Jan Esmann 2nd Interview

Questions this interview answers

• What is the difference between awakening and self-realization?
• How can one recognize true self-realization versus spiritual awakening?
• Is self-realization a permanent and irreversible shift?
• Why is identification with the mind an obstacle to enlightenment?

Key takeaways

• Awakening is a shift in perspective but is not the same as self-realization.
• Self-realization involves a complete loss of identification with the mind and ego.
• The sense of 'I am' is not the final realization; true self-realization goes beyond it.
• Self-realization is a sudden, irreversible shift that cannot be lost once attained.
• Practices and serious introspection are necessary for self-realization, not just intellectual understanding.
• Many popular teachers may facilitate awakening but not true self-realization.

Transcript

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer and my guest today is Jan Esmann or in Denmark pronounced Jan. I had Jan on the show almost three years ago and I listened to that interview just this week and found it really interesting. No credit to me, it was just a really fascinating account of your spiritual journey. And let me just, we’ll touch on some of those things that came up in the last interview and expand upon them, but let me just read a brief intro bio so that people know who you are. You were born in 1960, grew up in Burry, England. Your parents were Danish. In ’67 your family moved to Denmark. From an early age you showed strong spiritual yearnings. You trained as an artist and also studied art restoration. You got an MA in History of Modern Culture.

Today you work as a full-time professional artist and also have a software company developing photo retouching plug-ins for Photoshop. I’ll just switch this to the third person. After doing TM and the TM-Sidhi program for six years, Jan felt the need for a guru and found Gururaj Ananda Yogi, whom he stayed with for three years. Then Jan’s kundalini was so active that he did not need any other guidance than what the Shakti gave, so he gave up on gurus and meditated by observing the inner Shakti’s workings. Following this, Jan began to be contagious and the kundalini might spontaneously awaken in those that meditated with him. After some years Jan met Amma, the hugging saint, and related to her as a spiritual master for about ten years. But again the Shakti guided Jan to meditate on his own and follow the inner guidance of the Shakti.

Today Jan would describe his spirituality as being grabbed by Mother’s grace, the Divine Mother who resides in everybody as kundalini Shakti and patiently waits to unfold as a vibrating field of love, bliss and grace. Now since we did the first interview, Jan has published three books. One is “

Lovebliss: The Essence of Self-realization”. The second one is “Enlightenment 101: From Ignorance to Grace”. And the third is “

Kundalini Tantra: Song of Liberation”. So we’re going to talk about all three. Jan mentioned that, and particularly on the last one we’re going to focus on, but Jan mentioned that he might like to start with a review of his understanding and experience of the states or stages of consciousness, which is covered in some detail in his first book, “Lovebliss”. So why don’t you start right in on that Jan, and then I’ll naturally be asking questions as we go along.

✨ Understanding Enlightenment: Awakening vs. Self-Realization

Jan: Yeah, well it’s difficult to just summarize it because it’s very complex, but there are four or three distinct different kinds of enlightenment. One I call Self-realization, the other is a term I took from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi called God consciousness, and the third I also took from Maharishi called Unity consciousness. And the one phase which goes before enlightenment is called awakening. And awakening is a very popular term today, but it’s got nothing to do with enlightenment. So maybe in order to understand what awakening is, we have to understand what self-realization is, so we can understand that awakening has nothing to do with self-realization. The self, first we have to understand that the self is void, it’s pure being. There is absolutely nothing going on in the self. It’s pure void, it’s absolute, it’s unmovable, it’s untouchable, and in its very nature it is bliss.

Now bliss does not necessarily come in pure self-realization, that might come later. So you have two kinds of self-realization, one is pure void and one is void with bliss. My impression of these Neo-Advaita gurus is that they have experienced self-realization without bliss, only as void. So, what’s awakening?

Rick: Let me throw in two questions before you go on to that. One is, why do we call it the self? I presume it’s because it’s the sort of ultimate essence of what we are, but please elaborate on that. We’ll go for that one first, answer that first. Why do we call it the self?

Jan: Because it’s your self, when you realize it, you get a certain relief. Self-realization is a certain shift, unlike the other states of consciousness, they are more like phases. But self-realization comes with a certain shift where you suddenly get a release and the feeling, “Oh Jesus, oh God,” or whatever you want to say, “This is me, this is what I’ve been longing for all my life,” and you no longer identify with the mind. That’s the mark of self-realization, identification stops.

Rick: And you said that awakening is not the same as self-realization, and you know all the time you hear people saying they’re having awakenings, so contrast those a little bit.

Jan: Yeah. To be self-realized you have to get rid of this identification mechanism, which I call it the “I-ness” or the “I am.” “I am” is also very popular today, but it’s got nothing to do with enlightenment, it’s just a subtle state of ego. Now awakening is a shift in perspective. It can, as Adyashanti has explained, it can happen on the [level of the] mind or the heart or the gut, but it’s all in the relative. It’s a shift in perspective where you suddenly realize, instead of being an outward ego-sensitive materialistic person, that there is a spiritual dimension to life. And this realization can be life-changing and shattering for most people, but it’s not enlightenment. It’s a necessary step towards a serious sequel.

Rick: Could it be a permanent shift and still not be deserving of the term enlightenment?

Jan: It’s a shift in the mind or the heart or the gut. It’s a change of direction in your life and a change of priorities.

Rick: Which is something Adyashanti says a lot. He talks about awakening in the mind, the heart and the gut.

Jan: Exactly, that’s where I got it from.

Rick: So those levels of awakening might still not be self-realization?

Jan: No, because they are in the relative. The mind is in the relative, the heart and the gut are of the relative. But realization is totally beyond anything relative. Nothing moves, nothing is manifest, nothing changes in the self.

