347. Ganga Mira Transcript - Buddha at the Gas Pump

Summary

The conversation explores intense spiritual longing, the role of a living teacher, and how devotion can transform ordinary life. It also examines the difference between the end of seeking and full realization, including the place of thought, awareness, and the sense of self.

Questions This Interview Explores

How can I deepen my commitment to spiritual awakening?
Can liberation occur while thoughts and ordinary responsibilities continue?
What is the difference between the end of seeking and full realization?
How can I pursue realization while living a family or working life?

Key takeaways

Spiritual fire grows when liberation becomes the first priority in life.
Keeping company with people devoted to freedom strengthens commitment.
Ordinary duties need not conflict with realization.
Liberation is not thoughtlessness but freedom from believing thoughts are ultimately real.
The seeker can remain after seeking has ended, so peaceful experiences are not necessarily realization.
You are not an object that awareness can perceive.
Questioning who is seeking can expose the illusion of a separate self.

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. We’ve done about 345 of them so far, and if this is new to you, you could go to batgap.com, and you’ll see all the previous ones archived and categorized under the Past Interviews menu.

This is made possible by the support of appreciative donors and listeners. So, if you have been donating, we thank you for that. And if you’d like to, there’s a PayPal button on the right-hand side of the site.

❤️ Meeting Papaji

My guest today is Ganga Mira. Ganga Mira was born Genevieve de Kook in Belgium in 1947. In 1968, during her second year at the university, while studying philosophy, she stumbled upon the saying of Socrates, which actually was written in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, but Socrates and Plato and others quoted it, which hit her straight in the heart. That saying was, “Know thyself.”

Realizing that this was precisely what she had always been looking for, she instantly dropped her studies and set out for India by road in search of a living Socrates or Buddha. On reaching the Himalayan foothills, she led a meditative and ascetic life by the Ganges in Rishikesh, waiting to meet her master. The locals called her Mira because of her devoted renunciation.

At the end of 1968, in circumstances well worthy of Indian mythology, which we’re going to talk about a little bit, she met a man with whom she had an awakening experience. He left the following day without Mira knowing anything about him—neither his name nor his address. The one certainty was that finally she had found her master.

To give herself the best chance of seeing him again, she decided to live at the exact spot of their meeting. For eight months, she waited for him and meditated under a little tree on the banks of the Ganga River.

One day, her master, H. W. L. Poonja, a disciple of Ramana Maharshi—and, by the way, most people know this, but that’s Papaji; we’ll be talking about him—came back for her. She became his disciple and wife and started to travel with him.

In 1971, Papaji was invited to give satsang in Europe, and Mira accompanied him. Their daughter, Mukti, was born in 1972, and the little family went on traveling the world. For the education of her daughter, Mira returned to Belgium.

In 1990, H. W. L. Poonja, also called Papaji, settled permanently in Lucknow, where he gave satsang every day until he passed away in 1997. In 1998, Mira was invited to give satsang, which she continues giving to this day, all over the world. She decided to call herself Ganga.

In 2004, Ganga Mira moved to Portugal. She lives near the wild ocean of the Algarve with her daughter, Mukti, and her grandchildren and gives satsang four times a week.

Now, you don’t have to say all that. I’ve listened to quite a few of those satsangs, maybe about an hour and a half long. I’ve listened to maybe five of them over the past week and enjoyed them very much. They’re very light-hearted and informal, but very direct and clear, and cut to the chase, as we say.

So, I’d like to go over some of these biographical things a little bit more, if we could, because you have such a fascinating story. I told David Godman that I was going to be interviewing you, and he said, “Oh, you should read certain pages in Nothing Ever Happened.”

So, I managed to get hold of the books. Nothing Ever Happened is an extensive, roughly 1,500-page biography of Papaji, and I read all the sections I could find about you. Every time I started reading something, I got so caught up in the story that I just kept reading, even past those particular pages. That’s a whole fascinating thing in itself.

But I’d love to go through a few of these points with you in a little more detail before we get into the actual points of the teaching. For one thing, I found it very impressive that as soon as you knew what you wanted, you just dropped everything you were doing and headed east, headed to India. That showed a great deal, I think, of perhaps dedication and courage.

Ganga: I would say fire.

Rick: Fire.

Ganga: Yes, because you see, I was so desperate that I had to find or die. You know how the youth is.

Rick: Yeah, yeah.

Ganga: There was only that possibility. So, I wanted first to find. And I believed so much in the ways of the Buddhas because of my background. You know, I read a lot, and I was always fascinated by the stories of disciples and the Buddha, or this lineage, at least. So, yeah, I was sure. I was determined that that was the way to find a living master.

Rick: So, if you had already been reading a lot about Buddhism and so on, you must have already known about the concept of knowing the Self, right? But how is it that this saying of the Oracle at Delphi, or Socrates, suddenly struck you when your previous reading hadn’t done so?

Ganga: You know, I was probably not that mature. I was just very attracted by wisdom, even though I could not put a name on it. But when I read Socrates, then suddenly I found that was it, because I put the question to myself, and not in a psychological way. And I could not answer. I saw, “This is it,” but I don’t know.

Rick: So, the time was right, and it really hit you. It hit deeply.

Ganga: Probably.

Rick: And this thing of hitchhiking to India amazes me. I mean, you couldn’t do that these days and live to tell about it, but in those days, I guess a lot of people were doing it.

Ganga: A lot, a lot of people did. Myself, I did it with my boyfriend two years before. We went up to India, crossing all the land. So, because of that, I knew where to stop.

Rick: I see.

Ganga: And I felt familiar, more or less, to the whole route. And I was so determined, you see. It was really a question of life or death. So, you are so determined. So, I was held in that way.

Rick: Yeah, so you must have been 20 years old at that time.

Ganga: Uh-huh.

Rick: And so you got to Rishikesh, and you were living a meditative, ascetic life, and then Papaji showed up for one day and disappeared. And then you actually just lived under this tree day and night, didn’t you? I mean, you didn’t have a little hut that you went to; you just lived under the tree.

Ganga: Yeah, under the tree. That was enough, isn’t it? Some people say that the roof is the sky; I am in the shade of the tree.

Rick: Yeah. I mean, there must have been rain and snakes.

Ganga: It was cold, especially cold. The rainy season wasn’t at that time, but it was very cold.

Rick: Yeah, it gets quite cold in Rishikesh. You just had one blanket?

Ganga: Exactly, one blanket and fire. I was making fire. That was my main occupation, a bit Zen-like, you know: go and fetch the wood, make fire, and feel cold. But you are in the blanket, and you trust that’s the way.

Rick: And you slept right on the ground, right? You didn’t have a mattress or anything.

Ganga: Yeah, the youth can manage those things, you know.

Rick: It’s true, yeah. But it’s impressive. I mean, it’s symptomatic, I would say, of your ardency—you know the word ardent?—your zeal, your fire, to use your word. And wouldn’t you say, this is something you might want to comment on, that the more ardent, the more zealous, the brighter the fire, the more somehow nature responds to it, right?

Ganga: No, the fire has to be directed, you see. If it is the fire for something you know, then it will present itself, that’s true. But some don’t know yet. They have fire, but they have not yet seen what for. So, I was lucky enough to know what I wanted, for sure. And that’s why probably I met the one I needed. I believe in that.

Fire has to be directed.

Rick: Yeah, well, someone might say, “Well, I have a fire to be a rock star,” or “I really want to be a doctor,” or something. And if you really do, then that’s probably what you’re going to do, but in your case it was just the one thing.

Ganga: Yeah, yeah, sure.

Rick: Okay, and so you were meditating under this little tree for hours and hours and hours a day, right? Just sitting and…

Ganga: I was sitting, bathing in the Ganges, and walking a little bit. And I guess, you know, I was in a state—maybe it’s a big word—but a kind of samadhi state.

Rick: All the time?

Ganga: I was not so aware. Yeah, you know, that meeting was so strong. It threw me into such a state that I could live like this.

Rick: So, even the very brief meeting that happened shifted your whole consciousness, or whatever?

Ganga: Completely.

Rick: Interesting, and it stayed shifted all that time?

Ganga: Stayed shifted?

Rick: In other words, it was a permanent shift, even that one meeting.

