Dr. Rahasya Fritjof Kraft Interview

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer and my guest this week is Rahasya. And I first became aware of Rahasya a few weeks ago when I was listening to some interviews that Janet Atwood had conducted on a series she called Dialogues with the Masters. And I guess those had been recorded a couple of years ago. And Rahasya was one of the people interviewed. And at this point, a few weeks later, I don’t even remember specifically what he said in very great detail, but I liked the feeling that I got from listening to him. I thought, “Well, I really enjoy listening to this guy. He really seems to be clear. He’s coming from the heart and I’d really enjoy talking to him myself.” So I got in touch with Rahasya and he agreed to an interview. And that’s what we’re going to do. So, Rahasya, welcome and thank you very much.

Rahasya: Thank you. Welcome to YouTube. Thank you.

Rick: Now, you live somewhere in Australia, right?

Rahasya: I live in a very beautiful place in Australia near Byron Bay. It’s kind of like a paradise. It has mountains and ocean and good surf and very clean air and a lot of rain. So it’s all green, so it’s very beautiful.

Rick: Sounds nice. That’s in northern Australia?

Rahasya: No, it’s the most eastern point. It’s exactly in the middle between north and south, the most eastern point. Cape Byron is the most eastern point. But unfortunately we’re not here a lot. We are traveling for seven months of the year for courses all around the world.

Rick: Well, that doesn’t sound like too great of a punishment, having to do that. In fact, don’t you have courses where you actually go to beautiful places and then you invite people to come to your courses in a beautiful place and have a course?

Rahasya: Yes, we do that. We have like a regular course for couples called Tantra Alchemy and that is in Bali in a very, very beautiful place. And then now, on the 2nd of July, we are leaving for Europe and we have courses in Sweden in two very beautiful places also in the countryside. So we are quite spoiled. Also, we will go to Brazil and we will have a retreat at the beach in Brazil, so it’s good.

Rick: Yeah, rough life. Sounds great. And don’t you go out surfing every morning when you get up or something, when you’re home?

Rahasya: I do, I do. Recently I was a little bit sick so I couldn’t go, but normally I go every morning, every morning, especially when it’s warmer I go kind of at 5 o’clock just for the sunrise. It’s fantastic.

Rick: Great routine. And you’re a doctor as well?

Rahasya: Yes, I used to be a medical doctor until I got bored prescribing medicine to people who didn’t want to know why they are sick. So from there I moved on to become a therapist and then a spiritual teacher.

Rick: And from your accent, you’re from Germany I would assume?

Rahasya: That’s right, you can hear it. Even though I speak English for many years, the accent doesn’t leave.

Rick: That’s okay. Arnold Schwarzenegger has an accent too. So let’s retrace our steps then and we’ll kind of get up to the point of understanding how you ended up in Australia and so on, but let’s pursue this as a spiritual odyssey. Why don’t you tell us your life story in terms of how you got bitten by the spiritual bug and what various experiences and stages you went through in pursuit of that motivation?

Rahasya: Well, I could start very early because I was brought up by a very unconventional family. When I was a kid we lived on a boat. My parents didn’t have any home. We lived on a boat in the Mediterranean and I didn’t really go much to school. My mother was teaching us. So in a way my father was very free-spirited and he always believed in freedom, but more in external freedom. And that external freedom was for me one of the most important things of how I would see my life. So I never wanted to really work for money. I always wanted to do something that I like and money needs to come by the side. So when I decided to study medicine, my parents at the time didn’t have enough money to pay for my studies. So I went ski teaching and sailing teaching in the holidays to earn my studies, which was very beautiful.

Rick: You’ve been blessed from the get-go.

Rahasya: So I was always very fond of traveling. My parents lived in Greece. First we lived in France and then they lived in Greece. And when I was 21, with two friends I went on a trip, on this famous hippie trip to India with a Volkswagen bus from Munich.

Rick: You drove to India from Munich?

Rahasya: Yeah, we drove to India.

Rick: Across Afghanistan? Wow, that’s quite a trip.

Rahasya: Yes, it was an amazing trip. And I realized only later that this is actually where my spiritual journey began because we took a long time. We stayed in Turkey for a while and in Turkey I visited all the spiritual places. One memory I have very strongly is when I visited the grave of Jalal al-Din Rumi. I was sitting at his grave and I was crying and I had no idea why and how, but I was so touched by this teacher in Iran when we were in Masjid in the Golden Mosque and in Isfahan in some very beautiful mosques. I also felt some remembering and then Afghanistan, Pakistan, and when we crossed the border to India again, this young 21-year-old boy, man, was crying his eyes out and I had no idea why. I just felt I’m arriving home, even though the outer circumstances were terrible. We had diarrhoea and it was raining monsoon, it was in July. It was awful from the external point of view, but internally I felt now I arrived home. So that was kind of a first taste and then for a long time nothing happened. I was still traveling, but I was very interested in mountain climbing and skiing and sailing and in pursuing my studies. Then I became a doctor and I worked in a hospital and I got a very beautiful job as an emergency doctor in one of the best hospitals in Germany. When they offered me a five-year contract there, the ambitious part in me was very keen because it looked like a lot of money, being the head of the department and so on, and my heart was shrinking. So I felt I cannot do this. So instead of accepting that offer, that job, I quit the job and with my partner at the time I went to India and to Nepal. For four months we were just climbing mountains. Then when the season in Nepal ended, we went to northern India. We met a couple who had a book of some German journalist who has written about Osho and Pune. We were close, so we thought, “Okay, now this is a good moment. Pune sounds very interesting according to his book.” So we went to Pune and met, at that time he was called Bhagwan. Again it was a very interesting situation because my mind, my arrogant doctor’s mind, was completely against everything that was happening there. People were dressed in red, they were following a guru, the guru was sitting on a stage. So I was full of resistance and my heart was absolutely in celebration. It was kind of such a split between my head and my heart because here was this strange-looking Indian master who was speaking things that my heart knew to be completely true. Nobody ever said it this way. But it was like my heart was speaking, not this outside person, but my inner heart. But my mind had kind of still won. So after four weeks I left and we continued traveling. Only six months later we realized now we have seen so many beautiful places. We ended up in Bali. Then we said, “Okay, let’s go back to Pune because this is where we were most impressed and see what is really there.” And that is where really my inner journey began because then we did many courses, we practiced all the meditations that Osho has given, and we felt this is really totally amazing. So for ten years we were more or less with Osho. First in Pune, then we created a big German commune in a castle where I was a medical doctor. I opened a private practice in that castle to take care of the people who would come for courses and to take care of seven villages around. So I was a kind of a strange doctor dressed in red with a mala, you know, at the time with a long beard and long hair. And yet the people, my practice was always very, very full. People just came. I still don’t understand why they came because in Germany they had all these prejudices against sects and cults and were afraid, but somehow it worked very well.

