Summary
The conversation explores how to choose and commit to a meditation path while remaining open to different traditions and practices. It also examines the relationship between spiritual realization, ethical conduct, trustworthy teachers, and the value of learning from established teachings.
Questions This Interview Explores
- How can I choose the right meditation practice for me?
- Should I explore different spiritual paths or commit to one?
- How can I recognize whether a spiritual teacher is trustworthy?
- Is ethical behavior connected to spiritual realization?
- How can spiritual teachings and personal experience support each other?
Key takeaways
- Trying different practices can help you find the path that genuinely suits you.
- Once you find a fitting path, sustained commitment is more valuable than constant searching.
- A teacher’s conduct should reflect the ethical principles they teach.
- Disappointment in one teacher should not lead you to reject spirituality altogether.
- Studying established teachings can help you interpret and protect your own experiences.
- Spiritual growth is not separate from honesty, responsibility, and ethical behavior.
Transcript
Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening people. We’ve done 499 of them now, and this is number 499. If you haven’t seen the others and would like to, go to batgap.com—B-A-T-G-A-P—and look under the Past Interviews menu, where you’ll see all the previous ones archived in various ways.
This program is made possible by supportive, appreciative listeners and viewers. So, if you appreciate it and feel like supporting it, there’s a PayPal button on every page of the site. That little sentence I just said is just about the only thing we do to raise funds. If you don’t like us making a big fuss of it, the support is appreciated and essential.
My guest today is Giovanni Dienstmann. That’s right, correct pronunciation. Giovanni, there are some sirens going by right here. Giovanni is a spiritual practitioner and teacher and the creator of Live and Dare, one of the top five most visited meditation blogs on the planet—or, as far as you know, on any planet.
As an author, meditation coach, and speaker, Giovanni helps people overcome anxiety and stress to live a calmer and more centered life through spiritually inspired personal development work. Having read that sentence just now, it makes it sound like he’s offering a practical, down-to-earth, benefit-oriented approach to spirituality, which very often doesn’t even involve the word spirituality. People meditate and do yoga and stuff to deal with stress.
But Giovanni himself is very deeply spiritually motivated and has been since the age of 14. Spirituality has been the center of his life since then. In his journey, he has practiced over 9,000 hours of meditation and counting, tried 70 different techniques, and nearly became a monk twice.
When you say to people, Giovanni, that you’ve tried 70 different techniques, do you get accused of digging a whole lot of shallow wells instead of one deep one?
Giovanni: When I talk to spiritual practitioners, yes. Some of them feel, “Why have you tried so many? Why don’t you choose one, focus, and go deep into it?” But when I’m talking to people who are approaching meditation as a practice of healing and growth, or for the other non-spiritual benefits of the practice, then they appreciate it. They think, “Okay, this guy has practiced different techniques, so maybe he can help me find out which one is best for me.”
Rick: Yeah. I think that it’s different for different people. For some people, maybe it’s a really good idea to shop around and try a bunch of different things, and then settle on one, two, or three that really work for you. How would you know which ones work unless you’ve tried a number of them?
Giovanni: In the past, this was never possible, because all of these paths weren’t available. The guru that you met—the guru of your town—or whatever religion you were born into: those were the methods and techniques you’d be exposed to. But nowadays, we have all these books, all these masters, and all these videos, and we can learn about all these paths.
So, I recommend people find one meditation and one path that works best for them and really focus on that. But unless you expose yourself to many practices, it’s very hard to find the right one for you, in my opinion.
Rick: Yeah. When I first learned back in the ’60s, there weren’t that many things around. There was TM, which I learned. There was Zen. I went to a Zen center once in New York City, had my car towed away, and spent the night sleeping in a car-storage lot. I was an adventurer.
There was Guru Maharaji, the 14-year-old Perfect Master, and there was Silva Mind Control. I suppose there was also Yogananda’s technique—you know, SRF—and much more, at least as far as I was aware in those days. Obviously, with the internet and everything else, there’s a huge supermarket full of things that one could potentially do. It might be a little overwhelming for some people. Where do they start? What do they do?
Giovanni: In all these techniques, all of the ones that I tried were traditional techniques. Many of them are from the Tantras. There is the book Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, which teaches 108 or 112 different meditations. So many of them came from that book.
Rick: Yeah, I remember hearing about that back in the ’70s—that it was said that there are that many different ways to transcend. Theoretically, you could try them all, I suppose.
On this topic, people are going to maybe try different things, and then at a certain point they’re going to do something and it really works for them profoundly. Then they think, “Okay, that’s the one for me.” Has that been your experience?
Zen Buddhism and the First Stage of the Journey
Giovanni: In certain phases of my journey. In the very beginning, one of my first paths was Zen Buddhism, and I almost became a monk there. At that time, I was only practicing Zen. I didn’t care about any other teaching or any other technique. It was only Zen.
But then, when I moved on from that path—and I think we might zoom into that later on in the interview—I moved to the path of Ramana and Advaita. Then, when I moved on from that path ten years later, I was like, “Okay, let me check out what’s out there.” That was the phase of my life when I experimented with all these techniques before I focused on another one.
Rick: Yeah. And the first thing you got into when you were about 14 was occultism, wasn’t it? No, you went to some meditation groups and did some kind of meditation, and you really liked it. Go ahead and tell the story.
Giovanni: It all started with me reading [name unclear]. My mom had his books, so I read his books. I got fascinated with this idea of the mystic, the occult, and the esoteric. I started reading about anything that I could find in Portuguese, because I was born and raised in Brazil—anything I could find in my mother tongue about religion, philosophy, occultism, Kabbalah, all of that. I was reading like crazy.
Many of these books and many of these paths recommended meditation. So, when I got to know about a workshop being held in my city by the Brahma Kumaris group, I went there for a one-hour introduction to meditation. There was maybe a ten-minute guided meditation, and that experience was very special.
For the first time ever in my life, I was happy and at peace in the present moment. There was nothing to run after and nothing to run away from—just having started meditating.
I was a very restless teenager and child, so that experience was unique, something I’d never had before.
When I had that experience, I said, “Okay, I’m going to continue practicing meditation every day of my life.” That was the beginning. I continued practicing meditation and reading a lot. First of all, the occult—that was my interest. I had a strong fascination for the siddhis, the supernatural powers, and that type of thing.
For the next two to two and a half years of my life, that’s how the journey went. Until, little by little, I started realizing that what I was after was not power; it was awakening and enlightenment. When I started realizing that, my path began to shift.
There were three paths that were calling my attention at that time: the path of Zen Buddhism, the path of Advaita Vedanta, and the path of Taoism. I felt, “Okay, so far I’ve been studying, reading, and trying to practice all these things, but I feel that it’s better to dig ten meters in a single direction than to dig one-meter holes in ten different directions.”
I felt the need to decide and choose one path and then dedicate myself fully to it. Because I got to know of a Zen master who lived in my city, in the Soto Zen tradition—the Zen masters are called roshis—I felt, “Okay, let me choose this path, because I found a master and it’s speaking to me right now.” I made it my path.
It was interesting: the day that I went to the Zen center to meet him, there was no one around. It didn’t occur to me that I had to go at specific times; I just went in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, and he was alone there. So, I had the chance to speak with him at length. I asked many questions, and one of the questions was, “Have you achieved nirvana?”
He said, “Yes. That’s what it means to be a roshi. That’s what it means to have received Dharma transmission.” Then I felt, “Wow, I’m in the presence of an enlightened being. This is great.” So, that’s how it all started for me in Zen.
Rick: Cool. From what I read in your bio on your website, you really got into it, gung-ho. You’ve always been the type to really get into this stuff whenever you try it out. You’re not just a dilettante—which means a superficial dabbler. You go in full-headfirst and deeply into it.
So, you were doing lots of Zen, and you actually assumed some kind of leadership role or significant administrative role in that group, even at a very young age—probably under 20 still, right?
Giovanni: Yes. I was 19 when I shaved my head. I went to the monastery in France because the master had a disciple who ran the monastery there. I went twice for five weeks each time during my winter break from university.
Everything about me made it clear that my whole life was about Zen. My parents were really freaking out. Even though I hadn’t said anything, they knew that every weekend I was at the same center—Friday night, Saturday night—and whenever I was at home, I was doing Zen in my room, reading about Zen, or taking care of the administrative tasks of the Zen center. Apart from university, that was my life. My parents were freaking out.
Rick: Were they relieved? I mean, what were other people your age doing at that point?
Giovanni: Exactly—drugs and other things. But they didn’t want that. They wanted me to be normal. They didn’t want me to do this Zen thing. At that time, meditation wasn’t even popular. Nowadays, if you say, “I practice meditation,” people admire you. At that time, it was like, “You’re kind of a weirdo.”
I was really close to that master. One day after a retreat—after my first retreat—I felt so great, so peaceful, and so connected. Then the idea came to me like lightning: “Why don’t you make this every day of your life? Become a monk.”
That idea came to me without any questions attached to it or any hesitation. It was just like a flash of insight, something that is dropped into you. I immediately accepted it and said, “Yes, that’s actually what I want.”
Then I went to talk to my Zen master, and he was not so impressed. He just said, “Okay, finish your university,” because I asked, “Should I quit everything and begin now?” I was studying law, and there were four more years. This was at the very beginning, so he said, “Finish your university, and by then, if you still want it, you can become a monk.”
Rick: And you had a girlfriend at the time?
Giovanni: Yeah, I also had a girlfriend at the time. Immediately, I told her, “Look, this desire has come into my heart. Should we break up, or what should we do?” And she said, “No, let’s continue for now, and we’ll see what we do in time.”
So that’s how things developed, and I became closer and closer to the Roshi. For me, he was my link to the Zen tradition, to the Buddhist tradition. In Zen, there’s this strong idea of the lineage, that the Dharma has been passed from generation to generation, all the way from the Buddha to Bodhidharma, then going to China, then going to Japan to Dogen, and then going to Moriyama Roshi in Portugal. So it was like, “Wow, it’s such an honor to be his disciple.”
I lived like that for about two to three years. Then, one day, when he had traveled to Japan, I got a phone call from a very close female disciple in the Sangha. She said, “Do you have the phone number of the Roshi in Japan? I would like to talk to him.”
I said, “Yes, I have it. Here’s the phone number.” Then I said, “I noticed that you haven’t been in the Sangha lately. What’s happening?”
She said, “Yeah, it’s not feeling comfortable.”
Then I said, “Is it the Roshi?” I don’t know why that idea came to me.
She said, “Yes.”
“Okay, what’s the matter with the Roshi?”
She said, “Well, I don’t think I should tell you. I mean, you were the closest disciple and the most dedicated one, so you should know. But if I tell you, it’s going to affect your life. So I don’t know what I should do.”
We talked for half an hour, and I convinced her to tell me. “What do you think I should know?”
She said, “Well, the Roshi is my boyfriend.”
“What do you mean, the Roshi is your boyfriend?”
“The Roshi is my boyfriend. I’m his girlfriend, just like any boyfriend-and-girlfriend relationship.”
Rick: How old is he, and how old was she?
Giovanni: At that time, he was probably 60, and she was probably 45.
Rick: That’s too big of an age difference. But anyway.
Giovanni: Yes. I said, “He is a celebrated monk. How can you be his girlfriend?”
Anyhow, I pressed her for more information. We were kind of close friends, and she shared everything. So I said, “Who is paying when you guys go out together? Who’s paying? Is it you or him?”
“Sometimes it’s me, and sometimes it’s him.”
“Okay, so the donation money that you’re giving to sustain him, he’s using to sustain you as well?”
All of these things started coming up in my mind. I was just confused. I didn’t know what to make of it. We talked for about two hours, and then we hung up. I thought, “I don’t know what to make of this. I’m just going to sleep and let things become clear with time.”
