LEARN TO VIBRATE CORRECTLY: How to MANIFEST the FUTURE Life You WANT! with Vishen Lakhiani

Vishen Lakhiani 0:00
But yeah, there have been so many struggles, but I chose them. And I'm still choosing struggles every time life gets too easy. I need to make things uncomfortable. Because if I didn't make things uncomfortable, I would get lazy.

Alex Ferrari 0:25
I've been able to partner with Mindvalley to present you guys FREE Masterclass is between 60 and 90 minutes, covering Mind Body Soul Relationships and Conscious Entrepreneurship, taught by spiritual masters, yogi's spiritual thought leaders and best selling authors. Just head over to nextlevelsoul.com/free. I'd like to welcome to the show Vishen how you doin Vishen?

Vishen Lakhiani 0:58
Hey! Alex good to be here.

Alex Ferrari 0:59
Thank you so much for coming on the show. I've been a fan of what you've been doing with Mindvalley and your journey for many, many years. I I admire what you're trying to do for the world. And I can't wait to have in depth conversation about what what you're doing in the world and how you got there. So my very first question is, how did you begin your your spiritual journey?

Vishen Lakhiani 1:20
Ooh. So there were a series of different events. I don't think anyone begins their spiritual journey with one event. There were a series of inexplicable things that happen in my life. That made me open up to the idea that we were more than just our physical body. So let me share one with you. Okay, when I was 14 years old, I grew up in Malaysia. Now, if you knew about Malaysia in the 80s and early 90s, it's a developing country. There were three television channels, all of which showed garbage shows that were like 10 years old. No internet, there was no Internet. The Internet wasn't really a thing back then that on this particular day, it must have been 8988 89. I was going through my dad's bookshelf, so my dad never went to university. But he self educated himself by buying personal growth books, American personal growth books, so he had this white bookshelf, and the bookshelf was filled with all of his favorite books from people like Bob Proctor. I see that behind you. There's Paramahansa Yogananda book course, probably on the bookshelf. And then there was this book called The Silva method. Now, on the bookshelf, there was this giant sign so the bookshelf had a had a door and there was this giant sign that my dad had stuck with tape on the door and it says, if anybody removes a book from the shelf and does not return it, I will be, I will be angry. I will be petrified. I will come after you. He was that protective about his books. So one day I'm just going to this bookshop because I was really into martial arts and I was looking to see if my dad had any books on physical fitness. And somehow this book falls on my head as I'm reaching up and the book is called the Silva mind control method. It was written in 1977 by by a guy from Texas called Jose Silva. So Jose lived in Laredo and Nuvola Raider, which is in the Mexican border back then, I guess the border crossings were easier. And he developed this form of mind control involving biofeedback. So he would use biofeedback train people to go to altered states of awareness, and then teach them to unlock different abilities of the mind. The Silva method went on to become one of the earliest personal growth systems in America, because they Silva trained everyone from the opera singer Margarita Piazza, to the strip to the Chicago White Sox, one of the students made the cover of Time Magazine, Richard back, who wrote the book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, he credited Silva with helping him download the information to write the book. And so I was mesmerized by all of these stories. And I started trying to practice through the book. Now silver never used the word meditation. Because in the 70s, if you said meditation in America, people think you belong to a cult.

