How Poetry is Saving Inmates, One Line at a Time: Rahul Athavale's Inspiring Journey.

Guest Rahul Athaveya, a Stanford Law graduate turned tech entrepreneur, shares his profound journey from addiction and incarceration to redemption and purpose. 

• Rahul discusses his experiences in prison, including founding the Prison Poetry Project, which has helped inmates through education and creative expression. 
• The episode features heartfelt poetry readings, including Rahul's piece 'Incarceration' and Katische's own reflections on love and transformation. 
• Rahul's near-death experience during COVID-19 and his subsequent recovery and reintegration into society highlight the power of resilience and hope. 
• Join Katische and Rahul for an inspiring conversation about the human spirit, redemption, and the healing power of poetry.

Chapter Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction to the Infinite Life Podcast
00:39 New Season: Conversations with Katische
01:17 Rahul's Poem: Incarceration
02:48 Introducing Rahul Athaveya
03:55 Rahul's Journey and Poetry
05:38 The Story Behind 'To Have Loved'
08:09 Rahul's Writing Journey in Prison
15:55 The Impact of Poetry in Prison
24:46 Transformative Power of Education and Hope
29:24 Introduction to Prison Life
30:08 Reading 'Oh, Mongolian Beef'
31:55 The Reality of Prison Food
34:08 The Business of Prisons
36:45 A Near-Death Experience
48:47 Life After Prison
50:59 Reflections on Love and Family
53:46 Closing Thoughts and Poetry

Rahul Athavale

Stanford Law graduate turned tech entrepreneur who sold his first company to Google for $10M, only to lose it all - and his law license - through an unexpected journey that led him through the depths of addiction and running an illegal enterprise. After achieving sobriety, he made the courageous decision to turn himself in to the FBI, resulting in federal prison time and the complete seizure of his assets by state and federal authorities.

Now 9 years sober, he's not only rebuilt his wealth in less than 5 years but created a life of purpose and freedom, splitting his time between Mexico and Greece while working just 5 hours a day. As the founder of the Prison Poetry Project and Prison Education Program, he's dedicated to h

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the infinite life with Katische Haberfield. I'd like to take you on a transformative journey, exploring the mysteries of the soul. I hope you enjoy the regression case studies, mediumship interviews, and fascinating discussions that I've had with guests I hope that these answer some of the questions that you might have about life on this planet, on others, and in other dimensions. Thank you for joining me and please don't forget to like and subscribe and Most importantly, share with your friends. Namaste. Welcome back to the Infinite Life with Katische Haberfield Podcast, and I'm your host Katische Haberfield. Now we've just finished the last season, which was the happiest moments of my soul season. And that was our longest season ever. We did over 20 episodes on understanding the soul's happiest moments. And now this season, I'm going to call it conversations with Katische because I've decided to handpick a number of, interesting, fascinating people so that I can explore different ways that we can understand the journey of being a human. And so you all know that I have published my first poem recently. And I'm going to start with a poem, and it's not my poem, it's actually our guest's poem today Rahul, and this is called Incarceration. So I'm going to read it and I hope I don't butcher it, Rahul, but I found this on his Medium blog on the Medium website, and so I'll give it a go. So, Incarceration should never be mastered. Life, beautiful, vibrant, loving life, is not the darkest. Not the darkness this place beats you down to become. To live at ease here would be disaster. Lose a bit of dignity here with a daily onslaught of fucks, niggas, bitches, you know, means and hoes. To be at ease here would be a disaster. Practice losing your mind, changing your values, selling your soul for the ease and comfort of belonging. To be at ease here would be a disaster. Incarceration should never be mastered. I have lost my freedom. I have not lost my language. I was once social and now I don't belong. I spoke in proper English when I came to this place, a place that can't even spell the word E N G L I S H. I still speak my beloved English. I happily say I will never be at ease here. To be at ease here would be a disaster. Incarceration should never be mastered. Sorry, now I'll introduce my guest, Rahul Athaveya. Rahul is a Stanford Law graduate turned tech entrepreneur who sold his first company to Google for 10 million, only to lose it all and his law license through an unexpected journey that led him through the depths of addiction and running an illegal enterprise. After achieving sobriety, He made the courageous decision to turn himself into the FBI, resulting in federal prison time and the complete seizure of his assets by state and federal authorities. Now nine years sober, he's not only rebuilt his wealth in less than five years, but created a life of purpose and freedom, splitting his time between Mexico and Greece while working just five hours a day. As the founder of the Prison Poetry Project and Prison Education Program, he's dedicated to helping inmates find sobriety through education, turning his own experience into a catalyst for change. His story is testament to the power of transformation, proving that our darkest chapters can become our greatest source of impact. Welcome to the show, Rahul. Thank you. So incredible poems and I've only just honestly discovered them today and downloaded a whole bunch of them because they really resonated with me. What I wanted to do with