Ganga: It was a permanent shift, too, probably not really, because I wanted to go back there, since it looked to me like the real thing I wanted, you know. And I knew I needed help for that from the master. But I was put in a state where I could have waited all my life.

Rick: I was just going to ask that. Did you ever have doubts, like, you know, maybe this guy isn’t going to show up again and I should just go and…

Ganga: No.

Rick: You were just going to sit there for the rest of your life if you had to.

Ganga: Yeah, otherwise I had to die, you know. I had this promise in me.

Rick: That’s amazing.

Ganga: The master said, “I don’t love you because you are beautiful or whatever; it’s because I recognize that fire.” And I think today I understand more what he meant. It’s true, it’s true, the fire was there.

Keeping the fire alive

Rick: Among your current students, or those you’ve been meeting with, do you see any fire of that degree of intensity?

Ganga: Ooh!

Rick: Maybe you make them go sleep out on the grass, just to test it.

Ganga: Oh, I have to ask my daughter to be like Kamali. You know the story of Kabir and his daughter?

Rick: No, how does that go?

Ganga: “You go to see my father, otherwise I cut off your head.” But first I have to cut off your head, and nobody went, of course, because that was too much. I mean, something like that.

Of course, you know, I must say, a few friends—I call them my friends—dedicate their lives to living where I live in Portugal, where there is nothing here. They are very fiery, because it’s not easy to live here. And they are here for satsang, so surely they have fire.

Rick: What would you say people can do? I mean, I think most people understand what you mean by fire, and they realize it would be a good thing, but maybe they feel like their fire is just a little flame. What would you say people can do to make the fire more intense, to increase the intensity?

Ganga: Yeah, first of all, let them ask what is their priority in life. That means, “I have to die soon. What do I want to realize first?” If it is liberation, it gives an urgency; it gives more fire.

And then you keep the company of those who love that too, you see, who have the same passion. So, there are beautiful books nowadays available from the same lineage, speaking of and indicating liberation, and satsang alive. For me, it’s very important.

Rick: And what would you say to people who say they want liberation, but they also want to raise a family, and they want to make some money, and they want this and that and the other thing? How would you comment if they came to you and said that?

Ganga: Well, I would welcome them, because I think it’s already fantastic to introduce satsang into their life. But of course, they cannot expect probably to realize on the spot, as it can be, because of those desires that they still want to fulfill. So, they have one leg here and one leg there, which is already fantastic when you see how the world runs after everything else, you know.

Rick: Right. And they might say, “Well, in your case, you had a daughter, and so you had some kind of worldly interest, but I think your case is a little bit different because your husband was a master.”

Ganga: Yeah. And also, you may be surprised I speak like this. It was not my desire; I was following and believing in the path of detachment. So, I totally surrendered to whatever was happening with my master because I knew that was the most precious. For me, the master was always first. I never forgot him as a master first, you see?

And now, of course, the wonderful thing is—I’m very happy that he gave me a daughter, a family. And it also removes the separation between this and that.

Rick: What do you mean by that?

Ganga: I mean that you can cook and still be totally fiery to, if you haven’t realized yourself yet, dedicate a second to that, whatever you do.

Rick: Yes.

Ganga: That separation has always been erased by the master. Because, you know, the time I was with him, it was like we were walking, busy marketing, going to the market to buy potatoes, making tea, simply sitting, or hearing him. There was no particular moment; every moment could be that one.

Rick: So, it didn’t so much matter what you were doing on the outside. Appearances were superficial, but on the inside that fire was burning.

Ganga: Yeah.

Rick: As you probably are aware, in the Bhagavad Gita, it says that it’s a very great fortune to be born in a family of yogis. So, your daughter has that very great fortune. Has she turned out to be an ardent spiritual aspirant, or is she interested in spirituality as her parents are?

Ganga: The answer, you can make it as you like, but she comes to every satsang, and her father is her master.

Rick: That’s great. And she has a couple of children herself now, so you’re a grandma.

Ganga: Yeah, yeah…

Rick: Nice. Okay, you mentioned in this little bio that I read that, for the education of your daughter Mira, you returned to Belgium. And in 1990, Papaji set up in Lucknow permanently. Does that mean that you became separated, or were you somehow back and forth?

Ganga: Of course, we were visiting. First of all, we never felt separated up to a certain point in time, because our letters and correspondence were very intense. Each letter I wrote, he replied with great love and great teaching in it. So, we were with him, actually.

Now, physically, we could meet him only every three years because of a lack of money. But as I say, that was not felt like this. In 1990, when he was in Lucknow, that was another phase of his life. So, there was no place for a family life as we knew it with him. For us, that was a big shift.

Rick: Yeah, at that point he became kind of famous, and all these people who are now satsang teachers were there—Neelam, Gangaji, Mooji, and all these people, Andrew Cohen, and all kinds of people were hanging around him in those days.

Ganga: Yeah, which is fantastic. And, you know, when I met him in ’92 in Lucknow, I really knew my time was over. I had so much, you know, I had to chew that now, really, by myself. It was time for others.

That was wonderful, isn’t it? When I saw his satsang, the first satsang in a quite different way, in a bit like this, in an official way, he said everything in one satsang that I had to hear during all those 29 years. I mean, it was extraordinary.

Rick: He packed it all into one satsang, right?

Ganga: Yes.

Rick: Interesting.

Ganga: Well, it’s my experience. I don’t know if it is.

🛤️ When the search ended

Rick: I think I heard you say in one of your satsangs that I was listening to that it took you about—correct me if I’m wrong, but this is what I gathered—that it took you about 30 years before realization took place.

Ganga: Yes, 29.

Rick: 29 years. So that sort of sounds like realization took place just around the time that you left to live in Belgium to educate your daughter. Is that about right?

Ganga: No, no, no. You know, ’68 until 1997 makes 29 years, no?

Rick: Okay, good. Yeah, my math is off.

Ganga: No, no. I was still a seeker. So I must say, I remember it in time because, anyway, it’s an experience in time. I didn’t take it this way, but today I can say that in 1987, the search dropped.

Rick: ’87.

Ganga: Yeah. But I was—and I felt, without daring to tell myself but hoping it was so—“This is it.” You know, I was in such a good school that I surely was not telling anybody. But later on, I saw there was still a seeker having no search. That was my trap.

Rick: That’s very interesting. It’s interesting you should make that distinction. There’s something like that in my own experience, where there’s a feeling that the search dropped some time ago. I don’t know exactly when, but there’s no longer—because I can remember what it was like to be dying and yearning and thinking, “I’ve got to have this.” Now I feel a great deal of contentment, but I wouldn’t consider myself to be fully realized or any such thing, to be honest.

Ganga: Because of the seeker remaining.

Rick: Yeah, there’s some seeker. The seeker feels a great deal of contentment, I suppose, but there’s still a continuous curiosity and inquiry and all that.

Ganga: Because of that, he’s too much there. But it’s of great help to know why, to know exactly why I have that feeling still, too—that the search is over.

Rick: Yeah, it’s almost like it shifted from seeking to an adventure. It’s like there’s still more to discover and a deeper appreciation to be achieved, et cetera. But the sense of “Got to find this, got to have it”—that somehow has dropped off. I don’t know if that makes sense.

Ganga: Yeah, I would say one has had an accomplishment, you see. It doesn’t seek after all; it’s what one hears: “Don’t seek. You have already died.” But the thing is that the seeker is still there, so he still trusts the so-called reality of what his mind will suggest.

And that is exactly what he will suggest when the search is gone: that there is still a deepening, or something beyond, or something more interesting. Or, as you say, deep contentment—but it’s still an experience.

Rick: It is, and there seems to be an experiencer. Some people speak about having no sense whatsoever of a personal self anymore, and I can’t really relate to that personally because I still feel like I have one. So I’m just trying to be honest about my experience, but that’s where it’s at at the moment.

Ganga: Yeah, it’s very interesting to see that you are so aware of it. It’s great. So I wonder, what is this awareness?

Rick: Well, it’s not an easy thing to express in words, is it?

Ganga: But that’s great, so it means you are it. Because if you could express it, you would objectify it. So you are never what you can objectify.

You are never what you can objectify.

Rick: No, you can’t step apart from it and say, “Okay, here I am, and here’s the awareness,” as if the awareness were some kind of object you could perceive. It doesn’t work that way.

Ganga: Well, quite a few people say, “I know what awareness is; I experience awareness.” Then it’s an object.

