714. Nishanth Selvalingam

Is it omnipresently cognizant of everything in the universe from macroscopic to microscopic? Is there some omnipresent knowingness that is consciously knowing each cell in my liver? Or is somehow things set up automatically and they just run? We could take a more maybe solipsistic view here, like we could take a more ekajiva vada view of like the only thing I can be sure of is that which is appearing to me now.

And that would be a valid approach too, but you're right. I think there are maybe more theistic, more realist views of the tradition that would say this, that right now I am a jiva or a pashu, an embodied soul, and so I'm Shiva plus some self-limitation, some sankocha. So right now I'm only aware of very little and so it appears to me that there's an entire universe beyond my knowledge. And then through spiritual practice in this tradition, the idea is that I expand my knowing.

So I become aware now not just of this body but maybe also of the liver. You know, before we take a hatha yoga class for instance, we're not even aware that we have hamstrings. And then after the practice we're like, "Ow! I didn't even know I had muscles in those places!" What is this inner growth? It's like our world has widened. We become aware of more of our embodiment. And in the Shiva Sutra, there's a beautiful line there, "Dhrishyam Shariram."

Whatever you can see is your body. Or to put it another way, this whole universe is God's body, and you are God. So technically it's true. The realization in this tradition would be knowing that and feeling that. You should feel embodied as the whole world. So you wouldn't just feel your own liver. You would feel every liver everywhere. I'm reminded of Swami Vekananda.

There's a scene where he's pacing back and forth on the balcony in his room in Belumat and he's obviously very distressed and someone asks him about why he's so distressed, why he can't sleep. It's like in the middle of the night and he claims that there's a volcano that just exploded somewhere in Fiji and you know the news hadn't reached him yet but he could feel the suffering of the people

on that end of the planet. He just was embodied as them in a sense or there's another story where where Ramakrishna is looking at a boatman in the distance on the Ganga and the boatman's assistant slaps him on the back and Sri Ramakrishna feels that, he goes "Ow!" and later it's verified that his back becomes red or he would feel when people stepped on grass, he would feel like they were stepping on his own body.

So there are mystical experiences, we call it Purnahangta, the experience of oneself as the Oversoul. In truth we are that, but maybe mercifully, for better or for worse, I don't know that and I don't feel that because I don't have the capacity to handle that. But through sadhana, through spiritual practice, one's capacity for embodiment increases and so one's experience of embodiment increases.

And I think you're right, at a certain point, one does know about the trillions of atoms in one little rock and is aware of all the laws. And maybe when you say one does know, it may not be human beings know, because it might be beyond the capacity of a gross human nervous system. You might need a celestial nervous system to have that kind of knowledge. Precisely. They call them siddhas and they have a different kind of embodiment actually.

They're not limited by the hardware of being a human, although they can at any time and any in any place appear in an anthropomorphic

Form like Matsyendra Natha or Goraksha Natha. These are great Siddhas even Vivekananda You know once he kicked the body he kicked the mortal coil and before news of it got to his brother disciple Sashi Maharaj in South India he himself appeared kind of like Ben Kenobi in Star Wars You know he appeared as a force apparition and he said Sashi Sashi I spat out the body So Vivekananda now, he's exultant, you know, I spat out the body.

Now he's gotten out of Ram Dass' tight shoe, he's gotten out of the hardware, and now he has a greater capacity to work, arguably, a greater capacity to feel and to act. Which is something Obi-Wan Kenobi said. He said, "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine." Precisely that. And you know George Lucas, he's friends with Joseph Campbell, who was a disciple of Holy Mother. Oh, I didn't know that.

I knew he was tight with Campbell, but I didn't know Campbell was a disciple. Oh, sorry, Campbell was a disciple of Nikilananda, sorry, who was a disciple of the Holy Mother. So, Holy Mother's disciple, Swami Nikilananda, who translated the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, his disciple was Joseph Campbell, which actually explains a lot of things. The way that Joseph Campbell thinks synchronically about all the world's myths and stories, that's a very Ramakrishnan

approach, I think. Yeah. Since we've talked about growth being a never-ending process, spiritual development, let's talk a little bit about the so-called direct versus progressive

paths because you've expressed notions that actually align with both of them, and my attitude is that both simultaneously can function but neither exclusively. Yes. I think the way that you started this interview was so apt and so wonderful, which is on the theme of reconciliation and harmonization. Because things that seem dichotomous, it's like the trademark of our tradition to somehow

reconcile them. We want our cake, we want to eat it too. So often when people are talking about the world and the ontological status of the world, you'll see that in non-dual tantra, it's like we both get the benefits of Shankara's vivarta, you know Advaita Vedanta says the world is an illusory appearance in Brahman. The advantage there is that God doesn't change or God doesn't

themselves undergo any process. The drawback is the world is no longer real, the body and mind are no longer real and then you can easily run into all sorts of ethical problems, chief of which is non-digested spirituality. You just make claims that you're enlightened but because you see the the body and mind is real, you can spiritually bypass, you can opt out of actually integrating that reality into each and every moment of your life.

On the other end of the spectrum though, ontologically speaking, if the world is real, then in what sense does God stand in relation to the world? Like you pointed out earlier, does God just create the world and then go to sleep and allow the world to run mechanistically? Or is God involved with every step of the process like some helicopter parent or something? And if so, what horrible mismanagement? Then all the sorts of problems of evil arise and everything.

So if the world is real, that's a real problem for God, it seems like. And then God might have changed or transformed or the whole thing. This is Ramanuja's Parinama Vada, God transforms. Our position is a bit of both. It's an appearance in God without any real change in God's being, but it's a real appearance, a real manifestation of God. So that's ontologically speaking.

To take this down to the level of the individual in spiritual practice, that allows for both views, the direct path view, that I'm already Shiva as I am, pure non-dual consciousness, in me arises the experience of the body and mind, but because the body and mind are real manifestations of my non-dual nature as pure consciousness, it's therefore still productive to try to integrate my Shiva-dva, my Shiva nature, into my embodiment, which is where all the

progressive practices become emphasized. Yeah, so let's say that, you know, you see on the news that a certain number won the lottery and you happen to have that number. Okay, so you're a multi-millionaire, but you haven't taken the steps necessary yet to cash in the ticket, to get an attorney and an accountant and all the stuff you have to do before you can actually begin spending the money. Yes, that's my favorite metaphor. It's like direct path gyana, tattva jnana is like knowing you have

the money in the bank and that itself is wonderful. It gives you great peace but the practice of tantra is in a sense yes going to the bank and withdrawing the money and then actually enjoying it, spending it, having fun. Yeah, so you have to do some stuff to make it. Yeah, but importantly not to get the the money. I think that's where we really benefit from the direct path. Because in the progressive path, there's sometimes this "I'm born in original sin" vibe that you get, like "I'm

broken in need of fixing, I'm deficient in need of growing." And so in that sense, the direct path criticism is valid, I think. As long as spirituality is in the future, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. You'll never recognize the truth, which is always here and now, inhearing in my experience, if I'm always wishfully thinking that it's going to come later, after the next experience, or once I make it to the Himalayas, or once I find a bearded Indian

guide to take me on as his disciple. You know, there's always some kind of fetishization of the future and so the direct path people, they're quite right to point out that this is a problem in the progressive path. But we say, importantly, that I already have the money. I'm already innately divine. You know, I'm already free. But I have to do something to manifest that freedom and enjoy that freedom, arguably. It doesn't change that I'm free. It's just the difference

is that, you know, who wants a grumpy jnani? Like there are a lot of direct paths, they're free, but you know, they're not enjoying their freedom. They're just as miserable as the rest of us. with a little bit more peace and assurance maybe, but not that much more I don't think. Yeah, I'm not even so sure they're free. It could just be an intellectual. There's a Tibetan saying

"don't mistake understanding for realization." Precisely, precisely, yes. Yeah, I mean you can kind of hypnotize yourself if you think about something or read about something or hear something enough times you end up believing it, but is it real? Precisely. Is it real in your experience. That's exactly. Okay, good. How long have you been doing your YouTube videos? I think we started in 2020, so it's about five years now. About four or five years.

Do you sometimes look back at some things you were saying four or five years ago and think, not so much? All the time. I said that about, I feel that about things I said 20 minutes ago. That's good. You know, I've become much more realist over the years. Like I think when I first started out, I was maybe a bit more in the Advaita Vedanta camp. I mean, it's true, I grew up within Shraiva Siddhanta. Mine is a ritual world, the world of Tantra, where it's all about puja and deity yoga

and all of that. That has been the case with me. But when I was lecturing, I tended to favor the more Mayavadic language, you know, the world is an illusory appearance and like that. But I think over the years, these past five years, I've moved a bit more towards realism, where I'm starting to feel into this, I think, tantric realism where it's like everything is real but real as God. Real as what? God? Real as God, yes. Everything is real, but not as matter or energy, not as a world,

but as God, as a real appearance and a real manifestation of God. Therefore, everything has value. I'm kind of the same way. I've made a similar shift over the years. I like Advaita

Vedanta and I love listening to Swami Sarvapriyananda. I take his classes and everything, but there's something about Kashmir Shaivism, although I only have a really kindergarten understanding of it, but there's something about the life-affirming nature of it, insofar as I've understood it, which resonates more with my experience or proclivities or something.

