Anette Carlström Interview

Summary

Anette Carlstrom describes a lifelong search for God and inner peace, including childhood experiences of inner sound, meditation, chanting, and spiritual exploration. She also recounts how anxiety, life changes, and a near-death experience during childbirth shaped her understanding of consciousness and the light within.

Questions This Interview Explores

• How can meditation and chanting help someone find inner peace?
• What is the significance of hearing an inner sound during meditation or sleep?
• Can a near-death experience change how a person understands consciousness and reality?
• How can spiritual seeking continue while living an ordinary family and working life?

Key takeaways

• Spiritual longing can begin in childhood, even without religious or cultural encouragement.
• Chanting and devotion opened a deeper connection for her than intellectual study alone.
• Inner peace must become part of daily life, not remain limited to formal meditation.
• Resisting a place or experience can sometimes keep its unresolved lessons alive.
• Her near-death experience revealed a vivid sense of light, connection, and purpose.

Transcript

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening people. There have been about 355 of them now, so if this is new to you, you could go to batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P, look under the Past Interviews menu, and you’ll see all the previous ones categorized in various ways. You can explore those.

This program is made possible by the support of generous and appreciative viewers and listeners, so if you appreciate it and feel like supporting it, that would be great. There’s a donate button on the right-hand side of every page on batgap.com, and if you don’t like PayPal, which some people don’t, then there’s a donation page that explains other ways of doing it.

My guest today is Anette Karlström. I’ll just read the little bio she sent here. Anette is an internationally recognized speaker, author, and teacher in the development of consciousness, living in Helsingborg, Sweden. Her focus and specialty is guiding individuals and groups toward finding their inner compass to discover their full potential and true nature.

Anette also has a strong presence in chanting sacred mantras, offering mantra concerts, as well as having recorded several CDs carrying the transmission of divine grace through the Oneness Blessing, easily accessed by simply listening.

She is the author of two acclaimed books. In her first, From the Heart, she shares her bumpy journey of conscious awakening and natural transformation, as well as answering sensitive and profound questions. Her second book, Namaste: Awakening the Power of Presence, is a roadmap and extraordinary guide exploring the sacred truths that are hidden in our everyday life. It is filled with wonderful guided meditations and anecdotal stories.

Anette is the founder of Diamond Life Foundation, an alternative health practice and meditation center in southern Sweden, where she gives weekly programs, courses, and guided meditations, as well as offering craniosacral therapies.

Since 2003, she has been traveling around Europe and the world, sharing her story, teaching, and singing. When she chants and speaks, there is a natural transfer of grace that is received either in person or over the phone.

She has been initiated to give the Oneness Meditation, which is a sacred transmission of energies that accelerates awakening to the intelligence of the heart. She offers online Oneness Meditations every Tuesday evening, Swedish time, on her free livestream channel. I’ll be providing a link to that livestream channel on batgap.com.

🛤️ A lifelong search for truth

Viewers may recall that I had a guest on here a couple of years ago named Eric Eisen, who is a very old friend of mine and who is also a teacher of Oneness Meditation. We talked a bit about that, but we won’t presume in this interview that anybody knows anything about it, and we’ll have Anette explain it to us. But maybe, for starters, it would be interesting to hear about your bumpy journey.

Anette: Yes, my bumpy journey. I think it started as far back as I can remember. I’ve always been a seeker of truth, or a seeker of “Why am I here?” as far back as I can remember.

I think I was three years old when I started questioning things and wanting to find out. I grew up in a mostly atheistic country. People are not so interested in spiritual questions in my country or my part of the world. I grew up in an academic, more scientific family, and nobody really had these kinds of questions, so I just came in with that.

I remember seeing some Sunday school or something next to the little store that I used to go to with my mom, and I said, “Oh, I want to go there.” There were these colored windows with angels and Jesus and things. So I was sent to this Sunday school to learn all about Jesus and God, and I took it upon myself very seriously.

I remember asking my little friends, “Do you believe in God? Do you believe in Jesus, or neither?” I wanted to know, “Why are not more people interested in this?” So my bumpy road started as far back as I can remember.

I come from a very nice family and had a very nice upbringing. There was no reason for me to be in some kind of pain. But all my life I’ve been having some kind of inner restlessness, not satisfied with life, wanting to know this: Is there a God or not?

I took it upon myself very seriously to pray every evening, the traditional prayer, but on my knees. Then I started to question, “What am I saying? Why is it that only people who pray will get help?” So it came from that perception of wanting to find something that could go in any religion or outside any religious or spiritual path.

Rick: Okay, you can continue. I was just going to say, as you got older, you probably began to explore various spiritual paths, like most of us did, right?

Anette: Yes, that’s true. When I was very small, I used to have this expansion of what I know now was an expansion of consciousness. I thought it had something to do with my pajamas.

Rick: Because you put them on at that time and then had a big expansion?

Anette: I had these blue silk pajamas, and I used to put my thumb in them, like little children do. That was my comfort. I put my thumb in it, and I did like this. Then I would hear the sounds, and I would go into the sounds and be outside the body. I did this every night, and I thought everyone did this and that it had something to do with this thing with the thumb.

Rick: So just the sound of rubbing the silk together kind of triggered a transcendent experience?

Anette: No, it was an inner sound.

Rick: Inner sound, okay.

Anette: An inner sound, like some kind of rhythmic inner sound that was very beautiful. Many years later, I was introduced to Nada Yoga, the inner sound, the yoga of inner sounds.

I just had those experiences, and I thought everyone had them. I loved going to sleep every night because then I would have the thumb thing.

Many years later, we moved to Helsingborg, where I live now. I got confirmation then in school, and I wanted to ask the priest a lot of questions that I had because I was not satisfied with the lack of clarity about this. But I was too shy. I had developed a great shyness from feeling different, because the way I was was very different from others.

Also, moving from Stockholm, which is the capital of Sweden, to Helsingborg, which is down south, was not so common at that time. So I was teased in school, and I became too shy to question things.

Those years were probably the hardest, because this presence, or this longing for union with the presence within, was still so strong, maybe stronger than ever, because I didn’t feel like I belonged in this world.

From Sweden to Hollywood

So I left Sweden just to be away for three months because I wanted to get some sunshine. I thought my suffering had something to do with the weather. It must be something with the Swedish weather, and in Helsingborg it’s very windy. So I thought, “If I could just get some sunshine for a little while, I’ll be fine.”

Destiny had me go to the City of Angels, and I thought that was so beautiful.

Rick: In California?

Anette: Yes.

I was there for three months, and then I was supposed to study chemistry and go the scientific route like the rest of my family. I got accepted at the university in Sweden to be a chemist, but destiny wanted something else for me.

My whole life changed over there. Not that it got less bumpy; it actually probably got more bumpy at that time. By coincidence, I ended up in Hollywood at the recording of TV shows. I worked for a family taking care of their children as an au pair. I was going to do that for three months, but on my day off one day, there was a man coming in the car. I did something that only a Swede would do—not you, Noah. You’re not supposed to do this—but he rolled down the window and said, “Do you want to come with me to see a TV show?” I said, “Oh, cool, yes.”

Rick: Wow.

Anette: All right, so I just left the bike and got into the car. This was in Orange County, so it was maybe an hour and a half or two hours’ ride up to Hollywood. I didn’t even know that Hollywood was around there, and I was just like, “Wow, this is so cool.”

Luckily, he was taking me to a Hollywood studio. Once we arrived, we were there to be audience members, to actually sit there and laugh at the sitcoms.

During the break, the bathroom break, I went to find the restroom. I got lost at Paramount Pictures, the lot that we were at, with lots of movies. There was this guard and a TV news light. He said, “You look lost.” I was very scared. I said, “I don’t know where I am,” and asked, “How do I get back?”

He heard my accent and said, “Oh, you’re from Sweden. We also have a newscaster who is from Sweden. Do you want to meet her?” Again, sometimes we have these meetings and our whole life changes. So I said, “Oh, yeah, cool.”

I got in to meet Christine Lund, who was the newscaster for ABC Television Channel 7 News at the time. She looked like she could be my aunt, so we connected in a very strange way. She hadn’t spoken Swedish since she was six years old, so she enjoyed speaking a little Swedish.

Just at that time, she heard what I had done—that I had come there with this man, and that he had also found me inside the news station. She said to me in Swedish, “You shouldn’t just jump into people’s cars like that. It’s not a good idea,” and she felt some kind of protection for me.

So she helped me, and she also helped me start working for ABC News and Paramount Pictures as a guest relations hostess. That changed things, so I called my mom and dad and said, “Yes, I’m not going to be a chemist. I’m going to work in Hollywood.” Of course, that may not be good news for someone, so they took the first plane over to see, “Is this really a good thing? Is this for real?”

But it was a very nice job, and I had nice people around me. During that time, working in Hollywood, you would think that, because all I’m looking for is some happiness, seeing Hollywood movies while growing up in Sweden, that everyone is so happy there. Maybe by working in Hollywood, I could find happiness there, right?

So I had great expectations, but it wasn’t what I thought it would be like. Actually, there was more suffering than I had experienced in Sweden, because everything was surface and everything was fake. It’s supposed to be like that, of course.

The inner suffering, the inner searching, got even worse at that time, because now I was also working in front of the camera and behind the camera. Of course, everyone in Hollywood would get discovered, right? So I was, of course, one of those people. They said I should become an actress. It was actually someone who directed the Cosby Show, a famous name, who said it.

I started studying acting and thought, “Oh, maybe I can be an actress. I could get happiness by being in the movies.”

Rick: And I hope you didn’t have anything to do with Bill Cosby.

Anette: No, I didn’t. It was another show.

Rick: Okay, great. Because he’s pretty notorious these days.

Anette: Yeah, no, it wasn’t the Cosby Show, but he was the director for it. It was enough so I knew him very well, and I had great respect for him. Actually, I was watching a movie star’s dog. That was my job, my assignment for the day. I was in guest relations—you do all kinds of jobs.

While she was doing the lines, I was there holding the dog, and one of the actresses was sick. The producer-director said, “Hey, you there with the dog, can you just get up on the set and say these lines?” It was a woman who was sick that day. So I just said, “Okay,” and said the lines. He’s the one who said, “Hey, you’re really good. Are you an actress?”

I found myself going, and then I thought, “Well, if he thinks I’m really good, maybe that is something. I can be fulfilled and find happiness.” That’s how I got into that business.

But doing all the acting classes, learning film acting, going for auditions, and being in the Hollywood business just made my confidence even worse. Because now I’m in a category with blue-eyed blondes, and either I’m a European or I’m a Californian. When I spoke, it wasn’t any good because I had too strong an accent.

