In this very special episode, Matt and Chris, despite swearing off any further Dr. K content after their previous three-part series, find themselves bleary-eyed and once again tumbling into the familiar depths of the K-Hole.Yes, they’re back with Dr. K, everyone’s favourite enlightened Twitch non-therapy therapist, now emerging from a self-declared midlife crisis with some powerful new revelations. Chief among them: while enlightenment may not technically be for sale, you can certainly pay to “level up your propensity for it.”After years of humble-bragging about undercharging for his mental health guides, Dr. K has boldly pivoted to defending high-priced spiritual initiations. If you thought enlightenment involved effort, introspection, and maybe a bit of humility, think again—it turns out you can outsource your spiritual growth to a guru, who will do the grinding for you. Great news for Elon Musk.Join Matt and Chris as they machete their way through a jungle of surreal analogies—landscaping contracts, parental down payments, Bluetooth enlightenment, and monetised spiritual energy transfer—all in service of a worldview where the real obstacle to self-actualisation is your reluctance to wire $10,000 to a spiritually enriched craftsman for a golden amulet.So fill up your chakras, empty your critical thinking cup, and enjoy this trip through the mystic marketplace—where your spiritual awakening is just one overpriced relic away.LinksSqueex: Indian Hate on the Internet (A Discussion w/ Dr. K)DTG- Dr. K (Part 1): OPed Ayurvedic Medicine vs. Nerfed 'Western' AllopathyDTG- Dr. K (Part 2): Rhetorical Judo FlipsDTG- Dr. K (Part 3): Therapeutic Non-Therapy
And welcome to Decoding the Gurus with a mini decoding, a mini decoding episode.
That's why I'm doing it.
That's why you hear this.
This is where we decode gurus.
That's why Matt normally does the introduction.
And over there, the Rocky to my bullwinkle.
How's that, Matt?
That's very good.
Yeah, that's good.
That's Matthew Brown, psychologist extraordinaire.
I'm Christopher Kavanagh, cognitive anthropologist, semi-extraordinaire.
Associate Extraordinaire.
And yeah, we're here to look at gurus, what they do and what they say and analyze it from a critical perspective.
Critical but fair.
That's our brand, Matt.
Always fair.
Always fair.
Fair.
Reasonable.
Fair to a fault, I would describe our approach.
I'm surprised you went there with Rocky and Ball Blinker.
You know, I think I assume it's because, you know, Rocky's so much taller than Ball.
Sorry, Bullwinkle's so much taller than Rocky.
I honestly, I've never watched Rocky Bullwinkle in my life.
I don't even know which one is Rocky and which one is Bullwinkle.
Bullwinkle's a big moose.
Rocky is a little squirrel, I think.
He's not a beaver.
No, he's a squirrel, I think.
Anyway, I did watch that because, my God, when you're 10 years old or whatever, you'll watch anything that's on the television after school.
Kids today are spoiled.
They have choices.
That's right.
I had no choice.
If it's a cartoon, you might have to watch it.
That's simple as that.
And my God, it was not good.
It wasn't good?
I think, I don't know when they made it in the 1950s.
We're still seeing reruns in the early 80s.
It's harsh, man.
That's my general impression as well.
You know, like Woody Woodpecker cartoons and whatnot as well.
I mean, okay.
But Catch the Pigeon.
I catch the pigeon.
That, on the other hand...
I don't know what that is.
Every single episode, a banger.
Anna-Barbera cartoon where there's...
What is it?
There's like a pigeon that is, you know, I can't...
I don't know if it's...
It must be World War II.
It's, you know, messenger deliverer pigeons and they're trying to catch it.
I don't think it's not really...
I don't think it's set around that these are Nazis trying to catch the pigeon, but it's...
It's a series of people trying to catch the pigeon and stop it delivering its messages.
That's it.
That's the show.
That's the show.
It's very good.
The thing is, Matt, they're catching the pigeon with various contraptions.
Do you know Dick Dastardly and Muttly?
I think I know Muttly.
I don't know.
He says, kind of giggling dog.
He's in it.
They're in it.
It's their show.
Wacky races.
One of them is an offshoot of the other one.
You've never seen that?
It's good.
I guess you guys got different stuff during the period.
You had to watch Wacky and Bullwinkle and we got Catch the Pigeon.
What about Trapdoy?
Do you know Trapdoy?
No.
Don't you dare go down a trapdoy.
No, that's it.
It's a clay animation show.
Yeah, you wouldn't have watched it.
There was like a British monster and there was like monsters in the trap door that he had to keep control of.
You would like that too.
All good recommendations.
I'll take your word for it.
I'll take your word for it.
Moving on.
Yeah, moving on.
That's not why we're here.
Why we're here, Matt, we've gone back.
This is a special decoding because we're only covering a segment.
Of a piece of content.
But it is a piece of content of a guru that we've looked at in some depth.
In some depth.
That's right.
We've gone back to the K-hole.
We're in Dr. K content.
I see.
So by special, you mean bad.
This is going to be a bad experience.
An unnecessary source of suffering for me, you, the audience, everyone involved.
Maybe.
Maybe.
I feel it's like it's more...
Targeted decoding, there's a specific reason that we should cover this content, but it doesn't warrant the full length, the full, you know, premiere decoding the guru's treatment because it's only one element of the conversation.
And I should mention...
And also, it's been done.
We've done Dr. K. We know what the deal is.
Oh, yeah.
He's been sorted out, right?
What else is there to learn?
Is there anything new?
Well, this is something of an update, Matt, because if you recall...
In the past content we listened to with Dr. K, one of the recurrent themes was that that spiritual focus stuff was kind of the mean thing in his old content, but he doesn't even emphasize that anymore.
In the past, I talked a fair amount about Ayurveda.
Generally speaking, when I talk about Ayurveda, I talk about it more from a personality analysis standpoint.
And as part of the support for Ayurveda, I cited a couple of scientific papers.
Seven months ago, someone in our community made a post sort of questioning the veracity of the research that we were citing.
And it turns out that they made really, really good arguments.
So we talked about it on stream, addressed their criticism.
Turns out that a lot of their criticisms were actually really good.
And for the last seven months, we haven't said a word about Ayurveda.
Internally, we're going through the process of reviewing a whole body of Ayurvedic research.
My point here is that sometimes at HG, we'll say particular things that we believe are correct and we'll even do some research and we'll cite papers and stuff like that.
But no scientific paper is perfect.
And as members from our community will point out those kinds of things, we will absolutely adjust our behavior.
So, you know, a lot of those criticisms are out of date.
And then we showed that didn't seem to actually be the case because he was still regularly saying similar kind of things in newer content.
But in any case...
That was an argument that he mirred.
And let's see how well that has held up in this very recent content.
So in particular, we are talking about a conversation he had with another YouTuber called Squeaks.
They're all Loner Box or Turtle Dove or whatever.
So this is basically characters from our childhood cartoon shows.
That's where the names come from.
Squeaks and Dr. K. And interesting, Matt, interesting framing choice here.
So on Squeaks' channel, this conversation is called Indian Hate on the Internet, brackets, a discussion with Dr. K. On Dr. K's channel, it's just titled Internet Hate.
So that might speak to the different way that the two of them approach that later topic.
That's not what we're going to focus on because it's actually the introductory part of the conversation.
But having listened to the whole conversation, that is a dividing line between them.
Squeaks is more concerned with the discriminatory racist stuff being targeted at Indians online recently in the uptick in it.
And Dr. K sees it as just, you know, like a manifestation of edgy online stuff and people don't really necessarily mean it.
And the way to approach them is not the...
You know, condemn it.
Well, in the past, Dr. K seems to be mainly concerned with, you know, criticism of himself, personally.
Haters, people with closed minds, and so on.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Well, okay.
So, the first part of the conversation is more focused around spirituality.
But I think it has some interesting...
Motifs.
But you know, Matt, one thing that I think is important, I believe this already existed in the content, but I don't remember it being so clearly explicit at the very start.
But maybe it was, but this just reminded me of Dr. K's speciality.
Hello.
I got to do my disclaimer.
Oh, okay.
Welcome to another Healthy Gamer GG stream.
My name is Dr. Alo Kanoja.
Just a reminder that nothing we discussed on stream today is intended to be taken as medical advice.
Everything is just for educational or entertainment purposes only.
If you all have a medical concern or question, please go see a licensed professional.
Maybe those listeners were always there, but, you know, good to get it in.
Yeah, good to get it in.
Good to get it in.