Every time people see something, they don't understand the level of a cult. But in the 70s, anyone who spoke about meditation, it was this weird Hindu thing. So Silva called it biofeedback. And he would train executives to relax and go into these mental states visualize the future, they wanted, visualize their body healing, and he was seeing amazing results. So I started practicing. And I got very, very, very poor results. I couldn't attend the silver seminar, which was too expensive. I'd never even set foot in America. But I decided to try to reverse engineer everything in the book to try to figure out what this man was talking about. Now, one of the things I learned is eventually was how to get myself to a super relaxed state of mind. Now Silva called is the alpha level today. Now that's an actual thing. Right and Dr. Can can put these electrodes in your brain and see your brainwaves relax and the alpha level is when your brainwaves slow down significantly from the waking state. Today, we know that this is what we call meditation and it has all of those health benefits. But back then in the 80s, it was mysterious and new. Now apparently at the alpha level, you can visualize certain aspects of your body. And Silva shared a specific visualization technique called the three scenes technique that he claimed, could help you heal your body. Now, he also shed some stunning evidence for this. The Cancer Research pioneer, Dr. ORCL Simonton apparently used this technique on cancer patients and about 159 cancer patients. And around 17 to 20 of them went through a full spontaneous remission of cancer, the average survival time went from 12 months. So these were patients who were given 12 months to live. They ended up surviving 24.4 months right and forecast Simonton went on to say that this method from Silva is the most powerful tool he has to offer patients. So all of this captivated me. And I wanted to heal myself. Now what did I want to heal myself from? Well, I was a teenager, and I have the really worst case of pimples when you think about a teen with really impulse that it affected my self esteem, I date, I've never gone out with other people. In fact, in my entire years, from 14 to 17, I'd only gone out with friends five times I could count it on one hand, because I had low self esteem. I considered myself ugly. And the bullies in school who call me pimple face. Well, that wasn't helping either. So I was adamant. I want to heal my pimples. And I read a line in Silvis book that gave me hope. He said that the skin is the organ that is easiest to influence with the mind. And he spoke about an experiment he would do in his live seminars in Texas, he would bring up a volunteer, he would take a marker, hypnotize the volunteer to bleed that marker was a red hot poker, he would put it on the ham, and a burn bubble would form. And then he would hypnotize them to believe that that burned bubble was about to disappear, he would place his hand over the burn bubble, and voila, it would be gone. So I thought, This is so freakin cool. Now, I've been to all of these doctors, I was, I had injections on my skin to heal the acne, nothing worked. I decided to try syllabus methodology. Now it worked like this, right? It was a you there was a specific sequence, a specific timing, you have to you have to state these these affirmations and stuff. But it took about three minutes. And you have to do the visualization for three minutes, three times a day. And that's what I did. And what happened, Alex is in five weeks, my skin healed itself five years of agony with horrible skin that ruined my teenage years that made me believe that I was hideously ugly, healed in five weeks. And that's what I woke up to the idea that there's so much more that we can do with our minds than then then what we're learning in school. So that was the first thing that got me acquainted with spirituality. I then went on to do something else with silver, I started visualizing my next big goal. So I was into martial arts. I taken up martial arts actually, because of the bullies because of the bullies. I was a scrawny, small size kid and my dad and will be martial arts class so I could defend myself. And my dream was to represent my country, Malaysia at the US Open. And I ended up doing that at 17. Not only that I heal my skin, I ended up qualifying to represent Malaysia at the US Open, I got to make my first trip to America. I got to compete at the Colorado Springs Olympic Training Center. My life forever changed. But again, it came because I visualize those moments in my head. And this made me made me start to believe that reality is an illusion. And that we can put that illusion, we can mold that illusion, we can shift that illusion, whether it's the reality of how our physical bodies function, or is the reality of how we move towards our goals. What I learned from that book was that reality was an illusion. And this started my love affair with personal growth. That's why it's why when I was 27 26 27, I decided to start a company called Mindvalley. And really what Mindvalley did was our first website, I got the affiliate rights to sell silver method CDs. So there was a big publishing company called Nightingale Conan, they had this big catalog of personal growth programs, and I got the rights to sell the silver CDs from their website, and I became a top affiliate. And before you know it, I had a website that was doing really well selling meditation CDs, and eventually that morphed into the company. Today, which is Mind Valley, and today we have arguably the world's biggest personal growth platform.

Alex Ferrari 10:06
So with Mindvalley, because I've heard your story about, you know, the the longer version of that story of how you built that up, there were many years that, you know, wasn't so hunky dory, it took there was struggle, there was a lot of up up, you know, it doesn't sound like I just started the company and up on what were the biggest and it's all great. But there was times in your, in your journey, that there was immense amounts of struggle, from what I understand from your stories that you've told publicly before. I always wanted to ask you, how do you or how did you persevere? How did you get over those? Because it wasn't like a month or two? It was sometimes years of problems?

Vishen Lakhiani 10:41
Well, the first thing to understand is that struggle is a choice, right? Why do we climb mountains? Why do we train for right outside my window the the the Ironman was taking place this weekend in a Why do people train for an Ironman struggle, it's a choice. There's a part of our human nature to push ourselves to push our boundaries, the best human beings do this. When I started my little website, I was living in New York with my, with my girlfriend at that time, and she was European. So if you didn't have a green card, she couldn't work. So we basically, were had this little website that was providing us passive income. And at a certain point, we were making four grand a month now four grand doesn't sound like much right now. But 20 years ago, that was pretty decent money. It allowed us to live in Hell's Kitchen in New York, lead a pretty good life. And if I had chosen to just stay in that environment, I maybe could have gotten that for granted maybe 10 grand a month, like would be hunky dory, I'd be living in New York, me and my girlfriend would be making 10 grand a month, we'd be able to just have the most amazing life. But I needed to push the boundaries, I needed to push that I needed to go beyond 10 grand a month. And that's why I went through the struggle. I decided to go from being a solo entrepreneur, to starting a company, I decided to go from starting a company with a successful website to starting an app, I decided to go from that app to diversifying into other areas of personal growth, I decided to go from meditation to fitness, and entrepreneurship. And all of those were part of the game of life. And every single time you do that, you will struggle. But as Rumi said, right? The wound is the path through which the light enters. All of those struggles make you stronger. They they enrich your life. You learn from them, you grow from them. And that is the essence of being human. So yeah, there have been so many struggles. But I chose that. And I'm still choosing struggles every time life gets too easy. I need to make things uncomfortable. Because if I didn't make things uncomfortable, I would get lazy.

Alex Ferrari 13:00
Very, you're so so right. Because even in my own life, as I've been building up my online business over the last seven years, there's moments where I just like I'm just coasting. You know, everything's good. But when you start to stretch to push to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, that's when you grow.

