I smiled to see the ever controversial Joe Rogan feature Sadhguru—lifetime yogi, founder of the Isha Foundation, and inspirational figure in the world of wellness and spiritual evolution. Their couple hours together covered the decline of modern soil (I learned the word ‘fallow’), the four paths of yoga, some of Sadhguru’s biographical history, as well as a discussion of extraterrestrials (this is the JRE after all).
While these topics contain many gems, what I am interested in most is the dynamic itself shared between Rogan and Sadhguru. Much like most of my writing, I wish to direct you away from the content (the stuff they talk about) and instead towards the process (what is happening on a deeper level).
But before that…
A Brief Recap [or if you’d like a long recap…]
My goal as a writer is to discuss the two ways of being. You are likely more acquainted with the first: common Western awareness. It is literal, logical and scrutinizing. It insists there are clear right answers and often gets irritated when others disagree. It is fuelled by the left hemisphere of the brain which loves to ‘chop things apart,’ putting them into boxes and categories. It loves details. It loves thinking.
Let’s name this content awareness, since it focuses on content—stuff, things and ‘what’ we are talking about. If I told someone who leans this way that I just got fired and how it has motivated me to start my own business they might ask: “Why did you get fired? What is your new work? Is your commute going to change? How different is the pay?”
A different way of seeing the world—and one more common in India given it’s Vedic underpinnings—is to look at the bigger picture of situations. This type of awareness is less likely to see separation between self and other. It is fine with ambiguity, accepting contradiction and paradox as part of reality. It sees the greater purpose all the parts play together. It feels things. It surrenders and flows with an eternal now and is inclined to the right-hemisphere of the brain.
Let’s name this process awareness, since it looks at the interconnected ‘how’ of all the stuff in life. If I told someone who leans this way that I just got fired and how it motivated me to start my own business they might ask: “How did it feel losing your job? How did this affect your identity? What meaning do you make of this? Has this affected your faith and cynicism?” Or they might say nothing at all, preferring to hold space.
Neither content nor process awareness is ‘better’ than the other. They are both important aspects of existing and at their best, they dance together while completing each other. In balanced functioning, the right-brain regards a bigger picture, the left suggests a few details and tweaks before passing it back to the right to create a new full picture.
Now, how does this relate to a podcast hosted by a DMT-vaporizing chimpanzee enthusiast?
Content and Process in this Episode
I could tell in the first half hour that Rogan was definitely the token left-hemisphere content guy: Analytical, skeptical and focused on details more-so than the bigger picture of Sadhguru’s parables and metaphors. Rogan was on a constant search for fixed truths, concerned with right versus wrong, putting things into boxes and grasping at firm judgments. I suspect he speaks for a lot of his viewers, and so credit to him for how he conducts an interview.
As you might expect, Sadhguru modelled yoga itself—emphasizing the whole experience of reality rather than chopping it into parts. Sadhguru continually used the right-brained power of metaphor to evoke a feeling. Similar to Zen Koan—puzzling statements that may spontaneously wake one up to the nature of being—Sadhguru continually brought out emergent insights (the exception of course was his first point of discussion which was a clearly scientific and left-brained educational campaign about the decline of soil).
Rogan Typifies Content Awareness
This is demonstrated constantly throughout the interview. Sadhguru would generally build towards a greater concept before the ever curious and precise Rogan would interrupt to press for very specific details.
One example was when Sadhguru posed the plaintive position that “heaven has collapsed in people’s minds.” His point was that we have forgotten that peace is found within rather than external search through the world, characterized by conquering careers and consuming chemicals.
Rogan briefly took this in before stating “the problem is that they don’t have any evidence for heaven,” steering the topic towards the semantics of the weighty term ‘heaven’ itself—often tied to Judeo-Christianity. If Sadhguru was presenting a forest, Rogan was saying let’s work out the trees first. He speaks for logic-oriented atheists and agnostics.
One of the top YouTube comments suggested this indeed is well-received for the literally minded: “The questions Joe asks… so specific… no beating around the bush.” Rogan is a different energy of person than who Sadhguru might typically meet with, and it helps these ideas who might not otherwise hear them.