No matter how much it looks and feels like therapy.
It ain't.
Yeah, a lot like financial advice.
Yep, this is normal.
We're used to this now.
Yeah, this is normal.
So, okay.
Then after that, the actual content that we're going to look at.
So there's some discussion about, you know, how both people are doing, right?
This is, you know, kind of catching up.
Then Dr. K raises this point.
And then I've also been, I went through a little bit of a midlife crisis, which was really interesting.
But then like sort of...
Feel really good about it now.
I think it's like a developmental stage.
What was the result of the midlife crisis, if you don't mind sharing?
So I think I had kind of been spiritually coasting for many years.
So I went kind of hard into spirituality because I woke up one day and I was like, what the hell am I doing?
Like, what is this?
You know, it's like, am I just going to continue streaming about mental health and making YouTube videos for the next decade of my life?
And how much of an impact is that really going to have?
Sure.
And what am I on this earth for?
We also, you know, it's kind of interesting because we really do try to price our products and services to be available.
So one of the biggest pieces of feedback that we get is like, oh, you know, your guide is way too cheap.
So people will be like, you should sell it for like $200, $300.
That's what medical doctors who sell courses on the internet sell it for.
But we're really proud of, or I'm proud of, the fact that people in 121 countries can afford it.
Yeah.
But then that also creates challenges from a financial standpoint because we leave a lot of money on the table.
Yeah, it's a very Dr. K response, isn't it?
It starts off, like the question is, how's it been going?
And then, okay, well, actually, I had a midlife crisis in the last year and that was because he's been spiritually coasting.
You don't want to do that.
You know, if you spiritually coast for too long, then spirituality will get away from you.
Yeah.
But then segues from that to, you know, we're basically doing, you know, great generous things with our thing.
We could be charging more money for our stuff, but with our business, we're offering it at a low price, even though we could charge more because, you know, we really care about people.
Yeah, those things aren't really connected, but it just breezes through them.
Yeah, well, there's the notion about like the dissatisfaction about, you know, am I just going to be a YouTuber?
Am I just going to be making videos about mental health?
I kind of, you know, you get it, right?
Everybody might have those kind of, you know, regardless of what career you're in.
But then like the switch over to, you know, there's a lot of feedback that I'm not charging enough.
I should be charging more.
And, you know, I'm really glad I don't charge that much, but there's a lot of money.
There's a lot of money being left on the table.
And, you know, that's a concern.
So just, again, like, are there really that many people clamoring that you should increase the price of your product?
Like, you're being too reasonable, these low, low prices.
Well, but in any case, Matt, it continues.
So, like you say, it is an interesting...
I think that those two areas are combined.
And so I was...
There's some sponsorship offers that we've gotten from companies that probably in retrospect, it's good that we didn't take them from an even perspective.
Sure.
But, you know, sometimes when you get faced with those sponsorships, it's like, okay, do you want to stick...
Does it feel wrong to you?
And how many zeros of money are you going to pass up?
Yes.
That's like every sponsor.
You have to play that little mental gymnastics a little bit.
Like, is this worth the risk?
Or is this ethically okay to take?
Yeah.
And in our case, it was sort of like the way I...
What I was really struggling with was like, okay, if I take this sponsorship, how much good can we do with this capital?
Yeah.
Right?
It's not...
I mean, it's never really been about...
I mean, I play Dota too, man.
The game is free.
I've been playing it for 13 years.
Yeah.
Can I ask you a question about what you said?
You said like you went through a midlife crisis and...
So I like Squeaks is kind of like, yeah, that's interesting.
But, you know, the original question was if I, you know, the midlife, we seem to have got on to like monetization strategies and whatnot.
But yeah.
It's interesting, isn't it?
I mean, like on one hand, like, you know.
I totally get it.
I empathize that, you know, yeah, it's true, right?
Like, we've been approached by people who want to advertise, or we don't do any advertising, but even if we did, it'd be like, okay, is this okay?
Yeah, yeah.
And everyone's got their different sort of thing.
So on one hand, I get it, that makes sense, but there's just that self-aggrandizing tone, and it feels like a, you know, well, you know, if we took this, all these, you know, all the zeros after it, think of how much good we could do with that money.
Yeah.
Maybe, maybe, I mean, there's a lot of entrepreneurial language there.
Maybe it's being run as a charity, as a pure charity, an NGO, a nonprofit.
But I don't think so.
No, it's not.
I don't think so.
No.
Yeah.
And that notion as well, like, that's very familiar with, like, Cooperman.
And stuff, right?
The money that we collect will go towards funding research into these important topics and will help us to improve the show, you know, or Andrew Gold saying, you know, if you subscribe, I'll be able to get even bigger guests and more conversations.
Like, yeah, just that notion that, like, it's not about the money for me anyway.
I just play a free to play computer game.
I don't need any extra money.
The lady does protest too much.
I feel it a little bit there.
Yeah, I feel so as well.
I think you're going to play more clips along these lines.
I won't say too much, but it's a very common thing, isn't it?
I think it is a borrowed American thing, but it is also a corporate thing where you have companies.
If you believe their advertising and their mission statements, you'd think that their mission was to save the world and make the planet green.
And make everyone happy.
But actually their mission is to make money for their shareholders.
So we don't take it at face value when companies do that.
But on the other hand, in this sort of tech influencer, California-esque type space, it seems like everyone says that, you know, we're on a mission to do something good, better society.
But, you know, I mean, I'm not saying that plays no role in their motivations, but...
They kind of overplay that a little bit.
They are running a business at the end of the day.
Yeah, like we say, it's a recurrent theme.
But everybody in the guru sphere has very lofty goals.
They are all making profit, but that's not really what it's about.
It's got nothing to do with it.
If they do make money, it's really just like, how can we then use this in order to make the world a better place?
Maybe that's what Jordan Peterson is doing.
Now, well, at least in his case, he does say, you know, I'm an unrepentant capitalist.
I never said I wasn't going to make money.
And, you know, I'm all about the good deals and whatnot.
Like, he fancies himself a modern-day industrialist or whatever.
I have to admit, yeah, they're a bit more honest about that kind of thing.
But in any case, Matt, so...
And Squeaks was trying to get him back onto the, you know, but what about the midlife crisis?
Is that what the midlife crisis was about?
And yeah, so this is how this connects in.
You said like you went through a midlife crisis and, you know, and related to if you really want to be doing like YouTube and stuff all the time.
And then you mentioned as well earlier that you're, you know, for the last year and a half, you're...
You're collabing with the UN.
You're going to the White House.
You're making courses.
And I know you have this thing called AOE Healing, where you try to heal as many people as possible.
What avenue have you found that to be the most effective with your company's admission statement?
Great question.
So I think it's kind of weird, but one of the key things that I came away with is focusing on efficacy is not the goal.
I know it sounds so weird, but it's sort of like there's some balance of, is it effective?
So we went to Capitol Hill a couple of months ago and met with two senators' offices and three or four congressperson's offices.
And so, like, is that effective?
Like, I don't know.
So I think a big part of that reframing was...
Really thinking about, okay, what's the target we're shooting for?
And what I sort of settled on is like, we're going to try to just do random amounts of good in ways that feel good.
And even if it isn't effective, because there are a lot of things that we do today that are not effective.
Sure.
You could argue that this stream is not the most effective use for solving the mental health crisis.
You're kidding!
And also, that's okay.
So I think that's a big part of what I kind of worked through is like, okay, because then you start getting into metrics and it's like, how do I make the biggest impact?
And it's like, you know what?
Better people than me can save the world and make the biggest impact and get, you know, get into that.
I'm going to do what feels good to me.
I'm going to do what feels right to me.
I'm going to do what feels fun to me.
And like, I'm okay.
I don't have to make the biggest impact.
I want to make some impact and I want to help people.
But I actually moved away from efficacy as an outcome.
Not that we don't measure it in some way, but that's not like the North Star.
So why don't you play this?
It sounds to me like your typical self-indulgent kind of.
I'm going to do what feels right to me.
Well, the first thing is it's a fair shift from the stuff that we previously heard in the content where it was all about we need to have the biggest impact on the biggest.
You know, the most effective, efficient use of our time to spread the message.
It's no good doing one-on-one.
It just reminds me that, like, you can completely 180 to actually, you know, aren't we all too concerned a bit with metrics?
And, like, if you help one person and you enjoy it, isn't that actually better?
So, like, it doesn't matter that you completely flip what you've been arguing for.
