonin is turning into DMT for his crazy experience. As compared to 100 units, what do you think the college kid has?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: 5.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: 5 compared to 100. Wow. Wow. So you actually need to drive it up to 100 units to even.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. So there’s evidence of this. Right? So 20, 30 years ago, maybe it was 30. Right. So if you look at what’s happened in the world, the rates of depression are skyrocketing, the rates of addiction are skyrocketing, the rates of erectile dysfunction are skyrocketing. As we were talking. Not that, you know, we were talking. We were just.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: I’m all right, guys.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So, so Ranveer was telling me that more of his friends are having problems with erectile dysfunction.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: I also think there’s a correlation with great skin and hair and not having erectile dysfunction.

The Mental Health Crisis

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay, so what we’re seeing is higher rates of addiction, higher rates of depression, higher rates of body dysmorphia. So it’s kind of interesting. Like, it’s really scary. And the world is getting better scientifically. Our neuroscience is advancing, our psychiatry is advancing, but we’re getting worse, we’re getting sicker.

Psychiatry is the only field of medicine where we are losing the war. Cancer treatments improve every year. Cardiovascular treatments improve every year. Skin treatments, autoimmune disease, ophthalmologic disease. Right. We’re getting, science is advancing and we’re winning. Except for in mental health, where things are getting drastically worse.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Everything else, you named all the other features.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yes.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: The enemy is usually germ cells or something going wrong in the cells of your own body.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Versus in psychiatry, one may not even be able to quantify everything that goes into the workings of the software of the human brain.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: That 100%. Right. So I think that’s one of the main reasons. So the problem is that our model, our understanding of the human mind in the west is missing a couple of things. So we can advance as much as we want to in psychiatry and in neuroscience. But here’s the tricky thing.

If I tell you, Ranveer, oh, you’re addicted to, let’s say, social media. This comes from dopamine in your nucleus accumbens. Giving you that information from neuroscience doesn’t help you at all. If I tell people, right? So you can tell a human being, hey, this food is full of saturated fat and carbohydrates, low in protein, low in fiber. It’s unhealthy for you. That doesn’t help them, really.

There’s a great, I learned this lesson where when I was in medical school, first year medical student, I would go to a clinic for five hours a week, and there was a patient there who was a smoker. And so he came in, he was many years older than me. And so I was like, sir, you know, smoking is bad for you. You know, are you aware of the health risks of smoking? And he’s like, no, doc, tell me.

And I was like, okay, if you smoke this, you’re going to, if you smoke, you know, a pack a day, you’re going to get lung cancer, you’re going to get heart disease. He’s like, oh, that sounds terrible. And I was like, great, so you’re going to stop smoking, right? And he’s like, yeah.

So he comes back a month later. I’m like, okay, how’s the smoking going? Oh, yeah, I tried, but it’s hard. I was like, I don’t think you understand. You can get strokes and you can get this. It’s really unhealthy for you. You’re going to get emphysema. So we can give people information. And do you think he stopped smoking? No, not at all.

So giving people information doesn’t work. So what worked for him is I was talking to my preceptor and things like that, and he was telling me that if you want to change a human being’s behavior, you have to make it matter to them.

So then next time he came in and I was like, okay, let me try to get to know this guy. So I would ask him, you know, tell me a little bit about what you like and tell me about yourself. So we’d like just chat, you know. So he’s like, he’s a very proud father of three daughters. And his oldest daughter was 23 years old.

And I was like, tell me about what you’re excited about in life. And he said, you know, my job as a dad, I’ll be able to die content the moment my last daughter gets married. And the thing that I want to, I’m looking forward to the most is he was Christian. So he’s like, I want to walk them down the aisle. So in a Christian wedding, you know, the dad walks the daughter down the aisle.

And I was like, oh, interesting. So when you walk your daughter down the aisle, do you want to be in a wheelchair with an oxygen tank behind you? And he was like, what? No. I was like, then you better stop smoking. Right? So that was heavy handed, kind of a mean thing to say. And I got better at it. But that was what really helped him understanding, okay, this is the impact of this behavior on you.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Human beings change because of emotion and not information.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Absolutely. That’s the real tragedy of being human is that we’re motivated way more by our emotions than we are by logic.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Can I take you back to that line about how excess serotonin becomes DMT?

The Science Behind Kundalini and Chakra Practices

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yes. So, yeah, so just getting back there, because originally you asked about, let’s just follow the chain of conversation. Kundalini, agna chakra, psychedelic experiences, what’s going on?

Okay, so if we look at all these yogic practices, they essentially cultivate detachment, they build inner peace, they build contentment. Probably the neurotransmitter that is responsible for all that stuff is serotonin. So as we do these yogic practices, serotonin levels presumably increase. They don’t really increase, but that’s a technicality.

Then what’s really cool is that we also know that not only you develop this contentment in life, but occasionally when you meditate, weird stuff happens. You get these like moments of out of body experiences. People use these words like expansion of consciousness. And that’s why I’m really excited about psychedelics. Not that people should do them because you can get PTSD and you can really mess up your brain.

But what I’m really happy about is for the first time we have the ability to study something like a meditative, transcendental experience. Because we can give people psilocybin, then we can see what happens in the brain, we can sort of figure out what’s going on. So I think that there’s a, when people do these psychedelics, they are triggering something similar to what happens when you meditate. But there are all kinds of differences and shortcomings and things like that.

But I think basically as we do this Kundalini sadhana, we are activating our biology in our brain. These kundalini practices, we’re activating all kinds of mechanisms which these yogis spent thousands of years figuring out how all this stuff works. Then what they passed on is the practice, they didn’t understand all this biology, presumably. But now that we know this biology, we can try to fit these pieces together.

This was related to the earlier conversation of, I started out with this very physiologic stuff of changing your respiratory rate and things like that. And then we slowly move into these weird kind of psychedelic transcendental experiences. But, and even there’s some science behind that because of psychedelics now. But then there’s all kinds of other stuff that I think is very real, which science can’t even touch and you were sort of saying, let’s take it from the perspective of a skeptic or someone who doesn’t know.

And what I would say is that with this kundalini stuff, you know, as you do these chakra practices, there are some things that we know. I’ll give you just a really simple example. So Muladhara chakra is addictions. And one of the key Muladhara chakra practices is something called sitting is Ardhasiddhasan. So this is sitting in a particular, you know, we sit like this. So, right. So Ardhasadasana. This is ardha padmasan. But there’s a particular meditative way that you sit.

And Ardha siddhasan has your heel pressed against your perineum. So the perineum under your prostate gland for a guy. Yeah. So it’s between your scrotum and your anus. Okay. Anatomically. And the interesting thing is when you put gentle pressure there, that compresses the nerves, arteries and veins that go to your scrotum. So when you compress those a little bit, it reduces the blood flow to the scrotum. When you reduce the blood flow to the scrotum, you get less horny. Wow. Right, dude.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Okay.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So they sit in these postures. And that’s a muladhara chakra practice. So when I have a patient who has a or things like that, there is a hypothesis of a physiologic mechanism through which sitting in this way will help you overcome a s. addiction.

The Western Bridge for Ancient Yogic Wisdom

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: The world of yoga needed a guy like you to take these ideas to the west in an American accent. Don’t mind me saying that.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah, sure.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: I mean, we talk about all this sh all the time. Yeah, but you need an American person to explain these things to the rest of the world.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. I mean, thank you. I think that’s what I get excited about. And it seems like other people are excited about it too. Right. Because when I was learning this stuff, I mean, like, so much of it like doesn’t make sense or isn’t really verifiable. And then as I’ve practiced, you know, I’ve figured out some hypotheses. I don’t do like research and stuff the way that I used to, so we don’t really know, but it’s enough for me.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah. So I have an additional question with that sitting posture. So it’s basically you taking your heel inside, putting it under your perineum, and then just sitting.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Now the Indian narrative on this based on what I’ve heard is that you control your urges and it helps you meditate better. Or if you’re engaged in a conversation, it also helps you stay in the conversation and think better and receive better. Especially if it’s a spiritually oriented conversation. It’s the Indian narrative. Okay. There’s another Indian narrative related to this sitting posture where they say that too much of it will turn you into a hermit.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Sure. That’s not a separate narrative, though. Yeah. Because if I’m regulating my impulses and if I regulate them more and more, a little bit will make me, you know, less materialistic, less, you know, less horny. And then if I like do more of it, I’ll be less horny and then even less horny and then less horny. And then as you lose your horniness for things that are not sexual, you move naturally towards a hermit.

So you asked me, you know, do I have friends who are content creators? And like, what I found is I’ve done like more and more spiritual practice is like, I’m kind of like, just don’t feel the need for that. Like, I don’t have many friends. I don’t feel like I need many friends. I feel like really kind of part of the homer. Yeah. So I’m sort of, I’m sort of like a hermit, you know.

So I have like a wife and the kids and I love them, but, you know, I don’t, I’m okay, like by myself. Like, I would miss them and things like that. I’m not saying, but I just don’t feel that need anymore. And I really think that a lot of it is due to the spiritual practice.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Okay.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: I know this is a lot.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: No, man, it’s great. Very deep, very insightful. Yeah. I think for the right kind of listeners, this is a life changing episode. Often audiences all over the world want actionables and you’ve given a very strong actionable here which is backed by both the world of yoga and the world of modern day medical science. Fair.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: To say backed by is too strong.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Okay.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. So I think that’s where like, you know, the standard of medical science is like lots of trials. There’s like no trials about this stuff, which is a problem. Right. So this is where like my verification. So what I do is understand the theory really well, what we understand from science. Then I try things with my patients with consent.

So the reason I’m like into this stuff is because once I put together these theories, I’ll have patients who come to me. And they’ll be like, I don’t want medication. What are my options? You know, all this yoga stuff, you know, all this meditation stuff. Can you teach me something that’ll help? And I saw, okay, we can try certain things. Let’s see what happens.

The Clinician’s Approach to Ancient Practices

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: You’re more of a scientist than you are a doctor. And you are still a doctor.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: No, I’m the other way around.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: You’re more of a doctor.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: I’m way more of a clinician than I am a scientist. So my thing is like when a human being comes and sits, I try to help them solve their problem with whatever I have at my disposal.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Okay, back to the third eye stuff and the ayahuasca.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. So Kundalini is this energy, this theoretical stuff that these yogis came up with. Here’s the theory behind it. As a medical doctor, here is how I have found it to be useful. When you have a particular patient, when they have a lot of self hatred idality, I’ll teach them heart chakra practices. When they need to digest their trauma, I’ll teach them Manipura practices. If they have addictions, I’ll teach them Muladhara practices. If they want to succeed in life, I’ll teach them Vishuddha chakra practices. If they want to understand things, I’ll teach them Ajna chakra. Now in my experience with people, this works pretty well.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: So the thing you showed about the sitting pose.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Is an equivalent for each of the chakras, sort of.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So what I’ve tried to do is figure out, right, because we have, you can look at like the Kundalini practice for every chakra. So basically what I’ll do is when I do these practices and when I teach these practices, I’ll read about these practices, I’ll do them. Some of them I’ve been taught by, you know, gurus. And then I’ll try to figure out for this dozen set of practices what is, what do we learn about psychiatry, neuroscience and physiology that would explain the benefit of these practices? Can we somehow tie the benefit of this practice to some real science in some way?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Tiny tangent. You’re doing a really brave job.

Credibility Versus Truth

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I think it’s, what I’m doing is a little bit dangerous. So I realized at some point that, you know, credibility is like tricky. So credibility and truth are not the same. And in fact, this is kind of a weird tangent, but I realized that credibility is about making something understandable to someone who’s ignorant.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Right. So you have to convince them. Yeah, but that’s not necessarily truth. So to be credible and to be truthful are two different things. And once I sort of came to that realization, I now intentionally, it’s like, what am I going for here? Am I trying to share what I believe to be true or am I trying to be credible?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Gotcha. This is a very important conversation.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Because I think a lot of spiritualists learn this subject through conversation with each other. And that also creates a lot of room for mumbo jumbo. Agree. This allows people to cut off the mumbo jumbo.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Sure.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: And conjecture and kind of stick to like what the science is saying right now. Okay. So let’s get back to it.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: So I’ll name a chakra.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Sure.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: And if you could give us like one actionable that people could do at home to help with the problems associated with that chakra. Is that okay?

The Dangers of Kundalini Practices

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yes and no.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: They can’t do it at home.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. So I would say that some of, so let’s remember, like, here are a couple reasons why. So first of all, when I teach this stuff, like, I’m working with a person. So there, and here’s the concern that I have. There are certain medical contraindications to certain practices. So even something as simple as nadi shuddhi, which is, you know, alternate nostril breathing, if you have something like a deviated septum, you can’t do that practice.

Kundalini Sadhana. This is the other reason the kundalini practices are the most dangerous. So the activation of, there’s like different kinds of meditation. Right. There’s some stuff that’s like pretty safe and some stuff that is more powerful, that is also more dangerous.

So I had one when I was learning kundalini practice. You know, one of my teachers was like, I’m going to teach you like a practice to cleanse your muladhara chakra. This is where the base desires come from. And he’s like, but if I teach you this, like, you and I are going to go into the woods for 30 days because, and when you do this, you’re going to feel incredibly horny and you’ll start sexually insulting anything that moves. So you can’t do this practice here. So we have to go. We have to leave the ashram, we have to go out into the woods. And then, you know, we can do diksha and initiation.

And what I realize now is that, you know, there are case reports of meditation induced psychosis and things like this. And so oftentimes what will happen is if you do these kundalini practices, these intense yoga practices that are not in the right way, you can have a bipolar break. You can become manic. So he was basically describing something in psychiatry that we call hypersexuality. So and when someone has bipolar disorder and they become manic, they become like horny on a level that is like they’re mentally not there. It’s not just like, right, like they just can’t control themselves. And so.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Like zombies.

The Dangers of Kundalini Activation

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. And then sometimes, if we think about, if I have a spiritual experience and I see God and God is talking to me, there’s a decent chance that I’ll end up in the emergency room. Someone inject me with antipsychotics. I’ve had patients that I’ve evaluated in the emergency room and they say my chakras are open. That’s why I’m here. And then I’ll do a chakra assessment and I’ll be like, no, I think you’re psychotic. I think this is.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Have you ever done a chakra assessment and the chakras actually opened up on a patient?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: There’s only one time I can think of in the emergency room that I did a chakra assessment. And that was because the patient was saying this and I said, hi, my name is Alok. I know this is completely unscientific, but I know how to do a chakra assessment. Would you like me to do one? Because I’m not sure. Can we try to figure out together whether you’re ill or your chakras are opening?

Here’s what I detect from your chakra assessment. I don’t think your chakras are opening. I think you’re psychotic. And I think that there’s a negative influence happening on your mind. I would like to help you. I think this is what I’m seeing. From a medical standpoint, you fit the criteria for psychosis.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: In that case, what was the root cause?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: I don’t know because I evaluated them in the emergency room. So my job as a doctor there is to stabilize them and send them to a doctor who will help them figure out what was going on.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Did you by any chance check what was up?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So all I know is that they were not, in this particular case, it was not substance induced. So sometimes if you use substances, you can become psychotic. DMT or psilocybin will create hallucinations. Cocaine can do it as well. THC can do it as well. Can create paranoia, psychosis, things like that.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Like a bad trip, bad trip.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Exactly. Yeah.

