Sahasrajit Ramesh: The Juice of Life

What if surrender isn’t giving up, but waking up to what’s actually happening?

In this episode, I speak with Sahasrajit Ramesh, co-creator of Satya Speaks, about what it means to live with more totality. His path runs from engineering at Oxford and MIT into deep spiritual work in Rishikesh, and he talks openly about stepping away from expectation and finding his way back to a more natural, creative way of living.

As we talk, a few themes keep showing up. There’s the subtle inner voice most of us ignore, and how easily modern routines can drain our sense of aliveness. We explore the link between creativity, intuition, and presence, and what “progress” starts to look like when you stop gripping the reins so tightly. And we come back again and again to this idea that life isn’t a series of separate events, but one continuous unfolding that we can either resist or move with.

It’s not a conversation about fixing anything. It’s more an invitation to stop managing life and start participating in it — to feel, as Sahasrajit puts it, “the juice of life,” in a way that’s simple, honest, and available right now.

Transcript

Speaker: 0:02

Hello and welcome to the Whole Leader podcast. I'm your host Richard Britton and my guest today is Sahasrajit Ramesh. I'm do that again. My guest today is Sahasrajit Ramesh. And in this conversation, we'll be uncovering his hidden wisdom and we'll be discussing the essence of, sorry, I'm just, I'm gonna start again. No worries, Okay. Hello and welcome to the Whole Leader podcast. I am Richard Britton and I'm your host and I'm joined today by Sahasrajit Ramesh and in this conversation we'll be uncovering his hidden wisdom and his essence. Welcome Sahasrajit. It's a pleasure to be here Richard, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be talking to you today. And you are the co-creator of Satya Speaks. And from my research, what that is for the listeners who do not know is Satya Speaks is an online movement and platform dedicated to nurturing human potential and fostering a deeper connection with life guided by Satya G's profound understanding of the human experience. He offers various resources and insights aimed at inspiring individuals to live with totality. The YouTube channel says that Satya Speaks serves as a central hub for disseminating Satya G's teachings and insights. And as of the time of recording, there were nearly 100,000 subscribers on this platform and more than 330 videos. The content focuses on topics such as sustaining focus, unleashing creativity and harnessing natural energy and the dynamics of that for personal growth and success. The official website satyaspeaks.net offers a range of resources designed to support individuals on their journey towards self-discovery and fulfillment, including an online community, practices, writings, and the website encapsulates the mission of Satya Speaks, which is to blossom human genius in the service of life, encouraging individuals to taste the juice of life and live authentically. So thank you for joining us and I'm really looking forward to talking to you more about this project and the movement that you co-created. I thought really an interesting place to start because you have such an interesting profile and background would be you're clearly doing something really creative and that's not always been the path that you have been on in terms of... your professional background until a couple of years ago was one of engineering and some high accolades for that, which I'm sure we'll talk about. So I'd really love to hear what sort of initially sort of inspired your creativity, maybe when you were a child, maybe we'd go back to your early days and hear what it was that engaged you when you were young. Sure. I think what engaged me when I was younger is the same thing that engages everybody in one form or the other, which is really feeling that juice and that live electric current of engaging with things. And I think, you know, we're all designed a bit differently. And so the activities that allow that flow to emerge most naturally for different people are different. For me, it was always communicating with people, creating stories or artworks. When I was a kid, I never realized it until I looked back recently, but I was always working on something, like a drawing or some kind of story or something like that. really sort of, it just kind of came very naturally and I really enjoyed the idea, especially of getting together with some friends and making like a comic book or something like that. I think those are probably the moments where I felt very alive and acting as well was like a big hobby or passion for me as I got a bit older. And I think now if I was to look back, I think I just really enjoyed sort of like a really sincere or raw emotion in some way. In some way that kind of could convey that to somebody else. I felt that was... I know, it just felt like a very beautiful and alive thing to do. So I think that's probably where it started, yeah. And those are such. those are such fundamental human traits to be able to connect with one another, to kind of express our creativity. And I think as children, we're all born with those facets. And I guess what interests me as I'm having this conversation around the whole leader is looking at, there's this clearly this large, creative part to you and then what what happened as you started to grow up as you as you also began to focus let's say on the some different pursuits you were involved in more quantitative activities let's say you became an engineer so I'd love to hear hear that that journey and where it took it to you because you you know you reach some So some heady heights you got a first from Oxford University and your engineering masters, know, you went on to you went on to do machine learning at MIT. So maybe you could tell me about that about that process of developing into clearly a world class engineer from from from your beginnings. I think that what really started to shape or influence my life increasingly into my teens was the opinions of other people. I think as it happens with all of us, we're encountered with that along our journeys, grappling with how much we want to get validation or approval from others versus follow our own instincts. And oftentimes those things are not aligned. And I think back then I... See, I think this creative instinct or the inner compass that sort of guides you towards the natural design of your system is very often at odds with the expectations that society teaches you around what it means to live a successful life. And the tricky part of that is the inner voice or the inner compass, it's called many names, it's quite a subtle and quiet thing. and it's very easy to sort of trample over it or ignore it in the name of something that seems far more tangible and real, which is the expectations from society. Because that I think connects to our sense or our fear around our survival and the opinions of other people we need to have a good social standing to kind of secure that. And so I wouldn't say that entirely shaped the direction of things. I don't think I would have ever really submitted myself to something that I really did not enjoy at all. And I was very, I guess you could say lucky to enjoy many different subjects at school. So while the arts and especially acting was something that I was very passionate about. And in fact, when I was around, I remember when I was doing my GCSEs and I was going to pick my subjects for IBs. I really wanted to do drama and at that point when I was 15 I was like, I'm gonna be an actor, that's like what I wanna do with my life. And my parents took me out and they said, no, please don't do this. So yeah, this kind of, I guess in a sense I started to make more so-called responsible or so-called realistic decisions and. Right. took a path that was more secure, which was more moving into physics and chemistry and science, which I did enjoy. Like I genuinely did really enjoy learning about these things. But throughout my academic career, what I sort of discovered is that, you know, I