Rick: You must have had a good bedside manner.

Rahasya: Yes.

Rick: During this period where you had been traveling in India, before you got to Pune, were you seeing a lot of different yogis and gurus and so on, or mainly climbing mountains and stuff?

Rahasya: Mainly climbing mountains. I was just interested in climbing mountains and doing some expeditions, very, very beautiful, but I wasn’t interested spiritually. Before we actually went to Pune, we went to Goa and there we met a funny American guru who was an astrologer. I can’t remember his name, but otherwise we were not really on search of a guru. The guru came to us in a way.

Rick: Right. So you spent about ten years, both in India and in Germany, with Osho and his people. And externally you had red clothing and long hair and beads, but internally what was going on during those ten years?

Rahasya: Well, internally I felt the truth that Osho is teaching and living, is possible to be recognized inside. And so after a while, after a few years of being a medical doctor in that Osho commune in Germany, I realized that the people who would come even to my medical practice in the castle, they only wanted medicine, but they didn’t want to look at why they are sick. So I already had learned hypnosis and deep relaxation methods, and so I went more and more into therapy. At that time Osho went to the ranch in America, and they had a beautiful program called the counselling training. It was a three-month course to learn the art of counselling. So I went to the ranch and did that three-month course, and after that I sold the medical practice and just became a traveling therapist. Now, my inner situation was really like this. I discovered inner limitations, let’s say, through childhood conditioning, and then I was going through primal therapy, and then I was teaching primal therapy because I thought that if I have released my primal issues I will be free.

Rick: Is primal therapy the one that John Lennon did where you scream and everything? Or is that something else?

Rahasya: It’s basically going back into your childhood and reliving very emotionally most of your childhood traumas. Yes, screaming is included, and crying, and a lot of emotional release, and looking at how your conditioning happened. So that was a very intense time, and I thought that if my deeper childhood traumas would be released I would be free, but soon I realized I was not. At the time when Osho came back to Pune from America, we also went back to Pune now with my new partner, who is still the same partner today. And there, Pune was at that time really the hub of meditation and therapy, and all the famous therapists that came to the end of their line in the West because something was missing, they came to Pune, and what was added was meditation and self-awareness. So I went through a huge learning process by participating and teaching many, many processes. So first, primal therapy, sexual deconditioning, energy work, breath therapy, bioenergetics, encounter. I think I went through all of it, and teaching all of it until I kind of became a relative famous teacher in Pune, which was helpful because that helped us to travel around the world during the time when in Pune it was monsoon time, to earn our living because in Pune we had to pay for everything, for our stay and for food, so we needed to find a way to get money. And that’s where our travel started, travels all around the world, because people would join courses in Pune and then they would invite us to Europe, to South America, to Japan, and so on.

Rick: I was just going to say, it sounds like it was a very experimental place with all these different therapies, like all sorts of different things were being tried to see if they would facilitate growth or unfoldment of consciousness or whatever. Is that a fair characterization of what was happening?

Rahasya: Absolutely. I mean, Osho’s vision was always that therapy in itself is not worth anything except it is a wonderful possibility to prepare the ground for meditation. And later, first, as a therapist, I always thought Osho doesn’t really understand us because we are so important as therapists. And I said, “You know, you therapists, you just play, but let me do the real work, which is meditation.”

Rick: But he did consider that therapy important as an adjunct or as a preliminary stage to meditation.

Rahasya: Absolutely, and I see that too. It’s very, very helpful, and yet if somebody believes that he can be freed through therapy, I would say no.

Rick: It’s interesting because I kind of grew up in the Transcendental Meditation movement and there, there was a definite discouragement from doing any kinds of therapy. It was considered that meditation alone would take care of everything, that in fact if people were involved in therapy, they would actually be prevented from going on courses and things like that. And I think over time, over the decades, it turned out that that wasn’t a complete picture either, and many people who had been meditating for many decades obviously could have used some therapy to straighten out some things that meditation just weren’t taking care of.

Rahasya: Exactly. I had many long-term TM meditators in our courses and it was very, very helpful. You see, we are really living in many different dimensions, and on the dimension of the body-mind, there is no end to the possibility of purification, of unfolding, of freeing yourself from old patterns, old unconsciousness. So that’s where, at the time, therapy was very, very helpful. I mean, we are now in a time where more streamlined possibilities are happening to release the unconscious, which I could talk about later. But anyway, I don’t want to miss any single moment of what I went through. And I have to say, awakening, or what the spiritual seeker is actually seeking, will not happen through anything that you can do, because the you that does is in the way of all of it.

Rick: True.

Rahasya: And I had a very clear experience in that, in 1999. It was like we left Pune in 1996 and moved here to Australia, and we were still continuing to run courses all over the world. And I became kind of more and more unhappy and frustrated, because whatever I was teaching, it helped people, but I didn’t feel free. So I came to a moment where I felt nothing that I have learned, and nothing that I, even though I’ve been on this path for so long, has really delivered what I was looking for. And it was such a strange situation, because on the outside everything looked perfect. I had a fantastic job, still have a very beautiful wife, best partner I can imagine, a beautiful house, and everything on the outside looked perfect, and inside I became more and more desperate. And in a way, I came to a point where I was really in front of the wall and nothing worked anymore. And there I decided there was a spiritual teacher, you may know her, called Gangaji.

Rick: Oh yeah, she’s been to my town here.

