Neelam 2^nd Interview

Questions this interview answers

• What is the true meaning of awakening and how does it differ from blissful states?
• Does awakening eliminate all personal conditioning and emotional fluctuations?
• How can one recognize presence as their true nature in daily life?
• Is there a difference between awakening and enlightenment, or are they the same?
• Can the embodiment of awakening deepen over time even after the initial realization?

Key takeaways

• Awakening is a shift from identifying with the body to knowing oneself as presence.
• Awakening is not the same as experiencing bliss; presence remains regardless of emotional states.
• After awakening, conditioning and emotional patterns can still arise but do not affect the knowing of presence.
• The senses continue to function, but the ground of experience shifts to presence.
• Embodiment of awakening can deepen over time, but the essential knowing remains unchanged.
• Awakening ends the search for fulfillment outside of presence.
• Awakening and enlightenment are often used interchangeably, with little practical distinction.

Transcript

Introduction and Neelam’s Background

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer and my guest today is Neelam. I interviewed Neelam a couple of years ago and you may want to listen to that interview before listening to this one but otherwise just go ahead and listen to this one. It’ll be fine on its own. Neelam is a direct disciple of HWL Punja Papaji whose teacher was Ramana Maharshi. Her unequivocal commitment to truth helps us turn inward and release underlying patterns of conditioning which block the recognition of our true nature. With the utmost tenderness while helping us to address all aspects of daily living, including past conditioning and trauma, she invites us into the same recognition of truth that her teacher Papaji transmitted to her.

And I can attest to that having listened to about before this interview and about 20 hours before the previous one, there’s a real sweet rapport between her and the people that she works with. And she works with small groups on phone conferences and probably in other ways as well but that’s what, and extending over a period of months. So there’s a sort of an ongoing course that people take and interact with Neelam and there’s a very sweet family feeling that develops among the participants and a lot of personal attention. So Neelam welcome again thanks for doing this. And I’d like to start with a basic question which is that the word awakening or sometimes enlightenment, maybe we’ll see if you distinguish between those two words, is used a lot.

You hear so many people saying I had an awakening but unless we all agree on what that actually means then we’re not communicating when we use the word. You know, one person says one thing and ten different people hear ten other things. So I’d like to start this interview by having you define what you mean by awakening and perhaps also enlightenment, if there’s any distinction between the terms and that’ll provide a good foundation for the rest of our discussion.

Neelam: Beautiful, so I really think it’s a very important question because as you say so many things can be called awakening. So you know I have to start, I have to go back and I have to start with the direct experience of presence. Because that first of all that’s the, you know, the very direct transmission of the natural state. It’s also the gift of this lineage, you know, that this lineage just goes directly right there and says here you are, that’s your nature and you can know that in this moment. So we have to begin with this because without knowing this you know we can’t talk about anything. It can’t be just a mental understanding, it has to be an actual experience.

So once we have that, once we know that and whenever that happened, it might have happened a long time ago or years ago or lifetimes ago, you know that there’s this process that starts which is really guided by our desire for freedom. And that’s what I call the process that leads to awakening. And in this process we will go through these experiences, many different times of experiences of expansion and you know kind of out of body you know and bliss and love and peace and oneness and consciousness and all sorts of different things we may experience and yet eventually we are going to go back to identifying or go back to that sense of identity as me, that little sense of identity. So it will be a great experience and then we’ll be like you know, I’m back here and that is going to go on and on and on for however long it goes.

This is predetermined, we don’t know you know but eventually we come to this moment where that shift happens and the shift happens and it’s a change from that sense of identity that is based in the body. Habitually even when we point to ourselves we say this is me and then when we direct our attention inward it goes, it lands first on the sense of the body and that is the sense of identity. And in the moment of awakening something happens, something shifts, something changes and that sense of identity changes into knowing oneself as presence. And so now it’s not a mental knowing, it’s an actual direct knowing that in the moment when you bring your attention to your inner where the attention lands is presence, it’s nowhere, it’s nothing.

Rick: Is it ever a hundred percent one way or the other? Is there anybody in the world who is just a hundred percent identified with presence and no sense of individuality, or anybody vice versa who is so completely locked into their individuality that there’s just no remnant of presence whatsoever or is it all as a matter of, you know 50/50 or point and I don’t know that this is the point when we talk about awakening right? Because when we talk about, when I talk about awakening I’m talking about that shift of attention right? A shift of attention and there’s no percentage in it, you know, there’s no percentage. You either know yourself as this body or you know yourself as presence. There is no like 70% knowing yourself as presence. Now, however, awakening doesn’t necessarily mean the end of conditioning right?

It doesn’t necessarily mean that once awakened that means nothing ever arises and there’s no stuff going on. That’s not true. It means only that there really is the knowing and the actual knowing that is not anymore, it’s not anymore a question. It’s also not anymore, see before it was like, is this it? Wow that was great and then where is it right? And now that is not there anymore right? There’s a simple knowing that who we are is always here. It doesn’t mean that that’s the end of conditioning, it doesn’t mean that that’s the end of everything that arises.

Bliss, Suffering, and the Shift to Presence

So I heard you describing a period, I think you might have been with Mother Mira then when you’d be in bliss for a period of days maybe and then you’d be in hell for a period of days and bliss and hell and bliss and hell.

Neelam: Throughout the same day, you know.

Rick: And you say eventually you got tired of that and you felt you needed to find a teacher who could bring you out of that cycle and you found Papaji and that eventually happened. When it eventually did happen was the awakening you experienced substantially unique and different from the bliss period that you experienced with Mother Mira? In other words, was it a whole different whole different ballgame?

Neelam: Completely different and when you say I found Papaji I would say Papaji found me or Satsang found me or you know that the response of the, you know when the desire is true on the inner, the universe or consciousness responds to that right. That’s how we find the teacher right or the teacher finds us or whoever that was. So yes completely different because sitting in blissful states there will be an end to it and there will be a period when there wouldn’t be any blissful states. So it will be coming in and out of it. It was like a Samadhi state that was not yet the final Samadhi where there isn’t anymore the coming out of it right. So there will be that blissful state and then there will be suffering right. And so, and now there’s no coming out you know there’s no coming out of knowing right. It doesn’t depend on the state you see.

It is not dependent on is there bliss here or is there pain here or is there challenges here or is there just blissful loving states here. That doesn’t matter, that doesn’t touch it.

“Now there’s no coming out of knowing. It doesn’t depend on the state you see.”

Rick: So now you would not say that you’re in bliss all the time but awakening is different than being in bliss all the time that’s what you’re saying.

Neelam: For sure definitely.

Rick: So you could be unhappy or angry or feeling sick or all kinds of you know things that we don’t usually consider to be blissful but those don’t compromise the awakened state necessarily.

Neelam: I can say all these states arise in presence and there’s always a challenge or a chance to identify with it. That is still always the possibility. So there needs to be that real true vigilance with that. However that knowing of who I am that’s not something that comes and goes right. That’s not something that happens you know when there’s, everything is going well and then it unhappens you know that is not affected by whatever states arise here.

Direct Experience of Presence

Rick: Yeah and so by knowing who I am you mean whatever states are coming and going presence is like a continuum and is just not affected or diminished by those states.

Neelam: Let’s do it right now Rick, why can’t I ask you to just direct your attention towards your inner?

Rick: Just closing my eyes or just doing it?

Neelam: You can do however you want close your eyes are open it doesn’t matter to me.

Rick: Okay i’ll close my eyes.

Neelam: Yeah just direct your attention towards the inner. Beautiful beautiful and what do you know in this moment? What do you know?

Rick: Same presence as when my eyes are open and my attention is directed outwards but with more less sensory input.

Neelam: Right right right of course of course but the presence is not different.

Rick: Correct.

Neelam: Yeah and it doesn’t matter like maybe now you’re feeling whatever you’re feeling because we are sitting and doing an interview right? And maybe an hour from now you will be in a completely different state because something will be going on in your life right?

Rick: Yeah.

Neelam: Something different and yet when you direct your attention towards this is it any different?

Rick: No and what I find is that you don’t really need, maybe it made a difference in the early days but after a while you don’t really need to direct your attention to it any more than you need to direct your attention to breathing and in fact you know thinking about it or trying to put your attention on it doesn’t make it any more there than forgetting to think about it causes it to go away. It’s sort of like a solid thing.

Neelam: Exactly and you know that I’m just reflecting back on what you said was there a difference between the when I was you know sitting in bliss and suffering and then after the awakening and I remember that the first time after that awakening experience when I went to back to satsang with Papaji and I walked into that satsang and I knew in this moment you know Papaji is me, everything is me, everything is just here right. And as before it was this is me and this is Papaji and this is the thing that is going on here and these are the people right and now everything is just me right everything is just me and that’s just how it is you know there is no separation.

“Everything is just me and that’s just how it is, you know, there is no separation.”

✨ Embodiment and Deepening of Awakening

Rick: So after your awakening then everything was in terms of the self you could say.

Neelam: Exactly, exactly.

Rick: And from then on or was that just an initial taste and then that kind of faded?

Neelam: From then on what faded initially there was this elation and blissful states connected with this experience and that lasted maybe a couple of years and that subsides too but that knowing that everything is who we are that’s always here, that doesn’t change.