really enjoyed learning and understanding, but it was actually always what stimulated me the most was when I was learning or understanding many different things. Mm-hmm. And I found myself throughout my time at Oxford as the course went on, became more specialized, and then trying research at MIT, it just felt like I was being squashed into a sort of specialization that they were just like, OK, now focus on this in the name of, yeah. it seemed like a very rational choice to make when you look at, I suppose, the expectations that the system we work in presents. It seemed like a rational choice to pursue a career that was gonna take you into something like engineering and kind of... we've all heard that haven't we, the kind of the safe choice. Pick something where you know there's going to be a great job at the end of it and you did that. But you were finding all the while that as you narrowed your focus, which those fields will always do, that you were kind of for something broader. Definitely. even it was not necessarily what I thought at the time, but just looking around at the people who had pursued those paths or like the mentor figures I had in those various spaces, be it research, academia. then after MIT, then I went on to, I started working in the energy sector as a consultant, making forecasts on the energy market. So I wanted to understand more about climate change and economics and renewables and all these kind of things. But in each of those spaces, I just kind of saw there was a sort of dullness that sort of crept in in a lot of people and a sort of things became very kind of routine and sort of repetitive. that, I don't know, something in me just felt very suffocated in that. So I had to just leave. So that's an interesting insight and it's one in the working world that we all get kind of drawn into those daily routines. And you're saying that in doing so that was in some way lessening people's energy and engagement with what they were doing, there was, through the nature of the way that these businesses were set up, it was restricting them in some way, reducing their energy and perhaps meaning that they weren't showing up with everything they had to offer. It's very true, absolutely. And I would say also that the way these systems are kind of set up is it's more, I don't think like a daily routine necessarily has to be something that is suffocating or non-creative because if you look at life and how nature works, there are natural rhythms for things. know, the sun rises and sets, the moon cycle, the seasons and everything. But within this, there is a sort of organic expression and creativity of nature that unfolds itself. To a sort of superficial glance, it may just look like the same seasons are repeating every time, but if you really feel it and look with the nature, it's always something new, expressing something new, and it's always in this process of evolution. And I think the issue that I kind of found was... Like growing up, I think we were all kind of brainwashed into this thinking that we exist to serve a system. And the system that we exist to serve is the one that society has currently in place. And whereas I do think we exist to serve the wider world and each other, the sort of the guidelines or the pathways that have been carved out in front of us. I think over the years I started to question more and more like, know, with what intention are these things carved? And it's always if you look at it without kind of going into necessarily like a sort of conspiratorial... mood, I think it's just quite clear to see that a lot of it is efficiency driven and outcome driven, where it's all about what you're able to produce rather than let's say a daily routine or a system or a group of people that are making changes and implementing things so that the process becomes more fruitful and enjoyable for the beings involved in that process. And as you described that, what I sort of think of is, you know, ever decreasing circles where because the routine is too industrialized and it starts to sap the energy, it's also sapping the creativity out of those people participating in it. And as it saps the creativity out of them, then maybe they're less inclined to make purposeful change to... change that system that they're in. So certainly my own experience has always been of working in startups because I enjoy that early stage nature and the ability to evolve and change what you're working on as things present themselves. And certainly what I've found later in my career is working on things that are more purposeful, that can affect the sort of change that you're describing become more important. So I kind of follow your thought process on that. And then, so you were doing this work, you'd got your degree, spent time at MIT, you had done something which was quite purposeful, working in the energy markets and trying to understand the green transition. But you were noticing that people weren't showing up with their energy and creativity, and that was something that you felt you... that wasn't for you. I suppose there must have been like all these things, we all observe stuff and you talked about that kind of quiet voice saying there must be more and I think lots of the listeners would respond to, know, what are the things that maybe I could have, should have tried and haven't done. Hmm. what changed for you because you clearly got to a point where you decided that putting creativity first and taking that kind of that leap into the unknown or that step into the unknown was something that was going to happen for you. Hmm. I think this sort of a bit of a daring streak was always there somewhere inside within me where I kind of felt... very Like I always felt that I wanted to do something unique or different or something authentic to myself. And I just realized, I think it was more of a slow build up of a realization that for me personally, this isn't it. And I think that the, essentially it was the courage to trust this unknown sense, but like a very clear sense that something is not right. but I don't know what is right, you know? And to take that plunge into the unknown, I think honestly, a lot of things that enabled me to trust in life were various books that I had read by that point. I guess you would call them spiritual books. I think one of them, like The Power of Now, The Untethered Soul, and The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer. That's a really fascinating book. don't know if you've come across it, but it's the autobiography of the man who wrote The Untethered Soul. it's really the life that he lived by just what he calls surrender, which is... to just open yourself and accept whatever life is bringing you in the moment and you no longer shrink away or try to force or control things to happen. You just go with the flow of things. And he really lived his life very committed to that. And he went through so many interesting experiences, which actually culminated in him being the CEO of like a multimillion dollar company that then got sold for like, I think, 100 or 200 million dollars or something like that. So I think it's just the unexpected nature of that and just his I think I was inspired essentially by seeing another human being who let go of the reins and Their life not only did not get worse, but like incredible things that they could have never expected even things that were classically socially kind of Successful happened so this fascinates me because it's coming back a little bit to your earlier point about there's an accepted way of doing things. But perhaps what you're talking about, you know, in this case, you know, allowing things to unfold as they will and seeing the opportunities that present themselves, those possibly get lost. in the day to day if there's too much of a rigid plan trying to execute on doing the 10 steps at those 10 milestone points in time. I think what you're saying is that all sorts of opportunities might be emerging and waving from the sidelines saying, I'm here, I'm here, and just get missed by leaders that maybe are, to use a phrase that's very popularized these days, it's