Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer, and my guest today is Mukti. Mukti, whose name means liberation, is a teacher in the lineage of Adyashanti, her husband. And incidentally Mukti, on your Skype name it says Mukti Mukti, so I guess that means Mukti squared, which means like a whole lot of Mukti. Together they founded, she and Adyashanti, founded the Open Gate Sangha in 1996 to cultivate the awakening of consciousness in those who yearn for truth, peace and freedom. In teaching Mukti brings flavors of feminine quietude and nurturing as well as kinesthetic visual and precise pointers to truth. Many speak of her being particularly gifted in her offering of guided meditations. Her keen interest as a teacher is in revelation of consciousness, touching and transforming human experience. She is licensed in acupuncture and certified in yoga instruction. Her website, which contains sample teachings, audio clips and downloads, further information is muktisource.org, although that redirects to a subsection of the adyashanti.org website, but no problem with that. All right, so here we go.
Mukti: Here we go.
Rick: So, I imagine we’ll be talking about all the usual interview type of stuff – your spiritual background, your awakening, what you teach and things like that. But I thought I’d start by asking you some questions, just for fun, that you may not have gotten in interviews – what question or concept most inspires and interests you these days? What do you find yourself thinking about when you’re walking the dog or something, that just really kind of lights your fire?
Mukti: That’s great. I love it. Well, it really interests me lately. I’m going to try to put this into words because sometimes when something captures our imagination, we’re with it for a while. Almost like a wordless contemplation. I’ve just been kind of chewing on it, so we’ll see how it comes out in words. I work with some people in private meetings or who I come upon when I’m giving public satsangs, who have had significant awakening experience. Not that awakening is ultimately ‘experience’, but they’ve had awakenings and they’ve lived with them for a while. I’ve noticed that there seems to often be a kind of period where they’re carried by the profundity of that. Then there’s often times on the heels of that, that things come up in their psyche that are challenging. If I were to put an image on it, ultimately, I can’t know. But what it feels like is the parts of ourselves, that are not clear, are less refined or are seeking their liberated state, sense that the ground has been prepared through those awakenings, for a level of awareness, openness and availability for that content to arise. I really chew on how to meet that in a way that is truly and deeply transformative. I think for a lot of people who have been in spiritual circles for a long time, they have their tools in their toolbox (as Adya would say), certain inquiry questions that have worked really well for them. They know meditation techniques that have served them. Maybe they know physical things that help them, whether it’s exercising or doing qigong or whatever. But what are some of the most effective ways of being with that content that isn’t just one thought to look at or isn’t just one energetic sensation in the body or one emotion? Because it is content that has many strands that reaches into many dimensions of their person. So, to just tackle them with one tool that’s to look at the thought or to look at the emotion may not really address it at its root. When I studied Chinese medicine, they talked about treatment principles where you either treat the branch symptoms or the root cause. Sometimes it’s the correct time to treat the branch, like it’s an acute situation. Sometimes you have the luxury of not having acute situations and you can actually address the root. So that’s what I contemplate is how to really address that root. It’s different for every person, and yet there seems to be some commonalities. So, I look for those commonalities. I look for how to speak to those commonalities when I’m giving talks or when I’m working with people. I’m really a student of all of the particulars and uniqueness’s of everybody. I’m constantly learning how to adapt what I see as common and not work formulaically but work individually to really address what is particular and unique to each person.
Rick: Cool. So, let me just reiterate what I think you just said to make sure I understood it and to help the audience understand it. So, what you’re saying is that very often a profound and genuine awakening can precipitate some sort of release of stuff that has been kind of lodged in our psychology or in our physiology. It’s as if it shakes the tree and fruit starts to fall or something. People might sometimes be unprepared for that and be seeking methods to facilitate and smooth out the release that seems to be taking place. And you’re saying that perhaps, Chinese medicine or Ayurveda or yoga or maybe some kind of psychological modalities could be brought into play in order to smooth the transition that the person is undergoing. Is that what you’re saying?
Mukti: I think I could springboard from your summary and just say what I was especially highlighting is that when people have tried those things that you mentioned, which are fantastic, I’d recommend them, that sometimes they reach a point where they try to reach in their toolbox and there’s no one modality or one approach that’s addressing the complexity of what’s arising. So that’s what I’m really interested in is how to address the complexity in a way that’s truly transformative.
Rick: Can you give us an actual concrete example of somebody that went through something like this?
Mukti: I would love to, but if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to backtrack and just speak to a piece of your summary, which is what I’m speaking about doesn’t necessarily only present on the heels of awakening. I see that the content that arises within people who have had awakening is sometimes material that has been so unconscious or so root in its structure, that it can surface more apparently or more in totality. When there’s that space and conscious awareness that that material almost feels like it registers and it’s like, “Oh, now I can finally come up like this deep unconscious material or these core workings in my ego structure can come up perhaps more readily on the heels of awakening.” There are signs of it all along, whether there’s awakening or not. I just wanted to speak to that.
Rick: Do you think it would be fair to say that awakening can act like a powerful solvent. Before awakening there can obviously be releases and purges and things that are bottled up, but that if a more radical or profound awakening takes place, it is really a powerful solvent. In the context of that, it is very likely that things are going to begin to be released, because physiology can’t so easily support that awakening if it has things clogging it up. So, the awakening is going to be like a solvent and the stuff is just going to start dissolving more with a greater pace than it might have before.
Mukti: Yes, I think that I really agree with the sense of what you’re describing. That’s absolutely true, that is what I found. Could you help me trace back to the question you wanted me to answer? Let’s see if we can call it back up. Probably the audience would know, but they don’t have a microphone, so.
Rick: Yeah, well, maybe if we, we’ll get around to it. So, is it your experience that sometimes these releases or issues that one begins to confront become even more critical in a way after an awakening. The intensity of the release has to be dealt with more urgently. There’s a lot more shit hitting the fan, so to speak, than before awakening. Of course, we’re generalizing and there are exceptions to every generality. So that’s why you consider this such an important issue. Oh, and I know the thing you wanted to get back to earlier – in my summary, I mentioned Ayurveda and all might be helpful, and you said, yeah, but those are the usual tools and that it might be necessary to go to a more root level to really deal with it. And I asked for an example. That was our summary.
Mukti: Okay, great. So, you want me to go for the example now?
Rick: Sure, whatever comes to mind.
Mukti: Okay, great. Well, let me see what does come to mind. I’m just going to give it a minute. So, for some reason, an example isn’t coming, but I can tell you the feel of what I’m talking about a little bit more. Adya, for example, has in some years past and maybe in present as well, talks about a person’s core story. Other teachers have addressed this too, maybe like a core identities, and they may map them to systems, like the Enneagram or different things. Sometimes there’s a way that we organize around a certain construct, and that construct feels familiar as to how we know ourselves. Maybe it’s the helper, maybe it’s the protector, maybe it’s people, you could probably name a million of them right now. There are different names for them. But it’s not always so simple as one label, because we’re holistic human beings. We may have had certain experiences that we want to repeat or certain experiences that we don’t want to repeat. And those may play into our behaviors and kind of layer upon how we organize. We may find ourselves in certain situations where maybe there’s certain triggers that go off, and they may feel unrelated to that core organizing identity, or core story, as Adya has called it. So, it may not be as simple as people like to make it. There’s a way that in spirituality people love to be simple when it comes to what they want to latch on to, to feel comfortable. Like, ‘I know what this is’, ‘you’re a two on the Enneagram’ and ‘this is how you need to solve that and address it’. Or ‘I know what you need to do with that thought’, ‘you need to ask if it’s true’, or whatever it is. People love that because there’s great comfort in having black and white structures, that you can just move through. But quite often, especially on the heels of awakening, there’s territories you get into where one tool or one black and white model of looking at it just starts to break down. And so
Rick: It’s more subtle, it’s more complex.
