Kosi Interview

Key Takeaways

• A profound awakening can begin in ordinary life through an unexpected experience of love and truth.
• Letting go of an old identity can feel like a spiritual reset and a release of family conditioning.
• Mystical experiences may come with visions, voices, and symbolic memories that deepen seeking.
• Fear and confusion around unusual experiences can be met with support, discernment, and writing them down.
• The core realization is that the love and consciousness sought are already present within us.

Questions Explored in this Conversation

• How can a spiritual awakening begin unexpectedly in ordinary life?
• Can mystical experiences include visions, voices, or past-life memories?
• How can a seeker work with spiritual experiences without becoming confused or afraid?

Full transcript, edited for readability

The Name Kosi

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer and my guest this week is Kosi. Welcome, Kosi.

Kosi: Hi.

Rick: My post-production guy will be happy because we just went through a whole reformatting of the titles, and he said, “What do I do about really long names? They won’t fit.” So here’s a nice really short name for him. [Laughter]

And Kosi is named after a river in India, as I understand?

Kosi: That’s correct. It’s in India. It’s actually one of the largest tributaries of the Ganges, or the Ganga. And it’s also a river where many of the ancient Vedic hymns were composed. So there’s quite a mythology associated with that particular river. And it’s also considered the embodiment of Kali.

It was a really profound mystical experience that I’ve never really talked about.

Rick: You relate to Kali?

Kosi: Yeah, well Kali is like a fire goddess, right? And she annihilates the mind. That’s the whole purpose of Kali. That’s the whole purpose of Shiva, really. So that’s some of the lore associated with the Kosi River. Its spring, or where it begins, is in Tibet. So it has a profound spiritual meaning.

Rick: Did you just kind of assume the name, or did some spiritual teacher give it to you?

Kosi: No, I was actually in India when I received the name. It was a really profound mystical experience that I’ve never really talked about, because to me, first of all, it was a shock. I didn’t go to India to get a name. That wasn’t my purpose in going there. I went to actually meet Ramana’s teacher. I wanted to actually be in the presence of Arunachala Shiva, the famous mountain that is in India, considered to be the embodiment of Shiva. So that’s what I was there for, and I had a profound experience. And then after I was in India, a good friend of mine who lives in Kauai, Hawaii, really encouraged me to take it on. I have a lot of mystical experiences, Rick, but it wasn’t something I was really interested in taking on. But with his encouragement, he felt like it was significant, and that if I took it on, there might be some spiritual teaching in it for me. And he turned out to be right, because it was in a way humiliating, telling people, “I went to India and I came back with a name.” And Gangaji was the first person that I told, and I wrote a little letter to her saying that I’d been given this name and I was going to start going by that name. And she didn’t actually skip a beat. She just really took it on immediately.

Rick: Yeah, well she calls herself Gangaji, right?

Kosi: That’s right. So she didn’t question it, it wasn’t a big deal to her, and then I was Kosi from that time forward. But what I actually learned in the spiritual aspect of it was letting go of my birth name and everything associated with that name. So what I didn’t realize until I actually did this was that my father gave me that name, it was a family name. My middle name is Leslie, and that was one of his favorite uncles. So he gave me that name so I would have his initials, J-L-W. And so it was interesting, because I never thought about any of that until I took this name on. So it was kind of a release of this heritage associated with my father, and just really it was a realization of emptiness in India, and it was a deepening into that emptiness, without the lineage or the heritage, the biological heritage to my family and my father in particular.

Rick: I kind of get the impression that’s one of the main reasons people take on spiritual names, is it kind of is a clean start, it kind of reboots your life in a certain way.

Kosi: Yeah, it is. That’s a good way of thinking of it, rebooting your life, because it was like my life before I went to see Arunachala Shiva, and then after, because it was right after that experience that I was with my friend, and he really was the one that said, “I really feel strongly that you need to take this name on.” And even that was kind of mystical, because I was down at the beach, he lives right on the ocean, and was contemplating the name, not sure what to do with it. And I came up to the house, and before I said anything about the name, I hadn’t talked to anybody about it, he said, “Well, what about this name? I just have this feeling that you’ve got a name in India.” And so it was mysterious, it was really mysterious, so I just went for it.

San Francisco and the First Mystical Opening

Rick: Cool. Have you always had mystical experiences, or did they just start at a certain point when your life took a turn?

Kosi: They started really, it was a profound mystical experience that actually started my spiritual seeking. But it was in San Francisco. A good friend of mine really encouraged me to go to this church. It was called Radiant Light Church in San Francisco, and it was known as the Disco Church. It was kind of this, it was San Francisco, right? So it wasn’t your typical church, but he encouraged me to go. We went, and it was one of those moments where I walked in the church expecting a regular church, but because they incorporated a non-dual belief system based on the teachings of both Muktananda and Sai Baba, he was talking about things like, “You’re not your body, you’re not your past,” and this was just a different way of thinking. And at that time, I wouldn’t say that I was a spiritual seeker. I was very successful in my career, I was selling software at that time in Silicon Valley. I was making lots of money. In fact, that day that we ended up going to church, I was going to go out and buy a house; it was one of those things, it wasn’t planned at all. But as soon as I walked in, I said, “Something major is about to happen.” There was a transmission or something that happened that day. And it was multi-faith, so it embraced many different traditions. It wasn’t just a non-dual or Advaita perspective. It definitely embraced Christianity and Christ. But they had a workshop that I signed up for immediately, and it was based a lot on Werner Erhard’s work, which is EST and Landmark Education, which really gets you in touch with your not-your-past. But he put together, he took some of the elements of that, he took some of the elements of Native American spirituality and the chanting of Baba Muktananda, Guru Mai in particular, and he put this together in this weekend workshop. And it was during that workshop that I had a profound experience of Christ and experienced, I guess you could call it almost like the risen Christ or the truth of Christ, which was this love. I mean, Rick, it was unbelievable. I never expected … I went to the workshop to meet some new people because I was new to San Francisco at that time. I didn’t go to have a profound mystical experience. I didn’t go to have my life changed. I didn’t even go to become enlightened. I went because I thought, “Wow, this might be an opportunity to meet some nice people.” And then I had this experience of Christ. And it was like your greatest love times a trillion billion would only scratch the surface of this love that I experienced. And then that’s where my seeking really started to begin deeply because I wanted to get back to that experience. I had the experience of Christ and this love, but then my conditioned existence, I mean, I can say that now, but at the time I didn’t really know why I lost it. It was there and I had this profound experience, but then it went away over time. And so that’s what really was the catalyst for seeking.

Your greatest love times a trillion billion would only scratch the surface of this love.

Rick: And we can’t entirely see all three. Maybe you can duck, but on the wall behind you, you have …

Kosi: There’s my trinity.

Rick: Papaji and Gangaji and Ramana Maharshi. And I also understand that Karunamayi is big in your life, so we’ll talk about all those things. So we’re kind of heading off on a chronological account of your path. So let’s keep going on that. That could be interesting and we can bring out a lot as we go.

Kosi: Okay, sure. So that’s when my seeking really began, was I had this profound experience of Christ. But it was an experience, it was like a past life memory. It was a process known as breathing, or conscious breath. I’m sure you’ve heard of this. And it was incorporated into the workshop. It’s where you just breathe continuously, you lay down on the ground. And it actually produces scientifically like an LSD kind of experience when you do that. I mean, I know that now because I’ve read about it. But at the time I didn’t know anything, right? I was just going, “Oh, well we’re going to breathe continuously.” But in that process I had this memory of actually being crucified with Christ. And it was like a memory because I actually felt what it was like to be crucified. So I was on the right-hand side of Christ.

Rick: You were one of the criminals?

Kosi: Yeah, I was one of the criminals.

Rick: Today you shall be with me in paradise.

Kosi: Right! But I was the guy that was just looking at him like, almost disgusted. Like, “Why would you let yourself do this?” I remembered him teaching, and I was a very rough kind of guy in that life, or at least the way I remembered it. I don’t know what that was. It was so profound and mysterious how this all happened. But I was looking at him and almost angry. Like, “Why would you allow yourself to be crucified? I deserve this, but you don’t.” So I was kind of angry. But then there was this fascination with him because he was so calm in the midst of all of this chaos. You know, people crying and everything that was happening in that scene. I felt like my skin was burning. The sunburn was outrageous. No suntan lotion, so your skin is burning. My eyes were swelling shut. I experienced what it was like, you couldn’t swallow. I couldn’t swallow to even swallow my saliva.

Rick: You couldn’t breathe.

Kosi: I couldn’t breathe. I was starting to suffocate.

Rick: Yeah, that’s the main way that crucifixion kills you, actually, because your arms are pulled so strongly that you can’t breathe unless you push up with your feet, which is why they have that little pedestal on there.

Kosi: Right, and then the scientists now say that the nails were driven in the wrist, but in that memory it was not in the wrist. It was actually in the palm of the hand, but there was a rope tied around this right here in the forearm. That’s what gave the additional support. So it definitely was in the palms of the hands, but the rope was around here, which gave you that extra support. So it wasn’t just hanging there from the nails. And then you had this little thing to stand on, the little perch, but your feet were also pierced. But my hands were actually completely numb, at least how I experienced it. My hands were numb, my feet were numb, I couldn’t breathe, my skin was burning, my eyes were swelling shut. It was excruciatingly painful.

Rick: It sounds like it was really a very vivid memory, very detailed.

Kosi: It was a very detailed kind of past life memory kind of thing. But who knows, like I said, it’s kind of a mystery with that kind of thing. It could be like the collective consciousness, and for whatever reason in that process you could plug into that. I don’t know, but I experienced it in the first person. I was the person being crucified with Christ. And then there was this moment when he really was surrendering his life and forgiving the soldiers. And I was just so disgusted with the soldiers. I was yelling at them and spitting on them. And here’s Christ forgiving them and actually teaching from the cross in this light that was coming out of him. It was just incredible. And then this energy came out of the crowd. So there was all these people standing around watching us die. And this energy, it looked like black soot came out of them and into Christ, into his heart actually, and into my heart. And that was the moment where it was the most painful. It was excruciatingly painful when this energy, whatever it was, was coming into us. And shortly after that, we all left our body. And it was in the leaving of the physical form that I experienced this profound, indescribable love. And in that moment, Christ looked at me and he said, “Do you remember? Do you remember that life, basically?” And he just looked at me with the most unbelievable love and compassion. He said, “You are this love. You are this. This is available to you anytime, anywhere.” But at the time that this was happening, first of all, I was shocked to have this kind of experience. And secondly, I was raised Christian but left the church when I was a young adult. I was really the only person in my family that continued with the church. When I was 12, my parents stopped going to church. They became kind of disillusioned with the whole church thing. It was kind of like a social club. But they got busy in their lives and really didn’t participate. So I didn’t have an in-depth knowledge at all about the Bible or Christ or non-dual teaching. I didn’t even know what a guru was at that point in my life. In fact, I really thought, because this friend of mine that took me to the church was saying, “Well, they have gurus. They have an altar with all these different teachers.” And I said, “Gurus are real?” I thought they were like aboriginal medicine men with shrunk heads. I really didn’t know. I was really ignorant when it came to the whole guru thing because I was raised on the east coast of the United States. And when I was young, in the 1960s, I was born in 1960, that wasn’t part of the conversation. Everyone in my community went to church.

🛤️ From Software Sales to Spiritual Seeking

Rick: Just for kicks, whereabouts on the east coast?