Vishen Lakhiani 13:17
Right, right. I took the business with no VC funding with no bank loans. We took Mindvalley from from that that tiny number four grand a month to sales, well over 10 million a month, in a good month. Right. And that was by building this really formidable brand in personal growth and getting 20 million loyal fans and followers all across social media.

Alex Ferrari 13:45
That's It's fascinating. Because in the personal growth space in the spirituality space, there is nobody like you. And it's really interesting to see how you've been able to, you know, over the years build up this brand that's helped millions of people around the world and continue to do so as we're speaking right now. I have to ask you this question, because I always I always love asking people who have had great success this question. How do you deal with the ever present ego that we all have to deal with? Because when you have money and fame and success and things and everyone's telling you, you're the great vision, you're the best? You're this You're that that? How can you keep that ego in check? Because it is a struggle that so many of us have.

Vishen Lakhiani 14:31
So firstly, there is a great myth of the ego, right? And this is something that is really worth pointing out and really worth explaining. You are not to keep your ego in check, according to Ken Wilber so I want to read you a paragraph from a famous essay called egolessness by the great American philosopher Ken Wilber, Ken Wilber is the most cited academic in the world. And if you Google Ken Wilber egolessness you will find this essay because it's been cited in blogs all across As the web, I'm reading you an extract from it from a blog called lion's roar Buddha's wisdom for a time. So Ken Wilber says one of the reasons we have trouble with the notion of egoless is that people want the egoless sages to fulfill all their fantasies of safety or spiritual, which means Dead from the neck down without fleshy one so desires gently smiling all the time. All the things that typical people have trouble with money, food, sex, relationship, desire, they want their sages to be without. However, he says egoless does not mean less than personal it means more than personal, not personal minus but personal. Plus, when you think of the great Yogi's the saints, the sages from Moses to Christ, the Padmasambhava they were not feeble minded milk toasts, but fierce movers and shakers from bull whips in the temple to subduing entire countries. They rattled the world on its own terms, not in some pie in the sky piety. Many of them instigated massive social revolution to the continued for 1000s of years. You see what Ken Wilber is saying. And this inspired my book, I'm looking for a copy of it the Buddha and the badass Ken Wilber is saying, we think that the Buddha was devoid of ego, no, if the Buddha was divided ego, he would never have instigated social revolutions to help uplift the poor. If Christ was devoid of ego, he would never have brought a frickin bullwhip to a temple, to go against the money changes. If Mohammed was devoid of ego, he would never have subdued entire continents, you need the ego. But there is a way to use the ego that is just and there's a way to use the ego that is unjust. Now the way to use the ego in a just way versus an unjust way has to do with one thing are you and it has to do with what we can describe as your your circle of compassion. So Ken Wilber and many other great spiritual teachers who talk about the expansion of human awareness, say that as we grow as a species, there is a widening of our circles of compassion. In fact, this idea was first coined by Charles Darwin in 1872. He called it diffusion of sympathy. Charles Darwin didn't just predict where we came from, he predicted where we are going. And one of the things Darwin said, is that as man evolves, we are going to see a sympathies. That's the word in 1872, for compassion, go into wider and wider and wider circles. Firstly, the people in our village and the people in our city, then the people in our country, then to unions of countries, and then to the entire world. And at that point, we will start operating as a global species. He said, The only thing that prevents our circle of sympathy from extending is when people look remarkably different from us, but that too, we will ultimately transcend. Now this points to an evolution of human consciousness towards what what is ethnocentric worldview where you you basically are I'm good, I'm kidding, but only if you are my skin color. Or you vote for my political party. Or you are within the confines of my border, you're going from ethnocentric worldviews, which is 70% of the world right now to world centric. World centric is where you see the entire world as one in the same you in other words, expand your compassion to all sexual orientations, all races, all religions, all cultures. And you can go even further to an even higher level of, of evolution of compassion to what is called Cosmo centrism. Cosmo centrism is where you extend your compassion to all life itself. If a disgusting alien species landed in front of you, and Xorg from the planet Alta got out and he had tentacles coming out of his mouth, you'd still go up and give him a hug, because he was sent here. So the difference between ego in a dangerous way and ego in a good way is basically has to do with your worldview. If your worldview is ethnocentric, your ego will say my race is the powerful race. My religion is the right religion. Let's build a wall to keep out Mexicans. Let's vote for this reality TV star who tells us that we need to fear Democrats and Muslims and brown people.

That's the corruption of the ego. But if you're Cosmos centric, you use your ego to fight for justice for all. That's what Jesus did. That's what Mahatma Gandhi did. That's what Martin Luther King did. So the idea is not to dissolve the ego. The idea is to raise your level of compassion to the widest circle possible. So you're fighting for justice

Alex Ferrari 19:50
Is probably the best answer to that question I've ever had, sir. That's fantastic.

Vishen Lakhiani 19:56
Why this is why you want this you understand one of the Latest quotes in the world by MLK power without love is reckless and abusive. And love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. And justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.

Alex Ferrari 20:19
That's a yeah, I've no luck with this beautiful, beautiful quote. One thing that you've, you've mentioned in your first book, which I loved the code of the extraordinary if I'm not mistaken, the concept of rules, can you just tell the audience what a rule is?