being more mindful about it. Absolutely. And I think there's a lot of growth of awareness and practice of mindfulness and these kind of things and becoming aware. But one thing that we're doing at Satya Speaks is really developing a modern integrated science around not just how to cultivate awareness and enhance one's perception of things, but how to move with that awareness in action. understanding the fundamental laws and dynamics of organic activity. Because I think we've really lost touch with what an organic human being moves like, like response to how they behave, how they create. And because, you know, human beings are not like other animals that we have such a fixed nature and pattern, we are malleable, we can sort of self adapt and change things. But there are also certain rhythms and just realities about our system that I think the current culture around work really is very blind to. And it's blind to because it's, think the question has not been asked or the purpose of the economy is the products of the economy as opposed to the process of the economy. And I think this shift needs to happen in that. sorry, do go on. I have another question for you, but I thought you weren't finished there, so that's why I... yeah, I think, so the economy is set up, we are so comfortable with just taking for granted that the purpose of the economy is this sort of mechanical process where it's just about the output. And I think that's the distinction between something mechanical and something organic, is that with a machine, It's designed for a specific purpose. Even if the purpose can change whatever, it's not a living, breathing thing. You don't care about what the machine feels like through the process, right? And that's what allows it to be super efficient. Yeah, what's coming to my mind is the, I suppose, the shift that took place through industrialization, know, a long time ago now, but moving from a whole lot of cycles that were quite in tune with the individual. So when people lived on the land more, then their seasons were, they had seasons of intense work and they had seasons of, you know, less work. But actually those were times to recharge those were times to spend with people and to bond Cal Newport wrote a really interesting book called slow productivity and he sort of goes through a lot of a lot of this and how you can look at traditional societies how you can look at agrarian societies and pre-industrial revolution and see that ebb and flow and those natural rhythms which allowed the people to To be very human to achieve what they needed And maybe the shift that's taken place now restricts that somewhat if you have a nine to five routine and, you know, and very set KPIs that don't change all year round. Clearly, business is built in a way where it achieves the ends that it's looking for. But are those ends always going to do the best for the people that work there, do the best for the for the owners? and do the best for society. And perhaps that's what you're touching on. It's like the humanistic elements to work, which as I explore what the whole leader looks like, some of those things get lost in the initial makeup of what a good leader is expected to have, I think. Certainly. I don't know what makes a good leader, but I think one of the things is a sort of openness and an inquisitiveness to constantly learn from a situation. And I think the experience of being in a leadership position teaches one certain things about leadership that you couldn't learn from somebody else or from a book or something, because I think it's also something very unique about relating with other human beings and relating with uncertainty, think that's one of the challenges that maybe in a sense I feel like the structures that we have in place, that the reason why people gravitate towards structural life so much, nine to five jobs and these things is with these jobs there is a sort of sense of, there's a sort of scaffolding of security and predictability. You don't have to deal with the uncertainty of things very much. Yes. I'm sure you have had to face a lot of that in the startup sphere or in your current role as well. How do you... Like, just one thing I wanted to ask you is, as I know from our previous conversations, the way you've been relating with life and flow and your work and relationships is going through a transformation towards being more in the state of presence and the state of flow. How do you... How do you find that has affected your approach or like how you engage with your work specifically, your ability to deal with people and with uncertainty? It's an excellent question and a good observation. That's right, my own experience is having worked in very traditional leadership styles in the past and used the kind of command and control structure for like a shorthand for everything that we're talking about. And then having been very successful doing that, getting personal insight that such ways of working don't get the best out of others and didn't get the best out of me or do the most for me in terms of my own development, sort of did lead me to reassess this. I absolutely practice a different approach, trying to be more in the flow and look out for those opportunities as they arise. Try and take a humanistic approach to connecting with the team that I work with so that we all feel engaged together on the same thing because You know, people talk about work-life balance. you know, work in many ways is life as much as family is life. Life is a complete thing. So what I have found is deeper connections and relationships with the people that I work with. I found... a greater degree of personal flexibility for the situations that arise and often the answers present themselves in a clearer by not trying to follow that kind of systematic rigid path that we talked about a little earlier. you know, the things that you're saying and certainly the practices that you are developing in your current work sort of resonate very much with that. And I'd like to hear a little bit more about that. But there's one there's one gap I'd like to fill in if I may. So you you're working in as an energy analyst, you've had this realization that the that the experience is not getting the most out of you or the colleagues around you for all the reasons that we've just been able to discuss. And then so what did you do next? What did you just like? pack a bag and think I'm going to go and work out what next. How did you go from that energy analyst role to I think you now spend most of your time in Rishikesh, which is most well known because of the Beatles spending time with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. And so that's a very different place to land up. I'm interested in that transition. Yeah, you know, when you put it like that, my life has changed a lot actually the past few years. Yeah, I remember it so very clearly quitting that job because it was the first case in my life where all my loved ones were very strongly cautioning me against leaving the job, even friends. And they understood that I was sort of frustrated and I wanted to explore different things. But they were like, well, just figure out what you want to do next and then, you know, get it like line up another job and then you can switch. So you kind of know that they're essentially they were looking out for me and trying to make sure I had something secure. But there was something inside me that just really wanted that insecurity. Like I wanted to go. into the unknown and see what happened. wanted to take that leap of faith and just see where would life take me. said, listen, I'm young now. I don't have responsibilities like I don't have to anybody to look after anything. Now is the time to roll the dice and see. And I'm very, very grateful I did that. I remember it was terrifying because we get so sort of comfortable and dependent on our story about what's going to happen tomorrow. And when that suddenly disappears, it brings up a lot of stuff. But that in itself was the beginning, I think, of a really accelerated process of growth and letting go and learning to trust the universe