Nukunu Larson Transcript

Nukunu Larsen Interview

Summary:

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. This is an ongoing series of conversations with spiritually awakening people. For more information or to help support our efforts, please visit us at www.BatGap.com. My guest today is Nukunu Larson. Nukunu is over in Denmark and as usual I’ve enjoyed getting to know him over the past week by listening to a lot of recordings, seven hours or so worth of them. He has an interesting personal story to tell, and all sorts of interesting insights as a spiritual teacher. So, we’ll be covering all that over the next couple of hours. So Nukunu was born a couple of years before I was, in Odense, Denmark in 1947. He left school at 13 years old and was declared hopeless, so he was given no education certificate. I’ll let him pick up the story from there.

Nukunu: Okay. I think it’s worth telling one’s personal story, so people can relate and it becomes personal, and also because you can never predict what’s going to happen for a person. I could never imagine that I will end up going to India and doing all these things. I came out of a painting family, house painters, and as you said, I left school very early because I was a hopeless kid. I was always sitting and looking out of the window, and dreaming about being out in nature. I was always deeply connected with nature, always. And so, I became a painter, house painter, and then I went into the army, and it was a big change because my biggest, my closest friends there were schoolteachers, and they ignited my inferiority complexes, like I could do nothing. So, I decided coming back from the military to start, get some basic education in mathematics and language, and then I got very interested in mathematics and I actually ended up studying mathematics at university. And then I felt it was too superficial, so I went to philosophy. And there I was very happy that I had a practical background so I didn’t get lost because all these head people, I mean, you should have seen when we had parties how when these people got something to drink, what happened to them, they came out of their head. So, I was happy I always had a practical background. And then it went on, you will find out one day when you really come home to yourself, that you were never the doer or the chooser here. So, life provided me with a situation with a TM teacher, Sven Ullr was his name, in these early days, maybe 74, and he said, “You should learn to meditate.” And I said, “Really? This metaphysics, what should I use that for?” And I was a very ardent Marxist in those days, very much into Marxism, and I enjoyed Marxist points of view, very practical. But when I sat down and repeated this mantra, I felt for the first time, something is happening in my life that is important. And then I really sticked to it totally for two years. Is it okay if I tell?

Rick: Yeah, yeah, sure, keep going.

Nukunu: And then I started sitting on so many feelings, because it was like the mantra drilled very deep in, but then all this deep anger and sorrow and deep feeling came up and I didn’t know what to do with them. And when I asked the people there, they didn’t know either really, and I was like an atom bomb.

Rick: Yeah, they just call it unstressing.

Nukunu: Yeah, but I was really grateful to this Transcendental Meditation, and then as my story went on, my girlfriend left me from one day to the other and I was totally devastated, and all these feelings, and then I met Osho. And it’s funny with Osho because a year before, I had been on a long yoga course, and I saw pictures of different people on that yoga course, and there was also a bald man giving a talk in India, and I didn’t pay much attentio

Nukunu: I just saw that picture on that yoga course. And then maybe three or four months after that I came home, I sat down and meditated and I asked, “Who’s my Guru?” I was very connected with Yogananda in those days, I was receiving all the Self-Realization Fellowship and of course I was touched by Yogananda’s book, the Autobiography of a Yogi, of the heart and the devotion. So, I thought he would appear, you can’t believe it, and then Osho, this bald guy came, and I did not even know what his name was.

Rick: I thought Osho had long hair.

Nukunu: Yeah, it’s right.

Rick: At different times maybe?

Nukunu: Yeah, on the top he was bald. I was very surprised, “Aha, okay.” And then somehow, I forgot about that, and I was in Africa as part of my study at the university to finish, and when I came back there, that happened with my girlfriend, and then I met a guy that was also interested in Osho. I started meditating Osho’s meditations and reading his books and it touched me very deep. So, I went to Pune in 1979, not because I wanted to become a sannyasin, but I actually have in mind to go up north also and see Babaji that Yogananda talks about. So, you can probably relate to a lot of what I’m saying.

Rick: Oh yeah, I have Yogananda’s book on the shelf back there, you see it?

Nukunu: Yeah, I can see Yogananda up there. And I ended up asking Osho for a name because I wanted to talk to him. So, he gave me a name and said that my work, my life purpose would be to grow love where there was only stones. And I started doing all kinds of groups in Pune, and the invitation just came from existence and I started going back and doing groups and therapy groups. And then Osho, I was totally devoted to Osho for so many years, from ’79 to ’94. And in ’90, January ’90, Osho left the body, and it was really a funny day because that day I couldn’t find my mala, this necklace with his picture. I couldn’t find it that day. And somehow, I was relieved in a way, because I felt he was starting to talk a lot and talking a lot and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. But I loved him, and I loved the people around him. So, I had become a Pune therapist those days. I gave groups in Pune also. So, in late ’91, maybe in November, I was going to give a Tantra group together with another woman in Pune. I was not really doing Tantra, she was doing the practical, but I was doing the open group work. And just the day before the group started, I met a woman, she said, “Ah, I just come from Lucknow, and I just met Poonchaji, Papaji, and she just had a cup of coffee, and I said, “Oh my god, I have to go. I have to go.” I went the next day in this Tantra group and when I saw these 24 naked people, I just felt, “No, no, it’s finished.” I said to my co-therapist, “I’m sorry, it’s not right, but I have to go. I cannot be here.” And I left and I actually never came back to Pune. I went up to Papaji and those days, it was in ’91, in the late ’91, so I was just told to go to Carlton Hotel in Lucknow and I may be lucky to find people who could show me him. And the first morning when they came with him, he had a diabetes and was quite old, so they came kind of holding him, and I said to myself, “He cannot be an enlightened master because he looked just like an ordinary man with a knitted hat.” And I was used to Osho, so I sat down and I just felt my heart connecting with him and then I could feel him. And he looked at me and called me up and he was laughing at me for half an hour. And I said to him, “When I go deep in meditation, I don’t want to come out, I feel so happy.” And he said, “Very good, very good. When you come there, let the self, embrace the self.” And then he left. And now you are getting touched, I can see. And I didn’t understand what he meant really, but I was deeply touched by him. And he said to me, “You have come for what you came for, and you can go.” And I said, “Really? But I don’t really know.” So, and something very important happened afterwards, because people around him, they came up to me and said to me that, “Papaji said you were very special.” And I just cried. Because nobody had said that, that I respected so much, had said that to me, that I was special…my childhood. And I just cried and cried, and like, that was very important to feel all this pain, but also feel seen. So I went to Goa, and I spent three weeks on the beach reading the Sakadattamaharaj, and just kind of digesting the whole thing. At that time, I had started an Osho community in Denmark together with another guy, and it had been running for nearly ten years. So, when I came back from Goa then, in January ’92, I felt strange, but I was still doing my work there. And I continued, and then the autumn ’92, we were having given a group there, Enlightenment Intensive those days, a four-day group about who am I, and we were sitting together with the people and having a cup of tea, and my co-therapist put a video on of Osho. And I turned around, and I saw him, and in that moment it happened, and it was gone immediately, but I knew in that moment, all doubt was gone, and I just knew I was everything, and it was not outside me or inside me, it just was. I was very, very deeply touched, and it was gone. I had no idea how to get back to it, I had no idea

Rick: Had you ever had experiences like that before or was this new?

