Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati Interview

Summary

The conversation explores an unexpected spiritual awakening that began during a first visit to India and led to life at an ashram. It examines experiences of divine presence, surrender, guidance, and the tension between personal plans and a larger sense of purpose.

Questions This Interview Explores

• Can a spiritual awakening happen unexpectedly to someone who is not seeking it?
• How can a person recognize and respond to inner or divine guidance?
• What does it mean to surrender when life takes an unforeseen direction?
• How can profound spiritual experiences be understood when ordinary language seems inadequate?

Key takeaways

• Grace can redirect a life in ways the mind could not have planned.
• Keeping the heart open can reveal meaning in experiences that initially seem irrational.
• Awakening may bring a direct sense that the sacred is present in everything.
• Truth is most helpful when it is also kind and beneficial.
• Surrender sometimes means following a clear inner knowing before understanding why.

Transcript

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews or conversations with spiritually awakening people. I’ve done hundreds of them now, and if this is new to you and you’d like to check out other ones, go to batgap.com and go to the Past Interviews menu, where you’ll see all the previous ones organized in various ways.

This show is made possible by the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. So if you appreciate it and feel like supporting it, there’s a PayPal button on every page of batgap.com.

My guest today is Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati. Namaste. I often say this when I do interviews, but I really enjoyed preparing for this interview. I’ve listened to maybe a couple of dozen of your talks and read a couple of dozen of your articles also. You are a beautiful speaker and a beautiful writer, not only in terms of the craft of speaking and writing, but in terms of the content that you’re conveying through your speeches and writings.

Sadhviji: Thank you so much.

Rick: You’re welcome. You’re living an amazing life. I have your bio here, and I could bore everybody by reading it over the next couple of minutes, but I’d rather you just tell it, because that’ll be more fresh and interesting. So just start telling us a little bit about yourself, how you ended up with a name like that, what you do, and all that stuff. I’ll be sure to interject questions as we go along.

From Stanford to India

Sadhviji: Sure. Wow. It’s so funny because it doesn’t feel like my story. I mean, I’m the one it happened to, but it’s really a story of grace. It’s a story of the way that grace works when it flows in such a beautiful and miraculous way through a life.

I grew up in Los Angeles. I had as good a Western education as one can get. I then graduated from Stanford University.

Rick: And before you did that, we can’t forget to mention that you got a black belt in karate at the age of 15.

Sadhviji: I did, I did, I did. Yes. I then graduated high school, went to Stanford for university, and graduated with a degree in psychology.

Rick: PhD, ultimately.

Sadhviji: Ultimately, eventually, a PhD. I was about halfway through the PhD when I went traveling to India.

I had been an avid traveler. I loved to travel. My parents had instilled that in me from a very young age. We were always going somewhere, and they had taken me to Europe, to London, to so many different places. Then, from the time I was a teenager, I was traveling alone in Europe, across America, and in so many different places. So for me, travel was very, very natural.

An Unexpected Journey to India

After having done the first few years of my PhD program pretty much nonstop, I finally realized I needed a break. I had originally been anticipating a trip with a backpack to the mountains of Europe, which was very much what I tended to do. But India was suggested by the person I was traveling with. I thought, “You know what? Why not?” I agreed to go to India.

As embarrassing as it is, almost 22 years now, in retrospect, the only reason that I actually agreed to go to India was because I didn’t know anything about the country. I was not on a spiritual path. I was not someone you would have considered a seeker, and I was certainly not someone who would have self-identified as a seeker.

I was an academic. I was focused and goal-oriented. But I agreed to go to India because I was a very strict vegetarian and had been a vegetarian since I was 15. I was one of those vegetarians where, when I was young and we would go out to eat, my mother would say to the waiter or the waitress, “Pull up a chair. You’re going to be here for a while,” because it always was about what’s in the sauce, what’s in the stock, and whether they were sure there was no chicken broth powder in the seasoning.

When I had been in Ecuador, I developed pretty severe PTSD, actually, after discovering that the place where I was eating rice and beans every day turned out to be cooking their rice not in water, but in chicken broth. It had never occurred to me that anybody could possibly conceive of cooking rice in chicken broth.

