Kranti Ananta Interview

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer and my guest this week is Kranti Ananta, whom I will refer to as Ananta. That’s a name that was given to her by the spiritual teacher Osho, whom most listeners will have heard of. And she is in Thailand, as we speak, and I am in Iowa, where the temperature tomorrow is expected to go to 28 below zero centigrade. That’s with the wind chill. And I’m sure it’s nothing like that in Thailand. It’s also 10.30 at night in Iowa and 11.30 in the morning in Thailand. It took us some doing to work this out. But in any case, I first found out about Ananta from several friends. A lot of people listen to these shows and I get recommendations and within a span of a couple of days somebody sent me a link to your interview with Alan Sternfeld and said, “You’ve got to interview this lady.” So I said, “All right, give me your email address,” and they did and here we are. So welcome and thank you.

Ananta: Thank you.

Rick: Now I’ve taken two different tacks in doing these interviews. One is to do a chronology of a person’s spiritual path, various milestones, and another is to have them say in a nutshell what they feel like the essence of what their awakening is or what they like to teach is. How would you like to do it?

Ananta: Up to you.

Rick: Okay, it’s up to me. Then I think we’ll start with what I first heard about you, which was that you had your awakening while serving time in a Japanese prison, which is a little unusual but not so much so. I actually know of two other people, one of whom was a good friend of mine, who awoke while in prison. One was Ed Beckley, who’s a friend of mine who wrote a book about it called Dance of a Rich Yogi. He was serving time in a prison in Las Vegas, Nevada, a federal prison, and had an awakening which was sustained. And another was a guy named Satyam Nadeem, who was in some kind of horrible …

Ananta: I know Satyam Nadeem.

Rick: Yeah, he was in some prison in Miami or something, horrible food, incredibly hot, and yet had this awakening. And it almost seems that in both cases, and in your case from what I’ve heard of your story, that those circumstances were somehow conducive to the awakening that occurred. Would you agree?

Ananta: Yeah, absolutely, yes.

Rick: Yeah. I mean, it’s hard to say what if, you know, but I mean, do you sort of feel like if you had been in more pleasant circumstances you might not have been forced into the shift that took place?

Ananta: Who knows?

Rick: Yeah, yeah, speculative.

Ananta: But I only know that before that happened there was such a strong, strong calling in me for silence, for truth, for really clarity. This calling was so strong that when it actually happened that the handcuffs went around my wrist, I knew in that moment, it’s like there was a huge … my whole body started shaking and there was of course like, “No!” And in the same moment there was a knowing that this is it, this is what I’ve been waiting for. I knew that it was …

Rick: You mean when you were originally incarcerated? Initially.

Ananta: In the very first moment that the handcuffs went on, it was like the mind completely stopped. And of course there was the shaking of the identity and an absolute screaming inside me. The mind was completely stopped and in the same moment there was a knowing that this was absolutely right.

Rick: But that wasn’t your awakening then and there?

Ananta: Absolutely, I went through a lot of extreme suffering following that moment, but when I look back now, at the same time that all the suffering was there, there was also a deeper clarity or knowing. It was like I was tasting from the very beginning the part that was free, but it wasn’t bigger than the part that was suffering.

Rick: Right, the suffering part had the upper hand.

Ananta: Absolutely, absolutely, for quite a long time, about a year I would say.

Rick: Of course these weren’t new notions to you, it’s not like you were a spiritual neophyte, you had been in Osho’s ashram for ten years or some such thing, so it sounds like you had been seeking since you were a teenager really.

Ananta: Yeah, when I look back, although it wasn’t like conscious seeking, it wasn’t a conscious search, I can see that I was seeking right from being a little girl. Like many met people it was like that, and because we don’t know it’s like we search in all the wrong places, but of course it’s like a process of elimination. So yeah, I looked everywhere for freedom. I recall being very young, about nine or ten years old, and wondering who made the rules? I was being told that I had to go to school and I had to do this and I was like, “Who made the rules?” I really wanted to know. My mother would say, “It’s the law, you have to go because it’s the law.” And I said, “But whose law? Where did the law come from?” And this question was like I wanted to be free. I started searching freedom in all those places where I thought freedom might be, and in the beginning I thought that doing what I want was freedom, so I just did what I want and broke all the rules. And then I thought that getting lots of money and having loads of money was freedom, or would make me happy. And then I got into various situations that brought a lot of money, and I spent some years with a very, very rich billionaire man, and went living the high life, and in that I got into drugs. It’s like drugs was another doorway of going to another reality. It was with him that I started that.

Rick: Hallucinations?

Ananta: Yeah, and also everything. With that man, he was very, very rich and money was no limitation, and he was into cocaine and I got into that.

Rick: Did you have some sort of rationalization that doing cocaine was enhancing your spiritual awareness or was it just like you were doing it for kicks, breaking the rules?

Ananta: I was just trying everything.

Rick: You were just doing stuff.

Ananta: Yeah, yeah. And then it moved on to harder drugs, it moved on to heroin also, and from the moment that started I knew something in me deep, deep knew that this has to end, this is not … you know, there’s so much money, there’s so much material, it’s like this is not it, this is just not it. And I knew that I had to leave him and leave the world I was in with him and search. And that’s when the search became conscious really, because then I knew that it wasn’t material what I was looking for. I was kind of done with that.

Rick: I went through a similar thing but I compacted it into about a year, without all the money. But actually there was a bit of heroin involved toward the very end, just a little experimentation and then I just kind of think, “No, this isn’t going to take me where I want to go.”

Ananta: Yeah, that’s how it was for me.

Rick: Were you still in the UK at this point or were you all over the world?

Ananta: I was, yeah, but I was living in Spain. I met this man in Spain. I left England when I was about 19 and just went like, “I’m just going to go.” I looked out at the horizon and I just saw forever there and I just wanted to go there. And if I look back now, it’s like I saw the eternal. I wanted to go to the eternal. I couldn’t see any end and I just didn’t like this life that was showing itself. Like when I looked at my parents and the society of getting a job and getting married and making the money and having kids and getting a nice house and this and that. It can’t be about that. That was my vision from very, very young. It can’t be this, not this whole miracle of what we are, like all of this, just for that. How can it be? So I wanted to know what was really behind it all.

Rick: Yeah, continue, that’s okay.

Ananta: So I tried all this stuff and then I went into a deep depression when I had to leave this man and all life that went with it. And in that depression was born the conscious awareness that what I was searching for was inside of me or it was not out there.

Rick: How did the depression trigger that? Did you just somehow realize that on your own or did it spur you to start reading spiritual books or some such thing?

Ananta: Well actually many years before that I started reading Krishnamurti but I didn’t understand the words, but I was poor. And also I started yoga and these things. Always if I look back, always I was looking for the deeper meaning of everything. So then at around 26 I knew that I had to go far away from everything I knew, that was the feeling. And I came to Thailand.

Rick: Oh, so you’ve been in Thailand quite a while.

Ananta: Nearly 22 years.

Rick: Amazing.

Ananta: But not like constantly. I came to Thailand and I looked out at the horizon again. And it was as if now I was sitting on the other side of what I saw when I looked out in Spain, which was a feeling, it was like, “Here I am.” And I knew in that moment that I wouldn’t go back to UK. And somebody told me that I could survive and make my living in Japan. So off I went to Japan.

Rick: Now, didn’t the Osho thing happen before Japan?

