so um can you tell us a little bit more about about I don't know what you spend your time doing I don't support succinctly I spend myself I spend my time trying to find the truth about the things that truly matter in the lives of human beings [Music] and so is can you put that truth into words essentially the truth is um something which can no longer be in this in indivisible or broken down any further that it is the bedrock foundation behind why something is happening or what the source of a particular problem is or where you know where where things essentially arise from as opposed to trying to make them better or to fix them to discover their source and in discovering the source allowing things to become perfect of their own accord that's beautiful and so how do you help CEOs and the other people you work with find this truth that you're talking about well essentially it's most of it is unlearning and deconditioning um as human beings you know we've been

exposed to a litany and a barrage of prescriptions and information of various types, and that information and prescriptions and perspectives and the way to be and how to look at things, um, all have had an effect upon us in that they have shaped who we have become and how we see the world. And fundamentally, most, if not all of it, is completely false. It has no basis in reality; it only has a basis in tradition and in status quo and knowledge that has been passed along from one person to another. And the person who was the originator of that information largely didn't do it because of truth; it just sounded right. And so, human beings have a tendency and a habit to like things that sound nice, and this, the sounding nice of it, becomes their litmus test as to whether it is something to pursue. And so, humans tend to be very cosmetic creatures, and the more societal you become, the more cosmetic you become. And so, you view things from the top of the head.

and whatever comes to mind first and according to what you've heard all along and whatever the books in the magazine say and and it really is never about a true genuine journey to discover what really is the case as opposed to what you would like the case to be or what you've been told that it is is our inability to go deep is that in natural human instinct or is that something that we have been conditioned to do. It's been conditioned. Yeah. Yeah. It isn't in it. It isn't an inability. It is. It is just a conditioning to become to having become so attracted to what has been given to us and and so cemented in that world that uh it's because it's alternative has never ever been proposed um there never has been any reason to look elsewhere and so you talk a lot about once you kind of discover that your life might not be going in the way you want it. A lot of people have the tendency to go the opposite way but it just kind of falls into the same pattern. It's just the

desire for the opposite. Can you talk more about that? Yeah, the whatever. It is very difficult to talk to people, and the reason for that is that if I say that x is not the way, I have to at light speed finish that sentence before they at light speed jump to the opposite. And so if x is not the way, the natural instinct is to say, Well, so then, so you're saying y is the way? No, I didn't say that x is not the way, and y is never the way. As I often say, it's never zero, and it's never ten, and it absolutely is never five. You know, it's always like 2.63798. And you can prescribe zero, and you can prescribe ten, and you can prescribe five, but you can't prescribe 2.67398. And this is what my teacher talks a lot about, is being very, very precise and accurate in exactly what we're talking about. But that accuracy and that precision is sometimes almost romantic in its

sense of being able to get to that level of accuracy and precision. Yeah, it depends on what you mean by accuracy and precision. It depends on how you are defining that. Um, I would, yeah, and that's something he tells me, so I haven't quite come to the understanding of that. So, what are some ways that you can tell if a client that you're working with or somebody you might work with isn't ready to accept the truth that you're talking about? By the questions they ask and what kind, what type of questions typically. There's always either a quiet or a not-so-quiet element of outrage. That's, yeah, and is it, and to me, I feel like I saw an example of this just a couple of days ago, working with my teacher and watching him teach someone else meditation. And the anger came up so quickly and was directed at him, but from my viewpoint, it didn't look like anything was happening, but there was so much anger and like rage coming up. Do you find that happens a lot?

or have you do you just not work with those people anymore um well, I mean, what you're describing is sort of an attempt at therapy through meditation, and you know, in my view, that doesn't go anywhere. Um, so the idea of trying to teach a human being meditation, I think, is a uh, is really unserious from both the practitioner and the person who's trying to learn it. Um, so the outrage that I'm speaking about is an outrage against the complete rejection of all the ideas that the person has grown up with. Um, and most importantly, the ideas that no one could possibly reject because they seem to be so sacred, and even when those are rejected as false, then one tends to default towards outrage, and that largely to some sense comes from either because they, something in them senses that it's true, and they're not ready to kind of buy it. Um, or they, or they look at, look at it such that, well, if that, if what you're saying is true, then I've just wasted the last 30 years of my