By the time I found out, I had been eating it for several weeks, or even a couple of months, and was so upset that I literally had PTSD from it. So when India was suggested, I thought, “Well, God, at least in India I’ll be able to eat properly. At least in India they know what vegetarian means.”

Actually, I was vegan. In India, vegetarian means that they don’t use eggs, too. There’s no concept of, “Well, I’m a vegetarian, but I eat eggs.” So it was really, really easy for me. That was actually why I had even agreed to go to India.

On the airplane over, I had this conversation with myself in which I said, “This makes no sense.” I was not a wanderer. I was not someone who did things that made no sense. Here I was flying thousands of miles away to a place I really had no interest in going to, where the only redeeming factor in my mind was that I could get pure vegetarian food.

But I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Rick: Which you can do in Los Angeles, yeah.

Sadhviji: Well, right. And I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area. On my corner—in fact, everywhere—I could get good vegetarian food. I cook. I love to cook vegetarian food. So it wasn’t like I was starving for good vegetarian food.

I thought, “This is crazy. Why am I going? I’ve taken September to December, the whole semester, off, and it doesn’t make any sense.” I realized that even though I wasn’t religious, and I wasn’t even someone who would have said, “Well, I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual,” even though I wasn’t either of those, I had always deeply, deeply believed in the presence of a Planner.

I couldn’t have told you who that Planner was, or what the Plan was, or anything about it, but I deeply believed that this was not random. I deeply believed that there was a capital-P Plan and that therefore there had to be a capital-P Planner.

On that plane, I said to myself, “Okay, there must be a reason I’m going that I’m just not aware of. I have to keep my heart open.” I took a vow on the plane: “I will keep my heart open to find out why I’m going. And if I can’t keep my heart open, if I find myself with a closed heart on autopilot, I’m going to come back, because there’s no point roaming around a country for three months if you can’t keep your heart open as to why you were there in the first place.”

On that plane, I said to myself, “Okay, there must be a reason I’m going that I’m just not aware of. I have to keep my heart open.” I took a vow on the plane: “I will keep my heart open to find out why I’m going. And if I can’t keep my heart open, if I find myself with a closed heart on autopilot, I’m going to come back, because there’s no point roaming around a country for three months if you can’t keep your heart open as to why you were there in the first place.”

We got to India and arrived in Delhi. It was September of 1996, and there wasn’t Google. You couldn’t just ask where to go, what to do, or what to see. So we had a 500-page Lonely Planet guidebook that I opened up in Delhi and said, “Rishikesh.” It was just like that: Rishikesh.

I was a mountain person, a real, real devout mountain person, and Rishikesh was there at the base of the mountains and on the banks of a river. It had yoga studios. We were already yoga students in San Francisco. So it just sounded like a really perfect place to begin an Indian adventure.

In Delhi, looking at the guidebook, I had selected one of the hotels. Rishikesh is a holy city, which means that you cannot buy meat in the entire city. You cannot buy alcohol in the entire city.

Rick: Even today?

Sadhviji: Even today, even today. It’s against the law. So, yeah, it’s great.

The descriptions of the hotels really looked very much the same. They all would say things like, “AC rooms, non-AC rooms, vegetarian restaurant.” But at that time, all of the hotels were either on the downtown side of Rishikesh or up by the second bridge, the northernmost bridge, which is called Lakshman Jhula.

The southern bridge, what’s called Ram Jhula, at that time, on the non-downtown side of Rishikesh—the calmer, more peaceful, beautiful, non-trafficky side of Rishikesh—was all ashrams, except there was only one hotel there at that time. Now there are many, many, but at the time there was only one, and it was called the Green Hotel.

Something about it—again, the descriptions all were identical—but because I was this avid environmentalist, I had organized the first Earth Day at Stanford when I had been an undergrad there. I was really a very ardent environmentalist, a devotee of the forests and everything green. So I thought, “Well, why not the Green Hotel?”

When we got down on the downtown side, where all of the transportation drops you, the driver just said, “You cross river, you cross bridge. It’s only a footbridge.” So we ended up carrying all of our luggage across this swinging footbridge, having no idea that there was a boat we could have taken, and having no idea that there were coolies who could have helped us.