Yes, right, right. Swami Sarvapriyanandaji is a very important mentor of mine. I actually mentioned this interview at the dinner table with Swami Mehtanandaji and Swami Sarvapriyanandaji, and they both were very excited. They said, "Oh yes, we know Rikji, and it was really fun," and etc. Yeah, I've interviewed them both. I like them all. That whole gang of the Vedanta Society,

I have a real good feeling about it. Yeah, yeah, because notice even though Swami Saruprananda ji represents Advaita Vedanta on the world stage as his predecessor Swami Vivekananda did to an extent, it's a different kind of Advaita. I mean, Swami Saruprananda ji, he speaks based on Shankara's commentaries and he's of course an acharya, a great teacher and expounder of Advaita Vedanta, but he differs I think in many significant ways from the standard traditional Advaita Vedanta

teacher because of his grounding in the Ramakrishna lineage. So he's obviously got a much more devotional flavor to his presentation of Advaita Vedanta, a much less I think orthodox and dogmatic approach you'll find in him. So yeah, his Advaita Vedanta, I mean we've had so many conversations between us about like Kashmir Shaivism, Advaita Vedanta and the main difference is the self

reflexivity. I remember once at the dinner table he said it this way, he said Kashmir Shaivism falls apart from the very beginning and he said it's because of that self-reflexivity.

In Advaita Vedanta there's this concept Swat Prakasha like awareness Brahman is self-illumining you know so therefore it's not void it's not nihilistically presented it's real and it's real consciousness but it's not a person it's a principle it's a self-illumining principle whereas Advaita Vedanta there's more theistic flavor where this principle is self-reflexively aware that's the big difference between the two but i mean when he pointed out there are texts like

Sureshwaracharya's commentary on Shankara's Dakshinamurti Sutram, you know that's attributed to Shankara and there we speak about the world shining non-differently in the mirror of awareness and the very name of Sureshwaracharya's commentary, Sureshwaracharya

mind you, is Shankara's disciple. The name is Manasolasa which is such a tantric name and his commentary is so incredibly tantric and even medieval authors like Vidyarana Swami, they wax very tantric in their expositions of Advaita Vedanta. You know, Sri Ramana Maharshi himself would say things like, "The world is Brahman." You know, so I think the distinction between Advaita Vedanta and tantric non-duality is often quite blurred in practice.

What did Swami Sarvabhayananda mean when he said, "Kashmir Shaivism falls apart"? Because its fundamental axiom, its primary stance is that awareness is self-aware. Shiva, Prakasha is in doubt, Vimarsha. And so when I speak to Swami Sarupendraji, the two of us are almost always discussing the difference between Svatprakasha and Vimarsha. So I keep pressing him on this point. I'm like, in what sense is Svatprakasha different from Vimarsha? And of course, Swami Sarupendraji rightly points

out Chitsuki and he points out the 11 definitions of Chitsuki. I think you better define some of these terms. The terms are flying pretty fast here. Once you mentioned Swami Sarupendraji, now we've gone into a very technical world of Indian philosophy where it's Advaita Vedanta versus the finer points of Swadmantriya Mata. I start using a lot of Sanskrit phrases really quickly because I start nerding out very quickly. So yes, thank you, thank you. Let me ground myself

a bit. But yes, because Swami Saraswati Pradhan Ji, his main claim is that awareness cannot be reflexively self-aware. Why not? That's a good question. And it has to do with the philosophical principle of non-self reflexivity. It's like a doorknob cannot turn itself. Or for instance, the eyeballs. The eyeball can look at everything in the room including like a reflection of themselves but they cannot literally see themselves. The eyeballs can't ogle themselves. It's impossible

for the eyeball to be self-reflexively aware. I have to have the mind and the mind is then aware of the eyeballs. So the eyeballs are an other to the mind and awareness is something other than the mind. So I as awareness am aware of the mind as an object and I as a mind am aware of the eyeballs as an object and I as the eyeballs am aware of the room as an object and a subject

can never be an object to itself. So if awareness could be aware of itself in that sense, if it could be its own object, then you end up with what in Sanskrit is called Anavastha Dosha, which means the paradox of infinite regress. If there is a subject for this subject, there can potentially be a subject for that subject and a subject for that subject and a subject for that subject and then you wouldn't have an ultimate subject and if there's no ultimate subject, no objective

experience is possible. You know, so that's one problem. And then of course we say, no, no, it's not in that sense that awareness is self-aware. Awareness does not become an object to itself. It's just awareness is self-aware in the same way that a light is self-illumining. You know, the light shines, it reveals all the objects in the room, but in so doing it also self-illumines. It's radiant and you become aware of the light. Similarly, awareness objectifies

everything but it itself in so doing is self-aware. So we have these kind of very nuanced discussions between Satprakasha and Vimarsha but I think the main difference is this in agency. In Advaita Vedanta, Brahman is Nishkriya and Nishkama. It has no desire, that's important, and it doesn't do anything. Brahman is totally inert. In fact the word that Kashmir Shaivas use for Advaita Vedanta

is Shanta Brahmavada, the doctrine of the peaceful and quiescent Brahman. Whereas in Advaita Shaiva, non-dual Shaiva philosophy, Brahman is endowed with infinite creative power, kartritva, a doership. So, Brahman actually acts and has will and has knowledge and has

activity and that's the main difference I think between Swami's Sava Puranas, Advaita Vedanta position and this Kashmir Shaiva position. But he's very friendly of course towards the Kashmir Shaiva school because he's not that dogmatic about the Advaita Vedanta stuff. Let me just interject for the audience's sake that you teach regular classes apparently several a week and if people would like to get involved in these, I will provide some kind of link on your page on BatGap so that

they can find out how to do so. Okay, let me run something by you on this point that you're discussing and see what you think. Lakshman Juh and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi spent a lot of time talking together and a lot of Lakshman Juh's teachings were kind of bequeathed to Maharishi through the, what's that couple's name, his archivist. John and Denise Hughes. That's it,

that's who I'm trying to think of. He spent years talking about what he called the self-referral nature of consciousness and what he meant by that was this, and I think this might have derived from Kashmir Shaivism, but let me just lay it out real briefly. So, you know, at the most fundamental level you have consciousness, right, and there's nothing else down there. So, its nature is to be conscious. So, what's it going to be conscious of if that's all there is,

is consciousness. Okay, it becomes conscious of itself, but in so doing it immediately sets up a trifle nature of observer-observed and object of observation. So, all of a sudden, you have one becoming three, but how can one become three? It's one, and yet it's three, and yet it's one, and yet it's three. And so, there's this sort of infinite frequency of alternation between one and three which creates the infinite dynamism at the foundation of creation which gives rise to the

whole explosion of creativity that we see. And of course, three then further bifurcates and trifurcates and so on to become all the great diversity and physicists have actually matched this up with the unified field and fundamental emergence or enlivenance of that field. Is that a Kailash Mishraism thing? Oh my god, one to one, you know, I mean there's a beautiful

phrase. Basically what you described is called the spanda. Spanda means the creative throb or pulsation of the one being aware of itself and there's a beautiful shloka that Abhinavagupta gives us. He goes, It explains the one in three. So he argues that there is awareness, Chit, and that awareness has as its inseparable consort, this Devi called Paradevi or sometimes called Pratibha, as the verse calls it. Pratibha has the connotation of intuition.

So awareness intuits its own being, it's self-aware. And this self-intuition is also sometimes called Svatantra Shakti, Ananda Shakti or Spanda. And Spanda means throb or pulsation. And then this Ananda Shakti or this throb then manifests in a tripartite way as knower, knowing and known. Pramatar, Prameyam and Pramanam. Matar, Mana, Prameyam, Sha. So these three are called the three spokes of the trident. So the three spokes of this trident, you know, are the transcendent, the imminent,

the transcendent imminent, or the knower, the known, and the act of knowing. And these three are united in one, the actual staff of the trident. So three in one is of course a very important model in Kashmir Shaivism. In fact, Abhinava Gupta uses this three in one model throughout his entire liturgical work to kind of reconcile various traditions. And the idea of, Rob, of course, like you pointed out so beautifully, the quantum mechanics people really love it.

And that's why I think outside CERN they have a dancing Shiva. There's a book, the Tao of Physics.

Fritjof Capra had breakfast with him at one of the S.A.N.D. conferences. Beautiful, beautiful. He made this point. He was on a beach. And I think, I don't know if this is in the book, but I remember him saying like he was on a beach and then he saw for the first time what he'd been studying for so long, he experienced it in a kind of mystical vision. He said, I finally understand what the Hindu means by the dancing Shiva.

So of course the dancing shiva is meant to express the dynamic, creative, playful nature of consciousness, which manifests as one in three. Nice. Okay, a question came in. Irene says it's a good one. This is Laura Gibson from the UK. "I know spiritual experiences are not the goal. However, I had more experiences before consciously being a seeker, such as vast emptiness and my vision turning golden. Why has this stopped? Am I doing something wrong? Was I closer to awakening before deliberately

seeking? Yes, perhaps. Perhaps. I mean, one thing to note is that what a mystery spiritual life is, you know, and I think for Lord Gibson, none but your guru can probably answer this question. So I would recommend that you seek out a lineage and a spiritual teacher because I'm sure there are a lot of factors in your life that you're not able to express through the question. So who can

say who can give a definitive answer here? It would be glib I think for me to say yes it's because you've fetishized this idea of finding and therefore you become a seeker that you've closed yourself off to the immediacy of each and every moment but it could also be that you've

become more refined. You know I know a very wonderful story there's a lady a beautiful lady and powerful teacher who started the Kali Mandir in Laguna Beach her name is Usha Harding and her book the Black Goddess of Dakshineshwar is perhaps the definitive book on Kali for anybody wanting to to learn about Kali for the first time. So she talks about how she would go to the temple and speak to Shri Ramakrishna directly.

She would sit in the Hollywood ashrama and look at the picture of Shri Ramakrishna and the two of them would actually talk. And then it just stopped happening in that tangible and direct way. So Shri Ramakrishna would often say also, he would make a joke about this, he would say when two lovers are just getting to know each other, they have to see each other a lot all the time. But then once they have an actually intimate relationship, it becomes much more relaxed.

