What Burning Man, Bitcoin, and Fake Gurus Have in Common | Vikram Gandhi

Key Takeaway

When you join any group of humans, no matter how idealistic the principles or enlightened the participants, there will be politics. The key insight: don't abandon experiences because of organizational imperfections. Whether it's Burning Man, a meditation retreat, or any community, the messy reality doesn't invalidate the authentic personal experiences you can still have there.

Episode Overview

Dan Harris interviews filmmaker Vikram Gandhi about his HBO documentary 'The Man Will Burn' and his earlier film 'Kumaré.' They discuss Burning Man's evolution from anti-capitalist experiment to complex social phenomenon, why we're drawn to gurus, and whether skeptics can find meaning in spiritual communities despite their contradictions.

Full Transcript

Transcript of What Burning Man, Bitcoin, and Fake Gurus Have in Common | Vikram Gandhi from 10% Happier. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Hey everybody, welcome to the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. For decades, various friends of mine have very passionately encouraged me to go to Burning Man, the annual festival in uh the desert of Nevada that draws tens of thousands of people. And uh these passionate invitations and exhortations have uh landed for me as uh sometimes inspiring and intriguing and sometimes irritating. It's people who really are into Burning Man a little bit remind me of that classic uh cartoon in the New Yorker from a decade ago.

It has two women eating lunch and one of them says to the other, "I've been gluten-free for a week and I'm already annoying." And that can really happen with people who get deeply into Burning Man. Uh so today we're going to talk about the truth about Burning Man, but we're going to talk about much more than that because my guest is a fascinating uh figure in the culture. His name is Vicram Gandhi. He's the co-director of a new uh documentary on HBO called The Man Will Burn.

But he's done a lot of other stuff that I want to talk to him about. In fact, he he burst uh onto the collective consciousness uh in the early as uh when he made a documentary called Kumare in which he plays a fake Indian guru who uh is able to inspire a real following conundrum that creates a real reckoning for him. So, we're going to talk to uh Vicram today about uh whether a skeptic can find meaning, why we're so drawn to gurus, what is the truth about burning man, and much more.

Vicram Gandhi after this quick break. A few things before we hear from our sponsors. I've got exciting news. If you love this show, but do not love listening to the advertisements, a subscription to my app, 10% with Dan Harris, now includes a private adfree feed of the 10% Happier podcast. available on whatever platform you choose, whether that's Apple podcasts, Spotify, or right inside the app itself. Plus, along with an ad-free listening experience, the app also gives you a growing library of meditations from worldclass teachers, exclusive live stream events with me and many of our incredible instructors, and robust and supportive discussion threads where you can ask questions, share your struggles, and connect with our growing community.

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They're gonna ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them that we sent you. Vicram Gandhi, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I love your new documentary on Burning Man. It's awesome. Uh for people who don't know what Burning Man is, can you just describe what it is? Burning Men is a social experiment um of people building a city in the middle of the desert desert desert and in that city there is no exchange of money and it is an experiment in sort of communal living.

In some ways people can look at it as a temporary utopia. Some people call it a festival. Some people call it accidentally think it's a music festival because there's so much music or an arts festival because there's a lot of art. But I would say u for the people who started it and the attempt to maintain its roots, it's a social experiment in basically living in a different culture like reinventing culture in the desert. Your documentary which again is called The Man Will Burn. It's on HBO.

Um and again I loved it. It does a lot of things, but one of the things it does is like trace the arc of of Burning Man. And as you said, the the the original founder, I think his name is Larry something. something. something. Larry Harvey. Yeah. Larry Harvey. His idea was really kind of anti- capitalist. I would say it's very much anti- capitalist um in its roots. I mean, Burning Man first started when Larry Harvey told his friend, "Hey, I want to go burn a man on a beach in San Francisco called Baker Beach." A wooden man, not an actual man.

Yeah, a wooden man. Excuse me. And there's a lot of myths around like why he did it, you know? Was it just a spark of an idea? Uh was it supposed to be this like pagan ritualistic thing? Did he watch the movie Wickerman like right before that? Like these are like kind of myths that I've heard and the idea of it being a myth is I think important to it. Yeah. Larry Harvey started it and I and as this sort of experiment happened, it started on Baker Beach and then um you know the first burn was like 10 people and I think that what they saw was that there was this almost religious fervor that people had when they were looking at this man burn and it it felt like a pagan ritual when you look at it.

Um but you know it's happening in the 80s and they did it again the next year and there were like a hundred people and then they did it again the next year and there were many many more people and they would start throwing a party around and there's music and you know at some point u so many people started coming that the cops shut them down and they realized they had to go somewhere else and that's when they went to the Black Rock Desert and the Burning Man that we see in images started um then in the '90s '90s '90s and it's now you know what 80,000 people a year, something like that.

It's 80,000 people a year who come together, build this city from scratch in the desert, you know, all kinds of people, builders and people who are who are um working on the infrastructure and then all these people who are coming to make art, you know, um create camps, throw parties, all of that. Um, so 80,000 people, most of whom are are 80,000 people there for about a week and but there's a lot of people who go there for like weeks before to build it. And I think you mentioned there's there's no money.

It's all it's a fully a gift economy. Yeah, I think the the founders of Burning Man uh there's a book I'm I'm forgetting the name of the author, but called the gift and I've heard that they they read that book and in it it was the idea that things objects that we have, they hold a different a different meaning when they're gifted to you. There's a story behind them. It's not about um purchasing something. And I think they thought, well, what if in this environment you just can't buy anything?