Rahasya: Oh right, she comes here every year, and she offered a retreat. And so I said, “Okay, now this could be a possibility,” even though my spiritual identity was very, very worried that if I go to another teacher now I will betray Osho. So it was a very interesting time to realize how much I had identified with being a sannyasin and being with Osho. And opening to a new teacher was kind of almost like, “Oh my God, now I’m even betraying my Master, and that is unforgivable.” But anyway, I booked for this retreat, and before the retreat even started, it was the first night in southern Australia. I took a walk in the forest at 3 o’clock in the morning because I couldn’t sleep. And I was sitting on a bench towards the east, seeing the sunrise, and this was a very simple moment where everything stopped. Like all my mind and these ideas of what to become, everything stopped. And for I don’t know how long, I felt and experienced this complete oneness with everything. I looked at the trees, I am the trees. I looked at the ants, I am the ants. I looked at anything I looked at, I was, I am the sky, the sun, everything. And in this opening, and I could say this is really just grace finding me rather than me doing anything, everything, all the struggle, all the despair, all the ideas of becoming something disappeared, and it became so obvious that there is no I, and that there has never been any separate I. It’s just a thought or an illusion that kept the seeker alive. So also the seeker died at the time. So everything that I was looking for suddenly fell in place, and everything that Osho had said and Ramana, I was very connected to Ramana Maharshi, fell in place. Everything fell in place. It was beautiful because in this morning Gangaji’s retreat started, and the first morning I went up to her and kind of asked her, because I was a little bit suspicious, my mind was suspicious, I said, “Now I really have a sense that I got it, or everything fell in place, and there is no seeking anymore, but I needed to check whether I am in a new illusion now or not.” And she was very beautiful. She just confirmed everything very strongly and helped me to see that this has always been there. So from then on, basically, an underlying sense of oneness has never left me, which in a way brought me to a moment where I felt all the work that I’m doing around the world I cannot do anymore because I only see Buddhas everywhere, nobody to fix. But then, a few months later, I realized, well, to live in oneness consciousness is one thing, but to help people to bridge mind and psyche with no mind is still a helpful thing to do. So my work kind of changed in a way, because the perception had changed completely, but in the same way it’s the same work, just from a different focus, from a different source. And that is what we share today.

Rick: Yeah, I mean, obviously you’ve always had the desire to serve, whether as a ski instructor or a doctor or a therapist or whatever, you’ve just found different expressions of it as you’ve evolved. You’ve acquired different tools that are commensurate with your own inner state of development. K Yeah.

Rick: And it’s interesting, this point comes up almost every week in my interviews with different people about the fact that whether there is any need to improve the person if there is no person. Because a lot of teachers argue that there really is no person, and so there is no one, no individual, and so all this discussion about improving the individual is nonsense, and all this discussion about levels of progress and stages of unfoldment and purification and all this other stuff is just a trap or a distraction from the core reality, which you just need to understand and you’re done.

Rahasya: Yes.

Rick: So it’s a paradox.

Rahasya: Yeah, it’s a paradox and it’s probably not solvable, but in my own experience, it’s like if you look at a plant, a plant never stops growing. A plant is already in oneness, but it never stops growing, and the same with us. I never stop growing. Now the effort to derive a sense of self from that growth, that is gone, but growing continues. And I can give a very interesting example in my own life, because from that time on I wasn’t seeking anything anymore, I was sharing and I was running more courses and it was very beautiful, but one day when we were teaching at a festival in Sweden, we came across the Diksha, the oneness blessings from the Oneness University, and we met a lady, Annette Carlstrom, there who was kind of, she was sharing Diksha with the people of the festival, and what she said didn’t resonate at all with us. You know, you get a Diksha and you get awakened, but the energy that was transmitted during the Diksha felt a very clean and clear energy of consciousness, so we felt on one side the way it was presented didn’t fit, but what actually was transmitted was very beautiful. So when we saw a photo of Amma and Bhagwan, who are the founders of the Oneness University, we felt they are really at this moment in time a very beautiful incarnation of male-female in the highest consciousness. One day we may meet them. And then things happened. We came back here from our travels and in this little town of Mullumbimby a friend met a couple who just came from the Oneness University and they were looking for a place to do a workshop and we offered our place. And then basically we were invited to go to the Oneness University and our mind said, “Why? We don’t need it. We don’t need that.” But at the same time it was interesting. In 2005 we went there and at that time there was a 21-day process. And I have to say there was nothing new from the level of teachings, but it was a very new way of implementing the teachings and helping people to have a direct experience and that we liked very much. And I touched levels of consciousness that I heard Osho talk about. My ego structure wasn’t interested in any more, but still I went through incredible experiences of cosmic super-conscious that were in a way mind-blowing. So I realized, well, even though there’s no seeker and no seeking, things still continue to unfold and I still grow. And what came through through the Oneness University is just a wonderful addition to the work that we do anyway. So I would say growth doesn’t stop, the seeking for becoming more, that stops.

Rick: Yeah, in the TM world Maharishi used to outline stages of consciousness and he would say that cosmic consciousness is a state of self-realization or liberation, but he would sometimes refer to that as mere cosmic consciousness and just basically a preliminary foundation step for the unfoldment of much higher attainments – God consciousness, unity consciousness, Brahman consciousness and so on. And I think what happens in some cases, if this is a valid cosmology of states of consciousness, is that people attain that – pardon the expressions, because “attain” doesn’t really do justice to it – but people arrive at that state of self-realization or liberation and they think, “That’s it, I’ve got it, I’m done.” And there’s no sense of seeking anymore because one is full and there’s none of the craving that had characterized previous stages of the journey. And there can be a tendency to rest on one’s laurels and to regard all this talk of further unfoldments and development of experience as being superfluous or unnecessary. But your life is a case in point of someone who had stopped seeking, had reached that stage, there was no longer the craving or the yearning or the feeling of inner frustration that you’re missing something, and yet look at how much progress has taken place since then.

Rahasya: Yes, and I think that will continue. I’m open and I have to say I’m constantly learning. We just had a beautiful weekend course here, a Oneness Awakening course, and I’m always learning, but there’s no… The learning has a different source. It’s not sourced in creating a stronger sense of self. It is just, you know, like more and more colors of the rainbow are added, if you like, and they happen by itself. The light behind the rainbow is always shining, but there are so many colors in this life to be lived. And this is, I think, the symbol of the thousand-petaled lotus. You know, there is a lotus, it doesn’t stop growing. There’s always more petals coming out, and it’s so interesting and fascinating to see how in this lifetime this body-mind keeps unfolding, and it unfolds much easier without anybody being there.

