Bearded Mystic Reacts | Hindu Dissects the 'Vedic' Jay Shetty Expose | Jay Shetty

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Hello and welcome to this episode of The Bearded Mystic Reacts.

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It's a different episode where we're actually going into the whole Jay Shetty controversy as you can see from the screen here.

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I want to actually look at the whole article and have a look about where does it go wrong and what does it have right as well not everything is completely wrong.

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The headline is Uncovering the Higher Truth of Jay Shetty.

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Very interesting play on words because obviously the higher truth indicates something.

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But here, the higher truth is obviously a negative connotation which is interesting.

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I've seen a few podcasts and a few reactions and they talked about what is Jay Shetty wearing.

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I must say whoever is Jay's recent stylist should be, no offence, but should be fired.

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He used to dress so much better in the earlier videos, in my opinion, but his recent, I don't know, style of dress is interesting, to say the least.

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And also It goes away from the whole monk thing that he was trying to sell a few years ago.

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It's like he's trying to redefine himself as well, new hairstyle, all that.

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And just to say, the caveat is, I've never read Think Like a Monk or his new book about love.

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One, I don't want love advice from Jay Shetty don't think I need it.

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And two Think Like a Monk.

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I just never was never appealed to it But I think in I think I may end up reading it and doing a review on that book as well and seeing what's good about it, but yeah, let's have a look I used to be friends with him on Facebook before he got famous.

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I want to give that as a caveat too.

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But after he got famous, we got out of touch I actually deleted my Instagram and everything, my old Facebook, and subsequently had a new Facebook obviously for the podcast, and Instagram for the podcast he hasn't followed me on that, so we so we don't really interact anymore, he's probably forgotten about me now that he's high up in Hollywood but more on how much I know him a bit later let's get to this, the emojis of the prayer hands.

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That's a good, Guardian's pretty good celebrities call him amazing and fans pay thousands, but what exactly do they get from this self help guru with an iffy origin story?

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That's pretty true.

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It's by John McDermott, in Los Angeles.

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Let's have a look at this, so on 20th August 2022.

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Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck got married on Affleck's 87 acre countryside estate in Savannah, Georgia.

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Oh, he was in Georgia, not far from me, and he never told me.

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He should have gave me a call.

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The nuptials were the closest thing the US had to a royal wedding.

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Okay?

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Two A list actors reunited after years apart.

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It was the kind of storybook ending you might see in a JLo rom com.

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That's funny.

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And I like Ben Affleck, actually.

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I think he was the best Batman we've had.

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Oh, he was a decent Batman.

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I like Christian Bale's Batman too.

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Presiding over it all was Jay Shetty, the former Hindu monk who's become a one man self help empire.

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Shetty and Lopez connected in January 2021 on the YouTube show.

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Coach Conversations, a sponsored series produced by the Handbag brand.

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Interesting.

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Lopez grew so enamored of Shetty, she invited him to officiate the ceremony.

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Jay is pretty charismatic so I can see that.

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He has very enchanting eyes.

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And just generally, I remember when I met him he's just warm and cool just chill to be around.

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But the fact that he's like officiating the wedding, a bit weird, I mean.

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Did he do a whole Vedic ceremony?

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And there is, there's a reason why I say this.

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Because he claims to hold Vedic ideals.

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This term Vedic ideals is thrown around a lot, but it's misleading.

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But I'll go into that later on.

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The wedding was a coronation for Shetty who loved reading celebrity autobiographies growing up as a British Indian in North London.

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That's very true.

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He loves autobiographies.

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He was now accepted into Hollywood's innermost circles as a celebrity in his own right.

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Yeah, he is man.

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He's been on The Daily Show, he's been on The Ellen Show And, apparently, he was invited to the White House, I didn't even know that and he's interviewed Michelle Obama yeah, he's pretty big.

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His on purpose podcast, which I'm not subscribed to, by the way, I stopped listening to it after a year, because I didn't find anything interesting about it, to be honest but it's still among the top 10 most subscribed to in the US last year, has featured a litany of high profile guests including Michelle Obama, Kim Kardashian, and Matt Damon, as well as Kobe Bryant, who gave one of his last interviews with Shetty before his tragic death.

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Shetty has written two bestsellers, Think Like a Monk, a 2020 memoir self help guidebook based on his time studying Hinduism, and 2023's 8 Rules of Love for helping people better manoeuvre their romantic relationships.

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Calm, the meditation startup worth a reported 2 billion, has given Shetty the title of Chief Inspiration Officer.

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Why?

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Beats me.

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Shetty also has a life coaching business, the Jay Shetty Certification School, where students pay thousands of dollars to learn the Jay Shetty discipline.

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He has 40 million followers on Instagram and 6 million across his two YouTube channels.

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Now I'm going to sip on my tea.

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PG Tips if you're from England.

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What's my issue with this?

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Well, first of all, I don't like the sound of this life coaching business.

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From the get go, my red flags about how capitalist Jay has got just shows in that moment when he began his certification school.

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Although I grasped it from his on purpose podcast, the celebrities, and then on top of that, the amount of sponsors he had, I felt like it was all, very capitalist feel vibe to it.

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Then he had all these products coming out.

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It turned me off.

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It made me question him a lot more but anyway, going back to the article, Shetty has been widely celebrated for these achievements.

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In June 2023, he attended a White House state dinner for the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.

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Two months later, he sat down with Joe Biden for an exclusive interview about the administration's mental health initiatives.

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This past holiday season, he and his wife, Radhi Devlokia Shetty, were featured in a Gap campaign.

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This month, he made his acting debut in Lopez's semi autobiographical musical film, This Is Me Now.

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Oh, the fact that he's made his acting debut is interesting.

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But the biggest one for me is he sat down with Joe Biden about mental health initiatives.

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Now there's a problem with that, in the sense of, there are so many mental health professionals out there and Joe Biden decided to sit with him.

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Jay Shetty is not the poster boy for mental health, in my opinion.

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Why you would do that?

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I don't know.

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I guess the administration wants to keep this young outlook.

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It's in millennials and Gen Z's, but Jay Shetty is not the person.

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In fact, I prefer if Biden spoke to a professional.

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So that's just me.

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Him meeting Modi is fine.

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Look, he's a well known South Asian celebrity.

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Makes sense for him to be part of the state dinner.

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And the fact that now he's taking his, he's doing his acting debut.

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I wonder whether that was his whole intention.

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There's good money in acting.

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So, but self help is a better market in my opinion.

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I wish I could do it, I just can't get the grift on but yeah.

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Recently, the ultimate mark of Hollywood influencer success was bestowed on Shetty, a menu item named after him at Erewhon, don't know how you pronounce that, the ultra high end grocery chain in Los Angeles.

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The Jay Shetty love potion smoothie contains rose water, banana, raspberries, and strawberries.

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This sounds disastrous.

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The Jay Shetty love potion.

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Jay Shetty might as well just sell Viagra.

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I mean at this point it's a bit ridiculous.

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Yeah, I know how I feel about that, but I guess it goes with being famous I get it.

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Yeah delivering pop psychology wisdom, called from sources as varied as Carl Jung, Bruce Lee, and Saint Francis of Assisi, Shetty has earned near universal acceptance.

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It's a remarkable rise to fame for a man who says that just 13 years ago, he was living as a penniless monk in India.

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I don't believe the monk story for a second I didn't really believe it, and I wonder whether Bruce Lee would have accepted what Jay is doing with his stuff and Carl Jung for sure would have probably done a psychoanalysis on the guy to be fair.

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In his origin story, which he tells in his books and countless podcasts and talk show appearances, Shetty is a business student preparing himself for a life of corporate ladder climbing, until one day he attends a guest talk by a monk.

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Shetty is so in awe that he seeks the holy man's tutelage.

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It changed my life, Shetty said on the Ellen DeGeneres show.

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It was the most captivating presentation I've ever been to.

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He spoke about selflessness, service and kindness and it just got me hooked.

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Okay, interesting because I think this was apparently at the CASS business school.

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Selflessness, service and kindness is not what Business School is all about.

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I know it likes to give the image, but nah.

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And there we got a picture of him.

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Jay Shetty, Love Rules, Tonight Sold Out.

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This must have been a live show or a world tour that he did, yeah.

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After graduating, Shetty forgoes a life of material success to live as a monk himself, three years later he has another revelation.

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His purpose in life is not to live the humble life of a monk, but to use his preternatural oratory skills to share wisdom with the world.

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Thus begins his transformation into a public self help personality and his swift rise to fame.

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This is where I have an issue actually.

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Why would a monk leave such a prestigious, respectful title, status, occupation to then share wisdom with the world.

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As a monk, you can share wisdom with the world.

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There are many monks doing that.

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The fact that he thinks he has to step out of that, means there's some other intention.

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In my opinion, why else would you do this?

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I don't buy this whole thing.

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And I think he did this whole thing of make wisdom go viral back in the day.

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I question his intentions and whether he was really a monk or whether he was just having a little stay for a few months at the eco village or, there's a reason why I mention that, or at the bhaktivedanta manor where I met him in Watford.

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So Shetty's success is largely predicated on this Riches to Rags to Riches backstory.

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Yeah, his parents were rich, then he went to a penniless monk, then he's rich again.

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Yeah, it's These are all red flags, in my opinion.

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His qualifications for being the world's most prominent mental and spiritual wellness guru are, according to him, the spiritual awakening and the time he spent in solitude in an ashram in a village near Mumbai.

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But people close to Shetty have questioned whether his conversion to a life of monkhood was quite so dramatic.