I had managers and agents—the whole thing—and they said they were trying to figure out what they were going to do with me. I said, “Well, we’ll just keep her silent.” They said, “Can’t you be like Greta Garbo? In the silent movies, you can just sit there and be silent.” I thought, “Well, I have to talk sometime.”

They sent me to a voice coach. They said maybe I could be a singer, maybe a pop singer. This is the business of Hollywood. So they sent me to a voice coach, and after about ten lessons—

Rick: You should have stayed back in Sweden and joined ABBA.

Anette: No, you should listen to this. The voice coach called my manager after a few sessions and said, “Maybe you should try something else.”

So both acting and singing—the whole thing—were just a failure from the beginning. But I pursued it, still thinking I had to do something just to find happiness in life.

I also found Los Angeles to be like a Mecca of New Age, and everything was there: all the teachers, the workshops, the books. I was always at the Bodhi Tree reading all the books, and I loved it. It was the best place. I thought I’d live there forever, just learning and studying, and somehow I could put up with the business.

So I learned to meditate very nicely—45 minutes every day. But the rest of the day was, like I said, filled with anxiety and not fitting in.

Rick: Where did you learn—from the Vedanta Society or…?

Anette: It was Siddha Yoga.

Rick: Siddha Yoga, okay. Muktananda.

Anette: Yes. Yes, it was actually the old guru, Guru Nityananda. I saw a picture of him, and something happened—some kind of awakening of the heart. It was through the chanting at his ashram and seeing his photo.

I remember I took all kinds of classes, and they had both Jnana Yoga and Bhakti Yoga. Then I heard a video of Muktananda, and they were speaking about how the path through devotion and love is the fastest one. I thought, “Oh, because I’ve tried to figure this out, trying to understand all this for so many years.”

I went to Jnana Yoga, the knowledge-yoga classes, but they just didn’t clarify anything. They didn’t give me anything, no matter how high-ranking a Swami was teaching them. I just wasn’t getting it. But through the chanting evenings that we did at the center, that’s when something started to happen in me.

I thought I was probably a bhakta, and that would be my way. So I pursued that path very intensely, singing “Om Namah Shivaya” and all of these sacred chants. It became part of me. I loved it.

So many things happened in those years that prepared me for what was to come later. What I didn’t like about it—or what I liked, but was looking for more of—was that it wasn’t fulfilling the whole part of my seeking. For 45 minutes every morning, I sat with a mantra and breathed in and out like that. Very nice. But for 23 hours—the rest of the day—it was filled with anxiety, fear, and all of these things that were happening.

“I could take 45 minutes of chaos if I could have 23 hours of God, or that presence and peace within.”

So I thought it could be the reverse: I could take 45 minutes of chaos if I could have 23 hours of God, or that presence and peace within. I started looking, because in Los Angeles there’s everything, right? I thought, “Meditation in action—there must be such a course somewhere.”

I was looking everywhere for meditation in action, somewhere where you could have that niceness of meditation, but you shouldn’t have to just sit. I couldn’t go into a cave, even though I started thinking that would be my way. That was probably my path: to be a monk and sit in a cave, because I really, really enjoyed meditation.

I was looking for something that would be meditation in action, where I could have hours of peace and that niceness. The experience of meditation was so profound. I just loved it. Just sitting, breathing in and out, repeating a mantra—it was so simple, and I was going deeper and deeper.

But I realized I couldn’t sit in meditation for the rest of my life, even though I started to contemplate that path. I thought maybe I should be a monk or a nun, and sit in a cave and devote my whole life to this. But then a part of me said, “No, we’ve done that already. You need to be a regular person.”

I had some kind of strange sense of a past life or something, where I often felt like an old sadhu with a beard, like Shiva, with a loincloth. I felt, “Oh, this is so familiar. This is so much like home. I could just do this forever.” But some part of me kept pushing me: “No, be a regular person. Be a normal person and just keep pursuing it.”

It wasn’t until I moved back to Sweden—strangely enough, to Helsingborg—that there was the shift I had been longing for, many years later.

When I lived in California, in the City of Angels, Los Angeles, I loved it there. I loved all the variety of people. You can really be yourself. If there were a place to live, that would be it. I thought I could live anywhere in the world as long as it wasn’t Helsingborg.

My memory of Helsingborg, of growing up there, was filled with such deep-rooted anxiety. I could live anywhere but there. It’s so strange that what you resist persists. That’s what happened to me. Destiny had me moving back here.

It was mainly because I had gotten married and we had a child. At that time, there were big riots in Los Angeles, and there were weapon detectors in first grade. I thought it was time to move back. I was missing my parents, who were grandparents then and living in Helsingborg.

I felt the heart—it’s always the heart that calls you, isn’t it? That’s what makes the shift. So we went; the family moved here.

Coming here to Helsingborg, there was more trauma happening, or more drama in my life. You could say it wasn’t over yet. I came here with an American husband and realized that we didn’t work here in Sweden and that we had grown apart.

I thought, “Well, maybe having a child will fix it,” which is the classic thing we sometimes think. But we had a daughter; she was born here. Unfortunately, the marriage couldn’t be saved, so we divorced when she was a baby.

If things were bad before in Helsingborg, things got pretty bad at this time. This was probably the worst time, in a place like this, and given my situation. Sometimes it has to be the darkest before the dawn. It was like that for me.

When I gave birth to my daughter, I also had a near-death experience, and that came to have a profound effect, even to this day.

It was during the birth, during the actual delivery. My husband was in the room, and I yelled at him, “You have to tell me when to breathe.” He’s American, right? I was yelling at him because of our relationship. I wasn’t in a space where I could fix that, so I was angry, and I yelled at him, “You have to tell me when to breathe.”

So he was sitting in the corner saying, “Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out.” That was his thing. Then I came up with the idea, “What if he’s not telling the truth? What if, when he says breathe in, I should actually breathe out? How do I know he’s telling the truth?”

It was that kind of logic that came into my head. When you’re giving birth, you don’t have regular logic, so my logic went berserk. I said to myself, “Well, I’m going to show him. I’m not going to do what he says.” I still remember thinking it was such a brilliant thought: I was going to outsmart him. I wasn’t going to breathe at all. That would show him.

It was just that kind of insight in the moment, with the pain and whatever was going on. I simply held my breath, just to outsmart him. This is the stupidest idea I’ve ever had, but you’re not really thinking clearly at that point.

As I did that, after some time I could feel my heart pounding like a hammer against my ribs. I was just experiencing this physical sensation, and then—poof!—I was out of the body and went into a dark tunnel, or this dark darkness of the universe. I could also see stars and things, and I was drawn into a light.

“The universe, the light, is within you; the light is also outside.”

This experience came to be very profound for me. There was a great light, and this light was alive, very brilliant, and intelligent. I can’t put words to the magnitude of my experience of being in this light. I had, of course, been seeking this all my life, but this was an experience that overtook my whole beingness, whatever I was in at that moment.

What happened then was that a few light beings, as I call them, came out from this light. They were like human figures, but there was no hair or skin or anything like that. They just looked human. I knew with every cell in my being that this was another me. I knew this as In Lak’ech, like the Mayan Indians, whom I love very much: “I am another you.”

I was startled to see these beings coming out of the light. There were three or four of them.

Rick: And each one was another you—each of the three or four?

Anette: Yes. I can’t explain it more than to say it was a very profound experience that helped me very much. In later days…

Rick: Was it like different lifetimes of yours, or something that each of these beings represented?

Anette: No, it was the one light coming out as three or four, just like that. I remember seeing these three or four tall light beings, and they were filled with joy, humor, and wisdom. They came out and said, “What are you doing here?” It was telepathic communication.

I said, “What are you doing here?” Then I said, “Well, I think I messed up the breathing because I was giving birth. I think I did something there.”

Rick: Meanwhile, from the doctor’s perspective, had you gone unconscious or something?

Anette: I had no idea, because there was no doctor there. It was just my husband in the corner saying, “Breathe in, breathe out.”

Rick: I mean, there wasn’t a doctor, a midwife, or something?

Anette: No, not in the room at that time. They were…

Rick: Okay.

Anette: Yeah, that’s hospitals in Sweden for you—they’re understaffed.

Yes, very much, but there was no midwife or doctor there when this happened. I realized that I was in some kind of trouble, but I didn’t see it as trouble because I’d been seeking the light all the time. I said, “Okay, guys, don’t worry. I can go in there. It will be fine. Let me into the light.” And they said, “No, no, no,” and they showed me a life review of sorts. They made me see that it wasn’t my time.

One of them picked me up. It’s like you’re in some kind of… you’re not heavy, you’re very… My experience was that he picked me up like this, and he went like that, and he set me off. He set me off like that, and I was like, “Oh…” That’s when I saw I had a silver cord with my belly button down into Earth. I saw the universe, and I saw the Pleiadian systems or the stars, different… It was like, “Wow!” But I was kicked back into the body.

Now something happened that really came to change my picture of reality, because as I’m coming down into the body, I’m also coming in from the inner universe, from the inside light into this gross, big body. The first thing that I hear coming in… So I’m coming from outside and from inside at the same time. The first thing I hear is the voice of my then-husband saying, “Breathe in, breathe out.” So I’m coming in with, “Oh, no!”—that kind of feeling—and the pain of the contractions and everything.

Again, things happened very fast, and once again I did the same thing. Because this relationship was not healed and I was not okay in… I held my breath again somehow to show that I just can’t do this. For whatever reason, I can’t recall, but I did the same thing and experienced the same thing again. Boom, boom, boom—the heart would be like a hammer up in my ribs, and I’m out again.

Again, the same star system was like… And there’s no pain when you’re out there. You just like, “Oh!” Again, to the light. Now they came out very fast this time, and they’re like, “Oh, you’re back again. What are you doing back here?” Now they’re a little more irritated, like, “We showed you it’s not your time.”

I go, “I know, guys. I had a new strategy.” I remember the second time I came, I said, “You know what? I know I’m supposed to give birth to a child, but I think I’ve learned all my lessons. There’s a husband sitting there; he can take care of her.” I tried to make some kind of a deal, because it’s just the most amazing thing to be with the light. You just want to get in there. It’s like, “Just let me in. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. I’ve learned whatever I’m supposed to learn. Just get me in there.”

They laughed. I remember they laughed so much that they doubled over like this. But I was so serious, and I could not understand why they were laughing because I had a great strategy. I thought I was very intelligent. I had that kind of a mission to get me into this light.

But one of them said, “Okay, I’ll walk you down this time.” So he walked me all the way down—so amazing—and he told me stories all the way down. Then he showed me and told me stories of what I am to do here. He said, “It’s not your time. What are you talking about?” He shared funny stories, and I was laughing.

This time, coming again into the body from inside, from the inner light, I was stepping into this body. The first thing I remember hearing was the voice, “Breathe in, breathe out,” but I also heard my own voice, and my lips… My lips were big, like tractors, huge. I remember thinking, “Ah, it’s such a gross thing, this body.”