Vishen Lakhiani 20:35
So so as humankind evolves, right, we we ended up living in, in an increasingly complex world, there are so many choices, so many decisions. So what we do is, we simplify the world by looking at social patterns. So if everyone is saying University is good, we go to university, if everyone is saying, Hey, you got to watch the show on Netflix called Stranger Things, we watch Stranger Things, if everybody says, Hey, eating animals are bad, let's go vegan, you decide to go vegan. Now, it doesn't matter if any of these things are good or bad or true, we follow the herd. But the thing is, we don't just follow the herd in our time, we follow the herd from long ago, so generations ago, you will make to believe that that you were born a sinner, then that belief carries through, and it becomes part of your religious upbringing. Now, all of these routes can either service or they can restrict us, the rules that restrict us, I call them rules or bullshit routes, rules that say that rules that, that that, that hold us back very often these rules come from religion, culture, media, and politicians who have yet to deal with their shadow. And very often these rules come from our parents and our upbringing. For example, growing up in an Indian family, there was a point in my life when I believed that because you know, in, in, in India, they are they are all sorts of like rules towards love and relationship. Many people in India don't date they finally marry the person their parents ask them to marry. So it's called an arranged marriage on introduced marriage. Growing up in in Indian culture, there was one point when I believed that that was how I would find love my parents, were going to introduce me to someone, can you believe how crazy that but that that is a rule, that was a rule, okay. And so our job is to remove the chains that shackle us, the people, the people who make you feel guilty, for going against your culture, for going against your religion. All they're saying is look at my chains, they are bigger than yours. We need to identify the rules that we're operating on. And identify which of these rules service in which of these are actual rules that are holding us back and break those change.

Alex Ferrari 23:07
Now, there's, there's a t shirt that I bought at the Mindvalley Live, which I absolutely adored, I wore so much it just it just finally fell apart because I would love it. It was the bend reality T shirt. Love that shirt. I just I used to wear it all the time. And people were like, What is that like? And I explained to them? Can you explain the concept of bending reality because it is such a powerful idea. And so many people, like you've said a couple of times in this conversation, believe that we are kind of locked in and we have no choice in the matter.

Vishen Lakhiani 23:42
So you know, I'm looking at the bookshelf behind you. And I'm trying to bring in examples that that relate to the books and the statues on your bookshelf. So let me read one I see the book awake by about Yogananda and Yogananda said this, The human mind is a spark of the Almighty consciousness of God, I could show you that whatever your powerful mind believes very intensely, would ultimately come to pass. This is what then reality means. It means that whatever your powerful mind believes intensely, will come to pass. And we're starting to see evidence for this. We're starting to see evidence for this in the placebo effect doctors like JB Mosley, he was written about in the New York Times he proved that you could take men who, who have arthritis of the knee, you could put them under anesthesia. Tell them they're going to get knee surgery to fix this arthritis. But really, you don't do the surgery while under anesthesia. You cut their knee, you don't do anything. You just make two, two cuts. You then sew up the cuts you bandage it, you wake them up and you go to we operate your knee. And in every case, the arthritis disappears. Why? Because these men believe that their knees were healed. So about beliefs can influence our body Can they also influence our career? Can they influence our intelligence? Can they influence how they show up in the world? And what Yogananda actually says is they don't just influence the physical you. They influence the reality that you experience. You can create synchronicities, you can create coincidences. You can create movement towards your goals. I somewhat experienced this when I was practicing with the Silva method, seen myself qualifying for the US Open. So I coined the word bend reality, as just as a fun little buzzword that we were using in our office to talk about this phenomenon when, you know, people I was close to were really visualizing their goals, they would see those goals manifests. But then in 2011, Steve Jobs passed away. And Walter Isaacson wrote a book about Steve Jobs, amazing book, Jobs biography. Interestingly, in that book, Isaacson used to work bend reality, three types to describe jobs, his ability to seemingly sway reality, to make things happen. And I believe jobs have disability, I believe, in fact, all great entrepreneurs have disability. I believe every human being as disability, what we believe to be true becomes true. We are particles of God, experiencing a reality around us that is malleable, that we can poke. We can we can shift things. In fact, jobs literally said that. He said, everything in the world around you was made up by people, no smarter than you. And you can shift things you can change things he went on to say you can poke reality, and you can create new worlds new things. And so that is what that brace represents. Whether you believe in Yogananda idea or Job's idea, whether you believe it is a function of the law of attraction, or it is the brain's reticular activating system that moves you towards goals. It doesn't matter how it works. The thing is, it works. What we believe to be about true about the world becomes our world.

Alex Ferrari 27:08
And a side note with that the last the only book on Steve Jobs his iPhone was Autobiography of a Yogi by Yogananda.

Vishen Lakhiani 27:17
Wow. Isn't it funny how that. In the biography, Walter Isaacson mentions that he asked the jobs, what books do you have on your iPad, and it was only one book, autobiography, Yogi jobs would go to his retreat in Hawaii, a hotel in Hawaii, he loved every year, and read and reread that book. And that book is literally about bending reality is about the world as Maya own illusion. Maya is the Sanskrit word for illusion.