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I question it too, and what I question is whether he is a spiritual wellness guru, I do not like to associate him with spirituality.

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I don't see him as a spiritual teacher, or guru, or monk, or any of that type of term.

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He talks about self help, it's very different to spirituality, and I think that, that line has to be drawn.

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But yes, he's managed to go into both kind of routes, paths, which is cool and interesting.

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But much of Shetty's spiritual education took place not in India, but in Watford, an orbital town outside northwest London, they say.

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He was there not because of a spiritual discovery in college, but because he grew up in the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, also known as ISKCON or the Hare Krishna movement.

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And yes, that's true.

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Shetty says he spent his time as a monk in meditation and religious study, but he also spent a lot of time making proselytizing videos for social media and hosting lectures at universities in London.

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Shetty almost never discloses his association with ISKCON, perhaps concerned with the organization's problematic history, which includes the allegations that in the 1970s and 80s, members engaged in corporal punishment, child sexual abuse and on two occasions conspiracy to commit murder, instead he presents his spirituality in vague terms.

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I want to take a step back and come to the defense of Jay a bit here.

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One he's definitely a Hare Krishna.

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I don't care what he may claim.

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He was really into it.

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I remember seeing him at the Bhaktivedanta Centre in Watford.

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He was introducing a play that the Pandava Sena were doing.

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And not only that, but he was, we met there, we shook hands and I don't know if we hugged, but we definitely shook hands.

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And, he he was big on this, he was really into it now, what I will say is that Jay would not know what happened in the States, I'm assuming, in New Vrindaban, which is where this took place.

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What should be questioned is the views of the founder, Srila Prabhupada.

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He was anti Semitic, he was racist, he was casteist, he was homophobic.

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All those things have to be talked about.

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He was a misogynist.

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I would say that needs to be looked into, and whether Jay wants to be away from that, but he's known for interviewing Radhanath Swami, who also has a few allegations he obviously, his guru is apparently Gauranga Das and we're going to look into Guru Rangadas a bit more and see what does he really teach?

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But, all these Hare Krishna people right now are all into this whole self help, chant to be happy type of spirituality.

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But, again, I don't really want to call it spirituality and he has an interview with Gauranga Das which is why I want to probably do a reaction video to that but he doesn't mention his faith, but that doesn't mean that he's shy of it or anything.

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I just think it's not what he needs to do right now.

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With the work that he's doing, it's irrelevant, but but yeah, he would not know possibly of the problematic history, in my opinion because that's what happened more in the States.

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Unless he learned about it when he arrived here, that would be possible I first met Shetty last March when I was assigned to write a profile of him for Esquire magazine.

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After attending his stage show, I became sceptical.

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One segment involved Shetty inviting a volunteer on stage and putting her in a de facto sensory deprivation chamber to illustrate how difficult it is for people to put down their phones.

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We all do that.

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Come on.

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Look, I've seen videos where he's on his phone.

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Come on.

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The crowd then watched her fidget via a live video feed.

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That's pretty horrible.

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I would not like to be that person.

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Later, he invited a different woman on stage and had her call her estranged brother, whom she hadn't spoken to in years.

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When the call went to voicemail, Shetty instructed her to leave her brother a message while we all listened.

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A woman sitting two seats to my right audibly remarked, this is mortifying.

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I agree.

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One, I mean, just think about what that woman's going through.

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She's not spoken to her brother.

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To make a deal in front of a bunch of strangers is, lacks emotional intelligence.

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This is key because apparently he's big on emotional intelligence.

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This lacks emotional intelligence.

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Repairing relationships is not easy and it's not something for a live event.

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It's something very personal.

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Someone who is apparently into wellness, mental health and spiritual wellness.

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The fact that he doesn't know this is questionable about what he actually is.

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That's where I have some issues with.

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Why he would do that, I don't know.

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I began researching and Found multiple allegations of Shetty using people's content without consent of attribution and distorting details about his past as a monk.

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The Esquire profile never ran.

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Surprise.

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The magazine didn't want to turn The interview into an investigation, but this article is the result of investigating those claims and interviewing dozens of people, including high ranking members of ISKCON, people who know Shetty personally, his schoolmates, his former employers, academics who study Hinduism, and graduates of Shetty's life coaching school.

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Interesting, I think the Esquire would probably want to do a fluff piece and It didn't turn out to be that way.

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But yes, I know about Shetty basically stealing people's quotes.

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Now he copies them.

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But again are you paying those people for taking their quotes?

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Probably not.

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And that's where he's a grifter, in my opinion I'm pretty big about this.

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You can ask my family, like when you quote something.

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Make sure you quote it properly and you give attributes to the person.

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You could say he's giving people clout, I get it.

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Okay.

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But two, if you've seen the Nicole Arbour takedown of him, it's pretty interesting.

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And this was like four or five years ago I think she did the video.

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The coaching school.

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This is this is when I say Jay's lost his way, is this one thing, the coaching school.

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I remember contacting the number or something, or a messenger.

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I remember when it started, and it's like Jay's chatting to you, but it's a bot.

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And it's just, you It's just horrible because it's just deception on many levels, that is unbelievable.

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But anyway, let's go into this.

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Shetty is hardly the first self help guru to embellish his spiritual credentials to amass followers, but he demands huge sums of money for his guidance.

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Shetty has used his spiritual authority to launch a number of subscription and education services, including the life coaching school, which charges 7400 a term for postgraduate diplomas level 7 in qualifications, equivalent to a master's degree.

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That's crazy.

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The Jay Shetty Certification School pays OTHM, a private exam certification company in the UK, to evaluate and certify its accreditation.

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It also claims that Ofqual, which regulates all exams for schools in England, approves the qualification.

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According to the school's brochure, as OTHM qualifications are approved and regulated by Ofqual, Office of the Qualifications and Examinations Regulation.

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Jay Shetty's certification school students are also eligible to progress to a top up degree, master's programme or MBA at many universities in the UK and overseas with advanced standing.

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That's crazy, that, making that claim is crazy, that's big.

00:21:37.605 --> 00:21:41.204
Like he can't make such a claim, but he does.

00:21:41.775 --> 00:21:53.904
Ofqual said it does not regulate the school's accreditations and Ofqual spokesperson wrote that the organization would be contacting school to have references of Ofqual removed from their website.

00:21:54.384 --> 00:21:56.095
That is crazy.

00:21:56.835 --> 00:21:58.575
How he can get away with that.

00:21:59.410 --> 00:22:01.049
Like that's damning in itself.

00:22:01.700 --> 00:22:12.501
Lawyers representing Shetty told The Guardian that the Jay Shetty Certification School is not approved by Ofqual, but that it is an OTHM approved centre.

00:22:13.342 --> 00:22:25.201
And that OTHM is approved by Ofqual, and that as a result, students are eligible to progress to certain programs, with advanced standing, as it says on the school website.

00:22:25.483 --> 00:22:37.084
But OTHM told The Guardian that Ofqual do not recognise Jay Shetty, the centre is not linked to any OTHM Ofqual regulated qualifications.

00:22:38.023 --> 00:22:54.473
They said that although the Jay Shetty School is an OTHM endorsed learning programme, these programmes are not Ofqual regulated and the way the arrangement is currently advertised on the Shetty's website might mislead.

00:22:54.834 --> 00:22:55.624
Might mislead?

00:22:55.673 --> 00:22:56.753
It is misleading.

00:22:57.186 --> 00:23:20.931
In October 2023, when the Guardian was reporting this piece, the school's brochure listed University of Derby, Anglia Ruskin University, University of Buckingham, as universities where students would be eligible to progress to a top up degree, a way to gain a full undergraduate degree by combining Jay Shetty certification school diploma with only one year of full time study.

00:23:21.105 --> 00:23:32.846
The coaching school's website still states that progression arrangements for a Jay Shetty coaching course to lead to a top up MBA have been confirmed by the University of Chichester.

00:23:32.846 --> 00:23:39.895
But when the Guardian contacted these universities, oh my god, all of them denied any link with Shetty School.

00:23:40.385 --> 00:23:43.556
We have never worked with Jay Shetty Certification School.

00:23:43.746 --> 00:23:53.913
The University of Chichester's Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Mark Barlow, said in an interview, I'm very unhappy that we are included on the website.

00:23:54.147 --> 00:23:56.208
We are unsure why we are being mentioned.

00:23:56.438 --> 00:24:00.678
We will immediately be making contact to get our name taken off.

00:24:01.718 --> 00:24:08.938
The claims about Ofqual and the University of Chichester remain online as this article goes to press.

00:24:09.198 --> 00:24:10.587
I wonder if it still stays on there.

00:24:10.637 --> 00:24:19.577
But the crazy thing is that this is someone going on record from a university saying we did not approve of this.

00:24:20.518 --> 00:24:27.067
And the fact they never worked with them, and yet on the website they make claims it's pretty poor.

00:24:28.557 --> 00:24:30.387
Why did you become a monk?

00:24:30.488 --> 00:24:32.917
Okay, Jay, you're amazing.

00:24:33.048 --> 00:24:38.198
Ellen DeGeneres gushed when Shetty joined her show for the first time in spring 2019.

00:24:38.387 --> 00:24:39.518
I wonder where she is today.

00:24:40.498 --> 00:24:42.397
So you were a monk in India.

00:24:42.428 --> 00:24:44.458
First of all, why did you become a monk?

00:24:44.758 --> 00:24:47.357
I'm sure Shetty's going to give a nice answer to this.

00:24:47.798 --> 00:24:52.968
Shetty proceeded to tell the spiritual origin story he has relayed in numerous other interviews.