Nukunu: Not so strong. I have had experiences of deep love, but I never had an experience of clarity like that, that there was absolutely … it was a shift in my whole perspective of life. It was like I saw life totally from another perspective, from consciousness, not from the personality. And the personality was also part of consciousness, but I was consciousness itself, to give it a word, something that is difficult to say, but I felt literally that involuntarily I fell from the periphery of the mind into the center, just like, without me doing it, it just happened. I fell into the totally unmoving, silent center of the mind, from the periphery, and it was not because I did something, I just saw him, and I saw myself. But there was nobody there who could recognize me or respond to me in the Osho community, and I felt no attraction to go back to Pune and do more programs. I went up to Lucknow again in ’93 in the autumn, and Papaji didn’t look at me at all. And I was crying, “What am I doing here? What should I do?” I was not finished, I had that experience, but I could not come back to it. And at that time, I had started doing a spontaneous surrender. I cannot say that it was because of that surrender that it came again, but I also don’t think it would have come without it. The surrender was basically four steps that was natural for me, I tuned into my heart, I knew the truth is in my heart, I know, but I cannot reach it, but I know it’s there. So, I would go in and say to the Divine, “I want to merge with you and nothing else, just that. I have no criterion or no demands, I just want to merge with you.” Just like a little child talking to the father. And the second step kind of was, “I don’t know how to do it, so I give it over to you to complete it. And from this moment on I will see everything in my life as your grace.” Where did I get that from? Of course, my many years in India, and I’m so grateful to the old Indian culture that is disappearing, I feel, in many ways, but the very, very old Indian culture where all the yoga, the mantras, the tantra, where all this comes from. So, I’ve been so much in India and picked all this up. So, this was the kind of thing I did every evening before going to bed, and I would often cry going to bed. So did it make it, I don’t know. But that evening in Lucknow in ’93, December, I also kneeled down and said, “I want to merge with you, I’m not finished, take me where I need to be, take me where I need to be.” I feel a very good connection with you.

Rick: Yes, I’m feeling it. If I could just interject a comment, what comes across in your story is the sincerity and the intensity of your quest, your desire.

Nukunu: Only that.

Rick: And this comes across in so many people’s stories who really achieve some results, if we want to use those words, which is not so much the means they used, it’s more like the desire, the…

Nukunu: The totality.

Rick: Yeah, the sincerity and the totality with which they throw themselves into the search, and then, as Jesus said, “Seek and ye shall find.”

Nukunu: And that’s grace, it’s grace.

Rick: And if a person is like, “Eh, so what, it’s interesting, I’ll read a book and then I’ll go to the movies,” it’s kind of a half-hearted sort of approach, yields half-hearted results.

Nukunu: It’s all or nothing.

Rick: Yeah.

Nukunu: And my life was like that. There was nothing else. When people ask me, “What are you looking for?” and said, “I’m looking for something I don’t know what is, but I feel it’s missing. I can’t…” And the pain could be so deep. I remember standing at the ranch, I was at the ranch with Osho those days. Now I don’t know how many of the listeners know all this, but Osho moved to America for a time, and we had what we called a drive-by darshan, where we were standing along, and you won’t believe it, but sometimes I felt, “Just die so I can get peace.” Because I felt, looking at him, I had to go on. I could see that there was something there. And I often thought about Pontius Pilate, and what was Judas. I think Judas saw Jesus, but he got desperate, because how to get there, how to get there? He could see that this man had something, like I could see with Osho, but for God’s sake, how do I get it? And sometimes I wanted him to be dead so I could get peace.

Rick: Why would that have given you peace?

Nukunu: I don’t know. Then I could go back to Denmark and just live an ordinary life.

Rick: I see. So as long as he was around showing this example of what was possible, you couldn’t rest.

Nukunu: Yeah. No.

Rick: But of course, there are other examples, so if he died, then there’s more. There’s Yogananda, and all the stories and all the books and all this.

Nukunu: I know, I know. So let me just slowly come to an end. So that evening in ’93, in December, I kneeled down and said, “Please take me where I need to be. I’m not finished.” And the next day, some of my Danish friends come up and say, “Oh, we’re going to go to Rishikesh.” And Papaji was going to his son’s wedding in Delhi, so I said, “Why don’t I go to Rishikesh? I always wanted to see Ganga, meet Ganga.” And I couldn’t get a ticket, so I went into the VIP office and they gave me a ticket. And we came to Haridwar, took a taxi to Rishikesh, and that is in January ’94. Walked down through that little town, down to the bridge, Lakshmadhula, and I met Jhanchi Mai from the Satyan lineage. And I closed my eyes and could feel her heart immediately. And I think she’s been awakened for a year then. And she was so, it was so new and fresh and simple. And I said to her, “Can I meet your master?” And she said, “Yes, of course, Maharaji.” An old master in a lineage called the Satyan lineage, which goes way back. And I started sitting every morning with Maharaji and this was the path of devotion, that was the path of love. So, I felt I’d been with three important masters, I’d been with Osho, meditation therapy, Papaji, self-inquiry, and now I met love, devotion. So, I spent a lot of time there with Ganga, with Maharaji, with Jhanchi Mai. And one morning after I had been chanting Gayatri as usual, I was sitting on my little guesthouse roof and drinking coffee and looking at the mountains, and I just listened to some pop music, and I was just here looking at the mountains, the beautiful morning, and I was not looking for anything, I was not trying to avoid anything, and it was like for a moment a door opened, like a gentle slip, that if my mind could have stopped it, it would have stopped it. Then it came again, the shift, and it came very strong now, and I cried a lot. I spent two months in the jungle in Rishikesh, losing it, gaining it, losing it, gaining it, and I started to find out how it came back. It came back when I relaxed totally, or if I felt Osho on Papaji, or Maharaji, or Jhanchi Mai also, and there is such a lineage, I felt very close to that, especially such a Baba who was the Guru of Maharaji, and Maharaji was the Guru of Jhanchi Mai. And then when I came back to Denmark that spring, I was so scared of losing it, because coming back to the West, whatever that is, it’s not so supportive. So, I was very scared, and of course I had coming in and out of it, and I will say I’m still cultivating it, because every moment comes dancing as this, every moment is this, but it comes as something else. It comes as houses, bodies, cars. So, my work changed, and I started, of course, trying to get people and help people into the same state. And the work I do today I call non-dual therapy, because I feel that people sometimes still need to see things in their minds, otherwise it will sabotage if they are not in touch with it, if they don’t know. So, I use all my skills from all these days in therapy and meditation, and then Dharma doors, Dharma doors, many of them that have come to me during my work spontaneously.

Rick: Do you feel that you still lose it from time to time and have to sort of relax back into it, or is it more stabilized now?

Nukunu: When I’m not present, it is not there, but when I’m present, it’s there. But if I’m not really present, if I’m drowning in activities or I’m not really here now, then of course I’m not aware of it. But the moment I become present; it’s coming here.

Rick: Is it sort of in the background, though? Let’s say you’re driving and its busy traffic and you’ve got to really pay attention to what you’re doing, but is there sort of a backdrop of silence?

Nukunu: Yeah, it’s always there.

Rick: Yeah, so it’s just not in the foreground because you’re busy focusing on things.

Nukunu: It’s like the screen in the movie, that you can get lost in the movie for a while and then you are the screen.

Rick: And you say you’re still deepening into it, I think was the phrase you used.

