Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 25: Claire Hoffman

Episode Date: July 13, 2016

Author and journalist Claire Hoffman has been practicing Transcendental Meditation since she was 3 years old. When she was 5, she and her family moved to a secluded meditation community in Fairfield, Iowa -- Maharishi's national headquarters for Heaven and Earth. In her new memoir, "Greetings from Utopia Park: Surviving a Transcendent Childhood," Hoffman describes what it was like to grow up in a place where people aspired to follow all of Maharishi's principles, what happened after she began to question them, and how she feels about her spiritual upbringing now as an adult. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out..com slash playlist singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. I'm Dan Harris. I read a lot of books for this podcast, but none have I devoured as quickly as the one we're talking about today. It's called Greetings from Utopia Parks, Surviving a Transcendent Childhood.

This is not a dry meditation guide. This is an extremely compelling memoir about growing up within the transcendental meditation organization. Transcendental meditation, also called TM, is practiced by many well-known people, including Howard Stern, the movie director David Lynch, Katie Perry, Jerry Seinfeld, as well as many of my own friends and colleagues like George Stephanopoulos and Robert Roberts from Good Morning America. But my guest today, the author and journalist Claire Hoffman grew up inside a remote community of, I guess we could say orthodox practitioners, seeing a side of TM that isn't often discussed. To be clear, however, Claire has not penned some blindly negative tell-all, as you're going to hear, as she unfurls her own story. Claire has a really nuanced and at

times very surprising view of TM. Before we dive into all of that, though, a bit of a personal disclaimer on my end, this is a little bit of a tricky interview for me because discussions of meditation can often devolve into what I fear may be a non-constructive sectarianism. I practice a form of meditation called mindfulness meditation, and the mindfulness people and the TM people sometimes sort of look down their respective noses at one another.

In fact, if I'm gonna be totally honest here, some of my fellow travelers in the mindfulness world are openly suspicious of TM. I, however, consider myself to be a non-combatant in these debates largely because I simply haven't done enough research into TM yet, which is why I recently made the acquaintance of a guy named Bob Roth, who Claire knows very well,

who's a long-time TM teacher in the head of the David Lynch Foundation, and Bob is going to come on the podcast soon and answer all of my obnoxious questions. He's also going to teach me TM, at which point I think I'll be able to speak with much greater authority. Anyway, enough throat clearing. Claire, thanks for coming in. Thank you so much for having me. Congratulations on the book. It's really, really, really interesting. Well, I love hearing that. It's your first book and I know the pain of publishing a first book, especially one that's really personal. So, thank you for saying that. I think as a journalist, you probably know that talking about your personal life is something you generally don't have to do. So it was a

weird decision on my part. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you made the decision because I think people are going to learn a lot and at the very least it's a weird decision on my part. Yeah, well, I'm glad you made the decision because I think people are gonna learn a lot and at the very least It's a really good read So before we get into your personal story. Let's kind of define terms a little bit. What is TM? TM is transcendental meditation and it is a trademarked form of meditation that was brought to the west by Mahari Shima Hashiyogi who was a secretary for a sort of leading guru in India, and he had served him for years, and he was devoted to him. And when he died, at the time his name was Mahesh, he went to a cave and meditated as the

legend goes for three or four years and came out with this idea of giving the world meditation, you know, the idea was that before that meditation was something you practiced in caves or it was something done by just a religious class of people and he talked about giving it to the householder class, right? This was like a big kind of fresh idea in the late 50s, early 60s and Right? This was like a big kind of fresh idea in the late 50s, early 60s. And he started traveling around India and teaching sort of business people, regular people to meditate. And then he came to America. Some listeners may know him listeners of a certain age because he was the guru briefly for the Beatles.

Yeah. By the mid to late 60s, he was just this huge pop culture figure he was on the cover of Time and Life. And he's on the Johnny Carson show. And yes, the Beatles went and spent, I think, a month, they're different Beatles, different amounts of time, different stories about what happened there. But they were in Risha Kesh with him. And I believe it was 1968. And how do you do TM? Which, am I going to teach you?

No, it will be everyone. I actually can't. I'm not allowed to. I'm sure Bobby will tell you that. OK. Bobby, by the way, is Bob Roth. Yes, I am. But everybody calls him Bobby.

Everyone calls him Bobby. He's much more of a Bobby than a Bob. You sit down quietly for a varying amount of time. Usually they say about 10 to 20 minutes and just say a mantra that's somewhat unique to you inside your head. So it's a word or a phrase that you repeat silently inside your own head? It's a syllable or multi-syllable sound. And to be clear, mantra meditation has been around for millennia.

Yes. And so when you said at the top that this is a trademarked form of meditation, it is a pre-existing form of meditation that the Maharishi kind of put a stamp on. He trademarked it. But people can do, it's Vedic, which is sort of the term for ancient Vedic. Right, there is something, there's like a sort of competing group that they that they, they, they, they offer something called Vedic meditation. And I've heard it's similar. Okay. Well, if you were to sit and learn meditation from Deepak Chopra as I have actually, oh yeah, it's a mantra meditation.

It is a mantra meditation. Yeah. And Deepak began as, as, as Murray, she's doctor. Right. And then they fell out. They fell out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He was, I mean, according to Deepak, he was sort of like the heir apparent. And where I lived, he became somebody who was like a raced from the record. OK, we're getting ahead of ourselves today.

I wanted to start. There's so much I want to ask you about. So T, I'm just to establish the basics for people is this mantra-based form of meditation. That is different from, and it's derived from Hindu meditation or it is Hindu meditation depending on your view and mindfulness is derived from Buddhism and it is not you don't use a mantra you're usually you start by just being aware of the sensations of your breath coming in and going out and then every time you get distracted you begin again.

And we could say much more about that but that would delay us even further from hearing your story. So how did you and your family get into TM in the first place? Well, my parents met at a Transcendental Meditation retreat in 1974 in California. My mom was from Princeton, New Jersey, and my dad was from Santa Cruz. And they met and fell in love and got married and had my brother and you know for my mom she was very devoted. She really loved Marie-She, she was really into TM.

My father was already sort of battling alcoholism and he gone to this retreat to kind of clean up but he didn't tell my mom that. So pretty- He went to the retreat where they met. Yes. And and pretty soon it became apparent that he had a drinking problem. So we moved around. He was a writer and we were living in New York and he he just sort of disappeared. He left one day and he was gone for six years. That's a dark humor laugh. Sorry. I don't want to spoil the book but the people because I want people to buy and read it. But your discussion of this time is very well written and heartbreaking.