First Encounter with the Ganga

We got to the hotel, dropped the bags, and I said, “I’m going to put my feet in the river.” I didn’t know that the Ganga was holy. I was hot, I was tired, and I wanted to just go and freshen up and be with nature.

I got down to the Ganga, and I didn’t even have my feet in the river yet. I was just standing there, and I looked out. On the water of the Ganga, right there, I had such a vision, such an experience that was visual, physical, and physiological. It was every sphere of sensation and perception that we have. It knocked me to the ground, and I burst into tears.

The unanticipated, indescribable experience of spiritual awakening I had on the banks of the Ganga River was richer, deeper, and more meaningful than anything I had ever known.

They weren’t sad tears, of course, but they also weren’t even happy tears. They were just tears of the truth. They were tears of being in the presence of the truth.

In that moment, it was as though a curtain had just come down on the first 25 years of my life. All of that to which I was attached—goals I had, relationships I had, possessions I loved, sensory pleasures I loved—it was as though the curtain just dropped on all of that. Suddenly, nothing mattered except being there in that presence of truth.

Rick: I’m going to read something you wrote about that experience. You said:

She captured my soul and pulled the drop of water I had called my identity back into her infinite stream, re-merging me into myself.

That was beautiful. Now, having read that, I just want you to elaborate a little bit. You said that all your senses were involved in this experience. If someone could step inside your head, so to speak, what would they actually be experiencing or seeing then, besides a river?

Sadhviji: There was, and I’ve spent 21 years trying to figure out how to articulate this. I don’t know if it’s a deficit of the English language, a deficit of my mastery of the English language, or a deficit of language altogether, but I’m unable to put into words what feels satisfactory to me.

Visually I was looking at the river but had an experience, visually, of the presence of the Divine. It wasn’t like an image of a man with long white hair and a white beard superimposed on the river.

Rick: Or a woman with four arms or something.

Sadhviji: No, it wasn’t the image of what we consider Ganga the goddess. It wasn’t a woman on a crocodile. But it was a very visual image of Divinity.

The river and this image of Divinity merged into each other, and it was divine, but the felt-sense experience was that it also merged into me. It wasn’t just something I was seeing with my eyes, but rather something that I was also part of. I was seeing it and living it simultaneously.

The river and this image of Divinity merged into each other, and it was divine, but the felt-sense experience was that it also merged into me. It wasn’t just something I was seeing with my eyes, but rather something that I was also part of. I was seeing it and living it simultaneously.

Then eventually, when I started moving my head around, my visual field split into foreground and background. The image of the Divine stayed in the foreground even though the background changed. Originally, it was Divinity on Ganga, and then, as I moved my head, it became Divinity on steps, and then Divinity on a pillar, and then Divinity on a child, and Divinity on a tree. Whatever I saw, although the background kept changing, the foreground stayed the same.

I just kept crying because it was so beautiful. It was as though a veil that I had worn not just on my eyes but on my mind, on my brain, on my heart, and on my interaction with the universe had just been pulled off.

Hearing the call to stay

Rick: There must have been a feeling of tremendous significance, like, “Ah, this is why I came here, and this whole thing was orchestrated to bring me to this point.”

Sadhviji: I didn’t actually have that much intellectual capacity still available. I was pretty incoherent in those early days, crying a lot, with a lot of open-mouthed awe. I was definitely not analyzing it, except to know, “This is where I need to be.”

The aspect of why I came came up for me only several days later, when I had found that the ashram in which I now live, Parmarth Niketan, was a parallel pathway to get from the hotel down to the river.

I discovered that there was a pathway that was really calm, really clean, really still, and beautiful. I was sitting on the banks of Ganga all day, every day, crying ecstatic tears and meditating, although I never would have used the word meditation. It was only in retrospect that I could look back and say, “Oh, yeah, that was meditation.”

I was walking through the ashram one day and heard a voice. The voice said, “You must stay here.” I looked around, but there was no one. I kept walking, and 30 seconds or so later I heard it again: “You must stay here.”

Recognizing the Inner Voice

I was fully prepared to let myself pretend that I had not heard a voice because, in my entire sphere of reference, the only people who heard voices were schizophrenic. I didn’t have any frame of reference in which to say, “Ah, this is an inner voice. Ah, this is a divine voice.”