Little by little, I—oh, and another important point is that she said, “I think I’m not the only one.”
I asked, “Did you ask the Roshi specifically about this?”
She said, “Yes, and he said, ‘No, you’re the only one.’”
She thought there was another girl who was also his girlfriend. So, the following day, I called the other person, who was also my friend. I said, “Look, this has come to my attention. Is it true that you are the girlfriend of the Roshi?”
She said, “No, that’s absurd,” and so on.
We finished the call, and I started thinking, “Okay, so maybe that other person is making things up, or misinterpreting, or fantasizing. I don’t know.”
But then I got a phone call back. She said, “No, I’m shocked, but it’s true. I’m also the girlfriend of the Roshi.”
That was a big, big disappointment for me. I was not angry with him, but I was disappointed because who I thought he was, he was not. If he were another type of teacher, it would be different. But if he is a Roshi, he’s a monk, so he cannot act like that.
Not only did he transgress the vow in Buddhism that, as a monk, you should not have sexual intercourse, but he also lied to both of them about each one being the only one. So that, for me, was the beginning of the end of Zen.
I called him after that. I actually called him in Japan and said, “Person A said that she’s your girlfriend, and I didn’t know that.”
He said, “Okay, I see.” That was all. There were no reactions.
I said, “She said that you told her she’s the only one.”
He said, “Yes, there’s only one.”
Then I said, “But I talked to this other person, person B, and she said that she’s also your girlfriend. She said that you told her she’s the only one. So you lied.”
He said, “No, what? She and I speak only what she and I understand.”
That was his answer. So, apparently, she didn’t understand. She didn’t understand because she was confused.
Anyhow, long story short, little by little, I shared the news with the members of the Sangha. To my great surprise, most of them, even though they were surprised and a little bit disappointed, said, “But still, the Roshi is my master. He’s a great man. I’m going to continue following him.”
For me, that was absurd. It doesn’t matter what level of realization he has, but his behavior does not match the behavior of a monk. It doesn’t even match the behavior of a lay Buddhist practitioner, because you take the five vows, and one of them is not to lie, while another is not to misuse sexuality. So, yeah.
Rick: There’s a larger issue here, which has been discussed quite a bit on BatGap and which is related to the Association for Spiritual Integrity, which I helped found, formerly called the Association of Professional Spiritual Teachers. That is the whole issue of whether there is a correlation between higher consciousness and ethical behavior.
We don’t need to spend the whole interview on it; some people are tired of hearing about it. But some people say there isn’t. You could be an alcoholic, womanizing scoundrel and yet be enlightened. When I hear that sort of thing, I say, “Well, that’s ridiculous,” because it renders the term enlightenment utterly meaningless.
Enlightenment has ramifications for all aspects of life, including your behavior. That’s just one aspect, but it’s a big one. It’s important. You simply couldn’t be behaving that way and be in any significantly developed state of realization.
Ethical Conduct and Higher Consciousness
To buttress that argument, we could refer to so many different ancient traditions, which all have these codes of ethics, like Patanjali’s teachings, the Buddhist codes, and everything else. They all say that there is, or should be, this correlation, and that ethical behavior is not only correlated with, or a symptom of, higher consciousness, but is also conducive to the development of higher consciousness.
To buttress that argument, we could refer to so many different ancient traditions, which all have these codes of ethics, like Patanjali’s teachings, the Buddhist codes, and everything else. They all say that there is, or should be, this correlation, and that ethical behavior is not only correlated with, or a symptom of, higher consciousness, but is also conducive to the development of higher consciousness.
If you’re misbehaving in those various ways, it renders the mind and physiology more impure, less pure, and that is not conducive to realization. Mental and physical, physiological purity is essential in terms of honing and fine-tuning the instrument so that it can be a fit vehicle for higher realization.
Anyway, that’s my little soapbox spiel on that. I imagine you agree.
Giovanni: Yeah. I think we’re going to go into the topic of newer traditions soon, and then we can discuss that more in depth.
From that point onward, later on, I traveled to Japan because I had won a scholarship to study Japanese there. When I was in Japan, I actually sent a letter to the Roshi. In that letter, among other things, I gave back my rakusu, which is the thing that you receive at the moment you become a disciple. It’s a very symbolic link; it’s like the wedding ring of the tradition.
Rick: It’s like a physical item of some kind.
Giovanni: Yes. You wear that around your neck whenever you are practicing. It has the name of your master, and it is the formal link with the tradition.
Rick: So you gave it back to him?
Giovanni: Yes. I wrote him a letter saying, among other things, “I’m deeply disappointed by your behavior. You criticize Buddhism a lot for decaying, but your behavior is part of the decay of Buddhism.” Then I sent back my rakusu. The letter was a bit longer than that, but that was the gist of it.
For me, there was a closure. There was a closure with the time of Zen. When the path of Zen was finishing, I was like, “Okay, what am I going to do next? Enlightenment is still the most important thing in my life, but what is going to be my path? Who is going to be my master? What is going to be my practice?”
Rick: Let me ask you a question. Did you ever have a moment, or a brief period, when you began to doubt that there was such a thing as enlightenment because you kept being disappointed by various supposed examples of it? Or did you always put those things in perspective and realize, “Well, this person is a work in progress, but enlightenment is a real thing, and I still want it”?
Giovanni: I think I started thinking like that. I started questioning. But then I immediately went back to the teachings of the ancient masters, like the Buddha, Bodhidharma, Ramakrishna, Yukteswar, Shirdi Sai Baba, and all of these great masters.
Because I had read so much during my journey, I had already been exposed to different paths. That was not the be-all and end-all for me. If I didn’t have that background—and I think that’s what happens with many spiritual seekers—they don’t have a strong background in spirituality, in the study and understanding of different traditions. The only form of spirituality they know is that of the master they are currently seeking.
So, if they discover something about that master, or become disappointed with that master in any way, they may just become cynical about the whole spirituality thing.
🕊️ The value of spiritual knowledge
Rick: Yeah, that’s a good point. I just want to throw in a point here. I think there’s tremendous value in knowledge as well as experience on the spiritual path. A lot of people don’t emphasize that very much. In fact, I’ve had people say to me recently, “Forget about all these dead masters and all these quotes and all this stuff. Just go by your own experience.”
But if you go by your own experience, it’s really easy to get mixed up, because how do you interpret your experience? Knowledge safeguards the path, and it actually enables you to appreciate the experience more if you know whether it’s significant.
For instance, there’s an old example. Let’s say you pick up a stone by the road, and it’s kind of shiny. You think, “Oh, this is cool,” and you put it in your pocket. Now, you don’t realize it because you don’t have the knowledge, but it’s a very valuable diamond—a large, valuable diamond. You just think of it as a shiny stone, and maybe you even throw it away after a while because you don’t know what it is.
Knowledge safeguards the path, and it actually enables you to appreciate the experience more.
So having a clear understanding safeguards the path.
Giovanni: Yeah. A quote from Confucius comes to mind. I’m paraphrasing, of course, but he says there are three means of wisdom: by self-reflection, which is the noblest; by imitation, which is the easiest; and by experience, which is the most bitter.
You can throw away all the knowledge and all the experiments that other people have already undertaken for centuries before you. They have written down their conclusions and insights, and you can throw all of that away and start from zero based on your own insight, your own heart, and your intuition. You will progress, but it’s going to be slow, and it’s going to be bitter.
It’s like a scientist. A scientist doesn’t start science from zero. Everything that was already learned and discovered before him is the ground on which he stands.
Rick: Yeah, Sir Isaac Newton said, “I stand on the shoulders of giants.” Science works by consensus. Scientists don’t just say, “Okay, here’s my idea,” and then have all the other scientists jump on it and say, “Okay, let’s test it.” They poke holes in it, and maybe they find out more, but there’s this sort of group effort that builds the body of scientific knowledge and also safeguards it—from misinterpretation, misunderstanding, and false conclusions.
Giovanni: Yeah, and I know what you mean, because I have heard that type of argument a lot. A lot of people on the spiritual path kind of shun reading and studying. In Tibetan Buddhism, that is a huge part of the tradition. But if you think deeply, that doesn’t make much sense, because the ancient masters whom we revere as masters are the ones who achieved what they achieved at the end of the path that you’re walking. They achieved what you want to achieve. Some of them wrote books, right? So, if that was useless, why would they have written books?
Rick: Yeah. It might be argued that they wrote in an ancient age when we didn’t have all the understanding that we have in this contemporary age. But there’s a saying that what is closest to truth lasts longest, and the stuff they were writing about is truth, capital T, and therefore it should be timeless.
Obviously, there could be issues with distortions as things are translated and retranslated and passed down, sometimes just orally for a long time before they’re even written. There’s that kind of issue. Also, this person speaks from their level of consciousness, and listeners can only hear from their level of consciousness, so translators might gobble it up. Nonetheless, there are a lot of gems in these ancient traditions.
I don’t want to talk too much, but I just want to add that it’s good to have not a skeptical attitude, but a questioning attitude. The Buddha said this, too. He said, “Don’t just accept something because I said it,” but rather, go by your own understanding and your own experience. He didn’t say, “Don’t listen to me.”
With all these books, we don’t need to throw the baby out with the bathwater and say they’re all just mythical nonsense, nor should we say, “Oh, it’s absolute gospel truth.” If it says that Hanuman, the monkey, flew to the Himalayas from Sri Lanka and brought a mountain back, we don’t necessarily have to accept that it literally happened. Maybe it did, but it’s questionable. There are teachings and gems sprinkled throughout these books that can be very valuable.
Giovanni: Sometimes we can be in front of a master and sit in satsang, but sometimes we can’t because the master is far away or has died a long time ago. Getting a book with the teachings of the master, really reading it, and going deeper into it with an open heart is the second-best thing. It’s a form of satsang, where you can get that energy. When you read I Am That by Nisargadatta Maharaj, or the works of Ramana, it’s almost as if you’re sitting in their presence. The energy comes through the words.
Rick: Good. Okay, and just one more point here, and then I’ll continue on. We have different faculties. Experiential realization is not really an exercise of our intellectual faculty. It’s not conceptual. But we also have the intellectual faculty, which deals with concepts; we have the heart, which deals with feelings; and there’s no reason why all these different faculties shouldn’t be employed in the process of spiritual evolution. They should all be developed as we go along, to become more and more effective and enable us to progress.
Giovanni: Yeah. Typically, we speak of the four paths: the path of jnana, the intellect; the path of raja, meditation; the path of bhakti, devotion; and the path of karma, which is action. Then usually they say the path of Tantra is more about tapping into the path of energy.
People who are more heart-centered will feel more attracted to the path of bhakti, devotion. People who are more head-oriented will feel more attracted to the path of jnana. But at the same time, as Swami Sivananda used to say, we need to develop the yoga of head, heart, and hands, or something like that.
We need to integrate all of these aspects, because as human beings, we have to act, we think, and there are illusions in our thoughts. Reading books and reflecting on the teachings helps us get rid of those illusions. We also have a heart and we feel, so we need to purify our hearts as well.
Rick: Yeah, and some people might be more predominant in one or another of those things, but no one is exclusively one of those things to the exclusion of all the others.
Giovanni: The interesting thing is that, by my own nature, I’ve always been more into the jnana yoga path, the path of the intellect. In several sources, I’ve seen masters saying that the jnana yoga path is the hardest one and is only for the most advanced seekers. In my own arrogance, as a teenager or in my early twenties, I said, “Yes, that’s the one for me.”
Rick: Yeah, because I’m cool.