Ananta: No, first I went to Japan and then I met somebody who gave me a book of Osho. I was in Japan about 7 years on and off.

Rick: Did you learn the language?

Ananta: When I got locked up I had to because you’re not allowed to speak anyway, but when you do speak to the guards or whatever it must be Japanese. And I couldn’t speak Japanese so I had to learn.

Rick: Interesting. So you’re in and out of Japan but then somehow you ended up living in Osho’s ashram for quite some time as I gather.

Ananta: Yeah, it was like once I got into Japan this feeling of depression was like underneath everything. Like I was having a time on the surface, you know, I was enjoying all the beauty of the ocean and the play and the parties and all these things, but deep inside me was like, “Something’s just not complete. Something’s just not clear.” And somebody gave me a book of Osho and I read the first chapter and my whole body started responding and I knew I’m going to Pune.

Rick: Interesting. In what way did your body start responding?

Ananta: Like everything came totally present and knowing that this is where I need to go, this is it. The words he’s speaking is the deepest truth inside of me. And it was the first time I’d really heard what I call truth.

Rick: And obviously it resonated with you a lot better than Krishnamurti had. He was a little opposed to Krishnamurti, he was a little hard to follow.

Ananta: Yeah, quite serious for me at that time.

Rick: I was just going to say, when you got to India, Osho was still alive at that point.

Ananta: No, at the time that I read this book and I started my journey towards Pune, he left the body. While I was on the way to Pune I got the news that he’d left the body and all the sannyasins were going crazy. So instead I went to walk in the Himalayas in silence for three months by myself.

Rick: Just trekking around?

Ananta: Yeah, and still not wanting to have contact with anybody, really just coming more and more inside, inside, inside. And then I ended up in a monastery for a ten day silent retreat.

Rick: Up in the Himalayas?

Ananta: Yeah, in Kathmandu actually. And that was the first conscious glimpse and confirmation that what I was looking for was right here.

Rick: Were you up in the Nepalese Himalayas mostly or Indian Himalayas?

Ananta: Nepalese.

Rick: Ah, okay, so you weren’t up in Uttarkashi and places like that, you were more up in Nepal hiking around? So you probably weren’t running into a lot of yogis and so on up in Nepal so much.

Ananta: I wasn’t interested in talking to anybody, in fact I had an aversion to speaking to anybody who wanted to know my name or where I was from or my story or any of this. I was just like, “Stay away.”

Rick: It’s interesting because a lot of people go through teenage rebellion but you seem to have sustained a very independent attitude. I mean a lot of the old hippies, radical guys from the 60s ended up becoming stock brokers and conservatives and what not. And you seem to have managed to keep your fire lit so to speak.

Ananta: Yeah, this went on until I was in jail and my whole life changed after that.

Rick: So is it worth elaborating on the monastery in Kathmandu at all? Was that significant for you?

Ananta: Not really.

Rick: Not a big deal?

Ananta: No.

Rick: Okay. And apparently you were still dabbling in drugs, or at least you got back into dabbling in them because that’s how you ended up in jail, right?

Ananta: Yeah. I was in and out. I started searching healing. When I first went to the commune, to Osho’s commune, which was the following year, I started getting into intensive awareness groups. And that was where I first tasted the first experience of like, “Wow, this is … ” The only way that my mind could relate to that was that, “This is where you go on LSD.” This expanded awareness was, “Ah, this is what I get on the LSD.” So then I became aware that I didn’t need the drugs to go to so-called this place.

Rick: But certainly that wasn’t the first time you had been exposed to that notion. I mean, if you’ve been reading any sort of spiritual books you must have realized that that’s what all these yogis and what not are trying to …

Ananta: I realized it here in the head, but I was totally tripping. I mean, I did this like intensive awareness, enlightenment intensive, “Who is in?” for four or five days and all that was left was that, was pure awareness. That was all that was left and I was speaking out of that. And that was the experience I had on the LSD, which was just an experience that came and went always. But this was here, it was clear, it was no confusion.

Rick: Yeah, it was natural.

Ananta: Yeah, so although I’d read about it I’d never experienced it, so then this was like confirmation, like, “Here it is, here it is.” And Osho was speaking, expressing truth through his way and I was tasting, tasting, tasting the truth of that. But still there was a lot of confusion about so-called enlightenment. I mean, I wasn’t even concerned about enlightenment, I was never trying to become enlightened, it wasn’t my thing. I wanted to get freedom, freedom, freedom.

Rick: And of course, I mean, enlightenment can be defined as a state of freedom, but I don’t suppose that’s not what the word implied for you.

Ananta: Yeah, it wasn’t really like, “I’m searching to get enlightened.” This was never implied.

Rick: It’s interesting, now during all this period, this burning desire for freedom indicates that you must have really felt trapped or constrained or in some way not free.

Ananta: Well, I was carrying all this, you know, I was carrying … one of the things I said recently to myself was, “I ran so far away from my roots and I couldn’t run far enough because it was all inside of me.” Everything I tried to run from, like the family atmosphere which was dysfunctional, and everything I tried to run away from was still all somewhere sitting inside of me, even if I found I had great experiences and I knew another taste of life, still it was always underlying what I was wanting to get away from.

Rick: Right, in other words, you’re still carrying all your baggage.

Ananta: Yeah, yeah.

Rick: Okay, so you had this experience in Osho’s ashram, five days of pure consciousness.

Ananta: I had many, many experiences there, you know, screaming, shouting, going crazy, celebrating, coming totally in love with life in every way, learning lots of things, learning body work, meeting people in love constantly, and yeah, it was just extraordinary.

Rick: How long were you there?

Ananta: Amazing. Over a period of about ten years.

Rick: That’s a long time.

Ananta: But it was only two years later that I was in jail. I was only in prison two years and then I was in jail. Because it was like I had one foot still in the scene with all the friends who were connected to drugs and parties, and another foot was into this healing, cleaning, pure vibration. I was kind of torn between the two.

Rick: So you were kind of oscillating between them, plunging into this and then going back to that.

Ananta: Yeah, yeah, like an old habit.

Rick: Right, right. So obviously you would have to leave Pune to go back to the drug friends, right? They weren’t there.

Ananta: Whenever I left Pune, that was the circle of friends I was in.

Rick: Interesting. Yeah, my father, when I got into meditation, my father was an alcoholic and I would get him to go to meditation. He started meditating at a certain point because he saw how much good it was doing me. I’d get him to go to retreats and he’d feel great in the retreats. And then he’d come home and start drinking again and he just couldn’t sustain it because the habit was so powerful.

Ananta: Yeah, and also the circumstances that go with the habit, the vibration of the people, the crowd.

Rick: Yeah, the peer pressure, the whole social scene. So you’re in one of your flings in Japan, away from the ashram, getting your ya-ya’s out and you got busted, right?

Ananta: I was just about to go totally wild again. And this time that I got busted, I am not saying that I was 100% innocent, but I wasn’t guilty either. It happened that somebody was passing through Tokyo and they left something with me in my apartment. It was only there a few days and I was raided. But I knew it was for me, it wasn’t about the story around it. It was really like the screaming inside of me so deeply for silence, for peace, for clarity, was stronger than all the play of life.

Rick: Yeah, so when you got … Japan seems to be rather aggressive about busting people. Paul McCartney got busted over there when he arrived to do a tour and had to leave the country.

