On a frigid February morning, Jay Shetty joined Drew Barrymore as a co-host on her talk show for an episode about love. “No one is smarter and better” at talking about love than him, Ms. Barrymore declared, before bringing Mr. Shetty to the stage.

As Mr. Shetty, a 35-year-old monk turned life coach and influencer, shared dating advice from his new book, “8 Rules of Love: How to Find It, Keep It and Let It Go,” Ms. Barrymore melted into her chair. When he explained that a person should focus on self-growth before jumping into a relationship, she said, “Jay, I just appreciate you so much — I can’t even handle it!” Phoebe Robinson, a comedian, producer and actress who joined the two later in the show, was also smitten, leaning in to ask: “Jay, do you have any single friends? Hook us up!”

Mr. Shetty’s body of work is largely based on what he learned while living at an ashram in India from 2010 to 2013 — teachings he laid out in “Think Like a Monk: Train Your Mind for Peace and Purpose Every Day,” his first book, which became an instant New York Times best seller in 2020. His “8 Rules of Love” is also based on ancient Hindu teachings, and, within a week of its publication on Jan. 31, topped the New York Times best-seller list. Starting next week, he will promote the new book on a 30-stop world tour, which has already sold out shows in Sydney and Los Angeles.

After seven years of posting bite-size self-improvement videos online, Mr. Shetty has achieved a level of fame that he described in an interview from his home in Los Angeles as “surreal.” He has amassed about 50 million followers across social media platforms; his podcast, On Purpose, is downloaded about 20 million times per month, and guests have included celebrities such as John Legend, Khloé Kardashian and Oprah Winfrey. He met Jennifer Lopez during an online event they hosted together, sponsored by Coach, and she then asked him to officiate when she married Ben Affleck last fall.

When asked what his official title should be, Mr. Shetty said “helping people find their purpose.” He joins a long list of wellness leaders expounding Eastern philosophies and capturing the attention of the West — a group that includes Deepak Chopra and the Indian monk Swami Vivekananda, who received a standing ovation in 1893 for his speech at the Parliament of the World’s Religions conference in Chicago. Mr. Shetty has his critics, like Ronald Purser, a business management professor at San Francisco State University and the author of “McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality.” Mr. Purser said he saw Mr. Shetty’s content as fuel for a multimillion-dollar industry that has “uprooted entire 2,600-year traditions” and has turned teachings historically rooted in selflessness, altruism and sustainability into profit.

Mr. Shetty acknowledges the inherent tension in going from a monastic life, during which he disavowed material comfort and personal gain, to living in a mansion in Hollywood with his wife, Radhi Devlukia-Shetty, who has become a social media star herself, and charging fans up to $300 for a private dinner and meditation session with him on tour.

“I had to work through that paradox in my own heart and mind,” Mr. Shetty said. “It took me tons of internal work to wrap my head around it.” But it is all in service of his “vision”— as his website puts it — to “make wisdom go viral.”

The Making of an Influencer

Mr. Shetty, who is of Indian descent, grew up in north London in a middle-class household that wasn’t particularly religious. At 18, he enrolled in a management course at the prestigious Bayes Business School with plans to work in finance. But when he went to hear a monk named Gauranga Das speak on campus (lured by the promise of drinks with friends afterward), he became inspired.

“Gauranga Das talked about how using your skills in the service of others is the primary focus of human life and I was like, ‘Wait a minute — everyone so far has been teaching me how to become a millionaire or a billionaire or how to start a new company, and he’s here talking about being happy and joyful,’” Mr. Shetty said. “That moment was so pivotal. If I didn’t meet him, I don’t think I would have pursued a spiritual path.”

While finishing his three-year degree, Mr. Shetty split his time off between interning at finance firms in London and training at an ashram in Mumbai under Gauranga Das. At school, he started the Think Out Loud club, which gathered like-minded students to discuss spirituality, psychology and philosophy. It wasn’t very popular, drawing just five to 10 students each week. But “I was listening to people, answering their questions, recommending books,” he said. “I was essentially doing what I do today, and I was happy.”

After graduating in 2010, he turned down job offers in finance and chose to live at the ashram full time, which meant shaving his head, swapping his wardrobe of corporate suits for two robes (one to wear and one to wash) and sleeping on a thin mat on the floor in a communal living space. His life choice didn’t make sense to his tight-knit community at home. “They were like: ‘Jay, you’ve been brainwashed. You’re never going to get a job again. You’re joining a cult,’” he said.