life, and that's a very, very difficult thing to accept. And the fact is that what I just said basically applies to us all. We have wasted our lives, and we continue to waste our lives in the most egregious way. And so how can I, listening to that, understand how to not waste my life anymore? Well, first of all, you have mentioned a few times that you're seeing a meditation instructor or a teacher. Yeah, you're, uh, I mean, we're talking truth, right? So I don't hold anything back. If you want the truth, I'll speak the truth. Um, you're wasting your life talking to a meditation instructor, and he's wasting his life trying to teach someone meditation. Because meditation, it's kind of, you know, yeah, it might lower your blood pressure, it might make you feel a little better, and, you know, give you some ease throughout the day, but that isn't for the serious. I mean, those who are truly serious do not devote themselves to meditation instructors. In fact, that isn't part of the equation at all.

and would you include also coach in therapy, anything one-on-one, or I mean obviously not because you do one-on-one work. Well, no, no. I mean I will hold myself to the same standard. I mean I don't protect myself. So my answer, my honest answer to your question is yes. I absolutely include all therapy, all one-on-one, all you know such coaching. I so you know it. You know do I do I do that. I do but you know I don't know what to say. There are some things that you just can't explain. You know I don't know what it is that I do. I don't. I don't have a brochure or a pamphlet right because it will be blank. I wouldn't know what to say. I don't even remember what I say to people right. I have no briefcase. I have I have no plan. I have no idea what I'm going to say. I have you know so so I don't. I don't know what it is that I do but but in a fundamental sense

yes, I do work one-on-one with people, um, but I, I, it's not, it isn't, it isn't in that way. It isn't to try to fix someone. It is extraordinarily difficult to explain something that I myself don't even understand. All I know is that it's like speaking in tongues. It just comes, and the, you know, the, the, the cause arises, and the effect, you know, follows, and that's all I can say, um, very cool. And so then, what is the importance of silence in what you're talking about? That seems like a leading question. You know, you, you, that question, that question sort of, you know, takes silence and uses it as a presupposed prescription and kind of wedges it into the end of the sentence, uh, to, to make it, you know, to make it sound as if it's necessary. And, and anything that arises by way of prescription, no matter how, uh, truthful it may be in the very, in the very moment that it becomes prescribed, loses all its teeth, and it loses all its value.

do any of your clients ever ask for prescriptions? Absolutely, yeah. It takes many years for them to decondition themselves away from that, and that is natural because how could it be otherwise? If that's all that you've known, it would be impractical to assume that that wouldn't be the lens that you look at it for some appreciable amount of time, even after we begin working together. What is the biggest challenge that you face or that you see other people face in this addiction to prescriptions? Coming to the realization that prescriptions lead only to prescriptions and never lead to any permanence or any form of arrival. How did you get into this? How did you find yourself doing what you're doing? I guess it's something that if I look back retrospectively, it's always been with me since I was small. I never considered that this would sort of become something that I do in any professional basis, but I guess it's something that I've always done, and I

you know began saying a few things to people over the years, and you know they'd come back and say, Well, something has totally changed in my life, and you know, no one was more surprised than I was because I don't even know what I said. And then I began, you know, doing it in sports and in professional sports, and um, it happened very, very organically. And where you have md in your handle, are you a medical doctor? Yes, okay. And so did it arise out of that medical doctor practice? Did you? No, that's completely divorced from this. I practiced medicine for a number of years, and um, it just sort of, uh, this sort of took on a life of its own, and uh, and so it, you know, the calls from various clients and travel and, and just a general, just a true calling for it, uh, became overwhelming, not only from a time standpoint, but also from a sensibility standpoint and authenticity standpoint. And so it was the

It was inevitable that this was going to be the way. [Music] What has been the biggest change that you've seen in a client? You know, all kinds of changes happen, none of which I really, you know, try to predict, um, because I don't know when they will happen, if they will happen, or what happens, um, you know, uh, but typically there's usually a quite consistent, uh, and quite transformative amount of peace that happens within a human being's life. And there's no way that I can put my finger on what I said or did to help make that happen. And quite honestly, it isn't even really me; it kind of happens through me. But I do know this: I do know this, that one drop of truth is nepal. Um, it's a hydrogen bomb, and it has the power to transform a human being absolutely and completely without his consent, simply upon contact. This is what I learned. I have a lot of fear that's been coming up recently, and I think it has a lot to do