Rick: Could it be that, let’s say in Adyashanti’s experience — I don’t know what his experience is, he just talks about these levels — but let’s say he awoke to the self, but then having awoken to the self, there still needs to be a further awakening or embodiment on different levels — mind, heart, gut — sort of like Maharishi’s talk of awakening to the self in cosmic consciousness, but then further refinement after that. Or would you say that by his model of mind, heart, gut, the self has not necessarily yet been realized and there is a more significant shift yet to come in terms of self-realization?

Jan: Absolutely. Adyashanti in some of his rare interviews talks about this Kundalini experience he had when he realized the self for a short while, but then he lost it again unfortunately. And this experience changed his perspective on spirituality completely, and this change he called awakening. You don’t get self-realized from attending a satsang with Adyashanti or Mooji or whatever they are called, or reading their books. It’s the hardest journey to get self-realized. You can get an awakening from it, and the awakening will ignite a desire and a longing to become self-realized in you. That’s wonderful. And I respect these teachers a lot, even though I’m criticizing them right now. But you have to understand it’s not self-realization, it’s not enlightenment. It is the kickstart of an engine that will take you there.

“You don’t get self-realized from attending a satsang or reading their books. It’s the hardest journey to get self-realized.”

Rick: How about Eckhart Tolle, since we’re talking about other teachers, we’ve all read his story of his awakening, and that was many years ago and certainly undoubtedly it’s matured and ripened since then. But would you say there too that was awakening but it wasn’t self-realization as you’re defining it?

Jan: I don’t know about Tolle, I’m sorry. I can’t comment on that.

Rick: But with Adya and Mooji and these guys…

Jan: He’s a mystery to me.

Rick: Oh, he’s a mystery to you?

Jan: Yeah, Tolle is a mystery to me. I mean I think his talk, his incessant talk about the now is naive, and it has nothing to do with self-realization, because the now is also in the relative. In the self there is no time, there is no space, there is no pain body. What is the pain body anyway? There is no such thing as a pain body, there is a bliss body.

Rick: Well you have a TM background so you would probably understand the concept of stress in the nervous system, which could have its emotional counterpart. So when I hear him talking about the pain body I kind of interpret it that way, that there’s some kind of deep impressions that have to be purified or burned through for realization to be more complete.

Jan: Yeah, well that could be an interpretation of his term, that makes sense, I respect that.

Rick: And about the now, I mean maybe, couldn’t the now be like a portal into self-realization?

Jan: No, I don’t think so. No, the mind can be in the present, but your pain is also in the present, and your dreams about the future are also in the present. Everything is in the present, ignorance is totally in the present. So the present moment awareness can clear you from a therapeutic point of view, from various traumas and illness and problems etc., etc. that haunt you, but it won’t grant you self-realization at all.

The Importance of Breaking Identification

Rick: Okay, so let’s go deeper into what you mean by self-realization, because so far we’ve established that you’re suggesting that Adyashanti and Mooji and these guys, I don’t know whether you’re suggesting that they themselves aren’t self-realized, maybe you are, but you’re suggesting that just listening to their talks and sitting in their satsangs and all isn’t going to ignite self-realization in you. It really needs some more diligent, arduous practice or procedure to get there, right?

Jan: Yes. You mentioned Mooji, I think of all these guys, Mooji is probably self-realized. But he’s, oddly enough, antagonistic towards everything that could take him further. He despises Kundalini and he rejects bliss as some ridiculous emotional experience. He even called Kundalini “child’s play” in one video I watched. I’ve never met Mooji so I can’t be certain for sure, but I’ve read his books and I’ve seen a number of videos with him and he does seem generally self-realized, that’s for sure.

Rick: He seems blissful too.

Jan: Yeah, I’m not sure about that. He has a very gentle and kind nature. But talking about self-realization, with the risk of sounding arrogant, I would like to say I don’t think the rest of the New-Advaita gurus are. They’re awakened and that’s great, and they help people become awakened, but they promote their awakening as if it’s enlightenment, and I don’t think that’s ethical or proper or, it’s grandiose somehow, it’s not true.

Rick: Well they probably think that it is enlightenment.

Jan: Yeah, they probably do.

“As long as you’re identified with being a spiritual person, or a Buddhist, or some other holy identity you’ve got, the farther you are from becoming self-realized.”

Rick: We need to look at it more carefully. If you don’t think that most of the Neo-Advaita gurus are enlightened, and that they are merely awakened, and we’re clarifying again the distinction between enlightenment and awakening, then awakening it seems can be very convincing, it can be very intoxicating, it can be very profound, and it’s not necessarily a flash in the pan. It may be a permanent shift, at least in people’s experience, you know, it happens and then on and on and on, days, weeks, months, years, they’re different, they’re living from a state of awareness that is profoundly different than what ordinarily one lives. And so, if we grant that that’s not enlightenment, probably what we need is a much clearer understanding of what enlightenment is, because things that are much less, that don’t really deserve the term enlightenment, can easily be taken as enlightenment. Right?

Jan: Yes, for sure. And I want to make it clear, I don’t disrespect these teachers, but the one thing that is very important in enlightenment or self-realization is first “I am” and next is the identification principle, and when you become self-realized, this identification principle goes away, it vanishes, it breaks down. And as long as you’re identified with being a spiritual person, or a Buddhist, or some other holy identity you’ve got, the farther you are from becoming self-realized. You have to practice many years of serious introspection, and at one point the identification principle breaks down and goes away. And then you are never, ever, in any way, identified with the relative mind.

In awakening, things are going on in the relative mind, like you understand spirituality and you long for being enlightened, and that’s all very fine, but they have to move on and leave all this New-Advaita nonsense behind and become serious students of spirituality.

✨ The Shift of Self-Realization

Rick: Alright, let’s pick that apart a little bit. So you said two things “I am” and breaking the identification.

Jan: Yeah.