and trust myself and just explore. So for three months, I moved to London to stay with a friend and I was just exploring things in London. I was doing some sports. I was meeting a lot of new people. doing some poetry, just exploring, I guess, my own creativity and just sort of taking a break. And then, actually at that point, I wanted to go to India because I had for a while been really feeling very drawn towards exploring, I guess you could call it spirituality, or probably a better term is a more meditative way of living and just to go deeper within myself to find a sense of... a peace and a sense of completeness that was really my own and untouchable. so I, but that summer there was a very big wave of COVID in India. So I didn't go in the end. And so I stayed in London for a year and I started doing some freelance consulting, which is where I was using my skills for my previous job. And the way this kind of thing started, which is actually in LightSource, Labs BP that that was the thing which later is how we met but the CEO then at the time we connected very randomly He was actually a client when I was working at Aurora the first consulting job and We just sort of connected on one of the calls and then I followed up and just asked we could just have a chat and there was a real sort of heart-to-heart connection and a genuine feeling of like an as a human to human being, a sort of connection. And then I had no idea at that time, but then many months later that kind of just, it just landed a job basically in my lap exactly when I needed it. I was doing that for around a year. And then the following summer, which is just, think around when you had joined and taken over from Ben. the... at that time I had finally kind of... Yeah, I felt that calling to go to India and to take this sort of trip for myself and really just take some time where I'm not obliged to any work that had not gone away in the past year. And despite, you know, the work going well and, you know, relationships and friends, everything, a nice life was being built. Again, I felt like I had to sort of let go of that and just go into something, into something different. Just to explore that for a moment then. So you'd mentioned some of the literature you've been reading and how you were open to living in a way that was more present and more whole and you then spent some time, you spent some time. in London and what you described was the interest in spirituality, a more meditative life. What it sounds like is, you know, from a kind of a balance point of view, if there's been just to use a common model, I'm not sure if it's biologically accurate, but you've been spending a lot of time working on the left-hand side of your brain, developing, you know, your engineering skills and then going off and being an analyst and quite quantitative and developing models. And there was, there was something inside of you saying, actually, what about the right-hand side of my brain? What about my, what about my intuition? What about gaining greater insights into what's happening inside me, beyond me, that kind of more meditative hole and that's where you then said you know I am still going to pack my bag I'm still going to go and find out what what more there is to this Yes, yes, I think that is what has happened and it's still ongoing, the development of the right side brain. And on this note, actually, I think it's a very interesting lens through which to look at our world and our society is very, very left brain dominant and in a sense, it glorifies the left brain, the sort of logical, defined thinking, outcome focused. very sort of calculating approach and how that approach is the approach that you need for success and The whereas the right side brain is much softer more receptive intuitive The way I look at it is like if you ask the right side left side brain to draw a picture It would draw you a bunch of squares if you ask the the right side brains draw a picture it would draw curves and smooth organic forms and I think the problem with our society is not that the left-hand brain is like, we need to get rid of it or anything like that, but the problem is that it thinks it's the boss. It thinks that it's the one that has the ultimate say and it calls the shots and the right-hand side of the brain is just a sort of sidekick or an enabler of if it's glorified projections of what it needs. But yeah, it's... It's only, I mean, I think what you're talking about there, I'm not a psychologist, but I'd like to read around and I can't remember who the book is by, but it's Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow, and this is about the kind of the S1 and S2 processing. know that. The left-hand side of our brain, which can be very quantitative and great at doing calculation, requires a lot of CPU, a lot of processing time to work things out for us to give us detailed answers. The intuitive part of our brain, which can think fast, but it works in patterns and it works in bigger ideas and framing concepts. To be effective, I wonder if we need... both to optimally balance one another. And if you spend too much time working on the logic and making that the king or queen and making it the boss, then as you say, those very valuable abilities to be insightful, to bring intuition, to understand the wider context of a situation perhaps are getting lost. And if they're getting lost, then that is going to have consequences to the quality of decision making. Hmm. I think. I think that... I cannot really say in terms of left hand, left brain and right brain, because there ends the limits of my knowledge about this, but what I can say is in the science of tantra which is developed in India, one extremely powerful framework to experientially understand within ourselves the relationship between, you can say, the logical or the ego-driven mind and the more let's say intuitive feminine energy is The mind is male and the body is female. So it doesn't matter what kind of body you have, but essentially the relationship between mind and body is like a relationship between male and female, archetypally speaking. And the issue right now is that the male mind is essentially completely taking control of our energy, of our body, which is really the source of our creativity. People think creativity is a sort of mental thing. but actually insightful ideas, fresh ideas that carry actually power and charge to drive change. They don't come from the logical processing of the mind, but they come from something deeper. And when you start to observe it more closely, you can feel is the energy that is residing in your body that can take many forms. And so this energy, which in India we call Shakti, and we personify even as an intelligent entity, because that helps to understand the nature of intuition, is that it's not a tool for you to use. you are the tool for it to move through. It's a much, it's like it's connected to a much wider set of information and movements and coordination with the rest of the system in a way that the mind, the male mind simply cannot see just by its nature. It cannot, it cannot comprehend such a complex arrangement of things. And it's not really meant to, because it kind of takes away the fun if you knew how everything worked, you know, behind the scenes of the orchestra of life. And I think the key point I want to get across is that essentially the whole process of meditation or living a creative life is to remove the trust or the power that has been given to this automated process of mind, which is like a socially conditioned male mind that essentially manipulates the energy for its own vision or gains of what it likes and what it doesn't like. And detach from that and re-engage our awareness and our energy to feed and protect this natural organic energy that then it knows how it wants to move. It has its own sort of design for the individual and for society as well. Right. See, that's, that's fascinating. And what I'm thinking about, as you talk about, if you like, the mind or let's say the the logic, suppressing the natural energy of the body, and being able to get that wider