Shakti Caterina Maggi Interview

Summary

Shakti Caterina Maggi describes spontaneous experiences of awareness from childhood, a major awakening in her twenties, and the recognition that identity is not limited to the body, mind, or personal story. The discussion explores the role of teachers, the purification that follows awakening, and how emptiness can include and embrace every human experience.

Questions This Interview Explores

• Can profound spiritual awakening happen spontaneously and without intentional seeking?
• What is the difference between awareness and the personal identity formed by memory, roles, and life circumstances?
• Why can emotional pain and psychological conditioning intensify after awakening?
• How can a person relate to difficult thoughts, emotions, and patterns without being defined by them?
• What role can a spiritual teacher play after an awakening experience?

Key takeaways

• Awareness is present beyond memory, personal history, and changing roles.
• Awakening can arise naturally through life experiences rather than deliberate spiritual seeking.
• Awakening is often the beginning of deeper purification and integration.
• Conditioning can be fully felt without being taken as a personal identity.
• Emptiness is not separate from life; it allows every experience to arise and be welcomed.
• Seeing oneself as awareness brings freedom while deepening love for the world.

Transcript

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening people. I have done hundreds of them now, and if this is new to you and you would like to check out others, go to www.batgap.com and look at the “Past Interviews” menu, where you will find all the other ones categorized in various ways.

This show is made possible by the support of appreciative viewers and listeners, so if you appreciate it and would like to support it in any way, go to the website. There are PayPal buttons on every page.

My guest today is Shakti Caterina Maggi (SCM). We first heard about Shakti, I don’t know, some months ago, when Zaya Benazzo, who is the mother of the Science & Nonduality Conference, got in touch with me and said, “Rick! Shakti Caterina Maggi…” something like that, “you have to interview her! She’s great.” So, we thought, “Okay,” and here we are.

Welcome, Shakti.

Shakti: Thank you for having me. Thank you, Rick.

Rick: And it’s been delightful getting to know you over the last couple of days, as we’ve been doing a little technical testing and stuff—microphones and things like that.

I’ll read a little bit of your bio, and I won’t read the whole thing without interspersing it with questions. So, let me start chronologically. Well, first of all, you’re from… well, not obviously, but I know you’re from Italy.

Shakti: Yeah.

Rick: People will get to hear the accent in a minute. You used to be a journalist in the financial industry, yeah?

Shakti: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. In the last years of my journalism career, I was actually writing about Wall Street.

Rick: Wall Street.

Shakti: Yeah.

Rick: But we’re going to go back farther than that. You say that the first glimpses and non-definitive openings to the Self and the true nature of reality began to occur for you at a very early age. Presumably you mean around five, six, seven, eight—an early age like that?

Shakti: Yeah, yeah. I would say around the age of eight, through various strange circumstances that maybe are not worthy to mention. But basically, I started to notice how what I was thinking and what was appearing, apparently in the outer world, were actually appearing simultaneously. So, this was, of course, happening in the mind of a child and…

Rick: So, for example, give me an example.

Shakti: Well, basically, what happened was a major situation, like a shock situation, because my grandfather died. The morning in which he actually passed away, my brother and I were in the house with him. He had a heart attack, and my father was upset.

That morning, when he actually passed away, he had a huge argument with my grandmother. I was feeling all this energy of disturbance, let’s call it, in his presence in the house, and everybody was angry because they had continuous arguments and things.

In that moment when he actually died, I could see the synchronicity of this negativity happening—let’s call it like that—and his passing. I don’t know if this threw me into a state of shock, where the mind stopped.

Days later, this understanding was coming up in me by itself, and I was saying, “Okay, let’s say this cannot possibly be true. Let’s say, hmm, the red car is going to pass at the end of the road in ten seconds,” and it was happening. More was happening, and the more it happened, the more I was getting a bit scared and very quiet, because I never mentioned it to anybody.

But for me, the death of my grandfather was probably something that was so strong and shocking because I was there, and I was very young, very little. It threw my attention within. I noticed how everything was happening in a kind of synchronic way.

Rick: Synchronistic, I think, yeah.

Shakti: Synchronistic, yes, sorry. And this carried along for many years. I had another important moment—or accident, although maybe it wasn’t really like that. I was 15, and I slipped on a rock, banged my head, and lost my memory of the last two years.

Rick: Whoa!

Shakti: Yeah. So, I woke up in the hospital and realized that everybody was living two years later, and I didn’t remember anything. Of course, the memory came back in a very short while, but when I was pondering this, I realized that I existed beyond my memory. I was not my story, because I was there. I felt that I couldn’t remember my story very well.

You know, I had a compression in the brain because of the bruise, so it took some days to recover. There was something that was perfectly conscious and aware, and it had nothing to do with memories. This was another very big opening.

A Teenage Expansion of Perception

Then again, I could talk endlessly—many things. It’s been a kind of solitary journey. I didn’t say anything to anybody. But, for instance, this thing when I was 15 left me for a couple of weeks in a very big space of perception, a feeling of how everything was actually appearing in me and was me. My senses were very open.

Then the personality, I suppose, came back, and you quiet down again. But many, many, many situations or glimpses happened along the way.

Rick: It’s interesting that you interpreted them the way you did, because most people might not have given them a second thought. But you thought, “Oh, this is interesting. This tells me something about reality that I hadn’t realized.” You contemplated it a little bit.

Shakti: Yeah, it was natural for me, I would say. I was very curious. For instance, one time, actually when my grandmother died—this sounds very odd now, bringing up all my family!—I had another realization: “Okay, she died.” She was very dear to me. “She died… okay, what am I if I am not the granddaughter of my grandmother? And what if I wasn’t the daughter of my mother? What if I wasn’t a person? And what if, and what if, and what if…?” You know, everything flickered back into nothingness. Then I panicked. I felt a huge fear of death.

Rick: Yeah, like a self-inquiry you were doing.

Shakti: Yeah, yeah. I was 18, so I mean, I had never heard about self-inquiry. It just happened spontaneously. So, I suppose I had a very inquiring and curious attitude. Once again, I didn’t say anything to anybody. I mentioned it once to a friend of mine who was a psychologist, and they said, “Oh, so you have panic attacks. It’s very serious.”

“Really?” I said. “I found it very interesting.” So, anyway.