00:24:53.528 --> 00:25:06.528
As Shetty tells it, he's an 18 year old first year student at Cass Business School in London where one of his friends invites him to attend a lecture at the school given by Iskcon monk named Gauranga Das.

00:25:07.057 --> 00:25:11.528
I wasn't interested in hearing a monk's perspective on life, Shetty told DeGeneres.

00:25:11.748 --> 00:25:13.258
My friend forced me to go.

00:25:13.548 --> 00:25:15.958
He promised me we would go to a bar afterwards.

00:25:16.938 --> 00:25:25.357
Yeah, this is a story he keeps saying and one thing I found out that Jay Shetty said that he stopped drinking at 18 on the blog post.

00:25:25.847 --> 00:25:29.107
So the bar story is something that could be questioned.

00:25:29.718 --> 00:25:34.268
But he could claim to still be 18 after the meeting he stopped drinking.

00:25:34.268 --> 00:25:39.097
But, yeah, was he really forced to go?

00:25:39.157 --> 00:25:39.708
I don't know.

00:25:40.218 --> 00:25:48.508
The other thing I want to mention about Gurungadas is that I tried to find who Gauranga Das' guru was and I wasn't able to find that out.

00:25:49.238 --> 00:25:51.958
But if you know, do write it in the comments.

00:25:52.407 --> 00:26:01.567
I would like to know because, this tells you the lineage that Jay Shetty is from and that lineage is questionable.

00:26:01.670 --> 00:26:13.640
I am not a big fan of the Hare Krishnas, basically based on philosophy, but him doing what he's doing is okay in their lineage, it's, they're all are self help motivational speakers.

00:26:14.250 --> 00:26:20.180
The lecture ends up drastically altering the trajectory of Shetty's life.

00:26:20.579 --> 00:26:27.660
My whole life, I've been fascinated by people who've gone from nothing to something, rags to riches stories, Shetty writes in Think Like a Monk.

00:26:27.930 --> 00:26:32.170
Now for the first time, I was in the presence of someone who'd deliberately done the opposite.

00:26:32.799 --> 00:26:43.269
Okay, Shetty is so amazed by Gauranga Das that he follows the monk back to the ashram in India, spending his summers and holidays there studying ancient Hindu texts.

00:26:43.599 --> 00:26:53.670
After graduating from Cass, Shetty moves into the Indian ashram full time, he says, renouncing the trappings of the material world for a devout life as a monk.

00:26:53.978 --> 00:26:56.807
Shetty tells conflicting versions of the story.

00:26:57.127 --> 00:27:07.018
He often changes the age he says he was when the lecture occurred, telling different news outlets that he was 18, 21, 22 years old when he attended the talk.

00:27:07.317 --> 00:27:17.597
On Shetty's own Genius website, whatever that is, it says Shetty heard a monk speak for the first time when he was 21 years old.

00:27:18.258 --> 00:27:20.877
Even on his own website he's not consistent.

00:27:21.577 --> 00:27:28.897
That's what happens when you become too big for your own brand.

00:27:29.738 --> 00:27:32.067
You can't tell a coherent story.

00:27:32.611 --> 00:27:42.290
In an email, Gauranga Das, the monk in question, told the Guardian that the lecture at Cass Business School occurred in 2007 when Shetty would have been atleast 19.

00:27:44.240 --> 00:27:46.330
Okay, so that's interesting.

00:27:46.871 --> 00:27:51.800
So we met at his college, and then several other events that week, he writes.

00:27:52.361 --> 00:27:56.990
Shetty's legal team confirmed to The Guardian that the lecture took place in 2007.

00:27:57.520 --> 00:27:59.740
What's interesting is, have you noticed?

00:27:59.830 --> 00:28:01.171
Shetty's legal team.

00:28:01.721 --> 00:28:02.621
Another red flag.

00:28:02.621 --> 00:28:05.510
Why would you have a legal team answer?

00:28:06.361 --> 00:28:11.361
When you talk about having courage, you talk about all these things on social media.

00:28:12.050 --> 00:28:17.280
Yet, you're lacking courage right now, Jay this is not a good look, in my opinion.

00:28:17.810 --> 00:28:21.790
The fact that you cannot even answer these questions and you've got a legal team to do it?

00:28:24.010 --> 00:28:25.461
It doesn't make sense.

00:28:25.820 --> 00:28:37.891
Chaitanya Lila, a member of ISKCON, who was in a romantic relationship with Shetty from June 2008 to December 2009, says of Shetty's story, he was in ISKCON before 2007.

00:28:39.256 --> 00:28:40.266
I would say so too.

00:28:41.006 --> 00:28:47.246
There's no way he was not part of it before, like afterwards, after meeting Gauranga Das.

00:28:47.476 --> 00:28:49.596
He must have known Gauranga Das before.

00:28:50.286 --> 00:28:58.996
They host a lot of like sessions, whether it's at people's houses, their residence, or at the center, the Bhaktivedanta Manor.

00:28:59.395 --> 00:29:00.346
It's interesting.

00:29:00.773 --> 00:29:10.423
The spiritual epiphany Shetty often describes seems to have happened a year earlier in the summer of 2006, during a trip to France for members of ISKCONPandava Sena.

00:29:10.423 --> 00:29:29.142
IPS, the organization's youth group, the IPS sounds really formal a video of that 2006 trip the link for that is in the article, and you'll see him shows a young Shetty interacting with monks in the white or saffron robes that denote monkhood in ISKCON.

00:29:29.292 --> 00:29:35.952
In one part of the video, Shetty is seen rapping while a man wearing a monk attire plays violin as accompaniment.

00:29:36.522 --> 00:29:45.603
The Guardian is using archival links to content that is no longer accessible, including some websites made private immediately following inquiries for this article.

00:29:46.163 --> 00:29:48.992
Again, this is red flags.

00:29:49.222 --> 00:30:06.073
I don't care where you stand on how Jay Shetty has inspired you, but for someone that claims authenticity, honesty, courage, Strength, facing life's obstacles, yet he cannot face his own past.

00:30:06.692 --> 00:30:08.873
Just own up to it, you know what I mean.

00:30:09.202 --> 00:30:17.532
Shetty spoke about how revelatory the trip was in a November 2008 newsletter published by ISKCON.

00:30:18.173 --> 00:30:24.452
And he said, this is what he says, when I returned, my view on Krishna consciousness, ISKCON religion, or.

00:30:25.242 --> 00:30:29.692
Whatever it is, had completely changed and had gone through a massive transformation.

00:30:30.952 --> 00:30:31.593
Interesting.

00:30:32.303 --> 00:30:40.163
Those who attended the trip with him agreed he came in and was this London rude boy, said one ISKCON member who was also on the France retreat.

00:30:40.553 --> 00:30:42.593
But he really immersed himself on the trip.

00:30:42.833 --> 00:30:45.542
I think he experienced Krishna consciousness and loved it.

00:30:45.722 --> 00:30:46.742
Okay, that's really cool.

00:30:46.803 --> 00:30:54.633
I think that's really great, he was a London rude boy, I can imagine how he was, and then, does a complete 180.

00:30:55.222 --> 00:31:01.823
In 2006, shortly after the trip to France, Shetty was named chair of IPS.

00:31:02.212 --> 00:31:06.752
Now come on you're really entrenched in the organisation if you're now the chair of the IPS.

00:31:06.752 --> 00:31:14.373
And I think I met him in 2000 And 15.

00:31:15.212 --> 00:31:17.692
So he was still associated with them for quite a bit.

00:31:18.393 --> 00:31:21.553
I want to say 2014 2015 is when I met him.

00:31:22.153 --> 00:31:26.583
When me and my friends went to, and I have friends who can attest that we met him.

00:31:27.113 --> 00:31:30.972
And yeah, it was an interesting trip to say the least.

00:31:31.643 --> 00:31:46.653
So yeah, a grainy YouTube video taken later that year shows Shetty jumping and spinning in the center of the kirtan circle, ISKCON's collective chanting and dancing ritual, led by Gaurangadas, the monk whom Shetty claimed he met the following year.

00:31:48.022 --> 00:31:55.442
In a letter to the Guardian, Shetty's attorneys wrote that Shetty's 2007 meeting with Gaurangadas was Mr.

00:31:55.442 --> 00:31:59.573
Shetty's first meaningful meeting and engagement with a monk.

00:32:00.563 --> 00:32:02.553
I really question this.

00:32:03.298 --> 00:32:09.847
Like, how can you say that was the first time you met a monk, if you've been going to ISKCON most of your life?

00:32:10.817 --> 00:32:14.938
Mr Shetty has been attending his local ISKCON temple since he was a child.

00:32:16.087 --> 00:32:20.317
If you've been going to your local temple, you've met an ISKCON guru or monk.

00:32:21.518 --> 00:32:27.857
While Mr Shetty came across monks at temple in his youth, those engagements were not memorable or meaningful in any way.

00:32:28.637 --> 00:32:54.022
Okay, I get that, but you said that Yeah, the wording, first meaningful meeting and engagement with a monk, I can attest that maybe he was just not interested when he was growing up, I get it, I think I can even vibe with that, but, I don't know, it's just, the way they're just making it come across that was his first meaningful interaction.

00:32:54.563 --> 00:33:01.063
If this is someone who was a rude boy, he probably had questions, and I'm sure Being, a bit cocky, you would have asked.

00:33:01.873 --> 00:33:09.192
I don't know the 2008 ISKCON newsletter, Shetty makes no reference to a lecture by a monk awakening him spiritually.