Well, I don't I don't want to break your heart. But you know, it was it was a very hard time my mom, for her, I think at that moment where we're like totally broke, it seems like sort of an obvious decision to kind of reconnect with the TM movement, which she had been so strongly attached to and passionate about before she got married. And coincidentally, around this time, Marishi had kind of come out with this formula, what he called the Marishichi effect, where he said that a people who were practicing his trademark advanced forms of meditation in large groups could create world peace.

So it kind of changed the game a little bit where before it had just been meditating for yourself, now he was saying, meditating together creates world peace, and it kind of shifted the movement into like a more utopian Movement where they're trying to create change the world and so changing themselves and he had bought the spankrup university in Iowa And asked everyone to move there and practice meditation together. So that's what we did How old were you when you moved there? Five. How old were you when you started doing TM? three So what was that? How did that go? How did you how do you teach a three-year-old to do TM? They have a initiation ceremony. It's different kind of it's also a mantra,

but you don't have to sit down and close your eyes. You can walk around and sort of like color or look out the window and it's short. It's like for five minutes. So you would just do kid stuff while repeating this word to yourself internally? Yeah, and I loved it. It was fantastic for me. Why did you like it? I think, you know, I mean, our life felt very chaotic. I knew that there was a lot of stress for my mom, and just things felt very precarious. So I think for me, TM gave me this space kind of of separateness, like away from the world a little bit.

And it felt kind of magical, frankly. Like, you know, there's a lot of sort of magic and learning it and you're told it's like almost like a secret power and it's gonna make you powerful and I totally believed all of that. Did it, aside from the stuff they tell you, but it's magical powers, did you actually feel different while doing it? Did it have any sort of psychological

or physiological effect on you that you were aware of? It's, this is sort of the question about meditation in general for me is because I've been meditating so long, like I don't know actually know what it's like to not be meditating. I mean, I've taken breaks for years at a time, but I think meditation's just been part of who I am forever. It's hard to know if you've derived any benefit. But I do think I have magical powers if that's your question. Yes. Well, there's some magic

promised here, which we will get to. So you move out to Iowa. Where is it again in Iowa? It's in Southeast Iowa. It's like an hour southeast of Iowa City. It's very rural. And how many people were living there? You know, it was a town.

Probably when we moved there, maybe 7,000, and Marysche asked 7,000 people to move there. So there was a point where it almost doubled the population of the town. And right now it's a little under 10,000. So these are the true believers. This is a different crew than the bold face names that we see talking about TM publicly, Lena Dunham, Katy Perry, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah, I mean, as far as TM goes, I think this real contraction happened in the late seven news when Maryshe announced this idea of the Maryshe effect of this idea of people meditating together. It was at the same time that he also announced that he was going to give a special technique that could make you fly. And I think those kind of two things really didn't jive the mainstream. So, and they, he, the, the flying technique, as it's called, you know, it's part of a larger program of something called the cities.

The cities is, is it ancient Indian word for powers? Yes, power. So it, you can find old advertisements from the time that, that Mari, she created, that said, like, give you the strength of an elephant, walk through walls, power of invisibility, and flying. Gotcha. And your mom, believe this. My mom believes this. Still believes this. My mom lives there.

Still. Yes. Lots of people still live there and believe it. Does she have the strength of an elephant? I find her very powerful. She's powerful eating. And she fly. In terms of what flying is, I think she has

powerful experiences doing something called yogic flying. It is not a beautiful thing to see, though. It is not soaring around the room, sadly. What is it? It's kind of like frog but hopping across the floor on pieces of film usually or on a mattress. So do you think it's baloney or is there something there? I, well, so part of my book is that I go back and I learned, I learned the TM City technique about five years ago. When I lived there as a teenager, I wasn't allowed to learn. Well,

first of all, it was extremely expensive. It's like $6,000. So I couldn't have afforded to learn. But I also was deemed a bad kid, so I wouldn't have been allowed to learn. And even when I went back, you know, as a 34-year-old and a mother, yes. Wait a second, you have to pay to do this? Oh, yeah. You pay for TM in general.

This is usually one of the bones that people pick about. Okay, so I know you have to pay for TM as one of the things I talked about with Bob, slash Bobby, and we'll talk about it on the podcast when he comes on, but, but so you have to pay for all these sort of varying levels of teachings. Yes.

Yeah, there's the advanced techniques. You know, most people, I was just kind of come back to your question about the celebrities and these people who are out there talking about TM, they're talking about the 20 minutes a day basic TM, which is the original sort of product, if you will, that Murray's she came out with. People find it very effective.

You don't really need to believe anything or have any kind of larger philosophy about life in order to practice it. What you see in terms of people talking about TM is just people who like doing a mantra based meditation, and they like the TM version of it. The people that move to Fairfield believed in this bigger cause, and this sort of big utopian idea of meditating together to create world peace, and most of them were practicing this advanced forms of TM.

I was just taking it down to the tributary for a second. Back to what I was saying in my overly long disclaimer at the beginning here. Well, first of all, about TM, because people ask me about it all the time, now that I'm this meditation expert. I don't know about expert, but definitely evangelist. Okay.

So I get asked about it a lot, and I've always kind of struggled with what to say. What I know we can say for sure is that there appears to be pretty good science that shows that it's good for you. And I think we can also say it's an ancient technique, while trademarked by the Mara Rishi. I mean, it goes back thousands and thousands of years. So I mean, I think there's a lot of validity.

And when you see these bold face names get up and talk about the benefits, I think they're standing on pretty firm ground. However, do you think they know about the kinds of stuff you were talking about in your book? And if they did know, do you think that would be problematic? Or... Yeah, I mean, it's hard to know. Oprah has come to Fairfield.

She did a show on Fairfield. And that's where that's where... That's this is the town that I grew up in. So, and she knows about the people who meditate together in domes and people practicing the flying technique. I know that she knows about the people who meditate together in domes and people practicing the flying technique. I know that she knows about that. I think they just see a division between that and this.