Understanding Kundalini Practice and Its Risks

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: So with these dangers of the Kundalini practices, I’d love for you to give a narrative on what the spiritual teachings are about, the dangers of Kundalini practices, and then give me what the likely science could be.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Sure. So first thing about kundalini practice is that it involves a guru and diksha. So we have to understand these two terms. So guru is like someone who is at the highest level, enlightened. Someone who’s attained moksha, but someone who is competent as a teacher. To be a real guru, I mean, you’ve had some guests on the podcast that will know way more about this than I do. I’ve received tantric diksha and things like that.

But so you have to be initiated into the practice, and the guru has to guide you, especially with Kundalini practices. And the whole reason is because as you do these practices and you start activating your chakras, they have to be cleaned. That’s the other reason that I’m hesitant to just teach this stuff, because there’s a cleansing process. And if you don’t, if you activate the energy and it’s not cleaned, you can have problems like psychosis, mania, things like that.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: But what’s the dirt made up of?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Oh, that’s a very interesting question. I would say, and this is going to open up a lot of doors, some amount of unclean prana, so your vital energies are not cleaned. Maybe some amount of samskara. Some amount of karma, potentially. I would look at it from a couple of different layers. Yeah, those would be the three things.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Not like food that you’re eating or experiences or drugs.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: No, all of those things go into that. So let’s understand. If my prana is unclean, then maybe if I’m taking unclean food, if I have lots of trauma, then those will be samskaras. So my mind and the impressions that have been left on me are not healthy. And then even karma.

So if I do drugs, that’s going to have a karmic impact. So if I am doing Kundalini practice and I’m getting high every day, there’s going to be a karmic consequence of these two things when I put them together.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Okay.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: That’s the spiritual lens on the subject.

The Biology of Karma

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. So here’s the cool thing that I think a lot of people, this is what I get excited about and a lot of people miss is when people say karma, they’re like, oh, it’s some spiritual force. No, this can be understood in scientific terms.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Like the biology of karma.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Biology of karma. Absolutely. So there is absolutely a karmic biology. If I, if the patient I talked about, if I smoke two packs of cigarettes, my karma is to walk down the aisle with a wheeling an oxygen tank behind me. So there’s the karma is a very real cause and effect force that happens biological.

So going back to your question of how do you do Kundalini practice? So you have a guru, you get initiated. This is one of those things that I used to not believe in, that I now believe in, which I can’t explain scientifically. There’s a limit to I think what science can.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: There’s a need for a guru.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: I think so, yeah. I mean, but the caveat there is that, so I’m kind of like on this path. So my teacher, the reason he taught me third eye practices is because he said you’re going to have difficulty finding a guru. So I’m going to teach you a practice to connect with what he called the inner guru. So once you do third eye, you do third eye practices first in one branch of Kundalini because then you can get the guidance from the third eye itself.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah, Guru Tattva, I mean that’s what we got.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So we can. Guru Tattva is very interesting.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: You can manifest Guru Tattva inside you.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Absolutely.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: That’s a whole section we’ll break down later.

The Mechanism of Diksha

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So that’s kind of how you learn them. So you have to have diksha. And I think that diksha is like when the, is initiation. So that’s when I didn’t understand this stuff when a guru gives you a chunk of their spiritual energy. And so it’s kind of like the way I would think about it.

The analogy that I would use is if I want to have financial, if I want to have a million dollars, if I start from zero and work really hard and I have all these expenses, I have to pay my rent, I have to pay for my car, I have to pay for my medical expenses, the ability to accumulate a million dollars is very hard.

If my parents give me $200,000 to start, they give me a down payment, a one time injection of cash, they give me a down payment for a house. My, even though they only gave me $200,000, my ability to get to $1 million is way easier. It’s worth way more than 20%. Does that kind of make sense?

That’s what I think is the mechanism of diksha. So when a teacher gives you a chunk of their spiritual energy, your ability to get to a million happens way faster, even though they’re not getting you a lot of the way there. But it’s just like getting that down payment to the house. Your financial situation is drastically different. It’s worth way more than 20%. So that’s kind of what happens. And then the Kundalini sadhana. What was your question again, precisely?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: The biological dangers of Kundalini Sadhana.

Advanced Practices and Their Risks

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah, so and I think when these, because these practices are strong, they’re things that are kind of scarier. So you’re activating, they’re more intense meditation, they’re more intense practices. So you’re doing these things like Ardha siddhasan, where you are compressing some blood vessels, which you shouldn’t do without guidance.

So there’s another kind of scary practice where there’s this little, if you look at your tongue, your tongue is attached to the bottom of your mouth by a little. Yeah, right. So we’ll talk about, yeah, so khechari mudra. So khechari mudra is when you lift up your tongue, you push it against the back of your mouth, the top of your mouth, and then you push it up into the oropharyngeal cavity. So you’re kind of sticking your tongue up towards the back.

Now what’s going to happen is when your tongue, you can only push it so far because it’s attached to the bottom of your jaw with a little membrane. So there’s a particular yogic practice where you cut that membrane and you use turmeric so it doesn’t get infected and things like that. I would never recommend this. But that’s an example of the more you do that, the more intense your khechari mudra can become. So you can go, you can, how far up it goes depends on removing that membrane.

The reason that I don’t teach this stuff quickly is because these techniques are not meant to be taught quickly. They’re done in a very particular way. If you screw that up, who knows what’s going to happen. And if you screw up navel chakra practices, your capacity metabolize may get messed up. You could intensify traumas. This I’ve seen specifically with trauma.

So here’s just a good example of sort of a western side. See, when you have trauma, your mind has these things called defense mechanisms. So it’ll do things like block out memories. And so you do, your mind is trying really hard to keep things suppressed. Now if I do some meditation practice where I’m removing all of these mental barriers so that I can clean my mind, the trauma will come flooding to the surface and that can overwhelm me.

So one thing that’s really interesting, even if you look at the science of meditation practices used to treat trauma, they are all grounding practices. They’re not something called open awareness practices where you have some aspects of meditation where they’re like, accept whatever thought comes. If you have a history of trauma and you let the thoughts come the way that you’re just let every thought come. It’s all okay.

People who teach that have not had patients who’ve been used since the age of five. If you just let that stuff come, it’ll overwhelm your mind. And so there’s all kinds of stuff that’s buried. So let’s remember that when I have food poisoning, the process of getting that toxic food out of me, vomiting or diarrhea is very unpleasant and can be dangerous in and of itself.

If I have food poisoning, I vomit too much, I can die of dehydration, I can die of an electrolyte disturbance. So even though it’s theoretically healing, if I’m not careful and it isn’t done right, it can be more dangerous.

Safe Meditation Practices

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Like the only medications that are suitable for everyone are grounding practices, basically.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So the other practices that usually are safe, there’s a set of yogic practices that are pretty safe. Grounding meditations is like the Western people, but things like Surya Namaskar, incredibly safe. Shuddhi practices, the basic Shuddhi practices, very safe. So this is like Nadi Shuddhi, like alternate nostril breathing, incredibly safe. Things like Kapalbhati, bellows breath, some of these other practices, really safe.

Basically what you would learn in a yoga class or Pranayam class is pretty safe. These aren’t kundalini. And then other things, there are introductory practices. So one practice that’s very safe to do for Agna chakra is candle gazing. Trataka.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So fixed point gazing. So this is just looking at a candle flame without blinking for 30 seconds, 60 seconds, 90 seconds, then you kind of work your way up. And then there’s a second phase of that practice. Once you do it on a candle flame, then if you want to make it more kundalini oriented, then you can do it on a yantra. A yantra for a particular chakra.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: I think all this needs a guru.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yes. For the most part, I think guru is the safest way. There’s a reason why we’ve had gurus for thousands of years. But doing candle gazing is something that I can teach to a patient without activating any chakra.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: And then if it, if they get activated and that’s part of their karma and that’s supposed to happen. And then we kind of guide them through that. If it happens. But, right. And then if someone comes to me and is like, I want to learn a chakra practice, then I’ll be like, okay, let’s start with candle gazing, then let’s do yantra practice, then let’s learn a mantra. Let’s combine all of those things. But that’s not something that I would quickly give.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: You’re a wild guy. Love it. Love this, man.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: It’s great. I love that this stuff actually works. There’s a system.

The Dangers of Kundalini Activation and Meditation

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah, yeah. You know, back to the Kundalini. So you’re saying that the dangers are that some of the meditations that you need to put one through for awakening the Kundalini might trigger traumas from the past, might trigger some kind of psychosis.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: All kinds of stuff. Right. And there’s evidence of that.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: This is a psychiatrist, like a qualified psychiatrist giving this piece of information to us.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. Just to give you one tiny example, I know you’re trying to summarize, but so there’s a study that shows that the risk of psychosis increases if you meditate for 40 minutes or more.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Oh.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: For anyone? Yeah. So this is a population based study. So the methodology is that they’ll look at everyone who had bad experiences with meditation and then they’ll ask them, how do you meditate? And one of the things that floats to the surface is people who meditate for 40 minutes or more are at a higher risk of problems.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: And yet the life changes that meditation gives you is when you take meditation up to that level.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Exactly. Precisely the point I wanted to make. Right. So the stuff that is dangerous is the same as the stuff that is the most effective. Which is why a guru is important.

Finding Authentic Meditation Schools and Teachers

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah. For Western viewers especially, but also, honestly, Indian viewers. I keep saying this a lot. The big advantage of being in India is that we have access to really well made meditation schools here where even if the guru is not present in biological reality, his teachings are present in detail. Meditation techniques are given in detail.

And I’ve also seen a flip side of this, where some people pretend to be fake gurus, some people alter the teachings of the original guru, and that leads to a lot of trouble for a lot of people. Seen this in my own life as well. But it’s a seeker’s duty to go find the right source of the teachings and to be intuitive while finding the source.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah, agreed. I think there are some problems even with some of these traditional meditative schools. So this is going to be a little bit of an unusual take.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: You’re just doing a narrative on reality.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So here’s my experience. So you have some enlightened teacher. Right. And they have a text or they pass along the teachings. So many people have come to me and said, you know, meditation doesn’t work for me. And then as we get into it, like, why doesn’t it work for you? What happens?

So let’s understand what happens in a school. There’s a couple different versions of this. So you have some meditator who’s really good. Right. A good example is Buddha. And then there’s a lot of people that come after him. But the question is, what percentage of Buddha’s capability does the second guy have? Does the third guy or third girl? Fourth, fifth, sixth, maybe 10 generations down?

You get someone who’s very spiritually enlightened, and then they kind of re-infuse that spiritual energy. But oftentimes what you’ll see in these traditions is a shell of the practice. They have all the techniques. But what happens? It’s not clear to me that the person who takes over has the same degree of shakti as the person who started it.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: I have a more optimistic outlook on this.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Surely you got to begin somewhere.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Absolutely. Yeah. So I think that’s fair. Right. So I think, though, that sometimes what happens is you end up with teachers who are mechanically teaching.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah. That I agree with. Yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: And so what happens if you look at some of these…

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: I mean, I feel like the essence of this is that the meditator has to be serious about the practice.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Completely agree.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Like, you are your greatest coach.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: You are absolutely your greatest coach. But I think one of the scary things out there is that when you have one of these meditation schools that you go through a course and then you get certified as a teacher and then you teach meditation, that’s not how it used to be done.

What used to happen is, sure, you go through a course that’s 30 years, and at the end of it, you’re not guaranteed a degree. Your guru turns to you and says, so this is in the Zen tradition, after 30 years of dedicated practice, depending on your spiritual development, you receive a title. Right. So in the Hindu tradition, we’ll have swami or paramhansa. Right. Where you get this title because of your capability, not because you paid $5,000 and showed up every day.

So the quality of meditation, the quality of meditative instructors. I completely agree with your point that you have to start somewhere. There’s a lot of good stuff in these lineages, and you have to be your own coach. You have to be intuitive with yourself. But one of the scary things that I see is a lot of people will go, they’ll pay for some course. There’ll be a teacher there. But just because they’re teaching doesn’t mean that they’re adept.

The Third Eye, Brain Capacity, and Human Evolution

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Gotcha. Gotcha. I’m going to try making this a little positive at this point.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Sure.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: We spoke about the third eye and the pineal gland and DMT. You know, you said there’s techniques to improve your sense of intuition.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yes.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Have you watched this film called Limitless? It’s got Bradley Cooper where he basically takes a pill for his brain.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: And then he apparently starts using the entire capacity of his brain.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Now, the first question to you is that as a licensed medical professional, is it true that we only use a tiny fraction of our brains while we go about life?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Absolutely not.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: We use the entire brain.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. All the time.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Okay.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Just to give you an example. The back 20% of your brain is something called the occipital cortex, which just does one thing, manages visual information. That’s all it does. So we have just huge chunks of our brain that are just devoted to our eyes. Right.

So I mean, we use all of our brain. There’s chunks of our brain that give us language. And I think what a lot of people forget is that the majority of our brain has nothing to do with mental activity. So we have this thing called reticular activating formation in the back of our head that governs our sleeping and our wakefulness. We have things that generate emotions. We have a part of our brain, the somatosensory cortex. So when I touch this, my somatosensory cortex is activating.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: But where does this narrative of brain expansion or, you know, I don’t know, but would you say that say in the case of the Buddha or someone who reaches that point of enlightenment, they’re evolving to some next stage of being human.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Absolutely.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: And therefore is something getting unlocked in the brain.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So this is what’s fun. So I think actually human evolution is not unlocking your brain, it’s disarming your brain. It’s shutting off your brain.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Shedding of what’s not needed.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Even crazier, shedding off what is needed. So let’s understand a couple things. This is going to be weird, but…

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Is this like reptilian brain and limbic system?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Sort of. Sort of. Right. So first thing to understand is Ranveer, what is our brain for? What’s the goal of our brain?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: To keep us alive.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Very good. So the evolution of a person is not about humanity or biology, it is about the evolution of you. Spiritually is very different from what our biology is designed for. So the standard problem that human beings have right now is that our biology is working against us.

A thousand years ago, even 100 years ago, people used to die a lot of starvation. So if you look at a lion in Africa, its biggest problem is finding enough calories to live. So we have a lot of our biology is designed to hold on to calories. But now we live in a world where obesity kills more people than starvation. So our biology is telling us, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat. We have to go against our biology. And that’s what I would call spiritual evolution.

So now you’re evolving within an organism to something else. So a lot of what we do in spirituality is actually going against our biology, going against what our brain wants to do. And there’s a beautiful example of this. We have a part of our brain called the default mode network. So this is the part of our brain that separates us from animals probably and gives us… Default mode network does one thing, it allows us to think about ourselves.

So if you look at a deer, it’s not clear that a deer can think about itself. It can think about the environment, it can think about a predator, it can think about, where do I find water? But human beings can think about themselves. So I can think, I am a good person, I am a bad person.