Alex Ferrari 27:47
Isn't it interesting, though, that it you know, as we're talking, it kind of reminds me of the matrix. And in a way, where Neo, you know, for everybody who's not seen The Matrix, I'm sorry, spoiler alerts. But the Neo the main character eventually learns that not only is there's a false reality and a real reality, but he's able to see during the course of that movie, learn how to bend reality to His will. And not only in one of the realities, but in both realities. So many people will consider that the matrix itself would be what we are living today, and the real world would be the spiritual world that we all come from, but he's in he's able to do it in both. And, you know, everything you're saying makes absolute sense to me. And we're here, everything that's around us we've created, even though things happen to us, if a car accident happens to us, it happens to us how you deal with it is relative. But generally speaking with those kinds of things happen to us, there's something in our lives that I mean, anytime I had a car accident or something really bad, there was something going off in my life. But this show, specifically I'll use this example of this show, is I've been able to bring people like yourself on the show, by will by mental but you know, and I've had the pleasure of speaking to some amazing gurus and spiritual leaders and best selling authors and, and it's remarkable the the kind of people that I'm starting to attract to the show. And that is my, my Dewey, I'm bringing them in. Because there are there's, there's hundreds, if not 1000s of other shows like mine, but yet not all of them had the kind of guests and the kind of conversations that that we have on this show. And I do believe that we truly build the world around us. Even when I came, I just moved to LA from LA to to Austin, and when I got here, I was like, I need a house with a back house. And every real estate agent said you'll never there's not a leg you're not gonna find a back house because I wanted a place for my office. You never get that doesn't exist out here. The third house I found had a beautiful back and everything else we wanted and we He literally willed it into existence in a week earlier, we would have lost it a week later, we would have lost it, it was just that week, because it was during the crazy real estate bubble or real estate craze that was going on a year ago here, but it's it's really fascinating. I love this idea of bending reality. And I think people should focus on that more the power of the mind and the placebo effect is so powerful. If you believe it, it, it's it happens.

Vishen Lakhiani 30:27
Very true. Very true. And you know, speaking of spiritual sages, Esther Hicks is another really great spiritual teacher, she wrote many amazing books. And one of the things she speaks about is a concept called rockets of desire. She said, the point of us as souls having a human experience is to explore our world, discover everything that we want, and everything that we don't want. And as we gain discernment and clarity about what we want, we're mentally sending out rockets of desire, desires, wants, clarity, and visions of our future. And our job as souls is to see these visions come forth. So what job the vision coming forward is inevitable. Our job is to fine tune, desire.

Alex Ferrari 31:15
You know, it's really interesting, I always remember this example. And I didn't know about it until years later, when I was a child, I lived in New York, and I lived in Queens, and it's cold. And you know, you lived in New York. So it's cold, there's not a lot of grass to run, if you're a child. I mean, you got to kind of it's not like you can walk outside and to concrete jungle, essentially. And all I wanted, I kept praying all the time, I just want a house in Florida, with a pool house in Florida with a pool. And a year or two later, I was in a house in Florida. And I never connected anything to that. But I was just like, Wow, isn't that remarkable? Even at that young age, I sent out those rockets of desire and they came in.

Vishen Lakhiani 32:02
So cool. Yes. No, all of us, all of us to do that to gain to gain clarity on the life that we want to construct.

Alex Ferrari 32:11
Which brings me to my next question, what is the unity rule?

Vishen Lakhiani 32:15
Okay, so the Unity rule is is is an idea I got from another spiritual teacher that I got to, to spend some really good time but one of the things I love about my job, Alex is that I get to spend time with all of these living legends and one of the people that I really, really really loved is Neale Donald Walsch. Walsh wrote the conversations with God book series when I was when I was in college, these books changed my life. They they freed me, from certain rules from my religious upbringing, Hinduism, certain rules from my religious upbringing, and helped me expand my dear of what life truly meant. Now, in his book, Neil, sorry, in his book Conversations with God, Book Three, kneel attempts to answer a question, what is the ultimate value? If you look at highly evolved species who might live in a different planet? What is that one rule that they all have in common, and that rule is unity. It is not individualism. It is unity. It is that you stand together with everyone. Literally everyone. And I found that rule to be a really interesting model. So Neil suggests that unity is the ultimate value of highly evolved beings, we see everyone as being in a way connected to us. He even suggests it's an exercise for you to to truly embrace this idea. He says, As you walk through the streets, and I remember doing this, when I was living in New York, as you walk through the streets, everything you see, that creates a discomfort or a dislike or a pain in you, rather than judge. You repeat to yourself. There I go again. So you might say, there I go, again, being a drunk homeless man on the street corner, you might see a person, you know, litter and you might go there I go, again, being a litter bug. Dare I go again, being a loud, obnoxious person on a subway. And I started doing this. And all of a sudden, like, within 30 minutes, I was like, bawling my eyes out. Something shifted. I suddenly felt non not judgment, but a sense of unity with every other person in the streets of New York. Every one passing me I certainly felt like, like I was connected to them. Although in New York, you don't really make eye contact. But it was such a powerful exercise and it helped liberate me from judgment. Because I lived I lived on Seventh Avenue and 15th street I remember there was this guy who was always in the corner, drunk, drunk and homeless, smelly as heck. And every day as I go by breakfast, I would pass him and I feel disgust There was a form of judgment. After I started doing this exercise, I sat down with him. We got into a conversation, I found out that his late wife had left him. He had sank into a depression because of that lack of love, he had lost his job, he took the drinking. And that was how we fell into the spiral. And he was just, he knew it was wasn't good. But he didn't know he didn't have the tools and the knowledge to get himself out. And I'd occasionally buy him a cup of coffee. I didn't have the tools and knowledge to help him either. I was a kid. But that unity exercise from Neale Donald Walsch shifted my perspective. Today, when I look at a homeless person, I no longer judge them. I do whatever I can to try to understand them. And I think this idea is so important for all human beings to embrace.