My lips were saying, “I remember, I remember,” because the light being was there telling me, “Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember?” And I said, “Oh, I remember.” So I came into the body the second time saying, “I remember, I remember.”

Then my daughter was born—this kind of dramatic birth for her. I’ve shared this with her many times when we’ve talked about it, and I thank her. I say, “Thank you for letting me see the light.” And I say, “Well, you taught me how to breathe. It’s like you got to breathe, Mom. You’ve got to breathe. Don’t stop breathing.” So we’ve developed a great sense of humor about it.

But it was a profound experience of discovering what I had learned. The universe, the light, is within you; the light is also outside. So my own experience kind of settled into that many years later.

Of course, after the birth of my daughter, she was put on my stomach. She looked up right away into my eyes, and that moment I’ll never forget. It was, “I’m looking at God.” I knew I was looking at God in God’s eyes. That was my profound experience.

Then memory was erased—completely erased. I remember nothing of what I’m here to do or my life review, nothing. But it was a profound experience that came to help me many years later.

Life threw me into being a mother, and it didn’t work out. With this relationship, I was not in a place where I could work things out with him. But we were married for 10 years, and we had two beautiful children, a son and a daughter.

The breakthrough came when I was a single mother with two children and my own work. I worked as a craniosacral therapist at home, and my home was like a hospital. There was always somebody feeling bad sitting in the kitchen because that was the waiting room. That’s how my children grew up: “Okay, there’s somebody there.” Then they go into the living room and get help, and then they go out into the hallway.

So it was that kind of circulation of people, always. I had a mission to fulfill. I wanted to help the world, right? And not the least, help myself, because I was filled with misery. If I could just help people the best I could, maybe I would get help too, one day. But I was probably one of the most miserable people you could find. I was afraid of everything.

Rick: You’re still meditating at that point, I presume?

Anette: It’s very difficult to meditate when you have two kids…

Rick: And your business and all that.

Anette: Yes, it was just… I was not at the point where there was any time for that. I was just… Every night I was looking forward to, “I can go to sleep tonight.” That was my joy. A little bit of breathing, and then it’s just tough, just hard, with difficult times.

Sometimes it needs to be a little more difficult before you get a shift. For me, that’s how it happened. My life came to have a dramatic shift—my first dramatic shift, you could say.

I was at a lecture here in Helsingborg. It was by an atheist who was holding a spiritual workshop or a lecture, it said, and I thought, “Oh, I’ve seen everything in Los Angeles but not this.” I actually threw that paper away. I thought, “I’m not going to go to that. I’ve done everything in Los Angeles. I’ve got to go through life.”

But no matter what I did, this piece of paper was there. So I thought, “Maybe I should just go to that and cancel my appointments that night,” because I always worked. I rescheduled them and went, and it turned out to be a life-turning event for me.

This atheist had very few words because he was clinically deaf, so he couldn’t speak much. He said, “I’m not a speaker, but I have been to India, and I’m not a spiritual person. Don’t ask me any spiritual questions. Ask my big brother. I don’t know anything about spiritual things. I’m not interested in that. I just have experienced something that I wish everyone could experience in their own way, like a positive disease.”

That’s pretty much what he said—that it would be contagious somehow—and he kept touching his heart area. I felt like, “Oh, I want that too.” Whatever he had, he had it in the heart, it looked like. He didn’t speak much, and he didn’t know anything, but he had obviously experienced something.

I felt an energy in the body. It wasn’t like he was particularly charismatic or brilliant in his saying or anything. It was just, something is happening here.

He said, “I will put some music on, and I’ll go around…” This was before the phenomenon of the Oneness Blessing, or Oneness Diksha, Oneness Meditation—all of these things that are more known right now.

He said, “I call this experience healing because you will get the kind of experience that you need. The only thing that you need to do is be grateful before you receive it.” He said it very seriously like that, and then he put on the music.

He said, “Before you get it, just be grateful. And if you can’t be grateful, then you have to pretend,” he said very seriously.

I thought, “This is the weirdest lecture I’ve ever been to.”

During this lecture, he touched the head of each and every person very lightly. I’d received healing many times. I also gave healing in my practice, so I knew what healing was like. But this was different.

When he touched my head, just very lightly, there was the presence of that intelligence, of that strong… If I could say a presence of God, this would be it. This is what I’ve been looking for all my life. I knew with every cell of my being, this is it. I was surprised. I didn’t expect that to happen.

“Don’t be afraid to meet your inner suffering.”

Rick: Especially from an atheist. It’s kind of ironic that this guy is an atheist.

Anette: I know. This completely overtook me. I was not prepared for this. He had said you should be grateful, but you never know how you’re going to react when you have an experience like that—something you’ve been looking for all your life, and here it is. You don’t know what you’re going to feel or how you’re going to react.

Unfortunately, I was not grateful at all when this happened. I was shocked that I wasn’t grateful. He had said you have to be grateful, and I wasn’t when this happened.

Here was this presence of loving witness-consciousness and all-encompassing love and intelligence, just seeing. What I know as chakras—different energy points of my body—was looking around at different points and could see everything there, not just the nice things about Anette, but all the other things too.

This became very apparent to me—what I was carrying around. What happened now was that I became so angry, so furious, and directed this anger toward this presence, to my great shock that I was reacting like this. I could not stop this reaction, and I tried everything I could not to be angry, but I was so mad.

Rick: Do you think that maybe this deep experience you had stirred up some deep thing that caused the anger? Or maybe not—but maybe you could play with that theory a little bit. Why were you angry? Was there some sudden release as a result of the deep experience that bubbled up as anger, or was there some other reason for it?

Anette: I saw that I wasn’t only angry; I was also hurt. I was filled with guilt, sorrow, and all the negative feelings you could have—anxiety, depression, feeling low, so dry inside. It was every kind of shadow emotion you could have, any kind of emotion that you just don’t want.

Rick: So you were seeing yourself so clearly for the first time.

Anette: What happened was, as this presence came, which could be seen as a light or whatever it was, all of these feelings came up. The anger was the one that was on top, so it got directed there. I said, “Why are you coming now? Don’t you know I’ve been looking for you all my life? You’re coming now? Through an atheist in Helsingborg? I’ve been looking, and you’re coming now, so I’m angry.”

At the same time, I remembered how this man said, “You should be grateful,” and I tried to push all of this down, thinking, “Oh no, I should be grateful.” It was the only thing. He said the only thing you need to be is grateful, and here I was, the most ungrateful, pitiful person sitting on the earth, complaining, “Are you coming now?”

I tried to push all of this down, but nothing I did was helping. More and more of the different anxieties and horrible feelings started pouring out of me. Then something happened that came to change my life, because this presence got a voice. I don’t hear voices like this. This was a voice that was coming from seemingly outside the whole universe and inside of me at the same time. It was a thundering voice, and if I could say there is a voice of God, then this would be it.

Whatever you would call this, it was a voice, and it had a clear message for me. The message came to change my life. What was said was, “Don’t be afraid to meet your inner suffering. Don’t be afraid to meet your inner suffering.”

As I was sitting in the deepest inner suffering you could imagine, at that time it was good advice. So I did what the voice said: I just relaxed, met it, and said, “This is what this is.” I relaxed about it, and as I did that, I met it and confronted it. I thought, “This is here.”

Then the energy of that—the anger, the frustration, the dryness, the hurt, the bitterness, and whatever all that was, like one big mass of grayness—went through the body like a physical sensation I had never experienced before. It was a physical-like flow, like a river, through the whole body. I later learned that it was joy.

I had not experienced that kind of bliss before, such a strong experience of joy for no reason, taking on a physical sensation like that. Around my cranium, I felt pressure or certain points. I thought, “Is he standing there doing something to my head? Is he putting his fingernails inside my head?” I had these kinds of thoughts because I had never experienced anything like this.

But he was moving on the other side of the room, so he wasn’t doing anything. I just had very dry wood, so to speak, and he came with something very light. Some kind of fusion happened in that meeting. That’s all I can say.

But the profound thing was that there was a teaching given to me from inside. This man had not told me anything. It was given from inside: “Don’t be afraid to meet your inner suffering.” It also gave me this sense of a sacred joy of some sort, which eventually died down. You get a peak experience, and it dies down.

It was good enough for me to get home. Somehow—I remember this was in February—I got into the apartment, ran to the computer, and started searching. I think there was Google search then. I was searching for anything this man had talked about, India, or something. There was nothing on the internet then. Nothing.

All I had was this deaf man, and he was coming back to Helsingborg. He was from another city, and he was coming back a week later to have a course. I signed up for that course because I had to find out everything.

He didn’t speak much, and whatever he was saying, I had to write it down because I’m a writer and a reader. I’m very intellectual like that. I couldn’t just have this kind of experience of a lifetime and not know more about it. I needed to know: What do I do now?

So I sat in the front during this course. I think there were only ten of us. I thought the whole city was going to be there, that everyone had had this kind of profound experience, but that wasn’t the case.

I sat in the front. He looked at me, and he was very serious. He said, “You can put down that paper and pen,” because I was sitting there ready to write down whatever he said. I wasn’t just sitting there thinking, “Okay.”

He said, “This course is about experience. There are only two things you have to remember. One: you have to connect with your antaryamin.”

Rick: What?

Anette: Yes, that’s what I said: “What?” I had never heard that word before. He wrote it on the big board behind us: antaryamin. It’s a Sanskrit word. He was an atheist, not a spiritual person, but he liked this word. It means “the one who dwells within,” or “the indweller.”

He was like, “This is so cool. This is a cool word,” because it described what had happened to him. He said there was something inside, and he called it the antaryamin. He would never call it divine or anything like that. It wouldn’t fit in.

So he said, “Get in contact with the antaryamin. However you relate to it, whatever you call it, that’s your business.”

Then he said something that almost made me fall off the chair: “Don’t be afraid to meet your inner suffering.”

Then I felt literally like there was a white flag inside of me, as if I was no longer at war with life. I had found a path. I thought, “I give up. The war is over.” I found my path because it was given from inside.

He had obviously found something, and he was saying there were only two things: get in connection with this inner self and don’t be afraid to meet the suffering. The course was simply about these two things and how to go about doing that in a practical way, because this man was a very practical farmer.

I said, “How do you meet suffering? How do you do that?” That was the classic question.

He said, “Go buy an egg timer.” Which I did. He said, “Next time you’re in some kind of discomfort or suffering—suffering is a big word, so he said to start with something little—something you’re uncomfortable with, something you don’t like about whatever experience, when you come home at night, set the egg timer. Just like when you boil eggs, you sit and Boil-In-The-Feeling until the timer rings. Then you can do other things, but during the time when you have the timer on, you just experience whatever it is you were trying to run away from.”