Experiencing Presence in Daily Life

Rick: That’s interesting because in my experience I feel that presence is very strong but I don’t feel like i’ve totally gotten this thing of everything is me and i’ve discussed this with some other people i’ve interviewed also when I look at the tree or look at my computer or something I don’t sort of have that sense that I hear some people describing so makes me wonder you know.

Neelam: I hear you, I hear you and so just can we do one more time close your eyes and when you have your eyes closed and you really direct your attention towards the inner and when you hear my voice speaking right now Rick, where is that voice coming from?

Rick: Well it’s just in my own consciousness.

Neelam: It’s here, it’s not coming from anywhere. So just for a moment give the moment of attention to what you just said, it’s in your own consciousness.

Rick: Yeah and so is the tree and the car and yes.

Neelam: Everything really truly is in your consciousness.

Rick: I see that, I understand that but somehow I don’t interpret that as seeing things as me, you know what I mean?

Neelam: Because you’re still thinking about it you see. If you’re using your mind and the concept of me and you and all that, that’s why I had you close your eyes because then it’s easier. Yeah. And I had you to just experientially see we have to go by experience just listen to your to where that voice is coming from. You instantaneously said it’s here, it’s in my consciousness.

Living from Presence

Rick: Well if the me is presence, if I’m presence, then it seems to me that when I look at a tree, that the tree should be appreciated predominantly as presence if the tree is me. But I’m not so sure I get that, you know. I don’t want to be disingenuous in my own experience. I mean I don’t want to hamper it by throwing in unnecessary doubts but at the same time I don’t want to, I’ve always had this tendency to not want to claim anything that I don’t feel I’m really experiencing.

Neelam: And that’s really good because otherwise we, you know, if it’s false then it’s not true and it’s not congruent and that’s not right. But at the same time you know maybe because see the sensory experience when we engage through senses it takes over. So we have a habit of, and that’s the habit of still identifying with the body right. When you have your eyes open and you look at the tree, I’m looking at the plant here and if you’re looking through your senses you are going to see you and it. If you’re looking through that knowing that you have within, you see, if you go back to that knowing I wonder what would happen if you just sit and there’s a tree and you would not engage you know the senses that want to interpret for you. This is me, this is the tree. That interpretation happens so habitually you don’t even know that it’s happening.

Before you know your brain has relayed information to you and you are like yeah well that’s me, that’s the tree and whatever. But if you would listen with this deeper sense of presence or truth I wonder what would be your experience.

“If you would listen with this deeper sense of presence or truth I wonder what would be your experience.”

Rick: That’s interesting and of course you still have to use your senses. I mean if you were blind, if I were blind we wouldn’t see the plant or the tree. Someone would have to tell us it’s there unless we felt it with another sense you know or it made some noise or something. So we still have to use our senses but I guess you’re saying and correct me if I’m wrong that there’s a kind of a way of experiencing in which the senses are still functioning but there’s something deeper that is perhaps more predominant or as part of the mix there through which you are actually experiencing. It’s almost like the deeper level of what you are is communing with the deeper level of what the tree is and that’s how it’s known.

Neelam: You know it before thought right? You know it before thinking, you know it before you know it’s an object. Even a blind person I would say because of my sensitivities I live with no electricity most of the time. So I live a lot in the dark you see and yet in the dark dark you know out there dark right and yet there is that sense of knowing and things you know that is prior to thinking right? It’s we know things you know we just and the reason I’m saying I’m not trying to take anything away from your experience but I’m just pointing you that somewhere without knowing you still you know use the sensory as the guiding post. It’s not that we are not to have the sensory. The sensory is important in the very deep Samadhi there is no sensory, but then the sensory is important when we are in the body but what is it that you rely on when you are in the inner right?

Are you relying on your knowing or are you relying on the senses? The senses is still here, we are not trying to deny or suppress you know but what is your attention?

✨ Awakening and Embodiment

Rick: True I mean if you’re really in there if you’re meditating or something then the senses are as it says in the Gita turning within like a tortoise withdrawing its limbs so you’re not really engaging them at all and then, but of course we can’t exist in that state all the time we have to eat and earn a living and stuff so we’re engaging our senses but you just taught me something interesting that I don’t think I had really thought of or at least not it wasn’t kind of in the forefront of my understanding which is that you know you begin to function in a way in which the sort of, there’s something deeper than the senses or perhaps it’s a subtle realm of the senses that begins to operate and that begins to interact with objects of perception at their deeper level as well and to appreciate the deeper level of the thing rather than just what the the gross surface perception has to offer, is that correct?

Neelam: Right and what I’m saying is that in the awakening that sense of you know ground shifts

Rick: Yeah

Neelam: Now we are coming from a different ground you see it’s not that the senses have to disappear and you know they may disappear at moments and then they might appear back at moments it doesn’t matter it’s the body right but what matters is that ground that we come from. In this ground everything Is see.

Rick: Yeah

Neelam: Everything yes? And everything same same same no different right different in form different in appearance but not different in the essence.

✨ Levels of Awakening and Embodiment

Rick: Now still on this theme of awakening and what it is and so on I read a quote by a Zen master at one point and he spoke about having had you know many many awakenings over the years some major some minor and the analogy occurred to me of like education.

Someone could go to the first grade and study arithmetic and he might say okay I am doing mathematics and he’s right but he’s not doing what’s what, you know a PhD student in mathematics is doing but both things are mathematics and yet there’s been this sort of evolution of of what they’re doing or now that’s of course just a metaphor but in terms of awakening can you honestly can we honestly say that there there can be an awakening and it’s valid and it’s legitimate and it’s exactly what you’ve defined in terms of shifting one’s orientation to presence being the predominant identity but then there could be you know numerous levels of deepening and clarification of that over time or but feel free to disagree if you do because this is just a

Neelam: Yeah and first of all you know when we say many awakenings then we have to define right because I remember having a lot of amazing experiences before this that I could have called awakening right and and back then maybe for a better lack of understanding but luckily I wasn’t very educated in the spiritual terminology you see so I didn’t have the points of reference to like say well this was it and this was not but they were extreme states blissful you know beautiful you know expanded and and I could have called that awakening you see. Because since this there is no on in the one sense there is no change there is no that is not going anywhere right what is that is not evolving in any way right. What is really evolving is the embodiment of that yeah what is really evolving is how that knowing informs everything that arises here.

That’s what has changed then I can say from that time if we look at time at whenever that happened to this time there is a tremendous change in and in the embodiment of that there isn’t change in the in the actual experience of it you know here it is that was it was like that before too.

“What is really evolving is the embodiment of that… how that knowing informs everything that arises here.”

Rick: Let me pursue that a little bit more so I understand about embodiment we’ll elaborate on that more but no change in the actual experience of it so does that mean that if again I’m using a metaphor if it were if we compare it to a light it’s not like the light is getting brighter and brighter and brighter it’s still light it’s not you know changing from one thing to another it’s still light but it’s getting brighter all the time so would you say that your actual appreciation of presence is getting clearer more profound or anything or is it just it is what it is.

Neelam: The truth is the truth you know the truth is the truth that is the truth you know so so that the actual knowing that this is not this body or this mind or this these senses that arise here that has not changed okay.

Rick: And when you say knowing you don’t just mean an intellectual thing you mean an experiential thing, experiential that that hasn’t changed right that was there from that very moment you know it was there, Wow, and back then it was new now it’s not new anymore you know it back then it was like Wow and now it’s like yeah this is normal right right what has really changed though is you know what has really changed is how that has penetrated through the levels of personality through the levels of you know conditioning or understanding you know how deeply that has informed now everything that arises here and how the expression see if I would look at you know how I used to speak about it however many years ago and how I speak about it right now the expression has changed tremendously right.

And the reason for that change is because there has been an inner change right there has been an inner willingness to just say okay let me be here let me just sit with what arises, let me not assume anything, let me not land in any spiritual understanding, let me not assume anything you know from what I know already right, let me just see in a moment over and over and over again right can I be here, can I be here, is this it too, is this the truth also, can I also in this find truth and rest in peace and quiet even when that arises? Is that, is that true right? Let me not land anywhere, let me not land in understanding, let me not land in awakening right, let me not land in that either.

The End of Volition

So that willingness has made you cooperative so to speak and you’ve been a willing patient lying still on the operating table while nature rearranges your brain.

Neelam: We can say at times cooperating, at times resisting.

Rick: But ultimately you haven’t.

Neelam: What other choices there you know once you know nothing see see the thing is once you know nothing is satisfying anymore nothing can satisfy other than this knowing right it just really doesn’t.

✨ Awakening vs. Enlightenment

Rick: And I presume this is an ongoing process like five years from now ten years from now you might say to me you know remember when we did that thing back in …

Neelam: Exactly, exactly.

Rick: So how about the word enlightenment I mean the in at least in terms of your use of that word is is there any sort of ultimate endpoint to all this process and we might reserve the word enlightenment for that or would you use it just synonymously with awakening and then probably in your understanding there is no endpoint.

Neelam: You know I would be very careful because there are many different kinds of information about it out there. So I’m very careful not to use the word enlightenment and I’m rather using it one and the same as awakening, or very close, because that’s how Papaji used it. He used it just as one thing; he wasn’t really speaking much about the differences, even though I could say there are some differences. But you know what Ramana says, what is interesting, what I read in a little obscure book that Ramana’s ashram published a long time ago, is that, you see, because once awakening or enlightenment—whatever we call it—happens, there’s no volition anymore. Volition, as in the end of that movement like “I want to know it, I want to get it, I want to understand,” that’s the volition, that’s the individual still looking for something, searching. So this is the end of volition.

