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Rick Archer: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually Awakening people. I’ve done hundreds of them now. And if this is new to you, and you’d like to check out previous ones, please go to the past interviews menu on batgap.com, where you’ll see all the previous ones archived in various ways. This program is made possible by the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. And so if you appreciate it and feel like supporting it in any amount that makes it possible for us to do this full time which is pretty much what it is. There’s PayPal button on every page of the site. just discovered this morning that there’s some kind of electronic music group that has just put out an album called Buddha at the Gas Pump. I wonder where they got that idea. Anyway, my guest today is Kosi. Kosi has a direct path. Advaita Vedanta, Satsang, teacher in the Shiva Kashyap Kashipur lineage. This teaching is a powerful support for dynamic shift in your consciousness from the fear, sadness, anger, anxiety and frustration of your mind to the indescribable peace and happiness of your heart. Satsang with Kosi is an extremely potent and initiation and transmission of the non dual teaching of Sri Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi. And her holiness Sri Amma Karunamayi. I have interviewed Amma Karunamayi what people can find on on BatGap, if they wish. And I’ve seen her a number of times myself. And I’ve also interviewed Kosi, before about five years ago. And I just listened to that interview this week. And I thought it’s a pretty good conversation. So if people enjoy this one and haven’t heard that one, they might want to listen to it. Might even want to listen to it first. And in that interview, we go a lot more into coaches whole biographical background, you know, stuff she has been through and all which we’re not going to, we’re going to try not to repeat ourselves in this interview, we have some fresh territory to cover. So Kosi What do you been up to for the last five years?
Kosi: Well, I’ve been traveling mostly in Europe, where Satsang really took off in Switzerland, Ireland and Prague. And I want to thank you for inviting me to this interview and connecting with you again, because we really did have a wonderful conversation last time.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I thought so. Yeah. And it was nice meeting you briefly at the sand conference back? Sure. Right. Right.
Kosi: I saw you briefly there. I just haven’t been able to get back to the sand conference. Because I got so busy in Europe. I did spend some time in Croatia, as well. And there’s, you know, a huge interest in insights on throughout Europe. And and now things are starting to happen in the United States in Virginia. And that’s where I am right now is in wintergreen. Virginia. Yeah,
Rick Archer: good. Something good is happening all over the world.
Kosi: That’s right.
Rick Archer: Well, as a starting point, perhaps, in the last interview, well, in your book, you allude to, as your book, reading that last week, organic awakening,
Kosi: organic awakening,
Rick Archer: you allude to an experience of Ramana that you had, I think when you went to Tiruvannamalai, why and I don’t think we talked about that in the first interview. So why don’t you tell that and we’ll see what we get into after that.
Kosi: Okay, so and it was around October of 2010. It was in the year 2010. During the summer, late August, that timeframe. October, I made the decision, I was gonna go to meet Rama and his teacher, which is Aaron Ochoa, Shiva. And for those of you who don’t know, Ramona, Ramona felt that his master was this sacred mountain in Southern India, known as Aaron Ochoa Shiva. And the reason for that is I was recognizing in myself, I was a longtime student and devotee of Ganga G for many years at that point. And I felt that there was no real progress happening because there was a heavy emphasis on the inquiry into various emotions, the emotional states of the body, as a way or a way of accessing the self and it’s powerful. Going to GS teaching is extremely powerful. But there was an aspect or there felt like there was something that was just missing. And so I made this decision to go to Ernakulum. And the reason for that was that it’s very rare in a lineage to be able to go and meet the physical form of the Master of Masters, right. And she, the mountain is considered a the body meant of Shiva or the formless presence of God. So I decided at that time that it would be powerful to meet Romanus mountain. And understand for myself through direct experience, what was it about this mountain that made him say it was his master, it wasn’t just a teacher, the mountain was his master. And by the grace of God, you can actually go and experience this yourself, right? You can experience the physical form of Ramana as master. So I went with that intention to see what is it about the mountain? And what would it reveal? What I didn’t know, or what I didn’t expect, at the time was to have a mystical experience with Ramana Maharshi himself. So that’s, that’s pretty much the crux of what happened is, I was, I was staying in a hotel, at the foot of their natural Shiva, my hotel window looked out at the mountain. And I was alone, I was spent a lot of time in the couch room where Ramana taught. And there’s a palpable physical energy of him in that room. And I found it to be a timeless experience, you know, I would go in there in the morning, and I would stay all day, and it would seem like, just a few minutes would pass by it was a really transcendental kind of experience in that meditation room. When I saw it’s on hold, however you wanted to describe it. When I came out. One day, I was walking towards the Samadhi tomb, and Ramana Maharshi walked out of the big double doors, it goes into the Samadhi tomb, and I just kind of froze in my tracks. Because it was a shocking appearance of Ramana. And for those of you don’t know, Ramana, Ramana left his body in 1950. Right. So it was real shocked to see him and he stared at me with his famous stare for what seemed like an eternity. It was just a few seconds, but then he said, this name of yours isn’t real. And when he said that, I just kind of went immediately inside to inquire into the name, which is kind of a label we put on top of ego, right? Was that the
Rick Archer: Cauchy? Or your American name? No, I
Kosi: was still chill at that time. Still, by going by my birth name, I had no intention of losing my name or anything. I went, I went specifically to see the mountain and that was it. Right to actually have that direct experience. So Ramana appears, he says this name of yours is it real? I inquire into my heart instantly in that moment. And can see, not only was the name not real, this sense of me was not real at all. Now I had had many profound direct realizations of what we call the self. Before that happened. It was just a shocking revelation and experience of him manifesting in physical form to actually say that. Now, David Garmin has done many YouTube videos and stuff. And he’s talked about how several people have had the experience of Ramana manifesting.
Rick Archer: I’ve dated half a dozen people who have had that. Yeah. And David
Kosi: maintains that it’s mind only, but my experience that it was transcendent of anything you would describe as mind, because it was such a potent transmission of his person, but also a transmission of the teaching. I can’t explain it as simply mind. Anyway,
Rick Archer: I mean, among the people I’ve interviewed who’ve had that kind of experience, such as Pamela Wilson and Nick guns at Tonto and a couple others. Robert Adams had Robert. And yeah, and most of them had it when they didn’t even had never even heard of Ramana they didn’t know he had ever existed. And yet this I mean, in Pamela’s case, she had this burning desire for truth. And she was sitting in her bedroom and I don’t know if she had fallen asleep or was still awake, but all of a sudden there was an Indian man sitting on her bed and she threw a pillow at him. But some quite some time later, she saw a picture of Ramana. And so that was the guy, you know, there are a number of others. So what’s going on with that?
Kosi: Well, there’s many instances of this. And what’s interesting to me about that is right before he died, several of his closest devotees asked him, Okay, you’re leaving, you’re about to leave your body, should we go get another guru? And he said, No, don’t go get a new guru. All you need to do is call on me and I will assist you because I’m not limited to the physical form. Yeah, right. Yeah, so yeah, exactly. So he said that. And of course, you know, when I when I had no idea, no expectations of this at all, I didn’t even know that other people at that time in 2010 had this experience. So it was a very fresh, kind of shocking experience. And it was,
Rick Archer: it was palpable, wasn’t that I mean, he didn’t seem like an apparition he seemed solid,
Kosi: solid. And like a, like a hologram.
Rick Archer: So somewhat somewhat, like,
Kosi: solid and not solid at the time. So at the same time, real and surreal. At the same time, it’s kind of a very strange experience. I mean, there’s really no way to quantify it other than to say it was more like a holographic kind of experience, but it was like he was really there.
Rick Archer: So what’s your best guess is, is Ramana hanging out on some level, and intercedes in human affairs from time to time? Or does is there no such thing as that being that was once called Ramana. But the divine Universal Intelligence manifests a form that people can recognize, and then identify as Ramana, in order to give it a name and an identity and to have some influence on them? There’s a subtle distinction between those two things are maybe not so subtle, or maybe there’s other possibilities. What do you think?
Kosi: Well, when you think of the mountain itself, when you look at the actual form of a being like Ramana, we can’t necessarily relate to it we possibly can to even look at it because of the brilliant light it would represent. So the mystical story of the mountain or nodular, Shiva was that Shiva took the form of the mountain, because people could worship the mountain. But they couldn’t worship, you know, when he was in his true form, which was this huge column of light, brilliant light. They were overwhelmed by that. Right? So that’s the mystical story behind Aaron Ochoa Shiva. So maybe, you know, in that sense, David has a his perspective is accurate in the sense that maybe the mind can’t comprehend the true form of Ramana Maharshi. And in that moment, it appears as a physical entity, my experience was that he was physically there, just like any human being would be standing there. But there was a different quality about him. Possibly, because there was a different quality about him when he was alive and physical form. So the next day after that experience, so I had a direct experience of emptiness. It was a direct, deep realization of emptiness in that moment. The very next day, I was very, very sick with like, strep throat and a fever. And I had to stay in the hotel room for seven days. And I decided to use that time as a kind of vision quest to be with the mountain because you could see the mountain directly from my hotel window. So from dawn until dusk, for seven days, I stared at Aaron Ochoa Shiva with the primary question, what is it about this mountain that would make Ramana call this mountain his master. As about three days into it, this poetry and grace and a deeper realization of emptiness started to engulf me is the only way I can describe it. So I started writing all of this poetry about the mountain and the grace of the mountain, the emptiness of the mountain. It was like a mirror that only reflects the truth of yourself. It sees beyond the ego. I experienced it as a living being, which is how Ramana experienced the mountain. So it was very excuse me, it was really a visceral experience of a mountain. So this went on for seven days. Then it was the seventh day around Ask the light was the sun was setting. I was looking at it Aaron Angela Shiva. And Ramana appeared in my hotel room. He was sitting cross legged on the bed. But he was also kind of floating above the bed. He wasn’t like sitting on the bed. He was like just above the bed. And he stared at me in this most profound silence. Now, this wasn’t just an instantaneous flash. He was there for about, I know, 45 minutes, at least 45 minutes, almost an hour. He was sitting there. So he was staring at me staring at me. And then I’m staring at him. I was just staring right back in total shock.
