Ep 11 - Arpan Patel - The Hindu Seeker Who Says There Is No God

# Ep 11 - Arpan Patel - The Hindu Seeker Who Says There Is No God: transcript **Josh Galt:** Yeah, I guess just if you want to introduce yourself and your spiritual framework or religious background and kind of how you see the world as far as spirituality, and then we can dive into questions from there, I guess. **Arpan Patel:** Definitely. So I am a former software engineer. I used to live in the USA. I was there from 2007 to 2022. I just came back two years ago. Now I am in India. Yeah. So after exploring my life as an engineer, I just wanted to look at the other part of it, which is spirituality, not knowing what spirituality is. I started watching some videos on YouTube from Alan Watts and people like him. I love him, by the way. J. Krishnamurti, I'm not sure if you have heard about him as well. He was a... Really great theologist, but then I got into this stuff and as being Hindu, which is my background from a religious point of view, I started reading all the scriptures and I started realizing that what people think of As a religion, it's not truly religion. It's just false beliefs and they need to fix it. But in order to understand what they need to fix, first, I need to understand what they have wrong in their mind. And that's why I started reading all the scriptures. So... By doing so and also following different people, there was a change in perspective and I started looking at things differently. So I also published a few books on Upanishads. They are live on Kindle. In a way, first for myself to learn and then if it can be helpful for the other people, then that's there as well. So that's my journey. You can say like the last 17 years from, yeah. Yes, **Josh Galt:** Wow. Wow. And so it's just a journey, a journey of exploration of faith because of your own curiosity. And you said you grew up Hindu. Is that the... Yeah. And did you grow up then Hindu in India or Hindu? You said you lived in the U.S. for a while. Because I would imagine that would sort of have a different framework to the... The intensity maybe of the belief system on where you grew up, but maybe not. Actually, I would be curious. Let me explain what I mean by that. I think someone who is in a fundamental religion, whether it's Christian, Islam, Hindu, Buddhist... If they grow up in the place where the root of that religion, so if someone is Thai and they grew up in Bangkok or in Chiang Mai versus growing up in Southern California, their connection to Buddhism is going to be very different, right? So that's the root of my question. Okay. **Arpan Patel:** Very different. Yeah. So I was here up to my age of 21. So I grew here 21 up to here. And then I moved for my master's degree in US. And since then, after age of 21 here, I was living there. So Definitely, in a way, like I always had questions about religions, gods and everything, but then staying in the US, I think the environment, US people read more, so they have a very open mindset. They are open to more ideas and discuss. They will really discuss. I think part of that environment also has helped me where I could discuss my things with other people, even with my colleagues. So, and honestly discussing those things, I rarely find a person here who wants to discuss those kind of things because they think that those are for old ages and not for the people who are young. So, it happens like... Around me, that's the situation right now. So I think in a way it helped me being there with meeting other people who supports the thinking and who can just connect. So that background being U.S. definitely helped me. **Josh Galt:** Mm-Did you question when you were younger? Like, did you question your parents about certain elements of the religion or about God or? **Arpan Patel:** Yeah, I did, but I never got the answer. I used to read short stories about Jesus because my mom was a teacher, so she used to bring books from school, free books. So I used to read and she used to ask me, like, why are you reading this book? Read something else. And I was like, why not? This is a good book. It was just like, those were just stories, right, for me. So I was curious. So I think I was curious from the beginning, but it always had some hindrance of not being supported or not being reluctant to that accepting that I am questioning in some other ways. **Josh Galt:** Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's, I think that's sort of, that's my experience as well. I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian household. And so... My dad was very much not okay with a lot of questioning. My mom was more okay, but it would have been the same thing if I was reading something about Buddhism, like, Why are you reading about that? Like, that's a false religion. Like, it wouldn't be forbidden, but it was sort of like, you should read your Bible instead, you know? And so, yeah, there's that sort of undertone of, why are you doing that? But I don't want to forbid you from doing it because, you know, it's just a story to you, et cetera. **Arpan Patel:** Yes. It, **Josh Galt:** But so now you started going through questioning and over the last couple of decades... Where would you say that your belief system is right now in terms of a framework? **Arpan Patel:** It has been kind of like evolving. It doesn't have a stop. Like religion, right? A religion is well-structured. It gives you the guidelines, what to do and what not to do. And where we enter into the realm of spirituality, religion is kind of like a stepping stone for spirituality. And once you go into that part, that is no ending. So if someone says that I am spiritual now, that's false because it's ever evolving process. I see it as like, if you start walking like Big Bang, when Big Bang happened, right, our universe is still expanding. So if you start walking from one end to the other, you will never reach the other end because it's constantly expanding and that's how the spiritually, that's the gateway, there is no end. **Josh Galt:** I like that. **Arpan Patel:** That's how I see it now. Maybe that's something I learned over past decades. **Josh Galt:** And so in your search as a spiritual person, I guess we could say, how do you put a framework in place to sort of have the guideline of how you live your life in terms of morality, in terms of what those values are that drive you, that the way that you operate as a software engineer, you said, Like, how does that framework help with all that? Yes. **Arpan Patel:** Yeah. So initially I had no ideas about morality. I mean, I know what morality is and what should be good, what should we do and what not. But then again, when I started discussing those ideas, It was all about the perspective and the situations. Like in one situation, slapping someone is bad, but in the other situation, it's bad, right? So I had to really, really work hard on figuring out. I'm still figuring out. I still don't have clear answers. I don't think even any structure can give you the concrete answer that in this situation, this is right and in this situation, same thing is wrong. It's all depending on situation, but While I was reading all the scriptures, there are some guidelines. For someone who has no ideas, Bhagavad Gita, if you have heard about Bhagavad Gita, then in Bhagavad Gita, you have **Josh Galt:** I have a copy, actually. I haven't read the whole thing, but yeah, I haven't. **Arpan Patel:** Great, great. That definitely lays a guideline, very basic guideline, like as a human being, what's your duty? What is the moral? What is acceptable and what is not acceptable? Like the war happened between Kaurava and Pandavas, like Arjun was Like, I don't want to kill my own people. They are my friends and my relatives. And Krishna says, no, they are not. Because if you don't kill them, they will continue doing the bad thing, which will eventually have long lasting effect for thousands of years. So you must stop it and don't see them as your relatives, but you have to see them as just human beings who... Needs to die because it has to end there. That's a very strong message in a way, but that was on the battlefield. We are not in battlefield every day, but there are messages just like that. What you should be doing and what is the right karma or what is the right thing for you to do. Those kind of messages I got, like morality message or whatever you can say. Good things to follow, a guideline. That's the book I follow right now. And there are other Upanishads. Basically, Upanishads of Vedas, like we have four main Vedas, but the conclusion of all the Vedas are in the Upanishads. And indirectly, if you see, there are some mentions of Upanishads within Bhagavad Gita. So Essentially, you can say it's kind of like derived from Upanishad. So Upanishad is kind of like basic guideline and then things are derived from it directly, indirectly in form of different stories. So I read those books to get those ideas and yet I'm not clear that whether it is still applicable. It does help, but it still kind of create confusions in some occasions as well. So it's still uncertain to me. **Josh Galt:** Yeah. Do you think that it's important for religion to evolve? It's kind of a two-pronged question, because one is... We need to keep evolving, or do we, as spiritual beings and having this human experience, but should religion keep evolving? Because you have sort of the fundamentalist view, which is, no, the book as it was written, Is perfect. Well, whatever, whatever holy book. It was written thousands of years ago, even though there's many things that don't apply at all to our modern life. Well, we can make an interpretation. Okay. So if we're going to make an interpretation then, because, for example, the book of Deuteronomy in the Bible doesn't talk about cell phones. I don't think any of the holy books talk about cell phones or the issues, let's say, that Christians in the U.S. struggle with, like looking at porn or something. That's always a top issue that guys talk about. So the Bible doesn't talk about that, does it? Well, it sort of says you shouldn't look at a woman with lust or eating food. There's all kinds of different things in our modern life, driving cars, whatever. So should religion evolve? Should we have religious leaders who are like, hey, you know what, we need to update sort of the framework or the template of this religion, or should it be a thing where you're like, what, can you explain a little more of what you were saying with that word? Because I think that answers the question. Religion is the gateway to spirituality. Right? So what that I guess that answers the question. So take me through that of religion. How? And what that's done for you, I guess. Nope, I **Arpan Patel:** Oh, yeah. So, Definitely religion should involve and the guidelines we think because we are not the same person or people that we used to be like 200, 300 years ago. We are evolving. We are getting smarter and smarter. So we need better answers. Like older answers are not good for us. And that's the biggest struggle right now. Like if you want a younger generation to accept those old answers, they will just call it bullshit. And I... I don't blame them because they need newer generation answers. So yes, religion must evolve and the guideline must be presented in a way that they are clearly explainable in today's term. **Josh Galt:** Do you think that... Oh, yeah, go ahead. I was going to say, do you think, though, that because in the West, at least, I've been seeing this push toward traditional or traditionalism or trad, they're calling it trad. So... It's almost like it's become a pop culture thing of let's go back to those old traditions. So I'm not saying that you're incorrect in your statement because I think you're very, very correct. But what do you think about this trend of going back toward the traditional and being like, let's bring back the values of the early Catholic Church or the Spartans or whatever? Yeah. **Arpan Patel:** For example, right? Yeah. No, go ahead. Go ahead. No, that moment which is happening is also good in a way. But first of all, they must understand what are the real values behind the tradition. If they don't understand the tradition, there is no point. Right. And I was about to give the example on the same thing. Like we do like in religion, there are mantras and there are shlokas and we do all the rituals. Right. We pray. Thousands of God, like Hindus have thousands of God. None of them, like we want to go back to the tradition and there is nothing wrong with that. But I must ask the question like, hey, you are lighting with diyas, what's the purpose of it? Right? If they don't know the meaning, then there is no point of just lighting the diyas and sitting in front of you and doing yoga. No. Right? It's absolutely bullshit. First of all, you need to know the lighting means you need to light up here, not just with matchbox. It's here. Everything is blacked out here and you must light here first. That's the symbolic meaning. If you don't know, then there's no point of going back to tradition. Second thing. Yoga, right? Yoga is very popular these days. I mean, it has been popular and popular and people are using it in a different way for exercise. Yoga truly is, yoga is means, yoga word means union, union of mind with self is yoga. Now, you don't have to sit in a specific