Rick: Yeah, no, that’s not my sense.

Ganga: Yeah, so nice.

Thoughts, mind, and liberation

Rick: Yeah. A question just came in. Let’s see what it is. Okay, we might as well ask this. This is from Srini Ramakrishnan in Chennai. I don’t know if that’s a man or a woman, but he or she asks, “I hear it stressed time and again by most modern masters that awakening has nothing to do with thoughtlessness, but only to do with waking up to one’s true nature. How important is total and complete cessation of thought and mind to liberation?”

Ganga: I would not say that it’s the same, you see. You can have a mind with no thought. Liberation is not to have no thoughts. Liberation is not to care anymore about the flow of the mind, which can appear or not, because the so-called reality of the mind has been demystified.

The mind is seen as unreal, so whether there is a flow of thought or not, who would care? First of all, who is there to care?

Rick: So, in other words, the mind does what the mind does, which is have thoughts or not have thoughts, but that’s not relevant to whether one is liberated.

Ganga: It’s not relevant. It’s relevant in the beginning of the search because you don’t give space to this desire for freedom. So it’s good to start to analyze what the mind is, probably through self-investigation or some practice of meditation, to have a quieter mind—an emptier mind. But the goal is not to have a mind that doesn’t exist if there are no thoughts.

Rick: Yeah, it might be a little hard to function if you didn’t have a mind. Let’s probe a little bit more into your experience. You mentioned, I think you said, ’87?

Ganga: ’97?

Rick: ’97.

Ganga: When Papaji left the body?

Rick: Well, after 29 years you had this awakening.

Ganga: Yeah, ’97.

Rick: ’97, right around the time when Papaji left the body. Was it actually coincidental with when Papaji left the body, or were they some months apart?

Ganga: No, no, no, no, no. It was the second he left the body. I’ll tell you what happened.

First of all, I didn’t know the state of Papaji at that time. So when I learned he was leaving the body, for me it immediately became an event as important as having met him. And so it created in me an urgency: “I have to do it now because I know I will never, never trust anybody else,” you see.

So I wondered, and suddenly a big doubt came: “What did I hear from him, after all? Did I hear anything right?” And it left me with one sentence that I always took as a tool: “Don’t land anywhere.” He was telling me that.

And then, I tell you, it went very quickly, but I remember the steps. For the first time in my life—it shows how bad a student I was—I asked, “But who is not landing?” And that was it.

So I can tell exactly in time that I had that experience of the disappearance of the concept, “I am real, ‘I’ is real.” And yet, realization is when you also don’t take this experience for it, you see.

I must say, I had an excellent background with my master.

Rick: An excellent background?

Ganga: Background.

Rick: What do you mean by that?

Ganga: I mean that whatever I could hear from him, I had enough time for it to probably enter my cells, so that at the proper moment, it came into effect.

Rick: So, yeah, it just finally came to fruition at that time. It’s very interesting. It’s interesting that at his death, you should right then have the big shift.

I know when my father died, I didn’t know that he had died that day. I was having this incredibly blissful day, and I was thinking, “What is going on? Why am I so amazingly blissful?” And then later on, I found out he had died that day, and I wondered afterward whether there had been some kind of connection between me and him, so that when he was released from his mortal coil, I experienced some kind of release at the same time.

Ganga: Probably, probably, sure.

Rick: So I wonder if somehow Papaji’s Mahasamadhi in and of itself was a catalyst for your…

Ganga: Probably, because you see, the urgency and the knowing that I cannot go anywhere else. To whom will I ask, you see?

Rick: Right.

Ganga: I knew that would not be available anymore, so that created for me this…

Rick: Yeah, and so how would you characterize your experience prior to that day, day-to-day, going through your day? What was your subjective interaction with life like, compared with after that day, when that realization had taken place?

Ganga: There is nothing in common, absolutely nothing. What I thought was real, but still I could not… there was somewhere a lack of something. It was still very peaceful, and I had no more questions about knowledge and whatnot. I understood Master. I could even tell the same answer as he was telling. I mean, I knew the subject well, but it is not… you cannot compare. It’s incomparable.

Rick: So that was before you knew the subject. You could speak the words and so on, but then after…

Ganga: Well, I want to say first that we speak then and now of a story, because in fact the realization is that there is no before and after. Yet I agree that, well, after, I was so overwhelmed by gratitude that I could not move.

I think at that time it was a great blessing also to have been alone in Belgium, in Brussels. And so I stayed, I think, two months sitting, and I could not stop writing. I have a diary of revelations, knowing very well that I would not take the revelations for it, but I could not help it.

Rick: You just wanted to express it.

Ganga: Yeah, yeah, I had to. It was too strong.

Rick: Did you ever publish that?

Ganga: No, I never read it again. So bad.

Rick: You could publish it sometime.

Ganga: My daughter may do that when I’m not there.

What satsang points to

Rick: So, as you know, these days there are hundreds of people running around offering satsang. They may come from different lineages, but a lot of people use that word. I don’t know if I’ve ever actually had anybody on this show who defined carefully what satsang actually is or what it does. Could you give us a good, clear definition?

Ganga: Yeah. Satsang can be summed up in one word. There is looking, like a guide or a finger, that will root out the demand of someone who is there, who must be a seeker after truth, or who wants to liberate himself from what’s unreal.

So satsang is exactly the space offered to have an occasion to awaken to one’s own Self. Some help may be there, but it will not be through a better understanding. It will be through rooting out the basic concept, because there is only one concept: “I am born.”

Rick: “I am born,” yeah.

Ganga: “I am somebody.” And so it is again and again indicated this way, but the seeker will understand at different levels of his seeking. That depends on, I don’t know, his own opening, his own fire, his own real priority.

Rick: Receptivity, maybe. What does the actual Sanskrit meaning of satsang mean?

Ganga: Yeah, the company of the truth.

Rick: The company of the truth.

Ganga: In fact, being yourself, you know, because who is the company? It’s being yourself.

Satsang is the company of the truth.

Rick: So what you just said, is that pretty much how Papaji would have defined it also?

Ganga: Oh, probably he would have had a better formula. He would have already rooted out our talk.

Rick: And would you say, both in terms of your own satsangs and as a general principle, that satsang is primarily for spiritually mature souls, if you agree that there is such a thing—those at the end of their seeking—or is it for pretty much anybody, regardless of their…

Ganga: Anybody is welcome. And soon, very quickly, they will see if it fits them or not. And those who are perseverant, good luck for them.

Rick: Yeah, perseverant.

Ganga: Perseverant.

Rick: Those who persevere, yeah.

Ganga: Yeah, yeah. It means it fits their demands, or at least more and more they see, “That’s what I want.”

Rick: Yeah. So you might say, “Those who have a fairly bright fire,” to use that term we’ve been using.

Ganga: Sure.

Rick: So, you mentioned a minute ago that it’s not so much about any intellectual understanding that is transmitted during satsang; it’s deeper than that. Would you say that there’s some kind of transmission of silence that takes place, some sort of transmission or attunement?

Ganga: No, no, I would not say so.

Rick: Okay. So what are the mechanics, then?

Ganga: I don’t lead it like this. I must say that surely I come quiet. I’m quiet even though I speak, and I respond to what’s coming.

As Papaji did, I see that in the beginning of a satsang, sometimes I’m really, very often, inspired, even if it is short, to say something. After the silence, something comes which can inspire or give a tone or a particular theme that day.

But you see, satsang is not especially to experience silence, because then it’s a circumstantial silence that you can also have at any time in life.

I would love that those who still think they have a mind see that it’s exactly because they think that their mind is real that they are in trouble. So they should hear—and that is repeatedly said in satsang—“Whose mind?” If you see that “I” was the mind, can disappear as a concept, everything else glued to “I”—meaning the mind and the body—is just concepts. They are unreal even though they appear. I don’t know if I am…

Rick: I think I’m following you. What you just said is something that you are attempting to convey or that you would like people attending satsang to appreciate: that which they take to be real, that which they take to be themselves, is ultimately not real and is not ultimately who or what they are. Is that what you were trying to say?

Ganga: Yes, and I like to direct people to the root, because it is… I don’t say of no use, because I used it myself for years, but finally, you don’t have to try to see that this concept is unreal, or this one, or this one, or this one. If you solve the root, all the rest will follow. So I try to show that this is very important.