Rick Archer: Was there any kind of verbal communication or anything?
Kosi: No, but it was like the hair on my skin rose like there was electricity. And it was goosebumps. But it was more than that. It was like there was this visceral feeling of a profound energy in the room. So I just sat with him staring at him in total awe and shock and amazement. And suddenly in front of him, he was like, he was showing me something, what he was showing me was the river Ganga flowing into the ocean. And this other very large river flowing into the Ganga flowing into the ocean. And that’s what he just showed me these rivers. And it to me in that moment, it meant to kind of surrender. So when I looked it up later, so I looked up the rivers flowing into the Ganga, and the image that I saw was the Koshi river. And I really think what he was showing me at the time was kind of like Cauchy was this new, kind of like a rebirth, or a letting go of the birth name. So the very first thing he said, was, after several minutes of total silence, he said, this birth name of yours, leave it at the feet of Aaron Ochoa, Shiva. And these rivers were kind of flowing in front of them into the ocean. So just leave your name here, your birth name here. He didn’t say what the name was he just that what the new name was going to be? He just said Leave it. Right. That also shocked me when I say okay, I just sat there, I didn’t say anything. And then he was silent for another easily 15 minutes just staring with this palpable energy in the room. And then he suddenly his, the intensity of his stare increased with a really intense energy coming from his eyes into into me. And he looked at me and said, he leaned forward a little bit and said soon Yatta and then he vanished and was gone. And it was like an audible gone and I sat there for several hours after that completely and totally stunned. Because soon Yaya Sunyata the words in Jada is a Buddhist term. And I knew that Sunyata was Buddhist. Right. But I actually at that moment in time, wasn’t sure what it meant. So I had to go on Wikipedia. And I had to look it up to see what is what is he saying? And see, it is really the Totti real estate or the Teresa Titas state which is beyond the fourth state of consciousness, right of Terraria. It’s beyond even ideas of emptiness in the Buddhist way of thinking of Sunyata. So really, emptiness, I could say was the name Sunyata was the name. But I was fascinated by the river that he showed me this river flowing into the Ganga flowing into the, to the ocean, right. So it was really an astonishing experience, but I was gonna let it go. Even though he said, you know, leave the name. Because the relationship with Ganga chi was really transforming at that time. I really wasn’t sure I wanted to come back from aeronautical and say, oh, yeah, Ramana appeared in my hotel room, and I think I’m going to take on this name. So I really was going to just kind of chalk it up to another mystical experience because I’ve had many really profound mystical experiences in my life. When I went to kawaii Hawaii right after India, a good friend of mine without me ever saying a word about this. I hadn’t talked to anyone about it. I hadn’t said anything to anyone. He comes out. I was a beautiful bed and breakfast and kawaii and he says this name you were given in India. You got to take it on. And this is a good friend of mine. He’s known For like, 15 years, he goes, whatever the name is,
Rick Archer: you got to do it. And you hadn’t told him that you had gotten the name? No, I
Kosi: hadn’t told him. So he was you go down to the beach. And you decide, you know, based on your experience, what is the name? So I wrote down the word Cauchy. And soon Yatta. And I put my hand on both. And it felt like both were the name. So Koshi Sunyata. Okay, you could say Sunyata was really the ultimate name, because it’s the teaching the Mantra and the realization all in one. Because in Yatta, is beyond name and form, right. But at that time, that’s what seems right was Koshi. Soon, Yatta. And Gangaji, actually was the first person I told, I wrote that in in a little note to her, and she immediately accepted that name.
Rick Archer: So for the sake of those who might think that it’s silly, or sort of trippy to take on an Indian name, like Cauchy, shunyata, or Adi, Ashanti or something like that, you know, what would you say to them, you know, to convey that there’s some, perhaps some serious significance to it, and you’re not just trying to seem exotic or
Kosi: something. Right. It’s it’s a profound spiritual practice. Now, I didn’t like I said, I didn’t really want to name I felt like it was going to be really awkward and strange, and oh, God, you know, Jill’s having another mystical experience. Because people who knew me, I’ve had so many rights, I just really didn’t want to go there with the whole name thing. But then my friend was so strong and his insistence, and the experience was so strong, and it was coming directly from Ramana Maharshi. I said, Okay, Let’s surrender. Because the name means surrender. Let’s like go and do it. And in the process of actually doing it, you don’t realize how much your name is tied to your identity to the ego to cultural conditioning. In my case, it was tied directly to my father, because my father wanted me to have his initials, which was JL W. My middle name wasn’t even a female name, it’s Leslie. And it was tied to his uncle, his favorite uncle, and he wanted me to have that middle name. So all of a sudden, all of this family history came up, and that fell away, all of the stuff fell away. And all of the past memories of experiences from my childhood, everything started to shift and fall away. So it was a I would describe it as a profound spiritual practice.
Rick Archer: I wonder what women experience when they get married, and they change their last name. I wonder if there’s some degree of same thing that happens.
Kosi: Well, I think initially, the whole purpose of the woman taking on the mat you know, the the husband’s name was a kind of surrender a surrender to the man as the head of the household because that was traditionally how it was. And that’s how it’s actually held biblically is the with the husband is the leader of the family, not the woman. So the woman had to surrender her name and all that was associated that with that, from her childhood, in the act of marriage, but now a lot of women are resistant to that and don’t take on the name of the husband or do the hyphenated name. You know, that kind of thing. And the middle name often became the maiden name. Yeah,
Rick Archer: right. Okay. Somewhat related question came in from Karthik Prasad from Mumbai. Here he says, he asks, Is it possible is belonging to a lineage really crucial for a spiritual seeker?
Kosi: What would it what committing to a lineage does for you is it enables you to deepen very deeply? If you don’t commit to a lineage or a teaching, you keep going from teacher to teacher to lineage to lineage, your mind becomes polluted in a way with all the different information and it keeps you more superficial.
Rick Archer: Okay, but some people might say wait a minute, now you’ve been through half a dozen teachers, the Dalai Lama and Guru Maya and Ganga de and
Kosi: yeah, that’s right. So because yeah, so there is a spiritual evolution that happens. But really, when God when I met Gangaji, she was the first person to say call off the search. Just before meeting going he I spent seven days with the Dalai Lama and he was going through The Heart Sutra. And he said, It’s fine to be a spiritual seeker and explore many different traditions and lineages. But at some point you must choose, or the mind becomes diluted with too much information. So this came from the Dalai Lama. At the time, I didn’t like that, because I was a minister in a multifaith church. So we embraced every tradition. So I didn’t really like that perspective. But then when I met Gaia, she’s she’s a call off the search. And there was something about the transmission in her emphatic assertion that calling off the search was essential for deepening. Now Papaji has also said that call off the search, she was the first one that said that, so I really stopped. And it really struck me really hard. And I really felt that Ramana Maharshi and his master Arunachala Shiva was the lineage. And I committed to that in that time that was in from that was in 2001, in July of 2001. And I’ve been totally committed to Ramana Maharshi ever since. Shri Rama Kareena my appeared right after the mystical experience of Ramana. In India, just four months later, she appeared in my life that was not planned. That was something that happened, I wouldn’t really had no intentions of leaving Ganga chi. But that’s what happened. Yeah, once Alma came in, there was such a potent transmission of grace. And her teaching is so advanced, that there really was no going back. You know, when I first met her, I really was meeting her in the sense of, I thought, I thought kind of naively that you know, because at that time, there was some friction between Gangaji and I, there was a lot of friction between Ganga G’s husband and myself. And I was thinking maybe this saint could help clear some of that through maybe it was Vossen or product karma, or maybe she could clear that up for me. But I didn’t know that actually, it would end relationship it just annihilated it. I had Shakti pot from Sri Rama karuna, my in July of 2011. And it was really game over. And she became in that moment, she became basically the Guru, the avatar, the living guru in a physical form, supporting the teaching that I’m offering around the world right now in a very powerful, potent, omniscient way.
Rick Archer: Yeah, a couple things to say here, perhaps. I mean, one is that it’d be one thing to just be living your life such that Oh, I think this week, I’ll go see this teacher, oh, this now this person has come to town, I don’t see that. That would be a sort of a dilettante way of approaching it. But it’s the way you’ve gone about it is, you know, basically years of deep dedication to whichever teacher you were focused on. So it’s not like you’re just flitting about.
Kosi: And I think it’s really important for people to understand that from the very beginning, before I even met Gangaji, my focus and attention was on liberation. I wanted the real deal. So I went, you know, I had the mystical experience of Christ, which revealed that there was something much more than what we call or what we perceive to be the physical reality of the earth and you know, our experiences and stuff. So I knew there was something there and I believed because the Buddha was a human being, that it was possible for an ordinary person to not only awaken but become an enlightened Master, which means from this point of view, that you are liberated from the karmic wheel of suffering. I went to Muktananda his lineage or Nithyananda, his lineage niche Ananda was also an avatar and Rishi received Shakti pod, in 1997 1998 timeframe directly from Guru Mei. And the emphasis of that lineage was on the Mantra and singing the Mantra, there was not a lot of inquiry or discussion and also the Siddha Yoga, the physical postures of yoga, but at that time I there was I was so confused by the mystical experiences and I had profound experiences with Google my and I didn’t really have a context for any of that. So So it just seemed like I couldn’t ask my questions I couldn’t get closed, close enough to go through my to ask them any burning questions that I had. And one of them was the paradoxical nature of physical reality. If you have happiness, you have sadness, you have light, you have dark. So what is the resolution of the paradox? So I had these kind of really deep questions that I wanted answers to, but I couldn’t get to her. Yeah, right. So then I knelt down I was with Kareem, I, I stood up in the middle of a beautiful chant, there was probably about 1000 people seeing them on tour around guru Maya in that moment, and when you have 1000 people seeing the monitor the sound is celestial is just unbelievable. But my sunlight, it was almost like the body itself stood up, it just stood up. And the only white person in the room with their eyes open was guru Mei, and I was standing 50 feet from her. So we were staring at each other for what seemed like a very long time. And then I just turned and I walked out into the sunlight, because I knew my questions would not be answered. So I walked in, I knelt down in front of a statue of Christ, and I prayed, like I have never prayed in my life for a teacher I could talk to is very specific. I don’t want a mystical experience. I don’t want Jesus to pop out of a cloud or Buddha to appear with lotus petals falling from the sky. I wanted a real physical teacher that I could speak to. And then 14 days later, I was introduced to Ganga J.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And we actually covered that in quite some detail first. That’s right. That’s right to that too much. But people might want to refer back to that.