And it just also happens, Matt, that, you know, Dr. K was at...
The White House, he was meeting with senators and whatever, and there's been a shift, right?
Presumably a lot of those people now don't have the same influence that they might have had under a Democrat regime.
So now, what's the point in, you know, interacting with politicians and that kind of thing?
Is that the metric of success?
So I wonder if it is just this organic reframing or if the changing political winds means that there's less of a Emphasis on mental health programs now in the modern political ecosystem in the US.
Right, right, right.
Yeah, I'm curious about how he measured effectiveness before.
Because I suspect he measured it by subscribers and views and your standard metrics of business success.
It's quite difficult to measure how effective any kind of...
Yeah, so there's two possibilities.
One is, like you said, you know, how many people download, how many people watch and whatnot.
But there's the other option, which is that he did mention in previous discussions, you know, about how much more effective their, like, healthy gamer coaching system was in post-treatment survey internal data that they had that showed it was,
like, really, really outperforming other types of Therapy and whatnot.
So, like, it could be both things being mixed in together.
But in any case, you know, don't get too caught up on those kind of ethics, Matt.
So, I remember him having a long discussion with people about how the problem with, like, modern psychiatry was that it didn't focus enough on, like, whether it was being effective and, you know, helping people.
But apparently, no, I...
Yeah, but, you know, he's talking about he went through a crisis and this kind of made him...
Change is opinion, right?
So this opinion has now changed.
You know, people change, Chris.
People change, they do.
Can we not let people change?
And there's also been another change because before we pointed out that like Dr. K really could be milking things more.
Yes, he has a what could be uncharitably referred to as a kind of multi-level marketing thing, but not entirely, but like he had that Model of you join and train in the Healthy Gamer coaching system and then you become a coach and you can earn money for being a coach.
So I don't know what way you frame that as like a professional development or like helping people to become not therapists, life coaches, right?
But he didn't have a monthly subscription model.
And we pointed that out at the time and kind of, you know, said it's actually somewhat admirable.
Given, you know, that would be common in this kind of space.
So for years, people have been telling me, like, oh, you should build an app and, like, have some subscription-based model, right?
Join the inshittification of content and charge people a monthly fee for things that they will never own and can be revoked because of some licensing.
Agreements in the fine print.
Let me just break my social media addiction by installing a new social media to help me break my social media addiction.
And so we have a membership now, but for many years, like, the key thing was, like, people were telling me, like, sign up, start a Patreon and do this and do that.
And I was like, but what do people get?
Yeah.
Right?
Like, it's not, I'm sure, like, I'm sure a subscription model makes us more money, but, like, just because it makes, like, what do people get for that?
And so we finally took us about...
Four and a half years, but they're in speaking of going deep.
So there was there's a group of things that I wanted to talk about that would not perform well on the YouTube algorithm.
And so that's where we started our memberships, where where people basically now they vote on what they want me to talk about.
So like I'll prepare lectures that are determined by the members.
So does this kind of join in the enchantification of subscriber-based content or not?
Well, I'm sympathetic to this.
I think this sounds reasonable.
Because, yeah, the YouTube algorithm does reward clickbait.
And if you do want to do a more long-form type series, then you might well want to get more into that kind of thing.
Look, I'm just pointing out that started out saying, you know, all these bad things about recurrent memberships and PhDs and whatnot.
But then the conclusion is, and now we've started our own one and highlighting the benefits, which, you know, that is what people said the benefits were before.
So saying, you know, well, what we're doing here is like, you know.
Well, it's true.
It is exactly the thing that he said before that is contributing to the gentrification of the internet, right?
It is a subscription.
Then we're people that are keen on a multi-part lecture series or whatever.
So, yeah, I don't know.
Yes.
And that model often, you know, rests on that, like people forget to cancel membership.
Like this is, it's part of the nature of subscription services.
So it's not that big of a thing, but what it is interesting then is like, just like with us, Matt, that in some way.
Assuming that you are building a Patreon or a subscription-based service, like, you know, a membership service, so that you can get more deeply into the topics that you and your audience, you know, are interested in, but maybe the general broader audience for your YouTube channel or whatever it is,
you know, might not be, right?
That means that the content that you produce there should give you some more insight into where your priorities are, like in Arceus, for example.
On the Patreon, we do this series of decoding academia, focusing on papers or reading popular science books and giving commentary.
Or the Garometer episodes where we're doing the scoring of the gurus that we cover.
These are all things that kind of point towards us being nerdy academic types.
But maybe people wouldn't find that so interesting in the general audience, right?
Or like the Very Bad Wizards, right?
They cover...
The various TV shows that they find interesting, like Deadwood or whatever, but they don't put it all out on the main feed.
So that's perfectly normal.
But what I mean is, it gives you an insight to what people are interested in delving into.
So what is Dr. K providing on this new platform?
And the really fun thing about that, so the other challenge that we ran into is that a lot of the good work that we want to do, I think, is contrary to metrics on the internet.
So one thing that performs terribly is if I make a five-part, let's say, YouTube lecture series on emotions, part number one will do great, and each subsequent part will be, like, half as good, and it'll kill your channel.
Because no one wants, like, everyone, no one's gonna...
Stick around for part five.
But on the membership side, it's completely different.
So these are people who are invested in kind of long-term stuff.
So it's really cool because for me, it allows me to go deeper into topics instead of staying on the surface.
Yeah.
And it feels a lot more like, okay, you all get to choose.
So we had a lecture this past week on soulmates, which is like a really fascinating topic.
And that one may have done OK, but like, you know, we'll do like kind of advanced stuff, like weird stuff about spirituality, which is another big thing for me is like I had some I went hard into spirituality again for the first time.
Like so for a couple of years, I've been doing some pretty hardcore spiritual practice and that has completely changed my perspective.
Oh, what practice?
I started doing some more serious tantric practice.
And then a couple of other Kriya-type practices.
Okay.
Can you explain that for people who may not know?
So, I mean, like, on one hand, he's describing, like, what's perfectly normal.
You want to do deep dives on X, Y, and Z. It's not click-baity stuff.
There's a few people that would really like to hear it, but it's not, like, millions.
So it's kind of a subscriber thing.
Makes sense.
And it's good because it allows someone that wants to make a lecture series on that, it allows them to do it.
That bit is all perfectly normal.
And I think that's the reality, right?
But is that him trying to cure as many people as possible and solve the mental health crisis?
It seems like that bit's kind of...
Well, that's gone.
Like you said, that's kind of...
That's not his focus anymore.
He's shifted his attention from AOE healing to just doing what he can.
And actually, I think that is probably a more reasonable thing.
But the second part of that, Matt, was then to say, you know, we can get into stuff like emotions and soulmates and whatnot.
But we can also get into some more advanced spiritual stuff.
Because I've been doing some spiritual techniques.
And as per usual, where people do this.
It's changed everything, right?
So, you know, you thought before, Dr. K was quite into Ayurvedic or spiritual practices and whatnot.
Apparently, he was only scratching the surface before.
He's got into the deep tantra now.
So, yeah, we're going to hear a bit more about what it specifically means.
But I think that's telling that, yes, you have these kind of lecture series, which, you know, might not do so well or whatever.
But then the next thing is, and we can do more about spiritual content, which he previously said he was getting away from, right?
Like he now wasn't focusing on spiritual stuff so much because he was like, that's his personal stuff, but he's not injecting that into his content.
So seems like it's coming back.
I guess so.
I guess so.
All right.
So that's cool.
Subscription model, deep dives into spiritual stuff for those that are super keen.
All very well and good.
What kind of things now?
Let's hear a bit more.
Here's the way I would explain it.
So there's like, you know, if you look at spiritual practices, there's a range of things that are plausible to things that are, or maybe scientific to esoteric is like, there's like a spectrum.
Okay.
So if we look at something like mindfulness.
Which is not even meditation, really.
But mindfulness is completely above board.
There are tons of studies on it.
We don't really know exactly what it does or how it works, but it reduces depression, anxiety, narcissism by somewhere around 20%, improves focused productivity.
And then there's all this weird stuff.
So when I started my meditative practice, I was very skeptical.
And so I started with the practices that were scientifically verified.
And I thought a lot of this weird stuff, like about these different dimensions of consciousness and crap like that, I thought all that was basically BS.
But over the last couple of years, and then I also was skeptical of spiritual gurus who charged gigantic piles of money.
And then I realized that there are a lot of scam artists there, but that there are some, through my own practice and being a teacher in some ways, I realized that there are some things that I think are really...