posture. What you need to know is, yoga is for introspection. Like you need to ask yourself when you're doing yoga, like just sit silently and am I a cheater? Am I a liar? And start answering those questions and you become the better person. That's the yoga. You are uniting with yourself, right? Now, I don't want to say that, no, don't go and don't do the yoga, but when you are doing yoga, it's not about the position. They must understand that first, it's about here. So that way, when people don't know what truly going back to tradition is, there is no point of going back to tradition because it's not going to help them either way, going forward or going backward. **Josh Galt:** That's really well said, yeah. And that's part of the issue, I think, that has frustrated me is when you just do something without knowing why you're doing it and there's no connection to it in any religion, it's like, You're kind of being bad at your religion because you don't understand the underlying meaning of why this thing is important. And yet, if you're going to teach your kids like, oh, well, you have to do this. Well, why? And I was always a kid that asked why. Like, why do I have to do this? Why is this important? Why is this a fundamental tenet of the religion, et cetera? And especially with rituals, like... Do you think that those rituals are really important to communities of faith to continue? Or is it what you said is you have to know why you're doing it. That's more important maybe than the ritual, but they go hand in hand. Yeah. **Arpan Patel:** Yes. So there is a very important idea behind the rituals. So rituals are not just like You do this and this will happen. Ritual has a basic idea. And I'm going to give you one more example. If you have seen somewhere, like in temples, we do burn the fire and put things into it, like we do yajna, we call it yajna, holy fire, and we burn things and do it, right? In Vedas, which is like a common guideline, you can say like basic guideline, but people have no idea like what things are, what is religion, but you need to give them entry point. So they talk about like a sacred fire where you burn everything and people Misunderstood, not misunderstood, but it's an entry point where you put some food in it, you put some butter in it, things like that as a sacrifice, right? Then it takes one step deeper, like then comes the Upanishad. They talk about the same yajna, the sacred fire, but that sacred fire is not to burn any physical things. Right? That is to burn your attachments. That is to burn your desires. That is to burn your green stepping stone. Like you went from doing a physical thing, now you stepping into here by comparing them. So it gives a metaphor. Which can be useful. But if you just go directly go to the second step, people will reject the ideas because they don't have any idea about what's the first step is or how to step into the spirituality and use the religion and religious guidelines. **Josh Galt:** Why are people afraid of that? Why is it so hard for us in general to be introspective, but then to take it to a spiritual level, it seems, is even a bigger challenge? And for some religions, if they look at... Like the Christianity and the new trend with yoga, there's a lot of fundamentalist Christians that think that yoga is satanic, right? It's like, well, you can just do yoga and exercise, but the yoga that you are explaining, which is the real yoga, right, is you're connecting with yourself and it's much more of a conscious thing, even to a spiritual thing. Why... Why in general is that a challenging thing for us? Or why is it something that people are afraid of going, going inside and knowing their real selves and then connecting spiritually? **Arpan Patel:** We as a human being, our species is dependent. We've never been an explorer, to be honest. We've never been an explorer. That's the reason we have very few explorers who explore the world or who explore the things, who became the scientists, who became the physicists. There are very few people. And that curiosity doesn't come without any cost, right? You have to constantly fight with yourself, you know, Become better and better. You cannot just say like, no, I know things and I'm not going to move ahead now. I'm not going to become better. Most of the people don't have that because they are happy. First of all, they are so occupied with the day-to-day life, like taking care of kids and making, earning money and impressing people, buying big cars. They're so occupied with the fake things that they have no idea, like they not, they have no idea. They have idea, but they don't want to look into that corner intentionally. **Josh Galt:** But so why is there so, **Arpan Patel:** Josh Galt: Because they know if I start looking into that corner of finding truth or finding about myself, they will feel guilty because what everything, what they are doing is absolutely wrong. That's, **Josh Galt:** This is really the interesting question. There is so much division in our world because of religion, right? And there is so much division. And there's so many people who claim to be part of a religion. And yet, the majority, it's exactly what you're saying. People don't really want to go deep with it because they may realize, oh, all of these things I'm spending my entire life so worried about, so preoccupied with, so focused on, Are material and they're temporal and they're ultimately meaningless. And I have, in reality, I am not connecting every day with God. I say that I'm a Catholic or a Christian or a Hindu, but I'm not, I'm not really connecting on a spiritual level. That's the problem. Like if people would just be, say, I'm this religion and I'm going to every day remember what that means and I'm going to go deep and I'm going to connect with God and I'm going to go connect with myself and see, am I living up to the values I say I believe? That's integrity. And yet, that's lacking. **Arpan Patel:** But the thing is that The thing is, religion and spirituality has nothing to do with each other. Like, you can, you, yeah, spirituality **Josh Galt:** Okay, take me more through that. Like, explain what you mean. **Arpan Patel:** Is, in a very simple word, it's just asking questions to yourself and in order to do that, you don't have to belong to any religion. Like, you are just talking to yourself. It does. It doesn't matter what religion you are from because fundamentally human mind is almost same, right? We all fear, we all have greed, we all cry, right? So we are fundamentally same. So when our structure, brain structure is more or less same, it doesn't matter what religion we are from. We might have Allah, we might have Jesus, we might have Krishna, but they all say the same thing. And why? Because they experience probably the same thing as a human being. So human being is a first, human brain is a first standard religion. And there has been a problem of... Dividing people based on religion. I mean, people were divided before that based on the boundaries. And today we are divided by base of the boundaries. So religion is not the only reason for the division. Religion is one of the biggest culprits, I would say. Biggest culprit. **Josh Galt:** Sure. Sure. It's one of them. So how do you define God then? Because if you define spirituality as introspection and talking to yourself, how would you define God? Yeah. Would you define it as something else that there's a universal consciousness as opposed to a god-like figure that religions have? **Arpan Patel:** Yeah, Hinduism does talk about universal consciousness and that's Shiva. Lord Shiva is a symbolic meaning of universal consciousness and Parvati is the energy. So with the combination of consciousness and energy, everything moves, including planets and whatnot. Those are basic two energies, consciousness and energy. Like, sorry, basic two fundamental elements you can say. Consciousness and energy. Now about God. There is no definition of God in any Hindu scriptures. Can you believe that? There **Josh Galt:** As far as like this is what god is? Why? **Arpan Patel:** Is no God. There is no God. What you see, what you can describe, what you can imagine, none of them is God. Because **Josh Galt:** Or why not, I guess. **Arpan Patel:** God is a creation of a human mind. Right? I was thinking the other day, like I was watching some dolphin documentary and I was thinking dolphins are smarter. Like, do they have God? And they might have, based on their level of intelligence, they might have their God, but we don't know about them. Same way, they don't know about our God. So it's just creation of the individual minds. Right? In a way, Hindus say like you, if you, God created you, that means you must be God. Like you are part of it. Like part of rise is part. Right? So **Josh Galt:** And many religions have, they believe that God is omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, right? So if God is all-knowing and all-powerful and everywhere, then how can we disconnect? Then it's like we ourselves in defining this religion and in trying to define God as a separate entity **Arpan Patel:** Entity. Yeah. Yeah. **Josh Galt:** We are causing that division that God is not causing because God is that unexplainable center of the energy that holds the atom together and keeps everything in place. And so if God is literally in every cell of our being and in these fibers and in all of nature, How can we think that we can just separate from God? **Arpan Patel:** No, absolutely true. There is no separation and that's why Truly, God doesn't exist, but it still does exist. Absolutely. **Josh Galt:** That's interesting. And then the connection with the dolphins, I love the quote from So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, where it's like, man has always considered himself more intelligent than the dolphins. Because of everything that he has created, right? Wars and New York and the wheel and so on. Well, all the dolphins do is just, they muck around in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins believe that they are more intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons, right? Because they're just being intelligent. They're just being dolphins in connection with the beauty of nature and their creator and creation. Like, they just are. And yet we're, like, trying to figure all this stuff out. So why do you think, like, what is the role of that? If, as you say, there's no God, there's this universal consciousness, like, are there other planets with other human-like beings that, Is this a test, like a cosmic test where we come and we have to work through things to try and connect more to our true nature? **Arpan Patel:** It's quite. First **Josh Galt:** Is this just a sim that our consciousness is making up and we're, for some reason, like a video game? I mean, these are all, maybe you can't, maybe none of us can say exactly what it is for sure, but like, what's your... What's your gut feel as you've studied and gone on this spiritual journey? **Arpan Patel:** Of all, consciousness, I don't think it can be measured. Truly. Consciousness does born with you as a human being, like when we, when Let me take my example. When I was in the womb of my mother, I had no idea. It was, I mean, I even don't know whether it was a total black inside my mother's womb or not, right? I have no idea. Before that, everything was black. I mean, I have no idea. Sorry, why I'm saying that it was black. I had no idea. Then we born, right? A brain that Is capable to start accepting ideas and maybe we can call that as a consciousness because before that I don't believe consciousness exists. Consciousness is basically telling you **Josh Galt:** Yeah, we don't know. **Arpan Patel:** That this is you or you exist. That's a consciousness existence, right? And until two, three, four years' age, I don't believe consciousness starts even developing. It may start developing the sense of like, oh, this is me, this is what I'm doing. But then that's where consciousness starts. So, and it's my point of view from what I have read, it's hard to truly define consciousness. It's a very thin boundary. People do have different opinions. So, This one is a hard question. I think there was one other question I wanted to answer, but I forgot what I was about to tell. **Josh Galt:** Well, about defining God and so if, yeah, **Arpan Patel:** Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. Let me ask a counter question. This is yes, yes. what will happen if I say God exists? Let's say tomorrow you are a very, like you pray with like total devotion and everything. And this applies to anyone. And God appears and just says that, yes, my son, I exist. Then what? Nothing is going **Josh Galt:** Of our actions, **Arpan Patel:** To change in our lives. So the question of whether God exists or not, or the question whether, What we were before we were born or what we are going to be after we die, whether we are going to hell or heaven, those questions are useless because getting answers of those questions doesn't change our life a bit. Maybe it will make us a little more conscious and, you know, a little more careful about our actions and help us live fully because **Josh Galt:** Do you think **Arpan Patel:** Those answers doesn't help us anyway. **Josh Galt:** That it should? Like if God, if, no? **Arpan Patel:** No, it shouldn't. It shouldn't