Kosi: I grew up in McLean, Virginia.

Rick: Oh, okay, yourself. I was up in Connecticut.

Kosi: Oh, yeah.

Rick: It would have been fun if we had gone to the same high school and hadn’t known it or something.

Kosi: My dad was born and raised in Hartford, Connecticut.

Rick: So I interrupted you with a trivial thing.

Kosi: That’s all right.

Rick: Okay, so this was a kick in the pants, having this profound experience when you really hadn’t expected it or really hadn’t been looking for it or anything else. But this, I guess, kind of lit a fire in you.

Kosi: It did, because the love was so profound. Really, when I say your greatest love, so imagine when you love someone, this feeling of love. If you multiply that by a trillion billion, then that only scratched the surface of this love. So it was unbelievable, this love.

It was unbelievable, this love.

Rick: I’m laughing because you remind me of Karunamayi, “Oh, my babies, I love you a gazillion trillion.”

Kosi: I love you, I love you, I love you. Well, her whole thing is just the most profound, divine, unconditional compassion and love.

Rick: We’ll come back to her.

Kosi: Yeah, yeah, we’ll definitely, we have to come back to her, because she mysteriously came into my life as well. And it’s connected, it’s all connected, it’s all perfection is how I see it. It’s amazing. So actually, after that workshop, I really thought it was a one-time kind of experience. You know, like you go to the workshop, you do the process, you have an out-there experience. And a lot of people had a lot of releasing, a lot of emotions releasing, a lot of past life memories and things. So it wasn’t unusual to have that kind of thing happen. But what was unusual about it is that after that experience, I continued to hear this voice that wasn’t my voice. It was the voice that I attributed to Christ, this really highly conscious voice, and this voice of the most profound love. But it absolutely terrified me, Rick, because I thought, “Okay, I went to this workshop to make some friends. I wasn’t expecting to have Christ start talking to me, or whatever this is that’s happening to me.” I didn’t really know, and I did talk to the minister of the church about what was happening, and he assured me that it was fine. But I still felt like, “I must be going crazy. There’s this voice that’s not my voice.” And it was a voice of profound clarity and love. So every time it happened, I would just go back to that bliss of this love. But at the same time, I was afraid because I didn’t understand at all what was going on. I even went to a therapist, and I said, “Maybe I’m going crazy. Maybe I’m schizophrenic or something because I have this voice.” And thank God, she was really a Buddhist, and she felt like because of the nature of this experience, that it was so profound that I experienced the crucifixion the way I did, that I should just start writing it down. She said, “What’s the problem with just writing down whatever this voice wants to share with you, as long as it’s not asking you to hurt somebody or do something crazy?” Because some people get very delusional with this kind of experience, right?

Rick: Sure.

Kosi: So luckily, I was fortunate to have that kind of support. And so the very first book I wrote was actually called One Love, and it was about this experience, this mystical experience of Christ. And I just basically followed the voice wherever he wanted me to go. I spent a lot of time at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Marin. Up in the hills, they have these little platforms for meditation. And I would just go up there and be in total bliss, writing down these most profound truths, like, “Go into your heart, you are the love,” you know, stuff like that. I can remember him even saying at one point, “You’re like a moth flying into the flame that is God.” And I remember erasing it, going, “That can’t be right. If I’m a moth flying into the flame, there would be no moth. I would disappear.” So I mean, that can’t be it, right?

Go into your heart, you are the love.

Rick: So these thoughts were just coming to you. You weren’t reading esoteric books all day long. This voice just started going and all these thoughts?

Kosi: It started going and I just, every weekend, it was mostly on the weekends because I was working full-time, I would just go to Grace Cathedral in Washington, not in Washington, but in San Francisco, and do the labyrinth or sit in the pews or go out to Montan and look out at the ocean and just write down what this voice was telling me. So it was profound in that sense. But then, of course, the questions started to arise. I started to wonder about the paradox. We have choice, but we have choicelessness. I had the experience of love, but it seemed to go away. Why is that? I believed at that point that it was possible for an ordinary person to become enlightened, but I didn’t understand how to do that. So I became very attracted to the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Buddhism, so I spent time with him. I had profound mystical experiences also with the Dalai Lama and then Sogyal Rinpoche.

✨ Gurus, Kundalini, and the Search for Enlightenment

Rick: You went to India for that?

Kosi: No, I didn’t go to India. He came to the United States and at that time in San Francisco, that’s when Conversations with God first came out. So actually it was Conversations with God that began this whole thing, because just before I went to the church, that book had come out and a group of us had got together in a friend of ours’ house to talk about that book, to talk about is it even possible to talk to God. This was just … I can’t tell you how strange it was for me growing up on the East Coast to find myself in San Francisco with this group of people talking about things that were relegated to the Bible, something that happened in ancient times, but it wasn’t something that could happen to you now. So I was exposed to Conversations with God around that time and I was fascinated with that book, especially the first book. I didn’t continue with that series of books because then my own mystical experience started to happen. But then I was introduced to Guru Mai through the same church, because when I found out that gurus were actually real, that you could actually go and talk to them, which was just such a shock to me, that there was actually enlightened people, was mind-blowing. And I found out that I could actually go to the ashram in Oakland and that’s where I was introduced to the real lineage of Nityananda, which is Muktananda who brought that teaching from India to the United States in the early 1970s. And then I had Shaktipat initiation from Guru Mai and it was profound, Rick, because I made fun of it. People said, “Oh, Shaktipat is you get your kundalini awakened.” But I was so ignorant at that time, I was like, “Kundalini? What is that?” It was just so strange. And I would tell friends, they’re like, “Well, what are you doing?” I said, “Well, I’m going down to Palm Springs to have my kundalini awakened.” But it’s funny to me now, but I really did make fun of it. And then I literally had a profound kundalini awakening, was in bed, sound asleep, and had this dream where I was in this dark meditation cave that was filled with candles and it was Nityananda, Muktananda and Guru Mai. And they were all in complete and total silence with their eyes closed. And then I was sitting right across from Guru Mai and she opened her eyes and stared at me. And then she reached behind her head and there was this ball of light and she took it and she threw it, like throwing a baseball pitch. She really threw this ball of light and it hit me in the third eye and this energy just shot through my body and literally I flew out of bed, I fell on the floor. That’s how intense this experience was. There was like this wave of energy that went through my entire body. It was like a classic kundalini awakening. And certainly my life before that and after was very different. So all of this was in the 1996-1997 time frame when all this was going on, this introduction to this profound lineage and the chant and the mantra, which is a big part of Guru Mai’s teaching, or at least it was in that time period. And then having these mystical experiences of Christ, it was all happening at the same time. But this is really my introduction to what we would call the self or pure consciousness, that we are the radiance that we’re seeking or the happiness and freedom that we’re looking for. But at that time I didn’t know it, I was still looking.

We are the radiance that we’re seeking.

Rick: It’s interesting to note the liveliness of your experiences and the details and the colorfulness of your experiences. Sometimes spiritual experience or spiritual awakening or something is portrayed as being fairly plain vanilla, just being, be here now, that kind of thing. And any mention of visions or cognitions or anything with any kind of relative details to it is somewhat dismissed by some people as being just imaginary or a kind of a distraction or something. But I think there’s definitely, if that’s the way it happens, there’s definitely significance to these things.

Kosi: It was my experience and not everyone experiences that. I’ve often told people I think that I was just really dense. It’s almost like I needed that.

Rick: Well that’s interesting, maybe God gives you what you need.

Kosi: That’s right. I don’t know, I just know at the time I followed it. Because I was not happy, Rick. I was really unhappy at that point in my life. I had all this money, I had everything that my parents said would make me happy, and I was still unhappy. So I poured all my life force into being successful in work. And it hadn’t provided anything. I certainly had fun with friends, drank a lot at that time. I experimented with drugs but I was never really into drugs. There was definitely, drugs were very prevalent in college and certainly in San Francisco, drugs are very, very prevalent, especially in the dance scene and the party scene is big in San Francisco. But that didn’t appeal to me. So none of it was providing any kind of fulfillment or lasting happiness. So that was the essential disillusionment. But how it actually unfolded was completely by accident, it seemed.

Rick: Seemed

Kosi: Or there was something else going on because who knows who we really are. If you believe in reincarnation, Papaji would say it’s 25 million years,

So who knows? I hold it as a great mystery. But this was my introduction to Advaita, was through this little eclectic church and then this profound experience of Christ.

Rick: Yeah, so then you had this Guru Mai experience in the dream, and Kundalini and getting knocked out of bed, but that certainly wasn’t the end of it.

Kosi: No, that was actually just the beginning with Guru Mai. And after that happened, it was really a slap in the face. And I think some of it was because I was making fun of it. I really was kind of, “Oh, ho, ho,” you know, kind of goofy. And so I think that was part of it because it really got my attention that this wasn’t some fake thing, this wasn’t something to be taken lightly. It was certainly an annihilation of my arrogance and my ignorance at the same time. It was both. And so it really shocked me into realizing that Guru Mai was this person that I had never, ever experienced anything like this before. And so I started going, at that time I had plenty of money, so I went to many of her retreats all over the United States. Wherever Guru Mai was teaching, I would find a way to get there. If the Dalai Lama was teaching, I would find a way to get there. I can remember in a sales meeting, you know, here I am in the valley. Now it’s more popular to be spiritual, but at that time, you know, I was one of the few women in this sales meeting, and they were making fun of me because I took a week off vacation to be with the Dalai Lama.

Rick: Wow.

Kosi: And they said, “Well, what did you learn?” And I said, “Well, we were studying the Heart Sutra, and form is emptiness and emptiness is form.” And they were just like, “What?” It just did not compute, because you can imagine the pressure in the valley if you’re in sales, is on business, it’s about getting ahead, it’s about making money, it’s about closing the deal, right?

Rick: Well, geez, I mean, Steve Jobs went to India and studied Buddhism and meditated and all that stuff.

Kosi: Maybe the group I was with was less conscious.

Rick: He did okay.

Kosi: So it was unusual, I guess, for these people.

Rick: It’s interesting to note that it’s not so unusual now. I mean, that’s a good sign that this stuff is really coming into the mainstream. It’s a hopeful sign.

Kosi: It’s really good that it’s coming into the mainstream so it’s not so unusual, because I think the ordinary person can awaken, the ordinary person can become liberated, and I do see them as two different things, because awakening happens in a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second. You can see yourself as pure Presence, you can see the seer, as Papaji said. But then to actually liberate yourself from the very powerful movements of your egoic mind and your genetics and your social conditioning, your cultural conditioning, your personal conditioning, that takes determination, it takes a certain resolve. Papaji talked about it as being walking on the razor’s edge. And one thought, a single thought is too much to carry on this edge. And then you come to the realization that there is no edge and there is no person walking on the edge, right? He would also describe it as finding the diamond. And so at first you feel like, “I’m this person perceiving the infinitude that I am,” right? And then there’s this shift, this essential shift, where you see that you are the diamond, you are the radiance.

Rick: You are the infinitude.

Kosi: Yeah, you are the infinitude, you’re not this person perceiving it. And that happens over time, there’s this deepening into this truth.

📚 Guru Mai, the Dalai Lama, and the Search Deepens

Rick: Let’s get back into that in a few minutes in much greater detail, but might as well finish the story while we’re at it. So you were still with Guru Mai, you’re going off to see the Dalai Lama when possible.