Kosi: All right. So that’s how that that you know, the commitment to Ramana occurred, it was through that prayer? Yeah. So I see the relationship with Gangaji. Although the form of that relationship is trained, changed drastically. I see it as divinely ordained. Right?
Rick Archer: How do you reconcile the saying, call off the search with your understanding that spiritual evolution is kind of a long haul and that there’s a lot of, you know, whatever stage you may be out, there may very well be a great deal yet to yet to realize.
Kosi: Really? Yeah, I think call off the search, at least the way I received it as a as a transmission was really the command to stop. Just stop seeking. Stop looking outside of yourself for the answer. Yeah, stop looking for a teacher that’s going to give you the answer stop. And so really, before Gangaji even said anything, when she walked into the room, first of all, I knew she was the master that I had prayed for. And I just kind of fell into the silence of the heart before she even said a word. And I knew instantly this was home, this was the place and then she said, call up the search. And that made sense to me. Because at that point, in my spiritual evolution, every weekend, I was going to do something else, you know, I was going to, I was doing Native American spirituality. I was a minister at this very eclectic church where it was a non dual church. You have a body but you’re not your body, you know, you’re not your past. You’re not your story kind of a church. So I was very much into the path but I was going from person to person to person, I spent a lot of time with Dalai Lama, etc. And so her command to stop, which is really Papa G’s teaching, it’s also wrong in his teaching to stop and turn your attention in. Stop looking on the outside.
Rick Archer: Yeah, so maybe that’s it in a nutshell. I mean, and that’s what meditation does. If it’s effective, you’re not looking for something outside yourself to find fulfilment, you’re, you’re just you’re turning your attention 180 degrees within and discovering that there was a great reservoir of fulfillment and deep within,
Kosi: right? The the reason for that shift and the reason why that shift is so essential, is that if you keep seeking, then you remain at the fact of the effect of your five senses. So you’re following the senses outward instead of turning within. So this is a dramatic shift when you first awaken to this living energy, the living truth that you are, it you have to stop, be still be quiet, to actually have a direct experience of that. So ramen is teaching is all about direct experience, not reading scripture, not discussing it. Not some philosophy, not some as That Herrick discussion, right? It’s not a discussion group, it is the point of stopping to turn within for your own direct discovery of your eternal nature. Yeah. And Gangaji knew you had to stop in order for that to, to start to mature, right?
Rick Archer: Yeah. Sometimes when I hear the phrase call off the search, I have a feeling that some people might interpret it as meaning just sort of, don’t even have a fervent interest in spiritual development or anything like that just sort of let happen, whatever happens. And I don’t think that wouldn’t make sense to me. Because I mean, there were people around Ramana and Puppet, who spent their whole lives around him, who were avid, we could say, seekers who are, you know, avidly focused on what Ramana had to offer. So it’s not like they were just sort of ho hum, you know, whatever happens. But they were in a position or in a situation which enabled them to discover where what they were looking for was actually located. Right? Yeah.
Kosi: Well, it’s not like your education ends. Because, you know, that’s why I call the book organic awakening. So there’s the moment of awakening, which is dramatic. It’s a dramatic shift in your consciousness, and all of a sudden, you realize I’m not this body, I am this eternal presence of the heart. This is what Ramana described as seeing the seer or seeing the witness. Right, this is the Turia state of the heart. So it’s a really dramatic shift. And you can experience profound euphoria and bliss, in a moment of awakening. But then there’s a deepening that happens over time. And part of the deepening is studying. It’s reading scripture, it’s reading the Vedas. It’s reading the Upanishads. It’s studying Romanus life. In my case, this was the lineage. So I wanted to know everything about Ramana Maharshi. I wanted to know everything about Papaji because that was going oh, geez, Master. So I read The truth is cover to cover seven times, you know, I really focused on this teaching and this lineage and this point of view, because each teacher and lineage has a unique perspective, a unique point of view. And so I just took a deep dive into this lineage, because the goal was always liberation. So I was never a casual student. Never.
Rick Archer: Right. Right. So this realization, you know, which you say, Can is quite sudden and dramatic that I am not this body? I mean, 10 minutes later, you may stub your toe, you know? And you might feel like, okay, I got it. I’m not this buddy. But damn, this hurts. So there, yeah, there’s still some relationship to this body, obviously.
Kosi: Right? That’s right. And well, seeing the car for me was a major shift in consciousness, I read that tiny little sentence in the book, The truth is, and that stopped my mind cold, it was almost like my mon my mind, just completely frozen that moment. And then deep examination of seeing the seer it was kind of like an inversion of mind, it was like the mind turned inside out. And I can only describe it as an experience. That was not an experience. And that was really an initiation coming directly from Papaji through Ramana, through the mountain, right. But that was the beginning of the spiritual evolution, right?
Rick Archer: Had you already been meditating a fair amount at that point in one form or another?
Kosi: I had meditated during retreats with guru my, but I wouldn’t describe myself at that stage back in 2001, as a, as a serious meditator. Okay, I was really more of a seeker. And that’s why call off the search was so powerful because there was this really dramatic stop and commitment to this lineage. So I committed to Ganga Ji is as my teacher and I committed to the entire lineage, which was the mountain which was Ramana, which was Papaji.
Rick Archer: What do you think of the sort of popery of spiritual teachers who consider themselves to be in a lineage tracing back to Ramana? I mean, David Godman is rather insistent that Ramana never established or intended to establish a lineage. And then, you know, there’s quite a pretty wide range of things being taught in the name of this so called lineage. So what do you think about that?
Kosi: Well, Raman has said that lineage was Aaron Ochoa Shiva. And I think that is the absolute truth. Because Shiva the omniscient presence of God is the lineage,
Rick Archer: but then it would, it would go on out Sheila to Ramana to let’s say, A Papaji and a few others, and then from there to even more others that is that really eliminate a lineage that Ramana would have put his seal of approval on?
Kosi: No, no, because he’s not thinking in those terms. That’s a human way of thinking of it as in terms of it being passed from person to person. That’s why he said, There is no lineage, the mountain is the lineage Aaron NACHA is the lineage right? So he was really adamant about that point, because there was no form. Right? So this is Juniata. This is, this is the formless presence of God, this is the lineage. So he was Go ahead. So that was his emphasis, he emphasized quite a bit.
Rick Archer: So would He say, for instance, to all these teachers who are sitting there with a picture of Papaji and Ramana next to them? That Well, these are intermediaries? Maybe you should have a picture of our Nacho on the table there.
Kosi: He might, or no picture just, you know, just an empty table. Right. So yeah,
Rick Archer: I just curious, yeah, I
Kosi: think you know, from my direct experience, ramen is, is right in that the the lineage is she cave is the mountain that is the lineage. The reason for why I call this Shiva Kashipur is that when I in in 2012, I was with guru with Shri Yama, karuna Mei at her ashram, in India. And she looked at all of us and said, I want you to take on the lineage. Her lineage is Koshas Ida, it’s an ancient go TRA. And it means all of creation. Koshas it says the rishi alto. Yes. Right. And Cassiopeia was Rishi. So she said, this is the lineage that that I want all of you to accept as yours. So I added Shiva, because the emphasis of the teaching is on self inquiry. Yeah. Right. So you can’t really leave out Shiva or Arenado chilla in the context of what this forum is currently teaching throughout the world, right. So that’s why it’s Shiva Koshas episodes, the divine masculine combined with the Divine Feminine Koshas, the divine feminine. Shiva, divine masculine, and often Shiva himself is predicted as both masculine and feminine. Right?
Rick Archer: Yeah. Yeah, I didn’t mean by my questions to imply that I don’t think there’s any significance to lineages. I just wondered what you thought about it. I mean, when I was teaching TM, for many years, we, we did a puja to honor the teachers in the Shankaracharya, lineage Shankaracharya tradition, going back even preceding chakra, and it was very potent experience to do that. And it gave some potency to the party and the monitor to the person. So there’s definitely something to all that.
Kosi: Right. Well, I think that Ramana was very clear about that, that there is no lineage and so you know, I’m in total alignment with David Gordon on that, that because you said it, it was he was very clear. He didn’t name Psalm a person to be his successor, which is what usually happens in a lineage that somebody is anointed as the person that’s going to follow. And that never happened. And they and the reason is simply because the mountain was the lineage which is the formless presence of God. Yeah.
Rick Archer: So you mentioned awakening to the realization that one is not the body. And then you you distinguish between that and liberation. And you distinguish between that and self realization. That kind of reminds me of a Tibetan saying, although they have it slightly differently, they they say don’t mistake, understanding for realization, don’t mistake, realization for liberation. So it to a certain extent, it might be semantics, and you know, what word we want to use to apply to what stage of development but um, anyway, how do you just in your terminology, how are you distinguishing between awakening liberation and self realization?
Kosi: Awakening is that initial shift in consciousness, it’s an initiation into your eternal nation, nature. What regardless of what lineage you’re resonating with awakening is that dramatic shift in your perception that I’m more than the physical form I am eternal, that is awakening. The next phase, if you will, is self realization and that is a deeper realization of yourself as that on missions that resides in the heart and then liberation is the complete and total annihilation of the sense or feeling I am the body, or I am. Rhonda described it as I am the doer. This is the Teresa Titas state, which is the state beyond Teresa which resides in the heart. It’s the fifth dimension of Enlightenment.