And of course in the beginning it was in the desert like there's no stores around there so you couldn't buy anything. But if you brought everything to that you could be self-reliant and then you brought some more to share with people and that just kept happening and happening and you brought art or you brought a party that that would change human interaction and that would become in some ways a release valve for capitalist society. I've heard people say that Burning Man is trauma bonding around uh the trauma bonding of capitalism.

And so its roots were definitely anarctic. Uh it's definitely anti- capitalist. They had a lot of connection to um performance artists and street art in San Francisco that were like critiquing culture. Um there was there were people aligned with Burning Man in the beginning that did something called the Billboard Liberation Front where they would sat satarize commercialism and cap and capitalism. Um I would say to get it right it was a lot more anti-consumerist more anti-consumerist more anti-consumerist than necessarily anti- capitalist if there is a difference.

I think that's debatable, but you know, that was the idea of kind of mocking um our consumer culture that everybody was consuming things and that's the way that we lived that we were just all about consumption as opposed to what if it was all about giving, building, creating, in, you know, in their case, making art. One of the critiques you hear, and I kind of gently made fun of of Burning Man and Burners, um in the intro, which you were sitting here while I recorded, so you heard it.

Um uh one of the critiques you hear is that this was supposed to be this, if not anti- capitalist, at least um anti-consumer, uh or consumer culture event. And yet now it is it is populated in no small measure by billionaires who have a whole parking lot of their private jets in the desert and they build these, you know, incredibly expensive private camps that they attend. And some of these uh billionaires are, you know, I think you can make a pretty strong case not necessarily nudging humanity toward its best uh its best version of itself.

So how do you square that with the the original intentions of the founders? I think that what's really beautiful about the way this social experiment started is that there are so many accidents. Like did Larry Harvey know that one day when he built the man that this you know city would emerge that people were going to all come there and did he know that in the beginning? U probably not. Like I think that it was it was it was an experiment in the beginning and it just kept going.

And I and in some ways I say I think uh one could say that like he he burnt this man and people gathered around it and for the last 30 years people have been debating what it means. And there was a point where uh Larry, you know, in in our in our documentary, one of the one of the um early members of Burning Man explains that Larry went out on like a pilgrimage to Mexico and he came back and he said, "I have nine principles." And then um this guy Steuart Mangram jokes that he, you know, they said to him, "You need 10 like any self-respecting cult." That is actually the tone of Burning Man, which is that yes, we have these beliefs, but like it's also a big joke.

Like the world is a big cosmic joke. So that being said, I think one of the more important guiding principles of what the the place has been is that, you know, they kind of don't tell you what you're supposed to believe. I remember when I first went, I thought, you know, I brought a tent. I went to I went and bought like everything I just needed for myself. Like I was going camping and then when I arrived and I met the people they we you know in Reno that I was going with my friends.

We went to Walmart and they started filling all of their all their carts up with steaks stakes steaks and and champagne and beer. And I was like wait what is going on here? I thought we were like camping in the desert. And when I got there I realized it was totally not what I thought. It didn't have this sort of ethic or moral around it. It was like this is just this is just the planet. This is just humanity and we just come here and do u this whatever we want to do and there's not like a rule here but there's like a guiding principle like we're this this is a place where you have to be self-reliant.

You have to be part of it. You can't you can't just be a a spectator. the early Burning Man days were were, you know, strictly about one thing or another. I feel like I just don't think it it happened like that. I and I don't think there is a moral grounding of of how to judge how people go to Burning Man. Um, I do think the way people talk about it can change the way that the outside world perceives it because they talk about in the same with in the same way that a lot of people talk about going to church or religion or some mystical experience they had.

So, I do think like the big conundrum of that's in our documentary and I think is in Burning Man culture right now is the exact question you're asking. Like look at all the money. There's I would I think we estimated that like $400 million of things come to Burning Man. U we've we've filmed with people who have multi-million dollar art cars that have speakers on it that throw parties. And I think the bigger question is if this place is supposed to be a way to kind of create a new culture outside of capitalist society, how do you mark where where where where what's happening inside starts replicating what is actually on the outside?

I think it's human nature to think you can escape all of those rules. So you will see that it's not structured so differently. I think that the idea is that it's trying to guide people in a way that like when you meet people, you give them a hug like they're family. When you when you go to a party, there's no you you can't be exclusive. It's all inclusive. Uh and I just think that it's a rare place where that is the direction. And whether or not it actually fulfills what these principles are, I mean, it's pretty hard to act like that.

You know, I sometimes think it it works really well in the first few days and then just like everything else like things start falling apart. So, so I think that the criticism of it not being what it stood for is totally like valid and I think it's something we struggle with in the documentary and something that becomes very obvious. Hey, there's no money here and then you see private jets flying everywhere. Like, how does this work? Um, but at the end of the day, it's it's a big experiment.

And I think once I went the first time and I realized that that this wasn't some ethical thing I wasn't doing. Like it there's no morality to it. All that stuff we bought on Walmart, we had to get rid of. And I remember we drove through the Native American reservation on the way back to Reno with garbage bags and there was a sign that says said it on the reservation, we'll buy your uh you pay us to take your garbage. And I was like, so we we gave we for $5 we paid, you know, uh people on the Native American reservation to take our garbage.