Rick: Getting in the way. I had a conversation with a fellow a few weeks ago, and we kind of arrived at this point in the conversation where he was saying, “You know, well, for me, I’m content now. I don’t feel like I need to seek or try to unfold anything else. I’m just living my life, raising my son and enjoying.” But I can understand how other people would have the orientation of really wanting to experience more, learn more, know more, unfold more, even though they’ve arrived at that same level of contentment that I enjoy. But I kept needling him a little bit to suggest that there is this force of evolution. It’s like a river we’re going in, and whether you’re swimming with the river or just floating along, sooner or later you’re going to find yourself encountering new shores and new experiences, because this force that’s really, I think, ultimately responsible for the marvelous diversity and richness and beauty of the universe is also that which animates us. We can’t help but be influenced by that, no matter what level or state or stage we’re at. It’s going to keep moving us along. If we choose to just relax for a while and maybe be in some little eddy in the river and go around circles for a bit, fine, but at some point we’re going to get kicked out of that eddy and discover that, “Whoa, there’s actually a lot more.” Even though I had stopped seeking, it seems that I haven’t stopped finding.

Rahasya: Absolutely, absolutely. And that finding, I mean, we are in the river, and the river flows faster and faster. I mean, consciousness itself is growing so fast these days. I’m getting jealous. In this weekend people got what I needed 25 years to get in two days.

Rick: Yeah, I was speaking to a guy last week, and he put it very nicely. He was saying that back in the days of the Buddha, it was as though there were a very thick membrane that the Buddha had to kind of pierce through in order to have his awakening. But so many people have pierced through that now, and with more and more frequency people are piercing through it, that the membrane has become very porous and easy to pierce through.

Rahasya: Yes, absolutely. And I think in the coming years we will see such a change, unbelievable change. Just two weeks ago we came back from China and from Hong Kong, and we had some amazing courses in Shenzhen with a hundred people, five-day course. And the transformation of people is just unbelievable. And I think as consciousness grows, it’s almost like light penetrates into so many old mind patterns that there’s more and more light, and we will see awakenings happening spontaneously very soon everywhere.

Rick: It seems to be happening, and that’s part of the reason I decided to do this show. There are other shows like this, of course, people interviewing people all over the world. But here in my town at least, there are a couple thousand people meditating out of a town of ten thousand, two or three thousand meditators. Plus a thousand Vedic pundits chanting Vedic Rudrabhisheks and so on all day long. So it’s an interesting place to be in the middle of Iowa. And more and more people are finding that they’re having these awakenings or are on the verge of them, but there’s a certain skepticism or doubt that ordinary people living ordinary lives, working in ordinary jobs, could be having genuine, profound, permanent awakenings. Because there’s some tendency to think that there’s something so special about spiritual awakening. You look special, you talk special, when you walk into the room people feel a wave of Darshan. And you look at a guy that seems perfectly ordinary and if he says he’s awake, people think, “Well, I think his ego is just getting a little out of whack.”

Rahasya: Well, you see, I would see it completely different. The ordinary people have much more chance to awaken because they don’t have all these spiritual ideals. Because if I look at myself, really in the whole journey for a while I was very interested in spiritual power, which has nothing to do with spiritual awakening. In awakening you become so ordinary and so simple that of course nobody notices it. Because you’re just simple, you don’t live in an inner conflict and you’re completely simple living your day-to-day life in presence. So, I now get very suspicious when somebody is so special because then it’s a more subtle way of the spiritual ego trying to manifest itself, which is just another huge trap. I think it’s one of the bigger traps. The worldly ego is a good trap, but the spiritual ego is the biggest trap. Thanks God, I had a wonderful Master, Osho, who just kept cutting our heads. He was supporting us to become really big in our ego structure and then cut the head.

Rick: Interesting. So he would build you up and then cut you down again?

Rahasya: Well, I can give you an example. When I lived in Pune, I became kind of a famous Pune therapist. Everybody knew me and so on. Then I asked him a question in Darshan, because I was a little bit suspicious about myself. Am I really so silent and meditative or is that happening just because I love to run groups and because then I’m in a certain position and people adore me and that helps me to kind of be silent. There’s a beautiful lecture, if you want I can send it to you, where he reads my question. At that time I was still called Fritjof. Fritjof, now, theoretically speaking, we all know you are a very good therapist. But practically speaking, you know and I know and everybody else knows that things look very different. You feed yourself, basically you feed yourself through the energy of your participants and the participants kind of put you up and this is why you feel good. You have to go deeper into meditation and realize who you truly are, that you don’t become dependent on the opinions of others. It’s a beautiful lecture with a lot of laughter. Now you can imagine, I was sitting there in the front rows with 3,000 people in Buddha Hall getting the hit from the Master, so, so beautiful.

Rick: It sounds like he did it with a lot of gentleness and kindness though, you know.

Rahasya: Yes, yes, with a lot of humor. I mean, he had so much humor.

Rick: A lot of love.

Rahasya: Yeah.

Rick: That’s an interesting point. I mean, I’ve seen it happen many times. In fact, I’m just reading a great book by, I mentioned this in several interviews because it takes me a long time to read books, but there’s a book by a woman named Mariana Kaplan called “Halfway Up the Mountain, the Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment.” Have you heard of that book?

Rahasya: I heard of the book. I would love to actually get it. It’s one of the books that are on my list.

Rick: Yeah, I’m really enjoying it. But she breaks it down into a lot of different chapters and one of the chapters is about the dangers of just what you’re talking about, the spiritual ego, the ego appropriating a certain level of realization and then allowing it to become aggrandized through that and causing all sorts of mischief. And there are so many examples we’ve seen of that happening on the whole spiritual scene over the years.

