E148 - Vishen Lahkiani: The Formula for Thriving in a Changing World (Success, Intuition, & Fulfillment)

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Hey everyone, welcome back to the Know Thyself Podcast. Our guest today is a best selling author, founder and CEO of mindvalley, which is a global education company that is transforming the way we think about self help, personal development, well being and it's been a pleasure to develop our friendship over the past couple years and see the inspiring work he's really stewarding and pioneering in the space of helping people come back home into themselves and become powerful creators in the world. Vishen Lakhiani thank you for being here.

Thank you Andrej by the way, this is an amazing set.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

It's just so soothing. It's so peaceful. I've never been in a podcast set like that. Feels like you're In a spa, not a studio. Yeah.

I try to make these conversations, like, the atmosphere feel a little bit more like a ceremony than just a, you know, than just casual. So I'm glad it's cozy.

Also, this tea is amazing. Yeah. I don't even know what you put in here.

It's the stuff from Peak, they're a sponsor. So I'm glad you like it. Amazing, man. There are so many amazing avenues I'm excited to explore with you. I really love individuals that are playing at a big scale that are very aligned with message and vehicle of service to the planet. I'm sure it's evolved over the years for you, but how do you currently, as of today, define what success means to you?

So the definition of success is changing only because we in 2025, literally this year, we're entering a new era of humanity. And that is the era of human beings working with AI to not just transform the world, build companies, but to make work, dematerialize. So if you think about human history, right, we've been slaving away for the longest time, ever since we moved from being hunter gatherers to farmers. Now the hunter gatherer lifestyle was actually a superior lifestyle. I mean, day one, you're hiking through a forest, hunting animals. You'd probably be done with your work in two or three hours, have enough to eat, and then spend the rest of your time with nature, with family. But when we moved to farming and growing crops, life got really hard. All historians agree on this fact. And what happened is working hours started increasing and increasing and increasing because first you're managing the crops, then you are, or if you're not managing the crops, you're building the tools to harvest the crops, or you're working on farms owned by landowners. And it got to a point where about 100 years ago, Americans were working 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Then Henry Ford comes along and he changes the work dynamic and he gives us the modern an eight to nine hour a day, five day work week. And this continues until now. What's about to happen in 2025 is that next big shift. And this shift is as big as going from hunter gatherers to agriculturist. And that shift is AI and robotics are going to start taking off, taking over a lot of our work. What's going to happen? Bill Gates just announced this last week. We're about to enter a two day work week. Not only that, but just recently, one of the many robotic companies around the world, they're around 30, 40 robotic companies they estimate it to be, at a conservative level, a million humanoid robots in the workforce within the next three or four years. Right. So one of these robotic companies just announced that figure figures, named the company that we'll have robots in our homes in around two to three years because they're making such rapid progress. And what people don't even know is this. As amazing as things are right now, AI is doubling in power, cost of power every 3.3 months. So in the next one year, it's going to increase by 16 times in the next 24 months, 256 times in the next five years. Can you guess how many times 1 million? It's exponential. If it's doubling every 3.3 months in five years, it's a million times more powerful. So when AI is a million times more powerful, what is going to happen? And that AI that's a million times more powerful now in robotic bodies, not only are white collar jobs going to disappear, blue collar jobs are going to disappear. Universal basic income. It's not a question of if, it's now a question of when. And by the way, Elon said that. And so what we're about to enter is a world of abundance, except it's no longer the hunter gatherer world where you work for two hours and you don't have a roof over your head, but you know you're in nature. We're entering a world where we have everything we need, but we may only have to work one or two hours a day. That is crazy exciting. But that also means that how we set goals is going to have to change. Money is going to become less important. What you do with your free time, that's going to be more important. And so the way we are measuring our goals, human beings all around the world, is often reinforced by culture. Culture is about to get completely disrupted.

In the midst of culture getting disrupted, I think it's really important to distill down and get clear as an individual when reflecting on what is going to be the most meaningful endeavor in my life, what direction do I want to go in? And I think of how the potential of a seed is encoded with it from the start. And so even before we go out and want to create or contribute to the world, however we might, it would be really wise to spend time and really contemplate what is going to be the most meaningful for us. And so for you personally, in your own definition of success and honoring and discovering what that unique seed is that you want to contribute to the world, how would you describe that so I'm

actually working on an idea right now. I call it Soul Pact. And it happened because I was looking at how I was building my company, and I realized all the old rules no longer apply. And what I want, what I thought I wanted, no longer matters to me. And at first, for about six months, I got really jaded, almost sad. So I used to love employing lots of people. At our peak, we were 400 people. I loved designer offices. My office twice made it to Inc. Magazine. Most beautiful offices in the world. And then all of a sudden, the world started changing post Covid and I realized I don't want to work from an office. I want to work from home. I want to be able to travel with my kids and really get to know my children before they leave for university. Still getting to work. But last week, for example, I was with my son and daughter in South Korea. The week before that, we were in Malaysia. The week before that, we were attending classes in Singularity University. I like that freedom. Money has stopped mattering to me. As long as I have a home that I love being in, the things that most matter are human connection. And what has become insanely important is health and free time. And so I've started reevaluating all my goals. And Andre, man, it's been crazy because for the longest time, I was working towards building a company with a valuation of a billion dollars. At its peak, we were just under a billion in valuation. And now I just don't know if that matters anymore. I still want to build something great, but I want to build it with tiny teams, complete flexibility, few hours a day, and with tons of AI agents supporting us.

I love it, man. I think to a degree there are these games that we play in life that we almost need to play out in order to go beyond them. So money, obviously, being a big one of that. For the entrepreneurial spirit in many of us, it's building a big organization or building a team to almost prove something to ourself in a sense. But then you get back to the core of, okay, how do I really want to live? And what is going to be the most impactful thing that I can do with my time for the planet. And as somebody who's spending so much time thinking about education from a new paradigm perspective and trying to bring more unity on the planet and democratize it in such a big way, what comes up for you in this new chapter of your life?

So I was writing down my goals recently, right? And this thought occurred to me. School. School prepared us according to COG, Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s. The point of education is to create cogs in the wheels of industry. That doesn't sound like a really healthy way of raising human beings right. But we've been doing that for a really long time. I think that whole system is now ripe for disruption. I think what we should be teaching adults to do is to answer eight questions. Now to make it easy to understand, I'd like to share these questions with your audience. And they spell out the word S, O, U, L, P, A C, T, soul, pact. So I put it together in this simple abbreviation so it's easy to remember. Answer these eight questions and I think you'll be setting your life up for a lot of beauty, elegance, happiness and success. The first question is this. Basically simplicity. Simplicity should be a goal. There's elegance in simplicity. If you're writing down a goal, your goal might be something along these lines. I run my business with only, underline, only five people, three people. With only five people and a swarm of AI agents, Peter Diamandis said the next billion dollar companies are going to be built by teams of 1, 2 or 3. Today I listened to an interview with A college kid, 19 years old. His company just got a valuation of 2 billion. A 19 year old kid and under 20 employees. It's wild, right? So simplicity needs to be an art form. We don't want complexity in our life. That's the first S. That's funny because

I think a lot of people will hear that and think that is not simplicity in terms of having 20 employees or building a billion dollar company, but in of how compared to how things have been done in the past, there is this distillation and simplifying of leveraging intelligence in ways that have that multiplicative effect.