because that reminds me a story from Gautama Buddha. This is a really, really short story. Gautama Buddha sitting there one day with the disciples and two people came to him. One was who believed in God and one who was atheist. He didn't believe in God. So one person who believed in God came to Buddha and asked, does God exist? Buddha says no, God doesn't exist. The second person who didn't believe in God came to Buddha and asked, does God exist? And Buddha says yes, God exists. So he gave answers, opposite answers to both, both people. And one of the disciples was watching it and he asked after both, they both went away, like why did you give them like opposite answer? And simple reply from Buddha was like, if I gave them the right answer, which actually doesn't exist, but if I gave them the answer that they are looking for, the quest will be ended here. And they will be, they will have no goal in their life to long for. **Josh Galt:** So it's the search, the seeking that is at the root of purpose. Then shouldn't that be one of the most important things, if not the most important thing that we focus on in terms of, I **Arpan Patel:** Searching for what? **Josh Galt:** Mean, that's a good question. But in context, it's a search for God. Does God exist or does God not exist? That's the question of the example with the two people that went to Buddha. So if that seeking is at the core of the purpose of our lives, then no matter what someone's religious belief, where they were born or whatever, It should be a continued goal to, I want to learn more, I want to know myself more, I want to connect with, I mean, it's hard to define it without saying the word, I want to connect more with God. Okay, so what does that mean? So, in your framework of how you see it, if it's not important to know whether God exists or not, then what is the seeking? What are you seeking? **Arpan Patel:** Seeking is brain's natural, you know, a fundamental thing to do. Our brain, like if you try to stop thinking for five minutes, nobody can. It's nature of mind to seek. It's nature of mind to chatter. It's nature of mind to constantly, you know, bother us. Now, it can be trained. **Josh Galt:** Is your **Arpan Patel:** The thing is, it can be directed, but it requires a constant practice of years. So, like, finding for a **Josh Galt:** Existence **Arpan Patel:** Purpose that has no meaning, like, to me, answer whether God exists or not, that doesn't help. Because there will be next question, now where God is? Right. Or why he is not showing up to me if God exists. So it opens up the unnecessary question, which I don't care, because what I care about, like, okay, I like planting some vegetables, right? So I'm going to do research on that. I'm going to long for that. Like, how do I make sure I avoid diseases or what do I do for, you know, growing it organically? So there are billions of other things to, you know, starve for, to go for. And All these questions just have been fed into our mind. Like, who am I? What am I doing in this earth? Whether we are alone? Those are used as questions because if our lifespan is like 100 years, we are in front of eternity. We are just flipped. We are gone. **Josh Galt:** More, or **Arpan Patel:** So I don't want to waste the time answering those questions because those questions like those answers won't be helpful for me in any way because after 100 years my existence is no more. **Josh Galt:** Is this version of you no more? **Arpan Patel:** I don't exist, like spirituality must go hand on hand with science, right? We are made of carbons and atoms. In Christianity, they buried, right, after the death. That means you are going to decompose. In Hinduism, they burned the dead. That means it's gone. It's in the ashes. The atoms remain. Varanasi. **Josh Galt:** I've been to Varanasi, **Arpan Patel:** Varanasi? **Josh Galt:** And we've seen the... The whole process, it's really interesting that they build the, like the altar and then burn the body and yeah, it's an interesting process. **Arpan Patel:** Yeah. In order, like, T, how we remember things from the references, right? you This happened to me. That means like I touched the hot, hot water. That means it's hot. So it's experience. Experience is stored where? In mind, right? And when mind is decomposed or mind is burning the fire, there is no mind to begin with. It's stored. It's like just computer, right? It's hard drive that burns and you cannot recover the data at all. It's not different from that. **Josh Galt:** So you think that when we die, we just go back into the... **Arpan Patel:** The nature. No, **Josh Galt:** Everything else in nature. So then what is, what would you say is the purpose of our, of our existence? Are we, do we have a purpose? Is it simply to be like the dolphins or is there some deeper purpose where consciousness or the divine God consciousness that's, I mean, there has to be some sort of cosmic intelligence to this whole thing, right? Like you were saying, I think it was called Shiva. No, there's not. **Arpan Patel:** You know, it's purely coincident, right? You are talking to me right now, right? We never met. But we are talking about a very important topic. Do you think it's just because I sent an invite? No, it's a series of coincidence, right? I was somehow, I registered myself on the Matchmaker, not expecting any, you know, invitations or anything. Went back to do my software engineering thing, went back to help someone else. Then all of a sudden I'm seeing a message. So nothing was planned. Everything just happened. You can say that God planned it, but that is after the fact. We never say that God will do A thing B, thing C, and thing D in year one, two, and three, right? We don't predict it. We just go back and say God planned it. Yeah. **Josh Galt:** Then it becomes a prophecy. **Arpan Patel:** Thank you. No, this is just purely coincident. Our brains are just kind of like brainwashed for a long time, for good reason, honestly, for good reason, because if we start thinking what we are talking right now, people will eventually go mad. **Josh Galt:** So, That's an interesting point of view, because for us, I think we're curious about this topic, and so it's something that we enjoy looking at, whereas, yeah, I think for maybe for a lot of people, if they look at it too deeply, they will go crazy, and that's why people avoid it, because our existence or non-existence, our mortality is, I mean, it's, there's actual, there's entire philosophies about the way people look at death or don't look at death and then how that changes the entire way that they live, et cetera. I'm just most curious because I do, I have always had a spiritual connection and I do believe that there's something bigger and a bigger purpose than simply life. A coincidence of existence because, I mean, that's almost terrifying to think about in that way of, I **Arpan Patel:** See, that's why we have to force ourselves from our... **Josh Galt:** Feel very real, right? And I **Arpan Patel:** Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. **Josh Galt:** Like being alive. And so I like the idea of Being eternally alive that I was alive before. Maybe there's multiple lifetimes. Maybe I reincarnated and I'm learning. I like to learn. I like to be productive. I like to work hard. I like to get better and better and better at things. And so the idea of multiple lifetimes of spiritual growth across that spectrum is interesting to me and exciting. The idea of, well, you just die and then there's nothingness. Like that's so honestly terrifying because what would it be like to just be nothing? Like then I no longer exist. So then like what is the point of this whole thing? **Arpan Patel:** Yeah, see, yeah, that is precisely the point of born of religion. Because you can brainwash mass by saying, Or by making them believe what makes them less insane. And **Josh Galt:** Right. Because there's something that if you, if you're good, if you do these things, then you can be holy and then you go to heaven. And if you're bad, if you misbehave, yeah. But do you **Arpan Patel:** That's why, yes, yes, exactly. And that's why religion is very, very, very, very important. Otherwise the entire structure will collapse. **Josh Galt:** Think that's all just coincidence too? Like, because nature doesn't have religion and the structure doesn't collapse. I mean, you have, you have alpha predators and you have sort of the food chain and you have this process of, **Arpan Patel:** People will do. That exactly is a religion of nature to, you know, make sure that cycle, One eats the other and the nature survives or thrives. That's the nature. No, sorry. That's the dharma of nature. Dharma and religion both are different. So that's how they are supposed to behave. Now, again, we are talking about the cycle of nature after looking at the facts, right? That one eats the other, second eats the whatever, the cycle. We are talking about Not in front, like we are not predicting what could have happened in the future, but what we have observed so far, we are using that to describe. So everything comes to our brain, it's just experience. Like if I ask you one thing that you have seen and the name of it you have never heard, you cannot create even image of it. So that's the end. **Josh Galt:** Yeah, because you would create something that is drawing from other things that are known, that you have seen, that you have experienced, that you understand. So it's like if you're going to make up a new animal or a new color or something, you're still going to draw from something that exists. **Arpan Patel:** Right, right. So the same way, religion is all stitched together, like different stories, stories to help people to be moral, to help each other, like fundamental, fundamental principle of the religion is like take care of each other, period. Nothing much, nothing less, like you all are equal, take care of each other as human beings and done. But then... The gurus and whatnot, they start adding their own mixtures and make it more spicy and pollute the entire nice soup that was really, really tasteful. **Josh Galt:** So with your framework, so I assume that you're... **Arpan Patel:** That's true. No, that's **Josh Galt:** Within the Hindu religious framework. Is that incorrect? That's true. Okay. So in Hinduism, they believe in thousands of gods though, right? So how do you, how do you connect your belief that there is no eternity, that it's simply like a coincidence of existence that we have consciousness in the mind with your religious framework of Hinduism, which says that there are thousands of gods, that there are these other things that take place on a spiritual plane. It's like, -huh. **Arpan Patel:** They do. The gods were for a reason, right? First of all, to... In order to pray someone, praying is basically keeping you engaging. Praying is not for, you know, God come here and sit with me. It's like I want to be engaged into something and God was the reason. Now without a face, right, or without a body, we are human. So we don't know anything beyond body. If we make idols, they are humans. They are not, I mean, there is no alien. We don't know about aliens. So we want to create someone or something that more or less looks like us. That's why thousands of God in Hinduism, they have like arms, like they just look like human with like four arms and whatnot, some multiple heads and whatnot. But they were meant for a reason, like for each and every deity, like each and every god has super deeper meaning in it. For example, Lord Ganesha. Shiva's son, right? Or any god, take for example, they do hold specific things in their hand, like each and every deity, you will see they will have something in their hand. Which has symbolic meanings on it of each and everything. Like some will have sword, someone will have trident, someone will have rope or something like that. That has meaning that don't bind yourself just like rope. Don't get attached to things like rope. So it has meaning, but people don't care about the meanings. Like I ask my parents, like you pray this God, like they have things in hand. What does it mean? They have no idea. So they don't care about the deeper meaning, what they care about the surface level. So it doesn't matter whether we have thousands of gods, thousands of God means thousands of reason or thousands of way. To be spiritual, but they decided not to be spiritual by understanding the deeper meaning of each deity. Just they prayed blindly, blind faith. Never asked like why this God looks like this or why he has four arms or three, whatever. They never were curious. So tomorrow if you give them a thousand more gods, it's not going to help them. They are just going to stay where they are. **Josh Galt:** Why is meaning important? Or is it important? Sure. **Arpan Patel:** Definitely meaning is the most important thing, right? In a language, a word, what does it mean really is much more important because now the word in our mind creates series of images. And if those images are wrong, the meaning of the word is wrong. So if we don't have right understanding, our communication is not going to be on the same page to begin with. **Josh Galt:** But on a bigger level also. There's, what is the purpose of mankind's search for meaning over millennia? Because it seems that if we look at our history, and of course, we could debate