Rick Archer: Okay, so one. One roadmap I was familiar with was that, you know, to Rhea would be the fourth, it means fourth. And it would be perhaps akin to what you refer to as awakening where there’s a sort of a glimpse of the transcendent, either brief or longer, which shows you experientially that you are not the body you are something beyond that. And then to Rhea Tita mean, I believe that that means without break, I think
Kosi: it means there’s no experience or Tereus teach Tita is there is no experience or period there’s no witness. It’s beyond language. Its current is pure consciousness itself. Right. So there’s no way to
Rick Archer: and it’s not much. It’s more of a perpetual sort of state constant. Yes,
Kosi: that’s true liberation. Right. There’s no break. It’s the continuum.
Rick Archer: Now, it’s my understanding, though, that they’re their states beyond that, as well. YouTube, I mean, do you understand is that your orientation?
Kosi: That’s my direct experience with Sri Ramakrishna, my friends, and it was it also my direct experience of Ramana Maharshi that they had attained a state of consciousness that is not typical. So it’s way beyond what we would even describe as liberation.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And one thing is often described as that, you know, that reality is not to Advaita means that in other words, there’s not there’s not only not, ultimately the dualities that we see in the relative world, but there is actually not also a duality between self and non self between pure consciousness and the relative world, that in fact, the relative world is made of the same stuff plus stuff. As pure consciousness, it’s all one holistic solids mass of being,
Kosi: right? Well, everything perceived through your five senses, ultimately, is an illusion. It’s my, but Maya itself is infused with the living presence of the self, right? So you can say it’s ultimately real. And then the resolution of the paradox is beyond the fourth.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Anyway, I find this interesting. I mean, it’s not it may sound like nitpicking to people. But I think it’s interesting to strive for, toward a, an understanding of the map of the territory, based upon direct experience, and to compare different maps, because it can’t really be a different reality to the universe, for every tradition, they must all be sort of climbing up the same mountain. And ultimately, it should be possible to have a kind of a scientific uniform understanding of the range of, of potential human experience and up until the highest level of whatever Enlightenment may be, you think, right.
Kosi: Well, Rahman is focus and emphasis was the intense application of self inquiry, which means training the mind to stay in the source until it completely vanishes. The mind that, you know, I was, you know, you sent me an email earlier about the genetic mind. So the genetic mine is the is, or somebody did. It was you?
Rick Archer: Oh, the question somebody sent in about, I could probably even read it here if you want. Yeah, this is Gorjana. from Belgrade, Serbia, who said, the genetic mind is basically the deeply ingrained physical sensation and belief that you are the body. When you are at the effect of the genetic mind, your perception of reality is filtered through the genetics of your physical form. Another way of thinking of it is egoic mind, but genetic mind addresses the genetic conditioning, or the parov, the karma stored in the DNA.
Kosi: Right? Right. And that that is the clearest definition I can provide for the genetic mind. Because really, it’s not we think of mind is thought and really mind is so much more than just thought. Right? Mind itself is kind of beyond it’s in the physical form, but is beyond the physical form. And so the transcendence of mind requires the very intense practice of so of inquiry, right? I also
Rick Archer: like the fact that and here’s some little snippets from your book, you say self realization is holistic. All aspects of brain, body, mind etc, are involved Vasanas are real and have some of this may be my alteration of what you wrote Vasanas are real and have a biochemical or neurological basis. Yeah, so they’re not just a concept. They, they may involve something in the subtle body, which physio neurophysiologist couldn’t detect. But I think they could probably also be on some level in terms of the biochemistry, they there would be some impression. I mean, we don’t even know there’s very little understood about how the brain works. People don’t know, right, neurophysiologist don’t know exactly how thoughts occur, or how memories are stored or any of that stuff,
Kosi: or how or hell energy even God into the brain for us to even think
Rick Archer: there’s a lot to understand. We don’t even know what consciousness is and how the brain creates it, if it does, or, you know, transmits it, if it’s something more fundamental than the brain. It’s like, this great big open field of investigation. But anyway, that I liked the fact that you place emphasis on the multi sort of faceted nature of self realization that it’s not just a it’s not a mental thing. It’s not a hard thing. It’s not it’s, it’s everything involves every and all aspect of whatever it is that comprises our total or total makeup.
Kosi: This is why, you know, the statement that Papaji made, you know, no teacher, no student, no teaching, this is the teaching, right? Ultimately falls down for in the relative sense. Yeah, what he’s really pointing to as the absolute, so in the absolute, you are already the self, and you can’t do anything to be the self because you’re already that you are already your eternal nature, right. But you can say that you can understand that. But you the ego is still very, very much there and present, until you actually purify the mind through in brahmanas teaching through self inquiry, the Mantra, right, he did emphasize the use of the Mantra, even though that’s not emphasized often in the West, and silence, you know, meditation, that those three things, the purpose of it is to train your mind to focus on and stay in the heart. It’s the staying and not forgetting the self. That’s the great challenge. Because we can have a direct realization of self. Right, even after awakening, we can have the realization, deeper realization of self of the eternal nature, and then walk out the door and like you said, you stub your toe, or you know, somebody stole your bicycle, and suddenly you’re back and you’re back in the same patterns of suffering.
Rick Archer: Or as Rhonda said, if you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your parents, you know,
Kosi: that’s right. That’s right. Right. And Nisargadatta. You know, when he was on his deathbed, he said, forget the book I am that, you know, so much deeper, I’ve gone so much deeper. So there is this evolutionary nature of your own realization until there is no one realizing anything.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And even then there may be an evolutionary process. That’s right. I tend to emphasize that point in these interviews, just because I think it’s it’s a common trap. And actually, some traditions recognize this, that there are many stages at which the experience is such that one is totally convinced that this must be it, there couldn’t be anything more. And once you’re one can get stuck there.
Kosi: That’s right. And I, I often say in Satsang, that you can never ever allow yourself to think you’ve arrived. Don’t ever allow yourself, I’ve done it. I’ve got it. I am the enlightened master. You know, I am free. I am liberated. The knee is still there in those kinds of statements. So if you will, it’s very humbling to to realize that this evolution continues until your last breath.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Adi Shanti. says, I always have the attitude of a beginner. That’s right. And the hugging Saint says that too. She said, it’s always good to have the attitude of a beginner. That’s right. By beginner’s mind, I
Kosi: don’t know. And cultivating humility, I think is essential, because after the awakened experience, often what happens is the ego grabs a hold of that is, wow, I’m awake. I’m special. So there’s a kind of arrogance especially in the West, which I describe as enlightened ego and This is why you really want to be vigilant, right? And not allow yourself to kind of grab a hold of a realization as a kind of indication of I’m special. I’ve made it I’m, I’m the master. Now. It’s dangerous when you do that. And I think this is where abuse can sneak in. When people think, oh, you know, I’m above the student.
Rick Archer: Yeah, it’s dangerous for teachers. And it’s dangerous for students. Because if a student has the perspective of, well, this guy has reached the pinnacle of human evolution, then by implication, he can do no wrong. You know? I mean, it’s right. And even if he starts saying and doing things that are completely crazy, the student would tend to doubt their own perspective, before doubting the teacher. They say, Well, I’m an enlightened I can’t possibly hit inscrutable. It’s crazy wisdom, he must be right, I’ll just jump off a cliff with him or whatever.
Kosi: Exactly. And, I mean, people have done that, or come close to death. Because you know, the deep desire for liberation is so strong, that once you identify with a human being, especially as your teacher, there’s a very sacred bond that happens. And, and it’s powerful. Yeah, it’s also very east. It’s very Eastern, it’s not common in the West, for us to commit to an individual as the master is going to guide us all the way through to liberation. And so there is a kind of intensity in that kind of relationship. And sometimes there is a place for Crazy Wisdom. Ahmed says, No, there’s not. She said, Love only is the way to liberation. And love only is liberation. Right? Yeah. So she doesn’t, she doesn’t buy into the whole Crazy Wisdom thing, because there’s too much mind involved in that. And there’s too much potential for abuse. But it is a very sacred and deep bond, when you find your true teacher, and there is a natural love that evolves over time for your teacher, because they are revealing your eternal nature, it’s the nature of redemption and salvation. And on a deep, deep level, many of us that are on this path have had many, many life many, many lifetimes of incarnations. And so when that that spark of awakening occurs, there’s a passion for this, right? And that passion often gets projected onto the teacher and like you’re saying, we can put the teacher on a pedestal. And then when we see something’s really off, we’re afraid to articulate that. Yeah, or accepted either just say, Oh, well, you know, that’s just crazy.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I mean, they’re, they’re kind of parallels in certain situations in the West, where people have been taken advantage of by those in positions of power and a have been afraid to say anything for fear of, you know, losing their job, or their position, or their, you know, their membership on the athletic team or whatever. And a lot of that senior position in the inner circle, yeah, that too. And a lot of that stuff is getting called out these days. But I think part of the mix with spirituality is that there’s an implicit and even explicit suggestion that surrender here and obedience and commitment will be a good thing, which you don’t get from a mathematics teacher or something, you know, you, you know, you’re expected to sort of, in many cases, put aside your own ways of thinking and feeling and align yourself with the mind of the teacher. And that can get real, you know, you want to hitch your wagon to a star, but you want to really make sure it’s a star before you do
Kosi: that. That’s right, because you can really get burned. Yeah, you can really get hurt psychologically, emotionally, even physically, you can get her to with if the master is really not a true master. And what I will say in my case, you know, I was very committed student to Gangaji. But I reached when I reached a very critical stage in that relationship. There was a betrayal that became very cultish, the whole inner circle. And it was a very painful and to that relationship. Now Arma did come in at the same time, and I wouldn’t change anything about it, because the way that ended was, I would describe it as an egregious abuse of power. With from Gangaji directly, there was a very vicious and violent kind of attack at a very critical stage in my evolution. Now this happened 24 hours after meeting on so there could be some energetic correlation to that I don’t really know No, but I will say that not long after that, even though we made several attempts to kind of work through it through inquiry and different things, um, his presence was so palpable and so potent and so omniscient, that it really, about six months later, it was clear that the relationship with Gong aji had ended. And Ahmed had come in at that particular time to support an evolutionary perspective and the change since Omma. Arrived is there’s no words for it. There’s just no words for it.