And I was like, this is the most American thing ever. It is not what I thought it was. It's not like, hey, you go to Burning Man and you're a better person than everyone. It's just like a full expression of it. Uh it's not. So, I think like that's the impression that people have um that there's maybe these new age or mystical or religious sort of connotations or even environmentalist connotations, but it's definitely I think there's an effort to do that, but I would say that's not an accurate portrayal.

In in some ways, it's just like an alternate culture and direction that has its own kind of aesthetic and art and it's like its own civilization for a week. Um, but I know exactly what you mean and I think it's still a question. um can a place actually function and be anti- capitalist or anti-consumerist and then still have all this money poured into it? It does make a lot of burners scratch their head as well. I have to say I came away from the documentary a lot less skeptical.

like I I landed I where you just took us which is this is an experiment with very interesting ideas behind it but it's also a big beautiful hypocritical mess and that's kind of awesome. I mean I think that's actually the beauty of it. I mean it's not a place that you censor yourself. Like I think actually one of the reasons that one of the main reasons Burning Man has changed also is because of social media. like this was a place that it was okay to be naked.

Um I mean it's okay to say anything and all of a sudden when cameras start coming in there people become less free and open. I mean I think in some ways it felt like it transcended all the stuff that was happening you know in the world with cancel culture and stuff like I think a lot of burners didn't want that to happen to Burning Man. Like even though I think many of the people who go to Burning Man, most of them actually believe in those ideals in the outside world, but in the but in this like little community where it's they you're supposed to be sort of creating a family uh where everything is safe and there's no rules.

Those moral and ethical rules from the outside world u are also scary because they just keep pouring in. Like I would say that the world just start the outside world is seeping into Burning Man. there's really nothing we can do about it because um now people like now there's phone reception out there there there and and you can get on the internet. So I think there was a force field around it before and that force field is like is very weak unless you know any anyone can decide.

So I think in a lot of ways that's happening like the culture is changing because it's hard to keep out the outside world. Going to the gym can be discouraging, especially if you're putting in the work but barely seeing changes. But with Tonal, you can actually see your progress with every workout. Tonal provides the convenience of a full gym and the guidance of a personal trainer anytime at home with one sleek system designed to reduce your mental load. Tonal is the ultimate strength training system, helping you focus less on workout planning and more on getting results.

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Where do you land? I mean, you you spent many years, you and your co-director, documenting not only the event itself, but you got incredible access um inside the Burning Man organization during some tumultuous times with lots of infighting, some of it involving Elon Musk's brother. Is that his younger brother? Kimble brother? Kimble brother? Kimble Kimble Musk who joins the board and and uh tries to disrupt things, which um I recommend people watch the documentary to see how that plays out. I'm just curious like where did you net out?

Will you now that you've finished this documentary, will you go back as a will you keep going back as a participant or are you kind of just like done with the thing for a while? One of the reasons that this all happened was, you know, my co-director Jan, who is a an amazing filmmaker, filmmaker, filmmaker, she directed The Vow on HBO and um she she had connected with um with the with the CEO of Burning Man and the and the board of Burning Man and they wanted people to document their journey and she came to me as she was finishing season two of the vow and said, "We need a director to come in who's been to Burning man, you know, and I at that point had gone probably like eight or nine times.

I would say I was not as hardcore. I'm like a New Yorker and so I would just go there for a few days and I knew like my counterparts in California might have been thinking about Burning Man for um like they're the ones really building it. You know, in some ways I was parachuting in which is, you know, not part of not actually part of the culture. This is one of the most fun things on earth. And if I don't have to go to a wedding on that Labor Day weekend um in the end of August and I don't have anything on my schedule, that's that's the place I'm going to go.

Of course, this has changed my relationship with Burning Man. I mean, taking a camera out and filming um in that location, it's not just the camera, it's also the microphones and the sound. uh that is almost completely against the vibe. It took me understanding the Burning Man culture and being a being somebody who went to Burning Man to uh to be able to bring those cameras in there and and but um so but to also your point um we got behind the scenes um yeah one of the you know one of our our characters who is in it is is Kimble Masilon Mus brother in the show in the in the series um he he also plays a a part of talking about sort of the early ideas of Burning Man that didn't have an organization.

Like when Burning Man started, it didn't have an organization. It wasn't supposed to be safe. It wasn't supposed to have any rules and people were just going out to the desert. And in it, he actually really embodies the voice of a lot of people at Burning Man who said, "We don't need an organization." I mean, it was really fascinating that it was happening. You know, those scenes happen kind of before Kimell's brother was um was working on Doge, but it was similar like it was interest it was an interesting parallel in that like a critique of the governing body, you know, of Burning Man that was um spending money and um and and people who were who loved Burning Man were saying, "Hey, like why do we have this organization?" They were questioning leadership.

And I think in the movie, you know, in our in our film, Kimell really um embodies, I think, a lot of the opinions of a lot of people who maybe just like were afraid to speak up. Um and and I think, you know, in in some ways that's the dilemma that like if you can have the organization do things and set things up or you can have the people with means and resources help you set up and that's not this dissimilar to the outside world. you know, if you if you want to rely on do you want to rely on the government or do you want to rely on on um big corporations and I think um the same thing that happens in the outside world is happening inside Burning Man.