perspective and insight. You mentioned meditation and other practices and I'd love to come on in a moment to talk about Satyajit and the sort of work that you're doing and those practices. But just first, the thing that came up for me was what you're explaining. potentially gives people the opportunity, the agency to transform and to change themselves. And we've been talking about how society operates in a certain sort of a way and it's bound in with the economy and all the rest of it. I'm not saying those things are bad, but they're... They're just the way they are and they're not changing. there's, there's a long, long list of problems that need to be solved, which require new ways of doing things, which are the reasons that we're doing this, this, uh, this conversation, this podcast, what you're saying, you mentioned meditation. You're saying that people have the potential to change by adopting certain practices, which will bring out different value systems for them. That sort of thing. Am I I don't want to put words in your mouth, but that's what I took from what you said. think definitely this work is about empowering people and helping them realize the agency they have to, I would say, open themselves to change as opposed to create change because it depends on what stage of one's growth one is in. Right at the beginning, these kind of distinctions don't really matter. What matters is starting to train your awareness and your energy in certain ways which we can get into. But the key thing about this shift, is why it's so tricky and why, let's say this blind greed and fear driven mechanisms of mind have shaped our society is because to make the shift that is required and return to being organic human beings, it requires deep trust in the unknown and a letting go of control, which no ego, no mind wants to do. It's not a comfortable experience at all. You have to face all the suppressed fears that you have squashed away in your life. You have to deal with all your traumas from the past because essentially the reason we want to cling so tightly is because we've been hurt in the past at some point and we don't want that experience to repeat. And if you start to look at it this way and bring awareness into your everyday actions, the motivations behind those, you'll start to realize quite a shocking fact that almost everything that one does is in a way to make sure that a certain experience does not repeat or to make sure that a certain positive experience does repeat. So we're trying to constantly manipulate this life. there's no vision or sense that there could be something like a sort of rhythm or a pattern that in the absence of our trying to control would actually be beneficial for us. There's no trust in that. And that is the sort of trust that needs to come. And it can't be done on an intellectual level because if it stays on an intellectual level, the same patterns of thinking will continue to dominate. This is why the shift is needed. Presence into the body, awakening of the body's energies so that you start to feel this intuitive present guidance that you don't know where it's taking you but you learn to trust where it's taking you because you keep seeing that it is taking you towards beautiful things. And yeah, I think... Go ahead. Jeet, I think there's some real wisdom in what you just talked to us about. This idea that actually all the time what our mind is trying to do is prevent those things that have hurt us, got us into trouble, caused difficulty in the past from happening again. And that's the control framework that drives so much of our behavior and sort of... That's the thing that makes it hard to open up to the life that presents itself and the opportunities that present themselves. You sound as though you've learned a lot on your journey. A key figure in that I am imagining is Satya G. I would love to hear a bit more about Satya and how you met and what... what led you to co-create your platform and your movement with him. So we met in India in Rishikesh just over two years ago. actually it goes back to the story that I've been telling in bits. When I left London, I left the freelance job and I went to India finally and I spent a few months there and I was diving very deep into quite intense meditations and practices and I also spent... two months volunteering in a yoga center, the Isha Yoga Center, which is affiliated with a Sadhguru, who's a very popular spiritual teacher. But during my time there, while I learned a lot, I felt that again something was calling me to explore something outside that. And I had this vague sense that I was going to meet somebody, but It was just a vague sense. But somehow through my travels, a very random turn of events, I ended up meeting Satyaji and... Yeah, when I met him and when we started speaking, it's like so many things opened up inside me and I felt such a strong affinity and a sense of familiarity with this person. I think in many ways we are similar. Of course, we have our differences as well, but I felt there was finally somebody who has an extremely deep, refined perception of of reality, but there was no pump and show around it of like, I am a teacher or I am a guru or anything like that. And he was, he's also very intelligent and well read and is a very multifaceted human being who has done many different kinds of arts, painting, singing, martial arts. He has had businesses in the past. He's done like many, many, many things in his life. And that is, I think the part that that resonated with me so much was not in the story of his life, but you could feel a texture in his voice that carried all this diversity of experience. so when he speaks with a very insightful clarity, but about issues that are very much in the mud and in the dirt, like everyday people, what they're going through, practical sort of things, where I think sometimes people, like certain spiritual... teachings, the place where they're coming from, it's hard for people to apply them into their everyday life. know, teachings around like, you know, love everybody, compassionate, all these kind of things is from essentially beings that are, of course, have attained to a certain clarity, but they, because the lives that they live may have been, you know, in a very different society or culture that was in a way much simpler and cleaner than the one that we live in now. but yeah, he's Yeah, I would say this. don't say this about many people, but I really think he's a genius. Like he's a very... And he kind of reminded me of something within myself that I wanted to bring forth. This sort of... The way that he lived his life of just following what seemed interesting to him. And I think that's a courage that artists have. That I found that I did not have that courage when I was younger and I'm cultivating and I'm having that courage now to... not live based on anybody else's expectations of me, but to follow my own creativity. And what I love the most is the essence of his message is that there is such a beautiful and juicy relationship to be had with life, that it's meditation is not just the sterile thing of awareness and clarity and presence and focus and getting your things done. But when you start to, if you were open yourself to the possibility and you dare to interact with life directly. it speaks back to you. And that is the most magical thing, I think. And so you connected, you realised that you were talking to a genius and you were drawn to Satya G. There must have been a moment when you both began to discuss the project, the movement that is Satya Speaks. Yep. Could you tell me about that? Yeah, I think it happened even a few days into us meeting. when we met... So we met in a cafe there in Rishikesh and then for the next like two weeks I was just completely immersed just spending time with him every day listening to what he had to say discussing things with him he was showing me some things as well some techniques and everything and at that point I was trying to understand what it is that I wanted to do with my life for a while I had thought I want to work in this space of helping people to wake up to their