It's a bit like this, say you're courting somebody, when they come over to your house, you prepare everything really nicely. You know, you have a nice cup of tea and you clean up the whole house. But once you've been dating for four years, you just sit on the couch, thumbing through the channels on TV and you ask them to bring you the coffee. You're like, "Hey, you go over there." It's like that. So Lord Gibson, your relationship to the divine might just be deeper.

It's deeper so you don't need all of these experiences here and there. You're already in. So I think God needs to give you less pieces of candy or something like that. So I don't think seeking is the problem. I think seeking is wonderful. One should seek. But maybe the fetishization of experiences as a marker for one's spirituality, maybe that has to go away. Spirituality, as Lord Gibson himself pointed out, has a lot more to do with character than it does to do with experiences.

Experiences are of course not the point. They could be valuable or they could just be happening on a much deeper, much more refined level now than they were before. Yeah, that's a lot in that. I think perhaps even some of the Christian mystics say this, that initially they had flashy experiences that really lit their fire and got them going and on the path, but eventually they went into a dark night of the soul where they weren't experiencing very much,

it seemed dry, but it's not like they weren't making progress. It's just that maybe they didn't need the enticing candy incentive. The lovers have become more intimate, you know, now they can shout at each other. But also another thing is that our concept of a spiritual experience, I think, changes as we continue on the path. So in

the beginning it's like flashy lights. I saw an apparition, I saw some lights, or I had this feeling of vastness, or suddenly all the walls melted, etc, etc. Then all of that stuff stops and instead something very different happens. A glass of water on the table becomes a divine rapture. It's like the mundane world becomes more mystical and the mystical world

becomes more mundane. That shock of seeing an apparition diminishes a lot. But the shock of seeing, I don't know, the sun setting becomes increasingly magnified a thousand fold. Another thought that comes to mind, Laura, is what are you actually doing in your spiritual practice? Because some spiritual practices might be counterproductive. Could be. I don't know what she's doing. That's such a specific predicament that's specific to you, Laura, that that's why the

first and foremost suggestion would be to find a genuine spiritual teacher. Of course, make sure that teacher is genuine, belong to a tradition, and then that person will be able to guide you more closely and more appropriately, you know, than just people on the internet.

That's a sticky wicket, finding a genuine spiritual teacher. You know, here's some titles from some of your YouTube videos, "Role of the Guru", "Problem of Unethical Gurus", "The Genuine Guru" and "How to Avoid a Fake", "Rogue Gurus" and "Fallen Yogis", "How to Practice Pure Yoga". It's a minefield out there. Oh my god, Rikji, have we run out of things to talk about that

you're now looking through your document for the titles? No, no, this is something I wanted to talk to you about because I've helped to establish this organization called the Association for Spiritual Integrity and we have like nearly 700 members and 40 member organizations and so on. But boy, the stories you hear, both in my position in Batgap and in that of spiritual teachers behaving reprehensibly. It's tragic considering how sacred and precious the spiritual path is.

Yes, because you can't really talk about tantra without mentioning the role of the guru. Like guru yoga and guru parampara is at the heart arguably of the tantric tradition. It's a very lineage-based transmission. So gurus become very important. But you're right, over the past few decades I think many unscrupulous individuals have used that and I think positioned themselves in positions of power as like important cult figures and then abused. What might actually be in most

cases genuine spiritual power, they maybe misuse that power for unethical ends. And so you're right,

it's a very big issue and it's something we talk about a lot in our community as well because in the Ramakrishna lineage of course ethics is very strongly stressed. In the Indian spiritual world in general, you know like the opening of almost any Advaita Vedanta text is going to be a list of prerequisite qualities that not the teacher but the student needs to have in order to even take up the study of Advaita Vedanta. So in yoga for instance the yamas and the niyamas, these are very important.

Ethics are very important for any spiritual practice. But I think after a while, maybe masters or self-proclaimed masters or genuinely spiritually advanced beings might also become a little destabilized by the lack of understanding of guru yoga here in the West. They might have done fine in the East actually. Maybe in the East people could understand the guru-student relationship in a maybe more mature way than they can do here, seeing as it's kind of new here.

And so people come here and they set up their communities and then it very quickly becomes like this cult of personality, hey commune thing and it loses its grounding. So selecting a guru is a very tenuous process. Swami Vivekananda speaks about this a lot. He says that the student must have three qualities. One, the student must genuinely want spirituality. There must be this real hunger, this real yearning and pining for actual spirituality. And that's something that awakens in the student.

Secondly, the student must have infinite patience. And thirdly, the student must have infinite perseverance. So the student must not go in for short-term goals. The kind of student who is impatient is perhaps the kind of student that can be easily swayed by a guru liberally giving Shakti Pathas because they get caught up in the glamour of everything. So patience and perseverance is very important. That's the mature student. Then, the student must test the teacher like a money lender tests coins.

That really makes sure the teacher has integrity. The first thing is that the teacher should have a teacher. The big problem today is people don't hold teachers to that standard. They think that teachers can just spring out of the earth. But teachers should have a teacher and their teachers should have a teacher and their teachers should have a teacher. So a lineage is very important. But secondly, scripture is very important too. In the tantric world we say, "Sad Agama, Sad Guru."

So there must be a true scripture as well. So the teacher must be able to cite their sources and the teacher must empower you to do the same. Ultimately, scriptures are there just to keep teachers accountable. So they don't just like make up their own idiosyncrasies and create their own religion, but that they're actually representing an authentic, peer-reviewed, corroborated tradition. And of course, thirdly, reason is very important.

A person must always use their reasoning faculties to test what the teacher is saying. And finally, most importantly, I think the teacher must be doing it for the right reasons. The teacher must be ethically grounded and pure. Swamiji calls this Akamahata. Actually no, he's quoting from Shankara's text, Vivekachudamani, and there the word is Akama Hatha, which literally means undestroyed or undegenerated by desire. So the teacher must not

be teaching for money or for some sexual advantage or for some name and fame. The teacher must be teaching as an act of love. From freedom unto freedom only this gift can be given. That's a really good checklist that you just gave us there. Unfortunately, a lot of times teachers aren't that transparent, so they can be presenting themselves as in accordance with all the things you just said and there could be some funny stuff going on behind the scenes that

only gets discovered later on. The internet has greatly exacerbated this problem because we can be whoever we want to be on the Instagram and I think that's the danger. If we judge a teacher based on their Instagram wall or based on their YouTube videos, see a charismatic individual who can speak eloquently about a subject is not a guru, not necessarily. It takes a lot more than

just being a powerful person to be a guru. In fact, I think one of the best ways we can test the teachers by testing their students. The guru's job is not to be cool and flashy and eloquent. The guru's job is to teach. So the quality of that guru's student, I think, tells you a lot about the teacher. But you're right, until we're actually in person with a guru, these days at least, I think we should be very careful about making judgments based on the internet as to the quality of the teacher.

But then you're right, even in person, you're right, it's quite easy, I think, to present a facade. And especially if you have this inner circle, you can really create the sense that you're like morally pure and like you're ethical.

I think this happened, a lot of people in some spiritual communities were shocked when they found out about their teachers engaging in maybe sexually unethical practices or taking money or drinking or something, they were shocked because the teacher in their lectures presented ethics as being the centerpiece of yoga. They would talk about the yamas and niyamas and then behind closed doors they would violate all the very rules that they set out as ideals for the community. It's true, it's true.

You wonder how they sleep at night. You know, in their quiet moments you'd think they'd be saying, "What am I doing?" I have a lot of compassion also for people like that because it's very disequilibrating, you know, when people put you on a pedestal and everyone's looking at you as like the guru or as God or something, if you're not careful you can start to believe it. Like, oh maybe I am God. You're right, maybe I am the king of my self-proclaimed nation.

After all, this little hermitage that we have, it's an independent nation. And I'm, and all those like baser animal qualities that we all carry with us, these animal samskaras that are embedded in our biology, they just become greatly exacerbated. It's a very

disequilibrating thing. I think it happens to the best of us. People start with very good intentions, they're true teachers from a true lineage, but then I think, you know, usually when they come to America and they start their commune, usually that's when things become a little iffy after about 10 or 20 years, you know. So I have great compassion for individuals like that. It's a difficult thing to teach spirituality. And you can still derive tremendous benefit from

association with such a teacher? I knew someone, I asked her about it. She was involved in one of these communities. Of course, I won't take names, I don't mean to judge anyone. Right, me neither. She was there in such a community, which I became very problematic very quickly. And she was there during the heyday of its communities problems, you know, and I was speaking to her about it. And we were talking about crazy wisdom and that kind of thing. And she said to me, she's like,

yes, there were a lot of problems, but it was real. She was in her 70s. She, you know, very grounded individual. She said, no, it was a real transmission. There was real power. I really benefited from the presence of that teacher and from the Asanga, but I also will not deny that all that horrible stuff happened. So her conclusion was that real teacher,

really powerful, complicated person. Yeah, well you don't have that problem. I heard you say in one lecture that you wet your bed one night after being kicked out of your rock band. That did happen. You're down to earth. Yes, that did happen. I did wet my bed. Don't mean to embarrass you. No, it's true though, it happened.

Yes. So here you mentioned one of your things was the dark side of tantra. First of all, better define tantra because I think the common understanding might not be adequate compared to what it really is and what its history is and so on. Tantra is of course at its core a form of deity yoga with the central modality being ritual worship.