Nukunu: Yeah, because it’s not a state, it is ongoing recognition. As long as you have a body and as long as you have a life in the body, God comes dancing as all kinds of other things. He’s hiding in whatever masquerade he comes in, like I love Ramakrishna’s saying, he says that the magic is unreal, but the magician is real. It’s really so true. So, I teach, of course, people really two basic things that you must face in permanence, otherwise, forget about it. If you start seeing any solidity in your experiences, there will be separation, there will be you in that. So, it is so important and it’s absolutely, without it, I cannot. There will be separation.

Rick: So, face in permanence, let’s understand that. So that would mean not believing with any kind of adamant certainty that any kind of permanent fulfillment is going to be found in changing circumstances, is that what you would mean by face in permanence?

Nukunu: Yeah, I would see that your perceptions are impermanent, your feelings, your body, your deep, deep senses of whatever it is, it’s all passing and it’s not really there because it’s all God, it’s all that. So, in the beginning when you face impermanence, you will see that life is a flow. If you have, for instance, a strong feeling of sadness or jealousy, I tell people just feel it, relax into it. If you give it names, it takes you away. If you label it and start opinionating about it or analyzing it, it distracts you, because in this moment, sadness or jealousy is your enlightenment. Your enlightenment comes as sadness or jealousy, and that is so radical. So, I have people who say, “Just relax, feel the sadness, come close, don’t label it, just relax into it. How does it feel in the body? What is the smell of it? What is the taste of it?” And notice that it’s changing. And after a while they say, “Yes, now it’s something else.” Then I ask them to relax into that. This is one of my main ways to work. And after a while, they say, “I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine, okay, I’m comfortable, it’s peace.” Then I ask them to say, “I am this, I am this, peace.” Say that, “Trattamasi, I am that.” And the very language can take people deeper into Jnana here. So, at Vaisala we call that Jnana, that state where you come into a state that is absolutely permanent and not changing. And I ask them to totally identify with that, and then I ask them to invite all they went through into this space and see what happens to it, and that is Vijja. Then there is a chance that you really come home, because if you only have this space of peace, silence, no change, there will maybe still be a fear of going out and meet the world, and I may lose it. So, I sometimes say, it’s like you’re sitting in a cave and meditate, and you say, “I’m not this, I’m not that,” and you’re relaxing through all the layers, and you come down to a deep peace and presence, and then, you go out in the marketplace, and then you say, “My good lord, it’s all myself,” and you let it all in. It’s a matter of the heart, it’s nothing to do with thinking at all. So, where did we get to?

Rick: Well, the thinking is kind of a tool, isn’t it? Let’s say your examples of sadness or jealousy, so let’s say you’re jealous of somebody, you think, “Oh, I love so-and-so, but she’s with so-and-so, and I can’t, and I won’t be happy unless I’m with her,” and there’s this sort of yearning for some kind of fulfillment outside yourself in some situation which you don’t have control over. And so, what you’re saying is, turn it around and look within your own heart for the fulfillment that you think you’re going to find outside, and if you melt into that, then you find that fulfillment which you were actually looking for mistakenly in some outside thing. Yeah.

Nukunu: You can’t get anything that you don’t have already, you cannot get it from outside. But these are deep matters, of course.

Rick: Yeah. It’s interesting also to consider, I think I heard you say this in some recording, that if you love somebody or hate somebody or some different feeling towards someone else, you’re really only kind of projecting qualities within yourself on those people or on those situations.

Nukunu: Your name is Rick, right?

Rick: Rick, yes.

Nukunu: Yeah, yeah. It is another major thing I want to talk about is projection, that if we don’t learn to take our projections back, we will create separation again. And they are both positive and negative, and maybe the positive are the most dangerous, because the moment we see something, when we have admiration for instance, and “Oh, you are fantastic, you are so beautiful, I wish I was like you,” or “I love you so much,” like in romantic love. These positive projections have to be taken back. I had a woman many years ago who came and sat down and said, “Lokum, I found a man in my life, and I love him so much.” I took her up in the chair and I said, “Now just imagine he is sitting in front of you, and just look at all this, you love it, oh, he is so wonderful. Then close your eyes and feel, where is this love coming from? Is he putting it into you? Is he stuffing it into you? Or is it arising in you? Yes, it is, it’s arising in me.” And then I told her, “Can you say to this man, I take responsibility for this love and set you free.” It’s very important. Then love becomes a sharing, not a need, not a beggar game. And if you start having glimpses of the truth, if you still fall victim of projection, you lose it, because you create separation again and fight and drama. So, I also teach a lot about projection, because it’s so important. We are living in a world where everybody is projecting on each other.

Rick: Yeah, it seems so important. Using love as an example, so many people fall in love and then how long does it last, you know? And then they fall in love with somebody else, and how long does that last? And it just kind of keeps cycling around, chasing after fulfillment, which is not to say we shouldn’t fall in love or have relationships.

Nukunu: One of the things I say to people is that love cannot come and go. So, if the body leaves you, if you are in love with somebody and that body leaves you, don’t try to get love to leave you. Why? It’s you. And I feel that is often the pain when people are divorcing or leaving each other, that “Oh, I have to hate him, I have to hate her, because we are not together anymore,” and that’s such a misunderstanding. Maybe you are not with the body anymore, but love is still there, because love is your inner being, and it’s painful to try to get rid of that.

Rick: So if love is our inner being and if fulfillment is our inner nature, and if ultimately, we are really self-sufficient within ourselves, then what’s the purpose of having relationships?

Nukunu: Yeah, sharing, beautiful. There’s no purpose in it really like that.

Rick: But everyone wants to do it.

Nukunu: I don’t want anything in a relationship. I don’t need it, but if life brings it around, we have a very open relationship. My partner and me is not really my partner. We are friends, and …

Rick: She’s good at setting up webcams and headsets.

Nukunu: Yeah, and we share this here, very deeply, the whole thing. We have a very deep connection that is spiritual.

Rick: But you say it’s open, so I don’t mean to pry into your personal business, but I’m trying to use this example.

Nukunu: No, we are totally free to do what we want.

Rick: So if you met someone else or she met someone else, no problem, there wouldn’t be any pinch or any trauma?

Nukunu: It is not so likely anymore, Rick, that I meet somebody. I’m not so much into sex anymore. It’s like God eating my sex. The Divine is eating it, that’s what I feel. But it’s taken many years actually. Should I talk about that?

Rick: If you want. You’re also 67 years old, so it’s natural, you’re not 18 anymore either, you know?

Nukunu: Yeah, I don’t know, but I feel this space fulfill me so deeply that it kind of … it’s not really important.

Rick: Yeah. A lot of spiritual people talk about that, and it might scare some people, but they say …

Nukunu: That’s why I say to you, “Should we talk about it?”

Rick: Yeah, no, it’s good to talk about everything because people run into this stuff, you know? If they find that their sex drive is kind of disappearing or is not so important to them anymore, they might think, “Something wrong with me, maybe I should take a pill.”

Nukunu: The people who fall into it and feel it, they will not bother about it. It’s the people who listen to this talk, that don’t know what we talk about.

Rick: Right. If it happens to them, then they’ll understand.