Kosi: Right, and with Guru Mai I would have profound experiences. Like the very first retreat, it was the Shaktipat retreat, I would see this golden elephant dancing. And I was like, “What is that golden elephant?” So I asked …

Rick: Eyes open, you’d see him?

Kosi: No, he was just dancing, he was just happy. This golden elephant, it was Ganesh, but at the time I didn’t know what Ganesh was, I had no idea. I didn’t know anything about Hinduism, I didn’t know anything about the deities or how they worship deities or what the deeper meaning of the deities were and what they’re pointing to, because they’re like icons that point to this living truth, right?

Rick: Muktananda’s ashram, it was Ganesh Puri, wasn’t it?

Kosi: Yeah, it was Ganesh Puri, that’s right, I never even made that connection. But that first retreat with her, I kept seeing this golden elephant, so I finally asked one of the sadhus that supported her at the time, and he told me it was Ganesh, and that he would break down the barriers to your own self-realization. And I was just like, “Wow!”

Rick: He’s the remover of obstacles.

Kosi: Right, remover of obstacles, he takes it away. And you can actually give over anything that’s troubling you to Ganesh. Like if you can’t break free of your monkey mind, you can hand that off to Ganesh. So it’s a form of surrender too. But at the time it was just, I didn’t have a clue, really. I was just fascinated that these things were happening.

Rick: Back to the psychiatrist.

Kosi: I was like, “Okay, at first it was Jesus, now there’s this connection.”

Rick: Now it’s the golden elephant.

Kosi: I mean, it’s funny to me now. But at the time it was just, it was exciting, it was like, “Wow!” I mean, this whole realm of possibility opened up, right, that didn’t exist before. But it was also very confusing. It was very, very confusing to me, because I wasn’t raised in India, I didn’t know anything about their religion. So when I would have these experiences, which are common in India, “Oh yes, you had a vision of Ganesh, it’s like great, you had this vision.” But it’s not considered unusual, you know what I mean? It’s not like they go, “Oh, you must be crazy if you had something like that happen to you.” So anyway, I was having these mystical experiences, but I started to become disillusioned with the whole thing, even with the Dalai Lama, because as profound as his presence is and his teaching is, I love Tibetan Buddhism for its profound message. I had all these questions, and I couldn’t get close to Guru Mai. I mean, she even had bodyguards around her at that time, because there were so many people coming to see her. There were thousands of people at her retreats. And so I couldn’t get close to her, I couldn’t get close to any of them, really, to ask these questions. So I was actually with Guru Mai, it was her birthday celebration, 2001. We were chanting this ecstatic chant, and when you have 500 to 1,000 people chanting these ancient Vedic hymns, it’s just euphoric. It’s the most incredible sound and the most incredible feeling, because it brings you into your heart. So everyone’s closed their eyes and they’re in this ecstatic chant, and my eyes fly open. I’m 50 feet from Guru Mai, just sitting right in front of her. She’s staring at me, I’m staring back. We’re looking at each other like in this locked grip. And my body literally, we sat there for about five minutes, just staring at each other, and then my body just stood up, and I walked out. And I walked, and I walked, and I walked, and I walked. And my mind was just swirling with thoughts. It’s like, “How am I ever going to be enlightened? This is crazy. This isn’t getting anywhere. This is too slow. What is this all about?” And she has these statues on—it’s a big campus up in South Fallsburg, New York, which is now closed. You have to actually give six months of seva or selfless service to actually be on that campus now. But at the time, it was open to everyone. And I walked, and there was a statue of Christ. And Hanuman, the monkey god of devotion. And I knelt down in front of that statue, and I prayed, Rick, like I had never prayed in my life. For, and I was very specific because I had so many spiritual, mystical experiences. I prayed that I would meet an enlightened master, an awake being, that could awaken me, that could show me the steps of enlightenment. But I was very specific in that it had to be someone that I could talk to. And then I heard Christ in that moment. I heard that same voice that I had been following around. And he said, “You will receive the answer, the answer, one answer, to all your questions at the water’s edge.” That’s what I heard. And so I said, “Well, that’s interesting. But I hope it’s a person at the water’s edge.” I mean, I was really wanting to talk to somebody. It was that kind of, almost like a desperate prayer for help. And 14 days later, I was introduced to Gangaji. I found myself literally at Gangaji’s feet. And the next weekend, I was marrying two people in San Francisco. A sun dog, I mean, this is actually what happened. I’m not just making this stuff up. A sun dog appeared in the sky. And a sun dog is an unusual phenomenon, where there’s a circular rainbow on a sunny, bright, sunny day. So in the middle of this wedding ceremony, this sun dog appears. And this man comes out of the audience, and he said, “I never heard a service like that. There’s someone you must meet, and her name is Gangaji.” And he ran into the house, and he got a picture of Gangaji, and he got me some videotapes. It was a videotape called The Longing. And he said, “You just have to meet her. You have to meet her.” And the very next weekend, she had a satsang. But he had a personal relationship with Gangaji. They had known each other in Lucknow. He had been in Lucknow when Gangaji was there. And so he was part of that Lucknow experience, and he knew Gangaji. And he called her every day. It was so shocking, Rick. And I kept telling him, he would call me and say, “I called her again.” And I said, “You really don’t need to do this. I’m definitely coming.” I knew that this was probably the answer to the question.

You will receive the answer, the answer, one answer, to all your questions at the water’s edge.

Rick: He was calling her to somehow direct her to you?

Kosi: Yeah, to tell me that, you know, like this minister… Because I was a minister at the time. I was presiding over a wedding. And so I was a reverend, you know, all of that. But I was a minister, and I was presiding over this wedding. And he was amazed by what I was saying. And he wanted to make sure that Gangaji knew I was coming. So why he did that, I have no idea. You know, part of it is just his personality. I kept telling him it wasn’t necessary. But then when I get there at the satsang, it was so sweet that he did this now because it’s such an important relationship that I have with Gangaji. And he got me this gardenia corsage, which for me was just profound because it smelled like the temple, how they worship the Nityananda temple that’s always filled with gardenias, and it’s that divine scent, right? So he put this corsage on me. He had put a blanket down in the front rows. It would be right at Gangaji’s feet. And he arranged for me to be in the small group meetings. So she had the big public meetings, but she also had the small group meetings for people that would be too shy to get in front of a group. And so I was literally at her feet within 14 days, and I was shocked. I mean, I can’t even tell you how shocked I was by all of this that was happening. But I was so wonderstruck before Gangaji even said anything. You know, she walked into the room, and I knew immediately she was the answer to the prayer. And then just a few minutes later I was literally at her feet and could ask that first question, which was, “How do you get there? What are the steps? What are the levels of enlightenment?”

Rick: Where does the water’s edge thing come in?

Kosi: The Ganga.

Rick: Oh, Gangaji.

Kosi: She’s the one.

Rick: Okay, I see.

Kosi: You know, Rick, it took me a long time to get that. I still in the back of my mind was thinking, “Oh, maybe someday at the ocean.”

Rick: Yeah, I was thinking there was going to be something literal, like, “Meet Gangaji on the beach,” or something.

Kosi: Right, she’s the water’s edge, and there really is only one answer to all the questions, and that is, “You are what you’re looking for. Call off the search. Stop.” You know, all the things that Gangaji was saying. But Gangaji was the first person that said, “Stop. Stop looking.” And that alone stopped my mind. You know, when she said that, it was like my mind just froze. And I was just like, “What?” Stop the search? How am I ever going to be enlightened if I don’t look for it? You know, that was how my mind heard that. But there was a transmission in being with Gangaji that first day. So I experienced the next… there were several satsangs in a row. So it was like a… I think it was a Sunday, and then the next night there was another one, Tuesday night, or something like that. But the next satsang, I felt completely nauseated. Like, literally, Rick, I thought I was just going to vomit on her feet.

Rick: Because of inner turmoil or something?

Kosi: Just like there was this… I couldn’t explain it. I still can’t explain it. But there was this feeling of nausea, and this is a very common experience of someone that’s had a profound transmission. So I’m sitting there, and I’m feeling sick to my stomach. And it was overwhelming. Like, here I am with another teacher kind of feeling. You know, almost a feeling of dread. Like, this is just another thing where I’m going to be stuck buying a bunch of books and buying the malas and the shawls and the pictures. So I had this inexplicable nauseating feeling. And I felt this huge emotion coming up, just huge. I mean, I literally, as soon as the satsang was over, I ran to my car, slammed the door, and just sobbed. I just could not stop crying. It was sobbing, sobbing, sobbing, sobbing. Like, this unbelievable release.

Rick: Catharsis.

Kosi: Yeah, it was just unbelievable. And so I drove home, sobbing the whole way. I don’t even know how I drove across the Bay Bridge, you know. But I was just crying the whole way. And I got home, and a friend of mine was with me, and I was sobbing, sobbing, sobbing, sobbing. And she was trying to comfort me. She didn’t know what was going on. And I said, it was just like falling into this pit of despair. And then suddenly, without any explanation or anything, I could not stop laughing. It was hilariously funny. I got to see how ridiculous the whole search was. I mean, you are what you’re looking for. And it just struck me as hilariously funny. And so I was laughing so hard, my stomach hurt. So I was sobbing, crying one minute, and then laughing the next. And I shared that with Gangaji the next time I saw her, which was about a week later. And she looked out at the audience and said, “A testimonial.” And if I was a cartoon figure, you would just put a big question mark in the bubble, you know. Because I was like, “Testimonial?” What exactly was that? You know, what happened to me? I mean, I just didn’t really understand at that time. But now I do understand that what was going on is that there was this transmission of this particular lineage, which stops you in your tracks. And any suppressed feelings or emotions, you know, trauma that you’ve had in your life, whatever, maybe many lives, just suddenly and inexplicably comes to the surface to be released. And so it was really a holy moment of release in meeting Gangaji. So there was this profound introduction to her, but then there was this transmission and the holy moment of release from the seeking and from the person that is suffering. It was like an instantaneous release.

You are what you’re looking for. Call off the search. Stop.

🛤️ Gangaji and the End of Seeking

Rick: I see that a lot around Amma, the hugging saint. People come and all of a sudden big football players and people are just bawling. And it’s not just because of the sweetness of the experience, there’s this inner kind of transformation that takes place and that kind of automatically triggers a purging.

Kosi: Yeah, like I said, it’s beyond the mind’s comprehension. The transmission is transcendent of mind. And so a lot of Hindu lineages that go back to India, not that Ammachi is necessarily Hindu, but certainly her culture is steeped in Hinduism.

Rick: She’s pretty Hindu.

Kosi: Yeah, there’s a transmission. I’ve been… during that period I certainly went to Ammachi to get a hug. I mean, how could you not get a hug? I even saw her transform into Krishna. There’s a puja that they do, it’s a special puja, I don’t even know the name of it.

Rick: Well, she used to do this Krishna-Baba thing. These days it’s Devi-Baba, but she used to also do Krishna-Baba.

Kosi: Nice, yeah. And even that was mysterious to me and common in the Indian culture, but uncommon to the Western culture, at least at that time for me. All of this was just like a shock to my system. But it was really Gangaji that ended the search, which was essential. I mean, I was kind of saturated at that point. What I had been was so many different teachers. The mystical experience with Christ actually took me all the way to Jerusalem. And what happened in the holy lands was …

Rick: You actually went to Jerusalem?

Kosi: Oh yeah.

Rick: Oh, okay.