I changed my mind on a lot of that stuff.
Oh, interesting.
I mean, I guess we can go into more detail if you want to, but I realized that there are just a lot of biases that we have that are ignorant biases.
Right?
So someone who is skeptical of, let's say, a high-priced meditation initiation or even the concept of initiation is working from a place of ignorance.
They have no idea what initiation is.
They don't know why it works and they think it's bad.
I know what you're going to say here, Chris.
I know what your issue with this is.
Oh, really?
You've accessed the doors to higher levels of consciousness?
Then tell me.
Oh, Chris Dakota.
Have I read your mind here?
The issue with that is that it's not true.
I don't think there was not a time in his career where he was like a super science guy, very skeptical of any kind of alternative treatments and so on.
And he's just reluctantly forced to come around with it because he's been doing the deep practice and he's realized just recently that actually there really is something to this.
That is not in fact the case.
I think he's always been into this.
This is not a framework for introspection, my friend.
This is something that has been scientifically shown to be baked into genes.
Okay?
So this is why I emphasize Ayurveda over astrology or...
Because I've studied a lot of stuff.
Okay, guys?
I've studied like Vedic astrology, not so much Western astrology.
I learned how to read tarot cards.
I'm an energy healer.
I don't talk about any of that crap.
Well, that is part of it.
Although I would say you've only scratched the surface of my dark soul there.
Because you're right.
It does impress me that people can constantly repackage the CM Cleam.
Because we heard Dr. K say this when he was in the previous content.
You know, I was skeptical, right?
But I've looked into these things and I've had my own experiences and I've...
I've recognized, you know, that there is...
Now, this is not a scientific belief by any means.
This is just based on my experience of my own sort of meditative practice.
So, for example, like 20 years ago...
Now, wow, it's been 20. 20 years ago, I was given a mantra by a tantric in India.
And this was a guy who, like, gave me a mantra.
And I was like, I want a mantra that will channel the energies of the universe to, like, make me...
Spiritually successful in life and materialistically successful in life.
And he was like, okay, I will give you.
And he just like gave me this month or every day and you'll harness the energies of the universe and you'll be more successful than you realize.
And at the time, I was like a college dropout with like a less than a 2.0 GPA.
And I was like, okay, like maybe I'll just do this thing and I'll give it a shot.
And what I sort of found is that it's kind of bizarre, but the more that I do the mantra, the more that I saw, it absolutely helped me spiritually.
And it also helped me materialistically in some weird way.
And I've had some sort of experiences in meditation where I sort of feel connected with other things.
So again, he's had the same discovery, and it's always going in the same direction.
It's always the more esoteric practices or whatever are actually...
There's something to them.
And look, generalizing up beyond Dr. K, I mean, this is a very common rhetorical technique.
Yes.
So, you know, the why I left the left, you know, I'm a very liberal guy, very progressive, but man, the things that have been going on recently, it's forced me, it's forced me to realize that they're actually all crazy.
And I have to be a right-wing now.
You know, we've seen this across multiple things.
You set it up.
As in, you are one of the people of the thing that you're against.
You're one of them.
But you've been on this journey and you've been forced to come around to seeing a completely opposite point of view.
It's quite an effective way to convince other people that you're not just, whatever, an idologue, a partisan.
You're not biased.
You're someone who's been compelled to take this view because of the evidence or the compelling...
Arguments that you're about to present.
So it's just a very useful rhetorical technique.
And the problem is when it doesn't really fit the truth about their background and their activities.
Yes, but also here, Matt, so Dr. K is talking about, like, one thing is that he claims that, you know, the evidence base for mindfulness practice is absolutely rock solid.
That's all been completely confirmed.
I encourage anyone who's convinced by that to look at more critical evaluations of the mindfulness literature because it is not as rock-solid as he presents.
Generally, yes, people do report feeling better after doing mindfulness-type practices.
But what tends to happen is when you compare that with controls where, say, people are taking tango lessons or doing exercise or going swimming, whatever the case, Often don't see these dramatic improvements,
right?
So there's a lot of issues with low-quality studies, non-pre-registered, small samples, etc., etc., the usual kind of thing.
So he's presenting it as there's this bedrock of completely validated science that we know these practices definitely improve things by 20%.
And first of all, that's wrong.
But second of all...
He then is saying in regards the more esoteric stuff.
Now, remember when he was talking to Dr. Mike and they got into that whole 90% of is crap or whatever, which actually Dr. K did not say 90% is crap.
That was Dr. Mike, me at that point.
But here you have this kind of framing.
Where you can vacillate between the two as well.
There's a lot of scammy gurus out there, Matt.
There's people, they're charging money and whatnot.
But if you locate the right teachers, if you can see through the crap which Dr. K can, you realize that actually your bias against them was ignorant bias.
And it's true that not everyone benefits from this kind of treatment, this kind of practice.
But if you look carefully, you'll see that the people that don't.
Come to it with a lot of negative energy.
They're not ready for this kind of...
I mean, there's lots of ways to do this.
And yeah, I know there's a lot of people that are out there that are fans of positive psychology and the various types of things, right?
And there's an infinite number of interventions like this that sound good.
You know, building resilience, you know.
Does this sound good, Domath?
High-price initiations?
That's what he's referencing.
And he's saying he was unfairly dismissive of their value.
But that's a very, you know, niche, even within the whole alternative spiritual ecosystem, like paying large amounts of money for initiation is a, I think, you know, a relatively niche product.
So, Chris, is this exactly what I think it is or what it sounds like?
What is a high-priced initiation exactly?
Oh, well.
Let's hear a little bit more.
So over about 18, 19 years of practice, I started to realize that, oh, a lot of this crap is valid.
And I understood why it's valid, how it's valid.
So I would say I took the plunge in some ways.
Oh, interesting.
And did a couple of things that I had avoided.
And I also realized that I had avoided those things out of essentially a certain degree of ego and ignorance.
Because I don't really know what it's like.
I don't know.
I'm just judging.
If I see a big price tag, I think that this person must be a scam artist.
And so I did a couple of those things, and it's been quite revolutionary.
Wow.
I mean, I'm so curious on what those things were.
I share your same skepticism on, like, the guru charging a lot of money.
Because I feel like, you know, you grew up in India, and you hear about these, like, gurus and villages who are just, like, basically taking advantage of poor people.
Is how I used to see it.
Where they would charge people basically all their money to reach some sort of enlightenment.
I feel like that's antithetical to what enlightenment should represent.
It shouldn't be a cause and effect or input thing.
It should be like a quiet solo work.
Like, enlightenment can't be sold, is what my preconceived notion is.
But maybe you know something.
Maybe there's some practices that are legit.
Yeah, so I think I...
I think it's a very reasonable statement to make, and this is going to get weird, but I think there are presumptions about the nature, like the metaphysics of enlightenment, that I think we're missing a couple of things.
There's a lot of presumptions about enlightenment.
One of them is that it doesn't involve paying a lot of money.
Yeah.
That's prejudice and ignorance, unfortunately.
A lot of people think that, but it's just purely...
Out of ignorance and prejudice, I think.
Yeah.
I love Dr. K's double speaker.
You know, that's a very reasonable statement.
I had the same, you know, preconceptions.
But, like, if we can just break out of that paradigm and get through our, you know, ignorant presumptions about things.
Like, he is a master at this.
And he's got these little phrases.
And, of course, one of the most common ones is, that's a great question.
That's a great question.
Or you always know that's going to be a launchpad for something when that comes up.
Or...
Like he said there, what was it?
He said, this is going to get a bit crazy.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, that's going to be a setup for him doing a Jordan Peterson-esque massive loop of double talk so that you're sort of baffled by what's going on and you're just going to kind of nod your head and go, oh, okay.
So he does go on a bit more.
About, you know, specifically what he's talking about here, right?
The presumptions that we've built up and like why they might not be valid.
So can you buy enlightenment?
No, no, no, no.
Of course not.
But can you level up your propensity for enlightenment through payments?
Well, that's a different thing entirely.
So one good example of this is diksha, which means initiation.
So people think that there is, you know, like if I, if I, Get initiated into a practice versus I just read a book about the practice or watch a video about the practice.
Those are qualitatively quite different.
That's my view now.
So to receive diksha from a guru, they basically impart a portion of their spiritual energy into you, which is kind of like receiving a down payment for a house.
So it's like when your parents give you a down payment for a house, It drastically changes the trajectory of your financial situation, right?