Now here’s the scary thing. If you look at someone who’s depressed and you ask them, what are you thinking about? They’re thinking about themselves way too much. I’m a loser. I’m an idiot. I’m pathetic. I’m not great, right? Most of the time when you’re happy, you’re not actually thinking about yourself. When you think about yourself a lot and you’re feeling happy, maybe you’re narcissistic. I’m great, I’m awesome. I’m better than everybody else. Right?

So if we think about the default mode network, it’s beautiful from an evolutionary standpoint because it allows us to study ourselves, but it also buys us depression. So how do we get, literally what is the mind of someone who’s depressed and how do we get them healthy? We help them stop thinking about themselves.

I’ll give you another kind of example of that. So if I have social anxiety and I walk into a room, I’m thinking about, oh my God, what does Ranveer think about me? All these people are watching me. What are they going to think? I didn’t shave properly today? Or my hair isn’t good. I’m thinking about myself, thinking about myself, thinking about myself. It’s not healthy, but it’s absolutely evolutionary.

And so when we look at some of these practices like yoga and meditation, and we do dissolving the ahamkar, dissolving the ego. Stop thinking about yourself as a human being. You’re an instrument. Now here’s the really cool thing. These people have been saying this for thousands of years now. We can do brain scans. When you meditate, what happens? The default mode network shuts off.

The Default Mode Network and Mental Health

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Wow.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but there’s a new treatment for depression called ketamine.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah, we’ve had someone who’s done ketamine administration.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay. Yeah. So ketamine is the fastest acting antidepressant that we have. And what is the mechanism of ketamine? Shuts off the default mode network.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Same with psilocybin.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So here’s the cool thing. When you use a psychedelic, depending on what your experience is, we can predict whether you will have a mental health improvement. Okay? And it comes down to one thing.

So if I take psilocybin and I just see lots of colors and I have synesthesia, which is the blending of our senses. If I start to taste music, if I start to see sound, if I just see visions, very little mental health improvement.

The one thing that correlates with mental health improvement the most strongly is a sense of ego death. So when people have psychedelic experiences where I feel connected, I realize I am not this body, I realize I am not this mind. I realize I am a part of something greater. When they have those kinds of experiences which probably correlate with default mode network activity going down, then we can predict, we can even ask you when you have a trip, what did you see? What happened?

And if someone says, I felt connected to the whole world around me, we can predict that this person will have an improvement in depression, will have an improvement in PTSD. Right. Because PTSD trauma happens to you. It’s about you. Oh my God, I’m this person and I’m screwed. I messed up, I’m terrible.

And then once you realize, oh, I’m just a part, I’m a cell in the organism of life. That shift in perspective, which people will also have through meditative practice, through spiritual practice. Now we know it’s linked to the default mode network.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: I hope that every mental health professional in India comes across this podcast. At least in India. Ideally the world, but at least in India.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: What do you hope they’ll get out of this?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Dude, so I’ve noticed that there are two types of mental health professionals in India, and I’m generalizing very, very heavily. Yeah, but this is what I’ve noticed. And they’re both kind of on polar ends of the spectrum. One’s completely open to the stuff. One’s completely shut off to the stuff.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: And then there’s maybe like a third category which is soft on both. Like really soft, but on both sides. But that’s a reflection of their own personality, that they’re really soft and easy going people. Anyone who’s opinionated is on a far end of the spectrum. So it’s okay. I don’t want anyone to move to the other end of the spectrum. I just want people on that opposite end to get this perspective backed by biology.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. Okay.

The Default Mode Network: Beyond the Villain Narrative

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: I want to talk more about this Default Mode network.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: It seems like it can’t be the only villain of the human story.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Oh, it’s not.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: It seems like it’s important.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yes. So here’s the thing to understand that which helps us survive is very different from that which makes us happy. Right. So a lot of spiritual practice and a lot of even mental, like the goal of life. Right. If you want to be happy, you have to do a lot of things that are counter to your biology. You have to do a lot of things that are not intuitive.

And a really good example of this is, you know, we think we need ego. Like if I stop looking out for myself, I’m going to get trampled. That’s not necessarily true. If anything, the less egotistical you become, the more clear headed you become. Right. So you’re able to see things in a more logical and clear way.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: You know, the only counter argument I can possibly think of for this is that probably in your 20s or just when your career is starting out, you need a tiny bit of ego, I think.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. So this is, it’s a great point. And even later. So I think the key thing to remember is that a lot of times when we’re talking about spiritual development, it’s not getting rid of desire, it’s not getting rid of ego. It’s having you in control of the ego instead of the other way around.

Arrogance, Narcissism, and the Default Mode Network

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Okay. An inflated ego leads to what we call arrogance.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yes.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Do you think there’s a correlation between the arrogance inside arrogant people and the nature of their default mode network? Like, is it more developed in arrogant people?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Sort of is my answer. So let’s be, it’s a great question. So arrogance is slightly different from narcissism, right? So arrogance is, I believe I’m right, and I’m not cognizant. So I would say arrogance is a deficit of cognitive flexibility, a deficit of empathy.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Okay.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So when I think I’m right, it doesn’t dawn on me that if you disagree with me, there must be a good reason for that. So let’s just use a simple example. So you mentioned earlier very rightly, that there’s people on two ends of the spectrum, right? There’s people who are like, open to spiritual stuff. And there are a lot of people in psychiatry, medicine, whatever, who are like, this stuff is completely wrong.

They’re not dumb. Let’s remember that meditation and spirituality has been around for thousands of years, and people were still killing themselves. We’ve had access to this information for thousands of years. Why are they so anti this stuff? Precisely because we don’t know which of this stuff works well, how reliably it works.

If you go to a tantric guru tomorrow, six months from now, what will be different about your life? No one will be able to tell you, even the tantra guru. I mean, I don’t know what they’ll say, but like, a tantra guru will say, like, okay, it depends on the blessings of the divine. Well, like, if I’m depressed today, am I going to count on the, because when do the blessings of the divine happen? Oh, it’s up to the divine, right?

So in spirituality, like, they’re not wrong, but there’s a reason why people are anti spirituality. So this kind of goes back to this point of arrogance, where arrogance is a deficit of cognitive flexibility. It’s a deficit of empathy. It’s a deficit of, I can’t imagine why you would think differently. And I know everything.

Narcissism is more related to the default mode network. Okay, so narcissism is kind of, when you say arrogance, right? So I’m going to call that narcissism. I think I’m great. Inflated ego. I’m the best person on the planet. And what we know from studies on narcissism, this is science now, is that narcissism is a reaction to insecurity.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Like, okay, it comes out of a negative self image.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Absolutely. Yeah. So that’s the tricky thing. Deep down they have a negative self image. And if I believe I’m dumb, if you even hint I’m dumb, I’m going to attack you. I can’t tolerate it. So a narcissist gets their self worth from the reflections of the people around them. I need you to think I’m smart. I need everyone to think I’m smart. I need everyone to tell me I’m smart every single day because I don’t believe it about myself.

It’s the exact opposite of confidence, right? So confidence is value that comes from within. So I think when we have a default mode network that is more active, we’re more likely to see narcissism. And narcissism also has an empathy deficit. Right? So narcissistic people aren’t empathic. And so that’s how we kind of get narcissism and arrogance. But I think if you really want to be precise, you have to separate those two things. And I think there’s two different mechanisms. But your broader point stands.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Gotcha. Okay. An average meditator like me, who’s been meditating for 10 years now. Okay, where do you think my default mood network is at? Because I’m not enlightened and neither am I a dick.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: How much do you think about yourself with age?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: It’s consciously and constantly lesser.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: There we go. Right? So that’s what’s happening. So let’s talk about consciously lesser. What does that mean? That means that you’re recruiting a different part of your brain. Your default mode network activates and then another part of your brain is like, we’re not going to do that. So it shuts it down.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah. Consciously catching your own thoughts, right?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: But so, so I think this is interesting, right, because you’re like a content creator, you’re an influencer. So the more that we use social media, the more our default mode network turns on. Right? So like if I post a picture on Instagram, I will see myself and I will start to think about myself.

Social Media, Influencers, and the Default Mode Network

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: It’s where this negative brand image of influencers comes from. Really switched on default mode networks. That leads to those human beings possibly being more narcissistic.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah, I think so. So, yeah, I think that, you know, their default mode network is activated. They’re more narcissistic. But here’s the tricky thing that I think a lot of people don’t realize. It’s a consequence of the job, right? So if I’m a soldier and I go into battle, it’s bad that I get, let’s say hit by, shot by a bullet. But that’s like a part of the job.

What people don’t realize is that technology and influencers, there’s no way, right? Because you’re constantly being judged for the way that you look, what you put out there. So if everyone else is judging you, you have to judge yourself ahead of time to make sure that what you put out is okay, is brand friendly, et cetera.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: I think the trick is to know that you are employed by that illusion that you’ve created.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yes, that is precisely the trick. But that takes effort, right? So this is where ego is not bad, but ego should be turned on or off. So if I come to you, Ranveer, and I say, oh, you’re such a spiritual guy, sponsor my thing for free. It’s good, right? People will try to take advantage of you. People will try to take advantage of everyone out there.

So your ego is necessary to protect you, but your ego should be like a guard dog where when you tell it to be quiet, be quiet. And a narcissist is someone whose guard dog is very poorly trained, is attacking whoever comes by, right? And so if we’re talking about like succeeding in the world, we don’t want to be hermits.

And I think, you know, Krishna has a great analogy where he tells Arjun that your Indriyas, your five senses should be like the horses and you should be the charioteer. You should be in control of your mind. And the whole problem with the default mode network being activated is your ego controls you.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: The zombie virus inside you.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: If you have, I have to be great, right? And so if someone like disrespects me like at the airport and cuts in line, there’s a time where I’ll say, hey, like you, you know, you cut in line. But there’s also like a, okay, this person clearly is like maybe having a bad day. So I don’t need to. When I, I can turn on my ego like a light switch.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: That’s the goal, man. I just, I feel that. I think people have understood what the default mode network is. And the process of long term meditation quietens your default mode network, trains your guard dog. And we’ve given people the clues to go in the right direction.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay.

The Mystery of the Self and Past Lives

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: But I feel like this is a very mysterious part of the brain.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: And there’s a part of me that maybe feels it may be related to past lives and why is past life therapy even a thing?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay, sure. So let’s just talk about ego identity in the self for a minute. So here’s what confuses a lot of people. So here we are talking about the default mode network, and I’m saying it’s basically bad. It’s not bad. It’s a necessary function. When it becomes hyperactive, you will be thinking about yourself too much. And if you pay attention to your own thoughts, usually when you’re thinking about yourself, they’re like, negative. Right? Like, I’m like, oh my God, I’m ugly. Maybe I look a little bit weird.

So here’s the weird thing. So if we’re sort of trying to quiet the ego and we shut off the ego, then what’s left? So there’s this concept in, you know, yoga and meditation and stuff about the self or the atman and the soul. And how is that different from the mind?

So here’s, so if you look at someone who’s like a hard neuroscientist, they will say there’s no such thing as the soul, which is like, fair enough from a scientific perspective. But let’s examine our own experience. So if you look at your mind, what you’ll notice is that when we call the mind is like thinking in emotions. There’s mental activity, right? We have thoughts. So a thought comes and goes, an emotion comes and goes. So the mind fluctuates. Even ego can get stronger and can get weaker. And we can turn it on and off.

So I’ll give you a really good example. We think like, maybe the ego is with me all the time. But no. So if you really pay attention, let’s say that I’m using the toilet. When I’m using the toilet, I don’t even have an ego. I’m not a man, I’m not a woman. I’m like no one. I’m just someone who’s using the toilet.

Imagine for a moment that you were just alive for one moment in time, six seconds, that’s all you were alive. And it was when you were using the toilet. You have no sense of identity. Right. So our identity is something that we accumulate on us over time.

So what the self is, it’s the part that is, that can look at the mind. It is the capacity for experience. So in your mind, you may have anger, you may be angry at someone. You’re thinking certain negative thoughts, but you can actually take a step back and look at that from the outside.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Meditation creates distance between thoughts and perception. It’s the same thing that you’re saying.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: The process of meditation creates distance between what you’re perceiving and the thoughts that your brain is throwing up.

The Nature of Meditation and Consciousness

DR. ALOK KANOJIA:

Absolutely. And ideally, the meditation. Meditation’s goal is to shut off the mind completely. And then people get confused because if I don’t have an active mind, then am I asleep? No.

So here’s the interesting thing. When you really meditate well, and people will, there are a couple good examples of this. So, like, if we think about the moment of climax, like sexual climax, you know, in that moment, you’re not thinking anything. You’re just present. You may be thinking right before and you’re going to be thinking right after. But in that moment when you’re looking at a sunset, your mind isn’t actually active. You’re just absorbed in that thing. And you’re noticing it and you’re appreciating it, and you feel content, but you’re just lost in it almost. Right.

So there’s something you can shut off the mind, and then what you’re left with is the self. What you’re left with is the Atman and the other way to kind of think about it. And I encourage people who are skeptical of this to, like, be skeptical. That’s good. I started out skeptical, too. And then you have to run your own experiments. You have to become your own scientist. And then look at the fact that you can look at your mind. So if you can look at your mind, what is doing the looking?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA:

Ooh, man.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA:

Right. So because, and you’ll say, but that’s my mind. Well, hold on a second.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA:

That.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA:

But what is doing the looking? And what is the object of perception? And what is the organ of perception? And that’s where you get to this idea of the self.

And so there’s a really cool technique, like in psychiatry, right. In this part of psychiatry called cognitive behavioral therapy, they say that there’s this problem called thought fusion. So this is kind of weird, but when you become mentally ill, you mistake your thoughts for facts.

So when someone has a panic attack in their mind, their mind is telling them you’re dying. They’re not dying. The problem is they think they’re, they believe their mind. The mind tells you you’re dying, you’re dying, you’re dying, and you believe it. You’re like, oh, my God, I’m dying.

And the interesting thing is that the more you believe your mind, the more mentally ill you become delusional. Perfect. Brilliant. Took the words out of my mouth. So the more severe illness, hallucination, delusion, psychosis. Those people are more mentally ill usually than someone who has a panic attack. Right.

So in that moment, their mind is telling them, hey, this is true. These people are following you. These people are poisoning you. And they believe it. They can’t disbelieve their mind. Then you have a panic attack. Then you have anxiety. So even in anxiety, there’s a part of you that you’re, like, worried about this. But there’s a part of you, okay, that may not happen. You can doubt your mind.

Then there’s the normal human being who has doubts about their mind every day. Oh, well, is that really going to happen? Okay. Like, I know I think this, but there’s just a part of me that thinks this. And then as you move, so that’s kind of treatment, right. Where we have, like, pathology, where someone who’s ill and then we bring them back to baseline.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA:

I called this perception. What did you call it? Consciousness, you said.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA:

Yeah. Consciousness or awareness.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA:

Okay, just for the sake of this conversation, maybe I nudge viewers to view this as a camera inside your own head.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA:

Yes. So here’s the key thing. So perception is also of the outside world, but you can perceive the mind.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA:

Yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA:

Right. Which is weird.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA:

It’s like when one does a shamanic psychedelic mushroom ceremony. Once it kicks in, they tell you to lie down and close your eyes because you need to explore your own head and not explore the world. But this is just a psychedelic experience without the mushroom.