So there really isn’t anymore, if that’s the true state, there isn’t any more an individual looking for anything anymore. However, what he describes is that there are three or four other stages that happen, but they happen as a destiny of a particular individual. There were different individuals on the planet and there are different individuals on the planet that can reach that, for example, state of living in the Turia, living in the fourth state, where there’s just no memory and there is no time and there is that much greater knowing of or transcending of this individual kind of experience. But that doesn’t happen by desire, you see, that happens of its own, if that was the destiny of the individual. So, he says there are three other stages but they are not reached by wanting. You can’t reach them because you sit here and think, “Well, I would like this,” right.

“Once awakening or enlightenment happens, there’s no volition anymore.”

🛤️ Destiny, Dharma, and the Path

Rick: So if it’s your destiny or your Dharma or the way you happen to be wired then maybe you will reach them, is that what you’re saying?

Neelam: Exactly. So what happened for me a long time ago, you see, what happened for me a long time ago was everything fell away and any interest in anything other than being here fell away. So there stopped to be interest in “what is this” and “what is that” and “what kind of state am I in” and “is this this or is that that” and “how does that measure on this scale” or all of that, which in the beginning still as an imprint was still functional. There was still some time, some years, that was functional, like, yeah, awakening, sure, yeah, awakening and this, and then that fell away too.

Rick: And yet you’ve devoted your life to spirituality and to teaching spirituality and so obviously this still is your most ardent interest.

Neelam: When I say it fell away, what fell away was needing to know anything.

Rick: Or be certain about anything.

Neelam: Or anything, because what is here in the moment, you in the moment, either you are at rest and knowing your true nature or suffering. It’s only these two options. So if you really know, in my experience, if you really want to just be very, very, very, very clear and very adamant about where you are at, that’s all that matters, right? Who’s going to measure that? What’s the measurement? Who’s interested? Who needs to know? Are we here or are we there or what is the state? That was still there a little bit as a construct, as a structure, and that fell away naturally and the interest became only, “Can I be here?”

📚 Teaching from Direct Experience

Rick: And yet as a teacher I’ve heard you give nice talks for half hour, 45 minutes at a stretch about some particular topic and you sound very knowledgeable, so you do know things and you impart that knowledge as a teacher.

Neelam: You know, at some point what I realized is, because in the beginning when I was teaching I was just sharing the direct experience and I couldn’t really even speak much back then because there was not much integration between that awakened state and the body-mind. The brain wouldn’t function, there wouldn’t be any words that would come. And after a while though I realized that, you know, the knowing of the direct experience of presence is not necessarily everything that my students need to know. There’s a difference there. Like I don’t live in that, thinking about it, and yet when I come to teach I recognize, oh, that knowledge needs to be verbalized in some way, that inner experience needs to be shared in some way, that understanding of what’s happening has to be somehow explained to others.

But it’s not necessarily—what I’m trying to say is that when I live my life moment by moment there isn’t really any kind of reflection of like, “Who am I and why am I like this and what’s…” I mean, that kind of doesn’t happen.

Rick: Yeah, that would just be a lot of mental agitation.

Neelam: It’s just natural, just being here.

🩺 Challenges, Health, and Deepening

Rick: Yeah, and of course, I mean again it might relate back to how we’re wired because there have been a number of great sages who have been really erudite and written, you know, like Shankara, written these long complicated things and that was his fort, that was his skill.

Neelam: Exactly, and in a way I see that the challenge of my health has brought a certain opportunity with it. Not being able to travel, not being able to see people in person, not being able to do the things that I used to do, there was a lot of deepening in the real true understanding of what it means moment by moment—can I be here and how to work with what arises here and how to understand the body, the nervous system, the brain more to really help it to be able to come to rest. So there has been a lot of deepening and from it, see that’s what you are listening to, hours and hours and hours. From it there have been a lot of different topics that would arise here and a lot of different things that would arise to speak about and to share, which really are the result of just this inner process.

It’s a result of what’s going on on the inner, and then it wants to express itself and it wants to share it with others to say, hey, you know, we could look at that, isn’t that interesting.

Rick: Yeah, that’s an interesting phenomenon actually. It seems like people go through all sorts of things and even though those things might not be something we would request or hope for because they’re difficult, but they all end up being part of our toolkit. And if we end up becoming a teacher, a lot of people I’ve spoken to say that they don’t regret a single thing. For instance, Adyashanti was on Oprah the other day and he said he went through a period of life after his initial awakening which was really hell for about five years, but he said he wouldn’t change a thing because it sort of endowed him with certain capabilities as a result of those experiences.

Neelam: Exactly, and we never know, so that’s why I don’t try to analyze where I’m at. I’m just like, okay, here I am, here it is, can we be here? Is that what we can do?

📚 The Inner Teacher and Surrender

Rick: So another thing I’m interested in about presence, like you were mentioning Adyashanti for instance, he had an experience similar to yours where he was sitting at a bus stop and he said, “I just want to know the truth and I don’t care exactly what happens to me, it could be hell, it could be heaven, I just want to know it, bring it on.” And sure enough it came on, and you said kind of a similar thing. What I find interesting about that is that it’s almost as if somebody’s listening, you know, that intelligence which is governing the universe is—you know, seek and you shall find. It’s sort of like if we reach out from our side with that sincere intention we get a response. Maybe you could respond to that and I’ll ask another question about it.

Neelam: You know, because the teacher is the inner, the true teacher is the inner. However, if we could fully surrender into what we know in the inner then we wouldn’t need an outer teacher. But most of us, most of us—you know, there are examples, Ramana, there, in and done, right? We don’t know what it means “done” also, I don’t want to put labels, but you know, no human teacher. Most of us though don’t fully know how to surrender to the inner, to what the inner is telling us is true. So the way consciousness responds when there’s true desire for freedom, it would respond, it would respond by bringing us in touch with the teacher, yeah, and it would respond by bringing us in touch with the teacher who can speak to us in the words that we understand.

Rick: And that teacher may be a human teacher or it may be a disease or it may be whatever we need, it seems.

Neelam: Whatever it is, right, whatever it is that helps us to trust that inner experience, whatever helps us to trust.

Rick: But to me the fascinating implication of that is that, you know, presence is not just some merely, some kind of—I don’t know, just some—it has intelligence to it, it’s responsive. If we look deeply enough into what we mean when we say the word presence. I mean, think of your thumb and what’s actually going on in there on the molecular level, the biological level, the atomic level, there’s this incredible world of intricate interactions and things going on, all so orderly and intelligent in their functioning. To me it begins to speak of God, you know, that presence …

Neelam: We can say what power is that, right?

Rick: Yeah

Neelam: So we can call it, you know, there’s many ways to call it—presence, consciousness, space, God, right? Even though I don’t really relate to God as a person …

Rick: Not an isolated person

Neelam: But just the force, right, well because what power is that, you know, what power is anything, right.

“Presence is not just some kind of being—it has intelligence to it, it’s responsive.”

🎵 Devotion, the Heart, and Embracing All Experience

Rick: I mean have you found for instance, you’ve talked about since your awakening even that the embodiment has progressed through many, many stages. Have you found a dawning of kind of a deeper sense of devotion or expansion of the heart? For Ramana had his awakening and then he spent his life devoted to the intelligence that was embodied in Arunachala and many other spiritual people have, you know, it seems that like Adyashanti again he had his initial awakening and then over time he just began to be fascinated with the person of Jesus and he felt like Zen, he actually said in that interview that Zen seemed kind of lacking in love, lacking in qualities of the heart, and it didn’t satisfy him because he felt his own heart was blossoming after his awakening. So has that been a dimension of your experience since your initial awakening and the embodiment you referred to?

Has it had to do with growth of the heart?

Neelam: You know I would say it really, if we call it the heart, then I would say it really is a continuous embracing or meeting of everything as is and it’s really allowing for everything. Because you see what I’m interested in lately, as I’m speaking with students—because otherwise it’s just my inner experience—what I’m interested in is how does the impulse that arises in presence, how does that translate itself into action in our experience and what are all the different other things that get involved? Our past, our conditioning, whatever we think, whatever we believe, whatever we think this is good or this is bad or it should be here or it shouldn’t be here, right? So a lot of the work that I do sitting myself and sitting with students is a work of: what is present, right? Can I be present to that? Is that okay also?

“Love is natural, right? It’s a natural quality that is already here. Most of the time we don’t know that it’s here because we are engaged with what arises.”

Rick: Okay now you just used the word okay about 20 times so we better talk about what we really mean by okay. So when you say okay, do you mean that you can take it in stride, you can accept it as it is without arguing with reality? Is that what you mean by okay?

Neelam: Yes, yes, yes, that’s what I mean, that’s what I mean. And what I mean again is that when you go right now to the inner and in this moment, is everything okay the way it is?

Rick: Yeah, yeah, sounds very much like Byron Katie, the way she teaches, you know, she’s—

Neelam: Well, it’s the natural state, right? We can have many ways of wording it. The reason why I like to use the word okayness is because, you know, when we are quiet it’s so obvious, right? When, let’s say you got extremely aggravated in your relationship and you’re going through the big drama internally, right? And so if we really work with okayness, but really not mental concept, and you would ask yourself: what is present right now, is that okay?