Rick: And so you’re saying that the sense of I Amness is only partway there, it’s not any sort of final realization. And breaking of identification. Now, I don’t know about anyone’s subjective experience other than my own, but even in my own subjective experience, which I readily acknowledge is less spiritually advanced than a lot of the people we’re talking about, there is kind of a multi-dimensionality to it, where there’s a very clear sense of not being a person and not doing anything, and sort of a deep silence that pervades regardless of what’s going on. But then there’s at the same time a sense of being a person and doing things and activity. And so it’s sort of like a spectrum where both aspects are on that spectrum. And I don’t know, probably there’s still a fair degree of identification. I mean, I can’t see how you can be utterly rid of identification anyway.

I mean, if I whack your finger with a hammer, it’s a more serious situation than if I whack your table with a hammer. You know, there’s some kind of, you know, ownership of that pain to some extent, yes?

Jan: Yeah. The mind goes on and the body goes on and they are both instruments of taking care of the body and this life. So if somebody whacks you on the hand or the fingers, you will react and it will be unpleasant. But you will be a witness to it. And this witnessing consciousness is a very important part of self-realization. And there’s no witnessing consciousness as far as I can see in awakening. It’s within the ego, body, heart, mind complex. So when you get self-realized, you merge your conscious awareness of who you are into the void or Shiva, as it’s called in the Tantric tradition. And this merging into void makes you realize that you are absolutely nothing. Shakti or divine grace, love, energy comes later, we’ll talk a lot about that. But in the beginning, in pure self-realization, for most people it’s just Shiva or pure being.

This pure being is separate from the ego, mind, body complex. And the ego, mind, body complex might have pain from a whack on the finger or it might have a neurological disorder which means it has to take into the presence of a psychotic medicine or whatever it might be, but it can still be self-realized because all this is going on in the mind, in the neurons, in the synapses.

🧘 Witnessing and the Litmus Test of Self-Realization

Rick: So listening to, we’re still talking a little bit about other teachers, but listening to some of these teachers talk, and I’ve interviewed a lot of them, including the ones we’ve mentioned, Mooji and Adyashanti, I get the impression that they are in a state where they’re witnessing, where there’s a sort of a natural separation between the silence of the self and the activity of the world. But you’re saying that that wouldn’t be the case if they’re not self-realized, and you’re suggesting that they are awakened but not self-realized. I don’t want to misquote you but you know these are some fairly bold statements so we better make sure we’re getting them right.

Jan: Well I said I think Mooji is self-realized.

Rick: Okay, okay. So he’s probably witnessing in the way you’ve described.

Jan: Absolutely, his texts and his lectures, they all witness to that.

Rick: And Adyashanti?

Jan: I don’t know about Adyashanti. He’s had these extreme experiences of higher consciousness from his one Kundalini experience, which he doesn’t talk about very often for some reason. I don’t know why he wants to suppress it because it was a kind of a sadhana. But I don’t think you would get self-realized from looking at Adyashanti’s videos or attending his satsangs. He can’t transmit it. He can talk about something that strongly resembles self-realization and he may be self-realized but he can’t transmit it.

Rick: Well he does describe various awakenings that he had, one when he was 25, another about 6 years later, and the second one being much more profound than the first. And you know, I’ve been with him, I’ve had lunch with him and stuff, and there’s a lot of Shakti around the guy. I mean I really felt a profound, you know, that sort of blast furnace, sitting in front of a warm oven effect you get when you sit with somebody who has a lot of Shakti and real profound elevation. So in my experience anyway, and having also been with Amma and Maharishi and various saints like that, I’m familiar with the Darshan effect and transmission, and he’s definitely got some juice in my opinion.

Jan: I’m glad to hear that. I’ve never met him so I don’t know. I just checked out his books and his videos, and a student of mine visited Adyashanti and partook in a Satsang, and he came home and reported, there was no Shakti. So I don’t know what that means.

Rick: But that’s in the eye of the beholder too.

Jan: Yeah, I can say that to you too.

Rick: Sure, and I have met people who have said they’ve had awakenings in Adyashanti’s Satsangs and so on. So yeah, I just kind of, in a way I’m trying to save you from getting a lot of flack on the internet, because we want to make sure these statements are clear in what we’re saying. And you have said that you respect these guys a lot. We’re just trying to parse out the fine points of awakening versus enlightenment and stages of enlightenment that there might be, which I think is very important because I think that we throw these terms around in the popular culture without a real clear agreement upon what they mean.

And it’s important for, as we evolve spiritually as a culture, it’s important for us to have an appreciation of the nuances of all these different terms and the stages of development they represent, much like Eskimos and perhaps Danes have many different words for snow, because they experience so much of it, they kind of have identified a lot of different subtle variations in meaning.

“In self-realization a shift happens and a breakdown happens, and you suddenly stop identifying with anything.”

✨ The Process and Permanence of Self-Realization

Jan: In self-realization, first of all it takes a number of years of serious meditation to reach it. But in self-realization a shift happens and a breakdown happens, and you suddenly stop identifying with anything. And that is what has led me to identify a couple of principles. You have the mind, the mind is constructed of something relating to something, and A thinks “I am B”, B thinks “I am C”, C thinks “I am D”, and so on, and this endless game constructs the personality and the ego. Now, just prior to this, you have the sense that “I am” this or this or this or this, but “I am” does not yet identify with anything, it’s just a sense of “I must be something”, and “I am” is praised by a lot of gurus as being the highest, but it’s not.

Just prior to “I am”, you have something which I have picked up as being “I-ness”, the sense of being an “I”, the “I” principle, the identification principle, the identification mechanism. And just below that you have the absolute, the self. So somehow, the energy of the self steps just one step up, and gets a sense of “I”. There’s me, something relative, something with a point of focus, and this point of focus then merges into “I am”, and identifies with “I am this or that”, and so on.

And if you do not get rid of this “I-ness”, this identification principle, you are not self-realized, but when you get self-realized you can clearly feel this mechanism snap, and then you get this wonderful release in your body, where you say “Oh my God, this is who I always thought I was, this is what I have been looking for all my life.” So self-realization or cosmic consciousness, as Maharishi calls it, and I hate that term because there is nothing cosmic about it, it’s self-realization, is a sudden transition in your self-awareness. It comes in a blast, it comes in an instant.