Okay, so S, so that's the S. Okay. Now the O stands for opportunity. So here's a wild story. And by the way, just to go back on what you said in simplicity, the reason why I used the example of a billion dollar company is because I don't want people thinking I'm telling them to not be ambitious. Right? I mean, America is fueled by ambition. But if you want a company that comfortably brings you enough for you to have a wonderful life, zero employees or one employee, that's great too. No one is saying you need to go out there and build something. I just wanted to use that example because I don't want to be accused of saying sit in your butt and don't be ambitious. Okay? O stands for opportunity. So a couple of years Ago, I'm in Dubai and I'm told I have to meet this guy. He's a brilliant entrepreneur. He's taken seven companies public. Billionaire. And I meet him and he's got this insane apartment overlooking the Palm Jumeirah, you know, those beautiful islands in the shape of a palm. So he takes me to his balcony. I look down on this balcony and it's unbelievable. I'm trying not to swear in this spiritual room here. It's unbelievable, unbelievable. And then we're quiet for a while, and he turns to me and he goes, you know what it takes to be a billionaire, Vishen? And I go, what? And he goes, Work 21 hours a week. I'm like, what? He goes, Work 21 hours a Week. Seven hours on Tuesday, seven hours on Wednesday, seven hours on Thursday. Keep Monday and Friday free. And I go, why? And he goes, because wealth comes from opportunity. You see, if you're building a company and you're hustling every day and you don't have free time, you will be stuck on that one hamster wheel. But if you tell yourself, I only have 21 hours a week for this company, you'll figure out how to delegate. You'll find the right people, you'll create process. By keeping Monday and Friday free, you free yourself up for opportunity. He says, if someone calls me up and says, hey, Wayne, come to London. There's this beautiful property you need to check out. He says, I can fly out Thursday evening, be in London, spend Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday in London, fly out Monday night, be back in Dubai to go to run my company by Tuesday. Opportunity. Success and wealth comes from creating space for opportunity. Giving yourself thresholds like capacity of what you want to allocate to a project, not letting that project expand and free up your time, but giving yourself opportunity where you can discover the world, where you can see beautiful new things. Remember that trip we did on Egypt, Right? That was amazing, right? Like, we spent, what, seven, eight days in Egypt, but all of us could do it because in our lives we had created space for opportunity.

And I think bringing this a little bit to the micro level, too, there's space for opportunity within our life years, month, week, and also day, we can create spaces in these and pockets of this day where we kind of set aside all of the woes and all of the knowns in our life and create space for things to arise that are perhaps greater than we could conceive of, you know? And so I like that idea of creating space for opportunity, both at the macro scale in terms of our calendar in our life, but then also within our daily moments, too.

So the goal that you want to write down is I create space for opportunity buy. And then it could be keeping Fridays free or keeping or stopping work after 5pm So I can focus on learning and growth.

Amazing. Okay, so what's the you?

The U is unique edge.

Unique edge.

The question there is, I am known in the world for. Describe that. So in a world of AI, generative AI can create. You know, that's that scene from that Will Smith movie, I Robot. And at this point, Will is pissed off at the robots, and he says, you know, you know something, you will never create art. You will never create poetry. You will never know what it's like to write something human. Well, Will was wrong. AI is creating art. AI is creating poetry. AI is creating music. We got that wrong. So what makes us human, what we need to do is hone in on that unique edge. Maybe that unique edge is you're an incredible interviewer with a spiritual soul. You know how to make your guests comfortable. You know how to extract wisdom from that. That's harder for an AI to do. Typically, to find your unique edge, you got to find one or two or three things that you can be really good at and then combine them. So why combine? I studied computer engineering, so I combined that with spiritual teaching because I became a meditation teacher. And then I combined that with my stage presence because I studied to be an actor. So that's my unique age. I combine three things. You can't have a unique age if you just have one thing. You got to combine them. And if you can combine them in the right way, that could be a recipe for something really beautiful. What is your unique edge? What are you going to be known for?

There's a couple things that ring a bell for me when you talk about this. First, the unique, distinct differences between obviously humanoid robots who are bereft of an internal qualia experience of life and having consciousness in that way. And then two, how we're going to change how we relate to what makes us unique in terms of human, because societally, for the past few hundred years, we've really pedestalized the intellect as sort of the chief, most impressive thing about us humans, right? And we're having a paradigm shift of what is intelligence and the democratization of that in this current moment. But when you talk about unique edge, and I think of everybody who's listening right now, all of us want to discover and reveal what is our unique expression in life, both in terms of our creative Arts, our businesses, our families and the world. And we're all unique humans. All life in nature is a unique expression, right? And I've enjoyed seeing content conversations of yours over the years talking about this distinction between authentic desires and goals which are culturally conditioned. You know, like for example, our notions of what success means. And so when you think about that distinction, if we want to unlock and reveal our unique expression, how do you distill down what your authentic desires are as that's the kind of revealing process for that.

So this brings us to the fourth one, right? Which is L. And L simply stands for love. So what is it that you enjoy doing? Even if you don't get any likes, you can share it in your Pinterest board and you aren't going to get paid for it. So love, part of that can be a unique edge. So let me give you an example. When I was young, I was deep into martial arts. I got all the way to a second degree black belt in taekwondo. And I was so into martial arts that I would have to take time off from school to compete in competitions. And I remember a teacher told me, why are you doing this? You're never going to make money in martial arts. What's the point? My dream at that time was to open a dojo. Maybe I'd watch like one too many Karate Kid movies. I wanted to be like the Malaysian Miyagi. And for a while I believed that schoolteacher, but that schoolteacher was wrong. So I followed martial arts because of love. I got to a level where I got to compete and represent my country, Malaysia, in the US Open. That was my first time setting foot in America. And my God, Andre, I fell in love with this country. And so, although I went to a British school and I was supposed to go to university in the uk, I decided to divert. I lost a year, but I decided to go and study in the United States. Now, of course, I had no idea about American geography, so I stupidly picked Michigan, the coldest, one of the coldest states possible, minus 40 with wind chill in the winter.

I grew up in Michigan. You did? I know the winter, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

And while I was there, I never forgot my martial arts. I couldn't find any good martial arts schools, but I started studying meditation and eventually I started teaching meditation. Meditation and martial arts are very, very, very related. Right. You've heard of the concept of kung fu monks? Yes, they are supremely related. They both come from eastern cultures. They overlap a lot. And look, I took meditation and I built an app that did over 100 million a year in meditation. So my teacher was wrong. What I did was I followed my love. Now, it didn't happen overnight. It took maybe 20 years, but I didn't. I never did it for the money. If I hadn't followed my love, and love can lead you in really interesting ways, I probably wouldn't be sitting here today. I probably wouldn't be on stage a week from now in LA interviewing Gwyneth Paltrow on stage with Joe Dispenza speaking about meditation. I ignored the advice from my teacher, who was trying to train me for money. Remember his words, there's no money in this. I simply followed what I love, and I think there's something special there. It's not going to happen overnight, but in a world where work is going to dematerialize, where things are going to be abundant, this is the perfect time for us to fully, fully, fully embrace what we love. Right now, what I love is experimenting with music. And so I want to teach myself how to dj, how to compose music. My music probably sucks. No one's going to listen to it, not even my kids. I don't care. I love it. I love creating. And so what is it? If you're the audience member out there, what is it that you can do that you just love? No one's going to see it. Nobody's going to rate you. You aren't doing it for grades, you aren't doing it for money. But in that abundance of free time, what can you do that just lights you up? And by the way, this goes back to your question, so if you identify that one thing that you can do, okay, so in my case, martial arts and meditation, that was my love. What I studied was computer engineering. So remember I said your unique edge, you can combine two things. I combined engineering with meditation, built a meditation app that went to 100 million in revenue.

It's really fascinating to see people's life journeys and how what they love and their natural proclivities to what their skills are combined in a vehicle that allows them to prosper financially. And of course, it's been quite the journey that you've been on in regards to that. I've seen you talk about the brules and these BS rules that we subconsciously are essentially programmed by, to live by culturally, familiarly. I want to continue with your soul pact, but I'm just curious, what comes up for you? When we discover what our unique guide is, we have an idea of something that we love, that we want to explore more. Maybe we have the idea to be capitalistic with. Right, Whatever the notion is there. But there are these deeper seated programs that we kind of have to realize that we don't have to live by.