Relating from Presence

Rick: And if you really are established in accepting what is as okay, would you really take a very oppositional position in a relationship or in some other situation? In other words, would you stir up as much drama as somebody who is not accustomed to seeing that everything is okay and this person is wrong and that idea is wrong, that they’re in opposition to things?

Neelam: Even deeper than that, because first, you know, when we go into relating, we first need to recognize that okayness is true for everything.

Rick: Yeah.

Neelam: Is the ground of your experience, is the ground of your partner’s experience, is the ground of the experience of everything in the world. So when we use okayness as an inquiry, when we ask ourselves is something okay, we are not in there and saying where am I at right now, am I really in the truth of what I know, am I really resting in the okayness of everything that is, or am I engaging in drama, right? And so first, you know, rather than trying to be anywhere, I use this question of okayness as a—you know, the answer is yes or no. And if it’s a yes, right on, let’s be here. If it’s a no, we have to clarify our relationship with what is, because otherwise we can process what is forever and we are never going to get satisfied because that stuff can’t be satisfied, the story can’t be satisfied, right?

✨ Collective Consciousness and Human Tendencies

Rick: You may say that, but it seems like there would be a different quality to it than if you were not established in presence. You know, it’s like, there’s so many people who are so contentious these days. The Republicans hate the Democrats, the Democrats hate the Republicans, and, you know, there’s all this Israelis and the Palestinians. I mean, it seems that if all these people were really established in deep sense of abiding presence, that there might still be differences of opinion and philosophy and, you know, and all, but there wouldn’t be this rancor and bitterness and outright warfare as a result of these sorts of differences.

Neelam: And even if they were not established, if they were willing, you see, rather than always looking out there, if they were willing to for a moment look within and see, am I actually at rest, right, this experience here, really knowing that everything is okay the way it is, right, or resting in presence or whatever we call it, if there was a willingness to do that, you see. But what I see in the world more is because there are so many changes happening. First of all, there’s billions of people on the planet, that’s a huge, humongous collective consciousness, right? That means a huge amount of tendencies, see, a huge amount of tendencies that come to be experienced, right? That itself affects the planet, the consciousness tremendously, right?

Then we have the huge changes of the climate change, there’s a huge deep change going on for so many years already that only now it becomes, you know, like more common knowledge, right? Meaning now everybody’s talking about it and many years ago only a few were talking about it, right? So it’s much more visible. But these changes affect us, yeah. The human body is affected by it, you see. I don’t know if you notice, but there’s so much more conflict on the planet right now. First of all, because there’s so many more, as I say, so many billions of people, but also we are affected by all these changes that are going on. See, this little nervous system, this little brain, you know, that all that is all connected, this all interconnected, there’s no separation. And so there is more, you know, tension because of that, right? There’s more—

Rick: Hard to say if there’s more conflict, I don’t know, I’d have to ask a historian. We’re not in the middle of World War Two or anything like that, we’re not burning witches on the town square, there’s a lot of things that have improved, but there’s definitely a lot of strife and a lot of, you know, seemingly irreconcilable differences among people. And it seems to me that, you know, even a little bit more introspection, if not a deep diving into presence, is the antidote.

Neelam: But this is, you know, why I said so many billions of human beings on the planet, so many tendencies present. Yeah, the tendencies come here to be cleared. Most of the people, the gross of the seven billion or however many billions already there are, is not interested in that, you see.

Rick: What did you mean by that just now, the tendencies come here to be cleared, to be experienced, right?

By whom?

Neelam: Well, well, why would there be even birth in a human body? Why would there be even birth, right? Why would consciousness need to incarnate into anybody? Because we are in a human body, but look, there’s billions of other beings, right, on the planet, right?

Rick: And billions of other planets.

Neelam: Exactly. So why would even incarnation be happening, right? What is incarnation? Incarnation is tendencies. What are tendencies? Tendencies is that—the postponement of being here. Tendencies, the idea that there will be a time in the future that we will get to experience something that we don’t have right now, and therefore we have to keep going, right? Consciousness has to keep going, looking for these experiences, right? Because if it looks for these experiences, then eventually there’s going to be this time that is going to be this perfect experience of something, right? And we get these moments, we get a second of it, and then it’s like, oh, that’s over, okay, looking for the next one, right? So these are tendencies. And we can say, if you and I are talking here, sitting in this interview, and whoever is watching, the predominant tendency would be the tendency for freedom, right?

Because otherwise we wouldn’t be here talking about it.

Evolution, Creation, and the Impulse for Freedom

Rick: Wouldn’t be interested in this.

Neelam: Exactly. However, there are other imprints that have not been cleared, right, that brought us into the human body. And why being, why to know our true nature, right? But here is also the time to meet the past, to not to perpetuate anymore, to not to go through another cycle of there’s going to be an experience out there sometime, somewhere, that is going to be better than what is here, right?

Rick: There’s a lot of what in that you just said. In listening to you talk—

Neelam: I’m sorry, maybe it’s too much.

Rick: No, it’s good. I’m trying to think of about five different ways I could go with this. So you’ve alluded to reincarnation just now, and I heard you talk about it in your talks, and it makes a lot of sense to me that as a soul we go through many, many, many lives experiencing different things. You also alluded just now to what I would call a sort of an evolutionary impulse, that it’s at the heart of everything and that really is probably at the heart of creation itself. Without which we wouldn’t have a creation, we wouldn’t have stars forming and eventually exploding and forming heavier elements which form our bodies. I’m sure you know that everything in our body was once part of a star. So there’s this sort of—how did that happen? It didn’t happen randomly or by little billiard balls running into each other.

So there’s this kind of evolution toward greater and greater complexity, greater expression of forms capable of—or evolution of forms capable of experiencing being, experiencing consciousness, capable of having the intelligence which governs the universe experience itself with greater clarity and embodying that to greater and greater degrees.

So it almost—sometimes people put the emphasis on, you know, we have all these tendencies, we’re on this cycle, we’re on this wheel of karma, we want to get off and just end the whole thing. And maybe that’s a valid perspective, but isn’t there also—I mean, can’t we give God some credit for having created a universe, the universe for a purpose? And that purpose being to bring into existence beings like you and I who can have a conversation like this about something which we can actually experience, which is a far cry from what it was before the big bang?

Presence as the Ground of Experience

Neelam: But, you know, we have to start in the beginning with, you know, when we are really truly at rest, right? Yeah. Where is the universe, right? What is the universe?

Rick: In our experience.

Neelam: When we are truly in peace—why don’t you just do that again, Rick? Let’s just together, you know, when we are in the moment here sitting quietly and you direct your attention towards your inner, you know, beautiful—then where’s the universe, right? Or what is it?

Rick: In my experience it’s less active, although I have a brain which is enabling me to have that experience, and that brain is—there’s trillions of cells doing things in that brain.

Neelam: Into the human body and then we go into the perceptions and all that, but when we sit in the real deep truth, you know, then we know that, you know, universe arises in presence.

Rick: Yes.

Neelam: So even though we have to talk in this dualistic way—and I talk in this way too, because if I want to explain certain things, like if I want to help my students to direct their attention towards tendencies that oftentimes remain invisible, right? Tendencies that bring us here and we kind of have a blind spot and avoidance of, like, whoa, let’s not go there, and that eventually succeed, that would need to continue in some way, right? So I need to be able to speak in these dual ways. And yet, when we look at, you know, like when we sit truly, truly in presence, then we can see what universe arises in presence, right? So it’s an experience that we are having, right? And the, you know, consciousness is having an experience of this. You know, consciousness is having an experience of being in the body. Consciousness is having an experience of having a conversation with you.

Consciousness is having an experience of billions of humans being on the planet right now, struggling with whatever they are struggling with, right? So we need to keep it in that perspective, you know, because as I see it, if we take the universe as just it, the entity that exists on its own independently, then we are missing a little bit that, you know, it arises in—it’s here as an experience.

“Universe arises in presence.”

Clearing Tendencies and the Human Experience

Rick: Exactly, and it’s here as a mechanism through which consciousness can experience itself.

Neelam: And through which consciousness can reach freedom.

Rick: Reach freedom.

Neelam: Exactly, because there’s a reason why, you know, we are here and why we are going through what we are going through and why we have to go through it and why we say, well, why is this happening to me or why is this happening to this person, why is this going on? And there’s, you know, there’s a reason to that as long as we can see it as, oh, that’s what it is, can I be here, other than, oh my god, why is this happening or I wish it wasn’t here.

Individual and Universal Perspectives

Rick: It’s funny because you can kind of swing back and forth from seeing it from an individual perspective or seeing it from the perspective of the, you know, the universal consciousness. And from that perspective, how could consciousness ever have not been free, you know?

Neelam: Exactly, exactly.

Rick: From the individual perspective it seems like something we want to get to, you know.

Neelam: And yet it doesn’t know it, you see, because these tendencies that are here, these are like little seeds that believe themselves to be something other than what they are. Yeah, this is—you know, we need to—you know, that it needs to know itself, right? It needs to know itself. Just looking up a—there’s this great T.S. Eliot quote. He says—hang on a minute, I’m not finding it right now, but there’s something about the journey, you know, we go through this whole rigmarole and we come back to where we started and know the place for the first time.

Right, that’s right.