Ananta: They’re pretty Zen, it’s a very Zen experience. They are so hard. In the beginning it’s like, “How is this human? It’s against human rights.” This was my whole thing in the beginning.

Rick: In other words, they’re so harsh the way they treated you, you’re saying.

Ananta: Yeah, so strict, like a concentration camp.

Rick: Wow. So you ended up in this prison and you had this recognition as you were getting busted that somehow this was God’s hand at play here, delivering whatever you needed to experience. But recount for us a little bit about what it was like in the prison, pre-awakening. What was your daily routine and how did you cope with it?

Ananta: Daily routine? Well, I was solitary confined, so I would be picked up at 6.30 in the morning.

Rick: Why were you solitary confined? Were you like a troublemaker or something? Were they giving you special treatment?

Ananta: No, no. Actually, when I first was locked up I was put in with seven who were Japanese or different Chinese or whatever, and they’re all speaking at the same time. And I just felt like I’ll go mad, I’ll go mad. And I asked somebody, “What are those rooms up there?” It was single rooms, and she said, “For one alone,” in Japanese. I said, “How do you go there?” And she said, “If you’re crazy.” So I said, “Uh-huh.” And I started screaming.

Rick: Oh, that’s great. So they locked you up.

Ananta: I was in there.

Rick: And they kept you there throughout?

Ananta: They kept me there.

Rick: Interesting. Okay, so they picked you up at 6.30 in the morning out of your little cell.

Ananta: And they took me to a factory.

Rick: On location or did they bust you off to some factory?

Ananta: No, no, no. This was the only chance you got to use the legs and walk. It was about a seven or eight minute walk to the factory, along with, I don’t know how many others. They’re all marching, you know? And you all march to the factory, and you go in there. You start at 7.30 and put on a machine to work. And the whole thing is in silence. And I was the only Westerner in the beginning. Towards the end, one or two more came.

Rick: Was there any attempt by your parents or by the British consulate or anything to get you out of there? Or were you just pretty much left to your own devices?

Ananta: No, I mean, it was in the beginning, you know, friends were trying to get lawyers and this and this and this. And I just knew, it’s like, you know, stop it. This is what it is. This is what has to be. And there was a struggle inside of me, like all the time, when is this going to be over, and struggling of the mind, but there was a knowing that this is it. This is the turning point of my life.

Rick: Interesting. And you didn’t know when it was going to be. I mean, they didn’t tell you, okay, it’s going to be three years or whatever. You just were in there and you had no idea when you were going to get out, right?

Ananta: No, you get like a sentence, but then you can on good behavior get out by 60% of that sentence if you’re really good. And I got out on 5%.

Rick: Even though you were crazy?

Ananta: No, no, I was totally sane. Totally.

Rick: Okay, so you were working on the machine. What time did you finish each day?

Ananta: About 5.

Rick: So a pretty long day, doing some monotonous work.

Ananta: Yeah, working on a machine, and everything is in silence. So, yeah, it’s a really amazing place, you know. You get counted about five or six times a day, and you have to stand to attention and make all these moves with your head. It’s just real complete madness it looked to me when I first arrived. And I thought, like, okay, they are joking. This is going to be for the first two weeks, and then they’ll put me somewhere else. I was sure about that, you know. But no, that was it.

Rick: The Japanese are tough. I mean, if you ever heard of the Bataan Death March during World War II, they were intense, those dudes.

Ananta: They are tough.

Rick: Yeah, so, okay, but at the same time …

Ananta: I must say, without that intensity and that strictness, the same experience, wouldn’t be there, of course.

Rick: Yeah, and it seemed like even when you were in the midst of this, you felt that there was some kind of wisdom inherent in the situation.

Ananta: Well, I started to become aware of what was free to smile.

Rick: What do you mean?

Ananta: Like everything had been taken away. I could have some wash over books, which I had been reading, and everything was taken away, but they couldn’t take the smile.

Rick: Right, yeah.

Ananta: That this couldn’t be taken. And it was like I’d found something that couldn’t be taken, no matter what.

Rick: Yeah, like they couldn’t rob you of your own inner happiness. So you were saying that you were kind of forced into …

Ananta: It was a great gift.

Rick: Yeah, not many people would have seen it that way, but you did. It’s almost like the lack of any external gratification forced you into finding inner fulfillment, right? Would it be correct to say?

Ananta: Yeah, absolutely.

Rick: And yet, when I listened to your interview with Alan Sternfeld, I got the impression that it was really quite hellish nonetheless. I mean, it was no picnic and you were really feeling tremendously trapped and constrained all the while.

Ananta: In the first half of my time there it was like that. It was the only time ever in my life I wanted to die, you know? But the second half, it was quite blissful, the same experience, you know?

Rick: Yeah, and that’s because some sort of shift took place, or a realization.

Ananta: Yeah, yeah. And it was so … you know, now there are moments when I feel like, “Ah, it was so special to be there in that little cell, all having so much space just to open up as myself, and it was really a special time. I’ve got absolutely no regret about that or any other moment in the whole of life, you know? It’s just all so much gratitude for everything.”

Rick: That’s great. So talk about the time, or the point during your incarceration when you actually woke up and had the shift.

Ananta: Well, I wouldn’t say that it was one moment, you know? I mean, I described that moment with Alan, like when I just surrendered. It was like an exhaustion actually. I was just so exhausted with trying to have a better experience of life, and my mind was just so busy all the time about this and that, and you know, if you don’t speak it all goes on inside, so it was just like cooking, you know? And my mind was just so busy with when I would get out of there and all of this constant madness in the mind. And one day I was just exhausted. I couldn’t … just totally exhausted, physically, mentally, emotionally, and I just laid back and there was like a giving up. And as I described it with Alan, you know, it was like I … as I started to just let go and relax, then I could really, really feel the pain. Because all the time you’re tense, you don’t really feel the pain. But once I really relaxed and it was excruciating, it was so strong, but on all levels, you know, like physically, emotionally, mentally, it was so extreme. And I saw the point, like just to just fall into it. I didn’t think of this, I just started falling into it. And I’d done a lot of … at the … in Pune, I had done a lot of body work, and especially cranial sacral, and I knew my inner landscape of the experience inside the body, so I just started like breathing into the pain, and it was like the body started unwinding itself. And it was very, very painful to feel it, but this just like feeling of surrender into it, into it, into it, into it, started to bring a sweet release. And I just continued for hours, I don’t know how many hours, but hours in this sweet releasing, sweet releasing, and falling and dropping. And then, to my surprise, you know, came a moment where everything just opened. Where there was no more body anyway. There was no more experience of a body in pain, or of a mind in pain, or of any emotions. It was just a complete openness. And it just kept opening and opening, and a feeling of bliss. It was just pure, pure, pure. It’s like everything was just … but it wasn’t like a shape of a body, it was everywhere. And a thought appeared in that moment, like, “What is this?” Like, “Wow.” And I just let go more into it, and more into it, and more into it. And there was just only pure love, pure freedom, pure beauty, pure … the whole ocean of existence. And I was not separate to that. Are you still there?

Rick: Yeah, I’m here. I’m just listening.