Mukti: It’s much more complex.
Rick: Yeah, more intertwined with all kinds of different facets of your makeup.
Mukti: Yeah, it’s very intertwined. I mean, it can be from how you hold your body energetically to where you grew up and your worldview, your conditioning, or opportunities of things you desired that never came to be, and unfulfilled desires. So many different factors can play in at a given moment to present a certain milieu of suffering. My main interest is in how do we have conversations like this, which are great, about territories where the black and white model of viewing things is breaking down. It’s really important to have those conversations and really valuable to be aware of that, and to not put ourselves in those black and white models because sometimes, sometimes they’re fantastic, but sometimes it’s actually almost cruel to try to take the whole complexity of what you are and reduce it to these more simplistic models and try to shove them in that model and think that it’s supposed to work because maybe some authority said it would, or we’ve been spiritually conditioned that, that’s what we’re supposed to do. I don’t know if I’m making myself clearer, but
Rick: It’s helping. We’re getting there.
Mukti: Yeah, we’re getting there. Good. Well, you’re helping me too, yeah.
Rick: Yeah. Well, actually, one example came to my mind, which is Adya himself. I mean, he talks about his first awakening, and this isn’t quite the same as what you’re saying, but I think it relates. He kind of got back into his habit of being a competitive athlete and pushing himself harder and harder, and next thing you know, he was flat on his back in bed for six months or something. He recovered from that, and then the old habits eventually started to creep back in again. He started doing it again, and it’s almost like nature was slapping him down, saying, “No buddy, this is not what you’re going to do anymore. This is an old habit, and I have different plans for you. So just cool it on the bicycle racing.”
Mukti: Exactly, yeah. I mean, that’s a perfect example. I can’t speak for Adya on this, but take a guy in his 20s, and there’s certain hormones and chemistry and all of those drives that are happening that push that kind of competitiveness. It’s not just as simple as a thought “I need to be a winner to be happy,” or “I need to be competing to be happy.” There are the physical drives or the love of the sport mixed in. Some people actually love bike riding. Other people, who are competitive athletes, have said, “Are you kidding me? It’s like a grind from start to finish. I don’t actually like it.” But there’s all kinds of different information in here, and it may not just be the identity of an athlete. It could be just some energy that wants to express, and this is where it feels satisfying to express it. There are many factors happening here. Once someone unpacks (I like to use the word ‘unpacks’) the many of the ingredients that go into the desire to compete, you get a better feel of all of the ingredients in the mix. Then to be with that and create space around that and see which ingredients come to the surface as the ones that want to be seen in their own time, maybe in a certain order that we couldn’t even guess. But just somehow, all that content may seek its own liberation and may know its own rate and its own order of unfolding. And so my interest is in how to support that and to have various skills that we’ve developed as practitioners to address some of those different components in a way that can really support that unfolding of transformation.
Rick: So does this relate to the whole idea of embodiment as you understand it? I mean, we’re all in bodies, right? Or we dwell in them. Most people in the world think they are their body. If you’re going for enlightenment, you’re going through a transition from feeling and thinking that you are your body to living as the totality of reality, within which the entire creation is contained. That’s quite a range of transitions, and people go through all this stuff as they make that transition. Very often identifying more strongly with the absolute to the exclusion or to the detriment of the body. Other things can happen, your ability to hold down a job, your relationships. Stephen Wright, who’s a comedian, had this joke. He and his girlfriend broke up because he really wasn’t into meditation and she really wasn’t into being alive. So, there’s this huge transition that people have to go through, and there’s a lot of reshuffling and rebuilding and restructuring that has to take place in the process. As I understand it, that’s what people mean when they talk about embodiment – embodying the absolute, embodying the eternal unbounded consciousness in a way that you can hold down a job and be in a relationship in a successful way and do all the normal human stuff while at the same time having this kind of cosmic awareness. How does that sit with you?
Mukti: I love this conversation because you might have as many notions of embodiment as you do people. People all have their own sense and everyone’s using the term differently. So, I like it when people are clarifying terms and I feel excited to have these kinds of conversations. I think that people mean many things about it. I think you’ve given voice very well to how a lot of people view embodiment. I think what I’d love to say initially is that, in a sense, there are perspectives where we can come to know ourselves as almost as having two bodies and then ultimately live without reference too much to either. But you describe the sense of being identified with the body and then maybe having a certain kind of awakening to the sense of the absolute nature of our being, which in a sense will drop the particular identity with the personal perception of our body. Often that can give way to a sense of the one universal body. It’s not always in this order. There can be a way that our energetics kind of remaps from the local physical body to the universal body of creation. There’s often the experience that our attention will go from one to the other and back and forth. There might be moments where you feel very identified with this physical form. You have physical pain; you have an emotion come up or you have a trigger. There can also be times where when either that’s not happening or simultaneously, there’s like an energetic mapping to the universal body.
Rick: I know Adya talks about the “I got it, I lost it” phase and that can go on for quite some time.
Mukti: Yes, and that can be more of a construct of mind. Well, in a sense, you could say that about a lot of things or maybe even all things, that there’s some projection of mind. The “I got it, I lost it” can be kind of held in more of an internal experience and a referencing of when they had it and gathering evidence to support “I’ve lost it.” But it can also be this sense of energetic organizing and almost like mapping to the local, global or universal being. Maybe it might slow down for a while and a lot of the energy is going back to the local and then people will feel like they’ve lost a sense of energetically knowing the universal. I think that what you might be speaking about.
Rick: Yeah, and even if the clarity of universality isn’t so great… in my own experience I went through a phase where there would just be smooth, harmonious, blissful functioning and it’s like you’re on automatic and everything is just flowing. And then it would kind of lose that and I’d feel constricted and confined and things would be rough and it’s like there were sharp edges in everything, and then back again. There was quite a phase of oscillation, but that eventually ended. So let me ask you this – even now, in your own experience, do you find that it’s like a zoom lens where sometimes there’s a kind of more greater identification with or immersion in the universal and sometimes a greater focus in the
Mukti: Personal.
Rick: in the individual, personal, and yet it’s not as the either/or way, as it used to be. It’s more like just a focus according to the need of the moment or the kind of appropriateness of your situation. But somehow the two have come to coexist in a stable and harmonious way.
Mukti: Yeah, yeah. I love that image. I use that image of the zoom lens a lot. I think there are phases in this territory that seem to be common. Initially when there’s that liberation from the sense of the identified form to the absolute or maybe to a sense of the one universal body, which in those moments you’re not even calling them that. You’re not calling them the absolute or the universal or oneness or anything, but we’re trying to give them terms. When those happen, there can often be a great sense of what people call being in the flow. But even more than just being in the flow as a person who experiences himself in the flow, in those moments there’s a sense that there only is the flow and there’s not a sense of oneself as being in it or out of it. There’s just not a sense of oneself. There’s just the one body of manifest intelligence expressing. It can move to an experience of feeling kind of more nuts and bolts like the camera. Like I have this experience of being right here with this or zoomed out into this one big body (I call it the big body sometimes – the big body and then the little body). There can be that experience and then there’s another phase beyond or even intermittent with that, where there is no referencing any of that. So, the sense of zooming in and zooming out becomes part of the one intelligence expressing. That is more my experience these days. There is a way that we can have a sense of our nature that is looking out our eyes, our nature of beingness that is really beyond all of these visuals or reference points whatsoever. It doesn’t mean it’s beyond and that they disappear into some vanilla experience, but they disappear in terms of how we organize and start completely or more completely. And it leaves those reference points of personal, universal, relative, absolute, or even flow or not flow or got it or lost it. A lot of those can fall away.