So tantra, it's argued that tantra predates the Vedic period. We find seals from Mohenjo-Daro Harappan civilization from the Indus Saraswati valley which radiocarbon dating says is 3,800 BCE thereabouts of gods like Shiva and Durga, very prominent tantric figures. So you could argue tantra predated the Vedas. Some scholars argue tantra is a Dravidian movement that interceded

into northern Vedic tradition. But I think many scholars understand Tantra to be a movement that emerged in the Indian subcontinent from within the religion of Shaivism around the 6th or 7th century AD. So it's pretty recent. It's a pretty recent movement in Indian spirituality. It most certainly emerged from within Shaivism but very quickly entered into Buddhism from there and then of course entered into Vaishnavism. So Tantra is not itself a religion, it's a way of doing

spirituality that influences many of the religions in the Indian subcontinent. Would it be part of of what is commonly known as Hinduism or some kind of offshoot or separate stream? I mean it definitely emerged within Shaivism which is one of the branches of broader Hinduism.

But Hinduism is a very complicated term because that term was only used much later after the British colonization. And it was first used, the first Indian to use that word Hindu was Raja Ranmohan Roy who belonged to the Brahmo Samaj, you know. And that was a movement in Bengal and Kolkata that was very much an apologetics. You know they were trying to scrub quote unquote Hinduism of all its Hindu elements. And so what you ended up with is a kind of Upanishadic Christianity.

And so the word Hinduism, I'm kind of uncomfortable with it. It conglomerates a lot of different spiritual traditions. There's almost like Shaivism is its own religion. And Vaishnavism is also its own religion. But in India, of course, these are all seen as various aspects of the Sanatana Dharma, the overarching religion. So yes, Tantra is a part of Sanatana Dharma. But I think Sanatana Dharma is inclusive enough to the extent that I can even say there's tantric forms of Islam.

I would argue that a lot of Sufism in India is tantric in nature. Take for instance Hazrat Inayat Khan, a very important teacher who came from America and taught Sufism here. His Sufism is of course Indian Tantra. So what makes something tantric? Yes, it's a good question. So I think it's this. Primarily, primarily the central feature of Tantra is ritualism and so the foundation of Tantra is dualistic worship of a particular deity through ritual practices.

And those ritual practices are very nuanced and very complicated, but they're an embodied way of doing spiritual practice. So there are for instance ritual gestures that one might do with the hands. There's ritual gestures that one might do with the body. And there's of course ritual gestures that one might do with the mouth. It's a speech act that ultimately defines ritual. So tantra is also sometimes styled mantra marga, the path of mantras. Mantras become very important in tantra.

So any embodied form of spiritual practice that sees the body as a means and not as an obstacle to spirituality that primarily uses mantra as a way to get closer to divinity. I think and properly speaking we call tantric. A few key features though in tantra is the emphasis on the direct transmission from a guru. Guru parampara is one of the main features of tantra. Secondly, the profileration of deities. Another thing I like very much about tantra is it

emphasizes the need for experience. It's very much a progressive path orientation. It's like The purpose of spiritual life is to have a direct, tangible experience of Deity. Deity, capital D. But, since everyone is different, Tantra has to diversify its means. And therefore, it comes up with this model known as the Ishta Devi or the Ishta Devata,

one's chosen ideal. So, the role of the Guru is to assess you as to what kind of predisposition you have and then to assign to you a form of the Deity that best meets you where you're at. You know, so some people will worship Kali, others might worship Krishna, others might worship Shiva. But in tantra, these are all diversification. See, within Kali even, in tantra, Kali is diversified

into 10 aspects. Kali, Tara, Shodashi, Bhuvaneshwari, Bhairavi, these are all forms of the same goddess, but there are many different forms to meet different aspirants at different parts of their journey. So therefore tantra is deity yoga, but also a diversification or profileration of deities in order to accommodate various spiritual predispositions. Incidentally, the word is proliferation. Oh thank you, thank you. Proliferation, thank you. I heard that on your

YouTube videos, sorry. I'm glad because a lot of my English is from reading, not from speaking, so sometimes I misread something, it just stays with me. So proliferation. That's right, similar to the word prolific. If a person produces a lot of stuff, they're prolific. Oh good, good, yes,

that's it. Proliferation of deities. So many deities appear. Yeah. And you know, I think one One very important feature in Tantra also is we have ritual, we have Guru, we have proliferation of deities, but we also have an emphasis on the divine feminine. So I think above all, Tantra, especially in its more non-dual form, like the Kaula and Kalikula, it's a revisiting of deity as goddess, which I think might have existed prior to the Vedic civilization.

It makes somewhat of an appearance in Vedic civilization, but I think it's not until Tantra that the goddess becomes front and center in spiritual life. So I would say the cult of the Divine Mother, the worship of God as Mother or as the Divine Feminine as Shakti, that I think is the central feature of Tantra. But not all Tantra is like this. A lot of Tantra is still worshipping God as the patriarchal figure, sure, but I think that's one of the maybe trademarks of Tantra, Goddess worship.

I don't know what percentage of our audience this would apply to, but I imagine a fairly significant percentage, culturally, can't relate to the idea of deities and gods and

goddesses and they look at the pictures from Indian iconography and they think, "Well, that's very colorful and a little weird sometimes." But, you know, do these... Is this just the product of some vivid imaginations or is there some actual reality that these images represent? Yes, yes. It's a great question. Yes and no, because these deities appear to rishis or seers in their meditation. So arguably a deity, any deity, will have four aspects. Its grossest aspect is its

anthropomorphic or zooanthropomorphic form. So we look at the art and by the way we should also mention this that tantra is not just a spiritual movement, it's primarily that, but it's also a social movement, a political movement, and I think it's also above all an artistic and aesthetic movement because it's not just that the deities proliferate, it's that art proliferates, right? There's like all sorts of artwork that emerges in the Tantric period.

And you're right to point out that the main form of this artwork is paintings of gods and goddesses. So you might see Kali with the sword and the severed head or with tongue sticking out, standing on the chest of her husband Mahakala in the cremation ground. So these actually, their forms are described by a series of verses known as Dhyana Shlokas. So for instance, a sage might be meditating and the sage has an experience of a particular aspect of Godhead.

say Kali, the sage sees Kali in the inner shrine of her meditation and then she spontaneously presents us with this hymn. For instance, the Kali hymn. She has wild hair, she has four arms. She is garlanded in heads. That is the southward facing goddess Dakshinakali. She is Kali. And then

the poet, having expressed this, gives an inspiration to the artist to paint it. So all All the paintings you see of anthropomorphic forms like gods and goddesses, both in Tibetan tantric tradition, the Vajrayana or Tibetan tradition, and also in the Hindu Indic tradition, what you see is an artist's rendition of these Dhyana Shlokas, these verses that describe the form of the deity. But that's considered in Tantra to be the most exterior form of the goddess.

The goddess is externally presenting herself as a form out of her grace, because we're human, we're anthropomorphic in nature. Therefore, our concept of divinity must also be anthropomorphic. So in a sense, the deity's projection as a human form is to meet us where we are. But when we go deeper, we find that what the deity actually is, arguably, behind her form, is a sacred geometrical pattern called a yantra. So for instance, this is the Kali yantra.

This yantra would be the geometric pattern in consciousness that corresponds to Kali. So it's a slightly subtler aspect of Kali. I see you two have a yantra behind you. Is that the Shri Chakra or? I'm not sure what yantra. I don't really know my yantras, but this is something we picked up somewhere along the way. It looks like a Buddhist yantra. What is it, Irene? We got it from Amma's organization.

So it must be a shri-chakra. I can't quite make it out, but it's like if it has many triangles, it's a shri-chakra. It protects the home. It's supposed to protect the home, whatever this is. Oh, is that Irene? Hi, Irene. Nice to hear your voice. Yeah, so that's the yantras, you know, they describe a form of the deity, and it's its subtle form, it's yantric form, but even subtler than that, Rick, arguably the true

form of the deity is its mantra. So, subtler than even the sacred geometry of a yantra is that pattern in consciousness called mantra. And mantra, of course, can be spoken aloud on the speech level, that's called bhikkhari. It can be chanted internally in a mental way, that's called

madhyama. It can be experienced in a spiritual way, that's called paschanti. But ultimately, that mantra, whether it's being repeated aloud or silently, mentally repeated within, that mantra is indistinguishable from the deity. Nama Nami Abhed. The name and that to which the name refers are one in the same reality. And then arguably even deeper than that is the deity as pure consciousness. So notice it's an emanationist model from pure non-dual consciousness emanates a sound, a vibration.

In the beginning was the word, the word was with God and the word was God. logos, that word is called "Om" but emanating from "Om" are these various mantras, if you will, and those mantras then further emanate as yantras, geometric designs in consciousness, and those when interpreted by the gross physical mind appear to be this or that god or goddess.

Would it be fair to say that a deity is most primordially an impulse of the ocean of intelligence, like a wave on the ocean of intelligence arising, and obviously there are different waves, different deities performing different functions in creation. I think that's a beautiful way of putting it because you brought up quantum mechanics. We could say it's a repeating pattern of consciousness. So it's a wave, but it's a static wave. It's a wave, it's a standing wave.

It's maybe I'm using that phrase, but it's not just mechanistic. It's an impulse of intelligence. Yes, awareness itself projects these deities. So they are real archetypical expressions of awareness that you're right. It is a wave whose water is the same. So every deity is a unique way, with a unique shape and with a unique form. Like I as a worshipper of Kali, we love the color

red and we have a certain disposition. The way we do ritual, the way that we approach spiritual life is going to be different from our Vaishnava brothers and sisters. Like they're going to worship Krishna in a slightly different way. They have different colors that they like, different ways of doing ritual worship. But both Krishna and Kali, I mean Krishna and Kali maybe aren't good examples because they're very close to one another, especially in a place like Bengal.