Giovanni: Yeah, especially with this. The more I walk the path, the more I see, “Okay, I’m not really ready for that path.” Even though I have walked the path for a decade and I’ve had an experience of awakening, which has been a point of no return for me, I still see that I may need another lifetime of purification of the mind, making myself sattvic, and developing other qualities that other paths emphasize more before I can really take up that path and go to the end.
Rick: That’s interesting that you should say that. I believe Shankara said something of that nature: that jnana yoga is for a relatively small percentage of people, and that these other paths are conducive to various aspects of purification to ready one for the jnana yoga path, if that is going to be one’s ultimate path—which it may not necessarily have to be for everyone.
Giovanni: After I left Zen, I kind of fell in love with the teachings of Ramana, which I had read in the past. That became my path for the next ten years—the path of Advaita—and I really had Ramana Maharshi as my guru, my main source of truth. I also read and was inspired by Nisargadatta Maharaj, Papaji, and Mooji.
But just to speak to what you said, at that time in my life, when it was just the path of jnana yoga, just the path of self-inquiry, I found it to be a very effective technique. Through the question “Who am I?” you remove attention from everything that is external, including thoughts, feelings, memories—all of that is external to the pure sense of “I am.” I found it very helpful and very powerful.
Rick: You were able to do that easily?
Giovanni: I wouldn’t say that I was able to do that easily. But even in the beginning of my path, I was having better results with that than with three years of Zen.
Rick: Okay. Was it easy for you to switch from Zen practice to this new one, or did you find yourself falling back into the habit of Zen meditation the way you had been doing it?
From Zen Practice to Self-Inquiry
Giovanni: It didn’t happen like this. It happened slowly. I was meditating twice a day at that time, so I said, “Okay, I’m going to be doing Zen at night, and I’m going to be doing self-inquiry in the morning.” Little by little, Zen started disappearing and self-inquiry dominated.
At that time in my life, self-inquiry, Advaita, surfing, and yoga were the main things. I was very disconnected from the body and from emotions, and that had an impact on my relationship with my life, for instance, and on other areas of my life.
Rick: As a result of Zen?
Giovanni: No, as a result of Advaita.
Rick: Oh, that made you disconnected. Okay.
Giovanni: Yeah, because whenever an emotion arises, if you ask, “Who is the one feeling this emotion?” then you drop the emotion and dwell in the pure consciousness that is emotionless.
Over time, I realized that type of path, if you want to go really deep and hardcore, as I was going, is easier if you are alone or in a monastery. In the past, only monks were following that path. People who were in the world were following paths that were a little bit easier to integrate with a more active life.
It took me ten years to realize that. I’m not saying that people in the world should not follow the path of Advaita or jnana yoga at all. It is very powerful, and if you have that inclination, you should absolutely follow it. But at the same time, you need to bring in other practices that are going to fill the gaps.
You need to know that this type of practice and this type of teaching were created by monks for monks, in a way. In the past, only monks were following it. So, you’re going to have to translate that into your daily life. You’re going to have to bridge that gap, rather than trying to apply it literally to every situation.
Rick: Okay, good. Incidentally, I wanted to mention to those who are listening live—I forgot to say this in the beginning—that if you want to ask a question at any point, there’s a form at the bottom of the Upcoming Interviews page on batgap.com. If you submit your question through there, it’ll come to me and I can ask it.
Okay, so you did Advaita for about ten years, I think you mentioned that. Lakshmana Swamy was one of your teachers, along with his co-living Swami, in the tradition of Ramana?
Giovanni: Yes. Lakshmana Swamy—I think he’s still alive—was twenty-five when Ramana Maharshi was in his last year of life. There is a book called No Mind—I Am the Self by David Godman, who has written extensively about Ramana. I read that book and felt, “Well, this is a real guru, a real jnani. There’s no doubt about it for me, and he’s alive. There’s a chance that I can meet him in India.”
In the teachings of Ramana, he speaks a lot about the guru. While many times he says that the guru is the Self, the real guru is the Self, he also says that if you can be in the presence of a physical guru, that is very helpful.
So, I felt, “Okay, the only one I know who is alive in this lineage is Lakshmana Swamy.” At that time, it was December of 2006. He was already quite old, and I had just graduated from university. I actually had to beg them to graduate me a month before everyone else so that I could be there for the darshan.
I was there. There were about thirty to forty people, and there was a lot of shakti, a lot of energy and peace in the environment.
Rick: And he was at around Asheville.
Giovanni: No, there’s about three blocks away from Ramana Ashram. He has his own place; it’s in his house, basically, and he has a big garden. That’s where the darshan is held.
To give a bit of context, in the lineage of Ramana, and also much before him, it is said that initiation, which is called diksha, can happen through word, through touch, or through darshan, through sight.
Diksha is something that, for many Westerners, may be a bit hard to understand. It’s a transfer of energy. It’s a transfer of grace that actually empowers you to be able to follow the path and to do the technique effectively.
So, I wanted the darshan of Lakshmana Swami to be connected to the path more deeply, to get that grace and that shakti part that would allow me to practice self-inquiry.
I was there in his darshan, and I was sitting in the fifth row, but I could barely hear him because he speaks in such a low tone of voice. But even if I had heard just a sentence, his presence was so powerful that something was happening inside of you just by being in his presence.
I’ve met many teachers, a couple of gurus, but I’ve never felt that with anyone else. It’s quite extraordinary.
Surrender is the easiest path. Effort is needed, but grace is also needed.
He said, “Surrender to the Lord within. Surrender to the Self within the heart.”
When he said that, I, in an act of complete surrender, did exactly that. By the power of his grace, I looked inside, and I surrendered the ego in the heart.
Something happened. It’s hard for me to explain what happened, but there was the first point of no return in my life, in my path. The practice of being present with the Guru made the ego dive into the heart, into the Self.
Of course, it came back, but it was not the same. It was lighter; it was more transparent. And there was a kind of grace helping me, pushing me along the path.
So, I really consider that an initiation into Advaita. That’s how I felt.
After that, I could see him a few times because he would get into a car every morning and go around Arunachala, doing the circumambulation, which is a sacred practice. He couldn’t walk, so he did it by car.
I would see him, and it was always very powerful to be in his presence. Sometimes our eyes would meet. So, that was a very powerful event in my path.
Rick: Okay. And then I have a list of the teachers you’ve studied with here, and the next one that comes up is Shiv Rudra Balayogi, who’s been on BatGap.
Giovanni: Yeah. So, before that was Mooji.
Rick: Before we get to that.
Giovanni: Yes. Okay. Well, Shiv Rudra Balayogi—I got to know of him in 2005, the same year that I was going into Advaita. We exchanged a couple of emails, which, for me, was strange. A yogi answering an email to random visitors on a website.
But I felt, “Okay, this man is also self-realized.” I felt like I could take him as a guru, but he was self-realized more in the path of Raja Yoga, with really hardcore tapas, meditation for multiple hours a day, and so on.
I was attracted more to the path of yoga of self-inquiry. So, he was always someone who was in the back of my mind, whom I admired as a teacher and with whom I had some connection. But for the next 10 years, until I met him again, it was mostly the path of Advaita.
Rick: Okay. And then who was Nikhil Ganesh Maremanda? You mentioned him here.
Giovanni: Oh, yeah. That comes much after.
Rick: Okay. How are we getting to him? Do you just keep telling your story? I won’t try to guide you along. We’ll get away from your story into all kinds of specific considerations and topics as we go along here, too.
Giovanni: Yeah. So, I had read everything of Ramana’s that I could get my hands on—maybe 30 books. I really felt I understood how Ramana taught and what he was about.
Then, when I went to Tiruvannamalai that year to meet Lakshmana Swami, after that I also walked around Arunachala. There are many satsang teachers around—I think it’s called Ramana Nagar—and there are many of them. I don’t even remember their names, but I was going to their satsangs to check them out.
I thought, “Wow, this sounds like Advaita, but this isn’t really Advaita.” That was my first introduction to the world of Neo-Advaita.
I continued going to the other satsangs, just going once to each teacher. That was enough for me to get a feel for how people were teaching in this path: What were they recommending? What were they emphasizing? What were they missing?
It was an exercise to develop my own discernment regarding the teachings. Later on, I realized that this was really popular. It’s the most common way that Advaita Vedanta is being taught—through the lens of Neo-Advaita.
A lot of that is because of a great master called Papaji. Papaji was a disciple of Ramana, and he attained enlightenment through Ramana. He was very hardcore and very true, in my own reading, but his way of teaching emphasized non-effort.
It seems to me that his whole teaching was optimized for getting a person to where they are—to that first experience of the Self—as quickly as possible. For that, it’s not going to be a decade of meditation that’s going to do it. It’s another type of teaching and pointing.
He emphasized non-effort, letting go of everything, dropping everything, and just being quiet, here and now. If you’re able to do that in the presence of the Guru, with the Guru’s grace helping you, then you may have an experience of the Self.
But then what happens is that many people think that’s it because they don’t have that background, that spiritual study. They haven’t really studied the teachings of Ramana. They think that that’s it, and then they become certain types of teachers. That’s how Neo-Advaita happens.
Rick: You have a good article on your site about Neo-Advaita. I’ve read Timothy Conway’s whole article, and you quote Timothy. He’s been on BatGap a couple of times, but your article lays it out very nicely.
I already sent it to somebody who told me they didn’t know the difference between Advaita and Neo-Advaita, and she found it very helpful. But anyway, let’s talk a little bit about what Neo-Advaita is and how you came to the conclusion that maybe it’s not what Advaita is cracked up to be.
Giovanni: Ramana said a couple of things that help us understand and navigate this world of spirituality. One of them was, “There is an experience of liberation that many attain, and very few go beyond.” I’m paraphrasing from memory, so the words may be slightly different, but the important point is exactly this:
As you practice self-inquiry and are on the path, you may have an experience of the Self. This experience may be temporary, or, on some level, it may be a point of no return in some aspects. But it’s very easy to get stuck there and to feel that this is it, and that from now on you just have to continue being this and whatever needs to happen is going to happen.
Then the thinking starts to arise that your actions can only be the actions of God, or that they must always be right because they come from the Self and there’s only the Self.
Another thing Ramana said is, “In the presence of the master, samadhi can occur, but for it to be fully integrated, further effort is required.”
Ramana’s Teaching on Effort and Vasanas
Ramana spoke very clearly about the need for effort. He said that as long as there are vasanas—which are desires, fears, prejudices, or thought patterns that are automatic and unconscious—as long as these things exist, you still need further effort to abide in and dissolve into the Self.
Ramana spoke very clearly about the need for effort. He said that as long as there are vasanas—which are desires, fears, prejudices, or thought patterns that are automatic and unconscious—as long as these things exist, you still need further effort to abide in and dissolve into the Self.
Rick: Yeah. I wrote down several quotes from your book, or copied them. Here’s one: “Even though the Self is the only reality, there’s a clear instruction that spiritual practice is essential.” Ramana continually emphasized that only a ripe mind would be able to easily find liberation. For all other seekers, a long period of drying up through purposeful spiritual practice was needed, according to Ramana.
And here’s one from Nisargadatta: “There are so many who take the dawn for the noon, a momentary experience for full realization, and destroy even the little they gained by excess of pride. Humility and silence are essential for a sadhaka, a seeker. However advanced, only a fully ripened jnani can allow himself complete spontaneity.”
Giovanni: Yeah, I like that quote to be pasted on the wall of a satsang house.
Rick: Yeah.
Giovanni: So, that is Neo-Advaita. Neo-Advaita is mistaking a temporary realization for full realization. It ignores a lot of the key elements of the teachings that have always been there in Advaita.
One of them is the idea of brightness of mind. Ramana used to say that there are three classes of students or seekers. There are those who are like dry wood, those who are like wet wood, and those who are like gunpowder.