Nukunu: Yeah. Then they will not miss it. But they can get scared, just like they hear … I had Satsang last night in Malmö, Sweden, and again, one woman started talking about this emptiness, and I said, “Our nature is not emptiness. It’s a terrible translation of sunyata. It’s such a misunderstanding, some kind of dead emptiness.” No, it’s not. It’s so alive, and it’s a no-thing, but it’s so alive, it’s so magical. It’s not a dead emptiness. Again, there’s some misunderstanding here. It’s very important we say that. And with sex, if it goes away slowly, as I feel it has done for me gently over the years, I don’t miss it, because this what comes is so fulfilling, such a contentment that has nothing really to do with the body. So, people must not misunderstand that … you know what Ramana calls it? He says that brahmachari, it means that living in Brahman, and it makes a lot of sense to me, that the more and more you live in the divine, it comes naturally.

Rick: Yeah, and there are many stories of that. It is puzzling that some gurus seem to be a little hung up on it still and have had all kinds of sexual problems, but some of the great ones, Anandamayi Ma, she and her husband were like brother and sister from the start, because she just couldn’t go there with her state of consciousness.

Nukunu: Let me say something. If you cannot see that your sex feelings are also your enlightenment, then you are also off. Like we see with celibacy and all this misunderstanding that you try to avoid something, you try to push it away, but just show you have not understood that everything is your enlightenment. Also, your sexuality, but it’s so misunderstood and painful that people start rejecting something and it creates separation and delusion and ignorance. We have to, and that’s what I’m very grateful with around Osho, I just want to say a little bit about that. All the years in Pune, I have had no repression I have not experienced. We had groups and all kinds of things, so, if I had any fantasies about anything that needs to be lived out, it was lived out. I’m very grateful for all these years.

Rick: Yeah, that was very different in the TM movement. There was a lot of repression.

Nukunu: Yeah, I know, yeah, my vision I had.

Rick: He and Osho were like, I don’t know, they were always sniping at each other and saying things about one another and so forth.

Nukunu: Osho’s teaching was “be total, but with awareness,” and many people forgot awareness.

Rick: Right, so it became a little hedonistic, you are saying.

Nukunu: Yeah, it became, but I never chose all that, it just happened in this life of this body-mind here. And very important, you can listen to my story, but everybody has to walk their own line, everybody has to walk their own story. I totally agree with Krishnamurti, there’s no highway, there’s no path to the truth, absolutely not. Everybody has to meet themselves totally deeply, and you have to go alone here, in a way, until you see there’s no one alone, altogether, until you see that there’s no one alone altogether. And go beyond that. But I think many people are scared of meeting themselves so totally like that. “Give me some teaching, give me some belief system, give me something.”

Rick: And I think a lot of people, like yourself, they really want to meet themselves, so to speak, they really want to realize, but they feel kind of blocked, like, “What next? How can I break through? Where’s my teacher? Should I practice something? I feel stuck. I want it but I’m not getting it, or I had it but I lost it.” So, a lot of people are kind of looking for what they can do or whom they can meet that would clear the obstacles that appear to them to be blocking their fulfillment.

Nukunu: I usually say to people that three things are very important. You hang around with people who have realized this, hang around with them, and you may get the measles right away, because it’s a recognition. It’s like I say to people, if somebody comes in through the door who is very sad, you say, “Oh, this man is so sad,” because you will feel the sadness, because this man is not really outside you, it’s your experience, you will feel it. If somebody comes in through the door who is awakened, you may also feel that. And it’s so simple. It can’t be so simple. It’s just a simple recognition of something you are also already. So, hang around people who are clear, who are awakened, and find a practice of meditation or something where you become present, where you go in, because even if you have had a glimpse of this, it will go if you cannot come in. In one of the Zen schools in China years ago, old time, they said that you actually first start meditating when you have had a glimpse. There were two schools, one said you have to have a glimpse before you meditate, the other said you have to meditate to get a glimpse, and in a way both are true.

Rick:Yeah, that’s what I would think.

Nukunu: Yeah. So, something that makes you present, something that makes you stay by yourself, spend time going in, and finally, also reading very good words, sutras, of people who try to express it, and share, share with people, meet people. I’ve been so lucky that I’ve been allowed to talk about this for all these years.

Rick: Denmark is a free country. Yeah, I know in my case I would say that I had had glimpses before I started meditating, through drugs and whatnot, I had had glimpses, but then when I started meditating there was a systematic way of having those glimpses on a daily basis, and then that was much more productive than just sort of random or chemically induced glimpses.

Nukunu: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rick: There’s an interesting quote I read from one of your books, you said, “Awakening does not happen because of effort, but it does not happen without it.” And I found a quote from Ramana Maharshi that’s very similar, he said, “Effort is necessary up to the state of realization, even then the self should spontaneously become evident, otherwise happiness will not be complete. Up to that state of spontaneity there must be effort of some form or another. There is a state beyond our efforts or effortlessness until it is realized effort is necessary. After tasting such bliss even once, one will repeatedly try to regain it. Having once experienced the bliss of peace, no one wants to be out of it or to engage in any other activity.”

Nukunu: He was fantastic.

Rick: So, the reason we’re on this point I think, is that some people kind of dismiss the notion of making efforts of any sort or doing meditation or anything else. They say, “Well, you were already that, so what is there to do?” And I think you would somewhat disagree with that.

Nukunu: Yeah, yeah. It’s true in a way and it’s also not true.

Rick: Yeah, it’s paradoxical.

Nukunu: Yeah, it’s a paradox. You cannot achieve it by doing anything, but all this doing, I love what Maharajji, the Satya Linda used to say that all the work you are kind of doing on yourself is creating a womb, so when it comes you can hold it. And I actually saw it with Papaji, because Papaji, have you ever met him?

Rick: No, not personally. I’ve interviewed a lot of people who were with him, but I didn’t meet him.

Nukunu: Papaji, what was it I want to say?

Rick: Creating a womb so that when it comes you can hold it.

Nukunu: Yeah. I saw many of us, we came to Papaji and I saw many people have a glimpse, just being close to him, and I also saw him reading letters afterwards that had lost it, and I could see how few people were able to hold it. And I saw that a lot of these people who were able to, to kind of hold it afterwards, it was people who had been working with meditation, with therapy, otherwise it’s just gone immediately.

Rick: Yeah, here’s another quote from Nisargadatta, he said, “The self cannot experience its knowingness without the help of the body, it is a necessary instrument.” So, it’s like what you’re saying Is, you got to tune this instrument so that it can play the music, so to speak, so that it can hold the state, and without that tuning then how is it going to be held?

Nukunu: Or maybe, Nisargadatta Maharaj, could you say the quote again?

Rick: Well, it’s a longer quote, but he was talking about the value of meditation and you shouldn’t give up meditation until you’re naturally in samadhi and it just drops off spontaneously, but then he mentioned that the self cannot experience its knowingness without the help of the body, it is a necessary instrument.

Nukunu: Yeah, maybe he also means that you have to realize the self by facing what is not the self, what is impermanent.

Rick: Like give us an example of that.

Nukunu: There is nowhere where you see the impermanence so clearly as when you just feel the body. The body is very, very intimate, very deeply, but it’s also the place where you very clearly see how there is actually no body, there is just an ongoing movement of impressions that we call the body, and that’s why this famous saying from the Buddhism that this body is the Buddha, because this very body is the Buddha. What does it mean? It means that if you really stop up and experience your body, you will see that your body is also your enlightenment, and there is nowhere you see so clearly the impermanence. I had a man yesterday in Satsang that had a lot of fear. I said to him, “You’re never going to solve it in your head, but how is it to feel the fear in the body? Come on, relax, and how does it feel in the body? Then there is a chance to use the fear to really come home, but not by thinking about it and trying to solve it and get rid of it, but really feel it in the body.” And the body is, I don’t know, I don’t say we are here because, I don’t know, but it seems to be a very great tool.