you was to take you back to the beginning because I asked you on here to talk about poetry and I couldn't find you anywhere writing poems. I couldn't find any published poems anywhere. I couldn't find any social media profiles about these poetry sessions and how it works. So I thought, I'll just do another bit of a search and I found the Medium site and I thought they were just going to be blogs and then, oh, here's all of the poems and holy smokes, there's heaps here that I like and, oh, that one makes me feel a bit gross and that one makes me feel a bit sad and that one makes me feel curious. So before we get into the, actual prison poetry project that I wanted to talk to you about I think this poem here is If I understand your the way that you wrote on the medium side, takes us back to just before you went to jail. And it's the poem that's called To Have Loved. Is that, is that the right timing? Yeah. That's right. Yeah, so, what I wanted to, I'll read it because we've just had Valentine's Day, and this will go live pretty soon, and it spoke to me because, I, I'm a divorced woman and I've been by myself for a long time now, and I want to cap off this episode with a poem at the end too, because it made me think about a lot of things that I've been re evaluating in terms of my own journey with love. And, anyway, I'll just read this poem as well, and then I'll let you take over the discussion. But because it's a poetry episode, I really wanted to get people to hear the poetry so they can go and explore it and then understand how this links in with your journey. Because we have covered all sorts of lifetimes on this podcast and all sorts of things that people can do. So I just wanted to let the poetry speak so they could get an understanding of who, who you are before we hear your story. So the poem is called To Have Loved And. They say it's better to have loved and you know how it goes. I say it's probably not, Who the hell are they anyways? She was kind. I was cruel. She epitomized loyalty. I, it's antithesis. She fought for 10 years. 2002 to 2012. For what? For us. For me. I ran around for 10 years. 2002 to 2012. For what? For me, myself and I. She broke. I left. She cried. She is kind, he is kind. She epitomises loyalty, he its twin. She is loved for five years, 2014 to 2019. As has he. She sings. He loves. She smiles. I was kind, she was cruel. I was loyal and steadfast, she was Goldilocks. I fought for 15 months 2016 to 2018 for what? For us, for her. I was always looking for what was right. She for what was wrong. Valentine's Day, February 14, 2018. Her psychic told her to leave. She did. I cried. She laughed. I hurt. She felt no pain. I broke. She looked down in disgust at my imperfection. I hurt. I cried. I grew. As I hurt, I felt blessed that I grow, you. I got to do. I came to see her as my greatest teacher. Maybe they were right, for in loving and losing, I lost one self but found another. I found self love in the darkness, pain in the light, and understanding in it all. Murphy's law figured it all out, and then you die. Wish the psychic would have told us about Armageddon. So, I know that that poem was actually written in prison, but it's about before prison. So, tell us the story of that poem, and what that poem meant to you and why it was one of the poems that you wrote in prison. In your own words, however, you want to tell the story. Yeah, that's, that's, that's a good question. So this was, this was a person, this was a story about a person who I met in AA. The way I got sober was I used alcoholics anonymous. I now come to realize there's much better ways. But that's the way I use. And I still have a lot of friends in that fellowship. Anyway, so I met this person there and we dated. It was this relationship that was. In many ways, it was, it was the healthiest or the best relationship I've ever been in. And I thought I was, I was certainly going to marry this person. We had met each other's parents. We had been on vacations together. We had gone and met my parents in Florida, her parents in Virginia. And then Valentine, one Valentine's Day and she loves psychic. She loves seeing psychics and meetings. It was her thing. Right? And I never questioned it. I thought, all right, you know, to each their own and it was fun. So she, I could still remember this. Like, I said, well, have fun. And they went up to Marin from San Jose. And, and she was happy and I can't wait to see you and we were going the next day on a trip. For Valentine's Day, and she came back with this very downtrodden face and she said, I. I think we have to break up. What? What do you mean you don't have to break up? Well, I, you know, I told the psychic knew about you. What do you mean she knew about me? Well, I told her that you were going through this criminal trial and what she told me was that your soul, your very being and soul is unredeemable. And for that reason, I have to break up with you. I was like, what? And, and it was a very interesting experience, right? Because the next day we were going on this trip and then we were coming back and we were going to help her move into a new place. And I was, I was kind of like, is this a joke, right? Is this, you know this can't be really happening. And I said, oh, that's good. I mean, my soul is not irredeemable. It was an interesting thought. I said, let's do it. We'll call her grace. I said, listen, grace, you met this person 1 time. You had a 2 hour session with her. Yeah, I just think we need to end it. I really think we need to end it. And then what proceeded to happen was like, I was very, you know, the, the AA programs, the 12 step programs. For those people who are really involved, they have a sponsor or mentor. I look back and I think I made the mistake of letting my mentor be like my