Rick: Is it irreversible?

Jan: Absolutely, there’s no way back. Once you get it, you’re done.

Rick: So you could still have sometimes a sleepy mind, or an upset stomach, or various relative disturbances, but on that level of the self it’s solid and it can’t be lost.

Jan: Yeah, sure. The mind operates as it used to, and it might have a neurological disorder and need antidepressants or antipsychotic medicine or whatever, I don’t care. It’s not relevant. Or you might suffer from fatigue, or you might be very energetic, and a career as a stockbroker or businessman or whatever, but you will be a total witness to everything going on, and you will totally know it’s not you.

The Dark Night of the Soul

Rick: So you’re saying that this self-realization doesn’t necessarily equate not only with physical health but even with mental health? You could be psychotic and yet be self-realized? You can be a babbling crazy man?

Jan: I’ve never met that, but I think so in theory.

Rick: Of course they talk about some of these Indian saints who seem like babbling crazy men and they’re supposed to be enlightened, but who knows?

Jan: Yeah, who knows? But in theory, I mean, the mind, you get awakened, okay? And then you begin to change the mind, and all this self-work on the mind, meaning the self as the mind, will change you to a considerable degree. And then when you get self-realized you might not encounter all of these weird problems of psychosis and depression and so on. But I think in general the pattern is that once you get self-realized you go into a phase which I call the dark night of the soul. And I took this term from the holy Christian saint, St. John of the Cross. And it seems that after you have become self-realized, a certain breakdown of egoic tendencies takes place. And this breakdown is of course painful, and can trigger depression, psychosis or whatever in extreme cases. Normally you just feel life has no meaning and you just want to die, to put it bluntly.

“The real depression sets in after self-realization in the dark night of the soul.”

Rick: Well it’s very interesting you’re saying this because someone noticed on my website that I was going to be interviewing you and they posted something on my Facebook page that they wanted me to ask you, and it’s right on this point. They said, it’s a little bit long but I’ll read it. It said, “In his first interview I recall he said he was depressed for 10 years. There he called it depression. Would he still call it that or is it the dark night?” You just referred to it as the dark night. And she said, “Adya (Adyashanti) describes this as the uncomfortable drifting that occurs as the will of the small self has dropped away to a great extent, but the will and flow of the big self has yet to take over. This whole area seems rather under-discussed and rather hard to recognize. Am I depressed? Lost? Doesn’t seem quite like that, but doubts do arise. And worse, it can be rather crippling.

For instance, I have lost much of my enthusiasm for awakening and for teaching. At times life seems so empty and finally it seems to take years to get through this patch.” And then another guy saw her comment and kind of chimed in. He said, “It can lead to a state of being unable to perform one’s duties in life and I also get indifferent about spiritual teachings like you, sickened by them even, for the words ring hollow and trite.” So, please respond to that.

Jan: That was a lot. Well you can get depressed before self-realization. I would call that the dark night of the mind. The dark night of the mind can be terrible because you realize that the dark night of the mind follows awakening. When you realize that everything you believed or thought you knew or understood about spirituality is fake. So you go into a crisis where you realize you understand nothing and that all your faith in this or that master or guru is phony and will not take you anywhere. And this can of course trigger depression. But the real depression sets in after self-realization in the dark night of the soul. I don’t know where these people are. I can’t say that from the emails. And of course you can suffer from a clinical depression which will haunt you, never mind of what state of enlightenment you reach, because that’s just the body-mind complex.

So if you have a neurological disorder and your serotonin balance is fucked up, no matter how enlightened you get, that will still be the case and it will need treatment because self-realization is beyond all that. The self has absolutely nothing to do with the mind or the body or the nerves or the depression or the joy or the pleasure or the insolence. You have, it is way beyond that. It is void. You have to understand this.

Witnessing in Sleep and the Progression of Sadhana

Rick: But you need a nervous system to experience the self, do you not? To live the self.

Jan: I’m not sure.

Rick: I mean it’s like saying, you know, the radio waves in the air and the radio, the radio waves have nothing to do with the radio. They’re propagating through space or whatever, whether or not there’s a radio there to receive them. And so that’s always been the case with the self. But what we’re talking about when we talk about self-realization is actually realizing the self as a human being in a human body, coming to have that level of experience through this instrument. What you’re saying is that even thereafter, if the instrument becomes really compromised in some way, damaged, if you get Alzheimer’s or if you go under anesthesia or something like that, once attained, self-realization is never lost, despite how compromised the instrument becomes. At least I think that’s what you’re saying.

Jan: I’m saying it’s never lost, that’s for sure.

Rick: Have you ever had anesthesia or anything since your self-realization?

Jan: Yes I have. I had a serious knee operation, some years ago.

Rick: And what happened when you went under anesthesia?

Jan: I witnessed it.

Rick: You were still awake inside?

Jan: No, the mind was passed out, but I had a continuation of consciousness, of awareness.

Rick: Okay, and I presume that happens every night as you sleep also?

Jan: Of course. Now we’re talking about witnessing, that’s interesting because we skipped that sort of in the first interview. And the first thing that is really interesting about witnessing is that dreamless sleep becomes blissful. A mind of bliss is not strong and it’s not overwhelming in any way, but yet during dreamless sleep time does not exist. The mind is shut down. So dreamless sleep passes like a flash, but when you wake up you know you are in bliss.

Rick: So you don’t know it during the dreamless sleep itself, you just know it upon awakening from it.