But I would say, you know, like does, I guess I've interviewed Katy Perry and she didn't really know about Fairfield or she kind of heard a room of it. It's just sort of this like mythical strange place that to them has nothing to do with it. I also think like TM has changed a lot in the last five years, so I have friends who learned TM five years ago, and they'll say, oh, like we had to watch all these tapes of Marishi talking, whatever, and boring, and then friends who've learned in the last year, and I say, hey, did you watch tapes of Marishi when you learned? And they're like, who's Marishi? And I did a story for the New York Times magazine

three years ago, I think. I don't know how many years ago, three or four years ago. And when you go into the offices of the David Lynch Foundation, there's no pictures of Marishi anywhere. It's of David Lynch and Jerry Seinfeld and Howard Stern. It's these big sort of celebrities. Like the sort of Indian-ness, the Guru-ness is being sort of pushed away. Do you think, and this is the type of whisper you

hear in the sort of mindfulness world, that there's some strategy, a celebrity strategy, because Bob Roth, who's the guy who teaches all the celebrities, vehemently denies that. That there's a celebrity strategy? To recruit celebrities to make TM more popular. The idea that that's not a strategy is crazy to me. How can you plane face deny that? That's bananas. Of course, it's a strategy, but I mean, it's a strategy for bottled water, too, at this point.

So, it doesn't seem that unusual. So, and I think in fairness, on a couple levels, you know, while mindfulness is, and I think in fairness, on a couple of levels, you know, while mindfulness is, and I'm a dyed in the world, mindfulness practitioner, I'm a Buddhist. If you scratch on Buddhism, you're going to find some pretty, you're going to talk, you're going to find claims about what they call them, itties or cities too. You're going to find claims of powers and you're going to find also metaphysical claims, all sorts of stuff that I think the modern scientific world would find a little questionable.

Also, there are plenty of celebrity mindfulness practitioners. There just isn't a mindfulness group. There isn't any sort of organization that makes any money off of it. I mean, well, having said that, I run a company that teaches people how to meditate through an app. So, you know, we were not making a lot of money at all. But I mean, theoretically, we were, but there isn't some central organ that is making,

so that seems to me to be the difference. But this is where I get hung up on a lot of this stuff about TM versus mindfulness because if I want to be fair about it and I do, some of the charges that you hear leveled against TM, you could direct toward Buddhist meditation. Yeah, I don't know enough about Buddhist meditation to say specifics about it. I think all spiritual religious organizations have skeletons in their closet. And, you know, I've been asked, why are you talking, like I still meditate. So why am I talking about this? And do I think meditation is a good thing? I do, I think it's great for people.

So why talk about what happened in the 80s and 90s when I would say this group became kind of fundamentalist, you know? And it was really a point in time. And that's something I think Bobby and I agree about, that this was a point in time. It was a place where things got strange. I think that for me writing this book, there's a lot of lessons about the way that people think about themselves and think about spirituality, they think about enlightenment, the way that groups work.

Like, I think it's important to examine it. And I think the TM movement kind of has to acknowledge that this stuff happened, acknowledge that it got like this in order to move on. And there's certainly people, I mean, first of all, Utopia Park is still there. There's certainly people who are- That was the official name for the place. Utopia Park was the meditator-only trailer park on campus. Okay. But there's Vedic City, Iowa. There's people who are still really pursuing

Mari Shes vision of an ideal Vedic society. And I think that's fine. That's almost a radical core. And I just think if you're gonna move past it or kind of move on or advance or go to the next generation, then you have to kind of look at the mistakes of the first generation. Fair enough. So how strange did it get when we come back?

Experience something powerful and kind of cosmic and then I hit my head on the wall. Stick around. Hey there listeners. While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduka Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Kodopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working

to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together, they discussed their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondery app. So how strange did it get?

I think it got pretty wacky. You know what happened was, Murray she didn't live there, so he would telecast in all the time, right? So we would have these big celebrations all the time to always celebrating and fundraising, those were sort of like a constant cycle. And Murray, she would telecast from India and then later on from Europe, and we would all gather together in this big golden dome buildings and listen

to him. And because he wasn't there, but people loved him so much, and he was this guru, his knowledge was this like commodity, right? So it was this very kind of wizard of Aussie thing where people were constantly quoting and saying like, well, Marie, she says this, Marie, she says, that's, I mean, I went to the Marie, she's school of the age of enlightenment. And that was the name of the school. That was the name of the elementary school. And you know, our teachers were constantly saying, well, Marie, she says to do this, don't do this, this is his favorite color. You know, it became a total cult of personality. And, you know, over time, Mari, she started having more and more knowledge.

So that knowledge often turned into businesses. So, you know, he had Mari, she, Ayurveda, which was the medicine and health. There was Mari, she's Depacciaveda, which is the buildings and houses and design. There was Mahari Shikandarva Veda, which was the music that you were supposed to listen to all the time. And so it was like every aspect of life had a sort of Mahari Shista knowledge wrapped around

it, things that you were supposed to do. And those were usually things that were commodified, they were products to buy. Okay, what point did you start to rebel against this stuff? I had a moment when I was 12 years old, you know, and it was a, there was a lot going on that kind of led up to this. I mean, I definitely, when I saw flying for the first time, I started to have real questions. And then my dad came back into my life. He moved back to Iowa. He got sober. And he was kind of critical of what was going on, which was the first voice like that that I was hearing. And but my moment was in November of 1989, we had a

school assembly, and the school administrator was on stage weeping with joy because we had torn down the Berlin Wall with our meditations and it was just sort of clicked for me like that's just it's not true. I know it's not true. And after that I became increasingly rebellious and I had an older brother who was kind of rebellious so I had a lead to follow. But yeah, so it meant sneaking out and drinking and partying, which it's a very small town and a community that's very sober and very interested in living an ideal life. So it was a contrast. You have said in at least one of the interviews that I read with you,

subsequent to writing the book, that the publisher is pressured you to use the cult word. You said cult of personality, but did they try to pressure you to call this religion or organization, whatever you want to call it, a cult? Oh, I think what you're referring to, it was actually an editor for a magazine. I had worked on this. I had worked on a story for a... Not the public. Interesting Rolling Stone quoted that, but I was telling them. It was a Rolling Stone story I got and assigned about TM and they ended up killing the story because I wouldn't say it's good or bad. They wanted, at the end, they were like, you either need to say it's a cult or not a

cult. And I was like, I don't have that answer for you, which people don't like. I don't mind it. Okay, cool. Ambiguity is fine. Yeah, I believe, yeah, this is a very ambiguous book, which I do think frustrates people, but to me, it's a much more accurate reality. No, I think it's part of the power of the book, personally.