therapist. And, and I don't think that's how, I don't think it was a healthy decision, but it was a decision that I went to him and I said, what do I do? And he said, you can never talk to her again. And and so I, I said, okay. And then he did it in small pieces, but 90 day, no contact, nothing. And so I did 90 days and I did. And then what happened was. It, it, I think it created a lot of trauma for both of us, right?'cause he made this somewhat rash, rash decision. I then make a rash decision and we just separated and really, we haven't said more than 20 words to each other since that day. Mm-hmm . And it was the most ish, it was the most. painful thing I have ever experienced in my life. I have been, I've been sexually abused by my uncle. I've gone through the pain of remembering and then forget it, not forgiving. That was painful, but this was more painful than that. I mean, this singular incident was the most painful thing I have ever experienced. It took at least four years, five years to get over it. And why did I write about it in jail? I wrote a lot about that relationship in jail. And it was the way I would write about it is it would, it would release a lot of that anger and confusion and rage and sadness and profound feelings of worthlessness that came from this, this experience. But yeah, that was the that was why I wrote that. But the answer to your question, that was a long answer to it. So prior to that, had you ever written poems before? I had, yeah. So I love to write. And so while I was in custody, I wrote, I wrote 10 books and three screenplays. That's amazing. And I wrote thousands of poems. In fact, the few that you saw, now that HGPT can actually convert these, because they were all handwritten, right? In fact, I'll show you. I have an example of what they look like. They're all written in these. They're handwritten, right? So they're just literally, this is actually all poetry worn. And they're handwritten like this. Okay, well, I used to do all the writing was this is this is a pencil. This is the size of the pencil that they gave us, right? And then this is what was created. It's like jail art. But it's a pencil holder, and that way I can write. Okay, yeah. So for those who are just listening rather than watching, it's like one of those little mini pencils that you used to get at Pizza Hut in the 80s, or when you go play Keno or something like that at a, at a bar or something like that, that they're tiny, like as long as you're pointer finger. Yeah. So not very conducive to writing poetry. Right. And so I wrote, I think I estimated that I wrote over four and a half million words in the time that I was in 18 months in prison. But your question is, yeah, I always wrote poetry and I would use poetry, I would use it as a release many times as a release of energies. I used to think it had to rhyme. I learned. It doesn't, and you'll see most of my poems don't rhyme. That one, some of those did, but I think I really dove into it in prison. Yeah, it's very freeing to see somebody who doesn't rhyme in their poetry, because that was the first thing when I was like, I mean I used to write rhyming poems as a, you know, small child, but, I never study. Sorry, I did study poetry at school and you know there's all these rules and formulas and it feels very, you know, constricting and it doesn't feel very flowing and it feels like, oh well I'm not Japanese so I don't know how to write a haiku and I don't really want to study it. I just want to express myself so, you know, I know for myself when I was first trying to write some poems I was like, how do I let this come through me without worrying about the rhyme? And the answer is If it needs to come through you as an emotional release, you just write what comes out, right? Yeah, so I, I appreciate seeing different, ways that poems that aren't picture perfect in terms of, you know, syntax and rhyming and structure and, you know, being beautiful. So yeah, just to anyone who's listening, poetry doesn't have to conform to what you see. And read at school or see in, in bookshops, it has to come from the heart or the soul. You know, I think something you said, which is, which is very true and very interesting is what it doesn't have to be. There were, there were guys in prison who They truly wrote some of the most beautiful poems I've ever heard. But if you were looking at their grammar and you were looking at their syntax, you would have said this is garbage. I mean, they spelled things phonetically because they couldn't write. They couldn't read very well. And so, but their message, oh my, it was profound. That is poetry. Your syntax does not matter. Your grammar doesn't matter. Do you need to spell words phonetically? Fine. But you, let that message come out. And I guess if we were going to be stereotypical and judgmental then you would not think of people in prison writing poems, would you? No, you wouldn't. And how did, how did it come about, these poetry sessions for, for people in, in prison? Like, you know, Is there somebody that came in specifically to facilitate that? You know, is it something from people, you know, you hear stories of, you know, say the Buddhists or the Catholics coming into prisons to try and redeem and save the souls of the people in prison. Was it that kind of a thing? Like, how did it even start? The way it started was I would sit every day and You know, I'll just tell the story. The full story. So I sat every day. I remember when I walked into that place and I called my sponsor and I said, how do I survive? Because the way jail is or prison is, is it's very racist and it's broken up by race, right? There's no classism in Brazil because everyone's the same class, but you have everyone who's black and one corner whites, Latinos, and then there's, there's no