Rick: That’s nice. I like your use of the word intelligence. In your recordings that I was listening to, you use that word a number of times. There was a quote in the newsletter that Adya sent out last week or this week, in which he said, “Life is divine and your life is your offering back to life.” The reason I like that is, in some spiritual circles, maybe non-dual circles, there is a sort of an aridity that seems to have crept in, in which there is very little mention of the divine or the intelligence that seems to be governing the universe. In fact, my friend Francis Bennett, whom you and I were talking about before this interview, he actually says he gets flack sometimes on Facebook for mentioning God or prayer or devotion and that sort of thing. I think some people find that that begins to become more and more meaningful and rich for them as time goes on. Awakening can’t just kind of stay at the stage of flat and personal, but that an appreciation for the sort of the divine begins to really dawn and become important. So, is that the kind of thing that Adya was alluding to in that quote? And can you relate to what I’m saying?
Mukti: I definitely can relate to what you’re saying. I think that there are some phases in this territory too, at least in my experience and with a lot of people I work with, there is a sense, especially when awakening is new in the initial weeks, months, years (depends on what kind of awakening, by the way, that’s a whole other conversation) there can be a sense that, any reference to a God or something outside of ourselves or something to pray to, all of that construct just falls and that’s all part of the liberating movement. For those things to fall away. Just like we were saying, the kind of way we might organize around the body can completely shift. But once there’s that release of some of those constructs, it’s almost as if that pure energy starts to kind of come back into a new form, like you mentioned the word embodiment Earlier. Those new forms seek to be vehicles of expression of presence. It’s just what they like to do. So that expression of presence very much feels like a divine experience, and it feels like that presence arises from nowhere. And there’s this sense of that grace or presence arising, that fits the word divinity or intelligence of something that is beyond our known human concepts but moves in this mysterious way that seems to really be ruled by another order than the constructs of egoic conditioning. So, people seek to find words to speak to that experience, and if people haven’t felt that liberated energy begin to really settle and ground into their form and be expressed free of most concept points, reference points or concepts, then they may not relate to those terms of divinity. They may even resent that there aren’t new terms being used because the concepts of God and divinity are associated with, many people and many times and many religious institutions, that maybe weren’t really speaking from this presence that I was just alluding to. So, I think there’s a reaction against those terms because maybe people are actually seeking new terms and new ways to shake out those old terms and move forward with a more liberated expression.
Rick: Yeah, and obviously, hopefully obviously, the sense in which you and I are using such terms has nothing to do with, an old guy with a beard in the clouds or any kind of external or far distant deity who is like, over-lording and judging us. It has to do with this unfathomable intelligence innate in every particle of creation, in our fingertip, in those flowers behind you, in every little thing. Even from a scientific perspective, there’s something marvellous going on in every little bit. If you start really pondering what that is and if that’s the intelligence that’s running the show, if that’s the artist that has created this beautiful piece of art that we see as creation, then you kind of want to meet the artist after a while. Become more intimate with that, that divine level of creation.
Mukti: Yes, and you may feel the meaning of that in your own expression as all of the parts of yourself also reverberate that in unison with all of these expressions that are reverberating, and that harmonic is part of the expression of the Dao.
Rick: Yeah, so you mentioned a couple of things, you said there could be different definitions of embodiment, and then a couple of minutes ago you said different definitions of awakening. These terms are thrown around a lot. My wife Irene coordinates the scheduling of people these days, and I’ll suggest somebody, and she’ll say, “Well, is he awakened?” and I’ll just have to say, “Well, yeah, but the term has such an absolute connotation. And there seems to be no end to awakenings, so I don’t know where to label it to say, “Oh yes, this is awakened, and this is not awakened.” It’s like saying, “Are you educated?” Well, yeah, up to a point, but there’s more. I’ve even heard Adya say that he often thinks of himself as just a beginner (I think that’s what he said), and if that’s the case then I guess a good question to lead into your response would be, do you see any end to it or is it sort of a matter of never-ending deepening and clarification and greater embodiment with no end in sight?
Mukti: Yes.
Rick: The latter?
Mukti: No, both. Yes, to both.
Mukti: Yes, to both, really. I mean, I think that certain things end. More or less, seeking can end, movements toward attachment end, and I don’t know that preferences ever end.
Rick: Like you’re going to like Chinese food better than Italian food or that kind of thing.
Mukti: Or, you know
Rick: Prefer your husband to some other character on the street.
Mukti: Exactly. Or, in the process of a loved one dying.
Rick: Sure.
Mukti: Attachment may not be your overriding feeling. Maybe you’re with what’s happening. Maybe attachment does arise because there’s really a preference for them to stick around. There are healthy attachments, right? But that’s really a big part of what this conversation is about, is people tend to really want things to be black and white. And even a term like “attachment”, “awakening,” “embodiment,” “liberated,” we had a few others in here, but there are several that, there is just no consensus on them. But in general, there is an end. How I like to talk about it is there’s a trajectory of embodiment that tends to look like less and less attachment, less and less argument with what is, less and less of a sense of self. Less and less of a sense of referencing, where you’re referencing spiritual territory in general. And there could also be maybe references of more, like maybe more and more quietness of mind, more and more energetic rest in one’s body and being. And of course, there are exceptions to this. We have stressors and everything. But I think there just feels like there’s a trajectory. There are certain pivotal moments where significant shifts in one’s perspectives and construct come into play that, we might call awakenings, that can feel very much continued. And yet, there can be a point where more or less, more pieces have fallen into place or fallen away, whatever is appropriate.
Rick: Yeah. So, kind of like milestones, you’re going to California and there’s all these state borders you cross and each one of those is a milestone. And of course, you do get to California, but then there’s Hawaii.
Mukti: Yeah, and don’t need to organize around a sense of the end. It’s just like, there’s right here and it’s the beginning, the middle and the end, the whole time. It’s just the way we organize around it that changes even more significantly so that the questions start to break down. It’s like they don’t compute anymore. Like, maybe that perspective might say, why are we talking about whether there’s an end or not? What’s the point?
Rick: Well, the reason I bring it up is that I do actually run into people still have some realization and they say, “I’m done. I’m finished. That’s it.” And I’ve heard Adya address this too. And there’s a kind of a, for some reason, there’s this sort of very convincing quality about awakening sometimes where it seems like there couldn’t be anything more and this must be it. And I’m very skeptical that that could be the case.
Mukti: Well, I know that in my own experience and in talking to others, that sometimes that can be a phase. Like, there’s just, there’s no way you could compute from that perspective that there’s anything else than that perspective. You could not fathom it. You could have a gun put to your head and say, would you stake your life on it? And the person in that perspective would say, “Hands down, I would.” And then boom. Maybe boom. Yeah, maybe not. Maybe they’ll always remain in that perspective, you know, because there could be exceptions to what I’ve experienced and other people have experienced. So, I’m not saying that I wouldn’t get blown out too if I said, “Well, I’m going to say that that perspective will go just as everything comes and goes.” I could get the shot in my head. Because in one sense, that perspective that they’re speaking of is the eternal perspective. Yet, as eternity is expressing, it expresses as that which changes and expresses infinitely in an infinite number of ways, without end.