The ones who are like wet wood need a lot of practice and drying up, as it says in the quote, so that they are ready for the truth. The ones who are like dry wood need less practice, and those who are like gunpowder come into the presence of a master and just achieve the final, irreversible, ultimate realization.
The trick is that most people think they are level two or level three. Right? But most likely, they’re not.
The level-three people are people like Papaji and Ramana, who came into the presence of Ramana and achieved enlightenment. You can say that even people like Lakshmana Swami were probably in category two. He was like dry wood because he did decades of pranayama and japa, practicing mantra by himself for years, before he went to Ramana and had the awakening.
What I found in my own journey is that the more I study the teachings, the masters, and the tradition, the more I see how long this path is and how far away, in a way, full realization is.
So, you really need to be humble. You really need to follow the path and the teachings and the practices that you need right now to take the next step in your life.
It may be self-inquiry. It may be dealing with your anger. It may be reviewing some negative self-beliefs. It may be learning to concentrate the mind through practicing mantra or trataka, or anything else.
But we need to have greater clarity about what the path really is. This is a multi-life project. For most people, it’s a multi-life project.
You may be blessed with an experience of awakening quite early on, and that is a blessing. But that’s the beginning of the journey; it’s not the end.
Rick: Yeah, I’m totally in agreement with you. Not everyone is, as you know. I think some of the objections people bring up to this type of talk are that spiritual practice somehow reifies or increases the sense of a practitioner. So, it makes the ego even more solid because there’s a you who is doing something, and the whole point is to transcend the notion of a you who does things.
How would you respond to that particular point?
Giovanni: Well, Ramana understood that point quite well. He said it very well: Every practice reinforces a sense of ego because it is practiced by the ego, by the individual “I.” But Ramana, who also understood that, said that practice is essential.
Rick: So, why would he say that if it reinforces the sense of an “I”?
Giovanni: He also said that it’s useless to remain inactive in regard to the path of realization and active in regard to everything else in your life. If you say, “Okay, doing a practice just reinforces the ego, so I’m not going to do it,” but you’re doing all sorts of other things in your life that are also coming from the ego, then that’s not consistent.
There’s a metaphor of using one stick to move all the other sticks into the fire. When all the wood is in the fire, then you throw in that one last stick. But if you throw that one in before everything is on fire, then you have no means to burn all the other wood.
The path is many times described as crossing a river, from samsara to Nirvana—from ego to Self, from individuality to consciousness. But to cross this river, you need a boat. If, in the middle of the journey, you say, “Hey, no one on the other side of the river has a boat, and I’m going to have to give up this boat anyhow, so let me give it up now,” then you’re left with no other means to move forward. You’re probably going to drown.
The path is many times described as crossing a river, from samsara to Nirvana—from ego to Self, from individuality to consciousness. But to cross this river, you need a boat. If, in the middle of the journey, you say, “Hey, no one on the other side of the river has a boat, and I’m going to have to give up this boat anyhow, so let me give it up now,” then you’re left with no other means to move forward. You’re probably going to drown.
Rick: Yeah, one second here. Okay, so, yeah, that’s a good metaphor. Rama was also fond of the saying, “It takes a thorn to remove a thorn.” Ultimately, a practice might not make sense for the reasons people have raised: there is no practice, or you’re only going to reinforce a sense of being a practitioner, and so on. But at a certain stage, that might be just what you need.
Sometimes people even accuse practice of being like a crutch. But if you have a broken leg, you actually could use a crutch. It helps you until the leg heals, and then you can throw the crutch away.
Giovanni: Yeah, otherwise it might never heal.
Rick: Yeah.
Giovanni: Ramana said that you cannot leave a mess behind and go beyond.
Rick: Interesting point.
Giovanni: Can I leave a mess behind and go beyond? Right? It’s almost impossible to go from a very tamasic ego, from a very gross, exteriorized, materialized ego, to no ego. You might be able to make that jump occasionally for a short period of time, but your psyche doesn’t have the structure to just stay there. You’re going to be pulled back.
Rick: Yeah. And you’ve heard the term “spiritual bypassing,” I’m sure.
Giovanni: Yeah, so that’s what happens. They have that experience, and then they say, “Well, this seems more true than all that mess that I’m leaving behind. So I’m going to affirm this, and I’m going to deny that.”
Spiritual Bypassing and Attachment to Emptiness
Spiritual bypassing is based on denial. You’re not being honest with yourself or seeing things clearly. In Zen, they have this saying, “attachment to emptiness,” which is also known as the Zen sickness. It’s very hard once you get that experience. That’s why they spoke against it, because it’s very hard once you get that experience for some people who just feel, “No, no, this is it. I am the Self. There’s only the Self. I’ve seen it. So everything else must only be an illusion. Why should I work to change any of that? It doesn’t make any difference to the Self?”
And it doesn’t make any difference to the Self, but it makes a difference to the Self in manifestation, which is who you are right now. Whether you recognize it or not, you’re the Self manifesting.
Rick: Yeah. There’s another saying—I think it’s in the Chandogya Upanishad—that says, “Into great darkness go those who worship ignorance, into even greater darkness, as it were, go those who worship knowledge.” I think what that means is that this fixation on the absolute view, to the exclusion of relative considerations such as practices, ethics, and all that other stuff, can get you into hot water.
Giovanni: Yeah. They also say that a truth misunderstood causes much harm. The higher the truth that is misunderstood, the greater the damage.
Maybe that’s why, in the past, if you wanted to learn Advaita, you couldn’t buy a book in a bookstore. It didn’t work like that. You would have to serve a master for twelve years. In those twelve years, he is not teaching you Advaita; he is teaching you humility, teaching you to let go of the ego, teaching you the precepts and how to be in the world. He’s also teaching you more basic practices, such as pranayama and japa.
At the end of twelve years of preparation and self-purification, if you were deemed worthy, he would teach you the ultimate truth. That truth would land on a very different mind than the mind it would have landed on twelve years earlier.
Rick: Yeah. If anybody’s listening to this and disagrees with the things that we’re saying, go ahead and send in a question, and I’ll ask it. Giovanni and I are pretty much birds of a feather here, but we’re open to hearing reasonable objections to what we’re saying.
You can see how people don’t like this line of talk, because it sounds like a lot of work: “I’ve got to spend twelve years doing this before I reach anything.” There’s a sort of resonance effect, I think, that takes place when you read a lot of Ramana or other beautiful spiritual books. You kind of entrain—you know that word? You sort of tune in to what it’s saying. It actually does lift you to a higher state as you’re reading it.
If you read enough of it, you can actually come to feel that you’ve got it: “The world is an illusion. I am That. There is no person, and there is no free will,” and all these kinds of concepts. You get them ingrained into your psychology. But I have a feeling that, in most cases, it’s a far cry from what the experience could be if one were really living that and not mistaking an intellectual understanding of it for the living of it.
Giovanni: It can be really hard to make that shift. As we can learn from the way Papaji teaches, ignoring all the effort, ignoring all the preparation, ignoring the ego and the mess, and just trying to be here and now, letting go of everything and keeping quiet—that can lead to an experience that is extraordinary. It’s a milestone in spiritual life that is very significant.
But then moving forward, doing the same thing again and again and again, is not necessarily going to help you. Now you have seen it. You have seen the truth. But there’s still a gap between how you’re functioning as consciousness functioning as the ego Giovanni, or the ego Rick, or whatever, and pure consciousness. There’s a gap.
I may be wrong, but I don’t think that gap is going to be crossed by just going again and again and again, trying to return to that experience. Maybe it will, but it would require a very specific type of mind that is very strong and able to hold on to that.
Ramana said that self-inquiry begins when you hold on to the Self and are beyond all thoughts. So most people would say, “Okay, I’ve done very little self-inquiry, then.” If self-inquiry only begins there, then we really need to be humble about what we’re doing. We are in the preparation; we are on the path of purification of the mind.
It’s very clear that Ramana also said that only a sattvic mind, a pure mind, can grasp the truth. So, if your mind is not sattvic, forget having an experience of the truth. Your path now should be to make the mind sattvic.
Rick: Yeah. In a way, some people might be scared off by the word “effort,” because the thought of having to sit for an hour or two a day doing something effortful doesn’t sound very appealing, especially if you have to do that for years on end before you get anywhere.
My own experience—and I think yours might be similar—was that from day one, the experience was so enjoyable that “effort” really is not a relevant word. In fact, what I learned to practice didn’t involve effort. I was specifically instructed not to use effort, but to just be very natural and effortless with it.
It was so gratifying from day one. I was not a very disciplined person. I had dropped out of high school and everything, and I had gotten arrested a couple of times. But it was easy for me to stick with because it was so enjoyable. It was self-motivating. It was like eating a delicious piece of food: you want to keep eating it because it’s so good.
Giovanni: Yeah. So that is a very important point, a very important shift. If you can learn to enjoy your practice, then you will continue doing it.
It’s deeply ingrained in our system, our brain, and our biology that we will avoid pain and seek pleasure. So if you can find pleasure in your practice, if you can find an immediate benefit in your practice—not enlightenment, which may happen several lifetimes from now, but some immediate benefit and enjoyment—then you will continue to practice.
It need not be a struggle. It’s just part of my life. The more I do this, the better I feel, so why would I not do it?
Rick: Yeah, exactly. Also, when you say “enjoyment,” some people might compare it to sensory enjoyment. There are a lot of sensory things that you can enjoy, but you get sick of them after a while. The kind of enjoyment we’re talking about here is not like that. It doesn’t become distasteful through repeated experience; it actually becomes more and more charming.
Giovanni: Yeah. But most people will say, “Look, a spiritual practice—I kind of feel calm and centered afterward, but it’s not really enjoyable. A lot of the time it feels like work. Looking at my shadows and working through all of this mess feels like a lot of work.”
But if you understand that this is the best thing that you can do for yourself right now—not because you may have an awakening in the future, but because you feel that, right now, the more you follow these teachings, the better you live—then you will continue, even though sometimes it may be difficult and painful.
Rick: Yeah. Well, that’s good to emphasize, too. If we make it sound too rosy, then it’s not realistic. You mentioned purification. If purification is going to occur, there is going to have to be a release of impurities, and the release of impurities can be an unpleasant process while we’re going through it.
Giovanni: Yeah. In some paths, like the path of bhakti yoga, which is the path of devotion, the seeker falls in love with a version of the Divine. In India, at least, that usually has a name and a form. It’s just like an icon. It’s not that God is the name and form; that name and form is something used to focus the mind and feelings toward God.
But the interesting thing about this path, which is not a natural path for my own inclinations, is that because you’re falling in love with a version of the Divine, there is a sweetness to it. There’s an enjoyment to it. The more you love and are devoted to the Divine in a form, the more you feel that enjoyment.
So that is something to be said for the bhakti path: it can make this transition easier.
Rick: Yeah, there’s a principle here, which I think might apply to any path, which is that all beings have a natural tendency to want to seek a field of greater happiness. Whether it’s a dog chewing on a bone, a person falling in love, or you’re sitting and talking and some beautiful music comes on, our attention effortlessly shifts to it. There’s just this natural, innate drive that all beings have to seek a field of greater happiness.
And the thing we’re talking about here is traditionally described as being the greatest happiness: bliss, Ananda, happiness beyond any relative sensory experience. And so, any step in the direction of that, if it’s a genuine step, if we’re really moving in the direction of that, should result in some greater happiness. And that’s, in a way, the litmus test for whether it’s a valid step or not.
And so, if it does, then, as you were just saying, it’s self-reinforcing. We just naturally get into the groove of continuing to take steps in that direction because it pays off as we do.
Giovanni: Yeah, and if you think about it, lately meditation has become quite popular and quite mainstream. And meditation is only one of several practices on the spiritual path. I even wrote an article called “The 76 Benefits of Meditation.” There is scientific research proving that meditation is good for all sorts of things.