Rick: Sure, and you’re well-versed in Indian tradition and you know all about vasanas and samskaras and all that stuff, which is said to be, in Western terminology, it’s like a conditioning that’s deeply rooted in our nervous system, and so if the guy is feeling fear, there must be some physiological counterpart to it, and rather than just thinking about it up here, which is not going to really touch the physio, get down to feeling in the physiology what is the basis of that fear, and then there is some hope of actually unraveling it and producing the physiological change that will be necessary to be rid of the fear.

Nukunu: Fear, maybe we talk a little bit about it. I often talk about the three stages of fear. There is a fear we call something tangible, we can say, “I’m scared of dogs,” we can see what it is and we are scared of it, but there is a more neurotic fear that we just end up having fear for the fear, and often, often this fear is a by-product of suppression emotions. So, there can be some time at work to find in, to find what kind of emotion am I, or action am I repressing that creates fear, because I don’t do it, I don’t feel it. It’s more neurotic fear, and then there’s also an existential fear when we don’t know who we are, when we are longing to know who we are, and the fear of death, the fear of life, the fear that is existential. So, I think the fear of death is because you don’t know who you are. So that I call an existential fear.

Rick: The Upanishad says, “All fear is born of duality.”

Nukunu: Yeah.

Rick: Because obviously if there’s duality then, “Whoa, there’s this, it’s separate from me, it could threaten me, I don’t know what it is, I don’t know what I am.”

Nukunu: But it is so important that we keep on telling people that it’s your natural state. It’s not something fancy, it’s very natural and very simple, but not easy to find, because we are so deluded, we are so lost. But I love the Zen people calling it inescapable. You cannot avoid it, you can avoid anything else, struggle with it, but this is inescapable.

Rick: It’s funny, anything you say I agree with, but I also think, yes, but the opposite is also true. Like if you say, “It’s not easy to find,” true, but at the same time, what could be easier, you know?

Nukunu: Yeah.

Rick: What could be easier than your own self?

Nukunu: That’s right.

Rick: So, again, the paradox. I got a question from somebody who wanted me to start asking it of guests more often than I have been, which is the whole dark night of the soul issue. He feels like he’s going through one, and he was wondering whether it’s something that people go through more if they are slow awakeners rather than sudden awakeners. And so, what did you go through, and what is your experience of working with various students with regard to this dark night of the soul thing?

Nukunu: When you talk now, I’m reminded of the Sufis. It talks about that you come to a state in your life where you see the whole of your life is meaningless. And if you are, I think it was Bernhard, what was his name, this guy that created Est?

Rick: Werner Erhard.

Nukunu: Yeah, he said that if you don’t see that life is meaningless, you miss the point. So, the deeper and deeper you go into life, you start seeing that you’re never going to fulfill here, you’re never going to find the meaning of life here. And so, the Sufis will say you get to a point in your life where you either commit suicide, or you wake up, because if you see how meaningless life is in that way, your mind stops. You stop your desiring. Otherwise, you will desire into the future all the time, but if you start seeing that it is hopeless, it doesn’t lead anywhere, then you can come into a very, very painful … I want to tell you an authentic story. I had an old Sanyasin friend.

Rick: Sanyasin meaning a fellow Osho disciple.

Nukunu: Yeah, yeah. And he was sitting in Buddha Hall one day and he just looked around and he felt, “My God, my whole life has been totally meaningless. What have I arrived at? What? What?” And he felt like killing himself, so he bought a rope, and he was going to hang himself out of the window in the flat he lived in. And this is an authentic story. And then he suddenly remembered his father also committed suicide, and he thought, “Oh, it’s like you couldn’t do that.” So, he was laying in his bed for three days, looking at the ceiling, and it came. And I understand, because the mind stopped. There is no purpose of committing suicide, somehow that door closed, and so he just laid there and his mind stopped. And many, many people wake up here when the mind for some reason just stops. It can also be something so drastic in your life, somebody leaves you, somebody dies, that there’s no future. Your mind just goes “pfft” and the next moment they are in bliss. So that’s what I call the dark night of the soul, that you get to this point “pfft” and of course, when you get to that point it’s very important that you are in a setting that can say to you, “It’s okay, it’s okay, just let it stop.”

Rick: Yeah, I had a friend who got to that point and he did commit suicide and I really felt like if he had just burned through whatever it was that was eating him, he would have come out good on the other side. Maybe, this is interesting, the thought just occurred to me, but maybe this desire to kill oneself is a sort of a slightly distorted form of the desire for transcendence, because transcendence is an annihilation of the self we thought ourself to be, but obviously, we don’t achieve that by hanging ourself. But maybe that’s it, maybe it becomes this distorted form of that desire, and like your friend who chose not to hang himself actually arrived at the genuine form of realization of what he was desiring.

Nukunu: Have you not seen the little cut with a guy I work with, I think it’s on YouTube or on my website, he’s an old sannyasin also and he said to me, “Nukunu, I’ve been trying and trying to get this enlightenment and I haven’t got it, tried my whole life and I haven’t got there and I’m getting older.” And I said to him, “It’s too late, it will never happen,” because his reality is that it is not happening, but he’s dreaming about it, he goes away from the pain. So, when I said, “What will you have to feel if it never happens?” This is one of my standout questions, “What will you have to feel?” “But,” I said, “It’s too late, what will you feel? It’s never going to happen, you waste all your time looking for it.” And he trusted me, and he went into this deep space of meaninglessness, and I asked him to relax into it as I tell you, how does it feel, how is it felt in the body, what is the sense of it, what is the smell of it, and he came through. Suddenly he started dancing, even his wife trusted him, she was also there. It is like that, isn’t it? Because his reality was a black, black sorrow over that it was not, that’s what he felt in this moment, and this moment is your enlightenment, not what you are dreaming about in the future.

Rick: Yeah, as you know, Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle both had similar awakenings where they hit rock bottom and feeling suicidal and so on, and then something snapped. And you also told the story in one of your videos of a guy who went to the Master and the Master basically said, “It’s too late, you’re too old, you might as well get a new body,” and he went and sat…

Nukunu: It’s the same story.

Rick: Yeah, the same story, and then he went and sat on the edge of a cliff and he had to throw himself off to get a new body, but then somehow things shifted for him.

Nukunu: Yeah, because then he was totally here now. I have another very good example, and that’s from, you must remember the series of Shogun, the movies.

Rick: Oh yes, right. I don’t think I watched them, but I know what it is.

Nukunu: There is a situation where Anjin San, this pilot from England, he is sitting there and he says to one of his samurai, “The samurai have said to the villagers that if they don’t teach Anjin San Japanese in a certain time, they will all get their head off.” We are back in the 14th century Japan, and Anjin San is sitting with, I think his, Japusan is his name, Japusan is his master, and Anjin San says, “I cannot live with this, you either have to take it back or I kill myself.” And Japusan says, “I cannot take it back.” And Anjin San is going to slit his throat, and some other …

Rick: Because he wants to save the villagers, right? Is that why?

Nukunu: Yeah, yeah.

Rick: Okay.