So your mom still lives there. What does she think of the book? You know, she doesn't, it's not so much the TM stuff that she doesn't like, which is to say that she doesn't like it. I think she, it was hard for her to read about some of the struggles that our family went through. I think she's embarrassed. Yeah, well, I get it, and it's hard to say that your father leaving was her fault. Yeah, I think probably, you know, I mean, you know how we are as people we tend to believe

ourselves for things. And I think she saw a lot of this as her failures. But she's never said, you know, don't write about the TM movement, don't voice your opinion about it. I think she has questions about it, she has concerns. I mean, the community has really changed now. It's much more gray kind of in every sense. First of all, everyone's gotten a lot older, so that's all these baby boomers who are now in their 60s. And people

will, like my mom still practices three to four hours a day of meditation, but she doesn't go to the dome very much. What's the dome? So you mentioned that before. Yeah, the dome, there's two domes, a man and a women's dome, and they are big dome shaped golden buildings where people fly together. Gotcha. And she meditates on a room, but not in the dome. Is she a true believer?

Or what, you say she saw some doubts? Where did she stand vis-a-vis the organization? You know, I think she just got tired of the organization. She got tired of the restrictions. You know, they had like a special department that would approve your badge. Your badge allowed you to get into the dome. And there would always be these like fears if you wanted, like we're found out that you were doing some sort of self-improvement or going to see another Indian guru that you

would have your badge revoked. Oh, oh, that's right. In the book, you talk about the fact that she actually took you kind of in secret to see another Indian guru. Yes, and that's not okay. You're verboten. Yeah. In fact, talking about this right now,

I'm hoping my mom never hears this because that is like still an issue, which is crazy. So the Marishi felt competitive or his fall or the people around him felt competitive? You know, I mean, one of the big questions in this book for me, you know, when I started writing it, I felt pretty angry at Mauritius. I felt like he was somebody who did something bad to us. And I would say by the end of it, I felt like it was us that had done it, if that makes sense, like it was sort of more of the mass effect, of he was just sort of throwing stuff against the wall and what we did with it was our own fault.

So, you know, does my mom, my mom probably doesn't blame Maryshe, my mom loves Maryshe. Still. Yeah, so there's definitely a large amount of people who will say, you know, it wasn't, Maryshe was, he was perfect, he wasn't latent. It's just his organization that became problematic. So do you think would you have any first-hand knowledge of whether the Margaritian self got upset if his followers consulted other gurus or do you think it was just the administration that I've heard that I've interviewed

Deepak who felt like you know that Marishi became with him. And that's why he had to leave. I mean, I think Deepak says and has written that once he started to become successful when his first book came out, Maryshe asked him to stop sort of promoting himself and fall in line. And he said he wouldn't. And that was it. It was over. They never spoke again.

Did you, you did a lot of research on the myrishy in the course of this book. Did you come to a view on what his motivations were, whether he was enlightened, etc., etc. I find the idea of enlightenment absurd. I don't know where you're at with that. It depends how you define it. Yeah. I mean, the idea of enlightenment that I grew up with, which was this sort of elevated consciousness, sort of no that I grew up with, which was this sort of elevated consciousness, sort of no human feeling omniscience, powers. No, I just don't believe in it. Yeah, I don't believe in that either.

Okay. What do you believe in? I don't know. I think there's the way enlightenment is talked about what's talked about in a lot of what. Here's the thing I've started to say recently, which is that as soon as you start talking about enlightenment, you're in an argument, because people have a million different definitions of it. Traditionally in the Buddhist world, it's defined as the uprooting of greed, hatred, and delusion,

but it happens in a stepwise progression. And I know a lot of serious people, including scientists, business professionals, who feel that they've achieved part of that. That doesn't mean they don't feel greed or hatred or confusion about reality on a day-to-day basis, is that they're feeling less of it, and they've had breakthrough experiences that they believe are on the path. I don't know, I don't know. But that's different from what you're talking

about. Some sort of perfection and omniscience. Although, you know, hey, if you read the Buddhist scriptures, the Buddha was described as having omniscience and all this stuff. And I have grieved out about that. Yeah. I mean, there's a few sort of big motivating factors for me in writing this book. And one of them is this idea. I mean, this is kind of why I dredged up to use my mother's word. A lot of our family history because I feel like, you know, as people, as families, as individuals, we, you know, we suffer, we go, we have addictions, we have vices, we do bad things, and we feel so terrible about it that the flip side of the coin has become, you know, this idea of religion and restriction.

And I'm, I'm pro, I like religion, but I do feel like it's this divide between like, you know, imperfect and human and perfect and divine. And I just don't think it's true. And I don't think it was true about Mauritius. I think I think here's what I can tell you that I know about Mauritius. I think he was incredibly charismatic. He had some kind of powers because if you talk to one of the 3,000 people who live in Fairfield who were followers of his, they will all tell you about some kind of personal encounter with them where they're practically weeping telling you about it.

Like they love him, he was very powerful. By power, you don't mean city, you mean sort of, just power, yeah, charisma. I think he was one of the more ambitious people that I've ever encountered. You know, I mean, part of researching this book was going into the archives of the Maryshe University Library and inside are just these brochures and booklets and plans. I mean, he had a vision of the sort of meditation domination that is just, you can't, like, I can't underestimate how big it was. Well, obviously theme parks are a big part of that, but tallest building in the world,

libraries all over the world. I mean, he has literature from the early 70s about opening 3,600 TM centers in every country and city in the world. Here's just extremely ambitious. But I think if you say just a true believer, Marie, she was ambitious. That doesn't make sense to them because how can you be enlightened and be ambitious?

Did you ever get to meet him? No. We were in the same room with him. I was once in the same... He came to Fairfield a few times and he came once when we live there. Oh right, you talk about this in the book. Yeah. Is the burp scene? Yeah, that's so funny. Everyone remembers the burp. He burped all the time. It was a weird thing. He just, I guess he was very free. But yeah, he, he sat up there on this little kind of golden throne that had been crafted for him on the stage and this giant shed building that had been built for these 7,000 people to meditate together.

And yeah, I mean, I just, for me, it wasn't so much about him, it was about the people around them. Like people are like having these incredibly powerful reactions to seeing him. And I felt the power of that. Let's hash out this enlightenment thing. Okay. So I actually, I...

