Vimoh Live: Recent Episodes
Vijayendra Mohanty
Vijayendra Mohanty on where we came from, where we are, and where we are going as a culture, as a nation, and perhaps as a species. This podcast dwells on the intersection of storytelling and society and tries to throw light on the fact that religion, culture, and politics are manifestations of the human tendency to tell stories.
In this epsode, we talked about subsidies and the reason behind them, among other things.
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Vimoh Live is a bi-weekly call-in show where I talk with callers about religion, culture, and atheism.
Support the channel by clicking the JOIN button and becoming a member.
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Or make a one-time donation at https://vimoh.stck.me
Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/vimohlive/message
Vimoh Live is a bi-weekly call-in show where I talk with callers about religion, culture, and atheism.
Become a patron at https://www.patreon.com/vimoh
Or make a one-time donation at https://vimoh.stck.me
Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/vimohlive/message
Vimoh Live is a bi-weekly call-in show where I talk with callers about religion, culture, and atheism.
Or become a patron at https://www.patreon.com/vimoh
Or make a one-time donation at https://vimoh.stck.me
Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/vimohlive/message
We discussed history as it is, history as we want it to be, and what role imagination plays in our understanding of the past.
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In this episode, we talked about Indian influencers and the illogical behaviors they practice and promote.
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WE discussed claims of black magic and how to address them, the question of living and dealing with radicalised parents, and tribalistic instincts among humans.
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In this episode, a review and sicussion of the movie Adipurush.
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In this episode, we discussed freethought and engaging in it in the age of social media.
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In this episode, we discussed how religion and art intersect, how people with religion behind them cope, and how political paradigms shape religious identities.
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In this episode, I took comments and questions from listeners and we got to talking about caste bias when people see a knowledgeable person, and how fans of babas react when you call them a baba.
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In this episode, we had chill chats about empathy, the old "new atheism" and how pluralism seems a better way to approcah secular activism online.
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The episode kicks off with a passionate discussion on the issue of Hindi imposition. Callers express their opinions, sharing personal experiences, and shedding light on the complexities surrounding linguistic dominance.
Next, the focus shifts to the best ways to educate children about religion. Callers seek guidance on how to navigate the delicate balance between imparting religious values, promoting inclusivity, and fostering critical thinking.
In the final segment, the podcast dives deep into the paradox of religious scriptures. Callers pose thought-provoking questions about the coexistence of messages of equality within religious texts and the persistence of discriminatory practices in various communities.
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We talked about power structures, societal hierarchies, and how religion enables these divides and biases.
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In this episode of the live stream, we got to talking about gender panic that is being imported from US, some thoughts about caste and reservation, and a couple of calls about evidence for god.
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I mean, that's what I have in mind. You can raise other topics also. Vimoh Live is a bi-weekly call-in show where I talk with callers about religion, culture, and atheism. Support the channel by clicking the JOIN button and becoming a member. Or become a patron at https://www.patreon.com/vimohOr make a one-time donation at https://vimoh.stck.me
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Karnataka election is over. So Meghnad and I chatted about it a little. Some fun, some insights. Nothing journalistically earth-shattering.
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This episode, my webcam gave out and thus there isn't any good video to share. But the audio is clean and interesting.
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In this episode, we talked about the way to prevent relatives from falling into religious algorithmic rabbit holes and about how meditation everything that ensues from it is probably a physical phenomenon.
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We talked about the nature of power, ways of political power, and howthe powerful have a responsibilit towards those less powerful than them.
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Hello and welcome to this special live stream about artificial intelligence. The purpose of this show is to make you aware of the fact that even though AI is going to help us in many ways, it is probably also going to complicate our lives. In many ways, it may affect employment, governance, and policy, but it may also change the shape of religion and philosophy.
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In this episode, we delved into whether it is accurate to say that all art is political. And also into the art of politics being exercised by the ruling party in India.
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Fun q&a session with live chat about topics as varied as politics, governance, media, the caste system, and artificial intelligence.
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In this episode we discussed culture and those who feed on it, the perils of baba culture, and how many people misunderstand the workings of Parliamentary democracy.
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This episode had me answering questions about political positions, religious practices, and scams running wild across India.
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This episode was mostly me taking live chat questions. They ranged from misinformation from YouTubers to this strange imaginary beast called the "Right Wing Intellectual".
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A question answer session where I read comments and tried to answer questions on religion, politics, and society.
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In this episode, we talked about how Indian journalism is plumbing such sycophantic depths that the very nature of a citizen's relationship with power is being redefined. We also talked about gender panic and how it is an imaginary hauaa built to distract from actual gender issues. And we discussed science fiction motifs like time travel and... again... gender.
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In this episde we got calls about patriarchy, atheism, religious influence, and political imagination.
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In this episode, we discussed the bad arguments presented by theists, certain political matters, and tried to explain simple concepts twenty five times.
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Live chat where I took questions from live chat and talked about free will, divisive politics, and standards of evidence thatwe employ hen evaluating religious claims.
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In this episode, I talked about reason, theist-atheist debates, the need to see through propaganda,and my position as an atheist on attempts by religious people to have unity and compassion.
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In this episode, we had callers who talked about wanting to do good but not knowing how to, we had people who supported the Aryan Invasion notion, and we talked about my own issues as a content creator.
In this episode, instead of asking me about things, people were asking me about me and my beliefs. It was fun.
We chatted about artificial intelligence and what it means for the future of art and artists. We also dicussed caste and the merits and demerits of meditating one's way to god.
This episode was just me reading comments and answering questions from the live chat. Then there were connectivity issues and the episode ended abruptly.
In this episode, we talked about why upper caste Hindus think they are victims, why atheists can't have echo chambers, and about arguments for god based on pure conjecture.
In this episode, we talk to present-day Bollywood's "evil White guy" Zachary Coffin about matters pertaining to artificial intelligence and the unique challenges it places before the contemporary artist. We also discussed the history of technology, society's struggles to adapt to change, and the lessons that we all must necessarily learn in order to survive this A.I. storm.
Himanshu is an Indian YouTuber spreading critical thought and making atheism simpler to understand for Indian audiences. He was on call with us for more than two hours during which we took calls on topics that had to do with Indian society, conversational sensitivity, and atheism.
Sumana spoke about coming to terms with depression, finding a relatble therapist with lived experiences similar to her own in a foreign land, and we took questions and comments from people about therapy.
Come and become experts in an area that I will never be an expert on. Hemant talked about financial planning, the importance of securing one's future, the dangers that need tobe avoided, and imparted sage counsel to the young.
This episode went in a lot of directions that were not my area of expertise. Fortunately, I had Meghnad to help out. We took callers and talked about right and wrong, about markets, and about whether one should pay lakhs of rupees for an ethics course abroad.
In this episode, we had heated conversations (that could have gone better) and talked about theism, caste, Artificial Intelligence, and free will. All things considered, it went well I think.
In this episode we discussed separating the artist from art, cultural appropriation, democratic checks and balances, anti-Muslim bigotry, and the need for prominent atheists to be more visible. We also went into the dynamics of having rationality-related conversations with close family members.
Was gandhi as good as we think? Was Savarkar as bad as we think? Do nuclear weapons prevent wars? Can we have hope in the future of things getting better or is the doom already here? This episode was marred by certain technical difficulties but when it was not, we had wholesome talks.
The human condition is something philosophers have wrestled with since long. It occurred to me that perhaps I should get in the ring as well. And when I did, I found that our existence is framed by two unforgiving constants - the love that we need to have to make society work, and the need to kill in order to survive.
Abhijit Chanda, who goes by Rationable on the Indian athest Youtube community has been a podcaster who communicates science and scientific literacy. He has interviewed personalities like Dr Cyriac Abby Philips, Dr Sumaiya Shaikh, Dr Paul Offit, Dr Shantanu Abhyankar, Susan Gerbic, Rob Palmer, Mark Edward, and Pranav Radhakrishnan. Our conversation took us over most of the usual territories and even some unexpected ones. Like I had never thought of genetic modification of babies as arranged marriage. Had you?
In this episode we discussed families holding on to superstitions, someone’s education-related questions, and the matter of whether Yoga enables life in extreme conditions.
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In this episode, we talked about whether marrying across caste is the best way to deal with casteism, about the difference between places having religious significance and historical significance, and about whether there are valid grounds for people being touchy about their religions.
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This was episode 150 of the live stream, and it turned out to be a series of chill conversations about topics ranging from reincarnation research to Artificial Intelligence. Good fun! Do listen!
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In this episode, our topics went from why the powerful think the poor are lazy, whether Artificial Intelligence will make all human work redundant, and how we Indians are often less-than-perfect tourists.
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In this episode, I had Meghnad of with me to answer audience questions about religion, spirituality, self-help, and education. It was two solid hours of good conversation and insight. Enjoy!
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Full Transcript (auto-generated)
I was going through the Mahabharat the other day and uh, I was in one of the earlier parts and I was going through the scene where King Shantanu's wife, the river goddess Ganga, takes their first baby to the river and drowns it. King Shantanu has made a promise to the Goddess Ganga, and that promise is that no matter what she does, he will not question her.
So he silently watches and weeps. Later we are told that the reason the goddess was drowning the babies is because those babies were actually divine beings who had been cursed to be born on earth. So by drowning them, she was actually freeing them from their curse. After reading these scenes, I was struck by a strange thought, and that thought had to do with the kind of feelings that the scene evoked.
When I was reading about the baby's drowning, I was feeling sad because obviously who wouldn't feel sad at the sight of a baby being drowned in a river by its own mother as the father of the baby watches. But then I was told that the babies were divine beings and everything was okay, because if it's going according to a plan, then no matter how twist the plan is, it's all okay.
It wasn't an accident. It wasn't a tragedy. It wasn't... a bad thing. It was part of a plan, and that makes everything better. The reason I'm talking about this is because I wanted to talk about why mythological stories contain so much magic, why they contain so many divine plans, why they contain so many secret reasons behind things that happen, and often the things that happen are terrible.
I gave you one example, but there are examples like this across mythology in every religion. Islamic mythology has it. Christian mythology has it. Every religion, I suppose, on some level has stories that are tragic, but they have super cool explanations behind them. So let's talk about why that happens. Why do mythological stories contain so much magic when they don't actually have to, like, you know, if the purpose of a mythological story is to be a cultural artifact that unites people, it can do that without having magic.
Right? You can have a story about a brave prince who fought a... who, who fought another king and, uh, brought his wife back. You can have a story about a great teacher, uh, who told people nice things and then went back to wherever he came from. My theory is that it's because magic is a way to alleviate suffering.
Magical thinking exists in mythological stories because if it didn't, these stories would be horrific tragedies. A person comes to Earth and tells people nice things about being good to each other, and yet he's crucified. But wait, everything is okay because he comes back to life. It's magic. It was all according to a plan, and things are all hunky dory now, so you don't need to feel bad.
A child is persecuted and killed and it's very tragic. But wait, it's all okay because that child is now a star in the sky. Did someone die? Was it painful for? , did it rip your life apart? Wait, it's all okay. That person is not really dead. They're in another world having the best of times, so you don't really need to feel bad.
I think the reason mythological stories contain magic is because life is terrible, and these stories by themselves cannot be processed without at least some kind of a bandaid. You've lost. And I have lost people too. And I can tell you from a personal experience that I would like nothing better than to know that the people who have lost did not die in pain and are now permanently gone.