Working with Tendencies and Vasanas

Rick: Okay, but when you talk about tendencies—I kind of took it to a metaphysical level—but when you’re talking about tendencies, you’re talking about vasanas, impressions, ingrained ways of behavior that keep us kind of constricted.

Neelam: Exactly, or that keep us—because what a tendency is, as I said, is a postponement, right? It’s a postponement of being present with what is, right? And that postponement has been going on for a really long time. Yeah, so it has been here before this life, and that’s the only reason why I talk about it, because otherwise we wouldn’t even be in this life if there were not certain impressions that are still drawing us into this experience, right? There wouldn’t even be that experience—why it would be necessary.

Rick: And we are repositories of many such impressions, right? We are just bundles of them, and so it’s not like we should want anyone to feel guilty if they are drawn outward and or don’t appreciate, you know, presence fully in this moment, because a lot of this stuff, you know, we’re so wired from so many lifetimes of impressions that that’s going to tend to keep happening.

Neelam: Exactly, and that’s why my interest is so closely on the inner—you know, where am I at? Yeah, am I at rest or am I suffering? Because when the tendency arises, it’s usually so habitual and so familiar that it feels like me, right? It feels like who you are, and before you know, you are acting on it, you are engaged, and that engagement recharges that tendency.

Rick: Reinforces, yeah.

Neelam: It forces—it makes it stronger, so yeah.

Practical Inquiry and Emotional Patterns

Rick: Okay, so you’re saying that by kind of catching it and coming back to the self—we could say coming back to presence—you take the steam out of it, you—

Neelam: And then you—exactly, catching it and being, first of all, being aware that that’s a tendency rather than—you see, even people who have had deep awakening, right? I know a lot of people and I talk to a lot of friends—there’s—we still have the nervous system and the brain and all that, and there are still tendencies here. And so even there can be still a misunderstanding, right? When something arises, it can feel so natural, but it really isn’t, right? It’s just the past, right? So first of all, we need to really go back and even know that this is the past, right?

But then the reason why we are born in the human body—I’m sure you know, you heard many times that is one of the prerequisites for freedom. Yes. Why would that be, right? Because first of all, we have that intelligence, which can be so much trouble, right? But it also gives us that self-reflection. Like so many times today we said, okay, just go and look on the inner, right? So it gives you the capacity to go and look, right, into our true nature, first of all. But it also gives us a nervous system and the brain, you see. And so when the past arises, one of the reasons that it hasn’t been finished is that it hasn’t been experienced. And so now we have a nervous system and the brain that can do that, right?

Allowing and Processing Emotional Charges

So when the tendency of the past arises, and if we can recognize it for what it is rather than engaging it, we can say, okay, can I be here? And what can I be here means—it means can I really allow the full experience of it in this body without engaging it, without suppressing it, but can I allow it to really run through? That’s part of the reason why we are born in a human body. Can it really be present—the excitement of it, the shakiness of it, the fear of it, whatever that is—can that content that was holding it in this seed, right, can that content fully come and just be here, and can it be experienced, and can it be then recognized like, oh, there was just, you know, an imprint, there was just an energy that moved through, that’s all it was, right?

“When it’s recognized for what it really is, which is in its essence everything is our true nature, then it doesn’t have to keep doing this thing over and over and over again.”

Rick: Sure, to some—well, you just think in terms of conditioning, you know. I mean, even Pavlov, you know, just basically we’re habitual creatures, things get deeply ingrained. And you can take extreme examples such as drug addiction or behavioral tendencies. Let’s take an example, like for instance, maybe you have a tendency to get angry at people. And how most people, you know, many people would just react blindly without thinking, without self-reflection, get angry when the impulse arises. What you’re saying—well, let you say what you’re saying. How would you recommend doing it differently?

Neelam: Well, first of all, you know, when I say tendency, I mean there’s something prior to our this life experience. So when we come into this body, there’s already tendencies, and there could be new tendencies that were formed in this life, right? But when we say, you know, the baby is so innocent, that’s true, and it wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t something, you know, past pushing it into this.

Rick: Right, right.

Neelam: So the tendencies are already here, right? They are not just—and yet they reinforce themselves throughout this life experience. So because of certain tendencies, we’ll be already drawn into certain situations in this life, yeah, which would reinforce that tendency.

Inquiry and Coming Back to Rest

Rick: So take a particular example, whether the one I just brought up—getting angry at people—or some other one if you’d like to choose it, and maybe let’s draw a contrast between how people ordinarily would do it and reinforce it or how you would recommend dealing with it so as to un-reinforce it.

Neelam: You want to take it more into the practical level and that’s a little higher up than just kind of understanding how it all works but let’s just take it there. Okay, so on the practical level for that reaction from anger to be there, there had to be somewhere—we don’t know when—a prior movement away from our true nature. Because when we are at rest in our true nature, it will be rare that we would react. Anger is natural too, and sometimes anger is important as an expression, but it will be rare that we’ll just react from anger. So that means that movement away has already happened somewhere. So when somebody’s really actually angry, has a lot of reactivity from anger, I would say, okay, let’s slow it down.

Let’s notice it as an experience in your body, let’s sense it for a moment, let’s come out of the thinking about it, let’s kind of drop that, let’s bring it back to the sensory and let’s just kind of notice it as an experience. Let’s just say, is it okay for it to be here right now? Somebody would say yes or no, right? And then we can, depending on what it is, we would sit with it in a certain particular way.

Rick: So when you say okay, it means that rather than pick up the phone and yell at so and so, you’re asking them to kind of put their attention more within and maybe feel the physiology or some kind of inner impulse that’s spurring them to that kind of action.

Neelam: And I am asking also them to ask themselves, is it okay that this impulse is present right now? Are they okay with it or not? And then we just do a little inquiry—let me just explain this—we just sit with it for a while until something shifts and they come back to rest. And when they come back to rest, then they regain perspective and then they go like, oh, oh, there’s other options. It doesn’t just have to be screaming, right? There’s other options. Okay, okay, right, regain perspective because we came back to rest.

Action, Impression, Desire: Breaking the Cycle

Rick: Yeah, so you’re saying that there’s a cycle: action, impression, desire. We perform an action, it creates an impression that plants the seeds of future desires, which gives rise to another impression, another action, and so on. And what you’re saying is nip it in the bud and rather than perpetuate this cycle, break the cycle by just coming back to kind of a self-referral, self-awareness kind of thing, feeling the sensation if it’s there and not necessarily acting reflexively.

Neelam: Exactly, but not suppressing it either.

Rick: Not suppressing it but maybe—

Neelam: Experiencing the heat of it, the challenge of it, the emotion of it, how it manifests in the body. Let’s have it, let’s have the sensation. We don’t want to suppress it, but we want to really experience it to go like, oh, okay, we can be here. You see, that movement doesn’t have to take our attention away from who we are.

🩺 Processing and Healing Emotional Patterns

Rick: Yeah, and it sounds like feeling it like that would actually produce the physiological change necessary to sort of eliminate that impression in the brain, in the nerve system.

Neelam: Exactly, it would change the pathway in the brain over time. It would change the pathway and it would really, as you say, eliminate it over time as an impression. It wouldn’t be there.

Rick: Yeah.

Neelam: But let’s say in that case, I would go even deeper and I would ask, how come somebody is so reactive? What is the experience of the past that made them so that they can’t be here?

❤️ Meeting the Unresolved Past

Rick: Well, you’re not asking them to go back to a past life and realize that they were mistreated or something like that, you’re—

Neelam: Well, you know, I’m not asking them to go anywhere, but I’m saying, if there were experiences in their past—this past, current past, or other past—that resulted in a certain unresolved charge that is still present, then that charge is what we want to meet, you see, without necessarily knowing the specifics of those experiences. But sometimes the specifics come up, that’s okay, but that’s not what we are looking for. We are just looking to see like, oh, there is this charge, and that charge has been here for a really long time. And when anything touches the charge, delicate touch, there’s like, ah, right, that reactivity happens. So that reactivity is almost a secondary pattern, because the primary is there is something I can’t be with, something I had to—and I personalize, I mean I say “I” because I don’t know how to say it otherwise—there’s something we couldn’t be here with before.

Rick: In your own experience, when you first started doing this after your awakening, was there like a whole shitload, to use that expression, of stuff that was coming on fast and furious that you had to deal with and then it gradually diminished over time and now it’s kind of tapered off to a trickle, or has there been a pretty consistent momentum?

Neelam: In the beginning there was a very spontaneous, natural just arising and things would just turn over almost by itself. And then eventually, after some period of time—I don’t remember the specifics of time—but it hit on some kind of resistance. There was some inner resistance and there was for a moment, luckily just for a moment, some sense of wanting to identify with the awakened state rather than being present to others. And luckily that has been seen very, very quickly. But what was missing in my personal experience was something that I call tenderness. There was a lot of, just coming from my conditioning, there was a lot of harshness about being with certain states and then there was a certain level of arrogance from that awakeness too, that just thought like, whatever, this is not important, we don’t have to be here, right, what’s this nonsense, let’s not mess with it.

But there was the tenderness missing of just, okay, this is what’s here, can I be here? And eventually there was that shift. I remember back then dealing with some physical challenges and I remember suddenly going like, wait a minute, let me just be here, and then suddenly realizing, whoa, this is just, this is the way to go. Because in being here, that’s what eventually relaxes what is here and that eventually, when we really come back to rest, everything begins to orientate by that. Everything goes like, oh yeah, that’s great, I can be here now, that’s wonderful.