This was his own way, and it worked for him. I did this. I had no one to help me or coach me on this path except him. For a year and a half, that was the only thing I did: developing a relationship with the antaryamin in my way, and learning to stay with what I was running away from.

These two things together, I discovered, were the magic key. If you only sit and experience an awareness of what is difficult, that doesn’t necessarily bring you into transformation. And only praying to the divine or having a relationship with the divine—which I had been doing all my life—wasn’t doing it for me.

Here, the divine presence came in and gave me a teaching: “Listen, you’ve got to know what to do when you’re with me.” It was that kind of thing. I felt the divine had given me that. I had to do it. He didn’t say, “Go tell your mother about this. Go tell the world about this.” He said, “Don’t be afraid to meet your inner suffering.”

So I took this very seriously. I did not speak about it to anyone. I just did these two things for a year and a half before I went down to India for the first time.

Already, I could see that my life had started to change because I was doing this inner process. These two things together were the magic key: a relationship with the divine, as I call it, though my friend who introduced it would not call it that.

It’s also very important to me that this was a path you could keep to yourself. You could be anonymous. You could call it anything you want. You could call it divine, or you could call it an antaryamin. You could be an atheist, a Christian, a Buddhist, or anything. The important thing is your experience and what you do with it.

Understanding the antaryamin

Rick: So did he provide some kind of technique or method to get in touch with this antaryamin, or how did he expect you to do that?

Anette: Yes, it was part of the course. This still stayed with me, and I also teach it. When a person has found the antaryamin himself, you find a secret way into this field—what I know as a unified field of consciousness. You can call it whatever you want. He had a very strong, definite experience of that presence within.

In his course, he did the same thing they had done down in India. This was before the temple and all that magic happened down there. It was just in the low-cut jungle, in some huts, with the monks and nuns. They prayed for the participants.

In other words, praying meant going inside. Of course, my friend wouldn’t call it “praying.” He would say, “I’m going to talk to my divine—my antaryamin—and ask, ‘Please give this to everyone here.’”

He said, “When I try to do something in life, whether it’s healing or anything else, nothing happens. I only get problems. I don’t want to be involved in all this.” So he simply had us lie down on mats while he talked to his antaryamin, saying, “Please help these people. They want to have this kind of experience.” That’s what he said.

Rick: It’s funny that this guy calls himself an atheist, because it sounds like he’s communing with something he considers to be intelligent, responsive, nonmaterial, and transcendental or something. He has a strange definition of the word “atheism,” it seems to me.

Anette: It’s beautiful. I love it. We’re free to call this whatever we like and call ourselves whatever we like, as long as we become happy. It’s really about that. A happy person can never hurt another. So whatever we call ourselves or however we relate to this, it’s really personal.

Rick: Sometimes Buddhists are referred to as atheists, and yet they obviously have a connection with this sort of field, whatever you want to call it. They just choose not to attribute any kind of divinity or intelligence to it, I guess. Anyway, that’s just a little side thought.

Anette: Thank you for sharing.

Rick: So, continue.

First visit to India and the Oneness Diksha

Anette: So after doing this process very intensely, I started with something like what this man who was deaf shared from his own experience. “I started with something simple,” he said. Because being deaf is kind of embarrassing sometimes. I would end up in a situation and feel embarrassed about it. So my first suffering was feeling embarrassed, and I was also like that. I was embarrassed about everything in my life.

So I started pursuing those things that were difficult for me to do and just staying with them. I would set the egg timer and just feel embarrassed until the clock rang. The thing that he said was the key to this was that you have to do it every day.

Much later, I learned about neuroscience and the wiring of our brain, and that to break a habit you have to do it regularly. So all these things I learned much later. But that’s how I started, just picking up on it, because the profundity of his state was that he was giving very simple, practical things to do.

So every day, or every evening, I sat with the egg timer, and eventually my brain got used to doing it. For a year and a half, I got so used to not running away from that which is called suffering, but to actually confront it, embrace it, or just see it. That is the nondual way, which I learned about afterward. I thought, “Oh, that’s so cool.” I just kind of got into it through awareness, learning it from the simplicity of this way.

There were some things, though, that were still difficult for me to simply be aware of and be with. I heard of this course in India called Samskara Shuddhi. Samskara is your past lives, your deepest cleansing. So there could be some past-life things that were still bothering me or something.

So I went down to India, for the first time, in August 2003. That’s when I had my second profound experience. The first one was definitely here in Helsingborg, where that inner voice came that changed my life. But the presence that I had gotten to know was more like the volume of a radio channel. Sometimes I could really feel this presence, and sometimes it was more like, “I guess it’s there,” but it wasn’t so clear.

That changed in August. I took a three-day course with the monks, or Dasas, down there. They guided us in meeting different kinds of shadow energies, invoking the presence of the Divine into them, and not resisting them. It was nice to do it in a group and not have the option of running away with your thoughts and things like that.

It was very strong and very powerful. I felt like I had taken a shower from the inside. It was that kind of feeling. It was actually so amazing that I thought, “I’ll stay here forever.” I didn’t want to leave. It was just an amazing experience.

But we were also going to have a darshan, a meeting with the founder of Oneness University. There are two founders, and one of them, Shri Bhagavan, had been in silence for three months at that time. He was having a darshan for the first time.

I went in there with a group of Russians. There were 30 Russians and me, and we were told we could ask questions or something like that. At this darshan, he shared with the group. He said, “Humanity has been preparing itself for a shift in consciousness that will start happening after 2012. Here at Oneness University, we will contribute to this shift in consciousness by giving an energy transfer we call Diksha.”

I had never heard of this before. He said, “We’ll start on Sunday. You should all come. You could have a transformation in consciousness, with different doorways of consciousness that you could go through and have an experience of. Something could happen to you.”

Of course, my plane ticket back home was on that day, August 17, but I was going to make it to this big day when the first Diksha was given to the broader public—to what I call regular people. Word spread fast, and people came from all over. You know how it is in India. I believe they said there were about 150,000 people there that day.

Rick: Wow!

Anette: Yes. They were at an ashram called Nemam, and they took in—I mean, it was very beautifully organized. It was like 10,000 people at a time, like a big rock concert, with fences, so you didn’t feel squished or anything. It was really nicely organized. I was very impressed by that.

As we came in, the Dasas walked around to different sections and put their hands on our heads.

Rick: The Dasas are…?

Anette: Monks and nuns who work at Oneness University as teachers. This first Diksha was to be given through them to us.

I had always had male teachers and male masters all my life, you know. Starting with Jesus, and then talking to God the Father in Heaven—all of this. I was so happy that on this path there was an Amma sitting next to Bhagavan, and that they were holding this together. This was what I knew I was looking for.

For a while, I thought it was the Siddha Yoga path, because as Muktananda left his body, there were actually two people joining together and holding that. But then that movement kind of split up, and I split with it, because inside I felt, “I want both the Divine Mother and the Divine Father—the Divine Female and the Divine Male—to be together.”

That was something I had been carrying in my heart all this time. I was so sad when the Siddha movement didn’t do that for me. They did beautiful things—both of them did beautiful things—but they didn’t do it together. For me, I needed them to be together.

On this path, there were both an Amma and a Bhagavan holding this phenomenon and bringing it in. In my mind, when we received this Diksha, it was so important to have the feminine energy. I thought, “I want a female Dasa to give this—whatever this Diksha is.” I didn’t know what it was, but whatever it was, it had to come from a female Dasa, one of the nuns. It just had to, because I had had too much male influence all my life. I needed more of the feminine.

So I prayed. I had learned to pray and talk to my Divine, so I said, “Have the female Dasa come.” I looked in my section where I was sitting, and there was a male Dasa. A male guide was going down and giving this very powerful energy transfer, and I remember feeling such disappointment.

I remembered my atheist friend back home saying, “You know, you should be grateful, really.” So I said, “I should be grateful. I shouldn’t sit here complaining, ‘But I want the female. I want you. I don’t want the male.’”

I started having this conflict again. Then I thought, “What can I do about the conflict? Nothing.” I had to be like, “This is happening!” I thought, “Oh no, not now. I want to be in this beautiful state, receiving this wonderful Diksha.” But I was in this innermost conflict again, wondering why this was happening.

Right before he was coming to my head, two female Dasas came running over to me. I could see and feel their shawls sweeping around me like this, and one of them pressed her hands down on my head—really pressed them down. I was so taken by the experience. I couldn’t believe it. I heard from my Divine at the last second. It was like the last second. She was saying, “I got you.”

Rick: Pretty cool!

Anette: That was a cool experience. The same thing happened as in Helsingborg: this inner presence. But now it was experienced more like a golden ball of liquid light. That’s all I can explain it as. It was like she went, “Bloop.” It felt like liquid light, just a kind of hook, and it expanded in my head.

It went down by itself into my throat. I was busy just feeling in awe. I had gone from being busy with the anger and disappointment to being in awe. I just watched how all of this was happening. It went into my chest area and expanded, and then it went into my stomach. That’s when it landed like a huge golden basketball of something.

It was so filling, with some kind of sweetness like honey or nectar. I could feel it. I saw that I had been carrying a dark hole in my stomach, like a black hole, and had just been trying to fill it with something. That had somehow been the issue, together with my brain now being used to not running away from suffering—not running away from that which I didn’t want to have there, but just saying, “Oh well, this is what we have to experience now. Whatever the moment brings you.”

So perhaps it was a combination of not resisting the now and the gift of grace that happened to me that day. It made a shift in consciousness—a profound shift in consciousness.

There was a lot of noise happening there, as there always is in India. With 150,000 people, there were speakers, and everyone had to leave the area. Everyone had to come out. I could move, and I was again filled with bliss.

I thought the Russians—because I was with the Russians, and I didn’t understand any Russian, but they always adopted me and pulled at me, saying, “Nitty-nitty, we have to go.” So I figured the Russians would save me. The Russians would take me. I would just sit there. I couldn’t move.

After a while, I looked up, and all the people in my section couldn’t get out because there was some kind of problem. They said, “Sit down. You will receive it one more time in this section.” I said, “Oh, cool! I get it one more time.”

This time I didn’t care whether it was male or female. I was like, “Whatever is happening…” This time it was a male monk who gave this very beautiful Diksha. The same thing happened again: golden liquid light coming in, filling my head, and now doing something more in the left brain. It seemed to have its own intelligence, whatever it was doing.

Sure enough, after some time, there was a Russian woman tugging at my arm, saying, “Nitty-nitty, share a taxi to airport.” So from there I went straight back home to Sweden—a kind of dramatic exit from India.

👨‍👩‍👧 Returning home transformed

When I came home, I realized that something was very different now from before I left, even though I had started this process before. There was energy shooting up my spine—electric energy. I was feeling so happy. I had never been so happy in my life. I actually didn’t know how to function.