Rick Archer: Yeah. I had a similar transition from the TM movement to the hugging saint, Mata Amritanandamayi. It was like cosmic timing in terms of just a smooth transition, which wouldn’t have really been impossible 10 years before that, but when it happened, the time was right.
Kosi: That’s right. And there was a process that I had to go through because I was so committed to going aji I was not expecting this saint to appear in my life, this avatar, and I even at one retreats, sat on his feet. I gave her a copy of this book, Erina chilla, Shiva heart of Ramana. It was the poetry that I had written. And I in that book, I asked her, I said, what you know, I wasn’t expecting you to appear. I don’t want to leave Ramana. And she laughed. Because how can you leave Ramana You can’t leave the omniscient presence of God, you can’t leave Shiva, right? But she explained, she spent a great deal of time she went through every page of that book, by the way, it was a beautiful transmission of grace and love and compassion. And she said, My appearance in your life. It’s a support you in final liberation in this life.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And it’s interesting to note that Ramona told Coronavirus mother that she would give birth to the person who became Korean Am i
Kosi: right? So there is a connection, a profound connection to Ramana. And what I find interesting about it’s the location where Ramana told his armas mother that so he she was standing at the cow shed, you know, the cow shed was a very sacred location, just outside where the Samadhi tomb is right now. It’s one of the first structures that was built, you know, the mother’s tomb was the first thing that was built. And the next thing that was built was the the cow shed which was an offering to lock Shmi. Right. Offering right in it was the not just Romanus cow, but Lakshmi that I see the abundance. And the cow, of course, because he had a very special relationship with Lakshmi the cow, right. So he asked his mother to meet him at the cow shed. And when I read that I burst into tears, because if there was any place on the mountain that was sacred to Ramona, other than the mountain itself, it was the cow shed. Yeah. Right. And it was there that he told her, he goes, he looked at her and he said, Oh, so you want to live in an ashram? Because she did. She wanted to leave her role as mother and just be with Ramona all the time. She was an ardent devotee of Radha Ramana Maharshi. And he said, and he just was silent. He stared at her with his famous deep stare. And then he said, You will live in an ashram. But it won’t be this Ashram. It will be the ashram of your daughter. She will be born as Thai, the divine mother. And she is the real thing, Rick, and you you’ve experienced her so you know, their transmission beyond anything you can understand it’s beyond beyond.
Rick Archer: did. Did he was he implying that? Rama his mother would be reborn, and then live in her daughter’s ashram?
Kosi: No, she actually lived as an older woman. She did. Yes, yes. So when her? Well, she knew that it was a special child. In fact, when the moment she was born, her mother did anonymous scar on the grant full namaskar to the little infants. So they put the infant in a basket. And her parents did a full hour novice card on the floor, recognizing her as Thai because they believed and trusted fully that Ramana knew what he was doing. And Ramana doesn’t really normally prophesies something of that nature. So she was treated as a deity and an avatar from the very beginning. And of course, there was many signs of that. She shared his story if you want to hear the story, it was just such an astonishing story that she shared insights on a couple years ago, about About her grandmother’s burial. So I can go into that if you like, but it was just it was so out there it is so ancient her.
Rick Archer: If you feel it would enhance what we’re talking about here, go ahead.
Kosi: So her grandmother died when she was about 767 years old. And her father was a Rama, devotee, you know, not a Ramona but a Rama, Rama and Sita. Yeah and Vishnu devotee, so he had a guru that was really into Vishnu. So they had the burial on the banks of, I believe it was the Ganga, I’m pretty sure it was the Ganga. And it was a traditional Vedic ceremony. And it was but it was a Vishnu ceremony, they had all of the crew trim on so of, of that kind of a ceremony, right. So they had baked all of these special offerings for Vishnu, which is considered the supreme god, right. And he was a Vishnu devotees. So he didn’t want Alma there, because she was so small, she was just a child. And he said, Well, she can come to the ceremony, but she has to sit on the steps down by the river. And, you know, and be really a good girl and be quiet. So she doesn’t interrupt the ceremony. Now, they had a tent with, you know, all of these things that they had cooked and baked and you know, it was a traditional funeral. So the body is burning, is down by the water. And she looks out over the Ganga and a Shiva Lingam, you know, which is a stone, which is a big sheet of aluminum about this size, was rolling across the water towards her. So she’s looking at the Shiva Linga rolling across the water. And so it comes right to her, and she picks it up. And the priest sees this happening, and he says, that’s a Shiva Lingam, get rid of it. This is a missionary ceremony. So he wasn’t like impressed that this stone is rolling across the water. He said immediately to get rid of it. Ahmed said she can just picture this little girl hugging the Shiva Lingam, if you said no. This is a gift from from the Ganga. I’m not going to do that. As soon as she walked up the steps holding the Shiva Lingam and walked into the tent where all of these little cakes and things were. And Shiva appears to everybody now to her, and everybody could see him. Yes. So he came in, and he starts eating these these, what are these little cakes that they made, and he’s enjoying? And he’s laughing, and he’s with Alma. And he’s radians, right? He looked like a young man, and he’s eating all this stuff. Well, the priests ceases any furious so he runs into the tent. And he says, How dare you eat the sacred foods. And suddenly, Shiva just stopped and when it was gone, and the guy’s like, fell on his knees, because he suddenly realized it was Shiva, had manifest it manifested in human form. And here’s Ana sitting there holding the lamb. Now, what’s interesting about the story is just a few hours later, he had a massive stroke, and died two days later, because he was so distraught. His entire life, he had prayed to see Shiva in physical form. And when he manifested because of his own arrogance, he had sent him away. Interesting. Can you imagine how devastating that would be for a priest? Yeah. Right. So that was just a story that she shared when she was just a child is and there’s many, many stories of miraculous things such as that occurring around her. But there was such a, when she told that story. There was such a transmission, it was so potent, and the visual of the lingam rolling across the water in this little girl picking it up and then Shiva manifesting. They still have the lamb. It’s at their ashram in the place where they keep these ancient Vedic papyrus scrolls and codexes that her father collected. So they have Codex is written on papyrus of the Vedas that are over 5000 years old. And when I was there in 2012, we actually did anonymous gar to the, to the papyrus that she said this is directly written by the hand of a Rishi. This is sacred text. and her father was a Vedic scholar, and he just collected many of these,
Rick Archer: maybe they would last that long, if they’re just prepared.
Kosi: Well, they’re in a controlled environment. And they’re in the process of trying to scan them. So they aren’t lost.
Rick Archer: Yeah. All right, I’m gonna change the subject a little bit. So in your book, you talk about the power of Mantra quite a bit. And you talked about the fact that Papaji himself used a Mantra to a great extent, and eventually stopped it, and then eventually didn’t recommend using one, even though he himself had used one for perhaps decades. So, um, let’s just touch a little bit on the what a monitor is what, you know, the significance of it is in various ways of using it, and so on, might be worth throwing in there. And then you mentioned in your book that a lot of sort of Advaita people in the West at least, dismiss the significance of Mantra, and, and, or, you know, say that it’s not any sort of practice involving a Mantra is not going to be efficacious,
Kosi: right, it’s gonna it’s often considered dualistic. And that’s what Papaji once he had the realization of the Self, once he met, when Ramana said, See the seer. So that was really a transformative moment for Papaji when he was out playing with Krishna. So he was a Krishna devotee and sang the Krishna Mantra for, for something like 20 years. He’s saying the Mantra, but he was very proud of the fact that Krishna would manifest and you could actually play with him and talk to him. And he was out on the aeronautical after just after he met Ramana, playing with Krishna, and he went back to the Satsang. Hall. And Ramana said, well, where have you been? And Papaji said, Well, I was playing with Krishna. And Ramana said, is Krishna here now? And Papaji said, No, sir. He’s not. And Ramana has stared at him with his famous stare for a while and then said, anything that comes and goes is not real. See this year, and Papaji said, his whole body shook in that moment, and he had a profound, deep and lasting realization of the Self. After that occurred, he could no longer do the Krishna Mantra practice that he had done for years. He tried, but it wouldn’t work. If he tried that it would work. And he was very uncomfortable with that. Right? So he went back to Robin and said, You know, I can’t do this practice anymore. And Robin, his response was, Well, how did you get here? And he said, Well, on the train, he goes, Well, how’d you get to the train from to the ashram? He said, by bowl card, and he goes, where’s the bowl card now? And he goes, Well, it’s, you know, it’s gone. And whereas the train is gone, it goes, well, the same is true of the Mantra, it served you up into that point, but you no longer need it. But he didn’t say it had no value, right. Papaji heard that as its dualistic, you don’t need it. And so he kind of said it was a dualistic practice from that point, then, you know, my direct experience is that the Mantra is really potent and powerful. And his teaching really emphasizes the use of the Mantra. And the there is a science behind it. So the purpose of the Mantra, is it first of all, the sounds of the Mantra are fused with silence, and it effects a different part of your brain. So she maintains that you cannot just awaken with just understanding. But the practices of the mantras, silence are essential, because it affects a different part of your brain, and also the puja. The colors of the flowers, the brilliant colors of the flowers, affects another part of your brain. And the incense affects a part a different parts of your brain. So the brain, it’s like a more holistic perspective of the brain. And these practices, train the mind to focus on the source in the heart, without the purification of the practices, whether it’s a devotional practice of the puja, or self inquiry, or whatever the practice might be, it’s about letting go of so sadhana which is spiritual practice means to let go. Right? It’s a it’s a form of surrender, but it’s also the physical energy of burning through this deep sensation. I am the doer. I am the ego. I am the body. Right. So anyway, there’s this whole science behind how it actually It affects the whole person, it goes back to what you were saying earlier that I wrote in organic awaken is a holistic process, because you can’t just know that you are the Self, you have to directly experience that for yourself.
Rick Archer: Yeah, you say in the book, natural organic awakening simply requires time. And that’s good to know. Because you know, teachers who say that you’re already awake, or that you should wake up now might make people feel that there’s something wrong with them. If that isn’t happening.