✨ An awakening experience at age 27

Rick: So, then you say around 27, “These temporary windows of our true nature brought you to a state of great inner openness without having the cognition that what was happening was called ‘awakening’ or ‘enlightenment’ in other cultures.” So, what happened when you were 27?

Shakti: Well, I would say that in the period of a year or a year and a half before that happening, there had been a kind of disenchantment with the world, disenchantment with my work. I had been putting a lot of energy into my work, and I realized that… like, that’s not it.

So, all my attention was back on me. After a lot of delusion, I was simply staying there, feeling this deep sense of love with no object. I was thinking, “Oh, I really wish to have somebody to give this love to.” Then I thought, “If this love is here, it has nothing to do with the other person; it’s me.”

I fell asleep in this recognition—to be love, which all my life I had been trying to express, touch, and reach. Then, around two in the morning, I woke up with my whole body shaking. All the cells of my body were singing in bliss and expanding in waves of love.

All the cells of my body were singing in bliss and expanding in waves of love.

I thought I was sure I was going to die. I even sent a text to a guy who was my ex-boyfriend to say, “I forgive you,” you know? I was certain. It was really strong.

When I woke up in the morning, everything disappeared, and when everything appeared in the morning, I was surprised to be alive. I called a friend and said, “You know, it’s strange. It’s like there is a huge, boundless me, an ‘I,’ with no limits, that is watching this small character. It is like a cartoon.” Since then, I was watching life with a much lessened sense of reality and a great openness.

After this big thing was when I realized I needed a guide, because for the first time I realized that I needed somebody to explain to me what was going on. But I said, “Okay, if all this happened by itself, I don’t need to look for anybody. He will show up, or she will show up. Life is going to bring me the guide I need.”

So, constantly there was a sense of openness and faith in me, let’s say, that God was looking after me. At that time there was still not a complete understanding. And that’s it! That’s how I met my guide, basically.

Rick: It’s interesting. The biggest awakening I ever had was during sleep, also. It was a very profound experience. I’m not going to talk about it now because it’s not… it’s your interview. But I wonder how often that happens to people, where something really profound happens during sleep.

Shakti: It makes sense, because when it happened here, my body was not asleep, but I woke up, you know?

Rick: Yeah.

Shakti: The moment before you go to sleep and the moment when you wake up are a twilight zone in which you completely lack your sense of “me.” So, it’s quite easy in that period. That’s why, in many traditions, there is this idea of meditating in the early hours of the morning or before going to bed, in a sense to align the form toward the Self.

So, this is the reason—I mean, you and I have learned that many, many people have major insights before going to sleep, or they wake up during the night, perhaps going through some strong energetic process. For some people, it is actually quite scary; it can be scary.

Rick: Hmm, especially if they don’t know what’s happening.

Shakti: Exactly, yeah, yeah. I think I was a weirdo. I was not worried. But I really felt that I was held by God. That’s why I wasn’t afraid, I think.

Rick: Yeah. It kind of sounds like you had cultivated that faith or understanding in yourself already throughout your life, so, you know, it’s different than if somebody hadn’t done that; you were just surrounded, to a great extent.

Shakti: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was just happening spontaneously. But until I met my guide, which was three months later, this bigger, let’s say, “opening up,” I had never even heard the words “enlightenment” or “awakening.” I had no idea that people were looking for it. I mean, I knew people were meditating, but …

Rick: You didn’t know why, or something.

Shakti: I … not really.

Rick: You hadn’t thought about it.

Shakti: No, not at all.

Turiya Between Waking, Dreaming, and Sleep

Rick: In the Vedic tradition, they talk of … there’s this word “turiya,” which means “fourth.” Waking, dreaming, and sleeping are considered to be the first three, or the other three. And it’s thought that between each of those three states there is a gap, as one transitions from one state to the other. In that gap, one can experience the fourth, or turiya. Over time, the gap gets wider or clearer, and eventually turiya is experienced continuously, along with waking, dreaming, or sleeping.

Shakti: Yeah, I mean, turiya, in my understanding, is simply the background of everything; it’s the empty awareness. And when you actually pass from one state of consciousness to the other, there is a possibility to see how everything is unreal.

Rick: Right, yeah.

Shakti: So, if something is changing, it can’t be solid. When I was inquiring, around my twenties, I would sometimes ask myself, “What am I when I’m not the girlfriend of somebody or the journalist? What am I between things, when I change my clothes, you know, like my masks? What am I in between any two appearances?”

So, it was something that was up in me very spontaneously and can happen to anybody. I mean, in a sense, I am the proof that this can happen to anybody, because it belongs to human nature; it doesn’t belong to seekers. Cautious seekers express it, but it belongs to human nature; it belongs to everybody.

So, it was something that was up in me very spontaneously and can happen to anybody. I mean, in a sense, I am the proof that this can happen to anybody, because it belongs to human nature; it doesn’t belong to seekers. Cautious seekers express it, but it belongs to human nature; it belongs to everybody.

Rick: Sure. And you might extend it to say, “Well, what am I if my arm gets cut off? Or if my body dies? You know, what am I?”

Shakti: Yeah, of course. And I mean, in a sense, when you see that you don’t belong to all of these, but what appears belongs to you, you can love life fully, you know? As long as you think you belong to the body or to the mind, or to your story, to what appears in your life, you remain attached to it, and you feel imprisoned and encaged. Whereas instead, when your vision comes back about the true you, then you see that everything belongs to you, and there is a sense of freedom while, at the same time, deep love for everything.

Rick: Yeah. So, you alluded to your teacher a couple of times, and maybe we can talk about him now. So, you had this awakening experience, and then about four months later you met your teacher. Is that because you realized—I think you said you sort of needed one—but you expected the person to just show up when the time was right?

Shakti: Yeah! Yeah, I mean, after this bigger event, I realized that for me, a teacher was needed, but I didn’t look for one. I said, “Okay, life will bring it to me, and I’ll wait.” And then, really by chance, let’s say, I was called by a friend to go to a satsang, and at the time I didn’t even know what a satsang was.

I just sat there, and at that time, this guy, who was Bodhi Avasa, was actually talking about his own first awakening, and I said, “Okay! That’s what happened to me.” And literally, five days later, I realized that Caterina never existed, that it was my own imagination, and all this was a movement of my own being.