Jan: No, also while you’re sleeping you have a vague sense that you are in bliss, but you’re not very conscious about it because the mind does not function, it’s shut down. So you only realize it properly when you wake up. And when you wake up in the morning you’re in a state of bliss and think, “Jesus Christ, if only I could have it like this all day.” And dreams are different. You don’t have lucid dreaming or anything like that, which is a common notion that witnessing gives you lucid dreaming. You don’t have lucid dreaming. I remember like my last dream when I wake up, like most people do, but I don’t have lucid dreaming. But still you witness the dream. It’s just a show being played out in a theater. But the most important, having this with dreams is easy, but having the bliss with dreamless sleep, that’s the mark of witnessing.

“The most important… having this with dreams is easy, but having the bliss with dreamless sleep, that’s the mark of witnessing.”

✨ Stages Beyond Self-Realization: God-Consciousness and Unity

Rick: So perhaps, you know earlier we were talking about awakening versus self-realization, so would this be a good litmus test, this witnessing sleep and dream, be a good litmus test to distinguish awakening from self-realization? Or can you also witness sleep with an awareness of an ordinary awakening which is not yet self-realization?

Jan: You can’t witness your sleep like I just described, before self-realization. But I’m not sure you will get it immediately with self-realization. This is where I disagree with Maharishi. He said it was a litmus test. For me it came gradually after that, and it took some years for it to manifest.

Rick: So to make it simple, would it be safe to say that someone who is not, well actually you just sort of responded to that, but would it be safe to say that if you’re not witnessing sleep, you may have become self-realized but pretty soon the witnessing should come in, and if it doesn’t then probably self-realization hasn’t occurred?

Jan: Yes.

Rick: Okay. And would it also be safe to say that if you are witnessing sleep then self-realization definitely has occurred, as opposed to just an awakening of some sort?

Jan: Well I don’t have that much empirical material so I don’t know, but it seems so, yes. Three of my students have become self-realized or cosmic consciousness as Maharishi calls it, and they have incidents of witnessing when they sleep but not permanent.

Rick: Yeah, and how long have they been self-realized roughly?

Jan: One happened in December, the other one happened a year ago.

Rick: So pretty recent.

Jan: Yeah, pretty recent.

Rick: And for you how many years did it take before witnessing became kind of continuous during sleep, after self-realization?

Jan: It took me seven years of hard sadhana to become self-realized, and witnessing took, I don’t know, four or five years to become permanent.

Rick: After the self-realization?

Jan: Yes.

Rick: And I don’t mean to throw in a new topic if we’re not finished with this, but after your self-realization did you keep doing sadhana of some kind and are you still doing it?

Jan: Yeah, yeah. After self-realization I became a fanatic.

Rick: You weren’t one already?

Jan: I was. I’ve always been a spiritual nutcase. But after self-realization, I remember before my self-realizations I’ve had these experiences of blissful longing for God. So for me self-realization was not enough. I didn’t even recognize it for a number of years because it was just a void and I was at the same time depressed. That’s when I was clinically depressed for various reasons, neurological probably, and I felt like shit. And I got self-realized because I felt like shit and I had been taught by the TM movement of Maharishi that cosmic consciousness would be the entire universe supporting human life, it would be joy ever after and so on. I didn’t understand what had happened and I didn’t embrace it. But I realized over the years because I was so different from other people and I was contagious that something special had happened.

So I began tentatively telling people that this was probably cosmic consciousness. And all these TM people, they just crushed me. That was not possible because I was depressed and I did not have any purpose in life. I was a mixture of a university student and an artist and everything was wrong with me from that perspective. So I had a hard time understanding what had happened. Now what was your question?

Rick: Oh, I don’t remember now, but it doesn’t matter. Oh, I think my question was whether you had continued to do sadhana after your self-realization.

Jan: Yeah, sure, sure. Yeah, yeah. And after that I did, oh dear, a lot of sadhana, it just intensified. For one period I did, excuse me.

Rick: And in case people don’t know what the word sadhana means, it just means spiritual practice. That’s what it means.

Jan: During one period for six months, I meditated six hours in a row. Every day from 9 o’clock in the morning to 3 o’clock in the evening. That’s pretty intense, I think. Very few would do that. And I just wanted my kundalini to awaken into the spine and dissolve. Once your kundalini has dissolved, you’re home free. Then the vehicle of reincarnation is dissolved and you are liberated. But that’s a different story, we’re way ahead right now.

Rick: We’ll get into that.

Jan: Yeah.

✨ God-Consciousness and Bliss

Rick: So where do we go from here? You’ve alluded to God-consciousness, and you’ve said that in mere cosmic consciousness the bliss component isn’t going to be very lively, but in God-consciousness it is. Okay, let’s talk about that.

Jan: Yeah, sure, sure. I think we first have to make it clear that the Self is both a pure being and Shakti, Shiva which is pure being, and Shakti which is the divine creative energy of the Self. Now understanding Shakti just as energy is inappropriate. It is a creative yet unmanifest blissful impulse that generates everything in the world. When you’re in God-consciousness, no there’s a stage before that, let’s take it one thing at a time.

I was in a state of bliss, that was the last time you interviewed me. It was a massive bliss, it was mind-blowing and I had a hard time functioning. That was not the Self, I thought it was the Self, but it was a layer just above the Self. The pure being or Shiva-Shakti as one are pure being, consciousness and bliss, but there’s a subtle body just above this which is called Anandamaya kosha, and I was resting in this Anandamaya kosha in my relative self-understanding. I was still self-realized but my mind was resting this body, and this Anandamaya kosha is incredibly blissful. I could hardly function from bliss, but later this collapsed into the Self, and then the bliss became a very mild, gentle sense of bliss within me. The massive bliss was within me, but with God-consciousness I began to experience this bliss without. So talking to this webcam, I realized that this webcam is blissful.

You are blissful, the computer screen is blissful, this cup of tea is blissful.

Rick: So you are seeing the essential nature of the objective world as being composed of bliss, the substance of it ultimately is bliss.

Jan: Yes, absolutely, it’s wonderful. And another thing which characterizes God-consciousness is that you begin to see a golden light in everything.