Nukunu: And Anjin San takes his hand, arm, and holds it. And the next moment Anjin San said, “Listen to the rain.” Same thing. He had died. He had already gone somehow, and it’s silenced. “Listen to the rain.” It’s such an incredible example of this movie series. They are really, they were sweet. That was in the 70s, 80s in Denmark, with Richard Chamberlain, played the main role.

Rick: Yeah, so the point we’re playing around here is sort of that if you can muddle along, you just keep muddling along, but if you come to a point of no return, a point of no choice, kind of like a do or die sort of point, then that can be the breakthrough point for some people.

Nukunu: For many, many people. And then comes the cultivation, sudden awakening, gradual cultivation.

Rick: Talk about that a little bit.

Nukunu: Yeah. So, there are these glimpses, and one thing is to know about this place, but that is the personality that talks about this place. You have a glimpse, and it goes away, and the personality talks about it. I know, and I had it, and I saw it, but another thing is to fully become that place, and from that place, talk about the personality. That’s the shift I talk about. And that shift is sudden, yes, but to get fully established, as Ramana would say, one thing is to know the self, another thing is to live as the self. That is a gradual process, and from my point of view, it goes on and on and on. It’s so deep.

Rick: I think that’s important. These days, the word embodiment is very popular in spiritual circles, and there are even people who kind of specialize in helping people who have had awakenings to embody them more. And you can think of examples of people who had had some kind of profound awakening, and maybe it wasn’t even a glimpse, maybe something is permanent, but it hasn’t really bled into their lives enough, and so they’re acting in really despicable ways, or irresponsible, or immoral, or shady business deals, or hurting people in various ways. So, you really wonder, and some people say, “Well, that doesn’t matter, the personality is a separate issue altogether from the state of awakening.” But I’ve always been of the notion that if it’s really lived, then it should be reflected in one’s behavior, in one’s personality, and if it isn’t being reflected, then there’s definitely some embodiment or some integration or something that needs to take place.

Nukunu: I used to say to people that you become more responsible than ever. Like you simply cannot do things that are not right. You cannot, and it’s not because you have an ethic, philosophy, or a moral code, it’s just so much against everything in you to do something that is not right. That’s what I feel, because it’s true, everything is impermanent, and blah, blah, blah, blah, but this is the mind. And I want to say something here about that, that it has to come so deep into the heart. I think many people just get somehow find out of it with their head, and it has not really come deep into their heart, and we never heard the old Zen masters talk about their love somehow, but even Ramana talked about his love for Arundhati Chala in one of his writings, and it’s not a dry matter, it is. If it doesn’t come into a deep, deep love for this mystery of whatever we call it, God or the Buddha nature, but it must. You must come in and cry, you must come in and dissolve here. I like another word from Ramana Krishna, he says, “If you have not cried for God, you don’t know what this is about.” And I totally agree, but God, let me call it Godliness, or this quality that comes in the heart, deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper, so mysterious, so deep and so fulfilling, and you just want to merge into it. Zen people have what they call conceptual enlightenment and existential enlightenment, and that is a good distinction. You can know everything with your head, but if you really know, then you don’t need to convince anybody about anything.

Rick: Yeah, I don’t know if you run into that much with your students, but I run into it a lot with just my show and people I interact with and all that. There’s definitely a certain category of people whom I would call “conceptually enlightened,” to use that phrase, who gain a good understanding from reading a lot of books, and then they think that that’s it. And very often they become pretty obnoxious on internet chat groups and all, because they become so preachy and argumentative and telling people where it’s at, but you just have the feeling that it hasn’t become experiential for them, it hasn’t really sunk into the heart.

Nukunu: No, that’s right, that’s right. And they can be very difficult.

Rick: Yeah, because they think they’ve totally got it.

Nukunu: Yeah, and they don’t want to let go of what they think they know. They can be, from my point of view, they are the most difficult. I sometimes used to like to go to places, where Satsang is not so well known, and I meet some more innocent people. If you go to London, these big towns, they know everything. I’m not saying that it’s for everybody, but there’s something about this, “Oh, I know, I know, yeah, yeah.” But you go out to a little village somewhere and they don’t really know about this, and more innocent and don’t know all the great words.

Rick: What is it Christ said, “Except ye be as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Nukunu: No, that is true.

Rick: I’m glad you’re mentioning the heart, though, let’s talk about that a little bit more, because a lot of times that dimension is left out. I do see some teachers, after a period of maybe not so much emphasis on the heart, growing into a much more heart-oriented place. Like for instance, to use a couple of famous examples, Adyashanti, these days, is just so loving, and his heart really seems to be blossoming, and he’s talking about this kind of thing more and more, A.H. Almas, who founded the Diamond Approach, just a tremendous heart, really blossoming in his heart, and I’m sure there could be many, many other examples, but there’s a kind of a dryness in some teachers’ orientations, but there’s a sort of a sweetness and a richness that’s developing among other teachers.

Nukunu: People come and say that to me also, “But Nukunnu, you have become so innocent and so heartful.”

Rick: Do they have a problem with that?

Nukunu: People who have known me over the years, “No, no, they see it as something beautiful.”

Rick: They like it.

Nukunu: Yeah, yeah.

Rick: Good.

Nukunu: And I also feel it myself. I actually call the place on my website “Matter of the Heart.” I call it that because it’s a matter of the heart, and for me, awakening happens in the heart. It’s a matter of the heart.

Rick: For what it’s worth, since you had some TM years, this is kind of the way Marshi explained it too, is that initially the self could wake up, one could be self-realized, but there might not be at that stage very much heart development, but on that foundation one appreciation really begins to grow and then the heart really begins to blossom and it’s a whole new phase, which is ever so much more than just realizing the self.

Nukunu: That’s the cultivation. Go deeper and deeper and deeper, and it is a matter of the heart.

Rick: And like you say, it seems to be a lifelong process, right? There’s no end to it.

Nukunu: This very old famous book of the Indians, the Ramayana, I often talk over that book, because Hanuman is this, and Hanuman is uniting Rama and Sita and so, Hanuman is uniting what has never been separated. It’s very beautiful in this story of Rama after the Ramayana. I often talk over it and then use the story, we are children somewhere, we like stories, but it says something very deep about Hanuman setting fire on the town of the demons. What is fire? Again, awareness.

Rick: Yeah, in fact you said in another one of your things that I read, let me see, get it on my iPad here, you were saying how in traditional alchemy fire is considered to invoke a purification and transformation of the gross elements into a refinement of the spirit.

Nukunu: Yeah, yeah.

Rick: So, that’s interesting, I never thought those things about Hanuman, but that’s really true that this great devotee united two things that had apparently been separated and that’s the role that the heart is supposed to play and that, initially when the self is realized, there can be experienced a separation between self and non-self, inner nature and outer nature, and the heart doesn’t like separation, so it rises to the challenge of uniting them. So that’s really cool symbolism that I never thought of.

Nukunu: Yeah, Bhagavad Gita, Ramayana, they are great, and the Buddhist sutras, and I talked over so many of them over the years, 20 years now I have been talking about this.

Rick: That’s great. So, tell us a little bit more about what you do with your students. I listen to a lot of sessions on YouTube and people really go through some powerful stuff apparently, some crying and screaming and all kinds of things that go on, but you know, apparently, you create an atmosphere in which it’s very conducive for people to undergo deep changes.