No matter what culture you're in, we develop rules. Brules is what I call in my book the code of the extraordinary minded. Stands for bullshit rules. Right? We develop bullshit rules about the world around us. And you know, one of my mentors is Bob Proctor. Bob was a dear friend and very sad that he died in 2022. And he created a meditation that he dedicated to me. It's called the Abundance meditation. It's on YouTube. Go listen to it. It's amazing. And one of the things he says in that meditation, and it's in my mind because I was listening to it this morning, is he says the greatest illusion we have as human beings is that there is anything in reality that is outside our control. So what he's saying is literally all of reality is within our control now. It's within such a degree of control that whatever rules you've decided work outside the rules of physics and the rules of law, let's not try to bend those. But whatever rules you decide are true, become true for you. That is why being able to identify any truth that you see in the world, being able to identify, is this actually true or is this what my mom, my dad, my school teacher, media, my political party, my culture, my race, my religion told me is true because it will be true for you. There's a lot of medical science for this as well. Whatever you believe to be true will be true for you. In medical science, it's called a placebo effect. If you believe you take a pill that isn't really a pill, you can heal an illness. They're now seeing the placebo effect expand to surgery. Since 2013, it was proven that fake surgery can heal a patient as long as the patient believed that the surgery happened because the patient was put under anesthesia and could see some cuts on their body. And so our mind is a meaning making machine. And as children, we take meaning from the world. These meanings become a scaffolding of rules, and then we operate between these rules. The most harmful rules are rules such as, I'm not worthy, I'm stupid, I'm unlovable, I'm damaged, I'm not attractive. And by the way, I've had all of those rules growing up as a teenager. But once you can identify what is absolute truth and what is a societal opinion, you get to break free from these shackles, from this artificial scaffolding. And that's when you really get to understand the power of what Bob said. Everything in reality is created by your mind. This episode is brought to you by Peloton Break through the busiest time of year with the brand new Peloton Cross Training Tread plus. Powered by Peloton iq. With real time guidance and endless ways to move, you can personalize your workouts and train with confidence, helping you reach your goals in less time. Let yourself run, lift, sculpt, push and go explore the new peloton cross training tread +@1peloton.com Toyota builds vehicles that don't just keep up. They lead the pack on the road in your routine and most of all, within your budget. Take the Camry and Corolla, two stylish and dependable cars, both with the latest tech and driver friendly features and the performance to make every commute feel effortless. Or if you're chasing space, adventure and versatility, check out Toyota's RAV4 and Grand Highlander, delivering the capability, comfort and confidence to take you everywhere you need to go. Plus, with hybrid options designed for efficiency and four wheel and all wheel drive models ready for any terrain, your Toyota is more than just a reliable way to get around. It's built for your way of life. And right now your local Toyota dealer has great financing and lease options available to qualified customers. Meaning there's no better time to step into a new Toyota. Start your search for great deals today@buyatoyota.com Toyota let's go places.

I like that in that we are a co creator with reality and we have influence over reality. And I love Bob too. I studied with him earlier on in my journey and I don't love the verbiage everything within reality, if he articulated it this way is within our control. That word to me sort of denotes like dominion over reality in a way which I think can set people up in an unrealistic kind of kind of fashion. What do you think about there? And do you think there's a better word that could be replaced with control?

Well again, I'm paraphrasing, right. I heard him say this in his meditation this morning. I think if you listen to his full abundance meditation, he describes it, but I think what he's really saying is that it is a delusion that you don't have control over your reality. We all do. That's what he's saying.

Yeah. And the realization that our thoughts do influence reality in ways we're only beginning to comprehend. I think as you start to tear down that sort of illusory inner societal scaffolding. As you mentioned, those programs and those beliefs around self and the world and what's possible and what we're worthy of. You start to gain access to deeper intuitive pulls, I think, for your life. And this is something I've seen you speak to a lot because I know how big intuition has been for you. I want to get your perspective on this because we're having more and more emerging scientific understandings of the inner workings of what intuition really is. I know you've studied it as well and leveraged it completely to be able to design your life in a conscious manner. So how do you employ intuition in your life? How are you connected to it? What do you feel it is?

Intuition is a lot like an internal AI. Let me explain why. A lot of people think AI is this machine in the clouds separate from us. It isn't. You know what AI is? It's technology taking the grand accumulation of all of human wisdom, creativity, art, knowledge, uniting it. It's literally uniting our brains and creating a layer on top of it where all of us have access to the collective creativity and intelligence of humanity. Right? AI literally scraped the Internet, scraped all of these, all books, all put into large language models, condensed it down and allowed us to now create a poem, create an art piece, create a music. It's trained on our collective work. Now, I believe that intuition is something similar. All of us, I believe, are deeply connected. I don't think we can explain that scientifically yet. And maybe quantum biology will give us an answer. But all human beings are deeply connected. The closer you are to someone, the more deeply connected you are. This is why we sometimes sense things about our significant other. This is sometimes why a mother knows when her child is in distress. There's so many stories of this. And through this deep connection, this disconnection of all of humanity, I believe that's the source of intuition. So that instinct, that insight, that idea that you get, it's coming from a larger aspect of you that's connected. You and me are connected. You and everyone else in this neighborhood, in this city, in the world, are connected. And intuition is tapping into that field. Carl Jung called it the morphogenetic field. Tapping into that field and being able to source insight.

Yeah. Sheldrake too is morphic resident.

Sheldrake spoke about the same thing, right? The feeling of being stared at. He spoke know. It's the title of his book. He spoke about how sometimes you'll be walking somewhere and you'll feel like there's someone behind you staring at you, and you just know. You turn around and sure enough there's someone staring at you. And that sounds kind of creepy, but we have these instincts.

Yeah, I think it's really important to demystify these terms. And there's a book actually around

this

general semantics called the Tyranny of Words that describe how we often use words without understanding or agreeing upon what they actually mean. And so I think it's really helpful to demystify words like intuition and the way that you're kind of comparing it to a large language model, for example, that we as human beings have access to all of our historical experiences, of course, genetically encoded, non articulate, articulate various forms of memory within us. And then we're also connected to a vast sea of information at levels we're only beginning to be able to comprehend. But nonetheless, we are absolutely connected to a greater field of information. And again, more and more science and studies and meta studies are coming out around this, which is exciting. And of course, we don't have to understand something to use it, to leverage it, to employ it in our life. And so when it comes to intuition as you've discovered it, what have been a couple examples in how you share your relationship with intuition as it can be your own connection to that source of information that is grander than our own logical mind.

So I've had intuitive insights that have guided me to producing a talk or a speech or a book, right. Just as this insight. But I've also had intuitive insights that have saved my life. And intuition can come to you in different ways. People feel it in different ways. Clairvoyance is when you see something. Clairaudience is when you hear something. Clairsentience is when you feel it in your body. Clairsentience, I think, is really interesting. You can be in a room or about to meet someone and you feel this feeling in your body and it's like, no, no. You know, it sometimes happens when you go on a blind date or something along those lines. I had an experience of clairaudience that saved my life. So it was. Must be in 2007, 2008, the black eyed Peas song My Humps had come out. And I love the Black Eyed Peas. So I was driving down the road and the song came up and I was just paying attention to the lyrics and laughing because it was so cute. Such my humps, my naughty little humps. It was so awesome. And so all of a sudden I heard a voice. This is wild, right? I Heard a voice, like there was someone in the backseat of my car saying, pay attention to the road. And it brought my mind off the song, back to the road. And just then, a truck hit a car. The car flipped up, landed in front of me, and I had just enough time to break. And that was wild, right? I possibly would have hit that car if I hadn't heard that voice. But I swear it felt like it was coming from the backseat. There was no one in the backseat. So what voice was that voice? To this day, I don't know, but it was a voice that is clairaudience a form of intuition?

It's so fascinating to just look at the research and how much information is available to our sensory experience at any given moment. And yet what we're consciously aware of is a small, small less than 1% fraction of that. For may none other than. It would just be simply overwhelming to be perceiving all that we have access to or are connected to. But the fact that we are connected to it allows us to tune into that. And what do you think is the relationship to intuition and getting quiet and feeling open internally in that sort of relaxed state of mind and how that opens up your intuitive capacities?