So, if you meditate, even if you spend the rest of your life meditating and never achieve any experience of awakening, let’s say worst-case scenario, still, you have lived much better than if you had spent that half an hour or one hour a day watching Netflix.
Rick: Yeah, I mean, chances are it may lower your blood pressure and improve your brainwave coherence and do all kinds of things that are good for you. These days, stress is a big deal, and depression is a big deal. Most people in the United States are on some form of antidepressant. So, even if it were only these mundane benefits, as you just said, it’s a great thing to add to your life.
Giovanni: Yeah, and then looking at enlightenment as a north, right? Not as a hard goal, not as something that I have to achieve, but as a north.
Rick: A north? What do you mean by that?
Giovanni: It’s where I’m pointing to. It’s where I’m walking toward. I see it as my direction. It’s my direction in life. It’s not something that I expect to arrive at any time soon. It’s just where I’m walking toward.
And then, if you have that attitude, it’s much less likely that you will feel disappointed by how much work there is to do and how far away you are from that ideal. It’s just the direction I’m walking toward. And then, if I can enjoy my path as I’m going, if I can see benefits in other areas of my life, and if part of me can sometimes even enjoy the practice, then why not? Is there anything better to do?
✨ An awakening experience with Mooji
Rick: You sent me a bunch of points, and I want to start going through them because these are interesting. Each one of them is a springboard to something we can talk about. We’ve already talked about a couple of them with regard to your journey, but there was also an important stage in your journey with Mooji. You’ve had an awakening with Mooji. So, do you want to talk about that a little bit?
Giovanni: Okay, so at that time in my journey, I was practicing self-inquiry compulsively. It was always there for me. With any thought or emotion, I would always kind of—not any thought, that’s a bit exaggerated—but with any emotion that would arise, I would immediately ask, “Who is the one perceiving this?” and kind of dissolve back into the Self. I was doing that multiple—
Rick: Twenty-four hours a day?
Giovanni: For emotions, yes.
Rick: Didn’t it kind of divide your mind to do that?
Giovanni: Well, by nature, I’m not a very emotional person, so there weren’t that many emotions. But emotion is something that is very close to the ego; it’s something that is very ingrained in the ego. So, for trivial thoughts, I wouldn’t bother so much. But when an emotion arose, I would ask that question.
And then, of course, I was also doing it during my one hour a day when I was only doing that. I was also watching Mooji’s satsangs at that time, maybe two hours a day, so I was really doing as much as I could to dive into that truth and to experience it.
What happened is that, in February 2010, I was in Tiruvannamalai. At that time, Mooji would walk around the mountain with a small group of devotees early in the morning. After the walk, we would sit in a chai shop, and a spontaneous satsang would occur. Maybe there were about 20 people. One of those days—before that, let me just come back a little bit and say that I also had some experiences when I was meditating, as if I were going to die, as if I were going to completely disappear.
Because that’s what self-inquiry is doing, right? Sadhguru calls it an ego suicide. When you actually get close to that, there is this fear that arises. By nature, I’m not a fearful person, but this fear arose in the middle of meditation. And then I thought, “I have lived as an ego, as an individual, for many lifetimes, like all of us. I want to go forward with this. And if it’s going to be the disappearance of me, let it be. I’m not going to be afraid to let it happen.”
I feel that releasing that fear like that prepared the ground. That fear never came back anymore. So, in 2010, I was in Tiruvannamalai, having that walk with Mooji. Then we sat in a chai shop, and we were all quiet.
Mooji started the satsang by saying, “You are the absolute awareness.” It’s a very Advaita sentence, something Mooji had said multiple times, maybe in every satsang, in one form or another. But that time, that sentence went through me completely.
It was as if consciousness had blinked, and the whole universe had blinked out of existence. For an instant, there was only the Self-aware. Then it blinked back into existence.
I was like, “Oh.” I didn’t know what had happened. There was just silence, something very different from what I had ever experienced. Something had dropped. Something had dropped, and I didn’t know what it was. Then I was quiet, very quiet inside.
I went to the morning satsang. In the afternoon, I had an interview with Mooji. Mooji had asked me a few days before—he had mentioned casually, “I would like to be interviewed by someone who asks really good spiritual questions all the time.” He hadn’t been interviewed by you yet.
I said, “Okay, would you feel like I would come up with some questions that could be helpful for the great majority of seekers in our interview?”
He said, “Okay, I would love that.”
So, I had prepared those questions beforehand. That afternoon was the day I was supposed to have the interview with Mooji. We went out for the interview, and I was already in that altered state. There were maybe five or six students around—Mooji, another five or six people, a very small group.
As I was going through the questions and asking them on behalf of everyone who might be watching that interview, at a certain point Mooji looked at me and said, “All these questions are good, but they are not your questions. I’m not being pulled to answer powerfully because they are not your questions.”
I said, “You asked me to ask them on behalf of everyone.”
He said, “No, but I need someone who comes to me powerfully wanting to be liberated.”
At that time, the thought came to me, “Okay, let me try to do this one more time.” With all my being, I tried to reawaken that feeling: “Okay, I want to be liberated. That’s all I want. One hundred percent—liberate me now.”
As I was trying to do that, I realized that I couldn’t. It didn’t make any sense. It would have been to create a fake sense of “I” in order for that “I” to be a seeker, only for that “I” to then be dissolved.
Rick: So, you had already kind of moved on from this intense seeker energy, and you didn’t want to whip it up again.
Giovanni: Yeah, I tried, but it just wasn’t happening. That psychological structure wasn’t there anymore, so I just couldn’t play that role for Mooji. I feel that something got triggered. Maybe he felt that, and he responded to it.
Soon the satsang finished, and after the cameras were off, we were all sitting quietly. There was silence, and then Mooji began to speak. At that time, I had already watched dozens of satsangs with Mooji and been in dozens of satsangs with Mooji, but I had never seen him speak the way he was speaking at the end of that satsang, with the cameras off.
It was coming from a different place. There was a dense silence in the room, and he continued speaking like that for maybe 20 or 30 minutes. It was as if he was channeling the Absolute. That’s the feeling I had.
After he left, the five of us just continued sitting there in silence. Then a couple of people came to me and said, “Thank you for these questions. I’ve never seen Mooji like that.”
“I’ve never seen Mooji like that either,” I said. Unfortunately, the cameras were off at the time.
But that was the day the big shift happened in me. I had no idea what had happened, and I had no desire to understand it. Over the next few days, I was just spending hours and hours in my room, lying down on my bed, staring at the wall, doing nothing, just being empty and silent, and going out for satsang and meals, basically.
I went to Mooji and said, “What’s happening? I mean, this state—I’m just spending hours and hours doing nothing, looking at the walls.”
He said, “I’m busy talking to people and running satsangs. Can we swap bodies?”
Rick: That’s pretty good.
Giovanni: So, that was it. There was a sense that I knew something had shifted, and I had no idea what it was. I had no desire to understand it. But over the next month of my life and the next years, I was just kind of marinating in that and allowing it to reveal itself.
Intuitively, I knew that this was not the end. It was a powerful milestone, but it wasn’t the end. So, I continued doing my self-inquiry. I just had no more inclination to be a seeker or even to read anything about spirituality. It continued like that for about four years.
That was also the same time that I moved to Australia. It was good that I was not in that spiritual thirst anymore because I needed my energy to make things work in the external world—with the migration, a new career, and so on.
Rick: What is your career outside of the meditation stuff?
Giovanni: Well, at that time, when I moved to Australia, I started becoming a programmer. I taught myself programming and made a life as a programmer for five years here before I quit the job.
📚 Discernment and imperfect teachers
Rick: Okay, good. So, in light of your beautiful experience with Mooji, what do you make of what’s going on these days with Mooji?
Giovanni: So, I saw that article. I didn’t read it line by line, but I skimmed through it. The article came out about a month or two ago, and I don’t know if those facts are true, if the things they say are true about his involvement with other women, etc. So, I cannot judge him, and I don’t wish to judge him in any way.
The only thing I can do is share my own discernment about this. I think every seeker needs to develop their own discernment on the path. That discernment is about themselves, but it’s also about the teachings and the teachers, so that they can find, in every moment, what really speaks to them.
My discernment was empowered by the framework of the Buddha of the four levels of awakening, or enlightenment. In level one, there is the experience of non-self. There is a dropping of the identity; that’s just level one. In level two, desire, fear, and aversion greatly diminish. In level three, they are overcome. Then, in level four, all forms of desire, pride, attachment, and so on—everything—is dropped.
Looking at this framework, I understood that what had happened for me was level one. I later spoke about this experience with a couple of Buddhist teachers who have been on your show, by the way. They said, “Yeah, that sounds like level one.”
So I said, “Okay, if what happened to me is level one, then where is Mooji on the scale?” From my understanding of the Buddhist teachings and Ramana’s teachings, I feel that he’s in level two. In level two, desire, fear, and aversion are greatly diminished, but they haven’t disappeared. If they haven’t disappeared, there is a chance that, moved by these poisons of the mind, the seeker—and he’s still a seeker at that stage—is bound to do certain things that are not conducive to his further growth or to the growth of the sangha. He has already taken on a teaching role.
So, I don’t know exactly what happened in the sangha. I don’t know what Mooji did. It would not break my worldview if all those things were true. I mean, it would break my worldview if those things were true about Ramana or about the Buddha. But about Mooji, seeing him within this larger spectrum, it would not break my worldview. So, I think those things might be true.
I think Mooji is a master for whom I’m deeply grateful, because it was because of him that I could have that experience. I’m sure that other people have had similar experiences, at one level or another. Mooji continues to serve the seekers out there.
But when you understand the deeper context of things, then you understand, “Okay, Mooji is not a perfected master.” If he’s not a perfected master, then he may do things that are not helpful to you as a student following Mooji. Therefore, you need to keep your discernment alive. You need to keep the eye of consciousness alive—not suspicious, not cynical.
If you take Mooji, or any of these masters, as your guru, there should be a certain level of trust and surrender. At the same time, you should keep your discernment alive. If your discernment tells you that some things are not right, that doesn’t mean you need to leave the master. You’re just seeking within a bigger context.
Rick: Yeah, it seems to me that any really good teacher is never going to tell you to discard your discernment, your discrimination. In fact, they would probably encourage you to use it. They would have an attitude of, “Ask me anything. If you have doubts, air your doubts. I don’t mind; I can deal with it.”
I don’t know. I can’t comment on what the scene might be around Mooji in that regard, but I think that’s a healthy attitude. Like you say, that kind of attitude doesn’t contradict the notion of being trusting and kind of innocent. You don’t have to be a cynic and doubt everything. Just be honest about what you know and what you don’t know, and feel comfortable asking about anything that you don’t know or that might trouble you. That’s how doubts get dispelled, isn’t it?
Giovanni: Yeah. Well, there are a couple of interesting and polemical points in what you said. The first is this: If you think that the master hasn’t achieved that final, ultimate awakening, he’s still a work in progress, right? So, he still has shadows. If he’s still a work in progress, he still needs to be practicing something to keep purifying the mind and growing.
But the trick with Neo-Advaita is that there’s this concept that all practice is illusory, the search is illusory, and you should give up the search. I wouldn’t really classify Mooji as Neo-Advaita, but there are some traces of it in his teachings, just as there are traces in the teachings of Papaji, who is a master that I absolutely respect and think is at level three or four.
Because there are those out there who promote the idea that there is no need to practice anything, that everything comes from the ego, it seems to me that this is the story Mooji is promoting to himself and others. I’m not sure how much self-reflection will happen to change certain things. If the teacher knows that he’s a work in progress and is acting like a work in progress, that’s better.