I would like to believe that they're having a great time in another world, and when someone tells me a story about them having a great time in another world, I want to believe it. , every fiber of my being wants to believe that the people who have lost close people, family members, friends, et cetera, who I loved very much, who are gone from my life and this world now, I would love to believe that they're not gone, and therefore the stories that tell me that they're not gone have value for me.
And that is the reason mythologies have magic. Tragedy is an inescapable part of life. . We all have to have to have to deal with it. And different people deal with it in different ways. But since imagination is a quality that all human beings share, we all dream. We all make up stories, we all lie, we all imagine things that are not, cannot be and will never be.
It is not a surprise that mythological stories have so much magic in them. I think the purpose of them being there is to alleviate suffering to a certain extent, and that's okay. It is the property of all literature. Literature is about alleviating suffering or at least crying out in pain so that other people may be able to hear you and say, yes, I have gone through that also.
You are not alone when you think about it, when you think about the human. , the condition that we are all in, the condition that the human species finds itself in, given that it lives on a small planet with a lot of dangers in a corner of a galaxy, in a universe where so much more exists. When you think about all this, you come to the gradual realization that we had to do something about the overwhelming sense of helplessness that surrounds.
We had to do something to feel good, otherwise, we may have gone mad. Human beings, for better or for worse are imaginative animals. and our imagination is a tool that has helped us create a lot of things, a lot of things that make our life easier. We have created machines that protect us. We have created structures that help us survive weather.
We have created devices that make our lives easier. Once such device is literature, it is a technology that we created to alleviate human. Every story on one level at least, is about feeling good. Maybe the good feeling that you get from reading one story is a sense of wonder, and that sense of wonder protects you against despair and hopelessness.
Maybe the feeling that you get from a story is fear, and that sense of fear protects you from a feeling of numbness. You feel something at. Maybe the feeling you experience after reading a story is love and affection, and that feeling protects you from giving up on human connection. It keeps you within society, it makes you reach out to other people and tell them that you love them.
And if you are fortunate, hear from them that they also love you. Literature like any other human technology was created to alleviate human. Mythology is literature. So when I say that a mythological story is just a story, I'm not insulting it. In fact, I'm actually giving it more respect than it probably deserves.
The reason we run into trouble with mythological stories is that there are two kinds of stories. One is the honest story and the other is the dishonest story. The honest storyteller will tell you a story and say, This is just a story. It's for you. It's for you to enjoy. It's for you to feel good because the world sucks, and I think you deserve to be happy.
The dishonest storyteller will tell you a story and then expect you to believe that that story is a literal description of reality. That is what happens with mythology. They're great stories. They're beautiful stories. Sometimes they're bad stories, sometimes they're terrible stories used for really bad purposes, but they are stories.
Because if we accept mythological stories as just stories, we will see them for what they really are. Attempts by human beings to feel good in a universe that doesn't really care about them, and that is a good thing to realize. A mythological story does not become less important because you think of it as a story.
It becomes more important by becoming part of human history itself, by becoming part of. Effort by human beings across the ages since the beginning of time, since the beginning of known history to make each other feel happy. That was my rant about magic and mythology. This is the kind of stuff that I do on this channel.
If you liked it, you can subscribe so that the next time I do this kind of thing, you get notified and you can watch the video and maybe get something to think about. Thank you for watching.
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Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
by Max Ehrmann ©1927
Narrated by Vimoh
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2022 is over. 2023 just began. In this episode, we talked about biases visible and invisible, how numbers don’t tell the full story, and about pain, suffering, and the brain.
Happy new year 2023 everyone!
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In this episode, people brought up the movie Don’t Look Up, the documentary the Social Dilemma, and matters that have to do with having conversations on privilege and power. Good fun.
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In this, the 145th episode of the show, we got callers who wanted to discuss caste, religion, careful speech, and political parties.
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AI art and related new mechanisms are going to revolutionise the world. But what will be the cost of this revolution and will the artist of today be standing tomorrow, after this storm has passed. What will change? What will be lost? How can we prepare?
Vinayak Varma is an artist and editor. He is the person behind the science fiction anthology Strange Worlds, Strange Times. He shares his despair and his hopes in this chat about artificial intelligence, art, artists, culture, and the future.
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This episode had us talking about plenty of caste and Reservation-related points. We also talked about separating art from artist, and about proving god using argument from contingency.
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This episode was about caste, and the conversation went in all sorts of directions, including eugenics FFS. We also discussed atheism, science, and politics of opportunity.
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In this episode, we talked about privilege and power and how those from oppressor backgrounds can try to get past the barriers created by their ancestors. We also spoke of ideology, liberal biases, and belief not being a pathway to knowledge.
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This episode was chaotic but still managed to find order in there somewhere. I went into topics I did not want to and emerged into other topics that I wished I could spend more time on but couldn’t. All in all, an interesting episode.
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A brief note I wanted to share about digital detoxes and how to actually do one without leaving social media.
I have very recently actually been on a little bit of an attempted detox. My Twitter account is just parked on Twitter. I don't feel that going back to Twitter. My Instagram account is still active, but I'm not actually using Instagram on my phone. I have removed the app from my phone. I'm using Instagram, the way people use Facebook.
I'm logging into Instagram from the desktop computer's browser, and I'm just using Instagram from there. This reduces 24x7 stress that I experience because of social media, but it also helps me continue using Instagram because it is at the end of the day, one of the places through which I get my messages out, including this podcast episode, by the way.
And there's something specific that I wanna talk about. It's digital detoxes and digital minimalism. I've been reading a book by Cal Newport called Digital Minimalism. It's about building focus in a word that offers us unending distractions in the form of social media. And Cal Newport has been a long time advocate of the idea that we should all quit social media because social media platforms are designed by corporations to be extremely addictive things.
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In this episode of the show, our conversations went from unity among rationalists to anti-caste mindset to finding god using meditation to secularism as a guiding principle of India. All in all, a very packed episode.
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Meghnad is a journalist, podcaster, and an avid social media user. I invited him over for a chat about Twitter, Meta, and other social media platforms and the ways in which our engagement with them affects our lives.
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Twitter is on the brink. And the reason is that its new owner is a petulant manchild. In this episode of the podcast, I talk about what’s happening at the world’s most powerful social media company and what it might mean for all who use the tool.
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In this episode, we talked about religion, logical overreach, and answers to some common arguments for the existence of god that are not actually arguments.
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Cartoonist Sumit Kumar and writer Adhiraj Singh are preparing to unleash their new animated show Aapki Poojita on unsuspecting Indian audiences. We got together to chat about their project, their journeys till this point, and the state of animation in India.
You can support the project on Kickstarter here.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bakarmax/aaapki-poojita-a-desi-animated-show-by-bakarmax
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In this episode we chatted with Dave Farina of the YouTube channel Professor Dave Explains. The conversation took us from Science communication, to abiogenesis, to quantum consciousness, to Naturalism as a worldview, to whether the internet is a net positive or negative. I also asked him about my two favourite mysteries - does math exist? and does free will exist?
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In this episode, we didn't take calls as I was not feeling well. But I did read some comments on culture, democracy, and the future of India.
In this episode, we talked about claims, evidence, and truth. We also talked about good and bad reasons to take up a religion.
Note: Certain parts of this episode have been removed in order to protect someone's privacy.
In this episode, we talked about language, English speaking privilege, Bombay privilege, going back to school, and the future of atheism.
In this episode, we went through caste matters, defining the supernatural, and patterns of privilege.
In this episode we talked about religion, the nature of reality, and about morality stemming from common good.
In this episode we talk about the claim that the big bang did not happen, that the universe is conscious, and that a lot of art is religious in nature.
In this episode, we discussed the variety of reasons behind religious conversion, and the tendency of rationalists to overreach into mental health territory.
This episode we talked technobabble, quantum quackery, religious morality, and religious conversion.
This episode took us from a long conversation about subjective experience, to one about caste and privilege, to another one about Brahmastra, Adipurush, and Bollywood's challenges with fantasy.
This episode saw us go through some deep shit. We discussed Materialism as a world view, atheism as a social movement, and the future of irreligious activism in India.
This episode had callers bringing up philosophy, propaganda, counter-propaganda, and even the very nature of reality.
In this episode we had callers come in and talk about their religious beliefs, about their opinions on Reservations, Capitalism, and even on how being apolitical is actually political.
This episode had us going from atheism to mythology to relationships to AAP being BJP part 2. Lots of people joined and lots of diversions were taken.
In this episode we talked about Bharat Jodo Yatra, the reason behind the Left not being more popular, and Type 4 civilisations.
This episode we took calls and spoke to a bunch of listeners about topics as varied as Capitalism, Communism, MCU, Kejriwal, and Indian politics.
In this episode we talked about the future of India, and the hopes and despairs that attend it.
This episode we talked about politics, power structures, and the need for sensitivity in dealing with cultural faultlines.
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Nakul Shenoy is a magician as well as a critical thinker. In this session, we will talk about how people sometimes say that hypnotism reveals knowledge of one's previous lives. We talked about the ethics, efficacy, and effects of hypnotism.
Full Episode TranscriptHi. This is again back to another livestream. And today we are going to talk about a thing that keeps coming up in our livestream chat. And that has to do with reincarnation, because one of the foundations, one of the main pillars of superstition or religion, as you want to call it in the subcontinent is the fact that the spirit continues to exist after death. And some people think that something called past life regression therapy, which is hypnotherapy in some way. Deviance says, you can't hear me, deviance, you can't hear me. Is my audio okay? I'll continue because I think my audio is okay. Nakul, can you hear me? Okay. So what happens is that people think that hypnotherapy or past life regression therapy reveals evidence that people used to have a past life or that it is going to that their spirit will survive into another life in the future. And to talk about this because they say something that keeps coming up to talk about this, I figured I'll bring in someone who's adept at these things or at least somewhat more aware of these things than I am. And that person is Nakul Shenoy, who is a professional magician. He has had experience with hypnosis and other things and he is the person with whom we are going to talk about all this today. So without much delay, I shall bring him on. Hi, Nakul.
Hey, Vimoh. How are you?
Good. So you would be someone who has written at least in some capacity in the past about all this, about hypnosis, past life therapy, past life regression therapy, and in general, the use of magic to imply that something like a superstition is actually real. Can you give us a brief overview of your background, your career?
Yeah. With regard to hypnosis itself, I got into around, I think age 16 to 18. And I've been into hypnosis for a few decades now. In terms of magic, I got in pretty earlier at around age five. By age 15, I was already performing shows. So that's been a 30 plus year career. And yeah, I perform as the mind reader, which essentially means that I'm a Mentalist. And so in my shows, I am doing exactly this right? I am using hypnosis. I am using suggestion. I am using magic. I'm using all these together to create the illusion of somebody who can go into people's minds and tell them what they are thinking of or predict things before they happen. So I sort of live this make believe that we are talking about.
Okay. So how did you learn you learned all this by yourself?