Kosi: That’s right, it’s you can have that the awakening is instantaneous is less than a fraction of a second, that can happen very quickly. But the evolution is over a period of time, right? towards the goal, ultimate goal of liberation. Right? The difference is a property says you already liberated so there is no goal, right? Yeah, you’re already that. That’s absolutely true. In the absolute sense. It’s not true in the relative sense, or the physical nature of the body. Because you know, and I know the sensation of me, which is ego is very, very strong, right? So you can have a profound realization of truth. And like you said, stub your toe, and then you’re back into old patterns of suffering, you’re back into the identification with a physical because of the feeling nature of the body. The sensations, right?
Rick Archer: Yeah, I sometimes use the metaphor of like, let’s say somebody has won the lottery, and but he doesn’t know it, and he’s begging on the street. And you know, someone comes up to him and says, Well, you’ve won the lottery, you should start begging, but he still doesn’t have the money. So he has to maybe go through a process of finding the lottery ticket in some sock drawer, something like that, going and getting an attorney and an accountant and cashing it in and all that, and it’s gonna be quite a few steps before he actually has money to spend. So, you know, we’re all the self or all enlightened ultimately, and essentially, but that’s just nice words, if it’s not your direct experience, and there may be some steps you need to take for it to become your direct experience. And what you were saying before, a few minutes ago, about all the different aspects of the brain, and so on, that might be affected by different practices and things. It’s like, there’s a whole, you know, whole huge variety of different spiritual practices and techniques, and teachers and teachings and all that. And, you know, obviously, you can’t do them all. And you shouldn’t do them all and wouldn’t want to do them all and don’t have time in life to do them all. But different things are relevant to different people, and at different stages of their development. And so to just sort of sweep them all away and just say this Ultimate Teaching alone is, is what everyone should do is not practical for almost anybody.
Kosi: Right? It ultimately doesn’t work. I often say that even though Papaji said, the practice was effortless, because you are that already. It was a Zen practice. He was fiercely here. He often said surrender to now as your guru, right. So that’s, that is very zen. And I think this is why it works so well for Gangaji because she was a Zen practitioner for many years before she met Papaji. Right? She did a very austere Vipassana practice, which was all about stillness. Right? So you could say that that was that had an effect? definitely did. So when she, when she heard Papaji speak, she received the stillness. Right. But that preparation was essential for her to receive that, right. So Papaji is teaching was really very zen. Very here. Very now. Many people cannot do that practice. Right, right, because it’s very hard to stay with this stillness of the heart.
Rick Archer: And Rama in the future. Rahman himself said that he had undergone a great deal of practice and development in previous lifetimes. And that, you know, the reason he woke up when he was 16 was because of all that preparation.
Kosi: That’s right. So it was lifetimes in the making. And when I asked Ana about Ramana, she spent an entire weekend talking about who Ramana was, and how many and how easy it was. It was incredible. I wish there was a recording because she went through how many incarnations he endured to realize the Self at the degree that he did in this life. Yeah.
Rick Archer: Here’s a question that’s totally unrelated to anything we’ve been talking about. But some nice fellow from Iowa. He might even be here in Fairfield, scented, and I think I’ll ask and see what you have to say. He said I became awakened to my non physical nature a few years ago, and since then, it’s Seems like I sleep every day away, and I can’t find the energy to do what I really desire in life. This doesn’t feel like depression, it feels like a part of me just wants to exist. I don’t, but I don’t want to just exist I want to do and experience, how do I make this go away? And why am I experiencing it in the first place?
Kosi: It sounds like he received a transmission, a true transmission of the heart, the self, and one. And so that’s like an awakened experience when you realize the Self. So he had the awakened experience, sometimes not all the time, when that happens, the desire to do completely falls away. And there’s really nothing you can do about it. Because the self is an intelligence. And once that happens, it literally at a certain point pulls you into itself. So Ramana Maharshi, when he awoke at 16, he was pulled into the self, he was pulled by the Sadhguru. The Sadhguru is one, it is not a person. So there is no person that is a Sadhguru. Right, there’s an often I hear that stated that God is you as a Sadhguru, or Mooji was a soccer or this person was a soccer, that is a dualistic perspective of what Sadhguru is a guru is the only one guru which is pure consciousness, which is beyond the fourth, right? That is the Sadhguru. Right. And so you surrender to the Sadhguru. And that generates the fire that burns through the egoic identification. So this desire to do that he you know, this friction, or this frustration that this person is experiencing, is due to the fact that his mind and ego don’t like this. It’s not, it’s not what he had in mind. Right? Yeah. You know, we like the idea of awakening, right? We like that. But we don’t necessarily, we’re not necessarily prepared for what that entails. Which means it can completely alter the course of your life,
Rick Archer: it can, I have several things to say to Matt. One is that as you and I were discussing earlier, Koshi awakening involves a physiological shift. And a lot of times when there’s a significant awakening, a lot of the physiology takes a while to catch up. And there can be a lot of house cleaning, and a lot of stuff happening, you might sleep a lot, you might not sleep so well, you might, you know, experience varying kinds of turbulence in the body as the physiology tries to adjust to that new level of consciousness.
Kosi: A lot of emotion can come up to things that you thought you dealt with in therapy or whatever can come flooding to the surface. This happens quite often, often after sad songs in Europe, this has been happening quite a bit. Yeah. Where people have this flood of emotion right after Satsang.
Rick Archer: Yeah. I think as as one sage once put it when when the postman knows you’re gonna move he tries to deliver all your mail. That’s right, yeah. But there might be things Matt can do in terms of helping the physiology such as, you know, by Aveda, or various other things along those lines, or, you know, actually just trying to get out of bed and get some physical exercise. One time the fellow I knew who was really kind of lethargic, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi said he should go get a job loading trucks, you know, do something physical, or building fences. Yeah, building fences or doing something. Because, you know, I’ve gone through something like Matt describes myself at a certain stage but but physical activity, even very dynamic physical activity is not incompatible with awakening. And in fact, the whole point of karma yoga is to integrate the awakened state with activity by alternating the experiences of transcendent with activity. And the two need to be in can be integrated. So you know, there might be some particular activity that Matt enjoys, he should come down and play pickleball with me at the Mun rec center, if he likes that. I’ll give him some activity.
Kosi: Shri Omicron crinum it recommends selfless service to others. Yeah, yeah. When you’re feeling really lethargic. She said that many people cannot meditate. It’s just their, the way their bodies wireway the way their biochemistry in the brain is they just cannot meditate. So she often recommends karmayoga just like you mentioned, which is selfless service to others with no expectation of getting something in return. And just the
Rick Archer: author’s Less than the other almost says that’s a traditional thing.
Kosi: That’s right. And it’s it that also burns through the egoic structure as well. That’s the purpose of it.
Rick Archer: Yeah. But you know, it’s easy to sort of fall into a rut, I think and to sort of like, things, various things become habitual. So you start staying in bed all day, and you become acclimated to staying in bed all day. It’s just like, one time, I went onto this whole purification fasting routine for a whole summer and I was like, doing all these extreme diets and fasting and, and I got to a point where I couldn’t hardly eat any normal foods without having some kind of weird reaction, because my body had lost the the familiarity with those things. So you know, you can acclimate yourself to anything and so, so perhaps the antidote to you know, not wanting to do anything, and just wanting to sleep all the time is to just make yourself do something and get involved in activity and, and see what happens.
Kosi: And the other thing I wish I would say, I would ask him, What does he really want? Yeah. What does he want? What was what was the catalyst for the awakening? Right?
Rick Archer: Yeah. Good.
Kosi: And that’s a deep, that’s a question that we don’t often sit with. But what do you really one?