with what you just said about this kind of uncontrolled aspect of this process or whatever is happening. How do you deal with fear? Do you experience fear? Yeah, occasionally. Occasionally. Um, you know, what is it that drives what you do for you? Well, so yeah, what I do. Um, there is an element of truth there. So I am inspired by the truth. Um, I love talking to people. I love getting access to their wisdom and then letting it kind of inform what's going on in my own life. Uh, I'm not really sure what I do yet. Um, uh, I love to do massage therapy. So I love giving massages. I love interviewing people. So I'm not quite sure. And so what is your biggest chase? Um, first thing that comes to mind is maybe like dopamine at the moment, kind of excitement. Tradition, traditionally excitement has been a big motivator and adventure, but as I get older, those things are not

serving the same fulfilling purpose. [Music] I understand. So is this why you like to have topics beforehand? So that's actually interesting because most of the time other people have asked me for topics and I and also I anticipated that other people would want topics so I created topics and then people started asking for them and so you're the first person who said no I don't want any topics. And once I saw that as an option I realized okay that's I've been going more and more towards moving towards not really having a theme just about stress and creativity but about whatever comes up in the moment. So um yeah you ask why why why I have topics um yeah I'm not sure why is truth so important to you as opposed to living in a delusion or I mean that's obvious once I say it but but exactly that's what I wanted you to say. I wanted you to be able to answer that for yourself. There is nothing else. Why would someone want to live in lies?

yeah, the only reason that you would live in lies is if you believe that the lies were truth. But then, most people on this planet are living in lies. Absolutely, if lies are all you hear, then why is it so rare? So once, uh, here's a good question: is it possible to make a living telling the truth? Again, I guess I just answered it because you're doing it. Um, is it possible to make a living being authentic or telling people the truth? Is it satisfying making a living telling lies? Ultimately, no. But I think some people will get that temporary satisfaction from it. Why don't I think everyone's looking for permanent satisfaction? It is just that they try to string together temporary satisfactions in hopes that they will be able to patchwork them into permanence. And then, once they realize that's not possible, then they open up the truth. I don't think that they really ever come to that point of realizing it's not possible. Very few. So, the part of me wants to ask what so

What's the point then of so if if very few people ever access the truth you just you do it because it's like there's something innate inside you that wants to yes yeah yes yes yes I have no choice and I don't think that people are as desirous of being divorced from the truth um you know if if you for instance felt like if you were chasing success and you thought that success came from hard work um and someone came along to you and revealed to you and you were the sort of human being who was sensitive and open to truth which is a big prerequisite um and someone said well the path that you're walking isn't really yet if you walk this path over here this is how things happen and here's the evidence for it I think that anyone who has any any fairly significant degree of openness and desire to become successful would actually be would actually very naturally embrace that so so the truth isn't some ethereal spiritual uh abstract thing I mean it is it is hard rock practicality

about the very, very day-to-day things that human beings seek, such as success, such as peace, such as freedom, such as having no conflict. Uh, all of these things, the things that are so... This is it. It is not that once one settles those things, then he searches for truth. Actually, each of those things has a truth, and the very reason that they have not been found is because one has not searched for the truth. Why don't people search for the truth? Well, because the only loudspeaker they hear is the loudspeaker of society and the mental models in nonsense like that, and the pseudo-intellectuals and the spirituality books and the power of now, right? And go and meditate and do mindfulness and chant and go to the wisdom 2.0 conference, right? And wear a lanyard and say... I mean, there is enough there to last a human being 50 lifetimes. So, when is he gonna have the time to exhaust all those things?

and find out that none of them work. They are all disingenuous. They all have no basis in any concrete reality, which results in any form of a permanent transformation. One has to either see the pattern after having experienced five or six of those things and realize that after one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, after the number four, one repeats, or they will have to go through all 7422 over 50 lifetimes before they realize that it doesn't work. [Music] What you're talking about, I recognize it intellectually, but I don't have an experiential understanding of it. But I do. No, you don't. You don't have to have an experiential understanding of anything except for that which you've already experienced. And so, the things that you have experienced, that you yourself have experienced on a repeated basis, have they resulted in an arrival? Have they resulted in a permanent transformation? I know. No. Okay, so you don't need anything besides that.