I think all the tantric deities are so closely related that tantra cannot be confined to anyone tradition. Everyone recognizes that their unique deity though is an expression of the same deity and that's the water of the ocean. So while the waves might all appear different to suit my temperament, the water is the same and that water has this innate desire to arise as waves. Light that is one though the lamps be many. Yes. To quote the incredible string band there before

your time. Here's a question for you. You know how some people say, I guess perhaps referencing quantum mechanics that a thing doesn't actually come into existence until someone perceives it. But if you think about that, all right, it was a few billion years at the very least before the universe was habitable enough for there to be living beings that could perceive anything. So, it seems like a kind of dog chasing its own tail thing. How did the universe come into existence

if there was no one to perceive it? But if we think of these deities as intrinsic to the fundamental nature of creation and as impulses of that field, then they were there from the very beginning to perceive and thereby to facilitate the manifestation of everything that came about. Yes, it's true. There's a beautiful Komalakanta song where he says, "Oh mother, where didst thou get thy garland of skulls before the universe was made?"

What a beautiful song. And he's implying that yes, Ma was there. She's Adhyashakti, primordial creatrix and she was there prior to the existence of the universe. What was she doing? Well, she was dancing in the cremation ground, howling madly with joy. Leftover skulls from the previous creation, maybe. Exactly, yes, probably. Sri Ramakrishna would use exactly that metaphor. He would say something, at the end of this creation, mother gathers all of this up and puts it in a little bag.

And then from that bag, she takes it out again and creates this entire universe. But yes, I think tantra, very simply put, is this, it's deity yoga. What a deity is, will of course differ from tradition to tradition. So this is a very deep and profound conversation of course. But I think different people have a different idea as to what

deity really means. But I think deity yoga is common to all tantric traditions. So you get a deity, typically you choose one and then you approach a teacher who can give you that deity's mantra, or you approach a teacher who then assesses you and then prescribes a deity for you. So the role of the teacher above all in the tantric world is to give you mantra deeksha. Deeksha means

initiation. That's another thing I should have mentioned actually. As long as we have guru yoga, then the emphasis is not only on the Guru but on this procedure called initiation. So the Guru gives you Diksha and the main form of that Diksha is the imparting of a mantra. Of course there are many kinds of Diksha. There's, you know, you can be enlightened through a glance from the teacher. It's called Chakshu Diksha or a teacher could smack you on the shoulder and you

could have an experience. That's called Sparsha Diksha. But basically Diksha, Kriyavati Diksha, means you sit down with the teacher, they do a ceremony, they invoke the presence of that deity and then they whisper into your left ear and you're familiar with this being part of the TM tradition. they whisper into your ear a particular mantra. But that mantra will not only have a bead mantra, you know, but it will probably also have the deity's name.

So now you have this mantra and your job now from this point on is to establish a close personal relationship with that deity. Maybe you think of that deity as your mother. As in my case, I think of Kali as my mother. Or you think of that deity as your guru or your sister or as your friend. That's another, I think, very unique thing in Hinduism, if we may call it that. Approaching God through all these different bhavas. God is my mother, God is my friend or God is my lover.

As in the case of Krishna Radha, a very difficult Baba to practice, but one of the various Babas. Then you do puja. The Guru will teach you how to worship that deity every day. So you have a daily ritual practice. You offer flowers and incense and fire. Depending on the tradition, this could look differently. And then after you do puja, the next thing you have to do is called japa. So you sit there and you repeat the mantra of that deity.

And then of course dhyana, you visualize the name and the form of that deity in your heart. And ultimately you become one with the deity. So this is of course, Tibetan yoga really stresses this. Deity yoga is all about identifying with the deity and losing yourself to the deity. So at the end of the day, you forget that this is your body, it becomes deity's body. It's like a moth going into flame. It's not that you're appropriating the deity into your personality.

A lot of people do that these days. It's like, I'm Kali. I'm like, "Hey, what do you mean you're Kali? You can't even digest dairy and you're claiming like you're the god." It's not quite like that. It's not like you're bringing the deity down to your level. It's more the opposite. You're eating food that was offered to the deity. Thereby, when you eat, you think of the deity. Before you go to sleep, you say your mantra and you dream of the deity. All day long, you're repeating the deity's name.

And when you say the deity's name, you naturally think of the deity's form. And it's like, before you know it, you're obsessed. Your whole life is nothing but Kali, Kali, Kali, Kali. And in that fervor, in that madness, you forget all about yourself. Renunciation comes spontaneously to one who is in love. The body is forgotten, the mind is forgotten, the world is forgotten. All that's left is Kali.

I sometimes think of Frodo Baggins in Lord of the Rings saying that all you can see is the great eye like that all you can see is that ring of fire Kali Kali Kali so you lose yourself in Kali and then you become one with Kali that's the way deity yoga works by repeating the deity's name you become one with the deity and then arguably from there you go even further from the deity which is the personal aspect of God you enter into the impersonal aspect of God you know which you cannot get to

directly. Good. A few questions came in. The first is from my friend Vaidehi Nathan who lives up in San Jose. If you're ever up that way you should meet him. I'll connect you. The question is comparing Shiva Siddhanta and Kashmiri Shaivism. Shiva Siddhanta has been there for thousands of years from through Mular and other Siddhas who are from BC. I'm not sure what BC is but Abhinavagupta, founder of Kashmir Shaivism is recent and only... Oh I see, BC meaning before Christ.

Abhyananda Gupta is recent and only AD, but they are similar. Do you think Kashmir Shaivism is derived from or took roots from Shiva Siddhanta and what are the differences between them? Yes, without a doubt. I think once, see Swami Sarvapriyanidhi is one of the most important

mentors in my life, of course, next to my guru. Another very important mentor in my life is is Tanishwar Timalsinna and I would sit with him in his living room and I would ask questions like this about Shaivism in the North, Shaivism in the South, Shaivism of the present, Shaivism of the past. And it seems like Shaivism as a whole is quite cohesive and quite unified.

So like Northern Shaivas, like the Shaivas in Kashmir and Southern Shaivas, like the Shaivas in Tamil Nadu, the kind of Shaivism I grew up in, there's a lot of coherence. In fact, there's an author, his name is Madhu Raja. He composed a beautiful hymn to Abhinava Gupta describing Abhinava Gupta. Some claim Madhuraja never met Abhinava Gupta. Madhuraja of course lived in a temple in Madhure Minachi. He lived in southern India.

Some claim he walked up north to Kashmir and he met Abhinava Gupta and then composed this wonderful hymn. In any case, Madhuraja is a very unique figure because he represents the reconciling of north and south. Northern Kashmir Shaivism with southern Tamil Shaivism. There's figures like that, Madhuraja. There was also a very important figure in Maheshwarananda. He was a priest in the temple at Chidambaram, a famous temple to Lord Shiva, the temple of the dancing Shiva.

And there's a beautiful story. One day he was dozing off after performing a puja and suddenly he had the vision of the divine goddess Kali. And the goddess held up seven fingers and he received this powerful transmission. When he woke up, he then composed a text in 77 verses called the Mahartha Manjari. And that's one of the most important texts about Kali ever written. It's a philosophical, exegetical work, of course, but it's about Kali worship.

So a lot of the texts like the Kali worship text, we call them Mahavata or Mahanaya texts, many of them are to be found in the South. Kerala is another center of goddess worship and you'll see that there's geographically

in India, there's a lot of similarities between North and South. So Abhinava Gupta, yes, he existed later on in the classical tantric period, late 10th century, early 12th century. And of course Tirumala and a lot of the Tamil Shaivas are ancient. They existed a long time ago. But you'll notice that Shaivism is not temporal. The teachings of Lord Shiva are eternal and the five heads of Lord Shiva are always issuing forth the Shaiva Agamas in each and every moment.

Om Namah Shivaya Satatam Pancha Kritya Vidhaya Nenaya Chid Ananda Asvatma Paramatmanam. You see, Lord Shiva, Satatam, always in each and every moment is revealing the Shaiva Agama. So I think when we talk about Shaivism, we can put all temporality and geography aside. The Shaiva Agamas, the tradition is one tradition and it's cohesive all throughout. Okay, good. question. You remember Laura who asked a question a little while ago? She said she's practicing

Kriya Yoga. Oh beautiful, beautiful. Yes and maybe you have a Kriya Yoga guru but you know Mahabhatar Babaji, he's very much in Shaivism we call him a Siddha, a being who just materializes. So Matsyendranath, Gorakshanath, these are Siddhas and it's true Kriya Yoga is in the wider umbrella of Raja Yoga or the Yoga world which is very much closely related to Shaivism. And one thing you might note is that Kriya Yoga is much broader than just Self-Realization

Fellowship. That's of course one movement within the Kriya Yoga tradition. But there's like lots of different traditions. You know, Sri Yukteswarji had different disciples besides Swami Yogananda Giri, Paramahansa Dev. There are many other disciples too and Yukteswar Giri was a friend of Swami Brahmananda and Sri Yoganandaji met actually M, the recorder of the Sri Sri Ram Krishna Kathamrita. So it's kind of interesting that those worlds actually do combine. But yes,

wonderful. It's a wonderful tradition. It's a yogic tradition, a mystical tradition, and therefore it does put emphasis on mystical experience. Laura, check out my interview with Philip Weber about a month ago. He was primarily in the Yogananda tradition, but he's a little bit eclectic. But he's had some really lovely experiences and awakenings, and he'd probably be happy to have a phone or YouTube chat. WhatsApp, that's what I'm trying to think of.