Rick Archer: Good question. Now, one thing I want to get into with you in our remaining time is you’ve you’ve put together these beautiful materials with all kinds of interesting charts like this. And I think there are two or three such charts that you want to talk about, is this, something that’s book I’m holding? Is this something people can buy or download from your website, or,
Kosi: basically, this is part of a course that I put together. And basically, it’s a workshop. But the reason for the workshop is it’s a kind, it’s more than just a workshop, you know, workshop is the term that I use, because that’s something people can relate to. But this is an initiation into the core teaching of Ramana Maharshi. So it’s really nothing to fool around with. It’s, you know, it’s appearing in the physical realm as a PowerPoint presentation, right. But it’s so much more than that. And it comes from a dialog between Ramana and a very serious student of his who fundamentally had the question. Basically, when he was sitting with Ramana, he was at the experience of profound peace, and his mind would completely stop, he would often fall into a Samadhi state, when Ramana was physically present. But as soon as he got up and went home to his wife and his children, his anger would return his frustration would return his board and would return his tendency to want to stay in bed would return here that. And he was like, what’s going on? You know, why is this happening? Now? He was very sophisticated in his questions, because he was off. The whole dialogue is really he’s asking about yoga, and the Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita in particular, but certain Vedas and how they emphasize different yogic practices. And basically what he was trying to figure out is how do you burn through the Vasanas, so that you don’t forget the self after a profound realization or profound samadhi experience? So how do you maintain the realization basically, is kind of what his question was, and why do these patterns of suffering return? So this presentation came out of the realization that many of the students that I’ve worked with now for the past four years, many of them are very, very serious students about Ramana, Maharshi, and self inquiry. And I noticed that there was a group of people that were progressing at an alarming rate of speed, so much so that they physically have changed. They don’t even look like the same people I met four years ago, they are radiant. On mission presences of the self, you know, you can physically see it in their faces shining through the other group that made no progress. And they were just kind of like stuck. And I started asking them what was going on, and the group that really wasn’t making any progress had not applied the teaching at all. They were waiting for Satsang to happen. The other group, the ones that had made this astonishing progress had actually applied it every single day. By doing what? By inquiring, right, they’d be walking down the street, who is noticing the mountains, who is aware of the crying baby, you know, they were they were inquiring, they were inquiring into their emotions, they were applying the teaching, they were meditating. They were singing the Mantra, but the other group wasn’t doing any of it. And so there was no real progress have a control group. And yeah, and so yeah, exactly. So then I started thinking okay, so I really what It was was a catalyst for what I would describe as a radical return to Romanus teaching. And I stumbled upon this. It’s a very short little book, it’s about 2530 pages long. It’s called self inquiry. When I first met Gangaji, I found this book. And there’s a drawing in the book. And I want to hold up this, this is what what Ramana is response was basically to this guy. Now, if you read the book that he goes into a lot of detail about different yogic practices, I’m going to hold it up in the in front of the camera, so you all can see. So this is the drawing that Ramana created, right. And when I saw this drawing, my mind froze on this drawing. Now, this was, you know, 17 years ago, when I first met Gangaji, and I didn’t understand really states of consciousness, or I knew the self was in the heart. So when I saw this drawing, even though it’s 2d, I immediately knew because this little flame, see the flame up here at the top is the self, that’s a representation of the self. So I immediately knew it’s 3d. So I told this group about this drawing. And so this drawing is showing that regardless of the state of consciousness, so you have three primary states, you have the waking state, the dream state, the deep sleep state, and then you have the Tereus state, which is the self which is in the heart, right? Regardless of what state you’re experiencing, the self is unmoving, and always present, this is what he was trying to show. These little windows down, here are the senses, right here, the five senses, right? So I saw that, and I just didn’t really understand what I mean, I knew that the self was always there, I had the direct experience of seeing the seer, you know, seeing the witness kind of thing. But I didn’t know anything about at that time about the Tereus state or taught Tyria, or any of that stuff. I just was curious about this. And I was also very curious about the Mantra, because I had been, I came to Ganga Chi from Guru Mei. And the emphasis was on the Mantra, Ganga Ji, pretty much had reject, you had rejected the Mantra didn’t use the Mantra, there was music and Satsang. You know, kirtana would sing in Satsang, people would spontaneously sing insights on, but there was no emphasis on the Mantra as a teaching. And so I was asking, going into very early on about that, because the Mantra had been such a powerful catalyst for my own awakening, and also deepening. And then a kind of confirmed, confirm that because it’s a kind of science as well. So then I told this group of people that it’s 3d, and one guy said, Well, can you draw that for us? Or maybe I can draw it? You know, I’ll put it in AutoCAD. So he tried to draw in AutoCAD. And it was, it was really not right, it was not accurate. So I drew it in 3d. So this is what it looks like in 3d. And hopefully, everyone can see it out there. And what’s interesting is, when you look at it in 3d, it’s changed. It’s just it’s so profound in 3d, because basically, he’s showing the self in the lower chamber. And the number five in there is the ego and the ego he was describing in this document as reflective consciousness. And it’s so important to recognize what he’s talking about. So the, the two chambers, it looks like and I want to put this up again, it looks like a castle see that? So the five senses are all in your head, there are holes in your head, when you think about that, that’s so bizarre. How we perceive everything in our environment is through the holes in our head, except for touch. Except for touch. Right, exactly. But he’s depicting it as a castle. Because your your sense of sight and smell, and taste are kind of our defense mechanism. When we’re looking out at, you know, the environment in which we’re in. It’s a way that we protect ourselves from any potential threat. This is the genetics of survival, right? The natural tendency, when you’re in the waking state is to move up into the upper chamber, to give your attention to your senses, not to the heart, or the self. Right, so ramen is whole teaching is you have to retrain and rewire your mind through the practices. But what was so cool about this drawing and the initiation that this presentation represents, is that he ties this to the Mantra and so here’s The drawing again. He made a Ramona, Ramona Yes, this is Rahman is drawing in 3d. So all of this is really wrong in his teaching. And he breaks it down and it’s really amazing. So the Gayatri Mantra Mantra he emphasizes as part of a Prashanti on a practice, which is a breath practice. And he said, basically, to control the mind to learn to control the mind, you must use pranayama. It wasn’t like you sort of could use it. Or maybe it would be nice, it was like pranayama was essential to train the mind to stay in the sources as a form of inquiry. So everything that Ramana was focused on, was a form of inquiry.
Rick Archer: And again, I want to emphasize, you’re saying that Ramana said this, because you very seldom hear that Ramana advocated any sort of practice like that, at least from the people who speak of his teaching,
Kosi: right? But you got to put it in context of this guy, who was a very serious student and a Vedic scholar, who has studied yoga had practiced physical yoga. And he was kind of asking this, this fundamental question, why is it that I’m at peace when I’m with you, but when I go home, and I’m back in the same patterns of suffering, right, so then yeah, and we don’t often think of Ramana using the Mantra, right. So each state of consciousness, so this drawing is showing states of consciousness. So what I’m showing here is that drawing again, but the sound ohm, which is the sound of the Tereus state, in the heart, the Tereus state in the heart is the constant, the one constant, right, and the sound of it is ohm. But the seed letters of home are a U M. And what Ramana does does in this document, which most people I think have just totally overlooked this is he said, the a sound is tied to the waking state. That’s the sound of the waking state. So it’s a basically a syllable of the sound o or the primordial sound, right. And then you did the same for the deep sleep state, which is down here, and also the dream state, right, those are the three primary states of consciousness. So he tied these seed letters to the various states the primary states of consciousness. This is a such an astonishing document, you can become liberated just by reading this book and fully, fully, not only understanding it, but actually applying it, right. So I went through this whole presentation, I was giving this presentation in Switzerland, and I drew it 3d Everybody was blown away, they were blown away with the AU n. Because when you sing these, these sounds, when you go ah, two you can actually feel this motion of energy coming into the heart. To our home, is the sound lady put all of them together. That is the heart that is the Turia state, that’s the fourth state is the sound Oh, this is what the Rishis had realized, and why the Mantra is so potent, and so powerful. Ramana recommended the Gayatri Mantra. And the reason was, the whole Mantra is this the sound aligning with self, it trains the mind on the on the heart chakra on the beyond the Heart Chakra The Tereus state, right? So it’s, it’s really, really potent. So I was getting this presentation. And everybody was like, oh my god, this is truly incredible, because you could actually physically see in the 3d version, how simple the teaching is, but how profoundly hard it is to do so the ego itself is reflective consciousness. That is like looking at the moon, a full moon is reflecting the light of the sun. The moon itself doesn’t glow. It’s reflecting the light of the sun. So what Ramana is saying is that the ego or the sense of me is reflecting the light of the consciousness, which is the self which is the Tereus state in the heart. But because the level of ignorance of the what separates those two chambers is what he called ignorance. We tend to focus on what our senses are sensing. So we overlook this presence in the heart heard. But really, the practice is like you fall through the trap door, which is the door of sleep. Right? When that shots, when you go into deep sleep, you naturally fall into the self. That’s why we like to sleep. Because we’re falling into the self, we lose the body consciousness went in true deep sleep state. Right. So understanding the ego as reflected consciousness, that it’s reflecting on one side. So it’s a double sided mirror, he draws it as a double sided mirror. So it’s reflecting your senses. And it’s reflecting the the self, the light of the self. And this is why it’s so hard to break free of patterns of suffering, because the ego is such a powerful illusion, like this little mirror, and then what came from that was what I would describe as a tantric text. Because I recognize that in order to put into practice what Ramana is talking about this 3d drawing in the states of consciousness tied to the Mantra that if you had a little book, which I call the pocket practice, not to market, it’s, this is not a marketing kind of thing. This is not meant to be a commercial book. It’s an initiation into the really deep teaching that Ron is teaching represents, and the correlation to the Mantra. And that’s this little book. Yeah, exactly. They’ve got a copy of it. So this book, basically guide you into using Romanus, teaching into a direct experience of the Self. It just takes you one step one page at a time. This came into being within three days, there was really very little thought processes involved. It’s very simple. So I’m going to show you the very first page, you see Ramana there. And he’s basically saying, in order for you to achieve what’s known as liberation, no one succeeds without effort, those who succeed owe their success, to perseverance. So Papaji was saying effortlessness Ramana, saying there’s this intense effort required. So this is why I call it a radical return to what Ramana himself said. And I put it in this little book. Now, when you go through this as a practice, and we did this as a group, there’s a group, a committed group of students in Switzerland, we spent seven days going through each page of this practice. And we did not seven days
Rick Archer: per page, but seven days for the whole book. Now we
Kosi: did the practice every day, all day. That’s all we did right? Now, that was not planned. It’s what happened. So the book came into being, we practice this thing every day, because in the reason we kept doing it, is it felt so amazingly good. It by the time you get to the final page, you just feel good, you feel the happiness, the unalloyed happiness that Ramana is talking about, but you have the direct experience of it. So we did it again and again, and again. And again. By the seventh day, everyone was statically, happy statically happy, because the difference was, we stopped talking about it, we stopped inquiring, we stopped thinking, we stopped even trying to meditate. And we just did what Ramana said to do, we just did it. Just do it like the Nike commercial, yeah, not talking about it, stop thinking about it, do it. And I made it in a little book form so that you could put it in your pocket that you put it in your backpack, you can put it in your purse and have it with you. So that whenever you thought about it, you can whip out your pocket practice, right? And do it. You can do it in 10 minutes, or it could be a two hour practice, you know, however, however much time you want to commit to it. But it’s really, really, really potent. And it’s is a radical return to precisely what Ramana recommended for liberation. So you have to remember, you know, my perspective and where I’m coming from is going all the way going going for it.
Rick Archer: Right? Can people buy this little book? Or do you have to like take it get it in the context of a course or what?
Kosi: Right now there’s no way to buy it? Because I didn’t want it to become a commercial thing. I really wanted it to coincide with the proper instruction. For those people who know Ramana you could flip through that book and go Yeah, I know that I know that, you know, you can kind of just whip through it and kind of get a sense. Oh yeah, I got so I didn’t really want that. ought to happen. And for new people, they don’t have enough understanding. So the presentation actually ties to quantum physics. It shows this this really profound correlation between quantum mechanics and the human mind, and how the human mind actually creates our reality. And this is specifically what Ramana was talking about that what we perceive to be reality is, in fact, an illusion, it’s Maya. And we get trapped in Maya, and we get stuck in the upper box, right? So really, the practices are letting go of the senses and falling through the trapdoor of the reflective consciousness moving through the reflective consciousness of ego into the self. And the book is a practice that enables you to do that using the seed letters of a U M. And the Gayatri Mantra as an inquiry the entire book is an inquiry and application of Roma’s teaching. So without that context, then you don’t necessarily appreciate or understand number one, how sacred this book is. Because this is like the heart of Ramana manifesting in physical form saying, Okay, do you want to if you’re serious, you want to make progress. This is what you got to do. It’s simple. It’s not very many pages. But the more you do it, the better you feel, the more progress you make naturally. But it’s kind of like the end of talking about it is the beginning of really applying it. And the people that have done it have just been completely and totally floored.