Then my own voice came in and said, “Okay, okay, you can do this. You can pretend that you haven’t heard a voice. But you’re going to get yourself back to Delhi and back on a flight to California because you are making a choice not to keep your heart open.”

For me, I’ve always been very dedicated to truth. Since I’ve come to India, I’ve learned a lot more about what Lord Krishna speaks about when he talks about tapas of speech, or dharmic speech, and how it has to be not only true but also kind and beneficial.

Rick: Yeah, I just read your article about how Indians will say, “Oh yes, I’ll have it for you tomorrow,” and they have no intention of having it tomorrow, but they don’t want to disappoint you.

Sadhviji: Exactly. They had the kind part down, and I had the true part down. I just didn’t have the kind or beneficial part down.

I looked up and saw a sign in English that said “Office,” and I went in. That was the first time that why I had come to India came into my consciousness at all.

Rick: There was a point at which they told you that you might not be able to stay there, and the head of the ashram was away. Then there was the thing where you were trying to walk out of the ashram to go hiking in the mountains and your feet stuck to the floor. Put those in order.

Sadhviji: I walked into the ashram and said, “I want to stay.” They said, “You’ve got to get up early in the morning. We have prayers at 5 o’clock.” I said, “Look, I will get up at any time in the morning you want. I’ll sit in anything you say. Just let me stay.” That was when they said, “Well, actually, we don’t even have the authority.”

Parmarth Niketan is a very old lineage. The ashram has been there since 1942, and the lineage is one of the oldest and most traditional Shankaracharya lineages of India. That’s where the Saraswati lineage name comes from.

At that time, as a Western female, I couldn’t just walk in and get a room. I had to get special permission from Swamiji. But they said, “Special permission from our president.” In my mind, I pictured a man in a suit and tie with a briefcase who was going to review my application.

I came back every day and asked, “Is he back?” They would say, “Maybe tomorrow.” Eventually, I realized they didn’t want to tell me directly that I couldn’t stay. I decided to stop asking.

I knew something was about to happen in my life. I realized, “All right, maybe it’s not here. Maybe it’s not at this place.” As I had always been a mountain person, I thought, “Well, maybe it’s the mountains.” We made a plan to go up to Badrinath on Monday morning.

On Sunday evening, out of the blue, I said, “Let’s not go tomorrow. Let’s go Tuesday.” Monday, I was walking through the ashram to get back to the hotel when a man I had befriended came running after me. He said, “He’s here, he’s here. You have to come meet him.”

He took me up the pathway and told me I had to do pranam, to bow low on the ground. We went in, and there was a room full of people. At the front of the room, sitting on a very thin cushion, was Pujya Swamiji.

He exuded love and light in a way that I had never experienced in any being. I was an entire big room away from him, and I felt him. It literally felt to me like he was a fisherman who had thrown a fishing hook into my heart and was reeling me in.

Eventually, we were called up to the front. I bowed down next to my friend and told Swamiji that I wanted to stay. He said to me, “This is your home.”

In 21 years, I’ve heard him say this to countless people. But at the time, it felt very prophetic. I said that I wanted to stay, and they wouldn’t give me a room. He said, “No problem. I will tell them to give you a room.”

He said, “Go to the mountains if you want, no problem. I’ll tell them to give you a room when you come back.”

I walked down the path to where I was going to turn and leave the ashram. I got to the intersection, and suddenly I couldn’t move. My feet were literally glued to the ground.

I thought I had contracted some horrible illness. I could bend my knees and straighten them, but I couldn’t lift my feet off the ground. I was a neurology student, so I pictured my brain and literally intended the neurons and neurotransmitters to make the muscles of each leg contract and lift.

Nothing.

A group of young children came tearing down the pathway. Instinctively, because I was standing in the middle of their path, I moved back. I then realized, “Oh, all right, I’m free.” But I couldn’t move forward. I thought, absurdly, that perhaps I had a disease whereby I could only walk backward.

I spun myself around and tried to walk out backward, but I couldn’t move. Then I realized, “It’s not about forward or backward. It’s about direction.” I could walk back toward Swamiji’s area.

I walked back into his room and stood at the door. He looked up at me, and I said, “I think I’m supposed to stay now.”