how much of history is true, since it's always written by the winners, but There is certain commonality throughout history of humans searching for meaning and looking to the stars to search for meaning, looking within to search for meaning, believing that there is something beyond this world, beyond our flesh and blood. So that seems like it's been something that's at the core of our species' existence. And maybe that's where we differ from the dolphins. The dolphins are created to look beautiful in the ocean and have a good time, and we're created to ask these cosmic deep questions about existence. But it seems like what comes next? If there's nothing when we die, then what is the purpose of all this? Is consciousness trying to evolve itself through us somehow? Is it working? You said it goes in cycles. Do we get to an evolved state and then we go back to a rudimentary, basic caveman type of state? **Arpan Patel:** Yeah. Consciousness doesn't evolve. I mean, theoretically, there is no proof, but consciousness is just like Pacific Ocean. If you take water from it doesn't matter. Like, it doesn't even count. So consciousness doesn't even evolve, doesn't even degrade. It just stays tame like a balloon, right? But you fill the balloon with air and you pop the balloon. What happens with the air? You pushed it in and it's just now free. That's basically **Josh Galt:** Well, that would **Arpan Patel:** What you can say consciousness is. It just stays the same. It's just like physics, like energy never created nor destroyed. It just stays the same. That's consciousness. So let me ask you a counter question in that case. What happened before the Big Bang? **Josh Galt:** Indicate that I agree that there was a big bang. And then that's a different question. Because philosophically, then... Yeah, then you would have to be able to determine that, which is why I think, especially because of the complexity of our world and of what we know, if what we know of the universe is true, the complexity of that, I think, had to be created or come from some type of Cosmic Intelligence. Because the idea of a Big Bang coming from nothing, and people much smarter than me have debated this, but my understanding is like if the Scrabble factory were to explode and everything landed and it landed in a perfect dictionary. **Arpan Patel:** Now what is that? Coincident or not? **Josh Galt:** It's like the probability of, yeah, the probability of that happening though is like that would never happen and we've never seen evidence of something like that is destructive that comes from nothing than creating something beautiful without intelligence involved. And so for me, I look at it more of beyond my understanding of the eternal reality. How can something have no beginning and no end? Because we think on a timeline, right? Of course. **Arpan Patel:** Yeah, but that's our timeline. Let's be very specific, right? So to our timeline, the first thing we know as a human being, probably not human being, but to known universe is the Big Bang as the first thing happened, but There could be more universe. There could be more Big Bang somewhere happening. And in that Big Bang, in that one Milky Way Galaxy, in that Milky Way Galaxy, one Earth and two people, we are insignificant in that scale. And we are talking about eternal, which is quite a big thing. So sometimes we just have to accept and not argue like, okay, Okay, if it is just like that, let it be. That doesn't change anything from my living. That will make me more sad because our nature is, I want to know everything. That's our **Josh Galt:** And I think that's part **Arpan Patel:** Nature. And it is impossible for any human being to know everything. There will be always something. **Josh Galt:** Of the search though, right? It would make us more sad and our natural state is joy. The state if you see a, you know, **Arpan Patel:** No, no. That's, that's, no. Our natural state is sadness. Definitely. **Josh Galt:** Ooh, interesting. *Part 2, recorded in a second session.* **Josh Galt:** All right, so where we were when we left off was... I was saying that our default state as humans is joy and you said, no, our default state is sadness, right? So explain what you mean by that and why you think that our default is sadness as humans. **Arpan Patel:** You just kind of like give a hint of it like two minutes ago. You felt bad, right, for being late or whatever reason, like you want to be punctual, but you missed it. So That was, you had a reason, right? But in most of the cases, sometimes we wake up, we don't have reason and we still feel sad. We don't know why, we don't know why, right? But there is answer to it in neuroscience. And there The real answer is dopamine. Dopamine doesn't get released naturally. It needs something, right? And when dopamine release, you feel happy, motivated to do more and more similar things to release more dopamine, right? So If our brain needs dopamine, a reason to be happy, then our default state is by default sadness. It's like playing ground. So that's **Josh Galt:** That's very logical. Okay. **Arpan Patel:** The reason I say like, yeah, we always need a reason. We can't be happy. And we are not meant to be happy, to be honest. We always find, we always try to search for peace, happiness, but when we are there, Thank you. We are always empty and unhappy. You have observed that, and we all have. But still, we are longing for happiness. So I think it's better to understand why we can't be happy. I think answers to those questions will, by default, make us happy. I mean, it's a state. I wouldn't say they're happy, but Not long for more happiness. **Josh Galt:** Yeah. See, I argue with people... That there's a difference between happiness and joy in terms of frequency, in terms of meaning, where happiness is this thing that society tells you that you should seek, that you should pursue. And it's very hedonistic, materialistic, et cetera. These things are going to make you happy. But the reality is that joy is something very different, I think. And from a frequency standpoint, if you talk about the frequency scale from shame, guilt, grief, fear, and you go up through the frequency scale through awareness and, well, anger first, and you get to awareness. And then eventually you get to Love, joy, peace. So if those, I guess it would make sense then if those are things that we have to choose and they're not our default state that's why they would be a higher frequency because we're having to choose then to resonate at that level. Do you agree with that? **Arpan Patel:** You have to make an effort to be joyful. **Josh Galt:** Mm-So many what? **Arpan Patel:** Like you have to do something to be joyful, right? You have to do something that you like, you love. Otherwise, joy doesn't come just by sitting, right? There are, like, especially in Hinduism, Thank you. To find joy and truth and all those higher frequencies that you were mentioning, people you have seen in Varanasi, probably in your wizard, like there are so many sadhus, they live their whole sadhus, **Josh Galt:** Sorry? Oh, like religious leaders or prophets or... **Arpan Patel:** Yeah, yeah. Many people with orange clothes, a simple way to define, right? They leave their home, they go to, you know, jungle, they go to Himalayas and whatnot to find the, to be alone, right? To find the peace. But that's, that's completely, that's completely wrong. In order to have a joy, you need something. Even, **Josh Galt:** Yeah. So you **Arpan Patel:** In those remote environments, you are going to be thinking, which you can do at home as well. **Josh Galt:** Think that **Arpan Patel:** So, yeah, you need something to be joyful. **Josh Galt:** The monks or the sadhus or the, in Latin America, they call them sarsidotes, like the Catholic leaders, you think taking a vow of poverty or chastity or going to a monastery, do you think that doesn't make one holier? Why is **Arpan Patel:** Not at all. **Josh Galt:** That? Mm- **Arpan Patel:** Not at all. What they are doing, you have to see what they are doing, right? At the end, a sadhu or a monk is following what has been given as a set of instructions, right? A monk follows instruction given by Buddha, right? Or his disciples. Same way, sadhu is following instructions given by smarter people than him, right? Or her. So they are just following instruction that there is no search. There are very few monks or sadhus who really, really do the inner search. Otherwise, they are all following instructions. So what's the point? I can read the instruction. It's like a parrot, right? A parrot can learn speak, but it doesn't understand what is speaking. That's the biggest problem. **Josh Galt:** Haha. Yes. **Arpan Patel:** And we bow to them. Millions of people, like masses and masses are bowing to them, giving them respect. Makes me jealous. Why? Like you understand them first, what, like, What they have to teach, value them by that teaching. There are, I'm not saying everybody is like that. There are really, really good gurus, gurus and sadhus and monks who give you really, really, really good lessons for life. So, but it's about maturity, I'm talking. **Josh Galt:** Sure. So this goes to living in our modern world and being a spiritual person. Like, if we don't need to go to a monastery, if that doesn't necessarily make someone holier or more enlightened, then how should we live spiritually? In this modern world, how do we prioritize? Like what are, is it the rituals that we talked about? Is it simply an individual thing for each person? It's different on how they pursue that in terms of growth? **Arpan Patel:** So, yeah. So the world we are calling a modern world, it's quite possible that even modern generation before has already come and gone, right? And we don't know that yet before us, probably they were smarter than us, but what we call modern, it's just, you know, probably happened. So we call ourselves modern because we fly in plane. It's okay. It's a product of brain and we imitate birds and whatnot. So we are modern, sure. We are smarter, sure. How... Your second question was how we can follow the instruction to be spiritual. **Josh Galt:** No, just like how should we live? What is the, What is the way someone, let's just say someone lives in Mumbai or someone lives in New York or wherever they live, they have a job, they have a fancy car, they have a home, maybe they have a family, they like to go do things that are cultural, whether they go to the ball game or that type of thing. It can become this very materialistic, societal-driven existence where you're trying to find time to fit God in or trying to find time to read the Holy Scripture or to meditate or do yoga or to pray or whatever it is that person does, whereas I think it's important to align God. Spirit, mind, body, emotions, like where you're putting spirit first, if you're truly seeking to be a spiritual person, like that has to be a priority, not something that's, I gotta find time to do this. It's like, I need to, this is my first order of existence, and then I'll find time to do those other modern cultural things, right? **Arpan Patel:** Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, the way we have been living at least, let's say, for the past 50 years, I would say, where materialism has become more powerful and everybody's going after money and show off, right? The problem is, even generation, even before that, they were not spiritual. The root of the problem is like 200 years back or 300 years back. Because if our grandparents were spiritual, by default, they would teach their kids, so the grandkids of today's generation, which is today's generation, right? That spirituality is first. That thing never happened. So we are running already behind. So if we started today, maybe our second generation, We can, you know, teach them that spirituality first and then materialism. Now, another problem is in this world, people don't know the difference between wealth and money, right? So, yeah, so in order, like they call money wealth. Where wealth is completely inner. Who is going to teach them? The problem is nobody, no, it's not nobody is willing to learn. There are people who are willing to learn, but there are not enough resources or not enough people available to teach them or to talk with them. Like most of the stuff I learned from books, but books are sometimes boring. Like you need real interaction, just like us. Right? And **Josh Galt:** Yeah. Mm-It's **Arpan Patel:** Materialism is, once it grasps you, it is an addiction. Because once you start, yeah, it is exactly, yes, yes. So once you start earning more money or start earning status in the society, your focus turns, Absolutely outward. If you want to go back inward, you have to work really, really hard, which takes time and definitely energy. And we are, again, cowards. **Josh Galt:** Dopamine, right? **Arpan Patel:** We don't want to accept that I am addicted to money or I am addicted to something that is taking away my valuable time. We are not even ready to accept that. I constantly argue with my parents, but they always resist in smaller things. So what I can do is give small pills whenever I get a chance, but because there is nothing much more I can do to erase the dust of 50 or 60 years, now we are talking about the dust that has been on our minds of 100 years. So this is not a short-term game. It