Ananta: And I don’t remember, yeah, I don’t remember immediately after that, exact moments like this, because it was like I didn’t think like, “Oh, this is whatever.” I just was like, “Wow, here’s a doorway.” And the next day I went to the factory and nothing was bothering me. Nothing. My mind had stopped running with all those concerns of tomorrow. I was just only like … I remember seeing a bird fly across the sky and I was flying. And everywhere I looked I saw the beauty, the beauty of the chilling cold, the frozen fingers on the machine, and trying to get the fingers warm under the light of the sewing machine, and the beauty of it all, you know? And the joke of it all. Like seeing that this is just a picture show. And that night I went back and instead of reading my books I dropped again to that place I called it. And this started happening on a daily basis, and more and more opening, and tears. I cried and cried and cried, but they were not tears of suffering. They were just like the soul cleaning. And yeah, I didn’t notice it so much in those moments, but when I looked back later I could see that my mind was changing, my vision was changing, everything was changing.

Rick: It’s interesting, you weren’t actually doing any particular spiritual practices, you were just going to the factory and going back to your room.

Ananta: You had to be totally, 100% present 24 hours, because you were being watched. You were being watched and any move you made could be breaking the rules, and you don’t know because you don’t know the rules, right? And so you had to be 100% total present, always.

Rick: Did this just become a nightly occurrence from then on, this diving deep?

Ananta: It was constant.

Rick: 24/7?

Ananta: Yeah, well the dropping into that ocean of whatever was every night because I didn’t sleep, I was lucid dreaming.

Rick: So you were sort of awake throughout the night dropping into this unboundedness?

Ananta: Yes, and then in the day everything changed, I just was feeling the blessing of everything, the beauty, I could understand everything in the life that had lived until that moment. I felt compassion for everybody, and I forgave everybody. And yeah, it was a period of time that was really all of that, but I wouldn’t say that that’s the state that does or needs to stay, it’s just a state like all states that come and go. Now I don’t need to feel the ocean of existence in bliss or whatever, because it’s just every moment is it, no matter how the moment appears. That was just like an opening, and there have been many openings.

Rick: Since then

Ananta: Yeah, many, and layers of … because following that, in that period of time I was mostly standing as awareness because I wasn’t relating in the world, so I didn’t have the identity touched and triggered, like the ego was not being triggered in relationships or anywhere. So most of my experience was of just being awareness. And when I came back into the world, of course everything started arising because the relating in the world started and buttons getting pushed and the personality started.

Rick: Yeah, more complex situations.

Ananta: More things happening, normal life. And I had massive confusion following that because how could all that be people tied up in all their useless stories and talking a lot of rubbish, that was my vision in that moment. How could that be part of this? There was no integration.

Rick: Interesting, so you had integrated prison into that.

Ananta: And my personality started having …

Rick: I was going to say you had somehow integrated prison experience into that.

Ananta: I wanted to go back.

Rick: Right, because it was so simple and routine and uncomplicated. Right? I mean, whereas outside the prison it got messy, you had to deal with all the complaints.

Ananta: Yeah, I mean there were lots of triggers coming in. I had to listen to everybody’s nonsense, you know, in there nobody was talking. So when I came out it was expected that you go into the social thing and start talking all this useless babbler, which I had seen the mind. We were given five minutes a day to speak, from Monday to Friday we could speak for five minutes. And what can be said in that five minutes that’s of any importance? So at the hour leading up to that five minutes I would be like, “Okay, that’s not important, that’s not important, that’s not important, that’s not important.” So I was seeing that nothing was actually important to speak. And then speaking happened out of that seeing. So when I came out, everywhere I was surrounded by was nonsense as far as I could see or hear, and I didn’t want to be part of it. So I had a big resistance to coming back into that play.

Rick: So how did you overcome that resistance? How did you finally integrate it?

Ananta: Again there was suffering, because this I didn’t want, this social scene, I didn’t want to mix with people, I was so deep that there was nobody I could speak to at that level. And what’s the point? I just went into this kind of depressive feeling again and would kind of like to go back to the jail, you know? And I stayed a few months in my father’s house, staying a lot by myself and slowly, slowly, slowly starting to feel the reality, accept the reality that I’d come back to, because I was imagining that coming back was going to be the greatest thing. And it was a downer. So within a few months I went back to Thailand and this was just fantastic all over again. And within a couple of months I was back in Pune and then I started a whole deep deconditioning training through body work, Osho rebalancing.

Rick: Right, so they have a specific practice for that, to sort of decondition yourself.

Ananta: It’s like emotionally releasing everything from the body and you’re learning how to work on other bodies to release the emotions. And it’s a ten hour a day course for four months. So while you’re learning, yeah, rolfing, all this kind of stuff.

Rick: So what did that do for you over four months?

Ananta: Well it gave me the chance to really scream everything out and let the body express everything it was holding, because the body was carrying the story. And so I could scream and let the body free up. My voice was so small that I couldn’t really speak much. And well, you can see that that’s changed. And yeah, just to come back into expression in all the ways and to start bringing joy back into the body. And learning how to it’s a very deep body work where you’re working on other bodies, you have to be totally present and totally sensitive and you work to release the bodies. So I was training in that, that would become my work.

Rick: Is it still?

Ananta: Which it did.

Rick: You still do that?

Ananta: No, I did that for some years. And there came a point after a few years where I started to see that even if people got free of their emotional, even if they were able to emotionally release, for as long as they were still continuing that the emotions are happening to a me and that they are believing in this me story, for as long as that is going on, there’s still no real freedom. Even if they could scream and shout and let go of the emotion, still they were identified with somebody. And so the work started to change.

Rick: Did you start studying Advaita or something? Is that how you came to the realization that … ?

Ananta: No, no, no, no. Actually I started to see a lot of things in the ashram where I saw the limitation, where I saw that identification was all there holding people in suffering. I started to see that the limitation in the ashram and that it wasn’t for me anymore. This started to become obvious, that it was over. That all the groups and all the workshops and everything, that it was just over. And at the same time I heard about Dolano. She gives intensives every month in Pune. And at that time I was struggling in a relationship with a man and that was bringing up all the drama that was still left in the body. And that is the system, it always is there in the system until it’s really met.

Rick: Yeah, it’s interesting how you keep referring to the body because it’s my understanding too that all this stuff, psychological or emotional, has a physiological counterpart. And it seems that what you were doing was working on that level rather than just working on the more abstract mental or emotional levels, working on the physical level in order to kind of root out the physical foundation of these things.

Ananta: Yes, but at the same time the emotional was being worked on and also the psychological.

Rick: Right, so all levels at once.

Ananta: But for as long as there’s any identification, yeah, I mean now my vision is totally different, but at that time that was what was appropriate. And then I went to Dolano.

Rick: Was Dolano an Osho graduate or something? Is that why she was in Pune?

Ananta: Yes, yes, yes. She had woken up and she was giving … actually at that time there were not awakened beings like there are now, so-called awakened beings. Like now there’s so much satsang happening, there’s so many people awakening to who they really are, and it wasn’t like that in that day. I couldn’t easily just meet somebody else who knew what I was talking about. Now it would be possible, but then it wasn’t. And so my experience could not be related to anybody outside. It was all within me.

Rick: But Dolano was one such person.

Ananta: Yes, she was giving intensives, she was so-called enlightened Zen master, that’s what she calls herself. And I went there and from the very first talk, from the very first session, what she made clear in that session was … then I became aware that what had happened in the jail was this shift. And what changed for me in that moment was, when I was in the jail I was experiencing all of that, but I was still feeling myself as somebody knowing truth, as somebody who is experiencing truth. And in that meeting with her on the first session, that changed into “I am that.” So there was no longer this somebody who is knowing truth, it was just only that.