Nukunu: I do many different things. I also do, now in the Christmas I will have 10 days meditation retreat here in Kerala, where I live, and there will not be screaming and crying, we will be sitting in silence, and I will give a Dharma talk in the morning, talk over a text and Satsang in the afternoon, and then we just sit in silence. So that is definitely also my way of working, come and sit for 10 days. My God, your whole life you are running around, could you not just take 10 days to meet yourself, at least. So that I am very much advocating and telling people to do, so I also do these non-dual therapy trainings as an opportunity to be with people for a longer time, and my basic point of the therapeutic stuff is that if there is something that has not worked out deep in themselves, it will sabotage them. Even if they have a glimpse of clarity, if there is something deep down that has not really been seen through as impermanent, it will come and create separation. The moment you start fighting with anything deep down, it creates you in that. We have you in that and we have separation. So, I start often with the very basic, first chakra, parents, second chakra, relating, third chakra, shadow sides.

Rick: What’s the third one?

Nukunu: It’s very much our shadow sides. What’s that word?

Rick: Solar plexus. Oh, shadow sides, okay, I didn’t catch the word.

Nukunu: Where I then work with, for instance, Gestalt or voice dialogue, which I feel are very good tools.

Rick: Are you talking about doing this as a one-on-one therapy or in a group or what?

Nukunu: I do it in a group where I work with people and they work with each other, and all the time during that journey we talk about going deeper. Like if I have people coming down in a Gestalt session and they start feeling very good and very fine, then I try to take them deeper. Relax into this. I see often the mind as a kind of like a cyclone, with a periphery and a totally unmoving center, and mostly people are caught out here in the periphery, struggling, fighting, and the more and more they start coming, relaxing back into this unmoving center, there comes the feeling of love, there comes the feeling of trust, of peace, and then it may happen that they become this unmoving center, which is the source of who you are. And then you will see, but I’m not separated from the periphery either, but I’m also not the periphery. So, I use this picture often. You’re getting tired.

Rick: No, I’m not tired, I’m fine.

Nukunu: Oh, okay.

Rick: Don’t worry about me. It’s morning here, more or less.

Nukunu: is it?

Rick: Well, it’s 1230, it’s not late, I’m good. I’ve had a flu for a couple of weeks, that’s kind of a weird sort of thing, but I’m doing good.

Nukunu: So let’s say some people are stuck in this periphery somewhere and they’re not really aware of what’s going on here, deep down, so then I feel I can use Gestalt, voice dialogue, to become aware, because it’s by understanding you realize. You must, but I’m not talking about intellectual understanding, it’s like understanding yourself in the Buddhist way. So, then you can suddenly fall into this unmoving, silent center, and that cannot be said anything about it. It’s just, you can be it, but you cannot know it. You are it, but you will never be able to say what it is. So, I often call it the fourth dimension.

Rick: Somehow this Gestalt therapy that you do kicks people into it somehow, or triggers that awareness.

Nukunu: It relaxes the mind, because it’s only a still mind that can become so clear that it knows itself. So, I use many of these techniques and these weekends we do to make the mind still, and my basic, if I have any teaching really, I call that associative inquiry, and if you go to Advaita, it’s Vijan. Vijan, not just Jan, but Vijan. It means, like I told you in the beginning, I ask people to relax through the layers, wherever they are caught in, and see that it’s impermanent, and then they come to a new one and come to a new one. Some of the deepest are the fear of death, no love, meaninglessness, and I ask people to relax into these feelings, these imaginations, and see that they are changing, and when people are ready for it, they come down to this space of Jan, where there is this peace, love, contentment, and joy.

Rick: Do you find that people generally have the capacity to relax into it? Like you were talking earlier about the container, I think you said, you were talking about Papaji, and people would have realizations and they wouldn’t be able to hold them, and because they didn’t have really the container established or developed to be able to hold those realizations. So as people are relaxing down, do you feel like they have the energetic ground or capacity for relaxing in these deeper levels, or does that somehow get increased as they relax deeper? Does it replenish or strengthen the ground, and thus enabling them to do this?

Nukunu: There are two things in it. The first thing is that to wake up you have to see that whatever this moment is, is impermanent, whatever it is. That’s the same as to say, this moment is your enlightenment, if you see it for what it truly is. So, then I ask them to relax into it, no labeling, no concepts, nothing, just experience, experience, experience. And then they will come down to layers like death, no love, meaninglessness, and these are very deep, and most people avoid them and never go there. Then I ask them to relax through them, and then they come into the silent, unmoving center. Then I ask them somehow to turn around there, and all this they went through, take it in to this place they are now, and then it becomes very strong. So, all these layers we talk about, you have to know them and you have to dare to meet them, and that’s why I also use therapy, gestalt, and voice dialogue, to meet these layers. And then you invite the whole thing in again. Then you know that you are the creator of this whole, and you know that all is mental, all is imagination, not in a negative way, just mental. There is no objectivity here, but you will see that in that place. It’s all myself, not in a personal way, but in a very deep, it’s all my own heart.

Rick: Do you usually find that after one of these weekends or retreats that pretty permanent change has taken place, people not only experiencing something on the retreat but feeling like afterwards their life is different in a permanent way?

Nukunu: I see two kinds of people. There are some people who kind of become some kind of teachers in whatever way. There’s nobody around me that has become famous, but there are some who teach it, and I also see people living a very simple life and living it. It’s not everybody who becomes a Guru. If you are supposed to teach this stuff, you will get invited to it. You cannot, like I was in Australia one year and there was a guy sitting there and had an awakening in my Satsang, and he rushed up to me and said, “How do I start giving Satsang?” You know?

Rick: Yeah, I think I’ve heard that in Zen you’re expected to wait 10 years after your awakening before you begin teaching.

Nukunu: Yeah, that’s right.

Rick: Do you offer these retreats in English mostly?

Nukunu: Yeah, always English. Very, very little Danish.

Rick: Okay, sure, because there aren’t that many.

Nukunu: And I’m traveling. I’m trying to not travel so much, but I try to be here more, but I’ve been traveling many, many places all over the world. I go quite a lot to Russia and Ukraine. These days, I feel many innocent hearts there and openness to this.

Rick: Yeah, what’s going on over there? Of course, there’s been this big controversy in Ukraine lately about Crimea and all that. Are there a lot of spiritual people over there?

Nukunu: I feel many beautiful people around me there, and I have just been there now in Ukraine for five days, and you can feel there’s something going on in the country, but in Kiev, I don’t know anything about it really, I didn’t, and I hope that it will settle so I can continue to go there because I really meet many beautiful people there. You know, Rick, I find some people who have not had an easy life. It’s not been easy, and at the same time I feel that many of them have kept a certain innocence and openness in their hearts, especially in Ukraine. Russia they are a little more hard, it’s more tough.

Rick: Hard?

Nukunu: Yeah, they are more tough. So, Ukraine, I like very much these people. It’s strange.

Rick: Yeah.

Nukunu: Sweden also, I like very much. I’ve gone a lot to Sweden.

Rick: It’s interesting how there’s a different national consciousness as you move around the world, but I’ve been to, not as many places as you probably, but I’ve spent three months in Iran, and nine months in the Philippines, and about eight months in India, and different places like that. Each one has its own personality, so to speak, but wherever you go, including places like Iran, you meet these incredible people who are just like these beautiful spiritual, highly evolved people. So, we should never write off some country and think they were all stupid there or something like that. There’re gems everywhere.

Nukunu: Yeah, there is. There are gems everywhere, true.