Indians, right? There's just no Indians and males. And so normally Indians get bullied and abused the most. And so my mentor, I remember saying, and saying, listen, trust God and be of service. So I, I've always been. I consider myself a Buddhist. If you have to pick a religion, Buddhism would be the case I would fit. So I said, well, trust God to be in service means meditate, connect to consciousness, and I can do that. And so I started by reading books in this one area in the prison where any race could sit. It was like a safe zone because there were zones where if you were black or brown and you went in, you were going to likely be stabbed. if you were white, you went into a black area, you were definitely getting stabbed. There's this one area that you could sit in. And so I sat there every day reading, AA books. And then one guy showed up, and another guy showed up, and before we knew it, it was big. And then the meeting would be over, and I would pull out my notepad, and I'd start writing. What do you write every day? You write for hours a day. I said, well, I write poetry first, and that's how it started. One guy said, oh, you can teach me how to write poetry. My girlfriend and so I started this impromptu poetry class and it grew and it shrunk and it grew and it shrunk and then it grew and shrunk to four. The four guys who were just there every day and they wrote poetry. They, they weren't interested in the AA stuff and they weren't interested in the, in the getting educated. They were interested in poetry. And then I, so I said, okay, so, so then we did a couple of things. We reached out to a friend who is a poetry professor and said, Hey, we're going to do this. You have clearance to come into the jail that you've gotten. Can you start sending us, you know, how would you do this? And she said, well, I'm going to send you weekly, homework assignment. And she sent us weekly homework, which were a variety of poems. And then we did all those and we mailed the poems out to her. And she gave us positive feedback. And she developed a group of people outside of jail through her writing class or church, whatever. Who would give us positive feedback and then send it back in and what ended up happening very interestingly was. these guys who are career criminals, who would histories of crime, and they would, they would make trouble in the jail also, right? They weren't good citizens in jail because they were for the 1st, time in their life, started to get positive feedback and words of compliment on not just on what I would consider bullshit. But on creative work. He started to act differently. They started to be different and they started to not do criminal things in jail. Right? One of the biggest criminal things that people do in jail is they, they make drugs. You can make drugs in jail and they make alcohol a lot of it. Right. And so and then imagine everyone in this. And find facility where there's no law enforcement. If you fight or get stabbed in a jail in the United States, I don't know what it's like in Australia and I don't know what it's like anywhere else. But in California, if someone stabs you in a jail in California, it'll take at least 15 minutes for the police to come and they see it happen. During COVID, I watched in my unit people die. I would almost die. The only reason I'm not dead today is because I have a friend who's a federal prosecutor and I called him and said, I'm going to die if I don't get to a hospital today. And when I got to the hospital, my body was septic. I was in a coma when they put me in the ambulance with this guy, my friend, I slipped into a coma. I had a beautiful, profound near death experience where I met God. I'm kind of glad, right? But I would have been one of those cases. So going back these guys, so then what we did was this professor reached out to these two women, the owners the, the people that wrote this book called the Daily Poet and they, the Daily Poet sent this book in. This is my copy from Chris. And we started writing poems then every single day using the Daily Poet. I would highly recommend the book, The Daily Poet. If you've never written poetry, you're like, well, where do I start? this book is, and I still use it today. I write a poem every day out of this book. Oh, wow. Okay. All right. And so my brain has gone on a million different ways because I'm like that just the lack of compassion in is astounding that they would take 15 minutes and rather somebody bleed out and die. just the way I think in many ways. I don't think the cops in jail are bad. I really don't. I think they have been, you know, desensitized. That's how I see the guards. they're not bad people, but once they walk into this facility, they're desensitized. They see everyone the same as these people that deserve to be in this box. And I would say in their real lives, they're not, if they saw somebody hurting, they would, they would be the first to be of service. They walk into this place and they lose their sensitivity. And I don't think that's. I think that's human. I think it takes a higher person to not be that. but the higher people, people who are Buddhist monks, will become prison guards. So you know, I don't, I don't consider them bad people. yeah. wouldn't it be a wonderful world if we could, help change conditions and be more compassionate and see everybody who is in there as somebody who has been there because of circumstances, but also because of a lack of love given to them, I guess. Yeah, no, I absolutely and so you say that you saw some profound changes in the people that were rising with you. Yeah, so one of the things that I started seeing was he's many of these guys Who were writing in this in this group and it grew in the ground to six six six guys is until that point They have no real interest