The Scientific Limits of Measuring Subjective Experience

DR. ALOK KANOJIA:

Yeah. So here’s what I think is cool about that. So here’s what’s tricky. If I can go off on a tangent, please. So we’re talking about this stuff, right? And if you’re someone who’s skeptical, you’re like, there’s no scientific evidence of this. And this is where we have to understand something about spirituality. Remember I was saying, like, some of this stuff is scientifically verified, but some of it isn’t. I think some of this stuff can never be scientifically verified. And there’s a fundamental reason for this.

So if we look at your experience, that can never be scientifically verified. So this is what’s kind of weird. I’ve asked and maybe you guys can ask. And if there’s a neuroscientist who disagrees with me, there’s no proof of thought. We have no scientific evidence of thought.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA:

Okay? We can’t quantify thought.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA:

We can’t detect thought. Forget about quantifying. We can’t even detect it. We can measure electrical activity in the brain, we can measure blood flow in the brain, we can measure blood flow to tissue, but that’s not thought. We have no instrument that can even detect whether you are thinking. All we can do is ask someone.

So how do we know which part of the brain emotions come from? Because we ask them. When we see this part of the brain light up, I ask you, what are you feeling? And then you say, I’m afraid. Then we say, okay, that’s where fear comes from. Because we asked 100 people, when this part of your brain lights up, what are you feeling? They all said fear. That’s where fear comes from. But we have no evidence of the feeling of fear. We only can tell that this part of the brain is lit up.

So one of the things that took me a while to understand is in the meditative tradition, they talk about gross and subtle, they talk about material and non-material. So if you think about your subjective experience, there’s no evidence that you even think or exist.

So I don’t know if this makes sense, Ranveer. I can’t tell if you’re a hallucination or a bot or a part of the matrix. You could be a hallucination in my head. And I’ve had patients, I can tell you stories if you want. Really scary stuff, right?

The Man Who Lived Two Lives

So I once had a patient who was in a coma, was in the Neuro ICU. A man in his late 40s has been in a car accident, was in a coma for a while. They were concerned about brain damage and things like that. But he’s recovering well.

So I go to him and I ask him, you know, how are you doing? He’s like, I’m doing okay. You know, he’s like, what do you understand about your prognosis? So I have to do six months of physical therapy, but basically like, I’m going to be back to normal. What’s going on with your job? I’m a partner at a law firm. It’s not a big deal. Like my partners have said, you know, take the time that you need to recover. No financial concerns. How are things with your family? My wife is supportive. My kids are supportive. You know, both of my sons are supportive. It’s like, totally fine.

And so then, you know, I go to the primary team. I’m like, he seems fine. And they’re like, yeah, there’s something off. And I felt something was off, too. So once you consult with a patient, you have to kind of see them every day because you’re, you know, you can’t miss something.

So I go to see him the next day, and I go see them the next day. I go see the next day, every day. Everything’s fine. How’s physical therapy going? It’s hard, but it’s fine. So about five days in, he’s being discharged the next day. And I’m like, look, I come and see you every day, and you seem fine every day, but, like, when I sit with you, you don’t feel fine, and it’s fine. Like, I don’t think anything’s wrong, but, like, what’s going on? Like, what are you really feeling?

So that’s when he starts crying, and I’m like, what’s going on there? So he tells me that while I was in a coma, I lived a whole life. I was married, and instead of two sons, I had two daughters. And I remember everything about them. I remember when they were born. I remember when, you know, my daughter got ready for prom.

And so, like, basically what he’s doing is, like, he realizes that that’s all fake, but he’s like, I know that’s fake, but I’m basically, he’s grieving. He’s like, I realize I’m never going to see those people again. And I’m heartbroken.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA:

Damn.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA:

Even though they’re not real, but I lived it. He’s like, he’s like, this is, you know, it messes with my head. And I, like, I know I’m crazy, and I know, like, I love my family in this life, too, but it’s like, like that. What is that? What’s going on? What’s wrong with me? Will this go away?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA:

How long was he in the coma for?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA:

One week.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA:

And I lived a whole life.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA:

He’ll live the whole life. Damn right. And that’s not the only time that happens. We have very, very well recorded experiences when people are about to die of this time dilation right in the moment before death. And actually not the moment before death. Here’s what’s really crazy. Everyone’s like, we don’t know what happens after death. That’s actually technically untrue.

We do have reports of what happens after people die because people are medically dead. And then we bring them back to life. Like, technically. Technically, right. And there’s lots of arguments against that, but, like, technically, this person is dead. And then we resuscitate them. You can be dead for a few seconds.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA:

Let’s just, like, stay here for a bit and let’s talk about this. Let’s talk about this stuff. This is like, let’s go back to this guy.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA:

Yeah.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA:

And then I’d love for you to break down more of these stories.

Near-Death Experiences and Subjective Reality

DR. ALOK KANOJIA:

Yeah, sure. So, like, here’s what I’ll say. So, like, you know, I started this stuff and I’m skeptical of this, right? Because it’s like past lives and soul and whatever like this is. And then what happens is you sit with humans who tell you these stories and that now my job is this person’s psychiatrist is like, how am I supposed to help this person? Because what they feel is real.

So do I tell them, like, okay, this is just a hallucination. It’s not real. And I believe that he believes that. And we try to figure out what to do about it. And then, like, weird things start to happen. Right? Because you hear about these stories again and again.

I was talking about time dilation. So the other thing that’ll happen is when people die, they will have this experience of, like, reliving their whole life. And they will also have a perceptual experience of things like light at the end of the tunnel, an immense sense of peace.

And it’s so interesting. You know, I’ve had patients that have been resuscitated, and the thing that they’re most upset about is that we brought them back to life. That what they felt on the other side was absolute peace. And it feels like, you know, they have this feeling of, like, being jerked back into life.

Now, you can say that, okay, this is a hallucination in the brain. Fair enough. But this is where things get tricky. This is where this idea of subjective experience comes from, where the brain has all of these things that happen. But that’s not the same as your subjective experience. These things are correlated, but they’re not the same.

And here’s the really cool thing. So I really started to understand this stuff once I realized that in the material world we have certain tools that allow us to enhance our perception and explore the world. I can take a regular human being 5,000 years ago, doesn’t have a telescope, doesn’t have a microscope doesn’t have a boat. Therefore what they have access to in the real world is very limited.

But we as humans did something really cool, man. We developed technology, we built a boat and we sailed around the world. We built a telescope and looked at the stars, we built a microscope and look discovered bacteria. So our understanding about the material world grew through the development of these technological tools that give you access to things that human beings without them will never understand.

Do you know if there’s any technology to explore subjective world, the non-material world? Do we have technology? It’s called meditation. Meditation is a telescope for the subjective world. It’s a telescope for consciousness.

I know that sounds weird, but it’s like, you know, we have these thoughts and these feelings, we have this human experience and then we can do things like psilocybin or whatever that give us a perception that is beyond. It’s like essentially a telescope for consciousness. And you have these weird things like out of body experiences. And there are certain meditation techniques that you can cultivate those kinds of kinds of experiences.

So you can start to like explore the non-material realm of just subjective experience. And you can experience all kinds of weird things like devas and asuras and deities and that’s where all that stuff comes from.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA:

Or you’re also just taking your internal mind camera all over your brain and seeing different parts of it?

Exploring Prana and Internal Perception

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: No, not at all. So I think this is, I know it’s weird, it’s hard to understand, but here’s what I’m saying. So when you in the real world, I see with my two eyes, but if I have a telescope I can see way more. So if you look at, if you close your eyes and you just observe yourself, you cannot feel prana. Okay? Right. There’s this thing called prana or chi, but we can’t feel it except we can do a practice where you can get a sense of your chi. And we can do it right now.

So do this. Okay, so everyone else at home, this is the pranam position. Anjali Mudra. And now what I want you to do is spread your hands a little bit. And what I want you to do is do you feel the warmth between your hands?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay, expand, but only as far as you feel the warmth. You still feel the warmth here. Go further. Go as far as you feel warmth. Do you still feel warmth?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: It’s a little less.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Little less. So keep going and let me know when you stop feeling it. Right. So anyone can do this at home. You feel something.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Now, when you’re over here, there’s a biological reason to feel it because your hands are emanating heat. And so you can detect the heat between both hands. When you go this far and you still feel warmth, there’s no heat that you can feel, but you can still have a perception of it.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: This can be experienced on a much deeper degree in a Tai Chi session or in a qigong.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Exactly, exactly. Right. So human beings will have these experiences where they can feel stuff that is not material. You have this capacity, and this most simple feeling that you have that is not material is your own experience.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Gotcha.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Right. You can see the color red. We can tell you that your photoreceptors are activating. Your occipital cortex is activating, but that’s not red. So meditation is a set of techniques to develop your internal telescope.

And when I work with these patients, we’ve had to explore some of this stuff because that’s how I help them. So I’ve had some patients, for example, that, so this person with the coma, you know, we ended up basically doing grief processing for that life. We tried to make sense of it. Right. So I was like, how do you understand this?

The Reality of Near-Death Experiences

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Do you think he actually traveled somewhere or his consciousness went somewhere?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yes. I think that what he experienced was not a temporary hallucination made up by the mind. And the reason I believe that is because I’ve spent thousands of hours with people who are hallucinating. Right. I know what hallucination looks like when you’re sitting with someone who’s hallucinating. This person was not hallucinating. That’s not what that was.

Now it feels a lot more real. There’s genuine grief. If this person, if I had not known this person’s history, I would not be able to tell the difference. If this person had come into my office and they’d actually lost their family forever or because I’ve had people like that too. It’s very similar to that. It’s a very genuine grief. It’s not hallucinated. There’s certain things that are different about hallucinated grief and delusion. It just feels different to sit with.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah. Did he say anything about his death in that world?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: No. So he didn’t die in that world. He was not. That was not part of his memories.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Where do you think his consciousness traveled?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: I don’t know. I don’t know. So I think it was real, but I don’t know where. Was it in this planet? I don’t know. I have no idea. So there are a couple of things there where I feel better about things, like past lives, where that too is, you know, there’s this idea that we have the soul and that it gets new bodies and things like that. So I’ve had some patients where I’ve done past life psychotherapy, which sounds insane.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Let’s break this down.

Past Life Psychotherapy: A Case Study

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. So I had a patient who had been in psychiatric treatment for 15 years. And so she had an anxiety disorder and a panic disorder. She had another psychiatrist who had been medicating her and doing psychotherapy with her. She was basically stable, but the problem had never gone away.

So this is kind of sad in psychiatry that sometimes we don’t think cure is possible. So when someone has an anxiety disorder, they kind of have it for life. And so this person, this is normal. They were married, they were functioning, they had a job, everything like that, but they were just not, they wanted to explore more.

So they came to me for a consult, where sometimes if someone is in regular psychiatric treatment, they’ll come to me for a meditative consult where I’ll teach them some of these things and hopefully improve their clinical status. So we worked together for a while. She was very interested in developing herself spiritually and things like that.

And so one day, you know, she was telling me about her anxiety, and then I was like, so what does it feel like? You know? And then I asked her, and this was sort of based on this theory of some scars, which we can talk about. But so I asked her, you know, when you have this, what’s the first memory of the anxiety and the panic that you have?

And then she’s like, can I tell you something I’ve never told anyone before? Because we’re talking about stuff like reincarnation. She’s curious about some of these things. So I was like, sure. And I was surprised by the statement because she’s had a psychiatrist for 15 years, very good psychiatrist. She’s had a great relationship with them.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Was she Indian origin?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: No.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Oh, yeah. See, this makes it so much more interesting. Okay.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. So that’s why she was curious about this stuff. So I said, sure. Tell me. And she’s like, you know, I have this when I have a panic attack. Here’s what it feels like. I’m underneath the floorboards, I’m underneath the room. I’m hiding underneath the room, and there’s booted feet on top. And I know if I make a single sound, the people with the heavy boots will hear me and they’ll find me. And if they find me, it’s game over. I cannot be found.

So she describes very, very vivid experience. The only problem is it never happened to her. She’s never had this happen to her. And so then what we started to do is work on that. So I sort of treated it like a trauma. Like imagine that a patient had a trauma and we’re going to do the same trauma oriented treatment, but just for an event that never actually took place.

And as a psychiatrist, we have to be careful here. This isn’t proof of past life. So the conclusion that we kind of came to was that she believes she was alive in Nazi Germany and she was hiding from SS officers and that she was Jewish in a past life and that somehow that trauma had stayed with her. And so we processed that and then she was fine. And then she stopped medication and then she was kind of quote unquote cured. I don’t know if she’s, maybe that’s fake.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: But according to her, in her past life, do you think she was finally caught by those SS officers?

The Medical Perspective on Past Life Memories

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: I don’t know. So all she has from that life is that image, even if it’s a life. Now we have to be careful here because just because she has this memory doesn’t mean that there’s past lives. So this is where a lot of people will make a jump that I don’t make, which is that maybe she was three years old and she watched a movie about Nazis hunting people and she was traumatized by it because it creates powerful emotion. Right. Three year old is very scary. Right?

So there’s what we call a differential diagnosis. There are multiple explanations. This is not proof of past lives, which a lot of people will jump to. Here’s what my experience is as a clinician. When we treat these as real, it’s very helpful. Not saying it is real, but it’s like let’s, because I don’t know. And we talked about that, right? Like maybe this didn’t really happen to you.

But what I do know is real is in your mind. This memory is there, whether it comes from a movie and you internalized it or it comes from a prior life. But what exists in your mind right now is a psychic complex. And that’s something that we have to unravel because that energy is there in some form. And I use the word energy loosely, but there’s some mental thing, there’s some pent up emotion.

And so the interesting thing is, once I did that with her, she got way better. She’s convinced it’s a past life, I’m convinced it’s a past life. But the medical degree within me says, just because you’re convinced, that’s me being convinced, that’s not the same as it being true.

Right now I’ve opened an interesting door because sometimes when patients come to me and they’re not getting better, I’ll ask them some of these kinds of questions. I won’t go directly to past lives. I won’t share this theory with them because I could be biasing them. But I’ll open the door to that dimension.

Sometimes I’ll ask, do you have any memories that you think are a little bit weird or any memories that didn’t happen to you? And some people are really confused by the question. They’re like, what do you mean memories that didn’t happen to me? And some people, maybe 10 to 20% of people are like, yes, how did you know that? I’m getting goosebumps. No one’s ever asked me that. How do you know that? What’s going on?

Because they live with this. They have this very vivid experience and they think they’re crazy and they certainly aren’t going to tell anyone else about it because it’s insane. And there’s some really interesting research about this as well. There’s a guy out in Israel who did a lot of really cool research on epigenetic inheritance.