00:33:09.643 --> 00:33:10.603
That's interesting.

00:33:11.333 --> 00:33:13.905
In his books, you would put it in a newsletter.

00:33:14.756 --> 00:33:19.135
You would put it in a newsletter because it's good for the brand of ISKCON.

00:33:21.195 --> 00:33:29.425
In his books and interviews published since he became famous, he makes no reference to his childhood in the faith and the trip to France.

00:33:30.965 --> 00:33:31.655
Interesting.

00:33:32.596 --> 00:33:38.286
It could have been edited out, possibly, but it's a significant part of his history.

00:33:39.115 --> 00:33:40.455
This is when he met his guru.

00:33:40.455 --> 00:33:42.346
This is when he had his spiritual awakening.

00:33:43.736 --> 00:33:45.076
That's when he did the 180.

00:33:45.895 --> 00:33:47.036
Why wouldn't that be mentioned?

00:33:48.635 --> 00:33:59.965
Shetty writes in Think Like a Monk that during university, he spent most of his Christmas and summer holidays living with monks in Mumbai, which Lila, Shetty's former girlfriend, disputes.

00:34:00.046 --> 00:34:07.546
He went to India probably once during that year and a half that I was in a relationship with him, and that was probably for two weeks.

00:34:09.076 --> 00:34:14.056
She said, representatives for Shetty said, because Shetty can't talk for himself.

00:34:14.585 --> 00:34:27.896
Shetty and Lila only dated for only a portion of Shetty's college experience, so she can't speak to the entire period, and that they had no, they had not had any contact in the 15 years since then.

00:34:28.338 --> 00:34:29.878
Why not go the Krishna route?

00:34:30.668 --> 00:34:34.737
Though he markets himself as a spiritual leader, That's interesting.

00:34:35.237 --> 00:34:39.027
Shetty's output isn't overly religious, neither is it spiritual.

00:34:39.628 --> 00:34:51.927
He occasionally references ancient Hindu texts, but the vast majority of his content is generalised secular pop psychology, the likes of which you can find from any number of competing self help personalities.

00:34:52.268 --> 00:35:01.532
He's pulled off a seemingly impossible contradiction, branding himself as a spiritual guide without ever specifying the religious tradition he practices.

00:35:01.943 --> 00:35:06.302
Shetty avoids mentioning ISKCON instead describing himself as a Vedic monk.

00:35:06.393 --> 00:35:08.353
What does that even mean?

00:35:08.972 --> 00:35:14.563
A Vedic monk, in my opinion, would be someone who's into the ritualistic portions of the Vedas.

00:35:15.103 --> 00:35:17.793
Therefore, very different.

00:35:17.802 --> 00:35:27.833
The fact that he's not mentioned Vedanta or even Vaishnavism, which is the tradition of the ISKCON.

00:35:29.268 --> 00:35:33.998
Oh wait, one of the branches of it, like broad branches.

00:35:35.557 --> 00:35:40.697
The fact that he doesn't say this is very, it's very interesting.

00:35:41.737 --> 00:35:46.637
It's, it just shows his lack of knowledge of tradition, in my opinion.

00:35:47.715 --> 00:35:49.746
Yeah, he's probably read a bit of the Gita.

00:35:49.746 --> 00:36:12.596
Gita is big in ISKCON, but again, there's questions about the authenticity of their version of the Gita, because they've changed words and two that's, they probably, he's read the Puranas, but he doesn't really mention those, so those are the stories part, the narratives, but yeah I want to know what ancient Hindu texts he has read and actually studied.

00:36:13.300 --> 00:36:14.641
Not read, studied.

00:36:15.240 --> 00:36:23.860
Dax Shepard asked Shetty this year on his Armchair Expert Podcast about the particular form of Hinduism Shetty practices.

00:36:24.179 --> 00:36:26.650
When did you decide to become a monk?

00:36:26.739 --> 00:36:28.539
Why not go the Krishna route?

00:36:28.878 --> 00:36:30.978
Why did you end up in the Vedic world?

00:36:30.978 --> 00:36:31.697
Shepard asked.

00:36:31.708 --> 00:36:34.268
That's a really weird question.

00:36:35.568 --> 00:36:36.347
Very weird.

00:36:37.978 --> 00:36:46.088
And then, Vedic is a term I've used because Vedic is the overarching term that kind of houses all of these philosophies.

00:36:46.927 --> 00:36:47.697
Shetty explained.

00:36:48.257 --> 00:36:52.878
No, I know ISKCON uses the word Vedic, that's why I know where it's coming from.

00:36:53.858 --> 00:36:55.788
It's not Vedic, it's Vedanta.

00:36:57.168 --> 00:36:58.047
Get it right.

00:36:58.057 --> 00:36:58.648
I understand that.

00:36:59.128 --> 00:37:03.458
By using Vedic, it's only about the Vedas, but is the Gita part of the Vedas?

00:37:03.487 --> 00:37:04.018
No.

00:37:05.217 --> 00:37:06.818
So what are you talking about?

00:37:07.458 --> 00:37:13.657
And yeah, the article goes into this, which is why it's good in some regard.

00:37:14.197 --> 00:37:15.458
But Vedic is vague.

00:37:15.728 --> 00:37:24.407
The term references the Vedas, a collection of Sanskrit writings that are among the oldest religious texts in the world, and encompass thousands of distinct Hindu practices.

00:37:24.487 --> 00:37:27.668
Exactly, and most of them aren't even practiced today.

00:37:28.467 --> 00:37:30.157
There's no such thing as being Vedic.

00:37:31.217 --> 00:37:33.307
Being Vedic is being Hindu, basically.

00:37:33.557 --> 00:37:40.932
Tilak Parekh, a faculty member at the University of Cambridge's Divinity Department where he studies Hinduism.

00:37:41.302 --> 00:37:45.612
Nearly all old Hindu traditions ascribe themselves to the Vedas.

00:37:46.242 --> 00:37:54.193
Yes, exactly, the Vedas, the philosophical portion, which is known as Vedanta.

00:37:54.193 --> 00:37:57.492
The other thing I'm going to mention here is he didn't use Dharmic.

00:37:58.362 --> 00:38:00.152
That's the term he should have used.

00:38:00.893 --> 00:38:08.545
The fact that he didn't even use Dharmic is again, a bit worrying about how much he really knows, but it's a part of Sanatana Dharma.

00:38:08.704 --> 00:38:10.864
He could have said that and he would have been fine.

00:38:11.335 --> 00:38:21.164
The fact that he uses Vedic, even I find that weird it's not clear why Shetty would speak so much about his time as a monk, but refrain from identifying where his studies took place.

00:38:21.335 --> 00:38:21.985
That's true.

00:38:22.394 --> 00:38:23.875
Why wouldn't you talk about that?

00:38:24.465 --> 00:38:28.764
Perhaps he doesn't want to alienate readers who are atheists or who practice another religion.

00:38:29.175 --> 00:38:32.715
But he might also be concerned about ISKCON's history in the United States.

00:38:33.425 --> 00:38:48.275
The Hare Krishna movement, as it was often called, grew in the 1960s by appealing to people, disillusioned with the hedonism of counterculture instead of free love and psychedelics Hare Krishnas seek enlightenment through self denial.

00:38:48.605 --> 00:38:58.175
Drugs, alcohol, elicit sex, caffeine, and meat are explicitly forbidden to achieve transcendence, to chant the group's signature mantra, which is what we all know.

00:38:59.405 --> 00:39:19.824
But yeah, to be honest, I can understand why he wouldn't do that when he was in Hollywood, but ISKCON is pretty big now, Radhanath Swami is a guru for a lot of people, Will Smith has met Radhanath Swami, so I don't think, I'm a bit baffled about why Jay would not say ISKCON.

00:39:19.990 --> 00:39:24.090
And I've often wondered that has he broken away or has he, is he still part of it?

00:39:24.371 --> 00:39:34.811
And the reason why I think he hasn't broken away from it is because Gauranga Das was interviewed by him, which we're definitely going to do a reaction to, I think, just to see the questions and the answers.

00:39:35.471 --> 00:39:44.150
But yeah, oh gosh By the 1980s, ISKCON leaders were being described by some as abusive and cult like.

00:39:44.465 --> 00:39:52.525
Men and women who had been raised in the Hare Krishna faith as children said they've been subject to routine beatings and sexual assaults at the hands of ISKCON teachers.

00:39:52.876 --> 00:40:00.266
There's actually, I think it's on Hulu, no, on Peacock, there's there's a documentary on this.

00:40:00.706 --> 00:40:01.505
It's horrifying.

00:40:02.576 --> 00:40:13.965
Children as young as five had been separated from their parents and sent to Krishna boarding schools in India called Gurukuls, where boys were ordered to have sex with their spiritual masters.

00:40:14.346 --> 00:40:16.456
Girls were married off to men twice their age.

00:40:16.735 --> 00:40:21.925
Two ISKCON members were murdered by a fellow devotee for speaking out against the organisation.

00:40:22.425 --> 00:40:30.505
Both murders were carried out by Thomas Drescher, who is serving a life sentence in prison, where he acts as a guru to other incarcerated people.

00:40:31.235 --> 00:40:32.356
Yeah, this is true.

00:40:32.996 --> 00:40:33.925
You can look it up.

00:40:34.045 --> 00:40:38.545
It's been, a documentary has been made from it, where it's been heavily researched.

00:40:39.556 --> 00:40:40.246
It's crazy.

00:40:41.655 --> 00:40:50.106
Shetty became more involved in ISKCON in 2006, long after these scandals and once the organization had already started to fade from public view.