Rick: And maybe more and more so these days. It seems like there’s kind of an epidemic going on.

Nukunu: Yeah, maybe it is so. I don’t really know.

Rick: So what should people do who have been watching this interview and they think you’re an interesting guy and they would like to get connected with you in some way? Do you do Skype sessions or would you…

Nukunu: No, we don’t do Skype sessions.

Rick: Okay, so they would have to come to some place you’re going to be.

Nukunu: Yeah, they will have to come to some… I go to India for instance now. I used to go to Rishikesh a lot and I go to Goa now for two, three months and they can come and hang out with me there and it’s cheap.

Rick: That sounds like fun.

Nukunu: Yeah, and what? And nice, nice weather.

Rick: Yeah, nice.

Nukunu: Yeah, and so that’s possible and they can go on my website and see where I am in the world and find me.

Rick: Is there anything else that you’d like to tell people? I always feel like I’ve just scratched the surface when I do one of these interviews. I’ve kind of given people a snapshot of the person, but I always realize there’s so much more and so many things we could have discussed and all, and so I always feel like I really don’t want to leave out anything that’s really important for people to hear or for you to say if it’s something you’re going to think of tomorrow and wish you had said. Is there anything like that?

Nukunu: I want to say to people that if they start feeling the Divine presence in their heart, that don’t pull away, because they are brought up with Christianity or whatever they are brought up with, that they go away from it. In Scandinavia, we have a strange situation because many of us are very much against all this Christianity, but still the culture is very saturated by Christianity, and so here in Scandinavia, when people hear the word “God,” it can be very antagonistic to it, to this word, “Oh, the Christian God,” and all this. But you will, on your journey, when you go deeper and deeper, you will start finding a mystery in your heart, something very beautiful and very, very, yeah, you can give it whatever name you want, but you will find it when you go deep. And don’t pull away from it, come into it and unite with it and be one with it. And like I told you about the surrender process, I just want to merge with you, it comes for everyone. It’s so overwhelming, this space. When you come closer to who you are, you just cry, and you feel love, and come in and unite totally with that love, and you will be free. And then you will maybe be able to say something about it, but it has nothing to do really with that, or you may go and just be quiet.

Rick: That’s beautiful. I hope I don’t dilute it by saying something now, but this whole thing of God, a lot of times in spiritual teachers and people don’t want to talk much about God, or they don’t feel it’s relevant, or they feel it’s just going to be misunderstood if they use that word, or it’s not part of their experience or something. But I really feel like it’s, and I think you’re giving a nice voice to it, that there’s this whole dimension of the Divine which is so sumptuous and rich and profound and mysterious, but in light of that, some ways that spirituality is presented seem very plain and bland and watered down or something. I don’t know. There’s a whole world of possibilities yet to be discovered when one begins to, as you put it, kind of settle into the heart and begin to appreciate the Divinity, the Divine, the infinite intelligence that is governing things.

Nukunu: The problem is that all these words are touched by so many dirty fingers, up through history, but what should we call it then?

Rick: So many wars fought over it and everything.

Nukunu: Yeah, but what should we call it? But everybody will feel it, the presence of something so beautiful, so unbelievable here.

Rick: I think if we’re just going to use these words like that, we just have to remind everybody that don’t think about what you were taught in Sunday school 40 years ago. That’s not what we’re talking about.

Nukunu: That’s what I say. I always say forget it, call it godliness, maybe. But that’s again, Rick, what to do with words.

Rick: But, all these great teachers that people respect and quote all the time, like Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta and Papaji and all these people, when you read their writings and listen to their talks, they were very much in tune with what we’re talking about right now, very devotional people, real profound hearts, and also it’s definitely part of the package.

Nukunu: If you’re sitting and watching a sunset and it’s so beautiful that you totally forget yourself, and suddenly there comes such a gratefulness and such an incredible feeling up in you, that’s what we talk about. Call it whatever you like.

Rick: Yeah, one way of putting it is if you really start to appreciate the art, you want to meet the artist, you know? Who created this thing?

Nukunu: Yeah, yeah.

Rick: Nice. Good. Well, were you about to say something?

Nukunu: No.

Rick: Okay.

Nukunu: I will say something to you. It’s been very beautiful to see that we are understanding each other very deeply, because we are both sitting with our words, but I feel we are, I know you know, and I know.

Rick: Yeah, I feel that too, and it’s a joy to talk to somebody who is so heart-oriented, who is not just dry intellectual, but is really coming from a deep level of feeling.

Nukunu: Yeah.

Rick: That’s good. All right, well, I guess I’ll conclude. I hope that people have gotten, I think people will have gotten a nice taste of who you are and how you teach.

Nukunu: What is happening now? Is this going out now to people?

Rick: Well, it’s not going live right this minute, but in a couple of days I’ll have it out on YouTube, probably by, easily by tomorrow actually, and then there will be a page on bathgap.com where I post this, and along with that I’ll post your bio and a link to your website and a link to your books if they’re on Amazon or wherever you can get them, and just all the essential information that people would need in order to get in touch with you or find out what your schedule is and all that stuff. So that’s what I’ll do. And also, an email will go out to about 6,000 something people who subscribe to be notified every time I put up a new interview, so that’ll go out. And if somebody is listening and they’re not on that email list, just go to bathgap.com, there’s a place which says “Join our mailing list” or something, you can sign up to be notified.

Nukunu: I want to say something, maybe while your net is popular, because it’s very rarely that somebody who knows like you know is interviewing another one, and people will feel that, because usually I’m interviewed by people who don’t really know. You know, you understand? But everybody also is seeing you, aren’t they?

Rick: Yeah, and you know what, I mean, I taught for 25 years as a TM teacher, and I got to a point where I was tired of talking about things that I wasn’t fully experiencing, and so, I didn’t teach at all for a long time. And then I just got the desire to do this interview show, and I kind of feel like it’s the right role for me at this time. I wouldn’t even feel qualified to go out and be a Satsang teacher or something like that at this point. It just wouldn’t be my dharma, you know? But I feel like it’s right for me to be doing what I’m doing, I’m good at asking questions, I can kind of tune in to where people are, and kind of get a sense, a feel for them, and have a nice conversation with them. And it’s really kind of enjoyable to me to bring people like yourself to a wider public attention, and it’s also very enjoyable to get the feedback I get from people who say, “Wow, I’ve been so inspired,” or “I met my teacher through this,” or “I was going to kill myself, and then I listened to your show,” all kinds of feedback like that. So, it’s really gratifying to be able to make that kind of contribution.

Nukunu: Thank you very much.

Rick: Oh, you’re welcome. A couple more quick wrap-up points. So batgap.com, that’s the place to go. You’ll see all the 260-something interviews I’ve done, all indexed there. You’ll see a “Donate” button, which I rely upon people clicking from time to time. You’ll see a place to subscribe to the audio podcast, if you don’t feel like sitting and watching videos, you can just listen on iTunes to the audio podcast. And there’s a discussion group, a bunch of other things. So just go there, batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P, explore the different menu options, and you’ll find out what’s going on. So, thanks a lot, Nukunu. Next week I’ll be interviewing someone named Mary O’Malley, and we’ll find out all about her.

Nukunu: Where’s she from?

Rick: I’m not even sure, I haven’t checked into her that much yet. Irene picked her out, and I’m sure she’ll be good. All right, thank you very much.

Nukunu: Thank you.

Rick: Talk to you later.