Kosi: He appeared to me, I was in Muktananda’s ashram.

Rick: In South Fallsburg?

Kosi: No, this was in Oakland. This was after … let’s see, this time frame, let me get the time frame straight. It was before I met Gangaji, so it was definitely before I met Gangaji. It was in 1998. I had already had the Shaktipat with Guru Mai and was meditating. We used to go and do the Guru Purnima chants where you stay up all night and you sing “Om Namah Shivaya” and you would be so blissed out. We would just be laughing our heads off by morning. So we were enjoying the chants, right? But I was in deep meditation one day in that particular ashram and Christ appeared as a ball of light, this brilliant light. And the same love that I experienced initially in that workshop. And he said, “I want you to go to Jerusalem. There’s something I want to teach you there.” And then he disappeared. And my first reaction was, “No way.” Because even then it was dangerous. There was a lot of bombs going off. It seemed like a lot in the 1990s, the late 1990s. There was a lot of terrorist activities going on in Jerusalem. So it was like the last place on the planet that I wanted to go. But it was such a profound vision that it haunted me. It was kind of like this haunting quality to it. I just couldn’t stop thinking about maybe there was some real reason for following this. But it would require that I leave my job. It would require making a pretty serious commitment to follow this.

Rick: You had to quit? You couldn’t just take a vacation?

Kosi: The way I held it, because the kind of work that I was doing at the time, I was still in sales and it was just so busy all the time. There was just no way you could take… To go all the way to Jerusalem for a week or two weeks didn’t seem like it was going to be enough time. So I did quit. I quit my job so I would have plenty of time. But it took me about six months to make that decision that I was actually going to really go for it and follow that mystical vision of him. And then once I made that decision, once I had quit my job, of course then I had all these ideas emerge in my mind of where I was going to go. I was going to go to the Mount of Olives where he taught the disciples. I had this kind of fantasy about Christ teaching the disciples and how incredible that must have been because I’m sure it wasn’t just his words. It was this radiance, this love that emanates from Christ or the love that emanates from Ammachi or Karunamayi. It’s this profound love. So I had all these fantasies and then he appeared again in the same ashram, the same exact kind of vision, brilliant light. And he said, “I want you to meet me in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher at the Burning Cross.” And then he disappeared.

Rick: Which is in Jerusalem.

Kosi: It’s in Jerusalem, but at the time I didn’t know what the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was. And it turned out that there was such a place. There is a church and it’s the church that’s built around the site of the crucifixion. So that led me and a good friend of mine that I met in the Conversations with God group, we went together on this amazing adventure. It was truly of biblical proportions what happened. It was just stuff that comes out of the Bible.

Rick: You mean in terms of far out things happening?

Kosi: Well, he says to meet him at the Burning Cross, right? So I figured it must be a painting or a statue or something inside this church. What could it be? He didn’t explain anything. He just basically said, “Meet him there.” It wasn’t the Mount of Olives, that’s all I knew. And I was kind of actually disappointed because I was initially going to go to the Mount of Olives where I knew he taught the disciples.

Rick: Is that where he was crucified, the Mount of Olives?

Kosi: No, he was crucified where the church is. It’s actually the location.

Rick: He was born in Bethlehem, that’s right. Is that where he gave the Sermon on the Mount? Is that the Mount of Olives?

Kosi: No, I’m not actually sure.

Rick: Anyway, I’m throwing you off the track here.

Kosi: I don’t know where the Sermon on the Mount was. It could have been in the Mount of Olives because it is up higher and there are olive trees that are ancient olive trees there. But anyway, that was just something I had read in the Bible when I was young and I was drawn to that because I know that he had spent time teaching the disciples under the olive trees, right? The night he was arrested, that’s where they were. They were in the Mount of Olives. And Christ was so terrified, he actually sweat blood, right? He was absolutely terrified because he knew what awaited him. And it was a profound moment of surrender that happened in the Mount of Olives. But anyway, it was just kind of a fantasy, really. And then he appeared and said he wanted me to go to this church instead. And so we did go to the church. I mean, we found our way there. And there was a series of circumstances that led us there. But we finally get there and we’d gone to. It’s a huge place. It’s a very old church, of course. It’s been there for centuries. And we didn’t see anything that looked like a burning cross, no picture, no statue, no nothing. And we were getting ready to leave, and I saw this really brilliant light coming from a balcony, a place that we hadn’t been. And I said, “Well, let’s go up there.” And we go up, and there’s a Eucharist Mass in process. And so they asked us to join hands, and we joined hands and became part of this group of people that were there, obviously on a Christian pilgrimage. But almost simultaneously, my friend and I saw this cross, which was over the top of this altar. There was this effigy of Christ on it, but there was this Byzantine art that looked like flames. And we both said it simultaneously. We said, “There it is. There’s the cross.” It was just one of those miraculous kind of moments when you finally found it. And then it turns out after this, we waited for the service to be finished, and the tour guide appeared. I was making my way towards the cross, and he said, “This cross marks the exact spot of the crucifixion.” And I was really overwhelmed at this point. It was almost like time collapsed. It was like the memory came flooding back of the actual horror of the crucifixion. And I really was starting to cry. I couldn’t actually crawl underneath the altar and reach down and touch the rock of Golgotha where he was executed, where he was crucified. And when I reached down, I touched the rock, and it was cold like you would expect a rock to be. But it suddenly transformed, and it was transforming into this warm, almost like liquid light. It was just the strangest sensation. And I was feeling this, and I just lost it. I was sobbing, sobbing, crying at the pain of the crucifixion and losing a beloved teacher, just losing Christ in that fashion, losing this beautiful teacher that could heal and open your heart to the truth of who you were. So I’m feeling all this sadness, and then this voice said, “Release your sadness, for I did not die. I’m as alive as the rock that you touch.” And this energy, Rick, shot … It was like the kundalini experience. It just shot up out of the rock, and literally like being electrocuted, it was like an energetic pulse that went up and hit me in the heart, almost knocked me down. And then I just grabbed a hold of my friend Randall and sobbed afterwards, because what else could I do? It was just shocking. It was shocking that I had the vision before I left, and then to have that kind of a profound introduction to not only the crucifixion of Christ, but the risen Christ, or this energy, this presence that defies the physical form or lives beyond the physical form before you’re born and after you’re gone. It’s just incredible. It was an incredible experience. And then we were there for a long period of time and had a profound experience of Moses. That’s where we were guided to go. Just incredible what happened there.

Release your sadness, for I did not die.

🕊️ Jerusalem and the Risen Christ

Rick: Interesting. So the thing I find most interesting about this is that you get these suggestions from a voice, and then you actually follow them up, and then something happens. And it’s sort of like you’re willing. I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard you use the word “willing” or “willingness” in your podcast, but you showed yourself to be willing to go ahead and follow these impulses, not really knowing where they were leading.

Kosi: Right, or even if I was going to be killed, because certainly it was dangerous. It’s still dangerous in Jerusalem. Maybe not as dangerous as it was back then, or more dangerous now, who knows? But it was risky to do that. I mean, I quit my job. I’d never done anything like that.

Rick: Yeah, that’s a big leap. You had the faith to take these leaps.

Kosi: Yeah, I did. It was definitely. Maybe it was curiosity, but there was this willingness because there was this love. The voice was infused with love, so it was that big love. It was the love. I now know it was the love of my own heart, right? But at the time, I experienced it as this Christ presence, as Jesus. And it was just, it was blissful, it was adventurous, and it was totally terrifying. I was scared. And I wouldn’t have even gone by myself. It was lucky that my friend Randall, at that particular time, he was a full-time artist. In fact, he was the only person that could go. And I paid for his trip because at that time I had the funds to do that kind of thing. So it was like divine providence. It’s the only way I can explain it. Because I knew, for whatever reason, even in my ignorance, because I was certainly ignorant, and I was also arrogant at that time, I just knew to trust it. I don’t think at the time I would have even used the word “faith.” Because my mother was more Buddhist. She likes the Buddha more than she liked Christianity. She didn’t understand Christianity, and she kind of put down “faith” because she didn’t really believe it was real.

Rick: These are nice examples of the fact that there is a divine providence, that we are guided. And again, it appeals to me because I recoil a little bit against the plain vanilla approach to non-duality, in which there is no sort of appreciation of the nuances and the subtleties and the dimensionality of life. But in my orientation, all that is significant and real, and you can get caught up in it and turn it into a fantasy, imaginary thing. But with the proper perspective and balance, it has its value, and it obviously has for you.

Kosi: Yeah, it definitely, to me, is the great mystery. The Native American was also part of my path. I’m a pipe carrier for the Lakota, right?

Rick: Boy, you’ve done it all.

Kosi: I was really into it. I was a seeker. After I had that taste, I was really into everything. The ancient stuff especially really appealed to me. But I wouldn’t have known at the time that it was the self or consciousness. I heard some of those terms. I heard that you weren’t your body. I knew about gurus, especially when I was… The Jerusalem experience was really in the very early stages. But I would call it the great mystery, because how do you explain something? You can’t explain that experience of Christ telling me to go, first of all, to a church that I didn’t even know existed, and then tell me to meet him at this place that actually happens to mark the exact spot of the crucifixion. That’s not something you can manifest just by even fantasizing about something.

Rick: That was all pre-Gangaji?

Kosi: This was all pre-Gangaji, but this was actually the essential. This was leading to the spiritual disillusionment, where I knelt down on the ground and said that prayer. Because this was over a period of about three or four years, and I guess it was about four years, that I was really doing heavy seeking and following this mystical experience of Christ, which was biblical in nature. Later I read about the saints, and many of the saints have reported similar experiences. So I can actually relate to saints, like St. Francis. When Gangaji and Eli went to Assisi in the 2004 time frame, I was part of that group, and I was just in bliss with St. Francis. He was like, to me, the epitome of my experience. So I could relate to St. Francis, because he had similar experiences. Christ spoke to him from the cross at this run-down church. So I could relate to that, and I could feel the love that is there, the Christ love that is so present in Assisi. So there is this mystical aspect, and even Gangaji had the experience of saying a prayer for a true teacher, and then found herself with Papaji. So it’s not an unusual experience. It’s almost essential, in a way, to find this point of disillusionment with the search, or this disillusionment with the mundane, so that you’re willing, like you were saying, to stop the search. In my case, it was good that I was willing to follow the search, but it was also time to stop the search, so that I could really go deeper.

Rick: That’s a good point. There’s a time for seeking, and there’s a time to stop seeking. “Seek and ye shall find, knock and the door shall be opened.” But at the same time, there’s also a time when, “Okay, now you can relax.”

Kosi: Yeah, right. And that was really the gift of Gangaji, and not just Gangaji, but the whole lineage, really. Papaji is definitely about stopping to see what’s deeper, to see what’s deeper than your name, because that’s the source of the seeking, is this egoic mind, this identity. And in my case, at that time, there was definitely a lot of self-hatred and feeling of unworthiness and confusion. And so the mystical was like the light. It was like I was following the light to get away from the suffering. But what happened over time was that following the light also became a form of suffering. Do you see? And that was the essential disillusionment that made me stop and say, “Okay, I need some help.”

Rick: Well, you can kind of get into a habit of seeking for something where it’s not going to be found, and that becoming habitual. And then there’s this sort of chasing a carrot on a stick.