You believe. No, no, as the kids say, I pick up what you're putting down. I, I, I hear you, I, I just don't, I'm very much working progress on this. I don't, I, I'm, I'm deeply skeptical of like perfection and divinity. Yeah. So, so I think in some ways, I'm having a different discussion than you're having because you're, I think in your tradition or the way, at different discussion than you're having, because I think in your tradition or at least the way you're seeing it, it was a much more binary thing, whereas

the idea that the mind is trainable and that over time you can reduce the likelihood of negative emotions and or reduce their power that I find Like maybe there's something to it and I just know enough Scientists who are sort of looking at you know the brains of advanced meditators and seeing that they are different That I think there's perhaps something to it, but I don't know. I'm very much agnostic on it But I think on the fundamental issue you and agree, which is setting up some sort of perfection, denying our basic humanity, and then making us feel bad about the things that we inevitably are going to do because our human birthright is fallibility. That is an unhealthy dynamic. Well, but when you practice mindfulness meditation and you have thoughts, are you judging them as negative or positive?

Well, I do all sorts of self-loss oration and well-meditating, but that's not necessarily the correct practice. Right. So, in mindfulness meditation, ideally, you would see a thought as just being a thought. Or you could note it as being aversion or desires and like that, but it should be ideally devoid of judgment. Right. Your thoughts are supposed to be like the sound of birds and the trees, right? Or it's just a little quantum bursts of mental energy.

They don't have value per se. Again, this is how it's supposed to be practice easier said than done. Right, that was always my challenge. Yeah. I think, but I do think it's a skill you can develop. Yeah. And especially when I go on a long retreat, I get much better at just seeing the contents of my own consciousness

with some real non-judgmental remove. And that has a value that is way beyond the theoretical, because when I'm becoming impatient with my son or my wife or a colleague, I'm much less likely, I don't know, I don't know about much less likely, I am less likely to get carried away by it. And that is, I think, where the rubber hits the road, at least one of think, where the rubber hits the road, or at least one of the areas where the rubber hits the road

with mindfulness meditation. Yeah. I mean, I think this is murky water, but it's super interesting. So I do think, I feel like I saw something that can happen with this idea of, like, positive thinking, moving away from negativity, like mind mastery, where it just, it gets perverted. I think we're human and we pervert things. That's just sort of how it goes. So, whereas you can say like, oh, it's, you know, people who tend to

be, you know, write down five things they're grateful for every day, right? Those people tend to be 20% happier, right? But living in a community where that was sort of the way it was supposed to be, what it turns into is a lack of the ability to express yourself and a lack of creativity and a lack of freedom. And I just think that the human experience is so complicated and ever-changing that to kind of start branding things positive or negative, that process itself, I just, I actually think it isn't it isn't good

I think I would tend to agree that that would it was again I didn't grow up in this community and I don't want a past judgment on it without really first hand knowledge But what you're describing sounds problematic to me. Let me just say that But the in the in the area that I have do have some personal experience in Buddhism the best teachers don't talk about squashing Your what they would call shadow side. They would talk about becoming a connoisseur of your neuroses. That's actually a direct quote from this guy, Ramdas, who's actually a Hindu teacher, not a Buddhist teacher. And so that's just more about becoming familiar with your own mind so that it doesn't

yank you around. And that I think is doable. And so, and I know it's doable, just from subjective firsthand experience. And so, again, that when the most compelling descriptions of enlightenment, which is such a loaded term, but if you knock it off its pedestal and talk about it in a much more grounded, earthy way, enlightenment is just the inevitable that you can just train yourself to get better and better at this over time. Yeah. I think that is beautiful and aspirational. Enlightenment is just the inevitable that you can just train yourself to get better and better at this over time. Yeah, I think that is beautiful and aspirational. I think here's even though you've not been to Fairfield, I think you have caught a whiff

of what I'm talking about because you've probably gone to maybe a yoga class. Not been to yoga class. And you see that person who is acting like what they think enlightenment is supposed to look like, right, or spiritual is supposed to look like, right? Or spiritual is supposed to look like. And let's just be honest, we all hate those people. I think, well, but if we all hate them, yoga wouldn't be so popular. I think you and I certainly share in a version to spiritual pretense.

Yeah. And I think it's, that's just, for me growing up there, I saw people trying to be, trying to act like what they thought ideal was supposed to be. I mean, we had the Ideal Student Award every month, right? Where you, given to the students who best embodied Murray, she's principles. And I just, you know, maybe I'm a really negative cynical person. I mean, I don't know why I'm saying maybe. Probably.

I am. And I probably have always been that way. But for me, living in a place where you weren't allowed to observe or remark or criticize, where everything had to be ideal, it just starts to feel, yeah, like very wizard of Aussie. I mean. Utopia Park itself, you know, the name itself, a trailer park that is named Utopia. That's sort of like, you don't even need to read the book.

Is your, you do need to read the book, it's very interesting. Let me, because your publicist is probably glaring at you right now for saying that. I got that. So you, your, does your mother actually live in Utopia Park? No, she doesn't. She moved out. She lives with her boyfriend on the other side of town. But I, I know people who live in Utopia Park still.

Gotcha. And just to close the loop on your mom, she's practicing a lot. So she still believes in the value of the practice. And she still loves the Maharishi, but has some problems with the administration. Yes. but that be a fair characterization Yeah, so just as they you know, you've got this big popular TM Movement happer TM people getting really into TM these days. There is like a smaller more radical core since Mauritius death that really are

pursuing his vision when did he die? 2008. And so who's running the organization now? I'm so excited for you to talk to Bobby about this, but before Murray She died, he appointed a king. Whose name is Roger Rom? King. I said King. I know you said King, but that was the word that was used That was title that was conferred upon this individual Roger King. Yeah His name is Tony Nader. There was Tony Nader before I became Roger Rom He Rules in silence. I believe is the term that they use so he isn't really out there in the world for people to see He recently bought a five million million property in Palm Beach, Florida, and I think he's sort of just behind the scenes involved with meditation. He was a quantum physicist, and Marys she

loved quantum science. He originally sort of came to prominence in the TM movement after he showed how quantum physics or use quantum physics to prove Maryshe's principles of living. I'm sure I'm butchering that, but basically, yes, showed that Maryshe's principles embodied quantum science or vice versa. And for that, he got his weight and gold. What? Yep, they put him on a giant scale. It's a fun video to watch.

And I know. Well, I probably get better at quantum mechanics. Yeah, I know. That's not going to happen. But there's a group of Rajas. So there's several kings? There's Rajaram. He's the king of kings.

He's the king of kings, exactly. And then there's a group of rojas who are mostly white men who are this council of however money they are, like 12 or 17. White men where are all the Indians? There's not a lot of Indians. There might be one or two. And so is the home base in India or is it somewhere else? When Maryshie died, he had his global headquarters in the Netherlands.