Authenticity and Congruence

Rick: That’s interesting. It kind of sounds like once that awakening occurred, then a lot of rearrangement needed to take place and in your experience, there was this tendency of arrogance or harshness or whatever, but that stuff was coming to your awareness, to your attention because it needed to be swept out, it needed to be resolved.

Neelam: Yeah, you know, it needed to be seen for what it is rather than just perpetuate.

Rick: Right, it might have been there even before the wake up, that you might have been blind to it or something.

Neelam: Of course, of course, I’m sure there was, I’m sure it was, and then on top of it, it became maybe a little bit of a spiritual conditioning, which by the way, so much of it out there, you know, conditioning—what we think is spiritual and how it’s supposed to be—rather than the true being with what is here.

Living the Truth in Daily Life

Rick: Yeah, yeah, you talked a lot in your recordings about authenticity and what you just said reminds me of that. My interpretation or impression of authenticity is just not mood making, I mean not sort of clinging to an attitude or a belief or just trying to take refuge in some sort of spiritual mindset, but just being genuinely what you are without trying to gloss over it in any way.

Neelam: Yeah, and is the inner, the true knowing on the inner and the outer, the expression, is it congruent? Is there congruency between the real knowing of what we know and then how does it translate when you talk to your friend, how does it translate when you are with your spouse or your partner, how does it translate when you are with your children, how does it translate when you are interacting with the world? Is it still congruent or is it just, I know the truth and then something else happens when there’s action?

Rick: Yeah, do you walk your talk?

Neelam: Exactly.

Congruence, Embodiment, and Making Amends

Rick: A lot of times when you were talking I was reminded of the Tao Te Ching, which talks about being in tune with the Tao, and it even talks about rulers ruling countries if they’re in tune with the Tao and how smoothly and in tune with nature, really. Or the Gita, you know, action in accord with Dharma, that if we’re sort of isolated in constricted individual consciousness without an appreciation of that sort of deeper, more universal value, then we’re just kind of kicking around with very partial understanding and appreciation of things and making a mess. But a lot of what you said reminded me of those principles of just acting from a settled state, settled in presence, and then who’s really the actor? Then there’s a saying, Brahman is the charioteer.

Neelam: Yeah, yeah, and also recognizing though that when that action really is based on our past, to make the difference, you see, and if necessary do what is needed, which is inquiry, and if necessary make amendments in the world if that action has hardened anything for anybody in some way. And really, so that brings everything into congruence, you see. It’s not about perfect, because we can also think like, what’s that perfect state, and nothing ever goes wrong. But no, we are all just in it, learning as we are learning. So if we recognize later on, oh man, this was just my reactivity, can I make amendments for that? Because that’s what brings the inner and the outer to congruence.

Rick: Yeah, I’m reminded of your fellow Papaji disciple Andrew Cohen, whom I’ve interviewed, and there was a lot of controversy around him. About a year ago or six months ago, he just decided to stop teaching and completely do a self-inventory, and he’s calling up people individually and apologizing for things he’s done. He had had a very profound awakening, but there was, I think perhaps, but he would admit—and I’m mentioning him because he’s being very public about this—but he would admit that there was still a lot of conditioning governing his behavior. A lot of people got kind of upset and disillusioned when he made this turn of heart, and a friend of mine who’s been with him for years felt like, oh, he’s just pulled the rug out under me. But my initial reaction was, right on Andrew, that’s fantastic, what an evolutionary step for you.

Neelam: Isn’t it great? That’s like how, you know, that’s what’s needed, right? That’s beautiful.

Rick: Yeah, it’s like he deserves congratulations for coming to the realization that that was necessary and for trying to make amends, as you say.

Neelam: Exactly, beautiful. And you know, a few years from now maybe he’ll come back as a teacher, but he’ll be a much better one without all that, you know?

Who knows, right? But at least there’s that tiny little recognition and that step into like, oh, that’s not enough, you see? Yeah, it’s not enough to just know it and to know it in a certain way, that’s not enough, you see? There’s something else needed, you see—embodiment, house cleaning, exactly.

Congruence, congruence.

Vigilance and the Ongoing Process

Rick: Something is needed, yeah. So it almost seems like a person is not going to be—maybe a person can go on for a whole lifetime acting inappropriately after awakening has dawned, but I get the impression that you’re not going to be allowed to do that in most cases, it’s eventually going to crack through you.

Neelam: Exactly, we hope or something is going to—

Rick: Something is going to happen or the—

Neelam: People around you are finally going to say, “You got to be kidding, right? Right, to clean up,” you know.

Rick: Yeah, and do you think there are any people who eventually reach a point at which there is really little or nothing left to process, that they’ve really worked out all the vasanas?

Neelam: You know, I don’t know that.

Rick: Do you think Papaji was that way?

Neelam: You know, I wouldn’t comment on that. I don’t know.

Rick: Hard to judge.

Neelam: And I would say, you know, when we talk about Papaji—Papaji would say, somebody asked him, “Papaji, do you still need to be vigilant?” and he would say, “With every breath.”

Rick: Yeah.

Neelam: Because he says you never know, you never know, you know, when something can arise. You just never know, you see, and you have to be vigilant. There are also stories of Ramana and his disciples, and Ramana, you know, when they were dying, in the process of dying, Ramana would sit with them and hold one hand on the heart and one on the head. He said so that the vasana can’t escape, so that it’s met here. And he said he was successful with one, but he was not successful with the other because his attention moved and the vasana escaped, and it just went to another birth, right?

🧘 Daily Practice and Self-Reflection

Rick: I know you advocate taking a certain amount of time to just be in silence each day, either some sort of meditation or just sitting in silence. You want to elaborate a bit on the importance of that?

Neelam: You know, there’s two or three different things I really recommend. One is, you know, we need a quiet time for self-reflection and just, you know, coming back to rest, right? Life is very engaging and oftentimes there’s a lot of things going on and we can easily get distracted by what’s going on. And so that keep coming back, that’s what brings that congruence and it also brings a lot of insight about what are the tendencies that are moving. That’s kind of that time, you know. I also recommend a lot for people these days to sit in the awareness of the sensations in the body because that’s often missing and that’s very different than meditation, but it really helps them later in the moment, you know, or in inquiry to be present to what is, rather than just be totally taken by the experience, right?

And then of course inquiry, which is, you know, can I be here, can I be with what is here, can I let it come to rest.

Rick: All three of those things, there’s some overlap too. I mean, you can be sitting in a meditative state and be aware of the sensations in the body and be processing stuff and all, but—

Neelam: Yeah, I find it a little different, you know, but anyway, there are just some elements that I think are helpful these days.

Rick: Yeah, I’m reading some notes here that I think Lee or Nina sent me and just—we’ve covered most of them, I’ll just read you some of them and if—

Neelam: You would talk about relationship a little bit.

Rick: Yeah, okay, go for that, let’s do that.

Neelam: Because that’s one of the things that I talk about. You know, if you have—you know, my interest in talking about it is because I find the relationship, being in relationships, you know, not just intimate partnerships but in general, that it really tells us so much about where we are.

Rick: Ram Dass said, “If you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your parents.”

Neelam: Exactly, so it’s a very direct inquiry, right? So, no, you can’t hide, right? And as I talk about relationships, you know, I’m saying that there’s a certain part of our conditioning that only arises when we relate. See, it doesn’t arise that much when we are just on our own. So you can say, “Well, I was fine before I met you,” right? Or, “I was fine before I talked to you, and then I talked to you and I’m not fine anymore,” right? And what’s not fine is because conditioning has arisen that it’s not been visible before, right? So in that way, if done rightly, not as an agenda but as an awareness, relationships can be a great path to freedom, right? But not as an agenda like, “Well, we have to be in a relationship to be free.” No.

But if you happen to be in relationships in your life, which everybody is in some kind of relationship, right, then that can become a great way to really inquire into some of these tendencies or some of these conditionings that we don’t know otherwise. Because when you are by yourself, they don’t show up that strongly, even though they show up also. They show up in the way we relate to work, in the way we relate to food, in the way we relate to our body, in the way we relate to the practice or sitting or inquiry—they show up in many ways too. But then when you relate, whoa, you know, it just shows up very, very strongly and that’s then a great place for inquiry.

❤️ Using Relationship as Inquiry

Rick: Yeah, well, 50% of all Americans get divorced. Mickey Rooney, who died recently, was married eight times, so yeah.

Neelam: It’s amazing, yeah.

Rick: So it seems like a lot of people haven’t learned that lesson and, you know, they probably have this outer-directed thing of, “Something’s wrong here, it’s your fault, I’m going, I’m moving on.” So how would—as a teacher, how would you recommend to people that they use relationship as a teaching tool for discovering one’s own, you know, weak points or whatever?

Neelam: Right, well, first of all I would say, you know, a relationship—that means two nervous systems arising in presence, which we have to remember. Because what you have, this nervous system is going through, the other is going through similar things. It’s just a little different, but two nervous systems arising in presence. So that means, you know, that’s first really important to recognize, that what is going on here is not so different than what is going on over there, you see. Which is often the reason we don’t see it is because the projection, the mechanism of projection—the positive and negative projection—covers that up and we don’t see the other just being another that is going through whatever we are going through also, just, you know, another experience arising in presence, right?