Not long after that, Sadhguru shared how (as he tries to put it) thirst for wellness and spiritual realization had generated 2.2 billion channel views for his YouTube channel by 2021. The glitzy subjects of view-count capture Rogan’s slice-and-dice brain, prompting him to hijack the point and recruit Jamie to check how many views the JRE has. Sadhguru replies, “No, no… It’s okay. That’s not the point… Just say you have 4 billion!”
Again, the forest of his greater idea will have to wait… There are trees to talk about!
Sadhguru worked on macro-points such as how feeling wealthy and secure is relative; how an elderly yogi taught him that pursuing the right path for the wrong reasons is still helpful; and how our self being limited to our bodies is questionable.
In these three cases, Rogan beelined for the smaller details, claiming that greed is objectively definable and that he has the master definition; he paused the story of the old yogi instead asking if he knew anyone who died jumping into his family’s well; and bypassed the point about where the body ends instead questioning if the thought experiment could be explained in terms of friction and heat.
I both smiled and cringed at Rogan’s eagerness to work out details at the expense of the larger concepts being conveyed. I think I cringed because I recognize the part of my own self that wants to yip my opinion like a Pomeranian long before I’ve totally understood what the speaker is actually trying to say.
Sadhguru Typifies Process Awareness
This became very clear when he described his experience around age four or five, when he spontaneously realized that he doesn’t know anything. Anything at all. This sudden Satori experience made Sadhguru aware that verbal language shared between humans is just an exchange of symbols. He came to see how our understanding of each other often has more to do with our own filters than what the speaker is even trying to say.
I appreciated this because it reminded us that enlightenment is not an effortlessly beatific ride on a sacred lotus into the eternal Godhead of jewelled splendour (read Adyashanti’s The End of your World for another non-romanticized view of spiritual awakening). On the contrary, Sadhguru’s early awakening created strife with his school teachers and he even fell into existential confusion wondering if he was a “devil” when he was called one.
Nonetheless, Sadhguru was experiencing other people almost entirely through the lens of process, unable to even connect with the content of their speech: “I’m looking at him. I know his past, present and future, but I don’t know what he’s talking about… I just see a blob of energy. I know the guy through and through, but I don’t know what he’s talking.”
I personally relate to this, as in 2021 following a week of experiential medicine and ancestral work with friends from Phoenix Academy, I existed in process awareness for two weeks afterwards. People would talk in clever and context-filled intellectual sentences but I simply could not track what they were saying.
It was awesome.
Without being bogged down by the constant braininess of our culture I could hear the language of their souls. I could see the pains of their past, written on their faces and in their movements like open books. Sessions with my patients would culminate in spontaneous cathartic releases and spiritual awakening (well, one at least), all the while I was hardly talking.
The affirmation of yoga, the life of Sadhguru and certainly what seems to be my own soul’s lesson is akin to Taoism’s emphasis on non-doing. Soften the intellect. Remove the striving. Surrender to what is bigger. Ecstasy and clarity follow (if only this weren’t so at odds with the normative demands of Western culture!).
Though he found himself bashful and hesitant to talk about aliens, Sadhguru’s process awareness shone when he finally did. Rogan circled like a shark around one of his favourite topics, quite determined for literal answers (I found this funny since Rogan himself has experienced how abstract trans-dimensional beings actually are during his DMT trips).
Sadhguru’s hesitance was as if to say the question of ‘are there aliens?’ fits left-brained thinking. You are asking if aliens exist on your terms—thoughts that emerge from ordinary Newtonian physics, derived from a world of dense matter and carbon-based lifeforms. It was very clear a big part of him didn’t want to share his experiences of extraterrestrial life as if it were some party trick.
He did though, and certainly his answers fit with what others may learn during lucid dreaming, Mahāyāna (Great Vehicle) meditation or taking transpersonal doses of psychedelics. Sure, there are ‘aliens.’ But meeting with them requires surrender of the ordinary ego and the experience does not fit our limited four dimensional way of experiencing reality. It’s more abstract, yet is realer than real.