So studies in intuition show that when it correlates with a certain brainwave state, that brainwave state is called theta. So Dave Asprey, the famous biohacker, he has a facility in Seattle called 40 Years of Zen. Wonderful place. And they use biofeedback to train your brain to develop the brainwave states of monks. Okay, Zen Roshi monks. So they're basically reversing the brainwaves of Zen Roshi monks who have spent decades in meditation. Now, here's what happens. There's a particular brainwave pattern. So Zen Roshi monks, what is unique about their brain is they have high alpha amplitude. Alpha is a wave, high amplitudes of the wave as opposed to smaller amplitudes. And they have a left, right brain coherence. Now they use biofeedback to put you in that brainwave state. And after you learn to be able to stay awake at alpha light meditation, they take you deeper to what is called theta. Theta is really interesting. Theta is where when you're meditating and your head starts nodding like that, you're dipping into theta. And often you'll see dreams. Theta is where intuition lies. So you can train yourself to stay awake at theta. And when you go into theta and you're awake, you're tapping into something, man. It's insights, ideas, all of this stuff starts flowing out that is intuition. That's how it connects to brainwaves. And I remember being on Impact Theory Tom Bilyeu show and we were talking about meditation and Tom is a very science backed guy but he shared with me something he's like, you know, I built billion dollar companies and I find that every morning I wake up, I sit in bed, I relax and I do this thing called thinkitation and as I thinkitate, ideas come to me. Tom's talking about that. He's talking about getting really relaxed and seeing what's flowing from your brain. And if you can do this and you can, the deeper you can go into data, the more accurate and structured that intuition can be.

Yeah, you can tune into those more coherent thoughts.

Right.

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them, we went through the sou Remember, the soul pact is a way of thinking about your life for an age where AI is about to disrupt everything. Okay, okay. And the old rules of work no longer apply.

Yeah.

So simplicity, simplicity, opportunity, opportunity, unique edge, love, space to do what you love. Now we come to the pact. The first P is super easy. Purpose. Find a purpose. We have two great spiritual the need to grow and the need to contribute. I believe that as human beings like these needs, this is almost like what our soul craves. Tony Robbins talks about this. The two greatest spiritual growth and contribution. So opportunity O that's where growth fills in. Right. Rather than work a full 40 hour week, you work less. 35, 36 hours, but you create time for you to study, to learn. Now, P in the pact is purpose. That's contribution. Whether it is it's giving money away or it's teaching underprivileged kids or it's building a product that's making a better world. It's just so important to have that purpose. When you have that purpose, you have more fuel. It correlates with longevity, which is really interesting. Right. So you have more energy, you have more excitement about life, you feel more fulfilled. But if everyone was doing that, imagine how beautiful the world would be.

Let's break those two down. So first, growth as one of the most essential human needs. You've spoken to this rate of self evolution and how it's an important pillar for understanding to orient our life in a way where we have all these latent capacity, skill set gifts that we just would not discover unless we make space for truly growing mentally, physically, spiritually. So what is that framework for you, Rose Rose?

Rose just stands for rate of self evolution. Right. I think it's an important way of measuring how fast you're growing. And you can measure it in terms of number of books you read, the courses you attend, it doesn't matter. But as long as you're making time

for it, what is the unique difference between growing through learning and unlearning?

So unlearning is simply the act of understanding where your frameworks came from and knowing was this a reliable source? It's understanding the difference between absolute truth and relative truth. Relative truth is what you learn from religion, culture, parenting, school and media. And I can tell you this, all of us are swimming in a sea of relative truth. I live in five different countries and it's really interesting to see how different countries observe each other. Americans will be shocked at how the rest of the world observes this country, especially in the past four months with the tariff war, and so many of us live in our own little bubbles. But this relative truth limits our capacity for growth, for understanding, for improving the world. TaxAct understands you haven't memorized the tax code. That's why TaxAct has live experts to help. TaxAct can even do it for you if you prefer. It's the easiest way to know you're doing it right. Well, other than going back to college and obtaining a bachelor's degree in accounting with a minor in finance, then interning somewhere and becoming fluent in all tax forms. But that might be hard to accomplish before tax day. So maybe just stick with TaxAct. TaxAct. Let's get them over with. This episode is brought to you by Subaru. Go further in a long range Subaru Hybrid with up to 597 miles per tank in the Crosstrek Hybrid and up to 581 miles per tank in the Forester Hybrid. Subaru Love goes the extra mile. Visit subaru.com hybrid to learn more. Range based on EPA estimated combined fuel economy in a full tank of fuel. Actual mileage and range may vary.

How does that play? Now into contribution and this idea of conscious entrepreneurship or enlightened entrepreneurship, you know, a lot of us feel the call and we discover a unique purpose and way we want to contribute to the world. And then it's a question of how can I scale this in a way that both nourishes self and allows me to amplify that contribution towards others?

So your purpose and your business, stop trying to mix them. Professor Scott Galloway I was just listening to a lecture of his and he said something really interesting. He said, we invite all of these speakers to come and teach at our universities and they always leave the audience with a stupid piece of advice. Find your purpose. He goes, no, no, finding your purpose isn't going to make you money. You want to make money, do unsexy jobs. Go into, you know, transportation, go into sewage, go into retail. The jobs that are unsexy have the highest profit margins. The sexy jobs, nightclubs, personal growth, teaching, music creation, lowest profit margins unless you're in the 1%. If you're not in the 1%, be realistic about it. Get out. Go get an unsexy job. You can do an unsexy job and then on the side, have a purpose. So I know a guy who makes a ton of money. He has a factory that makes noodles. Literally, like noodles makes tons of money. What's his purpose? He built a church and he feeds the homeless, two different things, right? The church isn't his job. Feeding the homeless isn't his job. That's just something he does for purpose. The noodles, that's his job. Let's stop trying to collapse the two.

For many of us, I think we simply can't live life unless we combine the two. Like for me, for example, I don't know how to divorce what I do and my purpose. Like, there's only one option for me in terms of my vision for what I want to create in the world. And I know similarly for you, you're

probably in the 1%. Your podcast is probably in the 1%.

Yeah, no, I mean, it is, and likewise with Mindvalley. But I think. I don't think, obviously one shoe can fit all for sure in this. And there's a lot of people who are going to work maybe an unsexy job, like you mentioned, and have their way to more directly contribute to the planet in a different way. But for those that do feel the call to combine them and have the sort of audacious ambition to combine them and, and see the vision for themselves succeeding in that 1%, what have you learned of what it really takes because you spoke to earlier, this discovering of love for what you do and then combining with purpose, growth and contribution. Why do those that make it into the 1% of combining their purpose and contribution make it while others don't?

Well, if I can be really honest, a lot of it is luck. It's luck. There was a study done by, I believe his name is John Goss. He ran a company in Silicon Valley called idealabs. And look at all of these startups in Silicon Valley and what contributed to their success. Employees 13% investors 17% timing 40% luck. Now you're listening to your intuition. You probably are going to be better at getting that luck right, because timing is so unpredictable, algorithms aren't going to figure it out. But sometimes that intuition can guide you. Just like the intuition, my intuition, that voice saying, pay attention to the road. Perfect timing for me to avoid a collision. So that's how I'd answer that.

Okay, let's finish with soulpack. So we got P. Now, what's A?