Alex Ferrari 35:47
Without without question, and when I had Neil on the show, we had, he had such a deep conversation about homeless because he was homeless for a year. And, and he changed the way I look at homeless people without judgment. Because, you know, even if you're, you always have a lid on the back of your head, you're like, you know, this or that. And you you have some sort of judgment. And the other day, I met a homeless man, and I gave him some food. And as I was talking to him, he explained, like the judgment that I might have had about him, he's like, Man, I lost my job. And because I lost my job, I lost my house. So now I'm living in my truck, and I'm trying to get myself back on my feet. But from the distance, you're like, Oh, this guy's lazy, or he doesn't have this or that, and why don't you get a job? It's fascinating. It's fascinating. And Neil Neil is the one he's like, always have a little bit of extra couple extra bucks in your pocket. gesink you don't know what those five bucks is going to help man that'll change. They'll change their day, it could actually extend their life for another day or two, because they're able to eat. So it was just a really interesting way of looking at. Well,

Vishen Lakhiani 36:54
Neil has a completely different way of looking at the world. So he was giving a talk at Mindvalley University. And he shared a story that really, actually no, we were having dinner, and he shared a story that shifted something in me. So you know, I would travel around the world with my kids. And we'd go to all of these markets and Egypt and other countries, Ecuador, and so on. And we would haggle. haggle for like little jewellery and little, little like handmade goodies. And Neil says, So you haggle. And I go here and he goes, Why do you haggle? When I go to these markets, and I travel and I see that Ecuadorian woman and she's trying to send some sell me her handmade jewelry for five bucks. Why would I tell her? I'll give this to you for four bucks? No, three bucks. Give it to me for three bucks. And I'll take two. I'll say you want five bucks? I'll give you six? No, I'll give you seven. He says I had an up. Why do I do that? Because I'm from the United States. What she makes in a month. I make maybe four hours. Why do I feel I need to handle her down? I was mind blown. Wow. I was like, Whoa,

Alex Ferrari 38:02
I feel I feel guilty.

Vishen Lakhiani 38:05
So now when I go when I travel, when I travel, I was just in Jordan. And same situation. So this old lady selling she was selling like like little pieces. I'm I'm gonna actually hold one up for you. So this lady in Jordan and it was selling these the it's just thread from a lamb, right? It's just a piece of wool and tread. I have no use for this. I have no use for this. But here was this 80 year old woman sitting in the hot sun, just selling this and I said, Hey, I'll buy. I'll buy this now. And I bought all of this useless stuff. They are beautiful reminders. I mean, I keep them in my home. I don't need this. But after hearing Neal story, not only did I buy this, but I gave the lady more than what she asked for. And I think that's where Neil's ideas of unity are just so mind blowing.

Alex Ferrari 38:53
But what was and by the way, what was her reaction? When you haggled up?

Vishen Lakhiani 38:58
She was really happy. But of course, we couldn't really communicate because she spoke Arabic and sadly I don't.

Alex Ferrari 39:03
That's fascinating. You also spoke about another concept called Radical forgiveness, and how it's changed your life. Can you talk a little bit about that.