Kosi: That’s right, it’s the golden carrot. And I kept thinking, and in a way it was true. I felt like that following the Christ voice or whatever that experience was, that by following that, that I would receive the answer. I was looking for the answer. I was looking for the way to enlightenment. And what’s interesting is that this voice told me the way. He said over and over again, “The truth that you are seeking is in your heart. It is the universal light of all that is. It is the freedom that you seek.” I mean, he would say that, and I would hear that and write that, like I told you earlier about the moth flying into the flame, but still be confused by it and even have a lot of doubt came up when I started having, even in Jerusalem. I mean, here I am in Jerusalem, Rick, having this profound experience of this energy shooting out of the rock of Golgotha, right? And I’m still having doubts. And that was just amazing that I still would have doubt at that time.

Rick: I think it’s natural and it’s common. And whether you’re with a guru or going through various experiences, you just go through what you go through in order for these doubts to be dispelled. Obviously you’re not beating yourself up over having had them. But everybody goes through such a phase.

Kosi: When Ramana said, “Doubt the doubter,” that was huge. I mean, that was huge for me. When I heard just some of those amazing quotes from Ramana, “Doubt the doubter,” one of them, and the other was, “The heart is the only reality.” And it was so infused with truth. But it was really Gangaji that could answer my questions that stopped this search. And it was a profound search for truth and freedom. And it was like, because I had so much money, Rick, I mean, this is one of the gifts of having all the money, is I knew that the money wasn’t the answer. That having the nice house wasn’t the answer. That having the BMW wasn’t the answer. That the things that my parents had done to survive was not going to make me happy. So that was the crack, if you will, that really opened this up.

From Bliss States to Deepening

Rick: Would you agree with the notion that stopping the search does not mean an end to discovery and deepening and exploration? It’s more like stopping of the sort of desperate energy in which you’re looking for something which is already your essence.

Kosi: Well, I think it’s an end to the addiction to the bliss states, because certainly that’s an aspect of seeking, right? But once you’re willing to stop, once you hear that, when you really hear that stop, not as necessarily physically stopping, but discovering what’s still inside of you, then there’s no end to the discovery, there’s no end to the inquiry. But you’re not moving outward to get. It’s not an objectification because there’s a subtle and gross…

Rick: Key phrase being, “not moving outward.”

Kosi: That’s right, but there’s a subtle and gross objectification of freedom and truth when you’re seeking to get it. It says it’s not here, the mind is going to tell you it’s not here. And the reason is usually because of some sense of self-hatred. Because if you feel deep down that you’re worthless, then freedom can’t possibly be here, right? This is how the mind would interpret that. And so naturally the tendency is to go, “Well, it has to be somewhere else.” And then there’s this longing for happiness and freedom that we all experience. But the tendency is in the ignorant mind, or the mind that’s not aware, is just to follow this longing, to follow it like I was following it. I was following the longing for Christ, the longing for God. Where is truth? Where is freedom? How do you become enlightened? I was following this longing, but I didn’t know to stop and turn to the longing itself until I met Gangaji. And actually that was the very first tape that this man that came and told me about Gangaji gave me this tape, was about the longing. And I was like, “That’s it! The longing!”

Rick: And yet you had had inner experiences, meditative experiences.

Kosi: Oh yeah.

Rick: So it seems like there should have been a clue that it’s to be found within, not in some kind of external search.

Kosi: I told you I was kind of dense. I mean, I certainly did. I had a lot of meditation, a lot of silence. Even when I was writing the words I was hearing in this mystical experience, I was alone quite a bit of the time. Most of the time I spent alone in silence, receiving whatever that was, this download of information, of truth. I just couldn’t understand the truth. It was like I needed someone to help me interpret that. And for me it was Gangaji that did that.

Rick: Would you say that even though you’ve given up chasing bliss states or specific experiences and so on, that is not to say that bliss has not become or cannot become a kind of a 24/7 experience, but in a subtler way. It becomes kind of a foundational thing.

Kosi: That’s right. It’s not a state that comes and goes. We all experience happiness that we get something we want, or a beautiful gift or whatever, and we experience happiness. Or we get a relationship that we’ve longed for and we feel happy. But as Papaji says, it’s because the desire was fulfilled. So when the desire is fulfilled, then you experience your natural state, which is happiness. But the state that comes and goes is not it, because anything that comes and goes is not ultimately real. So there’s this deepening into the heart, into the truth of who you are as aware presence. And the more you deepen into that, the more happiness you experience, no matter what is going on.

Rick: Yeah, continuum kind of thing.

Kosi: Even if you’re having emotions that are considered non-spiritual, like if you’re angry or sad or whatever, you’re still in the direct experience of happiness. And for me, it happened as a profound moment of what I call the supreme clarity. Just suddenly, it was like it got stuck on. And this was fairly recent. It was about three years ago. There was this feeling of being on all the time, just this presence of happiness. And it just didn’t matter what I was doing. I wasn’t even inquiring or doing anything in particular at the time. I was just walking through a park. And then suddenly, there was this shift, and then everything was, it’s indescribable.

Rick: And it just kind of stayed on after that.

Kosi: It just stayed on. It’s the clear awareness is the only way I can describe it. It’s the clear awareness. And you really, not on a conceptual level, because certainly I understood all this stuff on a conceptual level for years and years, but this is a deepening into the truth of being to such a degree that there’s no thought process. You just know. It’s not even a knowing. It’s just that you are that clear awareness. And so you really get that you’re not your past. You’re not your future. You’re not your emotions. You’re none of that. So it’s almost like a fire that burns through, burns through, burns through, and then suddenly it burns all the way through, and then there’s just this clearness, this clarity.

It’s the clear awareness.

Rick: Well, if you think about it, everyone, even a dog, is not aware by virtue of the fact that they’re thinking some particular thing. Awareness is just there as a continuum. But for most people that awareness is too dim to be recognized in its pure value. It’s true, it’s kind of full value, which all the scriptures tell us is ananda, it’s inherent blissfulness, but usually that’s kind of clouded over by so many layers of things. But like you’re saying, eventually enough burning through takes place where there’s no longer any shrouding, even in the most intensive circumstances. For instance, my old teacher, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, used to say, “Christ never suffered, even when he was on the cross. He couldn’t have suffered because he was that pure, blissful being, and he knew that so fully that no matter what was happening on the apparent levels, he couldn’t have lost that.” So that seems rather extreme.

Kosi: That was actually my direct experience of that past life memory, was that I was amazed by him, because he was calm, he was at peace. And I was just angry, I was angry that here I was, a young guy, strong and being killed, and there was nothing I could do about it. It wasn’t that I was a good guy either. It’s like I was just angry that I was stuck in that situation. And I was amazed by him, because he was just so calm and teaching. Here he was, teaching, still, and forgiving these soldiers, who I was also angry at them. And then there was this moment of surrender when we crossed over, which is really the essential piece. There has to be this willingness to surrender the mind, and an end of this internal belief system that what we’re saying to ourselves is true. And we can understand this on a conceptual level, but to actually burn through it takes time. And certainly the exposure that I had to all these different teachers, I mean, being with such high level teachings, being with the Dalai Lama, being with Guru Mai, being with Gangaji, going to be with Arunachala, certainly this life has been consumed by a profound spiritual flame. It’s a bonfire, it’s been a bonfire for a long time. So this started before I met Gangaji, and then it deepened and deepened and deepened with Gangaji.

Rick: Yeah, yeah, and each, yeah, I mean, doesn’t need commentary, that’s good. But I just want to reemphasize this point we were just talking about, which is sometimes you hear people talk about, “Oh yeah, enlightened people can be depressed, they can be miserable, they can be angry.” And yeah, fine, those things can happen on some kind of surface level. But if they really are enlightened, if that word means anything, then that’s really not the foundation or the predominant reality of their experience. Predominantly there is this silent blissful awareness; superficially, and maybe it might seem predominant to outside observers, but not from their perspective, there could be these changing things taking place, just like clouds can be passing by, but the sun keeps shining.

Kosi: Right, the clouds passing by is a great analogy, but I also think you’re not entangled. You’re not entangled with the past, you’re not entangled with your potential future. You’re just free of that, because you are that spaciousness. The identity, in other words, has to burn through. There has to be this burning through of this sense “I am me.” And that takes time, because we’re in a physical body, and that sense is still there to some degree, but you’re no longer identified with it. You’re no longer identified with your body. You’re no longer identified with your circumstances. So when you’re not identified and you’re not entangled, then there’s this clarity of presence. So you’re just clear, aware presence. And when you’re clear, aware presence and not entangled, then the experience is just happiness. And the body goes through its thing. You’re still feeling stuff because that’s the nature of the body. And it’s the nature of the mind, in unison with your emotions, as a kind of warning system. You know what I mean? The purpose of the mind is to keep you alive. So you need the mind, you need the ego, you need the body to be in a physical form.

Rick: I’m glad to hear you say that. Some people talk as though the ego is going to get totally annihilated. I don’t think you can function as a human being if it were. It’s a faculty which has usurped, it’s taken on more authority than it deserves, so to speak. But when everything is kind of put aright, then it still functions. It’s just that it takes more of a subsidiary role.

Kosi: Well, this is also where the vigilance comes in, too. Because Ramana talked about vasanas, these very powerful egoic tendencies. And they have to be fully burned through for liberation, which is the constant realization of the truth of who you are. But there has to be a vigilance or a resolve to really pay attention. For me, it’s paying attention. You’re like, “Oh, I’m buying into this thought,” whatever that might be. Or, “I’m becoming entangled in something,” and then just stop. So you’re not actually doing vigilance, you are vigilance. You are the presence that’s aware, so you’re very aware. Because the mind can get very tricky, and we’ve all experienced that, where we can have these moments of profound awakening, and then get tricked into thinking that our internal conversation is true, that our perspective is right, and whatever the other person is saying is totally wrong. And this is what leads to war. It all comes down to this identification with this idea of me, and that idea of me can include a culture, and it can include a religious belief, and it can include an entire nation. So this is where the “us” and “them” comes from.

Rick: I was just listening to Dylan’s song yesterday, “With God on Our Side.”

Kosi: Yeah.

Rick: Do you feel like you’ve burned through all your vasanas, or are you still burning through them?

Kosi: I don’t know the answer to that. I know that I am very vigilant, and I know that Gandhiji stressed vigilance. To me, that’s my focus, is on the vigilance and the resolve and the presence. I do feel that something major happened, Rick. And it’s actually after I met Karunamayi, Sri Amma Karunamayi, came into my life. And it wasn’t a planned thing, but she did come in, and there was this change that I can’t explain, but there was this burning through of something. And it could be, like I said earlier in our conversation, it could be centuries and centuries and centuries that this particular incarnation is incarnated and incarnated so many times, that this burning has been going on for a lot longer than we realize. But there was definitely a shift of profound magnitude that happened after Amma came into my life. And some of that is because of her divine devotion, certainly. She’s very devoted to God, very devoted to service. She’s a living saint, so she actually feeds lepers with her bare hands. And when you go to a meditation retreat, all of her teaching is primarily in silence. And you’ll be in silence for an hour and a half straight. But she’ll sit for hours and then feed everyone that comes to the retreat by hand. This is a completely different kind of consciousness. And the connection to Ramana is that her mother was an ardent devotee of Ramana when Ramana was still in physical form. And so Ramana one day, on a very rare occasion, looked at Karunamayi’s mother and said, “You’re going to give birth to Tai.” And in the Tamil language, Tai is the divine mother or an avatar. So she was born awake. So she’s a true avatar. And an avatar is in a completely different realm. And her focus is on the Vedic, the ancient Vedic teachings. But in terms of the vasanas, to answer your question, there is this burning through of the vasanas to such a degree that there is a clear, aware presence that I can’t explain in words. But I started to notice it in satsang, that there was this shift that was happening. And people were having these profound experiences in satsang that were different from what I had experienced with Gangaji. So I just noticed that there was something else, another dimension to this that is so beyond the mind that there’s really no way to even articulate it. But there was definitely a burning through to such a degree that my experience is one of lasting happiness. So everything that Gangaji told me for years and years and years, I would definitely describe myself as one of the rock people. You know, she talks about people that take a long time to get it. I would say I was a rock person. But then when you burn through as a rock person, then you find the diamond right inside of you. But then you realize that you’re the radiance. But then it goes below, it goes even beyond the radiance or any conceptual idea. And then there’s this clarity of presence is the only way I can describe it. But it all happened so quickly. I was with Arunachala Shiva, had these profound experiences there that just were mind-blowing. It was very similar to the Christ experiences were happening in India. And then a few months later, five months later, Amma comes into my life. I don’t think it was an accident at all. And not at all.