So I think that is still the base. They do poor small gold crowns when they meet. Okay. Yeah. You should ask Bobby about that. Okay, I certainly will. I have to say he was very open in our, in our, in our, in our, we had lunch the other day

and I found him to be very non-defensive and everything. I love Bobby. I also think if you're gonna find somebody to teach you TM, he is the guy. Yeah. He taught my daughter. He taught my husband.

I think he's great at teaching TM. Okay, so this is, this is, this is, you TV up for the question I wanna ask you. You just talk, you just talk you talk You're pretty fair. I'm excited. Sorry. You're pretty willing to talk in a in a critical way, but TM and yet you went back and Took the yogurt flying class five years ago. You've you've had your kid you've had Bob Bobby teach your kids how to do it and your husband So what is going on with all that?

Bob, Bobby, teach your kids how to do it and your husband. So what is going on with all that? I, it's part of who I am. And I'm critical of aspects of it, but I'm not critical of everything. I'm not critical of the technique. I think it's great. I mean, I think meditation in general is great. I don't think you have to do TM.

I've been doing TM my whole life. My husband wanted to learn. I didn't make him learn, but I did make my daughter learn. You know, I think this idea of sort of hypocrisy or contradiction, it's something to like be pushed against. So I think all these organizations have contradictory elements to them, and this process that I went through, I've found found is a process that a lot of people I know who grew up in religious communities go through. So say I have a friend who grew up Mormon, right?

And he lives in Salt Lake City. He's a reporter and he is a really bright and critical guy who has a lot of questions and you know reads books, Google's things, and has a lot of questions about Mormonism and its history and what they're told. He's married to a Mormon woman, they have kids, and there's so much that he loves about that community

and about his life there. But does he believe a lot of the things that were told to him, does he have questions and criticisms about what's going on? Yes. And I think that that's like how you move these new religious movements or movements on words is by asking those questions. So in some ways, I feel like I'm a bigger defender of TM than friends of mine that I grew

up with who are like, just don't talk about it. You know, because I think it's complicated, but by acknowledging that complexity, you're kind of acknowledging everything. You know, so I love meditating. I want my kids to meditate. For me, meditation is who I am. It's like my sense of self in the world. You know, it's my sense of the sacred

You know, and I want my daughter to have that. I feel like it would be weird if she didn't have that How did you get back into it after your rebellion? How how how When did you stop and when did you start again? I you know probably by the time I was a teenager my mom wasn't making me meditate anymore And I wasn't going to the emergency school anymore, so I pretty much stopped meditating for a teenager, my mom wasn't making me meditate anymore, and I wasn't going to the Maryshie school anymore, so I pretty much stopped meditating for a while, but, and I would say then, for the next 10 years or so, I would just meditate occasionally, like if I was stressed out, or if I had a house guest, you know, like things to hide from people,

or on a plane. Yeah, house guest would meditate. Yeah, I think it's the best time to meditate. What's the meaning? Maybe you haven't done this. If somebody's your housecast for a long time, I just start meditating all the time to escape them. Oh, I see.

Okay, gotcha. Sorry, but I'm outing myself. I consider him a housecast. Yeah. He's really destructive. Well, it is interesting. I think after I had my daughter, that's when I started getting back into meditation Um, it really was parenthood and I think you know, I mean it's a

complicated thing. I think part of it was wanting to kind of pass on the sense of purpose and value that I'd grown up with and also pass on this kind of legacy of meditation and this sort of idea of self as a meditator. But for me, you know, I definitely felt like something was missing. It was a real sense of shallowness that I experienced. And it was confusing for me because I think I'd struggled for so long and just sort of felt like I was just trying to move away from the past. And then I found myself in a place where I was like, is this like, I'm a normal person now? Is that what you wanted? Like, to be normal?

Like, you know, what does that mean to me? That means just sort of watching TV and drinking. You know, that's a normal person to me. Um, I hope the new normal becomes somebody who takes care of their mind the way we take care of our bodies and our cars and our home decor. Yeah, I'm being a little facetious, but I do. No, this is a friendly territory. I'm irony of all the right.

Just to make it clear, but I think, you know, I did, I was sort of like, well, wait a second. I've kind of pushed all this stuff away and been critical of it, but I want some of it back. I don't want all of it back, but I want some of it back. I ended up going back for a month, about five years ago, and taking the TM City program, which includes the Yoga flying course. Did you fly? taking the TM City program, which includes the Yoga flying course.

Did you fly? I had a transcendent experience. I did. Tell me more about that. Yeah, it was, it was, it sounded like a shrink now. I know what you do. I feel like I'm starting to blush. Um, they had a group of us and people were sort of taking off and hopping and I wasn't. And I was really wrestling with myself.

You know, at this point, I'm meditating like seven hours a day. And I'm also like, for that part, you're, yeah, I mean, you work up to seven hours a day, but yeah. And I had left my daughter with my husband, and I was just like very aware of the sacrifice that I was making from being away from her. And I felt very self-indulgent for doing it. And then being there, it was like, well, I can't be critical. I signed up for this. I don't know if you know that feeling.

You know, very well. But I have no problem being critical even though I signed up for this. I don't know if you know that feeling. You know it very well. You know, I have no problem being critical even though I signed up. Yeah, but it's such a annoying position to be in. Yeah, it's not annoying generally, so I'm fine with that. But you're annoying to yourself. Yes, yeah, yeah.

And everybody. Yeah, well now. As you can, no. And having sat here, interrogated by me. I'm not annoyed. It's not a thing. I just, I don't know. Well, yeah.

So I was, I really wanted it, you know, and I don't know how much of that was a factor, but I really wanted it. It's a fly. Yeah. Even though you didn't think it was real. I believed that people were having powerful experiences. So you don't know whether they were defying the laws of physics or just having some sort of internal experience that felt like levitation.

Yeah, I mean, my husband even now is like, we can talk about this, but you got to just not call it flying. Okay, like it's embarrassing when you say those words, you know, which I understand. That's what people there call it. But do you think of it as breaking the laws of physics or do you think, okay, I don't. So you wanted some sort of internal transit. I wanted this, I mean, I'd grown up forever, not just with my mother, but everyone talking about how amazing this feeling is.