This is your home. Welcome home.

Sadhviji: He said, “Welcome.” That was it.

Rick: You have been in the service of a guru now for a couple of decades. These days, there’s a sentiment going around that the guru era has ended: that one should be one’s own guru and self-sufficient. Partially, this is due to there having been many abuses by so-called gurus, and partially perhaps to American independent thinking. How would you respond to it?

Sadhviji: A question that comes up very frequently is, “Why do we need a guru?” For me, first of all, it’s not a power differential. The guru-disciple relationship is not about power or hierarchy.

The Sanskrit word guru literally means the one who removes darkness and brings light. That’s what the guru is. It’s not the one who tells you what to do or has power over you.

The Sanskrit word guru literally means the one who removes darkness and brings light. That’s what the guru is. It’s not the one who tells you what to do or has power over you.

I do think it is important, because unless you have worked with your own ego in a brutally, searingly honest way, you’re still being impacted by the ego. That’s not a judgment or criticism. It’s simply true for all of us.

The ego is insidious because, much like a chameleon, it can become whatever it thinks we want it to be. We may think we’re listening to an inner voice, but the ego can speak from within and say, “Don’t do that. You’re not good enough.” That’s not the capital-I inner voice.

The ego is part of us. It teaches us, “Here’s where you end and the world begins.” It is crucial for development and socialization. The problem comes later, when we identify only with this finite body, our history, our bank account, our education, our thoughts, and our emotions.

I want to connect with the truth of who I am, that sense of self that has stayed the same while the body and mind have continuously changed. I can’t be my anger, because when anger dissipates, where would I be? I can’t be my thoughts, because if I were my thoughts, I would cease to exist between thoughts.

The minute we enter this path, we realize how much richer an experience is available if we stop identifying just as this physical form. But to get beyond that, I have to get beyond my ego, because my ego can only do separation: “This is me. This is where I end and you begin.”

Rick: That’s its function.

Sadhviji: Exactly. When we talk about the guru removing darkness and bringing light, it’s the darkness of ignorance. The true self is divine, pure, perfect, and whole.

What the guru does is show us the light, which is who we really are. Otherwise the ego says, “I’m living as my true self. I’m so great. I’ve got this spirituality thing down.”

Rick: I should start teaching.

Sadhviji: Right, exactly. Where do I get a certification?

Rick: Put up a shingle.

Sadhviji: I need the advanced course. Where is the advanced course?

The ego also loves teachings such as “I am divine” and “I am one with God,” because if I’m God, then you should do the dishes. But any real spiritual experience of oneness with God comes with a simultaneous awareness of everyone else’s oneness with God.

Rick: There’s Tat Tvam Asi as well.

Sadhviji: Exactly. If I’m one with God and God is one with all, then I’m one with all.

For me, having a guru has been of immeasurable value because my ego loves my intellectual mind, rationalizations, excuses, and separation. The guru is the one who comes in and, like a potter with a piece of clay on a wheel, slaps you back into shape.

It doesn’t always feel good. We’re not a very patient culture. If a guru slaps us into shape—and I do not mean physically—it doesn’t feel good, so we may go find someone who will make us feel better and tell us that we don’t need a guru.

The guru is the one who removes the darkness and brings light.

But on a personal level, I never in a million years would have become who I am today if I didn’t have my guru slapping me at every turn.

Rick: What qualifies a person to become a genuine guru? How does the student know that a person is genuine? And how can a guru help when thousands of people are around?

Sadhviji: You have to have something before you can give it. I have to have light before I can bring it to somebody else. I have to have had my own darkness removed before I can remove somebody else’s.

Light is not like a haircut. You have to have it before you can give it. What qualifies a guru is someone who is able to live in the light, which is why we talk about enlightenment. If I’m a candle and my candle is lit, I am qualified to light your wick.

How does someone know that a guru is right for them? First, we have to be clear about what we’re looking for. We don’t always go to a guru for light. Some people want blessings for an exam, wealth, miracles, a spouse, a child, a job, or a particular body.

In many cases involving gurus who have fallen, if you look back, what attracted people was not simply an inner yearning for light. Maybe there was charisma, wealth, lavishness, or miracles. We have to ask ourselves, “What am I looking for? What has attracted me to this person?”