definitely is a long-term game. That we have to implant the idea of spirituality first than physical need. And the counter argument could be like, how am I going to eat? Like if I don't earn and I just think about spirituality, what would I eat? My answer to that will be, don't even get married until you Know what spirituality is, and you are earning. You have to do both things together. Don't take more responsibility. Getting married is one of the examples. Don't take more responsibility. Don't buy expensive cars. Don't have mortgages on big houses because you are going to just run after the other way, which is completely opposite to spirituality. Again, as I mentioned, it's a long-term game. man. There are many people just like me who are trying, but again, we as a human being are more like worse than monkeys. Sometimes we don't want to listen. We just want to jump around. **Josh Galt:** And there's scripture. I'm sure every religion has scripture about that. No man can serve two masters. You will either serve God or money, right? And it's sort of a saying, like... There's a lot of misinterpretation around money, especially in the Christian world where, oh, money is evil. No, the love of money is the root of all evil, which is very different because it means what are you serving and what are you obsessed with or is it just a tool or something? Is it something that you're focused on and takes your focus away from the other things? I've been thinking about something, though, since we talked the other day, that I still can't wrap my head around with where your framework is. And so I think I'm not even sure how to ask it because it'll help me to be able to ask other questions in the conversation. Yeah. Because everything that you're saying to me suggests that spirituality is important because of us as spiritual beings that have sort of an eternal presence rather than just this material temporal life as humans. And yet, if I understood right, the other day when we were talking, well, this will all be one podcast, so earlier in the conversation, if I understood right, you were saying essentially that this is it, this is all we have, that when we die, we go back into the universe, we go back into nature as carbon, And that's it for us. So our soul or our spirit doesn't continue in some other form. We don't reincarnate. We just go back into nothingness, which is almost, to me, like the view of an atheist who say, well, we just reincarnate. We came from nothing. We go back to nothing. So, you know, they take a different perspective of live it up and enjoy this life because it's all you've got. And yet you're taking the perspective of be spiritual because this is all we've got. And I'm not understanding the reason there. **Arpan Patel:** So definition of atheist is... is different and very much misunderstood from Hindu religion point of view. Atheist indirectly is the one who believes in Upanishads, like the scriptures. And what scripture constantly do talk about is this is it. Like they don't talk about the afterlife. They talk about what you are, how to identify the ego, how to identify yourself or what to do and what not to do. They provide the guidelines. So if you believe in the Upanishads, you are atheist. It's not about believing in God because there is no mention of a single deity in Upanishads. There is one thing in the Upanishad who we call ultimate God is Brahman, which is nothing like you, it's called neti neti, not this, not negate. You keep negating, keep negating and what stays at the end is the ultimate God and Which can never happen. It's just like the example that I used earlier. You're walking from one end of the universe to another end, which keeps expanding, right? So you have to just believe there is something, but don't get stuck into it, right? So that What do you call not even an image because it cannot be captured even in image, but the Brahman is ultimate God, which ultimately come back to Upanishads and Upanishads says indirectly that if you don't believe in any of that I have to say, you are atheist, nothing about God. It's not anything about God. This is the most misunderstood definition of atheist. **Josh Galt:** Interesting. Yeah. Well, I think even people that consider themselves atheists or that identify themselves as atheists, to use modern terms, like at least in the West, they say that because... They have a strict belief, or not strict, but they have a strong belief that there is no God. So I went through, my path, you know, started very fundamental as Christian, and then I went through exploring, I kind of went away to become, I never got to the point of being atheist because I was more of an agnostic theist, which is, I hope there's a God. I hope that God is benevolent and good, but I don't see evidence of it. I don't see the proof that there is a God, but I also don't see the proof, like atheists believe, that there is no God. And then that started me on this exploration the last 20 years or so of... Of looking at every different religion and living in other cultures, living in Muslim countries, living in Buddhist countries. I did visit India. I didn't spend as much time with Hinduism. But I think it takes more faith almost in the Western definition of atheist to say there absolutely is no God than it does to say, well, Maybe, and hopefully there is, but I don't see the evidence of it. So for me, atheism is almost a religion, but you're saying that, no, the scriptures and the Hindu scriptures are actually saying that is sort of the goal of it, is to just believe in the moment and that this is all there is. **Arpan Patel:** So, yeah, absolutely. And see, again, the great, like, this is, One of the greatest example, how religion just revolve around God, right? All religion do say that God exists and an atheist does come and say like, no, God doesn't exist. So there is going to be constant war. My question, a simple question is to those who believe in God is what will happen to you when God comes in front of you and says like, I am here? Or to the atheist where if they get the proof of God doesn't exist, what will happen after that? They did get their answer. Now what? One other other way. They both get the answer. What's going to happen? As we talk, life will still go on. It doesn't matter. So we are asking wrong questions. We have been taught to ask wrong questions, to think things that doesn't even matter. Whether God exists or not, doesn't matter. Why do I care? I still have to go and earn to have food on my table. **Josh Galt:** Mm-But isn't that a materialistic perspective as well? Like, okay. **Arpan Patel:** God doesn't give me food. No, you need a food. It's a survival need. If I'm hoarding too much food that is making others die from hunger, yeah, that's materialistic. But if I have enough for myself and my family, that's a need. **Josh Galt:** So it should be a spiritual seeking and being willing to have the necessary requirements to survive in this human body and to take care of your family, etc. But not to be seeking... A life of hedonism and gluttony and all of those things. **Arpan Patel:** Yeah, because it doesn't serve a purpose. Like we need, like monkey needs a banana. We need, our brain needs something to eat every time. So we started creating stories and we started feeding it stories. So we are just giving enough lies to our brains that it doesn't get, you know, tired. It keeps just jumping. Yeah. **Josh Galt:** But what is, I still struggle, so treat me like I'm a child here, because I'm not connecting, and maybe I'm overthinking it, or maybe I don't understand the Hindu scriptures well enough. **Arpan Patel:** That, see, no, you are, you are absolutely right. Sometimes, not sometimes, most of the time, we are overthinking. We are making things more complex than it is. And that's why it is hard to convince people that this is it. Because our minds are not built to accept that it can be that simple. **Josh Galt:** Yeah. I'm going to give you my reasoning. I'm a competitive person. I'm a person who likes having fun and I can be very materialistic. I can look at someone like Andrew Tate and be like, That would be pretty fun to live like he lives. I mean, I've been very blessed in my life materially. I've been able to travel the world and experience some of those things, but not on the line. I don't have a Bugatti. I'm not driving around Dubai, you know, racing supercars with, you know, a bevy of supermodels around me. And so I can look at that just naturally. I can look at that and be like, damn, that would be pretty good. But I feel this inner spiritual longing or calling or drive to go deeper and be like, listen, That's cool if it happens, and I'm going to be ambitious with what I have. I'm going to be responsible with the talents and abilities and opportunities that I have, but I'm not going to seek to simply have hedonistic pleasures, materialism, for the sake of having it, because I think that spiritual is more important. But if there's nothing, for me, it changes things. If this is all we have, and I do believe that all we have truly is this moment, but I also think that's on an earthly level where there's like different planes, where the earthly plane is one and then the spiritual is something completely different. And so I think all we have is this moment to live our lives as humans, but to seek to be more spiritual, to connect with the spiritual. Yeah. But I believe that because I believe that there's something else after we die that there's a transition, that death is transition. So if I look at it and I say there's nothing after I die, like I go into nothingness, then I'm going to be like, well, like, screw it. I'm going to go pursue that life and just like endless pleasure while I'm here because there's nothing afterwards anyway. So what does it matter? Yeah. I don't, I don't understand. I don't understand because I'm overthinking it. What's the point of being spiritual if there is no spiritual? And then like after we die. Of **Arpan Patel:** Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So materialistic, it's not like, I think where the confusion is coming from is, I have a bike and I call it I'm being materialistic. Not a great bike, but a bike that can move me around. That is not materialistic. That's a need. If you have a car to fit in poor people, sure, I wouldn't take two bikes. I would prefer a car instead. So that's a need. Things that we have out of our need, a roof or a simple house, that's great. **Josh Galt:** Course. **Arpan Patel:** Not like having Bugatti is materialistic, right? Having a mansion is materialistic. So I think one thing to clear is like not like having things, physical things is not materialistic to begin with. Right. So that's one point. Yeah. **Josh Galt:** Because it's Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Like there's just certain things that we do need. Yes. **Arpan Patel:** It's yeah. Yeah. So if we like, Yes. And like people do think that if this is it, then why am I not living the life with supermodels or girls or buy costliest thing, make more money? Sure, you can do it. Why? Nobody's going to stop you. But the thing is the consequences. I can buy a new car, brand new car. But the problem is, I will be constantly afraid someone might scratch my car. For months or two months or years, I will be not able to probably sleep. If I park my car on the street, I will be sleeping with thought in my mind, which is useless. Like I bought the car, I spent the money, I have loan, and now I cannot sleep. So I can chase what I want. I can have like three or four girls I like, but then I have to manage it. I have to earn money. In order to earn the money, I have to be surrendered to my bosses and do whatever they say. They can humiliate me. So what I have to do for getting all those needs and all the struggles that I have to go through, Is probably worse than being minimalistic. So **Josh Galt:** Yeah. **Arpan Patel:** People with short life, they have this dilemma like, yeah, it's going to end. Let me just enjoy. For how long you are going to enjoy? Like for lust, right? Shri Mataji: 40 years, 50 years, then you will be tired. Like things when you do in moderation is good, but in excess, we always do get tired. That's our nature. We will try to find something else. So we will keep moving on. And why not find something that helps others while we move on? Because all we need is something to cling to temporarily. It could be Money, women, people around us. Or it can be the same thing, people around us, but for good purpose, to teach them like, yeah, there are consequences on the other side, so which one you want to choose, and then leave them with the choice, and ultimately they will have to make the choice and go through the consequences and either suffer or be at peace a little bit. The fact is, no single spiritual person is at peace, to be honest. None of the side is at peace. That's like, usually we think that spiritual people are kind of like peaceful, but they are not. They are constantly, yeah, but **Josh Galt:** Well, I mean, that's the image you get from a monk meditating or, I mean, that's one of the highest frequencies is peace. And so do you think that people that are seeking **Arpan Patel:** That is not true, **Josh Galt:** Enlightenment are going to have more peace in their lives? **Arpan Patel:** What I'm trying to say. Because in