I'm reminded though the reason I brought up Sthaneshwar Timhalsanatji is because once he gave a course on foundational Shaivism and the choice of text I thought was stunning. He chose Shiva Jnana Bhoda which is actually a text

in Tamil which has a Sanskrit form of course and he chose the Shiva Sutra. So he took a Vasu Gupta's text which is from Kashmir and he took Shiva Jnana Bhoda which is from southern India and he taught a course on Shaivism using those two texts to show that Shaivism goes beyond all temporality and beyond

all geography. Yes, I just wanted to point that out. That's why I brought him up. Next question is from my friend Chitra Polanski in Sacramento. There's a presumption in this question that you might not cop to. She said, "When you realized the self, did the world vanish?" That's an interesting question. In my tradition, in the Ramakrishna Vivekananda lineage,

the realization of the self is in a sense equated with Nirvikalpa Samadhi. So yes, in a sense, When you realize the self, it's in the context of that Samadhi in which one forgets about the body and in which one forgets about the mind. See, the world is nothing but an experience of embodiment. If I don't feel my body, if I'm not seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting or touching, what to say of the world? I won't feel anything. I won't know what room I'm in.

The world will vanish. But of course, there's also a mental world. And the mental world is where we experience the forms of gods and goddesses. We have all sorts of exciting spiritual experiences in this like dreamlike dimension. But even that disappears in Nirvikalpa The mind is extinguished and in that moment, in that Nirvikalpa Samadhi, the Yoga Sutra says, "Tada drashtu svarupe avasthanam" In that "Tada" and then "drashtu" the drashta, the seer abides, "avastha" in her true nature, svarupa.

So with response to your question, when one realizes the self, it's often in Nirvikalpa Samadhi. Of course, I know most of the Advaita Vedantins, you know, those who are in the Neo-Advaita camp, camp will certainly disagree with this. They think you can realize Brahman like now itself without needing to go to Nirvikalpa Samadhi. But I think in our lineage, it's a very yogic Vedantic lineage. We do say yes, when you realize the self, it's probably because of Nirvikalpa Samadhi.

It's probably in a time when the world vanishes. But you know what? You come out of Nirvikalpa Samadhi. And when you come out of Nirvikalpa Samadhi and you experience the world, it's with new eyes and then you're constantly communing with the self now appearing as a table, now appearing as a chair. And just very briefly, there's a good example that might help you out with this.

Let's say a child has never before seen a movie screen and so his father takes him to the theater and they're watching the movie.

Now they arrive late and so the movie is well underway by the time the boy gets there and then the boy asks the father, "Dad, where's the movie screen?" And the father points and he says, "Over there!" Now let's say it's a World War II film and the boy looks to where the dad's pointing and he thinks, "The soldier is the movie screen?" And the dad says, "No, no, no, behind the soldier is the movie screen." And the boy looks and he says, "The tank is the movie screen?

Behind that, the mountain is the movie screen?" No, behind that, oh the sky is the movie screen. Now the father is at a loss. Everything that he points at is some object in the movie. So he says no, the whole thing. So the boy thinks, oh everything together is the movie screen. Not quite. So there is no movie screen. Not quite. You see, in the dad's predicament, there's nothing the dad can do to show the boy the movie screen. The boy has never seen a movie screen except to turn off the movie.

If they had come before the movie or if they stuck around after the movie, it's only then that the boy will see the movie screen. possible for the boy to intuit the existence of the movie screen while the movie is running, but it's probably better for the boy to just see the screen without the movie. That's called Nirvikalpa Samadhi. That's the realization of the self. Yeah, I have a question related to this.

Swami Sarvabhipayananda often seems to say that according to Patanjali, maintaining samadhi requires keeping the senses withdrawn, eyes closed. And I always counter, I usually send him an email after I hear him say this, that that's just an initial condition, but through regular exposure to that, it gets stabilized and integrated so that it will be maintained even in the midst of

activities. Like dyeing a cloth yellow by dipping it in dye and then bleaching it in the sun and dipping it and bleaching it back and forth until it's colorfast no matter whether it's in the sun or the dye. That's my take on it. There's a verse in Pratyabhigya Hridaya Sutra where where Shrema Raja says, it's like when you're in Nirvikalpa Samadhi, you dhyutane bhuyas bhuyas, you slowly emerge from Nirvikalpa Samadhi and you maintain that fragrance.

He calls it chid-aityo marshan, the sense of the oneness of all things. And then with your eyes open, you never quite forget that fragrance. And so you're right. It's a matter of constant immersion. That's why I like your dyeing the cloth metaphor a lot. Sri Ramakrishna would joke, he would say, what you put God in the prison of Samadhi and then threw away the key.

And then in Tripura Rahasya, man goes into Samadhi and his wife says, "Wait, wait, wait!" First he experiences Nirvikalpa Samadhi, then he opens his eyes, he looks around, and then he hurriedly closes them again. Because it's true, in Patanjali he does say, "Yogas chitta vritti nirodhah" It's the cessation of the mind. So all senses are shut down, the mind is turned off, you're in Samadhi. And in texts like Jeevan Mukti Viveka, it's true.

It seems like the longer you can stay in Samadhi, the better. So anyway, in this text, the man looks around, and he closes his eyes again, and his wife says, "Wait, wait, wait!" "Please tell me, my husband, What have you gained by closing your eyes? What have you lost by opening them? It's a very remarkable statement. And then she goes on to say that you can have this eyes open samadhi, sahaja samadhi. And so, Sri Ramakrishna, he would go into samadhi a lot.

The slightest mention of God would cause his mind to soar and he would enter into samadhi and he would be lost in samadhi, you know. And then he would come out and he would stutter a little bit like a drunk person. And then he would usually have to manufacture some desire. He would say, "prepare for me a smoke" or "give me a glass of water" or something. he would need something to bring his mind down. He wouldn't actually have to drink the water or smoke the Hubble bubble.

It was enough to simply just manufacture a desire. And with that desire, the mind would come down and then he would speak. And when he would speak, his voice would be charged with the power of Samadhi. So he was somebody who would frequently go into Samadhi, frequently come out, frequently go into Samadhi, frequently come out. Whereas Holy Mother, she was someone who was never seen to go into Samadhi. Rarely would anybody catch her in like a spiritually abstracted state.

So arguably she maintained the constant experience of samadhi like an undercurrent even as she went about doing the various duties that she had. So I think you're right, it is perfectly possible

post samadhi to maintain that fragrance. It's called maybe sahaja samadhi or some eyes open type of samadhi to constantly be interfacing with God even with your eyes open. One would hope otherwise it seems very tenuous, very intermittent. You can bet that when Ramakrishna had his eyes open and was talking to people, he wasn't in ordinary humdrum state of consciousness. We would be quite blown away if we could step into his body and experience things as he was experiencing them at that time.

Yes, it's true. And in India, they break these bricks and using the brick dust with lime, they make steps and then they also make roofs. So Sri Raghunath would say, when you climb the steps and you get to the roof, you then realize that the material of the roof, brick and lime dust is the same material as the steps. So having gone beyond the world, you realize God, you come back to see that the world is nothing but God. So Sri Ramakrishna would say it's all rushed, soaked in consciousness.

So this, what you're describing is a post-Samadhi experience of maintaining Samadhi even with the eyes open. Sri Ramakrishna might call something like that Vijnana, something greater than just Jnana. Jnana you get in Samadhi, but Vijnana you get with your eyes open, interfacing. So I think it is possible and desirable. And I think it's a goal actually.

I think this actually pertains to our previous discussion also about direct and progressive paths because you can directly go into samadhi on day one of your spiritual practice, but it's going to then integrate and stabilize over years and decades. Yes, true, true. Repeated exposure. Yes, repeated exposure. I think repeated immersion. Is repeated exposure therapy with samadhi. Beautiful question. Some more questions coming in here.

This is from Tree Wise Blood who was my previous interviewee just before you. She's in Australia. She says, "I have many of the deities dancing in my body. What is happening here? What are they doing?" You know in the Shiva Sutra there are words like "Khechari" and "Ghuchari". One thing about Tantra is everything in the body is deified. So for instance Kali has 15 attendants. They're called the Nitya Kalis. And each of these goddesses are correspondent to some aspect of embodiment.

For instance, the five organs of action, the legs, the hands, the organ of evacuation, the organ of reproduction, and the organ of speech. Each of these are seen to be in and of themselves goddesses. The organ of smelling, of tasting, of seeing, of touching, of hearing, these are all goddesses. And the five pranas that flow through the body, the downward moving prana, the outward moving prana, prana vayu, so inhaling and exhaling are movements of the goddess.

Samadha Vayu, the breath retention or even Kundalini Shakti, of course, the goddess Kundalini racing up the Shushubhna Nadi is a goddess. And then of course, Vyana Vayu, the goddess that's you know, what you're describing as eyes open Samadhi is this pervasion, Vyana, the pervasion of divinity and all things. These are all goddesses. So the five organs of action, the five organs of perception and the five pranas, they make up 15. And how many attendants does Kali have? 15.

Isn't that so beautiful? Yeah, there are eight petals in the Yantra. The eight petals sometimes referred to the eight aesthetic flavors like anger or like disgust or like fear or like arousal or laughter. In tantra the goal is to divinize the body to see every process that happens in the body as a stirring of consciousness. What's happening is that you're getting a better grasp of reality that everything that happens in the body is sacred and divine. Goddesses dancing.

I like that. And again, if we think of goddesses and gods as impulses of intelligence, the human body is just like this miraculous display of intelligence on every level. I love that phrase, Rikji. Impulses of intelligence. Beautiful. What is the body but a series of impulses of intelligence? And what is a goddess but that? In the West, when you say tantra, or more commonly tantra, what people are thinking about is sex. Tantra in the

the West is usually a fixation on sexuality. And that's not wrong. I mean, I think there are a lot of things that call themselves Tantra, maybe Neo Tantra, just like there's Neo Vedanta, there's Neo Tantra. There's one who just says Tantra. To distinguish Tantra from the California brand of it, she calls one Tantra and the other Tantra. So, this Tantra, I'm not saying it's without its value. I'm sure it's helping many couples find greater intimacy and whatnot.

I'm sure that's, as a standalone tradition, very valuable. It's just tantra is itself not really interested in sex as an end. There are forms of tantra certainly like vamachara tantra where sexuality and sex is divinized and ritualized.