I just fell in love with my family. I couldn’t speak of it. There was nothing to talk about. It was just like falling in love with everyone. My daughter was then eight years old, and I had missed all her baby years because I was so miserable and trying to help this world. It was like, “Ah, she’s so beautiful,” and we just connected like that.

Then it was so difficult to see how life could work on a practical level. I actually remember going to the doctor and saying, “I feel so happy that I don’t know how to live my life.”

Rick: You wanted a pill for that?

Anette: I wanted… I became serious. I thought, “I can’t stress.” Stress wasn’t having an effect. Just making a schedule and having all this work ahead of me—you need to have some kind of quicker energy. Here I was, just lying on a carpet and going into what I remembered from my childhood—the sounds and the pajamas. How could I book clients?

The doctor looked at me, because I thought he must have some kind of suggestion about what I could do. There was something different about me. He looked at me and sent me to a psychologist.

I thought, “I’ll go see her. It’ll be fine.” So I went to the psychologist and explained the whole thing again—what had happened to me. After an hour, she also wanted to go to India.

Rick: That’s great.

Anette: And she said, “You know what? I’m going to put you on sick leave for five weeks. I’m sure you haven’t gotten used to this by then.” So I got sick pay for five weeks. It was a second gift of grace that I actually got this time after this very big change in my body system.

Rick: Only in Sweden could you get something like that.

Anette: Yes, at that time. At least today, things change. But it was a grace that I could have that time with my family and just get used to it. Then I started taking my clients and booking appointments, and it was actually the clients who said, “You’re so different now than you were before. You know what happened to you in India?”

I didn’t want to take their whole hour to speak about my experience because it’s expensive to go for an hour of craniosacral therapy. I didn’t want to take their time and money for that. So I thought, “I’ll have that in my living room on Sunday. I’ll have what I learned is satsang, which simply means you share your truth.”

I’m a very shy person—I know that—but it’s satsang, and I’m sure I can just say a few things to people who are interested. So I thought ten people could come and just listen. I could share it. Those people, my clients who were interested, could come.

Now, a friend of mine had a big website, and he put it on his website that we would share my experience from India. And that day—that Sunday—ninety people showed up at my door.

Rick: And you don’t have room in your living room for ninety people.

Anette: I was completely taken by storm again, in shock. I said, “What do we do? What is happening?” People just kept pouring in, and the people from Denmark, from Copenhagen, had a film camera. It was like, “Oh, what is going on? I was just going to tell a few people.”

So someone said, “There’s a hall around this neighborhood where we can go in and just be, where we can all fit.” They knew of a community place. So we went there, and they put me on top of a table because they all wanted to see.

So I had this experience—the first time in my life on camera. I knew from Hollywood that I’m not good on camera, and my voice and the microphone were like, “Oh, I’ve been told I can’t speak. Be silent. You know, this is not working.” So all of the memories from Hollywood, the trauma, came up.

And also knowing that I couldn’t speak up—I had taken many classes trying to look people in the eye. I can only look one person in the eye; maybe it doesn’t work otherwise. Now there were ninety people sitting there, and they put me on the table so they could all see me.

On top of it, I was supposed to speak about the most sacred, most profound personal experience I had ever experienced. Oftentimes when we have a shift of some kind, we get tested. So this was, for me, the biggest nightmare you could ever have happen—a big nightmare like this.

What did I have? I had my divine; I had my antaryamin. I said, “What do I do now? What do I do? I have nothing to say. What can I—? I have never been able to look more than two people in the eye.”

And my divine said very clearly, “Stay with what is there. Experience whatever you’re experiencing. I’m there.” So there’s no shortcut. It’s just sitting there, experiencing whatever is going on, and having the willingness to experience whatever that is. That’s all that’s needed: just the willingness to experience it.

There was nothing happening. All the years of anxiety were more like old photographs: “Yes, that is part of me.” It’s like personality, like a toolbox with different tools, different aspects, like an etic—this and this and this. But it was like a bigger part of me was holding the smaller part, saying, “We’ll take some of this, a little bit of humor, and, oh, she loves to sing.”

Maybe I can’t sing, but I love to do it, and it didn’t matter. So I sat there on the table and started singing because I love to sing. Now it didn’t matter that I couldn’t sing right. I thought they were all going to throw tomatoes at me. I was absolutely certain because I had such strong charges around, “You can’t sing.”

But nobody left, and nobody threw anything. They all stayed, and I went around and gave this experience of healing. At the time, I said, “I just hope”—and I had my friend who had introduced this to me, and he was there too—“we give this energy transfer, or just a wish, like a positive disease: Let it just be contagious somehow. I don’t know what this is.”

Rick: Had you been trained to give Diksha at that point?

Anette: No, no, no, no.

Rick: You just kind of did your best to figure it out?

Anette: I did what he said. He had trained me. He said, “You talk to your antaryamin. It’s not up to you; it’s up to your antaryamin.” So I did that. I talked to my antaryamin and said, “Let’s just do that.” What else were we going to do?

I shared a little bit about my process in India, sang a little song, and then I said, “I’m just going to give you an experience of healing with my friend.” So we walked around doing this thing, and then I thought, “It’s over.”

But no, the people from Copenhagen who were filming said, “Come to Copenhagen. Have a satsang there.” I said, “Oh!”

So from then on, I started going to Copenhagen. There were people from Berlin who said, “Oh, you come to Berlin.” And there were people elsewhere. So this unexpected journey around the world happened that I wasn’t seeking.

I was just told to come to this place, from one place to another, to share my experience. I was comfortable enough to call it satsang because that’s all I could do—I could just share what was going on.

In the strangest places, I would be invited around the world. This phenomenon happened on its own, and it’s still going on, like going where the heart is calling.

What happens during Diksha?

Rick: So at a certain point, you got more formal training, right, in India, to be a Diksha giver and all that?

Anette: Yes. The phenomenon of giving it is something you’re trained in. You get initiation, and you’re also trained very clearly that it’s from your inner divine self, or your antaryamin. They use the word antaryamin because you should be free to relate to it in your own way.

So that’s how it’s given. None of us is giving it; it’s that presence within.

Rick: You’re just a channel, tool, or instrument.

Anette: Definitely.

Rick: Yeah. So the deaf guy—had he actually been to the Oneness University place, and that’s why he was using the word antaryamin?

Anette: Yes.

Rick: At that stage, it was in a very preliminary phase?

Anette: Yes, it was at the very, very beginning of this.

Rick: Yeah. So maybe this would be a good time for you to explain—you’ve sort of explained it just now—but what is actually happening when you give Diksha? Why does it work, and how does it work?

Anette: You get connected into that unified field of consciousness. We can call it the supreme light or the superconscious, whatever you want to call it, depending on you. There’s only one. To my own understanding, my own experience, there’s only one.

As we each find our own way into connecting with this unified field, we can help to awaken it in another. It’s not that you’re giving something, because it’s already there within the other person, and they relate to it in their own way.

So we don’t know, as the giver, what will happen. It’s not up to us. But we can wish good things for people, and we can give this energy transfer. It’s up to them and their antaryamin, their higher sacred self, or whatever they do.

It’s like sending an email: “Here’s some good news.” You can open it or not, and use it in the way that fits you. That is my understanding and my experience of it.

So I don’t get involved with hearing whether it worked or not. It’s not up to me. I know it worked for me.

Rick: Yeah. So when you study at Oneness University, do they give you training or methods to more effectively, reliably, and clearly connect with the unified field, or whatever we want to call it?

Anette: Yes, very clear teachings. I am totally amazed at these dasas, the monks and nuns. They have dedicated their lives to helping in this process; they’re amazing.

That was one of the things that really took me by storm when I went there. It wasn’t just that the founders were in a great state of consciousness—of course—but all of their monks and nuns are also in super states. You feel the presence of something so kind and so loving in their eyes, and so intelligent.

The way they teach is amazing. What I have found over the years—it’s fourteen years now—is that I keep growing. It’s not like, “Oh, yeah, I made some kind of a shift.” Yes, there was a big shift happening at that time, but that wasn’t the only shift. That was just one big shift that happened. It keeps growing and growing.

These guides—we call them guides, dasas, monks, or nuns, whatever you want to call them—have dedicated their lives to the phenomenon of awakening each person in their own way and helping this world through the evolution of consciousness.

Rick: Are they really monks and nuns? Are they living the monastic life? With the Osho group, for instance, they called themselves sadhus, I believe, but they weren’t really sadhus. They were just sort of people using that name. But these people are really monks and nuns?

Anette: What I know—yes, they live together, so they don’t have households, they don’t have families, and they’re not married. They live the kind of life of service. So they’re not monks in the traditional form, where they have to do austere things.

Rick: And they’re living celibate lives?

Anette: Yes, yeah. They don’t—they wouldn’t have time.

Oneness University and its campuses

Rick: And now questions are starting to come to me. This is probably the least I have talked in any interview that I’ve ever done, but you’re actually a very good talker, and you’re telling this story with such great interest.

But now I’m starting to get some questions. One is, is there a difference in capability among Diksha givers depending on how clear and deep they are? Maybe some are sort of ten percent and some are eighty percent, or whatever, in terms of their ability to transmit. And I would imagine there must be similar differences among those who receive each Diksha, in terms of their receptivity and openness to it.

Anette: Yes. It’s said that there are three components in giving and receiving a Deeksha. There is the giver, the receiver, and the Deeksha itself. The actual Deeksha, or the energy transfer, has the most power of the three.

So if you were to not feel so good as a giver—let’s say you have a bad day, you’re in some kind of mood, and someone is asking for a Deeksha—maybe that’s not optimal. The best way to be when you give a Deeksha is in a state of gratitude. That’s the highest state you can be in.

But maybe you’re not able to feel grateful, and somebody’s asking for Deeksha. What do you do? Well, what happens then is that the Deeksha is like a faucet; it’s turning on. So what happens is, if you as the giver don’t feel good, a little less comes to the one who is asking.

So it’s a good idea for the other person to be as clear a channel as possible. Otherwise, all this Deeksha goes to you as the giver, right?

But if the Deeksha itself has a mission—like it’s some kind of time for the gift of grace to be given to this person—it doesn’t matter if the giver is absorbed in some other kind of thing. It will still work, because the Deeksha has priority; it is sovereign.

Rick: I understand that. I mean, I used to teach Transcendental Meditation many years ago. Sometimes I would teach somebody, and all of a sudden I would have this incredibly profound experience while I was teaching them. I wouldn’t necessarily be in any very clear state that day or anything, but all of a sudden it would just be like, boom. Then I talked to them afterward, and they would have had the same experience.