potential. And I thought that the way to do that was as I had seen other people online, you know, creating content or doing coaching or things like that. I was essentially trying to emulate that. something about it felt phony for me. And I think the time in India, I kind of reconciled with that. And I said, you know, it doesn't just because it's an important thing in my life doesn't have to be my work. So I was open at that point. had no plans. I did not know at all what I was going to do. And then comes this guy who's like, oh, I really want to share these things. And I think that was it. had been storing up this lifetime's worth of insight and wisdom born out of creative arts, martial arts, music, and you showed up at a time where he had some realization that he wanted to share it with the world. Yeah, I think it's not totally accurate to say that he wanted to share with the world, but I think he felt that it wanted to be shared. He never actually wanted to be a teacher and in many ways he deplores it, like the attention of people and all these things. But it's, I've realized there was something, if I was to compare myself to him at that point, I think this is the difference that qualified him to teach people and did not qualify me to do that, which is that I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to be in that position and there was something in me, if I've been totally honest, that it's out of a sense of ego to like prove something to myself that yes, I have like, you know, I'm good now or I've like corrected my mistakes or something, you know, some kind of redemption thing. But it was about me more than it was about others. Whereas he, he shares spontaneously as people come based on the needs of the people in front of him, but he does not have any ambition or plan to like. do anything in particular. And that I think is also the hallmark of a truly creative present life. And this is the scary part that people, personally struggle with a lot in the past two years, letting go of this. But there's a security and ambition in having a plan. Like this is the direction that I want my life to go and I'm gonna work towards that. Because your energies are engaged into something you're like, okay. But. when you really see the loop of this, that it's all out of some fear or some greed, and at the end, if you kind of subject yourself to this linear, extrapolating sort of delusion that there's something to get out there, you are holding yourself away from the treasure you have inside. But once you start abiding in that presence, in that sense of fulfillment, you're no longer driven so much by ambition at all. So then it's... It's much more based on what you feel the moment needs because the moment is always communicating with you. Like right now what needs to be done, I'll do that. And like this, basically he felt that there was a need for these things. And it was honestly more me than him at that point that was, cause I was, I felt the impact that the things had on me and I knew that other people needed to hear it as well. So. Right. Right. poked him and I was like, we gotta do this. Yeah. And he said, yes, and 300 plus, 330 plus videos later and 100,000 followers, there's something to it. Just picking up on your point about allowing things to emerge more organically, following the kind of the path as it opens up without a particular ambition, do you think that that means that there is less progress in the end or are you talking about a different type of progress? Because I see stats on your YouTube channel. I see you building out a course framework and we should get into that in a little bit. I hear you tell the story of the chief executive who built the hugely successful company whilst taking less control over what he was. doing. So what you just described sounded like maybe there would be no progress, no outcome, but I'm also not sure that that's what I'm hearing you actually say. So could we touch on that a little? Sure. I think it's an extremely key point, this one that you're addressing with this question, because we are under the impression that it's our mental projection and ambition that creates change and progress. And what I've been finding more and more to be true is that there are waves already happening, and human beings are much more instruments of change than they are the controllers or the origins of that change, if that makes sense. I don't think that it would be no progress under this kind of more present type of living. But the shape and the direction of the progress of an individual and the overall society, if everybody was to live in this way, would be radically different. As I mentioned before, the left-hand brain with the logics, straight lines, projections, it's going to be like this A to B, how do we get there? It's very methodical and it has its utility, but I think what people don't realize is that secretly the real utility of why they engage with that type of thinking as often as they do and give it as much importance as they do is that its real utility is the sense of security that it gives you. It's actually an emotional coping mechanism and rather than it is something that is aligned with the way reality works. Yeah, kind of, everything can be summed up in maths and physics, but maths and physics isn't everything. know, life has its substance around all of that. even though we can work out the logical patterns within it, those are not the real thing. Yeah. What I found to be a helpful bridge for my own left brain to trust this more intuitive approach more. mean, firstly, I just want to say before I dig on this that it's not that intuition does not have a direction. It's not that it does not have a certain... It's not that there's no goal element of it or momentum to it. It definitely does. But it's not this sort of linear, predictable, extrapolative thing. And it's not about you're not honoring what you want out of it and trying to make that happen. You are feeling that this very thing itself has a certain destiny and you are there to accommodate that and facilitate that. So much more humble sort of position to take around creation and creating things. And in that way, we never create anything, we're always co-creating with the universe. I think the thing that helps perhaps a more rationally driven person to make the jump is Like I found this when I was studying like machine learning or statistics or know, physics and at university. When you start talking about complex systems, which is actually everything, everything that you don't oversimplify into a model that allows the maths, the simplistic maths that we use to like be accurate. You start to see that actually we, through this kind of building blocks of logic, we cannot comprehend or predict complex systems at all. Like if you just look at economics, it's a disaster. trying to make economics into an exact science, because it's such a vast and complex system that includes human beings, which they themselves are not, you cannot reduce them to like a variable or a set value, you know, because we're so multi-dimensional. And life in itself and creation in itself and nature is so multi-dimensional and there are so many interconnections across so many axes. If you could describe it mathematically, but our mind does not have sufficient complexity to be able to put that into a mental image that actually makes sense. we would grind to a halt. The combinations are just explosive and impossible to comprehend. So that's right. And so what you're saying is that there is some guidance behind that. And it's described lots of different ways by lots of different traditions, I would guess, but you're talking about some sort of consciousness sitting behind. sitting behind what's happening. another way of saying it is that life is a being. This life that we're experiencing right now, even our own thoughts, emotions, our body, the society, the systems around us, everything humans have made, it's all one being. And you can have a relationship with it. In fact, it's the most innocent and basic relationship that all of us are born with as children. It's so intimate that