order to be at peace, you have to figure out what is not making you peaceful first. And there will be thousands of things. So you will have to identify each one by one by one by one. And maybe eventually you will find the peace, but the whole process, entire process of spirituality is like, you have this something to figure out rather than getting into the material thing, which will get you nowhere, you do this instead. You try to pick bad things out of the grains and eventually what you will have left with is a little bit grain to eat. **Josh Galt:** It's a matter of elimination, of getting rid **Arpan Patel:** It's a definite. **Josh Galt:** Of things and you know, The distractions, I still, what is the intrinsic motivation to be spiritual? Is it because of the other? How does that work? Because for me, I can be very selfish also, and I guess that goes back to the materialistic thing. So if this is all there is, And why would I want to live for other people when other people can be a pain in the butt, right? And everyone, like part of the lack of enjoyment and peace. So if we're talking about elimination, a lot of times it's like, let's eliminate most of the people around us because they are the source of my suffering, right? They're not the source of my joy unless they are liking my social media posts or unless they are building up my ego, then I get that release of dopamine and so then I need the other people. But it's like, is that, you've connected that a couple of times I think with there's growth or there's benefit from serving other people, from doing things that help other people. Why is that important if this is all there is? **Arpan Patel:** Because it gives us how very free, like a free addictive juice called dopamine again, right? When you help people, you feel happy and it comes for no cost. So why would I use my energy in something that is costly and can give me happiness? And why not go for the free things that releases the same thing? So, helping people, it's free. And helping people does give you some respect. And we all need some respect. Again, people do confuse self-respect with ego. Self-respect is not ego. **Josh Galt:** Rational? **Arpan Patel:** All right. So you need self-respect. You need self-motivation. When you see people that, when you see that your help is making change in at least one person, to be honest, when I'm talking with you, it gives me a motivation to talk with more people. Right. So why wouldn't I do that? **Josh Galt:** Yeah. And self-respect is something that people confuse also. It's something that is earned. And it's something that we have to earn our own respect. Because integrity... Is essentially living what you say you believe and living your values. You can fool everyone else. You can deceive everyone else, but you can't deceive yourself. And if you get to the point where you're deceiving yourself, then that's a different sort of mental health issue, I guess. But if you say that, it's like the same thing of like, one of my values is having the integrity to be where I'm going to say I'm going to be. And be there on time. And so I lose respect for myself when I mess up like I did with you, and I'm late, or I have to reschedule because I mess up my organization or whatever. Because I say that I'm a person with integrity, and I will be where I say I'm going to be. So that self respect also, I think, When you live a contradiction, it's sort of the seed for insanity, the worst that the contradiction is. And so when someone says, I am a religious person, I believe in this, I believe in, you know, I'm a Catholic or I'm a Hindu or I'm a Muslim, but they don't live that. Maybe other people see them going to church or going to mass or going to pray five times a day or whatever, and they think, oh, that person is very religious, that person is excellent. But inside, they're pretending to pray and they're thinking about some girl or they're thinking about work or their mind is distracted, they're not thinking about what they're doing. **Arpan Patel:** Mm Mm **Josh Galt:** Only we know if we're living in integrity or not, and that's why... The deception is self-esteem comes from the materialism. Like Andrew Tate, a lot of what he pushes can also be a huge deception because it's like, oh, if you get rich and you have all these things, well, you're going to be an awesome person. Well, that doesn't come from external validation, self-respect, self-confidence. That self-esteem comes from within and it comes from earning that self-respect from yourself. **Arpan Patel:** And self-respect is something not to show off to begin with. Otherwise, it becomes, it is the ego. It's ego. Yeah. So, yeah. **Josh Galt:** You don't need to. But yes, yes, because I'm **Arpan Patel:** Where are you still, I think you still, we still have some disconnect. Yes, **Josh Galt:** Not, I want to understand. **Arpan Patel:** Let's, let's, let's. No, **Josh Galt:** Yeah, go ahead. **Arpan Patel:** No, go ahead. I was just asking, like, where, where, where are we still disconnected? Let's, let's talk about it. -huh. **Josh Galt:** So if the removal of things in order to get down to the essence of self-esteem, Of nothingness. So I kind of understand that from a Buddhist perspective, I think, where the goal is to strip away and to get down to nothingness because living in the now, in the moment is of importance. But the goal is still something external, I guess, because it is... You have to do this in this human journey because your spirituality, your spiritual enlightenment is going to come on the next level. You can achieve it here on earth as a human, but you won't fully understand it until you transition through death from this human body and your spirit goes to... to the next level and you either you reincarnate or you become more of an enlightened being. The disconnect for me with what you're saying the essence of Hinduism is seeking to eliminate things that are distractions and be more spiritual in order to get to the nothingness is nothingness is a tough pill to swallow because I don't want to be nothing I don't want to disappear. And maybe that's ego, but also the idea of spirituality and a spiritual level to this whole game, the idea of being connected to this divine consciousness that created the universe and is so intelligent and amazing and powerful and in everything, that... I don't want to say that it's hopeful because it sounds then like I'm hoping for something better than right now. And it's not. It's just the idea of, well, I exist and I know I exist right now. And I can't imagine not existing or what that would be like or why that should motivate me to seek it. That's kind of terrifying. **Arpan Patel:** Okay. Yeah. So let's try to, you know, have a series of questions and that might help you. where were you before you born? And **Josh Galt:** Okay. Yeah, I don't know because... That's one of the things that we don't know. I mean, obviously, part of me was in my mother, part of me was in my dad, right? And then those, the sperm and the egg came together and they created, you know, they've shown what happens when the sperm changes. Gets into the egg, then there's like a splash of light or magnetism or energy or something that happens right then. And some people will not agree with that, but like from what I've seen, like it's cool that like life is created. And then, so that's where I came from. **Arpan Patel:** Doesn't, doesn't it make, yeah. **Josh Galt:** But I think my soul was eternal. Like it was, I existed before, I believe, in some form. **Arpan Patel:** That's what people, that's what, yeah. So that's, that's medical science telling you that sperm entered egg and then cell division happened and you, like we took shape like for nine months I stayed in mother's womb. Did you and I, No, we were really inside a womb and did we know that the outer environment is our mother, right? **Josh Galt:** Mm-No, and babies even, I mean, the first, that's why they call it the fourth trimester, the first three months, the baby essentially thinks that it still is part of the mother. It doesn't, it doesn't differentiate. No. **Arpan Patel:** But we don't remember it. Like we, like, We have no idea. That's medical science trying to, you know, after doing some research and looking at the neurons after brain development, whatnot, they have the theories, right? **Josh Galt:** But do you, do you think that **Arpan Patel:** But we still don't know what happened. Theory is impractical, to be honest, but we still don't know what we were in our last birth. Like, I don't know whether I was a dog or a buffalo. I have no idea. **Josh Galt:** That's actually true? Because how would that happen if there's nothing after we die? That's, that's where I'm not understanding. So do you believe in reincarnation then? **Arpan Patel:** Okay, okay. I don't believe in reincarnation. This is the only chance I have. Yeah, **Josh Galt:** Okay. So it's just a, it's a, you're just saying hypothetically, if you don't know that if you were, you were a dog or if you were a king in your last life, you don't actually believe that we do have multiple lives. **Arpan Patel:** Because if I don't know my past birth, then there is no certainty I can guarantee what will happen after me or something might happen after my death because I have no idea, right? Second thing, spirit. Where does it, like, what is the point of entry for the spirit? Like, where does it enter from? **Josh Galt:** Yeah. There's a lot of theories about that. And that's sort of the. One of the ideas of that explosion of light and energy is that's when the spirit is entering the human biological form. When the sperm makes the egg, then it creates this vehicle of the human body. And the vehicle is, it's sort of like, the spirit is wearing this human flesh in order to have a human experience. And, you know, it's like... Entering a character in a video game or it's in order to learn. **Arpan Patel:** So spirit, like Atman, we call in Hinduism, it's Atman. The concept of Atman is exactly to, again, give people something so that they don't **Josh Galt:** Okay. **Arpan Patel:** Panic, right? That is like, I don't believe in Atman. I believe in a supreme energy, like the energy at atom level, that can be called Atman probably, because it's same in anything. So I can accept that being an Atman or spirit, right? And to me, when I look from the scientific point of view, very, very scientific point of view, Sperm and egg, they combined. They had everything all ready to create a life, right? They had DNA. They had enough protein to start the cell division and whatnot and the cell division started because that's how we take birth or any other living being with brain or without brain. It's just cell division. Nature does its thing, right? So at no point there was something came from outside. Everything was present in sperm and egg. So there is no spirit or Atman gets or comes inside the body of mother and then same Atman or spirit lives when you die. No, it is again brutally telling is a concept because we are not capable of accepting the truth. Do you believe trees have spirit? And how, **Josh Galt:** Yes. I don't believe that. **Arpan Patel:** How? How do they express their presence in trees? **Josh Galt:** I believe it because of the psychedelic experiences that I have had. And being, so there's sort of like, The going to other spiritual planes aspect of it, but there's also being in nature and the set and setting of this and stepping outside of the place where the ceremony was being held. And nature is alive in a way that we don't fully understand. And like... To be able to communicate with the trees and to see the trees communicating with each other. And like, I mean, it sounds far out there, but, and maybe that's just the mind, you know, and with the psilocybin or the ayahuasca or whatever talking. But yes, I believe that nature is alive, perhaps in a different way than us. But yeah, I do believe that if... And because of my belief that God is in everything, and that there is a sort of divine consciousness that pervades every atom, like you're saying, absolutely, **Arpan Patel:** Nature is alive, yeah, **Josh Galt:** Nature is... I mean, you could even... you could take that to an extreme. I'm sure I could be accused by certain religious people that, well, then you're going to say that the table is also alive. Well... If God is omnipresent, then that implies, it doesn't imply, it specifically says that God is omnipresent, then yes, then God would be in every atom of this table, whether it's a solid, **Arpan Patel:** It's true, yeah, that is what Hinduism believes, that's a belief in Hinduism, in scripture it says everything that moves and doesn't move, I am in there. **Josh Galt:** I believe that, I believe that, yes. Because that just makes the most sense. Omnipresent means omnipresent, and I do believe **Arpan Patel:** So you are not wrong. **Josh Galt:** In God. In God being this all-encompassing, like that energy that science hasn't been able to figure out, what holds the atom together, what is the smallest, smallest particle in the core of everything, that I think, yeah, a framework, **Arpan Patel:** So whatever, yeah, whatever remains, whatever science can not explain, whatever our brain can cannot explain is, sure, you can, we can say it to God, there is nothing wrong, because we need to give it a name, right, a