Epigenetic Memory and Instinct

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: If your parents have gone through an experience which is very strong, positively or negatively, it will affect your gene expression as well.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Absolutely perfect. Right. So now it’s kind of interesting because maybe it’s not an Atman that carries experience. Maybe there’s some amount of inherited memory and we are just subjectively experiencing what’s in our epigenetic configuration. And there’s absolutely piles of evidence that we can inherit memories. Happens all the time to every person and organism on the planet. We call it instinct.

Instinct is knowledge that is in your genes. So human beings, babies are instinctively afraid of certain kinds of animals, like reptiles. Right. So these are ancestrally our predators. So if you see a snake, you’re going to be creeped out by it. We’re not ancestrally afraid of dogs.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: No.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Right. We’re not ancestrally afraid of cats even. Right. Even if they’re dangerous cats. Maybe you’ll feel fear because it’s large, but so we all have instinct, which is basically memory that is encoded in our genome, in our epigenetics.

The Natural Confidence of Children

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: I have a very silly question. And it’s related to children and childhood and some of the stuff we spoke about earlier in the episode.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Sure.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Do you think kids are just more stoned than adults are naturally speaking?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Sort of. So there are a couple of really fascinating things about kids. So there are a couple of really cool things neurodevelopmentally about kids. The first thing is that what you can learn from kids is that confidence is our baseline state. We are conditioned towards lack of confidence. Right. So a child can make a mistake and they don’t feel bad.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: That’s such a painful quote, man.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: It really is. Right. So then you go to school and you got a B. Your brother got straight A’s. You made a mistake. That’s not okay. Right. So we actually condition insecurity. It’s not normal.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Oof.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So a lot of what we have to do is remove our conditioning.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: This is so painful and so important because one of the hottest topics that I’ve ever created videos for is this concept of confidence. And I’ve always looked at it as a skill that can be developed. So my assumption for 10 years of creating content is that everyone starts at zero and then has to drive it up to 100. And you’re saying that the neuroscientific truth is that everyone probably starts near 100 and then goes back down to zero and then you have to rise back up sort of.

Understanding Ego and Confidence

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Right. So I think this is where you have to be a little bit precise. So let’s understand what confidence is. Remember we said that narcissism, ego comes from insecurity. Right. So it’s a reaction to your insecurity. This too is. There’s two reactions to it. One is a Rajasic ego and one is the Tamasic ego. I know I’m introducing a couple of things, but Rajasic goes, “I’m great.” Tamasic goes, “I’m pathetic. I’m terrible.”

So Ranveer, I told you I’m such a terrible content creator. I’m a stupid doctor. Right? That’s ego too. It’s still I, I am this. I am this. I’m pathetic, I’m great. Both of them start with the same two words, “I am.” And removing the ego is removing the “I am.”

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: What’s a Sattvic Ego?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: The ideal sattvic ego is a balance between those two things. But sattvic ego is a lack of ego. Sattva is moving away from Ahamkar. Okay. Right. So it’s just getting rid of it entirely, and then you are what you are. You don’t have to say, “I am.” Okay. Right.

So when someone says “I’m smart,” they have to prove it to themselves and you. They’re trying to convince you. Yeah, but when you know you’re smart, when you know you’re smart, I know I’m so smart. And I also know I’m not smart. I know what I am, period. I accept myself for who I am, flaws and all, and that comes across as confident. Even if I’m flawed, I can still be confident. Right.

So confidence is, you know, there are people who’ve never danced in their life. They can go out on the dance floor. It doesn’t mean that they’re good at something. This is what really confuses people. This is where I think there’s a slight mistake about you have to work yourself up to confidence. No, you don’t. Being good at something absolutely requires effort. But tying your identity or your worth to your skill at a thing, that’s the problem.

Because a child doesn’t know how to dance. And they may even know I don’t know how to dance, but they’ll go on a dance floor and they won’t care. There is a difference between a skill and confidence. And I would say confidence is at the opposite end from ego. As you become less egotistical, you become more confident. Right. And I would also say that a lot of people think that confidence comes from success. I don’t think so. I think confidence comes from surviving failure.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: That is so true and very profound. Confidence and ego are two ends of the same spectrum.

Imposter Syndrome at Elite Institutions

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Absolutely right. So this was so interesting because I was, you know, when I was faculty at Harvard, I would frequently work with students and stuff there in residence. And here’s the really interesting thing. There is more imposter syndrome at Harvard than there is at Tufts, where I went to medical school.

So as you go to these really top institutions, there’s a lot of imposter syndrome. These kids are the best on the planet, but they’re terrified of being insufficient. Right. They’re like, “Oh, my God, everyone at Harvard is so smart. I’m just normal. I’m just pretending.” That’s ego. They have an “I am” statement. Right. I’m not smart enough. Everyone else is smart. They’re making comparisons. That also is from the ego.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: And constantly keeping your consciousness parked in the self.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Absolutely. Not in the self. In your ego. Yeah, right. In your Ahamkar. They’re always thinking their default mode network is active. They’re always reflecting about themselves.

The Anandamide Receptor and Cannabis

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: I asked you this question about kids being stoned.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: And I loved how you answered it. That’s not where I expected it to go.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: And I’m glad, you know, all this came out of the podcast. But where I was really getting at with it was that anandamide receptor thing you spoke about earlier. So as far as I understand, please correct me if I’m wrong. The biology says that there’s hormones in your body. The hormones are released by a certain part of your body and create a certain effect inside your body. But for the hormone to create any kind of effect, and I think this is true for enzymes as well. Every hormone and I think every enzyme needs to combine itself with its receptor.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yep.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: And the receptors may be present at a different location than where the hormones or enzymes are released. Now you’re saying that there’s something called an anandamide receptor.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yes.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: And anandamide is probably something that’s released naturally inside your body.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yes.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: But when you smoke weed or consume a THC edible, the cannabinoids inside the THC are going and combining with that anandamide receptor. Am I right?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yes, sort of. But just keep going in there.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: My question is why the f* is that receptor present in the body anyway? And what does it do in its natural state when natural anandamide is released in your body? The larger question here is that does long term meditation leave you feeling stoned all the time?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay, so let’s take this in three steps. Okay. First is a hormone is a signal. So, and you’re right that a hormone has no value unless it has a receptor. So the way I would describe this is, you know, back in the day there was a radio broadcast tower and then there’s a radio receiver. So the radio broadcast tower can be broadcasting music, but unless you receive, unless your radio is on, you’re not going to be receiving it.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Sure.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So hormone and receptor are just like that. Yeah. Now about kids, are they stoned all the time? No. Okay, so let’s understand. So there’s a certain amount of conditioning that happens, but if you look at a child, a child is not, I don’t know exactly what their serotonin levels are, but they’re not going to be serotonergic the way that a yogi is. In some ways, if anything, children are very highly dopaminergic. So children are very sensitive to fun.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Right. So this is where things get tricky because the brain is complex and their brain is very different from our brain. And there’s a lot of stuff that happens with conditioning.

Now let’s get to anandamide. So first of all, anandamide was discovered. So the anandamide is a cannabinoid receptor. That’s what it is. So we have these things called endocannabinoids. So our body produces cannabinoids. We make our own cannabis-like structure. Okay.

So cannabinoids are involved with everything from habit formation, which is why if you’re trying to develop healthy habits and you’re using any THC stuff, it’s going to sabotage your efforts, and if anything is going to help you solidify bad habits. So I’ve just noticed that people who use marijuana, they have a lot of trouble. They live a stoner life. Right. Oftentimes. And sometimes they’re very functional. I’ve had CEOs and stuff who use.

But the key thing is that we have this anandamide receptor. We have endogenous cannabinoids. Endogenous cannabinoids are also involved in pain regulation. Right. So why do we make this stuff? So our brain basically evolved this stuff because we need to be able to regulate pain. We want to form habits.

And then what human beings do is they discover certain compounds that activate certain parts of our brain in unusual ways. Right. So it’s still activating. It’s not creating something new, but it’s a hyperactivation. And then we feel stoned.

So couple of things here to remember. So here’s what’s really scary is when you use an external compound. So let me ask you this. So I know you’re a workout warrior, right. And you have friends who work out.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So you may have friends who use steroids.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: And when they use steroids, what happens to their testicles? Do you know?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: What happens?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: They turn into raisins.

The Body’s Efficiency and External Substances

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Exactly. Right. So this is important to understand. Our body is smart, our body is efficient.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Oh, okay. I get where you’re going with this, but go on.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: No, go for it.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: If you use the cannabinoid receptors too much, they’ll turn into raisins.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Exactly. Right. So my body measures my testosterone level. If my testosterone level is low, my body says, “Oh, my God, testosterone is low. Let’s jack up our testosterone production. We’re deficient in testosterone.” Now we need mangoes, we need papayas, we need watermelons.

When I start giving my body external steroids, then my body says, “Oh, my God, my steroid level is too high. Shut off. Let’s turn into raisins.” Okay? So one of the scary things about testosterone replacement therapy is the medical recommendation right now is that you should freeze your sperm if you get testosterone replacement therapy. Because even when testosterone replacement therapy goes away, there’s a chance that your sperm production won’t come back to normal.

So anything that we take from the outside is going to, our body’s going to say, “Oh, we’re getting it from out here. We no longer need to make it.” So this is where you get to, you know what happens to a yogi or are they stoned all the time.

So when we use external support for meditation, now we get to why you shouldn’t do psychedelics. If I get DMT from the outside, my brain will see that DMT, say, “Hey, my DMT level is really high. Shut off the DMT factory.” Okay? If I use marijuana from the outside, people who are stoners will find that their joy of life when they’re not stoned, goes down.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yes.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Right.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yes.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: And that’s because there’s some interesting mechanism.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: It’s masked as, “Hey, I’m going for a film. This will be more fun when I’m stoned.”

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Right.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: “Hey, I’m going for a meal so it tastes better when I’m high.”

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Absolutely. And they’re right. But the problem is that when you start getting marijuana from the outside, your endogenous production of marijuana goes down.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: And you need that internal weed to live happily.

Meditation Techniques and Neurochemistry

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. And then you get to yoga and meditation where when you meditate a lot, your endogenous cannabinoid production probably goes up when you use certain kinds of technique. And this is what’s cool about meditation. Right. It’s not one thing. There’s Ajna chakra sadhana, there’s tantric sadhana, there’s all these different kinds of meditation techniques depending on which one you do. You’re going to jack up your DMT or you’re going to jack up your endocannabinoids.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Wow. So you get to select the kind of drug you experience on the inside of your head because of your own biology.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Not your biology. The meditation technique you use. Right. So there’s a certain meditation technique that will help you feel compassion. So there’s lots of studies about how hostility, if I dislike and am hostile towards other people, it accelerates the rate of my dementia. I’m more likely to develop dementia. It increases my stress levels, it decreases my mood.

So if I dislike other people and I’m hostile towards other people, you may know. Right. There’s some people that are personality. They’re just angry all the time.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah. Or adversarial.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. Right. They get pissed off. They have. Right. So that’s the opposite of what yogis are.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: This has been my biggest challenge to work out personally. I had to remove my adversarial nature. Best thing I’ve done for myself. But it took me 10 years.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. So it’s hard. Right. We’re a certain way. We are. So here’s the really interesting thing. When you do compassion, how did you reduce your adversarial nature?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: I got adversarial thoughts and I said, “No, that’s just a thought.”

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay. Right. So you started disbelieving your thoughts. Notice what you did. Right. So this is what’s really interesting. Before you started disbelieving your thoughts, remember we talked about, you’re on the panic, anxiety, delusional kind of spectrum where you think your thoughts are facts. Yeah. So you started disbelieving your thoughts.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: You know where it was. It was, so I love my dad and have a great relationship with him at this stage, but for a long time I didn’t. And I think that element of having an adversary at home became a personality trait. Yeah. And then I was seeking that out initially in school. It was students. I didn’t like very few because I was a popular kid and most people like me. But those very few became my sworn enemies. Then once career started, it became industries.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Or the old school marketing industry.

Understanding Hostility as a Solution

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Here’s what people don’t understand. So you think your hostility is a problem. It’s not a problem. It’s actually a solution. Everything that you struggle with in life is not a problem. It’s a solution. It’s a solution to a different problem. So just like you said, if you think about it, look at where you are now, Ranveer. If you had not been hostile, if you had not been adversarial, where would your motivation come from?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: That’s true.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Right. So what a lot of people don’t realize, and this is what’s so tricky about sort of meditation and spirituality, is that you’re going to be getting rid of a lot of fuel of your life. If you meditate too much, you’re going to become a hermit.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: But you know what I think what people don’t say here is that it takes years for this to happen.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Well, it takes years for it to happen, sure, hopefully. But the other thing is that I think what a lot of people don’t say is that just because you get rid of your adversarial motivation doesn’t mean that you won’t have other motivations.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah, yeah.

The Concept of Toxic Fuel

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So what I tend to find, I use this concept of toxic fuel. So I work with a lot of very successful people like billionaires and CEOs and content creators and stuff. Right. And so these people are driven by needing to be the best. And the problem with that is that even when you succeed, like I want to be number one. I want to be number one. Gives you so much motivation. How do you think they feel when they become number one? What do you think?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Empty.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: If only they were so lucky. What they feel is terrified. Because now that I’m number one, do you get to relax? Ranveer, if you’re the top content creator on the Internet, what are you going to be afraid of? What do you think?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Heavy is the head that wears the crown.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Absolutely. And now you’re afraid about number two. I’m number one right now, but if I don’t keep up, someone’s going to pass me. The terrifying thing about striving to be number one is that you will only be there temporarily. It’s got a life sentence of its own. It’s going to end. Someone will always be better than you.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: You need to find non-transient motivations.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yes.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Right.

Transient vs. Non-Transient Contentment

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So I would even say that if you want contentment, you need to get rid of transient contentment. So any contentment that is circumstantial based on a circumstance. I want to get married. I want to get married. I want to get married. Dangerous setting for happiness because if you get divorced, then you’re married, then you’re no longer happy.

So we go on chasing all these things that we think will make us happy when really what happens is like, you know, once you have a kid, everyone’s like, oh, having a kid is great. I didn’t know what the feeling of love was until I had a child. What they don’t tell you is I didn’t understand what fear was until I had a child. I fear on a level that I have never been afraid of. Right.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: What’s a non-transient motivation then?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Ah, great. So there is no such thing as a non-transient motivation. Okay, so let’s understand this. Motivation, by its nature is transient. It’s temporary. It’s a fluctuation. So this is where a lot of people are worried because they’re like, you know, if I get rid of my motivation, if I get rid of my insecurity, then I won’t be motivated. Right. So they don’t want to get rid of their insecurity.

This is what’s really crazy. When I work with a lot of people and we get really down to it. Do you want to get rid of your addiction? No. Most people get attached to their motivation and they try to keep it going because in the absence of their motivation, they’ll be completely neutral. Right. They’ll be complacent.