Magic? I am self taught. So I got hooked into magic pretty young. Like I said, I was fascinated by mandrig the magician. And I always wanted to be Mandrake right from age five. And I found some books early on, I found these magic kits that you still get in the market. That's what started me off. But that quickly got me in contact with magicians and through magicians, magic dealers, magic shops. And so I was sort of in the right place at the right time. I was brought up in Urupi and Urupiu and now has some of the best magicians of the country. So I met the Shankar there, I met Rallad Acharya there. And so Kuroli Ganesh, these are all sort of perhaps the top five in the country in that sense. That sort of started me off in magic. As I was performing magic, I was getting dissolution with it because I was doing a lot of tricks. I was cutting ropes and joining it. And I was doing all this. And I wanted to be Mandrick. Right. And Mandrick the magician was.
I have to point out that Mandrick, of all the superhero choices a child has as a young person, Mandrick is not the first thing that comes to mind. People assume people want to be Flash God and a Superman or someone with muscles, etcetera. Mandrick was a very cerebral hero to be inspired by at such a young age.
Correct. And Mandrick gestured hypnotically, right?
Yeah.
So I wanted to be Mandrick. I didn't want to have this truckload of equipment that put people in boxes and cut them, etc. But I didn't want to do that. I wanted to be able to just get because the comic book at least suggested that Mandreck didn't have any equipment. He just walked on, he did stuff. He just gestured hypnotically. And magic happened. And so I thought, okay, this regular magic is not cutting it. I need to learn hypnosis. So I was, I think, barely into my first year PUC when I heard that in Mangalo, a person called Pradeep Agarwal was conducting a hypnosis seminar. So I sort of got on a bus when I went over there, attended a two day workshop for them, which was life changing, which sort of one removed all the apprehensions or all the things I thought hypnosis does. I thought I could just get in front of people do this, and they would do everything I want. Right. I realized, no, that doesn't happen. I thought I could control people with hypnosis. I learned very quickly it doesn't happen. So the students actually taught me what hypnosis really is. And Interestingly way back then, we did something called Astral projection, where you sort of make a person sit, you take him through thing, and then you say, okay, I invite you into my house. And then this person sort of. And it so happens that the person I am still in contact with, the person I did this for. And later on, he became a very good friend. This person was JP from Autopay. And I sort of invited him to my house and start describing my house for me. He's telling me how my house is, and he's describing everything. So this whole out of body experience. So this was nice. Those two days was life changing. And I don't make anything from this, but I would highly recommend if people are interested in hypnosis. Pradhi Pagarwal is one of the best in the country. He's Hyderabad based, but he does a lot of stuff online. I think a lot of his workshops are also in what I mean in other places. So you can just get a semblance of what hypnosis is because to a large extent we believe hypnosis to be like what we see in the Hollywood movies and worse in the Hollywood movies. So it's not that it is pretty much creative thinking. I'll just quickly wrap up there. If you have gone through something like meditation. Right. And you sort of get to a state where you are very calm and cool and sort of in control of everything. Right. The super conscious kind of a thing that sort of is exactly the same state that hypnosis helps you get to. But very quickly, you don't need to have attained all that concentration because you are sort of going into a trance and you straight reach into the so called super conscious.
So yeah, just quick parallel because actually earlier today when I was looking up not earlier today, this last few days, I've been looking up some stuff about past life regression therapy. And it turns out that the opinions about its ability to access something like a past life memory are wildly different even among people who think that it is possible because there are people who do believe that past lives exist. But those same people in some cases might say that hypnotherapy is not the way to do it. And you would appear to be someone who is off the view that memories access, so called of a past life through hypnosis are not reliably bad.
So let me clarify that a bit. Over the years, over these 20 odd years, I have gone through a lot more trainings, not just in India but also abroad. I have attended some trainings with some of the best hypnotists in the world and some of them being hypnotherapist because of my standing in the world of magic. These guys are some of them are really good personal friends. Right now there are two sides at the base. There are two sides to hypnosis. Right. One hypnosis for entertainment and hypnosis for therapy and other things. Right.
Okay.
I personally have always liked to stay on the school that is hypnosis for entertainment.
Okay.
Right. Having said that, I have doubled and I have gone through all these courses on the therapy side. So therapy, when we say is a really large word. Right. So back in College on a small trick somewhere, a friend of mine twisted his ankle. I just said it was just like a few weeks off this course that I had done with the Pradeep. So I'm like, look into my eyes, you're not going to feel the pain it's gone. Right. But when you go and meet the Doc, if you come back so that you can tell him how much pain you're really feeling. Right. And it worked. And I'm like, yeah, this works. Now that is also therapy. Right. But that is therapy at one stage, at a limited stage in that sense, then you can get into four birds and things like that, which is slightly more permanent.
Okay.
Right. And agnostic is very useful there. I think the best use of hypnosis for therapy is around things, around the phobias, because most of the phobias are here are in the mind. There is no real medical reason for it. Right. I mean, there could be psychological reasons, but generally they're not, essentially because it's about the mind. Hypnosis helps a lot to remove four BS in that sense. Right.
Okay. So before I get to the point where I ask you about past life regression therapy, if in a nutshell, you can tell us what is it that happens to someone when they're in a state of hypnosis? Because you just mentioned that you could make someone forget about their pain. So what exactly happens to the mind? Is there a simple way of putting it?
Yes. Everything that is happening around us, the moment we are now talking to each other, everything that we are understanding, et cetera, is pretty much happening in our mind, in our brain. Right. In hypnosis, when we do stage hypnosis, we also bring in this aspect of saying, believe, pretend or act. Okay, believe, pretend, act, believe, pretend, act. We just say that. Okay. So as a stage of notice, I don't really care whether you really are in a trance or you are pretending you are in a trance. Yeah. Or you believe you are in a trance. So it doesn't matter to me as far as you play along in that sense. Right now, when you're talking therapy, it's the exact opposite. And the primary thing that's happening is that the primary thing that's happening is about the mind. So now I'm going to try explaining this in as dumb way I can.
Yeah, please.
Which is the classic way we go about life. Right. If we say, hey, today is a great day, it's sort of whether it turns into a great day or not, you start feeling good about it, you have some happy, positive associations.
Yeah.
If at some point of the day you tell yourself, oh, no, today is really bad, and then it sort of feels like everything is just not working out. I'm not even getting into the physical side of things. I'm just using that to explain what's really happening in the mind. There are things we do when we are getting on stage. A lot of performers do this. That is before they just get onto the stage. You just in the mind, go through the whole show, start to end very quickly and sort of say the audience is going to allow me today, et cetera. So that whole thing again, pretend, act, believe. Right. So that is basically what's happening in hypnosis, that either I am completely taken in hypnosis is taken me to a mental state where I am actually believing everything and it has an impact on me. Right. And that is when it is most effective, especially for therapy and other things.
Okay.
At most other points, the second and third one that I mentioned, it's nothing but creative thinking. Third is slightly more third is I want to be the star. Right. So hypnotists always have a great going. In College campuses, you may be okay hypnotist, but in a College campus you're going to rock because you are basically going to call ten to 15 people on stage and going to give them the license to go crazy, go nuts on stage and blame me or the performer for it. I have no clue. Did I do that? Did I run around yapping like a dog? I have no clue. That happened. Right. So now why hypnosis works is not really well established or explained in science. Like you said, there are too many schools of thought and there is a lot of research which says, yes, hypnosis real. Equally there are research. It says, no, it's just a make believe. It's just climb flat. Right.
That is also something I came across like people were saying, that is hypnosis real is also a question that a lot of people still talk about very seriously.
Correct. So research has shown that there is something that happens in the mind. Right. There is this change of mental state. There is a calmness that comes in very similar to, again, I'll repeat, connected to meditation, any kind of a relaxation exercise. So at best, hypnosis, or rather at worst, perhaps hypnosis is a wonderful relaxation exercise. At best. It is brilliantly, creative and can help with therapy and other things. And again, when I say therapy, I am still talking about phobias. I am talking about reducing pain, like physical pain, because pain is felt in the mind. So talking to the mind in that sense can help abate the feeling of the pain. It's almost like you've taken a painkiller. It's basically that just with words. Right. And it works. You have to see that in action for it. And there are, of course, stories that you hear which are like, there are a lot of practitioners who say that they have our own pregnancies under hypnosis, et cetera. They run surgeries. And I am not that much of a believer, but I have seen it being immensely useful to help people with their confidence, to just go over a lot of phobias. I myself have used it to help people who for some reason felt like they had seen a ghost at some point in time and that thought was with them and to sort of take them through a session where you basically help them go over the phobia.
Okay.
That's where I will draw the line. Right. I'll sort of park here because now after this, I will get into past life regression and perhaps things like that.
I was going to get there in due course of time, but I wanted to set up you like, I want to prepare a path to get to that point. And you mentioned that hypnosis can put people into a meditative state. And there are guru type people who say that meditative States can also bring back past life memories or that if you meditate really hard, you can become aware of your past life, et cetera. And I asked you earlier if you are a materialist or a believer in some stuff, and you said that you do believe in some stuff. So before we go into your ideas about whether or not hypnosis can bring back past life therapy, past life memories, do you think that past lives is a thing? Do you think that the soul exists after death?
I don't know. Okay. I would love to believe all this. I would love to believe all this.
I can't, but I would love to.
No. Correct. I'm a magician, and I would love to believe that there are real magical powers out there. I would love to believe that people can appear things and make it come for real. I would love to believe that people can really read people's minds. All that I do on stage. I would love that to be real. And I'm always on a search for finding people who can do this for real. Sadly, every time I come across something, it's a very badly done magic trick.
Yeah.
And I think that's where the problem happens.
You mentioned earlier. Right. Like before a show, you'll pop yourself up by telling yourself that people are going to love me. I think the end result of all of this questing is to find that's what happened to me, by the way, is to find that human beings are very bad at telling the difference between stories and reality. They're so bad that they believe their own stories, that they tell themselves.
That'S a known psychological syndrome comes to mind. But effect. Dan really comes to mind for stories around this and also a ton load of other psychological research. Now, I think it was predictably rational, which sort of starts with where he says three people of three of them were talking and each start describing he and two of his friends were professors. And they start describing where they were on when 911 happened. And they realized that the three of them are saying very different stories. And at some point, Dan realizes that one of them is actually telling the other story.
Wow.
And he's telling it like me, my son. Right. And that's the part of pretend act, pretend believe. What I said is exactly that the mind doesn't know the difference. Human mind does not know the difference between act, pretend, believe the moment. You start acting, you start pretending because you are. Now it's like a good method actor who wants to cry on the scene. Right. They live that moment. They start with wanting to act, and that leads into the pretend, which is that they want to live the moment and then before they know it Realtors, are coming out.
Yeah.
Because now they're living in that moment. And that's the belief. Right. In one of the pieces I wrote around hypnosis was not even getting into a tranche. It was like if you're walking into an interview just before actually going in in the world, when we actually went into rooms and met people just in your mind, close your eyes and just imagine you going through that, going in and acing the interview, blah, blah, blah. And then you just go around, life normal, but your mind goes through like, oh, I have been here before. This is the second time I'm doing this. And all these years are gone.
You can spontaneously create confidence when previously there was that correct.