Charisma is neither good nor bad. It’s found in enlightened leaders and in harmful leaders. We really need to check in with ourselves.

The other crucial question is, “What does this guru tell me about being my guru?” Real masters are happy just to meditate and be one with God. They don’t need disciples in order to feel full themselves.

You’re not going to find a real master becoming irate if you choose not to become their disciple or if you also attend teachings with another master. A real master is not going to try to convince you that they are the most enlightened or the best guru.

The more someone feels like they’re running after you, the faster I would run in the other direction. A real master doesn’t need to collect disciples.

Rick: If they really got something, chances are they may collect a lot of disciples, because people will be attracted to them.

Sadhviji: Of course.

Rick: What you’re saying is that that’s not their motivation. It’s just happening because people are naturally attracted to a genuine flame.

Sadhviji: Exactly. A huge crowd doesn’t mean it’s not the right guru. What I mean is that the guru doesn’t need the crowd. The crowd needs the guru.

The guru is not going to come running after you saying, “I’m the only guru for you. If you don’t think that I’m your guru, it’s because of your ego.” The guru is not going to berate us for not wanting to be with them, having doubts, or having questions.

It’s important to ask ourselves, “What do I feel in the presence of this guru? Do I feel light? Do I feel love? Or do I simply feel the energy of the mob, of the crowd?”

When I’m in the presence of the guru, do I actually feel light and love in me, or do I just feel like a moth who has to be drawn to the flame in order to get light? The guru is going to light you. If you take ten steps back, are you still lit?

Do I feel that light when I go back to my room at night, or when I go back home after seeing the guru? Am I still lit, or am I miserable because I’m no longer in the guru’s presence?

Rick: Those are good criteria.

Sadhviji: The way that the guru lights us, brings us light, or removes our darkness is not only through one-on-one individual psychotherapy. Sitting in the presence of the guru touches you. The teachings of the guru touch you.

Grace allows a thousand people to sit in a hall, hear the guru speak, and have every single person walk out knowing that the guru was speaking to them.

Rick: The guru serves as a conduit or transformer, a catalyst that helps enliven the field in which everyone is gathered. That enlivened field uplifts everyone, like the rising tide lifts all boats.

Sadhviji: Yes, absolutely. This was what happened to me when I met Pujya Swamiji for the first time. I was in the back of the room, with lots and lots of people, and I felt it immediately.

Rick: Let’s talk about seva a little bit, because you do so much of it. I’d like you to define it and talk about its value as a spiritual practice and its deeper implications.

Sadhviji: It’s a beautiful topic. Where we are, the word is parmarth. The ashram is called Parmarth Niketan, and niketan means an abode, a place. Parmarth means dedicated to the welfare of all.

We’re dedicated to service on two different levels: external and internal. External service includes food for the hungry, free education, free medical care, shelter, water, sanitation, hygiene, women’s programs, tree planting, fruit trees for poor schools, toilets, medical camps, and disaster relief.

Rick: This thing of providing toilets—the statistics are shocking in terms of how many people don’t have them and what the social implications are.

Sadhviji: Exactly. Hundreds of millions of people in India don’t have access to a toilet, largely due to a lack of clean water, sanitation, and hygiene. We also work with many other states of India, from the south to the north, and have projects in the pipeline for Africa.

The other component of service is the spiritual component: people who have roofs over their heads, plenty to eat, and no diagnosable disease, but whose hearts are empty. There’s no judgment about which is more important, an empty stomach or an empty heart. We’re equally committed to filling hearts and lives.

For us, the service really is spiritual practice. We serve not as separate people who have something to those who don’t. We serve as spiritual people who recognize that the other is self.

If you trip and hurt your right leg, the left leg picks up the extra weight. You never have to ask the left leg to be a humanitarian or give it an award. It understands that the right leg is self.

For us, seva is sadhana. Service is spiritual practice.

When people are serving and are grumpy, cranky, jealous, or whatever else, the teaching is not necessarily to change their service. It’s to meditate more, because clearly something is lacking in their meditation if they’re not serving from that place.

Can I become a vessel and a vehicle? It’s not what I think, what I want, whose name is on what, or who has what title. It’s how can I respond to whatever the present moment requires?