00:40:51.061 --> 00:41:05.650
The year prior, ISKCON had been ordered to pay 9.5 million to 535 former students who suffered abuse in the 70s and 80s, a settlement that forced ISKCON to file for bankruptcy in Los Angeles and close all of its U.

00:41:05.650 --> 00:41:05.791
S.

00:41:05.791 --> 00:41:06.610
boarding schools.

00:41:07.106 --> 00:41:15.576
Seeing Krishna devotees chanting in public became a rarity, a Los Angeles City ordinance banned them from soliciting at LAX airport.

00:41:15.925 --> 00:41:21.056
But ISKCON has experienced a revival in recent years, particularly within the Indian diaspora.

00:41:21.215 --> 00:41:22.255
It has, sadly.

00:41:22.550 --> 00:41:29.255
Sadly, the fact that the Indian diaspora has done that shows me the Indian diaspora does not know anything about Vedanta.

00:41:30.385 --> 00:41:33.505
Why they would go down that route, I do not know.

00:41:34.666 --> 00:41:46.806
By 2016, the majority of ISKCON's members in the US were, for the first time, people of Indian heritage, not the white hippies with whom the religion had been so closely associated for.

00:41:47.306 --> 00:41:47.905
Many years.

00:41:48.385 --> 00:41:54.115
This guy, personality development career in ISKCON, I think his name is h.

00:41:54.195 --> 00:41:56.795
Bhanushwami or something like that.

00:41:56.795 --> 00:41:59.335
He, one, he speaks against Advaita.

00:42:00.005 --> 00:42:01.465
He doesn't know anything about Advaita.

00:42:01.476 --> 00:42:03.126
He's ridiculous.

00:42:03.126 --> 00:42:03.936
He's deluded.

00:42:04.335 --> 00:42:13.070
I could do many videos on him, to be honest, but he's so fundamentalist in ISKCON.

00:42:13.070 --> 00:42:13.800
It's crazy.

00:42:14.351 --> 00:42:16.481
It's interesting that there's infighting happening.

00:42:16.891 --> 00:42:28.860
But one thing I want to say that the fact that people of Indian heritage are going to ISKCON now, it just shows where people of Indian heritage actually think.

00:42:30.521 --> 00:42:38.041
Like where their mind is set on making money, motivating motivational speeches and all this type of stuff.

00:42:38.391 --> 00:42:41.922
while if you look at real Vedanta, it's about renunciation.

00:42:42.601 --> 00:42:48.931
It's about not being attached to the fruits of your actions giving, doing a lot of service.

00:42:49.211 --> 00:42:53.442
Although the ISKCON does do quite a bit of service, but there's ulterior motives to that too.

00:42:53.972 --> 00:43:05.081
The resurgence was in part due to ISKCON members finding creative ways to rebrand Krishna consciousness as a secular spiritual practice according to Nicole Karapanagiotis.

00:43:07.331 --> 00:43:16.202
An associate professor of religion at Rutgers University Camden and author of Branding Bhakti about ISKCON's efforts to reinvent itself.

00:43:16.512 --> 00:43:24.992
They've built a lot of yoga studios, mindfulness centres, sustainability centres to attract people who might not otherwise be attracted.

00:43:25.603 --> 00:43:26.342
That's very true.

00:43:27.563 --> 00:43:30.920
You would think by now he would have mentioned where he was a monk.

00:43:30.920 --> 00:43:32.963
Yeah, he still hasn't really.

00:43:33.443 --> 00:43:38.603
It's hard to imagine that leaving that out is not deliberate, but it's not clear what the reason for that is.

00:43:38.992 --> 00:43:57.713
Yeah, I would love to know why Shetty's arm length relationship with ISKCON has caused mixed feelings in ISKCON community some support his work and understand that he's had to embrace his secular version of spiritualism to reach the masses while others resent how personality cults have distorted their faith.

00:43:58.612 --> 00:44:00.262
Yeah, I see both sides.

00:44:01.177 --> 00:44:06.998
I understand him, actually, of why he would do a secular form of spirituality.

00:44:07.342 --> 00:44:14.632
If you want to appeal to, which he does, white middle aged women, that's the approach you're going to take.

00:44:14.643 --> 00:44:25.362
He's just pandering to his audience, nothing more than that, and I don't see why he would change that way.

00:44:25.702 --> 00:44:29.762
But yeah, is his faith got anything to do with what he's teaching right now?

00:44:29.902 --> 00:44:37.592
Probably not, but yeah, if you're part of ISKCON, this would be worrying, ooh the Watford Ashram, this is interesting.

00:44:38.463 --> 00:44:47.710
I'm so happy to see you, Gwyneth Paltrow exclaimed to Shetty from the stage of the In Goop Health Summit in November 2021.

00:44:48.260 --> 00:44:50.929
If you know about Goop, it's ridiculous.

00:44:51.010 --> 00:44:54.030
That's when you should know there's red flags about Jay Shetty.

00:44:54.382 --> 00:45:09.942
That he's invited to In Goop I would love it if you could just give everybody a little bit of your amazing story, Paltrow continued, how you came through being a monk and into being this amazing life coach and motivator and all of the amazing things you are.

00:45:10.362 --> 00:45:11.561
She was really gushing.

00:45:12.152 --> 00:45:16.322
Shetty's authority as a self help figure stems from his time as a monk.

00:45:17.141 --> 00:45:23.472
It's the basis for Think Like a Monk, and he brings it up in nearly every interview he does.

00:45:24.442 --> 00:45:29.672
Without his monk past, Shetty would just be another influencer battling for relevance online.

00:45:29.891 --> 00:45:33.192
That's quite true the monk thing is his biggest selling point.

00:45:33.742 --> 00:45:37.871
And, saying that he left monkhood is such a big headline.

00:45:38.012 --> 00:45:40.411
Think about it he left being a monk.

00:45:41.762 --> 00:45:46.791
That's prestigious, but he left it and he wanted to help the world.

00:45:47.012 --> 00:45:49.242
It's like this like superhero kind of figure.

00:45:51.001 --> 00:45:51.911
It's pretty smart.

00:45:51.961 --> 00:45:55.382
Look, on a PR level, yeah, it makes sense.

00:45:55.483 --> 00:45:58.443
I'm not, I actually think it makes sense to do that.

00:45:58.902 --> 00:46:01.202
He understands the branding aspect of that.

00:46:01.202 --> 00:46:10.963
So it's, he would do that, but I wanted to just say Obviously he's here at the People's Choice Award, but what I find strange is what he's wearing.

00:46:11.342 --> 00:46:14.583
Jay's fashion sense has just gone wild.

00:46:15.253 --> 00:46:17.672
I wish he was still a monk, he'd probably dress better.

00:46:18.409 --> 00:46:27.789
So anyway, Shetty has repeatedly said he lived as a monk for 3 years from 2010 to 2013 in a Hindu ashram in India.

00:46:28.219 --> 00:46:33.679
When I was 21 years old, I skipped my college graduation to join an ashram in a village near Mumbai.

00:46:33.835 --> 00:46:35.605
Shetty writes in Eight Rules of Love.

00:46:36.065 --> 00:46:43.034
There's a similar claim in the introduction of Think Like a Monk, where Shetty writes that he lived in Mumbai for three years before returning home to England.

00:46:43.505 --> 00:46:54.114
Three years after I moved to Mumbai, my teacher, Gauranga Das, told me he believed I would be of greater value and service if I left the ashram and shared what I learned with the world.

00:46:54.795 --> 00:46:56.795
I mean, why Gauranga Das would say that?

00:46:56.885 --> 00:47:01.974
Also, I would question I would question the authenticity of his teacher.

00:47:02.644 --> 00:47:08.824
For example, if Shetty is better off not being a monk, that means he was pretty shoddy monk.

00:47:09.465 --> 00:47:12.885
Let's be honest, why else would you say this?

00:47:13.927 --> 00:47:31.130
Or, Gauranga Das saw that Shetty was not, he would not vibe well as a monk and probably would be better off just going out in the world and doing his woo-woo language that he does.

00:47:31.559 --> 00:47:54.347
A host of media outlets have relayed the anecdote, including the Wall Street Journal, Magazine, New York Times, British GQ India, and the Times of London twice, but some of who know Shetty at the time say he spent the majority of his period as a monk at Bhaktivedanta Manor, a sprawling Tudor estate in Watford, a town just outside London, and visited India only occasionally.

00:47:54.547 --> 00:47:55.527
I believe this.

00:47:56.338 --> 00:48:01.958
And one thing, Bhaktivedanta Manor was donated to the Hare Krishnas by George Harrison.

00:48:02.235 --> 00:48:24.184
Virabhadra Das a Krishna Devotee who lived in ISKCON soho Street Temple in Central London from Feb 2011 to September, 2013, says he saw Shetty several times over this span during visits to Bhaktivedanta Manor, Lila also told the guardian Shetty had been in Watford for the vast majority of his time as a monk.

00:48:24.905 --> 00:48:27.885
Shetty's attorneys at say that.

00:48:28.650 --> 00:48:36.769
This time, as a monk, began in May 2010, when he moved into Bhaktivedanta Manor, and that is, moved to India three months later.

00:48:37.355 --> 00:48:37.514
Mr.

00:48:37.514 --> 00:48:42.905
Shetty spent most of his time in India with trips back to Bhaktivedanta Manor as Mr.

00:48:42.905 --> 00:48:50.514
Shetty was encouraged by his mentors at the monasteries in India to spend time serving in a community where he was raised.