At that time, I wasn’t able to express it as I can now because it hadn’t been integrated, but this recognition has been steady in the sense that, since that moment, I have never again felt that I am a person, as in identified with the “me.” The “me” came back big time, of course, but I never bought it; I never believed it.

Rick: It didn’t predominate.

Shakti: No, never. And I don’t know, maybe this is a bit unusual, and I suppose it’s because I had this opening since I was very, very young. So, I was already, in a sense, without knowing it, in a state of balancing on this.

Whereas for the majority of people I met, consciousness opens up and then there is a period of a pendulum of the mind, in which you fall back into identification, then you see your openness, and so on. And then you have to see that this movement is happening in you, as you.

Rick: Yeah, I went through that a number of years before that big experience that I told you about. And when you fall back into identification, it was always so painful that, all day long, I would feel like, “I can’t wait to go back to sleep at night, where I can just blot this out and not feel this anymore.” Oh, you know.

Shakti: Yeah, yeah, because that moment can be really painful …

Rick: Very painful.

Patterns of Identification and Freedom

Shakti: Because at that point, you see the grass on the other side of the hill is greener, and you know that there is a space of freedom and unconditional joy, and you seem to be doomed again in the patterns of identification. And it requires understanding to see that those patterns happen, but they don’t happen to you; they happen in you. And they are part of consciousness being able to welcome all its manifestations.

But for a period, you fall back into this idea, so these patterns are not actually free to come to the surface of consciousness fully. Because in my understanding, it is actually after awakening that you begin to have this purification, big time. Before that, the sense of identification with the “me” prevents the full surfacing of certain patterns, because there is always a “me” that all this is happening to.

Rick: Yeah.

Shakti: Whereas after awakening—and that is why, for me, awakening is the beginning of the journey—awakening is the moment in which your attention comes back to emptiness. That is the moment in which the purification, integration, and embodiment of awakening can happen.

Rick: Or can accelerate, anyway.

Shakti: Yes.

Rick: It’s like beforehand there has to be some purification beforehand, too, in order to prepare the vessel to experience consciousness or to awaken the consciousness. But it’s still like a little cup of water where you can’t really dissolve too much mud in it without muddying up the water. But then, once the cup kind of breaks, you can take shovelfuls and throw them in, and it can dissolve. So, the capacity to process or resolve all this identification and conditioning gets much greater, right, after awakening?

Shakti: Yes, because, taking your analogy of the cup, the cup is the “me.” If you are the ocean, it doesn’t matter how many drops fall into you, or how much current is moving, or …

Rick: Or how much mud you throw in, or whatever.

Shakti: It doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t mean that you don’t feel the emotions or the sensations that those patterns involve; of course you feel them big time, because you feel them for the first time, really, full force, as you said.

But because there is still this hook in believing yourself to be a person, it’s still marginal. Something is happening, of course, but it’s not really … The real process, in my understanding, happens when you really stand in the emptiness, and from emptiness watch all the layers of personality coming up. And then you integrate them on any level of your being.

The real process happens when you stand in the emptiness and watch all the layers of personality coming up.

Rick: Yeah, I agree. The capacity to process it becomes much greater, because you have a solid foundation. Otherwise, you get blown off by every little thing.

Shakti: Otherwise, you get scared and you say, “Oh, what is happening to me?” or “I should fix my way of thinking,” or “I should fix my personality. I must change in order to avoid something”—something that always looks to be bigger than you.

You know, when you stand in emptiness, there is nothing bigger than you. And I don’t want to give the impression that this is something difficult. In my experience, at least, waking up to seeing that you are really nothing is very easy. It’s easy and it’s natural.

You know, when you stand in emptiness, there is nothing bigger than you. And I don’t want to give the impression that this is something difficult. In my experience, at least, waking up to seeing that you are really nothing is very easy. It’s easy and it’s natural.

Just look back at what is watching this moment, and you find just empty awareness, not a person. The person is a sense in you. So, the real adventure, in a sense, in my experience, is meeting yourself in the manifestation.

Rick: Are you implying that this is something one would consciously and intentionally do as a sort of practice? Or would you say that at a certain point this becomes second nature and you don’t have to think about it or do anything; it just becomes the way you operate?

Shakti: We have to remember that all this is not happening to the person, but it is consciousness waking up. Consciousness waking up has, as a side effect, a change in the person, but it’s not the person that now has to watch things from the emptiness. I am emptiness. I am the emptiness, so I’m watching my own creation here.

Rick: A person can’t “do” emptiness. It’s like emptiness is itself.

Shakti: Exactly. When you see that you are really not in charge of this spiritual life, but that you are “done” by life, it can be a moment in which you get scared. But our going to satsang, our watching videos and interviews, our inquiry as this form, is the manifestation of empty consciousness wanting to meet itself.

When consciousness meets itself, one starts to welcome everything that is appearing as a manifestation. On the surface of life, this appears as if a person is integrating and embodying something, but actually what is really happening is that appearance is the final representation of something much deeper.

When I say “I,” I’m never referring to the person; I’m always referring to awareness, to consciousness. And when I speak with people, I’m always addressing that in them. I don’t address their idea of themselves.

Rick: If you’re sitting eating dinner with somebody and you say, “I would like some more mashed potatoes, please,” you’re not saying, “Consciousness wants more mashed potatoes.” You’re saying that your body would like some more.

Shakti: No! Of course! I say, “I would like more potatoes. Would you please pass them to me?” For everyday language, of course. Actually, it’s so weird when people speak of themselves in the third person.

Rick: I know. It’s annoying.

Shakti: It’s annoying because, in a sense, it’s really a mental thing in which you have to remember. I don’t remember anything, but I know when a pattern or some leftover, residual ego comes up. I know these are just things, just waves of the ocean. And I know, in a sense, that all this—and Rick and Shakti and the computer and each of you—is all a manifestation that is happening in me.

And dancing—since you mentioned this, I would really like to emphasize it—dancing between existence and nonexistence, seeing that everything is an illusion and, at the same time, giving it tremendous importance because it is happening now and it is a miracle.

You know, the balance between these two things: asking for the potatoes, knowing that it’s all a dream, and yet enjoying the potato, enjoying the taste of it. The balance between these two things is very important because otherwise we often spiritually bypass life, hiding from life.