Rick: And so how do you go about getting people to the root?

Ganga: According to what they say, I always try to throw them back where they already are.

Rick: Aha. So, for instance, if they were to say, “Well, I’m very unhappy because this and that is happening in my life,” or something like that, then you might say what?

Ganga: “To whom belongs this unhappiness? Is it not to your mind or body?” You see your body-mind; you see this experience. So why you?

This is a somewhat traditional teaching, and sometimes it’s more like Zen—a strange answer which may root something out. It depends. Sometimes it’s a bit more with explanations and sometimes not. But it’s always to try to root out the first, or to indicate that it is the “I” that is the trouble, and not whatever happens to the body or mind.

Rick: And how is that going for people? To what extent do you feel like people in satsang come away with a shift in their appreciation of who and what they are that actually sticks, that actually somehow lasts for them?

Ganga: If it is an experience, it will never last. I don’t know about what, but if they come, they must be attracted by something.

Rick: Yeah. Do you advocate, recommend, or encourage anything for people to do when they are not in satsang throughout the week, like meditate or follow any sort of daily routine that might be conducive to their quest?

Ganga: First of all, I would say, be on fire. It’s like falling in love with somebody, you see. Whatever you do, there is that somebody in you who invades you. In the same way as liberation, you see, in the same way. Fall in love. No, it is of such value.

All the rest, okay, maybe you didn’t taste enough, so go and taste, and still keep contact with satsang. Maybe one day you will see how precious it is to hear this indication of, “You are That.” And if you don’t believe it, it’s because you still trust your mind. Fire!

Rick: Fire.

Ganga: Yeah.

Rick: So I guess one way of phrasing the question would be: every time you come to satsang, maybe it throws a log on the fire and makes it brighter. But throughout the week, when you’re not in satsang—or if you can only come twice a year or something like that—is there something where you can keep putting more wood on the fire to keep it, you know, stoked?

Ganga: Of course. We have the luck to have fantastic books from the same lineage, you see.

Rick: Yeah.

Ganga: Buddha, Ramana Maharshi, Papaji first, because it is through him that I knew all this. I discovered not long ago Siddharameshwar Maharaj. This is fantastic—indications, plus all these teachers and masters. You read one line, you get inspired. You know, “Oh, how great it is,” you see.

And YouTube—what a fantastic technique now. Through YouTube, people keep contact. And then satsang live, at times, you see.

Rick: There’s a woman in Australia whom I’ll be interviewing in July who was watching lots of YouTube videos of Mooji, really liked Mooji, who of course was a Papaji student. At one point, just watching a YouTube video, she had this profound shift. She said she just laughed and laughed and laughed for hours, pounding her leg at the realization that she was not who she had thought she was. There’s this really significant shift, so YouTube can do it.

Ganga: Yes, anything, you see, because after all it is just to wake up—which is a strange way to say, to wake up to what you already are.

So I understand that we speak, and myself, I have to say, before or after a shift. In fact, there is nothing like that, but we have to speak. So it’s not even a shift; it’s to see that we shifted. I shifted to a place that was away from what is. What I am is always there.

Keep quiet”

Rick: Yeah. Well, it’s one thing to say that or to read it in a book, and it’s another thing to actually realize it. Just this morning, or maybe it was last night, I was listening to one of your satsangs, and you were going through the thing of this number of people: only this many go this far, and only this many go this far, and only this many go on the razor’s edge, and only this many don’t fall off the razor’s edge, and only a tiny fraction actually end up realizing the Self.

So it’s one thing to hear these words or to read them in a book, and it’s another thing to actually realize, “Okay, there was never any time when I was not That.” But that’s a concept until it becomes a living reality. That seems to be the trick: for that to become a living reality and not just a concept.

Ganga: No, I agree, but that’s why we speak of realization, in fact, isn’t it? Yes, there is this difference.

But you see, there is a difference when actually the “I”—who doesn’t feel yet, even though he has no more search and he knows everything, and that has never been questioned so far—questions. Even though it looks like that one questions, no, he has not touched it. It’s strange enough, but it’s like that.

Because if he questions once, “Who am I?” and keeps quiet, where this “I” disappears, he will understand that whatever comes and goes is not what is. It’s just the waves of the ocean.

And you see it once, it is enough. You don’t need to repeat, “I am myself, I am That, I am That, I am That.”

Rick: That would just be chatter. Now, I’ve heard you say many times, and I’m sure Papaji said many times, this phrase, “Keep quiet.”

Ganga: Oh, yes.

Rick: I mean, the average person, I think, if they think, “All right, I’m going to keep quiet,” then they sit there for a moment. The next thing they know, it’s five minutes later and their mind has been going all over the place. They haven’t kept quiet. So what do you really mean by this phrase, “Just keep quiet”?

Ganga: Yeah, first of all, Papaji also was not really understood when he said, “Keep quiet,” but it’s always a good indication, even if you don’t understand so well, because at least you give some space to your mind.

Now, the real keeping quiet cannot be addressed to “I,” to “I am seeker.” It cannot be addressed. “I” and the mind mean the same; “I” cannot keep quiet, or it is temporary. So when the Master says, “Keep quiet,” he says, “Go to the source of I, keep quiet,” at least for a moment. Whenever the mind comes back, because of course, the ocean always has waves, you don’t grasp it once and for all. You keep quiet.

Then you realize yourself, and it will be seen by you that all the rest are just strong old habits based on the past, previous beliefs. They are only habits; they are no more real.

Go to the source of I, keep quiet.

Rick: So this is something that one should do repeatedly: keep quiet, keep quiet, keep sort of coming back to the source, right?

Ganga: As long as it’s true, as long as he feels that his habits are still too strong.

Rick: Yeah, I was thinking about a metaphor for this. I was thinking it’s like if you say to someone in Calcutta, let’s say, “Be at the source of the Ganges,” or, “Stop the river,” let’s say, “Stop the river.” It’s a little hard to do in Calcutta; the river has tremendous force.

Even if you said it in Hardwar, “Stop the river,” there’s still a lot of force at that point. But if you said it in Gangotri, if the person could somehow be there when the river is first emerging, then it might be easier to stop it or redirect it or something, because it hasn’t acquired this huge force yet.

Ganga: That is why keeping quiet cannot be done before. You have to go there and then keep quiet. It is enough.

Rick: So, using that metaphor, you somehow have to get to Gangotri, the source of the river, and then if you can somehow get back to that point and keep quiet and stay there, then you’re really living up to what is being advocated by this phrase, “Keep quiet.” Is that correct?

Ganga: Yes, yes, it is.

Rick: Okay, so maybe that metaphor will be helpful. So again, then I guess that begs the question: Like you said, strong habits. If the mind is like a river which just has this momentum and is habitually busy and active and so on, how does one actually— I mean, is it sufficient to just sort of have the intention to get back to the source and keep quiet, or is there some means or method in some way to actually accomplish that? I think a person could go on for years with that intention and still the mind is unruly.

Ganga: Nobody does that, I don’t think so. They don’t understand. They think that it’s a kind of practice, and that they fall into a state of keeping quiet which is temporary, and they think it’s real. Through more serious practice, they think they will one day be permanent there.

Nobody does that—very few. And those few do it because they finally understood the indication, you see, that it can be done at any time, for anybody. One can wake up to that at any time, and anybody can hear that. But you see, we don’t do it. That’s why it’s so-called “doesn’t work.”

Rick: So people just don’t do it; that’s the problem?

Ganga: They don’t do it because, you see, often the concept of enlightenment is more cherished than real enlightenment. So there is always something obstructing—something, this “I” which has cherished something.

Rick: When you say the concept of enlightenment is more cherished than real enlightenment, you mean that people think of enlightenment as something that they are going to get, and it’s going to be this wonderful thing, and I’m going to have it, and I’ll be so wonderful and I’ll be so popular and all that stuff, as opposed to the actuality, which is that it’s really an elimination of this “I.” So it’s not like something one can ever get; it’s something that eliminates the person who thinks he can get it. I’m getting a little long-winded here, but is that what you’re saying?

Ganga: Yeah, it makes the concept of reality that “I” carries disappear. When “I” disappears, you see, in its source, the concept that it’s real disappears, because if “I” can disappear, it means it’s in time. It is in the mind; it’s part of the mind, and not as one thinks.