There was definitely a shift of profound magnitude that happened after Amma came into my life.

Karunamayi, Ramana, and the Burning Through

Rick: Nothing is.

Kosi: No, I just think it was divine providence. And then in a recent interview she said that in one of her incarnations she was the mother of Christ. And this makes sense, you know, because if she’s the mother of Christ and I was there at the crossover of Christ, so there’s a connection that goes beyond this realm. And certainly, when you’re talking about purely the mental inquiry of opening up to discover who am I really, right? This is the gift of Ramana. This is a very powerful, important piece. But it’s not the only thing. There’s this mystery of this transmission of God, deities, that is in a completely different realm. And just because we can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not real. And a lot of times what we see and we think is real isn’t real at all, because anything that’s phenomenal isn’t going to last. It’s not the real thing.

Rick: I’ll make a couple of quick comments on things you’ve been saying and then you can springboard off those. One is about the vigilance. It kind of reminds me of the analogy of learning to ride a bicycle. I remember when I first learned to ride a bicycle, my backyard was a little bit sloped, so my father helped me on the bicycle and I managed to coast down and crash into the garden. Then I kept trying that until I got pretty good at it. And then eventually I could ride down through other backyards. It was sort of downhill coasting. And then the next thing I knew I was out in the street and I was balancing. But it was still … I still had to be hyper-vigilant and there was still a lot of falling off before riding a bicycle became second nature. But still, Lance Armstrong can fall off his bicycle and sometimes does. So even great teachers can sometimes trip up. Perhaps it’s a lapse in vigilance that they succumb to. So even though it becomes second nature, it doesn’t mean one is invincible or invulnerable. There still has to be this sort of vigilance.

Kosi: Right. And Papaji said to your very last breath, and I think he’s right in that, because I think the maya or the illusion of life is very seductive. I call it eye candy. So as we move through our life, it’s eye candy. It’s like, “Wow, that guy is really good looking,” or “That woman is really beautiful,” or “I really would like to have a lot of money because then I could have that beautiful car, the new car that came out,” or whatever. And so it’s seductive. So you have to be vigilant to your very last breath, because as long as you’re in a physical body, the mind can trick and trap you. And certainly this is one of the great gifts of Gangaji, because she has spent so much time talking about the tricks and traps of the mind and the ego. And then the more you inquire, then you become more and more naturally aware of what your mind is doing. So you’re no longer at the effect of the mind. I think in one of my podcasts I called it “Riding the Bull.”

Rick: Oh yeah, I heard that one.

Kosi: Yeah, it’s like you’re the master of the mind instead of the mind leading you around by the nose.

Rick: There’s a beautiful Zen painting, the ten phases of awakening, the final one he’s riding the bull. But yeah, what was I just going to say? Oh, I was just going to say there’s some great stories in the Vedic literature about people who thought they had maya conquered, and then it turns out they didn’t, and they went off on some whole thing where they got totally snookered by maya. And then eventually, after quite some time, realized, “Oh my God, it got me.”

Kosi: Yeah, you can get trapped. Even in spiritual culture, I see that people start to emulate what it looks to be more spiritual. Like you have to have the white cotton outfit from India. In fact, I went to a temple in Kauai, I was with some friends, and because they know I’m doing all this spiritual work, they thought I would be dressed in the Indian garb, and I was just dressed with a T-shirt and sweatpants. And they were just like, “We’re going to this temple, and you’re dressed like that?” I said, “I’m an American, you know, you wear a T-shirt and comfortable pants if you’re going to go do a tourist thing.” So I think that’s where it gets up against the myth of enlightenment. From my own experience, I think it’s more … the more you wake up, the more you liberate yourself from these egoic tendencies. It’s almost like you just have permission to be human, just to make mistakes and be goofy. You know, like yeah, you get upset, you get mad about something, and then boom, you’re over. But I think the difference is you’re not entangled. You might have a reaction to something, but you’re not stuck in that reaction for a period of time.

Rick: Line on air.

Kosi: Right.

Rick: That analogy.

Kosi: Yes, yes, yeah.

Rick: The other thing I wanted to mention based on what you said is I was just reading something the other day about how … I’ve thought about this before, but how sometimes people are born very highly evolved, and maybe this doesn’t apply to someone like Karunamayi, who was born an avatar or Amma, but in many cases they just sort of awaken spontaneously, and they don’t make really good teachers sometimes because they haven’t actually gone through all the hard knocks, so they can’t relate very well to people at various stages of their development. So they just kind of sit there and maybe describe their experience, but there’s too much of a gulf between their description and what people are actually living. Whereas in the case of someone like yourself, although you do say on your website that there’s no teaching or spiritual practice, you just simply share your experience of simple direct self-inquiry, perhaps having gone through all the normal stuff that everybody goes through, you’re a little bit better able to relate to people, whatever stage they’re at, and commiserate or understand that.

Kosi: I have tremendous compassion, because if anyone suffered, I suffered greatly, because I was so identified as this, the self-hatred was strong, and I was identified with it, whether it was conscious or unconscious, it was there, it was running me. But because of that, and because it’s been a long journey, and I’ve gone through the mystical experiences, I’ve gone through the mundane experiences, there’s something to be said for that. But the main thing is I have unconditional love and compassion for the people that come to my satsangs, because I know that awakening is not… This is the real thing. When you have an avatar come into your life and support you the way Amma is supporting me, it’s a powerful fire, and it can be experienced as excruciatingly painful. It can be very emotional. Big emotions can come up, big fear can come up. And so the compassion is there, and the love is there, because I know what that’s like. I know what it’s like to be at the effect of this rollercoaster of your mind. I described it once when I was with Gangaji, I felt like I was on a rollercoaster with my hair on fire, because I was burning and struggling with this mind, wanting to break free and not able to do it. And part of what I’ve realized is that there’s this natural, organic awakening, which is really Ramana’s gift, because when he was 16 and he met his father, his father had died and he became terrified of dying, he laid down on the ground and he looked in his heart is really what happened. So he asked himself who dies, what dies, but that inquiry drove his mind deeply inside himself, into the heart, and then he realized that which can never die, right? So this inquiry, this looking into your heart, begins a natural, organic evolution. And if you’re patient, it will burn through, and just know that you’re going to make mistakes. Know that you’re going to get trapped by the mind or the ego or your identifications or your entanglements. And if you know that and welcome that, then there’s this natural evolution that’s allowed to happen. You know, like an acorn doesn’t become an oak tree overnight. I mean, if it did, it would be shocking, it would be like a sci-fi movie, you know, like this acorn just grew up out of the ground, or like Jack and the Beanstalk, right? It takes time for a tree to mature and grow and blossom. And the same is true of spiritual inquiry, especially on the path of Ramana, which is the pathless path. I call it “the path of freedom is stopped.” The path of freedom is now, freedom is now.

The path of freedom is now, freedom is now.

✨ Natural Awakening and the Pathless Path

Rick: Yeah. I think it also, I don’t know, personally, having interviewed about 190 people now, I’ve talked to all kinds of wonderful people, and I still haven’t been convinced that everyone is not still on the path. Let me phrase that more clearly. I just have this sense that the range of evolution is vast, and that regardless of how spiritually advanced someone might be, if they’re still breathing, they’re still progressing. And if you could step inside Karunamayi’s and see things through her eyes, regardless of how advanced one might be as many of these spiritual teachers, they might think, “Whoa, I didn’t realize it could get this profound. This is a little bit more than I conceptualized.” And yet I talk to many people who I ask towards the end of the interview, “Where do you see it going from here? What’s the leading edge for you now?” And they look at me like I’m crazy, like, “Hey, I’m done, dude.” But I don’t know, maybe it’s just my bias or it could be a misunderstanding.

Kosi: I call that the neo-advaita trap. It’s this idea that you open up, you discover yourself as aware presence, and that’s it. And I think there are degrees of realization or stages of realization. Papaji is known to have said, when he was interviewed by David Godman, that he only met in his lifetime, in his entire lifetime, Papaji only met two fully self-realized beings. Ramana was one, and the other was a sadhu that lived in the jungle. And no one even knows who this guy was or what his name was, or maybe somebody does, but he didn’t tell David. But that tells me that there are levels, or however you want to phrase it, it’s hard to phrase some of these things, but there are stages. And I know in my own experience, there’s a deepening, and it’s just profound, because you think, “Well, how could I possibly go any deeper?” And then you do, and then you just fall in deeper, and then there’s just these deeper and deeper and deeper realizations. I know, I wrote a book called Absence of Doubt back in 2004, and I interviewed Gangaji for that book, and I was really trying to put a context around spiritual terms, because what I realized is, based on your spiritual experience, whatever lineages you had been, however you were raised, it affected how you saw the words even, like what was “ego,” what did it mean, what was “mind.” And so I wrote this book with her, doing this interview with Gangaji, to try and put a context so that you could not overlook the depth of what Gangaji was sharing. Because I saw a lot, at that time, back in 2004, I saw a lot of people in the sangha that were missing the depth, because of that idea, “Oh, I recognize myself as this aware presence, I’m done.” You know, there we go, and then off to the next thing.

Rick: Well, I’m glad you’re saying this. When I interviewed Gangaji, as I recall, she herself said that there’s this continual deepening. And Adyashanti says the same thing. He said, “For me, it’s like I’m just beginning.” And I get flack from people, because I’m always talking about levels, but this is really what I mean when I’m talking about it, which is that I understand the idea of complete, indivisible wholeness, and that that’s the ultimate reality. But as far as a human being living that is concerned, don’t rest on your laurels. There could be so many degrees of deeper deepening, or clarification, or whatever you want to call it, and you’re selling yourself short if you assume that you’ve already traversed them all.

Kosi: Right, right. In fact, when Karunamayi came into my life, it actually was kind of upsetting to me when she came in, because I never ever intended to leave Gangaji. That was never in my mindset. I was so committed, and I still am very committed to Gangaji and the truth and inquiry, and this whole lineage of teachers going back to Ramana. But I asked her, I said, “You know, I get that Ramana’s different. He was a 16-year-old boy, he was living in India, he had this profound awakening. But why is he so different?” It always haunted me, this idea that he was different. And when you go to India, especially, when you’re with his master, which was Ramana saw the mountain as his teacher, and how incredible is that, that you can go to India and be in the presence of someone’s master that’s still in physical form. That’s incredible. And so, what made him different?