Vishen Lakhiani 39:11
The radical forgiveness is a key idea in my my new book, The six phase meditation method. So this one this one is crazy man. What happens with radical forgiveness? So I started going to these biohacking Institute's in 2015 and 2016 2017. To work with biofeedback that attempts to train your brain to have the brainwave states of Zen Roshi monks. And one of the things they found out in these Institute's they would they would put these electrodes in your brain and then you would have to use train your brain to influence sound and light. And they were guiding your brain towards the Zen Roshi monk brain tap, which is basically left right. Left Right. Brain resonance resonating together means your brain support your hemispheres up Passing at the same level. And then the other thing is high alpha amplitude. So your alpha waves have a high amplitude. So one of the things I learned is that at these Institute's there was a lady let's let's call her Clara, right? And Clara was making incredible progress day after day after day. So the scientists go to her and they're like, What are you thinking about? When you're sitting there with your eyes closed, meditating, trying to shift your brain frequency, what are you thinking about? And Clara goes, I don't know. I'm just trying to forgive that asshole. And they go, what? And she goes, I'm trying to forgive my husband who cheated on me. And then it turned out that this was the secret forgiveness. And so the scientists scrambled. And they started creating this eight step forgiveness protocol. This is what I write about in my book. And now when you go to these institutes, they teach you this forgiveness protocol, because it is the fastest way to remap your brain to give you the brainwave states of a Zen Roshi mark. But here's what gets crazy. So I go to this institute, and it costs us 15 grand. So this is around 2016. And I'm there. And you know, as you can imagine, 15 grand for five days. You're there with, like, really wealthy people, they were billionaires, there was a famous Hollywood actor, everyone was there training their brain and working on forgiveness. And I met this guy. And he was a pretty successful guy. And so we kind of connected we were having breakfast, we were having breakfast everyday, because we were staying at the same hotel before we would drive up to the Institute in in Seattle. And one day, he comes scrambling down the stairs to breakfast, and I asked him, Dan, what's wrong? And he's holding his phone? And I said, Dan, what are you okay? And he goes, my brother, my brother just sent me a video, and I go, What do you mean? Is your brother okay? I thought his brother had a car accident or something. And Dan says, No, you don't understand. My brother hasn't spoken to me in years. I don't speak to him. I used to hate the guy. So I said, Man, sit down. Explain this to me. So Dan says, vision when I was 10, my brother raped me. I was sexually raped by my older brother. And this buck me up vision. Growing up as a teenager in my early 20s, I couldn't have normal relationships. So I was hooked on prostitutes. I developed a cocaine habit. I only got myself clean in my late 30s. And I fucking hated my brother. And so I haven't spoken to him and yours. But I'll tell you this vision. As we've been doing these forgiveness rituals, I've been focusing on forgiving my brother, but he doesn't know. He doesn't know I'm here. He doesn't know I'm forgiving him. And somehow today, by sheer coincidence, he sends me a video apologizing for everything he did. telling me he feels that and wanting to come back in my life. Wow. We were both mind blown. Because then had no contact with his brother. Yet somehow, this forgiveness protocol extended beyond time and space to bring these two men together. For Dan, it was a healing. And that's what got me hooked. And so I write about this, this this experience, I shared the forgiveness protocol, I got permission from the institutes to share them. So I unveiled the forgiveness protocol in my book in the 60s meditation book. Phase three is that forgiveness protocol.

Alex Ferrari 43:17
Now tell me a little bit about your new book, six weeks, six months meditation.

Vishen Lakhiani 43:21
So I take everything I studied. And I put it into six transcendental practices. Transcendental practices are practices that you run in your mind. You transcend physical reality by closing your eyes going within getting into a relaxed state. And the six practices unlock superhuman abilities. The third one I've already shared with you, it's forgiveness. People underestimate how powerful forgiveness is. It's shown it improves endurance, it reduces back pain, it helps you sleep better it can. It reduces signs of anxiousness. It helps you overcome depression, it makes you a more loving individual. It's incredible what forgiveness does. That's phase three. There are other other things we do in each of this, I bring in a really powerful practice one, a world class teacher that I've studied with, and a practice that has been that has been studied by science, I get the science, I get the practice and a super specific way. And then I show you how when you stack these six practices together in 15 to 20 minutes in a guided meditation, incredible things happen to you. So the 60s meditation blew up. It's used by so many American sports stars, athletes in every major sporting, we use it because it just transforms your performance on the field. It's used by so many entrepreneurs who have built massive 100 million dollar plastic businesses. But it's not like a regular meditation. The only reason we put the word meditation in the title of the book is because the word transcendent psycho spiritual practice was too long. I call it the six phase meditation method, but it's not about clearing your mind. It's not about focusing on your breath. It's the six powerful tools that you run through in your mind in 15 to 20 minutes that utterly, completely transform you and help you bend reality.

Alex Ferrari 45:09
I have always wanted to ask you this question, what is personal growth mean to you?

Vishen Lakhiani 45:15
Personal Growth is the idea that you are a soul having a human experience that there's so much for you to be appreciative for that your life is a gift, that as part of that journey, to not just sit still in bliss and appreciation. But to go out there and practice the act of creation. And creation means in the words of Neale Donald Walsch, discovering the greatest vision of the greatest version of yourself over and over and over again every day, so you're constantly becoming better. But also, as per the rule of unity, doing this for all life, creating a better world, not just for the people you're connected with, or the people alive today, but the generations to come. By the way, we mentioned Cosmos centrosome earlier, one of the rules of Cosmos centrosome, is you don't just love all of life today, you love the children who are going to inherit the earth, and you ensure that the earth that you're going to leave them is going to be something they deserve. Personal Growth is that duality. It is continuously replenishing, renewing, growing yourself while being appreciated for who you already are. And then that process serving as a way to make the entire world better.