framework. So sure, there is nothing wrong. It's just perspective, right? I call it nothingness and you call it God. Both are same. God is nothingness. Nothingness is God. God is everywhere. So how are we going to, like, we are going to go in circles and going to come at the same point. **Josh Galt:** Right. But words. OK, so this is this is really interesting because I think we are like in the same point, but with different terminology for it. But words are important. Right. Words are very important. And so **Arpan Patel:** -huh. It is impossible. **Josh Galt:** Nothing is hard to define for us. And maybe this is **Arpan Patel:** It is impossible to define, right? Agree. **Josh Galt:** Right. So. And it's. I would say, on a linguistic level, saying that nothingness and God are the same, I struggle to accept that because nothingness is nothing, and something is something, and so God cannot be nothing because... God is something. Whatever this presence is, whatever this energy is, whatever this intelligence is, this spiritual life form and energy that holds the universe together and is constantly creating and evolving that universe and growing it is something. In a linguistic manner of saying. And so how can that something also be nothing? Then you do end up going in a circle. That's **Arpan Patel:** Yeah. So our universe is expanding, right? And yeah, **Josh Galt:** What they say. I mean, we've never even seen aliens or other planets or whatever, really, so we don't know what's actually happened. Yeah. **Arpan Patel:** That's what they say. And I read, right? So I'm taking the theory of science they have seen from Hubble that universe is expanding. By the way, today news came that they were wrong. They are wrong about it. The way they have theories of how the universe expanded is probably wrong. So it's going to change everything, right? So when something expands from a very scientific point of view, it's that much energy, like neutron stars and everything, right? Stars, they get bigger and then they again go very small or like pulsar star, neutron star or pulsar star. I don't know exactly what they call it, but they become smaller and smaller, but with too much density in it. So they come to almost nothingness and then from nothingness, they can create the entire What do you call it? It's like a new universe with another Big Bang, right? So things that almost came from nothing, like created Big Bang. Big Bang was probably created out of nothing. So nothing can also create life. Nothing means a possibility to have something. Like we can play with the words and that's what has been happening. It's a game of wordplay. And that's why we are going to continue to argue about that. **Josh Galt:** Well, I wouldn't consider this an argument. I think it's a fascinating conversation, but yeah, but trying **Arpan Patel:** Oh, no, nice. Positive argument. Positive. This is really fascinating and positive argument. **Josh Galt:** To really understand. And so I think that maybe is why there's confusion also is because of the idea within different religions where things are defined in such context. Opposite ways or such different, unique ways. Sorry, Okay. So let's set aside the definition of that then. Then I guess it makes a little more sense. So if I understand the perspective of being spiritual then for you is not the Western atheist view of there is no God, so let's just be materialistic and live it up in this life because there's nothing after. You were saying that, Yes, there's nothing after this, but that means that I go back into being connected to that nothingness, which is divine consciousness, essentially. Is that right? In a way, **Arpan Patel:** You can say that, yeah, in a **Josh Galt:** Because... **Arpan Patel:** Way you can say that, but to me, to me, it is like having like... To get to this idea of there is nothing after this life is the most powerful motivator to me personally because if there is nothing once I am dead, I just want to do fucking everything today because I don't know about tomorrow. That means whatever I love, Right? Simply, I love growing vegetables, which I started and I stopped and I feel guilty about it. And I always constantly think that, oh, no, could be tomorrow or could be day after tomorrow or 10 years after. So it constantly, in a way, motivating me to do everything that I want to ever do. Truly, I want to do. From inside, right? It's not going to, it's going to push me away from unnecessary things. Like I can have, I have two legs so I can ride bicycle. Bike, motorcycle. I'll sell it for some money and use that money for something that I'd like to do. Right? Because I am uncertain and that uncertainty is really, really important for me. Every night I contemplate on that because that motivates me not to get distracted tomorrow. **Josh Galt:** That's good. Very pragmatic. **Arpan Patel:** So that's why I don't care if there is an expert because I'm not going to remember my disbirth anyway. So what's the point? **Josh Galt:** That's good advice, yeah. Because we can get so caught up in attempting to figure out the universe and eternity and all of these different spiritual theories that we can also miss, even by doing that, we can also miss living in the present. And that is truly where whatever comes next, or if there is nothing next... That's the beauty of taking advantage of the now and the present and being present. So instead of being nostalgic about the past or having anxiety about the future, it's about living in the now, living in the present and maximizing that. I love what you said about the things that come from within itself. That you are really interested in. Those are the things that you want to pursue at this level as a human. And so often, I mean, I am guilty of that as well. I'm not guilty of it, but I unfortunately have done that many times. I'll set aside the thing that I really just feel called, that I want to do, that I love to do, to do something else. You know, so it's like an easy example is... Music. I'm a musician at my core, and that's the thing that probably on a, I don't know if I can say on a spiritual level is most fulfilling, but as a human, like I can get lost in that, and I can get, I'm fascinated with many aspects of life, but I can get lost in that, I think, on a more all-encompassing level than anything else in my life. And yet for the last, I don't even know how long now, time goes fast, the last 15 years or so, I have completely set that aside to pursue other things that are, oh, well, I have to build this business, I have to do this, I have to, these responsibilities, and it's like, that just gets taken to the back burner, but if someone said, you're going to die tomorrow, what are you going to do for the next 24 hours? I'd be like, give me a piano. Like that's, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go sit in Nate again, put it out in nature because I love nature and like, and yet if someone's, If that's truly the thing, then what am I doing? Why do I not touch the piano every day? Why have I not touched the piano for weeks or months or whatever? If that's something that calls me, why have you not gone out and planted vegetables and worked in the garden with your hands and seen the beauty of that seed turn into a seedling, into a plant, and then eventually bare fruit, is a matter of saying, but bare vegetables? Why have you not done that? Thank you. And I think that's really at the crux of my search here with this, too, is I talk about modern society, but really it's just life as a human. And this is the epoch that we live in, and there's so many things that distract us from that calling, and it's like maybe true spirituality is... Having to go within, be introspective, be honest with oneself and say, what is it that I, as me right now, truly love and get fulfillment from and then seeking that and doing that, being that. Then you're connecting and you will learn the things that you're supposed to learn, whether there's a next or whether it's just now to connect with that, with God or nothingness. It's just terminology. **Arpan Patel:** That is absolutely, like that is the purest definition of spirituality. It's not about God. It's not about whether spirit exists. It's not about whether I will be in heaven or hell. Nothing. It's right now what you are doing and you're doing what you really love. That is actually the core of spirituality. Then you are spiritual. You don't need to believe in God to be spiritual. That's why I mentioned in the beginning that religion has nothing to do with spirituality. Spirituality is a state of mind where you are happy. It cannot be in the books. It cannot be in any religion books or nobody can tell you what spirituality is. Definition is up to you. Then you are truly spiritual. No, **Josh Galt:** And do you think that there is a way to ensure that you're truly being introspective and connecting with self and knowing what? **Arpan Patel:** That is, there is no guarantee. Our mind is very good at deceiving its own, like mind can deceive self. But what we have to do, **Josh Galt:** Many external influences, right? Yeah. **Arpan Patel:** Yeah. Through external, mostly through external influences. Cause when you give, when we give our mind a choice that I want to do thing, first thing our mind will do is pull the past and start taking like negative things. Right? Like, oh, if I do this and this will happen, that will happen. Oh, then we just put the idea on. We just drop the idea. So it is very, very hard to say when mind is telling you truth or mind is telling you lie. It's just a thinking mechanism. People do call something called intellect or intelligence, right? That helps you to define what is right and wrong. But again, that comes from external. So even though we say the spirituality is figuring out inside, it's actually coming from outside. So because no person without any exposure even can think. So the definition, yeah, again, the spirituality is very, you know, a misguided word. Everything comes from outside for human beings. Nothing generates within the mind. But we use those pointers to figure out whether it can be myself or is it me? Like questions like who am I or what am I doing here are also useless. Like, I am a human being, as simple as that. What am I doing here? I was born here, so I'm here to live. What else can be? Like, I'm here to dig some holes and plant some, like, some vegetables or talk to people or earn some money. What else? Like, so there are many things we have made much, much more complex and it's hard to unwind that. **Josh Galt:** Do you think that there are different purposes for different people? Like some people maybe are called to be more of service to others. Some people are called to maybe develop... Things that can teach others. Some people are called to maybe inspire others, et cetera. **Arpan Patel:** Yeah, definitely. So it depends on multiple things. First thing is something that no one can tell. It's like your own nature. Nature is mysterious. Like, why am I just like this? I can't even tell. Right? So that's the first thing. You are just built up in a way that you are different from others. Second thing is your social environment, your family upbringing. That definitely does play a big role because society and family is writing on your clean slate, right? When you were kids, they started writing without knowing what they are writing. So second, most, most important thing that influences is the family. DNA, like things are already built in DNA, some characteristics, some traits. So third, I can say DNA, which does play its role. So there are a couple of things, three, probably three important things that makes us what we feel we are working. So, yeah. Yeah. **Josh Galt:** Yeah. Nurturing. Yeah, it's the nature and nurture sort of that dichotomy, but also that it influences a lot of Who you are and how you think and how you respond to the world and also how you respond to yourself because of those inputs that begin when you're born. So if you were to give one piece of advice to people from your perspective on if you truly want to be more spiritual, like do this one thing yourself. Every day for the next 30 days. And you'll start to see a change because it takes 21 days to build a habit, right? So if we just say a month, because we are, we naturally in our, the way our society, our world is built, it's like we break things into 24 hour days and weeks and months. Months generally give us like a stepping stone for creating habit and habits form character, et cetera. So if there's something that, You would say this is the number one thing that you can do in order to get on the path of true spirituality. Do this every day. What would you advise people? Wow. **Arpan Patel:** Mm-Yeah. Every night when you go to bed, think that I will not be waking up tomorrow. That will fix your tomorrow. If you wake up, you will be grateful that, oh, I wake, I'm awake now, so let me do what I want to do. And if I don't, then you don't know even you don't wake up, you don't know that you're dead already. So think about that end is coming. There is no, nothing in this world can, you know, avoid that. It is there. It is coming. The clock is ticking. So do whatever you have to, you must do. But before that, you figure out what you want to do. Like if you think that I want to keep earning money while you're contemplating