Three years later, he returned to London with roughly $25,000 in student loans and had to move back in with his parents amid a chorus of “told you so” from friends and relatives. “It was the most anxious and embarrassing moment in my life,” Mr. Shetty said.

After multiple rejections, he was accepted into a graduate training program at Accenture, but still wanted to pursue his dharma, or purpose, which he had come to believe was spreading mindfulness. And so he began offering meditation classes to co-workers.

Soon, an acquaintance suggested that he post meditation and philosophy videos on YouTube. “I literally thought to myself, ‘That only works for Justin Bieber,’” Mr. Shetty said. But he gave it a shot, recruiting a wedding videographer to help him make four short videos; they attracted thousands of views almost instantly.

His channel caught the eye of the human resources director at Accenture. She shared the videos with a friend, who just happened to be Arianna Huffington, the founder of The Huffington Post and, later, Thrive Global. She was “so taken with him and his mission,” Ms. Huffington said in an email, that she asked him to produce three videos for The Huffington Post to see if they would get any traction.

They collectively got close to 20 million views, Ms. Huffington said.“It was clear to us, to our audience and to the world that Jay Shetty was something special,” she said. Almost immediately, she offered him a job as a host and producer in New York City.

“Overnight, my life changed,” Mr. Shetty said.

What’s Love Got to Do With It?

Fans of Mr. Shetty point to his ability to translate complex philosophical concepts into easily digestible tidbits. He knows how to make that content “applicable to people’s everyday lives,” Ms. Huffington said.

His YouTube channel is overflowing with titles optimized to catch the attention of millions of viewers, like “Husband leaves wife for another woman, THEN THIS HAPPENS” and “If Someone Broke Your Heart, WATCH THIS.”  The videos skim over the surface of the human experience, often ending with pat takeaways. “Things are not always as they appear,” he says in a video on how to avoid making snap judgments of others. “When someone cheats on you, it reflects more of who they are and not who you are,” he says in another about heartbreak.

“He’s beautiful, he's charming, he’s educated, he’s thoughtful when he speaks,” said Fariha Róisín, a poet, novelist and author of “Who Is Wellness For? An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who It Leaves Behind.” “All of those things are part of the mystique,” she said, that also makes him palatable.

Last year, he started “The Daily Jay,” an audio program with the meditation app Calm, in which he gives listeners a seven-minute breathing and meditation exercise to do each day. In one episode, he talks about neuroplasticity; in another, he explores a Hindu parable about shifting one’s perspective. It has become the app’s most popular program, according to the company.

Focusing on love now, Mr. Shetty said, is a natural evolution of his work. He is not trained as a couples therapist or a counselor, and while he sprinkles in stories about his relationship with his wife, who does not seem fazed by Mr. Shetty’s fame (she finished reading “Think Like a Monk” only this year and rarely listens to his podcast), his personal life was not the impetus to give advice about romance. Rather, he said, his advice was about helping people improve their relationships with themselves, and now he is simply teaching them to deepen their connections with others.

The new book explores the four Vedic stages of love — preparing for love, practicing love, protecting love and perfecting love — with simple exercises and takeaways. There is a list of first date questions like, “What is occupying your thoughts most at the moment?” And for readers in relationships, there is a “social calendar” worksheet — to help people make time for themselves that is separate from time with their significant other or with friends — “because the time and space we spend apart enhances the time we spend together,” he writes.

On tour, rather than read an excerpt and sign copies of the book, Mr. Shetty plans to host an “interactive experience” devised to help the audience members deepen their understanding of their relationships, he said.

But the very thing that makes his work popular — the accessibility — risks oversimplifying issues that he and the wellness industry writ large are trying to solve, Ms. Róisín said.

“There’s so much access to meditation today, or to spiritual thought, and yet society isn’t really getting better,” she said, adding that it is in large part because the wellness options promoted in the United States don’t tackle the systemic root causes of the country’s record levels of stress, anxiety and depression. “How can we be individually well if we aren’t well collectively?”

But, as Mr. Shetty said, he is not trying to change the system:

“I’m simply a man who used to be a monk, learned a ton of stuff and I am teaching what I learned.”