A is abundance. Okay? So the thing people got to understand is as work dematerializes, okay, what used to take you five days, you're soon going to be able to do in one day. That's going to happen before the end of this year with agentic AI. So what you take five days, you can now do in one day. So if you want to keep yourself busy, you don't need to. But let's say you still want to work a decent 30 to 35 hour week. You could have business one, okay, that's the boring money maker business two on Tuesdays, that's the purpose business three on Wednesdays, not purpose, not money, just something you love. Thursdays could be for opportunity. Fridays, you could focus on something else or just not do anything and embrace that. That's where we're going. So that brings us to a abundance, right? Abundance is this. So, you know, I remember when I was first starting out, I was in Malaysia and I go to the KLCC Mall. Back then it was one of the biggest malls in the world. This is before Dubai Mall was built with the twin towers, tallest buildings in the world. The mall is filled with the most luxurious stores. And I go into the store called Zegna. So I go there and I'm just browsing and I'm a kid, I'm maybe 28 something. And the shopkeeper comes to me and I'm dressed really plain. And she goes in a Malaysian accent, I'm Malaysian, so I can do this accent. She goes, excuse me, sir, this door not for you because you cannot buy anything here. Everything here very expensive. And I was pissed. I was pissed. I walked straight out, straight out of that store. Now, flash forward over a decade later. The little. So back then, I was just teaching meditation. Pathetic money. All of a sudden, the day my company did over 100 million in one year. Okay, I decide now at that point, I'm living in Dubai. I decided I'm going to go to Dubai Mall, I'm going to go to Zenya and I'm going to pick up something. Because that shopkeeper, her words were still in my head. So I go to Zegna and I see the most amazing white sweater. And I try it on. And my God, that sweater was so. It looks so good on my body. It felt so amazing as I'm gonna pay for it. I look at the price tag, a thousand bucks, and I'm thinking, what the f is this made from, like unicorn fur? I am not paying a thousand bucks for a sweater when I can buy something that's 95% as good for a hundred bucks from H and M. So I don't buy the sweater. I walk straight out of that zinnia store. But I realized something that day. I was limiting my abundance with that attitude. See, about a year later, I was talking to Marie Diamond. She's a spiritual teacher. One of the teachers In Mindvalley. And Marie explained it to me. She said abundance is an energy flow, okay? And for abundance to come to you, you gotta give abundance. This is why Muslim people believe in Zakat. When they give money, more money comes to them. When you spend money, more money comes to you. I'm not saying spend everything, I mean definitely like have savings, like invest. But you got to keep money flowing. That's abundance. And to keep money flowing, what Marie told me is she said vishen, you're too comfortable. Expand your desire. So at that point I had a beautiful apartment. I loved my apartment. There was nothing else I needed but income wise I was not growing. She said, I want you buy a new apartment. I want you to then. And then she looked at my watch. I was wearing a $200 watch from, I hate to say it, from a duty free store in Istanbul airport. She said, vishen, I need you to go. So I met her in the south of France near Nice. And she said, I need you to go to Monaco. There's a Cartier store there. Buy a watch, it cannot be less than $5,000. So I bought this Cartier, this is six grand. Then she said, show me your wallet. I show her my wallet, she's like what the hell are you doing? You're disrespecting money. Go and buy a proper wallet. Right next to the Cartier store there is Giorgio Armani store. So I buy an Armani wallet. Marie made me do all of that and she said vishen, spend. So I decide now I go and I buy an apartment in Dubai. A multimillion dollar apartment. Then I go and I buy. This was a dumb one, but I bought a plane, right? For short air travel in Europe. Ended up selling that for a loss. Stupid idea. Don't buy planes. Bought another apartment. Massively luxurious, apart. One of the most glorious buildings in the world. And as I did that, guess what happened? Andre Co. Started doing better and better and better. More and more and more money flew to me. My royalty rates from book sales and teachings went up. Profits from the company channel back to me. My stock portfolio exploded. Even the company, the property I bought grew 40% in valuation in just 24 months. Money and abundance are a cycle now. The mistake people make is because of culture. I grew up in immigrant culture. Immigrant cultures say save, save, save. Bad times are going to happen. Save, save, save. That may have been okay, okay in the 1950s and 60s. Still have some money in case things go wrong. Don't be living in debt but have goals for what you want. The beautiful house, the good clothing, the latest iPhone, the nice car. When you have those goals, you're basically telling the universe, this is what I desire. And you're giving the universe space to expand your ideas, space to expand your business. You're allowing your intuition to channel through you. Because you know one funny thing about intuition? Intuition needs a direction. It's often not just random. When you set a goal, I want to earn this much, the ideas come to you through intuition. To get you to that goal, you got to give your mind a compass direction. That's why setting goals for abundance are important. But note, it's not just abundance. Many people make this mistake. They're just all about the possessions. And so they run out of time. They lack passion. They don't do what they love. They don't have a simple business. They don't have opportunity. They are tied to their job. Their job has become a golden handcuff. Don't do that. That's why soulpack is eight things and abundance is only number six right now.

It's fascinating because I've spoken to many, I guess affluent, abundant individuals, and there's many different perspectives on our relationship to money, to material possessions. I think that it's important to have our external reality and the things that we wear and the places that we live as best as we can to be a reflection of the abundance in which we want to call more of in. And at the same time, what we lack in resources, we make up for in resourcefulness. While I agree with you on the notion of investing in things that make you feel abundant and that there's reciprocity and you're not hoarding money, you know, and you let it flow and you invest into things that you believe in and, you know, you can buy nice things and not feel shameful about it. And at the same time, I think there is the mindful consumerism piece as well, because it can be very easy to slip into being possessed by your possessions.

Very true.

So, yeah, it's a good balance. So what are the last two?

Calmness. Is the C P A C T. So purpose, Abundance. Calmness. Make time for calmness. Every given day, you got to give your body at least an hour for meditation, massage therapy. People are starting to become aware of this. This is why longevity centers have become a really hot business. They're booming all around the world. I mean, I'm visiting LA right now. I booked an Airbnb right next to a longevity center because it's so easy for me to go there and be in an oxygen chamber or do red light therapy. Just let my body be calm. That's so important. One thing I like about you, Andre, is before we did this interview, you put me on that massage chair for five minutes, that vibrating massage chair that was embracing calmness. Calmness is so important. When we can treat our bodies with respect and allow our bodies to just release tension, to self calibrate, to soothe, that's gonna fuel us for the rest of the day. So an hour of calmness, a day I believe will lead to. Even if you have an eight hour day, the old paradigm of doing things, you take an hour away for calmness, in the next seven hours, you will outdo what you would have done in eight hours. We see this. There are actually numerous meditation studies that talk about this, that prove this. Tried. I've experienced this in my life. Makes such a difference. And the T after calmness is time. Set a goal for time. And that goal looks like this. I only work X hours a week. Let's stop now. Let's stop trying to glorify hustle culture, okay? Hustle culture is a thing of the past. It doesn't apply anymore. Stop trying to glorify it. I am choosing now to build beautiful businesses that can change the world. So I have all the abundance I want, I have the purpose I want, I love what I do. But I'm choosing to do it in under 35 hours a week. And for the first time in human history, because of AI, this is now possible.

You're right. I love how invigorated you are by AI. Like it seems like it's really taking you.

Remember, I'm a meditation teacher and a computer engineer. Right. I'm a Zen geek.

It's great. I love that. And we, I think, are going to experience again one of the biggest shifts humanity has ever seen over the course of the next five years. And so. So it's hard to not be captured by all the revolutions in technology and all the changes that are coming. I do think that relationship to time, how we spend it is really important. And there is this transition of trading time in for money and this notion of hard work versus smart work. And so what is the big shift there in terms of this notion of feeling like we have to work hard in order to see a reflection of abundance in our life? The word before that you used, which is finding your sense of calm and creating at least an hour a day for you to kind of focus not on just what you're doing, but also the energy in which what is being Done. And that's also why I put you in that vibration chair beforehand. It's partly what I would want as an interviewee if someone was interviewing me, especially after a long drive or travel, allowing your state to come into a space that is going to inform all the thoughts and words and all that you're going to do in the world and in this podcast, for example. And so I think that's just an example here. But like in our own life, we can create those practices and create space for that, to align ourselves into that sense of calm and quietness within so that we can make choices that have an exponential effect and they're more of like a 10x instead of a 2x. So what comes to mind there in that transition from hard work?