Rick: And it was a real experiential shift, it wasn’t just sort of, “Oh, okay, now I get this idea.”

Ananta: No, no, no, no, no. A complete stopping of the mind. And the mind stopped, I don’t know, six, seven hours, something like that, and in that stop, seeing and seeing and seeing and seeing, everything passing through, seeing clarification, clarification, clarification, knowing what had really happened in the jail, like everything just started to fall into place. So it was like a huge relief of now seeing really what needed to be seen for this freedom of this separation between personality and this experience of freedom. Before that moment there was still a separation, like a going into the experience of freedom and going back to the experience of personality, like they were two separate experiences. Whereas in that moment it all shifted.

Rick: And became simultaneous.

Ananta: There was nothing else. But I will say also, because in that very moment I was having an extreme, my life has been extreme, right? In that moment I was having extreme relationship difficulties. And in the very moment he was also in the intensive and he turned around like, well, her teaching was like the investigation of love, that you are love, and he turned around and said, “Well, if I am love I don’t need you,” and he just pushed me away and we were living together. And that triggered all the drama, all the reaction of all the drama came up in the same moment of this recognition. In the very same moment came all the triggers of the little me. And so this gave me the opportunity to really start investigating and clarifying what is really true and to be able to meet that that was being touched in a new way, from the point of freedom.

Rick: So what you’re saying is that your boyfriend walking out on you gave you that opportunity in the context of that awakening that you just had with Dalana.

Ananta: Yes, and he didn’t walk out, he stayed with that experience, so it was a constant, constant, constant thing. I mean we were living in a place that was very close and so it was a constant trigger and that gave me the opportunity to investigate everything that was arising in this personality, to really investigate that in a new way and to meet it finally, to meet those sensations as a sensation being touched in awareness. Knowing all the way that checking and seeing that this that is aware is absolutely free to experience this. It doesn’t change, it doesn’t get lost, it’s not hurt. And it is free to just meet this experience as a wave arising and falling, without energizing the “poor me” story of “he shouldn’t” and “this was happening in the mind” and the cutting of that story and the coming back into the experience was the shift.

Rick: So things were kind of unraveling in a way it seems like, the sort of intense identification with the story was getting undone.

Ananta: Yes, the recognition opening into “who really am I” and the clarification of that was, and the story getting triggered, both were as strong as each other in the same moment and this went on for a period of months.

Rick: And I would suggest that, and we’ll see what you say about this, but I would suggest that they weren’t unrelated. Obviously the awakening that was taking place in consciousness was facilitating this unraveling of all the personality stuff and conversely the unraveling of the personality stuff was necessary in order for the awakening in consciousness to be matured and stabilized.

Ananta: Absolutely. This is the integration. And the way I say it now is that it all comes home for truth. It’s all coming home for truth. It wants to be free and so it all arises. Once this recognition is here, then everything that’s not free in the system will come for this clarification.

Rick: Yeah, you’re not going to be allowed to carry all that garbage in the midst of it.

Ananta: No, otherwise the recognition stays here, it’s not embodied.

Rick: Right, right, right. So did it eventually finally taper off?

Ananta: It was like what I say about it now, it was the “me” story, like you’ve got a fan going around and you turn off the switch, the fan just doesn’t stop immediately. It takes a while to slow down. And the story of “me” in my mind was the story of “other,” you know, any story of somebody else is a “me” story basically. So the “me” story was going on about him, which was of course all about me, and this “me” was the suffering, this “me” was the pain, not anything he was doing. So when this got clear, I stopped allowing any energy to go in this “me” story. Like the moment I could see it starting, I would cut the energizing that and come back to being present to the sensation.

Rick: Do you still do that or does it no longer try to start anymore?

Ananta: Yes, that’s automatic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean the “me” story, I don’t know how to say it clearer than that. But the triggers can still happen, you know, and the body gets like a hit and the feeling of fear or whatever can be there. And it’s an automatic, the body knows that this is the moment to meet what just wants to be free.

Rick: Yeah, yeah. So when was this? The Dolano thing? This was when?

Ananta: 2010. I mean 2000.

Rick: Oh, so 10 years ago. (laughter) So what’s been going on for the past decade then?

Ananta: Well then for a few years after that, or soon after that, as soon as I got free of this story and this relationship, I still had one question left over, which I asked to Dolano and I didn’t get the answer that satisfied my mind, so I had to search myself. And it was the question about, “Okay, I recognize, I know who I am, I get this, I experience the freedom in that, but I still have this pull towards relationship and I still want to have a lover. What does that mean? Does it mean I’m not free or I didn’t arrive somewhere or what does it mean?” And she said to me, “Why you just don’t dance?”

Rick: What was that?

Ananta: And she answered me, she said, “Why you don’t just dance?”

Rick: Did you mean that literally or what?

Ananta: She said that, yeah, “Why you just don’t dance?”

Rick: What is it? I don’t understand the answer.

Ananta: “Why you don’t get this desire?” And neither did I. I didn’t know.

Rick: What did she mean?

Ananta: She meant like, “Don’t be bothered with desires, just dance.” But the fact is, for as long as the desire is there, it needs to be lived.

Rick: Yeah. It it’s there, it is there.

Ananta: It wants to be clarified, it wants to be lived, so live it. So I went on and yeah, it’s to be lived, it’s not to be denied, this is my vision, this is my vision and my experience. So soon after I met a man who was also awakened, so-called awakened, what we’re speaking of here, and we met in this clear recognition of same-self. And from there we started to, we had a seven-year relating, during which all the triggers of all the dream of relationship and all those things came up and we started to process and integrate all of that in this recognition. And after a few years it was quite obvious that our meeting was really about bringing this to the world. Everything that we experienced in our relating was like disappointment, disappointment, disappointment. The dream just couldn’t be satisfied. But one thing that in our relating that was always satisfied was the true meeting of who we are, beyond all that was playing. So this started to take the place more than anything. The dream fell away, this is all that was left. And there came a moment where people were already asking, people were asking me to share my experience. And I’d already started to give individual sessions because through the body work I saw that the only way for people to get free was to really ask, “Who am I?” And that started to happen during the body work sessions. And then slowly, slowly the body work fell away and people were coming just for those sessions. And soon I saw that these one-on-one sessions were not enough, people started asking for more. And then the relationship with Sato became obvious that together we were offering satsang. People were coming to us. And we returned to Pune and started to offer satsangs and groups where we were sharing everything that we were experiencing in our relationship, which most people can relate to who still live in the world and are still in relationship. How to meet this, how to meet that. And we started sharing all that we were experiencing and very quickly it grew and people were coming and asking for more. It was like a confirmation from life that this is wanting to be shared. And what I see is it’s very, very easy for people to wake up now, for people who have done a lot of background searching and they come really to a point of readiness. They just need a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny stopping of the mind. Just a moment of really clearly, directly experiencing the truth of what they are and just being held in that for a while. And from that moment they are able to shift. I see it over and over and over. And do they stay shifted or is it intermittent as it was with you?

Ananta: Well I see it that people mostly, I mean I’ve never met anybody that shifted in one moment and then never had to integrate.