Rick: Good answer. As you were saying that it occurred to me that we all have different dharmas, different roles, and it could be that for some people, they have a significant degree of awakening and they’re going to spend the rest of their life just living in that, without any other significant unfoldings. That just might be the way they are wired. That just might be the role that they are cut out to play.
Mukti: Yeah, I love that. I like that perspective because it frees us from thinking it should be a certain way.
Rick: Yeah, that’s good.
Mukti: Yeah, I love that, Rick. Thank you.
Rick: I confess though, to having a bit of a roadmap mentality in terms of wanting to codify all these terms people use, such as awakening and enlightenment and embodiment and so on, because we are all using them all the time. And if we really want to be communicating, then there needs to be some kind of agreed-upon understanding of what we are actually referring to. If everybody’s referring to something somewhat different in the use of such terms, then there’s a kind of Tower of Babel situation.
Mukti: Yeah. It certainly can be wonderful to strive toward that.
Rick: So, let’s loop back now and talk about the story of Mukti.
Mukti: Okay.
Rick: And I’ve heard you explain it beautifully on your Conscious TV interview and other things, but my listeners may not have heard those. And maybe we’ll bring in some little unique angles or something that you didn’t talk about in those other interviews. So, as I understand it, I think you said you grew up in an Irish Catholic family and take it from there.
Mukti: Oh, gosh. How much time do you have? Is this like a five-minute question?
Rick: This is as much time as you want, question. Whatever you feel is appropriate in the context of this. Just so people, because people always want to know more about the person in addition to whatever philosophical or spiritual perspectives they might have. People want to know, well, how did they get those perspectives? I mean, what did they go through that maybe I’m going through or will go through or something that might be helpful to me to hear about?
Mukti: Yeah. Well, there’s obviously infinite ways I could answer this, but what comes to me in this moment is that I feel most grateful for my formative years, and other people go, “What?” because they didn’t have the same experience. But I had a very positive experience of growing up in Catholicism. I have heard Adya, especially in his early years of teaching, talk about progressive paths and direct path teachings. I feel like in my formative years, that experience of Catholicism was a kind of progressive path. And then I was also introduced to the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda, very young, at the age seven, as my dad became interested in those. Yet the whole rest of my immediate family and extended family was still very involved in Catholicism. It would be to very much oversimplify those two traditions to just say, “Okay, they’re both progressive, end of story.” But for sake of trying to communicate, I feel like
Rick: Let’s just ask, by progressive and direct, do you mean like sequential, progressive progress as opposed to some kind of immediate full realization? Is that what you mean?
Mukti: Yeah, I was just about to go into that, thanks. After those formative years, I had more direct path teachings through Adya. The advantages of the progressive paths, as I see it is, they arre very much building a foundation in a person to have a healthy sense of tribe, community, individuality, morality, service to something much greater than themselves, a God, loving others. There is pointing towards discipline, introspection and contemplation that would help people be the most Christian or the most loving people they can be in the world. That sense of love really comes from a connection to a well-founded spirit that is the ultimate source of love that can express through us and that can speak to us when we call upon it. So, for me, those foundations were incredibly valuable to really steep in what’s possible as far as beautiful expressions of humanity, because I know there’s a lot of ugliness out there.
Rick: So, for instance, some of the Catholic saints, St. Francis, St. Teresa of Avila, and then Yogananda and Sri Yukteswar. So, you’re just speaking of those as being examples of what it’s possible for a human being to be, right?
Mukti: I guess you could say that, but mostly I was speaking of my inner experience. I was inspired by those outer experiences, the examples of those lives you mentioned, as well as their pointers to look within and to develop a sense of relating with the divine Presence. And to sense how that is food for us in our nature as spirit, and to also take on their direct constructs of guiding principles, whether they be the commandments or whether they be the self-realization fellowship lessons of Yogananda. All those were not only presenting profound examples of what’s possible as far as living an authentic expression of being that supports our well-being, but also the actual tools and teaching me how to hold some of these things and how to navigate. I felt really lucky that then when I was exposed to more direct path teachings that were a little less focused on the foundation, although there was definitely some focus on that. But the primary emphasis was on who is it that is living your life? What are you that is engaging in this business of living, praying, meditating? What is it, actually, that you’re praying to? What is this ‘I am’, that is spoken of in the Bible? What is this Psalm, “Be still and know that I am God”? What actually is that indirect experience? And so, the direct path teachings that I got from Adya were really like, you have to delve into your direct experience to come upon a knowing, like an order of knowing that is not something that’s been presented to you, but something you come to know through your own inquiry. I had a little bit of that through Yogananda, and there’s probably a fair amount of that in Christianity that I didn’t expose myself to, as much. But I just felt like the marriage of the two created this fertile ground that was greatly supported through those progressive paths of Catholicism, Self-Realization Fellowship, even my studies in Chinese medicine and Hatha Yoga. To then have that foundation on which to take in, feel secure and attracted enough to delve into the self-inquiry questions that Adya presented, I felt it was a real blessing. I feel it’s also a blessing in the embodiment because there’s some sense of the flavors and presence of what can be embodied that I think was greatly nurtured prior to my awakenings that kind of catapulted me into more absolute or transcendent views. I think knowing that divinity helped whatever we want to call it, my soul, my person, ascend into embodied expression because there is a sense that it’s not like before when we incarnate at birth where there’s a sense of the me coming into form expressing. It’s so different this time because the divine has taken up in one’s consciousness to such an extent that it literally feels more like the divine is incarnating, whether we want to say with us or as us.
Rick: Through us.
Mukti: Through us, exactly. So, I felt like all those years of getting a sense of divinity has facilitated, the feeling that divinity is always and ever-present and expresses as what I am, and the falling away of what I thought I was.
Rick: Nice. It kind of sounds like you’re saying that, at least in your case, direct path and progressive path teachings can be complementary, mutually enriching or supporting.
Mukti: I believe so.
Rick: Yeah. There’s an old Zen saying, “Enlightenment may be an accident, but spiritual practice makes you accident-prone.” So, it’s like all this culturing , refining and enriching of your sense of the divine, which would be the progressive thing, brought you to a point where a direct path teaching such as Adya’s was perhaps able to be more fruitful than it might otherwise have been.
Mukti: That’s my feeling. Of course, I’ve only lived this one life, so I can’t say categorically, but instinctively the pairing of those two, the progressive path teachings and the direct path teachings, for me, has made it much easier for me than other people I observe, to have things. Especially the process of embodiment and the ease with that, comes about more smoothly. There may be other factors that I don’t claim to be able to track or know, like notions of karma or other things that maybe easier for me, but I still feel like
Rick: Past lives.
Mukti: Yeah, but even people who have had difficult karma, I have seen their foundation in progressive path teachings help them tremendously with embodiment. That’s my interpretation of what’s happening.
Rick: You were saying before in the beginning about how simplistic path solutions, techniques or perspectives don’t necessarily cut it when one is dealing with some critical issue. I think you said that we have a tendency to grasp at those, people do have a tendency to want to glom on to black and white thinking and simplistic perspectives. I see nothing wrong with nuance and paradox and both/and. In fact, I think it’s extremely helpful. There’s absolutely no conflict or competition between direct path and progressive path. Doing practices and at the same time realizing that you are already that, and all kinds of such things that these little debates take place on chat groups and so on.
Mukti: Yeah, it’s so funny because when you take a side, you can definitely shoot down the other side really easily. I can too. I could be in a debate and shoot down each side, and I could probably shoot down what I just said. But I think in the end, what’s more important than winning the argument is what’s the nourishment that’s needed to know and express the clarity of being, at any given juncture and just to sense that. I think it’s wise to be open in this business of coming to know and express ourselves as infinite. It’s wise to open to the infinite myriad of expressions because there are all those facets of ourselves.