Well, hard work is a ridiculously obsolete concept. It just doesn't apply in the world anymore. And you can test this for yourself. I read about this billionaire who's spending $100 million to restore his help. He got sidetracked, overworked himself, lost his help. He's now decided that he's going to help working, spending $100 million to restore his health. No matter how rich you are, if you lose your health, you will give anything to get that back. But our schooling system doesn't train us for this. What was the last longevity class you took in high school? Nothing but tons of classes on how you can be a good obedient employee. Right? And then let's look at relationships. If I was in a situation where I either never see my children again or my business completely vanishes and I have to work a regular job just to survive, but I would have my kids. I don't even have to think about it. My children are more important than my business. And so as human beings, we understand this. Our bodies are important, our relationships are important, our love is more important, our peace of mind is more important. But in society, we fail to make time for that. Work seems to expand and fill up right now 70% of our waking hours. This is what I'm trying to wake people up to. I think one of the most important things governments can do right now, and I mean right now as in this year, is mandate a four hour work week and by 2030, reduce that. Sorry, a four day work week, mandatory. It should be illegal to ask employees to work more than more than four days a week. Same pay by 20 to 30, take that down to a three day work week. By 2035, take it down to a two day work week. Work will still get done. It's Just that technology is progressing so fast, human beings are not going to be required for that work. And if we did this, I mean, if we just move to a four day work week right now, it's not easy. Like if I tried to do this with my employees, what will happen is our competitors would crush us because they're not going to do it. But if it was mandated by law, this has to be the mission of government. If it was mandated by law and everyone's doing it, think about what this would do for America. Health would go up because we have more time to focus on our health. Whether it's going to the gym or it's taking a nice long run, or it's longevity therapies. The way we raise our kids would change because moms and dads are no longer coming home, stressed they have a day, an extra day to spend time with their children. And while we're doing that, we should also reduce, potentially reduce the school week to four days a week. Why is school five days a week? Well, because, you know, adults work five days a week. This gives parents, moms and dads and their kids more time together. The next thing government should do is start investing in social spaces, parks, town squares, walkable cities so human beings can come together and connect. That's going to be really important in an age of AI, in an age where you don't have to go to an office anymore. And so this has to start happening at a governmental level. But this is inevitable. We have to do this. If we don't do this, we are going to be exacerbating what's already happening, which is massive layoffs due to AI. Most companies I know are not hiring and are laying off.

It does seem like there's a big distillation process happening in terms of a mass amount of jobs that are either currently or about to be replaced by that. But then again, every challenge has the unique polarity of the opportunity that it presents itself. And for us as human beings, that's like, okay, then what is my unique edge? In what ways can I contribute uniquely? That is not something that a robot can just do.

Exactly. Yeah.

I'm curious, as somebody who's built systems within an organization and company that scaled so large, if somebody was to eavesdrop and spy onto the internal systems and culture that's been created within what you've created, what do you think would be the most surprising observation that they would have about the systems and culture behind the scenes that really enable so much success to happen?

Yeah, well, I think if you were to look at my company, what you would see is how rapidly we leverage AI. We've been shrinking the company. We went from 400 people to now 240, and it's going to continue shrinking. When we let people go, we ensure that they have a good severance. There's also natural turnover, but I believe we'll be able to significantly increase revenues and do it with under 100 people, but a swarm of AI agents. And so we have a central AI called Aura. And Aura allows all our employees to assemble data and then work with create AI assistance that can help them with their work. And Aura is getting so powerful, work is disappearing. It's dematerializing.

I'm really excited. What do you think life's going to be like 15 years from now?

15 years from now, Ideally. Ideally, we will have a work week of two to three days a week. Governments would have wised up and they would have started investing not in roads, but in public transportation, walkable cities, town squares, city centers, places where human beings come together. Sort of like the European model, right? Where in Europe, cities frequently have these beautiful spaces for people to collide. That's going to be so important. Longevity therapies and health are going to be booming. Personal growth is going to be booming. Because with all of this extra time in your hands, what you want to do is you want to create a population that's not going to be immersed in a virtual world as much, but also emerged in the physical world. But ultimately, what's going to happen is we are going to be living in two different worlds. Fifteen years from now, the holodeck from Star Trek will be real. We'll be able to go into fully immersive virtual worlds. Vrar glasses will be like regular glasses. You'll be able to sit in a chair, put on these, like, light headsets, tactile. You'll be able to feel things, and you'll be able to be in completely virtual worlds. But there's a danger there, and that is a loss of human connection. So you want to ensure. And that's why I'm saying town squares, like physical spaces where people can bump into each other. Otherwise, what we're going to see is less dating, less connection, birth rates going down right now. The other thing that's going to happen is humanoid robot. Almost everyone is going to have a humanoid robot. Pretty much as much as popular as we see people with dogs and cats right now. You'll have. Factories will be completely robotic. So all of this thing Trump is saying about bring the jobs back to America. No, those jobs even in China. So Americans are clueless about this. Factories in China are not run by human beings anymore. I'm sure you've seen the viral videos of the new Huawei factory. It's run completely by robot. Do you know what's the poverty rate in China right now? Well, let me ask you this. What's the poverty rate in America? Extreme poverty.

What is the extreme poverty rate? I'm not sure.

About 2%. 2%. So 1 in 50Americans live in extreme poverty. You know, what's the poverty rate in China? Zero. China has virtually eliminated extreme poverty China. The reason for the Trump tariffs, some people say, is not for jobs to come back to America because no American wants those factory jobs. Even the Chinese aren't doing them anymore. Robots are doing them, is to create a robotics industry here so that people like Elon Musk and his, you know, the robots that he's creating, they can start manufacturing in America. Robots manufacturing robots. Robots manufacturing everything we need. What I think they haven't thought about is what will happen to the workers, the blue collar workers. And this is where universal basic income income has to happen. It is inevitable. It has to happen.

Some people really don't like that idea.

That's because of a bullshit American rule that you have to work hard to mean something. Absolute nonsense. That's an American thing. Which I think America has to self examine itself and pull itself out of that stupidity.

What do you think about the. I mean, this is a rabbit hole we could go down.

So you're building a future society. The most important thing is this. Okay. Even if you disagree to universal basic income, there are four things we have to do. Every child should have the right to education. Not just at the age of seven, but, you know, at the age of three, preschool. Everyone should have access to healthcare, everyone should have access to food, and everyone should have a roof. If we're not doing universal basic income, provide that for. That has to be the mission of government.

Yeah. Fulfill basic needs.

This ridiculous idea of, oh, you gotta pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Right. It is fucking insane how America treats people.

No, I agree.

And by the way, the rest of the world sees this and they realize this. They look at the data and the metrics on America.

Yeah, yeah. How do you think education in particular is gonna be revolutionized? Cause I know you've been spending the

past couple decades, every child is going to have an AI based tutorial. So here's how education is going to work. Firstly, early brain entrainment training. So I investigated when my son was born, I went and I investigated facilities around the world where they were training kids to develop superior cognitive skills. Institutions such as the Dohmen Institute. So the Dohmen Institute, they started working with kids who had brain damage. Like literally kids who were born with half their brain destroyed. They were able to get these kids back to normal functioning with half the brain matter. That's how incredible the human brain is. Before the age of six. Now when they started doing it with regular kids and I went to visit and this was wild. When they started doing the same form of training with regular kids, these kids developed genius abilities. I met kids who could do complex math calculations in their head with no calculator. I met kids who could quote Shakespeare. I met a five year old who was reading the book Shogun. I asked him, well, you know that book Shogun has some adult parts. What do you do? He goes oh, when I come to an adult part I just turned the page and I skipped it. It was really cute. So I took some of those methodologies. I applied it on my son. We didn't do it as vigorously as Dohmen, but my son, he scores off the charts. He speaks seven languages right now. His schoolteacher calls him a mathematical genius.

How old is he?

Well, at the age of 16 he scored in the top 0.25% of his SATs. I did it in year one.