Rick: Right, right, right. So, okay, you were in Pune doing this with this guy but now you’re in Chiang Mai or whatever it’s pronounced.

Ananta: Yes, we went for a few years doing those groups together and then our relating came to an end, full of love, full of peace, full of truth, full of gratitude and moved on. And I began sharing, continued sharing by myself and him in his own way. And the call from life just continued. I started getting invited all around Europe and that just got and gets bigger and bigger. And you know, the way I see it, it’s like people are really with this extreme contrast that’s happening in the world now, a lot of chaos and a lot of calling for clarity at the same time. People are much more ready and available. And the work I do is really of this integration. You know, I find it very, very easy to facilitate anybody of the stopping of the mind. And that’s the simple beginning. And then from there it’s really the integration, the bringing up all that’s not free in their system and to really meet in this truth and let that come up. So that’s the work I do now. And it’s a great blessing, I’m very grateful.

Rick: It is. There’s a delay of 3 or 4 seconds between you speaking and me hearing you, so when I respond then there’s also a delay. Hard to go back and forth quickly. It seems like there’s a popular notion in certain circles that this realization of oneness or self-realization is the final stage and then after that you’re done and you don’t have to do anything else. And I think a lot of people gravitate to that.

Ananta: That’s not right.

Rick: I don’t know if it’s anybody’s experience but some people seem to be able to live with that for a while and perhaps it’s a lazy man’s …

Ananta: I would say it’s the end of the energizing the me story, it’s the end of that, but it’s the beginning of walking who you really are, which is really like baby steps.

Rick: Yeah, in other words there could be a vast range of further development and integration and so on.

Ananta: Yes, really. And I see that as endless, I see that as going on until the last breath, as Papaji said, you know? Vigilance is not something that, “Oh, you’ve arrived and now you just …” It’s like an ongoing moment-to-moment awakening. And there is still always going to be, as far as I see, in the body-mind there are leftovers, things that still want to become conscious and therefore life comes towards, when it’s manifested, to become conscious.

Rick: Also, I mean we might be kind of making it sound like it’s going to be a lifetime of just having to deal with your shit, you know, but there’s the upside to it, which is that there’s all sorts of glorious possibilities to be unfolded in terms of …

Ananta: Well, the beauty is there’s no more work, there’s no more work to do. Before it was like you were working on yourself, but after that moment there’s nobody to work on, it’s just an unfolding happening by itself.

Rick: So you just sort of enjoy the ride.

Ananta: Yeah, it’s just happening, you’re the passenger in the vehicle, it’s going by itself and it’s a deepening, and the deepening of the realization is greater and greater and greater freeing.

Rick: Yeah, absolutely, I just wanted to emphasize that, that there’s a tremendous gratification and fulfillment as a consequence of all of this unwinding that’s taking place, so it’s not like you’re just having to work through all this crud.

Ananta: There’s no more work to do, there’s no more work to do, because there’s nobody to do it. There’s nobody to work on and there’s nobody to do the work, but there’s an experience of being somebody in the world. There’s an experience, but there’s no sense of me needing to work on myself, it’s over. It’s all over. It’s the miracle of life unfolding by itself, it’s all happening just as we talk right now on this computer. It’s like, do you have any sense that you are actually doing anything right now?

Rick: Yeah, there’s just a spontaneous, it just rolls along.

Ananta: And it’s going by itself, I’ve got no idea what will be the next word and neither do you.

Rick: Right, and I don’t know if anybody does, but commonly there’s a notion that one is in control.

Ananta: Right, when you really get this, that these words that are coming out of the mouth are happening by themselves, then there’s a surrender of the doer, the doing, or the one who even needs to control anything because it’s just happening, right? It’s like a surrender, it’s ego death.

Rick: What I always find in my experience is that there’s just a paradox that’s always there, which is not in any way a conflict, it’s just the nature of it, which is that on the one hand there’s an impersonal non-doer kind of thing, and on the other hand there may be volition, “All right, I really got to get out and mow the lawn,” or something, and “No, I’d rather sit here and fool around with my computer, no, I’ve got to cut the grass before it gets dark, okay, I’m going to go do it.”

Ananta: And that’s my experience too.

Rick: And I prefer this food over that food, or this activity over that activity, so there is a person who has preferences and probably will be again until your last breath, but on the other hand, simultaneously, there’s nothing happening and there’s nobody to whom it’s happening.

Ananta: Exactly, exactly. There’s a unique expression of life happening, right? I like to smell certain oils and put them on my skin, I enjoy all these kinds of things.

Rick: Sure, and you’d rather do that than rub some kind of stinky thing on your skin. Obviously you have your preferences as a human being.

Ananta: I like to get massaged as much as possible, you know? I enjoy all these things, but many people they don’t want to be touched or massaged.

Rick: Well that’s their preference.

Ananta: So it’s like, yeah, there’s absolute unique expression and this is the beauty, especially one of the things I like to say is, “Now I can really be me.” Now I can really be me, fully, in all my little crazy little things and all my madness. I watch myself with all these funny little habits and they’re hilarious and I can really just be that without any judgment, without any idea I should be different or anything, it’s just the freedom to be what I am at all the levels.

Rick: Yeah, I think the reason I brought that up is that in neo-Advaita circles these days there’s sometimes an overemphasis on the absolute view, the non-person aspect of it, to the exclusion or to the denial of the personal. For instance, I was listening to this talk by a fellow named Jeff Foster who’s quite popular in those circles and he was talking about how he had been taking a walk with his mother and his mother had said, “Look at the beautiful tree,” and he went into this whole dry intellectual thing about how there is no tree and there is no person to see a tree and so on and so forth. He said looking back at that he was sort of shocked at how arrogant and how cold he was and how there is a tree just as much as there is not a tree and it’s wrong, it’s unbalanced to kind of emphasize one to the exclusion of the other.

Ananta: Yes, it’s like a way to say it would be like you step completely out of the play but you’re not really free until you come right back in the play of ordinariness.

Rick: Yeah, and if you can constantly beat the drum of “there is no person, there is no person” to the exclusion of the fact that there also is a person, then it’s unbalanced.

Ananta: Yeah, I would say from my vision that’s a stage.

Rick: Good point.

Ananta: And I notice a lot, I’m not being biased here, but I notice a lot in the – and obviously not with you and many others – but there are a lot of males expressing this that want to go into the cave where nothing is happening. And it seems to be a more female expression where they come into the everythingness.

Rick: I went through that stage.

Ananta: The fullness of everything. Right, right, it’s a stage. And as we mature there’s the willingness to come in and “okay, you’re going to experience now whatever you’re going to experience.” Because to come back into the person, so to speak, it is like you actually agreeing to come back into all those sensations.

Rick: Yeah, and you know, one thing that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is the fact that when you get right down to it, what we really are, is we are the intelligence which has given rise to the universe, and we are that, living itself or expressing itself or experiencing life through a particular individual expression. You’re Ananta, I’m Rick, and each of us is a unique expression of the very same intelligence. And look at the universe, look at how much that intelligence seems to enjoy creativity, diversity, beauty, drama, the whole catastrophe, as Zorba the Greek put it. And so that being the case, that being our tendency, it’s absurd to want to shut it down or deny it even exists. On some level that’s true, but obviously on another very significant level it’s not true, and you have to live that paradox. In fact, recently I heard someone quote Nisargadatta as having said that a good measure of one’s enlightenment is the degree to which one is comfortable with paradox and ambiguity.