Alex Ferrari 46:37
Now, during your journey vision, I have to believe that you've had self doubt along the way that monkey brain does those negative negative thoughts in your head, how do you overcome those self doubt,

Vishen Lakhiani 46:51
Self doubt is is a state it is not a stage you are not a self doubting person, and go through situations of self doubt. That is one of the first things people need to understand their stages than they are states. This is a this is a it's a dichotomy of being human. So ethnocentrism, world centrism, cost perception, these are stages, you don't suddenly feel love for the entire world and then revert back to being an asshole. You can be confident, and then you can doubt yourself, these are states, I was experiencing severe self doubt, on Monday. This is just two days ago. Now, self doubt can come from many reasons. Sometimes you fail, you doubt yourself, you got to have grit and resilience and pull yourself out. But sometimes it can also be a biochemical imbalance. What was causing my self doubt was that the day before, I'd experiment experimented with a form of plant medicine. And this particular plant medicine, and I cannot mention it because I don't know if it's technically legal. Right, then medicine causes your body to burn up a lot of serotonin. And so there's a depletion of serotonin in your brain. And I stupidly forgot to take a post journey supplements stack, which in this case would be GABA, and five HTP. So with the depletion of serotonin, all of a sudden, I feel like a little bit sad, right, and then sadness leads to self doubt. So the reason I'm sharing that story is I want people to understand that self doubt is not a condition that plagues you. It is a state, everyone experiences it, I get it every now and then. But when you understand where it came from, so that particular day two things happen, I have the depletion of serotonin, I forgot to take GABA and five HTP, which is a post, post jurnee stack. But I also somehow, because I was in that journey, I went to bed and I forgot to set my alarm clock and I woke up two hours late because my body needed rest, miss my morning meetings, created a really stressful day and then didn't have time to meditate. I skipped my supplements, and I skipped my meditation. But you see, when we do that, when we are Properly fueling ourselves with the right supplements, when we are meditating, you don't get self doubt as often because you are taking care of your state of being. And so self doubt can hit you. But you can also keep it at bay by constantly working on ensuring that you're getting the right love getting the right human connection, getting the right supplements and meditating.

Alex Ferrari 49:20
Now with with your journey and what you've done so far in your life vision you've been utilized. You said you've had the pleasure of being in the presence of some of the most remarkable human beings that are walking the planet today. Is there one that changed your course in the course of your spirituality, that that they did something or said something that completely skewed you into a radically different way?

Vishen Lakhiani 49:49
Well, there's so many, so many living and dead Jose Silva. I never got to meet him because he passed away in 1999. But I got to meet his family and the Silva method is now part of mind body and you Neale Donald Walsch, I worked with him on his new program awaken the species, which is now part of Mind Body. Pretty much all of these teachers that really, really, really touched my soul and helped me grow. I then bring them on to Mindvalley John and Missy Butcher of life book, Eric asked me to create a wild fit the food and diet program, Lorenzo Delano, who create a 10x, the muscle growth program. And so there are so many there are 60 Major teachers on Mindvalley. Today, every single one of them in some way, had an influence on me.

Alex Ferrari 50:33
Now, there's also there was a concept that you talked about called Rose, r o s e, can you talk a little bit about that real quick,

Vishen Lakhiani 50:41
Your rose is basically your rate of self evolution. It is how rapidly you are growing and evolving. Your rows is determined by how you study by the people you hang out with by the books you read the podcasts you listen to end, it's determined by how fast you you you implement that which you learn. You can learn something and then just not do anything with it. But you can also learn something and implement. Remember the example of Neale Donald Walsch, he spoke about unity, he gave an exercise and I walked through the streets of New York, implementing that exercise. All of these qualities help you improve your rate of self evolution.

Alex Ferrari 51:17
Now, I'm gonna ask you a few questions ask all of my guests. What is your definition of living a good life?

Vishen Lakhiani 51:24
Living a good life to me, means being happy in the now. But at the same time having a vision for the future that pulls you forward.

Alex Ferrari 51:35
What is your mission in this life?

Vishen Lakhiani 51:38
Me? Well, a lot of people think my mission is Mindvalley. And I'm sure that somehow connected to me, but Mindvalley is also 500 authors and employees and contractors and business partners. My mission is basically connecting people, I've connected more people into marriages, and loved relationships and partnerships. Anyone else I know because of the gatherings and the parties and the festivals, and the events I hold all around the world.

Alex Ferrari 52:03
Now, and what is the ultimate purpose of life?

Vishen Lakhiani 52:07
To me, the ultimate purpose of life is to remember that we are Gods having a human experience it is to remember,

Alex Ferrari 52:17
And where can people find out more about you what you do and where they can purchase the new book?

Vishen Lakhiani 52:23
Well, mindvalley.com is the website that's where you can even join the world's biggest personal growth movement. And then the book is mindvalley.com/books/6phase the number 6 phase.

Alex Ferrari 52:38
And Vishen I have to say thank you so much for coming on the show. You've been an inspiration to me along my journey. And I know you've changed so many people's lives around the world. And I truly appreciate the work that you're doing and you are doing as they say God's works or you are helping as many people as possible in trying to bring this planet and the species together through the work that you're doing. So I truly appreciate you my friend. Thank you again so much for for coming on the show and sharing your knowledge with us.

Vishen Lakhiani 53:06
Thank you, Alex. Take care!