Rick: Yeah, that is beautifully put. God is not a one-trick pony, you know, there’s this verse in the Bhagavad Gita someplace where Lord Krishna says, “However people approach me, so do I favor them,” and that any sort of spiritual effort or aspiration or interest or initiative is acknowledged and rewarded. I think if we’re really seriously, genuinely and sincerely interested in awakening as profoundly as possible and being as great a contributor to the world as we can be, then we’re not going to dismiss or reject any possibility that would foster that.
Mukti: Yeah, I think that’s good. You know, I know that sometimes it’s appropriate to give some really black or white structure for somebody at a given juncture. And there is an appropriateness to let someone stabilize in certain viewpoints that they’re opening up to and to just to let them think certain things for a while, as they really come into the full power and embodiment of that. Even if we just keep our mouth shut and let that happen, we can have confidence that all the other facets in their own time will seek their expression as well. Things come and go and change and as consciousness itself seeks to know itself through us, new perspectives will begin to unfold.
Rick: Yeah, good point. Back in the 70s I was teaching meditation out west with a team of three other guys and we were traveling around a bunch of states. For some reason, whenever we flew into Las Vegas, it would take forever to get the luggage. And without fail there were Hare Krishna people in the airport, so I would always entertain myself by talking to the Hare Krishna people while waiting for my luggage. I remember talking to one guy who had been helped so much by that path and that approach. And I was on a different path, teaching a different thing. But I can remember it was a lesson for me not to in any way, diminish or compare my path to his, and just to appreciate how much value he was deriving from what he was doing. And I doubt that he’s doing that now, 30/40 years later, but it was great for him at the time.
Mukti: Great, I love that little vignette, that’s awesome.
Rick: So, let’s get back to Mukti, the story of Mukti. So, we kind of veered off, you were talking about how you had this upbringing with first Christianity, then Yogananda, and that had in a way prepared you and built a ground / foundation which then made the direct path more potent or fruitful. And that direct path was with Adya, as I understand it. You met him and even married him even before he started teaching. So, pick up the story from there. What was he doing when you first met him? What were you doing? How did you guys meet?
Mukti: I was working in high-tech in the Palo Alto area.
Rick: Some kind of programmer or something?
Mukti: No, in that year, I kind of flipped back and forth between technical writing of manuals for software and hardware, and marketing of those products, because it was a small company. Sometimes I’d market at trade shows around the country or, just do different things on the phone – surveys, and direct marketing and things like that. But I knew my time there was ending. I was seeking to get certain products out, and then I knew that I’d be leaving. But what was significant about that year for me is, it was, I was about maybe age 24 or something, and I decided, you know, since graduating from college around age 21, 22, that by the time I was at that age (gosh, I can’t remember – actually, it seems like I’m messing up my ages). I guess I graduated at 21 and had been working in high-tech for four years. But anyhow, so I made a commitment to myself to meditate twice a day and do the energization exercises, which are some pranayama breathing yogic exercises that Yogananda recommends daily for a year straight. I made that commitment to myself because I was kind of abysmal at discipline when it came to meditation. And also during that time, I
Rick: Was the Yogananda meditation arduous or was it kind of gratifying and motivated you to sit down and do it?
Mukti: I don’t know that it was arduous for other people, but it was arduous for me. And yet, the devotional part of me, like I always loved the prayers and the chanting and everything, so that part was not arduous. And I loved just being together in community with the people meditating. So, I committed to that and I kind of was moving away from my socializing as I had known at university. I spent many evenings going to longer meditation groups, so, it was a really fruitful year for me, spiritually speaking. I was praying quite a bit and really kind of preparing myself to attract someone into my life. As Yogananda put it, you can attract someone of like vibration. I thought, “Gosh, I’ve always really wanted a partner who was really committed to spirituality,” because I had considered being a monastic and had spent some time at an ashram myself after that.
Rick: A Yogananda ashram?
Mukti: Yeah, and I wasn’t a postulant or anything. I just worked in the offices as a layperson, but that was just after I had met Adya, actually. I was lining that up for my life and I thought, I wasn’t really, didn’t really know if I wanted to be a monastic or have a partner, but I knew that I wanted spirituality to be central in my life. I lived in one of these group households where a lot of people rented rooms. We all found our housing on the university bulletin board, and then we shared the common areas. And one of the young men that had a room in this larger house started dating Adya’s sister. And so, I got to know Adya’s older sister, and one day we were chatting, and I mentioned to her that I meditated daily. Her eyes kind of got wide and her mouth got open, and she called her boyfriend, like, “Get in here! Why don’t we ever think of setting up?” Annie, which is my layperson’s name, Annie, with my brother. Her boyfriend’s like, “Oh my God, why didn’t we think about that?” And she said, “Yeah, you’re the only two people who I’ve ever known who meditate, so maybe you guys would like each other.” So, yeah, so we tried to go on a double date with them a few times, and then finally we ended up going on a blind date. He called me and asked me out.
Rick: Well, it wasn’t exactly blind because he knew who he was calling.
Mukti: Yeah, exactly. It wasn’t totally blind. Yeah.
Rick: Right. Cool.
Mukti: Slight unseen, he said, “Yeah, I’m going to take this one out.”
Rick: Oh, I see. You hadn’t met yet and he called you.
Mukti: Yeah.
Rick: So, you kind of hit it off. I’m letting dogs in and out here, by the way, if you see me opening the doors. That’s what’s happening.
Mukti: Oh, okay.
Rick: Yeah. So, was it love at first sight?
Mukti: I don’t know. Kind of. Not in the way you typically think of it, like sparks flying.
Rick: Right. So, a deep recognition kind of thing?
Mukti: Adya describe sometimes that when I opened the door, it was just like something in him that shifted, kind of like the troubles of his current life just kind of fell away and when he saw me, he just knew like this person will be significant in my life for the rest of my life.
Rick: Interesting.
Mukti: That’s what he knew when he saw me. When I saw him, it was more like I saw him and I thought, “I’ve never met a person like this.” And I was curious.
Rick: At first glance you thought, “I’ve never met a person like this,” or after you had talked a little bit? What was it about him?
Mukti: Well, both. It was both. It was both the phone conversation before the date and the date.
Rick: What was it about him that was unprecedented in your experience?
Mukti: It’s very subtle. It’s a great question. He didn’t want anything. I didn’t feel like he wanted anything from me. He didn’t want anything in particular to happen. He wasn’t putting on a show. He wasn’t like jockeying for position or trying to make an impression. There was a comfortability in himself to not necessarily be talkative. I mean, this is all in the first few minutes, right? But a confidence in himself to speak when he spoke. It doesn’t mean that other people don’t have these qualities, but it was something about the blend that I thought, “I haven’t come upon this before myself.”
Rick: That’s a nice characterization. That’s really nice. We could probably sum it up with the word “naturalness.”
Mukti: Yeah, the funny thing is he’s very natural and yet not ordinary at the same time. You know what I mean?
Rick: Yeah, I totally know what you mean. Having had lunch with him that time he came to Fairfield and having known him before from his teachings, but there’s this kind of real head in the clouds, feet on the ground kind of quality about him. Just a real sort of what you see is what you get, but there’s a lot going on there, there is a great depth.
Mukti: I love that.
Rick: And yet at the same time a great sort of down-to-earthness and kind of simplicity.
Mukti: Yeah, I think you described him fantastically. Thank you.