Reluctantly, Sadhguru continued to share experiences that defy common scientific understanding. He did his best to cloak stories—such as healing his body at Mount Kailash—in humility, going so far as to describe them as “mumbo jumbo.” He was very patient given that Rogan both enticed him to share this story and met it with rational skepticism: “How do you know it was the mountain that healed you?”
Sadhguru is no stranger to critical questioning, however, demonstrating regularly that he is very capable of translating the experiential into the logical. He did just that
He described Rogan’s (and indeed, most of the West’s) style of inquiry like a scalpel. In exploring something or someone, we chop it to pieces. You may get “the heart, the lungs, the kidneys,” but what happens to the full human? Does this help you to understand someone?
I was touched by Sadhguru’s patience and receptiveness to Rogans scalpel-like enthusiasm to pick things apart. Rogan spoke for the typical Westerner, asking needle-pointed and detail-oriented questions that the ordinary listener might also wish to ask were they in his seat. All of this only provided grist for the more right-brained Sadhguru to meet his questions as they together told a story.
The Dots of the Yin-Yang
To be clear, I’m not going so far as to say that Rogan and Sadhguru exclusively stick to content and process. After all, the Yang half of the emblematic Taoist Yin-Yang has a black dot within, symbolizing that even the scalpel contains sensitivity. At times when Sadhguru’s metaphors sunk in Rogan would emit a deep, “mmmmmm” signalling the embodied right-brained ‘click’ of ‘getting it.’ Nice to get out of your head, Joe? ;)
Likewise, Sadhguru’s preference for Yin principles and universal receptiveness also has the white dot of Yang. He began the podcast as a scientific soil empiricist and repeatedly declared himself a logical man. He also had many moments of content fixation, such as insisting the listener knows he is a licensed helicopter pilot which didn’t have anything to do with the point he was making (besides making him look cool).
He is clearly proud of his accomplishments. And why shouldn’t he be? Let’s not make the mistake of thinking that spiritually evolved folks have transcended all aspects of ego. This would set a dangerous precedent, encouraging us to deny our humanity. We may even tread into self-righteous spiritual materialism (you’ve met the type—they poo-poo you for being honest about feeling sadness, anger or envy).
In any case, the two certainly meet in the middle when they join in debate over the biographical facts of the original yoga forerunner, Adiyogi. “How do you know he was that tall?" “Why would they exaggerate the height of a yogi??”
Significance for the Culture War
I’m on the side of Sadhguru in that I also see our society as locked into scalpel-type thinking. We are socialized to zero in on details and become irritable if others don’t see things in the same way. Without being checked, the unconscious script can sound like this:
Trust me—my reality is the correct one. I’m totally certain that I understand the motivations of others, even without needing to ask them first. I know which foods that I should and shouldn’t eat, and you should eat the same as me. I’m confident that my political and moral views are objectively the best ones. I don’t need to be curious towards my enemies, I already understand that they are wrong and that my anger is justified. I don’t need to do inner work because I will find peace through arguing the world towards how it needs to be.
It sounds like a lot… But we have entire populations acting from their limbic systems—the ancient survival circuitry that has us make rapid decisions as a matter of life and death. People are enacting these without unpacking their assumptions. They’re willing to go to war for it. Really? You’re that certain you’ve found the capital T truth that fits everyone?
As Deepak Chopra wonderfully remarked, “The measure of your enlightenment is the degree to which you are comfortable with paradox, contradiction, and ambiguity.”
Damn! What if there is no clear answer? Or worse, what if multiple contradicting answers are all right at the same time? I always drew comfort from the Vedic traditions that view existence as consciousness performing for itself, taking the roles of good and evil to put on a good show (and an eternal one). We put ourselves through a lot of grief when we cling to the identity of protagonist or antagonist, but eventually breathe a sigh of relief when we remember we are the production itself.
It is only the modern evolution of the prefrontal human brain that grasps so greedily at the idea of a fixed truth. We had better have some damned humility before we dehumanize others thinking we are wise enough to have it all figured out (Google Scholar is not a shortcut to discovering absolute truth).