The same question and um and it it's a threat to uh the the organization what he what he says but I think in some ways he also embodies the real feeling of of people who go to Burning Man. It's like why why do we even have this organization? And the organization really believes that they're helping make sure that some of those cultural elements that we were talking about before they that they stay in there. And so it's a funny back and forth and it's not that dissimilar to the outside world.

And I think that's actually what's so interesting about the inner mechanisms of a place like that. Like you just keep replicating the same thing. You know, you can't change human nature. um you can change the look and feel of it but human nature is the same. So So So I may be feeling less less skepticism than what many of your viewers may walk away with. Um I part of the reason why is that I have spent a lot of time up close with meditation organizations including retreat centers and I've seen that even people who have spent decades of their life um practicing the dharma practicing deep meditation when you bring any group of humans together no matter how enlightened or close to enlightened they may be there will be politics and of course that's going to happen with even with an organization like Burning Man where the principles are super idealistic.

Um, yeah, it's just hard to get humans together to cooperate on a on a joint project. So, I was I was less surprised by that. I I was always seeing the story of Burning Man resembling a lot like any church or religion. I mean, in the Burning Man story, there's a schism early on with a lot of these ideals built into how Larry was thinking about it. You know, Burning Man has a temple. Burning Man has a symbol. Burning has a ritual. There's a hero's journey that goes through that week that leads up to a communal ritual.

Um, and there's an organization that's running it that's trying to keep the place pure. But of course there's donors who come in and I mean you can you can hear the story of the Catholic Church and almost any like large religious organization if whether it's Buddhist or anything uh or Christian all of these organizations have a similar kind of thing that they have to deal with like you're talking about donations you're talking about people with more means do they get access to something and Burning Man's just struggling with the same thing but also at the same time it's also a city so they have provide they have to build a they have to have a hospital and then they have roads and so weirdly this experiment is very complicated and um and you know you definitely need some kind of organization and and I would say that Larry Harvey in some ways was sort of like you know a messiah figure to it.

I think the joke is that um no that he's at once that but he's also the opposite like he as far as I know he was just a great storyteller who loved talking to people and they were just all building it around him like it's not like he actually there other people who were there were like we should build a road here we should shape it like this but he just kind of gave everyone this vision of like well why don't we just go for this thing and then everybody sort of aligned and in that way it does resemble like a cult or a religion in the way that it's just like all of these things we hear the story of like is this church or is this society or this culture or this meditation group is it still authentic?

Can you still have an experience? And I think that's also what we try to explore is can you still have like an actual mind-blowing uh mystical experience in this place? And I think I think you can and even though maybe the whole city has changed like you know it's like Brooklyn you know or or something like it's Burning Man has been gentrified but can you still have a really good time and and find what you're looking for? I think I think we've seen that people are still having that experience.

Um, so it's not over, you know. I think I think to some degree it's like, oh well, I would have gone 20 years ago. Like I I don't think that's true either. I think it's just evolved and more people have come. I remember when I was a kid and I would go to summer camp and every summer all the kids would say, "Yeah, this summer's okay, but last summer, man, last summer was the best one." Um, I want to broaden the discussion though, uh, because this is not the only film you've made.

Um, let let's go back to the the film that kind of got you noticed. Uh, Kumar, I'm I was telling you this before we started rolling. I'm I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that I've known you for a while and I I hadn't watched it until today. It's extraordinary. Um, uh, basically in it, you kind of masquerade as an Indian guru even though you're not. uh and you you you're this fake guru who develops a real following. Why did you do it in the first place?

first place? first place? You know, looking back after years, it becomes very obvious like I grew up in a home where my father started temples like my there was a Hindu temple that started in my basement in New Jersey. Um and his father before him started a Hindu temple in Burma. So I was around these sort of mechanisms of how a religious organization worked because like my father was running one and my parents were deeply involved. They're still very involved in in like their community. But I also met a lot of gurus growing up and I met a lot of uh pundits who did rituals and I just had an inside look.

I mean u we went to a lot of ashrams growing up. I was my my father started meditating and so uh and doing yoga and so we we we went we really just like were very much in searching for spirituality in America or Indian spirituality in America and I think my parents wanted us to keep our culture and so what was around was less um you know was was the sort of American version of it you know which is the tri-state area so we would go to ashrams and I would meet all these different swamies and I would watch their reaction and some of them were like this this place is not for us you know like may have been too hippie- dippy or newagy or the person who was running it seemed like a charlatan and we ended up I ended up going to an ashram when I was a kid and got really close with the swami who ran it and he was kind of like you know like a you know grandfather figure so I was very close to watching and it but I always was the guy the kid in the class who was like pointing out the mistakes You know, hey, I remember I had this whole I remember outing one of the swamies I to who we were we were we were cooking s'mores and everything was supposed to be vegetarian.

I said, "Isn't the gelatin in this like have animal products?" And he was like, "Yeah, don't ruin it." And then at the at the campfire and he got angry at me. I remember that. And I remember I outed him at the campfire and be like, "Swami G's lied to us." Um I was always like seeing these people as regular people. I never believed any of these gurus had any kind of like magical powers or were any way enlightened. Even the idea of enlightenment seemed so ridiculous.