Rick: Golden light.

Jan: A faint golden light. And it’s not stable. God-consciousness is not a stable state like self-realization. Self-realization is like being self-realized. But God-consciousness and unity-consciousness are phases that flow into each other and overlap, always falling back on the basis of self-realization. But God-consciousness goes up and goes down. Sometimes I’m not in this, sometimes I am. When I meditate with people and give shaktipat, I’m in unity-consciousness. Otherwise I could not give shaktipat, but we’re talking about God-consciousness.

“In God-consciousness you realize that everything is in a state of bliss, and I mean everything, not just a cat or a human or a dog, but this webcam is blissful.”

Kundalini: The Role of Shakti and Shaktipat

Rick: That’s the way it works, you know. You bring it in. If you feel it’s appropriate, let’s talk a little bit more about what kundalini is, because it’s the whole theme of your most recent book. And we’ve mentioned it in passing a lot, but I don’t think we’ve really defined it clearly or gone deeply into it. And everybody’s heard the term, but you say some very interesting things about it. Maybe, well, first define it and then we’ll get into more details.

Jan: Kundalini is a manifestation of the self’s aspirations of the Shakti as you as an individual.

Rick: Say that again because your audio choked up a little bit while you were talking.

Jan: Oh damn, I can’t remember.

Rick: Well, kundalini is a …

Jan: Okay, okay, okay. Kundalini is a manifestation of you as an individual out of your pure being.

Rick: Okay, you said it the same way. You said a very interesting thing in your book. You described this whole process of kundalini entering the fetus through the crown chakra and then going down through the chakras as the fetus develops and then eventually kind of curling up and going to sleep in the root chakra, and then the whole process of enlightenment being a reversal of that process. That was interesting.

Jan: Yeah, yeah. Well I have some recollections of the prenatal state, and it seems to me, as you just said, that kundalini manifests the nervous system. But what’s important to me is that after you’re born and you grow up, kundalini resides in the lower chakra as a condensation or a crystallization of your ignorance. It’s not a source, sorry, it is a source, but it’s not a restriction of you in any way. So if you get kundalini awakened properly, it’s not just an arousal of kundalini, but if you get it awakened properly, then kundalini will rise up through the central, through the spine, the central nervous system and into the brain, and will deconstruct your structures of ignorance, because kundalini manifested them in the first place. So kundalini inherently has the knowledge about your ignorance and knows how to deconstruct it and grant you enlightenment.

Rick: So that opens up some interesting lines of conversation. Firstly, you hear of the soul entering the body during the period of gestation, and some say that maybe the soul enters at three months or something, which has interesting implications for the whole argument about abortion. But in any case, the soul is — a couple of minutes ago you said the kundalini is a manifestation of the shakti which individualizes and forms the essence of what you are, something like that, right? And so I guess you’re kind of saying that this whole thing about the kundalini entering the crown chakra, that this crystallization or localization of the shakti as you, it has your fingerprint on it, so to speak.

I mean, if you were a yogi a thousand years ago that insulted his guru and then you had that recollection in this lifetime, that entity that we now call Jan has been carried from life to life through this crystallized shakti in the form of kundalini that has entered and left numerous bodies and then in this body has somehow woken up. And I don’t mean to put words in your mouth, I’m just saying this so as to make sure that my understanding is clear and inviting you to respond to it.

Jan: Yeah, well, your understanding is clear. I agree with you. But you have to understand that kundalini is still one with the Self, shakti. Kundalini is one step out of the absolute of the shakti, but it is still one with the Self, with Shiva. And many people who experience kundalini think it’s some separate energy that somehow invades them and begins to play tricks on them or give them unpleasant experiences. And I don’t know about that, because kundalini may release a certain amount of energy or a large amount of energy into the system. And this energy can be, I’m not an expert, but can be classified as prana or some vayu of some sort, and it will give you imbalances in your system and the pains here and various unpleasant sensations. But kundalini in itself, what I just said is an awakened kundalini which arouses itself into an eruption of energy.

But when kundalini awakens, it’s a totally different situation, because kundalini is the vibrant shakti, the energy of the Self. It is one with the Self. It is pure shakti, pure Shiva. And it can manifest within you when it’s awakened through shaktipat. Shaktipat is the key to all of this. Shaktipat is the only way to awaken kundalini properly. So kundalini can awaken, and when it’s awakened, because it knows inherently the structures of your ignorance, it will begin to deconstruct all this ignorance and very rapidly take you to states of ecstasy, bliss, void, etc. And suddenly it will culminate in a breakdown of the identification mechanism and right to Self-realization. That’s the nature of shaktipat sadhana.

“Shaktipat is the key to all of this. Shaktipat is the only way to awaken kundalini properly.”

Shaktipat and Transmission

Rick: Did you get shaktipat and that’s what woke your kundalini?

Jan: Well, that’s difficult to answer because I never had a physical teacher. But when I was 19, I received what’s called Mahashaktipat. I sat meditating and longed for God, and then this, oh Jesus, it’s so difficult to explain without sounding insane, but before my inner eye, vision, an eye appeared, and the pupil of the eye was a blue dot, a blue pearl as Muktananda calls it. And I entered this blue pearl and everything was pure being in a cyan, clear summer blue sky, kind of blue. And I realized that this was Self-realization. And something told me that I could either stay there or I could move on. But I was obsessed with longing for God. That had obsessed me all my life. And then suddenly this blueness manifested as a blue being. I don’t know, I thought it was Krishna or it was Shiva. I don’t think there’s any difference between Krishna or Shiva or Vishnu.

It’s the same blue being which has a special soul in some extremely high state of awareness. But anyway, this blue being manifested before me and did like this, and I surrendered to him completely and merged with him for some seconds during which I was unconscious. After that I saw God in everything, and I had kriyas. Kriyas are spontaneous movements of the body which come after you have received Shaktipat or Kundalini awakening, and so on and so on. What was your question?