So instead of like starting in debt, and so the efficiency of the growth increases very rapidly when you receive diksha.
And so those kinds of concepts I didn't really understand very well until I started digging into it more and more and more.
And then that begs the question, what does spiritual energy mean?
So then that's a whole different conversation about...
Understanding that the reason that meditation works for some people and doesn't work for other people is because of basically the spiritual energy accumulation stat, which you can meditate and it can have some mental effects and some physiological effects.
But there's a third dimension of leveling up, which is really what matters for enlightenment.
And I would agree that enlightenment can't be bought or sold, but there are absolutely certain techniques.
And certain things that can increase your propensity for enlightenment.
I believe that.
I want you to dunk on this, Chris.
Don't dunk on it.
Help me follow the arc of the logic here.
So we started off, am I correct, with an analogy?
Which is, am I wrong thinking that paying a lot of money up front for initiation is analogous to your parents' Giving you money to put a down payment on my house,
which puts you financially ahead.
So, you know, via the cumulative returns, whatever, you're going to get a big boost financially from that gift.
So that's kind of what's going on when you give money to a guru because you're going to get an immediate spiritual boost.
Is that right?
Yeah.
So the analogy, if I follow the logic of it, I think he's saying like you...
Are you, right?
And your house that you're building or buying is your spiritual progress, right?
Yeah.
So you've got a mortgage or whatever that you're going to, you know, have to pay for many years to get, you know, that you own the house.
But you could have an outside source come in and help you by giving you like a big chunk of money.
So like that is providing...
A big down payment for the house, right?
Like at the start of your mortgage.
So the guru is giving you the spiritual energy in a big boost at the beginning.
Yeah, so I think the confusing bit in this analogy is that it's the guru giving you the money in terms of the guru being your parent who is, you know, helping you to make the down payment on your house.
But of course, in the actual setting, it's the other way around.
You are sending the money to the guru who is then...
Send you the spiritual energy to help with your spiritual progress.
Because spiritual energy works the same as compounding returns on financial investments.
I get it.
I get it.
All right.
So that's a way in which giving a guru a lot of money is actually a good thing.
And that's why it helps you become...
If you assume that they can transfer...
Something over to you in return for the large amount of money that you pay them.
I would assume they can.
I mean, why wouldn't they be able to crest their gurus?
They could transfer spiritual energy.
Why wouldn't they?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And like, of course, you can't buy enlightenment, Matt.
You know, as we've said, no, nobody's talking about buying enlightenment.
No, don't.
We're talking about supercharging your spiritual capacity stat or accumulation stat.
And you also heard, you know, you called this out actually before.
That notion that some people, they do meditation and whatnot, and they don't find that it works for them or whatever.
But that is often because their spiritual energy accumulation stat is too low.
It's so low to begin with.
That would be me.
I would definitely fall into that category, I think.
So if you had put a down payment to a guru, they could have sent you...
Yep.
Yeah.
Their spiritual energy and helped you out and then the meditation would have been more beneficial.
So it works like that.
Now, of course, my problem is you don't want to send the money to like a charlatan because then you will get the benefit.
And there's a lot of charlatans out there.
So you have to be able to discriminate which ones have got the goods and which ones have not.
That seems very important.
But the high price tag, that's actually not a way to discern between them because the real ones are charging.
Very high.
Now, why?
Why are they charging so high?
I understand the concept of apprenticeships or whatever.
You need to go and study with the guru for many years to display your devotion, and then they will finally provide you the teaching that you need.
That makes sense to me.
Why would a large sum of money work in exchange?
So, Squeaks raises this point.
So then my question is, and sorry, if you want to move on, I'm happy to move on.
But my question is, then why is there a price tag on it?
Oh, what a great question.
Like, if it's so revolutionary, it's like, enlightenment is described as basically a fundamental, you know, it's almost every human's journey, whether they know it or not.
So it's like, then why are people charging anything for it in the first place, like distribution?
So, no, that's a question that I can't confidently answer.
But I have a couple of ideas.
The first is that sometimes when they charge things, what they're charging for is essentially their time.
So when you work with some gurus, they will do spiritual practices on your behalf.
So it's basically like outsourcing a portion of your spiritual grinding.
Wait, so it's like Bluetooth spiritualism?
How does that work?
Yes.
It's pretty crazy.
It's crazy, right?
So if I were to ask you, Squeaks, imagine you wanted to make a work of art, or you wanted to have a garden.
You can outsource that labor.
And the outsourcing of spiritual labor, I think, is a possibility.
So that's one piece of it.
Okay.
A second piece of it is that sometimes there are certain...
Objects which are rare and materially valuable.
So for example, like if you get a yantra, which is like a mystical symbol, oftentimes it'll be made of a precious metal.
And so the price that the guru charges, as crazy as it sounds, economically varies with like the price of gold or the price of silver.
So that's the second piece.
The third thing, and this is the big one, is that a lot of it is about...
The ego and the faith of the recipient.
So like when I have, when I, let's say I have like $100.
And when I say to myself, I'm going to spend $50 of my $100 on a spiritual thing, I think it changes something internally within me.
So I suspect that that is a big part of it.
But why do they charge so much?
I'm not sure.
Well, he's not sure, but he's given three compelling, very compelling reasons.
Screeks represents all of us.
He's got questions.
We've all got questions.
I like how he starts off with that.
That maniacal laughter.
That's a great question.
Yeah, yeah.
Like whenever somebody finds like a whole bunch of empty liquor bottles under my bed, I'm just going to go, that's a great question.
What are they doing there?
Yeah, that's it.
Okay, well, let's do it the simplest one first.
Look.
Clearly, you're going to need the precious metals to meet your esoteric implements.
You're going to need that.
You're going to need that stuff.
You can't make money out of copper or stainless steel.
And the more rare and expensive...
The material, perhaps the more spiritually potent it is.
Well, I'd take that for granted, Chris, clearly.
You don't want like a plastic trinket.
Like the things you've got on your windowsill behind you.
I'm not going to get any spirit.
I sense no spiritual energy from that gear.
Hey, the Daruma dolls have spiritual energy that they're made out of.
Pepe-mache or something.
I don't know.
So, yeah.
All right.
So that's a simple one.
That's clearly a great point.
Very important.
What was the first one, though?
I've forgotten the first one.
Oh, the first one was that you're not counting in the amount of time.
This might actually be like hiring a freelance landscaper.
Oh, this is the outsourcing, the spiritual labor.
Of course.
This is brilliant because this makes sense to me, right?
Because it is doing spiritual practice.
It's a lot like hiring someone to mow the grass or to build an extension to your house or, you know, a company outsourcing its human resources stuff to whatever or call centers or whatever.
That makes sense.
That is how spiritual development and achieving enlightenment works.
And, you know, that costs money if you're going to outsource.
I personally would never, like, I'm just never going to put the effort into any kind of spiritual development because that boat has sailed.
But, you know, I'm relatively well off now.
I'd seriously consider getting you to do it for me.
Well, but does it work like that?
Because one point to note here is when it comes to like hiring laborers or garden landscapers or whatever, you hire them for a specific project and they produce it, right?
Or they, you know, help you plan it out or whatnot.
But they're not doing that on their own.
They weren't working on their own garden.
And then you came over and said, well, if I give you money, will you give that to me?
That's not the way it works.
But with gurus, aren't they generally generating spiritual power, doing spiritual practices for their own reasons?
Not on commission.
They're not waiting till the next request comes in so they can allocate the energy over to this person.
Does it work?
I mean, I've got questions.
I've just got questions because it feels like the gurus are doing the work anyway.
So this analogy doesn't exactly work because it would be more like me donating to somebody that is working on a project.
So like I can get my name put on the project like this person donated.
But in this case, he's talking that they will transfer some spiritual energy to you, possibly through a metal.
And in that case, is that not available to other people?
I think the most reasonable version of that show's point is that gurus are like expensive lawyers, right?
Yeah.
They've invested a lot of time and effort into developing all of those skills, developing that track record of loyally things.
If you want their loyally services, they're going to charge you an arm and a leg for it, but it's worth it.
Because they've got the skills.
They're going to advise you well.
Yeah, and presumably if they're building a relic or constructing one out of precious metals, that will take time as well.
That's true.
You've said weighted 0.2 there, but that's fair.
Yeah, they overlap, Matt.
They overlap.
You haven't even got the 0.3 yet.
0.3 is the most important one because I think the most important thing is that you're making a commitment.
When you hand over $10,000 to a guru, the guru doesn't want your money for themselves.