Rick: Nisargadatta said that the ability to appreciate paradox and ambiguity is an earmark of more spiritual maturity. Some people don’t get the paradox thing; they just emphasize one side of it: there are no potatoes, there is no dinner, there is no body, and blah blah.

Shakti: From my point of view, how delicious it is that I am a limitless being and I am experiencing myself through this limited body. While it may be an experience that is so finite, if I bring it back here, it’s endless. And that’s the miracle of being human.

Rick: Fascinating, hmm?

Shakti: Absolutely, and it’s the meeting point. I think many people miss that the reward is being human and living life as it is; that’s the reward. When you stand in your eternal being nature, you will finally appreciate impermanence and life.

Rick: I sometimes find that even the more intense experiences are the most fascinating because of the contrast between being and the intensity of the experience you’re having.

Shakti: I understand now. You catch the drama and, in a sense, it’s like you learn how to play it as if it’s real, and do everything full force. Something in the background knows that it doesn’t really matter.

And this is the deliciousness, the delightfulness of being human. The human is a bridge between manifestation and what is always unmanifest—he is the center point of the cross. That part, the verticality of being and infinite manifestation, is you. It is the adventure of being human and it is totally fascinating.

❤️ Meeting life without attachment

Rick: I was listening to one of your talks, and a woman was talking about aspirations and not being able to fulfill them. It reminded me of a verse in the Gita: “You have control over action alone, but never over its fruits,” so don’t just live for the fruits of action.

Shakti: Exactly. It can sound contradictory if you don’t watch it from emptiness, but if you watch it from the idea of being a person, you can get engaged with life full force, be passionate about things, and be detached at the same time.

When we were kids, we were at the shoreline building a sandcastle. We were in total passion, making the door and building the sandcastle precisely, although we knew that the sea was going to destroy it. We fought with the sea, but at the same time it was okay; it was just a game. The fun of life comes from seeing that it is all impermanent.

If you stay in this thin line between seeing that everything is an illusion and watching the wonderfulness of life from both the emptiness point of view and from your form, from that center of the cross, from a heart that is open and enflamed, that is the door to understanding that you are here to meet life and play your part as a form, steady in the recognition that you are emptiness, silence, free.

Rick: I don’t know if all kids are as dispassionate as you just said. A kid going through the supermarket sees a candy bar and says, “Mom, I want the candy bar!” Mom says no, and then there’s all this screaming. But five minutes later the kid has forgotten all about it. There’s an initial resentment, but they usually move on more quickly than many adults do.

Shakti: Yes, because they don’t stay in the horizontal mind; they don’t stay in the story. They live everything vertically. Everything is intense and real in the moment in which it happens, and then it disappears, and you meet it, and it disappears, and you meet it.

Kids do this naturally, but when we grow up we tend to remain attached to our stories, so we remember the story of the candy bar ten years later and may even speak with our therapist about it.

Rick: Although sometimes a messed-up “me” has impediments for spiritual development that a somewhat healthier “me” might not have. Would you agree?

Shakti: In a sense, I agree that it might be more difficult to be a “somebody” if that somebody has heavy conditioning, but that heaviness might be a tremendous trigger pull.

I’ve seen people really struggling, their lives being so open to listen to this message because they say, “Okay, this finally makes sense,” and other people who were more functional and having a more functioning life were more asleep in their comfort zone because their lives are working. So, I would say that there is a justice, there is a balance in everything.

Rick: I think that was my experience when I was 18 years old: a high school dropout, getting arrested, just difficult times. And when I finally learned meditation it was like, “Holy mackerel! This is really what I needed,” so I stuck to it like glue.

Shakti: We have to remember that there is no “person” looking for truth; it is actually truth that is looking through us. Truth, which is us—it is our true nature—is looking for itself, anywhere!

Sometimes people who have had a bumpy road are the ones who have a tremendous natural passion for life and for truth. There is a beautiful expression of Osho’s where he says, “Only rebels reach God.” You have to be a rebel to go against the idea of being a persona and still remain sane.

This message is not only for seekers; it is for everybody. Everybody is looking for this, even if they don’t know it. You can address the true being in anybody and not the person, and not have the snobbery of, “I’m a seeker, I know better than you.”

Rick: Did you ever see the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind by Steven Spielberg?

Shakti: Yeah.

Rick: It was a beautiful metaphor for what you’re saying. He had an experience and it was implanted in him that, “There is this thing and I need to find it.” Then he went back to his normal life and couldn’t relate to it. He was taking mashed potatoes and forming them into a mountain because he was driven by this sense that there was this thing he needed to find.

Shakti: Sometimes, if we watch people’s lives from this point of view, we see that something way bigger than looking for a girlfriend, a job, or approval is driving them. What is actually driving our lives is Truth, even when we don’t know it.

Everybody, in their own merry way, or unmerry way sometimes, is actually coming to rest in this. Nothing is lost; even our mistakes and errors are perfect. It is not a person awakening; it is consciousness that is awakening through all its forms.

Rick: I think you’re saying it beautifully. You and I were talking the other day and saying how this is basically what is driving the entire universe. The whole thing has this deep evolutionary drive at its core, evolving all its expressions to greater and greater capability to awaken to their true nature.

It’s an endless recognition. This waking up is not something that happens at once to a person. It happens through the eons, through all the forms, through all sentient and nonsentient beings—awareness is waking up through all. And we, as forms, are the glory of it.

Shakti: It’s an endless recognition. This waking up is not something that happens at once to a person. It happens through the eons, through all the forms, through all sentient and nonsentient beings—awareness is waking up through all. And we, as forms, are the glory of it.

It is not a person awakening; it is consciousness that is awakening through all its forms.

Watching the manifestation from this recognition makes you appreciate life. You hated impermanence before—people changing, dying, and going away—but when you perceive it from here, you see, “Wow, it is so incredible! We are eternal and we experience death! We experience change!” That will make you appreciate life and love life as it is.

Rick: It doesn’t always make sense to try to fit cosmic purposes into human understanding, but if you were to try to give an explanation as to why consciousness is doing this—why is there a universe? Why do all the forms in the universe appear to be evolving?—what would you say?

Shakti: We all sense that there is something behind the sense of “me,” and it is knowing life and is our true self. When we meet the duality of life—the polarities of life—we get so fascinated with that polarity that we try to hold on to one side or another, or to the pain of having to decide between one or the other.