So I figured it must be that this person was really ready and somehow, whatever the mechanics are on a subtle level of this process, we both got uplifted by it because of their deservability—you know, their readiness. So what is the scene like over there? I mean, it sounds like it’s a really big place and there are a lot of people. Give us numbers. How many people are there at any one time? How many of these dasas are there? How much does it cost to go there? If one wanted to get involved in this and start going there, what are they going to find when they go there?

Anette: So, there are different ways to go there. First of all, one interesting point is the Oneness Temple. It is a magic, like you said, a magic fairytale place. It’s like so…

Rick: I’ve seen pictures of it. It’s beautiful.

Anette: Yes, you told me when we started talking that the Oneness Temple looks like a fairytale place, and that’s exactly how I feel.

Rick: It looks like the Wizard of Oz kingdom or Disneyland or something.

Anette: That’s how I feel. I’m like, “Wow!” It’s like candy for the eyes. The eyes go, “Ha ha,” because it’s in the middle of a low-cut jungle. So there it is in white marble. Everything is made from white marble: carved-out elephants and lions and horses, and magical staircases spiraling up. It’s like this magic place, so you just want to go there.

It’s built like a structure—the pyramid is built in a way called vastu, the knowledge of how a building can affect your consciousness. It’s built with that knowledge, together with a Danish architecture company that designed it, so it’s a very modern, very hip, very cool place.

It’s the largest hall in Asia. On the third floor, you can seat 12,000 people meditating without any pillars. And it’s like this cool… In Sweden, we have… The lighting is very important because it’s so dark here. We have IKEA here, so we have IKEA lighting. I always think, “Oh, I’m going into the Swedish home.” I don’t think anyone else agrees with me on this, but I feel very at home because it has all these lights, the cool lights from the ceiling.

So it’s like a magic temple because of the lighting. Inside, on the floor, there are these flowers that you can sit on. There’s the Sri Yantra, a figure—a sacred symbol—in the center. It’s like the power where eight different power-place lines meet at the same time. So the actual center of the temple is like a yantra, an energy structure.

You sit there and you feel, “I’m home. This is a really nice place to be.” In this temple, there have been, over the years… It took seven years to build. It was built in April 2008, I believe, for the opening, and they wanted to have it as a Oneness Temple. But they had some problems having it as a Oneness Temple because there was no denomination of religious things. So they actually had to sort out somehow how it could be a temple for oneness, a temple for all, for everyone.

So maybe soon it will be released to the public. But so far, you have to take a course or be involved somehow at the Oneness University, because it’s set up like that by the government and because of the political and religious structure.

Just to explain a little bit what’s going on: it’s not like an ashram or other sacred places where you can go and visit freely like that. They actually have to pay taxes like a business. They have to run it like a business until the laws in India change, so it can be a spiritual place, because that’s what it is.

They have worked around this to make it affordable for people, and they have something called Shambhala. Shambhala is a mystical vision of a place in another dimension. I think it’s from the Buddhist tradition, or a sign of the coming of the light. They call the temple Shambhala now, and then you can go for a one-day course. It’s very low-cost to go to this.

If you only want to go to the temple, you can join in with the Shambhala, where you simply pay for the food and the shelter, or for living there. So the cost is as low as possible, and you can stay for just a few days.

If you just want to go there and experience the temple, you go to the temple every night and you journey with one of the dasas. You learn how to relate to that antaryamin inside, and you learn from that dasa, female or male, their way. We all have different ways, so they’re just teaching us their way.

Rick: So each dasa has a slightly different way of doing it?

Anette: Yes. They have their own personality. They’re not the same. Oneness is not sameness, so they’re very different, but they are all connected into that unified field. It’s so cool to take classes with different dasas and say, “Oh, this is how they do something…”

Rick: Pick up different things.

Anette: Yes, it’s very subtle things.

Rick: How many of them are there?

Anette: I think there are about a hundred or so, but there are certain ones who only work with us Westerners and are used to Westerners. There are also those who only work with Indians and travel around.

They do lots of work, like volunteer work, helping a hundred villages around there, giving them food and shelter, and providing schools and hospitals. So there’s a lot of work happening around the temple that we’re not really seeing.

Rick: What part of India is this?

Anette: You fly into Chennai, and then it’s two or three hours by taxi up north.

Rick: Okay, Chennai is on the east coast, in south India?

Anette: Yes, the southeast coast.

Rick: Right, okay.

Anette: Yes, it’s in a nature reserve area.

Rick: And most people who would come here obviously wouldn’t just come for one day. I mean, most people listening to this would be flying in from the US or Europe or Australia or something, so I imagine they have longer programs for a week, a month, whatever.

Anette: Yes, actually, they suggest staying for at least a week. You don’t go to India for a day. So you stay for a week at the Shambhala. That’s the lowest, most economical option, if that’s your situation and you have to consider that.

Then they have longer courses. They have three-week journey courses, which are also extraordinary. Then it’s more of a process, so it starts with a beginning and ends with an end.

Shambhala has one-day courses, so you travel that day with a dasa, and then it’s a new dasa the next day, and so forth. But on the journey courses, it’s one journey for three weeks. So it’s a different kind of system in terms of the teachings and the experiences that you get. You go a little deeper. Then they have lots of other types of courses also.

Rick: And Bhagavan and Amma are designing all this? They’re overseeing the whole thing ultimately?

Anette: Yes, they are the founders. They started this, and they retired in 2014. They said, “We came here with this mission to help humanity, to create such a structure—a building that could stay for at least a thousand years without being damaged by the weather and wind and all this.”

The structure would hold the presence of light, the golden light, which is a symbol that I experienced coming into that. A golden light could be a symbol of just seeingness. You know, you put light on something, and you see it.

So they want the divine to be housed in that temple, so when you go in there, you will have an experience. But they still, of course, oversee it and have their part. They’re not so much out in public because they don’t want this to be like a guru phenomenon.

Rick: Right. I heard an interview with him one time, and he spoke very clear English. I really liked the things he was saying. There was a lot of wisdom in it.

India has a reputation for being kind of rough, and the food—you can easily get sick when you go there, and so on. But this place is pretty comfortable for Westerners?

Anette: Yes, it’s extraordinary, the things that have happened since I first came there in 2003. We didn’t even have beds at that time. It was so simple. We were in little huts with banana-leaf roofs, and I was with the Russians. I was just sleeping on a towel on this mud floor. It was so simple and rustic, but I loved it. For me, it was perfect. It felt really like being a spiritual seeker, like a sadhu, because I read all those books, and I would have loved that.

But also, realizing that when I came back to Sweden, people would want to experience that, they developed these very nice campuses around the area so that you could have the comfort of a Westerner who is used to nice toilets and, of course, beds.

They even have a five-star hotel campus. It’s also part of the Oneness University, where Sri Rama Bhagavan actually lived. After that, they moved into the temple.

That campus is very nice, and they made it into a campus where you can stay. They call it Campus 3 or Ananda Loka or something. I don’t know what they call it. They have different names, but it’s one of my favorite campuses to go to. It’s filled with peace.

All the campuses are like that. There are five, six, or seven around there.

Rick: Are all the campuses right in a cluster near each other, or are they in different parts of India?

Anette: No, they’re around the same area. Campus 3 is at the foothill of sacred mountains where old siddhas are said to be, where you can have many great mystical experiences.

That’s maybe why I love it so much, because you can actually communicate with these siddhas that are dwelling there. They could be 10,000 years old.

Rick: Not in the flesh, but on a subtle level?

Anette: On the mystical level, yes. But they can also appear if it doesn’t freak you out. They can do those things, too. They dwell up there.

There is a mountain campus called the Sacred Forest Campus. We are just there for a day; we don’t stay there. The indigenous people who live there, when they met Sri Rama Bhagavan, said, “We want to build a campus here.”

They said, “Oh, do you come with light-skinned people?” because they had heard through the generations that when the light-skinned people come, the world will start its awakening.

That’s very cool. It’s an awesome place that we go to visit. We don’t stay there. It has good energy. You can talk to the ants, you can talk to the tree. There are mystical things happening there that are just like a fairytale.

✨ How does Oneness define awakening?

Rick: That’s great. Let’s talk a little bit about what I know is happening over at the Oneness University. People are sort of proclaimed awake—like, okay, you’ve had your awakening, and so on. Let’s talk about what you guys actually mean by that.

To start with, someone named Dee from Denver sent in a question. Maybe this will get you going. She said:

When your mind is engrossed in something, say a good book or adding figures, are you simultaneously aware of the Divine? For instance, I might ask you, would that be one of your criteria of what awakening is—that awareness of the Divine or some kind of self-realized state persists no matter what you’re doing, even if you’re engaged in reading a book or driving a car or adding figures, or fast asleep, for that matter?

Anette: It is an experience. I can only speak for myself now; I don’t know what the criteria are. I can answer it in two ways. I can answer it the way that I know, because you also asked, “How do you know if you’re awakened?” Right? And then I can answer from my own experience.

Rick: How does the Oneness group define awakening?

Anette: Okay, we’ll start there. Some of the Dasas are highly trained and developed in their consciousness, so they can go into what I would call a Google search, but on the divine level. They can go into someone’s brain or their collective consciousness, and if they have your name and your birth number from when you were born, there’s some information about you.

What they do is, five of these Dasas go into five different dark rooms. They are trained to go into the divine field of consciousness—like an advanced Google search, I would say—and ask, “Is this person awakened? If they are, on what level?” If all five come out with the same answer, then that’s it. Otherwise… So that’s how we are proclaimed awakened, and on what level.

Rick: Do they do that a lot for people? I mean, if you think you’re awakened, do you talk to the Dasas and say, “Hey, would you check for me?”

Anette: They did in the beginning, and they got overwhelmed with my emails. Then they had to stop that because they were using these five Dasas too much, and they said, “We only do it now for people who take the three-week course.” Then you get declared awakened and told what level you’re on. This level is only for you to understand and to keep growing, to see where you’re at and what’s the difference between being on the lower level of awakening and what happens when you go into the awakening building. It’s like you are…

Rick: There’s an awakening building?

Anette: This is my explanation now. I came very quickly to my way of explaining it or understanding it. It’s like… there’s no actual awakening building, even though I would say the temple could be such a…

Rick: So it’s kind of a metaphor.

Anette: It’s a metaphor, that’s what it is. Thank you, thank you for helping with this, sweet.

My way of looking at it is that when you’re not awakened, you look at the world a certain way. Something is bothering you; it’s in your face, because that’s how you see things. When you go into awakening, it’s like you go into a building and—let’s say you’re awakened on level one or two—you go up to that level and look at the same reality from that second-floor level.

Rick: Second floor.

Anette: Yes, second floor. So then it looks a little different. Now you have a different perception of the same thing. Still, it’s bothering you. You’re not—you know… But you’re awakened, and you’re on this level.