Rick: So, how long did you guys go out together before you decided to get married?
Mukti: Well, we had an interruption there because around the time I met him, I had already lined it up to work at the ashram.
Rick: Oh, I see. Yogananda.
Mukti: Yeah, so we dated for a while, got interrupted. For various reasons we put it on hold. I think we really got dating about a year and a half later, but that whole time we were at a distance, and we were doing something kind of very traditional – we were just writing letters to each other all the time. We really got to know each other a lot through the letters and through the times we did see each other through the year that I was away. I had made a year commitment to the ashram. After I returned, I think we got engaged about a year later and then got married something like eight months after that. We got married when I was 28, so sometime then.
Rick: Okay. So, you were going along and then at a certain point, I guess after you were married, Adya decided to become a teacher, right?
Mukti: His teacher asked him to become a teacher, yeah.
Rick: Right. And you went along and decided to help be his backup person for that and help him organize the Open Gate Sangha and everything.
Mukti: Exactly, yeah.
Mukti: Just a little thing you might enjoy. When we were dating, I was really practical person, and I was asking a lot of questions about what he wanted to do for his life. One thing he said “I just have this sense that someday I’ll be a teacher.” And I said, “What kind of teacher?” He’s like, “Well, it’s going to be a teacher of adults.” And he said, “It may be like in a university setting or in a spiritual setting.” I said, “Well, do you think it could look like your teachers?” One of his teachers is really like an abbot of a whole Zen center. And he said, “It could be.” Boy, would I have to sit with that one for a long time. Like, do I really want to be the wife of an abbot running a Zen center?
Rick: Yeah.
Mukti: But in a way I could see the perfection of it because I had considered the monastic life and I had considered the lay life and I was like, “Wow, this is like a hybrid.” But it was an interesting curve ball for me when we were dating because I was such a loyal student to Yogananda. So, to think of being, resident in a Zen center, practicing my yogic path was kind of something to chew on for a bit.
Rick: Since the two of you both had a kind of a monastic background in a way, did you have any trouble adjusting to married life?
Mukti: No, really easy for us. We had a few challenges, but overarching it was very easy. A little adjusting, I don’t need to like paint it. There were a few warps and warbles. But in general, neither of us are people who enjoy arguing. Some people love to argue and it’s really fun. But we are both people that love to have harmony, and in general, we would work things out and keep things smooth.
Rick: Yeah, well what relationship hasn’t had a few warps and warbles, you know?
Mukti: Exactly, yeah. And at that age, too, I hope we get wiser as we age some.
Rick: Yeah, seems to be the trend. I was just going to say one thing I think a lot of people appreciate about Adya’s teaching (I’ve never been to one of his retreats, so I don’t know what goes on there), there doesn’t seem to be a lot of trappings. Just what you described about his personality earlier when you first met him in terms of naturalness and simplicity that’s the way the whole thing comes across when you watch the videos and talks. There’s not a whole lot of falderol, which is refreshing.
Mukti: Good. I’m glad you’re enjoying it.
Rick: Yeah, so.
Mukti: Me too.
Rick: There’s somebody who emailed me just today, who said, “I wonder if” I know more because I’ve listened to more of your talks, but she says, “I wonder if Mukti’s enlightened or awakened. I mean, she can’t help but not be, hanging around with Adya all the time.” If he had already undergone awakening prior to your getting together with him, was there some sort of osmosis effect that you began to feel when you were together? Is it contagious?
Mukti: I love this, great question. I don’t think I’d give a black or white answer is the quick thing, because it’s kind of the theme of our interview, right? One thing I sense when I look back is I have such a profound trust in him as a human being, and I had that from day one. I’ve had a life where I can have the luxury of being pretty trusting, so, I really could touch into him in a way that maybe others who may feel less of a capacity for trust may not be able to. In that way, I was really open to his pointers, very receptive. I very much engaged him as my teacher. So, there was almost like two tracks going, Adya my husband, Adya my teacher, and they didn’t feel really separate, we shifted between the two really fluidly and still do. I think the transmission that really opened my horizons as far as direct path teachings, spirituality, the inquiry and the pointers that he gave, and continues to give as a teacher (not so much to me personally now) but just to people at large, similar pointers – I think that my connection to them allowed them to go in very directly. That trust really provided an openness for them to come in quite directly. I had that trust also validated in our personal life and who he was in that role. I can’t definitively say, but I think there is a component of presence and Kundalini that I could feel being close in his proximity, day after day, night after night. A lot of that I didn’t really feel as acutely until after the more significant awakening that occurred for me. I think the two of us together supported one another. It was really when he could kind of rest into our relationship and our marriage that things really began to unfold for him more quickly. I think in some ways I’ve had easier karma than him. It feels like when you get married you really share each other’s karma. So, I feel like we’ve been mutually supportive in our spiritual unfoldings. He jokes around with me, saying that I’ve taught him a lot about just how to be a better host, have manners when he has guests or how to have conversations with people. I think that some people have that lens of like, “Oh, of course, Adya’s had this great influence on Mukti.” But it’s really been an influence that has travelled in both directions. I’m not saying that to toot my horn, but I think it’s just a valuable perspective to see that, of course, we all influence each other constantly. So, there’s no way I could ever say that his presence has not had a profound impact on my life because that’s what we are for each other. It’s probably beyond our comprehension how much effect we have on those around us or on every single living being.
Rick: That was a great answer. There’s so much wonderful stuff in what you just said. And I’m glad you said the bit about you influencing him because I don’t mean to imply by all these questions like, “Oh, what is it like to be married to Adya?” You probably get that a lot and I’m sure that your influence on him is every bit as important as his influence on you, so I don’t mean to imply otherwise by asking all these questions.
Mukti: Yeah, I didn’t get that, Rick, thank you. I didn’t get that at all.
Rick: Okay, good. The thing you said about transmission is significant too because I’ve been around some teachers that had a lot of Shakti, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Amma. I never met Muktananda personally, but I went into one of his centers one time in New York and it was cooking, there was just a lot of Shakti in the atmosphere. I noticed that also in sitting with Adya at lunch in Iowa that it was just like coming off him like heat waves off a hot road, in the summertime. There was just a lot of Shakti that is just kind of spontaneously transmitted. So, I imagine that was influential for you as you said it was.
Mukti: Yeah, just to let you know though, the volume on that really goes down when he’s not in a teaching setting.
Rick: Yeah, I know what you mean.
Mukti: Yeah, just kind of goes in and then that presence really comes forward when it has the intelligence to do so.
Rick: I’m sure you’ve experienced that yourself as a teacher. You’re up in front of an audience of people and somehow when you put yourself in that role, it really amps up. Then you’re back, because it wouldn’t necessarily need to be amped up like that all the time.
Mukti: Absolutely. Then when it’s amped down, it seems that that’s restful for the body too. In other words, you can almost feel like you get your circuits fried or something.
Rick: Yeah, I was a TM teacher for a long time and you’d give a lecture in front of 500 people or something and you really were cooking.
Mukti: Yeah, especially with a bigger audience.
Rick: You’d be up until 4 in the morning, you couldn’t get to sleep because there’s so much, so you wouldn’t want that all the time necessarily.
Mukti: Yeah, I haven’t tried it yet, but yeah.
Rick: So continuing along here, I heard you tell the story of how you were on some retreat with Adya or something and you had a pretty significant awakening and you didn’t even quite realize it had happened until the next day. Go ahead and tell that story.
Mukti: Oh gosh.
Rick: In as much detail as you want, I mean there’s obviously so many things we could talk about, but bring up whatever you feel would be significant in the context of this conversation.