Rick: Oh, whether you had gotten Shaktipat and that’s what awoke your Kundalini.

Jan: Yes, yes, yes. I received Mahashaktipat during this vision when I was 19.

Rick: One thing I gather in listening to you talk about Kundalini and reading your books about it is that it’s not just energy like electricity, but it’s vastly or infinitely intelligent, that it sort of knows what to do, how to work things out, in order to facilitate your evolution.

Jan: Yeah. Shakti is intelligent. I call it mother’s grace, because it’s like the Divine Mother showers her love and intelligence on you, and somehow this grace, I call it grace because it is love, and it’s aware of your ignorance and knows how to deconstruct it. So when Shaktipat really grabs you, you feel your body filled with an immense energy that transforms your nervous system. And as you can see from the cover of Kundalini Tantra, there’s a girl on fire. Yeah, a girl on fire. And it’s not because Tantra has anything to do with sex, but because when Kundalini really grabs you, you feel like you have become on fire. This Shakti energy, transformational energy burns within you with immense force, and you feel love and devotion and fire are one. It’s an amazing experience. It’s the most incredible sadhana that exists.

You burn, and this burning for each step develops devotion to God in you, and at some point it collapses and you become self-realized. But this brings us back to something we talked about earlier about self-realization, because self-realization can be without Shakti, as we said, and didn’t elaborate further, or it can be with Shakti. And if it’s with Shakti, your self-realization will be filled with devotion and longing for God. If your self-realization is without Shakti, you feel self-satisfied and you have the stupid, ignorant belief that this is everything there is to realize, like Mooji does.

✨ Unity Consciousness and Beyond

Rick: Well, you yourself, I mean, I guess you would say that you are enlightened, but do you really have a sense of how much there is yet to explore? Could be a vast range of possibilities, no?

Jan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. I think it’s endless, it’s an endless journey. Some teachers will say there’s an end to it, like I think David Spiro talks about Sahaj Samadhi as the end, but I don’t know about that, that’s not my experience. Sahaj means natural. So, there are many stages of Sahaj Samadhi. In Self-Realization you are in one stage of Sahaj Samadhi, and in God Consciousness there’s one Sahaj Samadhi, and so on, and in Unity Consciousness. But as far as my evolution goes, I am pretty established in God Consciousness. I see this golden light in everything, and I see everything as bliss and Shakti.

Rick: And then you have glimpses of unity, or you go into unity when you’re sitting with a student and so on.

Jan: Yeah, absolutely. Now, a lot of people say they see, I want to dwell on God Consciousness a little bit, because a lot of people say they see God in everything. That has nothing to do with God Consciousness. There’s a projection of a mood onto everything, or they see infinity in everything, or void in everything. That’s just pure imagination, or a mood projected onto everything. But in God Consciousness you rest in the Self, that’s the precondition. You rest in pure, absolute void, so inside you nothing is going on, and your mind is black. You’re in permanent Nirvikalpa Samadhi. Then this is in meditation, for example. Then during meditation you open your eyes and look out, and then there’s this tingling, fantastic golden light in everything, but that’s superficial. What’s interesting is that you see everything as a manifestation of Shakti.

You see things, the candle lights on the table, or a glass of wine, or whatever, I don’t care, you see it as tingling, pure bliss. So in God Consciousness you live in a dialogue, dialogue is important, between you and the outside world in a relationship between bliss and bliss, or love and love, or void and void.

But what’s interesting with Unity Consciousness is that this bliss in the outer world collapses, and you realize that beyond bliss there is Shiva, void. And you realize that this unmanifest, which is similar to your unmanifest, manifests as a computer screen, or a webcam, or whatever. And what’s interesting about Unity Consciousness is that there are two opinions about it. There’s Shankara’s opinion about it, in which everything is one. Of course Shankara is the Vedanta teacher from about 900 A.D., and he could not understand Maya, he totally misunderstood it, he had no explanation for it. And he said everything was Brahman. And for Shankara, Brahman is void and passive and self-contained and never manifesting. So for Shankara, if you take the thought to its end, to Shankara enlightenment is annihilation. I don’t believe in that, that’s not how I experience it, maybe I’m still ignorant.

But to me, there is no annihilation in Unity Consciousness. There was a critic of Shankara called Ramanuja from the same period, like 900 A.D., and he, like Patanjali, stressed that you exist as an individual, even though you’re realized. So Ramanuja says, and this is my experience, that there’s you, Rick, as an unmanifest pure being, manifesting as Rick’s personality, and there’s me as an unmanifest pure being, manifesting as Jan. And potentially stressed that God was a super special extreme self-pure being. So potentially stressed that in total enlightenment we are still individuals. So there’s one point of view about Advaita Vedanta, which is that everything is one and you become annihilated in enlightenment. And there’s Ramanuja’s point of view, which I agree with, is that you don’t.

So even though I see you as unmanifest pure bliss being, somehow miraculously talking, which amazes me all the time, how can nothingness talk and chat? It beats me totally. And me, they are the same, but the unmanifest is separate. How can you say two unmanifest beings are separate? It does not make logical sense, yet there you go.

“In God Consciousness you live in a dialogue… between you and the outside world in a relationship between bliss and bliss, or love and love, or void and void.”

The Mechanics of Shaktipat Transmission

Jan: Both. There’s a whole Shaktipat phenomenon, what goes on when I give Shaktipat, we haven’t discussed that.

Rick: Okay, want to touch on that?

Jan: That’s an interesting aspect. There are very few Shaktipat gurus around, so maybe we should talk a bit about what goes on when you give Shaktipat, just to put it on the record.

Rick: Sure. Muktananda was famous for that of course.

Jan: Muktananda was a great Shaktipat Guru, and his disciple Acharya Kedar is a great Shaktipat Guru. And there are several, there was Rudi’s (Rudrananda), they also give Shaktipat.