No comparison

Rick: Yeah, I think maybe some people might think, “Well, wow, she was with Papaji as close as one can be for 29 years before she got realized, so what hope is there for me? I don’t even have a Master, or maybe there’s some teacher I go and see once a week or once a year or something. If it took her 29 years, it’s going to take me 29 lifetimes or something.” What would you say to those people?

Ganga: The hope is that I say to myself, “I was a very bad student.”

Rick: Oh, you’re just being modest. I’m sure you were a very good student. You were exemplary. You sat under a tree for eight months in the rain—or no rain; it was cold. Very few people have that much fire, and yet it took you 29 years.

Ganga: No, no, it’s for everyone, I tell you. There is not a story similar to another one. No, no. One should not take one as an example, you see, but not in the history. The history will be different for everybody. That is the beautiful hope.

Rick: That’s a good answer. I think you’re saying, and you would agree, that it’s really important not to compare yourself to other people.

Ganga: No, no comparison, no comparison. Even in the teaching, you see, if any teaching happens spontaneously, you cannot copy even your beloved Master. It’s impossible; it’s like that. No comparisons.

Rick: Yeah, well, hopefully everybody—I guess we don’t have to elaborate on that point, but I think that’s really important, because I’ve done that myself, and I know many people who think, “Oh, if I could only be like him,” or, “He seems to be, or she seems to be, having this wonderful experience and I’m not having it.” There’s this comparison thing that can go on for years.

Ganga: Yeah, one thing that’s very nice with the stories of everyone, maybe, is to inspire, you see, to put fire, to inspire, but not to copy. The comparison has to stop there; it can inspire. That’s why the books are there. It’s not to copy.

Rick: Yeah, good point. And again, this thing I’ve been reading last week, Nothing Ever Happens, is very inspirational. I mean, Papaji was such a remarkable man. I didn’t really know that much about him.

Ganga: He is!

Rick: He is a remarkable man, yeah. Well, I don’t know if he’s a man anymore, or if he ever was, because he’s something deeper than that. But what a remarkable life, you know. Just to read about the way he functioned and everything, the sort of spontaneous, intuitive way where even he didn’t know why he was going someplace or anything, but then it turned out to be this perfect situation.

Ganga: Extraordinary.

Rick: Yeah, many, many—it’s like every day was practically like that with him.

Ganga: We are very lucky to have that in books also now, because it inspires so many people.

Rick: Yeah, it does. So, there’s been some discrepancy, like, for instance, in things David Godman has said, about whether Papaji actually sent people out to give satsang, or whether they just took it upon themselves to do so. Do you have any feelings about that?

Ganga: I prefer to speak of myself. He never sent me anywhere.

Rick: Except to buy vegetables or something. Yeah, so you don’t really have any comment on all the people who have been out teaching.

Ganga: I think everything is perfect, because, you see, when people teach, it means they have been struck by something. And whatever people follow them for, it means it’s what they want also. So everything is perfect. I mean, who cares? And the one who really wants what my Master said, he will find it also.

Rick: Yeah, I kind of get that sense. There are so many teachers these days, and maybe they differ in their clarity, or the way they teach, or the quality of their teaching or something, but there’s a saying—I don’t know if you’ve heard this—“Different strokes for different folks.”

Ganga: I do. And you know, many people also need to be healed, they need to be loved, they need to be protected. Then there are also many for them. And then maybe when they are loved enough, they feel like that. Maybe they will hear something different; they want to wake up to their true nature. We never know. Everything is perfect.

Rick: Yeah, that’s really good. I agree. And everything means everything. I mean, no matter what a person is into, it may be just a transitional phase for them. They’re getting what they need, and if they’re not, then they’re not going to stay there; they’re going to go and do something else.

Ganga: If they want to go to hell, they also go to hell.

Rick: Yeah, have that experience.

Ganga: Everything is perfect.

Rick: Good way of looking at it. Gangaji once said that she was told by Papaji, back in the day, that people coming to her were very well prepared and that there wasn’t much she needed to do or say when they showed up, that they were being sent to make way for the global awakening.

So there are two parts to that question. One is that people who come for satsang are very well prepared, perhaps, and there isn’t much one needs to do for them to wake up. There’s that part you could comment on. But also, did Papaji talk of a global awakening?

Ganga: Never to me.

Rick: Pardon?

Ganga: Never to me.

Rick: So you had never heard that?

Ganga: I never heard about global.

Rick: Okay. So he didn’t have any grand vision for the world undergoing some big change or anything like that?

Ganga: You know, I think in the years of Lucknow, in 1990, he wanted to offer it to more people, which has been done. And he sent even messengers, whatever they take themselves for, and this has begun to spread.

Rick: It’s true.

Ganga: So in that way, he had—but you know, Papaji would not have—I think it was more spontaneous with him. He didn’t have this intention, “I do that for global things.” He just did it when the time was like that. And of course, there was a spreading which was not there before.

Rick: Yeah.

Ganga: But I am not of those times, so I don’t know much of those years, except what I read and the many of those I meet this time.

Devotion and experience

Rick: That’s a good answer. There’s a common saying that Papaji is often quoted as having said, which is, “Give up the search,” and also things like, “There’s nothing to do. You already have it. Just be still.”

And he was no doubt, in saying this, stating the absolute truth. But he also meant that when you’ve made it to satsang and you’re sitting with a true teacher, you can finally relax—that your head is in the tiger’s mouth, so to speak. You’ve been caught, you’ve crossed the river, so you’re able to lay down your practices and previous knowledge and all that came before, and just be open and receptive to grace.

And that’s what Ramana told Papaji when he came to his door, because at the time Papaji was a lifelong Christian devotee and was reluctant to give up his practice.

So this is a little bit of a long question. I’ll just keep going for a bit and then you can respond. Papaji was—this is again the continuation of the question—not speaking to the seeker who is still in the heat of seeking, wanting more spiritual knowledge, or those at the beginning of the journey or even midway. He told those types to seek as if one’s pants are on fire.

So there are different teachings for different stages of the process, and the questioner here is saying, “So satsang is the end of the process, the end of the Vedas, the end of seeking, the realization that surrender is the only avenue after one has exhausted all strategies for awakening, which is why taking a Master’s words out of context does not do one any good.”

So she’s saying that the truth of Vedanta is not understandable to the average person, it’s easily misinterpreted, and most are not ready for it. Would you agree with all that, or comment on it?

Ganga: I mean, there is not much to say or add. The thing is, I told you, “Welcome, everybody, to satsang.” When I say “satsang,” it may be the direct indication, you see, but those who don’t feel it’s for them will go by themselves. They will go somewhere else where they feel it’s more understandable, where it’s more their thing for that time, and the others stay. So we don’t even need to say all those things. It happens naturally.

Rick: Yeah, but you would sort of agree with that, even though it’s not necessary to say it?

Ganga: I don’t like when it is labeled so much, because then it’s like the selected ones. We will fall into these archetypes again of selected ones. I don’t like it. It’s for everyone who cares, and those who don’t feel attracted will drop it and find something else.

Rick: Yeah, that’s a good point, because if we went by what she said in that question, then people who were at satsang might feel like, “Well, I’m the mature one. I am almost finished.” All these beginners…

Ganga: Those who are almost finished can stay years, up to the end of their masters, and most are finished, and they are never finished. So no, no, let’s drop it.

Rick: Okay, good point. One thing that you often hear—I mean, you don’t hear very much in Vedanta or in the nondual teachings—is much talk of devotion. And yet, in reading about Papaji’s life, and yours for that matter, there’s a lot of talk about God, the Divine, devotion, seeing Krishna, seeing other gods.

You know, there was that story when you and Papaji went to Vrindavan. You’re both dancing in ecstasy in the streets and so on. So what role would you say that devotion has to play in this whole realm of spirituality?

Ganga: First of all, real devotion, you see, is toward the truth: to hear, to love, and to love the guide that you still need, because he will bring you trust and he will bring you to the truth. That devotion.

And there is no self-inquiry if you don’t have devotion for it, if you are not devoted to the one who tells about it. It’s so natural; it goes together. I don’t think it’s possible otherwise.

