But I do wonder, how do you yourself navigate and when you're in community with others, navigate this sort of like deeply held collective belief that if you're being kind of rigorous and realistic, you are doubtful about people coming together across identity

with ease? I first came across this idea from after reading Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth years and years ago.

And he really talked about in his book that as a whole, social change is happening.

Human consciousness is evolving for the better and it is moving towards more equality, more equity, more justice, more love, more compassion.

And from a deep time perspective, it is if we think about way before a thousand years ago, 500 years ago, even 200 years ago, even four decades ago, a lot has changed with respect to human identities, how we relate to one another.

And for me, I sincerely believe in that because I'm so deeply rooted in various spiritual traditions.

But at the same time, at the relative level, which is our time right now where we're in this short term and medium term, we have to understand that consciousness shift takes some time.

What do you think about that?

And I don't know, that's hard to kind of like reconcile with or even believe, I think, for some people.

Yeah, you know, I want to kind of speak about a few things.

You know, there's three personalities I want to bring into this.

You know, first is Jalipuramasi Yogananda, who wrote this book called Autobiography of a Yogi.

He's kind of one of the most seminal figures in the world.

You know, George Harrison, part of the Beatles, was a devotee of his.

Steve Jobs, you know, at his funeral, the only book he gave to everyone was the Autobiography of a Yogi.

Or do you think we are?

Mm-hmm.

So whatever I share is something that I've gone through myself, and, uh, being in the trenches of anger, and also coming from a family where I bore witness to a lot of anger from a very young age, just rage and anger, and oftentimes not knowing where it was coming from.

What are the roots of this anger? Like, why is my dad raging the way he is? Because, you know, I wore s- a different color than he wanted me to wear or, you know, I made a certain sound.

So, like, the constant need to rage.

Like, what is that inner feeling that prompts such a radical response? And also to know the impact of anger, right? Anger is, you know, in Buddha's sense, it -- I think the Buddha said that, you know, acting from anger is like picking up a burning coal to tr- to throw it at another, but actually you end up scalding yourself first.

And we kind of see that from the science of the physiology of anger and how much cortisol it releases into the body, how it degenerates different parts of our body from our nervous system to our heart, to our inability to think clearly, and kind of also just becoming so narrow-minded.

So we know that anger is really harmful actually as a state of being that's within us.

Okay.

[laughs]

I changed my accent, I changed the way I dressed.

I even went by the name Andy.

Yet all too often, just walking down the street or riding the subway, I'd hear, "Hey, Osama, go back to where you came from." Every time I heard that, my heart sank.

I'd already changed everything I could possibly change about myself.

For years, I just ignored it.

I took comfort in the science.

Which is not what I expected from a book about bias.

Mm-hmm

... whether it's Christianity or Hinduism or Buddhism or Islam or others.

And underneath all of that, he was really speaking about this idea of truth.

And for him, like, in the autobiography, it's really fascinating 'cause there are so many instances in the book, if folks read, where he describes telepathic experiences.

You know, there's a whole chapter, you know, chapter 43, when his teacher actually appeared to him telepathically and gave him a sense of astral realms and all these other realms and how existence and consciousness actually operates.

And there's this really one funny example that he cites, which is of this cauliflower thief.

This is when he was young and he was a student, um, still learning, um, the path of yoga, Kriya Yoga in particular.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm

... whether it's Christianity or Hinduism or Buddhism or Islam or others.

And underneath all that, he was really speaking about this idea of truth.

And for him, like in the autobiography, it's really fascinating 'cause there are so many instances in the book, if folks read, where he describes telepathic experiences.

You know, there's a whole chapter, you know, chapter 43, when his teacher actually appeared to him telepathically and gave him a sense of astral realms and all these other realms and how existence and consciousness actually operates.

And there's this really one funny example that he cites, which is of this cauliflower thief.

This is when he was young and he was a student, um, still learning, um, the path of yoga, Kriya Yoga in particular.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm

... whether it's Christianity or Hinduism or Buddhism or Islam or others.

And underneath all of that, he was really speaking about this idea of truth.

And for him, like in the autobiography, it's really fascinating 'cause there are so many instances in the book, if folks read, where he describes telepathic experiences.

You know, there's a whole chapter, you know, chapter 43, when his teacher actually appeared to him telepathically and gave him a sense of astral realms and all these other realms and how existence and consciousness actually operates.

And there's this really one funny example that he cites, which is of this cauliflower thief.

This is when he was young, and he was a student, um, still learning, um, the path of yoga, Kriya Yoga in particular.

Yeah.