Rick: Yeah, some of the teachers I respect most, like Adyashanti, Shakti, Catarina, Margie, and others, always say, “I’m a work in progress.” They never try to give the impression that they’re finished and don’t have anything more to learn or grow into.
You know, Shankara offered another framework that was very helpful for me regarding full awakening or realization. He said there are three obstacles: ignorance, impurity, and dissipation of the mind.
Giovanni: You know, Shankara offered another framework that was very helpful for me regarding full awakening or realization. He said there are three obstacles: ignorance, impurity, and dissipation of the mind.
Neo-Advaita works only with the ignorance part. At the end of that path, you have less ignorance, or no ignorance, about who you are. But there are impurities in the mind in the form of vasanas, and there is dissipation of the mind. If your mind cannot become still, then that realization is not permanent. Unless you address those two elements, it’s not going to be.
Rick: Yeah, I would also question whether you could really be totally clear on who you are—the first point—if there are vasanas and impurities. You could have glimpses, I’m sure you could have glimpses, but I have a feeling that the vasanas and impurities, and the agitation of the mind, would prevent a genuinely clear, stable state of Self-realization. They just wouldn’t allow it.
Chances are, if you’ve dwelt a lot on Advaita principles but haven’t taken care of the purification, you’re going to end up mistaking an intellectual understanding of that for realization.
Giovanni: Yeah. And that’s part of the preparation that happens during those twelve years the disciple goes through before they try to—actually, this is becoming clear to me as we speak—they leave the ignorance, the final ignorance about the ego, to be tackled at the end.
If you tackle that at the beginning, there’s the risk of what happens with Neo-Advaita. They say, “Okay, the ego is ignorance. It’s an illusion. Why should I make all those other efforts?” But if you’ve already gone through those efforts, if you’ve already purified your mind and have a mind that can stay still on a single point without distraction, then the truth becomes clearer to you than it does otherwise.
Rick: Yeah. Some people might think it’s odd that there’s a tradition of secret teachings, and you don’t get the higher teachings until you have progressed through all these different stages. But I think we’ve kind of addressed it here. The teaching that could be extremely helpful at a certain advanced stage could actually be harmful at a more preliminary stage because you’re not capable of understanding it. It may confuse you, or you may end up misapplying it in some way.
Giovanni: And that depends on the discernment of the teacher or the seeker to know, “Am I ready for that type of teaching and practice or not?” Sometimes we’re going to misjudge, and the more spiritually mature we become, the better our conclusions about these things are going to be. Until then, we’re going to make mistakes and judge that we are at a point where we’re not.
Rick: And of course, these days, all the teachings are out there. It’s not like you can have them fed to you spoon by spoon as you progress. You can look at them. But Advaita is part of Vedanta, and Vedanta means the end of the Veda. The end means the final teaching, but it doesn’t mean that all the previous teachings of the Veda are irrelevant or useless. They all have their function in leading you up to the point where the final teaching is germane and relevant.
Giovanni: Yeah. Another point that you mentioned, which I myself question a lot, is this: You said no real teacher would ask you to let go of your discernment and be one hundred percent blindly devoted.
From my study, I’ve seen that in a lot of Indian traditions, apart from Buddhism, guru bhakti—the devotion to the guru—is so emphasized. It’s such an important element. In many texts and traditions, you even see them saying that you have to give yourself up to the guru and have no personal preferences; whatever the guru says is an order. There is no questioning and no hesitation. If the guru has flaws, you don’t look at them, because that would be unhelpful for your own growth.
Those teachings exist. They are traditional, and they are dangerous. But they’re also true, in my point of view.
Rick: I agree with you, actually. I think in probably a small percentage of cases, that might really work. Generally speaking, it would be a case where there’s a close personal relationship with the guru, and perhaps you’re living a reclusive lifestyle. You don’t have all kinds of other worldly responsibilities, and you could just become like an iron filing around a magnet, stuck in the immediate orbit of that guru.
But that’s one percent of the cases. The other ninety-nine percent have been cases of abuse.
Giovanni: Yeah. And that’s something that, for the West, doesn’t work. I will never promote these ideas. People who are ready for them will come and get to those ideas by themselves.
But the other important point is that this only works with one percent of the gurus as well—not only one percent of the seekers. I wouldn’t do that with a guru at level one or two, because there’s a good chance that they still have desires, aversions, and passions on a certain level that may still be harmful for you. There are very few gurus who are that elevated, with whom you can actually practice that safely.
Rick: Yeah, I don’t think I can name one. And if I can name one, I don’t think he’s asking people to do that. So, if anybody asks you to do that, chances are he’s not one of those people you should trust with it. Run the other way.
Giovanni: I would probably agree.
Rick: Yeah, a few good questions have come in. Let me ask you a few of these questions. Here’s one from Nicola Cvetkovic from Belgrade, Yugoslavia. I think she asks, as a woman, “How can one function in the world without ego? Many scholars have the interpretation that the world only exists from the point of view of the ego.”
Giovanni: From my understanding, a level of ego is always retained, even after realization. The metaphor that Ramana uses for this is that it’s like a burnt rope. It still looks like a rope, but it cannot be used to tie anything.
So your ego will still function like an ego. On some levels, and at some very sattvic, rarefied levels, it will still function like an ego as long as consciousness is embodied. But it cannot tell you anything anymore. It’s cleaned up. It’s harmless. And if it’s not harmless, it means that there’s further work to be done.
For everyone else, for all of us on the path, I would say that the priority shouldn’t be to think of destroying the ego or overcoming the ego, but rather to purify the ego—to move from tamasic and rajasic ego to a more sattvic ego.
Rick: Yeah, I’ve heard various people say that if you’re going to drop the ego, you can really only drop a healthy ego. So you can’t drop one that’s weak and impure. There has to be a lot of strengthening and purification before you can think about becoming egoless.
Giovanni: It’s like the question, “How can we cross the river without the boat?” You use the boat up to the very moment when you can jump out of the boat and land on land. Then you’re good.
Rick: Yeah. Thank you. Good.
Here’s a question that came in from Aaron Morton, from Dunedin, New Zealand. Aaron asks, “How important is the role of self-inquiry together with devotion?” I guess the idea is, can the two of them go hand in hand?
Giovanni: I think they can, if in your heart you feel that they’re both helpful for you right now. Practice them both together.
After I had been with Lakshmana Swami, and had that darshan experience, my path for a while became more of a self-surrender path rather than self-inquiry, because that’s what he taught: surrender to the Self in the heart. At the time, they were kind of happening together. So, yeah, they can be done together.
Rick: Okay. There’s a section of the notes you sent me. There are six different sections, and I think we’ve pretty much covered them. Actually, there’s one that we didn’t cover yet. In section one of your notes, you mentioned yoga and tantra, and then samadhi, mantra, and trataka. I think everybody knows what samadhi and mantra mean, and maybe even what tantra and yoga mean. But what is trataka?
Giovanni: Trataka is the meditation practice of gazing.
Rick: Gazing, okay. Like a candle or the wall, too?
Giovanni: Yeah, it’s usually done with a candle, but it can be a dot on the wall, it can be the moon, it can be a non-object, it can be a photo of your guru, it can be anything. The purpose is to concentrate the mind.
I think the context for that note is that, as I moved—as I kind of had an awakening in Advaita—why did I go back to Advaita? When the Shakti awakened for me four years after that, why did I go back to Advaita?
Well, it was because of my understanding from the chakra framework of the three poisons and the Buddhist framework of the four levels of awakening. I realized that what I need most in my journey right now is the ability to purify the mind and concentrate the mind, to remove the dissipation of the mind.
There are a lot of things in Ramana’s teachings that say the same thing. Then I thought, “Okay, of all the methods of focusing the mind, of all the methods of concentration, which ones are going to be most helpful for me?” Is it going to be to focus on the I, which is like the most subtle of all subtle things? Or, according to the yogis, do you start by mastering your mind by focusing on things that are more concrete?
A mantra is a sound, so it’s kind of concrete, or something that you’re gazing at. That’s concrete.
Rick: Have you ever done mantra practice?
Giovanni: Yeah. So nowadays, mantra and trataka are my main practices.
Rick: Okay. Where did you get your mantra?
Giovanni: I was initiated by a tantric guru in India, and he gave me the mantra.
Rick: Okay, good.
🛤️ Gradual and direct paths
Okay, a second section, if you noticed, is about the gradual versus the direct path. I think this is interesting. I hosted a panel discussion at the Science and Nonduality Conference on this very topic. Of the points that you wrote down, one is “maturity bias of the masters.” What does that mean?
Giovanni: This is something that I have realized helps me put things in perspective on the path. Masters like Ramana Maharshi, when they teach, are at the top. It’s like they were like us many lifetimes ago, but they don’t really have that context anymore. They have lost that context of what it’s like to be us.
Rick: What it’s like to be us.
Giovanni: Right. So they can see us, and maybe some masters can even read our minds. But sometimes the teachings and practices, the advice that they give, require a level of strength and purity that we just don’t have.
It seems to me that, with some rare exceptions, the more advanced the master is, the more hardcore the teachings will be, and the more difficult it will be for the great majority of seekers to really apply them. You will need something to bridge the gap.
Teachers who are closer to us in terms of maturity and progress understand better what it is to struggle, what it is to be where we are on the path. They can give us things that are more concrete and more helpful for the next step that we need to take.
Rick: Yeah, there’s a saying in India that when the mangoes are ripe, the branches bend down so that people can easily pick the fruit. I think it’s possible for a teacher to be very advanced and yet to have the flexibility to teach all kinds of different levels, so he can meet people where they are.
In fact, Ramana was somewhat famous for being able to do that. He would say different things to different people according to their orientation, their aptitude, and their level of development.
But it’s an interesting point. Obviously, I started teaching meditation when I was 21 years old. As I remember, one time I was teaching—I had been meditating for two or three years—and some guy said, “I want to be like you.” I thought, “What in the world would you want to be like me for? I’m kind of a beginner. I just have this ability because I’ve been taught to teach you this systematic thing.”
It’s like a kid goes to school in first grade and comes home, and his little sister says, “What did you learn?” He says, “Well, I learned A and B, and I learned C.” And she says, “What else did you learn?” He says, “I’ll tell you tomorrow after I go back.” So, we can teach something even though we may not have the highest teaching or realization. We can be evaluated.
Giovanni: That’s the point in this understanding of advanced masters and their maturity bias. It means that there is a space for other teachers on the path who are less developed to fill that role.
If I need to learn basic arithmetic, I don’t need to go to a PhD in mathematics.
Rick: Right. It’s going to be a waste of his time.
Giovanni: Maybe he can teach me mathematics very well, right? But maybe the person who teaches arithmetic, and that’s all he teaches all day long to students who are on that level, knows how to teach that part better to people who are on that level.
The reason why that was important for me is that I always wanted to go to the highest teaching, the most advanced master, and the most direct path. I realized that sometimes that’s not what’s most helpful.
Rick: It’s a good point. Some people complain about all these teachers out there offering satsangs to little groups and offering webinars and all that stuff. They say, “There are so few teachers who are really great teachers, like Ramana or Papaji.”
But I think we’re in a time when it’s appropriate for there to be armies of teachers running around, able to teach a certain niche, a certain group. In fact, when I became a teacher, one of the things that Maharishi Mahesh Yogi said to us was, “When there’s a war on, there’s no time to train sharpshooters. Just give them a gun and send them out.”
He gave us some basic instructions on how to teach, and we were just like kids, basically sent us out, and it had some effect.
Giovanni: It’s just important to keep in mind that the best teacher, the best path, and the best practice for you are whatever is helpful for you in taking the next step.