Rick: But devotion doesn’t just mean determination or fixity on one’s teacher or one’s path. It also means great feelings of love and bliss and that kind of thing that you read about if you read the Srimad Bhagavatam or other devotional texts, the Bhakti Sutras and all that.

And it seems like Papaji was a great devotee. You would hear these stories of his love for Krishna and prostrating in front of Ramana Maharshi’s picture, and there was nothing flat or dry about it. It seemed a very heart-oriented kind of experience.

Ganga: Yeah, but Ramana Maharshi also said to him, “Is the devotion— is God here now?”

Rick: What’s that?

Ganga: Ramana also told Papaji, “Is there God, your devotion, here now, when it was not?”

Rick: Right.

Ganga: So all those are experiences which come, of course. Why not? It is like wonderful toffees of your own Self: “Come and love me, love me more and more. It’s worth it,” you see.

But they are experiences, so we should not be washed away, even though what a blessing. But they are experiences, huh?

Rick: Yeah, that’s a good point. They come and they go. In fact, that’s a famous story of Papaji, as I recall hearing it. He was late for showing up or something to see Ramana, and Ramana said, “Where were you?” And he said, “I was playing with Krishna.” And he said, “Well, is he here now?” And, “Uh, no.” So he was kind of pointing to that which is always here.

Ganga: Because of that, he could finally keep quiet. In his life, nothing has happened; everything happens there. One cannot comprehend, isn’t it? It’s full of expressions and it is quietness itself at the same time.

Rick: Yeah, paradoxical. So I have a question about stages of development. I’ve heard you say many times, “There are no stages of development,” and yet wouldn’t you say that Papaji, for instance, was in a more advanced stage of spiritual development than some of the crazy people who came to him? Otherwise, why would they come to him? And if he wasn’t in a more advanced stage, why would we go to him and not just anybody—just somebody we found in a bus station—as our teacher? We want to be with someone who is more spiritually advanced than we are as a teacher, as a master.

Ganga: Yeah, but I don’t consider Papaji to have been in a better or elevated stage. He woke up to what is. He is a master of liberation, you see. He woke up to his own nature and had the capacity to deliver the indication so that the others… all the others, they are seekers, all the others, and of different stages, of course, of different experiences, more or less deep, according to their practice before or their fire, of course.

Rick: Okay, so then there are different stages or degrees of depth of realization.

Ganga: Absolutely not!

Rick: Oh, you just said that all these seekers were at different stages according to their practice, and Papaji was…

Ganga: Yes, sorry. No, but a seeker is somebody who has had so many experiences. He can even eventually have a glimpse, the experience of enlightenment as somebody. Now, a master is not somebody. He has demystified that he was somebody, even though he appears to us to be somebody, you know. So there is no common measure—I don’t know how to say it in English; we cannot compare that.

Rick: No comparison, yeah.

Ganga: Okay.

Rick: Yeah.

Ganga: Seekers have stages, sure.

Rick: Okay, so seekers have stages, but masters are beyond stages. Is that a way of summarizing?

Ganga: Yeah, yeah.

Rick: Okay, and so once mastery has been achieved, so to speak, or realized, then there are no further refinements. There are no gradations like, “This master is at a more powerful, deeper, clearer level than that master.” They’re all sort of in the same club, so to speak, once mastery has been…

Ganga: First of all, the master would see—and that is the great teaching—that any stage is unreal, and that’s how he can help the one who is asking.

Now, about the one who woke up to his own—let’s say, realized that he was always that—there are no stages. Now, some teach and some don’t. That’s all I can say.

Rick: Some teach and some… You mean some teach stages and some don’t? Is that what you mean?

Ganga: No, no, no. Some…

Rick: Oh, some teach and some don’t even teach at all.

Ganga: Yeah, I guess I’ve not met them, but it’s possible, of course.

Rick: Well, sure. I’m sure that there are sages or realized beings for whom it’s just not their dharma to teach. They just sit in a cave or they sit under a tree or whatever.

Ganga: Or their husbands.

Rick: Or their husbands, yeah. They might be working in a business or something.

Ganga: We never know.

Rick: Yeah. Now I know people like that. Something else about this question I wanted to ask—maybe it will come back to me. Oh yeah, just that, like, if you read different books like the Bhagavad Gita or the Yoga Sutras and all, they do talk about types of samadhi and stages of the development of the seeker, if we want to put it.

So I guess that kind of corroborates what you’re saying. You said for seekers, yeah, there are stages, but for one who has gone beyond all that, no more stages. Just—yeah, okay, just to reiterate.

Vasanas and purification

I heard you say in one of your satsangs that you didn’t make much of the notion of vasanas—that vasanas, or… I’ll have you define vasanas—but that vasanas could in any way be a deterrent or an obstacle to realization. Let’s just discuss that for a little bit.

Ganga: Yeah, okay. Because I know that it is in the mind of a seeker, or even that teachers are there to tell them, “First remove your vasanas,” or “Make them sattvic, or so pure that they quieten,” and all that, “and then you will realize.”

But you see, I don’t believe in this gradual work, which will never come. And first of all, you have to believe that somebody is real in order to purify that. Or it is exactly because that somebody believes he is impure or pure that there is a problem.

So we have to question again, “But who is this I with this concept?” Rather than starting to clean it, if it is unreal, then what was the use? All the energy and all the life went on.

Rick: Well, let me take an extreme example. Let’s say you go into a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane and you sit down with a group of psychotic, violent people, just to take a really extreme example. And then contrast those people with the people who come to your satsang in Portugal.

I mean, wouldn’t you say that the people who come to your satsang in Portugal are much more receptive, much more able to hear what you are saying than the psychotics would be? And so for the psychotics, it might be valuable to attenuate some of their vasanas, to purify and clarify, and just become a more sane person in the direction of being able to appreciate satsang.

Ganga: I understand, no doubt about it. But you see, this is not my job. I’m sure that a few compassionate, beautiful people do that, but I can’t do that; it’s not in my capacity. I am just good at this, that’s all. That’s what I do.

But others, I’m sure, and I hope it is done.

Rick: Oh yeah, I’m not suggesting that you go into a psychiatric hospital.

Ganga: I explain that people will be there to help them, you know. It’s sure.

Rick: Yeah, but the reason I brought that up is to show that now there’s an example of people who have a heavy load of vasanas—people who are, let’s say, really crazy. There’s a lot of impurity.

And traditionally it’s said that a sattvic nature is more conducive, or more receptive, to awakening than a tamasic nature or a negative nature. And so that kind of lends some credence to the notion that there might actually be some value in purification in the direction of being more worthy of, or more receptive to…

Ganga: First of all, I think that when you are very rajasic, very passionate, you want to finish things off. Already, the tamasic person is so obscure that they don’t even have space for the idea of enlightenment, that’s for sure, and they need some other help.

Rick: Yeah, they’re all clouded over.

Ganga: Yes, of course, if we go there, you see. Now, the sattvic people are not helped more than the rajasic ones because they are so saintly, comfortable, or peaceful that they have no more fire to question.

Rick: That could be. It could happen. But you were a pretty sattvic person, and you had a very bright fire, you know.

Ganga: But I was rajasic, I think, so…

Rick: Yeah. Well, they say that…

Ganga: I don’t want to say that you have to be rajasic or this or that. I just want to say that self-inquiry crosses the gunas, you see. It crosses those tendencies, except tamas. A rare one will be touched by grace even then.

Rick: Yeah.

Ganga: But that is, of course, more rare.

Rick: More rare, yeah. So there is this saying, which I often quote, by some Zen teacher. He said, “Enlightenment may be an accident,” which might be an equivalent word for grace, “but spiritual practice makes you accident-prone.” So, you know, they say that rajas destroys tamas and sattva destroys rajas. It seems that there is always a possibility of someone with a lot of tamasic quality awakening, but the probability seems to improve as one moves toward sattva.

Ganga: But I don’t agree that sattvic people have more chance. I don’t.

Rick: Maybe not.

Ganga: Maybe it is because we are in Kali Yuga, you know. I think our life here, even now in India, you know… No, I don’t think that sattva helps. Sattva will help you to have samadhi, to have a marvelous, blissful, or peaceful state for longer than a normal experience and all that. But then what? There is still somebody there, and they have to practice to maintain that, so nothing is real. It is not worth it.

Rick: Good. I do know that I have met people who are just kind of fanatical about sattva, saying, “Oh, I have to be so careful not to eat this and not to do that.” There is sort of this obsessive quality, you know, which becomes a hang-up in itself.