00:48:50.905 --> 00:48:54.954
He also visited elsewhere in Europe and the US as part of his service.

00:48:55.239 --> 00:48:57.099
This is consistent with what Mr.

00:48:57.099 --> 00:48:59.030
Shetty writes in Think Like a Monk.

00:48:59.480 --> 00:49:07.650
When I graduated from college, I traded my suits for robes and joined the ashram, where we slept on the floor and lived out of gym lockers.

00:49:08.829 --> 00:49:09.230
Really?

00:49:09.750 --> 00:49:13.195
I lived and travelled across India, the UK and Europe.

00:49:13.375 --> 00:49:19.835
Gauranga Das also told the Guardian that Jay was a monk from May 2010 to March 2013.

00:49:20.304 --> 00:49:25.574
The first three months were in Bhaktivedanta Manor, after that he was primarily based in India.

00:49:27.355 --> 00:49:29.175
Okay that's interesting.

00:49:30.985 --> 00:49:34.085
Now this, now let's see.

00:49:34.414 --> 00:49:38.315
But Shetty's own writings in his blog post conflict with this account.

00:49:38.715 --> 00:49:39.954
Both him and his guru.

00:49:40.144 --> 00:49:49.744
This is why I think Gaurangadas is a bigger fraud than Jay is because he's still wearing the monk clothes and he's lying.

00:49:49.744 --> 00:50:00.034
Shetty kept a blog called The Essence at this time in which he recounted his travels around Europe and India in 2010 for his friends back in London.

00:50:00.545 --> 00:50:03.545
The site was made private during the reporting of this article.

00:50:04.605 --> 00:50:11.155
In numerous blog posts, he describes Bhaktivedanta Manor as his primary ashram during his time as a monk.

00:50:12.005 --> 00:50:14.474
If it's your primary place, it's not the India ashram.

00:50:14.905 --> 00:50:17.414
That means you were staying there majority of the time.

00:50:18.405 --> 00:50:28.525
He moved into Bhaktivedanta Manor in July 2010, and it wasn't until October 2010 that he visited India, where he initially spent less than 4 months.

00:50:28.644 --> 00:50:44.610
In early 2011, he wrote on the blog, Came back from India, went to see a few people at City University, was a good laugh, then planned an action packed weekend but got sick, stuck at home in bed for 10 days, few nice souls came and visited.

00:50:45.239 --> 00:50:53.050
Came back to stay at the temple where I've been busy going to programs, distributing flyers and books on the streets all over the UK and enjoying festivals.

00:50:53.539 --> 00:50:57.969
After almost 4 months in India, I realised there was so much to process from my trip.

00:50:59.039 --> 00:51:13.974
Contrary to the portrayal in his books, Shetty's time in the Watford Ashram was not just a quiet life of seclusion and travel, exactly, he was busy giving out books, chanting, That's what he was doing.

00:51:14.923 --> 00:51:20.554
He spent a lot of these three years as a monk making viral YouTube videos on the streets of London.

00:51:21.353 --> 00:51:30.494
I saw him in sweatpants more than I saw him in robes, said a former ISKCON devotee who was a monk in London at the same time as Shetty.

00:51:30.833 --> 00:51:35.954
I think, yeah, I remember being friends with Jay on Facebook.

00:51:37.329 --> 00:51:40.818
Maybe in 2011, , 2012, yeah.

00:51:41.469 --> 00:51:49.929
In 2013, I remember interacting with him in 2013 and he started doing a lot more posts on Facebook.

00:51:50.119 --> 00:51:52.748
He's posting a lot on Facebook a lot of quotes.

00:51:53.358 --> 00:51:55.989
Yeah, so, it makes sense.

00:51:56.248 --> 00:52:07.358
Despite travelling constantly and spending a lot of time online while he was a monk, Shetty said that he had difficulty reassimilating into society after leaving the ashram in early 2013.

00:52:08.713 --> 00:52:15.523
That was the hardest point in my life, Shetty told the host of the British Daytime TV show this morning in early 2023.

00:52:15.882 --> 00:52:18.242
I feel like I experienced depression for the first time.

00:52:18.643 --> 00:52:20.552
I'd forgotten how to do small talk.

00:52:20.862 --> 00:52:22.842
I didn't know who the Prime Minister was.

00:52:23.112 --> 00:52:24.623
I didn't know who won the World Cup.

00:52:24.842 --> 00:52:28.293
I didn't even know how to have a conversation that wasn't deep and meaningful.

00:52:28.702 --> 00:52:35.682
He didn't mention, he spent a lot of that time a few miles from the TV studio blogging and making videos.

00:52:36.023 --> 00:52:58.032
I find that to be completely a lie you do a lot of small talk, even as a monk, you do speak to people, you have deeper, in fact, as a monk, you would be having more deep and meaningful conversations, you wouldn't know who the prime minister was that's also not true you wouldn't know who won the world cup, that's also not true you're not secluded from the world.

00:52:58.608 --> 00:53:02.518
If you could blog and do YouTube videos, you knew everything.

00:53:02.849 --> 00:53:09.489
So the Tom Cruise of Krishna Consciousness, we're coming to the tail end of this.

00:53:09.550 --> 00:53:14.389
In 2016, Shetty left his job as a consultant to pursue a new career.

00:53:14.639 --> 00:53:23.239
He rang in the new year by releasing his first video as an independent media personality, a piece about how the Bhagavad Gita can help people with their resolutions.

00:53:23.239 --> 00:53:28.500
The video was made in what would become Shetty's signature style.

00:53:28.885 --> 00:53:37.594
delivering a non stop stream of bumper sticker wisdom and quotes from prominent spiritual and cultural figures, Gandhi, Leo Tolstoy, Ringo Starr.

00:53:37.594 --> 00:53:51.704
Shetty's first video is more overtly religious than much of his oeuvre, I can't pronounce that correctly the New Year's resolutions video was released on the YouTube channel Hare Krishna TV.

00:53:52.228 --> 00:53:52.918
Interesting.

00:53:53.197 --> 00:54:02.047
Shortly after it was published, Shetty told an ISKCON affiliated news website that he was figuring out how to make his message more palatable to western audiences.

00:54:02.538 --> 00:54:12.978
The article states that Shetty and a team of urban monks who do not know who won the world cup, sought to present Krishna consciousness to the apple generation.

00:54:14.532 --> 00:54:30.282
Through blogs, social media, videos and presentations at universities, and that he wanted to bring people to the Krishna faith, we can connect people across the world with Krishna consciousness and start a revolution online, Shetty said in an interview.

00:54:30.503 --> 00:54:31.623
This is very telling.

00:54:32.202 --> 00:54:40.643
In Think Like a Monk, Shetty writes, this book is completely non sectarian, it's not some sneaky conversion strategy, I swear, I do not believe him.

00:54:41.123 --> 00:54:47.733
In Think Like a Monk, you may not claim that you're part of ISKCON, but it's there, in the subtext.

00:54:48.822 --> 00:54:52.512
Especially when you say who your guru is as well, come on man.

00:54:53.782 --> 00:54:59.932
No converting people to Krishna Consciousness is not Mr Shetty's goal, Shetty's lawyers wrote to the Guardian.

00:55:00.193 --> 00:55:08.612
Think Like a Monk explains Mr Shetty enjoys sharing the ancient wisdom he learned as a monk in a practical, accessible, relevant and transformational way.

00:55:09.972 --> 00:55:11.172
Yeah, okay.

00:55:11.932 --> 00:55:17.393
One ISKCON member says Shetty is to the organisation what Tom Cruise is to Scientology.

00:55:17.753 --> 00:55:23.632
A magnetic, media friendly ambassador for an otherwise controversial religious institution.

00:55:24.063 --> 00:55:27.052
His sheer fame serves as a recruitment tool.

00:55:27.373 --> 00:55:28.253
That's very true.

00:55:28.887 --> 00:55:33.297
Again, he interviews my spiritual teacher, Gaurangadas.

00:55:33.597 --> 00:55:39.108
That is a clear kind of shout out for ISKCON.

00:55:40.481 --> 00:56:03.273
People are hungry for spirituality, but they're not interested in having to bow to red robed monks, shave their heads, and chant ancient foreign mantras, writes Ronald Purser, professor of business at San Francisco State University, a practicing Buddhist for 40 years and the author of McMindfulness, about Western capitalism co opting and subsuming Eastern Religious traditions.

00:56:03.309 --> 00:56:11.778
A savvy influencer like Shetty with gobs of charisma, charm and entrepreneurial flair offers exactly what the masses want.

00:56:12.059 --> 00:56:17.719
A spiritual but not religious, DIY quick fix type of spirituality.

00:56:17.809 --> 00:56:22.659
That's very true and the very spirituality that my channel is against.

00:56:23.268 --> 00:56:25.889
We are not happy with this type of stuff.

00:56:26.884 --> 00:56:35.364
Oh, look at him there, showing off, sitting on the floor at Cannes France what is he doing there at Cannes, like?

00:56:38.594 --> 00:56:41.884
Shetty's videos got the attention of Arianna Huffington.

00:56:42.114 --> 00:56:50.534
He moved to New York in fall 2016 to work for HuffPost, but quickly realised he didn't need the backing of a media outlet to achieve fame as a wisdom peddler.

00:56:53.094 --> 00:56:59.764
By early 2017, he was releasing his videos on his own through Facebook and YouTube, where his growth was meteoric.

00:57:00.655 --> 00:57:06.905
Two years after striking out on his own, he has surpassed 1 million followers on YouTube and 20 million on Facebook.