So for instance in chapter 29 of Abhinava Gupta's magnum opus tantra loka, he describes the Adi Yaga or the Kaula ritual in which one enters into the ritual space with usually one's wife almost always is it's one's wife or one's husband and the two of them enter into a meditative state in which one partner identifies as Shiva and the other partner identifies as Shakti and they do actually participate in a ritualized sex act that happens.

That's definitely part of the tantric world and that's supposed to create a sudden explosion of Kundalini Shakti. So the purpose of that ritual, very importantly I have to stress this, is not pleasure. The purpose of that ritual is to use the primordial forces of arousal and sexuality and harness that and redirect that for a spiritual outcome. So sex is not so much villainized in Tantra as it is in other traditions.

Tantra is a much more body positive, Siddhi positive, sex positive tradition, but always with a spiritual view in end. So in the West, any tradition aimed at maximizing pleasure or increasing the number of orgasms you're having or something like that, that's fine. It's just not Tantra. Tantra is about going beyond the body and going beyond the mind. Albeit it allows the body and mind to be seen as vehicles. So sexuality then can be harnessed.

Sri Ramakrishna would say, "Why would you want to overcome your sexuality? Redirect it towards God." That's the idea. If you're angry, if you're aroused, whatever, that's free energy. Tantra is about capitalizing on that energy and getting beyond it ultimately. That's one thing. In the East, it's black magic. So the West, when they hear tantra, they think sex. In the East, when they hear tantra, they think black magic. And that's certainly part of the tradition too.

There are people who go to the cremation ground and then tie a string around a crow and then sacrifice that crow into the funeral pyre in order to like hex their enemy. This is called Abhichara. Abhichara means to stun your enemy, to kill your enemy, to have someone fall in love with you. That's also part of the tantric world and worshipping goddesses like Bhagalabhuki, like the Dasha Mahavidya tradition, there's a reputation in these traditions for doing Abhichara,

for doing "black magic". So I think it's good to be as inclusive as possible. It's good to say that that Tantra has high and low, pure and impure, and ultimately all can be seen as part of the same tradition. I think Abhichara is fine. I think the crazy sex stuff is fine too, because it's helping someone somewhere. I'll just close it with Vivekananda's famous statement.

He said in America when he first gave lectures here in Chicago, he said, "In Hinduism," I'm going to paraphrase a bit, "the lowest fetishism and the highest absolutism are seen as valid attempts to grasp the ineffable. So I think yes, there is a dark side and by dark side I mean a ritualistic black magic, like indulging the censor's side to tantra. And I don't think we as a tradition ought to reject that as not tantra. It's certainly part of tantra, but it's a great tragedy, I think, to

think that tantra is just that. Tantra is so much more. Right, it's just a small percentage, I imagine. Have you really understood the whole of tantra? Yeah, yeah. Most tantrikas would not be engaging in wine drinking or ritual sex acts or black magic or things of that nature. Most Tantricas wouldn't be even remotely interested in that. Yeah, okay. This one is from Prem Vishwanathan in Boston. How is Tantra different from Bhakti Yoga? If Tantra is ritualistic worship

of a deity, can that be categorized as a form of Bhakti? It's a very, very beautiful question. In In fact, a lot of Bhakti Yoga is tantricized. Tantra does not actually presuppose Bhakti, but it is a form of deity yoga, like I mentioned earlier. So it's a ritual form, right? So you get puja from your guru, you learn how to do ritual for the deity, but it doesn't

presuppose that you love the deity. It's enough for you to do the rituals. So tantra, many people have argued, has more to do with yoga and with jnana than with bhakti. It's not really about loving the deity as much as it is in performing rituals and doing the practices, which of course ultimately culminate in genuine love for the deity. Whereas Bhakti traditions sometimes are anti-ritual.

There are many Bhakti traditions, you know like Chaitanya Mahaprabhu famously would say, "No times are set, no rites are needed for the chanting of thy name, so vast is thy mercy." So there are a lot of like Bhakti teachers that are trying to go beyond ritual, that are speaking out against ritual, and in doing so are distinguishing themselves from the Tantric tradition, which for the most part is very ritualistic. Vaidehi Deva asked earlier about Shaiva Siddhanta.

Shaiva Siddhanta is the foundations of all Tantra. And of course, Kashmir Shaivism would not exist without the foundations of Shaiva Siddhanta. Everything we know about Shaivism rests upon this Shaiva Siddhanta ritual technology and ritual world. So in a sense, Bhakti can be seen as a standalone tradition for that reason, because it rejects ritualism in some of its forms.

But over time, the use of puja, the use of japa, the use of mantra became inalienable aspects of bhakti such that nowadays tantra and bhakti are almost indistinguishable. So I think it's fair to say that tantra is the means for bhakti yoga. Where you know in bhakti yoga you get a deity from your guru and then you use the practices that emerge from the tantric world. Practices like puja, japa, even kirtan in a sense is a kind of mantra yoga.

Those practices are tantric in nature, they evolve out of the tantric worldview. But the goal, the end goal in bhakti is devotion to God. Bhakti is special in that way because that's the end goal. In Tantra, I think its end goal is not necessarily just to love God. Its end goal might be to become God, which I think many Bhakti traditions would not be comfortable with. Yeah, they want to keep tasting the sugar.

Yes. I will say, Sri Ramakrishna often stressed, he would say, "Bhakti is the one essential thing." And he is a master Tantric, right? He mastered the 64 Bhairava Agamas. He was a worshipper of the divine goddess Kali. He was very well versed in puja. But his main form of sadhana was just crying out to God with a yearning heart. Vyakulata, Padma Vyakulata, intense yearning for God. That's a bhakti approach. So in bhakti,

if you have strong yearning, just deep love for God, that alone is sufficient. You can think of bhakti as a kind of super tantra maybe. Tantra is the way to get bhakti. One of the titles of one of your videos was the danger of non-duality, Ashtavakra Gita. Now I know Ashtavakra and Madhukya Upanishad are very world negating, you know, nothing ever happened and nothing ever

existed and all that stuff. Are you implying that by your title that that would perhaps be a dangerous attitude to culture for most people, especially householders? Yes, you know, I don't think it's so much that. I love Ajatavada and I think householders can also benefit from it because if they knew the world was nothing but a dream, nothing but an appearance with no basis in reality, I think that would help a lot of householders actually.

I think that would help them be better householders. They would take everything less seriously. Like Janaka, Ashtavaka's student in that text is himself a householder and not just any householder, he's a king. He has all these responsibilities and he doesn't give them up. He continues to be a king even in light of his realization which came from Ashtavaka in that Gita. So anyway, I think it's not so much that seeing the world as a dream is dangerous. I think

in that lecture I was specifically pointing out the risk of spiritual bypassing. There's this hasty conclusion that people make after they read the Mandukya Upanishad and they study Gaudapada's commentary after they study Ashtavakra Gita, they usually become like so condescending towards deity yoga. They're like, "Oh, I don't need to do puja. I don't need to do japa. Why should I have love for any form of the divine? The world is not real. I don't have to do any spiritual practices."

So I think it's the danger that I was pointing out there is the danger of undigested jnana or direct path without any supportive progressive path disciplines. Typically, I see a lot of people reading Ashtavakra Gita who have no foundations in spirituality whatsoever. They get turned on on to the text and they're intellectually stimulated by the text but they're not doing daily meditation or doing puja or anything like that. So I think that's the danger I pointed out. Ashravaka is a

high level text. Even Dzogchen or Mahamudra, that's something that's only revealed after a lot of ethical and meditative training within Buddhism. And most of the people practicing Dzogchen are monks and have been monks since they were children. You know, there's a big danger in starting from the top at the very beginning without the foundations. That's I think what I was pointing out. Good point. Yeah, and I mean some of these new Advaita teachers actually

follow this logic. They say, "Okay, the world is an illusion. You don't exist. Therefore, don't bother doing spiritual practices because those are only going to reinforce the notion of a practicer." So, you're already enlightened. You're done. Basically, I know, come next week and I'll tell you that again. And you know what? In some cases that might be true. There are some people, it's called Anubayan, Abhinav says there are some people who just hear it once and they're

free. It's very rare. Yeah, it's such a minority. And so I do really, I love that direct path teachers are trying their luck. Maybe someone in that big hall will be an Anubhaya qualifier. And they hear that, and it's true, it's actually true for them. They do experience the benefits of their realization and they for the rest of their life, they're free. And as Ashutavaka says so

provocatively, Sukhamchara, Sukhamchara, they just wander about the world happily. But you're right, for the vast majority of people, they'll hear that and they'll need to hear it next week. and they'll need to hear it next week and the high will only last until they get to the parking lot and when they're pulling out of the little conference center and someone cuts them off in traffic all the ajatama goes away. So the realization is not the problem, the realization

is wonderful. The problem is that because of that realization and because of, you're right, a lot of direct path teachers discouraging practice, the danger is this kind of spiritual bypassing where we don't actually do the work and therefore we don't actually benefit from the realization. And you know, I mean direct path teachers, a lot of them who are speaking out against practice, It's true, practice will reify the idea of the practicing subject. But they themselves have

done a lot of practice. That's one thing they don't often tell their students. True. A couple of years ago, I interviewed a woman named Jessica Eve. People can find her if they look on Batcap. And she's become a kind of a clearinghouse for neo-Advaita brainwrecks. People who just got really into the whole thing and began to lose interest in their families and

their jobs and to become nihilistic and to become depressed, even suicidal. There's several other All the people who are doing this now, too, there's a woman in Germany who's, I've seen her having conversations with Tim Freak. I think that overemphasis on jnana yoga is, or primary focus on jnana yoga, is probably most suitable for recluses.