Then let’s say you move up because you get trained not to resist what is. You get trained, and your brain is actually changing. You learn these things, and you have processes for that. Then you go into a higher level. To go really quickly, what would be the difference between a Buddha or a Ramana Maharshi, or someone who’s in a really elevated state of consciousness, and somebody who’s just starting this process?

That would be like being on the hundredth floor—let’s say the hundredth floor is the top floor in this metaphor. The Buddha is resisting nothing. Nothing of the mind is he resisting. Those of us who are not on the hundredth floor might have resistance to some things, and we are growing and learning. But we’re in the building, or in the process, of continuing. The neurobiological shift has happened. We perceive reality—we have not changed reality, but we perceive reality in a different way. That is the awakening process, from my own understanding and experience.

Rick: That’s a good explanation. Does the Oneness University—I guess that’s what you call it; is that the best way to refer to it? The Oneness group, or whatever you call it?

Anette: Oneness University is a university. It is a university for consciousness. You can call it a school for growing in consciousness, or the Oneness Temple. Words are not really important. If it creates a problem for people, then you can call it something else.

Rick: I just want to know how to refer to it correctly. But does the group, or does the teaching, have a fairly clearly defined explanation of how many levels there are? Like, they might say seven levels? When the Dasas say, “Okay, well, this person is awakened,” would they actually be so specific as to say, “Oh, they’re at level four,” or is it a little bit fuzzier than that?

Anette: They don’t put much emphasis on this. When they first started giving awakening levels, it was simply to explain this idea—that you can grow into it. This shift has happened, and you can grow; it’s for your own good. But it started a lot of conflict among people, and they said, “Let’s just forget these awakening levels, because they’re just creating problems for you. Let’s forget it.” But then people said, “No, we want to know if we have grown or not.” So then they started it again, and then they removed it. In one course, I remember, all of a sudden they said, “No, we’re not going to give it.”

It doesn’t matter, but some people get upset. They give a level just for our understanding, like a metaphor, you know. They can see how much of your brain has changed. So if your presence—your very presence—can change a room, there was some kind of explanation like that I heard in the beginning.

Now they don’t like to go into that because people will say, “Someone on level nineteen? I don’t change a room.” It’s just that you don’t… What is happening, practically, is that you don’t have a problem with what is happening around you; you don’t resist. It has to do with how much resistance you allow.

After you’re above fifty, you start processing the suffering of humanity. The collective human consciousness starts flowing through you. You’re still using the same tools: connecting with your antaryamin, not resisting what you experience, and responding from the intelligence of the heart.

It’s really quite simple. You learn how to live through the senses, so the mind is not… The mind is more like a tool. My experience now, from that—and from her question that was sent in—is that the mind is a great tool. It is.

I’m also coming from an intellectual country, so it’s not as if you give away the mind, or the mind is no good, or you shouldn’t use the mind when you’re writing, or the divine is here and the mind is there. No. That’s not my experience. The divine can flow through the intellect. The divine can flow through the words or a pen. It’s not as if you are separate from that. You are that too, and you learn, day by day, to go closer and closer, having that relationship with the divine.

You feel it when what you’re doing and how you’re responding is helping another, bringing goodness back to you and to the world. Then you’re doing something good. You don’t analyze it so much.

Rick: Sounds good. I imagine that if you’re upset because you can’t figure out what level you’re on, then you can safely assume that you’re not on a very high one. You should just relax and keep on going.

You said something interesting a minute ago about maybe after level fifty or something, you begin processing the stuff of the world. I’ve heard a number of teachers speak about this, even recently. In fact, Ramana said that his cancer was due to the fact that he was processing a lot of the stuff from his devotees.

At one point, one of his devotees said, “Hey, why don’t you just give us all that suffering that you’re experiencing? Apportion it among us. We’ll gladly take a load and take it off you.” And then he said, “Where do you think I got it from in the first place?”

Have you been experiencing this—processing the stuff of the world—and does it make you uncomfortable? Do you feel like it takes a toll on your body, for instance, or do you just digest it and it doesn’t really hurt your health or your well-being in any way?

Anette: It’s definitely not hurting my well-being, my health, my body, or anything like that. It’s not as if I do something. It is just what is happening. The process is the same as with the egg timer: when you start, you use one, but after a while you don’t need any egg timer. You just experience life as it is.

You don’t say, “I’m going to sit now and experience the suffering of the world.” It doesn’t matter if it comes from your ancestors, your family, the collective human consciousness, or something else. You learn; your brain gets the hang of it. I’m not resisting what is there. I believe this is a process of how long you can stay with that, or something, but the mind is not involved in it. It’s just a natural happening.

Rick: Do you sometimes get a feeling for what it is you’re processing? Like, “Oh, this is my family. This is my ancestors. This is something. This is a loop that I’m working out, some of that mess.” Or is it just more of a… Describe the subjective experience of this.

Anette: Sometimes the divine does, since the central thing in my process is the relationship with the divine, or the antaryamin. My antaryamin can sometimes show me a picture of where this is stuck—maybe with some ancestor, or something that’s happening—and this is causing the problem, or the karma, of what is happening.

So sometimes, yes, I can know what’s going on. I can also see the results of just not resisting it—experiencing it, feeling it, seeing it, and not resisting it. Something happens in me, and something very often happens in the outer world or with a person.

It’s a beautiful process to be involved in, and the fact that you don’t feel hopeless or helpless, because there is a presence inside of you that wants goodness and well-being in this world. The more people who can wake up to it without making a problem about it, without hurting another or hurting themselves, the better this world is going to be.

Until that time, whatever suffering is given to me is not suffering. It’s like a non-effort effort.

Rick: Yeah, it’s like a little assignment that you have to take care of. “All right, I’m going to process this. I’m a washing machine, and here’s a load of laundry.”

Anette: But it gives joy. See, it’s a win-win kind of thing. So it’s not like, “Oh, I have to take all the suffering of the world,” because that’s how I spent the first part of my life. I was here to help the world, but I went about it the whole wrong way.

I tried… I thought I had to do everything. I mean, I would get as many people as I could into my living room, and they often got well, but that’s not what we’re here to do. We’re not here to carry a burden.

That’s the reason why we get connected to the divine: something is released from the shoulders. I will go to Missouri sometime. He says, “It’s so weird. How can your shoulders be so loose?” But I’m not carrying the world’s pain. I just let it be experienced, you know.

So I wish that for everyone, actually. It’s a joy not to resist. Resistance hurts. To resist things that are difficult and painful—that is much more painful.

I heard a priest today on Swedish radio say something really beautiful. The priest here in Sweden is perhaps very open, but she said, “I enjoy going to talk to people who have sorrows or difficulties because I have the divine hand at my back. I can go into the darkness with them. I’m not there to say something that’s going to save them; that’s not my role. My role is just to be there, listen, and be there. And I’m safe because I have that at my back.” So beautiful.

Rick: That’s nice. Yeah, yeah, it’s like the divine is really… There’s a nice metaphor that I’ve heard spiritual teachers use. It’s like, if you’re on a train, let’s say, you don’t have to hold your suitcase in order to get your suitcase to its destination. You can put it down because the train is carrying it and carrying you. So just put the load down and enjoy the ride.

Anette: Yes, that’s a great analogy. That’s really cool. I was going to add something to that train analogy: You don’t have to run once you’re on the train. You don’t have to run—it doesn’t go any faster.

Rick: Yeah, you’re not going to get there any faster by running up and down the aisles.

✨ A hopeful view of humanity’s awakening

So you mentioned a few minutes ago that Bhagavan had mentioned that 2012 would be a turning point and that the world is awakening and so on. Has he, or do you, have any sort of vision as to how things are going, and whether we’re all going to survive or not, and what the world may end up like if we do survive this transition?

Anette: Yes, I’m very optimistic about this whole process, but I do feel that it is important that as many people as possible awaken into that intelligence of the heart. It doesn’t matter what religious path you’re on, or what philosophical path you’re on, or spiritual path, or non-path, or whether you’re an atheist—whatever you’re on, just so that you help humanity. It’s time, it’s high time, to come into clarity about what this time is all about.

We talk about the evolution of consciousness. What does that mean? I think it is most important for people to be clear about what this time that we’re living in now is all about. Except for going to India, I’m also very enthusiastic about the Mayan Indians. I’ve been that way since long back. The Mayan calendar supposedly ended in 2012, and it’s not like the world was going to go under. They clearly said that there’s an evolution of consciousness that this calendar is built on.

They built some pyramids, and these pyramids have nine levels. So there are nine evolutionary levels of consciousness for humanity. What is unique about 2012—which is what the founders of the One Earth University, whom I also align with, are saying—is that after 2012, there is a new possibility to download the divine consciousness, or to merge with the divine.

If you use the analogy of the Mayan calendar and the pyramid with the nine levels, humanity is technically at the top of the pyramid right now, like the priest in the old Mayan culture. He was standing there representing the consciousness where we’re at. So that is where humanity is actually at, but we are not realizing that. Many people—most people on this planet—are still in resonance with lower levels of consciousness, with duality consciousness: seeing things as right and wrong, me and not-me, and so forth.

That is where most people are in alignment, whereas the evolution of consciousness has taken us into a plateau where we can actually download the divine consciousness in our own way, without having to belong to any particular path or religion. That is the high time, I feel, for people to start awakening into that.

There’s not one path that is the right one, because if you have that kind of understanding, it’s fine. It’s just that we’re at a new point in the evolution of consciousness. Humanity has evolved to the top of the pyramid, and if you were to look at that analogy, what is the next step if you’re standing on the top of the pyramid? Heaven.

So the heavenly energies, the divine consciousness, are for us humans to learn how to download and how to connect with, because that’s the answer to the problems we have in our world. The evolution of consciousness has come to a point where humanity can see that we each have to find our own way. Whatever path, whatever way we choose, let it be for the goodness. Let me not hurt another, myself, or my family. Let’s do it in a kind way.

There are so many paths that are helping with the awakening of humanity, as long as you respect each individual’s way of doing it.

Rick: Yeah, so it sounds like you’re saying that whatever your path, the times are such that it will more readily bear fruit. It’s a good time to be pursuing spiritual development because whatever effort you make, in whatever way, will be much more productive, and your chances of awakening to whatever degree are much better than they might have been in the past.

Anette: Definitely, and we see it. We see it here at our center. I have a meditation center and a clinic here, and we have events happening every week. There are lots of new, curious people asking, “What is going on here?” They come, and they have nothing—they don’t know anything about meditation or spirituality—but they get an experience. They go into that field right away.

So it has nothing to do with, “Have you been a meditator for 45 years?” or, “Are you someone who just came off the streets?” It’s like, “I have no idea what this is. This is kind of cool. Wow, I just felt…” They have shared these experiences, and each one is different. It’s the beauty of life. There’s not one like the other.