Ananta: Right, right. Yeah, I mean it’s like going so far away to find where it always was, right here, right here in the cup of tea. This is it, this is the miracle itself.

Rick: So, how do you … I’m sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say, so you say that you’re still doing a lot of satsangs around Europe and this and that, does it just sort of have its own momentum? People call you up and send you a plane ticket?

Ananta: Yeah, for the last … no, they don’t send me plane tickets, I buy the plane ticket, but usually it’s like people book before I fly, so there’s a group of 10-15 people waiting when I arrive. And so for the last 5-6 years it’s been happening like that.

Rick: How do you cover your expenses?

Ananta: Well, if there are 15 people waiting then the payment they make covers the trip.

Rick: I see, okay.

Ananta: Because my expenses are like the flying, the staying, the moving on to the next country, the beautiful, wonderful quality of organic food that I love to eat, all these things are paid for by the participants. And the way I see it, it’s like energy, we move energy and people pay in the form of money, which is energy, and that pays for the things that I need to pay for. It’s all energy, energy, energy.

Rick: Yeah. Do you ever come to the US or mainly just Europe and Asia?

Ananta: I’ve never been to the States, but it’s funny, since the Alan interview I’ve had so many questions and so many suggestions and a few invitations to come to the States, but I really don’t have a very strong … my body-mind system is not the energetic type, it’s like I need a lot of stillness, relaxation, and I feel now that I don’t want to run around the world unless really it’s all set up and waiting for me, then I would fly. But I don’t want to go looking for or use energy I don’t need to, but I would love to see the States actually, if it happens one day.

Rick: Yeah, I hope it does. There’s some beautiful places to see here.

Ananta: Yes, yes, I’m sure, and some amazing beings.

Rick: And nice cold weather.

Ananta: I’ve had hundreds of …

Rick: You’ve had hundreds of what?

Ananta: Hundreds of mails from the States coming in. I’ve been doing Skype sessions.

Rick: Oh good, well you’ll probably get a bunch more as a result of this. Yeah, we’re having a big snowstorm right now in the Midwest, it’s just this huge thing coming down. It happens every winter, it’s no big deal.

Ananta: Did you say minus 20?

Rick: Yeah, that’s with the wind chill, you know what wind chill is? It means if it’s zero degrees and no wind, then it’s zero degrees, but if there’s a 20 mile an hour wind, the equivalent effect on your body is as if it were X number of degrees below zero. So in terms of your experience now, I mean since you seem to consider yourself to be a work in progress, what’s going on? What’s your current perspective on the changes you’re going through and unfoldments that are taking place?

Ananta: Yeah, the strong calling in me is more and more to settle, to stop running around the world. I’ve been running around the world for so many years and I’m still homeless, even though I found the true home. The body does require certain things and I want to try to settle more, and so I’m here in Chiang Mai checking out and giving a few open satsangs and seeing if this is the place for me to settle. So my challenge is really about, it’s the body. If I continue in the same way that I’ve been continuing, I’m just exhausted. So it’s really about me starting to just calm down, settle down, and let people come.

Rick: Yeah, the body has its limitations.

Ananta: Yeah, and it’s not getting younger, this is a reality. Even though I feel younger every moment, the spirit is always ageless, but the body asks for certain requirements.

Rick: I went through a stage, this was like 20 years ago or more, where I felt very detached from my body and I would just work myself into a frenzy. I know it was crazy, I’d get these boils on my neck and strange seizures and tensions and all kinds of things, but I felt so detached from it that I kept pushing it. And then I finally realized that that wasn’t the way to do it.

Ananta: It’s saying, “Hello!”

Rick: “I’m here too!”

Ananta: Yes, yes, yes. This “I am not the body” is like when the body says, “Hello, I’m just going to break and crumble and you need me.”

Rick: Yeah.

Ananta: You know, without the body this moment is not possible.

Rick: Yeah, I mean consciousness …

Ananta: And it’s really my passion to work with people and share this integration process. I feel that when we come together it’s really like an energy that’s being created on the planet, you know? Like so many beings are sharing this now and more and more energy fields are opening up with consciousness, that somehow the planet is asking for that.

Rick: Yeah.

Ananta: Even though the planet doesn’t ask for anything, it’s showing signs of needing more consciousness.

Rick: There’s a story in the Puranas which you may have heard of where there was this huge rainstorm in some village in India, Krishna’s village, and the people all called out for help to Krishna to save them from this rainstorm. So he came and he took a mountain and held it up with one hand over the village to shield it from the rain. And then everyone thought, “Oh, how can he hold up this mountain all by himself?” So they all got sticks and they put their sticks up to help hold the mountain. And they all thought they were participating in it, but of course Krishna was really the one holding the mountain. And it’s like that, there’s this vast intelligence that seems to be percolating up in world consciousness today and it’s just happening and we’re like the people that are holding up our sticks.

Ananta: Yes, and it’s a bit like each being, when that awakens in each being, it’s like coming in alignment with that that’s holding it up, because it is the same thing, these people are the same thing as that which holds it up.

Rick: And when you become a willing participant then it begins to use you and make you a more and more effective conduit for that intelligence. I was watching an interview with Oprah Winfrey just the other day and she was saying, “Use me until I’m all used up.” That’s what I want to do with my life. You know who Oprah Winfrey is, right?

Ananta: Yes, and that’s the same year. I’ve never actually watched any of her, but I’ve heard of her. I haven’t watched her stuff.

Rick: Yeah, she’s certainly the most rich and famous entertainment person in America and maybe in the world, and she just has a huge impact on what people think and do. But she feels like she’s a tool of some higher intelligence, you know, she often expresses that, that she’s just being used for a greater purpose and she just wants to be used as fully as possible for whatever that purpose may be.

Ananta: Yes, yes, yes. Yes, that can be the experience of the personality. It’s like at the level of personality, yes, I feel like that, you know, let it use me. And then at the other level it’s like only it is moving through this. It’s moving itself.

Rick: You are the “it” which is using you.

Ananta: Yeah, there’s nothing I can do otherwise. There’s nothing else I can do. It’s really just this moment happened.

Rick: And all this work you’ve been doing all these years, you know, working on yourself, working out all this stuff, all this body work and emotional work and all that stuff, you know, you’ve just been making yourself a more and more fit instrument, you know?

Ananta: Yes, and it’s also part of the sharing now, you know, because it’s like I’m able to meet people where they’re at, in whatever they’re at, in so many levels and in so many places, people that are coming off drugs, people who have caught up in whatever, you know, it’s like whatever you’ve experienced through yourself you can really relate to in somebody else, right?

Rick: Very good point.

Ananta: So I’m able to use whatever tools I picked up.

Rick: Yeah, I’ve actually heard it said by wise teachers that if you didn’t go through all this stuff in a progressive way you wouldn’t be a very effective teacher, because you just couldn’t relate to what other people were going through.

Ananta: It’s made a rich experience of being able to relate to so many different walks of life, you know?

Rick: Yeah, interesting.

Ananta: Yeah, what it gives every moment, every moment. And now, by the way, in my world there are no, all the drug connections and all these things are long gone, you know?

Rick: Sure, but if someone came to you who was involved in drugs you would be able to say, “Okay, I’ve been there and I understand what you’re going through, but now look at this.”