So a lot of the work that we do is, or I do is I try to help people get rid of those motivations and learn to be complacent and content with yourself. Right. Because if you’re content with yourself, Ranveer, why would you do anything?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: And then here’s the really cool thing that people don’t tell you. Here’s the other part of the equation is once you become content, you don’t stop working. You become a lot more responsive to your environment in a really healthy way.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah. Yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So now I’m not living for myself, but I’m going to, all kinds of stuff is going to excite me. I’ll get triggered into motivation in a good way. Yeah.

Staying in Rhythm

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Dude, sorry, I’m interrupting you, man, because this is things I’ve experienced this year as well.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Saw this form of ego death with everything that happened. And my priority now is what I define as staying in rhythm.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Great.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Like, I feel like I’ve played sports in my life. It takes three or four games to get your body into rhythm and for your body to do what your mind is telling it to do or what your mind is visualizing. Every time you kick a ball, it’s not going to land at the feet of your teammate.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So this is brilliant. So here’s the reason why. So if you think about staying in rhythm. Beautiful. What happens if you’re working too much?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: You get out of rhythm, you’re not able to stay good.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So if you’re working too much, how do you stay in rhythm? If you’re moving too fast, what do you have to do?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: For me, I’m just answering this from a very personal perspective, but it’s a lot about physical health.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Being on time, working out on time.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So, so the way you stay, if you’re moving too fast, you stay in rhythm by slowing down.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: If you’re too sluggish, you stay in rhythm by speeding up. This is beautiful.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yes.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Right. So this is the kind of thing that I think really works for people that they don’t understand. It’s not about being number one. It’s about staying in rhythm, maintaining that peace. I love that because on a very…

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Practical level, it’s like taking one day at a time and doing your best on that one day.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Great.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: But through a physically healthy body and mind, great.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Right. So, so I think that’s what people don’t understand, is that this way may not increase your subscriber count as much as horrible insecurity will, but your life will be a lot happier. And it’s not like you’re lazy. Right. I think over time, what people will discover is that when they work really hard to, like, stay motivated and try to be number one, they end up in an unhappy place. And the most reliable way to become incredibly successful is, is to let go of success. It’s kind of weird.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah. Detached work.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. So I’ll give you an example. So, you know, when I was in residency, I used to work about 80 hours a week. You’re working overnight in the hospital and things like that. And it’s like, you have to do this work, and then everyone says, okay, residency is the hardest you’ll ever work in your life. And I used to read a lot and see a lot of patients and things like that. And once you’re done with residency, then you can relax.

The interesting thing is I used to complain about working six days a week. Now I work seven willingly. So it’s really interesting. But once you start to figure out what your rhythm is, once you start to work, it’s not even motivation. It’s kind of what I feel like. Right. So I’ll have a different motivation on a different day. They come and go.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: I mean, just for the sake of better understanding, you and me are calling it rhythm. And I know we’re looking at the same concept, and we’re understanding it for the average person who’s still not understood what rhythm means, it’s kind of like where your work feels like play.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yes.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: But to hit that point of rhythm, you need some technical prowess, study, coaching experience. Then you can talk about rhythm.

Sustainable Work and Recovery

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. So let’s talk about, so I think this is what’s really cool, is we can scientifically break apart what are the elements. So I’ll give you one example of something that I try to really do that, I think you do as well. And I think people who figure out how to work seven days a week and like working seven days a week figure out this stuff. So step number one is whatever you do on a day, you should be able to recover from and wake up the next morning fresh.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: This is huge. So the biggest, the biggest problem that I see, worst invention in the history of humanity, is the weekend, because it presumes we’re going to work you like a dog for five days and then you can rest, you can recover on the weekend. But the moment we created the weekend, we created an unsustainable work rate.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Right.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: If I need a vacation, the whole point is to structure life where you never need a vacation. Now, that seems hard. So there are other elements to it. Then there are a couple of other things. So I always try to work. And this is where I think things like physical health, meditative practice, things like that, the way that you eat.

So what I try to do is really focus on when I wake up the next morning, I should have a full battery of energy. And I want to be really careful about really emptying that to the point that I can’t recover. I should be able to recover overnight. Yeah. So sometimes, and then, so we were talking about this earlier, but sometimes that’s not really practical. So then what I do is I bake in. I schedule rest days during the week. It’s not a vacation day. It’s a day designed for rest. Right. So if I’m doing too much over three days and I’m going to schedule a rest day and I’m going to recover, so that the day after that, I’m back to square one.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

Removing Ego for Sustainability

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Second thing that is really helpful is removal of ego. So once you remove ego, a lot of the stuff that makes things unsustainable goes with it. So if you sort of think about why do you work to the point of exhaustion? A lot of people will say it’s because I have to. That can be sometimes true, but a lot of times it’s because you want yourself to be something. I want to be able to retire. I want to be able to relax. So I’m not going to relax. Right. I’m going to sacrifice.

It’s so interesting. People will say, so I basically wasted a good chunk of my 20s. I started medical school at 28, finished medical school at 32, finish residency at 36. I was done with my education at the age of 36. People say, that’s so late. I had a friend who went into an accelerated medical program. Started med school at 17. Okay. And what I think about it now is they can retire 10 years earlier than I can for sure, maybe even 12, 15. But I would rather mess around in my 20s and have a good time and work 10 years later than sacrifice my 20s and retire 10 years earlier at 55. Right.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: So we have all of these weird societal conditioning.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Absolutely.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: That’s why it’s important to listen to episodes like this. Seriously, man. Like your job is related to the human mind.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Oh, yeah.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Spirit and it’s, your opinion has way more weightage than a thousand of these conversations that happen at house parties in Mumbai. This, this is a version of this conversation. Happens everywhere.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: You’re right. Yeah, that’s, that’s a good point.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: You spoke about this thing called non-toxic fuel or toxic fuel for your, if you could just explain that.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. So a lot of human beings, if you look at the human brain, a real pity is that it’s highly motivated by negative things.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

The Addiction to Negativity and Toxic Fuel

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: You probably realize this in retrospect, you know, oh, 100%. 10, 15 years like this, and you’re like, oh, damn. Yeah, I’ve suddenly got this cancer. Yeah, I’ve suddenly got this gut trouble.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yep. So that’s another really important thing is that when people use these toxic fuels, it comes out in the body. So a lot of people think that people who have like these called psychosomatic illnesses, they’re like mentally weak. Like, oh, you have like this pain here. Like you’re mentally weak. It’s actually the opposite. They’re mentally very strong. They’re able to push their body past the signals of slowdown.

So they’re like a slave master whipping their body. You got to keep working. You got to keep working. Then they have a heart attack. Then they go to the emergency room, they get discharged, and then they get a referral to come to my office. At the age of 52, some CEO had a heart attack, and he’s like, hey, doc, I need to learn how to slow down or whatever.

And then when I work with these people, what I learn is, first problem that they have is they don’t want to slow down. They come here and they say, I need to slow down. But anything I try to teach them doesn’t work because they don’t want to.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Dude, even I’m addicted to my cuts and bruises.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Feels great.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: I feel proud of the cuts and bruises.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: So one more all the time.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Absolutely. Right. So when I was training at Massachusetts General Hospital. So this is like Harvard. Right. It’s like. It’s called MGH, and the other abbreviation is Man’s Greatest Hospital. So it’s a very famous hospital where a ton of research and stuff, and we pride ourselves on getting crushed. How many patients did you see overnight? Oh, my God, this thing happened, and I had this emergency, and I have this emergency.

We. There’s a certain machismo of like, you know, the more you got punished and survived, the stronger you are, you know?

The Dragon Ball Z Mentality

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: I’m trying to think of where this idea comes from. I’m sure you’ve watched Dragon Ball Z.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Not. Yeah, I mean, I’m familiar with it. Yeah.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Every fight ends with the hero winning, but after he’s cut up and bruised a lot.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: And that’s my visualization of the right way to play the game.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: And it’s something I’m actively active, and it’s something I’m actively trying to unlearn at this stage of my life. Because I know that there’s also a way to not tear up your clothes and get cut up and still move forward.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So the problem is, what is natural is to do it that way is to do it. Getting cut up. Right. That’s so much more accessible learning. So moving against our biology and sort of like more of this spiritual evolution realm is starting to learn how to motivate yourself without those things. And it’s really scary because there’s a period there where like people are kind of in limbo. But that’s when you start getting motivated by things like Dharma. It’s not about ego. It’s not about accomplishment. It’s about doing your duty. Yeah.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: I mean, there’s this spiritual thing I also want to explore, which is an extension of this exact thought of really going hard at career, really going hard at fitness, David Goggins style in every aspect of your life. But that David Goggins mentality helps in spiritual growth also.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yes and no.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: So it’s like it allows me to meditate a lot longer, a lot more often.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Sure.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Chase knowledge a lot more. A lot more often.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So here’s an interesting question, and maybe one day we can ask David Goggins, but can David Goggins stop? Is he capable? What do you think?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: No.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay. So like, that for me is a problem. So when we talk about, like this is my value system is like understanding, control, freedom, not accomplishment.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah, you’re right. You’re right.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Right.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: The real luxury is free time. You’ll hear a lot of rich people say that.

From Ego to Dharma: The Path to Freedom

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. I mean, time, sure, but just freedom in general. Yeah. Right. And so I think that the problem is that these things are effective at accomplishment. But accomplishment, like the. Here’s the real tragedy is you can get pretty accomplished without those things. So you can work pretty hard.

And I mean, my process has been one of. So when I was like, you know, 15 years old, I decided I was going to be a doctor. And I decided I wanted to go to Harvard Medical School because that’s where the best doctors go. And then I started college. I was 18, I was pre med. I wanted to go to Harvard, and I wanted to be the best. But it was all ego. And ego doesn’t stand up to the work that’s necessary. Sometimes it does. It didn’t in me.

And then I let go of all of that and then, you know, went on the spiritual journey. And then I ended up applying to medical school and then ended up going to Harvard for residency. But, you know, I remember my wife asked me, like, when you got in, how did you feel? And I actually felt pretty neutral about it. Right. So I was like, where I end up is where I end up. Like, this is what I’m interested in. If they want me, that’s fine. If they don’t want me, that’s okay too. It’s nice. It’s great. I love the institution. It’s an amazing institution.

But letting go of the ambition, interestingly enough, freed me from a lot of that pressure. And what I really did, the reason I think I ended up there is at some point, med school, medical school, I was like, I want to learn this stuff. I realize. And now when I, you know, when I mentor people and they’re like worried about getting bad grades, I’m like, I don’t think you understand. This isn’t about a grade. One day you’re going to be in a room with another human being, and whether that human being lives or dies depends on how hard you study today.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So it’s a lot more pressure, but it’s dharmic pressure, not ego pressure. It’s not about great. It’s about service work from the perspective.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Of having an intent of service.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Absolutely. And when you work for the intent of service, then the work flows a lot more naturally.

The Power of Intention Setting

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Tiny, tiny tangent that I’ll take.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Which is that whole intention setting thing we did right before the show began. This is probably the fourth or fifth episode we’re doing it and it’s changed everything.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah, it changes. So it’s really interesting. From a neuroscience perspective, that kind of thing is going to kind of shut down your default mode network.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Makes it less about yourself.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Exactly, exactly.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Makes it more about who the episodes are.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So we’re showing up to do this thing, and we’re going to do it as best as we can because people need help, because the world needs help.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: An added note is that I think this intention setting has always been an internal practice, but there’s something about words that just solidifies it.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So there’s all kinds. I mean, we can get into that. There’s really interesting research about sub vocalization. So when you articulate things. So there’s this really interesting principle of cognitive dissonance. So once a human being says something, it’s hard to go against it.

So this is where, like, I don’t know if you guys have ever done this, like, especially in relationships where if you force your partner to say something, they’re not going to go back on it. So sometimes it’s like, best, I don’t know if this makes sense, but you don’t want to get them to say, okay, no more going out with your friends, because once they say it, they’re going to stick to it. Does that kind of make sense?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So there’s interesting stuff. Even if you look at the mantra shastra, they’ll say that when you say a mantra verbally, it’s worth a certain amount. When you sub vocalize it, it’s worth 10 times more. When you say it mentally, it’s worth 10 times more. And when it becomes a job, when it says it by itself, then it becomes ten times more kind of thing.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: When the mantra starts chanting you.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yes, exactly. Right. So this kind of stuff about speaking your intention is the first phase, but when we speak the intention, I know that you’re not. The speaking is a consequence of what you are thinking, right. So speaking helps us solidify the mind.

And there’s a really one last thing I know. So if you think about how fast you think when you speak something, you slow down your thinking and you sit with those thoughts because you speak slower than you think. This is also why writing things out is very good, because it slows down and you sit with those thoughts for a longer period of time.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: That’s why everyone should write. Yes. It’s one of the most therapeutics.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Don’t type. Right?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: If you want to learn something.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: If you want to slow it down even more, try writing poetry. Okay, back to that angle of anandamide.

Understanding the Endocannabinoid System

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay. Yeah. So you asked our kids.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Anand in Indian language systems means happiness, joy. Anandamide. So is it related to joy?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: It is related to joy, yeah.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: What? Okay, forget the usage of marijuana.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: If there’s someone who’s never smoked a joint or even knows about what marijuana is and is doing all the right things, is doing yoga and meditation and exercise and eating clean and being a nice person, do they have much higher activation of their own cannabinoid systems?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So generally speaking, the answer is yes, practically. The answer is unfortunately not.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Where I’m getting at with this is how do I switch on this internal cannabis?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: That’s a different question. Okay, so let’s understand. It’s kind of sad, but here’s what I’ve seen. It’s so sad. People who are doing everything right are oftentimes suffering the most. Like, sometimes people who are doing everything right, they learn to live that way because they can’t afford to do things wrong.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah. Yeah, gotcha. I can’t afford to take risks.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah, right. So like they’re eating right because their mind isn’t clean and they’re doing everything right. I see this a lot where people are trying to like get out of their depression and they start doing everything within their power to be healthy. And sometimes they are healthy, but it’s sad.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Because they have to work so hard to stay above water. It’s really. It’s sad. So sometimes I think the people who. And you look at people with good genetics that smoke two packs a day and drink and eat fried food and they’re healthy until they’re 90. Right. So it’s. It’s so sad that honestly, the people who I see who work the hardest, they oftentimes are the unluckiest and they have to live that way just in order to survive. And it’s sad.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Now your question about how do you cultivate endocannabinoid stuff. And I think that’s where like some of these meditation techniques and things like that really do work.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: There are specific meditation techniques to do this?

The Science of Meditation and Endocannabinoids

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: I would think so. Okay, so I have not studied specifically meditation techniques for endocannabinoid production, but like you said, anandamide. So the person who discovered the anandamide receptor, the THC receptor, the endocannabinoid receptor, I think, was an Indian guy and wasn’t familiar with spirituality. So he named it Anandamide because it brings bliss.

And I think that we certainly know that when you do these yogic techniques, right, these meditative practices, at a minimum, you’re going to have shutting off of the default mode network. You’re going to have physiological balancing between your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. Your stress levels go down, you will regulate your emotional emotions so your brain’s ability to shift, shut off negative emotions improves.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: If I twist this question and ask you how I can release more DMT in my brain naturally, would your answer remain the same?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: No. So what I started with is the basics. That’s what any meditation will do. Now, if you’re talking about cultivating bliss versus exploring different lokas, those are different practices.