No!
They'll probably just burn it or give it away.
They're beyond interest in those kind of things anyway.
They're spiritually involved.
They're probably in cheap enlightenment.
But they have to take it from you because they know that you, for you, you're not at their level making that great sacrifice and passing.
With such a large amount of money is an important milestone for your journey to signal that you're truly ready to embark on your own spiritual mission.
So that sounds completely fair.
What I don't think is the reason is that they would want that money like the lawyer does just because they want your money.
That was not one of the three reasons.
Well, presumably that's the bad gurus that are motivated by that.
So again, you've got to have the right Discernment here.
But it's a sign of commitment, right?
So much in the same way that in Scientology, if you want to ascend to the higher levels of, you know, it's not cheap because you've got to indicate your commitment to the system, to the program.
Scientology is not about making money at all.
No, they don't want the money.
They have a mission to literally save the world.
I mean, that's the beautiful thing about Scientology.
They don't care about...
You know, money or power or influence and things like that.
Nice things, mansions, nice cars.
I mean, sure, they have those things, but they live in a capitalist society like we all do.
Well, the people at the very top of that pyramid.
At the very tippy top, of course.
But they live in a capitalist society, so we mustn't judge them for that.
Their mission is actually to save the world from evil aliens or something.
I've lost track of their exact mission, but I know it's very good.
I think he's describing the same kind of thing.
Now, Matt, we're all being awful sarcastic here.
Are we?
Aren't we?
We're being sarcastic enough.
But yeah, so I do think the parallels that we're drawing here, unlike the confusing analogy to a landscape gardener or a guru who is your parents sending you money for a house.
Those are confusing analogies.
They are of any levels.
But us pointing out that this is the same logic.
That pretty much every predatory, cult, and multi-level marketing scheme operates on is much less of a stretch, right?
So actually, our good friend Squeaks raises a comparable example that we haven't raised to say, "Isn't this a bit like..."
and let's see what he compares it to.
Because, you know, like, it's sort of like the same argument of, like, a lot of hustle culture bros.
Like, it'll be like, sign up for my course, and it's expensive.
And if you don't pay for it, it means you're not fully bought in.
So don't waste my time.
You know what I mean?
It's like, it's almost an impossible thing to break through.
Because it logically makes sense, but it's like, yeah, but, like, if it was that revolutionary, why is it so expensive?
So, I don't know.
Yeah, so I think there are a lot of attitudes around money and worth.
Right?
So I think for me, like, and this is a big part of what I've learned over the last couple of years, like the importance of faith.
I don't mean faith as in like believing in a particular God.
What I mean is that, see, when you, it's hard, it's kind of hard to explain, but when you take the plunge, that's what it was for me.
There's a drastic change to the way that you approach your practice.
And when I'm sort of sitting there from the perspective of being the judge, right?
I'm judging whether this is okay or not okay.
Anytime you judge, judgment requires an understanding of something, right?
In order to judge something, I have to say this is good or this is bad, which means I have to have a certain impression of it.
Does that make sense?
You can't judge without knowledge.
But I feel like if something doesn't make logical sense, Then, even if you don't understand it, you can judge it.
Like, if I was like, Dr. K, I could just make up some random shit that doesn't exist, and then you would inherently judge it, even if you're not a subject expert.
Totally agree.
Totally agree.
I'm just saying that there's judgment.
There's a second part of this.
Sure, sure, sure.
So, your judgment is based on logic.
Fine.
That's my point, is that you can't make a judgment without knowledge.
Sure.
Okay, I agree.
So, now there's a certain problem, which is that if you have knowledge, your receptivity to new knowledge goes down.
Sure.
Yeah, that's...
I've come to appreciate Dr. K for his incredibly confusing answers to things.
Remember, it's easy to forget, and I remember this when we covered Jordan Peterson, how he'd be asked a straightforward question, and then the journey would commence, and you would embark on this thing.
And remember, the point being raised here was a pretty good one.
Which is, hey, but isn't it the same as these, you know, these fitness bros, these optimizer bros who are saying, yo, you've got to give me a whole bunch of money or I've got to be sure you're committed and stuff.
And he goes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But, you know, and he starts off with that statement.
Well, there are a lot of attitudes about money and worth.
Which is kind of like a...
Like, such a neutral kind of thing.
Yeah, yeah.
There are.
There are, Matt.
There are.
Are you talking to that?
And then he sort of gets a little tied up for a little bit because it's difficult to explain.
It's difficult to explain.
And then he goes back.
Fever's important, though.
That's right.
He goes back a few steps.
And we start off with, well, first of all, the minute you start thinking that way, you're making a judgment.
We've gone back a lot of steps, right?
And he goes on to talk about...
While it's necessary to make judgments, you know, it can involve your pre-existing prejudices and biases.
You've got to empty your cup and so on in order to do whatever.
But basically, remember the question that he's replied to and consider this answer, which is...
Wow.
Yeah.
You mentioned the empty your cup analogy.
There's actually quite a bit of time spent outlining specifically that in great detail, right?
Which we...
We should know, if we're familiar at all, with contemporary spirituality.
The notion that you go into a thing with your prejudgments, your ideologies, all these things.
Your cup is full.
You cannot absorb the new knowledge.
You've got to pour your cup out and be receptive.
And then you can learn new things.
Which, you know, as always, Matt, there's a version of it which is fine.
Which is like, you have this student who comes into a course with a whole bunch of ideas.
And they don't actually know the subject as well as they think.
And they have to kind of stop trying to preempt, you know, whatever it is.
So that's the reasonable bit.
But the other bit is the version where every single charlatan on the planet who says, you know, ah, you are approaching this with your preconceived notions.
Look at you questioning why you have to make a deposit in my bank account for $10,000.
This speaks to your resistance.
Your lack of trust.
Your lack of trust.
Your obsession with money.
That's right.
You need to open up to receive what it is I'm going to give you.
So yes, there is a reasonable version of it.
But the application here just leaves the door wide open to saying, hey, put your critical thinking, put everything aside and just totally let you basically accept whatever it is I tell you to do.
And what you should think.
And the analogy he gives in terms of that sort of emptying your cup thing is he says, oh, you know, like for instance, my parents, if I were to tell my parents that arranged marriages are bad, then they would have trouble receiving that new knowledge because they've already got preconceptions that arranged marriages are good.
And I think that's a pretty poor example, right?
Because what he's talking about there is an opinion.
And of course, if you've got a strong opinion in one direction, then if somebody comes to you, Hey, what about the opposite?
Then you're naturally going to be resistant to it.
But in the vast majority of cases, if we're talking about actually increasing your knowledge, actually having knowledge in the area is helpful to you.
Every advanced thing that I've learned in statistics has relied upon other things that I know about statistics and mathematics and so on in order to build on it.
And actual genuine knowledge, not this flaky You know, woo type stuff actually is an incremental thing.
It doesn't involve having a blank slate and emptying your brain.
So that's my counterpoint to that.
Yeah, I think you're right that like in the vast majority of cases, like, you know, knowledge is built on foundations of related topics and whatnot.
So it's not great.
And the other point is, like you said, this starts out with a very specific question.
What about, like, the Hustle Bros?
So if you apply Dr. K's logic to that, so you shouldn't approach Andrew Tate's course with this closed mind because, you know, you think that this looks like a scam, but he's saying you are coming with these preconceived notions and that's what's holding you back from success.
So, like...
Yeah, that's right.
Like, the minute you think, hey, maybe this is a scam, you're making a judgment.
And judgment is fundamentally a closed mind.
It's a beta meal thing to do.
Yeah, just the logic is not good.
The logic is not good in many ways.
Now, here as well, Matt, part of the reason I was interested in this is like, do I think Dr. K is going to start offering high-priced initiation, you know, spiritual initiation to his listeners?
I don't think so.
I'd give him more credit than that.
But he's certainly laying the groundwork for that being a reasonable thing to do.
That's right.
And in very Dr. K fashion, because he is the master of the judo flip, I mean, that would explain the groundwork he was laying at the beginning, really emphasizing that they don't care about money.
They leave money on the table.
They walk away from it again and again and again.
Numbers with lots of zeros behind them.
But, you know, now...
You know, they're trying to reach as many people as possible, but now they realize it's okay.
You know, you can just, you know, you don't always have to be changing the world, you know, doing the most, the largest area of effect you can.
Sometimes you just want to do deep dive stuff.
People are going to pay some money for it.
And now there's this long discussion about money for gurus.