It was it felt like it was just like the heaven or you know angel myths being you know uh trans you know transformed into an eastern version. So I was always like really skeptical but also really incredibly knowledgeable out about it. Like I mean the mythology I grew up with like I kids were reading like Marvel, I was reading like Hindu comic books like so I was super educated in it and I was around it and I had a lot of questions and then what really made me want to make Kumari is that I just I was watching yoga and meditation and Eastern philosophy becoming a big trend in New York and becoming a scene and being commercialized to in a way that was in its roots in its early days back then.

Now it's uh indistinguishable from like wellness. But I was watching that happen and all of these kind of you know crazy gurus getting followers. This is like this bizarre version of um of what was happening in India and what happens in any society with like you know megaurches and the critiques we can have about anything. So this was my way of of kind of looking at my entire life up to that point and trying to reflect on it to see how I fit into American society as an Indian-American.

I also would say that in a lot of ways I made an entire movie that was u talking about cultural appropriation and I didn't even know what that word was back then when I made it. I wonder if I knew that word um if I needed to make the movie. But ultimately it starts off about that like an Indian-American pretending he's from India and I but I also look at it as like a deep experiment in sort of showing that like religion is also an illusion and you know it's a structure that we don't really need and maybe it's not part of spirituality maybe these gurus don't need to be part of spirituality and maybe nothing is in in a way I looked at the whole thing as a zen [ __ ] Like that's the idea.

Like it's a big joke or big thing and at some moment you get this like flash of realization. Oh, I don't need anyone. And that was like my hope. Like can people watch that and go, oh [ __ ] like I I start following people. I believe in stuff that's not real. I'm I'm looking for an outside person to help me and I'm not empowering myself. Um, so in a lot of ways was aspirational of like what I wanted to believe in and you know by changing my voice and changing my character I could embody the character who could deliver that message.

And also the part that I was fake is actually to me the strongest part of Kumari the guru was that like the strongest and you know the most the most enlightening guru is actually the one that's like not real because all humans are flawed but like Kumari isn't real. So you could you could say that he's um he's a fraud and he's like that's actually part of my identity. Part of Kumar's identity is he wasn't real. So there are so many questions that arise out of this social experiment but it really starts as a social experiment.

You set up the movie. You talk about your background. You talk about why you're doing it and you say, "Okay, I'm going to go to Phoenix, Arizona, where nobody will recognize me. I'm going to see if I as a fake guru can uh develop a real following." But very quickly like it gets complicated because you do develop a real following and then you start feeling quite conflicted about the fact that you you've essentially tricked these people into a a relationship with a guru who they believe in even though he's not a real guru.

So just talk a little bit like at what point did you start to in this process to develop feelings of like oh no what have I gotten myself into here and what am I doing to these people? you know, some of the slight of hand in the storytelling process and editing process is to kind of create this hero's journey of where realizations come and different emotions happen at different times. But I think the reality is that from the first moment I started, which I think is portrayed more like a a joke and we go into it lighthearted and not knowing.

From the first moment I started, it was terrifying that I was crossing a taboo that I shouldn't be crossing. And all the way in the last moments where it feel you know later on where it feels really heavy really heavy really heavy like when you're revealing the truth to the followers. the followers. the followers. Yeah. And and and when people are telling me really intense things like it was really heavy but we were also still laughing every day because it was so ridiculous and um I think in the narration of it it feels like okay it started as a joke and became really serious and it is true we went deeper and deeper.

As I got deeper and deeper I lost myself in it. But um from the very second I I mean I thought this is actually playing with fire. The first time I tried out mutual friend of ours um helped me set it up. Uh and um I went to New Jersey to try out the character to see hey can this work you know like I had grown out my beard it you know um a little bit longer than this and um I went to a yoga studio.

We were shooting like some, you know, some images to kind of fund raise off of and basically we shot in a yoga studio with like extras that we hired and then the woman who ran the yoga studio said, "Who is this guy? Like, can he teach in my studio?" So, we're like, "This is a great opportunity to really do it and test it out." When we tested it out, there was a woman who came up to me. I [clears throat] was making up rituals, making up mantras.

I was doing exercises that made no sense. And um and I I had this ritual that I did where I put my forehead against someone else so I could shoot like you know spiritual energy into their third eye. And this girl looked at me and said I will I will just like follow you anywhere. And from that moment I was like oh [ __ ] like this is some real [ __ ] This is not like me. It was a joke before and I thought maybe I could do it and I was going blindly into it like just yeah I can make I could do it and then all of a sudden I had the realization like maybe I can do something.

Maybe this is actually like a real film. Yeah. And that's when it started. Um sorry I'm rambling here. What was the Well, I guess my question for you is like there have been I mean the film was extremely wellreceived. It won the audience uh prize at South by Southwest for best documentary. I personally loved it. I think it it's it was critically um reviewed very warmly and yet there were some criticisms about the ethics of it. You know, was it fair to the to the followers who thought they were in a real thing, but they were actually in a fake thing.

Where do you come down on that? Well, I was younger back then, you know, and it's almost I I almost felt like I had my own ethical code, you know, um which is very cult leader like, I guess, but um but also like this was the art I wanted to make. And I got to say, I felt more strongly about this doing it in this way than I feel like I've ever really felt about any project. I would tell people like I would feel maybe I feel weird about doing this or I feel strange but I would feel worse if I didn't tell this story cuz I just kind of felt like nobody else was saying it.

I I felt like hey I grew up with all all this this thing that's sort of new in America and with this insight and this education from my childhood also studying college and I was like this is the thing that I want to do and so I just felt like the message was more important than anything that like nobody is telling you this message and you could do it in a scripted movie or you could write a book about it but like nothing is better than actually seeing it play out in real life.