That pain, and the apparent losing yourself in the polarities, is actually the only way in which this knowing self in the background can meet those polarities. Your mistakes and errors and your ups and downs in life are not unnecessary suffering.

God is a scientist who is so madly in love with His own experiment that He entered into the experiment, so as to become one of the creatures of the experiment. We are, at the same time, both the mouse and the scientist.

Rick: Beautiful, as a living reality.

Shakti: Exactly! This allows you to see your life—whether it is very short or very long—like, “Wow, I had that experience.” Experience that, because it is precious. When we fight with life, we don’t see the beauty, because we want eternity from it. But if we rest where true eternity is, then we can love life.

Rick: Beautiful. Well put.

Shakti: Thank you.

✨ Awakening, purification, and embodiment

Rick: A while back, you talked about when you had this awakening and said, “For several days there was no sense of a ‘me,’ but then the sense of a ‘me’ came back.” Do you still have a sense of a “me” in some respect?

Shakti: Chronologically, that moment was a clear opening up, but I would say that the real waking up happened when I met my teacher five days later.

Since that moment, I did experience the “me” coming back, but I didn’t experience it as the “me” coming back in the “me.” I didn’t believe in the game anymore. I felt as if something was just happening in the silence of my being, with all the patterns—mental, emotional, and physical—that this involves. All these years have been about integrating this recognition every day.

Rick: When the kundalini rose up, what happened?

Shakti: When you wake up, the kundalini rises through the sushumna, and Shakti, madly in love with Shiva, with the emptiness, rises up; it’s ruptured. Then you have this clarity of seeing that you are not what you thought yourself to be. This is the space where I would say the majority of people stay when they wake up, in this clarity.

At that point, the “me,” the conditional mind, comes back, and false ideas are dissolved in the light of understanding. There is a clearing of the conscious mind. Many teachers teach from this space of clarity.

Then, if the integration goes further, the call for the deep is answered. The energy goes down; the kundalini, Shakti, Shiva, goes down into the heart. At that point, you deal with the old emotions behind those conditional patterns, and your heart breaks.

The beautiful image of Christ on the Cross with His heart open and enflamed is actually at the center, where the true spiritual heart is. From seeing that you are nothing, you meet life in your heart, and your heart is put in flames and becomes broken open.

For many years I had this feeling of having a little camera above my head, watching life. The first time this happened was in 2011, when I started giving satsang by myself. This camera kind of went down into the heart.

There was no more subtle duality between the nothing and the everything, but it was now fused. This gave space to a great dissolving of emotional patterns and of the dark side of our emotions that we don’t want to see, like anger or sadness.

In the last two years, the energy went down, and I was very surprised by it. After 14 years of seeing that I was not inside the body, it was like the “Self” claimed the body, and I crossed the density of the form. This awakening happened on the level of the hara.

Embodying the last part—after you clear up the conscious mind, the subconscious and emotional response to conditioning—means going to the deepest part of conditioning, which is the genetic, bodily conditioning, the true unconscious, in a sense. Meeting the form, meeting the body from the Self consciously, is incredible.

I’m still exploring it, still playing with it, and sharing what I’ve been seeing so far. It’s an endless integration, but it has given me a lot of love for life, substance, matter, and the sense that matter is really myself condensed physically.

Rick: People will probably remember that Adyashanti often talks about awakening in the head, heart, and gut. First you were saying that most teachers teach from awakening in the head area. What would be the characteristic experience of someone who has awakened on that level, and what would be the quality of their teaching?

Shakti: I have great respect for everybody because everybody is giving their own contribution where they are. But sometimes, when the experience of somebody is just here, you have a clarity that doesn’t match with life.

You have people who say, “Everything is an illusion. There’s nobody in the body. It’s all just one play of consciousness. There’s nothing to look for, there’s nothing to integrate.” You feel that they are a bit disconnected from life and not very human. It’s okay, because when you go through that stage, you need the Vajra’s sword to cut through things that are not real.

Rick: It can also be confusing to people who are trying to raise children and hold down a job to have it hammered into them that everything is just an illusion.

Shakti: In my experience, when you go through that phase, life gives you some slaps and says, “Really? And what about your wife, your kids, your bank account, and your dealing with your mom who is yelling at you over the phone? Are you really okay with illusion?” Life tests you.

Why Nonduality Must Include the World

Rick: I find it ironic that this is sometimes referred to as “Nonduality,” because it is actually duality. There’s been a big separation created between the Self and the whole world, which is supposedly only an illusion; it’s not a wholeness that incorporates both.

Shakti: The game is watching and experiencing duality from our Nondual being. We are Nonduality, but we are here to experience duality, and to avoid duality is the greatest duality of all!

Being attached to duality is dualism, and that is the source of suffering. But if you rest in the Nonduality of your being, then reaching duality is the prize, the reward. It is heaven on earth.

It doesn’t mean that life is always pretty. You still experience pain if somebody dies, or grief. But it doesn’t mean that you hold on to that grief forever. That’s the difference. You meet life, for real.

Rick: How about the heart level? What would the experience be like, and how might one teach if that has been one’s realization?

Shakti: The first great masters who come to my mind are Rumi and St. Francis, somebody expressing pure love and taking whatever happens in life as something for alchemical transformation in love, and then letting go of it.

Some teachers invite you to invite life—to invite grief, sadness, or anger—and not intellectually work them out in a story, but really meet them in your heart. The trademark is compassion.

Rick: There wouldn’t be that coldness and aloofness that you sometimes see in certain teachers; it would be more of a sweetness?

Shakti: We are generalizing. It also has to do with the characteristic of the form. My teacher was very aloof—he was British. At the same time, he had a great heart, and this deep love that is stillness was very evident when you were close to him. I’m very extroverted because the form is Italian.

It is also more about the teaching: are you addressing the “me” with compassion? Are you addressing the personality with love and compassion? If you are, then you know this.

Rick: Let’s take it to the third level, the hara level. What would the experience be like? What would a teacher who had realized to that extent be like?

Shakti: I can only speak of myself, and this is quite new. What I see so far is that you go through a greater neutrality of being, in which you meet all the polarities of darkness and light. You go deeply into meeting matter and the density of the form from the emptiness of the Self.

At the beginning, many years ago, I was trying to bring people to understand what I was talking about. Then I was trying to bring people to feel what I was talking about. Now it’s nothing. They just appear in my awakening. People wake up in my “Self.” I am the emptiness in which they wake up.