Can I become a vessel and a vehicle? It’s not what I think, what I want, whose name is on what, or who has what title. It’s how can I respond to whatever the present moment requires?

If a man wanders into my office after traveling for three days with his mother to a free medical camp, it would be absurd, bordering on criminal, for me to give him a spiritual lecture. He needs a meal, a shower, a room, and assurance that his mother will receive the treatment she needs.

Only after that should we say, “By the way, we run this satsang every night,” or, “I teach this meditation.” It’s like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Rick: I was just going to say that, yeah, exactly.

Sadhviji: Whatever the person in front of you needs is what you do. They need a cup of tea, you’re a chaiwala. They need a spiritual lecture, you’re a teacher.

Rick: So you’re a tool or instrument of the Divine, providing whatever the person needs.

Sadhviji: That’s the goal. That’s the way seva becomes sadhana. That’s the “How can you serve your way to enlightenment?” path.

Rick: Doing it tends to attenuate the ego and instill a deeper experience that we are all one. As Jesus said, “Whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.”

Sadhviji: What I love is when Jesus Christ says, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” because you can’t love the neighbor as yourself unless you can see the neighbor as yourself.

It feels to me like what he’s really saying is, “See thy neighbor as thyself.” If I see my neighbor as myself, with no border, then what we end up with is very much like the Indian tradition: We’re all one. The Divine flows through all of us.

Rick:Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, right?

Sadhviji: It means the world is a family. If you can’t treat the other as the self, at least treat the other as family. If you can’t see yourself in them, at least see your family in them.

Rick: Ram Dass said, “If you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your parents.” Shankara said something to the effect that you’re not going to get enlightened through good works, but karma yoga increases purity and brings you to the point where higher teachings become practicable.

Sadhviji: Exactly. All of our sadhana—karma yoga, bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, or meditation—clears the windshield of the dirt that blocks us from seeing the light that’s already there.

None of it brings God. God is there. None of it brings grace. Grace is there. None of it brings light. Light is there.

We’re sitting in dark rooms chanting mantras of the sun and doing sun salutations and sun pujas, when actually our curtains need to be opened or the window needs to be cleaned. Our practices open the curtains or clean the window so that we can be in the presence of the light, grace, and divinity already there.

Rick: The sun is always shining, but it may be obscured by clouds. Practices are like the wind that blows away the clouds. They don’t make the sun shine; they remove the obscuration.

Sadhviji: Exactly. The paths all converge. Some of us are inclined toward service, some toward devotion, and some toward wisdom or study. But wherever you start, if it’s real, it’s going to take you into the others.

If you fall in love with someone across a crowded room, that could be bhakti yoga. As I love you, I want to learn more about you, and then I want to serve you. You can begin with service as well. You serve someone for long enough, and as you serve, you learn about them.

In Rishikesh we say, “Come to Ganga, get in Ganga.” Ganga has no preference for where you enter. It doesn’t matter. Just get in. You start anywhere.

Rick: You’re speaking metaphorically. You’re talking about spirituality in general.

Sadhviji: Yes. Whatever path our yoga is, that’s what yoga is: union. Whether we say bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, karma yoga, or hatha yoga, they are all ways into unity, as long as we practice with the awareness and intention that this is our path into unity.

The Divine Feminine in Indian Culture

Rick: You wrote, “Emphasis on the feminine is an inherent part of traditional Indian culture.” Many people might be surprised to hear that because there seems to be so much misogyny in India. People talk about what the world needs as an upsurge of the divine feminine, and how the predominance of the masculine has made such a mess of things.

Sadhviji: It’s a beautiful topic, and it brings us into our world today and what’s needed from all of us.

For India, there’s an interesting dichotomy between what is in the scriptures about women and what we see in day-to-day life. But I want to talk about the importance of the spiritual and scriptural tenet.

When we worship the feminine, it includes Mother Earth and Mother Nature. In Sanskrit, Shakti, the energy, is feminine, and Prakriti, nature and that which is created by the energy, is also feminine. The energy of creation and creation itself are feminine.

In English, too, we say Mother Earth and Mother Nature. Yet we have been moving through the world with an objectifying viewpoint. I’m an object. You are an object. Nature is an object.