Rick: Yeah, I think this is a good point, and I think it’s an inspiring point, and more people need to hear it. Because if you just watch the news, you can get kind of discouraged. You read about global warming, what’s happening to the oceans, what’s happening to the animals, and everything—it sounds like we’re not going to survive as a species much longer.

But what doesn’t make the news is that there’s this groundswell of awakening taking place, which is part of the reason I started this show: to make people more aware of that. That groundswell of awakening, I think, has profound implications for the surface-level problems that beset us—for global warming, political unrest, economic woes, and all that.

Awakening is going to, in some way, hopefully help us resolve those things. Those superficial problems are symptomatic of some deficiency in world consciousness, and that deficiency seems to be getting remedied.

Anette: Yes, and you’re doing amazing work. I love watching your shows. I love watching all your teachers. I salute every one of them and the work that you’re doing. You have such passion from your heart to bring in different perceptions. This is completely in alignment.

Like you spoke of the grassroots—maybe you said something else, but I heard “grass.”

Rick: That’s a good phrase for this, yeah.

Anette: Okay, it’s like a grassroots thing. This is how I see it. It’s like the analogy of when you do the dishes: You put the water in the sink and then you pull the plug, so the water goes down. We’re close to the plug, where the dirty water goes out, because there are things that are like, “Whoa…”

Rick: Spinning around.

Anette: Yeah, those of us who are invited to your show or who can share these things feel like, “Well, so many things are happening.” So, yes, things are happening. But at the surface, people just say, “Things are changing a little bit.” They don’t know that, slowly, we’re also coming down. We’re all spinning, going down the drain.

Rick: That’s great—in a good sense. Going down the cosmic drain to infinity, the infinite sewer system.

Anette: That’s a good analogy.

🧘 A daily practice for connecting with the inner presence

Rick: Here’s a question that came in from Mark Peters in Santa Clara, California. He asks, “Is there any simple practice or daily check-in that you would recommend for building the relationship to your antaryamin?”

Anette: Beautiful question. Yes, I’m very passionate about this. First of all, find your own way. Find a way that is natural for you, or start developing a way. The important thing is that you do it every day, like you do Vipassana.

Vipassana is so beautiful. It’s an old Buddhist meditation where you just feel the body, because then you can see. The mind that is chattering so much is directly connected to the body. So if you want to affect the mind, or to be able to witness the mind, you need to be in contact with your physical body, because there are parts of the physical body where you might have resistance.

If you were to sit down every day and do Vipassana, you would just feel the body and be aware of the physical body. See the breathing moving in and out by itself, without interfering, allowing the body to breathe the way it wants to. You would naturally expand your consciousness.

Then you can put a focus inside your heart. It’s usually in the heart that we start to feel the presence, to feel that inner light, and to be interested in your antaryamin in the way that would be natural for you to experience it.

You can see it like a golden liquid light, if you like, or feel it like a presence of joy or peace—something that wants goodness for you, something that wants to help you in your world. Start relating to it in your own way.

The important thing is, just like when you brush your teeth, you have to do it every day. If you only brush your teeth once a week, you might as well just forget about it; it’s no good. It’s the same with connecting to your antaryamin: You connect with it every day.

You can do different things. I love to sing. It doesn’t matter if all of Hollywood says, “You cannot sing, girl.” I sing anyway, and I’ve actually recorded some CDs just to show that anybody can chant. When you chant the sacred mantras and sacred sounds, automatically you are downloading. It’s like having the cable to the Internet and asking, “Where do I plug it in?”

I’ll sing a mantra, because you’re like… In the Sanskrit language, there are gods, and there are 3,000 different nuances, like a diamond with many different facets. So I love to sing mantras. It’s a heart-opener.

When you do Vipassana, just take three minutes. Sit down and be aware of the body. You allow everything. It’s like a ticket to joy when you do this, so you know that you don’t resist anything. Just welcome everything.

Then put a focus on your heart. You can pick up a mantra and sing it. You can sing it loudly, whisper a mantra, or repeat it silently inside. There are different aspects affecting your consciousness in different ways. You can also listen to a mantra if you want; you simply hear the mantra.

Or you can talk. You can talk to your divine as if it is your best friend. Eventually, you can have that kind of bhakti relationship and more of a devotional path, where it becomes like a super-great friend who will help you. You can ask for a blessing for the day.

If somebody is feeling bad, if someone in your family needs help, you can say, “Please help this family. Please help this person.” It’s a great way to have communication and a relationship with that inner best friend.

Spend some minutes every day, and at night too, maybe. Isn’t that a good idea—to do that at night before you go to sleep? All these things happen at night. I always like to check in. It’s like, “I’m going to sleep. Please be with me in my dreams. Help me digest what I need to digest, and let me learn more during the night.” So I talk like that.

Rick: Yeah, that’s great. Let’s do it. So you might say, in summary, find a practice that seems to work for you. Maybe learn some technique or get a mantra from somebody qualified to give it, or whatever, and then just start doing it every day—even ten minutes or whatever.

I think regularity is important.

Anette: Definitely. Ten minutes a day is better than two hours once a week. The regular practice is what makes a difference. It actually affects the neurons in your brain; you will definitely have a different perception.

Rick: I was listening to a guy in an interview recently, and he was saying that the way you can tell if a technique is working for you is if you actually enjoy it and feel like doing it. It shouldn’t be something where you have to beat yourself up to sit down and do something. You should actually look forward to it. So find a way of practicing that you actually look forward to, that is refreshing and enjoyable, and that is a highlight of your day.

Anette: Make some tea, go and sit down, have some tea with your divine. Enjoy, definitely.

🧘 A guided meditation and mantra

Rick: I don’t know if the acoustics would be very good, but do you feel like singing something?

Anette: Oh, sure, yeah.

Rick: Go ahead, whatever you feel like singing.

Anette: Okay, I can guide them a little, just if you can, whoever—because I… Or how do you want this?

Rick: Whatever you want to do. I have no idea, but whatever you would like to do.

Anette: Well, I’m thinking that there are some viewers who are taking part in this, and I’m thinking maybe the viewers…

Rick: Right now, there’s a hundred and fifty of them or something. I can’t quite see—the print is small. But yeah, there are quite a few people watching now, and then thousands will watch later.

Anette: Okay, well, that is so cool. So the viewers can kind of get the feel for discovering their own inner presence.

Just close your eyes and relax in the body. Feel the feet touching the floor, your legs, your buttocks, your whole hip region, your back and spine, the stomach, your whole belly. Whatever is going on, just relax your chest and shoulders, your arms and hands and fingers. Relax your neck and throat. Relax your whole head and your face. Relax.

You can see the breathing happening in and out by itself. You don’t have to change the breathing; you just allow the body to breathe the way it wants to breathe. What you’re doing now is a Vipassana, an old Buddhist meditation, where you still the body and are aware of every part of your body, and you relax it—not resisting anything that might come up.

When you do this, you have an expansion in your consciousness, where you can see your inner world, your thoughts and feelings—whatever is happening inside of you.

Now, you can put a focus inside your heart. In the heart, you can usually most easily experience your higher sacred self, however that is for you—as a presence, as a golden light. However that is for you, allow that presence to move out into every part of your body. Let it move out into every cell of the body also, emanating outside your body, under your feet, over your head, in front of your body, behind your back, all around your body.

Let this golden presence of light move out as all-encompassing love, and receive this oneness blessing through this chant:

Om Purnaamida Purnaamidam Purnaat Purnamadachyate Purnasya Purnamadaya Purnamevavasisyate Om Purnaamida Purnaamidam Purnaat Purnamadachyate Purnasya Purnamadaya Purnamevavasisyate Om Purnaamida Purnaamidam Purnaat Purnamadachyate Purnasya Purnamadaya Purnamevavasisyate Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Shanti Shanti Shanti

And just keep your eyes closed for a little while, and give gratitude inside your heart in whatever way you are experiencing the presence. When we give gratitude to that presence within, it is like putting fertilizer on that seed of knowing the divine from within, every time you give gratitude.

You always end your time with the divine, or with your antaryamin—however you relate to it—always end it in gratitude that you have this anchor into that unified field of consciousness, your sacred self, in your own way.

When you feel complete in your gratitude, take a deep breath and open your eyes in your own time.

Rick: That was nice. Do you want to tell us the meaning of that chant?

Anette: That is a… Oh, your dog is called Luna. I always think of the moon when I sing that chant. It’s the full moon.

So if you take something away from that which is full, it is still full. If you add something to it, it is still full. You cannot change it. So if you use the divine every day and make use of the power of the light, you don’t take anything from it. You cannot add something to it. It is complete. It is full, like the full moon.

Every time there is a full moon, I always think of that chant. I love that chant.

Rick: Yeah, that’s nice. Yeah, it means, “This is full, that is full; taking fullness from fullness, fullness remains.” To me, it always reminds me that the divine is completely permeating everything, and that the sort of unmanifest field of all possibilities from which creation arises is not depleted when creation arises from it. In fact, the fullness permeates both. There’s nothing but fullness. It’s beautiful.

Anette: Thank you for explaining it so beautifully.

Rick: Whatever—out of the mouths of babes.

Closing remarks

I think that it would be nice to end on this note, since that was so sweet. I want to thank you for participating in this and telling such a nice account of your life. It was very uplifting, I think, to hear the whole story.

Anette: Thank you so much, Rick. Thank you for the platform you’re giving so many of us, and for bringing this out to the world, for each and every one of us finding our own path. I’m so honored and so grateful, so deeply grateful, to be invited here today. Thank you so much.

Rick: You’re welcome. So let me make a few little concluding remarks.

I’ve been speaking with Anette Carlstrom, and as always, she’ll have a particular page on batgap.com. From there, I’ll have links to her livestream account and to her website, her YouTube channels, and her books. So you’ll see that there.

This is an ongoing series of interviews, as you probably know. If you would like to be reminded whenever a new one is posted, there’s a tab on BatGap where you can sign up to get the email once a week or so.

There’s an audio podcast version of this, and there’s a tab for that. There’s the donate button that I mentioned in the beginning. I appreciate people’s support, and there are a number of other interesting things if you explore the menus.

I always say that because there’s no point in going through them all, but there aren’t that many things. If you just pull down the different menus on BatGap, you’ll find some interesting little things to check out.

So thanks for listening or watching, and thanks again to you, Anette. It’s really been a joy.

Anette: Thank you, thank you so much, Rick.

Rick: Yeah, and next week I’ll be speaking with Roger Castillo. He’s in Perth, Australia, and he was a close student of Ramesh Balsakar, who in turn was a student of Nisargadatta Maharaj. I had a brief conversation with Roger last week, and we really hit it off. I think it’s going to be a really nice interview.

So thanks for listening and watching. We’ll see you then. [Music]