Ananta: And I see that most of the people who are going into the drugs and all of this is because they want to get out of the mind, they want to know another reality, or they want to escape the pain, whatever, and there’s another way. And it’s really such a rich blessing for me to be able to easily facilitate the direct realization of another way. My work is really about bringing people into the direct experience, not like just teaching something I know and they don’t know. You know, it’s always I say, in every being it’s already known. That’s why when you read a book and you recognize truth, there’s something in you that recognizes that, because it’s already known.

Rick: Yeah, good point.

Ananta: So it’s very, very easy. And also like when people hear truth, they go, “That’s it!” What is it in them that says, “That’s it!”? It’s already that, truth itself that hears it.

Rick: And you know, almost everybody …

Ananta: So everybody already is it.

Rick: They are, and almost everybody whom I’ve talked to who has had what we would call a spiritual awakening has had the realization that, “I always knew this, I just didn’t recognize it, but I can see now that it was there all along.”

Ananta: Yeah, just look in a baby’s eyes.

Rick: Yeah, yeah, good point.

Ananta: Look in a child’s eyes. Really early, you just only see God looking out, that’s all. You have to try to tell them how life is, but they look at you like, “Uh?” They’re just being aware now. That’s all they’re shining, is being aware now. And you fall in love with that, because it is that love. It’s pure.

Rick: But somehow we have to come full circle and go through all of our teenage years and all this crazy high school and all this crazy stuff in order to come back to it and realize it in a more mature way.

Ananta: To value it, to value the being itself, to just value that. And when we were starting out we never could value just the being. The mind wants something, right? That’s why the mind starts chasing this thing called enlightenment or whatever, because it wants something, it doesn’t want no thing. This is the beauty, when the mind can relax, it doesn’t want anything anymore, it’s just being, being, being itself is everything. The value of this being.

Rick: I’m sorry, continue, say it again.

Ananta: Valuing this being, just valuing this. This is the only thing to give it value. I often say to people, the only difference between Ramana Maharshi and you is the value you give it. He gave it all the value and sat his whole life on a mountain, and absorbed in that because he gave it the value.

Rick: Right, and he knew how valuable it was. And of course his experience was very deep and profound and clear from a young age, but it’s a little harder for someone who is overshadowed and lost and confused to value something that they only dimly know.

Ananta: Yes, but then that’s what I say to people. I say often that I can show you right now where it is and what it is, but can you value it? Is there a valuing of that? Because if not, you just go straight to the next thought or the next whatever. It’s like to really stop in that for a moment, just stop and fall into that, just rest in that for a moment and see if it has any value. And when you start to see that, you know, even when you’re in pain, this is not in pain, it gets some value. There’s a place in you which is never in pain.

Rick: I think that, wouldn’t you say that the degree of clarity with which you experience it or know it determines how highly you value it. I mean if the experience is very vague and cloudy and you just have this remote sort of glimpse then you might go running after the Rolls Royce or the beautiful partner or something like that and not value it.

Ananta: And you will, until you get to the next disappointment.

Rick: Yeah, but in your case, for instance, when you had that deepening in the prison, wave after wave of deepening and falling into that, then you tasted it so profoundly that you couldn’t help but value it, because it was very full.

Ananta: I was very lucky, I was very, very lucky. Everything in the life for me has and still does point to that, but I was very lucky to get a long period of silence and solitude. I couldn’t go anywhere, I couldn’t escape, it was the only place to go.

Rick: Interesting, well there will be a run on the prisons after this interview.

Ananta: But I have to say, not everybody needs an extreme experience. I see now that so many I meet that have been on the path of yoga or this or that or whatever, and they’ve made themselves ready to come to a point of readiness to be able to just get a little shift and then it opens.

Rick: Right, I was listening to a fellow the other day talk about the distinction between the direct path and the progressive path, and the point he made is that the progressive path really brings you to the point where the direct path can happen. As someone said, there’s a Zen saying that enlightenment may be an accident but spiritual practices make you accident prone. I’m never sure. I say there’s a Zen saying that enlightenment may be an accident but spiritual practice makes you accident prone. In other words it makes it likely that it’s going to happen.

Ananta: Yes, it’s like prepare the ground and wait. Osho always said, “Tether your camel and wait.”

Rick: Right, which is why I’m glad we’re saying this, because again in Neo-Advaita circles there’s this premature emphasis in my opinion on giving up the search. Don’t do practices, don’t see teachers, just give up the search and realize you’re that. That may be true at a certain point in a person’s progress, but if that attitude is adopted prematurely it ain’t going to happen. You can just sort of…

Ananta: No, but even if you attempt that, you can’t do anything about it, the search goes on.

Rick: True.

Ananta: Even in giving up the search, it’s the search. There’s nothing you can do.

Rick: True, all seven billion of us are on the spiritual path.

Ananta: Yeah, yeah, everything, everything is part of that, and it’s just a moment of readiness as far as I see it. You know, grace reigns.

Rick: Yeah, good. So, we’ve managed to somehow overcome the technical challenges of having this conversation between Iowa and Thailand. Is there anything that you’d like to bring up that we haven’t discussed, that I haven’t thought to ask or anything? Pretty much covered it?

Ananta: No, I can’t think.

Rick: Okay, good. And so people obviously will be able to get in touch with you, and you say you’re doing Skype sessions and so on, and so on batgap.com I’ll have a link to your website and people can get in touch with you, your email is there and everything. And if they live in Europe they might see you in person or in Thailand for that matter, and otherwise maybe they can have a chat with you via Skype. And since you’re in Chiang Mai, look up my old friend Bob Fickus. I told you about him, he’s there, he has some little ashram, some little Ayurveda clinic or something attached to it.

Ananta: Oh really?

Rick: Yeah, go out and have tea with him or something. Does it ring a bell?

Ananta: Does he use another name also?

Rick: He might, I don’t know.

Ananta: Ayurveda clinic rings a bell. Does he have a, I know an Ayurvedic place not far from here, he has a restaurant called The New Earth?

Rick: He might, I don’t know. I’ll send you a link to his website, you can check it out. We were on meditation courses together from 1970 and onward for quite a few years.

Ananta: Oh wow, and if you had contact?

Rick: A little bit, yeah, I’m going to interview him one of these days. He spends most of his time in Thailand and Japan it seems, and he’s sort of a spiritual teacher over there. But his base is in Chiang Mai. Okay well, let’s conclude. So thanks a lot, I really appreciate this opportunity.

Ananta: Thank you, it’s been really nice.

Rick: Yeah.

Ananta: Yeah, me too.

Rick: So let me just conclude by saying that for people who have been listening, let me just conclude by saying that however you may be hearing this interview, there are about if you go to batgap.com, which is an acronym for Buddha at the Gas Pump, that’s batgap.com. And there you’ll find links to all the interviews that have been done and to the websites of the guests whom I’ve interviewed and links to podcasts and YouTube and Facebook and all that stuff. And it seems to be growing every week. Next week I’ll be interviewing Greg Goode, who is fairly well known these days in non-duality circles, has written several books. And the week after that I think I’m going to be interviewing a very interesting fellow who was some kind of a motorcycle biker guy and who had a spiritual awakening that totally turned his life around. So I’ve been speaking with Ananta from Chiang Mai, Thailand and I want to again thank you very much, both to Ananta and to my listeners and we’ll see you next week. Thank you.