knowing where it isn't is far more instructive and practical and immediate and acute and powerful than knowing where it is. When did you figure that out? Is there a moment? That's a good question. I don't know when I figured that out, but I will confess something which may actually help to explain why, perhaps to some degree, why such a path has become so appealing to me, is that I've never walked the way of the masses, to a fault. That's just by nature, that wasn't by design, that's just naturally whatever everyone else did, I did the opposite. I never was a crowd or a group individual. To me, that was the antichrist, to follow a group. If you know, it was, I've always been that way. And so, it helps to be that way in that if your DNA already, for whatever reason, happens to move in such a way

you are more likely to stumble upon something unique because where you will be looking will not be in the town center. How many of your clients have gotten to that to the point where they get that permanent transformation? You know, the only way you can address permanence is to watch them till the end of their life, right? So, but uh, but I mean there's been quite significant transformations. I mean, I don't, you know, I don't, I don't know how much it really matters talking about clients. The most important part of a client is his degree of sincerity, his degree of seriousness. And seriousness is a very rare thing. But the individuals who have seriousness, who have true genuine sincerity, um, those people have a wonderful opportunity. They have a great, they are, they are blessed with a magical wand because without that, there's little to no possibility. Can seriousness be cultivated or taught? Absolutely. In fact, what matures over time is sincerity and seriousness in a person who has a natural bent in that direction. And this isn't seriousness.

as the opposite of levity or the opposite of being no no this is seriousness seriousness and sincerity by that I mean um a true genuine and authentic desire to attain or to arrive yeah for me I have so much fear that comes up about that final and permanent transformation uh because I've read all these books about uh enlightenment and awakening uh and they all describe it in various different ways but some of which seem quite frightening yeah I think that's I think it's irrelevant what enlightenment is I think that it's far more relevant to see truth as your feet touch the ground and so in your daily life the things that you do in whatever it is that you are genuinely pursuing the things that attract you in your life be it your profession or relationships or whatever it is um that is your enlightenment devote yourself to looking into and to teasing apart the the strands of those pursuits to see where are the lies and the disingenuous disingenuousness and the the untruths

and the unseriousness and the prescription following and the empty chases. Where are those things that that's your enlightenment? And it's so interesting because, you know, I see on your Twitter profile, you say by invite only and only work with these people. And you've really kind of chosen, it seems like you've chosen exactly who you want to work with with no sort of sense of shame or or uh anything like that. And um part of me is like, I want to get there as well where I can just stop being stuck in this sense of scarcity all the time. Um yeah, I think that comes down to uh the DNA that one has which dictates his degree of compromise. It there you must find for yourself the things which that you will not compromise. You must find for yourself the things that are non-negotiable to you and then those begin those become your those those become the structure uh within which you move. They create your boundaries so not in a sense of prescribing boundaries to myself and

saying this is where I will not. It just comes naturally out of doing this. If you have to convince yourself it isn't truth, what do you say to your clients when you see them getting back into this prescription mode? They all get back into the prescription, yeah. And it is a systematic and continual revisitation of the truth and coming face to face with the fact that they are succumbing once again to an age-old habit of prescription and pleasure chasing. It is a constant revisitation of that which over time grows within them. And as it grows, it begins to become their new norm and their new skin without any form of effort or practice or rituals or doings or activities or homework or five-step plans or anything. The truth always happens by itself. Falseness and untruth require effort and practice, uh, and conditioning. Um, human beings are human beings are conditioned to practice and never to arrive, in a sense. It sounds very, uh, nice to get to that point where you don't need

prescriptions because it does seem like it is a lot of work. Always thinking about dying. The greatest quote work will be in coming face to face with the truth that all of the things that you are chasing are empty and all of the rules that you are following are flies. That's your work. That's what will take work. The rest is downhill. You have and I you know no one should ever believe me about anything. You have millions of people meditating. You have people I mean what what meditation do you or society do you do your two hours a day or your whatever's prescribed by the meditation instructor. These you know these monks and the the temples of of uh of uh Thailand and Nepal meditate for 10 12 15 hours a day. Yeah right. Are they are they Buddha? No. Okay so then so then what's your measly 20 minutes in the pot gonna do. Okay so let's just look at the don't believe me. Don't believe me. Just look at the evidence.