There is no homework. They don’t have to understand or feel anything; they are me.

There is no indication for the person because the process is already spontaneously happening. The call for truth is happening spontaneously and progressing at the pace of how much honesty, courage, and authenticity are there.

Rick: I’m glad you said that because some people say it’s absurd to talk of levels of consciousness because there’s only this, only oneness. I think oneness itself doesn’t have levels, but the degree to which it expresses or integrates into the person has many possible levels.

Shakti: The sun and its endless beams are an image. The light of the sun remains undivided and eternal, and all its beams have this same light. Each beam is radiated into a point in space and time and appears as a form. Before appearing as a form, it appears at subtle levels, then becomes more and more dense.

The sun is knowing itself through its own beams, and the ability to remain conscious all the way through condensed levels is our ability to embody awakening. When the beam discovers that its source of light is the sun, that is the initial awakening. The ability to bring down light into matter and density is integration and embodiment.

Rick: Right, and there is no end to that second part.

Shakti: No, it’s endless. This is an endless universal game that Consciousness is playing through all our forms. We are, at the same time, the creature and the creator.

Living as both the wave and the ocean

Rick: One thing that always puzzles me is the notion of losing the sense of the I-sense, the loss of a personal self. In my own experience, I can see losing the sense that that’s all I am and realizing that I am something much larger than that, but to lose it altogether, I don’t understand how living would be possible.

It’s like the ocean analogy: “I’m a wave, but I’m not only a wave; I’m actually this ocean, but I’m ocean arising as this particular wave.” So, it’s not like the wave goes away; it’s more like one’s limited experience of “I am only the wave” goes away. How do you relate to that?

Shakti: At the beginning, you believe you are the wave, and in awakening, if attention comes back completely on itself, you discover you are the depths of the ocean. The whole ocean, as manifestation, can disappear in that, and you have a real disappearance of the entire manifestation into nothingness.

Then one comes back into life, and a part of this energy that is now expressed will be engaged with the form. Not that I feel it to be inside the body, but some part of this awareness is engaged with the body; otherwise, the body would disappear.

These are peak experiences. In order to work in a balanced way, you remain belonging to the true Self and experiencing life. Taking a glass of water and at the same time being aware that this is a body happening in me, and drinking the water, is the balance.

Meeting the form from the formless requires you to be steady in the emptiness so that you can engage in life. The more you are able to remain engaged with the world and remain present to what you are simultaneously, the more you are able to bring reality to the manifestation.

You fill the manifestation with your own reality.

Rick: This is from Mark Peters in Santa Clara, California:

Can you speak more about your current sense of beingness? Do you feel yourself to be sitting on the couch, looking out from behind your eyes, heart, or gut, into the computer’s camera, or is the emptiness simultaneously looking without and within from everything in the sensory field?

Shakti: I’m not feeling that I’m sitting on the couch; I am the emptiness in which the sitting is happening. The feeling of cold feet is happening. I am the emptiness that is experiencing the joy and fun of having this conversation, and I am what is creating all of this. I am conscious of it and at the same time I am playing the role, as if I’m just here.

There is no thought or feeling before these words. There is nothing before these words; these words come up from emptiness, and everything is arising from the emptiness of my being, including this conversation.

I don’t know anything about this conversation and at the same time, I don’t understand it. I don’t know anything, not in the way I used to know it. I am this conversation; I don’t know it. So, I know nothing, and I am everything.

Rick: I try to describe it by saying: I’m everywhere, I’m nowhere, and I’m right here. All three are true.

The Meeting of Form and Void

You are the impossible meeting between form and void. Human experience is the miracle in which the formless appears as a form and yet is still conscious of its formlessness. The mind cannot understand this because the mind is an object.

Shakti: You are the impossible meeting between form and void. Human experience is the miracle in which the formless appears as a form and yet is still conscious of its formlessness. The mind cannot understand this because the mind is an object.

I gave up my understanding, I gave up my feelings, I gave up everything, in order to be everything.

Rick: It’s fun to talk about even though we can’t totally understand it with the mind.

Shakti: Isn’t this passionate, trying to say it and failing all the time, so we say it again? This is my life.

That’s why my teaching is made up of questions and answers and is not theoretical. When people bring something up on the word level and the sound level, the deep movement of consciousness becomes clearer.

Even the making of a question is part of the understanding. The ability to watch the question from emptiness will allow emptiness to change the question and dissolve it, because a true answer is the dissolving of the question.

Rick: Can you think of examples of speaking from the gut, speaking from the hara?

Shakti: I would say that there is not even a feeling anymore; there is no feeling behind it, there is nothing. There is a movement on the three levels. This form, as a tool, uses these three centers simultaneously. It is clarifying, opening the heart, and resting in neutrality, simultaneously.

Rick: Let’s talk about the body or the person as a tool. Traditionally, the body contains organs of action, organs of sense and perception, and subtler components. If someone says, “All sense of a personal self has fallen away and there’s just a functioning,” is that your experience?

Shakti: Yes, because we are the functions of God. As forms, we are the functioning of awareness. There is no person, there is just action. Shakti is an action of awareness, Rick is an action of awareness, and teaching—there is no teacher, there is only the function. The guru is a function.

Life is the guru, the function through which Consciousness is waking up, and it can appear as a human form that expresses that function. If you remember this, you won’t believe that truth comes from people. There is no truth coming from people at all. Truth is not in people. There is no truth in my words.

Rick: If Shakti Caterina is a function with a body and senses, is there something associated with this particular body that knows when someone says, “Hey, Shakti,” so that she turns her head?

Shakti: That turning of the head is not because there is a “me” here feeling that and deciding to turn the head. It happens simultaneously that I am the caller and the called; they are happening in the emptiness of being.

I’m experiencing myself as the calling and as the called. Because I’m using this tool, I’m experiencing the vibration of the voice here in my mouth, moving the lips and skull. I’m experiencing my own being through this tool.

Rick: What you really are is all the people in the room, the table, and everything else, so why doesn’t the table turn its head?

Shakti: In what you are saying there is the assumption that there’s somebody here who decided to move, and there isn’t. All that is appearing is not appearing as a doing; it is appearing as being.