Rahasya: Yes, because on a certain level you get very powerful and if you’re not aware that this power is not yours, that you are a vehicle for it, the tendency… again, Osho had a very beautiful lecture called “The Seven Valleys Towards Enlightenment.” You have these peaks and then you have to go through the next valley and another peak, you have to go through the next valley. It is very tempting if you’re not completely empty to derive a sense of self from all the attention you get. I mean, it’s just natural.

Rick: I interviewed a guy a couple of months ago who had had some profound kundalini awakenings and he felt like he was really awakened and he seemed like a sincere enough guy and genuine and all. So we had this interview and after the interview it’s like he went nuts. He started calling himself Bhagavan and calling himself a guru and he quit his $100,000+ job and left his family and started going all around and posting all kinds of crazy stuff on the internet. And I felt kind of guilty for having facilitated this. I put his interview up on my blog initially, at least the picture of it, but then I took it down again, “Well, this is getting out of hand and he doesn’t need more attention, he needs less attention.” But I think he’s kind of settled down now, but it really does seem to be a danger. Here in Iowa, here in Fairfield, Iowa, there was a guy, this was like 20, 30 years ago, to whom this happened and he began calling himself a world teacher and he hired a helicopter and dropped leaflets on the meditation hall and people were in there advertising himself. The security guys ran around and picked up all the leaflets before people came out of the meditation hall. It really was a wild scene for a while. He was buying full-page ads in the newspaper, challenging Maharshi to debates. So because of that sort of thing, people around here at least and perhaps elsewhere are leery of people who step forward as being awakened teachers or just awakened people. They think, “Whoa, whoa, we don’t want another one of those.” Maybe it’s good in a way that people are cautious. You can take it too far and reject everybody, but it’s good to take everything with a grain of salt and have a little bit of scrutiny, a little bit of sober inquiry. And if a person is genuine, they should be able to stand up to that without getting their feathers ruffled.

Rahasya: Exactly. But you see, all this will disappear very soon because so many people will be awakened and will recognize it as the most natural and simple thing in the world, just a very simple state of presence, that the specialness will completely disappear.

Rick: That is a very good point. And that again was another one of the motivations I had for doing this show. Let’s get it out there. Let’s take the mystery out of it a little bit, you know, and realize that it’s becoming a lot more commonplace.

Rahasya: Yes. I mean, I think one of the biggest traps in our spiritual evolution is as we evolve, we develop siddhis, we develop spiritual powers. We can influence through thought, we can do many things. And it’s very important that if one of the listeners is caught in that, to not derive a new sense of self from these powers, but let them come and let them go. They are not important really.

Rick: Yeah. I agree.

Rahasya: There’s this beautiful story of Ramakrishna and one of his disciples who had this beautiful awakening that he could put thoughts into other people’s minds. And he put a thought into the mind of one of the disciples who had collected many stones and prayed to them as gods. And this awakened guy, he said, “This is total nonsense. These stones are just rocks. Please, you know, throw them in the river.” He gave this thought into the mind of this innocent guy. And so he threw them in the river. He was very sad, and then Ramakrishna kind of met him and said, “Why did you do this?” He said, “I don’t know, but my mind suddenly told me.” But Ramakrishna knew who put that thought in his mind, and he was basically ruffling the feathers of this so-called awakened person, and he didn’t get liberation until Ramakrishna died.

Rick: Interesting. So you mentioned the oneness thing, and here in my town there are a couple of oneness teachers, and I have a very good friend that I’ve known for 40 years, and we’ve taught together and everything, and he lives in California, and he’s a oneness teacher. His name is Eric Isen. I don’t know if you’ve ever run into him. But sometimes the folks here in town say things to me that make me a little skeptical, and perhaps you could address this skepticism. They say, “Oh, well, Bhagavan was on a phone call with 800 people, and all 800 people got enlightened on the phone call.” And I think, “Oh, come on, give me a break. That sounds a little bit fantastic.” So I don’t know if, maybe you have a more sober view of the whole thing.

Rahasya: Yes, well, on one side, I mean, in the moment Bhagavan has a webcast every Sunday, and he has a kind of TV webcast inside India with more than, I think now recently he did one in Pune with more than 100,000 people, and many people actually had a shift in perception. What I would say is, I think the biggest misunderstanding of oneness teachers in the West that feel love and connection to Bhagavan, and the reality is that we Westerners have a different mind than the Indian mind. You see, when we came to Oneness University, Bhagavan said, “After this course, you will be all enlightened.” After our 21-day course. And of course, I’m pragmatic. I said, “How can he say something like this? This is nonsense.” And then we had a darshan with Bhagavan, and it was the same time, actually it was our third time we were in India with him. It was the time when Tony Robbins was there also. And already with our first darshan, I said, “Bhagavan, I understand what you’re saying, but you need to understand that the Western mind will get very confused. If you say, ‘After this course, people will be enlightened,’ we take it literally. We have a timeline, we say, “Okay, now today is the 23rd, and on the 30th you will be enlightened. And if you are not enlightened on the 30th, everybody will be disappointed and feel cheated.” And then Bhagavan said, “Well, you see, in India it’s very different. I as a Master need to say that after this you will be enlightened,” which is really like a strong intention. It helps the mind to move in that direction, and in India the sense of time is not there. So, it may be after the course, it may be after three weeks, after three months, after three years, after 30 years, after 300 years, lifetime, that doesn’t matter, but it will happen. And so, I said to Bhagavan, “You know, you need to really see and change these promises for the Westerners, because that will create very much confusion.” And so, on a certain level he did that, but on a certain level he still has an Indian mind.

Rick: Yeah.