If you are an object, there are only two ways of interacting with you: either you are an object I can use, or you are an obstacle I have to remove. Often we use objects and then discard them.

This objectification has become the way we see ourselves, each other, and nature. It affects how we treat rivers, mountains, trees, air, soil, women, and girls. It’s all one. It’s how we treat the feminine and creative energy.

Rick: Advertising brainwashes young girls, who end up getting into bulimia and anorexia because they want to look like models.

Sadhviji: Or because they feel worthy only if they look the right way. If I’m fat or ugly, I’m not just fat or ugly; I’m unworthy.

Rick: What you’re saying gives one hope. The change represented by the #MeToo movement could perhaps be a harbinger of a change that ripples out to the way we treat the environment, oceans, and rivers.

Sadhviji: I seriously hope that. Whenever we speak about women’s rights and equality, I always mention that we have to protect, care for, and revere women. We also have to extend that to Mother Earth and Mother Nature.

That’s why one of the things we’re working on is rights for Mother Ganga. Ganga should have rights. Why only Mrs. Smith and not Mrs. Amazon or Mrs. Himalayas?

Rick: If you’re really experiencing nonduality, it would seem that you can’t see the environment as separate and different from yourself. It needs to be treated accordingly.

Sadhviji: There’s a beautiful line in the Upanishads: “Isha vasya midam sarvam, yat kincha jagatyam jagat.” Everything in the universe is pervaded by the Divine. There is nothing and no one not pervaded by the Divine.

When we recognize it within ourselves and take it into our world—with all genders, races, religions, cultures, and species—then equality becomes a very small ask. Protection, preservation, service, love, and rights should be given automatically and inherently because everything is divine.

Everything in the universe is pervaded by the Divine.

Rick: Again, what Jesus said: “Whatsoever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.”

Sadhviji: Exactly.

How to connect

Rick: That’s probably a good note to end on. How can people connect with you? Can they come to the ashram?

Sadhviji: Absolutely. We would love it. We host the International Yoga Festival every year from March 1st to March 7th, with renowned teachers from all over the world. The website is internationalyogafestival.org.

The ashram is Parmarth Niketan, and the website is parmarthniketan.org. My website is sadhviji.org.

We do the festival live every day on Parmarth Niketan’s Facebook, and eventually it goes up onto YouTube.

Rick: Are they streamed all over the world?

Sadhviji: Yes. We have all of that. Do you have something that, if I send you links, you can flash them on the screen afterward?

Rick: The easiest thing would be for me to have a page for you and this interview on batgap.com, with all those links. People can go to your page, click on them, and there they’ll be.

So far I have sadhviji.org, washalliance.org, and divineshaktifoundation.org, and then you just mentioned a couple of others. Make sure I have those too, and I’ll put them all on there.

Sadhviji: Fantastic.

Rick: Great.

Sadhviji: Fantastic. Wonderful. Thank you so much. And when are you coming to India?

Rick: I don’t know. I haven’t been since ’86. I’ve been there twice, but only in the New Delhi area. I do a lot just sitting right here, as opposed to bopping around the world. But we’ll see what happens.

Sadhviji: It would be wonderful to welcome you. You could broadcast from the banks of Ganga.

Rick: That would be fun. If I ever get over there, I will be sure to come to Rishikesh and your ashram. Perhaps I could meet your guru too, and maybe even interview him.

Sadhviji: Wonderful.

Rick: You’ve been watching an interview with Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati. I’ll create a page for her on BatGap.com with information about her, the things she does, and links to everything significant.

This is part of an ongoing series. If you go there, you’ll also see all the previous interviews, upcoming ones, a place to be notified by email when a new one is posted, and links to the audio podcast.

We have all kinds of great guests planned and hope to be doing this for many years to come. I hope to have Sadhvi back as a guest when she finishes her autobiography.

Sadhviji: Absolutely. Thank you so much.

Rick: It was really a pleasure preparing for this and getting to know you through this lovely conversation. Thanks for all you do. You’re living an exemplary life.

Sadhviji: Thank you, and I’ve really enjoyed these hours as well.

Rick: Good. Okay. Namaste.

Sadhviji: Wonderful. Namaste.