Ganga: It becomes a concept again, you see, and satsang is to remove concepts. Otherwise, when will we live a moment, a time free from concepts, if we have to fulfill the concepts? Tell me.

Inquiry and suffering

Rick: Yeah. A couple of questions came in. This is from Paul in Portland, Oregon. He said, “I have recently begun this inquiry, ‘Who am I?’ The process seems so mysterious and nebulous.” You know what nebulous means? Nebulous means vague, like a cloud. “And I long to understand it so I can do it correctly. How does inquiry work?” And finally, a little bit more on his question: “How can one have confidence they are doing the inquiry in the way that the lineage of Ramana, Papaji, and so on teaches?”

Ganga: He has to confront the Master, with satsang, for a lifetime. Because, you see, to reply like this, indirectly or through words, he can read better in very good books. Ramana has explained it so well, and Papaji too. So if he still asks, he has to come.

Rick: Yeah. Well, he’s in Portland, which is not far from Ashland, where Gangaji lives, so maybe he could go there.

Ganga: Wherever he likes.

Rick: Pardon? Yeah, he might go there.

Ganga: Wherever he feels like.

Rick: Sure. Okay. Here’s another one from Durga in London. She asks, “Could you please tell me your views about depression and whether it’s still possible to awaken if one is in extreme suffering?”

Ganga: It’s just a concept that one has swallowed.

Rick: Hmm. Well, you know, it can also be a biochemical thing, where one’s brain chemistry is off and one is…

Ganga: It’s just a concept because one believes one is a body and mind, you see. So I will tell her, “Whatever you can describe, it’s not you.” Let her practice neti neti: not this, not that. “I am depressed. I feel it deeply in my heart, body, or mind. I can know it. I am not that.” It will help her.

Rick: Help to lift her out of the depression?

Ganga: Yes, help to see that, after all, it’s an object. It is an experience like any other experience, but one gets attached to a few experiences, you see, because according to one’s past, happy or unhappy, they give one a sense of personal existence. And this is a seeming drama.

Rick: What did Papaji have to say about bliss, about ananda? He seemed like a very blissful man, and you yourself, in your own experience, seem very… Pardon?

Ganga: Not all the time.

Rick: He wasn’t happy all the time?

Ganga: Maybe he would not be happy that I replied that way. But I tell you, not all the time, unless the bliss spoken of by the wise men means that you cannot objectify what it is. You see, it’s peace, it’s bliss, it’s joy. Of course, there is tremendous joy, but it happens this way sometimes and another way at other times. I cannot accept experiences of bliss as real.

Rick: So bliss is necessarily like a wave on the ocean? The ocean itself isn’t blissful in its nature?

Ganga: You can say that, but then it will never express itself as bliss. Those who speak of bliss, they speak of their expression, isn’t it?

Rick: Yeah, but there can also be this underlying sort of fulfillment, contentment, or happiness which seems to persist regardless of the surface fluctuations, you know?

Ganga: I don’t believe that you can objectify yourself. These are expressions already, maybe very deep, and they go on changing.

Rick: How about your own experience?

Ganga: This is my experience.

Rick: Do you ever feel depressed or have any negative emotions like that?

Ganga: Depressed, surely not, because the search has gone from the mind, you see. So negative emotions—what do you mean? Sad, sometimes, yes. I react to my circumstances with the body-mind. The thing is, the confusion is gone, that’s all. But I’m just a natural human being.

Rick: That’s good. And even when you’re feeling sad, is it all-consuming? With some people, they might be so overshadowed by it, just completely immersed in sadness: “That’s my world.” If you have a wave of sadness…

Ganga: There are waves.

Rick: There are waves on the surface of something much deeper.

Ganga: It’s not lived like that, you see, because I don’t think there is separation anymore. The sense of separation is not there. So in that way, I may say, “When I am sad, I am sad, and when I am not sad, I am not sad,” and it doesn’t give rise to more doubts or thoughts about, “Oh, I was identified,” or, “Oh, that was not the truth.” All that is gone.

Rick: So you’re just living naturally.

Ganga: It looks like it.

Rick: I read in… This is a strange question, maybe, and you don’t even have to answer it if you don’t want to, but I read in David Godman’s book that Jean Klein thought that Papaji was dangerous and warned students away from him. I found that a little puzzling, because from what I know of Jean Klein, he seemed like a very enlightened man. So what was his problem with Papaji?

Ganga: Oh, you should have asked him.

Rick: I didn’t even get the chance.

Ganga: He was truly a gentleman.

Rick: Yeah, okay. Well, that’s a tactful answer. Okay, so we’ve covered quite a few things. What haven’t we covered? I know another question will probably be coming in in a minute, but is there anything that you would like people to hear or know that we haven’t discussed so far?

Ganga: I am a bit blank. You gave me blank.

Rick: Okay, I’ll try to stir up something.

Ganga: No, it’s okay.

Rick: Well, let me ask you this. I know that you have these nice satsangs online. I’ve listened to about five of them now, and people can do that. I also mentioned on your website that you travel, so do you actually go around the world still and do satsangs here and there, or do you pretty much stay in Portugal now?

Ganga: I pretty much stay in Portugal, and yet, for the last two years, I have done a few trips, it’s true. For some reason, I wanted it to be known that satsang is available in Portugal. Maybe those who are interested, when they see me in some cities, can come here, and I can visit them again there if there is enough interest. I don’t go all over the world, but I travel a little bit, yeah.

Rick: Are there accommodations in Portugal if a person wants to come there? Is there a place for everybody to stay?

Ganga: There are. It’s a bit of a weak point because I don’t have an ashram, but everybody so far finds places. Yes, it’s okay, it’s okay.

Rick: Sounds like a nice place on the seashore.

Ganga: It is a wonderful place, yes. A wild ocean and quite far away from everything, and satsang four times a week gives it a certain color, you know. It’s nice.

Rick: Yeah, that’s like a regular, almost ongoing thing, four times a week. That’s great. So, here are a couple of questions that just came in from Mary. She didn’t give her location. She said, “First of all…” Let’s answer these separately. “What does love mean to you?”

Ganga: Love means everything. I don’t think the world would be sustained if there were no love. It means the Self, you know. I don’t speak of relationship.

Rick: No, you’re talking of a deeper kind of love. Love makes the world go round. So, the world is sustained by love. That was a nice phrase. Do you associate that with God or the Divine when we talk of love?

Ganga: With the Self, with reality, with what you are. And you know, when you don’t have a sense of separation, it looks very much like love.

Love means everything.

Rick: Yeah, you know, there’s that saying in the Bible, “Do unto others as you would do unto yourself,” and so it would seem that if there’s no sense of separation, then others are yourself and you’d love others as much as you love yourself, therefore not mistreating them in any way.

Ganga: Circumstances may provoke some strange things, but I mean it’s unshakable, untouched love or reality. I use this word “love” less because there are too many concepts around it, but of course I cannot deny what it refers to.

Rick: Yeah, it has kind of romantic connotations usually. This is sort of a related question from Mary again: “You said that all appearances are not real. Does this make all life forms disposable, lacking value? Since the world is a mirage, does that mean that…?”

Ganga: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you see, this sentence comes once you realize. The sentence is heard by a seeker to indicate the proper direction, to give them the proper indication: “Look and see if ‘I’ is real.” Because if you apply that idea, I think there will be very misunderstood behavior, misunderstandings, and completely cuckoo behavior, with excuses sometimes: “Oh, it’s unreal, so I can do whatever.” No, it’s real for the body-mind. It’s real for the body-mind. It has a seeming reality, and so natural intelligence goes on with that.

It’s a way to teach. It is not the truth. In truth, everything is real and nothing is real. So again, we cannot comprehend.

Rick: Also, if you look at the behavior of Masters like Papaji and others, they seem to be very concerned with people’s well-being and very compassionate, and so on. They don’t just say, “Oh, you’re not real.” For instance, there was some story where some German fellow, for some weird reason, drank some laundry detergent because he thought it was going to purify him or something. Papaji did all sorts of things to try to help him get the poison out of his stomach, you know, and all kinds of things. He didn’t just say, “Oh, it’s unreal, don’t worry about it.”