Rahasya: And how to say this, there is a reality in it. It’s like, for example, we had this Oneness Awakening course over the weekend, and from 18 people, 5 had a strong shift in perception, really just out of the blue. Now, I don’t know how lasting this is, this will be to be seen, but definitely something is happening also in China, in our courses, or in Hong Kong, or in Taiwan, or in Korea. We just came from a big trip, and so many people kind of very naturally say, “You know, it’s true, there is no self, I’m not there, everything is happening naturally and automatically.” But it’s so simple that they don’t dare to call it awakening. And the enthusiasts around the Oneness University who are actually teaching, they have in a way adopted part of the Indian mind that says, “Everybody is awakened.” So, I think, rather than calling them liars, it’s more like there is a certain enthusiasm that is part of this whole incredible spreading of consciousness, not just through the Oneness University, but Oneness University in the moment is huge. I have friends who are in America who give Diksha in jails, and the whole jail is transformed. The Hispaniards and the Easterners, the Asians and the Americans were constantly fighting and killing each other, and now it’s one of the most peaceful prisons in America. Or I had a talk to 35 high court judges in Taiwan, where the president of the high court invited me to have a talk, and I guided them into a meditation and we gave them all Diksha. And they are in such a good space that the Supreme Court came immediately and wanted the same thing. So, there is something happening on the level of shift in consciousness with people that have never done anything, which of course the old seekers will always doubt because we have done so much, and we have been on the journey for so long. But there is a reality in it. I would take it with a grain of salt. I wouldn’t say that from 100 people, 100 people are awakened. I think that is a part of the Indian mind that kind of creates that vision and hope that it’s possible. And there is a truth in it that shifts are happening back, left, right, front and center, everywhere, on a degree that is unbelievable also for my old seeker’s mind. It’s really amazing.

Rick: Well, I think as old seekers, we have been preparing the ground for decades, doing the dirty work, shovelling the rocks. And some of these young kids that are coming in now, you see these really young folks that are just beaming and are having levels of experience that are beyond anything I have had so far. And they haven’t done that much yet, but some really special people are coming along. It’s sort of like maybe we got sent down to be the shock troops to clean things up again before they came in. It all has kind of its own timing. I mean, at the time of Osho, we were really purifying the mind, and Osho’s vision was so strong to allow this awakening to happen. And we tried to find some explanation through Osho’s words about the Oneness University. And actually, there is one lecture where he predicted that towards the end of the century, before 2000, there will be a big group in India, like originating in India, that will spread awakening all around the world. And obviously, among many other people, this is what’s happening through the Oneness. It’s quite amazing. And of course, I wouldn’t believe the extraordinary stories of 100% awakening through one phone call. That is kind of the excitement of awakening happening, but I wouldn’t completely dismiss it either, because a lot is happening.

Rick: And also, the word “awakening” should always be qualified, because there are many degrees of awakening, and there are many degrees of stability of awakening. We’ve all had experiences which have come and gone, but obviously something significant is happening, it’s not just all imagination. And on the one hand, all this hyperbole and excitement about 800 people getting enlightened in a phone call, it does lend itself to disillusionment later on, if a person really buys into it too literally or too strongly. I’ve learned to take everything with a grain of salt, which doesn’t mean I’m cynical, but it just means that, “Okay, fine, I’m sure there’s some truth in that, but there’s always the other hand.”

Rahasya: Exactly, exactly. I think that’s an intelligent way to see it. And kind of something very, very beautiful is happening. And what you said before, I think that is very important. If I look at myself, while in Pune with Osho, I had so many awakening experiences where the mind would say, “I’ve got it,” and then it went again. And I know many people who say, “I was awakened for so and so long, and it’s gone.” And I think the biggest misunderstanding is the confusion between an awakening experience and the awakened state, which is an underlying hum of presence, I could call it, because every experience comes and goes. I mean, I had extreme cosmic consciousness experiences, God-realization experiences, but that comes and goes. Ultimately, if somebody asks, “Are you awakened?” I cannot answer, because it’s not a static label that you can put on yourself, “This is who you are now.”

Rick: Right, and there also is no “you” who gets awakened.

Rahasya: Exactly, there’s nobody there. I prefer the word “awakening.” It’s a constant unfolding into dimensions that keep opening and keep opening for everyone.

Rick: Yeah, and as you intimated a minute ago, as they keep opening, there’s some kernel or some thread that is always there. That doesn’t change, that doesn’t get improved upon, that’s not gained, that’s not lost, it’s always there. And then on that foundation, or just alongside of that, there are all kinds of possible developments that can take place. There’s a nice story about Ramana Maharshi, which I’ve told before on these interviews, I won’t tell it too many more times, but it kind of comes in nicely here. There was a story where, I forget who it was, it might have been Ramesh Balsekar or Papaji or somebody who studied with Ramana Maharshi. And he was having all kinds of profound celestial experiences, and he would see Krishna and he would play with Krishna and so on. These were very delightful to him. And he managed to get an appointment with Ramana Maharshi, which was difficult to do at that stage, because he had become old and very well known and so on, so he didn’t get appointments with him very easily. And so he went for this appointment, but Krishna showed up and he started playing with Krishna and got waylaid. And he was late for the appointment and the attendants around Ramana Maharshi were getting very upset, “This guy is so arrogant, who does he think he is? You don’t just not show up for one of these appointments, they’re so hard to get.” Finally he showed up and Ramana Maharshi said, “Where were you?” or something. He said, “Oh, I had this experience and I was playing with Krishna and Ramana said, ‘Is he here now?'” And that was his awakening moment. He just realized that there was something that’s not flashy, that’s not going to be coming and going, and that’s the thing that one would want to awaken to.

Rahasya: Yes, absolutely.

Rick: So what do you do on these? I mean, you go and you travel around the world. You said something about Tantra and you talked about Diksha. Do you have a whole potpourri of different things that you do according to the group or is there a standard routine that you run through with everybody?

Rahasya: I like to do new things all the time. There’s one thing I teach which I call “Transforming Lives” or “Counselling” – I used to call it “Counselling from the Heart” – which is like a training for people who want to work with people or be with people in a transformative situation. It’s a six-day training that I offer pretty much everywhere in Japan, in Korea, in Taiwan, in China, in Europe, and in South America. Then I have a series of courses that I call “The Seven Rays of Grace” which is seven times five days where we move through the different levels of consciousness connected to the chakras, like first chakra, second chakra, third chakra, looking at the story, the issues, the topics, the levels of consciousness in the different chakras, which is very interesting. We have that running in China, in Taiwan, and in Korea at the moment, and in Sweden. And then once a year we do this Tantra retreat for couples because my wife and me, we are together since 27 years now and love keeps growing, so we have something to share there. And then we have some open courses like “The Flowering of the Heart” or “The Sword and the Lotus” or “Love and Relationship” which are more open to investigate into the topics from the view of the awakened state. So we include a lot of satsang, a lot of direct pointing towards the truth. And then we have meditation retreats, like between two days and six days retreats, just in silence, meditating and satsang. So many different things and we keep developing new things.