Rick: Yeah, that’s a good point. Okay, I think we’ve covered that. We’ve covered some of these other points in the first group of your points. What does this one mean: “The highest standards of the yogis,” and then you have Shiva Bala Yogi in parentheses?
Giovanni: That’s again about the maturity bias. Shiva Bala Yogi is someone I have spent time with and whose ashram I have visited in India. He and his master say that meditation is when you can spend at least an hour without a single thought arising. If you cannot do that, you’re trying to meditate; you’re not meditating, right?
Rick: That has to be pretty frustrating to the average person who hears that instruction. They’re going to think, “What?”
Giovanni: That is the most motivating thing I’ve ever heard.
I dug a little bit and asked other disciples and devotees, including Ambaji, who has been with Shiva Bala Yogi from the very beginning, “Can you stay an hour without a thought, just focusing here, which is where the teaching practice is?” She said no, and I don’t know anyone who can.
Rick: Good. Yeah. Okay.
Giovanni: So there’s a big disconnect between where we are and where he sees us at the beginning. Maybe his teachings are not the most helpful in helping us bridge that gap.
Rick: Yeah, there’s a saying that a person could be sitting on the top of a mountain, shouting instructions and describing what he experiences from the mountaintop. But that’s not necessarily going to be really helpful to people who are climbing the mountain.
What he needs to offer—or someone needs to offer—are instructions about where they are in their progress up the mountain: “Watch out for this rock. Watch out for this avalanche. Go over this way,” and so on. That’s what’s actually going to get them to enjoy the same view that the person at the top of the mountain has.
Giovanni: Yeah. And that’s the role for teachers like you and me, and for many people who have come to your site and your podcast. We try to bridge that gap. We understand those high standards, and we are moving toward them, but we understand that people will need so many things before they can start doing that.
Rick: Yeah. And it’s nice to have the high standards too, because you want to have a vision of what’s actually possible. That’s inspiring. But there are different teachings for different levels of development, and those are relevant to all. I think we’ve covered that point.
🛤️ Do all paths lead to the same goal?
Now, this is an interesting little section of points here: nonsectarian spirituality. The first point is, do all paths really lead to the same goal? I’ve had this discussion a lot with some friends, Dana Sawyer among them, who’s been on BatGap a couple of times. If you had Jesus and Buddha and Krishna and Rama and all these great figures in a room together to have tea and a chat, would they actually realize that they were all experiencing the same thing? What do you say to that?
Giovanni: I think that, at least for me, but perhaps for many of us, we have always had this idea that all of these teachings are different paths to the same end. But after two decades of spiritual search, I’m questioning myself: Is it really so? Is it really that the difference is only because the explanations that they give are shaped by the fact that different teachers have different temperaments, or they’re speaking to people of different temperaments, or they come from different cultural backgrounds? That is what colors the different explanations that they give about the path, the goal, and the practice.
But if I look deeply into these things, it doesn’t seem to me that this is the case. Just to give one small example, Ramana and Shankara said that to keep a body, however subtle, is to throw a veil of ignorance over reality. So, from their point of view, a fully realized master has really dissolved into the Self and does not exist as an individual on any level, anywhere in the cosmos. He just disappears.
Rick: Once he’s dead, or even while he’s alive?
Giovanni: Once he’s dead, because that would be the final stage. He drops his final body, he drops all the bodies, and he doesn’t exist anymore. So praying to Ramana wouldn’t make sense, because there is no Ramana there. Some force of the universe may respond, but not Brahman.
That seems to be what Ramana and Shankara and other Advaitins are saying. But you go to another lineage, let’s say the lineage of Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya, and Yogananda, and you see that they speak of the master leaving the body and continuing to do work on subtle levels of reality to help people around them. They also speak of a master who is already completely realized taking another body to come and do more work in this world, and so on.
So I’m trying to understand this and see how all of this fits into the picture. One option is that these are two different things: one of them is right and the other one is wrong. Another option is that they’re actually different goals. Maybe the end of the spiritual journey for Advaita Vedanta is complete self-effacement into the Self. Maybe many other paths don’t want that. They want to stick around.
Maybe that’s the story of the bodhisattva in Buddhism. They could become a Buddha and just dissolve into nirvana, but they choose to stick around and continue to play in existence.
Rick: I’ve probably spoken to maybe a dozen people who’ve actually had experiences with Rama, in some cases before they ever even heard of him. Then later on, they saw a picture of him in a book or something and said, “That was the guy that I saw, the one who came to me.”
So it might have been that Rama got a surprise after he died and realized that he was still going to serve some kind of role in creation. I don’t know.
But I think one thing on this point is that, sure, different paths might have different goals. Ultimately, though, I think we would agree that there is some ultimate reality to the universe. You can’t have as many ultimate realities as there are paths, because then they wouldn’t be ultimate; they would just be relative realities.
Theoretically, the highest spiritual teachings, whatever they might be, will all lead to that ultimate reality. If they didn’t, then they weren’t the highest; they would lead to some relative degree of attainment. Although the different cultures in which those traditions arose might use different language to try to describe that ultimate reality, it would still be the same thing.
Different beings might have different roles to play. Maybe some of them do dissolve like a drop into the ocean and no longer exist in any way, shape, or form. Maybe some retain some kind of form through which they can function. That might just be an individual dharma thing—you know, what your role is to play.
Still, we come back to the point that ultimately there should be some ultimate reality, and that enlightenment is ultimately about the realization of that.
Giovanni: Yeah, reality needs to be one. But maybe there are different possibilities. Maybe there’s a choice as you’re going along the spiritual path: Do I want to just disappear into the eternal, or do I want to play in manifestation?
The eternal, the One without a second, is both Brahman and Maya. So do I want to be just Brahman, or do I want to continue being Brahman but also be in Maya? Maybe that’s a choice that they have.
Rick: Yeah. Also, with regard to God, there’s that choice: Do I want to be totally merged, or do I want to maintain some separation for the sake of devotion? That question is a traditional one.
Giovanni: Yeah. Because if I think that the whole spiritual path is for the ultimate goal of disappearing, that doesn’t motivate me so much.
Rick: Yeah.
Giovanni: Some people may say, “That’s because you were attached to an ego. You want to continue existing as an individual.” But then I say, is the universe in a hurry for us to awaken?
If we look at the Vedas, before there was only Brahman, and then from time to time Brahman manifests as the universe. Then it goes back to a time when there’s only Brahman. When it is manifesting as the universe, is it in a hurry? Is it saying, “Okay, now there is illusion. Let’s make sure that all these individual beings awaken, and make sure that this show finishes as quickly as possible”? Is that the purpose? That doesn’t make sense to me.
Rick: Yeah, it seems that the universe has a great deal of patience. It’s on a pretty big timescale—13.7 billion years in this particular cycle of it. It’s said that there are numerous cycles, and perhaps infinite universes. So it’s a big picture.
In my experience and understanding, the ride is enjoyable. I don’t really sweat it in terms of whether I’ll cease to exist, whether I’ll come back, or whether there’ll be some role to play on some level or other. It’s like, leave it in God’s hands and do the best one can to be an instrument of that divine intelligence.
Giovanni: In this sense, I like the concept of lila.
Rick: Yeah.
Giovanni: I think that the tantric tradition perhaps got this in a way that is more appealing for most of us.
Rick: More than Advaita Vedanta, at least.
Giovanni: Yeah, because it is a bit more holistic. In the tantric tradition, the universe is the lila of the Supreme. If the Supreme just wanted to be the Supreme, it wouldn’t have manifested at all. It doesn’t manifest so that the manifestation can finish as quickly as possible. It’s part of its nature to be the Supreme and to manifest as a universe. That’s its lila.
If we see it as lila, then there’s a lightness about it. For me, it’s much more motivating, and it feels very different in the way I approach the spiritual path.
Rick: I think that’s a great point, and that point inspires me. It comes up fairly often in conversations here.
Also, consider the notion of God. If we look at the universe, any little bit of it, and consider what a marvel it is—how many atoms are in this glass, what’s happening in each of those atoms and subatomic particles, and the whole thing—I mean, if the whole thing were just random and accidental, as some materialists try to say it is, the second law of thermodynamics would have ground it to dust a long time ago. In fact, it never would have arisen.
There’s this notion of biocentrism, and there are about two hundred different variables, any one of which, if it had been slightly off—the strength of gravity, for example, or various other things—we wouldn’t have had a universe, or we wouldn’t have had any life in the universe.
And yet we do have the universe and life, and all these variables were perfectly tuned to enable that to happen. That doesn’t seem like randomness or accident. It seems like profoundly designed intelligence that has orchestrated this thing and set it up in a way that we can barely comprehend.
So, a bit about meditation. Your book is called Practical Meditation, and you pretty much summarize all the different kinds of meditation that one might practice. It’s nicely illustrated, with all kinds of cool material in it.
Do you see all the various meditations as being equal, or do you see them as different strokes for different folks, with people naturally gravitating toward one form of meditation or another according to their inclinations or nature?
Giovanni: Yes—and yes. Basically, I think that there are different ways of looking at all of these meditation techniques. Each of them offers a lot of common benefits, regardless of the technique you choose. But each has a different kind of taste and experience, and different benefits as well.
It depends on your personality. The meditation you choose can depend on your personality, and even on things like whether you’re more of an auditory person, a visual person, or a body-oriented person.
If you’re more of a body-oriented person, you may really enjoy breath-awareness meditation, and that may come naturally to you. If you’re more of an auditory person, you may like mantra or sound meditation, or you may like nada yoga. If you’re more of a visual person, you may like trataka, or gazing meditation.
There are many elements involved in choosing a meditation technique. There is going to be one that flows better for you. It also depends on what you need to develop most at this time in your journey.
If what you need to develop most is letting go of certain negative emotions, overcoming anger, becoming more empathetic and loving, or opening your heart, then maybe loving-kindness meditation from the Buddhist tradition is the best one for you right now.
If your mind is really messy and dissipated, I would say trataka is really powerful for uniting the stream of the mind through gazing.
So it depends on many things. I would say that one meditation practice is not better than the others, just as one path is not better than another.
Unfortunately, I see a lot of this sectarian thinking out there. I see it in Zen, I see it in the passion traditions, I see it in Advaita, and I see it in TM. People say, “This is the best, and the other ones are inferior,” or that the other practices just strengthen the ego, or whatever.
I think that is a very narrow-minded way of looking at things, and it misses the larger picture. Different people need different practices. The best practice is the one that works for you at this moment in your journey. Five years from now, it may be different.
Rick: Yeah, you know, I think there’s a human tendency to want to feel that what I am doing is the best because, if it’s not the best, why am I doing it? I should be doing something else if something else is better. So it must be the best because I’m doing it.
Giovanni: Yeah, and you see, even the Masters reinforce that. Ramana says that self-inquiry and self-surrender are the superior techniques, and your teacher says that Kriya Yoga is the best way to evolve.
Rick: Mark and Yogananda said that Kriya Yoga was like an airplane that could get you somewhere quickly. And then Maharishi Mahesh Yogi came along and said, “Well, yeah, fine, but TM is the jet plane. It goes faster than the airplane.”
Giovanni: Yeah, so it’s a form of indulgence. Why do even the Masters indulge this type of thinking? I feel that, as you mentioned, there is some usefulness to that. There is even some usefulness to dogma. If I am with a master and on a path, and he says, “This is the best path, the only way forward, the most effective technique,” then I can say, “Okay, I’m not going to think about anything else. I’m going to focus on this one hundred percent,” and we’re going to have better results.
But if all techniques are equally good, beautiful, and useful, which is kind of what I’m pointing to, it may be that a person doesn’t know where to begin. So what I say is that you have a period of experimentation in which you are exploring and going wide. Then you have a time when you’re going deep. Ideally, you choose one path, one way, one practice, and stick to that, but you do that after you have experimented and broadened your view.