about that's useless. Like think something that will That is something internal to you and think about that and it will motivate you indirectly to, you know, just leave. If it happens tomorrow, I will leave. If it doesn't, then I'm not there to see it. **Josh Galt:** Wow. That's profound. And it opens up if someone is to start thinking that way, it opens up a whole lot of other questions and reorganization of one's priorities every day. Yeah. **Arpan Patel:** Yeah, it just starts beating you up. Shaking you up, beating you up, whatever you call it. It starts slapping you like, what the hell I've been doing for this long? So it slaps self, like it's a big slap. So it changes. But yeah, if that works, then your life will definitely change. And if that doesn't work, then nothing will work. Mm- **Josh Galt:** Do you think that fear and shame play a big role in that though of the external influences that started childhood but also even as an adult like it's in different cultures for me like there's the American very individualistic sort of the individual is the only thing that matters, whereas in other cultures that I have lived in, like in Southeast Asia, for example, the family, the collective is more important than the individual. And so it really changes how people think and how when they are introspective. What kind of answers did they find? Because someone that grows up in a very capitalistic, individualistic society is going to have different answers for who am I and what do I really want to do than someone who grows up in a collectivist society where even asking the question of what do I want to do is going to be answered intellectually By their nurture, which is the culture, which is, well, what does the collective need you to do? What does the collective want you to do? What's most important for the family, the group? **Arpan Patel:** Yeah. There is nothing wrong to be individualistic or thinking about own self, right? Because if I don't know enough about me as a human being, there is no way I can help 100 other people. If I have wrong definition... Of everything that I'm going to do, wrong teachings, I'm going to misguide 100 people. So it doesn't matter, right? First of all, if you prefer to stay or think just for yourself, that's absolutely right. At least, there is a saying, right? Self-help is the probably best help, right? So help yourself first. If you think that you have started understanding things better and more clearer, And automatically you will like to help people. So you will come out of that shell of individuality or being individual and you will just come out, let it happen. You don't have to make an effort because you have seen the power of knowing the clarity. Like what you know now can be helpful and can elevate many people's lives. So why you would be so selfless? It will be. it will automatically push you. You will have to probably make no effort in doing that. So don't worry about that. If that has to happen, it will happen. But if it makes you happy, to clarify things on your own, let it just be. There is nothing wrong. It's not selfishness. Oh, **Josh Galt:** It's so difficult, though, I think, in many cases, because a lot of times the people that are closest, when someone is... is truly seeking to be more spiritual, to be more themselves. There's so many external influences that beat that down. So depending on the culture, depending on, there's an interesting metaphor in Latin America called crabs in a bucket. And it's something that is very pervasive in many of the different countries and cultures in Latin America, which it's really sad because the story of the crabs in a bucket is essentially fishermen don't need to put a lid on the bucket when they're catching crabs. You've heard this. Because if a crab makes it to the top and it starts to leave, the other crabs, instead of using that and climbing up and they do it as a team and they all escape, they'll all try and pull it back down. They would rather all be imprisoned in the bucket together than see one crab succeed and exit and escape that imprisonment, that slavery. And it's a, it's a mentality that's really, really strong. And I think really difficult to overcome in that makes it more challenging, I think, for people to be introspective and find who they are and then say, well, this is who I am. This is what I'm going to do, because there's just always like, no, no, you can't do that because that we just don't do that because that's a, it's a form of escaping that mentality. Cultural or religious prison. Then the escape is internal. It's not external. **Arpan Patel:** Yeah. Yeah, but internal escape also pulls you back from the external, right? Like, if you want to think about something, you will go and sit in a room which most of the people will say like, oh, why you are just sitting alone? What are you doing? Come with us and sit with us, talk about the bullshit that we are talking about. Sometimes, You have to do it to be social because at the end society is also something that we need. So spirituality is not only thinking like I just have to do one thing finding about myself. No, it's balancing act. You have to also balance your social life. Sometimes our parents do talk bullshit, but then you are the only one or I am the only one to listen to them and it is necessary to listen to them. It doesn't matter what they're saying, but what they need is a listener. So just listen to them, do the job for one hour. Then you will be free. Otherwise, you will be constantly hearing chatter about like, why you are not listening to us? You have to talk to us. Why you are not? So 23 hours, you will hear that versus just spend one hour. So you will decide your priorities like, okay, let me do this and they will leave me. So you have to juggle and balance and that's why spirituality or finding the self or inner voice is not that hard because everything is external coming always towards you, hitting you harder and harder every time you try to be introspective. So it's not an easy game. That's why there are not many people who are doing introspection. **Josh Galt:** Yeah. Well, it's also painful because a lot of the things that we think that we are or that we present to the world, it's accumulation of... The deceptions and facades that we put on and over time we start to you get into a place where oh well I've been doing this for so long since I was a child or since a teenager that it becomes a core of who you are. And it's very painful to strip those things away and get to our real essence and be like, hey, everybody, so sorry, I've been lying to all of you about who I really am for the last 30 years. This is actually like the real me. And I mean, I think internally, it's also very, very painful to admit to ourselves that we have been... Lying and that we haven't been just being, but we have been living in a false, like, representation of who we are. **Arpan Patel:** Which is absolutely, again, fine because some people not even make that start, whether you and like where you and I have just made that start. So we are, we will have to suffer a lot. Spirituality is not about making life easy. It is. to struggle in the beginning and eventually none of the external stuff will keep bothering you. **Josh Galt:** Yeah, that's really good. And is that **Arpan Patel:** So initial struggle is real and you have to go through it and we all have to go through it who are really want to be free. I mean **Josh Galt:** The payoff? Is it a form of freedom that can't be achieved any other way? Mm- **Arpan Patel:** Yes like not without introspection like how we are going to be free of our own shackles when where we don't know. Where the cycles are on my hand or my mind or my legs. We have to free ourselves. So we have to know that first. Otherwise, there is no way. Otherwise, everybody would have been spiritual, isn't it? To **Josh Galt:** That's why it's the difficult work that has to be done in order to find that freedom, to find that peace, to find that joy and happiness. **Arpan Patel:** Find the joy. Even spirituality doesn't guarantee happiness or freedom. Again, spirituality is constantly evolving. So We might have answered 3 million questions, but there will be 3 million and first question. So it again, but it gives you the, you know, confidence that I have answered those 3 million questions. Ah, that's one more question. I can answer that. That's confidence you gain. **Josh Galt:** Absolutely. Absolutely. So I'm going to ask a personal question. What would you recommend to me? Because I want to learn more about the... The philosophy or the framework that you're coming from. What's one book that has really impacted you in your thinking and in the way that you are approaching spirituality right now? I'm going to read. I read a lot, so. Okay. **Arpan Patel:** Yeah, honestly, I'm not a reader. I have never finished a book entirely, to be honest. one **Josh Galt:** Would it be videos then? Because you talked about Alan Watts in the beginning. What would you recommend? Go check this out and you'll get something from it. **Arpan Patel:** Book, yeah, yeah, Alan Watts, I would say, deeper dive into Buddhism as well, Hinduism, I can suggest you some books, some translation that I have made of a book. Bhagavad Gita, actually, I started writing, I just published my part one of first two chapters from different perspective. So I will create a short list and see, like, give it a try. How do you like it? But yeah, I... It is easy for me to not read too much because I have a fear of getting pulled into the thoughts of books rather than having my own. Regardless, like everything comes externally, but I still have a hard time accepting that my mind still cannot generate better ideas. Like it cannot, you know, get into deeper. So I want to exercise that part and trying to avoid reading books. **Josh Galt:** So you're publishing then what you're writing? Do you have a blog or are you... **Arpan Patel:** Yeah, it's on Kindle. It's on Kindle, Amazon. **Josh Galt:** Okay, cool. All right. So yeah, so maybe send me what you were writing and publishing and I'd love to read it and have more of an understanding. We're going to be, I'm going to have to edit portions of this because we're like two and a half hours. This has been really fascinating, Arpan. I appreciate your patience with this whole process and finally being able to connect. And I'll definitely, that's why I'm asking about what I can read. Yeah. because I want to reconnect maybe in a few months, and have another conversation and I'll, I'll sort of have a more of a structure and maybe we can go back and forth on email and have a structure of what we want to chat about because it's been really fascinating and I think it's, there's some value that always comes from these conversations and hopefully people that do listen, like, will, It will make them think as well because it's really important to do that introspection no matter what one's religious belief is and in connecting with that person because I think you have to be before you can do, before you can have in order to give. And all of that comes from that introspection and that seeking. And that is really at the essence, I think, of spirituality. So I really appreciate the conversation. And we'll connect on email to send me that list and I'll go read what you're writing as well. And then we'll definitely connect again here in the future and have another long conversation. **Arpan Patel:** Definitely. It was also a pleasure talking with you. Very active conversation, back and forth. Like, good arguments, very positive arguments. I am... Looking for more people to have this kind of interaction, because I know that at some point, I also am wrong. It's just that it hasn't been identified. So I also want, you know, or like to interact with people more and more. So I'm grateful for this opportunity. **Josh Galt:** Yeah. And this, it's such an important conversation. This is, that's why I wanted to start this and do it because it's so many conversations I think that we have between religious people or just in that spirituality. It's a debate. It's not seeking truth together where we're coming from different perspectives and we have a book. It's strong beliefs held loosely, right? I believe what I believe, but I want to hear. I truly want to hear what other people, what you have to say, because I want to, I want to learn. I want to challenge my own belief system. And that I think is where there's a lot of pushback from many people. It's like, They don't want to challenge their belief system. They don't want to think about what it is that they truly are believing in the framework of how they're living their lives, et cetera. They're comfortable. I want to be uncomfortable. I want people to challenge. I want to have these. And it's so positive, too, when we can have a conversation like this, because... It's not, I'm right, you're wrong. I'm better than that. It's not like, it's like, hey, let's seek truth together. It's not about who is right. It's about what is right. And that's the beauty of this type of conversation. So really, really have appreciated it. And I'm looking forward to reconnecting and maybe even like, doesn't even have to be for a podcast. We can just have a conversation again, because it's fun to have these types of chats. Thank you, Arpan. I really appreciate it. And we will connect again.