in education. They had no interest. Some of them didn't even have their high school degrees. Some of them could barely read. All of them, every single one of them said, we want to get better at reading. So they started, and so I said, well, I had a lot of friends outside of, You know who were supporting me, sending in books and writing to me every day. And so I started to request books that were elementary reading and writing books. And so I set up a class teaching these guys. How to read and how to write and they were always looking at how this was going to better their poetry. Right? So The poetry was a book on getting education. And then I mentioned that the University of California, Berkeley, and all the UCs have a, they'll like, they have a bars. There's some catchy name for it, but it's how prisoners. Former prisoners get into the UC system, right? One of the best universities in the world or in the country in the U. S. They all of them simply what we can go to college. just got to get you guys in right? The way we get you in as we take these tests It was like I said, there's gold underneath your beds. And I mean, everybody was really. And so 4 of those guys now are 2 of them are done with prison. And they're still sober. They're, they're reading, they're writing, they've gotten their GEDs, they're taking advanced education classes, and one of those two have been accepted to uc, San Diego. Wow. What's amazing is before jail, so really less than 10 years ago, these were adult men who couldn't read and write, and now they're going to one of the best ucs in the country. Why? Because when you get people, what I learned is when you give people hope, but actionable hope, not just one day, it's going to get better. That's not hope. Actionable hope that listen, just take these steps. And then you watch them light up and then you realize what lit them up and then just feed that fire a little bit more and eventually the fire will burn on its own and they will find a way. Yeah. Wow. And what's also interesting there is that you connected that the writing of poetry with a pathway. Something that was unimaginable to them before they started writing poetry, But in their mind, they would probably go, but that's a path of crime and drugs and alcohol, right? Whereas this at least said, you can do education, but in a field that is meaningful to you. And what do you get out of it? Well, you get this thing that, you know, people who are educated value, that's called a degree, but what's happening to you is you are alchemizing your experiences in life and you are releasing emotions and finding your own inner wisdom. that's absolutely right. Yeah, profound. And also I guess, you know, just reading some of the poems that you've written from in, Jail, like, I clicked on one, and you're gonna laugh at this, but it's the one that's called Oh, Mongolian Beef. And so I was like, Oh, maybe this is from, you know, I know that he's got married again, and maybe this is a nice poem about, you know, taking his, his family to the Chinese restaurant and having Mongolian beef. Cause you know, I grew up in the eighties and whenever we went to Chinese restaurants, we had chicken with cashews and we had fried rice, some plain rice, and we had Mongolian beef. And that's not what the poem's about. So, if you don't mind, I'm going to read that because this. It's so much of an education for me to learn about, I mean, I've been to America and I did the Alcatraz tour, right? But this is like, this is a level of insight to what it's like to survive in prison. And what is really astounding to me is that you've taken this just unsanitary, mentally detrimental situation and decided to teach people and help them. Whereas your, you know, this poem, Oh Mongolian Beef, shows you like what you're dealing with in your everyday life. And what I can see is this, this is ability to transcend the reality that you're in because, you know, some people would just give up in despair. Oh, Mongolian Beef, how I have come to be repulsed even by your name. I see your tools of preparation and feel a mix of disgust. I am appalled. A red spork used for all things related or unrelated to food. A plastic bag in which popcorn arrives, designed for only that use, yet your preparers use it over and over again, washing it and using it over and over again. A tub meant for your feet and used to mix a latrine, used for urine as a cup. We did not have any tools of the trade. We did not know any ways of the world. Your ingredients contain no beef or pork in the traditional sense. Your, you contain pork rinds of a low grade, two day old bologna, mayonnaise, mustard, jellies, ketchup. Sitting in a popcorn bag on top of a water heated mix with four day old rice. You're not a Mongolian and you're not beef and you're not all that good, but in here with work taste buds, you're a true delight in all that's disgusting. All I know is how I am now, acclimated to you. I know my mind's eye, how gross you really are. Yet my taste buds delight in your disgust. I have acclimated in ways I never thought I would to the vile nature of this place in the space between my teeth. This is a little known fact, but do you know what the budget is? You have to find the budget for the Santa Clara County or for state prisons. Guess what the budget is per inmate per day. Oh look, given that, I'm thinking like a dollar. It's 84 cents per inmate per day. 84 per inmate Yeah. So that and the Mongolian beef, right, that was, that was like the treat. That was for people who had some, some money and because you don't have money in jail, people buy you these. These boxes of really, really low grade food, basically like ramen, packs of ramen noodles or pork rinds or tuna that if you opened it, but I don't even, I don't like fish, but you would