Rick: You asked this of Karunamayi?

Kosi: I did. I didn’t know why she came in. I said, “You know, I’m really devoted to Gangaji, I’m devoted to Ramana Maharshi and how this was passed on, even though he doesn’t believe in lineages.” And she spent an entire weekend.

Rick: Talking about that?

Kosi: Talking about this, because I gave her this book that I made, it’s a coffee table book of just pictures of my experience of the mountain. And it was profound revelations that came just by looking at Shiva, looking at this embodiment of Shiva. I gave her the book and she went through every single page. She was just amazed by this book. And then she spent the entire weekend explaining her mother’s relationship with Ramana, that she ensured me that she didn’t come to take anything away from my teaching, that she was here to support with the greatest love and compassion, which is what she does with everyone. But she explained to me that Ramana is not what we are perceiving. So we perceive that this 16-year-old boy was afraid that after his father died, he suddenly became terrified of death, right? And then he had this awakening. But she said he was millions and millions and millions of incarnations, that he was a rishi in many, many different lifetimes, sat on the banks, probably of the Kosi River even, who knows, and composed music. These ancient, ancient chants that are filled, infused with this vibration of truth. And so part of what I do in my satsangs, Rick, is I bring in the mantra as a form of inquiry, a very simple inquiry. It’s not hard, it’s not like a complex thing.

🧘 Mantra as Inquiry

Rick: What mantra?

Kosi: Any mantra.

Rick: Like the ones Karunamayi gives you?

Kosi: Yeah, it can be any mantra. It can be Om Nama Shivaya, it can be anything. Sitaram, that’s one of our favorites is Sitaram. There’s a group of us, it’s really starting to take off, my teaching in Europe, and there’s a group that’s really part of this, and they sing for me, and it’s just beautiful. But we use it as a simple inquiry. And I think that’s how it was originally taught. And what I mean by that is, okay, so you’re chanting this chant, you feel it in your throat, you hear it with your ears, but what’s deeper than your throat and what’s deeper than your ears? What inside of you is receiving this sound? Now I’m using the mantra to do this because it’s infused with the grace of the ancient Rishis, right? But I’m also using it just as a sound, as a tone. You could actually use a motorcycle engine and do the same thing.

Rick: You could, but different sounds have different effects.

Kosi: Yeah, different sounds have different effects, but still it’s the sound.

Rick: Heavy metal music is different than Mozart.

Kosi: Well, it certainly would be a little harder to get into the presence of a Whitesnake or something. But you know what I mean, certainly the mantra helps because it’s a specific vibration. This makes what I do very different immediately from what Gangaji does. Certainly singing happens spontaneously in Gangaji’s satsangs, but this is an intentional use of the mantra as a very simple form of inquiry that bypasses the mind. And what I’ve discovered over the past year is it’s very effective. It really, really works and it’s very supportive in a very gentle way for people.

Rick: I’ve been doing mantra meditation for 45 years myself and it’s very effective. I interviewed Michael James a few weeks ago and he lived in Tiruvannamalai for years and he translated a lot of Ramana Maharshi’s works from Tamil into English and so on. And he had an interesting take on Atma-vichara. He was saying that if someone hands you a book and says, “What’s in this book?” you don’t just sit there with the book saying, “What’s in this book? What’s in this book? What’s in this book?” You open the book and you investigate. You investigate what’s in the book experientially. So he felt like the true meaning of Atma-vichara was definitely not sitting and thinking, “Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?” It’s not like saying, “What’s in this book?” but it was more of an inner exploration. By that definition, anything which is really conducive to an inner exploration could be defined as Atma-vichara. Like this mantra thing you’re talking about or perhaps a number of things.

Kosi: It’s definitely vichara, there’s no question. It’s an intentional inquiry. It’s a simple inquiry, it’s just a single question, “What receives the sound? What side of you receives the sound?” This is a very intentional inquiry, not to know what receives the sound, because you could say, “Well, I receive the sound,” but it’s deeper than the feeling, “I am me.” What is receiving the vibration of sound? What’s receiving your senses? So it is an inquiry, it is vichara.

Rick: Well, it’s another thing that happens with you.

Kosi: Using sound to do it instead of just thinking. But one thing, just real quick, that you touched on that I really want to emphasize, because Ramana said the only true inquiry was the repetition of “Who am I?” And I think the reason he said that is because that question, the mind doesn’t have an answer for it. The mind is used to having an answer and collecting that information. With that particular question, it can’t come to an answer and there’s an energy associated with it. So this cycle of repeating the question creates a kind of energy that burns through these vasanas. And this is why I think Ramana emphasized the use of the question “Who am I?” And I just wanted to say that because you touched on it. Because some people think, “Oh, it’s just a question of ‘Who am I?’ I get that I’m awareness and that’s it.” But it’s actually deeper than that because it generates a fire. It generates an energy, that particular question.

Rick: And ultimately if the question is going to be answered, the question has to be transcended. Because “Who you are?” is not a verbal answer that’s going to satisfy that question.

Kosi: Who’s even asking the question?

Rick: And that’s actually the way a mantra works, if it can work, which is that it’s a sound, like you say, but in repeating it, the sound becomes finer, finer, finer, finer, and disappears. And when it disappears entirely, what you’re left with is no mantra, no repetition, just pure awareness, which is who you are.

Kosi: Right, right. And you can just sing and have the same thing happen without even doing any kind of conscious inquiry. But when you put it in the context of the mantra, in the context of conscious inquiry, wow, it’s very potent. And so what I’ve seen over the past, especially over the past six months, is this very potent transmission. And I attribute it to the mantra itself, because it’s ancient, it’s these Vedic chants coming way back, you know, thousands of years. But I also attribute it to the fact that Amma, for mysterious reasons, has come into my life, for divine reasons, divine providence, to fulfill whatever this life is supposed to offer the world. And right now it’s showing up as satsang, an inquiry, embracing these ancient techniques. So certainly silence is part of that, inquiry is part of it, and then the mantra is the other. And I really believe that in ancient India, it wasn’t just the mental inquiry, it was all three. It was silence, it was the inquiry, and then it was the mantra. And if you have all three, it supports a profound and immediate deepening into the truth of who you are as Atman, as happiness, as fulfillment. But it’s this burning energy that burns through the vasanas. Because if you have the awake experience of recognizing the infinitude, but you don’t burn through all the way, through this identification or these egoic vasanas, then you’re really at the risk of being trapped more easily. And if you burn through them, then you’re not as easily tricked by the mind.

Rick: Yeah, I think you’re right. And not only the three things you mentioned, but there are any number of engines that could be added to that train. I mean, for instance, Ayurveda, panchakarma, it could have a purifying effect on the body, which could help to … In fact, I just ran into a friend, he’s going to Nepal tomorrow for 40 days of Panchakarma—or Ayurveda, and he said, “Well, the first thing we’re going to do is something that’s supposed to burn off the impressions in the subtle emotional body.” And I said, “Oh, great, get in touch with me when you get back.” And then yoga. I mean, a lot of times these practices are seen as sort of competitive approaches, but they could be complementary.

Kosi: They’re definitely complementary. I can’t even say that word right now. Complementary.

Rick: Complementary.

Kosi: There you go. But basically, yes, I had a vision, actually, because I recognize that the planet is in such trouble right now. There is an intense energy on the planet. Actually, Amma told us this. I was in India last year for three weeks at her ashram in Andhra Pradesh, India, and she said that what happened on 12/21/12 was not just a one-time event, that the planetary alignment that occurred then actually changed the magnetic sphere of the entire Earth. And so if you’re not grounded in any kind of spirituality, it makes your mind go kind of crazy. And she said it was really important for people like myself that are awake to be really present and compassionate and help people that are really struggling and suffering at this particular time in the Kali Yuga, because we’re still in Kali Yuga, the dark age, the dark spiritual age. And so it’s very important to be aware, to be grounded in your meditation and have many different modalities. So I had this vision called, and I created this program out of it called The Clear Way. And it’s basically taking what was formerly hidden in secret, the inner circle, if you will, of the teacher, or in ancient India, the secret teachings that were never really exposed except to the closest disciples. And I want to bring that out and offer it as a program, but it includes multiple modalities. So it’s the mantra, it’s the silence, it’s the inquiry, but it’s yoga, it’s breath work. It’s other modalities to support the liberation, certainly, but also to support those who feel called to offer satsang, people who feel called to incorporate an aware presence in their healing or therapeutic practice. And so it’s something that just came to me when I was in the Philippines, that this is one of the things that’s needed on this planet right now, is to have more people out there offering a conscious, aware inquiry through silence, through the mantra, through these different modalities, that it was important to do this now. And so it’s not just a program, and I just kind of put it on the website just to see how people would react to it, because I said it’s 10 years. It’s a 10-year commitment, because it takes at least 10 years to burn through these layers. And I would suspect the criticism I’m going to get is, “Well, how do you know, because somebody could wake up quicker than somebody else?” And that’s true. So you don’t really know, but I’m basically saying this is a life kind of commitment. If you really are serious about your own liberation, and you feel called to be in service or to work with other people in a healing practice or in satsang, it takes time. And it takes a deep, deep, deep commitment to the truth of who you are. So I put that together, but it’s not really a workshop. It’s funny, because in this maya that we’re in, that’s the only way I know how to present it, is like a course or whatever, but it’s so much more than that.

It takes at least 10 years to burn through these layers.

World Change, Trauma, and Service

Rick: There’s lots of good stuff in what you just said. First of all, this thing about world consciousness shifting, and that could cause a lot of people to freak out if they’re not prepared for it. Very true. I’ve thought about that for a long time. I was out on a boat ride on Lake Lucerne in about 1974 with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and there was this comet coming at that point, Kahootek or whatever it was called, and people were all freaked out because they thought it was going to be a harbinger of God knows what for the world. But we got into this serious discussion about, well, yeah, world consciousness is really shifting. It’s going to be shifting profoundly over the next generation or so, and what’s that going to do for people? What’s going to happen in society? Because there are so many things in the world that have no reason to exist in an enlightened age. They just don’t fit, and somehow that’s all going to have to crumble. So he went into this whole talk about, yeah, a lot of things are really going to be shaken up, and a lot of apparently solid institutions are going to fall, and economies, and all sorts of things are going to happen. But people said, “Well, what can we do to survive it?” He said, “Hang on to yourself.”

Kosi: Right. And Amma would say, “Meditate.”

Rick: Yeah, well, he would have said the same thing. What we’re seeing now in Arab Spring and not so springy things happening in Egypt and Syria and so on, there’s always been problems in the world. We had World Wars I and II, so there’s always been crazy stuff. But I kind of feel like we’re entering into a time when transformation of world consciousness is just going to result in the shaking up of a lot of stuff which just can’t comfortably exist anymore in a higher, more conscious world.

Kosi: I think that’s what we’re seeing, actually, Rick. If you look at the world stage right now, I think it’s a crumbling of those institutions. The economy in Europe is very unstable. The economy in the United States is unstable, with the amount of debt that we’ve incurred. It’s unstable. We haven’t experienced this kind of debt before. And then you’ve got all these wars breaking out. The horror of war, which ends up killing lots of innocent people, children, women, men, older men, older women, grandmothers and grandfathers are being just annihilated by chemical warfare.

Rick: Which most of us haven’t experienced that stuff if we live in the U.S.

Kosi: No, we’ve been very fortunate.