And that is basically the essence of this. Right. Even when you're saying it processes something at some point, if you're taking somebody through, it's a lot of pleasible. Right. Even when you're doing Caribbean, it's a lot of pleasible. But it's a pleasible 100 times because I have put you in a state in a susceptible state, to be very Frank, where you believe that for lack of a better example, it's Ricky, somebody standing you're totally allowed to make fun of Ricky here. And you feel it. I mean, forget that. Let's try this. Right. Everybody here, I want you to just hold your hands next to your own hands like this. Come on, do it. Just put this and bring that slightly like say, yeah, that should be fine. And now slightly far off. Yeah, perfect. Now I wanted to just concentrate between the two palms. Right. Okay. Don't rest your hand on the mic. Either you have to keep it below or it's okay with no, it's above it.
I'm not touching it.
Just concentrate on the palms. Right. Or actually the area between the palms. And you will start feeling some energy there. You start feeling some magnetism, right?
Yeah.
And I just concentrate. And now I want you to believe that this magnetism is actually our hands are being pulled against pulled towards each other. They are coming closer and closer and closer. Right. Because as you just imagine that as they get even 2 mm closer, the power gets even more stronger. And you will feel that whether the hands come together or not, you will feel between your palms really like a vacuum pulling them like a suction pulling them together. Right. I do find something.
I'm not sure.
Yeah. So that's basically it. Right? I'm not even done. I'm hoping a lot more people who are watching this now or later go through this because it's just that there's nothing happened.
But I know. So I think what happens is that I feel something, but I don't know what it is. And then you tell me what you think it is and my mind fills in the gaps. Is that what is happening.
Also a lot of simple things that always happen in the hand, which is blood flow, et cetera, et cetera. And we normally don't hold our hands at this point and we don't hold it like this. So there is that feeling of.
This is a place I have never been in before, that sort of thing.
But what's very fascinating for me is when I'm doing this, let's say the whole audience, you have hands coming very quickly together, hands interlocking, and then you can quickly get into things like your hands are locked, you can't separate your hands and that's it from something as pretentious as this without taking them into any kind of a trance. You can move them very quickly into a trans state. You might have seen a couple of my old videos where I'm getting people to lock there. They can't even say their own name. They have name amnesia and things like that, which is that it is not like I have power over them. Hypnosis is not me having power over them. Hypnosis is me being a guide. It is self hypnosis. At any point. Hypnosis is self hypnosis. I'm helping you hypnotize yourself. Right.
Because you said that if someone does not want to be hypnotized, they cannot be hypnotized.
Yes, to a large extent, yes.
Okay.
There is always caveats, but there is also something that you might want to be hypnotized but may not get hypnotized.
Yeah. So clear something up for me. Am I right now in a state of hypnosis or am I talking with you?
No, you're not in hypnosis.
Turns out I'm thinking I'm having an interview, but everyone is laughing in the chat because I'm clucking like a chicken.
We could do that. No, please, we could do that.
So people keep leaving your questions and the questions in the chat. Once I'm done with my series of questions, I'll take on your questions and we'll do this till 11:00. So we have time.
Yeah, we can do it is longer. I'm sorry, I was not even seeing the chat part of it.
You can, but I'll put up the questions in sequence on the screen when we get to them right now, don't get distracted by them because people are.
Friends. I'm seeing some magicians ask questions also. I'm like going through that very quickly.
So let's finally get to the main point, which is you had mentioned to me that you don't think that hypnosis can bring past life experiences to mind. And you also said that you don't know if a past life is a thing. I personally am a skeptic at a materialist before I even go there.
Okay, I need to clarify. Right. I was still talking therapy. I draw the line at a point, like I said, about 400 BJ's. And I'll explain why personally, every two days I get emails from people because of my online persona, of being a mind reader, of being a hypnotist. Can you help me with this? Can you help my daughter with this? Can you help my son with this kind of a thing? Right. And many times people come to you when they've tried everything, they've actually tried stuff. I have doctors coming to me about their kids because they are at a point where they want anything that might work. Now, that's where a large part of this therapy comes in. This is so called therapy because now this is beyond your normal thing of your hand is fractured, I'll reduce your pain so that you can go to the doctor. Right. This is a bit beyond that. This is me playing with things I don't know about. So even when I have attended a lot of I'm a certified thing on almost of these things, I can actually start therapy practices. I have like certificates from trainers in UK, US and all that the point I always ask them at the end of it is, are you a medical practitioner? Are you somebody who is a doctor? Right. I'm using it as an overencompassing word there. Because for me, the larger problem becomes that of do I know enough about what I'm doing to people? For example, you might have an issue which for all I know, might be a tumor in somewhere. Right. And I might talk to your mind and say, your pain is gone and the pain is, to a large extent gone. Now, the example I gave you, the couple of times I did it, I essentially ensured these people do go to a doctor because under physical pain, but the pain would come back in its full when you go back to the doctor. Now, if I am doing any kind of a long term therapy for people, because that's how this scheme works. Right. You come back to me for three settings, I'll take away whatever are your ailments. A lot of times we are, in that sense, just hypnotizing them. We are making them believe that their pain or their ailment has gone away without really knowing what is ailing them. And that's why I said I am on the school of entertainment and not on the therapy. Right. So sorry. I mean, I needed to say this.
No, totally.
Before I went to the past life part. Right.
No, I understand totally because I understand this because in your capacity as someone who's a professional in this respect, I can always understand that there will be caveats that you will need to give. So this was totally okay. And I'm happy that you did it because you mentioned something crucial and it reminded me of something else that I had read a few years back about, like someone wrote to a magazine help column and said that I do not want to get married. My parents are forcing me to get married. This was a young woman, and apparently they had tried to hypnotize her into getting married. And she wrote to this columnist and this columnist said, whoever tried to hypnotize you is violating their medical oath and B, this is criminal and you should seek legal help and everything. So this does happen a lot.
Yeah. I don't know if the hypnosis would work. To be very Frank, with all due respect, yes. The hypnotist has no right to do that. And what the hypnotist is trying to do is wrong. But having said that, being a hypnotist, I really doubt it.
We have a related question about that. We have a related question about that. But I'll get to that in a minute. But let's get to our main thing, that we are like 32 minutes into the conversation. We still haven't got to our main thing. Do you think past life recognition therapy works? And if it does not, then why do people think that it does?
Okay, what is past life therapy? Earlier, it used to be called past life regression. In recent times, it's been called past life therapy. It believes in the fact that what is ailing me today is because let's say I have a phobia. I'm scared of the dark. This is how it starts. I'm scared of the dark. Why are you scared in the dark? Okay, we will close your eyes. And now please play along. I won't hypnotize you. Okay. Just close your eyes.
Okay.
Okay. Let's imagine for a minute that you have a fear of darkness. Okay. Now, one of your various past lives, he's like, really doubtful. He keeps opening his eyes to ensure he's not.
No, I'm scared of actually.
I'm scared of darkness.
My own eyes closed.
I'm afraid.
No kidding. I'll do it. I'll do it.
Yeah. One of your various past lives has the answer to you having a fear of darkness. I want you to go to that. Lock in your thought on that. Okay. Okay. Now open your eyes. I was like, here to say your eyes won't open when your eyes are stuck and take you. And I will not do that. But what you just did. And I don't know if you saw something, but. Okay. Curious, what did you see?
Nothing.
Nothing. Okay. But if I had put you in a trance, I've spent four minutes asking you to do a certain level of breathing, get into a trance, et cetera, et cetera. And now I'm guiding you through this. I'm going to give you time. Are you not finding anything? It's okay. Find something. Your creative uses will find something.
Something? Yeah.
Right now it will find something. You will say, oh, yes, I'm in a past life. Okay. What do you see? I see myself as I'm like dressed. I'm like dressed royally. I'm on this seat. And then there are these loads of people. It looks like I'm a King. Right. Yeah. Okay. Blah, blah. You sort of make them. So you're essentially doing what in NLP we used to call a movie theater experience.
Right. In case somebody doesn't know about it, it's neuro linguistic programming.
Yeah. Neuro linguistic programming is again, an area where a lot of again, the same thing. It started with saying, I can help you take your phobias away, et cetera. Right. And they said, what is your phobia? Okay. So the way they had this out of body experience, which was essentially you sit down and imagine that you are seeing a moon play and you are watching yourself in that. So, like, if you hate darkness, you are now watching a movie of you in a dark room. And so supposedly because you have seen this, your fear of darkness goes away, blah, blah, blah. The problem happened is that example works for certain kind of, Bobbys. It's very problematic if there are traumatic experiences. And now you're asking the person to watch themselves go through traumatic experience and relive this in their mind again and again. Right. So taking that back into past life, the primary problem here is one I am just encouraging free thinking, which Hypnosis is a great tool for. Right. And for smaller issues, smaller therapy problems. It helps. But the moment people start believing this, it's like everything else. Right. I have this problem today because in one of my past lives, I did this. Now this is now self hypnosis. That is where the dangers are. Now you're doing self affirmation in the longest of ways and you are essentially, I don't know, the opposite of self affirmation.
Self deformation.
Yeah. So you repeatedly telling yourself this is the problem. Right. And you start believing it.
Yes.
Parent teller who are very famous today with their foolers shows magic years back created a series called Bullshit. It ran for seven to eight series. I mean, that they exposed a lot of this, especially things like past life regression and stuff. Now, one of the things that we found in just conducting Hypnosis workshops because Interestingly, Pradeepa Garb has conducted in each of these two day sessions that he does, he does one part where he says, this is an interesting exercise. I won't get into whether this is true or not, but I will just take you through this experience and you teach everybody, like your 30 odd people in 30 to 60 people in the class. So you get them to hypnotize each other and you hear their experiences. Right. Interesting how most of the times they are Kings or Queens for great political reason. I personally have met many Gandhi. I've met many Bhagat Singhs. So it's interesting. Right. Either the solar is in multiple States.
I have a question about this. These people who turn out to be kiopatra, Julie Caesar or Mahatma Gandhi's. It's a favorite. Yeah. A lot of people think they were kiopatra in their past life. But do you think that someone the first thing someone's mind goes to is Cleopatra in one person and in some other person? It's a completely novel setting, like they're writing fiction. Do you think it's got to do with how creative a person is? Because someone is not creative. They'll latch onto something historical, but they're creative. They'll make up their own past life. Or is it the other way?
You can't do anything to choose your future. Right. You have no bearing on why you are where you are today. And we pretty much have not much in that moment bearing on what we can do for tomorrow. But here's a free run. I am basically saying here's a blank check. Go and write your own past. And because you are in so called hypnosis, you can blame me saying this is real. Right. Okay, I take you back to the stage experience of hypnotizing. You and saying a dog is chasing you. Or in Las Vegas. I've seen people in other places also. We do it. I myself have been a participant on stage and for each shows, I love being not just the hypnotist. I love being hypnotized.
Being hypnotized.
Yeah. I love that.
It sounds like it must be a fascinating experience.
It is quite a fascinating experience because you realize to a large extent you are in control. I mean, I can either go nothing or I can completely go like this. It's completely here. And it takes that one moment for me to say, okay, I am going to be hypnotized versus I am not right now. I'm not saying everybody can be that right. But that's very interesting. Okay. The last biggest example I was saying was pretty much telling people to strip on stage this fantastic hypnotist called Anthony Cool. I was shocked when he just got a person on stage and said the room is getting hotter, blah, blah, blah. And in no time the person was I don't know if it was his own person audience, I doubt it would be his own person. I mean, he can do this.
He'll probably get that to someone who is not prepared for it already.