you don't even often feel it as something other than yourself. But the social conditioning that we have around it, it engenders so much doubt and a sense of smallness and disconnection. So perhaps this is a good time, and I do know what you're talking about, perhaps this is a good time to talk a little bit more about the work, about what you are co-creating, what Satya G is speaking about, and our listeners can get a greater appreciation of the sort of things that you're working on. be where life is, to be as life is, and to move as life moves. This is our tagline and I think it really captures what all of it is about which is to be where life is, life is here and now and we often live in our minds we project stories about the past and the future. and we experience them as very solid, very real, tangible things. But in reality, we're just stuck in this mass hallucination, and we're rarely here where actually is the only live experience of life. Everything you've ever experienced is happening in this moment. And anything that you fear might happen in the future or you really like for it to happen in the future, when it does happen, it's gonna happen in this moment. So the most important relationship to cultivate in your life, more than any plan or any strategy or any type of knowledge, is your ability and your, the quality of your relationship with this moment. One way of looking at it is, you know, to develop the strength and the clarity to deal with things as they come and to accept things as they come. And the other aspect of it is how to move with them. Create with them and realize you know you're not just a Passive spectator, but you do interact you do participate, but you have to honor What it is that you're really participating with? because most of us were participating only with our minds and our stories and our thoughts and We're walking around blindly and to be as life is. For me this means to return to a sense of naturalness where there is no longer a need to pretend to be something that you're not. and the ease and the grace of movement that comes with that. We're coming to a place where you can take a stand for that. Even though it's not giving you any security, it's not giving you anything in your mental bank balance, you're willing to discard all the stories, the pros and cons, opinions that you hold, that other people hold. When you see that what life is in this moment is the most valuable possible thing that could ever be. So nothing is worth leaving your throne. I think that is to understand the royalty of life, the ease of life and the innocence of life as well. Because we judge ourselves a lot and we're taught to judge ourselves and to judge other people. But I think one thing that has shifted in my perspective is even through things like disease and death and war and all these sort of very painful visceral experiences. We assign blame and we assign evil to be attributed somewhere out there. But life as it moves, as a creativity, is fundamentally innocent. And this innocence, I think, is what we are really seeking inside, where we can stop judging ourselves for maybe the things that we regret doing, the so-called negative aspects of ourselves, and to be able to embrace ourselves totally as we are. Not that you have to achieve some sort of puritanical divinity in order to be part of this universe, but already as you are, you are part of this play and you are connected to the whole thing and there's nothing wrong about the way you exist. That's the key of it. And finally, I think to move as life moves is the... is I think the crux of it and I think one of the unique things about Satyaji's approach which is It's tempting to think I will like sit here and be aware and figure out everything that I need to figure out and then I will take action. But actually it's action itself that cleans you out and brings the clarity. It's the movement. Life is always moving. It's always changing forms. It's always this constant creativity going on. And being in a flow state essentially means you drop whatever kind of solid blocks of thought you have and you're able to enter this liquid flow. And through the present action, being totally engaged with it and totally with total abandon, being able to do anything as simple as moving my hand or picking up a glass of water, engaging my whole being into it without any concern for the results of my action. This is how life moves. And as you start to get better at acting with totality as Satyajit says, two things happen. The influence of your mind drastically reduces in your life and you feel very alive doing even very simple things. And the second thing is you start to understand the mind of life and the mind of this cosmos as you're saying this sort of innocence to it because you realize that there is only this present action going on. There is nothing that ever was done in the past, there is nothing that's going to be done in the future, it's just one movement that is going on right now. And the kicker is that it's all one movement. You nodding your head right now, me nodding my head, is one movement happening in real time in this one reality. Like clouds are moving in the sky, insects are going around, people out there, somebody is yelling, somebody's laughing, somebody's crying, somebody's dying. It's all happening as one movement. And you start to get a visceral experience of that. Not just as a nice imagination in the head, but you feel that as a reality. And then it's like a... quantum shift of how you even feel and interact with life. Thank you Sahasraj. I enjoyed immensely hearing everything you just said and there was a beauty to it. I wanted to let you finish because it was a very wise explanation of... the big topic of the day that we're talking about. I suppose if I bring it to... If I bring it to what people can relate to day to day, you talked earlier about flow and getting into the flow. Most people can understand that on some level. I play music, so if I'm playing my guitar and I'm absorbed, time flies and I'm just present in what I'm doing. Or if I'm reading a good book, or if you play football and you... and you have the ball and you're running down the pitch with it, everything else goes away and you're participating in those moments. So hopefully everybody can understand that. And I suppose as you try and bring that thought into the work that we do as well, I like to think about business as an opportunity to bring that kind of flow, that progress in the optimal way every day to the work that we do together in a company. And I know you and I have done some of this work before. There's certain things that you can do to encourage mindfulness, though it's probably a misnomer to call it mindfulness, it's embodiment. really bring about kind of an, it sounds like a science word, but an optimization to bring to life every moment and get the most out of it that you can bring, I think, as a leader to your work and you're bringing something much more than the kind of traditional logical view that we've been talking about. So there's a real beauty to that, I guess. Do you have anything, any thoughts on what I just said? Yes, I have a question, which is how do you see this working in a context like, let's say, work in your organization or just generally in the mainstream world? Because the people that I work with, and it's been honor to kind of guide and facilitate the growth of thousands of people over the past two years. It only, what we have found is that this kind of, it really only works when one makes an individual decision or has a willingness to shift their relationship with life. So do you think that in the world of work right now, what could a leader do, for example, to start to encourage or allow a space for these kinds of things to happen, if that is even the right approach. I read a fascinating book recently called Leader as Healer by Nicholas Gianni and in that book Nicholas talks about some of the topics we have discussed. He talked about the flow state and how do you set the conditions for people to do their best work. And he talked about creating a better environment