Somebody arrives and says, “Hey Shakti,” and in my being, this body is moving. Because I’m experiencing my own being through this tool, I experience the senses here. I am touching my being through this spot.

Rick: To even say “my” being, it’s not your being; it’s Being. There’s no possession of it.

Shakti: When I say “my being,” I’m not speaking about it being mine because everything is me. Everything is my being, everything is the Being. There is not an author of this action.

The entire appearance is a movement of your own being. If you really see that there is nobody here but just beingness, everything gets very easy.

It is simply that this Being is expressing itself through a particular form, so it has an experience on the sensorial level only through this location. I don’t feel the dog’s bladder at the same time, but I experience the dog from this particular point of view.

There are moments in which you see the entire scene, a geometrical representation of the entire scene. You can watch something from many points of view simultaneously, but this can be done just out of the corner of your eye, because if you do that, your body would dissolve into light, and this is what happens when we die.

Rick: What you are indicating is that we are the Divine intelligence that animates all forms. The forms themselves are that, but it somehow functions through a particular form.

Shakti: We don’t meet in the experience; we meet in the non-experience. We meet in nothingness. I am the non-experience of your dog. When you live from this, the forms seem to answer and reply to this knowing.

It doesn’t mean that I’m experiencing what everybody is thinking or feeling. That would be very confusing.

Rick: That would be omniscience.

Shakti: Emptiness is experiencing the moth flying and being in love with the flame, the dog, the cold feet of Shakti, and the fun of the conversation with Rick. God is experiencing it; it’s the emptiness.

At the same time, in the human experience, you are experiencing your limitless and your limited function. I’m experiencing life as Shakti and I can call that “my life.”

Rick: You could even call it your relative self, in your relative perception.

Shakti: It’s like one tree with a lot of buds. Springtime makes the tree blossom. You are, at the same time, the springtime bringing the tree to life and the buds. You are experiencing springtime from the bud’s point of view, knowing that you are the tree.

Rick: I don’t have a problem with the idea that we have the physical body, the senses, the organs of action, and that on some subtle level there is something associated with this particular body, like an interface through which this body is animated. It is not ultimately what we are, but it is some degree of expression unique to each being.

Shakti: I agree totally with you. Just take off the idea that there is somebody who is having the experience and then we agree completely.

What’s happening is that the entire game is experiencing Self through one of its characters.

Rick: The character consists of organs of sense, organs of action, and some kind of jiva or kernel of individuality, which is not ultimately real but is essential to the functioning of that expression.

Shakti: I wouldn’t call it a functional ego. It is simply the functioning of the tool having a sense of knowing. I don’t say, “This body needs to eat.” What I say is, “I’m hungry. I’m going to prepare a meal.”

Rick: Let’s go for it.

Shakti: Yeah.

Rick: That’s helpful. It helps to resolve something that has been bugging me.

Shakti: I might ask myself: Is there an unconsciousness in my consciousness? Is this a place where I want to land, a safe place to land? If I can land here safely, I can experience everything.

Rick: I’m trying to understand the mechanics of the functioning, and whether there is a complete elimination of any sort of individual expression of being, or whether that thing is very subtle. Like a stream going into the ocean: you can no longer distinguish it from the ocean, and yet within the ocean there are currents flowing this way and that way. They are really just the ocean, but there’s something within the ocean that has an individual expression.

Shakti: I love your analogy, because it’s all just water. That current is a movement of Being. It is not a movement of a person who is doing it. The fact that there is individuality in manifestation is not proof that we are separate.

We are all flowers of the same tree. The individual expression is simply a movement of consciousness appearing like that; it is all the same consciousness.

Rick: It’s all Being interacting within itself.

Shakti: Exactly. If you land your feet on Being, then it all makes sense; it’s all just a movement of your own being.

It is like a symphony with a flute, violin, piano, and so on. The symphony is played through all these instruments.

Rick: It’s all one orchestra.

Shakti: Exactly. It seems that the instruments are played by individuals, but actually it is the music that is playing through all these. It is the silence that is vibrating and producing sound.

Rick: Could we think of Being not as a completely homogeneous wholeness, but as having impulses within it—impulses of intelligence and energy percolating within the wholeness?

Shakti: Of course. Seeing everything as one Being doesn’t mean that everything is harmonious as the mind thinks it is harmonious. There is darkness, light, and everything.

The beauty of being impersonal is that you can express as anything, whether as individuality or impersonality. You can see contradictions and paradox in one being. It is only when you attach to one side that you say, “This can’t be.” But in love, anything can be, because love is unconditional.

Rick: This is what the word “Brahman” is supposed to signify: the absolute, the relative, everything contained within a larger wholeness.

Shakti: We are, from the absolute of our being, appearing as the relative while remaining the absolute. There is no subject-object relationship; it’s all a movement of my own being. Speaking is a movement of my being, listening is a movement of my being, everything is moving and is me.

Rick: Could you say that whereas in reality there is no subject-object relationship, there is at the same time a knower, the known, and the process of knowing, and yet there isn’t?

Shakti: Yes, because for Oneness to know itself it has to appear as two. The only one who remains persuaded in this is the one who won’t contain it in a phrase or frame. Otherwise, this remains as an openness with no answer.

Rick: In the Vedic tradition they talk of the infinite dynamism at the root of creation: Shiva, pure silence, and Shakti, the tendency to manifestation contained within infinite silence. Ultimately, manifestation doesn’t happen, and yet it does.

Shakti: Everything is pulsating—appearing and disappearing. We are here, and we are not here. The fact that we are not here allows us to be here.

We are here, and we are not here. The fact that we are not here allows us to be here.

Experiences, kundalini, and the ordinary

Rick: You mentioned peering out of the corner of your eye. Is that an expansion of awareness to incorporate more and more of creation?

Shakti: Everything that is appearing is like a fractal. There can be a moment in which you look at manifestation and catch its perfection—not because you land on any point of view, but because you simultaneously hold a whole point of view for a second. You see that all of it amounts to nothing, and you die like you would in a climax, in the joy of seeing the perfection of it.

Rick: They say that the whole is contained in all the parts, like a hologram.

Shakti: What is appearing is the reflection, the manifestation of a light that remains always unseen. What if you could peek at the pattern of it for a fraction of a second? You would die in ecstasy.

Rick: Maybe the growth from the stage you have described is being able to do that without dying.