DMT, Ayahuasca, and Otherworldly Encounters

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Very much so the context here is that that’s supposedly what DMT does to the brain. So the larger context here is in pop culture, DMT spoken about a lot on the Joe Rogan experience. And he constantly says that with a lot of people who do ayahuasca or who do DMT in that smoked form, they go to another realm, meet entities, sometimes visit cities.

And there are also reports where I think there’s something called drip DMT where it’s administered through an IV. And they are able to sustain their DMT trips for long. And it’s been found apparently that different patients go and visit the same DMT city.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So let’s talk about. There’s a lot to talk about here. Okay, so number one is let’s talk about research. So I forget if I think it was DMT. One study on 36 patients, a small sample size found that 92% of people who use DMT encounter otherworldly beings.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yes.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay, so I’ve got a creepy story for you. Okay, so I once had a patient, patient started using drugs at the age of 11, had something called polysubstance abuse, which means that they’re not addicted to one thing, right? Sometimes we get addicted because we have a certain genetics and our certain transmitter. We’re vulnerable. I can’t stop with one drink. This guy could get addicted to anything. So it’s a different kind of neurochemistry.

So he started using drugs at the age of 11. Came to my office around 27. So he’d been addicted to stuff for 16 years, had tried all kinds of treatment. So he comes to me and he says, doc, and he wants to try the spirituality stuff, right? Because nothing else has really worked. So he says, doc, I want to go do ibogaine. Not DMT, but it’s a different. So he’s going to go to a different country, Costa Rica, and he’s going to use ibogaine treatment. Ibogaine helps people get off of opiates, especially. So it has some opioid activity.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Is it like a mushroom?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: I don’t know what it’s derived from, but it’s like another. It has hallucinogenic compound. It’s a hallucinogenic compound that also has some opioid effects. People use it specifically for opioid detox, and it helps them understand spiritual things, which helps.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

The Ibogaine Experience and the Story of Thomas

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So he goes and does ibogaine treatment. And I’m kind of scared. So he’s going to go do this because it’s illegal in the US, we don’t know how safe it is. He wants to do it. It’s his choice. He’s going to come back and is going to be with me at a drug rehab for 30 days after he’s done. So he says, I want to go here for one week, then I want to come back to you, and I want to do 30 days of rehab treatment. I said, okay, whatever.

So he goes there and I talked to him a couple of days in, and he says, you know, I had this great experience. I saw. I had this vision of myself with all these leeches on me. And the leeches are the addiction and the leeches were falling off of me and the addiction is getting out of my body now. I got scared because I was like, this guy’s going to skip treatment now. He’s not going to come. And I said, so are you still planning on coming? He says, oh, yeah. I realize that the leeches are the spiritual addiction. I still need to do the biological work. I need to do the neuroscience work. Those parts of me have not been healed, but this part of me has been healed. I was like, okay, cool.

So he comes and we’re talking more about it, and I asked him, because I’m curious, right? I was like, what happened? What did you see? And so he tells me that while I was going through this stuff, it felt painful, it doesn’t feel good. But he says there was an entity there. And I said, who are you? And the entity was helping him, was supporting him, was sending him positive energy. And he says, you know, I’m, he felt very secure. The leeching was very painful, but this thing was there. And he says, he says, who are you? And he says, I’m Thomas. And he’s like, who are you? And he says, I’m your brother. And so comes back, but he’s an only child.

So then he’s like, tells me about this and I’m like, okay, so maybe like who knows, right? So whatever, it’s like some weird trip. So about a year later I’m talking to his mom, so his mom came to my office for a different reason. And so I kind of mentioned and he gives me permission to share this story publicly and things like that. So I’m talking to his mom and I tell him about this, which he had never told her. And then she like goes white as sheet and I’m like, what is it?

And she says, so before she had him, 10 years before she had him, she was pregnant, had a miscarriage, buried the child, named him Thomas and it was a boy. I, I not kidding at all, swear to God. Okay, so like once again we have a couple of options. One is that maybe he’s three years old, maybe you know, his mom is crying because he’s healthy or he’s sick, maybe he’s sick, mom is crying, oh my God, like I don’t want to lose you, like I lost Thomas. Who knows, right? So it’s very, very non spiritual soul incarnation kind of explanations, very simple psychological. Those are a possibility. We have to acknowledge it. That doesn’t, that’s not proof of anything.

But here’s the crazy thing. 92% of people who use DMT, now we’re talking about a different drug, will encounter otherworldly beings. So this is like a telescope, right? So like if I look through a telescope and I see this rings of Saturn and I point up at a twinkling star and I tell other human beings there’s rings, that’s a planet. They’re going to be like, you’re insane. But everyone who looks through the telescope will see the rings.

92% of people use DMT, they meet mother Ayahuasca often. Yeah, so there’s like, you know, there’s and the different drugs will give you different experiences. So another really common was something called machine elves, where people will encounter these beings that they describe as machine elves, which is the best words we have to describe these kinds of things.

Tantric Meditation and Deity Invocation

And when we do certain kinds of meditation, when we do tantric meditation, Vajrayana meditation. Right. So there’s different kinds of meditations. Some will cultivate endocannabinoid production. Some are like when you do a deity meditation, when you invoke a deity, then when you meditate and you do upasana or something like that, Vajrayana meditation, you will invoke a particular deity and you will have a particular kind of encounter.

So ibogaine will give you certain encounters. Ayahuasca will give you certain encounters. DMT will give you certain encounters. Mantra, shastra, yantra, shastra, antara, or someone else will invoke a particular kind of deity, and you will encounter another worldly being of a particular shape and a particular form. Right. And all these yogis or tantrics studied this stuff. And they’re like, okay, if I do this symbol, what will. If I chant this mantra, what will happen? If I chant this mantra, what will happen? And those will invoke certain kinds of energies.

So what does that energy mean? I have no doubt. I don’t know if this is true, but I have no doubt that each of those deities will have certain physiologic and neuroscience effects because each deity is associated with a certain chakra, right? So some of them like, you know, even then the variants are very different, like Bhairava. If you do invocation of Bhairava, it’s a scary business, right? So like, they’ll give you sometimes what you ask for. Some of them are way kinder, some of them, you’ll move way faster. And then we get to things like assuric influence and things like that as well.

Understanding Asuras: The Spectrum of Beings

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Let’s open that up. Okay. I think a good place to start would be to explain the term asur to the West.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Sure. Why don’t you give that a shot?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: In Indian culture, we believe in a universal power called Parabram, which is the same as God, loosely. The one universal power which expresses itself as different forms. Those are deities. Those deities visit your life at different points in your life depending on what you need. There’s also higher beings, which would be an equivalent of angels or something.

Then there’s human beings which are like middle beings, because we are a combination in terms of personality type we have some good elements, some bad elements. And then there’s a spectrum of lower beings. There are ghosts, which we call bhoot, which is a very basic low level lower being. And then when you crank up that intensity, almost at the end of the spectrum, one of the beings near the absolute bottom is Asura. The loose translation in English would probably be demon. Yeah.

The Realm of Consciousness and Statistical Anomalies

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So let’s start with a couple of disclaimers. So hopefully people who have been listening to this, I want to give skeptics plenty of off ramps to not believe what we’re saying, right? So like when we talk about things like past lives or whatever, like, it’s important to remember that there are explanations which are not esoteric that explains this stuff. And I think that should be maintained here too.

So this is something that I used to not basically believe in this stuff. And then as we kind of talked about, you know, there’s a material world which is like things that you can quantify, touch, measure, so light, sound, matter. Then there’s human beings. We have this brain and that’s like measurable, but then we have the subjective realm. So this is what I call the realm of consciousness. We cannot measure consciousness, we cannot detect consciousness, we cannot measure thought, we cannot measure emotion. We can sort of ask someone for a subjective experience of emotion, but we cannot externally measure it. We require a human being to access their own consciousness in order to tell us what they’re thinking and feeling.

So that subjective realm actually like opens up. And the whole thing about psychedelics and you can decide, you have to decide for yourself. When someone encounters an otherworldly being, when they’re on a psychedelic trip or transcendental meditation experience, is that real or is it a hallucination of their brain? So I’m of the mind that it’s real. And the reason that I believe that is because of certain personal experiences I’ve had. Meditation, encountering weird things. Right. And even then when you first encounter it, it feels real. But then you wake up the next day, I’m kind of skeptical about it. Then it happens again and again and again. Then you start to see influences in your life that are what I would call statistical anomalies.

And I’m a really good example of this. So I graduated high College with a 2.5 grade average, which is like around between a C and a B. Okay. It took me five and a half years to finish my undergraduate education. Normally it’s supposed to take 4 in the US and the percentage of people with my stats who end up in medical school is less than 1%. The percentage of people who end up at Harvard is even smaller.

And so when I look at my life, it’s a statistical anomaly. Anomaly. It’s an outlier, which can be. Statistical anomalies exist all the time. But what I think of is when I was 21 years old and I went to my guru and I said, can you teach me a mantra? And he said, what do you want? He said, are you more interested in material success or spiritual success? And I said, can I have both? And he said, sure. So he taught me a particular mantra. I’ve been doing that mantra for 22 years. I personally believe that this mantra is responsible for a lot of my success.

So I don’t think, like, people will look at me and they’ll think like, oh, my God, you’re so great. Right? People will say, you’ve said, oh, my God, you’re such a gift.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Wow. Tell me more.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: How beautiful. Tell me you’ve got a great hairline. Tell me how I’m amazing.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: You’ve got beautiful skin.

The Nature of Consciousness and Spiritual Practice

So my whole thing is that I’m not special. The only difference between me and other people is that I have access to knowledge and techniques. I was given knowledge and techniques about how the mind works, how to accumulate energy, all this kind of stuff, right? And I employ those techniques, and then I have patience. And when I employ those techniques with them as well, they see huge improvements in their life.

So that’s why I believe this stuff is not because I’m special. It’s not some weird mystical thing. This has a science to it, too. It obeys laws, okay? Cause and effect. Karma is not just in the material world. It’s in the spiritual world as well.

Understanding Asuras and Levels of Consciousness

So now let’s talk about Asuras. So if we look at a human being, a certain level of consciousness is in the capability that is mental that I have is greater than an insect, which is greater than a plant, which is greater than a stone, okay? And that consciousness is like a fundamental kind of stuff. There’s no amount of matter that can capture the feeling of falling in love. It’s just not possible.

We can measure blood flow in the brain. We can measure electrical activity. We can’t capture the subjective experience in any way, shape or form. So there’s a certain amount of consciousness. Let’s say we’re 50% matter and 50% consciousness. There are other things that are more conscious and less material.

So I don’t know that I believe in ghosts at all, but there are beings that exist in that weird subjective space where most of what they are is subjective. That’s the other simple way to think about it.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Most of what they are subjective.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yes. So their ability to affect the material world is limited. We can affect the material world very easily because we have a material form they usually don’t have. Maybe they did in the past, I don’t know. This is where there’s—you can read all these texts. It’s not clear what’s real and what isn’t.

The Limits of Scientific Exploration

The limits of scientific exploration. And this is why I’m excited about things like DMT. So I had these experiences and I still didn’t know am I crazy or not. Then I started working with patients who encounter things all the time. Then they started meditating and they started encountering things. And then when they sit with me and they’re like—I’m like, do you think you’re crazy? Do you think this is real? What is this?

And by the way, the other thing is, the reason I love psychiatry is I’m professionally trained in recognizing crazy. That’s my job. And I know I’m not psychotic. I mean, maybe I am. That’s part of it. But—

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah. One of the easy ways that a lot of Indian skeptics brush it off is they say, oh, yeah, you believe in ghosts? Actually, I think you’re kind of—all these ghost hunters. Yeah, all of them are schizophrenic.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So here’s the key thing to understand. Psychosis is maybe some of these same elements, but in a pathological way. So we have a human body that’s supposed to work in this way, and if it gets ill, it works in this other way. Right. But that capacity is still there.

So we have this capacity that can be accessed through meditation, psychedelics, and it can be accessed through psychosis as well. And it’s really interesting because even when I would talk to my patients who are psychotic, I would be able to connect with them very well because I’ve had similar experiences.

There’s a great text by this guy named William James called the Varieties of Religious Experience where he talks about the similarities between mental illness and seeing God. Right. Or people who—and people have—scholars have sort of talked about people who are religious prophets or they just—

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Mentally ill or ate a mushroom from off the floor.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah, or that. Right. So there’s something about, you know, the Burning bush being a hallucinogen or something.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Right.

Beings in the Subjective Realm

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So let’s just start with that background. So I think what I think—there are beings that exist in this subjective realm. So this is what also makes it impossible arguably for science to detect them because they don’t have anything that is detectable in the same way that our thoughts aren’t detectable.

So now we have to ask ourselves, everyone thinks, is that a real thing? It’s a real thing, but it’s not an objective thing. It’s a subjective thing. It’s real subjectively, but it doesn’t have form and substance. You can’t measure it.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: It might appear as a different color, shape, form to different people based on their own subjectivity.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yes, but the fact that subjectivity exists and is different from objectivity, you can still think that’s a hallucination. I don’t think so. I think subjectivity is real.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: And you can explore in that dimension. That’s what meditation is. And when you explore in that dimension, sometimes you will encounter otherworldly beings.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: You know what you’re calling the subjective world, is it the same as the astral world?

The Subjective World and Spiritual Exploration

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Sort of. So that’s where what I’m calling, the reason I use the word subjective world is because everyone has a subjective world. You basically have proof as a person, not as a neuroscientist, but as a person. You have proof of your subjective experience.

So what I’m saying is if you explore in that direction, explore your own subjectivity, not measure something with a ruler, but meditate and pay attention to what happens. Have your body have an out. You know, you can trigger out of body experiences where the feeling of consciousness exists outside of you. And then once you’re floating, you literally keep traveling. And there are other experiences that you can have. Like a tunnel opening up.

Kind of like when people have this near death experience or when they die and they travel through the tunnel. There are certain agna chakra practices, people in my meditation YouTube community. So when I teach this practice, someone described it as “charging the laser beam.” So many people, thousands of people had the same experience of this third eye practice where they feel like there’s a laser beam that’s charging up and then if you continue doing that practice, you’ll have other weird experiences and you’ll kind of follow this tunnel and there’s all kinds of stuff that can happen and there’s things on the other side.

It’s all going to be in your head. So when you do this stuff, you will sometimes encounter other things.

Understanding Parabrahman and Cosmic Consciousness

So this is where we also get, now I’m going to explain a little bit of the metaphysics. You all just have to kind of trust me on this. So you have Parabrahman, which is like cosmic consciousness. Sometimes people will talk about it in panpsychism, that the fundamental substance of the universe is consciousness and it has matter and energy kind of arise out of it.

But there’s three buckets of stuff. There’s matter, which is the most gross form, then there’s energy. Right. We have evidence of energy, but you can’t, we need, we measure energy through matter in many ways. Like, so if you look at a scale, we’ll talk about something like potential energy. There’s no thing like potential energy. Energy is just the capacity to do work. But you can’t tunnel down into a weight and find energy there. There are some ways we can measure electricity and things like that. But matter and energy are different stuff.