open it and your stomach and this is what you buy, you pay for, right? the stuff they fed you was horrifically bad. It just seems so short sighted, doesn't it? Because we know that our gut health is linked to our mental health, right? And so you're trying to, You're just demoralizing people who are already demoralized. You're giving them poorer gut health, which means that they're going to have poorer mental health. And, you know, food, sure, it's, we have to, eat to live, but you're also making them feel disgusted and degraded even with the food that they have. So, no wonder they don't get out of the cycle, right? No wonder they don't feel energized to help anybody. No wonder they're manufacturing drugs. What's also missing in that is this realization or understanding that prisons are big business. Prisons are big, big business for states because states get huge federal subsidies for prisons. Okay. And prisons are becoming privatized. So the prison I was in was partially privatized. And so when you privatize prisons and, and then those private prisons are pouring money back into the system through lobbyists, they go out of their way to, they want recidivism rates to be high. They want people to keep coming back into these facilities. It was like an act of God and war for me to get a GED program and a program in that people could get educated. It's, it's incredible to think, but this is the process. There was no education program. There was nothing of the sort. I remember talking to a guard. He said, good luck. This is a private prison. They don't want you people. They don't want people educated. And so I called a federal prosecutor who was, I happened to call a federal prosecutor and I said, I need your help. And he worked 20 buttons and he got this unit in and it's still in there. That's the beauty. I said, I was like, when I leave, it needs to stay. And the units, all that stayed, but. The system itself, the way it's built in the U. S. is designed to keep people in prisons. It would be interesting to be able to, as we were talking about, prior to starting the podcast, to speak to your higher self. Because it smacks to me, like, this was a purposeful decision by your soul to do something about. I think so. You know, it's funny. I look back. I really say to people when they ask, I say, I got to go to prison. I got to go and I got to be of service. And people say, what do you mean you got? You didn't really have a choice. I said, well, I had a lot of choices. I could have left the country. I have a lot of contacts overseas. I was. laundering money for very dangerous people who would have been more than happy to say, yeah, just leave the US and continue to do this work. No, I chose to go. I had a choice and I chose to go and face the consequences. And I really think it was my higher power, my higher self consciousness. Saying this is the work you need to do, and I got to do it, and listen, I died in prison, I died and I met God, and it was a profound experience, and none of that would have happened if I hadn't gone to prison. Yeah, do you want to talk about that? Yeah, I would love to. So, so it's COVID, right? COVID, I don't know when COVID hit Australia, but, It was February February March timeframe. This particular day was March 1st. I remember it clearly because a good friend of mine, there was one other very educated guy in that unit, and him and I became very good friends. He was in, he helped me found the Prison Poetry Project. Him and I still stay in touch, but he was leaving that day. And I remember that day because it was this very sad moment, right? He was the only guy that I could have conversations with in real English, right? Without, and so, and I was getting sick and I was getting second, second, second. And I remember leaving him leaving and saying, Hey, Rahul, take care of yourself. and then March 3rd, I woke up and I was now vomiting and coughing up blood. And I go to the medic, the doctor in there, and he said, yeah, there's nothing I can do to help. I had a fever of 106 degrees Fahrenheit and my blood oxygen level was at 81%. It's normally supposed to be around 95 to 99. And, and he said, I can't help you. And I was in the wheelchair. I couldn't walk. And, and so as I'm leaving, the guard looks at me and he says, listen, I'm not allowed to do this. You're going to die in here and I know it. Here's my phone. Call somebody that can get you out of here. And so I used his cell phone and I thank God I had all these numbers memorized Peter was the name of the attorney and federal prosecutor. And I said, Peter, I'm on a private cell phone. They handed it to me by a car. I'm going to die today. I already know it that today's my day if I don't get to a hospital. And he said, I'll be there. And so he was in San Francisco. The jail was at least 40 minutes away. Somehow he made it in 30 minutes. I don't know how, but he made it in 30 minutes. He walks in and he said, You will be on an ambulance. And the head supervisor said he's not going anywhere. And he said, Okay, listen, I'm filing a federal lawsuit right now. Against you against this prison and against this county, and he got on the phone and he called somebody at the local news station. And this kind of heard, he said, okay, we'll get him in an ambulance right now. And they called an ambulance and the ambulance came So, Peter's in the ambulance with me, and he's holding my hand. The last thing I remember, you know, when they put someone in an ambulance, they put you with your head is Back first, right? They put me on the gurney, and then they, they slide the, the gurney into the ambulance. And so I can see as this ambulance is moving, I can see the jail and as the gates of the jail closed, right? I die. And I think my body knew it could finally stop fighting And so My