And I just been kind of hashing, thwacking through regular old meditation for three decades. So what, what can you describe for me, what the transcendent moment was like? Yeah, it was strange. I mean, I had a girl kind of come up to me who was on my course, you know, who was a much more free spirited person, which was not easy, just kidding. She said, you know, she basically suggested fake it till you make it, like just start moving a little bit and maybe it'll take off. And I did for sort of an instant and I kind of experienced like, experienced something powerful and kind of cosmic and then I hit my head on the wall or actually there was on a pillar

and I realized that I'd moved like maybe three or four feet and I'm sure it was like sort of a hideous ugly thing but it actually was this so none of that is anything I would I'm like greatly proud of or I'm telling you something incredible happened I'm sure it was just probably like totally embarrassing to look at. Should anyone have been looking at it. But for me, it was this instant of feeling just sort of total oneness, darkness, like complete shut off of my brain, complete, and something kind of of my brain complete and something kind of just bigger. And I started crying afterwards. And... Not because you hit your head. No, I was fine.

I mean, it was more like, for seeing something so beautiful for a second and then having it go away. And say, in realizing, like, wait, it's there, but I'm not there, I'm back here. Like my brain clicked back on, and I've realized where I was and that I hit my head. And the contrast between those two was really harsh.

And then I felt also though this connection to my mom because I kind of understood, like, gosh, if I could access and experience that all the time, wouldn't I keep trying to do that? And like, would I move to some town in Iowa? And would I join large groups of people who are also pursuing it? Absolutely. Have you found yourself chasing the dragon or you're trying to get back to it? No, why not?

It's a good question. People always say that when they don't want to answer the question. I, is he, uh, uh, good, you're good. You're good. It's a great question. Um, I, you know, I came home afterwards. And I practice some of the cities. It's like 17 different mantras.

And I, my meditation is much better after I did it. You know, I'm not on here, evangelizing taking that course, but for me, it did change my life and made it, like my meditation more powerful. Um, the flying sutra, to me, it's just, I mean, I could have a longer explanation of this, but it's kind of just too weird. There's an idea with the cities,

and I don't know if this is the same in Buddhism, It's kind of just too weird. There's an idea with the cities, and I don't know if this is the same in Buddhism, where it's about going to like a transcendent layer and then using your mind to like alter reality, right? And alter the physical. And I just don't know if I believe in that or want to do it. Oh, well, I definitely a trouble believing in it, but if it was possible, I would totally want to do it.

I think that it, the kind of transcendent oneness that you pursue in Buddhism, and that I kind of, is that okay for me to say it, do you believe what I just said? Well, like I call myself a Buddhist, which I just think of as meaning somebody who does Buddhism. You know, like I don't believe in, I don't believe in, or have any personal experience with things like rebirth or anything like that. Right. I just practice Buddhist meditation, which my view makes me a Buddhist. However, it does not make me an expert in Buddhism. Right.

So I won't pass judgment on that comment. Okay. Well, I would just say sort of the non-duality of life, right? Yeah. Right. Right. No, there isn't separation between you and the universe. It is all one thing. Yeah, I buy into that. That's one of the few things I might buy into. I think it's almost like, uh, then I believe true, right? How can you be separate from the universe if you're created, you're part of the universe. You're, you're made up of atoms from the first exploding stars. I mean, we are one, um, on some important level. I just don't know. I

just don't know. I can't define or describe that level and I haven't experienced it personally. But I think it seems pretty obvious. And when you say you had a trend in the experience after a month of seven to eight hours a day of meditation, I don't find that as surprising. No, it's not. It's not. I think the flying sutra, just to close that, for me, it feels like getting away from that bigger sort of experience. It's like kind of going into a corner and doing something weird. I see. Does that make sense?

Yeah, so you're basically saying that you, the value for you, the beauty for you, and what you glimpse there was a connection to everything as opposed to going off separate from everything and manipulating the laws of the universe. Yes, yes. I'm gonna say that correctly. You are. Okay. I don't know if this is interesting or if this just seems like Wicken practices that we're talking about. Totally interesting. This is what we talk about on the show all the time. Okay. Yeah. I haven't had a Wicken, but we would do that. That's my next summer project. That's your next book. I know I am obsessed with the idea of there being something beyond 10% happier, right? I think there I suspect there is well, I know there's something beyond 10% for that doesn't mean anything. I pulled out of my rear end.

beyond 10% for that doesn't mean anything, I pulled out of my rear end. I know there's more than just sort of making your self slightly calmer and less emotionally reactive. I just haven't experienced it for myself. Yeah, I don't know what to say. When your book came out while I was working on mine and I was grumpy about it because it's sort of my thesis where it's like meditation isn't going to solve everything. It isn't the answer to the world's problems but will it make you a little bit happier? Yes. But then somebody writes a book. There were a lot of books that came up when I was writing my book that I was very grumpy.

What were you the most grumpy about? There was a book, I'm gonna have trouble remembering the name, it was something like, I think the subtitle was something like positive thinking for people who hate positive thinking and something like that, it was by a journalist, a British journalist who lives here in New York and it's my literary agent sent it to me and I was really pissed off, like why are you sending this to me?

This is exactly what I'm trying to do and it doesn't make a difference. Yeah, these are just mental games we play with ourselves. Absolutely. That's why it's strange to see you in person. It's great to see you in person. Thank you for doing this. I really appreciate it.

I, it's a delight. Anything else that I should have asked you or that you want to talk about? Well, I think there is the idea of sort of cynicism versus mysticism. Yeah, it's a lot of work. It kind of goes through this book that I feel like I frankly would like to talk to you about in the sense that I want to hear what you think.

I think they go well together, right? My view is maybe not cynicism, but skepticism and mysticism, skepticism vis-à-vis mysticism. So you can have curiosity, but it's not an... I mean, so you can have skepticism, but it's not an incurious skepticism. So, so I suspect, I actually misspoke a little bit before when I said, I know there's something beyond 10 percent happier. I meant like I suspect there's something beyond 10 percent happier. And I'm investigating it in a pretty robust way, but I'm going to be a wiseass as I do so. And I think that's totally fine.

I think those are, I think I find people who do this investigation without, in a more earnest way, to be a little annoying sometimes. Right. So I had a friend who is religious. I think he's orthodox actually, he's Jewish. And he said this thing to me that is always stuck in my head that in order to have experienced the cosmic,

you have to let go of logic. And then maybe true. It's very interesting and very compelling assertion. But then you talk to somebody like Sam Harris, a neuroscientist and very, very logical and has had, you know, has spent years of his life on meditation retreats and has had all sorts of what he would describe as transcendent experiences. And I don't think he's had to abandon logic.