It's a science experiment or social experiment and the message is what people can believe in something that's not real and change themselves and empower themselves and it doesn't matter if the thing they were focusing on is real and that's what Kumari was. I mean he was sort of a talisman or an icon but he was he was completely like there was empty vessel. There was nothing in there. I wasn't really teaching anything. Actually, what I told people was I asked them to make a plan about how they wanted to change their life and just to promise me they were going to do it and look me in the eye and say, "I'm going to do this." And that was actually the catalyst for them doing things.

So, when they look back at like what was the teachings that Kumari were giving them, yeah, there were a couple like chants and things that were just sounds that I made up, but really the thing that people benefited was like because they thought of it themselves. Um, and that message I felt like I felt like this was saying something about all of religion. Like it was a takedown of all of religion. It was like these are just stories. They're mechanisms to getting us to believe in things.

I recreated all those mechanisms. I made a formula, a recipe of like have a myth, have a character, have a chant, have a ritual. Like just imitate what all the rel religions are. make your own and people will believe you because that's just like been working for thousands of years. So I think I was trying to take down all of religion. I was trying to show that gurus were fake. I was trying to talk about cultural appropriation. All of it was like the most meaningful thing at that time in my life I could I could say.

And now I look back and I'm very happy I made that movie. A lot of people who watched it, they were often a they were like I totally agree with this movie. Some people would even say, "My guru actually says the same thing." Uh, and then some other people go, "I really I really love your movie, but I'm kind of worried that this other person I know is going to be really offended." And I was like, everyone's sort of it was interesting the nerve it hit because I felt like other people thought other people might be offended by it, but they weren't cuz they actually believed in that, too.

So, I think in in everyone's heart, they kind of already believe that they don't need any of these people. we don't even realize sometimes when we're following things and following people and and now I think it's even more relevant because there are so many online gurus and so many people selling a lifestyle and we gradually just see all of them fall um so many of them fall I mean every big yoga guru in America has pretty much fallen you know from from Osho uh to Bikram like there's always a darkness behind them are they worse than the average person who has a lot of power and influence maybe not But they definitely were making it seem like they were ethically higher than everyone else.

And I think that's that's the thing also that I was trying to say like these people are not you don't have to dress like that and act like that to be spiritual. Like that doesn't mean anything anything anything to me. The most moving part of the film and I you know I'm watching it with a lens of Vicram's friend. So, so I I'm I maybe almost certainly I'm biased in some ways, but to to me the most moving thing and in some ways the most important message of the of the movie um uh and again this is just me and I'm not saying that all the things you just listed are not important, but the there's a point in the movie where it becomes clear that you playing this character character character who is essentially just the best version of Vikram, of Vikram, of Vikram, a guy who makes and holds eye contact, listens very carefully, is encouraging and loving, that's just the best version of you.

Somehow channeling the best version of you actually started to make you into the best version of you. And I found that very moving, but also instructional like we can identify the best versions of ourselves and kind of fake it until we make it. I totally agree. And that was actually there was an experience of feeling like everybody loves this guy. He's such a good listener. He I mean I would practice almost like when I would talk to people the practice that I had internally was I was just seeing light in them.

I told them that that's what I was seeing. But I actually would try to do that. I would look at people in the eye, hold eye contact, and I would actually try to look beyond what was in their eyes. And I was just doing this thing and in some ways you could say it's method acting or something. I wasn't I've never trained in acting so I don't really know and I I don't think of myself as an actor in any way but I was just doing this thing like what if you were stuck in that position?

What if somebody put you on a pedestal, which I'm sure happens sometimes, and they're looking to you for advice and you realized every word you say has so much weight, weight, weight, so much power because of the position you're in that you got to step up. And I think I think that is the experience of being a spiritual leader from the inside that is experiencing. I honestly could have been any anybody could have been in that position. Um, and in some ways it's just optics like, hey, if you decide to sit in the center of the room and u everybody's looking at you, all of a sudden it seems like you might be the, you know, the person in charge.

And that's kind of what was happening. And but it also made dawned on me like I don't act like that with everyone. I'm not like I I would say Kumari was incredibly mindful. Like I was mindful in every interaction. I was mindful of saying I have a moral code to how I speak. Someone's asking me for advice and demanding that I tell them what they should do. And Kumari's philosophy is never tell anyone what to do. You don't know anything. You don't know anything. You're saying that everybody's equal.

Never break that rule. So Kumari was all about like like he's kind of an idiot in some ways. my my you know my model was like you know um the movie being there like a character who just people people projected things on and that's actually I think the most powerful part of that character that I learned from it's like I I didn't tell people what to do I said what do you think you should do and I would learn from them and just give it back to them and they would hear it in my voice like they were looking in a mirror and this the person in the mirror me me was just telling them like the same thing that they already knew And u so I learned about that's possible and I would have to say that after I made Kumari um I be made started making more documentaries and interviewing a lot of people.

I was a correspondent people. I was a correspondent advice and I remember embodying a lot of that when I would interview people. I was like Kumari was taught me how to talk to to interview people and make them feel safe and talk to them. Um because that's kind of all I was doing in that character. I was basically just a documentary filmmaker, too. But I I I trained myself through the Kumari method, if you will, in interviewing. I was playing around this morning with the new Rosetta Stone Sapphire app, which is really cool and really intuitive, really easy to use.