Rick: So it sounds like some of these courses place more emphasis on experience and some of them place more emphasis on content of various kinds, dealing with more specific aspects of life?

Rahasya: Well, they are all pointing towards awakening, just from different levels. It’s like you can awaken through the first chakra, through the topic of the body, of money, of grounding, of the earth. You can awaken through any chakra. And you could say, if you like, as you enter through different chakras, just before the nothingness of no-self, there is a certain essential state that is different in each chakra, which is really, you could say, what manifests as the gifts in a person. What is your gift in your first chakra? What is your gift in your second chakra? What is the gift in the third chakra? So it’s kind of a flowering of the gifts, how they manifest through the body-mind in the world. And of course, there is always pure consciousness that flows through that. So these are all experiential courses. And by now, in most of the courses, we include the Diksha, which helps the realization of these experiences in an incredible, more faster way, in a way.

Rick: So the various courses, are they specifically designed to facilitate an awakening at a particular level? Like at the level of a particular chakra? Or are they all kind of ideally intended to bring about the no-self awakening, but just by taking different angles on that?

Rahasya: Yes, yes. They actually all point towards the no-self. And for example, the seven doors of grace, these seven courses, in a way, we could say it’s like there was one disciple who awakened through a Master in Tibet, I think Tilopa. And then Tilopa sent him to another Master, to Atisha, and then Atisha sent him to another Master. And each time, he got awakened newly through a different door, so that he could see that every door leads to the same thing, and that he could actually teach. In a way, you could also say, for example, Jesus awakened through the heart, Mohammed awakened through the throat, Buddha awakened through the third eye, Krishna awakened through the crown. So this is how the different religions came into place, because the essential quality before the no-self is different in the heart, it’s different in the throat, it’s different in the third eye. That’s why there will never be a world religion, because people that awaken through a certain quality will always tend to be more attracted to that part of the teachings. And the seven doors of grace are basically including most of these experiences of awakening through different doors. And of course, we never know. For example, we had the yellow ray course in Korea right now, and in the earlier courses, people didn’t have a shift in consciousness, and this time, maybe three or four people from 30 had a permanent shift. So that ray did it for them, and of course they will come back for the green ray and maybe have a different experience in this awakening. So that’s very interesting, which is really basically in Pune, in the school of mysticism, we experimented a lot with the seven levels of consciousness and exploring on an experimental level. So all that, what I learned there, while I was still identified with mind and content, comes very handy.

Rick: Yeah. So you’re not saying that these different awakenings from this chakra, this chakra, this chakra, are necessarily one is better than the other. You’re saying it’s sort of like just going through different doors into the same building, so to speak.

Rahasya: Exactly.

Rick: And do you think that once you’ve entered the building, metaphorically speaking, it’s a different experience in there according to which door you have come in, or do you think it’s basically the same essential thing, you just have entered the door that is most easy for you to get through?

Rahasya: It is the same essential thing, which is the realization of no-self. And the embodied experience is different through each chakra, which makes it interesting, and which kind of, I could say, expands the level of experiencing. You see, perhaps first our level of experiencing is just the heart or just the throat, or heart and throat, but as awareness grows, more colors become available. And I think it is mainly for people who work with people, who help people in their transformation, where these different approaches are helpful, because if you have an experience of awakening through the third chakra, you will be able to help somebody that maybe has that door most available, because you can recognize it. And if you have then also experienced through the heart, then you can help somebody whose door is more the heart, to be recognized in a way. So that made this approach interesting for me.

Rick: So you are also saying that if you have had an awakening, let’s say, through the heart, it doesn’t mean you can’t go ahead and have awakening through the throat. Even though you are already awakened, you don’t leave the house to come back in through a different door, but somehow or other you do experience awakening from a different angle, and then another angle, and then another angle. So what’s actually happening there? It’s not that the essential awakening is getting any more awake, it’s more like you are kind of just opening up different petals of the flower through approaching it by different angles?

Rahasya: That’s the best way to say it, yes. You see, awakening, no-self, nothingness, pure consciousness, stays always the same. But the embodiment in this body-mind during this lifetime, the level of experiencing can endlessly expand.

Rick: So you are just unfolding different facets so that you can enjoy it in a more multi-faceted way, yourself.

Rahasya: That’s the best way.

Rick: And be of greater use to people, because you have kind of unfolded a certain aspect that might resonate more with this person, and then you have unfolded another aspect that might resonate better with that person.

Rahasya: That’s right. So this is one series of courses, and then we work a lot with these two main paths. You could say there is the path of awareness and meditation, and there is the path of love. And it seems for some people a discrepancy or a difference, but like the path of awareness, when I was meditating or when I am meditating, it’s always like the realization, “I am not my body, not my mind, not my thoughts, not anything that I can experience.” This is why meditators go into the desert. Then when you look at the path of love, the message is completely different. “I am my thoughts, I am my body, I am everything that I can experience. I am not only me, I am also you, I am everyone.” And for some people, one path is more connected to their inner nature, and for some the other path. But eventually, in the meeting of love and meditation inside of you, which is really the meeting of life experiences, welcomed in love, and the meeting of nothingness as I am nothing. In that meeting, you could say we become transcendental human beings. So we work a lot with these two sides in one course. One course, for example, we just did in China, is called “The Sword and the Lotus,” and we have a few more courses in Europe like this. So basically it’s always looking at the same thing, but people’s minds are different, and so we try and meet people’s minds so that they feel comfortable in pursuing that pathway.

Rick: Nice. Well, it sounds like you’re doing a lot of good for a lot of people and having a lot of fun in the process.

Rahasya: It’s fun, yes. I feel so blessed, we both, we do a lot of courses together, my wife and me, and we just feel immensely blessed. It’s such a joy, you know, people come and they maybe feel miserable or disturbed, and they go out in happiness and bliss. It’s very rewarding.

Rick: That’s great. Well, I’ll have a link on my site to yours, so that if people want to get in touch and find out more about these courses, they can do that. Is there anything that you feel we haven’t covered, that I haven’t thought to ask, or you haven’t thought to say, or you haven’t had a chance to say, that is missing from our discussion?