So I first teach that kind of taking that little distance and looking at that projection and understanding that the other is just another, you know, they are going through whatever we are going through, right? It’s just another experience arising here, first of all.

❤️ Rest and Fulfillment in Relationship

Secondly, you know, I say fulfillment or happiness or rest is not found out there. We can’t find it with the other. We can share it, but we can’t find it with the other because it’s an inner experience. And when we come to relate, you know, there’s so many of these unfinished early experiences and early states that arise, and when that gets involved—you know, I talk about conditioning and there’s the second kind of conditioning that arises in relating, and there’s certain experiences or certain parts of our conditioning that are trying to get met by being with another. They are trying to get finished by being with another. So if anybody’s in a relationship that has these so-called issues, right, where people can’t get along, that’s the unresolved past, right? That’s your unresolved past, my unresolved past, that’s what it is. And there is no resolving it out there, right?

There’s no meeting it out there. The only way we can meet it is by meeting it here. So that’s why I say, you know, I really recommend inquiring or relating, and can you come back to rest? You know, can you come back to rest? That’s the beginning. There’s, of course, many things I talk about when we talk about relating, but can we come back to rest?

Rick: Do you think that if a person didn’t have unresolved issues they wouldn’t even bother getting into a relationship?

Neelam: I don’t know that it’s true, you see. I’m not sure. Maybe, you know, I’m not sure because part of our pull towards relating is unconscious unresolved past, part of it is conscious, you know, like, “Wow, that’s great, I want to have that or be with that or be around that.” So I don’t know, you know, maybe, I don’t know, you know, who knows.

Rick: Are there people among your students who are taking your teaching to heart with regard to relationships and, you know, in order to recognize that the fault doesn’t lie with the other, they’re, you know, it’s their own tendencies that are bubbling up, but they’re in a relationship where the partner isn’t a student of yours and isn’t thinking of it that way and they’re just going on doing what they do. What do you say to such students?

Neelam: Here I would have to respond very, you know, practically to each particular person because everybody is different and I would have to know much more information before I can give an answer. Well, let’s say you’re working in a job and your boss is a jerk, and he really is a jerk, you know, and you don’t have control over the way he behaves, but you have control over the way you behave and you can sort of—

Have control over if you remain in that job or not.

Rick: You do, you have that.

Neelam: And so, you know, what I see inquiry really does for people—because it does different things for different people, right? Sometimes what it does is that whoever they are with begins to resonate with it, right? See, an interesting example: I had one, two, three students, women students, over the last few years that have been in my longer programs, and I did a program on relationship a couple of months ago and their husbands showed up, you know, because they were sharing some things with them.

❤️ Resonance and Change in Relationships

Rick: They decided to join it, you mean?

Neelam: Well, then they came to another little program I was doing because these women were in my long-term program—you can’t just join it, you know—but came to another little—I had a talk on the relationship and they showed up.

Rick: Right.

Neelam: So the first thing is people can begin to resonate. They may have a different path, they may have a different way, but if they begin to resonate, they will start to like it, they start to like the changes. I remember a husband saying to me once, “I wish you would keep my wife on the retreat because every time she comes, this is so great, you know, when she comes up to the retreat.” So they either begin to resonate or they begin to really hate it, you see, and if the change is something that they can’t really resonate with, then that’s going to drop out at some point.

Transformation and Letting Go

Rick: Yeah.

Neelam: Or it’s going to create a transformation. I have another example of a student and she would come and say, “I can’t really resonate or I can’t really be with my family because they eat pizza and they watch television. When I go there,” she says, “I’m a vegetarian and I’m doing yoga,” and she said, “What should I do?” And I say, “Well, why don’t you just go and hang out with them a little bit?” And she said, “I can’t do that.” And I said, “Well, just go and watch some television. You don’t have to eat the pizza, maybe get vegetarian,” you know. And so she goes, and then some months later she comes to me and she says, “I don’t know what happened,” she said, “but my father so got into it that now he’s reading Eckhart Tolle and he’s started like a book club or something.

I don’t know, he’s just so totally into it.” And I’m just saying, well, it’s a simple, you know, like there’s the resonance, right? And if we trust in it, like with the job example. I have another student in a program right now and she just said, “I have been in a really bad job for so many years and since I have been doing this inquiry something happened and I just quit the job.” She said, “I came so much into that congruence within myself and into the resonance and I realized I was so codependent that I couldn’t really do it before, but now that I know that here everything is okay, now I can just leave it and I could just go and do something else.” So, you know, it’s not like there’s one advice, you know what I mean? But when you do the work, when you do the inner work, the outer begins to respond.

Rick: Yeah, no, that’s good. I mean, I understand how you couldn’t give a specific advice but that general principle—if you take care of it—this is a Bengali saying: if no one comes on your call, then go ahead alone. So, you know, if you do it, then one way or the other the outer environment is going to change.

Neelam: Exactly. And I often talk to people who have had addictions before, and they know when they have changed from the addiction, most of their life or most of their friends fall away. But then they find a whole new life.

Rick: Oh yeah, that happened to me. I mean, I was into drugs, I was hanging out with all my drug friends. I learned to meditate and for about three months I just walked the dog every day and didn’t hang out with anybody, and then a whole new social circle began to build.

Neelam: Exactly, beautiful. Yeah, it’s just the way it works, right?

The Nervous System and Capacity for Presence

Rick: Yeah, cool. So what else we got here? I’m just looking at the list, there’s all kinds of interesting notes here. You are talking a lot more about the nervous system these days. We’ve sort of covered that, but I think it’s important because obviously the nervous system is like—if consciousness is lived through the nervous system, it’s similar to like, you know, you need a television set to pick up on the signals that are in the air all the time anyway, but you don’t pick them up without a television set. And the quality of your television set determines how clearly you pick them up. So like that, we have a nervous system, and you can finish the thought.

Neelam: We have a nervous system and what I say is that the more we understand this instrument—you know, we live in the body, right? The more we understand and we understand how it works, the more helpful we can be to, you know, the more helpful it is to being with our own experience.

So when we understand how does it work and when we understand, you know, when I teach about it I talk about the brain and I talk about the instinctual parts of the brain. And there’s a lot of our experience that is not accessible by thinking, right? Which really is what proves what the spiritual teaching has been talking about forever, but physiologically, you know, it’s proven that the higher brain, as beautiful as it is, doesn’t reach into the instinctual parts. So it can’t regulate stress, it can’t regulate these instinctual states. They come on and they are here, and no matter what you think, they are here. So we need to develop a different way, and that way is through this sensation.

Trauma, Capacity, and Being Present

Neelam: If we understand that that’s how it works, then if we also understand how trauma past affects our ability to be present—if we understand trauma as not just an event that happened in the past but if we understand trauma as a charge, an unresolved charge that is present in our nervous system—then we see how that charge limits the capacity that we have in every moment to be with what is. So if we can understand that, if we can work with that, if we can have the tenderness and kindness and generosity of being here, like, well, can I just be here? Can I just be here with this? And understand that that’s what’s going to help.

Rick: Reminds me of the first time I ever saw Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. He gave a lecture in which he started quoting Darwin. He was saying, “Survival of the fittest is the law of nature.” And I don’t know if that’s how Darwin meant it, but he said there’s so much challenge these days, the pace of life is increasing so much, and we have to increase our fitness to our capacity, basically, I think he was saying. In fact, he used an analogy: he says if a donkey has to carry a heavy load, you either have to lighten the load or strengthen the donkey. And he said, you know, sometimes you can’t lighten the load because there’s so much coming at you in life, so you need to strengthen your capacity, increase your capacity, and then what might have seemed like an overwhelming barrage of stuff becomes manageable.

Neelam: Beautiful. And so I talk more about the nervous system, how it works, and also how to sit with it. Because we have this—you know, we have learned, a lot of us come from some, you know, like what does it mean to be with something? It means like get totally overwhelmed and let it all just be here, and that’s not necessarily how the nervous system works. We have to learn, like, well, just capacity and a little bit, you know, how you regulate and all that. And once we get that, then it helps us so much with practice, right? Inquiry, yeah.

🕊️ Brain Plasticity and Spiritual Freedom

Rick: I’m sure you’ve heard the term neuroplasticity. There’s a lot of that going on, I think, in what you’re talking about. Because, you know, it used to be believed that there is no change in the brain after a certain time, right? And of course in the spiritual teaching realm it was always true that, you know, of course the change happens whenever the consciousness sets, right? Then that’s change, it changes everything. So now it’s like, well, you know, by repeating certain actions, certain behaviors, certain way of being, eventually it develops a different pathway in the brain too. That’s brain plasticity, right? It’s changeable, which is another way of saying, you know, you can be free. It’s possible, it’s available to you this lifetime. It’s possible.

A lot of scientists are recognizing that too, like Rick Hansen and Rudy Tanzi and various scientists are all writing about how dramatically the brain can actually change.

Neelam: Exactly.

Rick: Yeah, so there’s a point that one of your helpers sent me. I think she said one point she’d like me to bring out in this: that the impact of doing a long-term program with you or with any other satsang-oriented teacher or teaching is an opportunity to deepen into presence in a way that is continuously more impactful than a satsang here and there. That long-term programs provide a safe container in which deep-rooted vasanas or patterns of conditioning can be seen, held, and fully let be here as they are, and witnessed by others in a non-judgmental way that can provide a path to really set these attachments free.