Mukti: Okay, I’ll do that because you know people can go on to Conscious TV and there’s two.
Rick: Sure, they can see that whole thing and you don’t need to read it all over again.
Mukti: Yeah, there’s actually a little bit of on the first video and a little bit more on the second video. Maybe just to touch in with what might be significant here. Well, what I would love to do and I’ve been wanting to do at some point in this interview, so I think this is a good time, is that tendency of people to kind of make their approach to ego or suffering or embodiment or whatever, all these different parts of the spiritual territory, they can tend to make that approach very black and white?
Rick: Yes.
Mukti: Sometimes there’s a tendency to really want to make it really simple so that there’s something really concrete to relax into and just like give your energy to. Sometimes that really works, especially if it’s at the stage where it’s absolutely appropriate. And sometimes it’s like trying to use the wrong tool or just all the tools come up short. Interestingly enough, sometimes in spiritual practice, things aren’t simple enough. So that’s the paradox of sometimes we really want to oversimplify, and it doesn’t work. And sometimes we don’t almost have the capacity to simplify enough to have ourselves engaged in one thing that really gives transformative power. What happened for me on that retreat with Adya is I had been cooking for some time with an inquiry that kind of helped me get through an incredibly busy time, with multiple jobs and an acupuncture education program, newly married, starting Open Gate Sangha, all kinds of things.
Rick: What is rest?
Mukti: Right. So, you’re familiar with this thing I was cooking on, ‘what is rest?’, contemplating that for a long time, using it such that asking the question would direct my attention to a sense of rest that was already present. And to invite that sense of rest, almost like I was asking it, “What are you?”, to have that sense of rest present itself in a more palpable way. Then when I was on that retreat and Adya gave a talk on stillness, this is on the Conscious TV interview, but I really sat when everyone went to bed, I really sat with that question, “What is stillness?” And energetically dropped it from my mind into my body and into the quiet sense of rest that I had been cultivating. I just let the question ripple and carry my attention into a direct sense of stillness. I had taken me a long time to come to a moment where I could be that simple and just give the entirety of my being to that question. It wasn’t just a capacity I had developed, it was when I had heard him give the talk on stillness, I could feel where he was speaking from and it was still in my system. In that inquiry, I let the inquiry take me to that, which was being transmitted in his talk. It didn’t take so much of me, but my attention lay its head down in that and just emerged with that and that had its own unfolding from there. That’s one of the most important things I can convey about my awakening experience is that that question really captured me and that’s how I knew to give myself to it completely.
Rick: I wonder if your Yogananda background and affirmations, just that you had cultured the ability to follow an affirmation down to a subtler level and so you were primed to be able to do this.
Mukti: Definitely, I had practiced affirmations and there’s like two things that I look back on – one is that when I was young, maybe like 14, I was in a Yogananda activity with other young women who were my age and we were all embroidering this psalm, “Be still and know that I am God.” I just was so taken by how I didn’t know what that was. So that seed was planted in me at a much younger age and I would chew on it periodically throughout my life, like what actually is it to be still? I don’t know if I’ve ever been still. And could you actually know God? How could the stillness show me that? So, there was something that was already in the mix, I think. Also, just the time that I had spent with Yogananda’s teachings where I had become more attuned to presence and transmission that I could, really take notice of it when Adya was giving his talk and sense it very acutely. So, I really think Yogananda was tremendous in that. Also, the way Yogananda always pointed, you have to take things into your inner laboratory.
Rick: Yeah. Nice. So anyway, he was giving this talk about stillness and you had been asking the question, “What is rest?” And somehow or other there was a significant shift, which you talk about in much greater detail on Conscious TV, which people should look up that interview to hear all the details. But in any case, that was kind of a turning point for you?
Mukti: Yeah, absolutely. Spiritually speaking it was really like my sense of self was turned inside out. Just this sense of believing, who I was at the center of experience, like right here, looking out at the world, looking out at the territory of spirituality. As I turned in, it was as though I merged with that inward sense of stillness that almost like, felt like it pulled myself as I knew myself to be into that stillness. And then when a sense of self re-emerged, it was literally like being turned inside out. And instead of feeling like I was this one in the center of the eternal, I literally felt more like I was the eternal looking out at itself.
Rick: Did that sense fade after a while or did it pretty much just integrate and stabilize and kind of become the norm for you?
Mukti: A little bit of both. It depends how you look at it. How I feel what happened was that turning and that sense of the eternal, it really took up residence in a way. It almost just felt like it entered the architecture of who and what I was in such a deep way that that has never left. In fact, it seemed to be that it always has been and always will be, whether I have a body or not. But what did change was that sense of the eternal looking out my eyes, almost like they talk about the Holy Ghost. I felt like, “Oh, I know what they mean by the Holy Ghost.” It’s just the sense of these two eye sockets and infinity looking out of this body. But that sense changed on the heels of that shift in the next couple days, that sense of emptiness looking out at itself. I don’t know if it did a flip, but it did almost like an energetic merging where the inside and outside, aligned. The sense of the eternal looking out at creation, it’s like the creation and the Holy Ghost aligned and lined up and became the same. It was the sense that the manifest world is this emptiness.
Rick: Or fullness as the case may be.
Mukti: Yeah, it is this eternal. I mean, yeah, the words break down. The eternal is the eminent.
Rick: Kind of makes sense because if the eternal is the infinite and if it’s really sort of infinite and omnipresent, how can that look out? It’s looking at itself.
Mukti: Exactly. And then it went kind of from looking at itself to, “This is myself.”
Rick: Nice.
Mukti: Yeah. And so that basically has stayed, although what happened on the heels of that, just to finish the question really fast, is more of a sense of the construct of my personality and ego started to come back. I was surprised at how much of the ego had just seemed to have vanished. Lot of times people are surprised that any ego comes back, and that can be a bummer. But I was almost surprised at how much had fallen away. Like, “Oh my gosh, where did that go?” And I think people experience surprise on both counts. But that sense of the ego not ultimately being what I am has made it a completely different experience.
Rick: Yeah. Would you agree that the ego is a faculty, like the sense of hearing or any of our other human faculties, and that you need that faculty in order to function in the world? So, it’s not like you can be completely and utterly egoless, without any sense of personal self and be able to function? Or am I wrong? Is it not that way?
Mukti: I think it’s almost like from a certain perspective, the referencing of the ego goes offline. So, at that point, you could still call it ego, and that’s fine with me. Or you could just not call it ego, and that would be fine with me. But it’s almost just like the ego can come back in its different strands of the former structure, and they may come back in a different way, or they may come back in just the very same way. And when they come back, they’re seeking their place in the scheme of that liberated state, and they often are seeking their liberation. Or maybe they’re just seeking to be a conduit for the expression of that awakened state. And so, it’s almost like it may feel, in the black or white view, it’s like, “Oh, it just all gets liberated and discarded,” but it’s almost more like it energetically transforms into a different vehicle, and some of it doesn’t need to transform so much because it’s basically a pretty healthy conduit for expression of spirit. Some of it, as it reforms, can look very concrete, can really look like a personality and expression. We could call that ego, we could call that personality, we could call it whatever we want, embodied spirit. But at that point, you really have to take the magnifying glass to how we’re using the terms, and at that point, you’re splitting hair so much, and your lived experience is like, it’s just not necessary to get in there with the microscope because you’re too busy going on with the business of living.