Yeah. But it's Vegas, right? So like I said.
You can do it in Vegas.
But when we do it, say in a similar thing in India, you would say you would not get to the physical part of the clothes, but you would get the room is suddenly becoming very cold. Right. And when I stamp my fingers, the room is getting very cold. You are looking for a blanket, but there's nothing to cover you. You're looking for a jacket. You are feeling good. And you see this entire bunch of twelve odd people on stage going like this, right. And then suddenly you're like, okay, something happened. Somebody turned on the heater, but the heater has been turned on at a very. So now what is also very clear is that this is all in the mind. But then there are people who completely sweat. One of the points where I was trying to help that person who thought he had seen a ghost halfway through that session, three minutes into that session, he was just sweating like he was wet because I basically made the thing off. Just turn around and open your eyes and in your mind, of course, and there is nothing standing there. Just look around your room. And this guy goes, he just starts. And I'm like, okay, in his mind, he's actually now imagining the ghost rather than imagining a room without the ghost. Right.
So there is a limit to how much even you, as the hip noticed, can control the experience of the person.
The control of the experience is completely you right. I can only give you suggestions.
Okay. And you don't have much control over how those suggestions manage.
Exactly. Now, coming back to the real past life thing, it's exactly that. I am just giving you guidance. And now it's absolutely for you to figure or what you want to see. I sort of saw this message from Samar saying it's very similar to getting high. I would think so.
And Summer also says that he will definitely choose the latter. But since you mentioned about this lack of control over their experience and you have no control.
Let me just give an example. Sorry. I'll just give one thing he tried because Pradeep, whenever Pradeepawal comes to Bangladesh to do his workshops, I just go for the fun of it. I just go sit back and watch. And it's also that moment to meet your mentor, spend half a day a day because we never get to catch up with each other. So the last time this was happening, I just walked up to Sadeep and gave him like a nudge. Right. So he got a person on stage and he hypnotized after everybody had learned this and said, okay, now we're going to do this past life thing on stage. And he calls it past life progression or whatever. So he hypnotized this person and then ask the person, just because it's a demo. So you will be going to one of your various past lives. But just so that everybody understands something, you'll go to a past life where you are a human and I want you to go to one of your past lives where you are a human. Are you there yet? The person says, yes. And then he says, okay, so look around you. You are a girl in London now, you are around age seven. Describe what's happening. Right. And this person starts describing how she's wearing a white gown and it's the early 1900 and there are horse carts going around, et cetera. And now the progression happens, right. So now. I'll jump you to when you are 20 years of age. I'll jump you to when you're 60 years of age. What are you seeing? Et cetera? Very clear depiction of what this person is seeing, what life she is leading, et cetera, et cetera. He gets her out of the session. And this person that he had hypnotized, or rather even now he's one of the top past life therapy people of Bangalore. Okay. He was a student. So he says, all that is fine. How was it? He says real? Did it feel real? Yeah, it felt real. This, that all that happens. He said all that is fine. I just have one question. How did I know that in one of your various past lives you are a human aged seven and a girl in London, and the guy goes, no answer, right? And this was not a normal person. This is the person who charges people day in and day out to do so this was our way of teaching him a lesson, right?
This is telecom delusion on another level.
It is all about me planting a thought. And that's what I do on stage, right. If I want you to think of something, I am planting a thought in your mind. I am doing justice. I'm seeing a lot of things to make you do certain kind of choices. Those are the exact same things that apply when you're doing something like pass life regression or therapy, whatever you want to call it in. Hypnosis. I'm sorry, I saw another comment and smile.
The PMO one.
Yeah, they reached out to me, but I don't think for what.
So we have the software called Pegasus and we know that this person is an asshole. Can you also hypnotize them into thinking that they don't get infected?
I don't hear you.
Nor did I not get any of you in the chat. So how did you like the film Inception? Did it strike you as something that was inspired by hypnosis?
Weirdly. You're gonna kick me for this? I have not seen Inception. It's always been on my to. Do you like, I have Inception in like, Bluray.
If you are not sleepy right after this live stream ends, turn your lights off and watch Exception, the Bluray version right now. I think you will enjoy it a lot.
Yeah, I think that's one of the reasons I'm not watching because ton load of people after my shows come and say, you know what, you did that's. So like Inception, you're planting thoughts?
Yeah, planting ideas and things like that.
And that's been a pitch I was performing with. And so it was like, okay, I do not want to now watch and get sort of, oh, that's why your plot comes from actually about a magician.
Like, if I were to put it in terms of stage magic, magician plants ideas in someone's head and then faces the consequences himself. So that would be the best way to describe it, but I won't spoil it for you. Please do watch it.
One few questions.
Sure. We're already at 50 minutes, so I wanted to ask one more question, but we'll see if we have time left after the audience question is over because that's just one thing I wanted to ask. Shamir says, hold on.
Hey, Shamir.
So popular question I've been asked by many is that does hypnosis work in all languages or are there any language barriers?
Hypnosis works in all languages. The person being hypnotized should understand the language that he's being hypnotized in. Having said that, I have friends. And Shamir, you're a magician, so you would know a few of these.
Shabir is a magician. Hi, Shamir.
Yeah. She's I think logging in from the US. So there are performers who can hypnotize without too much reliance on word. Now what can they do with it? How much? Like, is it all about only taking somebody till the Tiller trance or beyond? That is a different thing. Right. So what do you want to achieve after hypnosis? After hypnotizing, somebody. What do you want to achieve? The second part, but does it work? Like my friend Brian Phillips in Tywin? He just and ton load of people like that who just generally do what something called street hypnosis. They just walk up to people. The video looks like this. They just walk on to the people, tap on them, just say something and walk off. And that guy just stands there like this for like for an hour.
Do you believe that is real?
Yeah, I can do that. So yes, it is real.
Wow. Okay. I'm not going anywhere close to you ever in my life. I'm scared.
But I have learned from Brian ages back and then some more friends of mine do this immensely. Well, I sort of again digressed from hypnosis into other areas. I don't see the value in getting 20 people on stage and making them stand like statues on stage. My show is not about my show is about reading minds. So I use hypnosis or skills of hypnosis only to plan thoughts and make people more susceptible. Right.
Okay.
So that's where my focus is.
The one time I have met you in real life was at a Comic Con. I can totally imagine you coming and telling me, go sell someone else's comic books. And I'll be like, Robin and Ruthija asks, do you go through hypnosis while learning it? And I will just add a supplement to it. Is it possible to learn hypnosis without getting hypnotized?
I tried to learn hypnosis through books. Like, I learned magic through books pretty early on. It didn't work for me, especially those kind of books that I found in India where like put a candle and stare at it for 8 hours or whatever nonsense. So I didn't have the patience for it. And so clearly I can't just look at you and hypnotize you. I can today, but that's a different story.
No, but you learned how to you went through the process.
But I do believe going through hypnosis as an experiencing hypnosis, whether you believe it is true, whether you believe you played along, whether you believe I just pretended and walked off. I fooled the hypnotist. That's fine. But I think you need to go through that experience. Then you know what your audience is going through. Because the biggest thing I have heard from people is like, I met this hypnotist who tried and tried for 30 minutes. He just could not hypnotize me. Right. I met this guy once in my hometown and I said, we want to be hypnotized. He ran one of the biggest super large stores, their grocery stores. I always wanted to be hypnotized, but I've never been hypnotized. I said, okay, let's do that now. And three minutes later, he was completely into it because I took away a few of the fears he had about his Masters. One, since you're here the point, that when I hypnotize you, you will be like in a state of coma. No, that's not how it is actually. Remember the creative mode. You will hear more. You will perhaps hear things that you normally don't hear because you are now mind is concentrating a lot more. It's free of all the immediate things. Right. As an Ipnotist, also, I will do things like your hands are stuck in your hands can't come apart or your eyes are closed and you can't open them. But the point is as simple as that. When you are in a hypnosis session, all it really takes for a person to come out of the trance in that sense is open their eyes or at any point tell themselves, I'm done with this. Right. I've seen this on stage. I've seen this like 20 people completely like this. And the hypnotist gives a suggestion. One of the people just doesn't like it, looks at him and just walks off from the stage. Done. Okay, Ruthvija. Yes. I think going through hypnosis while learning it is the best way to do it.
So there is a question from Priya Shagarwal saying what is the explanation for children having past life experiences? Or rather, I think he meant claiming to have past life experiences and these experiences coming out to be true.
So ages back, you guys would have heard of this person called Professor Richard Weizman. Richard Weissmann is one of the most famous psychologists in the world today. He's written books like Cocology. He has the Cocology channel on YouTube, which I think has millions or billions of views. Richard and I were working on trying to find people who claimed last night that they had gone through. Like, I have this kid who can tell me that he was this person. And then we went and searched for that and have a book on that somewhere else. Reincarnations. Yes. That's the book that I remember now. So there are tons of these stories out there. And Richard, at that point in time wanted to pick three or four stories across India. He's in Edinburgh. He's part of the herd for Chai University. And he wanted to find out if some of these are real. I did letters to Editors across the country. This is early 2000, letters to Editors across the country and all that. We got some ten to twelve letters. There is not a real evidence story that has emerged from all this, not just my example, but in all this cohort's work and a ton load of work. Of course, in popular culture, there is popular culture. You always say, oh.
There is this scared, unverified.
And I went and searched and he happened to be that guy, right? Yeah. He went and said Hi to the recent grandmother.
There was some news article about a scientist who has prepared a boatload of case studies. And he says that they're falsifiable like children have claimed to have these details in their past lives. And when you go and check those details, those details are found to be true. I'm not saying that you know the answer to this or neither or anyone does. But what conceivably could be the reason behind children coming up, coming up with accurate details?
I have no clue, to be Frank, outside of my purview, but most of the time stories get added on. I start with one word or I start with the line, right?
Yeah.
In trying to find something, whatever was the original. Let's say you're a story writer. Let's say you write five lines of the story. Right. And then you go out and do 20 conversations and come back and you don't get the first four lines, but you have to write the same four lines again without looking at your first four lines. You're going to write completely differently. But you're going to believe this was exactly the story I said earlier. Very weird example. But I personally believe something like that is happening.
I totally understand.
Why would a kid suddenly wake up and say, I was this?
It's like the parents are instead of asking the child, what are you saying? They'll say, who are you in your past life? And the child will come up with something because I remember asking my nephew if he had seen a snake and he said yes, how big was it? He extended his arms because as far as he could extend it. And then I asked how many arms did it have? And he said, ten arms, because that's how much he could count. And he was a baby barely walking. So children, if you give them a sentence with three blank spaces, they'll fill in something.
No, absolutely. Like I said, this is creative thinking at its best. But if you want a scientific answer for it, I'm not the qualified person to answer that. But in my own world of theories I think that's exactly what's happening. Kids are basically either the parents want the kids to come up with these kind of stories because that's the parents claim to Fame many times it's the parents claim to fame. I mean it's like all these talent shows, you watch all these talent shows and I think this is something you wanted me to touch upon. Recently a kid went on and we went after Africa and after that because he said this kid has supernatural power. He just said it in fun. But that became the promo clip for this kid because she blindfolded herself and she was able to read or whatever.