So I guess I’m bringing that up as a sort of a moving toward a conclusion of the interview, that you offer these long-term programs, six-month programs and whatnot, where you meet with people in fairly small groups in an intimate way—not physically in the same place, but over a conference call. Maybe you could speak a bit about what I just said, the impact that you’ve seen in these long-term programs as opposed to attending a satsang here or a talk there.

Deeper Work and Individual Attention

Neelam: You know, and I also say in my own teaching that has also changed over the years, right? Because there’s different interests at different times. So initially, my interest was just share it with anybody, just go as broad, as wide as you can and anywhere and everything. There was the movement in the beginning. And then eventually there was more like developing of, like, how can I really help people to be here? Because not everybody understands when you say just be here, but what does it mean? How do you do it?

And then eventually I recognized, you know, my interest now is in that deeper work with people. It’s not really anymore just bringing them back over and over and over to recognition of presence. Now the work is more like, hey, what stops you really from fully resting here? Let’s address that. And that is what the longer programs are about. The initial six-month program is really broader because I have new students come into it and it’s broader, that really covers more direct experience and more inquiry and how to do it and all that. But then after that initial six-month program—and even in this we go deeper into the tendencies—but after the initial six-month program I really spend time more individually with people.

People write stuff, there are certain questions they answer, we interact, we do things in which I can be more of help to these particular tendencies that maybe are not visible to them otherwise.

And also, the longer time, you know, it’s like when we talk about brain plasticity or when we talk about practice, you know, I’m not really satisfied anymore with somebody just visiting with me for a moment. I really want to see the change, and when I want to see the change, that takes time, you see. And so when we can do this over and over and over again for a certain period of time, that usually results in a more permanent change.

Intuitive Insight and Working with Students

Rick: I remember hearing you say that you went through a phase where you would be walking down the street and you would actually see people’s past lives and stuff like that. I mean, do you still have that, something like of that nature with your students where you’re kind of seeing much more deeply into their makeup or their nature than people ordinarily would see?

Neelam: What I can say is, and this is the gift and the curse of consciousness, of that recognition, is that even walking on the street or looking at anybody, I can tell. I can tell their history, I can tell the different things that they went through, I can tell what their conditioning is, and so on and on and on. I’m not going to speak more about it, but in a flash it happens and I can see all of it, which sometimes I really work on protecting myself from this information. So, places I go, I don’t like to talk about what I do and I don’t like to engage in that way. I try to really keep very much to, let’s not even engage on that level. Let me not, even though that information comes to me anyway.

Rick: Yeah, there’s a saying, “too much information.” It’s not just too much, but it’s just like, you know, the significance of it. That can be challenging, you know what I mean? Because it’s not just information, it’s very significant information.

But it would seem that that would be a handy capability to have in working with students, to be able to see much more deeply into their… I see.

Neelam: Sit with a student, that’s why, that’s where I reserve the time. Because just being in the world, that could be overwhelming, but sitting with the students, that’s very helpful because then I can see where they are at, I can see what’s really happening, and that’s how I can be helpful.

Rick: You know more, yeah, so it’s not something you really want to have going on in the grocery store, but when you’re sitting with a student, yeah.

Neelam: Exactly, and yet that information comes in anyway sometimes, and it’s just how it is.

Program Structure and Student Progress

Rick: So how many different programs do you have? You have this six month thing and then…

Neelam: Because of the limits of my health, I only do usually two six-month programs throughout the winter and fall and winter.

Rick: And they’re identical? So you do one and then another?

Neelam: It’s for new students and one is for the students that have done programs before.

Rick: I see, so the first one’s like a prerequisite to the second one.

Neelam: Well, in a way yes, yes, yes, because people learn inquiry. And then throughout the summer I do smaller programs and also a program like a five-week program where I teach inquiry too. Also, there’s this other, I do some open calls and some other different little things.

Rick: Okay.

Neelam: And shorter programs in the summer too.

Rick: Yeah, people are busy with things in the summer. Yeah, good. Well, it sounds like you have a whole lot of… if a person, having listened to this interview, feels inspired to plug into it somehow, there’s all kinds of things they can do.

Neelam: Yes, of course. They can come to our website and they can look at our schedule and they can see this variety of ways to come and visit and see if that’s something that they would like to.

Long-Term Change and Student Outcomes

Rick: Yeah, and as I mentioned in the first interview, I have some friends that I’ve known for decades that are students of yours and have really consistently been engaged with you. Well, that reminds me of one more question, which is: what kind of changes have you seen in people who have worked with you for a long time?

Neelam: You know, the one thing is, unfortunately, sometimes you say, unfortunately, when people go through the good changes you don’t see them anymore, right? Because they just, you know, they don’t need to do it anymore. But the changes that I see really in long-term students is the capacity to be here, the capacity to be here and really what they can be with within their own experience. And also what I see, which is really amazing, I have seen this over and over and over again, and I see this in many of the students that you probably know, that the changes are in how does that translate into their life.

Rick: Yeah.

Neelam: How does that capacity show up in the way they are actually functional in life? That’s where I see the biggest change, real-time change.

Rick: That would really be the acid test, I should think.

Neelam: Exactly.

Student Experiences and Moving On

Rick: And do you ever have some students who say, “Sorry Neelam, I’m just not getting it. Maybe I should move on”?

Neelam: Well, you know, they probably did move on.

Rick: We just moved on anyway.

Neelam: And I have that conversation, but I don’t think that ever happened. Maybe there was one time that a person came into a program and she said, “I just don’t…” She was with another teacher before, and the teacher speaks in a different way, and she came into the program and she said, “I just don’t understand how you are saying it.” And I said, “Well, you just relax and then you will,” but she decided to just move on and that’s, you know, that just… what to do, right?

Rick: Yeah, I mean, come who comes.

Neelam: Exactly.

Closing Thoughts: Freedom is Possible

Rick: Yeah, great. Is there anything else that you feel like saying before we conclude?

Neelam: No, no, I think that’s good. I think we have done it all. Maybe one thing I always want to say is, we want to know freedom is really available to us. That is our natural state and we can know it in this lifetime, and that’s what I would like everybody to remember, that that’s really true and we can, and it’s possible.

“Freedom is really available to us. That is our natural state and we can know it in this lifetime.”

Rick: Yeah, I think I’m glad you said that, and even more so these days than might have been true 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. It seems like it’s more in the air these days.

Neelam: See, things are speeding up on the planet, so there’s really like, okay, what’s… what else to do? You can still go and do the nonsense that you’re doing, or you can just really go like, “Whoa, wait a minute, this is really true, I can actually be here.”

Rick: Yeah, that’s great. Well, I think we’ve given people a nice overview and I think we managed to cover a lot of things that we didn’t talk about too much in the first interview, so it’s worth listening to both, I’d say.

Neelam: Beautiful, yes.

Conclusion and Resources

Rick: So let me make some concluding remarks. First of all, thanks again Neelam, it was wonderful talking with you. I really enjoy it and I know you had to do a lot of running around and we sent you equipment and all kinds of stuff we try to do.

Neelam: No worries.

Rick: So that was great. I appreciate you doing all that and I just want to make a few general comments. Well, first of all, as we have already said during the interview, if you want to get in touch with Neelam you just go to her website which is neelam.org and I’ll have a link to that on batgap.com and there will be a page for this interview in particular. If you happen to be watching this on YouTube or something, you can go to batgap.com, you’ll see that page with a lot more information, links to Neelam’s website, and you will also see all the other interviews I’ve done, well over 200 now. There are several different indices: there’s an alphabetical index, chronological index, a bunch of other things. If you play around with the menus on the website, you’ll also see a link to an audio podcast so that you can subscribe on iTunes and just listen to the audio.

There’s a donate button, which I appreciate people clicking if they feel inspired. There is a place to sign up to be notified by email each time a new interview is posted, and so you’ll get about one email a week as a result of signing up there. And there’s a discussion group that crops up around each interview, a forum, and there’s a different section of the forum for each interview so you can go in and discuss some of the things we’ve talked about in this interview if you like. So thanks for listening or watching and thanks again Neelam, and it’s so nice…

Neelam: Such a pleasure to talk to you.

Rick: It was great.

Neelam: I appreciate you and all the work that you put into it. It is just so awesome, I really, really appreciate that.

Rick: Well, it’s a lot of fun and I have some wonderful helpers: my wife, who’s sitting here, who does hours a day worth of stuff, and my friend from high school, Ralph Preston, who does all the video post-production, Larry Kelly up in Canada who does the audio post-production, a guy named Jerry in Utah who coordinates the sending of equipment and testing things with people. There’s a team of translators and transcribers headed up by a guy named Nicholas who’s in Spain, and so there’s a lot of people who’ve stepped forward to volunteer, which is another thing you’ll find on the website is a page of potential volunteer activities. If you’d like to take a look at that, maybe there’ll be something that resonates with your skills. So, good, so…

Neelam: Yeah, and I also mean, though, you personally, personally listening to hours and hours and hours before the interview, that is so awesome and deeply appreciated.

Rick: Well, I really enjoy it. It’s very listenable, it’s good stuff. All right, thanks Neelam.

Neelam: Thank you, thank you so much.

Rick: Bye-bye