Rick: Yeah. Well, I think in Sanskrit the best equivalent to ego is “ahankara”, which means “eye maker.” It seems to me, and I’m not arguing the point, but I’m just saying, and you’re free to refute it if that’s what your experience is, but it seems to me that there is going to be some sense of “I” even though the kind of the impersonal cosmic awareness, or whatever you want to call it, might be predominant. But if somebody calls your name, you’re going to turn your head, or if you stub your toe, that’s different from a rock being dropped on your driveway in terms of the lived experience of the situation. There’s some localization of experience, as long as we’re a human entity.
Mukti: Absolutely.
Rick: If people expect to be completely and utterly free of that, and have no personal identity whatsoever, they may end up spending their lives looking for something that’s never going to happen.
Mukti: Yeah, and they may miss out on a really rich human experience too.
Rick: Yeah. That’s an interesting point, which is that, as opposed to snuffing out our human experience, doesn’t all this awakening actually enrich and enliven it?
Mukti: Yeah.
Rick: Make it much more sumptuous.
Mukti: It certainly can. I don’t want to be Pollyannaish, that it’s always rich and beautiful.
Rick: Rainbows and unicorns.
Mukti: Yeah, exactly. I mean, there’s the grit, there’s the boots on the ground, there’s the spice in the sweet, the bitter in the sweet, whatever you want to call it. But you see it all as yourself more, in the sense that you don’t have to have it be sweet and beautiful, and yet, but you’re also not running away and missing the beauty when it can present and strike you very profoundly.
Rick: Yeah. How are you doing on time? Are you good to go for a little longer? Do you want to wrap it up?
Mukti: Let’s start, Ted, toward wrapping it up, yeah. I mean, I don’t have an end point, but I think it would be nice to transition to other arenas of life that you might be wondering what’s happening.
Rick: Yeah, what happened to Mukti? No, that’s good. I think in a way we’ve come full circle in this discussion. We started out talking about dealing with stuff that may erupt when awakening occurs, and we talked about embodiment and so on, and we’ve looped around through a lot of good stuff and in a way come back to that very thing, the living of awakening through the human instrument, and maybe what a precious opportunity that is. So, that’s good.
Mukti: Yeah, yeah.
Rick: So, anything you’d like to say in conclusion?
Mukti: Yea, just as you were taking the feeling of something was coming forward. It seems to be that that within ourselves (going back to the earlier part of the interview), that seeks its liberation, it’s a little over simplistic to call it content of conditioning, but just energies that may seek a new harmony, as those are coming up, whether it be thought constructs, behavioral patterns, traumas, whatever it might be. As that’s coming up, if there is a capacity to rest in oneself as spirit and to rest in one’s nature as the seeing of awareness that liberation seeks, then there’s a way that that awareness can both be directed as one is attending to that content of experience and directing one’s attention to be present for that. That seems to somehow further encourage that content to want to join that sense of aware space, we could call it. And when that content begins to join its liberated state or its nature as awareness, it literally can release energy from our human expression to be available for other expression and to be available to be really valuable contribution for our own lives and for our world. So, being available to that sometimes takes a tremendous amount of courage and dedication and love. That is not only something that is needed by those aspects of ourselves that seek that liberation, but it’s also something that we can thrive in because it’s our nature to express as attention, love, compassion, a beingness that is receptive. It’s not only about us, that process of liberating that content of what some people might call ego, it’s also about our nature as spirit to get to welcome itself in these forms of conditioned patterns and to let that functioning of our nature as spirit function and be present for all of these aspects that long to join that freedom.
Rick: So, I kind of hear you saying that spirit wants to, if we can anthropomorphize it a bit, it wants to express fully through us, in us. We can choose to cooperate more. And with our attention and our intention, we can be more cooperative and help to facilitate its desire, again, anthropomorphizing, its desire to make us as fit a vehicle as possible for its expression.
Mukti: Exactly, yeah. It’s kind of reminiscent of all those images of us chasing God when God’s chasing us. There’s that sense of, it may feel like we’re trying to liberate this stuff sometimes, when in actuality, it’s the nature of things to move toward liberation and it’s the nature of our expression of spirit to be that liberating agent and to be enriched by all that becomes liberated and joins that union of spirit with spirit.
Rick: Perfect. We’ll end it there.
Mukti: Okay, great. Thanks for letting me do that.
Rick: Oh, for sure. Just let me make some concluding remarks. But yes, you’re very much welcome and thanks for doing this. I know you just got back from Europe and you’ve been busy and all, and there’s a lot of technical setup involved. So, I really appreciate the effort you’ve made to do this and it’s been a lot of fun.
Mukti: I’m so glad you enjoyed it. I’ve been looking forward to it for a while.
Rick: Yeah, me too.
Mukti: Looking forward to who will come upon it and find their way to sharing with you and I our great love of this.
Rick: Yeah, so Mukti will have her own page on bathgap.com. This particular interview will have its own page. And on that page, I’ll have her bio and also a link to her website muktisource.org and also a link to an audio book that she has put on, that Sounds True has published, that I’ve been listening to this week.
Mukti: Oh, I think that’s something that’s for sale.
Rick: It is, oh yeah, that’s for sale, sure.
Mukti: But you don’t want to give them the link that we gave you for the free issue.
Rick: No, I’m going to give the regular link to the Sounds True page where they can buy the book.
Mukti: Yay, they’ll love that, Sounds True.
Rick: I’m not going to give them your personal password to the Sounds True. Yeah, so there’s that, and it’s a nice book, you’ll enjoy it. And also if you go to muktisource.org, M-U-K-T-I-S-O-U-R-C-E.org, that will redirect you to a page on Adyashanti’s site where you’ll find all things Mukti. I know sometimes you conduct the Wednesday night phone call thing or video conference thing that Adya does on Wednesday night, so people can subscribe on adyashanti.org to be notified whenever there’s going to be one of those Wednesday night things, and sometimes it’s you. And do you have any other kind of newsletter or anything else that you keep in touch with people with?
Mukti: Yeah, I’m part of the Open Gate Sangha newsletter and website, and it’s been great to check out the website. A lot of people have liked this guided meditation I’ve done, it’s free on there, called “Let Down and Let Be.” There’s lots of clips and
Rick: Yeah, there’s tons of stuff you can download.
Mukti: free satsangs, and then there’s the Indian Internet show that is free. I know I’m going to be on sometime later this fall. So, just have fun on there, there’s a lot to explore, and we’re working on stuff all the time, to add to that, we’ve got some exciting stuff coming out in the future too.
Rick: Great. Okay, and regarding Buddha at the Gas Pump, the website for that is batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P, and there’s all kinds of things there too, 250 previous interviews, and they’re all under the past interviews menu, they’re all categorized in different ways, alphabetical, chronological, and so on. There is the future interviews that are upcoming or announced under the future interviews tab, as well as some other stuff. Look under the “About Us” tab, you’ll see some things. There’s a “Donate” button that I appreciate people clicking, which makes this thing possible. We’ve started putting ads on YouTube, I kind of apologize for that because those are annoying. But there’s a need to monetize this a little bit more. BatGap is a non-profit organization, registered as su ch in the U.S., but donations are appreciated. There’s a place on BatGap to sign up to be notified by email each time a new interview is posted. There’s a discussion group, which has its own little section for each interview, so, there will be one for this interview. That’s just about it. Oh, there’s also an audio podcast, and there’s a link to that with every interview, so you can subscribe on iTunes or whatever to listen to the audio of these interviews. Thanks a lot for listening or watching. Thank you again, Mukti.
Mukti: Oh, you’re so welcome, it was so fun.
Rick: Yeah, great fun. We’ll see you next week. Next week is Barbara Marks Hubbard, so that’ll be fun too. So, thanks.