heart stopped. I stopped breathing. and I woke up in this massive area. It was a room. It was definitely an indoor area, but it was massive. And as I looked around, It was just, it was black and I felt no fear. I felt, I didn't feel anything for a split second. I felt nothing, but I felt no fear. Then I could feel this profound energy behind me, like standing behind me, something standing behind me and guiding me in a direction. And the energy was love. It was generosity, it was kindness, it was beauty, it was everything that you could imagine. Imagine you had a mom that really loved you. My mom loves me, loves you more than, you know, your mom loves you. That kind of love. It's guiding us to this Right, and I'm trying to move and I go to move one direction. And what I feel in that direction is not as much love as I felt where I was, and no one like drug me, but I just felt less love here than here. So I wanted to be as I'm as I'm walking. I'm getting more miles. I'm described and I get to this place. And it's this massive ball of light. I mean, it was massive. It was, it looked like it was three empire story buildings. I mean, it just, it's massive. But that Dubai tower, the huge Dubai tower, imagine that. And then a hundred of them across. Right? What it reminds me of is what in the Mahabharata when, when, when Arjun asks, well, who are you to Krishna, to Lord Krishna and Krishna opens his mouth and Arjun is on the ground shaking, right? Like realizing that Krishna is the universe. He is all that is. That's where I, I spelt that, but it wasn't fear. It was this sense of profound love, looking at all that is and realizing that I am part of all that is, and everything around me is part of all that is right. And then this voice comes and it wasn't my voice and it was the voice of consciousness. And it says, you have a choice. You can come home or go back. Now I knew go back and then go back to my body. And so I said, and I cursed, I actually cursed at God. I said, why the heck would I go back when I'm here and surrounded by profound love? Why would I go back? This voice said, you have a lot of work to do, and you're going to do the work in this lifetime or the next, but you're going to do the work. And then I cursed at God again. And I said, well. No, let's get this shit over with right now. I don't want to, I don't want to do this again. Let's just, I've been through enough. I don't want to do any more. Let's get this shit over with. And in that moment, I am being pulled back to my body. Now, listen, if I would have known that I was making a decision. And telling God that I wanted to go back. I would have thought about it a little bit longer. I might not be here today. I might be like, I'm not going to remember it. My soul's going to remember, but I'm not going to remember. I could have used that logic, but I didn't have time. So, I get sucked back to my body. And I remember going through this vortex. I mean, that's the best way to describe it. Some type of vortex. And I woke up. Now, I don't remember this. All the people around me remember this, apparently I woke up, I, I sat straight up screaming, I made a mistake. Send me back. I made a mistake. Send me. Right? And and the, and I grew up around doctors, right? I blood doctors in my family, this doctor who's there, I see tears, right? And I'm like, what's, what's wrong? He's like, you were dead. You had no brain activity. Normally, when an inmate goes into prison, into a hospital, there's no brain activity. They pull the plug. Well, the only reason they didn't pull the plug was Peter said, no, you're not, you're giving him 5 days. You're going to pay for it. You're giving him 5 days. I was in a coma for three days. All of that that I experienced was three days. It felt like four minutes. Yeah, I was in a coma for three days. I had no brain activity. I was on life support. machines were keeping me alive. and then I woke up and everything came back. I mean, all my brain activity came back. The doctor said, listen, your body is septic. You were, and until that point, they couldn't break the fever. until that point. So for three days in a coma, I had 106 fever, even though I was technically dead. Right? So none of it made sense to anybody. And then I came back when I after I woke up and then laid back down within two hours, the fever broke. They said I was, I was septic. I had almost no white blood cells left and that I would be in the hospital for at least two months. I was able to be released after three days. My body just, I had lost in three days, I had lost something like 35 pounds of weight and I hadn't, I had just. Several days after that, everything came back. My weight came back, my health came back, it all came back. I was so excited to be in the hospital. I got to eat hospital food. That's how bad jail food is when you're excited to go to the hospital. Wow. That's amazing. It's very interesting for me to hear that you said that you could feel one way was Basically love and the other side was fear because one of my weird special talents is I can communicate with and cross over ghosts and people who die sometimes go towards the fear. And I'm able to take them out of that realm and take them to the light, but I've never heard anybody say that they could feel both and be drawn towards the light. Usually people just say. Oh, I can see the Archangel or Jesus or my mother or whatever, and I just go, I'm catapulted towards the light. But you're the first person that I've ever heard say, oh, I could feel, oh yeah, you could. I could feel it. It was clear, and it wasn't necessarily clear. It was just less love. Right. Less love. Okay. it wasn't. There was no fear there. It was just less of it. And I think what it was is I was present to what was there and then moving in another