I was learning some basic Japanese in anticipation of a trip that we haven't even planned yet, but my family and I have been fantasizing about going to Tokyo. And I was playing around with the Rosetta Stone Sapphire app and very quickly it was having me say things in Japanese. It was I was talking about a little boy drinking tea and it checks your pronunciation and you can't move on if unless you pronounce the words correctly. It's really cool, really intuitive and it took me further than I was expecting to go just sitting on my couch.

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If you want to take your language skills to the next level, don't wait to try Rosetta Stone Sapphire. 10% happier listeners can get 20% off their Rosetta Stone Sapphire subscription. When they sign up today, you'll get unlimited access to all 25 Rosetta Stone languages, plus the new Sapphire learning tools. Visit rosetta.com/happier rosetta.com/happier rosetta.com/happier to redeem your 20% off. That's rosettton.com/happhappier rosettton.com/happhappier rosettton.com/happhappier and start learning a language for real. It is kind of poignant too that there's there's another moment in the film where you say that you connected more to people as Kamari than you ever did as Vicram.

Vicram. Vicram. Yeah. I mean these there was a group of people who were total strangers who didn't know anything about me. They thought I was from the mountains and I mean I I you know I meet them for an hour like I was like I'm bonded with this person. That's what was so real. Like you felt bonded. I was I mean this is real connection. And I kind of feel like that way with everyone I film with um if I go deep with them. But that was different.

Like the cameras were invisible. It was just me and them. But also um I think I mean there's so many reasons I felt like that. But I think the truth is that it that was Kumari's gift. I went in thinking, "Oh, I'm going to do some Sasha Baron Cohen thing like it's all going to be jokes. We're going to take the piss out of everyone." And very soon I realized that's not Kumari's gift. Kumari's gift is the ability to make people feel comfortable, feel heard. I mean, the gurus stand in front of like thousands of people.

My guru Kumari was going over their house and staring into their eyes for like listen to every word. Um, so I do I do feel very connected to those people. I'm still in contact with some of them. Um, it's been a minute since we're communicated because they're all over the, you know, across the world, across the country. But yeah, I mean, I felt bonded with all of them. They they were all part of this thing that was also very important to me. Like they unwittingly were part of like the full expression of what I was going through in my life.

Um they were part of my art. Um I sort of trapped them in there. So there was a contract that happened where hey like we're in it. We're in this. That's why I I did keep in contact with a lot of them for a while. Um uh and I wanted to make sure they were cool with it. You know in a way like very few people are really mocked in it. It's it's actually just like none of those people deserve to be fooled. Uh and that's why I think they were also very confused at the end where like they didn't A lot of people were like, "But I lost a bunch of weight.

I got only good things. What is this weird prank where you make people feel good?" That's not how pranks go. We're almost out of time, but you you also you have another film coming out soon on uh the um mysterious founder of Bitcoin. Satoshi. Uh, well, that's his that's his kind of nom to coin, right? We don't actually know who Satoshi is. We don't know. Could just tell me about the project because it we were texting before we started recording in your mind like this this thing on on on Bitcoin kind of is in line with Burning Man and Kumar.

Yeah, 100%. I mean, I think it's funny. I think I think sometimes it's funny to me to think I maybe we all we just keep telling the same stories over and over again or I keep making the same film over and over again but like um you know uh when Bitcoin was created there was a person named who named Satoshi Nakamoto who wrote a white paper explaining what Bitcoin was and created it and that person some people perceived as a person in Japan but it turned out that it was a pseudonym and nobody knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is which is an incredible idea.

If you think about how many billions of dollars have gone and been invested into this thing called Bitcoin and the creation of all cryptocurrency, you know, there's a line from uh what's the author of Sapen's name? Noah Uval. Noah Uval. Noah Uval. Harrar. Yeah. He says that, you know, the greatest story ever told is a story about money because money is the only thing that we all believe in. And um and that was like you know an interesting parallel that this mythical person that no one knows named Satoshi Nakamoto who has is totally become a mythical character people have been searching him for him since the beginning of Bitcoin.

So people looking for 15 years and I just got so fascinated by the fact that an entire world and economy and and the economy of of nations um and the and the wealth of people um we're all being we're all trusting that this person who nobody knew knows created it. And I love pseudonyms and and alter egos as you know and this was the greatest one of all. So I decided to go on a search to go find him. And since um I started there have been I don't know dozen like long form articles, several books and a bunch of documentaries u that people have made looking for Satoshi Nakamoto.

But um it's funny cuz the entire time I was like this is actually all about the belief system. I'm just fascinated how we can all put so much trust into this person. I mean right now whoever Satoshi Nakamoto may be would be worth I don't know about I don't remember the price of Bitcoin right now but $80 billion and a certain point um could be one of the richest people in the world and nobody knows who it is. 5% of Bitcoin is owned by this person.

Um, and it's r, it's crazy that we put our belief system. But what's so interesting is that, you know, on the dollar it says in God we trust and nobody really understands what what the concept of God is and that's what money is sort of based on and nobody understands who Satoshi is and that's what Bitcoin is based on. And in some ways a lot of people believe that the reason that Bitcoin is still around and so all these other coins aren't is because no one knows who Satoshi is.

if we found out it was one of, you know, some of the billionaires or tech moguls that we that some people that aren't doing so well in popular opinion, like people might divest out of it. But since we don't know, he remains a myth and there's more trust. And I think it's fascinating that we could put more trust into something where we that's a black hole or a void u which is kind of what Kumari was than a real person. And so yeah, I mean it's very much in line with belief systems.