Well, also actually related to that, originally his listeners actually wanted them to charge more.
For his courses.
But he wouldn't because he had this point of pride that it was affordable, unreasonable.
Maybe it's for their own good.
Maybe it was ignorance and bias that was preventing him from seeing...
There are cases where you could charge a lot.
I don't know whether he's going to charge a lot either, Chris, but I do know that if he does, it'll be for the good of his listeners, of the people that pay.
It's going to be for them, for those reasons he described there.
Yeah, yeah.
So Squeaks also had a meditation practice, right?
He actually had one for two years that he was doing half an hour a day, he says, right?
Which is, you know, a relatively sustained meditation practice.
And, you know, he talks about it and he basically says that he was getting some benefits from it, but it didn't really last.
It didn't really change things, right?
And he tries to explain, you know, some of the...
Benefits he got out of it.
And I want you to listen to Dr. K's reaction because it sounds very familiar to previous interactions that we've heard when people describe, you know, that they've had some experiences and how these have influenced their life.
That I've realized that I have.
So what I'm trying to say is meditating allows me to explore myself a little bit more so that when I am with someone or when I am in a group, I feel confident in my internal being.
But I don't have to feel like I have a need for micro-adjusting or whatever.
How does that work?
I have no clue.
I've got no idea.
That's the magic of it.
I think it's like, and if I was to sort of logically, you know, try to look at it, my thinking is, it's just like when you are in a silent room, it allows you to process prior traumas or prior experiences that you have.
It cleans your inside spiritually so that when someone else is with you, you feel just more confident.
I don't know how to explain it, but that's my best attempt at logically explaining.
Give me a second.
Does that make sense or is that just jargon?
Oh, no.
It makes a lot of sense.
Okay, good.
We're going to learn a couple of things.
Something about that tone of voice that makes me uncomfortable.
And I hear that.
Yeah, you know that feeling that he's got when he's struck gold.
There's some deep psychological, clinical wisdom about to come up.
Yeah, you know, I guess, look, it's not our business to criticize these things.
A lot of people like to talk psychobabble and to add to...
Psychobabble, Mart.
Don't be disparaging.
Processing your trauma.
I don't know.
People can't have trauma and process it, excuse me.
I know, you're standing in for the Reddit.
No, I might be somebody that's very into that kind of self-work.
You don't know.
You might just be judging me.
Trauma exists, but a lot of people that talk about trauma are talking about something a little bit, you know.
More self-indulgent, you might say?
Yes.
You know, there is people, believe it or not, that benefit from talk therapy and from introspective practices.
They all live in California.
No, no, that's not true.
We are not anti...
Okay, we're not Scientology.
We don't disparage all...
Therapists and all talk therapists.
Is that in our official stance?
I don't know.
I don't know.
It's not my stance.
It's not my stance.
Please target your objections towards the senior.
I think there's a pop culture version and an indulgent version of talk therapy, which is incredibly popular.
Yeah, like in Larry David's world, everybody.
Is doing therapy, right?
They all have their therapist and they're all doing the internal work.
And this is also a thing that you see when you're like watching the White Lotus or whatever, right?
That the rich characters will all have their therapist back in the city or whatever.
So, yes, there is that language.
That's right.
And it is.
Yeah, it's a cultural thing.
That's all I'm saying.
It's sort of accepted in certain milieus as totally normal, totally.
You know, valid, all that stuff.
I'll just point it out.
It's a very specific cultural practice.
Anyway, go on.
Okay.
Well, they go on and they have more discussion about Squeaks' meditation experiences and what he may or may not have got out of it.
And there was some discussion about this thing, which comes up a lot, Matt, in the content we cover about like, you know, being authentic versus...
Reacting to what others are social pressure.
Like the heterodox gurus talk about it as well.
It's a recurrent theme in pretty much all of the content that we look at, including like the optimizers and whatnot, right?
But here's Dr. K's kind of approach to that because I think it's heading on similar themes.
When you are with other people, your impression of who you are is fractured between your experience and their perception of your experience.
So if I go to school with a Ninja Turtles backpack and I'm excited because I like Ninja Turtles.
I wanted this Ninja Turtles backpack.
I'm happy.
I'm like, I got my Ninja Turtles backpack.
And the second kids start making fun of me, this is very confusing.
Now, there's a part of me that loves it and there's a part of me that doesn't love it and I'm getting really confused.
And so then over time, what starts to happen is we start to...
We compromise who we are.
We try to reconcile this internal thing with this external impression.
And we slowly, and this we understand, right?
This is why you are getting tons of Slack messages.
Because you compromised what you wanted for the sake of the world around you.
And as you compromise in that way, generally speaking, it leads to unhappiness.
Because I'm the most happy when I'm with my Ninja Turtles backpack.
Yeah, yeah.
So if we think about the purpose of meditation, not the purpose, a purpose for you is to more solidly connect with that internal sense of who you are.
But this is important, not in a way that's temporary, but in a way that you carry with you throughout the day.
Yeah.
So as you carry it with you, as people start to judge you, you acknowledge that judgment.
You can even acknowledge like...
The necessity of, I don't know if this kind of makes sense, but you can acknowledge the necessity of playing the game, but your internal investment is not there.
Right?
So I can look at the situation and say, I need to shave today because I'm going to stream.
I don't care about streaming, but I recognize that if I don't shave, there will be some consequences.
I don't have to be emotionally invested.
Detachment, Matt.
Detachment.
Detachment.
But it's detachment.
I get the...
The Buddhist, Zen, whatever mystical influence is there.
But it's also just a perfect reflection of American culture and modern Western culture in general.
Dr. K would not like this.
He would not like you to say that's what it is.
It absolutely is.
Because as you know, as anyone who's got this sort of background in social psychology, anthropology or whatever, humans are social animals, right?
Yes.
But in the popular culture, And you mentioned this at the beginning of the show.
There is this concept that there is this pure you that is there on the inside.
Authentic.
Authentic, yeah.
This Rousseauian child of nature that wants to grow and flourish.
And there's a society out there.
There's other people that are going to be judging you, controlling your behavior, expecting you to shave, you name it.
So this person you're rubbing up against.
This outer society which is harsh and mean and uncaring.
And what you've got to do through, and you know, it could be traumatic and a lot of that stuff.
So what you've got to do through the self-work is to more accurately find that real you and express it, your individual self, more and more fully.
And I'm not judging this point of view.
I'm just pointing out that it's not psychology.
It's rather an expression of a certain set of cultural values.
Right?
And that's what is so appealing about it.
That's what I'm saying.
It's not saying it's good or bad.
Like, it's not, I think, fundamentally better or worse to be like in a Japanese sort of society where it's like...
Yeah, where social pressures are super high.
Yeah, you need to accommodate yourself better.
If you're not fitting in, then you need to change sort of thing.
Like, that's not necessarily better or worse, but both of them are just social constructs.
They're like cultural values that he's expressing using psychobabble.
Well, I will say, Doma, in Dr. K's defense, you didn't expect that.
There are a bunch of spiritual traditions, including from Vedic traditions, where he's mostly drawing from, where there are concepts that there is a more pure, crystalline, permanent essence or underlying that you can uncover through spiritual work,
right?
So there are...
Other systems beyond the individualistic New Age version, which does tell a similar story of uncovering the debris put there by society and conditioning to help you uncover, you know, your spiritually pure essence.
So it's not only modern Western, like, self-work that has that concept.
I agree.
No, no, I don't disagree with that at all.
And, you know, like the Zen Buddhist take on it, right?
It's a bit of a different angle, right?
You kind of deconstruct the self and find out there's nothing there.
But it's still a similar kind of thing, right?
Where you're kind of ignoring the outside world to a large degree and focusing on cultivating an inner purity.
Even if you call that purity and nothingness, it's still the same kind of vile, right?
But there's still this notion in Buddhism and Zen Buddhism and most of those traditions where that's a stage where you then pass through.
And you are then able to be in the world and you don't need to be meditating or isolated or whatever.
And you're kind of self-realized, self-actualized.
So he's saying, because he's saying, no, you might still shave for the meeting because you, like the Matrix, you see all the...
The paths of consequence and social appropriation that will come.
So you're doing the same thing that anyone else is doing.
It just doesn't matter to me.
I get it.
I get it.
You're putting on underpants in the morning.
You're more superior.
Out of consideration for the rest of society.
But you're doing that in a better way.
You know that underpants don't matter.
But you're putting them on.