That's a common thing. Also like someone called Rajiv Malotra stood by Saffron Guru whose name is Swami Nityanand or something and they were into this like they were trying to open schools in Bangalore to encourage children to pursue their third eyes or something. And you wrote something about that also.
Yes. So we have been carrying forget all that I have written. You can just search third eye Nakul Shenoy and you'll find the banking articles on it. But here's the thing, the next time you find somebody not a magician, the magician is telling you he's tricking you for your entertainment. But if you're finding anybody in your family or in your circles who has paid ton load of money, I mean trust me, this is $50,000 of rupees plus for a kid to go through a two day three day workshop whether coerced into learning how they can sort of read mines with a blindfold. The last time I met a kid like this I said I trust you completely. I just have one thing. Can you remove the blindfold and put that on the book right. And now read, keep eyes open. I don't care because as a magician I can blindfold myself and put hoods around my neck, etc, etc. And put steel blindfolds or whatever and drive and do stuff. So magicians have been doing this for 200 years plus so there are tons of load of ways we can do this. They are using one of these methods. They are teaching the kids this method but they're teaching it in such a way that the kids are choirs into believing that they should not tell anybody that they are cheating. Yeah, so much so if you hint at your cheating or anything like that the kids will start bawling, screaming and shouting. It's all there. So it's very simple. It's very nice to say white cloth on the I put the cloth on the book to be Frank I would find it very difficult to do something like that.
That is actually a very good way of dealing with this but we're at 1 hour, 1 minute right now. Are you okay with going on for ten more minutes or it should be fine. So before we proceed to the next question I would really love it if you could show us your book.
So this is Smart Course and Magic. This was published in 2015 with Harper Collins. This is available across the world, mostly through Amazon and most of the bookshops also. But I think it's pretty much run out of stock in most of the bookshops, so you would find it easier on Amazon. So this is the only book I've written. So if you go into Amazon or any of the bookshops and search for my name, which is down there, you will find Smart Course in Magic. This is a course in magic. I used to do a workshop. I used to do a two day workshop in magic. That workshop is what is condensed into the book. This is not a book of 200 tricks and things like that. I think I barely teach 20 tricks in there. But the point is I teach performance. The idea here is again, I think there's a chapter on hypnosis also. But the primary thing is, what is magic? How do you approach magic and how do you perform magic? Is what is covered in there primarily.
No, that's perfect. It would have been a lost opportunity if I hadn't, because I do think that more people need to be aware of how their minds work, how their minds can be fooled. So that the kind of thing that we often run into. Superstition, for example, can be dealt with more effectively.
Just to add on to that, I believe magic is something people should absolutely, totally learn, and especially kids should be taught magic, even if I don't mean so much because I have written a book on it. But it is the best tool for developing critical thinking.
Yeah.
If you have a kid in the home who knows even three or four magic tricks and they understand the principles, why magic works, they're going to question everything in life. You don't need to teach them how to question things. They are going to question things in a way no other education can train them for, which is why a lot of universities in Europe are especially putting a lot of thought into critical thinking and magic, for example, that's a side benefit.
So Samurai has a question. A person who is in good mental health and has strong convictions and form of certain beliefs, is it difficult to hypnotize them into believing in something opposite to their beliefs? I think this is something that is related to that thing we were speaking about where girls parents were trying to hypnotize her into getting married.
Yeah. So quite an abstract question, Samar. So it's difficult to give a general answer to this. Right. What is opposite? I believe smoking is good. Somebody else had a smoking question. I believe smoking is good, but I want to be convinced smoking is not good for me, which I know internally. Right. I want to give up smoking, and hypnosis will help tremendously with this. Absolutely. Right. So in a way, what you're saying. I think that's the other question for smoking and things like that. It absolutely, absolutely helps. But again, it has to be you. Right. So I'm going to talk to you because you asked the question, let's say this is you and it's you that wants to give up smoking. A hypnotist can help you. But to be Frank, you don't need the hypnotist. It's like saying, I will be fit. I will run every day. Right. But for us, as somebody said, to wake up at 05:00 every day, 05:00 in the morning, you're going to get up and you're going to run 05:00, you'll get up and say, what the heck? And I'm going to go back to sleep. That's what happens even with this. Right. I think was I reading one of these Agatha Raising stories, which I came into contact very recently. So she goes through this whole thing where she's hypnotized. She wants to give up smoking. So she goes and meets Hypnotist, and he says every time you try to smoke, you get the taste of burnt tire. So every episode is that like she takes a smoke and she goes, it's the worst thing, five, six times. And then done right after that, the cigarettes back, the smoke is gone, the burnt tire is gone. So at the end of it, I think it's all here. Hypnotism definitely helps, but the success of it always is also dependent on what the individual wants. So I think that answers both your questions, in a sense.
Okay, so Haymanth saw you in his office performing magic, and you correctly guessed the first word on a random page from a book you had never seen before, just by reading the face of the person holding the book, apparently. And how did you do it? Like Bangalore?
Yeah, I don't know. Okay. Could be tons of the offices. I play this character on stage. Right. My onstage character is the mind reader. And on stage, it's basically not just books. I would ask somebody to think of a person or a place or a vacation they've been to and things like that and be able to tell them what they're thinking of. And in an unprepared scenario, it would be something like this because rather than using my own books, if there are books available, like if I was doing this with more at his house, I would say, why don't you pick up a book from behind you and look at. But I'm not going to really get into the how there.
Okay, so is that you protecting a trade secret?
Yes. It's more in the territory of the mentality side of things or the magic side of things.
Okay.
There are multiple ways of doing these things. I don't think explaining anything.
No, totally. Let's not spoil the magic. So Hemat obviously always wants to get to the bottom of things. He's a friend of mine. Rushdie asks. Also a lot of people say that they start speaking foreign languages.
The moment they get drunk. Question.
I think, do they speak those languages correctly?
Yeah. So that would have been my follow up. So the vernacular joke in that sense in OT, mostly in OT, Bangler, after he gets done, he speaks English. Right. So that is like a cultural joke. I think that's coming to movies. But I think to hypnotize somebody and say, hey, you can talk a foreign language. If I was doing this on stage and I was hypnotizing you, I would say, okay, in a moment you're going to speak Chinese and you would now would that really be Chinese? No. Do you think it's Chinese? Perhaps. Right. So that's how I'm going to.
And does the audience think it is Chinese? Perhaps because they don't know Chinese ideas?
Yeah.
Nelson says, I have not found any scientific study that supports NLP or approves that it works. Nlp ideas don't match with modern neuroscience. Any scientific evidence that it does is energy a real thing.
Okay, you're opening a can of forms.
So I have a Tony Robbins right here that I have never opened. So this answer will determine if I do.
Richard Bandler did this PhD write off on Milton Ericsson's work was a Hypnotist and called it Neuro linguistic Programming. That's how the whole thing started. Right now, again, to me it's a branch of Hypnosis because that's how it came about. Nlp guys always say, oh, we are not Hypnotized, we are doing NLP. I am a master NLP practitioner and I've done pretty much everything that is there to be done in Hypnosis. I don't see a difference. I think in the mind of the audience, the person who is going through this, they are going through the exact same thing. They are just falling for it more than anything else. So again, I use the same example for NLP also for small little things, again for smoking and things like that. It's extremely beneficial. Anything that gets into therapy. Well, if a psychologist is doing NLP, why not? If a psychologist is doing Hypnosis, why not? Because a psychologist at least knows what's going on or is supposed to be knowing what's going on in my mind, I'm a communicator. If I'm trying to do the same thing, there is a problem, is all I'm trying to say.
It was 2010.
I was going to say that. Yeah, I was going to say that.
Hayman Single says Art of Living is carrying out a program of intuition process for blind people to identify color or read. Is that possible?
What? It's a scam.
Yeah.
I have an article online on this. I have actually used some of the Art of Living and other videos in that. But I have actually reached out to the team at that point in time. I try to be nicer to them and said, hey, your competitor is doing this. Why are you guys doing it? Why don't you come out and give a statement that the whole thing is fake? So they said no, what we are doing is an inclusionary process for kids where they can read with their eyes closed. And I said okay, I will come to they said why don't you come to the ashram and see for yourself? Yes, I will. Happily, I have friends.
Did they know that you were a magician?
Yes, of course they do know that. And I have friends who are part of the shrimp set up. In that sense, I'll come with them, right? One for my security, two for your security also. Right? So they are these in between people? It never happened because the moment I said we will come give us a date. The dates never happen. Now, I don't know specifically about the blind people here, but the kids do this, the same thing with color and reading, et cetera. Simply, they're just speaking from this part. I mean, most of the times they are just speaking from this part. With regard to blind, I can think of multiple ways in which they can be trained to identify color by unconscious queuing, for example, and differences in a slight difference in material and things like that. Since this process here is, for lack of a better word, cheat people. There can be lots of methods to do this.
By the way, I'll just point out there was an episode on Shark Tank a few weeks ago. At least I saw it on YouTube. I'm not sure if it was on TV recently where one of the startups that came to pitch their idea was this. Only like they said that these are our daughters, we will blindfold them and our daughters will grab hold things and they will tell you what they are. And one of the things that they handed her was that mobile earphone cup box with surrounded corners. So she held it, she felt it and she said this is a mobile earphone box. And the judges were really impressed. I'm not sure they got funding for it or not.
But this was on they send me that link now.
It was bizarre, the kind of stuff that goes on on that show. But anyway, I think we are at 1 hour, 15 minutes and we shall now wrap up before we go. Nicole, I wanted to ask you if you have ever received backlash for the rational stuff that you put out, like you will go after a superstition that some guru is promoting and their fans will come. I know of YouTubers who get their channels banned because of this because their network of followers is quite large. So has something like that ever happened to you?
It happened on a few of the other things I went after, right? The Tiranga bangle that was launched. Interestingly at that time. By now in general, a lot of the guys are full support in exposing that at that point in time. This is pre 2014 today. I guess if any of the ministers at that level was going to do something like this, I would be full Hardy to try exposing them the way I went after Sashitaroo and naming back then. Yeah.
At some point you knew that this was a very different India.
I think it's a different world. We did get threats from Nichananda ashram and we were told to come to the ashram. We said no. Meet us in a Press conference. Right. I have tied up with Narendra Nak, who is one of India's top rationalist. He's the President of the Rationalist Federation of India. And we have done programs in different paths. I even appeared on NDTV ones on one of these kind of programs, Barkas show ages back. We do get at least I have not got so much friends of mine have Narendra, and I, being in the forefront of it, has a cop, always an armed cop, going around with him everywhere and things like that. But for me, the closest was the series of things that happened with Nichanandasha, which is why I was trying to actually pitch the shrimp against that. I think the point of the one thing that we always ensure when they reach out is to say, tell them I'm a magician. Right. And that seems to push them away because they realize you're not somebody who's out here with an agenda. You actually know how they're doing this and they know they can't fight you because they might know one method. I know 20 meters of doing the same thing.
Yeah. Someone from your background will be more uniquely suited to flushing this toilet, to use a very bad example.
Yeah.
So there is one more question that Brian had asked, and I had not put it on screen because I don't want to give medical advice on this live stream, but maybe you can direct them in the right direction. He says he has tennis ringing sound in his ear. Can hypnotize help him get rid of the perception of sound?