I do think a lot of people believe that cryptocurrency is a religion and people talk about it in the same way they talk about Burning Man, in the same way they talk about their guru. Um, so those are a lot of the parallels and I and that's what drew me to it as opposed to the story of an economic story or you know um it's so I've made a film that's um the definitive story on all of it um kind of goes beyond above and beyond all the other docs um and it's and it's been a longterm journey and u and uh and I think it has strangely similar themes as like all the other films that I've made.

When's it coming out? We're hoping it comes out in the fall, but more more on that. Uh there's been some updates into the story. The New York Times pointed their finger at somebody. Um that's quite interesting. And so we're kind of just making sure that the whole thing is um the whole story is kind of revealed in this in this film. U but yeah, excited to get out to the world because it's also probably the longest thing I've ever worked on. I asked you earlier where you netted out on Burning Man, but I I want to ask where you net out on meaning and belief for yourself.

you've built this career as a skeptic uh in the fields of belief but not fully a skeptic because you're not mocking it but you're not actually fully buying into it. So where do you Vicram Gandhi uh derive meaning? Uh I I know I know just from personal experience that you you take part in this group of uh guys that I put together to do meditation to get uh once in once in a while. Uh you you show up and practice with us. Um but what does it for you?

I think when it comes to Eastern religion um and philosophy and tradition and stories, I mean I think you know this also goes for western but like Eastern philosophy. I mean there's just like an incredible amount of useful information, tools, insights that with combined with the way we think, you know, in the western world, you know, is profound. And so I appreciate like the writers of of these things. I look at the people who maybe people think of as gurus or philosophers. I think of them as writers.

you know, they're are like artists expressing things or they have a way of looking at it. Um, you know, I I would say I have that the the sort of Kumari ideals is the sort of like when you meet the Buddha on the road, kill the Buddha. That's very much like a way of looking at things that I see, but I don't think it's necessarily complete. As I get older, I realized like you need to have, you know, sometimes like the meditation happens because there was somebody there to say, "Hey, you want to meet me at 2 p.m.?

You want to go on the walk?" Like it doesn't happen. And and that's and that's actually what's really important. Like people come together because somebody said, "Hey, let's do this." Who had the motivation. And then of course like humans are flawed. So I really just have tried not to throw out the baby with the bath water. I mean there's just such a you know the tools to deal with stress the tools to deal with things that we take medication it's all like in these ancient books it's all very much there the you know the ideas of the Buddha are are profound and and you keep coming back to it even as technology and society grows we get closer to the ideas that are in Buddhism but like I you know I don't really rever the Buddha I think of Sedart Gautama as kind of like all of us in America just like rich kids, people in like this, you know, privileged society who had to slum it a little bit to try to figure out how the world works.

And all the stuff that he says is not really that profound. Like, oh, people are suffering. But the thing that's been created from that is like an amazing wealth of wisdom. And to deny it because you're like, I don't want to, you know, oh, I'm not Buddhist. Like there's so much in there. And there's so much in like kind of every faith. So I'm just trying not to be cynical. Like I think I in when I before I made Kumari I was like I I had gotten really academic about all this stuff.

I studied in college I was like basically you see the mechanism of religion. It's all [ __ ] This is all just human psychology and people praying on each other. And after I made Kumari there was a moment of being like no you can't throw that out. There's actually something great in here. Yeah. It's just the mechanisms human human nature is flawed. It's the same thing that maybe you could say the burning man uh burn like humans humans [ __ ] it all up in every situation and that's uh and I think that's the thing that I try to hold on to is that there's actually real real wisdom here but all the apparatus all the thing around it you don't have to call yourself a Buddhist to meditate you don't you can still believe in all of these ideas and think about it with a different language and context and you're still like you know coming to it so I so I just try to think like I I think I have a lot reverence and uh and I see the importance of doing practices.

I just don't, you know, I'm like I don't, you know, any club that would have me a member, I don't want to join kind of vibe, you know. That's why I'm glad you you show up at my club sometimes. And I just want to remind everybody if you want to watch uh The Man Will Burn, I I think you should watch it. It's available on HBO. The Satoshi uh documentary. Who knows when that's going to be available. Um Kumare, I watched it on TubeBu. Is it available anywhere else?

anywhere else? anywhere else? We are figuring out distribution. The rights are just up, but yeah, I think it's on TubeBu. I'm I know people are watching on YouTube, but we will have a more proper place to watch it. Right now, just I think people should enjoy where it is free for the time being. You do amazing work. Thanks for coming on on the show. Thanks for having me. I was looking forward to this, so I'm happy we did it. Thank you so much to everybody who works so hard to make this show.

10% Happier is produced by Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmir is our executive producer and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme. Also, one last thing before I let you go. Our summer Sunday live series is officially underway every Sunday at 4 Eastern. You can join the legendary meditation teacher Sharon Salsberg for a deep dive into the Buddha's cookbook for happiness, the eight-fold path.

You can catch up on replays if you've already missed a few of the sessions. And you can join the next live meditation and Q&A only on the 10% with Dan Harris app. Go to danharris.com to start your free trial.