Rick Archer: When we did our last interview five years ago, you mentioned that you were starting some tenure program. Did you actually start that? And then is that what these people are in the middle of now?
Kosi: Yeah, it’s called the clear way. And everybody that’s currently in involved in the clear way? Most of them have been doing this now for four years.
Rick Archer: Can you still start that? Or to have to wait?
Kosi: So yeah, you can start that it’s on the website? And also, yeah, there is a tuition for that. But I’ve always told people, if you really feel called to calm, you don’t have the money. Just email us and let us know you want to come
Rick Archer: Yeah. You say come it’s something you have to do in person, like you have to go to Switzerland or something?
Kosi: Well, right now, the clear way is in Europe, it’s it’s there’s two retreats annually. Right now, they’re both happening in Switzerland. But there’s also this group that I just was introduced to here in Virginia. So it’s very possible that the clearway is going to start here as well, because they are also very excited about this. We just, we just did, we just did a workshop, it was called the yoga freedom where I did the whole presentation and the initiation into the practice. And the feedback I’ve been getting from people is complete and total astonishment. Because these, this group here in Virginia has studied Ramana for years. And they all had the same question, why am I not making any progress. And so then we went through this whole thing, and they’re all of a sudden, they’re just in this direct experience of this unalloyed happiness that we’ve all talked about, right? We’ve all had little tastes of right, we’ve had those direct realizations, we’ve had maybe even profound deepening into that. But then when you actually put it in a physical context, like this little book, and just kind of guide you page by page, it’s astonishing how simple it is and how potent it is. And you start to realize the pure genius of Ramana Maharshi. It’s genius. That drawing is genius. And he did it within like a few seconds, he drew that. Yeah, he’s kind of scribble it out. And of course, they made it really nice in the book. But he just made that drawing really fast for this guy to kind of show him that no matter what state of consciousness you’re in, the self is always there. And then beyond the Turia state, is the, you know, the fifth state beyond the fourth, right?
Rick Archer: Maybe you should offer one of these groups on the west coast to probably have a lot of takers out there.
Kosi: Well, it’s just, you know, and maybe do something online, you don’t have to travel is just right now. As you know, my mother is transitioning. Sure. So I’m here and unexpectedly in Virginia, it’s kind of a medical emergency. Yeah. So I’m going to have a base here in Virginia, and also I have a base in Prague. I have an I have an office in Satsang. Hall in Prague. And it’s going to be something similar here in Virginia. So it’s expanding and evolving here in the United States as well and we can do things online. It’s not like we necessarily physically have to be in the same room. Of course, it’s much more potent and palpable, if you can travel and be in the same room. Yeah, give it your full immersion. And you can do it can be a weekend retreat. It doesn’t have to be Have a seven day retreat, the clear way is for people who really are really serious about liberation, and living a life from that place of the eternal.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And as always, I’ll be linking to your website and people can get in touch and get on your email list and find out about all these things.
Kosi: And the reason for the 10 years is that Ramana and Papaji as well. So for true liberation to mature, it takes 12 years. Yeah. So I shortened it to 10 because I even thought 10 year a 10 year commitment for most people, it’s like, kind of out there, right. But you can sign up for one year, you don’t have to commit to the full 10 years now these people that are in it are really in it, they’ve committed and they’re going for it.
Rick Archer: Yeah, and other traditions say things like that, too. I’ve heard that, you know, some traditions they say, you know, after awakening 10 years before you should teach and, and things like that, but there’s definitely that kind of, it’s a long game. I also wanted to just comment quickly on your your comment about Ramana emphasizing effort and Papaji not emphasizing effort, I think there’s there can be a reconciliation of those two, that there’s a Vedic verse that says, Be easy to us with gentle effort. And, you know, I mean, let’s say to become like Serena Williams, or somebody like that, and to be to excel at a sport takes a lot of practice. But it’s not effort in the sense that you’re straining and struggling and you know, breaking your sinews trying to do a thing you’re you’re but you’re doing a thing, you’re building that case, you’re building muscle memory, and you’re you’re neuroplasticity, your brain is restructuring to be able to do this thing.
Kosi: And it’s really sharpening the blade of discernment so that you don’t forget this self. So you can have a profound realization and walk out the door and forget it. Yeah. Right. So it’s learning to train and focus your attention and purifying the mind at the same time. This is part of the science of it. So it’s not like simple understanding nature enlightened.
Rick Archer: Sure, of course not.
Kosi: It’s the actual burning through that structure, which is genetic in nature. It’s this feeling nature as well as the sensations. So this is not an easy thing. It’s a simple thing. Especially when you see the drawing and you examine the two chambers. It’s like, what the goal is to stay in the lower chamber no matter what’s happening. This is really what Ramana was saying, stay lower jazz, heart, heart. Yeah, the heart stay as hard regardless of what’s happening in your immediate surroundings. Right.
Rick Archer: And that takes, that takes time. It’s not just not like, oh, that sounds like a good idea. I guess I’ll do that. Now for the rest of my life. It was just gonna take a while to culture that
Kosi: happens. Sometimes I use the analogy of the karate, you know, like, if you go to karate, you know, like, given the black belt the first day? Yeah,
Rick Archer: almost everything. The whole educational system, I mean, almost everything involves gradual culturing have the ability to do mathematics, or tennis or karate or, you know, anything.
Kosi: It takes commitment, it takes perseverance. It does take practice and vigilance. Right. This is the resolve, you know, I’m going to be free no matter what. And when I met Gangaji, that resolve was already there. You know, it was like, no matter what, I was going to find that way to liberation.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Right. Good. Well, you feel like there’s anything important that we haven’t covered that you would like to cover?
Kosi: I think that the main thing that I would tell people is to really, if you’re serious about liberation, regardless of what path or lineage you resonate with, really look at what is the core teaching? And how can you apply that teaching daily, not just once in a while or waiting for the teacher to be in town, you go into sought song. And sometimes in some cases, you could be waiting an entire year for the teacher to return to a specific area. Yeah. So what are you doing in the meantime? And yeah, I listened a lot in the especially in the early stages to Robert Adams. And you know, he emphasized the I am practice, which is so hung, breathing in, so exhaling hum, you know, to align with the self, every day, wherever you were. And that’s a simple practice that you can apply. So it’s the application of the practice and the teaching. That gives you the direct experience and the realization.
Rick Archer: I agree. In four days, it’ll be my 50th anniversary of learning to meditate and I’ve I’ve never missed one. Yeah, these two, three hours a day forever.
Kosi: That’s That’s, that’s fantastic.
Rick Archer: I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging, because I’m not, but it’s sort of like, and some people think I’m just obsessive, or after 50 years, I should, I should have gotten it by now. But but it’s the thing of consistency, you know, and and, you know, just like, sticking sticking to whatever you’re not the end, you know, it might be that you stick to like you did you stuck to a teacher or practice or something for a number of years. And then you switch to another one. But you still, you know, it’s like change by travel you you take a flight from, you know, some little town to a bigger town, then you take a bigger flight to a different place. Yeah, but each flight is an essential part of the journey. That’s right. That’s right. And it’s
Kosi: part of the evolution in support of that evolution, right. But the application becomes essential, because what we can get caught in is the esoteric conversation or the philosophy of Ramana, or whatever teaching we resonate with. And we get into this very intellectual conversation, and we overlook that we’re not actually applying it, it feels good to think about it. But it’s still not the application.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Like I sometimes say, you could stand on the sidewalk reading a restaurant menu till you starve to death, but you want to go in the restaurant and eat.
Kosi: Right and Papaji said, Stop reading the menu, eat the food.
Rick Archer: Same metaphor. Okay, I said that.
Kosi: I love that. Eat the food. So this little book is eating the food, right eating? Gray. So Ramana Maharshi. Great applying.
Rick Archer: Well, on that note, I think I’ll go have lunch.
Kosi: Great. Well, thank you so much, Rick. It was really wonderful. Yeah. And hopefully this serves everyone this Senate discussion,
Rick Archer: I think it will. And if it doesn’t, then it’ll be somebody else next week, and maybe that will,
Kosi: you never know, right? Whatever. But I’ve really enjoyed my message to people is, you know, wherever you feel that your call to go, apply whatever the teaching is,
Rick Archer: yeah. And God, God is not a one trick pony. You know, I mean, the look at look at the abundance of nature, I just heard today. Here’s an interesting factoid for you. Tucson, Arizona, for some reason, has the greatest variety of birds other than any other than one other place in the whole world, which is the Amazon rainforest. Who would have thought that a desert he plays like that, but the reason I’m bringing up this point is that, you know, the diversity of nature, I think, is a testament to the creative potency of the Divine. And and the same can be found in the spiritual realm where there’s as many paths up the mountain as there are people in a sense. And so, you know, there’s something there for you, whoever you are, and there’s something that will suit your particular proclivities, and just, you know, find it and apply it.
Kosi: Right? And you know, all paths lead to the same place. All right. Well, Namaste,
Rick Archer: Namaste. Thank you. Have a great lunch. Yeah, no, don’t don’t disconnect. So I just want to make a couple of quick concluding remarks. I’ve been speaking with Kosi. And I’ll be linking to her website and her books and so on from her page on batgap.com. So you can just bounce from there off into her world. And while you’re at BatGap, check out the menus and see what else is available. It’s all pretty self explanatory. And I mentioned it in many interviews. So just, you know, poke around a little bit and see what we have to offer. So thanks for listening or watching and watching or watching, and we’ll see you next week. Thanks Kosi.
Kosi: Alright, thank you. Namaste.
Rick Archer: Namaste.
