10/04/2025
Why I Studied Kriya Yoga While Obsessing Over AI
For the last six months, I’ve been obsessed with the coming wave of AI—specifically AI agents—and the colossal shift they’ll bring to education, work, and the very meaning of life. I’ve spoken to anyone who would listen. I’ve explored the frontiers of what’s coming. And yet, in the middle of that storm, I found myself signing up for a 200-hour teacher training in Kriya Yoga.
Why?
To answer that, we have to rewind the clock.
In 2011, the world mourned the loss of Steve Jobs—the greatest tech innovator of our lifetime. I’d just begun meditating, and I was fascinated to learn that Steve, too, had traveled to India in his youth to study meditation. At his memorial, everyone received a copy of Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda.
I stored that book away in my mental list—"something to read one day."
Fast forward: I sold my company, TVN, and helped scale it from zero to $50 million in revenue. After the exit, I co-founded Soma, a meditation retreat in Byron Bay. The man who taught me to meditate—Gary Gorrow—became my business partner. One day, he suggested we place Autobiography of a Yogi in every guest’s room. There it was again. The Steve Jobs book.
This time, I read it, and I was fascinated. Yogananda spoke of an ancient practice called Kriya Yoga—a discipline so powerful that his teachers seemed to possess Jedi-like capabilities. In fact, George Lucas was inspired by it when creating Star Wars.
But here’s the twist: Kriya Yoga isn’t about acquiring powers. It’s about accessing stillness, alignment, and mastery from within. In the West, we’ve reduced yoga to stretching. But true yoga—yuj, in Sanskrit—means union. Breathwork, meditation, mantra, and energy mastery are part of a complete system that connects us to who we truly are.
And that brings us to now.
The AI Tidal Wave
We are entering a time of unprecedented disruption. Zero-cost expertise is coming. Automation is accelerating. My three kids—13, 4, and 1—will likely enter a workforce that looks nothing like the one I entered. In fact, it may not require much work at all.
Work, for most of us, has been the anchor of our identity and the source of our meaning. As AI decouples productivity from employment, the question becomes: Where will we find meaning next?
Without daily rituals, trusted frameworks, and timeless practices, we risk floating in a sea of distraction and despair.
And that’s my thesis: we will need inner technology to match the outer technology. Practices like Kriya Yoga—rooted in over 7,000 years of wisdom—will become essential.
When I’ve faced loss, stress, or overwhelm, Kriya Yoga has been my path inward to get back out. It’s a system I trust. Not because it’s trendy. Because it works.
Why Now
Steve Jobs—the world’s most celebrated technologist—was a devotee of this path. That’s not a coincidence. As AI reaches its tipping point, and the U.S. loses its grip as the world’s stabilizer, we’re entering a fragile epoch. Add in shareholder-driven tech rollouts and rising geopolitical tensions, and the need for a practice rooted in wisdom, not profits, becomes clear.
This isn’t about nostalgia or spiritual tourism. It’s about survival of the self. As we augment our lives with AI, we must equally invest in the human operating system.
Kriya Yoga is that system. It’s the ancient technology we’ll need to stay grounded, clear, and connected in a world accelerating beyond recognition.
And maybe—just maybe—Steve Jobs was giving us more than a book. Maybe he was handing us a blueprint for how to navigate what's coming.
Exploring the future of AI on behalf of my three kids, aged 13, 4 and 1.