Rick: Of course, the dark side of this is when you get people who say, “Well, anybody who doesn’t believe what I believe is an infidel and should actually be killed or converted.” Those are the two choices. Otherwise, the whole world is eventually going to either be killed or converted, so it will all be one thing. Those are the kinds of extreme values of this line of thinking.
Hmm. Okay. It’s kind of useful to go through these notes because we’re bringing out some things that I don’t always talk about. You mentioned the word “charging,” presuming money is involved, and some people say that nobody should charge for spiritual teaching. Others say, “Well, yeah, but teachers have to eat and pay the rent.” So what is your attitude toward that?
Giovanni: In the beginning, I was very against charging anything for spiritual teaching or even meditation. Little by little, I changed my mind about that, and that’s why I started the blog.
I think there are some important points here to clarify. First, we can teach and practice meditation outside of a spiritual search, right? There are many people who do that, and increasingly in the West, especially with mindfulness and depression, people are seeking meditation. They don’t want all that spiritual stuff. They don’t want a spiritual path or spiritual concepts; they just want a practice that will help them deal with anxiety.
Many people who come to me need that. If I give them the practice and their anxiety improves, if they manage it better or it may even disappear, then they may be open to asking, “Okay, so what else is there? If this makes such a difference in my life, what else is there? Is it that those ancient yogis invented one thing that is a gem and everything else is rubbish? Probably not. There are probably some other gems in what they said as well.”
If you think about what happened to yoga in the past, it was the same thing. People would frown upon you teaching yoga—I’m talking about the asanas—and being paid for it. But now it’s just commonplace. If I want to do asanas, I’m going to pay for a studio teacher, someone who lives by doing that, and that’s okay.
If I go to yoga in a cave, I probably don’t need to pay anything. But there are people who are paying for his life, and people who are donating things to him. The same will happen with meditation. We are still in that phase where people who are very traditional in meditation, like myself in a way, feel a bit uncomfortable charging for meditation.
But if you’re teaching meditation in a secular context, as a tool for growth, healing, or self-exploration, then you’re not charging for spiritual teachings. That’s one thing.
The other important thing is, let’s say that this argument that you shouldn’t charge for meditation and spirituality wins. Let’s say that everyone is convinced by that. There are some people who are not going to be convinced by that, and those are companies—companies that are looking at these things simply as a source of profit. They will continue to promote and create apps, books, retreats, and whatever else.
If you convince everyone who is a true spiritual seeker, who wants to dedicate his life to sharing these teachings and practices, not to do that because they shouldn’t charge, they’re going to have to have a job. Their ability to dedicate themselves to this is going to be severely diminished.
That is not in service of people, because the spiritual aspect of meditation will become smaller and smaller. People who have a spiritual background do not want to charge for meditation, but people who don’t have a spiritual background will look at meditation as a business. What happens is that their version of meditation is going to be the one that gets spread, and I don’t think that’s good for anyone.
Rick: I mean, back in the olden days, a monk would go around with his begging bowl and get enough food to eat. There would be some support from the community for the ashram or wherever the monks lived, and they would teach.
There was a sort of socialist support for them. These days, in the West, teachers can’t really do that. They have rent to pay, and maybe health insurance, food, and all that stuff.
So it’s kind of silly to say, “Well, spirituality is about consciousness, and consciousness is a far cry from money, so there shouldn’t be any money involved.” But, like everything else, it can be taken to extremes and abused, and it can become a mercenary kind of endeavor.
Again, students should probably use their discernment and discrimination and decide whether they feel comfortable with the way the whole money issue is being handled by a teacher with whom they want to get involved.
Giovanni: Yeah, and I would say that the more sincere teachers and seekers who have something to share are able to make a comfortable living, dedicating themselves fully to the teaching, the more the Dharma, in all its versions, will flourish.
This is something that I learned only recently, but even in the Vedas, and even in the ancient traditions, there is this idea that you cannot, or should not, get knowledge for free. If there is a master or teacher giving you knowledge or giving you a technique, they even had the idea that if you get it for free, it’s not going to work.
Rick: So, there’s dakshina.
Giovanni: Dakshina, exactly. You can see it as a kind of energetic exchange. From a psychological level, it makes sense. We don’t value things that we don’t pay for in many respects.
With dakshina, if you want to receive something that is so valuable from the guru or teacher, you need to give something back. That something could be money to help him pay his bills, knowledge, or service in the form of seva, but you need to give something back.
Nowadays, in our type of society, that’s usually money, which helps the teacher continue to live and teach full time.
Rick: Yeah, it’s a medium of exchange. You could very well give them a cow, and it’s not going to be so useful.
🕊️ Siddhis and spiritual development
Okay, final topic, and then we’ll wrap it up. Someone, a friend of yours named Daniel from Newport, Vermont, said, “Hey, Giovanni, it’s your friend Daniel. Do you feel that occult practices and learning siddhis can help one transmit teachings of awakening, being able to really see someone and know what teaching or transmission of energy to give?”
I know that you yourself started out with occult practices many years ago. In your notes here, you say, “The spiritual taboo on psychic powers and their role in liberating science.” So what do you have to say about all of that?
Giovanni: It’s a big topic, and it’s controversial. But let me start by saying this: If you look at the Yoga Sutras, one-sixth of all the verses are about siddhis. At that time, it was very difficult to write; they didn’t have paper. They potentially only wrote 240 verses, and they dedicated a big part of them to explaining how to develop siddhis and so forth.
Siddhis have been a part of spiritual awakening and spiritual paths in many traditions. Some people hate them and think that they’re just a distraction. Some people love them and seek them for what they are. And some people say that they can be useful or they can be hindrances.
In the Yoga Sutras, in verse 37 or 38, it says that these siddhis are obstacles to the mind in samadhi, but they are faculties of the exteriorized mind. When you are in samadhi, in that deep state of union, and these siddhis appear—perhaps you have a vision of your past life, or you start levitating, or whatever it is—if that appears in that state, it’s a distraction.
But the exteriorized mind is different. The yogi does not live in samadhi all the time; he lives in the world. So when he comes out of samadhi, those siddhis are faculties and things that he can use.
Just read Autobiography of a Yogi by Yogananda, or Living with the Himalayan Masters by Swami Rama, and you see that very advanced yogis and masters had siddhis, and they did use them on certain occasions—always for good things, not for entertainment or showing off, but for good things.
So yes, I think that, as a teacher, if the teacher has the siddhi to look at a student, understand everything that is going on in the student’s life, and see the student deeply without the student needing to explain much, that can be very helpful.
I have a friend who is an ex-monk from a Tibetan tradition, and he says that in Tibetan Buddhism, a perfect master would have all of these skills so that he can truly serve at a deeper level.
Rick: So, congruent with Christianity? Jesus had a bunch of different siddhis, according to—
Giovanni: Yeah. Siddhis are something that can come on the path as you’re practicing. They are something that can be purposefully sought after for a certain period of time. If you do that, the skills you develop in trying to develop a siddhi will be helpful for other things on your path as well.
But it should never be misused, and that’s the big challenge. Once a person gets those siddhis, it’s very easy to fall into the ego, to want to show off, or to want to use them to fulfill other types of desires that they should not be used for.
Rick: Yeah, you can go over to the dark side, like Darth Vader, and use them to strangle people or whatever he did. But yeah, I think it’s a good point. I mean, I know very—have you ever experienced a siddhi or developed one?
Giovanni: I haven’t developed the siddhis, but I have experienced some of them at times.
Rick: Yeah, it’s good that we brought it up. Like you say, we could talk about it for a long time, and we don’t have the time to do that. But it is there. In pretty much every spiritual tradition, and it certainly was a big part of the Yoga Sutras. The Buddha is reputed to have had all kinds of different siddhis.
So, it’s a little bit simplistic, I think, to just brush it off as a distraction or an obstacle. It seems to have had, and seems to continue to have, a role in higher forms of spirituality. So, it’s perhaps something to take seriously and understand.
Giovanni: Yeah, I mean, if you think of a person coming to a yogi or a guru and saying, “I’m interested in practicing meditation only to have a better memory. It’s going to be useful in my life,” the obvious response is, “I’m going to teach you meditation. You’re going to have a better memory, and you’re going to have many other things,” right?
But another person comes to the guru and says, “I want to learn meditation so I can remember my past lives.” Then suddenly it’s like, “Shame on you. How dare you? This is an obstacle,” et cetera. It’s not so different. It’s a skill of the mind, and it’s not the end goal. But if that’s what is motivating a person to learn meditation and to be on the path, I’d say, do it. Just go for it.
But at the same time, understand that this is only a small chapter in a larger story and a higher goal.
Rick: Yeah, which brings us back to a point we’ve made a number of times during this interview: There is a value to knowledge. If you just really ponder this stuff, really think about it, and dwell on it—which is one of the pillars of spiritual practice in many traditions, you know, knowledge and dwelling, keeping your attention on this kind of thing—everything tends to fall into its proper context.
You don’t overemphasize something to the exclusion of others. That’s part of the reason I do these interviews. This helps me to keep myself focused on knowledge, but it also, I think, helps the people who listen to them and broadens their perspective, hopefully.
Giovanni: Yeah. Before we finalize, I just want to touch on the topic of the role of the siddhis in liberating science. Our Western civilization and culture are heavily based on science, and our science is very materialistic, right?
If our science became more spiritualized, if it started studying spiritual topics more, if it started opening up to that whole level of reality, then there would be so many positive benefits. So many areas, like medicine and philosophy, would be hugely beneficial for society.
If science started to say, “Look, there’s actually more to our life than this body, and our actions matter, and there’s karma,” imagine if that could be proven in the end. Imagine if there are past lives and we’re actually more connected than we think. Some people can even read each other’s minds. That would change the worldview of millions of people, little by little.
Rick: Yeah, that’s my favorite topic. I gave a talk at the Science and Nonduality Conference in 2015 about that. You and I could go on for another two hours about it, but we’re not going to be able to right now.
It’s a very important point. We live in a scientific age. Spirituality can really get science on the right track, and science can really help spirituality by giving it a more empirical, practical, systematic, and verifiable orientation.
Giovanni: Once some advanced yogis who have mastered these siddhis decide to come forward and demonstrate them by scientific means, and there is no explanation within science for what they’re doing, that will force science to review some of its paradigms.
Rick: Yep. Paradigms will have to shift.
Closing thoughts
Okay, well, obviously I enjoy talking to you, and we’re going to have to conclude. You teach—you have some kind of online meditation program that people can go through in a step-by-step way and try various kinds of meditation, then hopefully find one that they want to stick with.
Giovanni: Sure. For those who want to learn more, they can check out Live and Dare, which is my website.
Rick: We’ll link to it from your page.
Giovanni: Yeah, and the program is called Limitless Life. It’s really for everyone who wants to start or deepen a meditation practice, but it specifically focuses on people struggling with anxiety.
Rick: Good. Okay, so I guess we’re going to conclude now. An interview can never be as comprehensive as I would like it to be, because I would like to talk to you for eight hours and really get everything, but this is a kind of sampling. It’s a taste.
Those who find Giovanni’s points worthy of deeper exploration can go to his website, which I’ll link to from his page on BatGap.com. There are some very interesting articles on his site to read, and you can sign up for his email newsletter, right? You’ll be notified of webinars and so on. Buy his book if you want to; I’ll have a link to that.
Okay, thanks, Giovanni, and thanks to those who have been listening or watching. Next week I’ll be speaking with Dani Antman, and we’re going to be talking about Kabbalah. I don’t think I’ve ever done an interview on that, so it’s about time that I got around to doing one. I’ll see you then. Thanks.
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