That's exactly the problem. Can a hypnotist help you get rid of the perception of the sound? Yes. Should a hypnotist help you get rid of the perception of the sound? No, because we don't know what's the impact. Most probably what you need to do is find a really good ENT and the really good entry is not good enough. You need to find somebody better than that to find out what's really at the problem here.
And also, Nicole made clear earlier on that he is more on the performance side of it and not the medical side of it.
I think there was one question I saw about from Summer only in us hypnotherapy is usually I just put it up. Yeah, I would be allowed to answer that. I'm one of those guests who has to be kicked off the show. Looks like.
No, that's okay. We can do this for as long as you might be.
Like, Knuckle, 1 hour is up. You can leave.
You were the one who asked me earlier on, how long will this go on? So I keep thinking that maybe I'm keeping you from something.
I just wanted to plan for it. I just wanted to have some tea on the side. Okay. That's tea.
I thought you were drinking.
Yeah, I was drinking, but it's tea.
In US, hypnotherapy is used by legal institutions such as courts as a tool to recall memories, especially in respect to events which cause trauma, such as sexual assault, et cetera. Is it a credible tool?
Okay, two parts to this one. I just want to also draw your attention to things that happened in India called narco analytics or some nonsense like that, where they were inject in Bangalore itself. They were injecting people with some sort of a serum. And they said this was going to put people in this trance like state. They called it the truth serum. And people, they're in a hypnotic kind of a state. And they'll tell you the truth about everything. There is no scientific evidence for that. And that is basically this. That is basically getting a criminal mastermind and giving him free rein to basically imagine whatever he wants and say, make people say and sort of claim that is true because you've just given me a trip syrup. So whatever I said was true. Right. This particular thing I have heard and come across things like this where hypnosis has been used to help recall memory. Now, the problem here is the last part of your question is it a credible tool and that's why the whole thing falls apart again, because there is no way to know whether the credit, which is why I started with the it's like getting a person drunk because you believe people speak the truth when they are drunk. You get people drunk. Right? That's just a belief. It's just all by stale in that sense. And that's basically what this is. Also, this I want to link back to the NLP example I was giving when people have gone through sexual assault kind of traumas to make them relive, that is the worst thing you can do. So I think that has a lot more moral implications also, not just the credibility factor.
Okay.
So I'm just quickly looking through anybody has one last question that has not been answered already asked.
Perhaps a lot of them are comments. And there are a couple of questions that I kind of skipped because we had already talked about them. Got it. Also, anyone wants to ask more questions, please feel free to do. Apparently Macro has nothing better to do than spend time with us losers. So feel free to ask whatever you want.
I don't do this.
There was a comment.
I've done this for anybody else.
There was a comment early on that I kind of skipped. Let me go to it. Yeah. So Delson had asked so hypnotis for your description. Sounds like a placebo effect or an intense counseling session. Which one is it?
Interesting question. Hypnosis therapy sounds like a possible. It's an intense counseling session that brings brilliant, unbelievable flexible, if that makes sense. It is a counseling session. Hypnosis session is nothing but a counseling session. Because I am asking you, I'm basically so called putting in a trance or not putting in a trance, whatever. It is like a psychologist talking to a person. The point is, in normal situations, it's up to you to wet what he said was true. Not true. I will take it, not take it. And things like that. When you are in the process, you are mostly susceptible. You are in a state of mind where you believe that I will do whatever I am told. And you paid a lot of money. Is a hypnotized person just sleeping? No. Then it's a very bad hypnosis. You have 20 people in the room, everybody is hypnotized. And there's one person in the back, middle of it going, right? So no, that comes back on the hypnotist.
That must be embarrassing. On stage, you're like, you are a chicken. And that person is like.
That'S the question for next year.
Which one?
What is Reki? The lesser said, the better. I'm currently working on neurobiology.
No. But since we are on rekey, keep looking through the questions. If you find something, let me know. But since we are on Riki and it is not as if you are an atheist like myself, what are some things that you believe but cannot prove?
No, I just believe in the power. I believe in nature. I believe in the sun that gives us life. Right. I believe in the concept of an Almighty or a God that is providing all that is good and perhaps a bit of what is bad. Now, how much of that has a daily bearing on can I tomorrow be better, et cetera, et cetera? That's I think very much in me. And I believe that praying or wanting or positive affirmations, whatever you want to call it, helps make tomorrow better.
Right. But does that work because God has an independent existence or does that happen because of what we just talked about?
I don't care.
That sort of stuff.
Right, Delson, the quick answer to that is hypnosis actually started from something called mesmerism look up the word mesmerism. And it was all about hypnotizing, or rather mesmerizing animals that became hypnosis when it came to people.
Okay.
Yeah.
Can animals be hypnotized? So can animals be hypnotized?
I believe so.
Okay. Have you ever done so?
No.
Apart from the human animal.
They are not telling me to be hypnotized.
No. A human may have brought you their pet animal and said, please hypnotize this.
I'm not into therapy.
Okay. Yeah, that also but perhaps it was for performance purposes.
No, I make people believe that a dog is chasing them or make them believe that they are the dog. That's easier. That's funny.
All right. Do you have any other questions you can see in the chat that you wish to answer? Because I think this is good.
It's really good. Thanks a lot, guys. I didn't expect so many people. I'm hoping it's not removed. Sort of asking all these questions.
I created 30 accounts and asked you all these questions while simultaneously using my hands to do this. Somehow I'm typing with my legs, apparently. Sure.
Leave you locked for a couple of days.
So great. Nicole, thank you for doing this so much. And I hope that you write another book sometime in addition to this one, which I'm sure many people in the audience will be interested in. And I do think that you're right when you say that hypnosis sorry. Magic is something that children should learn at an early age because it develops critical thinking faculties. So thank you for doing this, everyone. Before I go, I'll just remind you that you can listen to this episode also in audio format on my podcast, which is at Remote In.
And I'm still seeing questions coming. So, guys, I am at Nakul Shinnoi. That's my name with an ad on Twitter. So send him the question.
Do you want to take this? Do you want to take this now?
No, I don't want to take more questions. I'm just saying that if people at any point, not just today, at any point, these kind of questions you can direct to me on Twitter, and I will be very happy to answer them.
Great.
Thanks a lot for having me. Before you do a sign off, let me. Thanks for having me.
Tell me your Twitter handle.
That's my name. You don't know my Twitter handle when you met me.
Double checking. So this is Nicole's Twitter handle. You can follow him on Twitter, Nakole Shannon, and you can send him messages or tweet to him, and he can answer whatever questions you might have. Please go on with your sign on. The sign off.
Yes. I think we actually met on LJ. Right. Way back.
Live Journal.
Yeah. Live from LGBT. Okay.
There are people here who were born in 2000. You're telling them about LiveJournal? Livejournal used to be a blogging platform back when interviewing people.
Recently when I'm interviewing people for the UX side of things, and I'm telling them starting to feel quite old. Okay. So thanks for having me and thinking of this and having me. And because you just popped this question at me randomly a week back. Right. And this is fun. I don't do that normally, as you know. And this has been absolute fun. Thanks, everybody, for asking so many good questions. Yeah, it was fun. Thanks for having me.
Thanks, Nicole. Thank you so much, everyone. This has been Nicole Chenow. We will come back to this live stream on Wednesday when we will be here with Sumit Kumar, the web comic artist from Bucker Max who was also on Shark Tank and he will talk to us about something of the things that happened there and I think you'll find it interesting and until then, I will take your leave and see you on the next stream. Bye bye.
Bye, guys.
This episode is about how sometimes religious people think testimony about supernatural claims is sufficient evidence. And about how they sometimes deflect genuine questions from atheists by changing the meanings of words.
Harris Sultan goes by Pakistani Mulhid on YouTube and dedicates his time to debunking dogma, fighting faith, and countering callous defences of religion. I sat down with him, in my capacity as an Indian atheist with far fewer YouTube subscribers than him, to talk about the dynamics of religion and its problems in the subcontinent.
A single man spreading hate pretending to be many people is a problem, but it is also a symptom of a much bigger problem. And that bigger problem has to do with a much older strain of cultural damage we have suffered when ads started pretending to be reality.
Let us assume, for argument's sake, that god is real and wonder what we might say to them if we ever meet them. Also in this episode, viewer questions and their answers.
We think our identities are natural and that conversion or leaving religion is an unnatural act that is brought about through brainwashing. But was the so-called natural religious identity not a product of brainwashing as well? Or are we all, just so incredibly lucky that we managed to be born in the one true religion?
In this episode, I recommend the Netflix movie Don't Look Up, answer a question about how religions may react to the findings of the James Webb Space Telescope, and try to respond to a question about whether purpose exists simply because we want it to.
Many people, including many atheists, like to have a sterilized version of atheism around. They say the real fight is against irrationality and we should let religion be. I talk today, about why that is a misguided attempt at solving the problems we face.
We see copy-pasting as a thing that happens in the education system. But because of it, the people who emerge from that system become incapable of true innovation and even truly understanding ideas like democracy.
Oppressive systems don't always come in the form of sticks and stones and visible violence. They also come in the form of systems that place themselves in positions from which they give permission to break out. In truth, you don't need permission to resist. That's kind of the entire point.
The reason farmers can't bring themselves to trust this government is because this government never asked for their trust. It has only ever wanted obedience. Trust can't be gained with violence and oppression.
We keep talking about free speech without considering the social climate that is necessary for it to flourish or even exist. I talk about free speech the concept as well as free speech the phrase and the context it needs to be seen in.
The simulation theory is becoming part of popular culture and even atheists seem sometimes agree that it is likely. But there is danger inherent in the propagation of this idea because it is at least somewhat adjacent to theism as a way of explaining the universe.
This episode is about why people burst firecrackers and why they lie - perhaps unconsciously - about their reasons for doing so. It features a boy who got beaten up for being good at studies, and it throws light on why we feel guilty for being happy.
To the problem of nationalistic passions, the suggested solution is sometimes a greater identity - that of a human being - presumably because it will make the nation irrelevant. But such a solution is bound to create similar passions in due course of time. So I try to answer the question by visiting the other end of the spectrum.
This episode is a recording of a live stream I did on youtube.com/vimohlive on October 30. It goes deeper into the Facebook Metaverse move and the perils it poses.
Navigate the episode using the time stamps below:
00:00 Welcome and Introduction
02:15 Facebook has a history of bad behaviour
09:00 How corporations hijack and destroy open technologies
15:44 Metaverse, the attention economy, and real world damage
21:44 The perils of "immersive experiences" and social apathy
27:42 Looking at technology through a human lens
30:38 The future of the metaverse has to be decentralised
32:43 Responses to comments and questions
Corporations have always hijacked public tech to build their empires on top of them. The result is not always the death of open tech like email, podcasting, and RSS feeds, but it does invisiblise the importance of open protocols. Protocols that are the gateway to freedom for independent creators.
The fact that people need to be able to see themselves in popular entertainment is not something many in India are unaware of, especially if they are tuned into American pop culture discourse. But are we applying that understanding to popular entertainment in India?
As a feature, the Twitter trending topics feature does more harm than good and getting rid of it might prevent rampant misuse of the platform for purposes of large scale manipulation of public sentiment.
This episode is somewhat a continuation of the previous episode about my problems with the phrase Hindu Atheist. It delvs into how not believing in god doesn't matter if you believe in Karma, which is a similar alleged cosmic principle.