Shakti: I had that and the body seems to be alive. But I enjoy being here and being sucked in—drinking a glass of water, having cold feet, and having fun with my new friend Rick.

I don’t want to give the impression that I am having anything special. I want people to see that this is possible and true for them exactly as they are now in their lives.

I do experience people in myself. Sometimes a face appears here and the person calls me and says, “I had this understanding. I was watching a video of yours.” So, I have an extended knowing of myself beyond the apparent limitation of my form. But I don’t speak a lot about it because it could confuse people into believing that they need psychic or strange experiences in order to see what they are.

Rick: Amma sometimes says that when she goes to bed she is flooded with images of people all over the world who are thinking of her and reaching out to her.

Shakti: Before coming to the United States, I met many people in myself before meeting them in form, before even knowing their name. I met the shape of them in my being.

When I arrived here, I sensed myself as the Bay and the ocean. At a certain point I sensed whales and the consciousness of whales. I made an amazing contact with them, as if I were speaking with them. I’m not a dolphin or whale person, so it surprised me.

I touched the seed of their expression and felt a great love for these animals and what they represent in Consciousness. The frequency of their sound is like a love-prayer for the earth, for Gaia.

This was something that happened in me, and it was very real for me, but I wouldn’t give it too much attention. Otherwise, you end up believing it is about having experiences, when it is really about meeting life as it is.

I had an endless amount of kundalini experiences and psychic experiences. Maybe it’s because my body is inclined toward them; it’s a function of the body, but it doesn’t mean that I’m awakened because of it.

Rick: It’s just a kind of add-on.

Shakti: You can have these experiences and not be awakened. You can be very empathic and psychic and not be awakened, and you can be awakened and not have these experiences. You may be just the ordinary John’s Meat around the corner, and it’s okay. It’s actually beautiful to be John’s Meat.

Rick: Life is like a territory with diamond, gold, and silver mines, but the territory is commanded by a fort in the middle. If you explore all the mines without first capturing the fort, it is not really your territory. You want to capture the fort first, and then you can explore the mines if you wish.

Shakti: The greatest advice I received was: whenever you are experiencing an energetic experience, let it be an experience. Don’t play with it, don’t claim it, don’t make it a big deal, and don’t become proud of it.

Considering the amount of kundalini experiences that can happen after awakening, it would have been confusing if somebody had told me, “It’s great that you had this because it means this and that.”

Many people experience kundalini without knowing what kundalini is. It is very common. Maybe they get scared, so after they have seen a doctor and there is no disease, it can be useful to explain that it is something else. But going into too many details can be confusing.

Rick: Indulging in it, milking it, and overdramatizing kriyas and shouting can be a hang-up too.

Shakti: Spontaneous mudras and movements can happen, but they happen because there is an obstacle that Shakti is trying to work out through the form. They are signs of resistance. The greatest realization is nothingness, silence, stillness. Being normal and being silent is the greatest achievement.

Rick: Can you imagine Ramana sitting there going through kriyas? He had arrived; he had worked it all out.

Shakti: Whatever your experience is, you don’t have to be afraid of it. Whatever the experience is, you are the non-experience experiencing it. You are nothingness experiencing. You can welcome everything in life; you don’t have to be afraid of life.

Rick: You should have confidence that something good is happening, even if you don’t completely understand it. Be patient, tolerant, and persevere.

Shakti: What is happening is a movement of your own being, revealing something you may not have seen or giving you something to experience. We tend to apply meaning to things, but it is even beyond that. It is meeting life, and maybe some understanding comes out of it, or maybe it is simply, “I just did it.” It just happened. This has been my life.

Closing thoughts

Rick: This has been totally delightful, and we could go on for another two hours. But like the dog you alluded to, perhaps we both have to pee.

Shakti: Or we sense it … no, I’m just joking.

Rick: I’m sure we’ll do another one day, especially since you have this attitude that there’s no end to it. I have a feeling that if I were to talk to you in five years, we would have a whole new conversation based upon everything that had unfolded.

Shakti: Probably. Where I’m heading to is how, when you really belong to your true Self, the form and manifestation—the physical form—is re-formed in a new way.

Rick: It can theoretically be transformed to the point of becoming a celestial body instead of just a physical, flesh-and-blood body.

Shakti: Because it’s something I’m still inquiring into myself, I’ll tell you in five years!

Rick: We’ll just be sitting here in our light bodies in five years.

Shakti: Or maybe we’ll just be here having coffee and saying, “How is the dog? Is that a new dog?” And it will be great anyway.

Rick: Are you coming to the SAND Conference in October?

Shakti: Yes, I am.

Rick: Good, so I’ll see you out there. Maybe some of the people watching or listening will like to come. It’s always great fun to go to that conference.

Shakti: SAND has organized a retreat with me in California, between March 14 and March 18, at Mount Madonna in Watsonville. If anybody is inspired, there is still space, and you’re welcome to come.

Rick: Great! And I think you’re going up to Seattle, right?

Shakti: Yeah, I’m going to Seattle, Portland, and New York.

Rick: Whereabouts in New York?

Shakti: We are actually still searching for a place.

Rick: Is it in the city or upstate someplace?

Shakti: Manhattan.

Rick: So, let’s make this simple. I’ll link to your website, and you’ll have all this information on your website—where you’re going to be and all of that. You probably have some email thing where people can sign up to be notified.

Shakti: If people write to the email on my website, info@shaktikaterinamaggi.com, I can send them all the information.

Rick: I’ll put a page up on www.batgap.com with all that, linking to it. There is also a geographic index under the “Resources” menu, where people can type in a city and see what is happening among the people I’ve interviewed in that area.

Shakti: That’s very cool. I like it. Thank you so much.

Rick: You’re welcome. It’s really been a delight speaking with you and listening to your talks in preparation for this. I feel like I’ve made a nice new friend, even though she doesn’t exist.

Shakti: Ha, ha, ha … yes, I feel the same.

Rick: And we’ll see you in October.

Shakti: Thank you, thank you, Rick.

Rick: Thanks to those who have been listening or watching. What were you going to say?

Shakti: It has been really nice to speak—really delightful—and I’m really happy to be here and to meet all these new friends. Thank you.

Rick: Good, yes, you’re welcome. Namaste.

Shakti: Be well. Namaste.

[BATGAP theme music plays]