Disclaimer: My ideas are not to say that an evolving society does not require critical discourse, civil disobedience and a warrior spirit of fighting oppression. This is not at all my point. I know I am encouraging a lot of right-brained humility, but this is only because I see a society-wide imbalance towards argument and arrogance. My intention is not to invalidate whatever cause you are fighting for—which may very well be your sovereign right to exist in safety. I only wish to expose the places that we have pointed our finger outwards before examining our own unfinished business.
It should also be stated that people become especially reactive and entrenched in their views when they feel threatened and burned out. In the context of the stress of the last several years, it is no surprise that so many people are scared, hurt and angry. In the West, perceived threat rarely encourages openness or curiosity—it tells us to get out the scalpel.
Peace Between the Prickly and Gooey
Any good performance needs to take us through all the perils of humanity: Hope, sorrow, relief and discovery. Love, loss and lessons that help it all make sense in retrospect. To accomplish such a discovery, we need the light and the dark. Yang and Yin. Content and process. Or as Alan Watts put it, we need “both prickly and gooey” people (because if there’s one thing we need at this point it’s more metaphors).
Is that not what Rogan and Sadhguru pull off beautifully?
The two speakers danced, sidestepping an irritable argument (though I could hear both of them sound a little frustrated at moments ;). The prickly Rogan could simply not let details go. And he didn’t need to! His static inquiry spoke for his audience and provided the contrast needed for emergent knowledge to manifest from the gooey Sadhguru.
I see this interview as a healthy model for how the left and right brain hemispheres may talk, or even how society itself may communicate. Folks such as Rogan—motivated towards scientific questioning—can pepper away with their intellectual curiosity. Those who have seen beyond duality—such as Sadhguru—can chuckle, entertain and welcome the questions, relieved of the struggle to always be right.
The Rogans of the world can ground us in the practical and goal-bent matters of the ego. They will motivate us to be precise in accomplishing what Western society prizes.
Meanwhile, the Sadhgurus can orient us away from the specifics to notice the holistic dance between cosmos, culture and parts of self that exist within us. They can protect us from the emptiness of worshiping celebrities, TikTok and Uber Eats as the gods that succeeded those of our ancestors.
I hope I have honoured my intention of being process-focused in my writing. Naturally, I contradict myself by stressing that reality is a maze of ever-shifting truth while at the same time wanting you to agree with my opinions.
That’s okay though—I’m not afraid to create a paradox or two in my articles.
An unplanned ego-death in 2004 ruined Carson’s chances of being normal (by society’s standards). Fortunately, a career in psychology and more recently — psychospiritual and psychedelic healing — demonstrated that life’s greatest struggles produce its most meaningful gifts. You can learn about his psychedelic integration clinic here. Stay tuned for more writing, music and content.
Great review of the podcast and your reaction to it.
I noticed that episode in the library of Rogan's recent episodes but wasn't really drawn to it. After reading your review, I think I'll listen to it. And maybe focus on it rather than just playing it like audio wallpaper while doing other things.
One question...
You said, "People would talk in clever and context-filled intellectual sentences (...)."
Why "context-filled"? Did you mean "content-filled"? When people say "context", I usually interpret that to mean what I think you refer to in the above review as "process". For example, the context of individual details that we focus on includes the fact that these details show up as one moment in a process. This is the process whose history led to the occurrence of these details and whose future will continue past the point where these details cease to exist.
So it seemed like you were talking about people delivering "clever and content-filled intellectual sentences".
It's been a while since I watched that episode but I remember the impression it left. It is perfectly possible that I am trapped by western thinking more than I realise, but for the most part Sadhuru's words seemed like generic platitudes to me that meant little and allowed anyone to ascribe the meaning they want.
If he wanted to say, as you suggest, that 'peace is found within' why say that 'heaven has collapsed'?
One answer is both are the same and my limited thinking can't see it. Another is that, like a politician, he prefers not to expose himself by speaking unambiguously.