This episode is about a label that is used often in the discourse about atheism in India. It's also about a bit of appropriation that happens.
This episode is about how we are ruining our future by forcing our past into our present. It's also about Star Trek, Star Wars, rebellion and tech utopias.
We don't know what debate is. We are obsessed with debates. And finally, we stuff our faulty understanding of debates into areas where there should not be any debate.
Mythologist and writer Devdutt Pattanaik recently gave an interview on Akash Banerjee's YouTube channel The Deshbhakt. In it, he made several comments that I felt oversimplified and misrepresented the truth about culture, religion, and politics. So I decided to make a response to the video. I highly recommend that you watch the video before listening to my response.
This episode is about a theme that I found common to the works of Asimov, Christopher Nolan, and Jonathan Nolan. It has to do with the future affecting the past and also perhaps with dropping our reliance on the past to some degree.
This week's episode is about how many creative people in India hesitate to monetise their content by asking their followers and fans for money and why that tendency exists. It is also about how to overcome those mental blocks.
In this episode, I talk about how trolls can sometimes come disguised as fans and how they insidiously try to divert content creators from their goals.
I also talk about how telling an atheist he will one day learn to believe is actually quite insulting.
This week I talk about how my favourite way of growing my Instagram account has been to periodically challenge the preconceptions of my followers. Of course, what goes without saying is that my idea of "growth" is not simply increasing my follower count or my post views.
I also spend some time explaining why I am wary of the appearance of being intelligent and how that has to do with toxic strains of Indian culture.
The thing that has been on my mind for the last week has been being an Indian atheist and the complications that come with it because much of the impetus behind the modern atheism movement comes from Western atheism movement, a cultural movement which was primarily anti-Abrahamic religions. And Abrahamic religions are followed in India by persecuted minorities. This episode is mostly me talking out aloud about how to strike an internal balance.
Review this podcast on Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/vimoh-talks-1445220
[00:00:00] Intro to the episode
[00:40:00] YouTube, Instagram, and the changing online video landscape - Some thoughts about how online video emerged, what made it popular, and what has happened recently to change things in the video market.
[09:22:00] Indian government "raids" media houses - I take a little solace from the fact that oppression still has to be disguised as something else. The day they just openly say we want media to shut up is still some distance away.
[12:54:00] Being an "influencer" - I am finding it increasingly difficult to handle the compliments that people send my way because of the content I put up online. My privilege means I don't have to work very hard to be seen as doing something heroic even I am doing the bare minimum.
[15:46:00] Masters of the Universe - I talk about the new Netflix series Masters of the Universe: Revelation and how it being female dominated has made some sad puppies really sad.
[20:07:00] Ending notes and information on how you can support my work.
[00:00:00] Introduction and an announcement about the podcast.
[00:04:00] A rant about how books are better than movies.
[00:08:00] A note about being careful with your time on social media as a content creator.
[00:12:00] Ending notes etc.
So I launched a new YouTube channel this week. It's called temporal ideas. It's where I'm going to publish video essays about science fiction series, movies, books, et cetera, and themes. The first video is up and it's about the Marvel series Loki.
When I was making that video, a few ideas came to me for future content. And one of those ideas has to do with a similarity in the outlook about the future in the works of Isaac Asimov and some stuff that is also in Christopher Nolan's work, which is doubly interesting because Christopher Nolan's brother I'm forgetting his name.
He's making a series based on Asimov's foundation series of books for apple TV. Which basically means that I'm not going to be able to watch it when it comes out and I'll have to figure something out. But the point is that I'm going to make a video about invisible descendants in the future sometime soon and put it up on the new channel.
But before I do that, I had a couple of book recommendations because that is where primarily a lot of the material that I'm going to put in the video essays. And those books are books that if you loved the, if you like the low-key series, then you also are going to like these books because they have to do with the things that make low-key and credibly interesting, which is the idea of multiple universes, the same person having multiple versions in different universes, those persons meeting, and then chaos, ensuing and stuff.
So the book that I want to recommend with respect to that aspect of Loki is called Interworld is actually it's it's a novel for teens and one of the writers is actually Neil Gaiman, the sequel to Interworld. I don't think it ever came out, but essentially it is about a boy called Joey and his ability to travel between dimensions. He can do it as easily as you and I walk across the room. He can just walk into another dimension and there are Joeys in every universe that he visits and they're all versions of him. And the interesting thing about this multiverse is that it's a series of earth spanning the universe spanning the multiverse and on this end, There is the scientific Earth and on the other end, there is the magical earth. And Joey is from the earth, which is ours, which is smack in the middle. So the influence of science and magic, both affect it but not to the extent that the other worlds on the spectrum. So as you move towards this end, you have earths, which are increasingly scientific.
And as you move towards this end, you have worlds which are increasingly magical so the Joey of this world is a magical creature and the Joey of this world is a cyborg. So it's very interesting. And I'm sad that the sequel to the story never came out, but the book itself is quite entertaining and you should try it.
It's called Interworld Neil Gaiman and Michael Reeves. The other book I wanted to recommend has to do with the other aspect of Loki the series, the Marvel series, where there's an agency called the TVA which oversees time and takes care of history. So that theme is also present in a book by Asimov. It's called the end of eternity. Eternity is the name of the agency that oversees time in this story. And the specific character that the book focuses on is called Andrew Harlan. And his job is he's a technician. His job is to tinker with history in order to keep it from going bad. So apparently in this world that Asimov has created mankind and earth in general ends in multiple ways over the course of the next few centuries.
The job of eternity and the people who work there is to prevent that from happening. So they keep history on a largely peaceable timeline, so that things don't go out of hand and in doing so they guide the course of human civilisation so that is the other book and it's, if you liked the TVA, the idea of an agency working outside time to keep an eye on how history unfolds, then you'll like this.
So again, these two books are Interworld and End of Eternity. Yeah. And I will at some point of time in the coming couple of months, make a video essay about the thing that I was speaking about, where you know where I find parallels in a theme that is quite interesting to me, which is about the future of humanity and the descendants that we all are going to eventually bring into existence and their relationship with us.
Yeah, if you want to watch that one, you should subscribe to the channel. And the link I will leave in the description. It's called temporal ideas.
If there is one theme the MCU has in place of a philosophy, it is probably a commitment to free will.
Religion and justice have a deep connect, but not in the way you might expect. People are religious because of their faith in an extended definition of justice - one that stretches past death and into future lives.
We all have homes. But we all have different ways of seeing home. And a lot of times, these ways are culturally defined. Today's episode is about leaving home and staying home.
If you like my work and wish to support it, buy me a coffee. You can do so on a monthly recurring basis or with a one-time donation.
We have grown accustomed to thinking of echo chambers as a bad thing. But in an atmosphere where free expression advocating equality, rule of law, and common sense are being penalised and discouraged through fear, they may be the only thing that allow us to remember who we are as a people and what is important for the continued survival of democracy.
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When the people applaud every easy antic undertaken by those in charge of doing the hard things, they put their stamp of approval on inept and irresponsible governance. And then begins the spiral of ease where those in power get comfortable and those without it aren’t aware of the many dooms that approach them from behind.
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There are two wolves fighting inside you. Which one wins? It’s an old story but one that I feel can define our present political discourse aptly.
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In India of 2021, there is a lesson to be had from the science fictional motifs of terraforming and bioforming. We encounter new cultural worlds all the time. The choice before us is between changing those worlds to suit the past we are acquainted with, or bringing about change in ourselves so we can embrace the possibilities that reside in these new worlds.
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Bhakti makes way for putting the leader above the people. It turns representatives into rulers. It is against the basic principle of democracy where people are primary and eternal. Leaders come and go and though you may love a particular leader, you must never be devoted to them.
Love towards your nation does not blind you. It causes you to care about the nation. And caring means being able to spot problems and illnesses and to look for solutions. Or at least state that solutions are needed.
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Vimoh Talks is a podcast about Indian culture. Not just ancient Indian culture. Contemporary Indian culture and the culture that India might one day have. A culture which is being created by all of our actions and words right now.
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Does your colony have a separate gate or elevator for maids, drivers, and workmen? Do you like to watch science fiction and can’t wait for the future where we all have robots working in our households?
Today’s episode is about work, class discrimination, and the problem with thinking of technological progress as social progress. It’s also about the fact that kindness isn’t something we engage in for other people’s sakes. It does us good too. It keeps us human.
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I find it quite useful to evaluate the ups and downs of human history using the made-up future histories of science fiction. Star Trek has a future history that depicts the gradual demise of many enmities. It points in the general direction of one truth. That enemies are never eternal and that the idea of eternal enemies is a construct created and perpetuated by those who benefit from the prevalence of hatred in society.
You can find and subscribe to the Vimoh Talks podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and other platforms. And you can support the production of it by either pledging an amount of your choice at my Patreon page or by becoming a paying member here.
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A good way to know your bias is to note who you have expectations from. Who are you talking to and who are you telling to change? In a domestic violence kind of situation, do you ask the abuser to change? Or do you ask the victim to change? In a political protest by citizens do you ask the government to change, or do you ask the citizens to adjust with the government's policies?
In any conflict, do you stand with the weaker party and ask the stronger party questions? Or do you remain silent before the strong and hold expectations from the weak?
Because the "adjustment" you keep asking for doesn't stem from your desire to strike balance. It stems from your desire to avoid doing anything. It's a love for the status quo masquerading as a desire to mediate.
You don't want peace. You want quiet. They're two different things.
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I have been having conversations about the importance of hope and figured some of it was worth putting on the record. Isaac Asimov wrote Nightfall with different intentions, but one good thing about literature is that you can break free from context and put it to different uses. Also, this episode features The Incredible Hulk.
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Today’s podcast episode is a brief rant about something I wanted to talk about a few months ago but the opportunity passed me by. It has to do with a particular manifestation of India’s class problem. Also, this podcast can now be independently subscribed to on Apple Podcasts.
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Getting hurt is okay. You are human. You are religious. It is only natural that something someone said about your gods has caused you pain. But what is not okay? What are the limits of the redressal you seek? Because if there is no limit and you think that everyone must necessarily put themselves below your religious sentiments, then you end up hurting your own religion’s future.
Vimoh Talks is a podcast published on vimohsworld.com and it is about contemporary Indian culture (because enough people are already talking about ancient Indian culture). You can sign up to received articles, webcomics, and podcast episodes in your email every week. And you can support the publication by becoming a paying member.
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A little something I was reminded of after listening to some protesting farmers make a distinction between how we see far produce and supermarket consumer goods.
Also, hey! This is the first episode of the Vimoh Talks podcast.
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The stated purpose of a lot of writers who deal with mythology as subject matter these days is to make the younger generation aware of India’s rich culture and heritage by telling stories which have remained untold. But I can’t help feeling sometimes that not enough attention is being paid to the shape of future India. What will these young people grow up to become? What kind of adults will they turn out to be? What manner of India will they build? Is it going to be more of the same — an India powered by outrage and offence, crying out three times a day demanding to be treated like children by the authorities? Or can it be something different?
Theme Music: Werq, by Kevin MacLeod
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Nobody wants to admit that they had help getting where they are right now. In their heads, everyone is a hero who did it all by themselves. And this is why people hate it when their privilege is pointed out to them.
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