00:57:07.326 --> 00:57:13.115
He told Mashable he was making six figures per month through Facebook's ad revenue share program for creators.

00:57:13.615 --> 00:57:21.146
Despite what he writes in Think Like a Monk, Shetty's social media prowess wasn't the result of his singular hard work.

00:57:21.295 --> 00:57:30.394
He used his stature within ISKCON and the IPS youth group to convince dozens of young members to help him produce and promote his work in the name of serving Krishna.

00:57:30.764 --> 00:57:32.014
I believe that to be true.

00:57:33.445 --> 00:57:41.155
You have to appreciate that Jay was like a superstar within ISKCON at that point and he was getting people to do so much stuff for him for free.

00:57:41.534 --> 00:57:43.027
Remembers one ISKCON member.

00:57:44.422 --> 00:57:50.592
Shetty had members post his social media content to their friends and family, urging them to like, subscribe and share.

00:57:50.813 --> 00:57:53.302
That's very true, he did tell us to do that a lot.

00:57:53.873 --> 00:58:01.353
Even though I wasn't part of, I'm not part of ISKCON, but part of his friend group, he did used to ask to, to share his stuff.

00:58:01.722 --> 00:58:05.302
It was relentless, recalled another ISKCON member.

00:58:05.302 --> 00:58:09.793
Facebook and WhatsApp and texts and emails, I don't think he'd be where he is without them.

00:58:10.742 --> 00:58:11.003
Mr.

00:58:11.003 --> 00:58:18.313
Shetty did ask and encourage friends to post, share and subscribe to his content, according to a letter from Shetty's attorneys.

00:58:19.003 --> 00:58:20.512
Some friends assisted Mr.

00:58:20.512 --> 00:58:22.213
Shetty with filming and editing.

00:58:22.432 --> 00:58:22.693
Mr.

00:58:22.693 --> 00:58:30.822
Shetty did not make promises or represent to individuals, organisations that they would be paid for posting, sharing, liking and subscribing to his content.

00:58:31.253 --> 00:58:33.813
That's true, he didn't say that, but still.

00:58:35.032 --> 00:58:38.302
But much of Shetty's content was plagiarised.

00:58:38.583 --> 00:59:06.358
In 2019, a social media influencer, Nicole Arbour, published a video, Jay Shetty is full of exhibiting how Shetty built his social media presence by lifting content from other people, making inspirational quotes, many of which have been copied, often times verbatim, from accounts with smaller followings that look like original content.

00:59:07.288 --> 00:59:09.237
Do check that video out, it's really good.

00:59:09.918 --> 00:59:19.288
After posting the video, Arbour said she was inundated with messages from writers and digital creators who said Shetty had appropriated their work and refused to give them credit.

00:59:19.637 --> 00:59:29.427
Even after they asked him directly, they sent email after email begging him to take his posts down or at least credit them, and he just didn't.

00:59:29.757 --> 00:59:32.137
Arbour said, that was pretty upsetting to me.

00:59:33.288 --> 00:59:33.557
That.

00:59:33.927 --> 00:59:35.987
That's when he's a grifter, frankly.

00:59:37.527 --> 00:59:44.443
Many of Shetty's 'original' videos were based on pre-existing parables and social media posts that had gone viral years earlier.

00:59:45.862 --> 00:59:55.432
Shetty released a melodramatic YouTube video in 2018 in which a blind woman dumps her boyfriend after receiving an eye transplant and discovering that her boyfriend is in fact blind himself.

00:59:55.432 --> 01:00:03.293
The twist, the boyfriend had donated his eyes to her as an act of selflessness and she was emotionally blind to see.

01:00:03.463 --> 01:00:04.012
LOL.

01:00:04.922 --> 01:00:06.182
That's really corny.

01:00:06.702 --> 01:00:13.152
This cautionary tale has appeared on Reddit five years earlier, and again on Facebook in 2017.

01:00:13.422 --> 01:00:22.123
Another Shetty video from that year is a theatrical reenactment of The Cookie Thief, a poem that had been making the viral rounds as far back as 2010.

01:00:22.913 --> 01:00:34.583
In another instance, Shetty copied an Indian man's facebook post about how parents shouldn't put so much academic pressure on their children, word for word, and without permission or attribution in one of his videos.

01:00:35.202 --> 01:00:43.083
After Arbour's video, Shetty ordered his employees to go through all posts and include attributions to content that had been taken from elsewhere.

01:00:43.282 --> 01:00:45.353
He deleted more than 100 posts.

01:00:45.996 --> 01:00:46.615
Red Flag.

01:00:47.155 --> 01:00:57.411
He also hired a crisis PR firm, Massive Red Flag, which launched a robust search engine optimization campaign according to a former employee of Shetty's.

01:00:59.449 --> 01:01:01.039
It was a learning experience for Mr.

01:01:01.039 --> 01:01:02.378
Shetty and his team.

01:01:02.789 --> 01:01:07.164
Shetty's Lawyers write about his unauthorized use of people's content.

01:01:07.375 --> 01:01:11.155
From that point on, we are not aware of any issues of this nature arising.

01:01:11.204 --> 01:01:18.385
Shetty still uses other people's content on his Instagram, now with attributions to the original creators.

01:01:18.775 --> 01:01:21.684
But he still does not get permission from the source accounts.

01:01:22.065 --> 01:01:41.675
The Guardian spoke to three online creators, the TikToker Emily Becker and the Twitter users Big Mel and The Oracle Reads You, whose content was reposted on Shetty's Instagram page in the past year and all of them said Shetty has never asked to use their content and that they received no compensation from him.

01:01:42.005 --> 01:01:52.150
His popularity is based on just repurposing other people's content and that's what he seems to be making money on Arbour said.

01:01:52.420 --> 01:01:55.449
The opposite path of a spiritual person.

01:01:55.670 --> 01:01:58.730
This is, I think one of the good parts of it.

01:01:59.119 --> 01:02:13.099
Shetty moved to LA, what he calls the content capital of the world in early 2018, and got cozy with big stars, one of Shetty's earliest Hollywood admirers was Russell Brand, who's now going to Christianity by the way.

01:02:13.579 --> 01:02:17.199
He was refashioning himself as a post woke social commentator.

01:02:17.710 --> 01:02:25.840
The same month, Shetty made his first of three appearances on Ellen and three on Red Table Talk, Jada Pinkett Smith's Facebook talk show.

01:02:26.510 --> 01:02:38.835
Will Smith took Shetty on as his personal spiritual advisor, and the pair would end up spending so much time together that they would later joke their wives suspected they were in a romantic relationship.

01:02:39.315 --> 01:02:40.255
This is interesting.

01:02:40.255 --> 01:02:47.644
This must have been prior to the Oscar slap incident when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock.

01:02:48.295 --> 01:02:50.525
I guess the spiritual advice didn't work.

01:02:50.994 --> 01:02:53.132
But also, the fact that he was friends with Russell Brand.

01:02:53.182 --> 01:02:54.862
I was a fan of Russell Brand.

01:02:55.672 --> 01:02:59.512
The way he's gone recently is disappointing.

01:02:59.641 --> 01:03:05.740
Obviously, that means that he didn't really have a deep understanding and it's a shame.

01:03:07.237 --> 01:03:24.336
He's an Indian man, he's attractive, he's charming, he's sweet, Fareeha Roisin, the Australian Canadian author of the book Who Is Wellness For, a critical look at the multi million, oh multi trillion dollar wellness industry wrote in an email of Shetty's appeal.

01:03:24.556 --> 01:03:30.737
I've been in the same room as him and he's appealing in the sense that he seems quite humble in person, almost shy.

01:03:31.106 --> 01:03:37.356
There is something compelling about that story, someone who accidentally came to fame, which I probably think to some degree is true.

01:03:37.547 --> 01:03:42.347
Yet it's questionable that a monk left his life in a monastery to instead live a life of what?

01:03:42.981 --> 01:03:47.181
Making TikToks, hanging out with celebrities, being on YouTube.

01:03:47.251 --> 01:03:51.052
It's almost the opposite path of what you assume a spiritual person arrives at.

01:03:51.052 --> 01:03:53.181
Yeah, when you claim to have been a monk, yeah.

01:03:53.251 --> 01:04:00.961
But again, to his defense, if he saw that life wasn't meant for him, it's good that he went out of it.

01:04:01.362 --> 01:04:03.342
So that's courageous too.

01:04:03.931 --> 01:04:04.141
But.

01:04:05.436 --> 01:04:12.237
I would say that there would be like this element of, still remaining humble that should still be there, which isn't.

01:04:13.077 --> 01:04:18.436
As Shetty's circle of celebrity friends expanded, so did his lines of business.

01:04:18.876 --> 01:04:31.356
In January 2020, Shetty launched the Jay Shetty Certification School, a six month online course that trains enrollees in Shetty's Success Coaching Methodology, so basically an MLM.

01:04:32.217 --> 01:04:35.206
To learn about the school, I signed up for an introductory call.

01:04:35.206 --> 01:04:42.567
After 30 minutes of explaining the school's schedule and curriculum, an enrolment advisor finally informed me about the sign up cost.

01:04:42.896 --> 01:04:45.827
7, 400.

01:04:45.827 --> 01:04:46.847
That's a lot of money.

01:04:47.166 --> 01:04:49.907
Information that's not available on the school website.

01:04:50.106 --> 01:04:55.646
The advisor was kind enough to make me a one time deal and cut the price to 6, 800.

01:04:57.637 --> 01:05:06.106
Three days later, the advisor followed up with another call and I pushed him about how graduates of the school recouped their 7, 400 investment.