it's all a scam. Everything in this society is a scam. It is all ribbon-cutting ceremonies. It is wearing the proper dress and having the proper name and saying the proper things and laughing at the proper time and telling a joke every 2.6 minutes. It's all a scam. Everything is false, and it has nothing to do with what in the beginning, nothing to do with what the truth really is. It has everything to do with seeing through the scam that will lead you to truth. But if you see through the scam and then you go back into your normal life, you know, with school, kids, and all this different stuff, then you will go back to your normal life. Yeah, but you're never looking at all the things in your normal life through your newfound eyes that see truth, that look for truth even in every relationship, in every mundane activity. You will have become reoriented. The person who is looking now will not be the same person who was looking back then, and because the person has changed, the

Things he sees will change, doesn't it ever? Maybe in when people first see this truth and then after that when they go back to their normal lives and they see that everything has changed. Isn't there an element of shock or and and difficulty that they experience in going back to those whatever whatever shock or difficulty they may there may be? How does it compare to the shock and difficulty of spending 80 years living a life of lies and chasing prescriptions and getting nowhere? What difficulty are you comparing the the acute and temporary shock of having seen the truth or the lifelong shock of being assaulted on a daily basis and never getting anything for your time? Which shock is greater to you? Why are you so worried about the shock and the pain that you might experience after seeing the truth as opposed to that which you've been experiencing since the day you've been born? Well, a lot of what I thought was true was very painful and so I imagine whatever that behind whatever is behind that that step uh is going to be painful as well.

it the pain has never stopped. As long as you don't arrive, the pain never stops. [Music] So, there is no gradual way to get there. What are you really trying to ask? Is there a way to go slow and steady so that when I do arrive, it's in a way that I can integrate? If I told you there's a billion dollars four miles from your house and it had your name on it, would you ask me if there's a way to go slow and steady? No, no. Okay, so then that's my point. Yeah, right. So, the way, whether you want to go fast or slow and steady, is your choice. The way is to see through your lies, and there's no prescription to see the lies. It's just, well, if I give you a prescription to see through the lies, then I'll give you another lie. Has the things that you've experienced on a recurring basis, let's keep it practical, have the things that you've experienced on a recurring basis caused you to transform?

okay well then why do reason that you would continue to do them is if you were told and therefore you believed or you thought on your own that it takes time yes it hasn't happened in 20 years but I've been told that it might take 50 years that's the only reason that you would continue and so the only question then becomes at what point what's your date [Music] what is the time and the date at which you evaluate and say okay where am I what have I gotten out of this did it work or did it not or is it any is there no date and no time in which if there's no date in no time you're sort of stuck see people feel comfortable talking about meditation and mindfulness and all these things because they sound nice and they're and and they're really um soothing to the ears uh like a humidifier in the corner and it doesn't cause anyone any consternation they can go around long and they're pretty little lies and they're rose-colored plastic flowers

and they can just. That's why everyone likes to talk about them. Listen, if something worked, it wouldn't be institutionalized. Only lies are institutionalized. Listen, if you, if you in the old days were in the, in the, in the gold rush of Colorado and you found gold, would you have a conference? Okay, so, so, so the things, the things that are institutionalized and conferenced are like, are like the leftover meat that you use to make the next day's soup. Okay, that's what you feed to the dogs. So, all the leftovers, you repackage it and you create a conference. You think, you think the people, you think the people who go, who are invited to those conferences, whatever small truths they may have, and if they have become world-class in their field, that they're going to reveal those things to you. And do you think that even if they do that, they're going to reveal it in a way, and even if they do, you think, you think with one explanation on stage that that piece of information is going to

transform you. It's all a scam. Do any of your clients or do you ever experience insomnia from the work that you do? That's an interesting question. Um [Music]. I've had a couple of people tell me that they have had, after experiencing specific questions, that they had a hard time sleeping. And others have told me that the nightmares that they used to have, they don't have it, they don't have any more. That's the main challenge that I face with things like this, if it's just won't be able to get to sleep. Yeah, I've, I never thought that would be the case, but I've heard that on the number locations. Hello. Well, thank you for this. You're welcome. Yeah, um [Music]. And from this, from what we've talked about, is it cool if I publish this? Yes, not a problem. Cool. Well, thank you so much. And um, don't really know what to say, but uh, thank you. I understand. Have a good night.

It s All A Scam - Part 1 - Kapil Gupta MD & Stewart Alsop

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