Rahasya: I think we covered pretty much a lot. When you ask me, maybe the secret comes back into my mind.

Rick: Do you mean that videotape, the secret?

Rahasya: The videotape, the secret. It’s about manifesting your reality that comes into my mind. And again, you know, when you realize that there is no self, then manifestation constantly happens anyway, but there’s no sense of self that tries to become something better. I think for the listeners it may be important that instead of trying to manifest a better reality so that you have more feathers in your ego structure, I would really recommend to awaken everybody to the passion for awakening. Get passionate into manifesting your awakening, because that will take care of everything else. And then you still can manifest wonderful abundance in your material life or in your relationships, that can continue, but there is not the fear that if you don’t manage, you don’t succeed, and you’re not really good enough to manifest in all of these things.

Rick: And lest people become cautious or disinterested due to this phrase “no self,” perhaps we should clarify that a little bit, because many people wouldn’t find that to be an appealing term. They would say, “I don’t want to have no self. I want to be somebody. I want to be myself.” Let me take a quick stab at it and then see how you would say it. I would say that there is always this paradox. You can be driving down the road at 70 miles an hour and have the very distinct realization that there is nobody driving this car. But that’s not scary, because on the other hand, there is somebody. I am driving the car. Here are hands, here is a foot on the pedal, and everything is under control. That’s not a crazy schizophrenic state. It’s the state of the reality of the situation, which is there is a level of one’s life which is impersonal, which is silence, which is presence. And there is a level of one’s life where if you whack your thumb with a hammer, darn, you’re going to feel it. It’s not going to be like, “Oh, that didn’t happen to anybody.” It’s like, “Shoot, that hurts!” There is a kind of a spectrum that we live, and we live on all points of that spectrum, and sometimes we zero in on one area of the spectrum more specifically, and other times maybe we’re broadened out and so on. But does that do justice to what you’re trying to say when you say “no self”?

Rahasya: Yes. Well, when I say “no self,” it is really the end of the fear of not having enough, or of not being enough, or of not achieving. All this ends when, at least I can say for myself, when that sudden little shift happens, “My God, this separate I, “it’s a separate sense that I am separate from you, “that I have to survive by myself, “that everything else outside of me is separate from me,” that disappears. And that is also the disappearance of suffering. It doesn’t mean that pain ends. Somebody steps on my foot, there’s still pain. But there’s no suffering because there’s no need of an ego structure that needs to repair itself and judge you for stepping on my foot.

Rick: Or defend itself.

Rahasya: Or defend itself. So this type of “I thought” is not there. And yes, of course, existence that lives through this body-mind, you could say this “I am-ness” is more there than ever. But this “I am” is pretty unlimited. It’s really, you could say, “I am existence experiencing myself “through this body-mind.” It’s like, for example, just now, as you listen, I listen. Something comes out of my mouth, but there’s nobody really speaking. There is consciousness watching the speaking and enjoying it through the body. This is what I mean with self. That means everything stays the same. Of course, your personality patterns also stay the same, and your way, your preferences within the body-mind stays the same. I like to eat good vegetarian food and sometimes a nice fish, and other people like to eat beef. So these preferences, of course, simply continue. So that, I don’t know, you probably have that experience too, but this is the fear of everyone, and also the fear of every meditator, which I encounter deeply. On one side you want to awaken, but on the other side you don’t want to go. But eventually, when that dissolution of the ego structure happens, you realize, “My God, I’ve been always here, always here.”

Rick: Yeah, you put it very nicely a minute ago, something like pure existence or pure consciousness or something experiencing through the body-mind. And that’s always been what’s happening. For so long we misappropriated the ownership of the body-mind. It’s sort of like we assumed there was this little guy that ran it and that lived in it, but really it’s a reflector of a much larger intelligence. A friend of mine likes to use the phrase “sense organs of the infinite.” And the infinite enjoys having billions of sense organs through which it experiences this creation that it has created. And you happen to be a sense organ through which the infinite enjoys teaching and surfing and traveling, and you love your wife, and there’s all these particular things which I’m sure are not in the least bit diminished in your enjoyment of them by having this broader perspective. In fact, you experience them much more richly and enjoyably than when you were just kind of locked into merely an individuality without the broader perspective. Is that not right?

Rahasya: That’s a very beautiful way to put it, yes, absolutely.

Rick: So I just wanted to bring that up because I have friends who take umbrage with this notion of no-self. They feel like you’re kind of having the soul sucked out of you or something. You know, losing that which makes you special.

Rahasya: Yeah, well, you may lose exactly that which makes you special, but you never lose that which makes you individual, which makes you unique. You’re not special, but you’re unique, very unique. Everyone is so unique. And the beauty is, you know, when there’s no comparison anymore, then you can see the uniqueness in everyone and just love it. Everyone is so unique and it’s so beautiful. Nature is such a variety and human beings are just so unbelievably unique.

Rick: I know you marvel at the infinite genius of the intelligence which is running this show.

Rahasya: Yeah, yeah.

Rick: Okay, well this has been a very delightful discussion. I’ve really enjoyed talking to you.

Rahasya:Me too.

Rick: Yeah, and we’ll do it again sometime because obviously your orientation is that it’s an ever unfolding adventure and so a year or two from now you might have whole new things to tell us that you haven’t been saying today.

Rahasya: Yes, who knows?

Rick: So thanks a lot, Rahasya. Let me conclude by saying that my name is Rick Archer and I’ve been talking with Rahasya on Buddha at the Gas Pump. I will be linking to his website where you can get in touch with him, probably get on a mailing list, find out more about his courses all over the world. And if you’re just listening to this and you don’t know what that website is or what my website is, it’s www.batgap.com, which stands for Buddha at the Gas Pump. So go there and you’ll find this interview online and you’ll find all the other interviews I’ve been doing and you’ll find links to the websites of all the people I’ve been interviewing and YouTube videos and all sorts of things. So thank you very much for watching or listening and we’ll see you next time.

Rahasya: Thank you, thank you. Beautiful to meet you, beautiful discussion. Namaste.

Rick: Namaste, thank you very much. [Music]