for human connection through not jumping straight into the task, but taking time to be still, to center, to connect with others. He talked about addressing as leaders the baggage that they carry. very much like you were saying earlier, the decisions get made based on the things that have happened to us in the past and trying to process that. He talked about mindfulness and meditation and using techniques and practices that can bring us into the present moment. And then I think it's the old adage of lead by example. If you try and create a space where you work in a certain way, where you're... maybe reducing some of the traditional natural tensions that are in a room, encouraging creativity, then the opportunity for these changes to happen and flourish is, least the foundations are there, the roots are there. That's what I believe, and it possibly fits with what you describe, which is that... if everything's unfolding, you know, as it will, as it will anyway, then the breakthroughs that companies make, the things they achieve, you you talk to most startup founders, the business they build in the end is not the one that they thought they would build at the start because things happen and changes appear and then that's all part of a process which if you can encourage a better flow state as you're doing that. then everybody gets to participate in it. So those are just a few thoughts I have. Hmm. So what I'm hearing from what you're saying is that it feels like quite an organic approach of setting the conditions and the environment that would allow such things to take place and then leaving it to the humans who are there to, in a way, be human. Yeah, absolutely. And isn't that what all of the kind of business schools would say? You need to allow your talent to flourish. You need to give them the space to do their best work. need to allow them to find their superpowers. All of those things are pointing to the same thing, which is you can't just give somebody a task list and say, do that and expect doing that to create the best. So yeah, cultivating, setting the conditions that will cultivate that kind of human potential to engage in the organization and make it a better one. and Yeah, that's made me... look at, I guess, my own work in Satya speaks a bit differently that is tempting or rather I think the vision or what I would really like to be able to do is create a way of working that. The experience of doing the work itself and interacting with the team is part of the growth as well, not just engaging with the practices or anything like that. I think it's going to be an interesting... interesting revelation but yeah one day at a time yeah, one day at a time. And it's a fascinating subject and always happy to talk about that. So I think we've had an excellent conversation, Geet, I've really enjoyed this. Do you think that there's any subjects which were on your mind which we've missed as we've gone through? I think maybe one thing is just I'd maybe like to give people a bit more of a tangible view on what it is that we have, for example, on our website and YouTube channel so that if somebody's interested they can look into it. So maybe what we can do is I can do an edit on this bit and I'll just go to next question and next question, can you tell me a bit more about the tangible things people can do? And then we can cut that in. I've really appreciated sharing so many interesting perspectives and learning so much about the work that you're doing. Maybe for our listeners, it would be a good point to talk about the way they can engage with your project, the things that you are offering, and really find out some of the specifics about what... Satya speaks involves and indeed Human Studios I think is the latest iteration of this as well. Yes, so to anybody that is curious and wants to see what kind of wisdom we're sharing, there is the Instagram page SatyaSpeaks and the YouTube channel SatyaSpeaks and both of those go quite deep into various aspects of connecting with life and forming this more fulfilling and creative relationship with life. And for those that want to take some action, and try out some of these practices that we've designed. You can look at our website satyaspics.net slash practices and you'll see they're divided into three sections. And the first section is catharsis. So this is one thing that I learned from Satyaji which I did not know before was that what we struggle with these very repressed, deeply repressed kind of emotions. Many times people are not even aware that they have these emotions stuck inside. And especially in modern times when we're crowded with so many information and signals from other people, social media and everything, it can really help to engage. in a concentrated process of catharsis. So there are three methods on our website, each of which are slightly different, and these basically help you bring up these difficult emotions from your past. So warning is it's gonna be an intense experience, but it's also a very fast and direct way of processing a lot of this surface level, unprocessed experience and emotion. And once your system is clear and your energy is flowing, now, things like meditation or chanting or drawing meditations, creativity, music, you will see a sudden change in all of these things. Like there's so much more vitality, so much more richness to those experiences. And so many people who might try to go directly for the creativity or for the meditation without having done a body-based cathartic somatic release of certain experiences might not really feel the juice of those experiences for what they can give. So yeah, those are the places to connect. And actually there is also the Telegram channel, Satya Speaks. So this is like the live space if you want to interact with Satya Ji or want to be connected to live what he shares. We have curated this free channel there as well. And I recommend it. It's very, very powerful sharing. very uplifting and inspiring. Thank you, that's excellent to hear about those resources and where we can get them. Do you want to touch on human studios as well or not? Yeah, so Human Studios is right at the core of our community. We've recently launched this platform where essentially it's an online guided program with Satya Ji and the team going through a series of practices that allow, it's like a foundation for your development as a being. And this is really for people who, you you will have realized at this point that working on your own energy And your awareness is the most important thing that you want to do in your life and this is sort of there to give people a bit of a structure and a guidance on how to do that in a direct contemporary and integrative way. So it's not like one specific tradition or path. Like one thing that Satyaji says that I really like is that you know, paths are made for humans. humans are not made for paths. if you have any experience, any, listeners going into like meditation or yoga or whatever, you'll find there are different schools of yoga, different schools of Buddhism, different schools of this and schools of that, and they all have a sort of philosophy that they're trying to propagate. And within that, sure, there is valid growth to be had, but our approach is really not a philosophical one. It's sort of integrating and cross-pollinating the wisdom from all these different traditions into something live and direct, what needs to be said to human beings today to connect with what is already theirs, which is this intimate connection with life. Thank you. Sahasrajit, it has been a pleasure to spend time talking to you today. Thank you for giving us that time. It's been fascinating to hear about the things that you're working on and to learn more about your past. And I look forward to doing it again sometime, I hope. Likewise, it's been a pleasure. Thank you very much for having me and thank you for also starting this project and sharing people's perspectives. I'm sure there is a lot of human beings out there who will resonate and really appreciate the efforts you're putting in. Great. Thank you very much. Bye bye. Alright, bye.