Rick: Unless we’ve been around since the Civil War.

Kosi: Well, my dad was a World War II veteran.

Rick: Yeah, mine too.

Kosi: So he flew B-17s and he saw a lot of action. Too much action. It really affected his life. He suffered. He was very functional. He was very successful in his career and all of that. But he was really damaged emotionally by what he experienced. And it was never diagnosed until the last two years of his life. So there’s the trauma of war as well. So you can be traumatized even if you’re not in the war zone. So none of us are in the war zone, but it certainly can be traumatizing to see this. To see that one government would just drop a bomb on this group of people and annihilate them. It’s a trauma that we experience. And certainly in 9/11, that was a very traumatic experience. Even though we weren’t in the Twin Towers, certainly just observing it was a kind of trauma. And then we’re all connected, so we don’t even realize how deeply connected we are because we’re so attracted to the illusion that we’re separate, right? But when that kind of trauma happens, we actually feel it in the astral body, if you want to describe it that way. I don’t know how you describe it.

Rick: Yoda said it best when the Death Star blew up the planet Alderaan or whatever. Or maybe it was the other guy, Obi-Wan Kenobi, said, “I just felt a great disturbance in the Force.”

Kosi: In fact, that was the first time, I think that movie, Star Wars, when I was 16. I was 16 years old when that came out. And I remember standing in lines and seeing it more than once and standing in lines more than once because of the Force. There was something about that. It was like the Force. I wanted to know what that Force was because there was something about it that seemed true. That it was more than just a sci-fi movie. And certainly it turns out that there is more to it.

Rick: Sure, George Lucas was a Buddhist and he understood that.

Kosi: Was he?

Rick: Or is… I just want to come back to one other thing you said, which is that you’re talking about this 10-year program and a lot of different modalities and a lot of people around the world. There’s that saying, you’ve probably heard, that the next Buddha is the Sangha. There’s this proliferation of teachers all over the world. I don’t know if there is such a thing as an ultimate teacher. Everybody is at different stages of the game, but everybody has something to offer and people gravitate toward that which is of value to them. You’ve gone through a number of stages yourself. Even though you may have graduated from one stage to the next, you certainly still respect and honor each stage you went through. It had its value for you.

Kosi: It had its purpose.

Rick: And maybe still does. I just want to throw that out there. It’s kind of the theme of my show in a way, to offer this potpourri of different voices, different teachers so people can familiarize themselves with the range. Whereas on the one hand it’s really good to commit yourself to something and dig one deep well rather than a bunch of shallow wells, on the other hand I’ve seen people get kind of stuck in a particular thing and just hang on to it even long since it was valuable for them and refuse to look at anything else. So there’s some kind of a balance between those two that I guess you have to find for yourself.

Kosi: Right. And it’s certainly not like I’m not going to become a yogini, but I’m going to invite people to include.

Rick: You are a yogini.

Kosi: Well, a yogini in terms of yoga, the physical yoga.

Rick: Oh, I see. That’s what I’m talking about. I’m talking about that aspect of moving the physical body. But I want to include that in the ClearWay program but have someone that’s really an expert in yoga and the physical, like Kundalini yoga or whatever, there’s many different modalities even within yoga. But to bring that in, not because I expect everyone to be a physical yoga person, but to introduce that as another way of another inquiry because that was initially what yoga was all about. It was the physical movement of the body, but the purpose was to discover the Atman, was to discover the truth. But you don’t necessarily have to stay in one mindset. And I think if it remains too mental, then you miss the fire. So certainly Ramana is powerful. There’s no question about that. But then these ancient modalities, when you bring them all together, including the char, then, wow.

There’s no conflict.

Kosi: There’s no conflict. And then you empower people to go out. So there’s basically the creation of people that can go out and serve. That’s what this model is. So it’s not about me as the single great guru or teacher. It’s really about empowering people by bringing people together so we can deepen together with inquiry, using different modalities, and see where that leads. Ten years is certainly a long time. It’ll be interesting to see if anyone completes it. Because you have to make a certain commitment to that.

Rick: Well, it’s a good effort.

Kosi: Will it outlive itself or will it evolve into something else? I don’t know. But it came to me as just a moment, like a download from the universe, that this is what’s needed, is a structure and a platform to support this kind of liberation, awakening, and being in service, which is slightly different from the modality of being Ramana, like who cares about the world, the world will take care of itself, know who you are. That can lead to this idea, “Well, I don’t have to do anything, right? It’s all a dream, so why do I have to worry about it?” But instead you can play in the dream in a conscious way and alleviate suffering in the process.

Rick: I think it’s really important. It’s a theme that a lot of people are waking up to. And certainly great saints like both of the Ammas we’ve been talking about and others have displayed and embodied, which is, “Yeah, fine, the world is an illusion, but okay, get out there and help. Get out there and do something.” Because it’s not true on all levels that the world is an illusion.

Kosi: Right. The world is infused with truth, so it’s truth, right? It’s not just the illusion. I love how Papaji left Ramana because it was during that time where India was being partitioned between India and Pakistan. And Papaji’s family was in Pakistan. It was very dangerous. People were being murdered left and right. It was like a civil war. And Papaji didn’t want to leave Ramana. He found his teacher, he was his master. He didn’t want to leave. He was in bliss. And Ramana said, “Why aren’t you going to help your family?” And he said, “Well, it’s all a dream. It’s a dream, so it’s an illusion. It’s maya. Why care about my family?” And Ramana’s response was so classic because he said, “Your dream hand is perfectly safe in the mouth of the dream tiger.” Right? Why not be the dream son and rescue your family in the dream?

Rick: Yeah.

Kosi: Isn’t that beautiful? I love that. And then Papaji recognized immediately that he was telling him to leave. And he pranamed to him, walked around him three times, collected the dirt from his feet, put it in his pocket, and he went on this adventure to save his family. And through many miraculous events, he was able to bring them out of Pakistan without being murdered. In fact, he was on a train and everyone was taken off, but he went and stood with the Muslims. He just had this intonation, “I better go stand with the Muslim people,” so he did that. All the Hindus were taken off the train and executed. This is the train that Papaji was on, so this is the level of intensity of what Papaji had to deal with. But he totally trusted in Ramana and the grace that Ramana represents, and he knew that he would be taken care of on this journey, and he was. But he never saw Ramana again. A lot of people don’t realize that. Papaji was sent away by Ramana. He never saw him again in physical form. But as Papaji said, “My master never left,” because he had realized the truth of who he was beyond the conceptual, beyond someone perceiving the infinitude. He knew he was that same infinitude, and that’s a big difference. And then you can go deeper even from there. That’s the amazing part. It’s like, “Wow.”

Your dream hand is perfectly safe in the mouth of the dream tiger.

Closing Reflections

Rick: Cool. Well, this is great. We’re kind of reaching the two-hour mark, and I don’t want to go on too long for the sake of the listeners. But I really appreciate the multidimensional, nuanced, all-embracing perspective that you have. I consider it to be a mature form of spirituality. I just think that there are certain teachers who latch on to a particular idea, and they just hammer away at that and reject or dismiss anything outside of that. I just don’t consider that to be as mature. It’s just not the way the universe works. In my father’s house, there are many mansions. It’s a multifarious, diverse creation, which sure, is ultimately only one thing in its pure essence, but at the very same time, it’s the both-and situation where all these various dimensions of life have their relevance and their value. It’s not full enlightenment if you glom on to one to the exclusion of the others, any more than it’s valid to get focused on some narrow boundary to the exclusion of the wholeness. The true, the full package is both the oneness and the diversity, all bundled into one greater whole, which is what Brahman means. It means the great.

Kosi: The great, or the great mystery, which is what the Native American described it as. I love that, “Wonkantanka,” the great mystery, because it is such a mystery. Then when we embrace the mystery, we’re willing to embrace that, then we can be present to what is. It’s more inclusive, right? It’s not so narrow.

Rick: Exactly. Inclusive is the word. If you don’t embrace the entire mystery, the full enchilada, then there’s something missing. There’s some fragmentation, some kind of narrowness, exclusivity, and there’s more yet to discover.

Kosi: That’s right. There is value in calling off the search, especially if you’re searching or you’re even addicted, like I was mentioning earlier, to the bliss or the next spiritual high or the next exciting experience. There is value in going deeper in a particular teaching or lineage so that you don’t get spread so thin. Early on in my searching, the Dalai Lama said that even. He said, “You have to pick one.” It’s okay when you’re first starting out to try many different things, taste many different teachings and lineages, but eventually pick one so that you can get the depth. At the time, I didn’t like that idea because I was a minister by that point, in a multi-faith ministry, right? So we embraced all these different traditions, but I finally understood the wisdom in that because the problem was we had no depth. As you said, we had lots of little shallow ditches, but not the deeper trench.

Rick: Deep well.

Kosi: Yeah, the deep well.

Rick: But picking one doesn’t mean you’re going to get into the psychology of, “My thing is the best thing and everybody else’s.” It’s just that, “Okay, this is my chosen path and all the other ones are of great value for those who have chosen them and we’re all just ultimately on the same boat.”

Kosi: That’s right. That’s right. Perfect. Thank you so much. I so appreciate this opportunity to speak with you. Really, it’s been great.

Rick: Yeah, very enjoyable. I’ve could go on all day, as I sometimes say. It’s really nice. Maybe we’ll do it again sometime.

Kosi: No, definitely. I’m totally open to that. My schedule is getting more and more busy, which is a good thing. But yeah, certainly we’ll work it out. If you want to do it again, we’ll do it again.

Rick: Well, you know, eventually. I have about a thousand people on the waiting list, so I could do one a day for three years.

Kosi: Okay. You could put me at the queue at the end of the line, and by the time I get to the top, it’ll be a year or so from now, or maybe two or three.

Rick: Let me make a few wrap-up points that I always make. So, whoever I’m addressing the audience now, you’ve been listening to a conversation with Kosi, and her website is Kosi.co, not .com, but .co. And I’ll, of course, be linking to that from her page on batgap.com, and there also you’ll find links to her books. Are your books on Amazon?

Kosi: I have, only Absence of Doubt is on Amazon, and it’s an older version. We’re in the process of repurposing all of my books.

Rick: All right, but I can update your page too, like a year from now or something. If you tell me to change some link or something, I’ll do that.

Kosi: I’m coming out with a new book called Organic Awakening. That’s going to be released in October. But I have several other books that I’ve written under the name Jill, which was my birth name, that are being repurposed, and they’re just not ready yet.

Rick: In any case, from Kosi’s page on batgap.com, I’ll link to all things Kosi. And there also you’ll find a link to a discussion group about this particular interview, and also a general discussion area for those who like to engage in those things. There is a link to an audio podcast, so you can subscribe in iTunes and just listen to the audio if you like to do that. There’s a donate button, which I appreciate people clicking. There is a link to an email sign-up thing, so you’ll be notified by email about once a week when I post a new interview. And that just about covers it. There’s also a Yahoo chat group, which I link to someplace or other on the site, that is smaller and a little bit less chatty than the general chat group on BatGap. So if you explore, you may find that. So I think that’s just about it. Next weekend I’ll be doing two interviews, one with Catherine Ingram and another with a very interesting teacher I just discovered named Anadi. And I’m kind of excited about both of those. So thanks for listening or watching, and we’ll see you next time.

Kosi: Thank you so much.

Rick: Thanks, Kosi.

Kosi: Namaste.

Rick: Namaste.