There’s a third level of stuff, which is consciousness. So once you start exploring those realms, you’re going to encounter, so Parabrahman is like, has no qualities, is just, doesn’t have, doesn’t care about you, doesn’t care about who you are, whatever.

And then you have the deities, like the gods, like the Maha gods. So this is like Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva and those things, it’s hard to describe, but they’re like forces. You can kind of think about them like gravity. They actually don’t care about you so much. Like, Shiva arguably has been meditating for millions of years, is going to annihilate the universe, and he doesn’t really care. He’s just going to do his thing. Brahma cares about us some, but his job is done. Vishnu kind of cares about us.

So even these conscious beings, they’re like lumps of subjective experience, which is the way that you can think about it. But they’re really big, and the bigger they get, the less human they become. So Parabrahman is not really human, doesn’t care about things. People are like, oh, if God exists, why is there good? Why is there evil? Parabrahman doesn’t care about good or evil.

Parabrahman says that there’s, in the same way that if I have a neutron and I split into a positron and electron, one is positive, one is a negative. There’s no such thing as good or evil. Karma just has a consequence. So if you do quote, unquote bad things, it’s not a bad thing. If I start using a lot of drugs, that’s going to alter my dopamine circuitry. That’s a fact. It’s neither good nor bad. It’s just a physical fact. Biology doesn’t care. Physics doesn’t care. We’re the ones who apply the label of good or bad.

There’s no problem of evil for Parabrahman. No such thing. There’s just stuff. We are the ones that place the value judgment as an aside. That’s why things like Advaita Vedanta and stuff will help us because non dualism will help us transcend these concepts of good and evil.

The Hierarchy of Devas and Asuras

So then what happens is we think about Parabrahman, which is like pure consciousness, has no form, like no roop. Then we have the gods, like the big gods, and they have a little bit more form. So now we’re dividing things into three chunks. But they’re still pretty primordial. They have certain mantras associated with them which are also primordial mantras. Like Om is like the primordial mantra. It has a certain oneness quality. It’s not specific. So if you chant Om, you’re not going to manifest a particular thing. You’re just going to cultivate general energy.

Then we have the devas and the asuras. So these are creatures, as far as I understand, that have more human qualities. But what I’ve noticed is that some people are able to accumulate shakti energy and they’re able to get a lot out of life. They get really lucky. They get into problems and they come out on top even when they shouldn’t. They can make mistakes, but everything seems to happen to them. They get a lot of accomplishment.

But here’s the key thing about Asura influence. They’re never happy because an Asura will always take its price. It’s going to give you what you want, but you will never be content. So they’ll make $100 million and they’ll be egotistical. They need $200 million, then they need a billion, then they need $2 billion. And you can observe that there are a lot of people on the planet who have every reason to be content, but they are anything but content.

And so there’s a very simple psychological explanation for this that has nothing to do with asuras. Right? These people are narcissistic. We talked about toxic fuel. So the narcissistic drive causes them to push to succeed. But they’re never going to be content because they have a narcissistic complex. You can explain these people with psychology very easily, in my opinion.

This is opinion. There’s asuric influence because you can look at this person. You can be like, how can someone be so bad? Says stupid things, does stupid things, does illegal things, and they just get more money and more money and more money. But if you look at these people, you can even tell kind of that they’re suffering profoundly, they’re not content, they’re not happy. There are billionaires that are happy, and there are billionaires that are not happy. And you can even just look at Twitter and tell the difference.

Warnings About Meditation and Spiritual Encounters

So what I’ve kind of observed, and this is why you have to be careful if you’re meditating. The reason I talk about, the reason I started talking about this stuff, I know it sounds insane, is as I started teaching people meditation that is a little bit more esoteric. And my students started encountering, they’d come to me and they’d say, hey, I met this thing. What’s going on? And I don’t know what’s going on. But here’s all these texts that say, written by meditators from thousands of years ago that talk about these things.

So the reason I teach this stuff is because you need to know. So that if you encounter something, don’t treat it like a hallucination. It’ll screw you over. Don’t make a pact with these things. They’ll offer you stuff, right? And if they offer you stuff, say no.

So there’s a great example of this, which is if you look at the third chapter of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras is like this seminal text on yoga. It’s the bible of yoga, teaches the basics of yoga. So he’ll teach you what an asana or yoga posture is. He says an asana is two things. It’s a position that’s stable, and it’s a position that brings your mind to the present. That’s all an asana is. And if you look at every yoga posture on the planet ever been developed, it follows these two rules. Stability brings your mind to the present.

So he teaches all this basic stuff about yoga. Here are the different states of consciousness. There’s sleep. There’s dreamless sleep. There’s dream sleep, there’s wakefulness. He teaches you other things, like, here’s why truthfulness is important. Here’s why this. And he’s just explaining all this stuff. Right.

Chapter three happens, by the way, if you do this technique, you’ll be able to travel through time. If you do this technique, you’ll be telepathic. If you do this technique, you can shrink yourself to the size of an atom. If you do this technique, you’ll be able to increase yourself to the size of the universe. He just lists all these things out and then he just goes back to the other stuff. He’s just listing stuff. There’s no clickbaity paywall. Right. He’s not even taking credit. He’s not. He’s just, he’s warning people. He’s telling people, hey, if you meditate, this stuff will happen. So don’t be worried.

And one of my teachers, this is a lesson I’ve sort of learned the hard way. I won’t go into too much detail, but one of my teachers told me, even when you have siddhi, so siddhi is perfection or accomplishment.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Superpower.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Superpower. When you get these things, you should not use them. They’re actually distractions.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

The Danger of Using Siddhis

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So the problem is, and this is something that a lot of people don’t understand, they’ll say, if these people have superpowers, why don’t they use them for the benefit of humanity? The reason is because you can’t use it for the benefit. It’ll never benefit humanity. It’ll just cause problems. And you can learn this the hard way. Right?

So I can try as hard as I want to try to help people. I can help people only as much as they’re willing to accept. And I can’t use, a really good example of this is I’ve got patients whose parents will bend over backwards to pay for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars of addiction treatment. And you can try to give a million dollars for addiction treatment. It will not cure someone of their addiction.

So even if you think about it, you know, we’re talking about ego and ahamkar and attachment. Ego is very hard to get rid of when you use a siddhi. Because now you’re saving people, right? Everyone’s saying, why don’t you save the world? And you’re like, yeah, why don’t I save the world? I’m going to save the world. I’m going to help everyone. Really messes you up.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So this stuff happens. It’s to be ignored. Just like everything else. In meditation, you just do the practice. Means you do the practice. You do the practice. You do your sadhana. You don’t worry about what happens. You don’t go seeking beings. If you want to have some motivation towards it and you want to do that technique, go for it. You’ll learn over time as these things happen, that the more you chase it, the more impossible it will be.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: That DMT city thing is flashing in my head.

DMT and the Subjective Realm

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah, Right. So DMT is an example of a particular configuration of neurological activation that gives people an extra sensory experience of consciousness.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Right. Do you think that city exists somewhere in the subjective realm?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah, but I, yeah.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: And what are the beings that they’re meeting?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: I don’t know, man.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Higher beings or lower beings?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, higher and lower. So I think, I use the terminology that I use. I think they’re more conscious than material and their ability to affect the material is limited. Right. So we’re like 50% conscious, 50% material. A rock is like 1% conscious, 99% material. An asura is like 90% conscious, 10% material.

And that’s why there’s also a difference. Even if you look at some of these Tantric texts, you look at some of these texts by people like Aurobindo, you know, he’ll even say that a deva is different from a demigod. Right. So Shiva is different from Ganesh. Ganesh cares way more about us than Shiva does. And that’s because he’s actually, you know, Ganesh isn’t 100% divine. You know, why not?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Why?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: There’s a part of him that’s not divine. Which part?

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: The elephant head.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Exactly. Right. So he’s born of a God and a goddess. Except for his head. So he’s a little bit material. So he cares about us more. He’s a little bit more with us. And so these devas, I think are conscious beings that have a lot of power. Asuras, I think they’re at the same level.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Spectrum of consciousness.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: And spectrum, which is also equivalent to the spectrum of objective material.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Right. So they’re minimally objectively material, but they are very subjectively accessible, which is why we have no proof of them. Because they don’t exist in this planet.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Because the limitations of science limit us to the material so far.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Right. So the moment that we can scientifically detect and verify a thought, I think that’s when we’re off to the races. Right.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Will that happen in our lifetimes?

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: It’s not clear to me. I don’t know. It’s not clear to me that it’ll ever be possible.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Okay.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Right. So I don’t know, but that doesn’t. Then you have to decide for yourself whether your subjective experience exists or not. You have to decide for yourself what your answer is.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Gotcha. I think we’re almost at the end of the episode.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Sure.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: I feel that internally.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah, yeah, me too.

The Third Eye and the Spectrum of Consciousness

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: A tiny closing thought I have is that I think at the beginning we spoke about the third eye, the chakra related to intuition. The sentence that goes, “my third eye is opened” or “my third eye is opening.” It’s probably related to the spectrum of consciousness again you spoke of.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yes.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: That you can now start seeing this realm of higher consciousness.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: I think so it begins with, like…

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Better pattern recognition and intuition, but it ends at enlightenment and probably even beyond that.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. So I don’t like the spectrum that you’re listing out. So you’re making it sound linear. I don’t think it’s like that. I think all this stuff happens. Not all, but a lot of it happens patchy and in parallel.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah, gotcha.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So I think you’ll have, you know, it’s not like you get material intuition first and then this happens. It’s kind of random, not like super random. That’s why I think the importance of techniques are important. Right. So a guru will understand, like, where you are and which practice you need. But if you do like, you know, if you do like. So I’ll just give you a simple example. So if people want to do. Because you asked for a practice, I’ll give you all simple.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah.

Trataka: A Safe Practice for Beginners

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Safe practice. So you start with trataka candle gazing. So you just look at the flame of a candle. Or diva is even better. And even then you’re using sesame oil instead of ghee, which is perfect. So ghee will have a more wavering flame than sesame oil will. So if you want a stable candle, use sesame oil. Use a…

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: A wick.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: And you just light a candle and you look at it. So you can start at 30 seconds and then work your way up to 60, 90. Check with a doctor first to make sure you have no medical contraindications. Then you just gaze at the candle. And what you’ll notice is as you gaze at the candle, your peripheral vision will disappear and you’ll only see the candle, everything around it.

So normally it’s super cool. This is why I love this stuff, because it’ll give people a subjective experience which is separate. You can easily access a weird conscious experience which is very different from the regular life. That’s why I love starting with trataka. So normally when I think about a candle, the flame illuminates the area around, but you’ll see something really trippy, which is that the flame, everything around it becomes dark. And it doesn’t illuminate anything, it creates darkness, which is a really weird thing to see.

There’s even an interesting physiologic reason for that, which is the exhaustion of rhodopsins in the eyes. It’s really cool. So I looked into why does this happen. Rods become weaker, so the way you see things is you can run out of sight, basically until you close your eyes.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Fuel inside the…

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: It’s fuel inside the eye runs out and then everything goes black. So that’s just the first phase of the practice, which is super cool. So I like doing things for people that give them a cool experience very quickly. Because people, everyone has a short attention span. Everyone wants to jump to psychedelics. Let’s give you a cool trippy experience that’s safe.

Then comes phase two, which is when you close your eyes, you’ll see the after image of the flame. And then, then what you want to do is stare at that with your eyes closed. And what you’ll notice is that it’ll disappear from your mind, it’ll start to move around. You have to get good at staring. That, that’s what you want to do for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes. That is Anthartica.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Wow.

Yantra Practice and Subjective Exploration

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: And anyone can do it. You can do it today really easy. Even if you do it for 30 seconds, 60 seconds without closing, without closing your eyes. When you close your eyes, you’ll see the after image. You know, people know what an after image is, right? Then you can try other things. Like then I’d encourage you to do trataka on different objects. Not like the sun or anything, but you can do even on something like around you. And then if you close your eyes, you’ll see an afterimage. But flame is the easiest way to create an afterimage.

Okay, then we get to the fun part. And if you’ve ever wanted to understand what a yantra looks like, if you’ve never done antarthratika, you’ve never seen a yantra. Look at a yantra with trataka and then close your eyes and you will see the negative image of the yantra. That’s truly what a yantra is. When people were meditating, they saw the image of the yantra and then they reverse engineered it into the physical form.

And the cool thing is when you do Antarthratika and when you do Trataka antartica on a yantra, and that’s a mouthful, then you will also see colors. So I’m going to give you all really cool exercises if anyone wants to understand this stuff and how, like, where to start the journey of subjective exploration? Tell me what the color that you see is. I mean, they don’t have to tell me, but just try to describe the color. It will not be a color that is describable using regular perception. It’ll be like a weird color.

And if you’ve seen after images, you kind of know what I mean. It’s like pinkish, purplish, greenish, but it’s not any of those colors. It’s a weird color. So this is what I love about this practice because it quickly gives these people this idea of, like, okay, but this is just the first practice. Once you start doing more and more and more in this realm, once you start exploring, you become your own explorer of the universe. You’re the only astronaut.

Because I can’t convey this to anybody. I can describe it, but the color, the words that I use will be different from what you say. They won’t really describe it, but you’ll, you’ll know what I mean. I can trigger the subjective experience in you, but I cannot transmit the knowledge. This is also what’s different about the material world and the subjective world. Right.

And so then if you want to do a particular, you know, based on what they’ve learned from your podcast or whatever, there’s a particular, like, energy that you want to cultivate, then you do yantra practice on that. You do trataka on that yantra, you do Antarctica on that yantra. But best thing to do is work with a guru. That’s number one.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah. Yantras can be dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah. So maybe people shouldn’t do this. It’s very possible that these tantric masters that you had on will say, oh, look, this is a bad thing to teach people. I’ve never had run into a problem with it. I still think it’s, like, it’s super safe, I think, you know, and I haven’t seen, like, a medical…

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Some yantras are more fierce than others. Yeah, yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So probably, like, in retrospect, you just stick with. And step number three is go find a guru and then do that appropriately.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Like, I appreciate you sharing step number three because, like, I have access to some people. Yeah.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: So. And I don’t do. So I don’t teach that. I mean, I’ll teach the principle, which is fine. Just so you understand. Right. But, like, then I wouldn’t go do that sadhana without the right guidance.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Gotcha.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Yeah.

Closing Thoughts

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: And that’s the episode.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay, great.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: This was a legitimate third eye episode. Like third eye from every possible angle. Including psychedelics, including ego, including a sense of motivation. Highly practical and useful episode you’ve given us, Doctor. Thank you so much.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Thanks for having me.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Appreciate you flying to the other side of the world for this, man.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Thanks for having me, man.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: Yeah. And I hope to take you to Varanasi someday.

DR. ALOK KANOJIA: Okay.

RANVEER ALLAHBADIA: That’s all. I’ll end it. Thank you, Doc.

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