Yeah, I think that I felt like for me personally, logic had to be put aside. The critical thinking part of me had to be put aside in order to have that experience. What I suspect is that you have to let go. Right. Generally, I don't know if you specifically need to let go of logic, I just find my very nebulous early stage understanding of all of this is that if you're gonna have these experiences

that were mystical experiences that we're discussing, if they're real, that you are going to have to, it's like a deep, unclenching. Yeah, but I find somebody like Sam Harris who's so critical of religion, annoying and also so not accurate, because of course there's all these negative things about religion, I completely have my eyes open to that,

I've lived through it. At the same time that has been the gateway for so many people to these really big and powerful experiences. So who is it to say that religion is bad when half of it is made up of this incredible aspect and you know, he sort of pursues the dogma of religion or the sort of absurdist beliefs. And I find that I don't know I find it sort of like a gut punch like it's not it's not really what it's about. So it's like a baby bathwater argument. And baby baptismal water is really like this. Yes, so, but have you read waking up? I have. Okay, so I mean, I think the argument that he makes there is that, yes, religion has been

the gateway to these transcendent experiences, but also comes with it, his argument here, also brings with it a lot of often damaging destructive, dogmatic arguments. And so why not extract spiritual experience for lack of a better phrase from its metaphysical context and pursue it in a modern scientific context? I think that's like the best possible way of describing Sam Harris, like the most positive. But I mean, I find it like so annoying the way that he sort of just completely goes

after people who are religious and then writes this book waking up, I have interviewed him and we didn't really see I die. You know, he writes this book and he offers different meditation techniques like, Hey, pretend you don't have a head, which I tried. It's cool. It kind of works. Like it kind of works. But I can totally make fun of him for that the way he makes fun of religious people all over the world for their crazy thinking. But pretending you don't have a head, I mean,

that's based on a book called On Having No Head. It's called Zen and the art of, and the rediscover of the obvious. And the argument there is that from your perspective, from your own perspective, you don't have a head. Like there's just the world and maybe a smudge where your nose should be, right? So that is a compelling argument. It actually is divorced from metaphysics. So Sam, I think his point, and I don't want to make you uncomfortable here because Sam is a friend of mine, but I don't mind people criticizing him. He doesn't mind people. I think he loves engaging.

He does mind, but yeah. Oh, well, he may, yeah, maybe he does mind. But he does engage in all, he puts himself in a position to have, he intangles himself and all sorts of debates all the time. So in that sense, he's used to it. So anyway, you're not in trouble with me for criticizing his ideas and nor I suspect or even trouble with him, but. So I guess I would defend him

on having no head thing. Right, well, I'm just saying you can kind of poll-quote any religion or any book or any belief or faith or pursuit and make it look stupid and absurd. Right? Like, you could say like, hey, you think you can fly, you're an idiot. I totally get that. But for me, I think I'm a pretty logical skeptical person who was pursuing a personal transcendent experience. And so for Sam to act like these, like billion people on Earth who believe these different faiths are invalid and idiots is idiotic to me. That's all.

Fair enough. I guess the only, I'll just speak for myself, which is that I just find the idea that there are experiences that we can have of our own mind that transcend the mundane. I think you can, I suspect you can talk about this and experience it and pursue it in a way that doesn't involve subscribing to metaphysical claims that are immune to proof. And I find that very, very compelling. I don't know if that puts me four square in Sam's camp or not.

I just think he and I agree there. And I suspect you and I agree too on this. How dare you. How dare you. How dare you. I mean, I just think that having lived in a place where we believed unbelievable things and seen how that belief completely shaped our reality and made it true, it made it true. We lived it. Like, I know what it felt like to believe, and I saw the way that that transformed everything. But is that good or bad?

It's mostly bad the way you portray it in the book. Are you saying there was something good about that? Yeah, I do. I thought like the first part of it was supposed to be kind of good. Well, it's been a few weeks since I read it. Like I said, I actually kept me up at night. I read it in like two or three nights,

and I'm a slow reader because it's just such a compelling yarn So I apologize if I've forgotten things, but do you think Believing in things that can't be proved you think there's some value in that. I do I'm not saying I disagree with you But no, no, no, I'm not that's not I'm not saying that necessarily I'm saying Part of why I wrote this book is because of this debate that I hear with like Dawkins or Sam Harris and against like Bible thumbers or something. You know, it's like believers and non-believers, logic, and I mean, my husband and I argue about this all the time because he loves Sam Harris.

But love to said, Dawk. Big argument. And I went to Divini School. I have friends who are very Christian, who are Muslim, who have talked to me about their experiences and their beliefs. And I think it's valid. I think it's totally valid. I think it's a valid path to these transcendent divine

experiences, or a way to connect with a cosmic, or a way to connect with society, or connect with people. So holding up like bad apples or weird ideas, like that represents the whole thing. There's a term for it, but I can't think of what it is,

but it's like, it's, yeah, it's unfair. I, so for me, part of writing this book was to show like you know people act like you're you know people who believe in crazy things are idiots but I don't think we were idiots. I think that's really really really interesting and you have standing. No no no no no you have the standing to make, to explore these themes because you've studied it academically and you've lived it. So I think I'm totally open to it. It's so interesting every time Sam comes up

because, yeah, I know a lot of people love him and a lot of people who have strong negative feelings about him and I actually more know him as a guy. Right. We don't talk about the controversial stuff so much. Yeah. And as a guy, he's like incredibly warm and he's the one who introduced me to my meditation teacher.

And so there's a lot of, I have a lot of personal affection for him. But, and I've been, you know, I listen to his podcast and he's fighting with people. Yeah. And that's just not the saying that I know. Yeah, I will say, when I've been, you know, I listen to his podcast and he's fighting with people. And that's just not the sound that I know. Yeah, I will say, when I met him in person, I liked him a lot more.

When I was reading his books, I was like, I rate. Yeah. You're not alone. I think he certainly knows that. Yeah, I get it. And we all have to make a living. Yeah. This has been amazing talking to you.

Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. It's an absolute pleasure. Let me just remind people of the name of the book, Greetings from Utopia Park, Surviving a Transcendent Childhood. It is just out and a fascinating read. And your publicist is actually making

happier faces than me than she was at you for you know, it's saying you didn't have to read it. Thank you very much, Claire. All right, there's another edition of the 10% happier podcast. If you like it, I'm gonna hit you up for a favor. Please subscribe to it, review it, and rate it. I wanna also thank the people who produced this podcast,

Josh Kohan, Lauren Efron, Sarah Amos, and the head of ABC News Digital, Dan Silver. And hit me up at Twitter, Dan B. Harris. See you next time. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today.

Or you can listen early and ad-free with 1-3-plus in Apple podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at 1dory.com slash survey. at Wondery.com slash survey.