But I'm not actually having a go at Dr. K. Because it's incredibly common.
Common.
Zeitgeist, right?
And I'm just saying it's not psychology.
For most people, it's an expression of the sort of cultural values.
Some positive psychologists might sign on to it.
But in any case, yes, I agree.
But yeah, so there is that notion, you know, that you're...
Inner self is really into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
That's the real you.
And society says you can't wear a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles backpack as an adult.
They say it's not okay for you to go into your work meeting with a turtle's pencil case.
By the way, the counterpoint is here that maybe social learning is really important.
And if you're raised by wolves and you grow up without social influences whatsoever, like in the case of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles backpack, It's probably the case that the other kids are being mean and it's perfectly fine to love Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, right?
But a lot of the time through development, a lot of the things that people do kind of instinctively are incredibly inconsiderate, are incredibly selfish, are incredibly annoying, a whole bunch of things, right?
And we learn from our parents, our families initially, and then through our social groups.
So an alternative point of view is that actually social learning...
It's important and it's not always about ignoring social feedback and discovering that it's not important anyway.
You can actually learn things from other people that in certain situations, what you really want to do is not actually the most important thing to consider.
It may not be a great idea.
It could be that when people are staring at you with open mouths, shocked and disappointed.
Sometimes they're not just judging you out of pure means.
Spite and mellows.
Sometimes it's you, right?
Well, be that as it may, Matt.
So there's another message.
And this is, I think, recurrent.
This is actually fairly consistent in Dr. K's content.
But, you know, a lot of doctors don't get the insights that he's talking about.
There's a lot of things in Ayurvedic practitioners where most of them or a lot of them are doing things that are, I find it interesting,
Dr. Case, I've never heard someone ever say the phrase, like, meditate with a goal in mind.
Like, I've heard gurus and many people say to me, like, you should never meditate with an end result in mind, that you should meditate and find what those end results are.
Does that make sense?
Have you heard that?
Yes, I've heard that.
So let's understand two or three things, okay?
Okay.
So I think that one of the biggest problems with meditation in the world today is that 99% of meditation teachers are like pretty bad at it.
I know it's a judgmental statement.
But I think Balvihar is a great example.
Sadly, Matt, that means you've got, you know, only a 1% chance of...
Getting to meditate.
So you're actually in grave danger if you're doing meditation, or at least of wasting your time, right?
Because what's the chance that you're going to locate the 1% you're actually giving?
Well, I guess you could increase your chances if you paid them a huge sum of money, because that would be a sign of commitment.
I don't know if you clipped this, but elsewhere, he says that it's almost basically impossible to tell the difference between...
A guru that is the real deal and a guru that is, you know, basically ripping you off, taking you for a ride because all the indications are exactly the same.
And right there he's saying that 99% of them is bullshit, right?
You've got to want this at chance.
So if you took what he says in these sort of throwaway statements at face value, you should take our advice, basically, and run for the hills whenever Sun Guru is offering to charge you.
An awful lot of money to show you the path to enlightenment.
But that's not the conclusion or the narrative or the argument that he's making, is it?
No.
And it's just to remember, you know, we're going through like a bunch of connected things, but this is what is the midlife crisis that occurred?
The midlife crisis was like, I'll focus more on individualized programs and teachings and more spiritually advanced stuff.
Like what?
I'm getting my own initiations that are, like, high-priced, and people think they're bad.
And then moved on to Squeaks.
Well, I have my own meditation practice.
Yeah, most of that is, like, not good.
Actually, most of the meditation that people do is pretty bad.
So I'm just saying, like, you know, you put those together.
And, well, the good thing is Dr. K has been able to identify.
Good teachings and effective teachings.
So I suppose if you find someone like Dr. K, they can help point you, at least point you in the right direction.
That would be the implication.
That would be the implication.
It's the implication.
It's just the implication.
Yeah.
So Squeaks, I think, was talking about being a little involved with transcendental meditation.
This is a type of meditation that was quite popular.
In North America and was like associated with a guru or whatnot, but it's fair to say that it's one that's like more prominent outside of India than inside, right?
Like, so it's a westernized popular meditative practice, but originated in India.
It's a thing that was popular in the 90s and 2000s in the US, and a lot of people that study meditation as a result have...
Being exposed to it, right?
And Dr. K talks a little bit about what he thinks has happened in regards to Transcendental Meditation because he used to be critical of it.
It's so funny.
It reminds me of an analogy of required reading growing up kind of ruins reading when you're older, where they make you read the most boring shit ever.
And then, of course, people don't want to read books because they associate it with tests and assignments and stuff.
So it's very similar in that light.
If you have a bad experience with meditation because of a poor teaching, you'll...
Yeah, and I think if you went through some TM-based whatever Silicon Valley thing, like, you know, I think that...
So I used to be a lot more negative towards TM than I am now, but I think TM is a really good example, and there's some weird metaphysical stuff going on there of, like, just generation after generation of imparting spiritual knowledge that I think has basically been watered down,
because that initial Shakti...
From Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to his initial disciples, it kind of wanes over time unless you boost it up.
So it's like, I gave you a down payment, but unless you pay off the house and you sell it, you start earning rental income on it, you can't make the down payment for someone else.
So the down payment shrinks and shrinks and shrinks and shrinks.
That's my understanding of it.
So what do you think of that, Matt?
You'll have to explain it to me.
What's the down payment, shrinking and shrinking?
Well, don't you remember the down payment analogy, right?
We're back there.
Then we have that the transcendental meditation, the original insight was like, he believes that was, you know, a real, like spiritual down payment.
And the followers have like, you know, over time it's been diluted.
But like the original transfer was so potent.
That is why it was able to be effective.
But now like people are...
They haven't been doing the right thing, so they haven't been able to like kind of top it up.
So it's again speaking to this version of spirituality where it's, you know, there was a guy, he was very spiritually powerful.
He was able to help a lot of people.
And then the followers have kind of not, you know, done the practice right and all.
So like, it's just the approach is so different than whenever he was talking in the content with like Dr. Mike about how He's talking about, you know, doing practices that are based on, you know, self-development and it's all stuff that's,
well, empirically thing done.
And anyway, he's not focusing anymore on the Ayurvedic stuff in his content because, you know, that's his personal thing.
But this is so, it's just all of it is so different.
It's a different model and it's a very, it's a religious, it's a religious, it's a religious model.
Absolutely.
I mean, actually reminds me again of Jordan Peterson because Jordan Peterson also, Does that little two-step?
Like he switches between science-y Dr. Peterson, right?
Where he's citing studies and it's evolutionary psychology and lobsters and so on.
It's just science, you know?
And then he'll switch to the most abstract bespoke religious reasoning in the next breath.
So you can sort of have your cake and eat it too.
You can be the man of science and you can also be the spiritual religious Mystic.
So yeah, I mean, I hear what you're saying.
It's just he gets to play both corners.
But somebody, Matt, some people have to mention it.
They have to highlight it to the audiences out there.
They have to let the world know what goes on.
And when people completely contradict what they claimed in other contentious interviews around this topic.
So that's why we...
That's why we do what we do.
That's why we do what we do here.
Somebody's just going to point it out.
Take it as you will.
You know what I mean?
Other opinions are available.
Like you say, maybe you love positive psychology.
Maybe you're into transcendental meditation.
Whatever.
Who knows?
Maybe you want to go see a guru.
That's all fine.
Up to you.
Your choice.
What we're doing is just pointing out some inconsistencies, some issues, and following the logic.
And, you know, giving our opinion.
Giving our opinion.
Giving our opinion.
Is that all right?
That's all right.
Can we not give our opinion?
Yeah, that is it.
But, you know, some people have said, Matt, some people said that the original episode, the one where we decoded Eric and Brett and their grand conspiracy around Carol Greedo, that was the original, the purest.
Decoding, the potent source.
And everything since then has been a dilution of that original insight that we have.
It's gotten less powerful.
So, you know, people can judge for themselves.
But yes.
Yes.
Yeah, that's right.
Judge away.
We judge.
You can judge.
Dr. K says judgment is bad.
Empty your cup.
But I say, no.
Keep filling it up.
Judge away.
Don't abandon your critical faculties.
Yes, keep an open mind to some degree, but come on.
Come on.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Come on.
Come on.
All right.
All right.
Well, Matt, you did your duty.
Good job.
Your spiritual potency is increased by 400%.
Precious metal artifacts are in the meal for you to increase your spiritual capacity.
And please say those mantras that I've sent and, you know.