direction, less of what was there I felt. And I said, no, I don't want that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's my mind interpreting it. Because obviously this work that I do, there's a lot of fear in there. So I just assumed that it was fear, but it's less love. So that's sort of very interesting. Interesting distinction. So then you come back after the NDE, you spend time in hospital, you recover, you get chucked back to jail, you start the prison, you do, you help. You said that you're released because of good behavior. And is that because of the work that you did with this? No, so I don't think so. they don't really tell you, right? And It very well could be that they don't tell you why you're released early. They just say, hey, you know, 1 day they come to you and they say next week is going to be released. so that's what happened one day. And by this point, there was a GED teacher. He is the American equivalent of a high school degree adults have. So, 1 day, the teacher who was a member of the staff, the prison came to me and said, hey, Rob, we're going to cut you loose a little early. And I said, okay, well, why is it? Because I died and now it has nothing to do with that. I don't know why, but. You know, be grateful for it. And so, after I got back from the hospital during COVID, they said. They're like, you know, you can, you can go home early if you want but then you're going to have to come back here. I was like, you are must be high. Let's I'm here. Let's just get this. What do you there's no, there's no way. I'm going to be free and then coming back. Are you nuts? And so I think that had something to do with it also. That most people just say, no, I'll just I'll go and I'll come back. I wasn't going to go and come back. Yeah. Yeah. And, what I wanted to end with is obviously, because there's a good. We could probably cover the next bit in a whole podcast on itself. But if we fast forward to now, you're married, right? Yeah, so, I'm married. My wife had two kids who I've adopted. I call them my kids. They've never heard the term step. It'll never come out of my mouth. And I find myself to be very, very lucky. I feel very grateful that the universe has very kindly and generously blessed me with these three beautiful people who are my wife and kids. And the way I found my wife, very interesting, I met my wife, and I remember like, I never had those in love feelings and I remember, and I have a mentor now who has helped me a lot in business and in life and, I've had him now for many years. And so, I remember saying, Michael, I really like her, but I don't have that, like, in love feeling He's like, great. You should definitely marry. I said, what? Yeah, that's, that means it's healthy. You're an addict. And when you're, when you're in love, it means you're addicted to someone or something. And that is the epitome of unhealthy. Look at your ex girlfriend. You were madly in love with her and she was completely crazy. So you are not in love. You don't have the dopamine and addictive feelings. He's the one. And so I was like, that's terrible logic. I don't think he's right. So I'm going to keep dating her. And sure enough, what I found was that she was the one, right? And that in love feeling was, my parents had an arranged marriage. Now, I don't advise that for most people. Some are really good. Others suck. Theirs sucked. But something I remember my dad saying is, I grew to love your mom, and now I love her in a profound way. And I said, I experienced that every day. I've grown to be deeply and profoundly in love with her, my wife without having all those in love, dopamine serotonin drugs basically being pumped into my head. And so I have a much healthier relationship than I've ever had. I have a much better sex life than I've ever had. It's sane. It's kind, it's loving. It's playful. I didn't have that before. And so I find myself to be very thankful. And I have two kids. who love me. That's, I mean, I love them, but they actually like me and they love me and they've accepted me as their dad and it's, I'm very lucky. Yeah. Wow. And well, I hope you get to actually publish all of these poems because I think you could like just write a book as it is just about transitioning and helping people to understand the difference between addictive love and soul growing. Enjoyable, stable love. I mean, that there's an advice there that, you know, the world needs and maybe we can do a whole, another chat on that because the final two things that I had here and I want to respect your time today was the two poems about love and, The fact that you, you had a whole list of things that you did and didn't want and love is also about understanding where these lists are false and where you're willing to compromise. Love Will Stand. We are species of love and hate. We are known to cut off our nose to spite our face, yet we will bandage the nose of a total stranger so we can help him. We are known to see one's colour and torment or kill, yet we are known to fight for the equality of all. We are known to be so selfish we don't care about anyone else. Yet we are known to protect those we know nothing about. We are known to be ruthless and vicious in the ugliest of ways, yet we are known to be open hearted and generous in the most beautiful of ways. The world is yin and a yang. In the end, the very end, love is all there is, and it will always stand. So thank you for coming on the podcast today and I will put in the show notes information about how people can contact you if they want to know more about the Poetry in Prison project. Yes. And yes, please, take advantage of all the new technology to get all that poetry and those playwright, those plays and everything written because that's what the world needs to see. Thank you. Thank you. Mm.