Ganga: No, but that’s what I say, you see: the Master is the wisest person. He will not take things this way. He knows very well, you see, everything is real, nothing is real. But to say, “Look, what comes and goes is unreal,” is guidance, a tool to touch the one who thinks it is real.

Because if you see that even I can disappear as a concept of reality, all the rest is of the same nature. So it’s just an indication. It is not saying that all is unreal and that everything the mind will understand through its logic will be a disaster.

Returning to the source

Rick: Good. Here’s a couple of questions from Abe in Canada. First question: “Could you please elaborate on the word ‘demystifying the mind,’ which is a phrase that you use very often in satsangs?”

Ganga: To see that the mind is just an object of yours and to go back then more easily to the subject, instead of being mystified by objects and their hypnotism generally. To slowly go to the root subject—the subject which is into cause, into question.

Rick: Aha, so not being so caught up in it, in other words. Second question: “Would you please speak a bit more about ‘keeping quiet’?” We talked about that earlier, but he wants some elaboration. “I understand that it is not physical quietness, like not talking. Would you say it is the passive experience of the waking state in which the ‘I’ is arising as anything else?” I don’t think that’s totally clear, but I’m sure you can elaborate on this point of keeping quiet.

Ganga: I didn’t really follow, but what is clear is that you keep quiet when one doesn’t grasp the thinking, the movements of thinking power. Then you keep quiet. Then is there anybody keeping quiet?

Rick: And you said earlier, it’s not like you’re not thinking. You will be having thoughts, but you’re not caught up in them or something, right?

Ganga: You don’t confuse anymore. You don’t confuse yourself anymore with the one who thinks.

Rick: Aha, so there’s a discernment, we could say, or a discrimination between the self and the thinker. Would you say that?

Ganga: Discrimination? No, it’s a fact. It’s a fact. The confusion disappeared. A discriminative mind is used on the journey, I would say, if one has a journey. You see, you have to know what to follow or whatever. But at some point even this has to be left behind and one has to be busy with who is discriminating. This is the main point, if there is any.

Rick: Is to know who is discriminating, who is thinking, who is acting.

Ganga: First, to be clear that you will not solve anything with the infinite objects of the mind, whether they are subtle, in the mind or in the body. You have to question the owner of it, the doer.

Rick: Yeah, and when you really do that, don’t you find that the doer actually is not a doer? Because doing implies engagement, activity, and so on, and we’re referring to something which is beyond the field of activity, aren’t we?

Ganga: Absolutely. Activities and doers rise from who you are and disappear into you, who you are. Sure? The thing is that we make one step away, believing “I.” “I” is already the first expression. It’s an expression, but we take it as the main base. It looks like we cannot go prior to “I” when we are a seeker, you see.

So in satsang, we hear more and more, or we click, or we get more and more awake, and realize, “Oh, that first base we take for granted, in fact, is a step too much.” That gives the sense of separation.

Rick: So when one goes beyond that, then one goes beyond separation, correct?

Ganga: Absolutely. Separation is created only if you believe that the rising “I” is real.

Rick: And so if you go beyond that, if you have gone beyond the belief that the rising “I” is real, is there still any sense of “I” whatsoever, or has one sort of landed in a place which is impersonal, beyond a sense of “I”?

Ganga: First of all, everybody is already himself. Everybody. The only thing is, he believes that “I” is real, so he wants to experience who he is as he experiences everything else. That is the trouble.

Now, what you say—the sense of “I” when it rises is there, but it is known; it is demystified. There is no more confusion that the rising “I” and that body-mind are what you really are. That is gone radically.

Rick: Yeah, so what you just said then is that—words are always limited in the way you have to express things—but this state of realization or enlightenment, or whatever you want to call it, is not going to be an experience like any other experience that we’ve ever had. It is not an experience; it is beyond experience.

Ganga: We can even remove the word “beyond” because it gives this concept that you have to go somewhere or that you are not there now, you see. You are there now, but because we believe that “I,” somebody, is real, we have the habit of objectifying our world, of experiencing it. So it looks as though we can never attain what we really are.

Now, to realize what is already here, we just have to make this “I” disappear. How? By going back to its source. I go back always there, you see, to remove the concept of prior and beyond, which is fantastic at some stages, but in fact can also create a concept. We should be removed from concepts.

Rick: It’s difficult to talk about this stuff without using words like that, just because the whole language is built upon objective experience, you know, and so you have to be very careful what you say when you try to describe these things, and you never quite do it properly. And I don’t mean you; I mean one—you know, me or anyone.

Ganga: Yeah, sure, sure. But also, it is the—how to say—the passion or the compassion of the teacher to point out, if he sees that the word comes from some place, “Oh, you have to correct here.” But the same word can be expressed, how to say, without a base, and then it’s all right.

Rick: Yeah. For instance, I was listening to one of your satsangs, and at the end the children come in. There was one where you were saying to the children, “Now, you please sit over there so I can see you,” and that seems very dualistic. There’s a you and there’s seeing, and there’s here and there’s there. But that’s the way language works, you know, and you’re communicating to people in a relative sense. You want the children to move around.

Words are inadequate to describe reality, and we use dualistic words for the sake of practicality: “Please pass the salt,” or “Go there and buy this,” or “How do you do? What is your name?” Things like that. But that doesn’t really hit the depth of reality. So do you want to elaborate on that a little bit?

Ganga: Yes. First of all, it is impossible to describe what is, because the mind comes from what is and disappears there. So it’s no longer there when it could have words to bring and tell, you know; it disappears, it’s just dying there.

But in satsang, the words which are used are not for the word but for the target. They indicate something else. That’s different.

Rick: Yeah, what was the word before you said “indicate”—for the target, did you say?

Ganga: It does a target, yeah.

Rick: Target, target.

Ganga: The word gives an indication to follow. So you don’t follow the finger, but the indication that it shows.

Rick: Yeah, it points to the moon, but it’s just a pointer.

Ganga: Exactly. They are pointers.

Rick: Which, of course, includes books and everything else, you know. We need words to communicate.

Ganga: But that’s why, you see, it is, I would say, necessary at some point to come to a satsang live.

Rick: Yes.

Ganga: You have to be confronted by a pointer alive that may shake your own convictions or your thoughts.

You don’t follow the finger, but the indication that it shows.

Rick: Okay, good. Well, that’s a good point to end on, perhaps. It’s an invitation for people to come to a live satsang, either yours in Portugal or elsewhere.

Ganga: Yeah, where this is indicated, it is important.

Rick: Yeah, yeah. So then, we’ve discussed this a little bit, but you’re based in Portugal near the seashore, and people can come there. You do satsang four times a week, and they can find out more about that on your website, which I’ll be posting a link to, and make arrangements to come there if they want. In the meanwhile, there are quite a few satsangs on your YouTube page that people can watch.

Is there anything else you’d like people to know in terms of—you haven’t written a book yourself, right?

Ganga: No, no, no, nothing. There is one in Hungarian, but I think it’s very localized.

Rick: So if anybody really wants to read that, they can learn Hungarian.

Ganga: Something is being prepared. Now my friends are transcribing some satsangs, but it will take time, sure.

Rick: Yeah, good. Well, this has been very enjoyable. I really appreciate—

Ganga: Oh, thank you very much.

Rick: —the opportunity to speak with you.

Ganga: Yes, it’s a pleasure. It was a very good moment with you.

Rick: Yes, and likewise, I’ve really enjoyed this.

So let me make a couple of general concluding remarks. I’ve been speaking with Ganga Mira. I’ll be linking to her webpage, as I always do with guests, so people can follow up with her, explore that webpage and website, and carry on with what she has to offer.

This, as I mentioned in the beginning, and as most of you know, is an ongoing series of interviews. So if you’d like to explore past ones, come to www.batgap.com and go to the Past Interviews menu. If you’d like to see who’s scheduled to come up, there’s a Future Interviews menu, or Upcoming Interviews.

You can be notified by email of new ones, if you wish, by just filling out a little form on the email link that you’ll see. This is also offered as an audio podcast, in addition to video. So if you’d like to subscribe to the audio podcast, there’s a link for that. You can get it on iTunes or Stitcher, or those different podcast platforms.

So thank you very much for listening or watching, and I will see you next week. And thank you again, Ganga Mira. It’s really been an honor to speak with you.

Ganga: That’s very nice.

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