Rick: He died many years ago, but he was …

Jan: Yeah, he died in a plane crash. But there are very few Shaktipat gurus around. We’re only like five or eight in the West, there’s nothing.

Rick: Do you consider Amma a Shaktipat guru when she’s doing her blessing thing? Is that a form of Shaktipat?

Jan: No way, no way. She transmits love, Divine love, but she does not awaken your Kundalini and puts you on a permanent path to Self-realization. There’s an interesting book about Amma which is devoted to Gayatri through 20 years.

Rick: Yeah, I’m aware of it.

Jan: Yeah, “Holy Hell,” that shows a different perspective on Amma, but never mind Amma. I went to Amma for 15 years and I was totally in love with the love that Amma transmits. It was fantastic and healing and awesome, but it has nothing to do with Shaktipat and it will not get you Self-realized. It’s very healing and it’s very loving and so on, but it will not take you to Self-realization.

Rick: So you said that to your knowledge there are maybe five or eight Shaktipat Gurus in the world and you are one of them.

Jan: Yeah, in the West.

Rick: In the West, maybe there’s more in India, and you wanted to talk more about the mechanics of it.

Jan: That would be fun. When I meditate with somebody, I meditate with people Thursday evening and Sunday evening, twice a week, and give Shaktipat, and we’re only about like five people, which is a shame.

Rick: If you had 500 it might be a little difficult.

Jan: Oh, that would be, no, fuck it, that wouldn’t work. No, I prefer to work seriously, with a few over and over again.

Rick: And the mechanics you were going to say.

Jan: Yeah, I sit and meditate with a person on my sofa, one to one, and I put my hand on their knee, so there’s a double transmission, I can transmit it physically or mentally, and I also transmit it through eye contact. So I sit with them and meditate, and I go into, I mean I’m in my mind, everyday consciousness is just jammed, but whenever I meditate, I’m in Unity consciousness. Unity consciousness is not a stable state, it goes up and down like God consciousness. God consciousness for me is more stable, but Unity consciousness goes up and down, and when I meditate, I go into it.

So when I meditate with these people, I like I always do, look at The Absolute in them, their pure self, their pure being, or whatever you should call it, and I realize it is the same as my pure being, and then within their mind, body, physical complex, I manifest the state of self-realization, because the absolute is here, the absolute is one of the Shakti, Shakti is a manifested being in an individual, so I can step in here, manifest a different variation of Shakti, which bears the seed of enlightenment. So that’s what I do with those I meditate with, and give the Shaktipat.

I know it sounds very abstract, I’m sorry, but I transmit the state of enlightenment to them in my body, the state of self-realization, and these people, the first thing they experience when I put my hand on their knee is an incredible heat, so was people who rightly experience heat, but the important thing is that they enter the state of Nirvikalpa Samadhi, Nirvikalpa means Nir – without, and Vikalpa – thought, construction, fluctuations, so they enter a state of void, and this voidness springs out of the fact that I have called it Nirvikalpa Samadhi, and maybe they can grasp and merge into oneness, that’s not certain, but the very seed of enlightenment becomes sown in them, and I assure you some people pick up on this right away, and they are destined for self-realization.

Some do not pick it up, and some experience Kundalini awakening and energy up in the spine, and so on, and there’s a special block and knot here where the spine reaches the skull, and a lot of people have problems getting the Shakti beyond that, but some break right through that and enter ecstasy and bliss and purity, and they are destined to be in the one stage.

“I transmit the state of enlightenment to them in my body, the state of self-realization… the very seed of enlightenment becomes sown in them.”

Final Thoughts and Contact Information

Rick: Well you know it says in various scriptures that being in the company of the enlightened is one of the most powerful things you can do for your evolution, and because of this contagion effect, because of the osmosis, the transmission that inevitably occurs. And I don’t know if you would agree, but I would suggest that sometimes a large group can produce as much Shakti as a single individual who is capable of producing lots of Shakti, even though all the people in that group individually might not be able to produce as much. But you get large groups of people together who are on some spiritual retreat or something and the energy can become quite palpable and it does seem to be conducive to people’s awakening to whatever degree.

Jan: Well, if they are not enlightened, they are not enlightened. So a group can conjure up an energy field which will be conducive to a mood of devotion, but I seriously doubt that they could shift anybody into self-realization.

Rick: Maybe not, I’m not qualified to say. Okay, well I think we better wrap it up. We’ve been going on for quite a while. As always I will be linking to your website from your page on www.batgap.com and people can get in touch. They might want to do the remote thing where you send the Rudraksha beads or they might want to actually come and visit you. And in your book, Kundalini Tantra, you do have a number of meditation practices in the beginning that you describe, so maybe people can read that and pick them up. Do you have any kind of email newsletter or anything that you send out to people, or basically just the website and they can come there when they come?

Jan: It’s basically the website, jan@lovebliss.eu.

Rick: What is it again?

Jan: Jan@lovebliss.eu.

Rick: Okay, so that’s your email address and then your website is just www.lovebliss.eu

Jan: Yeah, that’s true.

Rick: And I’ll be linking to that. Good, so let me make a few concluding remarks. You have been listening to or watching an interview with Jan Esmann, who obviously lives in Copenhagen. This is an ongoing series, so there are 215 or so other ones, which you’ll find archived at www.batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P. There you will also find a number of things, a place to be notified by email each time a new interview is posted, a forum or discussion group that crops up around each interview. Each one has its own section in the forum. A donate button, BatGap is a 501(c)(3) in the United States, which is, if you’re an American you know what that means, but I rely on those donations. I think that’s just about it.

Oh, a link to an audio podcast, so that if you’d like to just listen on your iPod while you’re doing other things, you can subscribe to that and every time a new interview is posted, it automatically comes into iTunes and you can sync that with your iPad. So thanks for listening or watching. Thank you again Jan, and we’ll see you all next week. [Music] [End]