And if householders do it, and especially if they're focusing on knowledge that says, "You don't exist, the world isn't real," and so on and so forth, I think it can make one kind of nihilistic. you know, your child gets cancer and what do you say? Oh well, the world is an illusion. I mean, yeah, you know, Swami Vivekananda says it best. He says it's not good to be one-sided. And this model of the four yogas is very helpful because you're right. If we're very, very developed

in one yoga and we forget about the other three, often we can become unbalanced. There's a Swami in Providence, Swami Yogatmananda Ji, he makes a joke. He says, if you do too much jnana, you become stony, cold and dry and holistic. If you do too much bhakti yoga, you become shaky, overly sentimental. If you do too much raja yoga, you become spooky because you're so ungrounded because of all these

mystical experiences. And if you do too much karma yoga, you become shady because you're always asking for donations for your new school or something. If you practice karma, you become stony, shaky, spooky and shady. Yeah, my friend Steve in Santa Monica that I've referenced, he called me today and the first thing he said was, "Do you think that on the whole, worldwide, is spirituality doing more harm than good?" And we got into an hour and a half conversation about it.

My conclusion is that if it is approached in a holistic way, where all the different aspects of life are cultured, you get exercise, you have proper relationships, you eat properly, you engage in meditation, study, you know all the different things, then you can have a balanced

development that is very good for you and your contribution to the world will be good. But if, as you were saying with the Swami in Providence, you focus in an imbalanced way on one or another aspect, it can throw your whole life out of whack and then perhaps it's not good for you or the

world. Yes, it's true. To be balanced and to be integrated, I think, is the Ramakrishna mission, the goal is really the four yogas ought to be developed alongside one another because they're mutually enforcing and out of the understanding that we as human beings are not just cognitive

beings which i think has been the hyper emphasized aspect of our personality since the dawning of the internet age because so much of our life is in the head you know we're just on reddit or we're on discord like talking to people and getting disconnected from the rest of us and so we're not just cognitive beings we're also affective beings we have a heart and we have a desire to act, we're active beings and we're co-native beings. So the four yogas meet us where we are.

Jnana yoga for the cognitive aspect and of course Bhakti yoga for the affective aspect, Karma yoga for the active aspect and Raja yoga, one of my personal favorites of course, for the co-native aspect. What's that word? Co-native? Co-native, like to will. Cognitive? Not cognitive. C-o-n-a-t-i-v-e, co-native. Co-native, I hadn't heard that word. Willing, willing aspect. Because yoga is really an act of concentration, keeping the mind fixed on

let's say the breath or like whatever else you're meditating on. That's the kind of muscle unto itself. It's like a specific part of the mind arguably willing. A lot of jnanis, they read a lot of Ashtavagraha Gita but their willpower is very weak. So they'll continue to indulge in activities even after they realize that it's not real. They'll still plunge headfirst into that indulgence. Why? Because they cannot will themselves away from it. They don't have that vairagya. Why

don't they have the vairagya? Because they don't have the willpower and and Raja Yoga will develop that willpower, that psychic strength. And some people are jnanis but they're so sad and so sorrowful and that's because their life is not filled with song and devotion and the ecstasy of bhakti yoga. And a lot of them can be very ungrounded and very reclusive because they're not plunging into the realm of activity and serving others. Because if it's true that only Brahman

exists, then Brahman is appearing as all of this. And if I'm going to eat, if I'm feeding this illusory body, shouldn't I also feed every other illusory body that appears around me? I should go out and feed and volunteer and help people. So it's only when we have all the four yogas cooking at the same time that the meal is really tasty. Swamiji said, "I give you dry hard reason, jnana yoga, softened in the syrup of bhakti, made spicy through karma and cooked in the

kitchen of yoga." Very good. Okay, so that's a really good takeaway point. If you're a spiritual aspirant, try to cover all the bases. And in fact, that's fun, right? It's just more exciting to do that. Yeah, and that's not to say that you will become a dilettante, a superficial dabbler, but there's that old saying, you know, you dig one deep well rather than 10 shallow wells. But another way of looking at it is use maybe 10 different tools to dig the one deep well.

You need a pickaxe, you need a shovel, you need a jackhammer, you need all kinds of different things. you're raising a really important point here. The four yogas will only really work, I think, if you have this understanding that it's the same whole and these are distinct tools for digging the same hole. Because if you think the god of bhakti and the god of jnana are different gods, then you will feel a kind of tension. Because you'll study ashtavakra and you think,

god is impersonal, god is absolute. In fact, I won't even say god anymore, I'll say self. Then you come to bhakti and it's all Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. You might get the sense that like okay well that personal god, that god with attributes that I'm praying to, is different from the self that the Upanishads talk about. And if you have that sense, then the

four yogas you're right will be like digging four shallow holes. But if you know and if you understand that the formless is the form, that the absolute impersonal is now appearing as Kali, if you know that the person that you're serving is none other than Kali embodied, and if you know that in meditation your goal is to reconcile all of this, then the four yogas will feel like different tools digging the same hole. You'll feel like each of them is giving you the same joy and each of them

is mutually enforcing one another in the path of spiritual progress. Yeah and another thing you said

a minute ago which I really liked is we have different faculties. We have an intellect, we have a heart, we have organs of action, we have organs of perception and so why just develop one to the exclusion of the others. Yes, that's the tantric idea too. The body is real, the mind is real, the human personality is real. So tantra seeks not to overcome the human personality but to transform it. And so there must be practices for the body, for the mind, for the prana and for the

ego. In fact, Kundalini as Swami Vimalananda, not Swami, Vimalanandaji, the Agora trilogy is about this very powerful Aghori named Vimalananda and Robert Swoboda. I think someone who, if you If you haven't interviewed him yet, you have to. I have. You have? I'm a big fan. I think he's such a great voice in this world of Tantra. Because the Tantra that he learned from Vimalananda Ji is that Aghora Tantra, that Vamachara Tantra that is often so misunderstood and misrepresented.

So he's pivotal, I think, in clearing up our tradition. Vimalananda was deeply devoted to Ramakrishna. A lot of the things that Vimalananda says are very aligned with what Ramakrishna says. He saw Ramakrishna as the perfect ideal. And so Vimaranda, I keep saying Swami Vimaranda because he has a Swami name, but he's a householder. Vimaranda Ji, he teaches about the Kundalini in a very unique way. He says it's Ahamkara actually, ego.

Kundalini, that power within us, which is the heart of Tantra arguably, Kauliki Visarga Shakti, the goddess that runs the body, which Abhinava Gupta describes as a streak of lightning, Vidhuleka Vilasanim, playful and beautiful. That goddess who abides in the body of the dancing Shiva, that Kundalini is nothing but personality. So when we come into the world of Tantra, it's a practice of personality transformation. Right now I think I'm this little mind and body. So Kundalini is dormant.

It's sleeping because it's identified with this limited Jiva. And Tantra is the journey from Jiva to Shiva, the journey from the Muladhara Chakra to this Hasradha Chakra and then back. It's a hero's journey. So that transformation of personality is actually very important. So Advaita Vedanta sometimes when it's taught in a neo-Advaitic way can reject the person. I'm not a person. I mean, after all, reality is impersonal. So I'm not a person.

I have no body, I have no mind, and that's kind of bypass-y. But in Tantra, we acknowledge the person. I am a person, I am this jiva called Nish. And the journey now is to transform that jiva into Shiva, to become a God person. Actually, Tantra is all about getting the Divya Deha, or the Vajra Deha, the lightning body or the divine body.

The body should be full of prana and full of power and refining the mind so it's clear and lucid, and most of all, transforming the personality so that it becomes divine, veritably God on Earth. - That's great. I'll let you have the last word. - That's a really good closing point. (laughing) 'Cause we could go on for the next 20 days. (laughing) - Nicely done. - Where do you do these classes? Are they on Patreon or on YouTube? - Most of them are on Zoom. Anybody can come.

The big satsang, the one that most people attend, is Monday nights at 7 p.m. Pacific. And it's just a Zoom link. It's totally free. Anybody can come. And then we meet again at 10 a.m. Pacific on Friday morning, just to be inclusive to our EU and Indian satsang, because of course they can't make the evening times. And then we do it again Friday at 6 p.m. Pacific. So these are just our satsangs. They're free and open to the public.

But yes, of course, the videos from there, many of them we put on YouTube, some we put in podcast form. And if anybody wanted to come live, we could of course be part of the Discord and they could of course join us on Patreon. And of course, you know, thank you for all your contributions, but really it's just freely open to the public and anyone and everyone is welcome. - That's great.

I'll make sure that I have proper links to all that on your BatGap page and links to your website, which I imagine gives people a window into all those different things. Good, so it's great getting to know you, Nish, and I hope we stay in touch. - Yeah, Rick G, that was so much fun. Thank you so much for having me. I greatly enjoyed our conversation. And you're right, we could just go on and on and on.

(Rick laughs) - Okay, so thank you very much, and thanks to those who've been listening or watching. My next interview is with another young guy. How old are you now, 25 or so? Yeah, the next one is another young guy in Denmark that Irene discovered. I mostly interview older people, you know, but old white dudes. But it's really good to tune into someone like yourself who is the hope of the future, really.

You and others like you. It's encouraging, it's inspiring, and it's reassuring to know that there are young people who are so ardent in their spiritual development and so advanced in their understanding already at your young age. That's impressive. I remember I was 28. I didn't think I was that young anymore, but it seems young to me now. Well, thank you so much for the chance, Rick G. Thank you for giving me the space to share these views and my deep pranam to Irene G. Just convey my pranams

to her and of course to the rest of your household. May Divine Mother Kali bless all with health and and prosperity and with light and love and renunciation. Thank you. And thanks to those who've been listening or watching. We'll see you for the next one. Aarhar Mahadev. Thank you.