It's a lot of languages.

30 minutes. Year one, year one using Flipkarts domain method. This is going to become more and more prevalent. So human beings are going to become smarter. Now the next thing that's happening is within 15 years we will have brain to AI interfaces super tiny, attached to your head and they will allow you to control the AI around your room.

How long will you wait before you personally get that implanted?

It's going to be. It's not an implant, it's a tiny prick. Tiny prick. You don't even feel it. And it's the size of a human hair. It's literally like a hair.

What do you think about the potential loss of human faculties in the sense of if you don't use it, you lose it?

Not going to happen.

In what regard? It's not going to happen.

It's not going to happen because what's going to happen is rather than simply use our eyes and our hands to interact with AI, the user interface is going to be different. I've already been 40 years of Zen where they use biofeedback 12 point hats around your head. That train your brain to improve its efficiency and function like the brain of a Zen Roshi monk. Our brain does not differentiate between the 12 points electrodes on my head and my actual hands. It's using those 12 points to self regulate itself and then influence computers. This is a unique feature about the human brain. It's crazy. Now all that's going to happen is the brain computer interface is going to empower our brain to work in new ways. We will have something called ambient AI. Your computer is not on your desk. Your computer is the room. That room. Using sensors, using video will not only help you self regulate. So for example, you might hear a voice saying, andrej, I notice that based on the slight flush on the skin on your cheeks, your heart rate has gone up. Would you like me to power up the massage chair for you? Okay. So what happens is ambient AI is watching us, with our permission, taking care of us. And when you need to get something done, not a computer, you can be sitting out, having a cup of coffee. You just speak it into existence and the AI creates it. This is becoming faster and faster and faster. Three weeks ago, I spent 15 hours with a tool called Replit. I've forgotten how to code because I graduated computer engineering school 25 years ago. But I built in just 15 hours on Replit, an insanely advanced app to function as my medical doctor. Because I was tired of dealing with human doctors. Right. And so this is the world we are going into. You will speak things into existence. Work is going to disappear.

What do you think is the end goal of the age of AI? Do you feel like the singularity is very much so upon us?

Yeah.

You do?

I don't think the age of AI has an end goal, but we human beings need to. What we need to start looking at is how to reorganize Earth civilization to be more functional. Now we are making good progress. We don't see this in the news. Can you guess the number of people in the world right now that are living in poverty? It's 9%. It's 9%. Right. But most people assume it's 40%.

And what degree of poverty would you say?

Like extreme poverty, under $2 a day. Okay, it's 9%.

Got it.

Right. Poverty, it used to be 40% just 25 years ago.

It's like over 700 million people.

Exactly.

That's a lot.

Exactly. So our world is getting better and better, faster. Populations are also. The population crisis isn't going to happen. We're about to plateau in terms of population. So that's a good thing, but what we got to be.

Some people say it's a really bad thing, but it's controversial. We'll sidebar that.

But what we got to be paying attention to is the quality of our world, the quality of our water, the quality of nature. So one of the things that's pretty unfortunate right now is 90% of all biomass in the world is biomass to feed human beings. So if you look at all the animals, all the animals, all the plants in the world, 90% of it is stuff for us to consume. 10% of it is that it's just plants existing. Right. And so, sorry, I'm talking about animals here, not plants, animals, biomass. And that's an unfortunate thing. We have to start creating more beautiful wild spaces where we can go and be one with nature again. So we need to start looking at re engineering the world. Now, part of this also means re engineering countries. We have to start breaking down borders. And this means countries have to stop worrying, populations have to stop worrying about things such as illegal immigration. Do you know what percentage of the world actually lives in a country outside they were born in? 3%. It's nothing. And that's including nations like the EU, right? We don't have a world where people are just flooding across borders. We don't have a world of poor people that are producing more kids than what Westerners think is necessary. A lot of that is myth created by politicians to create fear because fear keeps them in power. What we need to start looking at is a world with regionals, regions like the un, America, Canada and Mexico, remove the borders, have trade treaties, sort of like how the EU functions. That will actually increase wealth, GDP diversity, food quality for everyone. Now, I'm not talking about one world. That would be dangerous. You don't want one leader of one world. You know, that's like Palpatine from Star Wars. But what we should be looking at is regional unions. An African union, a Southeast Asian union, an East Asia union, a South Asian union, a North American union, South American union that will allow a world where there's greater equality, where there is greater diversity, there's more peace. And it will prevent. It will allow us to make better choices for our children. When you want your spring break to feel like. And your kids pool day to feel like. And your hotel bed to feed. Ooh. And room service to feel like. Because at Hilton, hospitality feels like your cabana's ready. Would you like fresh towels? It matters where you stay. Book now@hilton.com Hilton for this day. Does it Ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void? But with LinkedIn ads, you can know you're reaching the right decision making a network of 130 million of them. In fact, you can even target buyers by job title, industry, company seniority, skills and. Did I say job title? See how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Get started at LinkedIn.com campaign terms and conditions apply.

It's really exciting to see what's going to unravel over the next 10 years. I just think it's got to be one of the greatest times to be alive. What we're seeing, the birth of. I want to bring this down to more of the individual because we've been a little bit more on the macro side of things. Is that cool?

Absolutely.

So you've been working with over the past decade, some of the most incredible teachers in the personal development, spiritual space. You've been able to bring them on your platform, have them speak at events, build courses and connect with them, become friends with them and learn from them. What has that revealed to you about what human genius is like? When you work with people who are at the top of their field and have really discovered their unique edge to the top degree in terms of what they're here to do to support the planet, what really makes it, if anything,

it's made me understand that being human is so much more complex than what we think it is. Because I have brilliant engineers, teachers, Keith Farazi, people like Steven Kotler, incredible left brain people. Right? They are the ones who you read business books about. They lecture at Singularity university in abundance, 360amazing folks. But I also meet teachers who work with intuition and they have a different type of intelligence, intuitive intelligence. They just know things. And this is incredible, they just know things. And then I meet people who are relational and they feel things in a different way. They are so acute at looking at you and knowing how you're doing and being able to intervene to soothe you, to help you feel better. And they teach other people these skills. And then I meet people who are extremely aware of the body's energy. People like Jeffrey Allen, not some of them can see energy, so they know if you have an illness because they can literally see an energy pattern, but they can also, or Lee Holden, the qigong master, work with energy and then move that energy over your body and you feel it. And then I meet People who have body kinesthetic intelligence, people like Ben Greenfield, who was one of American Fitness Trainer of the Year at one point. Guys who can run extreme ultramarathons and their bodies are just like world class machines. And you start to understand that being human is so much more diverse than what we think it is.

There's a few incredible books around, multiple intelligences and Frames of Mind, I believe by Gardner, who talks just about how we have primarily these eight different categories of kinesthetic intelligence to musical intelligence, to logical mathematical intelligence.

But she misses out intuitive intelligence and energy intelligence. Intuitive intelligence is the ability to tap into source energy. Intelligence is the ability to feel energy and work with that energy. It's what qigong masters have.

What would be interesting is to examine how all those forms of intelligence, for example musical, logical, mathematical, kinesthetic, they all have intuitive aspects of them. And when you go deeper into any field, you can see how your connection to source, if you will, your intuitive capacities help amplify. You become one of one unique. Discover that unique edge in that field. I think musicians are really known for getting quiet in a space and they have these melodies, melodic tendencies come to them, or certain rhythms that end up being world hits. You work with energy healers, body workers that have this sort of intelligence about them and how they navigate your body, or the intelligence of that great physicists and mathematicians have gone into this space as well, like Albert Einstein and Newton and so many great thinkers of the past and have leveraged that too. So I think of that as a sort of positioning and way to amplify any of those intelligence.

Yeah, yeah, I think you're absolutely right there.

I think one other thing that's important to talk about with you because you've been a big orchestrator of communities. And I think in a time where there is sort of this perceived split happening of like this virtual world that we're getting more and more immersed in, it runs the tendency or the capacity for us to lose the physical connections and how important that is for not only our health, but so many aspects of life. And so what is the importance and power of community in your eyes?