01:05:06.456 --> 01:05:15.547
The advisor had gone through the program himself, he said, and had been able to make his money back in just two months, thanks to the school helping him set up his life coaching business.

01:05:15.987 --> 01:05:20.786
He eventually built a big enough book of clients to make 10, 000 a month from the business, he said.

01:05:22.217 --> 01:05:35.806
I asked him why he had quit his life coaching practice if he had been making so much money, and he said he made just as much now as an enrolment advisor for the certification school, a job that's entirely commission based.

01:05:35.902 --> 01:05:39.692
It really aligns with my purpose, he said.

01:05:39.692 --> 01:05:41.552
With life coaching, I impact one person.

01:05:41.851 --> 01:05:46.271
Or I can be here and help people like you who are going to go on and impact thousands of people.

01:05:46.592 --> 01:05:50.192
But then why wouldn't those people just end up becoming enrolment advisors?

01:05:51.101 --> 01:06:02.572
I mentioned that his explanation, him being certified in the Jay Shetty School, then certifying others so they can teach thousands of others, reminded me of a multi level marketing scheme.

01:06:03.231 --> 01:06:05.382
I don't know how to answer that, he replied.

01:06:05.431 --> 01:06:07.242
I'm just trying to help people, man.

01:06:08.702 --> 01:06:32.161
The Jay Shetty Certification School doesn't meet the formal definition of a multi level marketing MLM company, in that success is not entirely dependent on recruiting others to join the school, but it does share a lot of the characteristics with companies that operate as a pyramid scheme, according to William Keep, a professor of marketing at the College of New Jersey and an expert in MLMs.

01:06:33.172 --> 01:06:42.192
There are many similar patterns here, Keep said, when what we're seeing more in MLM world, especially recently, is services instead of products.

01:06:43.041 --> 01:06:50.052
Someone builds credentials that are difficult to verify and or exaggerated and then suggests they have a secret.

01:06:50.422 --> 01:06:52.302
I've got these wisdoms to share with you.

01:06:52.371 --> 01:06:53.842
What you do with them is up to you.

01:06:54.242 --> 01:06:55.012
He does that.

01:06:55.032 --> 01:06:56.121
Jay does that a lot.

01:06:56.346 --> 01:06:58.606
The Guardian spoke with several graduates of the J.

01:06:58.606 --> 01:07:00.155
Shetty Certification School.

01:07:00.235 --> 01:07:02.496
By the way, I know someone who's also gone through this school.

01:07:03.115 --> 01:07:06.536
And their experiences with the school were overwhelmingly positive.

01:07:06.846 --> 01:07:19.405
They felt the tuition, though expensive, was a good deal relative to other life coaching courses, even though none of them were earning a full time living from their coaching business a year after graduating.

01:07:19.905 --> 01:07:34.235
The Jay Shetty Certification School has accredited more than 1, 100 students in three years, according to its brochure, which at 7 grand a student means more than 7 million in revenue.

01:07:34.826 --> 01:07:35.806
That is crazy.

01:07:36.123 --> 01:07:38.893
By the way, do check out this video as well.

01:07:39.143 --> 01:07:39.943
It's really good.

01:07:40.199 --> 01:07:46.510
Shetty also markets himself in his content as an authority on mental health, which he's not.

01:07:46.940 --> 01:07:55.269
Last spring, Shetty wrote 7 Easy Ways to Improve Your Mental Health Right Now in a blog post for the meditation app Calm.

01:07:55.760 --> 01:08:01.090
A July 2022 YouTube video from Shetty instructs its viewers, let's talk about mental health.

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On his podcast, Shetty shares with his listeners 7 things to do this weekend to boost your mental health in an episode.

01:08:09.920 --> 01:08:24.231
Shetty's former Girlfriend Lila, a practicing psychotherapist for 13 years and the head of mental health services at university in the UK, fears Shetty and his life coaching school provide inaccurate and potentially dangerous mental health guidance.

01:08:24.631 --> 01:08:32.402
My issue as a mental health professional is that Shetty has misrepresented his persona, his knowledge, and his credentials, Lila said.

01:08:32.692 --> 01:08:38.671
Misinforming others is not only unethical, it's potentially harmful to vulnerable people.

01:08:39.202 --> 01:08:49.596
Just to say Lila, she's also done a video about this whole thing, so she's come out in the open, so that video's worth checking out too.

01:08:50.697 --> 01:09:02.023
Shetty's wellness industry success allowed him to purchase a home in Nicholls Canyon in the Hollywood Hills in Fall 2021 for a reported 8.

01:09:02.082 --> 01:09:05.693
4 million from a monk to a mansion.

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That should be the title for his next book, From Monk to Mansion.

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The house was formerly owned by Baltasar Getty, an heir to the Getty oil fortune, whose family has been Hollywood royalty for generations.

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So far, Shetty's rise has had a few critics.

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When people do question Shetty, they are quickly dismissed.

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After he appeared on Armchair Expert this March to promote 8 Rules of Love, one of his show's Instagram followers wrote a critical comment.

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Super disappointed that you're platforming Jay Shetty.

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He's not an expert.

01:09:38.632 --> 01:09:42.573
What credentials does he hold to help people through their current struggles?

01:09:42.823 --> 01:09:43.403
That's true.

01:09:43.462 --> 01:09:45.682
Jay Shetty is not a mental health professional.

01:09:46.372 --> 01:09:47.943
I'm not a mental health professional.

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That's why I think it's very important that my deal is only with spirituality and for mental health, you should always go to a mental health professional, to a therapist, to a counsellor.

01:09:59.813 --> 01:10:04.773
Dax Shepard, the show's main host, answered the comment from his personal Instagram account.

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If you listen, you will quickly hear that he is an expert in the religions from India.

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What religions?

01:10:11.122 --> 01:10:11.613
Buddhism?

01:10:12.122 --> 01:10:12.682
Sikhism?

01:10:12.722 --> 01:10:13.353
Hinduism?

01:10:13.722 --> 01:10:14.393
I doubt it.

01:10:15.113 --> 01:10:15.662
Jainism?

01:10:16.078 --> 01:10:16.868
I don't think so.

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I found it illuminating.

01:10:19.047 --> 01:10:22.677
This means I'm going to have to listen to that episode and begin to react to it.

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Shepard wrote, what religions those are, exactly, Shepard didn't specify.

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That's what I mean here is, we can now question this.

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Because this is what he says.

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The article tells where it's been corrected.

01:10:39.252 --> 01:10:51.420
So, still sipping my tea, it's good tea this is an interesting article and it tells you a lot about when people try to sell spiritual ideas in wellness.

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Let me make one thing clear, spirituality has nothing to do with wellness.

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Mental health is serious and you should always consult a mental health counsellor, therapist or professional.

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Spiritual people, we can only help you.

01:11:10.914 --> 01:11:12.875
And ethically, we have to help you.

01:11:13.845 --> 01:11:19.385
But, I can't tell you that meditation will totally get rid of stress in your life.

01:11:21.204 --> 01:11:25.994
Along with therapy, it can help you to address stress in your life.

01:11:26.707 --> 01:11:30.596
The other thing that I will say is spirituality is about liberation.

01:11:31.117 --> 01:11:33.636
Jay Shetty, he calls himself a spiritual guide.

01:11:33.686 --> 01:11:34.886
That's what the article says.

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And I've heard him say that he's allowed people to call him that.

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He's a spiritual advisor to Will Smith.

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And also, what I want to say is he's obviously also allowed people he's interviewed people who peddle on some level conspiracy theories about COVID.

01:11:54.074 --> 01:11:55.454
How has he allowed them to be?

01:11:55.944 --> 01:11:59.694
That also, in my opinion, is worrying.

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The other thing is he's, he also is selling tea with his wife.

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So many things that he's doing now.

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But, what I'm coming down to is that spirituality is about liberation, about freedom.

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Freedom from the self of the body and mind, the association.

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Not to disassociate, but to understand that's not your identity, alone.

01:12:25.359 --> 01:12:28.399
And Jay doesn't provide that.

01:12:28.399 --> 01:12:29.738
That's why I stopped listening to him.

01:12:30.279 --> 01:12:31.668
That's why I don't take him seriously.

01:12:32.338 --> 01:12:47.378
But at the end of the day, if Jay has chosen to not associate himself with ISKCON, I don't see that as a red flag as much, but It's also telling about what his views on ISKCON are.

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In my opinion I think there's a lot for us to go into when we look into this whole Jay Shetty thing.

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We have to look at this podcast with him and Dax Shepard.

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We're gonna have to look at the interview between him and Gauranga Das as well.

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So those two things will be coming up.

01:13:05.878 --> 01:13:07.338
It's been a long episode.

01:13:07.509 --> 01:13:09.748
Tell me what you think about this article.

01:13:09.948 --> 01:13:16.578
We really need to look at holding people who talk about spiritual ideals to a higher standard.

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And it starts with people like Jay Shetty.

01:13:19.628 --> 01:13:24.588
And, We need to look into and be honest.

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That are these people actually offering us spiritual advice?

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That was my deep dive into the whole article.

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I hope you liked it.

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It's pretty long, I know, and if you stayed with me throughout, thank you.

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But until next time, think about the people you follow and think, are they providing what they claim to be providing?

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Don't just look at someone because they have so many followers that they're great.

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It's not always about the numbers.

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It's about the quality, it's about the content, and that's what matters.

01:13:58.769 --> 01:14:05.069
Anyway, thank you very much, and I shall see you again soon, thank you, bye.