I think community is what really makes us human. Human beings are like ants. We function best when we are within a group. We collaborate, we love, we connect. This is why so many studies show that loneliness is so bad and damaging for our health and our happiness. And I mean, just aside, some of the studies harvest loneliness is worse for you than smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Another study by Gallup showed that if you work in a company and you have a best friend in that company, meaning deep human connection. Your engagement at your job is up 7,000%. And then of course there are all of the studies on love that show when you have someone you love, life is just so much better, your health is better, married people live longer, happiness levels are better. There are studies that show that people who go to church or mosque or temple because they come together as a community just have higher levels of happiness. And so we are built, we are built as a species to be collaborative. And what we got to pay attention to is in a world of remote work, in a world of AI, in a world of virtual reality, we cannot lose that.

We all have our unique gifts and how we want to contribute to the world. And some people have a great gift of being a bridge for other people to creating containers and spaces for people to meet who have like minds, similar interests and aligned values and whatnot. Yeah. I'm curious how you see your role in the next decade too in the evolution of mindvalley. I know you talked about the internal changes within the team and everything as AI grows, but what is your unique contribution you feel in the next 10 years?

Well, what I'm trying to do is based on my understanding of futurism and where technologies are converging and my understanding of the human mind and society. What I'm trying to do is do my part to help human beings take the right action so that we truly build a world that's great for our health, our hearts, our emotions, primarily our children. We're not doing that right now. And so countries need to operate in a different way. Companies need to change the way they work with employees. Governments, regional, national, they need to start thinking differently. The problem is so much of the world is trapped in all paradigms. The voting public need to be smarter at who they are voting for. I see my job as helping spread awareness of how we can make the right choices towards building a better world.

One aspect of that, because I love that beautiful noble mission of yours and one thing, because we're in a similar space in terms of the industry and the people that we work with and are connected to. There is this amazing thing that happens when an entrepreneur creates a platform for scaling mindfulness and understanding and insights for well being. How that becomes a touch point for so many people to discover the tools and knowledge for their own personal path of self actualization and healing. And all so beautiful and important where we can run the risk, I suppose, of this sort of notion of commodified Spirituality where consumerism captures spirituality for its benefit. There's obviously there's a light and there's a shadow for all of this. But what are your thoughts on the potential pitfall of this commodified spirituality that can become pretty solipsistic and all about self and how do you plan to guard against that?

So spirituality itself as a word is really hard to define. Right? People define it differently. What we want to avoid is spirituality that takes away your human ability to make your own choices, make your own decisions, and live life your way. And a lot of spirituality right now put you in boxes. Follow these rules, follow this dogma. These are the commandments. These are your people. Don't betray your people. Don't love other people outside that box. That's what we have to clear up. So true spirituality is one thing. It's unity. It's not unity with just people with your skin color or unity with people who follow your rulebook, or unity with people within your border. It is unity, period. Unity with all human beings and all life. True spirituality has no borders. Ken Wilber, the philosopher, says that's moving from ethnocentrism to world centrism to cosmocentrism. Cosmocentrism is where we want to be. This is where we see unity with the entire world. If you're making decisions based on concepts like country or tribe or religious groups, you're already obsolete. You're living in an outdated modality of the world. There's one thing we have to be headed for as human beings right now, and that is global unity. I don't give a fuck about any single country. The only flag I would wear on my chest is the Earth flag. And by the way, that does exist. This is why I have multiple residencies in multiple countries. I love all of them, but I would never, ever, ever identify as a person of one single nation. Earth first, unity first. That needs to be the aim of true spirituality. Anything that tells you otherwise is limiting you.

What do you think is going to be the process of religions dismantling coming to a sort of.

Religions are going to merge. Merge, yeah.

That's quite an obvious.

Religions are going to merge in what way? It's already doing it.

You mean like dissolve?

They're going to dissolve. They're going to have porous borders. Borders need to become porous. When we talk about things like tariffs, we are hardening borders. Everyone suffers. It puts us in an us versus them mentality. It's backward thinking, dumb ideas. Same thing happens to religions when we Say, oh, you know, you need to remarry someone with this particular fate. Or our laws are better than their laws. Look at what's happening in the Middle east right now with Israel and Palestine. I mean, that whole war, those tens of thousands of people dead, those thousands of people kidnapped, murdered. All of that happened because people had different definitions of God. What I believe God really wants, what spirituality really wants, is for us to stop having allegiance to our spiritual books. That is artificial. It's outdated. That. Start having allegiance to Earth and the human race. That's world centrism. We move there, we build a better world.

Yeah. And it can get quite idealistic unless you understand the process of human development and the human developmental journey. And also how it can be quite a messy process as a birth of a new way of being is born. You know, just like the birth of any new being is born is quite messy. And in that transition from ethnocentrism to world centrism to cosmic centrism, the answer's very simple.

Stop raising your kids with your religion. What makes you think your religion is the one? My children get to choose their own religion.

The reason there is because people believe religions to be true. That's why they're a believer of that particular religion. And so. So I do think religion is beautiful.

I love. There are so many practices right now from different religions, which I'm mixing. I'm mixing Kabbalah with aspects from Islam, aspects from Hinduism, Christianity. I've been indoctrinated in different religions. I'm exploring Buddhism right now, but that's the way it should be. Would you want to eat one food for the rest of your life? But the biggest thing, okay, if you ask me, how do I know when I'm moving up the ladder of spirituality? You stop telling your kids that you are Muslim or you are Jewish or you are Hindu or you are Christian. You stop that. You let your child grow up to decide for themselves. Teach them goodness, teach them humility, teach them kindness, teach them unity, but don't teach them that this book is the one and everything else is not good.

I think it's St. Francis of Assisi who talks to, says that, quote, paraphrasing, preach everywhere you go, and when necessary, use words right meaning. Make your life a living expression of that to which you believe to be true. And if that is certain qualities and values of emanations of Christ, consciousness, of love, of unity, then by your actions, like you should be known for that. I'm curious about your own thoughts around. And this is Kind of my last question and thought for you around all this is the nature of ego and how you relate to it and this idealized notion of egolessness, but also leveraging ego mindfully as you're building the way that you are in the world. How do you come to relate and think about ego?

So ego is your mind attached to a singular identity and stubborn towards any movement that might allow expansion. So ego might say, listen, I'm a lawyer. I work so hard for this. I have my law practice, and you're telling me that I should now cut down my working hours to 20 to 25 hours a week? Why would I do that? Ego is this. Ego is bad when it causes a fear of you losing identity. But to really be an advanced human being, you got to be fluid. You got to be open. You got to be willing to dump what doesn't serve you. You got to be willing to question yourself, identify your own rules, understand your beliefs about the world, whether these beliefs are relative truth or absolute truth. Constantly upgrade, upgrade, upgrade. Ego locks you down. And so when we talk about dismantling the ego, that's what we're really talking about. The ego isn't bad. Ego is part of your identity. But ego has to be fluid. Ego can't slam the door. Ego has to occasionally open the door for new ideas.

Yeah. Just like a flexible body is less prone to injury, so our minds, as they stay flexible, are with life. What does it mean for you to know thyself?

To know thyself means to fully understand what makes you you. And that means being aware of your trauma, your pain, being aware of what you experience as a child and the meanings you made about it. And by being aware of that, we give ourselves permission to grow out of it, to expand in different ways. To know thyself is to expand thyself.

This was a great convo, man.

Thank you.

I enjoyed it. Thank you so much, man. You got this event next week. I'm excited for you. I think I'll come pop by.

That'll be amazing. I'd love to see you there.

And, yeah, many more adventures to come, man. I appreciate you. Any last words you have for the audience or anything before we close out.

I think we're good.

I think we're good. All right, everyone, thanks for tuning into this episode of the Knowly Self podcast. Until next time, be well.

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